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firelxdykatara · 3 years

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I’m just really confused as to where this idea that Zuko is gaycoded came from. Like people are allowed to have that headcanon but I don’t understand where people are coming from when they try and claim that he was undisputedly gaycoded and trying to deny it is homophobic when he’s only ever shown romantic interest in women.

I made a pretty long post on the topic a while back, but the ultimate gist of it is this: there are a lot of elements of Zuko's status as an abuse victim and trauma survivor that resonate with queer folks. This is understandable and completely fine! However, there are some parts of the fandom who have taken that to the other extreme and will now insist that those elements are uniquely queer, and that they can only be read as some sort of veiled gay/coming out narrative, even though that doesn't make much sense since there is no part of Zuko's narrative which is unique to any sort of queer experience.

I think the problem really does stem from two things being conflated--Zuko's history of abuse and trauma, and trauma&abuse being something a lot of queer people have experienced. I suspect it goes something like 'I see a lot of myself in Zuko, and I was abused for being gay, therefore Zuko must be gay too in order to have had similar experiences.' This can then lead to feeling dismissed or invalidated when other people point out that those experiences are not unique to being queer--but on the flip side, abuse victims and trauma survivors whose abuse&trauma do not stem from queerness (even if they are queer themselves) can feel invalidated and dismissed by the implication that their trauma must be connected to their queerness or it isn't valid.

This is also where the 'people don't actually know what gay coded means' part comes in, and I realize now that I didn't actually get into what gay coding (and queer coding in general) actually means, since I was so hung up on pointing out how Zuko doesn't really fit the mold. (And the few elements that exist which could be said to count are because of the 'villains historically get queer coded bc Hays Code era' thing and mostly occur in Book 1, not because of how he acts as an abuse&trauma survivor.)

Under a cut because I kind of go on a tangent about gay/queer coding, but I swear I get back to the point eventually.

Queer coding (and it is notable that, with respect to Zuko, it is almost always framed as 'he couldn't possibly be attracted to girls', rather than 'he could be attracted to boys as well as girls' in these discussions, for... no real discernible reason, but I'll get into that in a bit) is the practice of giving characters 'stereotypically queer' traits and characteristics to 'slide them under the radar' in an era where having explicitly queer characters on screen was not allowed, unless they were evil or otherwise narratively punished for their queerness. (See: the extant history of villains being queer-coded, because if they were Evil then it was ok to make them 'look gay', since the story wasn't going to be rewarding their queerness and making audiences think it was in any way OK.) This is thanks to the Motion Picture Production Code (colloquially and more popularly known as the Hays Code), which was a set of guidelines which movies coming out of any major studio had to adhere to in order to be slated for public release and lasted from the early 1930s until it was finally abandoned in the late 60s.

The Hays Code essentially existed to ensure that the content of major motion pictures would not 'lower the moral standards' of the viewing public. It didn't just have to do with queerness--cursing was heavily monitored, sex outside of marriage was not allowed to be seen as desirable or tittilating, miscegenation was not allowed (most specifically interracial relationships between black and white people), criminals had to be punished lest the audience think that it was ok to be gay and do crime, etc. Since same-sex relations fell under 'sexual perversion', they could not be shown unless the 'perversion' were punished in some way. (This is also the origin of the Bury Your Gays trope, another term that is widely misunderstood and misapplied today.) To get around this, queer coding became the practice by which movies and television could depict queer people but not really, and it also became customary to give villains this coding even more overtly, since they would get punished by the end of the film or series anyway and there was nothing to lose by making them flamboyant and racy/overly sexual/promiscuous.

Over time, this practice of making villains flamboyant, sexually aggressive, &etc became somewhat separated from its origins in queer coding, by which I mean that these traits and tropes became the go-to for villains even when the creator had no real intention of making them seem queer. This is how you generally get unintentional queer-coding--because these traits that have been given to villains for decades have roots in coding, but people tend to go right to them when it comes to creating their villains without considering where they came from.

Even after the Hays Code was abandoned, the sentiments and practices remained. Having queer characters who weren't punished by the narrative for being queer was exceptionally rare, and it really isn't until the last fifteen or so years that we've seen any pushback against that. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is famous for being one of the first shows on primetime television to feature an explicitly gay relationship on-screen, and that relationship ended in one of the most painful instances of Bury Your Gays that I have ever personally witnessed. (Something that, fourteen years later, The 100 would visually and textually reference with Lexa's death. Getting hit by a bullet intended for someone else after a night of finally getting to be happy and have sex with her s/o? It wasn't remotely subtle. I don't even like Clexa, but that was incredibly rough to witness.)

However, bringing this back to Zuko, he really doesn't fit the criteria for queer coding for a number of reasons. First of all, no one behind the scenes (mostly a bunch of cishet men) was at all intending to include queer rep in the show. This wasn't a case where they were like 'well, we really wanted to make Zuko gay, but we couldn't get that past the censors, so here are a few winks and a nudge', because it just wasn't on their radar at all. Which makes sense--it wasn't on most radars in that era of children's programming. This isn't really an indictment, it's just a fact of the time--in the mid/late 00s, no one was really thinking about putting queer characters in children's cartoons. People were barely beginning to include them in more teen- and adult-oriented television and movies. It just wasn't something that a couple of straight men, who were creating a fantasy series aimed at young kids, were going to think about.

What few instances you can point to from the series where Zuko might be considered to exhibit coding largely happen in Book 1, when he was a villain, because the writers were drawing from typically villainous traits that had historically come from queer coding villains and had since passed into common usage as villainous traits. But they weren't done with any intention of making it seem like Zuko might be attracted to boys.

And, again, what people actually point to as 'evidence' of Zuko being queer-coded--his awkwardness on his date with Jin and his confrontation with Ozai being the big ones I can think of off the top of my head--are actually just... traits that come from his history of trauma and abuse.

As I said in that old post:

making [zuko’s confrontation of ozai] about zuko being gay and rejecting ozai’s homophobia, rather than zuko learning fundamental truths about the world and about his home and about how there was something deeply wrong with his nation that needed to be fixed in order for the world to heal (and, no, ‘homophobia’ is not the answer to ‘what is wrong with the fire nation’, i’m still fucking pissed at bryke about that), misses the entire point of his character arc. this is the culmination of zuko realizing that he should never have had to earn his father’s love, because that should have been unconditional from the start. this is zuko realizing that he was not at fault for his father’s abuse--that speaking out of turn in a war meeting in no way justified fighting a duel with a child.

is that first realization (that a parent’s love should be unconditional, and if it isn’t, then that is the parent’s fault and not the child’s) something that queer kids in homophobic households/families can relate to? of course it is. but it’s also something that every other abused kid, straight kids and even queer kids who were abused for other reasons before they even knew they were anything other than cishet, can relate to as well. in that respect, it is not a uniquely queer experience, nor is it a uniquely queer story, and zuko not being attracted to girls (which is what a lot of it seems to boil down to, at the end of the day--cutting down zuko’s potential ships so that only zukka and a few far more niche ships are left standing) is not necessary to his character arc. nor does it particularly make sense.

And, regarding his date with Jin:

(and before anyone brings up his date with jin--a) he enjoyed it when she kissed him, and b) he was a traumatized, abused child going out on a first date. of course he was fucking awkward. have you ever met a teenage boy????)

Zuko is socially awkward and maladjusted because he was abused by his father as a child and has trouble relating to people as a result. He was heavily traumatized and brutally physically injured as a teenager, and it took him years to begin to truly recover from the scars that left on his psyche (and it's highly likely, despite the strides he made in canon, that he has a long way to go, post series; it's such a pity that we never got any continuation comics >.>). He was not abused for being gay or queer--he was abused because his father believed he was weak, and part of Zuko's journey was realizing that his father's perception of strength was flawed at its core. That his entire nation had rotted from the inside out, and the regime needed to be changed in order for the world--including his people--to begin to heal.

That could be commingled with a coming out narrative, which is completely fine for headcanons (although I personally prefer not to, because, again, we have more than enough queer trauma already), but it simply doesn't exist in canon. Zuko was not abused or traumatized for being queer, and his confrontation with Ozai was not about him coming out or realizing any fundamental truth about himself--it was about realizing something fundamental about his father and his nation, and making the choice to leave them behind so that he could help the Avatar grow stronger and force things to change when he got back.

TL;DR: at the end of the day, none of the traits, scenes, or behavior Zuko exhibits which shippers tend to use to claim he was gay-coded are actually evidence of coding--they aren't uniquely queer experiences, as they stem from abuse that was not related in any way to his sexuality, and they are experiences that any kid who suffered similar abuse or trauma could recognize and resonate with. (Including straight kids, and queer kids who were abused for any reason other than their identity.) And, finally, Zuko can be queer without erasing or invalidating his canon attraction to girls, and it's endlessly frustrating that the 'Zuko is gay-coded' crowd refuses to acknowledge that.

#atla #zuko #on queer coding #atla fandom salt #salt for ts #asked #mudbend

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akwardlyuncool · 3 years

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29 Albums At 29 Part 1 (One - Fifteen)

Yes, I am back for another year of self-analyzation, (not a real word, but I’m going with it.) which includes me overthinking my own tastes, telling myself it doesn’t matter and then creating an entire life out of some silly songs that many just happened to land on the same compact disc together.

Note: Last years list is not required reading, but it’s cool if you’re into seeing how things have changed as a whole, cause change is inevitable in these streets.

TREAT: I’ve also decided to add Deep Cut tracks this year, just in case my favorites were getting repetitive, but also to show some love to other really great songs as well.

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1) Feels Like Home (Deluxe Edition) |2004| ⇢ Cemented

Home is where the Norah Jones’ tracks are. The other day my mom told me that this album was sad and melancholy and I came back with how I actually love sad music, however this isn’t what I’d consider to be the sad soundtrack of my life. I guess I just never looked at it that way. I always saw this album as warmth and comfort and my forever required listening for early morning road trips. I’ve also found that it’s been a wonderful treat to be watching an older show or movie these days and knowing they’re playing Norah Jones because of how instantly I feel that comfort. It may not always lead me back to this record, but I know the feeling when I hear her voice.

Top 2 Tracks:

Humble Me (Track 9)

Be Here To Love Me (Track 6)

This is the song I’m using as self care this year. “Just hold me and be there to love me today.” - That’s how I’m talking to myself.

Fun Fact: This song is actually a cover of a Townes Van Zandt song. (Now knowing that Norah didn’t write every song on this album herself, I’m going to try not to hold that against her in future rankings lol.)

Honorable Mention: Will always go to the song Toes because that’s the song that I tend to set aside to make room for other things to ring favorite or represent me at my life changes. I just couldn’t let this list pass without giving this song it’s flowers in my life.

Deep Cut:

I Turn Your Picture To The Wall (Track 16)

This is a bonus track specifically on the deluxe version.

2) In Love And Death - The Used |2004| ⇢ Cemented

So here’s some TMI real quick. The other day was a rough one for me, there was hella crying and I was just feeling really bummed. For the first time in a long time I decided to put on this album or a few songs from it and I just sung them really hard while in my kitchen, and unsurprisingly that helped a ton. I still felt sad afterwards, but giving it all into the music was the personal solace I needed to help things ease up on me. It’s moments like these that I remember why I’ve called this the only album that I was ever 100% sure was one of my favorite albums of all time. It’s there when I need it and rarely judges the reasons why.

The Used 15th Anniversary Tour (Hopefully they bring it back for the 20th anniversary.)

Top 2 Tracks:

Cut Up Angels (Track 5)

I Caught Fire (Track 2)

I’ve always had this song as a favorite, but didn’t want to sound generic, even though Cut Up Angels is probably one of the actual deepest cuts on the album, so in actuality I could totally get away with it. One day I’ll play this song during this secret moment I’ve assigned it to, one that hasn’t happened yet, and I’ll feel like I’ve leveled up in the world or just hit some sort of weird personal milestone.

Deep Cut:

Light With A Sharpened Edge (Track 8)

3) Corinne Bailey Rae - Corinne Bailey Rae |2006| ⇢ Cemented

Here we go again with the comfort records, that have cemented themselves at the top of this list. I don’t think I could describe this album more perfectly than I did at 27 when I said, “It’s lovely and soulful and it also wears a golden yellow sundress everywhere. It’s me in an alternate universe” I truly do believe that this album is a version of me when I dream, like when I imagine all the ways my life could feel. I just want to be covered in sunshine, warm rain and have complex, but not complicated love.

One of my biggest concert misses will always be the tour that Norah Jones and Corinne Bailey Rae did together. I get actually sad just thinking about it.

Top 2 Tracks:

Just Like A Star (Track 1)

The only time track number one gets the favorite spot.

Till It Happens To You (Track 4)

Deep Cut:

Breathless (Track 8)

Note: The link is of a live version.

4) 10 Things I Hate About You - Various Artists |1999| ⇢ Cemented

I feel like I go harder for this movie and this album in particular, more than most people who claim the 90′s ever will. (Don’t quote me on that cause I’m sure there are some real Stans out there.) I just feel like if I’m holding onto anything, it’s these songs and the movie quotes they backed. One day I’ll do a top movies list and 10 Things will make the top 10, easy, and knowing that, the soundtrack just comes along with the territory. 3 of the songs on this compilation are some of my all time favorites and yes nostalgia plays a big part in that, but unless you ask my anxiety, that isn’t the bad thing people make it out to be when it comes to the making of these lists.

Top 2 Tracks

Your Winter - Sister Hazel (Track 4)

Don’t let anyone, especially Spotify (or whatever streaming service you use) tell you that the version on Sister Hazel’s album is the same as the one on this soundtrack. It’s my hill to die on.

The Weakness In Me - Joan Armatrading (Track 10)

Deep Cut:

War - The Cardigans (Track 11)

5) American Idiot - Green Day |2004| ⇢ Cemented

Not gonna lie I kinda feel like Green Day has gotten too “arena tour” for me and I don’t go as hard for them as I used to, but I promise you that if you put this album on, nothing will have changed about me. I’m still telling the story of my middle years like it’s the defining factor of my life. American Idiot was a turning point for me and it’s part of the reason I believe moments and music go hand in hand. I remember being that kid who found something she didn’t know she needed in these 13 tracks. I wax poetic about this ish because I take moments to heart and this record isn’t just a record, it’s a moment. It’s me lying on my bedroom floor at 12, 13, and probably long after that, feeling all of the sadness and then at 19 for my first adult musical theater performance where my friend sprung for the expensive seats when I figured we’d just go nosebleed. Again at 23 in an Alamo Drafthouse with that same friend watching the documentary and then at 28 where my dad brings me an American Idiot shirt he found at the thrift store and asks if “I still like them.” Now currently at 29 wearing that shirt to my vac appointment because I wanted to feel cool, but knowing that it’s not just a fashion statement, but an actual part of my life.

Top 2 Tracks:

Wake Me Up When September Ends (Track 11)

Give Me Novacaine (Track 7)

Deep Cut

Are We The Waiting (Track 5)

Note: The link is to the live version.

6) Meteora - Linkin Park |2003| ⇢ Cemented

This is one of those albums that I’m pretty sure will always be relevant to me. Maybe I’m just a perpetually sad person who’s constantly trying to work on myself and grow, but in less of an Instagram self care kinda of way, and more of a New York underground kind of way lol. Honestly this is just another album that makes me feel things. It’s not always the same things, but it’s always some-thing. I feel like we’re told that we shouldn’t relate to or be able to relate to the music that we grew up on, as that’s some sign of immaturity, but I strongly push against that idea. I’m not going to attach myself to songs about literal teen angst for the rest of my life, however songs about pain and struggle and growth are always going to have some relevancy.

This is also one of the few “heavy” albums I have on this list. Fun fact though, I love heavier music, it’s just that love usually get represented the most with singles and not full albums, so I take what I can get.

Top 2 Tracks:

Easier To Run (Track 6)

Finally added this song to the “All Time Favorites” list this last year. It’s something that I already knew, but I guess I just had a hard time admitting it, cause those lists are hard to get on to.

Breaking The Habit (Track 9)

Found a way to be relevant to me again.

Deep Cut:

Faint (Track 7)

7) Ocean Avenue - Yellowcard |2003| ⇡1

We finally have some fluctuation!

The back and forth on the 7th or 8th spot for this album is just silliness, we all know that this album is never dropping below a 10 spot, because I’m never allowing this album to mean anything less to me. I remember this being the album that made me realize what front to back meant. I’m sure there were others prior to this one, but it’s like learning a new word or phrase and finally having a definition that makes sense for it. I try to keep my case closed cause it smells like the used CD store that I bought it from on the inside and I never want to lose that. Yellowcard has been rightfully judged these last few years for their hella tacky choices, however I’m gonna sit with my Ocean Avenue and attempt to separate the people from the art lol.

And no I still haven’t listened to the acoustic version. Again my heart’s just not ready.

Top 2 Tracks:

Only One (Track 3)

I know this is a love song, but it’s also turned into one of my self-love songs over the last few years. Don’t limit the meaning certain songs can have.

Empty Apartment (Track 4)

Deep Cut:

Back Home (Track 13)

8) Five Score and Seven Years Ago - Relient K |2007| ⇡2

Relient K in general represent several different moments in my life, and young Jai always knew I wanted them to continue on my journey with me. I think because of how much I wanted this album to represent future moments in my life I hold onto it differently than I do the other two Relient K albums on this list. I’m literally taking them with me, through whatever, wherever I’m going, just because this feels grounding to me. Maybe I’m feeling that more strongly these days because it’s a side effect of me watching all those “Progressive Christianity” videos on YouTube and trying to figure out what exactly that means. That being said, Deathbed is still not a soul-tie for me and I’m okay with that “hot take.” I’m aware though that my love for them and this album wasn’t born out of connections to my religious beliefs, so that could be the main reason for that take. Sorry didn’t mean for that to turn into a religious conversation, so I’ll end this by saying something I’m sure I’ve said before, and that’s that not all of our favorite things have to have in depth explanations. This list is partly about past moments that we run with and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Side Commentary: Here’s a pro-tip, don’t join the online communities of your favorite things, because all of the hot or “woke” takes will have you questioning your love for everything and not in a good way. (Basically Twitter indirects aren’t a safe space lol.) Recently I searched Relient K on Twitter cause Matthew Thiessen has a writing credit on that new MGK song Love Race and I ended up in the land of “your music is actually trash” for a moment and it made me kinda bummed. This is me acnkowledging that multiple things can be true at once and also that I’m still going to go hard to this stuff regardless, because I’m sure I listen to far worse things than Christian, Pop Punk sung by white guys who didn’t always know how to talk to or about girls in the early 2000′s. (Yes that is actually a genre and for the record Faking My Own Suicide is not one I try to defend.)

Top 2 Tracks:

Devastation and Reform (Track 7)

Come Right Out and Say It (Track 2)

Why are you so relatable right now?

Deep Cut:

Forgiven (Track 5)

9) Being To Hope (US Version) - Regina Spektor |2006| ⇢ Cemented

This is an album that knows where it’s at in life and never plays games. It just stands on it’s own merit and you never have to defend it too hard cause everyone else already gets it as well. Begin To Hope is cool and lovely and I feel part of that crowd when I put it on or other people put it on around me. This is not an album that I take a hipster stance on. Do I hold it close, yes, quite personally in fact, but I’m never going to be too cool in front of other people about it. (That doesn’t mean Samson isn’t some straight mainstream hipster ish. Still great though.) This is another album that I feel represents another version of me that I’ve concocted in my head. One that wears tulle dresses and combat boots, is an elementary school poetry teacher, but leads a very strong adult life when she’s off the clock. I am many different people, it just depends on the album.

Top 2 Tracks:

Hotel Song (Track 6)

That Time (Track 9)

The linked video is not the official version, but it always came up when I searched the song, so for a while I thought it was. (It’s still good though.)

Here’s a regular link to the song that is also not age restricted.

Deep Cut:

Field Below (Track 5)

10) MMHMM - Relient K |2004| ⇣3

It’s still top 10, so I can’t be too upset that this one manages to keep slipping. I think from the outside I’m like “Five Score is better” and I need to say that in rank, but in a pure “I’m feeling good” listen, MMHMM just hits all of the Pop-Punk spots and feels for me. so do I wonder myself, what is the actual separating factor between the two? I never mean to make this a competition between the two albums, it’s just that when it comes to Relient K, because they are my favorite band, it’s hard to say which one I ultimately like more and why. I know which albums don’t get played, so that part’s easy, it’s just tricky for the ones that have been on replay for me since middle school. I think if this rank was based more on pure joy MMHMM wins every time. It also has Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been on it which is one of my favorite songs of all time, so there’s that, however there’s so many factors at play here which make it hard to rank just based on enjoyment. To clarify though, this album isn’t top 10 just for the Pop Punk joy it brings me, cause if that were the case State Champs’ first two album would be so high on this list and sadly they haven’t made the cut at all. It’s another album that has soundtrack-ed several moments in my life and just how I’ve felt on my journey, so I’ll always try and give credit where credit is due.

Will always treasure hearing it live for their MMHMM 10th Anniversary Tour back in 2014.

Top 2 Tracks:

Who I Am Hates Who I’ve Been (Track 10)

More Than Useless (Track 7)

Deep Cut:

When I Go Down (Track 14)

11) From Under The Cork Tree - Fall Out Boy |2005| ⇡12

I had a rank put together and Cork Tree said let’s play. It told me I had a stronger love for this body of work, than I had noted in years past and moved its way all the way up the list. I didn’t like that so much. I ended up stepping away and re-ranking everything a few days later, (This was before I started officially writing, so nothing has changed since then.) however at the end of it all, 2005 Fall Out Boy stayed put and other albums got switched around. That wasn’t my intention, but for whatever reason this album got hella cocky this year. 29 told 28 to hold it’s drink, cause I wondered then if at #23 if it would stay that high forever in the grand rank of things. I think I question this album so much cause I don’t want to sound generic, but I guess that’s just par the course for me and anyone else who grew up during/inside this era.

I know I did it and I make the rules, but part of me wonders (I’m not 100% sure on my feelings and thoughts here) if the known feelings I had/have for other albums and bands within this last year and thus causing some of their slips in the ranks, forced me to find comfort elsewhere. Not saying that this isn’t an album that I’m truly feeling right now, just that maybe when other people mess up it gives good guys a chance. That being said, I’m really into Patrick Stump’s solo work right now, which could also be helping things out.

Top 2 Tracks:

I’ve Got A Dark Alley And A Bad Idea That Says You Should Shut Your Mouth “Summer Song” (Track 6)

A Little Less Sixteen Candles, A Little More “Touch Me.” (Track 11)

Deep Cut:

7 Minutes In Heaven “Atavan Halen” (Track 7)

Is this really a deep cut though? lol

12) Everything But What You Need - Speak Low If You Speak Love |2015| ⇡1

We are aware of the hot mess that was the last year, so there’s no need to get too deep into that specifically, however because it was such a trash year I found myself putting this album on to basically sing me to sleep a few times. I only really do that when my anxiety is high and I can’t sleep and since I hadn’t done it in a while, the times I felt I needed it, seemed significant. I think it’s relevant in the sense that I believe the “entertainment” we put on during certain times in our life say a lot about who we are. This album has tons of moments that I definitely do scream to, but often times I can have it on and just be hella content and chill with it. To me this simply says that I have a lot of emotions and sometimes need certain music to comfort them/use as a sleep aid.

Top 2 Tracks:

Confusion (Track 7)

Guess and Check (Track 8)

Deep Cut:

List Of Things (Track 4)

13) Lemonade - Beyoncé |2016| ⇣ 2

“I f*cks with you til I realize I’m just too much for you.” Beyoncé just has a way of getting me to release all my side eyes and confidence and just any “I’m on my ish and you’re wrong, but I love you so much” feelings that tend to live inside of me. All those memes and Twitter threads that came out in 2016/2017 about Lemonade having us in our feelings were correct. I think I’ll always get caught up when I put this album on and I hope that never changes.

Top 2 Tracks:

Sandcastles (Track 8)

All Night (Track 11)

Deep Cut:

Love Drought (Track 7)

14) Still Not Getting Any... - Simple Plan |2004|⇡2

My struggle as a music fan for the last year. 2020 put a whole wrench (that’s speaking lightly) in one of my favorite bands and I contemplated whether I could actually ever listen to them again. I went back and forth on claiming them as a favorites on this list, then “shelving” them, as in not actively listening to them anymore or just listen sporadically, and it’s just say it’s been a mess. To be honest I haven’t come to a complete conclusion on the matter. I’m treading the waters with Simple Plan at the moment and am really here to just state a fact, that this album still does something for me. I’m tied to this album, this work, most likely for teenage connection ties, which I’ll always defend, because that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It was the first cd I ever bought with my own money ;) and that significance alone means it gets sentimental points, which elevates it higher than it probably should be at current, even though I do legitimately thinks it’s good. There’s just no way you put on Shut Up! and don’t go at least a little hard for it, like you’re a kid in the audience of a Kids Choice Awards.

Top 2 Tracks:

Everytime (Track 8)

Perfect World (Track 3)

Deep Cut:

One (Track 10)

15) The Young And The Hopeless - Good Charlotte |2002|⇣1

Some things you put on just for fun. I think we’re constantly making digs at some of our “juvenile” music tastes to offer a hella weird balance for some reason and since I’ve been guilty of that in the past, I actively try and push back on that when I talk about the music I’ve been listening to since middle school. Side note, I feel like Alt Kids do this way more than kids who listened to like Lil Wayne and T-Pain, that is full time, cause I also listened to both of them back then as well. I’m not denying that this album and others in the same vein aren’t filled with massive amounts of teen angst, however it’s just another one that I will go hard to every time. No matter how old I get, this is the music I feel I will always find my way back to, simply because of the joy it brings me.

Top 2 Tracks:

Say Anything (Track 10)

Emotionless (Track 13)

Deep Cut:

The Day That I Die (Track 11)

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I really hope y’all enjoyed part one, please stay tuned for part 2 with albums 16 - 29 and spoiler alert, there will be 2 Phat Playlists at the end! As always thank you for reading, skimming or consuming in any capacity.

DM’s are always open for discussions and commentary as well. I do this mainly for myself, but I love the conversation that comes out of it, immensely.

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steve0discusses · 3 years

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S5 Ep6: Joey Wheeler is on Fire, Yet Again

Came down with a little sickness-not the biggie, just a little sly guy. But I took some meds, I’m a little floaty, I’ve only been listening to baroque music all morning for some reason? And I hate baroque music usually? But I’ll leave it to bro to tell me if this is fluid enough.

Just so you know, these caps were kind of a hot mess for a while and some of them read like that Garfield in of hot eat the food comic until...today. So pls don’t judge me, Judge my damn DMV where no one was following Covid regulations because I’m pretty sure that’s where I got this damn cold.

We start off with Roland getting more attention than he ever has in his entire life. Like honestly, I don’t know what Roland’s job really is...but he’s got a very diverse set of very useless skills. One of which, is knowing how to announce sports games that aren’t really a sport, while those games he’s announcing slowly fall into chaos.

Anyway, Roland’s taking so long cherishing his sweet time before everything goes to hell, that he’s boring Joey, who’s kinda turned into a ball of stress in the waiting room.

A lot of this episode is us watching them watching Joey having a break down moment by moment, TBH.

(read more under the cut)

Yugi telling Joey to study his cards and straight up--what?

Like at this point they know what’s on the cards, right? Like there comes a point where even Yugioh cards have a finite amount of words and I’m just going to assume that like...Joey probably knows them all in his own deck, right?

(bro note: they have no limit on what they will put on a card)

Then again, maybe Yugi doesn’t know what “study” means?

Also, appreciate how some artist crosshatched the hell on Joey’s nose there and I zoomed out and ruined it.

Now for some reason every duelist is hanging out in the duel lodge, including our current arch-villain guy who’s brought a book. I want to know what book this guy even reads so no one could suspect he’s actually a hacker who uses computers. He’s reading romance, right? And I don’t think he’d even be into Twilight, I think he’s straight up into hard core Mom romance like a lame ass Nicholas Sparks over there reading “Dear John” for the millionth time because he is completely un-phased by anything else happening in this room.

Joey, our hero, just out there being an asshole for no reason.

After Tea is pushed into a locker or something screaming about her need for female friends (which she screamed in earshot of Rebecca again, who I figured was on friends terms with her after last episode...but I guess not) Leon hops up to remind us that we should be caring about the fact that his character exists.

And like, I love Leon’s hair color--that’s a good choice, and legit that is the color I tried to dye my hair at the beginning of the epidemic (it didn’t work PS, my hair cannot take dye for the life of it) but also like...he just kinda feels like a weak Rebecca as far as characters go. He’s young, he’s good at cards...I think he goes to a private school? That’s all I can think of about Leon.

He mostly just reminds us that the big prize of this tourney is to duel Yugi, who anyone could have dueled at any point even without the tournament.

On the way out of the...duel room? lounge? Area? Joey decides to like...make peace with Zigfried, and I gotta tell you, I kinda have to side with Zigfried, because Joey spent the last ten minutes being a freak in the dressing room/lounge/bathroom and at one point looked like he was going to hold the entire locker room in a stranglehold.

I would also want some space from Joey Wheeler, is what I’m saying.

After insulting Joey’s style (which honestly, Joey...has a style? He pops his collar, that’s his entire style.) Zigfried assures us that Joey’s gonna lose and like...

...probably, right? Just looking at the plausible direction this season will go.

Anyway, Joey is such a mess (which is the theme of the episode, that Joey needs to learn to chill in order to win at card games) that Rebecca is like “I understand if all of you leave me to go help our poor baby Joey.” And no one felt bad for her.

Mokuba comes over to tell everyone all of the Kaiba family secrets because Mokuba has no filter.

Seto has devoted himself to staring at a computer screen for the rest of this episode. I guess he’ll put their names into Google, realize that social media hasn’t been invented yet, and then just lie his head down on the desk and take a power nap until the tournament is over. Much like I did after taking Dayquil this afternoon.

I like how Seto dressed for success and then locked himself in the server room for most of this arc so far. Maybe he’s just...really tired, I dunno. I don’t really blame the guy, he’s had a hard time.

And then Yugi was like “DAMN IT MOKUBA, JUST ONCE CAN YOU NOT INVITE THE ILLUMINATI???”

And we had a weird scene where Yugi just started talking to the ghost and it was while he was talking to everyone else, and the show didn’t treat it like that’s a weird thing to do...but it was a weird thing to do.

This show does that sometimes, where I guess they imply that Yugi’s Pharaoh conversations are split second conversations but...they’re not, right?

Also this chick ain’t gone yet, and Mokuba is just failing at his entire job for not zeroing in on vibes coming off this chick like stinky cheeseman.

So listen.

Did the Kaibas make like 3 types of Blue Eyes Caboose to one up Noah? Because Noah made one choo choo dragon, and then Mokuba and Seto were like “how dare” and then made sure that everyone ride every single version of the blue eyes caboose just to see how proud of them they were.

How many months of troubleshooting was the train? Like how long in development did Seto and Mokuba spend on these? A lot right? Like most of the time?

I did not check the subs to see if Roland said Jumping or Champion but I like to believe that Roland thought it was a cool new name he gave him.

Then these guys all showed up.

Hey so...can we talk seating arrangements?

Tea decided not to sit next to Yugi after complaining about not spending time with him for like how many episodes? Or was it too awkward to sit on top of what was probably Pharaoh?

Or did Mokuba go like “please, Tea, I cannot sit next to the others because I’m pretty sure one is a mole that is about to go cray” and was Tea like “Good, I need female friends, these ones are driving me crazy!” and then was Mokuba like peering desperately over the edge of his self made dragon train prison realizing he has to listen to Tea complain about boys for the rest of his ride across molten lava?

Headcanons abound about this weird seating arrangement that the animators drew for the reasons they did...but reasons I cannot fully understand. That and the Dayquil is making me overfixate on random stuff.

And also, Tea is kind of the Kaiba’s security’s understudy. Just there to always protect Mokuba with her ass because she’s the strongest woman alive.

PS I missed the tumblr wars because at the time I was trying to like...run a proper business on blogger. When Blogger died and I jumped over here it was like a weird ruin where everyone was like “tumblr is the most toxic place alive” and...I’ve had a really nice time here, actually. Completely missed that civil war period and I have no regrets.

Now I was there for the Petz wars (warz, I guess) where people were very militant about Petz abuse (abuze?) where apparently people were using the spray bottle on their catz too much and people were very, very upset about it to the point that they were like campaigning about it on their angelfire websites with the most bizarre grassroots campaigns that I still recall, to this day because they were like...well they looked like this:

PLAPA. Not only am I 100% positive that only this one guy ever called this movement PLAPA, but I’m 100% positive that not only are Catz not real people, but also this wasn’t actually happening and we never had any proof that it was. Either way, if people knew or suspected that you hadn’t deleted the spray bottle from your game (which at the time I had no idea how to do because I was a wee child) they would basically assume you were on a one way road to being a mass murderer in real life.

In real life we were 7 years old so like...thanks?

But that’s the closest I got to toxicity and at the time I was too young to make an email account and actually converse with these people. I was just there to download their Petz hexes, and I already made a post about how wonderful and incredible Petz Hexing was.

And y’all, I heard, just now after a little deep dive into the Petz Abuse debacle (which yes, is on the wiki), that apparently, like gardening, Petz Hexing came back in a big way during the epidemic--and I have found an active Petz forum in this the year 2021. The only problem is that I no longer remember how to use old timey forums...and I think I’m locked out of seeing most of these threads (and like this forum is so old I think I have to send them a letter in the physical mail to apply). But, I’m pretty sure they’re hosting a picture contest for who’s dogz poses the best. And I’m pretty sure someone created a hexxed Pickle Rick. Or it’s a photoshop that was made to look like a hexxed Pickle Rick.

Dammit why did it have to be Pickle Rick? That’s not worth re-installing Petz and getting it to run on Windows 10...

Guys is this the Dayquil? Is this really happening? I feel like I’m losing my mind for so many reasons...

Anyway, speaking about useless hexing it’s about time that our villain did something that was actually dangerous, so Zigfried decided to install a new virus that does more than turn off the lights. (it still turns off lights)

the Spreadsheet Virus!

Confounded by the spreadsheet software, it...um...it does this:

Straight up how does Excel make a volcano erupt? Is that why I have to pay for Microsoft office now?

All this because Joey made fun of Zigfried’s naturally pink hair? Which is the most normal hair on this series outside of like...Tristan?

Hey guys...Joey’s fine, right? Like how many times has Joey been on fire? And once in an iron cage next to like...a Fire Golem?

Joey’s fine.

MAN I miss Fire Golem. He had a good mug.

And then we just kinda watch chaos go across the park, chaos that includes: Too many ghosts in the haunted mansion (which honestly--you’ll get your money’s worth, sounds great!), the Ferris wheel goes kinda fast and thus might accidentally be fun, the lights turn off at some concert stage that only had 2 people on it (so it might just be motion detector lights and not even a virus), and um...literal fire and magma are going to set Joey Wheeler on fire.

Just...one of these events does not seem like the others. In fact most of these things sound like good improvements to the park and they should just hire Zigfried at this point.

Roland puts down his microphone and jogs across the stage, about a mile through the audience bleachers, and into the staff lounge, to go and bother Seto Kaiba, who is in a room that has a hi-def classical painting copy-pasted on the wall and I can’t look away from it.

I almost did a Google search on this painting but then thought better about it. There’s like...a billion classical paintings that look exactly like this, and they wouldn’t use like a Monet, they would have to do something that’s harder to catch to avoid copyright issues (because yes, even old ass paintings have copyright issues, but no one tell NFT’s which are going to be so freakin screwed and was such a bad idea, that I can’t even start).

Anyway, I have no idea who it is and it is legitimately driving me up a wall, but I’m on too much meds to do the effort of putting it in a reverse google image search.

Plus, a reverse google image search would only pull up Seto Kaiba.

So Kaiba takes us on a little flashback to his weird ass past, a weird ass past that just...doesn’t follow any of the established timelines, but I assume was shortly after adoption but before Seto got into a phase where he wore his school outfit everywhere and tried to shove his MMO off onto his Dad as a business model.

Seto is like 8 for some reason. I don’t know why, they kinda drew him younger this season anyway, like maybe they got a lot of fan mail and realized “Hey I think we made the 16 yo boy too sexy?” And they just toned Seto the hell down. That, and it’s a different animation team, and maybe they looked at Seto’s character design and were like “we don’t get paid enough to draw this well.” So...since Seto actually looks like a teen again, I guess his 12 year old self has to look like he’s in Elementary school.

Also, I only recognized this, because at some point in S3 as I was roasting Noah Kaiba’s weird fashion:

I remember distinctly roasting that little bow tie. I don’t remember when I wrote it, I think there was a version of this outfit that was in color...but I don’t remember where.

Anyway, it’s not the same jacket...but man that’s kind of awkward, ya? Like the maid who dressed Mokuba deffo got fired?

He um.

Turned the lights off a little bit.

Guys this villain is like...

...why does he think lights are scary? Like look at little Seto here. The boy is already bored. Seto duels on the edges of cliffs...he doesn’t care about the freakin dark.

We had a guy who killed everyone on the planet last season, and this season we have a little fashion gremlin standing in the corner and flicking the light switch going “wooooo you never catch me!” and it’s like...

...I’m starting to think this guy isn’t a witch.

Like we’re at Episode 6, there’s still time for this guy to be a witch...but I really am starting to think this guy is just...straight up not a witch. It’s everything Seto wanted, a rival who isn’t a freakin magic person...and sets Joey only fake on fire instead literally on fire like last time...

and Seto is just completely unhinged by it.

Anyway, I’m off to go drink a bowl of soup and pass out. If you’re new here, this is a link to read these in chrono order.

https://steve0discusses.tumblr.com/tagged/yugioh/chrono

#yugioh #yu gi oh #ygo #S5 #Ep6 #Yugi Muto #Seto Kaiba #Joey Wheeler #Tea Gardner #Tristan Taylor #Mokuba Kaiba #zigfried von schroeder #rebecca hawkins #I talked about catz again #leon #but not the kings of leon guy #I mean he could be

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red-hood-vigilante · 3 years

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more hbo spn rambles, thoughts, drabbles etc. long long post.

part 1 here

there’s some things i’ve omitted here bc others have already posted about those things, certain headcanons and characterizations and stuff. those posts are in my likes somewhere (and i’ll reblog them someday), and there’s some posts i’ve read but not liked, which i now can only vaguely remember, which is why some ideas/thoughts are similar

ALSO most of these follow the model i talked about in part one: how s1-5 will stay more or less how they are but s6-10 is changed (some things are cut out entirely, some things are tweaked and some characters + arcs are more fleshed out. more focus on sam’s trauma and post-cage adaptation to the real world as well as dean letting his rage and control issues consume him and how he’d recover and redeem himself)

as i typed these paragraphs, i realized i really have 10 seasons mapped out and ready to go. hbo hire me!!

alright go:

sam and dean get wearier as the show progresses (second half), and eventually they stop putting so much care and thought in the people they save. like...hm how do i say this, like as long as a victim/victims are saved, they don’t care about how that happens or how those people suffer potential consequences, like if the victims lose a limb or have their homes burned down because of the monster, then sam and dean don’t really care. they saved your life, now they’ll leave you with your life in potential shambles and not care because all that matters is that they saved your life, not how it is afterwards. they still care about saving that one person, but eventually it pales a little in comparison to a war between heaven and hell, being the vessels etc. ---> saving people becomes less about making sure they’re actually alright and healing from horrific events and more about just making sure they have a pulse before they move on

when angels lose their wings they are either burned off in the actual fall or ripped off of them in their vessels, which leaves pretty nasty scars on the vessel

ed and harry are so young and bright eyed about the whole hunting thing; sam and dean as kids, idolizing it, finding it exciting and intriguing when they shouldn’t. sam and dean try to get them out of the business before they too are too traumatized and desensitized to do anything but hunt. neither sam or dean will say it but they are jealous of ed and harry and their freedom to leave, and hate them for choosing this voluntarily instead of being dragged into it by tragedy

hbo spn is a slow burn. there’s a lot more shots of sam and dean in silence just sitting together after a hunt, exhausted and too tired to move yet. they’re covered in blood and guts on the side of the road after killing or covered with dirt in a graveyard after burning bones, sitting next to the fire, just watching it. the times they park the car and watch the stars? we get to see it.

dean wears rings and the amulet all the time in the beginning, for the first five seasons. the rings vary; first they’re some of john’s old ones and stuff he finds in thrift stores. then later on he begins wearing rings from people they’ve saved/haven’t saved as a keepsakes etc. when he begins his descent to the holy murderer in s6-10 he wears less and less rings. they don’t matter anymore -> symbolically shedding who he was and what mattered to him

the only accessories sam has is a rosary/cross around his neck. he has jess’ engagement ring in his pocket/wallet. after the cage he vaguely remembers why the ring was there and who jessica was (more on this further down)

the four horsemen are manifestations of different aspects of human nature at its most grotesque and strongest, can’t be killed as long as humans live. war is conflict, famine is desire, pestilence is physical and mental illnesses.

(the seven sins are like the horsemen, tulpas of human nature instead of demons)

death isn’t a concentration of an existing aspect of humans as much as it is the end of life, the antithesis of life. death the oldest of the horsemen and has existed since the beginning of any life, organism, cell and atom. the opposite of life and light, the other half of god (as i’m typing this i’m confused as to why amara was the opposite of god instead of death). death isn’t evil or good, remains 100% objective. doesn’t care for sam or dean at all, but has a begrudging respect for their stubbornness and entertainment they provide due to their flat out refusal to do as they’re told by celestial bodies when anyone else would crumble

by including death i feel like it very naturally begs questions of who decides when someone dies, when someone lives, why would death follow these guides instead of reaping whomever whenever, what happens if a life isn’t reaped at the right time etc. the reader in me adore the idea of death having a library with books and records of everyone who has ever lived and died and how they died - but then, who writes these books and why? do they decide, and if in that case, how? these questions are above my paygrade but you know what i mean? like there has to be some sort of system right, god created everything, death executes to maintain order, some third party deity writes the laws and the books. the three branches of government. ok but it’s hbo so again, i think we shouldn’t dive this deep into things, like as much as these topics intrigue me i don’t want to stray too much from the dirt road trip aesthetic

shapeshifters are extremely rare because they don’t require any kind of human blood or organs/sacrifice to live

i want more exploration of how magic is like science, like it just needs the right ingredients and right conditions. sam thinks of magic as an obscure branch of science; it just requires research and knowledge and clear intentions because science can be controlled and do a lot of good when used responsibly. dean doesn’t like it. he doesn’t trust the unpredictable elements and he’s seen enough to know it never goes well. magic is a force that can’t be controlled by anyone.

sam and dean have full on fist fights regularly. to practice and keeping each other sharp, but also because they’re siblings. they’re feral, insane and unhinged with each other and they get on each other’s nerves A LOT. it’s petty and childish and sometimes it can get a lil ugly but it becomes their way of family therapy. after a fight the next scene cuts to sam and dean with ruffled clothes, nosebleeds and swollen lips at a diner eating silently after beating each other up. either they sit in silence because they’re tired or both are harping on the other’s openings and weaknesses

sometimes they’ll fight a little dirty but they do so in different ways; dean will pull the old ‘look!’ and point to something and then tackle sam when he turns to look while sam will just cry out in fake pain which makes dean stop dead in his tracks before sam headbutts him or kicks him in the groin

we, the audience get used to these fights, they’re sometimes funny and for comic relief, sometimes for narrative purposes (like tricking a monster they’re fighting each other when they’re really not) BUT. then comes the times when sam and dean are actually fighting without holding back and we see how much they are capable of hurting each other or how heartbreaking and difficult it can be to watch when of them are incapable of fighting back/doesn’t defend himself -> swan song when dean doesn’t fight back against possessed sam, or when dean beats soulless sam unconscious

sam and dean also just verbally bully each other constantly but they do have their odd ways of expressing affection and care. they get the other person their fave snack whenever they go grocery shopping without being asked to and are the only other one they truly trust to have their back in hunts. have a cup of coffee ready before the other asks for one. brothers and each other’s best friend. nightmare duo but in a sweet way. the cooperation of ‘the usual suspects’ when they’re in different interrogation rooms but still has the cover story down to a t. code words and code names and cover stories, they know it all

when sam and dean fight together against a common enemy they’re a damn nightmare - because they know each others weaknesses and habits, they cover each other perfectly and in complete silence. they’ve been at it together since they were kids and read each other’s nonverbal cues like a picture book

to build off of what i said in part 1; the winchesters are pretty hated in the hunter’s community. even the people sam and dean frequently work with (bobby, ellen, jo, ash, rufus, bela, kevin, charlie, castiel etc) roasts them all the time and don’t hesitate with calling them out on their self-pitying crap when it get’s too much (spn was just objectively better when characters weren’t afraid of dragging sam and dean through the mud for being selfish and stupid) and this WILL persist in hbo spn. the only reason people continue working with sam and dean is because they know deep down a lot of the things that happens aren’t sam and dean’s fault - but they still blame them for it. doesn’t make it easier how sam or dean sometimes start crap on purpose to save the other

the winchesters are terrifying and people for sure tell stories about them, but not like ‘they’re heroes’, more like ‘they’re insane and dangerous. stay the fuck away from them’. some stories are true, like how they’ve worked with demons, but some are just game of telephone. (dean has apparently a ghost he is frequently possessed by while sam is actually a mutant vampire). hunters hate and are scared of the winchesters. sam and dean are never invited to hunter stuff (burials, memorials etc) but crash them nonetheless even though the hunters do NOT want them there.

you know what drives me insane when i think about it? how some characters in spn already are their hbo spn counterparts; john. mary. adam. maybe kevin?

other things that already are their hbo spn counterparts: dean throwing away the amulet right in front of sam. eyes burning when angels are seen. how ghosts are just tragedies, stuck in a loop they can’t leave. how a lot of the monsters they meet are just victims or their circumstances or the first victim of a curse. the impala being sam and dean’s home. dean not knowing how to comfort sam when he’s upset other than trying to do things for sam that usually brings dean comfort (driving the impala, listening to rock music etc). the roadhouse. heaven being an eternal version of the memories that made you the happiest even though it’s not real. sam wanting independence and freedom but never fully having it. dean fearing being alone more than anything else and that’s where he always ends up. sam has an eating disorder after the demon blood and dean has an alcohol problem he refuses to see as a problem. dean saying “i’d do it again” without an ounce of regret and pouring himself a drink when sam tells him it was fucked up to lie to him about gadreel

the demon/angel hybrid: THIS could be sooo interesting to explore. an angel and demon hybrid are you kidding me?? not to toot my own horn too much but i’m so clever. i should write this story myself. SO. does this creature have parents who fucked in their vessels or was this an experiment by god (yes i love the ‘mad scientist’ idea, that really should’ve been played up way more) or did a pre-existing creature (human or otherwise) drink demon blood and angel grace at the same time so that it created itself? so much potential for some really intriguing storytelling and character exploration - not only the creature itself and what they would be like, but also for the people around; sam, dean, castiel, jack etc. how would they react to this thing that is the very definition of defying heaven and hell and all the natural laws? does it exist before the show starts or will we see its birth?

the powers of the demon/angel hybrid would be tricky; a mix of holy and defiant, grotesque and beautiful. unconsciously forces people to tell the truth when talking to them. poisons whatever they touch. eyes of a demon, wings of an angel. can smite but skin will burn when touching iron. can do deals but will require a sacrifice in return, not a soul, usually a body part taken then and there (the hybrid eats it. it favours eyeballs and the liver - angels like raw meat). lights always flicker. makes things explode when angry (esp people and cars). can manipulate feelings, thoughts and memories. can travel to both heaven and hell, not welcome in either places. + standard stuff like telekinesis, teleportation, mind reading, super strength etc.

sam and dean’s wardrobe are pretty much the same; whatever’s cheap and not covered in blood. however, they do have stylistic differences. sam thinks graphic tees are funny, dean uses whatever’s black combined with john’s leather jacket. their wardrobe melds as they stop thinking of themselves as individuals and more of “me and my brother,”. their clothes are tattered and torn to shreds all the time. hand me downs, hand me ups. when they stray off their “path” and do things that are the crux of a storyline/character arc, this would reflect in their clothes. when sam is with ruby and becomes more and more “evil” he wears more and more red, a colour he has stated in the past he doesn’t really like. when dean is dead, sam starts to wear his rings and john’s and dean’s leather jacket. when dean decides he’s going to say yes to michael he dresses in white, when sam is dead dean takes off every piece of jewelry except the amulet. he holds it clenched in his fists when he’s whispering what comes close to a prayer

logically the amulet should have a backstory but you know what? i love that it’s hinted to be just a piece of cheap jewelry sam found in a thrift store he decided to give to dean. but narratively it should be explained so... idk. what could be logical solution as to why it would react to GOD himself? maybe god wore it once cuz he thought it was neat but he sold it for three dollars because he wanted coffee and then sam found it a week later

i would prefer it if god didn’t show up at all (absent father number one) but if he DID he’s not all powerful just a true neutral (like death, 100% objective) who created a thing that just took a life of its own, much like a parent and a child - the parent helps the child but can’t control it. the times he did intervene or tried to do something it didn’t really have any real long lasting effect so he gave up on trying a while ago.

@spneveryseason talked about this, how the storyline of sam being possessed by gadreel would be horrifying if we saw everything from sam’s perspective instead of dean’s (her fic is wonderful). in the ‘dean slowly descends into a righteous murderer to become holy’ idea i have this tracks so damn well because again, if dean believes something is right, it is right, no questions about it. everyone around him is like “that’s really fucked up and you should make amends” but dean doesn’t see any reasons for why - sam is alive isn’t he? and seeing it from sam’s pov would really underline how horrifying, dehumanizing and belittling that experience was

john and mary are adam and eve. sam and dean are cain and abel are michael and lucifer. time is a flat circle. history never stops repeating itself.

sam is the villain of s4. he is manipulated and key information is withheld from him but in the end... would it made a difference? it crossed his mind, that he could be tricked because ruby is a demon after all, but maybe he likes the power, the feeling of freedom, that he wasn’t just the baby, the one who always needs permission to do things. if he has to drain possessed people to get that power... so be it. and it’s for a good purpose, until it isn’t. he’s hungry for more, to be feared and respected. he’s enticed by lucifer’s sweet words, the potential of all that power and the idea of ruling two out of three realms. dean manages to pull him back from the brink because sam decides he doesn’t want to be what john thought he was and fail dean and himself like that.

dean is the villain in s9. he is controlling, the mark of cain without the mark. what he says goes - it’s not a democracy, it’s a dictatorship. he doesn’t see how much pain, doubt and fear he causes the people around him. if some victims or civilians die on his watch that doesn’t matter - just some collateral damage. sam can’t make dean listen to him because dean is the older one, the one who’s always called the shots. dean is the angelic one, heaven’s chosen warrior, he is untouchable and unkillable. he’s is an excellent killer, filling the void with blood and rage which is better than the crippling fear of loneliness carved into his bones. 'i butcher for love, to protect,’ he tells himself. ‘why shouldn’t i exterminate, regardless of the cost? i’ve followed the rules, i’ve always sacrificed. now i call the shots. it’s my right.’

sam’s hell trauma is never magically removed. he’s stuck with the memories and the nightmares and the occasional hallucinations. castiel can’t do anything but offers to wipe his memory completely, but sam says no, he is still doing penance.

after dean comes back from hell he starts calling himself old man and jokes a lot about he’s 40 years older now (after he’s more comfortable about speaking about hell)

when sam comes back he feels ancient (he’s over 900 years old at least but he lost count), weary, tired and so so so out of place in this world. he’s forgotten how to put gas in a car, how to drive, how to use a credit card, all the song lyrics he and dean used to yell together, the faces of people he knew before he fell, the softness of a bed, the schools he went to, most of the hunts he and dean, how john died, who mary is, the initials carved into the impala, the taste of food that isn’t raw meat. it’s so much he’s forgotten that he has to relearn. he prefers figuring things out with castiel instead of dean because castiel doesn’t silently resent him for everything he’s forgotten

sam doesn’t laugh anymore. despite dean’s many and castiel’s few awkward attempts, it’s more like quick smile and a quiet “hmm”. on some days he recoils when he sees blood and guts, on other days he’s so apathetic it’s unnerving

sam sympathizes with the brought back mary and castiel more than ever. dean tries to get sam to remember things he’s forgotten from his childhood but sam can’t connect with it anymore. he stopped being that sam a long time ago. dean doesn’t know what else to do than try to force this connection to be revitalized and he fails. sam isn’t that person anymore and this wedge in their relationship becomes a central factor in dean’s s6-10 desperation and isolation. sam is here and safe but it’s not really sam, not the sam dean grew up with

while sam has forgotten how to make coffee, he now knows everything about angels, effective torture tricks, a bunch of lore + biblical history, how to navigate hell, the most powerful and influential demons, rare and powerful spells as well as perfect enochian (he will speak enochian without realizing and it feels more natural than english). lucifer and michael were surprisingly talkative (raging about the unfairness) when taking their anger and hatred out on sam and adam and each other. sam had access to all of lucifer’s memories and knowledge for the time he was the one in control. walking library and encyclopedia of biblical lore.

he still has some muscle memory from hunting and sparring, but sam is ghostly thin and very rusty. even though he’s an expert on lore, he’s not fit to go on hunts anymore and he knows it.

sam remembers adam and swears he’ll try to get him out, but he can’t. just thinking about the cage makes him vomit. he can’t talk about it, much less go near it. after a while sam thinks it might be better to let adam stay down there than let him come back up and feel this crushing emptiness and loss of direction

sam’s trials take place in s9 instead of 8; coinciding with dean’s villain arc. for sam the trials are a chance to redeem himself again, this time for good by closing hellgates forever. they’re scrubbing him clean of the demon blood and his sins and they give him a sense of purpose again now that he can’t join hunts anymore. it doesn’t matter if he dies because of it. it would be nice with a permanent and peaceful death that did something good. dean is taken aback by sam’s devotion to repent for something that happened years ago and for something sam has already paid for a thousand times over. dean realizes how messed up he himself has become and how he’s helped put sam here, on the cusp of self sacrifice again because of sickening guilt and self hatred. dean begs sam to not complete the trials at the cost of his own life and swears he’ll better himself, be a friend and a brother, not a jailer, dictator or a murderer. ‘if you won’t give yourself or life another chance, please give me one.’ ---> s10 pacifist dean learning to let go of the control, the violent tendencies and the rage

oh wait what if gadreel still possessed sam after the trials to heal him but sam is the one who invites the angel in? he’ll keep his promise to dean about staying alive, as well as heal from the inside and have breaks from the world when he doesn’t want to be present, like he and gadreel will alternate being the one in control. he keeps it a secret from dean and helps gadreel imitate him so dean won’t notice. it’s not so bad, being possessed by this angel - sam can say no anytime and gadreel is a nice guy. since they alternate on who’s present they can access each other’s memories, which is terrifying and embarrassing at first, but since gadreel and sam have been tricked and used by lucifer and been punished for it for far too long, they understand each other. now another creature knows their trauma and terrors without the need for verbal explanation. also having an angel residing in his body makes sam feel like he can hunt properly again because gadreel can heal him and take over in situations sam’s overpowered. this could show how messed up sam has come to view himself and his body.

dean is conflicted when he finds out; sam lied but gadreel does help sam heal, sam’s traumatized and his self-worth is fucked up and dean has contributed to that. dean convinces sam to push gadreel out, that sam is still valuable, loved and a good person who shouldn’t be in a place where he views his body and mind like a property to be occupied. sam’s faith begins to come back bit by bit, not in god, but in himself, his brother, in the good things in life. they build their little family; sam, dean, castiel, the hybrids, whomever of their allies that are alive at this point.

castiel can heal sam and dean’s wounds but they are never completely gone; they leave scars and phantom pains. the brothers have SO many scars over the years. dean flaunts them to impress people because he likes the questions and the fearful admiration, the attention and the nods of approval. sam hides them.

when dean is in a bad mood or needs to get his mind off of things, sam just drops something like ‘i don’t get the deal with led zeppelin. one of the most overrated bands of all time’ and dean will go OFF every single time about the entire led zeppelin history, their discography and how they’ve shaped rock music. this will go on for hours and sam will zone out after 1 minute. but dean rants nonsensically the entire drive and it does get him to think about something else for a little bit. they stop at a motel and dean is STILL ranting while brushing his teeth. stops when going to sleep but without fail picks up where he left off the morning after and is so into it he doesn’t notice sam not paying attention at all. we could see this once in s1 when they’re searching for john, another in s3 when dean is anxious about his deal coming to an end and then again in a later season, when sam doesn’t remember to ask/doesn’t have the patience or mental capability, so they’ll sit there in tense silence, showing how much they’ve changed.

---> i can see this SO clearly in my head, how they’ll get in the car and we, the audience, will recognize the camera angle, the same lines and dean’s grumpy mood, and we’ll anticipate what comes next. but sam isn’t that kid anymore and he’s not peeking at dean to gauge what his mood is and how much of a shit eating grin he should wear when being an annoying little brother to cheer dean up. now he’s looking out the window, leaned back, they’re not looking at each other. this shot is a minute or two long, uninterrupted. dean turns on music but neither are singing along or doing anything to lighten the mood.

s1-5: sam gets hooked on demon blood, dean has an alcohol problem. when sam goes through withdrawals, dean decides to quit drinking and joins him because he wants to be supportive, and he realizes that when he drinks two beers for breakfast there’s a problem

s6-10: sam takes painkillers, anti depressants and anti psyhosis meds to numb himself from the phantom pains and reduce post-cage effects. dean started drinking again after sam jumped and still does, but started smoking in addition because he still drives a lot and doesn’t want to die in something as pathetic as a car crash.

there a scene in an episode in the first half of s8, when sam has decided to stay with dean instead of amelia, and dean has rejected benny in favor of sam, and then the brothers sit in a couch watching tv while drinking beer and neither of them look particularly happy about it - that’s how their relationship is a lot of the time. they know they’re fucked up and neither of them will ever be truly happy when the other’s around, but they owe each other so much and they don’t have to explain themselves to each other the way they do to others. they know each other so well, each other’s traumas and the things they’ve done, it feels fake and exhausting to try to be something other than the veteran hunters they are. misery loves company; they are miserable together but would be far more miserable apart and living a normal life. they do love each other, but neither of them are particularly happy as the show progresses. family is hell and so is the lack of it.

OK OK i mentioned it in part one, how i had my own very specific idea about how jack should come to be and here it is. long winded but (might just write a damn fic):

after lucifer was cast back into the cage, he is stronger than he has been in a long time (being in his true vessel helped him stretched muscles he forgot he had. and fresh air.) sam is pulled out of the cage and it leaves a rift in the magic and chains - the binding is weaker and lucifer must act fast to get out before it heals. the cage is still strong enough to hold two archangels, so lucifer has to become weaker somehow to slip out through the cracks. he can’t get out of the cage, but souls can come in. demons bring themselves and human souls as tools for lucifer to use. there’s not much he can do here - consuming them, eating them, touching them, dissecting them doesn’t give him what he wants

eventually lucifer realizes he must do like azazel and create something new of two halves, like when he created demons. he begins melding his archangel grace with a human soul. he tries with demons, but his archangel grace automatically purifies them and leaves them too weak. he must try with a human soul who is good. he finds the soul of kelly kline, who sold her soul to save a loved one. with her, the merging, works.

he has another self, a twin, a son, who’s half human and half archangel. half lucifer. the old lucifer will die but that’s ok, his desires, presence and self will live on in his new creation. the new lucifer barely makes it out of the cage, only able to due to its human side. on earth it creates a body for itself and takes shape, no longer a form of pure power and energy akin to the sun itself but now a person, reminiscent of kelly kline on earth and lucifer in heaven. they name themselves jack. jack searches for familiarity and finds it in sam, their old self’s perfect tool and another hybrid. jack finds a mentor in castiel, a younger brother and fellow angel with human elements. they do not find anything in dean, the key to his former self’s doom.

jack’s powers: their powers are like and unlike the angels because he is half archangel. jack has wings but sometimes they don’t work, or they’ll end up somewhere else entirely. their body is their own, not a vessel, so jack can’t possess people. doesn’t talk but people “know” what they’re saying or want because jack emits their emotions and thoughts to people they’re talking to like a radio tower. jack can also have this empathic connection and communication with animals. his mood affects the weather. immortal. reads minds. can remove a soul from a body and send it to heaven/hell by touching it, with practice they don’t need to touch a body.

other stuff about jack: the human/archangel nature means jack only need sleep and food once a week or so. eats only nougat and raw meat. because jack is a kid they nap a lot. levitates when sleeping. never blinks, stares intensely at everything. their eye colour changes based on their mood. eyes glow in the dark. normal humans who look at jack for too long experience memory loss, fainting spells or migraines and eye contact for more than 10 seconds give vivid hallucinations of their worst nightmares. always barefoot, often floats like 10 cm off the ground because they find it more enjoyable than walking. wears the wildest clothes they can find, nothing matches and nothing is weather appropriate

i have a very specific image of jack in my mind; they look like delirium from the sandman comics with the hair that looks like it’s underwater and the fishes floating around their head, here and here are examples. in live action this would look not good or maybe even ridiculous for sure but in animation... endless potential for angels and monsters to have super interesting designs sigh

castiel’s arc should end with him going from blind soldier, to the unwilling ruler of heaven, finding a place on earth with sam and dean, becoming closer with humanity and eventually a father of three (the hybrids).

#hbo spn #sam winchester #dean winchester #supernatural #iben spoke #ok i'm tired of looking at this now #i just needed to get these thoughts out of my head to get some peace and quiet #more character centric than part 1 #and it turned into such a long post.... jesus #i should make a separate post for post cage sam headcanons #ana if you see this i'm so sorry to drag you into this mess but i wanted to give credit where credit is due

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secrets-of-the-library · 3 years

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This is a fan-created personal home of Antonio Carriedo, the Hetalia personified nation of Spain. I did look up a few reference pictures but I mostly just took a few ideas I liked from them (A courtyard, a tower, certain design features, etc etc) but it is mostly ‘winged’ and ‘as I felt like it’. I’m not Spanish and I wasn’t aiming to do a 100% authentic or accurate build here. Just for fun. I like to imagine that he loves this huge mansion that he has built up over the years and there is TONS of plants and things to do to entertain not only himself but also guests, friends, and family. Like Arthur, he has his own personal office too. I can imagine Arthur complaining about his home being too big and spacious though lol.

Remember: This is fan/headcanon created. I build for fun and am not a professional. I do not build with the intention of having it livable/non-clashing. If something clashes it will be up to you to fix it because I build for the pure aesthetic and not functionality. I own a lot of packs so if you don’t own all the ones used in this there might be issues.

After the cut here I will provide a visual walk-through via screen captures. You’re more than welcome to download it and look at it for yourself. My username on Sims4 is Shinoshallbugyou.

This project in particular was HUGE, again, I like to do huge projects and mansions. Because of its size the ‘cut’ will be huge as well, keep that in mind. I’ll do my best to walk you guys through it but if you have the game and packs the easiest way would be to just download it yourself.

I chose Oasis Springs because of its desert surroundings. The only lot bigger than this one is park lots. I was tempted to do a ‘central courtyard’ and a house essentially wrapped around it but I chose this one instead. I like to pretend that his property actually extends down several paths on the cliff and to some stables, horses, and etc down below. I like to think the road leading to his house is more long and windy but the lot simply isn’t big enough for it so I compromised. I’ll be showing an occasional night-time photo of the building here and there but for the most part I’ll stay in ‘Afternoon’ because it’s the brightest to see in.

The overall look...

Now the overhead breakdown of each floor, overall...

Now for some shots around the outside in certain spots. I really liked the idea of a courtyard and I wanted to do that. I’m always a fan of driveways that go down to another level of the house. Please note, I am aware that the driveway would be too steep realistically but this lot is NOT big enough so I made do. While cars are not a thing in the Sims 4 (They were in 3) I still like to pretend and put them in there anyways even if the objects do not work. I wanted to try my hand at a lot more balconies and playing around with the outside of a house more as well as trying things I normally wouldn’t do like leaving a section on the roof uncovered or throwing in more gazebos (Or whatever). I especially liked the below photo of a wall that kind of comes out in increments? It looked neat!

The front door. We’ll explore the 1st floor now. I wanted a ‘rug’ that would descend down with the leveled steps/platform here. There wasn’t one like that so I created one. I often play around with things and use them in ways they wouldn’t have been normally used in the game: Such as upsizing that tiny toy horse into a ‘statue’ of a horse.

Next up: The Living room. I can imagine that he shoved in some things to entertain people with like Foosball and more. This area has a balcony too and a lot of areas on this floor open up directly outside to have airflow. Each area kind of has its own ‘major color’ to it. This area is more ‘orange’.

Downstairs here is where I decided to put a bar, storage for drinks (He’s a mass producer of wine, after all, and he likes to drink on top of it) as well as the garage for where the cars would go, etc. I usually improvise and take other objects to look like other objects. ‘Wine caskets’ don’t exist- Those are some weird metal object in the game that is a wall decoration.

Next up is the bottom of the tower connected to the living room. The tower is the tallest building on the map with it being four stories high. The bottom is connected to the living room and it contains a small changing/towel area (This could double up for the pool/hot tub) but mainly for the sauna I have installed in there (Because why not?). I also plugged in a bathroom with the remaining room there. Because it is such a small space it is hard to see.

The next room we’re going to is the opposing wing on the 1st floor, on the opposite side of the main entry room. There is a staircase that goes upstairs here but through the archways is a small reading nook. There are multiple ‘flowing corridors’ around this building, both internally and externally, that are very open for air and breezes.Often these will have a lot of seating and decor mainly on the way to other rooms. I went for more white/grey here.

Next up is the first guest bedroom. It is sandwiched between two of these flowing ‘corridors’ and it has its own personal bathroom. These spaces are big enough for people to stay in plus an additional seating area.

The next is that corridor on the other side that leads out onto an outside corridor as well as the courtyard. I tried often to get different decorations and objects going on in some of these rooms that would differ them from the other ones so it wouldn’t all just blend together into nothingness.

Next up is the courtyard. I had to have some kind of courtyard in here and I really liked how this one turned out with its nooks and crannies. It leads back towards the front door, back to where we came from, or to a wrap-around corridor that is only specifically on this side of the house.

Next up is that wrap-around outside corridor. The first one has a wall separating it from the front of the property. What follows it is what I filled that property with. I thought it would be neat to place what would’ve been an old ruin there that has long since faded away. I thought it would be a treat for the eye. I’ve never been able to use those weird rounded structures from the romantic garden pack before so I wanted to see how they would look here.

Now here is the other half of the wrap-around corridor but what makes this one so different is... Even though it is plain it doesn’t have a wall barricading you and thus you can walk outside with your sim more here. This corridor leads into the solarium.

The Solarium is two stories tall with the 2nd floor being hallowed out in the middle with a pathway surrounding it and a glass dome on top in a mock greenhouse effect. I wanted to play around with arches and I’ve always loved indoor gardens and such like these so I wanted to include it.

The Solarium branches out towards the ‘backyard’ where there is a pool, hot tub, karaoke, a fire pit, outdoor grilling area, and more. I really wanted to include this ‘gazebo’ effect not only for the look and aesthetic of it but also for potential ‘structural support’ for the 2nd floor balcony up there. Plus it ties in the same effect on the 3rd floor corridor up on top.

I forgot to get a picture of it but if you do an aerial view of the pool (Or perhaps basement level) I did add turtle decorations to the bottom of it. Tortugaaaa.

Here I’m going to show off the tower a bit. Please note: You can’t make rounded walls in the Sims 4. This is my closest attempt to being able to do that. I knew I wanted a tower and I’m happy with how it turned out. As I started it though it was trouble because I simply didn’t know what to do at first. I had no idea how to fill it and at first I was trying to put the staircase INSIDE rather than out. I finally got the idea for a wrap-around staircase which is also difficult given that they only make right angles. Putting them on the outside massively helped save on space inside. That and, actually, I had difficulty in general with stairs on this map. The awkward building spaces made it difficult to place them.

The overall look of the ‘backyard’ with roofs up.

The overall map layout of the 2nd floor with the stairs specifically outlined. I ended up giving up on trying to build another flight of stairs on the 2nd floor leading to the 3rd and settled for putting it, too, outside on the main back balcony. Out of everything on this map that was one of the most frustrating things that I struggled with. I don’t ever do outside stairs so this was interesting for me to try.

Next we’re going up the tower and coming into the pantry. It’s rather nice and big, he can grow stuff in there on hand to eat, a collection of fish, spices, oils, and etc is all in there.

The next up is the kitchen. This one was frustrating too but once it came together it was nice. I went out of my comfort zone here, too. I’ve never made a blue kitchen and while I loved the idea the Sims 4 pallet was NOT working with me. I even tried with yellow cabinets and it just wasn’t working. These cabinets were the best I could do which is rather unfortunate because I wanted older looking cabinets but... It’ll do. I accented it with white and it is very spacious for lots of company! This kitchen has its own balcony and small eating area out there too. While most would argue that the kitchen should go on the bottom floor I actually really liked it here specifically because of the panty, the additional balcony, and the large eating area on the back balcony too. That and the stairs into the main entryway are actually in here and near that front door so it isn’t as far as one would think.

If you look in the below photo, though you can barely see it... On the left countertop against the wall there is actually a ‘tea’ area. We ship spuk/engspa and so I like to think Antonio, while he does drink tea, doesn’t as much. He does have this little cute area for Arthur to make his tea at though. He himself has his own counter under a window where he stores all his coffee stuff. Also, while I’ve never done it before, I really like hiding the stairway with that china cabinet because it just changed the whole atmosphere of the room.

Below is a rather chunky corridor that I chose a ‘black and white’ tile scheme for. It really only serves as a point A to B type of thing. The kitchen is to the right, another corridor to the left, below is a balcony that overhangs the front entryway and the doors at the top of the image lead to a massive back balcony that serves as an outside dining area that I imagine Antonio actually prefers to eat in because of the views and especially when he hosts guests.

Next is the corridor to the left of that chunky middle section. This is a rather odd-shaped corridor that was one of the last things I put together because I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do with it. I ended up having it being a seating area, a bathroom, a piano area, a small library area, and another seating area. It leads to another guest bedroom as well as the solarium/wrap-around-corridor on that side of the building, to continue the pattern from below. I went with a ‘yellow’ kind of theme here which is completely out of my element. Also, I realize that the lighting on the piano area looks out of place compared to the rest of it but I wanted it that way so that the piano had a spotlight feature.

Alright- The last ‘room’ on this floor. The second guest bedroom. This one doesn’t have its own personal bathroom (Just down the hall) but it does have its own balcony and it is bigger. I actually like this one more, I think.

Alright. This is the last main wrap-around corridor. It opens up and is not separated from the 2nd floor of the solarium. I decided to differentiate this one big time by introducing colored carpets and furniture to give it a fun touch. Also it does have a ‘hookah’ area lmao. The solarium part is alittle more boring but it does have activities for your sim to do such as painting, woodworking, and more. I figured it was a good spot to put misc hobbies since it is more out of the way of the usual social areas but has a great view and airspace.

Now for the last section of the 2nd floor: The main back balcony. This thing is huge and has a LOT of seating. I really like that big main dining table, the record player, and decorations. There is a stairway here that I put in, cutting through the roof, to get to the 3rd floor because I could‘t figure out how else to do it. I actually picture Antonio preferring to eat out here.

This is that stairwell with the 3rd floor cut off.

And here it is with the 3rd floor activated. It was a pain to get that to work but once I got it it worked just fine. I couldn’t figure out how to really connect the two separate buildings but then realized I could do an open-air corridor with no roof. That was DEFINITELY new for me and interesting to do!

With the roof on.

Next we’ll go to the office. I imagine that because he often shows up late (If even at all) and so he really utilizes this personal office and library a lot. It has its own personal bathroom, small kitchen, small records area, and eve a TV and fireplace near his desk. I often picture him trying to turn his desk around on the rug so that people on camera or on his zoom call won’t see his kitchen but I often see him forgetting to do that and so they just see a big microwave behind him lmao. Also I imagine, while the TV is helpful a lot for news and etc he is often distracted by soap operas, sports, and etc on it. Get to work, Antonio!

So we’re going to go back across that open-air corridor to the other wing and that is Antonio’s personal master bedroom and master bathroom. He has his own personal balcony that is colorful and relaxing.

First we’ll go into the master bathroom. I wanted a nice tub, plenty of space, more yellow accents... And I couldn’t figure out the shower and had to improvise. I actually put up stand-alone showerheads and nozzles into each of those pillars so he could take a really cool shower, if he wanted. I just didn’t want the shower to take away from the overall look of it and that seemed like the best option. Again, improvise, adapt, overcome.

Now for the final room on the 3rd floor: Antonio’s master bedroom. I went with ‘green for this’. It’s really cozy and colorful. I like to pretend that Arthur stitched those designs above his door and he hung them up because he loves them. Antonio also has a large walk-in closet/wardrobe that has been fitted onto the 3rd floor of this tower. I couldn’t get any good brown furniture to work so I shifted it to black in here. He’s a really fashionable guy and loves to care for his looks so it felt natural to make this his closet and area to get ready in.

From Antonio’s wardrobe... You have to use the stairs outside leading upstairs to the last and final room at the top of the tower and the 4th floor. It’s actually an attic/storage area and I often love putting these in the homes I build. I like to make them messy, cluttered, full of memories, and personal things to the person that lives specifically here. I always have a fun time trying to cram them full of stuff.

And with these last few pictures I wanted to show some of the scenery around in the area. It was a massive build and I’m glad I finally finished it at long last! Thanks for checking it out, it was a lot of hard work and time but I love it!

#the sims 4 #sims 4 creator #sims 4 build #hetalia #axis powers hetalia #aph spain #aph antonio fernandez carriedo #fan build

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metalandmagi · 4 years

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Summer 2020 Anime Worth Watching!

Apparently it’s time for the summer anime season, even though it feels like time is meaningless at this point. But somehow, there are still new shows coming out, so if you’re looking for something to watch when you’re stuck at home, here’s a list of the first impressions I got from this season. I don’t really know if it’s going to be worth it, considering how the spring season delayed so much, but here we are.

As always, not all of these are available on Crunchyroll, but I’ll put a * next to the ones that are.

And if you’re looking for a bit more variety, I have lists for 2019 and the rest of this year’s seasons too...because remember when there was good anime being released instead of just everything being an ecchi or a second season?

2019 master list

My master list for every season of 2020 anime

New Shows!

*The God of High School: An over the top action anime consisting of one big tournament arc! It follows a group of teenagers competing in the epic “god of high school” martial arts tournament to determine the best fighter in the country. Following in the footsteps of Tower of God, this is the newest “crunchyroll original” that is being adapted from a South Korean webcomic. You can tell from the first episode that this will be a spectacle with crazy characters and lots of wild action and humor!

Great Pretender: When a Japanese con man pickpockets the wrong person, he ends up hopping on a plane to Los Angeles and getting wrapped up in a scheme with a sassy Frenchman named Laurent...who basically runs the mafia. There’s humor, there’s plot, there’s great characters, and it’s kinda gay. It’s an exciting original anime from studio Wit, so the animation is bursting with character, and both the music and the general vibe remind me a lot of Baccano or even Lupin III. And since it takes place in America with several foreign characters, there's hilarious English and accent shenanigans abound! The bad news is it’s still in Netflix jail, so if you want to watch it legally you’re kinda stuck for now.

Japan Sinks 2020: A giant earthquake hits Japan, and a family must cope with the mayhem together. Because what the hell else could possibly go wrong this year? This is a new series (based on a novel) made by Masaaki Yuasa, the guy behind Ride Your Wave and Walk On Girl, if that tells you anything about the style of this anime. I’ve only watched the first two episodes so far, but I heard it goes from being a gripping realistic disaster series to a balls to the wall adventure. To be honest, disaster shows/movies freak me out, and this one is pretty devastating so far, which is a testament to how well it's made. But I appreciate that they include glimmers of hope when they’re needed. The best moments are the quiet ones that focus on the actual people and the narration that juxtaposes the time periods. There’s so much atmosphere, and the music really enhances the experience. And it’s all out on Netflix now, with a dub and a sub!

Deca-Dence: When humanity has been pushed to the edge of extinction by monsters called the Gadoll, the rest of civilization is forced to live in enormous mobile fortresses and send groups out to battle the unknown monsters. So basically like Mortal Engines but the fortresses can turn themselves into giant fists and punch the monsters. We follow a girl named Natsume who wants to be one of the soldiers who fight the Gadoll, but she is constantly rejected because of her prosthetic arm. So she ends up with five years of cleaning duty supervised by a stern but mysterious badass named Kaburagi. I honestly don’t care at all about the plot of the anime, because for me the characters are what drives everything, and these character dynamics are great. I’m not going to say it’s the most original story, but I think it’s fun so far.

*Rent-a-Girlfriend: A typical harem/romance anime that follows the world’s most annoying protagonist named Kazuya. After Kazuya is dumped by his first girlfriend, he seeks out a rental girlfriend out of self pity….BECAUSE APPARENTLY THAT’S A REAL SERVICE THAT EXISTS IN JAPAN?! Like you can actually rent moms/dads/girlfriends/boyfriends and so on. Anyway, his fake girlfriend is the picture of anime waifu perfection...until Kazuya starts being his typical asshole self and she reveals her true nature of being an absolute sass master who don’t take no shit from no boring ass main character. Shenanigans happen and the two of them end up having to pretend they are in a real relationship. And I’m just calling it now...Kazuya’s grandma is the real best girl of the series. If you want a harem that’s actually funny and doesn’t mind roasting the protagonist, give this one a shot. Although I wish this were just a straight up romance instead of a harem because there is no way in hell that any girl, let alone more than one would want actually to date this guy.

Next Seasons and Continuations!

*Fruits Basket 2019 (Season 2): Thank goodness Fruits Basket wasn’t delayed or cancelled last season because sometimes I feel like it was the only thing getting me through the spring. I’ve ranted about how good it is enough by now. If it can’t brighten your year, then nothing will. Just watch it if you haven’t already.

*Re:ZERO-Starting Life in Another World (Season 2): Subaru is still trapped in another world, and he’s still as angsty as ever, but that’s not going to stop him from constantly putting himself through hell when he keeps dying horribly every time he needs to reset the timeline! There are mysterious new villains, nobody knows who Rem is (again) and I think there’s a plot somewhere under all the suffer porn. Seriously though, this show is pretty cool (even if I was two years late to the party). It’s one of the most interesting isekai anime I’ve ever seen, and it feels like it’s acting as a deconstruction of the genre, kinda like how Madoka Magica is for magical girl anime...both shows certainly have enough crying. The story is weird but interesting, the world building is cool, the villains (and sometimes the heroes) are batshit crazy to watch, and I like its moments of humor.

No Guns Life (season 2): The story of Juzo, the hard boiled detective who plays by his own rules continues in the second season of No Guns Life. In case you missed the first season, this is a mystery/action anime that feels like an old noir film had a cyberpunk baby. There’s underground conspiracies, there’s interesting side characters, and...oh yeah the main character has a gun for a head. That’s right. we came to see a bara detective with a literal gun for a face, but we stayed for the world building and mysterious plots!

*Fire Force (Season 2): I’m going to be honest here, I really didn’t know if I should include this one or not. I have a major love hate relationship with Fire Force, but I figured there may be other people out there who would like it more than I do. So in case you missed the first season, this show follows a group of firefighters who puts out fires caused by spontaneous combustion using a mixture of guns and super powers. It was created by Atsushi Ōkubo, aka the guy who made Soul Eater. So it’s bound to be amazing right?

Not necessarily. Strap in for this one lads.

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed with this show overall. Its main characters just aren’t that interesting most of the time, it can’t decide on what kind of show it wants to be, and so much of it just dragged for a good part of the series. I don’t know if it was a problem of pacing or if the plot was just that uninteresting for a while. The first couple episodes set up a very unique plot, filled with intriguing moral dilemmas. And then it proceeded to abandon everything interesting in favor of badly timed fan-service. It just couldn’t strike the balance that Soul Eater had between its humor and its sincerity. If they wanted to make an ecchi show, they should have just made one instead of inserting the same overplayed scenarios into every episode. I don’t care if a show has fan-service as long as it fits the tone, or if it only has certain episodes dedicated to playing up the humor. But Fire Force has a habit of just inserting it wherever it wants regardless of what’s actually happening in the episode. Also, some of the humor revolves around one of the main female characters who has a really messed up self image because she’s slightly more muscular, and not a tiny delicate flower like some of the other girls. Not going to pretend that doesn’t bug me.

But that doesn’t mean there is nothing good about it! If there wasn’t, I wouldn’t have finished the first season, and I wouldn’t be including this one. So far, the second season has actually been funny because it made the first episode more like filler, instead of cramming in too much plot all at once. And to the surprise of no one, the animation is absolutely god tier. I wish it was being used for something other than clumsy fan-service, but it’s still really something to see. The world building is super creative and 100% my aesthetic, and there were a couple side characters I really loved later in the series (Benimaru). And I did like the twists and turns the series took later in the season when it actually focused on the conspiracy behind the fire force and the cult. When it follows the mysteries it sets up, it’s more fun to watch. Who would have thought?

TLDR: There’s good stuff and there’s bad stuff. This show is really something you have to watch for yourself to decide if it’s going to be worth it. I’m going to at least try the second season, because I want to see where this goes, but it’s on thin ice.

Honorable Mentions

Isekai edition! Both of these came out last season, but I hadn’t mentioned them when I made my spring list. But they’re both getting dubs now so I’m still counting them.

*My Next Life as a Villainess- All Routes Lead to Doom!: A twist on the isekai genre where our main protagonist wakes up as a character in her favorite otome game...only to find that she’s actually the bitchy rival side character who ends up either dead or exiled in every route of the game. So naturally she does everything she can to prevent this by becoming a sweet and caring supporting character...who inadvertently makes every single other character in the game fall in love with her. I ignored this show for the first few episodes because I need another isekai in the world like I need a hole in the head, but after hearing everyone rave about it, I caught up with it in no time. It’s a fun take on the otome game tropes, and it manages to be funny and sweet while not committing to any particular pairing.

*Ascendance of a Bookworm (Season 2): That’s right, it’s another isekai where an adult is reincarnated into the body of a child in a fantasy world. But this time, it’s a nerdy girl whose entire purpose in life revolves around reading books (can relate). However, when our main character Mine is thrust into this fantasy world, she quickly realizes that this particular fantasy setting is a little too...medieval for her tastes...meaning a family of commoners like hers would have no clue how to read and books are only meant for rich people or the church. So of course Mine has to figure out how to either get her hands on some books or make them herself. This is a super cute show that I waited a long time to finally watch, and since the second season is finally being dubbed I wanted to shout it out. It’s just a wholesome isekai version of Dr. Stone. There’s no real action, but it’s a relaxing watch if nothing else.

Well, there you have it. Hopefully nothing else gets delayed or cancelled because it’s pretty slim pickings as it is. And before anyone asks, I didn’t include GIBIATE because I thought it was a massive disappointment that somehow made a time travel horror anime plot boring. There’s also My Teen Romantic Comedy Snafu, but it’s been 5 years since I watched the other seasons and don’t remember anything about it. But there’s that too in case anyone is a fan of the series and didn’t know it got another season.

See you next season…if the world is still here by then?

#anime recommendations #2020 anime worth watching #ascendence of a bookworm #my next life as a villaines #fire force #no guns life #re:zero #fruits basket 2019 #fruits basket #rent-a-girlfriend #deca-dence #japan sinks 2020 #great pretender #the god of high school

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seymour-butz-stuff · 4 years

Link

Not only did Donald Trump avoid answering half the questions he was asked during the second and last presidential debate Thursday night, but he decided to name-drop Democratic representatives in Congress. In an attempt to criticize Joe Biden during a discussion on the climate crisis involving the Green New Deal, Trump said: "You know who developed it [the Green New Deal]? AOC plus three.”

Trump was referring to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, nicknamed AOC, in addition to other freshmen female Congress members including Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib. The four women have shown resilience throughout the multiple attacks Trump has subjected them to. He has often used the phrase “AOC plus three” in attempts to belittle the unstoppable and unapologetic group known nationally as “the Squad.”

"They know nothing about the climate,” Trump continued. “I mean she's got a good line of stuff but she knows nothing about the climate, and they're all hopping through hoops for AOC plus three. Not a real plan, it costs 100 trillion dollars." Trump, a longtime denier of the climate crisis, continued his rant and called the Green New Deal “the craziest plan that anybody has ever seen.”

Biden appointed Ocasio-Cortez as co-chair of his climate policy task force in May. With her strong following, the move was seen as an attempt to appeal to progressives that supported the Green New Deal. Following her appointment, the task force released a series of proposals including recommending that carbon pollution from power plants be eliminated by 2035 through an increase in clean energy resources.

Of course, being the savvy person she is, Ocasio-Cortez replied to Trump on Twitter in the best way possible—with corrections and facts.

"It's actually AOC plus 115 because that's how many House and Senate members have cosponsored the most ambitious climate legislation in American history," she wrote, adding that she is grateful for each member of Congress who supported the Green New Deal.

But that’s not the only comment Ocasio-Cortez replied to. In response to Trump’s comment that “she's got a good line of stuff,” AOC humorously shared some nice merch. *Casually heads over to her site to shop*

In addition to her fire responses, Ocasio-Cortez and the three other marvelous women of the Squad shared a group photo. In the photo, the four women can be seen laughing together (props to the photographer for taking such a beautiful and natural shot). If this doesn't make you feel all warm and sentimental inside, I don't know what will.

Each member of the Squad shared the photo with a different caption celebrating their sisterhood.

“Joy is an act of resistance,” Omar tweeted.

“Living in his head rent free is something,” Pressley tweeted. Her tweet included a link to a page, iwillvote.com, that allows individuals to access resources to voting, including checking if they are registered and registering to vote.

Tlaib used a common and spiritual Islamic term to express the love the picture depicted: “Mashallah.” The term is used as a compliment, admiring something God has willed or created. “This is real sisterhood, and we are just getting stronger. #MashAllah," Tlaib wrote.

Noting the number of times Trump brought her up during the debate, Ocasio-Cortez noted that prior to being a congresswoman she could have never imagined a president repeatedly mentioning her name. There’s that humor again:

And of course, touching on the importance of names and correctly pronouncing them, Ocasio-Cortez reminded Trump and others who refuse to listen that AOC is a nickname she was given by the community and her constituents, to be used by them—not by officials. She has repeatedly expressed this, noting that colleagues and others who use her name professionally should show respect.

“I wonder if Republicans understand how much they advertise their disrespect of women in debates when they consistently call women members of Congress by nicknames or first names while using titles & last names when referring to men of = stature,” she said. “Women notice. It conveys a lot.”

During the vice presidential debate, Ocasio-Cortez tweeted something similar when she called out Vice President Mike Pence for referring to her as AOC, instead of her full name. "For the record @Mike_Pence, it's Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez to you," she said.

Ocasio-Cortez has come under fire from conservatives since the first day she stepped into the House. Many Republicans seem to be jealous that Ocasio-Cortez not only appeals to younger generations but has a large group of dedicated supporters. This is in part due to Ocasio-Cortez’s energetic and honest persona.

She not only is unapologetic in her words but makes efforts to connect with younger audiences and engage them in political action. On Tuesday, the young congresswoman made an appearance with colleague Omar on the popular gaming service Twitch, to encourage young people to vote in the upcoming election

Her livestream of the game “Among Us” garnered more than 400,000 views. "Holy cow ... Can y'all hear me?," Ocasio-Cortez said while playing. "This is pretty wild. I'm pretty excited.” Despite being relatively new to the streaming service, Ocasio-Cortez has already reached 545,00 followers and more than 4.5 million views on her first video, which streamed last year. According to a Twitch spokesperson, data confirms that her Tuesday stream is among the 20 biggest streams ever on the site.

Oh fuck I just realized I’m posting this now and not two days from now.

I’m going to get such a long tersely written message from @when5hourisntstrongenough about how he had to laboriously fact-check everything in this post 2 days from now and list in excruciating detail just how much of it was wrong or not precisely true.

I just don’t know what I’ll do between now and then, maybe post some more articles? Some other humorous things that I don’t hold up 2 days in order to fact check each and every detail in them?

How will I live with myself.

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warninggraphiccontent · 3 years

Text

29 January 2021

Tragedy and statistics

The UK marked a grim milestone this week, recording more than 100,000 Covid deaths by every measure.

Various versions of the famous quote have it that one death is a tragedy, many merely a statistic. Newspapers tried to avoid that and humanise the sombre statistic in different ways. The front pages of The Times and the i focused on the individual tragedies, photographs highlighting the human beings behind the numbers.

Beyond their front pages, both tried to visualise the impact. The i used its paper form to give a double page spread to 100,000 dots, each representing a death. Online, The Times combined the human stories with a different use of dots and a 'narrative scroll', the act of having to move down the page helping illustrate the extent of the tragedy. It put me in mind of Ampp3d's story from 2014 (no longer online, analysis here and here) visualising migrant worker deaths in Qatar. The New York Times took a different approach to scrolling , using the density of dots to show how the pandemic unfolded in the US.

The FT, meanwhile, kept things simple, using a line chart to show the different measures of deaths all exceeding 100,000, and a simple bar chart to compare the UK's mortality rate to others.

Different approaches, but all important attempts to communicate the human cost of Covid and examples of how data visualisation can help make sense of tragedy on such a large scale, when words might fail us.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

In other news:

It's Data Bites this Wednesday at 6pm. Come!

Congratulations to my erstwhile IfG colleagues on the latest (terrific) edition of Whitehall Monitor. Read it here (some more links below), sign up for next week's launch event here.

I had a great time at this year's (virtual) UKGovCamp last week - thanks to the campmakers for making it work so well online. I made it to sessions on public trust; the state of (open) data; every move you make, every word you type...; data in regulation; silos beyond government; data service design; and digital exclusion. I ran a session on whether some sort of annual report on the state of government data could work and if so, what it should include - the notes are here, Jamboard here, and rest assured it's a subject I'll be returning to... Full grid of events and notes here.

The Atlantic had a rather good piece on narratives about the pandemic this week, and how a successful vaccination programme could dispel memories of 'a catastrophic failure of governance': 'The pandemic disaster that might not happen'. I wonder if focusing on how politicians can drive their own narrative overshadows the role of society's storytellers - the media - in shaping and questioning narratives, and absolves them of agency to hold the government to account. Not dissimilar to some narratives around data and technology that seem to forget the decisions around them are made by humans.

Have views on vaccine passports? Tony does. A reminder that the project I'm working with the Ada Lovelace Institute on is taking evidence until 19 February.

And I forgot to post this last week... President Biden's inaugural address grappled with some of the same tensions between unity and dissent in a democracy that some of the founding fathers did in The Federalist. I'm a particular fan of Alexander Hamilton's fourth and fifth paragraphs here, the fourth eloquent on the need to respect our opponents, and the fifth eloquent on the exact opposite ('no, not these opponents').

Have a good weekend

Gavin

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Graphic content

Macabre milestones

Boris Johnson ‘deeply sorry’ as UK’s Covid death toll passes 100,000* (FT)

How the UK reached 100,000 Covid deaths* (The Times)

100,162 lives (The i, via Matt Butler)

UK official Covid death toll has always undercounted fatalities, analysis shows (The Guardian)

How the world reached 100 million coronavirus cases* (New Statesman)

Covid-19 cases pass 100m* (The Economist)

How 425,000 Coronavirus Deaths Added Up* (New York Times)

Vax populi

Covid-19 vaccine tracker: the global race to vaccinate* (FT)

Vaccine nationalism means that poor countries will be left behind* (The Economist)

Vaccination rates in England are lower for older non-white people, study shows* (FT)

Viral content

UK Covid lockdown starting to work, say scientists* (FT)

Home page for an experimental website displaying COVID-19 statistics

New UK and South Africa Covid variants may spread more easily, so what does this mean for the fight against coronavirus? (The Guardian)

The Amazonian city that hatched the Brazil variant has been crushed by it* (Washington Post)

The march of the coronavirus across America* (The Economist)

See Covid-19 Risk in Your County and a Guide for Daily Life Near You* (New York Times)

We are now sharing previously hidden weekly COVID-19 state profile reports with the public (Cyrus Shahpar, White House COVID-19 Data Director)

Covid-19 Pandemic Could Be Source of Global Crises for Years: WEF* (Bloomberg)

Putting Kamala Harris as VP into perspective (Melissa Shusterman)

How popular is Joe Biden? (FiveThirtyEight)

Joe Biden is taking executive action at a record pace* (The Economist)

Full List: Where Every Senator Stands on Convicting Trump* (New York Times)

How The Frost Belt And Sun Belt Illustrate The Complexity Of America’s Urban-Rural Divide (FiveThirtyEight)

Our Radicalized Republic (FiveThirtyEight)

This is one of the most harrowing pictures I have seen about how we lost an entire generation (@marcusjdl)

Whitehall Monitor 2021 (IfG)

Launch event next week (IfG)

Three ways that the coronavirus crisis has changed government (Alice for IfG)

Ministers overrode official advice more than ever in last year’s crisis* (Tim for Times Red Box)

We’ve calculated ward level EU Referendum estimates in England/Wales (James Kanagasooriam)

In data: the benefits squeeze* (Prospect)

Who's furloughed? (Resolution Foundation)

Cities Outlook 2021 (Centre for Cities)

Global

The uncounted: How many women die at the hands of their partners? We simply don’t know – and that needs to change* (Tortoise)

La Niña Roars, Unleashing Fire, Drought and Floods Worldwide* (Bloomberg)

How the Arab spring engulfed the Middle East – and changed the world (The Guardian)

Pessimism and Distrust Could Sway Elections Around the World* (Bloomberg)

Poland’s coal-fired home heating creates widespread pollution* (The Economist)

#dataviz

How to work with Facebook population density data (Alasdair Rae)

Check out this interesting cartography decision! (Gretchen Peterson)

Sport

How green are Premier League clubs? Tottenham top sustainability table (not entirely convinced by this graphic, BBC Sport - and not just because Spurs are top)

When GOATs meet: Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers, by the numbers* (Washington Post)

Everything else

The frenzied rise of GameStop* (The Economist)

Data Archeogram: mapping the datafication of work (Autonomy)

VIEW THE ARMADA MAPS (National Museum of the Royal Navy)

Spanish Armada maps 'saved for the nation' (BBC News)

Meta data

ICO baby

Our session with Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham (Digital, Culture, Media and Sport select committee)

Tory party illegally collected data on ethnicity of 10m voters, MPs told (The Guardian)

Covid contracts: Extend FoI act to cover private companies making millions says Information Commissioner (Evening Standard)

Adtech investigation resumes (ICO)

Information commissioner’s term extended to allow successor recruitment (Public Technology)

Shaking that pass

Exclusive: Tony Blair calls on Boris Johnson to lead drive for global vaccine passport* (Telegraph)

Vaccine passports and ID Cards (Phil Booth)

Tech companies are racing to build smart vaccine passports. But technology isn't the only problem (ZDNet)

Viral content

What Covid revealed about government’s legacy IT, and what to do next (Civil Service World)

What can wastewater tell us about COVID-19? (COG-UK)

Digital government

Our Syllabus: Here to help you teach Digital Era Government (Teaching Public Service in the Digital Age)

Respecting users’ privacy on GOV.UK accounts (Inside GOV.UK)

Two GDS projects to watch : GOV.UK Accounts and “Forms discovery” (David Durant)

Government Gateway at 20 – looking back at the UK’s most successful digital identity system (Computer Weekly)

No digital postal vote application service before May elections (Public Technology)

"Find your NHS number" (Tom Read and others)

Open government

The Path to the Future (Audrey Tang for CommonWealth)

We are thrilled to announce that #OpenGovWeek will take place May 17-21, 2021! (Open Government Partnership)

RECOMMENDATIONS TO STRENGTHEN CANADA’S RESPONSE TO NEW DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND REDUCE THE HARM CAUSED BY THEIR MISUSE (Public Policy Forum)

FOI* (Peter Geoghegan for the LRB)

AI got 'rithm

Government by Algorithm: The Myths, Challenges and Opportunities (Tony Blair Institute for Global Change)

What's your go-to document or paper that defines different types of algorithmic bias? (Rumman Chowdhury)

AI review: Transforming our world with AI (UKRI)

New – Amazon SageMaker Clarify Detects Bias and Increases the Transparency of Machine Learning Models (AWS)

Who Is Winning the AI Race: China, the EU, or the United States? — 2021 Update (Center for Data Innovation)

The City of New York has released an inventory of algorithms in use (Rumman Chowdhury)

A New AI Lexicon: Responses and Challenges to the Critical AI discourse- Call for Contributors (AI Now Institute)

Independent auditors are struggling to hold AI companies accountable (Fast Company)

Media

Fix information failures or risk lives: the Full Fact Report 2021 (Full Fact)

Facebook News feature launches in UK (BBC News)

How Participatory Media Promote Coverage of Social Movements (Nieman Reports)

‘It’s a reality’: Google threatens to stop search in Australia due to media code (Sydney Morning Herald)

Privacy

Exploring Design and Governance Challenges in the Development of Privacy-Preserving Computation (Nitin Agrawal, Reuben Binns, Max Van Kleek, Kim Laine, Nigel Shadbolt)

How Europe’s privacy laws are failing victims of sexual abuse (Politico)

Inside India’s booming dark data economy (Rest of World)

We're exploring the role of privacy enhancing technologies (PETs) in enabling secure and trustworthy use of data (CDEI)

#DataProtectionDay

#DataPrivacyDay

Everything else

Microsoft is one of the largest contributors to the members of Congress who tried to subvert the Democratic process (Judd Legum)

Why does Big Tech want us to feel nostalgic?* (New Statesman)

Census 2021 will be taking place March 21 (ONS)

Opportunities

EVENT: Data Bites #16 (IfG)

JOB: Chair of Geospatial Commission (Cabinet Office)

JOB: Head of Open and Innovative Government Division (OECD)

JOB: Head of the Evaluation Task Force (Cabinet Office)

JOB: Product Manager (360Giving)

And finally...

Lady Gaga as diagrams about AI systems (thread). (Miles Brundage)

Infosec sea shanties (Rachel Tobac)

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aion-rsa · 4 years

Text

Bram Stoker’s Dracula and the Seduction of Old School Movie Magic

https://ift.tt/3j6X6Ga

It was one of the most challenging shots in Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Sitting before Roman Coppola’s second unit camera was a 50/50 mirror, the kind that was once commonplace in any illusionist’s magic shop, but which hadn’t seen the inside of a Hollywood studio in decades. On the other end of the glass lay Winona Ryder in bed, ostensibly asleep but soon to be bedeviled by a monstrous vampire.

Yet co-star Gary Oldman wasn’t on hand that day. Instead, at about a 90-degree angle away from Ryder’s boudoir, stood a duplicate set of the same size and shape, but buried in black velvet Duvetyne. And in that blackness, smoke created by dry ice was oozing its way around the velvet. When lit by green lights and reflected in the mirror, a sentient emerald mist suddenly appeared in the same room as Ryder. Dracula manifested out of thin air.

“That was a good one, if I may brag a little, in that it was a backwards photography [shot] with a 50/50 mirror,” Roman says in 2020. It’s been nearly three decades since that day on set at the legendary Culver Studios, and Roman Coppola is a bit older and far more seasoned, yet when he looks back at what he and his team achieved on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, he can’t help but marvel. After all, you could now run a video taken by your iPhone in reverse with the swipe of a finger. But there they were in 1991, “puppeteering” dry ice fog in reverse, so it would appear to be sneaking below a mattress when reflected off a mirror and captured at a 45-degree angle in a camera that was running its film backwards.

In truth it’s more or less the same effect John Henry Pepper invented in 1862 to conjure a ghost on stage. Literal smoke and mirrors in the digital age.

When Bram Stoker’s Dracula opened in November 1992, it astonished the industry and silenced many of Francis Ford Coppola’s sharpest critics. Snarked about in the press beforehand as “Bonfire of the Vampires”—a reference to Brian De Palma’s misbegotten Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)—the whispers were that director Coppola had created a lurid and weird vampire movie based on one of the most oversaturated characters in fiction. Well, Bram Stoker’s Dracula was certainly lurid and weird, but in the best possible way.

Originally conceived as a Victorian man’s repressed anxieties about lust and passion being given demonic shape, Coppola’s vision for Dracula was entirely divorced from the pop culture image of Bela Lugosi in a cape. While the movie was marketed as the director of The Godfather going back to the 1897 source novel that no one had ever faithfully adapted (which turned out to be only partially true), the movie’s true appeal lies in its decadent imagery. It’s a marriage of lavish costumes, freaky makeup, and half-forgotten magician’s effects. And the last bit was given new life by Francis’ son, Roman, who became the film’s visual effects director.

Somehow it all came together, with performers such as Oldman, Anthony Hopkins, Tom Waits, and Ryder going so big that their cries threatened to burst through the soundstage walls. The hypnotic union thrilled audiences, who made Bram Stoker’s Dracula a surprise holiday blockbuster, and was ultimately celebrated by the industry, which awarded the movie three Oscars, including one for Eiko Ishioka’s dazzling costumes and Greg Cannon’s makeup. The irony is that, in its way, it was the industry’s skepticism toward Francis Ford Coppola that made the movie’s unusual vision possible.

“For some reason I always thought it was unfair I had the reputation of being a director who spent a lot of money, which is not really the case,” Francis said in a recent interview with film critic F.X. Feeney. “The only movie that I really spent a lot of money on, and went way over budget, was Apocalypse Now.”

Be that as it may, when Ryder first piqued Coppola’s interest about making a Dracula movie, which as it turned out was a favorite novel from his youth, he knew the studio would never agree to Coppola’s first inclination: As with going to the jungles of the Philippines on Apocalypse Now or Sicily in The Godfather, Coppola initially imagined shooting Dracula in Transylvania and inside actual crumbling castles.

“I knew the studio would be a little leery of getting this director with three names to do this Dracula picture, and possibly go off to Romania, and it’d be a Heaven’s Gate scenario, or Apocalypse Now scenario, so I played into that. I said, ‘You know, we could go and make the film in Romania, we could go to the real Castle Dracula… or I could make it all in the studio… In fact, I’ll make the entire picture right in a soundstage, a group of soundstages right under your noses. They just loved it, they ate it up.”

That was how Francis pitched himself into the movie, but how he made it worthwhile stemmed from two separate ideas bleeding into one otherworldly vision: First that the laws of physics would never apply when you were in the presence of a vampire; and second, if he was going to attempt to authentically return to the Victorian world of Stoker’s 1897 novel, he also would return to the early world of cinema where the laws of physics were never even considered.

“The period of the turn of the century was the birth of movies,” Francis said. “And movies, as you know, largely came about because of magicians who started to use the cinema to make illusions…. That’s when I became excited about the idea of [having] this story 100 percent shot in soundstages and not only using illusions and magic, and effects, but using effects as they were done at the turn of the century, which was in-camera.”

Thus entered Roman Coppola. Only 26 when Bram Stoker’s Dracula went before cameras, Roman wasn’t necessarily his father’s first choice to lead the visual effects. While Francis’ accounts have varied over the years as to whether his first head of special effects quit or was fired, the one consistency in Francis’ telling is that modern effects experts were exasperated by the idea of using almost no optical printers or new digital effects, and instead focusing on in-camera tricks. “Absurd” was the word Francis heard. But as it so happened, his son already had a passion for magic and the old ways, absurd though they may be.

“I was involved [on the movie] already,” Roman says. “I was going to be second unit [director], and we wanted the effects and second unit all to be one group effort, and do that stuff live. And when I started to take certain leadership and do storyboards, and supervise certain preparation, it was just clear that I was able to direct these efforts in a way that was more in my dad’s wishes, which is to really genuinely, deeply embrace the idea of total adhesion to ‘how would they have done it back in the day?’”

In retrospect Roman taking over leadership on the effects in Bram Stoker’s Dracula—to the point where he’s given the title card of “Visual Effects and Second Unit Director” in the end credits—seems natural. Ever since his uncle David Shire introduced him to theatrical magic as a young child, Roman has had a lifelong fascination with the tricks of illusion and sleight of hand. He still recalls boyhood days spent at Los Angeles’ Hollywood Magic store and San Francisco’s House of Magic, learning the trade of visual trickery, such as John Pepper’s “Pepper’s Ghost,” and staying up to watch Paul Michael Glaser in the 1976 TV movie The Great Houdini. In San Francisco, he saw Tony Slydini on stage.

“After 12 and 13, I stopped being so active,” Roman says. “But later, as a younger person in my 20s, I started to get back into it and get a lot of books, and collect certain apparatuses. It’s just something I found a real love for.”

Culture

The Bleeding Heart of Dracula

By David Crow

It also perfectly positioned him to spearhead Dracula’s visual effects. And one of the first things Roman and his team did was curate a film reel, or “visual library,” of all the points of reference from classic cinema they could use as inspiration.

“The movies that were much more points of reference are a touch later, but still drawing on the same principles,” Roman says when we mention early cinema pioneers, including Georges Méliès. “Jean Cocteau was a particular influence, Beauty and the Beast [1946], Orpheus [1950], and Blood of a Poet [1930]. So those are all movies that we drew a lot of inspiration from.”

Indeed, during the scene where Keanu Reeves’ Jonathan Harker explores Castle Dracula, a single carved arm in the wall is holding a candelabra in homage to Beauty and the Beast. Meanwhile Mario Bava’s Black Sunday (1960) inspired the nightmarish imagery of Harker’s carriage ride through a desolate mountain range, with the ominous passing tree branches actually being grips whacking the carriage as it was rocked in place.

Other films in the reel might include F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) or Carl Th. Dreyer’s Vampyr (1932), but Roman cites the biggest influences as being actual books on magic he turned to for research. Some were as old as Stoker’s novel itself. Erik Barnouw’s The Magician and the Cinema (1981) was a major touchstone on the movie; Sam Sharpe, author of Neo Magic (1932) and Conjurers’ Optical Secrets (1985) was another; and then crucially there was Magic: Stage Illusions, Special Effects and Trick Photography, which was written by Albert A. Hopkins in 1897.

Explains Roman, “Those books were the bibles of the research, and those have all sorts of references.” For instance, recall the grandiose prologue of the film. With baroque glee the movie begins not in 1897 but 1462. That is the year the real-life Vlad the Impaler repelled the Ottoman Empire and protected Christendom by slaughtering thousands of Turks. The sequence was Francis’ invention, and one he called his “Origin of Batman” scene on the set. But rather than actually film a battle scene, or even actual daylight, the warring portion of the sequence is completely captured via unnatural silhouette, with shadow puppets before a blood-red sky standing in for actual humans as they are impaled on a forest of pikes.

Says Roman, “If you get the book of Hopkins’ Magic, you will see other things like shadowgraphy, which is using shadow puppets. There was a guy named Caran d’Ache, who I think became famous because he’s the namesake of the Swiss colored pencil company. But he was the originator, or at least excelled in, shadowgraphy. And when you see the opening of Dracula, all those shadow puppets, that was inspired by an example from that book.”

This focus on the classical principles of stagecraft and magic, reverse photography and compositing images with a forced perspective, is the secret of Bram Stoker’s Dracula’s lingering appeal. As Roman points out, there were no effects they feared wouldn’t work. If they could achieve how things were done then, they’d appear inexplicable in the dawning age of digital effects.

“There’s a lot of steps and a lot of process that can be painstaking, but I don’t think we did anything that was pushing a boundary,” he says. “I think everything was an accepted principle that we knew, ‘Well, this is going to work if we do it right.’ There was nothing groundbreaking. We adhered to all the old tricks.”

There could certainly be setbacks, Roman recalls during Dracula’s voyage to London on the doomed Demeter that they exposed the same negative to five passes of filming. This is to say they attempted to combine five separately filmed images as the camera swung on the set by rewinding the film before each new pass. But because the frame line was incorrect on one of the passes, the whole multi-step take was ruined.

But the effects they did achieve all have a potency that register as alien to our modern eye. Some can be as simple as running the film backward in the camera, giving a macabre, unnatural sense of movement as Sadie Frost’s newly turned vampire Lucy climbs into her coffin after being accosted with a crucifix. In reality, she was filmed simply climbing out of it. Others might be slightly more complex, such as a black matte box being used over multiple passes.

For instance, when rats appear to run upside down on a girder above Jonathan Harker in the castle, two passes were used. In the first, the camera was upside down with the black matte covering the top of the lens as rats ran across a piece of set; then the camera was turned upright, the film rewound, and the other half of the lens was exposed while the original portion was covered as Reeves was burned into the negative.

BBC/Netflix Dracula’s Behind-the-Scenes Set Secrets

By Louisa Mellor

Among my personal favorites is the extreme perspective of Ryder’s 1462 Princess Elisabeta flinging herself from a castle parapet into a river, which Roman reveals “was basically a puppet with a forced perspective, and a little river below, [with] some tricks to make the scale look correct.”

Another was the much more complex series of techniques used during the vignette of Jonathan Harker traveling by train into Transylvania. In the finished film, Reeves sits in a shadowy train compartment with stark mountains out the window. Soon they fade away into darkness as Oldman’s predatory eyes appear on the horizon. Outside the train, Harker’s journal entry about the day’s travel is visible in the frame, running the length of the train track and just below the crossing transport.

“That was done by Gene Warren Jr. at Fantasy II [Film Effects], and that was multi-pass, multiple exposures,” Roman says. Among them was a rear projection created over two passes on the same piece of film. The first was comprised of multiple layers of the mountain range background moving at different speeds from right to left, while the camera moved left to right. In the second pass, the lights were turned out and Oldman’s eyes, as filmed by Roman, were projected as the only source of light onto the same background. All of this was then rear projected behind Reeves in a separate shot while he sat in his carriage. Conversely, in one of his close-ups, a map of 19th century Transylvania appears on his face via front projection.

And as for the journal in the same frame as the train? According to visual effects camera operator Christopher Lee Warren in “In Camera: The Naive Effects of Dracula,” they built a 20-foot wide replica of Harker’s journal entry so it could stand 10 feet in each direction between the camera and a miniature train, all to get the right type of sunset shadow being cast across its pages.

As just one in a string of intricate effects and set-pieces achieved by Roman and his team, the effects’ cumulative impact is immeasurable. In its way, Bram Stoker’s Dracula works on the level Francis wanted: He was able to bring it closer to Stoker’s world and plot, if not necessarily Stoker’s themes. As Francis more openly admits in recent years, when Ryder first approached him with a draft of James V. Hart’s script for Dracula, it was about a gushing love story between the dashing Count and Mina Murray Harker.

Ironically, that may be the element of the film that lingers most on subsequent pop culture depictions of Dracula. But it was Francis’ insistence on the script being rewritten, and rewritten again, to incorporate all of Stoker’s narrative beats, side characters, and supernatural wickedness, as well as the sense of a British society in upheaval. It was the dawn of a new century, the twilight of an old monarch, and an age for scientific discovery and technology, be it in the realm of blood transfusion… or moviemaking.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula is at its best when it drinks deeply from its dreamlike environment and atmosphere, capturing the base dread in Victorian culture of suddenly being confronted by what it deemed irrational or lascivious. And those elements mingle to gory delight when the aspects Coppola cared about most took center stage.

“The focus [was] on the actors, the costumes, and this unusual way of doing live-action and multiple take effects done in-camera,” Francis said. And when it’s Hopkins, Richard E. Grant, and the rest of the ensemble standing around Sadie Frost in an extravagant 19th century wedding dress while being filmed in reverse, its sense of tone and style is overwhelming.

Talalay’s Terrors! The Director Breaks Down Her 5 Scariest Scenes

By Kayti Burt

On his end, Roman met that goal, and underlined the movie’s macabre madness, with ideas as primal and orgasmic as firing waves of blood out of air cannons during the scene where Dracula kills Lucy—“That was just a total last minute thing of like… ‘Hey don’t we have a bunch of blood bullets? Let’s put it in those air cannons and see what happens”—and it also paid off in old-fashioned Hollywood bravura, like the climax where Harker and the other vampire hunters chase Dracula down the Borgo Pass.

As second unit director, Roman shot much of that finale—as well as about 20 percent of the finished film—on the same soundstages where Merian C. Cooper filmed King Kong (1933) and David O. Selznick burned Atlanta in Gone with the Wind (1939). And a few years before Jurassic Park changed movie effects forever, Roman and his father were in that space, filming Reeves, Hopkins, and the rest approaching on horseback an enormous looming castle… which was created by Michael Pangrazio and Craig Barron by painting it on matted glass.

“That is remarkable that that would still be done in our time,” Roman reflects. “It’s hard to imagine that will ever happen again, latent image matte painting. It’s a great way to do something, but you need to have the skill to do it… and that’s just sort of a dying art.”

Not that Roman doesn’t still indulge the old ways. Many of his modern collaborators adore miniatures, for example. “I work with Wes Anderson often, and he likes to use miniatures, and he does it pretty liberally,” Roman says. “So I think there’s always a place for that.”

But composite shots? One where you put a sky or castle in the same shot with a miniature and live-action over multiple passes?

“It’s not possible to imagine someone wishing to do that on an optical printer, because for one, they don’t really exist [anymore],” Roman says. “Number two, it degrades the image, and there’s a lot of reason not to.”

Like the in-camera effects that fascinated two generations of Coppolas, even the optical printing techniques they were largely forgoing in 1992 have become obsolete in the age of computer generated imagery. Even the backwards-looking Bram Stoker’s Dracula has a single CG effect, with Roman conceding the transformation at the end of the movie, where demonic Dracula turns back into Prince Vlad in death, was done with CGI. But as Roman says, it was used judiciously at the conclusion as “a real punctuation mark.”

And perhaps Bram Stoker’s Dracula is itself a punctuation mark. A last hurrah for antiquated styles of moviemaking that were long gone, or about to be, and a chance to open a magician’s bag of tricks to fool the eye into believing, as Francis says, “the earth doesn’t rotate at exactly the right speed” in the presence of a vampire. It’s why the movie has aged like fine wine (if you drink the stuff), and likely will continue to do so while many other effects-driven movies are practically timestamped by their imagery.

“It was unique to a time and place,” Roman says. “I’m sure other movies, other horror movies in particular, over time will represent a time and a place, but this seems to be the one that represents that time and place.”

That time, and perhaps that of a century earlier.

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the-nights-parade · 4 years

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Ocean Park | Hong Kong's Largest Theme Park

Ocean Park is Hong Kong's largest theme park. In fact, it is Hong Kong's only theme park. With its 35 attractions and rides, the park has won several awards, including "The World's Seventh Most Popular Amusement Park" and "33rd Most Visited Tourist Attraction in the World". These are not statistics that I would necessarily brag about, but maybe that's just me.

Ocean Park is a 10 minute taxi ride away from our home, and Sadie has been at least a dozen times with her friends. In fact, her school did a trip there earlier this year and attempted to sell it to the parents as a physics lesson. Right.

I am reasonably informed that watching a teacher get spun around until they puke is the height of entertainment for a teenager. Anyway, I had never been before. I'm not sure why this is, but I guess that it is partly to do with David's lack of interest. I guess I can understand that. Any roller coaster becomes Space Mountain when you are blind, and although I love Space Mountain, I'm not sure that I'd want to spend the whole day riding on it. David is in the UK though, and I thought it might be a fun thing for Sadie and me to do.

This is the latest in a long string of my attempts at mother/daughter bonding. I try to kid myself that Sadie and I really have a close personal connection, that she loves and respects me as much as I do her, and that she actually enjoys my company when in reality what I perceive as bonding is probably just Sadie playing along to get something she wants. Regardless, if that's all I can get, I'll take it.

So, off we went to Ocean Park. I had to queue up for the ticket as Sadie already had a season pass that paid for itself if the first month. The price was comparable to other them parks - about £20 for the day. Now it is time for me to fess up about the real reason I wanted to go to Ocean Park. It has two different sections, one of which has animals, an aquarium and kiddie rides and the other which has thrill rides. The animal section has PANDAS! For a long time, seeing pandas has been on my list of 100 things to do before I die* and I was finally getting to do it!

I am marginally embarrassed by my passion for pandas. I have seen Kung Fu Panda three times and that is really not something of which to be proud. I am completely suckered in by their furry, fat cuddliness and those big black circles around their sad eyes. To be fair, I was also completely suckered in by Pete, the dog from the Little Rascals too. Something about a black circle around an eye. I like to think of myself as mature, urbane, sophisticated, cool and more than a little cynical. Loving cuddly panda bears blows that image. It's like Henry Kissinger saying he loves "My Little Pony". I guess I am out of the closet now.

Anyway, back to Ocean Park. I decided to prolong the expectation for as long as possible, so we visited the aquarium first. It is a pretty good aquarium as these things go - maybe even in the top 50 aquariums in the world.

I couldn't really contain my excitement much longer though. I had to see the bears. I spotted the Panda House from several hundred metres away. I knew it was the panda house because there were 10 metre tall plastic pandas waving to us from the roof. For one brief moment, I actually thought that they were real and waving just at me. We walked up the ramps and into the house. There are three panda enclosures, each with its own panda. They are solitary creatures and don't like to mix much. Thank goodness. The sight of two pandas cuddling or playing might just might be more cuteness than an ordinary human could bear (ha ha - I swear that wasn't on purpose).

There are two parallel ramps in front of the enclosures, and you are encouraged to stroll down one and up the other, giving everyone a good chance to have a look. Good manners went out the window as soon as I walked in the door. I stopped, creating a domino effect of panda watchers behind me. I couldn't move. I was spell bound. There in front of me was a giant panda sound asleep on a wooden platform. He was on his back, mouth open and with all four paws up in the air. I couldn't hear it, but I am absolutely sure he was snoring.

It is not terribly mature or sophisticated to jump up and down and shriek "OOOOH! LOOK AT THAT PANDA! HE IS SOOOOOO CUTE!", but that is what I did. Sadie,even more than usual, pretended that she didn't know me. Finally, someone behind me gave me a good push and forced me to carry on.

The second and third enclosures were empty, so I hurried down to see snoring panda again. Then, just as I was about to go past window number two, out came a beautiful female panda bear. I know it is unspeakably rude, and I am really not proud of it, but I simply would not budge from that spot.

Parents tried to push their eager children in front of me, but I wasn't having it. I figured that I had less time to do the 100 things to do before I die than they did. I took photos and watched her amble around for a good 10 minutes. I probably did more to damage Chinese/Western relations at that point than Tienanmen Square, but my wish was fulfilled. I have seen pandas. I am also the very, very proud owner of a cute, overpriced panda cuddly toy that we have named Bing Bing.

Back out into the sunlight, no other event that Ocean Park could offer could possibly live up to the panda experience. I have to tell you though, that in the dozen or so time Sadie had visited, she had never before seen the bears. She comes for the rides. So, off we went to the other part of the park.

This can be accessed in one of two ways. There is a cable car that offers magnificent views over the southern part of Hong Kong or there is a train. The trip up is unbelievably steep. There are stairs, but it would probably take me the better part of my life to get up them. I don't think that they are even open for public use. We took the cable car, and it was lovely, but I certainly wouldn't recommend it for anyone with height issues.

Once at the top, Sadie said she needed food. There were a number of food options, most of which involved some form of squid. There is something not quite right about eating something that was one of the attractions we had just visited. I am just trying to imagine how this menu would go down at Alton Towers or at Six Flags.

Thankfully, there were other options than munching on Squidward and Sadie was very happy with her french fries and diet coke. This is the ultimate food oxymoron.

During her feast, Sadie had been eyeing the temporary tattoo parlour. "No", I said, "Don't even ask". Of course, a few minutes later we were sat on the chair inside the booth whilst Sadie got her Panda tattoo. Giving in against your better judgement is a big part of the bonding process.

As foreigners, we are used to being stared at sometimes despite the fact that Hong Kong is one of the most cosmopolitan and ethnically diverse cities in the world. Just recently, I was accosted on the MTR by about 20 teenagers demanding to have their picture taken with a foreigner. Of course, I obliged with my goofiest grin.

Sadie actually attracted an audience whilst her tattoo was painted on. There was a crowd of people gathered round, pushing each other out of the way to get a view. When the tattoo lady was finished, Sadie stood up and the crowd actually applauded!

We then moved onto the arcade. This time I was really going to hold firm, and I set about telling Sadie how all the games are rigged and that it is virtually impossible to win a big prize. Then I saw the shooting gallery. OK, it was a Nerf shooting gallery where you shot plastic pegs with suction cups onto a plastic target, but it was still a shooting gallery. My resolve crumbled and I became the world's biggest hypocrite.

When I was about Sadie's age, I went to a summer camp. It was altogether a miserable experience, except for one thing. I discovered that I was really good with a 22 rifle. I've been hooked ever since. I would NEVER shoot at a living thing (I won't even let Sadie go to BB Gun parties when EVERYONE else gets to go), but boy do I love shooting at a target. I bought 10 rounds and sidled up to the bar counter. Everyone around me was doing rapid firing, but I took my time to line up that bullseye in my site. I felt like Clint Eastwood, Annie Oakley and John Wayne all wrapped up into one. Slowly, I pulled the trigger. Bullseye! I took my time with the rest and managed 5 bulls eyes and 5 in the next circle out. God, I'm good.

On to the rest of the park. It was time to do some rides. We headed off to the log flume. On our way, we saw large groups of mainland Chinese wandering around in packs. Some of them had on matching hats. Others had perky little matching bandannas. All of them had little tags around their necks which I can only presume said "If found, please return to Hunan Provence". Hong Kong tourism is big business in mainland China, and the groups are typically made up of older couples. It's sort of like visiting the Florida of the east.

These groups, with their bad teeth, worse clothes and what I can only imagine is the Chinese version of a hillbilly accent, are treated with complete and utter disdain by the local Hong Kong community. I rather like them. I can only imagine what they must have seen in their lifetimes, yet they retain a certain child-like innocence in the pleasure they take in places like Ocean Park. Then we got to the queue for the log flume.

All innocence was gone as these old folks pushed and shoved like they were in the queue for the last kilo of rice at the state rice store. I'm not kidding, they were vicious. They cut in front of as many people as they could, tread on toes and elbowed their way to the front. Then once on the ride, they looked miserable when they got soaked to the skin. What were they expecting? We got soaked to the skin too, but it was fun.

Then I had a really strange experience (as if being jostled by old Chinese people wasn't strange enough). We were in the queue for another ride (Raging Rapids, if you must know), and I spotted someone I knew in the queue. I knew I knew him, but for the life of me I couldn't thing of how. His was not a face I would forget as he looked like a youngish Paul Newman. I stared for about 10 minutes before he looked up and nodded at me and smiled before he turned away to talk to his very young Thai wife/girlfriend. It finally came to me.

It was a close friend of one of my exes whom I like to call Lucifer (No Grizz and Billy, that is not a nickname I have for either of you). It was driving me crazy because I couldn't remember his name. I remembered that he had been born with a really bad name (Malcolm Pratt), but he changed it by deed pole as soon as he was old enough. Who could blame him? So, although I could remember the old name that he changed before I even met him, I simply could not recall his new name. Then it came to me. Pat. His new name was Pat. Just to test out this theory, I yelled out "Pat" to see what would happen. What happened is that Sadie nearly died of embarrassment and the bloke didn't even turn around. I'm certain it was him though. I had heard to had moved to Asia a few years ago for the women to teach.

After a couple hours of different rides, it was time to head back down. This time we opted for the train. We were waiting for the train in a sort of holding pen with a bunch of mainlanders. Several of the women were staring at me and giggling. I smiled at one lady and she came over to me and poked me in the chest several times. Then, she gave two big thumbs up. All the other ladies then started smiling, nodding and pointing at my boobs like they had just won an academy award. I swear to you this really happened.

#ocean park #hong kong

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lovemesomesurveys · 4 years

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1. Do you ever doubt the existence of others than you? Uh, no. 2. On a scale of 1-5, how afraid of the dark are you?   Probably about a 3. It depends, really. 3. The person you would never want to meet? Uhhh. 4. What is your favorite word?   Sassafras. 5. If you were a type of tree, what would you be? A Weeping Willow.

6. When you looked in the mirror this morning what was the first thing you thought? I haven’t looked in the mirror at all, yet. 7. What shirt are you wearing? A tie-dye shirt I got from a tourist shop while on vacation last year. 8. What do you label yourself as? “I’m a loser, babyyyy.” 9. Bright room or dark room? I don’t want it too bright, but I don’t want it completely dark. I like comfortable lighting, I don’t really know how to explain it. At night I like to turn the lights off and just have my TV on. 10. What were you doing at midnight last night? Eating ramen and watching YouTube. That’s my midnight routine if ya’ll didn’t catch on to that by now. 11. Favorite age you’ve been so far? All of childhood. 12. Who told you they loved you last? My mom. 13. Your worst enemy?   Myself. 14. What is your current desktop picture? Alexander Skarsgard. 15. Do you like someone?   I don’t currently like anyone in the romantic sense. 16. The last song you listened to?  I’m too into watching TikTok lately, so I have songs I hear on there all the time stuck in my head. 17. You can press a button that will make any one person explode. Who would you blow up? I wouldn’t do that. 18. Who would you really like to just punch in the face? I don’t want to punch anyone in the face. 19. If anyone could be your slave for a day, who would it be and what would they have to do?   Wtf. Uh, I don’t want to have someone be my slave... 20. What is your best physical attribute?  Nothing. 22. Do you have a secret talent? If yes, what is it? Nope. 23. What is one unique thing you’re afraid of? Clusters. <<<< aljsflsfksld SAME. 24. You can only have one kind of sandwich. Every sandwich ingredient known to humankind is at your disposal. Well, I already often have a bologna sandwich with sharp cheddar cheese and mayo and a pickle on the side. Sometimes I’ll switch it up and have a turkey sandwich and the same stuff with the addition of spinach. Oh, and I have olive oil on the side for dipping. 25. You just found $100! How are you going to spend it? I’d save it. 26. You just got a free plane ticket to anywhere in the world, but you have to leave immediately. Where are you going to go? Well, that’s not happening right now. 27. An angel appears out of Heaven and offers you a lifetime supply of the alcoholic beverage of your choice. “Be brand-specific” it says. Man! What are you gonna say about that? Even if you don’t drink booze there’s something you can figure out… so what’s it gonna be? I highly doubt an angel would be offering a lifetime supply of alcohol, but to play along with this scenario I’d ask if I could swap it for something else. I don’t drink, so I want something I’d be able to enjoy. 28. You discover a beautiful island upon which you may build your own society. You make the rules. What is the first rule you put into place? I don’t know. 29. What is your favorite expletive? I don’t have one. 30. Your house is on fire, holy shit! You have just enough time to run in there and grab ONE inanimate object. Don’t worry, your loved ones and pets have already made it out safely. So what’s the one thing you’re going to save from that blazing inferno? Just one?? D: I’d grab my laptop. At least the photos from my phone are saved to my iCloud. 31. You can erase any horrible experience from your past. What will it be? I don’t think I’d erase anything, to be honest. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t have any horrible memories. 33. The Celestial Gates Of Beyond have opened, much to your surprise because you didn’t think such a thing existed. Death appears. As it turns out, Death is actually a pretty cool entity, and happens to be in a fantastic mood. Death offers to return the friend/family-member/person/etc. of your choice to the living world. Who will you bring back? Would there be any conditions to that? Like, would they be the same person they were? 34. What was your last dream about? I don't remember. 35. Are you a good kisser? Probably not. Now I’m really out of practice since it’s been almost 10 years since the last time I kissed someone... 36. Have you ever been admitted to the hospital?  Yeah. 37. Have you ever built a snowman? No. 38. What is the color of your socks? They’re white. 39. What type of music do you like? I like variety. 40. Do you prefer sunrises or sunsets?   Sunsets. 41. What is your favorite milkshake flavor?   Banana or strawberry. 42. What football team do you support?   I don’t care about sports. 43. Do you have any scars?   I have a lot of scars. 44. What do you want to be when you graduate?  I graduated 5 years ago and I still don’t know. 45. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? My health, which includes both mental and physical. 46. Are you reliable? I don’t think I am now. :/ 47. If you could ask your future self one question, what would it be? I’d want to know if things improved at all and if I ever do something with my life, but I’d be scared to ask cause a couple of my biggest fears are things never getting better/getting worse and never doing something with my life and just wasting away. 48. Do you hold grudges? Not usually. If I do, it doesn’t last long. 49. If you could breed two animals together to defy the laws of nature, what new animal would you create? Nah. 50. What is the most unusual conversation you’ve ever had? I couldn’t possibly choose the most unusual. 51. Are you a good liar?   No. 52. How long could you go without talking?   Hours. Some days I’m extra moody and go most of the day. 53. What has been you worst haircut/style? Gah in middle school I thought it was a good idea to hairspray my bangs and I’m not talking a few light spritz either. My bangs were CRISP. hahah. Not a cute look AT ALL. 54. Have you ever baked your own cake? Yeah, I used to like baking cakes or cupcakes. Especially around the holidays. 55. Can you do any accents other than your own?   I don’t do any well. 56. What do you like on your toast? I’m good with just butter. Peanut butter is also good. 57. What is the last thing you drew a picture of?   I don’t draw. 58. What would be you dream car?   I don’t have one. 59. Do you sing in the shower? Or do anything unusual in the shower? Explain. I sing in the shower. I play my shower playlist on my Spotify. 60. Do you believe in aliens?   No. 61. Do you often read your horoscope?   I don’t read them. I used to when I was younger for fun, but I’ve never believed in it. 62. What is your favorite letter of the alphabet? I don’t have one. 63. Which is cooler: dinosaurs or dragons? Dinosaurs. Rawr. XD lmao. 64. What do you think about babies? They’re cute and all, but I don’t want to have one. haha.

#personal #text #survey #surveys

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kokichi-and-co-imagine-blog · 4 years

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To everyone: what would your Pokemon teams be and why?

Oh good god.

Well… this is going to get complicated. At least from me.

Let’s start with assuming no legendary Pokemon. Makes life a bit easier. Of course only a bit.

So… first off a lot of this depends on generation and limit. If you’re asking for a full team that I would have with rotations and stuff, we’re looking at… probably close to 10 full teams of 6, maybe even more.

In my defense, I’m a major Pokemon fan and I really really like a lot of them.

Of course, if we’re going to cut down the team to a more manageable six which can be from any region/gen, but only one from each region/gen to keep things interesting and varied… well, it would depend on a lot of things, including mood and such, so if one were to ask me this question again it would likely change. But, here would be, as I feel right now, the team I would use if I was limited to only six, one per region/gen.

1: Lucario. I’ve been a fan of this guy for so so long, ever since it was first introduced. I loved Lucario and the mystery of Mew as a kid (still kinda do). The whole concept behind aura is amazing. One’s spiritual energy/life force/ soul being utilized in combat? Being able to sense others and see without seeing? So awesome. Lucario is just SO. FREAKING. COOL. It’s design is wonderful as well. Jackel/Anubis? Yes please. Plus, I’ve been maining Lucario in Smash Bros. ever since Brawl. You better believe it’s making my team.

2: Tyranitar. Is it probably the weakest pseudo legendary when it comes to typing? Yes. Do I care? No. Tyranitar is BA. First, it’s one of the only two pseudo’s to not be a dragon. Yes, 8 regions, 9 pseudo’s, and only 2 are not dragons. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some dragons. But… variety would be nice, you know? But yeah, not a dragon, still awesome. It’s Godzilla for crying out loud! Plus, its design is just so good. It’s simple but perfect. It’s a giant Lizard creature that could fell mountains. It doesn’t need to be complicated, and is perfectly awe-inspiring and terrifying without being complicated. I also used a Tyranitar in my Ultra Sun playthrough, a male one named Typhon, Man was he fun to use.

3: Golisopod. Listen, if a Pokemon is good enough for YOUR BOI GUZMA to use it on his team, you know it’s a good pokemon. It’s the Alola take on Gyarados and Milotic (weak pathetic first stage with few moves and while those two do have a slightly higher BST, that ain’t enough to keep my boy Golisopod down. Golisopod’s design is just so good. An Isopod mixed with a Samurai? Sign me right up thank you. It mixes the creepy crawly aesthetic of the bug type with the strong proud samurai perfectly and I love it. And yeah, sure Emergency Exit can be kind of annoying, but it allows you a second usage of First Impression. That is worth it. Also, it’s shiny is dope.

4: Toxtricity. Part of building a team means keeping in mind type composition. I love Grimmsnarl dearly and equally, if not more so, but I already have one Dark-type on the team, so Toxtricity manages to bag this spot. At least, for now considering my current mood. Ask me again tomorrow, or even in an hour, my answer may very well change. Anyway, Toxtricity itself. When I fist saw the design, I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt. It was… interesting to say the least, but I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at, or what it was supposed to be. But after some more time with it, learning more about it and using one I can say that Toxtricity is easily one of my new favorites. Quite possibly my absolute fave from Gen 8. A punk lizard that plays music? Rock/Metal? HECK. YES. The form change is also pretty nice. The stats don’t change between the two, but I honestly like it that way. Just the idea that more energetic natures would have an ‘Amped Up’ form based on an electric guitar while the more mellow natures would have a ‘Lowkey’ one based on a bass is ingenious. Same with the movepool changes. It makes sense that the different forms with their different music preference would have different moves. (My personal fave is the Amped Up, especially with its shiny colors.) Plus, an electric posion type? SO. COOL. Who cares about 4x weak to earthquake, this thing is boss! And Punk Rock is an amazing ability.

5: Flygon. Man oh man was Flygon treated poorly. Added in Gen 3 as a solid pokemon, but with a better attack stat than a special attack one. True, not bad in it of itself but before the Special/Physical split, ALL Dragon-type moves were special. Meaning Dragon Claw, a solid dragon type move back in Gen 3, wasn’t yet a physical move. And Outrage wasn’t even something Flygon could learn yet (it wouldn’t be until Gen 7 that it became a TM). Then came gen 4. Now, I love gen 4. I truly do. It is by far my favorite Gen. And it did do something very good for Flygon. It gave the special/physical split, allowing some Dragon type moves to now be physical as well. But you know what else came along? Garchomp. Honestly, I like Garchomp, I do. But suddenly here we are with a new Dragon/Ground type that is a pseudo-legendary? My poor poor Flygon. And it didn’t get any better. I mean seriously, give Mewtwo and Charizard two megas but none to Flygon? WHILE GIVING ONE TO GARCHOMP WHO DIDN’T NEED IT AND WAS ITS BIGGEST COMPETITION?! Why Game Freak? Why?Anyway, mini-rant aside, I love Flygon. The design is incredible. The line is based on an antlion and is so cool. That sweet green design and the little lenses over the eyes? Perfect, just perfect. Plus, it has some sweet lore. Appearing in sandstorms with haunting music coming from its wings? Yes please. Beautiful pokemon that was done such disservices. It’s a shame really. With Megas gone, Flygon will likely never get that final boost it needs. Though considering it is in Galar while Garchomp isn’t… maybe Flygon will have a chance to shine again. (A shame though that it will never get to have a type change to Bug Dragon. Would be sick.) Regardless of the future though, Flygon will always have a place in my heart, and in my team.

6: Zoroark. Yeah, I know what I said about team composition above with Toxtricity and Grimmsnarl. But I also pointed out mood has a lot to do with it. Anyway, for Zoroark itself. Like Lucario, I’veb een a fan for so long, ever since it was first introduced. It’s kinda funny in a way. Zoroark acts as the perfect yin to Lucario’s yang. Lucario uses aura to sense things and to see, Zoroark is the maser of illusions. In it of itself, this illusion business is awesome, but add in how it counters Lucario and it works just so well. Typing as well, Lucario is a fighting steel, the type you’d think of for a chivalrous paladin of justice and truth, while Zoroark is dark (evil type in Japan), perfect for a sly illusion master. Of course, it’s not just dualism with Lucario. The line is just so amazing itself. Clearly drawing from Kitsune, Zoroark is a sly fox that is able to not just use illusions, but masters them to the point of being able to create solid constructs out of them (see the anime). It is just so cool, how can I not love it? Also, like Tyranitar before it, I used a female one named Vixen in my Ultra Sun playthrough and it was a delight.

Anyway, that would be my team. You know, assuming all the limitations I put on myself and my mood at this moment. But if you guys enjoyed this and want to know more about my favorite pokemon, please let me know. I’m always happy and excited to talk about Pokemon.

Anyway, going to hand this over to the other mods. I’ve been monopolizing this ask for too long.

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Ooo!! This’ll be fun to answer! Cause, well, I love Pokémon!!!

But, forgive me for this; I haven’t played any of the games.

So im just saying my favorite characters!!!

1: Glacieon, I really, really like glacieons and have always loved ice type Pokémon. Mainly because I really like the cold. Like; really, really, like the cold. I also really like her attacks, their cool!!! (Pun intended)

2: Furret. Absolutely furret, I never knew why I liked furret, but. I’m just gonna blame it on me really liking Ferrets and cause I honestly have really liked normal types for some reason.

3: Vulpix (either one), I really like any fire type Pokémon mainly because I’ve always just had a very weird interest in fire and because vulpix can be either a fire or ice Pokémon I love that about them. And they remind me of a bunch of irl animals that I love!!

4: Smom , I LOVE THOSE LIL ICE BABEYS SO MUCH!?!? They are so cute-!? I JUST LOVE THEM SO MUCH???! They are all my children and I want to adopt them all, and I will. No one can stop me………except maybe the other mods-

5: Sylveon, absolutely. I always have such an attachment even with digital animals, so I absolutely would give my eevee enough attention and love for them to evolve into sylveon. Honestly, it’d end up be accidental, but, I still really love Sylveon, and wouldn’t care if I got more than one of them-

6: Flareon, listen- I just love eevees okay-? I love them all so so much, and would lay down my life for each and every one of them. Just 💞💞💕💖💓💖💝💞💖💕💝💓💕💞💖💞💖💝💘💖💕💕💞

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Ah, I bet you missed hearing from me! No worries, I’ll tell you my pokemon team, even if it’s not particularly exciting.

First off, a Pachirisu is a must for my team. I’ve always loved how hyper it can be and the mishaps it would cause. Plus, c’mon- who doesn’t like its color scheme?

I’d also incorporate Chimchar to my team. I’ve always had a soft spot for Chimchar, since it was my first ever starter and I leveled mine all the way up to 100 in my Pokemon Platinum playthrough.

Yamper definitely had my heart the moment I saw it! I have a really strong love for dogs, and its addition to the game got me so excited!! Kirigiri can vouch for me on that one.

Growlithe is also integral to me. When my dog was a puppy, I used to jokingly call her a growlithe. I don’t think I still have pictures, but I even got her a floof for halloween once so she could be in a costume with me. Also... Arcanine is seriously badass.

Wooloo is super cute too! I love that it rolls away from its problems, and I, too, wish to do that. Plus the braids immediately reminded me of Peko, so I was super soft for it the moment it was revealed.

Finally, I’ll add my favorite Eeveelution to the team: Glaceon! Something about its sleek design always made me happy, and the way its fur sharpens as defense is super interesting!

(If legendaries were allowed on the team, I would’ve added either Giratina or Shaymin. They’re my favorites.

#Mod Makoto #Mod Ibuki #Mod Kokichi #Mod ask #Pokemon #Pokemon Preferences #Pokemon team #UwU #Thanks for the ask!#Ask

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howtohero · 4 years

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#252 Superhero Gift Registry

If you’re a superhero you’ve undoubtably made your way onto a lot of people’s nice lists. You’ve saved countless days, a great many lives, a handful of worlds. (Plus that one worldful of hands. The fine, disembodied, sentient hands of Manibus 5 thank you from the bottom of their palms.) There are probably a lot of people who would like to do something to return the favor for you after all you’ve done for them. And while of course, you didn’t get into the superhero game for all the free stuff... you don’t not want the free stuff. But asking for things can be awkward, and ever since we lifted that curse, we are no longer fueled exclusively by the awkward interactions of others. So we’ve done you the massive solid of compiling a list of great gifts for superheroes, so next time a thankful civilian asks you how they can thank you, you can just direct them here!

Hello civilians, welcome to my blog! If you’ve come here in search of the perfect gift for that wonderful superhero in your life you’re in the right place. Without further ado we present...

How To Hero’s Ultimate Superhero Gift Guide

Collapsible Capes: Cape’s a great for photo-opportunities and dramatic poses, but for little else. Our new How To Hero brand collapsible cape can be folded up into the size of a dime and stored away during battles or trips through revolving doors. A must have for any superhero who loves to pose on windy days, but hates getting killed after their cape gets caught somewhere.

Reusable Water Bottle: Superheroes spend a lot of time fighting crimes. They’ll often fight up to 50 crimes over the course of a single night. That’s gonna make them thirsty. Especially when there are (at last count) 8 different villains with some form of the word “dehydrate” in their name. With these new How To Hero reusable water bottles, superheroes can drink on the go without harming the environment. Plus, for a nominal fee of $80, we’ll do our best to paint their insignia onto the bottle! (We’re not good at painting but we promise to give it the old college try!)

Super Vehicle Dent and Nick Remover: Superheroes are notoriously bad drivers. They drive straight into ravines, mine fields, and the gaping maws of eldritch horrors. So it should come as no surprise that their vehicles are constantly getting damaged and their insurance premiums are through the roof. Thanks to our patented Interdimensional Warpgate technology, the How To Hero Super Vehicle Dent and Nick Remover can take care of all that nasty vehicle damage by scouring the mutliverse for identical or similar vehicles, and stealing mass from them! Got a dent? Not anymore, thanks to stolen metal from some other shmuck’s car! Paint chipping? Not your problem anymore because we’ve stolen flecks of paint from another dimensions. It’s the perfect gift for that reckless superheroic stunt drive in your life.

Magic Goblets: Ever wanted a magic goblet that instantly fills up with anything your heart could ever desire? Ever not really cared about owning one yourself but have a burning desire to gift one to someone else? Well do we have the How To Hero product for you! These magical goblets can fill up with anything your hero could ever need. Emergency blood transfusion? Fill that sucker up with your blood type! Impromptu Scrabble game? Fill it up with Scrabble pieces! Hot sauce! Lemonade! Human eyes! These magic goblets can do it all! If the $3 million price tag has got you antsy, don’t worry we’ve got cheaper options....

Cheaper Magic Goblets: These creepy looking ancient cups can magically fill up with any cursed objects you could ever want. We’re practically giving them away! We do not want them in our warehouse! Please order now! [Disclaimer: These objects are deeply cursed and will ruin your life and the lives of your loved ones. Do not purchase these.]

Pocket Cloner: Ever had a lot to do but not enough time (or desire!) to do it all? Simply use this How To Hero pocket cloner to clone yourself! Pocket cloner clones are obedient, able-bodied and have a relatively low chance of turning evil when you try to reabsorb them back into your being! (If your pocket cloner clone turns evil simply bludgeon it over the head with the pocket cloner and call the police.)

A time travel vacation: Things a bit hectic in your timeline? Sick of the young adult dystopian hellscape your life has become? Nostalgic for the good old days? Purchase a round trip time travel vacation through our new How To Hero Time Travel Agency. Go anywhere, anywhen, and live it up for up to seven days! Meet historical figures! Witness world-changing events! Free continental breakfast included! Literally the perfect vacation! [Fine print: How To Hero does not guarantee the safety of you or your possessions and is not responsible for any butterfly effects, reality wipes, or instances of “I’m-My-Own-Grandpa” syndrome that may occur. Paralox™ sold separately.]

A Horse That is On Fire: Ok picture a horse. It’s pretty cool. I mean it’s like fine. It’s a horse. Not much to say about it. It eats apples and will kick you given the opportunity. All right. Now, imagine if that horse was perpetually (and harmlessly {to the horse}) on fire! That would be lit. We’ve taken the time to wrangle several flaming horses out of Hell and now, you can buy one! For money! (Be on the lookout for How To Hero: Hell Cowboy: The True Story of How Some Guys Stole Some Horses From Hell to Make a Quick Buck But Along the Way Learned the True Value of Friendship. Coming to theaters this December and coming to the Oscars whenever the next Oscars are!)

Identity Concealing Glasses: Tired of people discovering your identity because your arrogance prevents you from wearing a mask while you fight crime? Try putting on some totally regular glasses! We guarantee that nobody will ever discover your identity again. [Disclaimer: How To Hero Identity Concealing Glasses may cause your loved ones to be unable to recognize you. People who don’t wear glasses can’t just start suddenly wearing glasses and think that everybody will still know who they are. That’s crazy.]

Size-Changing Ergonomic Office Chairs: Superheroes have to spend a lot of time on their feet, fighting ne’er-do-wells and Psyclops, the psychic cyclops. (He’s got one eye... and it sees... your thoughts!!!!) Our new How To Hero size-changing ergonomic office chairs can be shrunk down, kept in your utility belt, and then whipped out and sized up during idle moments so you can rest your weary soul and aching (and melting, yikes, you should really get that checked out) body. The size-changing chair can change to any size! So it’s perfect for all of the giants, dwarves, dinosaurs, sentient fleas, and regular-sized folks in your life!

Get Out of Hell Free card: We have one left over after we decided to leave Parentheses Guy down there when we were stealing those horses. (BUT I ESCAPED HAHAHAHAHAHA) Chill. {Chill.} [Chill.] (Chill. Wait!) So yeah, it’s basically exactly what it sounds like. If you ever find yourself in Hell just present this to whoever’s in charge that day and they’re mystically required to send you back. Perfect if you want to bugger off to somewhere nice and warm during this holiday season.

Smoke Bombs: Superheroes can never have enough smoke bombs! They’re great for making hasty escapes, causing diversions, and taking car of asthmatic supervillains in record time! This holiday season, don’t just settle for any smoke bombs. Only How To Hero Smoke Bombs produce smoke that resists any and all attempts to disperse of it. Our smoke won’t budge in the face of fans, wind, or persistent shouting. And then there’s the odor. The odor will never leave. It will permeate the place where you used the bombs and never, ever leave. There will be no escape from How To Hero smoke! It will haunt your dreams!

Cash: What do you get for the man who has everything? They’ve got power, fame, lasers that come from their eyes. How can you ever get them something that they can truly cherish and love forever? Ya give them cash! But not just any cash, How To Hero cash! How To Hero cash is like regular cash except it has no buying power! It’s a unique gift that they can never give away! They’ll be forced to keep it forever and they’ll always remember the wonderful holiday they spent with you! So what are you waiting for! Buy some of our How To Hero cash! It’s ludicrously expensive, but the memories you’ll create it with it are priceless!

Vengeance: I’ll preface this by saying that this isn’t for every hero, but many superheroes out there are fueled by a righteous desire for vengeance! Get the superhero in your life some classic sweet sweet vengeance by hiring us to kick their enemies butts! That’s right folks! For this holiday season the How To Hero staff are becoming butt-kickers for hire! [Disclaimer: No refunds, even if we are not successful in kicking butt or if your superhero is terribly disappointed in you for think that this is what they wanted for the holidays.]

An Ugly Holiday Sweater Version of Their Iconic Costume: They’ve already got the ugly down, all we need to do is sweaterize it! Send us a pic of their costume and we’ll do our very best to knit a sweater based off of it! [Disclaimer: None of us has any knitting skills. And we have all been banned from any thread distributor in a 100 mile radius for one reason or another.]

Any one of these 15 wonderful How To Hero gifts is sure to put a smile on any superhero’s face, but why stop there! What good is one measly smile! You now have the power to put 15 separate smiles on your hero’s face! Buy all of these gifts! And hurry! Our prices will probably only go up!

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karmade · 5 years

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okay... i didnt like far from home.

well, spiderman far from home spoilers ahead.

i honestly never expected that I’ll type up something like that after spider man movie... after homecoming, that comforted my tortured by civil war soul in best way possible, i hoped that far from home will help me, and peter, to cope with endgame.

well, it made me feel worse.

Starting with: NICK FURY. I always had up and down relationship with him, but after Captain Marvel I was really cool with him. Yet in FFH, he hit the bottom way too fast: Fury demands Spider Man to help take down creatures that supposedly destroyed the earth of other dimension: water and fire element creatures. Spider Man, who’s abilities include super strenght, agility, stickiness and webs... is simply just not fit to help with this kind of villians. What exactly Dr Strange is doing, when other dimentions are actually his shtick? Where’s Wanda? What about Hulk, Wakandian soldiers (and tech), hey, where’s Rhodey? There was fucking battalion of superheroes at the end of Endgame, but this supposed apocalyptic villian is only fit to fight by 16 years old teenager? Okay.... Well, I get it that it’s a plot point, that there will be no Spider man movie if this plot point didnt exist, but they could have at least designed a villian more fit to make Spider Man’s abilities essential. ANYWAY: Fury decides on this 16 years old and uses tranquliser on his 16 years old friend (which was not creepy and unnecessary at aaaaaall). But then Peter says no (we’ll get to that later) and Fury? Fucking tries to guiltrip him by using Tony. I am so completely livid about it, Fury saying some shit about ‘oh I guess Stark was wrong about you’ TO A KID TONY LOVED, OBVIOUSLY HAD A HIGHEST REAGARD FOR AND NEVER DOUBTED AND WOULD HAVE NEVER FUCKING ASKED SOMETHING LIKE THAT FROM IN THE FIRST PLACE, FUCK YOU. Fury using Tony to make this KID feel bad about himself, reminding Peter about death of his friend and mentor and, yeah, possibly father figure, basically by implying that apparently Tony would have been dissapointed... that shit was low. The fuck. But Peter still says no, so Nick Fury goes and steers a WHOLE BUS OF TEENAGERS TO EPICENTRE OF DANGER. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING MEEEE. If I’ll hear one more WORD about tony kidnapping peter to berlin after this, I’m going to fucking explode.

EDITH: the first ever Tony Stark’s AI that had no emotions. I used to think that it was Friday operating Tony’s glasses, watch and everything, but it’s beside the point: unlike her brothers and sisters, Edith shows no hints of having her own mind, she’s a THING that can be simply transferred to the wrong guy and dont mind it. JARVIS was able to tell that Ultron was hostile, AND when he was hurt and disentegrated he STILL had a mind to protect nuclear codes without being ordered to. Yet Edith is fine with destroying cities, harming people and killing Spider Man. I guess it’s a small point to be peeved with, since she’s artifical, but it sure would have been nice if Edith (created by Tony who LOVED to be prepared for everything) had protocols to prevent her from being used against civilians (AT LEAST be familiar with Spider Man and Peter Parker to NOT shoot him on command) and they would have had to hack her to remove it. But oh well.

What REALLY hurt me about Edith tho, was how easily Peter let the glasses go. It was unexpected and sad and I’d say rather poorely executed. Again, giving up the glasses was a plot point, but the scene itself, it was done in such way that I felt no reluctance from Peter. It was a thing Tony left for him, a parting gift, yet Peter gives it away like it didnt matter, even more so, it felt like he was happy to part with it, phew, thanks god it’s not my burden anymore! Also, Tony was really, really protective of his tech: his suit, his watch, his AIs, his bots, his glasses... all of them were part of him, never intended to be given over to goverment or military or some stranger. He gave Peter those glasses because Peter could use them like Tony did, discreetly, while out of costume, and because he knew that Peter would NEVER use them to harm people. But seeing Peter giving over those glasses to some stranger he met only two days ago, as some kind of sacrifice to not feel bad about not joining Fury’s new superhero team, that left a bad taste in my mouth. So bad, in fact, that I still feel it.

(And while we’re on topic of AI, what about Karen? Where is she? Peter used 3 different types of costumes in this movie (minus black one that wasnt stark tech) and she never said a word. Thats... weird, dissapointing and sad.)

BECK: That piece of shit. Yes, I hated that it was yet another ‘IT’S ALL TONY STARK’S FOULT!’ origin. Just.. how many more villians ranting about how and why they hate tony marvel wants me to endure? Because I honestly lost count by this point. And yeah, movie didnt try to make Tony problematic, yeah, they did not try to make us sympathetic toward Beck, they kept enforcing the idea of Tony being good and selfless superhero Peter should aspire to be, but. I still hated it. I hated that they dragged Tony into it, I hated villains cheering that Tony is now dead, I hated that they used stark tech to destroy cities and harm people, I hated Beck wearing or just touching Edith... I hated it, okay. And people WILL now use this 'tony steals tech!' agenda out of context how they happily blame tony for 'kidnapping and blackmailing' peter, 'trying to kill bucky in cold blood', 'siding with ross and splitting avengers apart', 'creating murderous bot'... it's now out there, even if BARF is obviously property of SI and Beck is obviously a psycho.

PETER: I love Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. I love him, I never stopped. But. But. In homecoming, Peter’s inner tremor of wanting to be of use so badly but not called up or trusted to be of help was a very well executed theme of the movie. Peter had a bravado of I’M NOT A KID, I CAN DO IT! in the first half of the movie, that led him to failing big time on the ferry, to him having this big emotional choice of WHO, IF NOT ME on homecoming night, to declining an Avenger title. It was so so so so so well done emotionally. And I was so ready to cry my soul out in FFH, expecting Peter to have so much inner struggle between wanting to distance himself from superheroing after endgame and wanting to help people and trying to fit in in tony’s shoes and not seeing himself capable of it... I searched for those undertones so much in every scene, but all I really felt was Peter not really wanting to be in this movie at all. He’s a kid! I get it! He’s a kid I love and want to protect, okay! But after 4 movies of knowing Peter Parker who jumped in the MOMENT someone was in danger, it baffled me how reluctant he was to help in FFH, basically forced to do it. We could theoritise about him having trouble coping after endgame all day long, but after IM3, brilliantly showing Tony struggling to cope after traumatic events, FFH did not deliever. They tried, but, it was some bland dialogue and barely any subtlety, just a kid wanting to go on his date, already, can you please ask someone else?

Scene with Happy was good, tho. How Peter goes to him but is scared to trust him at first, how Happy is gentle with him, the talk, the in plane lab, the music. It was good bit, but. It was just small bit.

Another thing I loved was MJ, who was a delight, her scenes were good and pure, and Zendaya did perfect job on portraying her struggles of liking Peter and worrying about him being Spider Man and still not being sure about it and trying to appear indifferent and above it all... she was really great and endearing and her scenes with Peter were lovely. The kiss(es) scene was one of the purest kissing scenes I witnessed in a superhero movie, god bless it.

HOLOGRAMS: They were scary, I guess. They were disorienting and difficult to follow and 100% made to whoa you with 3D effects. But I felt completely detached from feelings that those illusions should have summoned up, because for the most part Peter wore the mask and thus we could not see his face or read his emotions. Ironman zombie was by far most unnecessary bit, I was scared that Beck would use Tony in his illusions, barely breathing whole thing, but then ironman zombie showed up and I actually relaxed, cringing. It was just that, a scene that makes you pull a disgusted face, not touching your emotions at all. Somehow...disappointing. Also... Tony CONSTANTLY used heat signature scanner to check up where civillians and villians were. It's a feature that exist and could have been greatly used against holograms. But oh well.

POST CREDITS SCENE: So Beck was even more shitstain of a person, okay. So his grand plan B was to frame Spider Man, okay. The scene was supposed to make me jump from my seat with WHAAAAT and kickstart thirst for 3rd movie, but... I just stood up and walked straight out of cinema feeling strangely hollow and disappointed. I guess... it wasn't bad movie? I won't try to change the opinion to those who liked it. I look forward to seeing gifs and reading thoughts of those who liked/loved the movie. I might change my mind on some bits. But I waited for this movie so much and in two hours I barely enjoyed maybe about 15 minutes of it and it's something i never expected after adoring homecoming and all the peter scenes in other movies. Maybe it's that they murdered Tony and I lost ability to enjoy marvel movies anymore, maybe it's just that.

(finally, I guess it’s too picky of me to be peeved by this, but science school teenagers coming up with ‘i will always love you’ google search grainy picture tribute video was so anticlimatic it was uncomfortable to watch. There’s nothing hillarious about death of those characters, and it did not lighten the mood at all, it only made me uncomfortable and wrong footed. It’s also not how teenagers novadays make tribute videos.)

#spiderman far from home #far from home #far from home spoilers #spoilers #spiderman spoilers #spiderman #rant galore

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