#about half my time this year has been spent thinking about patho. playing patho. watching laila dyer play it. Listening to the classic ost

[pathologic-thoughts]

Thinking about how the video of American Psycho guy walking through Pathologic classic towards the Trammel...

is what reminded me that I had been meaning to find out what Pathologic was for a long time. I kept hearing it mentioned in my circles as something i would like and getting more and more interested until my curiosity and chasm of No Hyperfixation misery made me look into it

#like... cannot believe that was the final trigger #i was like hmmm the background of the meme is very interesting and i love the music - i think the utroba disease one ? #And then i bought it and spent 2 months playing it non stop hours at a time :-) #we love a hyperfixation #about half my time this year has been spent thinking about patho. playing patho. watching laila dyer play it. Listening to the classic ost #the other half of my time has been hyperfixating on disco elys. .. #my musings #Pathologic classic

[reachexceedinggrasp]

Fated to Love You here reaffirming my long held conviction that no pure romance drama should be 20+ episodes.

This show is... really something. It is, in the fullest possible sense, A Lot. It starts out as an all-out screwball comedy wrapped around a troperiffic romance fluff plot. Wall to wall clichés, but not in a bad way; in a meta, self-aware, peak performance, finest Velveeta way. And if you’re not familiar with screwball comedy, think ‘light-hearted crack fic with slapstick and farce’. There is nothing believable or grounded about any aspect of it, it starts at Bonkers Level: Platinum and it only climbs higher as it goes on.

(On a side note, this results in the leading man being possibly the most memorable love interest in romcom history. His introduction scene is nothing short of batshit insane and you can't reliably predict how he will respond to anything. I have never seen a main character like this, he is all over the shop and utterly singular. Your first reaction to him is ‘wtf?’, your second and third reactions are ‘really?! this guy??’, your fourth reaction is ‘okay he do be mad hot tho’, your fifth and final reaction is ‘I cannot believe this performance exists, I have no idea what he is doing, but it is amazing.’

Appropriately(?) the actor who plays him is an uncanny Korean doppelgänger of Johnny Depp and- between the resemblance, the mannerisms, and the fearless total commitment to a bold as fuck acting choice with the very serious chops to back it up- I’m not convinced they aren’t half brothers separated at birth.

They do sabotage my happiness several times by starting to randomly style his (long, beautiful) hair very weird, fixing it right when the plot is rapidly circling the drain so he looks his hottest just as the show becomes briefly unwatchable, and then ruining him for the entire second half of the series by shearing it all off. WHY, my anguished cry goes up. Why do you do this?! Why does he have like seven hairstyles over the course of the show? Much later they even briefly give him that ubiquitous Kdrama Second Lead haircut with weirdly forward combed fringe in a solid straight line across the brow all the way back from the crown. It looks terrible on everyone and I hate it so much. This version was less bad than most but it is still bad. Anyway.)

So it’s an incredibly fun time to start but there are some problems with the tone and plot even in the first 9 episodes, including when the lovers start getting along really well right away and they’re both thoroughly decent people so there’s nothing keeping them from having a lovely time together making the best of the circumstances (forced/fake marriage). And, instead of introducing new conflict or advancing one of the dozen conflicts previously established and actually moving forward, there is a painfully contrived rehash of something they already dealt with which is then just never resolved. They make the hero leap to a conclusion his wife is nefarious after he’d already decided once that she isn’t (though it was completely reasonable for him to think she was- the fact that he decided to trust her so quickly just speaks to what kind of person he is), never try to find out more or talk to anyone about it, start pushing her away because of it, and have all this come to absolutely nothing. It only exists so he’ll stop being so incredibly nice to her and they won’t fall in love too fast.

You’d think they would have to eventually clear the air before the romance advances right? No. It wasn’t a real plot point, it was just a reset button to get them estranged and hostile again after they connect over their kindred spirits and we’ve spent a bunch of time showing how profoundly supportive and honourable our hero is. He’s being beautifully mature and selfless because he’s a really good dude (unusual for a romcom drama, right? for the main guy to be nice and considerate? to accept responsibility even if he doesn’t have to? Gun’s weird but he’s wonderful), but the writers need him to be cold and standoffish, so they just make him act like an unreasonable idiot for a while. He’s been thus far hugely proactive and direct and honest about everything, it’s one of his most prominent character traits, but suddenly he’s going to avoid confrontation in favour of being super passive aggressive?? Then the writers never solve it. Never! It just goes away. He got over it, I guess? He decided he doesn’t care if she’s a gold digger who deliberately trapped him? God forbid we have motivations that make sense and organic character drama, right? It's not like he didn't have totally valid reasons to be suspicious that could have led to legitimate conflict our heroine would struggle to vindicate herself from.

But anyway, apart from that kind of lazy bullshit, it’s a fine romance plot with extremely endearing characters who have great chemistry. They are fun and well-rounded and incredibly human despite all the silliness and OTT antics. Their relationship is hugely, hugely engaging and the dynamic is perfect, they really complement each other as characters and organically drive each other's arcs. There's the genuine depth and warmth and quiet pathos so often lacking from this kind of show. Things progress at a semi-reasonable pace. They work up to confessing their mutual feelings and get into some cute shenanigans before making out. It happens soon enough that you are not frustrated, but there's still plenty of build-up. Then- uh oh! We’re only 9 eps in and we have another 11 hours to fill with this fluffy plot!

Time for a bunch of absolute fucking nonsense. Time for our show, which has been so goofy and removed from reality it occasionally resembles a Monty Python skit, which has been so light it asks you to ignore the frankly incredibly fucked up implications of its premise for the sake of comedy (they were both drugged and proxy raped resulting in a pregnancy- the FL was a virgin prior to this and Gun had a girlfriend he wanted to propose to- and it was the FL’s family who did this to them: SUPER FUCKED UP), so farcical that it makes Some Like it Hot look like a gritty crime drama, that show to cover a bunch of serious heavy shit.

First, the rankest of melodrama. The families and the world all turn on our couple, but their love is true and will conquer all- UNTIL, he randomly collapses and gets convenient Soap Opera Amnesia. He’s forgotten their entire relationship and a series of coincidental pieces of misconstrued evidence, the machinations of his scheming ex girlfriend, the Soap Opera Doctor’s advice, and his closest confidants all going along with this conspire to make him believe (AGAIN) that his wife just wants his money.

This whole terrible episode is mercifully brief, but it just gets worse after his memory returns. This is where we get into the Noble Idiocy. The ‘pretend you don’t love them to “save them” from getting hurt by hurting them and making their important life decisions for them as if they don’t have a basic fucking right to decide that themselves’ kind. Which goes on for three FUCK years in the show. He wastes three years of their lives they could have spent together because he’s worried he might die young (in a terrible way) and doesn’t want to put her through that. And, of course, they inevitably get together later, so all he did was make it infinitely worse for her either way. To say nothing of how he thus couldn’t be there for her through the loss of their child. Possibly my most hated fucking trope of all time when done this way.

And, yep, you read that right. This show that has the single most batshit bonkers over the top slapstick I have ever seen in a kdrama, this show has a storyline where the fluffy romcom trope accidental pregnancy ends in massive trauma. Because she was standing around in the street after realising he does remember her (he continued to pretend he had amnesia after his memories came back, it’s all part of the stupid noble idiocy so I glossed over it) and gets hit by a car in the middle of their angst staring.

It is nearly Meet Joe Black levels of hilariously abrupt and incongruous.

so, blah blah, they lose their baby (there’s a very stupid whole thing about her telling everyone to save the baby instead of her- the baby is not far enough along for this to have been remotely viable. She is like 3 months pregnant. They all act like there’s a choice to be made between them and she’s mad at her husband for choosing to save her, but there was NO CHOICE. Either she lives or they both die! ffs I’m so irritated about this) and then he dumps her ~for her own good~~ because he loves her too much to make her go through losing him? So she loses him sooner?? right after their baby died???

Why do people in these stories always think being betrayed and abandoned for no reason and being incredibly angry at someone you love while also not getting to be with them is somehow less painful than making the best of your life together and then losing them against their will? ‘I will make her hate me and then she won’t be sad we broke up/I died!!!!’ is such a fucking galaxy brain take and I despise it with the heat of ten thousand suns. Fuck you, Spider-Man. You aren’t protecting anyone, the villains still know you love MJ and will still use her against you, you clod. Emotionally torturing the person you love is not going to make them not a target because the villains are not as fucking stupid as you two. Anyway.

Amnesia was right where I started fast-forwarding and skipping around (because I couldn’t bear it), but it only goes downhill from there. Maybe I would have toughed out more of the wretched middle part plot twist if they hadn’t cut all the hot guy’s hair off. If I’m going to watch total nonsense tedious melodrama, I need it to at least be pretty. I understand it was a Symbolic Haircut but damnit! Let me have this!

And it ultimately does the thing that kdramas seem obsessed with and which makes me want to claw out my own eyeballs with frustration. There’s a giant time skip, the female lead gets a personality transplant, all narrative momentum is lost, and the characters who eventually (at ENORMOUS length) get together permanently are essentially completely different characters with a completely different dynamic than the couple you were shipping for 90% of the story. It is so FUCKING unsatisfying and it is EVERYWHERE.

Not so much with this one because this one still had a lot of very romantic scenes late in the game, but most that do this, it’s also like all the romance is sucked out of the post-time skip episodes and the ending is a consolation prize instead of a triumphant culmination. Inevitably, the heroine abruptly cools off and is suddenly wary of the hero and wants this Important New Career she never mentioned until the penultimate episode but is now her one true life’s dream. What the apparently irresistible appeal is of these contrived separations and demure conclusions is I CANNOT FATHOM. I’m here for the fucking romance guys, you have not made Citizen Kane, please just indulge me with a big schmoopy finale.

And if not that, it’s frequently that there’s been so many random mood swings and so much shitty behaviour by the end that the relationship doesn’t make sense and you don’t know why they even bother to get back together.

I’m not inherently against all misunderstandings (they are the bread and butter of low stakes romance let’s be real) or attempts at noble idiocy from misguided characters, but the duration and seriousness of the drama these generate needs to be in proportion to how ridiculous they are. If your entire plot can be solved by a thirty second conversation there is NO REASON not to have and the continuation of the misunderstanding is a result of someone just NOT SPEAKING UP when any functional human being would have spoken up seven times by now IT’S BAD.

Do little cliff-hangers, whatever, but don’t draaaaagg out silly misconceptions into Shakespearean tragedy, it’s just wearying. It makes me hate the characters for acting like emotionally constipated toddlers with terminal stupidity. If there is so little trust, so little understanding, and so little basic patience between these people, they probably shouldn’t be dating, so try fucking harder, writers. And noble idiocy that is more than an impulse they fairly quickly see the error of is just insulting. You are not helping the other person, you are being domineering and selfish. I have a whole complex about wasting time and seeing endless parades of characters flushing years down the toilet for literally no reason gives me hives. Especially when the whole issue is about time!

(And, btw, so much of the plot is about how desperately the family needs an heir and everyone still wanting them to have kids the second time they get together- while the ~dilemma used to keep them apart is a GENETIC DISEASE which could STRIKE AT ANY TIME. Do you SEE THE PROBLEM WITH THIS WRITERS????? NO, I KNOW YOU DON’T. ommmmmmmmggggg that’s awful! So they’re just dooming more kids to Soap Opera Brain Disease? And maybe growing up without a father just as Gun did? And no one even considers suggesting adoption??? He never considers that he shouldn’t have biological children despite thinking he shouldn’t have a wife?)

ANYWAY. Please do watch the first nine episodes and the last three, it’s bananas. They are cute as fuck, Gun is The Best, and the tropey romance scenes are top quality. You don't get those things executed so well, it doesn't happen, so you need this in your life. The acting is of a calibre you never usually see in modern romcoms; these are people at the top of their game committing utterly and taking these characters completely seriously. In that way it is pure wish fulfilment for me as someone who loves romance and is almost always disappointed by popular romance media, and thus the show is incalculably special. But skip the middle. Just skip it. It's not worth the suffering. I find the tone whiplash honestly just this side of crass.

I’ve been thinking about it for over a week and I truly love the main characters so it did plenty right, but I just cannot with wedding the two things this show is trying to be together, especially when it goes so hard in two mutually exclusive directions. but also the Meet Joe Black sudden car accident device is not redeemable under any circumstances. Can we never do that again, please.

#fated to love you #kdrama #jang hyuk #writing

[goldenmeme]

Untitled Sanders Sides fic!

My fic got Jossed hardcore, so I’m just throwing up the first chapter as a stand-alone instead. It was originally titled “Five Time Deceit Told Thomas His Name (and One Time He Didn’t)” but like... obvs that’s not going to work now. So just imagine this snippet takes place sometime between Intrusive Thoughts and Putting Others First. No spoilers for POF.

Untitled, 2,200 words, PG-13 (Virgil says a swear), no pairings.

Summary: Thomas can’t sleep. Deceit wants to help.

 "--then you'll say, 'Well, when you've seen one, you've seen them all,' and Patton will say, 'Yes but this one's eating my pizza!'"

Roman paused for the inevitable roar of laughter and adulation. None came.

"Thomas? Thomas. You're not writing this down. I'm giving you comedy gold and you're letting it fall through your fingers like sand through your... fingers…"

Thomas rolled over just enough to unbury half of his mouth from the pillow. "Roman. Buddy. It's almost 5 AM."

"Well we could have worked on scripts earlier, but you insisted on watching Parks and Rec until inhuman hours again. I need opportunity to create!" The bedsheets rustled behind Thomas with the force of Roman’s gesticulating.

"What happened to 5 PM, when I specifically set aside time to write and then spent an entire hour staring at a blank word document?"

The mattress dipped in a way that, even with his back turned and his eyes closed, somehow managed to convey the haughtiness of Roman’s shrug. "I wasn't feeling inspired at that time."

"Could we maybe try being inspired tomorrow morning instead?"

"I can't control when the muse strikes me, Thomas."

"You’re my muse," Thomas said. He rolled onto his back to starfish out, smacking Roman on the shoulder with one floppy arm. All he wanted in the world was sleep, but apparently Roman wasn’t going to let that happen. "Does my muse have his own muse? How does that even work?"

To Thomas’s right, Logan cleared his throat. Logan thought beds were no place for anthropomorphic personifications of facets of personality, so whenever they congregated in Thomas's bedroom his customary spot was sitting primly beside the bed in a utilitarian office chair he'd conjured from the Dreamscape.

He said, "As amusing as this musing on muses may be, I must remind you how essential it is to maintain a consistent sleep schedule for the--"

"Yup!" Thomas half-shouted. "Thanks Logan, I got it. We go over this at least four times a week."

"And yet you--"

Patton blindly batted a fuzzy paw at everyone and whined, "Nnnnnnnnn, s’sleepy time now." He was cuddled in a ball at the foot of the bed in his cozy kitty onesie. At night he also jammed an old-fashioned long stocking cap over the hood because he thought it made him look more, as he put it, "bedtimey", though the kitty ears distorted the hat and made his head look weirdly lumpy.

“Patton is correct,” Logan said. “It is, unequivocally, sleepy time now, so Roman, if you’ll just put a pin in your ill-timed inspiration--”

"But my witty dialogue…" 

"--I promise we'll write your script first thing in the morning--" 

Thomas squinted at Logan's silhouette in the darkness. Something seemed... off...

"—when we all have a fresh perspective and Thomas has gotten seven-to-eight hours of restful sleep.”

"… Deceit?" Thomas said.

"Hm," Logan said.

Like a flower blooming in fast motion, his silhouette sprouted a shadowy shape that coalesced into a bowler hat. Deceit pulled off Logan's glasses and threw them behind himself, where they crunched against the wall.

Roman smacked Thomas on the shoulder three times before pointing frantically, as if Thomas may have missed the transformation.

Deceit said, “I just love how much easier it’s gotten for you to spot my little dress-up games. What gave me away this time?”

“I always forget any ideas I have right before I fall asleep,” Thomas said. “Logan would tell me to write it down in my phone’s notes sooner than later, because if I just try to remember it Roman will keep me up for hours badgering me about it, and I’ll forget by morning anyway. If I make myself a note, Roman can be secure in the knowledge that his work won’t get lost in my brain over the next eight hours, and he’ll let me sleep.”

They’d worked that one out years ago. Thomas still had problems remembering the system if Logan didn’t pop in to explicitly remind him, because in the moment Thomas just wanted to sleep and it felt counter-intuitive to get out his phone and start writing instead.

“Curse that fool and his established systems,” Deceit said.

“What are you doing here?”

“I can’t just stop by?”

“Um. Can you?”

“I know you don’t believe that I have your best interests at heart,” Deceit said, “but I do. You wanted sleep. I came to shut the Prince up so that you could get it.”

“Hey!” Roman said.

“You didn’t have to impersonate Logan to do that,” Thomas said.

“Didn’t I? Would you have even considered heeding my advice, had I appeared to you as myself?”

Well…

Across the room, the closet door swung open with an ominous creak.

When Virgil had first started showing up in Thomas’s room, he’d lurked in the closet like the monster they all thought he was back then, glaring out of the barely-cracked door, only ever speaking when Thomas was on the very edge of sleep, and only then because he couldn’t stand to let the important questions the others never asked go unsaid. Questions like, “If you died right now, how long would it take someone to find your body?” and, “Where is your wallet? Do you remember having it when you got home today?” and, “Remember that time in chorus?”

Now that he and Thomas had found a workable equilibrium, Virgil still hung out in the closet (yes, the joke had been made several dozen times) because it was small and dark and comforting. Except now instead of hiding behind a mostly closed door, when the others were feeling chatty he’d sprawl in the open doorway, back propped against the frame and one boot braced on the other side.

He still liked to make an entrance, though. Thomas’s closet door didn’t creak when anyone else opened it.

Instead of sprawling in the doorway, today Virgil appeared sitting aggressively crisscross applesauce in it. “No. He’d have told you to fuck off, like he’s doing right now.”

Deceit smiled bitterly. “Oh good, Anxiety is here.”

“Guys,” Thomas said. “Come on, no fighting. I’m--just--I’m just trying to sleep…”

“And I am just trying to facilitate that,” Deceit said. “I had hoped to do so with as little fuss as possible, but evidently you’re getting much better at spotting me. I may have to retire that tactic.”

“Wait,” Thomas said, horror dawning. “How often have you impersonated the others without me noticing?”

“Why, never!” Deceit said. “You’ve managed to catch me at it every last time! Brava to you.”

“Somehow I do not find that reassuring,” Thomas said.

“Trust issues,” Deceit said, nodding sympathetically.

Roman said, “Only when it comes to you, Deceit. Are you even capable of telling the truth?”

“Oh I assure you, I am very… capable.”

“Oh yeah? Prove it. Say one true thing, right now.”

“Fine,” Deceit said. “RENT is overrated.”

“HOW DARE YOU—”

Thomas had to physically stop Roman from launching himself across the bed. “Okay, woah, hey, eeeeeasy big guy.”

“Thomas, did you hear what he said about RENT?!”

“Yes, immediately after we’d established that he in incapable of telling the truth. Think of everything he says as like… backward-land.”

“So… when he says RENT is…” Roman couldn’t even bring himself to say the word. “What he meant was that it’s an incomparable masterpiece of theatrical genius soiled only by the somewhat questionable staging choices of the cinema adaptation?”

Deceit caught Thomas’s eye from behind Roman’s back. Deceit rolled his eyes.

“Yeah,” Thomas said. “That’s definitely what he meant.”

“It’s as if you took the words right out of my mouth,” Deceit drawled. “Playful ribbing aside, of course I’m capable of speaking the truth. Why, I’ve made five true statements within this conversation alone. I simply prefer to play my cards closer to the chest than the rest of you bleeding heart goodie-goodie-goobers.”

Thomas said, “You understand that the constant lying makes it really difficult for us to trust anything you say.”

Deceit, surprisingly, actually seemed to think about that. He pressed his steepled fingers to his lips. After a moment’s thought, he said, “You’re right. How about, as a show of faith, you may ask me one thing, and I promise I will answer truthfully.”

Roman rushed out, “Say one nice thing about RENT!”

Deceit said, “Thomas may ask me one thing and I promise to answer truthfully.”

“Really?” Thomas said.

“On my word as a construct of your imagination.”

“What’s your name?”

“… That’s it? You get one, single, honest answer from me, and you waste it to ask my name?”

“Well sure. I know the names of all my other sides, and I can’t very well make you a Christmas stocking with your name on it if I don’t know your name, now can I?”

“Dear god. Your moral side is asleep, how are you still this unbearably saccharine? Fine. My name…” he took a deep breath and gathered his pride, “is Ethan.”

“Oh,” Thomas said. “Huh.”

“What?”

“No, nothing, it’s a good name! It… goes with everyone else’s names?”

“Naturally! Logan, Patton, Roman, and Ethan. Derived of course from Logic, Pathos, Romance, and Ethos.”

Roman gasped. “Thomas, you named me for romance?”

Thomas said, “I don’t… think I named you? You told me your name. I don’t really know how this works.”

Deceit said, “That’s right, Casanova, he did! Did you catch the emphasis I put on the no there? Casa nooooooo va… Anyway, yes, we’re all one big, happy family, all with names that fit tidily into one single convenient naming convention. Well. Except Virgil, of course. Ah, Virgil. Our little eternal outcast. Even his name doesn’t fit in with the rest of us.”

Virgil said, “What do you mean the rest of us? You’re not like them.”

“Hey, you can’t argue with etymology. It’s science.”

Thomas said, “That’s not—a science…”

“Um, it ends in -ology, sooo, yes it is.”

Virgil said, “Remus doesn’t fit that naming convention either.”

Deceit’s smile froze. “Ah. Remus told you his name, did he? I should have known the embodiment of zero impulse control wouldn’t be able to keep privileged information to himself.”

“If you think about it,” Virgil said, “only Thomas’s Good Sides fit that pattern.”

“So nice of you to finally acknowledge the fact that I am one of Thomas’s Virtuous Sides, and not an Evil Side like you, Anxiety.”

Patton thrashed suddenly in his sleep, swiping a velvety, kitten-pawed fist at an invisible enemy before mumbling something mostly illegible that might have ended with, “me or my son again,” and settling back into stillness.

Virgil had to force the fond expression off his face before turning back to Deceit. “Do you really think Thomas is going to buy that you’re supposed to be the embodiment of ethos?”

Roman leaned close to Thomas to whisper-shout in his ear, “Thomas, what’s ethos?”

“Uhhh,” Thomas said. He’d definitely known that once. Logan probably still knew it, but Thomas hadn’t consciously retained much of the Communications course he’d taken in college. “I think it has to do with… the ideals of a society as a whole?…”

“And isn’t that just me to a T,” Deceit said. He was already sinking down as he rushed out the final words, “Okay well it was nice to officially be known by you, good night now—”

“Wait,” Thomas said.

Deceit reappeared, already glowering.

“Your name isn’t Ethan, is it?”

“Of course it is,” Deceit said, voice dripping with… something. Whatever it was, it was not sincerity.

Thomas should have known. With all his other sides, learning their names had felt right, like it was knowledge he’d already had that he’d only needed to be reminded of. Deceit just didn’t strike him as an Ethan.

Roman said, “Why, you’re… lying!” like it was only just dawning on him. “But you promised Thomas an honest answer!”

“And there’s no possible way I could have been lying about that, too,” Deceit agreed. “Are you not understanding this—” he gestured to encompass all of himself, “--whole thing yet? It really is a good thing you’re pretty.”

The ire drained out of Roman in an instant. “I am pretty, aren’t I?”

“And so very quick-witted,” Deceit said. He gave Thomas a tight smile and sunk out of the room before anyone else could protest.

“You know, I think he’s not as bad as everyone makes him out to be,” Roman said.

Thomas rolled onto his stomach and buried his face back into the pillow. With Deceit gone, exhaustion was making itself known again, darkening the edges of his consciousness. It was sooo past his bedtime. “Good night, Roman.”

“Good night Thomas.”

“Night, Virg.”

Virgil’s response was the click of the closet door closing. Thomas couldn’t sleep if it was open, on account of monsters.

Sleep came quickly after that.

 ***

 The next morning—well, afternoon, but Thomas had just woken up—Logan scrolled through Thomas’s phone while Thomas puttered around the kitchen singing breakfast songs to the appliances.

“This is my jam, this is my jam, this is my toast, this is my knife, and this is my jam…”

“Thomas, where did you put Roman’s idea?”

“Hmm? What idea?”

“My records say that Roman had an idea last night, but I don’t see anything in your notes. You couldn’t have forgotten. We have a system.”

Oh. Oooooh no.

#Sanders Sides #Fic #No spoilers #RENT is overrated though #fight me

[xwaterice]

“Gray and Juvia” episode final thoughts

I wanted to make a video review but I do not have time for it so I’m gonna write it instead haha anyway... I LOVED THE EPISODE.

“Gray and Juvia” as the title was a blessing. I didn’t expect it tbh because I was sure they’d choose “Fire and Ice” instead... I am so glad I was wrong! SO GLAD. An entire episode focused on Gruvia just like the manga chapters... amazing.

Before commenting the actual episode I’d like to say that, yes, I had high expectations but I also kept in mind that the new season of fairy tail is... sloppy? in terms of animation and adaptation. The pacing is too fast, things get resolved too quickly and I barely felt the “hype” each time the focus was on a huge fight or moment (I mean, when the balcony scene was animated I didn’t even have the time to flutter my eyelashes that it was over already 😂 ). Another negative note is the “still frames” which are very annoying. We definitely aren’t here to see the coloured version of the manga lol but somehow the animation studio has a thing for still frames.... -_- I was also worried they would completely censor the suicide... this to say that I didn’t watch ep 307 expecting something better than manga (that will never, never happen) nor something terrible.

The previous episode about Invel’s introduction and the first part of his fight vs Gray hyped me so much though, I was over the moon because!! THE BLIZZARD!! THE SCENERY! I LOVE IT! It looks so epic, so violent, so DYNAMIC, everything was completely frozen and compared to the previous spriggan fights it looked to DIFFERENT. I felt like it was a completely new world! The OST they played was on point as well!

It just screams “WINTER IS HERE” lmao I loved it. I could talk about this iced background for hours, hahaha if you notice it’s also different than the bg in 499 (Mashima used snow + ground, not actual ice for the floor) and it’s epic. I say it again... EPIC.

Moving on to the actual episode, I was extremely moved when we saw Invel’s portrayal of Gray’s dark side and I think it was a nice extra, scary lol, but surely nice because Gray’s darkness is something we’ve seen building up ever since Ur’s death (“I will seal your darkness”) and now someone is using JUVIA to unleash it.

Gray vs Juvia was good. I like focusing on details and I must say they did a good job in animating water and ice and their respective attacks, as they did with the most important part of the episode: the suicide.

They could have censored it. They really could have. Yet we saw: Juvia’s water blade piercing her (SIDE NOTE: totally love that it starts as ordinary water just to change its properties and harden as Juvia gets ready), BLOOD, more BLOOD, Gray piercing himself, Gray coughing BLOOD, BLOOD, BLOOD!!! Bloodiest FT ep (and chapter lol)

I think the animation was good; the pacing was ordinary in my opinion. I know that lots of people said it was too fast but I honestly don’t really think it was?... I actually had the time to flutter my eyelashes this time. It could have been slower and that would have been better to build the pathos and make it more dramatic but it wasn’t thaaaaat fast or “rushed” as many say. I think we are too used to the manga that we forget how anime actually is, it’s my problem at least, but I firmly believe this has something to do with the way we perceive this last season.... I take lots of breaks when I read the dialogues to focus on details, and I cannot do this when I watch the anime as it goes on its own. That’s something I forgot because I hadn’t seen the anime in... years lol so yeah I understand where people are coming from, but they spent 12 minutes to anime 499 which is HALF of the episode and the other 10 to animate 500 which was longer than usual and it counts as two chapters in one. 307 was really all about “Gray and Juvia” and all the frames were beautiful drawn.

There was a debate about Invel’s chains years ago and the anime made it clear that as he dispelled the blizzard he also undid Ice Lock freeing Gray and Juvia (lmao he literally miscalculated everything and even helped the enemy... to go after him :))) ). The blizzard is gone and so is the epic scenery, sadly. The still frames from now on... ugh. The random people talking without moving their mouths got me laughing lmao that was so awkward... but... thank god we have Gray and Juvia’s voice actors!! GIVE THEM AN OSCAR PLEASE, Gray’s scream was AWESOME. BREATHTAKING. It was so moving that the still frames weren’t so still anymore, it truly was divine... and I have chills remembering it. I wish they had animated the way Gray got closer to Juvia’s body and held her in his arms more clearly... it wasn’t even shown :/ it’s just still frames and the dynamism is gone. Same for that big Juvia panel, it’s just still while she talks and I didn’t like that... it didn’t need to be still. Anyway, Gray’s va saved this with his broken yet soft “Juvias”, such a beautiful interpretation.

^ this one frame broke me, just saying.

I will say a very unpopular opinion now but I’m honest: I didn’t like the flashbacks. Some were unnecessary (the butt touch one) and lasted too much (413 days) but I won’t complain about those because as many blogs said they wanted to show us how Gruvia’s dynamic has changed over the time from being comedic to romantic (416, 453) and they also confirmed that THIS IS GRAY’S ANSWER. Gray and Juvia went from enemies to lovers and seeing their first encounter was a must imho, but I get why they didn’t add scenes from the oldest season.

Last but not least, I liked Gray kicking Invel’s ass better than in manga lmao Gray looked even SCARIER and more violent imho it was so satisfying to watch. We all know that Invel would have died killed by Gray’s owns hands if he hadn’t to reveal END’s identity. This bitch is in prison now. ;)

That’s all. Enjoy and remember: Gray loves Juvia!

#gruvia #fairy tail #gray fullbuster #juvia lockser #my thoughts

[kmp78]

I came, I saw, I (little bit) konquered 💪

First of all: apologies for this mega massive post! 😂

But I wanted to fit everything in one, so that´s the way it has to be! 

Big thanks to lovely Stockholm for being a very gracious host and taking such good care of this world-weary traveler! Let´s start off with some general sights before getting down to the nasty business of Mars!

I have to say that seeing those posters for the 1st time in the flesh made me quite giddy indeed...

BUT NOW! On to the main event...

The M&G took place a few hours before the show, and arrangements were top grade, gotta give props when props are due!

These two ladies were really lovely and seemed like PROS at what they do and yet POLITE towards us even tho this was probably the 3000th M&G they were handling. I have no complaints!

We were escorted to a small meeting room type of area right next door to the stage area, and at first I figured I wasn´t even gonna bother fighting the hoards for the 1st row seats, but then I heard Reni saying there was one spot left - and I leaped into action.

At the M&G room Reni explained the rules and game plan for the evening. No personal/private questions, no simple yes/no questions, no groping during the pics, no running to the concert area (there were near-catastrophic incidents in Prague some days ago, some girls ran like cray and tripped and fell and created a domino effect and it was a mess...) and so on. 🙄

Reni asked us who has listened to the album (most raised their hands) and who has not listened to the album (me and few others raised ours... Hihi...), and what people´s fave songs were.

Then we got back to talking about the potential questions again, and she encouraged people to ask about the new album (*COUGH* REMEMBER THIS LATER AS YOU READ ON *COUGH*), or if you want advice etc. 

Not that I cared much anyway, but seeing as she did not seem to touch upon “that topic” at all, I decided to try my luck and asked:

“What about the “elephant in the room”?” 🐘

The room fell silent and there were some dramatic “Oooooooh´s” coming from my fellow VIP peeps.

Reni´s face went serious and she quietly said “No”, as was fully expected.

I pressed on.

“How come?”

Reni: “Because we would rather... It´s a personal matter. Of the band.”

Me: “So we´re never gonna get any explanation?”

Reni: “It´s a personal matter... And until he doesn´t decide... It´s not in our...”

And that was it! That´s the explanation I managed to squeeze out! Sorry, guys! I tried, but... 😞

I´m totally not the only one who reads that to mean that IT WAS TOMO´S OWN DECISION TO WALK AND IT´LL BE HIS DECISION IF/WHEN HE COMES BACK, right?! And that the band has no say in it, and they have no clue if and when the situation gets resolved?! Right?!

UGH! 😠

Then Reni went on to explain that if someone was there specifically to meet TM, they could get a refund but they would have to leave immediately.

Total bs “offer” because there ain´t NO ONE coming to these things just to meet TM, but whatever... I did contemplate if I should ask for a partial refund because I only got partial Mars, but chose to let it slide. Not even worth it.

One guy in the audience commented “Good question”, so I guess I wasn´t alone with my queries! It may have been Gustavo, I dunno.

Before the band came in, people kept busy by asking the crew a few questions. 

And at this point I would like to offer a MEA CULPA and sincere apologies to the person/persons who I battled with some weeks ago when Reni´s home land was a topic. See, as luck would have it, one of the VIPs asked the staff where they were from, and Reni said “I´M ORIGINALLY FROM MEXICO”, so yeah... Haha! I giggled quite a lot... Sorry, anon/anons! I was indeed wrong! Shayla said she´s from NYC, Inaki also from Mexico and Diana (I think that was her name...?) from Brazil.

Shayla mentioned that she is kinda jetlagged. Reni said she´s usually pretty good with it.

Then they plugged Camp Mars (a few people had no idea what Camp Mars even is...) and lured us to buy with big promises of hangings with the band during the most magical weekend of the year.

“The band is also there all day.”

Reni also inquired if people would be interested in attending Camp if they by some miracle happened to arrange it in Europe. Most people were eager, no surprises there.

Someone asked if Camp could be arranged earlier in the summer, and Reni said no because the Malibu Camp site is occupado until August.

Another one asked if Camp is getting bigger, to which Reni replied that “It´s getting better. I would not say it´s getting bigger because the number of people for the past 2 times has been exactly the same, which is 200.”

So there we have it. An official number.

Well, as official as these people are ever gonna admit, anyway... 🤷

Then we voted for our fave songs from the new album. “GWO” won.

(I voted Tabasco. 🤗)

Someone wanted to know if they were gonna play “GWO”, and Shayla said nope because they have not rehearsed it.

Of course not! 🤷

Then we swiftly moved on to the “Kumbaya” moment of the evening where Reni asked if someone knows how to sing, and some dude said yeah, so he came up front and started singing WoW.

Now this is just my opinion, but sitting there listening to an almost Sunday church-like hysterical pathos... Worshipers partying and yelling out the lyrics as if God himself was within hearing distance...

I did not know I needed that in my life. 😱

Then Reni we needed to “make some noise so they´ll come faster”.

Is... is that what VK does too? 🤔

I dunno, but we did. 

It did not help. 😴

To kill even more time, we did the obligatory “Where is everyone from?” round. I stayed silent. Surprisingly it seemed like almost half of the peeps were non-Swedes! The woman next to me was also from Finland. Wooooop!

Someone asked if the band is gonna do festivals, and Reni listed some upcoming dates. I don´t know why people don´t GO ONLINE to find out this stuff, but... 🤷

The crew also mentioned they have days off on occasion, Helsinki was mentioned as one of their days off, which kinda maybe means that the band will be arriving tomorrow and hanging for a whole day before the gig on Wednesday... Uuuuuuh!

Then all of a sudden...

DOORS FLUNG OPEN AND ANGELS SANG PRAISES!  🎺

Well no, it was just echies screaming and clapping. 🙏

JL and SL sneaked in from the stage area and the masses of course went bananas. 

I still sat in silence and watched. 👀

The bros had a table and chairs, but never sat down. Instead they stood and placed one foot ON THE CHAIR, as all civilized peeps do.

JL asked if anyone was at the previous gig, and mentioned that it has been a really small show, but this one would be the smallest (arena holds max 3500 people). Last night apparently was “INCREDIBLE”, one of the better shows on the tour.

For some reason (pffft...) he spotted some German chicks who I guess were twins or smthg, I wasn´t really paying attention. Anyway, he mentioned “We always need more twins in our lives”.

Echies naturally giggled because OMGGGGGGGG HILAAAARIOUS, and JL went on to explain that “Hey our grandfather had a twin”.

SL quipped that maybe he or JL will have twins, and JL mentioned that he and JR argued about the twin gene skipping a generation or smthg like that.  🙄🙄

Then he spotted some chick in the front row who had big muscles (no she did not btw) and asked her if she´s a trainer or smthg. JL mentioned that he just recently started working out again so he keeps looking at muscles.

Uh huh. 🙄🙄🙄

On/off SL gave looks around the room, and I got some too. He did not smile, not even a crack. Meh.

THEN IT WAS FINALLY Q AND A TIME!!! 🙏 😈

Some dude asked how hard it is to get a workout on the road.

SL said the recovery is the most challenging part. I guess he meant recovery from the shows.

JL says the 2 hours on stage are the hardest, and then the rest of the time should be spent by doing nothing.

That last part might be more familiar to some in the band than others... 🤔

Some woman from Ohio, USA was picked and I guess she yammered on about herself a bit too long because JL interrupted her speech with a very stern “QUESTION!” (we all know that tone... Hihi!), and she asked if there were any “Aha!” moments when making the album.

I suppose she did not mean “Aha! We totes should wrap this whole shit in Americana even tho it has fuck all to do with it!”...

SL said the 1st thing that comes to mind is “Rescue Me”. Apparently they´ve had that song for 10 years and have had people help them work on it (WHOOOO?!), and the last person they worked on it with caused them to have an “Aha!” moment when they realized they were actually going to finish it.

I´m sure we all share that amazement...

JL said he remembered sitting down during TIW in his home in Fredonia (his old home) with a synthesizer and the verse and the chorus are still the same. Lyrics have changed. The chorus used to just be “Rescue me, rescue me” without anything else, and 5 years later he was sitting on a plane and the current chorus started forming in his head. The song used to have a “pre-chorus” too. “He said” or “She said” (I could not make out which, or maybe both) before the main chorus. 

He said the lesson in that is to never give up because you never know what can happen. Sometimes songs happen quickly, like “A Modern Myth” which he said he wrote in 5 minutes, and SL wrote “Remedy” fairly quickly. Finishing songs usually takes him longer than coming up with a song.

Next guy asked about creative differences between Album 1 and Album 5.

JL said you can still hear the same band on both albums.

(GIVE OR TAKE A FEW BAND MEMBERS, MAYBE... 🙄)

He listed all the elements the new album features. He said he thinks a song like “Echelon” could totally be on the new album.

Next up a woman who said she was studying to be in the music business asked what she could do to make sure no other artist has to deal with what Mars had to deal with (lawsuit etc.).

JL´s advise: Don´t sign a record deal unless you absolutely have to. Spread your music via social media and other platforms.

(I know he was talking about EMI specifically, but I could not help thinking there might have been some Interscope crumbs in there too...)

The woman clarified that she meant more from the music label/business side and not the artist side. Jl responded “Go work for Spotify”. He went on to say that record companies and people can be great too, but the deals are the problem. They should be transparent and available online. It´s the last kind of “gangsta business” where you can really take advantage of people.

Some dude mentioned that he saw Mars 11 years ago when they opened for Linkin Park in Europe. JL remembered that tour, SL did not.

I guess he asked what it feels like to go from there to here (I wasn´t really listening because meeeeeh), and SL tried to come up with smthg intellectual and deep but it just sounded so ridiculously pathetic it´s not even worth mentioning. Smthg about just living and maturing and evolving as human beings.  💤

He also said they are really fortunate to still be together as a band (*SNORT*) because lots of bands from back then don´t exist anymore.

JL said this feels like a new and fresh chapter. Like his inner child. Like a reboot. Like they just got a facelift (HOLD YOUR LAUGHS, PLEASE). The new songs live are apparently “pretty INCREDIBLE”.

“I know some people are like “Where´s the guitar?” and “Where the heavy music?” but I think it´s still pure 30 StM.”

He also called the new album very dark and “lyrically on point”.

His point might be somewhere waaaaaay off the playing field tho, but...

Some chick with pink hair was up next and JL said he was gonna dye his hair pink but now he can´t.

SL said dyeing wrecks your hair and JL said his hair can´t take another bleaching.

And yes, you guessed it, folks. Fangirl giggles and swoons galore! 

Her actual question was about Mars music feeling ancient or smthg, again I was totally not even paying attention because I DON´T CAAAAARE. Sorry but these questions were fucking USELESS. 👎

Anyway, SL blabbered on about them being from an “old place”. JL said everyone has missed the point that they made the album by using modern American sounds like Hip Hop and Pop etc. and that WoW is a giant political FUCK YOU. 

Except not too long ago he gave that interview to a Finnish journo and specifically banned political questions, but okay... 👌

He said it´s exciting to see people from different countries singing that song with so much passion that sometimes he almost feels like they need to escape through the back door (he was kidding).

Next that same guy who sang during the pre-M&G stood up and congratulated the band on the new album. JL in return congratulated the guy on his hair (= a poofed up semi-mullet kinda thing) and they chatted a bit about his hair. Soooo riveting... 😫

The dude said one of his fave songs is “Convergence” and he asked about spirituality or smthg. Again, not interested...

JL said the last album was only 7 songs and the rest were fillers (well he didn´t say fillers but I´m saying it), and this new one is 11 songs and only 1 filler.

While JL was still yammering on his response to the mullet dude, I made my move and raised my hand HIIIIIGH - and when he finally finished his looooong sermon JL turned my way and...

Oh uh! It's Go time! 😱

⚠️ Little background info first! ⚠️ 

I obviously had thought of a few questions before coming to the M&G, just to prepare for the off-chance an opportunity might present itself. My options ranged from "Why did you call us Screaming Fat Girls?" to "Why did I have to pay 400 for this when 20 yo models get it for free?" and beyond. Yes I even toyed with the idea of sneakily slipping VK into the mix... 🙃

But sitting there as the M&G went on and listening to the other questions and studying the room's vibe, I started feeling my questions were all... wrong. They started feeling like I would just be purposely asking for trouble and causing a stink and potentially ruining the event, which was not my intention at all.

I started feeling like I needed to ask smthg current, smthg that has relevance in this day and age, smthg that hopefully gave us some answers to the questions we have been pondering about on the blog, smthg that would make you peeps proud, smthg that would not be a waste of a question - and yes, smthg that maybe poked a little hole into his massive ego at the same time! 🤔

So with all that criteria in mind, I went into battle...

Me: "Hi, speaking of the album, have you read or heard the reviews? Because some of them were... not very kind...?

JL: "This newest album?"

(NO DUMMY I WANNA KNOW IF YOU READ THE REVIEWS FOR THE ALBUM YOU RELEASED IN 2002!!! 🙄🤦‍♀️)

Me: "Yeah."

JL, staring right at me, with the snarkiest and bitchiest voice and most passivest aggressivest demeanor:

"Well thanks for bringing that up."

😱😱😱

His reaction both in words and in vibe (and the reaction from the room aka loud gasps, few hisses and cheers after he "lashed out" at me) was worth all the money I paid for that M&G, I don't even mind telling you!

SL also chimed in with “Yeah, thanks for bringing that up” but at that moment I was so focused on JL´s face that I completely ignored SL´s whining and existence - not to mention that every single molecule inside me screamed “HALLELUJAAAAAAAAH!”

So yeah basically I just sat there going...

While he stared at me throughout that little exchange, he most def could sense the snark in my question, and I most def could sense the snark in his reply. Naaaw... Just a couple of petty snarks sharing a moment... 🤣🙊😍

#BucketList ✔

I guess that is what an orgasm of the mind feels like. ☺

And btw...

"Thanks for bringing that up"?

Honey, with the amount of shit we have on you, you should be very #Grateful I only brought THAT up! 🤨

Anyway, the room kinda “erupted” with little gasps and hollers and whatnot, and after that initial "explosion" SL took over and started "grilling me" about my choice of question.

"That's your question? You wanna know if we read and what´s our response to the bad reviews?"

I replied “Yeah, I wanna know”.

SL said he had not read any.

Okay, but... Why did you just jump on my throat about that topic then...? 

He continued that everyone has opinions and tastes and attitudes and personalities and colors (???) and stuff... He said he can´t pay attention to it, he can only focus on what he did and the band did, and he feels great about it. He said he is secure in himself and his “bro”, as he called JL.

Then JL took over and in a very explanatory manner (calm voice this time) said that these days everyone is a critic. He said on social media any person´s opinion is as important as a reviewer´s. He also said he thinks a lot of the criticism revolves around the “Where is the rock?” argument, and that they are probably right. 

“It´s not a rock album.” 

Followed by a LOOOOONG silence. 

A silence which was only interrupted by SL going “Well, there you go!” in a triumphant manner. Echies of course applauded, and then suddenly JL picked up again:

“Don´t be fooled, we knew EXACTLY what we were doing. But let me just tell you something: we have NEVER gotten good reviews. Even when we made rock albums. So... Nothing really changes...”

At this point it again felt like he was getting ready to move on, but NO! He still kept going!

“I have a feeling lot of it has to do with me...”

That Gustavo dude piped up with “Jealousy...”, but JL ignored that comment and continued: 

“It just has to do with me being in the band... I don´t think people wanna let that slide...”

SL commented “Fucking weird...” and then after a short silence went “Great” in the most “NON GREAT” way imaginable. Kinda like when you spill juice all over yourself and go “Great”.

So with that “NON GREAT” “GREAT”, this topic was now finished and my time in the spotlight was over.

I will point out that while pretty much everyone who asked a question before me got a “Thanks for the question” comment, I did not...

😭😭😭

*

BEFORE WE MOVE ON - QUICK ANALYSIS ON MY Q AND HIS A:

I think what we learned here are 3 things:

1. Poor SL really thinks he contributed to this album and has reason to be proud. 🤷‍♀️

2. JL is indeed VERY aware of the bad reviews and backlash his latest offering brought him. 😭

3. JL is also aware of the "bad rep" he has. Not just for the "Oh he's an actor trying to be a singer" thing which he has battled since Day 1 (which I'm sure he was mostly alluding to), but also that currently (= after SS) he gets ridiculed and judged on a whole new level.

I mean, the way he almost dragged the topic on and felt like he had to add “just one more thing”... Kinda felt like he was trying to convince not just us but himself as well... 🤨

Anyway, feel free to send feedback and thoughts on this! Did I do good?! 😜

*

Okay back to the M&G!

The next person asked what would they say to their younger selves.

JL wouldn’t wanna say anything because “We’re in a pretty good place right now in life and career… I guess I’d say "Take a deep breath… It’s gonna be alright. Don’t pay attention to the reviews.”“

Ooooooh... Still feeling butt-hurt from the previous Q, are we… ? 😏🤭

The next Q was asked with such a heavy-accented English I had NO IDEA what he asked, but apparently JL did because he managed an answer. It was smthg about the Mars symbols (the triad). 🤷🏼‍♀️

The next chick started off my saying "I just wanna say I love you and adore you” and I almost yelped out “MR. KAUFMAN IS ALREADY TAKEN!” but managed to keep my emotions in check.

Her question was a pretty good one: “Why did you come up with the name "Monolith” for the tour", she said she (like all of us!) did not get it.

JL said the name comes from the giant screen on stage and the giant box thing as well, which of course for this tour they could not fit through the doors.

Next question was “Why did you call the album "America” when it talks about universal issues?“

JL: "I think the idea of America is universal (FUCK OFF ALREADY DICK IT SO IS NOT) and everyone has an opinion (WANNA KNOW MINE?) and the songs are universal. I think what’s going on in our country is probably going on in other countries. I don’t think we’re the only country thinking about things like immigration, the right and the left, what kind of a world we want to live in, what kind of a future we want. I just thought it was an interesting time and an interesting word. It really isn’t political title, it’s more of a concept (🙄🙄🙄), that’s why I liked all the lists that we came up with because they were so bizarre and funny and provocative. They do give you a sense of the time we’re living in.”

He went on to say that in 100 years people will be able to look at them and go “Oh, that was that crazy group if people that was alive between this time and that time and that fucking guy was president in America!”

Oh my! Look who’s getting all feisty again! Dare you to say that publicly tho!

During this question the noise from the soundcheck taking place in the next room went up a few notches and Stevie´s high-pitched screams almost overpowered the Letos... They made some jokes about SA´s screams. 😂

And of course he kept with the “The name “America” inspired the film that we made that´s coming out later this year, the trip across the country... Did anybody follow it on social media? (I MAY HAVE...) The Museum of America in LA and many other things that we´ve done. I dunno, I just thought it was an interesting container.”

In relation to the previous question, JL also mentioned that he had an alternative title for "America" which he admitted (?) he sometimes thinks he should have used:

“ERA”.

As in this era we are now living in.

YOU GOD DAMN DILL!!!!! THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN 40 GAZILLION TIMES BETTER THAN "AMERICA"!!!!!

🤬🤬🤬

I seriously almost screamed out loud when he said that... I can't even deal with him! 😠

He said that title would have been “a little more global but a little more boring”.

NO, DILL! YOU AND YOUR BEDWARMERS ARE GLOBAL AND BORING! THAT TITLE WOULD HAVE BEEN PERFECT!

😠

The last question came from a woman next to me (fellow Finn btw! 😃🇫🇮) who told us that she's a teacher and she asked what inspires them etc.

JL said that “sometimes I´m not inspired” (REALLY? Never would have guessed...) and that “at that point you just have to rely on muscle memory and to just put one foot in front of the other and keep marching forward... Someone asks a question you don´t like (WHO?! WHO ASKED A QUESTION YOU DID NOT LIKE?! 🙊), you deal with it... You have to do some part of your job that´s tedious (like... the actual working part?), you push past it... I think a lot of times it´s just showing up... You can surprise yourself. You start a conversation, you start a concert, and before you know it you´re lost in the concert and you´re enjoying your time.”

SL said what helps is “getting rid of the fucking trash in the head. If I feel distracted or there´s a lot of stuff going on in my head that doesn´t have anything to do with what I wanna do, I have to get rid of it. Meditation helps, hanging out with cool people (LOOOOOOOOL), yoga, taking a walk...”

And that was it! Show over! JL thanked us for coming and then...

Picture time! 📷

We lined up in the hallway and practically RAN through the stage they had set up for the pic.

Seriously it was RIDICULOUS! Felt even faster and more North Korean than in Getafe! We all legit had no more than 2 seconds to pose and then we were pushed out! 😑

Total bs. No other way to put it. Treated like actual cattle. 🐄

Anyway, I had a plan ready again and as I stepped up to SL who kinda "yanked me" between him and JL (not in a bad way but just kinda like "let's just get this over with FAST"), I said to them:

"Okay guys, let's smile like I'm a model."

🤭🤭🤭

Now, I don't know if they heard me or bothered listening (or in "someone's" case even understood what I was hinting at), but it def made me feel giggly... 😜

Anyway, end result is this:

I think JL may have gotten what I was implying, or perhaps he was still salty about my earlier question, but he def pushed my back to get me to leave the area after the pic. 🤷🏼‍♀️👉🚪

Altho he probs does that to everyone, especially those who are not 20-smthg Russian models, but… Oh well. Kinda made me smirk even more! 🤣

Or perhaps it was my shirt which ruffled his feathers? 🤔

Wanna see a close-up?

BOOM.

Tell you this much: online T-shirt printing businesses and 20€ sure provide a lot of satisfaction. 😏👕💳

And even tho I once again got only 20 Secs (Jfc… 😂), I still managed to sneak TM into my pic, sooo… 😎💁🏼‍♀️

More closeups:

Thanks GOD he looks more than decent in mine!

And c´mon now, Jarry. I think we all know you can go bigger than that.

Jaw seems to work a-ok...

And yes, I watermarked them because that´s how I roll, homies!

After the pics we were given our VIP merch: black beanie (not bad! I might actually wear that…), plastic badge (who the fuck needs these?!), a canvas tote bag (meh ok) and a signed poster.

TRY TELLING ME BOTH THOSE SIGNATURES ARE NOT FROM THE SAME DAMN ALMOST-WORN-OUT PEN… 😂😒🖋

We were also allowed to stay in the M&G room and check out the official merch stand (pffffft! Did not buy a fucking thing as everything looked so uggo).

This tho...

After about an hour of waiting, we were finally led into the actual concert area. As some of you saw from my IG posts, this was not a regular MonolOth tour gig, but more a club gig. The set was completely different, no monolOth anywhere, and stage was not in the middle of the room.

I noticed there was a balcony area too and I marched up to a security guy to ask if it was ok to go up. He said yeah but only 100 people are allowed up so I needed a special ticket, which he then handed me and told me I needed to give it back if/when I came down again so someone else could use my place up there. Very smart security move!

Being as tiny as I am and as claustrophobic as I am, I knew standing in a sea of people and not even seeing a fucking thing was not a viable option, so I chose to wander up to the balcony - and oh man, that was the best decision I could have made! I scored a prime spot right up front and had full “skyview” of the whole room! Lucky move also because without the balcony spot, that IG Live would have been quite difficult to pull off…😏😄

JR’s DJ set was about as useful as sledgehammer when washing windows, so there’s no need to even discuss it. Literally maybe 7 people actually listened and cheered him. 😴

At around 8:40 pm the lights FINALLY dimmed and the show started.

Now, seeing as I did an IG Live for the whole show which means I did not take any pics or clips (I´ll try posting some of the clips I saved from the IG Live a little later on tho), I’m going to utilize a few fellow concert goers offerings here for vibe and atmosphere reasons! 😉

And of course we can NEVER forget the true star of the night...

A post shared by Jared Leto ∆ Echelon page (@dy.jovi) on Apr 24, 2018 at 1:18am PDT

A post shared by Jared Leto ∆ Echelon page (@dy.jovi) on Apr 22, 2018 at 1:11pm PDT

NOT ALL HEROES WEAR CAPES.  OR SHIRTS. 🤣 🕺

As far as overall grade for the show goes…

Well, the people who came on my Live on/off and witnessed the gig with me can probably kinda agree that… eh… It wasn’t very awesomely great. 😣

The stage looked stupid with just SL’s drums, SA was once again shoved to the side where we could barely see him (but could hear him plenty!), the sound overall was kinda off (or maybe it was because of my location, but the drums sounded REALLY loud at times, almost drowned out rest of the instruments. Altho… what instruments? 🤔)…

But the biggest problem of all: Jared’s voice.

It’s fucking DESTROYED, guys. GONE.

Yes on some songs he sounded ok, even quite good on occasion. But overall, he cannot do a full show like a proper rock singer should.

And true to form, he skipped out on a lot of the lyrics (either he let SA sing, or the audience had to sing), and when he did sing (“sing”) he sounded BAD. Multiple times extremely off key and basically just shouted/screamed his way through the songs. There is no way on earth that anyone with ears could claim he sounded good!

Sheep would try no doubt, but lemme tell ya: Lies! Lies, lies, lies!

I think the only song which sounded at least half decent was “Stay”. It’s not a very challenging song anyway, so that one he still manages ok. Everything else… uh. 🙉

But it is what it is, I guess... Can´t turn back the clock and undo years of damage! 

And that yelling is not helping what little he has left...

I did enjoy JL calling me and my fellow upstairs residents “BALCONY MONKEY MOTHERFUCKERS” tho. 🐒

Been called worse before! HA! 😂

Overall I would say that had I not had the IG Live peeps keeping me company throughout the show, I would have been majorly bored. There really was nothing even remotely interesting happening on stage (not counting Naked Dancing Dude!), and traveling across an actual ocean just for that show... 

Not really worth it, gotta say.

If someone asks me if I would recommend buying a ticket, I would have to say no - based on the actual show, I mean. it just really does not offer any great “WOW” moments.

But on a personal level and by taking into account the WHOLE experience, counting the entire weekend etc., I will rank this as one of my better vacays for sure! And a big part of that is thanks to ALL YOU who joined and shared it with me, so THANK YOU! 💗

Report over and out!

#30 Seconds To Mars #sweden #yeehaw #jared leto #shannon leto #duo #i like bringing things up #you should know that by now

[askmerriauthor]

Hey, I got to see Avengers: Infinity War on company time ‘cause my job was nice enough to buy the staff tickets.  This movie has given me... feelings.  Major spoilers ahead, so hit the jump below to read my thoughts on the matter.

Man, what a boring disappointment of a movie.

I’ve really been digging the last handful of Marvel films for their overall quality, especially where the characterization and banter are concerned.  Both Captain America movies?  Dug ‘em.  All the Thor movies?  Man, I could watch Hemsworth doing prat-falls getting hit by cars all day long and never tire of it.  First Guardians of the Galaxy was great, though number two had missteps.  Ant-Man was a fucking delight from start to finish.  Spider-Man: Homecoming was pitch perfect.  Black Panther has the best villain of the entire MCU thus far.  On the other hand, the Avengers movies were a bit clunky by comparison but were overall enjoyable with some great character moments.  They served to temper expectations about what big group-event films in the MCU are like.  So my gripes on Infinity War is not out of some kind of beef with Marvel/Disney, nor is it out of overblown hype.

With that in mind, Infinity War was incredibly dull as a film.  The bulk of the movie is divided into fight scene after fight scene (to the point that they actually cut away from one massive fight to peek in on another concurrent massive fight), introducing characters to one another (generally via fight scene), or Thanos getting “character building scenes” (immediately before or directly in the middle of a fight scene).

One thing I love most about the Marvel movies is the character interaction.  It’s why these cinematic versions are so beloved by the fandom, why there’s so much creativity spawned around them - they have chemistry and interesting relationships with each other.  A:IW has precious little of that at all.  The lion’s share of character interaction goes to Vision/Wanda and Thanos/The Scenery, and not in a good way.  Each of these two relationship elements are only present to build up a false sense of drama that falls flat in the end.  Though there is one particular scene between Rocket Racoon and Thor (yeah, who saw that one coming?) where the two have a heartfelt conversation that Hemsworth just knocks out of the park.  That moment of Thor recounting just how much he’s lost and it being clear how much agony it’s causing him behind a cocky grin is the kind of characterization I adore in these movies.  Vision and Wanda being melodramatic about a plot point that is clearly never going to go anywhere in the film is not appealing at all.  Their entire story thread from start to finish across the film is Vision wanting Wanda to destroy the Mind Gem (and thus kill him) to prevent Thanos from getting it, and the emotional roller coaster that entails since the two are now in love.  Except that entire concept is a total non-starter, doesn’t go anywhere, and ultimately amounts to nothing at all.  It’s just a waste of time that eats up writing and screen time that could have been put to better use elsewhere.

Onto the villain: I could not give two flying flips about Thanos.  I will fully admit that a part of this is that I personally loathe the cliche “nature is out of balance, I must purge life to restore it” villain trope.  That does play a big part in my dislike here.  But setting that aside, he’s just a terribly dull character with feeble motivations and justifications for his actions.  There’s a major dissonance between what he does and how it’s presented to the audience.  While the movie does give a one-line bit of lip service to him being insane and misguided, it’s never fully addressed as a defining aspect of his character throughout the movie.  The comics put a major emphasis on the fact that Thanos, for all his scheming and intelligence, is coo-coo bananas.  He’s called the “Mad Titan” for a reason.  The movie fails to put a light on that fact and it makes Thanos feel like a flat character since all we really get is him just blankly marching toward his end goal the entire film.  He has no arc or development and is wholly unsympathetic no matter how many times the movie takes us aside with him in solitary, artsy moments and yells “LOOK AT ALL THIS PATHOS” in our faces.

Thanos’ entire villain scheme is that he wants to destroy 50% of all intelligent life forms in existence in order to bring a balance to the universe.  He directly states that the universe’ resources are finite and that life allowed to grow unchecked will snuff itself out by over-consuming these precious few resources.  So his solution - which he has been practicing on a planet-to-planet basis for decades by the point the movie takes place - is to divide a world’s population in half.  50% is murdered on the spot while the other 50% lives, purely based on whoever happens to be standing on the left or right.  It is explicitly described by Thanos as being totally random who lives and who dies so as to be “fair”.  His win-scenario is that the species of whatever world he 50% Genocides thrives in the wake of the purge because they now have a more controllable population size - nothing else beyond that.

So... I mean, right out the gate, that’s the stupidest damn thing possible.  It’s not like he’s going to each of these worlds and carefully examining the state of conditions, then deciding they need to be culled because of their abuse of their resources.  He’s just doing it willy nilly without any justification as to whether such a culling is actually necessary or whether it would even be beneficial to the world in question.  I mean, hey, how can openly slaughtering 50% of a world’s population at random possibly be a bad thing?  Surely that won’t throw their entire society and culture into a death spiral, right?  It’s how he picked up his adopted children - Gamora in particular.  While he was busy murdering 50% of her world, he just sort of kidnaps her because... uh... because he wants to, I guess.  He literally just walks up to her in the middle of wrecking her world and decides he arbitrarily wants to take this one tiny green girl with him for no apparent reason whatsoever.  So, hey, way to undercut your own practice there, Thanos.  50% of the population dies with it being completely random and fair... unless I happen to fancy taking a souvenir, apparently.

The movie beats us over the head with the idea that Thanos is in turmoil because of his mission to balance the universe.  That it is a massive strain on his soul, that only he has the willpower to endure what he sees as a necessary culling.  Not a “necessary evil”, mind you - he never views his actions as being morally wrong.  Just difficult.  But, y’know... it’s kind of hard for me to sympathize with a character introduced to us as being an omnicidal maniac who has built a fanatical cult of personality around himself and callously murders literally trillions of people.  Especially so since, as cannot be overlooked: HE’S DOING IT ALL BY HIS OWN CHOICE.  The whole universal culling this is entirely his idea and pet project, so he is completely responsible for whatever so-called internal suffering the movie is trying to make us feel for him.

This whole affair becomes especially annoying when Thanos acquires the Soul Gem.  There’s a little test he has to perform to get it - he must sacrifice the one thing he loves most.  It turns out this is Gamora, aforementioned adopted/kidnapped daughter.  He has a moment of realization, cries stoic tears, and murders her by throwing her off a several-hundred foot tall cliff to that he can get the gem.  He then spends the rest of the film with the fact that his choice is emotionally wrecking him inside, that he’s grieving and saddened, that his quest has taken everything from him and--

Y’KNOW, YOU DIDN’T HAVE TO THROW HER OFF THE DAMN CLIFF, RIGHT?  NOBODY WAS FORCING YOU TO DO THAT.

Gah, this entire character angle just pisses me off because of how inane it is.  “You must give up the thing you love”.  Thanos, you smug bitch, you kidnapped a girl at random while in the process of murdering everyone she knows and loves, then spent the next 20 years putting her through an endless array of physical, mental, and emotional abuse to try and shape her into one of your fanatical Thanos-worshipping minions.  IN THIS VERY SAME MOVIE you tricked Gamora into thinking she brutally killed you just to see if she’d feel bad about it afterward, then literally dismembered her sister before her eyes to force information out of her.  Then, y’know, you murdered Gamora herself.

YOU DON’T FUCKIN’ LOVE HER.  THAT IS NOT LOVE.  I don’t care how many melodramatic “single tear down the cheek” moments you have - there is absolutely nothing about this character or his established, presented backstory that gives even the slightest hint he cared about Gamora beyond her ability to serve him as a tool.  If the Soul Gem was really supposed to be using this “sacrifice your love” test as a measure of who gets to take it, then Thanos should have just failed flat-out.  Even if one tries to argue something like “Oh, well, it was genuine love in Thanos’ twisted perspective”, that doesn’t matter.  The Infinity Gems - especially the Soul Gem - are presented as being semi-aware and capable of making decisions as to who they want to serve.  So it’s not Thanos’ call as to whether or not Gamora is the thing he loves, but the Soul Gem’s.  But it works because we need to get to the next fight scene but quick, so off we go!

The final climax point of the movie is right after Thanos finally gets all the gems and snaps his fingers.  He wins.  In that instant, 50% of all intelligent beings in the universe just sort of go away.  They don’t really die, per say, but rather just poof out existence.  Effectively dead but maybe not specifically so?  It isn’t explained.  So we get this lengthy montage of main characters going poof into particle-effect clouds one by one, with how abrupt or extended the disintegration is depending on whether or not the writers wanted to give them a dramatic final speech.  Oh, how sad.  How very sad.  Boo hoo.  My eye-rolling on this point isn’t because of the meta-awareness of me knowing Marvel isn’t going to purge its main character roster because money.  Rather, it’s because the movie itself takes a moment to pull us aside and assure us that literally NONE OF THIS MATTERS AT ALL.

During an earlier point in the film. Dr. Strange takes a moment of meditation and uses the Time Gem to peer into the future.  He looks at millions of potential futures and says that they only beat Thanos and win the day in one of those probabilities.  It’s done in a way that seems to impress upon the audience just how hopeless this whole effort seems, but it’s a blatant Chekhov’s Gun moment since Dr. Strange acts extremely out of character with his decisions from that point on.  He surrenders to Thanos and, right before dying himself, looks at Tony (and almost directly into the camera) to assure everyone that “this is the only way”.  Whiiiiiiich very blatantly means that his out of character decisions were actually intentionally made to set up the one lone “we somehow manage to win” future he saw.  Because HE SAW HOW TO DO IT BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THE TIME GEM DOES so literally NOTHING that happens beyond that midway point in the film matters because it’s all predetermined to end up well for the heroes.  Which, right along with the “kill everyone to restore balance” trope, is another of my hated cliches because IT’S SO DAMN LAZY.

That’s really what this boils down to for me.  A:IW is lazy.  It’s all flash and fluff without anything really satisfying under all the sparkly varnish.  There’s no genuine substance to it.  Just a few faux plot concepts that are dressed up to look like they’ve got weight, but just end up being hollow.

Also... Thanos?  Buddy?  If your whole bit is that the universe has finite resources and there’s too many mouths to feed, why not just use your newly-acquired phenomenal cosmic powers to make more resources?  I mean, if you can literally snap your fingers and cause an unimaginable volume of matter (ie, people across the universe) to just spontaneously stop existing, why not just make the universe bigger and fuller for everyone’s benefit?  That maybe might go over better with the crowds, y’know?

#marvel #avengers #avengers: infinity war #infinity war #thanos #spoilers #movie review

[wcprice2opinions]

I guess I am an Oprah Centrist

Okay so I know this is mostly just “this week in social media” and everyone is going to move on tomorrow but the Oprah conversation has brought several things to the front of my mind that I want to get out there. Whenever I try to write one of these it usually turns into an illegible mess so apologies in advance to the 2 of you that actually read past this point. On another note I am well aware that I have a 3rd graders understanding of grammar and spelling so no need to tell me by correcting all my mistakes.

I am blown away how passionate people I know to be liberals/progressives became overnight about whether or not Oprah would make a good President of the United States. Didn’t any of you pay attention in middle school? Sometimes you have to read all the multiple choice answers even if B really jumps out at you. Sometimes option “E” is “Not enough information provided”, “none of the above”, or “sometimes B and sometimes C.” I think all of these are better reactions than 90% of the “Hot takes” on the Oprah subject. I’m not saying you personally do not have legitimate evidence to support your opinion on how Oprah would do as president. It is possible you do. What I am saying is: it is highly unlikely that every liberal/progressive in my social media circles conveniently finished the research necessary to form an informed opinion right before they sat down to watch the golden globes.

But since all of you seem to have done just that can one of you please highlight some of the key points from your research for me? All my other friends are playing some cruel joke where they are fixated on the kinds of arguments I’ve come to expect from conservatives. The ones where you boil a complex question down to a simple point that is easily agreeable on the surface and is based almost entirely in ethos or pathos with no logos to be found. I am going to focus on the one I have seen the highest volume of but believe me regardless of what side of this “debate” you’re on the arguments I’ve seen from you I find equally illogical.

“Oprah doesn’t have any experience in politics therefore she is a bad choice for president.” I had quips w/ this narrative during the Trump campaign and regret not voicing it more at the time. I think my main issue with it is it gets thrown around so nonchalantly and is incredibly loaded.

First off there was a time in our nation that you had to be white and male to be a politician. Do you realize how whitewashed and man washed congress is even today? 91% of the Senate and 88% of the house is non-white[1] (compared to almost 40% of the USA[2]). Curiously enough only a fifth of congressional representatives are women when they make up something like half the country.[1] So yeah I think we are going to have to elect some officials with no experience if we are ever going to balance those scales. Or you know we can make the same arguments the white male executives that run my company make every time they have to appoint a new Senior Vice President who happens to also be a white male. And look I’m not saying experience isn’t a good reason to pick somebody for a job - I’m just saying nothing will ever change if it is going to be a deal breaker every time. You’d think a bunch of millennials always posting memes about entry-level jobs asking for 8 years experience would get that.

Second of all where the hell are you drawing the experience line? Barack Obama had only been a politician for 9 years when he started his 08 campaign. Only 2 of those were in DC. I am sure you learn a lot as a state legislator but I can’t imagine you touch on things like diplomacy and military strategy as an Illinois State senator two things that the president is actually supposed to do. The point being is Obama had not spent anymore time working on peace in the middle east than you spent doing GenEds for your bachelors degree. Actually maybe that explains why he kind of sucked on that front… I joke but I don’t think outside of serving in a high ranking cabinet position there are very many people that you can really say have the “experience” of being president. A general may have all the military strategy in the world but not no the process of a Bill. A 30 year senator probably has the bill thing down to a science but might be completely lost in his first national defense brief. I imagine Oprah has both those two beat on a lot of the soft skills that go into being president such as public speaking and outreach.

Third and most obvious of all - those people with the “experience” are the ones that got the nation to where it is today. (I am just going to assume you probably have some problems with where the nation is today if you do not just go ahead and skip this part.) Look I’m not saying there aren’t people in the Senate, House, Governor Mansions, etc that wouldn’t make great presidents. I am saying that the vast majority of the people in those positions are opportunist, crony capitalist, and/or owned by lobbyist. Like it or not there was some truth to Trump’s “drain the swamp” message and a reason it resonated with people. (I think it is pretty clear that was just a convenient campaign message and he abandoned it minutes after taking his oath but it doesn’t mean there wasn’t some truth to it.) Once you take out the people who are complicit in the broken system you’re left with a pretty thin field of potential presidential nominees to choose from.

I personally want anything but a thin field in the 2020 primaries. I think the most important thing to do is consider all the options on the table. Legitimately research and understand their platforms and differences. And most importantly of all make them take a stance outside of “I am not Trump.” Maybe Oprah will actually put together a team of people and a platform that can offer real progress to the American people. Something that will ignite people not just to cast a ballot for her but also to campaign heavily down ticket to make sure her well laid out plans get have a snowman’s chance in hell at implementation. Maybe Warren, Booker, Sanders, Zuckerberg, or Gillibrand will do it. I do not know. What I do know is that we should not back or discount any of them before they have even announced their candidacy, let along delivered us a platform.

There are a couple of other points/things I wanted to talk about but didn’t find the right place for here maybe I’ll write a different blog post some other time to discuss it. Anyway thanks if you actually read this jumbled mess. I love you!

#oprah #oprah2020 #election 2020 #democrats #liberals #progressives #2020 #oprah winfrey

[spicynbachili1]

Half-Life is 20! Happy Birthday! We are all old!

Goodness me, completely happy birthday Half-Life! 20 years outdated at present. However are you continue to as contemporary because the day you have been born? I’ve been re-playing the sport for the primary time in a few years to search out out. And crikey, it’s a bit good.

Again in 2015, when Half-Life 2 had simply turned a mere 10 years outdated, I went again to replay it and located myself enormously shocked by how a lot I’d forgotten. It wasn’t fairly the magnificent recreation I’d remembered, buried in pacing points, but nonetheless very good.

I forgive myself just a little extra simply when discovering simply how a lot I’ve forgotten concerning the unique Half-Life, what with the extra decade. However I’d assumed it could have aged to the purpose the place it had change into a little bit of an anachronism within the 21st century. You recognize what? It actually hasn’t. Whereas it has its points, it’s nonetheless a very fantastic recreation to play. So I’m going to diverge off right into a “what I’d forgotten” in a bit, however first I need to discuss what I’d remembered.

What I bear in mind most clearly of all was the anticipation. 1998 was an unbelievable yr for video games, and even higher for being enthusiastic about forthcoming video games. And I bear in mind studying these first previews, these first unique screenshots, in PC Gamer on the time. And the factor that almost all blew me away, had me scrubbing at my eyes cartoon type, was that it seemed like a recreation set in the true world!

I bear in mind seeing the photographs of places of work, with tables, espresso mugs, drinks machines and microwaves. And I’d by no means seen something prefer it. Video games, particularly FPS video games, have been set in area! Or in hell! Or someplace totally dissimilar. Right here I used to be taking a look at correct real-life locations, mundanity crammed with pleasure, and it appeared so impossibly thrilling.

Getting my arms on it, Half-Life instantly rewarded this pleasure with what would change into a infamous and genre-redefining opening sequence. Not solely was there the monorail credit sequence, wherein you noticed glimpses of this underground office, glimpses of potential glitches and a probably unhealthy working surroundings, however then when that was over… you simply went to work!

It’s a piece that feels virtually trivial to play it now, with video games having realized a lot from Valve’s starting. Whereas nonetheless someway so many don’t study the lesson that the extraordinary is a lot extra thrilling once you’ve had a dose of the atypical, it’s commonplace to have video games offer you just a little peek at what the world may need been like earlier than the baddies confirmed up. But it nonetheless does it in addition to wherever else. You mill about in corridors, watch folks by means of home windows, ultimately comply with directions and choose up your particular go well with. You continue to strive a number of lockers, blow up the meals within the microwave, after which once you’re prepared, head into the lab the place you’re assigned. After which, after all, all of it goes unsuitable. There’s a resonance cascade (nonetheless no thought what a type of is), and the office is exploding, scientists are dying, and there are terrifying aliens in all places.

What follows is an unbelievable collection of more and more elaborate set items, as Gordon Freeman unintentionally stumbles his manner from researcher to governmental enemy, just because he refuses to die. Crowbar in hand, to play it at present is to expertise every little thing nice concerning the FPS, in some ways higher than the style has provided for years. There’s simply a lot happening, so many surprises, challenges, dramatic modifications in surroundings and circumstance, tiny and detailed corridors, or huge open outside areas battling helicopters and hulking alien brutes.

And it nonetheless appears unbelievable! Sure, blocky and dated and crude, however with such improbable type. It probably helps that gaming is in such a pixelly retro place simply now, to see the inventive type at its perfect. However actually, like a 1920s cartoon nonetheless appears superb within the period of CGI motion pictures, Half-Life stays an aesthetic delight within the gaming way forward for RTX 2070s. The textures are unpleasantly blurry in locations, however past this, it nonetheless efficiently delivers senses of vertigo, horror, gore and scale as a lot because it ever did. Half-Life at 20 is, with some caveats laid out beneath, nonetheless a surprising videogame, and I’m very shocked to search out myself arguing, holds up higher in 2018 than Half-Life 2.

So let’s do not forget that which was forgotten:

All the things I’d Forgotten About Half-Life

Working round on 2% well being

Clearly FPS video games are experimenting with well being once more of late, having spent too a few years with solely “crouch to heal” as an possibility. Now, I like me some crouch to heal, however what it takes away is the daft pleasure of how a lot your expertise of any stage or sequence can change once you’ve minimal well being left. Half-Life presents well being very generously, however it additionally has prolonged areas the place it’s more durable to search out, with such good timing. Getting right into a scrape, and simply making it by means of with 2% well being left, can completely be addressed with a quickload and one other strive. But it surely’s so extremely rewarding to simply hold going, and scramble.

It so considerably modifications my method, having me desperately dashing between obstacles, intentionally not preventing one thing so as to simply scrabble my method to the closest door, frantically smashing crates within the hope of discovering a number of extra p.c to maintain going. After which I’ll arrive on the wall models, and simply drink that magical well being elixir to my fill, and rush out emboldened and preventing as soon as extra. Cor, that’s good gaming.

A number of routes

Over the past decade we’ve had the good pleasure of seeing FPS video games get higher at hiding their corridors. And certainly we’ve seen the style transfer into ‘open worlds’, the place the corridors are gone solely. However Half-Life did it the olden manner. You didn’t must do every little thing only one manner. You would discover the raise and get upstairs that manner, or you could possibly uncover a passage by means of an airvent and climb bins. It doesn’t do it a lot, it wasn’t attempting to be extra, however it’s simply sufficient that you just really feel a better sense of freedom.

Or for those who’re me, you simply really feel nervousness that you just didn’t choose one of the simplest ways, and reload or circle round to see what would have occurred the opposite, and spoil the magic for your self since you’re a large twit.

Moments of pathos

I feel after we bear in mind Half-Life, we bear in mind jokes about Freeman’s mute methods, about how there have been solely three or 4 scientist skins and simply the one Barney (who wasn’t even known as Barney), about foolish barks and enjoyable gags. So once I got here out of the opening explosion to discover a scientist on his knees, trying CPR on a dying Barney, it actually shook me. This felt actually, actually actual.

When did you even see CPR in a recreation? Apart from in a cutscene exhibiting the hateful film model the place the particular person wakes up, coughs a bit, after which carries on working. Correct hopeless CPR the place you’re simply desperately attempting to maintain somebody not-dead lengthy sufficient for a medic to have the ability to assist? That’s what you see in Half-Life, and it actually struck me exhausting. It’s fairly the factor.

The horrible leaping

I’m unsure how I’d forgotten this, however I’d fully erased from my thoughts how terrible the leaping is. It’s a colossal mess. Glitchy, fiddly, susceptible to not working simply once you want it most, and all rendered much more terrible by Gordon Freeman’s apparently travelling all over the place on rollerskates. You roll to a cease, which is ace when ‘skidding’ right into a struggle, however simply garbage once you’re attempting to precariously stability on tiny platforms to succeed in a gap in a wall. Oh the cursing.

It will get even stupider with the mantling. Bear in mind mantling? You needed to crouch, then bounce, and kind of be doing each and neither or one thing to have the ability to attain a platform. It by no means feels proper, or at the least it by no means appears like you’re doing it proper. It’s so, so odd that it was such an enormous a part of the sport, when it was so hopelessly coded. And simply think about leaping off a ladder…

It feels terrible killing Vortigaunts

Actually terrible! In case you’ve performed Half-Life 2 and past, you’ll know Vortigaunts are Gordon’s associates! They’re light aliens, on his aspect, ever-helpful and type. Right here they’re simply attempting to zap you and also you’ve no selection however to kill them. And it by no means feels good!

My child’s obtained a toy stuffed Vortigaunt in his room! That is terrible!

Black Mesa should order from Amazon

That the plant puzzle was nice, not horrible

I bear in mind hating it! I bear in mind everybody hating it! This huge round chamber, on a number of flooring, with a three-headed monstrous plant pecking its mighty plant-beaks on the platforms as you tried to run round. One hit killed you. It was brutal, and annoying, and other than Xen, the bit everybody complained about.

Besides no! Now, I’ve no thought how a lot was 21 yr outdated me simply not getting it for too lengthy, however the entire part is marvellous. It’s a multi-part puzzle, with enormous branching sections to finish in your personal order, to allow a button that kills the bugger for you. All you could do is keep quiet. And yeah, it’s silly that you just couldn’t get onto a ladder from crouch, and that for some motive this made noise, however it additionally meant you had these glorious heart-skippy moments of attempting to scramble away because the mighty beaks started their terrifying pecking the place you simply have been.

Then its eventual destruction is sort of so satisfying! It’s one in every of my favorite bits within the recreation!

The complete prepare part

Much less so the trains. A lot as once I replayed HL2 I found simply how ridiculously lengthy the hovercraft part goes on, lengthy, lengthy after anybody desires it to be there, gosh Half-Life lets the trainlines overstay their welcome. Tracks lie in prolonged gray corridors, on which you journey an automatic wood platform, whereas avoiding obstacles, stopping to filter out areas, journey between flooring, explode bombs, and so forth. And hurrah! Besides you do it sooooo a lot. Again and again. Gosh I used to be sick of the prepare part by the point it was lastly over.

Watching the fights

Now, I hadn’t actually forgotten that Half-Life had the troopers and the aliens struggle one another. That was simply probably the most astonishing factor in 1998, to see your enemies turning on one another, letting you maintain again and have them skinny their very own numbers earlier than you stepped in. However I’d forgotten how good it’s!

The AI is, actually, higher than most you see at present. Troopers run away after they’re practically useless! Gosh, which latest recreation final considered that? They transfer round as a substitute of simply coming up and down behind a wall! How can this be?! And it means the fight they’ve between themselves is fascinating to observe. You are feeling prefer it may go both manner, altering what you’ll must be ready for once you have interaction.

How lengthy it’s

I’d deliberate for this last entry to be a pithy touch upon Xen, maybe confirming it’s as unhealthy as all of us bear in mind, or archly observing that it’s fairly good. I’ve no thought. As a result of regardless of taking part in it over the weekend, and all day at present, I’m nonetheless not there! This recreation is big! FPS video games was once enormous!

However I’m having such a very good time with it. That is large, and for those who’re one of many many individuals who both forgot to be born till too not too long ago, or simply by no means did again then, that is one in every of only a few video games that basically genuinely deserves being performed past its historic significance. It’s a hell of a whole lot of enjoyable to play, and that’s and not using a assortment of “although”s and “for its time”s. It simply is, proper now, an excellent recreation.

from SpicyNBAChili.com http://spicymoviechili.spicynbachili.com/half-life-is-20-happy-birthday-we-are-all-old/

[meadowhilley]

it’s back

Today, my friends, is World Cancer Day. How exactly does one celebrate such an occasion, you wonder? That’s actually what I’m writing to find out. For starters it seems like a fitting moment to break my nearly year-long silence and tell you It’s back.

Not the cancer—I’m still “free,” as far as anyone can tell. No, what’s back with a vengeance is the sensation of living with an ugly and insidious thing growing inside me. The Get-It-The-Fuck-Out-Of-Me urgency that two and a half years ago made me drop everything, fall into a blue vinyl chair, and start blogging straight through my chemo infusions.

I still can’t explain by what internal mechanism this revelation about my compromised physical state triggered a visceral awareness that I’d been living with a different sort of malignancy for decades—a tangled knot of repressed emotion growing more potent and far-reaching as I happily went about the manic business of being a working mom. Or how I understood that my ability to heal bodily was predicated on my willingness to undergo a mental purge. Or how I knew with absolute certainty what I needed to do, even in those foggy predawn moments before the diagnosis had fully resolved into a clear picture of what awaited me in the days and months ahead.

Whether it was some atavistic survival instinct that kicked in or what they (dismissively) chalk up to “women’s intuition,” whether it was divine inspiration or something closer to unhinged delusion, at the very moment I received The Bad News I found myself in A State of Grace, like in a primal garden scintillating with dew where knowledge hangs low on the branch, hungry for the right mouth.

Glutton that I am, I bit. And instantly I came to understand that my body was a book I’d been writing for years without ever stopping to read it. At the center of my story was this malignant enigma, a living organism pregnant with meaning whose tendrils reached greedily through the space-time of my inner landscape, looking to occupy all my vital sites.

Stopping its spread and reversing the cancer’s insidious creep was the obvious goal of our immediate coordinated response. But as my three doctors each took up their weapons—poison, blade, and fire—I lay low like a meadow-turned-battlefield, bracing myself for the onslaught and devising an alternate plan, knowing that the only way to truly best this beastly part of me that fed on darkness was to draw it out, into the light.

So I painted my face. Obviously. Spent a week wearing only dresses. Naturally. Loitered seductively at the mouth of what I guessed might be my deepest emotional cavern. Patiently. Until one day, in the small round mirror of my compact case, I glimpsed a dark shade emerging against a background of shadow. Taking a sultry step forward in my red two-inch heels, I watched discretely as it advanced with predatory appetite, hypnotized by the allure of an easy meal. And at the very moment it crouched to pounce, I turned to face my Beast-Me.

Go ahead, I told my cancerous self, feeling beautiful for once and more powerful than ever. Show me how ugly I am inside. You will not be the first.

My plan wasn’t particularly well-formed. I was totally winging it, to be honest. With hindsight though it’s possible to list the major steps of my cancer-fighting campaign as:

1. Perform strength to psych myself up for the encounter.

2. Position myself as bait.

3. Coax the unknown threat out of hiding.

4. Subject it to intense examination.

5. Force it to reveal its origins.

6. Love the thing to death.

All on my terms, in a place where I felt safe and strong and well supported.

In other words, I would write the cancer out of me.

Out, like, in the open. Words confided to a private journal were not going cut it. An invasive species so entrenched would have to be pulled up by the roots into the glaring light of day and subjected to full exposure. This pathogen and its attending pathos should be left to shrivel and wilt under public scrutiny, I understood, until having lost all potency conferred by me, their host, they would reveal their true, pathetic nature and leave me whole.

If you’re not an exhibitionist by nature, writing publicly about your intimate past and present is highly ill-advised. Maybe you’re someone who cares about what people think of you. Or maybe you have a family to protect, a job you’d like to keep, or competing interests and hobbies. In my case, all of these inhibiting factors were compounded by the muzzling effect of four hundred years of injustice perpetrated by the West, which we have systematically justified by painting the Other as radically different—a threat to be mastered, a contagion to be contained.

How could I possibly talk about my challenging 13-year relationship with my African ex-husband, who was also a Muslim, without perpetuating these longstanding stereotypes and adding fuel to the fire? How could I tell my story without doing more harm than good? Fully aware of the risk that my experience would be generalized and my words misinterpreted, I felt compelled to write all the same. Common sense and fear, I came to feel, were my greatest enemies. To build a bridge, you’ve got to reach dangerously across the gaping abyss.

All this to say that hitting “Post” was never a mindless gesture for me. It required a force of will that ran counter to reason, and caution, and instinct.

Announcing that I had cancer in a Facebook status update was admittedly a shameless bid for your attention, like dancing carelessly on a mountain ledge. But I wouldn’t have sought your attention if I didn’t think it was absolutely vital to my healing. You, dear friends, were the gentle sunlight that scorched my disease better than a daily dose of photon rays at +$3,000 a pop x 25 sizzling pops. It was because you agreed to bear witness to my self-designed form of treatment by reading me as I attempted to decipher the book of my body that I got better. You did that. Each one of you made a difference. And it didn’t cost us anything but time.

So now it’s back. That oh-shit-here-we-go-again feeling, like there’s some creature dragging its claws through my gut from the inside. Only this time I’m even more reluctant to write publicly. For one, I’ve been writing privately, trying to build a bigger bridge, in silence, and that jealous pursuit demands all the attention I can afford to give it.

But, UGH. The world changed two weeks ago just as it did two years back with the diagnosis, and ten years before that when my first marriage ended: abruptly, dramatically, alarmingly. A rug has just been pulled out from under our feet, and with my introvert laid out in utter shock, my extrovert showed up, a rival sibling looking to compete for the same scant resources of time and attention, demanding I Do Something Now.

Don’t! shouted my introvert, albeit weakly from the floor. Keep to yourself, it pleaded. Focus your angst inward. Don’t be so arrogant as to think you have something of value to say in the here and now. Lay low. Leave this one to the activists and experts.

Reasonable arguments, all. But here’s the thing: on the subject of hostile takeovers, I am something of an expert. I devoted my doctoral dissertation to groups who used writing as a means of liberating themselves from their longtime oppressors. I lived for six years in a country that had only achieved its independence a generation earlier. Even more instructive, I personally survived the experience of being colonized twice: first mentally, by my domineering ex, then physically, by the cancer, whose insidious advance reminded me so much of the guy’s subtle way of methodically getting me to give up my freedoms, one by one, until it seemed I had nothing left. Claiming that others would be better suited to speaking out against the authoritarian power grab by the big bully now occupying the White House, that someone else would do a better job describing the risks his tyrannical methods pose to our liberty and national character, it’s all just bullshit, a way of shirking my responsibility.

So it’s with a certain authority that I can assure you: the cancer plaguing us today may wear a name other than ER/PR HER2-Positive Invasive Ductile Carcinoma, but it is just as deadly. It’s not only an oppressive ex haunting my own little psyche, but our current President doing a serious number on our collective consciousness. This shit’s not just in me this time, but it’s in you, too. And it’s going to poison the world over if we don’t all stand up to stop it now.

One of my first thoughts on getting the diagnosis was, Did I bring this on myself? My ongoing attempt to answer that question without wallowing in self-loathing has brought me on the greatest journey of my life, towards healing. The same can be true for us as a country.

Yes, we brought this on ourselves. But we also have the means to fix it. We are all cause and cure both. Niit niit mooy garabam, the Wolof proverb goes. Other people are our own best medicine. We need to turn and face this ugliness together, give ourselves permission to speak out, and shout a resounding Fuck No as one. The disease may have found its way into US, but in no way is it a definitive reflection of who we are. Not if we refuse to play host to its toxic presence.

So how should we celebrate World Cancer Day? I’ve come up with a couple suggestions, based on personal experience:

1. Start by making yourself feel good and beautiful and strong.

2. Don’t be afraid to draw fire. Welcome discomfort. Actively displace yourself.

3. Coax this shared malignancy out into the open.

4. Take a good, hard look at it, understanding that it offers us the blessed gift of insight.

5. Figure out where it comes from, and how it managed to take root within us.

6. Spread beauty and love in abundance.

Writing was the tool that best fit my own hand, but everyone has a custom-made means of expression, an instrument perfectly suited to doing the patient work of parsing out what’s healthy in us from what is corrosive. My girls got a great kick out of the Turnip sign that recently sprang up just feet away from the spot on Main Street where an enormous Trump sign has for months been planted like a foreign flag, causing Brewster residents to wonder who we are as a community.

Me, I can’t wait to see what you all come up with.

#worldcancerday #trumpturnip #resist #blacklivesmatter #nowall #nobannowall #cancer #sanctuary #antigone #longwayhome

[casualarsonist]

RDR2 Last Impressions

Click here for my formal review of the game:

https://casualarsonist.tumblr.com/post/179824865660/red-dead-redemption-2-review-ps4

Full disclosure, I haven’t finished RDR2 yet. I’ve put close to eighy hours into the thing, at a guess, and I still haven’t finished it. There was a time I was hoping to 100% it, and while that’s not an impossible task, it is exceedingly time consuming, and not something that I’m ever likely going to care enough to do. The last few hours of my time were spent just begging for it to end, and failing that, I simply reached the point where I finally stopped caring about finding everything, put down the control, and left. Late into my run, once everything in the game finally opened up, I did feel a gentle nudge that gave me the energy where there was none before to keep pursuing the side-activities and challenges. But everything in the game only opens up in the epilogue - the last eight of nearly one hundred hours, once the main story has been completed. It’s unprecedented, in my experience. And it’s impressive, if frustrating. But it’s also incredibly draining to waste so much time trying to figure out ways to do things that you don’t realise can’t be done until after the main part of the game is effectively finished. And by the time the game comes round to letting you have free-reign, it’s been going on far too long for you to care anymore. 

My final impressions of Red Dead Redemption 2 are...mixed. The main issue being that the problems I identified much earlier in my playthrough never resolved themselves, and only became more frustrating as I was exposed to them again and again. My horse never stopped veering into trees, or into rocks, or into people in towns and giving me a wanted level. I never really managed to completely master the temperamental, complicated, and unresponsive controls. The game never stopped feeling like it was a bloated copycat of its predecessor, enslaved by the tropes its towering forerunner established. One of the biggest issues I experienced was during one of the multi-stage side missions that exist in the world to be stumbled upon by unsuspecting travellers. These missions are one of the most valuable parts of the game’s design, filling the world with organic moments that advance themselves with the passing of time, but are unmarked for the player, meaning that your thirst for exploration is the only thing that can help you find and unlock these stories. One of these ambient side-missions involves helping a railway foreman with the construction of part of the line. You have to track down an employee stealing from him, and later chase off some aggressive competitors, and after a time the construction of the railway is supposed to progress along its intended route until it’s finished. Mine did not. Instead, after I had cleared the land for the company’s advance, my railway just up and disappeared. I first discovered this when I unwittingly rode into a sky-coloured chasm in the ground, tumbling for a good 30 seconds before reloading the game. Once, maybe twice, a blank, featureless ridge of flattened gravel would load in, but nine times out of ten, it would simply be a void - a massive hole in the ground that let you see through into other parts of the map. If your horse fell in, anything it was carrying would be lost, which caused me to nearly break my controller after I lost the first perfect raccoon skin I’d found in dozens of hours. This void cordoned off an enormous section of the eastern part of the world, meaning that if ever I wanted to travel from west to east I’d have to divert my journey by three or four minutes to skirt around it, and if ever I forgot that it was there, well, too bad. This enormous glitch was never fixed in the weeks I played this game, and was a thorn in my side for dozens of hours, and had the game not been quite so long, perhaps this issue wouldn’t have progressed into such frustrating territory, but with the amount of time I spent in its company it became a real burden, which is analagous to much of my experience with RDR2. 

After those eighty hours I felt that the game failed to rise above its flaws. It’s often a breathtaking experience, but it’s a tiresome and frustrating one too. Which isn’t to say that it’s not worth the price - I honestly don’t think I’ve ever gotten more of ‘my money’s worth’ out of a game than when playing RDR2; I mean, how can one complain when there’s so much to do? Make no mistake, it’s not that Red Dead lacks value in any kind of tangible sense, but my overall satisfaction in the experience was noticeably waning for something that was seven years in the making and with all that money thrown at it; for something that should have been a generation-defining experience. No, sadly, what RDR2 represents is a triumph of efforts and budgets beyond anything else. It’s a testament to what a massive team of developers and artists can do with infinite money, as much as it is a testament to the bloated product of such a lengthy and ambitious project. For all its virtues, RDR2 is not a particularly well-made game. In fact, all the apocryphal tales of its creation simply serve to render more starkly how lacking it is in terms of its core design. It is by far the most cumbersome of Rockstar’s games, easily the least fun to actually play, to control, and while I was initially happy to credit this as a commitment to recreating the slow, methodical pacing of life in the time in which it is set, at this point I’m far more certain that it’s actually just shitty design. Picking up God of War after putting RDR2 down was a breath of fresh air, and as Kratos smashed his fist through the lid of chests in order to wholly retrieve whatever spoils lay within, I came to realise that having to watch Arthur crouch down, creak open a lid, and one-by-one take out each individual item again and again and again had left me somewhat traumatised. God of War is an engaging experience, but rarely forces the player into inconvenience for the sake of immersion; it only ever asks you to do things that it plans on rewarding you for doing. Every chest has a useful item in it, every corner of the game has something worth seeing. Collectibles are hidden, but not obscured, and in following your instincts you can find treasures that are both practical enhancements to your character, and small emotional rewards that positively reinforce your behaviour. There is plenty of exploration to be done, but there are no true dead-ends. There is a point to everything. And while the hack-and-slash genre is, in my opinion, mechanically crude and difficult to innovate, God of War is a superbly refined product. RDR2 is not. 

I would compare it to assembling a ten-thousand piece puzzle. There’s a certain respect that such a mammoth undertaking earns, undoubtedly. Whether you enjoy that kind of thing or not, you can’t help but admire it. But it’s an activity of diminishing returns, and after a while you find yourself just looking at the box to see the finished product. In the same way, after a time I wanted to skip out on RDR2 and read the wiki. In lieu of that, I found myself just railroading the story missions towards the end, which isn’t difficult, given that the entire second half of the game is a series of dumb shooting galleries. There’s a very clear turning point, after which literally every single mission follows the same formula, and that formula always revolves around killing everything in sight, which feels even more out of place given that it runs parallel to your character more frequently voicing his doubts about the gang’s brutality. It’s no coincidence that during this latter half of the story is where it becomes abundantly clear that the game’s shooting mechanics are terrible. Lock on, fire, lock on, fire, for five to ten minutes straight. All depth falls out of the bottom of the gameplay, and it feels like the team either ran out of time or inspiration and just phoned in the final ten hours of the main story. When the game finally reaches its climax, the tension in the story is squandered as it forces you into a pointless, repetitive, and overlong fist-fight, and then things finish up with little sense of closure. For those that played RDR1, Marston’s death feels like a fitting, if crushing, end point for that character. But there is little of that sense of satisfying drama here. Instead, the game’s epilogue, rather than wrapping up loose ends, takes the place of the ending of the third act. Again, while I might have initially thought of it as a bold move, that feeling quickly wore away in favour of the opinion that it’s just shit writing. 

It’s not entirely mismanaged, though. The fact that the game forces the player to follow through with the debt collections for a long time before offering a choice, and then eventually forcing them to let the debtors go, is an example of the gameplay smartly imparting the definite shift in Morgan’s personality. It understands your discomfort at having to enforce them, and then slowly changes its own rules to reflect the changing mindset of the character. And the game is superb at retrofitting a backstory to the existing characters carried backwards from RDR1: Dutch’s final speech of RDR1 is repeated almost verbatim here as a ploy to get himself out of a bind, and in that moment completely redefines his end in the first game from a man musing on his own animal nature, to a shyster, full of empty words and devoid of real convictions and values; a pathetic human being. But for the largest part, the moments of genuine pathos are disrupted by the irreverence of the world, or by the repetition of ideas for the sake of drawing out the story, or by the disconnect between the narrative and the gameplay.

Red Dead Redemption 2 feels like two games serving separate, conflicting interests. On one hand it’s a third-person survival game that relishes the grind; a slow, methodical approach. It suffers from many of that genre’s flaws, such as unrefined controls, and a struggle to strike a balance between labour and frustration, but its dedication to the realism of its interactivity endears at times. On the other hand, it’s also a typical Rockstar narrative of crime, morality, and revenge - largely humourous, but retrofitted into a bloated body that doesn’t match it. It’s a teenager’s head sewed to an old man’s torso, with a brash intention that its creaking frame can’t properly execute. Rockstar’s writing style is a bad fit for the introspective themes the narrative aims for; the Housers cannot help themselves but plant their tongues firmly in their cheeks, and while the era in which the game is set is ripe for parody, that parody doesn’t mesh with the seriousness of the main character’s struggle. John Marston was a man whose nature was never legitimately contradicted by the gameplay. In RDR2, ‘Arthur Morgan the character’ can be in the middle of a crisis of conscience when the player decides it’s time for ‘Arthur Morgan the avatar’ to start the bandit challenges, leaving a trail of bodies in their wake. It’s just too disjointed. And I don’t care what genre you’re talking about, or what kind of achievements the game itself has earned, a 3:100 story-to-content ratio is never going to offer a wholly satisfying experience. No matter the price, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth here, but whether that’s going to feel like a good thing or a bad thing at the end, well, that’s an outcome a little less certain. 

#red dead redemption 2 #rockstar #ps4 #western #video game #review #open world #action #arthur morgan #dan houser #houser

[shuvani99]

I had a hard time holding my newborn. When I was pregnant, I practiced carrying  a string bag filled with oranges, and a sack of potatoes. Weights and hydrotherapy also played an important role. When my daughter came along, I found it very difficult to hold her, and wrangling her as an active toddler was a challenge! Breaking my back again when she was three, saw me unable to carry her; even navigating a roundabout in the car would see me bite my lip to avoid screaming in agony.

I am a planner and think a great deal of the future. I guess when one has had so much out of their control, you grip onto that which you can have power over. My spine is a case in point. Working with weights each day and walking are things I can do to prepare for the future. I had researched spinal cord stimulation, and sought experts in this particular field. I was excited about the prospect of being able to cope as my back pain became more challenging (the fusion sites are already wearing out with age). I was so young when the damage happened, which means that preparations and reparations have to be considered now. I thought of my daughter as a teenager and young woman. I want to travel with her, and maybe one day be a hands-on grandmother to any children she may have. I want to be able to hold those babes in my arms. Unfortunately, a site of major damage is the thoracic region. Holding anything in my arms is agonizing. For a year, I harboured hope that spinal cord stimulation would help. It was to be my insurance policy; a nod to the next decades of life.

Last week, my daughter and I saw Evita at Sydney Opera House. It was a spectacular production, which left us spellbound. Tina Arena as Eva Peron, was stunning, and deserved the standing ovation which she received. My girl asked lots of questions about Argentina, and we researched it’s history online after we left. We stayed in Sydney overnight, having a leisurely brunch before seeing my spinal specialist. Armed with my latest test results,  I followed the doctor to his rooms, unaware of what was to come. I assumed we would be arranging to have a trial device implanted.  Spinal stenosis and fibrosis at the site of former surgeries meant that there isn’t adequate space to weave the wires through. I can’t even have epidural injections to manage the pain. Having surgery to place a stimulator would be far too hazardous, as it turned out. It was a lot to take in. It means I have to reimagine my future, and my daughter has to reimagine hers. Simple things like sitting or carrying luggage, going on long treks or long-haul flights will be that much more difficult.

I went home and cried. I watched the movie Frida, as I laid on my Frida cushions. It will be a reimagined future. I am doing everything in my power to keep my bones and muscles, kidneys, lungs and mind strong in preparation. There will be no hope of relief nor reprieve from the merciless pain. It shall always be there, a constant reminder of the brutality of my youth. It will limit what work I can take on, and how far I am able to drive. I will be damned if it limits what I can do with my daughter. She stubbornly took my suitcase off of me the other day, on our way to our hotel room, giggling as she ran ahead, despite my protestations. She reaches out her arm to me, and carries my backpack on her strong shoulders each and every day.

  We shared the bus ride to RPA with an eloquent middle-aged gentleman who was homeless. He was Italian, and ate a tomato as though it were an apple. He reorganized his bag, and when he stood, he rolled deodorant under his armpits, before gifting the family opposite a drawing. He read a book on philosophy as he sat back down, finishing his tomato with relish. As we departed, he tipped his hat. I would love to know his story; I’m sure it is brimming with pathos and triumphs. The most remarkable stories are.

I have always been fascinated by birds, butterflies and dragonflies. How wondrous it would be, to have wings. For over half my life, I have been fused from my shoulders down, with  limited range of movement. I am grateful that I have been able to walk, and if my mobility were to cease tomorrow, there would be no lamentations. I just want (and need), to be well enough to see my daughter through to her adulthood.

For a moment, I regretted the time and money spent seeing specialists and having all of the tests done. What a monumental waste of a year! Then there was the matter of the space all of this took up in my brain. I had put things off ‘until after I had the device fitted.’ Ironically, as I reflect, I see that these days had only brought my daughter and I closer together. We had stayed in the city, walking and laughing in the rain. We brunched and cheered on street performers. We had been together, smart phones displaced from our hands. I found myself outside the Downing Centre courts, a place I had avoided since the court case I endured at sixteen, trying to get a bad man to pay for the vile things he had done. I stood outside for fifteen minutes, waiting for our bus. Lost in my thoughts, the Italian gent, tomato in hand, tipped his cap and we talked. Mental illness had robbed him of a lot, but not his heart. Physical injury had robbed me of a lot, though not my heart. For a moment, we were in simpatico. He gestured for my girl and I to board the bus before him, and I glanced out the window at the imposing courts. I had come back to retrieve that girl.

Perhaps, none of it was about a spinal cord stimulator. Perhaps it was to give me leave to spend quality time with my daughter. Maybe it was also about facing another piece of the past. Maybe it was to show me that I can organize travel and hotels and that I am enough for my daughter. I am the mum that she needs. Perhaps it was to affirm that I need to let go of fear. The worst has come and gone and I am still here. Maybe I was meant to meet the Italian fellow, and be encouraged to eat vine-ripened tomato’s as though they were apples. He even ate the stem, and I realized that nothing is ever wasted. The same is true with lives.

I have been referred to a physical therapist, and my specialist is going to review my case at the next practice meeting. As I reflect on the year gone by, I see no wastage. My daughter and I had experiences we would never have had, and seen parts of Sydney that we wouldn’t have. We have met magical people, been in magical shops, had magical food and stepped out of comfort zones. The only thing left to do is eat a tomato as though it were an apple.

  Frida, Tomatoes and Giving Pain Meaning I had a hard time holding my newborn. When I was pregnant, I practiced carrying  a string bag filled with oranges, and a sack of potatoes.

#Back Pain #hope #Inspiration #Spinal Cord Stimulator #Spines #Sydney #Tomatoes

[its-just-like-the-movies]

Malin Åkerman in The Final Girls

Time for a performance review! A big shout out here to Decider’s Joe Reid (operating on the handle @joereid on twitter and tumblr, go check him out) whose enthusiasm for the film on those sites and his contributions to The Film Experience podcast (thefilmexperience.net, even more fabulous) encouraged me to see this gem. Now on with the show!

I’ve spent a good while trying to write a review of The Final Girls itself, but struggled in trying to get a real paper out of it after having seen it for the first time about two months ago. Plenty of parts stuck in the memory fine, but I felt qualms that the screenplay was a strong in parts and weak in others as I remembered, and wanted to be sure that the performances were as sturdy as I was espousing they were. A few weeks out from my Women-in-Film class, which capped itself off with analyzing several horror films and which I was taking the first time I watched the film, the road bumps I’d noticed before felt less egregious, and the highs slightly less high, though that may have been out of familiarity. None of the ways it trips up are worth everything it gets so wonderfully right, and even all the things it adds to itself. Adopted a fairly warm style to the milieu it’s parodying, The Final Girls is constantly finding new angles and scenarios for its characters and narrative without collapsing into itself the way Cabin in the Woods and Adaptation do in their final half hours. Its premise, of a handful of high school classmates accidentally hopping into a horror movie and trying to return home, possibly with the characters from the film in tow, The Final Girls’s flaws are a little more scattered, and I wished it was willing to bust up the genre more than it did, but it remains a real pleasure throughout as much through the script as it does through a surprising amount of visual style and the commitment of the performers. Editing, sound, and cinematography do a lot of work, like in the American Horror Story: Murder House style way of the characters realizing they’re trapped in the film the same way one of the show’s protagonists realizes she’s died, the entire sequence of setting off the booby trap the characters have laid for Billy Murphy, the final battle between him and protagonist Max. It’s stylistic virtues aren’t just more than you’re expecting but also find multiple new ways to present itself across all fronts.

The cast, too, is uniformly strong and almost completely in sync with the film’s tone and variant style of performance, with characters of the now behaving differently than characters of the then. It’s a culture-clash comedy across decades of acting and genre style, save Adam DeVine being allowed free reign to discordantly improv in that exact way he always does. But aside from him, all the other characters are given room to develop and hilarious lines, often in unexpected ways. The trajectory of Nina Dobrev’s antagonistic ex-best friend of Max’s gives her room to stand on in her nastiness, more often driven by uncouth survival instincts than it is classroom bitchiness, but also allows her a surprisingly poignant conversation to explain herself with Max and her friend Gertie, and plenty of funny lines for Dobrev to chew on. Early on Dobrev’s Vicki politely nixes the theory they’re in Heaven because Max is Jewish, and repeatedly asks where on Earth she can get an axe once they arrive in camp. Alia Shawkat’s Gertie gets great lines and gives even better reaction shots and freak-outs, and Angela Timbur’s nympho counselor Tina gets funnier the more caricature-ish and regressive her character becomes, in contrast to all the character development going on around her. Taissa Farmiga continues to display real talent at jiving between the insane and the sincere tones of the bizarre horror projects she signs on for, a slightly wackier, genre-friendlier version of that grounding Kristen Stewart’s charisma can do, and she’s a welcome anchor for the whole project. The film’s spread out enough that it’s not all on her shoulders, but she carries a larger range of emotional and narrative tasks than almost anyone else in the cast and delivers on all fronts.

That “almost”, though, is because the most challenging part by far is the dual role of downtrodden mother/actress Amanda Cartwright, and that of her most famous character, the sweet Camp Bloodbath counselor/bodycount filler Nancy, who Max three years after her mother has died in a car crash. Both roles, but especially Nancy, is played by Malin Åkerman, with incredible delicacy and an almost confronting amount of emotional transparency. In her only sequence as Amanda, we see learn everything she’s trying to get and trying to avoid. We know from her posture, the way she walks to the car, that Amanda thinks she probably isn’t going to get whatever part she was auditioning for. Or maybe she’s just feeling pigeonholed, again, by how she’s seemingly trapped in limbo because of her Camp Bloodbath role, and is sick of dealing with another director who only sees her as that. Maybe both, but it’s the limbo stuff she tells Max about as the two drive home. Farmiga and Åkerman give a full triage on the mother-daughter dynamics between them as Max worries about money for bills until Amanda throws them out the window, cranks the radio, and the two dance to “Bette Davis Eyes” in the car as Amanda marvels at her daughter, calling Max the only thing she ever got right. But it’s a panicked reaction to Max spilling coffee over her headshots that’s the last thing Amanda ever says before they’re clipped by another car, sending them careening down the road and killing Amanda. Max lives, still grieving her mother three years later, and adamantly refusing to attend a 20th anniversary screening of the two Camp Bloodbath films three years to the day later on the grounds of that grief, at least until the guy running it offers to do her homework for her in exchange for her showing up.

From there our crop of human characters gather together and are transported into Camp Bloodbath itself to escape the theater burning down, rendered in slo-mo as the ashes of a toke ignites a spilled bottle of alcohol. They meet the car carrying almost all of the camp’s counselor’s twice before agreeing to hop on the third time, and from there we meet Nancy herself, gloriously back-lit with sunlight as she wakes up from a nap in the back of the buggy. And it’s here, as she asks a visibly startled Max if this is the first time she’s been away from home, conveying the earnestness of the character without pushing it in the slightest, that a very basic but incredibly effective tenant of Åkerman’s performance reveals itself: a rejection of subtext. Max spends their scenes together fluctuating between treating Nancy as her mother and Nancy as Nancy, but Åkerman never leans into “playing Amanda” and stoking Max’s confused feels. Her actions are completely derived from the character, though we do see small glimmers of what Amanda herself may have put into the role. As one of the characters of the film-within-the-film, Åkerman also has to keep her style of performance within that of the 80’s horror films The Final Girls so affectionately skewers, and again Åkerman plays it completely straight. She fits snuggly into the “Nice Girl” trope without ever pushing it, and even as she starts grasping and accepting not just that she’s a film character but that she can be more than that, Åkerman always plays her as a film character.

In group scenes Nancy is neither more or less compelling or active a presence than any of the other characters, and Åkerman doesn’t try and foreground her when the moment isn’t earned. As interesting as her reactions often are, neither she nor the camera try and highlight her in moments that are about everyone. From the moment the humans decide to try and save the character’s lives Max insists on shadowing Nancy, leading them to have multiple scenes alone together: Max asking Nancy not to sleep with Kurt; Max stopping her from sleeping with him; Max comforting Nancy after being told she’s not fit to kill Billy; preparing weaponry to kill him together; recuperating in an abandoned church; all of these scenes have a surprising amount of pathos and, in the latter three cases especially, travel to genuinely unexpected emotional territory. Farmiga and Åkerman’s scenes together quickly become the heart and soul of The Final Girls, but it’s even clearer than it’s Åkerman who’s walking on a much higher tightrope, not just fulfilling the demands of the script but enriching them with an almost alarming level of directness in her playing. There’s an almost contradictory presentation of depth here, as Nancy doles out old and new dreams for herself, giving us a greater understanding of her without removing the character completely from her archetype. I wonder how much to even say about the specifics of these scenes, given everything I’ve said about how unexpectedly lovely and poignant they are. If this ends up persuading anyone at all to watch this movie, I wouldn’t want to give up exactly what those moments ultimately are. But dammit, they’re worth some description, some mention, some unqualified exuberance, so here’s a kind-of run down of the latter three scenes I referenced at the top of the paragraph. That said, feel free to skip it entirely.

<<<All of these are similar kinds of scenes - as I mentioned, the film is more than willing to repeatedly stop and explore the bond between Max and Nancy as their relationship with each other, Nancy’s relationship to her own personhood, and their relationship to escaping the film all fluctuate - but each goes off on a track that’s rendered with more heart than you expect going in. This is not to lessen her early scenes with Max, before Nancy knows she’s in a movie, but they aren’t as rich to look at compared to what happens once the tea is spilled. The first, as Nancy grapples with the idea that she’s doomed to die by design, sees her confess to Max a future for herself that sounds remarkably similar to the one Amanda ended up getting before she died, invoking that common interview question of how much of themselves an actor puts into any given part. Her second big scene comes while prepping tampon arrows to torch and shoot at Billy with Max, and it’s here that she starts to really wonder what her life could be like once they defeat him and escape Camp Bloodbath. Nancy’s joy at being told by Max that she can go to college and create a real life palpably fills the room as she starts babbling all the things she wants to do with herself, tripping up at being told people don’t shop at malls anymore but going right back on pace saying she wants to learn what online is and use it, get an education, a daughter, and live in California. You can feel Nancy coming alive in this moment, see her hurriedly think of anything and everything she could possibly want to do with herself, overjoyed to share these ideas with Max, just as excited, if not more so, at the possibility of living with Max once this all ends. I quibble with the structuring of her final scene, a last goodbye in the face of imminent death, but the actresses more than make up for it as Max finally, tearfully reveals that Nancy is played by the woman who is her dead mother, accepting this with the stride she has everything else up til now while doing her best to comfort Max. It’s a painful goodbye, calling back to Max’s final scene with Amanda, and I ugly cried through the whole last minute of it.>>>

Throughout, Malin Åkerman realizes her scenes with a nakedly direct level of emotional candor, grace, and genuine goodness, all without seeming to strain in the slightest. It’s a resistance to pandering that only makes the performance more powerful, and a pretty damn indelible rendering of an odd character, strewn with easy pitfalls a lazier actress might’ve hopped into. Åkerman doesn’t just fulfill the requirements of the script but brings adds to them with a dizzying level of sincerity and depth. Who knows, only 38 films into the 2015 film year - yikes, that feels even smaller typing it out - how well she will stack up next to performances from Julianne Moore, Jada Pinkett Smith, Lise Roy, and who knows how many others But from my viewpoint, not just of that year’s crop but totally outside it, hers is an unbelievably tricky part realized better than I could’ve ever hoped for. It’s weirder than almost anything that’s ever been up for an Academy Award, or anything that’s ever been within throwing distance of a nomination, but to my mind it’s certainly deserving of recognition beyond the few horror-themed awards shows and websites that covered it and scattered laurels from online critics and people like me who Have Blogs And Only Have Blogs. The Final Girls feels like the rare meta-anything that manages to stay wholly original its whole runtime, resisting the urge to ironically (or not) wind up succumbing into becoming the kind of project it’d been skewering up til that point. At just over ninety minutes, it’s a treat no matter how you slice it, but the crown jewel of this project is doubtless the miraculous turn that Malin Åkerman pulls off. It’s for sure the kind of “heart and soul of the movie” part that doubtlessly would have impact by design alone, but Åkerman does one better and makes Nancy remarkable by making her wants and her feelings as real as anyone else’s, keeping her in her own time and style of being, and making her completely extraordinary as a result.

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