#back in that time: actually did the edit for the directory and since was already in PS did a nav version too

[crazycatladysims]

A few years ago, Theo left Moonwood Mill and hoped they'd left all their problems in the small town. But years later, the invitation to their mothers' wedding reminded them that some ties are simply too hard to leave behind…

realized NOW that never posted here the poster that i made for Urge entry in @simstorydirect, so here it is.

#not the best summary but was trying to be brief (i talk to much brief its a problem) and feel like theres so much going on in Urge that #could NEVER resume that >< #back in that time: actually did the edit for the directory and since was already in PS did a nav version too #urge:extras #see a i know how use capitals just choose not to #forget the fact that i also forgot to post this #did have a draft just like these from august 23 #oh boy

[myrmica]

mer my dear mutual mer i would like to ask you how do i get into lifesteal

HELLO FARLANDS!! you've come to the right place. Step into my office.

this is an interesting question with a variety of different answers. a lot of the time people seem to direct you towards videos rather than stream vods, which does makes sense, because they're more accessible and the barrier to entry is definitely less daunting.

but lifesteal videos aren't episodic, they're designed for a viewer to be able to jump in with little to no context at any moment. they throw a lot of information at you fast as hell, and events spanning hours and hours of footage are condensed down in ways where most of the meat gets cut off. i have a hard time absorbing information from or remembering what happens in lifesteal videos because of the editing styles... i don't claim that this isn't in large part a taste thing, but in videos you miss the complicated character moments, and the sense of pacing/chronology, and all of the things that happen that don't translate well to video logic. and you don't get to see (as much of) the dimension of things where the fact that everyone is trying to make videos can be character and story relevant information. all of these things are what make lifesteal season 4 my favorite minecraft roleplay ever in the world. i guess i would say that i do like lifesteal videos, but mostly in relation to the livestreams.

all of which means that while pretty much any lifesteal video ever produced can make for a perfectly serviceable starting point, it doesn't really get you any of the things about lifesteal --i-- care about. and you're asking ME. So.

what is the deal with lifesteal in general?

you probably know at least some of this already, but for the sake of the thing:

lifesteal is a server based around a mechanic where, upon killing someone, you gain one of the hearts off of their health bar up to a maximum of 20. if you lose all of your hearts you're banned, but this is temporary and players can be revived. it's also a server where you're free to steal and destroy builds to your heart's content, and people toy with breaking the rules they do have often. so it naturally follows that lifestealers are generally interested in pvp, and have a social system where the most important relationships are your teammates, who come before basically anything else. lifesteal IS roleplay but it isn't scripted, and what they mean by unscripted is that the outcomes of a conflict can't be predetermined, because that would defeat the point—if something goes wrong, it goes wrong. (and hopefully, it goes right for somebody else.)

why season 4?

short answer, because it's the one that has the guys i care about in the situations i care about. the long answer is at 9k words and not even close to done yet so you're gonna have to wait a bit on that one.

the medium answer: while you could go back and watch through season 3 in detail, or try to just start watching season 5 and keep up with stuff live as it happens, that's not what i did. i have it on good authority that the mer guide to lifesteal season 4 works, because i did that, and also because my friend whose initial reaction to lifesteal was "wow this subz guy is loud..." and then radio silence for months has since sat through 30 hours of princezam building stream of his own free will. see review below:

lifesteal can be sort of an acquired taste. i think a lot of the time it either clicks for you or it doesn't, or you have to see the right thing and then suddenly the appeal starts making sense.

luckily, the aftermath of zam betraying mapicc & ro in season 4 tends to have this effect on people, and it's a good jumping in point! i didn't actually start watching season 4 chronologically, i started by bouncing around the last couple weeks of the season and quickly discovering that it was bonkers fucking crazy and i needed to know more about this "eclipse federation" thing... so i don't really think knowing how it ends makes it less fun to watch, and if you wanted to just poke around at random and see what's up i wouldn't stop you. i went back and sat through everything between that aforementioned betrayal and the end of season 4 chronologically after i already knew how things ended up and it's thoroughly enjoyable that way. maybe even better than the alternative, because you're less likely to get caught up in how frustrating some of it can be. but if you would rather know as little as possible going in you can definitely give it a shot, and i do think there are parts that are probably even more fun if you don't know what's coming.

how do i do that though?

and here is my gift to you. when i watched through season 4 all i had to go off of was the vod archive spreadsheet, which is great & wonderful & awesome & the best thing ever, but it does kinda just have you clicking links blindfolded if you don't already know what's going on.

so eventually i started keeping track of vods as i watched, in a google doc. it has clips and/or timestamps and summaries for basically every vod in the second half of season 4. it's a little embarrassing because it records a bunch of my initial reactions to stuff but c'est la vie. it's also 85 pages long (it was 105! i edited my notes down!), but again you can jump around to get a lay of the land if you want, and how much stuff you skip is completely at your own discretion. have at it.

#m #lifesteal #lifesteal smp #lssmp #asks

[countessofravenclaw]

The 2022 writing Advent calendar: Day 4

4. Christmas Wishlist

Timeline directory: This is happening between SL Seasons 1 and 2

Luna picked up a silver glitter pen from the cup of pencils she had on top of her drawer. It had been a wek since they had arrived back to Cancun and she did miss her friends she had made in the past year, and she really missed Roller, but nothing could keep her from being excited for Christmas. Now it was time for one of her favorite holiday traditions. 

IT WAS TIME FOR HER WISH LIST! Luna was terrible at art, but she still had, since she had been a kid, written all that she wanted for Christmas on paper with her special glitter pen and decorated the whole list, before giving it to her parents. She never expected to get everything she wished for, but Luna always loved what her parents got for her. 

As she wrote the last thing to the list, she suddenly remembered that she would need to figure out a way to ship gifts to Simon and Nina, back to Buenos Aires. She had gone to Cancun’s huge merchants' market a couple of days ago and had gotten Simon a new guitar pick and a new beanie. For Nina, she had found this beautiful hand-woven notebook. 

Luna opened her phone and was about a google how you’d ship things from Mexico to Argentina when a text from Matteo popped up. Luna smiled at it as she read it. She quickly added one last thing to her wish list. 

Suddenly her phone rang. 

“Hi!!!” Luna answered Nina’s facetime call enthusiastically.

“Hi Luna! How is it going there?”

“Fine,” Luna answered, “We're back here at the Cancun mansion, but I miss Roller already. Excited about Christmas, I just finished my wish list, but I am sad that we can’t spend it together.”

“Christmas with Ambar…” Nina furrowed her brow, “I can only imagine.”

“We’re not spending it together per say…” Luna rolled her eyes, “Mom cooks them the dinner and stuff, but then we’ll celebrate together just the three of us. How are you spending Christmas?”

“You don’t wanna know,” Nina sighed, “Morning is with Dad, and evening with Mom. They fight about it every year.”

“But now you have a new thing to focus on,” Luna smiled mischievously, “A boyfriend.”

“Yes,” Nina laughed, “but we can’t spend Christmas together, even if we want to. Mom is not letting me, since apparently “family traditions are more important”, but in my family that means arguing, so I’d rather skip it. But actually… I am actually meeting Gastón parents, on Friday.”

“Nina, that is exciting!” Luna jumped up from her bed and almost dropped her phone.

“Yes, it really is,” Nina smiled, “I mean, I am his girlfriend. I still can’t believe it.”

“Sounds like a Christmas wish come true,” Luna continued excitedly.

“Yeah, I am so happy, but also scared.” Nina shook her head, “I don’t know why I never realized his mother was Isla Perida.”

“Who?” Luna asked confused.

“She is the most well-known real estate agent in Buenos Aires,” Nina explained. “She deals in all kinds of expensive houses, just like the one you live in.”

“Wow, well that sounds nice.”

“Well, anyways, enough about that. You said you were writing your wishlist, wanna tell me whats on there?” Nina asked, “I already sent you your present. Hopefully, it will make it there in time.”

“Sure!” Luna said picking up her wish list. “So, I asked for this skate customizing kit, that I saw on this website. It has all kinds of beads and paints on there, so I can make my skates whatever I want.”

“Are you going to change your skates?” Nina asked.

“Nooo, not yet,” Luna laughed, “But I might want to customize them a little bit, and they won’t last forever. Then I can make my new skates myself. Maybe they could be yellow.”

“Okay, what else?”

“Oh right, back to the wish list.” Luna jumped back down on her bed, “Then I asked for a couple of new Mexican necklaces, a new pillow for my room, this shirt I saw… it was so cool you should gave seen it. It read: “I am limited edition”. So cool, right?”

“I don’t think that is grammatically correct.”

“Anyways… then I asked for some colored markers, new socks, and a banjo.”

“Luna why do you want a banjo?” Nina asked with a bit of concern in her voice.

“Because it looks so fun when people play it.”

“But do you know how to play it?”

“Well it can’t be that hard, it looks like a guitar.” Luja shrugged, “And Matteo knows how to play that, so It seriously can’t be that hard.”

“I don’t think you play banjo exactly the same way as a guitar,” Nina was still looking skeptical. “But if that is what you wished for, I hope you get it.”

“Oh, and the last thing on my list was that Matteo comes back from Italy.”

#2022 Writing DCLA+ advent calendar #Lutteo #Gastina #Soy Luna

[hydrus]

Version 560

windows

zip

exe

macOS

app

linux

tar.zst

I was suddenly without internet for a while, so there was no release last week, but everything is back to normal now, and I had a great couple weeks' work. The 'edit times' dialog can now handle multiple files.

full changelog

editing times for multiple files at once

If you launch 'edit times' on a single file, everything is the same. If you open it on a larger selection, it will now show, in a summarised way, the range of each particular time type, and how many files in the selection have or do not have a time set there. The controls all work as before, but in general, when you set a time, all files are now locked to that new time. Give it a play and you'll see how it all works.

SInce we don't always want to set exactly the same time to a set of files, but rather ideally a similar, staggered time, there is also a new 'cascade step' system in the multiple file version of the dialog. Every time-edit you open up has the ability to enter a little step, say 100ms, which will cause the dialog to set each successive file in the selection to be that much later (or earlier, negative values are allowed!) than the last. This way, if you have a bunch of files of something contiguous, like a comic chapter, that all have different, merged, or otherwise awkward import times, you can now manually sort them in the UI using tags or hackery and apply a new import time based on the first file plus a few milliseconds each time. Thereafter, any time you sort those files by import time, they'll also be nicely in page order time, just as if you had imported them all together from one directory.

I am quite happy with the new dialog, and I plan to copy some of the new techniques I figured out to other dialogs for similar better multi-file handling. I'd also really like, as we have discussed before, to tackle a 'cascading' tagger in 'manage tags', so we can quickly set 'page:n' tags to many files at once.

misc

In v559, it turns out I did make a '54 years ago' mistake, on moving files from one local file domain to another. This is fixed, and on database update, any borked timestamps that were saved should be corrected too. Let me know if you encounter any more issues.

Mr Bones and the File History Chart are now under the database menu.

There's a new checkbox under 'files and trash', 'Remove files from view when they are moved to another local file domain'. This actually re-introduces the unintended behaviour we had a couple weeks ago, which was happening under 'remove when trashed', but targeted to the correct logical trigger.

The gallery downloader cog button now has a 'don't add new dupes' option, which discards the query_text/source pairs you add if they are already in the download list. If you need to paste a hundred queries from a big mishmash list, I think this will help.

As a very brief test, I've added 'sort files by pixel hash'. If you have some pixel hashes in your current query, this will make them stand out, but the rest of the sort data is meaningless. I had wanted to try out some similar hacky new tech with 'sort by perceptual hash', but thumbnails don't have quick access to that data yet, so it'll have to wait.

I wasn't sure when my internet was going to come back up, so I dumped a bunch of time into some longer cleanup jobs. There's a ton of updated code behind the scenes, particularly around the way files get informed about new metadata, but nothing you need to care about. I have some new plans here and can see the path to getting all sorts of new metadata commands integrated into the shortcut and undo systems. I changed a couple thousand lines, so there may be a typo bug somewhere--let me know if you try to set any unusual content changes and it throws an error!

next week

Now we have tech that relies on file order, I think it is time we get the ability to conveniently reorder thumbnails. This will also help when I figure out cascading tagging in 'manage tags'. I'd love to have reordering by simple drag and drop, but that may be too complicated to slip into one week. I'll see what I can do.

I have quite a few messages to catch up on, which I will try to tackle Saturday.

#release #Youtube

[taperwolf]

It's been said that in computer science, a field where many processes are measured in nanoseconds, the actual shortest measure of time is the ohnosecond: the duration between when you hit "enter" and when you realize you just screwed something up, possibly irretrievably.

I got reminded of this a couple of weeks ago I blew away the SIFAS Daily Theatre Database with about six keystrokes.

To explain, the database uses SQLite, a package that stores all the SQL tables of your database in one file. This makes it very easy to use on different operating systems and with different languages, and I've used the SQLite libraries and the command line program to build both the website and various scripts to maintain it. But while a lot of things are automated away, I do still need to open the file directly with the command line to make certain changes (mostly adding 'theme' categories and such).

Since I've done this a lot, the command to do that is in my command line shell history — so I can hit ctrl-r (to search the previous commands) and ".sql" (matching the end of the file) to pull up that editing command, and just hit enter to run it again. Of course, to do that, you have to be in the directory with the file. If you're not, it opens a new, empty database file with the same name in whatever directory you are in, and then none of your SQL commands will work, because the tables aren't there.

So in the process of doing a daily update, I had done exactly that. I exited out, and I deleted that new file. I then went to the correct directory. And you probably already have caught what I did wrong — when I pulled up the previous command that had ".sql" in it, it was the deletion command instead of the editing one.

I realized my mistake before the enter key had stopped moving downward.

Everything worked out all right, after the panic attack. Fortunately, the website works by having a separate copy of the database file on the web hosting server, which I upload the working database to after each update — so I was able to pull that version back down, and re-do the updates. Which definitely validates that practice, at least.

(I do have other backup systems, though they would probably have required more effort to restore from. I should finally get all my personal projects into a proper version control system, but I've been dragging my feet on that for over a decade.)

The real lesson here is to be mindful of what you're doing, of course, and to have backups for when that inevitably fails.

(But on the off chance anybody here knows, is there a way to keep bash from saving 'rm' commands to the history?)

#personal #ohnosecond #sqlite #computer programming #sifas daily theatre database

[cristobalrios]

All of them. All of the joy. Spread it. Fuck you. <3

Spread the Love! Meme | Accepting!

This is an aggressive request to spread joy, but. I will take it.

Also, here's the jerk :p person who requested all of them I mentioned earlier.

1. What's a roleplay blog whose characterization you admire?

So we only have one thread but @therapardalis Thera is fun and honestly what Cris needs at this point in his storyline. He's in an extremely reclusive part of his life and Thera has quite honestly an excellent balance of light conversation ("light" as in small/not delving into details, not content-wise)/asking (and answering) questions and not pushing for details even though he's clearly got some Stuff going on. It's good for him to meet someone like Thera and know he's not the only person going through this kind of thing, and would be more so if/when he learns a bit more about her story and obviously their stories are not identical but they're similar enough in certain ways that it'll be good for him and make him feel less alone.

2. What's a roleplay blog whose writing style you admire?

@agnespjurati (@talvenhenki) Orion, both for Agnes when they RP her and the fics they've written. Also, I know this is stepping out of the RP sphere but shout out to @procrastinatorproject because I adore Lili's fics<3

3. What's a roleplay blog who always has the best plot ideas?

I'm saying Dean @assasenach again because we have the most threads and we talk ooc about ideas/headcanons all the time every day, so.

4. What's a roleplay blog whose artwork/edits/icons you admire?

@musikcr Nix! We just started following each other but her blog is so pretty, honestly. Like I said when I reblogged your promo, your edits are gorgeous.

@heartfledged Sarah's blog is ridiculously gorgeous and also her art is beautiful, whenever she'd post her stuff in the Discord I would have heart eyes. So pretty.

@assasenach Dean has great taste in aesthetic and it's simple compared to the other two mentioned but clean, efficient and pleasing, and I always like the edits he makes.

5. What's the roleplay blog you've been writing with the longest here?

Yeah obviously obviously that's Logan @manenimittliv, February was our, what? 7th anniversary of the first interaction between our first ship Erik/Anna with my Phantom blog @princeofconjurers and their OC (we'd interacted a little bit before that with their Raoul but that was like, a week or something before that, and then at sometime even before that very briefly with their version of Christine's father Gustave Daae but I didn't realize that until sometime later that that was also their blog). We've jumped multiple fandoms together and we pretty much autoship. They're my bff and the only originally online friend I've ever gotten to meet irl (three times) and I love them to death<3

6. What's a roleplay blog who's an absolute joy to talk to ooc?

The people I talk to ooc the most are @manenimittliv Logan and @assasenach Dean my current bffs so obviously I adore talking to them ooc (although I wouldn't say Dean is "joyful" talking to him does make me happy, so before you say anything, shush). I've primarily been talking with @iamselfmade PJ out of character but we're RPing now too but yeah, he's great and I love doing streams with him. I said Serena @empathicstars already for the "friendly mun" thing which honestly this question is rather similar to so maybe I should save some people for that question below, slkdjf

7. What's a roleplay blog you love whose character you didn't know until you started writing with them?

Well, besides OCs, I'm not currently RPing with any canon characters I did not previously know the character before I RPed with them, but I'll say Vasher back when Sarah @heartfledged RPed him on @cosmoshearted (which I would still love to continue/redo if/when you ever revive him as you've said you might do in the past, as well as the stuff with Resool, and I'm always up for stuff with Av<3). I did not know anything about that fandom but it turns out my brother-in-law loves it and he got my mom to start reading those books and I'm just like oh! I've heard of that! That's where Vasher is from (I realized it because my mom mentioned Kelsier who I also heard of from Sarah too) and I will get around to reading it at some point, I promise.

Also, PJ made a blog of a character I don't know and followed me on it and we talked about him and Elnor doing something so I'm gonna put @fifty-one-doc here too

Shout out to the OCs who of course I didn't know until I started writing with them but who I love, Anna @manenimittliv, Lorian/Paris previously Sylar @assasenach, Ellie @mclti, Manny @perfection-reached, Thera @therapardalis, Cheryl @ckingsbury1967, Av @heartfledged, any and all of my friends' OCs! Those are just the ones I'm RPing with rn. Give me all the OCs, I love them.

8. What's a roleplay blog with a friendly mun?

Dany hasn't really been RPing anymore but @empathyvslogic still counts. @heartfledged Sarah is great too. Jeanette @ltbroccoli, Logan @manenimittliv (yes I'm mentioning you again), Jamie @livedtough / @quantumstarpaths, Courtney @starsdestined, Eros @tongowheel, Hope @astraldestiny, Fool @strings-have-been-cut, Gin @alyafae, so many people I'm sure I'm missing some (as well as the ones mentioned above). Honestly everyone is friendly and I love all my mutuals<3

9. What's a roleplay blog whose dedication you admire?

So I've answered this question several times now but I know I did not include @mclti when I talked about multis and though I only roleplay with Ellie, Spyro deserves a mention for that "multis are so dedicated" thing I talked about here. I'm sure I'm missing things again too, but yeah. <3

Also, again I have to do a shout out to Lili even though it's still not RP because @mappinglasirena is a beautiful project and although it's technically more for fics, since that's what Lili writes, I as a Cris and Holo Squad RPer use it too, for RP purposes, so I say it counts as an RP resource blog like I did with the directory. And Lili is dedicated to this and I am here for it. I love our conversations about the tiny little details dearly.

10. What's a roleplay blog that always keeps you pleasantly surprised?

As other people have mentioned, this is kind of a weird question but I'm gonna go with Dean @assasenach. I'm not surprised by anything Dean does anymore, so "keeps" me pleasantly surprised isn't exactly right (although it is for certain things like whenever he compliments me I'm like ????) but this is here because the ship caught me by surprise. Like, OC/Canon (with me playing the canon) is my sweet spot when it comes to ships I fixate on, but I did not know they'd be shipped together until Dean posted a short fic about Cris and Raffi talking about then Sylar but now Lorian, Raffi asking Cris why he accepted his reassignment and Cris asking her what "t'hy'la" means and I was like Oh. Oh I like this, they're really cute (Note: I was already really liking their thread before Dean posted that fic, they had a great dynamic and chemistry and I was here for it) and now we're here.

11. What's a roleplay blog you admire from afar?

Good question. Umm, I'm going to say Jamie @livedtough / @quantumstarpaths because we've talked plenty ooc and we're in several Discords together, I love Jamie, but we haven't actually RPed together and I would love to change that at any time (we have talked about some things in the past throwing ideas around just never got to writing them).

Kame @cadetxtilly / @maldonadonco again we're in a Discord together and ze's really sweet but we haven't RPed, so

And just. Anyone in the Discords I'm active in that I have yet to RP with/have only RPed with a little bit. I love all of you.

#positivity #long post

[episims]

Tweaks to Graphic Rules file that helped me with The Sims 2 crashing and flashing (Win7 + Nvidia card)

Since I was encouraged to share these (thanks to everyone who gave their opinion!) you’ll find a rather lengthy explanation of what I’ve done under the cut.

First, since I can’t stress this enough: I’m on Windows 7. Nothing stops you from trying this with Windows 8 or Windows 10, but personally I believe that especially on Win10 the cause of problems with this game might be totally different, so don’t expect too much from these tweaks. (Actually, don’t expect too much from them in any case - every setup is different and what works for me might not work for you.)

Other important things: These tweaks are not what you should start with if you experience problems with the game. Make sure that you’ve already followed at least the tips 1-3 from this list! And take your time testing those changes in-game as well - they might just have solved your problems already. 

You'll need Notepad++ or a similar program to be able to make changes to sgr files. And you absolutely need to back up your game and Graphic Rules file before tweaking anything at all. 

Graphic Rules.sgr is located in Program Files, TSData\Res\Config directory of your latest EP. Searching by ctrl+f will greatly help you to find the lines I’m talking about from this point forward. Remember to save the file after making changes!

All three tweaks explained here are separate from each other. You can test one of them or experiment with all of them, whatever suits you. 

1) Enabling driver memory manager

The first thing I've changed from my Graphic Rules is actually an old trick. I’m going to list it here as I haven’t tested the other two tweaks without it.

# never trust the driver to manage its own memory boolProp enableDriverMemoryManager true

By default this variable is false, but I’ve changed it to true. My own experience is that this alone doesn’t unfortunately solve any problems, but since my game still seems to be a bit more stable like this I’ve just had it turned true ever since I found about it. 

2) Disabling texture memory estimate adjustment

This helped me with my game often crashing when I loaded multiple lots in a row, but who knows if it has something to do with the pink flashing as well. Since I got the idea to try this by checking what device properties other manufacturer's GPUs use this one probably only applies to Nvidia cards and my instructions for how to put this variable in use definitely only work with Nvidia. If you want to try this with some other manufacturer’s graphic card you’ll have to figure out how to adapt it to those first, but I think this variable is actually already in use for most GPUs apart from the ones by Nvidia.

If you want to test this tweak start by opening <pcname>-config-log.txt, located in My Documents\EA Games\<TS2 folder>\Logs. Scroll to the very bottom and you’ll see the line Device properties. There’s a list of variables under it - check if you can see boolProp disableTexMemEstimateAdjustment true somewhere among them. 

If the variable is there you have no reason to try my tweak as your game already uses it. But if it’s not, here’s how to make Nvidia cards recognize it. Let’s go back to Graphic Rules.sgr:

if (match("${cardVendor}", "NVIDIA")) logSystemInfo "Card: NVIDIA"      # on NVidia cards, create a dummy texture on device creation to prevent BSODs      boolProp createNVidiaWorkaroundTexture true      boolProp disableTexMemEstimateAdjustment true

By default only boolProp createNVidiaWorkaroundTexture true is there. I’ve simply added boolProp disableTexMemEstimateAdjustment true right under it. That should force all Nvidia cards to use it. If you pay attention you might notice that the same variable is actually part of the if / else sentence that follows - but if you checked your config log and didn’t see it there it means that your game only takes into account the first variable of that sentence, so we can just ignore that. (The latter note of that sentence is pretty interesting btw.)

3) Setting the virtual memory size as the texture memory size

Edit: If you’re in doubt about what number you should use here, please read this! Also, the seti textureMemory -line you’ll want to edit is the very first one in the file :)

This is the really weird one. The title pretty much tells what I did - and it actually stopped my game from flashing pink. I’m not sure if it was just changing the value bigger that did the trick but I ended up using the virtual memory size as I wanted a value that’s based on something at least.

Anyway. If you want to test this you can check your virtual memory size from Control Panel -> System and Security -> System -> Advanced System Settings -> Performance / Settings... -> Advanced -> Virtual Memory / Change... (this is the path for Win7, but I think it’s something pretty similar for other Windows versions as well). At the bottom of the window you can see Recommended and Currently allocated values. If the two are already the same you don’t have to do else than copy that value to somewhere. If they are not, choose Custom size and change both Initial size and Maximum size equal to the Recommended value. Copy that value to somewhere, then press “Set” and “OK”. 

As you can see my recommended virtual memory size is 12198 MB. So at my Graphic Rules.sgr the texture memory setting currently looks like this:

seti textureMemory       12198

Now if your actual texture memory size is already bigger than the size of your recommended virtual memory I don’t see any point in changing this. But if the value here is lower... well, I have no idea why, but changing it to a virtual memory size worked for me. 

Alright, that’s it. If I wasn’t very clear with some part feel free to ask about whatever might puzzle you, or if you have any thoughts about this in general please do share! And if you end up testing these tweaks I’d love to know how they worked for you.

#text #text post #ts2 problems #sims helpdesk #tutorial #kind of #phew #it took me a lot longer than i thought to write this #but here it is

[emoboijk]

MYG | Lo-Fi Beats (05)

Lo-Fi: an aesthetic of recorded music in which the sound quality is lower than the usual contemporary standards so that imperfections of the recording and production are audible.—fluff, angst, idol!au

prologue :: 01 :: 02 :: 03 :: 04 :: 05 :: 06 :: epilogue

1,928 words

p.cred

Despite everything, it is nice to be home. The familiar smell of your grandmother’s cooking as she putters around the kitchen. The sky, which looks so different than the one in Seoul. The sounds are different too, although you can’t pinpoint why. If you were going to force a banishment on yourself, this would be the place to go. And of course, that’s exactly what you had done.

You turn with a sigh away from the window and go back to your grandmother in the kitchen. She’s stirring a large pot on the stove, and you lean against the counter when you say, “That smells delicious.”

“I have many skills,” she says, adding a seasoning you don’t recognize, “but this one is by far the most useful of them all.” She steps away from the stove to press her lips to your cheek comfortingly, “Hungry?”

You shrug, “Not right now. I’m thinking of taking a walk actually.”

“By yourself?” she asks from the fridge, her eyebrows raised.

“Yes?” you say cautiously, confused.

She sighs and turns back toward you. “I’m worried about you dear,” she says with a frown. “You loved that job in Seoul. And the Mins tell me that you and Yoongi have had a fight? What’s so serious you had to come back home, hmm?”

You chew on the inside of your cheek before leaning in to squeeze her shoulder, “I’m fine, I just missed you is all. And there are lots of jobs here. I wanted to be home.”

She looks at you skeptically but goes back to her cooking. You walk out before you’re further tempted to tell her the truth.

You like to think the air is warmer now that you’re further south, but that could just be your imagination. The roads are quiet as you walk down a well-memorized path, waving to a few neighborhood kids and ahjummas as you go. You don’t even have to think about where you’re going, your feet are already taking you there.

You try to make it at least as far as Yoongi’s house before checking your phone. But you never do.

And you’re not sure why you check, there’s never anything you want to see. You’ve been ignoring texts from Jihoon and Minji for weeks now. None of the members have bothered reaching out, and other work contacts have all given up. The only text you replied to was from Bang-sajangnim, apologizing. And of course, the only person you really wanted to text you was Yoongi. And he never did.

You’re in front of Yoongi’s house by the time you tuck your phone away again, feeling like crying. You nearly jump out of your skin when you hear your name called. You turn around to find a familiar ahjumma in the window. Yoongi’s mom.

She runs down the porch steps, which you refuse to look at because of the memories, and greets you on the sidewalk. You bow respectfully and she pats your arm, “Aish, why are you so formal now? You’re practically my daughter!”

You chuckle, pain spreading through your chest like heartburn. “How are you?” you ask politely, hoping she’ll let you leave soon enough. You’re surprised she still speaks to you at all after what you did.

“I’d be better if you and Yoongi made up,” she scowls. Mrs. Min never was one to beat around the bush.

“Ahjumma,” you sigh, a fresh set of tears pressing against your eyes as you aim your gaze anywhere but at her (and those damn porch steps).

“I know what you did,” she says so seriously that it makes you look up. And she’s frowning, nodding her head mournfully, “You broke his heart.” She says it so definitively that you feel it like a knife through your chest. She looks up again and adds, “But I know you love him. You were there for him...even when his family wasn’t. So whatever has happened...just fix it. I won’t accept anyone else as my daughter-in-law!” She makes this last, bold, claim with a laugh before running back into her house at the sound of an oven timer.

It makes you want to smile, but you can’t get your lips to work that hard anymore. You immediately turn around and go back the way you came.

By the time you get back to your grandmother’s place, you’re already late for work. You change quickly, rushing out of the house with an apple half-eaten in your mouth and your grandmother scowling at you; she’s disappointed you’re only eating an apple and she’s disappointed because you’re working at a grocery store (“And with all your potential!”).

But the grocery store gig isn’t bad. It’s routine, requires very little thought process, kills time. Although the mundanity of the tasks does you give you almost too much time to think about...everything. You kept telling your grandmother that there were lots of jobs here...you’re not sure that’s true. For video editing and production Seoul might be the only place.

You’re knee deep in these thoughts when you hear a familiar, cold voice say your name. You turn around in your workstation to see Minji, her face dark and her arms crossed. She’s glaring at you like she has no other purpose in life.

“You bitch,” she scowls.

You sigh, a small smile on your lips. You missed her. “How did you find me?”

“Your grandmother’s address was in the staff directory,” she rolls her eyes, glaring at a customer who dared approach your counter before doing so herself. She leans against it and says, “I went there first, and she told me where you work. Big upgrade. Definitely see why you left the city.”

“Minji,” you sigh, “It’s not that simple.”

“Isn’t it?” she says, looking at you for the first time without a glare or scowl, just confusion and hurt, “I wouldn’t know, huh? Since you haven’t bothered talking to me in over a month.” You sigh again, shaking your head, but she cuts you off, “And you are going to talk to me now because I used vacation time for this. I’m risking my trip to Jeju for you. When are you off?”

By the time your shift is over, Minji has deflated slightly. She’s still angry, sure, but now that her mood has settled you see the real pain and betrayal in her eyes. She’s sitting across from you at the coffee shop next door, staring at the latte she ordered.

You don’t speak first; couldn’t if you tried. Your throat is choked up, something like guilt stuck there. A few minutes pass before she finally sighs, “What happened?”

When she looks up there are tears in your eyes, and she frowns at the sight. You open your mouth to say something, but no words come out. Minji sniffles and talks, less to you and more just...aloud, like she’s thinking out loud, “Everything’s messed up now. Yoongi’s this close to moving to Japan with Daniel Ito, the boys are all acting weird…” she looks up, “You love Yoongi,” she sniffles again, “I know I joke about it a lot...but you guys...you’re soulmates. Why would you break his heart like that? Why would you leave?”

You’re crying now, slow tears that fall down your cheeks rapidly, but you don’t make a move. There’s a knife in your chest twisting slowly at her words, at her news of BigHit. Your fists are clenched beneath the table and her expression strikes the killing blow. You tell her everything.

“Why would he blackmail you?” she says once you’ve finished. There’s a pile of napkins on your side of the table from all of your crying and blowing your nose.

“He said Yoongi would be easier to manipulate,” you sigh. Minji snorts and you almost crack a smile at her response. But then you remember what she said earlier, “It worked, though, if he’s considering moving to Japan—he’s considering that deal.”

“And it’s a crap deal,” Minji says, frowning, “I guess the original contract would have granted him all this creative and travel freedom, but they revised it—it’s less money, less freedom…”

“Then why would he take it?”

Minji looks at you seriously, “You’re not there.”

“Well,” you say, feeling frustration in your chest like an ever-expanding balloon that’s going to pop, “tell him not to do it; force him not to.”

Now she’s looking at you like you’re stupid. “As if,” she rolls her eyes, drawing on the table with her finger, “You and I both know that there are only a few people who could talk him out of it, and I’m definitely not one of them.”

“Then...the boys? Ask them to do it; surely, they don’t want him to go.”

“No,” Minji sighs, defeated, “Of course they don’t. But they also want what’s best for him, and they won’t fight him on his decisions...He’s usually so well thought out...plus, they know this will just cause a bigger rift than is worth it. His decision is made.”

“He can’t…” you ground your teeth together, clenching your fists. Pain runs through you so deeply that you didn’t know it was possible outside of a physical injury, but it hurts like you’ve been eviscerated.

“If you don’t want him to go, you’ll have to tell him yourself.”

“I can’t go back there, Minji,” you run your hands through your hair, “if Daniel finds out…”

“What does he have on you?” Minji reaches across the table and clasps your hand, squeezing tightly, “There has to be some way around it.”

“He threatened my grandmother,” you sigh.

“To kill her?” Minji whispers.

You almost laugh, “No, no. Just...her mortgage and hospital bills...we’re barely hanging on as it is.”

Minji sits back with her eyebrows raised, and you can almost see the cogs in her head turning. She chews on the end of one of her fingernails as she thinks. “Financial stuff, huh? How could he manipulate that?”

“I don’t know,” you shrug, “I just...I freaked and came home.” Now that you’re talking about it aloud, you feel stupid for not asking those questions earlier. But you’d been so scared...aside from Yoongi, your grandmother was all you had. Now she was all you had.

“Let me do some research, okay?”

You nod your consent and Minji stands from the table and heads for one of the public use computers in the corner, busily typing away on the keys. You suppose there’s a reason she’s one of the main researches for the video department.

You watch her for a moment, counting the seconds to see how long you last. But you can’t help yourself. You pull out your phone and open up your text thread with Yoongi. The last message you’d received from him was a picture of Taehyung and JK goofing around; it made you smile despite yourself. Before that was a message asking if you were alright, and before that his confirmation that he would meet you at 5:45. You felt a pang in your chest.

Before you could think anymore you typed out a quick message and hit send, your heart racing.

Just don’t go.

You stared at it for a long time, but a reply never came. You suppose you shouldn’t expect one. But before you could dwell on it any longer, Minji came back to your table. She folded her hands over yours and said, “Two things. One, you suck. It didn’t even take me twenty minutes to realize this guy is full of shit. And two, Daniel Ito is full. Of. Shit.”

author’s note—okay so the whole story up until this point has been in past tense but this chapter is in present tense which i totally did on purpose because of art and creativity

06: reunited ↝

for more of my works check out my m.list

#rosynamjoon #bts #hyunglinenetwork #bangtanbuds #bts x reader #suga #suga x reader #min yoongi #yoongi x reader #bts fanfic

[alexandergsp-blog]

Which Is Greatest For Listening To Lossless Music On Mac

No, I always convert my audio to AIFF or WAV first. When looking for top-of-the-line AIFF to MP3 converter app, it is best to take a look at the choices. In these codecs, you need to use software program to easily convert to each different format if you should in future, with out having to re-rip. I consider I've 1 m4a, so I basically persist with the mp3 format, as I seem to recollect some mp3 modifying devices did not acknowledge the m4a format immediately, alac to flac converter online so when points like entire counts bought right here up, I used to be all the time off by one. FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) is a musical file format that ensures a high sound high quality, as it retains all the audio info. That is why it's called a lossless format, not like MP3, for example, which sacrifices the highest and lowest end of the vary in favor of creating smaller audio recordsdata. VIOLA! The idiot proof guide to converting ALAC to FLAC, whereas retaining the tags. Press on Convert" button to start out changing APE, Apple Lossless or FLAC information to 24 bit WAV or 24 bit AIFF. It is that simple. Pro Studio Masters is another US-primarily based hello-res audio store, which has quite a few albums available in a wide range of file formats, from PCM, AIFF, FLAC and DSD. The album alternative is just a little restricted, although there are some intriguing back catalogue gadgets, equivalent to Sinatra and Swinging Brass, in 24-bit 192kHz. Why not download and have a do that totally free FLAC to Apple Lossless Converter, which is specific designed so that you can convert Flac file to lossless codecs. Together with Flac to M4A, Flac to Apple Lossless, Flac to APE, Flac to WAV and more. Inserting IF NOT EXIST "d:%~pI%~nI.m4a" into the above command after DO will skip converting files that already exist within the vacation spot directory. Now technically each AAC and alac to flac converter online are MPEG-four. However AAC is allowed however ALAC isn't. However actually I called for MPEG-4 to be added for movies, they often have an audio codec of AAC. Bigasoft Mac FLAC file converter includes batch conversion assist. You'll be able to drag and drop 1000's of information to the app, it'll batch convert them one after the other. Click Convert button to start to convert ALAC to FLAC or different audio format you desired. A conversion dialog will appear to point out the progress of alac to flac conversion If you want to cease the process, please click on Cease button. After the conversion, you may click on the Output Folder button to get the transformed recordsdata and transfer to your iPod, iPad, iPhone, mp3 player or laborious driver. Note: The trial model of Sidify Apple Music converter has three-minute conversion limit. If you wish to unlock the time limitation, you may have to purchase the complete version with $39.ninety five. Hamster is a free audio converter that installs quickly, has a minimal interface, and isn't laborious to make use of. Then again, unlike the totally different MP3 and other lossy codecs, compressed lossless formats truly do prevent lots of disc house compared to uncompressed formats (see chart beneath). Since they sound almost indistinguishable from WAV and AIFF, lossless audio presents a robust argument for ending up in your virtual crates. It is wanted to differ FLAC to WAV because it could really remedy the problem of FLAC won't play on iTunes, QuickTime, Dwelling home windows Media player and much moveable devise in addition to maintain the audio high quality. The Most interesting cda to mp4 on-line click reference: the way to convertcda to mp4 proposal used how do I convert from cda to mp4 on-line keep CD Ripper: MetaDataGD3 Symphony - prolonged classical fields CD Ripper: naming sections max size elevated from one thousand to 10000 chars CD Ripper: metadata analysis - crimson miss-matches proven in daring (for colour blind) Sadly, not all media gamers and gadgets are appropriate with M4a, that features small dimension of the recordsdata and high-quality of sound.

Part of the Actual codec suite, Real Lossless too hasn't any very special options that make it stand out. Similar to WMA Lossless and Apple Lossless, it was created to fit in a codec suite, however unlike WMA Lossless and Apple Lossless, there is no such thing as a hardware support and software program assist is proscribed. Compression is on par with most other codecs, but it is reasonably slow to encode.Convert FLAC music to iPhone, iPad, iPod or MP3 gamers, and many others. AC3 Converter can convert AC3 to MP3 to import AC3 to Adobe Premiere, Remaining Minimize Categorical, Remaining Lower Professional, Windows Film Maker, iMovie, Sony Vegas, and many others for editing. It makes use of the newest ALAC codec and Lame MP3 encoder which is mostly believed because the the perfect MP3 encoder.

[chiseler]

Larry Cohen Isn’t Alive

Writer, producer and director Larry Cohen, who died on March 24th at age 77, rightfully earned his spot among the Pantheon of low-budget independent American filmmakers.

Like so many great satirists before him, Cohen had a knack for using a good story, off-beat characters, misdirection, humor, and monsters to disguise some pointed commentary about the most sacred of our sacred cows: childbirth, religion, cops, race, the military, AIDS, health care, and consumerism. And he always did it in a hugely entertaining way, squeezing the very most out of tiny budgets, small, fleet-footed crews, and simple guerilla tactics.

The artist responsible for Q: The Winged Serpent, God Told Me To, and the It’s Alive! films was a maverick, an independent’s independent, who wasn’t afraid to put a wild story on the screen and populate it with oddball characters (that Michael Moriarty would become his standard lead in four films in the ‘80s says something). If Cohen owed a lot to Sam Fuller and Roger Corman, then most indie directors who’ve come along since owe a lot to him, and the evidence is right there in their films.

Even when he was making low-budget monster pictures, Cohen’s films were always character-driven, so when it came to casting even the smallest part he was looking for people with interesting voices, faces, and personalities. He populated his films, in short, with the modern equivalent of Forties character actors. It’s no surprise that he would so often choose to work with like-minded maverick young actors like Moriarty, David Carradine, Karen Black, Sandy Dennis, Candy Clark, even Andy Kaufman. At the same time, though, Cohen also went back to those old films, hiring great character actors like Sam Levine, Broderick Crawford, and Sylvia Sidney.  With casts like that together on the screen (many of them there simply because they wanted to work with Cohen) it’s sometimes easy to forget you’re watching a horror movie.

It seems Cohen was born with a little too much energy. Years before getting his degree in film from the City College of New York, he was already selling scripts to television. In the short years following his graduation in ‘63, he was creating shows that would go on to become classics, like Branded and The invaders. Hearing it now, he almost sounds like the kind of guy you’d like to punch.

After ten prolific years as a television writer, Cohen finally made the expected jump into film directing. But Cohen didn’t go to Hollywood to do this, and lord knows he didn’t aim for the mainstream. Although considered a blaxploitation picture today for some reason, Cohen’s directorial debut, 1972’s Bone, begins like a standard home invasion film a la The Desperate Hours or Five Minutes to Live, as would-be burglar Yaphet Kotto  takes a wealthy white man and his wife hostage in their palatial home. When he sends the husband out to get money, though, the crime film becomes a social satire about both race relations and the generation gap. The wife begins to fall for her kidnapper, and the husband starts falling for a young hippie chick he meets on the way to the bank. In later films, Cohen would mix and match genres in a way that hadn’t been seen since the W. Lee Wilder wierdies of the Fifties.

His next two films were both fairly straightforward blaxploitation numbers, and both Black Caesar and Hell Up in Harlem would become  genre standbys.

It was in 1974 that what is considered Cohen’s golden era would begin. Between ‘74 and the early ‘90s, Cohen was writing and directing the films he wanted to make. They were films that were completely his own, more than a little odd at times, and utterly memorable. For a career that lasted over half a century, having a Golden Era that ran nearly twenty years ain’t too shabby.

Switching from blaxploitation to horror, Cohen made It’s Alive! starring the great John P. Ryan. On the surface it’s a horror film about a killer baby. It’s also a conspiracy film about some nefarious shenanigans at a large pharmaceutical company, and a social commentary about the power of the press to destroy innocent lives. At it’s heart, though, it takes The Bad Seed a step further in exploring our deep fear of children and the screaming bloody horror of that most beautiful of miracles, childbirth.

Using the power of suggestion and some fantastic performances (many of the actors here would become members of Cohen’s stock troupe), coupled with some solid direction, clever cinematography, Rick Baker’s special effects, a Bernard Herrmann score and one of the most effective trailers of the Seventies, this low budget killer baby film caught a lot of people off guard. It was smarter and slicker than anyone would’ve expected given the budget, and was a big hit for Cohen.

After that success he came back two years later with a film that was even stranger, more complex, and much harder to categorize. Trying not to give too much away here for those who haven’t seen it yet, God Told Me To stars Tony Lo Bianco as a New York cop who’s never been sick, feels he has some strange powers, and whose early biography remains a little up in the air. As the film opens, he’s  investigating a series of seemingly inexplicable and unrelated rampage killings. A soft spoken gay man climbs atop a building with a high powered rifle and begins shooting. A cop (Andy Kaufman in his big screen debut) shoots up the st. Patrick’s Day parade. A man slaughters his family for no apparent reason. The only explanation any of them can give is that, yes, god told them to. Well, his investigation leads down some strange channels, including stories of  an alien abduction, a secret cabal of wealthy  executives, and reports of a glowing figure who had contact with all the killers and who may or may not be god incarnate. In short it’s a film that asks the eternal question, “What if Jesus was a Venusian?” It may also be the best film Cohen ever made.

Although the film looks great (and brings together a remarkable cast), it represents a perfect example of the guerilla filmmaking Cohen would come to be known for. All the location shots, from the parade to the subway to the shooting of half a dozen people outside Bloomingdale’s were stolen. Cohen saw where he wanted to shoot, set up his crew, and shot. If he were to try doing that today there would likely be casualties, but because he did it then he captured a portrait of a city long gone.

On the downside, in his excitement  to grab shots of actual events as they were happening, one sequence finds Lo Bianco racing from the st. Patrick’s day parade in March and ending up some 70 blocks to the south  at the San Gennaro festival on the Lower East Side in September. It was a hell of a run.

The film was picked up by Corman’s distribution company, New World. Before releasing it, they decided that title of his was too long and too complicated, so needed to be changed. They decided to call it The Demon, and changed the font on the poster to match the font used recently on the posters for the incredibly popular The Omen. It didn’t seem to help. Whether it was the title or audiences were merely baffled by the film itself it’s hard to say, but it was a definite step down from the success of It’s Alive. Still, in subsequent years it has become one of the most popular of Cohen’s films, and in terms of influence, well, all you need to do is watch the last few seasons of the X Files to see for yourself if anyone was paying attention.

Following God Told Me To, Cohen took a radical turn in more ways than one. After making three blaxploitation films and two sci-fi horror movies, he took the next logical step down the genre trail by making, yes, a J. Edgar Hoover biopic.

A clear though uncredited influence on the 2011 Leonardo DiCaprio Hoover picture, 1977’s The Private Files of J. Edgar Hoover makes for an intriguing double bill with another AIP film from around roughly the same time, John Milius’ Dillinger. It stars screen legend Broderick Crawford in a brilliant turn as the enigmatic and all-powerful head of the FBI, and co-stars a slew of famed character actors, from Lloyd Nolan and June Havoc to Howard DaSilva and Rip Torn.

Couching the story of Hoover’s life within the frantic scramble across Washington to gain access to his titular secret files after his death, Cohen does something I don’t think anyone was expecting. In spite of Hoover’s reputation as a neurotic, paranoid, cross-dressing monster, Cohen treats him fairly, even sympathetically at times. There’s no real secret about his sexuality here, but it’s never made cartoonish. It’s a portrait of a deeply flawed man and a publicity whore, yes, but one who was trying to do right. Oddly enough the historical figures who get slapped around more than anyone here are the Kennedy brothers, who come off like a couple of smug rich, asshole college boys. Martin Luther King doesn’t get off too easy, either.

It’s an odd man out in Cohen’s filmography, but what the Hoover film proved without a doubt is that he was a director who knew pacing, who knew editing, and who could, even without monsters, turn material like this into a gripping story.

Good as it was, The Private Files wasn’t a big hit either, so Cohen returned to killer babies  in ‘78 with It Lives Again. Not interested in simply rehashing the same material, Cohen expanded the original story, broadening the idea of a conspiracy (conspiracies would play a larger and larger role in Cohen’s films), and multiplying the number of killer babies afoot.

As more and more mutant babies are born throughout America, a renegade group of scientists and parents (including John P. Ryan and expecting father Frederic Forrest) criss-crosses the country trying to save the mutants before the government can terminate them with extreme prejudice. The hope is to be able to raise the mutants in a reasonably loving environment, rehabilitating them and making them contributing members of society. Let’s just say their success is limited.

The later ‘70s and early ‘80s were kind of rough for Cohen. His teen horror comedy Full Moon High bombed, and a made-for-TV mystery was ignored. He planned to resurrect Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer character in a film version of I, The Jury starring Armand Assante, but after a major studio picked up the project, they promptly fired Cohen.

Knowing he had to get right back on his feet, Cohen had a new independent film in production within a week. He started grabbing some location shots around New York before he had a cast, and started filming before he had any backing. Still, he was able to wrangle together another great (in B film terms) cast, and he had a fantastic story to tell, even if it owed a bit to 1948’s The Flying Serpent. He had some more wonderful characters, he had a monster, and once again all of New York was his playground. Samuel Z. Arkoff, who’d just sold AIP, fronted him a little cash and they were off.

Cohen’s mixing and matching of genres was never more evident than it was in ‘82’s Q The Winged Serpent. It’s a bungled jewel heist/cult murder/police procedural/giant monster picture with Michael Moriarty as an ex-con and failed jazz pianist who’s forced to participate in a heist that goes very, very wrong. He’s a neurotic to begin with, and this doesn’t help. David Carradine, meanwhile (who filmed his first scene before he’d had a chance to read the script or find out who his character was), is a detective investigating a series of murders in which the victims have all been skinned alive. And then there’s that pesky Aztec god who keeps flying around New York plucking people off rooftops and construction sites.

They all eventually do come together inside the cone atop the Chrysler Building (it was actually filmed up there too, even though Cohen and his crew didn’t exactly have permission). Before all these storylines and genres come together, Cohen has us so wrapped up in these individual character’s )and the countless little stories and side characters we encounter along the way) that the monster barely matters, save for providing some of the best aerial shots ever taken of NYC.

It’s a film packed with great small bits, set pieces, and locations. And Moriarty, crazy and pathetic and fucked up as he is, is a gem. In one of the best (and mostly ad libbed) scenes in the film, he attempts to negotiate a deal with city officials and the cops. He knows where the creature’s nest can be found, and wants money and amnesty in exchange for the information. It’s a real tour-de-force of sniveling bravado and desperation.

Cohen had more stories to tell about the making of Q than any of his other films (and he was a man with a lot of stories). The final joke of it all being that Q opened the same day as I, the Jury and made four times as much money.

It occurs to me that any young would-be indie filmmaker would be better served by watching the film and listening to his commentary than anything they’d learn after 3 years of NYU film school. He knew how to work fast and work cheap, yet still come away with a film whose production values matched anything being produced in Hollywood.

Cohen was back on a roll after Q, and even when he wasn’t working on a film himself he was selling  scripts that had that unmistakable Larry Cohen feel to them. The William Lustig-directed Maniac Cop and Uncle Sam come to mind as prime examples, though Abel Ferrara dropped the ball, and dropped it hard, on Cohen’s reboot of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. It’s a film I keep trying to like, but just can’t. Cohen’s understanding of character is something Ferrara’s never been able to grasp. It had so much going for it, it should’ve been so good, but Christ it’s just a tedious fucking mess. Okay, I’m starting to ramble.

After making a few straightforward thrillers, Cohen returned to horror and social satire in 1985’s The Stuff. There had been elements of social satire and commentary in his previous films, but usually so well disguised it was easy to miss. Michael Moriarty’s gift for the ad lib and his ability to play crazy and manic so brilliantly allowed Cohen, in their second film together, to slap the satire right there on the surface, plain as day.

When a thick white goo coms bubbling out of the ground at a mining operation in Georgia, one of the miners unwittingly discovers it’s not only delicious—it’s downright irresistible. Before you know it, “The Stuff,” as it’s marketed, has become the most popular dessert item in the country, helped along by a celebrity-laden ad campaign (though many of the celebrities may no longer be recognizable to most audiences) and the small fact that it’s five times as addictive as crack. Yes, it’s mighty good right up to the point when it makes you explode. But no one talks about that.

Moriarty plays an ex-FBI man turned industrial spy who’s been hired by a now-struggling ice cream company to find out what’s in The Stuff. What Begins as a simple bit of industrial espionage quickly becomes much more than that when people start dying, small towns start vanishing, an ex-FDA employee (Danny Aiello in a smart and funny cameo) is killed by his stuff-addicted Doberman, and Moriarty uncovers a sinister, far-reaching conspiracy.

Along the way he’s assisted by Garrett Morris as a Famous Amos clone who’s cookie company was stolen from him, a young boy who realizes there’s something evil going on with The stuff, and  Paul Sorvino as an insane and paranoid militia leader/radio show host who’s more than willing to spread the word and lead a commando raid on the stuff factory.

There are nods throughout the film to everything from Dr. Strangelove to White Heat, but the one film that kept coming to mind was Halloween III: Season of the Witch from three years earlier. Both, after all, are horror conspiracy films concerning the potentially diabolical threat posed by marketing and consumerism. The ironic thing there is that when Halloween III came out in ‘82, I assumed given the way the story was structured that it had to be a Cohen film, or at least based on a Cohen script. I was wrong, of course; the film had been written by the equally great Nigel Kneale. So it only made sense that here we got Cohen’s version of a similar storyline. While Halloween III was very sharp and dark, The Stuff reaches for some broad, heavy handed laughs and often falls short. Maybe Cohen figured if you wanted to reach an audience in the Reagan era with a dire warning about rampant consumerism, subtlety would get you nowhere.  The film does have a number of moments, though, and I love the fact that the “monster” here is a smooth, white, featureless dessert. I also love the fact that a paranoid Right Wing nutjob saves the day in the end.

Two years after The Stuff, Warner Brothers offered Coen a deal to direct two straight-to-video pictures: a second  sequel to It’s Alive, and a sequel to Tobe Hooper’s TV version of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Cohen, anxious to work with Moriarty again and push the story of the mutant babies a little further, signed the contract.

Working fast and cheap as ever (he said all of his films were shot in 18 days), Cohen returned to form with It’s Alive III: Island of the Alive, with one difference. While the previous two films had been stark and ultimately quite grim, with Moriarty aboard Cohen was able to bring out a lot more humor.  Mixed more evenly with the violence, the blood, a half-hidden AIDS parable,  and Cohen’s trademark strangeness, here it works more effectively than it had in The Stuff or his straight comedies.

This time around, Moriarty is a struggling actor who finally gains fame after he and his wife (Karen Black) become the proud parents of another monster baby. That’s pretty much it for the marriage, but instead of destroying the baby, a judge orders that all the mutant babies be sent to, yes, an island where they can roam free and pose no threat to anyone.

Moriarty’s life, meanwhile, collapses under the constant questions and accusations until he finds himself working in a children’s shoe store. In a delightful set piece, he finally cracks and gives the what-for to all the rotten little brats and their obnoxious parents. There’s just something both terrifying and hilarious about Moriarty when he loses it.

Anyway, he joins a government-sponsored expedition to the island to study the mutants and run a few tests. Along the way, we learn the government has stopped trying to destroy the mutants after deciding instead they represent a new stage of human evolution, quite possibly a form of human who could survive a nuclear war. Moriarty, who loves his child and wants to protect it, tries to warn the babies to stay away from the researchers, which does not endear him to the researchers. No matter, it isn’t long before all the members of the expedition are dead save for Moriarty, who finds himself alone on a boat with four mutant babies. And that’s when things start taking any number of strange turns.

Island of the Alive is also marked by a fantastic opening sequence, in which a woman gives birth in the back of an NYC cab as the cab driver panics about the mess. Or maybe that scene’s just memorable to me because it was shot in an alley behind the building where I used to work.

After the film was wrapped, Cohen packed up his crew and several members of the cast and flew to a small town in Vermont to start shooting the Salem’s Lot sequel, a sequel in name and font alone. Compared with Island of the Alive, A Return to Salems Lot seemed almost an afterthought. Maybe people were just tired after the previous shoot, but the cinematography has all the flat earmarks of a TV film, and the music, usually so rich in a Cohen picture, has been reduced to a cheap, cliched electronic score. Even the actors, apart from Cohen’s usual suspects (like Andrew Duggan), are abrasive at best.

Story’s still good, though. In their fourth and final collaboration, Moriarty is a famed anthropologist whose ex-wife saddles him with his troubled and foul-mouthed teenage son. Not knowing what else to do with the kid, he takes him to Salem’s Lot. Moriarty had visited an aunt there once when he was young, and when she died she left him her (now decrepit) house. It doesn’t take long to figure out the town is home to a colony of vampires.

Cohen’s script plays around quite a bit with the mythology, with the anthropologist being conscripted to write the vampires’ history to set the record straight, but the film is memorable for one reason. Sam Fuller appears for the second half of the film playing, well, Sam Fuller. He’s given a different name of course, and he’s playing a Van Helsing-type vampire hunter, but it’s Sam Fuller all right, as short, gruff, and straightforward as ever, and always chomping on that ever-present cigar. Cohen’s homage to the king of independent filmmakers is the only thing here that lifts the picture above second-tier Cohen fare (which is nevertheless still more interesting than most vampire films made in the last 20 years).

Cohen went on to make another straight thriller and a comedy about witches that turned out to be Bette Davis’ last film before returning to the horror, conspiracies, and New York that always brought out the best in him. It would be the last of the classic Larry Cohen films.

In 1990’s The Ambulance, Eric Roberts plays an enthusiastic young comic book artist working for Marvel (Stan Lee has a few cameos as himself) who sees a young woman on the street and falls immediately and stupidly in love with her. When she collapses to the pavement while they’re talking and an antique ambulance appears out of nowhere to whisk her away, he sets out to find her without even knowing her name.

It sounds like fairly standard romantic comedy material and there’s no denying that’s at play here, but as usual there are a few other genres at work, too, as we learn the drivers of that creepy antique ambulance are making their own victims all over the city.  It’s best to leave the story there and not mention the organ harvesting ring, but the film does include James Earl Jones, Eric Braedon, and a grainy, dirty, street level Manhattan that, even circa 1990, still seems so ancient and alive.

Moving into the later ‘90s and 2000s, as films like his were no longer really viable in a marketplace so fixated on formula and empty pointless characters, Cohen concentrated more on his screenplays, but even if the stories had that old Cohen spark and warp, the films that were made from them tended to be sadly conventional. He was behind Phone Booth, Cellular, Messages Deleted, Captivity, and rewrote his own script for the reboot of It’s Alive.  

He once made the excellent point that B films tended to have a longer lifespan than A films, because it’s the genre pictures that find a new audience every generation. Kids have no idea who Robert Taylor or Greer Garson are anymore, but they will always know Karloff and Lugosi, because people will always be going back to horror films while the big dramas, so important at the time, will fade away.

Cohen made films that weren’t like anything else (except maybe Halloween III). They weren’t aimed at teenagers and they weren’t slasher pictures. They were intelligent, textured, character-based, and they dealt with adult themes. Plus they had monsters in them.

Cohen’s career, as noted above, spanned some fifty years, and fifty years from now, I can almost guarantee no one will remember Titanic or whatever the hell nonsense won a Best Picture Oscar over the past two decades, but they’ll still be watching God Told Me To.

At the time of his death, Cohen left behind dozens of unproduced screenplays. If anyone had seen fit to toss him the funding to make the films he wanted to make, who knows what else he might have left us?

by Jim Knipfel

#Jim Knipfel #Larry Cohen #The Chiseler #It's Alive #The Ambulance #Bone #god told me to #Karen Black #The Stuff #Michael Moriarty

[arcaneranger]

Final Thoughts - W’z

I may not have watched Hand Shakers but that doesn’t mean I don’t have something to say about this project...which is that it’s really, really sad. Director Shingo Suzuki (and co-director Hiromichi Kanazawa, promoted from series comp for Hand Shakers) really seem to think they’ve got something in this concept that is just not there, and they’re throwing all kinds of money behind it but absolutely do not have the talent to actualize it into something watchable.

Let’s talk about the production for a second, because we don’t often get to see cases where the production value and directorial ambition are running high but are completely wasted on people with no talent to utilize them! We get a short fight in the beginning of this episode that easily illustrates this point - having the camera swing wildly around all over the place costs a lot of money in anime, and the animation actually doesn’t look half bad, but the editing is so incompetent (and the camera crosses the action line so many times) that it becomes so confusing to watch, I didn’t even realize there were more than two people fighting. I only realized it when I went back and rewatched that minute of the episode, but it’s also completely unclear what’s actually happening since it immediately follows a timeskip and appears to take place in The World That Never Was from Kingdom Hearts II. The individual cuts don’t look half bad but the directors (and the storyboard for that matter) are so awful at putting them together into a cohesive scene that it falls right the hell apart and you just get a vague sense of people swirling around the screen and swinging things at each other, but your eyes can’t quite digest it, hence why I didn’t notice their faces.

And, already knowing by reputation that the writing in this is going to be absolute trash, I see little worth sticking around for, but I did want to at least comment on what I could parse from the first scene.

2/10 for wasting perfectly fine art! Dropped after one episode!

#final thoughts #arcane's hall of shame #winter 2019 #w'z #arcaneanime

[linuxlife]

Linux Life Episode 42

Hello folks and welcome back to Linux Life.  Well since last episode I was still having issues with ArcoLinux B Cinnamon due to issues with mirror lists.  I changed them I reset them and I was still having issues regarding updates.  Also Cinnamon kept crashing at random intervals for no apparent reason and had to be restarted.  So it was being a tad problematic.

So I have now gone back to Antergos using MATE on the i7 desktop.  First I had to write my USB stick to install it.  I used Etcher under ArcoLinux which has normally not been a problem but for some reason it did not set up the stick correctly and it failed when I tried to boot it into the UEFI version.

Given my BIOS does not like Legacy boot systems it can do them but is very reluctant to do so.  I tried to install the old way but it refused to start Grub 2 correctly.  Ironically I had to now go and use a Windows system to rewrite the USB stick using Rufus and the UEFI setup worked.

Once installed I setup all of my regular programs without a hitch and was actually surprised the MATE could use the theme I had downloaded for Cinnamon called Cinnamox Heather without any conversion or problems.

Due to me having my home directory on a separate drive I also did not have to setup Steam, Thunderbird or Firefox plug-ins as they were already in the home directory config files, Handy.

So within a matter of under an hour I was back up and running without a hitch.  Updates seem to be working fine in Antergos and Cnchi did not crash on me even once which is an absolute achievement as it used to be unstable as hell.

It did give me a few more Window Manager options to play with such as i3, Budgie and Openbox which I don’t believe were in the list last time I tried to run Cnchi.  Ultimately I went with MATE because I know it works quite well and is quite low on resources usage compared to Gnome 3 or KDE.

So Antergos is back for now.  We will see how long it lasts.  Something didn’t work I think it was Davinci Resolve 15 but that I have discovered is due to you need the Nvidia 390.xx drivers as it does not work using the 340.xx ones.  The 340.xx drivers don’t work well with OpenCL and CUDA which is what Davinci Resolve uses.  The 390.xx ones are fine with it.

I planned a video experiment using OBS and certain emulators to do a comparison of a game between systems.  Now I managed to install Fuse (ZX Spectrum) and VICE (C64) emulators no problem.  However when it came to Amstrad emulation it was a bit of a pain.  First I tried to install Caprice32 from the AUR but it refused to build due to issues with an alleged missing freetype-config.  Also it was looking for pkg-config so I installed pkg-config then as soon as I ran the AUR build it uninstalled it and reinstalled pkgconf.

After lots of trying to get it to build playing with Makefiles and PKGBUILD files which the AUR uses I eventually gave up.  Eventually I installed Arnold which seems to work.  As a man who has not really emulated Amstrad machines I have no idea which one is a good emulator.  They did say CPC4x is not bad but I could not get it compile as it uses TCL/Tk and I had no idea how to get it to build.  I kept claiming it was missing old GCC v5 libs which I could not be bothered to install.

Especially as Antergos is using GCC version 8 if I remember correctly so it would have been a major step backwards and would probably break something.

Now that I have the three emulators working I can do my comparison but I must remember if I am using OBS not to capture in MP4 as the free version of Davinci Resolve does not include the H264 codecs, for them you need to buy the Studio version which is $200 I believe.

Unless Kdenlive can use MP4 considering I have not used any video editing packages beyond Adobe Premiere for about 5 minutes.  I can try them and see if I can find one I like. Natron I believe is more like After Effects and is used to add filters and transitions but I have no idea as I have not tried it.

So now I have all of the necessary tools I can start playing with my video project.  I can’t guarantee I will be happy with it or that I will even release anything but it will be a learning experience.  I am sure I will keep you informed of the joys and pitfalls if I do so.

Anyway that’s enough waffle for this episode.  So until next time ... Take Care

#linux life #linux antergos #linux arcolinux #kdenlive #natron #davinci resolve 15 #mirrorlists #uefi #waffle

[keep-it-i-resign]

Discussion/Analysis Time, my friends! Garcy Edition

One of the things I noticed was she very clearly still has her boots on. This could just be one of those things where they didn’t think anyone would notice but I’m fairly confident that in the grand scheme of things, Garcia Flynn would make sure his tiny historian Queen would be comfortable in her sleep so I’m thinking that this was more a directorial direction to save time than the characters really having a say.

Next, we’ve got the “gentle and responsive lover” comment and woooo if only he said that to me that boy has it bad for her. It’s very clear in the way he lowers his tone and softens his voice, even as he clearly teases her says a lot about how he feels about Lucy. He’s open with her and comfortable enough with her to immediately tease her a bit just after she wakes up. He even brings up that he enjoyed the company. As a man who’s been pushing away people since his families murders, he’s probably starved of any sort of company. Lord knows that no one in that bunker apart from Lucy really interacts with him apart from scathing comments. He’s probably alone a majority of the time between missions and he’s not the type to talk really talk to himself from comfort. This says a lot about him being comfortable enough to trust she won’t intentionally hurt him. It seems to me that when Lucy says, “I wasn’t that drunk” means there is, somewhere in her mind, an impulse to push the boundaries with him. Lucy seemed to be mildly disappointed that something didn’t happen and the way she inflected the ‘Oh’ has me thinking she has a hazy memory somewhere in her head of something actually happening and she can’t quite tell if it’s memory or dream who can blame her though - someone needs to climb that tree.

Whatever they talked about the night before definitely opened up both of them to a more friendly banter - one that’s clearly meant to suggest they either: sat and let Lucy complain about everything or they did the history nerd version of 20 questions and got to know more about one another. In my opinion both are likely since Lucy had clearly had a few before seeking him out (imo brought on by Wyatt’s need to keep acting like he and Lucy were still an item despite Jessica) and his comments about wanting to get to know present!Lucy (if she was willing to let him) being fresh in her mind.

It’s pretty clear though that Flynn must’ve picked up on some of Lucy’s other underlying issues. He’s a perceptive bastard, he has read he journal (although he admits that FutureJournal!Lucy seems entirely like a different person at times), and he knows a bit of what she’s going through. Her stating that it seems a little insane that he’s the easiest person to talk to speaks levels about what she experienced at the hands of Rittenhouse. I admit I do think that before she was held captive for six weeks, talking to Jiya or Rufus would’ve been easier for Lucy. However, she was a prisoner for six weeks. She saw everything that they really did, she saw the lengths they would go to, she saw her entire family line laid out in front of her and watched as the only family she had left reveal themselves as being part of the reason for all of this mess. They stripped her of what little innocence she had left and crushed it beneath their little Nazi boots. The only other person who has been that victimized by Rittenhouse is Flynn. Flynn, who saw his wife and daughter brutally murdered by a strike-team because he stumbled across a single bank account and asked a single question. They’ve both felt the crushing weight of their situations and are both looking for a little dry land where they can rest and someone else can help them bare that weight a little. I think her saying it’s a little insane is more the realization that she didn’t need to hide her pain from him because she sees the same in his eyes. No more fronts, no smiling to hide her pain, no need to struggle to hold her head above the water.

When Flynn does bring up that they are both alone in all of this, he notices that Lucy immediately looks down and seems to try and retreat back into her head. Flynn (instead of doing what I think the others would’ve done, especially Wyatt - try and push it further and make her talk) teases her about them both being geniuses, effectively giving her something else to focus on. Her little smile that she tries to hide shows she appreciates it from him that he isn’t pushing her to open up or pulling her in one direction or another. He himself seems to have really confronted that reality already but was willing to show that it’ll still hurt but it’s possible to start healing if you open up about your problems.

Lucy quickly finishing her coffee and leaving, I think can be seen in a few ways. As she’s hungover and slept in her clothes from the previous day, she probably feels gross. Another way is that she feels she might be pushing the limit on invasion of personal space even though we know our Garbage King would never get tired of his tiny Queen . As a socially kind of awkward individual, she’d probably be feeling that she’s overstayed her welcome and want to give him his space. The only other option is that she’s being confronted by this easy going morning with a guy and no expectations from him and is realizing that she could get used to it. Understandably, that would terrify anyone who had just been chosen second best after finally opening up to someone (I don’t blame Wyatt for that - I honestly think him and Jessica fit better than him and Lucy. He worked so hard in S1 to get her back that it seems out of character for him to be stuck between the two of them when he very clearly still loves Jessica enough to risk his freedom to get her back. Besides, someone needs to show that they can happily get the people they lost back otherwise Flynn and Lucy’s missions seem fool hardy.). Flynn was clearly heart eyes over her and still didn’t push her and made her know she was clearly welcome back at any time that she needed it without manipulating her into feeling guilty for leaving.

Whatever they did discuss was clearly good for the both of them. They both found someone they could turn too and not have to hide anything from them.  They found a friend and they found a safe space for the two of them. Abigail and Goran’s performances were brilliant to be able to give so much more depth into such a short scene and it’s one of the best subtle acting scenes I’ve seen.

Please, feel free to tell me what you picked up on or if you have other thoughts on how things played out because lord knows I missed something. 

#just my thoughts on that scene #garcy #lucy preston #garcia flynn #timeless #lucy x flynn #but seriously #i love that scene so much

[redvelvetreel]

Red Velvet Reel 4.5: A Crabapple A Day

                                      [Fic Directory]

Pairing: [Married] Spicyhoney (Underfell Papyrus x Underswap Papyrus)

Summary: Edge is incredibly unhappy, Undyne is incredibly nervous, and Stretch tries to keep them both from self/outwardly imploding.

Characters: Edge (Underfell Papyrus) & Stretch (Underswap Papyrus) & Red (Underfell Sans) & Blue (Underswap Sans) & Undyne (Underswap Undyne)

Contains: Mpreg/Skelepreg! Iatrophobia (fear of doctors)! Anxiety manifesting as aggression! Awkward & Anxious Swapdyne! Stretch & Undyne being buddies!

Rating: Teen and up! (I guess?)

Note:  Hello! This is still a queued post! I’ll try to edit the links as soon as possible, but since I only have mobile access right now, it’s a little tough… But I’ll get to it eventually! Thank you for your support! <3

“UGH.” Edge looked disgusted. “Terrible. Absolutely horrendous.”

Undyne cleared her throat, clicking her pen and holding her clipboard professionally. “Why don’t we get started. I’m Dr. Undyne, and-“ she stopped suddenly, earfins drooping as she seemed to collapse on herself. “I... I already introduced... myself...”

She stood up abruptly, heading towards the door, “That was really stupid... I’m, uh- I should maybe-“

“Undyne!” Stretch pulled her into a big hug that had her squeak in surprise, lifting her clear off the floor. He nuzzled the back of her head like she was a toy, and she clung to his arms as if afraid of falling. Undyne looked suddenly much more relaxed, for whatever reason.

“It’s going tibia ok! Edge won’t bite you or anything! He’s a lot more nervous about this than you are!”

Edge narrowed his eyes, stung by that inadvertent betrayal. “Doubtful,” he sneered, “You reek of fear.”

“Edge,” Stretch’s voice took on that rare warning tone, giving him that vaguely disappointed quasi-judgemental look that never failed to make Edge actually feel (a little) bad, “Play nice.“

Undyne leaned toward her armpit discreetly, sniffing the fabric a little too loudly to go unnoticed. “I knew I should have taken that extra shower...” she mumbled to herself, cheeks flushed in mortification.

Stretch squeezed her to get her attention, continuing with an obvious undertone of pride, “My Dyne-amo’s a great friend, and an even better doctor! She’s hardworking and honest, and has a great bedside manner! She owns up to her mistakes and works hard to fix them, so you couldn’t be in more capable hands!”

Edge held his tongue, watching actual sparkles manifest by his husband’s head with a carefully neutral expression. That was hardly reassuring, but Blue was right- isolating her would do him no favors. He would just bide his time until he could find a more suitable physician, if necessary. He gripped the plastic on either side of him tightly.

“Oh, well...” Undyne started playing with a loose lock of hair almost bashfully, before she grinned, “You’re such a huge dork!”

She turned around and started mercilessly noogieing Stretch’s head, laughing boisterously as he sank to his knees in pain, “OW OW! WHY DO YOU ALWAYS DO THIS?!”

“BECAUSE I GET OVERWHELMED AND I DON’T KNOW HOW ELSE TO EXPRESS MY SINCERE APPRECIATION OF YOUR SUPPORT!

Edge felt something stir deep in his soul, a strange feeling that made looking at them suddenly unbearable. Was it jealousy? Stretch gave hugs to everyone, and Undyne didn’t seem like much of a threat... What was it, then?! As much as he tried to ignore it, he couldn’t make himself relax.

“Do you know m00nsh1ne?!”

Edge looked back, watching Stretch massage his neck and shoulders for a moment, before turning his attention back to Undyne. She sat on her little stool, clipboard held against her face and looking incredibly excited.

“...Homemade distilled liquor?” Edge asked, unsure of what to make of her odd question. He was fairly certain that wasn’t what she was asking, but he had no idea what else it could be.

“If that’s a roundabout way of asking if I drink, then I haven’t since I found out I’m pregnant.” Edge wasn’t sure why she deflated, turning to look at Stretch in obvious confusion.

“A-pop- Aerok* Pop Music.” Stretch pointed at the poster on the wall. “They’re an A-pop band called m00nsh1ne, and Undyne’s their biggest fan. You were looking at the poster so...”

Oh. The poster featured a group of pretty girls in identical, impractical dresses, posed with something written in the middle in a foreign language. Maybe not, he squinted, maybe it was just very stylized.

“Hm.” Edge felt her eyes on him, even as she started fiddling with a complicated-looking machine. “No-“ He could see Stretch behind her miming a conversation with his hands, followed by a pleading expression. “You may tell me about them some other time.”

That wasn’t the best answer, but Undyne lit up like a Gyftmas Tree and Stretch made him a little heart with his hands. Edge sighed, rolling his eyes.

“Excellent!” Undyne picked up a portable screen and held it up, “I’ve read through your medical file, and you don’t seem to have any underlying conditions, but if there’s anything I should be aware of-“

Edge instinctively scrambled away as she came closer with the machine, only stopping when Stretch physically sat on the end of the examination table. He dug his claws into his husband’s femur as though grounding himself, keeping one arm raised defensively at chest level.

“Why...” He forced himself to take a deep breath, straightening his spine and asking with more aggression than he intended, “What’s that for?”

Undyne flinched as if he struck her, leaning back against her chair and pulling the screen up to her chest. She actually seemed to be trying to hide behind it, looking down as though afraid to make eye contact.

“Uhhh...” she started, worrying at her lips nervously, “Medicinal- um, magic- magicianal-“

“Ok, let’s all calm down,” Stretch was as soothing as possible, draping an arm on Edge’s shoulder and reaching out to lay a gentle hand on Undyne’s lap. It was more suffocating than comforting, so Edge quickly shrugged it off, putting his back against the wall instead.

“Did I say or do something bad?” Undyne asked timidly, ear fins drooping in obvious consternation.

Stretch looked in his direction, but Edge pointedly looked at the machine instead, bringing his foot onto the examination table.

“We’ve had very bad experiences with doctors before-“ Stretch sighed, but kept his voice calming and even, “So we’re very wary and very uncomfortable being here, right?”

Edge gave a curt nod, not trusting his voice when every instinct screamed at him get out of this room. He tapped his fingers on the plastic cushion restlessly, reminding himself over and over that neither monster was an enemy or a threat. They were allies. Allies. Allies. Allies-

“What?!” Undyne got up immediately, eyes dilating and gills flaring in obvious anger, “Doctor’s take a solemn oath to follow a strict ethical code tohelp their patients! That anyone would dare violate this is INEXCUSABLE!“

The aggression put Edge back on high alert, crossing the room with his handle on the doorknob in an instant- but it was familiar. Justice-fueled and aimed outward at no particular target. Just outrage at things outside of her ability to throttle into submission. Comforting. He felt something almost forgotten stir deep in his soul, and he almost smiled as Undyne let out a guttural scream of rage. Edge forced his fingers to uncurl around the handle, making a tight fist at his side as he watched her every move.

“THAT QUACK-! MALPRACTICE SHOULD BE PUNISHED BY EXECUTION!” She snapped her clipboard in half. Stretch looked completely unfazed as he ducked his head to the side, avoiding the largest piece of shrapnel as he kept an eye on both monsters.

“Ah!” Undyne looked down at her clipboard with furrowed brows, “That’s the fifth one this month!”

Stretch patted her back, taking the remains from her hands and tossing it in the trash with practiced ease. “At least it wasn’t the machine. You almost caused a fire last time.”

“Sorry!” Undyne was incredibly apologetic, ducking her head repeatedly in a series of quick bows as she swiveled towards the door, “I didn’t mean to startle you! I just can’t stand bad doctors! I can only imagine what that- that- UGH did if they could make someone as cool and as tough as you are that uncomfortable!”

She shuddered meaningfully. That, more than her praise and passionate outburst, did more to settle his insecurity and anxiety into something more manageable. Edge had to remain stable and in control for the sake of all the monsters looking up to him. For the monsters depending on him.

“Since your previous physicians- if you can even call them that- failed you, it’s my duty to make up for their shortcomings!” Undyne continued earnestly, procuring a new clipboard from a drawer filled with them. “Rest assured, you’ll have the best care here! And I’ll make sure little Pancake never has to suffer the same way!”

Edge nodded, still a little terse, “Very well, Doctor.”

Undyne sat back down, beaming, “What can I do to make you feel more at ease? This is your appointment, after all- you’re in charge!”

He was?! Edge felt something in him unclench, and while not at all comfortable, it was... better.  He went back to his spot on the examination table next to Stretch, discreetly laying his hand next to his husband’s fingers. He felt Stretch shift, squeezing his hand gently. Feeling a little more like he was in control, Edge looked at the machine she was holding, forcing down his trepidation.

“Explain what you will be using, where and how, and for what purpose before you do anything,” he instructed, sounding more confident than he felt. Undyne flinched at his commanding tone, but nodded nonetheless.

“...I can’t run the same risks as if it were just me, you understand,” he added softly as an afterthought, watching her every movement carefully. Her face softened as though she understood (how could she?), but if it was for Pancake’s sake, he could do it. He would do it. He would do anything.

“Of course.” Undyne pushed her hair out of her eyes to little effect, “Well, then let me explain what this thing is first, then.”  

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5 - Here!] [Part 6] [Part 7]

#spicyhoney #underfell papyrus #underswap papyrus #underswap sans #underfell sans #underswap undyne #redvelvetreel #fanfic #skelepreg

[aion-rsa]

Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Why It’s Better Than the Joss Whedon Cut

https://ift.tt/3lqZB9g

This article contains spoilers for zack snyder’s justice league.

The long-awaited Snyder Cut is here at last. After nearly four years of rumors, innuendos, hints, allegations, online harassment, and everything else that’s good and bad about fandom, Zack Snyder’s Justice League has been willed into existence by the filmmaker and his legions of fans.

Four hours long–one for each year you’ve had to endure the clamor of Snyder acolytes demanding the filmmaker’s vision be restored–Zack Snyder’s Justice League is the ultimate version of the movie that Snyder never completed in 2017. Instead the version of the film that reached theaters was a truncated, patched-together mess that nearly stopped the DC cinematic universe in its tracks.

If you detect a bit of snark in the preceding paragraph, you’re not off-base. The very notion that a vocal contingent of fans could make enough noise to actually get a version of a piece of art or entertainment in their preferred format opens a proverbial Pandora’s box. Everyone treats whenever fans sign online petitions to get movies, television finales, or the like remade as jokes. But a cynic might wonder if the Snyder Cut gets us closer to that happening.

There is of course a key difference between Snyder finishing his passion project and other flair ups between fans and creators: The Justice League that came out in 2017 was a Frankenstein’s Monster of a movie, with half of the finished picture rewritten and reshot by a director (Joss Whedon) with a completely different tone and approach. This occurred after Snyder had to abandon it due to a terrible family tragedy–which, in the most cynical version of this tale, the studio (Warner Bros.) saw as an opportunity to hijack the film and retool it to their liking.

So now that Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a thing, with the original director restoring hours of footage that he shot (and adding some freshly filmed material at the end) while throwing out everything he didn’t, there is one question that burns as fiercely and brightly as the raging eyes of Darkseid himself: Is it better than the 2017 theatrical version, aka the Whedon Compromise?

The answer is unequivocally yes.

Now that doesn’t automatically make ZSJL a good film. Nor does it necessarily make the Whedon version a wholly bad one–but there’s no question that the 2017 version suffers greatly and is diminished by comparison. In fact, it’s almost not fair to call that version the “Whedon” one; regardless of the man’s personal controversies, it seems apparent that he was put in an almost impossible position when he was recruited to finish Justice League back then.

Whedon was tasked by the studio to make a movie more like his own The Avengers out of material that couldn’t be more different in terms of tone, visual style, pacing, and structure. He was also asked to recreate what Marvel had taken six movies to do: introduce and assemble a team of superheroes all in a single film and in less than two hours (minus credits). And he did that by stitching together footage that was already shot by a different director with scenes that he had to craft almost on the fly, all with a desperate, panicking studio breathing down his neck. Whedon could have summoned Scorsese, Coppola, and the ghosts of Hitchcock and Kubrick to help him solve it and it still might have defeated him.

The result was a movie that was the soulless, corporate product that critics accuse all Hollywood blockbusters, particularly superhero movies, of being–but which most are decidedly not. Whedon’s own The Avengers is proof that a studio can make a heartfelt, earnest, charming, and still awe-inspiring spectacle with the right people, story, and vision in place. The vision behind 2017’s Justice League–which does have its lively moments and does benefit in some ways from better pacing (but is ultimately hurt more by its shortened running time)–is a vision only of bottom lines and quarterly profits.

So, yes, ZSJL is the better movie. For one thing, it’s clearly a personal work. Whatever one thinks of Snyder’s directorial vision and peculiar take on superheroes, it’s all there on the screen and unashamedly his, just as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and, to a lesser extent, Man of Steel were. The fact that the DC film franchise has long moved past his approach doesn’t necessarily factor into ZSJL. It stands alone.

On its own terms, it hits all the marks that Snyder probably wanted to hit. The story and several of the characters are developed much more than they ever were in the 2017 edition. True, a lot of exposition is needed to make that story more cohesive and complete than it was before, but there are plenty of new visuals to go along with that foundation building as well. There is much more representation here of the full breadth of the DC universe, from ancient gods to Jack Kirby’s Fourth World.

The back story of Darkseid and the Mother Boxes, and the first battle for Earth with the Atlanteans, the Amazons, and everyone else somehow seems better articulated and executed. The connective tissue joining Darkseid’s quest to that of his lackey Steppenwolf–tying it all to the death of Superman, whose removal from the board cleared the way for Steppenwolf to return–is strengthened. Bruce Wayne’s quest to put together the team to defend the planet takes longer and has more steps to it, making it feel like much more of a challenge than it did four years ago.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Some of that team are given much better treatment this time, with Victor Stone/Cyborg getting the most out of the deal. He truly does become the heart of the picture in many ways, getting two extensive flashbacks that are equal parts elegant and clumsy but do a lot to round out a character who was little more than a special effect in 2017.

Ray Fisher’s performance is assured and graceful, and one can now see why he is so angry about what happened with the theatrical cut: it’s quite possible that some backroom studio committee meeting came up with a variation of “we can’t have an unknown take up so much space in a movie starring Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman.”

Ezra Miller’s Barry Allen/the Flash also has more to do than make jokes, although the much-ballyhooed introduction of Iris West (Kiersey Clemons) is little more than a walk-on, seen once and never heard from again (there’s a bit of that going around in this picture). Similarly, Lois Lane’s grief over the death of Clark/Superman is explored with somewhat more depth, although an otherwise poignant scene between her and Martha Kent (Diane Lane) is nearly ruined by a pointless twist.

Aquaman (Jason Momoa) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot) are less developed here, and their characterizations clash with what we’ve seen since in their standalone movies. There is a much more melancholy resonance to the absence of and longing for Superman. And although he’s still no Thanos in terms of complexity and nuance, Steppenwolf at least has a clearer motivation in this film. He just wants to get back on the boss’ good side, which kind of makes him weirdly amusing in a movie notable for its almost complete lack of humor.

All the banter that Whedon wrote and shot–the flirting between Bruce and Diana on the plane, Aquaman sitting on the Lasso of Truth–is gone. There are still some laugh lines in the movie, but ZSJL is as self-serious and grimdark as Snyder’s previous two DC entries. That makes it feel heavy-handed, as does Snyder’s deployment of agonizing slow-motion for so many scenes that it feels like he could have lost an hour just by speeding up the film. The colors are murky, mostly brown and gray, and while a number of visual effects are pulled off handsomely and seamlessly, this is supposed to feel mythic but ends up feeling just artificial more often than not.

But most importantly, the story and characters in this Justice League are still ill-served by the way the film was conceived in the first place. Even though our heroes are overall given more to do, this is still a movie that has to introduce three of those heroes, their backstories, and their worlds in one fell swoop. There’s no sense of culmination or victory in seeing them together, like there was in The Avengers. And in the end, Steppenwolf’s pursuit of three magic boxes just doesn’t carry the entire four hours.

Read more

Movies

Zack Snyder’s Justice League vs. the Whedon Cut: What are the Differences?

By David Crow

Movies

Zack Snyder’s Justice League: A History of Steppenwolf

By Marc Buxton

For all the world-building that Snyder (and screenwriter Chris Terrio) do, the placement of the “Knightmare” epilogue and its Joker cameo undermine everything that has come before, and undermine the character of Superman again. By the time the movie’s ending rolls around, Snyder is still basically saying that our heroes are going to keep letting us down–especially poor Superman, who’s going to turn evil in the future after being killed off and brought back once already as a rage monster. The addition of a Martian Manhunter cameo (his second!) at the very end is also superfluous, pointless fan service.

It certainly seems as if Snyder put every scrap of footage he shot into this version of his magnum opus, and perhaps that is what it took to give him closure, both for the film and for the unspeakable loss he endured while making it (there is a poignancy now to the movie’s major plot point of trying to bring back someone from the dead). But just because he could do it doesn’t mean he should have. Incredible as it seems, there may be an even better two-and-a-half or even three-hour cut of this Justice League that we’ll never see.

As it stands though, this one we now have will be the one spoken about in the years to come. Meanwhile the 2017 version will fade into history as an oddity. And that is, in the final analysis, the way it should be.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is now streaming on HBO Max.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

The post Zack Snyder’s Justice League: Why It’s Better Than the Joss Whedon Cut appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3150FWJ

#aion-rsa #Den of Geek

[recentanimenews]

INTERVIEW: Dr. STONE Director - Shinya Iino

Dr. STONE was one of the most exciting new anime of 2019 and we’re right in the middle of the series’ second season! We were lucky enough to interview series director Shinya Iino and talk about how his team have adjusted to COVID, conducting his own science experiments, and what exactly it means to be the director of an anime series.

    Crunchyroll: What is a day in the life of an anime director like? Is there anything you'd like people to know about it?

  Shinya Iino: Well, as far as a day in the life of an anime director goes, the director’s job primarily consists of drawing storyboards, which is what I would say takes up the majority of the time. Other than that, the job involves checking on individual episodes, checking on things like layouts. Then there’s reviewing early footage, and, depending on the day, there’s editing or recording. I feels like you touch a few different episodes every day. I’m not sure what else would be interesting to fans… What kinds of things might they be interested in hearing about?

  Well, is there anything that people seem to assume that directors do, but in reality isn't the case?

  That's a good question... Being a director is seen as being a pretty lofty position where you get to order everyone around. While that’s not totally untrue, there’s a lot of support involved where you pitch in to help the other staff when they need it. 

  So it’s almost like you’re being creative, administrative, and even a bit like an HR department, making sure everyone is happy.

  I think so. The storyboarding process is probably the most purely creative task. On an episode-to-episode basis, there’s a bit of an oversight aspect to it–I guess you could call it management–where you help with the fine tuning.

  What got you the most excited to return to this world and to these characters?

  Well, as far as the second season goes, you get to meet a lot of the characters from the Tsukasa Empire. They’ve already been announced, and three of them are going to be regular additions to the cast. I was really looking forward to getting to draw them. Other than that–and this is almost like unfinished business from Season 1–there’s the conclusion to the conflict with Tsukasa. Getting to depict how his arc comes to a close was something I was happy about. I really wanted to make sure I finished it out. Tsukasa’s depiction, in general, is one of the things I really enjoy about this series and put a lot of effort into.

    The first season of Dr. STONE was your directorial debut. I wanted to know how you feel you’ve grown as a director since starting out.

    Good question! How I’ve grown as a director… hmm, I wonder. Well, one funny thing is that I don’t oversleep as much anymore! I’ve managed to make it to meetings on time and I’ve been a bit more responsible in general. I’m mostly kidding here, though! The way I used to be assigned screenplays and storyboards before directing, I was assigned things one episode at a time, so I used to focus on the job in that order. But this time, to direct a season of 24 episodes, working on multiple episodes simultaneously, there was a lot of trial and error. Through that trial and error, any mistakes become evident really quickly. The response I would get from trying different things out would be really timely on an episode-to-episode basis. So, when it came to the scripts and storyboards, I was able to gradually figure out what points I needed to be most attentive to. I guess you could say getting used to directing was the big thing I gained from working on the first season. 

  What was the most difficult thing about shifting from an episode-by-episode way of thinking to a more holistic approach?

  Figuring out when to compromise was touch, I think. When you’re working as an episode director on an individual half hour, it’s possible to put your personal touch into every cut of that episode. But when you’re overseeing the entire series, that’s not possible. That’s definitely a dilemma to come to terms with. Figuring out how much effort you can afford to spend with the time that you have… it’s a bit like trying to figure out where your energy is best spent. Or what alterations you can make to best benefit the project. I had to think a lot about that. 

  The Dr. STONE manga is still ongoing, and I wanted to know how you and your team choose where in the story to start and finish a season.

  Well, when we were planning out the second season, the manga had made a fair bit of progress. It just made sense to segment the story arc where it fell for a single season’s worth of episodes. When the initial proposal was made, the main goal was to cover the Tsukasa Empire story. After that, I spoke with the writer responsible for the series composition and the rest of the writing staff and we had to figure out how to ensure the quality level from episode to episode remained high, like in the first season. We also worked on how to portion out the material from the manga and how many episodes that material would turn into. 

    Science is a really unique theme for anime, but the show has been quite successful. What about Dr. STONE do you think connects strongly with anime fans?

  I think part of it is what you said, that science is a unique focus for a manga. There’s something universal about science as well. Part of that is having something recognizable no matter where you’re from, and then there’s the fact that it’s a nicely paced story filled with thrills and excitement in every chapter. I think the biggest thing is the appeal that Senku has as a character that draws fans into the story. 

  Dr. STONE doesn’t have battle or action sequences–how did your team manage to make science seem so exciting and cool?

  This is something I thought about while reading the manga… how it manages to make science seem exciting instead of dour or serious. In the process of making the anime, something I kept coming back to is the tempo of the story, or the rhythm it’s told with. Using music to make a scene seem more upbeat or using a lot of quick cuts in the scene to help build a rhythm. That helps assure it remains interesting. Another element is the scenes where characters are using science to make things–they’re always depicted as being really into what they’re doing, so we’re making sure to be careful with animating that. With this anime, we’ve chosen to be careful with animating that. We’ve chosen to be very detail-oriented about how the scientific processes are depicted in order to make sure that it reflects the reality of those elements. But that’s more like a prerequisite and not part of the actual fun. The trick is to show how the characters are enjoying their interactions with realistic science, which then conveys that excitement to the audience. We refer to those sequences as crafting sequences, so it’s all about the sense of excitement the characters feel when crafting. We’re always careful about how we depict that in the anime.

  I know your team did a lot of hands-on scientific research for the first season. Did you do the same for the second? If so, what was your favorite thing to research?

  Well, for the second season, there was the oscillating engine–basically a car engine. They sell miniatures of those, so we got a hold of one and took a good look at how it moved. That was the main thing. Other than that, in the first episode, there was an anime-original crafting sequence. We have them make instant ramen, and in order to do that, they have to freeze-dry the food, which is literally what it sounds like. We went to an actual factory where they do that sort of thing to see what kinds of materials were involved, and experimented with how to make it work well in the anime. While a lot of what we saw didn’t actually make it into the episode, it definitely helped us in terms of getting familiar with the scientific processes. That was pretty interesting.

    How has your team adapted your work processes for the COVID-19 pandemic?

  The biggest change is how the voiceovers are recorded. We used to get the entire cast, 10-20 people, and record in one place, and we can’t do that anymore. So instead, it’s just four at a time, and those groups record their lines separately from each other. As far as the effect it’s had, luckily Dr. STONE had started its recording in summer, so while other projects might have had to stop recording midway or come up with workarounds on the fly, we were luckly enough to benefit from the techniques they came up with. The thing with Coronavirus is that, with the way we have actors recording in smaller groups, it can be harder for the actors to respond to one another based on their performances. With Dr. STONE, though, since it’s a continuation from a previous season, the actors already had a good idea of how each other’s delivery would sound. Because of that, it didn’t prove to be much of a problem during recording, really.

  Since all of the animation from storyboards to key animation and other aspects are already digital, does that make it pretty easy to do from home?

  As far as storyboards go, I was already working digitally in Season 1. As far as that goes, it’s pretty simple to switch to working from home, and that wasn’t much trouble as a result. Key animation is often still done on paper–there are a lot of people who work that way–so for those cases there’s been a bit of extra work to compensate. Even with my work, the workflow for my checks is digital, but I’ll often print something out and work with the art on paper, so I wouldn’t say things are quite 100% digital yet.

  In your opinion, what is the most important theme or feeling you want viewers to come away from this season with?

  That’s an interesting question… Season 2 is really about the battle between Senku and Tsukasa, and how it wraps up. This is something that I came to understand while working on this season, but Senku always pursues the ideal solution, no matter how difficult the situation gets, and he never gives up hope. When you look at him, you see his unique hairstyle, and he really seems like a particularly cartoonish manga character. But depicting him, you really get an internal sense of who he is, his feelings, and how authentic they are. And with that in mind, it’s hard to think of a stronger character. The way he always retains high-minded ideals, no matter how trying the circumstances are, is something that the anime and the series in particular makes really apparent. With Senku, the appeal of this intellectual character is that he never gives up hope, which is something I think we could all learn from and maybe be inspired by. Dr. STONE Season 2 has the same staff back from the first season, and they’re all working to bring you an even better show this time around, and have spent all year working on it. We hope you enjoy what we have in store for you. Please check out Dr. STONE Season 2 here on Crunchyroll. Thank you very much.

      ---

  Watch Dr. STONE on Crunchyroll here!

By: Cayla Coats

#Anime #News #Latest in Anime News by Crunchyroll!