#can we get something else for these greasy men to do to show viewers some s p i c e

[neon-applesauce]

How come every time a greasy looking straight white man who looks like he hasn’t drunk water in years cries in a movie it’s considered ‘artistic’ and ‘powerful’ but when I cry for the fifteenth time today it it’s just ‘can you be quieter’ and ‘stop blowing your nose so loud, you’re disturbing the movie’

#but seriously #can we get something else for these greasy men to do to show viewers some s p i c e #this is a joke but not really #dank memes #funny memes #memes #funnies #gen z #gen z memes #funny stories

[skullsandwineglasses]

Hi! There is a show: ZYW and some other guy travel for 3 days. From what I've seen, it's his morning routine to warm up his vocal cords Also ZYW is hugging trees and basically most of the time they eat lol Also they talk a lot, so I guess it should be cool to understand. When you have two minutes, could you tell us what this show is about in general? The name on youtube: 《仅三天可见》[第六期] 姜思达 周一围｜一个冠军给我带来了无妄之灾 Perhaps they're visiting some place important to ZYW? Thank you so much for all your help!)

Yeah, so in brief, the show is about the host, Jiang Sida (JSD), who spends 3 days with a celebrity in each episode to try to understand them better. 

ZYW in particular is a celebrity who really interested Jiang Sida because of how quickly ZYW gained popularity after Birth of an Actor, and also because of all of the negative rumours swirling around his personal life. ZYW is often insulted by the media for being 油腻, which means greasy. Greasy is an insult used to describe older, middle-aged men who are sleazy, self-absorbed, and on the heavier or chubbier side, although sometimes this insult can be leveled at younger, in-shape male celebrities too who come off as kind of douchey. 

It’s sad because even though ZYW doesn’t often express it, you can tell that the rumours do get to him. For instance, during the first meal in the show, he wanted to use a toothpick, but he was wary about using it in front of the cameras so he pocketed it away. The host noticed this and sympathized and playfully said, “Ah, too protective of your image. Stop the camera. Let’s go upstairs to the third floor, I understand you.”

The vocal cord warm up (that occurred during the hike before that meal) happened because ZYW asked JSD “you studied production right, not broadcast? If you studied broadcast, this would be a good place to practice your sound”, to which JSD replied, “show me” (or, “give one”). ZYW proceeded to demonstrate a dantian qi exercise. 

In the voiceover during the hike, JSD  said that even though they were friendly, things were still a little awkward and distant between them since they hadn’t gotten to know each other yet. 

On the third floor rooftop, JSD opened up to ZYW about a film he wanted to write about. JSD shared his ideas to ZYW, saying that the film would tell the story of his father who spends a year away at sea fishing. ZYW then shares his feedback, saying that it’s a really meaningful story because it’s about the loneliness of a man out at sea. Basically, this conversation is what finally allowed JSD to connect to ZYW because they were finally talking about deep and thoughtful topics like the art of storytelling and life lessons. ZYW said to JSD, you need to think about what kind of perspective you want to show. Is the story about the son’s feelings about his father’s return, or is the story the father’s story at sea, and the son is just an observer meant as a stand-in for the audience? ZYW then said that he was pleasantly surprised to learn about this side of JSD because he now knows that JSD is able to understand him. He also encourages JSD to keep pursuing his dream of wanting to make this movie. It doesn’t matter whether the end result is good or not, but it’s a joy to be able wake up everyday and pursue your goal. JSD says that he spends everyday thinking about this story he’s creating, because he wants to get to know the story better since it’s still so unfamiliar and foreign to him. 

During the tea segment, JSD asked ZYW if he was bothered by the things the media says about him and he kind of just shrugs it off and says that it grounds him. They talk about how he used to love karaoke (KTV) when he was younger, JSD asked him what his wife likes about him, and ZYW said that you have to ask his wife why. ZYW mentioned how people would call him PUA, or “pick up artist”, and then JSD if those things bothered him. ZYW said that he learned to ignore those things, but they do bother his wife. The tea segment ends with them noting that it looks like it’s about to rain soon, and ZYW says, when it rains, you can choose to stand in the rain, or avoid it and go indoors. 

During the evening meal, ZYW is asked again about how he feels about what people say about him and why he doesn’t address the rumours. ZYW says that it’s pointless because his voice alone isn’t going to make all the rumours stop. JSD says that it could be cathartic to be able to yell back at people, and ZYW laughs and says it’ll only be for a moment’s satisfaction but it won’t change anything. When asked if he is a person who likes to win, ZYW said that he likes to finish things, but does that make him someone who likes to win? He doesn’t compare himself to others, but he just wants to do what’s expected of him. JSD then tells ZYW that the director of the show asked him if he was worried that netizens would accuse him of trying to use this show to try to rescue ZYW’s image (洗白, which means to “wash white”, or clear someone’s name). JSD tells ZYW that his goal is to present celebrities in an honest and genuine manner, and if it just so happens that the celebrity is actually a better person than what netizens thought, then that’s the truth and he’s not fabricating anything. 

The following evening, they have a conversation about happiness. ZYW says that he doesn’t compare between the years in his life or classify certain years or decades as being bad years or good years. He doesn’t wish to forget the bad years. He says, why would you need to forget the bad years?

By the river, ZYW asks JSD if he ever thought about what kind of animal he wanted to be. JSD says that it doesn’t really matter what animal, but if you asked him if he would rather become someone else, he’d say no. ZYW says that not wanting to be another person is a pretty good answer. 

During the final sit-down interview, JSD starts off the conversation by saying that ZYW looks relaxed most of the time, but he’s actually 绷 (”beng”) on the inside, meaning stretched-tight. ZYW asks how so. JSD says that ZYW is constantly noticing things around him, and avoiding things and people and cameras. ZYW says that it’s part of his job to notice more details more than the average person. In terms of avoiding cameras, he’s constantly being scrutinized, there are always cameras around him. Even during this interview, they have to put on a show of being relaxed in casual conversation, even though there’s a whole sea of cameras and people with mics and earpieces around them. So it’s only natural to want to try to find a balance between reel and real life by being a little aversive towards cameras and people’s scrutiny.  

JSD then says that ZYW seems like he has a lot of thoughts that he keeps to himself. JSD says ZYW is 拧巴 (”ning ba”) , which kind of means uncomfortable, awkward, restless, wanting to do something but not doing it, like for example, being uncomfortable with rumours but not addressing them. ZYW says that what’s the point of explaining? How is it meaningful? Will explaining something change you as a person? You are still you whether you choose to explain something you not. Likewise, you are still you despite the rumours. The rumours (no matter how bad they are) don’t change who you are. Only you know who you are.

This really reminds me of what Xiao Qi said in episode 64 of TRP: “If there’s anything that needs to be explained, then no matter how much you try to explain it, it’s never going to be explained away. Let them spread the rumours.”

ZYW explains that there is no way that a single word or statement from him can possibly fend off the tens of thousands of words from netizens, so there is no point. In addition, rumours are only momentary and they ebb and flow. The netizens are always going to look for a new rumour or scandal to talk about anyway, so the uproar about him is only temporary. 

ZYW also says that there will always be rumours. There’s no truth. He will never expect that a single interview can change people’s minds. First of all, the viewers can’t experience the conversation in the same way the he and JSD are currently experiencing the conversation now in this moment. The audience will be watching it through a screen. The audience will only seeing an edited recording of the conversation, but they will never be able to know or understand the “true” nature of the conversation that he and JSD are having right now because the audience isn’t here with them. This is actually some really deep and philosophical insight from ZYW lol. What is real? What is the truth? 

JSD asks ZYW is this means that he’s disappointed and lost faith with the audience. ZYW says no, this is just reality. We can only hope to influence people who are able to influence, like people in our immediate circle, but when it comes to noise or mass opinions, you don’t have control over that. 

JSD then asks about fatherhood. JSD says that most men would talk about how fatherhood has changed them. ZYW says that most of his friends talk about this, but he doesn’t. But if he doesn’t talk about it, does he think about it? ZYW pauses to reflect. In another interview, ZYW noted that all kids have their own life “scripts” that they act out and deal with (this was in response to how he doesn’t seem to be home often to be with his kid). In that interview, he said that that was the way in which he had to grow up, figuring out his own script (and essentially not relying on anyone), so he doesn’t expect it to be any different for his own child. This once again result in the media backlash against him and questioning his role as a father. Which is why when faced with this question from JSD now, ZYW has to pause to think carefully about how to answer. 

JSD asks why can’t ZYW give a straightforward answer for the audience. The audience doesn’t want to hear an answer buried in layers of meaning, but they just want a simple answer to things. ZYW says that sometimes he isn’t completely sure of what the answer to something is, and so he can’t give a straight answer. It would be easy to give the answer that the audience wants, but he needs to be able to give answer that is genuine and resonates with him. 

JSD asks how ZYW would respond if the audience calls him self-absorbed. ZYW turns the question back to JSD and asks him to provide a response for him because he doesn’t know how to. ZYW said that he would just not respond and let it pass. On top of that, ZYW says that he doesn’t think of himself as being self-absorbed at all. He’s actually dissatisfied with himself in a lot of ways, and all he wants is for the audience to not pay attention to him so that he can be peacefully left alone. 

JSD asks if ZYW is he is more afraid of being criticized or being forgotten. ZYW says that being forgotten would mean that there is a problem with his acting skills. In terms of being criticized, it would depend on the criticism. He would mind criticism towards his acting because he would want to improve any problems in craft. However, if it’s personal criticism, then he doesn’t care. 

ZYW says that someone he admires once said, it’s a complicated world out there, so find a comfortable position, change positions, and learn to live with it.

JSD’s second last question to ZYW is whether he’d rather choose a comfortable position/posture or a beautiful position/posture. ZYW said that he would choose a comfortable position. JSD asks if ZYW thinks his current “posture” looks good (i.e., if his current standing and image is favourable). ZYW asks that you’ll have to ask someone else in order to know. 

The last question asked whether ZYW can predict how this interview will be received by audience. ZYW says that they touched upon many deep topics, but it’s hard to say what kind of effect it will have on the audience, or how the audience would choose to interpret it. He’ll welcome thoughtful discussion, but it would regretful if the audience took away very superficial things from the discussion. 

JSD asks if ZYW is happy with the discussion today. ZYW says that if it weren’t for the cameras, they could have gone deeper into some topics, but because there are cameras, he has to have impose boundaries on the things he’s willing to reveal. But he says that he would be interested in having more private conversations with JSD.  

JSD ends the episode saying that ZYW is an old soul who knows himself, knows what he wants, and already has his own “world” (meaning he already has what he needs). 

lol I was at first only going to summarize the first few minutes of the episode, but I ended up watching the whole thing because I was so memorized by ZYW’s insights, so here you go, a scene by scene summary of the episode. 

For those curious, you can watch it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzt31O7imS4

#zhou yiwei #zhou yi wei #cdrama

[ordinaryschmuck]

What I thought about every episode of The Owl House Season 1 (Part 1/2)

Salutations random people on the internet who probably won't read this. I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

Hey, do you miss Gravity Falls?

...

Yeah, I know, dumb question. Which is why I have good news! Not only is there a new series that is just as good as Gravity Falls, but in some ways, it's even better. That new series would be none other than Disney Channel's latest hit: The Owl House.

The Owl House, slowly but surely, became my new obsession since Eda reacted to decapitation with an unconcerned, "I hate when that happens." I wrote fan-fiction, made fan-art, and even began to separately review new episodes. Unfortunately, I got in a little late in the reviewing game and only managed to analyze the last four episodes of season one. And like an idiot, I promised that I'll review the rest when they came out on Disney+. Seeing that all of the first season has finally come on a legal streaming service (which means WATCH IT RIGHT NOW!), it's time I finally saw through to that promise. However, I'm not going to over-analyze each episode because that would be insane. So instead, we're going to lightning round these suckers. Because it's my Tumblr, and I get to decide what I review and how the hell I review it...hooah.

Which means this is your last chance to avoid spoilers if you haven't seen The Owl House yet. Seriously, it's a great show, and you can catch up right now on Disney+. A week-long trial is more than enough time to watch the series, so DO IT! With that out of the way, let's get started with:

“A Lying Witch and a Warden”: This episode gets a lot of flack for having poor pacing and being too preachy with its message. And to that, I say...you're not wrong. Yeah, I wish I could be that person who can defend this episode against criticism like that, but these are understandable problems that just left this icky feeling in my tum-tum when watching. But that's only when looking at it as a regular old episode when in reality, people need to see it as a first episode. The first episode in any show needs to get viewers interested enough to continue watching by answering these five essential questions: What's the plot of the show? What's the tone? Who are the main characters? What's the world they live in? And what are the rules of the same world? "A Lying Witch and a Warden" does a great job of answering all of these questions. And if you stuck around until the season finale, then that means it did a great job of keeping you interested in sticking around as well. So seeing how it got its job done, albeit, with mixed results, I give this episode a B-.

“Witches Before Wizards”: Don't mind me. Just reveling in the fact that Luz escaped to a fantasy world to avoid Reality Check Camp, only to get a reality check anyway. Because that's what this episode is in a nutshell. Through the "quest" that Luz goes on, she learns two important lessons: One, don't trust strangers who offer you something nice and shiny (bonus points for Eda warning Luz to avoid men with sandals and then have Ategast wear sandals). And two, there is no such thing as having a predetermined destiny. I love the idea that Luz coming to the Isles was just a twist of fate, and everything that happens afterward is pure dumb luck. And that moment when Eda gave a speech about making your own path instead of waiting to become something special? That was the moment when I went from thinking this was going to be a fun show to thinking it's going to be a great show. So consider this episode a solid A in my book.

“I Was a Teenage Abomination”: How is it possible for an episode to get better and worse with time? Because here's the thing: This episode does a great job of showing how perfect Amity's development is. After one single season, it already feels jarring, seeing the way she acts in certain scenes. However, in that same respect, it's the same reason why this episode got worse. I didn't mind that Willow practically got away with cheating and vandalizing the school with her magic because she and Luz were basically trying to show up a two-dimensional bully. But knowing what we know in the future, it does seem unfair that Amity gets punished for their bad behavior and Willow got little consequences for it. Sure, Luz got banned and had to work at gaining Amity's trust, but what about Willow? Although, despite this complaint, I don't really hate this episode. It builds a believable connection between Luz and her friends, and the B-plot King and Eda show off their budding friendship. So while this episode is a C-, it's a somewhat enjoyable C-.

“The Intruder”: Is it weird for anyone else that King gets most of the blame in this episode? Yes, he took the potion, but Luz was the one who kept pushing him. This is why it never sat right with me seeing how everyone, including himself, blames King for this episode's incident. That being said, "The Intruder" is fantastic. Eda, as the Owl Beast, is legitimately threatening, and the way the episode treats Eda's curse like a chronic illness is actually kind of sweet. It teaches kids how this is something that just happens to people, and they're not any weaker because of it, as long as they take the right steps. Which is cool, and it's why this is another solid A episode for me. Sure King getting the blame bothers me, but it pales in comparison to everything else “The Intruder” does right.

“Covention”: If you want my personal opinion (obviously, seeing how you're reading this), "Covention" is the perfect episode to show a friend to get them into watching the The Owl House. Everything there is to love about the show is seen in just these twenty-two minutes. Eda being a chaotic good, Luz being a sweet and understanding character, some incredible/natural world-building, an actually decent B-plot, an epic fight scene, great comedy, and, my personal favorite, the building of Luz and Amity's relationship. In fact, this episode has the most quintessential moment between these two, that Dana Terrace herself took charge of making the animatic for it. A scene that is so perfect that you can do an analysis of these few minutes alone...which is what I did. Click here to read it! "Covention" gets an A+ in my book and might possibly be the best episode of the season. Maybe even the series!

“Hooty’s Moving Hassle”: There's not really a lot I can say about this episode. I don't hate it, but I'm not exactly in love with it. The interactions between Luz and her friends are adorable, and there are a few good jokes that kept me laughing. But the story is kind of bland, and I just find Eda's sudden obsession with Hexes Hold'em kind of odd. Especially since a card game is what nearly defeated the "undefeatable" Owl Lady. If it wasn't for the nice reveal of Willow's and Amity's friendship (which comes into play in a far better episode), I'd say that you could skip this one on future rewatches. Because this is a C grade episode that just doesn't grab me as well as others.

“Lost in Language”: Ah, yes. The episode that made dozens of fans jump aboard the Lumity ship...unless you're like me, and you've been shipping these two since the show's theme song (And I don't know why, either. It's just the second I saw Amity my first thought was, "Oh, honey. You're gonna fall in love with the main character, aren't you?" AND I WAS F**KING RIGHT!). But jokes about shipping aside, "Lost in Language" is a fantastic episode. It has a great lesson about how people are more complex than their first impressions (Or to not judge a book by its cover, if you wanna stay on theme). Edric and Emira seem like a chaotic duo who cause mischief all for good fun. But Luz, as well as the audience, learns that Ed and Em are kinda the worst (they get better in future episodes, but still). Then there's Amity, who hasn't had the best first impressions in the last few episodes. We got glimpses of a good person here and there, but for the most part, that's all they were. Glimpses. Then there's this episode, which gives us more than a small look, but some actual insight into who Amity really is. Better yet, who she wants to be. It's something that I appreciate about The Owl House in that it wastes no time in developing Amity's character. So much so that I can forgive this episode for shoehorning a "Two idiots and a baby" plotline that does nothing but add maybe two minutes of padding. So yeah, it's an A+ for sure.

“Once Upon a Swap”: "Ugh! It's the body swap episode! How cliche and-" SHUT UP! Shut your mouth, and listen: Something being cliche does not always make it bad. Only when the cliche fails to tell an entertaining story does it have the right to work as a complaint. "Once Upon a Swap" may have a cliche premise, but it's still an enjoyable story (or stories) with great laughs and even some ok lessons. I can understand if you hate the episode because its premise is something you've seen a dozen times to the point where your sick of it. My most hated story idea is the "Character A saves Character B, and Character B becomes a life slave." If you have seen this story once, you've seen it a thousand times, and it's the same case with a "body swap" episode. But guess what: The Owl House is a kids' show. Kids'. Show. You can complain all you want about predictability, but kids are the type of viewers who will be new to this experience, despite if it's one that is done to death. Which is why this is solid B of an episode if you ask me.

“Something Ventured, Someone Framed”: Can people please stop shipping Gus with Mattholomule? Because that slimy, greasy, weaselly little son of A BASTARD BITCH WEASEL DOES NOT DESERVE LOVE IN WAY POSSIBLE!

...

But enough about how Mattholomule is the worst character ever, because "Something Ventured, Someone Framed" is a B+ in my opinion. Sure it shows the worst side of Gus and lets Satan's little herpe win in the end, but there is still quality to be had. We get insight into who Gus is as a character, on top of Eda swallowing her pride and cleaning the school so Luz can get into Hexide. Also, Eda's permanent record was the first time this show brought me to tears due to laughing so hard. So while I have to take points off for the inclusion of Mattholomule (I don't make the rules. I just live by them), this is still an episode I wouldn't mind revisiting.

“Escape of the Palisman”: I subscribe to this theory that Luz will one day have Eda's staff as her own. And episodes like this that strengthen the bond between Luz and Owlbert help confirm that theory. Luz's dedication to trying to make things right could just be part of her kind nature, but I like to believe that this is Dana and the crew trying to set up this possible outcome. As for what I think about the episode itself...it's ok. Again, Luz's dedication is nice to see, and King's adventure with Owl Beast Eda is somehow insanely adorable, but there's not really much to say other than that. So it's another B episode for me.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And that’s the end of part one! Part two has probably already been posted by the time you finish this, so you can go ahead and find that if you’re interested.

#the owl house #the owl house review #what i thought about

[bluewatsons]

Laura Miller, Sleazy, bloody and surprisingly smart: In defense of true crime, Salon (May 30, 2014)

This stigmatized genre has much to teach us about the way crime and justice really work

Give me a book that begins with a time and a date and a boring address, something along the lines of "At 9:36 on March 24, 1982, Dep. Frank McGruff of the Huntington County Sheriff's Department was dispatched to 234 Maple Street in Pleasantville, North Carolina, a quiet, suburb 10 miles west of Raleigh, to follow up on reports of gunshots and screams."

There is nothing more generic than this sort of sentence -- which is why I was easily able to make one up on the fly -- and yet there's nothing more seductive, either. In it is promised: the regular-guy lawman (who always seems to have a new baby at home), the horrific crime scene (there is always more blood than anyone expects), the enigmatic object found lying in the foyer (marked with an X in the helpfully provided floor plan), the minute-by-minute timeline of that fatal half-hour, the witness reports that don't add up, the fractal-like multiplication of scenarios and theories and complications.

I've always felt somewhat sheepish about my appetite for true crime narratives, associated as they are with fat, flimsy paperbacks scavenged from the 25-cent box at garage sales, their battered covers branded with screaming two-word titles stamped in silver foil, blood dripping luridly from the last letter. The most famous practitioners of this louche genre -- Joe McGinniss, Ann Rule, Vincent Bugliosi -- come coated with a thin, greasy film of dubious repute and poor taste. (Can there ever be a valid reason to title a book "A Rose for Her Grave"?) True crime is also the mother's milk of risible tabloid journalism, of endless trashy news cycles in which the same photo of a wide-eyed innocent bride (where is she?); a gap-toothed kindergarten student (who killed him?); a bleary-eyed, stubbled suspect (why did he do it?) appear over and over and over again.

Occasionally, true crime is where literary writers go to slum and, not coincidentally, make some real money: Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood," Norman Mailer's "The Executioner's Song." It's not the Great American Novel, yet somehow such books have a tendency to end up the most admired works of a celebrated author's career. Is it because better writers tease something out of the genre that pulp peddlers can't, or is it just that their blue-chip names give readers a free pass to indulge a guilty pleasure?

By contrast, crime fiction has a better rep. It is the most respectable form of genre fiction, the one that even the snootiest literary critics will admit to enjoying now and then. They justly praise the innovative prose styles of Raymond Chandler or Elmore Leonard as vehicles for a distinctively American voice. And crime -- transgression of the social and moral order -- is one of literature's central themes, after all. Isn't one of the greatest novels of all time called "Crime and Punishment"? Plus, from Cormac McCarthy's "No Country for Old Men" to Toni Morrison's "Beloved," many novels by literary titans are crime fiction by another name.

True crime, however, labors always under the stigma of voyeurism, or worse. It's not just unseemly to linger over the bloodied bodies of the dead and the hideous sufferings inflicted upon them in their final hours, it's also kind of sick. Gillian Flynn's second novel, "Dark Places," describes the wincing interactions between its narrator -- survivor of a notorious multiple murder like the Clutter killings of "In Cold Blood" -- and a creepy subculture of murder "fans" and collectors; when she's hard up for cash, she's forced to auction off family memorabilia at their conventions. Yuck.

The very thing that makes true crime compelling -- this really happened -- also makes it distasteful: the use of human agony for the purposes of entertainment. Of course, what is the novel if not a voyeuristic enterprise, an attempt to glimpse inside the minds and hearts of other people? But with fiction, no actual people are exploited in the making.

I love crime fiction, too, but lately I've come to appreciate true crime more, specifically for its lack of certain features that crime fiction nearly always supplies: solutions, explanations, answers. Even if the culprit isn't always caught and brought to justice in a detective novel, we expect to find out whodunit, and that expectation had better be satisfied. A novelist who dares to build her narrative around a murder and then refuses to collar the perp by the last chapter -- as Donna Tartt did in her sumptuous, underappreciated second novel, "The Little Friend" -- will never hear the end of it. Readers of books and viewers of television and film demand not only to know who did it but why, preferably with a tidy little back story about a molesting uncle, bullying schoolmates or a mom who tricked with sailors in the next room. We believe in evil, but we also want pop psychology to explain it away.

Crime fiction reassures us that for every murder there is a sleuth as obsessed as we are with getting to the bottom of the puzzle. There are the formulaic clashes between the committed police detective and the self-serving brass, the feds who interfere with the locals (or vice versa) for purely territorial reasons, the nagging spouse and the occasional sloppy, time-serving colleague who just wants to wrap this thing up before he's set to retire with a full pension. But there's also always someone, the hero -- whether public officer or private dick -- who really, really wants to find out the truth and has the brains (and sometimes the brawn) required to do it.

Because most of us have a lot more experience with crime fiction -- TV and movies, but also books -- than we do with actual crime, our sense of how law enforcement works has been distorted by the imperatives of entertainment. Forensic scientists often complain that the public expects them to possess and deploy the wizardly high-tech tools they see every week on "CSI." Because the "CSI" team's gear is presented as omniscient and infallible, legal professionals must contend with jurors' overinflated confidence in forensic evidence. Even the most appalling news stories of incompetent or corrupt lab workers will never register as deeply as watching Gil Grissom and his earnest sidekicks stay up all night and ruin their marriages for the sake of seeing justice done.

For all their lingering shots of mangled bodies and gooey, maggot-ridden corpses, these TV procedurals paint a too-pretty picture. If Jack Nicholson were a true-crime author, he'd be telling the audience for such pseudo-gritty shows that they can't handle the truth. Finding myself seated next to a criminal prosecutor-turned-defense attorney at a wedding several years ago, I asked him what pop culture gets the most wrong about crime and punishment in America. After a long pause, he said, "I'm torn between two answers: How much police care about getting it right and how competent they are to do it."

True crime is not above trafficking in misleading clichés -- because, let's face it, there's not much that true crime is above. The majority of the genre is cheap sensationalism, deploying the most shopworn clichés: tragic maidens; idyllic small towns; smiling devils; winsome, doomed tots. Much true crime has achieved its goals if it gives its readers something to shiver over late at night or to whisper about at school. (Most of my early knowledge of true crime classics like "Helter Skelter" came from other girls who got ahold of the books while baby sitting and recounted the most horrific details to a breathless audience on the playground the next day.) Plenty of it offers a comforting message similar to that of crime fiction: that, for all the bewildering and seemingly random violence of this world, it is usually possible for us to know what really happened and who's responsible.

But we also live in a golden age when it comes to a more challenging vein of true crime. These books include Robert Kolker's "Lost Girls," about 14 unsolved murders in Long Island; Raymond Bonner's "Anatomy of Injustice," about the wrongful capital conviction of a black handyman for the rape and murder of an elderly white widow in South Carolina; Janet Malcolm's "Iphigenia in Forest Hills," about the celebrated journalist's inability to accept the guilty verdict against a young mother accused of hiring a man to murder her ex-husband; and Errol Morris' "A Wilderness of Error," which is in part a challenge to another milestone in the genre, Joe McGinniss' "Fatal Vision." Coming up next month is another landmark, "The Wrong Carlos," by James Liebman and the Columbia DeLuna Project, an exhaustively researched consideration of a 1980s case in which the state of Texas most likely executed the wrong man.

Even true crime books in which the identity of the killer is uncontested can open up welcome vistas of uncertainty. Recently, Anand Giridharadas' "The True American" examines the lives of two men: the sole survivor of a hate-crime spree, who forgave and tried to save his would-be killer, and the killer himself, who seems to have become a different man before his 2011 execution; who was he, really? Dave Cullen's masterful "Columbine," published in 2009, offers the most definitive account of the infamous school shooting and clears up many misperceptions, but still leaves the reader with a sense that the reasons for such acts may be fundamentally unknowable. Several years ago, when I was interviewing Margaret Atwood about "Alias Grace," her novel about a maid convicted of killing her master in 19th-century Canada, she remarked that murderers themselves often don't seem to understand their own crimes. They describe the acts as something that "just happened" or as if they were committed by someone else even as they acknowledge they did it. The true crime accounts I've read confirm what Atwood said.

Most important of all, true crime reminds its readers over and over again that most detectives aren't fantastically clever, that most investigations make dozens of significant mistakes and that even the most seemingly hard evidence can become as indeterminate as a quantum particle under sustained study. Sometimes the confusion is understandable. Jeff Guinn's "Manson," a biography of the murderous cult leader published last year, recounts how long the LAPD spent pursuing a bogus scenario in investigating the massacre at Sharon Tate's home.

Investigators assumed that because drugs were found on the premises, the motive was probably a drug deal or connection gone bad. Manson had his followers plant "clues," in the form of weird words written on the wall in blood, with the bizarre idea that the police would instantly link these words to the Black Panthers. (They instead assumed it was just crazy druggie writing, which of course it was.) Much time was lost before the cops were put on the right track by an informant. This, incidentally, is how most real-life whodunits, such as the Unabomber attacks, seem to be solved. There's nothing like true crime to dispel the notion that criminals get caught because of a detective's brilliant reading of the clues. Rather, they get caught because someone rats them out.

Nowhere is the danger of investigators' tendency to settle too early on a theory of the crime more evident than in stories of wrongful conviction. As "Anatomy of Injustice" tells it, police decided that Edward Lee Elmore, the simple-minded African-American man who had mowed neighborhood lawns for years, suddenly turned violent. Under the influence of a suspiciously meddlesome neighbor, a local city councilman, they ignored significant evidence contradicting this theory, and eventually resorted to falsifying evidence, while Elmore's own lawyers barely bothered to defend him at all. Finally, thanks to the efforts of an attorney working for South Carolina's Center for Capital Litigation, the conviction was overturned. The actual murderer has never been identified, but at least an innocent man has escaped death row.

Investigations aren't always led astray by deliberate manipulation, however. In "The Wrong Carlos," confused and inept handling of the crime scene, witnesses and hunt for the man who stabbed a convenience store clerk in Corpus Christi combined with coincidence and bad luck to lead to the unjust execution of Carlos DeLuna. He was the spitting image of the likely culprit to the degree that even people who knew either of the men quite well couldn't tell photos of them apart. Under the aegis of Liebman, 12 Columbia Law School students pored over the records of the case, producing a meticulous and highly detailed report on the crime investigation and trial -- which, while sobering, is also catnip for the amateur detective. It strongly suggests DeLuna was innocent and it's so convincing that even the victim's brother agrees.

Robert Kolker's "Lost Girls" and Errol Morris' "A Wilderness of Error" may be the most accomplished true crime narratives I've read in recent years. The killer or killers responsible for dumping bodies along a lonely Long Island road have yet to be identified. The investigation appears to be stalled for a variety of reasons having to do with the personalities and ambitions of local officials. So Kolker's "Lost Girls" focuses instead on the lives and families of the dead, young women who drifted into the world of prostitution and could not succeed at pulling themselves out again. It's a portrait of underclass life, frayed by substance abuse, domestic violence, crime and fecklessness, and it asks not what circumstances create a monster but which ones forge his victims.

"A Wilderness of Error" is remarkable not just for questioning a murder investigation and conviction but also for condemning the famous true-crime narrative written about them. Morris is a master of the genre, albeit in a different medium (documentary film) and can even claim to have gotten an innocent man out of jail by making "The Thin Blue Line" in 1988. Above all, he is preoccupied with how we establish what's true. His first book, "Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography," dismantles our faith in the facticity of photographed images. "A Wilderness of Error," his second, concerns the case of Jeffrey MacDonald, convicted of murdering his wife and two small children in 1970. The crimes were the center of a bestselling book, "Fatal Vision" by Joe McGinniss, later made into a TV movie, that pressed home McGinniss' theory that MacDonald was a psychopath.

The writing of "Fatal Vision" was the subject of yet another book, Janet Malcolm's "The Journalist and the Murderer," devoted to probing the moral soft spots in all journalists' relationships to their subjects, but Morris believes these murders were insufficiently investigated and that MacDonald did not get a fair trial. Many aficionados of the trial find Morris' arguments unconvincing, but that is partly Morris' point. Just like the cops, outside observers settle on a story about what happened and become invested in it. They then ignore or dismiss any evidence that undermines that story, often with a vehemence that increases as the counter-evidence mounts. Certainty, an emotional state all too common today, is less a testament to the merits of a belief than a measure of how much we want to go on believing it.

At the very least, Morris presents a convincing case that an uncertain McGinniss was pushed into endorsing MacDonald's guilt by his publisher because offering a conclusion would make for a more satisfying book. Later, of course, the author had no choice but to double down on that conclusion, and whether or not he believed it before his editor urged him to declare the case solved in his own mind, he seems to have fully believed it in the end. All this would be meat for an interesting consideration of the nature of truth and whether it can ever be meaningfully detached from desire, but as Morris keeps pointing out, when it comes to true crime, real lives and real justice are at stake. Crime fiction can afford to go on telling us what we want to hear, but at its best true crime insists on telling us what we can't afford to forget.

#media #true crime #ethics #errol morris #crime fiction #crime #society #detective fiction #television procedurals #Joe McGinniss

[biohackerblogger-blog]

Biohacking and Science: A solution for most of your problems

In this article I’m going to be discussing biohacking—what it is and the different aspects of human biology an individual can improve (or “hack”, if you want to call it that) to optimise their life and cognition. In the next blog I’ll discuss the specific improvements I’ve made in my life and their scientific justifications—with an in-depth focus on nutrition, supplementation and cognitive-enhancement.

Biohacking as defined by merriam-webster is “biological experimentation done to improve the qualities or capabilities of living organisms especially by individuals and groups working outside a traditional medical or scientific research environment”.

While that sounds dramatic, the term could also be described as do-it-yourself biology—making small, incremental changes to your diet, habits and life to optimise your cognition and life expectancy. This hobby likely originated in Silicon Valley, a place popular in many trendy self improvement hacks: The keto diet, intermittent fasting and microdosing to name a few.

We are living in an era of excess. Western supermarkets are packed full of processed, sugary, fatty products that people cling to as comfort food. Social media and smartphones have been tweaked to be as addictive as possible. Even television has been replaced by on-demand streaming services that provide countless hours of mindless oblivion to addicted viewers—so much so that “binge-watching” is now a recognized term in many dictionaries. This combination and more has led to the shortening of the average attention span.

Coincidentally, it feels like every other person in recent generations seems to suffer from some form of ADHD, depression or other mental health issues.

Me, technically a part of generation z, am no exception.

I’ve been an underperformer most of my school career, with every parent-teacher meeting ending the same way: “Alexandru is a very bright boy but he doesn’t seem to be reaching his potential in class.”

I daydreamed, lost focus often and was often unmotivated when tackling complex tasks. My mom has practiced psychiatry for 2 decades and during my last year of high school I saw one of her colleagues who eventually diagnosed me with ADHD.

This shook me. I had believed that I was just a lazy person, not working hard enough but now this doctor was basically telling me that it wasn’t my fault; That I had a learning disability that would always put me at a disadvantage to other “functional” people.

As I made my way through university the same issues kept coming up over and over again and I started feeling hopeless. Medication seemed to act as a bandaid on the problem, working as intended inconsistently. Is this what the rest of my life was gonna be like?—Craving achievement while lacking the motivation to acquire it?

Nahhhh, I wasn’t going to let some abstract diagnosis prevent me from prospering in life.

Enter biohacking:

In my spare time at uni I began researching ways of “curing” my ADHD. The goal: Improving my attention, motivation and cognition anyway I could. I’m a scientist, so it only made sense to solve my problems with science. Little did I know I wasn’t so much as curing a disorder as I was just finding ways to optimise my life using scientific knowledge. I tried different lifestyle changes and recorded the positive benefits of each one—Basically running my own scientific experiments on a sample size of 1. Biohacking is basically tweaking your biology to improve your life.

Diet

As I mentioned before, supermarkets today are full of horrible, delicious processed food. It’s expensive eating healthy and it’s difficult to resist the allure of a greasy portion of chips. Regardless, I think a large percentage of the population seriously underestimate how much your diet impacts your day-to-day life as a human being. A heavily debated study found that judges tended to give harsher sentences just before lunch due to hunger (This study has argued about for years). If even people who practice being impartial for a living are at the mercy of their own biology—that means so are you.

Your body is a complex machine, requiring certain amounts of macronutrients (protein, carbs, fats) and micronutrients (vitamins, minerals) to carry out all of it’s processes efficiently. If any of these numbers are skewed, the machine won’t run smoothly. You can optimise your diet in a number of ways depending on your goals, but the FDA and similar organizations provide recommendations as to how much of each nutrient an average individual requires in a day.

Many of the micronutrients have important roles in our day-to-day lives which becomes apparent when we are deficient. Magnesium plays a huge role in good-quality sleep while vitamin D is important for healthy bones and mood. The world health organisation provides guidelines for what they consider a healthy diet which contains healthy doses of all these nutrients. Obviously, we’re human, not superhuman and we can’t always have a perfect diet all the time. There’s no shame in supplementing your diet artificially, just don't use pills as a replacement for healthy eating habits. Getting blood work done can help you identify which vitamins and minerals you're deficient to inform your dietary changes or supplement purchases.

If you're looking to improve cognition, omega-3 fatty acids are a well-researched staple supplement that is found in high quantities in fish. I could write a whole article on cognitive enhancement and supplements—so I’ll save it for the next one.

If weight loss is your goal maybe consider reading up on the science of the keto diet (a fat heavy diet that pushes metabolism into burning fat) or experimenting with alternative eating habits like intermittent fasting. Hell, I hear great things about going vegan nowadays and you’d be saving the environment while you’re at it.

Play around with it, optimise it for your goals and give supplements a try.

Exercise

The NHS recommends 75-150 minutes of exercise a week for the average individual. Obesity continues to be a huge issue in this country and others so more still needs to be done to encourage public fitness. It seems that many people make the mistake of thinking of exercise as a distraction from more important things like careers and making money, especially as they get older. They say they’re simply too busy and can’t find the time but in reality they’re decreasing their potential to excel in other aspects of their lives. There’s no point in making money if you’re too fat and achy to enjoy spending it.

Exercise is important. As Socrates eloquently puts it:

“No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable.”

Deep.

Endorphins produced by exercise  make us feel great, we sleep better, we have more energy, we are more engaged with our work—Not a whole lot of downsides. For men in particular weight training is a very well-researched method or raising testosterone levels. A hormone my generation seems to be in significant lack of but in need of due to its important properties. Testosterone has anxiolytic properties, lubricates social interactions and is involved in providing an array of physical health benefits too.

Exercise is free, there are no downsides and a plethora of benefits. It doesn’t so much matter what type of exercise you’re doing so much as you’re doing it on a regular basis. It will suck, especially if you’re not accustomed to regular exercise but once you make it a habit (takes around 21 days to make something a habit), you’ll stop thinking about it and it’ll happen automatically.

Biohacking sure sounds a lot like self-improvement eh?

Sleep

In today’s day and age a good night’s sleep has become a rare treat. It’s like taking a gamble every night and hoping you wake up rested. As a student studying in the UK, I feel like I’m probably the most qualified person to say that. Sleep is very important for humans as pretty much all of our physical processes are regulated to some extent by our biological clock. A clock set by our circadian rhythm (Aka sleep cycle). Small perturbations to our sleep can seriously knock our daily rhythm out of line. Memories are written into your long term memory, waste products are flushed from the brain and the body readies itself for the new day. Everyone is aware their performance drops after a poor night’s sleep.

Here are some things you can do:

Humans need to go through about 4-6 sleep cycles per night to function adequately.

                          Sleep cycle = 90 minutes +/-                  5 * 90m = 7.5 hours

Try to wake up after sleeping a multiple of 90 minutes. If you wake up during the middle of a cycle you’re more likely to feel groggy. 6 hours, 7.5 or 9 hours between bed and wake are what you’re looking for.

Avoid blue light before bed. I’m sure you’ve already heard this one but blue light from screens inhibits sleep. Try a blue light filter on your laptop—Flux is the free one I use and recommend.

Avoiding caffeine, sugar and carbs before bed works wonders for your sleep. A magnesium supplement does too.

Going to bed and waking up at the same time consistently will make sleeping easy and soon your whole body will adjust itself to the routine. The human body loves routine.

Anything else worth mentioning

Yes, meditation is a big one. Specifically mindfulness. If you haven’t already been preached to on the internet about the numerous benefits of meditation, it seems to improve pretty much everything about people.—The ultimate meta-habit for improving all aspects of living. It shows promise in ameliorating depressive symptoms, anxiety, self-control and a lot more.

The mobile app headspace provides a great starting point and for those that want a challenge and want to try their hand at a monk’s life check out Vipassana meditation. Their free week-long retreats are a crash course in mindfulness with lifelong benefits. I tried one this summer and was convinced it was a cult for the first 3 days.

I’ve seen huge improvement in my life after I started applying science to fix my problems. I hope I’ve managed to give an effective overview of my experience in biohacking and given you some well-researched places to get started. If you have a biological background I think it’s a shame not to use that background to optimise your life in every way you can.

Thanks for reading,

Alex

P.S. here’s a short rant:

I think (not all, but a lot) of the recent diagnoses of ADHD and depression could be “cured” by not treating it as an isolated malady caused by some bad genes and poor luck—but as a culmination of lifestyle choices and habits that could be improved upon. Exercise and diet should be the FIRST CHOICE intervention when it comes to treating things like ADHD and depression.

I believe diet and exercise should always precede a chemical solution to these ailments. There are hundreds of supplements and activities that have proven psychological benefits that could hugely benefit humans. Thanks again.

[ramajmedia]

10 Jokes From The Parks & Rec. That Have Already Aged Poorly

For six years we were totally enthralled in the behind-the-scenes look at Pawnee, Indiana's government; more specifically, the Parks and Recreation Department. With Ron Swanson and Leslie Knope leading the way, fans of the show followed a whirlwind of character development, outdated portrayals of women in the workplace, and an array of some pretty outlandish jokes.

Now, with many geniuses in the writing room and seven seasons on their belt, Parks and Rec. was a hit; but within just four years of the show's last season, some of their jokes are falling flat. What was once deemed laughable and "okay" for TV is slowly fading away. While not every fan of the show is offended by these 10 jokes, some fans have showed their disdain for them on message boards, thanks to more serious advances in our culture like the #MeToo Movement and issues revolving around green cards.

These jokes are surely up for debate among fans but they're definitely ruffling a few feathers.

10 WHEN LESLIE ASSUMES TOM'S FROM INDIA

In the second season, we're given the episode "The Stakeout." It's date night for Ann and Mark but Leslie can't enjoy the night off because she's too upset and consumed by the fact that her BFF is going on a date with her crush. After hiding in a van for hours looking out after Ann and seeing if they can catch an intruder in the community garden, Leslie and Tom try to get to know each other more.

RELATED: Parks & Rec: 10 Episodes That Actually Tackled Deep Issues

Considering Tom is a man of color, fans are continuously upset at characters on the show of assuming Tom Haverford is from anywhere other than America simply because of his heritage. While in the back of the van, Leslie assumes he came here from "somewhere else." He tells her he was born and raised in South Carolina but she isn't satisfied with his answer and alludes to him being born elsewhere. The moral of the story here is why couldn't Tom be born in America just because his family came from somewhere else?

9 WHY IS A SEX CHANGE SEEN AS LAUGHABLE?

Once Andy finds out that he and April have feelings for each other, he tries to win her over (regardless of that one, small kiss with Ann). However, she tries to move on with another man who speaks little English. After Andy says something to the couple, April's boyfriend asks what he said. “He says he wants to become a woman," she says, and her boyfriend dies laughing.

Uh, in what way is a sex change laughable? Although the joke was done in jest, someone being transgendered shouldn't be seen as a joke.

8 WHEN TOM WAS TREATED AS A SERVANT

Also in the second season, the Parks and Recreation Department is gearing up to welcome visitors from Venezuela in "Sister City." According to quite a few threads, many people were offended by this episode due to the stereotypical nods and insults coming from another culture.

For starters, when the Venezuelan team arrives in Pawnee, they instantly think Tom is a servant because he's a man of color... To make things even more uncomfortable, they want to choose Donna as their female companion for the night due to her size and color as well.

Leslie, the leader of the pack, should have protected her team, but instead told Tom to be a "good host" after he was asked to collect their bags. Come on, Leslie!

7 JERRY'S RAP JOKE...

It's not very often where Jerry offends us. The poor man is just trying to get by without drawing attention to himself. Nevertheless, in one camping episode, Tom asks Jerry, "What do Jay Z, Lil Wayne, and Drake all have in common?". In response, Jerry quickly says "Oh, I know this one... They are all rap-ists." Not only was Jerry incredibly insensitive but he was extremely judgemental. The short, quick answer is: They're all rappers, Jerry!

6 WHEN LESLIE SAYS SHE'S FOR EQUALITY BUT THEN DEGRADES A STRIPPER

Now that Tom is finally divorced from his green-card marriage, Leslie tries to cheer him up by the only way she knows how: taking him to a strip club. And although she says she's a feminist and that her stripper name would Equality, she actually does the opposite which upset a few viewers.

After meeting Sierra (a stripper), she ignores her name and calls her Seabiscuit — even after being corrected twice. Furthermore, she tries to tell Sierra to rethink her life choices which is kind of against the whole women-support-women-thing.

5 THE FACT THAT BEN CAN'T COMPREHEND HOW JERRY LANDED GAYLE

News flash, Ben: everyone is deserving of love!

It's understandable that Parks and Recreation wanted to show another side to Jerry, considering he was bullied every day in the office. It made fans happy knowing he had a wife and three girls waiting for him at home every day after work.

RELATED: Parks And Rec: 5 Times Everyone Was Actually A Good Friend To Jerry (&5 Times They Were Too Mean)

As we know, Jerry isn't the most text-book attractive guy on earth, but his wife is a total bombshell. Ben (most of all) can't seem to fathom how Jerry landed such a knockout and says so multiple times throughout the seasons. "Was she temporarily blind?", he asks. "Like... was she a Russian spy and the KGB forced her to marry Jerry as a cover?", he says another time. Fans found his reactions harsh because it plays into the stigma of "larger" guys not being able to find love or happiness.

4 JEAN-RALPHIO'S SCEMES DIDN'T MAKE EVERYONE LAUGH

Jean-Ralphio. Fans either love him or hate him. As Tom Haverford's best friend, Jean-Ralphio seems to always have a 'get rich quick' scheme. He's a con artist of sorts and everyone can see this except for his father who refuses to believe his children are life suckers.

RELATED: 5 Things Parks & Rec Does Better Than The Office (& Vice Versa)

While many fans are offended by Ralphio, he crosses the line when he sees Ben conversing with Chris. "Are you ding dongs making fake drugs for sophomores, because if true, this guy wants in!" he says. Fans always knew Jean-Ralphio was greasy but to become a fake drug dealer for kids? Too far, man.

3 April's Gay Jokes Fall Flat

April is a very dark person who speaks in a monotone voice day-in and day-out, but she is low-key accepting deep down. Early on we find out that April is in a relationship with two gay men. Fans of the show figured April was "allowed" to get away with some of her demeaning jokes because she was in a polyamorous relationship, but that's not always respectful.

After inviting Ben out one night, he declines due to having a date. "Oh, what's his name?" April replies, which insinuates Ben is gay and she's poking fun at him for it. Likewise, Tom also drops some "jokes" about his metrosexuality — especially when he was opening his store, Rent-a-Swag. "We're not even close to being ready, they're not even done painting that sign. It says 'Tom's bi.' Actually, no that's a good sign." The offense with Tom's joke is that those who are bi or gay love fashion and are more likely to shop, which is another stereotype.

2 WHEN THE BEAUTY PAGEANT IS JUDGED BY MEN WHO ONLY CARE ABOUT ONE THING

In "Beauty Pageant," Pawnee is hosting a local beauty pageant to award the winner with a cash-prize. Due to needing money, April decides to join and Leslie praises her for it because she's not the "average" beauty. After hearing there's a pageant in town, Tom rushes to his phone to make some calls to try and become a judge.

RELATED: Parks & Rec: April Ludgate’s 10 Most Badass Quotes

Not only is he insensitive to another culture while trying to increase his personal gain ("Just bump that clown, tell them they already have an Asian judge"), but he's also a creep and confirms what most male judges think. Excited by the news of being a judge, he tells Leslie, "I had to make some favors. But if you don't make some favors to look at women in bikinis and assign them numerical grades then what the [heck] are you calling favors for?" *Sigh*

1 The LGBTQ+ Community Was Not Pleased With The Penguin Episode

In the very first episode of season two, Leslie decides to marry two penguins at the Pawnee Zoo because she thought it was a cute gesture. After it turned out the two penguins were male, Leslie was thrown into a 'do you or don't you support gay rights' screaming match. Unfortunately, the LGBTQ+ communtity was upset that Leslie never took a strong stance. She only wanted the attention of the gay community because they were chanting her name. While at a gay bar, April chimes in, "She’s Leslie Knope and she wants to recruit you!”, which plays right into the stereotype that young gays "recruit" others instead of accepting the fact that they were born that way.

NEXT: Parks And Rec: 5 Reasons We Want To Work For The Pawnee Parks And Recreation Department (& 5 We Don't)

source https://screenrant.com/10-jokes-parks-rec-already-aged-poorly/

#screenrant

[ringusscully]

@gifsourcefed made a little post detailing about how she felt about all the hosts and I thought it would be a good way to show my appreciation as well! 

My story is pretty much like every others, I started way back in 2012, right around the time of the fall, and from then on my life was forever changed. SourceFed has always been my home, some place I could leave for a bit and then come back and things were a little different, like the furniture had changed around and maybe we got some new members, but it was still home, it still had the heart and the love that I always remembered.

Lee Newton, the sweetest, funniest, dinosaur loving woman I’ve ever seen. I connected with her Make-A-Wish story and being sick and having surgeries all the time as a kid with my own past being similar, and from then on she felt like a new mom, one complete with hilarious voices and a bright smile.

Joe Bereta, the dad I wish I had, so athletic and fearless, and Joe knew how to tell a story like nobody else, I always wanted to learn how to tell a story like Joe Bereta, even if he did almost die in half of them.

Elliott Morgan, the dry humored, silly guy who had the tendency to go a little dark, Elliott was filled with endless talent and entertainment, there truly was nobody like Elliott Morgan, and never will be. 

Steve Zaragoza, this silly, joyous, funny, fantastic man. I love Stee, even when I disagree with him, because Steve is so magical, so special in the way he exudes happiness. Zabagoobler has always been the kind of guy I wanted to be friends with.

Trisha Hershberger, this small, dramatic, tech loving woman. I love Trisha Hershberger. Trisha reminded me of myself, in drama and wanting to be an actress, and so very tiny and optimistic and loved games and technology. Trisha is the sweetest little lady, and I know she’s going to be a fantastic mother.

Meg Turney, this red haired force of nature. Meg was hot and quick and full of life, so casually cool and fun it almost hurt. Meg seemed so effortless in everything, like that being that amazing was just easy. She made being a nerd girl in a t-shirt be hot.

Ross Everett, although far from a favorite of mine personally, always added a little spice. I actually did come to miss him when brought up the last few days, missing the dynamic he had, and I think that’s how Ross shined: he was good with people, good with bouncing off of them, good at creating a fun energy and a good time. I could only hope to have that much energy as Ross.

And then came our first round of newbies. Admittedly, these are probably my favorite hosts, ones I connected with the most.

William Haynes, the unpredictable, creative, wild Naruto Shippuden loving boy. I had a crush on Will when he first popped up on Anime Club. Will was awkward, but well spoken and characteristic, and funny? Will was so funny. And he changed, right before our own eyes, Will went from this awkward boy, to this amazing, cool, funny man. Will showed me that even in the void, you can always find the light at the of the Tunnel (Vision). Speaking of Anime Club...

Reina Scully, this small, beautiful Asian woman. God do I love Reina Scully. Reina was small, just like me, and loved anime, and was actually pretty disgusting and lewd, in the best of ways, things that I was afraid of showing, but Reina brought me out of my shell. Reina is by far my favorite host, coming into her own from sitting quietly at TableTalks to yelling to my favorite soft chicken boy. Never did I have to think about liking Reina, because she was so likeable right from the moment she popped up. Somebody else that brought me out of my shell?

Sam Bashor, meek and sweet in the beginning, now a still sweet, but amazing man who is so full of ideas and passion that he seems like he’s going to burst. Sam was also somebody I had a crush on, the old Doctor Who outfits were so charming, and the privilege of seeing Sam (and Will) grow from boys my age to these incredibly talented men who are living their dreams and their passions, has always given me hope and something to strive for, that you can change but still be yourself at heart, especially if deep down you’re actually just the Flash.

Matthew Lieberman, this boy! God I love Matt. It was so popular to dislike Matt, but I loved him. I love the crazy stories Matt always brought to the table, and he always knew how to tell them, the details and specifics, and in story reactions almost unbelievable and amazing. And cooking! The man can cook. Amazingly so. I’m so upset we never got to see more of Matt’s skills, and that SourceFeed is never going to happen now. And on top of that, an actor and a writer? Matt is so talented, and I especially loved him on Nuclear Family.

Around late 2014 early 2015 I fell off SF, but not for long. I came back home, just like always, and there were even more new hosts. 

Bree Essrig, this feminist fireball, Bree is everything I wish I could be. Talented, outspoken, funny, beautiful. Bree is the complete package, topped with hair just as fiery as she is. Bree’s skills were brought to the forefront on Nuclear Family, and not getting to see those anymore makes me so sad. God damn do I love Bree Essrig. Know who else I love?

Maude Garrett. Maude. Fucking. Garrett. When Maude Garrett enters a video, enters a single frame, this is Maude’s show now. Maude brings the light to the room, draws all the attention in with that tall blonde Australianness that only she could exude, somehow contained in a Star Wars dress. Maude is so ridiculously funny, you might as well just sit back and let her go at it. The dynamic with Sam is so amazing, so perfect, lightning in a bottle that could never be recreated. I can’t wait for the Smaudecast.

Steven Suptic. This soft chicken boy. This boy grew on me. I watched SPF for Reina, she’d always been my favorite, and now she did games? Full time? Hell fucking yeah I was in. But then this boy came in. This weird white boy with greasy hair who said all the wrong things. I don’t know how long I wouldn’t watch a video that didn’t feature somebody else that involved Suptic. But somewhere along that way, that boy got a haircut, and I’m pretty sure some new glasses, and eventually found his voice and his stride, and GOD do I love Steven Suptic. Suppy is a grower, somebody that’s so bombastic you’re off-put by him. But then you watch more, and you realize that boy that jokes around all the time? Is sentimental, and kinda sweet, even if he still says the wrong things sometimes, but now it’s a little bit endearing, especially if his dick is just, y’know. Out.

I was pretty consistent with keeping up from now until the end, and luckily, I’d already been keeping up with a few of the new hosts.

Ava Gordy, a sweet, funny, short haired lady with legs more bendable than I thought possible. Ava’s been somebody I knew since 2012 as well, I saw a video she did for Taylor’s Swift’s “RED” album reviewing it, and had been watching “HALT, I am Ava.” ever since. Seeing Ava here was a surprise, a good one, Ava’s talents finally having the coolest of platforms I could think of to be shown off. Ava is funny, her timing and storytelling impeccable. Ava Gordy is a masterpiece.

Mike Falzone, this sweet, funny man was also somebody I knew, having been around the YouTube block, knowing of Tonjes and Gunnarolla. Mike was like Steve, hilariously funny, always doing something to get a laugh, and this man is so genuine it seems almost impossible. Mike is so sweet, so good to this world, and so funny on top of it all. The world does not deserve the Calzone, but we get to enjoy him anyways.

Candace Carrizales. Oh Candy. Candace is someone that took the most to grow on me. Her humor is so different from the others, her demeanor so unexpected from this office that’s known to be out of this world loud and exuberant. Not Candy. Candy’s just hear to be here, and have a good time, and to give a laugh. I wish I could’ve appreciated Candace sooner, seeing her grown more comfortable and more into her voice and comedy has been amazing, and I wanted nothing but to see her more, considering she’s made me laugh so much in the last few months than I ever expected.

Yessica Hernandez-Cruz, God damn do I love this lady. Yessica and Will were dynamite, bouncing off each other, feeling like the PBL duo to SFN’s Maude and Sam, it was impossible to not smile seeing these two do magic together. Yessica on her own, is even more magical, proud of who she is and unapologetic, and holy shit can Yessica make me laugh. I’m going to miss Yessica, but I have hope for the PBL trio, considering John’s promises. Speaking of...

John Ross, I love this man. John is somebody I want to hang out with, to teach me all that he knows about food and camera work and everything he’s familiar with. John has such an aura about him, so friendly and positive, John is the calming member of this amazing trio, just wanting to spend time with his friends and have a good time and make amazing content. John Ross is a gift.

Whitney Moore, another gift, was the perfect person for Nerd. Whitney was a slightly familiar face, and she felt just so right to be there. Whitney brought a cool meal edge to the channel, her slightly darker tones of interest so contrasted with her bright and bubbly personality. I always smiled when Whit was on screen, so funny and cool, ready to take on the world. 

Filup Molina, the biggest surprise for me, was just on Nerd one day. Just hanging out. And I’m glad that he did, that hat wearing, funny boy. Filup’s always been slightly out of place for me, in the best way, his references falling on deaf ears because they didn’t make sense to others, jokes that the viewer caught going unnoticed by others, I loved him. Filup was a breath of fresh air for the channel, a sparkling gem that I feel not many noticed.

Aside from the hosts, I wanted to note a few BTS staff:

Rickey Mizuno, handsome, talented Rickey boy, beautiful behind the camera and in front of it. This man exudes charisma, and we didn’t get to see him nearly enough. Dani Rosenberg, the HBIC, funny and badass, Dani was one of my favorites to see. She really made SF what it was, and I want to see her do more awesome shit. Sophia Lorena, that curly haired beauty, dealing with Will’s shit every day was truly a lot for her to deal with, and I think for that alone we should be praising her. Also, have you seen her blog? Sophia’s amazing. Starline Hodge, the beautiful, talented graphic designer, Star’s vlogs and art have never not caused me to smile. Star was always subtle in things, but I always wanted more of her. And Audrey Davy, hearing Reina scream her name in SPF videos was always hilarious, and seeing her in Phil’s vlogs and in the Drunk Co-Workers series confirmed that Audrey is a dime a dozen, hardworking and sweet, Audrey was one of my favorites always.

To all of those in this list, and on staff, thank you for these 5 years. They were wonderful, and funny, and God, I will never forget them or the people that made them. And I will never forget the amazing community that thrived from it. I love every single one of you. 

See you, you hot little daddy’s.

#sourcefed #william haynes #sam bashor #lee newton #steven suptic #maude garrett #LMAO I WAS GONNA TAG EVERYONE BUT ITS TOO MANY but i lvove you all

[lyricalive]

If you're an Ace Attorney fan and haven't seen the 1950 Akira Kurosawa film RASHOMON, you're missing out on something very relevant to your interests. It's a gripping tale of murder, contradictions, samurais, and spirit mediums... seriously.  Here it is on public domain.

By the way, because it's so relevant, I wrote a dumb fanfic that reinterprets the story of Rashomon using the characters of AA.

Two men took their seats in a cramped sideroom on the Global Studios set.

An uneventful silence persisted between them… until a bright and rosy figure sprung abruptly from behind their folding chairs.

"BOO!"

"Maya–!?"  The man in blue jumped at her sneak attack.  "What are you doing?"

"Haha!  Why so shocked, Nick?  Didja think I was a ghost?"

The suggestion was enough to send him into a cold sweat.  "Don't joke about that, Maya.  Sometimes you are a ghost."  Turning his attention back to a thick stack of paper he held in his hands, Phoenix Wright furrowed his jagged brow.  "I'm still not so sure about this movie thing.  I've only read halfway, but this script hits scarily close to home…"

"You're lucky, then!"  The girl in the pink costume clapped her hands together with delight.  "You’ll be a natural for the part!  No need to rely on the acting skills you don't have."

(I resent that!  Bluffing could be considered a type of acting.)

Brushing off his indignance, Phoenix continued.  "What kind of story is this even supposed to be?  Isn't it a little serious for a kid's show?"

Maya shot back, "Get with the program, old man!  Everybody loves it when TV shows get a little darker and edgier."  She whirled to face the other lawyer seated beside him. "You agree, right?  Don't you like things edgy, Mr. Edgeworth?"

"Mm…"  Choosing to pardon the pun, Edgeworth agreed.  "It is an interesting choice to base the plot on an old cinematic classic.  I can commend the franchise for being willing to take risks in a direction that appeals to more mature viewers peripheral to its target demographic."

"…Excuse me?"  Phoenix threw Edgeworth a baffled glance, having hoped his old rival would support his argument just this once.

With unwavering eyes, the prosecutor clarified, "I'm only speaking from a marketing perspective."

"Anyway!" Maya interjected.  "How often do commonfolk like you actually get to guest-star in a real Steel Samurai special?"

Phoenix protested in vain, "Commonfolk like me? What about y–"

(…Oh, right. You're a little too unique to be called "common.")

His assistant grinned smugly. "That’s right, I was already a shoo-in to play the character I inspired, after all!  I told the director I'd do it only if my friends could be in the movie, too.  You should thank me for this opportunity!"

"J00 4C70RZ!"  The jarring voice of the director called out from the neighboring studio.  "R U rE4dy 2 m4Ke dIs m0V13 h4PPen?"

"…"  The lawyer’s most crucial objection to participating in this project was the idea of having any further involvement with the greasy criminal accomplice whom he had the displeasure of meeting two years prior.  However, his objection was overruled by the unboundable excitement of his young friend.

Rising from his seat, Phoenix sighed and resigned himself to fate.

"5c3N3 0n3!!!1"

Slow pan.  The courtroom is hushed in anticipation.  The entire gallery is so silent that one can clearly hear every drop of rain that splashes on the cold ground outside.

At once, the silence is broken by the slam of the courtroom door.  The attorney barges in, panting, in the middle of this important case.

All others hardly stir.  The only response from the prosecutor is a subdued mutter.  "I don’t understand," he is repeating, angst dripping from his words.  "I don’t understand."

The latecoming defense attorney understands even less.  "What is it?  What don’t you understand?"

"This entire case, which I should have easily solved in your absence…  It makes no sense at all."

The attorney sheepishly scratches the back of his head.  "Oh, come on.  A famous prosecutor like you, and our wise judge here– you've surely heard every story in the book."

"No," says the latter from atop his golden bench, stroking his silver beard.  "Not even the wise judge has heard a story quite like this."

"Here in the courthouse garden," the former somberly explains, “a man has been murdered.”

There is a brief beat.

"…I-is that so?”  The attorney fails to convey the proper level of concern.  "It's awful, but I mean, we've had murders inside the courthouse too."

"Of course, I've seen plenty of murders myself, but this…  This is beyond any crime and any disaster."  The prosecutor lowers his heavy head.  "Worse than fire, famine, or earthquake."

The tension is palpable.  What could possibly be as devastating as all that?

"Three days ago, the Steel Samurai himself… WAS ASSASSINATED!"

Gasps!

Dramatic close-ups on horrified reactions!

The prosecutor slams one hand on his desk to silence the riot.

"You there!"  He thrusts his index finger toward a certain person seated along his side of the courtroom floor.  "I'm calling you to the stand!  Summarize the case thus far."

The person nods vigorously.  "You've got it, pal.  It's not like I have anywhere else to go.  The rain doesn't seem to be letting up anytime soon…"

-TESTIMONY-

It was three days ago, pal.  I was on my way out from attendin' to business in this court.

Out in the garden grove, a bunch of strange-looking things were scattered around the area.

Like a trail of evidence, it led me right to the scene of a crime I never expected to see:  the cold corpse of the old samurai!

When I saw the body...  Naturally, I let out a yell and ran as fast as I could to go get the police!

"HOLD IT!  ...The police?"  The prosecutor narrows steely eyes at his subordinate.

"I mean... to go get backup, pal.  Heh-heh."

"Please elaborate," he instructs.  "What sort of strange evidence did you see?"

"Sure thing.  A detective's eye, you know, always noticin' stuff."

First, there was a long pink veil caught in the bushes.

A little closer to the body, there was some sort of talisman case with red lining.

Finally, next to the body, there was a cut-up piece of rope, pal.

(Interesting. I should jot this down in the court record.

...Wait, I almost forgot this isn't a real trial.)

The judge interrupts with a loud sigh.  "And to think, Mr. Prosecutor, you and I had both caught a glimpse of this man, healthy and well, out in the grove mere hours before his death."

"That's right," the prosecutor responds.  "I recognized him by his iconic mask, and armed with his iconic weapon, the Samurai Sword.  He was escorting a woman in striking pink armor-- but the woman had a veil, so we couldn't see her face."

"Uh, can we cut for a second?"

"CUT!  ...Wut U w4nT?"

"Well, if the samurai also had his face under a mask, I don't get that last statement.  How could you be sure it was him, yet doubt the woman?"

"Duh, Nick.  Everybody knows that the mask is part of the Steel Samurai's identity.  It would  only be weird if he didn't have it.  On the other hand, at this point in canon the Pink Princess isn't well known outside of Little Olde Tokyo.  Her outfit wouldn't be enough to give her away."

"Yeah, but--"

"OK!  4C710N!"

"But the samurai..."  The prosecutor solemnly shakes his head.  "I didn't expect that would be the last time I'd ever see him alive.

"Ah yes," the judge muses.  "Even for such a brave warrior, life is as frail and fleeting as the morning dew."

The policeman scratches his chin.  "Well, we actually found him toward the afternoon, pal."

The judge's eyes widen. "Are you suggesting that the morning don't?"

"So..."  The defense attorney takes the chance to speak up. "Do we have a suspect or a murder weapon?"

"You bet, pal!" The answer is delivered with a hearty salute.  "In fact, the person we caught is none other than the notorious criminal everyone's been buzzin' about!  The new heir to the line of EVIL NINJAS that've long been terrorizin' the Steel Samurai's regime!"

Bursting through the door, a bailiff drags in the struggling prisoner-- a feisty female ninja with raven-black hair. Her garish clothes drawing the attention of every eye in the gallery, she violently kicks the air.

“Lemme go!”  The young ninja rips her arms free from the bailiff.  “Lemme GO!”

"When we caught her, she was carryin' the sword you see here..."  The policeman raises the relevant evidence from the stand in front of him.  "None other than the legendary Samurai Sword!"

"I understand," says the prosecutor.  "The day after the murder, she was found passed out by the side of the river, evidence in hand.  Presumably, she was caught in the act of theft, and killed him to escape.  Then, exhausted from the struggle, she fell asleep by the waters."

The suspect, who had been listening to the charges, begins to laugh hysterically.

"Come on!" she squawks.  "There's nothing wrong with a little nap."

"You didn't say anything about the murder.  To what part of the accusations do you object?"

"Listen, I'm a ninja with honor.  The only thing I ever steal is the truth!  Naturally, that means I have nothing to hide!"

(Who even is this?  This character is awfully suspicious, down to the actress herself.)

"So then, motives aside, do you confess responsibility for the fate of our samurai?"

Her maniacal laughter rings out again.  "...That's right!  I did it!"

"What!?"  The prosecutor is aghast.  "With such insolence?  How dare you!"

"Oh, the wind carried me into flight... but I struck with my own wing."  She inhales deeply.  "Here's exactly what happened..."

-THE BANDIT'S STORY-

Three days ago, I was napping under a tree in the grove, drifting in and out of dreams.

So I thought it was a dream when I saw him...  Coming down the path, that goody-goody Samurai escorting this woman in pink.

She had a veil as a disguise.  Probably some damsel in distress he was saving.

That's when... the fateful wind lifted her veil, revealing a glimpse of the rosy face beneath.

It was only then that I snapped awake!  This was no dream, and this was not just any woman.

This was the Pink Princess of Little Olde Tokyo-- getting all cozy with the Steel Samurai!

I thought, this was my chance.  I could get to the Samurai by striking at his heart:  his precious Princess.  I couldn't take him down alone, but if I could get her to join me instead of him, he'd be at my mercy!  Persuasion is a specialty of my clan, you know...

I set my plan into motion.  While the Princess was off gathering water at the river, I snuck up on the Samurai from behind and used my handy stash of rope to tie him up to a tree.  It happened so fast and so easily that I was surprised at my own strength!

With the Samurai out of my way, I went back to find the woman.

We met eyes through the branches.  "...Samurai?" she questioned me.

"Nope, I'm a ninja.  You can tell by my trademark shuriken!"

"Very funny.  I mean, where is my Samurai?"

"Oh, him?  I saw him resting over by a tree.  I think he might be sick."

"Sick...?" There was such sappy emotion in her voice.  Like, did she really care that much about him?  All I could think about was showing her how pathetic he looked tied to that tree.  Then she'd definitely wanna side with me!

Now, again, I'm stronger than I look.  I scooped her right on up, Princess-style, and ran.

(What kind of mutant strength does this teenage ninja have!?)

Her veil caught on a stray branch along the way, and I could see her shocked face.

"Evil Ninja!" she gasped.  "It's you!  What do you think you're doing!?"

"I'm taking you to the dark side, Princess!  You'll have no choice but to join forces with me instead!"

I set her down to see her helpless hero.

This is where things got weird...  She looked at him, then back at me...

Suddenly, that innocent expression turned fierce, as she drew her rapier from her armor's sheath and started slashing at me!

Whoa!  She really had me fooled with her goody-goody act!  I laughed out loud, 'cause now I wanted her on my side even more.  It was like a game as I danced around tree trunks, avoiding her swipes.

"Join me, and we could take down that stupid Samurai together!"

The rapier dropped slowly out of her hands and her face went dark.  She repeated in a whisper, "Take down... the Samurai..."

"HAHAHAHA!  My plan was a total success!"

SLAM!  The prosecutor furiously pounds a hand on his desk.   "Villain! You corrupted the pure heart of the Pink Princess!"

"Eh...  It didn't last very long though.  That heart of hers is weaker than a twice-picked lock."

She snapped out of it as easily as she'd snapped in.

"What am I saying...? I've dishonored both our states by even considering betrayal."

She gave me her rapier to cut the samurai's ropes.  "You two worthy opponents must fight.  I'll have no choice but to go with whoever survives."

And so, we faced off.  I even waited for him to strike first!  I may be a ninja, but I'm also an honorable gal.

I used the princess's skinny rapier to counter his legendary Samurai Sword.  My skills are so great that I wasn't even at a disadvantage.  We crossed blades twenty-three-and-a-half times.  I remember because I was so impressed.  No one's ever crossed me more than twenty!

THEN I GOT HIM!  BAM!  Right in the chest!  I defeated the Samurai, fair and square!

When I turned around, the Princess was gone.  The fighting must have scared her away.

I wanted an ally with a fierce spirit, but after all she was just a loser who couldn't handle a fight!  So I wasn't interested anymore...

Still, while I claimed his sword as a victory prize, her rapier was probably just as valuable. It was pretty dumb of me to leave it behind!

"OBJECTION!  ...Didn't you say you don't steal anything but the truth?"

"Uh...  Right, yeah, of course.  Hahaha."

SLAM!  The judge strikes his gavel on the bench.

"Prosecutor, you have a suspect who has directly confessed to the crime.  Isn't this all the deliberation we need?"

He shakes his head.  "Your Honor, as much as I wish to see justice done for our samurai's true killer...  It is for this very reason that the trial must go on.  We will hear the accounts of all possible witnesses, including the princess herself."

SLAM!  The attorney shields his ears from all the clatter.  At that moment, the courtroom door gives another dramatic burst.

The edges of the doorway shine with a hopeful light.  From behind the barrier, a perfectly poised woman in pink makes her appearance on cue.

"Indeed!  Though my lord's spirit is gone, long live the spirit of justice!"

"Princess!" the gallery cries.  "It's the Pink Princess!"

With no veil to hide her painted face or her flowing hair, she confidently takes the stand.  "People of the court...  As much as it will pain me to do, a true account is exactly what I intend to give.  Or my name isn't the Pink Princess, Warrior of Little Olde Tokyo!"

-THE WOMAN'S STORY-

That terrible ninja...  I would never dream of betraying my dear Samurai!

She was certain that she could sway me, bragging about what a great bandit she was.  "I can even steal people's hearts!"

I tried to run to his side, but I became dizzy and fell to the ground, such that my veil came tumbling off.

I may act strong now, but the truth is...  In the moment, I failed.

The bandit attacked the Samurai, but unlike in her grandiose tale she was unable to finish the job. She ran away in the middle of the fight, dropping leftover pieces of rope like a trail behind her.

When it was safe, I finally rose and made it into the samurai's arms.  But... the look I saw in his eyes chilled me to the soul.

It was neither anger, nor sorrow... but the cold light of pure hatred.

"Have I dishonored you, my Samurai?  Don't look at me in such a way!  It's the cruelest punishment I can imagine!"

But his steely gaze held steady, almost as if in some sort of trance.

I held out my rapier as an offering to him, resigned to my fate.  "Kill me if you must!  Preserve the honor of your name!  Just stop with that cruel look in your eyes! I can't take it!  Stop, stop!"

"Maya, please...  Wasn't she just looking at the face on his mask?"

"Nick, it's not your line!  Have you no tact?  Let the Princess mourn!"

"But I mean..."

"4C710N!!!"

And that was it.  I must have fainted after that.  When I came to, and looked around...  There it was.  My own rapier, stuck in my own dear lord's chest!

"A tragedy indeed," the prosecutor laments.  "But does this mean you are unclear about the actual moment of the murder?"

I refuse to accept the ninja's victory with honor.  I know not what happened, whether she returned to catch him in a weaker state, or whether another person entered the scene.  But I can certainly say that his demise was the doing of a coward.

"Oh my."  The judge looks troubled.  "The more we hear, the less clear it gets."

The policeman waggles his heavy eyebrows.  "You know, pal, it's funny.  Since the suspicious bandit was found with the Samurai Sword, we would've thought that was the murder weapon."

"Hm, why yes.  And yet both witnesses have testified that it was the Princess's rapier."

"The rapier itself wasn't found at the scene.  I wonder where it is now, pal!"

"In lack of evidence," the prosecutor speaks, "these words are everything.  Unfortunately, everyone inevitably holds a biased account."

"You're right.  What can we do, sir?"

"...HOLD IT!"

(Finally, I get a line in somewhere!  And one I've practiced so much.)

In an instant, all eyes converge upon the source of the shout.

"I have an idea," the attorney speaks, "if the honorable court would hear out a commoner's plan."

(Though I could do without the excessive humility.)

"Very well," the judge graciously agrees.  "What are your thoughts?"

"Well, we've heard from all the witnesses.  I would say that the only thing left to do... is to hear the tale from the man himself."

The courtroom gallery buzzes with confusion.  "Huh?  From the Steel Samurai?  But how?"

"I happen to know a spirit medium, who can communicate with the spirit of the deceased."

"So even if he's gone, we can hear his story..."

The camera pans down, down, down.  A petite body draped in light purple robes peeks out from her hiding spot behind the defense's bench.  The extra small medium speaks in an even smaller voice.

"H-hello.  I am a channeler of the dead.  I will do my best to shed a shining light on the true purr-pa-traitor."

The judge's eyes widen.  "This is madness!  A spirit medium?  We haven't used this technique in years, since the fall of the last regime..."

"And yet," the attorney insists, "it may be the most reliable method there is.  After all, why would a dead man lie?"

The lights dim.

From the orchestra, a heartrending ballad pours out to fill the ambience of the fallen hero's scene.

From the center of the room where the spirit medium stands, a strong and familiar voice resounds, a voice that is not her own.

"It is I, the Steel Samurai!  I am now suffering in the world of darkness, where I can no longer protect the people who rely on me."

(So in this movie, when a medium channels someone, only their voice comes through.  Considering the true face of the victim, that's a relief.)

"...Sniff."

(But, poor Mr. Powers.  Cast down to a voiceover role.  I can hear him sniveling between lines.)

"Ahem.  It is a dark day for Neo Olde Tokyo.  But someday, surely, the villain too will fall.  When that day comes... I'll see you in hell, Evil Ninja."

"Worry not, my lord," the prosecutor asserts.  "Justice will be served in your honor.  Simply tell us the legend of your final moments."

-THE SAMURAI'S STORY-

It hurts, my dear Princess... to hear you testify that my death was the work of a coward.

Every action I took was to ensure the very opposite.  Allow me to tell my own tale.

After the bandit attacked the Princess and left her full of shame, she then preyed on these emotions.

"Now that you've been tainted with traitorous thoughts, why not join me once and for all?"

The way the Princess looked at that moment... it was no ordinary look, and it was certainly not my Princess's face.

On my honor, she was bewitched!  It was the ninja clan's devious power of mind control!

"I'll join you," is what she shockingly replied.

"Now that we're on the same side, we have to take out the samurai!"

"Yes.  TAKE OUT THE SAMURAI!"

Even the bandit turned pale at her fierce, frightening words.  After regaining her composure, she addressed me with a scoff.

"Are you hearing this, Samurai?  How do you feel about your traitorous Princess?"

Waging a battle of will against the ninja's tricks myself, my head was spinning and the conversation around me grew faint.

All I could muster was, "Princess, snap out of it...  Save yourself..."

Soon, I was relieved to hear her footsteps as she obeyed and escaped into the woods.

The Evil Ninja turned to me once more.  "Oh, she got away.  I guess I have to deal with you myself."

The ninja readied the rapier that she had stolen from my Princess, and approached me.

In one swift motion, I took the weapon from her hands... and I killed myself with it instead.

That is the one and only truth.  After all, that's the only honorable way for a samurai to go...

"...OBJECTION!"

The outburst erupts from the prosecutor's bench.

"My lord!  I am loath to oppose you, but I cannot stand for these lies any longer."

"Prosecutor, what do you mean?"

"The rapier, as everyone mysteriously insists, was not the murder weapon.  This man was killed by the sword!"

The judge thoughtfully strokes his beard.  "I see, and...  how are you so sure about that?"

"Because I...  I was there."

Gasps!

"Prosecutor...  You saw the whole thing, didn't you?  Why didn't you tell the court?"

"I wished not to get involved. Of course, now there doesn't appear to be much of a choice.  I will add my own testimony."

The man in red, with piercing eyes that could slice through wood, nobly takes the witness stand.

-THE WOODCUTTER'S STORY-

This courthouse is a second home to me.  Of course I was nearby.

I first found the pink veil caught on a branch in the grove...  At the same time, I heard the sounds of voices.

Peering through the foliage, I witnessed the Samurai tied up, the woman on the ground sobbing, and the bandit gloating.

I didn't only see him before and after the crime, as I earlier claimed.  I saw the scene of his very death.

"Come with me!" the bandit crowed to the Princess.  "You and I together will take down the Samurai!"

"Take... down..."  Tears filled her eyes and choked her words.

"Eh?  I can't hear you!" the bandit demanded.  "Quit crying and answer!"

With that, oddly, her crying stopped on a dime.  "Hmph. Impossible.  How could I, an innocent Princess, make such a decision?"

The newly articulate woman approached the Samurai, and with her rapier swiftly cut the ropes that bound him.

"Go ahead, take him down yourself.  If you can't, you're not a real ninja!"

"This... can't be my Princess," the warrior lamented, and I thought the same thing. "This must be mind control!  Her love isn't this weak!"

The Princess broke out into laughter.  Getting a better look at her face, unobscured by crocodile tears, I saw that it had completely changed.  "Oh, Samurai...  A famous writer once said, 'A woman loves a man who loves passionately.'  Your love is that which needs to be tested."

They were finally motivated to fight.  The Evil Ninja seized hold of the Samurai's sword, and the Samurai was left with his Princess's rapier.  Even with this advantage, she didn't put up nearly as impressive a fight as she would have you believe, I assure you.

The Samurai valiantly blocked each of the bandit's thrusts, one by one.  The sound of metal against metal echoed through the grove.

Suddenly, the Princess swooned backwards, reeling from her seeming trance.  In this brief moment, the Samurai was distracted by her fall, and it was only then that the ninja managed to land one lucky strike... or rather, a fatally unlucky one.

The deed done, the great Steel Samurai sunk to his knees.  The bandit, in pure shock, withdrew the sword from his body and stared down at it.  Then she decided to replace the rapier instead into the corpse's chest, running off with the sword as her trophy.

"So this is the real story...?" asks the judge. "Then why wasn't the rapier found at the scene of the crime, I wonder?"

"That is, er...  TAKE THAT!"  With a sweeping gesture to the court record, the prosecutor reveals his possession of the rapier all along.

"Sir, you withheld evidence!?" the detective roars.  "But how can we trust you then?"

"Admittedly irrational in the moment, I removed it in a vain attempt to help him, though he was already gone...  Then I confiscated it as evidence.  I waited for the right time to present it, but at every turn it made less sense..."

"Feh!" the ninja girl scoffs.  "Are you sure you didn't just want a souvenir, samurai fanboy?  And you all call me the bandit."

All around, each person in the courtroom is eyeing one another with suspicious disbelief.

The judge somberly shakes his head.  "Human beings who can't trust each other...  What has my job come to?"

(That's how your job has always been, Your Honor...)

SLAM!

"Let's take a moment and think about this," the judge continues. "The Bandit, the Woman, the Samurai, and the Woodcutter.  Out of these four contradicting stories, whose is the most believable?"

"Hm...  I still say the victim's firsthand account should be the most believable," the attorney insists.  "Again, why would a dead man lie?"

"Mister Attorney..."  The young spirit medium suddenly speaks again, the sound of her shy voice a quiet surprise.  "Isn't that a great question?"

"Huh?  What do you mean?"

"The spirits told me... that's the question you should be asking.  After all, Mister Attorney, that's your doo-dee of juzz-tizz!"

"..."

Struck with inspiration, the attorney at last raises a confident finger.

"That's right...  People of the court, there may be justice yet!"

-CROSS-EXAMINATION-

It's time for a turnabout!

Instead of looking at the suspects' motives to kill, why not look at their motives to lie about killing?

The bandit... would lie to claim the honor of defeating her clan's sworn enemy.

The samurai... would lie to preserve that honor, and to protect his beloved Princess from suspicion.

The woman...  Her motives, between her strange behavior and hazy memory, are the most unclear.

Her changing face... the so-called mind control...  It's all coming together!

The judge appears captivated and excited.  "Enlighten us, commoner!"

"Well... We still don't know the culprit, but we may have another character involved that may make the accounts we have more compatible to judge.  The presence of a fifth party is based on reasoning that is difficult to prove, yet we have proof in the very courtroom: spirit mediums.  And, if my hunch is correct, not just the little one."

The Pink Princess steps gracefully forward.  "An astute observation, Sir Attorney.  Indeed, I hail from a royal bloodline of strong spiritual power."

"I see..." murmurs the prosecutor.  "This could be the key to understanding her strange behavior.  She never betrayed our lord after all."

"And maybe, the long arm of justice will have to reach somewhere beyond!"

"...MY PRINCESS!"

With a dramatic slam, more dramatic than any other, the courtroom doors burst open one last time.  Trumpets flare with a familiar melody.

"Wait, what?"

"I thank you, commoner.  My Princess is purged of her dishonor."  A deep masculine voice rings out as once before, but no longer from the spirit medium's position.  "I too, will reclaim my honor and together we will return to our rightful service."

Standing proudly between the courtroom doors, a tall and muscular figure is drenched in the rain that continues to pour outside, which only makes his steel armor glisten all the more with the impending hope of the rising sun.

Here before everyone stands...  the Steel Samurai, well and alive!?

"…Wait!  No!  HOLD IT!  This is definitely a contradiction!"

"Nick!"  The princess puffed out her rosy cheeks.  "An actor must always keep in character!"

"I am my character!  And I don’t think he would stand for this."  Phoenix turned, troubled, to the grubby little director.  "The medium couldn’t have channeled the samurai to testify if he wasn’t actually dead.  If that’s the case, this whole story doesn’t hold any water."

"Hm," the prosecutor mused.  "Then again, are irreconcilable contradictions not the very theme of the original film?"

(Edgeworth…  Tell me you're not praising the writing for being purposely bad.)

"…It is clever," he shrugged with a smirk, "though I don’t believe in irreconcilable contradictions."

“L0L.”  Not actually laughing at all, the director stared condescendingly at his blue-suited actor.  "D0 j00 7h1nk 1’m 5700p1D 3n0ugH 2 fR4G t3h 5733L 54mur41?“

"Obviously, the face of the franchise can't die!  Just be patient and it’ll all work out in the end," Maya confidently asserted, as if she were the one running the show.  "We still haven't gotten to the part about the Iron Infant!  Where they all discover a reason to restore their faith in humanity– and get back to fighting Evil, of course."

Phoenix opened his mouth to object to absolutely everything, but, much like his character, he had no answer to these contradictions.  Unlike his character, his faith in humanity was anything but restored.

#ace attorney #rashomon #akira kurosawa #fanfiction #YOU REALLY DON'T NEED TO READ THIS!! #literally all i wanted to do was point out the parallels #and i promised myself i'd finish this for years hsdgfd

[theconservativebrief]

If you’ve been following the world of TV Twitter this spring, you probably know that a certain subset of this nation’s great, professionally paid TV viewers has gone a little goofy for Showtime’s Billions. Observe!

Your occasional reminder that Billions is really good, even if it’s not about a crime-solving business tycoon named Jack Billions.

— Todd VanDerWerff (@tvoti) June 4, 2018

I could go on. But my larger point is this: Billions is a show that a lot of critics wrote off somewhere in early season one, and while it got the typical, “Hey, this show has gotten a lot better” write-ups late in that first season and (especially) in season two, the recently concluded third season seems to have crossed some sort of threshold in terms of its popularity and the willingness of its fans to bug you about it nonstop on various social media platforms.

Billions has managed this rise in its fortunes despite being a show about white-guy antiheroes — a type of series many critics have cut less slack in recent years — and despite being about the mega-rich and the lawyers who fail to prosecute them at a time when nobody’s particularly enthused about either of those things.

It’s managed this rise in its fortunes despite the fact that its entire premise, involving one of said lawyers deciding to make an example of one of those billionaires, was basically torpedoed by reality, where the Trump administration has been, let’s say, much friendlier to the mega-rich.

And it’s managed this rise in its fortunes despite the fact that its storytelling is frequently completely ridiculous, often predicated on its characters hiding incredibly elaborate strategic gambits from each other, to the degree that it’s hard to imagine how they kept something so skillfully from seemingly everybody they knew.

That makes it a fun show to goof on, only helped by just how funny the show has become, thanks to its deep bench of actors who are incredibly agile with a one-liner. From jokes about the show’s potential for a crossover with The Americans to “FUCK ‘EM UP, BILLIONS!” this is a series that can handle a solid bit of snark — a must for social media takeoff.

But Billions is really good and sometimes great TV (in its third season, especially). It’s one of the rare shows that has genuinely been bolstered by the times: In an era of very dour shows about the dark times we live in, sometimes great (The Handmaid’s Tale) and sometimes mixed (Westworld), Billions is pure pulp thriller, but in a way that never loses sight of how poisonous all the vipers within it are. Here are three ways Billions overcame its early shakiness to become its best self.

Chuck and Bobby try to find common ground. Showtime

The original premise of Billions was probably unsustainable. It centered on Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti), a US attorney for the Southern District of New York, who grew tired of prosecuting small-time crimes and decided to take down Bobby Axelrod (Damian Lewis), a titan of finance he knew was crooked. Chuck’s wife, Wendy (Maggie Siff), worked for Bobby and thus became an unlikely figure in both men’s games.

In the early going, it wasn’t always clear what the show was, beyond an excuse to watch its two big-name stars snarl at each other. My review of the first half-season liked some aspects of the show (particularly the acting) but found its attempts to dig into the world of high finance too surface-level and obvious. It was clear the show was interested in income inequality and the corruption of US systems that led to the wealthy abusing them endlessly, but it also flirted frequently with lapsing into straight-up lifestyle porn about how cool it was to be rich.

Slowly but surely, the series corrected some of these flaws in season one, but then the question became what the show would even be once Chuck put Bobby behind bars, or Bobby somehow triumphed over Chuck. On a network that had already had a show that centered on an investigation of Damian Lewis that lasted at least one season past its welcome, Billions felt caught in a trap.

And then somewhere in early season two, Billions started overhauling itself for the long haul. You wouldn’t know it to look at the surface of the series, where Chuck and Bobby were still launching long-range attacks at each other (remarkably, it took until mid-season three for the two to share significant screen time). But underneath that surface, the show’s writers, led by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, were focusing more on other cases that fell under Chuck’s jurisdiction, as well as stories about how the corruption of the mega-rich had so infected the entire system that to try to defeat that corruption meant becoming corrupt yourself.

The second season concluded with a series of revelations that showed just how long of a game the series could play and substantially muddied its ethical waters. The question wasn’t whether to root for Chuck or Bobby; instead, the question was figuring out a way to tear down the entire system they existed within. The show still had the gleam associated with wealth and power, but it was interested in questions beyond its central battle. When it finally moved past it in the middle of season three, there was a wealth of other stories waiting to be told, including…

Asia Kate Dillon plays Taylor Mason. Showtime

Much has been made of how Asia Kate Dillon’s Taylor Mason, a promising new employee of Bobby Axelrod’s company, Axelrod Capital, is almost certainly the first nonbinary regular character on a major American TV show. (Both Taylor and Dillon use they/them pronouns.)

Dillon is one of TV’s most electric performers, and they’ve made Taylor into a force within the show, to the degree that almost all of the third-season finale revolves around major decisions they make. The show even subtly codes which characters are not to be trusted based on whether they use Taylor’s preferred pronouns — and the fact that Bobby and his various cohorts take no time in adjusting to using “they” and “them,” despite being scoundrels in countless other ways, is meant to convey the immense respect they have for Taylor, even when they’re incredibly mad at them.

But Taylor’s nonbinary identity and Dillon’s performance don’t explain, in and of themselves, why the show seemed to take off almost immediately after it introduced Taylor in its season two premiere. Instead, I would argue, the presence of Taylor has immediately pried apart some of the show’s most rigid elements, in a way that has benefited both it and almost every character within its world.

Somewhere near its core, Billions is an exploration of toxic masculinity, of the ways that codes of behavior between men can sometimes curdle and go wrong, most obviously affecting the women around those men but also hurting the men themselves. Billions’ most obvious example of this is in the relationship between Chuck and his father, Charles (Jeffrey DeMunn), a ruthless legal shark who abhorred any signs of weakness in his son and seems most at ease when the two are trying to kill each other.

But it’s also present in the constant dick-measuring at Axe Cap, or the scenes where Chuck and Wendy’s love of BDSM threatens his burgeoning political career. Nothing is more important in the world of Billions than the appearance of raw, masculine strength, but that raw, masculine strength is strangling everybody near it.

In the first season, this resulted in a lot of scenes of guys competing to see who could be the most macho, while Wendy and the handful of other women on the show tried to find places to fit amid the swagger. Simply by their mere existence, Taylor stands out as a rejection of this fruitless binary — a one-character expression of the idea that some of the systems we’ve come to rely upon were rotten to begin with.

If the larger idea of Billions is that a failure to seriously question the status quo will destroy the world, Taylor immediately makes viewers question many things the other characters accept as simply the way their lives are. And that extends to other aspects of the series, where Taylor (who is, after all, really, really good at playing the markets to make lots of money and, thus, part of the same corrupt economic system as everybody else) might not have as much immediate bearing.

I didn’t get a chance to talk about my beautiful boy Wags (David Costabile, left) in this article, so I’ll at least put him in a photo. Showtime

If toxic masculinity is near the center of Billions, then the show’s absolute core is the idea that while unchecked capitalism might be fun to watch a TV show about, it’s destroying the world all the same. The more the characters maneuver to hang on to their power, the more entrenched the horrible systems that need to change become.

Chuck goes from trying to bring down Bobby to more or less propping up the whole system Bobby used and abused to become as rich as he is, and in the third season, the government (a not-that-fictional spin on the Trump administration full of fire-breathing evangelicals and grifters in greasy suits) is only too happy to let him do the propping. In the process, innocent lives are destroyed, a woman who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time is deported to Guatemala, and the titans at the top of the credits don’t even blink.

Billions was still interested in these ideas back in its first season, but it kept shifting awkwardly between the modes of “Chuck and Bobby snarl and hurl invective at each other” and “Unchecked capitalism is destroying everything.” One of the show’s co-creators is journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin, and in season one, certain storylines in the series felt more reported than they did written, like the show was trying to get across a point but hadn’t quite settled on what that point was or the best way to sell it.

In season two, however, the series simply shifted all of its eggs into the “pulpy business thriller” basket, and trusted that audiences would notice all the horrible venality that happened in proximity to the long war between Chuck and Bobby. When watching people do very bad things is as fun as it can be on Billions, it makes viewers feel all the more complicit in those bad things — and helps increase the sense that we’re just as complicit in the bad things happening in our own reality.

By wedding its larger concerns to the sheer, propulsive fun of the business thriller, Billions found a way to serve the audience its cake, then keep serving them so much cake they wondered where all the cake came from and desperately wanted to stop eating it. That makes Billions, at times, a show where it’s hard to find someone to “root” for, but the series is canny enough to know that’s the whole point.

We’re not damned; we’re already in hell, and we need to find a way to pull it down around our ears to make something better. But good fucking luck with that.

All three seasons of Billions are available on Showtime’s streaming apps. Season four will arrive in 2019.

Original Source -> How Showtime’s Billions went from dull to dazzling

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

[robertdaviis]

Top 10 Turn-Offs For Women That You Want To Avoid

Note from the editor, Kyle: Big thanks to Tani Underwear for partnering with us to make this post/video possible. Tani Underwear is the most comfortable men’s underwear that I personally use and love. If you’re looking for undergarments that will change the way you think and feel about underwear, I highly recommend it.

What is this?

Today, we’re showing you the top 10 turn-offs for women, that you NEED to avoid.

If you’ve done everything right with a girl, there will come a point where it seems like you can do no wrong. Where it seems like no matter what you do, she’s going to like anything that you’re about. But guys, even when things are going good, especially when they’re going good, there are plenty of seemingly harmless, everyday things you can do that either slowly get under a woman’s skin and make her lose interest, or just kill the chemistry in the blink of an eye.

So… to help you out, we’re showing you the top 10 turn offs guys do that tend to slip through the cracks. And because we want you to know how to take your game to the next level, we’re also showing you the #1 thing you can easily do, to almost completely avoid turning a girl off. Now let’s jump in.

10. Low Volume Facial Hair

One of the biggest understatements of the year here… facial hair has made a pretty big comeback. For a while (as in, for a few decades), being clean cut and shaven was more or less the norm. But these days, facial hair is everywhere. As soon as a guy can grow it, BOOM. No going back. Full beards, five o’clock shadows, mustaches, mutton chops. If it grows on the face, guys are trying it out.

Nobody really knows what led to bearded revolution over the last decade or so, but there is one unfortunate side effect: A lot of guys are going for beards, when it’s just not in the cards for them. We know, facial hair is cool… and even if you don’t want it most of the time, it’s nice to have the option.

While, of course, your facial hair your choice… when it comes to turning on girls, patchy facial hair typically doesn’t do it for them… and almost always, they’re gonna prefer a clean-shaven face to get close to.

9. Greasy Hair

Alright alright alright. You’re probably hearing this and thinking, wait a minute, I KNOW I’ve seen guys with greasy hair get girls, so how are you gonna tell me greasy hair is a turn-off?

Alright, true. But what you might think is hair grease, is actually hair product. And if it’s product, yeah… It’s probably part of their style. But what we’re talking about today, is about the naturally occurring grease that builds up on your hair after not showering. For some dudes, that grease may show up after a couple days without washing their hair… for others, it might show up after a couple hours. Like sweat and body odor, hair grease is largely genetic, and unfortunately… is something girls will notice when they’re looking at you closely.

8. Ratty Underwear

This one should go without saying. But our reports show that a surprisingly high number of guys out there… appear to be pushing their underwear to the limit… and girls are noticing.

For some reason, a lot of guys seem to have the impression that girls won’t catch that pair of ratty old boxers they’ve got on. It’s either because guys think their underwear isn’t all that bad, or because they think girls just don’t care. Either way, your underwear matters.

You may even know today’s video sponsor, Tani Underwear. Super high-quality and universally girl approved Tani has designed underwear that solves the problems plaguing your underwear drawer and how girls look at your chonies…

Now… instead of showing you a bunch of dudes in underwear (which we’re sure you’d love), how about we show how the right type of underwear, like Tani, keeps girls from ever being turned off by the sight of your boxers.

Reason #1: Breathability

When it comes to your underwear, breathability is everything. The reason why? Because moisture is not only what causes gross stuff like odor and fungus. But it’s also ultimately what causes boxers to dissolve into the shreds on your floor. And not only that, swamp-ass, as it’s officially called, is the result of underwear that offers no breathability in an area that produces a lot of sweat, and for girls who see it on a guy, it can be pretty hard to ignore. By using Micro Modal AIR, a futuristic fabric that’s both moisture wicking and quick drying, Tani’s SilkCut Collection manages to keep the moisture levels to a minimum and the infamous swamp-butt at bay.

Reason #2: Accentuation

Do you like when a girl wears sexy, attractive lingerie? Of course you do, and women want the same. She wants to see something that’s naturally accentuating and attractive. Rather than saggy underwear that looks like you’re wearing a cloth diaper. High-quality underwear, like Tani, are designed to not only make you and your body look attractive. But they’re also manufactured with special materials, like elastane and Micro Modal Air, so that they last longer, and help hold their shape for longer.

In short guys: your underwear is probably the last thing a girl sees you wearing, so it definitely needs to make the right impression… and today’s video sponsor, Tani is the exact type of underwear women love.

Tani was even kind enough to hook Mantelligence viewers up with a crazy deal: buy 1 get 1 free! Check it out in the description… and note: it will only work for a limited-time.

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What is this?

7. The Wrong Thing Playing in the Background

In general, one of the major differences between guys and girls, is that context plays a huge role in their attraction, and overall interest in guys. If this sounds surprising, this phenomenon is pretty well-documented and understood in psychology. While women do like guys who are classically good-looking and well-taken care of, the overall presentation of the guy plays a much bigger role in how girls perceive him. And that also includes the immediate context of being in the moment with a guy.

One of the places this becomes especially clear, is if you’re hanging out with a girl at your house watching a movie or show. If you’ve got comedy, horror, action or anything too distracting playing in the background, it’s gonna be a lot harder for her to look at you romantically, if anything starts to happen… the reason why is simple: Because your entire presentation is off.

Which make sense, right? All we’re trying to say, is that if you’re watching a movie on the couch together, always be ready to hit pause.

6. Smelling Like a Gym Bag

You knew this one was coming. Just about everybody, from AlphaM, to TMF to BasedZeus, has discussed widely the importance of not smelling like an armpit. And the reason for that, is because far and away, a guy who smells bad from a distance, is a HUGE red flag for women.

Now, there are some excuses that girls will let slide: You could have just gotten done working out, you could have been helping a friend move all day, or you could be a sailor returning home from sea. Basically, if you’ve been engaged in heavy physical activity, you’ll probably get a pass. At least the first few times. However, if you’re caught repeatedly stinking for no reason, don’t be surprised if she starts asking you to shower before coming over.

Guys, if you’re a subscriber, keep watching, because at the end of this video, we’re going to show the #1 thing you can do to EASILY prevent turning ANY and ALL women off. So stay with us. You don’t want to miss it. Okay, let’s get back to it!

5. All Grooming All The Time

Alright. So you guys know that we always advocate proper grooming, taking care of yourself, knowing how to dress and that it’s always a safe bet to look after your appearance. But we also know… that with the sheer volume of information, opinion and choices as there is out there, it’s incredibly easy to get carried away in the details and get obsessed with looking good. While your girl does want you to be able to look good, if you’re taking longer to decide what to wear than she is every day, your impeccable style is probably having the opposite effect of what you want.

4. Disgusting Nails

So, you may not think this is a big deal but a girl almost definitely notices how your nails are looking. And even though you probably (hopefully) don’t roll around with finger nails that can take an eye out, they are 100% a detail worth keeping in check. And it’s pretty clear to see why they might be a major turn off for women: They look crazy, they hide bacteria, and worst of all, they scratch. Now, you may not have had the misfortune of accidentally scratching a girl with finger or toe nails that are overdue for a trimming… but take our word for it: It’s embarrassing. And as far as your night goes, there’s basically no coming back from that. While long, unsightly nails are an eyesore for sure, there may be nothing that kills the mood so swiftly as accidentally snagging your girl with a toenail that’s too long.

3. Why So Serious?

Here’s a common scenario: Imagine you’ve been hanging out with a girl all night and while things may have started off alright, they slowly faded until it seems like she’s just kinda ready to go home. As I’m sure you can imagine. This is something that happens a lot. And while there are endless reasons why a date can fizzle out, one of the most common reasons, is just because the guy didn’t look like he was having any fun. Girls are magnetized by fun.

So, if a guy doesn’t seem like he’s enjoying himself, a girl’s most likely not gonna want to hang out for too long. Because like you, like your friends, like anyone else… girls need that feedback to let them know that everything is cool. So if you’re hanging out with a girl, and wondering why she doesn’t seem to be enjoying herself, there’s a good chance, that it’s probably because you’re just not smiling enough for her to know.

2. Failing to Mirror Body Language

Just like you’re wired to respond to what she’s throwing your way, she’s gonna respond to what you’re sending hers. You’ve probably heard us talk about “mirroring” before. Basically, the mirroring we’re talking about is where two people are communicating, while also subtly copying each other’s body language. Mirroring happens almost entirely on an instinctive level, and It’s a way of subconsciously building familiarity. Animals do it, and so do we. But even though it happens with us barely evening noticing it… it still has a huge effect on chemistry. So much so, in fact, that if you’re not mirroring a girl’s body language, she’ll have every reason to think you’re not into her, which will lead to her turning off feelings she has for you.

1. Your Teeth

If there’s one thing, one loose end, one last remaining detail that can come back and bite you just as you’ve got a girl comfortable, it’s yellow teeth. Honestly, this one stings a little bit. Because usually the way a girl finds out a guy has yellow teeth, is if the guy is laughing, smiling and having a good time. It’s a harsh reality. It’s always in that moment when a dude finally decides to let his guard down and relax, that a girl notices “damn, those teeth are just a little on the yellow side.” The good news is that, with all the teeth whitening options out there, yellow teeth don’t need to be something you’ve got to worry about. The bad news is that if you’re just finding this out, you might’ve lost a few points with a few girls already.

The #1 Thing You Can Do to Prevent Turning OFF ALL women

By this point, you might be thinking you’re gonna be walking into a minefield the next time you go hang out with your girl. And while it’s remarkably easy to lose favor with a girl you like and take her from feeling it, to turned off, there is one thing you can do everyday to always have a leg up with a girl, get in shape. Seriously. Now we know, this isn’t as easy for some guys as it is for others, but for a lot of guys out there. A ton of their problems would be solved just by getting strong. The reason why? Honestly, it’s NOT that you’ll look better. It’s not that you’ll be stronger.

It’s almost 100% due to the fact that exercise is guaranteed the clearest path to becoming a fundamentally more confident version of yourself. Which is without a doubt the #1 realest turn on for women anywhere you go.

In Conclusion

If you enjoyed this video, be sure to let us know, and give it a thumbs up and don’t forget to click and subscribe.

And while you’re here, why not check out these other powerful videos?

Thanks for watching!

The post Top 10 Turn-Offs For Women That You Want To Avoid appeared first on Mantelligence.

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