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madmensideblog · 3 years

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MAD MEN BOOK RECS

Happy pride/Don Draper’s fake birthday ❤️ Below the cut, I’ve listed info on my favorite Mad Men related books and a couple I haven’t read yet but I’m really looking forward to. Let me know if you check any of these out, or if you have any other recommendations! ❤️

Mad Men Carousel: The Complete Critical Companion by Matt Zoller Seitz

“Mad Men Carousel is an episode-by-episode guide to all seven seasons of AMC's Mad Men. This book collects TV and movie critic Matt Zoller Seitz’s celebrated Mad Men recaps—as featured on New York magazine's Vulture blog—for the first time, including never-before-published essays on the show’s first three seasons. Seitz’s writing digs deep into the show’s themes, performances, and filmmaking, examining complex and sometimes confounding aspects of the series. The complete series—all seven seasons and ninety-two episodes—is covered.

Each episode review also includes brief explanations of locations, events, consumer products, and scientific advancements that are important to the characters, such as P.J. Clarke’s restaurant and the old Penn Station; the inventions of the birth control pill, the Xerox machine, and the Apollo Lunar Module; the release of the Beatles’ Revolver and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds; and all the wars, protests, assassinations, and murders that cast a bloody pall over a chaotic decade.

Mad Men Carousel is named after an iconic moment from the show’s first-season finale, “The Wheel,” wherein Don delivers an unforgettable pitch for a new slide projector that’s centered on the idea of nostalgia: “the pain from an old wound.” This book will soothe the most ardent Mad Men fan’s nostalgia for the show. New viewers, who will want to binge-watch their way through one of the most popular TV shows in recent memory, will discover a spoiler-friendly companion to one of the most multilayered and mercurial TV shows of all time.”

A classic episode-by-episode look at the series from reviewer Matt Zoller Seitz.

The Legacy of Mad Men — Cultural History, Intermediality and American Television (Edited by Karen McNally, Jane Marcellus, Teresa Forde, and Kirsty Fairclough)

“For seven seasons, viewers worldwide watched as ad man Don Draper moved from adultery to self-discovery, secretary Peggy Olson became a take-no-prisoners businesswoman, object-of-the-gaze Joan Holloway developed a feminist consciousness, executive Roger Sterling tripped on LSD, and smarmy Pete Campbell became a surprisingly nice guy. Mad Men defined a pivotal moment for television, earning an enduring place in the medium’s history.

This edited collection examines the enduringly popular television series as Mad Men still captivates audiences and scholars in its nuanced depiction of a complex decade. This is the first book to offer an analysis of Mad Men in its entirety, exploring the cyclical and episodic structure of the long form series and investigating issues of representation, power and social change. The collection establishes the show’s legacy in televisual terms, and brings it up to date through an examination of its cultural importance in the Trump era. Aimed at scholars and interested general readers, the book illustrates the ways in which Mad Men has become a cultural marker for reflecting upon contemporary television and politics.”

This is a really beautiful collection. It was published in 2019. It’s rather expensive. (I found a used copy for much cheaper.) If you can afford it, I really, really recommend buying it. There is a pdf floating around if you know where to look though. But like I said, it’s really amazing work and the women who curated it deserve high praise and compensation.

A few favorite essays of mine include “Don Draper and the Enduring Appeal of Antonioni’s La Notte” by Emily Hoffman, “Mad Men’s Mid-Century Modern Times” by Zak Roman, “Mad Men and the Staging of Literature via Ken Cosgrove and His Problems” by Aaron Shapiro, and “What Jungian Psychology Can Tell Us About Don Draper’s Unexpected Embrace of Leonard in Mad Men’s Finale” by Marisa Carroll.

Mad Men and Philosophy: Nothing Is as It Seems (Edited by William Irwin, James B. South, and Rod Carveth)

“With its swirling cigarette smoke, martini lunches, skinny ties, and tight pencil skirts, Mad Men is unquestionably one of the most stylish, sexy, and irresistible shows on television. But the series becomes even more absorbing once you dig deeper into its portrayal of the changing social and political mores of 1960s America and explore the philosophical complexities of its key characters and themes. From Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle to John Kenneth Galbraith, Milton Friedman, and Ayn Rand, Mad Men and Philosophy brings the thinking of some of history's most powerful minds to bear on the world of Don Draper and the Sterling Cooper ad agency. You'll gain insights into a host of compelling Mad Men questions and issues, including happiness, freedom, authenticity, feminism, Don Draper's identity, and more.”

This collection was published just a month before the start of season 4, so it only concerns the first three seasons of the show. As such, it includes some assumptions that are proven false and a few strange misreadings that I’m sure would’ve been cleared up had they had the rest of the show at their disposal. But there are some great philosophical insights and analysis.

I haven’t yet read the whole collection, but my favorite essay of what I’ve read so far was “Pete, Peggy, Don, and the Dialectic of Remembering and Forgetting” by John Fritz.

The Fashion File: Advice, Tips, and Inspiration from the Costume Designer of Mad Men (by costume designer Janie Bryant)

From Joanie's Marilyn Monroe-esque pencil skirts to Betty's classic Grace Kelly cupcake dresses, the clothes worn by the characters of the phenomenal Mad Men have captivated fans everywhere. Now, women are trading in their khakis for couture and their pumas for pumps. Finally, it's hip to dress well again. Emmy-Award winning costume designer Janie Bryant offers readers a peek into the dressing room of Mad Men, revealing the design process behind the various characters' looks and showing every woman how to find her own leading lady style--whether it's vintage, modern, or bohemian. Bryant's book will peek into the dressing room of Mad Men and reveal the design process behind the various characters' looks. But it will also help women learn how fashion can help convey their personality. She will help them cultivate their style, including all the details that make a big difference. Bryant offers advice to ensure that a woman's clothes convey her personality. She covers everything from where to find incredible vintage clothing and accessories to how to pair those authentic pieces with modern shoes and jeans. Readers will learn how to find their perfect bra size, use color to convey a mood, and invest in the ten essentials every woman should own. And just so the ladies don't leave their men behind, there's even a section on making them look a little more Don Draper-dashing.

I recently ordered a used copy of this book and haven’t yet received it, but I’m very much looking forward to it. Like Mad Men and Philosophy listed above, it was published between season 3 and 4, so unfortunately does not cover the whole show. It sounds like it might just cover the women’s costume design, though I’m not sure. Janie Bryant is such a meticulous, genius costume designer that I can’t wait to read it. Relatedly, you should follow her incredible costume design instagram where she posts lots of her work from Mad Men and other shows with fascinating insight into her process.

The Universe is Indifferent: Theology, Philosophy, and Mad Men (Edited by Ann W. Duncan and Jacob L. Goodson)

Centered on the lives of the employees at a Manhattan advertising firm, the television series Mad Men touches on the advertising world's unique interests in consumerist culture, materialistic desire, and the role of deception in Western capitalism. While this essay collection has a decidedly socio-historical focus, the authors use this as the starting point for philosophical, religious, and theological reflection, showing how Mad Men reveals deep truths concerning the social trends of the 1960s and deserves a significant amount of scholarly consideration. Going beyond mere reflection, the authors make deeper inquiries into what these trends say about American cultural habits, the business world within Western capitalism, and the rapid social changes that occurred during this period. From the staid and conventional early seasons to the war, assassinations, riots, and counterculture of later seasons, The Universe is Indifferent shows how social change underpins the interpersonal dramas of the characters in Mad Men.

I only just found out about this collection, but I’m very interested in finding a copy. This was published in 2016. You can see the table of contents here. EDIT: This book is available to read on Scribd. They offer a 30 day free trial.

#mad men #books

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avaantares · 4 years

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FFVII:REMAKE - A Review

So I beat the game two weeks ago and started writing down my thoughts while they were fresh in my mind, but I didn’t post anything then because my one IRL friend who is also playing it hadn’t finished it yet and I didn’t want to risk posting anything spoiler-y. But the extra time has allowed me to play through the game again on Hard difficulty, which has allowed me to reconsider and elaborate on some of my thoughts. And frankly at this point I just need to dump my Very Big Opinions somewhere, so... here ya go.

I discuss visuals, gameplay, character and story below. I’ve tried to keep spoilers minimal up front, though obviously if you want to go into the game totally cold, don’t read this. All major spoilers are clearly tagged. All of it is below a cut to spare your dash.

Also, there are pretty pictures, because why not?

First, my background with this franchise: I played through the original FFVII multiple times; I’ve watched and rewatched Advent Children and Last Order, played Crisis Core, gave up on Dirge of Cerberus despite my deep love for Vincent Valentine (sorry, VV, but your game was just a mess), and lamented that Before Crisis wasn’t available in my country. I even played (and own!) Ehrgeiz, the obscure fighting game that featured the main cast. (Still bitter that they didn’t keep Miki Shinichirou as the voice of Sephiroth. He’s one of my faves.)

^ Ehrgeiz, a mediocre fighting game that forever endeared itself to me by including Turks!Vincent Valentine as a playable character. 💖

In short, I’ve been waiting for this game for DECADES.

So. Here we go. My thoughts on Final Fantasy VII: REMAKE.

The good:

The character models are very pretty. With individual pores, threads and scuffs visible, they’re so detailed that it’s almost impossible to reconcile them with the mouthless sprites from the original game – even more so than Advent Children (and dear goodness, that was over a decade ago now, wasn’t it?). Still, they’ve kept the costume details and absurd proportions largely intact (Barret’s fists are literally larger than Tifa’s entire head, yet somehow it works visually), so it’s not too much of a departure from the familiar.

They’ve kept the aesthetic. I was afraid the game would try to update the iconic world of Midgar, but by and large, it’s full of visually-arresting designs that preserve the gritty-industrial look and feel of the original.

Japanese version is included. BLESS YOU, Square Enix, for including the Japanese voices and character animations. Not only is it impossible for me to hear Cloud in anything other than Sakurai Takahiro’s voice, but the Japanese script is a bit nicer to the characters. I’m not really keen on the English dub… but more on that below.

They fixed the spelling of Aerith’s name. This may seem like a minor point, but considering it’s been 20 years and I’m still bitter that Devil May Cry still hasn’t corrected “Nelo Angelo,” it’s a small victory.

Improved combat. Admittedly, I wasn’t sold on the new combat system at first, but after playing through the game twice, I’ve come to really like it. It has a few rough edges and can get chaotic in some battles, but it does a decent job of blending the feel of an action game with turn-based strategy. The fact that you can switch to a more traditional turn-based system if you prefer is also nice. (I haven’t tried Classic mode yet, though.)

Weapon customization. The Skill Points system allows you to upgrade your loadout instead of acquiring new gear. The tutorial was somewhat lacking (I didn’t quite figure out the multiple-core-unlock thing right away), but I appreciated the ability to add materia slots or stat buffs rather than just cycling through a dozen swords that Cloud apparently keeps in his back pocket.

Background dialogue management. On the whole, the conversations as you run through town enhance the story without slogging down the gameplay; you don’t have to stop and talk to every single resident, because snatches of their conversation reach you (and your on-screen chatlog) as you pass. You can stop and listen for more detail if you want, or you can just keep moving. The extra worldbuilding is really nice.

The music. The orchestrated versions of the original themes are excellent (and some of those music cues gave me goosebumps… Did I spend way too many hours immersed in the original game? Probably). I can take or leave some of the collectible jukebox tunes, but the background music in general is good. (But did I earn that Disc Jockey trophy? Yes, yes I did.)

Supporting character development. Jessie, Biggs and Wedge actually have characters! And personalities! Clichéd ones, admittedly, but it’s an improvement over the original game killing them all off within the first few minutes. The game also does justice to the Turks, and actually surprised me with how much depth of character it gave Reno and Rude in particular (perhaps setting them up for a mini redemption arc so players forgive them for dropping a plate on tens of thousands of slum residents?). Their moments of concern for each other and (brief) crises of conscience made them more than the stock villains they were in the original game, more in line with their temporarily good-aligned characters in Advent Children. Tseng, likewise, was on point. However, I do have to qualify all this with one irate question: Where the heck is Elena?! Seems like the female characters are always getting left out… /sigh/

Improved plot devices. REMAKE cleans up some of the more questionable and outdated content from the original. As you likely already know from the demo, the new game somewhat exonerates the protagonists by having Shinra blow up their own mako reactor to turn public opinion against AVALANCHE (possibly because someone finally realized that it’s hard to sympathize with characters who are willing to melt down an entire reactor and kill a bunch of innocent civilians). AVALANCHE are still eco-terrorists, but they’re… terrorists with a conscience? I dunno, at least they feel bad when people die now… Likewise, the weird and uncomfortable Honey Bee Inn segment of the original game has been reborn as an amazing dance extravaganza. Less voyeurism/prostitution, more Vegas floor show (complete with minigame choreography) and makeover. The whole Don Corneo scenario is still hella creepy, but frankly, there’s nothing that can fix that.

Series references. Fans of the original will appreciate all the inside jokes and direct references to the original game and other franchise entries: One-off comments about Chocobo racing; a broken console in Wall Market that shoots at you; a framed picture of the original 32-bit Seventh Heaven; ads for Banora apple juice; side mentions of characters and plot devices from spinoff games; PHS communication… The game definitely pays tribute to its history. They even recreate the original loading screen and several of Cloud’s iconic poses/animations throughout the game:

The neutral:

Recycled gags. Look, I know Advent Children was the ultimate evolution of FFVII for a while, and admittedly, it did some things very well. The running gag with Rude’s sunglasses and the victory fanfare being used as a ringtone are some of the best moments in the film, in part because they were so unexpected. But as much as I enjoyed the repeated nods to AC in this game, they felt a little desperate, like there were no new jokes to insert so they had to double down on the ones they’d used the last time this franchise had a renaissance. (See Rude’s broken sunglasses, below.) And fitting into the series as a whole, it feels a little weird. Why is Rude’s ringtone the same as the clones’ from Advent Children? Does Barret really need to sing the victory fanfare over and over when he defeats an enemy? Is there supposed to be some history behind that song that was left out of the worldbuilding? It just feels too meta.

Arbitrary localization of names. I don’t really grasp why it was necessary to rename so many items and characters for the English market. Some changes make sense for localization (e.g. Whack-a-Box certainly works better for an American audience than Crash Box), but others seem arbitrary, like changing Aniyan Kunyan to Andrea Rhodea or Mugi to Oates (a play on the meaning of his name in Japanese, but... does it matter?). And then… well, I don’t want to spoil A Major Plot Element, but there’s another thing that changes names from one English word (in the Japanese track) to a different English word. Why? No idea. It doesn’t affect gameplay, and it’s not really a problem, but listening to the Japanese track, I found it jarring to have the subtitles contradict what I was hearing.

Underutilized characters. While the whole gamut of original FFVII characters make appearances, several of them aren’t used to full effect, or aren’t used at all to advance the story. Rufus Shinra’s bossfight is a decent challenge, but while his character was vital to both the original FFVII and Advent Children, his presence in this game is little more than a cameo. His fight could be cut or swapped out with any other boss, and it would have zero effect on the plot. Similarly, while Hojo is a key player in the full story (which this game doesn’t cover, since it’s only a fraction of the original timeline), he’s largely wasted here, except as a means of extending play time by making you wander through corridors and fight a bunch of monsters for “research.” (I have no idea what his motivation is; you’d think he’d be more interested in recapturing Aerith or Cloud, but instead he just... opens an elevator and lets them leave? after they beat up some midbosses.) Reeve Tuesti actually has a solid presence in this game, but since he’s ONLY ever active as himself, there’s no explanation for the random Cait Sith cameo in one scene (players new to the franchise probably have no idea why a random cartoon cat showed up for a few seconds and was never mentioned again). Obviously the plot arcs have to change when the game is covering only a few days’ time in a much longer story, and the major players need to be introduced at some point if they’re going to feature in later games in the series, but from a narrative standpoint, there are an awful lot of superfluous characters doing things for no reason in this installment.

The bad:

THE PADDING. Dear goodness, there is so much padding to make this a standalone game instead of just the first chapter of a longer adventure. I got really, really sick of running literally from one end of the map to the other on side quests – and that’s me, an avowed trophy hunter who spends hours scouring dark corners for collectible items in other games, saying that. So much of this game felt like time fill that didn’t really advance the story. It’s also full of unnecessary new characters with improbable Squeenix hair, like Roche the super-annoying motorcycle SOLDIER (below), or Leslie, Don Corneo’s doorman who somehow merits his own backstory and side quest. (Though in fairness, every FFVII sequel has added superfluous characters, with Crisis Core possibly being the worst offender.) But it just felt really drawn-out and bloated for a game of this generation. If this game had been as compact and tightly-written as the other games I typically play, it probably only would have taken me 15 hours to beat instead of 50. (I don’t actually know how many hours I spent on it the first time through, as I didn’t check the play clock before restarting on Hard difficulty. I do know it took me over 110 hours total to complete the game on both modes, though much of the second run was spent dying repeatedly on a handful of nasty fights. Hard mode removes items and MP replenishment, and if you run out of MP at any point during a chapter, you’re going to die. A lot.)

The pacing. Related to the above... the Midgar portion of the original game was just the setup for a larger story. It wasn’t meant to have its own complete dramatic arc so much as to introduce you to the world and the major players. Consequently, there are some really odd beats in this story, as well as a total lack of urgency in your mission. There are no natural places to slot in the side quests and minigames, so they’re shoehorned awkwardly between plot sequences. “Quick, our friend is in mortal peril and needs our help!” "Okay, cool, we’ll go rescue her after we spend ten hours running around town doing random errands for townspeople and playing games with the local kids.” Uh... what?

The graphics just aren’t as good as they should be. While the character models are gorgeous, there are a lot of low-res background textures and weird polygons that don’t quite match up with other components. Most egregious are the Shinra logos, which frequently get close-ups as part of the fixed camera work and, frankly, look like lossy JPEGs. (See image below, screencapped from a PS4 Pro. Those jagged edges on the logo are present throughout the entire game.) There are weird clipping errors and artifacted images and reflective surfaces that don’t reflect, making the game look more like something from the PS3 era than a 4K late-gen PS4 game. (And it’s not that we don’t have the technology: Uncharted 4 was released back in 2016, and the rendering of its vast world was twice as pretty. Devil May Cry 5, released in early 2019, has far more realistic textures and object interaction. Granted, those are different types of games with fewer NPCs to render, but I feel like there’s no excuse for a game this big to look this mediocre.)

The HUD could be better. The lower-corners concept is okay, though it took me a while to train my eyes to travel between both sides of the screen and track the fight action. But for a long time, I didn’t even notice the commands in the upper left corner of the screen, and after playing through the game twice I still have no idea what they say because I couldn’t focus on the tiny text long enough to read them while trying not to die in combat. (I just looked it up; apparently they’re combat control shortcuts? Huh, that would have been useful to know.) It wasn’t until my second time through that I realized there even WERE separate controls on screen during the motorcycle minigames; I had resorted to panicked button mashing to figure it out the first time through because there was no tutorial (you’re just dropped into the action) and, having ignored the small text for the previous hundred combats, I had no reason to look for on-screen instructions there. Not that it would have helped, since on many backgrounds the text in the upper left is really difficult to read (see below). It’s worth noting that I have better than 20/20 vision and played this game on a large TV screen and still had trouble reading some things; on a smaller TV, or for someone with less acute vision (like my sister, who is blind in one eye), I think even the basic menu controls would be difficult to see. While you can resize the font for subtitles, my cursory glance through the menu did not uncover an option to increase the size of the HUD.

Inter-fight menu mechanics. Specifically, the inability to save (or save loadout settings) between fights in a multi-part sequence. There are several back-to-back fights in which it is necessary to switch characters or change gear between bosses. The game treats them as one continuous fight, though it does allows you to access the equipment menu by holding square during key cutscenes. Which is good, if you only have one of a particular materia or accessory that you need to switch between characters, and in most cases when you die the game lets you restart just before your current fight instead of restarting the whole sequence -- also good, since some multi-stage bosses can easily take 20-30 minutes to beat, and if several of those are strung together in sequence, you’re in for a long play session to get past them. But since it’s treated as one fight, you can’t save between bosses (more than once, I had to leave my PS4 running in Rest Mode overnight and just hoped we didn’t have a power glitch), and if you happen to get killed and need to restart the fight, your loadouts reset. Which means if you’re, say, fighting the end boss on Hard difficulty and get killed in the first two minutes -- which happened to me a lot -- by the time you restart the fight, sit through the unskippable cutscene, access the menu and rearrange all the materia and accessories you need, you’re spending five or six minutes gearing up for two minutes of play, and then doing that over and over again every time you die. It gets really old.

The English dub script. *deep breath* Okay, look, I know I can be a bit elitist about translations, but I really do not like the English adaptation of this game. It makes Cloud come across as less socially-awkward and far more of a deliberate jerk, Aerith is mouthy and even swears (which is not accurate to her original character), and it downplays some of the symbolism that’s more obvious in the Japanese script. One quick example: When Aerith gives Cloud a flower, she says (in Japanese), “In the language of flowers, this means ‘reunion.’” It’s subbed/dubbed in English, “Lovers used to give these when they were reunited.” That’s a subtle difference, but since the concept of “reunion” is a freakin’ huge part of the FFVII plot, and since Sephiroth was on screen literally seconds before that line is delivered, my brain automatically went, “OMG REUNION!!!” while I’m guessing people listening in English only picked up on the romantic subtext. It’s a pretty minor thing, and of course translation is always a complex balancing act between literal meaning and local market understanding, but the English version just seemed to me to have a different vibe overall. (Unfortunately, the English subtitles are the same as the dub, so unless you can understand the Japanese audio you’re kind of stuck with that dialogue.)

[WARNING: SPOILERS BELOW THIS POINT]

- …And my #1 complaint about Final Fantasy VII: REMAKE is…

…it’s not actually a remake.

Sure, the game starts out the same way and covers a lot of the same events, but fundamentally, it’s a sequel, not a retelling. It’s evident from Cloud’s future-oriented visions throughout the game that something else is going on, and the ending MAKES NO SENSE if you don’t already know the story. Heck, even the rest of the game doesn’t really make sense if you don’t know the story -- Sephiroth’s presence is never explained; Zack isn’t even introduced, just shows up randomly at the end; Cloud’s flashbacks of Tifa and her dead father in Nibelheim are left as a complete mystery (and since she evidently remembers the burning of her town, judging by her dialogue outside Aerith’s house, why doesn’t she even react when Sephiroth shows up?).

The core elements of the plot – the Feelers (Whispers) preserving a specific fate; the three entities from the future (whose weapon types just happen to correspond to certain named characters) defending their timeline; the return of post-Advent Children Sephiroth (the only time we’ve seen him in human form with one black wing), who has inhabited the Lifestream since his death and promised that he would never truly disappear, who in the end appeals to Cloud directly for an alliance rather than attempting to control him, because he knows now that Cloud is strong enough to defy the Reunion instinct; the change in the outcome of story events in which Biggs (and, unconfirmed as to which timeline he’s actually in, but quite possibly Zack) now survives his intended death -- all point toward Sephiroth trying to manipulate destiny into an alternate outcome in which he is victorious, and using this naive version of Cloud to facilitate it. That means this game is taking place in an alternate or splinter universe, created at some point after the events of the original Final Fantasy VII, and possibly even after the events of Advent Children.

All of that is fine from an overall continuing-story perspective – it opens up a lot of interesting possibilities, like the fact that Aerith might survive now that Cloud has seen prescient flashes of her death (among other events), and there are opportunities for more story twists and changes from what players might expect. But touting this as a remake of the original game has the potential to confuse players who are new to the franchise. FFVII was groundbreaking back in 1997, and it defined JRPGs for an entire generation of Western gamers. But that was more than two decades ago, and a lot of current gamers weren’t even born then, so while they’ve probably heard of the classic game, they aren’t necessarily steeped in its lore. FFVII:R relies heavily on prior knowledge of the series to carry its twist ending, so it largely fails as a standalone game.

Also, speaking as a longtime fan of the franchise… I honestly found the ending rather lackluster. It was a twist, of sorts, but not the sort of shocking, mind-bending revelation that made the first game so iconic. Granted, it’s hard to follow an act like revealing that your protagonist’s entire identity is a lie, not to mention killing off one of your main characters a third of the way into the story! But when the surprise ending is just, Surprise! We’re going to change things up a bit this time around so you aren’t entirely sure what’s coming! Also, here’s a gratuitous Sephiroth fight because everyone expects that, even though it doesn’t serve the main story at all nor resolve any conflicts previously established within this game! it smacks of Different for the sake of Being Different, not for the sake of a really amazing storyline they’re hiding up their sleeve. It’s a bit of a let-down, and I find that I... just... don’t really care that much. Which, for someone who’s been a fan of the series for nearly a quarter of a century, means there’s a Big Freaking Problem somewhere. If you’re not keeping the attention of your die-hard fans, how do you hope to build a fanbase of players new to the franchise?

Given the pacing and story issues inherent in this game, I’m not convinced that the following game(s) in the franchise are going to be structured any better. Considering the amount of pure side-quest padding they did in Midgar, I have no idea how they’ll maintain that same tone on something the scale of the World Map portion of the original game, unless they just completely eliminate things like Fort Condor and the submarine and the spaceship side quests. I have a feeling the Gold Saucer is going to be reduced to a Jessie flashback, a Chocobo race (probably to win a key item), and a battle arena run like the coliseum in Wall Market in this game. If they include all the story elements and side characters from the original, this series is going to be a dozen games long.

Still, on the whole this game was enjoyable, and I’m glad I played it. It wasn’t as good as I’d hoped, but they haven’t completely killed off my interest, so I’ll probably continue with the series whenever the next game comes out. Though I’m not really sure if the higher-priced edition I pre-ordered was worth the extra money, so I may wait and see how the next game is shaping up before deciding which version to get...

But if they don’t give me a really pretty (playable) Vincent Valentine in the next installment, I may riot. I do have priorities.

#final fantasy vii #final fantasy vii: remake #ff7:r #final fantasy 7: remake #ff7 remake #video games #long post #review

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rabbiteclair · 5 years

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So, a whole lot of notes on Flatscreen. This is, like, halfway my attempt to analyze what I was doing for myself, so I can't guarantee they'll be informative or interesting to anyone else, but hey. It should go without saying that there are tons of spoilers in here.

Mysteries And Stuff

I guess the big thing on my end was that I deliberately went out of my way to avoid establishing a definite answer about What's Actually Going On with big facets of the story. Like, I didn't come up with them at all. Some of them don't strictly need answers. Some of them I felt were best left mysteries. Overall, though, subjectivity was kinda a theme for the story as a whole, so it felt appropriate to leave as much as possible open to interpretation. Most of these have apparent explanations within the story that work, because I still wanted a coherent narrative, but here's a short list of things I deliberately kept a bit vague: Does Gensokyo exist in this timeline? Compare the list of occult goodies Renko inherited from Sumireko in Flatscreen:

There are a handful of keepsakes, passed down from your grandma, that have managed to keep your faith in the supernatural alive. A photo of a gate in the Netherworld, with cherry blossoms on one side and a mundane graveyard on the other. A series of videos from her long-archived blog where she's bending spoons and levitating balls with her mind. A rock she brought back from 'some pyramid or another' that does, in fact, sharpen any razors you leave near it.

to Eyes in the Dark:

It had been a large box full of stuff, and practically the only mundane thing in it was a pack of Zener cards.

There was also a photo of a gate in the Netherworld, with cherry blossoms on one side and a mundane graveyard on the other. I know it's the Netherworld, because Maribel and I investigated it once. (Case File #6) There was a series of selfies that my grandma had taken with people she swore were youkai. (A few of them did have remarkably realistic costumes if not.) A recording of an unearthly song that did strange things to the listener's mood, that was supposedly from a youkai night sparrow. A heavily-warded jar with what could only be a ghost of some sort bound inside.

Flatscreen Renko... really didn't get anything impressive, apart from maybe the Netherworld photo from Ghostly Field Club. Maybe Sumireko just didn't leave her much--Renko doesn't really seem to know anything substantial about Gensokyo in the canon stories, after all. Maybe the Sealing Club stories are an alternative timeline from the main Touhou canon, and Maribel is traveling between worlds when she visits Gensokyo (we already know she's ended up in current-Gensokyo's past before, so it wouldn't really be much weirder.) Plus, Fantasy wasn't in very good state when Renko visited it. I think that's probably the case either way--Gensokyo would be a pretty crowded place if every single forgotten god, myth, or youkai ended up there. But, you can definitely point to it as evidence that Gensokyo isn't out there making things better, if you want. Is Renko the real Renko? What even counts as 'real' in this particular case? Whether or not this all happens in the same world or timeline as Gensokyo, Renko might not be The Renko that Maribel remembers. She raises the possibility herself in chapter 3--she has a past that she remembers, with no Maribel in it. It's entirely possible that by erasing Maribel, the monster changed the past and made a new timeline with a whole new Renko. Or maybe she's from a pre-existing timeline and was out there all along. Or, hell, if we're considering alternative timelines anyway, maybe this isn't the same Renko or Maribel from the Sealing Club stories. Or maybe Maribel is right, it's all one tidy timeline, and the monster didn't do much except alter some of Renko's memories. I did kinda wimp out on this one a little, by letting Renko regain memories of Maribel. It undermines some of these possibilities, but I couldn't stand the thought of having Renko go through all of that and only remember a single week with her. What is the monster? I really wanted Renko to make some kind of Black Hole Information Paradox comparison here, but never found a way to shoehorn it in. Regardless, it kinda fits. Whether the monster was a god, or a youkai, or whatever, almost by definition, there's no way of knowing what it used to be. All that information was lost when it got completely forgotten. Or maybe Maribel's theory is completely wrong, and these things aren't gods. She was guessing on pretty thin evidence. Renko thought she saw claws on some of them, and the main monster had some kind of weird features at times too. Stealing existence might be a bit much for an undead myth. If you want to interpret it as some kind of minor elder horror or an especially unstylish Excrucian or something, it doesn't change much about the story except maybe some of the implications. This is part of the reason I avoided giving it a name. The other half was for horror purposes--having Renko give it a snappy nickname like she did in Eyes in the Dark would make it feel a little less scary, I think. For what it's worth, in my notes, I referred to it as the Static.

History and connection with Eyes in the Dark

I really gave most of the relevant bits in the notes at the beginning of the story on AO3. The short version is, the story didn't originally have a monster, and when I decided to add one, a few rounds of expansion later, I had the outline for Eyes in the Dark. There are a few tracts of text that I originally copied over verbatim, and any differences in the section between the two stories evolved over time. The stuff about fake fish is one of them. Renko's big list of stuff Sumireko left for her is another. The monster from Flatscreen is fairly similar to the first iteration of what became the Watcher. When I went to add monster(s) to the first partial draft of Flatscreen, I thought it would be best if it was something that could threaten Maribel, even with her TV-dwelling nature, so a TV-filling monster was one of my first ideas. Obviously the monsters in both stories evolved quite a bit from that point, so it'd be incorrect to say that it's an earlier evolution of the Watcher. This is probably why both stories pretty heavily revolve around televisions, though. The lack of a monster to add some opposition was one of the two things that made me shelve the first draft of Flatscreen.

The other one was the lack of an ending. 'And then Maribel became Yukari' is practically a stock ending for Sealing Club stories, but somehow it didn't occur to me for about two and a half years.

Chapters 1-3 are pretty similar to what the original draft had, minus the monster. In the original draft, Maribel’s plan was to take Renko on a tour of various places they’d visited together, to try jogging her memory, which might hopefully help Maribel become real again. The plan was for Renko to get more and more absorbed in the fantasy world with Maribel in it, while Maribel just kept getting weaker and weaker. Eventually, Maribel would get too weak to even show up outside of Renko’s dreams, and Renko would decide it was better to float off into nonexistence with her than stick around on Earth alone.

... this was the plan for about thirty seconds before I realized it kinda sucks, at least. The lack of a satisfying ending was the main thing that made me drop the story and move on to other ideas.

Yukari!!!

Anybody who’s talked to me on the topic much (this is a list that has like two people on it, so in retrospect this was a bad way to introduce this paragraph) knows that I’m actually not all that fond of ‘Yukari is older Maribel’ as an interpretation of their relationship, in general. For one thing, whenever canon has a big open question and everyone just kind of decides it has to be answered the same way, I wanna go the opposite direction just to spite them. (See also: the idea of the previous shrine maiden being Reimu’s mom.) For another, I feel like it produces a lot of kinda crappy stories. I’ve read a ton of doujin and stuff where Maribel isn’t a character, she’s a macguffin for Renko to chase after, or a placeholder to stand around until Yukari pops up.

... but it isn’t an inherently bad idea, so I was able to convince myself to end the story like this after a while.

If I had to guess (and I do, since it’s another thing where I didn’t come up with a strict Objectively True Answer), it was just kinda the first step. That talk she gave about ending up somewhere else eventually was pretty open-ended. It definitely made her a bit weirder and more... eldritch. Probably, she drifted around in there for a while, ended up way in the past, and came back to find Renko again once she was able to. Could’ve been decades or centuries on her end.

I did definitely mean to drop some hints about how this all led to her becoming Yukari, though. Between the abandoned tanuki house and the really horrible state of Fantasy in the last chapter, it isn’t hard to see where she might get interested in something like Gensokyo. She’s literally playing around with the boundary between fantasy and reality before the story starts. And her walled-off fantasy bubble in the last chapter is basically a mini-Gensokyo, if you wanna think about it that way.

... I think that’s all the stuff I intended to cover? If I missed anything, feel free to shoot me a question, I guess.

#rabbit does fanfiction

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tessatechaitea · 5 years

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New Titans #114

This is it! The last regular issue of this comic that I own!

I guess the changing of the guard leaving Arsenal in charge was the last straw for me. Or maybe the last straw was that Pantha's tail hole on her shorts never ripped so that I could see her butthole. One of those two reasons is definitely why I stopped buying this comic though. This issue is called "24 Hours" which makes me think of Gaiman's The Sandman which makes me think, "Why the fuck am I rereading this shit when I could be rereading that shit?!" Oh wait! I actually know the reason for this! It's because these Titans comic books were stored in a big old regular sized moving box that I wanted to get out of the way! Also I've reread The Sandman and I've never reread this. And since I'll be fifty in a little over two years, I should probably get all of the stupid time-wasting bullshit ideas out of my head now. Any writing projects I can't finish by the time I'm fifty, I'm abandoning. At that time, I'll just make up new ones that will only entertain me and a few other people. So if I've ever said anything in passing about something I was going to do, like finishing the Goggles Futures End story or my Fantastickal Fuck-Fighting Books, you'd better get your vote in now! The issue begins at midnight with Changeling getting his ass beat by a dark silhouette who claims Changeling promised to "end her living days." I don't know who that might be or why this is happening. With Zero Hour beginning right around this time, my comic books might become complete nonsense. I just have to hope the comic books involved in that non-crisis-labeled crisis will have "Zero Hour Tie-in" labels on the front. I probably don't understand what's going on in this one because Marv Wolfman is being artsy. And fuck if I know anything about art! I read comic books for a reason, people! At 1:10 AM, Starfire flies around wondering if Earth is really her home. Yes, it takes six panels for her to ask that question. But she's also being artsy in a poetic way! She uses phrases like "scarlet sea" and "delicious nectar" and "golden skies." It's almost as if somebody scoffed at Marv Wolfman when he mentioned he wrote comic books earlier in the week and he thought, "I'll show them!" Then he was all, "Hey! That issue by that new kid Gaiman was kind of artsy! It had those clocks that showed what time it is and the whole thing took place in only 24 hours and it was all filmed in real time although with all the cuts from one character to another, why did it even fucking matter? Oh wait, it's only 1994! I don't know who Jack Bauer is yet!" At 3:36 AM, Pantha breaks into somebody's apartment. Supposedly it's the person who changed her from a person into a cat or from a cat into a person. But it isn't so Pantha gets to scream in existential angst which is the only cathartic release available to those of us who know nothing has any meaning and all of our clothes need to be tailored so the tail can stick out of them. At 4:10 AM, Dick Grayson proves he's a master of disguise by first being unrecognizable and then being unrecognizable in a different way.

A true master of disguise! He's already showing hints of his ability to be Agent 37 of Spyral.

Notice how the panels are all wonky in the previous scan? I'm sure Marv Wolfman put a note in the script to the artist: "We're being artsy this issue! Art it up!" At 5:20 AM, we finally learn what happened to Deathwing. I don't mean we get an explanation of what Mirage did to him and why he doesn't have testicles anymore. We just see that he's making an appearance so that the audience can go, "Oh, that fuckbunny isn't dead? Great." The silhouette from earlier has dragged Changeling into Deathwing's bachelor pad. She's still just a dark profile but she mentions that Changeling is probably strong enough to accept her seed so it must be Raven. I guess being a demon from a dimension of empaths means you don't learn about the birds and the bugs. Unless this answers a question I'm sure I asked much earlier! Changeling can turn into a female version of any species! And Raven squirts semen because, well, she's Trigon's daughter. At 6:05 AM, Arsenal goes jogging with Bill Clinton. Clinton messes up Sergeant Steel's plans to manipulate the Titans into working for the government by telling Roy that he wants the Titans to be completely independent but he hopes that they'll work with the government. This plot point feels like Marv worked himself into a story arc that he didn't want to pursue any more. It's not like the DC Universe needed another team working on behalf of the U.S. government. At 6:15 AM, Garfield Logan finally gets laid.

Okay, maybe he doesn't get laid. But he definitely comes in his pants.

Do you think Marv Wolfman was in the shower when he thought, "Comic books have 24 pages. There are 24 hours in a day. Hey! I should steal an idea from Neal Gaiman!" At 7:43 AM, Nightwing crashes through a skylight. Just like Batman taught him! I can hear Bruce now: "Good job, Dick! Now they'll have to call Wayne Skylight and Window Repair! Another payday for the Batman!" At 9:00 AM (Eastern Time, Planet Earth, Sol System), Jarras Minion of some planet in the Alpha Centauri system watches his entire race disintegrate before his eyes. Probably a symptom of Zero Hour! At 10:05 AM, Nightwing declares, "I'm not a doctor! I just feel like a doctor!" It's his philosophical explanation for why he doesn't use lethal force. It totally makes sense because Nightwing still punches the shit out of people just like how doctor's love to give shots and cut people open. At 11:20 AM, Changeling begs to remain a virgin. He escapes but he has some missing time so he might also be pregnant. I guess I'll never know unless he starts showing in 24 hours! Or I'm curious enough to go buy some back issues. Ha ha! That was a joke! I have no curiosity. Page 12 is noon, of course! Nightwing has lunch with a detective because Dick Grayson had the fear of Alfred beaten into him about sitting down promptly at noon for the midday meal. Twenty-four hours for Dick Grayson went like this: 9 PM - 4 AM: Risk life with grown ass adult man in bat costume. 4 AM - 8 AM: Sleep. 8 AM - 9 AM: Waffles. 9 AM - 12 PM: Training. 12 PM - 1 PM: Cucumber sandwiches. 1 PM - 5 PM: Study time. 5 PM - 6 PM: Tea. 6 PM - 9 PM: Try to evade Bruce and Alfred as Dick finds a quiet spot to masturbate. At 1:30 PM, Roy has coffee with Steel. The government's final offer to the Titans: the government gives the Titans the Terraist's satellite, an Earthbound base, and money to pay off any lawsuits against the Titans and in return, the Titans promise to consider missions for the United States. What a terrible deal for the government! The Titans can just turn down every mission and the United States gets nothing for their investment. There must be a loophole. Steel reminds Roy, "You gotta decide fast!" As if it wasn't the easiest deal in the world to say yes to! At 2:25 PM (Eastern Time, Planet Earth, Sol System), Jarras roleplays Kal-el's early days. As his world is destroyed (along with some visiting Darkstars), Jarras escapes in a pod called the Omegadrone. It's both an escape pod and a weapon! I don't remember the character Minion at all. Probably because this was the last Titans comic I read for decades. At 3:55 PM, Wolfman reveals that Red Star has taken a job as a mall security cop. And I guess a babysitter as well since Baby Wildebeest is hanging out with him. At 4:10 PM, Roy Harper signs the contract with the government even though he knows it's going to blow up in his face. Fucking leftist comic book writers, portraying the United States government as underhanded, manipulative bastards who don't give a shit who they hurt to get what they want! At 5:20 PM, a bunch of Darkstars are killed by the rainbow spiral that destroyed Jarras's planet. The populace of the planet had been bred to be passive. So I guess the moral of this story is that hippie beatnik pacifists are only asking for trouble. Fucking right wing comic book writers! Well, at least Jarras has learned the lesson that peace is for dead people. The Omegadrone will teach him how to get revenge. At 6:03 PM, Roy thinks he's going to get Wally West to join his government Titans team but he's really going to get Impulse. I know that because I looked at the future roster of this team: Arsenal, Damage, Impulse, Mirage, and Terra. No wonder I stopped reading it! At 7:32 PM, Nightwing takes a shower. Naked! I know that's how most people take showers and I probably didn't need to emphasize it but he also jerks off so maybe I should have started with that.

DC canon: Dick Grayson jerks off thinking about puns.

And after he finishes.

At 8:54 PM, Dick Grayson turns in his resignation to Roy Harper. He's officially off the Titans! Good riddance, ya dumb jerk! If that even is you. Try looking more like Dick Grayson next issue, Dick Grayson! At 9:20 PM, Red Star, Pantha, and Baby quit the Titans as well. Then they go on a romantic road trip which DC apparently didn't publish. There's an advert in this issue for a Green Arrow story arc called "Cross Roads" that the copy compares to Knightfall and which nobody fucking remembers (probably!) but DC never published a Red Star/Pantha team-up?! No, they were right. Just as I was typing that, I was thinking, "Fuck, I would never have purchased that shit." At 10:10 PM, Changeling agrees to stick with the Titans. But he's full of Raven's disgusting seed, so he'll probably just turn on them immediately. At 11:05 PM, Dick and Kory break-up. But not in person! Dick waits for her to arrive to a dinner where he can dump her but Kory knows better and just flies into outer space. I don't remember what happens with her but it's probably super boring. I'm sure she goes home, fights with Blackfire, fights some Gordanians or whatever dumb race always enslaved the Tamaraneans, and then remembers why she moved to Earth in the first place. At midnight, Phantasm arrives to lead Harper and Logan into Damage #6. And then into Titans Zero Hour! Oh. So I guess I do have one more issue of this story arc to read: New Titans #0. I also have a Titans Elseworld Annual in the stack. Plus a Team Titans Elseworld Annual and one more Team Titans issue. And finally, before I can totally move on, Deathstork #0! New Titans #114 Rating: C. The one hour per page gimmick really helps Marv Wolfman clean up a bunch of loose ends to get the Titans ready for a big group change in Zero Hour. Plus he was able to shove in the Minion origin story (which was really just Superman's origin). And I usually give the art a pass even when it's not very good (and I often ignore it when it's great!) but holy Lobo's bulging crotch, it was fucking terrible this issue. It was so bad that I'm not even going to remember who the artist was so that I don't have to feel embarrassed for them.

#New Titans #Teen Titans #DC Comics #DC #Comic Book Reviews

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moonvalecrossing · 5 years

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Moonvale's Pokemon Commentary: #676 Furfrou

Go, gimmick-pokemon! Make me have to make a big thing of all your forms!

Just for Looks:

Before I begin, see the white on all those guys up there? For the shiny, paint the white black. And the black white. Still looks pretty cool though. In fact the shiny version helps the colors of the more meh trims look a lot better to me.

Furfrou is our expected French Poodle Pokemon that was introduced in Kalos, the Pokemon world's version of France. Though I wouldn't call Furfrou a poodle. Its natural form's fur is far too shaggy and wild to be the same as the curly fur of a French Poodle. That said, I find the natural form to be a very nice design. Now, as you saw above we have multiple versions of Furfrou. That is because it's gimmick is that you can style its fur into various trims by taking it to the right NPC. They do absolutely nothing but look nice. Also they are not permanent and it will return to its natural form in five days. Or if they're put into (Gen VI) or removed from (Gen VII) the PC. Make sure you got plenty of money laying around if you wanna keep that look. It'll cost ya $500 poke-bucks every time. Now then, onto the styles!

Heart Trim- The pink one with the heart shaped tail obviously. This is the most poodle-looking of all the forms to me. It's really cute for the most part but I find the two white butt-poofs weird.

Diamond Trim- Orange with Diamond tail. I like its pants.

Star Trim- The pale blue one with a stair shaped tail. I like its head fluff. And that it doesn't have butt-poofs.

Pharaoh Trim- The one who kinda looks like it's wearing a fancy Egyptian headdress. The fact this one is not a golden yellow is a crime. I know the decorative stripes on this sort of artifact is usually a dark blue, but the majority of what is usually depicted is gold, darn it! Also, the black stripes on its ears are what I assume to be the fluff cut down to the base coat... and I can't imagine that looking anything but weird with a more realistically depicted fur. However it seems that these stripes are just the fluff colored the exact same as the base coat... for some reason. It's okay.

Kabuki Trim- The red one. So like... Kabuki. It's Japanese dance-theatre pretty much. But with usually exaggerated face painting and costumes. Look up Kabuki in an image search and you'll probably at some point see a dude with white face paint with red markings and wild red hair. That's what this trim style is based on I guess. There's also a Kabuki pikachu plush on the pokemon center website... which is just pikachu with a kimono, headband, and wearing a little eye makeup and a small upper lip paint. At least put on a wig, Pikachu. Sheesh. This trim is interesting. I love the tail.

La Reine Trim- The other light blue one that isn't the star trim. I have no idea what this is. Looking up La Reine doesn't really help either. I guess it's some kind of fashion type for rich women? I guess its head and ears are supposed to look like some fancy up-do? It's bland.

Matron Trim- The purple one. The older motherly woman figure design I guess. I guess it's meant to be a bonnet on its head. I'm grumpy this doesn't have at fur style that looks like one of them big-butted round dresses though. Maybe that's more a rich young-woman only thing? But even the young woman style we'll go over in a bit doesn't really seem much different.

Dandy Trim- The green one that looks like he's got a suit and top-hat on. My favorite. A dandy is a dude who cared a lot about his appearance and looking and acting as if he belongs in high society. If y'all got some sort of slur you wanna use here for this sort of character you can turn your fancy ass back around and walk out the door you came through. Moonvale aint puttin up with that shit here. This style is adorable! I love this particular cut. I would choose this one over all the others if I used Furfrou in my party. My fancy boy. Bonus points for being a lovely shade of green.

Debutant Trim- The yellow one. Now a debutant, if you don't know the actual meaning, is a young rich woman who has just entered into fashionable society. Originally meant to show off women to the men who'd be wanting to marry em. About the design though... I like its hat. It is a nice fur-hat. Though, I don't see anything that screams young-woman to make this one different from the Matron Trim. Could have given it a nice shorter dress-like style on the back end of the fur design.

What's in the Name:

Fur + 'Frou-Frou'. If kids don't know that term nowadays that's basically calling something fancy and over-elaborate. Fancy pants? ...I’m like a decade out of the loop on slang. I just learned yeet.

The Japanese name, Trimmien, seems to be Trim + Chien, which is dog in French. Can confirm. I took enough French in high school to say this is accurate. Bulbapedia says it could also be a play on très bien (basically very good/excellent). But I think its a tad bit of a stretch as the first explanation fits perfectly as is.

The 'Dex Says:

Some dex entries claim trimming the fur makes it swifter which has absolutely no standing in the actual game since the trims seem to be completely aesthetic in every way. Trimming only changes the pokemon's appearance. There was a time where these pokemon were guardians of the Kalosian King, and in a certain era aristocrats would compete on who could style their Furfrou’s fur to be the most exquisite.

I'd call these people stuffy and arrogant only using their pokemon for status, but apparently only someone a Furfrou highly trusts is allowed to trim its fur. Though, that fur grows and grows when not trimmed so I'd assume they have a limit to where they have to find SOMEONE to trim their fur before they end up like that one sheep that managed to hide away and hadn't been sheared in six years. What do they even do with all that trimmed hair... Maybe they use it to stuff fancy pillows.

It's Rating Time!

I'm giving this guy a 3/5. It's a cool concept. However the designs are mostly meh to me, and the fact that you have to re-do the cut every 5 days is pretty annoying. I can't say this guy's among my favorites. I wish the cut style had some kind of effect, even if it were only to boost certain stats in a contest-like environment. How does a straight haired shaggy dog get curly poodle puffs anyway? My mom has never been able to keep her non-permed hair in any sort of curl for more than 5 hours, what the heck do they put on these dogs to keep them curled for FIVE DAYS?

Want to read more of my reviews? Click here!

#Moonvale Reviews Pokemon #Pokemon commentary #pokemon #Furfrou

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stone-man-warrior · 5 years

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May 14, 2018: 3:43 pm:

May 14, 2018: Yesterday was Mother's Day in the United States. Yesterday,... StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-05-14T18:43:57-0400 - Updated: 2018-05-14T18:43:57-0400

May 14, 2018: Yesterday was Mother's Day in the United States. Yesterday, Mother's Day, StoneMan went grocery shopping, he made three stops at three places in Grants Pass Oregon. Wal-Mart was where StoneMan chose to do his shopping. Grocery shopping has become nearly impossible for Americans to survive in Josephine County Oregon. No matter where an American chooses to shop for food, gasoline, convenience store products, or any other thing, item, clothing or anything at all, anywhere, those Americans will be killed or taken prisoner at the place they have chosen to shop. StoneMan only survives because he knows in advance, that he will be attacked by terrorists who use the anesthetic gas. On Mother's Day, there was a theme in place as there often is. In Grants Pass the theme was "Dead-Mother-Fucker-Day". The idea of themes used in terrorist attacks can be seen by those who look for them. Explanation of the themes in detail is not what this post is about, so, be advised that themes are used on a County-wide scale through-out the area on holiday's especially. Themes are not limited to holiday subject matter, but are popular and themes help the terrorists communicate among themselves about where victims are in a given retail store, for instance. This post is not about themes. StoneMan survived the shopping experience yesterday, however, his survival came at the cost of the lives of several terrorists. Stoneman survives shopping for food ONLY because terrorists do not survive on EVERY shopping outing. There is a situation here that StoneMan is not comfortable discussing at all. The situation includes the very real possibility that other Americans may have not survived shopping at the Wal-Mart in Grants Pass Oregon on Mother's Day also. This very specific situation, if things are the way StoneMan perceives it, includes that any helpful anti-terrorist personnel who might read this, survey this information autonomously. Further information may be found at 434 "MyStreet" and 598 "MyStreet". StoneMan is hopeful that his perception of this particular situation is wrong. And now, the reason for this post: John Bolton is the National Security Adviser for President Trump. StoneMan STRONGLY advises caution regarding Mr. Bolton's loyalty. John Bolton is in a position that better suits security of the advancement of Screen Actor Guild and French Canadian terrorist armies than the security of American people. And that is what this post is about.

Shared with: Public

StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-05-14T19:24:04-0400 - Updated: 2018-05-15T21:22:08-0400

May 14, 2018: As a reminder, this page has a section titled "About". In that section of this page, a public service information page, there is information that is still valid. This post is to remind those good, helpful, American Public Safety personnel... Anti-terrorist agents... of the enormity of the National Security threats that this page concerns. In Josephine County Oregon, the entire population is composed of terrorists of a variety of disciplines. Their numbers in Josephine County Oregon are estimated at fifty-thousand, that's 50,000. In Jackson County Oregon, their numbers are estimated at seventy-five thousand, that's 75,000. In Klamath County Oregon, their numbers are estimated at twenty-five thousand, that's 25,000. In Douglas County Oregon, their numbers are estimated at twenty-five thousand, that's 25,000. Estimates of the enormity of the National Security terrorist threats, beyond those four Oregon Counties, are beyond the scope of StoneMan's ability make. Be advised, the threat is much larger than StoneMan is able to report. Please help.

StoneMan .Warrior - 2018-05-15T00:36:25-0400 - Updated: 2018-05-15T02:44:56-0400

May 14, 2018: Part of the commenting done today included a bit of information about how themes are used in the terrorist activities in Josephine County Oregon. Briefly, this additional information about themes is important. Most computer users are familiar with Google Doodles. Those Google Doodles are often in celebration of some obscure historic figure. The themes used in the terrorism are often in sync with, and inclusive of, those obscure historic figures. This added information is here to elaborate about the complexity of such an idea, and the difficulty level of identifying that a particular theme is being used on a given day. For those doing investigative work, don't forget to check what Google Doodles are present on the search engine page. Once investigators are able to see and identify that themes are being used, then, the notion and identification of a theme becomes much easier. Soon, themes used in terrorist activities at retail shopping centers can be easily be grasped and then used to solve other more deadly aspects of the terrorism. At least one of the terrorist family cells on "MyStreet" has access to what the Google Doodle will be two days ahead of when the actual Google Doodle is displayed at the Google Web Page. For that reason, StoneMan is also able to get early hints as to what themes are being planned for in the coming days. Themes are perceptible at Wal-Mart and at Fred Meyer. This is a very subtle attribute of terrorist activity but could be a monumental breakthrough for those trying to crack the codes that terrorists use. Memorial Day Weekend will be a theme on that weekend. A sure bet of terrorist activity nationwide will include that Versed will be used extensively at various memorials in the USA. Victims will be taken. Those who investigate would be well advised to start finding stockpiles of the Versed drug now, in advance of Memorial Day Weekend. Use your own thinking caps to detect likely ways a "memorial" theme can be deployed by terrorists. It would be wise to identify synonyms and antonyms as well, because the terrorists will be doing just exactly that and more. In the future, as holidays approach, use this information, and a Bic Lighter, to fight terrorism. Also, as new movies are released in the theaters, those movies become the theme, however, terrorists often resort to themes that mimic classic movies such as "Gone With The Wind". Check for the anniversary of that movies original release and you may find that "Gone With The Wind" is the theme on that day at a location that fits the theme.Themes in terrorism include costumes and cosplay, which helps identify victims with a visual communication. Those who are not "in-theme" in some way are targeted as victims. Imagine that if you went to a renascence fair dressed in Star-Trek clothes and all the renascence people were terrorists. Use this kind of thinking to stop terrorists from taking the USA. On Valentines Day the use of a Thomson Machine Gun happens at someplace heart related. On Independence Day there will be an enormous production of terrorist activity... the terrorists live for the sole purpose of taking American victims on Independence Day at every kind of venue were independence of some kind occurs, or historical places where people gather. On Independence Day, theme oriented aspects include that a there will be a guy on stilts dressed as Uncle Sam in Red White and Blue and children will actually disappear into his baggy pants... not joking. On Christmas, Santa at any mall USA will invite children to sit on his lap and people will line up to participate as there children are taken away right in front of the parents who are exposed to anesthetic gas. On Halloween or at harvest festivals in the fall, at county fair grounds nationwide, there will be a Great Pumpkin theme including all of the characters of Charlie Brown. Victims will be taken. There is an event called "Boatnik" in Grants Pass on Memorial Day. The theme will be "Midway" of the historic Chicago Carnival style. Victims will be taken at Riverside Park. There is no limit to themes. Terrorism knows no boundaries, it has no age, nor gender... terrorism knows no boundaries. Also, the original concept of what a Google Doodle was intended to be in the beginning of it's use has changed to something completely different than it's intended form. Google has been taken over by the French Canadians with the help of Screen Actors Guild. There is much more to discuss about that, however, with the lack of interest in protecting the people of the USA, there simply is no one interested in knowing the details As printed books become obsolete, the digital account of historical facts will be online. Much of that historical information will become more and more corrupted and sculpted over time to the desired result of those who control Google. By the way... terrorists have been taking children at Christmas time in great numbers for as long as there has been a Santa at "Any-Mall USA". Screen Actors Guild has successfully brainwashed the entire country with the idea that bringing our children to sit on Santa's lap is a national ritualistic custom. Every year, news agencies continue to show us on television that it is normal to tell our kids to go sit on the lap of a man we don't know, who is wearing a fake beard such that we could never recognize him, and in such a baggie costume that no one really knows where his hands are at. And this has become normal. You may notice that Santa always seems to be sitting on some grand stage type of thrown chair.... the kind of chair that has large fake, decorative packages on each side. That is where the anesthetic gas tanks are. Some of those stages have a trap door and the children fall down as the trap is released. Stoneman can remember Topanga Plaza in 1970 where exactly that was occurring and no one seemed to care. Screen Actors Guild has been taking our children for more than four decades... with themes. Santa is a terrorist, even if you refuse to believe it, he is. Or would you rather "Believe in Santa"? Santa at the mall is the invention of Screen Actors Guild. Santa's are required to have a SAG Union card in order to be a "Mall Santa", or else the mall will be picketed by SAG members. Malls have been picketed by SAG members... look it up, you'll see.

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realgeekhammer · 7 years

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I have to be honest, I have been dodging this article for awhile. Any time you touch on certain subjects, you will bring out the bigots, trolls and pathetic people in general. Having decided to voice my own OPINION here, I wanted see what shakes out. I have been a comic book fan and collector for the better part of my life. Comics were a survival mechanism for me in my youth. As an only child, I came from a relatively poor family from a poor state with comics being all I had at times. I collected them all, starting with Daredevil first and then I moved on to Uncanny X-men, Master of Kung-Fu, Rom the Space Knight, Warlord, and eventually discovered Superman. I have no favorite house. Oh! you like Superman so you like DC…Oh! you like X-Men so you like Marvel. No! I like comics with great writing, great art, and a strong but centered message or that are at least entertaining. Both of the major comic book houses and most independents have been able to do this at one time or another in their long histories, but that seems to be in the past of late. I have found myself slowly canceling comics that I have collected for years and redirecting those funds to collecting runs of older comics. So, what is going on?

Lets talk about DC first. DC Comics had my favorite stories through most of the late 90’s and the early 2000’s. I collected all the “Super” titles for many years as well as most of what Geoff Johns produced during the 2000’s. In 2011, DC decided to revamp their lineup and modernize the characters for a new audience with a focus on digital comics. They dubbed this the New 52. I was writing for another, now defunct “Geek” site at the time. One of my first assignments, I read and reviewed every title that was in the first run release of the New 52 for an article on the digital move in comics. Some of the books were good, some were great, but most just fell short. The first red flag that popped up for me was how DC’s creative heads viewed criticism of their moves within the New 52. Jim Lee was quoted at a convention as saying that it was alright if people didn’t like what they were doing because as long as they were talking about comics that was what they wanted. I found this to be a curious take on people saying that they just didn’t like the direction that DC was heading. How was that going to sell issues and keep people interested in your titles? The last straw for me personally was the Lobo revamp. The new Lobo was a complete disaster and lost all the edge and grit that made the character likable in the first place.

DC finally relented to fan pressure and in 2016 they ended the New 52 and switched to the Rebirth launch which was an attempt to bring a lot of the “old” style back, re-establishing the original numbering system, while cherry-picking the better parts of the New 52. It appears to be working as sales for DC are doing immensely better. There is still controversy however, despite fan pressure for some basic costume changes to key characters, DC editors have decided to continue with the “no briefs” policy on title characters like Superman and Batman. Sometimes it is just hard to admit that they made an error in judgement, but so it goes.

Marvel is yet another story. I loved Marvel in the 70’s and 80’s, but have not liked the direction of the company increasingly since the 1990’s. Marvel has always been on the cutting edge of comics since Stan “the Man” Lee was running things, but they’ve had their issues over the years. However, Marvel has entered into a crisis like they have not seen in awhile. Sales for the House of Ideas for the first time in history are losing major ground to it’s competitors. They still are number one, but they are barely hanging on as DC has been coming on strong. Why? One word: Diversity! Marvel decided that it was a good idea to kill off, repackage, or otherwise just ignore canon and revamp the Marvel Universe for the sake of making it’s readers embrace what they see as more diversity. Sad thing is, Marvel was already a diverse house before it started on this creative blunder. They have gay and pan-sexual characters as well as characters in pretty much every major racial and/or ethnic group you can name. DC has been diversifying as well, but Marvel definitely wins the award here.

The problem here is not that readers are bigots that don’t want diversity in their comics (which was the explanation that Marvel recently gave for their slump in sales), but rather is the connection that readers feel with specific characters. When major changes are done to characters, then readers have trouble relating to those characters that they have been collecting (in some cases for decades or more). It is bad enough to do this kind of revamp to one character, let alone to multiple ones across your lineup. The editors at Marvel also got caught up in an artistic blunder with the X-Men: Gold controversy. The controversy was created by trying to diversify talent at Marvel without properly vetting those new talents especially when they came from unstable political regions (regardless of the politics).

Marvel fails to realize that their characters are a brand and changing the essence of a character is the artistic equivalent to “New Coke.” If you take a Pepsi and change the logo but the formula for the drink is the same then you have a repackaged Pepsi (ie. we have given Captain America a new costume/shield). If you take a “different” character and put him in the Captain America costume you’ve changed the essence of the character (ie. we changed the formula of our drink but it is still the same great logo in the traditional can). If you change the fundamental character and the costume than you have created an all new product that may pay a small amount of homage to the original, but has nothing really to do with it. If you cease producing the old product in lieu of the new one than you are asking for failure of both by creating contempt for a forced new product (ie. New Coke).

So, where does that leave us? I believe that the overall message here is simple. Fans DO want more diversity in their comics, but NOT at the expense of the heroes that they have grown to love and have invested both financial and emotional capital in over the years. The major comic houses have grown stale. They rely on the old characters and instead try to repackage them for resale instead of seeking out diverse writing and artistic talent that will take old characters to new heights and give them new, fresh stories with new casts of characters. They don’t even encourage the older talents in the industry to create anymore. Many aging creators are jumping ship to independent or self-created labels so they can maintain control of their new properties.

The major houses have grown a bit lazy on the development of new characters and are afraid to take any risks at this point. What does that mean for fans? It means we won’t see the development of new characters like Deadpool, Venom, Cable or positive redesigns on mid-tier characters to make them better like Mr. Terrific, Animal Man and Luke Cage like in the past. How many new characters can you name from the major comic houses in the past ten years? Not too many, I am guessing. Instead, we can look forward to racial, ethnic, gender or sexuality changes on current established characters, constant costume redesigns, gimmick or recycled story lines and a further muddying of the canonical waters. But what do I know, I have only been doing this for 40+ years.

What Ever Happened To The House of Ideas? I have to be honest, I have been dodging this article for awhile. Any time you touch on certain subjects, you will bring out the bigots, trolls and pathetic people in general.

#Batman #Books #business #Cable #Captain America #Comics #DC Comics #Deadpool #Diversity #geek #Jim Lee #Luke Cage #Marvel Comics #MCU #New 52 #rebirth #Stan Lee #Superman #Venom #X-Men

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