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Usa today MLK, robot unemployment, Python Bowl: News from around our 50 states

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Usa today Alabama

Birmingham: Jefferson County is preserving what’s left of the lockup the put officials recount Martin Luther King Jr. served his final time unhurried bars simply months sooner than his assassination. County commissioners unanimously authorized a resolution Thursday to memorialize and withhold an location on the seventh floor of the county courthouse that aged to be a jail. Critical of the floor is now aged for storage and mechanical tools. Sheriff Note Pettway acknowledged the civil rights leader used to be held on the floor in 1967, when he served three days for contempt after losing an allure on his conviction for demonstrating with out a enable years earlier. A shrimp location including two mild-green cells, an isolation chamber, a bathe and mechanical tools are all that remain from the oldschool jail. The county doesn’t know whether or no longer King used to be held in that true portion or yet some other portion that has since been removed.

Usa today Alaska

Juneau: A make a call dominated Friday that an effort to retract Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy may maybe maybe proceed, a call that's expected to be appealed. The decision by Superior Court docket Approach to a call Eric Aarseth in Anchorage followed arguments in the case Friday and got here two months after Gail Fenumiai, director of the declare Division of Elections, rejected a advise to plot the retract effort. Fenumiai acknowledged her decision used to be fixed with an belief from Attorney Overall Kevin Clarkson that found out the causes listed for retract had been “factually and legally deficient.” The Rob Dunleavy team has argued that Clarkson’s prognosis used to be overreaching and that the retract effort will deserve to had been allowed to switch to a 2nd, signature-gathering portion. Amongst its claims, the team acknowledged Dunleavy violated the law by no longer appointing a make a call within a required time body, misused declare funds for partisan online adverts and mailers, and improperly aged his veto authority to “assault the judiciary.”

Usa today Arizona

Mesa: Tonto National Forest officials recount workers idea to birth up installing 4 miles of steel fencing alongside and cease to the decrease Salt River east of metro Phoenix to forestall wild horses from crossing the Bush Motorway and to withhold livestock from mingling with the horse herd. Forest officials recount the fence work starting Monday is the 2nd portion of a project that noticed workers entire installation Friday of 10 miles of barbed wire fencing. That work began in November. Forest Carrier and declare Division of Agriculture officials acknowledged previous fences didn’t prevent horses from getting onto the toll road, resulting in the deaths of 20 or extra horses each year. The Forest Carrier acknowledged the project entails installing 35 gates at designated trails and historically aged get entry to components.

Usa today Arkansas

Small Rock: A make a call on Friday acknowledged he won’t pause his pronounce reinstating a police officer fired for fatally taking pictures a dark motorist. Pulaski County Circuit Approach to a call Tim Fox denied the town of Small Rock’s ask to pause his pronounce relating to Officer Charles Starks, who used to be fired over the deadly taking pictures of Bradley Blackshire. Starks fired a minimal of 15 cases by the windshield of a vehicle Blackshire used to be riding in February. Starks and yet some other officer had been attempting a motorized vehicle pause on the time. Police commanders fired Starks in Might simply, pronouncing he violated department policy. Fox had beforehand upheld a city rate’s ruling that Starks violated policy prohibiting officers from voluntarily putting themselves in front of an oncoming vehicle “the put deadly force is the attainable .” However the make a call acknowledged a 30-day suspension and reduction to an entry-level officer wage are extra appropriate sanctions, and he ordered the town to conform by Jan. 16.

Usa today California

San Francisco: It used to be a frightful week for robots in the Bay Dwelling. A Silicon Valley firm that aged robots to mark its pizzas closed closing week, and three espresso outlets in downtown San Francisco that aged robots as baristas also shuttered. Zume Pizza acknowledged it's decreasing 172 jobs in Mountain Take into sage and striking off yet some other 80 at its facility in San Francisco. The Mountain Take into sage startup, which first began delivering pizzas in 2016, acknowledged it intends to focal point on its meals packaging and provide programs, the Mercury Files in San Jose experiences. In San Francisco, Cafe X closed three of its espresso outlets in the financial district. The startup’s founder, Henry Hu, acknowledged the downtown cafes helped function the most up-to-date machine being aged at outlets at San Francisco Global Airport and Mineta San Jose Global Airport, the San Francisco Tale experiences.

Usa today Colorado

Loveland: Northern Colorado commuters can contain to order goodbye, a minimal of for now, to Equinox, the giant sculpture of three horses galloping alongside a ribbon of railroad tracks on the intersection of Interstate 25 and U.S. Motorway 34. The five-memoir-huge sculpture, put in web page in 2014, will likely be taken down in the next couple of weeks, in response to the town. The interchange is being redesigned as portion of an interstate-widening project. The sculpture will likely be placed in storage “unless a brand unique plight may maybe maybe furthermore furthermore be selected,” in response to a city news liberate. Equinox used to be created by three Loveland residents – figurative sculptor Jack Kreutzer, structural engineer and artist Doug Rutledge, and artist and philanthropist Doug Erion – and used to be impressed by the art work of Arapaho and Cheyenne Plains Indians. Loveland says it’s the largest public art work project in city historic previous. It price $225,000.

Usa today Connecticut

Hartford: An agreement reached Friday in a prolonged-working school desegregation case in the capital city will put the district on a path to ending 30 years of litigation, declare officials acknowledged. The settlement entails unique measures to achieve diversity targets and permits for judicial oversight to end as soon as the wretchedness is shown to function alternatives in numerous school settings for all Hartford households. The Sheff v. O’Neill case began in 1989 with a lawsuit intelligent racial and economic segregation and inequalities between Hartford colleges and suburban colleges against then-Gov. William O’Neill. The plaintiffs had been dark, Latino and white households from Hartford. The case used to be named after Milo Sheff, one amongst the major plaintiffs, and his mother, Elizabeth Horton Sheff. In 1996, the declare Supreme Court docket dominated the intense racial isolation of Hartford students violated the declare Structure.

Usa today Delaware

Rehoboth Beach: Seaside Jewish Community successfully-known a milestone 23 years in the making this month, the Delaware Teach Files experiences. The groundbreaking team began assembly in 1997 when strangers responded to an commercial in the Cape Gazette newspaper inquiring for fellowship for a Passover Seder feast to celebrate the starting of the vacation with fellow Jewish team participants. Virtually 100 participants responded. By 2006, Seaside Jewish Community had grown to 200 participants, prompting them to exercise their most up-to-date facility after renting it for lots of years. Fourteen years later, the team had yet some other want fixed with improve – enlargement. They're now about 600 participants solid and wish extra location so their team can proceed to thrive. The want for a ramification used to be demonstrated as team participants who attended the Jan. 5 groundbreaking needed to take a seat down in an overflow room the put the ceremony used to be streamed stay online for the explanation that sanctuary used to be beefy.

Usa today District of Columbia

Washington: A team in D.C. is extending the fight to decriminalize medicine beyond cannabis to magic mushrooms, WUSA-TV experiences. Spokesperson Melissa Lavasani says she suffered with postpartum despair and found out reduction when she gave the psychedelic substance a are trying after taking note of a Joe Rogan podcast on which mycologist Paul Stamets mentioned the advantages and makes utilize of of psilocybin mushrooms. She says it made the entire distinction for her, however the panic didn’t whisk away her – she used to be, no topic everything, quiet the utilize of an illegal Schedule I substance. So as to alleviate these fears and attend others combating same instances, she joined the team Decriminalize Nature DC to carry the fight to politics. The team has submitted a ballotinitiative to the D.C. Board of Elections to make a call whether or no longer it goes to switch forward. A hearing will likely be held Feb. 12.

Usa today Florida

Break of day: Miami’s upcoming Neat Bowl will imply loss of life for dozens of invasive Burmese pythons in the Everglades – and plants and fauna officials recount that’s a lawful thing. The game’s organizing committee is working with the declare to promote the Python Bowl, a 10-day contest that began Friday that will give out all-terrain autos and money to the hunters who execute the most and largest of these non-native snakes. The pythons, which can develop to 20 toes, are descended from pets launched starting five a long time prior to now. The immense serpents had been devouring native mammal and chook populations. Kristen Sommers, a plants and fauna impact supervisor for the declare Fish and Natural world Conservation Fee, says officials realize the option of pythons caught throughout the contest won’t even mark a dent in the population, which may maybe maybe exceed 100,000. However the goal is to perceive the public’s awareness of the difficulty.

Usa today Georgia

Tybee Island: A project to restore erosion to the declare’s largest public shoreline is underway east of Savannah. Crews had been pumping sand onto the shoreline at Tybee Island since early December. Tybee Island Metropolis Supervisor Shawn Gillen instructed WTOC-TV work is ready a week unhurried agenda, but crews needs to be done pumping unique sand onto the shoreline round Jan. 20. The declare and federal governments are spending $13.8 million to renourish Tybee Island’s shoreline. The project has been in the works since hurricanes Mathew and Irma pushed adversarial storm surge onto the Georgia wing in 2016 and 2017. The restore work entails building a brand unique stretch of dune to attend give protection to beachfront structures from future surge, as well to rebuilding lots of crossover walkways onto the shoreline that suffered storm wound.

Usa today Hawaii

Honolulu: The Hawaii Air National Guard will birth up deciding on candidates in April for one amongst 4 location adjust squadrons in the nation in the Air National Guard, militia officials acknowledged. The declare Air Guard would retract out 88 militia participants for the 293rd Dwelling Adjust Squad essentially essentially based on the Pacific Missile Vary Facility on Kauai, Honolulu Smartly-known person-Advertiser experiences. Operations by the unique squadron are classified, but its predominant goal is to give protection to and protect the nation’s satellite tv for computer communication programs, Hawaii Air Guard commander Brig. Gen. Ryan Okahara says. The announcement comes after President Donald Trump signed the $738 billion National Protection Authorization Act in December funding the militia and extending the Dwelling Power, the first unique armed service since 1947.

Usa today Idaho

Lewiston: A Exquisite Water Act lawsuit filed by the Nez Perce Tribe that seeks to force a Canadian gold mining firm to plan permits for air pollution discharged from its central Idaho facility will likely be allowed to proceed, a federal make a call decided. Approach to a call B. Lynn Winmill in Boise forwarded the lawsuit first filed by the tribe in August against Midas Gold Corp. and its subsidiary, Midas Gold Idaho, The Lewiston Tribune experiences. “Midas Gold’s motion to pause the Tribe’s litigation used to be simply a lengthen tactic,” Nez Perce Tribal Executive Committee chairman Shannon F. Wheeler acknowledged. The firm is discharging water polluted with arsenic, cyanide, mercury and diversified heavy metals into streams of the Salmon River, home to lots of species of fish safe by the Endangered Species Act, Nez Perce Tribal leaders recount. The streams also flee by prone territory the put tribal participants fish, tribe officials recount.

Usa today Illinois

Chicago: DNA tests to settle if a coyote captured on the town’s North Facet is the an identical animal that attacked a 6-year-oldschool boy will retract weeks to entire, a city animal adjust legit acknowledged Friday. Kelley Gandurski, government director of Chicago Animal Care and Adjust, says the coyote will at closing be relocated outside the town. The company’s Jenny Schlueter says yet some other coyote used to be spotted in the an identical location Thursday night but eluded gain. Animal adjust officers contain persevered to search for coyotes in the Lincoln Park neighborhood and downtown. Experts recount the huge majority of cases in which folk suspect coyotes turn out to had been assaults by dogs, but Chicago officials remain assured the animal that attacked the boy Wednesday used to be a coyote. If so, it'd be the first confirmed coyote assault on a human in Illinois, in response to a plants and fauna biologist with the Urban Coyote Be taught Mission.

Usa today Indiana

South Whitley: A northern Indiana dam that used to be the scene of a deadly 2017 kayaking accident has been demolished, making the location’s Eel River safer for game and striking off a barrier to migrating fish. A crew that began demolishing the Collamer Dam on Wednesday performed striking off the closing of the concrete structure Thursday, acknowledged Jerry Sweeten, a retired Manchester College biology professor. The dam’s removal design the Eel River now entails about 95 miles of free-flowing birth waterway that will promote both safer game and the river’s ecological health, Sweeten acknowledged. “That is a extraordinary thing, to birth up this extraordinary of the river,” he instructed The Journal Gazette. There’s now no barrier to migrating fish, including shrimp-mouth bass and lots of other species of suckers, including the gargantuan crimson horse sucker, which is an endangered species in Indiana, Sweeten acknowledged. The river has 52 fish species, 43 of which migrate upstream, he acknowledged.

Usa today Iowa

Des Moines: Teach Supreme Court docket Performing Chief Justice David Wiggins launched Friday that he’s retiring. Wiggins, 69, acknowledged he'll retire March 13. He used to be appointed to the court by Democratic Gov. Tom Vilsack in 2003. He used to be named performing chief justice in November after the unexpected loss of life of Chief Justice Note Cady, who had named Wiggins as his replacement if he had been to be unable to act. Wiggins’ departure will give Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds a possibility to interchange one amongst the 2 closing Democratic appointees on the seven-member court. She simply received the names of three nominees Thursday to maintain Cady’s vacant seat. Wiggins may maybe maybe contain served unless 2023, when he turns 72, the wanted retirement age for declare judges in Iowa. His most up-to-date length of time is to flee out in December.

Usa today Kansas

Wichita: The declare’s farmers contain seeded an estimated 6.9 million acres into chilly climate wheat, the National Agricultural Statistics Carrier reported Friday. The declare’s chilly climate wheat acreage is equal to the location planted a year earlier, the company acknowledged. Iciness wheat is planted in the drop for harvest the next year. Kansas is the nation’s largest producer. One after the other, the company also reported that about 394 million bushels of wheat are now stored in the declare, down 13% from the amount in storage today a year prior to now.

Usa today Kentucky

Covington: A homeless refuge in northern Kentucky is absorbing to a bigger facility and may maybe maybe offer extra products and services, officials acknowledged. The Northern Kentucky Emergency Shelter in Covington will switch to a building on West 13th Avenue later this year that entails location for a scientific sanatorium, lockers and laundry products and services. The building can home up to 55 extra folk in want, says Kim Webb, government director of the Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky. The refuge labored with Kenton County officials and St. Elizabeth Healthcare, which bought the building, to provide products and services for the homeless in the location. Bigger than 1,500 folk skilled homelessness in Boone, Kenton and Cambell counties between July 2018 and June 2019, in response to a portray from the Northern Kentucky Homelessness Working Community.

Usa today Louisiana

Contemporary Orleans: Southern College at Contemporary Orleans will suspend all of its athletics programs on the tip of the educational year, seeking to connect money and dig itself out of years of monetary concerns. The Southern College Board of Supervisors authorized the switch Friday with out objection, on the ask of SUNO Period in-between Chancellor James Ammons. “That is one amongst the most refined choices I’ve made as an administrator,” Ammons acknowledged. He acknowledged while he understands the importance of athletics programs to attracting students and drawing alumni toughen, the campus must focal point on retaining its academic programs in desire to persevering with to steer money to sports. The historically dark public university is on probation by its accrediting company amid persevering with financial woes which contain stretched over years as enrollment has fallen.

Usa today Maine

Kennebunkport: A mark welcoming folk crossing the bridge into this coastal city has been stolen, police acknowledged. In a Fb post Friday, police acknowledged the “Welcome to Kennebunkport” mark posted off the aspect of the Lanigan Bridge is lacking, even when it used to be unclear when it used to be removed. The bridge is a conventional location for web page visitors and tourists to retract photos, generally with the register the background, CentralMaine.com experiences. The mark, which reveals about a of city’s skyline, is fabricated from copper and aluminum, but police don’t have confidence it used to be stolen for scrap. “I imagine it’s a trophy sitting in any individual’s front room,” Kennebunkport Police Deputy Chief Kurt Moses instructed WGME-TV, “and we simply are seeking to get the note out that we would enjoy our mark attend.” It would deserve to contain taken some effort to dismantle the mark, as it used to be secured with lots of bolts on a railing over the river, the chief acknowledged.

Usa today Maryland

Ocean Metropolis: This coastal team has playfully invited Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan to vacation there after the couple acknowledged they'd step attend from royal responsibilities. Town tweeted Wednesday that the couple is “welcome to plot for a talk about over with any time!” and that “our castles may maybe maybe no longer be as mighty as these attend home,” but it absolutely’s “a gargantuan web page for any family taking a look to retract a damage from it all.” Metropolis officials weren’t readily available to negate on whether or no longer the couple responded to the offer. Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan recount they intend to change into “financially just” and to “steadiness” their time between the U.Okay. and North The United States.

Usa today Massachusetts

Boston: The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is warning world students that federal immigration officials may maybe maybe talk about over with their work websites to envision that their employment is at as soon as linked to their learn. School officials sent a memo to varsity Thursday pronouncing the Division of Place of origin Security has been making declare visits to employers of international students in science, expertise, engineering and math fields. The college is notifying students one at a time and telling them what to query from the visits. MIT spokeswoman Kimberly Allen acknowledged the memo used to be no longer ended in by any talk about over with to the institute. Immigration officials launched closing year that they'd birth up web page of enterprise visits for some students in the federal Non-obligatory Unprejudiced appropriate Coaching program, which permits these with pupil visas to retract short-length of time jobs linked to their learn. College students in STEM fields can get their visas prolonged by two years, while others can get one-year extensions.

Usa today Michigan

Madison Heights: An industrial declare in suburban Detroit from which a greenish movement of immoral water leaked onto a expressway will likely be regarded as as for the federal Superfund cleanup program, declare officials acknowledged Friday. The Division of Atmosphere, Large Lakes and Energy acknowledged an evaluate of the Electro-Plating Services Inc. declare will likely be accomplished this spring. This may maybe maybe be fixed with dozens of soil and water samples being taken by the department and the U.S. Environmental Safety Agency. The chrome plating firm in Madison Heights used to be shut down by declare regulators in 2016 due to mismanagement of industrial atomize. An EPA cleanup removed toxic chemical compounds and immoral liquids. The leak of inviting green goo onto the shoulder of Interstate 696 closing month ended in a brand unique investigation. It found out high levels of numerous toxins in soil and groundwater on the declare, including hexavalent chromium, which is expounded with cancer, kidney and liver wound.

Usa today Minnesota

Minneapolis: The Minneapolis VA Properly being Care Center has been cited for failures in connection with the 2018 suicide of a passe in its care. It’s the 2nd time in 16 months that a federal watchdog has cited the scientific middle after a suicide. In a portray closing week, the VA Place of job of Inspector Overall found out the Minnesota passe acknowledged he wished to die after he used to be admitted in spring 2018. A nurse also overheard him telling any individual on the telephone that he would die on the health facility. Hours after that call, he attempted suicide and couldn’t be revived. The inspector typical found out that workers participants failed to portion the person’s suicidal thoughts with others on the therapy crew, that may maybe maybe furthermore wish prevented his loss of life, the Smartly-known person Tribune experiences. His loss of life got here weeks after yet some other passe killed himself in the guts’s automotive car parking lot, lower than 24 hours after he used to be discharged from the mental health unit.

Usa today Mississippi

Jackson: Gov. Phil Bryant is leaving office Tuesday after serving his limit of two phrases. The Republican says he believes the declare’s economic system is stronger, susceptible early life are better safe, and students are exhibiting stronger academic performance. He also says a most up-to-date outburst of violence in Mississippi prisons is no longer something he would contain wished as portion of his legacy. Five inmates had been killed, an undisclosed number had been injured, and amenities on the Teach Penal advanced at Parchman had been so broken that the declare space an emergency contract to switch 375 inmates to a non-public penal advanced. Bryant’s predecessor, fellow GOP Gov. Haley Barbour, pardoned almost 200 folk as he performed his 2nd length of time in 2012. Of us protesting penal advanced conditions closing week known as on Bryant to liberate some nonviolent inmates to ease penal advanced crowding, however the onetime deputy sheriff says he is no longer going to exclaim any pardons or commute any sentences and does no longer have confidence of inmates as victims.

Usa today Missouri

St. Louis: Getting lawful representation will retract longer for lots of of prison defendants in the declare’s largest county now that its judicial circuit has instituted a waiting list that supporters recount is the true methodology to diminish the enormous caseloads its overworked public defenders had been dealing with. St. Louis County’s waiting list went into pause Jan. 2 following an pronounce by the county’s presiding make a call, Gloria Reno. Her evaluate closing drop found out that public defenders – attorneys who are assigned to defendants who can’t contain the funds for non-public attorneys – had been juggling a long way extra cases than they may maybe logically take care of. The list used to be requested by the St. Louis County public defender office and had the toughen of Prosecuting Attorney Wesley Bell, who in a November court submitting known as it “the least-frightful more than a few readily available.”

Usa today Montana

Helena: NorthWestern Energy has donated $15,000 to efforts to memorialize Judy Martz, who served because the declare’s first female governor and lieutenant governor. The donation for a statue used to be launched closing week by Lisa Perry, NorthWestern Energy’s team relatives supervisor for the Billings division, on the Montana Chamber of Commerce’s 20th annual Alternate Days on the Capitol luncheon. Martz, 74, died in Butte in Oct. 30, 2017, after a battle with pancreatic cancer. In 2019, lawmakers passed Senate Invoice 275, by Sen. Al Olszewski, R-Kalispell. It presents a committee five years to perceive funds to place a museum-quality statue or bust in honor of the Republican governor on the Capitol grounds. The committee must elevate funds, and the statue earn must get approval from the Capitol Grounds Advisory Committee and the Montana Ancient Society.

Usa today Nebraska

Lincoln: Requests for early ballots may maybe maybe furthermore furthermore be submitted starting this week, the Nebraska Secretary of Teach’s office experiences. The office acknowledged in a news liberate that the first day to submit applications for an early ballotat county places of work is Monday. Counties receiving early vote casting requests will withhold a list of the requests, Secretary of Teach Bob Evnen acknowledged. These requests will likely be among the first ballots mailed staring April 6, he acknowledged. Nebraska’s well-known election this year is Might simply 12. Some counties withhold a permanent early vote casting list, which permits counties to achieve out to voters who contain indicated an ongoing desire to vote by mail. Each and every voter on the list will earn a postcard, which the voter can return indicating she or he would gain to earn a ballotby mail.

Usa today Nevada

Las Vegas: Two human skulls and two human jawbones had been found out in archival storage boxes by a volunteer, prompting an investigation, Clark County Museum officials recount. The 50-year-oldschool museum grew from a assortment of objects from the Las Vegas Valley’s first female mortician, Anna Roberts Parks, The Las Vegas Review-Journal experiences. This used to be the first time human stays had been uncover in Parks’ assortment, museum registrar Cynthia Sanford says. “She had hundreds animal bones and things alongside these traces, but we’ve never found out human stays sooner than,” Sanford says. “She used to be a mortician, so it seems enjoy that will likely be build of a queer line to irascible.” A volunteer used to be going by archival boxes Dec. 5 when the four bones had been found out, Sanford says. The bones had been delivered to the Clark County coroner’s office for investigation, officials recount.

Usa today Contemporary Hampshire

North Woodstock: Organizers of annual handmade ice citadel sculptures in the declare opened the standard tourist appeal over the weekend as deliberate, no topic warmer climate. The frozen appeal is located in six places all over North The United States, including in North Woodstock. The castles consist of LED-lit sculptures, frozen thrones, ice-carved tunnels, slides and fountains. The chilly climate wonderland is built from scratch when the cool conditions enable the ice to sprout from the barren ground. Warming climate is constantly a menace for the Ice Castles. In years previous, some areas as soon as shortly contain needed to slash their seasons short due to warmer winters. The appeal, which moved closing year from neighboring Lincoln, attracts tens of thousands of tourists every season.

Usa today Contemporary Jersey

Jersey Metropolis: A entire bunch of protesters turned out Saturday as portion of an effort to connect one amongst Liberty Teach Park’s waterfront vistas from a billionaire developer hooked on expanding a prestigious golf membership into the pure withhold. Chants of “Whose park? Our park” reverberated alongside the fringe of the declare park overlooking the Statue of Liberty as demonstrators gathered to fight a proposed three-gap enlargement of the brand new Liberty National Golf Membership at Caven Point – a safe peninsula of the adjacent declare park in Jersey Metropolis – and attend a invoice sooner than the Legislature that will ban further model in the location. The peninsula is a high habitat for migrating birds and has marshland and a sandy shoreline, the put fish, crabs, seahorses and diversified marine lifestyles are uncover in native waters.

Usa today Contemporary Mexico

Santa Fe: A nonpartisan team says focused mailings that help voter registration are going out to 1 in 8 declare residents. The nonprofit, Washington-essentially essentially based Voter Participation Center says this will are trying and attain extra than 248,000 folk in Contemporary Mexico by mail in January as portion of a brand unique national advertising and marketing and marketing and marketing campaign to achieve populations that are statistically underrepresented in elections. The wretchedness seeks to narrow the gap between these eligible to vote and folk that are registered to vote – a plight that's mostly pronounced among Latinos, says middle founder and president Web page Gardner. Contemporary Mexico has one of the best share of Latino residents of any declare, in response to the U.S. Census Bureau, estimated at successfully above 40% of the population. Younger adults and single, unmarried ladies are yet some other focal point of the force supposed to raise general vote casting.

Usa today Contemporary York

Contemporary York: Town will set up 100 unique safety cameras in ultra-Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in notify to forestall anti-Semitic assaults, Mayor Invoice de Blasio launched Friday. Apprehension has gripped the town’s Orthodox Jewish team since the the deadly Dec. 10 assault at a kosher meals market all around the Hudson River in Jersey Metropolis and the Dec. 29 stabbings at a Hanukkah celebration in suburban Monsey. The unique cameras will likely be installed in the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Williamsburg, Crown Heights and Borough Park, the put Hasidic Jewish residents contain reported assaults starting from any individual pulling off a wig or hat to extra violent assaults. “An assault on the Jewish team is an assault on all Contemporary Yorkers,” de Blasio, a Democrat, acknowledged in an announcement. Police officials recount anti-Semitic crimes in Contemporary York Metropolis jumped 21% in 2019 in contrast with 2018.

Usa today North Carolina

Charlotte: The FBI is inquiring for the public’s attend in catching a so-known as frightful wig bandit who’s been robbing banks in the declare. The FBI acknowledged in an announcement Thursday that the suspect wore a odd wig throughout every heist in the Charlotte location. One wig used to be blonde. One other used to be dark. The third used to be crimson. The FBI says he robbed a BB&T in Huntersville on Dec. 13. He then robbed two banks Jan. 7. The principle used to be a Contemporary Horizon Bank in Belmont. The 2nd used to be a Wells Fargo in Gastonia.

Usa today North Dakota

Bismarck: A man who allegedly instructed a neighbor he had a bomb and indicated he would wound anyone who tried to enter his condominium died after he used to be shot by tactical officers in an change of gunfire, police acknowledged. Authorities identified the person Friday as Cody Carnes, 30, of Bismarck. Officers responded to the location after getting a call from a neighbor about 10 p.m. Thursday. The neighbor reported noisy sawing and hammering coming from Carnes’ location and acknowledged Carnes said that he had a bomb. Two diversified calls had been made earlier in the night, including one from a caller who acknowledged Carnes said he had weapons and would utilize them if anyone tried to enter his home. One other call got here from a offer employee who acknowledged Carnes displayed a handgun and acknowledged he had lots of extra firearms. West Dakota SWAT officers tried to get the person to resign, but he refused.

Usa today Ohio

Columbus: There’s restricted proof that expanding the digital monitoring of inmates in the declare would decrease the charges at which ex-offenders commit unique crimes or that it may maybe maybe maybe toughen public safety, in response to a brand unique portray. In addition, increasing a tool that will enable exact-time monitoring of inmates in the hopes of putting them cease to crimes would quiet pause nothing to forestall such crimes from taking place, even when it may maybe maybe maybe attend motivate investigators and parole officers, in response to the portray launched closing week. This kind of tool is identified as “crime scene correlation expertise.” “The each day operations required for this kind of tool are exceedingly advanced and would require careful planning and fixed oversight,” in response to the portray, which used to be given to a declare job force attempting at all facets of supervising inmates upon liberate. “Additionally, the costs linked with constructing and operating such an initiative would be gargantuan and routine.”

Usa today Oklahoma

Norman: A girl has pleaded guilty to spray-painting racist, anti-homosexual and anti-Semitic graffiti on Democratic Celebration places of work and diversified properties in central Oklahoma in 2019. Allison Christine Johnson, 46, of Norman, pleaded guilty Thursday to a criminal payment of malicious wound to property, three misdemeanor counts of malicious wound to property, and one misdemeanor depend of malicious intimidation or harassment as portion of a plea deal. “My actions pause no longer replicate how I the truth is feel,” Johnson instructed District Approach to a call Michael Tupperman. “It used to be out of persona.” In change for her plea, the costs will likely be pushed apart if Johnson completes a mental health program. The graffiti included racial slurs and swatiskas outside the declare Democratic Celebration headquarters in Oklahoma Metropolis and a Chickasaw Nation office. Identical graffiti used to be found out on the Cleveland County Democratic Celebration headquarters and an elementary school in Norman.

Usa today Oregon

Coos Bay: Federal authorities advised the environmental impact of a proposed liquefied pure gas terminal and pipeline in southern Oregon would be minimal, pronouncing the contentious project wouldn’t jeopardize safe species or adversely change their severe habitat. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration acknowledged its evaluate reveals that the implications of the proposed Jordan Cove liquefied pure gas terminal and a 230-mile feeder pipeline alongside Coos Bay would be short-length of time or on a shrimp scale, dispersed broadly all over 250 miles. The natural undercover agent done by NOAA scientists reviewed 17 species listed under the Endangered Species Act and their severe habitats, including whales, sea turtles, salmon and diversified fish species. In November, the Federal Energy Regulatory Fee’s workers in its final environmental prognosis concluded that the contentious project would likely contain an destructive affect on plants and fauna, including 18 federally listed or proposed threatened and endangered species.

Usa today Pennsylvania

West Manchester Township: Shiloh Water Authority has started the direction of to care for fluoride from the township’s water provide. Shiloh is one amongst the closing water corporations in York County so as to add fluoride. Per a database by the Pennsylvania Division of Environmental Safety, the others are Hanover Municipal Water Works, Red Lion Municipal Authority and the West Manheim department of the York Water Company. Adams County is one amongst 19 counties in Pennsylvania that does no longer contain a supplier that adds fluoride or purchases fluoridated water. Franklin has three authorities, and Lebanon has two that add fluoride to their team’s water. Chairman James Bentzel says Shiloh started so as to add fluoride to the water in the mid-1960s. Within the previous few years, about a of its customers requested that the firm pause.

Usa today Rhode Island

Windfall: A fund has been created to settle for donations to toughen public education in the declare. Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Inexperienced launched Friday that the nonprofit Rhode Island Basis established the Fund for Rhode Island Public Education to settle for donations from participants, corporations and foundations attracted to enhancing public education statewide. The Rhode Island Basis will prepare and distribute the money in response to the education department’s priorities and the donor’s intent. Donors may maybe maybe invest skilled finding out alternatives for educators, advanced coursework for school students and upgrades to varsity amenities, for instance, the department acknowledged. The fund launched with a $20,000 commitment from the Rhode Island Commodores, a nonprofit that promotes economic model.

Usa today South Carolina

Eastover: Officers at McEntire Joint National Guard Substandard are warning neighbors that hour of darkness practising scheduled for the next lots of days may maybe maybe compose so much of noise. The practising will flee Monday by Thursday on the air frightful east of Columbia. The South Carolina Air National Guard’s 169th Fighter Fly is hosting jets from the 4th Fighter Fly stationed at Seymour Johnson Air Power Substandard in North Carolina for the exercise, 169th Fighter Fly commander Col. Akshai Gandhi acknowledged. The frightful in Richland County has a rotund airfield and affords realistic practising for a range of militia objects, Gandhi acknowledged in an announcement. Substandard officials will pause everything they'll to diminish noise from the hour of darkness practising and enjoy the idea of their neighbors, Gandhi acknowledged.

Usa today South Dakota

Aberdeen: A federal make a call has dominated that a brand unique declare law that requires ballotpetition circulators to register and be included in a directory is unconstitutional. The organization SD Divulge, a grassroots ballotquery committee, filed the lawsuit in federal court. There used to be a one-day trial in Aberdeen closing month. The law required petition circulators to apply with the secretary of declare for an identification number, provide personal records and be included in a directory. Attorneys for the declare recount the law is aimed in direction of scuffling with fraud. In a written ruling Thursday, Approach to a call Charles Kornmann declared the measure a violation of the First Modification of the U.S. Structure.

Usa today Tennessee

Memphis: A brand unique pilot program starts this month with the goal of helping early life in Memphis and Shelby County lead more healthy lives. The Craigmont High School Healthy Habits Program is a brand unique curriculum designed to educate ninth graders taking portion in the college’s Lifetime Wellness classes in regards to the importance of living a healthy life-style. The entire program will most up-to-date a 3-factor attain that shrimp print the 8-5-2-1-0 (8 hours or extra of sleep, 5 fruits and greens, 2 hours or much less of computer screen time, 1 hour or extra of physical activity, and 0 sugary drinks each day) recipe that contains appropriate diet and sufficient exercise into each day actions. College students on this plot can even retract half in FitnessGram, an proof-essentially essentially based fitness evaluate program.

Usa today Texas

Houston: Shriners Properly being facility for Younger folk in the Texas Scientific Center will cease in 2021 to consolidate location care at its bigger Galveston health facility. The decision, made closing drop, used to be pushed by a desire to build one premier health facility, in response to the Houston Tale. It used to be no longer fixed with financial concerns. Even though the closure will end Shriners’ 100-year presence in Houston, this will imply all four forte care departments – acute burns, orthopedic conditions, spinal accidents, and cleft lip and palate abnormalities – will likely be offered in Galveston. “This may maybe maybe well mark extra atmosphere friendly utilize of resources and enable us to provide our patients who desire just a few model of care to earn it all in a single web page,” acknowledged Mel Bower, director of advertising and marketing and marketing and marketing on the Shriners national places of work in Tampa. “It makes extra strategic sense.”

Usa today Utah

Salt Lake Metropolis: Rare salt formations had been documented for the first time on the shores of the Large Salt Lake, and as well they may maybe yield insights about salt structures found out on Mars sooner than they go for lawful. They’re exhibiting up now in portion on sage of water levels at a actually powerful pure lake west of the Mississippi had been lowered by drought and water diversion, exposing extra shoreline. Meaning there are extra places the put water can bubble up to the floor from warmth, sulfate-rich springs. When it hits the cool air, a mineral known as Glauber’s salt, or mirabilite, separates out. The diminutive crystals contain built up over the last lots of months, at closing increasing flat terraces stacked atop one yet some other enjoy the travertine rimstone and dam terraces at Yellowstone’s Plentiful Hot Springs. From above, even when, the cascading terraces are enjoy an tall portion of lace laid over the sandy earth. There are now four mounds on the Large Salt Lake shoreline, rising up to about a toes huge.

Usa today Vermont

Montpelier: The governor has reaffirmed the declare’s commitment to accepting refugees from all around the world and says he would gain to plot the option of folk arriving in the declare to the levels sooner than President Donald Trump took office. In a letter to the president and U.S. Secretary of Teach Michael Pompeo, Republican Gov. Phil Scott acknowledged the declare has welcomed almost 8,000 refugees since 1989, and sooner than Trump took office, it used to be accepting about 325 to 350 a year. In fiscal 2019, Vermont took in 115 refugees, acknowledged Amila Merdzanovic, of the Vermont office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants. “Vermont’s refugee communities contain made so much of contributions to our declare,” acknowledged Scott’s letter to the president. “Refugees attend ensure a healthy sized and numerous pupil population. They attend employers maintain birth positions, contributing to the team and native economic system, and pay federal, declare and native taxes.”

Usa today Virginia

Richmond: Lawmakers voted Friday to ban firearms on the declare Capitol, the first in what’s expected to be many contentious gun votes in coming weeks. Newly empowered Democrats who made up a majority of a diversified solutions committee voted to ban weapons on the Capitol and a legislative office building no topic bitter protests from Republicans, pronouncing the switch used to be wished to give protection to public safety. “Our focal point here is to withhold all and sundry receive,” acknowledged Dwelling Speaker Eileen Filler-Corn. “These are policies and solutions that will deserve to contain passed a prolonged, prolonged time prior to now.” Public officials contain expressed concerns about deliberate Jan. 20 rallies that are space to draw tall crowds of skilled-gun and gun-adjust advocates. Gun advocates from round Virginia and even out of declare contain pledged to point out out in force to specialise in their resistance to proposed gun-adjust measures.

Usa today Washington

Seattle: Wolf advocates attempting for to give up the declare Division Fish and Natural world from taking pictures wolves to give protection to livestock contain suffered yet some other lawful setback. The Capital Press experiences King County Superior Court docket Approach to a call John McHale on Friday pushed apart claims that Fish and Natural world’s deadly-adjust policy violates the Teach Environmental Coverage Act. McHale’s ruling mirrored one in November by a Thurston County make a call presiding over a same lawsuit. Fish and Natural world wolf policy lead Donny Martorello acknowledged that the department prefers to function wolf policy outside courtrooms and that this decision lets it proceed to entire that. Jonathon Bashford, an attorney for the wolf advocates who introduced the lawsuit, acknowledged they're reviewing the ruling and exploring their alternate solutions.

Usa today West Virginia

Charleston: The governor says a expertise firm has agreed to birth a learn facility in the declare to search into the utilize of coal to mark carbon-essentially essentially based products. Gov. Jim Justice gave further shrimp print in regards to the agreement with Ramaco Carbon on Thursday after bringing up the learn middle in his Teach of the Teach speech. “We fully must proceed doing all we can to harness the vitality of coal in every methodology attainable, and having this facility to envision unique programs to convert this dynamic handy resource is a gargantuan opportunity for all,” the Republican governor acknowledged. Ramaco Carbon has received extra than $5 million in federal grants to toughen its learn, Justice acknowledged in a news liberate. One of many projects the firm is engaged on revolves round the utilize of coal as a precursor to function carbon fiber for the automotive industry.

Usa today Wisconsin

Milwaukee: High winds, towering waves and flooding contain ended in thousands and thousands of bucks in wound to Port Milwaukee on Lake Michigan, the port’s director acknowledged Sunday. Wild climate Saturday forced the port to limit public get entry to to Jones Island and ended in flooding on all well-known roadways on the port. Winds gusted up to 50 mph, and waves reached 6 to 8 toes high. Port Director Adam Schlicht known as it “an unheard of match at Port Milwaukee” and acknowledged the port’s world docks, which may maybe maybe well be closed for the season, sustained “most well-known wound.” Floodwaters had been receding Sunday, he acknowledged. The internal harbor is expected to reopen early Monday. The wind and water stripped off dock wall subject fabric and pushed it inland, and frozen floodwaters covered railroad tracks in a foot of ice, Schlicht acknowledged. Water levels on the Large Lakes had been at or cease to all-time highs for a long way of the previous year, the Metropolis of Milwaukee acknowledged.

Usa today Wyoming

Jackson: An annual elk hunt in Gigantic Teton National Park doesn’t entice and listen rotund numbers of grizzly bears, scientists contain concluded. The November to December hunt doubtlessly takes web page too gradual in the year for grizzly bears to search out animal stays that hunters whisk away unhurried, in response to researchers with the Interagency Grizzly Agree with Survey Crew. Many grizzly bears contain denned up for cold climate hibernation by the point a most well-known option of elk stays contain gathered, undercover agent crew leader Frank van Manen wrote recently in the educational journal Ursus. The park holds the hunt to control elk numbers. Most national parks don’t enable attempting, however the law organising Gigantic Teton a long time prior to now affords for the hunt.

From USA TODAY Community and wire experiences

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Essential Avengers: Giant-Size Avengers #4: ... Let All Men Bring Together

June, 1975

Hmm. Looks like a double wedding. And dread Dormammu is going to interject during the “speak now or forever hold your peace” bit.

Maybe its symbolic.

SO! Last time: There was a star that signaled the Celestial Madonna, that Celestial Madonna was Mantis, Kang tried to kidnap her and conquer the world, repeatedly, he failed, repeatedly!, Swordsman died, Immortus sent the Avengers on a timequest to learn Mantis’ origin and sent Vision on a different timequest to learn Vision’s origin, Moondragon showed up, as did a ghost? of the Swordsman and Mantis’ maybe dad Libra, Vision vanished into the dark, Wanda was possessed or something while learning magic from Agatha Harkness!

This time: the thrilling conclusion.

So Vision finds himself in some place and also under a noticeably different penciler and inker.

And because Vision is a comic book character in a comic book, he narrates to himself what has been happening recently. If there were any body just coming into the adventure, this would be helpful at getting them up to speed. But also, it must be relaxing since so many people do it. Like, a way to center yourself in times of confusion or stress?

But you know the drill if you’ve been following along. Ultron ‘borrowed’ the original Human Torch from the Mad Thinker, kidnapped original creator Professor Horton to force him to remodel the robot into the Vision, Horton refused to erase the Torch’s memories so Ultron killed him and replaced the Torch’s mind with brainwave data from Wonder Man, because it was available. Ultron is lazy.

So Vision’s question is this: obviously his timequest is over. He saw how he was created and filled in the gaps up to the point that he already knew. He should have been returned to Immortus. So whats the deal with this dark dimension he finds himself in?

... Its not much of a mystery. The answer is staring at you from the cover. Vision ended up in Dormammu’s Dark Dimension. And following the sound of a woman screaming, he finds the fire-headed man himself moshing in a fire.

Oh, also Dormammu’s sister Umar, who warns the fiery tyrant that the Vision is behind him. Dormammu has a sister?? Why isn’t her head on fire?

Dormammu has apparently been having a busy day. Clea visited him earlier, during Dr. Strange #7. Oh but also after that, a Scarlet Witch came to play. And Dormammu is gonna kill her.

Probably because of the time Scarlet Witch thwarted his takeover plan of Earth and got him shot through Loki’s brain.

Vision promises that he’ll use all his robot logic to stop Dormammu and save Wanda.

BUT FIRST: I bet you’re dying to know what’s up with Mantis, right?

Too bad.

So back at the Temple of Pama, Swordsman’s ghost? notices that Vision isn’t back from his timequest. He senses pain and sorrow and that Avengers are involved because of course. And despite or perhaps because it was a quest through time, Vision is overdue. So Immortus goes looking for him.

But by all means, continue the story Ghost Swordsman. Immortus already knows it anyway.

So we’ve covered pretty much all the historical aspects to Mantis’ backstory now. How the Kree are jerks and genocided their Cotati neighbors because the Skrulls maybe liked them more. How the Kree pacifists became the surviving Cotati’s secret allies and smuggled them off Hala. And how a pair of Kree pacifists founded the Priests of Pama.

So how does it relate specifically to Mantis?

Well. She’s the perfect human.

Mantis’ expression seems to indicate ‘hahahah what?’

The fact that Mantis doesn’t believe it is the reason why Mantis is the perfect human, apparently. Why, just look at near-perfect human, Moondragon.

See, Mantis and Moondragon were given very similar upbringings. They lost their family, were taken to a temple founded by Kree pacifists to be taught perfect control of mind and body, were worshiped by the priests for what they might someday become and how they could kick a thick pole in half. Their training also covered the arts of the mind and became the first non-Kree to commune with the Cotati. This is the basis for what Mantis called her empathic connection to nature.

But when they completed their training, the two women were taken in wildly different directions.

Moondragon was allowed to stay in the temple to continue her work as a priestess.

Mantis had her memories erased, was given false memories of a life on the streets of Saigon, and was dumped to fend for herself.

... Geez. That’s... geez.

Ahem, anyway. When the two completed their training, it was decided that Mantis had an earthier nature than Moondragon, perhaps due to actually living on Earth.

Swordsman?: “So she was selected to abandon her temple and walk amidst other humans -- to seek perfect humanity.”

Fucks sake.

Ahem again. A cloistered life in a temple was judged to be incapable of imparting complete understanding of life in the full society. Which is fair.

Moondragon is a bit surprised to hear that she was brought here to day to stand besides Mantis so that an ethereal Frenchman can point at her and say ‘see, this is what happens when you don’t make your prospective messiah build some character.’

Or at least that’s how I’m interpreting it.

A quick interjection here. According to Swordsman?? the reason why they trained two girls is because, hey, its better to have a backup in case one dies. By that logic, it would have been better to have multiple girls also going down the ‘learning humanity’ path with Mantis in case something happened and maybe a control group of not subjecting children to warped education schemes but its for the best that this weird conspiracy kept itself to only two girls.

Thor and Iron Man share a moment to talk about what a journey into mystery this is that they’re observing but Hawkeye has something to show them.

Its the Titanic Three (Radioactive Man, Titanium Man, Crimson Dynamo - who all decided that instead of going back to their home countries to be used as pawns or continue to attack America, they’d become Vietnam’s superhero team). And someone beat them up right in front of the temple.

Well, Titanic Three. It took you one additional appearance to go from patsies for a criminal not-so-mastermind to being worfed to show that something bad is coming.

And if you think I’m exaggerating:

Iron Man: “These guys are tough -- but something did a job on them!”

Its textbook worfing.

Anyway, the Titanic Three were investigating the Avengers’ disappearance (when they were kidnapped to Limbo) because hey they don’t like them but they’re committed to their new roles. But then they ran into Kang.

MEANWHILE BACK IN THE DARK DIMENSION:

Vision confronts Dormammu.

Dormammu tells Vision he shouldn’t even bother rescuing Wanda. She’s headstrong. She ignored Agatha Harkness’ warnings and called upon forces she couldn’t control.

So I guess that’s why Wanda was acting like a dick. Explicitly she was possessed by Dormammu when she attacked Moondragon.

Wanda sure gets possessed a lot. Part of messing with magic, I guess. Like how Vision gets hacked a lot. They really are a pair of peas in a pod.

Anyway, yeah don’t even bother rescuing her. You should just go. And hey, Dormammu ain’t got no reason to hate you but if you stick around, he just might.

Vision notices that Dormammu is talking an awful lot considering that this is his domain and he should be adjacent to all-powerful. Vision’s robot logic hazards a guess that Dormammu is bluffing.

So Dormammu summons some demons to attack Vision.

Its no big to just go intangible and let their attacks fly through him. But controlling density with precision in this hellish environment takes energy. And Vision is low on energy after his voyage through time left him little opportunity to replenish his solar battery.

BUT: he has just learned that he used to be the Human Torch, who could absorb flame within certain limits. And his systems were revamped but his plastoid flesh was left mostly untouched except for being made bright red. Hypothetically, Vision could absorb some of this demonic flame to replenish himself.

And yes, this turns out to be true.

I don’t know if it ever comes up that much, like Vision’s ability to remote-control his cape’s density, but for this moment right now, he can absorb fire through his solar gem.

And then he uses Solar Beam on the demons and it is Super Effective.

Umar wonders if Dormammu really will admit that he’s bluffing, that his powers have not fully returned after reconstructing himself from that being eaten by the Evil Eye thing.

But eh. No. He still has other pawns to throw at Vision. Like how about this Scarlet Witch? Remember how Dormammu is controlling her? That’s still a thing.

And he commands that she destroy the Vision.

Which is sure to be an exciting fight and oh we’re cutting away back to Vietnam, okay.

Swordsghost continues his story. Confirming that yes, the priests just dumped Mantis somewhere to fend for herself.

Swordsman??: “The Priests of Pama led their charge from their temple on the night of her eighteen birthday. Dressed in the clothing of the time -- she was abandoned unceremoniously in Saigon, left to make her way as best she could.”

That is the worst birthday gift.

Luckily? she was soon employed by her unbeknownst uncle Monsieur Khruul (he got killed by a dragon and deserved it) to work as a pretty face in a bar.

It was there she met the Swordsman and was drawn to the frail nobility in his soul and as previously relayed managed to convince him to turn his life around when he almost died.

And it was this trick of fate that brought her into contact with the Avengers.

Geez. This story is continuing for some reason even though its getting to the stuff Mantis already knows.

Although I guess Moondragon wasn’t there for it. But I’m surprised she’s still around since she was brought into this just as an unfavorable comparison. Learning that she was a failed attempt to make a perfect human might go some way to explaining how she acts later, except she pretty much always acted like that. So. I guess she’s taking it in stride.

Thor, Iron Man, and Hawkeye are less than thrilled that Kang is back again again and decide to split up and cover more ground that way.

Or rather, Hawkeye proposes the plan and Iron Man jokes that Thor better watch out or Hawkeye will be after chairmanship of the Avengers.

Which makes Hawkeye ponder. He always used to get on Cap’s case during the kooky quartet days about who should give orders but he hasn’t thought about leading the Avengers in a very long time. And he likes the thought.

Thor has different feelings. He knows that he has held the position long enough and that it is time for someone else to lead the team. But he enjoys the responsibility of leading the Avengers and wishes not to give up the position.

Thor muses on godhood for a while and how Mantis is poised to ascend to it but spots Kang.

Kang: “Curse you, Thor! You may have discovered me -- but you won’t turn the tide of battle this time!”

And blah blah blah. He’s going to get that Celestial Madonna for sure this time. Kang really doesn’t know when to give up.

So Thor hits him really hard with Mjolnir. Kang tries to zap him but then Thor hits him with Mjolnir a couple more times until the conqueror is out.

Thor contemplates killing the insensate villain to fulfill his vow to avenge Iron Man’s death in Limbo. But Immortus returned Iron Man to life. And it would probably be a dick move to kill a man’s younger self after he saved your friend and let you go on a cool timequest. So he ultimately decides against it.

Meanwhile, Hawkeye explores the grounds around the temple, still musing on being chairman of the Avengers. He decides that next time he does something impressive (like capture Kang, maybe?) he’s going to propose new elections.

And then he runs into Kang.

Wait what?

Kang: “Curse you, Hawkeye! You may have discovered me --”

Hang on. Anyone else getting deja vu?

BUT TIME TO CHECK IN ON VISION AGAIN

VISION VS SCARLET WITCH

I mean. Wanda is scary powerful now. Her new command of magic gives her control over natural forces. She attacks Vision with molten lava and with a giant boulder. But being able to control his density means he no-sells it all. And since he’s a synthetic man, he’s immune to her powers.

Except, not precisely.

There is one part of him that’s not man-made. And that’s the jewel on his forehead.

And Wanda simply has to command it to release all of its stored energy, and Vision’s goose is cooked.

Drained of power, Vision starts to collapses. But he tells Wanda that only she can save him now but she must remember who she is and who he is. And for one last time, he says he loves her.

SLUMP!

That snaps Wanda out of it and in despair she shouts “WHAT HAVE I DONE?!!”

TIME TO SWAP VIEWPOINTS AGAIN

Ghost!Swordsman is still telling Mantis’ story, including the parts she already knows that aren’t that flattering. He claims that Mantis actually knew nothing of love when she first came to the Avengers.

Libra: “He speaks of exploring the limits of your humanity... your attraction to glamor, your competitiveness, your selfishness, loneliness, lust-- all that which passes for love and is not. For all that you had learned, you could not love with so much of you still bottled up inside. Thus, there came a time when you needed to learn that there was more to learn about life.”

And that was Libra’s role, as the balance. See, this whole time Libra knew more than he let on. Part of the reason he became Libra of Zodiac was that as the leader of an international crime-cartel, he could be assured to encounter Mantis no matter where she ended up or what she ended up doing.

So after leaking enough information to Taurus to make him think Zodiac could defeat the Avengers (they couldn’t) he told Mantis enough about her past to make her question her life.

Which, as I theorized when covering those issues, is what made her turn to the Vision. She saw him as a pillar of stability.

NOW BACK TO THE DARK DIMENSION

Scarlet Wanda promises to make Dormammu pay for what he made her do. Dormammu isn’t impressed. He brought her here as a means of filling time until he could figure out how to conquer Earth. She’s not in charge here. He is.

Big mistake.

Dormammu tries to put Wanda under his control again but Agatha Harkness finally shows up, revealing that Wanda freed her when she regained control over herself. And Agatha Harkness returned the favor by stopping Dormammu from controlling Wanda again.

And that leaves Wanda free to strike. Which she does, using her newfound magics to cool the lava Dormammu has been sitting in. Which he needed the heat from to complete his regeneration.

Umar goes to intervene, less out of love for Dormammu and more because she has plans for him, but Vision pops up and fists through her skull, knocking her out.

See, when Wanda freed Agatha Harkness, she also restored Vision. She’s great at multitasking.

Dormammu desperately sues for peace, unable to afford further heat loss.

Not sure she can trust him, Wanda nonetheless lays out her terms.

1. He’ll return herself, the Vision, and Agatha Harkness to Earth with no further fear of himself or his sister bothering them.

2. He’ll free the Earth spirit (old woman tied to a wall or whatever. Its a Dr. Strange thing)

3. He’ll abandon his plans to conquer Earth

Dormammu agrees, secretly planning to renege (he only kept his similar vow to Dr. Strange because he owed Strange a solid) and make Wanda pay. But he does need to return them to Earth because those are immediate right now demands and he can’t afford to get on Wanda’s shitlist.

Meanwhile back on Earth but also on the temple grounds instead of Mantis listening to a story about Mantis:

Kang finishes his familiar statement about how nothing can keep him from the Celestial Madonna this time.

Hawkeye is slightly less of a match for Kang then Thor was. But Hawkeye has been giving it a lot of thought and blasts Kang with gas arrows. And Kang’s force field doesn’t keep out air, otherwise he’d suffocate. So Kang passes out.

Iron Man walks in on the scene, holding his own Kang. And then so does Thor. And all three think they fought Kang. The Kang they fought fought like Kang. And had his technology. and they have heartbeats so they’re not robots.

Realizing that this is some kind of deception probably, the three take their Kang prisoners and head back to the temple.

After loads and loads of exposition, Mantis is finally prepared to believe this story about her. But she’s still a bit unclear why this. Why this anything.

Swordsman????: “Woman, have you not seen that you are to marry that tree?”

Mantis: “What? What did you say?”

That’s the only reasonable response really.

Ghost Swordsman clarifies. That tree is the eldest Cotati on Earth. And in the prime of his life. Y’know, at that point where a young tree’s fancy turns to pollen. But also, he has spent years perfecting his mental powers. And now he is the perfect plant seeking the perfect union.

And Mantis is the perfect human.

Mantis: “This -- this is insane!”

Again, the only reasonable response.

Mantis insists that even if she could marry a tree and lets put a pin in that to come back to later because no, she couldn’t become a Madonna because a human can’t have a child with a tree.

Well, no. But that’s why Elder Earth Cotati resurrected Swordsman’s body and possessed it. As a wedding gift! Since she loved him!

And now a tree is wearing his body around like a meat suit!

Geez. The Swordsman gets no dignity in life or death.

But seriously, put your forehead to my bark and you’ll understand all, Swordstree promises. And a suspicious Mantis does.

SCENE CHANGE AGAIN, AVENGERS MANSION:

blip, Vision, Wanda and Agatha Harkness were transported back here. Which was mighty kind of Dormammu. He could have put them in the Everglades and kept to the letter of the agreement. Earth is a big place.

Wanda asks Agatha Harkness if they could delay her witch training for a bit so she can have a moment with Vision.

Agatha Harkness: “My child, this is your house. I am only a guest here. Besides, you are the woman who just saved the world, as well as three of its occupants -- quite skillfully, too, I might add. You’d make me feel silly asking my permission to do anything.”

Besides, Wanda has completed her training with Agatha Harkness. She has learning to do still but its learning she has to do for herself.

So Agatha Harkness scampers off to give the two some privacy while also noting in a dirty old woman kind of way that she’d love to hear what the two of them talk about.

And when she’s gone, Vision reveals that he too has been learning recently.

Vision: “Wanda... she spoke of your instruction, but it’s I who’s been learning over the past months. First we were apart because we quarreled... then because you were immersed in bettering yourself... and for the first time, I lived a life without your warmth. I found that such a life was far more barren than life with us together. I didn’t truly realize how I felt -- or that I felt as deeply as I do -- until Mantis offered herself to me -- and I felt no desire to accept her. Wanda, you are the only woman for me! I can make you happy! Forget all the human rules and please... marry me.”

Wanda asks why it is that Vision loves her. Is it only because she was the first girl he met?

And he answers that its partially because his life is so tied into being an Avenger that he could only love a woman who can understand that. And also because he has finally become fully aware of himself as a man. He’s no longer a mysterious synthezoid of unknown origin. He was created to be human. He had a father.

Vision: “Now I can be your man for all my synthetic flesh.”

Wanda: “I know you can. Don’t you see, love is for souls, not bodies? Yes, Vision -- yes, I’ll marry you!”

Aww.

SCENE CHANGE!

Back at Vietnam.

Mantis has just finished communing with the tree, having accepted her role as the Celestial Lorax. She realizes everything she’s been told is true and that this tree is definitely her soul mate. She’s gonna do it, she’s gonna marry a tree.

And then Iron Man, Hawkeye, Thor and three Kangs show up. Warning, hey Kang is probably about and causing trouble. But since forewarned is forearmed, they must stand ready for anything and- dangit.

Kang just materializes his time sphere above Mantis, puts a force field around her, scoops her up, and then amscrays to the ends of time.

Kang: “This was my most brilliant strategy of the war! As a time traveler, I can journey to the same moment many times, from different points in the future! Thus I appeared three other times this day! I expected you to take longer in battling my other selves -- but even with your early return, I yet emerge victorious! Despite all predictions, Kang has captured the Celestial proving me the most powerful man on Earth -- and when Mantis mates with me, I shall become ruler of the heavens!”

If she doesn’t bite your head off first.

Anyway, it was just that simple. One wonders why he didn’t just do that before. But remember, Kang is an idiot who likes a challenge. Until it becomes too challenging and then he cheats.

The Avengers and discolored Moondragon get ready to follow him... somehow... but Immortus stops them.

Oh, yeah, and Immortus is back. Look who he found at Avengers Mansion! Vision, Scarlet Witch, and Agatha Harkness.

Oh and also, yeah, he knew Kang would pull this. Because he is Kang and remembers doing this. So now its time to open the wedding gift he brought.

Remember that big box he brought, called attention to, and refused to explain?

He opens it now to reveal... Mantis?

Remember that Immortus is rule of Limbo. And Limbo only has one subject.

THE SPACE PHANTOM.

Yup. Immortus trolled Kang with a Space Phantom disguised as Mantis, while swapping the real Mantis into a giant simulated Limbo box.

The Celestial Madonna Saga as a whole is basically just Kang trolling himself through time. Like he’s Karkat or something.

Kang doesn’t take it well. But its not like the Space Phantom enjoys it either. Rawwwwww, its a living.

Anyway.

Mantis announces that she’s totally going to marry a psychic tree and give birth to a new lifeform. Because.

Cotati Swordsman: “Yes, beloved. Humans deal broadly with life, but not deeply... while plants deal deeply but not broadly. One has mobility, the other mind control. There must be a mingling of the two, for the benefit of both!”

Scarlet Witch: “If there’s any mingling going on, the Vision and I want in on it!”

Yup. Scarlet Witch crashes Mantis’ destiny wedding to make it a double wedding. Because she didn’t want a big ceremony anyway. She just wants to tie the knot with her love machine.

Although it also sounds like Scarlet Witch is into swinging?

Anyway, Immortus decides he’s going to officiate these weddings. Sure, he isn’t a registered minister or anything. But he has a cool castle. The weddings won’t be legally binding, having been performed by a person not yet born in another country. So Wanda and Vision will have to fill out some paperwork when they get back.

But also, how often do you get to have a double wedding alongside a tree and a Celestial Madonna officiated by a weirdo who lives in a timeless Limbo? None often, probably.

And before the ceremonies can get started, Thor does what should have been done a while back and officially makes Mantis an Avenger, instead of just a de facto Avenger that lives in the mansion and goes on all the missions.

And Wanda is happy for her. Sure, she didn’t like her for a long time and really only likes her now that she’s marrying a tree and not coming after Vision anymore... but.... um.... Hey, she’s happy for her! They were besties for five seconds once. I remember those five seconds sadly and fondly.

So then the wedding ceremony.

It happens.

And Mantis bids the Avengers farewell. Aww...

And then... she and her Cotati Swordsman husband turn into pure energy and fly into space?? To I guess mingle their essences and conceive a perfect god baby.

And having done that, Mantis will become a free agent, backpack around space, and flirt with Silver Surfer. Perhaps that’s why she agreed to marry the tree after all.

Get your destiny over and done with and then enjoy the rest of your life. That’s the way to do it, if you want to do it.

.... Yeah.

So. The Celestial Madonna Saga. According to the collected edition, it covered Avengers #123-125, 129-135 and Giant-Size Avengers #2-4. That’s thirteen issues, three of which are Giant-Sized. It covered that bit from Libra claiming to be Mantis’ dad and the Star-Stalker, took a break for some one-offs and for Crystal and Quicksilver’s wedding, and then picked up again from the appearance of the Celestial Madonna star to the double wedding.

A lot of weddings in this stretch of time.

It was a big, dense storyline that covered not only Mantis’ awakening as the Celestial Madonna but also revealed her true backstory, Vision’s true backstory, Kang’s future as Rama-Tut and Immortus, the first time an Avenger died that was an Avenger for more than a single issue, the backstory of the Kree/Skrull War, space intreegue, Wanda taking a level up by studying witchcraft, the development of Wanda and Vision’s relationship, Mantis becoming an official Avenger and leaving the team for pure energy space sex a page later, and a double wedding.

It covered a lot of ground and the final stretch of that was incredibly exposition heavy.

As you can tell from my hasty summary of everything, the Celestial Madonna Saga was arguably as important, if not more so, for Kang, Vision, and Wanda’s character development as it was for Mantis’.

Was it a good story?

Ehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Your mileage may vary? Parts of it were very good or at least entertainingly bad or batshit.

I liked the backstory confirming that the Kree have always just been the biggest assholes in space.

But. You can see the shadows here of how Carol Danvers leaves the Avengers in issue #200.

In fact, just like Chris Claremonte had Carol blast the Avengers for that story, the Crossing was supposed to be Mantis’ revenge for the Avengers letting her be bamboozled into going off into space to marry a tree wearing her dead boyfriend.

And, in fairness... Cotati Swordsman does stress that the Eldest Earth Cotati is super good at mind control.

I guess what I’m dancing around here is that Mantis’ grand destiny as the Celestial Madonna means that her destiny is in her womb. She’s going to have an important baby. Its a terrible version of the Chosen One.

And it means that nearly her whole life, Mantis has been groomed into an arranged marriage by her biological father and by the priests that raised her.

She’s guided and railroaded into this decision. And although it (seemingly) is her decision in the end, she’s really pressured into it.

In so many ways she lacks agency in this story. The Celestial Madonna Saga is the story of things happening to Mantis while everyone else gets cool character development.

Oh and also I know that Celestial here refers to heavenly things but it occurred to me when Kang called Mantis the Celestial full stop that Celestial is a term that used to refer to things Chinese and maybe calling a Vietnamese-German woman a Celestial Anything was a misstep.

Still cool that the Perfect Human was a Vietnamese-German woman. Not as cool that being the Perfect Human meant you had to marry the Perfect Tree.

I think based on modern sensibilities, a lot of small things could have made it less bad. Although modern sensibilities would probably not do it at all. And that’s probably why modern portrayals of Mantis act like the Celestial Madonna is still something she has to get around to doing eventually.

So. One thing would be to make it so that it was Mantis’ decision to leave the temple, live among normal people, learn humanity, and her decision to wipe her own memories for that goal. Instead of being dumped to fend for herself and build character, it would have been more like the Buddha’s journey. Except with more auto-mind-wiping.

Going along with that would be to make becoming the Celestial Madonna an explicit goal of pre-mindwipe Mantis. Something she was working toward. Something that was, again, her choice.

Another thing would be I guess, to make the Cotati Swordsman have the Swordsman’s memories and soul or whatever. So its less of Mantis marrying a tree with basically a picture of Swordsman stapled to it. Except worse.

So aside the big Mantis marrying a tree elephant in the room, what else is there to say about the Celestial Madonna Saga? Just some structural complaints.

Its a very long and dense story. Perhaps longer and more dense than it needs to be. It gets very exposition heavy at the end. Its possible that some of the reveals could have been spread out to be less back loaded.

The exposition heavy nature means that for the last few issues of it, the Avengers (sans Vision) are just hanging around, spectating, and peanut gallerying Mantis’ backstory. Because moral support and because they don’t have anything better to do. Perhaps why Kang attacks in this issue. Gives the Avengers some reason to be hanging around.

And Kang comes back about one too many times. Or three too many times at the same time? He’s very much the big villain of the piece but he attacks three times in fairly rapid succession, with diminishing effectiveness. I did like Immortus trolling him though so iunno.

I will also say again about Swordsman that it was a shame to see him die without fully living up to the potential as an Avenger. And that his tenure and death and post-death were so ignoble.

Next time, the Avengers go through a period of change but first a rerun.

#Avengers #Kang the Conqueror #Scarlet Witch #Vision #Mantis #Cotati #Dormammu #Titanic Three #Essential Avengers #Essential marvel liveblogging #mantis and a tree sitting in a.... er.... um....#goodbye mantis #possibly the weirdest double wedding #Thor #Iron Man #Hawkeye

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jehanimation · 7 years

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Celebrating the undersung heroism of The Peanuts Movie

In December 2015, a movie reboot of one of history’s most beloved entertainment brands was released in cinemas, and it took the world by storm. That movie was not The Peanuts Movie.

Not that I’m setting myself up as an exception to that. Like pretty much everyone else, I spent the tail-end of 2015 thoroughly immersing myself in all things Star Wars: The Force Awakens, drinking deeply of the hype before seeing it as many times as I could - five in total - before it left theatres. In the midst of all that Jedi madness, I ended up totally forgetting to see The Peanuts Movie, Blue Sky Studios’ well-reviewed adaptation of Charles M. Schulz’s classic newspaper strip, which I’d been meaning to catch over the festive period. But then, it’s not as though the schedulers made it easy for me; in the US, there had been a buffer zone of a month between the launches of the two films, but here in the UK, Peanuts came out a week after Star Wars; even for this animation enthusiast, when it came to a choice between seeing the new Star Wars again or literally any other film, there was really no contest at all.

A year later, belatedly catching up with the movie I missed at the height of my rekindled Star Wars mania proved an eye-opening experience, and places Blue Sky’s film in an interesting context. With a $246.2 million worldwide gross, The Peanuts Movie did well enough to qualify as a hit, but it remains the studio’s lowest earner to date; in retrospect, it seems likely that going head-to-head with Star Wars and the James Bond movie Spectre didn’t exactly maximise its chances of blockbuster receipts. Yet in an odd way, modest, unnoticed success feels like a fitting outcome for The Peanuts Movie, a film that acts as a perfectly-formed celebration of underappreciated decency in a world of bombast and bluster. Charlie Brown, pop culture’s ultimate underdog, was never fated to emerge victorious in a commercial battle against Han Solo and James Bond, but his movie contains a grounded level of heartfelt sympathy for the small-scale struggles of unassumingly ordinary folk that higher-concept properties don’t have the time to express. The Peanuts Movie is a humbly heroic film about a quietly laudable person, made with understated bravery by underrated artists; I hope sincerely that more people will discover it like I did for years to come, and recognise just how much of what it says, does and represents is worth celebrating.

CELEBRATING... BLUE SKY STUDIOS

Before giving praise to The Peanuts Movie itself, it’d be remiss of me not to throw at least a few kind words in the direction of Blue Sky Studios - a group of filmmakers who I’m inclined to like, somewhat despite themselves, and who don’t always get very kind things written about them. After all, the 20th Century Fox subsidiary have been in the CGI feature animation mix since 2002, meaning they have a more established pedigree than most studios, and their long-running Ice Age franchise is a legitimately important, formative success story within the modern era of American animation. Under the creative leadership of Chris Wedge, they’ve managed to carve and hold a niche for themselves in a competitive ecosystem, hewing close to the Shrek-inspired DreamWorks model of fast-talking, kinetic comedy, but with a physical slapstick edge that marked their work out as distinct, at least initially. Sure, the subsequent rise of Illumination Entertainment and their ubiquitous Minions has stolen that thunder a little, but it’s important to remember that Ice Age’s bedraggled sabretooth squirrel Scrat was the CGI era’s original silent comedy superstar, and to recognise Blue Sky’s vital role in pioneering that stylistic connection between the animation techniques of the 21st century and the knockabout nonverbal physicality of formative 20th century cartooning, several years before anyone else thought to do so.

For all their years of experience, though, there’s a prevailing sense that Blue Sky have made a habit of punching below their weight, and that they haven’t - Scrat aside - established the kind of memorable legacy you’d expect from a veteran studio with 15 years of movies under their belt. Like Illumination - the studio subsequently founded by former Blue Sky bigwig Chris Meledandri - they remain very much defined by the influence of their debut movie, but Blue Sky have unarguably been a lot less successful in escaping the shadow of Ice Age than Illumination have in pulling away from the orbit of the Despicable Me/Minions franchise. Outside of the Ice Age series, Blue Sky’s filmography is largely composed of forgettable one-offs (Robots, Epic), the second-tier Rio franchise (which, colour palette aside, feels pretty stylistically indistinct from Ice Age), and a pair of adaptations (Horton Hears a Who!, The Peanuts Movie) that, in many ways, feel like uncharacteristic outliers rather than thoroughbred Blue Sky movies. Their Ice Age flagship, meanwhile, appears to be leaking and listing considerably, with a successful first instalment followed by three sequels (The Meltdown, Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Continental Drift) that garnered successively poorer reviews while cleaning up at the international box office, before last year’s fifth instalment (Collision Course) was essentially shunned by critics and audiences alike. Eleven movies in, Blue Sky are yet to produce their first cast-iron classic, which is unfortunate but not unforgivable; much more troubling is how difficult the studio seems to find it to even scrape a mediocre passing grade half the time.

Nevertheless, while Blue Sky’s output doesn’t bear comparison to a Disney, a Pixar or even a DreamWorks, there’s something about them that I find easy to root for, even if I’m only really a fan of a small percentage of their movies. Even their most middling works have a certain sense of honest effort and ambition about them, even if it didn’t come off: for example, Robots and Epic - both directed by founder Chris Wedge - feel like the work of a team trying to push their movies away from cosy comedy in the direction of larger-scale adventure storytelling, while the Rio movies, for all their generic antics and pratfalls, do at least benefit from the undoubted passion that director Carlos Saldanha tried to bring to his animated realisation of his hometown of Rio de Janeiro. I’ll also continue to celebrate the original Ice Age movie as a charismatic, well-realised children’s road movie, weakened somewhat by its instinct to pull its emotional punches, but gently likeable nevertheless; sure, the series is looking a little worse for wear these days, but at least part of the somewhat misguided instinct to keep churning them out seems to stem from a genuine fondness for the characters. Heck, I’m even inclined to look favourably on Chris Wedge’s ill-fated decision to dabble in live-action with the recent fantasy flop Monster Trucks; after all, the jump from directing animation to live-action is a tricky manoeuvre that even Pixar veterans like Andrew Stanton (John Carter) and Brad Bird (Tomorrowland) have struggled to execute smoothly, and the fact he attempted it at all feels indicative of his studio’s instinct to try their best to expand their horizons, even if their reach sometimes exceeds their grasp.

Besides, it’s not as though their efforts so far have gone totally unrewarded. The third and fourth Ice Age movies scored record-breaking box office results outside the US, while there have also been a handful of notable successes in critical terms - most prominently, Horton Hears a Who! and The Peanuts Movie, the two adaptations of classic American children’s literature directed for the studio by Steve Martino. I suppose you can put a negative spin on the fact that Blue Sky’s two best-reviewed movies were the ones based on iconic source material - as I’ve noted, the films do feel a little bit like stylistic outliers, rather than organic expressions of the studio’s strengths - but let’s not kid ourselves that working from a beloved source text isn’t a double-edged sword. Blue Sky’s rivals at Illumination proved that much in their botching of Dr Seuss’ The Lorax, as have Sony Pictures Animation with their repeated crimes against the Smurfs, and these kinds of examples provide a better context to appreciate Blue Sky’s sensitive, respectful treatments of Seuss and Charles Schulz as the laudable achievements they are. If anything, it may actually be MORE impressive that a studio that’s often had difficulty finding a strong voice with their own material have been able to twice go toe-to-toe with genuine giants of American culture and emerge not only without embarrassing themselves, but arguably having added something to the legacies of the respective properties.

CELEBRATING... GENUINE INNOVATION IN CG ANIMATION

Of course, adding something to a familiar mix is part and parcel of the adaptation process, but the challenge for any studio is to make sure that anything they add works to enrich the material they’re working with, rather than diluting it. In the case of The Peanuts Movie - a lavish computer-generated 3D film based on a newspaper strip with a famously sketchy, spartan aesthetic - it was clear from the outset that the risk of over-egging the pudding was going to be high, and that getting the look right would require a creative, bespoke approach. Still, it’s hard to overstate just how bracingly, strikingly fresh the finalised aesthetic of The Peanuts Movie feels, to the degree where it represents more than just a new paradigm for Schulz’s characters, but instead feels like a genuinely exciting step forward for the medium of CG animation in general.

Now, I’m certainly not one of those old-school puritans who’ll claim that 2D cel animation is somehow a better, purer medium than modern CGI, but I do share the common concern that mainstream animated features have become a little bit aesthetically samey since computers took over as the primary tools. There’s been a tendency to follow a sort of informal Pixar-esque playbook when it comes to stylisation and movement, and it’s only been relatively recently that studios like Disney, Illumination and Sony have tried to bring back some of that old-school 2D squash-and-stretch, giving them more scope to diversify. No doubt, we’re starting to see a spirit of visual experimentation return to the medium - the recent stylisation of movies like Minions, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, Hotel Transylvania and Storks are testament to that - but even so, it feels like there’s a limit to how far studios are willing to push things on a feature film. Sure, Disney and Pixar will do gorgeous, eye-popping visual style experiments in short movies like Paperman, Inner Workings and Piper, but when it comes to the big movies, a more conservative house style invariably reasserts itself.

With the exception of a greater-than-average emphasis on physicality, Blue Sky’s typical playbook hasn’t really differed that much from their peers, which is partly why their approach to adapting Seuss and Schulz - two artists with immutable, iconic art styles of their own - have stood out so much. Their visual work on Horton Hears a Who! was groundbreaking in its own way - it was, after all, the first CG adaptation of Dr Seuss, and the result captured the eccentric impossibilities and flourishes of the source material much better than Illumination managed four years with The Lorax - yet The Peanuts Movie presented a whole new level of challenge. Where Seuss’s worlds exploded off the page with colour and life and elastic movement, Schulz’s were the very model of scribbled understatement, often eschewing backgrounds completely to preserve an expressive but essentially sparse minimalism. Seuss’s characters invited 3D interpretation with their expressive curves and body language; the Peanuts cast, by contrast, make no three-dimensional sense at all, existing only as a limited series of anatomically inconsistent stock poses and impressionist linework that breaks down the moment volume is added. It’s not that Charlie Brown, Snoopy and co are totally resistant to animation - after all, the Peanuts legacy of animated specials and movies is almost as treasured as the comic strip itself - but it’s still worth noting that the Bill Melendez/Lee Mendelson-produced cartoons succeeded mostly by committing fully to the static, spare, rigidly two-dimensional look of Schulz’s comic art, a far cry from the hyper-malleable Chuck Jones/Friz Freleng-produced style of the most famous Seuss adaptations.

Perhaps realising that Schulz cannot be made to adapt to 3D, Blue Sky went the opposite route: making 3D adapt to Schulz. The results are honestly startling to behold - a richly colourful, textured, fluidly dynamic world, populated by low-framerate characters who pop and spasm and glide along 2D planes, creating a visual experience that’s halfway between stop-motion and Paper Mario. It’s an experiment in style that breaks all the established rules and feels quite unlike anything that’s been done in CGI animation on this scale - with the possible exception of The Lego Movie - and it absolutely 100% works in a way that no other visual approach could have done for this particular property. Each moment somehow manages to ride the line of contradiction between comforting familiarity and virtuoso innovation; I’m still scratching my head, for example, about how Blue Sky managed to so perfectly translate Linus’s hair - a series of wavy lines that make no anatomical sense - into meticulously rendered 3D, or how the extended Red Baron fantasy sequences are able to keep Snoopy snapping between jerky staccato keyframes while the world around him spins and revolves with complete fluidity. Snoopy “speaks”, as ever, with nonverbal vocalisations provided by the late Bill Melendez, director of so many classic Peanuts animations; the use of his archived performance in this way is a sweet tribute to the man, but one that hardly seems necessary when the entire movie is essentially a $100 million love letter to his signature style.

I do wonder how Melendez would’ve reacted to seeing his work aggrandised in such a lavish fashion, because it’s not as though those films were designed to be historic touchstones; indeed, much of the stripped-back nature of those early Peanuts animations owed as much to budgetary constraints and tight production cycles as they did to stylistic bravery. Melendez’s visuals emerged as they did out of necessity; it’s an odd quirk of fate that his success ended up making it necessary for Blue Sky to take such bold steps to match up with his template so many decades later. Sure, you can argue that The Peanuts Movie is technically experimental because it had to be, but that doesn’t diminish the impressiveness of the final result at all, particularly given how much easier it would have been to make the film look so much worse than this. It’d be nice to see future generations of CG animators pick up the gauntlet that films like this and The Lego Movie have thrown down by daring to be adventurous with the medium and pushing the boundaries of what a 3D movie can look and move like. After all, trailblazing is a defining component of Peanuts’ DNA; if Blue Sky’s movie can be seen as a groundbreaking achievement in years to come, then they’ll really have honoured Schulz and Melendez in the best way possible.

CELEBRATING... THE COURAGE TO BE SMALL

In scaling up the visual palette of the Peanuts universe, Blue Sky overcame a key hurdle in making the dormant series feel worthy of a first full cinematic outing in 35 years, but this wasn’t the only scale-related challenge the makers of The Peanuts Movie faced. There’s always been a perception that transferring a property to the big screen requires a story to match the size of the canvas; in the animation industry, that’s probably more true now than it’s ever been. Looking back at the classic animated movies made prior to around the 1980s and 1990s, it’s striking how many of them are content to tell episodic, rambling shaggy dog stories that prioritise colourful antics and larger-than-life personalities over ambitious narrative, but since then it feels like conventions have shifted. Most of today’s crop of successful animations favour three-act structures, high-stakes adventure stories and screen-filling spectacle - all of which presents an obvious problem for a movie based on a newspaper strip about a mopey prepubescent underachiever and his daydreaming dog.

Of course, this isn’t the first time that Charlie and Snoopy have had to manage a transition to feature-length narrative, but it was always unlikely that Blue Sky would follow too closely in the footsteps of the four previous theatrical efforts that debuted between 1969 and 1980. All four are characterised by the kind of meandering, episodic structure that was popular in the day, which made it easier to assemble scripts from Schulz-devised gag sequences in an essentially modular fashion; the latter three (Snoopy, Come Home from 1972, Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown from 1977 and Bon Voyage, Charlie Brown (and Don't Come Back!!) from 1980) also made their own lives easier by incorporating road trips or journeys into their storylines, which gave audiences the opportunity to see the Peanuts gang in different settings. The first movie, 1969’s A Boy Named Charlie Brown, also features a road trip aspect to its plotline, but in most respects offers the most typical and undiluted Peanuts experience of the four original films; perhaps as a result, it also feels quite aggressively padded, while its limited cast (lacking later additions like Peppermint Patty and Marcie) and intimately dour focus made it a sometimes claustrophobic cinematic experience.

Given The Peanuts Movie’s intention to reintroduce the franchise to modern audiences who may not necessarily be familiar with the original strip’s melancholic sensibilities, the temptation was always going to be to balloon the property outwards into something broad, overinflated and grand in a way that Schulz never was; it’s to be applauded, then, that The Peanuts Movie ends up as that rare CGI animation that tells a small-scale story in a focused manner over 90 minutes, resisting the urge to dilute the purity of its core character-driven comedy material with any of the family adventure elements modern audiences are used to. Even more so than previous feature-length Peanuts movies, this isn’t a film with any kind of high-concept premise; rather than sending Charlie Brown out on any kind of physical quest, The Peanuts Movie is content to offer a simple character portrait, showing us various sides of our protagonist’s personality as he strives to better himself in order to impress his unrequited love, the ever-elusive Little Red-Haired Girl. The resulting film is certainly episodic - each attempt to impress his object of affection sends Charlie Brown into new little mini-storylines that bring different classic characters to the foreground and evoke the stop-start format of Schulz’s strip, even though the content and style feel fresh - but all of the disparate episodes feel unified by the kind of coherent forward momentum and progressive character growth that Bill Melendez’s older movies never really reached for.

Indeed, it’s probably most telling that the film’s sole major concession to conventional cinematic scale - its extended fantasy side-story featuring Snoopy engaging in aerial battles in his imaginary World War I Flying Ace alter-ego - is probably its weakest element. These high-flying action sequences are intelligently conceived, injecting some real visual splendour and scope without intruding on the intimacy of the main story, but they feel overextended and only infrequently connected to the rest of the film in any meaningful way. This would be less of a problem if the Snoopy-centric narrative had effective emotional hooks of its own, but sadly there’s really not much there beyond the Boys’ Own parody trappings; any real investment in Snoopy’s dreamed pursuit of his poodle love interest Fifi is undermined by her very un-Schulz-like drippy damselness, and it becomes hard to avoid feeling that you’re watching an extended distraction from the parts of the movie you’re actually interested in. Of course, it’s arguable that an overindulgent fondness for Snoopy-related flights of fancy drawing attention away from the more grounded, meaningful exploits of Charlie Brown and friends is actually a fair reflection of the Peanuts franchise in its latter years, showing that Blue Sky were faithful to Schulz to a fault, but I wouldn’t like to focus too much on a minor misstep in a film that’s intelligent and committed about its approach to small-canvas storytelling in a way you don’t often see from mainstream animated films on the big screen.

CELEBRATING... LETTING THE ULTIMATE UNDERDOG HAVE HIS DAY

All of these achievements would count for very little, though, if Blue Sky’s movie wasn’t able to adequately capture the intellect and essence of Schulz’s work, a task that seems simultaneously simple and impossible. For such a sprawling franchise, Peanuts has proven remarkably resilient to tampering, meddling or ruination, with each incarnation - whether in print or in animation - remaining stylistically and tonally consistent, thanks to the strict control Schulz and his fastidious estate have kept over the creative direction of the series. On the one hand, this is a blessing of sorts for future stewards of the franchise, as it gives them a clear playbook to work from when producing new material; on the other hand, the unyielding strictness of that formula hints heavily at a certain brittleness to the Peanuts template, suggesting to would-be reinventors that it would take only a small misapplication of ambition to irrevocably damage the essential Schulz-ness of the property and see the result crumble to dust. This has certainly proven the case with Schulz’s contemporary Dr Seuss, one of few American children’s literature writers with a comparable standing to the Peanuts creator, and an artist whose literate, lyrical and contemplative work has proven eminently easy to ruin by misguided adapters who tried and failed to put their own spin on his classic material.

There’s no guesswork involved in saying these concerns were of paramount importance to the Schulz estate when prepping The Peanuts Movie - director Steve Martino was selected specifically on the strength of his faithful adaptation of Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who!, and the film’s screenplay was co-written by Schulz’s son Craig and grandson Bryan - but even taking a cautious approach, there are challenges to adapting Schulz for mainstream feature animation that surpass even those posed by Seuss’ politically-charged poetry. For all his vaulting thematic ambition, Seuss routinely founded his work on a bedrock of visual whimsy and adventurous, primary-colours mayhem, acting as a spoonful of sugar for the intellectual medicine he administered. Schulz, on the other hand, preferred to serve up his sobering, melancholic life lessons neat and unadulterated, with the static suburban backdrops and simply-rendered characters providing a fairly direct vessel for the strip’s cerebral, poignant or downbeat musings. The cartoonist’s willingness to honestly embrace life’s cruel indignities, the callousness of human nature and the feeling of unfulfilment that defines so much of regular existence is perhaps the defining element of his work and the foundational principle that couldn’t be removed without denying Charlie Brown his soul - but it’s also something that might have felt incompatible with the needs and expectations of a big studio movie in the modern era, particularly without being able to use the surface-level aesthetic pleasure that a Seuss adaptation provides as a crutch.

I’ve already addressed the impressive way The Peanuts Movie was able to make up the deficit on visual splendour and split the difference in terms of the story’s sense of scale, but the most laudable aspect of the film is the sure-footed navigation of the tonal tightrope it had to tread, deftly balancing the demands of the material against the needs of a modern audience, which are honestly just as important. Schulz may have been a visionary, but his work didn’t exist in a vacuum; the sometime brutal nature of his emotional outlook was at least in part a reaction to the somewhat sanitised children’s media landscape that existed around him at the time, and his work acted as an antidote that was perhaps more necessary then than it is now. That’s not to say the medicinal qualities of Schulz’s psychological insights don’t still have validity, but to put it bluntly I don’t think children lack reminders in today’s social landscape that the world can be a dark, daunting and depressing place, and it feels like Martino and his team realised that when trying to find the centre of their script. Thus, The Peanuts Movie takes the sharp and sometimes bitter flavour of classic Schulz and filters it, finding notes of sweetness implicit in the Peanuts recipe and making them more explicit, creating a gentler blend that goes down smoother while still feeling like it’s drawn from the original source.

The core of this delicate work of adaptation is the film’s Charlie Brown version 2.0 - still fundamentally the same unlucky totem of self-doubt and doomed ambition he’s always been, but with the permeating air of accepted defeat diminished somewhat. This Charlie Brown (voiced by Stranger Things’ Noah Schnapp) shares the shortcomings of his predecessors, but wears them better, stands a little taller and feels less vulnerable to the slings and arrows that life - and ill-wishers like Lucy Van Pelt - throw at him. Certainly, he still thinks of himself as an “insecure, wishy-washy failure”, but his determination to become more than that shines through, with even his trademark “good grief” sometimes accompanied by a wry smile that demonstrates a level of perspective that previous incarnations of the character didn’t possess. Blue Sky’s Charlie Brown is, in short, a tryer - a facet of the character that always existed, but was never really foregrounded in quite the way The Peanuts Movie does. In the words of Martino:

“Here’s where I lean thematically. I want to go through this journey. … Charlie Brown is that guy who, in the face of repeated failure, picks himself back up and tries again. That’s no small task. I have kids who aspire to be something big and great. … a star football player or on Broadway. I think what Charlie Brown is - what I hope to show in this film - is the everyday qualities of perseverance… to pick yourself back up with a positive attitude - that’s every bit as heroic … as having a star on the Walk of Fame or being a star on Broadway. That’s the story’s core.”

It’s possible to argue that leavening the sometimes crippling depression in Charlie Brown’s soul robs him of some of his uniqueness, but it’s also not as though it’s a complete departure from Schulz’s presentation of him, either. Writer Christopher Caldwell, in a famous 2000 essay on the complex cultural legacy of the Peanuts strip, aptly described its star as a character who remains “optimistic enough to think he can earn a sense of self-worth”, rather than rolling over and accepting the status that his endless failures would seem to bestow upon him. Even at his most downbeat and “Charlie-Browniest”, he’s always been a tryer, someone with enough drive to stand up and be counted that he keeps coming back to manage and lead his hopeless baseball team to defeat year after year; someone with the determination to try fruitlessly again and again to get his kite in the air and out of the trees; someone with enough lingering misplaced faith in Lucy’s human decency to keep believing that this time she’ll let him kick that football, no matter how logical the argument for giving up might be.

Indeed, Charlie Brown’s dogged determination to make contact with that damn ball was enough to thaw the heart of Schulz himself, his creator and most committed tormentor - having once claimed that allowing his put-upon protagonist to ever kick the ball would be a “terrible disservice to him”, the act of signing off his final ever Peanuts strip prompted a change of heart and a tearful confession:

“All of a sudden I thought, 'You know, that poor, poor kid, he never even got to kick the football. What a dirty trick - he never had a chance to kick the football.”

If that comment - made in December 1999, barely two months before his death - represented Schulz’s sincere desire for clemency for the character he had doomed to a 50-year losing streak, then The Peanuts Movie can be considered the fulfilment of a dying wish. No, Charlie Brown still doesn’t get to kick the football, but he receives something a lot more meaningful - a long-awaited conversation with the Little Red-Haired Girl, realised on screen as a fully verbalised character for the first time, who provides Charlie Brown with a gentle but quietly overwhelming affirmation of his value and qualities as a human being. In dramatic terms, it’s a small-scale end to a low-key story; in emotional terms, it’s an moment of enormous catharsis, particularly in the context of the franchise as a whole. It’s in this moment that Martino’s film shows its thematic hand - the celebration of tryers the world over, a statement that you don’t need to accomplish epic feats to be a good person, that persevering, giving your all and maintaining your morality and compassion in the face of setbacks is its own kind of heroism. The impact feels even greater on a character level, though; after decades of Sisyphean struggle and disappointment, the ending of The Peanuts Movie is an act of beatific mercy for Charlie Brown, placing a warm arm around the shoulders of one of American culture’s most undeservedly downtrodden characters and telling him he is worth far more than the sum of his failures, that his essential goodness and honesty did not go unnoticed, and that he is deserving of admiration - not for being a sporting champion or winning a prize, but for having the strength to hold on to the best parts of himself even when the entire world seems to reject everything he is.

Maybe that isn’t how your grandfather’s Peanuts worked, and maybe it isn’t how Bryan Schulz’s grandfather’s Peanuts worked either, but it would take a hard-hearted, inflexible critic to claim that any of The Peanuts Movie’s adjustments to the classic formula are damaging to the soul of the property, particularly when the intent behind the changes feels so pure. The flaws and foibles of the characters are preserved intact, as is the punishingly fickle nature of the world’s morality; however, in tipping the bittersweet balance away from bitterness towards sweetness, Martino’s movie escapes the accusation of mere imitation and emerges as a genuine work of multifaceted adaptation, simultaneously acting as a tribute, a response to and a modernisation of Charles Schulz’s canon. The Peanuts Movie is clearly designed to work as an audience’s first exposure to Peanuts, but it works equally well if treated as an ultimate conclusion, providing an emotional closure to the epic Charlie Brown morality play that Schulz himself never provided, but that feels consistent with the core of the lessons he always tried to teach.

In reality, it’s unlikely Peanuts will ever be truly over - indeed, a new French-animated TV series based on the comics aired just last year - but there’s still something warmly comforting about drawing a rough-edged line under The Peanuts Movie, letting Charlie Brown live on in a moment of understated triumph 65 years in the making, remembered not for his failings but by his embodiment of the undersung heroism of simply getting back up and trying again. It’s not easy to make a meaningful contribution to the legacy of a character and property that’s already achieved legendary status on a global scale, but with The Peanuts Movie, the perennially undervalued Blue Sky gave good ol’ Charlie Brown a send-off that a spiritually-minded humanist like Charles Schulz would have been proud of - and in my book, that makes them heroes, too.

#peanuts #peanutsmovie #charles schulz #charles m. schulz #charlie brown #peppermint patty #lucy van pelt #linus van pelt #snoopy #woodstock #blue sky #blue sky studios #animation #film analysis #movies #movie critique #long post

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nico-in-space · 7 years

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Sunny/Bright/Winter/Night

This is an original story of mine that I’m working on. I figured I could post the rough drafts online so I could get probable feedback on them! :) They’ll just escape into the void of Tumblr, so it’s not like it really matters, but I’m putting myself out there anyway, just for the hell of it.

Summary: For each situation, there are at least a hundred different perspectives. Naturally, when the aliens invade Earth, there are a few different perspectives on that event. One is in favor of the operation. It will, in the end, benefit Earth's prosperity, and add more diversity to the already incredibly advanced ecosystem. Another couldn't care less if aliens are invading. She's currently in the process of writing her application for MIT. It's not going so great. Also, she just had a MASSIVE fight with her best friend, who's been unusually grouchy lately. What's up with that? Not that it really matters, at this point. Now, what to study next... One wishes that the aliens would beam her up, as she's feeling lost, alone, and depressed for many, many current reasons. But maybe she's been feeling like that for longer. Another has been trying, fruitlessly, to defend Earth from the eventual capture of its people, but really wishes she had a helping hand in her project. Her co-workers don't seem to understand that a battle cannot be won with only force. You need knowledge, too, which is something she has quite enough of, thank you. How do their stories intertwine? Find out in Sunny/Bright/Winter/Night.

Also cross-posted on Wattpad here! I update there more regularly. :)

CODENAME: AGENT S1143

I sigh, leaning back in my chair. It protests at the action, squeaking unpleasantly, the sound reverberating in the large domed room that my cubicle, along with many others, is situated. I'm done working for the day, finally. It always feels like my work is never-ending, but my job is important, at least in the eyes of the Overseer.

I flex my feet, hearing the joints crack. Us menial workers "run the show," according to the many posters hung up around the satellite base. We are the backbone that run the hypothetical "body" of the Earth Mission #024. At least, that's what the Overseer tells us to make us feel better.

My work consists of an infinite amount of paperwork. Well, fairly recently in terms of history we've gone digital, so it's all computerized work. My older co-workers often complain about the supposed "laziness" of folk my age because we never had to sort physical paperwork like they did. It's really fucking annoying, to be honest. But I digress. My job is basically to scan over the documents which detail, in exactness, the birth of a Human, and all their medical "traits." I run the document through diagnostics to make sure there are no glitches. It's just some debug program, one that I could probably program myself if I had the desire, but I'd probably get in trouble with my Local Leader. As much as I don't give a literal fuck what my Local Leader thinks, I don't feel like being electrocuted to death anytime soon. After the document goes through diagnostics, I click the confirm button, and the next document pops up. It's all I live for, basically.

It's menial; almost an insult to my intellect. I pride myself on being a fairly smart Ki'golian these days, though I was fairly rebellious in my youth, and didn't spend much time at the Academy. I preferred to spend my time in more...lucrative ways.

I get up, rubbing my shoulders. Terror above, they're sore... What I wouldn't give for a sauna in this damn place. Not like I'd ever be able to use something like that, as a folk of my status.

Feeling rather sour, I leave the Dome to head to my apartment. I swipe my card, entering my apartment Block, then find my room number and swipe to enter that. Alone at last. I recline on my bed, looking out the small window to the view of Earth. The planet is large, and I am currently viewing the Pacific Ocean. It's the largest one, which is the only way I can remember it. It's incredibly blue, even covered with clouds, and I find that I can't look away. The sun's light reflects on it even from my vantage point, though the clouds cover most of it, swirling gently, circularly. Actually seeing it in person is kind of a shock to me still. I've done boring work before, in boring places, so I figured the Earth Mission, when they reached out to me, would be no different. But the scenery, at least, is incredibly extravagant, even if the pay isn't.

...it really is a beautiful planet. I suppose there are things that don't have a monetary value. Scenery like this, I suppose, can be counted as one of them.

-----

GAMER-ID: BETATESTER 112

"Dammit!" Tasha exclaimed, slamming her controller on the ground. Next to her, her friend Leila yelled in success, punching the air with fervor. She was at Leila's house, playing video games with her together after school. The room was brightly lit, and Leila's screen was massive. It was a video gamer's heaven.

"Fuck, Leila, you're way too good at games. Seriously," Tasha groaned, rubbing her temples. She continued, "you'd be real good in the robotics club. I could use a friend there."

"Yeah, yeah, I know," Leila reiterated, setting down her controller and pulling a hair tie off her wrist, using it to pull up her hair. Tasha couldn't help but watch the motion, watched Leila's tan, toned arms as she fixed her hair. "You hate that the guys there think your sexuality's a challenge." Tasha blinked, focusing back on Leila's face.

"You think the teacher's wishy-washy for letting that shit happen. But you want to go to college for Rocket Science, so you're sticking with it anyway." Leila scoffed. "If I were you, I would'a quit the moment one of 'em started hitting on me."

"Not all of us have a career in lucrative hobbies, Leila. I gotta work for that future degree, y'know?" Tasha grumbled, annoyed. "Which means I have to be in a shit ton of clubs, even ones I'm...less fond of, and I've gotta do well in my classes, so that MIT might even consider me. I just wanted a little more support, that's all I was asking. It's not that hard to join a-"

"Stop." Leila's voice was tight. Her shoulders had tensed up. Tense herself, Tasha leveled her gaze at Leila, not about to back down now.

Outside, a bird trilled. Leila's robotic butler rolled to its charging dock and hooked itself on, shutting down for a quick nap, it seemed.

Leila scoffed.

Tasha blinked.

"Video gaming is hard work, okay! It's an actual skill."

Tasha glared at Leila. Leila was changing the topic again, like she always did when Tasha brought up her tendency to slack off.

"No, it's not," she responded, annoyed with herself for encouraging this particularly irksome behavior of Leila's.

"Fuck you. It is," Leila growled, giving Tasha the respective finger.

Tasha groaned, frustrated, throwing her hands up in the air. This is how their conversations have been going lately, and Tasha can pinpoint it starting during the week that Tasha and their mutual friend Akane began casually dating, three months ago. Ever since then, for whatever reason, Leila has been really tough to be around, especially with applications for college starting up this month.

Tasha knew Leila was sensitive about her grades in school. No matter how much Tasha tried to reassure her it was just a letter, it didn't mean anything towards her intellect, it was still a touchy subject with her, for whatever reason. Leila wasn't planning on going to college, and college was all Tasha could think about. It was, in hindsight, a recipe for disaster.

"You know what," she began, getting up from her seat. "I'm getting a little tired of your attitude, Leila."

Tasha grimaced, before flicking her off. She hated to do it, but Leila seriously needed a taste of her own medicine."Wait, Tasha," Leila whined, but it was too late.

Tasha had walked out of the door.

Tasha strode purposefully to her car, parked in front of the Horton's mansion. Leila was just another nobody who spent all their time gaming. A nobody who had once been special to Tasha, but not anymore. Tasha had bigger things on her plate, and that plate didn't have room for Leila's rich girl problems.

Tasha gunned the engine, tasting the delicious feeling of knowing that Leila, right now, had heard that, and was probably upset.

It was almost like freedom.

-----

LEILA

She yearned after those Saturday nights spent drinking strawberry lemonade and watching the clouds, sun bright, in her eyes, in Tasha's eyes, the bright summer sky turning everything a shade of gold. Flittering, fluttering, old dandelion fluff from spring still in the air, making her nose itch.

She loved to watch as the white puffs blew in the slight breeze. She wished, oh God, did she wish, that she could fly like them, free, warmed by the sun, dancing against the wind.

And when she looked into Tasha's warm hazel eyes, she was part of the way there.

But all she felt now was the deepest chill, winter's chill creeping up her bones and settling in her spine. It froze her. She couldn't move, as her dearest friend and one-sided lover walked away, for what looked like the last time.

-----

DIARY LOG 10/10/40

Today's mission went pretty rough. Those damned beasts keep making the chase harder. I keep hacking into their mainframe to try and disable their cloaking device, but they change the security every time. And it's always so God...damned convoluted. Ugh, I have the worst fucking headache right now. Boss keeps telling me I need lasik, or contacts, or even old-fashioned glasses, but there's no time for that. Not when I'm the only hacker on the Resistance team. We really need to get someone else who can program. Jesus.

End log.

#nicowrites #sbwn #original story #original character

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takenews-blog1 · 6 years

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Disney Deal Could Redraw Fox's Animation Business

New Post has been published on https://takenews.net/disney-deal-could-redraw-foxs-animation-business/

Disney Deal Could Redraw Fox's Animation Business

With Thursday’s information that the Walt Disney Co. is buying 21st Century Fox’s leisure property for $52.four billion, the way forward for Fox’s animation enterprise is now in query.

Since Disney already homes Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, arguably the 2 greatest manufacturers in function animation, will the brand new mega-studio have room for Fox Animation and the Fox-owned Blue Sky Studios?

Primarily based in Greenwich, Connecticut, Blue Sky launches its latest animated function, Ferdinand, on Friday. However Blue Sky’s most respected property is its Ice Age franchise, which has earned greater than $6 billion for the reason that unique 2002 animated function debuted, spawning 4 sequels in addition to a number of animated TV specials and shorts.

“They’re nervous,” one supply within the tight-knit animation neighborhood confides, though he cautions it is “too early to inform” how the Disney-Fox merger may play out.

Animation Guild enterprise consultant Jason McLeod describes the current second as “a wait-and-see scenario. At this level, there aren’t sufficient particulars about what may occur to offer an knowledgeable remark.”

Observes USC animation professor Tim Sito, “Blue Sky is a worthwhile studio, so I do not suppose Disney would part them out.”

However, Sito provides, it “will affect the best way animated movies are distributed. Many animated options are launched round this vacation time and early summer time in shut competitors with each other. At present, Blue Sky’s Ferdinand is about to go up in opposition to Pixar’s Coco and Sony’s The Star. Disney is kind of shrewd in the best way they launch their animated options, in order to not step over each other. I might anticipate they might shift the dates of a Blue Sky launch away from any Pixar, Disney product.”

After Ferdinand, Blue Sky’s subsequent scheduled function launch is Spies in Disguise, primarily based on Lucas Martell’s 2009 animated quick Pigeon: Not possible and that includes a voice forged that features Will Smith and Tom Holland. It’s slated for a Jan. 18, 2019, launch, only a few weeks forward of Warners’ The Lego Film Sequel, which is ready to open Feb. eight, 2019. Past that, there’s Blue Sky’s adaptation of the graphic novel Nimona, which is dated for Feb. 14, 2020.

Blue Sky was based in 1987 simply exterior New York Metropolis by a small staff that included Chris Wedge, the Oscar-winning director of the 1998 animated quick Bunny in addition to such options as Ice Age. The studio initially turned out commercials and different short-film work, transferring into function animation with Ice Age in 1999 following its acquisition by Fox. Blue Sky releases have additionally included the Rio franchise, The Peanuts Film and Horton Hears a Who!.

Its new film Ferdinand, primarily based on Munro Leaf’s youngsters’s ebook a few bull who does not prefer to struggle, earned two Golden Globe nominations earlier this week for finest animated function and finest unique music.

To bolster its family-friendly choices, Fox has additionally introduced Ron’s Gone Mistaken, a brand new venture from its co-production cope with the U.Okay.’s Locksmith Animation. It’s set for a Nov. 6, 2020, launch — only a few weeks earlier than the Nov. 25 date Disney Animation has reserved for an untitled venture.

Exterior of children’ motion pictures, Fox is also growing animated options for a extra grownup viewers. In October, Fox Animation introduced a function primarily based on its profitable TV collection Bob’s Burgers, which is due out in theaters July 17, 2020. That’s only a week earlier than the July 24 date secured for an untitled Sony Footage Animation title and only a month after the June 19 date presently being held for an untitled Pixar movie.

And simply this month, Stoopid Buddy Stoodios, the animation firm behind the long-running Grownup Swim collection Robotic Rooster, signed a first-look cope with Fox Animation, establishing the Untitled Sword Venture.

Given Fox each produces its personal animated motion pictures and in addition offers with exterior suppliers, one other animation insider notes, “The troubling factor about Disney shopping for Fox’s animation property is not simply the potential of dropping Blue Sky as a studio to work for, however the lack of Fox as a studio to distribute indie animation movies. Will Disney be as focused on releasing a movie like Jorge R. Gutiérrez’s E-book of Life [which Fox released in 2014]? What different animated movies could or could not get launched?”

Fox’s strategy to animation has been going via some modifications. With final spring’s Captain Underpants, Fox accomplished its distribution cope with DreamWorks Animation, which was acquired by NBCUniversal within the spring of 2016 and which can launch future titles by way of Common. In that acquisition, DWA turned a part of the identical firm because the Despicable Me franchise’s Illumination Leisure. At the moment, many equally questioned DWA’s future underneath the identical roof as Illumination, however to date each animations studios are coexisting.

Fox Animation additionally has new management: In late October Andrea Miloro and Robert Baird had been named co-presidents, with oversight of Fox Animation and Blue Sky. They succeeded Vanessa Morrison, who was named president of Fox Household.

After all, earlier than Disney can determine what do with Fox and Blue Sky, it should first tackle the management query at its personal Pixar and Disney Animation, the place final month, chief artistic officer John Lasseter introduced that he would take a go away of absence amid allegations of misconduct.

Mia Galuppo contributed to this report.

#Animation #Business #Could #Disney #Fox

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nastyukulele · 6 years

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Wolfenstein 2 New Colossus

First, I want to say I love this game. I was incredibly excited for it when all there was was just rumors about it being in production. New Order was one of my favorite games, and I loved every moment of it. New Colossus takes everything that was amazing about the first game and ramps it up even further, embracing absurdity, and going hog wild in a way that just works.

Spoilers below the cut

The game, as we all know, starts after the battle with Deathshead. BJ has been in a coma, and is crippled. The Kreisau base on Eva’s Hammer is attacked by Engel, still seeking vengeance for BJ killing her Bubi. She almost wins out, capturing BJ and two friends, Caroline and whoever you pick to save from Deathshead. There is now carry over of save data, you are given the choice in a series of flashbacks.

On the flashbacks, you get to learn more about BJ’s childhood. His father is an abusive asshole, and his mother a Jewish woman. I remember that there was fan speculation that BJ might be Jewish, or have Jewish heritage, and I’m very glad they went with this. I think it makes BJ more than just an American soldier fighting for America. He has stakes in killing nazis beyond them being America’s enemy. The flashback sequence shows us that BJ’s dad was a nasty bigot, throwing around the n-word, saying it’s “Up to us to straighten out the queer” and even being anti-semtic toward his own wife. It’s implied that they are only married so that BJ’s father can have access to his wife’s family money, and that he has been squandering that.

After your capture, Caroline is killed by Engel. I think we saw this coming, BJ is in her power armor through (half of) the game, and she wasn’t shown in any of the trailers beyond scenes coming from the first level. It’s a gut punch still, and it’s something that motivates BJ through the early levels.

Early on we are told through inner thoughts of BJ that he is dying, and doesn’t have very long to live, maybe weeks, maybe less. He’s driven to burn through and root out the nazi cancer infecting his country. He tries to hide it from Anya, which mostly just causes angst for them.

The early levels are marked most notably by having half your HP. However, the game makes up by giving you higher armor. It’s still a rough handicap, even on lower difficulty levels. Levels include discovering that nazis have been hiding on the u-boat in a hidden section of the hull, a level similar to the side quests at the Berlin hide-out that took you through catacombs, sneaking through the ruins of Manhattan, and infiltrating Area 52.

Area 52 marks the half-way point, culminating in one of my favorite sequences, where BJ stops by his old house. We’re treated to more flashbacks of his childhood, including him playing with the black girl that so enraged his father in the first flashbacks. All of this comes to a spectacular scene where you collect BJ’s mother’s ring and find his father waiting for him.

BJ’s dad is a proud collaborator, working with the nazis and selling out a number of people, including his own wife. He threatens BJ with a shot gun, to which, in typical Blazko fashion, Billy chops off his father’s arm and kills him with a hatchet. A beautiful moment, and a deserved end to the monster.

Things go to shit from there for BJ. Engel captures him, steals his power armor, and leaves him a chained cripple. He gets humiliated, is forced to watch Super Spesh killed, and are left believing that Anya and the rest of his friends are dead too before he is taken to court.

Then he breaks free and slaughters and entire building of nazis. Which is a dream sequence that ends with BJ hallucinating his mother. BJ is taken away and is finally publicly executed by Engel, beheaded by a sword and his head is dropped to an incinerator.

Yep, half way through the game BJ is killed. It’s okay, it doesn’t stick.

In what is a delightful twist right out of a cheesy B sci-fi movie, his head is swapped for a fake, put in a jar that keeps it alive, and he is given a new genetically engineered body.

With a new lease on life, BJ also gets a new toy, shoulder pads, a harness, or stilts. What you pick doesn’t effect the story, just gameplay. Each is for a different style, and gives you a different ability. I picked the harness because I like stealth.

With the nazis thinking him dead, and with a new body, BJ continues his fight with a new drive. Murdering nazis and recruiting more resistance fighters, BJ builds an army and starts taking out nazi commanders.

BJ explores the New Orleans Ghetto, a walled city of dissidants and deviants that is being purged by the nazis. He manages to rescue a large group of freedom fighters and their leader, Horton, who is a bit of a douche, but is willing to fight after a bit of convincing.

Riding the panzerhound is a fun sequence of taking a flamethrower to nazi scum and incinerating every single one of them in your path. It’s not too hard to get it through to the end of the sequence, since you’ll pick up scraps for it, much like the robot escape from Camp Belica.

It’s decided that to fully kick off the revolution, they need to take out the airship that is used by Engel to quickly respond to any sort of resistance to Nazi rule. They need codes for that, much like you needed codes for the u-boat’s cannon. And where are the codes? In space! But not on the moons. This time you go to Venus!

Disguised as an actor auditioning for the role of none other than William Joseph “Terror-Billy” Blazkowicz, William Joseph “Terror-Billy” Blazkowicz infiltrates the nazi base on Venus where he comes face to face with Actually Hitler.

Hitler is an old decrepit man now, hacking and coughing and walking half bent over. He still has the absurd mustache and a goofy fashy haircut. The encounter is marked by him being a paranoid nut, shooting the other actors when they mess up (this includes you if you get the lines wrong), urinating in an ice bucket, and vomiting on the floor.

During the audition, BJ is given a chance that mirrors one given in the New Order. Much like he could grab Engel’s gun, he can Riverdance on Hitler’s face. BJ gets further with the furher, actually stamping his face in, but then heare evaporated by a robot for his efforts. Worth doing (at least) once, since you are returned to just before the stomp if you do it.

After the audition BJ is selected to be the actor for the film about himself, and he has to escape his room, infiltrate the control room on the Venusian surface, and collect the controls for the airship. A mechanic here that is unique to the level is the coolant. On medium it isn’t much concern. There are plenty of coolant stations and it doesn’t drop fast enough to be a real danger, though you will probably hear the reminder lines from BJ a few times.

Codes in hand, BJ returns to Earth and prepares to steal the highly advanced airship.

But first there is something wrong. The emergency lights are on and it’s only Bombate to greet BJ as he boards the sub. Where is everyone?

Surprise~! It’s BJ’s birthday! You are treated to a hilarious montage of the group enjoying drinks and having a hilarious party that includes a pig ride, Max Hass no-selling BJ’s punches, and Set Roth vomiting in the jar that once held BJ’s head.

After a sequence that is different based on who survived the events of New Order, it is finally time to take the revolution to the nazi’s door.

The airship is not an easy level. There are tons of elite enemies, long fights that are taxing, and a complex sequence to unlock the control room. The roughest fight is the final one, where you have to battle through waves of elite and non-elite soldiers, super-soldiers, and two super robots at once. Once you are finally through that you get to enter the bridge.

BJ is ambushed by nazi soldiers there who come through a bay door with a panzerhound. Luckily for BJ, Anya is there. Remember the shot of pregnant Anya throwing the grenades at the feet of Nazi soldiers from the trailer? That happens here. She slides, tosses the grenades, blows up the nazis in a rain of blood. She has to throw off her jacket because it’s on fire, and the panzerhound is still up. Does that stop her? Hell no. She grabs a pair of shot guns and blasts the robo-dog away, half naked, pregnant, and drenched in blood.

I can see why BJ is so in love with her.

Airship firmly in the control of the heroes, we discover that word has not reached Engel, who is doing an interview on TV below. Well, no time like the present. The gang descends to the surface, breaks into the tv station, and BJ gets to walk through the rafters until he finally gets to the stage and has his one-on-one with the most powerful woman in the reich.

The fight is quick. She shots at BJ, BJ chops off her arm with a hatchet, and then buries the blade in her skull while giving a speech about how fighting for freedom. It’s another intense moment, and you get to top it off with a speech from Grace (and whoever you saved from Deathshead) to the American people to stand up and fight for their freedom.

Roll credits, then a mid-credits scene where BJ proposes to Anya with his mother’s ring, which Engel stole.

It’s an amazing game. The story is handled like a movie, the cinematics have a movie feel, like they are just scenes lifted from a film about BJ. In-game sequences often have a movie-like feel to them as well, and it works really well. New Order did the same thing, and I think it’s what made the game so good.

Actual gameplay is pretty tough. As I have mentioned, even medium difficulty can be hard, and the game isn’t too forgiving. Luckily there is plenty of ways to find health and armor, and there is no shortage of guns and ammo. The heavy weapons are worth picking up if you get into a heavy firefight.

As I have been repeating, I cannot recommend this game enough. It isn’t perfect, but my god, this is a very very good game. Goofy, certainly. Hard, definitely, but if you like killing nazis (as you should) then this is the game for you.

#review #spoilers #wolfenstein 2 #new colossus

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