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rupymerwar · 2 months

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The Diamond Skirt from Pure Collection: A Versatile and Luxurious Investment in Canadian Designer Fashion

The Search for the Perfect Designer Skirt for Women

The Neverending Search

For the modern woman, finding that perfect skirt that blends style, versatility and comfort can feel like an endless quest. With so many options out there, how do you know which one is truly worth the investment? Well, my hunt may have just ended with the discovery of the Diamond Skirt from the renowned women's clothing in Canada brand, Pure Collection.

The First Impression

When the Diamond Skirt arrived at my doorstep, I was instantly enchanted by its sleek, sophisticated packaging. There's just something about an experience that feels elevated from the get-go, isn't there? As I carefully opened the box, I was greeted by a beautiful, deep blue hue that instantly caught my eye.

The moment I pulled out the skirt, I knew I was holding something special. The fabric, a luxurious wool-rich knit, felt incredibly soft and substantial to the touch, with just the right amount of stretch to promise both style and comfort.

Trying It On

Of course, the true test of any garment lies in how it looks and feels once it's on your body. As I slipped into the Diamond Skirt, I was immediately struck by how flattering the fit was. The high waistband smoothed and sculpted in all the right places, while the slight A-line shape skimmed over my curves beautifully.

Versatility Reigns Supreme

Work to Weekend

One of the most impressive aspects of this designer skirt for women is its incredible versatility. In a world where we're constantly seeking pieces that can take us from day to night, work to play, this skirt delivers in spades.

On a typical workday, I found myself reaching for the Diamond Skirt time and time again. Its sophisticated look elevated my standard button-down and blazer combo, lending a touch of polish that instantly made me feel more confident and put-together.

The Art of Layering

But the true magic happened when I started experimenting with different styling options. A crisp white tee and ankle boots gave the skirt a cool, urban edge, while a fitted sweater and over-the-knee boots created a cozy, date-night-ready look.

And let's not forget about the art of layering. The Diamond Skirt's lightweight yet substantial fabric made it the perfect canvas for experimenting with different jackets, cardigans and even vests, allowing me to seamlessly transition my outfit from season to season.

Quality You Can Feel

Built to Last

While style and versatility are undoubtedly important, it's the quality of a garment that truly determines its longevity in your wardrobe. And let me tell you, the Diamond Skirt from Pure Collection does not disappoint on that front.

From the moment you pick it up, you can feel the substantial weight and integrity of the fabric. This isn't some flimsy, fast-fashion piece that will lose its shape or pill after a few wears. Instead, the wool-rich knit is designed to maintain its beautiful drape and softness wash after wash, year after year.

Attention to Detail

But it's not just the fabric that speaks to the quality of this designer skirt for women. It's the thoughtful construction, the impeccable finishing touches, and the attention to detail that truly set it apart.

The seams are expertly sewn, the lining is smooth and comfortable against the skin, and the diamond jacquard pattern is perfectly aligned and symmetrical from every angle. It's these little things that add up to create a garment that looks and feels as luxurious as it should for the price point.

Investing in Quality Women's Clothing in Canada

Canadian-Made with Care

Speaking of price point, it's worth noting that while the Diamond Skirt from Pure Collection may not be the cheapest option on the market, it's an investment piece that truly delivers on quality, style and longevity.

As a consumer who values sustainability and ethical practices, I appreciate that Pure Collection is a Canadian-based brand that prioritizes local production and fair labor standards. Their commitment to creating garments that are built to last aligns perfectly with my own values of investing in quality over quantity.

Cost-Per-Wear

And let's be honest, when you find a piece that seamlessly integrates into your wardrobe, flatters your figure, and makes you feel confident and put-together, the cost-per-wear ratio quickly starts to make sense.

The Bottom Line

In a world saturated with fast fashion and fleeting trends, the Diamond Skirt from Pure Collection stands out as a true testament to the enduring power of quality, versatility and timeless style.

From the moment I first slipped it on, I knew I had found a piece that would become a faithful companion in my wardrobe for years to come. Its flattering fit, luxurious fabric and elegant diamond jacquard pattern come together to create a designer skirt for women that effortlessly transitions from the boardroom to happy hour and everywhere in between.

But what really solidified my love for this garment is the undeniable quality and attention to detail that Pure Collection has poured into its creation. This is a brand that understands the value of investing in pieces that are built to last, both in terms of construction and style longevity.

For those seeking a true investment piece, one that will elevate their wardrobe and make them feel confident and put-together no matter the occasion, the Diamond Skirt is an absolute must-have. It's a reminder that sometimes, splurging on quality women's clothing in Canada is the wisest choice of all.

#Diamond Skirt #Canadian Designer Fashion #Designer Skirt for Women #women's fashion canada #fashion dresses for women #women's dress collection #buy trendy dresses online #Long Skirts For Women #Designer Skirt for women #Full Length Skirts For Women

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insanityclause · 3 years

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SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details of the first five episodes of Disney+’s Loki, & maybe the finale. Maybe.

As always with almost any project from the Kevin Feige run studio, that ride could continue, at least in some form or another. Certainly, the June 9 ‘Glorious Purpose’ premiere of the Michael Waldron penned and Kate Herron directed Loki proved to be the Disney+ and the MCU’s biggest small screen success so far. Also with any Marvel project, past Emmy winner Hiddleston was elusive on what could be coming next, be it in the Loki finale, another season or another appearance in the movies as the MCU shifts into its next phrase.

One thing is clear, after a decade playing the God of Mischief, Hiddleston still has a lot of Loki on the brain, in the best way.Leading towards the finale, I chatted with a UK-based Hiddleston about returning to play Loki and the search for who or what controls the seemingly all knowing, all powerful Time Variance Authority. The Night Manager star also spoke about filming during the coronavirus pandemic, working with Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Richard E. Grant, and Sophia Di Martino, who portrays variant and soulmate Sylvie, and his upcoming AppleTV+ series The Essex Serpent with Claire Danes.

DEADLINE: There’s a great line in this season’s penultimate episode where your Loki and Sylvie are stunned at watch Richard E. Grant’s Classic Loki recreate Asgard to distract Alioth and you say “I think we’re stronger than we realize.” There seems to be a great resonance in the line that there’s a whole lot of Loki coming in the finale and probably more …

HIDDLESTON: I suppose it resonates with the theme that we all wanted to highlight about purpose and about meaning. Loki’s someone who’s probably been deluded by the idea that he’s burdened with glorious purpose, and that perhaps that purpose has been revealed to be fraudulent or meaningless, and maybe his self-image or the role that he has condemned himself to play is redundant.

His experiences through this story have shown him that there are actually more opportunities available to him, and you know, it speaks to this idea, like, can we change? Can we evolve, and in that evolution, is there room to grow? You know, so, I think the stronger than we realize I think is Loki finally understanding that, really, by caring for other people, that maybe there’s power in that, and I found that very touching, and the whole thing is an extraordinary dream.

DEADLINE: Speaking of an extraordinary dream, you have been playing Loki for a decade now, since the first Thor movie, We know you are going to do some voice work in the animated What If…? series, but how has it been having this series directly centering on him, in all his variants, so to speak?

HIDDLESTON: You know Dominic, I have enjoyed it so much, because I felt it was a gift and a privilege to be invited to come and sit at the table and think about what the show might be. Also, I suppose so many of the things that I’ve discovered about Loki as a character in the comics and a character in the Norse myths, in the canon, aspects that I’ve always thought were interesting, and understandably, there hasn’t been time or space in the movies to explore them.

DEADLINE: In terms of who he is?

HIDDLESTON: Those aspects of him have been externalized and embedded into this new story about identity itself and about integrating the disparate fragment of the many selves that he is or perhaps the many selves that we are. You know, we contain multitudes. Loki certainly contains multitudes. We have met many of those multitudes, including Alligator Loki (laughs).

DEADLINE: Sounds like you’re not done with those multitudes yet. From your POV, from conversations with Kevin (Feige) is there more that you see for the character as the MCU heads into its next stages?

HIDDLESTON: Well, I certainly don’t have Kevin’s brain or encyclopedic knowledge or capacity for invention. I’ve been on the ride for a while, and it’s been the most extraordinary journey, and to have lived through different iterations, different phases of the MCU, and I’m so grateful that I’m still here, and it’s been amazing to watch. I feel that the MCU is even more expansive, is even braver, more inclusive than it’s ever been.

DEADLINE: How so?

HIDDLESTON: I think the stories are getting really exciting. Not that they weren’t before, but I think they understand that the investment of the audience is very deep, and they don’t take it for granted for a second. So, yeah, I suppose the perspective I have on how Loki might affect the ongoing course of the MCU is this idea of the multiverse. People have already understood it when Miss Minutes is introducing Loki to the TVA. She talks about the multiverse and the war and that the sacred timeline, which is reality as we know it.

DEADLINE: It opens up the aperture certainly for new stories from all opportunities, doesn’t it?

HIDDLESTON: It raises questions of, well, maybe there are other parallel or alternate universes. Maybe there are other realities, and the possibilities there are endless. I feel that at the end of episode five, Loki and Sylvie are close to discovering the answers to the questions that they have of who is behind the TVA and that, somehow, this will provoke even more curiosity about…

DEADLINE: …Because in the Marvel Universe, answering one set of questions always leads to another set of questions, in many ways.

HIDDLESTON: Right. Yeah. Yeah, and I know that there are lots of, you know, interesting titles of movies that’ve been announced, which kind of hint at where it might be going.

DEADLINE: One of those that hasn’t been officially announced, but is rumored is a Season 2 for Loki, in gear under the temporary title of Architect on call sheets and the like …

HIDDLESTON: Well, yes, maybe, as I say, all the kind of multiple alternate realities are …it’s taken me 10 years to get a handle on this sort of mono timeline. The idea that this might be a multiverse is actually beyond my knowledge of physics.

DEADLINE: Well, I doubt that, but let me ask, and no spoilers for the finale or further, but if Kevin, Marvel, Disney asked you to do more Loki, are you game?

HIDDLESTON: (laughs) I have learned, at this point, having said goodbye to the character more than twice, two and a half times maybe, to make no assumptions. So, I’m also aware that I’m only playing him because of the audience, really. So, it’s not up to me. But I do love playing him, and every time, I seem to find new, interesting things about him. So, yeah, I’m a temporary passenger on Loki’s journey, but we’ll see. We’ll see where the ride goes now.

DEADLINE: On the ride, as the finale looms, there’s a ton of fan speculation out there and so much that people have hooked on to from the show. So, as the man at the center of it, what was your favorite part of Loki the series?

HIDDLESTON: That there was meaning in the making of it.That we crossed the finish line in the middle of a global pandemic and could create something, and more than ever, I felt really grateful for being able to do this job. I think in this there are some of those questions that we were all asking ourselves in the last 18 months in the show, you know, what do our lives mean?📷I love taking Loki in new directions. I love the contributions of my fellow actors, of Owen Wilson and Sophia Di Martino and Richard E. Grant and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Wunmi Masaku, they all brought so much to the table, and I’ll always remember that. You know, I’ll always remember just being in Atlanta with all of them and making our bonkers show. Yeah.

DEADLINE: Making your bonkers show in Atlanta as the world, as America was still in the heat of the pandemic. What was that like, because you were in production and then everything stopped and then you came back, right?

HIDDLESTON: I mean, people have used this word a lot, but it really was unprecedented. I think we did six weeks of filming before the hiatus, and then the production was suspended for four or five months, and we came back. At first, it was unfamiliar because we had to make adjustments, but the thing I remember most of all, quite honestly, is the diligence and resilience and spirit of our cast and crew.

DEADLINE: Really?

HIDDLESTON: Yes, and it remains extremely special for me, this project, for that reason.For me, it just demonstrated the character of these amazing people. It took a huge amount of planning and care and looking after each other. By that, I mean, being in the bubble. So, for many of us, the only other human beings we saw, really, were each other. So, we came to work, and we became a team, and the circumstances fostered this extraordinary team spirit, and so the memory of making it is really my incredible and deep respect and affection for my fellow filmmakers. People like Trish Stanard, our line producer. Richard Graves, our first AD. Kristina Peterson, our second AD. Autumn Durald, DP. Kevin Wright, our supervising producer, and so many others making sure everyone could stay safe and look after each other.It’s really…I find it…it’s very moving, and it’s remarkable, and I just want to salute them all because I couldn’t have done any of it without them.

DEADLINE: In that vein, you have just come off filming The Essex Serpent with Claire Danes for AppleTV+. Very different from Loki, and yet also a tale of what is real and who we are. Is that what attracted you to it on some level?

HIDDLESTON: I read it and immediately connected to it. Read the screenplay, the adaptation. It’s based on a novel by Sarah Perry, which was published in 2016 and is set at the end of the 19th century. It’s an extraordinary story about uncertainty and about our deepest fears and how sometimes our fears can distort our imaginings and how our minds can lie to us. About how we have to guard against that, and Perry sets it in this extraordinary time with a beautiful leading character of Cora Seaborne, played by Claire. Anna Symon adopted it.

There’s this community on the east coast of England who believe that an ancient beast has been awakened by an earthquake and that it’s dislodged all these fossils. But perhaps, it has also dislodged this ancient underwater monster, which has been used to explain certain unusual phenomena. This was in the era when Darwin had just been published a few decades before and people are starting to think, this Charles Darwin, he’s onto something. Still, fear spreads very quickly, and it’s a very fascinating time where science and faith are in conflict.

DEADLINE: When you describe it like that it sounds very Loki indeed.

HIDDLESTON: Maybe the themes are very Loki. Maybe that’s where they join up, but I’m playing a 19th century vicar who is trying to contain his community. You feel very destabilized by all these rumors. So, yeah, to go from Loki to a vicar was definitely new, a new territory.

DEADLINE: Literally and figuratively?

HIDDLESTON: Well, it’s my first significant time in Essex, where we filmed, which I feel embarrassed about. I’ve been to Essex before, but I’ve never been to the very, very eastern, most eastern coast of Essex. It’s the Blackwater Estuary, which then feeds into the River Thames, and it’s a very ancient part of England. It’s so marshy, it’s where in Great Expectations, that’s where Pip meets Magwitch for the first time. It’s all foggy and muddy and marshy and quite atmospheric and a perfect place to set a story about of uncertainty and fear and gothic romance. Clio Barnard directed it, and working with her has been amazing.

DEADLINE: You know, it occurs to me that of all the main Marvel characters, Loki has been such a constant, yet so ethereal in so many ways too. Is it jarring for you to jump back into the role with all the uncertainty it brings?

HIDDLESTON: You know, I’ve always seen it as sort of an extraordinary and surprising constant in my life for a decade. But, I don’t take it for granted because I don’t often…you know, it may end. It has actually ended, and those endings have been conclusive. I really thought a couple of years ago, after I made Avengers: Infinity War, you know, we all know what happens in that scene, and I thought, that’s it.I thought it’s over, and I was really proud to have been part of it. I was grateful for my time, but I thought that, my work would go off in a different direction. So, the idea that I got to come back and have another go was a complete delight, it truly was.

#Tom Hiddleston #Interview #Loki #The Essex Serpent

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eightyonekilograms · 3 years

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Someone on the Discord brought up fertility

Just like last time I'm lazy and just going to dump it instead of editing.

[5:10 PM] Me: Oh boy, I have thoughts about this

[5:12 PM] Me: I haven't brought it up here but demographics has been one of my covid obsessions. I got a couple books about it (What to Expect When No One's Expecting, One Billion Americans, etc.), read all the articles, etc.

[5:15 PM] Me: I agree with you about a couple things: namely that if we had "infinite free energy" we'd be a a lot better off in many ways including demographically, but I disagree with most of your other points.

[5:18 PM] Me:

Also we need not assume decline in population growth is chronic.

This is a tricky statement because there's a social aspect and a mathematical aspect. Socially you're correct in the sense that whatever trends are driving the current decline could, in theory, reverse at any time. But mathematically, population decline is exactly symmetrical to population growth: it's exponential (technically it's logistic, but that's the same as exponential in the short term), because having fewer people means fewer people to make more people later on.

[5:20 PM] Me:

Infact there is some evidence to suggest that we actually did more science when we had 4-6 billion people.

I disagree with the implication here: we used to do more science because there was more low-hanging fruit, which is now plucked, and further discoveries require more resources (human and financial). Actually one of the big reasons I disagree with Ray Kurzweil and the other singularitarians is that when they show these impressive-looking exponential curves about scientific progress, they quietly hide under the rug that these increases are requiring ever-more investment (again, in both people and money) to accomplish. Just to pick a random example, every time chip manufacturers go to a new process (14nm -> 10nm -> 7nm -> 5nm -> 2nm etc.), the cost to build the fab basically doubles. I remember a couple years back Intel had to spend $5 billion to hit a new process shrink; now TSMC needs to spend $28 billion to hit their next target: https://www.wsj.com/articles/tsmc-to-spend-up-to-record-28-billion-in-advanced-chips-capacity-11610623587)

[5:23 PM] Me: I will try to find it but I came across a paper a little while ago laying out in detail that the cost of new scientific discoveries has been steadily increasing over time. It's not that there's anything necessarily going wrong with the scientific process, this is just what you'd expect as we pick low-hanging fruit: the later discoveries necessarily become harder. But if you extrapolate that trend out forever you eventually hit a point where every single person needs to be a scientist, and every dime of capital in existence, needs to be used to make any new discoveries.

[5:26 PM] Me: (In most fields we're a long way from that point, but it actually is here or nearly here in e.g. particle physics. What I have been hearing from leading-edge particle physicists is that we've got maybe one or two more generations of particle accelerators left before we reach a point where, to probe any further (e.g. to see if string theory is true), we'd need to build accelerators the size of the Solar System, which would take more raw material than the mass of the Earth. Barring some new theoretical breakthroughs, we might actually nearing the "end" of high-energy physics.)

[5:30 PM] Me: Fortunately most fields aren't at that point, but my point is that the more we discover, the more human capital is required to make further progress. That's a tricky enough proposition with a growing population, never mind a shrinking one.

[5:36 PM] Me:

I don't think it is safe to assume lowering population growth is a biological disorder so much as a conscious choice most people in the younger generations are making for a variety of obvious reasons.

I agree with this, but it's important to dig into that a little and understand the reasons. For example, I'm not yet convinced that there is a mass epidemic of people choosing childlessness because of anxiety about e.g. climate change. In internet comments sections you certainly see lots of people making that claim, but talk is cheap and randos on the internet can say whatever they want. In terms of the actual reasons, the data I've seen shows that number of children continues to track closely with a couple data points, mostly housing costs, expected lifetime income and uncertainly about future income flow.

[5:40 PM] Me: Third, I think you should give more weight to the concerns Rhys brought up than you currently are. The environmental stresses of more people is certainly a big issue, but I think it's one that can be dealt with without too much struggle with increased deployment of clean energy (one of the few optimistic data points lately is that there's a staggering amount of wind and solar power being deployed every year) and a couple of lifestyle changes like eating less meat. Not to say these are easy, but contrast with the pretty serious problems of population decline, particularly the social safety net.

[5:41 PM] Me: And I don't just mean the explicit ones like Social Security, but even market-based, privatized ones like retirement savings have a hidden reliance on a growing population.

[5:42 PM] Me: When you "save for retirement", you're not stockpiling food and water to live off when you no longer work, you're collecting financial assets that you expect to sell to someone else and live off that income. But if there's no one to sell to, that doesn't work.

[5:44 PM] Me: This is a problem that's starting to show up at the top end of the income stack: see this WSJ article about retirees who can't find anyone to buy their $3 million homes: https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-growing-problem-in-real-estate-too-many-too-big-houses-11553181782. It's easy to have schadenfreude here at those poor rich people who can't unload their huge mansion, but remember that this is inherently a problem which will start at the top of the income brackets and gradually make its way downward.

[5:46 PM] Me: You can push this problem back for a while by increasing taxes on the rich, and I do indeed think those should go up, but in a declining population that only buys you a little time. Remember that "money" is nothing but a claim on some fraction of total economic output. e.g. when you hold a dollar bill, you're essentially holding a note entitling you to one-zillionth of American GDP.

[5:47 PM] Me: At a certain point once population falls then total aggregate output necessarily falls too, and at that point taxing the rich hits rapidly diminishing returns: you're just claiming a bigger share of falling output

[5:49 PM] Me: One thing to keep in mind here is that most economies, but especially the U.S. economy, are primarily driven by consumer spending, i.e. normal people just buying and selling stuff to each other.

[5:50 PM] Me: This is why e.g. mass immigration isn't as huge a deal as a bunch of nativists like to think: immigrants get jobs, but they also spend money on goods and services just like anyone else: they generate labor demand as well as taking up supply

[5:51 PM] Me: But what I'm driving at here is that, again, a consumer-spending-driven economy with a falling population is going to get poorer pretty much by definition: fewer people buying stuff means fewer jobs to produce that stuff.

[5:54 PM] Me: Or to put another way, to use a ridiculously simplified model, GDP = Population X Productivity, and so if you take the derivative, then GDP' ~ Population' + Productivity'. So in a falling population environment, you need a lot of heavy lifting in terms of forever-increasing productivity in order for economic growth to be positive. And while there might be improvements down the pipe, frankly we kind of seem tapped out on productivity growth already

[5:55 PM] Me: Now, one possible response here is that we should work out how to have an economic system which delivers prosperity without endless growth, and I do agree we need that. But just saying that doesn't fix the problem that right now we don't have it and people will be poorer in a world without growth.

[5:56 PM] Me: And in such a world, I think it actually becomes harder to successfully transition to whatever post-scarcity economy can fix the problem, because people will be caught up in fighting over a shrinking pie.

[5:58 PM] Me: The neoliberal capitalist mindset of "a rising tide lifts all boats" isn't totally true and has been used to justify all kinds of nasty plutocratic behavior, but it isn't entirely false either. Without growth, at least in the system we have now, wealth distribution inherently becomes a zero-sum game. And that could get really ugly.

[5:59 PM] Me: So, that's most of what I have to say about why a falling population would be bad. But that's the easy part. Where this gets really complicated is why it's happening and what to do about it

[6:00 PM] Me: Now, I think one of the reasons I've been so fascinated by this is that it's been a pessimistic year, and falling birth rates are kind of the perfect pessimistic problem because I don't really see an easy way out. Also I'm just annoyed by partisans in general, and this is a perfect problem for that because it sort of frustrates partisans on all sides.

[6:02 PM] Me: e.g. the left mainly talks about the economic causes and proposes a variety of policy solutions, but an ugly little secret here is that government policy to increase birth rates has basically a perfect, unbroken track record of total failure

[6:03 PM] Me: All kinds of countries (mostly in Europe, but also in East Asia) have implemented all kinds of pro-natalist policies, and for the most part they have accomplished pretty much nothing. (Amusingly, this even goes back to antiquity: in the first couple centuries AD Roman Emperors were also concerned with falling birth rates, and implemented a variety of reforms that didn't do anything)

[6:03 PM] Me: You could always say they didn't go far enough, but at some point you're making an unfalsifiable hypothesis

[6:06 PM] Me: Meanwhile on the right, they're constantly talking about cultural factors, but this runs into two problems: it's again a set of mostly unfalsifiable hypotheses, but even worse since they're all tangled up in the Right's usual rants about The Way Things Ought to Be, but even if they turned out to be true, it seems like a hopeless cause because we basically have no levers to change culture.

[6:07 PM] Me: "Why does culture develop in the direction it does" is one of those huge questions I'm not sure we'll ever have a complete answer for, but I think it has to mostly involve technological determinism.

[6:08 PM] Me: https://www.sciphijournal.org/index.php/2017/11/12/why-the-culture-wins-an-appreciation-of-iain-m-banks/ <-- this is a great article explaining what I'm talking about, as well as explaining why you should read Iain Banks

[6:09 PM] Me: But my point here is that all the cultural changes the Right laments as causing people to have fewer children, assuming they're even correct which I am definitely not granting, are pretty much all products of industrialization. You can't roll them back without undoing the Industrial Revolution. At least not without an insane level of authoritarianism

[6:10 PM] Me: So on the policy side we have a bunch of levers which don't do anything, and on the culture side there are no levers at all.

#meanwhile on the discord

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twh-news · 3 years

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‘Loki’s Tom Hiddleston Teases Marvel Series Finale, What It All Means & Is There More Of The God Of Mischief To Come?

By Dominic Patten | Deadline

SPOILER ALERT: This article contains details of the first five episodes of Disney+’s Loki, & maybe the finale. Maybe.

EXCLUSIVE: “I have learned, at this point, having said goodbye to the character more than twice, two and a half times maybe, to make no assumptions,” says Loki’s Tom Hiddleston as the hours tick away to the finale of the Disney+ series drops early on Wednesday morning. “We’ll see where the ride goes now,” the Marvel alum adds. As always with almost any project from the Kevin Feige run studio, that ride could continue, at least in some form or another. Certainly, the June 9 ‘Glorious Purpose’ premiere of the Michael Waldron penned and Kate Herron directed Loki proved to be the Disney+ and the MCU’s biggest small screen success so far. Also with any Marvel project, past Emmy winner Hiddleston was elusive on what could be coming next, be it in the Loki finale, another season or another appearance in the movies as the MCU shifts into its next phrase.

One thing is clear, after a decade playing the God of Mischief, Hiddleston still has a lot of Loki on the brain, in the best way.

Leading towards the finale, I chatted with a UK-based Hiddleston about returning to play Loki and the search for who or what controls the seemingly all knowing, all powerful Time Variance Authority. The Night Manager star also spoke about filming during the coronavirus pandemic, working with Owen Wilson, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Wunmi Mosaku, Richard E. Grant, and Sophia Di Martino, who portrays variant and soulmate Sylvie, and his upcoming AppleTV+ series The Essex Serpent with Claire Danes.

DEADLINE: In terms of who he is?

DEADLINE: How so?

DEADLINE: It opens up the aperture certainly for new stories from all opportunities, doesn’t it?

DEADLINE: …Because in the Marvel Universe, answering one set of questions always leads to another set of questions, in many ways.

HIDDLESTON: Right. Yeah. Yeah, and I know that there are lots of, you know, interesting titles of movies that’ve been announced, which kind of hint at where it might be going.

DEADLINE: One of those that hasn’t been officially announced, but is rumored is a Season 2 for Loki, in gear under the temporary title of Architect on call sheets and the like …

DEADLINE: Well, I doubt that, but let me ask, and no spoilers for the finale or further, but if Kevin, Marvel, Disney asked you to do more Loki, are you game?

HIDDLESTON: That there was meaning in the making of it.

That we crossed the finish line in the middle of a global pandemic and could create something, and more than ever, I felt really grateful for being able to do this job. I think in this there are some of those questions that we were all asking ourselves in the last 18 months in the show, you know, what do our lives mean?

I love taking Loki in new directions. I love the contributions of my fellow actors, of Owen Wilson and Sophia Di Martino and Richard E. Grant and Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Wunmi Masaku, they all brought so much to the table, and I’ll always remember that. You know, I’ll always remember just being in Atlanta with all of them and making our bonkers show. Yeah.

DEADLINE: Really?

HIDDLESTON: Yes, and it remains extremely special for me, this project, for that reason.

For me, it just demonstrated the character of these amazing people. It took a huge amount of planning and care and looking after each other. By that, I mean, being in the bubble. So, for many of us, the only other human beings we saw, really, were each other. So, we came to work, and we became a team, and the circumstances fostered this extraordinary team spirit, and so the memory of making it is really my incredible and deep respect and affection for my fellow filmmakers. People like Trish Stanard, our line producer. Richard Graves, our first AD. Kristina Peterson, our second AD. Autumn Durald, DP. Kevin Wright, our supervising producer, and so many others making sure everyone could stay safe and look after each other.

It’s really…I find it…it’s very moving, and it’s remarkable, and I just want to salute them all because I couldn’t have done any of it without them.

DEADLINE: When you describe it like that it sounds very Loki indeed.

DEADLINE: Literally and figuratively?

I thought it’s over, and I was really proud to have been part of it. I was grateful for my time, but I thought that, my work would go off in a different direction. So, the idea that I got to come back and have another go was a complete delight, it truly was.

#loki #loki series #tom hiddleston #interview #article #deadline #loki spoilers #spoilers #loki series spoilers

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gunnerpalace · 4 years

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Hi! Same anon as the previous one. Tbh, I agree wholeheartedly with you. Y'see I do ask rhetorically,too but i could really accept and understand how and why ppl can be oblivious to IchiRuki, and somehow felt that the 'canon' should suffice, even the most excruciating of all is the fact a number found the ending even acceptable (ships aside, too). Again, I could respect that. But it's my greatest bane when ppl ask 'why' and not be clear they are asking rhetorically because I literally will

provide you an actual answer. And I get it, it’s the reason why ppl find shipping wars toxic and silly. But then again, as human, conflicts are always part of us (partly because as social psych explains so, we are gravitated to the negative for that allows us to change and survive), and the reason why “logical fallacies” are coined in the first place. Human will always debate, and argue about something; the only thing we could change is how we approach the opposing views.

Again, I dont condone any way, shape or form of abuse and harm. In some certain extent, I could perhaps understand it’s much harder for some IH to approach the actual argument being there’s either too much noise, and trapped in their own island between sea of salt. Thus becoming too acquianted w/ few IH who shared the same thought until it became their views as the only truth (see, that’s why its important to have debates! it is what keep us grounded and fair! Just like you said)

Who am I to speak though? I never ever challenged anyone anyways. And as you said, you just have to understand things in every way you could possibly think of–endless ‘whys’. Which is where I agree in your reply the most–this silly fandom wars is just the black mirror to every truth that lies beneath human psyche–the dark and the grimy. Heck, being a psych major is like staring at dark hole–at times, good, but most just plain confusing, revolting even or just heartbreaking.

Sorry it’s been long, but for the final of this ask: let me tell how glad I was with IchiRuki fandom I found in tumblr. It was the saltiest I’ve ever been (im not generally a fandom person anyways) but it’s the himalayan salt–expensive and actually nutritive it really deepened my desire to become wiser in general. And you for your wonderful essays, critiques and whatnot. I definitively would love to talk with you more not only about IchiRuki but the wonders and nightmare that us humans! Kudos!

I have sitting in my drafts a post spelling out my thoughts on “canon” (and thus, the people who cling to it) in that as a concept it privileges:

officiality over quality when it comes to validity (thus violating Sturgeon’s law)

corporations (intellectual property rights holders) over fans, and thus capitalists over proletarians

hierarchical dominance over mutualist networking within fandom

curative fandom over transformative fandom

genre over literary content

plot over characters

events over emotions

It is notable that (1) generally degrades art as a whole, (2) generally advances the capitalist agenda, and (3–7) generally advances the dominance of men over women (as the genders tend to be instructed by society to view these as A. dichotomies rather than spectrums, and B. to ascribe gender to them and make them polarities). These form the sides of a mutually reinforcing power structure (in the typical “Iron Triangle” fashion) designed to preserve and maintain the status quo.

Who really benefits from say, the policing of what is or is not “canon” in Star Wars? Disney, first and foremost. And then whomever (almost certainly male) decides to dedicate their time to memorizing the minutiae of whatever that corporation has decided is “legitimate.”

One can imagine a universe in which fan fic is recognized by companies for what it is: free advertising. (Much like fan art already is.) Instead, it is specifically targeted by demonetization efforts in a way that fan art isn’t. Why? Because it demonstrates that corporate control and “official” sanction has no bearing on quality, and it is thus viewed as undermining the official products.

In the same way, by demonstrating that most “canonical” works are frankly shit, it undermines the investiture of fans in focusing on details that are ultimately errata (the events, the plot, the genre), which is the core function of curative fandom and the reason for its hierarchical structure. The people who “know the most” are at the top, but what they “know” is basically useless garbage. And those people so-engaged are, of course, usually male.

To “destroy” the basis of their credibility, and indeed the very purpose of their community, is naturally viewed by them as an attack.

(This is not to say that efforts to tear down internal consistency within established cultural properties are good unto themselves, or even desirable. For example, efforts to redefine properties such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and Ghostbusters, for the sake of a identity-politics agenda have largely A. failed as art, B. failed as entertainment, C. failed to attract the supposedly intended audience, and D. failed to advance the agenda in question. Trying to repurpose extant media in the name of culture wars is essentially always doomed to failure unless it is done deftly and gradually.)

(At the same time, this also shows what I was talking about last time, with regard to people seeing whatever they want to see. You will see people complain that Star Trek and Doctor Who didn’t “used to be so political,” which is obviously nonsense. These shows were always political. What changed was how their politics were presented. For example, Star Trek has, since TNG, always shown a nominally socialist or outright communist future, but was beloved by plenty of conservatives because they could [somehow] ignore that aspect of it.)

Of course, almost no one is seriously suggesting that one side of the spectrums outlined above be destroyed, rather merely that a new balance be struck upon the spectrum. But, as we have seen time and again in society, any threat to the status quo, whether that be 20% of Hugo Awards going to non-white male authors or the top income tax rate in America being increased by a measly 5.3% (from 28.7% to 34%… when the all-time high was 94% and for over 50 years it was above 50%) is a threat. This is why, for example, Republicans are out there branding AOC as a “socialist” when her policies are really no different at all from a 1960 Democrat who believed in FDR’s New Deal. (Which they, of course, have also demonized as “socialism.”)

(As an aside, all this ignores the fact that most of the “literary canon” of Western civilization, or at least English literature… is Biblical or historical fan fic.)

And this is when I finally get to my point.

Those people out there who denigrate and mock shippers and shipping, the people who hurl “it reads like fan fiction” as an insult, and so on, are the people who benefit from and enjoy the extant power structure. You will see the same thing with self-identified “gamers” complaining about “fake girl gamers.” Admitting that the hobby has a lot of women in it, and a lot of “casuals,” and is indeed increasingly dominated by “non-traditional demographics” is an affront to the constructed identity of being a “gamer.” They are “losing control.” And they don’t like it.

This exact same sort of population is what the “fanbase” of Bleach has been largely reduced down to through a slow boiling off of any actual quality. Of course they’re dismissive of people who are looking for anything of substance: their identity, their “personal relationship” with the franchise, is founded on a superficial appreciation of it: things happening, flashy attacks, eye-catching character designs, fights, etc.

(What this really boils down to, at heart, is that society at large has generally told men that emotions are bad, romance and relationships of all kinds are gross, and that thinking and reflecting on things is stupid. So of course they not only don’t care about such things, but actively sneer at them as “girly” or “feminine,” which is again defined by society at large as strictly inferior. And this gender divide and misogyny is of course promulgated and reinforced by the powers that be, the capitalists, to facilitate class divisions just like say racism generally is.)

(The latest trick of these corporate overlords has been the weaponization of “woke” culture to continue to play the people off one another all the time. “If you don’t like this [poorly written, dimensionless Mary Sue] Strong Female Character, then you are a racist misogynist!” They are always only ever playing both sides for profit, not advancing an actual ideological position. It is worth noting that there was a push by IH some years ago to define IR as “anti-feminist” for critiquing Orihime for essentially the exact same reasons [admittedly, not for profit, but still as critical cover].)

Which makes it very curious, therefore, that the most ardent IH supporters tend to be women. (Though there are more than a few men, they seem to tend to support it because it is “canon” and to attack it is to attack “canon” and thus trigger all of the above, rather than out of any real investment.) I think there are a number of reasons for this (which I have detailed before) and at any rate it is not particularly surprising; 53% of white women voted for Trump, after all.

What we are really seeing in fandom, are again the exact same dynamics that we see at larger and larger scales, for the exact same reasons. The stakes are smaller, but the perception of the power struggle is exactly the same.

Of course, the people who are involved in these things rarely think to interrogate themselves as to the true dimensions and root causes of their motivations. People rarely do that in general.

Putting all that aside, I’m glad that you have found a place you enjoy and feel comfortable, and thank you for the kind words, although I am not of the opinion that there is anything poignant about the non-fiction I write. It is, as I keep trying to emphasize, all there to be seen. One just has to open their eyes. So, it’s hard for me to accept appreciation of it.

Anyway, don’t feel shy about coming off of anon rather than continuing to send asks. We don’t really bite.

#Asks

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eztria · 5 years

Text

League of Villains Youtuber Au

written with @robot-naps and @bladeofolympus, including our interpretations and headcanons (ily nerds)

Shigaraki - he’s a gamer, obviously. he plays all kinds of games, although strategic and open world ones are his personal favorites. uploads videos regularly, everyday. in his videos he’s usually level-headed and observant. while playing he comments on the mechanics and what could be done better in certain aspects. he’s definitely a completionist who plays games on the hardest difficulty. one of his longest ongoing series is a Minecraft let’s play which he collabs with Dabi

Dabi - he’s branching out and owns Two channels (dabigames and dabipyro, as @bladeofolympus named them). on dabigames he mostly indulges in fighting and shooting games (he also unironically enjoys the lego games), while dabipyro consists of videos of him building elaborate constructions, only to later burn them (or just straight up arson). either way the house is nearly burning down at least three times a week and seeing Dabi on fire in the background of others’ videos became a norm (newcomers to his channel are very worried about him)

Toga - she’s a prankster. most of her pranks are very elaborate and well-thought out. while recording she explains the whole process of setting them up and the execution in detail. she’s very methodical and even though she pranks the league fairly often, each time feels different and is surprising (or terrifying). usually no one gets hurt (or at least badly hurt), there are times she does go overboard, but that’s what you have your portal dad for

Twice - he’s a vlogger!! basically a bnha equivalent of Jenna Marbles. his content is the most wholesome of the bunch! regularly collabs with or just records the other members, catching the rare moments where they are at peace or just enjoying themselves. all of his videos have clickbait-ish titles but they are 100% true every time and Very bizzare. Twice is full of energy and his channel is clearly a fruit of his passion. often times holds streams and q&as

Kurogiri - a distinguished owner of a cooking channel. all his videos are very calming. he likes to record with the family dog in the kitchen (its a shiba inu named Mashiro, created by @robot-naps). he puts a lot of effort into making his videos accessible and easy to understand. it’s fairly common to spot the league members going completely feral in the background as he prepares the meals. from time to time he uploads recordings of the gang acting like a wholesome family, because he’s a proud dad

Mr Compress - he has a magic show/tricks focused channel. maintains a persona during his performances. he’s very serious about his videos and is willing to shoot multiple takes so they come out perfect. his main goal is to entertain the viewer. treats his channel like his career. he’s the most extra and flashy of the members for the sake of aesthetic

Spinner - his channel is anime related. most of his videos are reviews and in-depth analysis of certain series or tropes. he gets very invested into the series he’s watching/talking about and oftentimes ends up making over an hour long videos. he indulges in cosplay from time to time (Magne helps him out with the makeup). his thumbnails look very anime, so some people assume he’s just That One Anime Guy

Magne - she’s a makeup artist! her tutorials are targeted towards her fellow trans women! probably the most successful out of everyone in the league, due to all the sponsorships and deals with cosmetic companies she has. constantly collabs with others. her videos are not only funny, but also educational, because not only is she entertaining the audience, but she also explains the mistakes inexperienced people make and how to avoid them

Mustard - he’s in charge of a drama commentary channel. before he tackles any story, he does his research though, and presents the facts as best as he can. would be a perfectly neutral channel if it wasn’t for his obvious bias towards the villains. he posts rants about hero society from time to time

Muscular - he’s a motivational speaker, who records his videos while working out! aggressively encourages people to take care both of their bodies and minds. has various videos about training routines and encourages people to reach out to him, in case they need help coming up with their own

Moonfish - he doesn’t have a consistent theme for his channel, because he gets easily distracted. will probably record a few videos in a certain format/on a certain topic and then drop it the next week in favour of something completely different

+bonus info:

Shigaraki and Dabi do couples challenges for any milestones they reach. their fans make compilations of sweet moments they have, but both Shigaraki and Dabi immediately report them (bc those nerds find affection embarrassing)

they all live in one house so imagine the complete Chaos and endless possibilities for mischief

Giran doesn’t know anything about Youtube and constantly appears in the background of everyone’s videos. the fanbase basically made him a cryptid

Kurogiri regularly scolds Mr Compress for disappearing furniture

“Everyone: is your son okay?? Kurogiri: this isn’t the first time this happened” - via @robot-naps

there’s an ongoing rivarly between the LoV and the Seventh Precincts channels and it all started when Magne was punched by Overhaul (She Lives In This Au Because I Said So). sometimes people can see the both gangs fighting in the background of the videos

“they do a video on the collective channel watching Do Not Get Angry videos and there's a clip of Endeavor and Every Single Person boos” - via @bladeofolympus

“Dabi one day just drops a link on his Twitter to evidence of all the shit Endeavor has done and the internet explodes” - via @bladeofolympus

everyone calls Mustard a 10 yo baby and refuse to aknowledge he’s older than that

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beneaththetangles · 4 years

Text

Teasing Master Takagi-san, and an Easter after Lent

Teasing Master Takagi-San has been a joyful surprise for me. This slice-of-life school comedy about the excessively self-conscious Nishikata and his clever and humorous female deskmate, Takagi-san, is full of color and light and small moments in which I could find myself—and God—went much further than I thought it would, and really pulled me along for the ride.

And very appropriately, as this is a twofold story about gradual change for the better in the midst of daily life, about heading in a direction and being able to see more clearly as you grow. It’s about being guided, which requires hope, and about what seems a messy cycle of everyday chaos at first glance, but is really a path. After all, our everyday life may be, in fact, a series of miracles, and one day I will join Japesland and write about why Our Lord probably likes Nichijou.

Takagi-San may not have the crazy originality and brilliance of that series, but it has strongly reminded me of how I felt watching it as well as other favorite comedies of mine like the Haruhi Suzumiya series, Toradora, OreGairu, Barakamon, and Ore Monogatari, all fish-out-of-the-water stories of a sort.

Enduring the crazy status quo, half-knowing that something is growing and solidifying at the other side, as in all romance, as in Christian life, and as in Lent too, which is like a small parable of Christian life, I must confess Takagi-San has rapidly become one of my favorites, and has also taught me a great deal.

On the surface, Takagi-san seemed like a well-paced mix of the similarly named Tonari no Seki-kun (which I also enjoyed a lot) and Tsuki ga Kirei. There are the seemingly endless variations of the same basic premise, each done in a wildly inventive way. There is the absurdist character comedy centered in small moments. There is the indirect connection through a feeling of “but I can´t help but be interested.” There is the recreation of the school ethos, with all its small pleasures and small torments (Get yelled at in class—the horror!). And on the other hand, there is also the attention to detail, the small moments, the side characters, the luscious colour and detail and developing relationships of the second. Yet, too-cute shows usually push me away (it ended up happening even with Tsuki ga Kirei, despite its other virtues), but here, the teasing, the constant battle of wits, the slow reveal of new aspects of our characters, did the trick: I was invested in them from beginning to the end.

Part of its appeal for me is that I remember, and can still imagine, how nightmarish it would have been to be sit next to a Takagi-san as a kid. I would have died. At that time, I was a good student, I practiced a faith that few around me practiced, and I did read a lot of books that nobody else read, so it was only natural for me to model many of my attitudes on those books. Sometimes this was helpful, and I’m glad I did that instead of finding other models. Oftentimes I was more or less socially awkward and self-serious, a time-traveler from the Victorian era or downright ridiculous, bordering on having the infamous 8th-grade Syndrome. In time, my demeanor at school became that of a Hikki (more so around girls). I would go in my school suit as if it was armor. While I changed at university (not without a not-so-little help from my friends), I was still told once by a classmate that I was the most serious person he had ever known, and I’m intimately familiar with all species of Phariseeism you can think of, and maybe more.—Luckily, my parents are wise and dealt with all my antics with patience and a good sense of humor, and God played the role of a Takagi-san in my life. That is, He teased me, threw me off balance, told me who He was, and patiently guided me so I didn’t become completely trapped in my own defense mechanisms. Like Norman in The Promised Neverland, He was the one who told me something like, “Come with me, and I´ll show you something cool.”—That being so, I really appreciate how without fail, Takagi-san teases Nishikata in a way which subtly helps him mature and develop, while also making herself known to him. Her jokes are never separated from her appreciation for him. It is truly an art. She pays attention to him, to how he thinks, to what he likes and dislikes, to what he seeks and to how he reacts, and uses all that to play him. She has the courage to make herself comical and compete, and seeks the occasion with delicacy and cunning cleverness, again and again. She searches for the weak spot in his defenses, and for the correct word and the correct time. She patiently waits, and when the time comes, she takes him out of the frontiers of his small world like a rollercoaster, showing him a ray of intimacy he did not know she knew (or even that existed) and places him again in the floor of a broader world, shared to a greater degree and more open to the true meaning, to the joyful surprise, to the deep adventure.

And now I will discuss more specific aspects of the plot, so spoilers ahead.—Nishikata may or may not have realized, but Takagi never humiliates him for the sake of humiliation alone. She does it to let him know when he is being ridiculous; to make him acknowledge what he likes and dislikes; to strengthen their bond; and to encourage him to try harder. She offers him a way, and asks for him to choose to go on at the crucial times. She trusts him. God has acted like that many times in my own life, and in that I see the fatherhood of God the Father, the intimate knowledge and loving wisdom of the Holy Spirit, and the humanity of Christ, Who told the Apostles, “Let the children come unto near me.”—Just as He approaches in the Bible and the Gospel to each person at His own pace, to John and James through the Baptist and a day of hanging out, to Peter through the miraculous catch of fish, to the Samaritan by asking her for water and discussing Jew-Samaritan issues, to Zacchaeus by requesting he host Him at his house, to the sickly woman by letting her touch Him in a crowd, or to the Canaanite by debating and testing her, He has often chosen to approach me and make my head spin with His unique sense of humor, and offered me a way which certainly takes control out of my hands in many situations, but that I would not change for any other. And I am very grateful.—The path of the Christian, for me at least, feels very much like that of Nishikata sometimes. After all, God knows everything, and if I am being dumb, evil, or infantile, He sees it at first glance. Yet, He is kind, and interested in develop a personal bond, an alliance. So He speaks to me every day while everyday life goes on, challenging me, putting up with my antics, leading me further, showing me my folly, forgiving me, taking the effort to get me to feel that He really understands. And from there, it is a strange and sometimes downright embarrassing world full of crazy situations where I find myself confessing my blackest sins to a guy I just met; asking for a McFish for the first time in my life because it is Lent; returning at once forty books I had been taking out of the library during the years; engaging in practices, prayers and devotions that only in time come to “unblock,” so to speak, their meaning; trying to love in some way the cartoonish teacher whose philosophy and manners with which I violently disagree; the cheerleader-like classmate who constantly shows off how rich her family is or to the man trying to rip me off twice with the same story on the street; discovering that I am crying at the Passion; singing at the Church with the very elderly choir; letting Christ wash my feet or sharing all this in an article at Beneath the Tangles. And this is not even the crazies part. It is being a long and strange journey.

Takagi’s trust in Nishikata has another aspect I like: It highlights how chaste he is. Nishikata is often dumb, very much immature, believing everything he sees on TV and would die before admitting that he enjoys a romantic comedy show, but he is remarkably noble and respectful in dealing with Takagi-san. Chastity as a virtue is not a popular topic outside a Christian context, and may make him sound like a loser. Yet, he is not losing. He is fiercely competing with a girl who teases him all the time, yet he wouldn’t take advantage of her, respecting her space and her intimacy, refusing to risk hurting her feelings even at the cost of the game and the joke, and rushes to protect her whenever she is in danger. He will not tickle her, even though she tickles him. She can be alone with him, flirt with him, close her eyes in front of him, or make herself vulnerable, knowing that she is safe, that he would refuse to take advantage of her.—He wants to trick her (and so badly!), but never to humiliate, use, or demean her. He chooses to interpret Takagi’s teasing as a challenge to become stronger, both physically and in cunning, and he does, everyday. It is meant as effort, as he is being teased and they are always competing, and more so as their bonds grow. Of course, giving his immaturity and the context of romantic comedy, his barriers on this matter are sometimes excessive and even an obstacle, but I cannot help feeling that he puts this embarrassment to good use.

As Takagi-san, I admire that: I´d rather be cool than uncool, but I´d rather be as chaste as him when dealing with girls and women, who are the precious daughters of God. The life of St. Joseph’s example (Medieval Otaku commented on this here a few years ago), for instance, is one of trusting God, taking care of Our Lord and of His Virgin Mother and dealing with major inconveniences at a maddening pace: the duty under the Law to reject his betrothed, carrying out with a love which would have taken the fault before the world; the sudden change of plans and the courageous faith required to accept God´s design; the edict of the Emperor and the rushed voyage to Bethlehem; the birth of Jesus in a barn; the flight to Egypt; and Jesus lost in the Temple at twelve. All of it unplanned, and probably a mess in the eyes of those who knew him. And through it all, he exhibits the chastity, the respect, and the paradox of being the guardian of St. Mary, who he always loved and always respected. His relatives and contemporaries may not have admired him, but I certainly do.

Returning to shame is described in the Bible as being a result of the Fall, of the end of Edenic innocence. Man and woman, both being now broken inside—unclean, with their sins ingrained in the heart—in a suddenly hostile world where the inner ugliness was present and the gaze of fellow human beings was not warranted to be one of love, became ashamed. They needed clothes to hide, and a path to communion with God and with others, sometimes full of hardships, in which both maturing and cleansing, purifying our intentions, play a part. They tried to do it with leaves, and God gave them better clothes.

Shame, like a guardian, is intended to protect our intimacy and that of others to let us share ourselves with purity, with respect, in a way that helps and enriches us and others. We need to overcome it to achieve communion, but it helps us realize that, in sharing ourselves or entering the space of others, we are dealing with something valuable, something that must be protected. I think we must understand what our shame tells us, not merely deny it. Like Nishikata, we need to gradually learn to be vulnerable, but also to love with all our strength, and to be faithful.

Every time Nishikata is foolish, he is also vulnerable in a way he cannot help, as he is exposing his true self. There are aspects in which we all behave like idiots, in which our silliness is exposed to others. We may not think anymore that having a two-storied house with one story dedicated to manga and other to video games is a sophisticated and mature thing, but we believe things which are equally ridiculous. We become comical, and it is easy to make fun of us. But even the dumbest can do that, to laugh at others: The real challenge, the interesting, helpful thing, is to make them enjoy the joke, to bring them to smile even so, as God does with us and Takagi-san does with him.

That´s why gossip, slander, dirty humor, frivolity, and cynicism are repugnant: to take advantage of the weak spots of others, real or imagined, to have a laugh. The foolishness of man shows something of the inside in a way beyond his control and perspective, and thus becomes hopeful when looked at with a hopeful view, with compassion, joy and tenderness, reflecting the view of God. Our friends and our loved ones are like messengers of God when they do this: They are godsends. And humor is precisely one of the biggest challenges that every tyrant pretending to be God will face: It will reveal that, despite all his might, he is in some way ridiculous.

Which leads me to the final episodes, and the connection with both Lent and Easter. Having endured the constant teasing for more than a year, Nishikata has grown, and he and Takagi-san are closer and closer. Through all this embarrassment, all this effort, all this training, all this hard-conscious guidance, all this hardship (and what may seem trivial to us may be a world to a middle school boy), he has changed. He is able to bring comfort to Takagi-san when she is sad, and when she leaves an open spot, also to triumph over his shame and ask her to the festival, where they will be together in public.

And there, after the final separation and reunion (Our Lord, when He was twelve, also used the separation and reunion during the feast to prophesy His passion to St. Mary and St. Joseph), she tells him the secret: Whatever he thought, he was not losing at all. Every part of it is now a part of their valuable future, a sign of the triumph achieved through them, not by sheer force, nor in the sense he expected: The triumph of having freely chosen to follow an uncertain path, and to have letting himself be guided, enduring the proof, confronting the obstacles. He has come to see what he could not see at the beginning, a whole new world.

The road for Nishikata and Takagi-san is ahead, but they already have a joyful sign of hope in this first triumph. Likewise with us and the Lord: I hope you will let this Easter celebration be the conclusion of your Lent, rest in the bond between you and Christ, and prepare yourself for what lies ahead. I assure you it will be worth the wait.

=====

Teasing Master Takagi-san can be streamed in Netflix and Crunchyroll.

#Anime #Christianity #Karakai Jouzu no Takagi san #Teasing Master Takagi san #Lent #Holy Week #Comedy #Easter #God #Articles #Author: Gaharet

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notpreparedblog · 5 years

Text

Introduction and Story

The Fire Emblem series, for me, has been one of those things that’s always been in my peripheral, but never really close enough to gain attention. I knew of a slew of characters from the Smash Brothers series, that it was a tactics style RPG, had knights, and horses, and magic…and that’s about it. Fire Emblem: Three Houses is the first traditional Fire Emblem game on the Nintendo Switch, and the first game of the series I sought out.

After just finishing my first play through of Fire Emblem: Three Houses, I really didn’t know how to review this game. I typically like to delve into each major mechanic and give insight into how it all ties together, but the idea of touching on everything is daunting for this game.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is massive. I was initially amazed at how little I actually did after playing for three and a half hours.

Your three choices, Claude in the yellow, Edelgarde in red and Dmitri in blue.

By nature, there’s three different story line routes for you to take, each with their own twists and turns; The Alliance with Claude, the Empire with Edelgarde, or the Kingdom with Dmitri. There is a mid-point of the game where decisions must be made that drastically impact the rest of the game and splitting off into different forks. For that main reason, you will absolutely need to (and want to) play through multiple times.

With the branching story, each path you take gives you a different experience. My first go around was with Edelgarde and the Empire. I felt that some of the story beats were visible from a mile away, but they were never unsatisfying, and the characters actions in-story always made sense.

There’s a rich history in the world of Fódlan where Three Houses takes place, and I felt the game does a great job in reinforcing that, and making the world feel lived in.

Gameplay

At the start of the game, you’ll be met with a few different difficulty options. First, you have the option of choosing hard or normal difficulty, which is self explanatory. Second, you must choose between classic and casual. Classic means that when one of your character perishes in battle, they are lost forever. Casual means that they more so retreat from battle when defeated, giving you access to them again the next mission.

I originally wanted to go for casual just so that playing the game felt less stressful, because I definitely wouldn’t be able to let one of my students die throughout the game, but I’m happy I didn’t. Going with classic made me rethink how I was going to utilize my team. If there is no risk of permanently losing a member of your team, all you have to do is throw characters at enemies without repercussion and overpower every battle. Part of the fun is treating the battlefield like a chessboard and trying to make smart decisions for that particular round of moves, and a few in the future.

Rhea, Archbishop of the Church of Seiros as well as her second in command, Seteth.

I also went for normal difficulty, but I felt that it was a bit too easy. I never did any grinding and completed all of the story, auxiliary and paralogue battles that popped up. With just that situation, I was consistently over leveling missions I was participating in. It wasn’t until the final two battles that I felt the difficulty spiked.

Aside from difficulty, the gameplay of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is split into a few distinct sections; character development and the actual battles.

The overall template of Fire Emblem: Three Houses ends up feeling like the following; Begin month, instruct your students, build support and relationships between your students and other inhabitants of Garreg Mach, complete quest/auxiliary/paralogue battle, repeat the previous steps 2-3 times per month then complete the month with a story mission between weeks three and four.

You take on the mantle of professor after arriving at Garreg Mach Monastery, choose a class of students to oversee, build relationships with them through different actions that you take, then lead them on the battlefield.

With that in mind, don’t come into the game expecting endless battles and action. Battles become more fun because of the investment you put into your students, your team and goals in terms of selecting future character classes for them to excel at, and eventually become.

Battles

Speaking of battles, the real action in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, comes from the different battle types. If you’ve never played a tactics-RPG game, battle fields are broken down into a grid system similar to a chess or checker board. Each battle has rounds where your team, allied teams and enemy teams are able to move all of their units once. During these rounds is when you would attack, use items, heal team members and so on.

General battle map view, showing you the grid, obstacles, enemies units and more.

Story Battles: These battles, which usually occur once a month in-game, progress the story and usually offer the player the most unique setups. They feature more named characters, which are typically deadlier and require more thought on how to approach them, and more unique side objectives other than ‘rout the enemy’ or ‘defeat the enemy commander.’

Paralogue Battles: These battles hold the best content other than your basic story battles and are always character driven, with a particular conflict or goal in mind. One may require you to block four escape routes for thieves while another has draw bridges in the middle of the map that need to be re-taken. Many of them also reward you with one of the heroes relics and are always worth doing.

The unique aspect of this paralogue battle puts you in the middle of a battlefield with fog of war surrounding you. You can seek out enemies in the fog, or act defensively and wait for them to come to you.

Auxiliary Battles: These battles also soak up a battle activity point and are a step up in difficulty from basic battles. Many of them include rare beasts and reward you with various meat or resources to continue upgrading or repairing your weapons.

Quest/Basic Battles: Throughout your time at Garreg Mach Monastery, you will get a number of quests that involve a battle, many times rewarding you with another gambit battalion. There’s nothing much else to say about them. They are usually uninteresting and just require you to defeat a number of non-threatening enemies.

Basic battle list along with activity points on the top of the screen.

The downside of this aspect of the game, is map variety. Too often is a story map revisited for a paralogue battle or vice versa. The auxiliary battles or basic battles also pull from the same pool of maps. There were multiple times that I played through the same map two or three times in a row just completing quests, paralogue’s or even story missions. It would have been nice to have a larger map selection pool so that battling becomes less dull outside of the over-arching narrative.

The Monastery

Garreg Mach Monastery acts as the central hub for most of Fire Emblem: Three Houses and feels like a character on its own. During the story, you’ll slowly unlock areas of the monastery to explore, and subsequently, give you more to do.

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On top of leveling up your characters in battle, you’re really expected to invest equal time during the following activities to better improve overall.

Professor Level: The professor level allows you to do more actions during the explore phase of the monastery, and gives you more battle points for when you decide to battle instead. You increase this by participating in extracurricular activities that I’ll talk a bit about below, building relationships and completing quests.

Training Grounds: Houses a tournament every month featuring a different weapon type. You choose a character to enter into the tournament. Winning nets you gold, an item and experience towards increasing your professor level.

Dining Hall: Various options available to sit down with other characters and build your relationship with them. A sound strategy would be to eat meals multiple times on the same day to increase the motivation of your students, so when you go to instruct them, they gain greater experience towards the selected skills.

Fishing Pond: Exactly what it sounds like. You use your bait to catch fish to use for meals at the dining hall. Each successful catch nets you a small amount of professor level experience.

Greenhouse/Harvesting: You have the option to plant seeds and cultivate them. Doing this will yield more seeds, items and again, professor level experience.

Tea time is another activity you can use to build bonds between yourself and the others at the monastery.

While overall I like the idea of the monastery, it’s design really leaves something on the table. I really don’t care much about having the best graphics, but environments look very blocky and outdated next to the detailed and interesting character models. Everything has a jagged edge, sort of like it was out of the N64/PS1 era, except with better textures.It’s a strange contrast that’s very noticeable.

Characters

One thing I was not expecting, I guess being a newcomer to the series, was how large the character roster is. At first, I was worried about this because how is it possible to get really in depth with everyone and have it not feel superficial? There are always some characters that are developed more than others, and some that are forgotten. This really isn’t the case with Fire Emblem: Three Houses.

I really am blown away with how much personality each character is packed with. The house I chose for my first go around was the Black Eagle House. By the end of the game, following these same characters for nearly 50 hours, I could correctly answer any question they had, have perfect ‘tea times’ every instance, answer their queries correctly in the church and more. I felt that the amplified feeling of knowing they can die in battle also helped me get more attached to them. I never left a character to die, it just didn’t feel like an option.

Couldn’t help but think of animated Link saying ‘Excusssse me Princess Zelda.’

Aside from each character having distinct personalities, the voice acting is also superb. I usually read quickly and scroll past text but here, I waited and watched every conversation because of how much I enjoyed the voice acting.

Support Conversations: The more two characters get to know each other, the better their relationship gets. When that happens, support conversations unlock between those two characters, and they are lengthy. I started getting in the habit of waiting until I was eating breakfast to start activating these support conversations because they took so long to go through. At times, I would sit for 30-45 minutes strictly just listening to characters build relationships with one another. It sounds boring on the outside, but it really was a nice change of pace sitting back and enjoying these conversations.

The main growth of a character besides straight leveling up and support levels, are leveling skills and becoming classes that excel at those skills. This is mostly all done during the classroom sessions that you will be setting up for your team. Classes are all visible from the outset, so you can, and should to a degree, plan ahead for certain characters and see what you’d like to be.

An example of instructing a student on a particular set of skills.

If you really want a Dark Knight on your team, you really need to select an appropriate character, then focus on Reason, Riding and Lance skills. The same goes for any of the other few dozen classes that are obtainable. It’s really an open book, and although certain characters clearly excel at certain skills, you’re never truly bound to those skills. Get creative, and work on what fits your style as a player.

Other Points

Cutscenes: I really enjoyed all of the cutscenes I’ve seen in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. They stand apart from the rest of the game, enacting a more anime style than what is presented elsewhere. Many of them included some unsettling images that reminded me of the feeling I have watching titans contort in Attack on Titan, or even some of the imagery from Berserk.

There are some unintentional comedic elements as well. One cutscene in particular shows three armies rushing towards each other for this grand battle. When it’s over, you head to the battle screen and everyone is standing around waiting for their individual orders.

The animation is top notch whenever given to the player. Unfortunately, cutscenes are sparse.

Online Recon: Another addition to Garreg Mach is online recon. When unlocked, an NPC as well as four other characters from other players appear. They each sell you one item at a small discount from just purchasing it in store, and you have the option of doing a mini-game with them. The mini-game scatters them across around half the monastery, and you have to find all four of them within 90 seconds. Rewards for completion include basic food items and one time, a battalion. It’s just strange and super laggy whenever you get near that section of the monastery.

One of the online recon travelers from other players games.

Pacing: The pacing of the main story can feel awkward with the system they have built. They really want to do one main mission every month, with you as the professor, teaching, battling, exploring and everything else during the same month. This is fine for the first half of the game where you are teaching students, and as a class, are being assigned one major mission per month, but the same is not the case for the latter half of the game. I don’t want to go into spoilers, but I felt the system faltered a bit later on and pacing seemed either too rushed, or too slow at times.

Final Thoughts

I’m happy that I took the plunge into the Fire Emblem series. Outside of enjoying the board game/tactics play style, I’m a veteran RPG player, so those long conversations or bonding moments between characters are very welcome and I got just as much enjoyment out of character development as I did actually battling.

The downside, is that map variation was rather boring outside of unique ones used for story or paralogue missions. Graphics are also blocky and seem out of place for this generation of consoles (characters models were a different art style and looked fantastic).

There are three distinct paths for you to choose in Fire Emblem: Three Houses. While the first half of the game may largely be the same for all three choices, the second half is drastically different and you’ll want to check out the other paths.

As long as you aren’t expecting a visual spectacle or non-stop action, you’ll find the same enjoyment that I did with Fire Emblem. Now, onto the second playthrough…

Review: Fire Emblem: Three Houses #fireemblem #threehouses #nintendo #nintendoswitch Introduction and Story The Fire Emblem series, for me, has been one of those things that's always been in my peripheral, but never really close enough to gain attention.

#anime #attack on titan #berserk #fire emblem #fire emblem three houses #nintendo #nintendo switch #rpg #tactics #three houses #turn based

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scoutshonor56 · 5 years

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American History

Capitalism

To me, capitalism is one of those concepts that, in theory, is sound and based on common sense. After all, at its core it is a monetary system of reward for hard work and initiative, often involving significant risk.

Those willing to dedicate and apply themselves are rewarded proportionally, often leading to advancement, growth and prosperity – sounds fair to me. Certainly everyone, regardless of effort, shouldn’t be rewarded equally. Many folks, myself among them, are pretty much content to hold down a steady job that provides a modest, comfortable income and at the minimum, some type of health care and some basic “bennies”; everyone is different, and this works out well within the system.

The problem starts when this system goes unregulated, and the opportunity becomes not fairly available to all. When over time, this dream becomes a runaway money train with only a small, select group of privileged passengers. In short, unlimited greed while the rest are exploited; the “rest” are left to build the tracks and walk.

So, where did it all begin? Well, here in America anyways; what gave America the template for big corporations and their punitive relationship with their labor force? There are a lot of facets to the horror and history of human slavery in this country, but to be honest, I was surprised to find out that this was one of them. I became aware of this thanks to a recent piece featured in the NY Times, which is running a series of stories this month entitled “The 1619 Project” to mark the 400 year legacy of slavery here in America. It’s quite a lengthy read, so as best I can I will cover the basics, and of course, for the full story in detail you can refer to the article.

To lay the groundwork for this blog:

Did you know almost half of the American population makes under $15/hr? That middle class wages (when adjusted for inflation) have been stagnant since the late ‘70s while CEO wages and benefit packages have increased exponentially to obscene amounts? That the number of Americans receiving food stamps has increased 40% over the last ten years, yet we have over twice as many billionaires? That the richest 1% of America owns 40% of our nation’s wealth, while a larger share of working age people live in poverty here than in any other nation belonging to The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (O.E.C.D.)?

This impartial organization also rates its capitalist members in the category of worker rights and how easy it is to fire them. As far as worker’s rights, the U.S. shares second to last place with Malaysia, and out of 71 nations, the O.E.C.D. scores our country #1 in ease of being able to fire workers. In other words, “You’re Fired!” isn’t just our reality show president’s favorite tag line.

So let’s crack open the history book you won’t find in your average school curriculum, because here in America we much prefer our taught legacies with plenty of smoothing out, touching up, masking of flaws, and finishing with a thick, glossy coat of varnish.

There was a time, just before the Civil War, when the Mississippi Valley was home to more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the United States. Cotton grown and picked by slaves was the nation’s most valuable export, a font of phenomenal wealth. New Orleans suddenly had a denser concentration of banking capital than New York City, and the backbone of all this selective wealth was the thriving slave trade, where the combined value of slaves exceeded that of all our factories and railroads. Can you imagine? An enterprising person with an entrepreneur’s spirit and ambition finding himself in a new world of seemingly endless natural resources, cheap land, and free labor? Its a capitalist’s Disney World of profit, filled with promises of limitless growth.

Well, OK, that was hundreds of years ago – what does that have to do with the workings of large, modern corporations today? Well, other than the obvious Golden Rule of Capitalism: maximum productivity out of your workers while spending the least amount of money on wages, health care and benefits…

Have you ever fired up your PC or laptop at work in the morning only to see yet another memo from management? A memo that came from your “team leader”, who got it from lower management, who got it from mid-level management, who got it from upper management, who got it from regional management, who got it from the “Big Boss”, who first had to get it OK’d by the BIG, BIG Boss? Well there you have it, the inner workings and corporate-like hierarchy of a typical slave labor work force on a typical large plantation.

The owner (or group of owners) supervised a top lawyer, who supervised another lawyer, who supervised an overseer, who supervised multiple bookkeepers, who supervised a group of enslaved head drivers and specialists, who finally supervised hundreds of slaves. Like today, accountability was foremost and strictly adhered to. Laborious and complex spread sheets were developed by hand for the first time in American industry, and volumes of data were kept to breakdown all aspects of bale production. Everything was tracked, recorded, quantified, analyzed, and accounted for, including meticulous record-keeping of a slave’s age, sex, when bought, performance, expected productivity over the years, potential value, breeding history, etc.

Sound familiar yet?

Who hasn’t endured the sweat inducing “performance review”, where you are essentially forced to appear before the low-end management judge to plead for your job, bringing evidence of your worthiness to the company? You may want to feel lucky that today you might get an upbraiding, maybe a negative mark that will go on your record. The poor black slave was faced with walking that fine line of performance, where his production must be maintained at a level of competence and profitability without being too much of a pacesetter in the fields; that not only got his fellow workers a cruel beating, but himself included if he (or she) didn’t maintain that level every day.

More than once over the years, when reading about the millionaires through our history, the billionaires and mega-billionaires of today, I’ve pondered the question: when is enough, enough? Is there even such a thing as “enough”? Is there ever a point where you sit back, think about throwing in your cards and spending the rest of your life enjoying your bottomless bank account and investments?

Kind of a moot point. A person who had a single billion dollars at their disposal today would have to spend $40 million a year for 25 years before they ran short of cash; which would mean burning through $3 million a month, or over $100K a day. And that’s just a single billion… I recently read an article that shed some light, or clarity onto this supposition, and according to the author, at some arbitrary point it does become no longer about money. It becomes all about power and position among your peers. Your image, your perceived position in this exclusive pack – who are the big dogs at the front of the sled.

My apologies if you find this all too unsettling, or uncomfortable; in which case feel free to refer to one of those Board of Education sanctioned history books where you can read the softer, more palatable version: how white Europeans came over to the New World, claimed it theirs (in the name of Manifest Destiny), got rid of those indigenous savage heathens who were ignorant of the one true god and didn’t know how to exploit the land properly anyways, and soon began shipping over the “darkies” from Africa to give them a much more fulfilling life on our cotton and sugar plantations, where they could contently live out their lives singing happy spiritual songs in the fields and enjoying a higher standard of living, thanks to the largess and Christian charity of “the masta’”. For those interested in the harsh truth, you can check out all of the chapters in this series so far at The 1619 Project.

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delusion-of-negation · 5 years

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On another note Lucifer is actually pretty enjoyable in a campy way as long as you don’t think too hard about it being related to sandman

I haven't watched that yet, so I'll check it out! On the subject of supernatural shows, I'd recommend Diablero on Netflix - it's really good, probably the best of that kind of show out at the moment (better than the more recent Supernatural series), and it reminds me a lot of the Constantine movie that had Keanu Reeves in it (which I really like). Also, Love Death and Robots is really good, and I especially liked Sonnie's Edge - that episode was dark and really well crafted; the sound, the imagery (idk if metaphor is the right word, but y'all know what I mean), the twists, the writing, it was really well put together.

On a massive tangent (but since we're talking about watching things on Netflix), I'm still looking for a good horror movie that either isn't pretentious or is good enough to carry its pretentiousness. This new wave of pretentious horror films (alongside boring cookie cutter ones and so many sequels and remakes and spin-offs) is getting really tiresome, because they seem to think that if you just say it's a horror film and kill a few people in the few brief breaks we get from having depression or philosophy forced down our throats, then that makes it a horror film... it's like no dude, you've got to make it scary. I clearly don't mind having metaphors, deeper messages, etc (again, Sonnie's Edge, and Love Death and Robots as a whole, uses that stuff well, and I like other stuff that does too, like Annihilation and The Night Eats The World), but I just don't want that stuff to come at the cost of what makes a film good.

Like, Annihilation was good because it actually managed to be creepy and unnerving (honestly, that film genuinely triggered some really specific OCD shit I have, and that was great, haven't been genuinely scared by a horror film in years... like, sometimes I just wanna feel like clawing my skin off after watching a horror film, is that too much to ask), and the characters were good, and when the weird fight happened towards the end it was a little anticlimactic, but it was still alright because you had actually invested time in her character growth and it was interesting to watch her figure out what was happening and come up with a solution; also it didn't spell shit out for you, like it had enough faith in the audience to expect them to notice tiny details on their own. The Night Eats The World was pretty good too because even though it was slow and quiet, you could feel the build up, you cared about the character, etc.

But then you had Bird Box that had such a good premise but then let you down at every hurdle - the character growth was completely missing, the jumping between times just caused spoilers, the creatures were inconsistent and absolutely shit (like you can have an unexplained monster but you need to do it right, inconsistency ruins immersion, these monsters just did whatever was convenient for the plot, for example, you can't look at them through a video but the news footage at the beginning didn't kill anyone and you could still see shapes and colours through the blindfold, and one person was willing to immediately crash a car to kill themself and someone they've loved for their whole life but another dude could resist it for long enough to protect some people he's known just a few years, it didn't make sense), the ableism was annoying (legit a friend said to me "The mentally ill can't go crazy because they're already crazy." and it's like dude the creatures made people suicidal by showing them something that would push them to suicide, mental illness doesn't render you incapable of being pushed to suicide, and they literally did "go crazy" if they were already "crazy", mentally ill people became dangerous and sporadically deranged, while mentally sound people killed themselves), and the worst thing was the sound design (look, if you have a movie where you can't see and you're being guided by sound, fucking get the sound right, make it get louder and quieter based on closeness, use the speakers to give it some direction, but instead some fucking wind-chimes were just as loud across a river and down the path as they were right next to them, and the birds were just as loud all the way through the forest except quiet when the creatures started talking... which makes no sense because the movie was literally named based on the fact that the birds made noise when the creatures were about). Also Ravenous/Les Affamés was SO BAD - if I wanted to watch people sit solemnly in silence for hours, only broken by the occasional bad joke, I'd go work in an office, and there was absolutely no substantial plot or tension, it just dragged on and on while you sat there wishing the zombies would just come in and eat these shitty characters.

I'm starved man, I need good horror, but Hollywood and Netflix are just churning out either cookie cutter plots, endless sequels, or pretentious shit that lacks any of the things that make a horror movie good. And don't even get me started on found footage films, I am so tired of people sacrificing a lot of quality when it comes to character building and cinematography and basically every aspect of the movie, just to have it be found footage style - like, that style can work, but not if you are fucking up everything else about the movie and not even using that style right. Cloverfield did it right. Apollo 18 did it so badly, and had such a shit plot, that I feel like it should be a criminal offense to call that atrocity a film.

EDIT: I forgot to add that The Purge series is good, it takes the slasher formula and does something new with it, and it manages to get political points across without preaching to you or being full of itself. And despite having messages and stuff, it still manages to be a good horror film - they don't detract from the film, and they didn't sacrifice the quality or horror for the sake of having a message.

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tweakedouttexan · 5 years

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5 Best Webcam For Streaming 2019 Plus Buyer’s Guide

I am convinced that technology is becoming bigger and bigger part of our lives. Knowing this, we must admit that communication has gone as far as using visual technology when two people are trying to connect. The most important aspect here is playing the webcam. There are a number of things one person can do with the webcam when it is attached to his/her computer. Just by using or installing some software you can do a lot more with your camera than just the regular video calls or checking your make-up or hair. These things sound great, And if you are a guy seeking a webcam for streaming, This Guide: Best Webcam For Streaming 2019, will set you on a right path.

Top 10 Best Webcam For Streaming 2019

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Why You Should Buy a Webcam

You can get your own camera for the price of 50$ up to 100$, and there are many places where you can get them. If you are asking yourself what are the cool things you can do with your camera here are some examples that might help you: • You can use your camera as a surveillance system in your home or even your office. • You can use your face to log in to windows. • Optical character recognition. • You can create cool time lapse videos. • Turning your boring PC into a photo booth. • You can use it to watch the birds that visit your bird feeder. • You can even create your own fonts. • You can do live streaming. • You can use it to make your gaming sessions more fun.

How I Picked These Top 5 Webcam for Streaming

When it comes to streaming cameras I have 5 favorites that happened to be liked by other users as well. The first one is Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 with its 1080p Camera. The second one is Logitech C922x Pro Stream Webcam, then the Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000, then the Logitech C930e 1080P HD Video Webcam and the last, but not least, is Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910.

Top 5 Picks Reviews: Choose Your Best Webcam For Streaming

All of these webcams have 1080p camera, which is probably the main reason why I picked them. Another important thing when choosing a webcam is how fast and compatible with most of the computers they are and these 5 stand strong on that point. You will also want a camera that is easy to use, so easy that even beginners can use it, out of all these 5 the Microsoft LifeCam HD-3000 is probably the easiest to use. Of course, when I invest my money in something I want quality products and all five of these have great quality for a relatively fair price. Another thing is that these five webcams have similar design and they are easy to install on the monitor. Therefore, low price, great picture, good sound, handling dark and light settings with ease, fast installation, looks good on your monitor what else can you ask for a fairly priced webcam? For me personally, these are the main characteristics that I look for when I buy a webcam.

Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 Reviews

The Logitech HD Pro Webcam C920 has no bounds with self-expression. No matter if you use it for Skype or video blogs, this webcam will offer you lifelike HD picture. For Skype video calls this camera offers you full HD 1080p up to 1920 x 1080 pixels same as the video recordings. This webcam also has built-in microphones, which has an automatic noise reduction and that will ensure natural stereo sound. The webcam has a lens that has a five-element glass with very precise auto-focus that will give you amazingly clear and detailed picture. It also has a low-light correction and it can be used with a tripod and it has a universal clip for LCD monitor and laptops. This webcam is compatible with Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 10 or later, Mac OS 10.6 or later, Android v 5.0 or above, Chrome OS, Available USB port, and Internet connection.

What Current Owners said This Webcam

People, who have bought this webcam, say that it is more than what they expected from a webcam that does not cost much. They are surprised by the quality and the wide view that this webcam offers. Another thing that the users like is that you are able to adjust focus, color, white balance, zoom and so on, the way you prefer it. Buyers are also pleased with this webcam’s monitor mouth, which can be clamped at any monitor. Probably the biggest pro for this webcam will be the low cost, and then the quality and clarity of the view and that it can be put on any monitor. The only con might be the auto-focus meaning when you use this camera for streaming the auto-focus will constantly try to find focus and that might make the stream unwatchable.

The Logitech C922x Pro Stream Webcam Reviews

The Logitech C922x Pro Stream Webcam is the webcam you need if you what your YouTube or Twitch videos to have a professional quality. The recordings or the stream will have a very lifelike view with this webcam with its HD 1080P video at 30Fps/ 720P at 60FPS. This webcam has full HD glass lens with premium auto-focus that will give you clear video. This product also has built-in microphones that will capture the voice in rich Stereo Audio. You do not have to worry if you are recording in dim or poorly backlit settings as this webcam has an automatic light correction. For all the streamers out there by purchasing this webcam you will receive, for free, a six-month Xsplip license, an app that can help you make your streams as professional looking as possible. If you are streaming games, lagging will never be an issue with the Logitech C922x Pro Stream Webcam. The performances that this webcam offers will simply give you a quality that will raise you above the others and that will be possible from your very own home. The webcam also has technology that offers background replacement and you can use it without the need for a green screen. This webcam is compatible with Windows 7-10, Mac OS X 10.9 or later, Chrome OS, and Android v5.0 and above, all you will need to start broadcasting is a USB port.

People find it easy to set up this webcam and they are very pleased with the quality of the view. The con would be that some people have experienced difficulty when streaming music due to the sound phasing when you use it in stereo. Anyhow, once you figure out how to work with this webcam the possibilities that it offers are endless.

The Microsoft Life Cam HD-300 Reviews

The Microsoft Life Cam HD-3000 offers you a widescreen with 720p HD recording and video chat. The built-in microphone has noise reduction, which is always a good thing. Thanks to the True Color technology your videos will be colorful and bright. You can attach it to any laptop, desktop or notebook thanks to the universal attachment base. As its manufacturer would say ‘your picture or video is worth 1,000 texts’ and this webcam will interpret that with HD view. Another thing is that this camera is easy to use that you do not have to be a professional to make good videos.

What Current Owners said This Webcam

Users have reported that you get your money worth with this webcam. They are satisfied with the clarity of the picture, as well as with the wide angle lens which allows for a better picture. Users have noticed that this webcam handles dark and light settings with ease and the attachment that comes with it is easy to put on any monitor without damaging it. The video is stutter free on record and the microphone offers crystal clear audio. There have been noticed some flows like Windows 7 might not support this webcam and so far there has not been found a solution for this problem. Also, some people have reported that the webcam is not compatible with Windows 10. Knowing that this is a relatively cheap camera you cannot expect a long working period, but it is a good webcam that, for a low cost, can give you a good starting point with your streaming hobby.

Logitech C930e 1080P HD Video Webcam Reviews

The Logitech C930e 1080P HD Video Webcam is a business grade HD video webcam that offers full 1080p HD videos at 30 frames per second for the purposes such video conferences on your PC or Mac. This camera has the widest field of view of 90 degrees and it is the perfect tool for face to face video collaboration or whiteboard presentations in any office. This camera comes with a universal clip that fits laptops, CRT or LCD monitors. The webcam has HD 1080p H.264/SVC UVC 1.5 encoding, this frees up system bandwidth and your video stream will be smoother by putting video processing in the camera. Other features are pan, zoom and tilt functions as well as the advanced light correction technology which will deliver you the best video experience that you can ever fish for. The autofocus is smooth and it will keep your video image razor-sharp, even in close up situations. This webcam is compatible with Microsoft Lync 2013 and Skype and it is compatible with the of most UC and web conferencing applications.

What Current Owners said This Webcam

People who have bought this camera are pleasantly surprised by how wide the screen actually is. Another pleasant feature, that its users found, is how professional the image looks with this camera and no need to mention that the clarity of the image was impeccable. When it comes to this webcam’s flows some users have noticed that the autofocus can get jumpy at times. Every single time something moves the camera will try to readjust the focus and you end up with a few frames of defocus before everything becomes sharp again. You can get around this issue by setting the focus to manual. Also, the camera sometimes might not be recognized by your computer even after you have unplugged it and restart it several times. And finally, some of the users have found that the sound is not so great and the recording capacity of the microphone is poor.

The Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910 Reviews

The Logitech HD Pro Webcam C910 has a Logitech Fluid Crystal

Technology which gives you Full HD 1080p video recording and smooth HD 720p video calling. With this webcam, it will take you only click to upload a video on either YouTube or Facebook. The webcam also has 5 MP HD sensor and precision Carl Zeiss lens. For crystal clear videos and awesome 1- MP photos this webcam has autofocus and an intelligent auto light correction. The built-in microphones have noise-canceling properties which will make your sound be heard in clear and rich HD quality dual stereo. This webcam works with Logitech Vid HD, Yahoo Messenger, Microsoft Live Messenger and Skype. The wide HD 720p screen will is with no doubt a nice feature.

What Current Owners said This Webcam

People that had the chance to try this product have reported that the installation is very quick and easy and they find the menu easy to understand. Users are also satisfied with how sharp the picture is with this webcam and the longevity of the camera is also quite long. The users have also noticed that the built-in microphones are capable of picking up even the quiet voices. About the flaws, some have noticed that the quality of the picture is not as good when they have used the webcam for video chats. Also, the clip that comes with the camera might not fit some laptop monitors.

If I Were You, I Will Choose Logitech C922x Pro Stream Webcam, Here Are the Reasons

Now comes the question which one out of these five should you buy. Since we are mainly interested in streaming my personal favorite is the Logitech C922x Pro Stream Webcam. This is the webcam that will make your videos look very professional, even if you are only a beginner. The audio is impeccable and it will capture even the quiet voices and the auto-focus will make every frame look crystal clear. Plus, we can forget that by purchasing this webcam you will receive, for free, a six-month Xsplip license, this the app that can help you make your streams as professional looking as possible. So, if you are about to start career or hobby with streaming, this is the webcam that I would strongly recommend for you.

5 Important Features when Choosing a Webcam

The functionality of the camera you choose has a direct correlation with the sum of money you are ready to spend on that camera. Naturally, if you need a webcam for the sole purpose of video chatting with your friends and family, then you will need one that cost less and that does not have high quality. But, if you are in search of a webcam for professional purposes, then you might want to check one with functionality such as video conferencing, because those are the ones that offer more features and higher picture quality.

The market is offering thousands of different webcams that have different sizes, shapes, prices, and specifications. Here are the 5 main tips you should pay attention to, and that will help you select the one that will meet your own needs:

The megapixels – Those tiny color dots that when they are combined they make the resulting visual picture are named megapixels. Naturally, the more megapixels one webcam has the more vivid and clear picture it will deliver. Nowadays, there is no big issue with the quantity of megapixels as there have been in the earlier period. The majority webcams on the market today are providing a realistic image quality. You are advised to for one that has 640X480 or 320X240 pixels as it will give you a good picture. You should pick a better specification for your webcam of 1280X720 pixels if you have the HD functionality.

The frame rate – First we saw that the megapixels are responsible for the image and its color vividness, and the frame rate is the one responsible for the smoothness and quality of the video. The amount of images that are displayed per second is decided by the frame rate. For a webcam that you will need for standard use 30fps (or frames per second) is more than fitting for you. But, those who are looking for with higher quality moving image and also one that is smoother should pick a webcam with the capabilities of 60 frames per second.

The lens quality – the video processing comes in stages and the first one is the lens. Naturally, it is very important for you to buy the exact lens to cater to your needs. Here you are advised to get a webcam with glass lens and not with plastic one because the glass one has more quality.

The continuous autofocus – Many times you will want to record with your camera scenario where there is a significant amount of movement in the background and the autofocus will enable the webcam to maintain you as the central focus and not diverting to another movement inside the frame.

The low light quality – You will with no doubt end up with very poor image quality if you use your camera in low light surroundings or in the evenings. In case you try interfering with the screen contrast and brightness, you will create a foggy and continued bad image on the screen. Some of the Logitech webcams have created ‘Right Light’ in the webcam. This will enable the image quality to be optimized in the reduced light conditions.

Other important thing you should consider when you use a webcam is your Internet connection’s speed. The speed of your computer processor and Input/Output ability is also an important issue. The video images take up lots of the capacity of the computer’s communications, therefore the faster it is the better it will work. I would suggest the fastest broadband speed you can find for the money you have, to avoid jumpy, start and stop video images. A lot people have bought webcams and very soon have faced a disappointment because of the bad video quality that resulted from the communications and computer limitations.

Choosing Webcam? It’s your turn now!

Just like when you want to buy a computer, there are many models of webcams available on the market. The prices start from low and very affordable to extremely pricey ones. You have to figure out what you need and want from your webcam so that you will not end up buying some extra features that will cost you more and you will never need to use.

What You Definitely Need

You need to pay attention to the webcam’s resolution; you will want one with high resolution. If you buy one with a lower resolution you will end up with an image that will look grainier on other’s screens. Your starting point for a good resolution should be 640 x 480.

Just like with the resolution the frame rate is also crucial, so you should look for a high FR. The reason for this is that high frame rates mean that the webcam will produce images will not periodically freeze or stutter on the viewer’s screens. Just look on the webcam’s packaging and find the fps (frames per second) a good frame rate starts at 15 fps and above. The higher you go the better you streams will be. Try to get as close as you can to 30 fps if you can afford higher than that it’s going to be even better for you.

What You Should Get

When it comes to the lens of the webcam you should always go for the glass lenses and try to avoid the plastic ones. This is because the glass ones will offer you a better performance and the price for them is not so much higher than the plastic ones. Needless to say, the lens is a crucial feature for the webcam’s performance.

If you are going to use your webcam in a room with a poor light that the auto-focusing, as well as the auto light adjustment, are the technologies that will come very handy to you.

Other standard webcam features are the ability to take still images and the built-in microphone. Also, make sure that the webcam you choose is able to take at least 2.0 megapixels images.

Bells and Whistles

Some webcams come with the feature like motion sensor and this is useful if you want to use your webcam as a security system. This feature can be built into the webcam or you can later download the software for it.

Some webcams have the abilities that include special and video effects; this will come handy if you want to include those kinds of things into your streams and videos. These features can also be downloaded as software.

High-Def Considerations

Another popular feature that a webcam can have is the ability to capture videos in high-definition. This feature will come handy if you plan to use your webcam for video streams to the YouTube or Twitch sites. You must be aware that this feature will also make the webcam cost a lot more; therefore, if you do not need it then it is better to not spend your money on it. Capturing video in 720p or higher is considered to be an HD.

What You Should Get

You will want a webcam with high resolution and high FR fir better images that do not tend to freeze or stutter. A glass lens for better performance alongside with auto-focusing and auto light adjustment. Your webcam should be able to take at least 2.0 megapixels images and to have a built-in microphone.

Pricing

When it comes to the prices, just like I mentioned above, they can be from very affordable to the high-end ones. Usually, the prices start from $9.97 and go up to $299 on websites like Amazon.com and ToysRUs.com. What you must figure out is exactly what you want and need from your webcam so that you will not end up buying or not buying the features that you need or don’t need.

Conclusion

Read 5 Best Webcam For Streaming 2019 Plus Buyer’s Guide on Game Roe.

source https://www.gameroe.com/best-webcam-for-streaming source https://sheepmone.tumblr.com/post/183955438267

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ken-harrison · 5 years