#movie was like. slightly-above mid only because of how absurd it was that it was kinda funny

[todayisafridaynight]

kiryu but to the left

#rgg #ryu ga gotoku #yakuza series #i aint tagging all that #kazuma kiryu #snap sketches #i never draw kiryu despite me lovin him </3 i should draw him more tho.. i have no idea how to rn... #anyway this is the part of the tags where i ramble about something not at all related to the drawing goodnight ty for readin #after failing to find a site that streams furai dadi furai i decided to watch dangan runner #and the main yakuza character/takeda reminded me of kiryu </3 it was cause of the grey suit and white shoes and slicked back hair </3 #and no girlfriend </3 #i did just draw this to ramble about a movie in the tags youre absolutely right #movie was like. slightly-above mid only because of how absurd it was that it was kinda funny #description wasnt lying i really did just watch three blokes run around japan for an hour #i got to see lady chesticles tho so. 10/10 will watch again

[mariacallous]

On Monday 29 August 1994, sandwiched between a repeat of the 70s sitcom Happy Ever After and a showing of the 1988 movie version of Dangerous Liaisons, BBC Two broadcast one of the finest documentaries ever made. And now, thanks to a sudden wave of renewed interest, Three Salons at the Seaside has returned to iPlayer.

Directed by Philippa Lowthorpe, who most recently helmed a couple of episodes of the new Willow series on Disney+, Three Salons at the Seaside is a beautiful, delicate 40-minute film about (as you’d expect) three hairdressing salons in Blackpool, all of which appear to cater exclusively to women aged 70 or above. It feels like a dispatch from a lost age. Customers, no matter how loyal, are always addressed formally. Fishmongers pop in from time to time to take orders. All the phone numbers have five digits. Perms, in all three of the salons, appear to be violently non-negotiable.

This does all sound a bit “Who remembers proper binmen”, I know, but the appeal of Three Salons isn’t nostalgia. Instead, Lowthorpe was clever enough to let the women take centre stage – and it’s spending time in their company that makes for the real joy of this documentary. Although there’s an obvious class difference between the three establishments – one has its opening hours written on notepaper and taped to the door – the clientele have all very clearly clawed through mounds of life.

At the start of the film, conversation flits between casual gossip (a Coronation Street star who had plastic surgery and now looks “like a goldfish”) and how big a sofa needs to be when you only ever sit on the edge of the cushion, but after a while it all begins to coalesce around death. There are dead parents and dead relatives and, in one slightly tragicomic scene, a dead woman called Betty who has to be elaborately described because there were so many old women called Betty knocking around in Blackpool in the mid-90s.

But, overwhelmingly, it is a film about widows. Lowthorpe’s subjects all talk openly – in a bracingly no-nonsense, let’s-get-on-with-things way – about having lost their husbands, and their struggle to carve out a new identity in the world now that they find themselves alone. And, in need of something to gravitate towards, they have all been drawn to their hairdresser. These places have become integral hubs for their customers, all of whom have found community in routine.

This isn’t to say that Three Salons is a bummer, of course. Not only are the women all so fiercely indomitable that only a fool would try to mess with them, but the viewing experience is happily gauzy. Scenes pass by unruffled, interspersed with long, dreamy montages of white hair being combed, with a burbling synth soundtrack that could very easily have come from a Warp compilation. It’s Slow TV before Slow TV was a thing – made before the docusoap juggernaut swept in and tried to make all its participants famous. It is absolutely gorgeous, like a remake of Agnès Varda’s Daguerréotypes scripted by Victoria Wood.

The increased interest in Three Salons at the Seaside comes largely from the peerless (and too little watched! And too hard to find in the UK!) comedy Documentary Now! from US cable channel IFC, which has for years found rich pickings in beautifully recreated versions of old documentaries. In April, Seth Meyers wrote Two Hairdressers in Bagglyport, in which Harriet Walter and Cate Blanchett play two hairdressers who not only prise stories of increasingly absurd spousal death from their customers, but also put together the 1994 Blackpool hair salon equivalent of Vogue’s September issue.

Like all Documentary Now! episodes, Bagglyport is exquisitely done – at one point Blanchett matter-of-factly passes around a “ransom bucket” because “Mary’s been kidnapped again” – but its greatest achievement might have been reviving the source material. Three Salons at the Seaside is in turns sweetly funny and endlessly touching, but, in the years since its first broadcast, it has taken on a new patina. It has become a reminder of just how fast things move. The relationships of these women all ended. The shops are no longer there. We’re watching a way of life that has been utterly lost. And, before we know it, we are all likely to become variations of these women, broken and adrift, but battling through. What an incredible tribute this film turned out to be. I really cannot recommend it enough.

[cinanamon]

something familiar — hrj

pairing | renjun x reader

genre | fluff, angst, vampire!au

word count | 1.3K

synopsis | You and Renjun always seem fascinated by each other. Maybe it’s love or maybe it’s something deeper; maybe your fates have been intertwined, long before you ever met.

warning | none

Happy Birthday @renjunite! This is for you because you’re really an amazing person, writer, and friend, and you were the muse for my fic anyways! Here’s to you! ♡

“So you can’t fly? Like just—become bats? Like they say?”

You can’t help but tilt your head back, the laughter in your chest bubbling over and spouting forth past your lips. “No, we cannot. Where do you get such an absurd idea?”

Renjun shrugs, swirling his champagne glass as he looks over the edge of the golden railing, the ground far below your perch on the Eiffel Tower. “Well its just...”

“The movies?” You quirk a brow playfully as you take a sip of the shining liquid, letting its acidic taste wash over your tongue.

He flushed, and you briefly wondered if it was because of the liquor or your inquiry. “Well I might have hoped I could, you know, fly over the edge. Freefall then fly or shape shift and be cool, and all that.”

“Well I do hate to break it to you, but you’re stuck going down the stairs like I am.” The candle flickers from its place between you, the roses in the center of the table seemingly glowing. You let your eyes raise to encapture the view of your lover.

His already pale skin seemed to glimmer silvery in the night, his eyes perfectly reflected the stars above and the artificial lights that lined the steel railing. His dark hair wispily blew around his forehead due to the slight breeze, and the collar of his shirt weakly moved aside to show off the angle of his neck and collarbone. But your eyes were naturally drawn to his lips; red and a little swollen, his glass of wine coming back up to rest on the seal of his mouth. You wondered what would urge his fangs to leave their hiding place, to slice open his bottom lip in need of a taste of a coppery liquid.

It had been a few months since you fled Korea. A few months since you’d turned Renjun; since you were alone and unfeeling. And he was the reason for it all.

He had never once seemed to regret his choice, since the pain of his changing he had only seemed to feel curiosity and wonder, and he found joy in the little things you took no notice of.

You lost count of how many questions he had asked: how often did you have to drink, did you sleep, when can you go outside, what does blood taste like, and any other question you could have ever thought of, he had asked it.

Truly it was a peculiar but fascinating change, to have someone else with you at every moment. For centuries you had been alone and didn’t really care for anything, and Renjun had come in like an actual breath of fresh air; so enchanting and alive, he made you feel the childlike wonder at things you took for granted like it was your own. You could never possibly be opposed to his company.

And as you gazed at him, your chin in your palm as you admired his features, you felt oddly cheesy. Really, you felt like those cliche romances you watched occur with each generation, the ones that seemed to sweep you off your feet and leave you breathless. Because Renjun did that; he really did.

“Are you okay there? You’ve been staring for quite some time.” And you never missed his sense of humor. You smirked at the slightly snarky comment, not taking the hint to look away. The apples of his cheeks grew a soft shade of pink and he finally put his glass down. “Really, are you okay? Are you drunk?”

“I don’t get drunk so quick, I’m offended,” you finally lifted your head and leaned back, trying to fight the smile on your lips. He raised a brow and you gave in slightly, “I might be a bit tipsy though, you didn’t ask me that.”

He chuckled softly, looking back down at the park below, and even his side profile was elegant; the slope of his neck and hook of his nose, the glimmer in his eyes making you want to sigh lovestruck. “It’s so free up here; have you been here before?”

“Once,” you shift in your seat, with enough effort casting your gaze down to the ground below where he was commuting each sight to memory. “The World Fair? I think of...1889? If I remember correctly.”

You heard him choke, his eyes widening as they look to you and you felt bittersweet that he always forgot how old you were. After a moment, it clicked for him. “Right,” he said softly, more to himself and you just nod.

“It’s when the Eiffel Tower was built,” You add softly, letting your eyes grow foggy from remembrance, and Renjun listened intently, fascinated by the story or you, you didn’t know. “With so many people I didn’t think it’d be so bad to stick around for a bit, just to watch them create something so big and different; and the fair was so...fun. Bustling and loud and it’s probably one of the few times I felt like a normal person,” you laughed, but it wasn’t airy and carefree like it was before, since you felt so high up on the top. You absentmindedly thumbed at the railing before shaking your head to smile at your lover encouragingly. “But you probably don’t know what I mean, right? You’re always so bright.”

Renjun blinked at the change and sudden compliment, smiling kindly but for someone so young, you almost swore you saw the wisdom you carried in his own eyes. “I can understand what you’re getting at; it must have been a memorable time to...be at such a historic event is just—wow.”

You chuckled and stood, reaching for Renjun’s hand. “You’ll experience plenty of historic moments, I promise. I kind of have a knack for knowing what will go down in history books at this point.” And he laughed along with you at that, and you felt lightweight again as you gripped his hand, moving to the elevator.

There was something about Renjun that threw you back in time, the nostalgic feeling of memory lane. Something bittersweet yet romantic, something endearing yet wry. Like a photograph from the fair, he was faded and slightly browning on the edges, but he was captured mid-laugh, eyes twinkling and limbs full of movement. A photograph you would see yourself caressing with a soft smile and teary eyes.

And yet, he was in front of you, caught between life and death by your hands, the ones he was holding as he began to talk animatedly about running down the cobblestone streets at one in the morning, the old buildings he passed casting even darker shadows on his beautiful face. And you loved it. It was a moment you wanted to capture. You wanted to throw yourself into the shot with him, smiling wide and arms thrown precariously around his neck, your old dress flying in the wind at your sudden movements so you’d have no reason to stain the snapshot with tears of loss.

Because Renjun himself was a living memory. And in such moments, so full of life yet so not, you knew that it felt right. Because Renjun was your future, and he was your present, and he seemed to fit right alongside your past, almost accidentally associating him to each experience in which he was not.

And sometimes you wondered if it was wrong to change him, to be selfish and do as he asked so he could stay beside you. And maybe it was. But maybe it was selfish of him to inquire, maybe it was wrong for him to want you. But you had each other, now and always.

And as you giggled and broke into a sprint down the uneven sidewalk beside him, he knew he wanted to be with you every step of the way, living or dead. And maybe he hadn’t taken every path you had, experienced every feeling or event as you, but he wanted to make history with you, watch it unfold form beside you.

And it was a fluttering feeling in his chest at your smile that set that wish in stone, it was him kissing you against a lamppost that finalized his hopes, and he really couldn’t wait for history to begin.

#smtownnetwork #dreamiesnetwork #nctwriters #nct #nct fanfiction #nct fluff #nct angst #renjun #nct scenario #renjun scenario #renjun fanfiction #renjun fluff #renjun angst #renjun x reader #cinanamon #something familiar #this is MESSY but i really!! tried to make it sound pretty #like i tried to include different elements and capture lovestruck bc THATS WHAT YOU ARE #okay i love you and!! happy birthday!! i hope it was great ily!

[junker-town]

Secret Base Media Club: Herman Melville hates penguins

Herman Melville was an elite-tier shitposter, and Dinosaur Train makes no sense but rules anyway

Book: The Encantadas, Herman Melville

I love Herman Melville more than most people would find reasonable. For instance, I read Moby-Dick about once a year (and sometimes more). This is not because I think Moby-Dick is The Great American Novel, because it’s not. In fact, I’m not even sure it’s a novel at all. People get bogged down in the endless asides and lies about whales, complaining that they obscure the plot, but I think that misses the point. To use what I believe is the academic term, Moby-Dick is an enormous collection of brilliant whale shitposts, stuffed willy-nilly into a manuscript and sold (or not sold, as the case may be) as an adventure story.

Since the 19th century was not ready for elite-level shitposting, Melville went under-appreciated in his time. His early work, particularly the straightforward, vaguely charming Typee, was well received, on account of staying closer to the accepted forms, but Moby-Dick was something of a flop and he never recovered his reputation, ending his life more or less forgotten. Being pathologically unable not to shitpost is something I think quite a lot of the internet would sympathise with.

Anyway, here is Melville amusing himself upon penguinkind in its entirety. You might think penguins are cute and graceful, but he disagrees (possibly because he has smelled penguins):

What outlandish beings are these? … Their bodies are grotesquely misshapen; their bills short; their feet seemingly legless; while the members at their sides are neither fin, wing, nor arm. And truly neither fish, flesh, nor fowl is the penguin … without exception the most ambiguous and least lovely creature yet discovered by man. As if ashamed of her failure, Nature keeps this ungainly child hidden away at the ends of the earth.

I like to imagine Melville knew perfectly well how graceful penguins are once underwater but chose to ignore it for the sake of a good shitpost. The internet loves penguins? Fuck penguins. Please retweet. (It’s fortunate for the world of letters that memes hadn’t been invented in the mid-1800s, or we’d have gotten The Chad Pelicans vs. The Virgin Penguins instead.)

The above excerpt is from a short story collection set in the Galapagos Islands called The Encantadas. As with all things Melville, ‘story’ is somewhat misleading; there are certainly stories buried within, but it’s mostly a survey of some weird, wonderful and slightly hellish islands and their equally strange inhabitants. Actually, it’s not even that. The Encantadas are mostly an excuse Herman Melville to shitpost.

All hail our shitposting king.

TV: Dinosaur Train

Dinosaur Train is a kid’s television show which is meant to stoke every child’s interest in Mesozoic paleontology. The Pteranodon family travels through time and space on the Dinosaur Train, meeting different species of dinosaurs and other critters and finding out about how they live. It’s pretty fun. However, I have some questions.

What is the dinosaur train for? Why was it built? The investment required to develop and build the train must have taken absurd amounts of resources, and the only justification I can think of is that this is a tool by which dinosaurs can escape mass extinction, looping back in on time like Primer meets Snowpiercer meets T. Rex. This is never addressed in the show.

Speaking of resources, a ride on the dinosaur train requires tickets, yet no character on the show barring The Conductor appears to possess money or have any sort of job. How does the dinosaur train economy work? Indeed, how could it work in a world in which time travel is normalized? Some sort of massive state effort might explain the elaborate infrastructure, but then ... why tickets? I believe that unravelling this mystery is the key to understanding the dinosaur train world.

Why are the Pteranodons so cool about Buddy? Buddy is the youngest of their children, and he is a Tyrannosaurus Rex whose egg happened to end up in their nest. And sure, he might be cute when he’s a little guy, but someday he’ll be the largest carnivore on the continent, and he’ll remember that only minimal steps were taken to reunite him with his real family. What then, Pteranodons? Kidnapping dinosaurs is not the sort of thing one can afford to be cavalier about. Pretty sure this is most of the message of Jurassic Park.

WHY IS THE MUSIC SO GOOD?

This is Secret Base Media Club. Every Wednesday, a member of Secret Base staff will talk about what they’re reading and anything else they happen to be enjoying. Feel free to join in the conversation or start your own — books, movies, music, tv shows, sports (hah!) are all fair game.

[mc-dude]

unuaj impresoj (g)

this takes place in very early JLI days, before booster and ted really knew each other.

or, where ted gathers some valuable data and maybe even falls a teeny bit in love

Ted likes to think that he’s a patient man.

His stomach growls. Ted clutches at it with a justified grumble.

Then again, he concedes, all of his admirable qualities have to have limits.

“Boost,” he whines as he leans back against a precarious tower of books. “I thought you wanted to get some food. Can’t we do this, like, later?”

That ridiculous mane of perfect blonde hair pops over the top of one of the shelves. Tall bastard, Ted thinks. Totally unfair. Booster’s eyes are wide and excited, face slightly flushed like he just had an invigorating workout right here in the middle of this second-hand, old-timey bookstore in the middle of downtown Paris.

“But there’s so many of them.”

Ted raises an eyebrow. “What? Books?”

Booster nods and his hair flops back and forth like a puppy wagging its tail. Ted raises his eyebrow even further.

“Well.. yeah. It’s a bookstore.” He tilts his head to the side. “Don’t they have those in the future?” He taps his chin with a finger. “I guess that would explain that weirdly intense moment you had with the magazine rack at the airport.”

Booster narrows his eyes, but his excitement doesn’t falter.

“You don’t understand! Books are, like, super rare in the 25th century.” Ted watches as he rifles through a well-worn paperback with an exceedingly gentle touch. “I only ever saw one once, and that was at a museum that we went to for a school trip.”

Ted feels his frustration slipping as he scoots forward to watch Booster run his fingers along one of the pages. There’s something about the soft, awe-filled expression on his face that makes Ted forget about how hungry he is. He crosses his arms across his chest and leans against one of the bookshelves with a small smile.

“Well, why don’t you get one?”

Booster’s eyes go wide.

“What?!” He glances down at whatever book he’s holding. “There’s no way I can afford one of these!”

Ted blinks. “Boost, these are all, like, two dollars each. Five, tops.”

Booster blinks in surprise. “But that’s as much as a coffee!” He gestures around him, book still in his hand. “These are made out of trees, Ted. Do you know how valuable a tree is in the future? How few of them are le–” he cuts himself off to rub at the back of his head. “Actually, I probably shouldn’t tell you that.”

He points at a stunned Ted with the book. “The point is, these should be worth a lot more. They should be, uh..” he frowns, glances around him “.. konservis?” He narrows his eyes, and then snaps his fingers. “Treasured!” He glances at a teetering stack of used romance novels in despair. “Not treated like–” he starts pushing the corners of the stack together “– this!”

Ted pinches the bridge of his nose as Booster aligns the books until they’re neat and orderly. “Boost, I don’t know what to tell you. You can’t change the past, right?”

Booster glances at him and shrugs. “Uh.. unclear?”

Ted rolls his eyes. He still can’t quite believe someone who knows as little about time travel as Booster does managed to find the right year, let alone even start a time machine.

“Well, books are already on their way out. All this–” he knocks on the side of one of the shelves “– is being slowly replaced by tablets and e-readers, so.” He glances at Booster who’s staring at the book in his hands with that helpless look in his eyes again, thumb sifting through the pages in the corner in a way that makes Ted’s throat feel tight all of a sudden. “So, uh, don’t think there’s much you can do about it, buddy. Sorry.”

Booster just nods and, very carefully, sets the book back on the top of the pile. “Yeah, you’re right. It just–” he runs a hand through his hair and shrugs “– feels like a waste.”

Ted stares at him helplessly. “Yeah, I get it.”

Booster takes a deep breath and throws him a small grin that doesn’t quite meet his eyes. “Ok, so– food?” He starts to head towards the shop exit. Ted glances at the slumped slope of his shoulders, back to the pile of books, back to his shoulders.

“Uh, yeah. It’s just across the street. I’ll be there in a sec, just gotta– do something.”

Booster throws up one of his hands in acknowledgement and scoots out the door with a quiet jingling noise.

“Alright, one croque monsieur pour moi–” he hands Booster the slightly soggy container “– and one ratatouille for the blasphemous vegan.”

Booster sticks his tongue out at him. “That waiter looked at me like I was a stain on his perfectly-pressed shirt.”

Ted grins. “You’re in the cheese capital of the world, mon ami.” He pats Booster arm and gestures to the crowded street behind them. “Not eating their delicious food is a grave offence. Many-a-heads were lopped off for less.”

Booster raises and eyebrow critically, like he’s not believing Ted’s blatant bullshitting, and leans back against the railing. The sunlight catches on the tips of his hair; Ted almost wishes he had sunglasses.

“It’s not like I don’t want to have cheese,” Booster starts, sniffing at his takeout box suspiciously. “A burger was the first thing I tried when I landed here. One bite and I was sick for days.” Booster pouts at him and rubs his stomach. “Days, Ted.”

Ted grimaces and pats his shoulder sympathetically. “There’s probably some digestive enzyme that you can take if you ever want to experience the finer foods in life.”

Booster fake gags. “That is literally the least appetizing thing I have ever heard.” He pats his takeout box. “No, I’ll just stick with.. whatever this is.”  He tucks the takeout box under his arm, and then his eyes light up. “Oh yeah! I saw a sign for a park on the way here. Can we eat there?”

Ted eyes his croque monsieur longingly, and then makes the mistake of looking at Booster’s face; the one that’s giving him the most ridiculous puppy dog eyes he’s ever seen. That’s going to be a problem. Ted’s chest squeezes and he lets out a sigh.

“Sure,” he relents, gesturing for Booster to move in front of him. “Lead the way, Marty.”

“How do you get Marty from Booster?”

Ten minutes of explaining why Back to the Future is the second greatest time travel movie of all time later, and with a promise to show Booster the first greatest time travel movie at the soonest possible convenience, they hit the gate entrance to the park, and Ted almost runs into Booster as he halts mid-step.

Later, Ted wishes he had snapped a picture of this moment– the one where Booster’s whole face lights up in a sort of childlike wonder, mouth parting in a silent gasp.

“Wowzer.”

Ted drags his eyes away from Booster’s face to gaze out over the park. It’s nothing special. Sure, it’s big, but it’s mostly just grass. Grass, and some scattered trees. Someone is flying a kite above them, a bright yellow dragon that makes Ted smile. A vendor is set up a ways down the path, selling crêpes filled with that looks like every dessert food imaginable. A warm breeze ruffles the tips of his hair and Ted tilts his head back to feel the sun on his face.

It’s nice here– peaceful and calm, a welcome contrast to their hectic day job. Ted glances back towards Booster, only to find him missing. He blinks and spins around.

Ah, there. He lets Booster’s shiny mop of blonde hair act like a homing beacon and jogs over to the closest tree. Ted leans against the trunk, arms cross over his chest as he looks down at his traveling companion; the one currently kneeling in the grass and running his fingers through the neatly trimmed vegetation with a ridiculous smile on his face. Ted slumps down at the base of the tree and digs in his tote bag for his sandwich.

“It everything you ever dreamed of?” Ted teases.

Booster grins at him, then stands up and gestures around him wildly with a dramatic spin. “It’s so green!”

Ted takes a bite of his croque monsieur and tries not to audibly moan at how good it is. He glances up at Booster with a bemused purse of his lips.

“That’s generally what happens when you have a lot of plants in one area,” he responds dryly.

Booster spins back towards him, opens his mouth to tell him something ridiculous, Ted’s sure– like there’s no plants in the future, Ted! Or in the 2400s plants are sentient and have taken control of the Earth– and then his eyes dart to the tree trunk behind him and he gasps with delight instead. Ted leans to his right as Booster presses his face inches away from the worn bark, taking another bite of his sandwich as he watches Booster with blatant curiosity.

“Okay, I know you’ve seen a tree before.”

Those big blue eyes pop up from where they had been studying the bark with rapt fascination. Booster glances back to the tree, back to Ted, and then rubs at the back of his head with a shameless shrug and a lopsided smile.

“Not the tree– ants!” Booster says as he flops next to Ted so close that their thighs brush together. Ted has a theory that ideas of personal space must be a bit lax in the future, because Booster seems to always find an excuse to put a hand on his back or lean into his shoulder. Or maybe he's just an affectionate guy, Ted thinks. What's surprising is how Ted doesn't actually mind. If anything, it just adds to Booster’s charm.

Ted passes Booster his take-out and takes another bite of his lunch. For some absurd, inexplicable reason, he finds himself waiting to see what will wowzer Booster next. His reactions are just so.. genuine.

It’s refreshing, Ted reasons, to hang out with someone so unabashedly sincere.

Booster thumbs open the container after a moment of fiddling and Ted watches his eyes go wide for the hundredth time in the last hour. Ted tries not to feel like too much of a voyeur as he eats another mouthful of sandwich and eyes Booster expectantly.

It’s not everyday he gets to see someone get bewildered by a box full of mushy vegetables.

The plastic spork dips into the neatly arranged pattern of multicolored vegetables, and then hesitantly enters Booster’s mouth. Ted waits as he appears to be processing, and then–

“Mm! It’s good!”

Ted grins as Booster tucks into his meal with the same fervor he used to see children at his elementary school employ, barely taking time to swallow as he scoops up mouthful after mouthful. He passingly wonders if that’s how everyone eats in the future; if everyone’s too busy with their augmented reality headsets and jetpacks to take the time to properly enjoy food.

Though, Ted muses, given what Booster’s told me about future food, maybe they just try to get it over with as quickly as possible.

Booster catches him staring and blinks. “What?”

He has little freckles on his nose, Ted observes, and then he blinks and feels his face grow hot. What the hell.

“Nothing.” He shoves his sandwich back into his mouth. Okay, Theodore– that’s enough creepily staring at people you’re trying to befriend. He sees Booster frown in his peripheral vision, scratching at the side of his neck before taking another sporkful of ratatouille, slower this time. Ted scrambles for a distraction.

“So, anything else missing in the future that you want to cross off your bucket list?” Ted asks a little too quickly, fingers tapping against the back of his sandwich wrapper.

Booster side-eyes him and takes another bite of his food. He swallows. “Bucket list?”

Ted swallows his mouthful. “Uh,” he hesitates. “Like, a list of things you want to see?” He knocks his knuckles on the tree trunk behind him. “Stuff you couldn’t get back home.”

He sees Booster’s eyes light up in that look he gets when he understands some 21st century reference, and then he lolls his head back against the tree.

“Yeah, a few things.” Booster looks at him with a thoughtful hum. “I don’t know if I should tell you, though.” He waves his hand with a haughty motion. “Important, timeline-affecting knowledge and all that.”

Ted raises an eyebrow. “What,” he deadpans, “like how the future doesn’t have trees? Or insects? Or meat products, or about World War Three, or–”

Booster laughs and knocks his knee against Ted’s. “Okay, okay. You’ve made your point.” He shoulders shrug in a nonchalant way. “I’m not great at keeping secrets. Michelle always said–”

He cuts himself off with a frown. Ted watches him stuff another bite into his mouth, curiosity piqued.

“.. Michelle?”

Booster swallows and hunches over ever-so-slightly. “Uh, my sister.” He sounds.. resigned. “Twin, actually.”

Ted blinks. “Oh.”

He can tell he hit a sore spot, because the dimples on Booster’s face are less pronounced, fading more by the second. Ted gently nudges his shoulder.

“.. what did she used to say?”

Booster’s still staring at the toes of his sneakers. He glances at Ted’s sandwich for a minute with a faraway look, and then quirks his lips.

“She always said that I had a malferma vizaĝo,” he says with a fond lilt to his voice. He rolls the r in a way that makes Ted stare at the pronounced bob of his adam’s apple. Booster rubs his chin and glances at him. “Uh, like a- an honest face.” He grins with that same helpless little shrug from before. “I can’t hide anything.”

Ted laughs. Like that wasn’t already readily apparent. He pokes Booster in the arm.  “You’re what we cavemen call an open book.”

Booster purses his lips again and then his whole face lights up as he sets his empty container down and wipes at the back of his mouth. “Uh huh,” he agrees, and then points at him accusingly. “You’re supposed to be a superhero, so you can’t use this weakness of mine against me. It would be, like..” he taps his lips with a finger “.. immoral.”

Ted holds his hands up defensively. “I’ll try to resist prying you for information, even if I could learn the formula for interstellar travel in a round of twenty questions.”

Booster tilts his head up and puts a hand on his chest. “Thank you.”

The conversation fades to a comfortable lull as Ted finishes up his sandwich. He finds his gaze drifting towards Booster again, wondering what mundane thing he’ll find new and exciting next. Maybe I should take him to the zoo, Ted muses. That would probably blow his mind.

He finishes his sandwich and crumples up the tinfoil wrapper, opens up his tote to toss it inside when he remembers the small object resting innocently at the bottom. Ted scoops it up, stomach churning nervously all of a sudden. Maybe he shouldn’t give it to him. Is it weird? But then he remembers Booster’s face and the way his eyes had lit up, and the absurdly endearing way he’d carefully straightened the pile and–

“Oh, hey– here.” He hands Booster the paperback before he can second guess himself. “I, uh, got this for you.”

Booster’s eyes do that thing again, get that awed, enraptured look as he carefully accepts the worn-looking book. It’s pages are curled on the corners, there’s some scribbles on the sides like someone’s kid got overzealous with the markers, and even some illegible note scribbled on the inside cover, but when Ted had seen it on the shelf he knew that he had to get it.

Long fingers turn the book around to reveal the cover. “Dune?” Booster asks, thumb brushing along its spine like it’s something more than just a two euro used novel. Ted scratches at the back of his neck, face feeling hot for some reason.

“Yeah, just something I read when I was a kid. I was obsessed with it.” Booster thumbs through the pages, thumb dragging down the corner of the worn paper with an exceedingly gentle touch. Ted clears his throat. “Thought it was about time you learned some proper culture,” he tries to joke, voice unsteady.

Booster looks up at him from under his long blonde eyelashes, eyes flickering between his own like he’s searching for something, and then he swallows, clutching the book to his chest protectively.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, tone serious and intense. His hand reaches out to squeeze Ted’s arm. Ted fights down the sudden hysteric sensation in his chest, briefly wondering how this moment became so deep.

Ted can’t seem to look away, gaze trapped in Booster’s own. “It was only, like, three dollars,” he says helplessly.

Booster sighs wistfully, eyes lingering over the cityscape in the distance. “In the future I could sell this and be a millionaire.” He tilts his head and taps his chin with a finger. “It’s like– Van Gogh with his paintings. No one appreciated them while he was making them, but as time passed they became more valuable, you know?” Ted watches as he scratches at the back of his neck and laughs under his breath. “Not that these are the same, but–” he shrugs and smiles at Ted, warm and open in a way that makes his dimples particularly pronounced. “It means a lot to a guy like me.”

Ted stares for a minute, uncomfortable with the way his chest has started to twinge every time he sees those stupid perfect dimples. Okay, Teddy. Reel it back in.

“Well,” he starts, tossing his sandwich wrapper in the air and catching it with a feigned nonchalance, “I’m only giving it to you because your pop culture references are embarrassingly outdated.”

Booster scoffs. “They are not.” He pokes Ted in the arm. “I was a history major in college, thank you very much.” He puts his hand over his chest. “I know things.”

Ted tosses the wrapper at him and snickers when it hits him smack in the forehead. “Name one musician that’s popular in this decade.”

Booster tosses the wrapper back at him and Ted dodges forward to let it sail over his head. “Um, Elvis,” he says with an air of superiority. “Duh.”

“That was, like, thirty years ago, dude,” Ted groans. “Oh my god, I can’t be seen hanging around a guy who listens to Elvis.” He pushes himself to his feet with an overly-dramatic flourish and grabs his tote.

“Wha–!” Booster grabs his arm and squeezes, something panicked in his voice. “Wait, you’re leaving?”

Ted reaches for his takeout box and tosses it into his tote so he can throw it away later. He’s about to draw out the act for longer, storm off in a huff, but something about the way Booster’s looking at him with such an open, vulnerable expression makes him roll his eyes instead, place his hand in the middle of Booster’s back, and lightly shove him in the direction of the exit.

“We’re leaving. You have to update your tune collection, my man, and lucky for you I got Stevie’s new album a brand new Denon DCD back in the Bug.” He wiggles his eyebrows up and down. “It has a super linear converter, a four times over digital filter, and–” he pauses for dramatic effect “– a remote control.”

He waits for Booster to look impressed. Booster raises an eyebrow and shakes his head. “Oh yeah, you people and your CDs. How..” he waves his hand vaguely and purses his lips “.. quaint.”

“Quaint!” Ted says incredulously. “That thing cost me eight hundred bucks, pal. There’s nothing quaint about it.”

Booster just laughs and pries his hand from Ted’s arm to gesture for him to lead the way. Ted swings the tote over his shoulder and glances at Booster out of the corner of his eye as he rubs his opposite arm with his palm. He looks relieved, Ted realises.

Ted’s struck, suddenly, by how utterly alone Booster is in this time. He’s heard tale of some kind of marketing team, and there’s the rest of the League, but other than that? Does he have any friends here? Ted wonders, chewing on his bottom lip as he swings the metal gate open and lets Booster through first. From what Ted can tell, Booster spends most of his time just hanging around the League HQ waiting to be sent on a mission.

Not, Ted concedes as he stops and waits for Booster to be done inspecting a newspaper kiosk, that I’m much different. Ever since his scheming, jerk of a dad had taken Kord industries out from underneath him, it’s been nothing but R&D for him and his Bug. He doesn’t talk to his old colleagues anymore, except for Murray, and Murray’s as much of an isolated workaholic as he is.

Booster could be a good friend, he realises, watching the curve of Booster’s spine as he bends over to pet some old lady’s poodle with that megawatt smile. He likes Booster. The others at HQ might find his enthusiasm off-putting or fake, but if Ted learned anything from this outing, it’s that that’s just how Booster is; constantly giving 110% in all aspects of life, even if under all the skin-tight gold outfit he’s just a regular guy like him. A regular guy from four hundred and fifty or so years in the future, granted, but still essentially powerless unless unrelenting charm is a super human quality.

Which, Ted acknowledges with a wry grin as the old woman practically swoons as Booster compliments her dog, might actually be the case.

Ted shifts forward against the fence. “Ready to go?”

Booster’s head snaps up at him at the same time as the poodle. Ted snorts and pushes off the fence to head down the sidewalk, waiting for Booster to catch up before crossing the street back to HQ. Booster tugs the book out from under his arm and starts to read the description on the back, mouth moving silently with every word. He bumps Booster’s shoulder with his own to get his attention. He feels nervous, all of a sudden, like, somehow, deciding that he should actively try to befriend Booster has made it five times as difficult.

“Uh, I can show you that movie after, if you want.”

“Hmm?” Booster glances up from the book. “Oh! The first best time-travel movie.” He grins at him. “Star Trek, right? You said earlier.” He taps his nose smugly. “I do know that one, actually.”

“Even I knew that Star Trek would make it all the way to the 25th century,” Ted says. “It’s a classic.”

Booster laughs and carefully tucks the book back under his arm. “Uh huh. It’s in all the history pads. I read about it in my Terran history class.”

Ted blinks and pauses in his step. “Wait– you’ve seen it, right? The show?”

Booster raises an eyebrow at him. “Ted, I’m from the 25th century. Why would I watch Star Trek when I could just order some Slyggian food from the place down the street?”

Ted groans. “Oh my god, we have our work cut out for us. No Star Trek, no Stevie Wonder– I bet you haven’t even seen Alien.”

“J’onn’s room is like, two floors up.”

Ted stares at him for a moment before grabbing his arm and physically tugging him towards the hangar bay. “That’s it, we’re not moving from in front of the TV until you’ve been properly indoctrinated into this time period.” He tugs open the door and pushes Booster through. “Hope you like popcorn, bud.”

“What’s that?”

“Ohhhhh my god.”

Maybe not so difficult.

#boostle #booster gold #ted kord #idk this got away from me a bit but its just them bein cute i guess #young sons.. back in JLI era.. #the first best time travel movie is #of course #star trek IV: the voyage home #i'll fight u on this #writin

[aion-rsa]

How Marvel is Redefining the Future of the X-Men

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Jonathan Hickman and crew are blazing a bright trail for Marvel's X-Men with House of X and Powers of X.

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Jonathan Hickman, Pepe Larraz, RB Silva, Marte Gracia, and the rest of the team are now two issues into House of X and Powers of X, the intertwining X-Men event comics meant to reset the marvelous mutants, and in four issues over one month, they've managed to change everything we know about the X-Men. This isn't hyperbole: the changes that were made in House of X #2 altered everything we knew about the past of the X-Men, and the additional information we got in Powers of X #2 changed at least two potential futures and may have further tweaked the past. We are one third of the way done with the event, and already these are the most ambitious, most entertaining X-Men comics in a decade. 

WARNING: This article contains EXTENSIVE spoilers about the first issues of House of X and Powers of X. STOP READING NOW if you haven’t read both comics.

I. The Theme

They're not kidding about this 10 thing. First, Powers of X literally goes through exponentially greater powers of ten on a timescale (starting at year 1, jumping to year 10, year 100 and year 1000). So of course Moira X would be the tenth Moira Kinross.

House of X #2 made one of the most head-spinning retcons in X-Men history. This is a flatly absurd statement to make about a comic family where the title character faked his own death for shits and giggles more than once, but Jonathan Hickman will see your "actually Jean Grey's real body was in a cocoon at the bottom of Jamaica Bay," and raise you "in Moira MacTaggert's ninth life she chose to help Apocalypse ascend to godhood."

A brief summary of this massive, massive retcon: Moira Kinross lived a happy, long life full of family and died at the age of 74. When she died, she immediately woke up in the womb with all the knowledge she had gained in her previous life. She tried living through her life again with that additional knowledge, but it didn't work, and when Charles Xavier outed himself as a mutant on television, she felt that was the answer she had been looking for, and promptly died in a plane crash on her way to meet him. She woke up again in the womb, with an additional lifetime of memories, and proceeded to devise a cure to her mutant ability of reincarnation. Unfortunately, Mystique and Destiny didn't care for the potential outcomes of having a mutant cure out and available in the world, so they burned her and her cure in her lab, but not before warning Moira to help mutants, to never attempt to make a cure again lest they find her and kill her again, and telling her that she only has ten or eleven lives in total.

read more: Marvel's X-Men Relaunch Explained

From there, Moira begins an iterative process of figuring out the best way forward for mutants. First she marries Charles and helps him establish the X-Men, but they're eventually all killed by Sentinels. Then she finds Charles 10 years early and helps him establish a separatist mutant colony, but they're all killed by Sentinels. Then she goes badass commando and kills every Trask she can find, but Sentinels are created anyway and she's killed by a stray Mastermold.  So she convinces Magneto to attack early, but he's killed by the heroes of that world and she dies trying to break out of jail. The ninth time through, she wakes Apocalypse early and helps him ascend to his maximum power, and they go to war with the Sentinels. And the tenth time through brings us, presumably, to House of X.

This is a massive, massive change to existing continuity that asks as many questions - what happened in the unaccounted for life 6? why would she enter an abusive relationship with Joe MacTaggart in life 10? - as it answers (Moira is no longer the only human to contract the Legacy Virus).

II. The Art

Pepe Larraz on House of X and RB Silva on Powers of X  continue to astonish with their linework, but my god, Marte Gracia's colors are staggering. It's unfair to single anyone out, because these are arguably the best looking superhero books on stands right now, but Gracia is doing tremendous work (and we fawned over Larraz and Silva last time, but holy shit look at Destiny's mask and tell me Larraz isn't due some awards).

These two books are basically telling four stories; one in each of the four time periods. Each is a vastly different setting with a different tone and different coloring needs. Gracia maintains the distinctions between the four with different palates, and uses different effects for each. He also does a great job of getting out of the line art's way when it's needed - Larraz is a little chunkier and muddier with his blacks, which really adds to the tone of some of the scenes in HoX, while Silva is a little bit bubblier and cartoony, which is perfect for adding incongruous menace to Nimrod. Gracia combines with the other artists to make an X-Book that sings better than any X-Men comic since Jerome Opena and Dean White on Uncanny X-Force.

We are in a golden age of comics coloring. The perfection of digital coloring technology has both opened the doors to a lot more potential colorists, and given those at the top of their game more tools to use when telling the story than they had when coloring was more analog, and that means there are a lot of people doing incredible work. Gracia's work on House of X and Powers of X show that he belongs in the same conversation with the Dave Stewarts and Jordie Bellaires of the world.

III. The Marvel Universe Matters Again

For a very long time, the X-Men books have been siloed off from the rest of the broader Marvel Universe. This has been to the detriment of both the X-Men and the rest of Marvel. That shared universe feeling is part of the reason most of us got into superhero comics in the first place. If we wanted to read a story about a group of kids with powers, there are any number of places we could go for that. It's the fact that the X-Men resonate within a larger shared superhero universe that helped lend these stories some meaning.

That feeling is back, and the beauty is that the creative team is doing it entirely through offhand references. The fact that Powers of X's textual explanation borrows heavily from Annihilation: Conquest isn't material to the progress of the story, but for longtime fans it's a sign that these stories matter, and for new fans it's a thread to tug at to find more stories to love. Cyclops showing genuine affection for Ben Grimm is an awesome metacommentary on how the Fox properties were treated at Marvel, but it's also a link between all of these stories happening. X-Men comics haven't felt like they mattered like this in a long time.

IV. Everything X is New Again

X-Men comics haven't been this effectively rooted in their own continuity for some time either. These two comics are absolutely jammed with classic X-Men nods and love from all over the time period. The promotional material flagged four distinct eras it would call back to - Giant Sized X-Men #1, the '90s launch of volume 2, Age of Apocalypse, and the Grant Morrison run - and while we're getting plenty of those, we're also getting everything else. There's a surprising amount of '90s X-Men, too, from well beyond the launch of volume 2. That is perhaps required when you're doing this much work with classic '90s villains like Apocalypse and Sinister, who weren't entirely fleshed out until The Twelve and the Gambit ongoing series respectively, but it's still fun and surprising to see that era rehabilitated here. And the X^3 era's focus on the Phalanx hearkens back to a lot of X-Men continuity that is firmly mid-90s.

Magneto is also a pathway for a lot of Silver/Bronze Age cusp continuity. We spend a lot of time in Octopusheim, his island base from the dawn of Uncanny X-Men that he then used as a vacation getaway for the New Mutants when he ran the school, and the gorgeous flashback above from Powers of X #2 is chockablock with classic callbacks. 

And every aspect of X-Men life is touched. Obviously their genetic inheiritance is the crux, but the preponderance of crazy X-adjacent space name drops like the Shi'ar and Phalanx and Technarchy shows that everything counts and nothing is off limits.

V. Hickman's Mastery of Villains

There were very few outright villains in Jonathan Hickman's older Marvel work. Really only two that I can think of: Thanos in Infinity and The Maker, Ultimate Reed Richards. There were plenty of villanous characters, but while Namor and Dr. Doom are assholes, they at least had an argument to make. But whether they were bad guys or bad guys making compelling points, Hickman wrote them beautifully. This is happening again here.

read more: The X-Men Movies You Never Saw

Nimrod is a delight. He plays as brilliant, weirdly funny, and just slightly unhinged, which goes against type for a blocky murder robot. But his power and design and openness to flat murder make him a little bit terrifying as well. Meanwhile, Magneto is tremendous. "I do. I decide." is right next to "I. Doom." in the face of the Beyonder's destruction of the multiverse as PERFECT lines from ambiguous bad people. Destiny's entire interaction with Moira in HoX #2 is on the same level. Menace, authority, understanding, and purpose all in the briefest of dialogue.

VI. The Greatest Cyclops of All Time

This is going to sound weird, but I don't want to be friends with this Cyclops. I want to be his coworker.

I want to be set to a task with him. I want us to decide who's going to take care of what. And then I want to be completely and utterly certain that the stuff I'm not working on is going to be taken care of correctly and quickly, and then we can go grab a beer when it's done.

This is perfect writing of a character who's been done dirty for the better part of the last 15 years. Good Cyclops should be competence porn. He's the guy who can bank an optic blast off of two walls and knock out the bad guy, the one Captain America takes tactical advice from. I look at him and I see a viable politician with appeal outside the mutant community, but for a decade and a half events have conspired to push him into reactionary terrorism before he was killed off panel. His return in the last wave of X-books is promising from what I've read so far (I'm on Unlimited time, so I'm six months behind), but he was off the board or playing a different game for a long time. He's back now and he's better than any Cyclops I've ever read.

VII. Elegant Infodumps

The infodump graphics that abound in Hickman comics have turned some people off to his work in the past. Designer Tom Muller and the subject matter are, I think, combining to change that. Also, the droplets of information hidden on these pages make them really worthwhile to pour over.

read more - The Essential Episodes of X-Men: The Animated Series

There has been an enormous amount of information conveyed in these first four issues. Resetting of timelines, additional potential futures, massive character retcons, a core mystery, new factions introduced. All of them used Muller's infographics to help further the story, but they're presented in a clear, logical way that both furthers the story and deepens the mystery. Here's a perfect example: the timelines at the end of HoX #2 require two page turns. Being the broken completist that I am, I wanted to see all of the timelines lined up, and when I found a copy of the images attached online, I clicked away immediately because it didn't work in my brain. It was laid out the right way for the page turns, but not necessarily from end to end. Someone also very generously put the timeline data laid side to side in a google spreadsheet that was, to me, fundamentally unreadable, and I have spent enormous parts of my life staring at and creating unreadable spreadsheets. It is a testament to Muller's skill as a communicator that he found the best way to convey this information on the page.

It also helped that he dropped a huge hint about Moira 9's timeline as an OS build caption at the bottom of the mutant race summary graphic in PoX #1.

VIII. Mastery of the Form

As consumer products, these books are just about perfect.

To be completely honest, $5 is pretty expensive for a comic. Even with an added page count, a LOT of books now are breezy, decompressed reads that are done in ten minutes. Not these. Setting aside that they're designed for rereading, these are incredibly dense stories that are perfectly balanced between using the art and the words to tell them, that reward deep readings and rereadings in a way a lot of other comics don't. I'm not saying I want my entire stack of books to be like this, but these are good purchases.

They also manage the information flow perfectly for a weekly story. Consider: week 1, House of X #1 lays out the new status quo for humans, Magneto, the X-Men and the robot adversaries. A week later, Powers of X #1 builds two potential futures and sets up a retcon while furthering week 1's story and layering in mystery that rolls back onto the first issue. A week after that, we get hit with a massive retcon that changes all of X-Men history and totally recontextualizes the first two issues along with building out ten potential alternate timelines. And then this week, more gaps in that story get filled in and more mystery gets layered on. A month delay between any of these would be interminable. A week is just right, and considering the quality we're getting, it's also ridiculous from a production perspective. This is high quality work.

IX. #XSpoilers

I've been reading comics for a while, and I think the last time any comics hit like this was probably Flashpoint. EVERYBODY is talking about this book. It's selling like gangbusters, but it's also the first time since I started using the internet that people were universally and uncritically happy with a comic. 

read more: Best X-Men Movies Watch Order

Honestly, these books are just so much fun to experience. Rushing to read them right when they come out, then spending hours arguing about the possible interpretations and new plot lines, it's a reminder of what it was like to first get into comics. I'm loath to be the old white dude shouting at the kids that this is how comics should be, but it is nice to have everyone on generally the same page and having fun reading them again. Even if the guy who owns Marvel has spent the last three years trying to rob the VA.

X. I Don't Own Enough Corkboard and Yarn

An enormous part of that fun is the baseless, incorrect and often ridiculous speculation. Last time, I argued that X^1 Xavier is actually Sinister in disguise. While the trashy glam geneticist remains conspicuous by his absence, I'm drifting away from that idea a little bit, only because it feels like he's being accounted for. My big speculation this week is around the various lives of Moira and how they relate to the PoX timeline.

-X^3 is Moira 6.

-X^2 is Moira 9.

-X^1 is Moira 10 and the 616.

-X^0 is Moira 11.

I'm very confident about the X^2 timeline belonging to Moira 9 after PoX #2 showed that Apocalypse is leading the future mutants. There's still one unaccounted for mutant on Asteroid K, so that could easily be her.

Moira 6's timeline is noticably missing from the timeline at the back of HoX #2, but each new life flows from its predecessor - Moira 5 gets Charles to wall off the X-Men after watching them die in a Sentinel attack, while Moira 9 goes to Apocalypse after Magneto can't fix things. So what happens to Moira 6 to make her spend her next life hunting down Trasks? 

She makes herself a Sentinel and lives through the Ascension. 

If Moira 6 doesn't involve a Nimrod, then the first time she'd experience on would be in her ninth life, so it would make no sense for her to have the X-Men hunting down information about Nimrod's emergence there for use in a future timeline. It makes a kind of sense for her to experience these Sentinel ends to her previous two lives, then to go all the way to the end of what the robots want to find out what she's up against.

read more: Complete Schedule of Upcoming Marvel Movies

I have no evidence to support X^0 and X^1 being different trips through besides a gut feeling. X-Men continuity would be SO much more complicated if Moira, Charles, and Eric all knew what was coming and the intervening thousand issues of X- and X-adjacent comics happened. And we've seen a timeline where minor changes lead to mostly the same outcomes - Moira 4 lived through the original 5, the Giant-Sized globetrotting team, and A vs. X while married to Charles, so Moira 11 can have Charles and Magneto working together from the jump and the rest of Marvel continuity unfold the same way.

Either way, it's extremely complicated and a blast to argue about.

Read and download the Den of Geek SDCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Feature Jim Dandy

Aug 14, 2019

Marvel

X-Men

Jonathan Hickman

from Books https://ift.tt/2Z4FqVR

#aion-rsa #Books

[kickasswireup]

It’s been about 2 weeks. Here are the return flight logs:

Flight log R1

10 people on this flight lol. Something keeps clanking underneath my seat. We had an English only safety demonstration (British airlines). Smells really weird. You can see the ground DRY behind the engine turbines...? Subtly, and not completely, but they probably created the driest spot around here. I ended up riding a horizontal escalator for fun at the airport. The things people do when they’re bored. I think I may use this as a time to reflect a little. Or just watch the clouds and such. It’s a 2 hour flight to London. I may end up seeing Annic! Although that may not be for the best — just in case. Corona. One day I’ll look back and be like “damn that was crazy huh”. One day. Probably not for a year or so. I’ve been running this blog for what...since....august? Mid august? Or early October? Lord. Well, I’ve gotten worse and I’ve gotten better. Changed? Slightly. In trynna get Xanax / Ativan for anxiety. I’ve always noticed how it’s bothered me but never really done anything too powerful too try and combat it. Xan/Ati because they have an immediate effect. I’m not afraid of addiction. Would be pretty funny if this plane crashed. Smallest deaths as a result of a commercial airline flight ever lol. GOD DAMN EVERYTHING IS BEAUTIFUL. The clouds and the way the wing looks like it’s amidst nothing at all, the clouds from above. The perfect lighting when you’re between one level of clouds and another. And the sun creating shadows on the inside of the plane. Glorious. I think I’ve been feeling really good since I got to the airport and it’s because of the ten mile walk. That shit sucked, but was the most exercise I’ve gotten in a long time. Not highest heart rate for sure, but longest period of objective, near-continuous exercise. What a mood boost! Also I’m going home!! And to London! And the SEATBELT SIGN IS OFFFFFF YESSSSSS but right now we’re just above clouds so it’s not as cool as seeing cities. It’ll be neat to see London though! Rainy rainy London :) one of the icons of Europe! A shithole! I wouldn’t want to go outside for fear of being arrested for my pen and charging brick lol. Haha autocorrect changed “pen” to “own” because it recognizes how absurd such a thing is. They serve tea bitch!!!!!! TEAAAAAAA woo! The lady sounded a little disappointed when I said no to milk and sugar. They just bring the tea around already poured and steeped and everything in a little Dixie cup. Ah. Drinkable water too. In a bottle no less! With TWO pretzel packets!! Flavored! Sour cream and chive. Okay A they’re tiny. B the flavoring is good, and C the packets are like 80% full. And good and proper inflated. Mad. I wonder if they’ll have meal service on the way home? Looking out the window really heightens the sky diving itch you know, I’m pretty sure running a mile is a little over 100 calories. I wonder if that’s comparable to walking? That’d be 1000 calories of walking haha. Or abut 700 of memory serves correct for walking. Definitely the most exercise I’ve gotten recently. Yay me! Just landed. Some dad said “we’re in London!” And their kid said “peppa pig?” And he said “yeah peppa pig”

Flight log 2R

I see the clouds and I cry. They are so damn beautiful.

***

I’ve seen about 1/3 of 3 movies now, and all of moonlight. We’re over Greenland now. Stupid clouds. They never end. They legit like we have been over clouds off and on since before we left GB. Pretty crazy how you can get such clouds from the snow, or have clouds travel all the way across Greenland. About 6 hours left. 1/3rd the way through. I’ve eaten all my food and 600ml of ginger ale. Nobody following no rules. It’s a good time :) it’s easy to forget that I may be put somewhere or questioned or separated or whatever when I land. These bitches better beLIEVE I’m a citizen. I frequently find myself predicting hostility. Maybe that’s because hope let’s me down often. High expectations...if they’re met, that’s fine, and if they’re not, that’s really not fine. But if I have low expectations and everything goes well, then that’s awesome. I’ve had that a few times recently. That’s the way to go. I can’t tell where the clouds end and the snow begins. A different kind of ocean.

***

It’s been half an hour. Bro. 5:20 left. This reminds me of the Mexico flight. This may be the longest flight I’ve been on. Went through some videos/photos. A few more movies couldn’t hurt eh? Heh.

***

Finished Jiro. Not sure how much time left. Planning to check around 3:30, based on feel. Gonna try and ask if they have anymore food.

***

ouchie. 3.5hr left. Gotta cross like all of Canada. Canada is mostly ice, turns out, but still pretty in its own way. I miss the clouds, but mostly I miss the cities and such. All the lights in the cabin are off for some reason? I think they turned them off at 9pm local (former).

***

Bro it’s been like 12 minutes bro....please bro. Aight Casablanca time. Why not lol.

***

Good movie so far :)

***

Sub 2 hours!!! Love that! 1:57!!!!!!!!!

***

Tiredness taking a toll on my brain. There’s only been a few times where I’ve understood that, how you can do stuff and have it not register at all in your head as....bad? Or wrong or whatever

***im at international arrivals. Fatigue and tiredness ain’t shit. I am hungy tho

[thedeadshotnetwork]

Confessions of a Star Wars nerd Does the phrase "earth tones" inspire you to fits of childish and utterly inexplicable laughter? What about "Yub-Nub?" Do you consider the replacement of Elaine Baker, the woman who played the spooky holographic Emperor in Empire , with Ian MacDiarmid one of the most egregious changes in the Special Editions? (Do you, in fact, refer regularly to the second Star Wars film as "Empire"?) How often have you complained to your wife or girlfriend, if you have one, about the absurdity of ret-conning "Darth" into a title, like "Sir"? Does the phrase "Zahn-era Expanded Universe canon" mean anything to you? Do you know how many novelistic accounts we have of Han Solo's marriage to Princess Leia, and do you prefer the one where C-3PO serves — naturally — as "Best Droid" or the one where Han kidnaps Leia and flies her to a planet he's just purchased, one inhabited by a clan of Force-wielding witches who want Luke to impregnate their chieftaness in order to produce some kind of super Jedi babies? Do you continually return to Mr. Plinkett's prequel reviews? Could you pick a Sullustan out of a police lineup? How about Bossk? If you answered yes to any of my questions, it is possible to predict a few things about you. You are between the ages of 25 and 45. You are likely white and almost certainly male. Odds are you didn't see all the original Star Wars films, or maybe even any of them, in theaters. Your introduction came by way of the old CBS/Fox videocassettes or maybe the THX boxed set with the "One Last Time" preview and the Leonard Maltin interviews with George Lucas at the beginning. You had the Kenner "Power of the Force" toys from the mid-'90s rather than the ones from the '70s. You were confused by The Phantom Menace , disappointed by Attack of the Clones , and saw Revenge of the Sith with your friends explicitly to make fun of it. You think that the Special Editions of the film released in 1997 to commemorate the 20th anniversary of Star Wars are even worse than the prequels because they sullied something you loved. You complain constantly about the unavailability of the original versions on modern home-video formats and make a point of reminding people who don't care about whether Han shot first that you own them on VHS. You might even own the laserdisc versions as well even though you don't have a laserdisc player. If, on the other hand, you answered no to most or all of my questions but think that my asking them is occasioned by the upcoming release of Disney's Star Wars: The Last Jedi , which I have no plans of seeing, you are wrong. Star Wars exists for fans like me in a realm that Disney cannot touch, in tapes and heaps of out-of-print mass-market paperbacks and coffee table books with titles like The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels and, above all, in memory. It is a hobby, a sport, and even a kind of cause. It is (to paraphrase General Motti) the ancient religion to which we are sadly devoted. I cannot actually remember the first time I watched the films, except, oddly, Empire , which used to be my least favorite. At first I only had Star Wars . Then my mother taped Return of the Jedi from TBS the day after Christmas, complete with repeat airings of a Menard's commercial that I will be able to quote on my deathbed. A few years later I can recall being in Mrs. H's first-grade class compulsively rereading The Golden Globe , the first in the Star Wars Junior Jedi Knights saga, not to be confused with the roughly concurrent Young Jedi Knights series written by Kevin J. Anderson, much less the Star Wars Galaxy of Fear books, with their attractively spooky holographic covers. By the time I was 8 I could quote every line of dialogue from all three of the films. I had been Luke and Han for Halloween in immediate succession. I was old enough not to want to die of boredom during the romance scenes but young enough to want to leave the room from embarrassment. One of the rites of passage for serious fans is recognizing that the hallowed original trilogy is not without its problems. So your very interesting and original opinion is that the Ewoks were a lame cash grab from Lucas, who clearly cared more about selling stupid toys than the cinematic arts? That's kid stuff. Real Star Wars fans can turn off the sound during the first film and tell you in any given scene whether Carrie Fisher is even bothering with her never-very-steady English accent. They can catalogue the various pronunciations of Han's name in Empire . They can point out to you how that film's timeline makes no sense at all unless you proceed on the unspoken assumption that it takes place over the course of at least six months, that Luke ran and did pushups and balanced cups on his nose for weeks on Dagobah while the Millennium Falcon crawled to Cloud City. (I would be lying if I said that I did not know a website where someone has done the math, using the speed at which the Falcon was able to travel without hyperdrive to arrive at an exact figure for how long our hero was with Yoda.) Do the films hold up, though? It depends what you mean. It is certainly the case that, in the words that only we have committed to memory, they "changed movie-making forever," but it was almost certainly a change for the worse. They are fun, even Jedi , but are they any good? When we are children, it doesn't really matter what we read or watch. The point is to have something to apply our silly minds to, preferably something that can inspire a sense of awe and longing, something that succeeds, however clumsily, in telling us a story about good triumphing over evil. It turns out that for a large-ish portion of American males in roughly my age bracket and slightly older, Star Wars was that thing. Forget the effluvium. The novels were boring by the time we were 10. The merchandise was a scam for which we should be begging our parents' forgiveness. But the films themselves were good then and are good now because they are true and even moving. We can still laugh with them even though we are old enough now to laugh at them as well. There is nothing I would rather watch than Luke staring up at the twin suns of Tatooine, one blood orange, one faintly violet, framed by that ridiculous magenta expanse of sky, dreaming of something ineffable amid the strains of John Williams' throwaway pastiche of a score for the very simple but impossible to explain reason that it is the most beautiful scene ever filmed. December 11, 2017 at 02:28PM

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[lesserplaces]

Despite what you may have heard perfection isn’t all that difficult to attain. It’s goes something like this: First you bring in the experts to tell you what they want. Because everyone like’s improvement, they will tell you to make whatever it is you are designing lighter, stronger, better functioning, and better looking than what they already have. Humanity has come a long way over the past 200,000 years, so this is a pretty tall order. To make sure your widget is up to snuff you set off combing the planet for an incredibly rare material that is somehow ticks all these boxes. If, after many meetings in many far away places, you can’t find such a thing in the earth, you call in the chemists and engineers and have them make it for you from scratch. Finally, you pay a craftsmen with a lifetime of experience to take this raw material and convert it into your perfect widget by hand. Not easy, but simple.

Simple and expensive. Don’t believe me? Just take a look at the price of good camera lenses. Extra-super-duper-low-dispersion glass doesn’t grow on trees and Germans don’t work on the cheap. Yes, in the end you do get a perfect lens. Unfortunately this perfect lens costs more than your car and your partner deeply resents it’s purchase.

So perfection, which can be attained by anyone with patience and an unlimited budget, just isn’t all that interesting. What is interesting is the very very good. For one, very very good products are what we people of limited time, income, and experience actually buy. We know that we can’t have it all so we compromise. Though it may seem counterintuitive, that these very very good products are exercises in compromise is actually a positive. After all, it is only through the crucible of compromise that we figure out what it is we really want. Maybe instead of buying something that is perfect, but specialized, you decide that you’d rather have something that is only very very good, but more versatile. Or, that instead of buying something that is perfect, but complicated, you’d rather have something that is only very very good, but simpler. Or, that instead of buying something that is perfect, but expensive, you’d rather have something that is only very very good, but doesn’t break the bank.

Enter the Orvis Battenkill Disc.

TL;DR

WHAT IS IT? Orvis Battenkill Disc Fly Reel

HOW LONG HAVE YOU OWNED IT? One Month

HOW MUCH DOES IT COST? Between $149-$200, depending on size

PROS? Smooth drag, classic looks, machined construction, excellent fit and finish, absurd value

CONS? Lowest drag setting too heavy for smaller models (1-3), not quite “clicky” enough

WHO SHOULD BUY IT? People looking for top of the line features at reasonable prices, people who like classic looks with modern conveniences

WHO SHOULDN’T BUYT IT? People who like large arbors, cheap people, people who prefer click and pawl over disc set ups

DID SOMEONE GIVE IT TO YOU FOR FREE? No, I bought this reel with my own money. This post does contain affiliate links, however, which do provide a small kickback to us if you purchase through them at no additional cost to you.

The Battenkill Disc isn’t a perfect reel. We need to get that out of the way at the beginning. The lowest drag settings are too heavy for the smaller sizes, the “mid-arbor” design is closer to small than large, and detents on the drag wheel are, while distinct, a little on the mush end. Most annoyingly, the size two is just a little on the small side for a 5 weight line while the size three is just a little too large.

What it is, however, is a very very good reel at an absurdly reasonable price.

For starters, that slightly-too-heavy drag is extraordinarily smooth. Compared the the traditional click-and-pawl Battenkills that Orvis has been selling since before humans finished off the last woolly mammoth, the disc models use a drag drag system. In particular this system is based on Orvis’ top of the end model, the Hydros SL, and the result is silky perfection.

Second, the entire body of the reel and spool are machined, rather than cast like many of the other reels in this price range. Far be it from me to bring the horror’s of Bill Ruger’s ghost upon these pages, but suffice it to say that, while we all know objectively that castings can produce tools of excellent finish and durability, most fishermen prefer the piece of mind that comes from having our gear carved from a single piece of metal. And while we’re talking about construction, it is probably worth noting that the Battenkill Disc is somehow lighter than the much more ported Hydros SL. Go figure.

Last, it looks phenomenal. While I understand the allure of space-age looks in a vacuum (EDITOR’S NOTE: Hahaha, space-age looks in a vacuum, get it? GET IT?) part of fly fishing’s appeal is its heritage. Not to get too deep into the mumbo-jumbo– we’ve all seen that movie after all— but fly fishing is an art and aesthetics matter when art is concerned. Most modern reels, with their giant arbors and euro-trash angles, have always made me feel a little like Brian Nosackpo, wandering the sidelines, muttering the most important line in sports history: “C’mon, man. What we doin’ out here, man?” The Battenkill Disc looks enough like the reel I learned to fish on to make me nostalgic while still being shiny enough to be alluring, a very difficult balance indeed.

BUT IS IT CLICKY?

The most important part of any fly reel review: How clicky is the reel? Most of us learned to fish on click-and-pawl set ups, and this has given us a deep and abiding love for the click-click-click endemic to traditional reels. Unfortunately disc reels, despite their many advantages, just can’t click the same way. This is due to the nature of their construction and it makes fishermen very sad.

The Battenkill Disc is satisfying in this area. It does click. Unfortunately the clicks, though distinct, are muted. The search for the clicky disc reel continues…

Which brings us to the best part: the price. Ranging between $149-200 this is a reel you can actually buy. Sure, some compromises had to be made to get here. My guess, and this truly is a guess, is that the reason the drag is a little on the heavy side for the lighter models is that it costs more to produce many different drag set ups rather than just a few. And yes, given and infinite R&D budget I’m sure Orvis could have made it clickier. But in return for these sacrifices we get a machined reel with beautiful looks and silky drag at a price that wont crush your marriage. No, this isn’t a perfect reel. But then again, what’s better: a very very good reel you can afford or a perfect one you can’t?

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Max Wilson is a graduate student studying ecology at Arizona State University. He writes here at Lesser Places, occasionally for Backpacker.com, and even more occasionally for scientific journals. You can follow him on twitter @maxomillions.

    Orvis Battenkill Disc Review Despite what you may have heard perfection isn't all that difficult to attain. It's goes something like this: First you bring in the experts to tell you what they want.

#fishing #Fly Fishing #gear #reel #Review