#the genre of music associated with goblins is also called 'goblin'

[prokopetz]

When I think of musical genres associated with standard fantasy species, it's probably elf rock and orc metal, but gnome music is definitely gnomecore. Gnomes just feel like they'd be about -core.

#gaming #tabletop roleplaying #tabletop rpgs #dungeons & dragons #d&d #fantasy #tropes #music #gnomes #the genre of music associated with goblins is also called 'goblin' #not goblin anything #just goblin

[watching-pictures-move]

Viddying The Nasties #31 | Frozen Scream (Roach, 1975) & The Slayer (Cardone, 1982)

“It is one of those works that has proceeded directly to the status of Great Movie without going through the intermediate stage of being a good movie.” Roger Ebert said this about Sergei Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible, and these words came to mind when I was watching Frank Roach’s Frozen Scream. It’s got a plot that’s total nonsense, seems to be slapped together with no grasp of normal filmmaking language and and is never less than completely fascinating. If I can describe the story, it involves the hero investigating a pair of mad scientists who are searching for the secret of immortality, which to them means enslaving people and turning them into braindead zombies. (The exact method involves freezing people to near death and then reviving them, hence the “frozen” scream in the title.) The hero narrates his quest in a robotic monotone that brings to mind Microsoft Sam, and calls out one of the villains’ “bad acting”, which is a bold claim to be making in this movie.

What follows is a mishmash of dreams drifted into and out of, visual non sequiturs that puncture the somnambulist ambience, a lot of the flat acting one associates with the marginal productions of regional horror but seems thematically appropriate here, and dissonant synthesizer music that serves as the score. I scrambled to jot down notes as I watched this in a desperate attempt to make sense of what I was seeing. A grim reaper in a dream with a scream, a fetching blonde, said blonde appearing topless in what might be another dream, a reflection of a character’s boyfriend turning out to be the blonde, the blonde choking her Paul Simon-ish date (okay, clearly I was a fan of the blonde), a character squawking as they were strangled, a really strange Southern accent, a reference to witches and goblins that seemed like an overreaction, and a cheerful line of dialogue (”I’m not going to guilt, I’m going to hell”). Yet it was no use, as these elements seemed to blend together into one surreal fever dream, assembled with a filmmaking sensibility that seems completely alien to our own.

The characters behave as if they are parodying human behaviour (I mentioned the flat acting earlier, which extends to some really robotic pillow talk), with the “star” (and producer) of the picture, Renee Harmon, shaking up the proceedings with her bizarre, left-field presence. I understand that Harmon has written several books about different aspects of filmmaking, yet if there is any conventional wisdom to be found in those books, none of that is seen on screen. On Harmon’s face is always the threat of a really out-of-place smile, one which never feels all that reassuring. Harmon produced this and other movies and seemed to place herself often in starring roles, yet for her lack of what most would call “talent”, I don’t find her presence egotistical but rather endearing in its strangeness. The violence is crude yet startling, and the ending manages to pierce through the strange fog cast by the film and tap into the genuine existential terror the material deserves.

I was similarly enthralled by The Slayer, which is much closer to what most people would define as a good movie, yet also operates on its own distinct wavelength. There isn’t a whole lot to the story. Four friends vacation on an island off the Atlantic coast while the heroine is taking some much needed rest from her emotionally draining work as an artist. One by one they start to get killed off. Who or what is doing the killing seems to be an afterthought, although a couple of explanations are offered by the ending (it seems to split the difference). The word “dreamlike” can be used to describe vastly different horror movies, from the gory non sequiturs of Lucio Fulci to the shifting menace of the original Nightmare on Elm Street to the low key ambience of Jean Rollin or Jess Franco, and I think this movie definitely feels like a dream in which the characters are adrift and the plot has dissolved. An almost abstract sense of menace hangs over the proceedings, one which sporadically becomes literal when the movie decides to deliver the slasher goods.

The movie has a delicate, elusive atmosphere not unlike what you would find in the work of Rollin or Franco, yet makes it its own by imbuing it with the presence of its island setting. (Herzog’s “voodoo of location” comes to mind, and the inclement weather does wonders to cast a sense of doom over the action.) The proceedings are channeled through the frayed nerves of the heroine and grounded by the mature, lived-in performances of the cast, sliding occasionally into the surreal but never losing grasp of its distinct mood. The sense of isolation is palpable (as in a series of deft cuts after the heroine discovers another victim) and the bursts of violence (which are not all that explicit by the standards of the genre yet are nonetheless grisly) are genuinely jarring. The ending, which offers only ambiguity to conclude the mystery, might be called a cop-out by the less generous, but with its forgoing of easy answers and embrace of the irrational, I think it achieves a deeper unease than a clean denouement would have allowed. The strange spell cast by both these movies can’t be explained away.

#film #viddying the nasties #movie review #frozen scream #frank roach #j.s. cardone

[thetygre]

30 Day Monster Challenge 2 - Day #9: Favorite Zombie

1.      The Tarman (Return of the Living Dead II)

Tarman is just one of my favorite undead ever. When I look at Tarman, I see all the potential a zombie can have realized. He oozes, he drips, he rots, he’s a living personification of death. There are no mysteries about how the Tarman died, and he incorporates that death into his design. His every movement is jerky, but forceful, giving you the sense that Tarman could punch through a wall if he was hungry enough. The death’s-head face pierces into your soul without malice, but only a crazed and insatiable hunger. But it’s more than just his design; there are hints of a personality in Tarman’s wild eyes, the inklings of instinct. Tarman speaks, and his intellectual musings cut to the philosophical heart of the zombie condition by reaching out and expressing his utmost desire; “MORE BRAINS!”.

2.      Deadites (Evil Dead 2)

So this challenge is kind of different; I’ve split the list between my favorite individual zombies and my favorite ways zombies are handled. And my favorite overall zombie species, so to speak, are the deadites from Evil Dead. The deadites don’t even need to start as zombies; they’re demons possessing people, creatures, and objects. But corpses do seem to be their favorite hosts, and even the living they possess sustain enough wounds to be lethal. It doesn’t really matter to the deadites; as spirits, the line between living and dead is irrelevant to them. What’s even better is that their hosts start to mutate, growing faces, limbs, and deformities. The deadites make me think of Legion from the Bible, the old man full of demons scavenging around graveyards. Not to go around picking favorites, but my favorite deadite design is still Henrietta Knowby from Evil Dead 2; she’s the most deformed you ever see any deadite get in the core movies, and she becomes utterly inhuman.

3.      Lewis Legend (Lollipop Chainsaw)

My favorite of the Dark Purveyors from Lollipop Chainsaw. It was tough call between Lewis and Sid, but Lewis has a guitar that is also a machine gun named ‘Nosferatu’. Just take that in for a moment. Think about how much it rocks. Lewis represents the entire genre of Rock N’ Roll all the way from the beginning, including Johnny Cochran and Chuck Berry. His music is some of the best in the game, blending modern Metal with classic Rock. While he might get the least amount of screentime of the bosses, he makes up for it with an intense and spectacular boss fight. Lewis Legend doesn’t add anything to the zombie mythos or say anything deeper about zombies as an allegory; I just think he’s cool.

4.      Umbrella Zombies (Resident Evil)

There’s a part of me that wants to say I like Resident Evil zombies because they can transform into some of the cooler RE monsters, but I really just like them straight-up in the first game. The Resident Evil zombies feel like the perfect zombies as antagonists. The mixture of their damage resistance and aggressiveness helped form the survival horror genre as a whole. Even to experienced soldiers, a single zombie can be threatening, and can easily become overwhelming or costly. That, to me, is the best embodiment of a zombie and, as weird as it might sound, how I threatening I think they would be in the real world.

5.      Solomon Grundy (DC)

Grundy is a tragic character as a zombie. Frankly speaking, he works better as a reiteration of Karloff’s Frankenstein, but the line between Frankenstein’s monster and zombies has always been kind of blurry. There’s just something folkloric about Solomon Grundy to me; maybe it’s how his name is a rhyme, but I guess associate his quest for personhood with something like a golem or an ogre. Grundy’s a call-back to the old days of comics, the pre-Code time where horror and the undead ran rampant. That mark never really left, even during the Silver Age, and Grundy is a representation of that era. But most of all, I think about the Justice League cartoon, and Grundy’s character there. How he turned around, tried to fight for good, and died, and in doing so found his purpose. And then when he came back again, how heart-wrenching it was to watch Hawkgirl put him down like Old Yeller. That’s the kind of thing that should be done with zombies more often; having to face people at different times in a person’s life, and facing how they’ve both changed.

6.      Ragers (28 Days Later)

28 Day Later fundamentally altered what we expect from zombies. The ragers look the least undead out of all the zombies on this list, and pedants will even point out that they aren’t real zombies. What they are, though, is legitimately terrifying. Ragers’ defining feature is that they are fast, and that makes all the difference. The scene during the first movie in the tunnel still knots my stomach up; the shadows on the walls always gave me the feeling that there was some kind of thought to the ragers’ actions there for some reason. Ragers really can’t survive; they’re a plague that dies out after enough time. But that just makes me think that they’re some kind of fever for the planet; a burst of destruction to cleanse the world before cooling back down.

7.      Church (Pet Sematary)

Zombie kitty! Though maybe not so cuddly as that should be. In fact, kind of horrible and vicious. Church (short for Churchill) is the first creature to get resurrected in Stephen King’s Pet Sematary. When Church gets run over by a truck, his owner’s father Lewis takes him to a forbidden Native burial ground to bring him back in secret. And Church comes back PISSED. That’s why I like Church as a zombie; he actively hates being alive, and he blames Lewis for it. He knows he’s unnatural, that he shouldn’t be moving, so he does everything a cat can do to make his owner suffer. Sometimes, dead is better.

8.      The Witch (Left 4 Dead 2)

Left 4 Dead isn’t the only series with ‘special’ zombies, but it is the only one with the witch. The witch was a female zombie identifiable by her loud, moaning screams. As long as a team was stealthy, they could avoid her; but once she woke up, she was unstoppable. Witches were the bane of many co-op session back when I was in high school. But what I love is the implication of the name; this is a zombie that has evolved past zombie-hood. It has become so powerful that now it’s beginning to become a completely different monster. After the zombie apocalypse, how will society cope with living in a world where monsters are real again? How do we go back to living with goblins, ogres, and witches lurking in the night? It’s a question that I’d love to see explored more.

9.      Emily (Corpse Bride)

Emily is another tragic zombie. Admittedly, she works better as a ghost than a zombie, and she’s not even really undead, but she does briefly return to the world of the living. As you might expect from a Tim Burton creation, Emily is purely gothic, embodying romance, loneliness, and the sins of the past. Aesthetically, I do have to say that I like the blue coloring, and the link between a bridal veil and a funeral veil is always a funny connection to explore. I think I like Emily because she’s representative about how zombies can still explore old themes. And my thing for Helena Bonham Carter.

10.   The Sleeper (Edgar Allan Poe)

Okay, confession time. When I was a kid, I got a book of Edgar Allan Poe poetry for kids filled with creepy-ass illustrations, and the illustration for Poe’s The Sleeper was of a corpse slowly coming out of its tomb and pining at the window. And of course that’s not what the poem is actually about; it’s another Poe poem about the narrator dead love lying in her grave. But the IDEA stuck with me, and I kind of wrapped up all my conceptions about Gothic zombies into that image. Zombies do have a presence in gothic horror; they’re not called ‘zombies’, they’re just walking corpses, but that makes them all the more horrible. These days, we’re so used to zombies as a monster archetype we’ve grown kind of numb to the horror of seeing a loved one rising up from the grave and move around in unnatural agony. Every now and then, I feel, we need to go back to the classics to remind ourselves about how horrible a commonplace trope really is.

#30 Day Monster Challenge 2 #30 Day Monster Challenge #zombie #zombies #horror #undead #evil dead #resident evil

[krinsbez]

Book Recommendations: Da Big List, Fiction Edition

Well, I said I’d do more book recs, so here we go...

(note that some of the series recs are out of date, with additional installments written since I previously updated the list) 

-Devil's Cape by Rob Rogers is the single best work of superhero prose I have ever read. -The Six-Gun Tarot by R. S. Belcher, in which the unusual inhabitants of a Wild West town (a sheriff who can't die, a deputy who's the son of Coyote, a housewife who used to be an assassin, and more) fight an Eldritch Abomination. Has two sequels, The Shotgun Arcana and The Queen of Swords -"Craft Sequence" series (six books and counting, starting with either Three Parts Dead or Last First Snow, depending on whether you want to read 'em in publication or chronological order, respectively), by Max Gladstone. Set in a modern-esque fantasy world that runs on corporate necromancy and "applied theocracy", the first (in publication order) involves a junior associate in a necromancy firm having to investigate the murder of the god who powers a steampunk city. -The Goblin Emperor by Katherine Addison, in which the half-goblin Unfavorite son of the Elven Emperor is unexpectedly raised to the throne after his father and half-brothers die in a zeppelin crash. -Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein, in which a Tokyo policewoman catches a case that involves a Yakuza power struggle and a trio of magic swords, with extensive flashbacks (as in, they ultimately take up about half of the book) to the history of said swords. Has a sequel, Year of the Demon, in which the heroine goes up against a cult revolving around a mask tied to the swords. Also, more flashbacks. Now has a third sequel, Disciple of the Wind; there are also a couple of eNovellas, which I haven't read. -Eifelheim by Michael Flynn, in which a Renaissance-era village in Germany interact with a group of aliens whose ship crashed nearby. -Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie, in which the last remnant of a space warship's AI seeks revenge on the ones who blew up the rest of her and...find out why they did it. Has two sequels, Ancillary Sword and Ancillary Mercy. -The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril by Paul Malmont, in which the creators of Doc Savage and The Shadow team-up with each other (and L. Ron Hubbard and someone else who is a minor spoiler) on an actual pulp adventure involving Nazi spies, a Chinese warlord, and something which is actually a BIG spoiler. Has a sequel, The Astounding, the Amazing, and the Unknown, in which Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and L. Sprague De Camp investigate Tesla's final invention. -Bridge of Birds by Barry Hughart, in which Master Li, a sage "with a slight flaw in his character", is hired by an immensely strong peasant named Number Ten Ox to investigate a mysterious plague afflicting his village in a "China that never was". Has two sequels, The Story of the Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen that are greatly inferior but still enjoyable. -The Kitty Norville books by Carrie Vaughn (15 books starting with Kitty and the Midnight Hour; the count includes a short-story collection and a side-novel starring a secondary character), about the host of a midnight radio show in Denver, who is also a newly turned werewolf. One night, instead of playing random music, she starts talking about the supernatural. Then vampires and other werewolves start calling in... -The Inspector Chen novels by Liz Williams (6 books starting with Snake Agent), about a police detective in a near future Singapore who investigates mysteries that require him to liaise with the Chinese versions of Hell and Heaven. -"Barsoom" series by Edgar Rice Burroughs (11 books, starting with A Princess of Mars): The ur-text of the Planetary Romance sub-genre, one of the definitional texts of soft SF. Rollicking adventures with epic characters in a marvelously imagined world. Long story short; a Civil War vet on the verge of death is astrally projected to not-yet-dead Mars, befriends a group of warlike natives, falls in love with the Princess of another, and turns the whole planet upside down in the name of love. Then he has kids... -"Lensman" series by E. E. "Doc" Smith (6 books; starting with either Triplanetary or Galactic Patrol, depending on your preferences): The granddaddy of all Space Operas, a triumphant example of power creep. The forces of Order and Chaos war for the fate of the universe, using the ultimate police force and an army of space pirates as proxies. -Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon: An exploration of the future evolution of mankind. Starting in the '30s with the then-current state of the "First Men" (that is to say, Homo sapiens sapiens) until the extinction of the "Last Men" millions of years hence. Redefines epic scope. -Star-Maker by Olaf Stapledon: A companion of sorts to Last and First Men, except with with the scope turned up to eleven, covering billions of years and the entire universe. -Slan by A. E. Van Vogt: Jommy Cross is a Slan, an evolved human possessed of superior physical and mental abilities. Years ago, the Slans took over the world, but their regime was overthrown and now the Slans are hunted. When Jommy's parents are killed, he must learn to survive in a world that hates and fears him...or does it? Jampacked with twists and turns, not to mention being the archetypical "mutant hunt" novel. -Voyage of the Space Beagle by A. E. Van Vogt: The best and brightest of man's scientific minds have been sent into space to explore strange new worlds, and then figure out how to keep the life-forms they encounter from killing them. A rip-roaring tale of of space exploration, alien monsters, and an omnicompetent protagonist. Not only was it a major influence on Star Trek, one episode is the basis for Alien. -"Demon Princes" series by Jack Vance (5 books starting with The Star King): Years ago, the five most dangerous criminals in the known universe joined together to murder or enslave the inhabitants of a small colony. Now the sole survivor is hunting them down one-by-one across the galaxy... The narrative is a great combination of action and mystery, and the setting is full of all manner of interesting worlds and civilizations. -"Planet of Adventure" series by Jack Vance (4 books, starting with City of the Chasch): An Earthman crash-lands on a planet inhabited by four alien species, and the humans they've enslaved, travels the world to find a way home. A marvelous exploration of the concept of Blue-And-Orange Morality. -"Sector General" series by James White (12 books, starting with Hospital Station): Life aboard a massive, multi-species hospital space station in a deeply idealistic 'verse with one of the most diverse bunch of aliens ever devised. The first six books are mostly collections of short stories featuring medical mysteries solved by Dr. Conway (the primary exception is the second book, which is mostly a novella set against the backdrop of an interstellar war and brilliantly inverts the "Hard Man Making Hard Decisions" trope), as he goes from being a trainee to one of the hospital's elite, while the latter six are novels featuring an assortment of characters. -"Cobra" series by Timothy Zahn (9 books and counting, starting with Cobra): A multi-generational tale of super-soldiers in war and peace, with a healthy helping of interstellar diplomacy. A really interesting take on MilSF, where out-of-the-box thinking takes center stage. -"Quadrail" series by Timothy Zahn (5 books, starting with Night Train To Rigel): Frank Compton, former agent of the human government, finds himself working for the mysterious aliens who run the local 'verse's sole form of interstellar travel; a train in space called the Quadrail. Intrigue, action, and plot twists abound, including one of the best Heel Face Turns I have ever encountered. -"Stainless Steel Rat" series by Harry Harrison (11 books, starting with The Stainless Steel Rat, and one short story, which can be found in the collection Stainless Steel Visions). In a far future where mankind has spread across the stars, crime has been eliminated. Well, that's what the authorities would like you to believe; in truth there are still a small handful of individuals maladjusted enough to commit crimes and smart enough to get away with them. James Bolivar "Slippery Jim" Digriz, the Stainless Steel Rat, may be the smartest of them all, a white collar thief and con artist who's almost pathological disregard for law and authority is balanced by a surprisingly strong moral code. Which is why when he is finally caught, the authorities put him to work catching criminals who lack those morals. This is classic SF comedy, with a surprising amount of pathos at points. -"The Parasol Protectorate" series by Gail Carriger (five books, starting with Soulless). A humorous and exciting tale of love, intrigue, mad scientists, and fashion in an alternate Victorian era where the British Empire's power derives from steampunk technology, werewolf soldiers, and vampire politicians. Has a sequel series, "The Custard Protocol" (3 books and counting, starting with Prudence) revolving around the daughter of the original protagonist. Has a YA prequel spinoff, "Finishing School" (4 books, starting with Ettiquette and Espionage) revolving around a teenager who is recruited by a boarding school that trains spies. There are, in addition, a manga adaptation of the first couple books. -Ports of Call by Jack Vance. Myron Tany has always dreamed of traveling the Gaean Reach. When his eccentric aunt acquires a spaceship, it seems his dream has come true...until she ends up marooning him on random planet. Fortunately, Myron is able to obtain a position as supercargo aboard the merchant ship Glicca. The story does not really have a plot per se, consisting primarily of a series of marvelous picaresque vignettes as Myron and his crew-mates travel to different worlds delivering cargo, trying to acquire additional cargo, and periodically running afoul of bizarre local customs. The book just kinda stops at one point, and resumes in a second book, entitled Lurulu. I'm not really describing this well, but they're both very fun, beautifully written books. -The Green and the Gray by Timothy Zahn. A night on the town for a young New York couple takes a turn for the weird when they are forced, at gunpoint, to take custody of a 12-year old girl. They soon find themselves enmeshed in a secret Cold War between two alien races that have secretly been living in the city for generations...a Cold War that is threatening to turn hot. -The Rook by Daniel O'Malley. A young woman awakens surrounded by corpses with no memory of who she is. In her pocket is a letter from her pre-amnesia self, one Myfanwy Thomas. It seems that Myfanwy was a senior bureaucrat for the covert organization in charge of controlling magic and other such weirdness in Britain, and that her amnesiac state is something that was done to her. Myfanwy must therefore investigate the mystery of precisely who that is, while simultaneously do a job about which she knows nothing, without letting anyone realize what's happened to her. Ha a sequel, Stiletto, though I cannot explain the plot without spoiling the previous book. -Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed. A tale in which an elderly demon-hunting cleric and his paladin assistant team-up with a shape-shifting barbarian girl and husband and wife alchemists to prevent an undead villain unleash an ancient evil, while trying not get involved between the conflict between the tyrannical ruler of their city and a gentleman thief-turned-revolutionary. Did I mention that the cleric's spells invoke the name of Allah, the paladin is a dervish, the barbarian is a Bedouin, and the whole setting draws it's cues not from Tolkien but the Arabian Nights? -"White Trash Zombie" by Diana Rowland (6 books and counting, starting with My Life As a White Trash Zombie). Angel Crawford is an unemployed high school dropout in rural Louisiana with a deadbeat dad, an asshole boyfriend, a drug habit, and no future. After one particularly wild night of drinking and drugging, she gets into a devastating car accident...and wakes up in the hospital without a scratch on her to find that an unknown benefactor has arranged for her to have a job at the Coroner's Office. Which is good because she now has a hankering for brains... -Under the Moons of Mars: New Adventures on Barsoom edited by John Joseph Adams. Exactly what is says on the tin, a collection of original stories set on Barsoom by an assortment of writers. As with any anthology, quality is a bit uneven; some of the stories are excellent Original Flavor pastiches, some are deconstructions or parodies, one or two are just bad. But all in all a great collection. -Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs edited by Mike Resnick and Robert T. Garcia. Same basic idea, but for the entire Burroughs oevure, including some of his non-SFnal work. -"Winter of the World" series by Michael Scott Rohan (two trilogies, the first starting with The Anvil of Ice, the second place taking place before the first and in another part of the world, and which I haven't been able to get my hands on ), an epic fantasy taking place against the backdrop of an Ice Age, in which a young man rises from slavery to become the most powerful smith-cum-magician the world has ever known, and together with some companions fights to defeat the sinister primal forces that wish to cover the world in glaciers forever. Much less generic than it sounds, even without going into the appendixes which reveal the real(ish) science behind quite a bit of the magic. -"Spiral Arm" series by Michael Flynn (4 books, starting with The January Dancer). Moderately Irish-flavored space opera, the first book tells the tale of of how a random space captain found a pre-human artifact, of the various hands said artifact passed into, and the conflicts that sprung up in it's wake. The second book turns the first's framing sequence into an epic of it's own, as a young bard hunts down the truth of her parentage. The series notably involves massive retcons with each volume, revealing that what we thought was going on was actually something else, but does so in a way that's compelling rather than irritating. -Dr. Jay Hosler is an entomologist who has written four edutational graphic novels for children (Clan Apis, The Sandwalk Adventures, Optical Allusions, and Last of the Sandwalkers). I've read three and they are amazing. In Clan Apis, a young honeybee desperately searches for her place in the hive, and ultimately finds an unorthodox solution. In The Sandwalk Adventures, an elderly Charles Darwin tries to convince a follicle mite living in his eyebrow that he's not God, by teaching him about evolution. In Last of the Sandwalkers (no relation)...honestly, the story contains so much epic awesomeness, I just want to list it, but it's all spoilers; suffice to say that the title character is A: a beetle, B: could give Sam Carter and Agatha Heterodyne a run for their money in the mad science department, and C: leads an expedition to explore the unknown and along the way discovers truths about her family and the nature of her people's civilization that some people really don't want her to (also you learn stuff about beetles). -Nightwise by R. S. Belcher. Years ago, Laytham Ballard was the Golden Boy of the occult underworld sub-culture. That was a LONG time ago, and no one would ever mistake Laytham for golden. But he's not so much of a bastard that he'll refuse the last request of one of his few remaining friends. What was supposed to be a simple revenge killing, however, turns out to be a lot more complicated and a lot more dangerous than Laytham ever imagined. Has a sequel, The Night Dahlia, which I have yet to read. -Brotherhood of the Wheel by R. S. Belcher. Jimmy Aussapile is an independent trucker, hauling cargo cross-country to support his pregnant wife and teenage daughter; he is also a member of a secret order descended from the Knights Templar that protects the highways of America from monsters both human and not. An encounter with a hitchhiking ghost finds him heading off on a quest, in which he joins forces with the heir apparent of monster-fighting outlaw biker gang who's military service unleashed some serious inner demons, and a State Trooper who's determination to solve a series of child abductions leads her to go rogue. Together, they must battle an ancient evil involving serial killers, human sacrifice, and Black-Eyed Kids. Note that it's loosely tied to Nightwise, in which Jimmy shows up in one scene as a minor side character; meanwhile, an off-hand reference to Laytham is made at one point in Brotherhood, and a minor plot thread in the later novel relates to a major plot thread in the earlier. They aren't even the same genre, with Nightwise being urban fantasy noir instead of horror. All in all, one doesn't have to have read one to enjoy the other,

#Book Recommendations #Book Recs #Fiction #SF #Science Fiction #Fantasy #Big List

[ericleo108]

🎤 Music Artists’ Composition and Communication

Overt and Subliminal Tactics and Techniques

Intro

This essay is an update of The Collective (Un)conscious in Music & Media. It is more concise and directed in light of newly developed information like ETM, ETM2, The Blue Treatise, etc. As you will come to see there are different forms of linguistics, lyrics, music, imaging and cinematic semantics and mirroring. What we will explore are the various forms those semantics and mirroring portray themselves and try to make sense of what most people don’t even know occurs or exists.

Influence

“If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.” - Sir Isaac Newton

When we think about music we think of our favorite composers.  No matter what genre though your favorite artist got their start learning from someone that came before them. Doing things like learning another artist's songs and what their favorite cords, words, phrases, or metaphors are, will mold the proceeding artist in their image. As with anything familiar, their artistry will be “imprinted” in their mind.

Recognizing Similarities

I will be focusing on hip-hop but as long as I know the proceeding artist I can tell how the succeeding artist has been influenced. For an example, in song, you can tell Avril Lavigne was heavily influenced by Alanis Morissette; just listen to “Head Over Feet” and then “Complicated.” As an example in rap, Asher Roth talks about how he thinks he’s been successful because he sounds like Eminem as described in the track “As I Em.” Those are vocal examples, musically some artists and bands use other band’s work explicitly and deliberately. For example, Crazy Town’s “Butterfly” is just a riff from The Red Hot Chili Peppers “Pretty Little Ditty.”

I heard “Butterfly” when I was in grade school but never knew it was from TRHCP until College. I knew the first time I heard “Pretty Little Ditty” though that it was the same musical riff as “Butterfly.” I’ve shown this to a couple people that have heard both songs and they couldn’t tell it is the same musical progression. If the lay-person doesn’t recognize this, as we go deeper into the human mind, it should become more and more self evident that the similarities between various musical and lyrical associations become harder and harder to see!

Musical Samples

What most people don’t see are music similarities known as “samples” which are small snippets of work from another’s artistry. Some examples of obvious samples are Kid Cudi sampling Lady Gaga’s acoustic version of “Pokerface” in “Make Her Say” or Mac Miller sampling Nas in “Nike’s on my feet.”

Music artists often take a certain sounds and create a whole new musical piece, creating an original work from a classic or a classic from an otherwise unknown original work. Often the sampled classic become a classic. Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long” sampled from Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama” is a great example.  

Copyright

Musical sampling happens so often certain sounds (and phrases) are considered intellectual property and are copyrighted by the originator. If you do not credit or pay for the rights to use the sampled sound of a copyrighted work the originator can sue for damages. The most quintessential example of this is Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” and Queen’s “Under Pressure.”

Less noticeably, Mac Miller was sued for "Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza" because he didn’t clear samples from Lord Finesse's 1995 single "Hip 2 Da Game." More famously, controversial, and recent this type of copyright infringement sampling happened to Robin Thicke who “ripped off” Marvin Gaye's 1977 hit "Got to Give It Up" when he wrote the smash hit "Blurred Lines" with Pharrell Williams and T.I.

These examples are either obvious, identifiable, or published in the news because it’s protected and institutions get involved in protecting their property. But to people or the regular person, they can’t tell, don’t care, and/or have no idea (Robin Thicke sampled Marvin Gaye, for example)! ...and why should they?

Understanding Metaphors in Hip-Hop

There are other ways artists share without having to worry about copyright. For example, besides creative commons, in hip-hop, artists use metaphor and samples to communicate in music. The following are common metaphors, themes, tropes, or cliches in hip-hop that are (pretty) universally used (to show talent and ability).

The “Lab” = Producing Hip-Hop, example:

“What, cause I been in the lab, wit a pen and a pad, try’na get this damn label off” - Forgot about Dre by Dr. Dre

“Back to the lab again yo, this whole rhapsody” - Lose Yourself by Eminem

“I be in the Lab” by G-Eazy

“Whipping” it in “the Kitchen,” example:

“Catch me in the kitchen, like a Simmons whippin' pastry” - Empire State of Mind by Jay-Z

“I throw down in the kitchen might hit your mom with my omelette” - Despicable by Eminem

"Woke up in the kitchen and I started mad whippin'" - Whippin' by Gucci Mane

Voltron/Weapons Capabilities of Transformers, example:

“Come on, you know the 'Tics connect like Voltron Collect so much grass, popo thinking we mow lawns.” - Shake Ya Tailfeather by P. Diddy

“But I form like Voltron and blast you with my shoulder missiles” - Just Don’t Give a F#$k by Eminem

"We form like Voltron, and GZA happen to be the head" - Can It Be All So Simple by Wu-Tang

“I'm a beast when you turn me on into the future cybertron” - Boom Boom Pow by The Black Eyed Peas

“Sleep on Me” is so cliche I don’t need any examples.

To identify metaphors you need to be able to recognize certain words and phrases and how they associate to one another. Another factor is the music. Like what is the tone/mood, is it reflecting another work, etc.? If you’d like to know how rappers use and write metaphors watch this video from the pro Novi Novak himself!

Lyrical Samples

There are musical samples but there are also lyrical samples. When it comes to “sampling” you have to be able to recognize patterns! Lyrical sampling is when you take another artist’s cadence (i.e. flow) and make your own (new and original) lyric progression. This typically starts with the first line from the original, sampled lyric followed by original lyrics in the same cadence (flow) as the sampled work. Some examples of sampling are as follows.

Drake samples Dead Prez’s “It’s bigger than Hip Hop” in “Over” starting with the lyric, “One thing bout music when it hit you feel no pain.” G-Eazy samples Kanye West’s “Stronger” in “Let’s Get Lost” starting with the lyric “Let’s get lost tonight.” Rita Ora is sampling Biggie Smalls’s “Party and Bullshit” in “How We Do” ...and 50 Cent’s is sampling 2pac’s “Picture me Roll’n” in “Places to Go.”

Artistic Communication

In music, especially in hip-hop, there is a form of artistic communication in musical, linguistic, and visual mirroring or responding. Sampling is usually a sign of respect and admiration. Some examples of positive linguistic artist communication is how Sublime honors KRS-One in their song “KRS-One,” Royce Da 5’9” honors Eminem in “Lighters,” Eminem honor’s Dr. Dre in “I Need a Doctor,” Taylor Swift honors Tim McGraw in “Tim McGraw,” or The Notorious BIG and Macklemore honors all of hip-hop in “Juicy” and “At the Party” respectively.  An example of positive visual communication is how Justin Timberlake honors Michael Jackson posthumously in “Love Never Felt So Good.”

Biting

Biting is when you sample but “flip” the words/sentiment to make them negative or pejorative (i.e. a diss).  Biting is more of a competitive condescending back-talk. Biting or negative artistic communication is all too common especially in hip-hop where it’s rampant and (almost) expected.  Some historic examples of negative linguistic artist communication are 2Pac’s “Hit Em Up” and The Notorious BIG’s “Who Shot Ya,” Nas’s “Ether” and Jay-Z’s “The Takeover,” Ja Rule’s “Loose Change” and Eminem’s “Hailie’s Revenge.”

A less serious (showboating) example of negative visual artistic communication is how Hopsin makes fun of Tyler The Creator’s “Yonkers” in “Illmind of Hopsin 4.” Then The Game copy’s Hopsin’s look in “Martians Vs. Goblins” and Hopsin “calls-out” The Game for it in “Hop Madness.”

Subliminal Artist Communication

The previous examples in the “Artistic Communication” section were examples of overt artist communication. This makes sense because why would you subliminally honor an artist, if you like or love that fellow artist? You wouldn’t, you’d want to make it known. However, when it comes to biting (in contemporary artistry) the negative communication turns subliminal.

To be explicit, notice how Hopsin makes his communications overt and says the artist’s names and mirrors them while the mainstream artists never official say they are talking to Hopsin although it’s obvious once pointed out. This is done so the bigger mainstream artist (Tyler The Creator and The Game) doesn’t give attention to the independent artist (Hopsin). If you think about it, a mainstream artist gains (almost) nothing by mentioning a smaller independent or underground artist. These are the reasons why I believe subliminal artistic communication overwhelmingly, if not always, is negative and artistic communication between mainstream and independent artists remain subliminal.

Subliminal Examples

Another example of subliminal artist communication is how Immortal Technique’s “Reverse Pimpology” is (in my profession opinion) a response to 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P.” for reasons that should be/sound obvious in the songs similarity, region, and lyrical insinuation. An example of an obvious but subliminal mainstream negative visual artist communication is when Taylor Swift literally bites Kanye West visually in “Look at What You Made Me Do” by making fun of his bottom row of diamond encrusted gold fronts.  

There are other reasons to keep your influences, mirroring, and “artistic theft” hidden and subliminal. Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” famously and controversially came from Madonna’s “Express Yourself.” Bruno Mars definitely is insinuating the word “pleasure” in his song “Treasure” but probably only used that choice of words as to not be restricted from radio or other airplay for being explicit or obscene (because America sees it obscene to give women pleasure). Finally, Eminem’s Despicable is a freestyle over Drake’s “Over” beat and was Eminem’s way of protecting his throne at the top of the chart and showing he was a better artist than Drake who was a threat on the charts and awards at the time when both “Recovery” and “Thank Me Later” were released in the same year.

Eminem’s Subliminals

The most famous example of overt artist communication turned subliminal is between Mariah Carey and Eminem. After Eminem and Mariah Carey were done dating Eminem came out with a few songs mentioning Mariah, notably "Bagpipes from Baghdad." In what can only be deemed as a response Mariah put out "Obsessed" which features a shady character (pun intended) that looks just like Em in a room with posters full of Mariah obviously obsessing over her. Although Mariah never mentioned his name, Eminem responded with "The Warning" where he says "I'm obsessed now? Oh gee, is that supposed to be me in the video with the goatee?" ...which it obviously is.

People saw this subliminal communication and went, “duh” but would you have noticed it if Eminem wouldn’t have responded so overtly? What if you didn’t know who Eminem was? The only reason people see the subliminal communication here is because they are both big name artists, Eminem made it obvious, and the events surrounding the communication were closely connected in time and suspect.

Taylor Swift Visual Sampling Example

We started with auditory sampling and we have now graduated into visual sampling as just discussed starting with the “Biting” section. The most recent and relevant example of visual “sampling” in a music video is to look at what TIME magazine is saying about Taylor Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do.” I picked this article TIME wrote about Taylor visually sampling other artists to show it doesn’t get any more normal and mainstream to connect and associate visual similarities and references. For example, TIME talks about what the dollar bill means in Taylor’s bathtub of diamonds and I agree with their assertion.

In other articles there are a lot of people saying that Taylor copied Beyonce because she has a bat in the “bank scene” like Beyonce does in “Hold Up.” I personally see that as a stretch because the bat is an independent association with no other references (to “Hold Up”)! What would strengthen that argument is that people think the V formation in Taylor’s dance scene is actually copying Beyonce’s Superbowl dance formation but that’s a stretch.  It’s more likely Taylor is copying the “V” formation for “The Mighty Ducks.” There are other articles about how Taylor’s cage scene is referencing Lindsay Lohan’s “Rumors” but it’s just as likely she reflecting the cage scene from Miley Cyrus’s “Can’t be Tamed.” However, I do agree with the consensus that Taylor is more likely referencing “Rumors” IF she is reflecting either of them at all.  

Visual Sampling

The best representation of a similar music video is Nick Jonas’s “Chains” and Jay-Z and Kanye West’s “No Church in the Wild.” The music composition and the visual themes are very similar. They are both shot in widescreen, same style, hue/shade, and have the same props and characters. The music videos are so similar (in fact) I expect that both (music videos) were made by the same creator. They were both made by the same label, Universal Music Group (UMG).

Two other music videos that are also from the same parent label (UMG) and are in the same style, hue, and have the same themes are Taylor swift’s “Trouble” and Eminem’s “Love the Way You Lie.” Demi Lovato’s music video “Sorry Not Sorry” is in the same style and format as “Beauty and the Beat” by Justin Bieber.  If you take away the fact that one is in black and white, there’s a lot of similarities between G - Eazy’s “Calm Down” and Drake’s “The Motto” which is unintentional due to the production coming from different labels (UMG and Sony respectively).   

Can’t Keep My Hands To Myself

The question becomes what does all this reflecting mean considering it’s coming from the same label, UMG? This isn’t just mindless, random mirroring. There’s a deeper metaphor and narrative that UMG is creating/painting. As discussed in ETM2 it’s like playing balderdash where you have to associate words without using certain words or phrases. In the same respect UMG is playing balderdash with music videos and giving people ideas without their conscious recollections, which is what semantic priming is as discussed in ETM.

For example, we assume Selena Gomez’s character in the song “Hands to Myself,” is in the house of the boy she’s obsessed with, the one with the curly blonde hair. However, Rihanna's song “Stay” could be about the same curly haired blonde boy just over at Rihanna's place singing with her while Selena’s breaking into his place and he shows up to catch her after he leaves Rihanna. The ending scene in “Hands to Myself” could just represent what Selena wishes the reality would be while the actual reality is Selena getting arrested for trespassing. Although confusing, this is plausible, and seems to be a semantic mirroring regardless coming from the same parent label UMG.

To add to the complexity of UMG’s message it seems that Camila Cabello’s “Havana” is (also) intentionally reflecting Selena Gomez’s “Same Old Love.” The music videos are very similar in cadence and composition and at the end of the “Havana” music video Camila says “...if you don’t like my story, go write your own” after, what we can assume to be Selena Gomez, ends up alone.

UMG’s Societal Painting

The point I'm making and the question we must ask ourselves is what message is UMG trying to portray with all these similarities between music videos? What psychological conditions are UMG trying to create with the similarity between “No Church in the Wild” and “Chains,” “Trouble” and “Love the Way You Lie,” and “Beauty and the Beat” and “Sorry Not Sorry.” For example, both Taylor and Eminem have poor romantic reputations and their videos are similarly about the dismantling of love.

Considering The Fascist Capitalist Nazi Ideology journal we can assume the motivation and goal is pejorative. Its seems intuition and common sense would assume UMG is boguarding love and having these artists create their own mental blocks. As I ask in the Leo's Inception journal,  why are the majority of these artists not married with a family?

Next Level

To be able to see the aforementioned it’s all about pattern recognition of all the various forms. However, there's a whole nother level in writing lyrics where you say something that sounds similar, imply it, omit it, say it without saying it, or give a double meaning.  

An example of a double meaning is Uncle Kracker's “Follow Me.” Is it about love or cocaine? An example of just omitting words is in Eminem’s “Toy Soldier” when he says “I went my whole career without ever mentioning ___.” It’s clear he’s talking about “Suge (Knight)” by the rhyme scheme in relation to his history and what he’s talking about, but he doesn’t say it.

As an example of saying it without saying it (more subtle, but [what should be] just as obvious) is Taylor Swift’s “Picture to Burn.” She says “So go and tell your friends that I'm obsessive and crazy. That's fine, You won’t mind if I say... By the way, I hate that stupid old…” It’s obvious she’s implying she's going to “say” he’s “gay” because what else would she tell everybody that’s gonna hurt him and rhymes with say and way?

An example of saying something that sounds similar is when Taylor Swift says “make fun of our axes” in 22. She clearly means “accents.” One of the most famous examples (that’s probably unintentional) is from Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space” when she says “I have a long list of ex lovers” because everyone thinks she is really saying “starbucks lovers.”  

Some examples of songs that imply what you are saying is Miley Cyrus’s “Wrecking Ball.” I swear everyone I tell this to says they see it and can’t get it out of their mind afterwards! In her music video “Wrecking Ball” Miley is naked and crying as it sounds like she’s saying “you Ra-a-aped me.” It’s almost as if the producers of the music video deliberately wanted the listener/viewer to make that connection in their head between her vulnerability, tears, and what it sounds like she’s saying without saying it, and used those similarities to such a tragic event to (balderdash [as discussed in ETM2 and) sell records.

#🎤 Music Artists’ Composition and Communication

[gnomegirlgabby-blog]

Wiki Gnomes

So after DND gnomes wiki article I decided to find out what other gnome articles Wiki has! Hehe their story is below...

This article is about the fictional humanoid type of creature. For the user interface for UNIX-like operating systems, see GNOME. For the garden ornament, see Garden gnome. For other uses, see Gnome (disambiguation).

History

Origins

The word comes from Renaissance Latin gnomus, which first appears in the Ex Libro de Nymphis, Sylvanis, Pygmaeis, Salamandris et Gigantibus, etc by Paracelsus, published posthumously in Nysa in 1566 (and again in the Johannes Huser edition of 1589–1591 from an autograph by Paracelsus).

The term may be an original invention of Paracelsus, possibly deriving the term from Latin gēnomos (itself representing a Greek γη-νομος, literally "earth-dweller"). In this case, the omission of the ē is, as the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) calls it, a blunder. Paracelsus uses Gnomi as a synonym of Pygmæi and classifies them as earth elementals. He describes them as two spans high, very reluctant to interact with humans, and able to move through solid earth as easily as humans move through air. The chthonic, or earth-dwelling, spirit has precedents in numerous ancient and medieval mythologies, often guarding mines and precious underground treasures, notably in the Germanic dwarfs and the Greek Chalybes, Telchines or Dactyls.

In Romanticism and modern fairy tales

The English word is attested from the early 18th century. Gnomes are used in Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock". The creatures from this mock-epic are small, celestial creatures which were prudish women in their past lives, and now spend all of eternity looking out for prudish women (in parallel to the guardian angels in Catholic belief). Other uses of the term gnome remain obscure until the early 19th century, when it is taken up by authors of Romanticist collections of fairy tales and becomes mostly synonymous with the older word goblin.

Pope's stated source, the French satire (by Nicolas-Pierre-Henri de Montfaucon de Villars, the abbot of Villars) Comte de Gabalis (1670) describes gnomes as such:

"The Earth is filled almost to the Center with Gnomes or Pharyes, a People of small Stature, the Guardians of Treasures, of Mines, and of Precious Stones. They are Ingenious, Friends of Men, and easie to be commandded. They furnish the Children of the Sages with as much Money, as they have need of; and never ask any other Reward of their Services, than the Glory of being Commanded. The Gnomides or Wives of these Gnomes or Pharyes, are Little, but very Handson; and their Habit marvellously Curious."

Villars used the term gnomide to refer to female gnomes (often "gnomid" in English translations). Modern fiction instead uses the word "gnomess" to refer to female gnomes.

In 19th-century fiction, the chthonic gnome became a sort of antithesis to the more airy or luminous fairy. Nathaniel Hawthorne in Twice-Told Tales (1837) contrasts the two in "Small enough to be king of the fairies, and ugly enough to be king of the gnomes" (cited after OED). Similarly, gnomes are contrasted to elves, as in William Cullen Bryant's Little People of the Snow (1877), which has "let us have a tale of elves that ride by night, with jingling reins, or gnomes of the mine" (cited after OED).

One of the first movements in Mussorgsky's 1874 work Pictures at an Exhibition, named "Gnomus" (Latin for "The Gnome"), is written to sound as if a gnome is moving about, his movements constantly changing in speed.

Franz Hartmann in 1895 satirized materialism in an allegorical tale entitled Unter den Gnomen im Untersberg. The English translation appeared in 1896 as Among the Gnomes: An Occult Tale of Adventure in the Untersberg. In this story, the Gnomes are still clearly subterranean creatures, guarding treasures of gold within the Untersberg mountain.

As a figure of 19th-century fairy tales, the term gnome became largely synonymous with other terms for "little people" by the 20th century, such as goblin, brownie, kobold, leprechaun, Heinzelmännchen and other instances of the "domestic spirit" type, losing its strict association with earth or the underground world.

Cultural references

Modern fantasy literature

Creatures called gnomes have been used in the fantasy genre of fiction and later gaming since the mid-nineteenth century, typically in a cunning role, e.g. as an inventor.

In L. Frank Baum's Oz series (created 1900 to 1914), the Nomes (so spelled), especially their king, are the chief adversaries of the Oz people. They are ugly, hot-tempered, immortal, round-bodied with spindly legs and arms, have long beards and wild hair, live underground, and are the militant protectors/hoarders of jewels and precious metals. Baum does not depict any female gnomes. Ruth Plumly Thompson, who continued the series (1972 to 1976) after Baum's death, reverted to the traditional spelling.

J. R. R. Tolkien, in the legendarium (created 1914 to 1973) surrounding his Elves, uses "Gnomes" as the initial and later dropped name of the Noldor, the most gifted and technologically minded of his elvish races, in conscious exploitation of the similarity with the word gnomic. Gnome is thus Tolkien's English loan-translation of the Quenya word Noldo (plural Noldor), "those with knowledge". Tolkien's "Gnomes" are generally tall, beautiful, dark-haired, light-skinned, immortal, and typically wise but suffer from pride, tend towards violence, and have an overweening love of the works of their own hands, particularly gemstones. Many of them live in cities below ground (Nargothrond) or in secluded mountain fortresses (Gondolin). He uses "Gnomes" to refer to both males and females. In The Father Christmas Letters (between 1920 and 1942), which Tolkien wrote for his children, Red Gnomes are presented as helpful creatures who come from Norway to the North Pole to assist Father Christmas and his Elves in fighting the wicked Goblins.

BB's The Little Grey Men (1942) is a story of the last gnomes in England, little wild men who live by hunting and fishing.

In C. S. Lewis's The Chronicles of Narnia (created 1950 to 1956), the gnomes are sometimes called "Earthmen". live in the Underland, a series of caverns. Unlike the traditional, more human-like gnomes, they can have a wide variety of physical features and skin colours. They are used as slaves by the Lady of the Green Kirtle.

The Dutch books Gnomes (1976) and The Secret Book of Gnomes (1984), written by Wil Huygen, deal with gnomes living together in harmony. These same books are the basis for a made-for-TV animated film and the Spanish-animated series The World of David the Gnome (as well as the spin-off Wisdom of the Gnomes). The word "gnome", in this case, is used in place of the Dutch kabouter.

In the Warcraft franchise (1994 to present), particularly as featured in the MMORPG World of Warcraft, gnomes are a race of beings separate from but allied to dwarves and humans, with whom they share the lands of the Eastern Kingdoms. Crafty, intelligent, and smaller than their dwarven brethren, gnomes are one of two races in Azeroth regarded as technologically savvy. It is suggested in lore that the gnomes originally were mechanical creations that at some point became organic lifeforms. In World of Warcraft, gnomes are an exile race, having irradiated their home city of Gnomeregan in an unsuccessful last-ditch effort to drive out marauding foes.

In J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series (created 1997 to 2007), gnomes are pests that inhabit the gardens of witches and wizards. They are small creatures with heads that look like potatoes on small stubby bodies. Gnomes are generally considered harmless but mischievous and may bite with sharp teeth. In the books, it is stated that the Weasleys are lenient to gnomes, and tolerate their presence, preferring to throw them out of the garden rather than more extreme measures.

In A. Yoshinobu’s Sorcerous Stabber Orphen , the European concept of a gnome is used in order to introduce the Far Eastern notion of the Koropokkuru, a mythical indigenous race of small people: gnomes are a prosecuted minority banned from learning wizardry and attending magical schools. 

In Terry Brooks' Shannara series (created 1977 to 2017), gnomes are an offshoot race created after the Great Wars. There are several distinctive classes of gnomes. Gnomes are the smallest race. In The Sword of Shannara they are considered to be tribal and warlike, the one race that can be the most easily subverted to an evil cause. This is evidenced by their allegiance to the Warlock Lord in The Sword of Shannara and to the Mord Wraiths in The Wishsong of Shannara.

Terry Pratchett included gnomes in his Discworld series. Gnomes were six inches in height but quite strong, often inflicting pain upon anyone underestimating them. One prominent gnome became a Watchman in Ankh-Morpork as the force became more diversified under the command of Sam Vimes, with Buggy Swires appearing in Jingo (novel). Another gnome in the series was Wee Mad Arthur a pest terminator in Feet of Clay (novel).

L. Frank Baum also featured the classical gnomes in his book The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. They are in charge of watching over the rocks and their king is part of the Council of Immortals. In addition, they also created the sleigh bells for Santa Claus' reindeer.

Music

"The Laughing Gnome" is a song by English musician David Bowie, released as a single in 1967. It became a hit when reissued in 1973, in the wake of Bowie's commercial success.

The 1970 album All Things Must Pass by English musician George Harrison has a cover image of the musician sitting among a group of garden gnomes.

"The Gnome" is a song by Pink Floyd on their 1967 album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. It is about a gnome named Grimble Gromble.

Games

In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, gnomes are one of the core races available for play as player characters.

Derivative uses

Garden gnomes

After World War II (with early references, in ironic use, from the late 1930s) the diminutive figurines introduced as lawn ornaments during the 19th century came to be known as garden gnomes. The image of the gnome changed further during the 1960s to 1970s, when the first plastic garden gnomes were manufactured. These gnomes followed the style of the 1937 depiction of the seven dwarves in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Disney. This "Disneyfied" image of the gnome was built upon by the illustrated children's book classic The Secret Book of Gnomes (1976), in the original Dutch Leven en werken van de Kabouter. Garden gnomes share a resemblance to the Scandinavian tomte and nisse, and the Swedish term "tomte" can be translated as "gnome" in English.

Gnome-themed parks

Several gnome themed entertainment parks exist. Notable ones are:

The Gnome Reserve, at West Putford near Bradworthy in North Devon, United Kingdom

Gnomeland, at Watermouth Castle in Berrynarbor, North Devon, United Kingdom

Gnome Magic Garden, at Colchester, United Kingdom

The Gnome Village, at Efteling theme park in Kaatsheuvel, Netherlands

Zwergen-Park Trusetal, in Trusetal, Germany

Garden Gnome Liberationists

Garden gnome liberationists such as the Gnome Liberation Front were introduced in France in 1997. They claim that Garden Gnomes deserve the same freedom that any other living creature would have. They are noted to have stolen hundreds of gnomes.

Gnome parades

Gnome parades are held annually at Atlanta's Inman Park Festival. Numerous one-off gnome parades have been held, including in Savannah, Georgia (April 2012) and Cleveland, Ohio (May 2011).

Metaphorical uses

The expression "Gnomes of Zürich", Swiss bankers pictured as diminutive creatures hoarding gold in subterranean vaults, was derived from a speech in 1956 by Harold Wilson, and gained currency in the 1960s (OED notes the New Statesman issue of 27 November 1964 as earliest attestation).

Architect Earl Young built a number of stone houses in Charlevoix, Michigan, that have been referred to as gnome homes.

A user of Wikipedia or any wiki who makes useful incremental edits without clamouring for attention is called a WikiGnome.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gnome

Welp that is all for this Wiki gnome article but there are plenty more!!! Thank you Wiki!! 

#gnomelove #gnomegirlgabby #gardengnomes #gnomes #WikiGnomes #GnomeArticle #GnomeHistory #GnomeGames #GnomeFacts #GnomePuns #TravelingGnomes #GnomesPuns #GnomePlaces

[giallofever2]

Non Dimenticate lo Start Up per la Realizzazione del Cofanetto Limited Edition Edition by CG Entertainment in 🇮🇹Italian & 🇬🇧English Language 1988 Dario Argento & Michele Soavi on set of ... La Chiesa film del 1989, diretto da Michele Soavi scritto e prodotto da Dario Argento. 🔝🇮🇹 Il film fu il trentasettesimo più visto in Italia nella stagione 1988/1989 Al Cinema: Italia, La chiesa 10 marzo 1989 Stati Uniti The Church 30 gennaio 1991 Nei confronti del film la critica ha avuto giudizi piuttosto altalenanti. Il sito FilmUP assegna al film un giudizio di 7,5 su 10.Il sito MYmovies.it dà al film un giudizio di 2,07 su 5, giudicando la sceneggiatura del film abbastanza confusa, ma lodando il punto di vista estetico del film, giudicando La chiesa "visivamente molto accurato e ricco di suggestioni". Viene inoltre lodata la semi-esordiente Asia Argento 🇬🇧The Church is considered as the official second sequel to the Dèmoni series. Although it was originally intended to be the third film in the series, the story has no direct thematic link with the first two parts, and therefore the 1991 horror film Dèmoni 3 (also known as Black Demons) is usually -and incorrectly- associated as the third film of the saga. The film premiered in Rome on 10 March 1989 and was released in the Italian cinemas on the same day. It received similar wide releases in both Japan and Spain, and a limited release in the United States before being released on videocassete. As with many Italian genre films of the period, the film was released under a myriad of alternative titles, including Demons 3, Demons III : The Church, Demon Cathedral, Cathedral of Demons, and In the Land of Demons. Critical reception In a contemporary review, Variety referred to the film as a "technically proficient but empty horror exercise". The review noted that the musical score by Goblin was The Church's "strongest element." On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, The Church currently has an approval rating of 64% based on eleven reviews, satisfying the "Fresh" criteria. AllMovie called it a "gothic-drenched apocalyptic nightmare" that builds "a suffocating sense of quiet dread" (presso Budapest, Hungary)

[allysia]

Ayyy yo for the ask thing I wanna know about Audrey and Jasmine ;)

Thanks, boo! You are such a sweetie. ;) 

Full Name: Audry Elizabeth DoellGender and Sexuality: Female and StraightPronouns: Her/She Ethnicity/Species: Human. The Whitest™ (I’d name a specific ehtnicity, but I’m not 100% sure)Birthplace and Birthdate: Born in a town called Chesapeake (one town east of Middleburg) on May 25thGuilty Pleasures: The Bee Movie, being snuggled, and meme-d pop songs. (Fergalicious, Take On Me, All Star) Phobias: Snakes, majority of what she sees on missions, death, and certain dinosaursWhat They Would Be Famous For: I really don���t know. Maybe “Most People Associated With in a Single Dimension.” What They Would Get Arrested For: “WHY DID YOU STEAL A DOG”You Ship Them With: Rippen. Platonically and Romantically. OC Most Likely To Murder Them: I think Emma would find her annoying enough to murder.Favorite Movie/Book Genre: Try and get this girl to stop reading the fantasy crap. You can’t.Least Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: “If I read about another shy girl getting mixed up in some crazy adventure, I’m gonna puke.” “Isn’t that what happened to you–” “NOBODY ASKED YOU RIP.” Talents and/or Powers: Whatever she’s got in her mission. She’s a pretty good singer, and is super flexible, which helps on missions. Auds can make a career out of arguing, and her manipulation skills are getting pretty good. (Do those count as talents?) She can also fight pretty well. Why Someone Might Love Them: She’s sweet, and likes to laugh. If you’re a friend and you need something. she’ll help you. And, well, look at her! She’s adorable! How can someone hate that face? Plus, she’s not afraid to hurt someone when she’s fighting them, which shows that she’s strong, I think? And who doesn’t love a strong person/character?Why Someone Might Hate Them: I’ll tell you how. She’s incredibly forward. If you annoy her, she’d gonna give you the cold shoulder. She’ll also plot your demise in her head if you’re not from her dimension. And trust me, you’ll know when she doesn’t like you. She will openly tell you. Luckily she only tends to hate people from missions.How They Change: Audry, in my canon of the show, has come from being a quiet introvert, to being a loud extrovert. She’s also become more sarcastic, and evil, as a result of hanging out with goblin man. Why You Love Them:SHE IS SUCH A SWEETIE. I love how she hangs out with her polar opposite (Rippadipdip) and kinda brings out another part of him. SHE’S ALSO KIND OF A TRAITOR BECAUSE SHE TALKS TO PENN, LIKE, DAILY. And they get along pretty dang well! She’s also supportive, AND OMG IS SHE FREAKING COOL AND WHEN SHE STARTS FIGHTING SHE’S RUTHLESS. SHE WILL CUT A FOOL.

Full Name: Jasmine Marina Alvarez (Not very Star Wars-y I know)Gender and Sexuality: Female and straightPronouns: She/HerEthnicity/Species: Human; Same category as Audry. She’s kinda tan, though. Birthplace and Birthdate: A galaxy far, far away on the Earth equivalent of June 17thGuilty Pleasures: The Cantina Music (I’d like to think it’s an actual song you can find in that universe), Meiloorun, and romance-y novels.Phobias: The Sith, Fyrnocks, Purrgil (irrational, but still), and fire.What They Would Be Famous For: MOST MEILOORUN STOLEN IN A SINGLE WEEKWhat They Would Get Arrested For: MOST MEILOORUN STOLEN IN A SINGLE WEEK (also the usual crimes she and her crew commit)You Ship Them With: Garazeb Orrelios (platonically)OC Most Likely To Murder Them: I don’t know, really.Favorite Movie/Book Genre: She loves rom-coms and romance novels, but she’ll never tell you that. If you ask, she’ll say action movies and historical novels because “that’s all I have time to read” that lying liarLeast Favorite Movie/Book Cliche: Person Comes Back To Life Despite All Odds. (”It’s not gonna happen.”)Talents and/or Powers: SHE’S REALLY GOOD AT SHOOTING A BLASTER ESPECIALLY ZEB’S BO RIFELand she can talk her way out of any situation. She’s very coordinated, but trips easily, so Zeb usually carries her out of battle. She can also tie a Meiloorun stem with her tongueWhy Someone Might Love Them: She’s so loyal and sweet. She’ll do anything to protect her family, even if it means sacrificing something of her own. She tries to be selfless, unless it means hurting someone around her. Jazzy is also pretty dang funny, if I do say so myself. AND SHE CAN FIGHT LIKE A PRO SO DON’T MESS WITH HERWhy Someone Might Hate Them: She’s a rebel. Someone who sides with the Empire automatically hates her. She’s pretty argumentative, too. She’ll argue for anything she deems as unfair or unjust. Even if it jeopardizes the mission at hand.How They Change: She starts off bright eyes and happy. She’s lighthearted, and only becomes serious in battle. It’s clear as the crew loses more and more that she becomes more serious and reserved. That’s around the fist few episodes of S2. It’s hard for her to find light in any situation for a while. That is, until she almost loses her best friend, Zeb. After that, she has more of an appreciation and positive outlook on life. That backtracks a bit at the beginning of S3, but Zeb is slowly helping her get back to happy, and only serious when she needs to be. Why You Love Them:She is my only Sci-Fi OC. She’s a bit of a contrast to the rest of the Ghost crew, and her backstory is far from complete. She’s the only OC I can only write for in the now. She has no family. No past. She only has her crew and building off of the characters I watch is the best! ALSO I WANT TO WRITE SO MANY SCENES OF ARGUING, FIGHTING, AND REUNION WITH HER AND ZEB THESE TWO KILL ME. It’s awesome to see her progression and asking “how can I hurt her more without breaking her” and “what if she freakin’ died?”

I’m terrible

[entergamingxp]

Old School RuneScape and Shenmue • Eurogamer.net

Old School RuneScape

Matt: I have to admit, a good portion of my time allocated to this feature was spent signing up to RuneScape. It was frequently baffling – I somehow had an account already associated with Jagex which needed resetting several times, my usual handle (and my back up, and the back up to that) were already taken, and upon trying to buy membership, it wouldn’t let me type in any credit card details.

Downloading the game from the Old School RuneScape website really sets the tone straight away.

It was similar to the only other time I tried to play an MMO – an evening wasted trying to get my head around Square Enix’s account system to play Final Fantasy 14 in its infancy, forcing me to give up on what I hear is one of the best games in recent years – and a reminder of why I tend to stick to console games. There’s only so many captcha screens I can take!

Lottie: Back when I made my first RuneScape account – like a good fourteenish years ago – I’m pretty sure that it only required an unused username and a password. In fact, I don’t think I even attached my email address to that account until I signed up for membership a year later. I’m also honestly surprised you had such a time paying for your membership – you’d think Jagex would make taking your money an easy process.

Matt: You’d think so, right? However, once I was playing… I was pleasantly surprised! First, I absolutely love the way Old School RuneScape looks. I didn’t get into PC games until Half-Life, but it’s reminiscent of early PlayStation games, an era I’m more familiar with and tirelessly fond of – where everything was made of chunky, brightly coloured polygons, the world gradually clipping into view as you explore, and charming MIDI music blazing as you go.

Old School Runescape eases you into things surprisingly well.

It’s also impressively tutorialized, uncovering its menu options and associated systems one-by-one as you explore the opening island. I’ve already forgotten how to use an anvil, or how to bake some bread, but I misjudged RuneScape as something which drops you in the deep end without explaining how anything works.

I also enjoyed how the first thing you fight is a giant rat in a mine. This is an MMO all right!

Lottie: There’s a part of my brain that’s dedicated to pure RuneScape knowledge. I can write you a guide right now about how to smith a rune scimitar or how to brew a prayer potion.

I’ve always loved how so many of the skills in RuneScape are interconnected; you grow herbs using the farming skill, for example, and, thanks to herblore, use them to create potions, which can provide boosts to your hunting skill or help out in combat. There’s a real advantage to training every skill, which becomes more apparent the deeper you delve into the game.

Now that you’ve escaped Tutorial Island, how are your first real steps in Gielinor going?

True to form, you’ll fight… giant rats.

Matt: Okay, so now I’m actually playing and picking up quests, I’m starting to run up against the antiquity of it all. I’ve discovered it’s quite fiddly to get around, and my character’s stamina depletes very quickly, making exploration feel far more sluggish than I was expecting. Meanwhile, left clicking on things is unpredictable – will you converse? Will you pickpocket? Will you puncture that cow with your bronze sword instead of milking it? (I quickly discovered right clicking on things first is the way to go.)

Also, the combat is frightfully simple – you just click on a goblin (of which there are an alarming number of?) and you’ll automatically exchange blows until it dies, then repeat, occasionally pausing to eat something for health.

I ended up scrolling Twitter as I was chaining through a field of goblins, helping me get through the combat questline a little easier. At first this didn’t feel in the spirit of the game, but then I realised – that’s how MMOs are secretly supposed to work, right? It’s a thing you chip away at while doing / watching / listening to other things?

Goblins. Everywhere!

Lottie: I’ll admit that when I’m training a skill like woodcutting or mining, I usually do it while reading. Doing so has never felt like I’m betraying the game in some way, I’m still playing after all, I just don’t want to watch my adventurer chop trees for an hour. Grinding is an inevitable part of any MMO and, as long as you’re not using a bot, I don’t care how people get through it.

For me, the simplicity of the combat has always been part of the game’s charm. You can make it more complicated by using magic as your primary weapon or by training the slayer skill, which involves hunting down monsters that can only be killed using specific items, but I like how the melee combat is simplified, so that you can focus on buffing your abilities with potion or food.

(There’s also a really good questline that explores what’s happening with the goblins in the Lumbridge area.)

Matt: I’d love to find that, because there really are a lot of goblins. I was actually overjoyed when I saw a giant spider scuttling around, just for something else to fight.

I think where the game clicks for me is the non-combat stuff – I enjoyed the simplicity of milling wheat to help someone bake a cake, and digging up clues for a treasure hunt. It reminds me what I enjoy most about modern games-as-a-service stuff like Fortnite or Destiny – less the combat, but more completing challenges as an excuse to see the vast, beautiful world developers have created.

And, again, I love the look of Old School RuneScape – I might look up some YouTube videos later to see what other areas look like.

Working out Treasure Hunt clues was probably the highlight of the my brief time with Old School RuneScape.

I’m not sure whether I’ll come back to it – there are one too many rough edges with combat and controls for me, I think – but I enjoyed it more than I was expecting, enough so that it’s convinced me to finally start playing an MMO one day. Assuming they’re not all completely overrun by goblins.

Lottie: The graphics for Old School RuneScape have a special place in my heart as it manages to be both endearing and terrifying, sometimes on purpose, all at the same time! There are certainly some beautiful locations in the game, especially when you’re able to visit places like Prifddinas. I also promise that there are a lot of goblin free areas in Gielinor – you might want to avoid north of Falador though.

I do understand why you have mixed feelings about returning; MMOs require a higher time investment compared to other games, Old School RuneScape especially due to its age and, as you mentioned, certain little quirks. I’m glad, however, that you enjoy the non-combat skills, as they have always been my favourite aspect of the game. It’s really cool how, even if you completely ignore the combat system, the game still allows you to have a great time.

Now that you’ve tried Old School RuneScape, I think that it’s only fair you give RuneScape 3 a go too, just for comparison’s sake.

Matt: That’s not a bad idea. Though unless RuneScape 3 has the same incredibly cute ‘quack’ sound effect, I’m not sure it’ll ever live up to the original.

Lottie: Yes, the quack is the same!

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Shenmue

Lottie: Shenmue makes it very clear from the opening cutscene that it wants to tell a martial arts vengeance story; a mysterious stranger arrives to demand an equally mysterious artifact, a father is murdered in front of his son and revenge is sworn.

This was great for me, because I love a good revenge story, especially if it involves punching. When I began playing Shenmue, however, I realised that it doesn’t approach this story in the way you’d typically expect from a video game released in the late nineties. Instead of punching enemies in face, I was gathering clues by talking to Ryo’s neighbours and managing an allowance, which means spending it all on capsule toys.

Vengeance!

The game even used its genre to tease me; I dialled the number for the police, but Ryo refused to call them. He has to avenge his father himself after all.

Matt: First, I’m very pleased you tried to call the police! It’s one of many great Easter Eggs you can easily miss. The game rewards you for experimenting with the world around you in all sorts ways – and by Ryo reacting accordingly (i.e. being stubborn) helps establish his personality beyond a typical cutscene.

He will continue to establish his personality further through punching as you originally assumed, though, so stick with it!

Lottie: I hope so! I do like how, as you explore Ryo’s home, you can uncover little cutscenes that give more insight into his relationship with his father as well. As you said, scenes like those reward experimentation and helped me become invested in the story.

You can uncover a variety of hidden cutscenes by exploring Ryo’s home.

The more I played, the more I came to love how intricate the world of Shenmue is; the shops have different opening times, the streets grow busier throughout the day and each NPC has their routine, which means you have to learn when and where characters will be.

The game is as much about planning your day as it is revenge. Even when I found myself waiting for the local bars to open, the daily cycle continued to heighten the immersion of the game, rather than making me feel like I had hit a roadblock. It makes sense, in the story that Shenmue is telling, that Ryo’s journey begins with him patiently tracking down information and, while he waits, he can always waste some time in the Sega arcade.

You have to wait till 7pm to find this man.

Matt: Yeah – despite the heavy premise, Ryo is still a teenager, right? That’s exactly what he would do to kill time. Again, another way of establishing who Ryo is beyond a cutscene – people you talk to constantly remind he’s still in school, the cash you can spend is from pocket money, etc etc. This is also the point where the game doubles down on the time aspect which can leave many players frustrated – forcing you to wait hours or sometimes a full day in-game for the next event to happen – but it sounds like you’re fully on board?

Lottie: I am – I like games with well developed worlds, be it expressed through environmental storytelling, gradually revealing aspects of the lore or, in this case, applying aspects of reality, like the fact that most shops aren’t open 24 hours a day. What did break my immersion though were the quick time events.

For me, quick time events ruin the flow of the gameplay.

I’ve never liked quick time events, because, to me, their inclusion always feels forced; the flow of a game is brought to a standstill as you’re made to push a certain sequence of buttons, often until you’ve done it correctly.

In Shenmue, there’s always a chance that you might encounter a little side event, from a bike race to children playing football, and, like the daily cycle, these activities make the community feel more realistic. Unfortunately, a number of these hidden activities include quick time events and, of course, if you don’t do it correctly, then you have to do it again. It took me four attempts to correctly complete one such event.

Ten minutes later I discovered that the main storyline also included quick time events.

Matt: Fun fact – Shenmue was the first to feature (or at least popularise) Quick Time Events, so you’re seeing the birth of something which plagued every action adventure game for the next decade.

There are some brilliant chase sequences which use them effectively later in the game, but as you say, means you’re now on alert every time a cutscene plays out. There’s even a couple of arcade cabinets which are QTE simulators, if you need to kill some time and test your reflexes. I’ve played them so much the sound effect is forever seared into my brain.

Oh look – another quick time event…

Lottie: For me, it’s the quick time events that are really preventing me from deciding whether or not I’m going to continue playing Shenmue. The story certainly seems to be picking up pace and I would like to see what other early open world aspects this game has, but the knowledge that there’s even more quick time events to come is really off putting. I’ve had this happen with other games before when there’s an aspect of the gameplay I don’t like, such as the tests of strength in Breath of the Wild. I find myself unable to dislodge the thought of these features from my mind and, rather than simply enjoying the game for its own sake, I spend my time worrying about when I’ll have to deal with this feature once again.

Matt: The last third of the game certainly gets more punchy – and has one of the most infamous mini-games of all time, so if you can make it a little further, I would say your spirits will be… lifted.

Ultimately, I think Shenmue is a game which suffers from playing excessively in short periods, so come back to it and progress through the story whenever the mood takes you. Or not – Shenmue is a game, 20 years on, I still load up from time-to-time just to spend time in, usually waiting for the jazz bars to open by practicing martial arts or trying my hand at the Tomato Convenience Store raffle to pass the time. Either way, take your time and savour it if you do return – there’s no rush, despite how eager Ryo seems to get!

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from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/old-school-runescape-and-shenmue-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=old-school-runescape-and-shenmue-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net