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modecaisnow · 4 years

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Fitness Roommates

**This story contains topics suitable for 18 YEARS OR OLDER! Read at your own digression. This story contains themes of realistic(ish) weight gain (ie. 150 pounds – 800), mentions of challenges being overweight. This story is 3360 words, and 6 pages long, was gonna be part 1+2. This was a story I had saved for a bit. ENJOY!**

[This story follows Tyler and Zach, a dynamic duo of health and fitness. Zach, a bodybuilder with all the know how of exercise, and Tyler, a healthy and fit nutritionist, have teamed up and opened a business together. However, their business has gotten slow and not as many people are getting memberships anymore. As a marketing experiment, Tyler agrees to pack on some weight with the ultimate plan to lose it all following their dieting and exercise plan. But, it turns out gaining weight is a little more enjoyable than Tyler expected.]

Zach and Tyler have been friends for years. They first met in their freshman year of college, and Zach and Tyler were both fitness buffs. Their bodies were toned with dense muscles, but Zach was much larger. Zachary studied Athletic Training and Tyler studied Nutrition over the years. After 4 years of college, they decided to open a gym together and become business partners. Zach would help train people and show them how to exercise, and Tyler would teach them about nutrition. However, a couple of years later things have changed. Zach walked into the living room of their apartment. His face was akin to a greek god – high cheekbones, square jawline, and a strong nose. He was a tall, tan-skinned, with a body covered in rippling muscles. From his thick neck and massive traps to his softball-sized calves, which everyone used to tease him and call them ‘steers’, Zach was the personified ideal of fitness. His broad shoulders and flared out lats created the classic ‘V’ shape all bodybuilders aspired to get. His arms were absolutely massive, with cannonball-sized biceps, horseshoe triceps, and forearms that were as large as a normal man’s biceps. Zach’s torso and legs were just as impressive. His barrel chest must’ve been 60 inches and was covered in brown hairs. Beneath his meaty pillows that were his pecs was a wall of abs that looked like bricks. A dark trail of hairs led down his carved abs and into his boxers, which were being stretched from both ends. Zach was blessed with large junk in the front and a lot of junk in the trunk. His bubble butt was made of pure steel and bounced along everywhere he walked. Further down were two thick quads with equally powerful hamstrings. Bellow the knees were the most well defined and muscular looking calves anyone has ever seen. Tyler, on the other hand, was not nearly as much of a ‘greek god’ as Zach. He was very toned, but also on the skinny side. His face was square with a pointed chin and a sloped nose. His hair was cut short, and he didn’t have much facial hair. Being a nutritionist, he knew all the ins and outs of healthy eating and dieting. He was part of the reason why Zach looks the way he looks. He kept Zach on his meal plan. Tyler has helped countless gym-goers reach their goals faster and easier with the help of his dieting plans. Tyler looked up at Zach. He stood in his boxers in front of the TV, blocking his view of it. Zach crossed his arms, causing his large slabs of chest meat to squeeze together. Tyler grabbed the remote and turned the TV off. “Is everything okay, man?” Tyler asked. “We have to talk about business.” “What’s up?” “It’s been slow recently-“ “-Yeah-“ “-and I have an idea,” Zach sat down on the brown, cloth couch next to Tyler. Zach widened his eyes and tried to look innocent. “Well, …what’s the idea?” “Well, bro, what if we have an experiment where one of us puts on some weight, and then we both work together to try and get that person back to a healthy weight?” “That might be good, but it might take too long. We need people to join now, not after months of gaining and months of losing weight.” “Well, with our expertise, we’ll be able to lose the weight pretty quickly,” Zach snickered. “Also, I’m sure you know of some quick weight gain techniques.” “I mean…I guess,” We both sat there quietly for a moment. Zach continued to stare deeply into Tyler's eyes. “So…do you want me to put on the weight?” Tyler hesitantly ask. “…Do you mind?” “I mean…I guess…” Zach jumped up. His face brightened up and he fist pumped into the air. The two immediately started to plan out how this would work, and Tyler got to work researching foods and gaining techniques. He started planning out a grocery list filled with unhealthy fats, carbs, protein, sugars, as well as a plan for minimal movement for himself. Zach started to create exercise plans so when Tyler finishes putting on the weight they’ll be all set to take off the pounds. Before starting it all, Tyler stepped up on the scale to take the initial weight. He was 154 pounds. At first, gaining was an awkward feeling. Tyler’s flat abs slowly started to look more and more like a gut. He was continuously shoveling food into his mouth, even while at work. It made it difficult to work with new patients, given that their nutritionist was eating junk food, and had a little bit of a belly while trying to give tips on staying healthy. After explaining the experiment to every single patient, they all seemed to understand. After the first week of constant binging, eating even while Tyler was stuffed in order to expand his tank of a gut, he had managed to pack on 15 pounds. His flat wall of abs had officially become a rounded, flabby belly. When he sat down, it would flop over the waistband of his pants. Tyler’s hips were stretching his pants to their max. The waistband would dig into his hips, and his thighs actually ripped the seams of one of his favorite pair of pants. And still, Tyler continued to gain weight. He added more meals into his daily diet and doubled the serving sizes. Tyler added two snacks between meals, as well as a “weight gain” shake between snacking. All this food, along with his restricted movement, helped him gain weight exponentially. Tyler’s face was looking rounder and fuller. His arms were softer and would stretch the sleeves of his tightening shirts. The once toned chest started to sag down over his belly, which was spilling down lower and lower towards his crotch. Even his pubic area was softer – a layer of fat was forming and starting to creep towards his junk. Everything about Tyler was getting flabbier. This continued for weeks. Tyler had to expand his entire wardrobe. One day, when he went to sit down, his shorts gave in and ripped all the way down his ass cheeks. From that day on, Tyler only wore stretchy pants – no more khakis, or dress pants, just the stretchy kind. His shirts also went from XL to XXL, and then just as quickly to XXXL. Tyler was officially 330 pounds. His chest continued to sag lower and lower as his belly continued to get larger and larger. Tyler had patients who were as large and some who were much, much larger, and they used to tell him what it was like to be big. However, now he lived it. The sagging breasts slid and rolled over his belly, which seemed to weigh him down. As Tyler walked, he needed to lean back a little bit so his substantial belly wouldn’t pull him down to the ground. Even sitting in chairs, which now had to not have armrests so his hips could fit, he needed to slouch and lean back so his belly could spill over his lap. It was quite the feeling. After a while, Tyler started to like it. It felt nice to be big, but he didn’t feel big enough yet. Zach asked him if he was ready to start their little experiment. Tyler told him that he wasn’t ready, and Tyler asked for a couple more weeks – business picked up anyway since it was about a month away from New Years. Tyler continued shoveling fattening treats into his mouth. Serving sizes became even larger, he went from 6 meals a day to 9, and he started doubling the size of the gainer shakes. This was to help break out of his weight plateau. His arms started to feel even heavier, and Tyler’s thighs always brushed against each other. His feet also started to get fatter, to the point where he needed to purchase ‘wide-fit’ shoes. At night, he would slouch on the sofa, which started to feel slightly smaller, and he would balance a 60ounce cup of soda on the crest of his soft belly, and slurp it down. All while lazily watching whatever was on TV. After chugging the entire soda, Tyler would rub his belly to help with all the bubbles. His blubber was warm and malleable. He could no longer see his belly button, or feet as a matter of fact, but Tyler could still poke a finger in the deepening cave that was his belly button. When he waddled onto the scale, it showed he was about 423 pounds. Eating only got easier and easier as the holidays came. Zach and Tyler usually went their separate ways to see their respective families, since Zach’s are out west, and Tyler’s are up north, but this season they had decided to just relax and focus on the experiment. Tyler continued to bloat up and shovel food into his face, and now that holiday cookies were out and on sale, he made it his goal to eat at least 3 boxes of cookies a day. Zach would tease him and say that Tyler surpassed ‘Santa-size,’ and Tyler laughed along with him. Deep down, he was excited to see how far he could push this. Tyler’s neck had officially disappeared into the fat on his shoulders and chins after a couple days of gorging. Actually, his chins were now flopping onto the crest of his flabby chest. Tyler’s moobs hung down, almost as far down as his elbows – not quite, but close. His fat arms started to feel very heavy. Despite always being hungry, after hours of grabbing for food, it started to feel like an arm workout. When sitting down, he would have to spread his legs far apart to give his substantial belly room to flop down. On the topic of his belly, a fold had started to form above his belly button, creating the double-belly look. Tyler’s belly was getting hard to contain in shirts, so instead, he started to get even larger pants to pull the waistband over it. Speaking of, Tyler’s pant sizes went up a lot faster than his shirt sizes did. He needed extra stretchy, 6XL pants in order to try to contain his growing belly. The fat over his junk also grew, making it hard to reach down there, as well as use the bathroom. However, he figured out how to manage in both areas. Tyler started to just sit on the toilet when he needed to pee, and just reach around and push his fat pad down towards the toilet bowl. Tyler also started to sleep on his side at night, it was much more comfortable, and whenever he’d need to shift his belly, Tyler could just dig a finger in his belly button like a hook, and shift it manually. After the holidays went, Tyler stepped on the scale for the first time in a few weeks. He was officially 546 pounds. Zach was proud and impressed. He asked Tyler when he would want to start buying healthy foods and start training. Tyler told him to instead buy a larger scale. Zach looked a little concerned at first, but Tyler explained that in order for them to make a bigger impact, they would need a bigger test subject. Zach eventually agreed and continued to go along with everything. He even did buy a larger scale, one that went up to 850 pounds. At this point, food became really expensive for them to afford on their own. In order to eat a meal every hour, on the hour, the two needed to dip into their company’s profit. It would be fine since it would all work out in the end. Thanks to their excellent accounting skills, Tyler was able to eat as much as he wanted, when he wanted. Tyler truly blew up in size after this. Walking became really difficult…well, if you can call it walking. It was more like a waddle. Tyler mostly spent time sitting on the couch, eating, watching TV, with the occasional trip to the fridge, or to the front door to great the delivery boy. After a while, Zach mentioned it would be best that he didn’t walk too far, so he moved the fridge into the living room, and anything else that was needed, he would get for Tyler. Tyler rarely went to the gym anymore to meet patients in person. Instead, Zach set up an online messaging system for him to reach out to their “premium” customers. That way they wouldn’t be able to be turned off by what a huge blob of lard Tyler was becoming. His ass cheeks started to take up a considerable amount of space not only on the poor little couch but in his bed as well. Tyler was just about as wide as his full-sized mattress, so Zach thought it was best to buy him a larger one. Zach was about to buy a larger sofa too but figured that he didn’t need to since he never really sat on it. Zach was rarely in the living room anyway, unless it was to drop off Tyler’s next heap of food. He was always working or working out. Shirts and pants both struggled to contain all of Tyler. Folds and rolls of flab started to ripple and slide over one another as he walked, hiccupped, or burped. His breasts had become so large that a pillow of flab had connected his moobs to the wings of back flab. This gave Tyler’s arms more support, which made it less work to shovel food into his fattening face since all he needed to do was just bend his elbow. Tyler’s cheeks were very fat and flopped down his face and onto his shoulder flab. Sweat almost constantly dripped down from his brow, and he was almost always out of breath. When Tyler finally stepped on the scale, he was up to 623 pounds. He still shoved on…well, he still shoveled more food in. At this rate, he was just eating one large, nonstop buffet of food a day. Tyler was always ordering pizzas, Chinese takeout, donuts, and delivery from every fast food joint in a 10-mile radius using those new food delivery apps on his phone. Tyler continued to gorge, slurp, and chomp down food for a few more weeks. As it got closer to the end of January, he had officially changed his wardrobe to 12XL shirts, and God only knows how many X’s for his XL sweat pant shorts. It was interesting to wear them because, with each day he grew fatter and fatter, one could see the ends of the drawstrings slowly disappear, as they were pulled deeper into the expanding stretchy waistband. As Tyler’s stomach grew so did his fupa. It became impossible for him to reach even close to his fat pad anymore. Whenever Tyler used the bathroom, it came to the point where he would have to just sit and pray that it went in. His old technique of digging into that deep belly button to shift his mound of a gut had officially been rendered impossible. Tyler couldn’t reach down that far anymore. Tyler sat on the ever-shrinking couch, with his ass cheeks spilling outward on both sides and behind him by a foot, and shoved more food into his deep mouth. His moobs had officially started to hang lower than his elbows, which were now a series of folds of flab. Tyler’s arms were incredibly flabby and even when he raised them over his head, some of the fat would still be weighing down against his torso. That massive belly of his hung down, past his knees as he leaned back. Tyler’s fat feet didn’t fit in normal shoes anymore, and Zach had to measure them to get custom made ones. Tyler was a mound of flab, and he loved every soft, wobbly inch of it. When Zach finally brought the large scale into the living room, Tyler placed his feet down and rose up off the couch. He was officially 710 pounds, and he was not quite done yet though. Tyler had one more goal he wanted to reach– to officially take up all the space on the couch. Zach, after trying to convince him that enough was enough, finally caved in and agreed to help Tyler gain even more weight. To do so, Zach raised the price of their gym membership. He told people it was for “marketing purposes,” and most people thought it was a good idea. Little did they know, it was to stuff Tyler’s fat face with food. It only took a couple weeks before he met that goal. It was hard to increase the frequency of Tyler’s feedings, so instead, he increased the amount he stuffed in at one time. Since his cheeks had bloated up, Tyler found there was more room in his mouth to hold food. As a result, he ate multiple pizza slices at once, instead of one at a time. He also would dump food in by the containers. This included containers of french fries, chicken nuggets, candy, Twinkies, devil dogs, breadsticks, bowls of pasta, you name it – Tyler just dumped it in. It must’ve been the sight to see. His downstairs neighbors hated it though. They had started to leave complaints about an “elephant” walking around, making their ceiling rattle. Tyler used that as more fuel to his fire. He continued to stomp around his apartment like the whale of a man he was, in order to get to his next source of food. The ground would groan and the couch would creak with every little shift of motion. Tyler’s folds and rolls of flab rippled and jiggled as he chewed, burped, hiccupped, scratched, pretty much any type of movement caused him to undulate like a waterbed. Tyler’s arms were extremely heavy and tremendously difficult to move. However, his insatiable desire to eat and feast gave him all the strength Tyler needed. As his hips started to finally touch the armrests of the couch, he called out for Zach. Zach was thrilled. Not only for Tyler, but also for the publicity this would get the two of them and their business. Tyler couldn’t help but smile and think about how much larger he could get. To celebrate, Zach went all out and hired caterers for the evening. That night, Tyler went all in on the food. The caterers pulled in carts, and tables of food, and set them up all around Tyler. They all circled around him, and he would eat from whichever one was in front of his fat mountain range of a body. As Tyler finished off one table, they wheeled the emptied table away, and immediately wheeled in the next one. He just ate and ate and ate all evening, until there was absolutely nothing left. Tyler probably could’ve eaten a little bit more, but his arms were incredibly tired. As the caterers all funneled out of their place, Tyler’s stomach gurgled and growled for more. He rubbed and pat his fat sides with his hands sending tiny ripples reverberating through his gelatinous form. Tyler leaned forward and moaned as he felt his heavy love handles slide against the armrests of the couch. His folds all glided against each other, and the two massive ass cheeks seemed to rise up out of the deep crater they formed in the cushions. He was massive. Zach quickly grabbed the massive scale and placed it right under Tyler’s fat feet. His massive thighs made it hard to keep his feet close enough to stand on the scale. Zach grabbed Tyler’s fat fingers and pulled him up onto his feet. Tyler’s bulky flab slid off of the couch and flopped downward. As he stood up, the scale buzzed. “What…does it…say?” Tyler huffed, out of breath from standing. “It says ‘Error.’ Damn…” Zach muttered and smiled. “What’s the…weight limit?” He wiped the sweat from his brow. “850 Pounds.” Tyler was massive…and he loved it… -THE END-

#maleweightgain #weightgain #muscleguy #SSBHM

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spacedimentio · 5 years

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Live Impressions of “Change Your Mind”

Neat, a bit of the credits music on the title card is fun and totally not ominous

Oh, this a dream. I was legit worried about Connie for a second there

That thing looks like one of those rainbow caterpillars that really little kids have that you can pull behind you with a string

!!?! I- That’s not worrisome at all, nope, no identity crisis here, oooh boy

Does that mean that Rose knew what the corruption light was? Or just that it was an attack of some kind. Cause if she knew exactly what it was then she should have probably seen it coming.

Déjà Blue is right, they’re using the exact recording/drawing I think

“No.” Damn right you’re not sorry!

Oh Blue, you really did love her, didn’t you… She looks nice with messy hair, it reflects how she feels on the inside.

That easy huh? Haha, look at her face she doesn’t know what eating is and is totally mystified and disgusted xD

Yellow time. Oh, are those…those are fusion experiments. A nice reminder of an awful thing that Yellow is responsible for.

Oh, oh shit! Blue looks absolutely mortified holy fuck

Hey, there’s the scene from the promo. “You’d hurt your fellow diamond?” “Didn’t we hurt Pink? She was suffering in silence for ages, just like our gems, just like me!” Oh man, she does know that they’re responsible for a lot of bad shit, was their behavior all just…fear?

That face Yellow just made stabbed me in the heart jesus No don’t you dumb banana what are you doing holy shit! Oh my god no she’s gonna cry and then I’m gonna cry and she really just doesn’t wanna do this

Did he really just Did he really just hit her with “If every porkchop were perfect, we wouldn’t have hotdogs” I can’t

Haha fuck yes! Yellow crying was my one wish for this ep :’D Let it all out Yellow, I’m sure Steven will give you hugs at some point Also kudos to the person that made the comic where the dialogue was almost exactly like this in regards to Yellow telling Blue to stop using her powers when she wasn’t doing anything

Oh! They’re calling him Steven now! They probably don’t get what he is still but that’s a good step

I’ve heard “You’re not going anywhere” in the commercial like 5 million times but it’s still creepy af

Oh hell no the ship did not need eyes no thank you

Ok I just thought he was trying to pull a “hey, what’s that” and run away while White looked to see what he was pointing at, but no it’s actually the two arm ships how the fuck did Bismuth fix them so fast (how long were the kids in prison jeeeeez). I like how it looks like there’s bandaids and duct tape on them lol But this might actually be a bad thing because why did you bring the arms, you’re going to make the mech stronger!

Dream: achieved! Ayyy, new designs! Nice glasses Peri, but they too big, so I like Lapis’s outfit more. I do love how you just have the lid to a garbage can, you could have found cooler things to surf on, but nope. Garbage can lid.

No don’t attach the arms that’s going to come back to bite you I just know it!

Man, the diamonds hopped on Team Steven quick, but I can’t be too upset with that because it is also what I wanted XD I guess they’ve been suffering a lot more than I thought.

That’s a nice sentiment Connie, and I’m surprised that the diamonds actually listened to what you said and considered it. Doubt it’ll work though.

Oh, they’ve still got control of their ships. I wonder how that particular bit of bullshit space magic works.

You got this Yellow! Don’t hold it in anymore! Oof, they don’t like the pressure they’re under, and they’re under a lot. The diamonds are responsible for a lot of awful things, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t conditioned and expected to fulfill their roles just as much as any other gem.

Aww, look at how Yellow is smiling, and I love how they’re holding hands! Bellow forever!

Oh that’s… Zero hesitation. Stone cold. I don’t like the way their heads flopped backwards, that’s really unsettling OK IT GOT WORSE STOP SMILING LIKE THAT D:

Steven I know you want them to reform but you should probably bubble them before…you…drop them, just like that.

I demand the BGM for this episode and will inevitably be sad when we don’t get it

Oh what, you can just do that? Fuse with a gem that’s not even formed?

o0o Rainbow 2.0! I had a guess that their weapon would be a parasol and it was even neater than I thought it would be Wow, they’re really, really British. That’s a British accent right, I’m not dumb? They’re just Mary Poppins, holy shit I love them! Jet umbrella leaves rainbow trail, ok yes thank you

Fire lady??? We fusing with everyone up in here today! Steven, in episode fucking 11: So, what’s today’s mission? I hope it’s fighting a giant foot! Today, in episode 157-160: a giant foot almost shatters everyone Well you sure got your wish buddy, are you happy?

Alright we got sunglasses mcgoo over here. Sunstone looks like a cereal box mascot I swear to god. So we’re going full “PSA mascot from the 90s”, are we. Man you are just…continually breaking the fourth wall aren’t you. Of course, Sardonyx also has the power to break the fourth wall so I guess it’s just a Future Vision+ thing. I like you Sunglasses McGoo, but I hope your weapon isn’t just suction cups or you’re never going to show up again in a fight xD

Fuckin rip Nice shades Garnet, I like what you did with your…idk what that piece of clothing is called but it’s the bit in the thin section of her body, I like the way the color goes onto her hips a little.

Oh OH SHIT IS IT REALLY TIME FOR THE LONG-THEORIZED TEMPLE FUSION That’s a lot of arms dude! Oh my god they are so cool I love them already!

Peri I love you, never don’t be ridiculous Oh geez I thought she wasn’t going to be able to catch her for a second because bismuth is a diamagnetic metal and *flashbacks of A Gem is Shattered being on the bingo card*

What’s this…staff thing? Ok that was extremely cool, your face is full of lava and you just made a sword from it. Goodbye hands I’m hearing Alexandrite’s percussion instrument in the music, that’s neat. Obsidian is also just roaring a lot, like Alexandrite.

Oh through the eyes, sure. Idk why she didn’t just close the eyelids to keep them out

With all the commotion and fusions, I totally forgot they got brainwashed, oof. It’s definitely not extremely unsettling to see them all talking at once with one voice, nope, not at all. Please stop talking, please stop talking, christ please stop talking

“But you’re a part of me” I-… Does that mean that the color theory where the other diamonds used to be part of White has more merit than I thought? Is that where they came from?

Nononono leave them alone! Oh god why

NONONONONONO STOP THAT DON’T DO THAT PLEASE DON’T DO THAT OH GOD I AM LEGIT CRYING RIGHT NOW THIS IS AWFUL

I don’t think that’s true, I’m pretty sure Pink was just a naturally social person who’s status forced her into loneliness. She just wanted some got dang friends

I DON’T THINK I’VE EVER BEEN SO CREEPED OUT IN MY LIFE. Why is this animation and these over-exaggerated faces reminding me of Cuphead. I’ve never played Cuphead but that’s what I’m thinking of.

DON’T YOU DARE GIVE THE CHILD AN EVEN WORSE IDENTITY CRISIS I AM VERY, VERY WORRIED SHE’S RIGHT

Wait, what are you doing WAIT A MINUTE NO DON’T YOU DARE DON’T YOU FUCKING DARE OH JESUS OH CHRIST THIS IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING NONONO STOP

THEY DID IT THEY ACTUALLY FUCKING DID IT Is…is she…

(Edit from the future: Probably most of you didn’t have a commercial break after this moment, but I sure did, and I spent the entirety of those minutes with my hand covering my mouth in pure shock, tears trickling down my face. I was left to wonder…is Rose coming back? Is Steven dead? I was left with this image:

I was so astounded that I had to pause for a moment and just breathe. And christ, having to wait just a few minutes in utter shock and terror was An Experience. I feel bad for those who didn’t have a break there.)

*quickly realizes that having half the screen still black means that we’re gonna have double perspective* Oh No Oh Shit Oh No is it really gonna be her?!

Oh thank goodness. Congratulations, you now have two Steves, whatever that means

Ok Steven’s still alive, but it looks like it’s excruciating to be without his gem. I’m glad he didn’t just fall apart without the light holding his cells together. How long can he last without his…soul? Shit what do we call this, what even is this.

This is definitely not what she expected to happen. Oh jesus christ holy shit chill out dude, even White Diamond shook

It’s just…such a relief to finally know. I never believed that the show would abandon its themes of loss by having a miraculous return, but I still wanted to see her anyway. She’s gone.

So what is this guy, exactly? Does he have any conscious thought? Or is he just pure gem energy with the desire to return to his other half

“I only want you to be yourself!” Uh, White honey, you are literally doing the exact opposite thing. “I’ll do it for you!” That’s not how people work White, you are just not having a good time with this turn of events are you

That’s an…interesting shield. Who did Steven say that to, btw? Was he telling White to stop hurting them, or his other self to stop reflecting the attack? Cause White was also in the middle of being hurt, I think

Aww, they’re so happy! It’ll never not be creepy to see White’s voice coming out of Steven’s glass-eyed friends though.

Normally I don’t notice when something in a 2D cartoon is 3D animated, but that shot of White’s head was kind of jarring? I didn’t like it

Oh thank christ he’s alright! I wonder if the gemstone is gonna be turned the other way now? Wait no, it was still turned inside when we went through past reformations.

Oh wow, she’s actually just a 60 foot baby. Look at Steven and Connie laughing cause they’re getting bounced up into the air. Zing! Haha, she’s blushing so everyone’s blushing. …Ok did the ship really need to blush too, come on guys

Ok so whitewashing everyone is something you have to put some effort into controlling. She was literally putting parts of her mind into them.

Haha, good timing guys, you missed everything. Bismuth’s face tho, perfecto At least only Connie has to live with the trauma of seeing Steven get his gem ripped out.

Her face is still cracked? What…what are the cracks from if not from being mind-controlled mercilessly

Yes, congratulations, you are having an emotion. Oh, she’s actually a shade of pink now, what. There’s that color theory again. Guess whose turn it is to have an existential crisis? It’s you!

“I’m supposed to know better! I’m supposed to be better! I’m supposed to make everything better!” Wait, according to who? Theory that someone made her confirmed?

Oh hey, Beach City. It took me a good second to realize that Sadie was doing a remix of a Greg song. Cue a big-ass robot hitting the beach in three…two…one! BAM! A+ timing guys

Oh, White isn’t actually that much taller than the other two when they’re standing together like that. I could have sworn she was at least 100 feet tall, that’s a bit disappointing. Then again, it would be really hard to get her to fit in frame with everyone else. Does this mean that Pink actually might be undercooked after all? Cause when I thought White was 100 feet tall, Blue and Yellow were as proportionately small next to her as Pink was next to the two of them, but now I’m wondering again.

Me too, Ronaldo. Me too.

Uh, wow. Nice timing Lars. Those poor off-colors, it took them a million years to get to Earth and the first thing they see is all three diamonds staring at them. That sure is a mood, Rhodonite. Big mood.

Aww, Lion and Lars are gonna be bros. ‘You’re like me!’

Fucking hug each other you dumbs! God, you’re frustrating.

I demand to know how all three of them fit on the warp pad/inside Steven’s house! Tell me at once!

Oh, we’re doing this right now? I know there’s going to be a season 6, but what are we going to do in season 6? Sneeple? (Re)adjusting to earth shenanigans? Diamond family time?

Nephrites! Look at em all, I love ‘em! And Watermelon Tourmaline too! Ayy, it’s Biggs! I’ve always wondered what she looked like. Haha, if I wasn’t shipping Biggs/Bismuth before I sure am now.

Jasper! Wow that only took like two years for her to show up again. Also I just realized that everyone looks weird because they still have traces of corruption on them and not because they were Like That in the first place.

Oh boy Jasper, you’ve…you’ve missed a lot. I wanna know what Amethyst just told her that made her hide in the water in shame.

Boy that one in the middle with all the different colors is scaring me a little

It’s kind of funny how White Diamond went from Massively Threatening, Narcissistic Perfectionist to Completely Lost Almost Cute Child in a snap. I actually feel bad for killing her off in my fic now, whoops. Ah well, it’s an AU anyway so I’m not gonna retcon anything.

Alright who taught Yellow to make a peace sign

Alright who parked the legs on the cliff like that

All the songs in this arc have been named after the episode title they appear in, nice. I’m kind of disappointed that we didn’t get another diamond song but maybe that’s for later (a song about how everything is confusing now? or maybe about how they let Pink down and suffered themselves)

Welp, that’s a wrap. It is now once again time for hiatus. Yellow continues to be my favorite diamond after Pink; I really hope they all come visit Steven and learn stuff. I’m actually very surprised that they jumped ship so easily; it seems that they might understand that what they do is wrong but they do it anyway cause that’s what’s expected of them. Seems they were suffering a lot more than I thought, and I already thought they were hurting quite a bit.

And that brings me to the biggest question I have. Much like Blue and Yellow, White was acting as if someone told her to do this; it’s like she’s a rogue AI who’s original creators are long gone. I don’t know if I wanna see what White’s afraid of, cause up until the last 10 minutes or so of this ep she was the scariest thing I’d ever seen.

Who made White Diamond?

#steven universe #reaction #spoilers #su spoilers #change your mind

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allstarsstorymode867 · 5 years

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“Tomorrow Will Be Better Than The Last...” [Prequel of All-Stars -Story Mode-]

[WARNING: This will contained spoilers about my Pyro’s gender, you are warned]

[FINISHED]

Engineer had been up late on his work on his building, he yawned but he wanted to finished the new sentry for tomorrow’s next King of The Hill, one of the War Games that is known in Gravel War in all of the Badlands.

“Aw hell...” He muttered as he took the googles off but half-way stopping to his forehead to rub his temples. “Engie?” A soft shy female voice perked up that made Dell turned around to see who it was.

“Yeah?”

“You’ve been up late, don’t you think it’s time to sleep?” The voice softly questioned, Engineer only turned his head back to the building with a groan. “Ah’d can’t, Ah can’t let the BLU Spy...” but he couldn’t seem to finished his sentence as he lowered his head onto the desk as the figure walked over to her dear teammate with a pillow and blanket in her hands.

Like on autopilot, she took the hardhat and goggles off of him and placed them aside him before lifting his head up just a little bit to place the pillow under him and let’s it land on it with a flop.

Then she placed the blanket onto his back and shoulders before kissing him good night. “Py...”

“Just sleep Engie, tomorrow will be better than the last.”

“Alright... ‘Night, Pyro...” he snored, Pyro smiled through her deep red brunt mark done to her face before replying “Goodnight Engie.” before leaving the room.

Morning came on the canyons of the Badlands, on one canyon of Offblast as a rooster caws at the morning light, signaling that it’s time to get up and get ready.

Everyone does so, getting dress, cleaning their knives off of the blood and reloading and gathering the ammo for them. All but Demoman who had slept through the morning call like a rock after drinking himself with Scrumpy in his room last night. It was somewhat peaceful until-

*DING!!DING!!DING!!DING!!DING!!*

Soldier walks on top of the RED base with riding crop in hand, he stood there as he declared “Attention soldiers! Get in positions, you’ll be late for war!”

Eight mercenaries scrambled all over each other as the alarm kept ringing as red lights flashing all the while Soldier is barking out “Left, right! Right! Left! Right! Left! On your right and on Demoman’s left!” before turning his attention towards the Scout and said “Get over to your position, son.” before hitting him on the rear end with the crop, making Scout squeal in pain.

“Discipline! Order!” Soldier said while Pyro, who is now dressed with a gas mask and fire-proof asbestos-lined suit, gently pushed Spy out of the way and then lets Engineer get in line as the Spy scoffs and Soldier saying “Sun Tzu wouldn’t want his men to be lazy or careless in the heat of the battle! When the horn blows out its call of duty and you must be ready to charge in to attack!”

“Soldier, please” Medic said first, “Zhey just wanted to make sure zhat ve’re ready for zhe today’s mission.” as Soldier looked at him with a glare, “How dare you German,” he rebuked, “Talking back to your superior leader of the team!”

“The mission begins in 30 seconds.”

Engineer looked up when the Administrator said that as others did the same, looking over to Soldier and ushered “Soldier, it’s gonna begin soon, get in line.” over to Soldier who heard him and said “Alright.” as he mushed himself between Heavy and Scout in line as Scout was shoved out of the way,

“The mission begins in 10 seconds.”

“Now be strong in battle and laugh at the face of danger, Private.” Soldier whispered to the Heavy who is holding his minigun, leaning over to Medic and said “We go together, Doktor.” as Medic looked over him before nodding.

“5... 4... 3... 2... 1...”

Then the alarm called out it’s siren as metal chain-link doorway opened up, Soldier yelled out “Give ‘em hell, boys!” and ran out of the door first as others ran out with him.

BLU Team are look-a-likes as the RED Team but wearing blue-colored uniforms that are the same as their’s as they too prepared to fight.

It started out as usual, the air is filling with the sounds of gunfire, rockets, explosions and screams of pain and agony. It’s nothing special, really but they didn’t seemed to realized that all of that, the war games or to each other. It’s all about to change and this time it’s isn’t Merasmus the Magician or robots.

It’s different, so different this time.

A Glitched Disembodied Lady’s Voice softly cackled so poisonous “They're perfect for my little game of life...”

(From Team Fortress 2 [4] wallpaper and Wallpaperplay)

“Perfect for my BIG game of a Battle Royale...!” before laughed so vile as Evil itself will only describe.

-Later on...-

Engineer is finishing up getting his sentry to Level 3, then a familiar zap and buzz of his Dispenser after being sapped by the sapper, the AM/FM Ultra-Sapper, is the default building weapon for the Spy. It is a small electric generator inscribed 'ELECTRO-SAPPER', with a carrying handle, two long yellow wires and a meter.

“Spy’s sapping mah dispenser!” Engie yelled as he begins to smack it off as the BLU Spy uncloaks himself with the Black Rose knife as he raised it into the air, ready to bring it down onto the Texan’s back as it turned for a moment.

*HACK*

A thunk of an ax to BLU Spy’s shoulder as a sheering spike of pain rushed through him, the Frenchman screamed and drops the knife down, that made the Engineer turned around as he gets out the Frontier Justice in one hand and firing a round to Spy’s head, making it exploded into a bloody splatter like a water balloon but with the water being replaced with blood and chunks of bone inside.

Both Pyro and the Engineer covered in blood, she pulled it out of the corpse and watched it dropped to the floor while the Engineer finished getting the sapper out off of the dispenser, allowing to function well again.

“Thanks Pyro.” Engineer looked at her, she mumbled “Anytime Engie.” as she places the ax on her shoulder while he turned back to fix the dispenser.

Then a sight rumble started, they both can feel it under their feet as they looked around. “What in Sam Hill....?” he asked but somehow lost the confidence to finish the question as he scratched the back of his head in confusion and fear when the Administrator begins to say “Alert! Alert! Alert!” as the alarms are beginning to sound off across Offblast.

“Engineer...” Pyro wheezed, “It’s time to go.” as she placed her hand on his shoulder. Engineer looked at her, he now knows that it’s time to abandon his buildings to get out of Offblast. “Alright then.” he muttered, “Let’s go!” he ran as Pyro followed suit to the outside of the base and saw the a dark shade of gray clouds covering up the skies. The ground bellow them rumbled more harder as they stumbled a little, nearly towards the edge of the cliff.

“W-What in What in tarnation is going on!?” Engineer said as he and Pyro catches their balance on the pillars of their base as BLU versions of Scout and Medic lost it and then fell off the canyon to their deaths. “I-I don’t know!” Pyro stuttered as bits of rubble fallen down on their heads then to the ground.

“Aaaaah!” “Mehdic!”

They looked to where RED Medic and Heavy are and they saw to their shock is Heavy holding on to the frame of the window with one hand while using the other to hold Medic from... Being sucked into the sky when a light purple and cyan glow had appeared after the clouds began swirling.

“Doc!” “Medic!”

Medic is holding on for dear life as Heavy is trying to pull them back into the base but failing in the process as the force of it is getting stronger by the minute. Then they are pulled into the sky as they screamed.

Without another word, they began running now as everything around them is falling apart. They are trying to push through the force of the wind blowing through them but as they are halfway to their base, Engineer had to grabbed onto the frame of the doorway while holding onto Pyro’s hand as the winds are getting too strong.

“Hold’ on, Matches!” Engineer yelled as he has a death grip on the door frame, Engineer then looked to see that Soldier is doing the same thing as well, hearing Scout screaming as he is digging his nails into the hard wood floor before being forcefully pulled into the skies but Soldier managed to grabbed him before that could happen.

Scout was terrified, he was screamed “I knew this will one day happened! I foresaw dis!! Soldier! This is the end of the-” “Do not use that tone of doubt on me, Private!” Soldier splat him in as he held onto his teammate with determination.

“Engie... I... Can’t.... Hold on...!” Pyro grunted as she is losing grip on the Engineer’s hand, he held onto it tighter than ever; refusing to let her go up there.

They then heard Sniper screaming and flying onto Soldier, knocking him and Scout into the skies with him as they screamed, then the ground shook violently as Engineer felt it and... the door frame broke, sending him and Pyro into the sky with a scream as everything gone white before suddenly; darkness.

“*Groan* ....What in buzzard‘s breakfest... How many beers did I have last night...?” he groaned as he rubbed his head while his hardhat is still on as he pulled himself off the wooden floor with a headache.

He groaned as he looked at the window and saw that there’s a forest outside and an old western town with the 1940′s, 60′s and 70′s Medical/Mental hospital and a train station.

Has he fell asleep during the mission but it soon came to him: He was in Offblast and he’s now in a map that he doesn’t know. It’s not a dream, something else... Is going on right now.

He needs to find the rest of his team and figure this out, he got up and ran out of the building as zombies are digging themselves out of the ground, hungry for flesh and sole thirst for blood.

Welcome to.....

All-Stars Battle Royale

>Press Start to Begin!

#Prequel #All-Stars -Story Mode-#Team Fortress 2 #Pyro #Engineer #Soldier #Scout #Medic #Heavy #Demoman #Sniper #Spy #The Administrator

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realmendopilates · 6 years

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Learning to be an Animal

Sports Illustrated, February 12, 1962

There is a happy band of people, of which I am an aspirant member, who are distinguishable anywhere by their springy step and "saved" look from the mass of their contemporaries who shuffle and shamble in untidy corpulence around us. We know that we are saved because we faithfully attend exhausting but exhilarating sessions at the Joseph H. Pilates Universal Gymnasium on Eighth Avenue in midtown Manhattan.

For it is here that Joe Pilates, a white-thatched red-cheeked octogenarian, his wife Clara and Hannah (who came in for a lesson 25 years ago and stayed on) bark their stern commands as we twist and stretch and complain through the exercises forming the core of what Joe, with his Germanic taste for scientific nomenclature, calls Contrology.

Don't ask me what Contrology is. Don't ask Joe either, for orderly exposition is not one of his talents. It has something to do with rational tension and relaxation of the muscles, and it comes from a profound knowledge of bodily kinetics begun three quarters of a century ago when Joe as a child in Germany began observing his fellow children at play and animals bounding through the forest. Later, when he was making a living as a boxer and a circus tumbler he began developing a series of exercises to relax him after an exhausting day.

The full principles of Contrology were revealed to him during World War I. His circus was caught traveling in England when the war broke out in 1914, and Joe and all the others were interned in an abandoned hospital on the Isle of Man. Here, as weeks lengthened into months and years, he watched his fellow-prisoners sink into apathy and despair, with nothing to do but stare at the bare crumbling walls of their prison, nothing to break the daily monotony but the inadequate meals (for the German submarine blockade was slowly starving England) and an occasional walk around the bare courtyard with nothing to look at but an occasional starveling cat streaking after a mouse or a bird.

It was the cats which did it. For though they were nothing but skin and bones - even the most animal-loving prisoners could hardly spare them anything from their own pitiful rations when their own children were begging to be fed - they were lithe and springy and terribly efficient as they aimed for their prey. Why were the cats in such good shape, so bright-eyed, while the humans were growing every day paler, weaker, apathetic creatures ready to give up if they caught a cold or fell down and sprained an ankle? The answer came to Joe when he began carefully observing the cats and analyzing their motions for hours at a time. He saw them, when they had nothing else to do, stretching their legs out, stretching, stretching, keeping their muscles limber, alive. He began working out an orderly series of exercises to stretch the human muscles, all the human muscles. He began demonstrating these exercises to the dejected figures around him, and since they had nothing else to do, they began to do the exercises too. Awkwardly and timorously at first, but under his firm supervision they became more and more confident, more and more bouncy, like cats. They ended the war in better shape than when it started, and when the great influenza epidemic came sweeping over all the countries that had fought in the war, not one of them came down with it.

Once free, he came to America because that is the place to be when you have a new idea. He designed and built machines for carefully graduated stretching exercises, he rented a loft, he opened his Universal Gymnasium, up the street from Stillman's Gym, an institution built to other specifications. Little by little the word got around, people began coming in, people from professions which demand complete and precise control of the whole body, ballet dancers, opera singers, Laurence Olivier, Yehudi Menuhin.

When I came to join this band, he greeted me as he did everybody else. He lay down on his eighty-ear-old back and commanded, "Step on me." I hesitated. "Don't be afraid," he said. "STEP!" Gingerly I put one foot on his belly, one on his chest. "You see," he said. "It's easy."

Later I stood before him in the mandatory black trunks and he poked a scornful finger into my poor bare flesh.

"Typical," he said in ringing Teutonic tones. "Just like all of them! Americans! They want to go 600 miles an hour, and they don't know how to walk! Look at them in the street. Bent over!. Coughing! Young men with gray faces! Why can't they look at the animals? Look at a cat. Look at any animal. The only animal that doesn't hold its stomach in is the pig. Look at them all out on the sidewalk now, like pigs.

"By exercising your stomach muscles you wring out the body, you don't catch colds, you don't get cancer, you don't get hernias. Do animals get hernias? Do animals go on diets? Eat what you want, drink what you want. I drink a quart of liquor a day, plus some beers, and smoke maybe fifteen cigars.

"And what do Americans do? They play golf, they play baseball, they use half of their muscles, a quarter of their muscles. They get fat, they go jogging, they go on crazy diets, they jump up and down in crazy exercises, they have bad backs, they have beer bellies, they slouch, they complain, they have hernias.

"So, you want to learn how to do better. It's all up here, in the head. Lie down on the mat. Don't flop down, go down smoothly, like this, cross the arms, cross the legs. Now, legs in the air! Grab your ankles! Of course you can't reach them, no American can. All right, grab your calves. Make it your knees. Straight the knees! Bend forward! Now reach! No, you have to think first! Think! Up!"

It may take months to learn exactly which straining set of muscles and tendons is the object of that Up!

In the meanwhile, the neophyte is ever under someone's scornful eyes or encouraging grunts, learning the Pilates ropes - the varieties of pulls, twists, bends, crouches which he says use 25 percent more muscles than circus acrobatics and fifty or seventyfive percent more than baseball (pfui!) or golf (double-pfui!), No jumping or running, which put unnecessary strain on the heart; in fact, almost everything is done flat on your back or your stomach. No weights ("Do animals lift weights?") No bulging biceps.- Joe is more interested in muscles that will hold you up up than those that will let you knock another fellow down.

The exercises are graduated and have whimsical names: the Teaser, the Forward Rocking, the Saw, the Hanging.

Looking down from the walls of the gym are paintings, photographs sculptures of Joe, naked or loinclothed: spearfishing at 56, representing the Spirit of Air on the floor of the Nebraska state capitol at 60, skiing at 78. There are also photographs with admiring testimonials ("To the greatest,""to the one and immortal Joe"from distinguished alumni, and photostats of articles from American newspapers documenting the horrors of American posture. Through sweat-filled eyes, as you are upside down on one machine, you might see a famous publisher or producer or anchorperson bent double on another. They are all receiving the full lash of Pilatean philosophy.

"Its' the stiffness. You must open up the chest more, two inches more. Up! NO! With this muscle" poking a protuberance about his midriff which will never rise on you or me - "straight the knees! Where are you going - like an elephant?"

"Oh Joe," wails a famous ballerina. "Now you're calling me an elephant."

"I wouldn't insult the elephant. An elephant could walk into this room, and you wouldn't hear it. An elephant walks delicately. But you - clump, clump, CLUMP! Americans! Baseball players! Joggers! Weight-lifters! No wonder they come to me with arthritis! Ulcers! Animals don't have ulcers! Animals don't go on diets! Straight the knees! Out the air!"

So the minutes pass -- flipping and wriggling through the Corkscrew, the Jackknife, the Seal. It's not cheap ($5 a session, which lasts about 45 minutes) but as you go your two or three times a week, the weeks become months, and the abuse becomes scattered with a few congratulatory murmurs. Kindly Clara will admire you new sleekness, gruff Hannah will say, "Well, about time." Perhaps your head is a little higher in the street, above all the young gray faces. Aches and twinges disappear. A day comes when you are able to swing your ankles neatly into two loops hanging down from a bar way up there, stretch your body, get a firm grip on two upright poles - and climb up. You reach the top with grunts of pleasure and suddenly whoop in terror, "How do I get down?" "The same way you got up." Down you come, hand under hand, with gasps and moans and a final yell of triumph. In the hush that follows, Joe bellows out his final accolade:

"Now you are an animal"

Sports Illustrated, February 12, 1962

#realmendopilates personalvictory sportsillustrated fitness pilates

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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The most important scene in Brad Bird’s Incredibles 2 comes early on and offers a brilliant summation of everything the writer-director does so well.

The Parr family, having attracted the attention and irritation of the government with their superhero shenanigans, sits in a lonely motel room, munching on Chinese food. They’ve just saved the city of Municiberg from the Underminer, who set his giant drill on a path to destroy City Hall.

But officials don’t see all of the destruction that was averted — they only see the rubble that actually exists. Yes, nobody wants supervillains like the Underminer robbing banks, but there’s a process in place to ensure those banks and the money within them, and having superheroes leap in to save the day just complicates that process.

The scene is notable both for its small, detailed animation — pay attention to how Bob Parr (aka Mr. Incredible) can’t seem to grasp anything with his chopsticks and finally just stabs an eggroll through the middle — and for the way it tosses a bunch of questions the movie knows it can’t possibly answer up into the air. To change the law that has made superheroes illegal, the Parrs will have to break it, to show that superheroes can still be useful. Or, as G-man Rick Dicker wearily sighs in an earlier scene, “Politicians don’t trust anyone who does a good thing just because it’s right. It makes them nervous.”

The first time I saw Incredibles 2, all of these ideas jostling for space within the movie struck me as a movie frantically searching for a story to tell, one it eventually found but that didn’t quite cohere with everything else. The second time through, though, the movie made more sense to me as a meditation on the popularity of superhero stories and what it means to live in a world where what’s legal isn’t always what’s right. It doesn’t offer solutions, because it knows there aren’t any.

But the movie is also keyed in to something that’s always present in Bird’s work, something that’s caused some to accuse him of being an objectivist along the lines of Ayn Rand: an obsession with the rights of the exceptional and how they can be stacked up against everybody else.

Incredibles 2 strikes me both as Bird’s deepest exploration of this idea and his biggest refutation of it. Bird might be fascinated by the exceptional among us, but he’s also not interested in exceptionalism if it doesn’t benefit the larger community.

Brad Bird Photo by Juan Naharro Gimenez/Getty Images for Disney

The works of author Ayn Rand — including Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and others — have been hugely influential on the thinking of various political and economic theorists over the years. (Among current politicians, Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan is a notable devotee.) To put Rand’s writings in modern terms, you could describe her objectivism as a kind of extra-strength libertarianism, in which the truly great among us should, as much as possible, not be shackled by the law or by conventions.

Atlas Shrugged is her magnum opus, a futuristic dystopia in which citizens who don’t contribute to society leech off the business classes, who create both wealth and useful material goods (mostly trains and railroads). The action of the book — if a book so heavy in long discussions of philosophy can be said to have “action” — mostly involves the various characters learning that society needs them more than they need society, that the world is only as strong as its strongest, who should be subject to as few rules and regulations as possible. Rand stops just short of saying, “Billionaires should be able to straight-up murder whomever they want,” but reading the book, you have to think the idea occurred to her at some point.

This is a vast oversimplification of a book I read once in high school for an essay contest, but Rand’s ideas that regulations are bad and wealth creators are good have trickled down into the modern Republican Party in ways that are hopefully obvious.

The question is if they’ve also trickled down to influence the films of Brad Bird, one of modern animation’s few auteurs, but also a writer-director who keeps returning to the idea that society places unnecessary constraints on exceptional individuals. You can see where the comparisons come from.

Bird has made just six films — 1999’s The Iron Giant, 2004’s The Incredibles, 2007’s Ratatouille, 2011’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, 2015’s Tomorrowland, and 2018’s Incredibles 2 — and four of those wrestle with the above idea at length. There’s a touch of that idea in Iron Giant (which we’ll get to), but it doesn’t dwell on it at length, while Ghost Protocol (one of the finest modern action movies) is mostly about how it would be totally rad to free climb the world’s tallest building. (Ghost Protocol and Tomorrowland are live-action; the other four films are animated.)

The “objectivist” tag was first applied to Bird extensively after the first Incredibles. And to be sure, the very premise of the film plays in this territory: superheroes have been outlawed due to safety concerns, and one character bellows, “With everyone super, no one will be!” This is particularly true of a concluding scene in which young Dash Parr, blessed with super-speed, intentionally throws a race at a track meet. The plot reason for this is that he can’t let anybody know he has superpowers (which are still illegal), but it plays as a weird critique of the idea of participation trophies and the attempt to make sure no child’s feelings are hurt.

The criticism followed Bird through Ratatouille — which is ostensibly about how anyone (even a rat) can cook but is also kind of about how if you don’t have talent, you should get out of the way of people who do — and especially Tomorrowland, in which a group of geniuses abscond to an alternate universe where they build the sci-fi future imagined in the ’50s and ’60s and mostly abandoned in our modern era of imagined dystopias.

A world where the exceptional cordon themselves off and refuse to save the rest of the world is literally Galt’s Gulch from Atlas Shrugged, where the book’s mysterious hero, John Galt, hides out to proclaim his superiority to everybody else. And now Incredibles 2 toys with many of these same themes, which makes sense as a continuation of the first film. (When I asked him about these themes, he mostly punted on answering the question, saying he didn’t think about it that much when writing his movies.)

I think it’s worth considering all of these ideas in the context of Bird’s career, which got a bit of a late start. After beginning as a young wunderkind animator at Disney in the early ’80s, Bird was fired after raising his concerns that the company was half-assing it, instead of trying to protect its rich legacy.

Bird spent much of the ’80s bouncing from project to project — he worked on, among other things, a Garfield TV special and the Amazing Stories episode “Family Dog” (his directorial debut) — until in the early ’90s, he landed a job as the animation supervisor on a new TV show named The Simpsons, a job that made his career and allowed him to direct Iron Giant. When that movie flopped, he was brought to Pixar thanks to a college friendship with John Lasseter (who has recently been pushed out of the company after accusations of sexual misconduct).

But his directorial debut still didn’t arrive until he was in his early 40s. And while that’s not exactly unprecedented, it is at least a little unusual in an industry where someone with the evident talent of Bird likely would have proceeded through the ranks of a major animation company and directed his first film somewhere in his 30s.

Bird’s self-admitted demanding nature likely make him difficult to work with — something that surely contributed to his difficulty getting a film made, despite numerous almost-realized projects, like an animated adaptation of the comic The Spirit. (Bird was also probably hurt by his certainty that “animated film” and “kids film” shouldn’t be synonymous, even though animated films aimed at adults have always been difficult sells in Hollywood.) It makes sense that Bird’s frequent musings on the shackling of genius might be a political, but it’s just as possible this is an artistic idea, based on the struggles he had getting his career to take off. (My friend David Sims has had similar thoughts at the Atlantic.)

So, yes, we could read Bird’s filmography as a celebration of Ayn Rand and of climbing very tall buildings. But we’d be remiss if we didn’t also read it in the context of the career of a director who felt stymied at every turn for almost 20 years, before he unexpectedly became one of the most successful directors of his generation almost out of nowhere.

Even then, we’d be missing something big.

The Iron Giant paints a very different picture of how those with great talents should behave. Warner Brothers

One of the things that makes that early motel-room scene in Incredibles 2 so potent is the fact that there’s no clear right answer to the issues that Bird raises via his characters. Nor is there a right answer in a later scene in which Helen Parr (Elastigirl) talks with a new friend about whether the ability to create something great or the ability to sell it to the mass public is more important to the world. Nor in the frequent arguments about whether breaking unjust laws is the right thing to do, even if society requires people to be law-abiding to function.

It’s impossible for any animated movie to truly be “timely” because they’re produced on such a long timeframe. But Incredibles 2 feels eerily tapped in to the political debates we’re having around the globe right now. If you have massive amounts of power and feel like the world is circling the tubes, is your primary duty to society or to the self? Or your family? Or all of the above? Brad Bird doesn’t know this answer, so the movie doesn’t either.

This is a common thread across his filmography. All of his movies grapple with objectivist themes, to be sure, but they also don’t conclude that doing what’s best for the self is what’s best for everybody. The closest thing to an answer Bird ever provides is “Do what’s right, and what’s right is what benefits the most people.”

In short, his movies always posit that the exceptional should be allowed to express their talents to the best of their abilities — but only insofar as they can benefit society at large.

What’s interesting is how often Bird’s most openly objectivist moments and story ideas are presented as bad things. That collection of geniuses making up Tomorrowland, for instance, invents a machine meant to bring doom to our world, while the famous line about being special or super from Incredibles is actually spoken twice — the first time by a child and the second time by the movie’s villain. Helen is the closest thing the Incredibles franchise has to a moral conscience, and she’s always the one on the side of the idea that “everyone is special.” We just have different talents.

Ratatouille might be the best developed expression of this idea among Bird’s films. His portrayal of a restaurant as a collection of people who do very specific jobs to the best of their abilities, all adding up to a kind of symphony, is very much like filmmaking, with the film’s hero, Remy the rat, standing in as a director. The movie’s villains are those who would stand in the way of Remy realizing his full talents — but you can also read that as being against prejudice, as a celebration of the idea that anyone can cook and great art can come from someone you’d never expect (like a young and hungry would-be animator from Montana, not exactly a hotbed of Hollywood talent).

It’s telling that Ratatouille’s great chef is a rodent and not the gangly human who discovers he’s the son of a great, dead chef. Talent isn’t always predictable, following along conduits you’d expect. But when you find it, it’s best to encourage it but also make sure it’s tempered with kindness, as it is in Ratatouille, a movie where even the restaurant’s waitstaff is briefly but memorably celebrated.

All of which brings us back to The Iron Giant, a movie rarely discussed in conversations about Bird’s interest in exceptionalism. If any Bird creation is exceptional, it’s a giant metal man who eats railroads and can become a literal death weapon, but the arc of the film is about the giant trending away from that which makes him exceptional and would harm others, and toward what about him is exceptional that could benefit others. It’s a movie about a really amazing walking gun who decides, instead, to become Superman.

Superman’s a fitting icon to consider as a way to understand Bird’s ultimate philosophies. Yeah, he could kill all of us with a flick of his fingernail, but he doesn’t. So could the superheroes of Incredibles 2, but they make the choice not to.

That’s why Incredibles 2 stands so beautifully as Bird’s most fully engaged wrestling with all of these ideas. It never offers easy answers because there aren’t any. The question of how we build a society that benefits everybody and gives them the same rights as everybody else, while still allowing people as much freedom as possible to exercise the talents and abilities unique to them, isn’t one that can be answered easily. It’s arguably the work of democracy itself, and it will never be finalized, as long as human beings strive for a better world. Thus, those of us who are exceptional, be they people or rodents or whole countries, are only as exceptional as they are good.

While it’s not always easy to determine the right course of action, determining what’s good almost never is. It’s what takes you away from celebrating the self and back toward figuring out how that self can fit into the community of others, how your own exceptionalism can become a part of the great symphony of life.

Original Source -> Why Incredibles director Brad Bird gets compared to Ayn Rand — and why he shouldn’t be

via The Conservative Brief

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caredogstips · 7 years

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10+ Times Dads Took Their Jokes To Another Grade

It’s very likely that you’ve already evidenced a few dad gags in their own lives. Dads love to agony their children with such pranks and they are so embarrassingly bad that they end up being funny.

Bored Panda accumulated some of the best pa jokes captured on camera, proving that while the laughs themselves may be cringe-worthy, they’re also fairly humorous to look at. A large-hearted shout out to all of the awesome papas who come up with so many the resources necessary to exasperate their minors in most ridiculous paths!

If you’ve captured a daddy pun on camera, be sure to add it to this list. Don’t forget to comment and upvote other pa gags as well!

# 1 My Dad Just Moved To Tokyo. I Requested For A Picture Of The Position From His Apartment …

# 2 After A Multi-year Battle I Lastly Persuaded My Dad To Improve His Old Nokia 3310 To An Iphone. The Custom Phone Case He prescribed For It Arrived Today ..

# 3 Dad’s Office

# 4 My Girlfriend’s Dad Sent Me This Visualize Of Himself Today

# 5 Happiness Level – Dad

# 6 My Dad Was Seeming At Me Like This For Like 5 Minutes Until I Ogled Down At His Plate

# 7 Dad, Why ..

# 8 My Dad Said My Dog Took Over My Room After I Left For College. He Sent Me This …

# 9 My Friend’s Dad Is A Dentist. This Is His Pumpkin For Halloween

#10 A Girl Got A Text From A Boy Asking To Ascertain Her In Her Bra, Dad Replied

#12 My Dad Keeps Placing This Around To Scare Me

#13 Exact Photo Description Of A Dad Joke In Action

#14 Dad Told His Daughter That The Turkey Was Pregnant

#15 Daughter Asked For Frozen Gifts This Christmas ..

#16 My Dad Is An Ob/ gyn, And Was On-call For Christmas. This Is How He Extended To Round On Patients This Morning.

#17 Never Ask Your Dad To Introduce You Stuff At School

#18 Marilyn Manson’s Dad Stunned Him At His Recent Photo Shoot With Terry Richardson. Proof That Its A Father’s Duty To Humiliate Your Children As Often As Humanly Possible

#19 God Damnit, Dad …

#20 My Apartment Lost Power For Two Date. I Complained To My Dad, And Minutes Later, I Got A Text: “They’re On The Action! “

#22 So My Friend Has Her First Driving Lesson With Her Dad

#23 Was In My Room Considering When My Dad Sent Me This Photo

#24 When Your Dad Thinks Your Bath Bomb Is A Toilet Cleaner

#25 My Dad Simultaneously Discovered Snapchat And Started Embellishing For Halloween … This Is The Result

#26 My Daughter Had A Nightmare About Me Getting Sucked Into The Computer, After She Watched Tron. This Is What She Will Wake up To

#27 Just Got Home From Work And Found This Document From My Dad On The Fridge … A Little Confused, I Went To Into The Front room To Find My Cat As Promised. Thanks Dad!

#28 My Uncle And Dad Found My Cousin’s Hair Extensions, And Sent The Whole Family Glamour Shots

#29 My Friends Wife Let Him Name Their New Puppy

#30 My Dad And His Morbid Sense Of Humor Make Their Way To The Family Reunion

#32 Went On My Husband Sauntering The Cat Across The Ceiling While Singing “spider Cat, Spider Cat, Does Whatever A Spider Cat Does”

#33 My Friend Ran Out Of Lunch Bags, His Dad Is A Cop …

#34 My Dad Asked If We Craved To Read A Portrait Of His Pride And Joy

#35 My Mates Dad Is Officially Having A Mid Life Crisis! He Ordered This From Thailand …

#36 My Dad Likes To Get Up To Hijinks When Left Alone

#37 My Wife Didn’t Appreciate My Fridge Magnet Poem

#38 This Is Why I Can’t Take My Dad To Nice Region …

#39 Mom Said She Wanted A Smaller Tree For The Holidays This Season. Dad Came Home With This

#40 My Dad Reached A Good Snowball I Guess, He’s Really Proud, He Even Saw This Photo His Profile Picture ..

#42 You Can Tell Me I’m A Bad Dad But This One Is Biding In The Baby Album

#43 My Dad, The Belly Flop King, About To Ruin My Moms Afternoon

#44 My Dad Returned A Kitten Home And Give It Drive

#45 How To Realize Your Kids Hate You

#46 My Dad Just Sent Me This With The Caption “Minotaur”

#47 “I Think My Dad Is Happy About My Stepmom’s Early X-mas Decorating Spree. He Captioned This On Facebook ‘This Is What Happens When You Come Out Of Your Box Bfore Thanksgiving You Damn Dirty Elf'”

#48 Graduation Gift From Dad

#49 My Dad Loves Neon Yellow Operating Gear. People Always Joke That He Gazes Like A Highlighter. So He Became One

#50 My Sister Posted A Paint To Facebook, My Dad Responded

#52 My Dad Thought He Was Home Alone. I Had To Accompany Why He Was Laughing So Hard ..

#53 My Dad Went Mushroom Picking In Oslo And Sent Me This On Whatsapp

#54 To Not Lose A Baby Kitten In The House, My Dad Does This

#55 Here Is My Dad’s Gift To My Younger Sister. He Announces It The “Birth Control Blanket”

#56 My 13 Year Old Daughter Wants A Ear Rings For Christmas. I Can Hardly Contain My Excitement

#57 “Fancy Name For A Fart” My Dad Whispered While Shopping ….

#58 My Dad Made Me Earrings For My Birthday

#59 Ten Minutes After I Tell My 68 Time Old Dad What Hipsters Are, He Returns Back Like This. He Expects “Did I Do It Right? “

#60 I Questioned My Dad For $10 For Gas, He Announced “Sure, It’s In The Top Left Drawer Of My Computer Desk”. Thanks, Dad

#62 My Son Craved “cold Hard Cash” For His Birthday

#63 “I Only Want Tiny Pancakes Today.” Troll Dad Obliges

#64 My Mom Asked My Dad If He Was Man Enough To Pick Her Up Something After He Get Off Of Work, So He Mailed Her This.

#65 My Dad Is Building An Outhouse. This Is What He Sends Me …

#66 So I’m Putting Stuff Into The Attic When My Dad Runs In Bellowing “why? Why? Why? “

#67 How Shopping With Dad Is Better Than Patronizing With Mom

#68 Every Time My Dad Visits He Disguises A $20 Bill Before He Leaves. This Place Is By Far The Excellent. I’ve Been Clearing Coffee Like This For A Week Before I Noticed

#69 So Me And My Dad Were Out Browsing Army-navy Store When Then He Shed This At Me And Said, ‘she Cant Laugh At What She Cant Meet! ‘

#70 My Dad Hates Wrapping Presents So He Precisely Did This

#72 Told My Dad I Was Get Flying, This Is What He Had To Say About It

#73 While Vacationing My Dad Discovered An Discount Candy Store. When I Did I Didn’t Miss Anything He Sent Me This

#74 My 13 Year Old Daughter Wants A Nose Ring For Christmas. I Can Just Contain My Excitement

#75 Dad Humor

#76 My Dad Posted This On Facebook And No One Got It( Including Myself ). Everyone Was Anticipating He Fell Down And Hurt Himself. His Reaction: “Staged Photo, All Is Well. It Was The First Day Of Fall”

#77 My Father Stumbles Me With Dad Jokes When My Guard Is The Lowest

#78 How My Dad Is Moving Out Gifts This Year

#79 I Am Living Abroad And Asked My Parents To Celebrate My Dog’s Birthday Since I Am Away. My Dad Texted Me This Picture Titled, “birthday Party”

#80 Every Year My Dad Gets Us Odd Religous Candles Around The Holidays. This Year He Actually Outsmarted Himself

#82 My First Time Leaving Her, And Dad Decides This Is The Photo To Transport ..

#83 Many Years Ago My Dad Got To Meet Christopher Reeves. The Follower Of Steel Did Not Appreciate His Shenanigans

#84 Asked My Dad What He Was Doing With His Tax Return And He Sent Me This

#85 Cleaning Out Some Of My Dad’s Old Files. I Don’t Know What I Expected

#86 My Dad Ran Up To Me In The Garden Centre Yesterday And Requested Me To Take A Photo Of His ‘Massive Tits’.

#87 My Wife Just Told Me She Is Pregnant, And Required A Toasty Shower. First Dad Joke Executed ..

#88 Every Equinox, My Dad Counterbalance An Egg Upright And Sends Me The Pic. This Year, He Outsmarted Himself

#89 We Just Had Our First Baby. My Sister-in-law Who Lives Far Away Sent Us This Text And This Is All My Husband Reacted With

#90 Make It Go. Dad Considered It Was So Funny

#92 My Dad Thought Waking Me Up As The Easter Bunny Would Be Too Clich …

#93 My Dad Spent 5 Era Schooling His Feline To Do This

#94 My Dad Wore This Shirt To His Colonoscopy

#95 My Dad Just Got His Chest Port For Chemotherapy Today. Here He Is Researching It Out

#96 My Dad Just Sent Me This …

#97 Friend Sent Me This Pronouncing “it’s Not My Flaw She Has No Imagination”

#98 My Dad Insisted On Getting His Image Taken With This “Giant Kotex Pad” At Sam’s Club

#99 My Dad Emailed Me This Depict Of Himself After Going An Ipad, The Title “Here Come The Sun”

#100 This Was My College Graduation Present. Over $1500 Of Change My Dad Saved Over The Last-place Four Times

#102 Dad Gave Me An Eye-Pad As A Gift This Christmas. He Envisaged It Was So Funny …

#103 My Dad Said If I Took Constituent In His Stupid Photo Idea, I Wouldn’t Have To Shovel For The Rest Of The Day

#104 I Got In An Disagreement With My Dad Earlier Today And Simply Now He Came Into My Room, Threw This Down, And Left Without Saying A Word( i’m Allergic To Peanuts)

#105 “i Asked For Money This Christmas, So My Dad Individually Wrap 100 Single Dollar Bills”

#106 Should I Be Obsessed About My Dad?

The post 10+ Times Dads Took Their Jokes To Another Grade appeared first on caredogstips.com.

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citiusaltiusfraughtius-blog · 7 years

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SWIMMING

Swimming is the worst, and I’m so annoyed that it makes me feel so amazing.

My poor boyfriend bears the brunt of this strange transfiguration by chlorine. I basically have to be peeled off the sofa and pushed into the pool. I complain constantly. I’m like a cat. I like sleeping and I don’t like being immersed in water.

My brother was a national level swimmer. I was not a national level swimmer. I was a national level nerd, and moving was not my forte. I have strong memories of squinting up at swimming teachers who stared at me with a kind of horrified amazement, unable to comprehend how I could demonstrate textbook perfect technique but not manage to actually move. It was like I was on an underwater treadmill. I just stayed in the same spot. It was actually impressive, in a way.

Over the years, I’ve become no better at swimming, just more stubborn and resentful. I walk into the pool as a human thundercloud – grumpy, anxious, deeply uninterested in flailing down a length of water and back again, dozens of times. And for good reason. Swimming is profoundly, almost hysterically uninteresting. There is nothing to look at in a pool. The landscape never changes. There never seems to be quite enough light in any swimming complex, so the place has this horrible drab mouldy energy. The upshot is that the whole session becomes an exercise in directionless hatred.

But in the same way that bellowing invectives at the four wheel drive that cuts you off at the traffic lights is sometimes quite invigorating, swimming provides ample opportunity to work through your stores of built-up resentment. For one thing, freeway rules apply to each lane. This means that anyone going slower than you is a somnolent drain on society and anyone going faster is a dangerous hoon. If anyone causes you to have to overtake them or overtakes you in turn, you get to loathe them, passionately and profoundly, for as long as they’re in your lane. It’s glorious. It’s energising. You usually can’t see their face, so you don’t ever have to feel guilty about hoping they drown. Same goes for children who bring their horseplay into the lap lanes, or old people who insist on walking in the lanes designated for swimming. The people one normally feels a social impulse to protect become detested enemies. It’s wonderful.

It also works in the other direction – sometimes it feels really good to be enormously passive aggressive and have everyone turn against you. In a world where so many of us are terrified that we’re somehow upsetting people while trying to do good, it feels good to know that you’re being a jerk. Recently, I swam with my brother in a crowded 25 metre pool, and he totally cleared the lane of its six inhabitants with one Olympic-speed lap. It was majestic. Everyone hated him. They all stood together up one end of the lane and bitched about him swimming too fast. It was legitimately inspiring.

If ruining other people’s days brings you joy, I particularly recommend swimming at the Northcote outdoor pool at around 9 pm on a cold, rainy night. Getting out there is hell, but once you’re in you don’t mind that it’s raining, and there’s always one lifeguard standing shivering in a puffy jacket just boring holes into your skull because you’re forcing them to be out in the cold. The power! Plus, sometimes there are ducks in the pool, so everyone wins.

Aside from befriending ducks, swimming is inherently a lonely activity – it’s hard to connect emotionally with someone with both of your faces underwater. And something about that means that small moments of human connection take on strange significance when they happen between the pool ropes. When you stop at the end of a lap to breathe, and someone pops their head up to see whether you’re about to start another one, there’s often a sweet little ‘Oh no, you go’ pantomime that feels very British and proper. People in a cold swimming pool immediately bond out of a shared suffering. And now and then, you end up inadvertently touching people as they pass, and it’s quite startlingly intimate. Once, late at night at Collingwood pool, I was doing breaststroke, and somehow managed to accidentally hold hands for a second with a woman going in the other direction. I was single at the time, and the suddenness of that touch actually made me tear up. So there’s an image for you. A woman crying into her goggles because she accidentally brushed hands with the old woman breaststroking opposite. Now that I think of it, I also once managed to accidentally grope a friend’s penis while breaststroking, so I think it’s safer for everybody that I stick to freestyle now.

I know several people who claim to find swimming meditative. I don’t. Or actually, I do, but I find it very similar to trying to meditate when your brain is more interested in yelling at you. My internal monologue while swimming usually goes something like: ‘1. HEY REMEMBER THIS SONG LET’S TRY TO REMEMBER ALL THE LYRICS. I DON’T KNOW YOU BUT I WANT YOU – 2. OH WAIT WE GOT INTERRUPTED BY COUNTING THE LAP NUMBER LET’S START AGAIN. I DON’T KNOW YOU BUT I WANT YOU ALL THE – 3. OH NO WE GOT INTERRUPTED LET’S START AGAIN.’ It’s nightmarish. I also have this inability not to inhale water every time I breathe, so I usually end up swallowing litres of chlorinated peed-in water. I’m sure this is excellent for my health.

If this sounds like total unmitigated torture, it is. But there are benefits even to this. Because you have nothing to do except keep moving, swimming becomes a rather elegant testing ground for more general life skills. Such that when you fuck up a tumble turn and flood your sinuses with water (that particular red nose-eye-face pain that feels like an imminent nosebleed and that so strongly characterised my youthful swimming efforts), as it turns out, if you just breathe out through your nose and keep going, the pain recedes and is quickly forgotten. If you breathe in just as someone passes you and a wave flops into your lungs, you can actually cough it out while still maintaining a passable freestyle. The takeaway being that it is possible to cope with crisis while still maintaining a semblance of serenity. That pain is temporary, and that most things can be cured with some good quality breathing. That most people can’t tell them you’re hacking up phlegm underwater. I’m not sure if that last one is super applicable to the office, but hey, I’m not one to judge.

Even so, I know that this doesn’t seem like a recipe for a good time. And for the first thirty laps (fifteen in a 50 metre pool, but anyone who tells you they prefer 50 m pools to 25 m pools is lying to you and is not to be trusted), it’s not. It feels like those agonising nightmares where you’re trying to run but you look down and realise that you’re not moving. But – and finally! The but! – at around the 750 metre mark, your body suddenly remembers that somewhere back in its evolutionary chain, it was a fish. It’s as though you have to clear out the old oil in the engine by churning through 30 horrible laps where you feel like you’re not moving at all, and then suddenly, you are. Suddenly, you get a grip on the water. And then you’re not a human trying not to drown accidentally, or trying not to drown on purpose out of boredom. Suddenly, you’re just swimming. Your brain shuts up. Your body clicks over into autopilot. And you just cruise.

And then you get out, and go through the interminable effort of trying to comb chlorinated knots out of hair, and have the inevitable naked chats with similarly naked, gloriously fat women in their 60s. I’ve had some excellent naked conversations with women in changerooms, all of whom don’t seem to give a single fuck about what their bodies look like, which is an inspiring energy to be around. I’ve befriended stressed mothers and joined gossip circles and learned about how border security works, all from wobbly nude ladies. I understand that the male changerooms at pools lack this kind of joyous camaraderie. My boyfriend once saw a man at the Coburg pool placidly drying his pubes with the wall-mounted hairdryer once, though, so there’s something to be said for that.

And then you’re outside and then – suddenly, finally, it hits you. The calm. The calm. The blissful, blissful calm. After an hour of deafening pool-amplified echoes and bubbles and water and children shouting and shower noise and hairdryers – suddenly, the silence. Your body feels like setting jelly and your head feels like it’s been pressure-hosed and the serenity is like nothing else. It’s like a drug. It’s the only reason I ever go back, and by god, it’s a good reason.

Swimming. Boring as fuck, feels awful – until suddenly, it really doesn’t.

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