Sayonara Lara | Ep1 | I want to see it...the ending of a foolish mermaid's tale. The real value of the love that blossoms between mermaid and human! Show me whether it is true love or not, Lara! A tragic heroine, huh? What a dull ending.
This squirrel attempted to jump a full six feet (yes, I measured) from a nearby bush to the bird feeder. Its first two misses were spectacular, so much so that when it made it on the third try, I let it hang out and eat as many peanuts as it wanted.
(I'm sorry I didn't manage to get the leaps to sync up, but I've already spent quite a lot of time turning the video into gifs that'll upload here, so.)
The Two Towers film is actually really impressive for how it feels like a cohesive story despite being about three groups of characters whose plotlines almost never intersect during the filmâs runtime (Frodo/sam, Merry/Pippin, and Aragorn/Legolas/Gimli.)
Because the Fellowship almost never interacts with each other during the main plot, the filmmakers instead had to connect the plotlines thematically. Frodo/Sam never actually talk to Aragorn, but their plotlines mirror each other.
The Two Towers film is structured so that each splinter group of the Fellowship ultimately struggles with the same goal: they need to convince a despairing grief-stricken ally to aid in the war against Sauron. Theoden, Treebeard, and Faramir are all people who have suffered some great loss in the past wars. As a result, they are all set in their ways out of grief, and refuse to listen to the Fellowshipâs advice or agree with their plans. (Until the very end.)
This is also where the films depart a lot from the source material. The two towers was probably the biggest adaptational challenge of the entire series, because the original book is split into two parts that focus on the POV of two different groups of characters (A Three Hunters book, and a Sam/Frodo book) â and then ends on a horrible cliffhanger. This works in the books but would not have worked on film at all.
The filmmakersâ attempts to build a Structured Film Story led to them emphasizing the idea of the Fellowship recruiting reluctant allies, and emphasizing the thematic idea of people being trapped within grief and stasis. Elrond predicts that the worst fate for Arwen would be to âlinger on, in darkness and in doubt,â permanently frozen in grief; and this is the state we find most of the new characters in. Film!Theoden is portrayed as far more hesitant and grief-stricken than he was in the book, film!Treebeard is more reluctant and afraid of what war means for the Forest, and film!Faramir is more overwhelmed by the pressure to be like Boromir⊠and all three of them are overall far more heavily swayed by the Fellowshipâs presence. (Though I still have beef with the way Faramirâs plotline was handledâXD) Because they needed to build out a structure that could work on film, they found this thematic throughline and really emphasized it.
Theodenâs grief over the death of his son makes him refuse the Fellowshipâs advice to reach out to his allies or ride out against Sarumanâs forces; Treebeardâs grief over the waning of the forest makes him decide that âhe is on nobodyâs side because nobody is on his side,â and Faramirâs grief over the death of Boromir makes him unwilling to try a solution that isnât âwhat he believes Boromir would have done.â
These characters all start the film in a state of hopelessness and stasis and avoidance; then theyâre ultimately forced to confront the source of their grief, and end the film by aiding the Fellowship.
This is also connected to the journey that all the Fellowship members need to go on. Frodo and Sam are forced to confront the grief at the idea that Frodo is being consumed by the Ring; Merry and Pippin have to face that âthere wonât be a Shireâ after Sauronâs victory; and Aragornâs relationship with the people of Rohan forces him to confront his own fears about becoming a king and leading people to their death.
The plotlines are also really well connected through the use of musicâ like the Last March of the Ents leitmotif being used for Theodenâs choice to ride out against the Uruk-Hai, emphasizing the parallel between the way both characters have hesitated to âride out and meetâ the source of their grief.
And then Samâs final speech, where a variation on the Shire leitmotif â (a version of the same variation that played in the end of Fellowship of the Ring)â becomes the final moment that ties all the disparate plot threads together. The film is centered on characters being overwhelmed by grief, and entering a state of numbness or stasis where they cut themselves off from the world. When this happens to Frodo, Sam encourages him to believes that there is still goodness in the world thatâs worth fighting forâ a culmination of all the ideas that have been built up throughout the past three hours.
Despite its flaws the film feels so cohesive, and the end of the film feels like such a satisfying resolution? Which is easy to take for granted because like, there were so many different moving pieces, and without a really clear thematic focus the film couldâve easily ended up falling apart.
I refer to The Two Towers as "the opposite movie" because almost every character in it makes the opposite decision they do in the book. And it works! Because books and movies tell stories differently. Once you learn to accept that, all of storytelling becomes easier.
Look I hope everybody has lesbian sex and gets their license and moves out and whatever but this post is about one thing only and you guys are diluting its power. No offense I hope that all happens but this post needs to be aimed at one point and it can't move.
Proof of concept for a simple, cheap, flatpack lantern!
Two squares off a 1x4, holes drilled in the top piece for a rope handle; popsicle sticks for the sides, stuck together with woodglue (and stained beforehand) with magnets in the corners. Cicada wing paper glued to the frames. The magnets attach to little tack nails hammered into the squares of wood.
I think on the next ones I'll make the rope handle go though both the top and bottom for extra strength. But this can be held up with just the magnets holding it together, which is pretty good!
I did manage to superglue all my fingers together while making this, and there's still so much glue that I've resorted to eating cheese puffs with chopsticks
Do you think vice wants some? Do you think he craves the cheese??
Anyways, you can definitely modify this design a lot to be more refined than this. I just wanted to see if it's viable as something I can make a lot of! I'll be sure to update when I figure out what needs to change from this design.
Flatpack 2.0! This thing folds COMPLETELY flat. Right now it's got no magnets--I am going to add some but they haven't arrived yet-- but it fits and holds with friction alone. It's just butcher paper, stained popsicle sticks, rope and wood glue. I oiled the paper after it was built to make it more transparent and a little waterproof. I think I want to add decorative elements on the sides so it's less boring, but again, we're still at the concept stage.
Okay I just did a test using yellow cotton and hot glue instead of paper and liquid glue (no other changes) and it's an upgrade for sure. It's not bright enough for functional use with a votive, but with a brighter bulb it could be! It ties together at the top and bottom, no magnets needed. The cotton is definitely more durable than the paper version, I'm probably sticking with this going forwards.
Cruelty doesnât sustain itself. It needs someone reasonable to keep it running.
Yesterday, Vanity Fair published photographs of the Trump White House.
Not the usual photographs. The magazine has spent decades translating power into glamour. Dictators become statesmen. Executives become visionaries. Everyone leaves more beautiful than they arrived. Thatâs the deal. Access for airbrush.
Christopher Anderson refused.
More under the cut.
He shot them in extreme close-up. Clinical lighting. The kind a dermatologist uses to diagnose damage. Susie Wiles, chief of staff: steel-gray hair swept back, skin unretouched, pale blue eyes staring straight into the lens. Karoline Leavitt, press secretary: filler injection dots visible at the lip line, the work showing because no one asked the lens to forgive it. JD Vance, vice president: every pore visible, patchy beard, eyes fixed somewhere past the lens. Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff: hollow-eyed, gaunt, unblinking.
The camera looks exactly like what it refuses to do.
None of us would look good in that light. But the camera refused to do the work that everyone around these people does every day. It refused to translate. To smooth. To make the unhinged sound strategic and the cruel sound necessary.
Wiles sat for it. For almost a year. On the record. Over sandwiches from the White House Mess. On Sundays after church. While folding laundry in her DC rental.
She talked.
Trump, she said, has âan alcoholicâs personality.â
Vance has been âa conspiracy theorist for a decade.â
Musk is âan avowed ketamine user.â When he reposted a tweet comparing public sector workers to those murdered under Hitler, Stalin, and Mao: âI think thatâs when heâs microdosing.â
On whether to pardon men who beat police officers nearly to death on January 6th: her team debated each case, but âif thereâs a tie, he wins.
On prosecuting Letitia James, the New York Attorney General who won a $450 million fraud judgment against him: âWell, that might be the one retribution.â
She said all of this. On the record.
And the moment it saw daylight: âa disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House Staff, and Cabinet in history.â
Confess. Recant. Repeat.
Thereâs a word for this. It has a clinical origin.
In 1951, Lois W. (last name withheld per the anonymous tradition), wife of Alcoholics Anonymous co-founder Bill W., started gathering the wives of alcoholics while their husbands met in the living room. They sat in kitchens. They drank coffee. They compared notes. And they realized they were all doing the same things.
Calling the husbandâs work to say he was sick when he was hungover. Going without groceries because the money went to alcohol. Lying to the neighbors. Lying to the children. Lying to themselves. Shielding him from every consequence that might have forced him to change.
They realized they had their own sickness â the enabling pattern â and founded Al-Anon as a separate recovery program for themselves.
The psychology is consistent across seventy years of research. Enablers soften or remove the natural consequences of problem behavior. They believe proximity is control, that staying close means having influence. They often grew up in dysfunction and learned the caretaker role early. They tell the truth when they feel safe. They take it back when the system demands.
You might recognize it closer to home.
The parent who keeps wiring money to a daughter who swears this is her last time. The son who still drives four hours for Christmas dinner with a father whose jokes get crueler with every glass of wine. The wife who tells the neighbors heâs just stressed at work. The sibling who keeps the peace with a brother whoâs found religion and now sees demons in everything. The friend who says sheâs fine, sheâs handling it, heâs getting better. The girlfriend who says you donât see what heâs like when itâs just the two of them.
Millions of Americans have lost someone to this. Not to death. To the staying. The translating. The smoothing. The desperate insistence that what youâre seeing isnât whatâs happening.
Now look at what the staying produced.
On September 2nd, a missile hit a suspected drug boat. The boat capsized. Two men ended up in the water, clinging to the hull, no longer a threat to anyone.
Admiral Bradley ordered a second strike.
They died in the water.
Ninety-five people killed in these strikes since September. House Intelligence Chairman Jim Himes watched the video of that one. âOne of the most troubling things Iâve seen as a lawmaker,â he said. âThe United States military attacking shipwrecked sailors.â
Legal experts have a simpler word. âThe term for a premeditated killing outside of armed conflict is murder.â
A four-year-old boy named Romeo in the court filings. Born in Louisiana. Stage 4 kidney cancer. He was in the middle of treatment at a New Orleans childrenâs hospital when his mother brought him to a routine ICE check-in with his passport, as instructed.
They detained her. They flew the family to Honduras within twenty-four hours.
Romeo arrived without his medication.
âThe family was held incommunicado,â his attorney said. No lawyers. No relatives. No one who could help.
He is five now. He is in Honduras. He has stage 4 cancer. He is an American citizen.
This week, Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk and posted that Rob Reiner died of âTrump Derangement Syndrome.â Reiner and his wife had been stabbed to death days earlier. Meanwhile, six hundred Americans lost their jobs for saying the wrong thing about Charlie Kirkâs assassination. Civility, it turns out, is required in one direction only.
Wiles told Vanity Fair she was âaghastâ at the USAID gutting. She couldnât understand how they made that mistake with the deported mothers.
And she stayed. Thatâs the mechanism: staying converts moral shock into operational cover. The aghast one remains at the table. The cruelty continues. Now it has a conscience nearby, and the conscience didnât leave.
Susie Wilesâs father was Pat Summerall. The voice of the NFL. An alcoholic.
She grew up staging interventions, helping her mother try to get him into treatment. He was sober twenty-one years before he died. But she learned the lessons long before that.
âAlcoholism does bad things to relationships, and so it was with my dad and me,â she told Vanity Fair. âHigh-functioning alcoholics, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so Iâm a little bit of an expert in big personalities.â
She recognized Trump immediately. Thatâs not interpretation. She said it.
In 2016, he berated her for over an hour at his Miami golf club. Midnight. A poll he didnât like.
âIt was horrific,â she said. âHe was ranting and raving. I didnât know whether to argue back or whether to be stoic. What I really wanted to do was cry.â
She didnât leave.
âIâm not an enabler,â she told Vanity Fair.
She said this in an article where she described enabling everything.
JD Vance answered the question she wonât. âSheâs a facilitator,â he said. âThe American people elected Donald Trump. Her job is to facilitate his vision and make his vision come to life.â
Facilitate. Enable. Translate. Smooth.
Not restrain. Not prevent. Not stop. Make his vision come to life.
At what body count does the adult in the room become the room?
The camera caught what the enablers exist to hide.
Christopher Anderson shot them without translation, without softening, without the deal. Every line visible. Every year of the work.
Name one enabler who believed they were enabling. They all think theyâre managing. Mitigating. Being the adult. The one who stays because someone has to stay.
Hereâs the question the enabler never answers: if your presence restrains the worst impulses, why do the worst impulses keep winning? If proximity is influence, point to the atrocity that didnât happen because you were in the room.
You canât. Because thatâs not what the room needed you for.
The kitchen-table wives figured it out in 1951. The staying is the sickness. The translation is what keeps the thing alive.
Power doesnât need believers. It needs participants. The ones who stay. The ones who explain. The ones who keep their eyes on the center while the edges burn.
Confess. Recant. Repeat.
The people in the water are still dead. Romeo is still in Honduras.
Look at the photograph. Wilesâs pale blue eyes, steady, still watching the lens.
I cannot believe I'm about to type the words "this countryhumans video about Imperial Japan set to Maneater by Nelly Furtado is one of the greatest feats of animation I've ever seen" but this countryhumans video about Imperial Japan set to Maneater by Nelly Furtado is one of the greatest feats of animation I've ever seen. Whatever your opinions about countryhumans I PROMISE this will blow your mind.
According to the artist Pink_reignowl, no AI was used in its making
I will forever die on the hill that one of Florence's biggest influences and inspirations (and very rarely acknowledged because most music journalists don't see past the rigid boxes they put artists on) is Loreena Mckennitt. From the aesthetics, to the voice, the vibe, the music. They are truly mother and daughter. The arrangements of the recently released Chamber Edition of Everybody Scream just prove my point.
If you don't know Loreena check her entire discography because she is truly one of the greats, of all time.
Newcomer to the series. Binged the anime in about 3 days, have yet to read the manga so please forgive any bad takes and hold the spoilers. So, at first I believed the nokkers were just keepers of the natural order which fushi violated by being immortal with God like powers, so they kept attacking him. Which turns out wasn't the case after they finally communicated their intentions. Now having seen the latest episode of season 3, I'm not sure what to make of the nokkers. Do they want to free people's souls? Or perhaps they're after something else now? I get the feeling they wanna live life for themselves now, preferably in a human body,especially after the way the nokker acted in the latest episode.
Welcome! I hope it's not too late to answer you. I've been incredibly busy these past few weeks (I'm a student and it's That time of year, you know how it is), but I've been turning this ask over in my mind. And now I finally have the time to sit down and properly respond to it.
At this point, several new episodes have aired since you sent this ask, which makes explaining the nokkers' whole deal a lot easier. But I don't know if you're caught up on them (I actually haven't myself). So, I'm going to avoid spoilers for episode 10 in this ask since it only came out yesterday, but I'm also going to make a separate post to discuss what we learned in episode 10 in more detail. Sound good?
Chapter #78: I'm using screenshots from the manga 'cause like I said, I still haven't seen the most recent episodes. Also, it doesn't take as long to find what I'm looking for ahahaha!
Let's debrief the previous era. Back then, nokkers made no effort to disguise their true objective and the reason behind it. Setting the left hand aside, they were almost like a hive mind. They had a shared goal and no individual characteristics. That's a huge departure from how closely they've been mimicking humans in the present era.
Your speculation that the nokkers might want to live for themselves now is an idea that's come up in the anime already, through other non-human characters like Fushi and the Beholder/Satoru (and even the left hand). The shape of the body changes the shape of the mind. We can see that even if the nokkers aren't necessarily living for themselves, they have become more individualistic: they've been acting alone instead of as a collective.
Chapter #131: For real, this is like one of the main themes of the story. It's definitely relevant here!!
The reason for the nokkers integrating themselves into human society can be inferred from Satoru and Fushi's conversation, and the Beholder's inability to shut up.
Chapter #131
Chapter #78: Dude, why did you just tell them that?!
The nokkers didn't just happen to shrink. Fushi beat the nokkers in the previous era, and they came to the understanding that "they couldn't win against Fushiâas they are now." So in order to survive they had to develop a new strategy, getting small so that Fushi couldn't sense them.
And they're not just puppeteering corpses anymoreâeven if its host dies and the nokker ends up with full control of the body, the body is still alive and will feel pain. As we've seen, Fushi couldn't kill a nokker even though they knew it'd taken over someone's body (and they could resurrect her if it turned out to be a mistake), so it's... pretty effective.
Chapter #130: Fushi can't bring themselves to kill Mimori's nokker.
Chapter #136
In addition to that, both of the nokkers we've seen so far (Mimori's and Izumi's) are improving the lives of everyone around them. Mimori's nokker is outgoing, beloved by everyone in its class, and doesn't worry its mom. Similarly, Mizuha's mom Izumi has made Mizuha's daily life like a dream. Mizuha thinks her new mother is better than the old one ever was.
Chapter #128
They're living as humans, yes, but they're not simply enjoying themselves; they're following unknown rules. Their behavior seems to be dictated by whatever would please the people around them. This is definitely at odds with the nokkers' former mode of operations. I mean, they're supposed to want as many people to die as possible. Why the hell are they actively preventing Mizuha from killing herself?
Odds are, this has to do with the the previously stated fact that the nokkers don't stand a chance against Fushi in a fair fight. Assuming their goal hasn't actually changed, they have no choice but to change the rules of the game.
It's not actually a bad thing for the nokkers. Because, as the Beholder oh so helpfully pointed out, they weren't ever going to be able to eradicate all of humanity at the rate they were going. Their strategy in the previous era was, frankly, kind of bad. Whatever they're doing now, they're using their newfound brains to be smart about it.
yousharknotpass
prguitarman
gracieabrams
discoholicmusic
gummygunk
tangentwithtanner
