Zero Angel Richardson's Blog, page 13

Is the juice worth the squeeze?

I feel that I've been careless enough on here that my financial situation, if it's not known, can at least be guessed at.

I've made some questionable choices over the years, but each year there seems to be some reason or another to not deconstruct my life to try to improve it (i.e. go back to school, change careers, etc).

With employers feeling justified to keep their employees at permanent part-time status, it means that most people without a full-time job probably have to work multiple jobs.

However, there are some loopholes that employers are exploiting.

For instance, temporary positions are fine if they're full-time.

Also, employers are able to "smooth" hours across the entire year for some reason.

This means that at YSU for instance, I work an estimated 36 hours per week during the semester (since they cut us to 3/4 full-time due to the minority number of part-timers that work in the summer).

This last spring I was prompted to take three jobs that were ostensibly part-time, but all three ended up being full-time positions.

YSU of course, always present and clocking in at the aforementioned 36 hours per week average.

Then I took a position as a long-term substitute at St. Christine Elementary School and Cardinal Mooney High School.

I hope no one reading this has any delusions about how much teachers work.  The 35 hours per week in those schools were at least doubled out of school.

And then I managed to secure a position that if my financial means were not what they were, I'd be happy to do for free, but which immediately went from a hypothetical 20-30 hours a week in the interview/vetting portion to stretching every ounce out of 40 hours per week every week.

Amazingly enough, this position not only was a dream position in terms of the content, but it also became the first job to pay me an amount that made me feel good about myself.

But, well, I was then working 100 to 140 hours every. single. week. Some weeks I got less than 20 hours of sleep.

Thankfully, there were natural breaks.  The 8th and 9th graders started the year first, then YSU picked up, and then I got the third position sometime in February.  Not to mention the not-so-occasional snow day this year.

All told, I only maintained an 100+ hour per week schedule for about a month and a half, and an 80+ hour per week schedule from the second week of January until the second week of May.

And yet, the 100+ hour time practically killed me.

I drank coffee by the pot, started using instant coffee as flavoring to regular coffee, smoked strictly for the nicotine when I needed, took caffeine pills, and the constant sleep deprivation and being out of the house from 7 in the morning until 9 at night meant that not only was my body craving extra calories for energy, but I was eating constant junk and fast food. 

I gained 50 pounds and there were more than a few times during the 100+ hour sprint where I began collapsing and literally feared for my life.

I no longer have the bright-eyed optimism for the teaching field that I once did. To be fair, I already didn't at the beginning of the year, but one year of witnessing teachers below college in their natural settings knowing what I know now...

I mean, I know that there are bad teachers out there, but when confronted with actual obstinance against learning BY teachers. I couldn't handle it. That's like a doctor hurting her patients. That's like an artist destroying art, an arsonist firefighter, a criminal cop.

And I wasn't doing any of my students at the college or junior high/high school levels any favors by not putting in the time needed. I justified, I always justify, by convincing myself that my "winging it" is probably better than most people that are prepared, but even if that's true that doesn't make it OK.

(But even if I only had one job, would I put in that time? I mentioned earlier that this new job is the first time I've ever felt like I was being paid an amount that didn't make me feel like shit.  Could I justify that much time for a position that by itself meant that I was going without food more often than I had it? I still don't know the answer to that now that I am a quote-unquote experienced teacher.  I know when I was a kid starting out that I absolutely wouldn't have put in that time because I didn't put in that time then and I definitely wasn't going hungry living on my parents' dime. . . but I was a lot more arrogant back then.)

The beginning of this year was a nightmare to me.  I am grateful for the employment and being able to pay bills, but was it worth it? Have I done irreparable harm to my body? Did I make a difference in either of the school districts I substituted in?

I know I didn't change the atmosphere or attitudes of the teachers at either institution, not that I tried as hard as I should have.  I kept my head down unless spoken to and fell hook, line and sinker for the few so-called teachers that pretended like they cared only to find out that they actively didn't care to the point that they felt it was their job to hurt the students.

I doubt any of the students at Cardinal Mooney felt that I was a good teacher or that they learned something from me. So what was my tenure there for? A giant waste of time for everyone? Did it help at all? Did I help? I don't know. It was just a stop-gap for kids without a teacher. I let the brick wall of the establishment beat me when I shouldn't have cared about a theoretical future position and done what I thought was right and damn the consequences.

I just didn't have the money necessary to be able to have convictions.

In "When the Last Sword is Drawn", it makes it pretty clear that providing for your family is more important than doing the quote-unquote honorable thing. I completely agree, although it had never been put in such startling clarity for me before.

My paycheck was more important than upsetting the establishment. Maybe the academic ennui had beaten my optimism down, but I truly doubted that I could change anyone's mind about how mathematics should be taught when they were so set in their ways. At the time I viewed it as a flaw in others, but. . . When I realized that certain individuals only pretended to care, or convinced themselves that they cared without real merit, it was like hitting a brick wall. I let it bother me more than I should and I probably gave up more than a little when that house of cards came down. Any chance I had of leaving an imprint with the teaching populations at that point obliterated to zero. I didn't have the energy to fight for what was right. I'm weak.

As for the other school . . . I am not going to be arrogant to the point of saying that I made a difference with anyone, but just being given the opportunity to be in the classroom with the students at St. Christine's was a breath of fresh air.

Here were students, maybe not excited for math class, but that actually thought of themselves as students. Willing to learn. And I tried to teach.

The times I felt like I wouldn't be able to last through the position, the times my fiancee begged me to quit or to stop caring and stop pushing myself so hard, if it wasn't for the students at St. Christine's I would have quit. I didn't want to abandon them. I didn't want to ruin math for them by making them switch to another teacher.

But still, it could have been so much better than it was. How arrogant to think that I would have an effect like that? Would anyone have even noticed if I did quit?

They were the best students I've had in the last 10 years of teaching. So when the question came up about filling in as a day-to-day substitute, I of course accepted gladly even though the pay was right around minimum wage (which is probably more than I was being paid as a long-term substitute with all the extra work there was to be honest). The school called me in once and then never again.  Was I that bad?

Regardless, I am grateful to those students. I could have come out of this experience a lot more soul-crushed and it's thanks to them that I'm not. Whether I actually helped or not may be debatable, but at least I left feeling like I helped. I wish I could have done more.

Once I was only working two full-time jobs I started to recover physically from the stresses I had put my body through. 80 hours felt like a vacation at first, but I was glad when I could finally work a single job, rewarding in both spirit and pocketbook.

And now that's coming to a close.

. . .

And I have one and a half jobs lined up for the fall, the first month or more of which I'll also be still at the current position.  And it probably won't be enough, and because of the way teaching is, I probably need to find something now.

Meaning that I'll have to go back to working 100+ hours per week, and that's only if I'm lucky.

I am so blessed for this position. So very lucky.

I don't want to go back to the nightmare of working 3+ jobs. I don't want to go back to not having time for anything but work.

And this time around, there's probably not much hope of getting another class like the ones I got this year. Even my YSU engineering class was one of the best classes I'd ever had the chance to teach and my other YSU class was small enough that it was completely manageable. 

So I guess I am going to start applying to some places.

One year of success. Not even. Eight months.

One year of feeling like I'm not an asshole for having the job I have.

Eight months of feeling like I could finally have a real career.

It was nice while it lasted. 

RWBY Thoughts

Every time I look at or say "RWBY", I can't stop myself but singing "Ruby Ruby Ruby Ruby" a la the Kaiser Chiefs.

That aside, the show, or perhaps more accurately the web series, is a mixed bag.
The action, when it exists, is exceptional.  The humor is infectious.  The voice actors have an innate likeability that overshadows their inexperience.  The music is good, but when it takes up an entire minute of a 5 minute episode, you can't help but be annoyed.  The one downside is the production quality.  The art design is good, but the animation is clunky and sometimes unintentionally hilarious, which is a detraction. If you go into the series as a fan production of an anime by an American not-so-professional studio, then you probably won't be disappointed.

All 16 episodes are available in places (such as Crunchyroll), and really motivated people can even buy the blu-ray.

But well, 16 episodes of a web series is like 3-4 episodes of a "real" show.  (110 minutes means an average of 6 minutes and 52 seconds per episode).

The action is the primary draw of this show, but it really only exists in force in about 3 of the 16 episodes.  The rest are full of minor character development / days in the life / path to action, and when you're watching 3-5 of these in a row with the action tantalizingly out of reach, well, it gets pretty annoying.

Still, they're quick enough that it's bearable.

Anyway, check it out.  The first episode is on YouTube (I think legally for once) and is one of the 3 that I mentioned. ...wait, it's legal, so I can just post it here -_-

(by the way, for some reason it starts with your standard fantasy role-playing game intro, it's quick, no worries)



What are your thoughts on the show? Hope you enjoy it!

How to Tune a Ukulele Using a Guitar Tuner

So, I bought a ukulele and you would think that there would be innumerable resources on how to tune the damn thing on the WORLD WIDE WEB—you know, the repository of all human knowledge on Earth—but it came up annoyingly short.

Anyway, if you personally have a soprano ukulele, but only possess a guitar tuner (mine is a guitar/bass tuner, but I won't be using the bass side), then here's the easy way:
Tune the 4th, 2nd and 1st string using the guitar tuner set to G, E and A respectively.

That is, the string closest to you (the fourth string) is G, two strings further from you will be an E and the furthest string will be an A.

These are all in the same octave.

The second string is a C string, and here's where all the other resources were shite because they tell you to use your tuner until it tells you it's a C, but MY TUNER DOESN"T BLOODY HAVE A C!

Anyway, this string's second fret is a D, so tune it to that. Oh, and it's an octave lower than the rest, don't overtighten.

Hopefully, this will help you successfully tune a ukulele without wasting 30 minutes plus searching. 

Numbers

I suppose humans don't really understand numbers.

You don't even have to get to crazy numbers like quaternions or complex numbers (which are understandably . . . complex).

Humans don't understand real numbers.

Hell, humans don't understand the natural numbers, the so-called counting numbers.

I suppose we can blame education systems for a large portion of it. I mean, how many people think of fractions as numbers?

If you ask a kid what a fraction is (or an adult probably), chances are likely they're going to say something along the lines of "it's a ratio" or "it's a division problem".

But well, you know, it's a bloody number. It's right there on the number line with all the rest of the numbers.  If I ask you to describe pi, amongst the top three most likely somewhat valid answers would be "a(n) (irrational) number", the other two being "3.14" and "circumference divided by diameter of a circle" and the mostly invalid but tasty answer of "food".

But one million is equally difficult to think about. One thousand thousand. For every one in a thousand, there's a thousand more.  Then there's a billion, trillion, quadrillion, pentillion and more. There's a googol. There's a googolplex.

And even though a googolplex is a number larger than the number of atoms in the known universe, there's still reason to use outrageously large numbers. If we had computers that could do that many operations in a second teleportation would be a snap.

I've read that if you took the known universe and shrunk it down to the size of an atom, the length of a small tree is THE length, as in, the elementariest of lengths, the smallest length, smaller than which is impossible with certainty, the length that if you try to break things up smaller you create virtual black holes, the length of strings.

Can we conceptualize? Well, we can anecdotalize I suppose and theorize and develop proofs and maths and more, but it takes processing.  It's not natural even if it's with natural numbers. The moon is 250 thousand miles away. One-quarter of a million. That's all. It's likely you'll eventually drive 250,000 miles in your lifetime, well, if you drove up that far, you could have driven to the moon.

Similarly, if I write 1/2 people cringe in fear even though if I ask them how much gas they have in their car they may response with the same number. Hell, if I ask them the chances of a fair shell game, they might respond with the dreaded 1/3.

People don't understand natural numbers or rational numbers, how could they understand real numbers which contain the irrational?

People still cling to the belief that numbers mean solidness. 3 is a number of apples. 1/2 is a portion of a pizza. Pi is geometrical, if not tangible.

What's the smallest positive real number?

On the one hand, there is no smallest positive real number.

Proof: Let x > 0 be the smallest positive real number.  Then x/2 > 0 and x/2 < x, which is absurd by our claim.  Therefore, our claim is absurd.  There is no smallest positive real number.

On the other hand, we assume that in some heretofore unproven type of  ≤ sort of way, there is a smallest positive real number.  There has to be by the well-ordering principle, which is equivalent to the axiom of choice, which is foundational to ZFC.  We just don't know the ≤ that makes a least (or a most).

For those that don't realize it, ≤ can be thought of as a type of function.  It takes two numbers and orders them.  But we can order numbers differently.  For instance, we could define ≤ to tell us the number of digits of a number.

If that was the case, then 2 = 5 since both 2 and 5 are 1, and a googol is 101. A million is 7. But 0.3 is 2? and 0.00000000001 is 12.  We could apply this to sets of numbers maybe more easily than digits, but then it would just be cardinality and that would be boring.

There is some way to order the real numbers, unless there isn't. But if we allow that we can pick any number, then we should be able to pick the smallest, yes? The next largest past nothing? The least is bigger than nothing? Right?

Err, well, if you've abandoned mathematics and gone back to primitive ways of observing, I suppose we could say that the least is bigger than nothing, and we can even show this to be true since the least must be contained within 0 < x < 1 and every x in that set are larger than 0, the nothing. But there is no 0.000...01 with an infinite number of zeros. There is no end to infinity.

Numbers, grounded in the most concrete of concrete, especially if you're counting statues, end up being insubstantial. Infinite in breadth and infinite in their skinniness.

. . . why don't more people like math?

Attack on Titan—Where have I been?

So if you've been present in popular culture for the last year or so, you've probably started to see Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人) merchandise cropping up in your periphery. If you're an anime fan, it's likely been unavoidable.

I was one of the naysayers that took one look at the childish designs of the titular titans and scoffed, knowing that I would never give an anime with such crap art a chance.

Only, I kept hearing about it. Then finally, just to see what the hubbub was about, I checked in for an episode.

And I couldn't check out.
I immediately streamed a half dozen episodes and only the impending threat of not fulfilling the requirements of my job were enough to tear me away from the television.

When I returned, exhausted, from my battle with teaching mathematics for a living to my welcoming couch after a twelve hour workday, after a 4 hour the previous night sleepday, after a too long fast of pre-first episode of Attack on Titan to post-6th episode to post 12 hour workday and chose to stream the seventh episode.

Well, I watched the remaining 19 episodes of the series back-to-back-to-back to the not-so-wee hours of the morning and was so wired with adrenaline and excitement that I could not sleep afterwards.

Attack on Titan is an experience like no visual media has ever been able to give to me before.

Immediately, I found myself questioning long-held beliefs about the reality of storytelling.  I wondered why a Hollywood hundred million dollar blockbuster trilogy had not already been greenlit by jaded studio executives that rediscovered their love of storytelling in this series.

Once it became a time of day that normal humans were up and about, I recommended it both to people I knew to be anime fans and people I knew detested anime.  If there exists a gateway anime that should be enjoyable for any and all watching, it should be this one.

I read or watched others describe this as an anime of the decade, but what anime is as good in the last twenty years?

It's hard to compare Attack on Titan to ANY anime series I've EVER seen in the history of my anime-watching career and not choose Attack on Titan as the victor.  More. It's hard to compare Attack on Titan to any series or movie or book or story that I've ever encountered and not choose Attack on Titan as the victor. 

The one criticism you could give it is that there is not much of a romantic element at all, and there are times that you do feel this lack, but it's an absurd criticism in light of the true incredible nature of this program.

But well, it's not over is it?  This was only the first season.

It's unfinished status notwithstanding, if the future episodes and story arcs are all crap, Attack on Titan is an unparalleled masterpiece.

You can watch the entire series on Netflix.  Depending on the time of the year, either the entire series, the first half, or the second half are available on crunchyroll.  These are all subtitled versions.  The dub is currently airing on Cartoon Network, although I question how censored this may be. It's a pretty extreme show.

Whatever you choose, watch it from the beginning.  From the very first episode it is riveting.

The trailers on youtube are a bit too spoilery, so I'd avoid them if you can. Just watch this show.

Sailor Moon Crystal First Impressions

So the first episode of the long-awaited reboot of Sailor Moon is up and available (check hulu, crunchyroll, etc) aaaaanddddd.....

It's pretty much exactly what they told us to expect.

The art is gorgeous but somehow closer to Naoko Takeuchi's original manga work (by the way, you know you like Sailor Moon when you can spell Takeuchi without even hesitating).  It feels dated but fresh.  Luna is young again like she is supposed to be (as much as the original American dub is part of my childhood, having an old matronly Luna is one of its more egregious sins).

They've said over and over again that this new reboot is going to be "closer to the manga". Well, that's good and bad.  The original anime had a crap-ton more character development that the manga was pretty lacking in, although it also made Mamoru a douchebag that made people fall for Seiya (or "fucking Seiya" as I refer to her). The manga has a breakneck pace throughout all of the original material that made it to the original dub.

If this series is merely a faithful reproduction of a twenty+ year old manga with gorgeous art, then well, it won't live up to what I want it to be, but it will be impossible to not enjoy (at least for me).

Sailor Moon was such a huge part of my childhood I can't personally process it.  In spite of the fact that I would completely rewrite the series (which many fanfic authors have done to great effect) if I was at the helm (maintain all the plot points, but develop characters, twist the feels, maybe finally put Minako and Rei together somewhere outside of the live action series (OK, that's a personal bias. I probably wouldn't do that without Takeuchi-sama's explicit permission) and for the love of all that is holy have the battles have some actual weight and real action to them.  In spite of all that, if this series is just a manga-to-anime translation, I will love it.

Even with all of the great that it could have been, I won't be able to not watch it with a smile across my face the entire time.  'cuz approximately five seconds after realizing that they're doing the same episode 1 that we've seen at least two previous times (first anime and first manga), in spite of being let down and disappointed and seriously feeling the lack of what could have been, I was smiling.

Sailor Moon's got its hooks firmly into me and even though I half-heartedly deny their existence by not spending money on manga re-releases and anime DVDs, if Sailor Moon is on, you can bet I'll be watching.

Please though, for the love of god, please have Motoki and Mamoru be in fucking high school, not college. And please don't force Mamoru's character into some sort of pinnacle of douchebaggery.

I've given up on SyFy's Defiance

I watched the season opener and recorded the second episode, but couldn't bring myself to go any farther and ultimately ended up deleting the episode without starting it.

There are a few reasons.

1. Franchisitis

This is the word I think of when I think of Batman post Tim Burton, Spider-Man 3 and Amazing Spider-Man 2, any mainstream comic book series since "The Death of Superman", any soap opera.

It can also be thought of as sequelitis or just a fucking cash grab.  Anytime a villain survives a battle in a movie when there isn't a really good fucking reason, I start to feel a case of any of these diseases coming on. In fact, with each new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie since the Avengers, I've been pretty concerned. Loki? Responsible for billions of dollars in property damage and countless human lives? On house arrest. OK. That's lucid.

It's why in comic books you can't ever say anyone is dead even if they are dead. Seriously Spider-Man? Clone Gwen Stacy? What the fuck?

And Defiance has always suffered from this as it's been tied to some dumb game.  The show's actors and creators touting it as a great feature where characters go to and from the TV show to the game.

So this is just some world we're watching and there's no real point even if there are the occasional plot points. Soap opera.
Comic book.
Dumb.

And a cash grab more than it is a fan service.

2. Cool kid syndrome

I don't have a problem with dark. I really don't. I devoured "Game of Thrones" before losing faith in Martin as a writer and creator.

I don't have a problem with darkness. But darkness for darkness's sake? I get it, the world sucks. Move the fuck on. Fallout at least is humorous. The Book of Eli was riveting. Are any of the characters here at all sympathetic? They all have some dark skeleton that you'd think might be mitigable or understandable or something, but in the end they're really just douchebags.

They're written as douchebags because douchebags are "cool", but not really. Badasses can be cool, but they have to actively be badasses to be cool. They can't just phone it in during an episode or you have nothing other than douchebags running around performing douchebaggery.

Even characters that you want to like are annoying.


Battlestar Galactica almost lost me as a viewer when there was a shift in power and they settled on that dumbass planet for a year or more or whatever.  This entire show feels like being stuck on that dumbass planet.

I've checked out. I will continue to watch Dominion, because angels, demons and the apocalypse are some krytonitey shit for this particular consumer (could you tell? Zero Angel. Apocalypse Designs), but I won't watch Defiance anymore.

I've begun to lose faith in Marvel cinematic universe even though Cap 2 was the best Marvel film I've ever seen (entirely because of fears of franchisitis). I've lost faith in Amazing Spider-Man. I've regularly lost faith in a variety of television programs because of this (Inu-yasha, Heroes, Smallville, Doctor Who, to name a few).

I'm just so sick of getting my hopes dashed. I'm not going to tolerate some show that doesn't even inspire me to the same emotional heights as good television and movies do.

The pilot was pretty good.  After saying all of that above, if the show had been just a little less drawn out (which is yet another symptom of franchisitis. Inu-Yasha made up an entire season of filler episodes while they waited for the manga to catch up.  Can you imagine Game of Thrones TV doing this? Heroes started sucking when practically nothing happened for entire episodes.  ) then it may have held my attention. At least I wouldn't have felt like my time's been wasted.

Another symptom of franchisitis by the way? Multiple part seasons. Season 1 Part 1. Season 1 Part 2. Blah blah blah. Fuck you Stargate Universe, Doctor Who and Battlestar Galactica. And I loved those shows.

What happens when your favorite character is the villain?

So as it turns out, there is a character of mine that I connect with above all other characters. There is a single entity that I myself have created and poured so much of everything into that this one character is my favorite above all others.

And I mean, I've created dozens, if not hundreds, of characters. I've created shadow assassins literally made of shadows, I've made dwarves that the earth itself bowed down before, I've made undersea shark wranglers and outcast dragons and blood magi, but there's one character that stands above all the rest.

And he's a villain. He's black as pitch.

Melek.


If you've read the Throne of Ao, you know it is not a villain's story. It's a story about a hero, Valistair, and about friendship. Val and Uri. Val and Maryl. Friends that no betrayal can separate. There's no room for a villain's victory.

But Melek is such a delicious kind of evil.

He's charismatic when he isn't being compared to the boy scout character of Valistair. He's dark and there's such hatred within, but there's so much capacity for love if you'd just put him first. So much comfortable danger.

It's a hero's story. It's Act I of the (planned) threefold trilogies. You want to root for Val and Uri, but you can't help but root for Melek too. You can't help but understand the dread logic behind his actions. You want him to find acceptance, even if that means the body count has to climb.

It's too bad the story ended before we could truly find out the results of Melek's actions.

Oh, but wait, what's this? A portion of the prologue of the second trilogy revealing what happens next?

Hmm. Considering that The Throne of Ao is in the process of being rewritten and expanded into a trilogy, maybe it's premature to reveal an unfinished portion of the next trilogy, tentatively titled The Towers of Aeruen. And yet, maybe it's long past due?

You can decide. Spoilers ahead if you haven't read Book 1. Specifically, if you don't know what happens to Melek at the end of the book, you should probably go read that first. This is an unfinished, unedited, unproofread version BTW. I just couldn't keep the secret any longer.

SPOILERS AHEAD


He was their hero.

There had never been an elf like him. A god in battle, with seemingly limitless magick. He had brought their community prestige, fame, and wealth.

So when, against all odds, he fell in battle and lay dying, it was no surprise that the elves of his community pooled their newfound wealth to transport him to Yesuria, the floating capitol of the empire, and hire no less than twelve master restorers to fan the spark of life within his cold body.

Five major leylines run across Yesuria, bringing the precious lithia from across the Realms into the everyday lives of the elves. The great nexus is available to the wealthy and privileged for the working of impossible magicks at the intersection of all five. The twelve restorers stood in a six-pointed star around the slumbering hero, tapping into the great leylines as only masters of their craft can.

The ritual was long, the magicks were complex and varied. Fully immersed in as much lithia as any wizard ever drew upon, the restorers began to lose sight of their material existence. Slowly, cautiously, the restorers bent and weaved the lithia as they crafted the careful spells that would restore the fallen hero. Only a single spark of life remained inside him, the slightest mistake would snuff out that spark forever.

Hours of struggle went by. Finally, the exhausted restorers were ready to place the magicks into him.

Something went wrong.

The fragile spark of life they worked so long to cultivate erupted into an inferno as a true Gate to the Realm of Lysia formed within the hero, drawing ever more magicks along the nexus. The restorers surrendered to the flow of lithia that poured into the new Gate. Their natural barriers against drawing too much magick shattered as more and more lithia burst through them to reach the terrible spark of life at their center.

Even the great leylines of Ao began to dim as the hero absorbed more and more magick. All over the planet, the technology and magicks of the elves began to fail as the lithia of the entire world flowed into him. Deprived of its magicks, the floating heaven of Yesuria began to fall.

The believed-infinite magicks of the Realm of Lysia that had birthed the elves and flowed through the leylines of Ao was being used up to rush into the receptacle at the center of those twelve restorers. No creature alive in either universe had ever seen anything like it since the Lumen Masolovat.

And then it stopped.For an impossible second all the elven magicks in the world were contained within a single being. Elves across the world cried out in fear at the end of the world.

The magicks flooded back, crashing against each elf across the world.The magick reserves of the heavens began to fill, Yesuria caught and righted itself several hundred meters lower, the magickal technology of the high elves resumed functioning and the leylines flared into existence, bright and steady again.

The twelve restorers who had unwittingly been the tools of this cataclysm looked around at each other. They found themselves not only whole and well, but with a more powerful connection to Lysia than ever before. Their magicks had increased exponentially, but all of their improvement paled in comparison to the magicks of the creature in front of them. Having proved already that his hume magicks were a match for a god, the being they had restored was now endowed with the Lithia—a permanent Gate to the Realm of Lysia that allowed elven magick to flow into him.

Oaths and prayers to the ancient gods crossed the lips of the restorers as they fell to their knees one by one in front of this being. For the first time in history, a hume had acquired the Lithia, and controlled more magick alone than the great archwizards of the Alyres combined.

The hero stood. His newfound powers raced through his body, dueling and dancing with the magicks of his birth. His own body became a battleground, but for the first time in his life, the hero was in total control. 

Melek smiled.

TV Recommendation: Arrow

The CW's Arrow is the best superhero television show I've seen outside of Spectacular Spider-Man (RIP).

The show follows the exploits of the titular character, based on DC's Green Arrow AKA Oliver Queen. You may remember the character as having a pretty major role in the last few years of Smallville on the same network (although this is a different version), but chances are that this is one comic book character you've never heard of.

And it's all the better for not having any preconceived biases. I confess to being a fan of Smallville, particularly the first few seasons, but the show definitely suffered from its naming and never became the Superman that we (or I suppose, maybe just me) wanted it to be. Although you can definitely tell that Arrow is playing on the CW (for instance, the need to have a party every other episode and the main character placing his base under a nightclub, which logistically, is a pretty absurd hideout), but surprisingly, IT DOESN'T SUCK.

And it's even got me more than optimistic for the shared universe The Flash on the same network premiering this fall.

I should mention, color adjectives are dropped from the names of different masked characters (so it's Canary, not Black Canary; Arrow, not Green Arrow; probably going to be Arsenal, not Red Arrow; Archer, not Dark Archer; etc). In fact though, most of the masked characters aren't specifically introduced and you don't actually hear the name until people refer to the character later. I suppose this is to avoid being cheesy and someone actually introducing themselves as an absurd comic book moniker. It also takes the main character something like a 1.2 seasons to take on the name of the show. He is usually referred to as "the vigilante" or "the hood".

Anyway, Arrow's got severely multi-dimensional characters, an amazing 5-year "origin" that is revealed parallel to the present-day storyline, a significant amount of "strong" female characters, genuinely interesting relationships and dynamics between the main characters, and an incredibly annoying sidekick character.

Seriously, Roy sucks.

I think his character suffers from that absurd teen glam that the CW puts on a lot of its shows (see the aforementioned nightclub and party complaint). So he's a bit of a walking stereotype that Oliver's sister likes for no apparent reason. Still, I'm hopeful for Season 3.

Oh, oh! and John Barrowman is in it!

The actors get better with every episode and by the end of the second season, some of the performances they put in are stunning.

No matter the nostalgia I had for Smallville, I never thought of the actors as being "good" (although in my youth, I never really thought of them as being "bad" either), but some of the performances put in on Arrow are mind-blowingly good.  You watch them and afterwards go, "Wow".

It's not just good superhero TV, it's some of the best TV. And if you are a fan of superheros and have been on the fence because it's not one of the most well-known characters, get down and check it out. The first season is on Netflix and I'm sure the second won't be too much longer before it plays there.

What are your thoughts on Arrow? 

Evangelion Twelve Years Later

Neon Genesis Evangelion is the single most influential anime on my childhood.  I'm using the word "childhood" a little loosely, in that I grew up during the running of the series. It helped make me who I am.

The "End of Evangelion" released in 2002 (in America), and it effectively shut the series off from me unfortunately. Not because I found it lacking. As a reimagining of the final two episodes of the original series, I found it deeply rewarding. Unfortunately, Manga fucked the dog with the DVD release and a series of botched discs made their way to the market. I got one, returned it and got another. Making it halfway through the film to stop at Rei's absorption and not able to continue past that point in the film resulted in me repeating the word "fuck" while my processes rebooted and a deep terrible disappointment settled in. (By the way, this really is not a spoiler for the new stuff because I'm pretty sure they're going a different route.)

Eventually, my best friend managed to procure a disc that was able to play on one of the DVD players we had between us and I managed to watch the final interpretation of the series.

Still, I've seen most of the episodes at a minimum of ten times.

I can't describe what this series was to me. The psychological issues, trust issues, everything. It was incredibly important for me to experience it. Growing up and being the same age as the main characters is something I've rarely experienced and it only contributed to the intimacy I felt with this show.

My very first exposure to evangelion, besides osmosis of course, was a VHS version of 2 episodes introducing Asuka. I'm not quite sure how I came to own that actually. But soon enough I began purchasing DVDs of the series at the store Suncoast for a whopping $30 per disc (and then they started dropping the number of episodes to 3 per disc).

The Hedgehog's Dilemma. Self-Hatred. Loathing.

It was such a powerful experience that even in hindsight I'm bowled over from the burgeoning resurfacing emotions and memories.

And then the terrible action.

And I say "terrible" in the sense that God is terrible. That devils and angels are terrible. Truly, truly terrible.

Watching Shinji explode from the Sea of Dirac. Watching the Eva release. Things that I've seen dozens of times that never stopped affecting me.

It's more than a favorite series. It's part of me.

So I naturally had more than a little inertia resisting watching the rebuilds: 1.11 and 2.22.

Not knowing exactly what the rebuilds were and fearing a money-grab raping my childhood added to the morass preventing me from consuming these. It turns out that they are the first two of four films remaking the series.

My fiancee bought 1.11 for me months ago and it took until this last week for me to finally put it into the Playstation to watch.

I have to keep stopping myself from going off on a stream-of-consciousness explosion, so please forgive the short, fragmented paragraphs.

Let me start by saying 1.11 is definitely worth the watch. Nostalgia abounds and many scenes are take-for-take identical to the original series, but with just enough of a change to turn your head. Besides being redrawn gorgeously.

The fact that I already knew the lines characters were supposed to say and then to hear them said differently really drove into me how well I knew the series originally. I've seen the series once when I introduced my future wife to it, but otherwise have probably not watched it an additional time in 10 years.

That said, I don't know if the Japanese was unchanged and it's a result of a different translation. I've probably only seen the series in Japanese 2 or 3 times and I immediately turned off the Japanese on 1.11 due to the subtitles being lost against the background (unfortunately my Japanese is not anywhere near what it was 10 years ago).

They make some pretty major changes as the show continues, I'll avoid spoilers. I can understand people getting emotional about the changes, but fuck your attachment. Many of them make sense and others contribute to the film being fresh and new while still retaining the nostalgia. If you want to watch the original series, go watch the original series. If you want to watch how you think the series should be, then write fanfiction or something.

2.22 really accelerates the changes and the culminating battle is one of the most exciting battles of the original series, but so much better now. I just finished watching this at 3 AM in the morning and was screaming "FUCK" at the television, forcing myself to not cover my eyes and trying to unclench my fists.

There are not words. My nostalgia has been erased and I just want to see where this new film series is going.

These are theatrical films. Amazing, amazing theatrical films. Easily the most approachable entrypoint for people that have never taken the time to watch this pillar of animedom before. If you've enjoyed Evangelion in the past, there is so much to enjoy about this new version, you have to watch it.

I did not think that Eva was capable of mind-fucking me in a whole new way, but these first two films are testament to its ability to do so. They dropped a lot of the heavy-duty psychological analysis stuff and ALL of the filler; which you know, modern audiences wouldn't be able to handle the long-shots of scenery with cicadas droning on in the background like a warning buzzer and most would probably be unable to deal with the discussions of ego and id etc too.

They're just not holding back. Where the series took its time developing, the films are not taking anything for granted. Watching the films you feel like you just sat through 4 hours of anime when it's only 2. I cannot recommend these films enough. You HAVE to watch these movies if you care at all about animated media, you HAVE to watch these movies if you care at all about Evangelion, you HAVE to watch these movies if you want to understand me at all, you HAVE to watch these movies.

3.33 is supposed to be out in August.

Jya