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I did two: one based on my username and one based on my nickname...

http://makemegoogly.com/1XRHV

http://makemegoogly.com/1ZB9L

These both look kinda weird. I am first a weird purple squirrel-thing and then a creepy predator. Both with sheep horns. It's weird.

-Twistey

Because sadly I can't participate in it. My computer blocks political/activist sites (and I can't say I'm sad about that...)

-Twistey

That was stiff and a bit- eh? I mean, I'd argue that they were better people (circus folk tend to be), but it didn't come across well. And for the big finale number, that was a flop.

Huinesoron & Kaitlyn. Apparently I am a flightless bat, and my wife is a... sort of bear crossed with a fiddler crab.



The Illian family - Dafydd, Tanfin, Jasmine, Belladonna, Daphne, Oleander, and Constance. :D Mooooost of them seem to take after their mother, though Jas' has inherited Dafydd's spines.

This is super surreal. :D :D :D

hS

This is the greatest spoiler. This is the greatest spoiler. This is the greatest spoiler. This is the greatest spoiler. This is the greatest spoiler. This is the greatest spoiler.

His money is gone, his credit is shot, his properties are ruins or foreclosed, by the way he'd been seeing the world, he had nothing- except for the people he'd given a family.

My problem with that is, that I don't feel Barnum is entitled to that family's support any more. He turned his back on the performers, and they never confronted him over that. Then they're suddenly there to bolster him in his moment of disaster? Why? I mean, I guess you could simply argue that the performer characters are better people than character!Barnum, but . . . from my standpoint as a viewer, it still feels like a very arbitrary and artificial moment.

—doctorlit

So! First off, to prevent people stumbling across spoilers: shout-out to the aerialists just sorta hanging out on hoops in full arabesque in the background of the circus shots. That pose is hella painful and they were rocking it. This has been a spoiler block.

Elephant in the room: That was almost entirely unlike P.T. Barnum's actual life. He started poor, made a fortune primarily in showbiz, and had a slip into financial trouble when a business didn't turn out. And that's it- everything else in the film is made from whole cloth. His tour with Jenny Lind was wildly successful, his circus never broke up or burned down, the one big financial problem he had was when he tried to get into major real estate. (Although it was then his circus people, many of whom had gone on to their own acts, who got him back on his feet. But it wasn't a moment of desperation. And his home burned down during the process, not his circus.)

The music was incredible. It was perfect- because it was, very specifically, circus music. Too much story to be pop or modern dance, too much beat to be theater, and I've got half a routine choreographed for each of those songs already. It's very cirque nouveau, specifically- the modern circus movement that's more about telling stories than just spectacle. All of it makes me want to get back into the air.

And the choreography... I'm still a bit envious. That bit in the bar, particularly- that was such a circus piece, a discussion and decisions and dance, and the choreography was glorious and small and fast. You couldn't perform that piece for an audience of more than ten, because nobody else could be close enough to see all the details that make it sparkle. The big stuff was equally good- both the choreography and the performance.

So, now drifting into the stuff that wasn't so good.

You're right, the whole thing felt rushed. They banged around from scene to scene, it really feels like they could have let all of it soak in more.

I'm not sure I see that one failing as a movie-ruiner- it's the arc of Barnum's story. He keeps chasing bigger and bigger things, and never stops to think about what he has- and that piled-up karma leads to his ruin. Jenny bails on him, destroying his fortune, the circus burns, Charity leaves- all of that crashes down on him in the fourth act. (And it's an extra twist of the knife to have Jenny singing "all the stars in the sky, and it's never enough...") That's the consequences of his selfishness, his lack of awareness. And that moment where the people come back together? That's not just "a moment of doubt," it's full-on ruin. His money is gone, his credit is shot, his properties are ruins or foreclosed, by the way he'd been seeing the world, he had nothing- except for the people he'd given a family.

Some of the editing also really didn't work for me. That moment at the end, where Barnum suddenly runs out of the bar, jumps on a train? I had no idea what he was doing. Was he running away? Were they jumping ahead to when the Barnum and Bailey circus traveled by train? Was it something else entirely?

Final shoutout- Zendaya worked hard to play an aerialist, and it showed. She... well, she wasn't doing anything terribly difficult? But she had really good form, and she sold it so well. And for someone who only had months to learn, she must have worked really hard.

...I'm at 69% progressivism, yet I'm still to the right of most of the Board. Everything I thought I knew about myself is wrong!

*happily skips off to find out what sort of adorable creature is a Neshomeh*

...

Oh.

...

Oh dear.

Um.



*wibble* You poor, poor misshapen thing. I... I will love you always, for I created you. II^II

~Neshomeh has a sad now.

So Calliope found this: http://niche-game.com/nicheling-explorer/. It generates a creature based on a name you give it: entirely nonrandomly, too: type in the same name at two different computers, any time, you'll get the same results.

We've been putting our PPC names and all the other PPC names into it to see what happens, and then someone shared it with the Discord. So I figured, why should you lot miss out on the fun? Post your nichelings in the thread, if you feel like it.

Mine:

Duly noted.

Yes, they do eat.

... as 'that not communist'.

In order to turn those 3-section bars into a single number, I just cut the 'undecided' part in half. So you're (40+53/2=)66.5 Capitalist. At least according to this website; as you know, you were much further to the left last time (around the U-shaped sea, as I recall).

Remember that 'Capitalist' (on this test) and 'Right' (on the previous one) aren't precisely equivalent - that fact has ended up moving me to the east, too (though not nearly so much); I used to be much closer to the Fabled River in the west.

I'm just glad you're not trying to squeeze into the middle with everyone else. ^_^

hS

How did I end up over there? Didn't think I was that capitalist... :-/

My oldest sister saw this, and then poked Mom into watching it with her, since she wanted to see it again. Then Mom poked me into watching it, because she wanted to see it again. This paragraph has been a spoiler block.

I'm going to be looking at this movie as a movie, and not as a representation of the historical events it's portraying. I don't know much about P.T. Barnum offhand, and I don't want to read up too much about the movie to avoid biasing my initial reaction. That kind of leaves me with two different ways to look at this movie: from the perspective of Barnum's character, and the aspect of inclusivity and respect for people who are different, which is a very strong theme running in the background throughout the whole film.

I think, as a portrayal of Barnum (or whatever level of flanderization of the real Barnum we're being presented with), it does incredibly well. It shows us his early upbringing in poverty, the treatment he receives from people in the upper classes, and his desire to do something exciting and entertaining, rather than having a dull, typical job. As his museum gains in popularity as it slowly develops closer to the modern concept of a circus, we see his ambition begin to ramp up, and the risks he's willing to take to find even more success, and the strain that begins to put on his family relationship. All along, his imagination and desire to entertain is constantly on display.

It's the other plot thread/theme that doesn't work so well for me. Don't get me wrong, the movie tries really hard, certainly more than most other Hollywood fair. I don't know whether all the actors portraying the sideshow performers actually exhibit the traits of the people they represent from Barnum's real life—with the exception of the small person who played Tom Thumb, all the other physical traits could have been done with makeup or prop effects. But the simple fact that this movie gives screen time to a woman with facial hair, an overweight man (in a non-punchline role), etc. puts it miles above the usual Hollywood method of using generally average-shaped people. A lot of the songs also have incredibly powerful lyrics about facing society with your true self and not feeling shame for being different. The one thing that weakens this part of the movie is, well, the other part. This is very clearly Barnum's story, and the sideshow characters always get the back seat behind his narrative. Actually, it's not only Barnum; a lot of focus is on his business partner and the trapeze artists he falls in love with. To be fair, that last pair form an interracial couple in the nineteen twenties, so it fits in with the themes of class-ism and acceptance. But that doesn't change the fact that the emotional focus of the movie is very heavily on three conventionally attractive characters.

The one failure that really ruins this movie for me is this: Barnum is at some fancy party, and when his sideshow employees try to enter, he bars them, very clearly because he doesn't want to be seen with them by the high society folks. I was shocked at this point, because it was pretty bold of the movie to have its protagonist be so overtly terrible. I was looking forward to the scene when they would confront him for this and call him on it . . . and I waited . . . and at some point, I got distracted by the flow of the movie, and only realized after I left the theater that the scene I had been waiting for didn't exist. There are no consequences to Barnum for the way he treated his employees in that scene. The next time they have a scene with Barnum, they're supporting him in a moment of doubt about the future of his circus. Leaving out repercussions that way is the kind of mistake I would expect from a bad fanfiction, not from a movie shown in theaters.

I feel like a lot of the movie suffers from the problem of people not talking about problems enough. It felt very rushed altogether. Probably just personal preference as a book nerd who likes to stew over events between chapters, but I really could have done with more scenes of dialogue with characters discussing their feelings and motivations. One subject in particular that suffered for this was the amount of phony effects the circus used. The movie doesn't shy from this at all, but there's no real examination of it either. Barnum gets called on it a few times, but always dismisses the criticism with a couple of sharp lines about people enjoying his show anyway.

Visually, the movie does an excellent job in costumes and sets of portraying 1920s New York. The one thing that detracts from that is the music. The music is good, don't get me wrong, I'll probably be listening to it on YouTube for the next couple of weeks. But it feels very modern and pop-ish, and it really jarred me out of the time period all the way through. Even a more timeless Broadway style of music would have worked fine, I think, but it sounded more like current radio music. But two things that were amazing about the songs were the choreography and the percussion. The choreography frequently went beyond just dancing, and they used very creative and unique motions to match the flow of the music. The percussion for some songs was especially fun, as they used physical objects or simply people's stamping feet as the backing to the orchestra.

Oh, also, I'm pretty sure all the animals were CGI, but I didn't mind that so much in this film, since they're often integrated into the song numbers, and all the flashing lights and humans jumping around erratically would have spooked animals pretty badly. This movie gets a pass for that, although one scene at the end where Barnum rides a (CGI) elephant through snowy New York streets in winter and left it outside unattended while he watched his daughter do ballet was a little too ridiculous for me.

I know this was a pretty negative review, but honestly, I think this movie is worth seeing once, if it sounds interesting to you. It didn't quite get to where I was wanting it to go, but it tried awfully hard, and the musical numbers are quite good.

Have a spoiler block.
This is the greatest spoiler. This is the greatest spoiler. This is the greatest spoiler. This is the greatest spoiler. This is the greatest spoiler. This is the greatest spoiler.

—doctorlit, the Greatest Lowman

Hieronymus has discovered yet another new river. Seafarer's ship is high and dry (but still shipshape). Delta Juliette is a bastion of Chaos in the domain of Order, though with the slight adjustment of the Order-Chaos scale she's not quite as emphatic about it. CmdrHorvat has caused a landslide to reveal a previously-underground magical forest, which is pretty cool. And Maxewell has revealed the true extent of the eastern desert, and (with Juliette) has neatly boxed the Order fortress of Granz in.

There is a definite tendency for eco-friendly types to lean to the Left - look at all that green on the flags, and all the desert/mountain terrain in the east! Oddly, there's also a trend of emblems mostly appearing on the Left - except for Guardsman Tom, every emblem is west of me, and everyone west of me has an emblem.

(Which makes sense, because apart from Tom's shield, the Monarchist fleur-de-lys, and the very difficult-to-get double-X from being an Essentialist Punisher, the emblems are all strongly Left-biased. Internationalism, Communism, Ecology, Revolution, and Feminism.)

hS, still having fun, but if we have any more centrists they're going to be stacked on top of each other.

I mean, I think they eat? Not up to date on Ork anatomy.

But they definitely wouldn't use it like that.

...I'm going UP in the world!

...Up? Like, higher above sea level?

...

I'll see myself out. :-D

This is horrific, also, Orks are sexless animal/fungus hybrids which reproduce by sending spores into the air. I don't think they have penises.

• Ix giving up her bed for Lotte is probably going to come up later, isn't it?
  - Shame about the knee, thank goodness Ix has magic
  - Using a wand to summon the TV remote would be pretty awesome, I agree with Ix there
  - Ok, yeah, that is going be an argument at some point
  - Lotte massively falling down the ranks at Overwatch makes sense, and now I'm wondering if she'll earn her way back up
  - Poor Ix. (re: the indecision about New Cal)
  - I can see why Ix'd want to avoid making a scene, given her backstory
  - "how different she was". Ouch, kinda.
  - Ok, yeah, general comment now that I'm on the clothing-picking scene: I do hope Ix can somehow work through all this crap she's been through and the self-hatred and the like
  - Ix does seem generally down around the bottom of page two
  - But still, kisses and relationship fluff!
  - Oh. Ix is going to come out as genderfluid.
  - Lotte is doing a very good job of reacting to this. Then again, she already knew.
  - Ok, so now Ix is going to do the "I'm worried you'll break up with me because werewolf" angst thing
  - ... Charlotte, if only you know who was writing you
  - Charlotte getting sunburned was really funny for some reason. Probably the rapid mood shift.
  - Awww, necklace thing
  - Why doesn't Ix want [Lotte] to look down?
  - Yeah. Right after morphing wasn't quite the right time, I think.
  - Huh. They might be getting married at some point.
  - It's nice that Lotte is being considerate of Ix
  
  Overall: That was a nice interlude. It did a good job of advancing the relationship and gave me good windows into both Ix and Lotte's heads.
  
  - Tomash

My results.

Neshomeh's colors? I didn't do this intentionally.

HG

That was a nice bit of character interaction. People not being perfect but managing to talk through their conflict was good.

The only thing I don't quite get is the last line. It doesn't quite follow, I suppose.

(also, "blew through")

- Tomash

I'll update the map tomorrow, but it looks like you're somewhere in the desert between Phobos and aakmal. On a hill, I think.

hS

Spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad spoiler pad

Reactions while reading:
- I like the rather vague opening
- The bit set on th ship does a good job of giving me the feeling of the place and what it's like there
- "Paint chip in both my eyes." is an excuse I haven't heard before. (and getting called on it made it rather funny)
- Cal and July missing each other is touching
- Guess-the-fic was a nice unusual thing that could happen because of the framing ... and now I want to know about the one with Colonel Sanders
- The Flowers using "not the actual trunk of the matter" and such makes sense and is a nice touch
- The "I want to get paid for this" moment was really funny for some reason
- July has evidently not quite learned to never again volunteer herself
- From what little I know about Power Rangers, they're in teams of six, right? Which is why having four more people makes sense
- I wonder what July got in DoSAT (if anything). If there was something, I suspect it'll be quite plot-relevant later
- Silas is right to be concerned, given how Legendaries go
- At least he was smart enough to stay out of it
- You'd better give Ilraen his partner back in one piece
- Nume hiding in the cafeteria makes sense
- Did the narration just do a doge meme?
- Why's July picking fights in the cafeteria? (or is she?)
- The veteran agents leaving to find better seating makes sense
- Ah, sneaking in during the chaos
- ... trafficking Luxury onto a Navy ship. Heh. If that succeeded, I suspect productivity would grind to a halt within hours. Maybe minutes.
- "Frell U" sounds like a coffee mug Nume would have
- Ok, so the backup is going to DoSAT to get ready to do something
- There's no way that box isn't plot-relevant later
- And I do wonder who the surprise cameos are
- The fic giving off a general sense of wrongness makes sense
- I'm not following the trousers/dress bit too well
- That was a fast CAD melt
- The fic wrapping itself around the canon so tightly you can't see the Words much is something I haven't seen before, and gives a good reason to not actually show us much of it
- "very serious military environment" yeah right
- Riffing the author's note gives me a sense of what's there without showing it and ... did this fic seriously get banned in Australia?
- chuckles at pronouncing the slash in "and/or"
- July, please stop trying to summon the Department of Redundancy Department (although I'm getting the sense they have a standing invitation to said powerpoints)
- "Isn't that piracy?" "Arr" was a good line
- I hope the fic doesn't know the agents are here either, and now hat it got pointed out ...
- Corny jokes are probably a better approach than trying to comprehend the horror of it all
- I wonder if they'll be able to make it to the youth center
- Standard mission-y pointing out bad stuff goes here, without showing much of the fic.
- I'm with July. That Tortura thing is bad and also that was a really freaky scene change
- That narration about the Pink Ranger is pretty creepy
- Well, now that the plan hasn't been spelled out on screen, it'll work ... I hope
- Ok, wait, it is specified. That's a good plan, which will inevitably go horribly wrong now that I, the reader, know what it is.
- Welp. The weird torturer thing was immune to bullets. At least they got through the portal and ... there's still two parts left. Oh dear.
- Ok, so part 3, well, that was a very gripping fight scene so I was too busy reading it to go back and react. The flashbacks worked well. And the Dark Ranger was really creepy. I also liked the "you're a hero" speech the Pink Ranger got near the end
- The departure bits were nice
- The meeting in part four is a nice thing, and I'm liking the details about the minor effects that happened, like Daffyd keeping his Zoid and Trojie stealing a bunch of Disc stuff
- That was a nice twist on July getting paid, and it's a shame she's not getting any medals
- The "moving on" conversation was good
- Heh. Books in the over. Nice call-back to the earlier domesticity conversation.
- It's nice that July and Cal will have some sort of relationship going despite going their own ways
- I wasn't expecting another person on the ship to be ex-PPC. Or for there to be plotholes in the ocean.
- Navigating a ship out of a plothole without anyone noticing does sound tough.
- The various scenarios the ship could've gotten in to were a nice touch.
- Now I do want to know who that navigator is.

General review: I really liked this. One of my favorite parts was how Checkov's gun was loaded a good few times in ways that left me expecting that something would get pulled out later, but without much of an idea of what is was. This made all the appearances (Zoidz, Daffyd, etc.) surprising but in a way that didn't feel like they'd been pulled out of nowhere.

I also think that was a nice, unusual way to take down the fic, and from what I can tell it was canon-appropriate. You had me really worried at the end of part 2 that "no casualties" wouldn't happen (that is, good job building up the tension).

The whole mission also had plenty of silly moments, which is appropriate for the setting.

One complaint is that not much of the mission was spent on actually sporking the fic, but I don't think there were many viable ways to do that with a straight-up piece of torture porn.

- Tomash

I apologize for not reading carefully.

HG