This is my opinion on every gamemode. Obviously it is just my opinion so keep that in mine, but I have played enough of every gamemode to give a pretty honest feedback on every one. I am a player of 6 years, have 4 golden heroes, 5000 MMR Battleground, 12 wins in arena and been rank 1 many times in diamond. So I do have experience on alot of these gamemodes:
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Standard:
Pros:
1: It has alot of different decks constantly changing the Meta: I feel like standard feels really fresh compared to some of the other gamemodes. Most classes are playable and each expansion and rotation has an impact on the meta game (unless the expansion is really bad). In year of the phoenix I think most classes have had a chance to shine at least once which means it has been good to play around with different decks and climb the ladder with different heroes.
2: It has balances patches frequently: Another positive is compared to most gamemodes it does have frequent balance patches. It a card or a class gets too overpowered they do balance it within a week or two which is reasonable quick.
3: You do not have to play around everything: Even if cards are generated randomly, it feels like there is less to play around than lets say wild. It is nice to have an idea of what kind of things your opponent could discover or get randomly, even if sometimes it can be hard.
Cons:
1: It only takes one card to warp the meta game: Just look at Bogspine knuckles as an example, That one cards wrapped the meta and now cheese paladin with High Abbess Alura has taken it's place. Having one card more powerful than the other's can lead to one class dominating for large periods of time.
2: It can get stale: Even with the balance patches, Standard has periods which do feel pretty dull half way through expansion cycles as there is less to play around with.
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Wild:
Pro:
1: You can play with ALL Your cards: You are not limited to only playing with the newest cards and can enjoy your full collection. If you play wild you may even choose not to craft whole new expansions and only focus on a few cards to slot into your already wild decks, which means you can save gold for other things!
2: A lot more decks to play and try: You can explore more in wild as you have more decks to try out. Wild allows you to try all kinds of decks and combinations with new and old cards for each class.
3: The Combo and Meme potential: Just look at all the different combos and memes you can try in wild! turning your opponent into Ragnaros to kill them, Shooting infinitive fireballs, Using shutterwock with Armor vendor to hold your opponent hostage. Alot of cool and crazy interactions to try.
4: More Hero cards: I am a bit bias, but I like hero cards. It is nice to have more of them in wild like the Death knights to try. I do think they do warp meta games a bit and would probs not work as well in standard, but fun to try them all in wild.
Cons:
1: The Mana cheat is unreal! The Mana cheat in wild Can be brutal. Cheating our huge minions in big priest, Zero mana secrets in mage, Having 5/5 worth of stats on turn 1 in aggro decks and zero mana spells. Wild can be a scary place if you do not know how to counter them.
2: Broken classes stay broken: Getting a balance change in wild is very rare. So the top classes like Darkglare warlock, Secret Mage and Raza priest will ALWAYS be the best classes.
3: You can't play your favorite old decks and win: I think iksar's tweet about "Wild being the place you can play your favorite old decks" is simple not really true. Yes you can play them, but your chance to winning is significantly lower.
4: You can't play around everything: With over twice the amount of cards in wild, It makes is much harder to play around everything, decks like casino mage can lead to games where you are playing against 20 random mage spells which can feel a bit crazy (in a bad way)!
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Battlegrounds:
Pros:
1: It is super fun and each game feels different: It feels like a fun gamemode to play as most games do end up playing out different depending on which hero you choose! I enjoy all the different play styles and builds you can make.
2: Has many mini expansions throughout the year: Battlegrounds have many mini expansion and new minions and heroes being added, which does help keep it really fresh.
3: Your decisions can matter: I think battleground has very interesting decision making opportunities like which minions you want to attack first and what minions to buy. This helps make the game feel fresh as each game is a bit different.
Cons:
1: No rewards/cosmetics: One of the biggest cons is the game mode feels like you don't really achieve anything. You do not get card backs or golden battleground heroes which feels like after playing all you can get to really show is either an achievement you have to work for or MMR. I think adding a card back or something could be a good idea in a future update.
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Duels:
Pros:
1: It is a dungeon run: Another bias point, but I love dungeon runs and having a gamemode where you can play a dungeon run against other people is pretty cool.
2: Lots of treasures to play around with: I enjoy the fact you can build a starting deck around a treasure and hero power. It seems a bit more personalized than a normal dungeon run as you can build it instead of having a starting deck made by blizzard.
3: A free mode to enjoy: The casual mode is a good touch. Being able to test out decks and treasures before committing any gold or tavern tickets is a good thing.
Cons:
1: It is behind a paywall: If you want the actual crazy treasures and hero powers you have to buy tons of packs to get cards which I feel is a bit rubbish for a gamemode.
2: Some heroes, Passives and treasures feel oppressive: The zombie passive is an example of how mental some passives can be. I think some classes just shine more in the gamemode than others.
Arena:
I forgot this was a mode and have not played it in 2 years so can't say anything apart from IT NEEDS A HUGE CHANGE as it feels like playing curvestone.
What do you think of my review?

IF YOU’RE LOOKING for a place where misadventure could begin, you can’t go past Mbargo. The nightclub’s streetfront is painted a purple so bright you’ll see it in your dreams. Strings of giant sequins shimmer in the breeze. Its phonically inventive name is spelt in silver letters that climb its three-storey terrace facade. Inside are strips of burning neon, a few booths, floorboards so marinated in drink that they have an ingredients list. Bristol is a student city on England’s south coast crowded with music and nightlife and street art. This is Banksy’s home town, and the tourism board suggests in rather strong terms that ‘you would be a fool not to see his amazing work firsthand’. The same organisation describes Mbargo as ‘intimate’, which is fair for a place where you can catch an STI standing up. Students cram into its modest dimensions while people with names like DJ Klaud battle for billing with £1.50 drink deals over seven sloppy nights a week. To get a sense of the story about to come, consider that it’s the kind of place open until two o’clock on a Monday morning, and that at two o’clock on a Monday morning, Ben Stokes still thought it had closed too early.
The Ashes of 2017–18 had disciplinary bookends. It was after that series that Australia’s two leaders went off the rails in South Africa. It was a few weeks before that Ashes tour that England’s biggest star windmilled his way into his own disaster.
In the early hours of 25 September 2017, Stokes and teammate Alex Hales were barred from re-entering Mbargo after a night out on the piss. A Sunday thrashing of an abject West Indies in an ignored series at the fag-end of the season apparently required ample celebration. After arguing with the bouncer and hanging about at the door for a while, they wandered off to find a casino in the hope of more drinking. They’d barely made it around the corner before getting in the middle of a conflict between four locals. As is said on the internet, it escalated quickly.
The 26 September reporting was bloodless. Withholding names, police stated that a man ‘was arrested on suspicion of causing actual bodily harm’ while another went to hospital with facial injuries. England’s director of cricket Andrew Strauss separately confirmed that Stokes was the arrestee, adding that he had been released without charge and that Hales had gamely offered to ‘help police with their enquiries’. Administrators had a good chance of hiding behind that investigation, and the next day Stokes was named in the upcoming Ashes squad as expected. But that night the video emerged.
Bristol student Max Wilson had shot it on his phone, then offered it to The Sun. What he thought was playing hardball was actually lowball: his opening price of £3000 was snapped up by a tabloid that would have paid ten times that. The Sun went on to make a mint by syndicating the rights worldwide. From a window above the fray, the vision showed six men on the street below performing the muddled choreography of a melee. One was right at the centre of it. One was waving a bottle, one dipped in and out, one tried to calm it. Two others floated around the edges. The central figure was unmistakable: red hair burning even in the streetlight as he launched into a series of blows against two of the men, falling to grapple with them on the ground, then following both across the street, swinging punches the whole way. Hales trailed behind, repeatedly and impotently shouting ‘Stokes! Stop! Stokes! Enough!’ The ECB could fudge issues that existed only in thickets of legalese, but not those captured in moving colour. Stokes was stood down from the next West Indies match, then suspended indefinitely. It emerged that he had broken his hand during the fight, something he’d done twice before while punching objects in dressing rooms.
The response in Australia was fierce: Stokes was a thug, a lowlife, a selection that would disgrace England. It was not entirely coincidental that a ban for England’s best player would be handy for the Aussie team, but there was also a cultural split. In England, plenty of people still minimise pub fights as lads letting off steam. In Australia, heavy media coverage as a succession of young men were killed had inverted that tolerance. The discourse now saw any punch as potentially deadly and accordingly reckless. This was more poignant in a cricket context given that David Hookes, the dashing Test batsman and state coach, was killed in 2004 by a pub bouncer’s fist.
The PR situation was bad for Stokes as details emerged of the injuries to the men he’d hit, and that one was a young war veteran and father. Stokes wasn’t officially removed from the Ashes squad through October but stayed behind when his teammates left, hoping for police to dismiss the matter in time for a late dash to Australia. His annual contract was renewed on the due date in case that came to pass. Then 29 October brought a twist in the tale.
‘Ben Stokes praised by gay couple after defending them from homophobic thugs,’ ran the headline. Kai Barry and Billy O’Connell had emerged. Not entirely out of nowhere: while Stokes had made no public comment, this story in his defence had initially been leaked to TV host Piers Morgan after the fight, as soon as the video appeared. Police body-camera footage played in court would later show that Stokes had given the same story to the arresting officer on the night. But no-one knew the identities of the fifth and sixth men in the video, and police appeals had turned up nothing.
It was The Sun again with the breakthrough. Kai and Billy were perfect for a readership not keen on nuance. ‘We couldn’t believe it when we found out they were famous cricketers. I just thought Ben and Alex were quite hot, fit guys,’ said Kai, who was memorably described as a ‘former House of Fraser sales assistant’. The paper had the pair do a full photo shoot: layering the fake tan, showing off chest waxes, mixing Ralph Lauren and Louis Vuitton into a range of outfits. Their best shot had them standing back to back, heads turned to the camera, in a mirror-image Zoolander moment.
Suddenly The Sun was the England team’s best friend. ‘Their claims could lead to the all-rounder being cleared over the punch-up and freed to play in the First Test in Australia next month,’ it gushed, then gave a tasting platter of quotes: ‘We were so grateful to Ben for stepping in to help. He was a real hero.’ ‘If Ben hadn’t intervened it could have been a lot worse for us.’ ‘We could’ve been in real trouble. Ben was a real gentleman.’ Would it be known forever as Kai and Billy’s Ashes? No. While the Bristol boys provided spin for Stokes’ reputation they didn’t influence the police. With charges still pending there was little choice – not given Strauss had previously sacked Kevin Pietersen for being annoying. Stokes remained suspended through the Ashes and a one-day series in Australia, and lost the vice-captaincy. It was January 2018 before the Crown Prosecution Service laid a charge.
That charge surprisingly came in as affray, a crime that can carry prison time but is classified as ‘a breach of the peace as a result of disorderly conduct’. The men he had punched, Ryan Ali and Ryan Hale, faced the same count, charged as equal participants in a fight rather than Stokes being charged with assaulting them. Alex Hales was not charged, despite being seen in the video to aim several kicks when Ryan Ali was lying on the ground. Given the underwhelming standing of the offence, Stokes was cleared by the ECB to tour New Zealand, and kept playing until his trial in August 2018, which he missed a Test to attend. None of the three defendants would be convicted.
The reasoning behind the charges was never released and was attributed vaguely to ‘CPS lawyers’. The service gave the case to Alison Morgan, a prosecutor of a class known as Treasury Counsel who usually handle serious criminal matters. Morgan had a scheduling clash and never ended up court for the case, but in 2018 and 2019 she would go on to win damages and admissions of libel from The Daily Mail, The Times and The Daily Telegraph variously for incorrectly reporting that she had been responsible for the inadequate and inconsistent charging decisions.
Morgan’s successor on the case was Nicholas Corsellis QC, who on the first day of trial was permitted by the CPS to request two assault charges be added against Stokes. ‘Upon further review,’ claimed a CPS statement, ‘we considered that additional assault charges would also be appropriate.’ This was patent nonsense from the service that eight months earlier had chosen the lesser charge. Any lawyer knows that no judge will allow new charges once a trial has begun, because the defence hasn’t had time to prepare. But such a request could deflect criticism of the prosecution service by technically making the judge the one who disallows the charge.
Working through the story from the trial and the tape is complicated. You had a Ryan and a Ryan, a Hale and a Hales, a Billy and a Barry and a Ben. You had several versions of events as to who knew whom, who was drinking with whom, who had insulted whom and who had merely engaged in ‘banter’, a word that in modern Britain has to do an unconscionable amount of lifting. The reporting had constantly mixed up the Ryans as to who had which injury, who was in hospital, who had played which part in the fight, and whose mum had which stern words to say about it.
Let’s agree that from now Ryan Ali is Ryan One, the firefighter who ended up with a fractured eye socket and a cracked tooth. Ryan Two can be Ryan Hale, the soldier who scored concussion and facial lacerations. Mr Barry and Mr O’Connell are best known per The Sun as Kai and Billy. In scorecard parlance we’ll leave the cricketers as Stokes and Hales.
Amid the confusion, Stokes and his lawyers built his case in a straightforward way. The UK legal definition of affray is ‘if a person threatens or uses unlawful violence or force towards another person, which causes another person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for their safety’. That means it doesn’t account for violence that harms a target, but violence that might frighten a theoretical bystander. The wiggle room for Stokes was with ‘unlawful’, because the charge excuses violence in defending oneself or others.
This interpretation hinged on the beginning of the video, where Ryan One waves a beer bottle about and takes a swing at Kai. The version from Stokes was that he was minding his own business walking down the street when he heard homophobic abuse. He intervened verbally and was threatened verbally by Ryan One – something that Ryan One denied but that couldn’t be proved or disproved. In fear for his safety Stokes had to nullify that threat by bashing Ryan One before it went the other way. He registered Ryan Two in his peripheral vision as another possible threat, and again had only one recourse.
Stokes also had to convince the jury to disregard testimony from Mbargo’s bouncer that he had been looking for a fight. A solid lump of a man, Andrew Cunningham had not enjoyed his patron’s attempts to get back into the club after the bouncer declined an offer of a bribe. ‘He got a bit verbally abusive towards myself. He mentioned my gold teeth and he said I looked like a cunt and I replied, “Thank you very much.” He just looked at me and told me my tattoos were shit and to look at my job.’ Cunningham described these words as coming in ‘a spiteful tone, quite an angry tone’, and said that Stokes still seemed angry as he walked away.
These were details the doorman had nothing to gain by inventing, but each of them Stokes denied. By his own accounting he had drunk a beer at the game and three pints at his hotel, then ‘potentially had some Jägerbombs’ along with half a dozen vodkas at the club. He insisted that after all of this he was not drunk.
If I may take a moment here to call upon the wisdom of experience – a person who cannot definitively say whether they have had any Jägerbombs has definitely had some Jägerbombs. A Jägerbomb is an experience that does not pass one by. Further to that, a person who says they have ‘potentially’ done something has definitely done that thing and doesn’t want to admit it. A person who has had between 15 and 24 standard drinks in one evening is shitfaced. A person who tries to bribe a bouncer £300 – three hundred quid! – to get into Mbargo – Mbargo! – is beyond shitfaced.
If Stokes admitted that he was drunk then the prosecution could say he was out of control. He claimed clear recall of assessing a threat, feeling fear and deciding to protect himself with force. He confidently denied details from the bouncer’s testimony, like using the word ‘cunt’ or mentioning gold teeth. Yet on other details he claimed a ‘significant memory blackout’. He didn’t remember the punch that saw Ryan One taken away by ambulance. He didn’t remember what the Ryans had said to Kai and Billy, only that those words were homophobic. With no head injury, as one of the few people who hadn’t been hit, he had supposedly suffered this memory loss despite being sober.
The version from Kai and Billy was compatible but vague: they had been walking along, they ‘heard … shouts’ of abuse from an unspecified source, then Stokes ‘stepped in’ and thus they avoided possible harm. They claimed to have been bought a drink by Stokes at Mbargo, although CCTV showed them meeting outside. The overall implication from both accounts was that the cricketers had been pals with Kai and Billy, while the Ryans as per The Sun’s headline were a roving band of thugs.
The reality though is that the Ryans were the ones hanging out with Kai and Billy at Mbargo. Police discussed CCTV from inside the club in questioning and at trial. On that footage the four Bristolians bought drinks for one another, danced together, and Kai was noted to have variously touched Ryan Two’s crotch and Ryan One’s buttock. Ryan One told police that all of this was taken lightheartedly and wasn’t a problem. Indeed, when the Ryans called it a night the other two left with them.
This much is clear from footage out the front of Mbargo, which shows Kai and Billy exit the club and start talking with a subdued Hales and a demonstrative Stokes, who are stuck outside. The vision was played in court to determine whether Stokes was antagonistic towards Kai and Billy, as he appears to impersonate them and to throw a lit cigarette their way. More interesting is that after a few minutes the Ryans emerge, and all six actors in the fight video briefly form a prequel in the one frame.
Ryan Two pats Billy on the chest in friendly fashion with his right hand before clapping him on the back with his left. He moves past and does the same to Kai before leaving the shot. Ryan One stops to speak to Kai. They lean in for a moment, talking, then Kai turns and they walk out of frame together. Billy hangs around for a few seconds at the door and then looks after them and races to catch up. Stokes and Hales remain outside the club to remonstrate further with the bouncers. Whatever discord develops around the corner is between four men who left amicably together minutes earlier.
There’s no way to know what caused that friction. If Ryan One did use homophobic slurs, he might have been drunkenly obnoxious for no reason. He might have had an insecure macho response to some extra flirtation. He might have thought unkindness was funny – ‘banter’ once again. Or he might have said something that was misunderstood, as both Ryans insisted in court that they had not used nor had the impulse to use any abusive language.
What clearly didn’t happen was an attack by bigots on random passers-by. This kind of crime is regular enough that an audience understands the horror of it, and this is what was evoked by the public accounts of Stokes, Billy and Kai. All we know is that there was some verbal dispute among the Bristol locals, and that Stokes came along behind them and put himself in the middle of it. Ryan One responded to the interference aggressively and away they went. There are plenty of reasons to look sideways at the idea that Stokes was a saviour. Foremost, neither Kai nor Billy was called upon as witnesses in court. You’d think it would be ideal to have Stokes’ story backed up by those who benefited from his selflessness. But his defence team had developed the impression that the pair had shown a changeable recall of events amid a hard-partying lifestyle, and would be dismantled by the prosecution on the stand.
That raises the question of whether The Sun coached their quotes for the 2017 interview. Despite missing court, Kai and Billy clearly enjoyed the attention. In 2018 after the trial they did a follow-up spread in the same paper about how poor Ben had been mistreated. They got a television spot on Good Morning Britain and glowed about his heroism. In 2019 The Sun wheeled them out once more to say that Stokes should get a knighthood. In 2017 they had ‘never watched cricket’ but by 2019 were supposedly volunteering sentences like, ‘He saved us, now he’s saved the Ashes.’ Whether they were paid for these appearances is not known, but the chance to be famous for a day can be lure enough.
If you find this cynical, consider that on the night in question, the Bristol boys were so deeply moved and thankful for Ben’s intervention that they left him to be arrested and never attempted to find out who he was. Seconds after the video ended, an off-duty policeman reached the scene. You might think that someone grateful to a saviour would speak on his behalf. Instead, said Kai, ‘it all got a bit scary so we walked off. It was too much for me and we went to Quigley’s takeaway for chicken burgers and cheesy chips.’ They didn’t give their hero a thought for over a month while police issued multiple appeals for witnesses.
As for Stokes, he told his arresting officer that ‘his friends’ had been attacked. After three minutes of chat outside a nightclub, these friends were so dear to him that he has never contacted them again: not after the newspaper piece, not after the verdict. He didn’t want to see how they were or thank them for their support. He didn’t mention them by name in his solicitor’s statement after the trial.
The Stokes defence rested on Ryan One’s bottle, which he had carried out of Mbargo to finish a beer, not to use in a Sharks versus Jets amateur production. But once he turned it over to hold it by the neck it became a weapon. Intent and interpretation can change the material nature of things. Part of Stokes’ justification in court was that the bottle implied that the two Ryans might have ‘other weapons’ hidden away. You can understand how a jury could decide that created doubt.
Not being convicted, though, doesn’t give the contents of the video a big green tick. It does not, as his lawyer claimed, vindicate Stokes. Looking in detail, Ryan One is belligerent but his movements telegraph a bluff. Hales is the person he’s gesturing at, but they’re several metres apart when Ryan One cocks his arm ostentatiously, showing off the bottle rather than bracing to swing. He skips forward but Hales skips back and Ryan One doesn’t follow. Kai stretches out an arm to impede Ryan One, who has a drunken stumble, nearly eats pavement, then staggers towards Kai and hits him in the back. That hand is still holding the bottle, but his strike is a side-arm cuff on a soft part of the body. It’s all pretty tame.
This is where Stokes gets involved. Having moved across to protect Hales, he now takes three large steps to run around Kai and booms his first punch at Ryan One. They fall to the ground and the bottle clinks away. Stokes gets to his feet to punch down at the fallen man, while Hales arrives to kick him ineffectively then runs off across the street for some unknown reason. Ice-cream van? Stokes is soon back in the grapple having his shirt pulled up to show off his Durham tan. Ryan Two steps in for the first time to pull Stokes away, prompting a couple more random punches at this new target, then Stokes trips backwards over Ryan One and sprawls in the street. Hales chooses this moment to return and aim some solid kicks at the head of the man on the ground. Nothing so far is a triumph of moral philosophy or the pugilistic arts. But if it all stopped here, perhaps you could say it was somewhere approaching fair. Ryan One has behaved like a turnip and it’s not an entirely unjust world that would give him a whack across the chops. The antagonists have disentangled, Stokes has some distance, it’s time to dust off and go home. Ryan Two steps forward for this purpose with his palm raised in conciliatory style and says, ‘Settle down, stop.’
So Stokes punches him.
It’s roughly his fifth punch overall, and he really winds up into this one. He misses so hard that he stumbles away into the shadows of the shop awnings along the road.
Hales starts shouting for him to stop. Ryan Two backs into the street, still holding his palm up. Stokes closes on him from about five metres away, six large steps, to where Ryan Two is standing on his own. Stokes pushes him a couple of times, as Ryan Two keeps trying to placate him and saying ‘Stop.’ Stokes throws his sixth punch, largely missing as his target ducks.
Ryan Two keeps pulling away and reversing, into the middle of the street now. Stokes follows him, grabbing his sleeve to drag him back. By this point Ryan One has found his feet and walked around behind his friend. Both of them are in the same line of sight for Stokes, and both are backing away. Stokes aims his seventh and his eighth punches, which Ryan Two tries to deflect, as Hales walks up behind Stokes to grab him.
Stokes yanks away from his friend and switches to Ryan One instead, taking seven paces to grab him before throwing his ninth punch of the night. He grabs again; Ryan One blocks that arm and pushes himself back away from Stokes. Ryan Two again intercedes, putting himself between the two with his palms up and his arm extended.
Stokes throws his tenth punch, a right-hander at the face of Ryan Two, then shoves him backwards. Ryan Two backs away once more, four paces. Stokes follows, steadies, lines up, then launches his strongest punch yet, his eleventh, a proper right hook from a solid base, one that cracks across the man’s head and gives him concussion. Ryan Two ends up flat on his back in the middle of the street, his hands still outstretched for a moment in useless protest until they twitch and drop to the blacktop.
Stokes isn’t done. He once more shoves away the restraining Hales and follows Ryan One, who keeps backing away saying, ‘Alright, alright, alright.’ Five more paces from Stokes before another blow at the man’s head. Kai and Billy are now standing over the poleaxed Ryan Two. The video ends, but seconds later Stokes will punch Ryan One hard enough to knock him out too, before off-duty cop Andrew Spure arrives on the scene to bring down the curtain. When the body-camera footage kicks in some minutes later, Stokes is in handcuffs but Ryan One is still laid out in the street. Ryan Two has regained consciousness, folded his shirt under his friend’s head and is asking police for an ambulance.
‘At this point, I felt vulnerable and frightened. I was concerned for myself and others.’ This was how Stokes described that sequence to the court. An elite athlete with years of gym work and training to snap a bat through the line of a ball with astounding power and precision, swinging fists as hard as he can at men with none of those advantages. Punching so hard that he breaks his hand, and repeatedly shoving away a friend so he can punch some more. Frightened and threatened by two targets shouting ‘Get back!’ and ‘Stop!’
The off-duty officer testified that Stokes ‘seemed to be the main aggressor or was progressing forward trying to get to’ Ryan One, who was ‘trying to back away or get away from the situation’. The student who filmed the video can be heard on the tape at one stage exclaiming ‘Fuck!’ and testified that it was because ‘I felt a little bit sorry about the lad that had been punched and it looked like he had his hands up’. That tallied with the prosecutor’s depiction of ‘a sustained episode of significant violence that left onlookers shocked at what was taking place’.
The defendant stuck to his strategy. ‘No, my sole focus was to protect myself.’ All up, in the 33 seconds of footage after he falls over, Stokes takes 35 steps forward to keep hitting two men who keep trying to get away. Not once is he hit back.
After the verdict, Stokes’ solicitor positioned him as the victim. It had been ‘an eleven-month ordeal for Ben … The jury’s decision fairly reflects the truth of what happened that night … He was minding his own business … It was only when others came under threat that Ben became physically engaged. The steps that he took were solely aimed at ensuring the safety of himself and the others present …’ The statement was impossibly self-righteous and self-absorbed.
If there was anyone to feel sorry for it was Ryan Hale, the second of our two Ryans. He’s the one who emerged from the club with a friendly arm around the shoulder for Kai and Billy. He’s the one who interposed himself to end the fight, then kept putting himself back in the firing line, trying to calm an intimidating stranger while dodging blows. For his show of restraint he got laid out regardless, concussed in the street, then was issued a criminal charge equal to that of the man who hit him, and described in national media as a violent bigot in an untested story to support that man’s defence.
Lawyers for Ryan Two made a more convincing post-trial statement, noting that Kai and Billy, ‘neither of whom were relied upon by the prosecution or the defence team for Mr Stokes, have taken the opportunity to speak with various media outlets about the alleged homophobic abuse that they received in the early hours of September 25. Mr Hale has passionately denied this allegation throughout the course of this case,’ it continued.
‘It is upsetting to Mr Hale that although he was acquitted, the accusation that he was the author of such abuse remains. Both Mr Hale and Mr Ali were knocked unconscious by Mr Stokes, and although Mr Stokes has been acquitted of an affray, Mr Hale struggles with the reasons why the Crown Prosecution Service did not treat him as a victim of an unlawful assault.’Good question. Avon and Somerset police were the investigating force, and they were frustrated by the decision. Ryan Two was filmed clearly not hurting anyone, but police were instructed by the CPS to proceed with a charge. Hales (the cricketer) was filmed fighting but ‘a decision was made at a senior level of the CPS’ not to proceed. Police expected Stokes to be charged with assault but the CPS declined. It doesn’t take a wild cynic to think that placing the same lukewarm charge on three men for vastly divergent behaviour might ensure that none would be convicted, even as the trial would maintain the pretence that a defendant of influential standing had not been given a free pass.
A couple of years down the line, the original interview with Kai and Billy has disappeared. All traces have been scrubbed from The Sun website, its social media history, and even from the Wayback Machine internet archive. Given its headline of ‘homophobic thugs’ and text that names Ryan Two but not Ryan One, the libel liability isn’t hard to spot. Later interviews with Kai and Billy take the passive voice – they ‘suffered homophobic slurs outside a Bristol nightclub’.
The article that was once claimed to exonerate brave Ben Stokes now links only to a missing content page, with a picture of a dropped ice-cream cone and the phrase ‘legal removal’ inserted into the web URL. In terms of consequences, Stokes missed one tour. When he resumed his career in January 2018, the Australians hadn’t yet ruined theirs. Their year-long bans looked much more stringent. But the Stokes case dragged on in other ways. With no criminal liability, the Australians confessed promptly enough for the sporting world to give them the full length of the lash. Their situation was ugly but there was closure. Stokes got stuck in legal stasis, unable to be fully backed or condemned. Instead his issue was always present, a browser full of open tabs that the ECB swore they would read any day now.
Through 2018 Stokes was back but he wasn’t back, in the sunglasses and finger-guns sense. In his return one-day series he nearly cost England a match with 39 from 73 balls in Wellington. His first Test hit was a duck as England got rolled in Auckland for 58. At Trent Bridge while Stokes was injured, England posted a world record 481 against Australia. With Stokes three weeks later at the same ground they made 268. He crawled to 50 from 103, the second-slowest any Englishman had reached that milestone in 20 years. That span covered Alastair Cook’s whole career. It was apologetic batting, acting out responsibility via the scorecard. Stokes was creeping back into the team like he’d been kicked out in a blazing row and was hoping to tip-toe to the sofa.
It was December 2018 before the ECB disciplinary committee ruled on him and Hales. In a ‘remarkable coincidence’, wrote Simon Heffer in The Telegraph, ‘the punishment both players faced in terms of bans from playing at international level was covered by the amount of games they had already missed when dropped by England’s selectors, in the furore that followed the incident’. The verdict compounded the omissions around the case by not addressing the violence at its heart. Nor did Stokes, apologising only ‘to my team-mates, coaches and support staff’, and then ‘to England supporters and to the public for bringing the game into disrepute’.
The implicit next step was to rebuild that reputation. It might have been easier had his court defence not meant that he wasn’t game to admit any fault at all. It might have been easier if he or his advisers had been willing to change tack once the trial was done. Imagine a world where Stokes had stood outside court and apologised for overreacting, for the injuries he’d caused, and for the time and energy he had sucked out of other people’s lives. That would have been a show of responsibility beyond a scorecard. When the time came around to assess forgiveness, it might have meant forgiveness was deserved.

To start this document, I’ve got a nickname by the transportation department: Robocop.
So I work at a casino with a golf course resort a few miles down the road, but I’m just Private Security at this casino. I see drugs, prostitution, and bullshitters daily, especially at the door. I have run into this problem, although having loosened up since then, where I’m first to respond and do the job, before the average joe shows up, which has landed me in the office being told to slow down.
Prior Experience: Marines (developed PTSD)
To keep it simple, the “hero” mindset comes into play and I drop Security Officer Safety, and make solo contacts. This kills myself physically and mentally to watch idiots do more idiotic things, when people don’t respond to the call like I do.
I thought THIS (moving fast, kill mode on speed dial) was the move, however it turned out not to be the case. This is a $15/hr job and I’m doing too much to avoid being fat. It’s a stepping stone job, but there’s something wrong with me that keeps wanting to do it uniformed and with tact when nobody else does and they get 🥰 when I get 🤬 from it. No shots taken at anyone, but this world really needs to bridge the gap, and me doing it the way I’ve been doing it the past 8 months has been the best way I’ve been able to do it.
So anyways now to the reason I got called in to slow down. I made solo contact on a suspect possibly armed with a fixed blade 10”+ knife doing (redacted due to it being under investigation and I signed a confidentiality agreement). I understand why this is bad, and I just have to wait for a cover unit.
But me coming from where I’ve come from, and having the skills in my pocket, and not being able to use them is just so fucked! I gotta wait for some jack off of an officer (whoever it became, obviously nobody showed up in the case duh) to complain about responding to a call, and it doesn’t seem like I should stay there, I should put my life on hold and go become a cop before I outcast myself.
These are the bottled up emotions writing at the end here, don’t take my article as a review of where I work, I just don’t have anywhere to go from here but down, and fatter, due to me already attempting to pursue a job like IT seems like life is trying to slow down.

I don't want to bore you all so please take a look at my thoughts on some pretty cool films! I watched ~91 movies this year and beginning January 1 I decided to keep a list and write a review if I felt inspired or didn't write one if I was too high or lazy. The list is a combination of movies that came out in 2020, movies I had never seen before, and some movies that needed a rewatch.
I am by no means a professional critic but only an incredibly passionate fan that likes to think I have a good eye! Comment if you agree, comment if you disagree, just comment so I have something new to think about some of the films.
As a quick note, this post is essentially a rip-off of a post done by u/BunyipPouch that can be referenced here: https://www.reddit.com/movies/comments/eh71gy/i_saw_192_movies_in_theaters_in_2019_here_is_my/ . I really like the way this person outlined their list so I'm pulling a Quentin Tarantino and stealing their idea! Without further ado:
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Arrival - 10/10 Confirmed my favorite movie of all time. Watching for what might be the 7th time made me realize the strength of a feeling that movies can give you. Having a favorite movie doesn’t mean it is the best movie, but the feeling you get when watching your favorite movie has you wanting to chase that feeling in every movie you see. Certain aspects are unexplainable but all I know is there is something about this movie that gets to me every time I watch it. Maybe it’s the decision she makes to live out the life she sees in front of her even though it leads to extreme heartbreak. Maybe it’s the daring concept of alien life in what is almost such a real depiction. Maybe it’s the idea that time really is a shiftable construct that we may have the power of utilizing. Whatever it is, it leads to extreme beauty and an indescribable feeling.
Parasite - 10
Spotlight - 9.4 A near perfect 10/10. This isn’t a typical movie that should be judged by the acting or camera work, but by the ability to progress and tell a sick and twisted story. The layers are peeled back with each scene, revealing a new horrific aspect about the size of the case, the attempt to cover it up, and the sickness of the individuals involved. The scope of the story can cause an emotional reaction at multiple points and makes you see the pain that the victims have gone through without leaning too much on showing this actual pain.
2001: A Space Odyssey - 9.4
1917 - 9.3
Gone With the Wind - 9.3
Waves - 9.2 There are so many interesting aspects of this film that make it unique and almost fantastic. Firstly, it is almost equally an experience of sound as it is of color and visual (hence ending on Alabama shakes’ Sound and Color). The soundtrack uses modern rap and R&B hits in an effective way and not in the way of trying to impress the audience with good music. Secondly, the emotional scenes are so genuine and the directing style is not aggressive so you can feel the emotion with the characters. The moment of Emily seeing her bf hug her dying father, causing her to walk away bursting into tears and trying to find the words to say to her parents over text, is beyond heartbreaking and done so well. The demise of her brother is depressing and felt exaggerated but goes to show that life can take crazy turns. Loved it.
Soul - 9.2 Such a beautiful film that I did not expect to move me the way it did. The film tackles incredibly deep and metaphysical questions with such ease that it makes the directing and everything about the movie feel even more genius. At times it struggles between being a movie for kids and trying to answer life's toughest questions, but overall tells a beautiful story of just living to live.
Sound of Metal - 9.2
The Lighthouse - 9.2 Oh my god. I don’t really know what to say but this movie made me feel things and that feeling is hard to find. I don’t want to rate it.
The Social Network - 9.2
Pain and Glory - 9.1
Dear Zachary - 9 Never cried more in a movie as this is what the heaviest loss looks like. The sheer passion and commitment that Kate and David have toward honoring their son and being good people is astounding and incomprehensible at times. I’ve never hated someone so much in my life before and felt so strongly about the need to live and do good. It is easy to be broken after something like this happens to you but the awe-inspiring love and devotion that these people have for this family is one of a kind. Please watch this if you need to cry.
The Tree of Life - 9
Ferris Beuller’s Day Off - 9
Midsommar - 9 I don’t even really know what I watched but I know it was genius.
Gladiator - 8.8
The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring - 8.8
Steve Jobs - 8.7 Shot in 3 unique stories, this movie is able to give you the spirit of Steve Jobs without needing to explain historical information like many biopics would. Faasbender is spectacular and creates the essence of Steve Jobs perfectly as someone who is utterly devoted to better the human race no matter the cost it brings to those around him. The editing is impressive with so many quick cuts and blending the shots to feel like a singular story. You walk away impressed with the legacy jobs left behind, the heartbreak of him not being around to further the human race, and the harsh reality that he was not a flawless human.
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 8.7 This film is really in a category of its own, not because it’s the greatest movie ever made, but because of how unique each of the elements are. Fincher takes his signature style of directing and combines it with a Tree of Life storytelling narrative and a Steven Spielberg/James Cameron style of creating a classic feel good drama. Overall, it’s core is designed to make you accept life for what it is, even if this is particularly a positive spin on life and its consequences.
The Grand Budapest Hotel - 8.7
Frances Ha - 8.5 It is such a realistic depiction of struggling New Yorkers without the emotional breakdown. You never really see her lose her shit even when she seems to be going crazy. I hated in the moment the separation of Greta and her best friend because of the somewhat abrupt change in Sophie’s character, but they have a nice full circle reunion. The performances are fantastic and the film has a certain air to it as if Baumbach wants you to realize that what you are watching is not real life while trying to make it seem as real as possible. Definitely a unique film that has minor flaws but overall shows a meaningful journey of a New Yorker trying to find their way.
Almost Famous - 8.5
Bridge of Spies - 8.5 Steven Spielberg has centered his masterful directing skills into telling real life stories without the need for too much artistic involvement. Movies like Vox Lux and The Lighthouse capture you with artistic involvement, but Spielberg has learned how to capture you with immaculate storytelling of historical events. If you are ever interested in learning something new, Spielberg will not disappoint.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King - 8.5
The Other Guys - 8.5
Drive - 8.5
Munich - 8.4 This is an action film that takes away the historical cliches of action films and adds a layer of raw truthfulness. Spielberg uses his gift to inform people of a momentous story that affected Israel and the Jewish people without adding any propraganda-like elements to make you pity them or be completely one sided. The story is horrifically true, and Spielberg does not hold back on any of the details. The acting is solid and provides an emotional look into the consequences that come with facing terrorists both for a nation and for an individual.
Ad Astra - 8.4
Okja - 8.4 So goddamn high please don't hurt the animals.
Wedding Crashers - 8.4 You sandbagging son of a bitch
Blade Runner - 8.3
Crash - 8.3 Incredibly powerful and socially relevant, this movie was necessary during these times to artfully show the systematic racism engrained in society. The acting performances are stellar, particularly Thandie Newton, and Haggis’ directing is perfect to convey the raw emotion in each scene.
Spirited Away - 8.3
Blade Runner 2049 - 8.3
Kill Bill Vol. 1 - 8.3
Enemy - 8.2 Such an interesting and gripping movie that didn’t seem to make a lot of sense but I imagine a second watching would provide more insight. Gyllenhal is truly something else and should be treasured. Villanueva is so good at creating his own world and creating such a uniquely shot film with moods and coloring.
Good Time - 8.2
Snowpiercer - 8.2
The Town - 8.2
5 to 7 - 8.1 Luckily I was in the mood for a rom com but this had its own unique air to it as of course there were cheesy parts, but they were not delivered in a cheesy way. Once over the fact that someone essentially like me could find themselves in this sort of relationship, I could actually begin to root for them and understand how something like this could work. There are some amazing lines that I should go back and write down for when I want to pursue someone, and the holistic narrative of the film is done very well. There is nothing special from a directing standpoint, but his simple approach at least allows the story to progress without any complications from a camera perspective.
Oceans 11 - 8.1 The heist movie of all heist movies. You show me a young Brad Pitt and George Clooney and I’m not sure there’s a way to fuck that up. There are obviously cliche moments and the impossibility of actually pulling this off is sometimes too ridiculous (they throw glow sticks into a hidden elevator shaft to a vault), but overall wonderful to watch.
Jojo Rabbit - 8.1
Philadelphia - 8 Led by the incredible acting of Hanks followed by the emotionally gripping plotline, Philadelphia is able to tell the story of not just one gay man’s plight with aids and the repercussions socially and physically, but of an entire minority’s struggle with acceptance. The directing is very understated in a way that pays off considering the story development should be at the forefront of the film. Incredibly heart-wrenching and is clearly an important film to giving a voice to gay Americans.
Uncut Gems - 8 The Safdie brothers have a particular way of filming/directing that creates an environment of entertaining stress that is able to grip your attention for the whole film. I love the connection between the opal gem and Howard as the movie begins and ends with that connection through his body. Sandler was absolutely snubbed and perfectly portrays what it’s like to be an addict and constantly on the run.
Molly's Game - 8
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers - 8
Jaws - 8
Love Actually - 8
Cruel Intentions - 7.9 A glorified soft-core porn featuring a young Reese Witherspoon? Yea, you could say I liked it.
Knives Out - 7.8 An all star cast and provides enough mystery to keep the plot moving seamlessly. It’s a very interesting film for a murder mystery as they reveal what would typically be the biggest piece of info quite early in the movie, but there are more layers that need to be peeled back. The reveal is very clever and was not too outlandish, but I think they could’ve done more to make it even more shocking. Aside from that it’s a fun film and is worth the watch.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes - 7.8 In what was a surprisingly enjoyable movie, planet of the apes takes an Avatar approach and gets you to root against the humans. The montage of the ape growing up is done concisely but effectively and allows you to connect with him while remaining entertained. There are obviously some cheesy aspects and not a lot of character development outside of the ape, but I left feeling like I could watch a sequel.
Tenet - 7.8 I love Nolan but I struggled at times to keep up even with my eyes glued to the screen.
Scott Pilgrim vs. the World - 7.8
Booksmart - 7.7 In what can be assumed to be an ode to the Superbad films of the late 2000s, Booksmart successfully keeps you entertained primarily driven by strong performances from Kaitlyn Dever and Beanie Feldstein. They have a clear chemistry that is never doubted and play the perfect duo of extroverted smart high school kids that are finally ready to rebel. There are scenes that are a bit predictable and slightly lazy in writing in order to move the story along that I’m choosing to nitpick over (dever creating a “diversion”, using the pizza guy as the free get out of jail card), but once the little things are accepted the greater story can be appreciated. The movie has the particular feel of Superbad in which you know you’re going to see some outlandish things on the journey that will lead to laughs, but will ultimately lead in a coming of age lesson in a heartwarming way.
Out of Africa - 7.6 "You’ve ruined it for me, being alone."
10 Things I Hate About You - 7.5
Zodiac - 7.5
Frozen - 7.5
The Interview - 7.5
Casino Royale - 7.5
Skyfall - 7.5
The Talented Mr. Ripley - 7.4
Tron Legacy - 7.4
Palm Springs - 7.3
Borat Subsequent Moviefilm - 7.2 The hype was too much to overcome but Cohen really did a nice job of bringing back the classic and presenting Borat in a 2020 world. It’s genius filmmaking to have someone like Borat show America what America is really like as you can look in the eyes of a racist foreigner.
Don’t Worry He Won’t Get Far On Foot - 7
Quantum of Solace - 7
The Perks of Being a Wallflower - 6.9 The cheesiness makes it shocking that it was released as late as 2012 but overall its an interesting story clearly coming from a novel with strong themes.
Loopers - 6.9 I liked having seen Loopers, but it’s not a must see movie. The ending was creative and definitely saved my overall opinion of the movie.
Have a Good Trip - 6.9 Never forget the power of psychedelics and how these icons have had crazy trips. Carrie Fisher is your new favorite.
Coachella Documentary - 6.9
The Gentleman - 6.9
Jurassic Park - 6.9
About Time - 6.9
Spider-Man Far From Home - 6.8 Probably the worst of the new Spider-Man movies but still provides great visuals with interesting hero concepts. There is definitely a lull in the middle and there are some scenes that make you appreciate Marvel, but otherwise just another solid movie from marvel.
Oceans 13 - 6.7 While entertaining and still shows you Pitt and Clooney, there are definitely more annoying aspects and less intriguing storylines.
The Social Dilemma - 6.4 Obviously a very important topic that should have more documentaries like this one, but really overplayed some of the dangers in a dramatic/theatrical sense.
Ford Vs. Ferrari - 6.2 Not gonna lie, while the story itself is enthralling and a unique part of history, the “studio” feel of this movie took away from much of my enjoyment. I feel bad that Bale and Damon had to be in such a studio made film because they both put on great performances. Bale can do anything he wants and crush it. The way they vilify certain aspects is comical and the cliches are tough to get by, but there are some great action shots of the races and powerful scenes where bale is doing the heavy lifting.
Long Shot - 6.1 Definitely some funny and witty jokes, but overall it’s mediocre. I didn’t hate it and actually enjoyed many of the aspects, but no need to say much more.
Air Force One - 6 Patriotic in the most 90s way possible, with Harrison Ford as president, evil Russian bad guys with mustaches, and an essentially all white cast, Air Force One is a hidden American propaganda film. The movie was funnier than anticipated because of the classic Harrison Ford trope of constant survival and the dramatic set ups to make the wins look even more unbelievable. Either way, hard not to love Ford as the president of the USA and almost made me proud to be an American by the end.
Meet Joe Black - 6 With a 100% white cast and overall 90s feel to the movie, it’s hard to rate this movie “fairly” as if it had just come out in 1998. But I like the idea similarly to Tree of Life in terms of looking over your life and making sure you have lived it completely without any regrets. However, acting is mediocre and I didn’t realize how much I hate the typical 90’s businessman in movies.
Andre the Giant - 5.8
Fury - 5.5 This was definitely a disappointing letdown. Expectations were definitely high going in but the horrible special effects and mediocre acting made this tough to be invested by the end.
Armageddon - 5
Back to School - 5
Cougar Hunting - 4.9

This interview was shot in November 2016, if you're curious. These two guys have some camaraderie established from their days together in 1PW, which is where they say they first met. There's some comedic overlays added by the editor at times in this interview, so that lightens the mood even more so than it already is with these two wacky characters featured. Meanie speaks more here, but that makes sense, given that he's the guest of the show, and they do a decent job overall of balancing their talk time with one another.
At the start, there was some bathroom talk, and that's probably the main flaw of this interview. I was afraid at that point that I had gotten myself into watching a "Best Friends - Poppin' Dogs & Talkin' Hogs" type of shoot interview full of that sort of chatter, so I was relieved when they fairly quickly moved onto wrestling and only really went back to the bathroom topics one other time later in the interview. That said, the fact that there was any toilet topics made me zone out at times.
I've seen a few Meanie shoots before and never heard some of the stories here, such as those about Buddy Rogers and "The RAW Boy," while other stories such as Meanie's fondness for Al Snow and Emilio Estevez are recycled from other interviews he's done. I popped for Meanie's stories about doing moonsaults into pools because I've certainly done that at hotels on many occasions, too. This interview comes full circle at the end, as Meanie had discussed the early days of The Monster Factory training school at the beginning and finishes off by touching on his current training duties there over 20 years later.
Meanie's passion for wrestling really oozes through in this interview, and it's refreshing. His silly pop culture references are goofy and charming, and ultimately one of the highlights. He self-deprecates at times and then at other times makes innocent jabs at other people, but all the while being humble. So, his sense of humor really shines in an informally formatted shoot interview like this, and you get an idea from his wit here why he was so successful as a comedy character during wrestling's heyday. If you can tolerate the toilet humor, this is a decent shoot, but there are definitely superior ones, including better shoots specifically with Meanie.
WATCH: physical DVD – highspots.com/p/spud-meanie.html; digital – highspots.com/p/VD_imwspud_meanie.html, highspotswrestlingnetwork.com/media/im-with-spudblue-meanie/58673/feature
GRADE: C+
INDEX OF TOPICS DISCUSSED:

• penises
• The Monster Factory back in the day
• Hogan vs. Flair
• training at Al Snow's wrestling school
• car rides
• growing up
• working at a casino
• Donald Trump
• other celebrities (Pete Rose, Mr. T., & Gene Hackman)
• "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers
• Tri-State Wrestling Alliance (TWA)/Eastern Championship Wrestling
• Christopher Daniels
• Philly crowds
• Emilio Estevez
• ECW's unsung heroes
• wrestling money
• his grandma
• the idea for him to play "The RAW Boy" (in response to The Nitro Girls)
• Meanie's penis slipping out on RAW
• porn
• 1PW stories
• Raven
• the Meaniesault
• the creation of the "Blue Meanie" character
• the bWo
• Tracy Smothers
• blading & blood
• taste tests
• Balls Mahoney
• today's The Monster Factory trainers
• career reflections

RUN TIME: 1 hr. 40 min.
More reviews at jonbarber.weebly.com/reviews.html

This is the best review of Hugh Cook's Chronicles of an Age of Darkness ever written, and it is written in German! English translation below. It's almost perfect.
https://postmondaen.net/2016/05/15/genre-experimente-hugh-cook/
(Google Translate.)

Genre experiments: Hugh Cook

05/15/16by Dennis Mombauer Comments 2 📷
Hugh Cook's Chronicles of an Age of Darkness is a ten-volume fantasy cycle that uses literary ingenuity and experimental techniques to break through classic genre boundaries, break them and leave them far behind. In addition to a diverse, wacky world and the precise, black-humored rendition of human realities, the author's willingness to experiment is expressed above all in a multitude of voices and perspectives: in his writing style, which changes from volume to volume, and the interconnectivity of the volumes, which tell separate stories, but constantly encounter, influence and overlap.
A guest contribution by Dennis Mombauer .
Fantasy - at least immersive, ie that takes place completely in a secondary world - is contrary to the perhaps obvious intuition, a conservative genre. A world built from scratch, foreign cultures and magic would allow every imaginable long-distance and high-altitude flight of the imagination, but the majority of fantasy authors fall back on the same conventions that were established by Tolkien and his imitators in the middle of the last century. At the beginning of classic fantasy stories there is always a carefully put together, often pseudo-medieval setting dollhouse that is threatened by evil and saved by protagonists, who are dug out of the shared archetype box by their authors. The plot runs on the same, often messianic, rails laid according to Campbell's mono myth, at the end of which the status quo is restored and the readership can lean back contentedly. All too often, fantasy is a »comfort genre« (Williams 2007) that, by tradition, unnecessarily limits its altitude itself and is dragged to the ground by reactionary resentments.

Golden gulags and dark ages

An exception to this rule is the British-New Zealand author Hugh Cook (1956-2008), who remained almost unknown outside of a small fan base and only moderately successful commercially, which could already indicate the experimental nature of his literature. His main works are the "Chronicles of an Age of Darkness", a megalomaniac fantasy cycle of 60 volumes, of which ten were written in the end and published between 1986 and 1992: And these ten volumes fire with such a firework of literary ingenuity and experimental techniques against the grids of the classic genre cage suggest that little more than ash and burned-in shadows remain of them. The world devised by Cook for his "Chronicles" towers as a mountain range over every dollhouse fantasy, is more of a sandbox and construction box than a carefully assembled toy. Individual novels span decades, various continents, islands and regions are visited, and almost everything is possible: pseudomagic »synergetic improbability«, wandering mountains, circularly lined up teleportation doors and arenas with monstrous giant minkes; a space academy whose AI director continues to train pilots even though the spaceships only exist in illusion tanks; mighty banking consortia, wish-fulfilling machine flowers, magic bottles inside magic bottles; ghostly Ilpse, who dissolve when asking questions, the skulls of the deep south, Asmen, the Odex, etc. etc. pp. Integrated into the intercosmic, probability-manipulating mega-civilization of the Nexus, the planet in the center of the setting is a former prison and therapy complex (the "Golden Gulag") that lost all connection to the Nexus thousands of years ago and fell back into a partially medieval post-apocalypse. Such a mixture of fantasy and science fiction elements is not new, and although Cook does it in a very original, often bizarre way (and does not emphasize the extraordinary, just mentions it in passing), it is not what makes it Novels escape the mainstream.

Human and non-human realities

In Cook's world, the potential of almost unlimited possibilities is fully exploited, and yet at the same time it remains down to earth, realistic in the psychology and physiology of its inhabitants. Humans (and human-like life forms) come in a variety of colors and shapes, of which black and white are just the beginning: for example, there are the islanders of Ebrell with their red skin, the purple-colored frangoni, the metallic-gold-skinned, milk-eyed inhabitants von Ling or the green-haired and bearded Slagger Mulps ("two thumbs and three fingers on each hand"; Cook 1988, 83); In addition, there is also a multitude of different ethnic groups, castes, cultures and subcultures:

"As had already been stated, Dog was a member of the Yara, the Unreal underclass of Dalar ken Halvar's dominant people, the Pang. Dog wanted to join the Free Corps, but membership of that august body was largely restricted to Ebrell Islanders and members of the Chem, the wealthy upper class of Dalar ken Halvar's Pang. "(Cook 1992, 46)

Racism, discrimination, pogroms, forced relocations and sometimes tolerance occur between the various groups; For example, the islanders of Ebrell on Untunchilamon are considered alcoholics, troublemakers and, if necessary, scapegoats, while in Dalar ken Halvar they belong to the most influential population groups. Diverse languages ​​and dialects lead to misunderstandings or misunderstandings, local customs are diverse, and there are different currencies, laws, religions and traditions:

“› I demand ‹, he repeated,› to see the ambassador of the Narba Consortium. Don't you understand? Ambassador! ‹But his captors spoke no Gaelish. Nor did they understand High Churl, City Churl, Field Churl, Ashmarlan, Lorp Talk, Estral, Rovac, Ligin or Ling, which was almost the sum-total of the languages ​​Jon Arabin spoke. "(Cook 1988, 375)

Classic fantasy creatures such as dragons, minotaurs, demons or orcs (hunted because of their oily trans and threatened with extinction) exist alongside high-tech machines and post-lovecraftian nightmare creatures, other protagonists are even more unusual: for example Shabble, a former toy , almost indestructible miniature sun or a gigantic hermit crab, which is in fact an inorganic, probability-manipulating entity from the heart of the local star. Cook builds a colorful world full of human (and non-human) abysses, showcasing all the light and dark sides of human nature, and ruthlessly opposing its protagonists. Oppression, torture, disease, hunger, thirst, alcoholism, betrayal, cannibalism and madness are ubiquitous; Armies on the march are constantly threatened by unrest, unrestrained pillage, excesses of violence and desertion; Ships of mutinies, intrigues, storms and sea monsters; Travelers end up in dungeons because they cannot pay a bribe, warriors lose their hands or more (Guest Gulkan loses both arms and legs in the middle of his more than seven hundred-year history). Cook's protagonists are mostly not heroes, not even antiheroes; they are villains and drifters, egoists in search of their own gain, often self-inflicted difficulties in the way, which perish by their own greed or celebrate great successes with their unscrupulous actions - and Cook puts the reader in these characters without taking sides for (or against) them.

A narrator with many tongues ...

A diverse, often wacky world and human realities are not yet experimental in themselves, even if they break with the classic conventions of the fantasy genre in many places - mixtures of SciFi and fantasy abound, merciless medieval realism at the latest with »Game of Thrones ”(albeit clearly after Cook) reached the mainstream. There are primarily two peculiarities that highlight the Chronicles series and perhaps cannot be found anywhere else in a comparable form: On the one hand, Cook's writing style, which changes in each volume, always maintains a certain distance and thus one (or more) additional ones to the story Level (s) conferred; and on the other hand the fact that the novels all tell closed stories, but constantly overlap, intersect and illuminate the same events from different angles. First to Cook's writing style, which makes him an omniscient, constantly commenting narrator, who delves into digressions (comparable to Moers' Mythenmetzschen digressions) and punishes "show, don't tell" rules with contempt:

"[Gouda Muck] was, quite possibly, the only atheist in the city of Cam. Most citizens enjoyed the practice of religion - indeed, for many devout souls, its consolations were all that made life worth living. But Gouda Muck was born to be a dissident. He refused to believe in the demon Hagon, far less to worship that formidable eater of souls. He also avoided those sacred religious duties usually accepted even by unbelievers, viz: patronizing the temple casinos; copulating with the temple prostitutes; playing the temple numbers game; going to the temple cockfights; participating in the human sacrifices. His main objection to all the above activities was that they cost an exorbitant amount of money. "(Cook 1988, 58-59)

Cook takes the typical genre elements - the young hero who sets out into the world, the battles, the prophecies, the ancient magicians - and confronts them with the psychological mechanisms and dark spots that are usually left out. The hero goes out into the world and comes back without having learned anything; the rightful heir moves out to take his throne and is broken and traumatized along the way; the revolutionary realizes that the story is not about him. Clichés and conventions are deconstructed without the story stalling, and Cook observes and comments on all of this from a withdrawn observer position that combines black humor and dry understatement:

"Another vessel was connected to the Gol-sa-danjerk by grappling hooks. Copious quantities of blood on the deck suggested that the connection had not been entirely welcome. Indeed, Drake observed that most of the crew had become corpses. "(Cook 1988, 82)

A remarkable element is the fact that the language changes with the narrator in each volume and appears almost as a separate character with idiosyncrasies and a multitude of idiosyncrasies. What in the first volume could almost pass as the voice of a traditional fantasy writer is in the fifth volume the cynical commentator on a picaresque story; in volume 3, a female point of view is adopted, which is rather rare in fantasy, which, according to the author, is one of the reasons for the series' commercial failure. (Cook 2005) The sixth volume consists of the recordings of an inmate of the Dromdanjerie, the psychiatric institution on the island of Untunchilamon, which are packed into different meta-levels à la House of Leaves: The records were first used by the »redactors of Odrum« with enormous amounts (» a full two million words «, Cook 1990, 5) provided with explanations and insertions, which in turn were cut out by another authority so that only the voices of a few prominent editors remained (as the preface to the preface explains). The seventh volume consists of the diary-like writing of the same inmate, who now seems cured of his madness and has dispensed with the commentary levels; Volume 8 is thematically based on Nordic sagas and takes place entirely at night, Volume 9 gets lost in technical debauchery on the nexus and (pseudo) scientific explanations. Most of these volumes alone would be reason enough to declare Cook's work to be experimental, but each of them represents only one of the ten facets of innovation and originality, which together form a colorful kaleidoscope.

... and a narrator with many eyes

The other big experiment of the »Chronicles« is the fact that each band tells its own story, has its own protagonists and locations, but is still linked to the other stories and constantly has interfaces. For example, the central protagonist of the tenth volume is introduced on the first page of the first book and appears in a large number of other volumes, sometimes only as a brief encounter, sometimes as an apparent deus ex machina or antagonist. A frequently cited example is a scene from The Walrus and the Warwolf in which Drake Douay is led into the torture chamber of the local ruler Watashi:

"Watashi's private torture chamber was a soundproof room containing a narrow wooden bench, which bore an ominous number of russet stains, and many ugly implements of iron. Drake did his thinking - and fast. Clearly posing as an innocent peddlar was not going to save him. "(Cook 1988, 352)

The same scene is exposed as a psychological trick in the next book from Watashi's perspective:

"[Drake] was gagged and taken to an abandoned store room. Over the last three days, this had been converted into a horror house. Many ugly implements of iron had been gathered together; a torture bench had been installed; and Jarl had slaughtered a chicken in the room to make sure it was suitably blood-bespattered. "(Cook 1989, 303)

The scene is one element of many, and even more than direct encounters, numerous descriptions and reports of events ensure that the ten volumes taken together are reminiscent of a more trashy version of Rashomon or a more extensive and complex anticipation of films like Babel or 21 Grams. Information spreads uncontrollably, and the events of one novel become the distorted rumors and legends of the next and the one after that; Due to geographical distances and inadequate means of transport, messages reach other places with enormous delay, and there is hardly anyone who does not constantly lie for his own benefit. Again and again the protagonists of other volumes play supporting roles, are mentioned in reports or set in motion events in the background that appear from the respective perspective like unchangeable fate, but in their own story are quite normal actions. Conflicts do not arise from the fact that some characters are good and others are bad; they arise from conflicting motivations, insufficient information and often pure coincidence.

Limitations and limits exceeded

There would be a lot more to say about Hugh Cook, about his biography which is closely related to the novels, his short stories, his crazy homepage (unfortunately only available via Wayback Machine or similar), his later novels such as To Find and Wake the Dreamer or even just to the titles of his "Chronicles" volumes, which range from the classic (The Wizards and the Warriors) to the comical (The Walrus and the Warwolf) to the exotic (The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers) - but time and space are limited, and therefore it must suffice to sum up that he explored the scope of the genre with his novels, far exceeded the limits and dared the experiments that classic fantasy so urgently needs.
Bibliography:
Cook, Hugh (1988): The Walrus and the Warwolf. London: Corgi Books Cook, Hugh (1989): The Wicked and the Witless. London: Corgi Books. Cook, Hugh (1990): The Wishstone and the Wonderworkers. London: Corgi Books. Cook, Hugh (1992): The Worshipers and the Way. London: Corgi Books. Cook, Hugh (2005): http://zenvirus.com/hugh-cook/bibliography-novels.html (accessed via Wayback Machine; as of July 22, 2012) Willams, Tad (2007): Interview. http://fantasyhotlist.blogspot.de/2007/02/interview-with-tad-williams_15.html (as of November 28, 2013)

I’ve loved TLJ since I saw it, and over time have appreciated it more and more for what it did. I want to delve into why it worked so well.
Characters
Rian Johnson said that he looked at where everyone ended up in TFA, and tried to figure out the hardest thing that each character could face. At its heart, TLJ, and generally middle installments, was meant to push the characters from where they were in the first movie to where they need to be for the last movie. TLJ perfectly set up its main characters for Episode IX.

• Rey begins the movie looking for her place in the galaxy, hoping Luke will be the key. She also believes Ben Solo can be turned back to the light. By the end of the movie she learns that she comes from nothing, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be somebody. She learns she’s not going to have easy answers, and that she needs to stand on her own two feet to fight what’s coming.
  
• Kylo Ren starts off struggling with the murder of his father, being defeated by Rey, and failing Snoke. He’s conflicted; he hoped that killing Han Solo would resolve his anguish, but he can’t bring himself to kill his mother either. By the end of the movie, he has killed Snoke. In a mirror of Darth Vader’s redemption, he kills his master in order to save Rey. But Rey wasn’t the linchpin that would have redeemed him: he needed Luke or Leia to come for him. Without this connection, and with Rey’s refusal of his hand, he found himself more deeply entrenched in the Dark Side.
  
• Finn starts off where he ended in TFA: protective of Rey and sure as hell he doesn’t want to fight for the First Order, but lacking confidence in the Resistance’s ability to win the war against them. By the end of the movie, he understands he can’t stand by as both sides fight each other, and decides to fight for the Resistance.
  
• Poe starts off wanting to jump in his X-Wing and blow stuff up to save the day. By the end of the movie he learns that sometimes you have to retreat and fight another day. (Admittedly the weakest arc, but I think a large issue is people mainly taking that the lessons is actually “keep quiet and listen to your superiors.”)
  

Luke Skywalker
Perhaps the biggest cause for people’s disappointment in TLJ was the handling of Luke Skywalker. Rian Johnson didn’t take him in the direction a typical franchise blockbuster would. Instead, he really got to the heart of who Luke Skywalker is, and showed us that not only can our heroes, and even we ourselves, be flawed despite our greatest successes, but that we can always learn from our failures.
Luke, while understanding the living Force better than he ever has, starts the movie disillusioned with the Jedi and both it’s and his place in the universe. Rey shows up on his island, looking for a teacher. But Luke decided years ago he would never train another generation of Jedi. He knows the flaws of the Order that came before his. He had hoped he could do it right. But if he, the last Jedi, couldn’t do it, then maybe the Jedi weren’t meant to live on. He’s accepted that the Force doesn’t belong to the Jedi, and he doesn’t think the Resistance needs them either. So he decides to teach Rey what the Force truly is, an energy connecting all life in the universe, and show her that it doesn’t need the Jedi to live on.
As seen in The Director and the Jedi, Rian Johnson saw Rey and Kylo Ren as two halves of the same protagonist. Rey represents the light side, Kylo the dark. Luke sees this in her. He watched her train with her lightsaber, and sees how similar the two are. He feels the raw power inside her, and is afraid. Eventually, through their connection in the Force, Rey hears Kylo’s side of events, and confronts Luke. For the first time in six years, he has to revisit that night.
Luke’s defining character trait, the part of his personality that drives all his choices, is his love for his friends and family. In an event that mirrors his fight with Vader in RotJ, just as Luke lashed out and ignited his lightsaber when Vader threatened Leia, he ignited his lightsaber on Ben Solo when he foresaw a galaxy in peril, with him at its center. But he didn’t have the chance to turn it off this time, and Ben turned on him.
This error in judgement, this brush with the Dark Side, is perfectly in line with his character. In ESB, Luke abandons his training with Yoda to save his friends, because he senses them in danger. In RotJ, Luke attempts to strike the Emperor down when he shows he has the ability to destroy the Rebel fleet. He also aggressively attacks Vader like no one ever has, even cutting his hand off, when he threatens his sister.
We’ve built this image of Luke Skywalker in our minds, and people were disappointed that it isn’t what we got. But more importantly, we decided Luke’s faced the hardest thing he’ll ever have to face, so he can’t possibly fail ever again. And in movie logic, that makes sense. But TLJ isn’t concerned with being the middle installment of a new trilogy in one of the most iconic and biggest franchises of all time. It shows characters in Star Wars at their most flawed. Luke isn’t done growing. He isn’t done learning.
Yoda shows up and gives him his last lesson. He knows in some capacity that Luke is right. The Jedi have failed in the past. That the Force doesn’t belong to them. That the Jedi are more than a few books in a tree. But he also knows that the destiny of the Jedi is to uphold the light, and use their abilities and beliefs to do right by the galaxy. Luke needs to learn from his shortcomings with Ben, and believe in Rey. The Jedi don’t have to die.
In the ultimate show of his understanding of the Force, Luke uses it just as Yoda taught him. Never as a means of attack. He projects himself across the galaxy to face down the entire First Order, and stalls Kylo Ren for long enough for the Resistance to get away, without ever fighting. Luke’s faith in the Jedi has been restored. He knows that the Jedi will live on through Rey, and that she will uphold the light as they were meant to. He knows he can’t be the one to save Kylo, but believes that he’s not truly lost. And with this last act, Luke dies a hero, as a symbol of hope across the galaxy.
Rey
In TFA, Rey discovered this power inside of her, and wants to know what to do with it. She’s also looking for her place in the universe. Luke seems to be the key to both her problems. But just as we the audience are disappointed, Rey is disappointed with the Luke Skywalker she finds. This isn’t the legendary Jedi Master who defeated Darth Vader. He decides to teach her about the Force, but not in the way she expected. She hoped to find her place as a Jedi, but Luke wants the Jedi to die, and teaches her about the Force apart from the Jedi Order. She hoped to find answers with Luke, but was left without any.
Through the Force, she saw the cave. This is where she would find her answers. But all the mirror showed her was herself.
When she learns how Luke failed Kylo Ren, she believes that he’s not beyond redemption. She felt the conflict in him, and so she decides to find him and try to turn him. Maybe her place in the galaxy is with Ben Solo. He kills Snoke, and she thinks she has succeeded. But he wants her to join him in the First Order. She wants her place in the galaxy, but not like this. And the final nail in the coffin, Kylo tells her her parents were nobody.
Rian has said that the hardest thing for Luke in ESB is to find out Vader, this man he hates, is his father, part of him. It takes away all the easy answers. For Rey, the hardest thing she could learn was that she came from nowhere. If she found out she was related to Luke, or Han, or somebody else, that would instantly define her. It would give her all her answers. So instead, she finds out that she doesn’t have a place ready for her, she doesn’t have somewhere she already belongs. If she wants to belong, she has to stand on her own two feet and find out who she is, and make a place for herself.
Kylo Ren
Some people think that Kylo Ren shouldn’t have been redeemed in TRoS because of the events of TLJ. But as soon as the script was finished for TFA, the plan was always for Leia to be the one to redeem Kylo Ren. Dave Filoni agreed, saying that structurally, there’s no redemption from killing your father, unless it’s by the hand of your mother. It harkens back to all kinds of mythology. The mother is always seen as this nurturing force, so it fits perfectly to make her the one person who can bring Ben back to the light.
The point of Kylo’s arc in TLJ is that he had the opportunity Vader had in Return of the Jedi, but Rey wasn’t the person he needed in order to be redeemed. He fell deeper into the Dark Side, and became the leader of the First Order. He did what Vader has always hoped to do. But Rian knew that having Leia redeem him was always the plan. So why did he do this? Simply because he wanted to show that as long as there’s that conflict in you, that pull to the light, it doesn’t matter how far you fall. You can always come back.
Snoke
If you look back to the original trilogy, you has the Emperor working in the background in ESB and RotJ. He wanted Vader to turn Luke in ESB. He had plans in motion to build a second Death Star. But he was never the true antagonist of the trilogy. He wasn’t the one testing the protagonist. That was Vader. When you get inside the world, it’s easy to say that because the Emperor controls the whole Empire, he’s the real bad guy. Especially since we ended up with a whole trilogy showing his rise to power. But he’s not. He wasn’t in the OT, or even in the PT.
Just like the Emperor, Snoke worked in the background, and was in charge of the First Order, but he wasn’t the true antagonist. His role was only ancillary to Kylo Ren’s story. He was never meant to have his own arc. And of course, because we had gone through the prequels with the Emperor, we figured that Snoke would have this big backstory. Two years of speculation built up such an idea in everyone’s minds that they lost track of the true villain in Kylo Ren.
Kylo Ren was the one testing Rey. Snoke served as a device for Kylo Ren’s story. He wanted to find his place outside of his family, and he thought he found it with Snoke. But like Vader wanted to take control with Luke at his side, Kylo wanted to do so with Rey. So he killed Snoke.
Snoke’s role was the next step for both Vader and Kylo Ren. But without the linchpin Kylo needed to be redeemed, he saw his chance at power and killed his master. It never mattered who Snoke was to anyone but Kylo.
Rose and Canto Bight
The most hated storyline in the movie, Rose and Canto Bight are essential in Finn’s arc. As I’ve discussed, Finn only found himself concerned with Rey in TFA. He was taken in by the Resistance, but he never saw them as a cause to fight for. His only concern was Rey.
Rose was the exact opposite. Her life was the Resistance, her family was the Resistance. She believed in everything it stood for, and she was a huge fan of all its heroes. So she was the perfect pairing for Finn in order to get him to join the fight.
He goes on Poe’s mission to Canto Bight. He sees a planet filled with all the galaxy’s wealthiest citizens. There’s a war going on, and these people are having fun and spending money.
They meet DJ, a direct result of the state of the galaxy. He wasn’t on Canto Bight to gamble. As Rian Johnson says, “he’s there to see a guy about a thing.” This guy is a clear contrast to the people in the casinos. He knows why those people are so rich. They’re not concerned about the war because they have stakes in both sides, selling ships and weapons to whoever will pay the price. Finn is disgusted by this. He sees that the people who don’t take sides have not principles or morals. They don’t stand for anything other than their own gain.
Rose and Finn are sold out by DJ aboard the Star Destroyer. He sees that this guy they trusted was just as bad as the people in the casinos. He wouldn’t take a side besides his own. And in this moment, about to be executed by his rival Phasma and betrayed by spineless scum, he takes his side. He fights back against the First Order, and claims himself as ‘rebel scum.’
Poe and Holdo
Poe starts this movie by losing countless fighters in an effort to destroy a Star Destroyer. He succeeds, but Leia knows that the ends don’t justify the means. Poe will fight with everything he has, whatever the cost, to accomplish his goals. Leia knows this isn’t how you fight a war. You can’t solve everything by fighting whenever confronted.
An attack on their cruiser sucks Leia into space, and she uses the Force to hold on and pull herself back to the ship. People will disagree about that, but the point of the scene was to take Leia out of commission. Because Poe needs to learn his lesson, and he knows Leia too well and trusts her. Holdo, on the other hand, is a completely unknown quantity. So when she is put in charge, it tests Poe. Leia will let him jump in his X-Wing, but Holdo has tact. She has a plan, and the challenge for Poe isn’t just trusting that it will work, but understanding that a fight at this point is futile.
Now I’ll agree that it’s a bit silly for Holdo to not tell Poe her plan. But the arc wouldn’t work if she did, so for the sake of the narrative I will forgive this flaw.
By the end of the movie, Poe realizes that Holdo had a plan, and that you can save the day without having to fight. So when Luke shows up to take on the Resistance, and Finn is ready to fight for his new-found belied in the Resistance, Poe holds him back. He knows that Luke is doing what he’s doing for a reason, just like Holdo. It’s not a cue to fight, it’s an opportunity to escape. He learns his lesson and helps the Resistance escape to fight another day.
Symbolism and Themes

• The moves Rey uses in her lightsaber training on Ach-To are the exact moves Kylo Ren uses to fight Luke on Crait. This shows the duality of Rey and Kylo, that they really are two sides of the same coin, this dyad in the Force.
  
• Luke’s used his blue lightsaber on Crait not to taunt Kylo Ren, but because it symbolized the ideals he had when he was young. He threw it out at the beginning of the movie because he no longer held those ideals. By the end of the movie, he’s reclaimed his sense of hope and has learned from his mistakes, and reclaims those ideals by reclaiming that saber. His green lightsaber is the one he ignited when he considered killing Kylo Ren. His blue lightsaber is the one he ignited to save the Resistance.
  
• The main theme of this movie is failure and what to do with it. Rey has two people in her ear. Kylo Ren is trying to tell her to let the past die. She doesn’t need Luke or Leia, or the Resistance. She doesn’t need to restore the old order of the galaxy, she needs to create her own. Luke meanwhile is showing her that the past is a curse, and that your failings define you. But by the end of the movie, both she and Luke realize that you can’t let go of the past, only learn from it and move forward. Luke accepted his mistakes, and moved on to help the Resistance. Rey accepted that her parents didn’t want her, and that she comes from nowhere, and decides to move forward with the Resistance.
  

Subverting Expectations
People miss the point of the whole ‘subverting your expectations’ thing. Rian Johnson wasn’t trying to subvert expectations because he thought that made a good movie. In fact, I think Luke’s arc is the only one where he was really counting on the audience hoping for this powerful Jedi Master. With Rey’s story, it wasn’t so much about surprising people, but rather taking her quest for belonging in a meaningful direction that ended up surprising people. With Snoke, he just simply never saw him as the true villain of the trilogy. That first week of critic reviews, this phrase of ‘subverting expectations’ was thrown around so much people got it stuck in their heads anytime something went opposite of how we predicted it, even though it wasn’t the filmmaker’s intention in most cases.
Conclusion
‘The Last Jedi’ set out to push every character in a meaningful direction from where they landed at the end of TFA. It succeeded with flying colors, even though TRoS didn’t follow up on these individual storylines. It was a bold movie that redefined what Star Wars could be for a new generation. It showed us flawed characters who learned from their mistakes and found the strength to fight for what they believed in. And I will always love it.

Part 2 and Part 1 if you haven't seen them, remember this is just reviewing it as a film, not an adaptation!

1. Lol they started driving before Grover said 'where to next?' Imagine if hed just had to turn around at the end of the motorway XD
2. Grover FELL ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL!?!?!?!?! What's wrong with him? The amount of problems with that...
3. 'Check this out' lol no way Percy had tried to heal someone else with water before. He'd have lost some major cool points if it didnt work, and it really shouldn't have - he's not the son of Apollo.
4. One kid goes missing and hes on the news? Seemed like a pretty mainstream channel as well.
5. They really didn't close the blinds on the windows? Why is that even possible, that anyone walking by has a clear, unimpeded view into the room?
6. Lol not one of the janitors made enough of a noise after being shot for another one to turn around? Also, shooting the guy on the ladder was REALLY dangerous.
7. Why did he rip of the whole top piece without even trying to pry out the pearl? Vandal.
8. Urghh i know he's the hero but i will never not find it stupid how he suddenly starts flying and chopping heads of this massive monster, all while dodging flame and other attacks, despite the fact that he's had no practice and would realistically need weeks to become at all proficient at combining all these types of combat. Also he really should know about the 'two heads grow back'. Basic mythology.
9. Who placed the Hydra? What was it's mission directive - if you see him, ask him once for the bolt because you're somehow capable of speech, the without waiting for an answer transform and try to kill him. That's definitely going to help them find the bolt. And once the Hydra got the bolt, what was it going to do with it? All 3 of the problems they face getting pearls - Medusa, the Hydra and the Lotus Casino, seem very random guardians of Persephone's pearls.
10. Wait so to make Medusa's head work, all they had to do was take off the glasses? Then they should all already have been dead. Or did someone forcibly open her eyes and put her glasses back on, which, by the way, shouldnt do anything to stop her power from working? Weird. Also how did Grover know it would work on the Hydra, or that he wouldnt have been destroyed by the fire before it worked?
11. Imagine how cool/scary it would be for the first person who then saw that statue. Massive, spectacularly detailed, really interesting and it sprung up in the middle of the Parthenon(replica) in the middle of the night. Tourism would exponentially increase and it would be one of the world's biggest mysteries ever for the next few 100 years. I wish something that cool would happen IRL.
12. 'The gods are angry' so Zeus shows his anger by stirring up natural disasters in Earth? Why have they chosen Earth as their battleground anyway? If Zeus is tryna punish Poseidon, shouldnt they just fight up on Olympus?
13. Their funding is confusing me. Are fuel and food free?
14. ... so they just stroll into this extremely famous casino? Aren't they a little young, and shouldn't it be a lot harder to get in? They just park their car in front of the Casino with no problem, and walk through the doors. K then.
15. Again, 'ladies man' Grover doesn't sit well with me.
16. What is the Lotus Casino's aim? Not only is it impossible for the world not to realise that nobody who comes into the Lotus Casino ever comes out - if they disappear from the world, does nobody blink an eye? Also, none of them are paying any money... what's the aim of keeping them in the Casino? Who's in charge and how are they benefitting.
17. 'This year. 1971.' Ok. That was scary.
18. 'Percy Jackson's awake' so they also track every person in the Casino, and make it their aim to keep EVERYONE in. ......Why? And this 'LaIr oF tHe LoTus eAterS' was not a sufficient explanation.
19. Was that extra hour really worth driving like a maniac? Theyd already have police following them - underage kids driving an extremely expensive car out of a casino at very high speeds is certainly grounds for police attention.

TLDR; $8 calls for June 19
Edit: If it goes below $7.30 I will most likely exit.
Position
My play: dumping before earnings or legging them out to further OTM calls if there is a strong run up. Save a few to exercise and wheel them until I'm exercised.
Estimated earnings date: 05/06/2020. $ATVI and $GLUU also have earnings that week.
I'd love some feedback. So let me know why and how I'm a retard. I already got in with 50 calls. I got burned by the witching hype. So just letting you know how smooth my brain is.
Thesis: Entertainment spending has not been significantly affected yet by Coronavirus(see $NFLX subscription count) and people are entertaining themselves on their phones(see $SNAP +20% DAU). These easy conclusions could lead to a runup for Zynga to earnings. Also, smooth brains spending stimulus money. $500 per kid and $1200 per adult.
Back of napkin math: If Zynga sees a 20% increase in DAU that translates to ~107m(4M additional DAU at $0.223 per day) additional revenue on the high side. Zynga's Q1 is typically a slower quarter, so $375m revenue was probably their projection when they gave the 1.6bn guidance. 33% of that $107m puts them at $410m on the quarter. This is inline with analyst estimates but it doesn't include the progress that they've made in Asia or the impact of content updates to older proven games.
DD

• Zynga makes $0.223 each day from 20M daily active users. (last sentence page 3)
• Expanded their newly acquired Empires & Puzzles game to Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. A similar game, Puzzles & Dragons is very popular there. So there is a strong apetite for this game.
• Coronavirus should help increase player base
• Words With Friends seeing 25% increase in Google Trends over season peak of December.
• WWF had a 2% YoY loss in users from 18 to 19
• 1.6bn forcasted for 2020 at the end of Q4, but analysts are estimating 1.69 to 1.81bn. 3 years in a row exceeding initial estimate.
• Snapchat just saw a 20% increase in DAU(daily active users). More smooth brains on their phones.
• Netflix blew out subscriptions estimates, so entertainment spending is still strong. NetFlix sub is $8.99, monthly spend on Zynga is $6.69 on a DAU.
• CSR Racing received new customization content
• Empires & Puzzles starting Season 3 whatever the fuck that is, I assume it'll bring back old players
• Over 1bn cash on hand
• Merge Dragons is #7 grossing game on Android App store, above Call of Duty Mobile. Unsure if this is lifetime gross or some time period.

Potential Suprises good and bad

• Class action lawsuit on March 3rd for losing PII to some hacker
• Zynga may announce positive developments in expansion of Empires and Puzzles to China, 1st or 2nd largest gaming market
• Coronavirus bump may not be projected by analysts, we could see revisions leading to a run up to earnings
• Coronavirus bump may have accelerated timetable for growth estimates in Asia and Zynga may crush their guidance
• Zynga Poker and CSR Racing are 2 loss leaders for MAU/DAU but are trending up on Google Trends
• $ATVI, $GLUU, $ZNGA earnings all around the same time, could create a lot of attention for smartphone game industry

​
Empire & Puzzles Android App Review Highlights
"Everything in this game is about money."(1* )
"Without significant spending it is not possible to compete with spenders. I've been playing six months nearly every day" (2* LOL)
"you can also spend alot of $$$ and still not get $hit like me." (2* LOL)
"Playing for 2 years and have 1 hero of the month and no 5* of any event heroes. That is not a good way to keep people playing. I have done probably 50 10 pulls and that's all I have to show for it. That's 1 out of 500, that's less than .25 percent which is ridiculous. Cant compete if I cant get any heroes other than basic heroes which leads to quitting because it's no longer fun. Just did 65 pulls and got basically nothing F U small giant!" [Link]
pulls = slot machine casino brain psycological microtransaction hooks
pull = 300 gems, 10000 gems is $160
This guy is admitting on a review that he spent $312, on Microtransactions. You know that shit is a lot higher.
Edit: GLU -> GLUU
Edit: of the 0.223, 19% is advertising so $5.40 a month from microtransactions per user per month
Edit: Bank of America just downgraded Zynga. Fuck them.
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/snap-stock-heads-for-best-day-in-two-years-but-jaw-dropping-slowdown-is-warning-sign-for-facebook-and-google-2020-04-22
Edit: First sign of good news? Shaking off the BofA downgrade. Shit math says they might get ~60m additional revenue in March. Putting them at 430-440m for the quarter. Analyst estimates 405ish. So a 7% beat.
Edit: I averaged down to .46 per contract and got up to 100 contracts. I just sold off half for .56 each. If you bought the day after this DD post at .41 then you made a nice 35%+ gain.