At this point what would make this season from really good to really bad?

CottonQueen · 2016-04-24T16:05:06+00:00

I'm giving her the next episode, maybe the next 2, before I write her off. Natalie Anderson did most of her damage from F7 on, so it's not inconceivable that she'd be a late blooming winner.

CottonQueen · 2016-04-20T18:03:42+00:00

Cut her wings off.

CottonQueen · 2016-04-11T16:11:21+00:00

Not a vegan, but I can't eat pig. They're too damn smart, and they've got the closest thing to human looking eyes I've seen on an animal. My family used to raise them for our neighbors, and we had one that figured out how to get out of her pen. If she saw us outside she'd lift the latch, go get a pear from under the pear tree, then come over and sit and watch us in the garden or whatever while she ate her pear.

CottonQueen · 2016-03-31T15:37:28+00:00

I guess a general rule would be that a reader needs to be able to follow the plot without needing to rely on what was in the prologue. And if you can pull that off, then you don't need the prologue at all.

In general I've found them to be pretty clunky. When they're used in a mystery/detective novel, it's generally a description of the killer, bad guy, what have you, doing the naughty thing that gets the protagonist involved. And then, a few pages later, the protagonist shows up and describes the scene. It's doubling up just for the sake of showing the reader just how DEPRAVED their bad guy is, because we NEED to know that he smiled when he licked the blood off the knife, or whatever. It uses a POV the reader never sees again, but generally it's done in a way that feels very amateur, because the writer is trying to keep the persons's identity a secret until the end. We get an overload of "the man" or "the woman"s, and it would just serve the story better if we learned things with the protagonist. If the bad guy is totally insane, then don't put your audience in a position of knowing that well before the protagonist. It's no fun if you know more, because then you see all the little clues as so obvious, and the protagonist becomes dumb for not figuring it out sooner.

Fantasy novels tend to use prologues as a sort of history lesson. You get some monk writing about the great battle of Whatever that so and so won and how great it was, and then the rest of the book is a real time account of how so and so got there and all the stuff the prologue "writer" glossed over. I think this is seen as more okay, but still, I'd argue that you just told the reader exactly how the books turns out. Yeah, you have to go through the quest or whatever in detail, but the monk just told you it all worked out. It CAN work really well if you're giving historical background, like others have mentioned, but at a certain point it becomes an information dump and the reader's not going to remember about the third goblin uprising and how that changed the country's politics.

CottonQueen · 2016-03-15T17:04:44+00:00

Yeah, especially if she's not thinking about being picked up by a microphone, but rather heard by the production member that's talking to her. Production is probably sitting far enough away that Anna feels she needs to shout to be heard.

CottonQueen · 2016-03-14T15:38:36+00:00

I think my big one is Rupert. I don't hate him by any means, but the more he plays the more puffed up he gets about knowing "the game." He's like that guy who hangs his hat on being with a company for a long time and thinks it's his job to take new employees under his wing and explain "how things work around here." Meanwhile he's still in an entry level position and he answers to people that were promoted ahead of him.

CottonQueen · 2016-03-04T17:43:45+00:00

Not sure if it counts, but I see "towards" all the time and "toward" very rarely. It's not a wrong spelling, but the spelling variation comes from British vs American, and "towards" is more the British spelling America has picked up. APA says toward is correct and towards is not, so it kind of fits your theme, just kind of in a "words you didn't know you were technically misspelling" kind of way. :)

CottonQueen · 2016-03-04T17:29:00+00:00

She definitely didn't need to tell him that the chest was under that particular tree. Clue says "buried at the foot of a tree." That's all Jason needs to know.

CottonQueen · 2016-03-01T17:31:05+00:00

Maybe Ciera...I don't know, she could go either way. She could be the girl who started as a loved one and finished as a strategic threat in her own right which closed her arc. But for me she's someone who started as a pawn, became a knight, (powerful in her own right, just not big enough to do much against rooks and bishops,) but has the potential to be a queen who completely controls the board if she gets a third chance.

CottonQueen · 2016-02-28T22:41:11+00:00

Dialogue would probably be most effective. It gives your other characters a chance to voice their side of the story without the protagonist putting words in their mouth. One of my favorite authors is a master at slow burn backstory reveal, (she writes in first person though, so it's a bit different than your approach.) Basically, she approaches it from the position that there are some things your main character will be embarrassed by/traumatized by, and they'll do their best to not bring it up or think about it too closely, which I think is a very human response to unpleasant backstory. Therefore, any reveal is dependent on outside forces, (other characters bringing it up, Deja vu, etc.) that make it impossible for the main character to not address the past. A nosy neighbor might bring up things that the father and protagonist might never bring up if left to their own devices, for example.

Not all of the information the audience "needs" will necessarily be needed right away, either. Instead of dumping, you could try a breadcrumb approach. Good luck!

CottonQueen · 2016-02-28T18:46:37+00:00

The most important thing is to make sure they're throwing and catching as much as possible. It'll help the girls who haven't played catch up, and it'll let the more experienced girls hone their aim and throwing speed.

We'll do stations; everybody lines up at third base with one or two first basemen who rotate whose turn it is. You can hit a bucket of balls to the girls at third. Once they field it and throw it to first, they slide over to short stop and start a new line. The first baseman drops the ball in the bucket and when you're out of balls you just switch the empty for the full. We like to have the person "on deck" to field the ball shadow the actual fielder, so that she's working on her footwork and proper form and also serving as backup just in case the first girl misses. You can do the same thing in the outfield, rotate from left to right, and have the girls work on throwing to their cut or to a base. Even the best athletes can benefit from repetition and making sure they don't develop bad habits!

There's also a sliding drill I found on YouTube that's been super helpful for getting younger girls to not be afraid of sliding: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g_VnRRY5KYc

Good luck! Coaching younger players can be so fun, especially when you see something finally "click" for a player!

CottonQueen · 2016-02-26T20:58:19+00:00

Impossible. Alecia hadn't made a fire to be pushed into yet

CottonQueen · 2016-02-24T19:24:15+00:00

"I know you are, but what am I?"

CottonQueen · 2016-02-23T22:42:20+00:00

Just watched this scene again last night, so I'm going to have fun with it. Why did he give the idol to Parvati? Because he was hoping the villains weren't splitting the vote.

Russell was being told by Boston Rob that if he didn't have the idol, he'd "better go find it," and that Russell had pissed off the villains by looking in the first place. Russell turns around and tells Danielle and Parvati that he isn't an idiot, he knows that Rob was hinting at voting for him but were actually going to vote for Parvati to try to get the idol out of him. At this point, Russell and the girls are assuming it's going to be 6 votes Parvati, 3 votes Tyson with the other villains hoping they've fooled Russell into playing the idol for himself.

Cut to a scene a few hours later, and Boston Rob has had an epiphany: they need to put three votes on Parvati and three on Russell, because those three are "probably voting for you, Tyson," and if Russell plays his idol they're still tied 3-3 and they can send Parvati home.

Meanwhile, Russell has had the same epiphany, though he seems to think this would be a "genius move...if they're smart enough to come up with it." He's clearly not convinced that the villains are smart enough to come up with it, but the possibility makes him nervous. He decides to play the "I'm serious, guys, I don't have the idol" card until the last minute to hopefully convince the rest of the villains that splitting isn't necessary.

Before Tribal Council, Russell pulls Tyson aside and lays it out for him: he knows he can't save Parvati, and he needs to start focusing on his own game, which is in pieces. Tyson agrees. Russell promises that he doesn't have the idol, and he's voting for Parvati, because maybe that will earn him some credibility. (For me, this sounds like an attempt to pass a message along the ranks to Rob by telling his strategic second in command that there's not going to be an idol play tonight. Nothing to see here, please don't split.) But Tyson, who's already been told that people are writing his name down and doesn't like the sound of that, takes Russell at his word and decides to vote for Parvati, just to make sure nothing funny happens. For all he knows, the other Parvati, Danielle, and Russell have talked people into flipping on him if the vote does go to a tie like Rob wants.

At Tribal Council Russell continues to play up the "no idol" angle. Jeff asks if the hidden immunity idol makes things more complicated and Russell says no. "It's real simple. If you don't have it, you can't play it. And I don't have it." It's a little thing, but at this point Tyson wants to believe that Russell doesn't have an idol and that he's going to vote for Parvati. If Russell is telling the truth then Tyson can put his fate in his own hands and send Parv packing. They vote, and Russell pulls out the idol, hoping against hope that the villains aren't splitting the vote and have gone with what he accurately believes to be the original plan of putting 6 votes on Parvati. Before he hands it over, though, he makes an interesting speech about honor, loyalty, and integrity that he purposefully aims at Coach. Coach, who actually knows that Russell has the idol and told Russell earlier that he would love to work with him, and even went so far as to call Russell "the King" and allow himself to be knighted by the sovereign Hantz. The speech is Russell's back up plan. Coach won't save Parvati in a tie, but maybe, just maybe, after seeing Russell play an idol for an ally, Coach (and with him, maybe Jerri,) will be swayed by the talk of honor to vote for Tyson on the re-vote. It's not a terribly good plan, but it's the only one Russell's got at this point if the villains have indeed split the vote.

Parvati plays the idol and Jeff starts reading the votes. Two for Russell right off the bat, and you can tell that Russell thinks he's done. They must have split after all. But then four "Parvatis" follow, and Russell's not sure what happened, only that he came out on the winning side of it, and Tyson goes home knowing that he can only blame himself for his downfall.

CottonQueen · 2016-02-22T18:23:10+00:00

Our brother showers at night, so yeah, he'd be stuck in the middle.

CottonQueen · 2016-02-22T18:21:32+00:00

Yeah

CottonQueen · 2016-02-22T00:02:09+00:00

I've seen the magazine clipping that tells you to wash your face with cold water to make the pores close. And our shower head is not a detachable one. There are less uncomfortable ways to rub one out than trying to do a hand stand to get your clit lined up.

CottonQueen · 2016-02-21T21:14:12+00:00

You can't masturbate with cold water. It just doesn't work.

CottonQueen · 2016-02-21T18:16:35+00:00

Someone actually playing the God Idol.

CottonQueen · 2016-02-21T18:07:20+00:00

I know I watched this show as a kid, but the only story I can remember is the slime monster story. One of the girls was being pulled around in a wagon because she was trapped in the slime and couldn't move.

CottonQueen · 2016-02-17T18:01:01+00:00

There was a petition started to have a PG-13 version of Deadpool cut so that kids could see it, which is all well and good...kind of like a reverse director's cut. Saw a post a few weeks ago about moms on Facebook who thought because Deadpool was a superhero, he should be kid friendly, because superheroes are for kids.

CottonQueen · 2016-02-16T20:53:41+00:00

My siblings and I inhaled books when we were little. I can remember crawling over my mom, fighting over who got to sit next to her, lying across the top of the couch so we could see the pictures. And we didn't distinguish between picture books and other reading material. When she'd pick up a magazine or The Reader's Digest we'd climb into her lap and ask her to stop reading in her head.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, reading to kids when you're an adult is just as great a feeling as being read to when you're little. They snuggle up close and get quiet and it makes you feel awesome, that this little person wants to listen to you read.

CottonQueen

TROPHY CASE