Danielle Moonstar

Danielle "Dani" Moonstar, originally codenamed Psyche and later Mirage, is a fictional Cheyenne superheroine appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. The character is usually depicted as associated with the X-Men.

A mutant, Moonstar originally possessed the psionic/psychic ability to telepathically create illusions of her opponents' fears or wishes. She later developed a wide range of psionic and energy manipulation powers. She also developed some magical abilities after a series of adventures in Asgard. She was a member of the X-Men's 1980s junior team the New Mutants and, after a long absence, its reincarnation X-Force.

Publication history

Created by writer Chris Claremont and artist Bob McLeod, Mirage first appeared in Marvel Graphic Novel #4: The New Mutants (1982), and appeared as a feature character in New Mutants (1983), New Mutants Vol. 2 (2003), Young X-Men (2008) and New Mutants Vol. 3 (2009). She appeared for a portion of the initial run of X-Force (1991), first as an infiltrator to the Mutant Liberation Front and later as a regular X-Force team member. She was also briefly a supporting character in Avengers: The Initiative (2007) and can be seen sporadically as a background character in Uncanny X-Men and related X-Men titles. Moonstar appears as a regular team member in the all-female 2013 series Fearless Defenders by Cullen Bunn and Will Sliney.

Psyche (Locke)

Psyche is a semi-opera in five acts with music by Matthew Locke to a libretto by Thomas Shadwell with dances by Giovanni Battista Draghi. It was first performed at Dorset Garden Theatre, London on 27 February 1675 by the Duke's Company with choreography the French dancing-master Saint-André. Stage machinery was by Thomas Betterton and the scenery by Stephenson. The work is loosely based on Jean-Baptiste Lully's 1671 tragédie-ballet Psyché.

Composition, performance and publication

According to Peter Holman, Psyche was "the first semi-opera written from scratch." It has over a dozen musical episodes and requires a large orchestra. Holman believes Locke composed it in response to the visit to Britain of a French opera company under the direction of Robert Cambert, which performed the opera Ariane, ou le mariage de Bacchus at the Drury Lane Theatre in March, 1674. Locke had produced his first semi-opera, The Tempest, in the same year and was eager to follow up its success with Psyche. Despite the theatre charging treble the price for tickets and the lavish staging, it was not as great a financial triumph. As a contemporary, John Downes, wrote:

Psyche (spacecraft)

Psyche is a proposed orbiter mission concept by NASA to explore the origin of planetary cores by studying the metallic asteroid 16 Psyche. This asteroid is the exposed iron core of a protoplanet, likely the remnant of a violent collision with another object that stripped off the outer crust.

16 Psyche is the heaviest known M-type asteroid, and heaviest known Themistian asteroid. Radar observations of the asteroid from Earth indicate an iron–nickel composition.

Overview

Psyche was selected on 30 September 2015 as one of five semifinalists for the Mission #13 of the Discovery Program. The winner will be chosen around September 2016, and must be ready to launch by the end of 2021. The Psyche spacecraft would use solar electric propulsion, and the notional payload would be an imager, a magnetometer, and a gamma-ray spectrometer.

The mission would launch in 2020 and arrive in 2026 for a year of science. Data shows 16 Psyche asteroid to have a diameter of about 252 km (157 mi). Linda Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona is the Principal Investigator. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory would manage the project.

Kink (film)

Kink is a 2013 American documentary, produced by James Franco about the BDSM website Kink.com.

Early production

While filming scenes of About Cherry at the Kink.com San Francisco Armory, Franco noticed the dynamic between actors and the production crew. He stated that this interested him, as in some respects, it was a similar dynamic to that of the production at Saturday Night Live. It was this that led to Franco developing an interest in this aspect of the BDSM culture. After coaxing director Christina Voros to an interview at the Armory, she agreed to do the film. The other reported influence for Franco's decision to make this documentary, was an unsuccessful sex tape, with his girlfriend.

People featured/appearing

Reception

The movie received positive reviews from The Hollywood Reporter and Variety.

KinK

KinK was a Canadian documentary television series, which first aired in 2001 on Showcase. The series profiled some of the more unusual edges of human sexuality, primarily the kink and fetish scenes. It was filmed in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg; the fifth season, set in Halifax, Nova Scotia, first aired in September 2006. KinK was produced by Vancouver's Paperny Films.

Concept

This series highlights different people's real-life kinks, as defined by the person being observed. Each episode takes an in-depth look at the lifestyles of two or three people (or couples), and how their kink affects their life. Each season of the show follows these couples as they learn and progress through the lifestyle.

Seasons

See also

Kink (sexual)

In human sexuality, kinkiness is any unconventional sexual practices, concepts or fantasies. The term derives from the idea of a "bend" (cf. a "kink") in one's sexual behaviour, to contrast such behaviour with "straight" or "vanilla" sexual mores and proclivities. The term kink has been claimed by some who practice sexual fetishism as a term or synonym for their practices, indicating a range of sexual and sexualistic practices from playful to sexual objectification and certain paraphilias.

Kink sexual practices go beyond what are considered conventional sexual practices as a means of heightening the intimacy between sexual partners. Some draw a distinction between kink and fetishism, defining the former as enhancing partner intimacy, and the latter as replacing it. Because of its relation to "normal" sexual boundaries, which themselves vary by time and place, the definition of what is and is not kink varies widely as well.

See also

Funk

Funk is a music genre that originated in the mid- to late 1960s when African American musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of soul music, jazz, and rhythm and blues (R&B). Funk de-emphasizes melody and harmony and brings a strong rhythmic groove of electric bass and drums to the foreground. Funk songs are often based on an extended vamp on a single chord, distinguishing them from R&B and soul songs, which are built on complex chord progressions. Funk uses the same extended chords found in bebop jazz, such as minor chords with added sevenths and elevenths, or dominant seventh chords with altered ninths.

Like much African-inspired music, funk typically consists of a complex groove with rhythm instruments such as electric guitar, electric bass, Hammond organ, and drums playing interlocking rhythms. Funk bands sometimes have a horn section of several saxophones, trumpets, and in some cases, a trombone, which plays rhythmic "hits". Funk originated in the mid-1960s, with James Brown's development of a signature groove that emphasized the downbeat—with heavy emphasis on the first beat of every measure, funky bass lines, drum patterns, and syncopated guitar riffs. Other musical groups, including Sly & the Family Stone and Parliament-Funkadelic, soon began to adopt and develop Brown's innovations. While much of the written history of funk focuses on men, there have been notable funk women, including Chaka Khan, Labelle, Brides of Funkenstein, Klymaxx, Mother's Finest, and Betty Davis.