#also this is apparently the video he uploaded to a dating website and it was like. 9mins of him eating this bowl of cereal

[stevengrant-my-beloved]

(he love me) he give me all this money I Part 1 [18+]

Series Masterlist

summary: A brief interaction with a catfish on a sugar daddy website leads to something quite unexpected and suddenly you're on the radar of genius tech billionaire Nathan Bateman, and honestly, you don't mind the attention.

chapter warnings: just a whole bunch of swearing honestly, catfishing (?), mentions of substance use (alcohol)

a/n: okay so, i've been listening to qveen herby's sugar daddy A LOT lately and if u couldn't tell from the title, that song basically inspired this fic. i really hope y'all like it 'cause honestly idek what this is, i just pumped out 2k words while running on zero sleep , so.. let me know what u think

also just a note about the texts in this fic

> Texts like these are from Nathan. [bold and italicized]

> texts like these are from you [italicized]

Here's the thing about getting (responsibly) piss drunk with a group of friends who are all enablers and won't ever discourage you from doing stupid things on a whim, as much as it sounds like an epically bad idea, sometimes (read: very rarely) it yields positive results.

Like that one time, fueled by copious amounts of liquid courage and the encouragement of your drunk friends, drunk you had sent that presentation you'd drafted to your then crush (who might have also been an coworker at the time), basically to try and convince him that you would be a good partner, and you'd ended up getting a really adorable email back saying that he was also interested and definitely would love to go on a date sometime.

That relationship had lasted a solid 6 months (which was really great considering your track record), and it had been good run, ended amicably even. You and your now ex co-worker were still on good terms, so yeah, all in all, a positive experience.

Then there was that one time you and your friends had gotten drunk and, for some goddamn reason, had gathered all the unsolicited dick pics you'd received over the years (because again, for some goddamn reason, you still had them in your DMs) and filmed your reactions to each and every dick pic (without revealing the senders, of course), commenting on the quality of the images (lighting, angles, etc.) while also rating each dick. Sober you had then used that footage, edited it to perfection, included digital renderings of said dick pics to add to the video (because as NSFW as your channel could get, you didn't need to put actual dicks in your videos) and uploaded it to your channel.

Currently, it was your most popular video, and the one that had quite literally made you famous overnight. A bunch of commentary and reaction channels were suddenly talking about you, and you'd even gotten messages from a lot of creators you looked up to, commending you on your hilarious content and hoping to see more.

Okay so, it really was just those two instances where you'd gotten something good out of heavily drinking.

That would change soon, though, because your next drunken adventure with your friends would change your life in ways you would have never imagined (in the best way possible).

---

"I can't believe I let you assholes talk me into this-" you groan as you scroll through the dozens of messages you'd received over the past few hours on your freshly created dating profile.

"Hey, this was your idea babe, we were just being loving and supportive-"

"By encouraging me to sign up on secret benefits dot com?" you ask, glaring at your friend over the rim of your coffee mug.

For context, you'd just woken up with a killer headache (as you do every weekend, because you and your friends have zero control and always, always get drunk off your asses on the weekend) to your phone absolutely blowing up on your nightstand from notification after notification, alerting you of a new 'Daddy' that wanted to get to know you better.

Apparently drunk you had thought it would be a real fun idea to sign up to become a sugar baby, and your equally drunk friends had agreed (because of course they did).

You had begrudgingly opened some of the messages that you'd received, and most of them were pretty tame, surprisingly.

"Yeah, I'm deleting this," you mumble, clicking through the page to find the deactivation option, not before taking a few minutes to admire your own profile (drunk you had a made successful attempt at creating an enticing profile for a sugar baby, it seems).

Once you get your fill of your own pictures, you head to the deactivation page, only to be greeted with a little pop up message that says-

"Oh, what the fuck, I have to keep my profile up for a whole week?" you yell.

Your friends all groan out some variation of "keep your fucking voice down" from various parts of your bedroom, and you turn to the one friend who somehow wasn't hungover at all despite how much you all had to drink the night before.

"It says I can only delete my profile after 7 days," you say, holding up your phone so your friend could see.

"Can't you just delete the app off of your phone?"

"I could...but ugh, I don't just want my pictures up on some app like this- I need to delete my account."

"So just wait out the 7 day period, maybe chat it up with some rich men and see if they'll give you their money, I don't know," your friend shrugs, before turning back to their phone.

Huh.

"Yeah, fuck it," you mumble, going back to scrolling through the messages on SecretBenefits, looking at the profiles of all the older men you'd matched with.

Maybe this would make a fun video...

---

It takes you an hour to set everything up, but eventually you're ready to film what's sure to be your next best video "Trying to Find a Sugar Daddy (Not Clickbait)".

"Hello everyone, I hope you're all having a great day," you say, waving at the camera. "Welcome back to my channel, this of course is another episode of Girls Just Wanna Have Funds, Specifically This Girl, This Girl Needs Money and She Needs It Now."

You laugh at your own stupid intro, before continuing. "So, the other day, my friends and I got together for drinks, and yeah I'm sure you can guess where this is going, we got drunk, and I ended up creating a profile on SecretBenefits, and I'm stuck with it for the next 7 days, so here we are," you chuckle as you hold up your phone, checking to see if the screen recording was still working.

"I'm not really trying to find a sugar daddy, this is purely for entertainment," you say before leaning close and whispering, "but if some rich zaddy wants to send me some money I wouldn't be opposed, ya know? Alright, so drunk me apparently already swiped on a bunch of potential sugar daddies, but I think we can do better so I'm going to try and get more matches. Obviously we're going to censor everyone's faces just in case anyone's actual father is on this app and you're watching, like, I really don't want to be involved in any family drama like that."

You set out to swipe on interesting looking profiles, commenting on just how big of a range of potential daddies this app had to offer.

"Okay, so that's not just an older man, that's literally a grandad, nope- wait, this guy included a picture of himself at his own wedding, oh my fucking god- 'looking for something discreet' he says- my guy maybe don't post your wedding pictures for anyone to find? Like I could easily track down this man's wife and snitch on him. Wait should I do that?" you ask, looking at the camera. "Comment down below if I should snitch on Matthew, 52."

You continue swiping through more profiles, occasionally snorting at the few messages that popped up from different matches.

"Okay, Dave wants to know if we've been on any other sites looking for an SD... SD? Sugar daddy? They have codes now?" you laugh incredulously. "I'm going to say...'no I haven't'."

Just as you're about to call it a day on swiping and focus on the matches you'd gotten so far, your eyes zero in on the next profile that shows up, and-

"There is no fucking way Nathan Bateman is on this app, this has to be a catfish situation right? Right?"

You look up at the camera. "I'm going to swipe right. It's probably, most definitely, not him, but if it is..." you trail off, looking off to the side with your eyebrows raised high.

It's a match!

Funnily enough, you'd actually made a video on Nathan Bateman, CEO and Founder of BlueBook. The video itself had been a Top 10 style video, where you'd rated various billionaires based on their looks and wealth, while also ranking them based on how willing you'd be to ignore their massive ego and wealth to be able to fuck them. Other notable figures on the list had been Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne and Lex Luthor (who'd ranked dead last) to name a few.

You phone pings with a new message from 'Nathan Bateman'.

NB: Hey.

hii :) quick question are you really the Nathan Bateman ??

NB: Yes, I am.

NB: Any matches?

"Imposter Bateman is asking me if I've got any other matches." You wink at the camera with a cheeky smile before typing out-

nope, just you :))

NB: I'll send u money if u send me a picture. Topless.

"Oh wow, he's getting right into it," you scoff at the camera. "No seriously, how stupid does this person think people are, because this sure as hell isn't Bateman 'cause the only pictures he has are like ones you could find online, like they're all paparazzi shots from before he moved to his private island or wherever the hell he fucked off to, and the few selfies I see here look edited so..."

You tap your chin a couple of times, before snapping your fingers

"I'm actually looking to be a sugar baby, without the sugar," you say out loud as you type out your response to Imposter Bateman, before tapping on another message thread.

"James just texted 'you look delicious', bye- okay, he looks kinda cute though, hm."

Just as you're about to type a reply, you get a notification from Imposter Bateman, and it has you gasping.

"Oh- oh my god, he just- I just got absolutely lambasted."

Imposter Bateman had replied to your earlier message about wanting to be a sugar baby without the sugar by saying-

NB: You just want my money

NB: You're not even that hot

You're still wheezing from laughing so hard when you look at your phone again to see that Imposter Bateman had deleted the conversation and blocked you.

"You guys see this?" you ask, holding your phone to the camera, even though you know you're going to be including the screen recording in post.

"Nathan Bateman, I don't know if you'll ever see this but, ouch dude. That was so harsh, you just told me I'm not hot," you pout at the camera, faking incredible sadness before laughing out loud again.

"Also, 'you just want my money'? Uh, yeah, that's what every sugar baby is here for, the app is literally called secret benefits? The benefit for me being money?" you say, shaking your head.

You go through more messages from other sugar daddies (15 to be exact), reading out their texts and formulating responses while talking to your camera, making sure to include as many funny quips you can think of before filming your outro.

"Alright guys, that's it for this video. I hope y'all have a great day and Daddy Bateman if you're watching, make up for my heartbreak by sending me eighteen hundred dollars?" you plead at the camera. "Please?"

---

The seven day wait period goes by pretty quickly, and once you deactivate your SecretBenefits account, you upload your final edited video, which had been sitting unpublished on your account for the past five days. It was short, only 10 minutes long, and it hadn't taken you a lot of time to edit, but you'd decided to post it after you'd taken down the account because the last thing you needed was for your fans to sign up for the app and try and find your profile.

The response to your video was amazing, but you expected nothing less from your loyal subscribers.

What you didn't expect though, was for them to take to Twitter and flood Bateman's mentions, asking him how he could possibly think you weren't hot. They even managed to get the hashtags #imposterbateman and #daddybateman on the trending page for a day.

And you certainly didn't expect to hear from the man himself, because the very next day, you get an Instagram notification saying @thenathanbateman_official is following you, followed by a text notification that read-

> Send me your IBAN

You blink at your phone for a few seconds before typing up a reply.

> ??

> well hello to you too mr. bateman

> Yeah hi, I need your IBAN

> can't you just hack into my shit and find out?

> why're u asking

> I can, but I thought I'd be polite and ask first.

Just as you're about to reply, you get a notification from your mobile banking app, which almost makes you chuck your phone at the wall.

You've received $1800.00 from Nathan Bateman

What the fuck?

> u watched my video???

> Videos. Saw the one where you ranked me too.

> no way- fr ?? 😭

> Fr.

> wow ummmm i hope u liked them ?? idk what to say

> Your videos are pretty funny . Liked the dick pic one.

> everyone likes that one yea

A few moments pass, and you think maybe that will be the end of that. You move to put your phone back down, but it pings with a new notification.

> Imposter Bateman was fucking blind.

> You're really hot.

welp, lemme know what y'all think-

#m writes #(he love me) he give me all his money #nathan bateman x reader #nathan bateman au fic #nathan bateman fic

[artblooger19moon]

Jeff the killer

Not many people know the true origin of the original Jeff the Killer image. Many people believe it was a photoshopped picture of a woman named "Katy Robinson", who allegedly committed suicide due to excessive cyberbullying after visiting 4Chan's /b/ board around the year 2008, and it was believed for several years that the picture of the girl was apparently the now famous Jeff the Killer image. However, this claim is entirely false and has been debunked numerous times, as there are no records of it actually happening. The Jeff image has been seen in places which date to 2005. It has been seen in a Japanese video published on YouTube on 2 August 2007 entitled "NNN臨時放送", which is apparently for a horror film project entitled Victims of Tomorrow or something to that effect, wherein a series of names and ages are listed. After Jeff's face appears for a split second, there is text that says "good night", which might be a precursor to "go to sleep". The earliest confirmed sighting of the image was on 16 November 2005, on a Japanese message board named pya.cc along with another image that Sesseur also posted, where he claimed that the alternate version was his original design concept. Sesseur's earliest known internet presence was 14 August 2008 where he made a Newgrounds account called "killerjeff" where he acted as if he were Jeff. The original Jeff the Killer video was uploaded on 3 November 2008.

The origins of the image and the subject it portrays are still unknown, as well as how it connects to Japan's internet culture. The most likely story is one that is unverifiable. In this version of the story posited by a few /b/ users, the photograph is of a woman whose identity is currently unknown (although it is speculated that her name is Victoria). She streamed on the now defunct website Stickam in 2005 and used /b/ as a means of promoting herself after the SomethingAwful forums started to become obsolete. One user took a screenshot of her face and posted it, acting as if they were her, with the caption: "Am I pretty?" In a successive series of images photoshopped by different users, one said in response: "now you are." After finding out about this series of events, the woman stopped streaming and vanished.

Three images of Jeff are nowadays generally accepted as being from the thread if it did occur: the famous one, the "alternate version" as Sesseur claimed it was, and a much more realistic although lower-resolution version building off the most famous version.

#jeff the killer #jeffrey woods #creepypasta characters #creepypasta #drawing #fan art

[worldfootballrumours]

#World Football Rumours

[skybirdpulse]

Isis flag

“I seem to be the only person that’s spotted this, and nobody seems to be raising any questions or pointing it out,” said CNN reporter Lucy Pawle. The Secret Service says it is 'aware' of a photo that appeared to show an image of an ISIS (also known as ISIL or Islamic State) flag in front of the White House. So CNN, as is its wont, blasted the headline “ISIS FLAG SPOTTED AT GAY PRIDE PARADE” for a rollicking seven-minute segment, even going so far as to pat itself on the back for the “scoop.” Indeed, during the network’s live coverage of Saturday’s gay pride parade in London, an intrepid CNN reporter claimed that she’d spotted an ISIS flag among the rainbows. “The award for greatest moment in global Pride celebrations actually had nothing to do with gay marriage, and everything to do with the idiocy of CNN,” said Oliver. Explore 'Isis-flag profile at Times of India for photos, videos and latest news of 'Isis-flag. And the outrageous screw-up served as perfect comedy fodder for satirist John Oliver on his excellent HBO program Last Week Tonight. 'Isis-flag News: Latest and Breaking News on 'Isis-flag. Saipov, who was shot in the stomach by police, was. One of the biggest foot-in-mouth moments came-of course-from CNN during its coverage of London’s gay pride parade on Saturday. Saipov requested to display ISIS’s flag in his hospital room and stated that he felt good about what he had done, the complaint states. The words ISIS is COMI had been spray-painted on a wall on the school’s east side, KUTV reported. It was the day the Supreme Court, in a landmark 5-4 ruling, legalized gay marriage for all Americans-including the 13 states where same-sex marriages had been banned.There were mostly positive reactions to the SCOTUS ruling, as well as some strongly worded dissents from Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. The American flag was left shredded at the scene.

No other changes.Friday was a historic day for America. But the video of the flag being raised appears to show younger children chanting Isis slogans, which may suggest that indoctrination is being led by women in the camp, according to one expert. The flag contains two parts of the shahada, an Arabic declaration of Islamic faith which asserts that Allah is the one true God and that Muhammad is his prophet. The graphic image depicts the 23-year-old Egyptian feminist, artist, and social activist Aliaa Magda Elmahdy facing the camera, nude and menstruating over the Islamic State flag, IS painted in. This is a flag known by some as the Black Banner. Higher svg resolution from same file: resized by "Inkscape". This Dildo Flag Was Mistaken For An 'ISIS Flag' By CNN. Svg image based on press photographs (original 2007 upload apparently based on a picture of the "Official website of Islamic State of Iraq" which can not now be traced press photographs showing this flag first appear in early 2006).Ĭlick on a date/time to view the file as it appeared at that time.Īligned "svg" image scale (1000x1000) to page size (1000x1000). (more precisely, the "seal" design is based on a 1980s facsimile of Ottoman era copies of letters written and sealed by Muhammad, in which the copyists had manually inked the seal impression the jihadist flags seen in press photographs do not show the seal as circular but in a slightly irregular shape that faithfully mimicks one particular such specimen see w:seal of Muhammad for details).Īlso note that the representation of this seal formerly uploaded to commons but since deleted is merely a graphist's "fictionalisation" of what the seal might have looked like the actual artefact on exhibit as the "seal of Muhammad" in Istanbul is rectangular) It shows the shahada in an arrangement that includes the image of the historical "seal of Muhammad" This particular version is used by the "Islamic State of Iraq" and by al-Shabaab in Somalia.

Description Flag of Islamic State of Iraq.svg

#Isis flag

[vanityloves]

lol i updated my promo/pinned. heres spencer eating cereal for 30 seconds i still need to edit my carrd so w/e ajdjd

#brainworm ivy #video #food #im tired n kinda emotionally drained #but this time i have a legitimate reason. if i reply extra slow thats why. #icarly rambles #also this is apparently the video he uploaded to a dating website and it was like. 9mins of him eating this bowl of cereal #but imagine being on set and just. watching him eat for who know how long/how many takes. wtf. #hes kinda built like a rectangle.

[femme-malewife]

Can’t an Idol Fall in Love? (Sara) Honeyworks Novel Chapter 6

Disclaimer: I’m not a professional translator, please bare that in mind as you read through it all

Masterlist here

Ever since the music festival, Dolce had done a wide variety of different detailed activities that even Uru could barely keep up. They were no longer just doing mini-lives at bookstores and commercial facilities, but now also local events in the metropolitan area. They were actively showing off their performances.

Uru was surprised one day when her father brought back a memo for a business trip to a local rural area.

According to him, Fuuma was arranging a website to show off their activities. On it, you could see the introduction of the members and the dates and times of upcoming events, as well as songs and dances.

There was also a guide to the video sharing service site they were using.

Apparently, each member distributed things separately.

“I didn’t know there was someone in that famous idol group who likes this place, Uru.” Her grandfather said while polishing a cup at the Mimi counter.

Uru raised her face from her chocolate drink she had at the cafe area. She was supposed to help today, but she’d been seated as a customer.

“Yeah. I mean, he hasn’t really complained about it.”

Her grandfather was talking about Sara. The reason why she hadn’t mentioned his parents names in Dolce activities was because Sara didn’t want her to. Of course, Sara’s already appeared on TV as a child actor, so a lot of people already knew who he was.

(Sara-kun, there seems to be a lot going on with your parents...)

How long ago was it that she saw Sara throwing his phone away?

The screen on the phone had an incoming call, with the name flashing Mother on it. Sara had grown up with excessive expectations as a child celebrity and suffered with his own identity.

Seeing him like that made her heart squeeze.

Uru turned to the newspaper on the counter. Along with it, this morning’s advertisement was also folded and placed. On the front image of it had a supermarket in a nearby neighborhood, and had some pudding on it as the main product.

“Won’t you eat pudding with me?” Was the caption under the image, with Toujo Sara on the cover.

After the summer festival, Sara changed his way of doing things and showed off his parents big names to everyone, and it was starting to be exposed.

(I think it’s a great achievement for Dolce to start being more well known to the older generations)

And along with Sara, who started to advertise on TV, the other four members were putting in their own effort as well. They were the talk of the internet quite often.

Maybe it was because of the images of Fuuma that were leaked, or the videos of Kippei’s street dancing, but either way, Dolce was getting a lot of attention on SNS and was gaining more followers everyday.

It also helped that their website had various guides to video sharing sites.

(Among them, Mameido-kun and Nemuri-kun’s dance lessons for elementary and junior high school students is really interesting...)

Girisha and Kippei taught dance as a type of physical education class for school. A free video called “Dolce Dance Club” was increasing the amount of views.

With the combination of the dance moves with their opposite personalities, it was easy to understand that the two laughing boys were good at what they did. It was always well received, with comments like “it’s so easy to use!”

(And Fuuma-kun and Haiga-kun are focusing on their songs)

Fuuma always handed out advertisements, while he and Kazuki uploaded many songs to the video site.

People who watched Sara on TV, students who checked out the videos for lesson preparations on their phones in their spare time, people who listened to their songs...

The fan base was steadily expanding.

On Uru’s phone, Dolce was on her screen.

The office had officially recorded the stage of that unforgettable summer music festival. It was Dolce’s most viewed video.

“Because it was the best...”

It was regrettable that Uru knew how bare it was.

Of course, more than that, she knew everyone in Dolce thought it was more painful and regrettable.

“But...no one is broken.”

Their regret turned into determination. Uru believed they were going to keep moving forward through it all.

“Uru, did you say something?”

“No, nothing. I’m going home. See you.” Uru handed him her empty cup.

“You should have some cake too.”

“It’s fine, I have to go study now! Oh, everyone please take your time and enjoy yourselves!” Uru said to the store full of regulars.

“It’s amazing she can study with such a bright face.” Uru heard someone say.

(Yes, it’s amazing because I have Dolce!)

She loved Dolce. She loved their singing and dancing- and Fuuma too. She also admired them for pushing for their dreams without giving up.

Uru herself also chased her own dreams.

Thanks to Operation Dolce the Carrot, Uru’s performance in her studies were increasing. Because of this, Uru may be able to aim for an even higher high school. One with a confectionery club. Some higher high schools had clubs where you can learn specialized confectionery techniques.

It was a good way in being on her way to becoming a chocolatier.

(I’m still doing my best. Everyone in Dolce is doing their best, so I can do more!)

She knew she could do it.

(I love them, they’re the strongest!)

💞

“Well, looks like you’re doing fine.”

When Uru got back to the apartment, Sara had just exited the Dolce room.

“Yep! Thanks to Dolce.” Uru answered him with a smile.

“What, is there something on my face?”

“Hmm. I just feel like after all this time, you look different in real life.”

“...Ah, you mean my appearance on TV?”

“I think you look a little more beautiful on TV, but then the real life you’re...uh, well, kind of lazy? You look really sluggish.”

“I just make more facial expressions outside my personal life.”

“Oh, like that product ad? It looked so professional. The advertisement for the pudding was so brilliant! I was surprised at your smile.”

“Right.”

He had a proud smile on his face that she had never seen on him on TV.

Thinking about it, it’d been a long time since the two had really spoken, and that was when she could see his face the most. Sara had been very busy ever since the festival ended.

“Um...”

Uru felt like there was a lot to talk about. There were many things she wanted to hear.

But it didn’t work out.

“Hey, Sara, get in the car already!”

From outside, the person calling out to Sara was their manager.

“...Alright, I’m off.”

“Yep. I’ll keep supporting you.” Uru smiled and waved at him, seeing Sara off. She watched Sara’s back as he walked away. But for some reason, she felt really lonely. Her mouth opened to try to call out.

(But what would I say..?)

She didn’t know.

Words weren’t coming out.

But...

Sara’s legs stopped in front of the elevator. He turned around before Uru could call out to him.

“Thank you.”

“...Eh?”

“For before, with that insane chocolate theory. It was surprisingly touching.”

Oh, now she remembered.

Don’t expect things to come out great just because the ingredients are great. She told Sara that once.

“To be honest, I didn’t really understand it at first, but now it feels like I got it.”

“Oh...I wish I had...”

“No matter how delicious the chocolate is, it doesn’t make sense if you don’t eat it. I’m going to eat it. To get to know Dolce, I decided I need to make the most of my parents fame.”

(I see...so that’s why he started appearing on entertainment TV for Dolce...)

The elevator arrived on their floor.

“Are you coming? To the Higashi-Meihan.” Sara asked as he got inside the elevator before the doors shut.

“Of course!”

The Higashi-Meihan was a tour for Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Performing at the live tour at those three locations was called the Higashi-Meihan Tour.

Dolce was going to be performing as though to make up for the summer music festival.

Uru sent a V sign with her fingers with the meaning that she was going to be buying a ticket.

“I’ll be waiting.”

And with that, the elevator doors closed.

_

The heat of summer passed, the leaves of the roadside trees changed color, and Uru didn’t have the chance to talk to Sara.

Eventually, the there were dead trees around, and the lead-colored winter came.

_

The Following February

The Dolce Higashi-Meihan Live Tour headed towards it’s fial day of the Tokyo performance in an explosive success. The day was very cold, and the line of people continued on from the opening into the snow.

Uru felt overwhelmed by the length of the line. The scale was definitely different from the live shows so far.

She knew the maximum number of seats in the venue, but upon seeing it, she was still surprised.

(This really is a tremendous breakthrough..!)

All the seats were inside. Everyone held penlights in their right and left hands as they waited for the opening.

The lights turned off in the venue and the crowd shifted.

A countdown was projected onto the screen.

And finally, it began!

A vivid laser light burst, and five people wearing wolf motif costumes popped out from it. The cheers grew loud.

The song Irodore was the opening song.

Fuuma, Sara, Kazuki, Girisha, Kippei.

Even though it was February, they were sweating while running around the stage, singing and dancing with all their might. Uru could tell they were all enjoying themselves with their whole being. And above all, they were doing their best to entertain the audience first.

The power of the song fit the fan head on.

Soap bubbles and jet smoke colored the song.

The flashy stage exploded with colors one after another.

The spectators also got excited, being pulled into the world of Dolce, filled with five people.

At the end of Baby, Baby, Fuuma sang with all of his heart. Kazuki leaned over and covered his voice with his own singing, with tears in his eyes.

“Thank you very much for coming today!”

“We’re still not done, though!”

“We’ll go even further!”

“Please follow us!”

“We won’t lose!”

The five members looked at each other and nodded, pressing their shoulders together.

“Let’s go together! Beyond this dream-!”

The sound of a canon concluded the dreamlike time. At the same time, all the hardships and regrets were pushed out of Uru’s chest.

Her eyes started getting very hot, and tears were overflowing one after another and didn’t stop.

It was an amazing stage.

It was a heartfelt performance with lots of emotions.

(Dolce has changed..!)

Uru always chased Fuuma as the main character during live shows, because Fuuma was admirable. She was always moved by him. Because Fuuma was shining.

But today was different.

Each member showed their individuality and shined dazzlingly. She was fascinated by everyone, and each one of them attracted Uru’s gaze.

Dolce’s charm had increased many times and each color exhibited each individual.

Dolce was still moving forward. More and more, far higher than before, beyond their dreams!

And next week, Uru was going to challenge high school entrance exams with the power they filled her up with today.

💞

After putting on matching t-shirts, everyone jumped onto the stage in response to the encore. Cheers like waves swallowed Sara and the others.

The audience was pitch black, but the sight of the countless colorful penlights shined like the starry sky.

When they sang to their fans with their whole body, the cheers of all the fans came back. It resonated, and it felt like the fans and Dolce were united.

This was his first time.

Even when he appeared in a popular drama as a child actor, he had the famous producer provide him with original music.

When he released a solo CD as Toujo Sara and had his own concert.

He never felt such excitement from his body.

He also thought it was hard to leave the stage like this. He wanted to sing more there. He also wanted to dance more there.

(This new me was born in Dolce-)

It didn’t matter if he had a big name father or mother, or what his parents abilities were. His urge to sing and dance was Toujo Sara’s. His own.

(You were right, Uru)

Uru was in the middle of the audience.

He wasn’t sure how he found Uru in the dark seats. However, a mysterious force sucked his gaze in.

She was staring at Sara from there.

Her eyes were glittering at him, like the time they had with Fuuma at the audition.

#ouji uru #toujo sara #dolce #honeyworks #lisians translations

[natromanxoff]

Queen live at The Summit in Houston, TX, USA - December 11, 1977

This is the legendary Houston show - legendary largely because its video was the one of the most sought-after documents of Queen for decades. Bits of footage have been seen in various documentaries dating back to 1987's "The Magic Years."

The filming (pro-shot footage that was shown on the big video screens during the concert) was the result of an agreement with the venue not only for Queen, but plenty of artists who played at the Summit during this period. The footage of Aerosmith, The Eagles, and Kiss is well-known amongst collectors, and the footage of Kiss, The Who and Bruce Springsteen has been officially released. Springsteen surprised his fans in 2010 with 1978 footage that was released in a box set. Footage of Led Zeppelin is rumoured to exist as well.

The performance is fantastic overall, although it's a bit of a rough night for Brian. After flubbing his solo in Somebody To Love and the transition from Death On Two Legs into Killer Queen, he breaks a string a minute into Liar. Roger has to improvise on his hi-hat for a short while until his guitarist gets a Red Special copy. They then play a spectacular version of the debut album gem, with an extended jam in the middle where everyone shines. Brian plays great from here onward.

Freddie, after '39: "We'd like to try out something very different right now. This is from the new album, the News Of The World. Have you got it yet? The album, that is." He feels the need to distinguish the album from the British tabloid of the same name, but it actually wouldn't matter to an audience outside of the UK. "Ok, you might just about recognize this one. This is called My Melancholy Blues."

Freddie makes a very rare reference to his recurring nodule problem which was an issue at many points in his career (but not during this great period for him). "It's a real bitch of a song. It really gets to the nodules, but we're gonna do it for you tonight. This is..." (he hesitates and chuckes to himself, probably because he's surprised at himself for even mentioning it) "a song entitled White Man." He offers a great version of the song, as his voice is in superb shape tonight.

The high quality of the recording is apparent at the end of White Man, as Roger can be heard dropping his drum sticks with the knowledge that he has a 10-15 minute break ahead. The band skip the reprise of The Prophet's Song - the only time this is known to have happened on the entire tour - as Brian jumps right into Now I'm Here after his rather unique guitar solo (which starts with him fiddling with his EBow). Perhaps this was done because of time constraints (having a limited amount of film?). At the end of Now I'm Here, Roger breaks a drum stick during his brief drum break before the final fanfare.

This show was also filmed by Bob Harris' Old Grey Whistle Test crew, along with plenty of other footage (on and off stage) from the tour, originally intended for a documentary for TV in spring 1978 that ultimately never aired.

On January 14, 1978, short clips of the regular and fast versions of We Will Rock You from the beginning of the show (overdubbed with the studio version) were seen on German TV (ZDF Kultur Rockpop), possibly a combination of the in-house feed and the Bob Harris footage.

In 1989, My Melancholy Blues from this show was released on the UK 12" "The Miracle" single, and on The Miracle CD single in the UK and Austria. Also in 1989, an edited version of the song was seen on the Rare Live video release.

In November 2009, the band posted some concert videos from the 70s on their website in conjunction with the release of their "Absolute Greatest" compilation, including The Millionaire Waltz and a non-edited My Melancholy Blues from this show. The picture was brightened for the latter. In 2011, the complete and visually unaltered My Melancholy Blues was posted on iTunes.

Some of the Bob Harris footage from Houston was first seen in the 2011 Queen documentary "Days Of Our Lives" that aired on BBC Two. Rhys Thomas, producer of that documentary, has confirmed that Houston was the only complete show filmed on the tour. He added that there are bits of Houston footage from other angles as well, often filmed from backstage, with no audio, and no complete songs. Thomas stated in 2012 that the Harris documentary and the Houston concert may be released as a package in the next couple years. Only the former has come to fruition thus far, in the form of the "American Dream" documentary in the News Of The World box set released in 2017 (also broadcast as a slightly different edit on the BBC as "Rock The World" in the same year). Much of the backstage footage in the documentary is from Houston as well, including footage of Mercury speaking about the show afterward - particularly about how he tripped and fell in his entrance for Now I'm Here, about Brian's broken string in Liar, and how audience enthusiasm is "up and down" on this tour, compared to the smaller venues of the previous tour.

An overdub in the second verse of We Are The Champions in the 2017 documentary clarifies that a 24-track master of this show does indeed exist in the Queen vaults (the drums sit differently in the mix as well) - see Chinwonder's video analysis for details.

A great picture of the crown lighting rig was taken before the concert by the head of the Queen crew, Peter "Ratty" Hince, and it can be seen on his website.

Pro pictures from this show can be seen at http://www.rockinhouston.com (pics 26 through 39). (I can’t upload them here but you can check from the link!)

#queen #queen band #roger taylor #freddie mercury #brian may #john deacon #queen concerts

[onisiondrama]

Onision: IRL EP: 2 - Onision’s Response videos summary Part 4 (Final part for his Reacts channel responses to episode 2.)

These videos are all over the place with everyone referring to Kai with different names and using different pronouns. I'm just going to refer to him by his current name and pronouns.

In the video summaries, I’m going to refer to James as “Onision” during documentary clips and “James” during his responses. Hopefully that makes things easier to read.

"Onision Documentary Dead Names and Misgenders Trans Man Repeatedly" (7 of 8)

Clip from the documentary plays. BigMoneyOnision says Onision is the most reviled person on the internet and someone needs to hold him accountable. James insults BMO’s appearance and says, "what the hell is this creature?" BMO says he's been following Onision for over a decade. James calls him a loser. They play a clip of Jaclyn Glenn saying Onision calls himself honest as a shield so he can be a dick. James plays a clip of Jaclyn saying she wishes him the best that he has a beautiful family. James says she doesn't sound like a very consistent person. He says one day she hates him, the next she doesn't, and now she is hating him again.

That clip of Jaclyn came from her response to his 2018 public apology to her. Hmm.. first he hates her, then he likes her, now he hates her. Seems inconsistent. 🤔🙄

Steven says Onision's relationship to Kai was his longest and most complicated relationship. James says he doesn't know what he's talking about. He says they're still married to this day. He points out they deadnamed Kai and says Kai hates everyone involved with this documentary. Steven continues to talk about Kai, but every time he misgenders Kai, James pauses it to point it out and tells them to stop misgendering transgender people. Steven says Kai would constantly reply to Onision's twitter. 

In the beginning of the second episode, the documentary has this text:

I don't buy it. Everyone who misgendered and deadnamed Kai during the storytelling parts continued to misgender Kai throughout the rest of the documentary. It's a mess and people call Kai by three different names throughout the whole show. I think the people who made the documentary were too lazy to tell the interviewees to either consistently misgender / deadname during the appropriate times for story telling / timeline purposes or to get everyone to call Kai by his current name and correctly gender him. Everyone who was interviewed seem to be on a completely different page when it comes to talking about Kai.

Steven says by December 2012, Onision and Kai are married and Kai's parents don't understand why a man nearly 10 years older married Kai within months of meeting. James says that's a lie and he's on good terms with his in-laws. He says they all flew across the country to be at "my” wedding. He calls Steven a dumb-ass. James shows a photo from his wedding and points out Kai's father, mother, step-dad, and sister. He says Steven recklessly said they don't support their unity, yet here they are supporting their unity. He says, "you guys are an embarrassment to journalism."

So James' #1 evidence that Kai's family is on good terms with him is the fact that they showed up to their child's wedding 8 years ago? James is conveniently leaving out the multiple videos he's made about how Kai's father tried to break them up while they were dating due to their age gap (17 and 26) and the grudge he’s held against his father for years. James even banned him from their home a few years ago.

"Onision Documentary Slander, Complete Embarrassment to Journalism, Discovery +" (8 of 8)

Doc plays. Clip of Repzion saying he didn't write the letter. They show a clip of Onision saying Repzion is the reason people are afraid to post videos online, because of psycho, creepy stalkers like him. James shows the email from Repzion apologizing to him back in 2017. He says Repzion is admitting to sending his in-laws an email and apologizing for it. He says his in-laws are no-doubt disgusted by him.

I just want to point out, the clip of Repzion was from when James was accusing him of sending his in-laws a physical letter in the mail. Repzion admitted to sending them a Facebook message and denied sending the letter. DSSCTM admitted to sending the letter.

James shows this on screen:

Edwin says Onision was pressuring Kai to date a girl. James says Edwin is being transphobic by misgendering Kai. Steven says we don't understand what was going on behind the scenes, but whoever Kai was is gone. James says they don't understand what went on behind the scenes, yet they make a whole documentary about it. He says himself and Kai don't talk to the doc because they are idiots that self-admittedly talk about things they don't understand.

Shiloh says she watched Onision break Kai like he broke her. James says he never called the cops on Billie or Sarah, yet he called them multiple times on Shiloh because she's a "psycho bitch." He says everyone else he dated were all way better than her. He shows thumbnails of videos he uploaded with Shiloh to his main channel and he says you don't see someone being broken. He says in the "My Girlfriend Is Beautiful" video, you see her have a mental breakdown and him being supportive. He says she thinks she can just eliminate his entire video library that proves their final videos were all positive and she fabricated the entire abuse concept. He says she got caught cheating and getting pregnant with another man's baby and she didn't like getting caught so she fabricated the abuse story. He references his page about Shiloh and goes over points he's already made in previous videos. He says she's proven a pathological evil liar.

Doc plays a clip of James and Kai with Kai looking uncomfortable. James jokingly says, "add that to the abuse reel." Edwin says he believes James is molding Kai. James says Edwin has no excuse for misgendering because they just announced Kai identifies as a guy. He says Edwin continues to misgender Kai because he's a piece of shit.

Shiloh says she no longer believes that Kai is a victim, she thinks Kai is a predator. James says it's a waste of time to speculate and it's an opinion reel.

The doc tells the story of Alicia Kozakiewicz. James says it's inappropriate they brought up a story that has nothing to do with himself and Kai. He says he's a law abiding former US air force cop.

He goes through his Sarah page on his website to prove she wasn't groomed. He says he found more texts and is going to update the page. He says Chris Hansen and anti-o's are morons for believing anything illegal happened.

Alicia K says she believes Onision and Kai found venerable victims. James says they're using the chick who was beaten and violated to speculate they are bad people. Alicia says they became friends with the girls, then they took away their power. James challenges Alicia to do research and look at his Sarah page. He says they blatantly ignore the texts he shared because they want to cash in on a fraudulent #metoo. He says there literally no actual victims.

Text on screen says in 2012, Kai begins an online relationship with 15-year-old fan, Regina. James says Kai was 17 for the majority of 2012, so it was a 2 year age gap. He says the first time he was Regina was on Chris Hansen's interview. He says they apparently dressed up as a dude to be on the show twice. [He plays the same clips as every other time he accused Regina of this. 🙄] He says the documentary admits Kai never met Regina.

I don’t think this needs to be said, but Regina did not pretend to be another person to get on Hansen’s show. Also, James was so upset the documentary misgenders Kai, but he keeps misgendering Regina.

Regina says they initially lied about their age to Kai. Regina told him they were 19 when they were really 15. James says Regina admits they'll lie to your face. He calls Regina a "stone cold liar."

Even though Kai did the same exact thing to James that same year? He lied to James about his age, yet Kai is not a stone cold liar?

Regina says they asked their mom if they could visit Kai, but she said no. James says he doesn't know what Regina is talking about. He says that's news to him. He doesn't know why Regina would visit them. He plugs his Sarah page again.

[tarry-a-lot]

French Musical Recommendations/review (Part 2)

I should have mentioned in part 1 but I don't speak French (well a bit but not enough to understand the lyrics unless I’m reading it or something) so if the lyrics aren’t that good my bad I honestly wouldn’t know, 

Also this is in no particular order, I don't think all the shows mentioned in part 1 are better than the ones mentioned here, there will be a part 3 at some point

1789 Les amantes de la Bastille: I think this may be my second or third (ties with Mozart) favourite French musical based solely on soundtrack, it’s about the siege of the Bastille and the days leading up to it with a focus on two lovers Ronan a revolutionary and Olympe Marie Antoinette’s children’s governess (the actress who played Olympe was also Guinevere in roi Arthur musical), my favourite songs are “Sur ma peau” and “La rue nous apparent” it is available in full on YouTube, IMPORTANT: This show has two endings, I don’t want to spoil so perhaps skip what I’m about to write though I will try to be vague: the scene before the song “fixe” at the end, the two characters switch place mattering on which version your watching, one version was done towards the start of the run and late 2013 they seemed to have made the change, the full version uploaded and the dvd have the original ending (I personally prefer the original but the other is not bad as well). also in 2012 when the show was staring with the showcase costumes are really different and you’ll find Ronan is played by Matthieu Carnot who plays Lazare in the full production later on instead because he had vocal issues resulting in getting replaced and given a more minor role (I think he’s great in his new role though, “Maniaque” is a bop)

Non-music: I have yet to see it in full but from clips the lighting is great and really adds to the songs and emotions, the story is pretty straightforward but nice, and the choreography is good from what I’ve seen, also for a “historical” show the costumes aren’t that bad, I would assume not accurate but a good balance of inaccurate and historical looking enough

Japanese Toho ver. (1789 バスティーユの恋人たち) 2016 clips are available on YouTube, the costumes in this version is fun, it’s non-replica but they really went off on Olympe’s costume, I will be honest a little bit sad about Ronan’s yellow jacket being replaced with a dark blue, also one of the Ronan actors (Olympe, Ronan and Marie-Antoinette are double casted) looks too old, especially compared to other Ronan actor who really has the young energetic vibe about him (though if memory serves me correctly his sur ma peau was strangely annoying to listen to)

Takarazuka ver. 2015, clips are available on YouTube if Japanese title along with “宝塚“ is added in search

Notre-Dame de Paris: a musical based on Victor Hugo’s novel of the same name, it is different from the Disney musical, this is another popular French show, if you like Romeo et Juliette you’ll probably like this, it can found in full on YouTube along with different translations/adaptions, I won’t go to in depth on different version on here like I did for R+J but if your interested the Wikipedia page is quite detailed and can tell you about all the casts and cast recording available, I have yet to watch it in full but so far I think Belle and Le temps des cathédrales are my favourite songs (quite basic I know), it’s one of those shows you can’t go wrong with, from the parts I’ve watched and listened I think it could become one of my favourite shows

Non music: From the bits I’ve seen the wall backdrop is really cool, It has nooks and platforms that appear and disappear and it’s just really cool looking, WARNING, this is a bit of the spoiler so maybe don't read what I’m about to write but if you’ve read the book its not that much of a spoiler but there is a hanging scene at the end so if that imagery is something your sensitive to please be wary, it’s at the end (on the YouTube video of the full original show its from 2:03:42-2:03:54)

Don Juan: I love this show (I strangely found parts funny and a bit cheesy which is why I liked it), It’s pretty much about a man Don Juan who is a know heartbreaker who is only into sex drinking and having fun but no love, he then falls in love with a woman, shocker, and conflicts arise from there, honestly I don’t see a lot of content for this show but I think it’s fun, the dancing is primarily flamenco (music is heavily inspired by the dance as well) and it’s impressive, the singing is great, the full show is available on YouTube, my favourite songs are probably “Les fleurs du mal” and “Jalousie,”  It opened in Montreal originally then went to Paris, the full show is available on YouTube (I think the Paris version) and there is also a full 3 and half hour behind the scenes video of the Paris production online, from what I can tell up till the symphony version of 2019 Don Juan and his love Maria has been consistently played by Jean-François Breau and Marie-Ève Janvier (obviously there were understudies and such) the actors are also married/were dating during the show which adds to it when you see them perform together 

Non-Music: a character described with black hair in the song chorus is blonde/brunette and I thought that was hilarious, some strange choreography with Don Juan especially in Jalousie, he walks up and down stage and it’s awkward, aside from weird parts in general the costumes are ok (gets better in later productions), the set is plain but with some fun props, I think the dancing is probably one of the highlights along with the live band present on stage for certain songs (photo from Quebec 2013 production) 

Don Juan (Théâtre St-Denis) 2004 Montreal, also had Canada tour after its Montreal premier in Feb.

France Tour 2005 Palais des Congrès à Paris performance recording and behind the scenes is available on YouTube 

Korean Tour 2006, the French cast touring, non-costume concert versions and actual performance clips are available on Youtube

Korean Cast, 2009 (March~) (뮤지컬 돈 주앙) separate from the tour which was the French cast touring this is an all Korean cast, act 1 and 2 can be found on YouTube (video called “돈쥬앙 1막“ and “돈쥬앙 2막“) though it seems to cut around so It’s like a pieced together version of the acts, other clips are also available, it is a replica production

2012 revival Montreal, from what I read it only had 10 performances? and with it released a cd with new recordings, “nous on veut de l'amour“ and “L'amour Est Plus Fort“ 

Grand Théâtre de Québec 2013 (August 9-18), you could call this a continuation to the revival in Montreal 

Takarazuka ver. 2016 (June+July) (ドン・ジュアン) the page is still up on the takarazuka website for this production, there’s a ad with clips from the show available on niconico (should come up if you search the title in jp and add takarazuka in jp) also this version Don Juan is strangely more touchy with his friend, not mad guess it adds a new tension to the plot, non replica production though it is quite similar to the French one, they don’t stray too far

Don Juan Symphonique 2019 (Feb 12-16): At the Montreal Symphony House they had a concert version with the original cast (or at least the original Don Juan and Maria), along with the OSM (Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal)

Japanese ver. 2019 (August/September + December) it’s non-replica, there’s a trailer for it online but it only features Don Juan, I found blog posts about it but currently while I write this it’s late so perhaps I’ll update with more info later, maybe not

Moscow Concert 2020 (March 17-22) (Дон Жуан or Don Juan) This is still in French with a French cast but this time the leads are no longer the original, Laurent Ban is now Don Juan, supposedly according to a Russian video it was meant to go on tour after Moscow (State Kremlin Palace) but I’m assuming the issue with the virus changed plans, I’m surprised they were going to go on world tour I honestly think it’s not true, the interview with cast can be found on YouTube with bits of songs, however the Russian concert advertisement is only a recording from the 2005 French, from what I can tell it is a replica, I believe it was cancelled before the premier due to Covid-19

The research for this show took me all day, maybe if I was fluent in French it would have been faster, if I’m wrong in parts feel free to comment and correct me and I’ll edit it

Les Trois Mousquetaires: Not to be mistaken with the Broadway/Westend show of the same name and base material from 1928 with the revival in the 80′s or the other three musketeer musical at the North Shore theatre in 2007 (the one with Aaron Tveit and Kevyn Morrow), or the other musical by George Stiles and Paul Leigh, this is an entirely separate 2016-2017 musical that follows the general plot of the literature it’s based on though simplified, it’s ok, not great but not the worst, I probably would rank it lower than roi Arthur, I will admit I haven’t listened to the full show, it’s quite catchy, my favourite song so far is probably “Je t’aime c’est tout,” there is a showcase concert in full, music videos and official soundtracks available on YouTube but I would advise checking out the live versions, the ensemble backing parts are really great and they get cut out in the recording versions which really cheapens the songs for me, In general ok show, really not the best but has its highlights (like the four lads relationship is fun to watch, dancing is great, singing is good), 

Non-Music: Athos the oldest of the 3 musketeers is actually the youngest actor though he is a few year older than the D’Artagnan actor, It’s minor I guess but I didn’t realise who Athos was until looking up the cast list and was shocked, Also Athos really doesn’t sing because Brahim Zaibat who plays him is a dancer, despite this his dancing skills really add to the fight sequences making them very impressive and fun to watch, it’s more concerty in style and a bit interactive with the audience, from what I can tell the sets seem plain and the costumes are really awful (in my opinion) like Athos’ shirt is so revealing to the point he might as well not wear a shirt, also Constance’s outfit is just a no for me

#1789 les amants de la bastille #notre dame de paris #les trois mousquetaires #the three musketeers #Don juan #musical theatre #French musicals #takarazuka #musicals #theatre #rambling

[worldfootballrumours]

#World Football Rumours

[mwolf0epsilon]

Just like how Keanu Reeves became a National Treasure™, Josh becomes a National Treasure™

Josh has a huge fan base that wholly adores him and maybe wants to marry him (At least in my fics he gets the respect he deserves).

---

[[MORE]]

"Leo, when I asked for you to keep an eye on what's going on in social media regarding public opinion on the pro-android campaigns, I didn't mean this..."

The brunet glared In mild annoyance as Markus walked into the kitchen holding his laptop. His annoyance escalated to mild irritation when he noticed his Accord profile was online.

He promptly got up from where he was seated with the others, dropping his cards on the table on top of everyone else's (which made a winning North throw up her arms in anger at her sudden loss), and walked over to his brother to snatch it away from his hands.

"Don't snoop through my shit, asshole!" Leo growled as he set the laptop down on the table. "I've been keeping up to date with shit too, so don't get your panties in a knot..."

"Playing Fuck, Marry, Kill with a bunch of strangers online isn't keeping up to date with public opinions..." Markus groaned.

"Shit, they started a round of FMK? Nice..." Leo snorted before shaking his head. "But in all seriousness, that Accord server there, is an exclusive team of elite that I assembled for that little favour you asked. They're pretty good at keeping me up to speed on things... Sometimes shit doesn't really happen all day tho, so we get bored and discuss the finer things."

"Like Fuck, Marry, Kill?" North rose an eyebrow in disbelief.

"Yep." Leo popped the 'P' at the end for emphasis before beginning to type into the chat. The four androids noticed his chat handle was 'KingOfTheUrbanJungle', an obvious play on his actual name. Charming. "Usually it's pretty chill, unless there's been anything dodgy going on online. We got an expert keeping up with the shadier sort, and another that's been keeping tabs on android supporters and community modders."

"Isn't modding illegal?" Simon asked.

"Only because Cyberlife's pitched the hissiest of fits over their merch being potentially stolen and copied, or worse, repaired at home. Cyberlife hates DIY engineers and mechanics that have an eye for robotics...That sort of crap. They're intimidated." Leo explained as he left an inquiry on who the FMK prompt was for. "That's not even accounting for people who can't fucking afford their ridiculous insurance policies. You know they tried to bill dad after the cops shot you down..."

"They did what?!" Markus looked horrified.

"Yep. Tried to bill a bed-bound elderly man who nearly died of a heart attack. Dad told me they only got their tiny dicks back in their pants after Elijah Fucking Kamski rained hell on their parade since technically he has full rights to your software and design..." Leo shrugged "Score one for androids being property I guess... But only this once."

"Those sons of bitches..." Markus muttered darkly before the laptop pinged.

"Oh! Ooh that's a hard one..." Leo mumbled as he read the prompt, sent by someone going by 'LatinaLatte'. What an odd chat handle. "Damn."

"Is it celebrities?" Simon asked.

"Nope. She's asking out of Markus, Josh and North, who we'd fuck, marry and kill." Leo admitted with a grin on his face.

Everyone stared at him.

He gulped.

"...Obviously I would not fuck Markus...?" He offered "But I'm uh, not inclined to kill anyone so uh...hard choice?"

They still stared.

And then the chat pinged.

Someone going by 'LamentingMercenary' immediately presented their thoughts.

"Fuck North, marry Josh, kill Markus." Leo wrinkled his nose "Of course he would, what an ass..."

"Wow this game sucks..." North glared daggers. She was not too inclined with being the subject of someone's fantasies.

Another ping, 'LatinaLatte' this time.

"Fuck Markus, marry Josh, kill North." Leo read.

Another ping from 'MercifulDisappointment'.

"Can you fuck and marry Josh and kill both North and Markus?"

Leo cackled when 'QueenBitch' replied to the last comment with a clearly disappointed "No" while everyone else started laughing in chat. Leo nearly forgot he had an audience.

"Ok so uh, there's like a lot of people saying fuck and marry Josh...consistently." Simon pointed out. "Not one person has said kill Josh."

"It's rigged I tell you..." North grumbled. Leo blinked at her in confusion and then shook his head.

"Nah not really... There's like, a fan page of you guys, with polls and shit...Josh is like, #1 in all of it."

The others, including a very uncomfortable and flustered Josh, all stared blankly at him.

"...What?" Markus asked.

"You really don't know? Markus I linked you the damn Facebook page..."

"Nobody uses Facebook anymore!" Markus protested.

"Well fuck Markus, they still do and holy crap it's insane... Here." He quickly closed his Accord tab and opened up the ancient website that should have been dead and buried by now thanks to a lot of law suits, but that came back crawling from the grave every two years. Surely enough there was a fan page dedicated to the Jericho leaders and Josh scored the highest in popularity, with Simon coming close second.

"What the shit?" North gawked.

"Yeah... Crazy right? Makes sense tho, Josh is like...The perfect poster child here." Leo shrugged.

"How exactly?" Josh looked very uncomfortable.

"...Dude...You're nice. And nonthreatening? You help old ladies across the street, you're very gentle with kids, you help with the community..." Leo listed off "You're not... I donno, overly perfect and unapproachable. You don't openly fight people. You don't yell, you don't hide away at the tower all day... People get like, super nervous around Markus and North, and they see very little of Simon so you're like... The only Jericho leader they ever actually seen being a part of society?"

There was a collective silence from the four androids. They were stunned really, after hearing all of this.

It was a little hard to process.

"You're all doing good out there, fighting the good fight and helping who needs it... But yeah honestly you three are a bit too scary. Josh is openly kind and outgoing and that gets people more at ease..."

"So basically... People prefer Josh because he's just... Being himself?" Simon blinked.

"... Yep."

"...."

"To be fair, it's easier to get behind the cause of someone who reads to kids in his free time."

"I...How did you know about that?!" Josh frowned. He hadn't told anyone what he did with his spare time.

"It's on YouTube. Some of the androids at the tower uploaded videos of you with the kids at New Jericho. It's super cute dude."

"Oh god...That's really creepy! And embarrassing!" Josh covered his face with his hands in mild distress.

"It also apparently made a chatroom with 11 people horny for you." North pointed out.

"North, not helping!"

"Then stop being so cute all the time!"

"He can't it's in his nature." Simon shook his head sadly.

"Simon don't encourage her!!!"

Leo smirked as he watched Markus sigh and try to help mediate the ensuing argument, before typing into the private Accord server chat.

"Can we all agree Josh is like, a national treasure, and that deep down we'd all marry him?"

The chatroom seemed to wholly agree with him on that one.

And then 'G69D' commented.

"So would you fuck or kill your brother? I know for a fact you'd not go near North even with a 20 foot pole."

Leo grimaced and closed his laptop.

#eps writes: #fanfic #detroit: become human #detroit become human #leo manfred #dbh josh #dbh markus #dbh simon #dbh north

[saleintothe90s]

384. “Mad About You” series finale (5/24/1999)

(source)

So, I remember watching the series finale of Mad About You that night, but I haven’t watched it again since it originally aired. I do remember feeling let down at the end however. This is what I remember from 20 years ago, maybe I’ll remember some forgotten details once I re watch it...which I will after I make this list: 

- Janeane Garofolo was Paul & Jamie’s daughter Mabel all grown up and she had come out with a documentary about her life? Her dad’s life? The film was everything after 1999?

-Paul & Jamie bought the apartment across from them and merged it into theirs? Which didn’t make any sense. Everybody had to walk through P&J’s bedroom to get to the expansion?

-Paul & Jamie were pregnant again with twins but she lost the babies? I just remember the scene where Paul rushes into the apartment with a double stroller excited that he found one. He sees the message light on the answering machine and it’s Jamie. I was trying to figure out if this was early on when Mabel was still a one year old, and one seat in the stroller was for her, or Jamie was pregnant with twins. 

-Paul’s dad died real early on in the episode. 

-Paul and Jamie wonder who should give her the birds and the bees talk when Mabel is a teenager, but turns out they waited too long. When Paul sits down with her to discuss it, she interrupts him and says that she’s already had sex, or she was already on the pill. Paul decides to take Mabel out for bagels every Saturday morning so he can remain closer to her. I just remember them eating bagels and sitting on a stoop. 

- Paul and Jamie separate for realz this time. Remember when they temporarily separated but then got back together and Jamie got pregnant with Mabel?  

[That episode is titled “The Finale”, please don’t confuse it for this one like I almost did. In case you’re wondering about my bitmoji dressed like a snail, our power went on and off the entire time I was writing this. I went ahead and used that save video me website so I could watch the clips offline.] 

- Jamie had become really cold at that point in her life and Paul had it. 

-The last scene was everybody watching Mabel’s documentary in a movie theater and P&J were a little embarrassed. Paul (almost crying) asks Jamie if she would like to go out for pie.

-Clearly they hadn’t shot enough because the last five minutes were “home movies” of the two and Mabel in central park. The montage seemed to last for-ever. 

-Before I re-watch, I also wanted to mention that I hate the theme song! 

I found the episode on DailyMotion, and the username of the uploader is “Magic School Bus” ... ms. frizzle is that you?  It also appears that Ms. Frizzle recorded this episode from syndication, so there might be a tiny scene or two missing. 

(part 1, part 2)

(Apparently it’s on the internet archive too, but it took forever to get the vid to play on my iPad. It has commercials though!) https://archive.org/details/MelrosePlaceHomeImprovementFinales1999 

So, Mabel’s film was titled “The reason why I am this way”. Maybe a grad school project?. Janeane looks grad school age here. 

The film starts with Paul & Jamie’s anniversary when Mabel was 1 in 1999. I was right!

A bird pooped on Paul! Nah, it was just Lyle Lovett the construction worker spilling paint. He married Jamie n Paul 7 years ago, but turns out he’s NOT an ordained minster, so they’re not officially married.  This is so dumb. Such a trope, right? 

Jamie is freaking out that they’re not really husband and wife. Paul is the rational one here, he says just go to city hall next week! Jamie is all “no, we gotta do it today, its our anniversary!”  So they go, there’s a chapel at city hall, there’s a lady named Phyllis there as a witness and who throws rice (25¢ a throw!)  

Stupidly, however, Jamie runs away. I do remember this freeze frame from the episode.

There’s lots of jumping around through time while all this is going on, I forgot about that, I just thought it was a straight up timeline.

We jump to 2005 where P&J are in therapy for the thousandth time, also when Paul goes in for a vasectomy. At first, I didn’t realize that Jamie was talking to her sister, Lisa in the waiting room since she had short hair. Jamie tries to explain to her that Mabel doesn’t need a sister, but Lisa guilt trips her. Jamie tells Paul that she thinks they made a mistake. They Michael Scott-eded it:

It’s 2011 and P&J are trying to give 11 year old Mabel the sex talk.

In 2004 Murray (remember, the dog? Yeah, the dog got forgotten somewhere in the series) got a girlfriend and they had puppies!  There is the best scene ever where Paul teaches Mabel how to shoot video and Nat the dog walker (played by Helen Hunt’s then husband, Hank Azaria) does a play talk show with the puppies. IT’S TOO CUTE, I put it on instagram. I forgot that Hank was on the show. I still remember how heartbroken I was though when Hank and Helen broke up, though.

There’s a real quick scene in the sports shop that Paul’s family owns (which I forgot about in the series). Jeff Garlin (who I like to call “Daddy Goldberg” since I love him on The Goldbergs) is teasing Paul for all his vasectomies. blah blah. You know what I noticed? That old Sketchers shoebox! Those ugly chunky metallic shoes they made in ’95 ’96 used to come in those boxes.  aw. ugliest shoes I ever had, they were most def. Airwalk Jim knockoffs. ANYWAY.

Mabel’s first film “Stabbing Bob” comes out in late 2021 when she’s 23. The whole family is there, including Cyndi Lauper who married Paul’s brother  cousin Ira. The whole family tries to get Paul and Jamie to sit together, so obviously something went DOWN between 2011 and 2021. This is when the syndicated version cuts off.

Part 2 begins again with Mabel’s documentary and her asking “Who do you think was responsible for my parents breakup? The one who ran away from the altar and changed her mind three times about whether or not her partner should have painful private surgery … or the other guy?” So when this film was made, Jamie and Paul were still broken up? Mabel is really tearing Jamie up a new one here. Jamie is the devil.

Back to 2005 and Jamie is pregnant, because Paul didn’t get that vasectomy. This is where everything is back on track with my memories of the episode. Except for those ugly ass pajamas. wow. Jamie is only supposed to be 42 here, the pajamas and glasses made her look 60.

2012, Mabel is 14 and she never did get that sex talk…perfect tribute to Whitney though, considering she had recently died.

Oh, no here comes the stroller scene in 2006. Paul is so happy, he says, “I found it! Last one in the city, and I found it! One big seat one little seat! 2 kids, one carriage! One big happy family. ” Uh, Mabel is 9.  The “one big seat, one little seat!”  makes me wonder if the writers forgot what year it was? Why would there be a big seat and a little seat?” Twins are the same size.  Those stroller seats look the same size. Paul finds a note left by Jamie, so it wasn’t an answering machine message.

In early 2021 we see Jamie’s bff Fran, FINALLY. I was wondering where Fran was! She was married to Richard Kind and he left her so he could ride motorcycles like “Easy Rider”, (remember when Fran kept calling the movie “The Easy Rider” and it drove Richard crazy, he was like, “the name of the movie is EASY RIDER, NOT ‘THE EASY RIDER!”). Riffs is somehow still open, martini glasses are taller, forks have clear spiral handles, and Fran be looking like something that walked off the Enterprise.  

Oh, and Paul left Jamie. Jamie now is wearing reading glasses around her neck. Oh, honey noo, you’re only 58.  Here is Helen Hunt in 2018:

Paul said that Jamie is unkind and that was why he was leaving.  

Aw, there’s my fozzie bear!

Costume and Makeup got Paul Reiser exactly right though!

After that, Paul & Jamie had to be straight with Mabel at all times. Ok, whatever:

 So I was also wrong about Paul’s died dying when Mabel was little.

On the way to the funeral, Paul’s mom encourages the two to pay a bribe so they can buy the apartment across the hall. She says, “Then Mabel can have a room.” …. Mabel didn’t have a room? She was 13 in the Murray’s not real scene. Where did she sleep?!  Now I remember thinking way back then that the episode left a lot of plot holes open, this being one!

I remember feeling kind of turned off by this elevator scene with the sad music after the funeral. I didn’t know the phrase back then, but now I know that it feels so forced. We get it. Paul’s mom is alone.

Casting didn’t do a good job with teenage Mabel, she’s supposed to be 18 in 2015 and it’s still the girl who played her when she was 12. w2g. I didn’t make a screen grab but I was right about Mabel having to cross her parents bedroom, and bathroom to get to her room. I was also right about the bagels! 

It’s back to the scene in late 2021 where everybody is watching the end of Mabel’s movie, “Stabbing Bob”.  I guess she was trying to be a lil Tarintino. Why did I think they were watching the documentary? Ha, at the end, Paul’s sister asks the family if they want to go out for pie. Yesss, the pie scene!

I did remember this from the pilot episode where Jamie kisses Paul on their first date when he turns to her. Jamie asks “buy me some pie?”, not Paul! I swore for 20 years I heard Paul Reiser tearfully saying, “I would like some pie” in my head!

Oh, one plot point that did get patched up was that Paul & Jamie asked the guy from city hall to come over and marry them in their apartment six seconds to midnight.

RIP, Murray the dog.

UGH, I was right about the long montage of the end that is just pretend home movies of the cast. It’s nearly four minutes long, and its set to country music. It’s hell.  I remember actually leaving the room during this part 20 years ago instead of just you know, muting the TV. It completely ruins the quietness of the episode. It’s total filler.

The ending credits are on Youtube, it’s adult Mabel giving a rundown of what happened to who.

Related:

More from the series finale series: https://saleintothe90s.tumblr.com/search/Series%20finale%20series

/edit/

I was curious and went hunting around in google groups (which houses newsgroup archives) to see what people said about it online right after it aired: 

Someone wondered too about where on earth Mabel slept until they expanded the apartment: 

>2)  Where did Mabel sleep before they got the second apartment and >turned it into a room? Shared with mommy and daddy?? Or maybe that little space before the bedroom.  Did they convert the appartments into one or move to the other side? I was a bit confused about that.

>>I wish I had watched Ally (but that's just my

>opinion).<<

Trust me, if you've watched the show at all this season, you've seen this episode.  Ally is depressed about no man, elaine whips out the video camera, the biscuit bobs his head to Barry White, does a gymnastic dismount from the toilet stall, stutters like Porky Pig, and all of the same fucking things he does every single fucking episode.  I really liked this show at first, but I'm about to give up on it because the same shit happens week after week after week.  If David Kelley cannot think of anything new to do with this show, he should hire a writing team, because it it going nowhere fast!

Brian

To know that Paul and Jamie's genes resulted in that shrewish frump Janeane Garofalo was one thing.  But to be "previewed" twenty years of their misery resulting in Mabel's therapy for bad parenting was pretty unbearable.

Crap.  Not quite as crap as the Rosanne finale, but more crap than the last

Seinfeld episode. I knew they were in trouble in the very first scene where

they set up the premise for the episode. Lyle Lovett tells them that he

wasn't really an ordained minister when he performed their wedding ceremony

and that he was drunk when he said he was. (now there's an original plot)

One problem: Lyle isn't the one who told them he was a minister and everyone

was sober at the time.

Then they have Jannene Garofolo as their grown up daughter, recounting everything thing that went wrong in their marriage, another lame plot device.

There're also a few little slips, like Paul buying a double baby carriage in 2005, when their daughter would be 8 or so.

But, to get to the root of why the episode (and the last two seasons for that matter) failed: The whole permise of the show was that these two likable, but occasionally goofy or even stupid, people were so much in love that they would always be together no matter what. Corny, naive, romantic, but also endearing. It made for a nice, comforting 4 seasons or so, but after a while the formula gets old. So they started making the characters a lot less likeable. Paul Reiser turned into Homer Simpson and Helen Hunt became a neurotic version of Lucy Ricardo, until I had no idea why these two people were staying together.

They got back to the original idea of the series in the last ten minutes, but it was too little, too late. In the previous 50 minutes, their whole marriage went to hell. Not only didn't those two people belong together, they didn't even seem to care about each other. They did something similar a few years back (marriage goes wrong, they still love each other and stay together) but it was convincing and they didn't do the gimmicky jumping back and forth over 25 years thing. That was the perfect moment to end the series.

I agree. I watched with the series finale of MAY with the morbid fascination that I would have while watching a car wreck.  I didn’t *want* to do it, but I was drawn to it.  And what a car wreck it was.

The plot of the finale should have insulted every thinking person.  Did anyone accept the premise that two sophisticated New Yorkers could believe they were legally married without having a marriage license and certificate?  For those of you who have never been married, you absolutely need such documentation for your bank accounts, health insurance, social security, credit cards, mortgages etc.   The retroactive vitiation of the Buchman’s marriage is akin to the Bobby’s dream sequence on Dallas a few years ago.

Jaime’s jilting of Paul at the “altar” was vapid.  Tim Conway’s gag in being both the marriage clerk and the justice of the peace was predictable, and as predictably stupid as Conway’s similar gags on the now ancient Carol Burnett show.  The pronunciation of “Buchman” to explain why Paul and Jaime had the same last name may have been amusing to a ten year old, but I doubt it was funny to anyone more mature.  A justice of the peace would not play the wedding march with a dime store cassette recorder while demanding that a prospective bride walk down the courtroom “aisle.”  Couldn’t they have done something interesting with the marriage witness instead of using a stock character such as the disinterested, magazine-reading rice-thrower?  From a legal standpoint, Paul and Jaime’s marriage at midnight was as ineffective as “first” marriage because there was no witness (contrary to the dialogue, a baby simply cannot be a legal witness to a marriage).  Why would a justice of the peace make a house call to perform a civil marriage?

The whole vasectomy gag was asinine.  Have either HH or PR been in a hosptial?  Did they do *any* research before they wrote this gag?  Its pretty safe to conclude that a surgical nurse would *not* lead a post- operative vasectomy patient through a waiting room while he was wearing nothing but a robe.  Moreover, given Paul’s obvious pain from the first vasectomy, don’t you think that Jaime would have known that Paul did not go through with the second one?  Wouldn’t Jaime have asked Paul if he went through with the vasectomy before she purchased and used a pregnancy test kit?  Jaime’s miscarriage was telegraphed from the beginning of the vasectomy gag.

The makeup aging of the characters was amateurish at best.  The sex talk difficulty with Mabel has been done by every sitcom since Leave It To Beaver, and most have done it better.  What was the point of the puppy urination scene?

The breakup and reconciliation was sentimental tripe.  In the real world, people that fight as much as Paul and Jaime do not get divorced and then, with one magic kiss, make everything OK.

Was it necessary to introduce a new character in the finale to narrate the Buchmans’ life story? (As an aside, I hated the casting of Janeane Garofolo (sp?).  She looked like complete crap.  Can’t that woman ever look presentable?  Someone should have given her a mirror and a comb before they began filming the episode.  She is a second rate Roseanne knock off, and, judging from last night’s appearance, she is now attempting to catch Roseanne in the weight department as well.)

The closing montage attempted to simulate a home movie circa 1960s such as that used in the Wonder Years.  But why would Paul and Jaime, a 1990s couple, have used such a medium for their home movies?  Also, even assuming the choice of medium was justified, why did they wave in quick, jerky movements at the movie camera?  Has anyone done that since the 1960s?

In the end analysis, the MAY finale was incredibly lame.  I got home in time to catch the end of the Melrose Place finale, and, IMO, even that show -- as bad as it is -- has more entertainment value than MAY.  At least they don’t take themselves seriously.  I am delighted that MAY is now over.  I hope that the poor ratings associated with the show will cause some retooling at NBC, especially in its high profile slots.

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#mad about you #1999 #series finale series #series finale #Helen hunt #Paul Reiser #nbc #janeane garofalo

[cyberdack-blog]

Week ending 6/22/19

Hi! Welcome to DillsVille. This is week one of my effort to write about my progress becoming one or both of two things: a professional MtG: Arena Twitch streamer, and/or a Software Developer or Cyber Security specialist. The latter really could go any which way, I’m not too choosy. I love computers and I’m in the process of studying programming with regards to game development, but my ultimate goal is to culture the skills necessary to get a job in the software engineering field at large. There was a recently announced cyber-security program at the community college near where I live, and that sounds like an exciting avenue for me to end up venturing down as well. So all-around, I want my career to be in tech. Primarily software-focused tech. At the same time, my number one biggest passion right now is Magic: the Gathering. With the release of Arena, Wizard’s premiere digital experience of the classic trading card game, there has been a huge boom in Twitch streaming. Of course, that means the competition is all-around pretty fierce, especially for someone like me who really doesn’t have any experience or clout backing them up to go into it. But here’s the way I see it. I love playing Magic. I love talking to people about playing Magic. I love analyzing my own play and improving myself through the game. What’s the best way I can accomplish all of this, while making the hobby an investment that can actually produce returns? That’s it: streaming. I don’t care if my viewership is 20 people per two-hour stream and I never get sponsored or anything like that. It’s not about getting big, although it would be nice. It’s about doing what I love anyway and extracting value from it. Even if the only value I get is feedback on my gameplay, either by re-watching my own recordings, or by having a live chat tell me just how much I’m screwing up. Anything else is gravy. So the stream will be starting soon. Right now, I’m working on getting my new account (featuring a username that matches this blog) past all the new-account bullshit they throw at you at the start. You kind of have to grind up through this Skyrim-esque tree of beginner decks. I’m just about to hit 5,000 gold, and I’ll use that to record a draft video and upload to YouTube this week

So that’s where I’m at with CyberDack the Twitch-streamer. This week is all about getting that draft vid up. The follow-up is to use the new account $5 bundle to get some gems and go live on Twitch despite not having a camera to show myself. My idea is to have two separate two-hour sessions each Monday and Wednesday. No particular reason for those dates, but it’s what I know I can commit to for a start. The stream will be from 5:30 PM PST to 7:30 PM PST. I’m pretty sure the $5 bundle can carry me through to enough content for that first stream, I’ll have to re-evaluate for the Wednesday stream.

So what about my other career? Well, right now I’m working on a video game built in Unity currently nicknamed Project Nightframe. My buddy Kenny, a veteran programmer currently working as a team-lead for user experience, is helping to mentor me through the process of creating the game. I can’t be more thankful for his help on the project. The idea is we meet up each week to discuss progress on a schedule we’ve established as bi-weekly development.

At the moment I’m a little behind from where I’d like to be on the project. Part of this has been outright procrastination. Last weekend in particular I really spent almost no time working on the game, thinking I could make up for it during the next week. Well, that next week has come and gone as well and I’m not a whole lot farther along. But that brings me to the second aspect of the problem, which is that I kind of jumped ahead of myself and my abilities.

You see, I thought I’d be able to create a working prototype in Unity within a week or two. At the moment, I have two sprites that I built in paint, and...nothing else. Instead, I’ve been focusing my efforts on a pair of tutorials for Unity in general. The first tutorial was How to Make a Rogue-like, but I realized even from going through that tutorial that I could benefit from backing a little farther up and experiencing a How to Make Your First Game in Unity, which is what I’ve more recently been doing by following the Brackeys tutorial.

In addition, I’ve been trying to progress through the codecademy website’s learner path for C# in general. I have to say, the codecademy course is particularly disappointing. It just doesn’t feel nearly as cohesive and rounded as their other tutorials have been like with projects for Javascript, which I really liked. The best example I can give is there was a lesson on finding the character index of a string. The example showed how they called a method to find the precise index of a known substring within a string (finding “cactus” in a larger sentence). Then the lesson asked you to build your own code for finding “the first letter” in a person’s name in order to address an email to them. The example does not illustrate how to find the first index position of a string, but it doesn’t matter. Apparently what they’re actually asking you to do is create the same method from the example to find the first letter “F” in the string.

The part that’s confusing about this is that in a real-world scenario, your code wouldn’t know what that first letter is supposed to be unless you’re manually looking at every stored value in your database that you’re trying to pull “the first letter” from! I dunno. If you’ve been through this lesson you know what I’m talking about. So what have I learned from going through these Unity tutorials and codecademy lessons on C#? Well...I’ve started to understand the basics of the Unity engine. How it creates scripts, stores them in your directory, and how the editor calls those scripts into its Inspector, which is really neat. I’ve also started to get a general sense of the flow with C#. Everything needs to be declared which is different from Javascript because in JS everything is interpreted automatically. You can’t just say “var yourMom = ‘example string’” and have it store that variable as a string in C#. It won’t even run. Instead, you have to say “STRING yourMom = ‘example string’”. Also everything has to end with a semicolon or it won’t run either! It takes some getting used to.

But I feel like I’m starting to get the hang of things to the point where I really ought to be able to get that prototype up over the next two weeks. My minimum goal is to have a working mouse-click event for my “Hacker” object that creates a pattern of highlighted tiles to be selected and moved onto. I think what this is going to take is a little more rooting around in the Unity documentation to get a better handle on events and also how an object can call a function to create another object or at least render an image in the game environment.

Either way I have a conversation with Kenny to look forward to and I feel like I’m a bit of a disappointment. I’m not sure how much crap he’s actually going to give me for not meeting the goals we set out, but my hope is that once he understands I was a little over-eager on my abilities, he won’t beat up on me too much. I even went through the process of tracking how much time I spent on the project and so far it’s been at least 5 hours of work. Most of that has been the tutorials, like I mentioned.

I did procrastinate, though. If I had really worked as hard as I would have liked on this project, I would be at 15 hours of project-related time. That’s basically 7.5 hours per week. So that’s my goal this next week! Even if it’s just more tutorial-grinding, I know that 7.5 hours of tutorials will get me a lot farther than I am right now. 

So, let’s recap.

Last week I:

- spent 3 hours on my Unity game: Project Nightframe

- created my CyberDack accounts for gmail, twitter, Twitch, YouTube, and MTGA. 

This week I will:

- spend 7.5+ hours on my Unity project

- record and upload to YouTube an MTGA draft video

My goal for the Unity project are to create a working mouse-click event that creates highlighted tiles around the player object.

If you’re interested in seeing me progress through these goals each week, follow me here on Tumblr where I will write about what I’ve learned, whether I met my goals, and what I plan to do with the next week!

See you then.

#mtga #programming #unity #twitch #personal #journal #june

[nstankey]

Celebrity as Practice in the Gaming Community

           The concept of celebrity as practice is an intriguing argument as it insists that due to the rise of social media, being famous or having your own fanbase is achievable to anyone.  This notion that gaining a fanbase on social media is attainable by anyone, even if they are not known for their offline presence.  Is there some sort of algorithm of how to run a social media account that can lead to gaining stardom?  While it is possible for accounts to become famous such as meme pages, you rarely see pages such as these where the operator is known as they typically are anonymous.  

According to Marwick and Boyd (2018), the largest social media entity that is used in celebrity practice is Twitter.  Twitter offers its users the ability to post short messages that inform others of their current activity, thoughts, or just random jargon.  Due to its format, Twitter offers its users a feeling of behind the scenes access to anyone whom one follows.  This brings fans and celebrities very close to one another by allowing fans to stay up to date on the information that their favorite celebrities are putting out into the world (Marshall, 2014).

Marwick and Boyd (2018) believe that celebrity as practice refers to the way that preexisting celebrities, who have an already established fanbase without Twitter being considered, use Twitter. This view is founded on the basis of symbolic interactionism, which refers to one’s image being created out of their own discourse. This discourse that stems from personal ‘tweets’ to their fans which in the eyes of Twitter refer to their ‘followers.’ This level of celebrity access and disclosure of information from a celebrity to their fanbase has never been seen before.  While the ability to put out messages to they public have been around for quite some time, the ability to do so on such a large platform, instantly without a mediator in between celebrity and fan has not (Marshall, 2014).  With this new ability has come new expectations from the public of an even deeper level of intimacy between celebrity and fan as new norms form suggesting that celebrities must update the public on aspect of their life that have been kept secret before Twitter.  This deeper intimacy infringes on a celebrity’s private and personal affairs by insisting that their fanbase has a right to know.  Thus, creating a “specular economy” in which we constantly project an image of ourselves on our social media accounts (Marshall, p. xxxvi).

Next, I will give examples of four internet celebrities that I believe to reinforce the ideas of celebrity as a practice that also strengthens these ideas of Twitter as a behind the scenes way for fans to stay ‘in touch’ with their favorite celebrities.  Each celebrity that I have chosen found fame on other social media type platforms, but all revert to the use of Twitter as their main form of communication with fans. These four celebrity examples not only reinforce celebrity as practice but also bring up intriguing thoughts about modern technological culture and how these self-made celebrities were able to create their celebrity status through social media websites along with the apparent dominance of Twitter as a sort of top-tier social media entity due to all four examples reliance on it to reach their fan bases.

My first example is Timothy Betar, known better online as TimTheTatman.  He found his fame on the gamer streaming platform called Twitch where he live-streams himself playing his favorite video games while having the ability to talk to his fans through the Twitch streaming website and they type messages to him.  Before his time on Twitch, he was just an average non-famous individual.  Now although Twitch allows for notifications to be sent out to all of his ‘followers’ whenever he starts a live-stream, TimTheTatman still finds the need to use Twitter to keep his fans up to date on stream times and his personal life.  One way in which he chose to use Twitter involved following the birth of his son, Brewer in 2019.  Unlike previously in American culture in which often times people take leave from work or celebrities disappear from the spotlight and into their own realm of privacy to go through the birth of a child.  TimTheTatman, used his Twitter account to inform his fans of new doctors’ appointments and test results.  Once, his wife was admitted into the hospital to give labor, he used his Twitter to post short video updates informing fans of what was going on. One video he ‘tweeted’ informed his chat that “My wife is only dilated two centimeters, so it looks like we are going to be in the hospital much longer than anticipated as she needs to be ten centimeters dilated in order to give birth.”  His use of Twitter in this case offers his fans with behind the scenes access to information at the same time as many of his real-life friends are receiving it and further reinforcing the technological and social media influenced ideas that take away a celebrity’s private life.

My next example is a YouTuber that goes by the name AliA.  He is a video game YouTuber with over ten million subscribers.  One way that AliA uses Twitter that reinforces the ideas of celebrity as practice is through his fan recognition.  Inside of the game Fortnite, which AliA currently uploads the most videos for, there is an item store in which players can use a code to support their favorite content creators, for which AliA is one of them, and a portion of the money that an individual spends in game goes to the content creator who’s code the player is using.  In each of AliA’s YouTube videos he asks his fans to use his code and to ‘tweet’ him a picture of the purchase they made using it which will say for example “Your purchase of the Easter Bunny Outfit supports AliA.”  After a fan ‘tweets’ a photo of their purchase that supports AliA to his Twitter account, he then often times replies to their ‘tweet’ as well as selects a handful of them to include in his next YouTube video in which their tweet will pop up on the screen in the video for all that view his video to see.  This offers a deeper level of intimacy and reward for his fans to not only watch his YouTube videos but to follow his Twitter and financially support his career through their in-game purchases.  This offers his fans a way to get recognized by himself and the rest of his fanbase through his videos and replies which creates a sense of hierarchy within the fanbase as those who receive responses from AliA are put on a sort of pedestal for the rest of the community to see.  This hierarchical sense conforms to the thoughts of Marwick and Boyd (2018) by their reference of fan relationships with celebrities in which they hold getting a response at the highest level of intimacy between fan and celebrity.

The third example is of Tim Havlock or Darkness429, a gamer who became famous on the video game streaming platform Twitch but was recently endorsed by Facebook to become one of the first Facebook streamers as they tested out offering a live stream platform utilizing Facebook Live.  What is so mind boggling about Tim is that he led to the success of the Facebook gaming industry by his unique and dedicated fanbase.  Tim, once again, uses his personal Twitter account to stay in constant contact with fans.  After one look at either a stream or one of his social media accounts it is quite apparent that Tim is an avid coffee drinker and considers himself to be a connoisseur.  He is sponsored by many different coffee companies and his Twitter is full of coffee related ‘tweets.’  His love for coffee has spread to his fanbase and ultimately created an online community to which he leads discussions about different brands and styles of coffee.  This supports Marshall’s 2014 thoughts on celebrities with social networks creating culture as Tim has brought the gaming community and members of the coffee community together to create an online community for them which in years past, the gaming community was thought to be full of soda drinkers.  

My fourth and final example is of Benjamin Lupo more commonly referred to as DrLupo by the online community.  DrLupo is another video game streamer who found his fame on Twitch.  He uses Twitter to stay in touch with his fanbase outside of his daily Twitch streams by ‘tweeting’ constant updates about the games that he streams himself playing, sending out polls for new stream ideas, and updating his fans on his life.  I would like to focus on his use of Twitter to connect with his fan base on a deeper level to allow for more interesting content ideas for his Twitch channel.  By sending out polls and asking for new ideas he is able to connect with his fanbase even more as they will help to create more interesting and fan approved content.  The use of Twitter to give his fans a voice in the kind of content he creates causes fans to be more supportive for longer periods of time instead of becoming bored with the same type of content until a new game comes out.  As a streamer this is an essential key to success as watching someone play the same video game eight hours a day six days a week can become old very quickly, so it is important to have some variety in streams.

I believe that these four examples strengthen the thoughts about celebrity as practice by scholars as seen in Marwick and Boyd (2018) and Marshall (2014).  Social media has allowed for fans to become more attached to their favorite celebrities by following their everyday lives. Social media allows for a closer relationship between fan and celebrity as there are no mediators such as gossip news organizations standing in between fan and celebrity.  Twitter is no doubt the strongest social media platform in respect to these ideas because it offers quick and immediate messages to be sent in a more simplified manner than the likes of Facebook, Instagram, etc.  The ability to send out messages to fans immediately is ideal for these celebrities in terms of advertising and self-branding as it puts them in control of their own image.  Unfortunately as these social media platforms have become the new norm for celebrities to have it does come with its own disadvantages such as a sense of entitlement felt by fans to know private information that society would not expect to be shared by non-celebrity figures and can therefore cause celebrities to lose all sense of a private life.  Celebrities who choose not to conform to this new norm of constantly updating your fanbase on your life could make themselves easy targets for celebrity gossip organizations such as TMZ which often create false articles to draw attention from fans no matter the face damage done to the celebrity’s image.

Reference List

Marwick, A. & Boyd, D. (2018). To see and be seen: Celebrity practice on Twitter. In Gail Dines, Jean M. Humez, Bill Yousman, & Lori Bindig Yousman (Eds.), Gender, race, and class in media (p. 525 - 535). 

Marshall, P. D. (2014). Celebrity in the digital era: A new public intimacy. In Celebrity and Power (p. xi - xvi & p. xxxii - xxxvii).

[kaialone]

Yokai Watch News: Forever Friends

Doing my monthly summary of recent Yokai Watch news once again.

Like always, information is taken from various website updates and Corocoro, and translated by me.

Beware of spoilers, naturally!

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We got news about:

5th Yokai Watch Movie - Forever Friends

Merchandise (showing off some new characters, too)

A bit of Puni Puni and World

Like with the past few times, I’ll only show information from Corocoro if it’s not shown anywhere else.

And due to time reasons, I won’t be doing full translations for everything, especially if it’s just repeated information that I already covered.

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Yokai Watch Movie 5 News:

The official website for the movie has gotten some updates again.

I’ll go over the minor ones first.

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The main page got this new cover image that we had previously seen in Corocoro:

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The general information page now also uses this image as a background for the “story” section, but the text seems unchanged.

It also has an added bit about Enma in this movie, among other things, but it doesn’t have any new information in there.

One thing of note is that the added cast list finally seems to confirm the name of this Whisper-like character:

Previously, it was unclear if he is supposed to be Whisper or not, since it was hard to understand him when he said his name. But now it seems confirmed that his name is 臼田さん/Usuda-san, so he’s probably not Whisper.

(Which makes sense, considering Whisper should be sealed up around this time.)

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The character page had some characters added, but no new information about them.

They did fix the apparent typo in Itsuki’s bio, so he’s no longer called a “yokai” here. Seems like it really was a mistake after all. I mentioned that typo in this post here, back in July.

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The design contest page now shows all winning entries. Note that, as far as I know, this information especially isn’t documented forever on these pages, so back it up if you’re interested.

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Now, onto the actual news page of the site.

There’s been a comment by TVXQ, the band behind the movie’s main song 大好きだった/Daisukidatta (”I loved you”) . But it doesn’t really have any notable information in it, so I won’t cover it unless I see people who really want me too.

Same with the short interview videos that Corocoro’s youtube channel did with Chiemi Blouson and Shun Oguri, which you can see here and here.

They all talk about the basic points of “this movie is about friendship”, and “please watch it with your parents”, which is nice, but something they went over before, like these comments from last month.

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Actual news is this section, where they introduce ”Yasha Enma”, a character that was name-dropped before, but we hadn’t fully seen him yet.

(Check out this post about the news from last month if you want to know the context of that.)

Here’s what they say about him:

"Yasha Enma", the ultimate king who controls fire and ice, unveiled!

The "Great King Enma" is a super popular character of the Yokai Watch series. His ultimate form, "Yasha Enma" which no one has ever seen yet, will appear in this work!! Wielding the strongest weapon, the "En Ma Rod" (1), and using the "Dragon of Ice" and "Dragon of Fire", he displays power like that of a fierce deity! Will fierce fights unfold at the "Enma Butōkai" where the next Great King Enma will be chosen?! Please look forward to the battles of the coolest Great King Enma to date!!

"Yasha Enma" Enma, bearing the name of fierce deities that appear in mythology, the "Yaksha" (2). In his hand, the strongest weapon, the En Ma Rod. He won't just appear in his regular form, but also forms in which he controls the "Dragon of Ice" and the "Dragon of Fire".

Notes:

I had previously translated the name of his weapon 炎魔棍/Enmakon as “Enma Rod”, but I decided to spell it as “En Ma Rod” now, to make it more clear that it’s not spelled the same as the name “Enma”.

“Yasha” is the Japanese spelling of “Yaksha”. I use the Japanese spelling for his name, since we also spell “Enma” like in Japanese, rather than calling him “Yama”.

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Corocoro has some more information on Yasha Enma that the website hasn’t covered yet. So I will go over those next.

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Corocoro introduces Yasha Enma with this two-page spread:

(image source)

In addition to his regular form, it also shows the two other forms that the website only hinted at.

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悪の妖怪と戦うシンとイツキたちは妖魔界へ行き、 次の閻魔大王を決める 「エンマ武闘会」に出場。 そこで夜叉エンマと出会うのか！？ Fighting evil yokai, Shin, Itsuki, and the others participe in the"Enma Butōkai" where the next Great King Enma will be chosen. Will they encounter Yasha Enma there?!

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夜叉エンマ 最強の武器・炎魔棍をあやつる。 右目に特別な力を秘めている！？ Yasha Enma He wields the En Ma Rod, the strongest weapon. There's a special power hidden in his right eye!?

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羅雪 氷の龍を宿し、 すさまじい冷気を発する！！ Rasetsu Harboring the dragon of ice, he emits terrible cold!!

絢爛・羅雪!! Shine brightly, Rasetsu!!

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紅華 炎の龍を宿し、 紅蓮の業火を巻きおこす！！ Benibana Harboring the dragon of fire, he creates crimson fireworks!!

乱舞・紅華 Dance wildly, Benibana!!

Note that last month, I had mistakenly romanized “Benibana“ as “Kōka”, since it was really hard to read the furigana for the names.

It also seems that “Rasetsu” and “Benibana” are supposed to be the names of the two dragons themselves, so it’s a bit confusing about how those names also seem to refer to these two forms of Yasha Enma.

Notably, the merchandise I’ll go over in the next segment seems to call the forms “Yasha Enma Rasetsu” and “Yasha Enma Benibana” instead.

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Yokai Watch Merchandise News:

Boys Toy Web has added two new Yokai Watch items to their list.

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First we have the “Yōseiken Series 04: DX Ashura Goen-maru Yōseiken & Yōkai Ark Set”.

In other words, the 4th Yōseiken toy, and as always it comes with a special Yokai Ark.

The Yōseiken in question is of course the Ashura Goen-maru, which has actually been in the Shadowside anime for a long time, where it’s wielded by Dōketsu.

For a while it’s been unclear if Dōketsu was its Kenbumajin, but now it seems that he is not, and that it’s actually Ashura (Asura).

The special Yokai Ark that comes with it is an Extreme Rare-ranked one of “Sekka no Fubuki-hime”, following the trend of these bonus Arks seemingly always being a special form of a yokai who debuted in the original series.

This set will be released in December.

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Next is the “Yōkai Arc Zero ~The Other Side of the Silver Screen” pack.

This is a special Yokai Ark booster pack related to the upcoming movie.

As always, each pack has 1 random Ark in it. There’ll be 13 Arks included in this series:

We got 3 Ultimate Rare ranks: Nekomata, Kappa, and Zashiki-warashi.

This time around, their backsides feature their Godside forms: Cat King Bastet, Kappa King Sagojō, and Tengu King Kurama.

Then there’s 4 Extreme Rare ranks: Yasha Enma Benibana, Yasha Enma Rasetsu, Shien, and one that’s secret.

We got 2 Rare ranks: Kukuri-hime and Karasu-tengu.

Karasu-tengu was seen in the most recent trailer, but I don’t think Kukuri-hime has been shown before. She is presumably based on the mythological Kukurihime, but her name is spelled differently.

And 3 Normal ranks: Yamata no Orochi, Tamamo no Mae, and Yamambā.

Interestingly, Tamamo no Mae is just referred to as “Tamamo” in her Lightside form here.

Yamata no Orochi is a legendary dragon, whom Orochi/Venoct seemed to be slightly based on, but we had never seen the real deal in Yokai Watch. Yamambā is one of the names of the yokai Yama-uba.

Curious that these guys are all Normal-ranked, Tamamo no Mae especially seems like she should be more special, right?

This booster pack will also come out in December.

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Corocoro has also shown off a black Yokai Ark of Yasha Enma, and announced that they will be giving away 10000 of them in their January issue.

I think, because of how the issue naming works with this magazine, that might actually be the issue that comes out in December, but I am not sure.

Corocoro mascot/employee “Kaa-kun” made this tweet, showing off the Ark in question:

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With the three Yasha Enma Arks, and the Ark of Shien, we’ve been shown a new tribe symbol, resembling a sun:

It seems reasonable to assume that this symbol could possibly represent the Enma Tribe, but it doesn’t seem to have been confirmed as of me writing this.

But it is reminiscent of the moon-like symbol of the Izana Tribe that Kaira belongs to:

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And lastly, Yoroz Mart is going to release plush toys of Junior, Nekomata, and Yasha Enma in December, as seen in this tweet.

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Yokai Watch Mobile Games News:

This is just going to be really minor, but I wanted to go over it in some form regardless.

Corocoro revealed that the Great King Enma, in his original, young form that first showed up Blasters, will be added to Yokai Watch World soon.

And, you have probably heard of it already, But Yokai Watch Puni Puni is currently having a crossover with Dissida Final Fantasy, adding many characters originally from the Final Fantasy franchise as puni.

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The offical Level-5 youtube channel has also re-uploaded their trailer for the mobile game “Yokai Daijiten”, which you can see here.

Though they still haven’t added a proper release date for it, in fact, it only seems to say “release date to be determined” now.

In case you don’t know, this game was first announced back in 2016, I believe, alongside a smartphone version of the first Yokai Watch game.

If I recall correctly, they were scheduled to be released in 2016, but when that year came and went, the release date was updated to 2017, and now, as 2018 draws to a close, many people thought they got cancelled, but this re-upload implies that Daijiten is still being worked on in some form.

The official website for Yokai Watch 1 for smartphone says that it will be released in 2019 now, but I haven’t seen anyhting else from it.

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And that’s it for the general Yokai Watch news in November of 2018.

As always, I hope you’ve found this to be interesting and/or helpful!

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