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sepublic · 3 years

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Kraid!

KKKKKRRRRAAAAAIIIIIIDDDDD

I was trying to avoid as much of Metroid Dread as possible to be surprised... But then I learned KRAID is back, in glorious HD as part of a mainline game and...

Oh, he’s beautiful!

Seriously, I’ve always wanted to see more of Kraid! Dude was one of the OG Space Pirates alongside Mother Brain and Ridley, who are present throughout the series; And as someone who is apparently Ridley’s Brother-in-Arms, I’m just really curious on what he could be like?

I doubt we’ll get much if anything in terms of personality, but that’s how Metroid games work anyway! Hopefully we get more lore on Kraid, how is he still alive? Does he have regenerative abilities, is he just really incredibly durable? An X-parasite imitation? Fake Kraid has grown up and this is Sclayd? Did the Chozo clone him, maybe even somehow resurrect him from a dead body, or even the afterlife considering their borderline mystical abilities???

Either way, that’s clever of the designers to have Kraid be restrained, as a meta explanation as to why he doesn’t just charge forward- Thus allowing the developers to start off with a traditional take on the Kraid fight... But since he manages to break an arm free in the trailer, the fight might progress and get more deadly, as Kraid becomes more free.

His neck brace will probably be the last to go, to show a sort of natural transition from the traditional style of Kraid fights, to a more modernized take and I am all FOR it! Everyone’s wondering if Ridley will return, but Kraid alone would MORE than make up for his absence, especially since Ridley is already so prevalent while Kraid has only gotten bread crumbs and the Brinstar Depths stage in recent years!

This is like a dream come true... And obviously Kraid is set up to fight Samus, but it’d be kind of neat to see an arc where him and Samus recognize a mutual enemy in the Chozo, and work with each other over it? Probably not, but I feel this would be more plausible than Samus and Ridley working together; A fun thought exercise I’d always entertained, but there really isn’t that personal vitriol between Samus and Kraid.

...I mean, there COULD be if Kraid takes Ridley’s death personally, but who knows, he might hold off on revenge just long enough for a practical escape! Regardless, I utterly adore just how gnarly and twisted this guy looks, it reminds me of Ridley’s Smash Ultimate renders that really modernize his look, breathe a new and alien life to it while still being the same! And the added, slimy body horror, borderline insectoid, like Smash Ridley!

But yes, I appreciate Metroid Dread taking the opportunity to be new, instead of trying to cater to the mainstream audience as an official return to pull them back, especially since we already had Samus Returns do that, especially with Proteus Ridley being thrown in! And with how Proteus was by far the best Ridley fight in the series, I can’t WAIT to see how Mercury Steam gives a new action to a Kraid boss battle!

And it looks like there might be a passageway behind Kraid that he’s guarding... Kind of like his previous appearances, I love Kraid being a giant guard dog- His girth and weight alone makes him an impenetrable wall! Plus he gives immovable object vibes, VS Ridley as an Unstoppable Force.

Ridley moves fast and aggressively leads the charge, while Kraid is less mobile, can’t even fit through most passageways; But holds down the fort and line of defense, tanking damage and shrugging it off compared to someone who heals from it!

Seriously, this is great seeing this under appreciated Space Pirate represented! I’ve always been salty about Meta Kraid being left out of Metroid Prime... And Kraid’s got a distinct identity of his own as one of the biggest bosses in the entire series by a long shot!

His big, colossal, green and chunky frame, that brutishness to Kraid, the size and brawn- It’s a nice contrast and foil to Ridley’ who is memetically huge in general, but from a relative standpoint averagely-sized as a boss, and MUCH scrawnier than the Awakened Behemoth; But he makes up for it wit speed and agility, flight, etc.!

Plus the concept of taking on a full-on Kaiju of the series, Metroid’s Godzilla... I always felt like there was a wasted potential to Kraid and how he stood out as a counterpart to Ridley’ more of the lumbering mountain to scale compared to the acrobatic Cunning God of Death! His Kaiju size, the way the ground could easily tremble from each footstep like Jurassic Park...

If Ridley is a Xenomorph, make Kraid into Godzilla and Rexy and every giant monster whose sheer scale inspires a horror based in awe, one that is huge and grandiose and demands attention and seizes all of it, gloriously basking in full view, in contrast to the more stealthy and subtle Ridley!

They’re both reptilian Space Pirates who debuted with the franchise, serve Mother Brain alongside one another as the two guardians to Tourian. And just like Ridley taking one of the recurring boss themes from Super Metroid and adopting it as HIS theme, Kraid seems to have done the same by Zero Mission!

Plus, Brinstar Depths, AKA Kraid’s Lair, is SUCH a metal soundtrack! It doesn’t necessarily apply to Kraid himself, but I feel like there’s an enigmatic personality hinted with the eerie, melodic tune of this theme... So as someone who’s tried to write him, mostly in my head;

What kind of person is Kraid? What archetypes and roles would he fit? As a more casual type of arch-nemesis, compared to the personal intensity of Ridley? A dumb brute, or smart in his own way? What personality and vibes would make Kraid’s Lair fit as a theme for him?

At the very least, I wonder if we’ll get Space Pirate lore, maybe even origins as to Kraid and Ridley’s species? They’re both huge dragons who took over Zebes... Could there be a connection between Ridley’s species and the Chozo? Will we get a bit of sympathy for Kraid, seeing him captured like an animal by the Chozo, perhaps to test experiments upon and clone?

Will Dread encapsulate the realization of just how much of a bigger scope villain the True Chozo are, experimenting on Kraid the way the Galactic Federation did with Ridley’s clone, another parallel between them? Will we explore the dark past of the Chozo, and a potential tragic look into Kraid’s species- So Samus has a better understanding of how her people have been terrible in many ways, even if that doesn’t at all justify Kraid the person’s actions?

Just... Imagine a storyline where Samus realizes that Kraid was made by the Chozo, or his species was, or they were genetically augmented or massacred, or something like that. Just a twisted moment of realization that explains but doesn’t justify. Which could lead to Samus and Kraid teaming up for a prison breakout at a pivotal moment, Kraid’s girth would make him a helpful ally.

Perhaps Samus could weaponize Kraid in the background to take the brunt of the True Chozo’s attacks, while she takes on the leader? Could he help with environmental terrain, blind to the background as a colossal feature of the environment, a kaiju briefly on your side?

Could we get a Kraid fight where he attacks from the background, instead of to the right? Will he ultimately die helping Samus- More for his own gain and revenge, but still? Maybe even leading to a reluctant salute from Samus as she recognizes them both as people captured, as experimented upon by the Chozo? Apologies for all of the fanon conjecture, my mind is racing...!

I think there’s SO much potential with Kraid and seeing him full, unadulterated HD glory... It’s glorious. It’s magnificent! This is a dream come true, and I hope Kraid finally starts to get the recognition he deserves! Even if he’s just A boss fight, I’m already sated and content here- And I can only imagine the new wave of fan content that will spawn for Kraid, as he’s recognized a defining moment of Dread!

Plus, I’d love to see people characterize and give lore to Kraid... All in all I am LIVING and in triumph here!!! I know I keep using this meme but

Literally this alone, just these shots... Are ALL I really want and need, in the end! Bless you Mercury Steam for this food, for breathing new life into this franchise while renovating what really needs it! I don’t even care if Kraid’s return is never really explained, I’m incredibly happy here!

This new design... It just FITS and works as a new, evergreen design for Kraid honestly! Compared to Ridley who is a lot more varied and arguably inconsistent, even with his Smash render... THIS is the new and definitive Kraid for me, now! I am having the time of my LIFE here!

Ridley the Cunning God has cheated death... is Kraid the Behemoth has reawakened!

(With the idea of Prime Kraid being reused for Metroid Prime 4... I’m wondering if we’ll begin to see an all new Kraid renaissance? 👀 More frequent content as Nintendo starts giving him and more appearances and attention, including in other media and advertising, alongside Ridley???)

#Metroid #metroid dread #kraid #Samus aran #speculation #ramblings

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olderthannetfic · 4 years

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Hey, sorry to ask this, but a few days ago I saw a post/discussion about the history of original work on ao3 (i.e. how and when it was allowed). I thought it was in my likes, but it's not, and I thought you had reblogged it recently, but I didn't find it. I was wondering if you have seen this discussion around? Or where I can find more about it? This specific post talked abt how who defended original work on ao3 were not the BNFs, if that helps.

That was me running my mouth in the reblogs of something or other. It’s just the one comment.

But what’s that you say? Some tl;dr about a pet topic? Don’t mind if I do! ;) (To be honest, most of this debate happened years ago, and a lot of the long meta was by me back then too, so…)

Okay, so, the situation with Original Works is actually super interesting and a microcosm of early years OTW wank.

This is going to be even more tl;dr than my usual. To try to summarize very briefly:

There were two big cultural factions. One thought “original” was the opposite of “fan”. That one was in charge of OTW. It was hard to get voices from the other side into the debate because they already felt excluded from OTW.

This divide broke down more or less into Ye Olde Slash Fandom on the “it’s the opposite” side and anime fandom on the “WTF?” side. Americans on one side and a lot of non-US, non-English language fandom on the other.

I. Media Fandom, Anime Fandom, and Early OTW

I went to that first fundraising party that astolat threw in New York City back in… god… 2007? 2008? I wasn’t on the Board or any official position until the committees got started later, but I was around right from the very beginning.

Whether you’re looking at volunteers or at people who commented on astolat’s original post, there were always a variety of fans from a variety of fannish backgrounds. People aren’t absolutely in one camp or another, and fannish interests change over time. If you go dig through Dreamwidth posts to find who was actually participating in this debate at the time, half of them are probably in the other camp now.

If you think like that sounds like a preamble to me making a bunch of offensively sweeping generalizations and divvying fans up into little groups, you’d be right! Haha.

I.a. Ye Olde Media Fandom

There are a lot of camps of people who like fanfic. One of the biggest divisions has been Ye Olde Media Fandom vs. anime fandom. Astolat’s social circle–my LJ social circle–was filled with people with decades of fannish experience and a deep knowledge of the Media Fandom side of things.

Those fandom history treatises that start with K/S zines in Star Trek fandom in the 70s and move on through the mainstream buddy cops like Starsky & Hutch to the more niche, sff buddy cops like Fraser and Ray or Jim and Blair are talking about Media Fandom. I try to always capitalize it because the name is lulzy and bizarre to me unless it’s a proper noun for a specific historical thing. It was coined as a rude term for “mass media” fandom aka dumb people who like, ughhhh, Star Trek, ughhh, instead of books. This is a very ancient slapfight from the type of fandom you find at Worldcon, often called “SF fandom” or plain “fandom”.

(Yes, this leads to mega confusion on the part of some old dudes when they find Fanlore and fail to understand that “fandom” there refers to what these people would call “Media Fandom”. They think only they get the unmarked form. But I digress…)

Media Fandom is a specific flavor of fandom. It’s where the slash zines were. It’s where the fans of live action US TV shows were. It’s the history that acafans have laid out well and that tends to get used to defend the idea of a female subculture writing transgressive and transformative fanfic. On the video side, Media Fandom is where Kandy Fong invented vidding by making Star Trek slideshows.

(Kandy’s still around, BTW. She’s usually at Escapade in L.A. Ask her to tell you about the dancing penises sketch in person. She’s hilarious.)

Astolat and friends had been going to slash cons for years. They founded Vividcon. And Yuletide. That meant that when astolat said “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” we all jumped to help. This is a lady who gets things done.

From a Worldcon perspective, or even from an older Media Fandom perspective, this group was comparatively young, hip, and welcoming. Their fandom interests were comparatively broad. Just look at Yuletide!

In fact, yes, let us look at Yuletide… [ominous music]

I.b. Yuletide sucks at anime

From the very first year (2003), Yuletide mods have asked for help with anime fandoms, been confused about anime fandoms, or made bad judgment calls about anime fandoms. They’ve fucked up on Superhero comics and plenty of other things over the years, but anime has been the most consistent (well, and JRPGs, but there’s so much overlap in those fic fandoms).

There was already bad feeling about this. There were years of bad feeling about this.

I.c. Where are the historians?

Academic study of fanficcy things pretty much got started with Textual Poachers and Enterprising Women. Other acafans who are well known to LJ and later Tumblr are people like Francesca Coppa who wrote a very nice summary of the history of Media Fandom. These are not the only academics who exist, these academics themselves have written about many other things, and by now, OTW’s own journal has covered a lot of other territory, but to this day I see complaints on Tumblr that “acafans” only care about K/S and oldschool slash fandom.

There were years of bad feeling about this as well.

I.d. What kind of fan was I?

Now, by the time OTW got started, I’d moseyed over to not only a lot of live action US TV but a lot of old-as-fuck US TV that is squarely in the Media Fandom camp. But once upon a time, I was a weeaboo hanging out with my weeaboo friends in college. I learned Japanese (sort of). I moved to Japan. Livin’ the weeaboo dream!

More importantly, I used to be a member of a lot of anime mailing lists back in the Yahoo Groups days. I didn’t realize what a cultural gap that would cause until the original works issue came up on AO3.

I.e. Anime Fandom, German-language Fandom, Original M/M

Once upon a time–namely in that Yahoo Groups era–there was an archive called Boys in Chains. It was where you found The Good Stuff™. Heavy kink and power exchange galore! It was extremely well known in the parts of fandom I was in, even if you weren’t on the associated mailing list. It contained lots of fic, but it also had lots of original work.

Around that same era, I was on a critique list called Crimson Ink, which was mixed fic and original. The “original slash” and “original yaoi” crowds mixed freely and were in fanfic spaces. Remember, this is like 2003. You’re never going to get your gay fantasy novel published in English in the US. A couple of fangirl presses started around then, but they died an ignominious death after their first print run.

Fanfiction.net used to allow original work before it spun that off into FictionPress. We forget this today, but if you were an early FFN person, the separation wasn’t so great either.

Meanwhile, German-language fandom was hanging out on sites like Animexx.de, a big-ass fic archive that prominently mentions also including original work. I have the impression that Spanish-language fandom was similar too.

Shousetsu Bang*Bang was founded in 2005. It was a webzine for original m/m, but it was entirely populated by fanfic fandom types.

In all of those kinds of spaces, there was a lot of “original” work that was kind of slash or BL-ish and seen as fannish if it was posted in the fannish space. These weren’t anime-only spaces. They were multifandom spaces where it was seen as obvious and normal that a couple of huge fandoms like Harry Potter would dominate but that everything else big would naturally be anime.

While fans from every background are everywhere, I found that the concentration of EFL fans living in Continental Europe, South America, and Asia was much higher in this kind of space, even the exclusively English language part of it, than in my US TV fandoms.

II. AO3 Early Adopters

AO3 went into closed beta in 2009. In 2010, it was open to the general public (albeit with the invitation queue it still has). But not everyone was interested yet. Just like fandom is loath to leave the dying, shambling mess of Tumblr, fandom was loath to leave dwindling LJ/DW circles or was happy enough on Fanfiction.net. I used to see a lot of posts like “Why are you guys trying to STEAL fanfic from the original! FFN is enough!”

I literally could not give away the invitations I had. No one wanted them.

So who was on AO3? Obviously enough, it was all of us who built it and our friends. So that means a bunch of oldschool Livejournal slashers coming from fandoms like Due South or Stargate Atlantis.

The queue was open. Anyone could make an account. Everyone was welcome. In theory…

But more and more, there started to be these posts about how “AO3 Hates Anime Fandom” and “FFN is for anime. AO3 is for Western fandoms.” and “If you guys actually wanted anime fandom on there, you’d invite us better and make us more welcome.”

At the time, I found these posts obnoxious. People aren’t purely in one sort of fandom or the other. No one was stopping anime fandom from making accounts. No one was banning anime fandom. If there wasn’t much from old fandoms, that was because old fandoms seldom move.

Things began to change. Trolls on FFN forced the Twilight porn writers out, creating enough fuss and brouhaha to mobilize people who would rather have stayed put. AO3 got big enough that randos found it by accident. Original work started to pop up, posted by people who’d never looked at the rules and had no idea it was not allowed.

III. History of AO3’s Policy

I had argued for allowing “original work” during the initial discussions about the ToS. On one side of this issue was me. On the other, everyone else on the committee.

I was overruled.

Open Door started importing old archives to save them. Boys in Chains was hugely important to fandom history from my point of view. It was slated to be imported… maybe. Except that Boys in Chains is half original. AO3 was happy to grandfather in those stories, but the final archive owner felt, quite rightly, that it would be unfair to tell half of the authors they were welcome in the new space while spitting on the other half.

I was pissed. I had been pissed since being overruled the first time. To me, the fact that it should be allowed was so blatantly obvious that it was hard to even explain why.

(To be honest, this difficulty in explaining why and the even greater difficulty in figuring out the source of that difficulty is what held the discussion back for so long. When every assumption on either side is completely opposite, it’s hard to communicate.)

I felt betrayed. It would be like if you helped build something, and everyone was suddenly like “Well, obviously, we can’t allow m/m. It’s not normal fanfic.”

So we discussed it again and, again, it was me vs. literally everyone else. And still the “AO3 is only for Western slash fandom” bitching rose in volume and more and more people complained of feeling excluded from the new fandom hub. Finally, the committee agreed to open the issue up for public comment and get some more input. I was a fool and neither wrote nor proofread the post. It went out phrasing the question as allowing “non fannish” work or something of that sort.

I was furious. The entire point of the whole debate was that I saw some original work, the original work that belongs on AO3, as inherently fannish. And now this had been presented to the AO3 audience as something completely different. Think pieces were popping up in the journals of everyone I knew about diluting AO3’s mission and how we needed to save AO3 from encroachment. Public opinion was very negative. That’s both because of how the post was phrased and because OTW die hards at the time were mostly from the same fannish background. This tidal wave of negativity meant that there was virtually no chance of changing this poisonous rule. And if the rule didn’t change, the people who wanted the rule change were never going to show up to explain why it mattered.

If you’ve been reading my tumblr, I think you can guess what happened next.

I posted a long post to my Dreamwidth. It was a masterwork of passive aggression. In it, I wrung my hands about how simply tragic it would be if AO3 had to delete all of the original work… like anthropomorfic.

Now, I think anthropomorfic counts as fanfic as much as anything else, but I also knew that it fails most rigorous “based on a canon” type definitions of fic and, more importantly, it’s a favorite Yuletide fandom of many of the people on the side that wanted to ban original work.

That’s a nice fandom of yours. It would be a pity if something happened to it.

Yup. Passive aggressive blackmail. Go me. Suddenly, there was a lot of awkward backtracking and confused running in circles in various journals. The committee agreed to table the idea for a while but not rule out the idea of allowing original works in the future. We agreed to halt all deletions of original work. If a fan posted it, the Abuse Committee (which I was also head of at the time) would not delete that work even though it was technically against the rules.

Time passed. The people on the negative side got tired. I wanted off that committee and had wanted off for ages, but I was damned if I was going to leave before ramming through this piece of policy. Grudgematch till I die! (Look, I never said I wasn’t a wanker.)

After a while, some other fans came forward with more types of “original work” as evidence that it should be allowed. These were from parts of fandom none of us on the committee knew a damn thing about.

This new evidence combined with the gradual accretion of original stuff on AO3 without the sky falling eventually led us to quietly rule Original Work a valid fandom. There was never even a big announcement post. I slipped a word to the Boys in Chains mod myself.

IV. What Were They So Afraid Of Anyway?

So why were people so resistant? Seems like a dick move, right?

Not exactly.

I mean, I was enraged and waged a one-woman war to change the rules, but the other side wasn’t nuts. The objections were usually the following:

I just don’t get why it would be allowed. It never was in my fannish spaces.

Most of our members don’t want this.

Most of the examples of things that ought to be included are m/m. We are privileging m/m if we allow it, and AO3 already has a m/m-centric reputation that can feel exclusionary to some fans.

AO3 is a young, shaky platform that can barely handle the load and content we already have. If we open to original work, we’ll be opening the floodgates. The volume of posting will be so high, it will drown out the fic we’re actually here to protect.

Protecting stuff that doesn’t need protection because it’s not an IP issue would dilute OTW’s mission.

If we allow it, idiots will try to turn AO3 into advertising space, posting only the first chapter and a link to where you can pay to read the rest.

If we add another category of text before we add fan art, that’s a slap in the face of the fan artists we are already failing.

These arguments all make perfect sense in context.

Obvously, the issue with the first two is that different fannish communities have different norms. I knew that a very large community disagreed with the then current AO3 policy, but since so few of them were around to comment, it seemed like a tiny fringe minority.

The m/m thing is… complex. M/M content with zero IP issues is at risk. It is always at risk in a way that even f/f is not (though f/f is also always at risk). Asking for m/m to be exactly equivalent to f/f or m/f in numbers, tropes, whatever is ignoring the historical realities. In our current moment of queer activism in the West, we treat all types of queerness as part of one community with one set of goals, but once you get to culture and art or even more specific activism, this forced homogenization is neither useful nor healthy.

OTOH, AO3 really did have PR problems related to the perception that we gave m/m fandom the kid glove treatment. That objection wasn’t coming from nowhere.

AO3 was shaky. It was tiny when I first brought up this argument. Hell, it wasn’t even in closed beta the first time we discussed this. Part of what made the quiet rules change possible was AO3 organically getting much bigger and OTW having to buy many more servers for unrelated reasons.

The “floodgates” thing was put to rest by tacitly allowing original work before the rules change. We had a period to study how fans actually behaved, and as I predicted, only a small amount of original work got posted. It was indeed mostly things like original BL-ish stories or original work that had been part of a mixed original/fic fest, exchange, zine, etc. Currently, the “Original Work” fandom on AO3 only has 76,348 works. That’s pretty big compared to individual fandoms but tiny compared to AO3’s current size.

The commercial argument was spurious because commercial spam had been against the rules from the very beginning. OH THE IRONY that nowadays AO3 has all these idiots trying to post the first chapter of their fanfic and then direct you to where you can buy the rest.

AO3 has plenty of fanfic of public domain works. One of the problems with gatekeeping original work is that any way you try to distinguish it (not based on a specific canon, not an IP issue, etc.) will apply to some set of obviously allowable fandoms.

As for fan art… OTW has failed fan artists. They needed protection as much as or even more than fic writers. Just look at Tumblr! If we had succeeded at making DeviantArt but allowing boners, fan art fandom could have been safe all these years. Or when Tumblr inevitably shat the bed, we could have scooped up all those people instead of them scattering to twitter and god knows where.

OTW has failed vidders too, at least in terms of preservation. I know I’m not the only one who thinks this. Other major people from like the first Board and shit have discussed this with me offline. Doing some kind of vidding project, possibly outside of OTW is on a lot of our to-do lists. But at least one of OTW’s biggest victories has been that copyright exemption. OTW has demonstrably done really positive things for vidders that other organizations and sites have not. As a vidder, I never expected to see good hosting for the actual video files, and I’m quite content.

But fan artists… yeah. That argument makes sense at least from a place of frustration.

BTW, for the love of god, if you’re a n00b to OTW stuff, please do not reblog this post excitedly telling me that hosting fan art is on OTW’s road map, so yay, good news. Someone always does that, and it’s so irritating. I haven’t been involved in OTW in years, but I used to be, and I know what is on the roadmap. The couple of you who do heavy lifting on sysadmin and coding and policy things are welcome to weigh in as usual. I know none of us like that we can’t host fan art. It’s not what we intended.

Nonetheless, I found this argument to be the perfect being the enemy of the good. If we can save more text now without losing much of anything, we should do it. The fact that we’re fucking up on the fan art front is not a reason to spread the misery around.

V. Is “Original” the Opposite of “Fanfic”?

Okay, so that tl;dr above is why “BNFs” were on one side and “nobodies” were on the other. BNFs from one cultural background founded OTW. BNFs from the other cultural background weren’t even aware that the debate was going on.

But what was the underlying philosophical problem in even having the conversation?

It took me a long time, but I finally worked it out: We had two completely different ways of categorizing writing, and they were so baked into how we phrased questions that everything ended up being unanswerable to the other side. Here is what I came up with:

Schema 1

Fanfic - based on someone else’s IP

Original Work - the opposite

Schema 2

Non-Fannish Work - School essays, stories you are writing to try to sell to a mainstream publisher

Fannish Work Type 1 - based on other people’s characters directly (i.e. fanfic) Type 2 - based on tropes or whatever (“original slash” and the like)

Now, in the current moment when half of Tumblr just got into Chinese webnovels and the m/m ebook industry is thriving in English, original, tropey, BL-ish work is no longer different from “things I am trying to sell”. But this is how the divide was circa 2005 on fannish websites, and it’s the divide that was driving this internal OTW debate.

VI. Let’s Summarize the Camps One More Time

So, again, the debate makes perfect sense if you understand who was involved.

On the mainstream “But that’s not fanfic? I’m confused?” side:

Big US TV fandoms in English

Fandom historians of K/S–>buddy cop slash–>SGA, etc.

Americans

On the other side:

Anime fandom

“Original slash” fandom that had already been chased off of everywhere

People upset that AO3 wasn’t farther on translating the interface and supporting non-English language fandom.

People upset about US-centrism in fandom

Yes, I am very white, very American, and by now very into old buddy cop shows, but this was basically how the breakdown worked. It meant that something that looked like a minor quibble to one side was really, really not.

#fandom history #fandom meta #original work #cowboyformitski

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johannesviii · 4 years

Text

Top 15 Personal Favorite Hit Songs from 2002

13 to 14 years old. Most of the year was pretty good. Summer was great. But in September I arrived in 2nd (local equivalent of 10th grade), so I was 14 in a class of mostly 15/16 years old students, and I looked so out of place that inevitably, bad shit started to happen very quickly.

Thankfully, it was a damn good year for hits. They say music never sounds better than when you are a teenager, as if that was a bad thing - but maybe they’re right? So yeah, nostalgia is in full force there. This year was so good for music, in fact, that this is a top 15 instead of 10. It was already super difficult to keep only 10 songs before I even looked at the French year-end list, and then I just gave up.

Disclaimers:

Keep in mind I’m using both the year-end top 100 lists from the US and from France while making these top 10 things. There’s songs in English that charted in my country way higher than they did in their home countries, or even earlier or later, so that might get surprising at times.

Of course there will be stuff in French. We suck. I know. It’s my list. Deal with it.

My musical tastes have always been terrible and I’m not a critic, just a listener and an idiot.

I have sound to color synesthesia which justifies nothing but might explain why I have trouble describing some songs in other terms than visual ones.

This list originally had SIX horribly painful cuts so I decided to do some damage control and make it a top 15. There’s still a whole bunch of honorable mentions, though.

Heaven remix (DJ Sammy) - [Insert here rant about Johannes liking overproduced dance garbage full of colors and lights]

Move b█tch (Ludacris) - Just a ton of fun to sing along that chorus.

Whenever Wherever (Shakira) - I claim overplay, but that is still legendary.

How You Remind Me (Nickelback) - Nobody’s gonna disagree if I say they’re a terrible band, but you gotta admit, their first hit was pretty great.

The Middle (Jimmy Eat World) - In a year full of fantastic earworms, some had to stay out of the list.

Can’t Fight the Moonlight (LeAnn Rimes) - Just re-read the previous statement.

Get the Party Started (Pink) - More on that later.

Inch’Allah (MC Solaar) - Not his best song by a mile (obviously; I mean, the guy who wrote a song about making Satan explode into antimatter can’t really top that because nobody can) but still very nice.

Cleanin’ Out My Closet (Eminem) - Yeah, the rethread of The Real Slim Shady is on the list and not this. What can I say, I told you I had bad taste.

Just Like a Pill (Pink) - The last cut from the list. I just really, really liked Pink, can you tell?

This is when I started to listen to the radio A LOT in my room, because my access to the family computer was restricted and radio was basically the only media I still had 100% access to and full control of. Which might explain why I suddenly liked a ton of pop music. Or maybe that year was simply really good. I guess it’s a mix of both.

Also, I still didn’t have a key to the appartment, but I was a lot less supervised when I was outside, and I would sometimes sneak out to go the library or to the disc store.

So... here’s some of the first singles I ever bought, for the record, and also because I think it’s fun to see all of them together.

They’re all on this list, just to clarify.

15 - I’m Gonna Getcha Good (Shania Twain)

US: Not on the list / FR: #67

Well, that was quick. So yeah, I loved this song. The accent meant I couldn’t understand half of the lyrics, but it was still a ton of fun and a delight every time it was on the radio.

14 - Wherever You Will Go (The Calling)

US: #5 / FR: #53

I didn’t love this song that much at the time and only put it on one tape, but it really grew on my over the years. Yeah, it’s your standard 2000s pop-rock song, objectively, but I don’t know. It didn’t have to go that hard with its metaphors. I mean the guy is ready to follow that person into hell and turn back time if necessary. I really don’t know. It shouldn’t work so well but it does for me. Maybe it’s because I’m very literal-minded.

13 - Le Chemin (Kyo ft. Sita)

US: Not on the list / FR: #55

Basically: A Ma Place by Axel Bauer & Zazie from the previous honorable mentions of 2001, except with half the amount of Hetero Drama(tm) and a pop-rock flavour to make it more palatable.

The first hit of a band it would very quickly be super cool to hate in my country (and I do mean very quickly, like a year or so) because everyone (including me, mind you) thought their lyrics were a bit too cringy even for pop-rock songs.

Doesn’t mean I didn’t buy the album and listened the shit out of it for like two years, though. The saddest part is that my favorite single from it by far, Je Cours (”I Run”), isn’t elligible for any list. Dammit.

12 - Murder On The Dancefloor (Sophie Ellis-Bextor)

US: Not on the list / FR: #26

This was a huge hit in Europe and somehow I thought it had reached the US, but apparently it didn’t. That’s a shame.

Also, overplay didn’t manage to kill it for me and that’s impressive.

11 - Complicated (Avril Lavigne)

US: #11 / FR: #83

Loved it, bought the single, loved it even more, and then one of my uncles sent me the album for christmas, and all was nice and good in the world.

For the record, I thought Sk8er Boi was one of the worst songs on the album (my favorite was My World), and I still dislike this particular song to this day, so this is why it’s nowhere to be found here.

10 - Don’t Let Me Get Me (Pink)

US: #36 / FR: Not on the list

You already know that because of the honorable mentions, but yeah, I loved Pink. This was the second album I decided I had to save money for months to acquire instead of just a single and which my parents would probably find acceptable. And this song is the best and it kicks some serious ass, on top of being full of self-loathing and extremely relatable at the time ("everyday I fight a war against the mirror, can't take the person staring back at me"? "I wanna be somebody else"?? Big, big dysphoria mood right there).

No regrets, baby.

9 - Hands Clean (Alanis Morissette)

US: #95 / FR: Not on the list

In just about every list I’ve made so far, there’s one song which makes me think “if I had better taste, this would be much higher”. This is one of these songs. Still love it, still put it on a tape and burned it on a cd. I found the cd in question again yesterday while making this list and it contains, in that exact order: Visage, Evanescence, Kyo, Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, Talk Talk, Scatman John, Sophie Ellis-Bextor, Shania Twain, INXS, Freur, Alizée, Linkin Park and this exact song by Alanis Morissette. It’s a great little time-capsule of my debatable tastes.

8 - Die Another Day (Madonna)

US: Not on the list / FR: #86

This has the same kind of weird, disjointed beat as Music, but it sounds much more aggressive and sinister. This dropped right when I started to have real problems at school, so it’s a bit difficult for me to listen to it nowadays without having unpleasant flashbacks at the same time, which is why it’s so low on the list even though I listened to it on a loop back in the day. It might be a subpar James Bond theme, and might have dumb lyrics (god the Sigmund Freud line sdfghjhgfdfg), but on its own? It’s great.

Also I loved the music video. My mother, obviously, hated it, which only made me like it more, because, I mean, obviously it did. That’s how it works when you’re 14.

Speaking of which.

7 - Without Me (Eminem)

US: #21 / FR: #11

By that point, it was becoming pretty clear that I would never be able to buy the music I wanted if my parents disapproved of it, so I had to be sneaky and buy every, uh “debatable” single with a second more acceptable single to hide the first one. The one I bought alongside this one was a cover of Désenchantée, sung by Kate Ryan.

Success.

It is, in fact, less good than The Real Slim Shady, and I could only understand about one third of the lyrics, but still. I listened to it a loooooot. Because I actually had that single and not the other one which it was basically referencing to the point of self-parody. And just like the other one, I obviously don’t endorse all the lyrics, and the beat is great.

6 - All the Things She Said (Tatu)

US: Not on the list / FR: #12

Just like Die Another Day this one is a bit difficult to listen to nowadays for me but it’s a monster of a hit nonetheless. Have to say, though: I listened to Not Gonna Get Us even more, which means THAT one is even more linked to bad memories, to the point of basically being unlistenable because it triggers a literal fight-or-flight response with me. Not kidding in the slightest. Still love it though.

5 - J’ai Demandé à la Lune (Indochine)

US: Not on the list / FR: #4

This is one of my least favorite hit songs from Indochine. It’s still #5 on a list where I had to keep 15 entries instead of 10. This is because almost no other song I really really like from them will ever be elligible for these lists and if I can’t put a single Indochine song somewhere, especially from the Paradize album, I will have to punch a wall, dammit.

So here. Have the one in which the guy asks the moon if his significant other still loves him and where the moon answers “dude it’s not my problem”.

I love them and Paradize is an absolute monster of an album which rightfully made them relevant again, from new wave sensations of the 80s to favorite mainstream band for every young French punk/goth kid ever in the 2000s. This is not a diss, by the way, considering I was very clearly in that core demographic. Especially if you look at the top three I made for that year (and for the next one but let’s not get ahead of ourselves).

4 - A Thousand Miles (Vanessa Carlton)

US: #6 / FR: #51

Yeah yeah, you knew this was coming when you saw that pic of the first singles I bought, and you can start laughing now. I know it’s basically a meme now (and a good one, mind you), but sometimes, songs are remembered for more than one reason, and you have to admit that one is still great on its own. I listened to it SO. MUCH. Especially before everything started to go wrong for me that year, so basically this is the sound of “how things should have been”, and it’s so pleasant and nice to listen to it even today. It’s no longer on my mp3 player, but, no joke, I think it stayed on it from the day I bought my first mp3 player to something like 2017. Is it an indicator of quality or yet another indicator of my debatable taste? Probably both.

In any other year, there would be a clear #1 either towering above the other songs or just slightly ahead of the rest. 2002 was so good I can’t, for the life of me, decide which of these next three songs is the best one, even subjectively, in a “hey I like this one a little bit more” kind of way.

So I’m ranking the top 3 according to the lengths I went to to listen to each of these songs at the time.

Let’s go.

3 - C’est Une Belle Journée (Mylène Farmer)

US: Not on the list / FR: #46

This is what I’d call the Last Great Mylène Farmer Song. Oh she was still making music, pretty great music, in fact, after that. She’s still making decent stuff nowadays, from time to time. But in my opinion, it’s all downhill from there.

Still. This kickstarted my obsession with her at the time, because someone (I still have no idea who that was) was foolish enough to buy me the cd for Christmas. This is also why it’s #3 and not higher; I didn’t have to work at all to listen to it.

So... This is a song about killing yourself, disguised as a bouncy energetic pop tune. And it works horribly well. It’s very vaguely sinister but if you don’t listen to it very closely, it’s nearly impossible to notice what it’s actually about (translation here), and it charted super high and for a super long time without any controversy in its wake.

As I said: all downhill from there, because... how do you even top this?

2 - Lose Yourself (Eminem)

US: #63 / FR: Not on the list

You probably guessed this was coming. I’m not sure what the consensus for the “best Eminem hit song” is nowadays, but that one has to be pretty high on the list. And it’s also kind of a meme because of the spaghetti line, I know, but still, quality, man. The most important thing about it in the context of this list is that it was juuuuust slow enough to allow me to understand most of the important parts with my still-limited English, and I loved the little story it told. I remember trying to put it on a tape for days and waiting for it to pop up on the radio and instantly pressing Record after the first note.

And of course I wanted to see 8 Mile and I couldn’t, but a few months later, the local book/dvd/music store, which had screens broadcasting scenes from new stuff they were selling, had a screen with a few battle rap scenes from 8 Mile on it, and once I noticed I stood in front of the screen for a long time in silent admiration. What can I say, I was an angry little thing, and seeing angry people fighting each other in ways where no-one gets hurt was very satisfying and cathartic.

1 - In the End (Linkin Park)

US: #7 / FR: Not on the list

The music video had hilariously bad cgi even at the time, just to clarify. But yeah, that sound right there had the perfect balance of color, energy, sadness and anger to be the hit of the year for me back then. And I could understand nearly all the lyrics! I. Loved it. The local library had Hybrid Theory and I listened to it so. MUCH (my favorite song on it was actually One Step Closer (singing CAUSE I’M ONE-STEP-CLOSER-TO-THE-EDGE, ANDI’MABOUTTOBREAK felt great) and I thought Crawling was a bit embarrassing). Thank god that library didn’t have fines if you returned your stuff after the due date because I had to wait until I was able to make a copy of it first. The “parents-proof” “”cryptic”” label I wrote on said copy wasn’t particularly cryptic, though, and I’m gonna share it with you right now because that’s kind of funny.

So what do you do when you’re 14, pretty sure you understood the whole song, are finally able to listen to the whole album, burn it on a cd, and listen to it way too often? You write down the lyrics, painstakingly, with a fountain pen, in a small notebook where you try to write down the lyrics of every single song you love & can understand entirely. That’s what you do. Of course.

When I stopped doing that in 2007, there were two notebooks like that. I lost one of them, apparently, but the one I was able to find already had 63 songs in it. I finally had my own internet access later that year and I could find all the lyrics I wanted whenever I wanted, and I stopped doing that once and for all.

But it helped me get a lot better with English, so in the end, it doesn’t even matter.

So yeah, In the End?

Loved it and loved that band. I still do.

Next up: wow, “all edge no point”, uh?

#Johannes’ bad not good pretty terrible music lists #music #long post #eye contact tw #suicide ideation tw

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sippin-on-red-wine · 5 years

Text

No. 6 Collaborations Project: A review!

It’s been a week since this fabulous album has dropped into our hands. Click “Keep reading to hear my thoughts on each track!

Track 1. Beautiful People Khalid ★★★★ Favorite Lyric: You look stunning dear/So don’t ask that question here

Thoughts/Reflection: Ed keeps referring to this song as ‘cozy’ and I completely agree. The vibe is cool. I love the tone of his voice here and I think it meshes really nicely with Khalid’s. The content isn’t super relatable, but I think we can all take something away from this one. It’s a good note on self-awareness and being able to see the reality in things that may look glamorous on the surface.

Track 2. South of the Border feat. Camila Cabello, Cardi B ★★★★★ Favorite Lyric: So join me in this bed that I’m in/Push up on me and sweat darlin’/So I’m gonna put my time in/Won’t stop until the angels sing

Thoughts/Reflection: This track is literally freaking scorching hot fire. TBH I’m surprised that they led the album with IDC and not this one. It feels like big radio potential to me. Regardless, this song is an absolute BOP - so catchy and so fucking sexy.

I know Ed’s Spanish leaves something to be desired ☺ But I feel like we can cut him some slack after singing (yet another) song dedicated to going down on a woman. The ginger is forgiven! Five stars for him! And I’m going to have SOTB on repeat all summer (or for the rest of my life).

Oh, I also really like Cardi on this song. IDK if she’s problematic or w/e, I don’t really follow her in the media at all. But her verse is fun. (I think Ed got a lil jungle fever AY) bahahahah

Track 3. Cross Me feat. Chance the Rapper, PnB Rock ★★★★★ Favorite Lyric: Know she gonna slide anytime you bitches talk shit/Keep a lil blade in her fuckin’ lip gloss kit

Thoughts/Reflection: Love love love LOVE this one. It just makes you want to get up and DANCE the damn thing! I have to laugh a little at the thought of Ed being hard & tough, lol, but it’s a cool concept nonetheless. Like he said in his Charlemagne interview, it’s kind of a love song…. but a different tempo. It’s catchy as all hell and Chance’s verse is fucking cool.

Full points.

Track 4. Take Me Back to London feat. Stormzy ★★★★★ Favorite Lyric: Coz you can win BRITS (it don’t stop)/And you can do Glasto (headline slot)

Thoughts/Reflection: Fuck. This song, though. IIt’s the first one that jumped out at me when I did my first full album listen. And I haven’t stopped listening since. The chorus is so syncopated. Stormzy is sick on this track, I love his voice so much. And it just feels like the two of them really play off each other nicely and probably had a blast making this song.

Also, Ed flexing “Grossed half a billi on the Divide tour/No I’m not kidding what would I lie for” is BDE and I’m personally really here for it.

This song is a banger and you should dance in your kitchen to it while baking pastries. FIve stars for you, Big Mike and Teddy.

(Dear God please let Stormzy guest live in Ipswich)

Track 5. Best Part of Me feat. YEBBA ★★★★ Favorite Lyric: it’s not a lyric but that part when Ed & YEBBA are harmonizing perfectly in the whoooaaAAaaaA

Thoughts/Reflection: I love the sound on this song! His voice is so raw and tender here. It reminds me of Plus era, but grown up. I think it may be how delicately he approaches the syllables in his verse and the chorus. YEBBA’s tone is super rich and lovely, and they sound great together.

I’m taking a “star” off here because I don’t love the lyrics. I get that he’s being vulnerable and showing insecurities in verse 1, but then YEBBA follows that up with lamenting about misplacing things and being late for the train? It doesn’t seem to match up with admitting physical/bodily insecurities. Also, it could just be that I hate that Ed thinks of himself this way.

DUDE IS HOT AF

Track 6. I Don’t Care feat. Justin Bieber ★★★★ Favorite Lyric: I don’t like nobody but you/I hate everyone here

Thoughts/Reflection: Oh god. When did this song come out? I’m trying to think back to my first impressions of it, LOL. It’s bright and poppy and of course it went and stayed #1 all summer (thus far). I remember thinking it was so cool that the melody is super mainstream and upbeat, but the underlying theme is around social anxiety. “Crippled with anxiety/But I’m told I’m where I’m sposed to be”

I mostly skip this one now that the full album is out, but I think I listened to it for a full 48 hours on repeat when it first dropped. Bieber is problematic and shit, and honestly I don’t think he adds much to the song. I really like Ed’s acoustic version where he does the whole thing solo.

The bridge slaps. Literally. I love that clapping bit behind it. I wish that Ed hadn’t fucked up the lyrics to the bridge in the acoustic version lolololol

Four stars, will bop along for many moons to come

Track 7. Antisocial feat. Travis Scott ★★★★★ Favorite Lyric: So antisocial but I don’t care/Don’t give a damn I’m gonna smoke here/Got a bottle in my hand bring more tho

Thoughts/Reflection: DID YOU SEE HIM GUEST AT TRAVIS’ SHOW LAST NIGHT? This song was already one of my faves but holy shit. In interviews, Ed talks a lot about feeling awkward on stage without a guitar - but it didn’t look like that last night. He was bouncy as all hell, sounded great, looked great. Looked like he was loving the crowd’s energy too.

And the music video? That deserves a post all on it’s own.

This track is pretty short but it’s packed with good stuff. Ed’s intro is really strong here, the chorus is interesting despite the repetition. I physically can’t help but groove along to this tune. I’m sorry. I have no say in the matter

Track 8. Remember the Name feat. Eminem, 50 Cent ★★★★★ Favorite Lyric: 20 years old is when I came in the game/And now it's eight years on and you remember the name/And if you thought I was good, well, then I'm better today

Thoughts/Reflection: YES. YES. YES. The song intros with a reference to Ipswich, bitch. I love how Ed makes those connections back to his upbringing.

It’s a little unreal that these three iconic voices/styles can flow so well on a song and still sound so balanced.

I’ve got this one on repeat too. I’m determined to learn all of the words damnit!!

Five stars for a tune that I would love to see performed live someday.

Track 9. Feels feat. Young Thug, J Hus ★★★

Favorite Lyric: See you wigglin’, jigglin/If I have a bite will it taste like cinnamon?

Thoughts/Reflection: This song is fine. I like the feature verses. The song just doesn’t stick out that much for me.

Track 10. Put It All on Me feat. Ella Mai ★★★

Favorite Lyric: I try to be strong but I got demons/So can I lean on you?/I need a strong heart and a soft touch

Thoughts/Reflection: Falsetto. Falsetto everywhere. I love that! Ella Mai’s voice is so rich. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot more to say on this one. It’s not a song I’m playing on repeat, but I don’t skip it either.

Track 11. Nothing On You feat. Paulo Londra, Dave ★★★★ Favorite Lyric: You and I/Whisky on ice/Maybe later we can turn down all the lights

Thoughts/Reflection: This song is SEXY and cool…. ‘smoke clouds and the scent of perfume’.... the imagery. Man. More falsetto here. Also, please go look up the translation of Paulo Londra’s verse. Thanks. I’m sweating. Is it hot in here? This album is *sexual*

ALSO THE ‘BRRRP’ AFTER “they keep ringing my phone” bahahahahah

Track 12. I Don’t Want Your Money feat. H.E.R. ★★★★★

Favorite Lyric: I need you here for the good times and the bad times/Yeah the pullin’ out my hair gettin’ mad times/Not just the when I’m in your bed on my back times

Thoughts/Reflection: THIS IS SUCH A GODDAMN TUUUUNEEEEEE!!!!!!! I love this song so much. 10/10 jamming out to this in the car at every opportunity. Finger snappin’ cool r&b vibe. I love the super quick tempo (but not quite rap?) in Ed’s verses. And I always appreciate the little double-meaning-references in Ed’s songs - like ‘diamonds, silver or gold’ means $$$ of course, but also just success in terms of album sales performance.

TBH when I saw the title on Ed’s tracklist reveal, I totally thought this would be a slow mushy love song about how Ed’s lucky to have found someone who wasn’t into him for his money. This was a pleasant surprise!! I love that it’s a little angsty.

Five STARS bitch I love this song and y’all are sleeping on it

Track 13. 1000 Nights feat. Meek Mill, A Boogie Wit da Hoodie ★★★★

Favorite Lyric: Birds eye view/Pay my dues/For a two-mile queue

Thoughts/Reflection: i been ON for a thousAND NIGHTSSSSS NEW YORK TO LONDONNN DIFFERENT CITY EVERY DAYAYYY

1000 Nights: a flexy bop and I love it

This song is about the Divide tour which has been going for approximately 572 years. Not that I’m complaining.

But it’s cool (how many times have I said ‘cool’ in this post? don’t answer that). Ed loves touring and that comes out in this song. And Meek’s verse is so fun to rap along to!

Four stars.

Track 14. Way To Break My Heart feat. Skrillex ★★★★★

Favorite Lyric: I can’t stop thinkin’ bout her/And her lips on mine, so soft/Feelings I don’t know the name of

Thoughts/Reflection: biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiitch.

This song is NOSTALGIC and I simply adore it. It has that same… “cozy” feel that Beautiful People does. Which is strange, considering it’s a song about heartbreak. But it’s just so. Soft. And warm.

We’re back to super soft placement of words and such pure tone.

It’s hauntingly beautiful. And yet uptempo! Bless, Skrillex. I especially love the drums that come in during the chorus, after “you’re still gone, and i’ll say”

PS, the soft sound of mouth smacking at :13. Use headphones.

Some of my favorite Ed songs are ones about heartbreak, and I appreciate that he included one here. About an imaginary heartbreak ��

Take another five stars from me, bud

- Track 15. BLOW feat. Chris Stapleton, Bruno Mars ★★★★★

Favorite Lyric: Hot damn/Pop it like a pistol mama/You got me down on my knees/Baby please?

Thoughts/Reflection: *laughing nervously*

Again, definitely not what I expected out of this track when the titles were all revealed. I LOVED release day on this one. The world collectively lost their shit. I need nothing more in this world than to see this song performed live, especially with a full band and Ed on an electric guitar.

I’m still not over this loud, full, energetic song full of men bellowing about wanting to, well, fuck.

Bye

(five stars from me and also my 62 year old coworker Jan)

:::OVERALL:::

This album is SO GOOD MATE and I already cannot wait until the next collabs project! Ed blessed us with 15 amazing tracks to tide us over until Subtract comes out. They’re so different from his normal album stuff and I really love to see him try new sounds and get to create/collaborate with artists he admires so much.

it also has me real hot and bothered lmao

Thanks for coming to my tEd talk.

#ed sheeran #no 6 collaborations project #album review #surprise bitches i love every song #what did you think would happen

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letstalksymphogear · 5 years

Text

Symphogear, EP. 5

LAST TIME ON SINGY WINGY

ANGRY GREMLIN BEAT UP GOOD BY SUICIDE MOVE SURVIVE BLUE BIRD YES. BLUE BIRD GO TO HOSPITAL FOR WATER METAPHOR WITH AFTERLIFE GIRLFRIEND. TINY BIRD SAD, BUT THEN NOT GET SAD! JACKIE CHAN TIME AFTER MUCH THINKING. WIFE WORRIED ABOUT THINGS. SOMETHING SOMETHING PUNCH GOOD NOW.

Let us continue.

Miku wakes up to see her wife has run off yet again. This is the part of the Sam Reimi’s Spiderman franchise phase where the Mary Jane (not weed) begins having a rockier relationship with Peter Parker (not slang for penis) due to lack of availability.

It’s contrived.

It’s almost impressive that she left a note and had time to draw a tiny Hibiki saying something in a bubble. Glad to see you have your priorities straight, Hibiki.

“you know she might have had a better time in the local art school that doodle aint half bad”

Hibiki is motherfucking Rocky all up in this.

youtube

She’s going to kick some ass and nobody’s getting in the way.

“YOU’RE GONNA EAT LIGHTING AND YOU’RE GONNA CRRRRRAP THUNDER TACHIBANAAAAA”

“THAT’S A DIET I CAN GET BEHIND”

I wasn’t joking when I said she’s not fucking around anymore. Did you think I was joking? I can see how you can get the impression given the first few episodes, but I really can’t emphasize the thoroughness of the ass kicking she is going to be capable of.

“MY FATHERLY ENERGIES ARE WORKING! ADOPTERS ANONYMOUS WAS WRONG AFTER ALL!”

That’s totally not ominous in the slightest.

Meanwhile, in the middle of an unnamed McMansion in the middle of who knows where...

Gratuitously spoken English is heard. To be fair, it’s actually really impressive pronunciation coming from people whose native language are systemically different to ours. Most shows would just settle for “this dude is actually speaking english but everything is said in japanese for better interpretation” but not Symphogear! No siree!

Relic business is afoot.

We have a random blonde lady shooting random Noise from the thing The Gremlin had in her hands.

She’s really trying her best with her accent. She’s also casually shooting Noise because let’s face it, would we not do the same if it were in our hands?

“i do whatever i want with my big stiff rod pal”

Also, she’s a nudist. To also be fair, if you lived in a fuckoff rich McMansion with weapons beyond your comprehension, you likely couldn’t help but walk around naked doing whatever the fuck you want.

The people she’s talking to are the Americans, which we explained before are portrayed strictly in an antagonistic light. They want some relics, and this lady clearly deals them like like some sort of glorified drug dealer.

Suffice it to say, she’s not a very nice person.

Also, the subs don’t match what they’re saying in English in the slightest.

The name of this woman... is Fine (pronounced fi-neh). And she is the main antagonist of this series.

Fucking identical.

And here is the most unpleasant scene in the entire season.

The person we’ve repeatedly alluded to as The Gremlin is called Yukine Chris. She serves Fine in whatever the hell they’re up to right now. In this case, it’s using the Nehushtan armor to run around with Solomon’s Cane to throw Noise around the city.

“shits gonna get real abusive, pal”

Fine is a narcissistic sociopath. She’s manipulated Chris into servitude by believing she is the only one that can pave humanity into salvation.

“i dont like that smile”

Chris thinks Fine can secure her deepest wish. Ironically? It’s world peace.

“yeah! yeah yeah, world peace, yeah, totally. just treat me like jesus and we’re gucci”

Anyway, she proceeds to thoroughly shock Chris.

The lore behind this is that this is helping her resistance with dealing with the physical demands of the Nehushtan armor, as well as deal with the pieces of Nehushtan that may be still inside. Let’s be real, though. Fine’s a sadist, and just likes hurting people willy nilly.

“fuck... that hurt like shit... hey wait... wouldnt some of the electrical arcs hit you and shock you too, given you’re so naked and close to all this...?”

“ya nevermind that food looks real nice and i want a piece of that fuckin turkey”

It’s a real creepy scene, and it cements Fine’s horribleness really well. One of the most pivotal things to take note is that Fine says that people can only communicate with each other universally through pain. Strong, terrible BDSM overtones notwithstanding, this will be a common (though varying in quality) motif of the entire series.

“BITCH YOU THOUGHT WE WAS GUNNA EAT AFTER THAT FUCKIN’ WISECRACK ABOUT GETTING SHOCKED LIKE YOU’RE EVEN FUCKIN’ NIKOLAI TESLA ALL UP IN HERE WE’RE GONNA ELECTRIC SLIDE YOUR ASS TO NEXT WEEK”

“FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCK”

“WHERE THE FUUUUUUUCK IS HIBIKI?!”

“i was gonna invite her to the circus with the rest of the class ‘cause i felt bad about how i treated her but i guess she’s not here”

“the only clown im interested in is hibiki, in the carnival tent of my own bedroom”

“isn’t being a part of /fit/ great, hibiki? can you just feel the gains?”

“yeah who needs doting wife based significant others when you have your gym bros, right newly acquired father figure?”

Hibiki, having acquired a new brain cell during her training, asks the million dollar question:

“Why the fuck are we relying on schoolgirls to deal with all this stuff?”

“anime just be that way, hibiki. i’m just the wrong protagonist in the wrong show.”

Japan is super big on keeping the Symphogear a secret because they are strong and the world really, really wants a slice of the Symphogear pie. These people are basically walking super-weapons. Tsubasa literally dropped a sword the size of a skyscraper. It’s like the premise of the series of Iron Man films.

“do i get like a superhero name too or”

Something to wrap your head around. This was released around 2012, and while the setting seems to be slightly more futuristic, the world it was made in at the time had not been through the era of social media/smartphones we have right now. It was on the cusp of doing so, which means the idea of decent (yet vertical) amateur footage of things happening wasn’t something in the mainstream yet. Why do I say this?

Because in Symphogear, the fact that Symphogear exist is the biggest open secret in this unidentified city ever. NDAs are passed like hotcakes to keep people’s mouths shut on seeing monster-fighting singing superheroes. And they sing, too! Symphogears as an entity are the most high-profile fighting agents out there. Bright colors, no masks, constant singing, fighting in broad daylight in populated areas. Everybody knows, but no one says a word.

Which means every politician on the face of Japan hates these idiots, but they’re stuck with them out of sheer necessity.

“i swear to god if you bring up sam reimi’s spiderman one more goddamned time”

“look it’s the truth, all anime comes back to sam reimi’s spiderman. fate zero did it. uhhh, fucking...baccano, probably? now us. face it. its pretty much the bible.”

It’s also pointed out that the very concept of a Symphogear is born from a science that didn’t exist, and it probably contributes to political frustration as well.

“im going to microwave all your sam reimi spiderman dvds. im gonna do it. you try me, motherfucker. i didnt go into acting and get into this position to hear lectures about a decades old film franchise nobody cares about anymore.”

“can we stop fighting about the validity of sam reimi’s spiderman for five seconds and get back to helping me thing of a dope as hell superhero name? now, lemme lay one on you: Mister Fister”

Hibiki asks where Code Ryoko is.

“any answer besides Not Here works”

“oh, she left to talk to the americans, why?”

“huh, shes sorta late, actually”

“WHY A BAD BITCH LIKE ME GOTTA GET STUCK IN TRAFFIC LIKE THIS”

In the mother of all Mom Vans, no less.

MEANWHILE... IN METAPHOR LIMBO...

Tsubasa has reached the sea floor of the water metaphor dimension surrounded by water, which is her feelings, which are very gay. Imagine the Mariana Trench but like, deeper. Way deeper. That’s where Tsubasa is.

Leave it to Kazanari “I am literally a sword” Tsubasa to successfully spin the very act of surviving a suicidal move during combat as a failure. That’s a special kind of self loathing right there.

“the sheer force of my love for big ladies is keeping me alive”

Tsubasa asks about the point of Kanade’s sacrifice. Why’d she do it? Why was she so hungry at the end?

She personally shows up to answer that question, because that’s Kanade for you.

“being badass is cool, but you know whats cooler? caring.”

“sharing the sauce... you... you shared the sauce...”

“thats right, tsubasa. i wanted to protect the sauce, but... ultimately... sharing it was better. it wasn’t my sauce, tsubasa. it was everyone’s...”

“im gonna suck on a ketchup packet in your memory, tsubasa”

Kanade’s spirit pulls her out of the dimension of water metaphors as she is slowly undrowning from her emotions.

Tsubasa, like Kanade, was lost in the sauce. But now, after Kanade’s touching peptalk, Tsubasa is lost no longer.

“will i ever see you again in my dreams, kanade...?”

“where there’s a sauce. i’ll be there.”

“ill eat taco bell every day just to see you again kanade”

“and i dont even like taco bell... im more of a chipotle girl...”

After accepting Taco Bell as her lord and savior, she is immediately pulled out of the metaphor zone.

And wakes the fuck up.

“b..... b..... b............”

“Baja Blast....”

#symphogear #symphogear season 1 #anime #comedy #recap

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steveholley · 5 years

Text

Seventeen Years and Counting

In February, 2002, the New England Patriots stunned the football world by defeating the Rams in Super Bowl XXXVI in the Louisiana Superdome.

This past Sunday, the Patriots defeated the Rams in the Super Bowl again but things were a little different. The Rams are back in Los Angeles for one, and the game was certainly no stunner; if anything, it would have come more as a shock if New England hadn't won Super Bowl LIII.

In the 17 years since that 2002 Super Bowl, with quarterback Tom Brady and coach Bill Belichick leading the Patriots and cementing themselves as arguably the greatest of all-time at their respective positions, the franchise has won an unimaginable six Lombardi Trophies, tied for the most in NFL history. And that's with New England having a full 10-year stretch without winning the big game. By contrast, only the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Giants have also won multiple Super Bowls in that span - each with two apiece.

But this story isn't really about who can yell "RINGS!" It's not even really about sports, though we'll cover that.

It's a reflective piece as I sit here writing my own Super Bowl LIII story.

Let's rewind. In the late summer and early fall of 2001 as the Patriots' dynasty first began to take shape, I was a 19-year-old college student plowing my way through school and driving around in my pride-and-joy at the time: a gorgeous 1992 Chevrolet Camaro that my father bought me the year I entered college. I was still living at home with my parents, working a job I hated and still struggling to escape the stench of high school and my hometown, with no purpose or direction for where my life was headed.

I was a loner struggling with severe depression and mental illness that wasn't diagnosed until much later. I weighed upward of 240 pounds, had very little social life or even social skills and never imagined all the many things God would bless me with as I grew older and moved away. My best friend since high school had already 'gotten out' after moving to Virginia Beach following graduation. We lost touch and didn't reconnect with one another until years later. There was no social media to stay in touch with back then. When I graduated high school, few of my classmates even had internet access and e-mail from their homes. Even fewer had cell phones. Texting was still a few years away from becoming mainstream; in fact, I didn't get my first real cell phone until I was almost 23. The point is that she got out. Had I not done the same a few years later, I would have been dead before I even turned 30. The older I've gotten, the more I'm convinced of that.

In 2001, I was still in college and the University of Alabama was in its first season under a then-promising outsider head coach named Dennis Franchione, who came to Tuscaloosa by way of Texas Christian University. Andrew Zow and Tyler Watts were Alabama's quarterbacks then, with Zow leading the Tide past Auburn, 31-7, in that year's Iron Bowl at Jordan-Hare Stadium. As strange as it may seem to some of today's generation of 'Bama fans, beating Auburn in those days was our national championship game (theirs, too). To some fans, it always will be. Thinking of those Alabama teams now, it will always be surreal to me that I've watched my school win not just one national championship but five. When you watch as your school is reduced to living off its glory days while losing to teams like Northern Illinois, Central Florida (before they were the annoying hipsters of the college football world) and Louisiana Tech - twice - because of unprecedented NCAA probation, you don't expect to one day reach the college football mountain top five times in nine years.

At the time, my grandfather was going through the final stages of a terrible but courageous fight with colon cancer that took its toll on all of us as a family. No matter how I look back on it, I'll always call him that: courageous. Courageous for the way he managed to stay alert, awake and coherent even as the cancer kept spreading; for the way he still got out of bed every morning in spite of the pain he was in. On the last birthday I celebrated with him, he managed to get out of bed long enough to spend time with me because he knew what day it was. He was courageous for how he'd still find a way to put his pain aside and try to make me laugh in his darkest hours, usually by needling my grandmother over something or ranting about his love of old-school country music and, just as equally, his sheer hatred of the Republican Party. He was courageous for the way he always searched and found a way to cheer me up even when he didn't know he was doing it.

My grandfather didn't teach me anything about sports. In fact, he hated sports with a passion. He used to say that if he were ever elected president, his first executive order would be to eliminate all sports. I would always quip back, "And your next executive order will be to remove the bullet from the sniper's rifle after they shoot your ass for banning football…"

Regardless, my grandfather was never a weak man. My brother Paul and I used to joke that we were the only kids in our high school who'd have taken an ass-beating from our 70-year-old grandfather had push ever come to shove over anything (not that it ever would). He watched with Paul and I when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl, though the significance of that feat couldn't have mattered less to him. We watched that game through the 841-foot outdoor antenna he had in his garden; you know, the kind that was big enough to serve as a communications portal to life on other planets.

My writing at the time, so far as it existed, consisted of daily Chicago Cubs game stories and general team news for a start-up company, more a hobby and a release and a habit from growing up a Cubs fan than an actual job. The Cubs had a good season that year. They won almost 90 games and stayed in the playoff race until September, Kerry Wood rebounded from Tommy John Surgery to win 12 games and post a good ERA, and Sammy Sosa was still… normal(ish) at the time. I had a front-row seat to it through WGN TV and the internet (hello, RealPlayer!), still relatively in its infancy at the time.

As I've written before, what started out as me merely writing about the Cubs beating the Reds or losing to the Cardinals or vice versa on any given day from April to September later turned into me becoming a de facto beat writer for the team and going on to branch out into covering other professional sports. One of my favorite stories is when I met the late Hall of Famer and San Diego Padres great Tony Gwynn at a Double-A All-Star game in Mobile where he was watching his son play. I said something to him about a father watching his son follow in his footsteps. I thought it was almost romantic in a way. Gwynn must have thought otherwise. "Thanks for making me feel old, dude," he said (grumbled is more like it).

Any of the tales I have and the things I've done in sportswriting have happened in cities hundreds of miles from where I grew up, of course. My hometown has never been known for anything overly noteworthy. It's the hometown of George "Goober" Lindsey, eerie unsolved murders and disappearances, some of the highest rates of spousel abuse in the nation, and numerous odds and ends mysteries. And drugs. Yes, lots of drugs and drug arrests.

Once, Bear Bryant came through town in his green Cadillac and another time Merle Haggard played a concert there when he was flat broke. I think my brother said it best about our home state: "It's a strange place. On the one hand, it's beautiful with many wonderful people and a fine, distinct southern culture. At the same time, it's terrifying and home to some of the downright worst human beings and atrocities the country has ever seen, all existing together in tension and constantly ripping itself apart from within." On that he's very much correct.

Anyway, to show how much time has passed, in the fall of 2001 when the Patriots dynasty began out of nowhere, New England was still playing its home games at the old and outdated Foxboro Stadium. The Yankees were still playing at the real Yankee Stadium in the weeks after the most horrific terrorist attack on American soil, and Wrigley Field and Fenway Park hadn't yet received long-overdue upgrades that have since brought them into the 21st century.

No one watches the Super Bowl on huge outdoor antennas anymore but rather on ridiculously priced cable "bundles" or in many cases their phones, computers and other gadgets. I often wonder what my grandfather would have thought of the idea that 17 years after watching my last Super Bowl with him that we'd have the means and technology to watch the game or the NBC Nightly News (his daily, can't-miss half-hour of television) on our telephones.

My brother called me after the Super Bowl last Sunday on his way back to his apartment in Brooklyn, another occurrence neither of us foresaw growing up. We were talking about the game when he said something that really got me thinking.

"It's hard for me to believe but this Patriots run started back when I was a senior in high school," he said. "They've won six Super Bowls since I was 18 years old. I'm 35 now. Their dynasty has literally lasted half of my life."

And that's what got me started down this rabbit hole.

Thinking back on the places I've gone, all the people I've since met, my grandfather, the New England Patriots (who incidentally once played a regular-season home game at Birmingham's Legion Field vs. the New York Jets), Andrew Zow and Tyler Watts, making Tony Gwynn feel old, getting married and finding my soul mate and the love of my life and the family I have now; all the things and fears and nightmares I escaped that are both real and imagined. And of course my own health battles I've fought despite being a full 100 pounds lighter now than I was 17 years ago.

There will be other sports dynasties in the years ahead. The beauty of dynasties is that no one can predict which team it will be or even when the current ones will end. Or better still, when and where life will take us, who we might meet next, and other things and history we'll experience and bear witness to.

All of which is to say in conclusion, enjoy it. Whatever it is and whoever it is that make history, just enjoy it.

"Buy the ticket, take the ride," Hunter S. Thompson famously said. Completely separate of football dynasties and any Super Bowl, may we all keep buying the ticket, wherever it takes us.

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