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likeadevils · 3 years

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hey! for your post about sun moon and rising but with taylor albums, can you list out the characteristics of each album? i'm having a hard time associating them and it'd make it a lot easier, if you could do that :)

oh totally! Its really all about your personal association, so i’ll give vibes for the era and the album. a good rule of thumb is to read the prologue if you want the tone for the era quickly. honestly, there’s no set system, go wild

taylor swift (2006) “debut”

era: blue and teal and brown. cowboy boots and sundresses, wild curly hair, trucks and mud and wildflowers. very 2006, very high school, very country

album: swings between pining from a distance and wanting to destroy a boys whole ass life and feeling like you have no friends and no one understands you in the whole world. like I said, very high school, but also full of whole ass bangers

fearless (2008)

era: yellow and white. 24/7 prom. she’s got the fairy tale aesthetics set in high school, she’s got calling your ex boyfriend out on national television, she's got so many headbands. god to be 8 years old when the joe jonas/taylor swift drama was going down

album: again, fairy tale set in high school. lots of crushes, lots of realizing men aren’t shit. it’s about the pull between childhood ideals and real life tearing them down, and deciding how much you should cling to your dreams and how much you have to let them go. it’s also a pull between knowing that these little moments are kinda ridiculous but also taking everything so goddamn seriously

speak now (2010)

era: purple purple purple. she’s starting to grow up! her look has evolved out of sundresses and prom dresses and into a more preppy style. she’s moved out of fantasy and into this like. circus aesthetic? 30s movie type thing? watch the mean music video, idk how to explain it. her hair is still curly and but under control, and she’s solidly Famous at this point. the idea that she can’t sing is Big, and the man-eater stereotype is starting to get popular

album: she’s starting to grow out of country. she’s experimenting with rock, but her pop sound is starting to take off. it’s all about Dramatics: she’s experienced her first heartbreak, broke someone else’s heart, and was in an emotionally abusive relationship all within two years. she’s moved out of her parents house and is both infantilized and forced to grow up to fast by the media.

red (2012)

era: its 2012 hipster style. her hair is Straight and she’s wearing vintage dresses everywhere, and she’s posting sketches of red lips and quotes from fitzgerald about heartbreak and finding yourself on instagram. she is dating and breaking up with harry styles Very Publically, and its the last major relationship she’ll have for two more years. the idea that she dates to much is everywhere, and she’s being slut shamed to an insane degree, while also being dismissed as a goody-two-shoes

album: it’s designed so each song has the opposite emotions of the song before it. it’s dramatic and it’s heart wrenching and it portrays these relationships that were toxic and messy and captivating. has the last vestiges of country, some more rock, and the first pure Pop songs, all nestled against each other to give you the epic highs and lows of being 22

1989 (2014)

era: its the height of her stardom, and she’s more beloved then she’s ever been and (probably) will ever be again. she’s cut her hair and moved to New York, she’s wearing high waisted stuff and taking polaroids, and she’s been single for two years and it’s has given her the freedom to find a “tight” group of friends and herself. shes talking about third wave feminism all the time, she’s papped every day, and she started dating c*lvin h*rris; they date for a year, he was the first boyfriend to be posted on social media, and the one she was with the longest (until her current bf). publically, she’s the happiest and most successful she’s ever been. personally, it’s more complicated, especially by the last few months. “she lost him, but she found herself and somehow that was everything” and “from the girl who said she would never cut her hair or move to new york or find happiness in a world where she wasn't in love”

album: single handedly brings 80s pop into the mainstream. (like seriously, her only contemporary influence is lana del rey, and even that is only on a few tracks. listening to this when it came out was a religious experience). it sounds basic now but only because she influenced all of the pop music that came after her. its also her first sonically cohesive album since fearless. subject matter wise, its very 80s movie. it’s the first album without a break up song that ruins a man's whole career— no cold as you, dear john, or all too well type. the relationship is on and off again, but more muted and mature then the tumultuous ones portrayed on red. its very star crossed; two people who just can’t find the right time. she’s also writing about how fame has affected her— blank space, shake it off, and i know places all directly reference it, but the idea that the whole world is watching is woven all throughout the album

bleachella (2016)

this isn't an album but its definitely an era

taylor has become so oversaturated that people are starting to turn on her, and her mental health is suffering. her relationship with c*lvin h*rris is falling apart, she's changing her hair every couple of moths (most notably she bleaches it, and goes to coachella. so like bleachella), and then all of a sudden The Phone Call happens. kim and kanye release edited footage of a phone call that makes it seem like taylor swift is a liar who intentionally plays the victim to stay in the public’s good graces, and the world pounces on it. between that and the idea that her friend group is super cliche-y and exclusionary, her reputation is ruined and she goes in hiding for months. before going into hiding though, she breaks it off with c*lvin (he throws a FIT on twitter) and starts a whirlwind romance with tom hiddleston that includes them flying all over the world on vacations and meeting each others parents super quickly. this all happens in one summer.

reputation (2017)

era: black and white and gold. very edgy, very rich, lots of snakes and casual wealth. there’s the aesthetic of her being very hurt and defensive and lashing out, but the reality of her being the happiest she’s ever been. she’s still famous, but she’s learned how to have a private life and healthy relationships. the tough times have shown her who and what’s important to her

album: pretty much that. the first half is brash and bombastic and playing off what people expect her to be like, how they expect her to fall in and out of love quickly and manipulate those around her to see her as a good person (while exploring sounds that no one expected her to explore) and the second half slows it down and shows her falling in love more explicitly and sweetly and under cover. “in the death of her reputation she felt truly alive” and “finding love through all the noise”

lover (2019)

era: bright pink and pastels and bright colors and happiness and butterflies!! she’s in love and beloved by the general public again, but all of her past albums have been stolen from her by a man she thought she could trust. sadly cut off short by covid. “step into the daylight and let it go”

album: her messiest album (sonically) since red. a popular saying when it first came out was that it had the writing of speak now but the sound of 1989, which is... understandable? its the kind of thing you have to form your own opinion on. it’s on the surface all bubblegum pop and being in love, but it has some of the absolute saddest songs of her entire discography. a 18 song long rollercoaster

folklore and evermore

preface: these are definitely two separate albums and there’s a definitely a difference but this girl has so many albums and it’s taken me an hour to answer this ask and it’s 1am right now so i’m gonna smush them together. go listen to them, and we’re in the era right now

eras: it been covid so all we’ve got are a couple performances and the album visuals. cottagecore, a return to the small town setting of her first two albums, very understated and timeless. one noteworthy element is that both albums were surprise releases (especially after lover had almost a year of build up that kinda worked against it). she’s reached a level of artistic respect that she’s never had

albums: folklore is a level of sonic and thematic cohesion comparable to 1989, as well as having a similar feeling of like. oh god we’ve been waiting for you to make an album like this for years and you’ve still exceeded every exception and made it surprising. evermore is mostly a continuation of its sound, though it’s a bit more experimental. both albums are incredibly mature, and move into non-autobiographical storytelling for most of the songs. it’s easy to build your own world based on one or both of the albums. their main themes are also mostly divorced from relationships, and more tied to personal identity and mental state (though there is quite a bit about divorce and heartbreak in both)

#sorry this took so long but damn that’s a big ask for someone who never shuts up #and by someone I mean me but also taylor #anonymous #asks*

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peachyteabuck · 4 years

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eye on the prize

summary: commission for astrid, who asked for chris evans x reader interview fluff.

pairing: chris evans x reader

words: 3,006

trigger warnings: RPF, slow burn, heavy flirtation, idiots in love, nondescript mentions of misogyny in the media as a business, a likely poorly reconstructed timeline (time fake and reality is a construct!)

ask box / masterlist / commission info / ko-fi

The hotel bed is large, big enough for four of you. The blankets are thick and the soft, the pillows a perfect balance of structured but plush. Sunbeams stream onto the mused sheets, warming your face. It’s nice, but only as nice as the calm before a major tropical storm can be. As your phone alarm blares next to you, you start to wonder if being caught in a category five hurricane would be better than press junkets.

A whole day talking to people about a movie you made months ago that you know jack shit about. Sometimes you have nightmares about giving a book report on a novel you’ve never even opened (you’re how old? And high school is still haunting you? Jesus, you need to go back to therapy) that cause you to break out in a cold sweat and kick all the covers from your bed and buy a bunch of stuff online to distract yourself from your racing heart and shaking hands.

Still, those are never as bad as interviewers asking about character arcs and plotlines and your relationship with actors you’ve barely (if ever) met and whatever else a normal interviewer would ask a normal interviewee when all you know is your character, the fact that she does shit with magic, and she’s Dr. Strange’s daughter. Anything other than that is anyone’s guess.

Your stylist and makeup artists are the ones to eventually drag you out of bed and plop you into hair and makeup after squeezing you into an incredibly tight pair of jeans and a non-controversial sweater. The forty-five minutes are a complete blur, but then again, nothing feels real until Sebastian hands you a large coffee in a travel cup that bares no logo or other kind of copywritten signifier – your knight in shining…cardboard? What are travel coffee cups even made of? Paper? Can paper even “shine?”

You’re nearly purring when the taste of caramel macchiato burns your tongue. “Ah. Thanks, Seb. I appreciate it.”

Sebastian shrugs, sipping at his own drink masquerading as generic brand. “No problem. I didn’t want you to bite an interviewer’s head off this morning. Or worse, mine.”

You play-hit him in the face and laugh with him, making small talk and trying to kill the time before the mind-numbingly long day really begins. You’re halfway through a rant about the woes of make up artists trying to put you in a full face of makeup to a man who barely has to put on concealer, the fucking asshat, when Chris makes an appearance.

“Hey, guys,” he’s is also drinking coffee from the unmarked travel cups. He looks you up and down before taking another sip. “You look really nice today.”

You blush, smoothing out your sweater – one of the color-blocked ones that sits at the intersection of casual, feminine, and not-intimidating. “Thanks, you too.”

Sebastian’s about to say something snarky when someone wearing a headset calls upon the three of you.

“Let’s get going, people!” she calls, ushering you into three barely-comfortable seats. You’re between Chris and Sebastian, the sheer mass of them making you feel approximately three feet tall. It doesn’t take much to forget how large they both are – even if Sebastian doesn’t weight two hundred pounds anymore and Chris was able to tone down his exercise regime since finishing Infinity War, you still feel like you’re sitting at the big-kid table for the first time.

The first interviewer is from some YouTube channel you only know because your fourteen-year-old niece gushes about them every family dinner. The woman who sits in front of you is young, cute. Dresses trendy, dark eye makeup and red lips.

She’s nice, too, along with being knowledgeable about the projects of each of you. She banters with Sebastian about his seven million movies before turning to you.

The interviewer turns to you. “And you! You’re nominated for some pretty major awards!”

You smile wide, unable to help yourself. “Yeah, best actress and best original score.”

“That’s so cool,” Chris mumbles. You blush and pretend not to hear him as you speak again.

“It’s just super crazy,” you tell the interviewer. “Not even gonna lie. When I was younger, I would look at stars who like, cried when they found out they were nominated. Not even winning, just their name shows up on the ballot. But now I’m like, it’s me, two-time Grammy nominee! I was nominated for a Grammy, twice!”

Sebastian chimes in, laughing. “When we were at bunch together, I got there early and the caterer showed up and they were like, we’re here for the two-time Grammy nominee?”

“You had a brunch?” The interviewer asks.

You nod. “Yeah, I bunch of the Avengers cast and the cast from my last movie were in my hometown, which is super rare, so I hosted this giant brunch-”

“As one does,” Sebastian chimes in with a crooked smile.

You nearly hit him. “Yes! As I do! I wanted to see all my friends, whom I love, so I host a brunch. Sue me! Anyway…I hosted this brunch and invited a bunch of people over. Just a bunch of my favorite food from my favorite restaurants. Everyone I’d wanted to see for such a long time was there. It was amazing.”

The interviewer paints a faux frown across her face, looking at the man on your right. “Chris, you look very sad.”

“I didn’t get invited to the brunch,” Chris frowns. Unlike the woman in front of you, he looks genuinely sad. A twinge of pain bounces in your ribcage, and you rub his cardigan-clad back

“You were out doing Broadway shit!” you laugh. “You were halfway across the country!”

Chris continues to frown, staring at the printed-out pictures from the social medias of various guests. A few are from yours – you in a flowy sundress with your head thrown back laughing, a shot of you and a few of your friends from college drinking alcohol in the bright mid-afternoon sun. One you recognize from Sebastian’s Instagram, another from Hemsworth’s. A few from Twitter of a few of your non-movie-star friends. You look so happy in all of them, so beautiful in each shot. “I still wanted to be invited.”

You just roll your eyes. “Okay, call me when you’re in my region of the country and I’ll host a brunch,” You touch your forefinger to his nose. Chris blushes, profusely, in his cheeks and his ears. “just for you and me.”

You don’t hear much after that, too focused on Chris’ eyes meeting yours and his small smile. You’re taken aback by how sweet, tender he looks, and before you know it the interviewer is saying goodbye and the next one is taking her place.

It’s a man this time, a little older than the last one with artsy facial hair and a button hip. He mostly pays attention to the two men and soon your brain goes on battery-saver and you’re lost in your own thoughts.

Are hipsters still a thing? Is that what this guy is trying to be? Do hipsters even like Marvel? Is that too “mainstream for them?”

Eventually he asks a question about you, your recent entry into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, your music, your composing. You’d be happy to talk about your passions, of course you are, but the first genuine question of the interview is positing towards…not you. You’re about to tune everything out again, but then Chris speaks and you snap back to attention.

“It’s always interesting to meet people who bring something new to the art form, ya know? A huge part of acting is learning and evolving and all that, especially from other actors,” Chris avoids your gaze, and the gaze of everyone else, as he speaks. “If you stop learning, if you stop growing, what’s the point? Why would I do this job if I didn’t think it could change me for the better?”

There’s a moment of thick silence, the heavy weight of Chris’ introspective answer settling over the people in the room. It’s one of the things you lo-

It’s one of the things you enjoy most about Chris, how dedicated he is to acting as more than a job. It’s amazing, truly, how much he adores what he does. You could spend the rest of time with him, a plate of cheese, and a bottle of wine; listening to him talk about how he thinks of acting as an art, how that art can impact people and society, how actors have a responsibility to that art (that is, of course, after you mock him endlessly for Not Another Teen Movie and Fantastic Four).

You feel like a high schooler again, doodling your first and his last name in hearts in your math notebook with your favorite pink glitter pen. You’re an adult, why are you blushing red as a raspberry every time he says something smarter than a fast food order?!

The rest of the day goes down in a blur, the only time you start to care again when someone on the production staff calls for dinner (yeah, no lunch on press junket day. You can ask for a light snack, but you learned the hard way a full meal is “bad for your figure” and “makes you likely to burp on camera” and a bunch of other stuff you care very little about).

All three of you groan in happiness when you enter the room designated as craft, the thick smell of barbeque hitting you like a baseball bat. But a good baseball bat, though, like…one you ask to be hit with. Honestly, you have no idea what you’re talking about because you’re so hungry.

When you finally manage to scavenge food, Sebastian’s right behind you as you stare at a very delicious looking tray of pulled pork. Your plate is already full, but what if they take the food away? And then what if you get hungry later?

“You know he’s flirting with you, right?” he whispers as you watch the man in question scroll through Twitter on his phone. Chris is eating about the same thing you are, plus celery. You almost make a quip about it being “nature’s floss,” but then you realize that would be dumb because Sebastian definitely wouldn’t find it as funny as Chris would.

You shrug, picking up a French fry from your plate. “Yeah, but you were, too.”

He scoffs into his second Americano of the morning. “Nah. Not like that. He likes you! He like likes you!”

“He does not-“

“And you like-like him!” He boops you on the nose and pinches your cheek like some sort of grandmother who hadn’t seen her fifteen-year-old son since he was five. “My little baby has a cruuuush!” he coos while making small kissy noises.

You’re about to bite back about how you’re not that much younger than him, but then the sound guy on the other side of the meat tray glares at the both of you. Looks like, while Chris couldn’t hear your bickering from the across the room, this dude definitely could – and he’s not very happy about it.

“Sorry,” you both mumble, shrinking away from the persecuting techie and his judgmental eyes.

Sebastian only talks again when you find an unpopulated corner, devoid of prying eyes and anyone who could be annoyed with the two of you gossiping like high schoolers.

“You know I’m not wrong, right?” he says around a bite of crisp apple. What is up with this guy and fruit? Sure, he’s on a restrictive diet for a role to keep him from bulking up (something at the intersect of keto and vegetarian but able to eat lean meats) but he’s can’t eat like, the vegan stuff? Why must he always eat like rabbit in your presence? “Have you not seen what he says on Twitter?”

You scoff. “No, because I don’t have a Twitter. And neither do you!” You narrow your eyes accusingly. “How do you know what he posts?” Sebastian rolls his eyes. “I see screenshots on Instagram, first of all. Second, he could be complimenting your music on the inside of a cave. It’s about the principle.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” you hiss. “Also, I’m done arguing with you about this. Let me find a cheeseburger and eat in peace. Is that too much a woman to ask, Sebastian!?”

He just laughs you off and lets you eat in peace, eventually getting his own food. Though, you suppose the meal was specially timed, because then Chris Evans is sitting next to you.

He’s about to say something, too, and you’re about to listen, but then you get called for an individual interview for a women’s health magazine and you have to leave him and you plate of food and fuck…you hate this job. A lot.

The interview is boring, once again, and the next time you have another coherent thought you’re taking the elevator back up to your hotel room and waving off your manager, who is telling you to be downstairs by seven tomorrow to catch your flight back home.

You’re just kicking off your heels when you hear a faint knock at the door. When you look through the peephole, you see a very sad-looking Christopher Evans. With his small frown and hunched shoulders, he looks like a kicked puppy; and even though all you want to do is take your bra off, you let him in.

He’s quiet for a moment before speaking as if he was a child preparing to be scolded.

“I lost my hotel key. And my backup got demagnetized.”

You bite back a laugh, trying to seem sympathetic. “Do you want to chill in here until security brings you another one?”

Chris nods solemnly as he steps through the threshold. “Thanks.”

Neither of you speak for a while, instead Chris looks around your quite messy (or “homey,” as you call it when you FaceTime your best friend and she scoffs at how easy you can make a room look like a hurricane tore through it) room and you…find an outfit for tomorrow?

You’re the first one to speak, only breaking the quiet after changing into fuzzy socks and sneakily taking off your lacey bra (and tucking it under the covers of the bed for you put away later).

“Well, that was excruciating,” you mumble. All you want to do is change into your biggest, most comfortable hoodie and your cotton panties and order room service and ignore humanity until you leave for a flight the next morning, but a man you’ve had a crush on since he appeared as Johnny Storm is right in front of you and after that talk with Sebastian your world is kind of shaken to its core and should you make a move? Is he the kind of guy to not like that? Would you want to be with a guy that doesn’t like that? What if he-

“Always are, I guess.” Chris interrupts your train of thought, saving it from going off the rails. When you at him he looks just as, if not more than, exhausted than you are. “That’s one of the things that you forget, I think. How hard it is to talk about these movies.”

You snort. Out of the corner of your eye, you can see Chris smile a little wider as you laugh. “Yeah. Other movies I can talk about like, characters and plots and shit. With these I live in constant fear I’m gonna pull a fucking Ruffalo and get my ass fired from the best paying gig I’ve ever had.”

Chris laughs with you, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Word.”

An awkward silence fills the room and you find something, anything to do to avoid his heavy gaze under those thick eyelashes and his thick beard that you just want to run your fingers through or his even softer hair that you want to mess up while you-

“Do you want to get dinner together sometime?” you blurt. You’re ready to take back the words as soon as you say them, wanting to backtrack or say “just friends” or “ha-ha, just kidding!” or something else that absolves you of non-platonic commitment.

By a long stretch of luck that you can’t even begin to thanks a long number of deities for, Chris doesn’t laugh at you or turn you down or even walk out of the room. He meets your gaze with excitement in his eyes and a smile wider than your home state. “I’d love to,” is all he says. It’s all either of you get to say before his phone rings loudly, and the name of the head of security flashes on his screen. He sighs loudly, apologizing as he takes it. Somehow, you feel more awkward as he turns away and answers the call. You fidget with your hands, with a loose thread on the sweater you’ve come to hate more than anything else in the world, with your phone. Nothing makes it easier to face Chris again once he hangs up.

“That was…,” he laughs lightly. Not laughing at you, maybe at life or how weird his life is, but never at you. “You know. They fixed my key and want to give it to me in person.”

You swallow and nod. “Yeah, understandable. I’ll, uh,” you clear your throat. “I’ll see you…”

Chris finishes for you. “How about we find a good restaurant near here after I’m confirmed to actually be me by the private security detail our employers hired to make sure no one kills us? We can have that second dinner I’ve heard you always eat late at night.”

Holy shit…he remembered that time you vaguely mentioned how much you enjoy staying up late and eating lots of food. It makes you blush as you respond.

“Yeah that sounds,” you sigh happily, smile just as big as his is. “That sounds great.”

#chris evans x reader #lukis does commissions #lukis writes stuff #chris evans imagine

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itsclydebitches · 4 years

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3 topics this time!

1.) I was watching Sarcastic Chorus’ video on Star Vs The Forces of Evil, and near the end there was a comment that stuck with me. “These ideas are present, but not fully explored. I like to call them the window shopping of ideas.”

And that was just such a perfect way of describing it. When I first heard it, I immediately thought of My Hero Academia and RWBY. And while both have this problem in spades, RWBY is much more obvious about it. Every single time RWBY introduces a concept they’ll look at it, try it on for a bit, and then dump it on the floor for other people to deal with, and then leave without buying into anything.

Raven? Dumped. Beacon? Dumped. Has anyone seen Tai? Glynda? Sun? Are the grimm still roaming around? Are we sure that Salem hasn’t yet retrieved the relic from Beacon? Wasn’t Nora supposed to get development? Are she and Ren still having problems? Shouldn’t Jaune be learning how to control his semblance better? Especially since it’s something so helpful? Didn’t Robyn need immediate medical attention? But she somehow survived? And is perfectly okay? How? Wasn’t she in a serious medical condition? Is Haven still in chaos? Where is Watts? Is he locked up? Or did he escape while the mains were throwing their temper tantrums? Where’s Tyrian? Where are all of the other students? All dumped. Little to no explanation, and off to the next shop.

2.) I disappeared for a bit after your recap because I was so purely infuriated with the last two episodes. Ironwood shooting Oscar feels ignorable to me in a way because it’s such an out of left field, ooc moment, that my brain is just refusing to acknowledge it. It’s horrible, terrible writing. And it feels a lot like shark jumping.

But as someone who started writing fanfiction in middle school, I get where they were coming from. They wanted a fall from grace story. Cool. Got it. But that takes time. If they wanted to do this properly, it should have been given much more time. Hit the topic episode 1 of the season and devote little time to anything else. The election? Scrap it. Overall it was barely relevant. Robyn. Skip it. Again, barely relevant. Don’t have Ruby&Co hiding info. That takes up time and attention. Have them put all of their cards on the table immediately. (It also serves to not make them hypocrites.) Give the teams another solution to save everyone. (At least a reasonably feasible one.)

Have the kids argue it out. Have Ironwood refuse to budge because they’ve already put too much time into the plan before Ruby and friends came along. Have Weiss go to her mother ask her to set up a meeting with the council to protest what Ironwood is doing. And have her gain their trust by revealing what her father has been doing. If you really want to do this in such little time, it’s possible, but you have to dedicate the time that you do have to it. If you don’t want to do that, and you don’t want to pace it out for another season, then scrap it. In the overall story for the show Ironwood being evil is wholly unnecessary. It adds nothing to the show. Especially since they’ve already done this twist.

You could also make it so that the Ace Ops were going behind Ironwood’s back to betray him to Salem. Have the ace ops getting along with the mains to gather information. You could also have had Ironwood going down a dark path since his reintroduction. Have him plant spyware on them. Have him in shadows. Have him looking menacing in scenes. Alluding to terrible things that he might be doing. Looking at secret files. Messing with the relic. But for the love of god, don’t do what you’ve done. It was messy and lazy. If you can’t (or don’t want to) devote the time and effort to make this work, then remove it from your story.

3.) There was an article about the fan backlash regarding Clover’s death. In it, it talked about how anyone upset was just a whiny woman who was upset that she can’t fantasize about two gay men. And that it wasn’t queerbaiting or burying your gays because Clover wasn’t officially canonized as such. And that the show has Bumblebee, so it can’t be doing either of those things. And I was so disgusted by it and the comments that followed that I had to get off the internet for awhile. There’s just so much wrong with that.

No, Clover was not said to be anything other than straight in canon. (He wasn’t said to be straight either, so…) However, if we are only going with what has explicitly been stated in the show; then I will not be accepting Bumblebee as a legitimate point for the show from the same people any longer.

Do they seem to be headed into a relationship? Sure. And I hope that it gets proper time and follow through. But if we’re only accepting relationships and sexualities by being told in universe, then you can’t use that as a shield. Because nothing has been said. The writers could change their minds, place them in relationships with male characters, say that they’re straight (you better not RT, do not take this as a legitimate idea to do) and act like nothing ever happened. But it wouldn’t matter, according to this logic, because they never technically canonized it. And I know that it’s a little different, given that we’re shown Blake and Yang having signs of romance feelings for each other, but by this argument, nothing matters unless we’re spoon fed information. And that brings me to my next point.

In the history of media wlw pairings have always been more ‘acceptable’ than mlm ones. Because there’s a history of denial and fetishizing them. It it’s women, then of course they’re all over each other! They’re women! With all those emotions and need for physical contact! If they’re in a relationship with another woman? That’s fine! It’s not a real relationship! They’re just playing! They need a man! And just imagine! Two attractive women being attracted to you, good sir! And imagine being such a studly man that these women change their sexualities just for you! Women are fickle after all! They change their minds all the time!

A man in a relationship with another man? Is seen as unnatural. Because straight men can’t fantasize about it. They can’t fetishize it. And therefore, there’s no need for it in media. They don’t want it there. And I don’t want to accuse the writers at RWBY of specifically thinking this way, but it is the way media tends to go. And while the lead characters are women, and a good amount of the fandom are women, there’s still room to question if this is what’s happening. The main leads are all young, thin, and conventionally attractive. Even when in a place that marked by how cold it is, the clothes are more for style and having the girls look attractive over function. The only one of them that looks even remotely clothed appropriately for the weather is Weiss. And when you get to the male characters, they’re either evil, dead, or given so little character that half the time they’re easy to forget. Because the story nor the writing is interested in men.

Also, I’ve noticed a disturbing trend of the writing suddenly getting rid of characters that fans pair with Qrow. First Ozpin, then Ironwood, then Clover. You could probably make an argument for Tai being shunted off once that started to gain traction in fandom as well. It’s creepy.

(Sorry if anything is phrased badly. One of the problems I have with social things is that I never know if I’ve phrased something well enough to get my point across without being offensive. Still working on it, so let me know!)

***

Response under the cut!

1. absolutely love that phrase: “Window shopping ideas.” I feel like I may have heard it before, but not enough for it to stick. It really is perfect though. The story looks at something, seems to consider it seriously, maybe even tries it on… but in the end doesn’t commit. We move onto the next piece of clothing—or even the next store—without, ultimately, having achieved anything other than introducing the possibility of buying a new outfit (telling a cohesive story). One of the most common compliments I hear RWBY get, and one I agree with, is that it has so many cool ideas. The problem is this isn’t a tumblr post going, “Here are all my fun headcanons, random concepts, and nifty details vaguely held together by a broad plot.” Cool ideas alone isn’t enough to carry a mainstream story a lot of people are paying for, certainly not one as long and complex as RWBY has become. Granted, every story has window shopping to a certain extent. We can acknowledge that there are different levels:

Dropping Glynda is super understandable largely due to the issues surrounding her voice actress. Finding someone new for Qrow is one thing because he’s still actively a part of the plot, but if you’ve lost an actress for a character currently off screen, it’s tempting to just keep her off screen. I get that. It’s an arguably smart sacrifice.

Dropping Jaune’s development is somewhat understandable because we acknowledge that change within a cast this size has to cycle. Jaune got to improve last volume through figuring out how to heal that guy’s arm and amplify Ren’s semblance. So his development takes a backseat the next volume to make room for others’. Problem is…

Dropping something like Nora and Ren’s development is both Not Good and actively hurting the justification behind dropping other things (like Jaune). What did we learn about Ren and Nora this volume? Nothing. There was no insight into Nora like we were led to believe there would be. Ren obviously has a lot of stuff he’s trying to work through, but the story actively kept him from working through it by silencing him with a kiss. And the kiss itself? Great in regards to moving forward with their romantic relationship, but we already knew that relationship existed. We were clear about Ren and Nora being a couple up until Ren voiced hesitation… which, as said, was then ignored. The kiss achieved little in the grand scheme of things and, unlike something like Blake/Yang, doesn’t function to provide absolutely needed proof. Again, it’s good we got it, it just wasn’t done particularly well and was done in place of much more important development. I don’t need them to kiss this second because their moments in Volume 4-6 firmly established that they’re a couple. I do need to know more about who Nora is, whether Ren agrees with Ironwood, and why he’s so torn about this relationship that just the concept of hitting a fake version of Nora in battle makes him cry. (Because seriously, don’t they spar? That was clearly something much bigger than just not wanting to his his girlfriend.)

So… yeah. A lot of window shopping. Which connects to:

2. The fact that yeah, there was too much going on this volume which resulted in none of it getting the time it needed. We keep coming back to the question of “What is the point?” What was the point of resurrecting Penny if she wasn’t going to grow as a person, or help Ruby do the same? What’s the point of spending so much time on Robyn learning to trust Ironwood only for her to immediately reject him on the airship? What’s the point of devoting time to Qrow and Clover’s friendship if Qrow thinks so little of it he’ll team up with Tyrian instead? What was the point of framing Penny? What’s the point of spending SO much time showing justified and sympathetic scenes of Ironwood if you’re going to take a sharp right and randomly make him shoot a kid in the finale? What’s the point of the group being devastated by Ozpin lying to them if they’re just going to turn around and tell the same lies? Nothing amounted to anything. All the time we spent developing Thing A was dropped for Thing B. Continuing the analogy, the characters spent a whole volume admiring the red dress, checking the price, talking about reasons why this was the perfect purchase for them to make… only to turn around and buy a pair of pants instead, something we haven’t even seen them look at, let alone try on. The journey these characters took is entirely disconnected from where they ended up.

3. Oof yeah. All of that is a complex af topic that deserves more than my quick response… but suffice to say, anyone who believes that “wasn’t queerbaiting or burying your gays because Clover wasn’t officially canonized as such” fundamentally doesn’t understand what queerbaiting is. The whole point is that it’s NOT canonized. Like Blake/Yang remain. I admit 100% that Clover and Qrow were not teased in the same way that other potential queer couples have been (such as Dean/Cas in Supernatural), but there were a lot of hints and coding that encouraged a queer reading regardless and fans are right to point that out, regardless of what RT’s intentions may have been. Even if you don’t want to go that route, this volume still—quite obviously—encouraged a close friendship, something that in and of itself is chock-full of implications given the history of the buddy duo/opposites attract trope. Whether you read Qrow and Clover as platonic or potentially romantic, the end result is the same: two men embodied an intimate and gentle relationship (something rare for two “straight” guys) and then one was horrifically murdered off in order to “justify” the destruction of the one other friendship Qrow still has going. There’s a lot in there for fans to be upset with, especially when it was all set up so poorly. And frankly, until RT actually canonizes Blake/Yang, I’m not going to make any blanket statements about how they would never queerbait, not matter how lightly. Because you’re right. We don’t know what we’ll get in the future and no matter how seemingly obvious it is that they will enter a relationship at some point…we can’t swear that it will actually make it on screen. In which case everything we’ve seen—romantic hand-holding, intense blushes, going out on presumed dates—would enter the realm of really intense queerbaiting, which in turn would drastically color how viewers read Clover and Qrow. You proved with one couple that you’re willing to string viewers along… so why would we claim you weren’t doing the same here, even though it was a lot more subtle? As an on-going series it’s hard to make any definite statements about RWBY’s representation, but given how long it’s taking for their presumed, primary queer couple to get together (no matter how little time has passed in-world the writers are still making the fanbase wait years) and the history surrounding Clover and Qrow’s character types as well as the ending they got… I’m more than a little uncomfortable. Just like I was uncomfortable with the decision to make the first queer character a villain who blames her crush for those feelings, her abusive relationship, all while trying to murder her parents. That stuff hurts in a world where queer media is still both rare and often badly done. Even if next volume Blake/Yang becomes canon and RT has A+ rep moving forward, we’re still left for the next year with one queer coded character denouncing all his male friendships, one close male friend dead, and two women dancing around each other. Volume 7 has a lot of things that on their own aren’t necessarily that bad, but pull them all together and it paints a far worse picture.

(Also yeah, another anon mentioned how RWBY is popular because it’s not fanservice and I’m like, “Yes… but also no lol. I have things to say about how ‘We don’t do giant breasts or pantie shots!’ shouldn’t be the only bar we strive to meet.)

#rwby #rwby volume 7 #rwby volume 7 spoilers #mymetas #submission

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commentaryvorg · 4 years

Text

Danganronpa V3 Commentary: Part 6.7

Be aware that this is not a blind playthrough! This will contain spoilers for the entire game, regardless of the part of the game I’m commenting on. A major focus of this commentary is to talk about all of the hints and foreshadowing of events that are going to happen and facts that are going to be revealed in the future of the story. It is emphatically not intended for someone experiencing the game for their first time.

Last time in trial 6, Tsumugi was very clearly just cosplaying Junko despite no-one properly figuring this out for ages, Danganronpa trivia was really not necessary to prove everyone’s memories are fake, Tsumugi kept insisting that Shuichi called this trial because of her backstory when really it has nothing to do with that and everything to do with Kaito, Maki was very distressed to learn even more how she was just being controlled and manipulated like always, Tsumugi was a literal fucking shapeshifter, everyone was more upset than they should have been over Hope’s Peak being fictional for something they’d only known about for two days, but at least that meant that the outside world was…

Well… about that.

Monokuma: “Puhuhu… Forget about the world. It wants nothing to do with you.”

Oh boy. It sure doesn’t, even though it should. Here we fucking go.

…Does anyone have any idea what “kumafarre”, the word plastered all over the trial background from this point on, is meant to mean? Because that’s always stumped me. It has to mean something for them to have put it there. Kuma is bear, obviously, but “farre” can’t be Japanese, so… ???

“first!”

Pfft, of course that’d be the first message to show up. But it also proves that everyone in the audience can see their messages showing up here, so they should know that the characters can see what they’re saying.

“Bring on the spoilers!”

How does this even make sense? You can’t have spoilers for a reality show that’s happening live. The only possible spoiler is who the blackened is during a trial, but we’re way past that now.

“Kyoko is my waifu.”

“Sakura is my muscle waifu.”

“Chiaki #1 waifu”

Ugghh waifu culture. And also, I told you everyone was a bunch of genwunners in this audience! No-one mentions anything like this for any character outside of DR1 or 2. And yeah, obviously seasons past 3 don’t exist in the out-universe, but the out-universe writers could totally have just thrown in some random names we’ve never heard and expect us to assume that they’re talking about unknown characters from other seasons. Fifty other goddamn seasons they could be choosing from! But nope, it’s all gotta be mostly season one with some two, that’s all that counts.

“My husbando Shuichi!!!”

And of course Shuichi gets that shitty treatment too, even though he’s a real goddamn person who never asked to be famous and nobody is entitled to anything from him.

“Wow, Himiko is still alive…”

Seriously, that’s the first thing someone wants to say when their messages are getting displayed in a place where Himiko can see it? Lovely.

“Viewers get to participate now!”

“I feel like I’m participating, too!”

At least these couple of people are currently being fairly reasonable – they’re just excited to be a part of it in some way!

…The first two characters Tsumugi cosplays after this moment are Kyoko and then Sakura, and then Chiaki pretty soon after that. She’s pandering to those people whose messages she saw, isn’t she.

“Sakura”: “Of course, those you see here are only a fraction of our total viewers.”

I. Should. Sincerely. Hope. So. Because that’s the only thing that makes this even remotely believable – the idea that the majority of the fanbase are somewhat more decent human beings than this (you know, aside from the watching real people kill each other thing) and we’re just seeing the vocal asshole minority right now.

…That’s really not what the narrative is going to be going for with this, though. If they actually wanted us to think that this audience we see is just the asshole minority and everyone else is more decent, this topic should get addressed in more than just this one throwaway line, and it is not. So probably the only actual reason this line is here is to establish that the number of viewers is way higher than suggested by just these commenters, and not that the attitude of the rest of them is significantly different.

“I believe in Keebs.”

This is a little early hint to the Keebo deal, since a lot of the audience should be thinking about him the most.

“You can do it, Shuichi!”

I like this person! This person is the most decent and realistic person we’ve heard from so far! Yeah, cheer on Shuichi just like I’ve been doing throughout this commentary! They care about him and want him to succeed! It is of course more twisted in this person’s case because he’s not actually fictional, and becomes even more so now that Shuichi can actually hear them and any pretense that he’s just fictional can’t be maintained, but at least this is otherwise a realistic and relatable response to this.

Shuichi: “W-Wait, why would a peaceful world need a killing game like th—”

“Taka”: “It’s *because* the world is so peaceful that this killing game is necessary!”

“Celeste”: “It is so very peaceful… And so, it is so very boring.”

“Kyoko”: “With so much peace, people have become bored. They need stimulation…”

That’s… kinda bullshit. First Shuichi’s assumption that only a world full of strife could possibly create a reason for a killing game, but then also the idea that peace would make people bored. Humans don’t start wars for entertainment, you know. World peace should be the least boring thing for humanity, because without having to spend so much effort on survival and equality, everyone would have more energy left to make all kinds of technology and art, including entertainment which should not have to involve killing real people to be entertaining!

To be fair, Tsumugi is probably exaggerating somewhat, given that she’s part of Team Danganronpa and is trying to sell the idea that her product is so necessary for the world. But it would seem that we are in a world where one way or another it’s become socially accepted to watch real people kill each other for entertainment… which doesn’t seem like a peaceful utopia at all, really.

“Chiaki”: “Every person in the outside world watching this is a huge Danganronpa fan.”

We get a demonstrative image of people all over the world apparently excitedly watching Danganronpa, most of whom are vague and faceless. If it were just them then it could be possible to imagine that Tsumugi is lying and this is just a hypothetical image of what she’s talking about rather than the truth. But… Makoto’s also there. The kid that we, the out-universe audience, very definitely saw at the beginning of the chapter in a context that had no connection to Tsumugi and no reason to be a lie. Which gives this image a lot of credibility.

(And if this is the truth, again, it really doesn’t look like it’s a shady hidden thing only accessed on the darkest corners of the internet.)

I will say one thing in this world’s favour. I’m not remotely trying to defend the part where they watch real people kill each other, but Danganronpa really must be hugely popular among absolutely everyone for this to have somehow ended up not extremely illegal. Which means, given the fact that the audience are basically telling themselves it’s fiction and treating it as such, this is also a world in which it’s socially accepted, not just in niche geek subcultures but in mainstream culture, to get really excited by and invested in fiction. If you took all the awful murderiness out of it and made sure it was all actual fiction, man I’d love to live in that kind of world. As it is, in our world, only children are really socially expected to get super-excited about fictional stories all the time, like it’s something people are meant to grow out of as adults. Among adults, only very few extremely mainstream fictions get even close to that kind of widely-accepted level of importance in people’s lives. Which is disappointing to me.

“Chiaki”: “This killing game is for everyone… So it’s everyone’s killing school semester.”

That’s the Japanese subtitle of this game, which actually turns out to be very meaningful! The general sense of it she’s talking about here would have applied to every season up until now, but there’s also the more specific sense that this season in particular has audience participation, which is apparently the first time it’s happened, making it even more “everyone’s” than before.

And the localisers just decided to nope on that subtitle and change it to the meaningless “Killing Harmony”, which is honestly a shame. Maybe the Japanese subtitle is a bit too long and too much of a mouthful for western standards, but they could have at least changed it to something which kept that relevance.

“Killing Harmony! I just got it! LOL”

Haha, no, that doooeees not work in the localisation.

“I’ve waited three years for this.”

“I thought the franchise was done.”

Huh, this is some juicy info. It’s taken three years since season 52, long enough that some people thought there wasn’t going to be another one? (And a lot of the rest of the chatter at this point is people applauding, perhaps being happy that they got another season.) That… suggests that Danganronpa might have been already on its last legs even before what happens in this trial comes and puts the lid on it all, which maybe makes things a little more believable. That’d also potentially explain why this is the first time they tried the Keebo gimmick, if they were trying to keep things fresh after worrying people would be getting bored of the same old thing.

Also, even if it’s usually less than three years between games, you’ve still got to imagine it’d be at least one year or so, which means it’s been over half a century since the Danganronpa franchise began. A lot of people who worked on it while it was still pure fiction wouldn’t even be alive anymore at this point.

Plus, geez, how long did they keep Rantaro in limbo between games? Was he allowed to live a relatively normal life for the time being while knowing that if they ever did get around to a season 53, he’d be forced into it, meaning he lived dreading that day and desperately hoping it’d never come? Ouch, poor Rantaro. Or possibly they do in fact have real cold sleep technology in this universe and they just stuffed him in one of those for three years.

“Shuichi, look this way! <3”

That’s… rather entitled but also kind of believable as something someone might do, since it seems like a lot of the audience have forgotten that these characters don’t just exist to perform for them.

“Get to the punishment already!”

Aaaand here’s someone who’s barely a believable person. Do the audience really just watch this to see people be horribly executed, rather than for all the character drama that happens in between those parts?

The opening theme music for this game starts playing… and apparently this is being played in-universe, based on the fact that Maki reacts to it.

Maki: “What is this…?”

“Fuyuhiko”: “Can’t you tell? It’s the title of the current Danganronpa you guys are doing.”

God, that has to be incredibly disturbing and wrong, being told that you’re hearing the theme music for you and your friends’ suffering and death… and it’s just this chill jazz tune, of all things. This probably hammered home more than anything else the awful sense that all of their struggles have just been entertainment.

“Chihiro”: “Danganronpa’s gone on so long because the whole world enjoys and supports it.”

No mention of the fact that apparently some people thought there wouldn’t even be a season 53? Of course not, Tsumugi wouldn’t want to admit that the franchise might be on its last legs.

“Makoto”: “What season do you think we’re on? You should be able to tell from the logo.”

So she claims. But you know what I thought when I first heard her say this? Since I already figured it was probably season 53 from Junko the 53rd, I thought the clue in the logo was the negative space between the V and the 3.

It’s actually kinda shaped like a 5 if you look at it that way! But nope, that’d make way more sense that what it’s actually supposed to be.

(I bet Shuichi figured it out from the Junko hint and not the logo, too.)

“V is the Roman numeral for 5.”

*deep breath*

That is not how Roman numerals work!!! In Arabic numerals, “5” can mean five, or fifty, or five hundred, etc, depending on its position within the number. But Roman numerals do not work like that! “V” only ever means five, and its position in the number does not change that. V3 cannot possibly mean fifty-three. It’s combining two number systems that work completely differently and do not make any sense being combined, but if one were to try and make a number out of it, it’d simply mean “five-three”, separately. Or maybe you’d add them together, so it’d mean eight.

In Roman numerals, fifty is denoted with an “L”. To actually get fifty-three in any vaguely sensible way by combining Roman and Arabic numerals, it’d be L3. Or, heck, why don’t we write the whole thing in Roman numerals? Then it’s LIII. Which just so happens to look and sound very similar to the English word “lie”. If the Japanese writers of this game wanted to do a clever little number/letter trick, why didn’t they go for that? It would have been great! Or they could call it L3 but make the negative space between the L and the 3 look kind of like an I somehow, so that “LI3” almost looks like “lie” as well. Missed freaking opportunity there, guys. Instead it’s just very apparent that nobody in Spike Chunsoft (or Team Danganronpa, for that matter) has any idea how Roman numerals work.

“Danganronpa 25 was the best.”

Shout-outs to this person. They’re the only person we ever see here who mentions any series other than 1, 2 or the one they’re currently watching. Props to them for knowing what their favourite season is and sticking to their guns in a sea of people who disregard every new season that comes along as soon as it’s not current any more in favour of obsessing over the first ones like they’re the only ones that matter. Season 25 probably was genuinely one of the best ones if it has a dedicated fan like this. You go, random person. I feel you.

“This is my first Danganronpa.”

Huh, so despite how much Tsumugi is trying to make us think everyone is obsessed with it, there have to still be at least a few people who don’t get what all the hype is about, if this person only just decided to check it out for this season.

(Clearly there hasn’t been a large enough proportion of these uninterested people who are upset about the whole killing-real-people thing to be able to put a stop to it before now, though. Even if it’s not their thing, if the rest of the world’s okay with it then it must be fine, right???)

“I love Shuichi <3”

Yes, thanks, we’re getting that impression. This is probably the same person from before, who still feels the need to mention this while everyone else is talking about this being season 53.

Monokuma: “The seasons just kept coming, and with it came more killing games… Until it transcended games and anime to become this, the Ultimate Real Fiction…”

They gloss over this quite quickly, but it is important to note that yes, the earlier seasons really were just fiction in this universe like they were in ours. They’re not trying to retcon that the Hope’s Peak killing games were actually only happening for entertainment thanks to Flashback Lights and fabricated backstory. DR1 and 2 were completely fictional in this universe, which means that nothing happening here matters to or compromises that storyline at all.

After all, it does make sense that Danganronpa would need to have worldwide popularity already before society collectively decided that doing this with real people (but definitely not really real people, right) would be totally okay. It’s unclear exactly when the transition to “real fiction” happened, although Shuichi and Maki’s comments on the files in his lab kind of made me assume that there were more real ones than fictional ones. So… I was just shouting out season 25, but that one probably involved real people being killed, too.

“Leon”: “What, did the letter in there throw you off? Well, I guess that happens. But isn’t it just rad how it looks like a letter, but it’s really a number!?”

I am way too amused at how they made it be specifically Leon, mister 11037 himself, who mentions this point. Nice one, guys. Nice.

“Sonia”: “Since this is the 53rd season, one would expect to see a multitude of characters…”

Tsumugi: “But you only have memories from the first two, so you wouldn’t recognize any others.”

They shouldn’t even recognise the ones from season two, like I’ve been saying! But she’s been cosplaying them anyway. So it’s probably a lot less about keeping them recognisable for the students here and more just about pandering to those genwunners and twoers outside.

(Obviously there’s a very good out-universe reason for this, but, you know.)

Tsumugi: “So yes, I’m the mastermind! But the *real* mastermind forcing you to do this is… the people of the outside world!”

Way to deflect your responsibility, Tsumugi! Yes, everyone outside is also partially responsible by demanding this and giving it an audience, but you’re still the one who made it all happen and got everyone killed!

The audience starts chattering about how they’re the mastermind, but it’s in a way that sounds happy about it, like they’re just excited to be part of the story. They don’t seem to register the fact that, hey, maybe being literally actually responsible for the suffering and death of the characters they’ve been watching and caring about isn’t actually a good thing.

“Mmm… Shuichi’s nose <3”

Meanwhile Shuichi’s “fan” here still has a one-track mind and is getting increasingly creepy. I refuse to believe that this is the same person who was cheering Shuichi on earlier, since that person actually cared about him and didn’t only shallowly see him as eye-candy.

“put Maki back on kthx”

Also apparently Maki has “fans” too. But hers probably aren’t the good kind either.

“Mikan”: “The ones managing this killing game aren’t psychos like the Remnants of Despair…”

“Ibuki”: “They’re literal managers! Literally!”

Just because they’re managers, that doesn’t stop them from being shitty, evil people on par with the Remnants of Despair in terms of awfulness. They are quite evidently both.

Tsumugi: “So I want to hear your best guess. What company is running this show?”

…

Shuichi: “…Team Danganronpa?”

I love how Shuichi’s tone of voice makes it clear that he’s just pulling this name out of thin air. How is he supposed to know? Conveniently, Team Danganronpa were apparently just really uncreative when it came to naming themselves. (I guess this is realistic enough, though – our world does have The Pokémon Company, which makes Pokémon.)

We – and therefore presumably the students and the in-universe audience – get shown the opening movie that was right at the beginning when you start a new file, the one that summarised seasons 1, 2 and 3 and then implied this one would be a continuation of it. Which still doesn’t actually make any in-universe sense, since all the evidence other than this clearly points towards Hope’s Peak having not being part of this game’s backstory until Tsumugi improvised it in chapter 5. Maybe this was a promo video Team Danganronpa then hastily slapped together after that point to try and act like they totally had this planned all along?

The only difference from before (because it would have been a huuuuge spoiler to see this last time) is that we also see the supposed logos of every Danganronpa season up to 53. 4 through 10 are clearly the out-universe writers having a field day referencing other works of fiction, but then 11 through 52 are all exactly the same logo with only the number being different. Yeah, that’s not how it actually was, is it. The out-universe writers just didn’t want to take the time to make that many unique logos for a split-second each of screentime. (And, fair enough.)

We then get shown a collage of what appears to be basically all of the illustrations in this game. Which you’d think shouldn’t actually exist in-universe, because the audience’s camera is supposed to be Keebo’s eyes, and he wasn’t there for half of this stuff! So this strongly suggests that despite what Tsumugi’s going to claim about that later, the audience could also watch the game through the Nanokumas’ footage instead and potentially saw all the same scenes that we saw that way.

…Makoto is on there, though. He definitely should not be. The out-universe writers didn’t catch that, I guess.

Shuichi: “Shut up… Shut up!”

Yeeeaaah, I don’t blame Shuichi for this. Tsumugi and Monokuma and the audience have been blabbering on for quite a while now, barely letting him and his friends get a word in edgeways while treating them like objects for their amusement. That has to be awful.

And even aside from Shuichi’s feelings about it, the way the audience has been suddenly babbling excitedly about Danganronpa in general to the point of almost completely ignoring the characters who are in this actual story they’re supposed to be invested in is pretty shallow of them. That’s already a sign of how unrealistically awful an audience they’re going to keep showing themselves to be.

Shuichi: “No matter how many false memories we’ve been implanted with, *we* aren’t fictional!”

This line is here as a setup for the big reveal, of course, but even so… he’s right. Just because literally all of their memories from before this killing game are fake, it doesn’t change that they’ve been real people from the moment they got all of those memories.

Shuichi: (Who… are we…?) “We… are real! We’re living, breathing human beings!”

“Nekomaru”: “No! You’re just like MEEEEEE!!!”

I made Shuichi answer this incorrectly at first because I really feel like he would want to assert this… and he’s still not wrong! They are very definitely living and breathing right now, nobody can deny that!

“Makoto”: “You’re just fictional characters created solely for this killing game.”

“Teruteru”: “Nothin’ we can do about it, I’m afraid. Danganronpa’s that kinda property.”

I’m sure it’s much less some intellectual property dispute and more the idea that everyone might have slightly more issue with actual real people from the outside world being killed in this. It’s totally fine if they were created solely for the killing game, though, because then they’re not real and only exist to die here, right?

And honestly… that does make all the deaths in this game come across as just slightly less awful and tragic, in that context. Not because they aren’t still extremely real people who very much did not deserve to suffer and die, but, since they were created to die, anyone managing to survive and escape despite that feels like even more of a victory than in the previous games. It’s less Monokuma killing a bunch of people who were never meant to die, and more Shuichi managing to save at least a small handful of people who were never meant to live.

“Gundham”: “Your immaterial existence is a fabrication, independent of your actual flesh and blood.”

To translate the Gundham-ese: their “souls” were created separately from their bodies. Kind of like how they were discussing when going into the Virtual World how odd it is that the two can be separated like that.

Tsumugi: “Yep, you’re all fictional.”

“Ibuki”: “You guys out there beyond the fourth wall already knew that, right!?”

I like how this works as simultaneously talking to the people beyond both fourth walls at once, while not actually breaking the real one. (Though the people beyond the in-universe fourth wall are only telling themselves these guys are fictional and aren’t actually right.)

Tsumugi: “You all didn’t look like this when you first came to the Ultimate Academy… Those were your true selves. Now you’re all just fictional characters. That’s the truth.”

Shuichi: (That’s the truth? Then… our real identities…)

Don’t get caught up in her manipulation, Shuichi! You are not any less “real” just because different people used to inhabit your bodies!

Tsumugi goes on to talk about when they first arrived at the school as their pregame selves before they got their outfits and memories. And again, we saw this. It is quite ridiculous to assume we saw an entire lengthy section in the prologue which just straight-up didn’t happen. The game has lied to us, but only with very small lies of omission (re: Kaede’s inner monologue). If the game was willing to lie to us about entire sections we played through, we couldn’t trust anything. We couldn’t even trust if this trial we’re playing is really happening right now, or if anything we saw really happened, which would render this entire story meaningless.

“Byakuya”: “But boring, everyday characters have no right to be in Danganronpa…”

Honestly, why, though? Sure, the talents are supposed to be a Danganronpa thing, but you could totally do a killing game with ordinary people. It might make for an interesting change, especially after 53 seasons.

“Peko”: “Which means your Ultimate talents are all just fiction.”

They may have come from fake memories, but they have those talents now. Nobody can deny that Shuichi’s been a pretty great detective.

Maki: “Our talents as well…?”

Maki Roll, you never killed anyone, and you’ll never have to! This is great news for you!

…I bet if Kaito were still here, he’d immediately turn to her with a big grin and tell her that. Encouraging and being happy for the sidekick with a bright side to this would be way more important than however he might be feeling about this revelation in respect to his own talent.

Maki doesn’t react here with anything other than shock and disbelief, though, so I don’t know if this quite sinks in for her yet. It’s probably very hard for her to accept that she suddenly doesn’t deserve to feel guilty about anything. After all, this won’t diminish the effect Maki’s memories have on her and that she’s going to have to live with feeling like she’s killed countless people for the rest of her life. But knowing that nobody real actually died because of her has got to help a lot. I’m sure that’ll sink in eventually, once she’s had more time to think about it without the trial getting in the way.

“Chiaki”: “I mean, they suited you to a certain extent, but mostly in a placebo effect sorta way. Kinda like a form of autosuggestion… You know, like if you do it, it’ll all work out.”

We’ve seen Flashback Lights do plenty of things that aren’t just straight-up remembering stuff: brainwashing everyone to be filled with meaningless “hope” and a sense of the completely wrong meanings of the words “hope” and “despair” in chapter 5? Brainwashing Shuichi into suddenly being a creepy pervert for that optional scene in chapter 3? Kaito’s phobia of ghosts leading him to feel anxious and nauseous upon simply thinking about a certain irrational stimulus? So, given that, it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine they can do this kind of thing too. Heck, most of the talents in this game are things that only require knowledge, and perhaps a certain kind of personality, something Flashback Lights can very evidently do. Some also require muscle memory, which is a bit more of a stretch, but it’s still memory.

The hardest one to buy for me is probably Angie’s talent. There’s some muscle memory and some knowledge involved, but a lot of what makes someone good at art is more intangible and hard to define and might be difficult to encapsulate in a Flashback Light. However, Angie was unique in that she explicitly did not remember creating her art, because Atua was supposedly possessing her, and she had to be alone for that to happen. That’s how she made the waxworks. So it’s possible that what was actually happening was some kind of hypnotic trigger making her pass out when she thinks she’s about to create something, and then the gamemakers put pre-created waxworks in her lab. Remember how Angie made four waxworks without having intended to? Almost as if the gamemakers weren’t sure who she’d choose for the ritual and just made all four in advance. …And, okay, admittedly it’s very unclear how anyone could have got inside the school to put the waxworks there, which is the same question as how a hypothetical clone-with-a-Flashback-Light would have got in for the resurrection thing if that was going to be possible. But there’s something there. (Can you tell I hadn’t thought of this idea until after the commentary for chapter 3 had gone up and so I’m awkwardly fitting it in here instead.)

And ultimately, if the characters being “fictional” is the point of this story the out-universe writers decided to tell, then that always had to include fictional talents as well, since Danganronpa insists on having all its characters be Ultimates. So Flashback Lights have to be able to do this, even if it’s a little bit of a stretch to believe, because it’s just necessary for the premise to work.

It’s a lot like how we had to buy that the Exisal randomly had a voice changer that could perfectly mimic any student’s voice, simply because that was vital for the fifth trial’s premise and that story wouldn’t work if it didn’t. We can’t just use the fact that it was somewhat unrealistic of the Exisal to have a voice changer as any kind of evidence to propose that it actually didn’t.

Another example: I once saw a blind LP of the first Danganronpa game where it got to the memory wipe reveal and Junko handwaved how memory-wipe technology worked. And the LPer was all “Um, no, how is memory wiping even possible? I think it’s pretty important to establish this, actually!”, like he was using the fact that he didn’t understand how to question whether it had even happened at all. But that was missing the point; explaining the technology really wasn’t all that important. The existence of memory-wiping technology was just a necessary part of that story that had to be accepted, because if memory wipes weren’t possible then that story couldn’t have happened. This story is the same, except with Flashback Lights and the multitude of things that they need to be able to do to make this story work. At least in this case, Flashback Lights and some of the things they can do are well-established already, which is better setup than the memory-wipe technology had in DR1.

Tsumugi: “Can you really say you’re not fictional now?”

Yes! Yes, they can and should say that!

“Hajime”: “Even if your body is real, your identities, personalities, talents and past are all fiction.”

Past, sure. Identities… maybe? At least if we’re just talking about legal identity? But their talents are quite evidently still talents now, as I’ve just been saying, and their personalities are also something they’re expressing right here and now. Even if they were deliberately crafted and created to be that way, it doesn’t mean those personalities aren’t now real. You can only call a personality “fake” if that person is knowingly putting on a façade and pretending to be someone they’re not. So the only fictional personality we ever saw was Kokichi’s supposed love for this killing game. …Oh, and Tsumugi’s, of course.

Also, hi, Hajime. It’s fitting that she’d choose him for this. If we’re supposed to believe that Izuru got shoved full of every single talent imaginable by them doing weird brain stuff to him, it’s perfectly reasonable to also believe Flashback Lights could do something similar on a lesser scale. And Izuru’s entire existence was created from that process, but that didn’t make him any less “real” of a person than Hajime was. If anything, it made him more real at that point, because he’d overwritten Hajime completely (at least until the simulation). It’s honestly a very similar thing. Maybe Hajime’s story partially inspired the idea for this game.

Shuichi: “…”

Unfortunately… this seems to be working on Shuichi.

…You want to know what Tsumugi ought to think of as the real reason she killed Kaito? Not to have his death inspire Shuichi to become even stronger. That would still be happening anyway if Kaito were still by his side encouraging him; all that was needed for that final push was for Kaito to admit that Shuichi’s even more of a hero than him and tell him that. The real reason for his death should have been because Kaito would completely annihilate what Tsumugi is trying to do here.

Because the only thing that matters is what you want to believe! Tsumugi is trying to argue that their pasts being fabricated means that they don’t count as “real” people, but who even cares about that? They believe they’re real, and have always believed that, and still want to believe that, so why should anything else matter? Someone like Kaito who puts such value in belief and has such strong, unbreakable convictions about being true to himself wouldn’t be listening to any of this crap. He’d be shaken to learn his memories are all fake and that his grandparents and fellow astronaut trainees don’t exist, sure, but it wouldn’t even scratch his belief in who he is. He’s Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars! Who cares if he’s only this way because someone else wanted him to be, it’s still who he wants to be, so it’s who he’s going to keep being, dammit! And, of course, upon seeing that his sidekicks are having trouble with this idea and are starting to doubt if they’re really real, he’d give them just the pep talk they’d need to keep believing in themselves and their own existences.

Kaito is exactly the kind of person who would be able to blow this whole trial out of the water, and nerfing him enough to prevent him from doing that required nothing less than him not being alive any more.

(Meanwhile, if Kokichi were still alive at this point, he’d be his usual infuriating self. “Oh, you guys are only just figuring this out now?”)

Also, if Kaito were still alive in this trial and ultimately ended up surviving and escaping while having learned that his memories are fake and he was never actually an astronaut trainee… you know that would not stop him from striding up to JAXA’s front door and being all “Let me take the astronaut exam, sure you already know I’m too young but you’ve also seen I’ve got exactly what it takes”.

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[Next post]

#danganronpa #danganronpa v3 #drv3 #ndrv3 #chapter 6 #class trial #commentary

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triyune · 4 years

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Review: Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity #1 + #2

Recently, or less recently by now, DC has decided to grant their older readers a little bit of more violence and psychological depth by releasing comics under their Black Label.

I greatly appreciate that effort since I really miss at least that depth in many comics.

Here, I am going to discuss the comics criminal sanity #1 and criminal sanity #2 in terms of storyline, art and even a bit of personal stuff, but who cares, I get no money for doin this!

SPOILER alert

Joker/Harley: Criminal Sanity "written by #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author Kami Garcia", art by Mico Suayan and Mike Mayhew

Storyline I am starting to wonder how Kami Garcia managed to get on top of New York like that. When I bought Criminal Sanity 1 I was looking forward to a comic explanation of what is commonly perceived as sanity in respect of criminals. And hey, it did. It explains that with reference to real life killers like Ted Bundy or Ed Gein etc. It is like a comic where they decided to show us what would have happened if Harleen Quinzel had adopted another course and used her skills to help the police find killers. I can’t say that I like her vibe, but that is a personal thing. I understand that she’s displaying that arrogance because she feels hurt, not only because her girlfriend had been killed by the Joker, so we assume, and that this police department full of snug macho men is not a happy place for a woman, but well. I can’t say what it is but something’s not right with her. Maybe it is also because she’s often drawn with the same expression and she feels a bit one-dimensional to me. Anyway, as for the killings, I appreciate DC’s (new) Black Label since that way, the writers and artists are allowed to give the stories and images more depth and intensity. I would have been disappointed to see those corpses just beaten to death or anything crude of the like. It is obvious that they have done some research and want to present that in the comic. They are just about to create a certain image of the killer and the reader is clueless as for the definite meaning of those symbols. Of course we are clueless because we aren’t killers, are we. Would we put arms on a clock to express that someone’s running out of time? We wouldn’t. And so we have no clue. After reading the first volume I was hoping to see it going into detail, hoping for the hunt to pick up pace. Instead, the second volume turns out to become a trip into the past. No doubt it is a Comic Noir and quite enjoyable to see the style changing from black/white to colours, but sometimes, the change from John’s to Harleen’s POV is a bit confusing since it doesn’t 'connect'. The first change, for example, deals with the explanation of how John got those concussions, dislocated shoulder etc. and we are taken back to the past to see daddy beating his son and doing his brute thing. Next, we see Harleen going out for a drink and next we see the Joker-to-be entering a drinking hole. I fail to see any connection there and I guess it was just done to push on with his story. And don’t tell me that the alcohol is supposed to be the link, please. I just don’t want to believe that -__- Anyway, Harleen leaves the liquor store, meets her bro and we are taken to reminiscences of how cruel mother tortured poor Harleen. I’m led to think that we should see from that that Harleen’s had a tough childhood as well and that she did not turn into an artsy killer. So, what’s the difference between her and him, we should ask at reading these pages, right? Oh dear. However, then, I was really disappointed. We see Harl diving into the files again: Back to the past with young John-Joker roaming high school and dealing with further emotional abuse in his own way. Maybe I’m one of the few but it destroyed a lot of the atmosphere when I saw the Smartphones there. Laugh at me but I was born at a time when phones didn’t even exist in a portable way and I got introduced to the Joker in the 80’s when Tim Burton let Nicholson smile his way through a lost city. I am not used to seeing the Joker together with Smartphones. Again, I understand that they wanted to make the reader identify with the victim John and that is way easier when that figure uses the same shit everyone does these days so we got a Smartphone to feel closer to the figures. Awesome trope. Failed to achieve that effect with me, though. After we have finally been taught that eventually, high school John started fighting back but that he still didn’t stand a chance against his dad we go back to Harl’s POV again just to see how she’s watching a TV ad about a ring. We see that ad now again in the background of the killer’s basement, meaning that this is just happening at the same time now. And while Harl is talking to a suspect we see the killer going on a hunt for his next victim which he captures effortlessly. "I could tell you that this isn’t going to hurt...but that would be a lie." From a social media pranking kiddo to a sadistic and conceited killer. A bit insipid. When I started with the second volume I realized that Mick’s son, John, was going to be the Joker. I didn’t expect that since I didn’t think that it was just going to be another Joker origins story. It’s got a more fundamental psychological background than many of the mainstream comics, but after all it’s just the same dull violent-father-suffering-son and son-turning-violent-at-that cheese. I’m tired of reading Joker origins, even more so after the movie with Phoenix, but with that comic, it is just an attempt to explain his origins from a psychological point of view. Justified, but...we all know, don’t we. Least, we can imagine. I hope that I’ll be proven wrong and that John is not going to be the Joker in the end. That’s not possible? Oh, I do think them capable of twisting the story a hundred times around again so that John, or this milk face with the smeared make-up is not going to be who we know as ‘Joker’. Art Very refreshing. I have to admit that I do not own anything else but Joker comics so my visual horizon might be a bit limited in terms of various DC artists, but this one stands out, to me at least. The coloured bits are almost hyperreal and that is what makes it so scary. Their expressions are even a bit exaggerated which adds to that feeling of things getting out of control. A great deal of the atmosphere of that comic is due to its colours. The black and white style changes, sometimes paler, sometimes richer in contrast and simpler, which can be a bit irritating too. Here, colours are sparsely used to highlight things. After all, it’s just a matter of taste. All in all, it is meant to be on the dark side, art- and story-wise and it reminds me a bit of The Crow when the great teen villain is marching past super badass drunkards with his shredded bondage leather coat and heavy goth boots. It's a new take on the figure of the Joker. The question whether we need that or not is left with you. Bottom line

Four out of five groovy bloodstained razor blades.

I’m going to buy the rest of the books till the end, of course. Easy to make money with die-hard Joker fans like me, no matter how superficial, exaggerated or dull a comic is. Cheers Cheerio.

#joker #joker/harley: criminal sanity #joker/harley #DC comics #psychology #psychopath #serial killer #murder #pathologic #forensics #trauma #violence #emotional abuse #criminal sanity #harleen quinzel

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motorcyclegirlfriends · 7 years

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Was it rude? Sure. Was it offensive to lgbt+ fans? Yes.

Was it homophobic?

No.

It may have hurt you, as a wlw, to see them so casually disregard something you are so attached to. To see them so casually disregard something you’re so attached to because you are a woman who loves women.

But the truth of the matter is, they just saw it as a ship that isn’t going to be canon, but that everyone has gone crazy for.

This happened, not because they are homophobic, but because they don’t realize the impact even non-canon wlw ships have on wlw.

They likely thought of it the way they think of other ships. Like typical ship wars, except there’s no reason for it because it’s not a part of the show they’re making.

Let’s break it down:

“They’re only friends. They’re not gonna get together, they’re only friends.”

This statement in and of itself was not homophobic.The shouting was cringy, but It could be said about any gender combo of a ship that isn’t going to happen, and there’s nothing inherent in it’s use that implies there is homophobia underlying it.

Heteronormativity, I suppose, in them assuming that Kara and Lena could never get together. (But it’s also true? They know that they’re not going to get together? They were never going to get together, and we all knew this.)

People are inserting a “we don’t like this ship because it’s gay” into the “they’re only friends!” that doesn’t exist at all.

If an actor said this about a straight, non-canon ship, even in the shout-y way they did it, it wouldn’t be a big deal. It’d suck for the people who shipped it, but it wouldn’t be a mark against their character, really.

Take for instance, The 100’s Eliza Taylor’s pretty obvious annoyance at Bellarke. A lot of people ship this non-canon ship, are super invested in it, and she’s pretty apparent about her dislike of it.

But because it’s not a gay ship, it’s not a big deal.

Their misstep was in not realizing that this isn’t a straight ship, and that it has a deeper meaning to people. It’s something that Jeremy is finding out-

Uninformed, not homophobic. It’s like someone calling someone something that they didn’t know was a slur. You aren’t aware of the impact the words can have, and you don’t mean it in the way that would hurt them.

Side note: it’s easy to say “then they should just apologize and not make excuses.” But when the alternative to me explaining myself is the other person thinking I actually feel a certain way, a way that would hurt them and lessen my own character exponentially, I’d probably do the same thing. Defend myself, whilst recognizing that I hurt the other person and apologizing for that. I wouldn’t apologize for being homophobic if I wasn’t homophobic.

In my drafts, I have a response to someone asking if Kara and Lena could ever get together a few weeks ago, and it was a strong “No, do not put your hope in this possibility”.

It’s sucks that we can’t have two main wlw relationships on a mainstream show at this stage, but that’s the way the reality of the world is, especially coming from straight writers who want to write stories about themselves. Realistically, we need to look toward wlw writers for that kind of representation.

But if your anger is about the fact that they won’t get together even though they have chemistry, that we don’t have the option that heterosexual ships have of something developing because of chemistry, then I think your anger is misdirected at these cast members, who are simply aware of this fact and did not make it so.

Should you be angry at the writers? Maybe. I think it’s the industry, more than any individual creative team (producers are more accountable because they are the gatekeepers), at this point. Writers like to write things they relate to, so we need to get people in who are lgbt+ to handle these stories if we want more than one or two lgbt+ characters.

What you should be angry at is that it looks like Ali Adler, a lesbian writer, was pushed out of the show.

Melissa’s comments, specifically:

Because this is a Kara/Melissa heavy blog.

“We’re only friends.”

Melissa was singing “a girlfriend” about Lena up until Jeremy shouted “They’re only friends!”

Then she laughed at Jeremy’s comment, mimicked his shouting, and said “We’re only friends!”

Like .2 seconds ago, she was into it.

Her stance didn’t shift from accepting to rejecting, she just joined in on a joke about how everyone loves these two characters together but they’ve been playing them as just friends.

(To me, this read like fake exasperation, playing that someone is repeatedly asking you if you’re into someone, but you’re not. I won’t argue that this is true, because we really can’t be sure, but that’s what my people-reading instincts are telling me about the situation?)

But as it stands, I don’t sense any hostility toward the concept of supercorp at all.

“That was brave.”

Melissa said this, not as “You’re so brave for standing up and going against the gays. It’s what we’re all thinking.”

She said it as, “You’re brave for saying that a ship that people are so so into is definitely not gonna happen when we’re expected to tiptoe around that fact as much as we can, to keep them watching. And for saying something against a group that has a really impactful presence online and who’s fans been known to harass people who are a threat to the ship (Rahul Kohli, anyone?).”

And Katie, a few minutes later, said that she and Melissa talked about how it was great that people could look at what they do and see something totally different from what they saw. And Melissa has enthusiastically agreed with the positive things that Katie has been saying on the matter.

She hasn’t said much herself, beyond that it’s cool that people can take away from it what they like and that she’s cool with it (plus when asked why people like supercorp so much, she said “A Luthor and a Super” which made me happy because it’s like an Iconic™ line from the show and a big way that I conceptualize them) but she’s a wallflower type and more comfortable directing people to others’ articulation of difficult topics than expressing them herself (like posting someone else’s comments about he US backing out of the Paris Agreement on her instagram, avoiding giving long speeches about her relationship with Chyler because it makes her emotional, letting Katie- who has more experience on this matter- take the wheel with explaining where they stand, liking Jeremy’s apology but not posting one of her own). She’s an introvert awkward type, not a Supergirl Hope Speech type. The only thing she really seems comfortable talking about is Kara’s characterization and growth, because it’s what she knows best and has lines ready to go.

As for Katie herself:

She laughed, and it wasn’t an awkward laugh. She thought it was funny. People have been posting pictures of her reaction that are misleading, but this was her initial laugh:

That’s a genuine laugh. Taking a single frame of a laughing face and adding the words “help me” over it will make anyone look like they’re faking being amuse. But this is a real laugh.

And it’s not the end of the world.

Because she didn’t think it would hurt anyone. At least not in that moment.

Later on, after thinking about it and having a lot more experience with these specific kinds of wlw fan situations than the rest of the cast, she re-emphasized her support.

And Melissa agreed 100%.

The cast was not trying to mock anyone, but to say something dramatically in jest, not realizing that it’s actually hurtful. Like teasing someone about being short and then realizing that they are actually sensitive about it. The other person’s feelings are valid, but accusations that you hate short people are not.

There are other things that I have issue with that Jeremy said (and with Chris but I’m not gonna touch that). His use of the word “debunked”, as if Supercorp is a conspiracy theory, for example. His initial apology that was less empathetic than it was defensive (likely in response to aggressive as hell comments, to be fair).

But based on his follow up apologies, I think he’s starting to get where it went wrong, that fandom is really important to people and not a fickle thing, and even that his initial apology wasn’t good enough.

And Melissa isn’t going to post a formal apology. It’s not her style, she doesn’t write on social media like that at all. Even if she does feel bad that she hurt people’s feelings, her method of making it better will likely be saying positive things about Supercorp in the future. Which doesn’t make her fake or two faced, it makes her capable of growth and empathy.

They made a mistake and said something super insensitive, but not something homophobic. The intention and the knowledge behind words matters, and placing a double meaning of mal intent into those words (but of course absolving your fave of any connection to it) doesn’t help anyone.

#supergirl #melissa benoist #katie mcgrath #jeremy jordan #supercorp #sdcc superfail #finally able to post about this #this isn't perfectly articulated but i'll address other counter arguments as they come up #i'm still on vacation so replies to your replies will be scattered #ive had experience with people who will outlandishly tell me that i meant something malicious that i didn't #and they were flat-out wrong #cause because you are feeling and because you are feeling for good reasons doesn'tmean you are right #saying 'no i didn't mean it that way' is not invalidating your feelings #either way #breathe in #breathe out #they don't hate you they aren't ashamed of you #they just don't understand you #but they're working on it

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tedfashionski · 4 years

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Finking, Finking.

Hi, welcome to my ted talk. (That is the only time I will ever make that joke. This is Fashionski Finks. Expect radically low standards of self-involved rantiness with zero research or accountability from here on out). For a while there I seriously thought that the covid-19 quarantine was going to result in people being increasingly placid and accepting of creeping extensions of the police state. But here I am, getting depressed again, not about the protests, which I love, but more about my relationship to in-group pressure dynamics. One of the problems with being a relentless contrarian is the discomfort of my impulse to rebel against groups even when they’re championing the right thing. I have to find my own way to fight against the system as an outsider. No gods, no masters, no fucking peer pressure. I’ll never be happy joining a chorus line. I don’t sign fucking petitions (they’re just lists for the NSA). I do donate, but like fuck will I do it performatively. I can’t go to protests cus I get panic attacky in crowds. I empathise pretty strongly with outsiders of all stripes but believe ridiculously excessively in the public good of criticism, and have a nostalgic love of trolling (I like to think I’m gentle with it though). Bring back the troll! We need that fucker, he’s a sign of a healthy internet. I’m writing this blog thing as an extension of my need to vent my extreme negativity. TBH I never expected to get any followers with ted twitter and the bizarre welcomingness of the hf twitter community totally wrongfooted me. I’m not nice. Ted isn’t meant to likable. He’s my dark side. I was meant to be using this alt as a way to terrorise the nice nice (secretly cruel) fashion people. I’m gunna try and up that aspect more. Just bear in mind, my complaints are largely about the system, but if I see you perpetuating fashion’s entrenched anti-intellectualism or its insidery bullshit, I’ll come for you with a little meta-bomb with your name on it. Maintaining my misanthropic tone does take work tho, like, deep down in some twisted part of my psyche, I guess I do actually want to be liked. It’s fucked up.

I suppose it’s only fair to explain this Ted fursona. Like, new concept, who dis? Why all the furry porn? …..because I just think it’s hilarious. Every time I think about the furries I cackle (not at them, mind). I just love the mad corruption of pure Disney aesthetics into hardcore pornography. That’s anti-authoritarian as fuck. I love the sincerity of their culture. The way the crazy fetish aspect means they’ll never be fully blandified by mainstream acceptance. The way it’s so cringe but so delightful. And more seriously, I’m interested in how a culture of mostly gay male nerds developed to the point where they’ll invest 10k in custom fursuits and support eachother’s independent businesses in ways that the fashion community completely fails to do. The fashion world sucks. There’s so many correlations there that I want to investigate: the newness (furries date from around the 70s, fashion culture in its self-aware state dates from the late 19th C – both very young fields); the centralisation/decentralisation; the hierarchy (furries can be pretty catty, I have discovered in my research, and we all know what fashion people are like); the adoption of new identities; the cis-boy gayness aspect (I’m increasingly tired of the extreme nasty hierarchy of certain CSM queens. It’s all very UGH. Just, fuck those particular bitches.) There’s more to the furry love, but I’ll explore it in future posts.

More importantly, why Ted fucking Kaczynski? I’m not like, actually a terrorist. (….yet. tehehe. NO, seriously I like non-maiming violence. Fuck yeah to property damage. Fuck yeah to disabling the system in extreme way. But no to wooden IEDs. Think of my shitty jokes that fail to land as my hand-crafted bombs). I think I like the shitness of Ted. He was just an epic fail of a terrorist. I’m a little white girl living in London. I’m not actually a primitivist, as much as I crave a hut in the woods. I did go to an elite school though. I had some really shitty experiences in the fashion industry in my early 20s, and I watch my friends who are relatively successful in that system and I get so angry on their behalf at their poor treatment. They think I’m too angry. Fuck that. They should be more angry, and the fact that they can’t be angry at their extreme precarity and the fact they’re still insecure and terrified of being ejected by the system after all their investment and skills they’ve built up is BULLSHIT. I’ll be double angry for them, I’m not invested in that system. I don’t need it to pay my rent. I’m free, motherfuckers, and I’m coming for the abusers and exploiters. If you’re a complacent industry figure not fighting hard from within, uggghhhhh fuck you. Yes, YOU. Soooo, I relate pretty hard to the MK ultra stuff. (go look him up, he was basically tortured and experimented upon by the elite). But there’s a pretty big chasm between my views and his, and I’ll try to be clear about the extent of my interest in his extreme beliefs. I haven’t even finished reading the manifesto. Basically, I watched that shitty show on Netflix with sam worthington around the same time I watched Joker (that movie fucked me up) and thought it’d be a good outlet to larp online as a terrorist. There’s the angry white alt-right school shooter aspect, which I’m still figuring out, cus I’m non-binary and I was raised by nutso trumpy right-wingers, who I barely speak to anymore, and I struggle to get along with people generally. There’s sad, self-pitying rage here. I empathise with the angry white dudes too much. I feel guilty about it. That’s good ground for artmaking (yes, shamefully, this…is…art. Sorry). I modelled this fursona a little after my brother, who I spent years living with and arguing with and trying to lift out of his scary racist youtube rabbit holes. This is actually quite an emotional thing for me, cus I did the ‘talk to your fascist family’ thing. And I completely failed. I realised his right-winginess wasn’t lessening, I wasn’t gaining ground, and in fact my excessive empathy and desire to reach out to the relative most similar to me in character meant his extremism was rubbing off on me. Making me more resentful and depressed. Feeling powerless. I was being too kind-hearted and forgiving of his masculine impotence. So I’m exploring some personal shit here. But Ted is also a cute lil fuzzball teddy bear. He means well, but me being super autistic and faily at social skills means he’s kind of a dick, cus I am. I’m going to try and further develop this character, this POV, and this post is the only time I’ll explain the divide between him and his creator (moi). The ‘I’ on the twitter and here is Ted Fashionski, I need that space between me and him. Masks give us this freedom to be more ourselves. Internet culture has lost a lot of its wild brutal anonymity in the last decade or so, now everyone’s afraid of making mistakes. How the hell do you grow if you’re not allowed to fuck up? This is a vital outlet. He’s become an important part of my life and I have to say, I love being Ted Fashionski. He’s like Paddington Bear who just escaped form Guantanamo or something.

I get pretty fatigued as a matter of course. I’m a long-term depressive since childhood. I have a difficult time keeping my hard-on for living. I don’t get suicidal really but I do struggle with extreme fatigue. I sleep a lot. I often fall into spirals of self-hate. And as someone who utterly believes in revolutionary leftist politics, I beat myself up about not doing enough. I’m so middle class and english and white. I was raised in such a chauvinistic and complacent culture; I don’t even know where to start. I’m wading my way through post-colonial literature and beating myself up for finding it boring and uncomfortable. It’s hard to force yourself to acknowledge your culture is The Bad Guys. It’s easier to fall into fanstasies of supremacy and butthurt misunderstoodness. And it’s not like my depressive brain needs any encouragement to hate me. My trajectory is ever leftwards, but I remember the righteous fury of being right-wing. I get it, that was me. We need more paths back from fascism, more comprehension of why people are that kind of shitty. I talk less, and less well, the more depressed I am. If I’m talking, it means im feeling a lot better. Just, fyi.

Give me a minute to be critical here. With the George Floyd protests, a lot of the cool guys on fashion twitter has gone blazingly hardcore on the political side. But there’s this troubling rhetoric about ‘no return to normal content’ or ‘this isn’t the time for fashion’. Like fuck it isn’t. This is a key problem with fashion culture right here, we have this received perception of fashion as empty escapism. Escapism matters in fashion, yes. But seriously, talking about the surfaces of things does not equal not caring about deeper meaning. What the fuck. Clothes are a connective tissue, a membrane between us. They’re emotional and powerful. We can talk about things that matter THROUGH clothes. I speak fashion, pretty fucking well. Most people who work at fashion magazines are morons with no understanding or respect for their subject. They’re incapable of doing it justice, and that’s deliberate. On this tumblr you’ll see rants and reviews of fashion and other artforms, always interpreting through a fashion lens. cus it matters, cus it’s a vital part of the culture, cus just because something has a glittery, seductive surface doesn’t mean it doesn’t communicate or contain depth. There’s no going back to ‘normal fashion content’, yes. Normal fashion content is a fucking psyop to divert legitimate interest in aesthetics amongst largely non-academic dyslexic visual types away from careful thought/feeling and towards empty consumerist commericiality. The traditional fashion media wants you to express yourself and your interest in the zeitgeist through buying more shit. Another fashion world is possible. Let’s destroy the old and build a new one, one where surface and spirit are connected and true and fashion can’t be abused in service of evil industrial monopolists.

/end rant. TLDR: angry fictional teddy bear with tin-foil hat and an eco-anarchist fetish says no to stupid fashion and yes to the renewal of conceptual fashion. Also, Fuck White People.

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firmanep · 6 years

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28/28 Vision: Retrace

28/28 vision, life’s been hit me with precision. I’ve seen both ways, mourn and defeat at the bottom in one side, glory and prosper in the other. I choose to live on and keep 27 years back on my head. At 28 I begin to realize that everyone walk their own path, with their own pace. All of sudden, the meaning of success, settle, stand-on-your-feet, etc dissolve into thin air.

Nor, this doesn’t mean those words and its meaning is nothing but perception. Yet it’s a word of progress, everything in life is on process not an unchanged or fix terms. To make it clearer, I simply put it on my case. I wouldn’t say that I’m a success or failure person if I see this on my own perspective not others. What I trying to do is put those terms not in binary opposition. But in a life line terms. Life line is a sum of all variable in life. They are time, space, body, mind, money, social, career, relationship, sex, etc. So let’s put it in practice, I using “age” as metric. In example, at 27 YO I get a job promotion, start a mortgage, not in a relationship, feeling numb, stretching my financial belt, 58.000 hours listening music, etc.

Looking back farther than a year, I see myself rolling in a rollercoaster adventurous life. At 5 my parents enroll me to primary school in assume I “a slight smarter” than my counterparts. So I’m 1-2 year younger than my primary school friend age average. Yet instead accelerated in academics, my passion in football is stronger. So, it swiped the whole 6 years in primary. I won several trophy, even my profile been written on local newspaper as “bintang cilik”.

My career in football stop when I get into junior HS. Some shit happened at that time, my sister passed, family breakup, I move to my granny house, join a motorcycle gang, and drunk for the first time. That’s all more than enough to put a stamp in my face as “a broken home little shit”. But fortunately I found another passion, music. I start collecting cassette since at class 5 primary school. For local act i listened to Sheila on 7 generation band. Then I start a band, which then I ditched by because my “musical taste”.

Fuck, thanks to MTV After School Rock, so I bit move from locals and see global. At JHS I listened to hipmetal acts like Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park for a brief of time. Till I really struck on Warped Tour bands like Blink 182, Sum 41, New Found Glory, etc. Because of the rarity of the cassette, I start digging music at 2nd hand cassette dweller. From which I got more recommendation, so I begin listen to more “edgy” bands like MXPX, NOFX, No Use For a Name, and local indie bands like Nudist Island and Buckskin Bugle. So almost all my “pocket money” at JHS went off to buy cassette. Oh wait! I get my first and second girlfriends on JHS. LMAO.

So, half of my JHS I spent as a member of “packed gang” (in motorcycle gang and in a band), and the last half I spent by myself, walking around finding cassette. My last year in JHS been so frustrating, I don’t have much friends because they left me/or in opposite, so i don’t see any reason to took a same school with them. Then I get into HS, speaking spatially, it’s really far from my JHS. But it’s a “throwing stone” away from my granny house. Surprisingly it’s really easy to make friends then.

Though, talking about “cultural taste”, they’re a level under my JHS friends. But I see a genuine quality in them. Like most of HS kiddos allover Bandung, we’re maniacally love occupy a Warung and make it our base camp. I can say that “nongkrong” is in par with curriculum. Everyday, after school we ambush that Warung, then we called “TeronX”(wtf!). Playing cards, or in my case I watching people playing cards then getting drunk. While in the other time I still digging music, it’s easier then because the CD & MP3 era came. And I start come to indie gigs twice a week, and I make friends from a fuckin pit! there. Local bands growth fast then, gigs and indie music start to intervere the mainstream. Their music starts play at MTV and Radio.

In HS, i live in 2 social spheres, at school and at gigs. They feed my certain personal dimension. School friends give me a kind of family-ish feeling, we eat together, we talking about life and girl together, we’re wasted together (6 hours before final exam we’re still wasted as fuck!). While gigs friends gave me a cultural experience and influence. It constructs my cultural taste, ie: I decide to being an Emo Kid as fuck. I listened to Emo bands, I dress like Emo bands, I scream at every Alone At Last shows, heartbreak like Emo kid, I writing devastated poems like Emo kid, and I start an Emo band. Yet, the most important is the 2 social spheres successfully distracting me from home, which I no longer knew with.

After finish HS I decided to take a moment to think about my future, so I not in hurry get into college. Like most of school-bonded HS alumni I pretty often still come to school. Thanks to our occupied Warung, so I always know where I should take shelter. 2 life changing things happened then. First, I met my first long last girlfriend. Second, I join a look-kinda-gonnabe-rockstar band. Not at once the two different interest got head-to-head!. Yet they’re still got along hand by hand. The girl is a freshman in my HS. So we’re separated generation. I met her at the first time when I have a meeting with my band near school. It’s a cliché that I have bigger guts as fuckin alumni to come to her, greeting and ask her phone number. Since then, a full week I spend my time with her and ask her to be my GF, and voila she accepted me. Soon I knew the reason she want to be my GF is because of the spreading news about me and my band. Our band is like HS hero then. Again, it’s a fuckin cliché. But, in fact even a cheesy reason could lead into a 7 years relationship. Strange huh!.

The band is another story. Lovely Lolita, we’re named it after a single of local shoegaze band The Milo, although our music is not a dot like them. So it all starts when I invited to featuring with one of my HS band at one single, which then listed into an indie compilation. Me and one of its guitar player thought we’re should making Emo project together. So we’re looking for another player, then we’re met a drummer who still a HS kiddos in my HS then. Then our band started with only 3 players. I took a role as Vocal and Bass then. We’re recorded a single demo and spread it on MySpace. Surprisingly, the acceptance is huge. So we’re playing from gigs to gigs. Our music evolving as our influences richen. So we’re thinking to have a bass player and I just focus on vocal. Then we’re being 4 player Metalcore/Post-Hardcore band. We’re record 3 more songs plus 1 song at the brink of our breakup. Our fans base growing bigger, we’re lined up in a big league gigs, and one of major Radio enlisted us as one of must watch indie band. So, it was a really fuckin 4 years of awesome time.

I took on college a year after I graduate from HS. I get a diploma program in state university in Bandung. I took Broadcasting major. It’s clear then I get on that major because of my “serious passion” in music industry. I thought, if I work in broadcasting company it’ll easier to “spot lighting” my band. But it’s not going well academically. My grade is average. It’s because soon I realize that I actually not into Broadcasting. At 20 I started to blown by books and thoughts. So that’s when the pseudo-criticize dimension of me started. One of my lecturer said that I suppose to took Political Science major. That’s be my battery to get off. Luckily my mom accepted it and get me into PolSci related Bachelor program in one of mediocre university. Although then financially we’re kind of broke. But that’s my mom, she push herself and eagerly sacrifice her life just to ensure her son not fail.

I start my second Uni almost 21. In contrary with what happened in primary, there my age are 2-3 years above average. So I always think it’s a setback. I try not to waste it since this is my second chance. Then I accelerating everything, my time overly consumed by reading books, writing paper, seminars, and other academic things. It’s obvious I left almost other thing behind. That’s moment I no longer dealt with music and band stuff. The path that seems like been written, the other player focus chasing their own project. So that left me with 1 thing, my girlfriend whom struggling enter a new life phase, college. At that point of life we’re destined to get along, our life line walk side by side. Struggling to graduate from school and find a decent job. We’re also financially not sufficient, so we take any after school job. I work for my Uncle as tour guide to pay my semester. From 21 to 24 my old social life melt into thin air, instead I make new friends with people in academic and activism circle. Which then I realize has huge contribution to shape my thought and mental.

Entering new social sphere shocked me mentally that time. I really change into someone I don’t even know. A skeptical and over-thought pseudo-academic person. You know, that asshole kind of person who ultra assuming their thought being original and super right. At that time I don’t feel comfortable hanging out with my music circle friends. So I totally left them. As a replacement, I’m diving deep into books and activism. Which I believe they are my “true” passion and moronically my life path. I really mean it that time, my writing published at prominent activism web site, presenting my thought at seminars and discussion, being part of mass demonstration, etc. With that load of activity I still finish college just in 3,5 years. And rightaway I don’t thinking about get a “formal” job anymore, so I decide to get a Master degree at the best state Uni in Indonesia. With my saving from part time job as tour guide I pay the administration. My mom doesn’t know that I already accepted at Master degree. Till when the school calendar is coming I tell mom that I going to Jogja for 2 years. My mom shocked. Not only by the fact that I choose to extend my school year, but also by the fact that I’m going to live away from home for a quite long time. So I say sayonara. I leave mom in confusion.

The Master year been super well for me, I got almost Suma Cumlaude at my first semester. My paper presented at Bangkok and Rangoon. Though, unfortunately I don’t get there to present them by myself. The problem is classic. I broke. My saving run out fast. Thanks to unplanned budgeting and excessive drunk habit. Plus I only got a little amount of money from writing project. So in the brink of the second semester I don’t have any money on my pocket. So that was my first experience being financially broke.

Somehow although with my academic achievements I don’t get any of scholarship. Even I mail my Rector then to ask tuition fee postponed, and no answer. So with that condition, at that time I don’t see any reason to stay in Jogja. So I back to Bandung with head facing down like the losing army march back from devastating battlefield. I already knew what I’m going to face, thousand mock. And that come from my own family. But I knew, I was wrong been took some huge decision spontaneously without any plan ahead. So I swallow the pills.

It’s been quite a time to stand on my feet once more. This is the second time I fail at college, the different is this time I fail not by my academic issue, but a god damn run out of cash. My heart break and I fall so deep haunted by my failure. But whatever it takes I should rerun my life. Fortunately one of my friend recommend me to his boss. He just built a research institution, so he hire people to work with him. And I got the job which is suits me. Not only the job, but also the office location, it’s in Bandung. So I work like a year there, until some shit happened again. The company declare bankruptcy!. For brief of time I still can live by some cash I save. But it doesn’t take long till I got broke, once more. So in such devastated time I randomly throw my CV to any open vacancy. I visit every job fair, I sent bunch of mail. What I get is nothing. It’s understandable now why it is happened. I am 26 then. While I wait for job interview, I took any work that I able to do. In example, I’ve been working as part time primary school teacher in my mom office. I teach Social. Then I begin to accept my condition. Yet I know I can do better. So I still connected with activist and academic circle. From the same circle, I met with the second girl I declare as a “serious” relationship. Actually she is not from that circle, but more like friend of my friend. We’re accidentally met at one café when I have a meeting about an event we’re going to run.

Friend of mine greets me with her, who eventually is one of that café share holder. I don’t know, but somehow we’re so easily connected. Our conversation last till the café close. And that is the start. From then we’re regularly meet and somehow our relationship up a level to “a relationship”. We’re thru a great days together. It is possible that our life line slightly different. She just graduate from college that time and I am a jobseeker cum part timer guy. That’s preconditioned us to can spend a lot of time together. But then I got the job in Jakarta and she work in Bandung. Even though we’re still regularly meet when she back her home in Jakarta, but our relationship start to tumble. It’s partly because I’m in adaptation phase with Jakarta and she just starting work in Jakarta. So our communication start dismissed. We’re lost in translation. And at 6 month of our relationship we’re decide to breaking up.

I get a quite decent and suit job in media industry. Since the break up I decide to focus on how to struggling in Jakarta, build my career Monday to Friday and have some reboot in Saturday and Sunday. At the same time I begin to fix my relationship with my family, one of the reason I start a worker life. But it’s not until the 6th month I work then I rethink about what am I wanted to achieve in Jakarta. So I start to redirect my life. And I thought I should save some cash to prepare my future. Yet I still don’t know what am I going to do with that cash. Then I remember one of line in an Indian clan movie, if I not mistaken it is Appache. At the closing, the main actor had a convo with his counterparts. They’re talking about land property ownership.

The whole movie highlighted the conflict between Indians and the invader to claim a land. One of the line got stuck in my head ever since, the chief Appache tell a young brave warrior that “ain’t a men without a land”. Thus when it comes to saving, I always thought that I should save my cash in property not a mere virtual digit in Bank Account. So I tell my mom and she support my idea. Then I went to developer and bank, they accepted my mortgage proposal. At 27 I mark a monumental decision to pay credit to bank for long years. So I start my 28 with years of credit on my back but property on my feet.

Now I’m 28. What does it means by being a 28?. That question keep buzzing me days before I turn a year older till now when I officially 28. Honestly I still don’t know the answer. But I just knew that it is the time that I should continue step my feet to the next phase of life. I should be more stabile, mentally and materially. So when the time to settle comes, I’ll be ready or at least prepared. How to do that?. Simply by fix a once broken thing back then and set timeline goals. So I set it up. Now I got my 2 year plan. If that realize, and it should, it would be another monumental life decision. I wish. May the lord open.*** Bandung 26 January 2018 Ps: Sorry if my grammar sucks. It’s unedited and I don’t give a fuck, tho!

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thejakeformerlyknownasprince · 7 years

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i just realized what would eventually be a big (and oh so very human) problem in the post-war society. copyright claims. the rate of yeerk infestation among musicians, showwriters, and authors must be quite high as they're prominent and influential and their work reaches a big audience. but who do the works produced by a controller actually belong to? the yeerk? the human? how do you even prove who the idea originally belonged to? let's face it: people would sue for that.

Honestly I don’t foresee it being a problem at all, for several super-cynical reasons.

First of all, do we ever see any alien species put out work that any other species considers ‘art’? Ax alludes to a bunch of different andalite jokes that mostly fly over his human friends’ heads, Dak Hamee describes some of the hork-bajir communication as ‘music’ whereas Aldrea considers it ‘noise,’ the andalites have a bunch of artistic structures on their Dome ships that to the Animorphs and Loren just look like trees near ponds, and if humans and hork-bajir ever manage to share any kind of artistic experience during those ~4 months they’re living together near the end of the war we never hear about it (#49-#54). Similarly, most aliens don’t seem to get human culture: Ax loves “these messages” and says “[human music] is awful. All of it” (#8). Yeerks probably have their own art forms, but Visser One describes television as “artifice and deception” and music as “screaming” (Visser). We rarely see controllers watching or reading stories unless it’s as a cover for something else, never hear them listen to music, and the only mention of television in a yeerk-runs setting are the human voluntary hosts watching a human sitcom while their yeerks feed (#1). Even Elfangor, who is the biggest human-culture nut in the series (and a little bit of a weirdo for it, Andalite Chronicles strongly implies) thinks cigarette ads are more beautiful than the actual content of magazines. This motif actually makes a ton of sense when you think about it, because there’s no reason that extremely different cultures would have similar enough music for cross-pollination to occur. As it is, there are tons of jokes and songs and shows within human cultures that get labeled as “I guess you have to be American [Japanese, Irish, etc] in order to find it funny,” and that’s just within cultures on the same planet. Standards of taste vary by geography, and there is a LOT of geography separating the alien species in this series. Anywhoo, it would strike me as relatively unrealistic within the series as a whole and within our knowledge of sociology for a yeerk to put out something that many humans consider art.

Secondly, this question raises a lot of bigger (messier) questions about the respective power dynamics of the yeerks and human hosts after the war. We never know a single goshdarn thing about what happens to the yeerks after their surrender, so this is all speculation, but… The human hosts are the ingroup. The yeerk invaders are the outgroup. The humans win; the yeerks lose. There are five billion humans on the planet at the time, and maybe 100,000 yeerks. All of those factors suggest that the yeerks are going to be awfully low on the pecking order of human society, if they’re in communication with human society at all. There are other possibilities, including them being moved “elsewhere” on Earth as the taxxons are, including them being culturally annihilated, including them being barred from mainstream communication. Let’s assume for a moment, though, that they simply go to live among the humans. (I consider that possibility wildly unrealistic, for reasons I outline here, and no I’m not discussing it anymore for reasons I outline here.) They’re still a group of outsiders who have an extremely nasty cultural history with the humans. When these kinds of questions arise, it tends to be the individual with more cultural power that wins: we talk about “Watson and Crick’s Theory of DNA” even though they blatantly stole from Rosalind Franklin because the alternative would be respecting women in science, about “Darwinism” not “Wallaceism” because although those two genuinely discovered approximately the same concept at the same time Darwin had better social connections, and about Archimedes more than Hypatia because Hypatia was yet another woman with power violently erased from math texts for millennia. AND THOSE ARE JUST THE ONES WE KNOW ABOUT. Historians have hypothesized that entire libraries’ worth of literature both scientific and artistic have been published by women using their husbands’ names, people of color using white fronters, and otherwise disenfranchised geniuses forced to rely on better-connected backers. Anywhoo, I honestly don’t think there would be a fight even if a yeerk did make art, because I’m pretty sure the human would win.

Third: let’s talk war reparations. Humans tend to suck at them, and tend to prefer revenge to reconstruction, but generally speaking people tend to try to help other people who have suffered as a result of war (as long as it comes at minimal inconvenience to themselves, of course) which is why we’ve got the G.I. Bill in the U.S., which is why Germany has outlawed NeoNaziism, and which is why the phrase “never again” strikes such a chord with so many groups. Ergo, assuming that the war happened and the humans came out the other side, it’s probably safe to say that the humans are at least making a half-assed effort to acknowledge that “oh lord what the yeerks did was OBJECTIVELY TERRIBLE” and therefore would probably just err on the side of granting rights to the humans.

Fourth, copyright law might not work like that. Now, I don’t know shit about copyright law, but what I do know is that once a copyright has been filed and is on record, it’s heckin hard to get that copyright changed. Generally it would involve a GINORMOUS civil case and some really strong evidence that someone currently uncredited with a particular output definitely inarguably beyondallreasonabledoubtedly contributed to the process of creating that output. The few cases of Person A suing Person B for rights to a piece of art that I’ve ever read about have tended to go with the “Possession is nine-tenths of the law” principle (AKA if Person A’s name is on the piece of art then everyone defaults to assuming it belongs to Person A) with a side of “Can we all just exchange money and stop fighting?” (AKA everyone loves out-of-court settlements because generally speaking everyone benefits). So if a yeerk was challenging a human over the rights to a piece of art that would have the human’s name on it anyway (because yeerks putting out art in their own names that would be recognized by humans enough to have legal issues would be hella suspicious), and if the human and the yeerk were both like “dude, I wrote this”…. Then I would assume that 99.99% of cases would end with the judge being like “go away and stop wasting my time, yeerk claimant,” or saying “take a little money and then go away, yeerk claimant” and at some point there would be enough precedent that the yeerks would get screwed.

Fifth… Sorry to the yeerk fans of the world, but I don’t give a crap if the yeerks do get screwed. If the host was voluntary and working with the yeerk to put out art, then there shouldn’t be an issue. If the host was enslaved to the yeerk and being used as a puppet to make stuff the yeerk wanted to make, then the yeerk kinda deserves to get screwed out of anything they used a slave to make.

Tl;dr: The issue of copyrighting assumes a) that yeerks put out art humans can appreciate, b) that yeerks have enough status in human society post-war to even attempt any claims, c) that any judge wouldn’t just say “the human deserves the rights” and call it a day, d) that there’s enough ambiguity left in the authorship of a piece of art with the human’s name on it to create space for conflict, and e) that there would be any “justice” in letting an involuntary host and a human-assaulting yeerk share credit for a work. I’m not sure any of those assumptions is necessarily backed by sociology, history, jurisprudence, or the Word of Our God and Savior K.A. Applegate.

#yeerks #humans #art #54 #headcanon #asks #answers #animorphs #anonymous #seriously PLEASE DON'T TELL ME HOW THE YEERKS WERE RIGHT ALONG #OR HOW THEY ARE ALL DESTINED TO BE HUMANS #I LOVE YOU ALL BUT I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT ANYMORE

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 5 years

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What it’s like to be Pornhub's social media manager

Managing a brand’s social media is tricky for anyone in 2019, and it’s even more challenging if you’re the social voice (and face) of Pornhub, the web’s most popular porn site. We spoke with Aria Nathaniel about the fine line she walks at the office each day.

Boasting a whopping 6 million followers on Instagram and 1.25 million on Twitter, Pornhub has amassed extensive reach on social media channels. By riffing on memes, trends, and current events — and interacting with readers — Pornhub stays relevant and continues to build an engaged community.

Most of that work is done by one woman — Pornhub's social media manager, Aria Nathaniel, who’s staying up to date not just on what Pornhub’s doing, but on the latest trends across the internet.

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The voice of Pornhub

Between spreading awareness of the brand, engaging with followers, and keeping her posts within each platforms’ terms of service, Nathaniel has a big job. But for all the extra behind-the-scenes challenges of running social media for a porn brand, Nathaniel's work appears effortless to the average follower.

Like all social media managers, Nathaniel's job requires her to stay up on what's happening online. “I try to latch on to mainstream trends and breaking news stories to boost engagement. If people are talking about something nonstop, I want to insert myself into that discussion,” Nathaniel tells Mashable via email. “It’s me 24/7, 365.”

“I’m constantly scouring the news and keeping myself 'in the know' on things — sports, politics, entertainment, video games," she says.

#instagramdown pic.twitter.com/yaZlCJy0tm

— Pornhub ARIA (@Pornhub) March 13, 2019

Like any social media manager for a brand, Nathaniel has to follow certain rules (like the aforementioned platforms' terms of service). But as the voice of a large adult entertainment platform, she has more leeway about what she shares than, say, someone running social for a telecom or an airline. “I’m afforded a unique opportunity to pave my own funny/witty/sexy/raunchy lane and break away from all the mundane commentary that tends to typically proliferate [on] branded social media,” she says.

This strategy, Nathaniel says, has made Pornhub more “approachable,” adding, “People are able to see me being silly on social media and are less inclined to think of us as strictly an adult entertainment platform. I like giving Pornhub a personality that many people can relate to.”

RT if you sexually identify as a mistake

— Pornhub ARIA (@Pornhub) March 20, 2019

She puts thought into the type of content to put on each platform: The Twitter account is heavy with jokes and memes, because, as Nathaniel says, “it’s especially important to be relevant and topical with whatever you’re posting about there.”

Because Instagram is more visually focused, she notes, she focuses on promoting some of the adult entertainers and "posting pictures from various marketing initiatives we’re doing, whether it be a new product, physical activation, or stunt.”

SEE ALSO: Oh great, another 'Game of Thrones' porn parody is here

While some of the content Pornhub posts may get your heart racing just a bit or isn’t something you’d want coworkers in your office catching you scrolling through, Nathaniel says that nothing she posts violates TOS. While content has occasionally been removed from Instagram, she says those instances generally aren’t a TOS violation but coordinated attacks by dissenters, “a result of people mass reporting our account because they don’t agree with what we stand for.”

There are other social media challenges for Nathaniel, too, but, surprisingly, not the ones you might think.

Side-stepping Twitter’s darker corners

We all know that along with the good things they do, like providing a platform for marginalized voices, social media channels can also be terrible places, filled with harassment and misogyny, making these platforms a minefield for women. One study, published in December 2018, found that women were harassed on Twitter every 30 seconds. And you know it’s not a good thing when that number actually feels like it's lowballing how often it occurs.

Nathaniel, though, says she’s actually been relatively lucky when it comes to harassment. She tells me she keeps a close eye on Pornhub's mentions so she can interact with followers, and doesn’t receive too many harassing comments. “The internet, by and large, has been rather kind to me/us in regards to comments and interactions," she says.

View this post on Instagram

Find me nowhere near the sun because my skin has evidently never seen the light of day....selfie. #phworthy

A post shared by Pornhub (@pornhub) on Feb 27, 2019 at 5:58pm PST

But Nathaniel does make an effort to evade trolls by being careful about what she chooses to post about, and avoiding controversial political topics. “I’m very cognizant so as to not post something too controversial because I don’t want my comments and replies to turn into a hateful thread where people are arguing back and forth with each other," she tells me.

Still, there are some questionable queries thrown Nathaniel's way, even as she seems to take them in stride. “The one question I’m asked incessantly... is why I haven’t done porn, which I take as a compliment,” she says.

In reality, she says she rarely even visits porn sets: “Because I’m the brand ambassador it’s pretty rare [that] I’d wind up on the production set unless it was for a marketing campaign. We do very little production ourselves, actually, which usually surprises most people.”

Nathaniel hasn’t had many issues with overzealous followers, either, and when she has it's been mostly positive. “For a while I had a wonderful fan sending me donuts every week. While it’s not uncommon for people to send me things, this was recurring and quite wholesome.”

Fans also appreciate her literal realness: “It always amazes me when people realize I’m not a bot and actually a real human," she says. "I always get a good laugh from that. Most people are super nice and gracious, and I’m always so appreciative.“ At the end of the day, regardless of someone’s profession, people should be mindful of the things they say to them.”

View this post on Instagram

Gal pals! #phworthy

A post shared by Pornhub (@pornhub) on Mar 13, 2019 at 8:03am PDT

The big online porn behemoths Pornhub, RedTube, and YouPorn are all owned by the company Mindgeek, and each has its own social media manager. When asked if these social media accounts might play a role in the misogyny that’s rampant on these platforms, Nathaniel points out that all of Mindgeek's social media accounts are run by women. “[Mindgeek] is a cool place for us as women to speak up and speak out on things that are near and dear to us."

Nathaniel says she also has a great relationship with those other social media managers: “I’m close friends with YouPorn Katie and the social media manager for RedTube, Emma.”

All three women work in the same office, she says, and adds, “We do sometimes talk shop but rarely compare notes. We want to be as genuine as possible and if we compare notes or share tips with respect to what does and doesn’t work on our distinct platforms, that may compromise our authenticity and personality.”

Treading carefully

One might think a drawback to working in the adult entertainment business would be becoming numbed to sex. After all, there have been numerous stories about the effects on those who watch a lot of pornography; it stands to reason that working in the industry, even an arm's length from production, one might run similar risks.

But Nathaniel says she hasn’t experienced this in her job. “People always expect me to be super horny or super desensitized to sex from working here, but I don’t feel a shift in anything at all. If anything, I’m just more informed.”

Elaborating, she adds, “Working at Pornhub is like being in sex ed class 24/7, and I mean that in the best way possible. I’m more knowledgeable about sex and sexual health. I’m more aware of the sexual community and the challenges they face. I’m more in tune with sex workers and have been fortunate to form lifelong friendships with many of them.”

That’s not to say she doesn’t have any concerns. When you’re the person behind a major brand online, you’re always a target of trolls and others looking for you to make the slightest misstep. Or, sometimes, no mistakes at all; they’re just ready to pounce.

The story of Amy Brown, the Wendy’s social media manager who blew up thanks to sassy tweets but soon experienced a backlash for no reason other than that people are jerks, is one such example.

Being sharp and genuine and connecting with the readership is a big part of the task, too, and Nathaniel is quick to praise the entire social media team at Pornhub, adding, “We work tirelessly to ensure we’re culturally competent, authentic, and sensitive to people.”

“At the end of the day we just want to put a smile on people’s faces. I want someone to be scrolling through Twitter, stop on my Tweet and laugh out loud or smile. That’s all," she says.

And it's working: Users apparently like Nathaniel's voice so much, that there are multiple series on YouTube featuring her, including the day-in-the-life series “Chronicles of Aria,” and “Pyft,” in which Nathaniel operates a rideshare for porn stars. “[Many] people who follow us on social ask to see more of me and my personality, so we thought this would be a cool way to do so on a safe for work platform," she says.

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While it appears that she leads an adventurous life, Nathaniel insists that she’s not “a wild and crazy person” but has had a few fun moments, like the 2018 Pornhub Awards in Los Angeles. “I never thought that I’d have Kanye West (who was creative director of the awards show) physically stitching a dress to my body.”

Ultimately, the success of both the Pornhub social media strategy and Nathaniel herself has boiled down to maintaining that much-talked-about authenticity and not losing her sense of self, particularly on a platforms littered with garbage, bots, and plenty of hate speech.

And, she says, it’s especially important to stay centered when you run the account for adult entertainment; the subject matter itself can inspire people who might think it’s okay to be horribly foul in response while at the same time angering people who, as Nathaniel mentioned, don’t like what Pornhub does.

Ultimately, Nathaniel has found that balance: “Pornhub Aria is who I am as a person. I haven’t changed to conform to people’s preferences or anything. I’m super authentic and take pride in that.”

#_uuid:a7bfaf87-ad63-3e3a-8da2-03e1359794b9 #_category:yct:001000002 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_author:Marcus Gilmer #_revsp:news.mashable

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sepiaglass-blog · 7 years

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UN-GO!! INGA/SHINJUUROU (if you even ship it -- or another ship of your choice)!!! YUUKI SHINJUUROU. yes i'm giving you all 3 :DDD

1. finally after like a week (or two??), i am here with a response :’D thanks for your patience. if. you were waiting. haha.2. thank you for this

001 | UN-GO

Favorite character: SHINJUUROUUUUU but i’m also rather fond of that no-name extra character who ran the bookstore that shinjuurou and co visited in ep 6 what a normal normal guy!! the novelist really fascinates me too

Least Favorite character: originally, rie. the first time i watched it, i thought her character was purposefully written that way so that there’d be some fanservice + plus i didn’t like her self-absorbed sort of personality? i don’t mind her now though; post-rewatch, she’s kind of tied with little inga. because little inga is… really loud and immature most of the time lol but i’m still fond of him because he’s like a little brother sort of character

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): shinjuurou/inga, and… wow, i’m mainstream for this one. no one else ^^;;

Character I find most attractive: hh inga’s adult form! unkempt shiinjurou too, in a half attracted, half pls-shave-your-stubble way haha

Character I would marry: rie. even though i said she was (tied for) my least favorite character lol. she’s really capable and straightforward, is able to conduct herself properly when she’s called on and is comfortable in politically charged social situations, etc. plus she’s super fashionable. she’s kind of self-absorbed at times, but if she has an issue she brings it up right away, which is a good thing. compared to the other characters, she’s the most capable of having a normal life. she’s also rich

Character I would be best friends with: …shinjuurou? i have a tendency to throw out explanations/theories and i generally agree with his cynical view of the world + the whole thing about unveiling truths is really up my alley. not sure if this would make us besties though??

a random thought: if shinjuurou lives in the restricted zone where no one can enter on foot or by vehicle, how can he have all those people lining up at his office

An unpopular opinion: hmm, i didn’t really like the last arc. it wrapped up well with the reiteration of opposing world-views but i felt it was rushed and a little bit of a cop out.

my canon OTP: shinjuurou/inga if we were to call that canon. i mean they are sort of stuck together for life haha

Non-canon OTP: N/A but for the sake of interesting situations… the novelist/prisoner and anyone with a strong sense of justice. or just anyone lol. he’s an interesting figure

most badass character: inga hands down

pairing I am not a fan of: rie/shinjuurou and kazamori/anyone. rie/shinjuurou because rie is kind of young for him + i feel like she’s missing something? kazamori because as much as it acts like a human, it is a constructed being. Attachment, loyalty, etc. are one thing, but i think kazamori is… wholly uninterested. (not that this is a bad thing)

character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): the female characters in general (not counting inga) but if i had to pick one, izumi. her behavior in the final arc seriously threw me for a loop and i felt like she became super flat and out of character. not to mention, she had a lot of lines in the beginning, when things were building up/episodic, but when shit got serious, hayami got pretty much all the lines and izumi was… turned into a plot point of sorts.

favourite friendship: this one’s a tough one for me haha. but i guess kaishou and shinjuurou? can’t go wrong with good old rivalry but on-the-same-wavelength relationship

character I want to adopt or be adopted by: i’d adopt kazamori but RAI are illegal lol

002 | Inga/Shinjuurou (yes i ship it)

when or if I started shipping it: the beginning!!

my thoughts: inga is kind of too pushy and shinjuurou is kind of a door mat, but they understand each other generally speaking, and inga does check in with shinjuurou/listen to him/etc.? plus they’re kind of bound to each other, so it’s fitting… wow, the more i think about this the more i question why i ship them

What makes me happy about them: i dunno, they give each other reasons to live and continue doing things, even if what they’re doing is meaningless.

What makes me sad about them: inga is disrespectful (understatement) at times :(((( like i think in ep 2 or 3, she hits shinjuurou??? i understood why she was upset and shinjuurou also knew what she was talking about, and inga is a demon/not-a-human so she doesn’t operate on the same rules if you will, but… it still makes me sad .-.

things done in fanfic that annoys me: haven’t read un-go fanfiction in a while so nothing to say here

things I look for in fanfic: un-go is one of those shows i don’t really feel the need to jump into the fanfic archives for, but i look for gen or character study type things. if there was a what-if long-fic, i’d be interested too! depending on the premise though

My kinks:

Who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other: inga/souls, someone should write it!! inga character studyyyy! shinjuurou/…uh. no… one… ^^;;;;;;;;

My happily ever after for them: they continue finding souls, meeting people, and solving mysteries

003 | Yuuki Shinjuurou

How I feel about this character: his viewpoints are super interesting and i can’t turn away from his words?? i love his outfit too. and the way he’s very chill (too chill?) about barging in on high profile events… i envy it. he works decently under stress too?? at least, he doesn’t become unable to do things when he’s faced with bad situations. like in inga ron, he ran out of money but he was still… at least setting up some semblance of a shop? all in all i think he’s really interesting and has a lot of admirable qualities

All the people I ship romantically with this character: inga

My non-romantic OTP for this character: izumi

My unpopular opinion about this character: i don’t even know what the popular opinion about this guy is hahaha :’D

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: the people he stayed with during high school, or those people who took him in for any number of years before he went to the battlefield… what were they like? i don’t wish that shinjuurou would meet them again, or anything like that; it also doesn’t seem like anyone from while he was growing up made an impact on him beyond the “do your best to help others” thing. but i’d like to learn a little more about them anyway. + i would have liked to see rie and shinjuurou meet after she kicked him while riding that horse and actually discuss what went on there

my het ship: inga/shinjuurou

my fem/slash ship: don’t really have one but in the interest of not copping out, kaishou/shinjuurou in a “we never talk about this and it never progresses” situation 10/10 that’s my aesthetic

my OTP: inga/shinjuurou

my OT3: ^ + kazamori but not in a romantic/sexual sense

my cross over ship: man i haven’t thought of crossovers in a long time… but… maybe shinjuurou and aizawa from boku no hero academia? anyhow i think they’d get along

my kink: no kinks but it’s canon that his nipples are sensitive ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

a head canon fact: he was the one who decorated their office with the comfy couch and the pleasing color scheme, but he asked izumi (who asked kaishou) for advice so really, kaishou decorated the place.

my gender bend: female!shinjuurou……… = pandora’s box

#defeateddetectives #memes #replies #long post #un-go #waaaahh this was long and i thought more about it than i probably should have??? haha #i'll put this in #about me

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gigmusicdscvr · 7 years

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#GIGCHAT : THE PATH LESS TRAVELED

Friday is the perfect day to find new music. For you who are bored with the pop and EDM music out there, there are Neck Deep, Sleeping with Sirens, One Republic, and even The Script who releases their new music. But, have you notice one of the good underrated ones like the song “The Devil” from The Path Less Traveled? This Canada-based band had just released a new single which catchy to all punk, hardcore, and rock music fans.

The Path Less Traveled seems to be typical guys from a rock-band with tattoos, heavy voices, and everything associate to musicians you can name it. Yet, they are bunch of friendly guys with really cool humor and music taste. Here are they introduce us to their music, new single, and other fun stuffs.

Can you introduce a bit about yourselves? How did you meet and decide to make band ?

Jordan (our drummer) and I (singer/guitarist) were friends in Jr. and Sr. high school. We started playing our instruments at the same time, so we kind of learned off of each other in a lot of ways. After we got out of school Jordan and I stayed in touch and would jam together from time to time. Jordan was in another band at the time and so we did this fairly infrequently. After his band decided to call it quits, Jordan texted me and asked me about starting a band. After that point my brother Dustin came on-board and he played bass. Mike (guitar/vocals) and I met at a paramedic training course and he came on shortly after. We played with this lineup from 2013-2017. At this point a good friend of ours named Nic had recently left his band to try new things and we were really excited to see if he'd join us. So in February of this year Dustin departed the band and Nic joined on bass. It's been a really good fit so far and the shows have been a lot of fun.

How about the name “The Path Less Traveled”, is that a hint that you will take "anti-mainstream" path in music?

It's funny because that wasn't the idea of the name, but it actually does reflect how we write and sound. The band name basically means living your life to a higher standard that you set for yourself; to the best person that you can possibly be. Our world has a lot of crazy things going on and as an individual sometimes all you can do is be the best that you can be and try and inspire others along the way.

How do you describe your music and also the influences?

Our band has a lot of really unique factors. Jordan comes from a metal and hardcore background, so bands like Terror and Madball or Lamb of God and As I Lay Dying. Mike and Nic both come from a pop-punk background and really like that happy energy that you can put into music. Bands like Blink-182 and A Day To Remember. Then I come from sort of both worlds, although the more time we've spent together, the more we share new bands with each other and share interests. I like the heavier punk bands and some metal-core bands. I really enjoy bands like P.O.D., Seether, and Bullet For My Valentine. As I mentioned we share a lot of favorite artists as well. So we essentially put all of that together and get a unique sound that touches in the worlds of all of our favorite bands. The drums definitely sound metal, and the guitars have punk, hard rock, and metal elements. Then on top of that our vocal ranges also spread us around. I tend to have a more gritty and mid-range voice, while Mike and NIc both have the higher ranges that are familiar in the pop-punk scene. Jordan also sings on a few songs and his voice has its own sound too. We think that we have a lot to offer for rock fans though. We always try and create music that we would want to hear.

How is the writing process to you? You’re all involved on the lyrics writing or any other ways?

This is kind of a song specific thing. We have some songs where I wrote the music and lyrics, some where Mike wrote the music and I wrote lyrics, and some where Mike wrote everything. We've just started to write with Nic in January and it's gone well so far. We've got a new song called Devil that we can talk about in a little bit. Nic sings on it and we're really stoked on it.

As an indie band what’s the most significant and effective promotion medium to you?

It's really hard to say. Facebook and Instagram are our two biggest platforms. But what it comes down to is hard work. Tools won't do your job for you and that's something is really easily forgotten. At the end of the day it comes down to word of mouth. If people like what you're doing, they will share it with their friends. That can mean sending a text or calling someone to tell them about something, or just tagging them on Facebook. But at the end of the day that's what matters. Creating something that's worth talking about.

Do you manage to do all the management by yourselves or assigned a friend to manage the social medias and other band promotions ?

We've never had a manager or booker. We run our website and all of our social media platforms by ourselves. It's great to have that immediate connection with people who are interested in reaching out to the band.

Can you tell us a bit about Canadian indie music scene?

It's definitely in a weird place right now. There are more bands than ever before and more venues than ever before, but at the same time EDM and DJs are what is popular. There's a lot of competition for events and shows due to how many options are out there. Everyone in the live music scene is happy to co-exist though. There's a lot of support from each band and show turnout is usually really good. It's kind of hard because Canada has a much lower population than the United States and as such we have less cities to tour. If you're in California, for example, you could spend a week touring just that state because every 20-40 minute you hit a different county with 20 000 - 40 000 people in addition to the big cities like Los Angeles and San Diego. In Canada the cities are farther apart and the populations are less, which means it's harder to tour and make enough money to afford doing it. This does mean that the bands that choose to do it, do it because they love it. That's always really inspiring to see and to be a part of.

All that to say we are very proud of where we come from and our city of Calgary.

Tell us about your next single “The Devil”!

We're really excited about this song. It's our first song to release with Nic's vocals and it's a bit of a new sound for us. It kind of has a Rise Against vibe, but it also has elements of A Day To Remember and maybe Beartooth? The song talks about being stuck in the pattern of an unhealthy relationship and how it brings out the worst in you. Sometimes you know what the right thing to do is, but you just feel like you can't control yourself from being venomous.

Next project ?

We had an EP nearly finished before Nic joined, but now that he's onboard we're looking at what we have and are building a plan. Some of the songs are worth keeping, and some songs should be either re-visited or scrapped. We have enough material to release until December. After that we're going to see where we are and look at releasing an EP or full length in 2018.

Name one of the most favorite things to do together as a band, other than music?

It's kind of hard because when we're not recording, playing, or practicing, we're usually going to shows. Jordan, Mike, and I went out to a festival called Montebello Rockfest last year and we saw every band that we've ever loved with 200 000 other rock fans. It was amazing. Before Nic was in the band we would run into him all of the time at concerts in the city.

Besides shows we'll usually link up in smaller subgroups and go to a movie, watch the Calgary Flames (our hockey team), or get together with some friends and have a BBQ.

Mention bands/musicians you’d like to colaborate with?

I'd have to say that the number one goal would be to work with producer Bill Stevenson. He has touched every member of the band in a different way over his career, and we love that about our band. Nic loves the Descendents (the band that Bill plays drums in), and then all four of us love the Rise Against album "The Sufferer and The Witness". He produced one of Jordan's and my favorite bands called Wovenwar and also did A Day To Remember's latest album. We're just in love with the guy and what he does with his records.

If it came down to strictly artist collaboration, it would be something like this:

Scott: Shaun Morgan (Seether)

Jordan: Mike Johnston (Drummer)

Nic: Billie Joe Armstrong (Green Day) or Matt Skiba (Alkaline Trio)

Mike: Tom DeLonge (Blink-182 + Angels & Airwaves)

Place you’d like to visit for gigin’? Asia ?

Man! Asia would be super cool. The dudes in Our Last Night seem to go there regularly and they always have a blast. We'd love to play some US and European festivals.

A question you want hear people asking you but never been asked?

We'd love to be asked to go on tour with Rise Against, but so far no one has asked us to. It's a bit sad. Ha ha ha.

Message to your fans or your new listeners?

Hey! Thank YOU for taking the time to read this interview and giving us a chance! If you'd like to keep up to date with what's going on with us, check us out on Facebook, Instagram, and our website and you will be able to get any additional information on there. Hit us up! We'd love to hear from you and hear your thoughts on our music.

#the path less traveled #band #gigchat #interview #canada #indie #indie band #music #indie music #friday #new music friday #single #music blog #music blogger

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that-girl-you-were-warned-about · 7 years

Note

All the questions!!!

1. How long have you had a Tumblr? Off and on for 4 years2. Describe your first kiss, who was it with, what was it like, where was it etc? At my high school’s winter dance. It was super cute. 3. What’s your biggest regret? I know we all say we don’t regret things but obviously it’s how we learn, from our mistakes. So what’s something from your past you wished you could have changed? Basically the whole summer after senior year. 5. Favorite Songs at the moment? Stella and all other songs by All Time Low5. What is the craziest thing that you have ever done? I had sex in a park during the day 6. What’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you? Probably when I ate some bad food and threw up on the city bus. 7. Do you have any scars and if so, how did you get them? Yep. Scar on knee from 1st grade when I fell down, lot of self harm scars, one from my cat (it was my fault for not watching where I was going), one from when my best friend accidentally grabbed my arm8. Where would you like to be in 10 years? Part of me wants to be in a grave but part of me wants to be in a castle. So yeah. 9. What are your views on drugs and alcohol? People all have their reasons for doing drugs and alcohol. So long as you don’t endanger others, I don’t really care what you do. 10. What are your views on religion? Don’t have one, but I don’t have anything against people who follow a religion. 11. Have you ever thought about ending your own life? If so, why? Oh yeah. Every single day for years. Heartbreak and depression are the main reasons I have thought about it. 12. Write 5 facts people might not know about you.I get really attached to people, I will never have children because I will never be able to give them 100%, I really want to have a pet donkey and Shetland pony, I have a Japanese sleeping mat rather than a traditional bed (helps my back), and I want to learn about coding and hacking because I find ethical hacking to be super interesting. 13. last really important text you got? “I love you”14. Can you let go? Letting go of people is really hard. 15. Discuss your first love. Was meh, guy ending up being pretty shitty. I don’t talk about it but I don’t regret it. 16. Put your ipod on shuffle and write 10 songs that pop up. Explain why each song is on there. My iPod is dead. Send me this ask separately and I will answer once it is charged. 17. Name somewhere you’d like to move or visit. London19. What are your views on mainstream music? Not a big fan usually, but some is catchy18. Are you currently missing someone? Yeah19. At what age do you think people should have sex? Not before they start high school, but don’t think there is ever a time people should have it. 20. What are your highs and lows of this past year? Highs would be passing acting class, moving, and lows would be just about all of it. 21. What are your strongest beliefs? That there are good people in this world even if they are hard to find. 22. Who are you closest to in your family? Probably my mom, but we aren’t very close. 23. How important do you think education is? Extremely important. Education doesn’t have to be in a classroom, but learning is the key to making the world a better place. 24. What’s one of your favorite shows? Bones 25. How have you changed in the past 2 years? I self harm less and drink more. 26. Name 5 people who are famous who you find attractive. Andy Biersack, Ruby Rose, and idk who else. They are pretty much all attractive. 27. Name your favorite movie and what it’s about. V for Vendetta. Religion has taken over the government and a man is inspired by Guy Fawkes. Everyone should watch it. 28. Who is someone who fascinates you and why? Most politicians because I find it fascinating that they can care so little for the people they are supposed to represent. 29. What kind of person attracts you? Not afraid to laugh loud, loves music, supportive, doesn’t reject me because of my scars. 30. What’s a problem that you have recently had or are currently having? Anxiety over social interactions has gotten really really bad. 31. Name something that you miss. My cat Abby. 32. Share 5 goals you want completed in the next 30 days. Lose 5 pounds, not cut, not get drunk, read a book, run 4 days a week. 33. What’s been the highlight of your month and the lowest point? I can hardly remember the past 30 days… I guess the high is not failing any tests and the low would be my emotions. 34. What’s something that you’ve done in the past that you would never do again? Probably a sex thing or two. 35. What is you’re biggest insecurity & why? My height because I have been made fun of for it consistently since 4th grade. 36. What were the last 3 songs you listened to and what did they mean to you? “Wicked Ones” makes me happy, “these are the lies” basically how I feel most days, and “this is gospel” fun song and one of the kids I nanny adore the video of Brendon playing it on the piano. 37. Do you have a toy that’s really special to you and if so what is it, how did you get it etc? Not a toy, but my stuffed animal dog. My mom and I went to baby’s-r-us right before I first left for college because I was sad about leaving my cat and thought a big stuffed animal might help me. 38. Have you lost anyone close to you to death? No39. What is your purpose in life? Be there for people when they need it. 40. When was the last time you cried and what was it over? Yesterday because my computer isn’t working and my head hurt and I missed my best friend. 41. If you got to spend an entire day with your favourite celebrity what would you guys do? Go to the zoo42. If you could only listen to one artist for the rest of your life, who would you choose and why? Probably fall out boy cause they got a lot of good songs 43. What are 3 traits that you like about yourself and what are three that you dislike about yourself? Personality wise. Dislike: hard time letting things go, stubborn, tend to throw safety to the wind. Like: persistent, not ashamed of my mental health, and caring 44. Can you cook? If so what are your favorite dishes to make? I can cook basic stuff. Love this couscous with Tumerick and lemon. 45. What was the last decision you regretted making? Drinking 46. Do you believe in the saying “once a cheater, always a cheater”? Yeah47. Do you ever wish you were famous? Nope48. What’s the nastiest thing anyone has ever said to YOU? Or something that’s hurt you above anything else and why? It was said to me but they didn’t know it applied to me. A person said they think gay people should be put to death. 50. What mark would you want to leave on this world after you are gone? Just help people smile. 51. Have you ever thought of having plastic surgery? No52. Have you ever jumped in the pool with your clothes on? Yeah53. Have you ever slapped a boy in the face? No 54. What’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for you? Kissed my scars when I was crying 55. What is one of your favorite memories? Stayed at a friend’s house all night and watched shows58. What’s the nicest present you’ve ever received? Globe from my grandma before she died 59. Have you ever had your heart broken? Yep60. Have you ever wanted to change anything about your life? If so, what? Yeah. Would love to have curable depression 61. What is something you feel like you are really good at? Nannying *idk why so many numbers are missing here*65. What’s one thing someone has done for you that was really small but made a huge impact? Got dragged to church with my family, was feeling mentally horrible so I went outside for a few minutes and a stranger asked if I was okay and said things will get better. 66. What do you do when you can’t sleep? Take meds until I do. 68. If you could change 3 things within your government, what would they be and why? I can’t even answer this cause there is so much wrong with our government 69. What’s your favourite holiday and why? Halloween cause I love all the costumes 70. What’s the kindest thing a stranger has ever done for you? Even if it’s TINY like holding a door open for you, something that you remember even though they were a complete stranger. See #6571. Who’s your favorite cartoon character? Louise Belcher 72. What’s the first song that comes to your mind while reading this and why? These are the Lies cause it’s stuck in my head. 74. What would you like to be the first dance song at your wedding? Idk, guess I try not to think about it. 75. Have you ever been told you look like a famous person, if so, who? Nope76. What’s one thing you can not live without? Animals 77. What is the most selfless thing you have ever done for someone? Idk. I do things for other people, but it just seems like what a friend should do. 78. Are you a girly girl? Sometimes 79. What color is your bed? Like the sheets…? Light purple right now80. Do you prefer light or dark haired guys? Dark 81. Are you currently frustrated with a boy? Little 82. Do you have a best friend? Yeah 82. What song makes you cry the most? Lucy 83. What’s the funniest film you’ve ever seen? Horrible Bosses was pretty funny 84. What’s something crazy that you’ve always wanted to do? Skydive without a person attached to me85. Has anything ever happened to you that you just can’t forgive? Most of the stuff my father has said 86. Ever been really drunk? No 😕87. Is there any type of rumor going around about you? Not that I know of 89. Have you ever felt ashamed about something? If so what was it & why? My height cause I was taller than all my classmates 90. Do you keep a journal? If so what mostly goes in it? Random thoughts, feelings, stories? Nope  91. Do you like somebody? Yeah92. Craziest shit ever done? Same as #593. What’s the saddest story/one that’s touched you the most that you’ve ever heard on the news? Anything to do with dog fighting 94. If you were told you were going to have 3 daughters, what would you want to name them? Ophelia, Anastasia, Lucy 95. Do you have a middle name and if so, what is it? Rose96. Are you in a relationship? No97. Do you enjoy drama? Yeah98. Are you a virgin? No99. Are you short or tall? Tall100. Do you have siblings? If so, what are their names and how old are they? Claire age 17

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