#i know most people see covid as something mostly or entirely in the past but it isnt

[glitchdollmemoria]

that last post mentioning masks got me thinking about how like... i quite literally cannot wear a mask at all times due to one of my disabilities. i TRY to wear one when i can but it isnt always an option for me, which fucking sucks because im terrified of getting sick and potentially worsening the very disability that prevents me from consistently masking. and hardly anyone masks anymore so its not like theyre helping to keep me or anyone else safe lmfao. to spell it out very plainly i am PRO-MASK so dont put words in my mouth here please.

i experience heat intolerance, as a symptom of some kind of muscle weakness fatigue issue that still hasnt been properly diagnosed. my body temperature runs warm, im overly sensitive to my environment, and physical activity makes it worse. if i overheat, my muscle weakness (and nausea, and brain fog, and-) will flare up and ill be forced to rest for what could range from minutes to hours to days to weeks to months depending on how bad it is. i have to take IMMEDIATE action when i notice myself getting too warm because i cant risk that, and taking immediate action includes removing anything i can thats keeping me warm, including masks.

so when i walk to work in the summer bc i have exactly zero alternate options? most likely cant mask right away when i come in unless the weather is cooler than usual, because i need to take like half an hour for my body temperature to go back to normal.

moving around more than usual during my shift? the physical activity is gonna increase my temperature and ill have to take my mask off.

going somewhere other than work, having to either walk or take the bus? either way i have to spend time in the sun and so again i will probably need a cool down period once i get inside / on the bus, depending on how hot the weather is.

and theres an intersection here of my multiple disabilities and my poverty. i cant drive due to another illness, and i cant afford to use a rideshare service or even regularly take the bus, so walking in the heat is my only option to get to work. my work options are limited because i couldnt complete college and cant perform heavy physical labor, so i have to stick with a retail job that requires a lot of moving throughout the store, which itself is physical labor that can potentially make me sick if i go overboard.

mostly i just wanted to put this out there because i never really see people talk about actual reasons they cant wear masks, its almost always antimaskers who dont give a damn about people like me. but if you take anything from my ranting, let it be these two points:

while most people who dont wear masks are just making that choice because they dont like doing so or dont think its important anymore, a few of us out here literally cannot always mask despite knowing its a risk to ourselves and others; and

IF YOU CAN MASK PLEASE KEEP FUCKING MASKING. covid still exists! disabled people still exist! many of us are extra susceptible to the long term effects of covid! please fucking help to protect us! please give a shit about us! i feel like im shouting into the void here because i hardly see anyone mask anymore but please.

#ok to rb #just a couple weeks ago my roommate got sick with a covid scare and it was fucking terrifying to think i might catch it again #i know most people see covid as something mostly or entirely in the past but it isnt #and some of us are still scared and trying to survive #spoonie #covid #covid cw

[ellieinbg]

Making a folk skirt for my cold legs

Back in the before times—which I guess for most people means before COVID-19, but for me means before chronic illness smashed my world to bits—I used to do a lot of couture-style sewing. I have sewen entire historical ensembles. I sewed my own wedding dress. I thread traced and pad stitched and flat-lined. I was in love with the idea of fashion and wanted to engage with it on a sophisticated level. The problem was I didn't like anything I made.

Not only do I have a hard-to-fit body, but I have an electrolyte disorder that fucks up my hormones and makes my body size fluctuate like wild. When I could get things to fit well, they inevitably didn't fit well a month later. And the things I made were either too costumey for me to wear or too boring for me to enjoy. The sheer amount of money, and effort it took to create a garment I didn't like or could not wear destroyed my interest in sewing. I took a break for many years, though as sick as I was I could not have sewn even if I had wanted to. In the past few years, I have had the opportunity to live in Bulgaria for a few months at a time, here and there, slowly soaking up the culture. There I discovered my passion for Slavic folk attire. I have had the opportunity to view some amazing pieces up close at museums and festivals and to see countless up-close photos on Bulgarian buy/sell websites. Something that slowly wormed its way into my brain as I spent time appreciating these garments is how wonderfully flawed they are. I don't mean that they are not skillfully created. They, of course, vary from roughly made amateur attempts to some of the most amazing textile work I have ever seen. What they lack is the rigid rules of couture. The stuffy conventions that define high fashion are conspicuously and freeingly missing from these garments. They are not fitted but instead tied and belted into shape. Trimmings can be added ad-hoc with little coordination as old ones are replaced or new fancier ones can be obtained. Tunics, vests, skirts, and aprons are mostly stand-alone things and not part of a coordinated ensemble. Each item is beautiful and meaningful but modular. And most of all they tend to be extremely size adjustable. Not custom fit for one single body, but designed for any body that garment might be handed down to. Cue this winter, when I was once again looking with dread at the pants in my closet, knowing the things that fit were not warm enough for winter and dreading another round of buying things. There is a growing online trend for sewing historic-inspired adjustable clothing and I knew what I needed was an adjustable over skirt for going out. It needed to be long, warm, and easy to throw on over whatever I was wearing in the house. I wanted something that visually paid homage to the Slavic folk wear I love but their tie-on construction method wasn't going to work. Traditionally these skits had a long slit from the waistband down and tied shut. The ties let the skirt adjust to your size but the front would gap and was not very modest. This is why many historic European costumes include an apron. When wearing skirts of this type the apron covered this slit and provided complete modestly. Also, you have to either step into or drop these skirts over your head which wasn't what I wanted. While pondering how I wanted to make this I stumbled upon a video from "Sewing Therapy" about reversible hanbok skirt construction. The Hanbok is a traditional garment in Korea and like much traditional clothing, a very simple design made mostly of rectangles. As I understand it, and my understanding is poor, the skirt variant is a relatively modern creation. It has a waistband, two ties, and a large pleated panel. Importantly for me, the hanbok is made on the straight grain and not gored, or cut on the circle, just like Slavic folk skirts. They are very size adjustable and can be layered over any under clothes easily making them the perfect outer layer for winter.

I do not in any way claim that what I made in the end is a traditional hanbok. Pleated skirts with a waistband are a pretty pan-cultural idea and are frequently used in the construction of traditional European skirts as well, but the idea of making a pleated panel into a wrap skirt is something I first saw with this hanbok video and I wanted to make a point to give credit to Sara its creator. I hit up my local thrift store for cotton sheets for this experiment and lucked out on this burgundy and cream pair. The burgundy side I hit up with black fabric spray paint and whip-stitched a burgundy ribbon from my stash. For the cream side, I dip-dyed it with procion dyes. I added a simple pocket bag on one side and then stamped it with my possum skull block from my trash coat project. I made a point just to get this made and not to care about seams matching or thread color. I just wanted to have fun sewing again. And ya know what? It is imperfect and weird and works amazing to keep my legs warm and I LOVE IT. I wear this skirt constantly. I love it so much I have started on my second version, this time with some vintage 90s dino sheets.

#upcycle #folk punk #avant garde fashion #goblincore #folk core #folk clothing #historybounding

[olderthannetfic]

Alright I got kinda a bananas questions for you, but how much time do you think should be divided up between work, hobbies and people. Actually wait more specifically what do you think is a good goal to just sit down and do work, but like actually doing work. Like sitting down for 90 minutes and finishing something not working on said thing for 5 hours then finish it. Over the past couple years I kinda erm, just sorta stopped? My mental health has steadily going to shit and covid fucked that all to hell and I was spending so much time in what was essentially a state of panic(didn’t realize it at the time, but that’s essentially what was happening) that I was too exhausted to do anything and just kind of stopped. I didn’t realize it the time but now that I’m finally getting better Ive noticed how little I was doing and how doing little really negatively effects me. Its become a good marker for me to check that I’ve been actually painting, seeing friends, going for a swim but sometimes it still all goes belly up and I’m trying to figure out what is a good goal.(and whats a good marker for when fucking up) Like a realistic long term goal I can strive for and keep track of. I could real easily just say “go for a swim everyday” but that feels unrealistic. In fact I put exercise in same spot as painting so it would be more like “do hobby for an hour a day” but even that feels like a lot. The thought of that feels exhausting so at least for me it should probs be do hobby thing at least 5 times week. Big goal is to swim 3 times and paint twice or vice a versa. its just hard to do that and then I’ll feel like crap and then notice that I haven’t exercised at all for 8 days and I just don’t move around enough to do that. I’m like a dog or walking house plant that needs to go outside and move around for sunshine and blood flow otherwise I start to physically and mentally feel awful. Its just hard to notice you know? Ugh its annoying because there’s so much shit. Its not just that I need some kinda exercise I also need to do some kinda hobby thing for me and other shit that I like to do. And that isn’t even including the work I need to do. I wasn’t even working before I cannot express enough how much of “doing nothing” I was doing. I’m doing better know with meds and therapy and what not and it is helping but I’ll still get home at 7 and just look at my phone and do some combo of read fanfictin/ play sudoko till I get tired and fall asleep. Then I wake up and shocking, I’m still on bullshit. Sometimes its feels to much to shower (at least with that one I know that I can get away with one at most 2 days with out shower so if I didn’t shower the day before I can mostly just force myself into the shower) that’s what I’m trying to figure out for everything else so I can look at my self force my self to stop looking at phone and paint a shitty flower or something. I was doing pretty good but The other week I house sitter for a friend and was immediately back on bullshit. I barely left her apartment the entire time I was there I’m sure that if I actually went to class, got exercise, painted (I brought all my paints then did fuck all) I would have been able to get more work done. I think Im only actually productive when I’m actually getting up and doing crap. I’m in a contact state of “working” and doing nothing but time is moving forward. I have no idea what this anon is. Ugh whatever I’ll submit it anyway

TL;DR trying to be better at actually do stuff and not doing fuck all. Any idea on what’s a good goal to strive for and what’s a good marker for shits getting fuck go for a walk

--

Social time is going to be extremely variable. I'm an extrovert and thus lots of social time is no problem. I also do okay not seeing people though as long as I'm busy.

Exercise should be prioritized above most other things, much as I hate this. You should be doing something basically every day. I agree that swimming is likely not realistic on that schedule, but maybe a walk around the block? It sucks, but forcing yourself to get off your ass every day will help with the rest of it. Also, exercise that takes you out of the house, even if only briefly, requires that you put on clothes, which is also helpful.

Get off of social media. If you're having trouble managing things, now is the time to take a break from anything that involves doom scrolling and time just disappearing.

(I say from my bed where I'm wearing the dirty sweatshirt I slept in and no pants while answering asks instead of working on my next novel. Hmm...)

It's obviously important to you to prioritize painting, but I see the difficulty there: you have to get set up and clean up afterwards, and you can't leave paints sitting around or they dry out. I'd try to schedule one longer session per week for now. If you have something else like sketching, you can schedule more frequent shorter sessions because that's easier to pick up and put down without a lot of prep/cleanup.

I do find little morning rituals like making tea helpful. They pry me out of bed and add some structure to my day.

[askwendyokoopa]

Le Film Des Frères Mario

“As this poor independent film struggles to surpass one billion dollars in the international market, despite being in theaters for over three weeks already, I have decided to share the most trivial anecdote of all time, or at least the last ten years of running this stupid blog. So, over the past five years or so, I've started telling real life stories about the Mun on YouTube, only the Mun/Muse dynamic doesn't exist there, so I've been presenting them as true stories where I've just changed the names to avoid doxxing myself."

((This is also weird, because I doxxed myself nine years ago in 2014. Back when I got myself a personal account, that links to Facebook, and Twitter, and junk.))

"Who's telling this story, hmmm? Anyhow, Madame Flurrie is just my mom now, my sisters are Iggy and Lemmy, my Dad is still Bowser, obviously. I pick random names of Mario characters as needed, like for this one my mom was dating again, seven years after divorcing Dad. Let's use... King K. Rool, he's a lot like Bowser, but stupider, and/or lazier; and that pretty much describes this guy. My mom has a type... unfortunately that type is guys who take 'No' as a suggestion, and continue perusing relationships aggressively. This is getting heavy, let's get to the trivial part, shall we?

Bowser was feeling threatened by K. Rool, Flurrie was his woman, you see. It didn't matter that the divorce was over seven years ago, or that it happened because he was caught in multiple affairs, or that he had been shacking up with multiple women since the split, or that after bedding Gruntilda, he literally came crying to Mom because the sex was sooo horrible, that he had to quote 'strap a board to his ass to keep from falling in' and why couldn't she just take him back already?! So what was his newest solution? Buying his children's love, of course! Once he proved how good of a father he was, she'd have to dump K. Rool and take him back. But he wouldn't buy us things we wanted, no he would just take us to the movies... every. single. day. I know, I know, first world problems. But there's only so many movies playing at once, and this was November of 1996. So at some point we had to choose from seeing 101 Dalmatians, Jingle All the Way, or Space Jam again... so really there was only one option. All in all, we ended up watching Space Jam six times in theaters, six! I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who've watched some movie more, but it's always kinda bugged me because I don't even particularly like Looney Tunes. I don't hate them, they're just kind of... meh; like Mickey and the gang, I just don't feel that strongly one way or the other. My life revolves around Nintendo properties mostly... I'm sure this comes as a huge shock to all.

With no Nintendo movies to speak of, I went 20-odd years without touching my record. Then Detective Pikachu came out, and there was finally a movie that actually might have been worthy of breaking the record with. Unfortunately, I only went with Iggy and/or Lemmy, and getting them out of the house was like pulling teeth, so we only ended up seeing it four times total before it left theaters. Then Sonic came out, and this time for sure! I saw it twice the first week or something, but then the whole entire world shut down on the second week... fate just does not like me. Sonic 2, again was like pulling teeth with Iggy... I never even got Lemmy to see it in theaters as they're still deathly afraid of covid.

So for Mario, I simply went by myself. Kinda anticlimactic, but I have now seen the movie eight times on eight separate days, and paid full price each time. So when the final numbers tally up, over one hundred dollars are because of yours truly, specifically. And all because of Space Jam. So if that isn't a stunlock and a half, I don't know what is."

((Also-also, this is not part of "blog canon" maybe it can be, if a Bowser approves it? Or wants to alter the reasoning a little, but tell me if you would like to hear more Mun stories told by Wendy. IDK, for some reason, it's just easier to talk about my boring life than to roleplay anymore.))

#The Super Mario Bros. Movie #out of peppermint

[galunacycheckyourheadtour]

Turning a corner, but avoiding the mirrors

Things have started to improve, my lungs feel like they are healing and the tiniest bit of exercise does not seem to knock me off my feet for a couple of days with exhaustion. I have been experimenting with walking, swimming, yoga, ballet and cycling, just little bits here and there and it is working. I have started to feel more like myself again and more importantly for the first time since last October, I want to exercise again.

I have been reducing my antidepressants down. I was put on a maximum dose 6 months ago, which flattened me, I piled on the weight and was just generally exhausted all the time. I knew something had to change, as actually the mental health impact of how much I hated the way I looked and felt was probably pulling me more down into Black Dog town. I am so much better mentally when I am physically fit, so having that off the table created a vicious cycle of self loathing. The reduction in meds has meant the fog has cleared and I feel like I can make better decisions about what I do, my routine, eating well, looking after myself better generally. Which brings me on to the main point of this blog, which is hard to write about..

I have always had body confidence issues, which I have blogged about in the past. Having been curvy since I was 9, made me nervous and lacking self confidence. Boys at school were mostly talking to my chest or taking the piss. Grown men were always chatting me up or saying inappropriate things. I will never forget the first time I went for a haircut on my own and the male hairdresser spent the entire time telling me I would have a great career as a page 3 model or porn star…I was 14. This just made me cover up more, wearing a combination of minimiser bras and swimming costumes under my school uniform.

Then I started to struggle with depression and the weight piled on. I would get better and lose it all…and then the beat goes on…. When I turned 30 I did something drastic about it and went on a VLCD and lost 6 stone. I felt amazing, was the most confident I have ever been and swore I would never go back. The problem with that was that it made me have a very strange relationship with food, to the point that I was diagnosed with an eating disorder. It was just not sustainable. But it suited my ‘all or nothing’ mindset which can get me into trouble.

As I hit 40 something clicked, lots of women I am around said the same thing. You kind of get the fuck it’s. I started to not care what people think so much, embrace the curves and wear what I want and actually that gave me a healthier relationship with my body. I started doing exercise I enjoyed - like cycling and that gave me the idea to do my virtual cycle across America for MIND. It gave me everything I needed - a perfect outlet, raising awareness of mental health issues whilst getting fit and listening to some kick ass music. But then COVID struck me, followed by Long COVID and I could not do it anymore and we come full cycle (pardon the pun) and here I am again, unhappy me my own skin but that is something I can control as I start to get well again, but it also led me to another thought process…

Today when I was swimming in the sea, I was thinking about why I post selfies and I think it is because my face is the only part of me I can just about cope with. I can control what people see, isn’t that terrible and fake? I don’t know?! Is it vain I don’t know? Do I need validation by others? What the fuck? Am I just leaning into what that hairdresser told me that I was only a pretty face and a good rack?!! What the hell is it all about?! Maybe I am attention seeking? I don’t know - but sometimes, I don’t feel like I really exist in the world, like when the photograph fades in Back To The Future. I don’t know but anyway that is an aside.

But what I do know is that me, as a whole, me out in the world, is just a nervous mess thinking people are judging me, saying I am the F word, that I am not good enough to be loved or cared about, not wanting to be seen with me. I know this is mostly me saying it to myself, I am my own worse enemy. I realised how bad my internal monologue was when I met up with a friend this week. I spent the whole time unhappy in my skin, feeling ugly, nervous and I cried when they left and immediately started to second guess what they thought about me. How ridiculous.

So what is my conclusion, exercise is everything to my mental health as is good nutrition, not crash diets and general routine. I need to start to talk to myself in a more positive way and stop needing validation. I cannot control other peoples thoughts about me, and nor should I try to second guess/ predict what they are thinking. I just need to be ok for me, get through each day and the good things and people will find me I am sure. So I just keep on keeping on…and yes I will bloody get to LA on my virtual bike tour.

I’m not sure how good this blog post is today, it is rambling and probably lacking structure, I will probably delete it. Laughing at the irony of the photo I posted to accompany it - what a fucking idiot I am!

[matan4il]

Holocaust Memorial Day ‘22

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the liberation of Auschwitz and the attempt to exterminate every single Jew in the world, which resulted in the murder of millions. It was established at the United Nations in 2006, a resolution initiated and led by Israeli diplomats, who fashioned this day after the Israeli national Holocaust Remembrance Day, established back in 1951.

When I was a kid, the Holocaust was this horrific thing that happened to my grandparents, their families, their friends, their generation, but... it was the horror of the past. The Holocaust was the shadows underneath my bed, and the shadows were real, but they were shadows. They were a part of the real darkness that exists in the world, but they couldn’t harm us, not in the here and now. I believed the world had learned from its past, I honestly thought the Holocaust couldn’t happen again. The Holocaust was sad, it was the profoundest of sadness, but it wasn’t scary.

Today, the Holocaust scares me.

Because I do believe it can happen again.

I think the world has learned to say the Holocaust was bad, but it hasn’t learned how to look its cause, antisemitism, in the eye and deal with that.

I hate going on Facebook, Twitter, Quora... I am almost never there for long before I see antisemitic content.

Tumblr is better, relatively speaking. It is selective enough in the viewing experience it provides that a big chunk of the time, antisemitism doesn’t burst my bubble here.

But it is a bubble. As I feel less free to use the internet, I know that’s a kind of win for antisemitism. And I know antisemitism is present on Tumblr too, even when I don’t see it. And every so often, it penetrates my bubble, too.

I have stumbled here across the white supremacy, neo-nazi content that I used to think of as banished to the darkest corners of the internet.

I have seen blogs with urls that use the name of a popular Jewish character (for example, Jake Peralta), and post content that includes death wishes upon the majority of Jews.

There have been times when I have posted Jewish content and subsequently lost followers. Not a lot, but enough that it’s noticeable.

Back in May, almost every Jewish blog I know, myself included, got harassed.

Three days ago, I heard the news about a Jewish activist against antisemitism who ended up dead due to antisemites piling on him relentlessly.

Two days ago, I had to explain to a Holocaust denier than no, there aren’t more Jews today in the world (about 14.5 million) than there were before the Holocaust (at least 18 million).

Yesterday, I got to hear that propaganda is being distributed claiming Jews are responsible for every aspect of the “covid agenda”.

Today I heard there’s never been Jewish self-rule that lasted for more than 100 years, another case of Jewish history erasure, since there have actually been three separate Jewish kingdoms that did.

Being Jewish and experiencing something related to antisemitism daily is hard to convey.

And quite recently, four Jews in a Texas synagogue were held hostage for 11 hours. Eleven hours of something that could have ended horrifically, unfolding live. CNN cut away at a certain point to talk about movie reviews. Tumblr was mostly silent, with a small number of posts being made in comparison with the numbers I’ve seen for other social justice issues/events, and those that were made were hardly being reblogged.

So today I don’t want to talk about the past or dead Jews.

I want to talk about the present and living, scared, worried, tired Jews. I want to talk about preventing a future repetition of the past. I want to say it is VITAL for people to speak up. There’s a lot less Jews left in the world than most people realize. Almost every time I've asked visitors to our museum how many Jews there are, almost every time they overestimate the number. 14.5 million people is just 0.2% of the global population. There are more antisemites out there than there are Jews in the entire world. Without non-Jewish allies amplifying Jewish voices, Jews will not be heard. Jews will continue to be targeted and left to fend for themselves.

Please.

PLEASE.

Look for sources combating antisemitism online, listen to them, learn from them and amplify their voices!

And to those of you that I did see reblogging posts about the recent hostage taking in Colleyville or about the fight against antisemitism:

Thank you. What you did matters more than you realize.

#international holocaust remembrance day #holocaust #antisemitism #antisemitic #shoa #shoah #never again #jewish

[jjheejz]

What is Fate?

[Part 2/5] During filming

*I'm sure much crucial events happened here, they practically started online interactions within the first month of filming. But I don't have much resources/info for this period, so there's more inferences on fate here. I mean until YouKu decides to release all the BTS scenes, this is all I know.

- Since nobody cared much about WOH during filming, not a lot of photographers went to take their photos/videos. But beside them, was a more anticipated and hot drama in filming (HYX). Because it was so popular, tonnes of photographers were there, and the reason why there are generous amount of photos and videos of WOH BTS despite that was because there were so many next door, some of them just decided to come over to WOH as passer-by photographers.

= Some sweet moments of them got captured. You practically have solid evidence of their cute interactions taken because chance happened.

- Not much expectation from the audience sometimes means less stress for the crew, more fun and exploration in filming. Aka, the freedom for the crew to blatantly tell GJ "Your wife is outside." Aka, this is just the tippest tip of the iceberg. Aka, I would say, a support for them to accept their characters are lovers (and in turn on to themselves).

- If "your wife (your lao po)" was thrown around like a name by the crew, then "husband" is definitely hurled around like circus balls. The fact that Gong Jun's surname, Gong, is pronounced almost the same as husband (lao gong), is just...yea, coincidence.

= Fate is already written in his name

- Add on to point above, ZZH and GJ were pushed to warm up to each other because of their tight filming schedule and the drama's theme. The atrociousness of the words the crew threw around and even what these 2 used is beyond what we currently see and know, it's just pure crazy atrocity. (Calling GJ 宝-babe, is just the tippest tip of the iceberg, imagine that). The term used among Chinese CPfans for this period is "WenZhou accelerating temperature (温周急速升温)" (as in rapidly warm up to each other).

= This is like fate being impatient, right in front of our salad

- Summer filming: Share umbrella, WKX fanning and blocking the sun for ZZS, summer but wearing winter clothes together, hide in the same caravan alone cooking for each other/hide from the rain etc. [Umbrella saga], [Rainy night in a caravan saga], [GJ's vlog cooking saga], [Cook for each other saga]

= Small shared moments that leads to big feelings.

-  [ZZH’s Weibo rebellion saga] = This saga relates to Part 3

- It was Covid period, both actors didn't have other schedules (GJ probably only had 1, out of the 4 months there). Stuck together = Bond together.

- Music also bonds people together. Especially when both of them likes the same group of singers (when I mean 'group' I mean the era of famous singers at that point) eg. Jay Chou, JJ Lin, Wang Li Hom, Li Rong Hao etc. The way ZZS falls for WKX is probably paralleled to ZZH falling for GJ's singing.

- An experienced actor (ZZH) and a high willingness to learn actor (GJ). One is willing to teach, one is open to learn. Both are main characters, both have a lot of scenes together (aka, time spent together exploring their character and practicing with each other increased).

- Let's dedicate to the fated crew members: Producer Ma, Directors and Assistant Directors, Costume Designer, Script writer, Guo Lao Shi (Actor of Duan Peng Ju) for recommending ZZH as ZZS, the entire production team, the entire cracky supporting cast. For something to be successful, it takes a full team's healthy mindset and attitude, and most importantly, the correct people for each role.

Bonus

- For both GJ and ZZH, this script was the best they ever had. It was the first time they had a very good script. So they poured a lot of effort into ZZS and WKX.

= Looking at GJ's past works, they were mostly around the same theme, but still pretty decent works (still, praise the fact that he has variety in style: cross-dressed twice, a cool & calm senior - cutest character, a naive and innocent prince, a loving husband, uke - yes, I knew him from this show etc).

= Looking at ZZH's past work, all I can say is that his style was almost always the same (I looked at the spread and question if these are really not a compilation from one drama). Character wise, it's just like he said during WOH Concert's interview. He knows he has the potential to act a more diverse role, but the scripts just doesn't accept him. Because his portfolio is stuck with that manly image/style the agency had built for him, until ZZS happened. But his past works are generally quite good overall compared to GJ's, character style variety is limited.

The contrast above also shows the difference between an independent studio vs being signed under an agency.

🌻To returning readers: Updated info are in purple for your easy references!

🌸Part 1 - Before filming here

🌸Part 3 - After filming, before broadcast here

🌸Part 4 - Broadcast/Promotion period here

🌸Part 5 - WOH concert and after here

🌻[Ongoing updates] Will add if I remember or found new ones

🌻For long posts like this, I tend to look back for grammar and phrasing mistakes (sometimes info updates), so when you reblog for future references, do keep in mind that there may be updates in the original post! :)

#shl #woh #langlangding #zzh #张哲瀚 #junzhe #zhang zhehan #龚俊 #gj #gong jun #lld

[letterboxd]

In Focus: The Mummy

Dominic Corry responds on behalf of Letterboxd to an impassioned plea to bump up the average rating of the 1999 version of The Mummy—and asks: where is the next great action adventure coming from?

We recently received the following email regarding the Stephen Sommers blockbuster The Mummy:

To whom it may concern,

I am writing to you on behalf of the nation, if not the entire globe, who frankly deserve better than this after months of suffering with the Covid pandemic.

I was recently made aware that the rating of The Mummy on your platform only stands at 3.3 stars out of five. … This, as I’m sure you’re aware, is simply unacceptable. The Mummy is, as a statement of fact, the greatest film ever made. It is simply fallacious that anyone should claim otherwise, or that the rating should fail to reflect this. This oversight cannot be allowed to stand.

I have my suspicions that this rating has been falsely allocated due to people with personal axes to grind against The Mummy, most likely other directors who are simply jealous that their own artistic oeuvres will never attain the zenith of perfection, nor indeed come close to approaching the quality or the cultural influence of The Mummy. There is, quite frankly, no other explanation. The Mummy is, objectively speaking, a five-star film (… I would argue that it in fact transcends the rating sytem used by us mere mortals). It would only be proper, as a matter of urgency, to remove all fake ratings (i.e. any ratings [below] five stars) and allow The Mummy’s rating to stand, as it should, at five stars, or perhaps to replace the rating altogether with a simple banner which reads “the greatest film of all time, objectively speaking”. I look forward to this grievous error being remedied.

Best, Anwen

Which of course: no, we would never do that. But the vigor Anwen expresses in her letter impressed us (we checked: she’s real, though is mostly a Letterboxd lurker due to a busy day-job in television production, “so finding time to watch anything that isn’t The Mummy is, frankly, impossible… not that there’s ever any need to watch anything else, of course.”).

So Letterboxd put me, Stephen Sommers fan, on the job of paying homage to the last great old-school action-adventure blockbuster, a film that straddles the end of one cinematic era and the beginning of the next one. And also to ask: where’s the next great action adventure coming from?

Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz and John Hannah in ‘The Mummy’ (1999).

When you delve into the Letterboxd reviews of The Mummy, it quickly becomes clear how widely beloved the film is, 3.3 average notwithstanding. Of more concern to the less youthful among us is how quaintly it is perceived, as if it harkens back to the dawn of cinema or something. “God, I miss good old-fashioned adventure movies,” bemoans Holly-Beth. “I have so many fond memories of watching this on TV with my family countless times growing up,” recalls Jess. “A childhood classic,” notes Simon.

As alarming as it is to see such wistful nostalgia for what was a cutting-edge, special-effects-laden contemporary popcorn hit, it has been twenty-one years since the film was released, so anyone currently in their early 30s would’ve encountered the film at just the right age for it to imprint deeply in their hearts. This has helped make it a Raiders of the Lost Ark for a specific Letterboxd demographic.

Sommers took plenty of inspiration from the Indiana Jones series for his take on The Mummy (the original 1932 film, also with a 3.3 average, is famously sedate), but for ten-year-olds in 1999, it may have been their only exposure to such pulpy derring-do. And when you consider that popcorn cinema would soon be taken over by interconnected on-screen universes populated by spandex-clad superheroes, the idea that The Mummy is an old-fashioned movie is easier to comprehend.

However, for all its throwbackiness, beholding The Mummy from the perspective of 2020 reveals it to have more to say about the future of cinema than the past. 1999 was a big year for movies, often considered one of the all-time best, but the legacy of The Mummy ties it most directly to two of that year’s other biggest hits: Star Wars: Episode One—The Phantom Menace and The Matrix. These three blockbusters represented a turning point for the biggest technological advancement to hit the cinematic art-form since the introduction of sound: computer-generated imagery, aka CGI. The technique had been widely used from 1989’s The Abyss onwards, and took significant leaps forward with movies such as Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Jurassic Park (1993) and Starship Troopers (1997), but the three 1999 films mentioned above signified a move into the era when blockbusters began to be defined by their CGI.

A year before The Mummy, Sommers had creatively utilised CGI in his criminally underrated sci-fi action thriller Deep Rising (another film that deserves a higher average Letterboxd rating, just sayin’), and he took this approach to the next level with The Mummy. While some of the CGI in The Mummy doesn’t hold up as well as the technopunk visuals presented in The Matrix, The Mummy showed how effective the technique could be in an historical setting—the expansiveness of ancient Egypt depicted in the movie is magnificent, and the iconic rendering of Imhotep’s face in the sand storm proved to be an enduringly creepy image. Not to mention those scuttling scarab beetles.

George Lucas wanted to test the boundaries of the technique with his insanely anticipated new Star Wars film after dipping his toe in the digital water with the special editions of the original trilogy. Beyond set expansions and environments, a bunch of big creatures and cool spaceships, his biggest gambit was Jar Jar Binks, a major character rendered entirely through CGI. And we all know how that turned out.

A CGI-enhanced Arnold Vosloo as Imhotep.

Sommers arguably presented a much more effective CGI character in the slowly regenerating resurrected Imhotep. Jar Jar’s design was “bigger” than the actor playing him on set, Ahmed Best. Which is to say, Jar Jar took up more space on screen than Best. But with the zombie-ish Imhotep, Sommers (ably assisted by Industrial Light & Magic, who also worked on the Star Wars films) used CGI to create negative space, an effect impossible to achieve with practical make-up—large parts of the character were missing. It was an indelible visual concept that has been recreated many times since, but Sommers pioneered its usage here, and it contributed greatly to the popcorn horror threat posed by the character.

Sommers, generally an unfairly overlooked master of fun popcorn spectacle (G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is good, guys), deserves more credit for how he creatively utilized CGI to elevate the storytelling in The Mummy. But CGI isn’t the main reason the film works—it’s a spry, light-on-its-feet adventure that presents an iconic horror property in an entertaining and adventurous new light. And it happens to feature a ridiculously attractive cast all captured just as their pulchritudinous powers were peaking.

Meme-worthy: “My sexual orientation is the cast of ‘The Mummy’ (1999).”

A rising star at the time, Brendan Fraser was mostly known for comedic performances, and although he’d proven himself very capable with his shirt off in George of the Jungle (1997), he wasn’t necessarily at the top of anyone’s list for action-hero roles. But he is superlatively charming as dashing American adventurer Rick O’Connell. His fizzy chemistry with Weisz, playing the brilliant-but-clumsy Egyptologist Evie Carnahan, makes the film a legitimate romantic caper. The role proved to be a breakout for Weisz, then perhaps best known for playing opposite Keanu Reeves in the trouble-plagued action flop Chain Reaction, or for her supporting role in the Liv Tyler vehicle Stealing Beauty.

“90s Brendan Fraser is what Chris Pratt wishes he was,” argues Holly-Beth. “Please come back to us, Brendaddy. We need you.” begs Joshhh. “I’d like to thank Rachel Weisz for playing an integral role in my sexual awakening,” offers Sree.

Then there’s Oded Fehr as Ardeth Bey, a member of the Medjai, a sect dedicated to preventing Imhotep’s tomb from being discovered, and Patricia Velásquez as Anck-su-namun, Imhotep’s cursed lover. Both stupidly good-looking. Heck, Imhotep himself (South African Arnold Vosloo, coming across as Billy Zane’s more rugged brother), is one of the hottest horror villains in the history of cinema.

“Remember when studio movies were sexy?” laments Colin McLaughlin. We do Colin, we do.

Sommers directed a somewhat bloated sequel, The Mummy Returns, in 2001, which featured the cinematic debut of one Dwayne Johnson. His character got a spin-off movie the following year (The Scorpion King), which generated a bunch of DTV sequels of its own, and is now the subject of a Johnson-produced reboot. Brendan Fraser came back for a third film in 2008, the Rob Cohen-directed The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Weisz declined to participate, and was replaced by Maria Bello.

Despite all the follow-ups, and the enduring love for the first Sommers film, there has been a sadly significant dearth of movies along these lines in the two decades since it was released. The less said about 2017 reboot The Mummy (which was supposed to kick-off a new Universal Monster shared cinematic universe, and took a contemporary, action-heavy approach to the property), the better.

The Rock in ‘The Mummy Returns’ (2001).

For a long time, adventure films were Hollywood’s bread and butter, but they’re surprisingly thin on the ground these days. So it makes a certain amount of sense that nostalgia for the 1999 The Mummy continues to grow. You could argue that many of the superhero films that dominate multiplexes count as adventure movies, but nobody really sees them that way—they are their own genre.

There are, however, a couple of films on the horizon that could help bring back old-school cinematic adventure. One is the long-planned—and finally actually shot—adaptation of the Uncharted video-game franchise, starring Tom Holland. The games borrow a lot from the Indiana Jones films, and it’ll be interesting to see how much that manifests in the adaptation.

Then there’s Letterboxd favorite David Lowery’s forever-upcoming medieval adventure drama The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel and Alicia Vikander (who herself recently rebooted another video-game icon, Lara Croft). Plus they are still threatening to make another Indiana Jones movie, even if it no longer looks like Steven Spielberg will direct it.

While these are all exciting projects—and notwithstanding the current crisis in the multiplexes—it can’t help but feel like we may never again get a movie quite like The Mummy, with its unlikely combination of eye-popping CGI, old-fashioned adventure tropes and a once-in-a-lifetime ensemble of overflowing hotness. Long may love for it reign on Letterboxd—let’s see if we can’t get that average rating up, the old fashioned way. For Anwen.

Related content

How I Letterboxd with The Mummy fan Eve (“The first film I went out and bought memorabilia for… it was a Mummy action figure that included canopic jars”)

The Mummy (Universal) Collection

Every film featuring the Mummy (not mummies in general)

Follow Dom on Letterboxd

#the mummy #brendan fraser #stephen sommers #action adventure #fantasy adventure #action adventure film #the green knight #david lowery #dominic corry #letterboxd

[likeabxrdinflight]

my younger gen z kiddos (and honestly some millennials too), I feel like there’s some things we need to talk about re: 9/11 since this anniversary is gonna be one of the bigger ones and you’re probably gonna see a lot of hoopla about it this year...more than usual, anyways. it’s already started tbh and it’s definitely gonna be a Thing this week.

So here's the thing. It is very easy to look at all of the geopolitical nightmares that resulted from 9/11 and wonder why people can't just...move past this. Why it seems like people still care most about the actual day of when so many more were killed in the resulting wars. America went from victim to villain real fast in the aftermath, and because of that it is easy to get jaded and cynical seeing people say "never forget" when there's been so much pain and trauma that resulted from the government's response to those attacks. Mostly the war on terror, but the homegrown Islamophobia too. And around the anniversary, those things tend to get less focus and it feels unfair. Especially for younger people, when all you've ever known is the world that was made after that day. It's hard to imagine what it was like to experience it when all you've seen are the aftershocks.

And the aftershocks were horrific. Trauma begets trauma.

So I get it. Seeing conservative white dads who've never even been to New York nor care about the people who actually live here post the same preachy, pro-military bullshit every year around this time is deeply annoying and frankly pretty tone deaf.

But here's the thing- for people who remember that day? It didn't matter where you were from or what you believed. Conservative, liberal, christian, muslim- didn’t matter. 9/11 was traumatic. And I mean like, traumatic traumatic. Like you could have gotten full blown PTSD just from watching it live on TV traumatic. That kind of traumatic.

We've talked a lot, as a society, about collective trauma in the wake of the pandemic. And covid trauma is certainly more global, more long lasting, and more wide reaching than 9/11 trauma. 9/11 was one day, this pandemic has been like 18 months now.

But that one day was so shocking and horrific. If you've always grown up knowing about 9/11, I imagine it's hard to fully grasp just how much of a shock to the system this was for the average person. The government had warning that attacks might happen (which they recklessly ignored). The public didn't. To the average person this came out of absolutely nowhere, and it fried everyone’s nervous systems. This was before the internet age, before we were constantly inundated with bad news all the time, before we’d grown numb to near constant exposure to tragedy.

And I truly mean this in like a neurobiological kind of way. 9/11 was the kind of traumatic news event that literally can (and did) impact your brain chemistry. No one who watched those towers fall was entirely the same on September 12th. Whether the outward emotional response was anger, fear, grief, shock- it was all a trauma response. Everyone dealt with it in their own ways, some would develop true PTSD, others wouldn’t, but nevertheless- everyone who watched it in some capacity experienced a trauma. 

I was, admittedly, only 9 when this all happened, and both my parents and teachers tried to shelter me and my peers from the full truth of if- they succeeded for a while. So I don’t count myself among the traumatized. But I did see this trauma play out in front of me, and as I’ve grown older I’m able to look back and fully comprehend what was happening to the people around me- mostly the adults who truly knew what was going on. That’s scary, as a child, to see your teachers visibly frightened and not know why.

I don't quite know how to explain the feeling in the air, either. Even as a child I could sense it, that something was very wrong. It was like everyone's teeth was on edge. There were whispers, rumors spreading between us students. Some were being picked up early. The older kids (who had been told and/or allowed to watch)- were subdued and anxious. Everyone was distracted. Nothing felt right. My suspicions that something was very wrong only grew when the whole school was made to go over to the church (this was a catholic school) to pray the rosary on a day when we weren't scheduled to do so. No one had their rosaries with them, we hadn't been told to bring them. The teachers didn't care. Normally on rosary days we got yelled at for forgetting them at home. That day we were told God didn't care about the beads. Just make sure your prayers were sincere.

What?

It didn't get less confusing when the priest started talking about "horrible tragedies" and "all the lives lost". What had happened?

When I got home that day all my dad told me was that some buildings had fallen down in New York. I accepted that. For a while. But my parents' attempts at sheltering me didn't stop other kids whose parents had been a little more forthcoming from talking. They saved me from witnessing any of the trauma firsthand, but I still heard all the chatter about planes and terrorists and bombs and where would they strike next?

Kids freaked out every time a plane flew over the school playground for months.

But it was the adults who were more afraid, more traumatized than we were. And that's why it was so easy for Bush et. al to convince Americans to go to war, not once but twice. The country was traumatized, dysregulated, and scared. I can't quite describe just how much. But they called it the war on terror, not the war on terrorism, and I think that's fitting. It became a war about fighting everything that scared us, rational or not, and we were by and large willing to buy into it because of that.

Do you know only one congresswoman, out of the whole house and senate, voted against the act which gave the president his expansive military powers in the week after 9/11? Did you know the president didn't have that kind of authority before it? Did you know the patriot act, which has since been seen as more harmful than helpful, passed quickly with barely any opposition from either party? Did you know how quickly Americans regarded the surveillance, the heightened security, the militarized police, and the invasions into our privacy, as normal and necessary? Did you know how quickly we adapted to it, because it made us feel a little better, helped us sleep a little easier, even as our freedoms slowly eroded around us? We didn't see it then.

We were just scared. And the government, hard as this might be to comprehend, was scared too. They capitalized on that fear, certainly, but I truly believe they felt it too.

It's a good example of how trauma can be ugly, how fear and grief can turn quickly to rage and revenge. How easy it is to hand over your freedoms when you're terrified. How quickly you will find an enemy to scapegoat when you can't find easy answers for why and how.

I mean they flew planes into buildings. On purpose. I don’t think we often really think about that, really comprehend it. Imagine that in real time- how do you wrap your head around that, how do you make sense of it when you're watching the type of jet you take to Disney World ram itself into what is essentially a glorified office building, when you’re watching people jump to their deaths live on CNN, when you're seeing these seemingly indomitable towers crumble like toothpicks when you had no idea they even could?

Your brain isn't meant to process something like that. 

And that's the real reason why people still talk about this, and why you're going to hear a lot about it this week. It's been 20 years, and we haven't moved on, because we haven't healed from the trauma. America, frankly, has always been pretty bad at handling our collective traumas. You saw it after the civil war, you're seeing it now with covid. We don't heal our wounds well and never have. And you definitely saw that with 9/11. You're still seeing it.

So as people talk about it this week, as they continue trying to process this decades old trauma...just let it happen. Certainly call out misinformation and Islamophobia, certainly make room for Muslims and Arab Americans to talk about their own traumas from this day- I think that’s an important and oft neglected conversation- but do understand that what’s happening with every news article, every retrospective, every facebook post and TV special and tweet- is a nation that is still, 20 years on, trying to make sense of the senseless. 

#9/11 tw #I feel like in all the discussion about this particular event #the actual human trauma piece of it seems to get overlooked a lot #which is odd considering just how traumatic it was #anyways have a long think piece

[fuck-customers]

Our cafeteria is open for the staff of the hospital and the staff only. Stop trying to tailgate them and get in without a mask.

:( This makes me so sad because a lot of families of patients are waiting for them to die and can't just go out and get food. In a lot of towns the wait times have gone up. In the period of time you're waiting for your food, the drive there, and drive back, your mom might be dying while your brother and sister watches without you. It's really heart breaking. I know it is frustrating.. But I have worked in the healthcare industry too. And after seeing this much death? I'm so broken. I'm not angry, I'm broken. I want to cry all the time. I do get mad sometimes because of people that disregard the protocols in place for everyone's safety but I just mostly think about the families of those patients. Maybe not all of them are fighting the virus but they're scared of it too. And the policies have made it harder for patients to get visitors. Whatever visitors that do come sometimes can't leave without being heavily getting scrutinized by staff again and even tested for covid so most times people stay overnight with their loved ones if allowed(depends entirely on where the patient is and how long their stay is). When I was in the hospital the past two times my husband only visited me once each time because at least once they tested him for covid. It was negative but still no one wants something shoved up their nose each time they come to visit someone. This was at the height of the pandemic though. I was so scared that I begged to go home before I really should have. I suffered in pain for two days without proper treatment. I will not disclose my condition. I felt safer at home but was not able to get access to pain management. And that right there is what people are arguing with themselves about. Is it worth staying in the hospital after surgery? Should I stay even though family can't visit unless it's under strict rules? Heck, should I even bother calling 911 about my pain right now because I do not want to be in the hospital? I think my husband might have stuck around more if room service was offered to families to patients as well tbh and that wouldn't have been dangerous to anyone. Just deliver it with the food of the patient and as long as it is sent to the patient's room they can send you the bill. No contact needed. I wouldn't have felt so scared to be in the hospital and wouldn't have begged to leave.

TLDR-ish Families having access to food within the hospital is so important to the patient's well being mentally, emotionally, and physically. I understand the pandemic has created restrictions but in a hospital where people are dying the most human of us aren't willing to leave the side of our loved ones. Honestly, only a Karen would leave the building to get Galaxybucks when her mom was dying or a massive douchey dickweed would sit in line in his stupid ass truck in the drive thru for Chack Fa Yuck as his wife died.

The kitchens at hospitals are fucking important as hell. People shit on them because they don't always like the food but, guess what, that's because your doctor specifically said "no salt" or you didn't order it.

Buuuuut.... I can get trying to get in while not being staff. But NOT WEARING A MASK? Fuck you. Get your ass out of the hospital. Fucking disrespectful germ factory. Oh you thought I'd be all pro customer didn't you? LOL Got ya. If you don't wear a mask then you shouldn't even be around your loved ones especially! So get your asses out and order that fast food and sulk at home until you can respect your loved ones enough to wear a mask for their safety you dumb fucks.

Bottom line here it's not a grey and white situation. Yeah, there will be customers that need to access the cafeteria and if it's completely closed off to them then that's messed up. But the way that this is worded I'm not sure. I thought everyone had to wear masks in health establishments even if vaccinated which is why I'm thinking the cafeteria is just strictly for staff? I raised all of my points though.

But, jeez, now I'm wondering.... Is there a way to tip hospital kitchen staff? Right now they deserve it to high hell. Everyone talks about nurses and docs, but no one talks about who feeds these patients. - Abby

EDIT Misread this. Thought the kitchen was closed. Nope. It’s talking about people ignoring the 6 ft rule. Guess my definition of tail gaiters is different. Like someone ignoring closing hours. -Abby

#i don't know the definition to tldr #i ramble #hospital kitchen staff ftw #forgotten mvps

[engekihaikyuu]

View from the Top 2 - Review

Check out the Read More if you’d like to hear about this show!  Askbox is open as well if you’d like me to elaborate on anything out of this.

Before I begin my review of the final show, I do want to start with some caveats:

So as I mentioned previously, the production once again went with PIA for their live streaming platform, which means that live streaming this show is very inaccessible for anyone living outside of Japan.

PIA is a ticketing platform that requires a working Japanese phone number in order to finish activating/registering a new account because you must call the number provided to finish account verification. So without a Japanese contact or a Japanese phone number, this platform is basically impossible.

I have a generous friend in Japan who was willing to share her account information with me, which is how I was able to pay for a show and use her log-in to watch the stream. I did not see this show in-person; I do not live in Japan and obviously travel is off-limits. Even if I did live in Japan, I would have qualms about going to the theater.

There are some logistical issues with this show because of the current pandemic, with the most visually obvious one being the small face shields the actors wear on-stage. They basically serve as protection against direct spittle, but obviously they do nothing to guard against aerosol spread; putting on the play is still an incredible risk to the performers and staff. Another difficulty they face is the fact that Tokyo is still continuing to maintain a nightly curfew. Every evening Tokyo performance needed to be bumped earlier so that spectators can leave the theater in time to make it home for that curfew. Keeping that in mind, the show is a surprisingly condensed 2.5 hours long, where I would have expected 3 hours given the amount of content it covered. This does affect the pacing in Act 2 noticeably, and I get the feeling that were it not for covid and the current curfew restrictions, it would feel a little less rushed at the end.

So, with all that said, here are my thoughts on Engeki Haikyuu’s final play, The View from the Top 2!!!  This is absolutely not spoiler-free, for both the play’s content and everything that happened in the manga finale, so if you have not finished the series, this is your last chance to turn back.

Now that I think about it, I haven’t written a full review on a show since Fly High, so I’m a bit rusty at this, and I’ll probably leave out a lot so as always, my askbox is open for people’s additional questions!

The absolute main theme of this play (and really of the entire Haikyuu story) is the friendship and rivalry between Hinata and Kageyama, and the theme: I’m not alone. Engeki really did right by our dual protagonists by framing the final show as showing both of their journeys from beginning to end. Act 1 begins with that familiar sequence from the very first show: Hinata seeing the little giant on TV, being inspired to start playing volleyball, his struggle to find a team in middle school, losing to Kageyama in his one and only middle school tournament, and finding him again at Karasuno. They repeated the scene almost exactly as it was in the first show, and I think it was very smart of them to show us Daigo’s version of it, so to speak. That way we have a more cohesive vision of Hinata from the beginning of his journey to the end. Then they absolutely FLOOD the stage with a montage of projections with footage from all of the shows from the past five-and-a-half years. So already it’s pretty emotional for me, seeing how far the play had come as well as how far Hinata had come in the story.

To parallel this, the beginning of Act 2 actually begins with baby Kageyama. Yes, the baby Kageyama flashback with his sister and grandfather and how he started volleyball. We see Kageyama’s volleyball journey from childhood (for this they used a small doll similar to the dolls they used for young Kuroo and Kenma from Revival) to playing at Kitagawa Daiichi, to losing his grandfather, to being labeled the King of the Court, to defeating Hinata, and then having Hinata find him at Karasuno. And then they once again, they flood the stage with projections with past show footage, but this time they are more Kageyama-centric in the way that the previous ones were often Hinata-centric. And it just really highlights how much these two are meant to share the stage as the two main characters.

To see this framework and to know what’s going to come at the end, with the two of them reuniting in the pro-volleyball arena… just the beginning of Act 2 alone had me in tears. Another way they paralleled their respective journeys was to show us who have influenced them. In Act 1, there’s a dance with Hinata, Hoshiumi, and Udai (all little giants… well, Tsukishima’s in there too because he’s feeling a particular competitiveness with Hinata in this part of the match). In Act 2, there’s a dance with Kageyama, Atsumu, and Oikawa, because Atsumu and Oikawa are the setters who have had the most influence on Kageyama, and he’s drawing on what he’s learned from them for this match. They are not alone in their journeys, they have had people inspire them and be inspired by them in addition to having the support of their teammates.

The Karasuno vs Kamomedai match is interspersed with bits of action from the Fukurodani vs Mujinazaka match, so the stage was pretty busy for basically the entire time. The wires are back for some sequences so that both Hinata and Hoshiumi have a chance to fly, and there are plenty of acrobatics and lifts, and the same incredible soundtrack we love. Ryuu’s Hoshiumi is the obvious standout on Kamomedai for how many lifts he had, and they definitely tried to have him running around on the stage about as much as Hinata. It was notable how much they drew on past techniques and music for various parts of this match, since this is meant to be Karasuno at their peak. When Asahi was feeling particularly stuck/trapped against Kamomedai’s defense, they incorporated the tying-up visual they had previously used in Winners and Losers, with Kamomedai basically tying up and holding Asahi in place with ribbon. There was Summer of Evolution music when Karasuno does a great synchro attack, and the extras-wearing-Hinata-masks reappeared to show us Hinata’s “afterimage” as he flashes around the stage. If you’ve seen all the plays, you can’t miss these call-backs.

The flow of the match was fast. They hit the highlight plays and the highlight emotional moments, but we are clearly past the point where they need to narrate the actual volleyball to us. There was more dancing/acrobatics than attempting to place the two teams on either sides of a physical net with more overt volleyball moves. Everything was more intertwined and fluid than that. And actually now that I think about it, they have been sparse with their usage of a physical net in the past few shows, because everything has been a little more fast-paced overall.

They definitely wanted to highlight Karasuno’s rise throughout the game, to show that they were absolutely a formidable team, that they deserved to be at Nationals, and to show us all the ways that Hinata and Kageyama had grown. For most of Act 2 leading up to Hinata’s collapse, it really feels like they could win this. And I think it makes it that much harder for Hinata to accept being benched, because the team is riding this high and doing so well, and even Kageyama’s more visibly having fun. I think Takeda-sensei easily has a third of the best lines in the series. His speech to Hinata during the Kamomedai match is one that was really gut-wrenching to read when those chapters came out, and it was great to hear it said aloud.

And here is something I’ve never been able to point out because I didn’t do reviews for the past two tours, but I think Daigo’s voice is one of the strongest aspects of his Hinata. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the work he’s done as a voice actor, but when he cries or whimpers, it is genuinely the most pitiful noise. A lot of Kenta’s portrayal of Hinata’s frustrations throughout the story had an undercurrent of anger and frustration. He’s upset, but there’s always something behind it that says, “well next time, it’ll be different.” And I think Daigo replaces most of that with pure sadness, especially for this scene. After Takeda-sensei lectures him good and proper, and he accepts that he needs to leave, he just sounds so broken. It doesn’t have that anger and drive underneath, he’s just in despair. And why wouldn’t he be? A part of him understands this is the last match he’ll ever play with this team, his first real team.

We then see Hinata bundled up in a coat and scarf, watching the rest of the match from the tablet that Kenma gives him. Snow begins to fall on the stage as he slowly wanders through it, with Karasuno and Kamomedai finishing out the rest of the match around him. Engeki Haikyuu has always allowed for the losing team in a match to line up at the edge of the stage, say thank you to the audience, bow, and take their leave. It’s so symbolic, and it’s so emotional for the actors and for the audience who are in the theater. It’s a moment that just barely breaks the fourth wall, when they turn to us, the spectators, to say, “Thank you for your support.” And they mean it both in and out of character. And I was so so so sad when I realized that Karasuno would take their final bow as a team without Hinata in the lineup. He’s in the back of the stage, separated from his team, and he does take a bow, but it’s very lonely.

Now, I’m sure people are very curious about the timeskip material, and mostly I just have to preface with: it’s fast. It does not take up as much of Act 2 as you might think. It’s boom, boom, boom, cameo here, pre-recorded projections there, patissier Tendou interview, Kuroo in a suit doing a promotional commercial for the V-League, Kageyama’s curry commercial, a projected Osamu selling his rice balls, get the old team together, fateful encounters in front of the bathroom, GO! The only thing we see of the Brazil arc is Hinata having a brief flashback to tell Kageyama that he met Oikawa while he was in Brazil. It’s very short, and that’s all we get for his time in Brazil. Basically, the play is not the place to see Hinata’s journey and growth from those chapters because he goes through so much of it alone, and there’s just no time. The Brazil arc also brings back a lot of technical details about volleyball itself, especially as Hinata is learning the beach version, and that’s an area where the manga is the best medium to examine the finer details of the sport. I can see why a play version would gloss over the technical details to focus on the emotional arc, which is in this case, Hinata and Kageyama.

Because of how fast the ending is, it definitely feels made for the people who already read the manga; Previous Engeki Haikyuu shows have always presented the story in a way that was very friendly to those who may not have read the manga or watched the anime. You could watch just Engeki Haikyuu and not feel like you were missing out on references/jokes for the most part, but this ending would be way harder to follow for those not familiar with what’s already happened.  

It’s difficult because I do feel like Act 2 was overly condensed to wrap up this story, but I also don’t think the timeskip material is enough for a whole play on its own. If we had stopped at the end of the Kamomedai match, and had a whole separate play to cover Brazil and the Jackals vs Adlers match… the pacing would’ve been slow and low energy especially in the first half, and it would be an odd choice for the final show of a series like this. My preference would have been for this play to have been three acts, three hours, so that we could linger on some of those timeskip moments a little more, slow it down, and let them land emotionally. But clearly the covid situation prevents that in this case. That being said, I don’t think any of those timeskip moments could really hit as hard as when I first read them in the manga. Narratively, that Haikyuu timeskip was so unexpected and so outside the normal sports anime formula, that the initial shock is extremely hard to top. It was fun to see how they presented everyone in the future (seeing Noya on that boat catching a giant swordfish, or seeing Ennoshita almost break a patient’s back) in stage form, but it’s unreasonable to expect them to give us the same feeling of ?!?!?!? when we first read that Noya was in Italy of all places after waiting weeks and weeks for him to show up.

I still cried in several places, it’s still a great ending to one of the best 2.5D franchises in existence, and it still feels like the culmination of their legacy. I don’t know how it would be possible for anyone to watch that ending sequence with all of the team flags and the chanting of their names, and NOT cry.

There are no more live streams until they complete the rest of their tour and then there will be a live-stream of the very last show, which I will be watching with a towel in hand for my tears. Feel free to send in any questions if you’d like, and if you would like some Strongest Challengers or Trash Heap merch, I have a sales post that I recently made.

#Haisute #Engeki Haikyuu #Hyper Projection Engeki Haikyuu #Final Show #View from the Top 2 #review #reviews #2300 word vomit for any who are interested

[hatari-translations]

can you maybe tell us a bit more about the parties in icelandic politics? that is super interesting for me after reading your last post

Well, sure! Please bear in mind that as you may have gathered I am not unbiased, and I'm by no means the most knowledgeable person about this.

Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn (The Independence Party)

Originally founded in 1929, this party's name originally referred to independence from Denmark (achieved in 1944), but today it's just Iceland's dominant right-wing party. On other countries' scales they're fairly center-right in terms of policies; they want a strong welfare system, they're pro-immigration, they're not against LGBT rights, etc. However, they are very much the party of Iceland's rich elite establishment, and in particular have close ties to Iceland's largest corporations, and every other political scandal involves them being varying degrees of terrible, from "Independence Party minister breaking COVID restrictions" to "Independence Party minister in the Panama Papers" to "Independence Party minister's father signs a letter to 'restore the honor' of a convicted pedophile" (these three were all the same minister, who by the way still leads the party and is still finance minister) to "terrible corrupt fishing company Samherji introduced the Independence Party's health minister as 'our guy in the government' at meetings with the Namibian officials they were bribing".

The Independence Party opposes the new constitution, ostensibly because blah blah stability distractions about how changes to the constitution need to be approved through the appropriate process (yes, we know, we want that process to happen), but we all know it's really because the new constitution would have the fishing companies pay a fair price for their access to Iceland's natural resources, and that would be bad for their bottom line. They are also opposed to joining the EU.

The Independence Party has been the largest party in every single Icelandic election since it was founded except the 2009 one (which was right on the heels of another scandal - believe me, I barely scratched the surface above - as well as the 2008 financial crisis), where they managed to dip below the Social-Democratic Alliance with 23.7% of the vote, their lowest parliamentary election result ever. Historically they'd get upwards of 40% or even more of the vote; these days it's more like 25%, and this election's result of 24.4% is their second lowest ever. Even in polls days right after a huge scandal, the lowest I've ever seen the Independence Party poll at was something like 19%; that's why I've said here that 20% of the country will just vote for them no matter what. This means the Independence Party is always the most powerful party, and them not being in the government coalition is very much the exception.

Framsóknarflokkurinn (The Progressive Party)

Iceland's oldest political party, founded in 1916. Originally it was the farmers' party, and they've historically been most popular in rural areas, where they have longstanding loyalty. They're more or less center to center-right. Historically, they've formed coalitions with both the right and the left, but particularly in the past few decades they have been glued to the Independence Party in particular. They have occasional particular pet issues that they latch onto, but overall it doesn't really feel like they stand for much of anything in particular, other than wanting to maintain the status quo and be in government with (preferably) the Independence Party. They are also against the new constitution and the EU.

Vinstrihreyfingin - grænt framboð (The Left-Green Movement)

Founded in a 1999 split on the left, the Left-Greens are a left-wing party with a focus on equality and the environment, but with enough of a semi-conservative bent to have some common ground with Independence and Progressives on matters like opposing EU membership and being hesitant about the Constitutional Committee's draft constitution. A lot of their voters were very unhappy with them entering into the current coalition with the Independence Party and the Progressive Party (the former in particular); two of their MPs actually left the party after that decision, reducing but not destroying the government's majority.

Samfylkingin (The Social-Democratic Alliance)

Founded in 2000 as a fusion of two parties (hence the 'alliance'), the Social-Democratic Alliance is a center-left social democratic party. They were very popular in the early 2000s, almost rivaling the Independence Party for votes, and formed a coalition government with Independence in 2007, which oversaw the 2008 financial crisis; initially people mostly blamed the Independence Party, allowing the Alliance to become the biggest party in the 2009 election with 29.8% of the vote, but as the following coalition with the Left-Greens had to deal with the fallout of the recession, a lot of anger was directed at the Alliance too, and the party has never managed to recover since, instead hovering between 5-15% of the vote (but still stands strong in some municipal elections and currently leads the Reykjavík city council). They want to join the EU and ratify the new constitution.

Píratar (The Pirate Party of Iceland)

You may have heard of Pirate Parties before, originating with the Pirate Party of Sweden. Iceland is the only country where the Pirate Party has actually managed to get elected to the national parliament, and is an entirely serious political movement. At one point after the revelation of the Panama Papers, the Pirate Party was miraculously polling at 43%; sadly, by the time there was an actual election they'd gone down to 15%. Their primary concerns are transparency, democracy, privacy, human rights and freedoms, and "no bullshit", and among other things they want to establish a universal basic income. A lot of its founders were computer scientists and geeks of various stripes.

They refuse to be classified on the left-right scale, but in practice, their policies are strongly aligned with the leftier parties (one popular website comparing the parties on concrete policy questions for this election classed them as having 90% agreement with the Social-Democratic Alliance, 87% with the Socialists, and 83% with the Left-Greens). They are strongly in favor of ratifying the new constitution.

Miðflokkurinn (The Center Party)

After the 2008 financial crisis, the Progressive Party gained a more populist bent, led by Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, who was prime minister from 2013 until 2016 when he was implicated in the Panama Papers. He was reluctant to resign as prime minister and fully intended to stay as the leader of the party, until the party chose to boot him and replace him with current Progressive leader Sigurður Ingi Jóhannsson; Sigmundur Davíð went off to form his own party instead, the Center Party, and took the populist arm of the Progressive Party with him. They're where most of the anti-immigration and anti-LGBTQ vote goes, and along with the People's Party, some of their MPs were implicated in "Klausturgate", a scandal where a disabled woman at a bar overheard and discreetly recorded several MPs (including Sigmundur Davíð) who were drinking together while making a variety of sexist, homophobic and ableist comments about named people including members of their own parties. The Center Party was perfectly happy to keep them on board, which really says all you need to know.

I am unendingly disappointed that the Center Party managed to scrape past the 5% threshold to get parliamentary seats this election; for a glorious moment the early numbers looked like they wouldn't. Last election they managed to get seven MPs, and then the two guys from the People's Party involved in Klausturgate joined up with the Center Party too, giving them nine, so seeing them reduced to almost nothing was still deeply pleasing.

Viðreisn (The Reform Party)

A center-right party that split off from the Independence Party in 2016, largely over the latter's opposition to the EU, while the Reform Party supports EU membership, but also because of the endless scandals, cronyism, etc. The Reform Party instead claim to be proponents of "ethical capitalism" and have so far avoided the major scandals and general douchebaggery of their parent party.

Flokkur fólksins (The People's Party)

A populist party with a primary emphasis on eradicating poverty, especially for the elderly and disabled, letting the nation reap the benefits of our fish instead of the few large fishing companies, funding health care to reduce wait times, and so on. All this is lovely in theory, but unfortunately their rhetoric then goes off into pitting the poor/elderly/disabled against immigrants, Muslims, etc. Chairperson Inga Sæland seems totally well-meaning to me off what I've seen of her (disclaimer: have not actually seen that much), but it also contains less savoury people and sentiments, as seen by two of their MPs being part of the aforementioned Klausturgate. To the party's credit, they did expel those guys, but it's not the only example of the party attracting questionable people.

Sósíalistaflokkur Íslands (The Icelandic Socialist Party)

A hardline democratic socialist party founded in 2017, with this as their first parliamentary election. It looked like they would get MPs in polls, but in the end they didn't. They're led by Gunnar Smári Egilsson, one of the original founders of free newspaper Fréttablaðið, and have a much more radical left rhetoric going on than the other lefty parties, focusing on economic equality, housing, free health care, and a shorter work week. They made some pretty controversial remarks campaigning for this election, such as suggesting replacing all the judges of the Supreme Court if they won't agree to changing the fishing quota system (the argument being that the Independence Party appointed all the judges in an organized bid to maintain the current system), but who knows if that dampened their following or something else. They also want to ratify the new constitution.

#iceland #politics #asks #asks: iceland

[castiel-left-his-mark-on-me]

Why I think an “I love you too” was never in the cards—and why Covid was a convenient excuse for the “traditional” ending the network always wanted for Supernatural:

 I will preface this by saying that I don’t know anything for sure—but going off of what the cast and crew have said both prior to Covid and the finale, as well as during and after, I believe that the network and the show runners were always planning on taking the easy way out, and this worldwide pandemic just made it all the easier.

So—for the “I love you too, Cas” that we were all hoping for … the reason I think it was never going to be the endgame is for a few reasons: mostly due to what both Misha and Jensen have said over this past year. Misha said recently in a Q&A that he was concerned about how Jensen might react to the whole “confession” scene we saw in 15x18. Also, he said that he knew about that scene long before Jensen did; however, Jensen has said he’s known about the idea for the final episode for months and months before filming for season 15 even began—which means, the two things probably didn’t coincide. If the confession actually connected to the finale in some way (and let’s face it, if Dean said “I love you too” that’s all anyone would be talking about), then Jensen would’ve known about it probably before Misha did, so Misha wouldn’t need to feel nervous over how Jensen might react.

We all thought that when Jensen said he wasn’t happy with the idea for the ending—it might have something to do with Destiel; but given how it all played out and what both actors have said since the confession scene aired and all the buzz surrounding it, obviously that isn’t the case. They have both said more about the confession and have been more positive about that than anything to do with the finale.So, what was Jensen actually upset about? Well, I think that has changed over time and has gotten worse thanks to Covid.

Jensen has been recorded saying he’s wanted a “Blaze of Glory” ending for the boys for years. Hell, they even had Dean say it in the show when the boys were trapped inside the bunker (season 10? 11?). He always imagined a tragic, action packed ending—where both Sam and Dean go down swinging; so the idea of them making it to some big, happy reunion in heaven probably didn’t sit well with him, because it softened that tragedy. Misha seemed to have similar hopes for his character—although, Cas got much closer to that beautifully tragic and heroic ending than Dean did; and Misha was happy for that at least. He’s happy that Castiel got to go out doing something good based in love and sacrifice, rather than some clumsy ending that didn’t do his complex character justice; and his thoughts on this haven’t changed over time, unlike Jensen’s. Both before, as well as after Covid, Misha has said basically the same thing in regards to the show’s planned-ending for Castiel: “That’s how I always saw his character arc ending”. So, again—I don’t think some momentous reunion in heaven was originally scripted or else Misha would’ve spoken about the end to Castiel’s story a little differently. I think he would’ve been even more excited and pleasantly surprised about what his and Dean’s on-screen connection would actually mean for the fans and the LGBT+ community; and he probably would’ve hinted to that in the months prior to the finale being aired. He wouldn’t have spoken of “sacrifice” ... he would’ve spoken of “hope”.

But the original idea for the finale that Misha hinted to in this most recent Q&A seemed to be very much the same as what we saw … only, all our favorites would’ve actually made an appearance in heaven instead of just having their names dropped (if they even got that much). I still think they were going to kill Dean in that horribly dumb way. I still think they were going to have Sam live out his life in a crappy montage without his brother by his side, and I still think that heaven would be where the story finally faded to black—the only difference Covid made was that more familiar faces weren’t on the screen.

That being said—even if Covid hadn’t been a thing, I doubt Dean and Cas’s reunion in heaven would’ve been anything more than just a bro-hug outside the Roadhouse. That’s all Becky’s Funko dolls foreshadowed, and her fears regarding Chuck’s ending were the closest to the truth; because if Dean and Cas were meant to have this big moment of love and rainbows … if the network was actually going to be that bold and take that leap, they would’ve still done it. Misha is one guy, and getting Covid-clearance for one more person wouldn’t have brought production to some screeching halt. The show runners would’ve made it happen if they actually possessed the balls to try it; but they don’t, so it was never their plan to have Dean say it back. Also, the network apparently went to the trouble of holding some focus-groups regarding Destiel and potential ideas for ending the series, which means they put a lot of thought into what would be most profitable; and even though you and I would have lost our collective minds if Dean reciprocated Cas’s love, it could alienate the show’s market in certain parts of the country and the world, and this show has made them a lot of money over time, and will probably continue to do so if they just played it safe; so, that’s what they did. They played it safe so they could re-run it for years to come, and never have to actually own up to anything they implied or even flat-out said over the years.

To support this—in that pre-show send off featuring all the cast and crew, Misha talked about how we were in charge of our own endings. That was filmed before Covid. That was filmed before whatever plans that were made for the show, had to be adjusted. He knew that many of us would be disappointed that they took Cas’s character so close to that massive edge that would’ve made history in the TV industry, and then backed off of it right at the last second. He knew that nothing was going to come of it, so he told us that we could make it better, and we should—and he would support us with the better-endings we imagined, because he agrees with us more than the show he’s given his last twelve years to.

Finally, there’s Jensen. Like I said before—I think Jensen expected something more tragic with the finale, like Kripke had envisioned from the start, but when a happy-heaven ending was proposed, he needed some time to digest it. I do think he did digest it though. I think he realized that the fans would need to see the boys happy and in heaven with all the ones they loved, because so many of us identify with those characters. I think that he began to understand that, and he even began to get excited about it … but then Covid happened, and suddenly, that ending began to change. Jensen saw that slowly but surely, the finale was shifting into something no one would be happy about. It was some blurry-medium (like Sam’s wife) between what was originally planned, and what the production team could actually get away with. His support seemed to dwindle before our eyes. He went from “Yeah—I learned to be excited about it” to “I get it” to almost a dead-silence over the entire thing. That ending that “didn’t sit right with him” wasn’t justifiable anymore if all the people that fans have loved for years, couldn’t be there … and Jensen knew that, so doing that weird half-ass ending where they basically erased all those supporting characters, felt very wrong, so Jensen got very quiet about it. Even when the finale aired, he was pretty damn quiet.

He just “put his head down and did the work.”

And that is so horribly tragic to me.

I think though, that this crappy ending is what the network really wanted anyway. They wanted it to just be the boys. They didn’t want to have to field all the potentially “gay” things from the chemistry between Cas and Dean. They figured the confession was enough to placate us, and then when Covid happened, they realized they lucked out even more and could just leave it there. Hell, they didn’t even need to have Misha on set anymore because – if they weren’t going to address the confession anyway, why bother? They could just say “It started with just the brothers, so that’s how it’s ending” and blame Covid when anyone tried to question it. It all worked out in a way that allowed them to just sit back and wash their hands of all of it, wash their hands of us.

Wash their hands of the actors and cut the ties they said that they valued.

I think they were willing to hurt just about everyone to reach their bottom-line, and hiding behind a worldwide pandemic was an extremely convenient circumstance that allowed them to get away with it basically unscathed.

#15x20 #supernatual #jensen ackles #misha collins #season 15 #covid #spn family #essay #thoughts #I don't know anything for sure obviously #but this all seems to convenient #and Jensen and Misha seem so hurt by all of it #I hate it

[chibimyumi]

i’ve been a black butler fan for around a year now but im just getting into the musicals. you seem to know a lot about them and analyze them in really great detail. so, do you happen to know why yuta stopped playing sebastian? like if it was a personal choice or something else? he’s by far my favorite.

Dear Anon,

Welcome into the musical sphere (*´▽｀*)ノ🎭 I hope you will be having a great time. I offer free English subtitles for legal owners of the musicals, so make sure to drop by if/when you buy one of the DVD/BDs.

Why did Furukawa stop... that is an incredibly good question! But I fear I don’t have a definitive answer for you... I can only speculate based on my knowledge of the Japanese theatre industry, TOHO and Furukawa himself.

Furukawa’s Decision?

Furukawa has always officially announced his “retirement” for a recurring role in the past, like he did for Romeo or Rudolf, for example. About retiring from playing Sebastian however, Furukawa has said nothing. Sebas is one of the most important roles to him, and he did once say that as long as the material is canon, he would guard Sebas like a mad dog.

Shortly after the announcement of Kuromyu 2021, Furukawa hosted a mini concert for FC members where he also sang two songs of Kuromyu. Not only did he sing the songs, he also emphasised why Sebas is so important to him, and how even now Kuromyu will never leave him. Some FC members found it quite weird that Furukawa would perform Kuromyu, NOT announce his retirement, and say that Kuromyu will never leave him after a new Sebas had been announced. It is no evidence of course, but this lead some to think Furukawa might not entirely have chosen this outcome.

Knowing Furukawa, performing Kuromyu at that timing might as well have been a passive-aggressive statement. I 100% believe that Furukawa performed Kuromyu to assure his fans that he still loves Sebas as he has been saying for 6 years. But that does not mean it couldn’t also be a passive-aggressive statement. Furukawa is a VERY passive-aggressive man.

Situational Problem?

From 2018 on Furukawa has little autonomy left career wise since he became TOHO’s cow. His jobs are arranged for him by TOHO, and without TOHO’s approval he seems unable to do anything. Since becoming Ogosho Furukawa became the most representative face of the elite TOHO. If Furukawa were to be associated with something considered “bad rep”, then that’s “bad rep” for TOHO too.

It could be that TOHO judged Kuromyu would no longer be beneficial to themselves, and therefore discouraged Furukawa’s reprise and retracted their support. But it could also be because Furukawa decided to leave Kuromyu, and therefore that TOHO retracted support. Chicken and egg problem.

TOHO and Covid Japan

TOHO is incredibly strict with the Covid19 regulations, mostly because they have a reputation to keep, but also because they have a bigger buffer to afford being strict. TOHO-associated performances in Covid era are one of the very few ones in Japan that do social distancing with seats, meaning all their theatres are used at 50% capacity max. That’s 50% of ticket sales...

Smaller and poorer theatres need the performances to have any income at all, and cannot afford to perform at 50% capacity. That is the reason that in Kuromyu 2021 all actors are wearing those super gross saliva catchers (OMG they were OOOZING), while TOHO performances don’t require them. Those saliva catchers don’t do shit because actors still touch each other, talk in each other’s faces and are literally in each other’s arses. But they are “ceremonial” compromises to get approval to perform for a live audience.

TOHO cannot be associated with subpar corona measures, so it is possible that they forbade any TOHO actor from partaking in Kuromyu 2021. However, it is equally likely that even without TOHO’s interference Furukawa himself simply refused.

Furukawa and Covid Japan

Ever since Covid started, Furukawa has consistently refused to work with anything that requires too much physical contact and/or unregulated live audiences. Even for his own concert he cancelled ALL live spectator attendance and arranged a live-stream instead. The notable exceptions were “I Will No Longer Sing Love Songs” and “INSPIRE Onmyouji”.

“ I Will No Longer Sing Love Songs” requires no physical contact and has the audience dramatically reduced. There was ONE ENTIRE free row and TWO empty seats between all spectators.

In contrast, Kuromyu 2021 was just all packed, and everyone was given a weird face-shield thing to wear even though that doesn’t do shit. Those face shields are to stop liquids from splattering on others...but in a theatre people don’t talk anyway........soooooo that’s just a waste of plastic?!?!?!

The other exception was “INSPIRE Onmyouji” which ran at full theatre capacity, but it was also a charity event in light of Covid in collaboration with the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. TOHO only charged 75% of the full ticket price, and would pay 25% to non-TOHO actors affected by the pandemic.

So yeah, Furukawa was in radio silence for the past year, and the only thing that got him back to work in a “normal” situation was literal charity.

Musical Kuroshitsuji Project

My main question I have to ask is why MKP decided to continue Kuromyu without THE COW that won them their unprecedented golden reputation. I know it seems endless, but Covid is gonna pass eventually. So IF it had been TOHO or Furukawa’s decision to withhold because of Covid, MKP could just have waited, right? The fans have waited since February 2018, another year would have been fine, right?

Financially MKP has no reason to take distance from TOHO’s support on their own accord, which makes me suspect that they were simply dumped by TOHO. If so, it makes sense that MKP as a 2.5D producer just needs to make money, and therefore decided to stage Kuromyu now they don’t have TOHO support anymore, Covid or no Covid.

At the bottom of this post I wrote about a demographic shift of Kuromyu:

So, what will MKP now do to live up to the "elite” high bar TOHO had (helped?) set for Kuromyu? Change marketing strategy, change M.O.

From what I have seen on the Japanese side, the marketing is now indeed more focused on and also resonates better with J-pop and 2.5D fans specifically. MKP has made no attempts to market Kuromyu to (elite) theatre fans anymore.

Conclusion

So yeah, to conclude... the reasons I can think of for Furukawa to no longer play Sebas are:

Furukawa decided so: Not impossible, but quite unlikely

TOHO decided so: Most probably

MKP decided so: Most unlikely

I hope this made sense!

See also: How was Furukawa cast as Sebas?

#kuromyu #Kuromyu 2021 #Furukawa Yuta #Sebastyun #TOHO #Covid19

[juuls]

This was a comment left on chapter 11 of my fem!Tony Stuckony time travel/soulmate fic, Hanging From a Cross of Iron, and I just wanted to put a couple things out there.

First of all, I’m not mad. We’ll make that clear. I’ve received variations of this comment before and it’s rather on the mark. But sometimes both sides can be correct in how they interpret a piece of fiction, and I wanted to show that.

So… yeah. This is something I get every so often on this fic, especially around this chapter (10-12ish) and I just… really wanted to post my reply to it, if for nothing other than explaining the way my brain works and WHY I hate Captain America: Civil War so much for ruining so many good things in fandom.

I’m not putting this out there for sympathy or agreement or to start a fight or stupid shit. It’s more like a… “I’m tired of explaining myself, let me post something I feel is a semi-eloquent response to someone who was at least mostly respectful and got some things right, who I know does represent a fair portion of people who may be interested in reading this fic,” which I could then just point/link to the next time I wake up to things making me sad in my inbox on top of me being sad and feeling guilty at not having written for a while.

Stupid covid. Stupid life being dumb and depressing and draining energy and happiness from many. Just you wait. I’ll be back soon with Codega and this fic, Cross.

But here. This is my reply to the above comment:

So I don’t normally reply to critique such as this because this IS fanfiction, but you are at least part right: it IS supposed to be unfair.

This is me working out my issues with Civil War, because boy that sure as fuck pissed me off. I love Stuckony, but after CACW it was really hard to reconcile that love anymore. So this was my way to do that, and I 100% wanted to bring in the unfairness, the distrust, the favouritism, the… meanness that I saw and felt after that.

It’s also a way for me to work through my issues at the injustices I suffered at the hands of my ex-husband—I started writing this shortly after packing my bags and leaving.

I wanted a slow, somewhat realistic, non-fairytale path to even partial redemption, shared pain and circumstances and experiences, and to show that things CAN work out as long as certain lines are not crossed. I skirt the line sometimes, definitely on purpose, but that’s for ME.

I wanted to turn the tables: Steve (and Bucky) were out of their time and comfort zone in the future—Toni, in turn, needed to be out of her time and comfort zone in the past.

Plus, can you imagine a soulmate world where you’ve had a partner and you think “this is it”? Then bam! Suddenly someone’s suddenly thrust into your life.

And I wanted to play on every single issue Toni would have experienced with her family, friends, “friends”, enemies, Obie, her company, the world, etc., post-IM2.

None of them have had an easy go of it and war is goddamn hell. They ALL have PTSD. (But also, lol, the Howlies start laying into Stucky about what you’re getting mad about here too, so I’m way ahead of you!)

From the beginning, this was as much a psychological setting as a romantic one: way more so in the beginning. But it slowly crawls its way out of the murk. I wanted a soulmate story where it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. I wanted a story where they had to fight for it… or where they had a choice, shitty as it may be (they’ll NEVER choose not to have Toni, that was never going to happen). I wanted something… realistic, even amidst super soldiers, super tech, an almost unbelievable war, and soulmates existing.

I wanted it to be a fight. I wanted rejection… then them, ALL of them, to choose each other despite that, despite their past, and despite fate.

That is my goal with this fic. And since I take my own sweet time, that’s really not readily apparent so soon in this fic, even at chapter 11.

The love will be there. The unconditional love, the equal triadic love. Not just Stucky plus Toni. Because believe me, Stucky is probably one of my least favourite ships that include some of my favourite characters. Sounds ridiculous since I write them here, but as a historian I wanted to take that, take some realism, with a dash of ridiculous and hurt and pain and anger, and see what I could do with that.

The entire reason this story exists is because of a scene idea I had that doesn’t come about until the future in the 20s chapters. Leaning on each other and trusting each other because one of them was lost. Well, technically, that happens twice.

But the point is: this is a long as fuck story towards a love they have to (and WANT to, eventually) fight tor.

This fic is for me. It’s for people like me. It’s for people who don’t want an easy love story. It’s absolutely okay that you don’t like it! There are SO many fics that I dislike for a variety of reasons, and I simply close it, mark it as Did Not Finish, and don’t return. I recognize not every fic is for me.

This one’s for me. I may have sort of stalled out where I’m at in the 20s chapters, but it’s left at a pretty good place, and I’m looking forward to this dumb pandemic so I can get back to forging this love between these three idiots, as well as pick up an old Star Wars story I left 4+ years ago due to the abuse at the hands of my ex. But I’m ready to return to it now. Well, after the world calms down a little.

It’s okay if you’re done with this story—that is 100% your choice and I will never begrudge you that. I’m glad you gave it a try though! If you’re interested, you could skip ahead and see how the dynamics have changed, or I could give you clips and examples too.

My one wish (though I understand it completely) is that you had not done this on Anon. For a few reasons:

1, I would never hold this opinion against you, especially because you got tons of it right! Go you!

2, I’d love to understand you better and discuss this with you. No recriminations whatsoever.

3, But I do wonder who of those who have read my other writings left me this message. It makes me a little sad, and I will wonder which of the people I talk to have this negative opinion of me now, but that’s also my own past issues rearing their ugly heads. You have every right to remain on Anon, though it’s not so nice when you wake from a nice dream and discover anon ‘dislike’ in your inbox on a work you slaved away on, and that the dislike is specifically about the things you wrote about deliberately, hah. Sorta funny, actually, so I’ll let that one go. xD

Thank you, though, even if I disliked reading this words: it helps me to look at my own work critically and to better understand how to frame and write things going forward.

Not every fic is for everyone, and that’s okay. I’ve encountered mine, you’ve encountered yours, but I think we’ve both learned from this interaction.

Whoever you may be, even if you divulge your handle to me, my respect for you wouldn’t diminish. It’s good to have healthy discussions and to look critically upon your own work—even if I am a sensitive bean and it hurts a little, I’m fine. :P

I think the lesson to be learned here is: fuck everything after CACW!!!! Grrrrr xD

Take care,

Juuls

P.S. I may post parts of this on my Tumblr because I do occasionally encounter similar complaints about this story, and I think maybe this is the most coherent and respectful enough comment-reply response I’ve had on this topic. Thank you.

P.P.S. Happy to talk privately too!

P.P.P.S. And the offer still stands for some lovely clips from future chapters, especially if you’re not considering continuing reading this story anymore; it’ll at least show what I’m talking about and what I’ve been working tirelessly towards. It’s hard—fucking hard—work to get past CACW and still like these characters together (my fic Paper Boats is probably one of my bigger testaments to that, oof) and I admit it’s still really really hard and I struggle with it. Covid isn’t the only reason I’ve sort of stalled out on that. But that’s more because I’m like “now what?” than not seeing any love between these three.

It’s a long journey. I knew it was going to be. But I like a challenge. :)

Take care, be well, stay safe, to you and all of yours.

And may you find many fics you love!

#fanfiction #comments #commenting #comment replies #stuckony #hanging from a cross of iron #my writing #i know i don’t need to justify my writing but i am rather lacking in confidence most days #so stuff like this does suck #but it’s also helpful y’know? #not mad! not sad! seriously #i like engaging in conversations about WHY we write what we write #:)