#i’m assuming he means mostly Korean 90s

[kithtaehyung]

and the 93 line keeps being the 93 line

#i’m still taking 3tan songs btw! #i just saw this and was like yeah #exactly #i’m assuming he means mostly Korean 90s #but still lol #3tanotes #3tan playlist #*ryenfictalk

[stray-tori]

An Innocent Sin & the good gay flashback ft. my descent into madness

I wasn’t sure if I should post this but I mostly want it archived so here we go. This is from like,, September?

So. “An Innocent Sin” is a dumpster fire unlike anything I’ve ever seen. I don’t remember why I decided to read it. maybe I was crazy. Either way... I read it. It soon started to touch upon (very very outlandish) sexual abuse which I thought was interesting. (the angst, not so much some of the wack circumstances surrounding it)

ANYWAY. at some point... we have a flashback. And not just that. It has a gay character.

And it turns rly gay. which mind you, is still in a het smut manwha (that has a “gay” side couple, but still!)

And it destroyed me.

For those who want to read it because I genuinely think the flashback is a decent bit, it’s all the bonus chapters between chapter 77 and 78 I think. There’s a part before that too, but idk where exactly anymore. (It’s on lezhin! or your platform of choosing)

I don’t THINK you’ll need any other knowledge to get the flashback bit? but it’s been a while.

Below the cut (rip mobile users), you can read all of my amazing reactions (all of these were text messages, for context - but I took most of the replies and convos about other things out). Post is also tagged as long post. :))

(i’m serious, this is fucking long)

__________

Here I am. Liking the gay flashback character. Feck. Main dude is still straight but idk it's cute pff

This is a mess. The girl white hair likes, likes black hair, maybe, but thinks white hair is attractive

What just happened is sth I'd like to know too pff He's so cute tho omg. Watch me melt Can we stay in this flashback before everything got perverted af and before white hair gets assaulted all the time I would send an eyebrow emote if I could Context: he's asking he says it again

Ik it's not mutual but loookkk he's so sweet. He's kinda rude in present time, can't we stay in this flashback forever

I never asked for gay, never expected gay but I got gay

This story is trash why am I still reading it shdhhd

He caught his mom cheating. And now she's forcing him to watch??? What is thissss Well adoptive mom But still sudhdidu what Bitch how dare YOU exist

Save my babyyyy

Yay sister that's not yet a rapist to the rescueee

This flashback is actually just nicer in every way let's just stay here This is a super long flashback btw Idek anymore what triggered it

Okay I think I'm gonna make the sensible decision and let this dumpster fire rest and just go sleep

It was very wild. I kinda wanna see white hair get therapy but it has 90 chapters and I'm at like 30... So I'm very concerned this is gonna be very dragged out. Idek if it's even finished ahahsududi - but I do kinda wanna see where it goes and see more cute Noah (white hair) so. Here we are.

yeahhh like i was down for the sexual abuse angst but then the mother killed the adoptive son's mother bc the dad had a thing for her?? and it was someone a person studying with white hair knew and so he's investigating and I'm like how did this turn into a crime organisation kind of plot

hhhhhhh i... i appreciate these horny things also tackling abuse but it always kind of gives me weird vibes to have both, especially when its very horny. And when people are horny to people who've been abused. Idk but I'd assume... you might try NOT to tie them up if they're frequently bondaged during their assaults. I'm just.... disjdksdj hello?? am i weird?? why are they fine with it???

also this manwha is so wild, theres this murder mystery investigation thing and then theres just a couple doing honry stuff sprinkled in between and i'm like OKAY

they rescued a guy in their basement and he's understandably very traumatized and they're trying to question him cut to our main couple trying bondage which i still dont understand bECAUSE HE'S A RAPE VICITM WHY ARE YOU OKAY WITH THIS the ones questioning arent the main couple of course but idshkjds

like im glad he's somehow okay with all this horny stuff despite his trauma and im glad he can be happy and have a nice relationship but DO WE NEED THIS MUCH OF IT he's very cute tho

i like that even when i try other stuff lezhin recommends me it still has large amount of gay in it

[mei: i mean... that's pretty great, if you ask me]

I mean I agree, I'm enjoying the gay eheheh these tonal whiplashes there's not even that much white space between the panels fhjd nvm it just turned horny goddamn it can there be 1 chapter without fucking? okay, there were the flashbacks

WE ARE BACK IN FLASHBACKS but im not getting the gay relationship, sad

OH WAIT AM I GETTING GAY COMFORT bc thats very good too

OH NNOOO this turned sad very quickly

I'M SORRY IM SPAMMING BUT THIS IS JUST ANGSTY

I'M :((((

different species confirmed

I rly like them :((( I like the current girl too but it's just..... very horny with her. the flashbacks are nice [current tori edit: she’s very unloyal idk why i said I liked her] im weird HHHHH RIPPP 

someone help him he looks so saddddd

not sure if thats the most healthy relationship but I'LL TAKE IT

AWWW black hair's mom cooks mild food for them bc Noah can't eat spicy food :((( im soft

PFFF

I LOVE THE FLASHBACKS :(((

awww

i feel like theyve done much more bonding than noah's current relationship. I mean yes I think its cute when she comforts him, too, but they rarely do anything besides be horny together

OH OH THEY'RE KISSING

best buildup, honestly

the position is hornier than I'd like later here goes hope it stays cute

D-did someone just respect the word "stop"??? I am amazed

i think you might uh. have some trauma stuff too so yknow

Dohye is a little dramatic in his reassurance but it's all rly cute so I'm :(( I like them a lot pls stay like this getting invested in flashbacks is always like: ik it wont stay but pls stay like this

hELP

chapters ending in "i wanna touch him" is never good. I'm scared. Oh okay he didnt do anything. PHEW. He's already better than the girl, can't they just end up together lmao

[Noah was jealous]

w-why do you look so evil dohye haukdhjs

oh. oh no. the horny is starting. pls dont... just be cute forever

DOHYE NO YOU WERE SO DECENT WHY ARE YOU LYING ABOUT KOREAN TRADITIONS TO GET HIM TO DO STUFF HORNY STUFF TOO NO PLS STOP I JUST- WHEEE TvT the manwha is actually less visually horny in the flashbacks but im not sure if its bc its BL which isnt rly the genre of the manwha or if its bc they're still kids basically, which... I'd respect the latter, tho I'd prefer it to be like this constantly haha

okay. he's not respecting stop anymore, but it's also more of embarrassed nature more than "no i dont want this stop" so maybe i can forgive it. Still losing points, but he hugged him and it was sweet so HHHHHHHHHHH NOT SURE HOW I SHOULD JUDGE THIS SITUATION

They [Noah’s family] forbid him to visit his friends house I AM DEVASTATED

understandable they're a rapist, a fucked up murderer mother and a father with a thing for younger women so

tho he dont know any of that but yknow he's so pretty just fucking end me on the spot

hooo

they are boyfriends and ik from the future that his sister is gonna ruin it allll she has those drugs that make visual imaginations feel like they rly happened to the person (dont know if thats real but holy fuck its terrifying) and she's used it before to say that Noah assualted her. and im pretty sure shes gonna use it again bc there was a panel of Noah remembering Dohye being uhhhh intimate with her and thats why Noah began to hate him and im so sad im not ready for it. bc he's denied it in the future and i honestly couldnt see it happening even before that or she drugged Dohye, i guess thats a possibility too

[current tori: oh girl, it’s neither and it’s wack]

which if, btich you gonna die even more enough rambling, more reading. this makes me so sad but also spicy

on the manwha note, he thinks Noah doesnt like his family bc he's adopted and doesnt feel comfy which....... fair enough i suppose. and he's so cute im gonna melt just looK AT THIS 

SHUt UP, IM GONNA CRY

OH MY GODDDD he ate like ice and gum and all that, and Dohye assumed it was bc of the more spicy food and got rl worried, but he was just trying to get the smell out of his breath bc he wanted to kiss him ukhsdjs HOW CAN YOU BE SO CUTE HELLLOOOOOOOOO

look at them. LOOK AT mY BABIESSSS

how am i ever gonna care about the main couple again aww he-he wanted to go to the same highschool as him :((( im sad bc i know its not gonna happennnnnn

[mei: also at this point, you're literally never gonna care about them. i don't even know the main couple that well and i honestly don't care about them whatsoever.]

WAIT NO they're actually going to the same school awww ik it wont take long until sister fucks it up for them but for now theyre so sweet ohmygodddd

cant he move in with them, fuck his family honestly

dohye he's not a fucking pokemon iukhsdjs

oh. its. turning horny i am displeased with this development but i guess its natural for their relationship however COULD YOU DO IT AT HOME AND NOT IN SOME DUSTY SMALL ROOM how do ppl do this i like that the comments too are just "... is anyone still carng about the other girl?" sakjds

this is the best 3 panels in existence.

h-he just took your hand dohye idk what to tell you

[mei: "you blush at everything i do" god if that isn't me, idk what is]

awww its cute dohye is getting bonus points bc he invited Noah over while his mom wasnt home, they watched some sexual stuff and he DIDNT try to do anything what is this where can i get more of this

"well im not okay"

MY BABIESSSS 

they still didnt do much btw they're just kinda exploring and its honestly nice TvT I dont want this to ever endddd

[Dohye sees Noah’s sister and approaches her] N O

N OOOO

this is the starttttt of something.......... TERRIBLEEEE 

:((( babyyyy

I AM EMO

Noah was drugged im sure. hes having dreams and waking up in pain and the sister is asking doyhe over I DONT LIKE THISSSSSSS OH HE DECLINED

OKAY OKAY he saw him with her again but it was from behind and im not sure if it rly happened??? oh no this is terrible. Noah :((( poor child

i am so emo about this

[reminder he’s been abused TvT]

[the sister: “Don’t you want to know why?”]

i will. murder someone he called to ask her to delete his number btw what is this manwha but this is just gonna make it that more tragic when whatever happens that breaks them apart :(((

he's such a good bf but Noah just wont TELL him his side I'M SO SAD

I AM SO SAD

No

NO

It cant end im actually tearing up nooo you were so cuteeee and happpyyy

[*sister is telling dohye to come to the gym hall*]

what else is she gonna do she already teared [current tori: ahem... T O R E] them apart THAT'S NOT DOYhE. THATS NEVER HIM. OH MY GOD. is it a look alike??? damn, she's dedicated to just. ruining it, huh

I’M

I’M SO SAD

now he's switching SCHOOLS NO NOOOOO how will i ever find happiness againnnn NO they're misunderstanding further they're not talking properly i mean i get it but oh my god

I'M :((( 

NO NOOOO pls make up in the future at least omg he tried to clear it up tooo ahhh i dont even have hopes for them getting back together but i just i want them to clear it up im crying first manwha to make me cry and it's this dumpster fire ahaha maybe a little too bc it kinda hit a little close to home i guess but goddamnn ittttt they were so cuteee and so happy and AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

OH NO. Noahs getting drugged and assaulted. And he's realizing it happened before, he just forgot. I am. so sad it's not horny drawn either which i appreciate but MY HEART NO

N O DONT YOU DARE MAKE THIS WORSE

Im. gonna cry more 

Doyhe kept an eye on him im so emo :(( but he thought he was doing well enough and gave up.... Im im so sad no i want you to make up and get back together its all just a stupid........... MEHHHH will i ever find sth like this flashback again

[mei: p-probably not, no]

i am so devasted i dont even wanna go back to the main couple just fucking. i want this relationship back :(((( but i guess the investigation might end up somewhere so hhh hhhhhhhhhhhhhh the baker manwha had a similar flashback feeling so. i just gotta find more of that haha

BUT THIS WAS SO SAD??? im so emo

[Dohye got kidnapped // the flashback commentary stops here but I think my descend into madness is pretty funny too]

OH YEAH THAT HAPPENED. THE FLASHBACK WAS SO LONG I FORGOT. NOOOO SAVE HIM. JESUS CHRIST PLS JUST ONE GOOD THING

its. actually rly smart to have another, more focused on them flashback, before the arc where he gets kidnapped by the rapist murder household so. good job. from a meta perspective but also NO but also. maybe theres hope for them making up at least after all :(((

[main couple kissing] this is. very weird now. but im glad he has someone, he deserves it but dohyeeeee

and switching to sex, YET AGAIN now i wanna see this EVEN LESS THAN I DID BEFOREEEE it's even.... a threesome now with one of the other characters why are you like this why can't you be. like in the flashback i am so upset HAHHHHH WHEEEZEEEE

I am just stop fucking jesus christ PLEASE I DONT WANNA SEE IT ANYMOREEEEE

im just stop the horny pls just tell me who that new guy is and why doyhe likes him so much

[mei: this manwha is a fucking mess but at least we got your lovely commentary out of it]

dhsuksj thanks i feel honored at least i got cute BL out of it before everything went [back] to shit

[mei: THAT TOO]

[...]

tbh im getting kinda mad about doyhe... i dont... feel like he'd just fall instantly for a guy who looks like Noah... but eh not my character

i just want closure for dohye at this point, fuck everything else ... not literally pls theres already too much of that

pls get it together for like 1 chapter is the investigation even still happening i am so confused save dohye plEASE wait what i have less than 10 episodes left Dont tell me this shit isnt even wrapped up yet

[Dohye is having a breakdown over the Noah double not coming to see him anymore]

yeah i this... doesnt feel like Dohye... at all... Even when Noah was rejecting him he was just kind of... taking it with some humor and maybe he was a little desperate and risky sometimes but... oh well... i do want him to get better but... im having a hard time believeing this development??? he never seemed overly anxious or anything. but who knows what else they did to him. Sister can still go fuck off tho

[...]

i mean. i liked the flashbacks a lot honestly??? it stayed simple and focused on the dynamics and less trying to balance smut with murder plots

[dm partner: NO THAT'S WHAT I MEAN LIKE CLEARLY THE AUTHOR CAN MAKE A GOOD STORY SO I'M JUST... CONFUSED AS TO WHY THEY DIDN'T STICK WITH SOME SOFT, FLUFFY BL ROMANCE MANWHA AND DECIDED TO MAKE WHATEVER THIS IS INSTEAD ]

okay i dont care bc dohye is currently getting assaulted nobody asked for this why i just. this is terrible. he was... so sweet. he doesnt deserve this. nobody does of course but jesus christ pls someone save him at least its not horny visually, one saving grace

ah... the assult is back to being depicted horny-ly thank you for nothing

[... removed some general confusion about the plot]

YES. SOME SHIP FOOD.

i am. suffering i mean i cant stop but GOD

okay so apparantly. the sister. has just an arsenal of people who look like other people Dohye, then Noah... and even Noah's GF??? this is ridiculous??

one good message 

why 

did you feel the need to add that [actual tired rage]

im gonna die this manwha is gonna kill me im laughing but im suffering oh hes arrested great and thats the end and the last update was in january of this year

why AS IN NOAH IS ARRESTED nobody who actually did anything is arrested What is this why is this AHHH I at least wanted the complete-ness of finishing this but now I'M JUST SUFFERING

[ mei: I MEAN TO BE FAIR I'D BE SUFFERING TOO BC JUST... WHAT THE FUCK I HAVE?? MANY QUESTIONS?? AND MANY CONCERNS BC THIS MANWHA IS JUST... AN EXPERIENCE ]

its an experience allright WELL

_______________

yup that’s it.

in my head, in a twist of events Dohye and Noah make up and are actual endgame. Something like that must exist out there but I won’t ask because it’d destroy the surprise and ruin the point.

That’s it.

Have a nice day.

#an innocent sin #dohye x noah #noah x dohye #long post #tori talks #tori has opinions #reactions #yes I do this often in our dms #poor mei #toriqueue

[popscenery]

Passion Pit, »Take a Walk«

by Jessica Doyle

In the summer of 2010, when I took a leave of absence from my PhD program, my dissertation was a helpless non-thing without a subject. In December 2018, I officially got my PhD, because my dissertation was done: written, revised, defended, revised again, approved, copied, formatted, distributed, carefully archived, accepted as an actual work of scholarship. It is arguably my most important professional accomplishment of the decade, and also arguably entirely inconsequential. The claim that 90 percent of academic papers go uncited is mostly untrue, but it is true for my dissertation, and I have the gaping void of a Google Scholar search return to prove it.

Trust me: as bitter and self-deprecating post-graduate students might be about their research (see previous paragraph), none of us start out planning to write something inconsequential. Certainly the subject of my dissertation was not inconsequential at all. “Take a Walk” is not my favorite song of the past decade, but it is the song that kept reminding me that the topic was worth writing about.

My dissertation examined what makes starting and maintaining a business easier or harder for Latino entrepreneurs in different American cities. Take Miami as an example, where 47% of all businesses are Latino-owned. That’s much higher than the national average (12 percent) and higher than the percentage in other cities with large Latino populations: New York, Los Angeles, Houston. So what’s so special about Miami? Is it because the Cuban population that arrived in the 1960s were often landowners or merchants fleeing Castro, and made wealth-building a priority in their new city? Is it the geographic proximity to Latin America and the Caribbean? Is starting a business in Miami easier than elsewhere? Is it something about Miami’s economy in general, or Florida’s? Finally (and more to the point), if policy-makers in another city wanted to put in policies that would help local Latino entrepreneurs flourish, what would Miami’s example offer as guidance?

To make a 295-page story short: it is much easier to turn immigrants into successful business owners if they come to the country with business experience and/or capital already at hand; and if the local immigrant population doesn’t start with those advantages, then policy-makers should focus on providing business education and access to financing, especially the latter. Latino immigrants in the United States who want to start businesses are more likely than native-born white entrepreneurs to use their own cash (which takes a while to accumulate), credit cards (which charge higher interest rates than do bank loans), or loans from family or friends (which means that loved ones, rather than banks with larger cushions, bear the risks). I’d say read the whole dissertation, but in all frankness you’d be better off checking out the research being published by the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, including this report. (It’s more concise and their data is more robust than mine was.)

This all assumes, of course, that you want to encourage Latinos, or other immigrants, or anyone at all, to start their own business. A lot of us--including me; including Michael Angelakos, the artist behind Passion Pit--have immigrant entrepreneurs in our family lineage. In interviews to promote the album Gossamer, Angelakos described “Take a Walk,” the lead single, as about different members of his family. The first verse’s portrait is a classic rags-to-riches, grateful-to-be-in-America immigrant story: I love this country dearly / I can feel the ladder clearly. But in the second verse, the story shifts to a new narrator, and so does the tone: I watch my little children / Play some board game in the kitchen / And I sit and pray they never feel my strife. The final narrator is eventually undone...

I think I borrowed just too much We had taxes, we had bills We had a lifestyle to front

...yet still insists on his participation in the American dream:

Tomorrow you'll cook dinner For the neighbors and their kids We can rip apart those socialists And all their damn taxes You see, I am no criminal I'm down on both bad knees I'm just too much a coward To admit when I'm in need

Apparently at one point a Fox News reporter failed to hear the irony, and asked Angelakos if the song was anti-socialist. But Angelakos told MTV News, “It's about very specific family members, the male hierarchy, and how the men in my family have always dealt with money.... All these men were very conservative; socially very liberal but for some reason, they all came here for capitalism, and they all ended up kind of being prey to capitalism.” He told a different interviewer, “These are all true stories; this is my grandfather and so on.”

Angelakos’s ambivalence is understandable. (Several of the pieces that greeted “Take a Walk” identified it as a direct reponse to the 2008 financial crisis, an interpretation he rejected.) The idea that anyone can come to the United States, start a business, and work their way to financial security and political freedom is an old one--the history of immigrants employing at higher rates than native-born Americans goes as far back as the Census Bureau has been keeping track of such things. But even for the successful it has its costs. The narrators of “Take a Walk” are estranged from their families, anxious about their ability to keep wealth. The theme of risk runs through the song. No one worries about getting fired; they have market investments, business partners, endless complaints about taxes (as one might if one has to pay both ends of the Social Security and Medicare taxes single-handedly.) The risk allows the narrators to make comfortable lives for themselves and their family, and yet Angelakos isn’t convinced, looking back, that they were better off.

Historically, if you were running for any sort of higher political office in the United States and were from a major party, you made sure to say nice things about small businesses and entrepreneurship, especially the immigrant kind. To some degree this is still true: Elizabeth Warren’s campaign platform includes a Small Business Equity Fund that would give grants to minority entrepreneurs. That said, I’m not sure the current dominant political energy on either the American left or right favors small businesses, who tend to hate tariffs. If you read the Green New Deal resolution, though it calls for a more equitable distribution of available financing to such smaller-scale lenders as community banks and credit unions, a lot of what it wants it can only get at a certain scale. It’s easier for a larger company to retool its supply chains to lower environmental costs than it is for ten small businesses to do the same. It’s easier for a firm with a thousand employees to absorb the cost of any one employee needing a higher wage to make rent, or a longer maternity leave, or extended absences due to illness, than it is for a firm with five.

And Music Tumblr in particular can be forgiven for not thinking highly of entrepreneurship. Most creative people--artists, musicians, writers--end up as entrepreneurs simply because decent-paying employment in those fields has never been easy to find. (In 2017, Angelakos spoke of dealing with venture capitalists and deciding to run his mental-health-focused initiative, Wishart, as a combination of for-profit and non-profit.) But no loan officer with a nickel’s worth of sense would approve a loan to enter a market so saturated that marginal revenue is typically zero or close enough, or where thousands if not millions of people seem thoroughly committed to proving themselves, in Samuel Johnson’s eyes, blockheads. Upon hearing, “You can do what you love, but the market won’t reward you,” a lot of people will reply, “To hell with markets, then.”

It all comes down to how you feel about risk. For a long time the dominant American thinking was that higher risk was the price entrepreneurs paid to have the chance to succeed on their own terms. (There’s an ongoing debate in the immigrant-entrepreneurship academic literature about whether any one particular group of entrepreneurs is “pushed” into entrepreneurship--as in, they only start businesses as the best of a bad set of money-making options--or “pulled,” starting businesses because they want to.) More recently has emerged the critique that not all experiences of risk are created equal, and that in championing immigrant or minority entrepreneurship we offload risk onto those people with smaller financial or even emotional cushions. The heightened experience of risk, and its attendant anxiety and feeling of constant scarcity, may be what Angelakos meant when he described his relatives as “kind of being prey to capitalism.”

I personally agree with that critique, and would throw in that the general perception of Latino immigrants as not-entrepreneurial denies them a road to acceptance (or bourgeois respectability, if you prefer) that their Swedish, German, Jewish, Italian, and more recently Korean predecessors have been able to walk. That was why I wanted to write about Latino entrepreneurship in the first place, and why I ended up writing about North Carolina’s Latino Community Credit Union and associated initiatives as a promising case study. But I would caution against crossing the line from wanting to reduce risk for vulnerable minorities to regarding asking them to bear any kind of risk as imperialist and offensive. Risk can’t be eliminated altogether, and there are costs to scaling risk to higher levels of human activity and trying to diffuse it. A small business committed to a bad idea does a lot less damage than a government policy committed to a bad idea, even if the latter is more equitable in the range and number of people it effects.

Writing a dissertation is a humbling process. I’ve never written and recorded a song, but I imagine that process humbles too. (When “Take a Walk” came out Angelakos was not shy about disliking it, though he seems to have grown fonder of it as time goes on: “I like that it’s so uncharacteristic of me,” he said in 2017.) You work and work and work, all the while knowing you have no control over how your audience will hear your message, or if there will even be an audience. You can never be sure that you read enough, or chose the right method of analysis, or treated your subjects with sufficient respect. You’ll never know if you’re actually on the side of the angels. If the “angels” are metaphorical--if you don’t actually believe in a god, or God, whose love is greater than your human tendency to error and self-deception and treachery--then the risk is even higher. And yet, without that risk, how would you ever be able to say anything worth saying?

#songs of the decade #passion pit #longreads #music writing

[kihyunswrath]

Look I know you love them but

If the only things that we can come up with are “bear”, “daddy”, “awkward” and “big muscles” whenever we think about Shownu, we’re not looking hard enough.

If the only things we can come up with are “sexy”, “ramyeon lover” or “hot big brother bunny” whenever we think about Wonho, we’re not looking hard enough.

If the only things we can come up with are “girly”, “scrawny”, “way too hyper” or “crazy” whenever we think about Minhyuk, we’re not looking hard enough.

If the only things we can come up with are “mommy”, “hamster”, “man with a lisp”, “sassy” or any equivalent of a word “small/short” whenever we think about Kihyun, we’re not looking hard enough.

If the only things we can come up with are “model”, “meme”, “leg goals” or “sleepy” whenever we think about Hyungwon, we’re not looking hard enough.

If the only things we can come up with are “scaredy-cat”, “dimple boy” or “honey thigh/bee” whenever we think about Jooheon, we’re not looking hard enough.

If the only things we can come up with are “weird 4D/12D personality”, “baby maknae” or “puppy” whenever we think about Changkyun, we’re not looking hard enough.

If every small interaction between particular members is somehow romantic/sexual inside our head, and the reason we’re shipping them is because to us, they’re somehow each others’ opposites (tiny/huge, quiet/super social) we’re not looking hard enough. If we decide they must be gays because of this and that factor in their behavior, we’re not looking hard enough.

They’re indeed hired idols who want to impress us by their looks, but they’re also artists who want us to focus on their performance. They’re indeed hired actors to give us content we want to see, but they’re also real people who work their asses off and give all their time to us, even though they might just as well do something else.

Give them more credit. Don’t stay on this half-assed level. Dig deeper if you want to really respect them. And I know you do, because you’re their fan and you love them. 

When we tag or list the personality/appearance traits of Monsta X members with each post we make, if 90% of that content is based on jokes, memes and stereotypes MX members or fans once created to recognize the members better, we’re not giving them enough space. We’re not looking deep enough to see what else is in there. We’re shrinking them into quotes and jokes, even though they are very much real, breathing people with complex, changing personalities. And since we don’t know them personally, we must work even harder to spread diverse narrative about them. 

Whenever we’re listing these features, we’re also comparing them to each other. Whenever we call Kihyun or Minhyuk with feminine/”emasculated” terms, we’re also implying that the other members are much more masculine than them, and no matter how hard we’d like them to embrace such identities, we don’t actually know their personal thoughts about it. We should know by now, though, that in Korean idol industry, traditionally viewed masculinity is a thing many idols strive for, and if we look hard enough, we can see moments where both members have been uncomfortable after being referred to as “tiny” or “cutie”. We also aren’t technically just pointing out that there’s a difference in their appearance, we make it sound it’s something super “cute” and extraordinary, even though that just emphasizes the differences in an unhealthy way. When you give too much attention to Hyungwon’s legs, you’re implying there’s something wrong with Kihyun’s legs. When you give too much attention to Wonho’s chest, you’re implying there’s something wrong with Changkyun’s chest. When you pay too much attention to Kihyun being tiny, he thinks that’s all (aside from his singing) there’s to see in him. 

Whenever we’re calling some members as parents and the others as children, we’re not only defining what kind of behavior is considered childish/mother-like and what’s not (even though by definition, parenthood is mostly about custodial relationship with no necessary connotations), we’re also ignoring half of the interaction that’s completely unfitting for this setting and just continue to pay attention to what fits into our narrative. Changkyun acting like a caring friend equal to his older members? Nah, he’s a maknae, he can’t really break out of his baby boy role. Kihyun not giving a fuck about the other members? It’s not about him being a normal young man who’s tired of the tight schedule, it’s about him being a “mean hamster mom”. 

Whenever we’re giving extra attention to these stereotypes and thus constantly reinforcing them, we’re also either making certain features more valuable than others, or then blatantly fetishizing things these idols KNOW aren’t empowering to them. A lisp shouldn’t have connotations, for example, but we do know they have been linked to gays (in a negative manner), childish/girly behavior and sillyness in general. Just watch Minhyuk act a girl in a Kpop Planet radio show in 2015, and you’ll see Kihyun asking him since when he had had a lisp. Minhyuk chose to have it, because it apparently made him sound more girly. Us constantly pointing out Wonho’s and Kihyun’s lisps is not doing a favor to them even if we call it cute - it just gives them extra attention to features we shouldn’t even notice. But of course we do, because it’s not conventionally attractive and it’s not traditionally masculine.

If we look hard enough, we can also see that 80% of the times they are given nicknames or stereotypical features, that’s actually editors, translators and MCs at work, not the members themselves. That’s called marketing, and since they still keep pushing those stereotypes long after they were first mentioned as a passing joke, it means we as fans are accepting them. 

Jokes are jokes, but they’re not definitions. Fics and fanservice are fics and fanservice, but they’re not the whole picture. 

If we give chance to different narratives, we’re going to see more of them. We can choose to reinforce those that change them into caricatures, or then we can give space for multiple narratives. They will keep doing whatever they think we want to see, but that’s not necessarily the things they wanted to show us in the first place. It’s psychologically proven that if you assume that someone is like something, it’s a prediction fulfilling itself and they will start acting more and more like that, in good and bad. However, if you are ready to broaden your viewpoint and try to learn what else is there, they’ll show more of themselves too. It will let you see more genuine interaction, but also it lets them express themselves in a way THEY wanted, not just the way imaginary audience wanted it. With imaginary audience I mean the people the editors, directors and coordinators are picturing in front of the MX group. It’s not real audience, just their expectations based on the experience they have of us. We can change their expectations, but first we must stop accepting the over-simplifying ideas they are feeding us and start demanding more.

Here’s some answers to questions you might have:

1) Can’t we have fun at all? It’s just innocent joking. 

It’s less about what jokes you tell and more about how many times you tell them. If this stereotyping content makes more than half of the discourse we have in the fandom, it’s having too much space, because it alters the way we think about them and how they think about themselves. It’s also about the implications. Giving Shownu a dad nickname is in itself completely innocent and is not harming him (I mean, a masculine person with father-like features, isn’t that ideal?), but when we make Kihyun the mom, we’re comparing them to each other and deciding which actions they take are traditionally feminine / a part of straight-couple-dynamic and which are not, even though they are both men and haven’t expressed they want to present themselves as something else. It’s a part of heteronormative discourse to assume certain actions/looks are inherently feminine.

2) They’re not going to see what I post here in Tumblr.

Most likely not, but the other fans do. They’re going to reconsider their thoughts about each idol, and some of them are for real going to see MX members in real life. And even if not, some of them are young, some of them very much premature - your way of speaking about these idols DOES affect on how they view the world afterwards. If you sexualize/romanticize/fetishize or characterize them in an unhealthy way, some people are going to think it’s okay. If you know them better than just that, show it. The fact that they’re idols and exist to look pretty and appealing for you doesn’t change the fact that they’re real people, not anime characters.

3) They’re joking about animal nicknames / sexy bodies / mom-dad -relationships themselves.

Yes, but they do know each other in real life and they know where the limit goes. You do not. It’s a different thing to laugh about something they said once, than make it completely canon like there’s nothing else to see in that person other than the nickname he was once given. Also it’s not completely impossible that the members wrong their friends, too. In Monsta X’s case, the members have been quite respectful towards each other, but it has definitely happened in some other groups. Idols have bullied their group members because of their weight/skin color/jaw shape/whatever factor, and it was tolerated by fans because “hey, they’re friends”, it’s “Korean culture”, their “appearance is the most important thing anyway” and “we agree with them haha”. 

4) This/something similar is happening in other groups/fandoms too, though?

Yes, that’s true, and it’s not less of a problem there either. I’m pointing this out because Monsta X is important to me right now. I think all groups are being treated more or less the same, maybe because of the young audience or some cultural aspects or whatever. I still want to be one of those people who are changing this. We need to demand more representation, genuine personalities, diverse narrative, everything. In the end, it doesn’t only help the idols themselves, but us too. So if you are a fan of several groups, it definitely does no harm to try and apply this to whatever tropes/age-old jokes they have in other fandoms as well. 

5) Why do you care so much?

 Because I’ve been following kpop and other parts of Korean culture for 10 years approximately, and I’m fed up with the fact how idols are treated, exploited, sexualized, idolized etc etc. in the industry. Beautiful, charismatic and hard-working idols in itself shouldn’t equal mistreatment, oppression or manufactured clone culture. We can and we should want more than just that. I know kpop industry in and of itself is oppressive, belittling, over-competitive, sexist, fatshaming, ableist, racist etc., but we as fans can be there to change at least some of it. One of the easiest steps would be ceasing to treat them as memes/jokes/quotes/three-point personality lists who always act the same. Idk.

Also even if we don’t have such huge world-changing goals in mind, I have to say I wouldn’t like it if I was given an animal nickname or just one descriptive factor based on something arbitrary on my body/face/personality and then literally everything I ever did was somehow reflected in that. I have a friend who was called a basketball player because she was so tall. I have another friend whose face reminded some people of a horse, so then she was a horse. Shocking, at first time she heard it, funny the second, third and fourth times, not funny anymore after that. I know several friends who were “sluts” just because they had big breasts and most likely big cleavage. I know several men who were “gays” just because of how they walked or talked. You know them, too. You know the story. You know what I’m talking about.

People are not animals, people don’t have just one or two roles among their friends, people are not just their bodies or their voices. So. Please. Challenge the ways you talk, think and write about them. Every time you make a moodboard/list/member reaction/fic/incorrect quote etc., you’re also creating fanfiction, you’re also either reinforcing old ideas or reimagining new ones. Choose your words wisely, think twice. I have to do the same, I can’t talk myself out of it, either. It’s not an easy process. 

__

I love Monsta X and I know you all do, too. And jokes are fun, sometimes. Fics/scenarios are fun to read and write, too, and they don’t have to be truthful to the members’ personalities. But real Monsta X members are not characters. They’re not animal stickers with two-word personalities attached to them. They’re not memes, nor just different body types, one for everyones’ taste. Jooheon, Changkyun, Hoseok, Hyunwoo, Kihyun, Minhyuk and Hyungwon are lovely people full of colourful details, some of them changing, some of them contradicting each other, some of them positive, some of them negative. And even if we will never see it all, it doesn’t serve them right to settle down with less, instead of fighting through our own prejudices and assumptions and try to see more. They deserve it. So... let’s be careful, let’s be respectful and let’s end those stereotypes that are or might be harmful to the members. Our entitlement to laugh at something is never more important as someone’s right to have good, diverse representation.

 - Love xoxo, Kihyun fan

P.S. This wasn’t an attack to any specific post any of you have made, nor was it a demand to remove any fan material that already exists. 

#monsta x #kihyun #shownu #wonho #hyungwon #jooheon #changkyun #i.m #minhyuk

[gumshoeblog]

I bought all the Overwatch LEGO sets. These are the best.

I love Overwatch. I love LEGO. When the two combined, I couldn’t resist buying all of the themed sets that LEGO released at the start of 2019.

If you’re not quite as enamored with this geeky peanut butter-and-jelly combination as I am, or if you’re on a limited budget and you want to know which sets are the best, I’m here to break it down for you. The list follows from best to worst, with a particular emphasis on the quality of the sets compared to Overwatch’s fantastic character design. Here we go!

The Best: Big Bastion ($50)

If you only get one Overwatch LEGO set, make it this one. The only one of the bunch not at least attempting to build to minifig scale gets a lot of freedom in its design, and it’s a lot better for it. This guy stands about ten inches tall, from the top of his rotating turret gun to the bottom of his surprisingly stable feet. He transforms into turret mode, his head lights up with a special LED brick (no external batteries necessary), and he gets a little buildable Ganymede (that’s the bird) to keep him company.

Bastion’s robotic character design is ideal for a big, beefy LEGO set, and little touches like the decals on his shoulder plates and knobbly accents on his legs really stand out. It looks fantastic on a shelf. The transforming design means you get a lot of flexibility in posing him, too, which is a problem with the tank set below.

The turret mode isn’t all that exciting in and of itself---LEGO isn’t as flexible as polygonal models, after all--and they couldn’t squeeze in a tank mode. But posing Bastion in his standard mode is great fun, and the build is surprisingly simple for such a complex result. It’s the hardest set of the series, and even so, I’d say a ten-year-old would have no problem getting through it.

The Next Best: D.Va and Reinhardt ($40)

The set that probably has people most excited is the combination of two tanks in one box, the Korean mech pilot D.Va and the geriatric German knight Reinhardt. And they’re definitely some of the highlights of the series. If you’re a fan of either character you’ll love the way they’ve been modeled here. Both the MEKA and Reinhardt’s armor look fantastic posed.

Both six-inch tanks come with minifigs: D.Va in her “baby” mobile form and Reinhardt in a miniature version of his armor, which can also be accessorized with a tiny hammer. That said, the scaling is weird: while both match the rest of the minifigs in the other sets, the mech and the armor are about twice the size that they should be at minifig scale---though I appreciate this was the only way to get them both inside with any detail. I do like the inclusion of a sans-helmet Reinhardt option, complete with his flowing snowy locks. The character is so expressive in the game it would be a shame to hide him behind a helmet all the time.

The gamer decals on the MEKA and the bits of livery on the armor are fantastic. But both knight and mech are very unbalanced, and need to be posed in specific ways to keep from tipping over. I wish Reinhardt came with some kind of shield, and D.Va’s mech has only one canon on each arm, instead of the distinctive triple rotating guns in the game. It’s the one sore spot in an otherwise fantastic translation of the game model. I also wish there was some way to secure D.Va inside the mech---she just kind of sits in there, rattling around whenever you move the model.

Even so, both were great fun to build. They’re ideal for desktop companions if you’d like to show off your gaming habits in LEGO form.

The Rest: Dorado Showdown ($30), Tracer vs. Widowmaker ($15), Hanzo vs Genji ($20)

The smallest three sets with minifigs have a focus on the stages themselves: Dorado, Gibraltar, and Hanamura, respectively. They’re also good choices if you want quick, easy builds with a bit of Overwatch flavor, without having to dedicate an hour or more to setting them up.

Among the three, Dorado takes the definite lead. This set includes Soldier 76, Reaper, and McCree, plus the hovertruck payload and a stage-themed arch and market stall. The elements really come together nicely, with minifig scale working well between all of them. The truck is particularly nice as a translation of the game model, with plenty of places to stick the minifigs for posed battles.

Next comes Tracer vs Widowmaker, the cheapest set of the whole line. There’s no scenery to be had between these two rivals, but they can duke it out over a nice rendition of the Gibraltar spaceship payload. The Tracer minifig in particular is a highlight, with her dual-wield pistols, mop head hair, and translucent “blink” trail.

Genji and Hanzo get a minifig recreation of their battle from the Dragons animated short. The Japanese castle interior is nice, but the inclusion of action pieces that shoot dragon-themed discs is kind of forced, and the Yakuza lackey minifig (the only one in the series not of a playable character) is unnecessary. You’re buying this for the great Shimada brothers minifigs.

The Ones To Skip: Watchpoint Gibraltar ($90) and Omnic Crisis Bastion ($25)

The biggest and most expensive set is Watchpoint: Gibraltar, a recreation of the game stage with no less than four minifigs. And these minifigs are popular heroes that many will want: Mercy, Pharah, a wonderful BigFig Winston, and a repeat Reaper with a special smoky shadowstep bottom option.

Unfortunately these figures are saddled with a huge and underwhelming spaceship and launch tower. The ship itself actually has some cool elements, like a pop-out deployment module, crew quarters, and pilot cockpit. But the spaceship at the end of the Gibraltar stage is never part of the actual game, so the massive 15-inch long shuttle feels unnecessary at best, as if LEGO just needed a big set piece for the most expensive Overwatch box on the shelf. (The Overwatch team dropship, the starting point of many maps, would have been a better choice.) 

The launchpad and tower, while having some nice high spots to stick Mercy and Pharah, are likewise mostly unnecessary. Maybe this set would have been better if it had been combined with the Tracer vs Widowmaker set, which includes the themed payload, as the manual none-too-subtly reminds you.

The minifigs are a bit of a mixed bag as well. Winston looks fantastic, but Mercy and Pharah are a bit simple, and Reaper can be had in a much cheaper set, sans the admittedly cool shadowstep feature. All in all, this is one to skip unless you want another rather generic LEGO spaceship or you just have to have Mercy, Pharah, or Winston---its price just isn’t justified by its weak connection to the games.

There’s one last set you won’t find on store shelves: Omnic Crisis Bastion. This much smaller, orange-skinned version of the cheerful robot is exclusive to Blizzard’s online merch store, and it comes with its own placard stand and Ganymede in a matching cardinal skin. This one fits in well with the D.Va and Reinhardt tanks at five inches high, though it’s still way too big to match minifig scale.

With no mode transform option, only two decals on the shoulders, and a high $25 price tag for just 182 pieces, Omnic Crisis Bastion is only for those who love the character but can’t find a place for the much bigger, better Bastion. I have to assume that, since it came out in October, Blizzard wanted a LEGO Overwatch set for its store before Christmas.

Omnic Crisis Bastion is an “exclusive,” and unlike the other widely-distributed sets that can be found in most retail stores stocking LEGO, it may be hard to find later. But even if it is, it won’t be worth the effort.

Minifig Breakdown

Once again I’ll go from best to worst.

Tracer is the face of Overwatch, so it’s good that they nailed her minifig (especially since it appears on all the retail LEGO boxes). Her spiny pistols are faithfully depicted with a few translucent pieces, and the “blink” effect on her backpack looks great and lets her balance while holding the heavy guns. The custom spiky hair is spot-on. LEGO could have left her legs plain orange without much grumbling, but they added a few splashes of paint for straps.

The Winston BigFig is a close second. The Hulk-style figure is a natural fit for his gorilla frame, and both Winston’s torso and arms get custom moldings. His tesla gun and jetpack are both made from only stock pieces with decals, but they’re still very good approximations of the game models. Winston’s also the only tank that fits in with the scale of the other minifigs.

Genji and Hanzo are probably the best minifigs in terms of accessories. Genji’s iconic helmet is rendered well---no face underneath, so you can’t peek. Genji gets his sword and several shurikens, plus a scabbard. Hanzo gets his bow and a quiver for his back, with the single flesh toned arm and custom hair with bandanna insert being highlights.

For a character that’s little more than a cowboy with a few bits of armor, McCree looks great, with excellent painted patterns on both the chest and legs. I love the little detail of a grey left hand, since McCree’s arm is robotic. I just wish they’d given him a custom hat with his Blackwatch band...or painted a tiny “BAMF” on his belt buckle (though I can guess why they left it off).

The Reapers are pretty good: one included in the Dorado set, another in Gibraltar with an optional shadowstep bottom. Granted, it’s hard to get Reaper wrong. Even the oversized shotguns, much bigger than the game model, fit with Reaper’s ridiculous character design. But it is the start of a trend in overscaled guns with these figs.

The “baby” D.Va minifig is also simple, but effective. Her custom hair and headset work well---note the grey and pink paint. And while her gun isn’t custom, it’s all that’s needed to approximate her in-game pistol. A secondary face, complete with bubblegum, is a great inclusion.

Widowmaker’s minifig is serviceable, with a nice custom hair mold that includes paint for her visor. But I wish the visor could fold down---it’s not like LEGO hasn’t done this before. The sniper rifle made out of stock pieces is oversized and looks nothing like her curvy, expandable gun. I know toy guns aren’t a huge focus for LEGO, but it doesn’t even have a rifle stock, just a handle from a smaller gun piece. Widow gets a hook, but no line or separate piece for her to hang from, a la the Spider-Man LEGO sets. 

Soldier 76 suffers from some of the same problems. He’s painted well with good contrasting colors, but his multi-piece gun is ridiculously massive. It’s bigger than the sniper rifle or Pharah’s rocket, and again, looks nothing like Soldier’s intricate machine gun. This character really deserves a custom weapon.

Reinhardt’s minifig is almost unnecessary, since he’s always in his armor. But perhaps being aware of the odd scale of the tank set, LEGO painted a tiny version of his armor on the minifig and includes instructions for a scale-appropriate hammer. Still, seeing Rein as the same size as D.Va and Widow just looks odd. At least they included a hair piece for when you want to see his face outside of the helmet. The tank set also has a spare Overwatch team medallion, as seen in the Honor and Glory short.

Pharah is a let-down. The shoulder pads and attached “wings” don’t do a good job approximating her flight suit---these look like pieces recycled from a Nexo Knights set, with none of the fins or pieces her Iron Man-style getup really needs. The helmet looks good, but there’s no sign of Pharah’s hair or distinctive beads. And finally, there’s no way to elevate her, no jet effects. How can justice rain from above when she’s on the ground? At least her rocket is both correctly-sized and shoots a tiny capsule. 

Mercy is easily the most disappointing of the Overwatch minifigs. The wings attached to her backpack are stock “angel” wings, not the high-tech gliders from the game. Her caduceus staff is just a stick and a hook. And her skin tone face printed on an all-black head looks washed out and doesn’t match the colors of the rest of her outfit. Nice paint on the chest and leg pieces can’t save it. This figure is a big stumble for one of the game’s most visible characters.

If these complaints sound like nit-picks, well, they are. But in a game with an overwhelming amount of attention paid to character design, the Overwatch minifigs would inevitably be the focus of their LEGO sets. They range from great to embarrassing, so if you’re trying to buy a set with your favorite character included, choose accordingly.

[nonoboymusic]

Mitski Part I: Early Musical Influences Yumi Matsutoya and Miyuki Nakajima

One of the contemporary artists I’ve been researching recently is Mitski, a 26 year old “indie rock” musician who has found some success with a pair of excellent recent albums (Bury Me at Makeout Creek & Puberty 2) which examine youth and all its messiness through memorable melodies, striking vocal performances, while utilizing late 90s alternative fuzz guitar centric rock. Mitski uses her lyrics to explore different facets of her identity (youth, race, gender, sexuality) with great nuance and depth. Deservedly so, her single “Best American Girl” made many 2016 best of lists. The song, besides being a great, dynamic musical piece of power pop, articulates ideas about growing up looking or feeling different on the edges of the Richie Cunningham nuclear family ideal. The video--which features a Coachella girl stereotype making out with Mitski’s “best american boy”--does the song no favors and flattens out the complexity which her lyrics and the music can convey upon careful examination. 

Mitski’s background is what it is. People make too much it from surface level observations that she is 1.) Japanese 2.) mixed 3.) a woman 4.) a rocker. From my research (both reading articles and interviews and speaking to her fans), I’ve found that other people are keen to identify her as “an other” and then use this outsider position as a journalistic angle, or, in the case of some of her fans, they want her to be a political spokeswoman for marginalized people, specifically Asian-Americans. Certainly, Mitski looks different (and writes differently) from what we have seen and heard before in indie rock, and she acknowledges that.  In a surprisingly long email correspondence, Mitski was nice enough to write an essay length response to questions which aimed to flesh out Mitski as Asian-American rockstar, or Asian-American woman taking center stage, and add layers, historical, social and political, to who Mitski the human musician is. 

As someone who is studying “Asian-American” musical cultures, it’s frustrating when journalists or fans latch onto people because they’re Japanese or Korean or Vietnamese or whatever, and make that dominate the narrative. It assumes things that may or may not be true for the artist in question, and it also flattens them out. If that’s the lead line and there is no examination of what it means to be Asian-American, then that cheap analysis is an exoticizing tool meant to capture a reader’s imagination. Unfortunately, this exoticization associates one-dimensional images of whatever Asian things mean to you onto that person and further perpetuate stereotypes. Few of these articles seem to care even where Mitski’s Japanese family is from in Japan (Mie prefecture), while in the same magazine or blog you will find stories about how (mostly white) musicians really lay claim to a certain sound of a certain region where they’re from or grew up or moved to or visited once.

Mitski, like myself, and other Asian-American musicians I’ve spoken with recently has a complex and complicated background, and it’s kind of a bummer to see the “Asian” thing (or the “woman in rock” thing) used in such a shallow way, to just set up an “outsider makes good” narrative. Those narratives are important for political reasons, because there is still real racism and sexism and not enough songs like “Best American Girl” out there. But the real story lies in calling into question the idea of the outsider based on racial lines by actually taking the time to tell that artist’s story which in turn breaks down the validity of any kind of superiority of an “insider” culture. That’s what I hope to do in sharing Mitski’s interview here. In bits and pieces, I want to go through some of what Mitski wrote to me. She offers a lot, so I’ll unroll this over time, but let’s start with the basic introductory music journalist question:

What music did your mom and dad listen to respectively? 

“My mother was never really a music-listener, but she would hum or sing to herself often, and I found out later in life that she was singing Japanese songs of her youth - Japanese Pop songs of the late 70's-early 80's. She mostly sung songs by female singer-songwriters Yumi Matsutoya and Miyuki Nakajima, who I actually find my own songs sound a lot like! So I think a lot of my songwriting is subconsciously but greatly influenced by those two artists. 

My father was something of an amateur ethnomusicologist. His specialties were the local/traditional music of Latin America (especially Cuba), Irish/Scottish/American Appalachian folk music, and Tibetan and Mongolian traditional music, including throat singing. This sounds really pretentious, but he just genuinely liked that music, so that's what was playing in our homes all the time, and that's what I'm familiar with.”

The artists Mitski name checks are fantastic and certainly deserve recognition. As noted, they were foundational “J Pop” artists of the 80s and made some phenomenal music.Here is a brief introduction to a few choice Yumi Matsutoya and Miyuki Nakajima tunes. 

"Rouge no Dengon" was released in 1975 on the Alfa label under Yumi Matsutoya’s former stage name Yumi Arai. She was born in 1954 in Tokyo. This song, which was a big hit for her, trades in vintage 1950s American rock n’ roll. The strings and background vocals which sweep in during the second verse are joyous and push the song towards its truly outstanding chorus section. Yumi’s voice is controlled and understated for most of the track, soaring only when necessary. For all the camp of the production of the video, and the obviously cribbed greatest hits of American 1950s tropes, it still manages to feel exciting and not played out. The song has a sense of movement, a buoyant propulsion which never bores the listener.

By the late 1980s, Yumi Matsutoya’s work adopted the au currant synthesizer instrumentation which resulted in her most commercially successful work. “September Blue” from the 1988′s incredibly titled Delight Slight Light KISS is a synth feast of orchestra hits and a clave pattern which sounds pretty fresh now that we’re in this mid 2010′s tropical house moment in pop music production. By the time the song reaches its repetition of outro choruses and the background vocals are swelling and the horn hits are coming in and out, I am genuinely excited by the sweet jam unfolding before my ears.

Miyuki Nakajima, born 1952 in Sapporo, is first and foremost and incredible songwriter. “Wakareuta (The Parting Song),” has such a brilliant melody and cool vibe. The string orchestration (chunky 8th notes mixed with legato patches) and minor key harmonies create a slinky cool feel which is just, like, super hip. I love the upstroke guitar work and the threatening dramatics of the song which hints at Rocky type theme music. J Pop, or whatever you want to call this late 70s era of production in Japan, was smashing together so many cool sounds, and because of writers like Nakajima and Matsutoya, they had some really great material to arrange and orchestrate. 

#mitski #TPP #japanese #jpop #pop #music #miyuki nakajima #yumi matsutoya #influences #asian american

[neewtmas]

100 questions

Thanks to @giraffingthetardis i sat here for 2 hours answer all this questions     (but don’t worry, it was fun^^) 

#1- does the darkness comfort you?   depends. in my room in my bed it’s ok, but at every other place i’m nearly dying of fear .  

#2-what brings you crashing to the floor? not much, actually i can’t think of anything right now                   

#3angels or demons? angels

#4- God or Satan? yes, i just said angels, but i’m more for satan

#5- would you sit on the moon and watch the universe twirl quietly, even       if you couldn’t breathe? yes! even it would be fun only for like 20 secs?

#6- what scares you most in the world? darkness and heights

#7- can we always be there for one another? of course

#8- I feel like I’m dying… Can I talk to you? yes! don’t hesitate, i’m here

#9- being blind or being deaf? idk, like i love music but i love reading more and it would be terrible for me to live in darkness forever so i would rather be deaf

#10- what song makes your heart pound the most? idk... just every song by ed sheeran

#11- do you wish on stars? do you mean shooting stars? bc i would,but i’ve never seen one :/

#12- what were you doing last night at 1:03 am? sleeping?

#13- the happiest, most golden moment of my life? tbh, i don’t know. like there are many happy moments, moments where i’m just thankful for everything i have (ik i’m a cheesy potato) but i can’t think of the most happy one? i guess i couldn’t do a patronus .-. 

#14- the worst, most positively crushing moment of my life? didn’t had one yet

#15- if you had to choose between your mother and your father, who would you choose? oh god. idk maybe my mother? 

#16- ask me anything ok random fact: i love eating pomegranates, but everytime i make one, the kitchen looks like i slaughtered a pig afterwards

#17- salt or sugar? sugar

#18- death by water or fire? idk i think fire bc you get unconscious by all the smoke first or later by the pain and won’t feel anything, also i hate the feeling of drowing

#19- if you could have a degree in anything, what would it be? idk

#20- black or white? ….assuming I don’t like grey both, but rather black?

#21- the thing/person I want to stay safe and happy and comforted in this world? everyone i like

#22- if you could have the superpower of flight, invisibility, or mind-reading, which would you choose? invisibility, i think it would be really interesting to see how people act when you’re not around

#23- is music something you could not live without? i love music... but i could live without it if it would really necessary

#24- favorite flower my dear? roses

#25- why dragons? why not?

#26- ice cream in winter? Or possibly hot chocolate in the summer? hot chocolate in summer, i’m not the biggest fan of ice cream

#27- what’s your sexuality? heterosexual

#28- do you dream in black and white or color? luckily in colour, i think dreams in black and white would be really scary

#29- nights full of nightmares? nope

#30- what was the voice in your head saying at 2 am? idk, i was sleeping #31- okay…. Why don’t you hate the thorns on a rose? idk, it’s a part of the rose i guess? also, i like this thought -beautiful, but hard to touch if you don’t treat it careful

#32- do you trust me? yes 

#33- most cared for song at the moment? kitchen sink by twenty one pilots,i just love the lyrics

#34- worst injury? one time i fell off a horse and it stepped accidentally on my right shin - nothing bad happened but it hurted very much

#35- bath or shower? shower

#36- color you love the most? blue, black and white

#37- anonymous question ok, another fun fact: plants hate me,like i just have tolook at them and they already die .-.

#38- another way to wish not using 11:11, dandelion blooms, or even the fairy you thought you saw…? nope

#39- do you ever stare at the sky and look for those weird shapes in the clouds? yes! all the time, especially when i’m sitting in class

#40- a really weird something I like to eat in a weird way ok it’s not a weird something, but at our school you can buy this chocolate crossiants with a little chocolate bar in the middle, and i always eat the dough at the outside first, then the yummy pastry on the inside and then the chocolate bar, instead of just eat the whole thing like evrey other normal human being

#41- Lamborghini or Corvette? ok, i had to google it, and for me it looks pretty much the same, but i think i like corvette more

#42- when did I have my first kiss? Boy or girl? i didn’t had my first kiss yet (and i’ll die lonely with 30 cats)

#43- most listened to genre?  idk what genre this is, but i mostly listen to twenty one pilots, Ed Sheeran and Fall out boy #44- Jack Frost or Iron Man? Jack Frost ( is it possible to have a a crush on an animated character??)

#45- are shorts and a tank-top an optional outfit for you today? nope, bc first, i’m fat and second, it’s freezing cold outside right know

#46- will you be speaking to anyone you hate today? i won’t be speaking to anyone today

#47- nachos or pizza??? pizza pizza piiiiizzza

#48- is my life what I thought it might be like nope, bc i’m the most lazy person on this planet, even if i don’t want to

#49- thing I am the most proud of accomplishing? idk, i don’t have accomplish many things by now

#50- ask me a question concerning intimacy i’ll just skip this question lol

#51- piano or guitar? piano

#52- tell me something about yourself, my follower, please :) ok another fun fact: i can’t sleep longer than 10 am

#53- rather a mad world? Or an insane universe? insane universe

#54- are you that girl that sits alone on her roof at night? no, bc i’m that girl that is too afraid of falling down to sit at her roof at night or any other time

#55- I wrote this question at 3:59 in the morning, listening to Mad World by Jasmine Thompson: do you like hummingbirds? yes! i even drew one for my phone case

#56- is 1 (one) a unit or a number? a number

#57- glorious fireworks on a dark beach with your thoughts? Or swimming in the rain with your lover? i would love swimming in the rain with my lover - only problem: i don’t have one

#58- tattoo? What would it be? i don’t have one, but i think of a little moon or stars on the inside of my right wrist

#59- natural shade of your hair?  dark brown

#60- color of your eyes? oh thats interesting. hazel, and when i’m standing in the shadow, they’r brown, in the sun green, with the sun directly in my eyes somewhat green, light brown and and a hint of gold and with normal light they look mostly like a duck had just shit in my eyes .-.

#61- the thing you regret the most? don’t have one

#62- would you break a heart if it helped someone else? depends on who it would help

#63- do you ever wish you hadn’t kissed a past friend/lover/acquaintance? i never kissed a past friend/lover/acquaintance

#64- the most violent/brutal/inhuman thing you’ve ever done? i never did something like this, i’m a walking sunshine :)

#65- would I hug again, my most recent lover? maybe

#66- would I kiss the lips of my last kiss? maybe not

#67- who was the last soul to see you cry idk that’s long ago, but i guess my best friend

#68- have you ever looked into the eyes of someone who was about to die… And you didn’t even know it? if so, i don’t know it today either

#69- do you ever wear your clothes in a uncomfortable fit, just to try and reshape the way your body looks?  all the time

#70- have you ever intentionally hurt someone? pysical not, but when i’m really angry at someone, i can get mean and say things i don’t mean but just say because i want to hurt that person

#71- if you could spend the night with anyone, anywhere you wanted, how would you end up? idk, probably one of my favourite fictional characters

#72- butterflies or dragonflies? butterflies

#73- do you enjoy cooking? yes, but i’m the worst cook ever

#74- given the rather unpleasant opportunity, would you wear white to a funeral? yes, if it would fit to the dead person,like if he/she was a hopeful person i would probably do it

#75- have you ever abused drugs/alcohol/people? no never, i’m a good girl

#76- have I ever lay down in a barren field in the middle of a lightning and thunder storm? no luckily not

#77- would you dear, eat a strangers heart? i would eat nobody’s heart, not even the heart of an animal

#78- take the chance to sing in front of 10,000 people, while its snowing? no, because i can’t sing

#79- if “New Zealand” was a French pastry dish, would you eat it? i would try

#80- if “Naples Italy” was a Korean Milkshake, would you drink it? i would try

#81- if “Cardiff Wales” was a star in the universe, do you think you would know that? probably not #82- what happened in your dream/s last night? i forgot it 

#83- tell me who doesn’t deserve the air they breathe? the only person who i can think of is Donald Trump, becuase he stands for everything i absolutely hate, and is basically an asshole

#84- do you speak any foreign languages? english

#85- do you experience anxiety attacks? nope #86- ABCDEFGHIJKPLMNOPQRSRTUVWYXYZ…. do you know the alphabet? yes. and that’s wrong. it’s ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRTUVWXYZ

#87- describe “nucleus” ...

#88- running through the woods at night? Or crawling in the snow at dusk? crawling in the snow

#89- have you ever had a one night stand? Do you regret it? nope, i never had one #90- ask me anything “music” related *skips the question while hearing Young Volcanoes by Fall out boy*

#91- smoke alone, by the water or on your roof in the dark? by the water, but without the smoking part

#92- have you ever kissed a flower, knowing it was someone else’s favorite? ...no?

#93- have you ever sat on a cold bridge… And just waited? nope

#94- when I said “I love you” last… Did I honestly, truthfully and wholly mean it? i never said ‘I love you’ before (at least not in a romantic way, otherwise: yes)

#95- have you ever had a near-death experience? /What happened? no

#96- what do I want more than anything else on the planet/in the world/in the universe? idk

#97- do you put others before yourself, even on bad days? no, i’m a bit selfish from time to time, but i guess that’s important sometimes

#98- what, to me, is an angel? idk, someone who helps you in a situation where you really need it?

#99- what’s the most passionate thing I’ve ever done? idk i can’t think of something

#100- this is not a question, but rather a statement. 

* I want everyone to do me a favor: smile. Find that piece, that glimmer, that twinkle that brings life to you breath. Hold it, love it, don’t let it go. Talk to that person you fell for so long ago… Laugh with them, cry with them. It doesn’t matter, just talk. Get it all off your chest. We all need this. Eat what you want. Fuck society, everyone is beautiful, shape/color/voice/culture/sexuality/habits/ love and hates included. Wear something comfortable. Listen to your favorite song until you’re shouting the lyrics at the world because it feels wonderful. Run outside in the night air and jump up and down in your pajamas like a crazy child because we are human and we are beautiful and we deserve the love no one ever gets. Because we are us, and that is more than okay.

#101- thanks guys 

#100 questions #now i'm really exhausted #tagged #giraffingthetardis