#it’s nice knowing i have a core community of people who actually watch me i guess

[aimseytv]

i know ppl have asked this before either on streams or on twt/insta qnas, but i don’t remember when or what u replied, so what are some things about your community that really stand out to u? other than the fact that we r actually the Funniest ever

not to boost my communities egos but humour is a big thing that makes me laugh. especially on the alt streams where it’s just chat and me vibing it’s where i usually laugh the most because sometimes it’s just the dumbest things said that are also very funny

#i just like my core community #you gamers make streaming so much more fun #it’s nice knowing i have a core community of people who actually watch me i guess #like people who stay and watch me despite everyone and their mother being live #even if it’s just us jamming to dumb music and screwing taylor swift lyrics #asksey

[hazbinhappy]

hi, there! i hope that you are doing well and that you are having a lovely day. ♡ i really enjoy your writing, and i thought that i might request some general (romantic) headcanons for vox?

i really love him, and i think it would be very sweet and interesting to see how he might feel and interact with someone (the reader) he has genuine feelings for?

i understand that this man is a villain and well.. it’s vox - however, it would make me so happy to see him painted in a softer light. some people may enjoy darker themes, but, for me, it’s really upsetting to read sometimes.

i don’t really want him written as non-canon compliant because i still want it to feel like him.. but maybe, this could be the one person he has this soft spot for? like.. i want to see this man IN LOVE 😭💗

as for the reader, they’re gender-neutral but with feminine leaning presentation? and maybe, they’re also an angel and have this really sweet demeanor? maybe i’m just projecting. but i love the grumpy/sunshine dynamic.

and of course, thank you for listening to my request/ramble. if you can’t get to mine or it takes a while, that’s okay and no pressure !!

A/N: I know you wanted an Angel reader but I just couldn’t find a reason for an Angel to be in Hell so I made them a really sweet demon and they have a somewhat ethereal look, like they don’t look like they belong in Hell! Also don’t worry I get your feeling with Vox idk why I like him in a softer light maybe because I think he’s a loser too sorry

So for general Vox romance I look back to when he was alive!

I know he upgrades his body to whatever is modern (imagine a hologram Vox that’d be funny), but there are just some things from your past that stick to your core you know?

So I think he died in the 50s? I don’t know, but we know that he definitely had a box TV as a head at one point and we all know that has existed for like forever

I think he’d have the mindset that he has to be the “man”/”wear the pants” in the relationship instead of being equal

It would take a bit of arguing to get to a standpoint to where you’re equal (moreso you guys agree on receiving equal treatment and love, but you’ll take turns with responsibilities though to be honest that man is busy so sorry for the massive homework load you have if you don’t hire a cleaner)

I think he’d actually start off with a mask of sweetness trying to impress you, but he then lets it down and starts to seem more genuine with his affections

He starts off with generalized gifts at calculated times and it moves to more personalized gifts at random times

He does watch you through the cameras, love the common thought

Though I don’t think he’ll stalk you unless he’s bored or worried; he usually uses it to keep up with you occasionally

He’s not big on PDA unless there is paparazzi, but he doesn’t mind cuddling in private (though it is a bit tough because he is has a TV head, please become an android bro don’t you have the technology-)

His love languages are words of affirmation and acts of service! Help the dude out and inflate his ego! Easy win for this dude

If we want to be specific on looks: he was attracted to how you looked so out of place. He actually thought you were a fallen angel until you just explain that you were just an sinner who had a more innocent look (I think the look would be due to you potentially tricking people in life)

He initially seeked to take advantage, but he didn’t and saw you as an ally even if you didn’t have any or many souls

The lighter colors bounce off of his darker scheme nicely

TDLR: I think it’d take a lot of communication and trial and error to get him to a nice balance, he’s not romantic publicly, and he likes how you look so out of place it fits the public image of wanting to be trustworthy

#hazbin hotel x reader #hazbin hotel #vox x reader #hazbin hotel vox

[aguineapigcouldntdothis]

anyone i see comparing zionism to nazism, terfs, and other extremist ideologies will be blocked. i could explain that zionism is a hugely complex system but anyone who's that far down the antisemitic rabbit hole will not listen to me. so for anyone who is not that deep down: zionism is not an extremist ideology. at fucking all. there is the occasional extremist branch of zionism (particularly revisionist) but those are not the norm. the core belief of zionism is a jewish person who believes in jewish people's right to self determination. notice how that's a very very broad statement? zionism is not the type of movement that can be shoved into a tiny little box because you're scared of the fact that jewish people like complex things.

extremist movements like nazism and terfism follow very, very strict guidelines. some of yall do not realize that bc you label everything you dont like with that. a nazi will not be ok with simply having some similar beliefs and leaving at that. they will attempt to drag you further and further down the hole and they're so fucking good at it. extremist belief systems do not have any room for nuance.

if yall actually interacted with zionists instead of blocking us or harassing us immediately you'd realize that the vast majority of us have zero interest in making people zionists. we prefer to focus on ways we already connect and we like building friendships and allyships based off that. i do not want you to be a zionist, goy. i dont want you to be an antizionist or nonzionist either. i want you to leave our community's movement alone. we do not need your input and we are perfectly fine without you.

i know your little "zionism is evil!" "zio scum!" shit is due to misinformation but i do not give a fuck. you had your chance. you had MANY chances and yet you chose to talk over jews, threaten us, doxx us, etc.?? i do not like pulling the i-know-more-than-you card but if all you've done is watch a few tiktoks and skimmed an al jazeera article then i do know so much more than you. ive researched zionism for 5 years and have been learning the belief system through my family since i was a small child. and holy shit i have SO much to learn still so I can confidently say you don't know shit.

zionism isnt going anywhere. we're jewish and we're made to fucking last and that applies to the things we create. our strength lies in the fact that unlike nazism, terfism, and other extremist ideologies, we openly embrace nuance. we want to be able to cooperate with those who have different beliefs than us and itd be a lot easier if yall stopped the threats and other bs.

you can absolutely follow me if you're curious. i tend to talk mostly abt my own experiences with zionism but if you want resources you can ask nicely and you'll get them. im always open to more people learning but I will not coddle you. I'm an angry jew who was having a lot of fun with my guinea pig blog and now ive gotta talk about jewish shit because it sucks for us rn and I won't let my voice be stomped out.

#jumblr #jewish #tw antisemitism

[sea-owl]

So I'm rewatching the Marvel movies and I just finished Captain America: civil war and I was wondering about you opinion of the movie?

Oh that can of worms. Okay before I start know this is just my opinion and that's okay if your's differ from mine. Just be respectful or you will get the block button.

So my opinion on Civil War, short answer, I deeply dislike it and will never watch it on my own free will again. The only saving grace for me with that movie is the good angst hut/comfort fics the fandom has written after.

Long answer I don't like it for many reasons, narratively being a big part of it actually. I believe the MCU jumped the gun for Civil War. They put it in too soon without doing the work for all the needed buildup for it. I believe they chose the wrong directors for this movie and I 100% believe this should not have been a Captain America movie.

In my opinion this movie was made too soon. One of the core plot points for Civil War in any rendition is that it's a break up between two people that is so bad and so strong it divides an entire community. Those two people for Civil War is Steve and Tony, which the MCU had neglected working up their relationship to pull Civil War that soon. The outside conflict was there, you could see the outside tension rising with each moving but the dynamics of Steve and Tony, hell all of the Avengers was not. Had they wanted to do this in the time frame they did there needed to be crossovers from the two characters into each other's franchise. The audience needed to see them actually liking each other and the movies building up on that and the other Avengers' relationships as a team. Hell even a mini series that connected to the movies to give us those bonding moments would have helped.

Like many others I also believe this should never have been a Captain America movie, it should have been an Avengers movie. Right off the bat it's gonna try to frame Steve in the right which no. If you want to pull this divide off you need to have the narrative neutral or both Steve and Tony need to be right and wrong. They are both two sides to this fight, and personally both should be held accountable to what happens during and after. Which leads me into the directors, the Russo brothers should not have been the directors. By their own admittance they do not like Tony, they are Cap fanboys, and had they had their way Tony would have died in this movie. This type of plot is not meant for a singular franchise character it is an ensemble plot, and you would need a director who knows how to work an ensemble cast and in my own opinion neutral to both sides. Neither Steve or Tony should have been framed as all the way right or all the way wrong. The politics to this movie is actually very complicated without even adding on the whole Bucky side plot.

Speaking of the side plot, it felt kinda unnecessary and was added for Steve's pain/a way to tie up his brainwashing healing (at least the commands) in a nice little bow. I always say Bucky came back too soon and I still hold that belief. Should've kept him a shadow for a while and maybe saved him for Sam. Sam's cap arch is already doing more for Bucky's character than Steve's ever did.

And since I know this will probably be a follow up question, my opinion on the Accords is that I'm pretty neutral. Yes as they stood amendments were defiantly needed for it, but also the Avengers really had no accountability. The group that was supposed to hold them accountable, SHIELD, was gone. In the eyes of the public they were a loose canon. I don't blame other countries not wanting this American based military like group coming into my home, fucking shit up, and then dipping out. The whole situation needed compromise, but since this is Steve's movie and Steve doesn't know compromise if it bit him in the ass it's not framed that way. Despite the fact we have whole scene in the movie where Steve was proving these people's fears right.

What do I know though, I think the movie is a mess and if I had my way I'll never watch it again.

#I also believe ross should not have been the one to present the accords #that should have been a member of the United Nations #marvel #marvel civil war #mcu #civil war critical #steve rogers critical #just a little bit #I love steve but damn he got on my nerves in this movie #captain america civil war

[stargazeraldroth]

Aaahhh I’m! So glad you (and a few others!) liked my little Underverse AU idea! It means a lot to me, and seeing the idea blossom is so much fun- Thank you so much for making me smile so big!!!

I’m definitely with you on the whole “Ink wouldn’t endanger the AUs” thing, and it always rubbed me as off in the original Underverse… No hate meant to Jakei, of course! What they’ve done is amazing, their animation and art is absolutely gorgeous, and I can tell that they put a lot of heart and love into their creation! It’s just not something up my alley, you know…? Though 0.7 slaps, Ink/Fresh/Cross vs Error, Ink vs Fresh, and Fresh!Ink vs Error is my favorite sequence of events… So much fun, heh.

Anyways! I feel like a lot of avenues could open up with the idea you’ve laid out, here- I will say that I imagine this as a relatively nice (or doing his best to be!) Ink who doesn’t have any darker intentions, because I feel like that hurts more? Though obviously that’s open to interpretation!

But, like. How would Core!Frisk feature into this- I’m a sucker for platonic!Core and Ink, so I can’t help wondering what they’re thinking of everything going on. Have they been trying to help Ink, and maybe warn him that things are going south? Have they had to decide that they can’t risk the Omega Timeline getting involved with all of this, and been forced to watch a friend fall into a toxic trap? Do they care at all? They’re an interesting character to me, so I can’t help wondering!

And! Cross! My poor, misguided boy… I feel like he has a lot of potential to go a lot of different ways- Because once Blue and Dream’s betrayal becomes known, and they release XGaster, does he have a realization that he betrayed Ink, if only in a less personal way than they did? He hunted through the AUs and damaged them, knowing it would hurt someone who thought of him as a friend- What would he think of that? And depending on if you want brotherly!Cross and a Ink, I think it could go a lot of ways.

Error is a mixed bag, to me- He could absolutely be a yandere himself, and in that scenario, I could see him using Ink’s betrayal as a “ha, don’t you see I was right?” sort of moment. Because the people Ink cared for went behind his back in such an awful way, but he’s never done that, now has he? Alternatively, Error being the only sane man and going “well damn, I don’t like the guy, but that’s kinda fucked up” has some interesting potential in making him the overall… Hero? Or at least hero-aligned, since he might be trying to help Ink, now.

(Also, I just feel it’d be very funny, if he realized Blue and Dream caused the destruction of an AU and went “HEY WHAT THE FUCK THATS MY JOB-)

There’s just! So much to think about! And I’m so glad you enjoyed thinking about it! Make sure to take care of yourself, and thank you again for reading and thinking about my little idea!

I live for my brain to be consumed by AUs, I don't think there's even a logical side to my brain anymore /j.

Before I get more into this response, I wanna say that I'm not trying to bash Underverse either. I really do enjoy the series! I feel like Underverse is a big part of the AU community and I love that, it's just... I wish I could love it more, if that makes sense? I'm not placing any blame on Jakei, but I'm a firm believer that Ink's portrayal in Underverse has significantly contributed to the misconception of his character and the sheer amount of villainization (again, you know who you are). I think my favorite episode was actually 0.6, if I'm remembering correctly. That's the one with the Dream/Cross vs Killer/Nightmare battle, right? So many good cuts of Nightmare. 0.7 was good too, with all those juicy fights. Yum.

I don't really see Ink as a naive, wholly good character. I don't imagine him anywhere near as evil as other people do (y'all know who you are), but I don't see him as pure good either, like what I might imagine for Dream or CORE. However, I am very fond of the idea that Ink's been influenced by Dream and the others, and so he's better… but still not entirely good. He's still generally neutral and all, but he does make more effort to be considerate of others and have a better grasp of morals. Maybe this is a niche interpretation but he's my top comfort character, dammit. I'm gonna do what makes me feel happy and warm.

(I say as I torture him in numerous AUs)

Anyway, I do imagine this Ink to be nicer (or whatever word you wanna substitute that with) than the canon Underverse!Ink. Like I mentioned in the last one, I'm a stickler for the idea he wouldn't endanger AUs, buuuut... now that I'm thinking about it, wasn't part of his motives the Creators gradually leaving? Ink needs his paints to be "alive", if you will, and he won't get those if the Creators are gone. So if he becomes desperate, afraid of being forgotten (again), then... maybe he'd make a small exception? Perhaps? It's... for the greater good! I'm not gonna deviate from what I originally said too much, but I'm a sucker for angst- I'm sure there are some people here who can verify that statement.

I honestly didn't think of CORE very much when thinking of the idea. I know they're important to the story, I just... don't think about them very often lol. I'M SORRY CORE I STILL LOVE YOU-

From what I remember, CORE hates the concept of "the greater good". They're very against the idea of there being things as part of the grand scheme of the Multiverse, I believe. So they're going to be at a standstill here: obviously, they're not okay with Ink being manipulated, nor are they okay with what Dream and Blue were doing. But at the same time, they can't just risk the Omega Timeline. It's essentially the last safe haven in the Multiverse, in terms of being shielded from potential threats (let's just ignore Nightmare manifesting for a moment). As much as they despise the ideology of a greater good, they know they can't rush into this with their usual attitude. They know from experience that things don't always go the way you want, that people- no matter what your intentions may be- will be affected by what choices you make. (Maybe that can lead to some CORE backstory acknowledgment crumbs-)

Regardless of what choice CORE makes, I believe they would care about them still. They're just a little baby, just a little kid, give them a break!

I feel like Cross is becoming the primarily neutral character of this lol. I feel like he would have a lot of mixed emotions about the situation. On one hand, he could still be bitter towards Ink while also feeling guilt for his own betrayal. Depending on how emotionally damaged and exhausted he is, Cross might just feel pity and not much more. I think his dynamic with the other two Stars, especially Dream, would also come into play at this point. If he feels this awful about their betrayal, then... how does Ink feel...? I would ideally want the development of Cross and Ink becoming more brotherly with each other, but that's just personal bias.

And now, Error. Error, Error, Error... one of my favorite AUs. One of my skrunkles. My blorbos. My brainrot babes. There are things that I can't help but include when making an AU, and Errorink- or at least Errorink crumbs- is one of them.

First, let's consider the idea of Error being a yandere himself. This can either be a romantic yandere or a platonic yandere, personally I prefer the romantic one for Error. Generally speaking, even without the yandere trait, I do believe that Ink is the only Error considers "on his level". They're equals- one can never truly defeat the other. Error could definitely use the betrayal to his advantage, and try to tell Ink that he was always right about those anomalies. They took advantage of his trust, and now look at what's happened. But him? He'd never betray Ink in such a way. He's the only one Ink can trust. This could lead to some major angst when Error destroys the AUs, maybe also lead to Ink shutting down and considering giving up. And then Error can kidnap him (again)! Fun!

Now, we'll consider the one where Error isn't a yandere. This is probably the most generally favorable and can be a breath of fresh air amidst the two (three, if you wanna play with X-Gaster a bit) yanderes going after Ink. You know the situation's bad when Error- ERROR- is considered sane compared to you. I do like the idea of them being reluctant frenemies here; Error doesn't really like Ink, but damn, did he really deserve all of that? Especially if Error knows how much Ink truly depends on the Creators. I like the idea of them forming an unstable partnership for the time being. And who knows? Maybe, in this case, Error is one of the people keeping Ink from really hitting a breaking point.

I wonder what that would be like, Ink hitting a breaking point. Imagine all the juicy angst. Ink questioning if any of this even worth it, if trying to keep a Creator active was worth it. If he's worth it. Dream and Blue would frantically reassure him that he is worth it, no one wants him to fade away, but he just... doesn't really believe them. After what they did, how can they expect him to trust whatever they say?

Also, also! I am 100% supportive of the idea that Error takes offense to other people doing his "job". I absolutely LOVE that idea. I like to imagine that's what Ink does in AUs where the Balance is actually important, when Error's being lazy and doesn't wanna do anything. He's like "Hm, I guess I'll just find someone else to destroy the AUs" and suddenly, Error's working.

There's honestly so much that can be done with the concept of platonic yandere Dream and Blue being in Underverse. See, Ink never needed to worry about being forgotten or Creators leaving the Multiverse, because he's got me. I make so many AUs I should be getting paid for it.

#underverse au #ink sans #dream sans #blue sans #swap sans #platonic yandere dream sans #platonic yandere blue sans #cross sans #error sans #core frisk #anonymous asks

[mrd2a]

I'm very new to the berserk fandom and it's been fantastic, on tumblr at least, so i don't know why the perception of the fandom has changed for the worse. Could you elaborate on how/why that happened?

I've talked about the berserk fandom in general‚ be it on twitter, instagram, reddit et cetera, but it's kind of difficult to compare it on tumblr since it's only really a pseudo social media.

Anyways, to answer your question. It's believed to be more than one reason, but 2 things that I think were the most prominent ones(from my own observation and experience at least) - covid era and the sudden boost in popularity specifically on twitter.

Now the covid one is something that applies to A LOT of other media communities aswell. Basically what it did was open up a path for Berserk to be consumed by people who usually wouldn't even touch it(animanga haters, those who would usually just watch trendy shonens and others). On a surface level it sounds nice, but then slowly it grew apparent that those people severely lacked the media literacy required to understand Berserk for even its pretty obvious core messages. So what did those people do? They egregiously twisted many themes it's trying to portray and usually either made fun of some very explicit scenes or saying Miura deserved to die for writing them.

The latter mostly comes from the previously mentioned burst of relevance on twitter, but still not being exclusive to it. If you were ever using twitter you may know what kind of toxicity it breeds, so this may make sense to you. In case you weren't, there are youtube videos out there and whatnot that can explain it to you better than me. Besides, that could be a whole separate post in and of itself.

As I said in the post you're referring to, those bad corners did exist in the past. One big difference - there were only bad corners. Vocal, but miniscule and completely dismissible parts of the community. One long known example of this I can think of on top of my head was the berserklejerk subreddit. I have no idea if that thing is still breathing, though sadly I'm afraid it most likely is. If you were to visit it and were lucky, all you would see are Donovan, Eclipse **** jokes repackaged and repeated over and over again. Nothing posted there was funny, appropriate or respectful to the actual work. Still, they could've been ignored and for the most part they have been. Now... Imagine that instead of being 0.1% of the fandom, it's more than 50%.

The covid influence was actually described very well in this one twitter post I found a few days ago.

For the berserk fandom in particular, check out RealLifeRyan's video about it. It does a fairly decent job at expressing what's wrong with its current state.

#berserk #asks #tumblr “diary”

[webbywatcheshorror]

The Bye Bye Man (2017)

The Bye Bye Man. This movie has been meme’d to death, and I’m sure, if you’re reading this, you’ve at least heard of it. I first watched it for my 100 Horror Movies in 92 Days challenge in 2022, expecting it to be the kind that doesn’t take itself seriously. But it does.

The Bye Bye Man tells the story of three college students that move into a fixer-upper of a house and unleash an unstoppable force of evil that comes for you once you know his name. Now on paper, that sounds like a solid premise. In practice.... well, we’ll get to that.

Review under the cut, and as always, SPOILERS AHEAD!

The Bye Bye Man is a tragedy. It contains so many good bits and pieces, but they aren’t quite assembled right- like a puzzle missing some pieces, and somebody painted over some of the others.

It has a decently strong opening- Leigh Whannell murders his way through a quiet suburban neighborhood, gunning down friends and neighbors while shouting about a name that shouldn’t be said, and sometimes muttering the tagline- don’t think it, don’t say it. Nice and intriguing, good First Kill.

Even going into the next sequence isn’t bad- meeting our core protagonists, setting up the scenery, establishing backstories, etc. A bit slow, but it works fine. The slow ramp-up of the upcoming horrors is pretty decent, too- the scene with the kid opening one door while the Hound creeps silently out of the one behind her was nice and eerie! Not to mention one of my favorite tropes in horror movies- Spot the Thing. I managed to find him in mirrors and shadows at least four times before his big reveal, but there’s likely even more I didn’t catch.

The concept itself is promising! An entity that stalks you but only after you know it exists, and the more you think about it, the closer you are to death! That fucking RULES! I’d be so fucking dead! Trying not to think about something, especially when that thing is toying with your mind constantly? An impossible task for me, and a story genre I will always love.

The breaking of the protagonists is also fairly decent. Elliot, the main protag, is adorably in love with his girlfriend, and is so close to the other character John, they consider each other brothers; by the end, they’ve turned on one another, driven mad by hallucinations and suspicion. Heartbreaking stuff, honestly.

There’s a post that’s been going around on Tumblr lately about phones and horror movies, and how instead of simply not working, they could be utilized to invoke more horror as working devices. The Bye Bye Man actually has a good example of this! There’s a scene where one of our protags, trying to ease his mind, is looking through pictures on his phone, when he is treated a series of pictures of the titular entity, who taunts him.

So if it has all these elements, why does it not deliver?

Firstly, the name. Now, I know the original tale (both folk tale and published book edition) also has him named the Bye Bye Man, but reading it and hearing it just have very different vibes. Reading a story about a malevolent spirit with a goofy name? Sure, I can let my imagination run with that. Hearing people say it out loud with their mouth? It just doesn’t land for me, no matter how hard I tried.

It’s possible that it COULD have landed, with some tweaks to the movie: more instances of characters unintentionally saying it, or hearing it as an auditory hallucination; even the way it’s said might have heightened its fear factor. Here, try this- say The Bye Bye Man as though you are reading the title of the movie out loud. Now, say it slow, hesitant, breath shaky and as though you’re forcing yourself to stop saying it. There’s a noticeable difference, yeah? Well, mostly, we only get the first example. Even just a slight pause between each word gives it a different feel, or at least it does to me.

There’s few tropes in movies that annoy the piss out of me more than miscommunication/straight up lack of communication that drives the plot/drama. I know our protags are college kids, and as such are prone to reactions rather than sense, but it’s incredibly irritating to me. Had they stopped to think for like, ten seconds, they might have even survived.

The fact that they’re still kids might explain why they kept making the same mistakes over and over- constantly forgetting they can’t trust what they hear or see, automatically assuming the worst of people they’re supposed to love and trust, continuing to say the name OUT LOUD even after they know it’s dangerous. Ok so most of these sins are committed by the main character, but they’re all guilty of them at some point or another.

It’s possible, too, that much of their nonsensical behavior can be chalked up to supernatural influence. And it’s also possible that I’m far more paranoid than your average person. But talking and acting INCREDIBLY SUSPICIOUSLY in front of cops at a crime scene wherein you are a prime suspect? And then, when confronted by Carrie-Anne Moss’s character, Elliot continues to be suspicious as all hell. Don’t imply you have something dangerous to hide in front of a cop! Why would you do that!?

I also feel like they could have established a few more details that would have given more impact to the eventual character breakdowns. Elliot’s jealousy fueled hallucinations could have been even better, had he stated outright earlier that he trusted his best friend and girlfriend, instead of unconvincingly denying being jealous when his older brother points out the other two dancing during the party scene. Subsequently, his struggle to maintain that implicit trust would have been more impressive, as he is bombarded with hallucinations that imply they’re having an affair, including a full on vision of them having sex in front of him.

That being said, I do like that they set up Elliot’s fatal flaw early on- his cocky overconfidence. During the séance scene, he keeps smugly dismissing any mention of the supernatural as being illogical and beneath his consideration. When he later realizes how to keep the Bye Bye Man at bay, he lets this small victory feed into his ego and he seems to think he’s no longer in danger; he is quickly relieved of this notion.

His solution, when you really break it down, would never have worked long-term, at least not for him. Simply do not fear the entity! He thrives off of fear, much like Pennywise. With a name that silly, this should be easy, to be honest. (In my initial livetweet thread, I toyed with the idea of calling him The Baby Man.) However, unlike the dancing clown, denying him the fear that powers him only makes him get more creative. Upon returning home, Elliot immediately falls for another one of Bye Bye’s tricks. Shouldn’t have challenged him. You fool.

The Man himself is a decent looking monster, played by the wonderful, incredible Doug Jones; but despite the sounds and signs that precede his arrival, we never learn anything about him. Why the coins? Why the train sounds? What’s up with the Hound? Was he once a living person? The original tale has a few answers, but they are nowhere to be found in the film, which is a shame, because it could definitely have benefitted from the knowledge that Bye Bye created his canine companion out of the body parts of his initial victims, and it’s true name is the Gloomslinger. That’s fucking rad!

This movie feels like it drew inspiration from Candyman and Final Destination, in that there is power in a name, and once you’ve drawn its attention, there’s no way to escape it. The world itself will twist until you’ve fallen victim, no matter how clever you think you are. It also reminds me of an OLD, OOOOOOOOLD creepypasta that featured something similar- some sort of entity that hunts you down once you’re made aware it exists. I can’t remember much about it, other than the final line was something like “I’m so sorry. Now that you know it exists, it’s coming for you.” (If anyone knows what I’m talking about, please let me know, but be aware that I read it well over 10 years ago and cannot remember anything else about it.)

Lastly, I want to mention that I enjoyed the way it ended. Our protags are dead, as well as everyone they told his name to. With no way to spread his evil, Bye Bye should be defeated- then we’re treated to Elliot’s young niece saying she found the nightstand with the name carved into it. The wheel keeps on turning, and what a shame- but no, she couldn’t read it in the dark. THEN, we find out that John, the best friend, has survived the house exploding (how tho), and the movie ends as he whispers the name to Carrie-Anne Moss, thus ensuring the cycle continues. 

I give this one five ghosts outta ten. The framework for a great movie is there, but ultimately, it failed to achieve what it set out to do. I do believe, however, that had this movie come out in the 80s, it would now be a cult classic, and considered genuinely terrifying. Then again, if it had, we’d have been denied another instance of Leigh Whannell’s character dying horrifically, and that’d be a shame.

#the bye bye man #horror movies #movie review #webbywatcheshorror #webbyreviewshorror #carrie anne moss #doug jones #leigh whannell

[thessalian]

Thess vs "Think Of The Children"

I've been thinking about how to frame this for awhile, but ... okay, I think it bugs everyone - or at least, everyone that I associate with - that on top of the "the LGBTQ+ community is full of predators" bullshit, there's the softer-core version: "Oh, but children won't understand why Uncle Johnny wants to be called Aunt Jane now, or why Aunt Melissa has a girlfriend and not a boyfriend". I mean, obviously it's all bullshit, and that last is particularly bullshit.

And I know it doesn't have to be the way these jackasses would have it, because I remember understanding just fine as a kid.

I mean, TV. There was not a lot of representation in the 80s and early 90s, but I remember the show that introduced me to a lot of concepts that get, "Oh, kids can't understand that!" The show was called Night Court, and I think it got a reboot recently, and one day I will have it on DVD because it holds up surprisingly well. I mean, I probably watched it too young by most standards. Thing is, what with my mother bulldozing her way up the corporate ladder and working constant late nights and going to night school, she didn't get a lot of time to just sit down and watch stuff with me, and a lot of that was after the watershed.

(Um. ..."The watershed" is a particularly British phenomenon. I don't think it's necessarily a thing anymore given Watch On Demand, but for a very long time, anything deemed for mature audiences only - mostly nudity and swearing - was only allowed on TV after 9pm.)

Anyway, point is that we watched what my mother watched, and a lot of what she watched was MASH, LA Law, and Night Court. I liked that last best. And here are some of the things I learned about directly from it.

Homosexuality: I'm pretty sure I understood the concept before, but it came up a few times on the show. The one I remember best was the Resident Ladies' Man Letcher (who was actually more the butt of the jokes than the actual casanova, which was nice) getting an invitation to grab a drink with a gay man and going through The Gay Panic before getting stuck in an elevator with said gay man and figuring out that there's nothing actually wrong with being gay etc. Thing is, it wasn't just the "Lesson Of The Episode", that idea; it permeated the entire sub-plot. Because we weren't laughing at or appalled by the gay man trying to tempt this main character into depravity or whatever the fuck; we were laughing at this legend-in-his-own-mind asshole main character freaking the fuck out about what amounted to a simple question and an "Okay, fair enough" when he got turned down. The homophobe was the butt of the joke. This was in the mid-eighties, by the way.

Transgender people: Same guy (seriously, the 'ladies' man' was the perpetual butt of the joke in this show), looking forward to his old college friend coming back for a visit. Turns out his old college friend has transitioned into a woman - the kind of woman our ladies' man finds attractive, in fact. Cue more panic from our ladies' man. Thing is, he's not always the butt of the joke this time. The only times he gets "Laugh At Me; I'm An Asshole" is when he's doing the "is it catching / am I gay for being attracted to this person?" bullshit. The times the show frames him sympathetically is when they have the conversation about why she didn't tell him before, in any of their communication; when he actually started asking how she felt instead of focusing on how he felt.

Sex Work: It was a night court in New York City. They had a lot of people brought in for solicitation. And the main-character judge treated them all with decency and a certain air of, "Yeah, let's just give you the bare minimum because what you do with your body isn't really any of my business but this is my job, so ... $50 fine and time served". There was a whole episode where one 'regular' was so unused to being treated with basic dignity that she mistook it for the judge being romantically interested in her.

Neurodiversity: Again, night court in NYC. Lot of people brought in for some various disturbing-the-peace behaviours that required mental health intervention. Again, these people were treated with dignity at almost all times, and the audience encouraged to laugh at the people who treated them poorly.

Homelessness: Same deal - lot of homeless people just sitting in the audience seats for a safe place to sleep off the streets. Again, the only ones the show really wanted us to laugh at were the ones who refused to see these people as people.

"Illegal Immigrants": Two separate plot threads involved people trying to enter the US without the paperwork. One was from Russia - or, more accurately, the USSR, because this was the 1980s and we still had the USSR. He'd be in so much shit if they made him go back that he got desparate enough to douse himself in gasoline and threaten to light a lighter. Language barrier made it a problem and they couldn't get hold of a translator, but main character kept on trying with compassion, and eventually managed to help at least a little. The other was, "I was staying with a family in Vietnam and they had a daughter and she needs to be out of Vietnam so I'll do the 'marriage of convenience' to get her a green card and citizenship" and not understanding that said Vietnamese girl had been crushing on him for years. Thing is, they sat down and decided to stay married on paper but to try to build a relationship as adults. (Managed it, too.) The show didn't vilify either of these characters. Not for their nationality, and not for doing whatever they could to get someplace safe. (Also, the Vietnamese lady really loved using people's racism against them. It was always a delight when she'd justify any action she wanted to take with "It is tradition" and come up with 'whatever vaguely Oriental-sounding bullshit will best push this gullible idiot's buttons' to sell it.)

I grew up on this show. Most of what I learned from it is that however weird you seem to others, that's their problem, not yours. Unfortunately bigotry tends to make itself everybody's problem. Just ... if I could understand everything one kind of niche sitcom from the 80s was trying to teach when I was seven years old, the whole "kids won't understand" thing is bullshit.

It's not that they think kids won't understand, I guess; it's that they're terrified that the kids will.

[inariedwards]

Second panel from the ICOM-IMREC seminar.

I really really recommend watching the third presentation by Roshi Naidoo, which begins at timestamp 29:30. Below is a transcript of it, because the automatically generated captions on YouTube are bad, and also in case anyone is not in a place where you can watch a video or don't have the time or such. But if you can, please do watch her give her presentation in her own voice. All errors in the transcript are my own.

-

Hello everyone and thank you very much for inviting me to this very important conference. My paper is called "Let's Go Around Again: The museum carousel and its Others."

I sit down to write a conference paper on the above subject. I've written this paper before. Well not exactly this one, but variations on the theme of how institutional cultural policy around decolonisation and diversity in the UK museum sector regularly falls short of addressing its own structural racism, favouring instead the performance art of showcasing their latest flagship initiative. They are initiatives which speak to the issues, yes, often very convincingly, but they also deliberately and skillfully elide key questions, such as the positionality of its leaders, policy makers, or curators, the ways in which white supremacy lurks in its funding-outcomes-evaluation project cycle -model, or how the complexities and nuances of Black subjectivity, creativity, agency, and joy are sacrificed on the altar of neat deliverables and social media-friendly posts, aimed primarily at legitimising the museum as a force for social good, rather than dismantling power hierarchies.

What should I do? Make these points again and update them for 2023 and the current decolonial turn? This would be a valid way to approach this, but I'm uneasy, and must address why. Being told that this time is different, and that the museum carousel at least understands the circular motion of the ways in which it addresses and engages with its others. But do they really understand? This is how I see the dance.

When the funding runs out for the project perpetually situated at the edges of museum concerns, and they move on to the next "issue," the kind folk who populate the museum wring their hands in frustration, agreeing that this cycle is terrible, and ask "but how can we stop it?" Museum folk are nice, we know that. They want to change, we know that too. And nice people who want to change can't be part of the problem, can they?

The activists, outsider curators, consultants, academics, etc. say the following:

-Make changes at the core of museum work. -Forensically consider what is being said in these projects and the theoretical ideas behind them. -Learn about the cultural politics of race and representation, and about intersectionality. -Understand the breadth, depth, and complexities of our colonial past and present. -Consider your positionality and anxious responses when confronted with calls for powershifts. -Stop funding short term projects and fund structural change. -Do your "reaching out to communities" -work in tandem with considering how you recruit for actual paid jobs in the sector. -Stop instrumentalising our artists, historians, creatives, etc. for your own institutional self-aggrandisement. -Concert(?) that we may have no interest at all in reforming the museum and may go elsewhere in search of cultural, political, and social liberation.

I could go on, and the list of recommendations, reports, and interventions spanning decades, which attest to this, are lying still in filing cabinets of many museums.

So there is an answer, but when we furnish them with this, they become like the wise monkeys, and they speak over us to ask the question again, this time formulated with an intellectual and critical paradigm that fits the policies, processes, and practices that they've always worked within. Now back in their comfort zones they will suggest their own answer. We are met with a white noise of babble, and can just pick out the names of strategic reports and government policies couched in excruciatingly dead sector speak, along with references to communities, and phrases such as "lived experience" delivered blandly and without context or understanding. The slogan is that "Museums Must Decolonise." However, the message also is "but the museum will tell you how to do it."

We come back and try again. "There's a huge body of work that can help you," we say, "but it has to begin with you considering your fragility and the responses you bring to the table whenever we bring this stuff up. Maybe start with this YouTube clip, it's only an hour long." But this is already too much, and no one is listening. Museums instead will do the same thing over and over again, yet expect a different outcome. Or maybe the outcome they get is actually the desired one.

I too am on this roundabout, and also complicit in keeping it going. In this circuit then I know the role I must play. There's a wave of interest in all things decolonial and anti-racist comes into being. It means I can earn a living and someone might look at my apparently fractured CV and understand the thread of continuity that runs through it. I phrase things in sector-friendly language, hold my tongue when asked what I think of a project, which is at best just barely acceptable but at worst peddling homogenised essentialist myths, grateful that at least - as always - it is only a temporary exhibition, and will be gone soon.

I will accept that museums are on the beginning of a journey, and must be treated with patience, and will therefore sit on the knowledge that endless white innocence is a historical trope, which is enacted to maintain power. I will appear unthreatening - to an extent - but not unthreatening enough to be offered a full-time senior job in the museum to address the things I've raised - the things that management has assured me is so important to them and key to their strategic vision going forward.

There is a game being played. A set of rules and gambits to observe, and I too am part of the problem. As I star in my own microcosm of these cyclical events, I know what will happen. I will be applauded and commended for my provocative, thought-provoking paper. People will ask me afterwards to discuss things at the break. I will be invited onto an advisory board or to a confidential meeting with a high up somewhere - usually for no fee. Then we will hit a wall, and I will go away again until the next time.

So in response to that, and as a small attempt to break the cycle, I'm not going to give a traditional paper of the sort I've always given. Instead I'm going to present you with three small vignettes of what life working on the ground in the UK museum sector is like, and show how an understanding of what is happening in these interpersonal, anxiety-ridden, multi-layered moments may be more helpful than what I have presented to the sector in the past. I've merged and anonymised incidents, but each reflects a plethora of other identical moments. And all examples describe a climate that mitigates against change, despite claims to the contrary.

So, vignette 1:

The meeting decides that, although they recognise that there is a lot of theoretical work in the field of decolonisation, that what people in the sector really want is action and guidance on practice, help with the doing, not so much for the thinking, self-reflection, which is just holding things up. The inference they never spelt out is that you're a bit too academic and out of touch with the on-the-ground museum folk. We're just keen to work with local communities, to reinterpret their collection, change the racist label on an object, and open up their doors to more people.

Your suggestion, that a bit of thinking before this process may be essential to the success of this venture, has not gone down well. Besides there isn't the time or the money. You've subtly been labeled as over-intellectual and weirdly positioned as too white-identified and middle class as a result - despite being a working class person of colour - and therefore in opposition to the communities they're working with. They don't need a politics of nuance to be brought to bear on the knee-jerk essentialism that accompanies their project.

But, to express oppositional thinking and awareness of how structures of power confine and define us is part of the DNA of minoritised groups, and to dismiss this discussion as elitist, academic, or ivory tower in nature woefully misunderstands the intellectual traditions and resistance that we inhabit. Soon the self-same community is going to tell the museum that they're sick of being used as a resource and will bring the same critical skills to bear on the mooted project. The relationship will break down, resulting in the shedding of well-meaning tears of regret, and bafflement about what went wrong. Rather than learn from this though, do the reading and self-reflection, they will repeat this mistake the next time.

This is white supremacy at work. Not as visible as a hateful comment on the website, true, but part of the same network of thinking that refuses to see people in all their complexity, and as having value and identity outside of racism's structures, and totally unaware of the histories of agency and resistance that people of colour inhabit.

Vignette 2:

The museum consults a community about their gallery reinterpretation, and makes changes based on this. Other people, from what the museum understand as the same community, points out that the new display is rubbish. No one in the museum has thought about what expertise was actually needed for the refit, and that not everyone who is a person of colour will think the same thing or have the same response to the artifacts on display. There has been no respect paid to the expertise on colonial history or the politics of representation. "But we did really extensive consultation," they retort. The subtext and the silence in the meeting is "you can't please these people." This then becomes an issue of racial "infighting," not an issue of white supremacy at work again.

Vignette 3:

A senior museum person, signed up to all the diversity, decolonial, and anti-racist initiatives, confides that in the current museum climate, there is nothing that speaks to him as a straight white man. He also complains that "ethnic minorities" haven't applied for posts, so how can museums be berated for not recruiting more widely. It is a familiar moment in both your years in museum work and in life in general. You're being asked to actually reinforce this: to shrug and agree that identity politics has gone too far, or to telegraph your sympathy through silence. You have two moves here. One is to do just this and deal with the "why didn't I say?" later. The other is to speak. The fiction in the sector is that these moments or "difficult conversations" can always be embarked on. They can't, and I really admire those who have the tenacity and/or use their privileged position to do this.

My experience of this moment is that once I say, for example, - kindly, usually - that:

A) Whiteness is an identity politics, albeit rendered invisible, and that you need to understand your anxieties, or B) What else is decolonisation about if not about understanding the workings of straight white men? or C) Why does other people expressing their agency and subjectivity oppress you? or D) Where is your sense of solidarity or even curiosity?

...a familiar pattern of attack both in content and affect will ensue, no matter how nice the person in question is. Before I've got the first words out and it becomes clear I'm not agreeing, I'm spoken over. Immediately I'm accused of misunderstanding. The hurt party is now the man, who I've unfairly labeled as racist - even though I have not - by not understanding what was being said. A long list of mitigation engulfs me, and even though each confirms the view that white fragility is at play, I cannot speak again, and small fractured parts of sentences emerge from my mouth and disappear into the air. There is no listening, no desire to learn, no humility in these moments that so many of us endure. The psychic damage done to us is not an issue, and the fact that this is a scene that I've played over and over again can't be discussed.

This is not simply a recollection of one incident but of many, and all from people who are not culture warriors or rabid fanatical right-wingers attacking the museums through concerted political campaigns. It comes from nice, liberal, kind people, who would be welcoming to a Black person in their museum, and would bend over backwards to accommodate their needs, or to discuss an issue of the provenance of an artifact with them, people who are keen to do decolonial work with the local community. But this mismatch of such people enacting decolonisation work as merely procedural, without doing the most important decolonisation work, which happens between their ears, is one of the keys to unlocking this problem.

So, in conclusion, if my readings of the sector here have any validity, then there are various ways in which we can interpret these patterns. We can see this as evidence of the endurance of the bedrock contradictions of Enlightenment ideology, which historically has always been able to hold together the notion of "freedom for all" while oppressing the majority. Are we being managed as troubling others, in ways which may both give voice to us, but also seek to contain and limit those voices? Is the museum attempting to manage a fear of its own engulfment and loss of authority through hysterical reactions to the fact that we are not coming for inclusion but for power? Are museums hiding behind institutional speak as a means of avoiding the messy emotional labour that comes with genuine decolonial work, which confronts those deep circuits of economic, social, political, and cultural power, and white authority in particular?

Recently I went to see The Procession at Tate Britain in London, a piece of work by the sculptor and contemporary artist Hew Locke. This spectacular, vibrant, colourful, detailed, thought-provoking, large-scale installation - set between the classical pillars of the gallery's foyer - echoed with the centuries of labour, misery, and resistance that lives in that structure, and in the built environment of our colonial cities. Perhaps this is just a thread that can't be pulled on.

Thank you very much and I look forward to hearing your questions.

#museums #glam #decolonisation #anti-racism #long post #Youtube

[destiniesfic]

So, I have read scholarship talking about how media often glamorizes outlaws and gangsters in times when people feel the government is corrupt or weak. Silco is a crime lord but his aims are ultimately political — he wants a revolution, and hence presumably a new government. Since there are other characters who are leaders of governments or communities, do you feel like Silco and his criminality are a comment on approaches to governing?

I'm sorry I've let this ask sit for so long, it's just that it's such an intelligent question and I wanted to have an equally intelligent answer. (You've read scholarship on this, eh? Wonder why.)

The tl;dr of this is going to be "I believe Silco and his criminality are a commentary on governing within Arcane, but not outside of it," unless you believe Arcane is trying to make a political statement by showing mirroring systems of government that seem different but are both corrupt oligarchies. Which... I doubt they'll ever confirm.

Since I know that you, Lin, are kindly indulging me and have not actually watched Arcane, we're going to get into a little bit of Piltover v. Zaun 101.

Silco, though a crime lord, views himself as a liberator willing to do anything to get his people out from the yoke of their Piltovan overlords (including more oppression, whoops). The people in charge of Piltover are the Council, aka these guys:

Looks nice, right? Big, bright windows, circular table promising the equality of members even though they do have a singular Council Head. They meet at the top of the tallest tower in Piltover. (The Hexgates may be taller, I have not checked, but they don't serve the same purpose.) These people are mostly conventionally attractive and extremely well-dressed.

And they are corrupt and ineffectual. Absolutely terrible at getting things done. Beholden to financial incentives, not the interests of their people, as shown by them ignoring the basic needs and well-being of the undercity until they couldn't afford not to (literally, until trade was impacted). As far as real-world commentary goes: that's politics, baby.

We don't know what the system of governance Silco ultimately wanted for his independent Nation of Zaun would look like and never will, but it's too optimistic to think he wouldn't have to maintain the alliances that kept him in power. Those are the Chem-Barons, a group of other crime lords. Here they are:

Now, I think they mostly look rad as hell, but they are clearly designed to scare the pants off of those normies up in Piltover. Note the rectangular table! No pretense of equality here. They also meet at the top of the tallest tower we see down in the undercity, and they are, obviously, overtly beholden to their own enrichment at the expense of the people they, in an unofficial capacity, rule.

It's easy enough to look at the contrasting designs and be like "The sterile shiny bright one good, the sickly green one bad" and yes, yes, it's not deep. But the overt criminality of Silco and his ilk which appears to contrast the "upstanding" Piltovans actually serves as their reflection. Not trying to say the two Councils are exact moral equals, since Piltover is mainly negligent, mainly prejudiced, sometimes quite violent toward the people who live in the undercity and the crime lords unofficially rule with iron fists always (but without the prejudice, probably? Silver lining?). Under the trappings, though, you have two systems of governance elevating people who are primarily interested in their own enrichment and not in how to wield power responsibly, and who are, at the end of the day, willing to sacrifice the same group of oppressed citizens to achieve their aims.

Shiny red apple? Tart green apple? Either way, the core is rotten.

Not optimistic for Piltover or Zaun. Maybe the best thing to do is blow it all up and start over.

Too soon?

Back to the question you asked about approaches to governing: I really do think we're mostly talking about A Tale of Two Cities with what Silco represents in the scheme of things, but you can obviously extrapolate for real world implications if you want. "Aha! People who achieve power are often self-serving even when they mean well, and fall prey to the same corruption and violence they're trying to fight!" is maybe not a revolutionary thesis? It is probably the thesis, though, and is most clearly demonstrated by Jayce's arc, where we see this play out onscreen, and not Silco's, where it plays out mostly through monologues. There's a reason these guys are the ones who negotiate the final peace terms.

#arcane #arcane meta #silco #linearla #ask

[purposelynana]

What Did I Watch: #27

As a matter of fact, the only reason I watched New Life Begins because Bai Jingting looked incredibly hot in period costume. *play shallow by lady gaga*. I kept seeing someone familiar on his face. I was pretty sure, somehow we met in the past. Or previous lives. Who the fuck knows.

New Life Begins didn't give something new. Every trope that you can think of appeared. It's not like I wasn't happy about it, I kinda glad it didn't end up like *cough*Love Like Galaxy*cough*. I have enough of makjang and stupid women characters who doesn't give any depth to the story. Thankfully, New Life Begins isn't like that and I'm grateful to reporting that it does actually fucking smart. The women in this are just *chef's kiss*.

But yeah at some point I just oh my god, it really takes 40 episodes eh?

Well I have this one unpopular opinion. Until We Meet Again isn't particularly stand the test of time. Perhaps, it is a good series to start your journey into BL's realm. But personally, it doesn't have re-watch value per se. The premise is engaging and somehow back in the day I could finish 17 episode without having the feeling to gouge my eyes. And now after so many years, I already formed a reason that yes, it's way too long, too much filler and awkward acting (definitely not talking about Fluke and Earth, they were on different class).

Moreover comes Between Us, a spin-off from UWMA, focused on Win and Team during the events on UWMA. It's not a bad idea because personally I love the book it based on. I rather have slightly uncomfortable feelings, because well can it stand the test of time and not make my toes curl while watching it?

Let's just say that my toes definitely curled on certain parts. But I'm happily reporting that it maintained the core from the novel. The hurt-comfort agenda is so strong with this one. It nourished your emotion somehow. Like the feelings you get after visiting your psychiatrist. Relieved. Feasibly happen since Win and Team are one of the most relatable characters that ever grace Thai BL. No red strings bullshit, just some hard realities we face as a human being.

Well what happen in Between Us certainly couldn't occur in my life. Even though I called them the most relatable, I felt not really being represented by either Win or Team. Because I'm not engaging in the practice of friends with benefits or one night stand. Sure as hell I'm not into swimming or any other sport clubs. In addition, there's no way any of my friends would let me stay overnight just because I had an episode. (I used to have episodes during my college years, my friends only gave words of encouragement, yeah nice.)

But then I saw one little gif in this very app.

Dude, for so many years we convinced that love prevails all. No. Love alone wouldn't fucking save us. Instead it's us who make the effort to save love. sometimes I kinda wish romcom doesn't blatantly shameless and throw some 'I love you' then the relationship suddenly work out. Real life doesn't work like that. 'I love you' never solve anything. In fact, I consider people that easily saying 'I love you' is a fucking red flag.

The only thing that bother me quite a bit. The title. Taiwan and their attempt for make everything cringe. But don't let bad title hinder you to check out this masterpiece on writing. I wish it sticks to its healthy communication, no noble idiocy crap and keep showing us how is it to love someone maturely.

#what did i watch #new life begins #between us #my tooth your love

[idontlikeem]

f*ck Yohe ~ it was pretty obvious from his numerous articles, but "nice" of him to finally say it (in a comment of course, to keep article "neutral") ~ he wants Geno gone cause team won't win cup with Geno, however Yohe fails to offer path for team winning cup without Geno, so his "solution" doesn't actually fix the cup problem ~ so f*ck him and his "neutral" articles ~ have a pleasant day 😇

goodness! this is quite the message to send to someone! a friendly reminder to all that i don't know any of the pens beat reporters or have any connection to the team, and that aggression ABOUT something can easily be read as aggression TOWARDS the person you're messaging when you're communicating in a text-based medium!

i don't think it's quite as clear-cut as you're saying here, anon. i think you're actually pretty significantly misrepresenting what he said, both in his article and in the comment.

i went and looked at the comment (which i shan't be screenshotting because i don't want to get another copyright strike lol). what he's saying is that from a team perspective—from the overarching perspective of 'what is best for the pittsburgh penguins long-term, what gets them their next cup'—it makes more sense to look for younger talent that will come either cheaper or comparable to kris and geno. he did NOT single geno out in his comment at all, he very specifically named both of them. he (rightly) points out that with their combined current cap hits, you could sign up to four younger players that have considerable upside.

i'm not saying i agree with his take. but it's a valid one. it has merit. and i think you saying 'he wants geno gone cause team won't win a cup with geno' is not at all accurate. what he actually says is, and this is me typing exactly what his comment said, 'i don't think this core has another cup in it, so i would make changes.' that's significantly different than singling geno out as the source of the penguins' problems.

he also has this on twitter:

which actually contradicts what you've said he's saying via both article and comment.

something that i've found is that people, in defense of geno, can swing too far the other direction. they overcorrect, if you will. it's one thing to point out idiocy like 'sign him to one year at league minimum' (which is a literal take i've seen multiple times) or 'he's terrible at 5v5 all his points are on the power play and he ruins the system' (easily debunked with actual information). but he's not as good as he was at his best, there is decline in his play, and you can think that he's still far and away the best option for the team while acknowledging that. pointing out a flaw in someone's play is not the same thing as wanting someone gone or having a vendetta against them, and i'm not sure it warrants hatred.

people who are fans of a team are allowed to have different opinions on how that team should proceed when it arrives at a major crossroads. josh's conclusion, one he's come to via watching every game, is not one that i agree with at all, because i have looked around and i do not see good replacements out there. however, it's not an insane, irrational conclusion to arrive at, and people are allowed to have different opinions on things without any one person being right or wrong. someone disagreeing with you in a reasonable fashion does not mean they have it out for your favorite guy, it just means they disagree.

the bottom line is, geno is not the player he was in his prime. that's not a criticism, it's simple facts—he's not, and he won't be ever again. that's how aging works! however, he is still an elite-level center who galvanizes a power play and provides the team with depth down the middle. he is an asset to any team that picks him up and provides him with quality wingers to play with—he is at the point in his career where he can no longer elevate literal trash to an elite scorer, and expecting him to be isn't reasonable. sid can't do that either, at this point, and geno is not as good as sid. he's also coming off a second major surgery and still recovering and getting his conditioning back from that, so the truth of the matter is we don't actually quite know what he's capable of. it won't be 2012-level, we won't see that from him again, but it's still significantly better than most of the other options.

i frequently disagree with josh's game analysis and his takes on certain players, geno included. but i do think he's significantly more neutral and objective about gameplay and the team as a whole than, as an example, rob rossi. disagreeing with someone doesn't make them an enemy.

have a pleasant day 😇

#objectivity is so so hard with stuff like this but there's such a thing as taking it too far the other way! #asks #anon #long post

[fasa-umich]

Caitlin Ruth Gines, FASA's 2022 - 2023 Co-Performance Chair

Performance Chair –– a board position that I have a love-hate relationship with.

What do I mean by this?

 Let’s just say sometimes, the people that you love the most are the people you actually fight with most of the time and sometimes you hate them but deep down you really just hate them at that exact moment but you love them as a whole. You are grateful that you have them. Conflicts are inevitable but you get through it together…you grow together as it goes on.

That is the Performance Chair position for me.

There are times when I was like what if I just quit or I’m so tired of everything (as a whole) that I just wanted to just watch shows or play Call of Duty or play Genshin but thinking about FASA performances is what keeps me going. Thinking about the pride that the performers feel when they hear the crowd cheering, clapping, or even WOAH-ing keeps me going. Thinking about performers bonding and growing together keeps me going. So all year, I’m just GO GO GO!

Battle of the Bamboo Szn (2 week szn)

MoMA Spotted

This is MoMA. The girl who wears this MoMA jacket. I believe her name is Michelle. These are pictures of her. Let me know if you know this girl.

This girl. If we are going to make a movie based on the battle season, it won’t be “Michelle Saves the Day” but “Michelle Saves the Season”. I feel like I have not shown this girl how grateful I am for her for stepping up during the Pagapir practices and working with me in making the performance wonderful in a way that shows compassion to our performers. You played a vital role in keeping the performers’ morale high and making the performance amazing. THINKS!

OMG I FOUND HER!

Pagapiring: FASA, Back on Battle Stage

Performing in battle has become a core memory for me. It is not because Eric Solano gave a good comment on our performance, although it’s also nice. But my favorite part of it is the performers. Performers, I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to get to know all of you. We had our highs and lows…and we bonded over it. Each of you have made this experience memorable for me. I love you all and I hope that you are all proud of yourselves. Ensemblers+Nate and Pagapirers slayed so hard on the battle stage.

My Co looks like Bry-Bry

I really think that this guy I’m working with is Bry-Bry from BO4RD*TOWN. He said no but I have a feeling.

To Bryson:

I am glad that you are my co this year.

I am glad that you are the person I grew with in this position.

I might not have shown it to you but you are one of my rocks this year.

I hope that you are proud of everything that we have achieved. 

I cannot imagine being a performance chair without you as my co.

I appreciate you so much for all the things you have done in your position.

You have worked so hard and it shows.

You are one of the smartest and most professional people I know.

You are so cool.

Some people think we do not work well together because of our checkmate 1.5% compatibility. If that’s true, I wouldn’t have heard.

“It’s literally FASA’s Performance Era”

 - Wesley Liao 3/8/23

A TUNE FOR FASA E-Board:

I wrote a song for you because this is what I think about working with all of you…

🎶(Instrumental)🎶

Here and now it's time for celebration

I finally figured it out (yeah yeah)

That all our dreams have no limitations

That's what it's all about

Everyone is special in their own way

We make each other strong (each other strong)

Were not the same

Were different in a good way

Together's where we belong

We're all in this together

Once we know

That we are

We're all stars

And we see that

We're all in this together

And it shows

When we stand

Hand in hand

Make our dreams come true

🎶(Instrumental)🎶

To FASA:

I am thankful that I am part of this wonderful community. Everyone is amazing and I love seeing us grow bigger and bigger! Knowing each and every one of you brings me different experiences. COZ Y’ALL ARE EXTREMES.

The freshies! I’m not one of them

Bakunawa Spotlight

The bestest and coolest lineage deserves recognition here. DA DAURGS!

Transitioning being COOLturals to being a PERPormance:

Quick sequence of “How’d I get heeeere” (s/o SZA):

Applied as an intern because I thought it was like a FASA resource for an internship opportunity in my field of study.

Getting accepted in the internship program and realizing what it actually was OOPS. (I loved it tho).

I decided to run for both Cultural Chair and Performance Chair positions.

I did all my coffee chat for both positions

Something happened in my life that made me feel more strongly about culturals at that time but I love both positions equally.

I messaged the Presidents, Ate Izzy and Ate Bea saying that I would like to revoke my candidacy for the performance chair and wanted to focus on culturals more.

I promised Ate Bea Fandino that I will run for performance. 

Got the culturals position and the term went wonderful with the love of my life Miss Emily madlamba@um*ch.edu.

A year later and I ran for performance chair → PROMISE FULFILLED!

And now I’m here writing this testimonial.

Co-Cultural Chairs and Co-Performance Chair are positions who play very different roles in FASA although I got the chance to spread culture with all of them. I realized that the workload for each chair is very similar but in different ways. To give you a glimpse of it, being cultural is more research focus, you are mostly making documents or writing emails, and strict planning on everything. Performance on the other side is more work physically, has more informal communications, and planning that will allow flexibility. Also, my cos for both terms work in very different ways. For these reasons, I had to do a whole reset which was hard at first but I got the groove baby!

Key Advice to Future Performance

BE AMBITIOUS

BUT

MAKE SURE YOU MAKE DECISIONS YOU WON’T REGRET

Right now I am writing this and  reflecting about my past 2.5 years on board. I am happy with all my decisions and I am happy that I got to work with two wonderful people: EMILY AND BRYSON. 

AT LAST: I FEEL FULFILLED AND I WILL NOW BE MOVING FORWARD TO FIND MY NEW PURPOSE. THIS WILL BE A MEMORY THAT I WILL LOOK BACK AT WITH A SMILE ON MY FACE. 

One last important thing to say is Bryson is the reason why I finished strong. WE DID IT CO! It was a pleasure working with you.

Thank you performers and everyone for being a part of this journey. 

Signing out.

One of your co-performance chairs,

Caitlin Ruth Gines

#2022-2023 #FASAPerformance

[ugilestking]

reflecting on dan howell.

as #cringe as it probably is in the year 2022, i don’t feel any sense of shame in saying that i’ve been a very big fan of dan howell (and, of course, phil lester) for roughly 11 years now. it might seem embarrassing or juvenile of me, but i really don’t care -- for me, dan is maybe the most important person in my life in some ways. he’s certainly the most important person in my life that i don’t actually know on a personal level. so here’s the first entry in my journal of sorts, incredibly long and weird but i think it’s healthy for me to get it out somewhere.

growing up, i was the weird kid who never had any friends, or if i did, it was short-lived and they hated me once they talked to me for too long because i was different and something about me was wrong. i could feel it, even if no one really acknowledged it or put it in words to my face. even if i smiled and played nice, offered to share my crayons or help with an assignment, or never really talked at all, people didn’t like me. as i got older, i started to piece together what felt wrong, but i never wanted to acknowledge it or think about it for too long. after all, it was the thing that everything hated me for.

i was awkward and uncomfortable and i had no friends, so i spent most of my time browsing the internet looking for something to escape the suffocating world i actually lived in -- this is very intense for someone who was, like, 12, but it’s genuinely how i felt and sometimes still feel now. no one seemed to get it or be like me at all...until a random gifset of some british guy a little older than me popped up on my dashboard on tumblr. he seemed funny and cute, so i searched up the username “danisnotonfire” and, for the first time, it felt like someone just...got it.

it’s hard to explain what “it” was, but five minutes into the first video i watched and i felt like i had a friend. someone who was like me. it became this thing where i’d spend hours watching all the videos of him i could find, and if i had a bad day at school or got into a fight with my mom, the first thing i would do was watch a video of dan’s. it was like having an older brother or a best friend who had the same sense of humor and interests as me. even if i had no “real” friends, it felt like, maybe, he would like me. if we were closer in age and knew each other in person, maybe he’d get that i’m weird and different and it would be okay.

unlike most of my other interests or infatuations, all throughout high school, as i suffered through puberty and being put in long sparkly dresses and being told that i wasn’t feminine enough and the few times i spoke were too much and i was too loud and annoying and weird, i always felt like i at least had dan. he didn’t know me, but it was like he did and maybe me being so different wouldn’t be a problem to him -- he might actually like me even if i wasn’t exhausting myself to the core to be the opposite of everything i was denying and hated for. 

i admired him for who he was, even if he wasn’t saying anything particularly deep or meaningful or trying to basically be a role model for a horribly depressed, self-loathing teenager across the world. i wanted to be like him and surround myself with people like him because if nothing else, he seemed like the kind of person who wouldn’t give a fuck if people didn’t like you in school because you didn’t fit their expectation of normal.

i’m not yet ready to unpack all of this -- maybe one day i will -- but i don’t think i’d still be here walking around if i hadn’t found his videos and the sense of community and belonging that came with it. by 13, i was already positive i wouldn’t make it to 18 and that there was no point in being alive. especially not if everyone treated me like some disgusting outsider for something i didn’t even understand yet. but feeling like someone got what it was like to exist as me, even if he never explicitly said anything that would indicate this, made me feel like...maybe i could go on. 

by the time i was 18, i was already much older than i’d ever planned on being and absolutely miserable because this thing i was running away from was getting harder to ignore. it only got worse in the following few years as my social circle started to expand and i became more aware of the lgbt community...and how much the people where i live hate this community. even though my mother had never said anything degrading (quite the opposite, actually), there was so much on the outside that made me feel disgusting and wrong for what i was feeling...like i was something broken and unfixable.

by 2019, i was thinking about how i could either force this thing out of me or how i could...stop. to put it lightly. because “pride” and “acceptance” weren’t things that belonged to me or anyone i knew.

and then, like always, there was dan.

his coming out isn’t about anyone but him but i’d be lying if i said i didn’t sob until my head hurt when i watched the video -- even when i got the notification on my phone, i felt lightheaded. not because i was upset, obviously. i was so very happy for him that it was something he shared and wanted to talk about! even when it’s hard and not very happy.

with that, though, was the sense of relief, belonging, and togetherness i always felt when it came to my favorite parasocial relationship, but...amplified by about a hundred. it was almost like...him being true to himself and sharing that with us gave me permission to do the same, in some weird way. he’d never know me or know this, but he’s basically been with me for over half my life, and he really did get it. this person i looked up to, cherished, and effectively came to whenever i was sad or happy or anything in between, was like me. he understood. he wouldn’t hate me for what i am and i could say it to him.

it really does sound so deeply dramatic and soap opera-esque, i’m totally aware. but dan coming out to us helped me come out to myself. it wasn’t immediate, but before the end of the year, i was ready to be honest and admit the thing i’ve been trying to get rid of my entire life. i’m a trans man, and i’m gay. it’s such a simple sentence, but i could never say it even to myself...but somehow, because dan said his truth, i was able to as well.

his later discussions on not having pride and feeling deceptive and inauthentic have rung so true to me on such an insanely deep level, and i know this relationship is really all in my head, but. it’s saved my life, and i think ultimately made me a better person.

if i could, i’d invite him to my law school graduation or even my (maybe someday) wedding. crazy? yes. true? also yes! ( @danielhowell my graduation is may 2024 if you’re interested )

due to the amazing best friend i have, i was able to meet him in seattle last night and see him on his tour. i burst into tears as soon as we made eye contact. he hugged me and called me cute and thanked me for coming and being his fan and even complimented the stupid washi tape design i put on the envelope i handed him because i noticed a smudge on it ten minutes before i had to leave the hotel room and didn’t want him to see it and it was such a quick interaction, probably routine for him at this point, but my hands were shaking for about two hours after the whole ordeal.

he even drew me a few things for a tattoo i’m getting in january! 

seeing him in person and getting to tell him that he’s important to me was honestly...probably the best few moments of my life. the entire show was definitely the most fun i’ve ever had (and the emotional whiplash near the end...if you know, you know), and i know in 11 more years i’ll be talking about him fondly like he’s an old friend or something because i’m a crazy gay mess.

i don’t know. all in all, i hope he knows that he’s enough exactly the way he is. i’ve always liked him because he’s dan, whatever that means, and him just being dan has made such a hugely positive impact on me and nothing’s taking that away.

so. yeah! i don’t want my face on tumblr but i’m absolutely getting the selfies he took of us printed and framed and once i can get an appointment booked, i’ll have his actual handwriting tattooed on me because i am gay and so thankful for him in every possible way.

#this feels weird and somehow fake deep...i'm not really putting him on a pedestal and i'm aware i don't like... #know him personally and that it's largely my perception of who he is that #has impacted me in this way. just a small disclaimer that i'm not totally delusional! it doesn't mean i can't still care about him though #and overall be thankful for and acknowledge the impact he's had on me #idk why i'm tagging this when no one but me is gonna read it LKJGKJDKLGA

[fictionstuff]

Status: guide used to find materials and best combinations for the board, played through in about 60 hours, did not finish all side quests (about 80%)

Points: 4/5 [3,875]

How many Dragon Ball games are out there? I don’t actually know and neither have I played most of them. I do have this one card battle game for Game Boy and quite a few for the Advance, but I mostly remember Budokai 2 on Game Cube. The game really had me in its clutches when I was much younger. When Kakarot was officially released I watched a playthrough on YouTube and thought it was already pretty cool, but knowing I had gained quite a few in my community on twitch just because I’ve been weebing with Naruto games, I had to give Kakarot a try and damn, I was enjoying it immensely.

The anime is still making me feel all this nostalgia, I’d probably even give it a rewatch in the future and I think it is exactly this feeling, that most felt upon touching Kakarot and this may also be only catering towards DB fans in general. Apart from that Kakarot adapts the main story rather faithfully and might even help to get more people interested in DB. Rather than being simply Budokaitastic, Kakarot could be placed in the (J)RPG genre, given it tells a story about saving the world, offers world exploration, makes you gather materials and gives you tons of sidequests. The only thing that reminds you of the Budokai or Fighter games is merely the combat system which is quite easy to grasp, even for a simpleton like me.

I would also like to mention that the score of 4.25 is simply due to me enjoying the game immensely. I’d not like to put Kakarot into comparison with other games I’ve played this year, because while it is very well done, I’d like for it to be compared to games of the same genre. Comparing tomatoes and apples just doesn’t work for me, because while I enjoy both, I wouldn’t necessarily say that one is superior to the other.

Artwork/Design - 3.75/5

Kakarot features the usual CGI style of many Budokai games - which i have come to accept and halfway appreciate (in contrast to the usual anime style) but beyond that Kakarot creates a faithful world of a beloved franchise. While it may not be as good as other anime styled games out there, for example Tales of Arise, Scarlet Nexus or even NieR Replicant (the remaster), it features a variety of nicely looking landscapes reaching from forests, to mountains covered in snow or big cities which all will make you feel a big nostalgic, probably. I at least felt like that when Kakarot presented the DB world to me, along with planet Namek or God’s place.

While I’ll never completely warm up to the CGI style, Kakarot looks quite gorgeous and might make you want to explore the bright and colourful landscapes.

Story/Combat System - 4/5

I don’t think there’s a huge need to go over Dragon Ball’s story, other than mentioning that a hero from an alien race (Saiyan) who arrives on earth saves it from multiple disasters and villains. I’ve always loved Dragon Ball and its story and that will never change. Akira Toriyama has created something timeless and wonderful, that always warps me back to my days when I was still a child.

Kakarot - in comparison to other DB games - delivers the full DBZ story while giving you an enhanced big world to explore and collectibles to gather. It more or less dived into the RPG world in my opinion. It was quite an experience to see the entire map and now actually have an idea of where the different locations on the world map are. I’ve never truly asked myself that while watching the anime or playing the other DB games. Kakarot diverted from the path of simply being a fighting game and I can only say that this decision was a splendid one.

At the core are the different cutscenes and battles nonetheless, which lets you experience each fighter's skill sets, which you can max out by collecting orbs on the world map or through collecting certain balls which you can use in training points. So rather than just going from battle to battle, it is recommended to actually explore the world to build up your fighters.

Overall Kakarot is overflowing with love for the source material and I can only say that Bandai Namco has done a great job at creating an anime game which is faithful to the main story while also letting you explore a vaste map with more or perhaps less interesting side quests, gathering materials to update your car for races or just walking through the cities to talk to people.

It's therefore a mix of a fighting and semi-open world game, because while the different maps are quite big, it doesn’t take long to fly from one point to another and all the different maps aren’t exactly connected either (fast travelling is a good option anyhow).

The combat system is probably something Budokai players are used to. I’ve liked it quite a bit: gathering power (ki) to make special attacks, flying up and down or running across the field, defending or going in with physical attacks, laser beams etc. It’s not exactly a button smash combat system cause most of the bosses have attack patterns, so it would be advised to watch your enemy closely instead of pressing every available button. Nonetheless I can say that it wasn’t too hard to achieve most S Ranks. That, by the way, always made me feel kinda accomplished, not gonna lie.

If you’re only interested in the main story, you may also just use items and give no fuck about rankings as the game lets you advance, no matter how good your fight was. I didn’t achieve S-Ranks everywhere since I wasn’t in the mood to re-do fights, but even on the first try I achieved about 80% S-Ranks.

If you are really good, you might even get special battle end animations which are banger and leave you feeling quite satisfied with yourself. Needless to say, I might have triggered that about 2 times in like 30 battles? 

If you keep on battling and fulfilling sidequests, you’re also rewarded with badges of certain characters which you can place on different boards to trigger different effects. You can build them towards whatever you like: boosting your battle strength, finding better materials, upgrading your machines etc etc. Kakarot offers you freedom to play the game however you like, which is truly amazing. Collecting orbs lets you upgrade your skills and Z-Orbs make you learn new skills, hence - as I have mentioned - it’s not unrewarding to explore the big map.

If you fall in love with Kakarot as I did, you’ll easily be spending 60 hours on this, trying to get most S-Ranks, gathering materials to do the car races (yeah, I really loved doing them!) and finishing up most of the sidequests. Sidequests were perhaps the most boring things to finish. There was seriously just one quest that was enjoyable and showed us another side of the characters (yeah, the yamcha one). If we had more of those, it might have been actually rewarding to take them on. Let me mention though that doing them is not mandatory, they hardly give you experience points anyhow. Also while exploring can be cool, having enemies drop on you every 5 seconds is horrible, especially when they drop absolutely nothing worthwhile and merely disturb you while you’re searching for materials or orbs. Other nice activities include a baseball mini game, car races and fishing. Quite a welcoming refresh to doing your usual grinding.

They could have also put some more attention on side characters, since you’ll mostly be playing Goku, Gohan, Vegeta or Piccolo. Everyone else remains mostly behind, especially level wise. Despite that throughout the story each character has a moment to shine, which is more thanks to the original story rather than the game, but since it is one and the same here, I felt like mentioning it.

I would probably also enjoy a game like this for DB and/or DB GT/Super and since enjoyment is my utmost priority while gaming, I’ve given Kakarot solid 4.25 points.

Enjoyment - 5/5

#review #game review