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jokeroutsubs · 4 months

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ENG translation: If we believed that we were "kings", that wouldn't be us

An interview with Bojan Cvjetićanin for Slovenian newspaper Delo, originally published on 24.12.2023. Audio version by IG GBoleyn123

Original article is available here for Delo subscribers. Original article written by Lucijan Zalokar for Delo; photos by Jože Suhadolnik; English translation by a member of Joker Out Subs, native proof reading by IG GBoleyn123.

If you repost quotes from the interview, please link back to this post! And if you repost the photos, do not crop out the photographer credit.

With Bojan Cvjetićanin about the international breakthrough of Joker Out, the movie Kaj pa Ester?, about life on the road, football, sociology…

I met up with Bojan Cvjetićanin in Ljubljana's Stegne industrial zone, where the members of the popular pop rock (in their jargon: shagadelic rock'n'roll) group Joker Out created a rehearsal space for themselves two years ago. "Lately we've been on the road a lot, but this is still a great second home. If only you knew about the parties that happened here. There were fifty people dancing downstairs," he proudly looked from a small gallery towards the space that measures approximately thirty square metres. Even though the clock had just struck three in the afternoon, the 24-year-old Ljubljana resident had a long day behind him, which had been entirely dedicated to media obligations.

In journalistic circles, we often hear indignation about how modern day influencers - especially those who had gained their influence on social media - have no books on their shelves. Joker Out are first and foremost musicians, of course, but with 150,000 followers (Bojan's personal profile has 190,000) on Instagram, we can count them among the big Slovenian influencers. And there are plenty of books on their shelves.

I don't want to falsely portray the popular fivesome as enlightened donors to the Slovenian literary market: most of the books resemble those you can buy for little money in second-hand bookshops, or even get for free at library write-offs, but they still deserve praise for both the aesthetic sense and the content.

I also don't want to falsely portray the books as the only notable objects in the rehearsal space. There are also the golden plate for the Eurovision single Carpe Diem, which got over two million streams in Finland, a transfusion bag (Rh-) that Tomi Meglič¹, Cvjetićanin's biggest teenage idol, personally brought to them, and a small shop's worth of props given to them by fans: pillows with hand-embroidered patterns, plushies, bras with Instagram accounts written on them, various sweets, you could even find a vinyl from a Soviet cover band of The Beatles. If things continue like that, they soon won't have any space left for instruments, but those are just sweet worries. Joker Out, who were formed in 2016, are currently conquering Europe in a way that the Slovenian music scene has never seen before.

¹frontman of Siddharta, whose third album was called Rh-

I've heard that you approach your job with the utmost professionalism and that you wake up at five in the morning for media obligations.

That's true, today we started early in the morning in Maribor. The first few hours were the most tiring because we were constantly changing locations and driving around the city. After the third or fourth activity, we relaxed a little because we got to the studio. After that, everyone started coming to us instead of the other way around.

Slovenian cinemas have started playing the movie Kaj pa Ester? in which you play a boy who enrolled in high school just to get close to his ex girlfriend again. Did you have any problems with trying to get into the high school mentality?

We filmed the movie two years ago, when my memories of high school were much more fresh than they are today. But on the other hand, I played a boy who had just finished the ninth grade of primary school, so I had to put myself into the shoes of a primary school kid, which is much harder. We're also pretty different personality-wise. But almost the entire cast was around the same age, so too old. We joked about that a lot during filming.

Still, that's nothing unusual in the movie world.

Of course, there are 35-year-olds starring in High School Musical and no one is complaining.

Could you draw any parallels between a musical stage performance and filming a movie? You have to play a kind of role during a concert too...

I have to admit that it's completely different. On stage, I never feel like I'm performing. Of course I am actually performing, but I'm still in the role of myself, Bojan, whereas in the movie, I'm someone completely different. It might be easier to compare filming a movie with recording music in the studio, but there are big differences there as well. The biggest one is that for a movie, the director has the main and the final say. You have to trust him. When you film a scene, you don't even see what you've filmed for a long time. The movie in which I play one of the main roles will be played in cinemas, and I don't even know what I will look like on the big screen. It's different with music, because us authors listen to the songs a hundred times, a thousand times; we're the ones who make all the final decisions. That's quite a mental leap, but I didn't have too many problems with it, because I knew the previous projects of that team. V dvoje ('In a tandem') is my favourite Slovenian TV series. On the other hand, I needed time to get used to this new method of working. If I asked to see the scene we'd filmed one more time, but the director said it was good, we kept filming without hesitation.

You said that on stage, you are always in the role of yourself. Does the nature of that role change from concert to concert? And what influences it? The audience, the outfit…

The outfit has an influence for sure. More than I initially thought. Lately we've been playing with our stage look a lot and looking for the right combination. I currently find that the outfit suits me very well, it's just the shoes that bother me because they're too rigid. I have to change them. They're huge and massive, which makes me feel like I'm clumsily marching around the stage, whereas during rehearsals I wear sneakers and I'm therefore a lot more in the mood for dancing.

What about the language you sing in? Many people say that they feel as if by switching between different languages, they are also switching between their personalities.

I agree. When you change the language, your voice has a different colour and register, you come up with different jokes than in your mother tongue. If I lead a concert in Slovenian, Serbian, or English, I'm a different dude every time. This is also influenced by my notion that each time, I'm performing for a different group of people who are connected by a certain mentality. In Slovenia, I'm performing as a local for locals, and I feel like there are different "game rules" than for example in Croatia or Serbia. Elsewhere, I feel like I don't even think about this.

How did you get the idea to start creating and singing in English? You already broke through internationally with Slovenian.

Us creating in foreign languages isn't so much a result of wanting to break through internationally and the mentality that only English ensures global success. If we thought that way, we wouldn't have gone to Eurovision with a Slovenian song. We're primarily driven by a desire to learn new things, to push the boundaries... In the studio, it's similar to being on the stage. If you change the language, you're not only a different person on stage, but also inside your head. Your creativity is different. Playing with languages is actually also playing with your own creativity, because you enter a different space, a different mentality. The song Sunny Side of London could not have been made if we hadn't mentally transported ourselves to an English-speaking space. We want many more projects like that, not necessarily in English.

Can you be more specific? What kind of mentality do you associate Sunny Side of London with?

That song is a sort of homage to all the people who have suddenly become part of our story. Sunny Side of London has nothing to do with London as such. I was looking for a name of a well-known place with which to name all our concerts, and I decided on London.

The first time I said the words Are you guys real? – Is this really happening, are you really here and singing our songs? – on the stage, certain English phrases snuck into my mind. What the hell is going on? and so on. We also experienced, for the first time, foreigners coming up to us and talking about their own experiences connected to our music. That was something completely new for us. We listened to all those stories in English, as our fans of course can't speak Slovenian, even though they can sing our Slovenian lyrics. Sunny Side of London therefore emerged as a collection of all the experiences and stories that fans told us after gigs.

You've already touched on fans who sing your lyrics by heart from Finland to Spain. Could you highlight the nation with the best ear for the Slovenian language?

On the latest tour, when we visited Lithuania, Poland, Czechia and Croatia, there were moments when I felt like I was singing in Slovenia. In Prague, I filmed the audience singing Umazane misli without me. As if I were in Križanke, for example. But it's even more fascinating that people sing well in England and Nordic countries too. It's understandable that our Slavic brothers have the best ear for Slovenian, but northerners aren't far off either.

How much of your international success do you attribute to the Eurovision performance?

A huge amount.

If you had to express it in a percentage?

99.9.

Really?

Definitely. It was an incredible catapult. Whenever I ask the audience at our international concerts if anyone was already with us before Eurovision, a few hands shoot up every time, but those are rare exceptions.

How do you explain the fact that you finished in the relatively humble 21st place in Liverpool, but your visibility still grew in leaps and bounds?

We were very, very, very dedicated to the Eurovision project. We put a lot of time and energy into demonstrating to the people who were open to it that we weren't just a three-minute performance, but very much an existing band that has made many songs and that lives on stage. With time, and of course in connection with the Eurovision performance, more and more listeners got to know that. We clearly showed them: we are here, we are real, try it, connect with us.

Because they had so much different content available, this actually happened. I think it was also because they saw that Joker Out really was made out of five completely regular dudes from Slovenia who live a totally normal life, and at the same time we make music and have a great time doing it. That is already a slight deviation from what's been happening recently, when we're being bombarded from all sides by messages that we need to distance ourselves from each other, that we have to hate each other...

That was the sociologist in you talking.

That's true. The atmosphere in society nowadays is such that it emphasises individuality more than building a team. Young people, however, need and want to be part of a community. And we offered them that chance.

Where does your interest in social sciences come from? Your father is a gynecologist, your mother a pediatrician, and you have a degree in sociology.

I had a very good professor in high school. If you wanted to listen to him, he offered a lot of knowledge. Even though sociologists often think about society in an abstract way, the subject always felt tangible to me. I recognised it in very concrete life situations that I was trying to understand. At my final exams, I did a great job with sociology with very little effort – and then made a mistake and enrolled in economics. I wavered between those two options from the start, and in the end, what tipped the scales were the warnings of many people I knew that sociology doesn't have good employment prospects. I gave in to the pressure and very quickly realised I had made the wrong decision. I gave up on economics after the first semester. That was when I seriously threw myself into the band, we made Gola, and then I transferred to sociology and there was happiness all around.

You clearly won't work as a sociologist for a while yet, if ever...

But I am a sociologist.

In your soul?

No, as my profession. Us musicians are sociologists. A lot of sociological terms could easily be transferred into our environment. Locale, for example. In third year, the professor asked me several times: Well, Cvjetićanin, if you have a concert, is that locale or something else? And then I said it was locale and started rambling on. (laughter)

So you are a singing sociologist?

Exactly.

How do you explain the success of Joker Out from a sociological point of view? How do your songs address the zeitgeist?

I write the lyrics exclusively based on stories that really happened. Not necessarily to me, but to people I love. Therefore, I have a strong emotional relationship with the subject matter. My opinion is that there will always be people who will connect with the story if it's real. Because it's easiest for us to connect with real emotions. Our songs are love songs, they talk about finding yourself and personal growth, some are socially critical... I think that I have managed to find the right balance between being direct and being poetic.

I'll word it differently. The Beatles already sang about love and personal growth. And they weren't the first ones by far. Later on, those same themes were covered by hundreds of successful bands and an infinite number of slightly less successful ones.

I think that nowadays, we most often associate societal changes with technological development. Technological advances largely dictate the rhythm of our life. But those advances are mostly just a substitute for something that already existed in the past. The basic emotions have therefore certainly stayed the same. Love, fear, hatred... I think that the use of language is very important here. Even though the emotions don't change, the way we put them into words does. In music, too. I don't sing about a topic the same way my peers would have in the 1970s. Consequentially, our relationship with emotions is changing and evolving as well. As if our entire society is gravitating towards the point of holding the belief that it's better for an individual to feel less and less, and in a more and more censored way.

On the one hand, excessive use of social media and other media causes us to feel like distinct individuals. On the other hand, it connects us to the world and places us into a very wide picture. In every moment, we are only a click away from becoming cosmopolitan and being able to access all the information, events, and people, but at the same time, that's exactly what reminds us that we are a small and actually not very important dot on this planet. The magnitude of everything that's constantly available to us makes us feel small. I think that we mostly listen to, watch, and use those who manage to poke the spot that unnerves people the most in this context. If performers manage to break through the firewall of someone's VPN, then those people will also show their interest in an analogue way. Otherwise, they will only be a swipe away.

And now a question that's more psychological than sociological: do you ever try to get into the heads of the people who time and again show their interest in very analogue ways?

I have an infinite appreciation for their dedication, because for myself, I don't see the chance of a phenomenon exciting me so much that I would be ready to dedicate so much time and love to it.

So you've never been a very hardcore fan?

If, at twelve years old, I had to highlight one musicians that I would've wanted to meet more than anyone in the world, that would definitely have been Tomi Meglič. That hasn't changed to this day. The only difference is that we meet up with Tomi and we're friends. I still feel the highest possible level of respect for him. Every time he calls me, I am extremely proud of myself. But I still cannot imagine going to, say, Berlin tomorrow if Siddharta were playing there and I had a free day. I'd go to Maribor or Zagreb, but absolutely not across all of Europe the way the biggest fans do. Not even at twelve. I could sooner imagine that at that age, a football match rather than a concert would be the thing that excited me beyond all reason.

We're probably talking about two groups of celebrities that get worshipped as deities by the masses in Western society: footballers and pop and rock musicians. And this is probably linked to emotions again.

True. The thing that wakes up a person's sense of smell, sight, and all other emotions that overcame them as a child, is what has the best possibility of succeeding.

Now please explain how this is connected to football.

If I go to a concert by Siddharta, Big Foot Mama, Magnifico, I turn into a ten-year-old kid who will explode from happiness. There's no Bojan anymore. He gets lost. It's the same with football. When I watch it, I dream about how I played for Slovan² as a kid and what I wanted more than anything was to score a goal and for everyone in the stands to yell: Yeeeees!

²ND Slovan is a football club from Ljubljana

You don't score goals, but you are in a similar position that Tomi Meglič used to be in.

All the band members come from very loving families that have always provided us with a very good support system and instilled basic values in us that we internalised deeply. That is why everything that's currently happening around us hasn't gone to our heads in a way that would make us think that we're bigger or more important than anyone else. If we started believing that we were "kings" because everyone was clapping for us and singing our songs, that would probably be a very strong feeling, but that simply wouldn't be us. We mostly love to see all the people, because we know how much we mean to them and how much they mean to us. Without them, we wouldn't be able to focus on what's most important to us – our music. On the other hand, I can say with a thousand percent certainty that I would easily and happily do my job if I was performing at venues like Cankarjev dom. So, in front of a calmer audience, without unreal hype.

But what I would like most in the world is to turn into a footballer for ten seconds and score a goal at an important match. You know why? Because that is the biggest adrenaline hit that exists. When we perform on various stages, there's mayhem around us for two hours straight. But in football, when a goal is scored, that happens in a millisecond. You go from nothing into total chaos. Everyone loses their minds. I'd love to experience that. Well, I did – much like everyone who played football in primary school. When I scored a goal for Slovan and a hundred people in the stands clapped for me, I felt like I was on Maracanã. Imagine what it would be like to experience that on the real Maracanã.

It's interesting that you highlighted a loving and stable family background. Many of the biggest pop and rock stars in the world grew up in a diametrally opposite environment. From John Lennon and Janis Joplin to Prince and Rihanna. There are actually so many of them that we can talk about a pattern.

I know, because I love to read their (auto)biographies, and I agree with your assessment that their family circumstances are fundamentally different than ours. That is always my answer to the question when someone wants to know how debauched our tours are. When I tell them that we mostly drink water and tea on the road, they just can't believe it. But it's the truth, because we've realised three things. First, we enjoy what we do immensely, and from the experiences of many musicians, we know that you can almost definitely forget about a long career if you start doing everything that we perceive as the proverbial rock'n'roll lifestyle. A band like that breaks up sooner or later, either because of frayed nerves, or exploding egos, or because of money. Second, we've all had to go to work hungover and we know very well that it's unbearable. I especially can't imagine how we could stay healthy and keep our strength and our voice if we were constantly hungover on the road. In that case, the only short-term solution is drugs, which we fortunately [knocks on wood] don't do. And third: I'm sure that you have a much better time on stage if you're aware that you are on it.

Your international breakthrough doesn't have a precedent among Slovenian musicians. Would you dare to point out where the difference is, why you made it and not for example Siddharta, who had filled Bežigrad stadium and later did not hide their international ambitions?

We have to understand that Siddharta didn't have the chance to perform at a festival like Eurovision. It's hard to understand what it means for 160 million people to watch you. That is a bizzarely huge number. All this happened in the time of social media, and we had set up a pretty good mechanism in that area even before Eurovision, and then also used it, whereas Siddharta established itself as a band in the time of analogue media. I can't even imagine how it would've been possible to break through abroad from Slovenia at that time. Because even we are already – even though some things have opened up for us very nicely and we've been joined by the right people – finding out how much of an investment going international demands. Dreams of megalomanical earnings and a luxurious life brought on by a European tour shatter quickly. Even when you start filling up venues, you stay in a kind of hustle mode. You fight. Unfortunately, the costs in the music business are so high that performing abroad is more or less just for promotion for a long time.

You're probably thinking of logistical costs?

Yes. Some of my colleagues have total misconceptions about our earnings. They think that we're literally swimming in money, while we actually earn what amounts to a normal salary.

In March next year you will have eighteen concerts. You will start in Helsinki and end in Milan. How will you travel?

With a tour bus. We've rented it twice so far: for the UK tour and for the tour around Lithuania, Poland, and Czechia. There are beds on it, so we can sleep while driving from one concert to the next. The tourbus is prohibitively expensive, you pay almost half of your royalties for it, but it's the only way for a musician with such a packed schedule to survive in the long run. Sometimes people ask me why we don't travel with a van instead, but you have to understand that we sometimes have concerts two days in a row and the venues are 800 kilometres apart. If we spent all night in an uncomfortable van, then looked for a hotel in the morning and so on, we might be able to endure it for a week, but definitely not all month.

Do you ever sleep in a hotel?

Only on free days.

Will the March tour be your most exhausting one so far?

It will definitely be one of the more exhausting ones, but I am definitely happy that we will be able to sleep on a tour bus. We haven't been on a month-long tour yet, so it's hard to predict anything, but on the Nordic tour this year we played six concerts in five days, because we had two concerts in one day in Helsinki. We didn't have a tour bus there, we flew instead. That meant that after the concert, we got to the hotel at midnight, then we had to be at the airport at three in the morning, a few hours later we were already at the new location, we napped for two hours on a couch, had a soundcheck – rinse and repeat for five days in a row.

Let's not talk only about the negative sides of tours…

Of course. I love sleeping on the bus! I fall asleep like a baby who's being taken for a walk in a stroller. I can't sleep more than nine or ten hours in my bed at home, on a tour bus I easily get twelve hours. Maybe it's because it's constantly shaking a little. The other guys also sleep very well on the road.

But the most magical thing on tours is when I visit a city for the first time just because we have a gig there. That seems unimaginable to me. To meet new people, wonderful fans, to bond as a band, experience new, funny situations, to bring home a bunch of new inside jokes and incredible gifts that fans have made themselves. [Points towards a hand-embroidered pillow in the part of the studio where they keep the gifts.]

Elite athletes often lament that it's true that they compete all over the world, but they often only see the airport, the hotel, and the sports venue.

It's similar for us. When we travel with a bus, we only see the venue. If we happen to have a free day, we walk around the city, but we definitely don't visit all kinds of tourist attractions as some people might wrongly imagine. When we go to Paris, we definitely won't go to the Louvre, and we will see the Eiffel tower through the bus window if everything goes well.

But you meet a lot of interesting people.

That's true. I find it the most fascinating if we meet fans when we don't expect them at all. In a restaurant, on a plane… When we were flying to Poland, it turned out that one of the flight attendants was a big fan of ours. She told us that she was going to three of our concerts and brought us champagne and a model of a Lot Polish Airlines plane.

I was even more surprised in Helsinki. I went to some kind of dark club that had a techno music party. Suddenly I was approached by three people, two guys and one girl, and they told me that they were our fans and that they couldn't believe that they met me in that club. I also couldn't believe that people recognised me in the middle of Helsinki. What's going on?!

In the summer, you took a step back from Instagram for a while. What brought you to that decision?

Many things. I felt creatively empty. I also, for the first time in my life, experienced the internet – not just Slovenian, but global – being completely oversaturated with me. That started negatively pressuring me and eating me up. I thought about it a lot, and the first time I asked myself whether I'd be less Bojan Cvjetićanin if I didn't have an Instagram profile, I turned it off. Immediately after that, I wrote three songs; I felt as if I had cleaned up some of the mess that had built up recently. I returned to social media some time ago; with much healthier habits than before, I think.

How do you see social media? As a space for playfulness, for promotion, part of the job, part of private life?

I think that at the time when they started killing me, I perceived them too professionally. I had a feeling that Instagram was a platform through which I had to achieve all sorts of things. Lately, I prefer to joke around more.

If you repost quotes from the interview, please link back to this post! And if you repost the photos, do not crop out the photographer credit.

#bojan cvjetićanin #bojan cvjeticanin #joker out #Spotify

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gloomwitchwrites · 5 months

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vellichorom · 1 year

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Hello! I’m new to the Stanley Parable fandom (as in 3 days ago oop) and I’ve heard about the Narratorverse? I’m confused as to what that is. (Also, if you have any advice of people to follow in this fandom, I’m all ears!)

WELL WELL WELL! allow me to welcome you to the fandom & introduce you to it's most recent development ( as the technical hand in it's creation & persistence(?) )! may you enjoy it AND your stay here, there's PLENTY to consume & a little something for everyone, i think!

now, into the narratorverse;

TDLR; the Narratorverse is this idea that every Narrator / alternative TSP design exist in a multiverse & frequently mingle with each other in Tumblr & Discord events.

however, below is where I've compiled EVERY detail & piece of history to this monster in the fandom, so feel free to dive below & educate yourself thoroughly.

otherwise! i'm not really good at just Offering people to follow, as everybody brings something to the table & I hate to risk forgetting / neglecting one user over another, so I HAPPILY encourage other TSP artists to reblog this & promote themselves! ALSO! just dig through the tag long enough & you'll find TONS of amazing artists & creators to follow ( avoid rh/ad/ko like the plague ), I promise it's worth the treck!

Narratorverse Expansive Lore You Can Slap On a Wiki Below;

for the best experience, please read this to yourself in a generic " youtuber introduces & reviews niche topic " voice,

" the Narratorverse, " ALSO known as " the Paraverse " is an "AU" / fandom-wide concept in which every & all personal iteration of The Stanley Parable ( with a heavy focus on the designs of the Narrator ) from the fandom co-exist & mingle in a big, expansive multiverse.

if I'm not mistaken, this OFFICIALLY got started when the tumblr poll function started getting incorporated onto the site & @tsp-narrator-ask would grab up a handful of individual Narrator designs to feature in a " Sexiest Narrator " competition, where - of course, the fandom & any tumblr user alike could vote for their respective favorite design or whichever they found "sexiest" ( loosely ).

this whole competition inspired some participants of the competition ( including yours truly ) to make in-character commentary art, featuring their Narrator reacting to their BEING in the competition or otherwise campaigning for themselves not to lose / the aftermath of their losing; a lot of which would include their Narrator being thrown into some cruel & unusual punishment by the host of the competition. for le giggles. ( the latter linked post is the reason why MY narrator is referred to as Salad Boy, )

with the door open for it, this would spark some MORE drawn, in-character commentary, featuring contestants of the Sexyman Competition-- & even just anyone with a Narrator design who wanted to participate in the shenanigans, all gathered together like this competition & everything involved with it was this big party/event they were all called from their creators to get in on.

a lot of this commentary was featured in MASS REBLOGS, with everyone adding a little response to one's post; the main ones being THIS one, & the Unfathomably Popular Salad Thread, the latter of which, not to pat myself on the back for starting it, but I think REALLY popularized the concept of the " Narrator Multiverse, " & would lead things to escalate FAR beyond the initial Sexyman Competition.

NOW, there's an official Narratorverse / Paraverse roleplay / hangout server that features many ( if not everyone ) featured in these threads, there's other TSP servers that carry the lore & relationships from these events, & there's been a trend instilled of other, similar mass reblog threads that keep with the continuity of the last ones, but also branch out to expand on multiversal shenanigans with everyone allowed to participate.

-such as @blackkatdraws's Gluetrap Thread, the aftermath of THAT, this smaller " thread " featuring my arrator finding @tsp-narrator-ask's kid, & I think there might have even been a few started with the recently held Narratorverse Hunger Games that I just can't account for / didn't get to keep up with.

ALL OF THESE OBVIOUSLY tying into & ONLY adding onto the idea of this multiverse of Narrators & Stanley Parable alternatives alike & popularizing it into this own little delectable square of the fandom in which the community can really come together for some utmost silliness OR actual worldbuilding, given everyone in-character & out of character gets to reflect on every alternative interpretation of the game we're ALL here for.

& that's just about the full " history " of what this whole Narratorverse / Paraverse is! feel free to hop the bandwagon yourself!

who knows, your alternative interpretations could be what the fandom follow next!

#anonymous #inbox #ALSO inviting fellow TSP artists to reblog & infodump #ALONG WITH PROMOTING THEMSELVES #The Stanley Parable #The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe #TSP #YEAH HI don't ask me things because I'm liable to infodump everything i know about it

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new-revenant · 1 year

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DP/DC Week Day 2 - Mistaken Identity

This is built off of my last post for yesterday’s prompt, in which Danny is on the run from the GIW and came to Gotham for what he assumed was a small amount of time. Unfortunately, he sensed the Pit in the Batcave and now he’s sorta mostly alive now. And the Red Hood thinks he’s his clone.

“I swear I’m not a clone Mister Red Hood,” Danny pleaded. He had been saying the same thing for a few minutes now, and Red Hood still didn’t believe him.

“Oh yeah, how did you know how to get here then?” RH questioned.

“I dunno! I uh, sensed this weird…thing-I think it was this funky pit-and jumped in it. Yeah.”

“First of all, that sounds stupid.”

“Well I’m stupid.”

“Second of all, you still didn’t answer my question. Third of all, why are you wearing…whatever you’re wearing. It looks like you came freshly from whatever test tube made you.”

Danny looked down at his outfit. “Yeah you have a point there. And I uh, I was a ghost that died in a um…horrific electrical accident and this pit brought me back to life.”

“Sure you did. Now-“ Jason pulled out his gun, “-Tell me how you got here, or you’ll be a ghost long before the Bats get back.”

Well Danny was in a pickle. So he decided that he would just say the first thing that came to mind, since it worked so well the first time.

“I’m on the run from the government so I found this natural portal and it dumped me out here.”

“…The hell is a “natural” portal?”

“They appear whenever there’s an excess amount of ambient ectoplasm concentrated in a small area.”

“Okay, that makes sense. I think.” RH said as he finally put his gun away, “Well then mini-me, wanna steal the tires from the Batmobile?”

“Fuck yeah I do.”

“That’s my clone!”

“Don’t call me that.”

——

Tim was tired. Him, Batman, Robin, and Orphan had to leave in a hurry to stop the sudden appearance of Gentleman Ghost showing up and teaming up with Bane of all villains. GG managed to give him something akin to Venom in appearance, but was apparently much safer for Bane, and for more dangerous to everyone else who had to fight Bane. Almost had to call the league for help.

Not to mention the Batmobile just decided to not work so they had to grapple and run over to where they were. Probably GG’s doing or something.

Speaking of Batmobile, when they all returned to the Batcave, they noticed that all of it’s tires was gone. And they all knew who would steal the bat-tires.

“Jason,” Tim groaned as the group headed to the Batcomputer. Jason was leaning on it, helmet off, looking as smug as ever. Next to him was the four tires all stacked on top of each other.

“Heya Timbo. Heya B. Child. Hey Cass,” Jason smirked, “You know I just couldn’t resist taking the bat-tires.”

“Jason,” Batman glared at him, “Did you come here for a reason other than stealing the tires?”

“Tt. Knowing Todd, probably not,” Damian sneered.

“Kid’s right, I just wanted to steal the tires.”

The others sighed. Cass went over to collect the tires, but before she could grab one, someone jumped out of the stack.

“Hello!” The person-who was definitely at least a young teen-shouted. The Bats readied up to attack this intruder, before Jason bursted out into laughter.

“C-come on kid, was ‘hello’ the best you got? I thought we decided on saying ‘boo’ or something like that.”

“My mind blanked okay? How about you go kick your teeth in?” The intruder said.

Looking closer, it was obvious to see a connection between Jason and the child.

“Did you get cloned?!” Tim questioned. “How-why-Is this why you came?”

The two skunk-haired trouble makers looked at each other.

“Sure.”

“Totally.”

“Who cloned you?” Batman asked.

“The government.”

Damian also had a good question, “Todd, why would you bring a clone of you into the Batcave?”

“Oh, he didn’t bring me, I went through a portal and climbed out of that green pit over there,” the kid said.

“The Lazarus Pit, you mean,” Batman said.

“I forgot we had that,” Tim muttered.

“Yeah, so apparently ambient ectoplasm or whatever can like, condensed in one place and create a portal, or something, I don’t fucking know ask him,” Jason jutted his thumb over to the kid. The others looked at him expectingly.

“So…have you ever heard of the GIW?” The kid asked, “They wear white suits and stop people from learning about the existence of ghosts?”

Tim instantly went over to the Batcomputer to look for information about the GIW.

“Tell us more,” Batman requested.

“Well their like, this secret government group that experiments on ghost and they thought the uh, pits had something to do with ectoplasm. Including this guy-“ he pointed to Jason, “-he’s obviously some sort of undead to anyone with enough knowledge of ectoplasmic life forms-yes I know that sounds like an oxymoron fuck you-so you can probably connect the dots from there if your as smart as people say you are B.”

Tim stopped his search for a moment to look over at the clone. He had a similar smug look to Jason, but something was off. Something about him was…unnatural? Uncanny? Whatever it was, Tim wanted to look away from him and never look back.

Focusing back on his search, nothing was coming up for the GIW. Batman and Damian joined him, while Cass helped the kid get out of the tire stack.

“So, or we going to call the kid mini-Jason or?” Tim asked, bring quickly cut off by said kid.

“Call me mini again and I’ll bite you. Also, is it true that when Batman first met Jason he was stealing the Batmoblie’s tires? Cause that funny if it is true.”

“It true,” Batman answered.

“That’s cool-also can I have one of those batarangs? They seem-“

“No.”

“Can I have-“

“No.”

“Aw come on! You didn’t even let me finish my sentence.”

“Ah don’t worry kid, I get you one of those batarangs,” Jason patted him on the back. The kid eyes lit up in excitement.

“Really?”

“No,” everyone-sans Jason and Cass-said at once.

“Aw man.“

Batman pulled away from the computer, “I’m going to contact all the magic users I can. The rest of you-keep the child away from anything important. We don’t know if he could be a spy, or a sleeper agent. Robin, inform me if any attacks occur in Gotham. Orphan, inform the rest about the clone. Red Robin.”

“Yes sir?” He looked over at Batman and desperately tried to not make eye contact with the clone.

“Try to get as much information out of him as possible.”

“What about me? He’s my clone after all,” Jason complained.

“Find him some clothes-and make sure he eats. Goodbye.”

Then he left, with Damian going out to patrol and Cass going out to inform the others. That left Tim, Jason, and Jason’s clone in the Batcave.

“So, I don’t think we settled on this earlier, but what do we call you?” Tim asked the clone. He looked around, as if trying to come up with something based on his surroundings. Finally, he came up with an answer.

“Call me James.”

“Was James really the best name you could come up with?” Jason remarked.

“Was there really a need to be so rude about it?”

And the two started arguing. Tim would love nothing more than to take a nap right now. Alas, he would just have to drink 17 more cups of coffee to deal with this nonsense.

#danny phantom #dp crossover #danny phantom crossover #dp x dc #dpxdc #dp/dc week 2022 #can YOU find all the references? Maybe I don’t really care #revenant makes fanfics

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apollo-cackling · 9 months

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peace and love on planet earth folks can be shockingly mean and unempathetic if the words 'AI' or 'NFT' are attached.

like not that those things aren't materially harmful but the hate I see for them on here doesn't feel like it's bc of how those things are materially harmful and are just bc folks want an acceptable target to bully

#and with individual people who have done material harm too like yes that harm deserves opposing #but a lot of the talk around it feels less about that material harm and just bc folks wanted someone to unperson and hate #my rambles #almost each and every time I've seen this happen I get this feeling like #for example sure you hate terfs but do you care about trans people #idk #rh #this was prompted by that onion headline going around like 'guy who's bad at being a person talking about how ai will be revolutionary'#or whatever #like it's all understanding the reasons for isolation and loneliness and everyone lives at a different pace and queer/isolated/abused folks #often are 'behind' their peers developmentally #and discussing how ideas of being a person is ableist and queerphobic #...until the the word AI is attached and then it's just fuck that time to high school bully these fuckers #and I hate it how folks will tack on 'straight white guy' to figleaf their punching bag it's gross #again not that these things aren't materially bad but the way folks are talking about them is.. yikes #the cognitive dissonance in making a bunch of positivity posts but then turning around and mocking #'guy who's bad at being a person' just bc 'AI' is attached so they're okay to bully #feel like I could turn half the anti AI folks into eugenics advocates if I just sprinkled the word 'AI' here and there #hell the amount of fascist/eugenicist rhetoric I've seen used by people pontificating about nfts/ai/tiktok #feels like folks want to mock people for being pathetic but know that's not socially acceptable so they attach ai/straight white guy/nft/etc #on there so they can feel righteous doing it #brain poison

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edalynn · 5 months

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hii hope you don't mind me asking but why do you hate huntlow?? (genuinely curious) I personaly love the owlhouse and kin hunter and it's one if my favorite ships :0

I was just going to not answer this ask as I feel like I've repeated the many reasons I hate hunt/low in the past, but I realize I've never put it all in one place. I'm going to start by linking some asks or posts of mine that are a smorgasbord of things I or others have pointed out regarding what's wrong with the ship itself for some reference points.

X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X | X

And I'll add my "Hunt/low Trope Bingo Card" that gives us a fun diagram of multiple problematic tropes that Hunt/low falls under

Let me start of with the ship itself. Hunt/low quite literally makes both characters' arcs irrelevant. Willow's entire arc about learning to be confident in herself, overcome her bullying, and be strong for herself and her friends is basically entirely erased when you put her with Hunter. Her whole arc is that for a lack of better words, she saved herself and is her own person. Yes, she had the help of Luz and Gus, and later Amity after they began mending their friendship, but her whole thing was being strong and confident on her own. In concept, giving Willow a pretty boy boyfriend immediately makes her arc less impactful than if she's never paired with anyone in the story, because her story is about her own self growth. Not being saved by having a conventionally attractive boyfriend. And in practice, we actually see it happen. Willow is dumbed down and made insanely out of character in almost the entirety of the third season, particularly in FtF. She's shown multiple times throughout the end of the season (Actually, in S2 as well) needing to be physically saved by Hunter specifically when she's always been shown she can stand up for herself before. And, yes, you could argue that "Willow doesn't always need to be the strong one!", and you'd be right! But the fact that the second she becomes friends with Hunter, the way her character is written changes dramatically. We see her need to be saved over and over, and it is literally only by Hunter. If this wasn't the case, I would agree with that, but unfortunately it's not. Her growth and "revolutionary" strong-on-her-own arc is entirely negated if she is put in a relationship with Hunter.

On the flipside, Hunter's arc is just as equally, if not more, irrelevant. Hunter's arc is also about finding himself and finding a group of people that are his pseudo-family. His growth is his journey to becoming his own person, away from his abusive parental figure. In concept, Hunt/low makes all of Hunter's trauma, abuse, and loss meaningless by falling into the trope of "romantic love heals all", which is both dangerous for young fans who will believe that and a slap in the face for every abuse victim that relate to Hunter. It's like saying that nothing bad he experienced mattered or had any lasting impact, because you give him a strong girlfriend and poof! All the problems go away and are solved! And I shouldn't have to explain why that message is insanely harmful. As with Willow, we see this happen in action as well. Any time there's a nod to Hunt/low in the show, Hunter's trauma immediately doesn't seem to matter. This is shown the clearest when he is literally not allowed to grieve Flapjack's death because it "upsets" Willow and he has to run after her to comfort- and later save- her. The writers actually made it so that Hunter is made to feel guilty for showing sadness about Flap because it made Willow feel like she "can't do anything right", making the entire scene about how he had to save her and put his grieving of Flapjack to the side. I think as an abuse victim, this is the one thing about Hunt/low that makes me the angriest. And to dip my toes into a later point- fan creators that ship Hunt/low also do this in their fanworks. Moringmark is a BIG perpetrator of the Hunter abuse denial rhetoric.

The way they are intended to be written, these two arcs contrast each other, not complement them. It makes no sense for them to be shipped. And further, the context & content we get in the actual show has a staggering lack of depth or intention. Every interaction they have feels out of character and as if their personalities have to be entirely re-worked for them to even interact- and those are just the miniscule amount of times they actually interact. There's almost no actual content for Hunt/low in the show, it's never acknowledged by other characters how they do with Lumity and Raeda, and they literally almost never interact in the show until FtF. There is no logical reason that anyone should assume they were even interested in each other (aside from Hunter's blink-and-you-miss-it blushes) and you could probably count on both hands how many times they actually interacted with each other on screen both before the Day of Unity, and until FtF. And I'd go as far as to say that when they do interact, they barely even act like friends. Willow spends almost the entirety of TtT ignoring Hunter (assumably unintentionally, but they almost never interact and the episode was literally based around Hunter as one of the main characters in it) aside from the hair cutting scene- which contextually made no sense to be done by Willow- and the after-possession scene- also made no sense contextually for him to have his head on Willow's lap. She literally makes fun of him at one point, with Amity being the one to basically say "guys that's mean, Hunter I don't want you to get made fun of by others please change". How does any of that read as a healthy or loving ship? Much less even a friendship. By the time they get to the Human Realm, Willow and Hunter have interacted, what, maybe three times? Once during ASIAS (Where Willow forgives him way faster than she should have for her character, when she literally took months to fully forgive Amity- and Ami didn't kidnap her), Once during LR (Where Willow literally is shown as not caring, liking, or trusting Hunter until he says something that proves he was with Gus), and then on the mission with Luz & co. to rescue Amity leading to the Day of Unity. The ship both in context & in practice completely obliterate not only both characters' arcs as stated above, but also wreck their personalities, making them every other generic girl and boy in a generic m/f ship.

Moving onto the fandom in relation to Hunt/low. Let me set the scene. This show, The Owl House, in and of itself is for a Queer audience. That doesn't mean cishet people cannot enjoy it, but it is a silent "stay in your lane". TOH was REVOLUTIONARY for Queer mainstream media with the main character being the first main character on an animated show by Disney to be openly Queer. Luz is openly bisexual and has a girlfriend! She comes out to her mom! Her adoptive mother, one of the other 3 main characters, ends up in a canon relationship with her Highschool Sweetheart, a nonbinary person, and is ALSO openly bisexual! So why is Hunt/low treated as if it is the "third main ship" on TOH, when it ISN'T EVEN CANON. Why is it treated as if it's on the same level as Lumity and Raeda!? Why are there fanartists and other creators that ONLY draw or write Hunt/low!? It's insulting honestly! And I, as a queer person, am being so dead serious. it's fucking insulting. And the way Hunt/low shippers treat people that don't ship it is disgusting. Their go-to defense tends to be "Crying Wolf", or claiming any kind of "-phobia" they can to make their ship seem "more valid". You have no idea the amount of times I and my mutuals have been called "biphobic" or "fatphobic" or any number of other insults. When more often than not, It's Hunt/low shippers that I see ignoring Hunter's bisexuality, or worse, disparaging people for shipping Hunter in a mlm relationship. Or worse- saying certain ships (Huntric/Goldric) are inc/estuous because of Aladarius, which also is not even canon (And neither is "Dadrius" while I'm at it, but that's a totally different argument for a different day.). I see them use his bisexuality as fodder constantly. And I won't even mention the mischaracterization by every single Hunt/low fan I've ever seen, making Willow anywhere from Girlboss to Tradwife or Mom Girlfriend, and Hunter from Malewife to Wet Cat to Protector Boyfriend.

The crew also did not help the situation at all. Multiple Storyboard artists or other crew members have openly admitted to attempting to (or succeeding to) force Hunt/low into the storyline, always at the scolding of Dana who would make them remove it or tone it down as it didn't fit her vision of the show. I've seen multiple crewmembers say this- it's not just a one off thing. Or the crew member who once said she didn't care that the ship name "Winter" (the crew's ship name for Hunt/low) made it hard to block/tag because she liked how it sounded. It's just. I've seen so many instances of Dana's crew being that disrespectful to her and attempting to push their own personal feelings and ideas into the show against her wishes.

I could probably go on forever, so I'll stop here. But yeah. That's the basics of why Hunt/low is a shitty, harmful ship.

#taako talks #asks #anons #the owl house #toh #huntl0w negative #toh hunter #hunter toh #hunter noceda #hunter wittebane #hunter clawthorne #willow park #toh willow #long post

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