#started this save early 2020 so this was literally my pandemic save and i played the hell out of it

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Understanding the aftermath of r/wallstreetbets

A couple days back, I wrote up my best understanding of what happened with /r/wallstreetbets and meme stocks like Gamestop, trying to show how all the different, seemingly contradictory takes on the underlying financial stuff could all be true.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/28/payment-for-order-flow/#wallstreetbets

In the days since, a new series of contradictory takes has emerged, these ones disputing the meaning of this bizarre financial spectacle, and likewise what response, if any is warranted as it unfurls.

I think that all of these takes can also be true, and as with the trading itself, reconciling them requires that we widen the frame.

Let's start with Jimmy Carter.

In 1978, Carter's IRS created the 401(k), a tax-sheltered account for people who wanted to gamble on stocks to fund their retirement.

That was a fringe proposition at best.

The normal retirement system was a "defined benefits" pension where your employer guaranteed you a certain monthly percentage of your salary from retirement to death.

The vast majority of Americans wisely prefered a guaranteed payout to a tax-advantaged gambling account.

Obviously, right? On the one hand, you have the guarantee of a pension (maybe even inflation-indexed); on the other, you have a bunch of bets, that, if they go wrong, leave you literally homeless and starving.

When gamblers remortgage the family home and cash in the kids' college funds to play the tables, we consider them to have a mental illness, a pathological condition that harms them and the people around them.

Giving up a defined benefits pension in favor of a 401k is just the same kind of bet - staking all the money that will support you when you exit the workforce on the movement of stocks and bonds.

Who would do that voluntarily?

Pretty much no one. But the transition from defined benefits to 401k was not voluntary. Finance ghouls like Ethan Lipsig wrote memos to major employers like Hughes Aircraft showing them how they could ditch their pension obligations by moving workers to 401ks.

In the 80s, Reagan created a bunch of legal tools that allowed employers to coerce their workforces into giving up the security of a pension and force them into gambling their salaries on the prayer of a win in the markets.

This was insanely, amazingly great for the finance sector, in three ways:

1. It made companies more profitable. Guaranteeing that the workers whose labor made your company viable wouldn't spend their dotage starving and homeless is expensive.

Helping fund wagers on shares is much cheaper. The finance sector represented the major shareholders of the companies that transitioned to 401ks. The savings were transferred to these shareholders and the finance sector got commissions.

What's more, this temporary inflation of share prices disguised what was going on with the pension switcheroo: workers' defined benefits pensions were liquidated and turned into stocks, just as stocks were going up because their pensions had been liquidated!

Their legs had been amputated out from under them, but so subtly that they didn't yet feel the pain - and now their bosses cooked their legs and snuck them into their dinner, and everyone marveled at how full they felt after that hearty, meaty meal.

2. 401ks brought a lot of suckers to the table. The market was - and is - dominated by "sophisticated investors," AKA predators, who knew all the ways to fleece the rubes who had no idea how any of this worked.

The predatory nature of finance only increased over time. Hedge funds, for example, exist to find unethical practices that are legal (thanks to loopholes in the rules) and exploit them until they are illegal.

3. 401ks created a political force outside the finance sector that would lobby on its behalf. Transforming America into a nation of stockholders meant that workers had to choose between supporting rules that protected their jobs and rules that protected their retirement.

For your pension account to grow, you had to support policies that permitted finance ghouls to offshore your job, or misclassify you as a contractor, or eliminate the safety rules that prevented you from being maimed, or take away your right to sue for compensation.

Every time there's a particularly ghastly bankruptcy driven by PE or hedge funds - Toys R Us, Sears, etc - it emerges that at least some of that money is coming out of a union pension fund.

That's marketization - turning the once obscure, boring business of market-based capital allocation into a matter of import to everyday people.

Marketization begat financialization.

While marketization is primarily about capital allocation (who gets what money), financialization is about bets. Sometimes those bets are about things - businesses, houses, coal and timber - but things are limited. Mostly the financial market consists of bets on other bets.

Bets are infinite. Every time you make a bet, you create inventory for a market in a bet on the outcome of your bet. And that's inventory for a new market: bets on the outcomes of bets on the outcomes of bets.

It's called Wall Street Bets for a reason.

Bets need referees, someone who decides who the winner is. In sports, it's a major scandal if a referee is caught wagering on one of the teams in a match. In the financial markets, it's the norm - referees that lay wagers on the outcome of the contest they're overseeing.

Let's take stock:

Workers are forced to play the casino, and if their bets fail, they spend their old ages homeless and starving;

The vast majority of casino games are wholly abstract - bets on bets on bets - and require layers of refs;

the refs are all crooked.

Every couple of years, we have a massive, systemic financial crisis, and every time that happens, the finance sector lobbies for a no-strings-attached bailout, abetted by suckers who hate the finance sector but fear starving in their old age.

We're about to be engulfed in the second-largest crisis of our lifetime - the reckoning from trillions in capital market gains propped up by the Trump administration's policy of buying all corporate debt as a covid stimulus.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/28/cyberwar-tactics/#aligned-incentives

(the largest crisis of our lifetimes is a few years off, as the climate emergency piles losses on losses, stranding tens of trillions in assets, from fossil fuels to obsolete gas-stations to literally underwater coastal real-estate to whole towns incinerated by wildfires)

That's where we're at: a crooked casino that we've trusted our futures too, a crisis on the horizon, and a bunch meme-stock "players" who have thrown the normal weirdness of the market into stark relief through a spectacular stunt.

A lot of people are angry at Robinhood, the stock-trading platform at the center of all this. Robinhood froze trading on meme stocks, and has only allowed it to come back in a useless, performative trickle that is seemingly calculated to prevent more meme-stock gamesmanship.

Is Robinhood just another crooked ref? Yes…and no. The meme stock run upset the stable cheaters' equilibrium whereby cheating never escalated to the point where the game just collapsed.

For example, the total short position on Gamestop exceeds its total stock issuance.

Translation: there were more Gamestop shares promised between bettors than exist. When the game stops, all those promises come due, and they literally can't be paid off because there aren't enough tokens in circulation to settle all the debts.

Robinhood halted trading in part because the big fish upstream of Robinhood also halted trading, because they have even more at risk than Robinhood does if the game collapses - they the refs for MANY players, all the same size as Robinhood or larger.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-29/reddit-traders-on-robinhood-are-on-both-sides-of-gamestop

But remember, the refs are cheating. And they are both downstream and upstream from other games in which the refs are also cheating.

And the games, as a whole, encompass our economy, including the solvency of the "real economy" (the people who make masks, deliver groceries and drive ambulances), and whether you spend your old age homeless and starving.

So the people who say, "Don't blame Robinhood, they didn't halt trading to help billionaires, they halted trading to prevent the game from collapsing are right."

But they're not the only ones who are right.

Also, there's the people who say that meme stocks aren't making money for little guys at the expense of the big guys. They're right too.

First, because these stocks will all need to be converted to cash, and that means selling them.

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/the-gamestop-bubble-is-going-to-hurt-a-lot-of-ordinary-investors/

When the selloff starts, the price will plunge, because even if the stock was undervalued before, it's certainly overvalued now. Every bubble produces wealth for its early bettors who sell out to later players who lose everything when they can't find a sucker later on.

From Beanie Babies to subprime, bubbles burst and leave suckers holding the bag. If you just heard about meme stocks last week, you're too late to make money off of them.

There's another version of the "this isn't little guys, it's big whales" that's *also* true: the main beneficiary of the meme stock runs is giant funds who magnified and the bets from r/wallstreetbets and got out smart and fast.

https://twitter.com/zatapatique/status/1354904995901136896

So given all this, what can we make of calls (from parties as varied as AOC and Ted Cruz) to investigate Robinhood and other retail brokerages to see whether they're honest refs, or in the tank for billionaires?

At Naked Capitalism, Yves Smith calls this a "fatuous uproar," saying that the Senate has more important things to do during the racing-out-of-control pandemic than to investigate a literal penny-ante grift.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/01/the-fatuous-uproar-about-robinhood-and-gamestop.html

Do we really care who the winner is in "a beauty contest between Cinderella’s ugly sisters" ("clueless new gen day traders versus clumsy shorts")?

Smith is right too.

A speculator-v-speculator contest that falls apart when the crooked ref halts play to prevent collapse - who cares who "wins?"

But here's how they can all be right - the "who cares" and the "goliath v goliath" and the "bubble" and the "Robinhood is a plutes' honeypot."

*If* there's hearings, and *if* those hearings expose the absurdity and corruption of the system, *then* there is a chance to build the political will to make real, systemic changes when the crisis comes.

And there's a real crisis coming: two, in fact. The covid junk bond financial crisis, which is due very soon, and the climate crisis stranded asset emergencies, which will unroll with increased tempo and intensity for decades to come.

The half-century cycle of "addressing" finance crises by increasing financialization MUST stop.

If the meme stock spectacle gets us to pay attention to hearings that reveal the irredeemable rot of the system, then it's a unique chance to spread *real* "financial literacy."

And that literacy is the necessary (but insufficient) precursor to taking action when the time comes - and the time is certainly coming soon.

#pluralistic

[suchalonelysunflower]

hi!!

random question: how did you get into 5sos?

Hello, my dear and buckle up cause I love telling this story 💕

My sister is a huge One Direction fan - and I mean huge - One day she gets the notif that a band will go on tour with 1D and that their sound is much more similar like the other bands she listened to (we are very much into punk pop) So she and her best friend start talking about this band and how they are so cool but I didn’t really pay any mind to them until she showed me the videos of SLSP where I fell in love with the guy with the bluest eyes I’ve seen, and then the Amnesia video where I fist saw Ashton riding a bike and I knew that if I ever liked that band, the drummer already had my heart in his hand.

My sister continued to listen to them while I listened to their songs by the sidelines, not really getting involved except to watch the videos and one or two songs from SGFG - the only album we could buy at the time. My knowledge of them was very broad and general, and I didn’t allow myself to listen to them very often cause I was in a very toxic environment already and I didn’t need to add on “she listens to boybands and weirdos” to the things that would’ve upset my friend (ex-friend) back then. Still, my sister kept me on the loop.

Then came Youngblood and with that came Cocktail Chats where I once again gave my entire heart to Ashton cause omg, obviously. Their song was everywhere, literally at work we ate at a random lunchroom and the video was always playing. I listened to Youngblood and found it weird, since all I knew was them being all like “we are punk pop” and the shift - while amazing - was not what I was expecting of them. Still, “More” and “Babylon” were my most streamed songs that year on Spotify.

I saw them again with Rett and Link, I didn’t know Ashton had red hair but I still fell for it (at this point I should’ve known I would’ve given anything for this man) They were so funny and that became quickly one of my comfort videos even tho I didn’t listen to them all that much. But then… the pandemonium hit.

The first months of 2020 hit hard, even before the pandemic. I was severely depressed, so much so that my mom started to get worried (and she never worries or even noticed so it was a bad one) I literally saw no way out of it, nothing seemed to matter anymore and I was ready to give up. It still shocks me to this day how ready I was to leave, that’s why I always say that this band save my life.

On a random day here on Tumblr, I came upon a picture of Long Haired Ash from 2015 (one of my favorite eras) I didn’t follow any blogs with any 5sos content so it was weird to say the least. However, I got curious “what are they up to now?” I knew they had new songs and I watched the videos for teeth and easier when they came out. Still, I looked for Ashton on Instagram and found that they were releasing a new album that same week. And I told myself “Hey, you liked the new songs, maybe you’ll like this album”

So I made it through the week, watched videos of them and listened to their old songs, read fanfiction about them and just enjoyed any sort of content that had to do with them. And then, Friday rolled around. I waited till the early hours in the morning to listen to it and boy…

I remember listening to the first harmonies of Red Desert and I started to sob. And I mean ugly sobbing. It was like all the pain I had inside of me suddenly got lighter when I listened to them, to CALM. I could hear the drums and it was like my heart was beating along to it, finding a purpose because “I can’t go without seeing them live someday, I just can’t”

Then came the inspiration to write. Oh, how I loved to write but I had to stop because, again, I was in a very toxic environment when I was younger. But Ashton just screamed at me to write about him, anything, just put my feelings into words and come up with stories I always wanted to write. Then it was Calum, Michael, Luke and even Harry. I was writing again and I felt free. I felt whole.

And then my fics reached other people and I found this amazing community that gave me the courage to post the stories, create even more and be myself. This community gave me the confidence to, not only start writing again, but to unapologetically like something, be a fan of something. I found friends that even tho we’ve never met, I feel like I’ve known them all my life. And all because of a picture of Ashton in 2015.

I related to them in a way I haven’t related to anyone before in my life, especially Ashton. I found comfort in them and realized that if the universe gave me the opportunity to know about people who are so amazing, maybe it’s worth a shot to stay a bit longer. They were put in my life for a reason, and I’m still here so…

I knew of 5sos before, but I believe they came when I most needed them. I’m thankful for them and thankful for me and this community.

And that’s the story of how I met your father (?)

#anon #suchalonelyask #sunfloweranswers

[btssavedmylifeblr]

I forgot to send on my voting story. Ok so my brother and I both got mail in ballots, and let me tell you how we both forgot to mail it in so we just thought to bring them to our voting location. The lady there kinda yelled at us? She was confused and didn't know how to go about it. And honestly I just took it because we were the idiots who didn't mail in our ballots. We had to rip them up and they just us new ones to fill out in person and submit. Not exciting, but a story for void snippet. 👀

Anonymous said: Hi!! I'm so excited for void! I voted today around 30 minutes before the polls closed in my neighborhood because I had to wait for my dad and brother to get home from work since they wanted to go all together hehe. It was a pretty fast process! We just pressed buttons on screens (compared to last election where we had to bubble in everything by hand) plus, I got to keep the stylus that they gave us and it works on phones too! 🥰🥰 Thank you! I love your writing so much 💜💜💜

Anonymous said: I did mine through mail me and my husband did and we went to the post office a little while back and then he took us on a nice little date afterward and we got ice cream! Also I love void💖 keep up the good work

Anonymous said: VOTES FOR VOID??? I love democracy and I love VOID! So since May I've (temporarily) moved back home from New York to Indiana RE: covid; I've voted absentee for the both the primaries and presidential election (I'm still in IN rn...blah). I voted early and mailed in my ballot for the presidential election (about 3 weeks ago). Made sure my family was voting (brother mailed it in, mom dropped off a ballot, and dad did early voting) and encourage them to put up a Biden sign in our yard <3

Anonymous said: HI BEE! I ALSO VOTED TODAY! IM 21 SO THIS IS MY FIRST TIME VOTING FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION (my 18th bday didnt make the cutoff since im a december bday) im so happy to have done my part! I made sure to study up on the judges and policies and everything! Luckily the polling place didn't have a line so i was able to get in, get my ballot, and fill it in right away! I even dragged my mom and cousin to come with me. I made a joke on snapchat to encourage my friends to vote too. It was a pic of my "i voted" sticker with a caption saying "omg youre so sexy when you vote aHaha" -🦙

Anonymous said: this is my first time doing this so, so i hope i’m sending this correctly! i voted early in late september by mail! i live in a swing state, so it’s really important for me to vote and not waste time!! bc of my age, this is my first time voting so i’m really nervous 😅

Anonymous said: I voted by email! I'm overseas so I wasn't sure if my ballot would actually make it through in time, so I decided to go electronically. Had to sign a waiver saying I understand that my vote won't be anonymous but I haven't been given a reason to suspect voter suppression/fraud in my state, so I'm happy I think...!

Anonymous said: hi, i voted early on oct 24th. my absentee ballot didn't come in, so i had to travel back home to vote (~3 hour drive). when we got there, there was a ton of people outside the polling place, but no lines, so i was in and out pretty quick. it was my first time voting, so i had all the candidates i was voting for written down on a tiny receipt so i wouldn't forget 😅. my mom was with me, so she voted too. took a pic with my sticker (mask on for extra covid-ness) and went home. drove back the next afternoon!

whippedforkook said: Hi Bee. 💕 I voted in early October - nearly a month ago! 😱 It’s been really weird with all the lead up to the election because it felt like it should have been done once I cast my ballot! A lot of my friends have volunteered to get out the vote: writing postcards to voters, texting, phone banking, working the polls, curing ballots. I didn’t volunteer at all this year, but I hope that all of my friends’ hard work and everyone else’s is enough. I’m also hoping and praying that I will be in a better place mentally for 2022 so that I too can volunteer. Our work starts with 2020 not ends. 💕 Wishing you well. 💕

begineuphoria said: I went and voted last Friday as it was our last early voting day. No way was I going to wait until today with the crowds of people in my area that still act as if masks are somehow infringing on their rights. 🙄 It was a rather normal experience for the most part. Other than having to use a coffee stir stick to press the buttons on the machine to vote. In and out within five minutes.

Anonymous said: I voted down the street at this pretty park this morning. I got up at 5:30 and it was freezing. Luckily I wore like 30 layers and stood outside for 2 hours. Some nasty orange man supporters were rude but everyone else was pretty nice. A really cute older couple was playing soccer with pine cones and kicked it towards me to play too. Not the worst time tbh.

Anonymous said: Did mail-in voting in California! Extremely exhausting and took forever to research all the propositions - they are notoriously tricky in hiding their flaws and one side tends to outrageously outspend the other. But in the end I felt really good about my research and decisions! No need for you to post a snippet for this story - would like to save that to read sometime in the future ;) Thank you so much for doing this!

joonsgotthejuice said: Votes for void??? I am here! I went last Thursday and it was chaotic bc I kept going past the poll place but the line was soooo long so my mom called me and woke me up like "its pouring rain and the line is super short get up I'm gonna pick you up" so thats the story of how I got dressed in 5 minutes and dragged my ass to vote in the rain <3

Anonymous said: i voted early on thursday it was cold and rainy but i went in the late afternoon and thankfully the only waiting i did was a few minutes for an elevator i got very lucky and while waiting for the results is awful the relief that came from voting in general was just great

Anonymous said: Wheeew the polls just closed and I finally got to cast my ballot yayyy ( I was the one working the polls from earlier) it’s been a really really long day and we actually had surprisingly good turnout. I saw a woman try to vote for someone else who claimed to be “helping” and I saw a woman who I’m pretty sure was on some typa something 👀 Overall though I really I’m really thankful for people like you who encouraged people to get out and vote. I hope the odds are in our favor❤️🤞🏼

chelsea-chee said: Hello Bee! Today surprisingly my elderly father wanted to vote so I brought him out with me. He only cared about voting for Biden, which meant I got to help decide who he should vote for with the rest of the candidates and amendments! Say hello to baby bee for me as well! 💖

Anonymous said: Okay I gonna got a chance to vote today and the process wasn’t that bad actually. I went in just now and it wasn’t that busy( thankfully) so no lines. I’m from Texas and it’s gonna be almost impossible to turn this state blue, but every vote counts! I love that you are getting people to vote and also sharing your experiences as well!

owl-orgy said: Dropped off my mail in ballot at a polling location! I originally wanted to vote early in person because I was worried my signature wouldn’t match closely enough but ended up just turning it in and double checked today to make it said “ballot accepted and counted”!

Anonymous said: I voted in person this afternoon, better late than never I guess. I was gonna go last week but then I got cramps from hell. There was no one in line in front of me, I think my county early voted because it was packed everyday the last few weeks

Anonymous said: I voted early a couple weeks ago. Exciting thing though that did happen was I got both my parents to vote for their first time ever.

Anonymous said: I had a mail in vote. So, I filled it out and dropped it in at the ballot box at my library. (I also checked out books for the first time in years, so I had fun!)

bubblyjiminnie said: I literally just finished voting. Lucky for me, the line and wait wasn’t very long, and it was a nice enough day that the short amount of time I had to spend in line outside of the building wasn’t too bad. My social anxiety when it comes to stuff like this tends to be high but that’s what I get for waiting until Election Day instead of going the mail in route. This was only my second time voting, but I’m glad that I did 😊

Anonymous said: I turned my ballot in last week :) I’m not a big fan of crowds and I hate make spur of the moment choices but despite that the first time I was able to vote back in 08 my Mom pressured me into voting in person because “you’d have to experience it at least once in our life”. And ever since then I comfortably vote by mail. I take my time, do all of my research, listen to music, and best of all don’t have to deal with people.

Anonymous said: here in Washington state it’s super easy to vote. I dropped my ballot off in mid-October and it’s already been accounted for! Mail in voting and drop box voting is fantastic and provides equal opportunity and access. Sad to see some people in red states misinforming Americans about it! We also have a referendum for implementing mandatory sex ed, including teaching respect, empathy and consent as part of the curriculum so I was happy to vote yes on that too!

unionrox006 said: I voted about 2 weeks ago by doing a mail in ballot. The other eligible to vote members of my household did the same. We chose to vote by absentee ballot because both my mom and I have an autoimmune disorder, so we have to be careful going out in the pandemic. Tbh, the ballot layout was a bit confusing at first as was all the paperwork and required IDs and documents. But my dad explained it to me and we got them filled out and mailed off. Kinda mad I didn't get a sticker for it though

bluetostone said: Love this and so excited for the next chp of void! I early voted a few weeks ago and because I live in a pretty rural county I was in and out of my polling place in a few minutes. No sticker though 😢. I live in a swing state so it could go either way in terms of delegates. Just praying everyone is safe tonight as the results roll in...though, won't we not know for sure for a couple of days or weeks?

Anonymous said: My mom, sister, and I received our early voting ballots a while ago and I took the longest to fill mine out because it was making me anxious :,( but I did return it before it was due. I checked our ballot statuses and mine and my moms were accepted but my sister’s said they hadn’t received hers back. Then she got another ballot so she filled that one out too and I took it yesterday 👍👍 I think she got two because she changed her address late so they sent two?

vixsynsblog said: Non-interesting voter story: I'm paranoid and live in a highly divided area, so I filed mail-in ASAP, mailed it a few days after cause neighbors are nosy and don't understand boundaries. Was able to track my ballot through my credit company, which was nice. Only thing I was missing was my sticker. Never got one✊😔. So I had to improvise and write it in pen on my disposable mask. I'm working all this week so if riots break out from either side, I'll be at work. Prayers for the safety of others🙏

______

Waaah!!! Thank you all for voting!! You are all my heroes. I am so grateful and proud of you. I’m sorry I ran out of time to respond to you individually. I’m going to drop two big scenes from Chapter 7 in gratitude (one of which will be familiar to my patrons and one won’t). I’m hopeful I will have the whole next chapter out very soon. Love you all!

Void spoilers below the cut.

When you wake up in the morning, there are still no signed HR forms in your messages. Had you been a fool to think they were interested? How much time does it take to decide such a thing? Perhaps just by putting the idea out there explicitly, it had lost all of its taboo appeal. 

There is a calendar reminder waiting for you: Today is chili pepper pollinating day. At least this gives you an excuse to talk to Hoseok. 

You find the science officer in the lab as always, sitting with his knee up against his chest. Hoseok doesn’t look well. He’s got dark circles under his eyes.

“Hey, um…” You shuffle your feet. Want to fuck me? No wait…“You don’t look good. Were you here all night?” you ask.

He blinks at you, bleary-eyed. “Um, was I? Yeah.. I suppose. Lost track of time.” He rubs his eyes, before looking you up and down, then casting his gaze back to the floor. 

All you want to do is ask about the forms. Or the meeting. Or what he thinks of you now. But you don’t. “I need to pollinate the chili peppers today.” Usually Hoseok is the person who assists with that. “But I can get one of the other guys to do it if you need the sleep.”

“No!” Hoseok lurches forward, standing up a bit to rapidly and needing to put his hand back on the bench to steady himself. “I mean, I’m fine.” 

You should disgaree with him. He is exhausted. But you’d like more time to talk to him. 

Pollinating the chili peppers is both time-sensitive and time-consuming, hence why it took two of you to get the job done. There were no insects on your ship to do the job for you and if they didn’t get pollinated, they wouldn’t bear any fruit. Your chili peppers were your favorite crop. Not only a vital source of Vitamin C, but all your food benefitted from having a bit of spice added to it. 

You and Hoseok head for the greenhouse together. The intital set-up gives you something to talk about in the beginning. Hoseok gathers the pollen from one flower onto a paintbrush, then hands it over to you to paint onto the stigmas of each little flower on the next plant in the line.

Slowly the conversation dries up as you fall into a silent rhythm. Other than just enjoying the chili peppers, you must admit that this was one of your favorite tasks on the ship because of the high likelihood that the two of you would brush hands peridically. Always gave you butterflies. But today he seems extra intent on keeping his distance from you. Was he disgusted by you now? His hands are trembling.

“Are you sure you’re okay?” 

His hand twitches so hard that a little rain of yellow pollen cascades onto the floor. He curses in frustration before turning to face you. “Are you sure you’re okay?” 

“Um, yes, I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“This, um, plan of yours…” he gestures to the vague tension in the air. “It doesn’t feel like you.”

“I’m trying to save the mission. That has always been my top priority.”

“Yeah, I’m still not clear on how this benefits the mission.”

“Yoongi said…” you start to say, but are cut off my Hoseok’s derisive snort. 

“Look, if you’re in love with Yoongi, just go date him, okay? Don’t feel obligated to include the rest of us out of pity.” 

You frown. “I’m not… I’m not in love with him. It’s just sex. Just biology.” 

“This isn’t you!” Hoseok argues back. “You hated the idea of anyone of us ever treating you that way. And now you just want all of us to… to… use you like that?”  He splutters out the end of the sentence.

“No one is using me! This is my plan! I’m in charge!”

He sighs. “Well, I can’t be a part of it. Excuse me.”

______

Taehyung finds you in the gym. It’s good to see him up and about, even if his arm is still in a sling. 

“Hey, so I need to talk to you about this, um, ape sex thing.” He fishes awkwardly into his pockets and pulls out his tablet.  Maybe Jimin was right. Is Taehyung going to be the first to take you up on your offer?

You pause your jog on the elliptical machine. You wish you weren’t so sweaty and gross for this conversation. Taehyung is such an intimidatingly attractive man with those strong eyebrows and that perfect skin. 

Taehyung opens up the tablet and flips to the form. It’s happening. He’s going to sign the form. Shit. Then what will you do? It’s one thing to say you want to have sex with your whole crew, but what if he’s hoping to go right now? You need a shower. 

Taehyung has really nice hands. Long strong fingers delicately navigating the touch screen. It seems totally improbable that a man this attractive would be into you, even if you were the only woman in the universe. It just adds to your suspicions that hormones are driving everyone crazy. Perhaps if you slept with him once, he’d lose all interest. 

He finds the form and then turns his gaze up to you, staring you down with those eyes. It’s a good thing that Taehyung rarely turns his full gaze on you, because it is almost too much to bear. Shit, is he just going to sign it? Is he waiting for you to give him some sort of signal?

“You can’t do this to Jimin,” he says.

“What?” Not what you were expecting. “Do what to Jimin?”

“This.” He gestures over the HR form. “Signing these forms with everyone. Having sex with everyone. You’re going to destroy Jimin.”

“Jimin’s the one who suggested this whole thing in the first place.” It’s a lie. You know its a lie. Or at least a gross exaggeration. But Jimin was the one who first brought up the idea of sharing. All for the benefit of the man in front of you now. 

“No way.” Taehyung scoffs, crossing his arms and raising an eyebrow. “No way was it Jimin’s idea that you sleep with the whole crew.” 

“Well…” You can’t bear his gaze anymore and look down at the floor. “He wanted me to sleep with you.”

That surprises Taehyung. He puts down the tablet. “What? Why would he want that?”

This is awkward. “He, um, thinks you’re in love with me.”

“What?” There is only surprise on Taehyung’s face. It’s actually a relief to see that Taehyung is just as shocked by that idea as you were. “Why does he think that?”

“I don’t know…” You feel kind of dumb now. Of course, Taehyung doesn’t feel that way about you. Look at him. “Cause you told him you were jealous. Cause you can’t stand to be in the same room as us…”

Taehyung bites his lip. “Oh, um, shit, sorry, that’s not what I meant.”

If Taehyung isn’t jealous of Jimin... 

“Taehyung…” He looks up, biting his lip. “What did you mean? Who are you jealous of?” 

Taehyung’s eyes widen, but he doesn’t say anything. Instead he reaches for his microphone and mutes it. Out of respect, you mute yours as well. He glances toward the camera in the corner of the room, then stands up and begins unzipping his jumpsuit. 

“Um…” You are distracted by the golden arms that peak from either side of the tank top as the zipper reaches his groin. “What are you doing?”

“Need something to block the camera.”

“We have towels,” you mutter.  But he’s already stripping out of his shirt. The musculature of his back ripples. He hangs the shirt off of the camera to block the rest of the room from view. 

“Yeah, but this way anyone watching will think we’re having sex.” His chest is just as attractive as his back and you flush at the sight of it. Mercifully, he zips back into his jumpsuit as he returns to his position in front of the exercise machine. 

“You want them to think we’re having sex?”

“Don’t you? It plays right into your whole save the mission with bonobo sex plan.”

“I suppose.” Though the plan was also supposed to be that there would be no more secrets between the crew. “What plan of yours does it play into?”

“The one where Jimin doesn’t realize I’m in love with him.”

“You’ve never tried to tell him?”

Taehyung laughs wryly and shakes his head. “How would that conversation go? Hey man, I know we’ve known each other for years and I’ve already seen you naked and that you just think of me as a friend, but I’m in love with you. I know that’s awkward but now you have to spend the next twelve years with me, knowing that I’m attracted to you when you don’t feel the same way.” Taehyung sighs. “Doesn’t sound like a good plan to me. If he doesn’t feel the same way, I’ve just ruined the friendship for nothing and then I don’t even have that.”

“Yeah… I get that.”  There’s something touching about realizing that Taehyung has been fighting the same battle as you for the last two years. 

“I couldn’t tell anyone before launch because what if they wouldn’t let me go then? You know?”

“Yeah, the director wasn’t big on sending anyone who might ‘complicate’ the mission.” The two of you share a sad knowing smile. 

“Yeah… And I thought it would be fine, you know? I like women too. I’d just date women until launch and no one would know. I wasn’t planning on falling in love with my roommate.”

“I don’t think any of us really knew what this would be like.”

“I knew it was going to be a problem. I should have pulled out…” 

Your mind flashes back to that moment of doubt when Hoseok talked you into still coming on the mission.

“But I couldn’t just let him go off into space without me. Even if he’d never feel the same way, at least he’d still be in my life.”

The emotion in Taehyung’s words makes your eyes begin to mist. “You really do love him.”

“Yeah,” Taehyung sighs again. “But he’s in love with you.”

“Well, he thinks he is.”

“What does that mean?”

“He only feels like that about me cause he thinks I’m the only option.”  You wonder if maybe he would feel differently if he knew about Taehyung’s feelings. 

Taehyung frowns and shakes his head. “You don’t give him enough credit.”

“Oh come on, you know him. How many women did he date while we were in training?”

“A few…” 

“And how many of them was he in love with before he found the next one?”  

Taehyung bites his lip. He can’t really argue with that. “So why are you with him then, if you don’t think it’s real?”

You shrug, rubbing your arm. “He wants me. It’s nice to feel wanted, I guess.”

“You know you could have that with any man on this ship right?”

You scoff. “They’re all suffering the same delusion. It’s only-available-vagina syndrome. I just want us all to fuck and get it out in the open. Maybe if we could get it out of our system, they would see I’m nothing special. And then we can get back to the mission.”

Taehyung eyes you up and down. “You don’t give yourself enough credit either.”

You shrug. “You wait and see. Jimin will get bored of me. They all will.”

The two of you both slump backwards in your seats, mulling over your shared woes.  Taehyung bends down and picks up the tablet again. “So what should I do with this?”

“Obivously, you don’t have to sign it. I should have realized that not everyone would be interested.”

“Jimin thinks I’m in love with you?”

“Yeah…”

“Is it okay if we let him think that for now? At least until I figure out how to tell him the truth?”

“Okay.”

Taehyung smiles and signs the bottom of the form, then sends it to you. Your phone lights up with a message. “Thank you,” he murmurs before he leaves. 

#I'm not going to answer asks about the spoilers right now #because I want people to be able to avoid them until the chapter drops #but that should be sometime in the next week or so #votes for void

[missholland]

The Untamed saved me during Covid. Will it do it again?

It’s been a while since I last wrote about The Untamed. 2020 is ending and I was planning to do it anyway, but now it has even a bigger meaning given the situation I’m in.

Long story short: residents in London, UK including myself were told over the weekend that we were no longer allowed to spend Xmas with another household and the city would go into sort of another lockdown (they just didn’t call it ‘lockdown’ yet). That means not only I could not fly home to see my parents who I last saw in summer 2019 (let’s face it - 2019 was a hundred moons ago), but also I couldn’t even spend the holiday with my partner’s parents since they’re a different household. Basically, it’s just really shit.

That kinda push me to start my The Untamed rewatch sooner than plan. I thought a lot about the first full-blown lockdown we had in March, which led me into discovering the show and how it literally saved me from going insane over everything. Now that we’re entering even a darker time (particularly being in the UK), I’m just desperate for a spiritual ‘out’ from this sad reality. And what’s better than relying on a couple of friends (who are also a couple!) that got me through the first time? Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji.

I was determined to do this rewatch right. Sure, I’ve done it maybe 16 times since March. But given that The Untamed is now available on Amazon Prime where you can leave reviews, I gotta help the show to go places in the international market!

As soon as the intro played, my heart pounded so loudly. I was properly anxious, feeling like I was meeting a high school crush again after 10 years. Seeing the familiar faces from WangXian to Gusu Lan disciples, Jiang Cheng, Sujie, Mianmian, my man Nie Director, etc. I could not feel any happier. I had the widest smile on my face even though I was sitting alone in the room. Watching a sequence of familiar moments excited me so much I had to put a hand on my chest just to feel my heart beating. All that fuss over just an INTRO!

I might not need to pay too close attention to the story this time. But the more I (re)watched, the more I thought about why I fell in love with The Untamed in the first place and how the mystical cultivators’ world carried me through the national lockdown.

Everyone was (and still is) suffering in the real world with Covid. Many of us were required to stay in, work from home and live our social life through a computer screen. Like most people, my work and personal life became one within the 4 familiar walls of my living room. I changed from someone who thought she had the world to a person whose whole life got squeezed into a little box. Reality was just bleak. I didn’t want to live like that. I wanted to be somewhere Covid wasn’t a thing. Another world. Another universe. Anything.

The Untamed universe gave me everything and even a bit more. The show took me to a whole other world, although fictional, where I did not have to worry a thing about Covid. I was so immersed into their world, and that was possible all down to the cast and crew’s incredible effort in making it real for me. Of course, I did not think I became a cultivator. But everything felt real because I could feel so strongly in my heart the excitement when Wei Wuxian first fought Lan Wangji on the roof, the confusion in Sujie’s heart everytime she ran into Jin peacock, the sadness whenever WangXian part way, the anger of Chenqing, the pain when Sujie died, the relief when WangXian reunited, the butterflies in my stomach seeing the piggyback ride on the bridge, and the utmost happiness during the last 20 seconds of the finale. 

I can go on and on and on. But I remember so vividly during the first watch in March, I said to my friends The Untamed had been ‘the most beautiful distraction in the ugliest time’. I know the show has touched your hearts more or less the same way it did mine. Tell me - how do you feel whenever the loving melody of Wuji plays on the screen? I felt like someone was giving me the most tender back hug, or holding my hand tightly, or looking into my eyes so deeply. I genuinely felt like falling in love. It’s something that no other fictional production of any form has ever made me feel. Even though that ‘first time’ moment has passed, I could still sense the same emotion within myself whenever Wuji is played in the background of a scene. Some might say it was magical and I wouldn’t disagree. It’s hard to explain. But ‘magical’ is truly close enough to describe it.

You gotta give it to the production crew - how they manage to bring the source novel to life, not only staying faithful to the tiny details but also adding their own unique changes which, in some parts, actually did the work even better than the original. I can’t remember whether I’ve mentioned this, but The Untamed is the first Chinese series I’ve seen in 10 years - the last one being Bu Bu Jing Xin. This is for you to know that Chinese drama is not at all my jam. I have not seen any other Chinese series or fantasy/historical drama since The Untamed, and I will probably keep it this way for a long time. The Untamed has such a special place in my heart that I want to protect its legacy.

While typing this, I’m at episode 4. Still early days, the memories of the youth, the carefree adventures being the enormous storm that screw over our beloved characters. I thought maybe I’d write this after finishing the final episode. But I did not expect feeling so much emotion already from the beginning of the rewatch, partly because of the fresh frustration over what’s going on in the UK right now. I just want the show to save me again like it did during the start of the global pandemic. I don’t know how it’s going to do it, but I’m certain it will make everything a little bit easier everyday for me.

If you’ve made it this far to my super in-cohesive random writing, THANK YOU! I’ve ‘ranted’ about several Untamed-related topics during my first watch that you might find interesting:

Character Analysis: Wei Wuxian

Character Analysis: Lan Wangji

Moment Analysis: Favourite WangXian Moment

Episode Analysis: Episode 44-45

Story Analysis: Xiao Xingchen/Song Lan

Character Analysis: Jiang Cheng

The Ending Analysis

#wangxian #the untamed #chen qing ling #wei wuxian #wei ying #yiling laozu #lan wangji #lan zhan #hanguang jun #mo dao zu shi

[iaintyourbro]

Mental Gymnastics and the Sanity Question

I wrote this on June 2, 2020 and put it in my drafts. I don’t think I was brave enough to post this because it states how I really feel about things and at times that can be met with resistance. Almost three months later, after more research, talking to others in the fandom, and putting everything together, I’m going to share it now. I also know how to properly add pictures in a post so I’m gonna do that too.

Obviously, this is my opinion on it. Clearly from a fandom perspective, I love Cloud and Tifa as a couple. However, I’m ultimately a “canon-y” person. I do not ship couples without knowing the whole story. I ship after I know what happens. FFVII’s OG... I wasn’t too invested in, so I didn’t really do anything with fandom. I was online for FFVIII, Xenogears, and Gundam Wing. Anything FFVII related was Vincent related. 

***

Oh shipping, something I learned about recently. As a person who played FFVII at the age of 12 (well, started it) and then actually completed the game at around 13 or 14, the bulk of it went over my head. FFVIII was a clear cut romance, and probably why it was my favorite FF for 20 years. That being said, FFVII does have an ending, and does have a pretty clear relationship build between two of the characters. That’s then followed through in the additional media for the compilation. 

So why is there a fight? I honestly don’t know, and this post isn’t going to answer your questions, probably. I am going to give my opinion on why there is a fight, but I’m not a psychologist. This is how I personally feel about the entire FFVII shipping war and the impact it has on people - especially during the COVID quarantine in many areas. 

I played FF7R and was pleasantly surprised. I actually was scared to play it - scared it would change something I enjoyed as a teen. I was one that hoped for a 1 to 1 remake to keep the story solid. The reality is... the OG story is bare bones, which is why they ended up putting out multiple other pieces in the form of games, books, and movies. This bare bones story seemed to also create a war on who our protagonist loves. You realize how bare bones it is after playing the remake. 

That’s not to say it’s not a good game or good story. The OG is a fantastic game. It’s a fantastic story. It has the same issues every other RPG has where it has major gaps in the plot due to timing, money, whatever. The difference I’d say with FFVII and the others is the story is MUCH MORE COMPLEX and MUCH MORE MATURE. The closest I’d say is Xenogears, which literally was cut short due to time and money. FFVII and Xenogears also share a lot of similar themes, which makes a lot of sense when you know the “scrapped” FFVII ideas were repurposed. 

Most of us were kids or young teens when that game came out. We probably played it and understood about 60% of what was going on. We remember Cloud cross-dressing, we remember Aerith dying, and we remember Sephiroth. (And if you’re me you remember Vincent.)

The first part of the game, you’re given multiple choices on how to respond to things. This ends up being part of a “date mechanic” later on in the game. Feels like you have control, right? You’re the one who is going to determine who Cloud gets to date at the Gold Saucer! Who his life partner is! 

Wrong. 

Yeah, you make choices and it does determine who you go on a date with. However, you find out much later in the game that Cloud isn’t really Cloud. There are multiple hints early in the game that something isn’t right. It builds up until you literally see a ghostly figure of child Cloud standing there as Cloud beats the crap out of Aerith and gives the Black Materia to Sephiroth. Cloud hears voices during multiple scenes in the game, but meh, whatever. Seeing his child form, though, you’re like UM OKAY. 

So, you build up your relationship with Aerith. You say all the right things. You get the date with her, she says she wants to meet you. Then you go to the Temple of the Ancients, a cute little part with Cait Sith giving a fortune that you and her are meant to be... and about 10 minutes later you beat the living shit out of her and hand over the Black Materia to the enemy. 

At this point, you realize something is seriously wrong. Aerith disappears. The next time you see her, she dies. 

Then the focus is only on getting Sephiroth. Not just because of Aerith, but Cloud is being summoned by him - you just don’t know that until you get there. Cloud realizes that he wasn’t pursuing Sephiroth, he was being pulled to him. I mean, Aerith dies and isn’t mentioned for quite some time. There isn’t any point after she floats down that they really mourn. They go snowboarding and go after Sephiroth. 

Then Cloud completely breaks... when TIFA questions what she remembers and can’t give Cloud a clear answer. And this may come as a shock to somebody who was trying to woo Aerith. Why does Tifa matter so much? Cloud didn’t break due to Aerith dying, Cloud broke because Tifa didn’t know how to tell him that he wasn’t in Nibelheim 5 years ago (that she knew of). 

They don’t really build the relationship up between Cloud and Tifa until pretty much after this point. They talk about the Promise, they talk about some other quirks, they infer that Tifa has a crush on Cloud. 

You really aren’t aware that Cloud has a crush on Tifa until The Lifestream, when IT ALL COMES OUT. To be fair, Cloud didn’t show romantic interest to either girl in OG prior to the Northern Crater, honestly. More so until the Lifestream.

The Crisis of Losing Control 

You also lose the ability to make choices at this point in the game. 

During the first part, you are acting almost as Cloud’s false persona. The cool SOLDIER Cloud that makes nice or nasty choices towards other characters. You determine, to an extent, how Cloud is. But it’s an illusion. 

And Aerith tells us this in the Remake - that whatever you’re feeling now isn’t real. This isn’t a love confession, this is a warning. If you played the OG, you know she’s referring to his false persona.

The reason I think this gets so heated is because of the loss of control, the feeling of betrayal that the one you thought was supposed to be the one is gone, and all along Cloud held deep feelings for Tifa. You’re also probably young and inexperienced when this happens. The romantic notion of Romeo and Juliet, if you will. 

I think it also depends on how you deal with Aerith’s death. Personally, it wasn’t a huge deal to me. I was like damn did that just happen? I wouldn’t say I was sad, though, or upset. More shocked? Sadly at this point in my life, I’d already lost family members, and moving on is very important. I also didn’t notice Cloud doing ANYTHING romantic in the OG. It felt one sided all around until much, much later on. So I didn’t see it as Cloud losing the love of his life. I actually had no idea why he was upset except they were friends. 

There’s a clear end to the potential romance between Cloud and Aerith - she dies. Now in the world of FFVII, Aerith is a Cetra and has the ability to communicate with the planet and apparently those that are still living once she dies. However, that doesn’t mean that Cloud is going to pursue a relationship with her... that is... crazy, right? 

Apparently.. Not? 

This is where I start having an issue with shipping. The story clearly shows that Aerith dies. The story clearly shows that Cloud harbors deep feelings for Tifa during the Lifestream scene. Both of these events are set - there are no alternatives, no optional scenes. At no point during the Lifestream is anybody else mentioned as a romantic interest. Tifa dominates this guy’s subconscious. But to some, there does seem to be an alternative.

The most extreme I’ve seen is that Cloud should kill himself to be with Aerith. This is disturbing on so many levels, so I’m not going to talk about it much. This not only misses the point of one of the big themes in FFVII, but also just shows how desperate people are to get what they want.

The other is that Cloud actually only loves Aerith and Tifa was his living rebound. The story doesn’t support this. Watch the Lifestream scene and it’s obvious. Once again, we have no mention of anybody else during this. 

The mental gymnastics it takes to put Cloud and Aerith together as the canon couple blows my mind. 

***

And that’s where I stopped. I had noticed at the time there was major pushback on anybody who denied romance between Cloud and Aerith. I guess I just wasn’t ready to deal with it nor did I have the confidence I suppose. Now I’m confident in that after three months of observing, learning, and contemplating.

So I’ll finish with a few thoughts because apparently in fandom land three months is a long time.

COVID-19 Quarantine

The majority of the world went under quarantine earlier this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Personally, the last time I saw my cubicle was March 9. Not that I’m sad, because I do enjoy working remotely. But it’s not just my cubicle, restaurants, zoos, everything was shut down and is slowly opening up but I’m not exactly keen on going somewhere unless I absolutely have to. 

This gave me a ton of time to do other things. FFVII Remake came out, so I played that and, yeah, I got really obsessed and went into this depressed void of what the fuck am I going to do until the next part comes out? Hello, online fandom. Hello, insanity. 

I’ve learned that the FFVII online fandom - specifically the shipping fandom - is crazy in good and bad ways. This, of course, was reignited by the Remake’s release, but most likely really amplified due to people being under quarantine. This is an escape from reality for a while. An escape from the constant depressing news cycle.

Before I discovered fandom I was obsessed with COVID-19 information. I watched all kinds of new broadcasts, Dr. Fauci, random people on YouTube, and it was overwhelming after a while. Remake saved me from that. I played Remake before I went into fandom. I played it as a non-shipper. I was slammed in the face with how amazing they portrayed Cloud and Tifa. 

Self Insertion

The other piece that seems to be apparent in angry shippers is the idea of self insertion. This simply means that you put yourself in the place of the character, so you begin to take things personally. If a person self inserts as Cloud, and their personal preference is Aerith, they become angry when Aerith dies and we find out who Cloud TRULY loves. If somebody self inserts as Aerith, they’re upset that they were never a real love interest. 

Most people go “oh okay, I see.” and move on and/or move to fanon if they truly wanted those two together. 

Then there’s the people who, for 20+ years, spread false information, attack, stalk, and go ballistic anytime there’s any type of evidence that they were wrong. 

The Big Ego

Nobody likes being wrong. FFVII has a major twist in it that causes you to go into a daze, and I do think they do a great job with that. Aerith isn’t it. Her death isn’t the big twist. It’s Cloud that’s the big twist. Going through the Lifestream (and even prior at the Northern Crater) reveals like ohhh shiitttt everything you know about Cloud is a lie.

And he even tells us it’s an illusion. Imagine that?

I am very strongly swayed by evidence from official resources. I suppose I take a scientific approach to this. I cannot find canon evidence that Cloud ever held any romantic feelings towards Aerith. Therefore, to me, Cloud never held any romantic feelings for anyone but Tifa because that’s what the game and resources tell us. 

Luckily, the Remake is making things clear. The devs are being more direct when answering questions. 

There was never supposed to be ambiguity or “player choice”. The fact that you lose player choice at one point and there are fixed events in the game (The Lifestream) that cannot be changed should have been evidence enough. The fact that there are not multiple endings should have been a clue. 

With all of this being said, it shouldn’t matter what I say if you want to ship a fanon ship. I do not see any romance between Cloud and Aerith and I never have. There is no supporting evidence of it. I generally am boring - I don’t try to fanon too much stuff that I have other evidence for. I’ll do it in jest. 

My opinion on Cloud and Aerith in general is I don’t think they work or ever could work. That shouldn’t stop you from enjoying the ship. You cannot claim canon on a ship though unless there’s evidence. There’s way too much twisting, lying, and deletion to justify certain ships. This is one of them.

#cloti #cloud x tifa #ff7 shipping war #ff7 ltd #ff7 #ff7 spoilers #ff7r #ff7r spoilers #don't let canon stop your fanon #canonny #yeah i'm boring #final fantasy vii #final fantasy vii remake #cloud strife #tifa lockhart

[dustedmagazine]

Ian Mathers’ 2020: We’re stuck inside our own machines

I’ve had a song I loved in high school and haven’t thought much about since stuck in my head. The song “Apparitions” by the Matthew Good Band is a fine example of the alt rock of the late 90s; if you grew up then but somewhere down in the states (or elsewhere) instead of my southern Ontario you may well have your regional equivalents, and like this one they may not resonate terribly strongly outside of their time and place. It popped back into my head after a long time recently and of course 2020 has changed it a little. A song that as a teen I felt keenly as about loneliness (albeit also about how technology can feed into that) of course now plays on my nerves as another small piece of art about the way that most of us (those scared and/or responsible anyway) have only that relatively narrow, technologically mediated connection to the people we love. All of us, artists and listeners alike, are trying to fit our feelings and art and selves down these little connections, with some success.

On a personal level, 2020 wound up being stressful in ways we couldn’t have predicted even after the pandemic hit. In circumstances that could have seen governments on this continent support those unable to work (and those who shouldn’t have to), support those workers who are truly essential, support workers and renters and even landlords and small businesses, instead we got a near-total abeyance of those governments using the resources we provide them with to save any of us. On a personal level my wife and I were lucky enough to be able to work from home (not that it didn’t come with its own forms of stress, and now that I’m off until January I have several work/stress-related illnesses to recover from) but still saw friends and loved ones lose good, used-to-be-sustainable livings overnight, saw family businesses succumb to a near-total absence of effective government support after months of trying to keep above water, etc.

It is probably no surprise that this is not a situation conducive to listening to music, let alone writing about it; I have deliberately and happily kept busy on behind the scenes stuff at Dusted that I could still manage but looking, at the end of the year, at the amount I managed to actually create is demoralizing if not at all shocking. I’m not sure I think next year will be ‘better’ in many important ways, although at our job there is a growing feeling among coworkers that next year has to have some work/life balance because 2020 was, maybe more than anything else, unsustainable.

That’s not to say I didn’t spend a lot of time and emotion on music this year, and if nothing else constant sleep deprivation, stress, and panic meant I was probably open to being deeply moved by all sorts of art even more than normally (it’s gotten to the point where I can’t even read a sad or moving twitter thread out loud to my wife without getting teary, which is kind of… nice?). Funnily enough the band that did the most to keep me sane didn’t really put out anything in 2020. Personal favorite, Low, instead started, in early April, getting on Instagram with something they called on whim “It’s Friday I’m in Low.” With one brief break they have now done by my count at least 35 shows (catalogued here, by the way), every Friday at about 4 my time.

Admittedly it’s easier for Low to pull this off than some bands, since the 2/3 of the trio that sing are a married couple (they’ve had a couple of socially-distanced backyard shows with bassist Steve Garrington, but he’s mostly been isolating elsewhere). These shows have seen the band’s Alan Sparhawk take a mid-set break to do follow-up phone interviews with the acts featured in the COVID-curtailed touring bands series Vansplainingthat they started on YouTube, or just to give a tour round their vegetable garden and talk tips. It’s seen Alan and Mimi Parker draw on their impressive, 25+ year body of work (averaging 4-5 songs a set, I don’t think they’ve repeated themselves yet) and talk a bit between songs about pandemics, politics, song choices, and whether Alan should grab his bike helmet this time.

They’re not the only musicians out there speaking love and sanity (and playing music) into the strange digital interzone filled with hate and disinformation where we’ve all been forced to gather while locked down, but they were and the most consistent and steady signal being emitted each week. No matter how tired I was from work or what new symptoms I’d developed or what horrific thing I read into the news, even if I had to take an emergency nap while it was actually airing, every Friday the show was there. Once things do return to something more like normal, it’s one of the few things I’ll unambiguously miss about this weird-ass year.

So if that makes an argument for Low as my band of the year (admittedly again… it’s not like Double Negative has aged poorly, either), that does a disservice to those 2020 records I did connect with; even if there are still literally dozens I have to go through, many of which I expect to love, my top picks this year (if as unrankable by me as always) hit me as hard as any top pick in recent years did. So here I present a quick and informal top 5, which the rest of my top 20 following in alphabetical order. Here’s hoping for more time and space in 2021 for music, and even more than that, for more support for those who need it from those who could have been providing it all this time. (The Matthew Good Band, incidentally, always did best with their ballads. “Strange Days” is another I’ve had in my head these days; the image of moving “backwards, into a wall of fire” has stuck with me since the 90s and it’s never felt more grimly appropriate.)

Greet Death — New Hell

New Hell by Greet Death

This one is, in some sense, cheating; it came out November 2019. But that just means it’s the latest winner of my personal Torres Prize for Ian Being Late to the Party (so named because becoming slightly obsessed with Torres’ Sprinter just after I sent in my 2015 list was the first time I noticed that one of my favorite records of each year tends to get picked up by me just after I call it quits on the year, no matter how long I try to wait). This very doom and gloom slowcore/metal/(whatever, just know it’s heavy) trio at first felt very much like my beloved Cloakroom (whose Time Well has also won a Torres Prize) but sure enough nuances revealed themselves. Back in February it felt almost a little too negative, but then the rest of 2020 happened. And the extended burns of “You’re Gonna Hate What You’ve Done” and the title track remain searing.

Holy Fuck — Deleter

Probably the record I’ve been trying to write about the longest in 2020, and the one I’m most disappointed in myself that I just couldn’t get the requisite paragraphs together. It’s a wonderful effort from the consistently great Toronto resolutely human-created (and —mediated) dance music quartet, one that both feels like a summation of everything they do well, and with the addition of some outside voices (including strong turns from the singers of both Hot Chip and Liars) a step forward at the same time.

Spanish Love Songs — Brave Faces Everyone

Brave Faces Everyone by Spanish Love Songs

As the year got worse, this roar of defiance only got more crucial for me to hear every so often; I was a big enough fan of it, even after writing it up for Dusted, that when they solicited fan footage for a subsequent music video you may just be able to get a glimpse of me in it. (I’m the one in a “No Tories” t-shirt.) My punk rock-loving twin brother was the one who introduced me to Spanish Love Songs and we were supposed to spend an evening in June screaming along to them live in a packed, sweaty room. I need that in my life again.

Julianna Barwick — Healing Is a Miracle

Healing Is A Miracle by Julianna Barwick

It’s a sign of what 2020 has been like here that even just this album title leaves bruises, and while I privately worried Barwick would have a hard time following up 2016’s sublime Will (probably my favorite record that year), it seems that continuing to take whatever downtime she needs to keep focusing and refining her particular muse has once again yielded amazing results. Anyone who thinks they know what a Barwick track sounds like should really check out, say, “Flowers”, but much of this record absolutely sounds like Barwick, just even better than before. She also boasted my wife and I's favorite streaming concert of 2020, an absolutely gorgeous rendition of this album with Mary Lattimore showing up.

Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher

Punisher by Phoebe Bridgers

I joked on Twitter recently that I have far too nice a dad (and far too good a relationship with him) to be as obsessed as I am with Phoebe Bridgers’ “Kyoto”, but here we are. Like most of her generation, Bridgers’ social media presence ranges from shit-posting to inscrutable, but even though things are often just as hard to figure out in her beautiful songs (as they often are in life), there’s an emotional clarity to them that can just grab you deep down. Couple that with seriously impressive songcraft and the progress from her already astounding debut Stranger in the Alps and more than anyone else in 2020 I’m excited to see just where the hell Phoebe Bridgers is going to go, because it feels like she’s talented and hardworking enough to go just about anywhere and drag a lot of our hearts with her.

Other Favorites

Aidan Baker & Gareth Davis — Invisible Cities II

Anastasia Minster — Father

Deftones — Ohms

Hum — Inlet

Kelly Lee Owens — Inner Song

Mesarthim — The Degenerate Era

Perfume Genius — Set My Heart On Fire Immediately

Protomartyr — Ultimate Success Today

Rachel Kiel — Dream Logic

The Ridiculous Trio — The Ridiculous Trio Plays the Stooges

Sam Amidon — Sam Amidon

Shabason, Krgovich & Harris — Philadelphia

Stars Like Fleas — DWARS Session: Live on Radio VPRO

Well Yells — We Mirror the Dead

Yves Tumour — Heaven to a Tortured Mind

Five Reissues/Compilations/etc.

Aix Em Klemm — Aix Em Klemm

Bardo Pond — Adrop/Circuit VIII

Charles Curtis — Performances & Recordings 1998-2018

Coil — Musick to Play in the Dark

Hot Chip — LateNightTales

Ian Mathers

#yearend 2020 #dusted magazine #ian mathers #greet death #holy fuck #spanish love songs #julianna barwick #phoebe bridgers #aidan baker #gareth davis #Anastasia Minster #Deftones #hum #Kelly Lee Owens #mesarthim #perfume genius #protomartyr #rachel kiel #the ridiculous trio #sam amidon #Shabason Krgovich & Harris #Stars Like Fleas #well yells #yves tumour #aix em klemm #bardo pond #charles curtis #coil #hot chip

[sierrabinondo]

2020

damn my last tumblr post is the last day of woodland creatures, did i not do a 2019 wrap up?? i feel like i did. oh well lmao

so, arguably the most tumultuous year in modern history (at least, american history- all pandemic and political events considered) is about to come to a close. it was very not fun experiencing a pandemic as millions lost their loved ones to covid. i was part of the 20% of people that became unemployed as a result of the economy taking a huge dump. i would not want to experience this same year again if it meant that every life lost could be saved. with the year i was given, i made the best out of it that i could. 

like every other person on this earth (except for where the virus was already spreading), this year started out normal as hell for me. i was hating my job but chugging through each week, with the occasional show to worry about and then planning our band’s 2020 release plans. despite my salaried job, i was barely making enough to put anything away in savings, forthcoming disney trip aside. i really felt like i was putting in all this work at a full time job just to barely stay afloat and it grated at my soul. i don’t dream of labor, and i only take jobs like this because nothing i am passionate about truly makes money and the marketing jobs i would actually care about are never available to me/never come to fruition after submitting myself for consideration. 

disney was a huge highlight of my year despite being deathly sick. i keep wondering if i had covid (i never figured it out), but it sure as hell felt like it. i feel like if i did have it i would have passed it on to jeremiah and his family but i didn’t. i could still kinda taste, but not smell because i had the worst sinus infection i ever had in my entire fucking life. like i know i get them a lot but really, holy shit. i really had it bad. it started when we were in the studio the 2nd to last weekend of february on the last studio day. i had to go back to the studio several months later because i was that unsatisfied with how the vocals came out. i didn’t want to fuck up these releases and have my performance be mid so i was willing to pay to have to re-do everything. i assumed if this was like any other sinus infection, it would go away in a week.

lmao.

i had that infection for THREE WHOLE FUCKING WEEKS. i played a show with that monster sinus infection, and went to disney with it. i went two weeks without meds because i really was convinced it would go away on its own. before we left for disney i finally got antibiotics at urgent care and couldn’t drink most of the trip which sucked. but that finally did the job, and the infection waned when we returned from disney. despite being physically weak, in pain (there was one friday my body pains were so horrible that jeremiah contemplated taking me to the hospital), and leaking snot all over my sleeves the entire trip (LIKE IT WAS THAT UNCONTROLLABLE. I HAD NEVER GONE THROUGH THAT MANY PACKS OF TISSUES IN MY LIFE. I WAS LEAKING SO MUCH I HAD TO LOCATE THE BABY CHANGING STATION IN MAGIC KINGDOM. IT WAS LIKE A SECRET STERILIZED TROVE OF HAND SANITIZER, WIPES, TISSUES AND BABY OIL.) i had an amazing time at disney. and it was my first time going with a significant other so it was incredibly fun. it was also a wonderful opportunity to spend time with his family. the only very not fun part was missing our nephew in the main street parade because some bozos fucked up the info they gave my sister-in-law and we were out walking around when his high school band had actually marched earlier than we thought.

it’s funny, because that weekend after we returned was the last weekend of “freedom” everyone had before lockdown. we were weary of covid while in florida but still living it up on vacation. at that time, there had only been 3 cases in orlando. 3!!!! i had plans to go to a party once home but i cancelled only because i still wasn’t completely out of the woods and 100% well again. i felt so bad cancelling because it was for my friend’s party and she never really did parties usually :( and i thought it wouldn’t be a good idea considering i may or may not have had covid. 

then... the following week came. 

monday we got a weird email from our CEO saying there was going to be salary cuts and that it was essential for the company to survive a downturn. i pouted but my parents consoled me saying it was better than nothing; maybe look for a new job. and then- i got the nothing! a day or two later, i was let go. and i could tell my manager was absolutely not souped to be giving me this call at all. she literally prefaced it like, “this sucks, but-” and gave me the news. and i was utterly devastated, sobbing controllably, because i was just scraping by on this income to begin with. and i had JUST, finally, received health insurance through this job. i was asked to continue working through friday the 20th, which i would be paid for, and then i would have to return my laptop and any other work materials (like printouts and promo stuff) i had possession of. 

that day and the days following i had coworkers calling me or emailing me telling me they were so sorry. i was the first to be let go, and they were kind enough to extend words of encouragement to me. clients i worked closely with, a couple of them around my age, assured me that i could use them as a reference. many of my colleagues were my higher-ups, but were very down-to-earth people. one call that stuck out to me was from my colleague sarah. 

sarah was candid with me and said, “y’know how i was unemployed for 6 months?” i knew this well though we had only worked together for a year and a half; it was an important part of her path to where she was in her career now and why she chose it. she continued, “those were the best 6 months of my life.” 

and i would come to find out that yes, me too being unemployed was the best fucking time of my entire goddamn adult life.

when i posted i was officially unemployed i had an outpouring of support from my friends, and received enough animal crossing commissions to pay one month’s rent. the first day i finally felt peace was when i was sitting on my porch on an abnormally warm march day playing animal crossing following my last day at my company. it was like the universe was giving me a hug and telling me everything was going to be all right.

what would come was a pretty chaotic couple of months. jeremiah, my roommate and i would stay up until 3 am either watching anime or playing video games, subsequently sleeping until 11 am or noon. pair having fun, drinking (mostly me lmao) and lounging about with the scary realization that thousands of people every day were dying of covid and it could be my high-risk parents. i would cry at night and be so fucking scared. my sibling would tell me my family was being reckless, running unnecessary errands, and whenever my dad showed up to drop off food or necessities i would cry because i couldn’t hug him. i’m even getting choked up thinking about it now. and it was a fear that returned during the second spike around the holidays because it is the loss i fear the most.  

amidst this really horrible time, i would play games almost every other night online with my friends and it was so much fucking fun because all of us were either unemployed, furloughed or working from home. we’d laugh so goddamn hard our voices were hoarse. one of my favorite memories is playing quiplash with the creatureposting gang and then my big friends from college. and a really fun night in particular was SIIE release night, i popped a bottle of champagne and got absoluely zonked lmao. every few days i would have something to look forward to, some sort of virtual plans with my friends. this would continue until july when my friends were slowly starting to go back to work.

most of my early quarantine days were as follows: wake up, watch anime, work on commissions for most of the day, order extremely good food for delivery, play video games, and then bed. at one point commissions became so overwhelming i started to get slower at churning them out. though this became a daunting project, WOW it really forced me to become a better artist. and this year i got to spend so much more time drawing, which was fantastic. 

one thing i DID NOT spend a lot of time on at all? ugh. MUSIC. FUCKING MUSIC. i barely touched my guitar, stopped writing lyrics after july, and barely completed the instrumentals for about 3 songs. the only thing i consistently practiced was singing (because i would literally curl up and die if i didn’t). do you have any idea how much i blabbed to my therapist in 2019 about how much i would get done if i didn’t work full time and could just focus on my creative endeavors? and then life HANDED that shit to me on a silver platter the following year. i really did nothing insane musically with my time. and now i am really kicking myself for it. if i think about it, it was mostly because i was so exhausted from doing AC commissions, and partly because i was really intimidated about the prospect of struggling through songwriting. now i really wish that i had tried. 

one thing i started doing this year was streaming. i originally planned to just do it for fun, because i am horrible at video games and i really didn’t expect much out of it. i thought it would be cool if my friends could watch me play animal crossing. and then i unfortunately learned that this 3rd expensive pasttime is actually really, really, really fun. i started to spend half my week streaming and it led me to either getting closer to some online friends i only talked to a lil previously and making new friends. viewers would ask me if i continue to stream after the pandemic was over, and i enthusiastically assured them i would. and i meant it. even with the difficulties of returning to work and the band playing shows again considered, i really wanted to. i don’t get invited to things anymore anyway, so fuck it if that’s what i stand to lose lmao.

when the curve flattened in jersey i decided to become lenient again and start meeting with my bandmates. we spent the year trying to finish some new material and chip away at what work we have to do for the full length (yes, a full length). we had plans to tour this year and it sucks that fell through. we also had plans to do so much more content during the pandemic and we faltered under the stress of... well, existing in a pandemic. we did finally get to drop a new single though, and the difference in hype now vs when we dropped our last work was incredible. i am so thankful we were able to build an audience with nothing new for two years. i still often beat myself up because god every day i look around me, at our peers, and wonder where the fuck we’ve gone wrong to have such a slow build. and even daily just trying to stand out and prove that we have cut our teeth/deserve a chance is so demoralizing. i feel like it’s even worse than before. i literally have to talk to myself out loud, both alone and during interviews lmao, to remind myself that we truly have accomplished so much. and to take in and appreciate the little positive things. because this could all be over in a second. and this won’t be forever. the older we get the more we are risking for this, both time and resources, and it won’t do to let myself get bogged down over my inner competitive voice. but god it’s hard. like even with new music we still didn’t even TOUCH any of the goal numbers we set for ourselves in may. though we did put out less music than we had planned, and we really hope to change that in 2021 forreal. 

there was a single we were supposed to put out this year that’s on hold due to some pending assets but goddamn. if we really don’t break some sort of ceiling with this one i don’t know what will. i have the strongest gut feeling about the next single and in my opinion, it’s the best one we’ve had to date. when we play it at shows, the air in the room sometimes shifts. i’m eager to see what the response is and i’m so ready to push it with everything i have.

fuck this is getting so much longer than i planned i have to try to wrap this up lmao.

with our government stimmy money we turned around and got the dog of our dreams. we figured, i’d be home enough to watch him, and it was finally goddamn time. it’s why we moved into a house and not into another apartment. i was so scared meeting the puppy parents, and totally on edge the entire day. we went out to meet the breeder to test my allergies and see how i would react. samoyeds are not 100% perfectly hypoallergenic, but they were often lauded for being so. honestly? i still didn’t feel confident after two hours with the dogs because the pollen out there was bad (one of my WORST allergies) and i had mysterious hives on my arms i couldn’t figure out where they came from. for months jeremiah and my parents had to calm my nerves and remind me i lived with 3 cats before i moved out (i’m more allergic to cats) and that i would be fine. i had to do a lot of work on myself to get out of my own way about being excited about finally owning the dog of my dreams.  

this little fucking boy. i couldn’t believe he was real. neither in the pictures i often looked at about 20 times a day on the breeder’s facebook page nor when we went to meet him. and he was truly, truly perfect. our little shithead. when we went to go pick him out, he sat apart from his puppy pile of brothers, sniffing around the room and trying to rip off his ribbon collar. we locked eyes and he fuCKING APPROACHED ME. i could not fathom any other puppy in the room being brawly. this was the one. we could already tell he was a mischevious smartass, because once he untied his ribbon he proceeded to rip off the ribbons of all the other puppies. but he was the cutest, flopping over on his back when you were near to get belly rubs. 

ever since we have picked him up he has simultaneously been the biggest joy in our lives and the most source of stress lmao. that first week, and the next couple, werE FUCKING ROUGH.  i had a horrible anxiety attack when i couldn’t calm him for bedtime the first saturday he was home and i was loudly sobbing to jeremiah that i couldn’t handle this shit lmao. he was so scared i was having regrets but i am just a fucking anxious wreck and not used to having a DOG!! this is my first dog!!! but while i can remember what life was like before him i cannot imagine going back. the first time he got sick and we took him to the emergency vet i cried so hard. when he is wagging his tail happy to see me and he looks like a fuckin seal because his ears are folded back it is the best feeling. i’m so excited for when he gets older and we’re vaccinated for covid so that we can take him on so many adventures. he is truly the best.

there is so much more i want to say but this is long as shit. this is even painful for me to read lmao. it’s always been for me, a guy with dogshit memory, to remember everything, but so, so much happened. so i’m gonna wrap up the real descriptive stuff with this.

being unemployed allowed me to just experience life. to wake up each day, enjoy the sun in my backyard, have time to try new recipes, go for long walks, GET A DOG, get better at art, get better at singing, spend more time with friends (virtually), bond even harder with my amazing, beautiful boyfriend, create amazing work with my bandmates, improve at video games, connect with people all over the world, and so much more. all my life i let money dictate my every move. i am insanely privileged to have experienced this but when i had to just live within my means off unemployment i did just fine. i once believed i was perpetually indebted to my employer when i was discarded like it was nothing. i can get a job anywhere and be fine. it strengthened my class consciousness and while i have control over my own destiny it is our country that has so royally screwed us of living the lives we should be living. our lives do not revolve around labor. so until we win the fight and get what we deserve, i will be returning to work next month (full time... in commercial real estate.... again), but i will do whatever it takes to replicate the everlasting feeling of joy i felt this year for the rest of my godforsaken life. if that means struggling for 2021 to build up my twitch channel and the band, working 9 hour days and then streaming/writing music for another 4, so be it. i felt from a young age i was not destined to live a normal life and that feeling has stayed with me no matter how much i have tried to play the game of life as i have been told. i finally have the confidence to pave the life i want.

so, if you are here at this very spot because you read everything, thank you. if you are here because you scrolled to see how long this was, here’s the TLDR of my best parts of 2020:

- tapping out cover

- the 2 shows we played lmao, maybe 3 tops

- disneyworld

- ACNH outside on the porch on release day in warm weather

- making banana bread

- learning how to BRINE meats

- watching anime until 3 am, namely the time we watched pokemon journeys until 3 am 

-watching so. much. anime. 

-watching livestream concerts with my friends (the chon one was a real good time)

-playing jackbox with my creatureposting friends, the volcano saga (if u know u know)

-playing jackbox with my big friends

-the first time we ever had panchos and juanchos

-finally having sushi again after painful cravings and being grumpy

-the first time we had chinese food again after the lockdown began

-hitting the punching bag for the first time in forever (my dad bought me one)

-the first time we had ramen in forever

-surprising joe with cake at his doorstep for his birthday (we thought he would be the only one with a pandemic birthday lmao)

-playing monopoly and wheel of fortune on the switch, surprisingly having fun

-jeremiah’s birthday

-getting PAID for my ART

-writing + recording ONE (1) acoustic demo

-finally finishing the singles, fixing the vocals 

-shooting band promos

-unus annus

-meeting samoyeds

-meeting BRAWLY

-streaming except for the times 13 year olds cyberbullied me

-my birthday when my mom got me a terrifying singing birthday candle contraption and my sibling curbstomped the shit out of it (i was literally crying laughing like that kind of noiseless laugh cause you’re laughing that hard)

- getting the stamp of approval from andrew wells and anthony green 

-my friends having their first baby!!!

-dying from thanksgiving charceuterie board

-that week i binged ghibli movies on an hbo max trial and did nothing else

-filling the front porch with plants and most of them SURVIVING the fall, possibly winter but we’ll see in 2021 lmao

- (in general) nailing riffs i fucking sing over and over when practicing but prob won’t get down good enough to sing in front of others lmao

-solo inflatable pool hangs

-thursdays with sarah in the fall playing with the puppy

-the release of the first WSA single in two and a half years

-virtual movie night with sarah watching happiest season

-the music video shoots

-brawly experiencing CHRISTMAS

-receiving really thoughtful gifts from jerry and my parents

-deciding i would work towards being a full time streamer to supplement being a musician

[newstfionline]

Saturday, July 31, 2021

Biden to allow eviction moratorium to expire Saturday (AP) The Biden administration announced Thursday it will allow a nationwide ban on evictions to expire Saturday, arguing that its hands are tied after the Supreme Court signaled the moratorium would only be extended until the end of the month. The White House said President Joe Biden would have liked to extend the federal eviction moratorium due to spread of the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. Instead, Biden called on “Congress to extend the eviction moratorium to protect such vulnerable renters and their families without delay.” By the end of March, 6.4 million American households were behind on their rent, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.

Evacuation flight brings 200 Afghans to US (AP) The first flight evacuating Afghans who worked alongside Americans in Afghanistan brought more than 200 people, including scores of children and babies in arms, to resettlement in the United States on Friday, and President Joe Biden welcomed them home. The evacuation flights, bringing out former interpreters and others who fear retaliation from Afghanistan’s Taliban for having worked with American service members and civilians, highlight American uncertainty about how Afghanistan’s government and military will fare after the last U.S. combat forces leave that country in the coming weeks. Family members are accompanying the interpreters, translators and others on the flights out. The commercial airliner carrying the 221 Afghans in the special visa program, including 57 children and 15 babies, according to an internal U.S. government document obtained by The Associated Press, touched down in Dulles, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.

Not in control (NYT) Consider these Covid-19 mysteries: In India—where the Delta variant was first identified and caused a huge outbreak—cases have plunged over the past two months. A similar drop may now be underway in Britain. There is no clear explanation for these declines. / In the U.S., cases started falling rapidly in early January. The decline began before vaccination was widespread and did not follow any evident changes in Americans’ Covid attitudes. / In March and April, the Alpha variant helped cause a sharp rise in cases in the upper Midwest and Canada. That outbreak seemed poised to spread to the rest of North America—but did not. / This spring, caseloads were not consistently higher in parts of the U.S. that had relaxed masking and social distancing measures (like Florida and Texas) than in regions that remained vigilant. / Large parts of Africa and Asia still have not experienced outbreaks as big as those in Europe, North America and South America. / How do we solve these mysteries? Michael Osterholm, who runs an infectious disease research center at the University of Minnesota, suggests that people keep in mind one overriding idea: humility. “We’ve ascribed far too much human authority over the virus,” he told me.

Diasporas at the Olympics (Foreign Policy) Cuban athletes at the Tokyo Olympics are evidence of the exodus from the island over the years. By the Cuban sports journalist Francys Romero’s count, more than 20 athletes at the Olympics were born in Cuba but became naturalized in and are now playing for other countries. That’s a group almost one-third the size of Cuba’s own delegation.

Peru’s politics (Foreign Policy) Peru’s new President Pedro Castillo chose Guido Bellido, a congressman and fellow member of his Marxist Free Peru party, as his prime minister as part of a cabinet announcement on Thursday, setting up a tense confirmation battle with the country’s opposition-led Congress. Bellido courted controversy in a local media interview in April when he expressed sympathy for members of Shining Path—a Maoist guerilla group who fought a bloody insurgency during the 1980s and 1990s.

Death toll in Turkish wildfires rises to four, blazes rage on (Reuters) The death toll from wildfires on Turkey’s southern coast has risen to four and firefighters were battling blazes for a third day on Friday after the evacuation of dozens of villages and some hotels. More than 60 wildfires have broken out across 17 provinces on Turkey’s Aegean and Mediterranean coasts this week, officials have said. Villages and some hotels have been evacuated in areas popular with tourists, and TV footage had shown people fleeing across fields as they watched fires close in on their homes.

Three Jehovah’s Witnesses sentenced to six or more years in Russian prison for their faith (RNS) Three Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia were convicted and sentenced to prison for practicing their faith on Thursday (July 29). Vilen Avanesov, 68, was sentenced to six years, and his son Arsen Avanesov, 37, along with a third defendant, Aleksandr Parkov, 53, were both sentenced to six-and-a-half years. All three men have already spent more than two years in pretrial detention. “These men should never, ever have had to spend a minute in prison, and yet they’ve been locked up for two years,” said Rachel Denber, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Europe and Central Asia division. The three Jehovah’s Witnesses were detained in Rostov-on-Don in May 2019 and accused of continuing the operations of a Jehovah’s Witness organization that had been liquidated. All three were charged with organizing extremist activities. In January 2020, Arsen Avanesov was also accused of “financing extremist activities” by collecting donations to rent a room to meet with other Jehovah’s Witnesses. Near the trial’s conclusion, Arsen Avanesov spoke of his devotion to God: “I dedicated my life to him and did it sincerely. … I don’t want, I can’t and will not give up my promise.” The sentences for the three men are considered particularly harsh in a country where rape is punishable by three years in prison and kidnapping by five. The sentencing follows a 2017 ruling that categorizes the religious group as “extremist.”

Myanmar leaders ‘weaponizing’ COVID-19, residents say (AP) With coronavirus deaths rising in Myanmar, allegations are growing from residents and human rights activists that the military government, which seized control in February, is using the pandemic to consolidate power and crush opposition. Supplies of medical oxygen are running low, and the government has restricted its private sale in many places, saying it is trying to prevent hoarding. But that has led to widespread allegations that the stocks are being directed to government supporters and military-run hospitals. At the same time, medical workers have been targeted after spearheading a civil disobedience movement that urged professionals and civil servants not to cooperate with the government, known as the State Administrative Council. “They have stopped distributing personal protection equipment and masks, and they will not let civilians who they suspect are supporting the democracy movement be treated in hospitals, and they’re arresting doctors who support the civil disobedience movement,” said Yanghee Lee, the U.N.’s former Myanmar human rights expert and a founding member of the Special Advisory Council for Myanmar. “With the oxygen, they have banned sales to civilians or people who are not supported by the SAC, so they’re using something that can save the people against the people,” she said. “The military is weaponizing COVID.”

North Korea began the summer in a food crisis. A heat wave and drought could make it worse. (Washington Post) At the beginning of the summer, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un described the country’s food situation as “tense” after border closures caused by the coronavirus pandemic and crippling floods. By midsummer, a cycle of grinding heat and record-low rainfall could be a sign of a greater food crisis and hunger ahead. Temperatures in North Korea have climbed as high as 102 degrees in some areas this week—a shock in a country where temperatures do not often break 100 degrees. The heat wave has been compounded by a growing drought. North Korea had gotten 21.2 millimeters, or less than an inch, of rain as of mid-July. It is so hot that state media reports have been repeatedly warning residents about the dangers of dehydration and low sodium levels, especially for the elderly and those at risk of heart disease or stroke. They are urging residents to stay out of the sun, eat more fruits and vegetables, and drink more than two liters (about two quarts) of water per day, according to NK News, which monitors North Korea’s state media.

Hong Kong protester given 9-year term in 1st security case (AP) A pro-democracy protester was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison in the closely watched first prosecution under Hong Kong’s national security law as the ruling Communist Party tightens control over the territory. Tong Ying-kit, 24, was convicted of inciting secession and terrorism for driving his motorcycle into a group of police officers at a July 1, 2020, rally. He carried a flag bearing the banned slogan, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of our times.” Tong’s sentence was longer than the three years requested by the prosecution. He faced a possible maximum of life in prison. Tong’s sentence is a “hammer blow to free speech” and shows the law is “a tool to instill terror” in government critics, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific regional director, Yamini Mishra, said in a statement. The law “lacks any exemption for legitimate expression or protest,” Mishra said. “The judgment at no point considered Tong’s rights to freedom of expression and protest.” Defense lawyers said Tong’s penalty should be light because the court hadn’t found the attack was deliberate, no one was injured, and the secession-related offense qualified as minor under the law.

New Zealand rated best place to survive global societal collapse (Guardian) New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Tasmania and Ireland are the places best suited to survive a global collapse of society, according to a study. The researchers said human civilisation was “in a perilous state” due to the highly interconnected and energy-intensive society that had developed and the environmental damage this had caused. A collapse could arise from shocks, such as a severe financial crisis, the impacts of the climate crisis, destruction of nature, an even worse pandemic than Covid-19 or a combination of these, the scientists said. To assess which nations would be most resilient to such a collapse, countries were ranked according to their ability to grow food for their population, protect their borders from unwanted mass migration, and maintain an electrical grid and some manufacturing ability. Islands in temperate regions and mostly with low population densities came out on top.

Ethiopian roadblock (NYT) Aid workers in Ethiopia claim that an unofficial Ethiopian government blockade has cut off the only road into the conflict-torn region where millions of Ethiopians face the threat of mass starvation. A relief convoy headed for Tigray came under fire on the road on July 18, forcing it to turn around. On Tuesday, the World Food Program said 170 trucks loaded with relief aid were stranded in Semera, the capital of the neighboring Afar region, waiting for Ethiopian permission to make the trek into Tigray. The blockade is intensifying what some call the world’s worst humanitarian crisis in a decade. The crisis comes during an intensifying war, which has deepened ethnic tensions and stoked fears that Ethiopia will collapse. The United Nations estimates that 400,000 people there are living in famine-like conditions, and another 4.8 million need urgent help. The Ethiopian prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize, said last week that his government was providing “unfettered humanitarian access” and committed to “the safe delivery of critical supplies to its people in the Tigray region.” However, Mr. Abiy’s ministers have publicly accused aid workers of helping and even arming the Tigrayan fighters, leading to aid workers being attacked at airports, and even killed.

#headlines #news

[rachellevic]

As I sit here, thinking about the end of supernatural, reading all the beautiful tributes and articles, I feel a very great sense of loss. Not because I believe this is the end, the real end, that’s not possible with the Winchesters, but there is something much deeper going on and I can’t quite put it into words, so maybe that’s why I’m writing it down.

Maybe it’s a little bit selfish, maybe I’m just not ready to watch to ‘the end’. Rarely has a show done this to me, and believe me, I have a ‘brand’ of television that I get into. Confession, I only started watching supernatural because someone told me that Kim Manners was a producer on it and I was a huge, I MEAN HUGE, fan of the X-files, and I didn’t feel this way when that show ended. It was also several season in before I started watching supernatural because, truth be told, I very strongly dislike ‘vampires and werewolves’ stories and what media has done to lore and historical context; I’m looking at you Bram Stoker, you started this and opened the door to things like sparkles and Stockholm Syndrome and that’s not okay. But Supernatural had something that I had been missing in TV, in life, and I very quickly became a fan...thank you for fixing vampires and werewolves by the way.

I like endings. I like beginnings. I love the journey to get from beginning to end. Maybe I am feeling something more than a loss of a show, but a loss of a way of life, a path, the road...I don’t know. To be honest Supernatural is one of the last shows that I have tuned in to on the regular, week after week, to watch because the way we watch TV has changed. The way people experience a serial show has changed. I don’t know if Supernatural would have been what it was if it had found a life on a streaming service to begin with. But they didn’t exist, or were just in their infancy when supernatural started. What I will miss the most, I think is the episodes in between. Rarely do you find a show that can start a plot episode one and carry it over many season, reinventing itself, playing off its past and building a future. It has built such a future that regardless of how it end, whether they die or they live, they will always live, they will always live in the stories that we know and the stories that we will tell. Jared and Jensen will go on to do other things, as they had done other things before this, but they will always be Sam and Dean and whenever you see their faces, your first thought will be Sam and Dean. Like Anthony Hopkins will always be Dr. Hannibal Lector (so will Mads Mikkelsen, just saying) and Colin Firth will always be My Mr. Darcy. Misha, though an antagonist to us all, is literally an angel in real life. I said what I said, change my mind.

This thing we call Gish has it’s own life now, and will continue to do great things, but we are deeply bound to our Supernatural roots. Looking back on 15 seasons, the good the bad and the ugly, (*cough* Bugs *cough*), what would the show have been if it were a max of 9 or 12 episodes a season? I mean, honesty, if you are a fan of Lucifer, who has watched it on Fox and now on Netflix, it just isn’t ringing the same. It’s good, but there is something missing and I think what that is, is the passage of time. The episodes in between the big plots, the monsters of the week, and the goofy playful, ‘I killed Hitler’ And ‘Sam hit a dog’ moments. We know a milk run is never just a milk run, that life is big and bold and in your face, even though it seems a little slow right now, and that sometimes, staring a books and computers too long is going to force you out into the world to just look for some trouble. Supernatural has taught me a lot about life and what is out there in the world, the good, the bad, the people, this planet we live on and some of our fundamental flaws as humans. Nothing is ever going to be perfect, but if we work at it, we can touch perfection. It’s the moments and the anticipations, it may also be the glimpses of joy when the world is crashing in around us.

It has been a long time, 15 seasons, 320 plus episodes, and yes it does feel like an end, but not for Supernatural, for the way we watched TV. I like a mini series as much as the next person but I don’t think you can do what supernatural did in a handful of episodes even if you can keep yourself going for as long. I don’t think a community like this will ever happen again in the same capacity because the interactions on episode night wont be the same if they just throw everything up onto a streaming service. We have been so lucky with this show and the cast’s willingness to interact with us as much as they do and recognize the power of the fandom as a force for good. Networks were always just looking for viewership, but seemed to forget that the viewers make or break a show and I feel like Supernatural found a way to take views and unite them, to appreciate the fans and see the power that people can have when hey get behind something. That wasn’t the networks doing, it was the cast, it was the fans, I think that is very obvious. So, maybe this is where my feeling come from, maybe I just don’t see how a show doing as well, doing so much good outside of the show, making money, bringing in viewers, being the longest running show of its kind, could just be cut off when there could have been so much more to be done...Do I blame the network for the fall of TV and that they are grasping at straws for an old way of viewership? Yes, yes I do. I believe that they see the streaming services have been a mighty blow to their structure, that it has made TV so much more accessible and frankly so much less annoying with no commercials, but what I think the streaming services of the world have wrong is the limited number of episode and the anticipation of a new episode week after week. Sure, I hate a hiatus as much as the next person, and when I want to watch 15 season of supernatural all in one shot, I do have the DVDs so F you Netflix for taking it down and putting it back up and taking it down again only to put it back up, I have the collection and I can watch it any time I want! But, where is my live viewing party, the gasps and shock you can literally hear over twitter. The standing and singing Carry On when you know it’s going to play. You don’t get that binge watching a show on Netflix...Supernatural is so much bigger than the money maker it was for the networks.

Truth be told, I’m kind of over TV. I rarely turn the thing on in the off season. I didn’t watch anything new this whole pandemic, but instead went back to the familiar, the comfortable. I marathoned all of the X-files in order from beginning to end with two movies, two event series, and cried over their Kim Manners tribute. (Word to the wise, it may not be the best show to watch in a pandemic with all it’s government conspiracies and alien viruses...but the 90’s fashion in the early seasons, and so many actors who we know and love from supernatural were just babies back then, and yes almost everyone is in it. Baby Crowley, Baby Lucifer, Baby Meg (First Meg not Second Meg...sorry Rachel!)) And when I was finished with The X-files I jumped right back into season one of Supernatural.

Supernatural has kept me coming back every week, and it’s been around for almost half of my life (do we even count the years you can’t remember?). I’m about as old as Sam, I was in university when I started watching supernatural but I’m also an older child and I grew up on my dad’s music, and he had a classic car that I remember but my brother doesn’t and my dad isn’t with us anymore (2012). I found so much to connect with in Supernatural, like I relate to Dean on a level that I can’t even explain; from having a little brother to pie is the superior celebratory dessert - also pie for breakfast is totally okay not because there is fruit in it but because I’m an adult and I’ll do what I want! Go team free will! Does that make me a Dean girl? I don’t think so, because You can’t have one without the other. This whole time, it has been about family, more specifically siblings. Dean isn’t Dean without Sam and Sam isn’t Sam without Dean. But yes I’m a Dean girl for other reasons.

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, I doubt it, but supernatural hits the family feels, it came into my life at a time of transition, it was there when my dad died, and has been there for 15 years. Thinking back to the ‘where do you see yourself in 10 years’ question, and not being at all where I’d thought I’d be, there has been something very constant in the inconsistencies of the road so far. Remember back in season one when we didn’t even know demons were a thing and now our biggest issue is literally Chuck? What a metaphor for adult life. For dealing with this crazy world and society and all the weird that seems to be oozing out of the pours of humanity. We’ve grown with this show. I’m not going to say grown up, because I sure didn’t get any taller in 15 year, but I did evolve, and maybe in some ways I have also digressed, but we keep pressing forward because no one else is going to save my world but me.

Supernatural reminds me of so many part of my life. I saw so much of the X-Files in there, the show that formed my younger years, and was devastated when Kim Manners passed away. There was a familiarity in Supernatural. The idea of seeing Sam and Dean come back, in event series (like the x-files) gives me hope, because we know that death isn’t really death for the Winchesters, but there will be something very profoundly missing from the world going forward. Maybe it’s the last of the magic, something that I’m holding onto in my adult life from time before, the spark that has managed to light up a really strange time, and I don’t just mean 2020. Maybe its a Millennial thing, I am an elder Millennial, right on the edge of two generations and I’m not even 40 yet. I’ve lived in the 80s, 90s, 2000s, 10s and here were are almost through the first year of the 20s (its going to be a very different kind of roaring 20s but um...very similar. History repeating itself a little too literally at times)

I don’t think the Supernatural Family is going anywhere any time soon, I don’t feel like I’m losing that, but this is an end for us. Maybe it’s the end of one book and the beginning of the next. Maybe it’s now our time to carry the legend of the Winchesters forward. I can only hope that somewhere, somehow we’ll see the world expand, the characters lives on; this isn’t the end of the road, but I guess the road can only go so far. I don’t want it to be over. I feel the loss, the lump in my throat, the tears in my eyes that I am fighting back even though no one is going to see them. It’s all good. All good things come to an end, or do they? Regardless, we’ll always have Tuesdays.

Carry on, everyone. I hope that you’ll be okay. Sorry for the long rambling journal entry that didn’t actually come to any real conclusions...thanks John! (Oh yeah, my dad’s name was John too...)

#supernatural #SPNFamilyForever #theroadsofar #lastdaysofSPN #theend

#supernatural #spnfamilyforever #supernatural family #spn final season #the end

[kaorei-endgame]

Game of the Year #4: Pathologic 2

You went in with 10 years knowledge on the subject, read those Rock Paper Shotgun Articles, consummate played-by-proxy nerd. And if you come in feeling like that, you've got a clean head start in the first few days of Pathologic 2: The Pandemic Simulation RPG (And Meta Commentary On Gaming (And The Nature of Fiction (And Perhaps Humanity Itself?)) and proto survival sim elements). Like it's turbulent and your health meters drain quick, but you get the jist. Water is short so you learn where the water drums are. Break borrow and steal. Deus Ex house-scavenging on a time limit. That is a genre of game you can wrap your mind around. On day two the plague begins, infected district is cordoned off on the map (which you know--because you have read Rock Paper Shotgun--is shaped, and named, like a cow's various parts, pre-butchering. metaphor!!) and your little virtual desire paths shift to compensate. A timed meeting with a medical colleague on the other side of the city now includes a 5 minute detour. Your nightly visit to harvest herbal curatives from an abandoned village in the steppe slides back into a midnight run, and then an early morning visit as the tasks consume you. Treat these people or we'll withhold your (paltry) salary. But also, heal your friend or his whole district succumbs. But also, buy a cloak to cover your face or you'll succumb. But also, you can't afford a cloak, which is why you're stomping through this abandoned village in the dark trying to remember where the fucking weeds to pick up are because you can't even afford a fucking cloak, much less real medicine!! Which is why you spend like a full quarter of every day making the trip here and back which is why there are now a half-dozen infected districts, all your friends are dead or dying, and the military has brought out the flamethrowers! The game has to be almost over, right? This fucking bull I scrounged up to buy on Day 1, when the world was simple and kind, is supposed to talk to me on the worst day of my life and you're telling me that's not right now, on Day 5 of the 13 total days in this game??

So it's kind of like that. Pathologic 2 arrests my functions through mechanical overwhelm. You're always on the knife's edge of poverty, and the next trashcan is always going to be the one that has a sewing needle in it that you can combine with the cloth you also don't have yet to make a pocket and expand an inventory you couldn't possibly own enough to fill with anything but more trash.

In 2020, this sounds close enough any survival sim but Pathologic's loop is so attenuated by long travel times and finely diced resources that you will never become comfortable. Here's a Terraria where you mine every copper vein you see while everyone around you slowly dies, but not so slow that you can't convince yourself you can save them, or if not them.... maybe the next one? Holy shit, this game is hard, yeah, but wow! Am I a doctor? Am I doing triage?

You build a base, and it's never stocked because you're living out of your coat pockets. Oh, haha, you think you're a doctor? Well you can't afford medicine, as stated, and your guess-work home remedies require infected organs harvested on the sly when you pray no one's looking, because they will run you out of the neighborhood for it. Haha, remember? You spent the literally whole first day, the only infection-free day, skulking in alley ways because the whole town was ready to kick the shit out of you Rambo-style for being a wandering vagrant?

And you still got the temerity to call yourself a doctor? Bitch, you're a fucking haruspex, and that much is clear in how a certain percentage of the population views you as moooore or less one step removed from the anthropomorphic nomad people who roam the plains (and who are, not coincidentally, being targeted by hate crimes as the plague sets in). Half of the tinctures you brew in your lab go into your belly to delay the onset of hunger or sleep for a few more hours. You crash on any couch you can find before the meter bottoms out. You spent less time diagnosing patients yesterday than you did scrounging through the garbage for enough refuse to trade for a fish from a midnight merchant called the Dead Item Seller who for some reason wants bloody bandages, and the fish didn't even fill up your whole belly. Barely even 40%. And the day starts anew, another two cornerstones of the town are sick and dying but what else is new. Have to go watch the giant plague doctors put on a secret play in the town's enormous baroque(????who cares???) theater we've converted into an emergency ward so don't wake the patients, please, you quasi-metaphorical thespians! Oh, my uncle or some shit says there's a hole in the center of the earth where all the blood goes down and THATS the problem?? 😰Well haha I don't think anyone's got enough Orange+ Tincture for a hole that big, Grandad!!🤣 Maybe better find another shaman trained in the ancient ways?? This one's barely making rent.😬 Oh the RAT KING wants to talk to me now? Is he gonna HELP? is he gonna GIVE ME DRUGS OR A FUCKING COAT?🤬

Please, it's 2020, 50% of the people reading this use horror movies as a safety valve to experience trauma and inure themselves to it. In that way, I feel I am among friends. Pathologic 2 is a mechanical expression of that release valve, maybe? A way to touch all those anxieties--Gotta Work, Gotta Rest, Gotta Eat, Gotta Talk To People, Gotta Do My Mindfullness Meditation, Gotta Be Responsible For Building My Own Boundaries In Personal Relationships And Also A 401K or an IRA If I Have The Time, You Know, On The Weekend, By The Way I Belong To A Class Of People The World Unilaterally Hates :)--so I think a good way to manage that.... for people like me.... who have brains who don't manage things well without external motivation.... which, for them, has been historically linked to trauma.... is to play a video game where everyone looks at you like you're sick while THEY'RE all dying of the fucking plague. Is that it? I don't know. It's 2020. So maybe that's just it.

#game of the year #goaty #goty #goty 2020 #pathologic 2

[reminiscences]

another attempt at blogging

i started this tumblr a couple years ago at the same time kate did. i can’t remember why—i’m sure tumblr was in the news again for some reason. i guess it was before the great porn purge. i was talking about blogging again this week with my friend daniel, and i woke up this morning and he had sent me a blog he wrote on a new tumblr account early in the morning, so to continue my regression to the early 2010s, i too have rebooted tumblr, given it an era-appropriate name, and decided to give it another go.

the problem with having a newsletter is that i don’t think anyone wants to hear from me in their inbox daily, so i’ve become very precious about the things i write there. it feels like it has to really matter. i like blogs because they’re disposable and can be dumb and not your best writing. how many two-graf tumblr posts did i write in 2011 that were just thoughts i idly had during a statistics lecture? anyway, here’s the first blog, they won’t all be this long probably. 

When I think about eventually looking back at this year I think about what I want to remember from it. I will remember the first week of March. I’ll remember the last birthday party I attended in person at Branch Ofc, a perfectly serviceable Crown Heights bar that was very full of people. I’ll think about that night and how I showed up to the party with a Ziplock full of homemade salted chocolate chip cookies in my purse, how I shared them with a table where the birthday-haver and their friends sat. Breathing in the same air as the four dozen other people crammed into the bar. I can’t imagine it now. I like Branch Ofc because it is unpretentious without pretending to be a dive, unlike Sharlene’s, which tries too hard to mimic the aesthetic trappings of an authentic dive bar but is really just a normal Park Slope bar. Branch Ofc is just a bar where you can buy drinks, and it was an eight-minute walk from my old apartment. It used to be a bar with a photobooth and Big Buck Hunter but I think both of those are gone now. 

For a few days in March, it felt like people were preparing for a snow day. Everyone was slightly more on edge than giddy—but only slightly. “WFH but make it a coffeeshop” I saw on someone’s Instagram story, a selfie with four of their friends coworking somewhere in Bushwick, completely nullifying the point of a work-from-home edict. I ran into my friend Maddie at the renovated Key Food on Nostrand the next week. Maddie, her roommate and I were in the aisle with the Pop Tarts and the Oreos. “I feel like I should get those?” we asked each other, pointing at junk food. I wasn’t wearing a mask or gloves; nobody was. Some guy wearing a Cornell University Sigma Chi tshirt walked by us with the largest bag of dried beans I’ve ever seen in my life slung over his shoulder. That was a man who had never soaked dried beans in his life. I wonder if he ever ate the beans. We were a bunch of idiot 20-somethings blindly grabbing for cans of soup and Fritos for the end of the world. What were any of us doing there? Why was it imperative that day that I make and freeze a lasagna? Maddie’s roommate had fresh lasagna noodles from Eataly she wasn’t going to use before she left for her parents’ house, and she said I could have those. She brought them over for me and I idly wondered if you could get Coronavirus from someone else’s fresh pasta noodles or if the heat of the oven would kill the germs. I made my lasagna.

I’ll think about how March-to-May is just one long gray blurry streak in my head. I baked, I got into running, I said “running with a mask? No thank you, no more running for me,” I got a job, I felt bad about getting a job when everyone I knew in journalism was getting laid off. I did a lot of Zoom Zumba. At first I slept terribly, and then I started sleeping too much, and then I stopped sleeping again at some point during that stretch. There was a novelty to suddenly being inside all the time that made it feel like an excuse to get “really into martinis.” I got really into martinis. Then I stopped drinking for a couple months. Remember “Zoom happy hours”? 

The thing I use most as a means of setting apart different eras in my head is the music I used as a soundtrack at the time. I rang in the 2014 new year in my cute apartment on Westcott Street in Syracuse with my college boyfriend, drunk and blaring Cold Cave, before we walked down the street to Alto Cinco and got Mexican food and passed out. It was my senior year and I only had a few more months of living like this and I loved the small life I’d built for myself there. Of course, it couldn’t stay. When we broke up a year and a half later after he moved to New York, where I had been living for most of a year, I walked around the neighborhood near the Myrtle-Wyckoff stop, close to where we were living together, listening to Mitski’s 2014 album Bury Me At Makeout Creek. I sat in Maria Hernandez Park and watched a bunch of kids play Red Rover. I didn’t especially want to go home because I hadn’t taken an escape route into account when we broke up and somehow timed it out so that things ended after the first of the month, leaving me with three-and-a-half weeks of continuing to share an apartment with someone whose heart I had just broken. In retrospect it’s clear to me that I had just outgrown a relationship with someone five years older than me who hadn’t grown up at all, but I hear that Mitski album now and all I think about are the cold early April days of 2015 when no place and no person felt like home. There’s a line in First Love/Late Spring, by Mitski, where she sings “胸がはち切れそうで,” which translates to something like “My chest is about to burst (with grief).” My advice to recent college graduates moving to New York is to simply not do anything the way I did it. 

So when I think about 2020, I do not want to associate any music I previously had fond memories of with this year. This is unfortunate because every musician I like who produces sad music has nothing but time on their hands now and they’ve all come out with new songs and albums. My recently played selections on Spotify look like a cry for help: Phoebe Bridgers, Bright Eyes, even Tigers Jaw. 

On Saturday I couldn’t sleep in. I woke up at 5:30 and watched the sun appear through my bedroom windows. I kept rolling over, trying to sleep again, but it was futile. Eventually I got up and got dressed, and left my apartment on foot. The walk into lower Manhattan is a few miles from my new place in Fort Greene. I walked west on Fulton, and then down Flatbush. It would have saved me ten minutes to take the Manhattan Bridge, but I’ve always regarded it as the ugliest of the bridges to cross on foot or on bike—last fall, I would walk home from Ben’s apartment over the Manhattan Bridge, and it was just so grey. You get an okay view of Dumbo, I guess, on the walk east, but it isn’t much to look at. When I got back to the Brooklyn side on those walks, I’d get on the A at High Street and take it back to Nostrand instead of walking the last couple miles. 

So I chose the Brooklyn Bridge this time. It was as busy as you’d expect it to be in a non-pandemic event. Instagram boyfriends took pictures of their girlfriends, who took off their masks for a few seconds for the right shot. I saw a couple taking engagement pictures in front of the lower Manhattan skyline. It felt so normal, pedestrians and bicyclists squeezing past each other at the narrow points. 

I was listening to Saint Cloud, the Waxahatchee album that came out a few months ago, turning it over and over in my brain like a rock you pick up at the beach and end up carrying with you on a long walk. The album, outwardly, has this gauzy blue-sky Americana vibe but when you listen to the lyrics of some of the songs it feels like peeling back layers of skin until you hit a raw nerve ending. Every song feels like a eulogy for this year. “You might mourn all that you wasted/That’s just part of the haul,” Katie Crutchfield sings on Ruby Falls. I got to the title track, which closes out the album, as I ascended the bridge. When you get baaaack on the M train, watch the cityyyyyy mutaaaaaaate, she sings. I guess she’s singing about New York. Is there another M train somewhere? I don’t know. I’m going to think about this stupid year whenever I listen to this album, I thought.

I got off the bridge at City Hall, surveyed the ongoing occupation movement there and the literal dozens of cops that had seemingly been deployed to stand there and, at best, do nothing. I walked down Centre Street, eventually winding through the little park by Baxter Street where two adults were playing ping pong, which felt like a socially distanced sport, all things considered. I walked down all those side streets in Chinatown as the sun struggled to break through the oppressive clouds. I walked by Nom Wah, past the salon Polly taught me will give you a very good $12 blowout, past that annoying bar where the bartenders are dressed like scientists, past the place where Kate and I got our auras read on her birthday in January, and ended up at Deluxe Green Bo. I ordered my spicy wontons in peanut sauce and ate them right there, the hot plastic container burning my knees as I sat on the sidewalk. 

Afterwards I walked by all my favorite places—the skatepark under the bridge, Cervo’s, Beverly’s (RIP), Little Canal, Jajaja, the Hawa Smoothie near the East Broadway F. The skaters were hanging out in Dimes Square. Everything had changed but standing outside Kiki’s, it felt for a second like almost nothing had. It was almost a normal Saturday on Canal Street. The sky stayed electric blue until I got back to Brooklyn. 

[thecastingcircle]

‘A Goofy Movie’ at 25: An Oral History of “I2I” and the Powerline Concert Scene Posted on Friday, April 24th, 2020 by Ben Pearson

Part Two

Kevin Lima: We storyboarded the entire sequence first, so we had a very intricate sense of what we wanted from it.

Gregory Perler (Editor): Brian Pimental, who was in charge of storyboards, he and his team boarded it. The way they used to do it in those days was pin every single storyboard up, play the song, and then run with a little pointer and point out the beats. The one unique thing about that song, though, was that there was live-action reference done for it.

Kevin Lima: It was actually one of the very last sequences to be finished in the film. We found that we were up against a huge deadline with the movie. I actually asked a good friend of mine, who was a storyboard artist on the movie, Steve Moore, to go to Australia and the entire sequence was animated in Australia.

Steve Moore (Storyboard Artist and Sequence Director, Sydney): [Kevin] called and said they were behind schedule, and said the concert sequence at the end had a ton of effects and it was more than they could do to hit their deadline. So he said Disney had a studio in Australia that does a lot of their TV stuff, one of their top outsourced studios down there, and would I want to go down there and supervise this sequence? I was like, “Yeah, sure. Go to Australia for six months? What’s the problem?” (laughs) They were in such a hurry that they were like, “Tomorrow, can you meet with the choreographer?”

Kevin Lima: We choreographed the whole [scene] based on the storyboards.

Steve Moore: We met, looked at the storyboard reel, and talked for a bit, and then two or three days after that, we were in a little soundstage in Burbank. We’d hired a guy to video record [the choreographer] and his dancers, and they did the “I2I” dance. From the boards, he came up with the “I2I” dance, and that’s why you can actually do the dance – because it wasn’t left to animators to come up with, it had actual moves to it.

Kevin Lima: I wanted to create a dynamic that separated Powerline being more grounded in the choreography that he does, as opposed to Max and Goofy, who can slide across a 50-foot stage, fall from the rafters, blow up, and who can do The Perfect Cast. Which, I don’t know if you’ve ever tried it, but it is quite difficult.

Gregory Perler: In the old Disney films, they filmed the actors moving in live action and then the artists literally traced over them. If you look at Snow White, for example, who is human, she moves exactly like her live-action reference. But with Max and Goofy and Powerline, they’re not the same proportions. So you can’t do that.

Kevin Lima: We knew that we wanted The Perfect Cast to be the center of the whole thing…we used that, as a lot of animation does, to be an influence for the animators. They didn’t copy it, exactly, but they certainly used it to get a real sense of continuity and an overall sense that there was a beginning, middle, and end to the piece.

Gregory Perler: Kevin thumbnailed every single shot from the live-action reference that he wanted to include in the song, and he spaced it out in the middle of the storyboard sequence that Brian had done. We incorporated that into the shoot.

Steve Moore: I had this one animator, he kept pulling out Paula Abdul videos. I said, “We have reference.” He goes, “Yeah, but she does this really good – ” [And I was like] “The reference!” He just wouldn’t do it. I finally had to boot him off the crew because I couldn’t get any work out of him. He was so obsessed with Paula Abdul. (laughs) He was a good animator, too! But I was like, “Look, if you can’t do this, I have to move on.” I warned him, and he just wouldn’t listen to me. He thought, “Ah, what’s he going to do?” Well, I put him back on the series stuff [like Goof Troop], because the studio was doing series work for Disney at the same time. They were not so happy with me because I was getting all their best people. Once I let that guy go, they were very happy. They said, “Thanks for doing that! We got a lot of footage out of him last week because he’s so mad!”

Gregory Perler: It cuts from Max and Goofy very high up at the top of the waterfall where the little rescue has happened, and a map flies in, and the map transitions you to the concert. So then you have that music start, you have a couple of establishing shots of a stadium, and people arriving. Then these roadies throw these cases in, the cases open up, and Max and Goofy come out. And you just go with it. It may have been one of the later sequences that was boarded, so there wasn’t a lot of time. Early on in the process, a sequence can be overthought. And I’m sure if we had done this one very early on, someone would have said, “Well, how did they even get in the cases?” (laughs) But we didn’t, and it’s such a treat to watch it and you just buy it.

Kevin Lima: I was always fascinated with David Bowie, and the way that he became characters. He put on a theatrical version of himself as he performed. I thought, “How can we do this with Powerline? Is there a way to give him a visual identity that makes him ultimately super theatricalized?” That’s where it all came from. That’s where the atom came from, the electricity. It was really about creating this identity that could live within the world of Goofy and Max.

Bill Farmer (Voice of Goofy): When you do a take and they say, “OK, be electrocuted,” then you just let your mind go with it. What’s it like to be electrocuted? Sometimes you go, “Whoa!” or grab your throat and kind of shake it, like, “Whoa-oh-oh!” High ones, big yells, all that. Then they pick the best ones and put them in. But when you do those yells and things that are rough on the vocal cords, they always save those for the end of the day, because if you strain your throat you don’t have anything else to do after that.

Bambi Moé: Up until this pandemic, I think going to see live music was – there’s nothing like it on the planet. I think what Kevin and his team did was to visually animate something that we could all relate to. The experience of it. The way it was communicated. It wasn’t just seeing the character performing. I think what really makes it so special is that it felt to me that there was an intimacy. You were a fly on the wall in the middle of this unbelievable concert. You were seeing it through the eyes of the lead characters – in this case, Goofy and Max. It was less about Powerline and more about them.

Gregory Perler: You’ve got to be on certain things on certain times within the song. All the backstage stuff that involves Goofy getting separated from Max, Max being chased by a guy – they’re cut within an inch of their lives. Because you’ve gotta be back on stage when you’ve gotta be back on stage. I do a lot of movies that have songs that have performance stuff but also story stuff, and this was a great first one to do because it really works.

Kevin Lima: Because we were all separated – we were all in different parts of the world – I would do videotapes in which I acted out all the scenes. I may have gone through that scene with them. I didn’t dance it, but I did do the acting that the characters would have done. So all of the surprises, the double-takes, Goofy holding his face when he sees Trini in her dressing room, all of that stuff are things that I actually was doing on my videotapes to help the animators understand what I wanted from the scene.

Bill Farmer: The heavyset woman who sings with Powerline in that scene was a character who was in the “Open Road” scene, traveling along with a little nebbish kind of a character. She had a lot more in the movie that got cut out, except for her in the scene of “Open Road” and then as one of the backup singers that Goofy sees in the dressing room and has the most weird look on his face. (laughs) He’s all embarrassed. She’s the one that’s vocalizing with Powerline on “I2I.”

Steve Moore: It was pretty tight. We had it down to what it needed to be, and there was no time to waste on anything. The only thing that still had to be worked out when I got to Australia was how the lighting was going to work. Because there was so much concert lighting to figure out…one of the concert scenes had so many different light things going on that we had like 32 levels of animation. Because we were shooting it all in a camera back then. They had given up their conference room for me to have an office, and the entire conference room floor was covered in layers of this scene while we were checking it before it went to camera…In CG, you would just set the lights. But we had to figure it out. We had one thing where it was flashing overhead, and another thing going around the sides of them when they were dancing. So the source of light’s coming from here, and we had to draw a rim matte kind of thing, and they would paint that. It was a lot of stuff to figure out like that.

Gregory Perler: It was one of the first scenes I ever edited on the Avid, digitally. Prior to that, we were editing on film. When we started the movie, we were on 35mm film that was shot and edited on an editing table, and then after about a year, Disney said, “Hey, we’re thinking of switching to these digital editing platforms. Are you interested?” And I said no, because we were already halfway through. Then I realized it wasn’t really a question. (laughs) It was, “OK, you’re going to get an Avid and you’re going to learn how to use one.” Even though I was reluctant, I admit that “I2I” was the perfect sequence to cut on the Avid because A) you were integrating another source medium, which was 30 frame per second video of the [reference footage of the dancers], and B) you have to be able to react so quickly and extend a drawing, take away from a drawing, or repeat a drawing so much more nimbly than you could if you were working on film.

Kevin Lima: With film, you have to pull it out of the gate, cut it, splice it, and put it back into the flatbed. With Avid, you could do it seamlessly without physically having to handle anything. I remember when they told us they wanted us to do this, and we may have been the very first to do Avid work at the studio. I remember us looking at each other and saying, “Oh man, we’re in for it now, because we’re going to be working out all the bugs as we go along.” But really, it was kind of seamless.

Carole Holliday (Character Designer, Roxanne and Stacey): It wasn’t until maybe about ten years ago that I found out that people your age love A Goofy Movie. Because it was the movie of their childhood. I had a girl that I went to church with who was like, “Can you draw Roxanne and Max on my Keds?” She bought brand new Keds so I could draw them on her shoes. I was like, “OK!” (laughs)

Gregory Perler: I don’t even know how long the song is. It might only be three minutes, but there’s so much jammed in there. You’ve gotta see the kids watching them on TV.

Kevin Lima: I don’t recall when we actually pulled in the idea that they were going to be on television. The concert being on television gave us the ability to cut around the country, or cut to the different players within the movie. We knew that we wanted Roxanne to see what had happened, we didn’t just want her to hear that it happened. So that’s where this idea of being on television came into play. We knew that was really the crux of it: Roxanne seeing Max and recognizing that he wasn’t just pulling one over on her, that he wasn’t lying to her because he was afraid – he was actually there.

Carole Holliday: I was always drawing Roxanne because I [joined the production in] France hopefully to animate the character that I designed. I didn’t realize until I got there that she was popular. At one point, I had done a doodle of Roxanne with an Eiffel Tower hat on. I drew another picture over it, so I took the rough, crumpled it up, and threw it in the trash can. The next day, I came back to my desk and my desk mate had pulled it out of the trash can and put it on his wall. I was like, “What?” It was very touching…I went there, and all of the French guys were like, “I want to draw Roxanne!” I think that’s the thing: she’s innocent. She was just this schoolgirl. People like innocence. They’re drawn to innocence. Even though in her biography, her favorite song was The Police song “Roxanne,” a story about a girl who’s not innocent. But Roxanne was. At the time, I was working with teenagers through my church, and I just treated her like the kids that I knew, and I think people saw that in the character.

Gregory Perler: If I remember correctly, it’s Bobby who sees him first. It’s treated as, not a joke, because it has real importance for [Roxanne]. And it sets up the fact that [Max] has to go back and tell her the truth, even though he actually completed his whole deception.

Carole Holliday: The ending doesn’t work unless the director and his head of story and the story crew have set up from the beginning what the character’s emotional want is. The fact that Max thought he wanted one thing and was fighting the very thing that Goofy wanted through the whole thing, and at the end, gets the relationship with his father. It’s like, “I’ve missed out on everything else, but I got this one thing I wasn’t expecting.” Then the Powerline concert at the end becomes the cherry on top. It’s like, “Oh my goodness, you get your dad and you get this! You were a bad kid, but you won because you actually acknowledged your foolishness!” I think that’s why it pays off, is because he repents. He gets what’s important, and then he gets given this other gift on top of that.

Kevin Lima: I was really wanting to make a John Hughes movie in animation. That was really my goal. Can we tell a more contemporary story with contemporary characters than had been told in animation up to that point? So at every turn, I was trying to make it feel like it was happening today. Well, 1995 “today.”

Gregory Perler: I don’t remember how the whole thing with Bobby and Stacey came about, but I think the music is vamping a little bit there, so there was time to play that out. Kevin and Brian came up with that, and we made it fit as best we could.

Kevin Lima: We felt like we should wrap up all the other stories that we’ve been telling. Pete, especially, being just flabbergasted and spitting out his beer on the television screen. I think maybe we’re the only Disney movie to have a character drink a beer. But he spits it all over the television because he is just amazed that what Goofy said was going to go down, went down. The concert really gave us a way to tie everybody’s story together. It’s amazing for me how, in animation especially, you can use music or a song to tell so much of your story in a really economic way.

Gregory Perler: It really does feel like the climax to a movie. You’re putting this thing together sequence by sequence, not always in order. Everybody loved “Stand Out” at the beginning of the movie, but by God, [“I2I”] is a climactic musical number, and it has real scope and scale that maybe the rest of the movie didn’t. You’ve got wide shots with crowds and things we take for granted today.

Steve Moore: We’d hear that song every day. It was like, “Here it goes again.” But for me, it never got to a point where I didn’t like the song anymore or couldn’t stand to hear it anymore.

David Z.: It’s funny, but those songs really lasted. Actually, the whole movie has taken on a second and third generation. My kids loved it when we did it, but then all these other people, I guess it was just the time where a lot of people had kids. But it was for grown-ups, too, because we didn’t make the song as a kid’s song. We made the songs as a sophisticated, radio-friendly groove.

Gregory Perler: It’s the culmination of this little movie that people have really grown to love and become invested in. It feels like this is the most satisfying way the movie can end. It feels inevitable in the best possible way for a movie. When it takes two, two and a half years to do a movie like that, and you don’t necessarily work in order and we have other songs that we didn’t use and stuff, you just never know.

Kevin Lima: I think the scene resonates because it’s backed with a powerful emotional through line. I think you get to see the culmination of a very difficult journey for Max and his dad come to a very rewarding end. Max fulfills a dream in some ways. Not only does he get to go on stage with Powerline, but he gets the girl at the end of the day. I think those are all very powerful themes wrapped up in one big song that echoes those themes. The song truly echoes what is happening in the plot. I think that’s what makes it truly stick in a real way.

David Z.: That was one of the hippest movies to come out, musically. There hasn’t been anything as cool since maybe an old Betty Boop cartoon where they used Cab Calloway. That was some great music. But cartoons didn’t have great music until then – not that I can remember. It was sort of a brave statement for me to make because it hadn’t been done.

Patrick DeRemer: My kids, who are adults now, they still have this song in their playlists. As do their friends. This generation of millennials – late twenties to mid-thirties – love this song. It makes me very proud as a writer to be proud of, first of all, the Disney movie catalogue. But then to be a part of such a popular song that’s touched so many people, it’s really exciting to me. It’s one of my favorite moments in my career, being able to touch that many people so deeply. It’s an emotional thing. It’s that magic relationship when lyric, music, emotion, and film all comes together, and it fits. It’s kind of hard to describe exactly why or how it happens, but when it does, you know it.

David Z.: It expanded so far, and had such a big audience. And still has a big audience. I didn’t realize people were so dedicated to it. We went to a screening, a 20-year celebration, and it was packed to the gills. I couldn’t believe it. People were running on that memory for a long time. The popularity of it has exploded.

Steve Moore: For people today, they grew up with it. This was the age of the VCR, and kids watched this over and over and over again, and now they’re in their thirties, and you mention A Goofy Movie and they get gooey about it. It’s in their hearts from their childhood, and they can watch it today as adults and still enjoy it. It still holds up, and I think that has to do with the emotional quality of the film, how it draws you in, how the song was part of the story, it’s the climax of the movie, and the father and son are dancing together. It’s just a nice sentiment and a nice way to end the movie.

Roy Freeland: I’ve been watching the TikTok dance challenge. I’m OK [at it] now. I tried it. I decided not to post my attempt. (laughs) But it’s so much fun to see people get up and do it. There was a high school principal, there was a doctor in New York wearing his scrubs with an inspiring message on top of that about good news of how the curve is flattening. It’s a contemporary message, of the moment right now – that hopefulness and connection between people.

Bill Farmer: I have tried to get that [dance] down as close as I can. I’ve tried to remember how it is, and I actually found my old script. “Ten o’clock, two o’clock…” I’ll attempt it, but it’s not really a video-worthy thing. (laughs)

Patrick DeRemer: If you know Bruno Mars and any of the people at Disney live action, they should put a live stage version of this together with Bruno as Powerline. That would be great! Can’t you hear him singing this?

Bill Farmer: Over the years, many fans have come up to me – probably more than any other project I’ve ever worked on, and I’ve done close to 4,000 projects for Disney – and A Goofy Movie stands out among all of them with the fans. They always come up and say, “I couldn’t talk to my dad, but we saw this movie, and it became our movie.” They’d watch it every year or listen to the soundtrack together, and “I2I,” it encapsulates the whole theory of the movie. They can see eye to eye without seeing eye to eye on everything. A father and a son can find common ground and be buddies, even though they’re separated by one being Goofy and one being embarrassed of his dad. And everybody’s been embarrassed of their parents, so it really strikes a note that you can relate to.

***

A Goofy Movie is currently streaming on Disney+. All screengrabs are either from that presentation or from this “Making Of” documentary about the movie found on YouTube. Tevin Campbell’s representatives did not respond to our requests for an interview, but if you’d like to read his reflections on his contribution to the film, you can do so here.

The End

#Disney #a goofy movie #powerline

[pezzypezza-blog]

First Edition

I signed up on Tumblr around two minutes ago. The reason that I did is that I have become totally consumed by a feeling of anxiety and dread. The year is 2020 and we are in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. I really hope that you are 13 years old and reading this for educational purposes. It is fanciful to say the least that my first ever piece of writing on this platform should go on to form part of a futuristic learning course for children. But I guess I wouldn't be here if I didn’t have high hopes that other people may actually enjoy reading my articles. I have been off work for 8 weeks now. The early days were sun blushed, heady affairs. It was new and exciting. I drank wine every evening and played my favourite music. Closing my eyes I would drift off into my own world and a very unusual world it is. My passion is I suppose psychedelic music. Psyche can manifest itself in virtually any genre of music and I love it all. I suppose that it is a form of escape. I fear it is the result of an increasing dependency on marijuana, which I regret to say has shaped my life to the point that I sit down on a Tuesday afternoon and type these musings in desperation to save my soul. The halcyon days of (erm) late March have subsided. I wake up hung over every morning, usually to the saccharine sweet tones of Lorraine Kelly. She is not lying next to me, but my partner Claire watches her morning shows. Lorraine is an undeniably attractive woman even now. It was recently her 60th birthday she broadcast that morning and they put a special montage together for her. Despite my fondness of Lorraine on a wide range of levels, her cheerful chiming’s have started to send me into an immediate state of panic. The main reason for this is that I have become profoundly unhappy. I don’t have any friends. Until recently my version of friends was my work mates. But I have not dealt with being furloughed as well as everyone else and I have kind of told them all to fuck off. And now having done so I feel lonely and ashamed. Every time my mobile phone buzzes I hope that it is one of them asking how I am but it never is. So that’s one thing. 

The other thing is this - I hate my Line Manager to such an extent that it is eating me up. I will not bore you with the intricate details (unless you want me to?) I just do. I can’t get a new job as the country is on lock down. Which may not be a bad thing as when I was applying for jobs recently I achieved a 0% hit rate. The problem is that I am getting old now and a middle aged under achiever laced with an acute bitterness is not exactly the ideal candidate for any role in life. 

So what do you do? Well I have read a lot recently about the benefits of exercise and activities outside. So I drove to an ancient stone circle that is about 20 miles away. By the time I got there the sun had gone in and there were even spots of rain in the air. Never mind I thought, this is exactly what I needed and I have no doubt that by the time I get home I will be brimming over with endorphins to the point that I will pour myself a beer, stick on some tunes and feel like I did back in late March. That feeling is my benchmark. My plan was unsuccessful. At one point while standing by myself in the middle of the ruins I started wondering if I was ‘out of signal’ and that was the reason that no one had called me in the last half hour. Then I thought about my Boss and the previous year and the reason why I was stood here in the middle of nowhere in a bid to make myself happy. What the fuck AM I doing here was the next emotion. I walked back to the car and drove it into a sand bank which I couldn’t see on the way out of the car park. There was no damage caused with the exception of a hammer blow to my already fragile self confidence.

On the upside I could stop at a different shop on the way home and stock up on wine. I don’t like to make all of my purchases in the same shop as I am not proud of the quantity that I guzzle my way through. If I get enough for two days then I won’t have to go out once tomorrow. Hang on, wait a minute. That just means that I will mope around my house checking Facebook and thinking about my wretched work situation. I don’t like doing that, but it is preferable to driving alone to overcast stone circles and back. At least its safe. And I can open a beer at 5pm as well. Eastenders is on tonight so by the time that is over I will be tipsy enough to stick on my favourite XTC albums and obsess over them. How do I get myself over this sombre roundabout?

When I was 14 I came home in a state of excitement. My English teacher was a fierce man with a sense of real foreboding about him. He had given me a A for my latest piece of prose and told me that I ‘showed promise’. Maybe I could be a journalist? I’ll speak to my Dad and see what he thinks. His reply was literally the worst that he could have mustered. ‘You will never be a journalist and you should give up on silly ideas like that. I am hoping that you will join the Bank like me’. I was disappointed, but not too much. OK, maybe journalism is not my calling, but it really doesn’t matter. I’ll join the Bank. Dad earns quite a lot of money and we have a nice house. No biggy. Sorted.

You will not be surprised to hear that I am not a Journalist. Neither did I get the grades I needed to join the Bank. So I fucked that up.

It is all so obvious. Writing is going to get me off the sombre roundabout! It will help my anxiety and I can be honest. Writing down my feelings always used to help when I broke up with a girl. I SHOULD have been a writer. Maybe I COULD be a writer. This, dear reader is the start. Right it’s 16.50 and there is a cold Kronenbourg in the fridge. At the moment that is still my comfort blanket and medicine. Lets hope this is the start of something new. I doubt very much it will be, but it may take my mind off things at least.

Andy

[btsybrkr]

What A Time To Be At Home!: The Best And Worst Coronacontent The Internet Has To Offer

Remember that joke that’s been around for ages, but was being told literally everywhere back in 2019? The one that went something like, “I hate it when people ask me where I’ll be in a year’s time - I don’t have 2020 vision!”?

Well, I bloody wish someone did.

In fact, in early January, I wrote out my own predictions for the decade ahead right here on my blog. They were obviously entirely hypothetical and - I thought - ridiculous. They were just a series of daft ideas that I thought I could take the piss out of, in the hope that people might read it and take a second out of their day to do an amused little nose exhale for me. But now, even the post-apocalyptic TV show ideas I pitched in that piece seem less ‘far-off dystopian chaos’, and more like they could be pleasant additions to the BBC Summer schedule.

The world is in the throes of a global pandemic, the likes of which haven’t been seen since… I don’t know, The Black Plague, maybe? As a result of that, the instructions have been clear: stay home, save lives. 

At first, the thought of being given a period of Government-sanctioned laziness seemed like a dream to many. We could write our autobiographies! Learn Klingon! Build ourselves a whole new house! But six weeks in, it appears to have started messing with the collective consciousness of the human race. Brains are fried, your Weekly Screen Time is up 103%, stomachs are full to the brim with banana bread and dalgona coffee, and certain celebrities’ egos are in a fight to the death with their common sense. In a time when we’re all supposedly doing nothing, there’s still so much going on. 

With that in mind, I thought we could recognise some of the things we’ve seen online that have kept us talking in lockdown, not just because of Coronavirus, but in spite of it. 

Welcome to the first (but hopefully not annual) What A Time To Be At Home! awards. The WATTBAH!’s, if you like.

The ‘Why On Earth Did You Think This Was A Good Idea?’ Award

Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen a sizable handful of blunders by the rich and famous that have, at worst, knocked them down a fair few places in our estimations and, at best, have left us scratching our heads, wondering what response they were expecting in the first place. 

With that in mind, it’s only right that this title goes to the original celebrity lockdown mistake: Gal Gadot’s ill-advised acapella cover of Imagine, featuring a variety of different Hollywood stars - not one of whom had the foresight to ask “are you sure this doesn’t make us look like complete arseholes?”, which, unfortunately, it absolutely does. 

Between the bizarre and insincere ‘I have a dream’-style speech at the beginning, the boldness of some of those featured to be quite clearly just taking the piss, and the fact everyone appears to be singing ever-so-slightly below the note without ever actually hitting it for the entirety of the song, this was tone-deaf in more ways than one. It’s even worse when you realise that this was posted less than one week into the lockdown, but then what would I know? Maybe madness sets in faster in multi-million dollar mansions. Probably because it echoes louder and bounces off the walls of your massive living room.

The ‘I Had To Suffer Through This, So You Do, Too’ Award

This award recognises content we’ve been witness to over the last few weeks that was so awful, so completely uncomfortable to watch, that after you’d gotten over the initial disbelief at what you’d just seen, you immediately had to send it to somebody you know, so that you can suffer through it together.

Despite how many celebrity lockdown moments have left me with my head in my hands over the last few weeks, this award could only go to a very recent contender - one which isn’t simply an embarrassing piece of celebrity lockdown content, but will likely haunt the inner corners of my brain long after this virus is simply a topic taught about in GCSE History lessons of the future. 

I am, of course, talking about Olly Murs. I’m talking about Pringlegate. I’m talking about Olly Murs removing the bottom of a can of Sour Cream and Onion Pringles to trick his own girlfriend into touching his penis. On video, on TikTok.

Twitter: @buckyw1ng

There’s something inherently quite chilling about Pringlegate. It might be something to do with the 10,000 watt grin on Olly’s face as we watch him carefully maneuver a tin opener around the bottom of the can, or perhaps it’s just the question of how long he’d been sat there holding it around his naked penis as he and his girlfriend watched a film, patiently waiting for the moment to strike. Perhaps it’s the way the video freezes as she reaches over for a Pringle, allowing time for Olly Murs’ to add in an audio clip of himself, shouting “SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND”. 

Maybe it’s the uncontrollable show of amusement he launches into as she snatches her hand back in shock, laughing away, heartily, as if to say “Ha! You thought it was a normal can of Pringles, but it was actually my PENIS covered in Pringles crumbs! You just got PUNKED!”, like it was all simply a clever ruse. 

Above all else, I think the most uncomfortable thing about it is that I can’t help but feel like all bets are off in 2020, and that this is a fairly tame warm-up for things to come.

So, Olly Murs, you are inarguably the rightful winner of the ‘I Had To Suffer Through This, So You Do, Too’ award. Congratulations! Don’t do it again, yeah?

The ‘Are You Actually Aware Of These Words Coming Out Of Your Mouth?’ Award

I’ve said some stupid things since this lockdown started. Personally, I put it down to the lack of social interaction, which I think might be frying my brain a little bit, or at least that’s what the ornament of a turkey that sits on my kitchen windowsill told me the other day. However, I don’t think I or anybody I know has said anything even one fraction-of-an-iota as void of intelligent thought as Vanessa Hudgens’ terrible opinions on social distancing, shared in a now-infamous Instagram live last month. 

“It’s a virus,” she clarified, helpfully, before going on to explain, “I get it. I respect it.” 

I’m sure your respect means the world to it, Vanessa, but do you ‘get’ it?

“But even if everybody gets it, like… yeah… people are gonna die,” she explains, in a tone so chirpy that the word ‘die’ might as well be replaced by the phrase ‘have such a bloody lovely old time’, “which is terrible, but, like… inevitable?” 

In all fairness, death is inevitable, but I don’t know if suggesting speeding up that process for thousands of people because you were disappointed that Coachella was cancelled is an equally logical take.

After a brief - and probably quite profound - moment of self-reflection, she laughs “I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t be doing this right now”. Oh, you think? Which bit? Just holding these insane ideas, or actually broadcasting them to your 39.1 million Instagram followers? 

She did post a video the day after, clarifying that - despite what she said - she is staying at home, and is urging others to do the same. I guess she does respect the virus after all. Now, if everyone could hurry up, catch it and die from it, so that she can go to Coachella 2021, Vanessa Hudgens might respect you, too. 

I guess We’re All In This Together, after all.

The Show Of Support Award

I’ve already talked a lot about the rich and famous here, so maybe it’s time to take a break from that madness - although, I get it, I respect it - and have a look at how the rest of our lives look at the moment.

One weekly occurrence that seems to be set to stick around is the weekly round of applause for the NHS. Whilst it’s nothing short of blood-boilingly annoying seeing Boris Johnson absent-mindedly clapping in celebration of a service that he recently admitted he hadn’t even noticed the strain on until he, himself, nearly died of the virus, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the rest of us getting involved. If anything, it’s heart-warming to see the videos of NHS staff being applauded by neighbours as they leave for work, and to hear the cheers echoing through the streets at 8pm every Thursday. There’s a lot of people being quite cynical about it. We obviously know it’s not going to stop Coronavirus in its tracks, but sometimes it’s just nice to be nice, alright?

One thing I’ve noticed recently is how many people have adopted different noise-making strategies, possibly in an effort to effectively boost their support by a factor of 300%. Banging pots and pans together appears to be the most popular, but the winner of this award saw your pots and pans and said “how sweet”, before showing us how it’s really done.

I present to you, a genius. The ultimate hype-man.

Twitter: “a deeply disturbed national psyche” - @willuminare

There’s something so chaotic and angry about the energy in this video, just one man, a cricket bat, and a wheelie bin, banging away to show his gratitude. Just living in the moment. I wish the neighbour who’d captured it on camera had caught more of it, or at least just enough to edit the footage with Electric Youth’s soaring synth anthem  ‘A Real Hero’ from the soundtrack of the movie Drive against it.

I’ve been trying to learn to play the keytar in lockdown, to near enough no avail. Maybe at 8pm next Thursday, I’ll just take it outside and smash it against the pavement. You know, for the NHS.

Honourable Mentions: The Very Best In Coronacontent

It’s not all been so questionable - there’s been a lot of uplifting, funny, positive and thoughtful things shared online over the past few weeks. John Krasinski’s YouTube series Some Good News has provided a much-appreciated contrast from the bleakness of traditional current affairs programmes. There’s five weeks worth of episodes on his YouTube channel at the moment, so I would definitely recommend checking it out, especially if you feel like you need a lift! 

Over on Twitter, there’s been a lot to laugh about, as ‘front camera comedians’ are well and truly in their element (my personal favourite recently has been Alistair Green), as well as plenty of other users who are utilising their free time to create some brilliant stuff - this six-part opera based on a 2007 Facebook argument by Archie Henderson is genuinely one of the funniest things I’ve seen in weeks.

Twitter: “I made a six-act opera out of a conversation between some 14 year olds on my Facebook from 2007″ - @jazzemu_

All in all, these are obviously bizarre times that we’re living in. We don’t know how many more weeks of lockdown we’re going to have, when we’ll get back to normal, or even if ‘normal’ will mean something completely different from now on. 

What we do know is that the internet, and everyone on it - whoever they are or whatever they’re saying - will continue to surprise us, inform us, entertain us, provide a place for our quizzes and conversations, and keep us together in some sense, when we have no choice but to be apart. 

Thanks to anyone who’s read this far. I hope that you and your friends and families are keeping well, and that you took even a slight shred of lockdown enjoyment from even one thing I’ve said over the past couple thousand words! 

Finally, before I go, I thought we might share a little song. It goes like this:

Imagine there’s no heaven....

if you like, can follow me on twitter here or instagram here :-)

[louwellranoco-blog]

An Unexpected Surprise

It was Monday, January 30, 2020 when we had our first ever case of COVID-19. The Philippine Department of Health said it is from a 38 year old woman in China. It shocked many of us as we heard about the news. Few months after, Bulacan Governor Daniel R. Fernando announced that starting March 11 up to April 14  there would be no classes and this announcement was followed by another announcement, which came from our President, declaring Enhanced Community Quarantine for the whole Luzon.

Under the declaration lies down all the restrictions and rules to be followed, including stay at home policy, disinfecting yourself using alcohol to fight the virus, wearing face mask (any type of face mask will do) whenever you go outside for important matter. This rules are some ways of our government to stop the spreading of the virus.

With this government officials must do appropriate action to us not to starve. From the Capitol up to our baranggay, I can see their immediate response.

This picture clearly states how good our local government is. Our municipality gives relief goods every week and so as the provincial government of Bulacan. It makes me happy to see other people, who’s known for being rich, sharing goods from their own pocket.

Municipal Mayor Boy Cruz always keeps us posted with the case here in Guiguinto. Sad to say but our baranggay has a case and I’m not sure where hospital he’s in and our chairman doesn’t want us to know about it to stop the spreading of fake news that would make us panic. 

Netflix saves my life here at home. I am literally bored and I’m sure that I gain more weight this month because of my unhealthy lifestyle. At the back of this feeling, I’m worried about other people who;s suffering more because of having no salary and they haven’t received money came from DSWD. 

As of today, we are near to reach 10,000 and that is a bad news knowing that other places are under GCQ or General Community Quarantine wherein 21 years old and above are the only one who can go outside. 

Maybe this pandemic serves as a punishment for every bad actions we do and our nature badly wants to regenerate. I want to think that the time could be pause for a while and play it when the crisis is over for us to stop overthinking with our what ifs. But behind this trying times is a Man who has control with everything. All we have to do is to have faith in Him and never question His decision. To end this, I would like to leave a quote saying, “God has perfect timing; never early, never late. It takes a little patience and a whole lot of faith but it’s worth the wait.”

[monicathinks]

27th Day of Quarantine

It’s not that I don’t have anything to do during this quarantine period, it’s just that I want to put it all out here. Some sort of a remembrance, of this historical event worldwide. I feel like I need to share this to make sense of what’s happening around. Of what’s happening to an ordinary citizen like me during a global crisis. 

It’s been four weeks since the National Government declared Philippines under Emergency State and imposed Community Quarantine in Luzon. Of course, Visayas and Mindanao followed. Covid 19 infected people went to Philippines and infected people who had traveled affected countries. 

As a travel agent, it’s additional work and stress but things were not that serious yet so it’s better to be safe than sorry. All flights from and to Manila have been cancelled from March 15 to April 14, 2020. I had to re-book flights affected. It’s only eight months since I started my own travel and tours business. I wasn’t prepared for all this hassle but when I started all I know is I had to hustle for my future. Earning is fun. On top of that, you get to travel while earning but I haven’t ticked off my travel goals in my bucket list yet. But I thought, everything takes time. Traveling takes time. Earning takes time. And when trouble comes, that’s where you realize every business has it’s own weakness. Now that we’re facing a pandemic, tourism hits rock bottom. I froze when this thoughts came in my mind. But I have to take responsibility. When everything was going smoothly, I had my share. So now that it’s getting ugly, I had to stand up and take responsibility. I had to send e-mails to airlines, rebook flights, wait for long queues and I know you know how stressful it is. I had to refund cancelled tours. It hurts. My pocket hurts. But I learned a valuable lesson from this, I need to save for an emergency fund. By January, I can no longer wait to finish school and go full time travel agent. I grew impatient. And just when I have settled myself, Covid19 came unannounced. I was literally struck. I had definite plan. I thought of launching my first tour to Siargao Island right after graduation. Now, I just don’t know when and where to go. 

As a graduating student, not being able to graduate was the last thing I could think of. There were a lot of things going on but not getting up the stage never crossed my mind until memos ordering mass gatherings to be cancelled came out. Of course, I was disappointed. I think it wasn’t just me. All of my batch mates were disappointed. At that time, public schools already cancelled the graduation ceremonies. Other universities in the city did the same. We had no clue it will escalate and affect our daily life.Our final examinations were cancelled. We are all dismissed. The last class I’ve been in my entire college life is my Natural Science 3 class. I don’t really feel like going to class that day, but I thought it could be the last time so I did. Our professor, gave us his final instructions and one bad news. We had to take an exam online. We had no choice, we wanted to protest but we think it’s cool to get high grades. So we agreed.

Four days after my last class, I found myself at home with my son. I thought somehow quarantine did me good. I have a lot of time to look after my little man now. I thought it’s better this way. I have time to rest before I work or should I say before I go full time in my business. A month of rest is not that bad after a year of juggling work, business and studies. I feel like crying realizing that I am actually allowed to rest. For one year, I had to be in my toes. I had to be cool for my business and work. No matter how bad I feel, or no matter if I have cramps or just in a bad mood. I had to play it cool. Not because I want to look cool but because it keeps me sane. To keep me sane from being a wife, a mother, a business woman, an employee and a student all at the same time. 

A week after quarantine started, I was already bored with the monotony of staying at home for a long week. I started to look for something to do. I remembered my previous job. Online teaching was never easy. At least for me. Core times are early morning and night. Those times students study the most. I  am not a morning person and I love watching movies at night. But in this time of global crisis, I had to do something to earn or else we’ll run out of dough. So  I came back to online teaching. I was welcomed by a fully booked two hour class schedule early in the morning. I have no right to complain at all. Not a bad come back. Well, I’m really glad I came back. Again, it kept me sane. I guess the hardest part of living is having no control of what’s going to happen. But getting back to work makes me feel like I have control over what’s happening. I felt a bit secured. But we couldn’t deny the fact that there is fear. Fear of not having to get back to our normal lives again.

Three weeks ago, I was certain that things will be fine after a month. But now, almost after a month, twenty seven days to be exact. It’s all become uncertain for me. Will we ever get over all of this in just a month? I think we will. But we need more time. There are still a lot of people all over the world, fighting for their lives. I sincerely hope it’ll all be over soon.

I reflected so much about everything that’s happening. If I look on the brighter side, I think this crisis enabled our planet to heal. To heal from pollution, human destruction and all the wrath that we have caused our world. It’s sad to think that people had to suffer from all this so that our world could take a long deep breath. I feel like it’s taking a rest from all of human kind. I couldn’t blame her. She’s always been on her toes for a very long time.

But one thing is certain for me. Our Creator, sees us from above. He walks with us in this journey. I’ve seen it in my life. If there’s one secret how I made it despite all the challenges in my life, it’s all because of Him. I came back to school with nothing but trust in Him, that He will provide all our needs. And He gave me a business that I can do while studying. I don’t have any travel experience before I started my business but I have faith in Him, that He will give me knowledge and guide me with all my decisions. Two years ago, I can’t see myself finishing college but now I already did. Still because of Him. And so I think, we can all overcome this crisis only if we learn to turn our hearts to Him, focus on Him and trust in Him. Let’s just say we forget about our jobs, businesses, studies and all the other things that occupy our lives. Then what is life? It’s completely nothing. But if let Him in our lives. We have everything. We have peace and hope. 

I hope that whoever you are reading this, you will no longer be worried of things that are passing and temporary. That you will have peace in your heart knowing that our Creator, the one who loves us is with you everyday of your life. He is with you every step of the way. He is with you through good and bad times. I hope this gives you hope. 

#covid19 #quarantine #philippines #lockdown #workfromhome #survival #thoughts #hope #peace