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calmlyerratic · 29 days
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Encounters of the Future Sort
Chapter 2: The Battle of the Moldy Fruit
by @calmlyerratic
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Ch Summary: AU time travel. It's suddenly April 1st 1996, but the Marauders, Lily, and Severus don't know it yet…
chapter wc: 2.8k — rating: T — cw: none
Read Chapter 1 | full Story Summary & Chapter Index
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April 1st, 1996
"So, what should we do now?" Sirius asked, hands behind his head, strolling at a leisurely pace as if he hadn't a care in the world and exploding cauldrons was an everyday occurrence.
"I dunno…we could go swimming?" James shrugged, also effortlessly carrying this unphased energy.
Remus glanced out a passing stained-glass window. "Er—I don't think it's exactly swimming weather."
"Oh c'mon, an ice-cold squid dip is good for the psyche, Moony." James grinned. "We do it after every practice—helps with aches and pains too."
"Good for the psychotic, maybe." Remus mumbled, tracing the long scar across his nose. He had a habit of doing this when reminded of uncomfortable physical activity. "But that's not what I meant. Look outside."
James knit his brow. "What are you on about—oh." Raindrops were streaking down the stained glass in a spectrum of rainbow colors. "Strange. It was sunny just this morning…"
Sirius leaned in and pressed his forehead to the glass. The sky was dark, and rain was pouring from the clouds in biblical proportions, giving the impression it had been raining for hours.
"A bit chilly for swimming anyway," Sirius shrugged as if he were a sentient being that could snap his fingers and produce sunshine at will.
"It does seem odd…" Peter considered. "Must've come on suddenly?"
"Breaking news: the channel 5 weather report with Wormtail," Remus rolled his eyes.
"I think Moony's hungry," Sirius smirked. "He's reverted to eccentric Muggle references. We missed lunch—perhaps a trip to the kitchens?"
"Or we could go to Hogsmead," Peter squeaked, "grab a butterbeer?"
"Sorry, Pete…" Remus sighed. "Yeah, I could actually go for that right now."
"Nah," Sirius brushed away the possibility like a piece of lint on his shoulder. "As much as I enjoy seeing Moony tipsy, I hate smelling like wet dog."
"I have a bit of firewhiskey stashed away…" James eyes circled upwards, deviously.
Sirius stopped in his tracks. "You bloody git—I just asked you last week!"
"I was saving it for a special occasion," James shrugged innocently.
Sirius threw his shoulders back in pompous authority. "How dare you—I am a special occasion."
"Moony needs to blow off some steam," James clasped Remus on the shoulder. "That is a special occasion."
Sirius locked eyes with Remus. The former suppressed a grin and the latter flushed.
"Right you are, Prongs." Sirius nodded solemnly. "A special occasion indeed, let's see to it. To the dormitory!"
They were passing through a long corridor outside of the Charms classroom where a few students were gathered. A first year boy spotted them, and his jaw dropped.
"So, is it the same stuff as last time? That was delicious—"
"Hey, Prongs…" Peter whispered, noting the first year. "That kid is staring at you."
"Huh?" James' head whipped around.
The gaping first year with sandy blonde hair quickly hid his face in a book.
James, who had a head far too large for his shoulders, rather enjoyed admirers. After he'd scored 110 points in the last quidditch match against Slytherin, he'd become something of a celebrity to young, aspiring players among the houses. This fame had petered away since the new year, but he was still yearning for any opportunity that presented itself to relive this fleeting glory.
"Hello there," James approached him and grinned quite pompously.
The boy turned a deep shade of red and looked up at him with wide eyes.
"Er—did you want my autograph or something?" James asked, trying not to sound hopeful. He put his hands on his hips, stoically.
The boy looked half in awe, half confusion. "Um…no. It's just—you're Harry Potter."
James blinked twice. "No, I'm James Potter." The boy knit his brow. "You know, I won that match against Slytherin last term—chaser for Gryffindor?"
"You mean seeker," the boy corrected factually. James raised an eyebrow and the boy blushed again before shoving his nose back in his book.
James turned to his friends, ego getting the best of him. "Who is this little bloke?"
"Dunno mate," Sirius shrugged, rounding on the first year and crossing his arms. "What's your name, then?"
"Sirius," Remus admonished from the sidelines. He tapped the shiny 'P' on his robes.
"I just asked his name, Moony." Sirius held intimidating eye contact with the first year. "So? Go on."
The boy seemed reluctant and quite terrified. "E-euan Abercrombie."
"Never heard of you," Sirius raised an eyebrow, as if that was the only thing that mattered. He jutted his chin up the corridor. "Get lost."
Euan Abercrombie immediately complied, slamming his book shut and scampering away.
"Little git," Sirius muttered after him.
"Sirius," Remus massaged his closed eyes. "I really can't today."
"What did I do?"
Remus met his eyes with an eyebrow slightly cocked, then gently shook his head and sighed. "Nothing…never mind." And he strode off down the corridor.
"Prongs?" Sirius asked as the other three boys followed suit.
"Huh?" James said absentmindedly, eyes dazed. "Do you really think he doesn't know me? I mean, really—a seeker?"
"We should all aspire to your level of fame, Prongs." Remus called over his shoulder. "It really does wonders for the ego—aaggghhh!"
A dungbomb had just flown out of nowhere and hit Remus square in the face. A spectral little man appeared through the wall at the end of the corridor, floating just above their reach and humming to himself.
"Potty Potter, he's a squatter!"
"Huh, that's a new one." Sirius mused, drawing his wand. "At least Peeves knows you, mate."
Remus was blinded by the dungbomb. "PEEVES! I'll call the Bloody Baron—"
"OH NO, no fun!" Peeves' grin widened. "If only he hadn't left me all by my ickle self to go and watch the Headless Hunt—ha ha HA!"
Peeves eyed the four boys mischievously before he began pelting them with dungbombs and what looked like moldy, rotting fruit. Sirius flicked his wand, but it was quickly knocked out of his hand by a flying apple, and Peter had taken shelter behind a tapestry. There was no running away from this one.
"Reinforcements!" Sirius shouted, shielding his face with his forearm.
"On it." James took off running down the corridor, yelling over his shoulder, "Stay strong, lads!"
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James
April 1st, 1996
Gryffindor Tower
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A very short while later, given his quidditch star athleticism, James arrived at the portrait hole to the Gryffindor common room.
"Fortis leo," he panted.
The fat lady simply eyed him and did not admit entrance.
James took a deep breath to compose himself and said once again, quite clearly, "Fortis leo."
"That's not the password," the fat lady said simply.
"But it was just this morning! C'mon—I'm in a hurry!"
"No password, no entrance." The fat lady said firmly.
James frantically looked around the corridor for a fellow Gryffindor, but it was empty.
"You know this is my House—just let me in!"
"Hey Harry, forgot the password?"
A boy about James' age rounded the corner. He had a round face and was holding some kind of odd, exotic potted plant.
"I actually do remember it this time, it's my grans first name—"
"Who are you and why—? Oh forget it, I'm in a hurry, need recruits—just spit it out already!" James waved his arms about impatiently.
"O-okay," the boy stammered, clutching his plant pot. "A-augusta solis."
"Finally!"
James clambered through the portrait hole and franticly scanned the common room for someone—anyone—he knew but came up blank. In fact, he'd never seen any of these people. Sure he had his moments of being self-absorbed and oblivious, but this was just strange. Then a flash of red hair caught his eye and he darted over to the fireplace.
The red head heard him coming and turned around—it wasn't Lily.
"Oh, hey Harry." She smiled, adjusting her fiery locks in a ponytail. "I thought you went to the library with Ron?"
The fire danced shadows on James' face as he stared at her speechless, an uncomfortable feeling creeping into his gut. This was the third time he'd been called Harry—why had everyone suddenly forgotten his first name?
"You know," said a very bushy haired girl seated beside the red head, "you really should be, Harry. I finished that essay days ago."
"I'm not Harry, I'm James." James said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.
The red head and the bushy haired girl met his eyes with shock, then noting the conviction on his face, they exchanged a worried glance.
The red head leaned over and whispered something in other girl's ear that sounded an awful lot like, "I think he's finally cracked."
The bushy haired girl bit her lip. "Er—are you feeling all right, Harry?"
"I'm not Harry," James repeated firmly. "I'm James. Now I'm in a bit of a hurry—have you seen Frank Longbottom around?"
The bushy haired girl peered around James and anxiously eyed the boy tending to his plant.
"Um…no?" she whispered, as though compelling him to lower his voice. "You saw him at St. Mungos, right?"
"St. Mungos?" James knit his brow. "No—he's a seventh year."
The girls looked very confused and increasingly concerned.
"He's Head Boy? Ringing any bells?"
They just looked up at him with very wide eyes.
James rolled his eyes in frustration. "Okay, maybe you've seen Lily Evans then? I really shouldn't ask her for another favor today, but apparently she'll do anything for our precious Remus—"
The bushy haired girl put a hand over her mouth and squeaked, while the red head gently grabbed his elbow.
"Hey, why don't you sit down—"
"I don't have time to keep explaining myself," James huffed in frustration, "poor Moony has a face full of dung as we speak, so thank you—I'll be off!"
He made to leave, but the bushy haired girl grabbed the sleeve of his robes.
"It's okay, Harry…you obviously need to talk, and Ginny and I are here for you—"
James shrugged her off. "Am I speaking in Gobbledygook or something? I need troops! The battle of moldy fruit is raging as we speak—Frank would be ideal, obviously, but Marlene also has a good arm on her, so—"
The bushy haired girl stood and rested her hand gently on his shoulder.
"I'm Hermione, remember?" she implored uncertainly. "And this," she pointed to the red head, "is Ginny."
"Well, I don't believe we've met." James admitted shortly. "Now do either of you have a stomach for dung or—what now?"
He eyed them as Ginny whispered something in Hermione's ear.
"Right," Hermione nodded. "Right—we really should…" she glanced up at James apprehensively. "Er—Harry?"
"James," he said somewhat condescendingly, accentuating the syllables.
"Er—all right then, J-james…" Hermione smiled unconvincingly, as though it pained her to say. "Why don't we go upstairs for a moment?"
Ginny stood and slid her arm firmly into his. "Yeah, we have something to show you."
"Look, I really have to get back to Sirius, Remus, and Peter." James said calmly. Maybe he wasn't being clear enough? "The Barons' gone, so Peeves is bloody unhinged right now."
Hermione looked like she'd just seen a ghost, and Ginny tightened her grip on his arm.
"Sure," Ginny said soothingly, like he was a child and they were playing make believe. "Sirius has a firework stash under his floorboards—we'll create a diversion. Peeves will love it."
"Really? How d'you know that?" James bewildered, his thick head drawing a nonsensical conclusion about Sirius and his female exploits. "And actually, that's a great idea!"
Ginny grinned, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. "Let's go, then!"
They hurried up the spiral stairs and into the fifth-year boy's dorm. James burst out laughing when he spotted bright orange flair hanging about one of the bedposts.
"Since when has Peter liked the Chudley Cannons?" He wiped a tear from his eye at all the posters pinned on the wall. "They're the worst team in the league! Wait…"
James slowly looked around at the rest of the dorm. It wasn't just the quidditch posters that were different, the posters beside his own bed were missing and there was a great, snowy owl perched in the window—
"Hullo," James walked over to greet the owl. Ginny was still firmly holding onto his arm as if she was afraid he might fall over. "Who are you? Have you got post for me?"
"That's Hedwig," Ginny nudged gently. "You know, your owl?" She glanced at Hermione and mouthed, "Maybe he was cursed?"
James was quite confused at the rearranged dorm, the owl that wasn't his, and these two girls he'd never seen before that thought his name was Harry...but he certainly knew he wasn't cursed.
Although, he thought, that's exactly what a cursed person would think…
His mind flashed back to the exploding cauldron that morning and what Remus had said about the scent of powerful magic, trying to fit all the pieces together. Something wasn't right.
Hermione threw back her bushy hair and began rummaging through a trunk at the foot of the bed.
"Hey—why are you going through my trunk?"
"I-I don't mean to invade, I'm sorry, I just—oh!" Hermione held up a leather-bound picture album. She sat comfortably on his bed like she'd been in his dorm countless times before and opened it. "Here, look."
James adjusted his glasses further up his nose and gaped. These were pictures of, well—him. But in these pictures, most of them anyway, he looked older. Maybe eighteen or twenty. And so did Sirius, Remus, Peter, and…Lily?
"Wait…" He narrowed his eyes. "Why do I look old and why is Evans with me?"
His eyes widened as they fell upon a picture of them kissing, with Lily dressed all in white.
"Is this supposed to be my wedding?"
Hermione and Ginny were watching him intently. James looked back and forth between them, waiting for an answer. This was too much. There had to be a rational explanation. He racked his brain, then suddenly remembered what day it was, and his face erupted into a giant grin.
"Oh, I get it. April fools—this is a joke!"
Hermione shook her head slowly. "It is April 1st…but this isn't a joke, Harry."
"Ha ha—yeah, it all makes sense now. This is one huge prank to make me think I'm forward in time, or—or in a parallel dimension, or something…"
That was it!
The pieces clicked together. His unyielding persistence of pining after Lily had become a long running joke between the Marauders, and his fruitless efforts to woo her had peaked recently. Last week, he had made quite a public spectacle of himself while asking her out. This involved riding around on his broomstick in the common room, clutching a tiger lily between his teeth that was charmed to sing "Isn't She Lily" to the tune of Isn't She Lovely by Stevie Wonder.
In response, Lily's face had turned as red as her hair and she had yelled at him:
"I wouldn't go out with you even in a parallel dimension!"
Her words echoed in his head. And today was April Fool's, of all days. Of course this was payback. He was sure of it.
Ginny frowned, watching him closely. "I think we should go to Madam Pomfrey—"
"Is Evans in on it too?" James asked hopefully. "Did she put you up to this? She's bloody brilliant so probably, no way Moony would agree to pull this without her…"
The two girls were speechless, and Hermione jumped as James snapped the photo album shut.
"I should go offer Evans my congratulations. Seriously, 'O' for effort—she nearly had me!"
His ego swelled at the thought of Lily putting so much effort into pranking him and he ran a hand through his untidy hair, smugly.
"Married to Evans. Huh." His face erupted in a smile. "Kind of cruel really, when I think about it. Definitely her idea…"
Hermione and Ginny just continued to stare at him, so he raised an eyebrow and waved a hand slowly over their faces.
"Hull-o? So…where were those fireworks again?"
"A-april Fools!" Hermione stuttered, attempting to smile.
"Yeah, almost had you!" Ginny agreed far too enthusiastically. "Forget the fireworks—let's go find, um, Lily?"
"S-she, um...wants to know if you fell for it," Hermione nodded feverishly.
James ruffled his hair again, his head becoming larger still. "She does? Okay—"
Ginny hooked arms with him and began towards the door. "Of course she does! She's this way, c'mon…"
"She really is brilliant, isn't she?" James sighed, feeling dazed.
"Maybe a love potion?" Ginny whispered.
"From his dead mother?" Hermione mouthed.
Ginny shrugged. "Stranger things have happened…" she grimaced, appearing to rethink this. "Probably?"
James was listening but paid them no mind, his thoughts still wrapped around the photo album, dreamily humming Isn't She Lovely as they made their way through the portrait hole.
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Read Chapter 3 here.
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Notes: Spoiler…Sirius, Remus, and Peter run into Harry next chapter. That's all I'll say! I'm having so much fun with this, I hope you are too. Also, fun fact—Stevie Wonder released Isn't She Lovely in 1976. Hmm…coincidence?
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girlzwfun · 3 months
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✩°。⋆⸜ basics.
birth name ﹕cheryl lee
korean name ﹕lee chae-rin 이채린
nicknames ﹕chae , cher , cc, chaeprincess , kkoch , bangtan’s barbie
birthday ﹕april 20, 1996
zodiac ﹕aries-taurus cusp & rat
sexuality ﹕unlabeled
birthplace ﹕san francisco, california
hometown ﹕san francisco, california
ethnicity ﹕korean
nationality ﹕korean-american
languages ﹕english, korean, japanese
family ﹕
yang hae-sook / hannah yang ( mother )
lee yo-han / david lee ( father )
charlotte lee † ( sister )
✩°。⋆⸜ physical.
face claim ﹕park sooyoung
height ﹕168 cm / 5’6”
blood type ﹕a
body modifications ﹕
double lobe ( both ) , orbital ( right ) , helix ( both ) , tragus ( left )
cherry blossom ( rib cage ) , cherry tattoo ( back of arm ) , ‘444’ ( inner arm ) , angel wings ( nape ) , infinity ( pinkie finger ) , ‘j’ ( wrist ) , taurus constellation ( behind ear ) , lotus flower ( shoulder ) , two koi fish ( spine )
✩°。⋆⸜ persona.
traits ﹕
positive traits ﹕ good-natured, fun-loving, confident, charming, hard-working
negative traits ﹕ petty, hot headed, overly sensitive, nosy, naive
mbti ﹕ENFP
moral alignment ﹕neutral good
enneagram scale ﹕ type 3
✩°。⋆⸜ career.
stage name ﹕cheri
occupation : idol
years active ﹕2013 - present
label ﹕bighit music
group : bts
position ﹕main vocalist, lead dancer, sub rapper, visual, face of the group
representative emoji ﹕🐶 / 🍒
individual fandom ﹕beotkkot
✩°。⋆⸜ background.
tw. mentions of death, eating disorders, mental health issues
cheryl lee was born in san francisco, california to lee yo-han and hannah yang. cheri is the older sister to charlotte, who unfortunately passed not long after she became a trainee.
cheri was homeschooled and had a lot of free time. she convinced her mom to let her start piano lessons on top of her guitar and voice lessons. hae-sook did not argue as she wanted her daughter to find what suited her best. during a family trip, cheri was scouted by a bighit representative. she was unsure if she truly wanted to be an idol so far from her family, but her sister begged her to take the opportunity. after extreme consideration, her family moved temporarily to south korea in 2010.
due to her sister’s untimely death and the effects it had on her, cheri considered quitting and moving back to the states. she persisted, not handling her emotions properly. cheri was dubbed a monster trainee and was known to be quite intimidating. in 2013, cheri debuted in bts as the only female member.
she brought a lot of attention to the group domestically and internationally — unfortunately, she paid the price for being the only girl. cheri never took particularly good care of herself. in 2018, she was placed on hiatus due to her mental health and physical health. in her career, she has been faced with scandal upon scandal, rumor after rumor. her most noteworthy being a dating scandal with seventeen’s joshua hong immediately after her return to group activities. cheri and bighit confirmed the relationship in a letter from the artist.
she is widely known for her songwriting and has over 100 songs copyrighted to her name. her work is a testament of her life and feelings. cheri is often criticized for being to “open” and for not being careful enough with her idol image.
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animanga-bc-tournament · 11 months
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What is animanga Before Crunchyroll
This is a period in time roughly from 2005-2014 when the world is fully post-internet and Japanese anime and manga was already fully integrated into international youth culture and readily available to people outside of Japan.
Animanga fans had access via legal offline channels such as: television, home video, libraries, and bookstores. And illegal online channels such as: Youtube, pirate streaming sites, and torrenting. It is also a period with a sudden change in our general media viewing and reading habits impacted by events and technological innovations like the 2008 financial crisis, the introduction of social media as a primary way to be online, smartphones, and the slow death of live TV
Why start this period in 2005?
This page will be primarily dedicated to the English language distribution and fandom around anime and manga. By this point in time we are well beyond the stage of “evangelizing” animanga as mediums and a canon of “must watch/read” series has already been established.
The above mentioned channels were well established and readily accessible. Depending on where you lived you had a higher chance of being able to go to the bookstore and read the latest Fruits Basket volume, go to anime conventions, watch anime on TV, or join your school’s anime club, than in say 1996. The media industry in several countries outside Japan has or will soon start investing in the distribution of translated animanga for the first time ever. The US manga bubble spearheaded by Tokyopop is also still a few years from bursting.
From this point on online fan communities dedicated to anime and manga also steadily expanded via forums, database sites, to eventually meme aggregator sites, or facebook groups around 2010. In 2005 Geocities pages dedicated to sharing information are mostly dead and platforms such as Livejournal become the new place to engage in fan activities and access unofficial translations until the site was en masse abandoned following its 2009 acquisition by SUP Media
Why end this period in 2014?
Short version: 2014 is when the Naruto manga ended a mere 2 years after the Bleach anime ended its Japanese broadcast. Marking the end of the chapter on a seemingly endless period where every week without fail you could expect not just a new chapter of the manga, but a new episode of the anime version for the mega hits Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach. Kids today will thankfully never know what it was like for years have all of these series as a constant presence in 2 mediums simultaneously. This trio was controversially called the “Big 3” by fans. I could also easily leave it to the fact that of course after 9 years fans have obviously grown up and moved on and the face of the industry itself is completely different. But was just the medium that changed? What about the way international fans interacted with it? I will now present my case on why we can use the popularity of Crunchyroll as a service to make a pre- and post- era in the way international fans consumed animanga.
When the US manga bubble burst after the 2008 financial crisis there was a massive shift in which manga was licensed. The publishers that survived the collapse had to downscale their output leading series to be cancelled or go out of print for several years. The cost of manga also went up turning translated print manga into bigger investments for consumers. Another major shift is online fan translations (scanlations) becoming more prominent and accessible, with new aggregator sites appearing one by one. Not only could you read as much manga as you wanted for free with unedited art and a translation that felt more “authentic”. The high output from the fan translators revealed not just how much manga was not being licensed; the international publishers were often really far behind and much slower than the original Japanese serial.
The popularity of scanlations has always caused obvious tension to the decisions on what US publisher would license as companies like Viz Media and Vertical inc repeatedly expressed the belief that fans would never buy a title they already read for free online. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that as the fansubbers of the 1990s proved, unpaid fan translators were and still are the most significant tastemakers and gatekeepers of Japanese media for an international audience.
This sets the stage for what i personally believe forever changed the way international fans watch anime (and in turn read manga): social media and the premiere of Kill la Kill and Attack on Titan. Prior to this the average international animanga fans experienced anime rather delayed. There is little awareness of what was actually new in Japan and to the average fan watching anime recommended in online or offline communities may have been enough. But how many official channels like TV, video rentals, and home video sales were actually available as distributors went out of business or lost their licenses how was a fan supposed to watch the series they wanted to see? And what if you didn’t even live in a country with any of these official channels? Fansubs or DVD rips uploaded to Youtube, torrenting sites, or other unauthorized streaming aggregators successfully democratized access to anime for anyone with a stable internet connection. The high output of fansubbers just like scanlators also revealed again just how far behind the official channels were. Why wait for the right to purchase something when you know you want it and can just get it for free online?
Enter Crunchyroll: the site was founded in 2006 as a for-profit media hosting site for east asian media. A lot of the media hosted was unauthorized and illegal but some distributors chose to look the other way. This was until Crunchyroll started securing more and more funding in turn letting them enter legal partnerships and distribution deals. Eventually striking gold with partnership with Studio Gonzo and the acquisition of the Naruto Shippuden anime rights. Eventually all unauthorized media was removed from the site as they built a catalogue of anime for consumers to legally stream, at a price. In parallel to this, by 2012 fansubbers could and were expected to keep up with just about every new anime airing in Japan.
Another change happened in our daily lives: smartphones became a piece of technology most people owned. And the abrupt consumer shift from live TV to streaming was right around the corner.
A gradually acquired awareness of just how far behind and slow official “legal” channels were was already completely reshaping the way the most avid fans viewed anime. So was our new phones. The smartphone wasn’t just good for watching anime while you were away from home it also made reading manga online an even easier experience. How were the official distributors supposed to compete with this?
Unfortunately most pirate streaming sites were slow to implement players that functioned on smartphones, Youtube was also not far from implementing an aggressive DMCA strike system preventing new anime uploads. A service like Crunchyroll became more and more attractive as it was available in almost any region outside of Asia. With a big catalogue of titles that put Netflix and hulu to shame and a smartphone app that worked smoothly, it didn’t seem like a bad deal for people who wanted to watch anime on their phones or other devices, not to mention the premium gave you HD quality. A luxury the illegal sites couldn’t always grant. And it offered what previously only fansubbers could: you got to see brand new episodes of subtitled anime only an hour after it aired in Japan. It’s second major selling point to younger and less financially free individuals was that free users could watch as much as they wanted as long as they sat through ads, were fine with SD quality, and being 1 week behind on brand new anime.
Socially the immediacy and size of large scale social media like Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter cultivated bigger and bigger and more public communities. It became more and more commonplace to not just watch and read whatever was recommended to you but to keep up as well as finding the next cool thing before anyone else. So what channels would keep you updated on everything new? Trustworthy sources were for many still difficult to discern. More and more fans were watching new anime at the same time as Japanese viewers via illegal and legal channels, but what would it even look like if everyone watched the same show the same time as Japanese viewers?
When Attack on Titan premiered in April of 2013 we learned. Its immediate success was unprecedented and shocking. In a matter of weeks previously unprecedented changes happened within the official channels. Not only could the US industry observe how overnight every online community was discussing this new series, Crunchyroll who streamed the series from episode 1 could provide them the actual numbers proving its success. For the first time the dub specialists Funimation would offer an unsubtitled and ongoing series for sale on iTunes. Kodansha America as well had lucked out by licensing the manga over a year prior giving the US industry another rare example of how a successful anime can give a previously niche series an unprecedented boost in sales. For fansubbers and anime and manga aggregators to keep up if a hit like this was to occur again they had to somehow work faster than Crunchyroll, or just steal from them.
Attack on Titan i think was the first time such a huge group of people all at once learned and experienced how to keep up with a brand new anime and still ongoing manga. October the same year Kill la Kill, an original story and the first work by Studio Trigger directed by the already acclaimed Hiroyuki Imaishi premiered. Once again there was an unprecedented amount of attention from international fans given to a series that was still airing in Japan. This new desire to be part of a series as it was happening was not just significant to the way international fans started viewing and evaluating anime and manga but also new opportunities for the industry to make a profit by investing more and more into “simultaneous” streaming
I didn’t read all that, sorry
Fans come to expect instant access to brand new anime and manga -> Crunchyroll is the only service able to fulfill that expectation and can do it faster than a fansubber -> in 2013 an unprecedented hit opens the eyes of the industry and anime fans alike -> now discussions and trends among international fans of anime and manga is more than ever centered around what’s “new”, a huge shift from when awareness around “newness” was vague or less relevant to how international fans interacted with animanga
How will you qualify an anime or manga as B.C. (Before Crunchyroll)
This blog and its polls will be primarily centered on the offline and online English speaking fan communities. English Second Language speakers are included in this.
Any survey will include works that received translations (official as well as unofficial) into the English language. And with consideration of these criteria
If anime: did it air on TV in the US, Canada, UK, or Australia? If so when and through which channels. Because the aforementioned delays in distribution this will matter more than when it first aired in Japan. I will continue to make 2005 my start point but exceptions might be made for series that were in some way rereleased or put in long term syndication. 2014 is the end point because of the above mentioned changes in how a lot of us watched anime was completely changed by this point in time.
Did it receive a fansub? When and by which group(s)? Identifying the groups also allows us to map out who were the tastemakers and what they wanted to make accessible to other fans. This is very key for anime that sustained popularity despite not being accessible through official channels for extended periods in the years 2005-2014. Also if you don’t live in the countries listed above it was most likely the only way you watched anime.
How often did it appear in “Anime is life” collages? (VERY IMPORTANT DATA!! how else are we supposed to quantify its cultural impact)
If manga: was it licensed by a US publisher? If so when and by who? This also matters more than when it was serialized in Japan. Viz Media’s Shojo Beat and Shonen Jump, and Tokyopop’s catalogue are very defining of the first half of this era and shaped our manga starter pack years after they stopped existing.
Did it receive a scanlation? When and which group(s)? Once again key to identifying the true tastemakers starting around 2010. Scanlations were not just key in bringing fans brand new manga hot off the Japanese presses faster than a US publisher could, but was very important in making manga that were neglected by publishers accessible in English.
Any criteria you want to suggest or already use yourself to determine eras of animanga? Or perhaps your own memories of this time? Feel free to share!!
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uispeccoll · 1 year
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Past and Present: Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman
Last year, Special Collections and Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries acquired items to form a new collection: the Black Film and Television Collection. In honor of Black History Month, we’re shining a spotlight on a different item from this collection each week.
In yesterday’s post, we discussed the original script for 1971’s Shaft, a defining entry in the Blaxploitation genre. Our final spotlight shines on a unique photo book from 1996, when Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman attempted to excavate the history of queer Black women on screen.
Cheryl Dunye and New Queer Cinema
With The Watermelon Woman, Dunye became the first Black lesbian to direct a feature film. This movie belongs to a genre that came to be called New Queer Cinema, a movement in independent film during the 1990s that placed queer characters at the center.
The film was critically acclaimed and regarded as one of the foundational films of the genre, and it was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry in 2021.
It also gave new momentum to Dunye’s career in film and television, which continues to this day. Her recent directing credits include The Umbrella Academy, Bridgerton, and Queen Sugar.
Unnamed & Uncredited
The Watermelon Woman stars writer and director Cheryl Dunye as an aspiring documentarian who works at a video rental store. Dunye’s fictional proxy, also named Cheryl, is fascinated by the history of Black women in film, particularly those who went unnamed and uncredited for roles portraying the racist archetypes that were common in the cinema of the 1930s and 40s.
In the movie, Cheryl embarks on a journey to discover the name of Black actress only identified as “The Watermelon Woman.” She eventually uncovers the woman’s real name, Fae Richards, and discovers that she, too, was a queer woman.
A Supplementary Archive
Fae Richards may be a fictional character, but she stands for countless queer Black people whose stories have been omitted from the record. Artist Zoe Leonard, in collaboration with Cheryl Dunye, created The Fae Richards Photo Archive, a series of 82 images that document the life of this fictional character. From candid shots, family photos, and publicity pictures, every image matches a time and place of this character. As the Whitney Museum of American Art explains, “Leonard acknowledges the project’s artifice, encouraging the viewer to recognize that she had to create a story that is fictional, but rings true, because the real life counterparts of such stories went undocumented.”
This statement demonstrates exactly why many archives are, or need to, work to fix the mistakes of the past. As a school with a rich screenwriting history, it is why the University of Iowa Libraries is actively working to collect more stories from Black cinema.
A Century of Black Film
During this series, we’ve looked at four iconic examples of Black filmmaking. But that’s not to say that the work of Black filmmakers can be reduced to four eras, or that the films we discussed are more important than those that didn’t make this list. There’s so much more to discover in the Black Film and Television Collection, and if you’ve enjoyed this blog series, we encourage you to check out what’s available online. As The Watermelon Woman attests, the preservation of these stories, and the names and lives behind them, is vital and rewarding work.
--Natalee Dawson, Communication Coordinator at UIowa Libraries, with assistance from Liz Riordan, Anne Bassett, and Jerome Kirby
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aprisolis · 2 months
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˓⠀⠀﹪ :⠀⠀٬⠀⠀IVYRED.⠀⠀⸻⠀⠀is a fictional four-member girl group under kayak72 consisting of NAVA, SAANVI, MALEKA, and NERIAH. debuting on october 26, 2017, ivyred has largely been credited for reviving their label into vibrancy after their senior brother group, DIEM, saved them from bankruptcy.
based in new york city, the group was scouted by kayak72's creative director, romina richetti through a talent search looking for self-producing female artists throughout major cities around the world. though the group initially began with five scouted members, the fifth member, DANA, would be pulled out of the group by her parents who had previously been told she would be placed in a duo with her older brother DAX.
the group has often drawn parallels between themselves and diem. it is rumored that the members of the two groups do not get along and often are not present in the same rooms. seemingly fueling the fire, members avoni and neriah have been noted saying the diem boys were, "overgrown frat boys", following the scandal that alleged a member had offended the recording academy. unlike their counterparts, however, ivyred has drawn mass appeal, frequently selling out stadiums and even winning a grammy of their own for their album HONEY IN 2021.
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&.&.    SECTION  ONE ,      the basics
GROUP NAME: ivyred
LABEL: kayak72 (2017 - present)
DEBUT DATE: october 26, 2017
DEBUT SINGLE: sorry not sorry
DEBUT ALBUM: ivy
GENRE: pop, r&b, bedroom pop
FANDOM NAME: ivymind
MOST POPULAR SONGS: 7 rings, deliver, kiss me more
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&.&.    SECTION  TWO ,      the members
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𓆩*𓆪 .⠀⠀NAVA RAHMANI-ALDERS, 1995: born the first child to real estate mogul, yasser rahmani and his second wife, janna alders, nava was frequently referred to as her parents' "trial child". growing up, she attained an independence that peeved her mother who longed for a mother-daughter relationship that she had not been lucky enough to have with her own mother. by her 10th birthday, the rahmani-alders family would receive their own reality show starring nava, her parents, older step-siblings, and her two younger brothers. nava was noticeably absent from appearing on the show, later claiming that her mother had instructed cameramen to only film her when she ate to "make sure she stayed away from the food". nava's interest in music was given to her by her grandfather who played an active role in taking nava to music and vocal lessons when her parents refused. after filing for emancipation in 2012, nava would go on to work as an assistant for producer, RAHIM NAQVI, eventually being recommended to romina for a spot in ivyred.
𓆩*𓆪 .⠀⠀SAANVI MISHRA, 1995: a relatively quiet child, saanvi was born a twin in northeast india to a college professor father and a surgeon mother. after receiving an offer for a position as chief of surgery at a hospital in boston, the family would pack their things and move to the united states. there, saanvi found a love of music that would bring her out of her shell, landing her opportunities to perform with her school across new england in various musical theater competitions. after graduating in high school, saanvi would attend julliard in hopes on one day performing on broadway. three years later, while in line for an audition, she would come across a flyer for kayak72 looking for artists to join a talent search. being the first member to pass through auditions, romina famously built the group around saanvi who takes on a leadership role within the group.
𓆩*𓆪 .⠀⠀MALEKA JACKSON, 1996: raised the sole child of yolanda and demarion jackson, maleka had grown up with access to almost every interest she could ever have. running through dance classes and jiu jitsu lessons and any and every sport her school offered was the only way to keep the young girl occupied. a beloved headache for her parents, the jacksons were more than willing to invest in their daughter's fixation on music in all of its forms. finally deciding to stick to cello and voice lessons, it wouldn't be long before maleka spent most of her time practicing her craft than following her rowdy cousins out on the weekends. though yolanda and demarion grew wary of her social development, the scholarship she would soon receive to attend the new england conservatory of music upon her graduation from high school. while there, maleka found the pressure of assignments and composition thrilling, even taking a chance to take on a side hustle laying cello backings for hip-hop tracks. her talents soon landed her an in with romina richetti who encouraged her to join her hunt for kayak72's next group.
𓆩*𓆪 .⠀⠀NERIAH DIMAS, 1999: born in los angeles to a composer father and a songwriter mother, neriah and her three siblings had always been surrounded by music. the four dimas children were frequently found running around their parents' shared brentwood studio so it wasn't much of a surprise when they began to have dreams of pursuing musical careers of their own upon coming of age. ever supportive, ario and nailah would chauffeur their children around the country to auditions and performances all in hopes of making their dreams come true. initially landing gigs as a child singing the national anthem at sporting events, neriah would eventually land a recurring role in disney channel's suite life on deck before becoming part of the regular cast for ant farm in 2011. after the show ended in 2014, neriah would join fellow disney channel alum, zendaya, as a fellow spy in k.c. undercover. her time on the show would end in 2016 after learning of kayak72's search for female talent. after her official exit from the show, she would disppear for a few months before emerging as the second member chosen for ivyred.
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berniesrevolution · 1 year
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IN THESE TIMES
Something is stirring this spring. People in the U.S. are becoming increasingly interested in what commentators once called ​“the labor question,” following recent organizing victories at Starbucks, Amazon and Apple stores; well-publicized strikes of teachers, nurses and railway workers; and the unionization of staff, graduate assistants and even faculty at scores of campuses, including the recent successful strike of nearly 50,000 academic workers on the campuses of the University of California.
Evidence of this mood shift is unmistakable this spring as students, campus staff and faculty, together with unions and community allies, are coming together on or adjacent to more than 50 campuses nationwide — including ours — to engage in a remarkable national teach-in on worker rights and organizing called Labor Spring.
It has been a long while since we’ve felt this level of energy on our campuses around labor issues. The last such moment arguably crested in the second half of the 1990s. Following the election of John Sweeney to the presidency of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) in 1995, a spirit of change swept the labor movement and attracted the attention of young people. Sweeney’s union, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), had helped catalyze that spirit in the 1990s with its innovative Justice for Janitors campaign, which won significant victories for low-waged immigrants and workers of color through militant bridge blockades and similar acts of civil disobedience. Sweeney brought that spirit with him into the AFL-CIO’s leadership when he defeated Thomas R. Donahue in the first contested election in the labor federation’s history. His victory signaled a sea change in a movement that had suffered years of decline.
One of the most important features of Sweeney’s tenure was his effort to heal the lingering divisions that had developed between unions and student activists in the era of the Vietnam War. The healing of that decades-old schism paved the way for Union Summer, an effort to recruit young people to union organizing, which the AFL-CIO launched in the summer of 1996. That fall, another significant project took wing, a series of labor teach-ins at Columbia University, the University of Virginia and eight other campuses that helped electrify young people and attract them to the labor movement. Reporting on the overflow crowd that attended the Columbia teach-in, the New York Times likened its energy to that of a rock concert.
The 1996 teach-ins contributed to a remarkably fruitful period of labor activism. In their wake, an anti-sweatshop movement took shape on college campuses that gave rise to United Students Against Sweatshops and the Worker Rights Consortium to investigate and expose abuse and protect worker rights in factories around the globe. The teach-ins gave birth to campus living wage campaigns and to Scholars, Artists and Writers for Worker Justice (SAWSJ), which in turn paved the way for our organization, the Labor and Working Class History Association (LAWCHA), which was founded in 1998. Organizing on campuses also took off following the 1996 teach-ins. The United Auto Workers (UAW) won representation elections for graduate assistants at UCLA, Berkeley and six other University of California campuses in 1999, following a systemwide strike in December 1998. Then, in May 1999, the UAW filed a petition for a representation election for teaching assistants at New York University, inaugurating a long struggle to bring unionization to graduate assistants at private universities, a struggle which continues to the present day.
That period of activism was transformative. Among other things, it helped build the bridges between unions, environmentalists and critics of globalization that led to the ​“Teamsters and Turtles” alliance visible in the protests against the World Trade Organization during the ​“Battle of Seattle” in 1999 and the World Bank protests in Washington, D.C., in 2000. It also laid the groundwork for the AFL-CIO’s dramatic shift on immigration policy in 2000, when it embraced comprehensive immigration reform and began championing the cause of undocumented immigrant workers.
Unfortunately, this hopeful surge of creative, youthful energy was undercut by the events of Dec. 12, 2000 and Sept. 11, 2001, the first being the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision determining the outcome of the contested presidential election of 2000, and the second being the attacks undertaken by the followers of Osama bin Laden, which opened the door to a ​“War on Terror” that went on to dominate the national agenda for years. Nor would the energy of the late 1990s reemerge in the decade that followed. The housing bubble and financial crash of 2008, the subsequent Great Recession and the period of austerity that followed it created trying times for young people, educational institutions and the labor movement.
Now, however, a new and different moment is taking shape and we are seeing evidence of it on our campuses, in our students and co-workers, and among our community and labor allies. Even in the South, where most public workers lack collective bargaining rights, the United Campus Workers, a movement seeking to organize public university employees — graduate students, undergraduate employees, staff and faculty — in one wall-to-wall union, has been spreading from campus to campus.
This is why our organization, LAWCHA, has decided to promote the Labor Spring teach-ins and actions. We welcome other organizations to join with us in this effort.
(Continue Reading)
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sineala · 2 years
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Captain America/Iron Man: Invasion Force
Hi, internet! I'd like to tell you the story of how I discovered a glorious piece of new 616 Steve/Tony canon that has somehow remained unknown to us for twenty-four years! A lost treasure! And it's great.
So for reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, a couple days ago I was looking for digital versions of the recent Captain America/Iron Man miniseries. (Yes, I legally own it in issues, trade, and digitally. I own it many times.) And those came up, all right. But what also came up was something I'd literally never heard of, called Captain America/Iron Man: Invasion Force. And I thought this was weird because, as a Steve/Tony fan, I figured I'd heard of all the Steve/Tony miniseries there were, right? But this was new. This was a four-issue team-up miniseries I had never even heard of and here it was on the internet. I'm not going to link it, but if you like to, um, read comics online, you know what I mean, right?
The upload dates on this thing were this April, but the miniseries was dated 1998. At this point I was wondering how in the world there was a Volume 3 Steve/Tony team-up I'd never heard of. And then I clicked on it and it was even weirder, because it was a bunch of tiny blurry lo-res screenshots of a comic being displayed panel by panel in a program I didn't recognize. But it definitely looked like 1998-era Steve & Tony art; it was clearly a legit comic.
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We have so very, very few actual Steve/Tony team-up comics and so finding a brand new one that none of us had ever heard of before was a treat. And it's actually a fun read! This is delightful!
So I did some digging (and also Magic did some digging) and it turns out that this is from a long-defunct free digital comics line that Marvel ran from 1996 to 2000, consisting of what they called Marvel CyberComics, which is the most 1996 name I have ever heard. I hear modem dial-up noises in my head when I read that. CyberComics were new original comics for a wide variety of superheroes that were basically comics that had been lightly animated as Shockwave files, with some sound effects.
Eventually Marvel took those down from their website and I gather that they don't have the source files anymore, but, according to a 2011 CBR article, the guy who wrote a lot of them, D. G. Chichester, did in fact still have the source files, and in 2011 he put the Cap/IM one up on YouTube (1, 2, 3, 4). And from then on they languished in obscurity -- as of yesterday I think Part 4 had something like 24 views -- and then a couple months ago someone screenshot all of them, and here we are.
(They are hard to read, especially on the YouTube version -- you can zoom in a whole lot on the RCO screenshots -- but the YouTube version preserves the animation, so it's more fun in that respect. The first video doesn’t have sound, but the rest do.)
Captain America/Iron Man: Invasion Force is pretty fun. 1998 is one of my very favorite time periods for Steve & Tony and I am so excited that there is an entire brand-new team-up miniseries from that era of them being friends and punching aliens together. They have some nice banter and it's a fun team-up and they have each other's backs the whole way through and the ending is nice and happy and it's a fun read and I am just so happy that there is new Steve & Tony content from my favorite era. It is a shiny new present for all of us.
Also, if you are a Steve/Tony fan, you will probably enjoy the beginning of the first issue a whole lot.
We open with Tony and the beautiful woman he has taken on his yacht, because of course he has a yacht. They are having a great time together and are clearly interested in having an even better time in the near future, at which point Steve shows up at Tony's yacht to interrupt his hot date and tell him that they have to go meet aliens. You know, the plot. So Tony tells his date to head belowdecks and get started without him, although at this point it is pretty obvious he won't be continuing the activity he had planned.
And then Steve apologizes for ruining his date, and the conversation goes like this:
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STEVE: Sorry for the visit, Stark. TONY: No, you're not. You live for this "duty calls" routine, Captain America. I hope you're not waiting for me to salute. STEVE: I expect you're saving that for the young lady. TONY: I'll make you a copy of the video. What's this about, soldier?
So I'm reading along, going, okay, okay, Steve's apologizing, that's sweet. Tony's having some snarky banter. And then Steve is MAKING A DIRTY JOKE ABOUT TONY'S BONER???? And in response, Tony is OFFERING TO MAKE HIM A SEX TAPE???????
Like, uh. None of that went where I expected it to go. At all.
And, hey, now we can all enjoy the knowledge that Steve is the kind of guy who likes to make dirty jokes about Tony's dick, and now 616 can join Ults in "list of comics universes where Tony canonically offers a sex tape of himself to Steve." Just bros being bros, uh, watching each other's sex tapes. These guys, internet. I can't even.
I just. Yeah. I'm going to need to contemplate this.
And, honestly, the rest of it is pretty good, too! They team up! They defeat the bad guys! They each have a fun interior monologue about their motivations, and the end is very sweet, as Steve thanks Tony for his help and Tony, uh, offers to buy him a desert island.
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Anyway, Invasion Force here is a fun Steve & Tony team-up with some excellent banter, friendship, and fighting aliens together. It is a lost comic from one of my personal favorite Avengers eras, and also it contains some fun commentary on Tony's personal life. I am so glad that we have now refound it and all of Steve/Tony fandom can enjoy it.
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vs120shound · 7 months
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What tandem within the SF World enjoys each others' company more than this handsome pair? Can you name any? Honestly!
NEW SERIES!
THE VIDEO OF THE WEEK 🚬 (SF HALL OF FAME) 🚬 NUMBER 2 IN THE SERIES!
For the Week of 090323-090923
★ ★ ★ ★ ★ + | Five-Plus "Stars"
From vs120shound staff | ★★★★★ (L)
Dual-Media 7-Post, 28-Pack (Megapost)!
One reason and only one as to why this "newer" video to us, shot close to 10 years ago, was tabbed as our second clip for "THE VIDEO OF THE WEEK | SF HALL OF FAME" division during the second installment of our rollout of this new series. And that's the chemistry between Laura, to the left, and possible BFF Natalie, to the right! Rich, unadulterated synergy . . . every time together before the camera -- pure enjoyment as a duo or tandem. Being silly, talking (sometimes nonsense, even gibberish), often drinking a little too much, checking out the newest in fashion in magazines and with samples of the hot new clothes and accessories brought along in an informal Show-and-Tell. And, of course -- above all else -- heavy, intensely pleasurable smoking. And it is usually sharing from the same pack. Mostly Marlboro 100s -- they are each Marlboro 100s Girls -- but sometimes Virginia Slims 120s Luxury Lights (nowadays called "Gold Pack"). Their kinship, affinity and let's face it, their love for each other, platonic or otherwise, their "BFF-ishness," as it were, radiates without interruption. Great friends. Super smoking partners. Outstanding SF models!
. . . and how could we pass this up for Post Number 2 in the growing series. A sensational video! Still, being realistic and reasonable for the most part, we accept the pushback for why this clip, brought to tumblr's SF Content blogs/vlogs/webpages within the past week by Super Star newbie creator/author (contributer, poster, uploader) rtpsmk (formerly rtp-smk) should not be classified as an SF Hall of Fame video. (This is a re-blog of sorts, having first appeared on our platform on another's blog.) If this video is new to us, it MUST be new to many others who favor our brand -- our friends, fans and followers. The only qualities this remarkable SF video does not share with its Hall of Fame colleagues is its longevity on the Greater SF World Community scene and the esteem and reputation for being out there longterm and building a devoted following as a first-rate, top-rate, elite SF video. This scenario has not had a chance to play out. So, OK, that's evidence to disqualify this Laura-Natalie presentation from HofF (HOF) status. But this is our series, we have discretion. OK, will agree it is NOT SF Hall of Fame proper -- or in the traditional sense -- but we say it is of SF Hall of Fame quality, therefore we have included it as such. . . . Our call! We set the tone, you can comment and that can or should shape how the series unfolds to a degree. We brought the ball; we get to make the rules of the game, at least some, if all want to be playing along. Not expecting everyone to agree; know some of you will accept our determination, maybe even implicitly!
They sing Simon & Garfunkel's America (1968), Elton John's Tiny Dancer (1971), Sam Sparro's Black and Gold (2008) and the Spice Girls Wannabe (1996) among other ditties. "We're stuck for songs," Natalie says. "Don't we sing well? We should start a karaoke bar. . . . I think we are done here." ". . . we'll see you next time," Laura says in conclusion. Would-be singers they are not. They are dazzling SF models -- or at least they were once upon a time!
This was shot by a self-de-activated Mega-SF website from Australia that departed by the middle of the last decade. It's initials were R.S., rhymed with Camden Flaps!
Top Billing!
Laura is the "Smoking Fetish Queen" from being named No. 1 on the all-time favorite SF models list released on vs120shound during January 2023. Natalie unfortunately didn't even make Honorable Mention. Natalie is in the Top-50 all-time simply for her work with Laura in their outstanding video series together. Natalie as a standalone could be a Top-50 SF model. Disagree? OK, no doubt Top-100!
The Media!
Posts of one or both of them from our brand previously published within our domain . . .
Solo of Laura, the "Smoking Fetish Queen" from being named No. 1 on the all-time favorite SF models list released on vs120shound during January 2023 (from www.yoursmokingfetish.com) . . .
From March 29, 2023 on vs120shound, and dressed similarly to our VOTW | SF Hof F video at the top of this post, so these two clips are "sister" videos! They were shot on the same day. Tony P., the R.S. web-master/web producer, was fine with that. Might even had been planned/staged!
From June 16, 2022 on vs120shound, with Natalie misidentified somehow as Karina (sometimes we ARE asleep at the wheel)!
Laura's first post in the Photo of The Day series on July 27, 2023, folowed by her second on September 4, 2023 -- this is 2 for the price of none! Cannot beat that! Can we?!?
The post of Laura being named No. 1 all-time Favorite SF model
THE NEW SERIES
The Particulars . . .
Once a week. Two divisions. Calendar week, so our next publishing of it was scheduled to appear as early as Sunday, September 3, 2023. With the next after that -- the third overall -- perhaps as late as Saturday, September 16, 2023. Not every 7 days. Once in a calendar week, which, of course, is 7 days, with the next during the following 7 days, or the next Sunday-through-Saturday traditional week cycle.
First division -- this one! -- the main one, the Hall of Fame (HoF), is reserved for the elite SF videos of all-time. Top-100. There is no list. Second division -- the other of the two -- the secondary one, the Honorable Mention, reserved for "good" SF videos but which contain flaws. These videos could be -- aside from flawed in some way or ways -- brief, poor production values, controversial, quirky, unique, risqué, avant-garde, compelling, ground-breaking, iconic, historic. Different. Not that which would be associated with the Greatest Ever SF Videos tag. Will also feature those newer to the Greater SF World Community, of the Instagram persuasion or from Bigo Live captured for YouTube presentation, as is the case with this week's Honorable Mention post for the VOTW (Ziba,or Ella, from Turkey, already released).
We ask that the series be interactive. If there's a video you'd like to see affiliated with this project/series, give a holler. By tumblr chat or by tumblr e-mail. Both can be effective tools on our platform. No guarantees of immediate processing into the rotation but every consideration will be given to any and all requests. Of that, you can be assured. We do this for our entertainment but we take pride in knowing that so many of you SF buffs out there can appreciate the effort we put into our four blogs/vlogs/webpages. So, we want to connect with you -- some of you -- for your input to make this an interactive collaborative endeavor. We cannot read minds; please reach out with a suggestion. If we reject a request for inclusion, we will let you know why and you'll learn soon. We can have dialogue about it. Conversation by phone, highly, highly unlikely. You'll succeed and convince us to rescind our rejection or we will stick to our denial of access and inclusion.
We hope you will enjoy this series. Video of The Day had been suggested but was rejected out of hand. Once a week -- once every 7 days or twice every 13 days if it falls on a posting on a Sunday and the next on the following Saturday, 13 days later -- is much more manageable, we feel.
On August 31, we kicked off the series with the release of THE VIDEO OF THE WEEK | HONORABLE MENTION. Later in the day, we came out with THE VIDEO OF THE WEEK | SF HALL OF FAME. The initial feedback within the first 24 hours was not resounding. As this post in prepared for production, those first two VOTW posts have collected 40 positive response (likes/re-blogs) for the HofF, which featured Skittlez Cano, and 22 for the HM, featuring an unnamed teenager (most likely) from Turkey and was posted two days ago.
Hope you follow THE VIDEOS OF THE WEEK. We're sure you'll enjoy. And if you do not become a fan, it will be your fault to some degree for not seeing it on our brand because no request by you was offered to us. And, yes, VOTW will have a VOTW Hall of Fame and a VOTW Honorable Mention each every seven days. Double your pleasure. Let it plow through ('Ducky' in Pretty in Pink: "Let's Plow!") . . . !
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heyholmesletsgo · 2 months
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Shipper Tag Game
Tagged by @thesilversun, thank you! :)
1. What ship were you completely obsessed with when you were a teenager, but now you don't care about anymore? Probably Ste/Jamie from the movie Beautiful Thing (1996). I joined a very active mailing list at the time, so many beautiful fics were shared between everyone. Now there's less than 20 fics on ao3 for it, when it was such a rich, vibrant, loving community.
2. Which ship would you consider your first one? Probably Peter Pan/Wendy from when I was a little kid, lololol
3. Your first fanfic was about which couple? Probably Peter Pan/Wendy but they were in the form of comics, entire new adventures for the whole crew with drawings on every page. When you're a kid and don't even know about fanfic/fandom works but creativity is still second nature.
4. Do you remember the first couple you saw fanart of? Gosh, I don't remember anymore.
5. Have you ever gotten into ship discourse? Nope.
6. Did you use to have any NOTP or have one currently? Yep. Got my blocked terms set up everywhere cuz I just don't want to see it.
7. Who were the couple in the last fanfic you read? songxiao! Song Lan/Xiao Xingchen :D
8. Currently, do you have any OTPs? Yes! songxiao, but also xiyao as well. The former I write all the time, the latter I made a few fanvids for, but oddly don't read much fic for. I adore a lot of xiyao fanart, but I take songxiao anyway I can get it ♥
9. Is there any couple that, to this day, you are extremely mad about not getting together? Will/Lyra getting together was a major plot point in His Dark Materials but I'm still salty about them not getting to stay together. However, their not staying together is the heartbreak that keeps them together in my heart :P
10. Is there any ship you used to dislike but now you think they are kind of interesting? No?
11. Do you have any ship that, in the past, would've been considered normal but now you would be cancelled over? Hmm, I can't think of any. I've been in fandom a long time but I would either like a canon pairing or the work itself, but I honestly don't actively ship much.
12. What is your favorite crack ship? ??? I mean I ship two swords, Fuxue/Shuanghua, but I don't consider it crack :P
13. What is the couple you read the most fanfics about? BBC Johnlock most likely, for the several years I was inhaling fics about them.
14. What do most of your ships usually have in common? Competence and each having respective strengths that complement one another. EDITED to add: Them not being together in canon really kicks it up a notch--Wendy growing up and moving on? Will & Lyra separated in different dimensions!? Sherlock faking his own death?! Song Lan becoming a fierce corpse and XXC's shattered soul? OMG. That's when I get O B S E S S E S S E D !!!
15. What you absolutely hate in a ship? This is hard for me to answer--I was about to write down something from my NOTP but it was also present in an OTP, so really I can forgive a lot if the chemistry is there. It just comes down to vibes, I either feel it or I don't.
Tagging @alectoperdita, @apocrypha73, @snarkivistfic, @jamiesugah, @galauvant and whoever else would like to answer!
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yyh4ever · 1 year
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Yu Yu Hakusho Symphonic Collection I & II
Those two CDs are a selection of theme songs from "Yu Yu Hakusho", performed by the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra and conducted by Bob Sakuma.
Yu Yu Hakusho Symphonic Collection Vol. I (January/1995)
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Booklet
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"Yu Yu Hakusho" (written by Yoshihiro Togashi) has been serialized in Shueisha's "Weekly Shounen Jump" since 1990 and continues to have an overwhelming popularity. The comic books have had a tremendous circulation, and the TV animation, which aired on nationwide Fuji Television network, has recorded an astonishingly high viewer rating, an event that is said to occur once in decades.
The amount of characters' goods sold is enormous, and they continue to be eagerly desired by the fans.
The "Yu Yu Hakusho Symphonic Collection" is a selection of profoundly memorable theme songs from the big hit and masterpiece anime "Yu Yu Hakusho". Conducted by Bob Sakuma with great performance of the Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, we will present you with a profound and magnificence orchestration.
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Track List:
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INTRODUCTION
2. Unbalance na Kiss wo Shite (アンバランスなKissをして)
3. Hohoemi no Bakudan (微笑みの爆弾)
4. Kōri no Naifu wo Daite ~ Kokoro wo Tsunaide ~ Tasogare ni se wo Mukete (氷のナイフを抱いて~心をつないで~黄昏に背を向けて)
5. Taiyou ga Mata Kagayaku Toki (太陽がまた輝くと)
6. Homework ga Owaranai (ホームワークが終わらない)
7. Mienai Mirai e~Yasashisa wa Nemuranai~Hikari no Naka de (見えない未来へ~優しさは眠らない~光の中で)
8. Daydream Generation (デイドリーム・ジェネレーション)
9. Sayonara Bye Bye (さよならバイ・バイ)
10. END CREDITS
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Bob Sakuma (ボブ佐久間)
Profile:
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Composer, arranger, and conductor. At the age of 4, he started playing violin and piano, and at the age of 22, he made his debut as a composer.
Unsatisfied with the smooth sailing of the work as a writer, at the age of 27, he suddenly decided to emigrate to the United States, in order to know more about his own abilities on a global level. He lived in Hollywood, California, for 8 years, where he worked with many famous artists, especially in commercials and live performances.
In October 1985, he returned to Japan and settled there again. He has worked on numerous stages, TV shows, doramas, movies, musicals, etc., and his extensive composition (of music) activities have gained overwhelming support across genres such as pop, rock, jazz, and classical music.
Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra (名古屋フィルハーモニー交響楽団)
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Formed in 1966 by volunteer musicians of Nagoya City and surrounding areas, they gave their first subscription concert in October 1967.
Thereafter, they have steadily enhanced their skills while adjusting their structure as an orchestra. In 1988, they performed for the first time overseas, receiving great acclaim in various cities in Europe such as Paris and Geneva, and performing a great task as a cultural envoy.
T/N: Cultural envoy - figures and artists are sent overseas to engage in activities that will promote Japanese culture and create and reinforce cultural networks.
In recent years, symphonic pop concerts by symphony orchestras have become very popular, so they also have been very active in this area. In 1994, they have attracted attention from various circles with the "Symphonic Suite: The Silent Service," conducted by Bob Sakuma.
T/N: The Silent Service (沈黙の艦隊, Chinmoku no Kantai) is a manga series written and illustrated by Kaiji Kawaguchi.
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Yu Yu Hakusho Symphonic Collection Vol.II (June/1996)
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Cover
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Booklet
Track List:
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1. INTRODUCTION "Makai no Ibuki" (「魔界の息吹」, "Breath of Makai") 2. Hohoemi no Bakudan (微笑みの爆弾) 3. Unbalance na Kiss wo Shite (アンバランスなkissをして) 4. Sayonara Bye Bye (さよならbyebye) 5. Daydream Generation (デイドリーム・ジェネレーション) 6. Taiyo ga Mata Kagayaku Toki (太陽がまた輝くと) 7. Homework ga Owaranai (ホームワークが終わらない) 8. Kurayami ni Akai Bara ~Romantic Soldier~ (暗闇に紅いバラ) 9. Dead or Alive ~Toushin~ 10. Kuchibue ga Kikoeru (口笛が聴こえる) 11. WILD WIND ~Yasei no Kaze no you ni~ 12. EYE TO EYE 13. Sayonara wa Mirai no Hajimari (サヨナラは未来のはじま)
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All tracks are performed by Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Bob Sakuma.
Profile
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Bob Sakuma (ボブ佐久間)
Composer, arranger, and conductor. At the age of 4, he started playing violin and piano, and at the age of 22, he made his debut as a composer. Unsatisfied with the smooth sailing of the work of as a writer, at the age of 27, he suddenly decided to emigrate to the United States, in order to know more about his own abilities on a global level. He lived in Hollywood, California, for 8 years, where he worked with many famous artists, especially in commercials and live performances. In October 1985, he returned to Japan and settled there again. He has worked on numerous stages, TV shows, doramas, movies, musicals, etc., and his extensive composition (of music) activities have gained overwhelming support across genres such as pop, rock, jazz, and classical music. His representative works include the "The Silent Service Soundtrack" CD (Media Remoras) and the "Yu Yu Hakusho Symphonic Collection" CD (Media Remoras).
Nagoya Philharmonic Orchestra
Volunteer musicians from the City of Nagoya and the surrounding area founded the NPO in 1966. They gave their first subscription concert in October 1967. Thereafter, they have steadily enhanced their skills while adjusting their structure as an orchestra. In 1988, they performed for the first time overseas, receiving great acclaim in various cities in Europe such as Paris and Geneva, thus performing a great task as a cultural envoy. In recent years, symphonic pop concerts by symphony orchestras have become very popular, so they also have been very active in this area, attracting attention from various circles with the "Symphonic Suite: The Silent Service," conducted by Bob Sakuma, in 1994. Finally, in 1995, they formed Japan's first pop orchestra known as the "Mei-Phil Pop Orchestra". Their future success is greatly anticipated. One of their representative works is the "Yu Yu Hakusho Symphonic Collection" CD (Media Remoras).
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stvrkendrc · 6 months
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✹ ˚₊ 𝖮𝟭. ﹚ ꗃ BACKGROUND ⸃
[ ## trigger warnings: mention of depression and anoressia. ]
Raised into a wealthy and “privileged” family, Kang Saetbyeol — mostly known by the English given name, Kendra Kang — has always been interested in music, since young age, her big influence she claimed to be her own father, Kang Yicheol, who was since the early 2000 years an active artist in the industry, before retiring to focus on managing his empire, DASK. Though she loved music, she wanted to try something different, for this reason she decided to audition as a model — with her mother’s surname Joo— in many companies, the only company who accepted her was YG Entertainment, which Kendra signed a contract in 2008 at the age. She started as a joke, but she eventually got really immersed up into modeling. Her journey to become “super model” was hard, she loved getting the attention she couldn’t deny, but she also felt like she was pressed by her company, constantly wanting her to be on perfect shape, always practicing her walk. Kendra’s schedules where already ethic at such a young age that she don’t have the time to spend time by herself or her family.
Kendra told her father about the situation, who was firmly supported her, he told her that the best way was to leave the agency, as a CEO himself, but also as her dad, she couldn’t see her daughter so tired of… life. Because Kendra was diagnosed with depression, she was also not in a good relationship with food which brought her into anoressia, this slowly ruined her mental state. Saetbyeol Kang was sick, the best choice was to leave the agency, take some time off and maybe starting off something new. In late 2013, she asked for her contract’s cancelation but it got rejected, instead she was obligated to make her acting debut, since according to the company she was gaining attention due her facial features.
In 2014 decided to give the company the ultimatum, she wanted her 7-year contract to end, she was sick of waiting, she was determined into getting a lawsuit, but with surprise her contract was announced to be ended by her boss, she would later found out that her father and Yang Hyunsuk had a talk which he apparently talked about her daughter under the company. Kendra was angry with her dad, but she will later understand that he did it for her own good. That was she wanted the most.
Kendra was finally free, she had the time to rest, to heal her mind and especially body, but she also thought at what doing next, she wasn’t going to stop her career, she wanted to continue, but that needed time. Only in 2015 it was announced that her and her brother Kang Seungyoon founded a company: SEVEN SINS LABS, which Kendra would later debut under as the first artist.
✹ ˚₊ 𝖮𝟮. ﹚ ꗃ BASICS ⸃
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ BIRTH NAME. Kang Saetbyeol
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ BIRTH DATE. October 23th, 1996
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ BIRTH PLACE. Manchester, England
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ RESIDENCE. Soul, South Korea
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ ETHNICITY. South Korean
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ NATIONALITY. South Korean 1/2, British 1/2
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ HEIGHT. 1.79 cm ❪ 5’10 ❫
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ MBTI. INTP ❪ the logician ❫
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ ZODIAC. Scorpio
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ PIERCINGS. eleven
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ TATTOS. none
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ FACE CLAIM. Park Soojoo ❪ model ❫
✹ ˚₊ 𝖮𝟯. ﹚ ꗃ CAREER ⸃
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ STAGE NAME. Kendra K. or Kendra Kang
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ YEAR ACTIVE. 2009 — present
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ COMPANY. KK Studio ❪ currently ❫ ; DEADLY SINS LABS ❪ currently ❫ ; YG Entertainment ❪ former ❫
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ OCCUPATION. model, actress, singer, producer, composer
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ DEBUT DATE. June 5th, 2015
。𓍢𓍢 ★̶̲ ꜜ ˒ DISCOGRAPHY.
ꗃꠂꠥ. THIS IS HOW WE DO ; single ❪ 2015 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. KIDULT FEELS ; single ❪ 2015 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. BE THE ONE ; single ❪ 2015 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. RISING STAR ; extended play ❪ 2015 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. KK VEGEANCE ; single ❪ 2016 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. CONSEQUENCES ; single ❪ 2017 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. +WDYT+ (write down your threat) ; single ❪ 2017 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. DON’T START NOW ; single ❪ 2020 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. RHYTHM CLUB ; album ❪ 2020 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. WHAT TYPE OF X ; single ❪ 2022 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. PHYSICAL ; single ❪ 2023 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. SPICE (FEAT. W.U of ASHOY) ; single ❪ 2023 ❫
ꗃꠂꠥ. PANIC ON STORE ; album ❪ 2023 ❫
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MORE DETAILS IN THIS PAGE !
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magebunkshelf · 8 months
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Dr Foreman, excerpts from the lore wiki
Dr Foreman is a character who featured in the first Moth Listener audio. He appeared prominently in some of the lore ciphers posted in the lead up the the Lunar Mission collab. He was a biologist working at the shadowy Facility.
1995
On the 9th of September at around five in the morning, Dr Foreman interrogated the recently-detained moth demihuman. During the session, he discovered what he perceived as a relationship between the seemingly spontaneous existence of demihumans, and the moon.
On the 22nd of September, Dr Foreman signed off on the released of the moth back into the wild after the application of retcon, a memory-altering drug.
95/09/22 Subject 00352 released from captivity. Retcon applied. F
1996
A few months later, Dr Foreman sent a message to the Facility Director to request research into the link with the moon.
96/02/04 Director, our breakthroughs last year strongly suggest that the unprecedented increase of anomalous entities may be linked to activity from the moon. I would raise the notion that this avenue be explored. F
1997
Dr Foreman was present at an apparition event during the full moon of the 14th of December, as reported by Facility researcher identified as Rh.
97/12/14 The footage is incredible. Foreman was lucky to observe the apparition. It is however inconclusive. Yes it was a full moon, but I don’t see that being enough to warrant an extraplanetary mission, not if we want the Facility to remain undetectable. Rh
1998
Dr Foreman's activity during this year is mostly unknown, though at some point he handwrote a note in the Caesar cipher.
I stepped into the light and I wane as it shines. My lungs fill with light for me to proclaim its majesty. It will kill us all. I have seen it, and it doesn’t know. But no one will believe me. I haven’t the time, I will be found soon. Leaving what I can. Needle. Thread. Needle. Thread. Needle. Embrace. F
His death was later reported by the Facility in a numbers station broadcast. The cause is unknown.
98/08/07 FOREMAN IS DEAD. RETCON HIS FAMILY.
After death
youtube
A researcher identified as C made reference to Dr Foreman in a taped debriefing in 1999, saying "It was madness. He wouldn't let the moon thing go."
Several years later, C makes reference to Dr Foreman's research on the origins of demihumans.
04/09/27 Oh my god. Why wasn’t this in his report? The flash, the anomaly appears in it, right there. C
The lunar mission Dr Foreman had requested was eventually granted by the Director, and the Brazen launched in early 2010.
Dr Foreman is an important character in the lore of Mitch's World despite only having appeared once. While his fate is ambiguous, it gives insight into Θ, the voice related to the moon.
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generationstar · 2 years
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STARDOM ❪ 스타덤 ❫ is a fictional south korean girl group under blu:me lables. the sextet consist of: PARIS, TAEHA, BAE, YUXI, MINNIE, AND YOUNG. they made their debut on may 21st, 2017, with the single "SHOWTIME ! " on the extended play LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION !
stardom is known for their BUBBLY, SYNTH-POP sounds combined with their CUTE concepts that has DARK implications. the girls made their first appearance at the BEYOND BLU:ME joint-concert, where they preformed the single, "WHO AM I?" to hype of their debut. they would also preform it in the streets of hongdae, myeongdong, itaewon, etc. this made them very popular as they would be trending on multiple social media and several new outlets. after they made their debut, stardom became known as the monster rookies and just four days after debut they won their first win. it wasn't until the release of the titled track, "FANCY", that they were established as the "nation's girl group".
— ִֶָׂ ⋆ ᎒ BASIC INFORMATION
stage name : stardom ❨ 스타덤 ❩
debut date : may 21st, 2017
company : blu:me lables ❨ 2017 — present ❩
years active : 2017 — present ❨ 5 years ❩
genre : synth-pop. hyper-pop. edm. house.
concept : futuristic. space. time travel. retro-futurism. cyberpunk.
fandom name : starlights
group colors : moon yellow ❨ #f0c420 ❩. royal blue ❨ #4169e1 ❩
greetings : "all around the world, hello we are stardom!"
— ִֶָׂ ⋆ ᎒ MEMBERS
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PARIS KIM ❨ 1996 ❩
KANG TAEHA ❨ 1997 ❩
SONG YISEUL "BAE" ❨ 1998 ❩
XIAHOU YUXI ❨ 1999 ❩
LEE KYUNGMIN "MINNIE" ❨ 2000 ❩
JEON MOONYOUNG "YOUNG" ❨ 2000 ❩
— ִֶָׂ ⋆ ᎒ DISCOGRAPHY
under construction!
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mariacallous · 8 months
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The United Nations is the custodian of billions of dollars of international assistance meant for the hungry and needy of Afghanistan, where around half the population is said to depend on outside help just to stay alive. Yet the agencies entrusted with delivering that aid have been “effectively infiltrated” by the terrorist-run Taliban, who regard foreign charity as just another revenue stream, according to a report prepared for the U.S. government that has not yet been made public.
Tapping into charities and international aid to siphon money is nothing terribly new for the Taliban, who have been doing so since their first rise to power in Afghanistan in the mid-1990s. But that approach has taken on extra significance since the Taliban takeover of the country in August 2021, when terrorists, drug traffickers, and illegal traders were catapulted to power. The result has been fewer opportunities for Taliban leaders, and rank-and-file fighters, to cash in on illicit activity, making the collection plate grab all the more vital.
The detailed, and devastating, analysis of Afghanistan’s political and economic situation two years after the fall of Kabul was commissioned by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the U.S. government arm for foreign aid, and obtained by Foreign Policy. The report confirms that aid is being systematically diverted through Taliban-controlled hands and raises serious questions about the presence in Afghanistan of U.N. agencies charged with delivering that aid to those who need it. 
The “Taliban appear to view the UN system as yet another revenue stream, one which their movement will seek to monopolize and centralize control over,” the report says.
The report casts doubt on the world body’s ability to control the flow of aid, including about $2 billion from the United States alone since Aug. 15, 2021, when the Islamic Republic collapsed. And it comes as concern is growing that Western governments, including the Biden administration, favor moving toward recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate authority in Afghanistan, rather than attempting to hold them to account for brutal policies that have trampled the Afghan people and again transformed the country into a haven for global terrorism. 
With at least 19 agencies present in Afghanistan, the U.N. has effectively been operating illegally since a December edict from the Taliban banned the employment of women in NGOs; nondiscrimination is fundamental to the U.N. Charter. The USAID report says many nongovernmental organizations are now paying women to stay home, while the Taliban have ordered them to send their male relatives to ostensibly work in their place, even as the displaced women continue to do the heavy lifting. Afghanistan represents the biggest single-country appeal, for $3.2 billion this year (down from an earlier $4.6 billion), though the U.N. complains that, amid reports of corruption and complicity, it has received less than a quarter of the money. The United States is the biggest financial supporter of the U.N.
Donor reluctance to stump up the cash is understandable, given the contents of the report, which was submitted to USAID in May by the U.S. Institute of Peace. It flies in the face of claims that the Taliban are no longer the unreconstructed and unaccountable group that ran Afghanistan into the ground between 1996 and 2001. Assertions from U.N. and government officials that rifts within the Taliban could be exploited to force a reversal on policies such as confining women to their homes and banning girls from secondary education are also debunked; the report concludes that “the Taliban remain strongly, surprisingly cohesive.” Just as the political center of gravity has shifted south from Kabul to Kandahar, the decision-making power has drifted more into the orbit of Supreme Leader Haibatullah Akhundzada—there is little meaningful opposition.
The playbook of Taliban interference with foreign aid includes intimidation and coercion of local U.N. staff and, as with other NGOs, pushing for “ever-increasing degrees of credit and control over the delivery of aid, especially the more tangible forms of aid,” the report says. NGOs are forced to sign memoranda of understanding with ministries that are being taken over by agents of the Taliban’s secret service, the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI). The GDI official responsible for oversight of NGOs is believed to be responsible for a massacre of opponents in Nangarhar, according to the report. 
The Taliban recipe for overcoming opposition, like the Romans and British before them, has been to divide and conquer, and it still pays dividends—in an aid-flooded Afghanistan, handsome ones. The report notes that U.N. agencies and NGOs lack collective bargaining power as they enter bilateral agreements complying with conditions for Taliban oversight and control. This “removed much of the leverage other agencies had once the precedent of acquiescence was set,” the report says. 
The report also sheds some light on Taliban finances, describing the group as adept at tax collection and basic budget management—some iffy diversions by the supreme leader aside—thanks in part to the retention of a large core of Republic-era civil servants. Despite the collapse of Afghanistan’s economy, Taliban revenues of about $2 billion a year are roughly what the old government managed. What’s less clear is where that money goes. The report estimates that about 40 percent of the national budget is allocated to the security sector, as former military commanders, who retain control over “men with guns,” are a critical constituency. The rest is rather more opaque.
The “Taliban are clearly generating income—but it isn’t at all clear what they are spending it on,” the report says. 
In the meantime, as much as the Taliban remain reluctant to actually become a competent governing body, they are happy to be seen as such. That is one reason why NGOs that deliver high-profile goods and services such as health care are much more likely to be tolerated by the Taliban than civil society groups that deliver things that either smack of Western influence or can’t be packed in the back of a truck. The problem with the Taliban’s control of money is that it insulates them from any of the innumerable, and so far futile, calls to lessen their oppression of women or add some inclusivity to their government or fully rehabilitate former political opponents.
“The myriad means of profiting from engagement with the UN system and the aid sector, aside from formal taxation, mean that even though the investment amounts are greatly reduced from the 20 years of U.S.-led intervention, foreign aid is a major economic prize to be contested,” the report says.
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sugrstars · 8 months
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⸻ MEMBER PROFILES ; meet the members of SUG★R
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⸻ BASICS !
FULL NAME: Sang Hyejin STAGE NAME: Hyejin BIRTHDATE: july 8, 1992 ZODIAC: cancer, monkey BIRTHPLACE: wonju, south korea
⸻ CAREER !
COMPANY: infinite stage entertainment YEARS TRAINED: 2006 - 2016 YEARS ACTIVE: 2016 - present GROUP: SUG★R POSITION: leader, sub vocalist
⸻ HISTORY !
hyejin is often affectionately referred to as the golden child of ISE. beginning her training in 2006 and only debuting ten years later, hyejin had the longest trainee period of any ISE idol. this, along with the fact that she is the leader of the group that brought ISE back from the edge of financial ruin, means she is touted as being one of the most professional and experienced idols in the industry. she takes her work extremely seriously, both as a musician and a leader. she has songwriting credits on many of SUG★Rs albums, as well as some albums from other ISE groups. during SUG★Rs hiatus in 2021 rumors began spreading that hyejin was unsatisfied with the treatment the group was receiving from their company, which were later confirmed by hyejin herself. she clarified that she has done everything to protect herself and her members, and will continue to do so.
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⸻ BASICS !
FULL NAME: Yu Jina STAGE NAME: Julia BIRTHDATE: may 8, 1993 ZODIAC: taurus, rooster BIRTHPLACE: gunpo, south korea
⸻ CAREER !
COMPANY: infinite stage entertainment YEARS TRAINED: 2010 - 2016 YEARS ACTIVE: 2016 - present GROUP: SUG★R POSITION: main dancer, sub vocalist
⸻ HISTORY !
from a young age jina trained as a dancer, studying ballroom, jazz, and ballet. while she struggled as a vocalist for most of her time as a trainee, with the right support from her other group mates, jina has grown a lot as a singer and idol. jina is often praised for her visuals, especially her cheerful expressions while performing. jina revealed that she was once almost pressured into plastic surgery by someone at her company, and compliments on her visuals always cheer her up. while all of the members tend to be outspoken, jina is known for often accidentally being more blunt than she intends to be.
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⸻ BASICS !
FULL NAME: Kim Sohee STAGE NAME: Sohee BIRTHDATE: july 30, 1995 ZODIAC: leo, pig BIRTHPLACE: seoul, south korea
⸻ CAREER !
COMPANY: infinite stage entertainment YEARS TRAINED: 2010 - 2016 YEARS ACTIVE: 2016 - present GROUP: SUG★R POSITION: main vocalist, dancer
⸻ HISTORY !
of all members of the group, sohee is the one who most often admits to being interested in becoming an idol from an early age. in an interview she even said she would hang up posters from other idols in her dorm room while she was a trainee. sohee has always been a hard worker who enjoys what she does. other idols at ISE have often described her as an extremely positive force, who would never fail to cheer them up when they were having a bad day. while she is close with all the members, sohee seems to spend most of her time with the group’s leader hyejin, the two of them often posting pictures of each other on social media.
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⸻ BASICS !
FULL NAME: Nam Hyori STAGE NAME: Ari BIRTHDATE: april 10, 1996 ZODIAC: aries, rat BIRTHPLACE: busan, south korea
⸻ CAREER !
COMPANY: infinite stage entertainment YEARS TRAINED: 2010 - 2016 YEARS ACTIVE: 2016 - present GROUP: SUG★R POSITION: main rapper, sub vocalist
⸻ HISTORY !
hyori is the true youngest sibling of the group, being the member with easily the most scandals to her name. even as a young trainee, hyori was linked to trainees and idols from other companies. while she is a strong rapper with good visuals and is generally regarded as having a positive attitude, most of this is overshadowed by hyori’s scandals and netizens’ opinions on them. however, it doesn’t seem to bother hyori too much. she’s opinionated and outspoken, never shying away from telling everyone exactly how she feels. she has made clear that she has no interest in making fans think that she’s someone else.
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