#GH Meme Challenge

[strawberry-sticky-autism]

THE BOOOOYYYYY

I'm so so so so normal

[thenerdyunhealthybrit]

Tagged by the wonderful @dream-beyond-the-fantasy​

If you could change (or rather fix) the background and/or paternity of any five characters, who would they be?

This is tough, currently Griffin because he is sort of just floating around with no real ties - I would had made him Anna’s somehow, or introduce some siblings or extended family for him.

What five storylines would you rewrite?  And how?

The Everyday Heroes storyline, that storyline was awful and OOC for Sam, how previously lived a life of crime and who was dating a mob enforcer at the time. Being on TV and in the public eye made no sense for her. It was just a way to break down JaSam more for Liason. Like even when it looked to be building up to something, with the mark turning out the be abusive - it was all done wrong because if I remember correctly, he only got abusive when it was revealed that Sam was conning him. As bad as it sounds, he had a legit, arguably provoked reason. It’s still bad, but it didn’t make Sam sympathetic and the abuse was very brushed over in favour of Jason’s storyline and breaking them up. I was have changed it so her “husband” has abused her once married, but before it was revealed she was conning him. If they insisted on delving into Sam’s past as a con artist.

Three most annoying retcons in General Hospital history?

1) SamTrick. I’m sorry, I’m only going to say this now because I’ve been complaining about it for months and have appointed myself as leader of the SamTrick defence squad. But currently I hate how SamTrick is completely retconned by the writers, Robin only ever brings up Sabrina. And I hate how it’s being retconned to prop Dream up, she left Patrick because she thought Jason was alive and Drew was “Jason” - they got together in hopes of developing feelings because Sam thought Drew was “Jason” and “Jason” thought Sam was his wife and he owed it to her to try.

2) Another one is Jason’s commitment to the mob, currently they are acting like Jason’s number 1 priority is CarSon. When before 2012, he was able to separate Mob life to his private life with Sam.

3) Anything where CarSon do bad shit, then act all sanctimonious to other people, - like recently with the Nelle/Carly stuff or how Ava is being kept from Avery when Sonny isn’t even a good option, has killed people (and gets Jason’s to do it) and most of the time Avery is hidden in the corner or is with Michael and Kiki.

Favorite incarnations of characters who have been played by multiple actors?

Tyler Christopher, which is easy since Tyler is Nikolas.

Natalia Livingston, I never really saw Amber Tamblyn as Emily so that’s easy.

Steve Burton as Jason Morgan, and this is nothing against Billy, I just think he looks to soft to be believable as a tough, mob enforcer. Whereas, Steve kind of has a natural, rugged, rough around the edges look for him. Maybe it’s because of all those years of Billy in The Young and the Restless made it tough.

With Carly its tough, I feel like with Tamara’s Carly, the CarSon dynamic felt more like a mob relationship, whereas with Laura’s CarSon feels more on equal dynamic, but Laura’s Carly makes Carly seem more possessive and obsessive and needy over people at time. But I liked how independent she became, whereas I didn’t really get that with Tamara’s Carly - but I preferred Tamara’s relationship with Michael compared to Laura’s Carly.

Billy Warlock for AJ Quartermaine - this is nothing against Sean Kanan, because I never saw his initial stint, but I felt in his second stint there was a big unexplained discourse with the sudden change - kind of like what they are doing with Franco (but less worse) but also I felt like they weren’t giving Sean the right material for AJ and it’s an injust that he never knew about Jason and that he’s supposedly ok with Sonny killing him.

Five character deaths that destroyed you?

Emily, I don’t see what it did, expect butcher the Quartermaines and for shock value during the Sweeps.

AJ, but not for the same reason as Emily, this was more about the injustice done to his character.

Lila McCall - that’s down to Kelly and Steve’s performance, I did not expect to legitimately cry.

Danny McCall - He was so innocent and pure and at the time, the last of Sam’s family. He didn’t deserve to die - I would have liked to have had to full time character that is disabled or mentally challenged and have the relationship between the career and the person - without having to send them away or it defining them.

Georgie Jones - though I understand the actress quit due to lack of storylines, I think it’s a shame that writers didn't give her the material she deserves, especially since I think at the time, that age group was kind of small anyway.

If you could bring back any characters, which ones would they be?  And why?

Danny McCall, for reasons above.

Lila McCall - I flip back on this, this is a huge what if scenario. I’d like to have seen Jason and Sam raise her together. Though Sonny would ruin it, probably randomly decides he’s her dad every 5 years.

Emily Quartermaine - because it’s Emily Quartermaine.

AJ and Alan Quartermaine, for vintage Quartermaine goodness, plus Drew deserves this.

Lorenzo Alcazar - Which is probably an unpopular one, but I liked him and Ted King, had legit reasons to quit since the writers made him all about Sonny, but Sonny didn’t actually do anything to him, it was other people like Alexis etc.

Patrick Drake - SamTrick deserves to be remembered, he will always be an iconic GH Doc, move out the way Griffin. Plus I’d like to see SamTrick continue to be platonic best friends after they split. Sam needs her own friends, outside of Jason’s Carly, Spinelli, even though they befriended him at the same time was more about Jason, the writers forget about Saxie half the time. Plus Noah with Danny or Noah with Scout would be cute.

What storylines would you like to see General Hospital tackle?

Surrogacy, again - but not like what they did with Maxie/Lulu/Dante. 

A couple having a child born with Down Syndrome or some disability - and have it not be fixed by some miracle cure.

I lowkey want a Cult storyline. Australian soaps like Home and Away love a Cult storyline (It’s hippie style not Scientology style).

Any community style storylines - but not have Sonny and Jason come out looking as heroes. Not villains either but it use to be quite bad that they were legit like Superheroes.

Just more storylines that break the mould of a US Soap. 

If you watched any other ABC soaps (All My Children, One Life to Live, Port Charles, Ryan’s Hope, Loving, The City and I’m including SoapNet’s General Hospital: Night Shift), which characters (living at the time of the soap’s demise) would you bring to GH for a visit/story since they share the same universe?

I haven’t watched any of the old ABC Soaps, but I know my fair share about it and seen bits and bobs.

From One Life To Live, I think I’d bring Starr and Cole with Hope, but none of that storyline when they arrived. I think it was a mess what was done with the characters that hoped over to GH from OLTL and there was no true resolution to it. Maybe Jess with her split personalities to spice things up. Have her be predominantly know to GH residents by one of her alternate personalities.

From All My Children, I kind of dug Zendall from their clips, and I think their ending was a mess because only one returned to the Online Soap, but I would at least bring Kendall over to GH to kind of explain more on their split and have a life away if necessarily, without feeling out of place. I’d bring Babe back from the dead and bring her and JR over to rival CarSon in a way (in styles of relationship, not mob life).

I don’t see how Port Charles characters can properly be brought over considering how much the show veered off into the Supernatural. I lowkey would have liked to see Livvie and Caleb more, but not in GH.

I’m going to tag @gemleilou. I don’t think you have done this?

[sugar-petals]

My Lady, how does one go about learning a new language? I'm here trying to expand my ligustic territory.

go by your strong suit:

audiobooks and youtube, perfect if you learn sonically. like a challenge? try spanish, it’s thrice as fast as most other languages. spaniards really emphasize the spoken word rather than the written one, they pack in all that information. listening is great fun though and if you learn this way, it’ll be worthwhile. if you go one step beyond, portuguese. super important to listen closely there. as a bonus, it’s way slower.

if you learn by reading, french is the way to go. spoken french swallows half the word so you need to start by knowing the spelling first anyway. also, written french is simply extremely satisfying. german is also important to read to know where we separate words. it’s similar to dutch. listening to dutch is harder than reading it.

if you love to write, pick up russian. it really takes some time until you rewire your brain for cyrillic, a lot of ‘false friend’ letters, that’s why it’s so important to write. but once you get into it, wow you progress faster and faster. another favorite for avid writers, hindi.

haptic learning: you use post-its on items in your room(s). i recommend thai since the letters are essentially beautiful swirly ornaments, it’s a pretty af alphabet. also, written arabic will do you a favor, it’s like you’re painting. you’ll see how much of a kinesthetic-friendly language it is.

visual learners do well with written chinese. most characters are calligraphic depictions of items and people. they understand the principle the fastest while other people struggle big time. your eye goes: i see herbs peeking through soil (艹) garden/field (田) tail (犭)... that’s a cat (猫)! and you picture a tail looking out of a catnip plant in your garden. learn japanese along the way, it incorporates kanji characters, same idea.

verbal learners and extroverts head straight to arabic. yep. arab speakers are the most flattered when you pick up their language and do conversation. pronunciation is key as they have a completely different phonology for e.g. q, h, th, g, gh sounds. another pick for verbal learners, again, portuguese. or any norse language.

if you’re good at maths and logic in general, latin is your friend. the grammar is almost never arbitrary like say german where we do the strangest things with verbs. similarly, written chinese is very regular.

if you pick up languages through music, korean is a no-brainer. it’s all so goddamn catchy. whenever i learn korean vocabulary, i can reference bits and pieces to k-pop right away. the songs also teach you the bit of word contraction that native speakers add. tumblr is full of blogs posting vocabulary lists for every new release of your favorite, it’s glorious.

BONUS - if you learn through memes and rolling on the floor... get into slavic languages, you won’t regret it.

[mjohnso]

Periodic Rookie Group Report No. 17

I begin most of these Rookie Reports the same way, with an eye turned towards the rookie groups that debuted the year before. This choice, in a sense, makes every Rookie Report a continuation of the one that had come before, threading them together into a loosely connected whole, or at least it usually does. Last year, 2020, was a snag in this thread. As multiple memes about the long March and December 32, 2020 have joked, 2020 has not ceded to 2021, as much as countless memes have joked, made this year in its image. I might as well have called this Periodic Rookie Report No. 16, Pt II, instead of by its proper name, Periodic Rookie Group Report No. 17.

By which I mean, of the 79 groups that debuted in 2020, eight—four boy groups, three girl groups, and one co-ed group—have disbanded, with five doing so last year, during an unprecedented wave of disbandments. Those groups are as follows:

BECZ: According to a September 10, 2020 on their official Instagram, the boy group (March ’20) was disbanding because of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. (H&H Entertainment has since rebranded as YS Music and deleted their previous Instagram account, meaning this post is no longer available.)

BLASTAR: According to a December 23, 2020 post on the girl group’s (July ‘20) official Instagram, VH Entertainment asked the members to leave the company and consequently terminated their contracts.

B.O.Y: Music Works Entertainment released a statement on April 30, 2021 announcing that following his contract expiration, Song Yu Vin was enlisting, leaving Kim Kookheon the sole member of the male duo (January ‘20). Consequently, they disbanded.

Daydream: Former member, Sarang revealed in a July 19, 2020 post on her personal Instagram that the girl group (February ’20) had disbanded. She did not provide a reason for the disbandment.

H&D: Both members of the male duo (April ’20) debuted as members of the boy group, BAE173 in November 2020, presumably this means that the duo has disbanded.

OFF THE CUFF: According to an April 9, 2021 post on Purple Entertainment’s official Instagram, the boy group (April ’20) was disbanding and the members were going their separate ways. They did not provide an explanation for the disbandment.

XUM: According to a June 1, 2021 post on A100’s Entertainment’s YouTube page, the girl group (September ’20) had disbanded. They did not provide an explanation for the disbandment.

SSAK3: On the August 15, 2020 episode of MBC’s How Do You Play?, the co-ed group (July ’20) announced that, as planned, they would conclude their activities and disband.

Subtracting these eight disbanded groups from the 79 groups that debuted in 2020 leaves a total of 71 active groups. Between January and June of this year, 38% or 27 groups of these 71 groups released new music between January and June of this year, with 14% or 10 groups doing so more than once.

While this is below the average, as typically 47% of groups release new music in the year following their debut, it is in line with 2020. According to Rookie Report No. 15, only 38% of groups made a comeback in the first half of the year. By the end of 2020, per Rookie Report No. 16, slightly less than half of the rookie groups that debuted in 2019 would make comebacks in 2020.

Korean Releases from ‘20 Rookie Groups: January to June

Note: Releases marked with an asterisk (*) indicate an additional release from a group following their initial release

January

08 KEEMBO - “Love Me 4 Me” (Single)

08 MCND - MCND Age (Mini Album)

09 SWAY - “Let’s Go to the Beach” (Single)

11 TREASURE - The First Step : Treasure Effect (Album)

19 CRAVITY - Season 3. Hideout Be Our Voice (Mini Album)

February

05 aespa - “Forever” (Single)

09 Girls2000 - “XVI” (Single)

23 KEEMBO - Scandal (Album)*

24 WEi - IDENTITY : Challenge (Mini Album)

March

03 VINCIT - “Wavy Flame” (Single)

06 Checkmate - “DRUM” (Single)

10 Way V - Kick Back (Mini Album)

11 GHOST9 - NOW : Where we are, here (Mini Album)

15 SOYOU - “Moon Sonata” (Single)

16 DRIPPIN - A Better Tomorrow (Mini Album)

16 MY.st - “Dazzle” (Single)

17 Weeekly - We Play (Mini Album)

29 Checkmate - “You” (Single)

30 DKB - The dice is cast (Album)

April

032Z - ACT I (Album)

05 withus - “Dokkebi: Ground” (Single)

07 LUNARSOLAR - “DADADA” (Single)

07 Q.O.S - “All Love” (Single)

08 BAE173 -Intersection Spark (Mini Album)

08 STAYC - “ASAP” (Single)

15 SWAY - “Episode 3” (Single)*

20 P1Harmony - DISHARMONY : BREAK OUT(Mini Album)

May

10 KEEMBO - “Whatever” (Single)*

15 Sway - “Gray” (Single)*

17 aespa - “Next Level” (Single)*

20 Bling Bling - Contract(Mini Album)

27 woo! ah! - “Purple” (Single)

28 Weeekly - “7Days Tension” (Single)*

June

03 GHOST9 - Now: When We Are In Love (Mini Album)*

03 VINCIT - “Keep” (Single)*

09 WEi - Identity : Action (Mini Album)*

29 DRIPPIN - “Free Pass” (Single)*

Still from BLITZERS' "Breathe Again"

In what has turned out to be an otherwise bleak report, 2021’s Rookie Group debuts thus far are not bright spot. Indeed, the 28 groups that debuted—15 boy groups, 12 girl groups, and 1 co-ed group— by my own accounting, marks the lowest number of debuts to occur in the first half of the year since I started tracking rookies in 2013.

This may be a bad sign, or it may not. In these half-year reports especially, there always exists the potential for things to get worse for rookies or better, which has always guided my reason not to make predictions about the rest of the year. There is simply too much uncertainty, things can always change for the better, granted that is a hard case to make now. The industry is still reeling from the ongoing pandemic, one which as I have previously noted, has acutely affected groups from smaller, often less established agencies who are also struggling to make a name from themselves. In other words, rookies.

Methodology: https://blog.mjohnso.com/methodology

[felques]

Some headcanon for that AU where the Chimeriad all survived? :3

AU headcanon meme

Gosh. Where to start. It’s going to be hard separating headcanon from plot points.

Despite a rough introduction to Elympios, Agria does enjoy spending time over in the other “world” (largely Marksburg and Trigleph). Her initial traveling around already exposed her to the reliance on spyrixes, and her observations of Elympions in Rieze Maxia post-schism are pretty aligned with the fractured dimension version of her we see in ToX2, but she likes the clothing, decor, and food. The best way to convince her to hang out is suggesting  trying out “new” (read: Elympion) food or shopping.

Carried over from some fics I wrote a few years back, it took awhile for Jiao to embrace Elympion technology – mainly because he’s gigantic and things were not made with extremely big people in mind. He finally gets to use a GHS by using a stylus to tap the screen and buttons. He’s fond of messaging with Elize (of course), and they string together interesting emoticons they find to make little storylines.

Presa largely retires from spying fieldwork after things settle down post-schism, focusing more on maintaining the intelligence networks that gather information for Gaius. The intelligence-gathering game is more active than ever with a whole new continent to learn about, so she’s kept pretty busy keeping in contact with established connections and compiling reports for Gaius and Rowen. Her downtime is spent with the Chimeriad and their friends within Milla’s group; she gets along well with Rowen and drinks tea with him on occasion, and her relationship with Alvin is a little bit better now that Alvin’s learning not to be a jerk. Of the Chimeriad, she’s the one most often appointed as ‘bodyguard’ to Rowen while on diplomatic talks.

Wingul has trouble adjusting to things after he recovers and gets back to work. His world view and opinions have been challenged by Jude and Milla, and Gaius’ acceptance to take on less “aggressive” stance on Elympios has him frustrated and disappointed with both himself and Gaius. He heads to Marksburg, oversees construction as it is underway, and runs the Rieze Maxian embassy established there, rarely returning to Kanbalar. His refusal to come back is a point of tension between himself and Gaius, but he’s convinced himself that his self-exile is to help Gaius and Rowen form a united front in bringing together Auj Oule and Rashugal.

Because of their work and their own desires, the Chimeriad visit Marksburg more often than not. Jiao, Presa, and Agria will often crash in Wingul’s office when they are in town, catching up and sharing their observations of how things are going with their new “neighbors” from Elympios. Rowen and Gaius visit Marksburg as well, and they pointedly don’t talk about Wingul’s absence in Kanbalar. (Translation: Wingul is still doing what he thinks is best for the country even to his own personal detriment.)

Gaius and Wingul have feelings for each other and have been intimate on occasion, which compounds issues a billion times over. (No joke. They have a not-fight over Wingul not being in Kanbalar practically every time they meet.)