#18/09/2020

[mostlysignssomeportents]

“Brand safety” killed Jezebel

I'll be at the Studio City branch of the LA Public Library this Monday, November 13 at 1830hPT to launch my new novel, The Lost Cause. There'll be a reading, a talk, a surprise guest (!!) and a signing, with books on sale. Tell your friends! Come on down!

Progressives: if you want to lose to conservatives, all you need to do is reflexively praise and support everything conservatives turn into a culture-war issue, without considering whether they might be right. Because sometimes…they're right.

Remember early in the Trump presidency, when conservatives all woke up and discovered that America's spy agencies – excuse me, "the intelligence community" – were dirty-tricking psychos who run amok, lawlessly sabotaging democracy? Progressives have been shouting this ever since Hoover's FBI tried to blackmail MLK into killing himself:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FBI%E2%80%93King_suicide_letter

But millions of progressives forgot about COINTELPRO, CIA dirty tricks and CIA mass spying when this "intelligence community" temporarily set out to wrong-foot Trump. Remember James Comey votive candles?

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/08/30/james-comey-fbi-memo-leaks-trump-inspector-general-report-column/2157705001/

Anthropologists have a name for this phenomenon, in which one side reverses its positions because their sworn enemies have done so. It's called schizmogenesis, and it goes like this: "If they hate it, we love it":

https://pluralistic.net/2021/12/18/schizmogenesis/

Schizmogenesis is an equal-opportunity delusion. Within living memory, white evangelicals supported abortion, because their sworn enemies – Catholics – opposed it. Some of those white Boomer women who voted Trump because abortion was literally the only issue they cared about held the opposite position on abortion not so long ago – and completely forgot about it:

https://text.npr.org/734303135

The main purpose of the culture war isn't immiserating marginalized people – that's its effect, but its purpose is to distract low-information turkeys (working people) so they'll vote for Christmas (the ongoing seizure of power by American oligarchs). For the funders of conservative movement politics, the cruelty isn't the point, it's merely the tactic. The point is power:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/03/09/turkeys-voting-for-christmas/#culture-wars

Which brings me to "woke capitalism." Conservative string-pullers have whipped up their base about the threat of companies embracing social causes. They (erroneously) claim that corporations have progressive values, and that big business is thumbing the scales for causes they despise. The purpose here isn't to sow distrust of capitalism per se. Rather, it's to stampede talk-radio-addled supporters into backing the oligarchy's agenda. Remember when culture war leaders told their base to support being gouged on credit-card junk fees "to own the libs?"

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

That's schizmogenesis working against the conservative rank-and-file, tricking them into taking the side of a cartel of wildly profitable payment processors who are making billions by picking their pockets (credit card fees are up 40% since the covid lockdowns), because (checks notes), Target pays these profiteers a lot to process its payments, and Target sells Pride merch (no, really):

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/04/owning-the-libs/#swiper-no-swiping

It's easy to point and laugh at conservative dopes when they're tricked into shooting themselves in the balls to own the libs. This is not a hypothetical example:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/28/holographic-nano-layer-catalyser/#musketfuckers

But progressives do it, too, particularly when they embrace monopolies as a force for positive social change. Remember 2019, when people got excited about playing loud pop music at Nazi rallies in the hopes that the monopoly video platforms' copyright filters would make any video from that rally impossible to post?

https://memex.craphound.com/2019/07/23/clever-hack-that-will-end-badly-playing-copyrighted-music-during-nazis-rallies-so-they-cant-be-posted-to-youtube/

I warned then that if this tactic worked, it would be used by cops to prevent you from recording them when they're macing you or splitting your skull with a billyclub, and yup, within a couple years, cops were blaring Taylor Swift music in hopes of preventing the public from posting videos of their illegal conduct:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/04/07/moral-hazard-of-filternets/#dmas

Conservatives are (partially) right about woke capitalism. It is a threat to democracy. Concentrating the power to decide who gets to speak and what they get to say into the hands of five or six corporations, mostly run by mediocre billionaires, is bad for society. The moderation decisions of giant platforms are a form of (commercial) censorship, even these don't violate the First Amendment:

https://locusmag.com/2020/01/cory-doctorow-inaction-is-a-form-of-action/

(The progressive delusion that censorship only occurs when the First Amendment is violated is a wild own-goal, one that excuses, for example, the decision by school book-fair monopolist Scholastic to remove books about queers and Black and brown people from its offerings as a purely private matter without consequences for free speech):

https://www.themarysue.com/scholastic-response-to-authors-and-illustrators-on-diverse-books/

Conservatives are only partially right about woke capitalism, though. Here's what they're wrong about: corporations don't have values. Target isn't selling Pride tees because they support progressive causes, they're selling them because it seems like a good way to increase returns to their shareholders. Individuals – even top executives – at Target might endorse the cause, but the company will only durably support the cause if that endorsement is profitable, which means that when it stops being profitable, the company will stop supporting the cause:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/23/business/target-lgbtq-merchandise/index.html

The idea that corporations have values isn't merely stupid, it's very dangerous. The Hobby Lobby decision – which allows corporations to deny basic health-care expenses for women on the basis that a Bronze Age mystic wouldn't approve of an IUD – rests on the ideological foundation that corporate personhood includes corporate values:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burwell_v._Hobby_Lobby_Stores,_Inc.

Citizens United – the idea that corporations should be allowed to funnel unlimited funds to politicians who'll sell out the public good in favor of investor profits – also depends on a form of corporate personhood that includes values:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

There are undeniably instances in which corporate monopoly power benefits progressive causes, but these are side-effects of corporate power's main purpose, namely: taking money and power away from working people and giving it to rich people. That is what monopoly power is for.

Which brings me to ad-tech, "brand safety," and the demise of Jezebel, the 16 year old feminist website whose shuttering was just announced by its latest owner, G/O Media:

https://www.metafilter.com/201349/This-is-the-end-of-Jezebel-and-that-feels-really-really-bad

Jezebel's demise is the direct result of monopoly power. Jezebel writes about current affairs – sex, politics, abortion, and other important issues of great moment and significance. When we talk about journalism as a public good, necessary for a healthy civic life, this is what we mean. But unfortunately for Jezebel – and any other news outlet covering current events – there are vast, invisible forces that exist solely to starve this kind of coverage of advertising revenue.

Writing for the independent news site 404 Media, reporter Emanuel Maiberg and former Motherboard editor-in-chief Jason Koebler go deep on the "brand safety" industry, whose mission is to assist corporations in blocking their ads from showing up alongside real news:

https://www.404media.co/advertisers-dont-want-sites-like-jezebel-to-exist/

Maiberg and Koebler explain how industry associations like the World Federation of Marketers' Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) promulgate "frameworks" to help advertisers automatically detect and exclude real news from consideration when their ads are placed:

https://www.peer39.com/blog/garm-standards

This boycott makes use of scammy "AI" technology like "sentiment and emotional analysis" to determine whether an article is suitable for monetization. These parameters are then fed to the ad-tech duopoly's ad auction system, so Google and Meta (who control the vast majority of online advertising) can ensure that real news is starved of cash.

But reality is not brand-safe, and high quality, reputable journalistic outlets are concerned with reality, which means that the "brand safe" outlets that attract the most revenue are garbage websites that haven't yet been blacklisted by the ad-safety cartel, leading to major brands' ads showing up alongside notorious internet gross-out images like "goatse":

https://www.404media.co/sqword-game-dev-sneaks-goatse-onto-a-dozen-sites-that-stole-his-game/

More than a fifth of "brand safe" ad placements end up on "made for advertising" sites, which 404 Media describe as "trash websites that plagiarize content, are literally spam, pay for fake traffic, or are autogenerated websites that serve no other purpose than capturing ad dollars":

https://www.ana.net/miccontent/show/id/rr-2023-06-ana-programmatic-transparency-first-look

Despite all this, many progressives have become cheerleaders for "brand safety," as a countervailing force to the drawdown of trust and safety at online platforms, which led to the re-platforming of Nazis, QAnon conspiratorialists, TERFs, and other overt elements of the reactionary movement's vanguard on Twitter and Facebook. Articles about ads for major brands showing up alongside Nazi content on Twitter are now a staple of progressive reporting, presented as evidence of Elon Musk's lack of business acumen. The message of these stories is "Musk is bad at business because he's allowing Nazis on his platform, which will send advertisers bolting for the exits to avoid brand-safety crises."

This isn't wrong. Musk is a bad businessman (he's a good scam artist, though). Twitter is hemorrhaging advertisers, notwithstanding the desperate (and easily debunked) stats-juking its "CEO," Linda Yaccarino, floats onstage at tech conferences:

https://www.techdirt.com/2023/10/11/math-problem-for-linda-yaccarino-if-90-of-the-top-advertisers-have-come-back-but-are-only-spending-10-of-what-they-used-to-how-screwed-are-you/

But progressives are out of their minds if they think the primary effect of the brand safety industry is punishing Elon Musk for secretly loving Nazis. The primary effect of brand safety is killing reality-based coverage of the news of the day, and since reality has a well-known anti-conservative bias, anything that works against the reality-based community is ultimately good for oligarchy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reality-based_community

We can't afford to let schizmogenesis stampede us into loving things just because conservative culture warriors have been momentarily tricked into hating them as part of oligarchs' turkeys-voting-for-Christmas project. "Swivel-eyed loons hate it, so it must be good," is a worse-than-useless heuristic for navigating complex issues:

https://locusmag.com/2023/05/commentary-cory-doctorow-the-swivel-eyed-loons-have-a-point/

A much better rule of thumb is "If oligarchs love something, it's probably bad." Almost without exception, things that are good for oligarchs are bad for the rest of us. I mean, this whole shuttering of Jezebel starts with an oligarch imposing his will on millions of other people. Jezebel began life as a Gawker Media site, beloved of millions of readers, destroyed when FBI informant Peter Thiel secretly funded Hulk Hogan's lawsuit against the publisher in a successful bid to put them out of business to retaliate for their unfavorable coverage of Thiel:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2018/02/hogan-thiel-gawker-trial/554132/

This, in turn, put Jezebel under the ownership of G/O Media, who are unwilling to pay for a human salesforce that would – for example – sell advertising space on Jezebel to sex-toy companies or pro-abortion groups. G/O has been on a killing spree, shuttering beloved news outlets like Deadspin:

https://deadspin.com/this-is-how-things-work-now-at-g-o-media-1836908201

G/O's top exec, an oligarch named Jim Spanfeller who answers to the private equity looters at Great Hill Partners, is bent on ending reality-based coverage in favor of "letting robots shit out brand safe AI-assisted articles about generic topics":

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/ai-articles-disinformation-future-g-o-media-rcna95944

Three quarters of a century ago, Orwell coined a term to describe this kind of news: duckspeak,

It was not the man’s brain that was speaking it was his larynx. The stuff that was coming out of him consisted of words but it was not speech in true sense: it was a noise uttered in unconsciousness like the quacking of a duck.

When investors and analysts speak of "content" (rather than, say, "journalism"), this is what they mean – a warm slurry of platitudes, purged of any jagged-edged fragments to render it a perfectly suitable carrier for commercial messages targeted based on surveillance data about the "consumer" whose eyeballs are upon it.

This aversion to reality has been present among corporate decisionmakers since the earliest days, but the consolidation of power among large firms – ad-tech firms, online platforms, and "brands" themselves – makes corporate realityphobia much easier to turn into, well, reality, giving advertisers the fine-grained power to put Jezebel and every site like it out of business.

As Koebler and Maiberg's headliine so aptly puts it, "Advertisers Don’t Want Sites Like Jezebel to Exist."

The reason to deplore Nazis on Twitter is because they are Nazis, not because their content isn't brand-safe. The short-term wins progressives gain by legitimizing a corporate veto over what we see online are vastly overshadowed by the most important consequence of brand safety: the mass extinction of reality-based reporting. Reality isn't brand safe. If you're in the reality based community, brand safety should be your sworn enemy, even if they help you temporarily get a couple of Nazis kicked off Twitter.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/11/ad-jacency/#brand-safety

[goldsainz]

OVER THE YEARS — one shot.

pairing: oscar piastri x reader

MASTERLIST.

request: “omg hi i have a request for oscar piastri a social media au something showing their friendship over the years maybe through b'day posts/something else (you decide) basically like childhood friend to lovers social media au pls !”

NOTE: first oscar piece ever!! the format of this is a bit diff but that’s just bc it’s kind of only insta… thank you sm for requesting, i hope that this is what you wanted and enjoy! (this has no faceclaim btw)

APRIL 06, 2019

liked by oscarpiastri, nicolepiastri and 2,687 others

yourusername HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO MY BEST FRIEND WHO JUST TURNED 18!!!! cannot believe i’ve known you for 12 of those years…

view all 40 comments

oscarpiastri Was the last picture really necessary…

⤷ yourusername yes, yes it was 😁

oscarpiastri I was a pretty cute kid actually

liked by yourusername

APRIL 06, 2020

liked by arthur_leclerc, oscarpiastri and 3,185 others

yourusername 19 years old and he’s still acting like he’s 10!! oh also, happy birthday 🥳

view all 56 comments

oscarpiastri Was the happy birthday an afterthought or…?

⤷ yourusername was i really that obvious?

⤷ oscarpiastri I see how it is then🙄

arthur_leclerc I’m gonna need more of these pictures

⤷ yourusername your wish is my command

⤷ oscarpiastri Y/N NO

APRIL 06, 2021

liked by oscarpiastri, logansargeant and 6,279 others

yourusername selfie time for the birthday boy! 20 has looked better on others, but you’ll get there ❤️

view all 94 comments

oscarpiastri Wow!

oscarpiastri I send you these pics in confidence and they end up on Instagram… Can’t trust anybody😔

⤷ yourusername not really private if they’re in a group chat🤷‍♀️

⤷ oscarpiastri Watch your back for your next birthday post… You never the content I might get

arthur_leclerc You two look really cozy in that second picture!!

⤷ yourusername shut up, frenchie

APRIL 06, 2022

liked by carla.brocker, oscarpiastri and 10,836 others

yourusername happy birthday to this guy 🫶

view all 162 comments

oscarpiastri 🫶🫶🫶

liked by yourusername and 10 others

oscarpiastri Will I ever get some decent photos in these posts?

⤷ yourusername hm… no!

oscarfan1 who is she??

⤷ oscarfan2 she’s oscar’s childhood best friend i think

⤷ oscarfan3 i thought she was his gf, cause she’s always in the paddock with him

⤷ oscarfan2 nope, just friends from what i know

APRIL 06, 2023

liked by landonorris, zhouguanyu24 and 34,091 others

yourusername happy birthday to my boy friend (my best friend who’s a boy but also my actual boyfriend)!!! you’ve done so much in all these years, you’re even in F1 now, and i’m happy to have been through it all 🤍 i included some good pics but just because the fans need them 😁

view all 512 comments

oscarpiastri Aww… Is the beautiful girl single?

⤷ yourusername no… but you’re pretty cute so call me :)

⤷ oscarpiastri 🙃🙃🙃

oscarpiastri21 how i love them

oscarfan22 THE MCLAREN GLOW UP OMG

landonorris There are children on this app…

⤷ yourusername WE’RE YOUNGER THAN YOU???

⤷ landonorris And yet I have more decorum🙄

oscarpiastri23 they’re so cuteee

JULY 09, 2023

liked by oscarpiastri, yukitsunoda and 51,684 others

yourusername P4! there is so much i could say, but all that matters is that i am incredibly proud of all that you achieved and will achieve

view all 775 comments

landonorris If I speak…

⤷ yourusername don’t❤️

oscarfan31 the most unproblematic and cutest couple on the grid

oscarpiastri I love you 🫶

⤷ yourusername I love you 🫶🫶

⤷ oscarpiastri I love you 🫶🫶🫶

oscarfan32 I LOVE THEM SM

oscarfan33 y/n pls know that we love you

[bumblebeeappletree]

In 20 minutes I share everything I wish I knew before I started designing my permaculture food forest.

This video covers strategies for capturing and storing water, improving and feeding your soil, creating a baseman for capturing your observations, swales, contours, guilds and layering your food forest and working with succession as well as some syntropic agroforestry techniques that you can use in your backyard.

A permaculture food forest requires upfront work, but the long-term rewards are huge! That is why I believe it’s the easiest way to grow food. No annual tilling, no toiling under the hot sun year after year, no need to purchase inputs once your forest is established. Once you set up a successful system, it will thrive for generations to come.

Links mentioned in the video:

Want to experience the magic of Goldifarms? Visit our Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Goldifarms

The following are Amazon Affiliate links and I may receive a small commission if you purchase through these links:

Humanure Handbook by Joseph Jenkins

https://amzn.to/441FP9w

Restoration Agriculture by Mark Stepard

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About Goldifarms:

My name is Erin. I started Goldifarms in my backyard in January 2020 as part of my journey to heal myself and restore this land. I follow permaculture design principles to create regenerative abundance here on the Central Coast of California in zone 9a. My intention with this YouTube channel is to provide inspiration to connect with nature, grow your own food and medicine, and help create a more beautiful world together.

Thank you for all your support, I hope these videos will inspire you to follow your heart and pursue what lights up your life ✨ 🌼💛

Sending so much love to you on your journey. Thank you for watching 🐝💛🌻

Want to experience the magic of Goldifarms? Visit our Etsy shop: https://www.etsy.com/shop/Goldifarms

For a brief history of Goldifarms, check out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u5z7...

For pics of the whole project, visit: https://www.instagram.com/goldifarms/

To learn more and contact Goldifarms, visit our website: Goldifarms.com

To support Goldifarms (which would mean the world to me!), you can become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/goldifarms

If you never want to miss a Goldifarms video, subscribe by clicking here: https://youtube.com/goldifarms?sub_co...

For access to exclusive videos, consider joining my membership channel: / @goldifarms

Music from Epidemic Sound. If you create videos and are looking for a huge selection of music, feel free to use my epidemic referral for a free month: https://share.epidemicsound.com/hlg6dg

Chapters

00:00- Intro

00:33 - Start with Why

01:20 - Imagine

03:03 - Observe

04:09 - Create a Basemap

05:18 - Design for Water

09:45 - Get that GoldiGlow!!✨

11:04 - Feed your Soil

13:52 - Layers and Succession

18:38 - Design Iteratively

[jockpoetry]

golden lovers (2018-2023)

to the dead - frank bidart // njpw road to tokyo dome (photo credit) - 12/15/18 // langston hughes // starrcast 2 // njpw wrestle kingdom 15 01/05/2021 // i have some friends - robert w. service // aew dynamite - 10/31/19 // wrestling with angels - robert stock // njpw g1 climax 28 & aew full gear 2020 // song of myself - walt whitman // 01/30/2021 // wild geese - mary oliver // aew full gear 2021 // wrestling - louisa s. bevington // 09/15/22 // 01/04/23 // aew dynamite - 07/12/23 // to you - frank o'hara // aew dynamite - 07/19/2023 // to the dead - frank bidart

[seoul-bros]

Jikook Week 18 Complete ✔️(09/04-16/04/2024)

Their eighteenth week in the military is now complete. It's time to celebrate this milestone with a look back at this week in 2020.

The world was at the beginning of the COVID pandemic lockdowns and nations across the world were seeing a sharp rise in fatalities from the disease. The US leg of the Map of the Soul tour was on indefinite hold and to fill the gap, on 09/04, BTS announced Bang Bang Con a streaming event of their concerts between 2015 and 2018 to be held on 18th -19th April 2020.

On 14/04, the one hundredth episode of Run BTS was released. BTS had hired out the whole arena used for the ISAC games (IYKYK hee hee). It was sponsored by and they were all kitted out in FILA.

As with most BTS big days there was a cake to celebrate. Jimin suggested they cut the cake together (like VIPs) which was a cute idea but didn't quite work so the maknae had to do the honours and promptly got told off by RM for turning his back to the camera. The injustice!

Then it was on to team selection. A quiz about previous episodes of Run BTS was held to see who would be the team leader.

Taehyung wiped the floor with everyone. He really was the Run BTS mastermind. He then got to pick his team - JK, Jin and Jimin. It was rap line (100 jin) against vocal line (seok 100).

The teams have to play badminton with weird rackets.

All is going well until Suga hits JK's team members twice in a row. The first time it was Jin and the second it was Jimin. At this point JK springs into protective mode and I wouldn't have wanted to be Suga at this point. Check out Hobi's reaction.

Cr. to OP

First round the rapline dominate but the vocal line stage a comeback and take all three games and the match. Man of the Match though has to be J-Hope whose skill with the pot cover was outstanding. The 95 line really enjoyed it.

The second game was Foot Volleyball. It was the hopeless three moment for 100 jin. Needless to say seok 100 won again.

Finally this week, Boyfriend had Jimin choosing their massage chair over JK's capable hands. Yeah that's believable (heavy sarcasm) 🤣😂🤣😂

Post Date: 16/04/2024

[crevicedwelling]

Can you tell me some slugs that have very unique patterns or body shapes?

some Athoracophoridae:

some Veronicellidae, like my slugs:

Testacella has a shell, but it’s not really doing anything:

Gaeotis is another (entirely unrelated) semi-slug with a wonderful appearance:

and something from the most “typical” family of slugs, Limacidae. probably Europe’s prettiest land gastropod:

[pbnmj]

Genuinely curious, what’s up with Noir’s age? And what does it have to do with his 08/09 run? ((You may ignore if you wish :D))

i no longer have to do an extremely long explaination about comics noir because it has already been done here, by foolsocracy!!!!!!! really great breakdown of his very vague age, which is never said outright in the 08-09 run, only implied!! my own personal take on this is that he's 17-turning-18 in the first one, just about graduated high school but not able to afford college (see the panel below LOL)

this also got a little longer than i thought it would, so under the cut for the rest of it! the tl:dr is "itsv!noir is not the same as comics!noir, and people saying that he's 19 isn't strictly true. to me, he's around 30!"

eyes without a face (the 09 run!!) only takes place 8 months after, in september 1933, which makes peter 18-turning-19. this is more of a headcanon though!! (see the noir birthday poll, which made me a noir-is-a-december-baby truther)

(peter being a libra is mentioned once in the first issue of amazing spider-man (2015), mostly as a punchline, and a specific date of october 10th was given in another issue that i have lost. other media, like with the mcu, has his birthday on august 10th. but to me noir is a sagittarius and you cannot pry that from me)

the 2020 run of noir begins establishing the year as 1939, making peter around his mid-20s, and 25 if you believe me on the 'peter was 17 in noir 2008' LOL.... i won't lie though i haven't read this one properly i very quickly skimmed so pinch of salt regarding my takes on the 2020 run

noir being in his teens during the first original runs is why "itsv!noir is 17-19" goes around so often! i've seen that on tumblr, twitter AND on tiktok and i don't mind what people hc, but it has become a pet peeve when people say it like its canon even though it's never been mentioned by the writers or the art book. itsv!noir is similar to his comic counterpart, but his differences in his origin story make me interpret him as a different noir (like how peter b.'s dimension is 616B, making him... 90214B?)

again, we are straying from itsv canon/etc here because i'm deranged, but i personally hc noir as being 32! some of my friends think he's in his mid-20s, others think he's older, but really the only reason is that 32 is the midpoint between the other two peter parkers: ripeter was 26 and peter b is 38. he's also voiced by nic cage, which makes me think older in the first place!

i just like the idea that he's more experienced that ripeter, but hasn't gone through as much as peter b. he spends most of the movie being broody ("moral ambiguity of your actions!", "matches burn down to my fingertips", etc etc), or snarkier than you'd expect ("it's that easy" "who are you again?" "you gonna fight or are you just bumping gums" etc etc). he also very sweetly tells everyone that he loves them before he leaves !!! i feel like it can in fact be in character for a peter parker in his late 20-early 30s, distanced from his tragedies in his own world by time (he doesn't forget them, that's different !) being able to look out for the spiders around him.

okay now we are VERY deep into hc territory, but it makes him able to balance out the rest of the itsv spider-gang as an older-brother figure who's able to guide peni, miles and gwen but also be able to act as a voice of reason for peter b. and ham if the sitauation calls for it. that being said noir is still peter parker and is therefore capable of spider-esque tomfoolery, which can lead to him misjudging the need for a snarky one liner ("this is a pretty hard core origin story"). my characterisation of him is also very inspired by heyitsspiderman, the itsv fic that changed me for the better, and noir isn't even in it that much LOL

veering back into itsv!noir's age and your actual question though: he's always read older in the movies, and not at all 17-19. noir is always going to be around 30 (32 if i have to give a number) to me!! if anything, he did go through the same kind of 'canon events' as comics noir did, but is an older and more experienced version of him, with tweaks to the backstory (like a radioactive spider instead of a spider-god, and webshooters instead of organic webbing). there are reasons ofc to see him being younger (egg creams are non-alcoholic, and that if it's 1933, his comicsverse self would be 18-19 too) . however you must consider that sony didn't expand on this and therefore it's up to fan interpretation and also that

[pressnat]

MEUS CC’S MASCULINOS FAVORITOS + CC/ MY FAVORITE MALE CC || PART 1

⇢ basics ||

eyes. https://www.patreon.com/posts/d-o-l-c-e-v2-eye-68183687?l=fr

eyelash. https://kijiko-catfood.com/3d-lashes-version2-for-skin-detail-experimental/

skinblend. https://lamatisse.tumblr.com/post/612766683809136640/butterish-my-first-skinblend-i-made-like-two

skinoverlay. https://www.patreon.com/posts/lemonade-skin-62813813

skintone. https://www.patreon.com/posts/bare-skintone-40506361

skin detail. https://www.patreon.com/posts/61433364

freckles . https://www.patreon.com/posts/40247063

nose shade. https://faaeishccpreviews.tumblr.com/post/648642853067800576/skin-details-nose-shaders-by-faaeish-download

blush. https://squeamishsims.tumblr.com/post/185846308452/booboo-blush-by-squeamishsims-so-ive-tried-so

eyebrows. https://www.patreon.com/posts/whispy-eyebrows-62391460?utm_source=Patreon&utm_campaign=Whispy+Eyebrows

lips. https://www.patreon.com/posts/55703083

mouth corners. https://www.patreon.com/posts/61433364

~~~~

⇢  presets ||

lip. https://www.patreon.com/posts/memphis-lip-43736936

nose. https://poyopoyosim.tumblr.com/post/686774059407736833/male-nose-presets-n5n6n7n8-teen

jaw. https://www.patreon.com/posts/jiumiqaq-jaw-72054166

~~~~

⇢ hair/cabelos ||

01. https://www.patreon.com/posts/oh-my-god-were-58952703

02. https://jny-sims.tumblr.com/post/685668030601117696/jny-redo-hair

03. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pelo-bueno-male-33392785

04. https://www.patreon.com/posts/male-hair-pack-2-65951700

05. https://www.patreon.com/posts/kent-hair-62397490

06. https://www.patreon.com/posts/63544161

07. https://www.patreon.com/posts/wild-ride-70288763

08. https://www.patreon.com/posts/wild-ride-70288763

09. https://www.patreon.com/posts/63544161

10. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71551981

11. https://www.patreon.com/posts/71827369

12. https://www.patreon.com/posts/72827056

13. https://www.patreon.com/posts/levi-hair-73080895

14. https://www.patreon.com/posts/79061220

15. https://allabouthatcc.tumblr.com/post/656904403834503168/grimcookies-hair-dump-ive-updated-all-of-my-old

16. https://aharris00britney.tumblr.com/post/187194346870/axa-2019-official-release

17. https://okruee.tumblr.com/post/684075013010243584/sylvester-hair-hi-babes-info-masculine-frame

18. https://www.patreon.com/posts/58261906

19. https://www.patreon.com/posts/lorenzo-by-54215805

20. https://www.patreon.com/posts/marco-by-56792600

21. https://www.patreon.com/posts/federico-by-70185929

22. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pedro-by-44485564

23. https://www.patreon.com/posts/pedro-by-44485564

24. https://www.patreon.com/posts/70428613

25. https://www.patreon.com/posts/58551246

26. https://liliili-sims4.tumblr.com/post/691837200658219008/bruno-hair-bgc-hat-compatible-24

27. https://qrqr19.tumblr.com/post/673612023225073664/hair-24-fluorite-hair-25-peridot-hair-26

28. https://qr19sims.blogspot.com/2022/03/hair-27-28-29.html

~~~~

⇢ beard/barba ||

01. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

02. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

03. https://greenllamas.tumblr.com/post/646204704634929152/beard

04. https://www.veigasims.com/2018/07/beard-facial-hair-style-12.html

05. https://www.veigasims.com/2020/11/beard-facial-hair-style-15.html

06. https://www.veigasims.com/2022/08/facial-hair-style-33.html

~~~~

⇢ acc/acessórios ||

01. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/655362683425751040/calm-fit-collection-a-mostly-male-cc-collection

02. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/696230540558385152/equinox-collection-its-the-start-of-my-favorite

03. https://www.patreon.com/adrienpastel

04. https://www.patreon.com/posts/warm-5-item-set-60918114

05. https://www.patreon.com/posts/round-square-38706995

06. https://maxismatchccworld.tumblr.com/post/190436912960/liliili-sims-scarf-collection-scarf-no1-45

07. https://ceeproductions.tumblr.com/post/655362683425751040/calm-fit-collection-a-mostly-male-cc-collection

[yessa-vie]

❝PIRATE KINGDOM❞ . CHOI SAN . SMAU!

→ SUMMARY. It all starts when you and your friends are kicked out of your shared apartment, causing you to ask your childhood best friend (and idol) for help, which leads you to live with him and the other members of his kpop group. From there on, you completely enter the world of kpop, creating the best friendships you could ask for, and, as if working with kdramas wasn't enough, your life ends up becoming the best example of one with each passing moment. and your best friends are the main spectators and commentators of all the drama that has surrounded your life since it all began.

→ PAIRING. idol!Choi San x actress!afab!reader (main) || Juyeon x reader || some platonic pairing as well.

→ TYPE. social media au.

→ GENRE. stranger to friends to lovers, fluff, a little angs (on ocasion just bc), slow burn (!). if any part is to be written, it will be complementary and not a necessity to read it, but I don't really plan on having them atp.

→ WARNINGS. the story starts officially on febuary 2020, I'm not gonna focus a lot on the hair colors and their agendas or else I'll go insane to match everything but I'll do my best, idol! au, she/her pronouns, normalization of drinking/getting drunk, toxic envyroment (lightly), body dismorphia, idols are human beings. [more to be added if needed]

→ FEATURING. stray kids, astro, itzy, the boyz, oneus, txt, enhypen, aespa, and other. NOT ALL FROM EVERY GROUP WILL APPEAR, NOR WITH SUCH A PRESENCE LIKE ATEEZ AND STRAY KIDS.

→ STATUS. on going.

↪ started: 07.10.2023 (dd/mm/yyyy)

↪ ended: [ON HIATUS]

→ UPDATES. when I can and most likely on the weekends or whenever there's a hollyday and I get my hands on the laptop so I can update.

→ TAGLIST. open (here's the form).

→ IMPORTANT. the ATEEZ guys appear first in chapter 07, with some interaction with the members, but Wooyoung is the first one to interact directly with the reader, then progressively, the others start to interect and to become friends.

if you want to support me and my writing, you can buy me coffee here! I already thank you for you time and attention.

©yessa vie (2024) — all rights reserved. reposting/modification of any kind is not tolerated.

DO NOT REPOST, TRANSLATE, PLAGIARISE OR REPURPOSE.

twitter profiles: y/n babies || skz || teez || extras

teaser 01 || teaser 02 || teaser 03 || teaser 04 || teaser 05

PART I: princess.

01. me and jisung need help

02. Chan, can we keep her?

03. but I do love Moonbin more than you

04. crushing my dreams again

05. my baby?

06. keep the real ones close

06.1. happy birthday princeling 📝

07. 8M1T

08. I dare you

09. she did what now?

10. happened during rehearsals

11. Eric YES!

PART II: kingdom.

12. denial stage

12.1. catching fire 📝 12.2. 8Makes1AmazingTeam 📝

13. it's not how it looks

14. what you share online (??)

15. ?? (??.??.2024)

16. ?? (??.??.2024)

17. ?? (??.??.2024)

18. ?? (??.??.2024)

bonus (just extras that i did for fun):

↪ mostly will be smau, not sure if I'll put a written part here yet, but I do have some ideas. if they are written parts they will have the emoji that says they are written, other wise, they'll be smau.

⤳ pre debut han (??.??.????)

⤳ jung 'big mouth' wooyoung (??.??.????)

⤳ house warming 'party' 📝(??.??.????)

⤳ i'll prove it 📝(??.??.????)

[lindalofbroome]

Roddacember 2023!!

Roddacember runs during December to celebrate all of Emily Rodda’s books. With a new prompt every day, make a piece of fan content of your choice. You can draw some art, write fic, make a playlist, rant about something, or whatever you vibe with! Remember to tag it #Roddacember 2023 so we can check it out <3 I’ve also created an AO3 collection for those who would like to write fics!

Update

This is my attempt at taking the best of the past years and bringing something for everyone. What I've come up with are three levels of abstraction that (hopefully) serve as different levels of difficulty. The first week-ish draws more from 2019's style, and the last couple weeks are the more recent style, with the middle being a segue between them. (i kinda struggled to make questions, but you're welcome to use the prompts as keywords for your own!)

Notes

A reminder that you don’t have to commit to every day. Take care of yourself. You can make it more manageable by skipping days. It’s also okay to alter the prompt slightly for grammatical purposes, if you so wish (e.g. growth –> growing) or to cut out irrelevant words (e.g. animal or monster -> animal). Feel free to interpret the prompts as metaphorically or as literally as you want! If there’s anything you are confused about, feel free to ask me in the notes or DMs or whatever. You can also check out what the fandom did previously at #Roddacember 2022, #Roddacember 2021, #Roddacember 2020 and #Roddacember 2019.

Prompts in text below:

Your Favourite

01. Character 02. Place 03. Animal or monster 04. Something you wish was real 05. Magic 06. People, culture, or tradition 07. Filli❔ 08. Relationship of any kind 09. Symbols or signs

Memorable Moments:

10. Epic 11. Courage 12. Deception 13. Power 14. Foreshadowing 15. Playful 16. Envy 17. Solution

Abstract:

18. Ripples 19. Design 20. Trade 21. Nurture 22. Technology 23. Intricacy 24. Mend 25. Twisted 26. Pathway 27. Watch 28. Growth 29. Time 30. Unity 31. Essence of Rodda

[jqhotchner]

bloom

munson family timeline

*this is mostly for me because i suck ass when it comes to dates*

yn birthday 05/15/1999

eddie birthday 09/04/1998

-september 2016-

eddie: 18

yn: almost 18

yn finds out she’s pregnant and doesn’t know how to break it to her boyfriend. instead she confides in her dad

june 23rd 2017 baby aster wayne munson is born

the only baby boy <3

-november 2017-

eddie: almost 20

yn: 18

yn and eddie are adjusting as teen parents. with eddie working his ass off to graduate high school this time. yn finds out she’s having another baby

august 5th 2018 jasmine hope munson is born <3

-april 2020-

eddie: almost 22

yn: almost 21

covid outbreak happened which leaves everyone having to stay indoors. yn and eddie don’t have much else to do but watch their kids and well—she ends up pregnant again

january 24th 2021 lunaria morgan munson is born <3

-march 2021-

eddie: almost 24

yn: 22

eddie’s career slowly take off with corroded coffin! on occasion when he’s off doing shows, he brings yn along with the kids. the two of them are young, dumb, and having fun. leaving yn pregnant with baby #4 

december 25th 2021 lily belle munson’s born the same year as older sister lunaria <3

-may 2022-

eddie: almost 24

yn: 23

yn becomes a fashion icon! everyone loves her style. she soon signed to a modeling agency. too bad she and eddie get pregnant…AGAIN

february 14th 2023 poppy matilda munson and azalea love munson was born. eddie and yn final babies <3

[argyrocratie]

Solidarity among the Displaced

How Russian Anarchists in Exile Supported Armenian Refugee Squatters

(2023-09-19)

Throughout the world, mass displacement is accelerating as climate catastrophe, economic crisis, and war drive millions into exile, both within their own countries and across borders. These mass migrations are exacerbating gentrification, driving up housing costs just as real estate speculation is rendering more and more people homeless. How can displaced people continue to take political action in their new homes, establishing solidarity across ethnic lines in unfamiliar settings? In Armenia, Russian anarchists living in exile set one example, supporting Armenian refugees who had squatted the abandoned Ministry of Defense.

(...)

In the last decade, Yerevan saw several waves of protests. Do you see people building historical knowledge and experience from one struggle to the next?

With regards to the movement of the 2010s in Yerevan, there really was a street movement in which Armenian anarchists participated. There were protests against the increase in electricity prices, an anarchist bloc participated in a demonstration on human rights day, there was an action against the gentrification of Yerevan, and an action of anarcho-feminists. But unfortunately, all of the people from that generation have either left politics, joined political parties, or gone abroad to Russia or Europe.

Today, the anarchists in Armenia are mostly emigrants from the Russian Federation. In fact, I only know two Armenian anarchists: N—, a punk musician (who became an anarchist in the early 2020s), and S—, an anarcho-feminist who lectures in our space and occasionally publishes in left-wing and anarchist magazines (who also became anarchist around that time). Neither them, alas, was connected to the movements and affinity groups of the 2010s.

There is also an anarchist from Israel: Y—, a Jewish woman who gave birth in the Crimea, repatriated to Israel, lived there for 18 years in kibbutzim and participated in the anarchist movement there (including contact with “Anarchists Against the Wall”), married an Armenian and moved to Yerevan, and decided to establish a café here with anarchist and feminist themes. The café became a gathering place for the local Jewish community (for example, at Shabbat celebrations every Saturday), as well as for the creative intelligentsia, who held public readings there.

All this continued until Russia invaded Ukraine, after which the Russian authorities began to persecute their citizens even more, and hundreds of thousands of anti-war Russians (including anarchists) fled the country.

As a result, Armenia, which was mono-ethnic for almost all the years of its independence, is now more diverse.

The door of the Mama-jan café. The second sticker says “No war” in Russian.

That is how our small circle was formed, which now represents the entire anarchist movement in Armenia.

There are many different people among us. One is actively involved in veganism and even founded his own vegan cooperative (which I also joined). Others, like one friend who is a Christian anarchist, collect humanitarian aid for the victims of the war. There is a queer anarchist group that continues to engage in street activism.

How did you go about supporting the squatters?

As soon as we learned that they had been forcibly evicted, we decided to go and help them. We went to them several times and, despite some initial distrust, my friends managed to find a common language with them.

As a result, at the next weekly meeting, we discussed how to go about supporting them. One of the sympathizers of anarchist ideas, a visitor to our circle, arranged to supply firewood for using potbelly stoves to heat their tents. Also, as an anti-war activist with certain connections, I managed to invite a journalist friend there. During a subsequent visit, they met us very hospitably. We helped to unload the firewood and they fed us and taught us to play backgammon.

We made a report about the situation for emigrant Russian-language media, which later played a very important role. We also established contact with the charitable organization “Ethos,” which was founded by relocators in Yerevan and is engaged in helping both Ukrainian and Armenian refugees.

Thanks to the fact that news coverage appeared about the eviction and was reposted on our initiative via various publishing houses (for example, in “Doxa,” which actively covered the persecution of anarchists and anti-war protesters), we were able to initiate a collection for food, medicine, and fuel in Ethos. In the end, we collected 60,000 drams more than planned! [The equivalent of approximately $157, still a significant amount of money for some refugees in Armenia.]

Also, the squatters began to actively invite us to their protests: they held these every Thursday and every Monday near the government building and the State Expenditure Committee. My friends and I held a poster reading “State, why did you take away people’s housing” with anarchist symbols.

The squatters were very pleased with our support, and even invited us to barbecues—which was especially ironic in the case of our vegan friend.

What do anarchists have to offer to struggles for housing?

Anarchism, in principle, throughout its history, has been very interested in the housing issue. It is not for nothing that during the Paris Commune, one of the revolutionary decisions of the council was to settle homeless Parisians in the apartments of bourgeois emigrants who had fled to Versailles, and to establish a ban on evicting tenants for non-payment of rent. Housing insecurity is a significant aspect of modern society, a challenge to which anarchists must respond.

The example of this eviction is particularly striking. It shines a light on all the absurdity and immorality of a civilization based on private property.

_

The house was not built by its owner. It was erected, decorated, and furnished by innumerable workers—in the timber yard, the brick field, and the workshop, toiling for dear life at a minimum wage… Who, then, can appropriate to himself the tiniest plot of ground, or the meanest building, without committing a flagrant injustice? Who, then, has the right to sell to any bidder the smallest portion of the common heritage? On that point, as we have said, the workers are agreed. The idea of free dwellings showed its existence very plainly during the siege of Paris, when the cry was for an abatement pure and simple of the terms demanded by the landlords. It appeared again during the Commune of 1871, when the Paris workmen expected the Communal Council to decide boldly on the abolition of rent. And when the New Revolution comes, it will be the first question with which the poor will concern themselves. Whether in time of revolution or in time of peace, the worker must be housed somehow or other; he must have some sort of roof over his head. But, however tumble-down and squalid your dwelling may be, there is always a landlord who can evict you… Refusing uniforms and badges–those outward signs of authority and servitude–and remaining people among the people, the earnest revolutionists will work side by side with the masses, that the abolition of rent, the expropriation of houses, may become an accomplished fact. They will prepare the ground and encourage ideas to grow in this direction; and when the fruit of their labours is ripe, the people will proceed to expropriate the houses without giving heed to the theories which will certainly be thrust in their way–theories about paying compensation to landlords, and finding first the necessary funds. On the day that the expropriation of houses takes place, on that day, the exploited workers will have realized that the new times have come, that Labour will no longer have to bear the yoke of the rich and powerful, that Equality has been openly proclaimed, that this Revolution is a real fact, and not a theatrical make-believe, like so many others preceding it. -Peter Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread

[nevermindirah]

Who talks to who, for how long and about what, in The Old Guard (2020) dir. Gina Prince Bythewood?

I got curious and so I watched the movie taking a lot of timestamp notes. way back three and a half years ago now, I watched this movie for the first time bc I like gritty action movies, and it's a really good one of those. I'm still obsessed with it all this time later because it's full to the brim with well-drawn characters who have compelling relationships with each other, and boy howdy does the data show it.

I was especially curious about who spends how much time alone together on screen, so I coded all the scenes with that in mind, and I found some really interesting patterns in the breakdown of scenes where just two characters talk, where one character is the sole focus, and when three characters talk.

the winners of course are Nile and Andy, our dual protagonists, who spend 10% of the movie's total runtime alone together. they also spend a lot of time with our dual friendly antagonists, Booker and Copley. scenes featuring combinations of just these four characters make up 40% of the total runtime.

Joe and Nicky show up less in this analysis because they're side characters who mostly appear in group scenes, but wow are they richly drawn side characters. they're key players in all but two scenes where four or more named characters talk.

read on for many numbers and much analysis of what it all means!

Andy Nile 0:12:20 Nile Booker 0:06:00 Andy Booker Copley 0:05:22 Andy Booker 0:05:01 Andy Nile Booker 0:04:56 Nile Copley 0:04:18 Nile alone 0:04:07 Andy alone 0:03:31

Andy Celeste 0:02:49 Merrick Copley 0:02:41 Joe Nicky 0:02:24 Nile Dizzy Jay 0:01:33 Andy Quynh 0:01:31 Andy Nile Merrick 0:00:52 Booker alone 0:00:32 Copley alone 0:00:28 Nicky Kozak 0:00:27 Booker Quynh 0:00:21 Copley Keane 0:00:09

(the spreadsheet, if anyone's interested in digging deeper with me)

of the 12 min that our main characters are alone together on screen, almost fully half is super duper antagonistic:

4:26 is the kidnapping sequence

1:29 is their conversation outside after Nile's nightmare featuring the iconic "me and those three men in there will keep you safe" "like Quynh?"

and 7 seconds is Nile glaring daggers at Andy after walking over all those bodies in the church

the other half breaks down like this:

2:14 is them connecting over their mortal families — where Andy makes Nile give her phone back at the end

1:45 is Nile telling Andy she's not doing this, that she's going back to her family — Andy pushes with "we'd do the same for you" but then relents and gives Nile the car

50 seconds of them gearing up for the last segment of the fight — Nile tries to get Andy to wear a bulletproof vest, she jokes around with "is this gonna be like the last signal?" — it's operations-focused but there's a real warmth between them by this point in the movie (this scene starts at 1:41:45, just 13 min before the credits roll)

and 1:29 of Andy looking at Nile like she hung the moon (which, extremely valid and relatable!) and Nile saying that the time Andy's got left "you're gonna spend it with us"

Nile has an uninterrupted 4:18 sequence with Copley that speed runs the same general shape of her arc with Andy, hella antagonistic to teamwork, though the latter here is more of a professional camaraderie than the real warmth we see Nile develop for Andy.

in this context Nile's arc with Booker is remarkably different. their first scene alone together is 1:11 in total, intercut with Andy killing mercs elsewhere in the church, and it's sort of their only scene with friction between them. Booker keeps telling Nile to wait for the signal without explaining what that means, annoyingly continuing Andy's grand tradition of not fucking answering Nile's reasonable questions, ugh. though another way of framing this is of course that he's too busy packing her a change of clothes while showing off his tits for her. as I noted in a previous meta, the end of this sequence is the one time Booker lies to Nile (claiming he doesn't know who the mercs are when he has at least a basic idea, though we don't know for sure whether Copley involved him in this specific plan).

after this Nile and Booker have two more scenes alone together and they're both extended conversations: 3:14 for their conversation alone in the cave after Andy leaves, and 1:18 when Nile joins Booker on the balcony outside the bar. both of these conversations are remarkably intimate for how little these characters have interacted beforehand. remember, 6:02 total of Nile and Andy alone together with heavy animosity (Andy shot Nile in the head ffs!) before things between them started to warm up. granted, the conversation where they first start to warm to each other is right after Nile's cave scene with Booker and Andy's scene with Celeste, so an argument could be made that this was the point in the movie where Nile started to feel ready to open up to the other immortals generally and her first one-on-one conversation once she got there was with Booker before Andy. I'm not saying you have to ship them just because they get so close so quick, but the numbers sure do make it clear that us BoNers aren't making this shit up out of nowhere.

Nile and Booker's heart-to-heart in the mine is the third-longest one-on-one conversation in the whole movie — third after Andy kidnapping Nile and Nile's sequence with Copley, which are both heavy on action and exposition and antagonism, making this the longest intimate conversation in the movie. their other heart-to-heart, 1:18 on the balcony outside the pub, is on par with Joe and Nicky's 1:17 in the van.

there's also a 51 sec sequence during the Merrick tower fight where it intercuts pretty much equally between three subsets of the action: Andy going off on her own with an axe, Joe waiting for Nicky to wake up after that head shot, and Nile and Booker being drift compatible when Nile's gun jams. we're not making this shit up out of nowhere.

ok back to our blorbos in chief. we get 4:07 of Nile as the sole focus, and 3:31 of the same for Andy.

the sequence of Nile going through hell on base just because she fucking lived (laser eyes @ her squad forever) lasts 1:14 and includes a few lines from minor characters. we get 15 sec of her first dreaming of the others and waking up unmoored, then a 20 sec reprise with her nightmare of the first person she killed. the sequence of her driving away from Copley's then figuring out what the empty gun clip means is 48 sec. and then, one of the things that stood out to me the most in really digging into these numbers: just how frequently and for how long the camera lingers on Nile's face in this movie.

extended closeups of Nile with no dialogue and no montage:

10 seconds staring at the car she crushed, killing Merrick in the process but somehow not herself

36 seconds in the elevator

and a whopping 44 seconds of listening to Frank Ocean

that's fully 1 minute and thirty seconds of this movie's 2 hr 5 min credits-included runtime devoted exclusively to long takes of Nile Freeman's face.

Andy's sole-focus time is a little less tidy, because the majority of it isn't precisely focused on her like with Nile. we get 15 sec of her staring at her hand, realizing her immortality is gone. I could have coded all the pieces of the movie more granularly to find all the moments where we get Andy reaction shots, but I also could've done that with all of them and I'm but one humble spreadsheet lover, and it's more interesting to me that Gina primarily uses other kinds of film language to put us into Andy's perspective.

1:35 of her cutting through all those mercs in the church — other people are active in this scene, but they're not shown as people, and the horror of that is exactly the point, for the viewer, for Nile, and for Andy herself

41 sec of her voiceover at the opening of the movie, over clips of the kill floor scene

1 min of her moodily sitting in the car after the pharmacy and flashing back to Lykon's death

the Andy/Quynh flashback sequence that's a subset of Nicky and Joe narrating to Nile is 1:31, so counting that alongside this flashback here brings us to a total of 2:31 of Andy/Quynh(/Lykon) alone together screen time. almost precisely equal to Joe and Nicky's total 2:24 alone together.

further underlining Booker and Copley as our tritagonists, we get one scene of on-screen alone time for each of them: 32 seconds of Booker being drunk six months later and 28 seconds of Copley reacting to the kill floor footage. it's easy to focus on the Andy in a Union uniform element of this Copley scene, but a photo of his late wife is visible in almost every frame. I went back and double checked — only 3 sec of those 28 don't contain that photo of his wife displayed proudly between the kill floor footage and the Civil War photo, 3 sec of Copley in closeup. now that's what I call environmental storytelling.

we get almost exactly 5 min each with the sets Andy + Booker + Copley, Andy + Booker, and Andy + Nile + Booker. ABC and ANB conversations tend toward driving the plot and fleshing out detail about immortality, though a decent chunk of ANB in the "is this a Rodin?" part of the cave scene is Nile and Booker talking about following the money (their first moment of drift compatibility!) while Andy angsts nearby, and a decent chunk of ABC at Copley's place is Andy and Booker's heartbreaking "this is what you wanted" "not like this" exchange while Copley awkwardly hovers. just under half of Andy and Booker's 5:01 on screen alone together is about his betrayal, 2:13 across three scenes. the other half breaks out pretty evenly between them talking about Nile, making battle plans, and just being pals.

has any mid-budget gritty action movie ever done it better? even the infodumps are full of character and relationship details.

I also find it noteworthy that Booker and Copley are never alone together, and they never directly acknowledge anything about their relationship. we know from what they tell other characters that they've been in contact before the events of the movie, probably for some time in some detail. we know they worked together to ultimately enable the cartoon-villain antagonists to do their villainy. Copley is direct about how these results were absolutely not what he intended, and we can infer from Booker's behavior that he wasn't aiming for decades of medical torture either. but we get no information about how they feel about each other. now that I'm looking at it with this frame, it seems like the absence of information is itself a kind of telling — Booker and Copley maybe purposefully avoiding 1:1 contact, purposefully treating each other as mere acquaintances when others are around, because to do otherwise would be to look their guilt in the eye. oh shit I think I might have given myself a whole new meta idea on this tangent here: Copley and Booker as mirrors for each other.

disclaimer as we're nearing the end that there's inevitably going to be bias and error in something like this. I measured by seconds not milliseconds and I wasn't always precise about where I paused to note timestamps at scene changes. sometimes I included what ended up amounting to several seconds of establishing shots and sometimes I didn't. and there are a bunch of edge cases where there's more than one way to count who was an active part of which scenes, like for example:

I separated out Andy and Booker's opening motorcycle stalking and Don Quijote chat from the later part of what was probably just one scene in the script, where Booker talks to the hotel clerk while Andy interacts with tourists nearby

I included all as one Nile + Dizzy + Jay scene the sequence where Dizzy and Jay talk to each other about Nile before they go into the med tent and act shitty to her face about how Nile's still alive

I counted as Copley + Merrick the conversation in the car where Keane and Kozak are present and react on camera but don't have lines per se

similarly I counted as Andy + Booker the "she wants to talk to her family" exchange after Nile and Nicky leave the dinner table; Joe's still sitting there next to them but he doesn't say anything and the camera doesn't focus on him

I didn't try to delete the time where Andrei said/did stuff from the 4:26 Andy kidnaps Nile sequence but I did remove a Keane cut-away from a later Andy + Nile scene

so much has already been lovingly written about how well Joe and Nicky spend their short on-screen alone time and rightly so. I don't have anything new to add there so I'll take a moment instead to shout out to the 27 sec of Nicky telling Kozak to go fuck herself, and also the iconic Joe headbutting Merrick. fuck, this movie is so so good. every moment is a delight.

[calderacitylovers]

Wholesome Zutara Short Stories

Tell Me Where Your Heart Is by badlucksav | Published: 2021-04-12 | 2,363 words

Katara accidentally discovers a secret stash of love letters Zuko has written to an anonymous woman but never sent. Could he be talking about her? “And I can’t help but hope that maybe that’s a sign, that you feel for me as I feel for you. Maybe you’re afraid to put it to words, as I am. But I cannot ever speak these feelings to you unless I know...I won’t put you in that position.”

Tales of Tenderness by emicha | Published: 2021-04-06 | 3,068 words

Toph, Iroh, Sokka, Gran Gran, Aang, and Azula observe how the relationship between Zuko and Katara unfolds over the years. “This is the picture of two souls that have seen too much bad already, who’ve grieved and hurt more than one single lifetime should permit; the picture of two people who still have it in them to hold a person so different from oneself this close.”

MOONTIDES by  MarkedMage | Published: 2020-11-24 | 10K Words

He smells like fire and feels like home. She smells like rain and feels like love. A short story about Zuko and Katara’s first kiss inspired by this and this glorious animation by Hayley Foster Wong.

GOLD by ifyouwereamelody | Published: 2020-11-27 | 3,7K Words

Zuko and Katara’s first kiss in a fall garden.

A Love Story Told in Reverse by cablesscutie | Published: 2021-04-26 | 9,324 words

A collection of sweet outtakes from Zuko and Katara’s life: from their childhoods to becoming parents. “Her head tips to rest on his shoulder, and with his heart in his throat, he gives into the months-old urge to kiss her hair. She makes a happy little hum, and Zuko can’t breathe.”

just say when by hawktasha | Published: 2021-03-16 | 6,131 words

After Sokka and Suki’s wedding, Katara wakes up with the worst hangover of her life, with the best friend she has been harboring feelings in secret for the last few years laying next to her, no clothes at all on either of their bodies. Oh, and she had no idea how they ended up in that predicament.

Engagement Chicken: The Engagement Scheme by DontStopHerNow | Published: 2022-09-18 | 23K words

After a night of commiseration about marriage expectations, Katara and Zuko agree to fake an engagement to get the meddlers off their backs. They'll call Chicken on the arrangement when everyone else objects. This can't last a month! Featuring: meddling friends, heartfelt words cloaked in half-truths, chaperones, Fire Nation engagement traditions, Southern Water Tribe wedding traditions, background couples, and a squid-whale with a mistaken identity

The Dragon of the West’s Guide to Flirting by bluesunflower44 | Published: 2021-05-12 | 4,341 words

“Now. Take very good care of this, it’s a family heirloom. Although no one passed it down to me, since I wrote it, it will be a family heirloom one day. I just know it.” Uncle Iroh is good with the ladies. So taking his advice when it comes to romance should go just fine...right?

Strike a Match by Naladot | Published: 2022-09-03 | 22K

At Republic City's second annual HeiBai festival, Fire Lord Zuko has contracted a matchmaker to find him a permanent political ally—or, well, a wife. He asks Katara to chaperone his meetings. But this arrangement only threatens to reveal the truth: there are a lot of things neither of them have ever dared to talk about.

Seven Years Bad Luck by riathermopolis | Published: 2021-08-08 | 20.6K words

The gaang reunites every summer for a week on Ember Island, which in theory Katara supports whole-heartedly. The only problem is that apparently some higher power on the island is on a mission to humiliate her. At least, that's her best guess for why she suddenly can't act like a normal person around Zuko. Or: Katara repeatedly embarrasses herself in front of Zuko.

Maiden Mother Crone by MoonShoesReyes  | Published: 2021-02-12 | 10,8K Words

Post-canon. After the ravages of war, Katara learns to wear three faces: maiden, mother, and crone. A sweet story of Zuko supporting Katara in her journey of self-discovery and finding a purpose. A sprinkle of Blue Spirit and Painted Lady. "After years of being empty, Katara finally knew who she was - or at least, she knew who she was at the core. Though her cast of masks stayed ever-changing, the Painted Lady was always kind and just."

Bound to Burn by Selemetis | Published: 2020-10-02 | 10,3K Words

Post-canon. Zuko witnesses the kiss between Aang and Katara. Over the coming months Zuko and Katara work their way back together. "Zuko knew he had to let Katara go for her to see where she wanted to stand."

So Close and Still So Far by EKWolf2020| Published: 2022-09-18 | 6,4K Words

It is the ten-year celebration of the end of The Hundred-year-old war. Expectations and excitement are in the air for most of the world. But for Katara, she feels dread as some news has come to her that could change everything. Will she follow with expectations, or will she find that there is another path for her?

The Brave Man Only Once by ifyouwereamelody | Published: 2021-02-19 | 2,2K Words

Firelord Zuko and Ambassador Katara’s first kiss. “He flinches as a voice rips him abruptly out of his own thoughts and drops him back into the meeting; the table of council members is watching him, staring with raised brows that beg the answer to a question he doesn’t know, but Katara refuses to look his way.”

Til Kingdom Come by bluenebulae | Published: 2020-07-26 | Words: 6,2K

Four years after Sozin’s Comet, Katara finds her way home. A proposal story. Supportive Gaang. “I’ve spent four years exploring every corner of this world, Zuko. I’ve been a waterbending master and a shop girl, an assistant in an abbey and an advisor to the Earth King and a whole bunch of people in the Fire colonies still think I’m an actual spirit. I think, now, I just want to be Katara. And that means being here.”

Voyage by amoeve | Published: 2015-07-24 | Words: 4,2K When Zuko asks Katara to marry him, it is for love. But it’s also an alliance that shows the world that the war is truly over, and everyone wants to get in on the fun. For their wedding Zuko and Katara work their way through over-the-top combination of customs and traditions from the four nations. Hilarious and absurd, but wholesome. “She’s a waterbender. When they travel, the little ship skims across the surface of the sea, eating up the miles, and they have ice houses to sleep in every night. He’s a firebender. He lights their way when the fogs descend, keeps them warm when they sleep, and fries the fish she catches in his hands.”

But Who’s Counting? by halfhoursonearth | Published: 2023-12-28 Words: 7K

After the Last Agni Kai Zuko and Katara are waiting for the news from the GAang and get to explore their friendship and growing connection. A tender and beautiful story. “Tears are gathering in her eyes, and a new tightness pulls at Zuko’s chest. Though he still isn’t used to the casual way his new friends touch one another, this is not the first time he has felt the instinct to reach for Katara, in particular—to lay a comforting hand on her shoulder or arm. But wiping tears from her face is something new, and Katara watches him with wide eyes as his hand rises to her cheek.”

happiness (that's all rolled up in you) by soopsiedaisies | Published: 2024-01-17 | 3,8K words

A first kiss story. Zuko and Katara are cooking dinner for the Gaang on the Ember Island. Sweet, thrilling, and beautiful. "She reckons that she likes a lot of things about Zuko. She likes his face, for starters: his nose, his eyes, his mouth. She likes his scar and the way he dresses. She likes how he picks up the slack left by the others like those tasks were his anyway and she likes his smile. She likes the way he kisses and she really likes his hair."

For the Fire Nation | 2019-11-25 | 2,8K words

He falls in love with her for his country before he falls in love with her for himself. A short and beautiful AU story that explores how love and duty aren’t always mutually exclusive.

[aricastmblr]

Jeon Jung Kook a ascendido a miembro de pleno derecho de la Asociación de Derechos de Autor de la Música de Corea en 2024 (KOMCA) como compositor. .

KOMCA anunció hoy que Jeon Jung Kook ha sido ascendido a miembro de pleno derecho junto con algunos otros miembros.

Jungkook es el cuarto miembro de BTS después de Suga (2018), RM y j-hope (2020) en ser ascendido a miembro de pleno derecho de KOMCA.

La membresia plena de KOMCA se otorga a sus miembros que se han involucrado en una creación musical sustancial, medida por la cantidad acumulada de regalías de obras protegidas por derechos de autor.

Jungkook ahora está acreditado como compositor de 22 canciones y versiones en KOMCA (Asociación de Derechos de Autor de Música de Corea)

• Dreamers (22-11-20) • Dreamers (Live Version) (22-11-20) • My You (22-06-13) • Run BTS (22-06-10) • I NEED U (Demo Ver.) (22-06-10) • Still With You (Acapella) (22-06-10) • Film out (21-04-02) • Stay (20-11-20) • Telepathy (20-11-20) • SKIT (20-11-20) • In The Soop (20-08-19) • Your eyes tell (20-07-15) • OUTRO: The Journey (20-07-15) • Still With You (20-06-05) • My Time (20-02-21) • Magic Shop (18-05-18) • INTRODUCTION: YOUTH (16-11-09) • Love Is Not Over (16-05-02) • Run (15-11-30) • Autumn Leaves (Go Yeop) (15-11-30) • OUTRO: Love Is Not Over (15-04-29) • OUTRO: Circle Room Cypher (13-06-12)

Esto no incluye “No More Dream”, por el que apareció en los créditos musicales del álbum, pero no en KOMCA.

cr. a JJK_Times - TheWingsOfBE - en X

[seoul-bros]

Jimin and his Jin Hyung

Each of the birthday pictures Jimin posted on his Instagram today tells a story of shared experience and shines a bright light on how important Jin is to Jimin. I mean perhaps we should have guessed since these have been his icons on Weverse for the last year.

04/12/2022 11/12/2022 15/12/2022

The photos he posted come from 2018, 2020 and 2021.

Twitter Link

Run BTS! Episode 53 (03/07/2018)

iHeartRadio Music Festival (18/09/2020)

Twitter Link

BTS Winter Package 2021 (26/02/2021)

Twitter Link

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A post shared by JIMIN (@j.m)

After all this, I'm leaning towards believing the rumour that jikook will be enlisting at the same camp where Jin is based.

Post Date: 04/12/2023