kestalanonline-34

[agendabymooner]

mamma mia (again) ! daniel r. x ofc (måneskin member! ofc)

“they ask me why i’m so hot, ‘cause i’m italiano.”

summary: a series of video clips, but it’s only just danny ric being in love with a certain lester alessandro.

content warning: hint or two of suggestive comments (nothing detailed or graphic), use of explicit language, filler blurb or something, danny being a simp for few videos straight (“have my kids” type beat), lester being an etsy and pinterest enthusiast, literally posted this blurb from my phone so they’re crazy about their image limits 😩

note: THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR THE 105 FOLLOWERS?! UHM? seriously, i’ve never been so happy. i honestly only started posting these because i have them ingrained in my brain and won’t let go until i write or make something. just indulging my imagination you know? enjoy xx

masterlist

𝐘𝐎𝐔𝐓𝐔𝐁𝐄 𝐏𝐋𝐀𝐘𝐋𝐈𝐒𝐓: 𝐃𝐀𝐍𝐍𝐘 𝐑𝐈𝐂 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐒𝐈𝐌𝐏

【VIDEO ONE — daniel ricciardo is a gatekeeper】

[1st image: yeah, i dunno. everyone just found out that i made it official with my girlfriend and i’m pretty sure i just saw lando weeping in his room. max was the second to react to it and i’m so sure he recoiled. he did say that he didn't want to know what happened in imola few months ago.]

[2nd: interviewer: what happened in imola few months ago? daniel: *chuckles* wouldn’t you like to know - nah, i’m messing about. nothing happened in imola besides from me retiring to my bed early. i think we were both drunk when i posted that photo and i know it looks lewd but there's no way we could've done anything questionable.]

[3rd: d: but yeah. we didn't really want to catch that much attention until maybe i don't know... when we're married or something *chuckles* i: keep it a secret until the wedding? d: yeah. but charles, the absolute fool, posted videos during the concert with me in the background. It would've been real nice if no one caught onto it until we had a mini ric running and racing, you know? just to wreak havoc.]

【VIDEO TWO — daniel ricciardo talks about lester’s love language in his gq video】

[1st: i got this journal from lori. it has my initials "DR" on it for daniel ricciardo*laughs* it's one of those many first gifts that i’ve gotten from her throughout our first few months of dating. her love language isn't just shitting on my life -she has every single aspect of love language within her and this is one of them.]

[2nd: when she gave this to me, all she said was "you can write out your thoughts if you can't let them out through your mouth. *giggles* "she clearly had her thoughts sorted out that time especially when she showed me a page with an embossed phrase or nickname, "tasso di miele" - it means honey badger. she apparently bought the custom embosser from etsy and almost fought tooth and nail just to get it in time. *laughs even more* i love her so much, i honestly wanted to cry that day.]

[3rd: lori actually has a laptop with *laughs* itunes on it and she still got some playlists from 2010-2014? yeah. she’s put a lot of old taylor swift songs in my ipod during the christmas break. my favourite album right now is speak now. she loves red.]

【VIDEO THREE — lester hates ashy hands confirmed】

[1st: daniel: i think i should just cover my hands with gloves all the time. lando: that literally has nothing to do with anything that we're about to do. d: lori tells me that my hands are rough whenever she holds them.]

[2nd: l: or you know... you can just use a hand lotion all the time because your hands dry up real fast? d: ah that's true. i wonder if that's why lori just casually put a bottle of hand cream on my travel bag. the thing smells nice though. it’s chamomile.]

【VIDEO FOUR — it’s okay to spoil your partner; even if it’s an accent chair from her pinterest board】

[1st: d: lori just sent me a picture of an armchair from ikea. l: why was she randomly in ikea, by the way? I saw the text. d: window shopping. but anyway, she saw this armchair that she had on her pinterest board. she asked "pretty or no?" with the green velvet chair. l: what did you tell her?]

[2nd: word to word? I texted her "LOL you should see the accent chair I've gotten you for our flat in monaco." l: are you serious? *laughs* d: she wouldn't tell me what she wanted for her birthday. I only got a brief idea when she left her phone in my pocket once and gave me a free access to her pinterest boards.]

[johannestevans]

Woe, Boypussy Be Upon Ye: Transing Characters in Fanfic & Fanart

What’s the deal with envisioning your blorbos as transgender?

Originally published in Prism & Pen. Also on my Patreon.

It’s a meme, I made it. Here it is.

It’s been unbelievably positive for me as a trans dude, the change in approach to trans characters in fandom and subsequently in media in general, and I just wanted to write a bit about my experiences with the cultural shift and how positive it’s been for me personally.

What’s weird about people in fandom confidently, nay casually, writing characters as transgender and just having them be a regular dude with a pussy or a regular girl with a dick is that like… I remember when it wasn’t a thing.

Back in 2009, for example, which was a big time for fandom — Superwholock was running rampant, Star Trek (2009) had just gotten a new generation of fans into Trek — or even in 2012, when Les Misérables (2012) had dropped and gotten new people into Les Mis, or when the Hobbit had revamped a lot of interest in Tolkien’s books and the original Lord of the Rings films, not to mention The Hobbit itself, none of this even getting into the Marvel movies, like…

It just. It wasn’t a thing.

Sure, there were transgender characters around, characters that people wrote as trans, but I remember it so strongly as being very niche. It was deep, emotional work where people had to work to “justify” the emotional work they were doing, and even then, they couldn’t just say a character was trans and be chill about it. In order to justify a character being transgender, one had to put in mountains of evidence, or admit the trans perspective was a genderbend of sorts.

For me, I’m pretty sure the moment when things started to change was when I was reading and writing a lot of Loki-centred fanfiction, roundabout 2014–2017 — and the more permissive culture was very much borne of Loki being seen as an exception.

Loki, of the Marvel film and comics, is an alien secretly kidnapped and adopted into the Odinson family, and is known to change his body and appearance frequently, including changing his apparent gender or expression.

He was, in the comic canon (not to mention the original Norse mythologies) quite genderfluid, after all, so even if you didn’t refer to him as explicitly transgender, you could explore him as being some variety of genderfluid, nonbinary, or intersex — as an alien, as a Jötnar as opposed to being AEsir like Thor or Odin, as a god.

But then things changed a bit more.

Welcome to Night Vale, a weird narrative horror podcast, started in 2012, and one thing you could rely on from a lot of fanfics is that people might have weird or alien or otherwise not-not cisgender but not entirely cisgender genitals either. The Magnus Archives, also a narrative horror podcast, started in 2016, and when I got into the fandom in roundabout 2019, which is also when the new Good Omens TV show was due to release and there was a resurgence of interest in the book as well, I remember experiencing a sort of newfound thing where like…

I’d had a mental block around writing many trans characters, before — I could create my own characters who were trans, but a big part of me still felt like I wasn’t allowed to just make a canon character trans if they’d never been mentioned as being trans before or made explicitly trans.

What was it that stopped me?

My own dysphoria? Perhaps a little. Maybe some lacking self-confidence.

Most of all, it just felt as though I couldn’t justify it. I couldn’t justify seeing a cis man written by cis people in a cis show and saying, “Hey, no, he’s like me, actually” — even though I could easily do it about the same character being gay or Jewish or even chronically ill or disabled.

It was like there was a mental block inside me I just couldn’t get past.

I still had a lot of the old online cultural expectations stamped onto me, I think, even being an out trans man who knew many many other trans and intersex and nonbinary people of every gender imaginable in fandom.

I think for Welcome to Night Vale and then especially for The Magnus Archives, part of what made it so easy for people to write and envisage different characters as trans, the fact that there was such limited physical description of characters, the fact that you were attached to them by their voices alone, allowed people to envisage them in whatever way they liked.

In The Magnus Archives, most of the main characters are envisaged as trans in one way or another — Daisy Tonner particularly is explored with all flavours of butch dykey complexity, trans in whichever ways or directions are juiciest and most interesting. But for so many of the characters — from Jonathan Sims and Martin Blackwood to Sasha James and Tim Stoker to Elias Bouchard to Peter Lukas to any of the other Entities — there is no end to the characters people will explore or envisage as trans or nonbinary or just straight-up outside of gender or gender-weird.

No one has to justify a period character being trans with no problems. Loads of people write Izzy Hands or Stede Bonnet or Edward Teach, as being trans in Our Flag Means Death alongside the canonic nonbinary character Jim Jimenez. Any and all characters, trans or otherwise, are invited to participate in ye olde top surgery performed by Roach, the ship’s surgeon, or somehow get hold of ye olde hormones in whatever handwavy way necessary, and it’s cool and fine.

And what’s wonderful for me is the way I see the current approach to trans characters gleefully and delightedly applied to fandoms that are years if not decades old.

I see people write House MD fanfic now where they just go, right from the beginning, yeah this or that character is trans, and they’ve always been trans, and it’s chill. What if James Wilson was trans? It’d rock, that’s what. What if Greg House was trans? Yeah, he’d probably do his own T-shots under the table.

People write Spock as trans now, or guys from M*A*S*H, or Jean Valjean.

What if in the X-Files Dana Scully and Fox Mulder were T4T? Makes complete sense, and also, the idea fucks absolutely. They’re already so lesbian vibes for each other, it fits perfectly.

I wrote a silly little Tumblr post a few weeks ago envisioning Morticia and Gomez Addams as T4T, and it blew up immediately — I think about how if I’d made that most a decade ago it would have been met with crickets, if not a bit of scorn, and not just from transphobes, but just people who like me at that time hadn’t been able to relax and have fun with it.

That’s the real crux of the matter, the impact a lot of fandom has made on me and the way that trans characterisation is approached, the hunger I have for trans characterisation now — it’s the idea of being trans as joyful and delightful, as inherently fun and sexy, but also just as being something every day and normal. A detail you can include as casually in your interpretation of a canon character as any other headcanon.

There’s a beautiful freedom in it, and I’m so grateful to have been able to learn from and grow because of other trans people paving the way with their confident headcanons and delving into trans ideas in their fic.

It’s done wonders for me everywhere — not just in my fanfic, but most of all in the original works I pen now, each one of them featuring trans character after trans character.

[i-am-grell]

I’m Back! Throw Anime at Me!

If you’re new here, I suck at starting and finishing series and making choices, so I let Tumblr pick which anime I’ll watch next.

I’ve just returned from vacation, and have the freedom once again to include longer series - and long long series (description of how that’ll work below with the propaganda) - in these polls!

As always, propaganda* (*rambles about series I haven’t finished and how little I know about series I haven’t started yet, etc) below the poll. You’re welcome to reblog if you wanna bully your followers into voting for your fave. Other people’s followers and assorted Tumblr users: you don’t have to know me, follow me, or like me to throw anime at me. You don’t even have to like anime if you just wanna press a button. Go wild.

Propaganda:

How the long long series will work in my polls:

We all know some anime series are hundreds - even thousands - of episodes long. When it comes to these polls, rather than straight-shotting through these beasts, I’ll break them up by however the series is naturally divided (by season or arc - whatever that series has chosen). If there’s a shorter season/arc, it may be combined into the next one (for instance if one arc has 16 episodes and the one after has 30, I’ll watch 46eps for that poll option, since that’s pretty manageable. We’ll play it by ear, folks). I’ll always be specific in the propaganda about how far I’ll be watching for that particular poll and update my pinned post with my progress for that specific series after. The series may not show up in back-to-back polls for the sake of taking breaks and not burning myself out on the same thing.

Rambles about the options:

Blue Exorcist - I watched everything available circa 2014/15ish, but now there’s more? Apparently? I guess? Cool! I’ll probably rewatch what I have seen since it’s been a while and proceed from there.

Free! - I watched ISC and ES as they were airing. In sub. And y’all know I prefer dubs (of course I went back and watched it when there was finally a dub). But while everything past Eternal Summer was airing, I was in my busy period… 😬 Still have to finish it - but to be clear, I will be marathoning everything, starting yet again with Iwatobi Swim Club. Also I absolutely don’t mean to influence the vote but the longer Free! stays in these polls, the more 50% Off! quotes I get to use. If you ever see “backstroke for days,” assume I’ve run out.

Zombie Land Saga + Revenge - This has been in the polls before and I’m sure many of you have seen my propaganda for it before. TLDR: Love it, wanna finish it, TERFs aren’t welcome here 😌

Bungo Stray Dogs - I think about Dazai at least once a day and I haven’t even watched this show. I have 1) seen pictures of this man 2) listened to anime tiktok simps talk about this man. Do with this what you will.

One Piece - There’s a quote from an episode of Um, Actually… where Mike Trapp says he hasn’t read Wheel of Time because, while he’s always meant to, it “feels like nerd homework.” One Piece is my “feels like nerd homework.” For the purpose of this poll option, if chosen, I will start One Piece by watching the first arc.

Mashle - Anime OP make brain go brrr. Also from what I understand, it’s regular guy brute-forcing his way through Legally Distinct Hogwarts.

[radioluminescentoblivion]

Hazbin Hotel: The Corruption of Creativity. Part 1

1. Introduction

Hello everyone, I normally don’t make huge posts like these, but I thought it would be important to make this review and discussion about the latest animated show on Amazon Prime, Hazbin Hotel, and the people behind the scenes who worked on the show, mostly the show creator Vivziepop. Back in 2019 when I first watched the animated pilot of Hazbin Hotel, I was interested to see how this show, if picked up, would go about with its story. Like many people who were still fans of Vivziepop’s work, I wanted to see this show become a good adult animated series. In fact, as the production was going on behind closed doors, I supported viv and her work via Patreon for a time and bought some merch from Sharkrobot.com to help fund her endeavors—I even still have my Angel Dust t-shirt and Hazbin Hotel poster in a black picture frame. 

2. Personal Fan Origins

Though I wasn’t an og follower of viv back in her older days on DeviantArt, I was introduced to her work around 2014-2015, that’s when I originally saw her fan-animated Kesha Die Young music video and since then I became a fan of her work and was obsessed with her means of creating very expressive and stylistic characters. Vivziepop was the artist who not only introduced me to the furry community, she was also a big inspiration for my artwork and still is to some extent now, had it not been for her, I don’t think I would’ve been in the position I’m in now to make art or it would’ve taken me much longer than where I started. 

But as much as I was a casual fan of her work, I was also a skeptic of her as a person over time. Primarily due to how she would be overly defensive towards criticism, radiate a toxic personality on others and friends of hers, and how she would intentionally and unintentionally weaponize her audience against those that landed on her blacklist. These traits would only become more apparent over time, but I like many others had the mindset of “separating the art from the artist” And while there is some validity to be made on that notion, it makes it all the harder when the person intentionally makes the art inseparable from who they are or they’re still active or alive and will constantly change their position or view on things. I know there’s a much deeper discussion to be had about this notion and how relevant it actually is, but for the sake of this post, I won’t dive into it that much. 

Watching Helluva Boss in 2019 onward would prove to be a conflicting experience since the first time watching the first season wasn’t as bad, some episodes had some strong character development, decent action scenes, and enjoyable songs. 2, 5, and 6 were some of my favorites in the series, but around season 2 episode 4, I was losing interest and I began to see the cracks in the show and noticed that the charm had dwindled going into the second season. Episode 6 was where I stopped which is funny because the last episode (at least currently) was episode 7 which I didn’t even bother to give any attention to because I didn’t like the show much anymore: The characters were losing whatever charm they had originally, making the characters I did like lose that vibe I enjoyed and those I didn’t like before I just didn’t care or it made it all the worse, the pacing didn’t get any better as the show was always going so quickly but rarely having time to sit down and digest even when there were scenes that had those moments, and for a show that would have differing times from 10-30 minutes, it made it all the more rushed, the stories were all over the place in a way I had no fun engaging with or could get behind, sometimes plot points like D.H.O.R.K.S’s evidence of demons would be revealed but never brought up again or have the same impact on the show, and some of the songs were forgettable (though I did enjoy Cotton Candy).

After I stopped giving HB a watch I decided to be patient and wait for when Hazbin Hotel would drop, and on January 18th, 2024, the first episode would drop to present the new show to the world.

3. Hazbin Hotel Review (Spoilers, Obviously)

Summary - 

Hazbin Hotel is an adult animated series about the daughter of Lucifer named Charlie Morning Star, a demon princess seeking to rehabilitate sinners in a less violent way to combat overpopulation in hell. Along the way, she manages to get support from the enigmatic radio demon named Alastor who helps Charlie and Vaggie bring in sinners in an attempt to redeem their souls for a price while trying to be as cooperative as she can with the odds stacked against her. 

When I first watched the premiere of the show, I wasn’t really blown away or impressed by it, which isn’t a bad thing since not a lot of shows have a strong start with their early episodes in the season. Where it did get interesting however was around 4-6 when it started to focus more on character development and give some time for the main cast to shine and maintain some consistency with the story, though this has its limits. There were also some decent songs, some funny dialogue, and even some sprinkling of action around the end. Unfortunately, in the later episodes, it started to fall back to where the show lost its touch. So let me get around to the pros and cons of Hazbin Hotel:

The Good -

As someone who felt burnt out from Helluva Boss, this is an improvement as far as comparing viv’s older work goes, which is a slight benefit. 

Performances are great as far as voices go, especially when you have people like Keith Davids in your line up, though I would be a little more positive on the casting choices if it didn’t also come at the cost of the old cast, I genuinely believe they should’ve been given additional voice roles if not main ones for the show, so that sucks. 

Songs can be hit or miss in this show, with More Than Anything (both the first and reprise) and Loser Baby being the better examples and the rest not sticking out to me as much, either because I don’t think they had as much impact or they felt out of left field. I think it would’ve been better to not have every episode with a song number unless it was a grand introduction to something (i.e. Poison, Loser Baby, More Than Anything). Though I don’t expect this to be a popular opinion so whatever

The visuals are fairly competent with few to no issues that caught my eye, my only critique would be that due to how fast everything feels it can be hard to follow what's all happening, not to mention having the background and background characters look as eye-catching as the main cast can throw people off of where they should put their focus on. It's not as terrible enough where I loathe it, but it could make some contrast of who/what you should pay more attention to. 

The Bad -

The story loses track of the main premise of Charlie trying to redeem sinners and her relationship with Vaggie. The side plots don’t interest me as much aside from Angel Dust and Husk having some empathy for each other slowly through the series, and the other main cast aren’t nearly explored as much. Idk the best way to describe it, but it seems that most of the focus of the side characters isn’t where it should be (the hotel’s residents) and more so on those outside the hotel, which I think would’ve worked better in the second season rather than just the first. If season one was just focusing on the residents, Charlie and Vaggie more than the other characters, I wouldn’t mind that. I think the only exceptions to this would be the hell overlords discovery of how to fight back and Lucifer helping Charlie with the hotel. But back to the main cast, Charlie and Vaggie’s moments of romance and bonding seem few and far between, which sucks since this is supposed to be about them right? RIGHT?! The potential is just wasted.

Not every song is needed or has a place in every episode, though that could be because I wasn’t feeling them as strongly compared to the ones mentioned. Not much else to say there that hasn’t already been said.

Characters don’t appeal to me as much aside from Niffty and Sir Pentious (they’re the best) and unfortunately, the characters I should care about don’t get enough time to shine due to how this show is hastily paced—which leads me to my next negative.

Pacing is absolutely atrocious, for episodes that last 30 minutes, it feels like everything has happened yet also little has happened in such a short period of time (which is insane to me) Viv has had pacing issues in the past with her work which is concerning to me, mostly because she wasn’t always this speedy with her series, there were times she had more breathing room for her older works for instances like the Son of 666 and Timber, even the short Bad Luck Jack (which I liked) suffered from this in ways. Idk what exactly happened, but it seems like viv’s workflow has just gotten worse over time, and her artistic magic, patience, etc has just vanished.

Jokes? For what attempt of humor was there, it was very little. Once in a while, there was a joke that stuck the landing or made me chuckle, such as Charlie and Alastor swearing unexpectedly, only because it’s so out of left-field you wouldn’t expect it, so the joke works. Or when Niffty and Sir Pentious act their usual awkward selves in front of others. But everything else is just not funny to me because the majority of the humor is either sex or profanity jokes that don’t have that great of build-up or go for something more than just “haha adult words” which ironically makes it more juvenile than adult. I don’t mind stupid humor, but make it funny and not because you want to say “fuck” for the sake of it. Even if it’s just for casual talk, it's overly excessive. It doesn’t hurt to find humor in other ways even if those don’t land either, it's better than just resorting to profanity and sex.

Additional Comments -

When it comes to Vivziepop’s older works, it’s better than Helluva Boss but weaker than her shorts or animated music videos (fan-made or original), the strongest elements within the series lie within the hump of the season and fall short from the beginning and end. Though as annoying as that is, it pales in comparison to the other elements in the show. 

Heaven’s methods of carrying out exterminations every year to dissuade the populace of hell from rebelling is just a very dumb thing to do when there are so many other ways to shatter the morale of a persecuted people or nation without lifting a single sword that would’ve been better implemented and create a larger divide between heaven and hell and less costly as well. Perhaps this is just to further showcase how arrogant and incompetent Heaven is, but I have my doubts on that. 

Alastor as a manipulative radio host works well between Charlie and Vaggie, though I wish they wouldn’t have explained his ties to the disappearances of hell’s overlords so soon, it just takes away from his mysterious nature as this eldritch being. That part to me would’ve worked later on. (Yeah, I’m also aware they did something similar in the pilot too, which brings up another issue I have) 

Continuity between the pilot and the first episode is pretty murky, it doesn’t help matters when the plot of the pilot and the series episodes get collaged in so haphazardly. If I never heard of Hazbin Hotel or Vivziepop’s work before, I’d kinda be thrown off a bit and try my best to catch up on what’s going on. I don’t expect an expose of how everything works, but an organic flow of how things come together would’ve been nice. For instance: the pilot itself feels more like an episode one than the actual episode 1 of the first season. I know the point of the pilot isn’t as strict in its rules, since it's supposed to sell an idea to a network or distributor. Hell, The Amazing Digital Circus does something similar to how Hazbin Hotel does with presenting a first-episode introduction into the world and characters, only it does it far better and it hasn’t even gotten its first episode out yet, but I don’t want to compare apples to oranges on two different shows. The point is, the first episode should’ve had a better flow to it or at least maintained something more consistent like the pilot did. 

But by far the most glaring problem in the show isn’t part of the show itself believe it or not. But to keep this short, I’ll leave that for part 2. 

4. End of Part 1 

Originally when I watched the series I gave this a 7/10 on IMDB because I came at this from a perspective of how I would judge the work based on viv’s prior craft, this gave it a point above Helluva Boss, primarily with pacing, and direction of what it should be about and where to focus the story and characters. That being said, I was being very generous and didn’t also factor in on how it stood on its own two feet, and to be honest? It's not that good. For the first season of a new adult animated show, it’s too rushed, and not fleshed out enough in areas where it needs to be, The majority of the characters I have little interest or investment in, and despite having its moments, it's not enough to keep me hooked to know what happens within the next season. 

This would bring it down to 1 point for that to a 6/10, I know some fans would put the blame on Amazon, A24, or Bento, but here’s the thing, other shows have had episodes with similar limited space and time to tell their stories yet do a far more superior job in doing so than this, from what I understand, Amazon seems pretty open for a studio big or small to do as they please with what resources they have to get out what they can regardless of the restraint of episodes to be made, thereby making studios try their best to work harder on making a show work with such little episodes, so I see this mostly as a personal thing with viv and her team than just amazon. 

Now I would just leave it at that and move on, but I’m afraid this is where things get more muddy and grim.

[uboat53]

It's been a while, but I feel the need for some political analysis. Not the specific issue things I've been doing, but a broader look at the 2024 election. LONG RANT (TM) time?

INTRODUCTION

As I imagine you're aware by now if you read anything I write, I'm a bit of a data guy. I've been following the polls for a few decades now and I find it a good way to keep sane in the chaos of an election season. This time, though… this time I'm not so sure.

Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm still following the polling like a crack addicted muppet, I'm just no longer sure that it's accurate, even within its own margins of error. There are a few reasons for this, the long-standing ones like declining response rates, but also some new ones to do with the changing electorate. A bunch of things are coming together in ways that make me no longer certain that we're getting an accurate picture.

That said, there is still data I'm seeing that I find useful. Focus groups, for example, are still producing interesting nuggets of information that help fill in a few gaps, but more on that later. First, the polling.

HOW POLLING WORKS

So polling, at its heart is fairly simple. You call, text, or otherwise survey a bunch of people, usually on the order of a thousand or so, and ask them for their opinions. Then you figure out the race, age, and other demographic information of the people you got and use some statistical tools to normalize them to the broader population.

For example, if your thousand person sample was 5% black but you think the voting population is going to be 10% black, you'll "weight" the answers your black respondents gave. In other words, you'll give more impact to their answers to try to better represent who you think is actually going to show up on election day. If you get more of a group than you think will actually show up, you'll do the reverse and de-weight them.

If you think about that for a minute, you'll realize that there are two really big places where error can seep into your polling.

POLLING ERRORS

The first is called the response rate. It used to be that you'd have to call about 2,000-3,000 people to get 1,000 responses. Nowadays, you've got to hit closer to 10,000 people. And there's good research showing that the kind of people that respond to polls are meaningfully different than the kind of people who don't respond but still vote.

That said, pollsters have adapted and have gotten reasonably good at adjusting for this kind of error. Well, the good ones have, the bad ones just do low-quality polls and their results are terrible as a result. There was one particularly longitudinal poll during the 2016 election that apparently only had one black Trump supporter, who they weighted heavily, who would just stop answering their questions when he felt Trump was doing badly which led to some wild swings in their results depending on whether he answered that week or not. Generally speaking, though, this kind of error isn't as big of a problem in decent polling as we kind of thought it would be when it started showing up a decade or two ago. The other kind of error, though…

Look, in order to weight your polled population properly, you have to have a reasonable idea of who's actually going to show up to vote. Will 30% of white women between the ages of 18 and 24 show up or will it be 50%? Will the electorate in Georgia be 30% black or 40% black? Answering these questions makes a huge impact on how the final result turns out, and the way we generally answer these questions is we look at the past few elections.

The problem with that is, there's nothing consistent or predictable about the last few elections. 2012 and 2014 were pretty standard elections where the predictable groups showed up in predictable numbers and things went as expected. In 2016, though, Trump turned out a huge amount of people who had never voted before and shifted the result in key states that were not expected to go for him. Those same people, though, didn't show up in 2018 when he wasn't on the ballot and the result was a pretty solid win for Democrats in places that hadn't been expected to for them after 2016. Then, in 2020, those same people showed up to vote for Trump again, but this time they were outnumbered by ANOTHER new group of voters who hadn't showed up before but now showed up to vote against Trump. Finally, in 2022, yet another huge wave of new voters showed up, energized and outraged by the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade, and completely overturned the conventional wisdom of a strong Republican showing.

In other words, there's no way anyone could reasonably say that we can make a strong prediction of what the 2024 electorate is going to look like based on the last decade of elections. Are the voters who were outraged about abortion in 2022 still outraged? Will the new voters who showed up for Trump in 2016 and 2020 show up in the same kind of numbers? Will the anti-Trump voters of 2020? Maybe they have got it right this time, but there's absolutely no way to know that. Even worse, there's no way to know which way the error is running, the polls might be massively overweighted in Trump's favor or Harris's.

I certainly can't say and I'm fairly certain no one else can either.

OTHER DATA

That said, there is other data we can look at. My personal favorite these days are focus groups, particularly those conducted by people who are good at running them like Whit Ayers or Frank Luntz. Rather than look at what percentage of voters are voting for Trump, Harris, or undecided, they simply take a group of undecided voters and ask questions to determine why they're undecided and what could shift them and the results of those conversations are really interesting.

I've seen results from a few of these focus group results so far and they're fairly consistent. There's the standard undecided voters, the low-information voters who simply haven't paid attention enough to know where they stand and there's the so-called "double-haters" who just really dislike both candidates, but, surprisingly, these groups aren't the majority.

The majority of undecided voters apparently are generally moderate conservative voters who know that they don't like Trump but don't feel like they know enough about Harris to vote for her. Specifically, they feel like they don't know enough about her economic policies.

And that's a very interesting result, because it's the kind of result you see when an unpopular incumbent runs for re-election. Unpopular incumbents can and do win re-election; it's not enough that people don't like them, they also have to like the alternative. That's why John Kerry didn't defeat George W. Bush in 2004 and why Bill Clinton did defeat George H. W. Bush in 1992. Clinton persuaded voters that he would be better and Kerry didn't.

When Biden was running against Trump earlier this year, he was the unpopular incumbent and, while people didn't like Trump either, a critical mass of them seem to have liked him better than Biden. With Biden's withdrawal, the race has shifted. Trump may not technically be the incumbent, but people have seen him in office and they didn't like him. Harris has been Vice-President for about three and a half years now, but that's not being President, not even close. She's the unknown in this race.

WHAT IT ALL MEANS

Look, I don't know if there's enough undecided voters in this race to make a difference. Heck, it's possible that either Trump or Harris already have enough voters in the tank to win this thing in the key states and we just don't know it. All that said, there's a clear fight on for what undecided voters currently exist.

Harris needs to convince them that she has a plan to manage the economy. Job growth, wage growth, and consumer spending are strong and inflation is back down to reasonable levels, but the scars of high inflation remain. If she can convince voters that she has a plan to bring down costs and/or raise wages, she'll win. This is going to take more than the broad-strokes style answers she's been giving so far, my take is that she'll need to give a formal economic policy address, preferably more than one, and go into detail and depth about her economic plans.

Trump's only chance, on the other hand, is to smear Harris as well as he can. After four years in office and about a decade of a constant campaign, I'm pretty sure there's nothing left that could convince these voters to like him. Fortunately for him, he doesn't need them to like him, he just needs them to dislike her. That said, the relentless personal attacks he's been lobbing aren't going to do it, he's going to need to actually attack her economic policy, but that runs the risk of highlighting it to voters who may have otherwise not have heard about it.

CONCLUSION

Look, the polling data is iffy to me. It may be accurate or it might not, but we really have no way of knowing given the massive churn in the electorate this last decade. Assuming, though, that this race really is a tight one and will come down to undecided voters, it seems like this really is Harris's election to lose. If she can define herself, particularly her economic policies, in a way that appeals to undecided voters, it's likely that she can win them and, presumably, the election as well and there's not a lot that Trump can do about that without becoming a far different person than he is.

[raphmona]

How did Ramona become your favorite ship and how did you become a hardcore Ramona shipper?

I guess it was just instinct. I knew I found something special when I came across RaMona and my love for it just grew as the years went on.

It all started when I was watching one of Black Nerd Comedy’s TMNT videos on YouTube. He was doing a ninja turtles Q&A and someone asked him if he would ever like to see Mona Lisa in the 2012 series. He agreed that Mona should return and called her “Raphael’s lady”.

Note: This was in March 2014, over a year before Mona Lisa was introduced in the 2012 show in November 2015

I was very new to TMNT at this time, with the 2012 series being my introduction, so I had very little knowledge of the franchise and other versions, but I was a sucker for romance side plots and my curiosity was peaked. So I did some digging on YouTube and found the 1987 episode “Raphael Meets His Match” and I watched it. This was my very first episode I ever watched of the 87 series and I fell in love with Mona Lisa and especially her relationship with Raph. I loved how well her personality clashed with Raph, snarky stubborn sass with even more snarky stubborn sass. I squealed when she called him a doll and kissed his cheek. Him assuring her that he thinks she’s beautiful warmed my heart and them reuniting by the end of the episode was so sweet. You can image my disappointment when I learned that was her ONLY episode and she never came back. So I relied on fanart and fan comics of her, hopefully waiting for the return of this ship.

For those who don’t know, back when the 2012 series was running there were A LOT of fans who would constantly email/DM the producers and writers of the show on social media, asking them to bring Mona Lisa into the 2012 series. I will admit I was one of those fans 😅 I never harassed them like other fans did, but I do remember commenting on their instagram post regarding the topic once or twice.

Also funny fact, apparently Sean Astin (2012 Raph’s voice actor) was also one of those people. He constantly kept on asking Branden and Ciro (the producers) when Raph was going to get a love interest, cause he saw every other turtle get a GF except Raph. Angry turtles need love too! XD

Fast forward to August 2015, San Diego Comic Con, at a TMNT 2012 panel, they announce that Mona Lisa will be coming to the series in the upcoming season 4 as a warrior from an alien planet. I fangirled so hard that night when I watched the panel on YouTube! I was squealing so loud and dancing around my bedroom! I was so happy I started to cry! My OTP was finally returning!

It was 2012 RaMona that sealed the deal for me. After watching their first episode “The Moons of Thalos 3”, I fell in love with them. Raph falling for her because she punched him in the face is both hilarious and adorable, and also (strangely) very in character for him. His “what a woman” line made me squeal in excitement. Their first kiss, I couldn’t help but cheer. I didn’t care about any other ship except for them. To actually see a happy healthy couple with little to no problems in this series was a breath of fresh air. I never cared for Apritello, Leor*i I was questioning (that’s a whole different can of worms I’m not getting into now), I didn’t care for Capril, and though I liked Renetangelo I wasn’t crazy for them. The more Mona appeared in the show the more my love for the ship grew. Them constantly flirting or making out in the middle of battle, how trusting they are of each other, how supportive they are of each other in combat, and even their biggest road bump with Lord Dregg they were able to over come, with the cherry of that episode being Mona confessing her love to Raph. Even when back on Earth, Raph still thinks about her, loves her and stays loyal to her. In truth, Mona made Raph a better man. Them reuniting in season 5 kinda leaves us with an open book because now we get to decide what happens with them now that they are on Earth together. I just know from the look they gave each other at the end of the episode as they held each other in their arms that they will be living happily ever after 🥰

We only ever see this ship in a hand full of episodes in the 2012 series, but it was enough to show me and the audience how happy and healthy this couple is compare to the other ships. I love them. I adore them. I want a relationship like theirs one day. I wanna find my Raph to my Mona. I want to continue to see this ship in other versions of TMNT in the future!

I will stand proud and say that I am the captain of the Raph x Mona Lisa ship! 🫡💞

[sam-winchester-admiration-league]

To me, great actors to me are those that always sells the role and can play a variety of characters, which is what Jared Padalecki has done with Sam Winchester and with the many characters created on the same show.  Whenever Jared plays not!Sam, he disappears and takes Sam with him, leaving us with a new character that we find fascinating even as we eagerly wait for the return of Sam.  I really love it that Jared acts the hell out of the role but is almost never guilty of overacting.  There is something about Jared that is simply compelling and makes me want to see watch him, which is not easy with a character such as Sam Winchester who is the show’s everyman, the straightman that doesn’t get the funny, snarky lines that always goes to the archetype bad boy with heart of gold.  But Jared made Sam Winchester a compelling character, that’s a huge testament to his skill and talent.

When I joined the SPN fandom in 2014, I was beyond thrilled to learn that I was not alone in my thinking, far from it.  So much so that I started an “Acting” tag to collect critics’ and fans’ insight, reviews, and reactions (including Jensen’s!) to Jared’s amazing acting.  These are some of my favorite reviews:

“Jared has many skills that are incredibly rare in an actor, skills that are apparent to even me, a person who is about as skilled in theater as a fish is on land. As said before, Jared is routinely paired with actors and actresses who are not only extremely good at what they do, but also have three times the experience that he does and each time, Jared holds his own. And not only does he hold his own, but he has chemistry with every single one of them. He listens, he reacts, he responds to what’s going on around him, to the actions of the people he is working with. He’s always present, always alert, always changing and adapting, taking risks and putting so much passion into each of those risks that they nearly always pay off”  -(X)

“For the time being, this means we get to see Jared Padalecki playing two roles simultaneously: Sam (as usual), and whenever Ezekiel takes over to talk with Dean. Season 8’s finale was stolen by Padalecki’s amazing acting, and it looks like he just might take Season 9 as well.” - (X)

“To me, Jared was the one who set the “Lucifer might actually be female all along” mindset. The way he softens his face, the way he uses language, the way he likes things cleaner and prettier and appreciates the world for beauty, while still having a certain underlaying rage that seeths and boils more than overtly strikes and lashes.- (X).

“Jared is absolutely stunning at “silent acting” which he’s doing in most of these gifs, actually. From Gilmore Girls to Supernatural, Jared’s characters don’t have many lines (Sam has 15% less lines than Dean!) and it’s amazing that instead of letting his lack of lines put him on the back burner, he uses his time on screen to portray his character’s thoughts—even when he can’t voice them.  eternal applause!“ - (X)

[kevin--of-desert-bluffs]

WTNV quick rundown - 88 - Things Fall Apart

Featuring the voice of Maureen Johnson as (Ex)-Intern Maureen, Kate Jones as Michelle Nyugen, Emma Frankland as Emma Frankland as Sheriff Sam, Erica Livingston as Maggie Penebaker, Christoper Loar as Donald Penebaker and Dylan Marron as Carlos the Scientist.

[sound of phone ringing in earpiece] Citywide utility failures continue to haunt us, but not as much as the strangers who do not appear to move. Welcome to the Night Vale Public Utilities phone line.

Night Vale is experiencing city wide power outages, polluted water supplies and several gas leaks (hinted to be due to the Strangers in some way). Cecil is desperately trying to get through to NV Utilities Department but it's proving difficult due to the snippy attitude in Maggie Penebakers recorded lines (this is the first time she says her name, I believe, previously just being heard as the female voice on the phone line).

Carlos calls Cecil to see if he's alright and to ask him to come home, since he doesn't have power to run his show right now. Cecil says he has to do his job and find a way to report what is going on. Carlos wishes him good luck and to stay safe.

Apparently Maggie and Carlos are friends (or at least, she used to assist him in the lab) and she has a backup generator they can use.

Cecil calls Sheriff Sam to see if they know anything about the Strangers and to ask whether the Strangers are also targetting the previous citziens of Desert Bluffs. When Sam is derogatory towards the ex-DB citizens, Cecil stands up for them. Sam reports that some of the DB citizens have 'gone somewheere that feels more like home'. They also say that two sinkholes have opened up on route 800 and the dam along the NV lake (a dusty hole) broke.

Cecil calls Michelle to help him locate Maureen. Michelle reveals that Maureen is the leader of the army of strangers, and that Chad and his 'evil dog' are Maureen's boss. She also gives him Maureen's number. Michelle says that Maureen let her get up close to a Stranger. The Strangers can devour your soul, which starts a long and permenant process of transforming into a Stranger yourself. They only stand and breathe because they are in eternal torment and that's all they can do.

Maureen's phone goes straight to voicemail. Cecil leaves a message saying that he's proud of her and what's she's doing (and that he's finally worked out that it's former intern Chad Boenger behind this) but that he's worried he won't see Carlos again and didn't even say 'I love you' before hanging up when they last talked. He asks Maureen if he'll be able to see Carlos again, implying but not saying that he hopes she won't lead the Strangers to kill everyone.

Cecil gets a call from a Stranger, who of course only breathes slowly down the phone. A dog barks. The episode ends.

Weather: "Palestine" by Sam Baker, featuring Carrie Elkin.

Carlos called Cecil 'poot' and Cecil called Carlos 'bunny'.

There is a John Peter in NV who is a pharmacist. Cecil gets his prescription (whatever that is) from him.

Cards In Favour Of Humanity is a game in NV.

Michelle claims her previous monologue was 'private' but she also sent the tape in to Cecil with a label asking it to be played. She expresses her secret insecurities against this episode by questioning whether Cecil would think badly for her for actually liking something.

Proverb: Wanna feel old? People born in 2014 have already graduated college, don't know what a trombone is, are are all named after gourds.

[duhragonball]

Dream 9 Toriko x One Piece x Dragon Ball Z Super Collaboration Special !! (2013)

Okay, let me start with a disclaimer: I know nothing about Toriko and extremely little about One Piece.  No disrespect to One-Piece, but I didn’t like this special very much, because it’s basically crammed full of characters I don’t know, and the ones I do know don’t get a lot of screen time. 

So I wasn’t particularly excited to cover this one, and now that I’ve watched it, I can’t say it was a particularly great introduction to Toriko or One Piece.  All I really got out of this were a few good screenshots of DBZ guys. 

I’ve heard good things about One Piece, and I might check it out one of these decades, but I’ve also heard it’s over a thousand chapters long, and still going, so I might be dead of old age by the time I’m ready to try it.  And I have zero interest in Toriko at all.  For years, I kept having trouble remembering who the third guy was in this thing, and for some reason I kept thinking it was Bleach. 

So this is a good old fashioned crossover, like Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man.  Well, actually, all three properties are under the Toei banner, so this is more like an intra-company crossover event, like when the Avengers, Fantastic Four, and X-Men get together to do stuff.  Or Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman.  Basically, in 2013, these were Toei’s “Big Three”, and they wanted to do a cross-promotion. 

I never quite understood how DBZ got roped into this.  There had been a Toriko/One-Piece crossover before this, but this one aired the week after Battle of Gods first premiered in Japan.  So there was a coordinated effort to promote the movie along with the two TV series. 

Personally, I have trouble buying into Toriko as one of the “Big Three”.  This feels more like Superman and Batman hanging out with Captain Atom or something.  And Captain Atom is like “Hey guys!  It sure is historic that we’re all teaming up like this.  The three greatest superheroes!” And Superman and Batman have to try not to roll their eyes at him.  I’m not saying this to bash Toriko or Captain Atom, but they’re not on that level and they know it.  I feel like I’ve heard One-Piece has already surpassed Dragon Ball on a number of popularity metrics, and while I find that hard to accept, I believe it, because I hear about it all the time.  They made the theme song Krillin’s ringtone in  Resurrection F.  Every time I hear about Toriko, it’s always this special, where he teams up with two much bigger franchises.

To be fair, Toriko had a much shorter run than the other two.  The anime ended in 2014, and the manga wrapped up in 2016.  So maybe it just had a smaller pop culture impact. 

But I think it might have something to do with the author’s history as a sex offender.  In 2002, Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro was arrested and convicted for violating child prostitution laws.  He was sentenced to two years in prison, but for some reason the sentence was suspended.  So if it sounds like I’m not showing the proper respect to the Toriko franchise... this might have something to do with it. 

Okay, so this crossover is organized into two episodes.  The first part is Toriko Episode 99.  The conclusion is in One Piece Episode 590. Apparently both of these are going to get an English dub when they air on Toonami March 4.  That’s like next week, but I don’t want to wait around for that, so here we are.

Here’s the skinny: All of these characters live in the same world now, apparently.  Just run with it.  The IGO has organized a special tournament, with the winner receiving the Carat-Sized Cattle, a delicacy so tasty and precious that... I don’t know.  I saw Goku eat a cloud once, so he seems like more of a “quantity over quality” kind of guy.  The Toriko characters are all about gourmet food, so I assume this is to keep them interested.  And I think Luffy is another hungry action guy in the tradition of Goku, so that’s enough to get him involved.

Anyway, the tournament is really more of a race.  A large crowd of people enter, but early into the event...

A giant antlion or something shows up and most of the contestants get lost in the sand.  Did they die?  Who knows.  All that matters are the characters who didn’t get slowed down by this, and they continue towards the goal.

Sigh... let’s go over the characters.  The Toriko side, from left to right is: Toriko, Sunny, Rin, and Koichi Hirose from Diamond is Unbreakable I mean Komatsu.  yeah, that’s definitely what I meant to say.  We never learn jack shit about Sunny and Rin, so I won’t have much to say about them.   Komatsu is some kind of chef, and Toriko’s sidekick.

I literally just finished watching this and I couldn’t tell you anything about these characters.  Okay, let me try a little harder. 

Luffy’s the stretchy guy with the hat.  He’s the leader of the Straw Hat Pirates. 

Nami’s like the team’s resident woman.�� Like, if there’s a Pirate Crime that they can’t solve because the clues involve makeup, Nami will solve it for them, because she knows all about that stuff.  Also, she wants the Carat-Sized Cattle because its bones are made out of solid diamond, and she’s into money.

Sanji has a cigarette, so that’s kind of special, I guess.

Chopper looks like a deer or something.  Maybe an antelope.  I’m pretty sure he once teamed up with NJPW star Minoru Suzuki, so I guess he’s my favorite One Piece dude.

Franky’s a cyborg?  I guess?

Slash (aka Saul Hudson) was the lead guitarist for the hard rock band Guns ‘n’ Roses. 

Zoro is green and has a sword.  So he’s like their Piccolo, I think.

Finally we have... fuck, I have no idea who these assholes are.  Was Naruto in this thing too?  Dammit, I’m gonna be writing this all day. 

So there’s multiple paths in this race, so that allows the characters to split up and get their stuff in.  See, my problem with this whole premise is that these shonen franchises have a lot in common, and teaming them up like this really just exposes this flaw.  Most of the gags in this thing boil down to “Oh, you have  a horny guy on your show?  Well here’s the horny guy on our show!”  Like, I’m pretty sure the skeleton man has a little more to him than that, but we’re never gonna find out in an hour special featuring 45 characters. 

Also Vegeta shows up late, because no one even told him about this event, and he interrupts a showdown between Zoro and... Zebra, I think his name was.  They start fighting each other, which sounds like a cool little side-thing, but this is literally all it is.  The joke is that they’re fighting off-screen through the rest of the story.  So tough luck if any of these guys were your faves. 

Oh, hey, it’s King Kai.  And he’s not dead in this, which proves that the original theatrical cut of Battle of Gods didn’t have him dead!  The DVD release has halos on him and Bubbles, and I’ve known all along that Toei was gaslighting me, so this is my favorite part of this special.  Anyway, he calls Goku about a Space Crisis, so Goku just teleports away to deal with that other, probably cooler adventure.  Okay, so two things.

First, I really find it gratifying how they put over all the DBZ guys in this.  There’s some semblance of parity between Toriko and Luffy, but Goku’s clearly shown to be on another level.  They don’t even try to hide it.  He’ll knock out a second adventure while he’s slumming this one.  Goku doesn’t give a fuck.

Second, this is really, really annoying.  Just show me the cool thing Goku’s doing in space.  This little gag is basically admitting that the show would be a lot better if all these other characters would take a hike. 

So Goku makes it back just as the race is coming to an end, and he still manages to catch up to Toriko and Luffy, so they all grab the flag together and it’s a three-way tie.  But that just means we settle it with a tiebreaker....

So the IGO guy had prepared for something like this, and the stadium transforms into a combat sports arena.  The last man in the ring wins the beef.

Also, Mr. Satan fell onto the stage during the transformation sequence, so he’s in this thing too, even though he didn’t do the race part. 

So Goku works over the other two guys pretty well.  I like this fight, but let’s not kid ourselves, much of this is Toriko and Luffy double-teaming Goku.  They might have stood a chance that way, but then they turned on each other, and that borked it up. 

Anyway, they all cut loose with their full power (except Goku who never goes past Super Saiyan 1), and they destroy the ring, so all three of them lose.  Mr. Satan wins, because he managed to stay on the small piece of the stage that wasn’t destroyed. 

But Mr. Satan is a magnanimous guy, and the Carat-Sized Cattle is enormous, so he decides to share it with all three groups. 

So I think we’re into One Piece Episode 590 now.  Everyone sits at this big-ass table and eats and talks about how great the food is.  Cripes this is boring as hell.  Is this all Toriko does all day?

Aw, look at Marron, she’s so cute.

Toriko says some BS about how eating with friends improves the dining experience. Okay, but I had an omelet from Denny’s this morning and I ate it alone and it kicked ass.  Can I just say how absolutely goofy all these characters look when they’re in the same shot? 

Then Mr. Satan says the exact same thing Toriko did about the power of sharing or whatever.  Cripes this show is so damned redundant.  We have like eight guys in orange-red clothes, and four sex pests and this is just dumb. 

So then Piccolo and... two other people, confront the guy who organized the tournament, and they ask what the real purpose is to all of this.  He admits that it was all a plot to get a bunch of strong guys together to capture the Akami, a dangerous sea creature. 

I think the idea is that the Carat-Sized Cattle is so delicious that it lured the Akami up to the surface, where it then begins attacking all the superheroes.  Each time the Akami nabs somebody with its tentacles, it absorbs all their power and transforms.  Is this supposed to be a Toriko deal or a One-Piece deal?   Who cares?

So the gang splits up to find it, because the need to capture it in thirty minutes to cure its victims.  Unfortunately, it just gets stronger every time it nabs another one, and it even absorbs energy from attacks, so fighting it is pointless.

Toriko reasons that they’d have to hit it with a lot of energy all at once, so Goku proposes using the Spirit bomb, except that doesn’t work either, because the Akami sucks up the energy faster than Goku can gather it. 

So Goku asks everyone on the island to send him more energy, which... I don’t see how that changes the problem, but whatever.  The bigger issue I have is that we see a lot of characters sending energy even after they got drained by the Akami.  So what are they sending, exactly?

So Goku launches the Spirit Bomb, but the Akami manages to hold it off, so Toriko and Luffy hit it from the sides while Goku goes SSJ3 and fires a Kamehameha at the Spirit Bomb to force it down the Akami’s throat.  So that’s  a cool variation on the Spirit Bomb.  Nice touch. 

And that takes care of the Akami. 

So then they eat the Akami for dinner, because apparently it has legendarily tasty meat as well.  So wait... they had Carat-Sized Cattle and Akami on the same day.  Wouldn’t regular food just taste like poop after this?  Maybe I’m not supposed to overthink this gimmick.

Then we get these really long pans across still images, as the voice actors read their lines.  It’s really, really weak, and there’s like four of these in a row.  Is this standard for One Piece?   It just seems really cheap, especially for a big “event” episode like this one.  Maybe they blew all their budget on that SSJ3 Kamehameha. 

Also, they just show the same footage of Vegeta fighting those other guys, so that’s another corner cut.  I mean, damn.  I’m just gonna re-use the screenshot I took from the first half in protest. 

And that’s it.  I kind of hope they never do one of these again.  Also, Mitsutoshi Shimabukuro belongs in jail. 

[spinoff-antithesis]

[@distinguished-turtle-enjoyer ]

i actually have not stopped thinkin bout your bb!edit like,,,, its so good and scratches my brain right

how long have you been doin edits for? do have any tips for someone, who hypothetically, wants to start doin edits too? what programs do you use? how did you do the cool animated bits?

im so sorry for all the qustions 😭😭 i just think youre very talented and inspirational and i hope you have a good day ^_^

hi firstly oh my gosh you're literally so sweet i am gently shaking you i love you so much /p. secondly, i apologize for the long answer! (it's all under the cut. this got away from me. i'm so sorry apparently i have a lot to say.) (also you're so good about the questions i would constantly be asking one of my professors questions during class to the point where she said i didn't have to go "i have a question" every time i approached her)

i've been editing since 2016! around march/april, i think? loved it so much i went into film & video production in college as a major so i could do editing for a living. (i have done more motion graphics for my classmates than i have done edits outside of class assignments, BUT!)

the program i use is after effects - i started learning it when covid first hit the united states because i had nothing better to do with my time (other than music theory but i failed that bc my professor focused more on the history aspects than the actual theory soooo) and my ipad kept giving me the "no more storage" whenever i tried to use videostar lmao. (vs has, apparently, gotten a LOT of good updates, so if you're looking to start editing and have an ios system, i'd look into it! only downside is you have to pay for some of the cool stuff).

also the program i use for masking (i think i explain this later dwdw) is superimpose. i've been using it since 2014 and it's SO nice bc i can use my fingers to erase backgrounds & stuff instead of hoping i can get it to work correctly in ae or photoshop (photoshop my DETESTED i'll use it but i'll complain the entire time).

for people who want to start editing: tutorials on how your program works and how to do specific transitions are gonna be your best friend when you're first figuring things out! i forced a friend to literally walk me through how after effects worked when i was first figuring it out, and when i had swapped to videostar back in 2017/2018(?) i had watched a Lot of tutorials. that and played around a lot and figured things out on my own - which is also always a good way to start!! it's also totally valid to look at other people's edits for inspiration - most editors don't really care, as long as you don't flat-out remake their edit (some people don't like that!). i have a style insp folder on instagram where i save edits that i like so if i need transition ideas or i'm doing a different style, i can look there for inspiration. at the end of the day, as long as you're having fun with it that's all that matters!

also, starting simple is always okay!! my edits for a year were just me slapping gifs & video segments together on a timeline in cute cut pro bc imovie didn't load them lol & it'd crash every time i breathed. ++ it never hurts to ask people for feedback/constructive(!!!) criticism/etc! (also not to sound like everyone else but practice? good. it's so good. if i showed my 14/15y/o self some of the edits i can make now they would've passed out on the spot bc i was still trying to figure out transitions back then. programs can also sometimes make a difference in edits, but usually it's not super noticeable until you start getting to the Complicated Shit.)

a lot of popular programs i've seen are ones like video star (ios only), alight motion (android only), after effects (i recommend 🏴‍☠️ing it tbh, i only use it legally bc i had to use adobe programs for school), capcut, and i think some people still use sony vegas pro & maybe cute cut pro (i've heard it may have actually gotten better since i last used it in 2018)? i have no idea. programs also depend on whatever device you're using to edit on! since i've been using my laptop, i'm able to use after effects (it's computer-only), but when i used my phone/ipad to edit i used ccp & vs.

for the animation - it's a lot of cutting up the image and masking! more complex animations, like the one i had of leo walking down that red 'hallway' have several different layers that have been masked. (i removed the background & filled in the spot where leo originally was in two different apps - superimpose (taking leo out) & photoshop (filling in the bg)) in after effects, the way i've done this was mask out the specific thing i wanted to move (like an eye) and then put that mask on what i've called a "base" (not animated), and then stick a solid behind the base to match the color of the object. (some of my layers are not named appropriately; base 2 is the left arm & the four "SIX_[...]" layers are the mask/bandana tails)

an example of this would be for any of the eye blink animations i did! this (above) is the same shot, with and without the eye - since it's masked out and i have the background solid behind it, it doesn't look too unnatural/have a black outline/mass where his eye should be.

what it looks like without the solid layer behind it ^ (the red lines are from the null layers - ignore that)

this is what my timeline looks like if it's a more simplistic animation - the only five things being animated here are leo & raph's eyes. (there's only this many layers bc it's two characters in one shot & i was also animating their pupils - typically, an eye-blink animation is about 4-6 layers for me (solid, base, mask, & null to animate with, 6 if i'm animating both eyes & 4 if just one))

in after effects, there's this really cool tool called the puppet pin that one of my friends (lovingly) yelled at me for not knowing about - which. yeah fair she wasn't wrong it's SUPER useful in animating, provided you chop up your image first. if you don't it's a mess.

(separated by layer vs i should've really put the mask tails & leo's head on separate layers and didn't bc that was the 2nd to last animation i had to do and i was losing my mind bc i wanted to be done with the edit lmao)

the way people animate depends all on their style (there's two common ways to do blinking animation - having the anchor point at the bottom of the eye, or the middle of it) and the program they use. it's been a while, but i could probably tell you how to do some basic animations on videostar still even though i've been doing them in after effects for about 2-3years now. ALSO the best way to have an animation be noticeable is to over-exaggerate it/make them Big - which, yes, can mean 'breaking bones' and having the limbs be a little wonky at the start. (if you want it to be realistic though go Just to the point where it looks uncomfortable lmao)

uhm. again i am so sorry that this is so long i THINK this is everything? if not: my inbox/dms are always open if you ever want to ask more questions, wanna follow up on something, etc etc!! (also if you ever start editing please send me your edits!!! i'd love to see them <3)

[maddierussell04]

Balance and King is still a thing

Alright so I decided to make and exstensive thread on Godzilla KotM and the alpha system it introduced. Because I feel like it’s perhaps a bit misunderstood and a bit overthought. 

Important to note that a lot of it is my interpretation of the lore some of which aren’t confirmed but I’m simply using some logical assumptions based of what we have

No of course, this is lore, lore can go a bit in depth so this may seem a bit longer, so TL;DR Godzilla is the leader of a pack that includes most of the titans we see in KotM but not all and likely some of them are in it for individual reasons.

So to actually start with it, in 2014, the style they went for was different, much more “an ancient alpha predator” or basically an apex. One would think that KotM and it’s alpha system would contradict as he was hunting the MUTOs there and in KotM one arrives in Boston. However that is not true.

Yes, Godzilla hunts the MUTOs, because by nature the MUTOs were rivals or hunted Godzillas, able to supress the atomic breath with their EMP abilities. However it seems that Godzilla and other Titans have a form of inteligence and personality perhaps somewhere almost human. A lot of the time they still follow their basic instincts but seems to have emotions or think about what they are doing.

This may vary from species to species, but the MUTOs likely exhibit similar behavior. So why is that important?

Well, because in this case, it depends on the individuals themselves. The 2 we see in 2014 are freshly out of their metamorphosis and now try to mate, seemingly something Godzilla can’t tolerate because that means more enemies for him and also perhaps his pack (we will get into that later).

One of the things the director of KotM noted is that the MUTO we see in KotM (nicknamed Barb) has apparently a damaged eggsack, so in that regard she is of no concern to Godzilla and perhaps Barb understood she would have better chances to live within Godzillas pack of various Titans then trying to fight him.

Which speaking off, perhaps the 2014 MUTOs were never given a chance to join in the first place because they were trying to mate or simply ignored that. After their demise, MUTOPrime shows up and I believe it’s a similar situation, it runs Solo probably and probably ignored Godzilla for a while, only when her children died did she step in perhaps to make back her loses.

So that out of the way, how does the alpha-pack thing actually work? So to get it off the table, the wolve analogy Mark gives in the movie is wrong and based on outdated stuff, HOWEVER, Alphas are still a thing in nature, for example primates like chimpz and gorillas. (Perhaps Mark wanted to cut the chase with the general and simply used the wolve example not complicate things.)

Which that gets also pointed out, because the scene where Godzilla hears the ORCA for the first time and uses his intimidation signal, Graham compares it to a silverback gorilla pounding his chest.

So likely, the pack off these various species that decided to form one, work similarly to how troops of gorillas or chimpz work. It’s seems to be a combination of multiple structures, the silverbacks task is to lead and protect the group, however the infighting that happens works more like chimpz, simply because infighting seems to be clearly a thing which speaking of why would they fight anyway?

Well, it’s pretty simple, it’s a hierarchy where only the strongest rules. It seems also to reason the ones part of Godzilla’s pack are also some of the most powerful out there of their species as well, perhaps this plays also a role why it was build in the first place. Godzilla and Mothra build the head of the pack in this case, though I have an interesting idea on Mothra as to why she is so high in the first place, later to that.

But basically, Rodan, Barb, Behemoth, Tiamat, all the other Titans we see in KotM awakening and destroy the world for Ghidorah, would likely fight each other to get higher in ranks within the pack, this could be achieved simply by intimidation or even killing the opponent and the end goal could be various things, access to specific recourses they need, territory or perhaps even chances to reproduce since perhaps Godzilla only allows the top of the packs to reproduce, like say Mothra.

Which speaking off, I think we all saw perhaps that Mothra wasn’t the strongest fighter in KotM, however she seemingly is on equal terms with Godzilla. In pack structures like Hyenas, some can get higher in rank not via violence but befriending other Hyenas or doing things like taking care of the kids to get the leaders trust.

So not unlikely Mothra perhaps in her nature was more caring and less fighting and got that high that way.

Now, obviously, she got ignored by Rodan and the other whenever Ghidorah “killed” Godzilla and took over. Since we established the Titans having a higher level of thought, what likely happened was that they decided to rather follow Ghidorah and do his bidding and perhaps survive that way then try to defy him, likely from experience.

And well, this goes back into my other thought, that the pack alliance the Titans have is only there in the first place because of Ghidorah.

The information that Chen gets from the stone tablets and tells us is that Ghidorah “swallowed man and gods alike.” Now humans come in later and play an important part for the end scene, but later to that.

But basically it means when Ghidorah arrived, he probably waged war on all the Titans and murdered them, promtly reducing their numbers of some. It seemed to have also been a sort of war. So what likely they needed to do is team up to destroy a common enemy, and perhaps some Titans also joined Ghidorah since they saw more likelyhood of survival on his side.

Now this didn’t end up happening and at the end of all of it and Godzilla remained the King of the Monsters.

“okay but that scene of them bowing was stupid and makes no sense!”

*big sigh* alright, to get to the final point, like I said, the Titans are clearly more intelligent then people give them credit for, even 2014 had scenes shown of that and KotM took it’s own direction of that.

So why would these monsters all bow to Godzilla? Well on one hand it’s cool af shot and if hate it I’m just gonna assume you hate fun. Joke aside, bowing or lowering yourself to the ground is something very common in nature to show submission, again, mentioned in stuff like Gorillas, being lower to the ground and avoiding eye contact, this is exactly what happens at the end of KotM, just a bit more stylized.

And now here comes my suggestion from where they even got it from. Back in ancient times, before Ghidorah attacked, humans worshipped the titans, build temples around them and prayed to them. They were much more connected with them back then and perhaps Godzilla and the other ones we saw in temples and the like adopted this behavior into them, as they saw it as a form of submission. After Ghidorah got defeated the first time and the Titans were much more viewer in numbers and had builded a pack, they copied what they remembered seeing humans do in their presence to show submission. And obviously, Godzilla and the like know humans, multiple times is it show that they curiously inspect and look at them and don’t completely ignore them.

Because humans are part of this planet too and we belong also within the natural order of things, which the titans obviously have an affinity for. We are not part of their pack however, more so we are our own thing and that also applies likely to a lot of titans that didn’t awake in KotM and stayed in Hollow Earth perhaps.

Kong for example obviously is his own group but has no direct beef with Godzilla and wants just to be left alone. It’s when Kong leaves his island after Godzilla is tracking down Ghidorah again (aka Mechagodzilla), also leaving his territory, that he attacks Kong and Kong fights back and since he is the only leader of his own troop he tries to defy Godzilla. 

With Godzilla not wanting to outright kill him perhaps, possibly rather wanting to Kong to join him since Kong doesn’t really have any other options.

I think I will make a second post to this, in regard to the human relationship with Godzilla, because many people foolishly assume that Godzilla would just kill all humans if he really protect earth (which is a dumb thing based on dumb ideas about ecology) but this so far is my explanation for the stuff that happens in KotM.

[reviviscencegruiform]

Tell the story. Tell the story, it was such a beautiful moment. It has to be shared with the world.

//Alright. So this happened at Vidcon in 2000...what? 2016? Maybe 2014? To set the scene, we were a small horde of mentally ill 18 to 20 somethings that had all hyped one another up the previous night while drinking to go on a stupid nature walk for our stupid mental health because we were dead bored with the con. That was a whole other random chimp event because what caused it is it's own story, anyway- we piled into two separate cars and in one car was me, my boyfriend Jon, and our friends Chris, Zach, and Hunter. Maybe one other person, I don't remember, but we got turned around somehow.

We ended up going around and around this lake in the middle of Anaheim when it was 108°F outside and we just could not figure out how to get to the park from the google maps directions and it turns out it was because we kept driving past this gate and that was the way to the park. It wasn't supposed to be locked, but more on that later. On our maybe, eeeeh, 4th? circle of the lake we stop at the gate and send out the resident Irishman, Chris, into the heat to check and see if the gate was just closed and we were stupid. No, it was locked, we weren't stupid and this road is so small you can not turn around and it's miles long so we're like "Well, now what? The other guys are waiting on us."

For this next part you need to know that there are several multi-million dollar mansions surrounding this man-made lake.

Well, the appearance of Chris at the gate and our driving around, apparently the wrong way, summoned the most wretched angry old man from the ether, no one saw him coming. He just appeared like he used instant transmission fueled by his privileged rage alone.

So this guy starts SCREAMING at us. Like whole hog screeching at us about it. No one can understand what the hell he's saying and so Jon opens the door to try to explain and Chris gets in the car saying "Don't, don't, he's crazy. Just get in the car." and he was right because this old guy moves to stand in front of the car saying "I'm going to call the cops! I'm going to call the cops! There's a gate right there. Go out through the gate!" and we're like "It's locked." and he says "No! Why are you here?" and we said "Google maps told us to go here." and he says "I think you're lying. Do you think I'm stupid? Are you stupid or am I stupid? I'm going to call the cops!" I remember that part very specifically because it took every ounce of willpower from everyone in the car not to answer his question honestly. Then Jon has to do this near entirely off road five point turn to get us out of there because that guy would not move unless it was to get in front of the car again. We managed to find a whole other way to the park that was actually the exit to the park because that closed and locked gate was the real entrance, but because of that lake road it turns out people just use the exit.

We meet up with the others and we're telling them about what happened in a "You will not believe what just happened to us" kind of way and lo and behold that same old man comes walking up the path and makes a point to walk through our group, that isn't standing on the main path mind you. That old guy must have known he fucked up because he didn't say shit and was coming from the direction of the locked gate and I guess this goblin glaring at us all was just too much for Jon because he looks that old man right in the eye and calls him a bitch.

That old man starts screaming again "I'm calling the cops! The cops are coming! The cops are coming!" They never came by the way, we were there for hours after this on our stupid nature walk and not even one showed up, but anyway all I can say for Jon is he was a struggling alcoholic at the time so this opportunity presented itself for him to unleash the beast and so he did. "Shut up you old wrinkly bitch! You are going to die. You are old. You are going to get a heatstroke and die! It's over for you! Fuck off!" and the old guy said something else, I don't remember what, but that made Jon speak the legendary "Fuck you! Fuck where you came from!" And then he told him to suck his dick.

Now, I was mortified. Zach was on the ground cackling and Chris was holding his knees trying not to be on the ground cackling. Everyone else was somewhere between those two stages. "Oh my God, why did you say that?" and Jon was like "I know ten people exactly like that, that I had to deal with when I was a kid so now that I'm an adult and can do whatever the fuck I want I'm going to. It's good to tell old losers who try to take advantage of that to fuck with you and ruin your day to fuck off and remind them they ain't shit and are going to die soon. Sometimes they forget about that and you have to humble them."

I don't know when the old man left, he did at some point, but we went on our walk and the whole time we were like a shuffling group of roman senators debating over the ethics of reminding the elderly that death approaches. It was just one of those bonding, but cringe young adult moments that no one, but the present parties holds dear.//

[vro0m]

vro0m’s rewatch - 133/310

2014 Chinese GP

Hi! It's round 4! Everybody has high expectations following the Bahrain GP. I worry that we'll all be disappointed.

Apparently there's a lot of graining here, and it was a wet quali, so the track was washed clean and they can choose their tyres. It's going to be strategic then. 

We see Lewis in the drivers' parade. He says they get more and more fans here every year. He says it's gonna be a tough day and degradation is going to play a big part. He's not focused at all, he's waving to the fans. He says the graining is less of a concern as it gets hotter so he hopes it's going to be less of an issue during the race. 

The journalists think Lewis is starting to get in Nico's head. They think Lewis is playing games, for example when he said after the race that he was slower than Nico. Nico is still leading the WDC but he has to win today to turn this situation around, because Lewis is coming for him. 

Quali report. It was indeed very wet. So that's 3 wet quali out of 4 so far this season. Maldonado didn't go out at all because the car was broken, with an oil leak. Q1 went down without surprises. In Q2, it was Lewis who set the pace on inters. Massa and Raikkonen basically raced each other down the straight trying to get some clear track. But Raikkonen messed up and starts in 11th. The McLarens were also out in Q2. Jenson seems dispirited. Grosjean and Seb struggled to stay on track in Q3. Seb got the hang of it and he starts 3rd on the grid, but Daniel managed to outqualify him and starts P2. And guess who's on pole? It's Lewis again! 3 poles out of 4! Rosberg spun trying to catch him, and so he starts 4th.

That's Lewis 34th pole already! Damn these numbers are starting to add up. This rewatch is really going along isn't it? 

There's a whole segment about Domenicalli resigning from his job. They're talking about the lack of results, Alonso listing the championships they could've won and didn't. He's being replaced by a man who has zero F1 experience (why tf would you do that jesus christ), enters Marco Mattiacci, until then president and CEO of Ferrari North America. He said even he was surprised by the job offer. Then Alonso and an Italian journalist say you don't need racing experience and point out the example of Briatore who sold t-shirts before he got involved in F1. I mean sure, but that didn't end well did it? Mattiacci says he loves racing and does so in his spare time. For some reason the background music is the Game of Thrones title theme????? (note : actually the timing of posting this review in 2022 when Binotto just left Ferrari is very funny)

Brundle and Bruno Senna analyze the fight between Lewis and Nico in Bahrain. First Rosberg's overtake on Lewis that didn't work out, and how very close to a catastrophe they got as the contact could've resulted in a broken front wing for Rosberg and a puncture for Lewis (spoiler : foreshadowing.......). We are shown their respective lines on the track, just like I told you about in the last review, Lewis realizing he will be overtaken and going slightly wider to turn in sooner and keep the inside line. And then the second try, when it didn't work and Nico was ahead. They demonstrate how Lewis was strategizing his lines as they went, giving up on the current corner to position his car in a way that would allow him to overtake him in the next one, thinking ahead like a chess player. It's very impressive. They switch to show us Seb and Daniel also doing it well in Bahrain, and then Seb and Webber crashing in the 2010 Turkish GP compared to Jenson and Lewis fighting fairly in the same race. (And that really shows you how fair and clean a driver he usually is, contrary to some ridiculous claims that have been made in 2021 lol) 

Now we get Lewis telling us about his pole lap as usual. He said it was very slippery. You try to figure out where to brake as you fight the understeer, all the while taking the wind into account. He shows the spot where he lost a lot of time locking up one of his front tyres which also affected the next corner. Then he thought he needed to gain more time in the rest of the lap. He shows the areas of standing water. He thought he'd miss a turn because he went in too deep but fortunately his car turned at the right time. Brundle says the title is clearly either coming to him or Nico. He makes a gesture with his microphone and a face that says "man come on…"

But Brundle presses further. Lewis says "well at the moment" but the Redbulls have a very good car and good down force. "If they can get their engine sorted I think they'll be fighting us hard."

He thinks it's "naturally" going to happen at some point in the season and he hopes Mercedes keeps moving forward as well. Brundle asks if he can take a psychological advantage from Rosberg making loads of mistakes while he himself is putting on the pressure. He says yes, when you're in practice and you put in a lap you think is good and realize your teammate is a few tenths faster than you… he says he knows how it feels, and it makes you think you have to push more. Brundle says in F1 you're either giving pressure or taking it and Lewis chuckles as he answers he likes it better when he's giving it than taking it.

He reiterates the race is going to be difficult, the track is really hard on the tyres. 

Formation lap 

Lewis backs them up to the point it looks like he's stopped on the track completely lol. Brundle says it makes a lot of sense to do that and he's surprised they don't see it more often. It kind of became standard since then didn't it? 

And they're racing! 

Massa overtakes Rosberg who has a bad start. Alonso is also ahead of him, BUT HE MAKES CONTACT WITH MASSA! Alonso still gets ahead and overtakes Daniel to go fight Seb who also got ahead of his teammate into turn 1. Lewis is getting away already! Hulkenberg and Rosberg are fighting for P6. At the end of the first lap, Lewis is 1.5 seconds ahead of Seb, then come Alonso, Daniel, Massa, Rosberg, Hulkenberg, Grosjean, Raikkonen and Bottas. And Valtteri overtakes Raikkonen for P9. Hulkenberg complains he has front wing damage. Valtteri overtakes Grosjean as well! And Rosberg overtakes Massa for P5. Sutil retires for the third time in a row. Alonso complains of graining. Lewis says he also has graining on the left front but the tyres are doing quite good and it's not causing any problem. Seb also reports "serious graining on the front left" but he's told there's no good gap behind. There's telemetry problems for Rosberg, but Lewis is fine. 

We're 10 laps in. Lewis is almost 10 seconds ahead. The order hasn't changed : Seb, Alonso, Daniel, Rosberg, Massa, Hulkenberg, Bottas, Raikkonen as Grosjean pits and Kvyat now in P10. We're told Massa also has telemetry problems. Massa and Raikkonen pit in response to Grosjean but there's an issue for Massa! It's long… he shakes his head. They seem to not have had the correct rear tyres ready or something… and even now that they have them they struggle to put them on. He throws his hands in the air, shakes his head again and lift his visor. It's so long my god. The mechanic finally lifts his hands, the brakes are smoking from being stopped for so long, and even then they take a long time to set the car back down for him to leave. Terrible. Alonso comes in. Hulkenberg comes in. Rosberg asks his team to check his front wing when he comes in, and they say there might be rubber stuck in it. Seb pits. He comes back out behind Alonso though! Rosberg is called in. Seb is closing on Alonso, they're fighting for P3 but virtually for P2. Bono : "okay Lewis, so Ricciardo the only car that's in our pit window at the moment, you're 4 tenths faster than him last lap." Seb says they're too slow in the straights to overtake Alonso, he asks if it's worth backing off. He's told yes. Daniel pits from P2, he's out in P5. That should clear Lewis’ window? But he comes on the radio to say "surprisingly the front tyres still feel really good, as well as the rears." But Crofty points out his lap tyres aren't as good as they were so he'll have to come in anyway to keep Alonso and Seb at bay. Oh and we see he did lock up a bit, and went wide. He's actually struggling with grip. Yep. He pits. It's a good 2.9 stop and he's back out in the lead still, but of course Alonso is significantly closer now. Mercedes has to ask Rosberg to read certain numbers on his steering wheel so they can calculate the amount of fuel he has left as they can't get his telemetry data. He's told he's good on fuel. 

It's lap 20. Lewis is 5 seconds ahead of Alonso. Then we have Seb, Rosberg, Daniel, Hulkenberg, Bottas, Raikkonen, Grosjean and Perez. It's not a fascinating race so far ngl. Daniel is told his pace is good and only the Mercedes are quicker than him. Indeed Rosberg is closing on Seb. And they're wheel to wheel in the straight! He goes a bit deep in the corner, but he manages to stay ahead while Seb has to carefully avoid contact. Now they're in the pit straight, one behind the other, very very close still. Seb takes the outside line, they're wheel to wheel again! But as the track turns to the left, the advantage goes to Rosberg, who stays ahead. Seb has to fall back a bit and Daniel is right there, watching, waiting. And there he goes, attacking Seb in the next lap. DRS for Ricciardo while Seb lost the DRS over Rosberg. But it's too far still. Oh and Seb is told once again to let him through. Daniel is told to get close and overtake him. Seb asks what tyres he's on. "Primes, but he stopped later than you," says Rocky. "Tough luck," Seb answers. So he's not obeying is he? Brat (affectionate). And yep. Seb defends against Daniel. But Ricciardo is close, and he has the DRS advantage. He takes the inside line, and Seb gives up. Crofty and Brundle debate whether he yielded or made a mistake. We hear another team radio message. "Sebastian, Daniel is on a two-stop." Seb tells them to think about boxing. Grosjean is told to use 4th gear as little as possible as they are having problems with it. He exclaims that he can't! But he's told they have to or it's DNF. Rocky : "Sebastian, stay out, it helps us, please stay out. We are aware." And Grosjean goes off track and joins back. He comes in and retires. 

It's lap 30. Lewis complains about his tyres. He’s still in the lead of course, 13.3 seconds ahead of Alonso. Then the order goes Rosberg, Ricciardo, Seb, Hulkenberg, Bottas, Raikkonen, Perez and Kvyat. And here we go for the second wave of pit stops with Hulkenberg and Bottas. Rosberg is told to push to overtake Alonso, but he's still 1.5 behind so. Idk about that. Alonso pits. Then Seb pits. There's 20 laps to go. Rosberg and Ricciardo pit. Lewis is called in, they say they will clean his front wing for some reason. He was a bit slow to leave the box, 3.9. He's still in the lead though. Like. BY FAR. Earlier we saw the fuel use of the top 10 and for some reason there wasn't any data for Bottas. Ted says it's because his telemetry isn't working either. But we had Rosberg's, which prompts Crofty to ask whether they fixed his issue but Brundle says it might affect some components of telemetry and not others. However he did have to tell them what his fuel consumption was earlier so. Idk. 

Lap 40, and indeed they ask him for it again. He says : "33.5. It really annoys me to do that so I need to stop doing that now." He's closing on Alonso. And here you go. He overtakes him easily. Ricciardo is faster than Alonso as well, but he's 6 seconds down. Can he make it? 10 laps to go. Now Daniel is told Alonso is matching his pace. "Keep pushing!" 5 laps to go. Ricciardo gets the DRS from a back marker but actually loses a bit of time overtaking him. Final lap. Lewis says he got the checkered flag, for some reason. 

And it's the end of the race! 

It's the first time Lewis wins three races in a row. Rosberg P2, Alonso P3. It wasn't a very interesting race.

Rosberg is still leading the WDC but only by 4 points now.

Nico doesn't look too happy in the cool down room. The Mercedes representative tries to make small talk with him and he barely answers and kind of shrugs it off. Lewis and Alonso are talking off camera I believe. These men don't have too much to say to each other. Rosberg sarcastically asks Lewis if it was a tough race. Lewis laughs a bit.

For some reason Lewis hands his trophy over to Nico to let him feel its weight I think? They do look unusually light.

Just like Seb once, Lewis sprays the podium girls and the cameraman. I don't like it when they do that, I find it a bit obnoxious tbh.

Brundle says it looked easy from where they stood. Lewis says he couldn't have done it without the hard work from the team. He can't believe how good that car is. He says surprisingly the tyres did very well even though the quali was wet. He says he was racing himself really. He's happy Nico is up there with him, he really deserves it. Later Brundle jokes they can't improve this car any more than that! Lewis says the team is on a roll and they have to keep working hard because the others are pushing to catch them.

In the garage, some guys are dancing as they drink.

Lewis is getting ready for the team photo and already trying to get the champagne bottle out of his team member’s hands.

He does so forcefully and then sprays the guy who had it with it lol.

Nico's there and Toto and they take the photo as one of them sprays the champagne in the air.

(idk what Nico was saying but he looks so annoyed AND annoying in this gif lmao, absolute diva)

And that's how they interview him, as he wipes his eyes from the champagne.

They talk about his hair? Simon says "the power of the mohawk!" Lewis smiles wide. He says he didn't plan to have his hair look like this, it just grows that way.

Simon asks if they can have a look, he says no and Johnny tries to take away his cap, which. Consent, man? Ever heard of it?

Lewis laughs it off and gets the conversation back on track : he's so proud of his team, the energy is great and he hopes it is as good in the factory as it is there. He's grateful he can put in performances like today. Simon says they often travel with these guys and they seem very very happy. He says though Lewis still has to do the work on the track and it seems to be going so well at the moment, with three 1-2. Lewis says of course it's great when you're winning but they're not getting complacent, they're working hard, the guys are pushing hard. They're still trying to improve the car even though it's very good. He says he feels like he's growing with the team and the car. He's more comfortable with the car this year, he understands it better and that's what you see in the results. Johnny says his messages on the radio sound so positive, is it what he's feeling : positivity? Lewis nods "it is, it is… are you gonna give me your mic?"

Johnny forgot he didn't have one. They laugh at him. Lewis says he's had amazing support here from the fans, he sees them at the airport and in the hotel, they're amazing. Simon says that's 25 wins now, equal with Niki and Jim Clarke. He says he's pushed Fangio out of the top 10.

Simon says he always says he doesn't know but he must know! Lewis says he doesn't, he doesn't know the stats until they tell him. He gets reflective, he says it's remarkable for him to come from Stevenage and he never believed he'd end up there. All the work his dad and family put in to get him there, he is so grateful. "And to be up there with the greats, I hope my dad's proud, I hope my family's proud because, I mean, I'm working to continue on the journey that they helped me get on." He's way more serious as he says that. I wonder how they get along at that time, we haven't seen Anthony in a while.

It's awful btw because talking about consent you see these men forcing their way to take photos with him. First while he's blinded by the champagne some guy comes, puts his hand on his shoulder without asking and takes a photo. And when they start the interview he's still behind him taking selfies, leaning in very close to him where he can't see him. And then during the interview you see this other guy behind him trying to get his photo taken next to him while he talks. It must be so annoying. It's like he's not a person but just a monument or something. I don't like seeing it. 

[alexsfictionaddiction]

Review: Last Seen Online by Lauren James

There is something about thrillers with an online element that I find really intriguing. With the internet being as wild as it is, it often feels like anything is possible here -even things you previously thought unbelievable. Add the insane energy that fandoms contain and it's the perfect mix for a twisty, shocking thriller.

Aspiring, young actress Delilah has a nightmare audition for her school play but it sees her paired up with Sawyer, whose mother starred in a very popular TV show decades before. A show that ended when one co-star apparently murdered the other. But Delilah has come across some mysterious blog posts from back then, written by an online persona called gottiewrites, who appears to know things about the actors' personal lives. Before long, Delilah is immersed in a world of conspiracy, obsession and the fact that the truth of what happened may still be hidden.

From the very first paragraph, we are clearly supposed to think of Delilah as relatable and 'just a normal girl'. She worries about the same minor imperfections that we do and so, it's obvious that she is us in the story. Having a character who serves as the reader's eyes in the story is a really great device but I'm not sure I should have been able to 'see' the workings of this in the writing. I probably would have liked Delilah just as much as I did without being immediately told that she worries about bad breath or her period showing.

I really liked how the story was told in various forms of media and that we were introduced to the scandal as it unfolded in the press. It meant that we were given evidence to come to our own conclusions as Delilah was piecing things together and that made for a really satisfying read. I also felt like I got to know the show, despite it never being an actual show. I don't know whether Lauren James has any experience with the makings of a TV show but it felt very well researched.

Of course, we also get gottiewrites' blog posts to read through. I really believed in gottiewrites as an obsessed online fan but sometimes some of the choice of words made me think 'hmm, was this how we spoke in 2014?'. As someone who was heavily involved in online communities in 2014 and before, some of the language that gottie and their commenters use felt far too contemporary. For example, I don't remember us talking about 'receipts' 10 years ago. It's a minor thing that I know some readers won't even notice but it did take me out of things temporarily.

The way the comments spiral was really well done and read really authentically. I could believe that these were copied and pasted from a real Tumblr post. I could almost hear all the different voices chiming in with their thoughts and I definitely forgot that James wrote all of these bits too. It's a real art to come up with all of these tiny character appearances, so I really commend them for that.

Delilah's characterisation as an obsessive friend also felt really authentic. She displays more than a few neurodiverse traits and I'd believe it if the author confirmed that she's undiagnosed but certainly autistic. Her intensity frightens her friend Nida and this is something that many autistic people come up against. I've not seen it displayed quite as explicitly as James does it here, so I really appreciated that.

Last Seen Online is definitely a page-turner. The nature of the format (the blog and comments make up quite a lot of words) slows down the pacing but the fact that I wanted to keep reading it means that it is worth diving into. I can see how some readers might find the plot convoluted but as I said at the start of this post, it's believeable if you know anything about the craziness of online fandoms. If you like YA stories that explore celebrity culture, scandals and fandom investigations, you'll love it.

[motorclit]

I need to rant/vent a little...

I'm not sure if it's people in denial or what, but if you want a very basic, representative idea as to what the US is like when it comes to politics, the biggest one would be the show The Boys on Amazon Prime. (The name "Vought" that's featured in the show should be a gigantic giveaway for anyone keeping up with one of the orchestrators of Project 2025.) You know how a LOT of who works in Vought tends to be obsessed with doing all sorts of nasty sex stuff in the building? Look no further than two examples, with one that went viral of a sex tape that got leaked of two guys doing it in I believe the Senate Hearing Room (if I remember correctly), and the other being how Grindr went down in the local area where the RNC took place. Obviously, anyone who reads this will likely go, "Because they're always guilty of what they accuse others of." And like, yeah I know, but The Boys is so on the nose that there's an impact crater in the face, ya know?

Then you've got Game of Thrones (yep, waking those memories up in ya) and if you paid close attention to the politics, you'll notice some similarities there, but a glaring similarity I've noticed is (and I know this book series was written decades ago) between Joffrey and the big cheetoh, as well as Ramsey and DeSantis (which apparently the guy enjoyed torturing people when he worked at think at Guantanamo Bay, though correct me if I'm wrong if that wasn't where he worked at).

I'd throw in a lot of references from any X-Men storyline, but that's rather common knowledge that they're full of allegories regarding marginalized people and how they're treated.

But... The Boys and Game of Thrones... How has anyone watched them and not notice the glaring similarities? I know there are plenty who have, but there are some that remind me of right-wing Star Trek fans.. Like.. what? How? How. HOW.

I also wonder if some are in denial of how close the similarities are (this includes to what aligns with fascism) because that would mean they would have to acknowledge that just going out to vote really isn't enough. And there's a mix of people in that particular camp who either don't like it and thus ignore it, find it inconvenient to actually do anything, or don't know how to envision living under a different (and BETTER) system (or lack of a system altogether!) that would rather not take you seriously if you point all this out to them. Which means they're not too much better than the people in the other US political wing, but at least they have the decency to be upfront about it. Dems/libs would rather demonstrate that through actions (or inactions).

It pains me further to say that because of mine and my husband's situation in life, we really can't participate in much of anything ourselves, but that's because we are so rural that you have to drive to the nearest neighbor, but your neighbor doesn't like you at all because you're just different. And we can't afford to move. And I'm disabled and can't drive. I'm STUCK on my parents' farm. I've been largely isolated since moving back here in autumn of 2014 only to have it worsen with the pandemic. I can barely function in public when I do manage to go anywhere (which is sometimes to pick up groceries with my husband just to get out of the house). Granted, I'm trying to grow food, but it's hard when you hardly have any money to get started and suddenly your ONE rain barrel is clogged with algae because you couldn't get financial help to get a proper cover for it, you have to dump it to fix it, and LOOK AT THAT WE HAVE A GODDAMN DROUGHT. Then you get BITCHED AT when you ask for help as to where I can find more rain barrels even though you never asked mom to buy more for you, because you can afford it now if you save up because dad figured out the only way to get you to do chores is you pay you weekly for it but you never did it before because you can't stand hearing them talk about fucking politics all the fucking time or just dad watching faux news on full blast and you KNOW if you open your mouth you'll get into a scream-fest that goes nowhere so you're in literal PAIN staying silent and anytime you make a point when you're roped into one you get threatened with being kicked out and....

I wanna move back to Pittsburgh. I keep hearing some people from there asking others why anyone would wanna move there. I've lived there for 7 years and loved it. I felt like I was a part of the world. Here on the farm, I feel like I'm put away, out of sight. My parents ignored me most of my life unless they noticed I made mistakes due to a lack of their parenting and got my ass beat for it, or unless they were trying to mould me into a person that I'm not and getting mad when it doesn't work. They would only connect with me if it were on their terms with their interests. Not mine. My brother had better luck with them because he liked baseball like my mom and guns and some other stuff like my dad. But because I'm the daughter who loved nature and dinosaurs too much, they didn't wanna bother trying to connect with me. And they don't today. They can't tear their fucking eyes from the computer, TV, or in mom's case, the TV, tablet AND phone combined to listen to me when I talk about something that I like, but had the audacity to get mad that I spent so much time in my room on my computer in high school when they first got the farm. I've called them on this and they act as you'd expect: pissy, sometimes screaming, and trying to act like I could move out whenever I want.

But my husband and I can't afford to move, and even if he got a better job, which might be a trade, it still wouldn't be enough. We are stuck and I'm just trying to keep my mind out of dark places. And that alone is fucking exhausting.

I need therapy. But because I'm Autistic, I won't be getting therapy that helps me heal, whatever "healing" looks like or feels like. Because therapy in the US is a big scam. They help just enough so you can continue working. Because if too many people get true healing, they might realize that they (and the masses) deserve better than capitalism, that it is they who run the capitalist machine, not the wealthy elite. And they can't have that. So I'm left trying to figure out why my mind shouldn't go into dark places. I have to figure out what makes me happy, and before anyone tells me to find a hobby, I've exhausted most of my hobbies. All I've got left is gratuitous amounts of masturbating or sex with my husband, ordering some nice things for myself online (such as patches, books, CDs, movies, etc.), and saving up for getting a fuck ton of tattoos so I can at least feel more comfortable in my own skin.

If anyone has read this far, keep in mine that I'm ranting and venting. I'm not looking for advice. And don't you dare tell me to write to whatever representative. Anytime I've EVER sought help of any kind by going to specific people as I've been instructed to, I was met with a shrug of the shoulders, a "sorry, there's nothing I can do," a "what do you want me to do about it?," ridicule, shame, or just plain silence.

So unfortunately for me and my husband, we are on our own until we somehow move to Pittsburgh. Until then, we're mostly dead inside. Likely no help coming.

All I can do is maybe go to the library, focus on tattoo goals, and pray I can get more rain barrels so the droughts won't be so bad when I'm trying to grow food.

....by the way, we have an oil (fracking?) pad just over the goddamn hill from us. We're also on a former strip mine, hence all the goddamn cracks in this house's walls and foundation and why our well water is full of iron and coal dust that we haven't been able to filter properly just yet (got like, one half of that filtration system after TWO DECADES because my parents can't be fucked to take care of things, and they gotta get the other half like next week or some shit.... yeah, you want pictures? I can take plenty of what this water does...). So I got no clue how long me being able to grow food or us being able to use well water is gonna last.

Again: this is a rant/vent post. If anyone gets mad at me for "only complaining and not doing anything" after reading all this, shut the fuck up. I've been trying for fuckin' YEARS to do something, and my health makes it way more difficult than it already fucking is. Eat my shit.

...like.. FUCK, I so badly wanna just do some sort of photo-related tour to show you how shitty this farm is and what I gotta deal with, but I'm afraid of it getting too much internet attention that my parents might see it and then they'll get pissed at me for bringing shame to them or something (which it was their fucking fault for getting so easily duped but my mom just HAD to have her horses and she did not care for the quality of our living conditions).

Pittsburgh was better than this farm. I'm sorry. I wanna move back. I was able to at least be independent and go places and get the groceries myself and shit. What hurts is that when we finally do move back, I will need maybe a year or two to readjust because my sensory processing issues are gonna be overwhelming. Too overwhelming for me to confidently ride a bike. I can't ride any bikes here safely because there are WAY too many blind turns and a LOT of oil-pad worker trucks SPEEDING on these back roads. Everyone who lives on this back road has experienced being nearly run off the fucking road, unless a couple of them are on their tractors.

I'm so tired...

[popcornandgreenolives]

The Amazing Spider-Man 2

Movie Review (2014)

I had originally seen this movie in a theatre (!!) when it first came out (seriously can't believe that was TEN years ago!), and since then usually caught bits and pieces here and there whenever it was on TV. It wasn’t until last weekend that I had actually taken the time to watch it in its entirety again for the first time in a LONG time. 

Watching this movie again got me digging back into my movie review archive. I have been known to have opinions that have evolved through multiple rewatches of things, so I get curious to see what I had initially written about them. But I was kind of surprised (and confused, honestly) that I had actually never posted anything about The Amazing Spider-Man 2 - which is really weird because I swear I remember writing about it.

Anyway here is my super belated review because better late than never, right?

I guess I will start out with my overall thoughts, which also happen to mostly be the things I didn’t like.

First off, the story as a whole felt chaotic. They went a bit overkill with the villains and there was just too many concurrent storylines going at once, which resulted in less-than satisfactory payoffs for each of them individually. From the beginning, Electro seemed like main villain of the movie, yet his story seemed to end abruptly to make room for the conclusion of The Green Goblin.  Meanwhile Harry seemed to have a slow buildup throughout the film and then suddenly became a big deal villain only towards the end. And then there was Rhino who popped up here and there. I thought that they should have kept the focus of this sequel on Electro (see 'random tidbits' below), while also introducing Harry Osborne and building a foundation to establish that he was indeed one of Peter's 'best friends'. And then they could have devoted the next installment to The Green Goblin’s villain arc. However of course, now in retrospect we know that there never ended up being a part 3, so maybe it was a case of just trying to cram as much as possible into this one.

Okay, now for the things I liked. 

Something I noticed and appreciated more during this rewatch was the relationship between Peter and Aunt May. I really liked that there was a more noticeable mother-son dynamic in this film, and that you could see from the things she did (working hard to put herself through nursing school so that she could support Peter) and said (“You’re my boy”) that showed how much she loved him like a son despite not being his actual mother. I also loved (LOVED) any and all scenes with Peter/Spider-Man and Gwen Stacy. I know that Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone were dating at the time, which I suppose helps… but they had such amazing chemistry that was really apparent on screen and made me so invested in them as a couple. I don’t have a lot - if any? - of celebrity couples that I ‘ship’ (do people still say that??)  but they were seriously SO freaken cute, I love(d) them sososo much (RIP StoneField!! ☹).  And while I hated the fact that Gwen had to die in this movie, I do think that her death scene was so tragically and (cinematically) beautifully done at the same time.

Other random thoughts:

I had forgotten that BJ Novak was in this movie.

Why was Gwen applying for scholarships and being accepted into college after graduation?

I can’t tell if Aunt May knew or suspected that Peter was in fact Spider-Man. It seemed as though she was heavily hinting that she knew his secret at times, however I know in comicbook-land, characters are often surprisingly oblivious to the obvious (eg. Lois Lane not knowing that Clark Kent was Superman for the longest time).

Random tidbits I found out on the internet while Googling during commercial breaks:

The international title for the movie was The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Rise of Electro, which makes me think that the original intent was that he would be the main villain of the movie. (source)

When Gwen Stacy passed away in this movie, the time on the clock tower struck 1:21. This is in reference to issue #121 from The Amazing Spider-Man comic book series entitled "The Night Gwen Stacy Died" (also known as "The Green Goblin's Last Stand"). (source)

Andrew Garfield avoided Emma Stone for a week to prepare for Gwen's death scene. He is ~so~ method. (source)

Final Thoughts:

The reason for this revisit and belated movie review are due to the fact that The Amazing Spider-Man movies were on TV last weekend and I had unintentionally gotten sucked into watching them. Both of them. In their entirety. Commercials and all. I don't know why I did this, especially considering I have access to both of these movies on iTunes – commercial free.

I had re-read my original review of the first Amazing Spider-Man movie, and it mostly holds up - I still love that movie. However this second movie was just alright. It had its moments, but overall - especially plotwise - it was sub-par to the original. 

But you know what? Even though I had spent a crazy amount of time watching the with-commercial versions of these films, I don't regret it. It was fun. It made me feel happy and nostalgic :)