#2020 best nine instagram

[httpiastri]

PERFECTLY FINE – Y/N PROFILE

full name: y/n harper

date of birth: june 3rd, 2005

birthplace: cambridge, england

family members: william harper (father); sarah harper (mother)

teams: prema racing (2020-2023), campos racing (2024-now)

driver academy: red bull junior team (2019-now)

instagram: yourusername

best friends: jak crawford, dino beganovic, pepe marti

racing record:

2020 italian f4 championship – third place (six podiums; two wins)

2021 formula regional european championship – fifth place (four podiums; one win)

2022 formula regional european championship – second place (nine podiums; three wins)

2023 fia formula 3 championship – second place (five podiums; three wins)

2024 fia formula 2 championship – ongoing

trivia:

– y/n harper is the only child of four-time world champion william harper. her father was a ferrari driver for a total of eleven years and won his first two titles with the italian team in 2007 and 2008, before moving on to drive for red bull. there, he won his second championship in 2010 – only to move back to ferrari and take his last title with them the following season. as of early 2021, he's the head of the ferrari driver academy.

– y/n began karting at the age of seven, starting off with being coached by her father but later moving on to getting a trainer of her own. she joined the red bull junior team for her last year of karting and has stayed in the academy ever since.

– american f2 driver jak crawford joined the junior team one year later, and he and y/n found each other instantly. the two have been best friends, as well as neighbors, since then.

– y/n began being romantically involved with teammate paul aron during the summer break of the 2022 freca season. however, the pair split up almost a year later. she then started dating ferrari academy driver oliver bearman in late july 2023.

– y/n was homeschooled between ages 14 and 16 so that she could focus more on her driving.

– besides racing, her interests include skiing, baking, reading, and journaling.

– despite often being held back by her own performance anxiety and imposter syndrome, she is very set on and clear about her goal; getting into formula one. she has claimed that she will never truly be satisfied until she stands on the top step of the podium after an f1 race like her father did so many times.

series masterlist

[veilantares]

LOST LOST really is 2023's theme for me. I spent most of this past year on my PhD project, so my output has been quite scarce overall - certainly so compared to the industriousness of years past. When I had chances to draw this year it was often like a gasp of air amidst a sea of my other efforts. "What's the next step forward?" I think at times. Consider the center drawing my face of course, because in real life I look like if cannonbolt was a sad refridgerator.

I started a new physical sketchbook and made some breakthroughs in my personal illustrations, but nothing I'm happy to share - in previous years I didn't have as much nervousness to experiment in public. Anyway this feels like a good opportunity to do a bit of a retrospective on the last ones of these I did.

In many ways 2022 was the best year of my work, I both did my most challenging (and correspondingly complex) pieces this year, and had the confidence to make several things a week. Past the initial few months I had really started to hone my mix of solid shapes, lineart and linelessness thats ubiquitous in my pieces now, though I wonder if I have grown too comfortable with the stability of a partial formula.

One disadvantage about only choosing nine pieces was that in wanting them to look good together I had to exclude a series of the coloured background pieces that interspersed the dark background ones. In those, I felt like a lot more of my effort went into the shape language, so there was a synergy with both approaches letting me understand things.

In 2021 I started using colours instead of grayscale, that years inktober could almost be said to be my best work, there was both a variety and scale to it..I drew something virtually every day for almost three or four months straight and crucially, I also shared it all after I was done. It really felt worth it planning art ahead, but also spontaneously filling the blanks it in the moment. That being said maybe that productiveness was not sustainable because I'd have very little time for much else after school, work and art.

Late in that year I realised I could just draw the things I like if I wanted, instead of the things I thought people wanted - so some of the later pieces really resembled discount warframes. That game has so deeply hooked itself into my visual library that I draw it even when I'm not intending to, and so when I started deliberately trying to evoke it (with very fledgling art analysis skills), I think I got more and more familiar with what I wanted.

In 2020 I was just starting out so I did not yet recognise there was something specific to aspire to - I dont have a retrospective montage like these other years for 2020. You can see virtually every piece I've ever uploaded on my instagram page, so I think I might not narrate as much about those in this post. Maybe in the future I'll review all these years through a completely different lens.

[send-up-my-heart-to-you]

what is the story of you and violet like how did you start and how did it reach to where it did, of course only if you’re comfortable. ( i’m not trying to mock you or make fun of it, ik what you went through but since you said anything personal, i have wanted to know this. i’m interested in things which are none of my business. i pray im not sounding rude, i really want to come of as nicely as i can, but i can’t)

whole story below the cut, there’s a tldr at the end bc i added a load of unnecessary details. js brace its kind of a long one.

so we met when i was 12 and he was 15. i remember it was june 2020. i didn’t like him at first—got sort of a weird vibe. but then i got to know him more and, by september-ish, he became one of my best friends. by november, i thought of myself as having a crush on him (i didnt know i was aroace at the time) but i never made a move bc he was dating one of my friends, lets call her jude. we talked pretty much every day. i had to leave our friend group for safety reasons but he was my source of contact with the rest of my friends. i think we mainly talked on discord at the time?

flash forward to new years eve of 2020, and something happens. i’ll spare you the details, but needless to say my devices got confiscated. i still remembered his discord id, so i got my best friend to msg him and tell him what happened. i also got my favorite cousin to do the same, so he’d have two ways of talking to me.

keep in mind, my best friend and cousin both had it in their minds that i had a crush on him, so they’d both try to get him to like me. in june i think he broke up w jude. my cousin was also in regular contact with jude on instagram, so i got to msg jude at some point after the breakup and i distinctly remember her saying she’d be okay if i dated him but she personally was so unhappy w him. i didnt get that, but i think i later did

years pass w barely any contact. december 2022, i start dating someone else. january 2023, i realize i chose the absolute worst person and i break things off. then april 2023, i manage to get in contact w violet. we start dating the next day. (here he’s told me that he’s genderqueer he/she, but later he denied this)

i talked to him anytime i could and he'd send selfies a lot. i was scared about my parents so i asked him not to. he'd do it anyway. i didnt ask him to stop after that

he wasn’t necessarily a bad boyfriend, i js didnt rlly feel. idk. special? i’d make playlists for him and send voice recordings whispering “i love you” in arabic but i never got any of that back ig. the first few weeks were the best but after that? nothing. i’d send pics and he’d call me pretty and hot and say he’s so lucky to have me. later i found out he called every girl pretty when he’d see a pic of her.

i self-harmed for the first time when i was with him. what he did was ask me to send a pic of it so he could check if its bad. i told him i was suicidal. i dont remember what he said.

and then came june 15th, 2023. what a day. i talked to him at like midnight my time. i remember the last thing he asked was for me to send a selfie so he could show me off to his friend.

then my mom found out. and i was so scared of her getting angry at me that i downed 16 pills and got rushed to the hospital.

my mom didnt get angry. but my devices were confiscated again. and i couldnt talk to him. keep in mind, he knew i was suicidal. i was expecting some kind of response from him through my best friend because he was still talking to her at the time, but i didnt hear anything. instead, nine days after i tried to kill myself, on the 24th of july, he broke up with me. 

i didn’t blame him. when your suicidal gf ghosts you for nine days ofc you’re gonna wanna move on. it’s not his fault. i js felt kind of lonely, yknow? on the 30th i managed to log into my acc to talk to him, to explain everything, n all i saw was a breakup msg. i dunno.

in october-ish of 2023, i managed to get thru to him. i explained everything. he didnt give much of a response, but he did ask if we could keep talking. i said sure. we did keep talking and i invited him to tumblr bc i had more of a presence here than anywhere else. when my mom confiscated tumblr in november, i continued talking to him on google chat

in february 2024 he was my valentine js bc we were both single and alone and we thought itd be fun. i wrote him a letter. he didnt make me anything but its fine. you get the idea we were getting closer again

by this point i realized i wasnt receiving the amount of love i deserve, and i was kind of sad bc he’s not a muslim and i am, so we couldn’t get married, therefore we wouldnt have a future together (i’m the kind of person who wouldn’t have a relationship w someone if it won’t lead to anything in the long-term). he told me he wouldn’t become a muslim or study islam for me, so i respected that. i wouldnt forcibly convert him. but i also acknowledged that i couldn’t be w someone who’s not a muslim, so i asked him to stop talking to me. he said okay.

he’d still reblog stuff and send me asks—he even asked me to write a poem about him for my follower event. but around that time i had kind of been getting drained from exams and i didnt want boy problems on top of that, so i asked him to stop all contact w me. he respected that, as far as i know. he wished for me to have a nice life. i wished the same for him. and i blocked him. i havent talked to him since then at all, i dont think

so yeah. kind of lengthy story thats a whole load of nothing. i dont want you to go bother him about this. he was my friend before being my boyfriend, and he was with me during a dark time in my life. i respect him and i ask for you to please not send hate towards him. think what you will, just dont bother him. i’d be happy to answer anything else, but i think i js about covered everything.

tldr; we met when i was 12 and he was 15. we dated starting when i had just turned 15 and he was almost 18. he broke up with me after i attempted sewerslide. we continued talking for a while after reconnecting but i cut him off again last feb for religious reasons and we havent talked much since.

[bb-bare-bones]

Beating a Dead Crop: A Children of the Corn Retrospective

By Tabby Knight (instagram - tabby.knight6)

Artwork by Dy Dawson @xgardensinspace

If you’ve seen all of the Children of the Corn films in the franchise (dear God) I’m both somewhat impressed and also vaguely concerned for your mental wellbeing. I counted a total of 12 entries in the series, including the 2020 reboot and the 1983 short film Disciples of the Crow. Not bad, considering Stephen King’s original short story clocks in at approximately 10,000 words, and ends with a degree of finality that doesn’t exactly invite a sequel.

For those unfamiliar with the source material, Children of the Corn was originally published in Penthouse Magazine in 1977 and later reprinted in King’s short story anthology, Night Shift (1978) and follows a young married couple who accidentally hit a child with their car while driving through rural Nebraska. Burt and Vicky, who are road tripping to California in a last-ditch attempt to save their marriage, decide to put the boy (dead) in the back of their car and drive to the nearest town, Gatlin, for help. The shock of hitting the boy has been abated, somewhat, by the fact that he was likely already dead when they went over him — his throat's been slit from ear to ear. They are a little disturbed, however, to find a crucifix made of corn husks in the boy’s suitcase.

They arrive in Gatlin only to find it deserted, and the only building showing any sign of recent activity is the church, which is defaced, trashed, and decorated with corn. Inside, Burt also finds a record of births and deaths, and manages to piece together the town’s dark history: some twelve years ago, all the adults in town were massacred, and the children appear to have created a corn-worshipping cult in their absence. Since then, every registered death in town has occurred on the victim’s nineteenth birthday.

By the story’s conclusion (Spoilers) Vicky’s been mutilated and crucified on a cross of corn, and Burt finds himself trapped in Gatlin’s cornfields, pursued — and ultimately consumed — by a mysterious entity that lives amongst the rows. It ends with the children, who are informed by their nine-year-old cult leader, Isaac, that He Who Walks Behind the Rows is displeased with their inability to dispatch Burt, and has lowered ‘the age of favour’ from nineteen to eighteen as a punishment. As a result, the town’s eighteen-year-old residents march into the corn to sacrifice themselves to their god. One of those dispatched, Malachi, leaves behind a pregnant girlfriend, who fantasises about setting fire to the corn in retribution. We end with a line that still sticks with me years after I first read it: “Dusk deepened into night. Around Gatlin the corn rustled and whispered secretly. It was well pleased.”

And there you have it. It’s not King’s best short story by any means, but it’s far from his worst, and it has its own grim, mystical charm that appealed to me as a teenager and still appeals to me now. The cult operating in Gatlin works primarily because of its elusiveness, and its ambiguity. We don’t see the children overthrow the town, we see very little of the entity that lurks in the corn, and there’s no flashy final showdown. There’s a tragedy to the children that fails to translate to the films, a quiet sort of helplessness emphasised by their final march into the cornrows. The conclusion feels inevitable – this is the way things are in Gatlin, and it’s horrendous, but it’s unstoppable. It just is.

To the best of my knowledge, none of the film adaptations manage to capture this same sense of quiet horror, the idea that those who commit such atrocious evil are themselves victim to a larger, far more powerful force that cannot be overthrown or disobeyed.

It’s a shame, then, that the very first film adaptation – a 1984 venture starring Linda Hamilton – dispatches this sense of ambiguity and dread entirely. Instead we are left with a standard, far less eerie narrative structure, in which Burt rescues Vicky, teams up with a couple of the less murderous children, and manages to set fire to the cornrows, ostensibly killing (at least temporarily – 5 sequels and several reboots, remember) He Who Walks Behind the Rows. Instead of the quiet despair of the short story, emphasised by the pregnant Ruth’s secret desire to see the corn burn, we get a final jump scare and a happy ending as Burt, Vicky, and the two kids they appear to have adopted set out for Seattle on foot.

There are merits to the first film, at least. John Franklin makes an iconic and genuinely menacing (if a little campy) villain out of Isaac, who outshines the elusive creature behind the rows as the primary antagonist. Courtney Gains makes for a memorable Malachai - morally grey and surprisingly likeable, far more fleshed out than his literary counterpart. The supporting cast of Gatlin kids are suitably freaky, at least until Sarah and Job are established as good kids, which diminishes the effect somewhat, especially when the short story did so well as to establish the children as equal parts good and bad, victims of a larger system as well as perpetrators of violence.

By creating a binary in which children like Sarah and Job are “all good,” while those such as Isaac and Rachel (the crazed adolescent responsible for that final scare) are “all bad,” we lose that sense of dread. Worse still, we lose the last remaining shred of realism in a film that has Burt pursued through the corn by a tunnelling monster right out of Tremors. As I said, we essentially lose the very point the source material is trying to convey.

That’s not to say it’s a wholly unlikeable film, of course, or that it’s universally hated by horror fans. Lots of people, myself included, look at the film with a great deal of fondness. But that doesn’t change the fact that it falls into that famed category of questionable Stephen King adaptations. It also doesn’t change the fact that it didn’t warrant a sequel, let alone five, and a string of ill-fated reboots with sequels of their own.

Horror movies and sequels go hand in hand, obviously, but unlike the other sequel machines of the 1980’s, the Children of the Corn franchise lacks the same fanatical following. When quizzed on franchises and their sequels, diehard horror fans tend to have very specific preferences. They have a favourite Nightmare on Elm Street, (Mine’s 3) a preferred Jason Vorhees (8-bit video game Jason, though I suspect I’m an outlier) and strong opinions on the superior Child’s Play film (It’s Bride). But with Children of the Corn, that level of diehard devotion appears to be lacking. I’ve met a lot of horror fans, and I’ve never had any of them tell me that Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror, for example, is the best of the lot.

I don’t want to generalise, of course, because I’m sure someone out there is getting ready to contact me and tell me of their undying devotion to Urban Harvest. I only mean that as a collective, horror fans are incredibly tolerant of sequels, and often can discuss the merits of part six over part ten. A cursory glance at cinema attendance for the new Halloween and Scream sequels alone indicates a market for the same formula over and over again. I would argue, however, that Children of the Corn doesn’t necessarily fit into that category. With the possible exception of 666, which promises the return of the first film’s Isaac, none of the sequels on Wikipedia’s handy-dandy list either catch my eye or spark my memory, and I can’t be the only one.

The question, then, is why keep churning them out? Let’s not forget that this isn’t just a case of a one-off direct-to-video sequel, or even a trilogy. We’re talking about five direct sequels to the 1984 film, plus three maybe sequels (Revelation, Genesis, and Runaway) and two reboots (2009 and 2020/23).* The obvious answer is of course, money, but you can’t seriously tell me all these direct-to-video sequels are churning out bucketloads of profits. They’re certainly not churning out rave reviews, either from critics or audience members.

My best guess is that, like me, people continue to be drawn to and affected by the original source material, and want to create a film in that same vein. But if that’s the case, why the continual failure to accurately adapt that same source material? Why create a narrative in which He Who Walks Behind the Rows is easily dispatched by outsiders, when the real terror of the story (at least in my opinion) stems from His unrelenting hold over the children, even in the face of their growing resentment?

The 2020 adaptation, much like those that have come before it, has received mostly negative reviews, with an 11% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a 22/100 on Metacritic, and a staggering 1.6/5-star rating on Letterboxd. While I haven’t seen it myself (yet – if I do, it’ll bring my total number of CotC films up to…3) what I can glean from Wikipedia, Bloody Disgusting, and Letterboxd is that once again, the film fails to either accurately adapt the source material or, at the very least, capture the same spirit of terror the original story managed to convey.

In a perfect world, such universally abysmal reviews would signal a long-overdue death for the franchise, and I’d like to say I’m optimistic enough to hope for its end. But this is horror we’re talking about, and we appear to be in an age of unrelenting sequels for all genres regardless. And worst of all, there’s a backlog of twelve films whose very existence leave me pessimistic and cynical.

Incidentally, if you’d like to catch a Children of the Corn film that kind of captures the spirit of the original, consider checking out the aforementioned 1983 short film Disciples of the Crow. It’s not a perfect adaptation (Burt and Vicky still manage to escape unscathed, god damnit) but it goes a long way towards establishing that eerie sense of mindless violence and inevitability I talked about. It’s campy as hell, of course, terribly acted and not exactly scary, but it is only 18 minutes and free to watch on YouTube, and not too bad for a student film. At the very least, Burt isn’t pursued by a tunnelling monster as he attempts to set fire to a cornfield.

*In light of the pandemic, the 2020 rendition of Children of the Corn didn’t receive either mass distribution or a theatrical release until 2023. Interestingly, it was apparently the first film since the 1984 adaptation to even receive a theatrical release. Go figure.

[marzgurl]

So, I made a brief post yesterday, but I'll elaborate here. I hadn't been back on tumblr in pushing two years. Maybe not quite a full two years, but I'm pretty sure I was last on here in 2020, I think? Anyway, I've currently got a browser open with only tabs for various social media platforms. I'm trying to figure out how to best use each of them, and how to do so regularly. I knew Twitter was going to get bad, but I didn't realize just how rapidly it was going to happen, or that it would come so teeteringly close to actual full-on collapse.

I think a large reason I spent so much time away from tumblr was because I'd had a lot happening from 2019 to 2022. When all the Screamy Broccoli Man stuff exploded in 2019 (don't know what I'm talking about? Probably for the best, but ask your elders), I got drastically chased around all over the Internet, on every social media platform. Any platform I was on regularly got overwhelmingly bombarded with hate speech, death and rape threats, misinformation, etc. Tumblr was one of those places. My "asks" inbox was a slew of real wingnut sycophants who got all of their information from alt-right YouTubers, thinking those were credible sources of information, and had become an army of weirdos willing to jump in front of a speeding bullet to defend some weird sex pest voice actor who doesn't even know they're alive.

Twitter was pretty bad for that, mind you. However, I'd decided to keep most of that harassment largely on one dedicated front. For all the absolute hell that has ALWAYS existed on Twitter, the one thing it was able to do was keep the losers focused in one general direction rather than multiple directions. So when I quit posting so much on tumblr, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and even Twitch for a while, they really only had one place to go. And it was there where I could block to my heart's content. Twitter never did a very good job of responding to reports of harassment. In fact, I was frequently dogpiled by people using Twitter's systems intended to protect people, in order to false flag me into lockouts and even one suspension that I had to fight my way back out of. However, people had created enough tools for me to be able to block sweeping masses of people--either people who followed my harassers, or people who liked harassing tweets. All of those could be wiped out in just a few minutes. Twitter didn't do a good job of building that into their own platform, but at least I could use the tools that other people made for Twitter to make it work for me. Finally, I seemed to have found myself in a place where it was all sort of leveling out.

And now here we are, as Twitter sort of eats itself alive, because a guy with a lot of money can't get that money to work in ways to make him like himself enough as a human being, to have enough confidence in himself to not have to turn Twitter into his own private safe space. And for that reason, I find myself with tabs open for Mastodon, Tumblr, cohost!, Instagram, and TikTok, trying to figure out how I'm going to make any of these places especially unique, and how not to completely abandon one for the other.

Instagram is fine enough, I've had it for at least nine years now (a shorter amount of time than I've had this Tumblr, if I'm not mistaken). But I just don't take a lot of pictures or video, and I struggle to know how I'm going to make it interactive or interesting in any way. It's for that same reason that I struggle to know how to regularly use TikTok. I tried for a brief burst of time and burned myself out really, really fast. Writing is just easier for me. And for that reason, I'm not really sure what to make of cohost, because cohost seems like a place that functions pretty similarly to Tumblr (with some minor differences). Am I really going to try to differentiate and diversify over there, too? I mean, maybe. A lot of people I know are headed that way, though lots of us have been sitting and waiting to get verified to post for several days now, and I'm not sure how long it'll take.

But I did notice a concerted push on Tumblr's part to try to make you know, "Hey! We're still alive! Come back! We're here!" And as far as I can tell, a lot of the people I followed over the years are actually still quite active over here. It's not nearly as dead as I had perceived it might have been.

So, we'll see how this goes. I used to use LiveJournal quite a bit back in the early '00, but that journal is long since gone. I've journaled quite a bit here in the past as well. Will I keep that up here? It's hard to say. I have a pretty big habit of saying I plan on keeping up with something, and then I just can't manage to do it. That's just the way I'm built, I guess. I'm 36, and if it hasn't changed yet, it probably never will now.

Anyway, guess I'm screwing around on Tumblr for a while now. I'll see what new things I can make of it.

[a-silent-symphony]

TARJA TURUNEN Says She Is Supportive Of Current NIGHTWISH Singer FLOOR JANSEN: 'We Are Sisters In Metal'

During an appearance on a recent episode of the "Scars And Guitars" podcast, former NIGHTWISH vocalist Tarja Turunen was asked if she has ever had any interactions with current NIGHTWISH singer Floor Jansen. She responded (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "We are in touch, and recently more, because she came up with the really horrible news of being sick. [Editor's note: Jansen recently revealed that she was diagnosed with breast cancer.] So I've been in touch with her. But ever since she joined NIGHTWISH, I was there for her. So it's, like, I don't have any… Actually, I hope she's fine and everything is great with her and she's happy. That's what I wish. Now and then when I am in Netherlands, if I have concerts in Netherlands, she's poking by and so on and so on. It's really, really nice.

"In general, hey, I feel in metal, we are sisters in metal — we all are like sisters in metal," she continued. "We actually do support each other, all of us.

"When I started in metal, I felt a little lonely, because there were not too many girls around in the festivals I went; I was mainly the only girl all around," Tarja revealed. "And nowadays it's so incredible to see so many female vocalists. They approach me — if I do not recognize them, they approach me — they come and talk. And it's really lovely. We have this really beautiful connection and a lot to share. And that is also… I really enjoy it so much nowadays. It has changed a lot."

In December 2020, Turunen took part in an Instagram Live chat with Jansen. You can watch the entire 48-minute discussion below.

Turunen and Jansen previously performed a duet together at the 2013 edition of the Metal Female Voices Fest at Oktoberhallen in Wieze, Belgium. The women joined forces on a cover version of "Over The Hills And Far Away", originally written and recorded by the Northern Irish singer and guitarist Gary Moore and previously covered by NIGHTWISH on the 2001 EP of the same name.

Jansen made her live debut as the frontwoman of NIGHTWISH on October 1, 2012 at Showbox Sodo in Seattle, Washington following the abrupt departure of the band's lead singer of five years, Anette Olzon.

Jansen officially joined NIGHTWISH in 2013 and made her recording debut with the group on 2015's "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" album.

NIGHTWISH's ninth studio album, "Human. :II: Nature." , was released in April 2020 via Nuclear Blast. The effort is a double album containing nine tracks on the main CD and one long track, divided into eight chapters on CD 2.

In 2019, Turunen dismissed Internet chatter about her possible return to NIGHTWISH after her December 2017 onstage reunion with the band's then-bassist/vocalist Marco Hietala during a "Raskasta Joulua" concert in Hämeenlinna, Finland.

"I know a lot of fans would love to see something happen, but it's a very long distance away," she told Kerrang! magazine. "Personally, I don't see anything happening with me and them, to be perfectly honest. Marco came a little later into the band; he wasn't there since the beginning. He was always a guy I was close to. Me and [NIGHTWISH keyboardist/leader] Tuomas Holopainen, however, haven't seen each other in a long time… but we have been in touch. It's not bad. The past is what it is; we can't change that. We can only change the future."

Turunen was fired from NIGHTWISH at the end of the band's 2005 tour by being presented with an open letter which was published on the NIGHTWISH web site at the same time. In the letter, the other members of NIGHTWISH wrote: "To you, unfortunately, business, money, and things that have nothing to do with emotions have become much more important."

Holopainen later called the decision to part ways with Turunen "the most difficult thing I ever had to do." For her part, Tarja said the way she was kicked out of the group proved that her former bandmates were not her friends. "Maybe one day I'll forgive, but I will never forget," she said.

Tarja will release a new collection, "Best Of: Living The Dream", on December 2 via earMUSIC.

[alicetallula]

DEArtfest - July 2020 - Day 9 : MERMAID AU - 08.07.2020

It was a pleasure to participate to the the DEArtfest organized by @octopunkmedia, based on their movie, Detroit Evolution in the universe of DBH

Day 1 : REVERSE AU / Day 2 : #SHARINGABED / Day 3 : COLLEGE AU / Day 4 : #PROPOSAL / Day 5 : WESTERN AU / Day 6 : #AMNESIA / Day 7 : TIME TRAVEL/LOOP – Reed900 / Day 7 : TIME TRAVEL/LOOP – Valerina  / Day 8 : #DANCING / Day 10 : #SICKFIC / Day 11 : ALL HUMAN AU + GENDERBEND / Day 12 : #5+1 / Day 13 : COFFEESHOP AU / Day 14 : #ENEMIESTOLOVERS / Day 15 : SOULMATES AU / Day 16 : NOIR/MAFIA AU / Day 17 : #VACATION / Day 18 : CROSSOVER / Day 19 : #BODYSWAP / Day 20 : VAMPIRE AU / Day 21 : #MUTUAL PINING / Day 22 : PACIFIC RIM AU / Day 23 : #FAKEDATING / Day 24 : ALTERNATE ENDING / Day 25 : #ROOMMATES / Day 26 : ROYALTY AU / Day 27 : #WHUMP / Day 28 : MONSTER AU / Day 29 : #STUCKINACLOSET / Day 30 : JANE AUSTEN AU / Day 31 : #TOUCHSTARVED

Day 9 : MERMAID AU - 08.07.2020

I did my best, first time I drew mermens (mermaids in general).

I tried to go for Dwarf Gourami fish for merman!Nines and Koi fish for merman!Gavin. (And Nines in the second drawing has just one thought «What am I supposed to do with this ?!»)

Done using ink pens, graphite pencils, colored pencils and an acrylic paint pen

AO3 post / DeviantArt post / Instagram post / Patreon post / Twitter post

[c-worldproductions]

🎉🎊Happy New Year to all my followers!🎊🎉

Thanks for the follows & liking my content! 😊💜 This year, I’ve finally decided to do my 1,000+ followers giveaway on Instagram, which I’ve been meaning to do since 2020! More details of that will be up soon! (NOTE: Giveaway is only on my Instagram.)

This is my Best Nine for 2023! It was the year for mostly KH3, some Obey Me!, some Bleach, some FFXV, & some other series!

🎨 Cosplayers: bajablastoid, chameleon_c0s, cyclone_cosplay, dragonfire87, grimnya, Kai, kristiclesgg, lockheartcosplay, Lulu, Lulu’s friend, _phoenix.cosplays_, pinksea.cos

📷 Photographers: bajablastoid, Kai, lockheartcosplay

🗓️ Event: @otafest

🔑 Keyblade: ktechronin

(NOTE: Most credits are for Instagram accounts.)

[abiiors]

Vee, can you explain what is deuxmoi, please? I’ve seen you talking about it but I’m so confused 😭 sorry

oh no don’t apologise!! i think the best way i can put it is deuxmoi is wannabe gossip girl except she’s not fun and iconic because she just posts blind items left right and centre without verifying them. it’s a page on instagram with millions of followers! she has a website and a podcast and merch, the whole nine yards.

literally today she got called out by taylor swift’s publicist for spreading rumours that taylor and joe were secretly married in 2019/2020!

she’s been spreading rumours about matty and gabriette being engaged for weeks now despite none of them hinting at it and she was one of the biggest reasons for all the may/june maylor chaos

all in all, i think deuxmoi is an incredibly toxic and shallow account for people whose entire life revolves around celebrity gossip and drama and she’s been called out by multiple people in the past multiple times but oh well, she’s like a cockroach that does not die 🤡

[ts1989fanatic]

Taylor Swift scores one of the most historic weeks in the 64-year history of the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart, as she becomes the first artist to claim the survey’s entire top 10 in a single frame.

Swift surpasses Drake, who logged nine of the Hot 100’s top 10 for a week in September 2021.

Leading the way for Swift on the Hot 100, “Anti-Hero” launches at No. 1, marking her ninth career leader.

All 10 songs in the Hot 100’s top tier are from Swift’s new LP Midnights, which, released Oct. 21 on Republic Records, blasts in at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart with the biggest week for any release in seven years.

Swift also surges past Drake and The Beatles for the most titles from the top of the Hot 100 in a single week, as her monopoly of the top 10 bests those acts, each of whom infused the top five for a week each in 2021 and 1964, respectively.

Meanwhile, as Swift adds 10 new Hot 100 top 10s, she now boasts the most top 10s among women in the chart’s history, with 40 (surpassing Madonna’s 38). Among all acts, she trails only Drake (59 top 10s).

Plus, Midnights becomes the first album ever with as many as 10 Hot 100 top 10s, besting the nine from Drake’s Certified Lover Boy in 2021.

The Hot 100 blends all-genre U.S. streaming (official audio and official video), radio airplay and sales data. All charts (dated Nov. 5, 2022) will update on Billboard.com tomorrow (Nov. 1). For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.

Here’s a rundown of Swift’s unprecedented week on the Hot 100.

Top 10: Streams, Airplay & Sales

As Swift swoops in with a clean sweep of the Hot 100���s top 10, here’s a look at the songs’ official streams, radio airplay and sales in the U.S. in the Oct. 21-27 tracking week that drove their chart debuts:

Rank, Title: Streams / Airplay Audience / Sales:

No. 1, “Anti-Hero”: 59.7 million streams / 32 million in airplay audience / 13,500 sold

No. 2, “Lavender Haze”: 41.4 million / 2.4 million / 2,800

No. 3, “Maroon”: 37.6 million / 471,000 / 2,900

No. 4, “Snow on the Beach,“ feat. Lana Del Rey: 37.2 million / 615,000 / 2,600

No. 5, “Midnight Rain”: 36.9 million / 449,000 / 2,200

No. 6, “Bejeweled”: 35.5 million / 1.6 million / 16,100

No. 7, “Question…?”: 31 million / 425,000 / 21,400

No. 8, “You’re on Your Own, Kid”: 34.1 million / 498,000 / 1,500

No. 9, “Karma”: 33 million / 1.9 million / 3,400

No. 10, “Vigilante Shit”: 32.2 million / 424,000 / 6,400

With her total takeover of the Hot 100’s top 10 (with assistance from Lana Del Rey at No. 4), Swift passes Drake, who claimed nine of the top 10 (all except for No. 6) on the chart dated Sept. 18, 2021, when nine songs, all from his album Certified Lover Boy, bounded into the region, led by “Way 2 Sexy,” featuring Future and Young Thug, at No .1, as the set opened atop the Billboard 200.

Meanwhile, Swift passes Drake and The Beatles for the most titles from the top of the Hot 100 in a single week. Before Drake’s top five tally on Sept. 18, 2021, The Beatles held Nos. 1-5 on the chart dated April 4, 1964.

Swift’s Nine Hot 100 No. 1s

Here’s a recap of Swift’s nine Hot 100 No. 1s, notched over a span of just over 10 years:

“We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together,” three weeks at No. 1, beginning Sept. 1, 2012

“Shake It Off,” four weeks, beginning Sept. 6, 2014

“Blank Space,” seven weeks, beginning Nov. 29, 2014

“Bad Blood,” feat. Kendrick Lamar, one week, June 6, 2015

“Look What You Made Me Do,” three weeks, beginning Sept. 16, 2017

“Cardigan,” one week, Aug. 8, 2020

“Willow,” one week, Dec. 26, 2020

“All Too Well (Taylor’s Version),” one week, Nov. 27, 2021

“Anti-Hero,” one week to-date, Nov. 5, 2022

Swift becomes one of 16 acts with nine or more Hot 100 No. 1s, and one of seven solo women, joining Mariah Carey (19), Rihanna (14), Madonna (12), Whitney Houston (11), Janet Jackson (10) and Katy Perry (nine). The Beatles lead all acts with 20 Hot 100 No. 1s.

Swift’s Fifth No. 1 Hot 100 Debut

Swift debuts atop the Hot 100 with a fifth title, as “Anti-Hero” (the 64th single to enter at No. 1) follows the chart-topping premieres of “Shake It Off,” “Cardigan,” “Willow” and “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version).” With her latest, she ties Ariana Grande for the most No. 1 entrances among women.

Overall, Drake leads with seven No. 1 Hot 100 debuts, followed by BTS, Grande, Swift (five each) and Justin Bieber (four).

Record-Extending Simultaneous Billboard 200 & Hot 100 debuts

Thanks to Midnights and “Anti-Hero,” Swift is the first artist to have debuted atop the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 simultaneously as many as four times. (The Billboard 200 began on March 24, 1956, and the Hot 100, on Aug. 4, 1958.)

Swift became the first act to launch with such a double when Folklore and “Cardigan” began atop the Billboard 200 and Hot 100, respectively, on Aug. 8, 2020. She repeated the feat with Evermore and “Willow” (Dec. 26, 2020) and Red (Taylor’s Version) and “All Too Well (Taylor’s Version)” (Nov. 27, 2021).

Drake, with two, is the only other act with multiple such simultaneous starts on the surveys.

Top 10 Streamed, Sold Songs Are by Swift

As on the Hot 100, Swift holds the entire top 10 on Streaming Songs and Digital Song Sales charts. Swift is the first artist to triple up with the top 10 on all three charts simultaneously; no other act had previously claimed Nos. 1-10 in a single week on the Hot 100 or Digital Song Sales, while only Drake had swept the tier on Streaming Songs (Sept. 18, 2021).

“Anti-Hero” debuts at No. 1 on Streaming Songs with the biggest streaming week for a song (59.7 million) in 2022, passing Jack Harlow’s “First Class” (54.6 million; April 23). No song has logged more weekly streams since Drake’s “Way 2 Sexy” soared in with 67.3 million (Sept. 18, 2021).

Swift adds her sixth Streaming Songs No. 1, tying Bieber for the second-most, after Drake’s 14.

On Digital Song Sales, Swift’s “Question…?” debuts at No. 1, marking her record-extending 24th leader. (Rihanna ranks second with 14.) Helping its coronation, “Question…?” was made available for sale in Swift’s webstore on the last day of the chart’s tracking week (Oct. 27) in its original and instrumental form, each for 69 cents, as was “Bejeweled,” new at No. 4 on Digital Song Sales.

Notably, the streams for Swift’s songs in the Hot 100’s top 10 were strong enough that all 10 tracks would’ve ranked in the region even without any chart points from sales or radio airplay.

‘Anti-Hero’ Roars at Radio

Speaking of radio reach, “Anti-Hero,” the first promoted single from Midnights, debuts at No. 13 on Radio Songs, the highest debut this year and Swift’s best opening rank among 45 career entries.

The song concurrently places at No. 11 on the Adult Pop Airplay chart, No. 13 on Adult Contemporary and No. 16 on Pop Airplay following its first full week of availability.

Swift Up to 40 Hot 100 Top 10s, the Most Among Women

By instantly adding 10 Hot 100 top 10s, Swift now sports the second-most, 40, in the chart’s history. Previously tied with Michael Jackson, Swift leapfrogs Madonna – as she now claims the most top 10s among women – The Beatles and Rihanna.

Swift first hit the Hot 100’s top 10 with “Love Story” on the chart dated Oct. 4, 2008.

Most Billboard Hot 100 Top 10s:

59, Drake

40, Taylor Swift

38, Madonna

34, The Beatles

31, Rihanna

30, Michael Jackson

29, Elton John

28, Mariah Carey

28, Stevie Wonder

27, Janet Jackson

26, Justin Bieber

25, Lil Wayne

25, Elvis Presley (with the start of Presley’s career having predated the Hot 100’s inception)

Similar to Swift’s timeline, Drake earned the first of his record 59 top 10s in July 2009 and most recently ranked in the bracket this August.

Midnights Clocks Most Hot 100 Top 10s From an Album

Upon its chart start, Swift’s Midnights becomes the first album to generate as many as 10 Hot 100 top 10s. It passes Drake’s Certified Lover Boy, which landed nine, likewise all in the same week (Sept. 18, 2021) that the set started atop the Billboard 200.

ts1989fanatic there’s more in the article but these are the key points.

I have a Question…? Are we sure it’s Halloween and not April 1st other than the fact that these numbers are scary good I thought it might be an April fools prank 😂😂😂😂

[biteofwinter-archived]

KNOWING  YOUR  PARTNER  WELL  CAN  POTENTIALLY  MAKE  WRITING  TOGETHER  A  LOT  EASIER.  (  repost,  don’t  reblog  )

○    name:  nico ○    pronouns:  he/they/she ○    preference  of  communication:  disc*rd! i will forget to respond to ims but disc*rd notification show up on my phone so i remember them better ○     name  of  muse(s):  too many to count but most active rn are this blog and multi muse blogs and the muses there​ ( @deniedmagic & @heartsbreaking ) ○     experience/how  long  (months/years?):  about  nine years rp experience ○     platforms  you’ve  used:  quotev, instagram, tumblr ○     best  experience:  realizing that @fatcdsong was someone i'd been close with on quotev in hs and reconnecting ○      rp  pet  peeves  /  dealbreakers:  pet peeves: people that use sub to write. can you see that?? do people with 2020 vision SEE THAT?? deal breakers: not communicating expectations for me especially in regards to mains/shipping/exclusivity. ive had to change a lot of my rules over time to explicitly say i need us to both know what we're doing and i won't assume anything. i need it in words that we both understand what our boundaries and expectations are. even just to know i am actually shipping with someone i need to see the words 'we are shipping' written out basically because i've had a lot of experiences where both partners have different boundaries and expectations and our feelings get hurt. i don't mind initiating the conversation but it does need to happen or else i won't proceed with someone. ○      fluff,  angst,  or  smut: angst, but only if it has a point. i'm best at writing it, but constantly writing angst that doesn't develop our character's dynamic it's just boring. ○      plots  or  memes:  memes i respond to faster (which is surprising considering the amount of memes in my inbox rn, don't look at those.) but i like having continuing plots with people. so basically both. ○      long  or  short  replies: all of the above. short things get faster responses, but long threads make me feel like a real writer tm ○      best  time  to  write:  nights. i am a night owl and write most after 7 pm.

○      are  you  like  your  muse(s):  sorta, alice was definitely more self inserty when i first started writing her in the 7th grade but now we've diverged a lot and reconvened in some places.

tagged  by :   @tiderider​ 

tagging : @hookd , @songeurame @shehook @arthurjr + VIEWERS LIKE YOU

[ear-worthy]

Drew Afualo Audiobook & Season Two Of "Two Cool Moms" Podcast Debuts

Drew Afualo Audiobook offering

 Here's an interesting confluence of podcasting and audiobooks.

As of July 30, Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve by Drew Afualo is available on Spotify as part of Spotify’s Audiobooks Premium offering, which gives eligible listeners 15 hours of monthly listeners to a catalog of 250,000+ audiobooks as part of their existing Spotify Premium subscription. The audiobook is both read and narrated by Afualo.

Spotify announces: "Host and star of Spotify's The Comment Section, Drew Afualo, presents an empowering, inspiring, patriarchy-smashing first book."

Loud is part manual, part manifesto, and part memoir. It makes it clear that behind her fearsome laugh is a mission and a life philosophy, a strategy for self-confidence from the inside out, and a pathway to once and for all remove men from the center of how women and femmes think about themselves.

Afualo has amassed more than nine million followers across her social platforms. When she first started creating content in 2020, she realized that men on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and other apps were creating sexist content aimed at disparaging women, and also containing rampant fatphobia, racism, and other forms of bigotry, with very real-life consequences. It didn’t take long for her to step into the role of unofficial watchdog for misogyny, and her signature laugh is now recognized as a feminist call to arms, a summoning cry to rid the internet (and our hearts, minds, and lives) of “terrible men” and create a space to fight outdated patriarchal ideals.

The line between a podcast and audiobook is already thin. Now, it's blurred even more. That's a good thing, offering listeners of both formats more options.

***************************************************

Two Cool Moms podcast releases second season

Two Cool Moms, the podcast from comedians Joe Gatto (“Impractical Jokers,” “The Misery Index”) and Steve Byrne (“Sullivan & Son”), returned for its second season on August 6. The podcast will join iHeartMedia and Premiere Networks’ Elvis Duran Podcast Network.  

The iHeart elevator pitch for the podcast is: "Comedians Joe Gatto and Steve Byrne have always been the advice givers inside their friend groups, believing it’s the direct result of one thing: cool moms. Throughout their lives, each had a strong, opinionated mother who gave great advice, and the guys believe they have inherited that gene.

In each episode of Two Cool Moms, after discussing whatever is on their minds, Gatto and Byrne get into helping fans who submit their dilemmas by dispensing sage motherly advice—sometimes good, sometimes not, but always entertaining.

“This podcast has been such a fun and exciting way to entertain,” says Gatto. “Steve and I had been looking for a way to work together for years, and to have this show and be part of such an amazing organization at iHeart has me so excited. Not to mention to pay tribute to my mother, who was always in my corner every step of the way.”

“This podcast is such a fun and heartwarming way to explore the many complicated issues that life brings us,” adds Byrne. “I’m proud of the community Joe and I have built over the last year with Two Cool Moms, and to be under the umbrella of iHeart is a truly inspiring opportunity. I can’t wait to hit the airwaves with one of the kindest and funniest talents in comedy.”

Both Gatto and Byrne are on tour throughout the year,

Joe Gatto is a comedian best known from the hit TV shows “Impractical Jokers” and “The Misery Index.” Most recently, he toured for two years with his stand-up solo show “Joe Gatto’s Night of Comedy” in sold out theaters across the United States, Canada and Australia. Prior to that, he has toured with the Jokers live comedy show to sold-out crowds across the world, including legendary arenas, such as Madison Square Garden in New York and the O2 Arena in London.

Gatto is passionate about supporting anti-bullying organizations and animal rescue initiatives. He happily advocates for the “Adopt, Don’t Shop” movement with his non-profit Gatto Pups and Friends, founded in 2022, which operates on Long Island, NY focusing on mainly senior and unwanted dogs.

Stand-up comedy veteran Steve Byrne has done multiple stand-up comedy specials—including his latest, an homage to late-night talk shows streaming now at Amazon Prime called “The Last Late Night”—to “Sullivan & Son,” his own sitcom that aired on TBS for three seasons, to writing/directing his own feature film, the indie success The Opening Act about his early years in stand up, he has always continued to tour and work on new material. He’s currently gearing up to direct his next film about one of the longest losing streaks in sports, and he’s working on the material that will be his seventh stand-up special.

Check out Two Cool Moms. It's one of the better comedy/advice podcasts.

[otherpplnation]

Garth Greenwell on Style, Opera, Kentucky, Mentors, Poetry, Bulgaria, Prose, Good Art, and Magnetism in Language

In today's flashback, an outtake from Episode 626, my conversation with author Garth Greenwell. The episode first aired on February 26, 2020.

Greenwell is the author of What Belongs to You, which won the British Book Award for Debut of the Year, was longlisted for the National Book Award, and was a finalist for six other awards, including the PEN/Faulkner Award, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, it was named a Best Book of 2016 by over fifty publications in nine countries, and is being translated into fourteen languages. His second book of fiction, Cleanness, was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and was longlisted for the Gordon Burn Prize, the Joyce Carol Oates Prize, the L.D. and LaVerne Harrell Clark Fiction Prize, and France’s Prix Sade (Deuxième sélection). Cleanness was named a New York Times Notable Book of 2020, a New York Times Critics Top 10 book of the year, and a Best Book of the year by the New Yorker, TIME, NPR, the BBC, and over thirty other publications. It is being translated into eight languages. A new novel, Small Rain, is forthcoming from FSG in 2024. Greenwell is also the co-editor, with R.O. Kwon, of the anthology KINK, which appeared in February 2021, was named a New York Times Notable Book, won the inaugural Joy Award from the #MarginsBookstore Collective, and became a national bestseller. His fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, A Public Space, and VICE, and he has written nonfiction for The New Yorker, the London Review of Books, and Harper’s, among others. He writes regularly about literature, film, art and music for his Substack, To a Green Thought. He is the recipient of many honors for his work, including a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship and the 2021 Vursell Award for prose style from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He has taught at the Iowa Writers Workshop, Grinnell College, the University of Mississippi, and Princeton. Greenwell currently lives in New York, where he is a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at NYU.

***

Otherppl with Brad Listi is a weekly literary podcast featuring in-depth interviews with today's leading writers.

Available where podcasts are available: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, etc.

Subscribe to Brad Listi’s email newsletter.

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www.otherppl.com

[metalhead-brainrot]

[Album of the day] Howling Giant / Sergeant Thunderhoof - Masamune & Muramasa

Nashville, TN (HG) | Bath, UK (ST) // 2020

[Genres] stoner rock, heavy psych, prog rock

[Themes] Two blacksmiths of Japanese legend competing to make the best samurai sword.

[FFO] concept albums, samurai media

[Thoughts] I wanted to talk about an underrated release from one of my favorite artists, Howling Giant. They're a stoner rock trio out of Nashville* whom I encountered for the first time when they opened for space rock powerhouse King Buffalo, and later saw them again alongside Elder and Ruby the Hatchet.** Their early stuff is simple riff paradise, and recent releases have seen the band doubling down on the space rock of it all.*** Sergeant Thunderhoof is a great band that I know considerably less about, but my thoughts are that if you like one, you'll like the other.

I bought this split on vinyl because it was half the price of the others at the merch stand and I'm a cheap bastard. And fortunately so, because I love what Howling Giant and Sergeant Thunderhoof achieved together. The concept behind this concept album is one of my favorites; I'd talk more about the legend itself, but I thought you'd rather read the description below to hear what the artists have to say.****

This split is Chapter 2 in a series of splits put out by Ripple Music, a stoner rock record label. These "Turned to Stone" splits are great, I've listened to all nine so far.***** They're a great way to explore some of the selects of the underground stoner scene.

Finally, the album artwork of Masamune & Muramasa is intricate and compelling, especially up close on the vinyl sleeve. This album's cover was done by Sara-Jane Swettenham, based in Bath, who has done other Sergeant Thunderhoof album covers in a similarly distinctive style. It seems she used to sell prints of her work, but her Etsy storepage doesn't appear active so I will link to her Instagram as well.

o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::> o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::> o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::>

* You can tell by the mustaches. Keep on keeping on, Nashville.

** That later show I came specifically to see Howling Giant, though of course I knew the other bands. Everyone put on an excellent show. Ruby the Hatchet in particular was fun to watch; I'd jump at the chance to catch their high-energy heavy psych in the future.

*** I'd highly recommend Black Hole Space Wizard Part I and Part II, and am also partial to their debut EP. I'm also well aware that saying "I prefer their first album" makes me a chode, no need to point it out.

**** Wikipedia link with more info for the intellectually curious.

***** I prefer 1-4, your mileage may vary. They're all good; recent ones have been more desert rock, and earlier one are more psych/prog. Turned to Stone Chapter III features Merlin, a great band best known for their album Christ Killer, a re-telling of Nick Cave's Gladiator II in stoner doom format. Christ Killer is one of my all-time favorites, and Merlin is a band that reinforces what I said in my last post: KCMO is fucking cool.

o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::> o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::> o()xxxx[:::::::::::::::::>

[From the band/label]

Chapter two of Ripple's new Turned to Stone series presents the story of two legendary Japanese sword smiths, Muramasa and Masamune, as told in interconnected musical movements by spacefaring psych-metal warriors Howling Giant and their equally cosmic riff-wielding British contemporaries Sergeant Thunderhoof.

In the two pieces, Muramasa and Masamune have a contest to determine whose sword smithery is superior, each crafting a blade of masterful quality and facing off by the edge of the river.

Instead of the typical approach with two bands contributing stand-alone sides of a record, Howling Giant and Sergeant Thunderhoof wanted to write an album that was thematically cohesive. Each side features a 20-minute song assembled via sharing of melodic ideas between the two bands during the writing process, and telling the story from the perspective of one of the sword smiths.

The result is a single piece of ambitious songcraft created by two riff-prog legends leaving another impressive mark on the heavy rock landscape.

[qnewsau]

'Anything for ratings': Gay groom Simon slams MAFS

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/anything-for-ratings-gay-groom-simon-slams-mafs/

'Anything for ratings': Gay groom Simon slams MAFS

Married At First Sight Australia has introduced its first two gay grooms in years, but one of the grooms is “shocked” he was even included at all.

Season 11 of the blockbuster Australian reality TV show started on Nine on Monday night (January 29).

Warning: MAFS spoilers ahead

MAFS introduced Simon Flocco in the series premiere, and the Adelaide man shared his background at the groom’s party.

“I always had girlfriends,” Simon said. “It just took me a while to realise what my true sexuality was.”

But we already know the 39-year-old quits the show shortly after filming the groom party.

Ahead of the premiere, Simon criticised the producers’ decision to include him in the casting lineup through the use of a crudely photoshopped iPhone photo.

Asked about the situation by the Daily Mail, Simon asked, “Why am I even in the lineup? I suppose they’d do anything for ratings, right?”

The outlet reported an “utterly gobsmacked” Simon assumed he’d be edited out and he refused to give producers control of his Instagram.

“Simon thought he was completely out of the picture,” a source said.

“Seeing that photoshopped image [on the cast lineup] was a real shocker for him.”

Yahoo! Lifestyle claimed producers did consider editing Simon out entirely. But they ultimately decided to include him as his dramatic exit was a “real moment” that shows “not everyone can handle the pressure of the experiment,” the outlet reported.

MAFS groom Michael Felix is a ‘goddamn treasure’

Meanwhile, the MAFS premiere also introduced another gay groom Michael Felix, from Victoria. On Monday night, Michael attended the bridal party before meeting his husband-to-be.

This was supposed to be Simon, but we know the two men unfortunately won’t make it down the aisle. After Simon quits, Michael will be paired with another groom, Stephen, later in the series.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Married At First Sight (@mafs)

Regardless, Michael charmed Married At First Sight viewers on Monday night.

“Michael is a goddamn treasure I want the best for this man,” one person wrote online.

“I swear to god if they set this angel up with a mean man I’ll riot,” another MAFS viewer vowed.

“We must protect Michael at all costs,” someone else wrote.

Michael Felix. Image: Nine

Married At First Sight Australia continues on Nine tonight (January 30).

Gay groom says Married At First Sight wedding was ‘torture’

Married At First Sight Australia has struggled with queer representation since it started almost a decade ago.

In 2016, its only gay male couple, Craig and Andy, had a disastrous marriage with their relationship ending after just a few days.

In a scathing social media post, Craig later claimed the wedding was “torture” and left him with post-traumatic stress disorder.

In 2020, MAFS Australia featured its first lesbian couple, with Amanda and Tash tying the knot.

Read more:

Gay man ‘dumped from MAFS just days before filming’

Gay singles aren’t signing up for MAFS, producers say

MAFS bride Jessika Power comes out as bisexual

For the latest LGBTIQA+ Sister Girl and Brother Boy news, entertainment, community stories in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

[emzeciorrr]

EMITTER - THE COLOR MACHINE I 8K HDR from Roman De Giuli on Vimeo.

EMITTER is an experimental fluid art film which was created with a semi-automatic paint drop system. Since the beginning of my career, I exlcusively focused on chemical reactions and fluid motion on the macro and micro scale. But over time, I developed several visual methods on bigger canvases to create alive paintings which unfold over a longer period of time. To achive this, I apply a thick base layer of paint and then start to add other colors with droppers or by pouring. As the amount of paint is higher than what the canvas is able to absorb, the paint drops down from all edges of the canvas and onto my desk below. What I noticed for years is, that the constant dropping leads to fascinating and complex colors layers one cannot create by hand. I started to capture what was happening out of frame instead of focusing on the color flow on canvas and collected footage over time. To recrerate these constant dropping effects on canvas, I developed the first simple dropping rigs in 2020 with syringes and tubes. Allthough the visual effects were pleasing, I understood I would need a more mechanical and repetitive setup and developed the idea of a fluid art printing machine. After a long period of R&D (and trial and error), I finished a full working 10 channel drop machine driven with peristasltic tube pumps and stepper motors. The paint for each channel is stored in glass bottles on top of the machine. From there, the peristaltic pumps suck the paint out of the bottles and all the way to the tips of the tubes. The tips can be arranged in many different orders and positions and are sitting on top of a slider which acts as kind of a printing head. While the paint slowly drops from the tips of the tubes down on the canvas, the slider moves the printing head from side to side in loop mode. This way, the machine "prints" row after row of paint drops which slowy move from one side of the canvas to the other one, finally rinsing down in a drip tray. One of the tubes constantly provides the base paint in a higher volume, the other nine tubes emit drop sequences in different sizes and densities. Via the machine panel I can adjust basic parameters like speed and throuput for each channel. In combination with other factors, like tube diameters, slider speeds, tilt angles, color density and much more, The EMITTER is able to create endless variations of liquid dropping images. There are literally unlimited options to put this machine to use and it can print for hours and hours without interruption. What you see in this experimental fluid art piece is a collection of my best shots, captured over a period of around 3 and a half years, including shots from early stages of R&D (2020) all the way to the full model with 10 motor driven channels (since 2023). Despite the cost for electronics and maintenance, the machine consumes a devastating high amount of paint, making this damn apparatus a creative dream and a finacial nightmare at the same time. Every time I hear the melodic sound of all ten stepper motors running and the pumps doing their job, I worship the fact that I was priviledged to create such a weird thing. And I am very grateful. EMITTER is provided in 8K60p HDR. Thanks for watching!

+++ My Instagram: instagram.com/romandegiuli +++ +++ My Website: terracollage.com +++

Music: Jonny Fiasco - What lies ahead This video is available for commercial usage in 8K, SDR and HDR. Request a license here: terracollage.com/licensing

Terracollage // Experimental Fluid Art and Macro Cinematography // Stock Footage // Licensing // Production // 8K // HDR