#also i’ll probably be talking most about my work on twitter so follow me if you wanna see! tumblr’s more my recreational/personal

[tritoch]

Have you got any thoughts to share about Sphene? I saw your post about how misrepresented FFXIV’s female characters are, and I’ve been hoping to see anything more than the typical “Evil AI colonizer etc.” or “Tragic woman who can never change ever” or “Wuk Lamat’s girlfriend”. Maybe our interpretations will differ but I’ll be happy if you can provide anything more complex than those.

Sure! Throwing all this under a read-more for anyone who hasn't finished 7.0 yet. I think I'll probably expand on this more later but wanted to get initial thoughts down. (Note after writing: I meant this to be brief but uhhhh brevity is not my strong suit sorry. This take just sort of ends abruptly because I realize I'm rambling.) Again, spoilers through the end of 7.0 MSQ.

I think Sphene is the sharpest work the game has done yet in casting the antagonist as the noble double of the protagonist (a well it returns to a lot with Emet, and Zenos, and Golbez, and...). But because the protagonist here is Wuk Lamat and not the Warrior of Light, that's also a much more defined and interesting role. To me, Wuk Lamat is, above all, the Righteous Queen, who rules thoughtfully, wisely, and justly, and whose claim to the throne is justified by her moral clarity. Sphene, in turn, is also a wise and good queen, one who undertakes all her actions with her people first in her hearts, a sense of compassion towards all, and a clear eye for the consequences and costs of her intended course of action. And it leads to utter disaster, for her, her people, and the people of Tural. That rocks!

The first half of 7.0 is about justifying the fact that Wuk Lamat's going to be Dawnservant. Wuk Lamat is compassionate, curious, wise, and open-minded. She wins over rebels and malcontents not by asserting her authority or by strength of force, but by taking her obligations to them (as her subjects) seriously. She knows many of her subjects personally and takes a great interest in their lives, and she respects even those who openly oppose her.

And everything Wuk Lamat does, Sphene does to 11. Wuk Lamat respects her subject peoples and is curious about their cultures? Sphene forcibly annexes Yyasulani, but goes out of her way and expends Alexandria's limited resources to enable the remaining Xak Turali to live in their accustomed way if desired (…to the extent allowed by the new permanent lightning storms and the internal conflicts caused by regulator adoption). Wuk Lamat cares about her people not just in the abstract but as individuals? Sphene visits sick kids, knows them by name! Wuk Lamat understands the burden of rulership is too great and cedes half her power to her brother? Sphene recognizes her own weaknesses and makes a deal with the devil to keep Alexandria's culture alive! Wuk Lamat is willing to die for her people? Sphene will forcibly traumatize herself into being a better queen, if that's what rulership demands.

For an expansion that spends the first half being like "wow isn't this perfect candidate for the crown so likable and humble? wouldn't it be nice to be ruled by a good king?," it sure is funny that the final boss is THE QUEEN ETERNAL and she hits you with attacks like LEGITIMATE FORCE and ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY and ROYAL DOMAIN. This, to me, is Sphene's role: she complicates and questions the themes we've developed in the first half. Most importantly to me, she makes us ask: what is devotion to a people or culture even worth?

There's a thing I kept thinking of constantly during Dawntrail, not because I think it directly influenced the game in any way but because the parallels were so stark and startling. It's Jonathan Hickman's New Avengers #18 (2014). Truthfully, I'm not a big comics guy; I only know this sequence because Ta-Nehisi Coates cited it as inspiration for his Black Panther run on Twitter once (I also didn't read TNC's run, I was following him for politics talk). Forgive me, comics people, if I get any details wrong. The parallels are almost comical, though. It goes like this:

A superhuman secret society formed of some of the smartest heroes (and villains) in the land re-forms to oppose an existential threat caused by incursions from other dimensions that threaten to cause literal collisions between Earth and its alternate dimension counterparts. Seeing no other alternatives, they undertake work on a weapon to destroy these other worlds. T'challa—king of a fictional hyperadvanced nation called Wakanda, and also the superhuman Black Panther—meets with his ghostly predecessors, the previous Black Panthers/kings, for he fears the moral stain on his soul and the souls of the people of Wakanda, if they survive explicitly by killing their alternate counterparts, will be too heavy to bear. His ancestors are not impressed.

To them, there is no question at all. A king's duty may be complex in the execution, but it is simple in its conception. Your people come before all others. Always. This is, must be, the fundamental ethic of a good king. To do otherwise would be a betrayal of the social order on which this imagined good monarchy is built. In a situation like this, the only option is to do what you must to protect them. "Will there be a cost? Yes. Might the universe burn? Let it. . . . You will kill them all if it means Wakanda stands. The golden city must never fall."

"I will do what I must" is Sphene's guiding principle. It is so important to her that when she recognizes that her sentimental attachments are making her waver in her duty, she severs them entirely, sacrificing her whole identity to the throne. It is also implicitly Wuk Lamat's position: she has no choice but to fight Sphene because to do otherwise would be to fail to protect her people. In fact, it's briefly even sort of the Warrior of Light's position, as when you tell Sphene before her trial that you understand what you must do, which is shut her down to protect others.

(One quick thought about the Warrior of Light: one cool thing about the antagonist this time being a double in a more exact way than Emet or Zenos is that it means other characters get a chance to relate to her differently than Wuk Lamat. The Warrior of Light, for example, is pressed into her service immediately upon your first meeting as the Queen's Champion, there to defend her if need be against all evil. This role is further affirmed by both robot Otis and Endless Otis, who essentially hand off their role as her knight to you, and reinforced when you flash back to the "might I call upon your aid" moment right before the end. Except, of course, you are loyal not just to her, but to the principles she represents, which her own acts betray, and so your ultimate act of aid is to essentially pass judgment on her and execute her. In a sense, you become the internal safeguard that a political system is supposed to have to protect against this very issue, and which Alexandria explicitly lost when it cast out/forgot Otis. Very Voeburt/ShB tank quests, it owns.)

But really, it's Sphene who embodies this sort of grim logic best. Aside from her transformation into the Queen Eternal, it's also why she suggests you simply become Alexandrians. It's the only way for her to reconcile her values and worldview, which have backed her into a corner where preserving Alexandria has come to mean a maximalist declaration of war on all life outside its borders because the kind of absolutely pain-free life she envisions for her citizens is completely unsustainable.

In this reading, one of Sphene's main beats is to unsettle what has preceded her in MSQ. In nearly all respects, she shares your values. She prizes life, is curious about other cultures, believes in the greatest good for the greatest possible number. But she is also a queen, and therefore irrevocably (in her eyes) tied to her state. Gulool Ja Ja and Wuk Lamat (and Koana) are the mythical wise rulers, thank god--but what if Wuk had inherited a Turali state that wasn't desperately in need of cross-cultural understanding, but one in a state of war? What value would her deep love for the people of Tural have held then? Sphene says, it would have held no value. If the survival of your people means harming the innocent, you harm the innocent. Kingship allows for no alternatives.

But she also concedes, in the very next breath, that she is still kind of wrong. Because what happened here was not inevitable, despite her programming (a brief note: to me Sphene being programmed is exactly the same as Emet being maybe-tempered, it's a fantasy gloss on the idea of social and cultural education. "I was programmed for this" is really no different from "I was trained and educated for this"), because the truth is that this kind of thoughtful, principled devotion to the state and its people is also a form of sentimental attachment, in the end. One that is maintained not because it is natural, and necessary, but because the monarch, too, likes it, and gets something from it.

In so many ways, in so many senses, the monarch is the state. Kings and queens may fancy themselves merely a reflection of their people's needs and desires, but of course even a cursory glance at history will tell you that far more often, states reflect their rulers. Sphene and Wuk Lamat both suggest that their conflict was inevitable, but was it? Or is the truth, as Sphene glancingly acknowledges here, that she turned her own fears and desires into the same policy goals that led to this tragedy? And if so...what does that say of our Good Queen, Wuk Lamat? Perhaps this could be different if they met earlier, says Wuk Lamat. But when? When did Wuk Lamat ever not love her people so dearly that she would not have sacrificed herself for them, or caused mass death for the sake of their survival? When did Sphene not believe the Endless to be people, or the preservation of Alexandria to be the most important thing? Maybe she means "had we met before you met Zoraal Ja," but of course, we the player actually saw their meeting. And we know that Sphene even then was not the hapless naif she'd like to pretend. She always knew exactly what she was doing.

We know the price of this kind of thinking, this Hobbesian view that states are engaged in a struggle of all against all. Living Memory lets you walk through it. To preserve Tural, we exterminate the Endless. We befriend them, learn about their lives, promise to remember them, and then we destroy them and their homes, leaving nothing but a bleak blank landscape and the sound of wind. This is what Sphene would have done to Tural and Eorzea. Indeed, it's what she's already doing to the people of Yyasulani, because no amount of well-intentioned aid can make up for trapping people under the dome for 30 years and systematically eroding their culture through the resonators.

To me, this is what makes Sphene really work, that way she has of forcing Wuk Lamat and the player to commit the same kinds of sins she has. We'd like to think ourselves better than her, but of course, we've already reconciled with and integrated Mamook's brutal eugenicist regime back into Turali society well before we ever met Sphene. At the end of our long "wow isn't having a wise queen cool???" expansion, we are met with "Legitimate Force" and "Absolute Authority" and see them for what they truly are: nothing but tools of violence. No longer does the idea of the Warrior of Light hanging around Tural as Wuk Lamat's advisor have the same attraction, now that we have been reminded of the way the putatively unquestionable logic of kingship can ultimately lock even the wisest and kindest rulers into a path of war and exploitation and destruction.

I think Sphene is FFXIV's most interesting and nuanced depiction yet of a leader. She really, truly, wants nothing more than to save her people and protect them from pain. But even seemingly loving and compassionate goals like these can readily lead us down dark paths. She's a "hard men make hard choices"-type character, a noble but misguided opponent, but as a loving and elegant fairy queen instead of a grizzled knight or extremely sad man. She fucking rocks.

[swords-of-a-soilder]

Bless you for compiling what’s going on with that ex-bird app. It’s been genuinely insightful for me to understand the thoughts of the kinds of people behind those accounts.

That person trying to cancel creators for associating with Forever (and probably advocating for his lore to be excised from the server) saying “but I can’t possibly give up guapoduo, it’s My Hyperfixation” is very telling. Hypocrisy specifically in the context of “separating the art from the artist” isn’t something I’ve seen before, shockingly, so I guess I get to add that to my Social Media Discourse Bingo. (I had an online friend in 2016 who I was terrified to talk about my interests with because I didn’t know what angry punk teenagers on tumblr had deemed “evil and disgusting”, and even SHE stopped listening to some of her favorite metal bands when she learned they were homophobic, and had absolute turmoil when she learned that David Bowie might have allegedly slept with an underage groupie in the 70s. Her constant, unpredictable rage at seemingly random pieces of media was awful for my mental health, but at least she wasn’t a genuine hypocrite.)

Also that tone of “I’ve had good memories here… but I just can’t handle it anymore.” It sounds like someone whose meaningful but soul-crushing work has finally broken them, almost sounding like someone I knew at the frontline worker job I had mid-pandemic who missed her own birthday three years in a row, got repetitive stress injuries, and then got passed over for a promotion that was given to someone who did a fraction of the work. But the “God willing, I’ll never come back” was followed by “I’m 13” …damn, I got whiplash so hard that I astral projected into a universe where things made sense for a second. Because of course kids don’t have a complex view of other countries’ political systems or cultural pressures. Or the nuances of personal change and redemption. Or that sometimes people are just not online for a few days. And of course a 13-year-old doesn’t understand how dumb and petty they look by trying to ruin other peoples’ careers in the name of Activism (tm) while having a fandom portmanteau username.

“I didn’t want it to come to this but… I’m going to delete twitter!” I hope so, but more for their own sake, honestly. I actually have less anger towards most of them now. Many are kids with a false sense of grandiosity that makes them believe they are the ultimate moral authority, but have very little understanding of how messy people or societies can be. I just hope they can learn one day, and look back on who they are now and cringe. (And then many years after that, have the grace to forgive themselves.)

Oof, sorry for the wall of text.

I’m still not over the whole situation with Forever. I miss his energy, and his accent, and his silly bits with Richas that always dragged on too long, and N.I.N.H.O. (and everything it represented), and how different he and Cellbit are but how they understood each other WAY too well, and how he tried to make people who didn’t log onto the server as often still feel welcome and wanted, and how happy he got when anyone non-Brazilian even tried to speak a little bit of Portuguese. (I was learning, but I’ve barely touched it since.) I won’t lie, it’s affected me far more than I thought it would.

I miss Forever. Thank you for your blog being a little space where that’s okay.

I'm honestly a little worried for the kid (s), not in a "oh I just want the best for" fake bs way just a little concerned tbh. I still don't like them but I don't hate them either, they're a kid.

But at the same time I'm worried for their well being, they have like 5,000 follower on their main Twitter and 28 on curious cat (which is apprantly high for that app )

That's 5000 people (teens or not) waiting for you to tell them how to feel that can't be good for their mental state, not for a 13 yr old kid.

Most of their life was spent learning about the world and their still learning, these are the ages where you're worried about the sun blowing up.

You haven't seen how awful the world can be yet, You haven't seen how much worst it could get you haven't learned calculus yet!

To you the world is only these 13 years and you think if you don't act now everything will be over.

I get it, I had that fear too, most people grown into it and realize just how shitty it can get an settle in choosing their own battles and not letting It consume them, because no one had time for that anymore.

You want to experience the most out of live while you can and the older you get the easier it is to balance.

To me it looks like one of those situation where you'll look back and think "I wish I enojyed my childhood."

Because 5000 people waiting for you to tell them who to bash, 28 people prasing your while admitting they use to hate you.

It can't be good. And if they were to read this they'd probably say "oh you don't actually care you just want to shit on me."

And like, yeah I don't care, but am I saying all this because I want to shit on them? no I'm just pointing out concerns.

Apart from that I fully agree with anon.

[stelliarsheep]

みんな… おやすみなさい🖤 This is a few days late, but happy second anniversary OMORI! I posted this on Twitter and of course can’t write much, so I'll do the honors here.

TW for talk of mental health, hospitals and self harm. Please move from this post if you are uncomfortable with such topics, for your own sake. Thank you❤

I discovered OMORI in 2014. I saw that little trailer in my recommended as a kid and watched it. I got super inspired by it, but never did much else. 2018 rolled by and I found out about the Kickstarter. I couldn't back it up because y’know, I'm a broke teenager, but I still tried to follow its development until I just lost interest. It's now early 2021. My friends are talking about OMORI and begging me to play or watch it. I eventually caved in and didn't expect anything special. Boy was I wrong. I came into the game completely blind, and experienced everything raw. - The first ending I got was the 'true ending', where Sunny and Basil accept their actions and trauma. I cried so much near the end, especially during the Final Duet (but I'm sure that got most people). I had expected a cheesy rpgmaker horror game but instead I got an experience I will never forget. It's themes stuck with me. I hadn't played a game like it before. A game that accurately represents mental illness, trauma and anxiety. I have been suffering from depression basically since the fourth grade. A lot of bad things happened in my life and I was becoming aware of it. I started to feel down and hopeless, often resorting to sleeping all day, drawing and slipping into my own imagination and disassociating. - I soon realized that this wasn't working, and only felt worse. I'd say around fifth grade was when I started to hurt myself. And I couldn't stop. I slowly fell deeper into my depression as I eventually came to terms with the fact I was a transgender person. The first time I tried ending my life was only a few years ago. That led me to be forced to out myself to my family, which thankfully went well and they pledged to help me transition, which they still do to this day. - Despite being able to transition, I still felt like things were missing. I still felt depressed. I realized that I was suppressing my trauma from years prior to the point of forgetting it. And once I was reminded of it, I spiraled further. That leads to early 2022. I was close to ending my life. I was very close to death. But it failed. I gave up and decided to reach out for help. The day after reaching out I was admitted to a psychiatric hospital. I would go to two hospitals in the span of almost six months. Those months were some of the worst of my life. But somehow I grew as a person. And as time went on, I improved despite the challenges I faced while inpatient. My head became clearer. Because not only was I taking medication and therapy, but I thought of Sunny. - Yes it's kind of silly that I was inspired by a fictional character but Sunny's recovery and journey through his mental health and trauma pushed me to keep going. And ironically, I eventually met someone there named Sunny who also liked OMORI. We became really close and I think about them often. They were the only person from that horrible hospital that had a positive effect on me. In August of 2022, I was finally released. Shortly after my discharge my family moved across the country at short notice. I once again became depressed, having to leave my old friends and life behind, but I realized by moving, I can start anew. And that's what I've been doing ever since. I'm the happiest I've ever been and I'm about to turn eighteen in a week as of writing this. I never thought I would live to adulthood. - As cheesy as it is, if I never found OMORI I probably wouldn't be here. I wouldn't have been encouraged to get help sooner. I would most likely already have killed myself or ended up in the hospital for hurting myself. As harsh as that is, it is sort of true. This seemingly silly game about a boy dreaming up adventures with his friends has changed my life completely. I'm grateful for the OMOCAT team for working on this game and putting so much love into it. And I love a majority of the community as well. I have met so many kind and creative people through Discord and Twitter. Why am I opening about this on the internet then? I want to show that things do get better. No matter how old you are, no matter how bad things are either. - I used to think I would never make it anywhere but here I am, I have amazing friends, I'm working on passion projects with others and I draw all the time and enjoy it. My drive has improved because of this game. I don't know what I would have done without it. This game means so much to me and so many other people. I can't believe its been two years since it released already. I'm hoping to continue to love it for more years to come. Thanks so much to OMORI and the fandom that loves it so much.

[rocco-the2ndstormfilearchiver]

HI I AM HERE TO TALK ABOUT SOME TBSAP !

So as probably my 0.5 fans know I am a pretty big fan of towel studios’ (Spamton’s) “The Big Shot Autos Project” (TBSAP for short) as I’ve done a ton of art and other things, it really blows me away. Anyhoo! Spamton and another very talented soundcloud user by the name Puff worked and made Property Damage 2023 edition, which adds on to the already amazing song, from Spamton’s “I think this is a holiday album” album. Now it’s a stellar track, but I noticed a few things that now makes me have a theory: Realtor or a version of him will be a future secret boss in tbsap!

Now you may be thinking why I think this, well let me lay it all out for you!

First off: Vocals, can you hear them? kinda! they are distorted but if you use a vocal isolator you can hear them better!

it’s hard to make out but what we can understand is that these aren’t just stock voices, because we can hear “Follow the royalties Spamton, However, (Have more honor??), I will kill (or hear) you in broadway”

Let’s dissect this! Follow the royalties huh? due to it being the reator the most likely explanation is he is telling Spamton that he should pay for using his space, or area, or work. note this. if spamton would follow what the Realtor does, which in a sense is most likely sales, then this could explain spamton actually becoming a salesmen in the first place.

but doesn’t the christmas album take place after tbsap most likely due to the thumbnails? well here is the thing…

“Have more honor”

I think the Realtor, in a sense is a ghost of christmas past to spamton, this fact is supported by Pipineezer Scrooge song, referring to spamton.

I think then yeah that makes sense! case closed! Realtor is a representation of a sort of christmas ghost to spamton! well… what if?

Second off: Leitmotifs

during this new run of Property Damage, tbsap might notice a piece of music hidden in the background, is that…? TBSAP FREEDOM MOTIF?!

If you’ve listened to Heaven is Calling (Storgsly’s theme) you’d know that the freedom motif is the ending motif of the song, according to a comment by Spamton on the song, and that motif reappears in Property Damage 2023, well what does this mean? let’s get back to the last part of the vocals!

“I will kill (or hear) you in broadway”

Now the obvious meaning is the legit way this is said, the Realtor will hurt or hear spamton in broad day light, possibly as a punishment, makes sense makes sense, but what if you consider the chapters of tbsap?

in a question on the tbsap tumblr page (and on their twitter with an image), it was said one of the chapters of tbsap is theater themed, now what is this have to do? well the obvious: broadway. where in new york the first big hit theater shows where showed. now this seems far fetched, but go back to the original Property Damage song, where it is talked about the history of broadway and radio transportation, so there does seem to be a theme with theater, and with a theater chapter, this feels likely.

Now with an update, spamton told me themselves that there is something important about the songs rebooted

out the songs in the album, 3 where rebooted: Oink goes the egg, Property Damage, and Snow.

Oink goes the egg to me doesn’t feel like much importance, though that could be drastically wrong, but personally idk

Snow’s original lyrics was spamton singing about snow being everywhere, like his dumpster and in his hair, this could connect with the scrooge idea, but I’m not sure…

The order of the songs! wait.. Oink goes the egg is first, while Snow is the finale song. and property damage is also a final song, right now idk exactly what to do with this info, but it could be a christmas ghosts idea.

That’s all I have right now!! I love TBSAP and everything they do!!! so go follow those suckers and yeah! once I figure out more stuff I’ll make sure to update this post, or reblog it!

EDIT: This is my theory for now..

TBSAP Tumblrs

@tbsap @towelstudios (They are so cool)

[letmerambleplease]

Hey everyone! This is my first time doing this but in the following lines I’ll try very hard to convince you to watch a movie. ^^ (Yeah this isn't a balanced review of the movie, more like me just gushing about it) The name is « Sweet Smell of Success » and it’s is really underrated. However, when I went on twitter the other day, I did see that it still gets some love there which makes me very happy! You can rent it on amazon prime.

Ok but first things first. I‘m not a native english speaker so please excuse any mistakes! Also… and this is pretty important, I feel like I need to give trigger warnings because the movie deals with some heavy themes, like abusive relation ships, self harm, questionable sexual situations (sorry don’t know how to describe it) and probably more stuff that you should be midful of when watching it. It is not very explicit though in my opinion, so you won’t see any blood for example on screen. Furthermore (haha I’m trying to remember fancy words from english class ^^‘) I really love the characters as characters, that does not mean I condone any of their actions obviously.

Ok! With all of that out oft he way let’s begin!

Sweet Smell of Success is a film noir drama released in 1957, directed by Alexander Mackendrick. It is based on a nouvelette « Cosmopolitan » by Ernest Lehman and in the main roles are starring Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis, Susan Harrison, and Martin Milner.

The movie is about a press agent named Sidney Falco (dope name btw) who works under the very powerful colomnist  J.J. Hunsecker. J.J.‘s sister Susie Hunsecker is in a relationship with a man J.J. deems unworthy, which is why he wants Sidney to get them to break up. He himself does not want to ruin his relationship with his sister, who is already getting wary of him. 

I will try to stay spoiler free for this first section. Later on I want to talk about more of my personal viewing experience and will probably get into Spoilers, but I’ll warn you then.

I would like to start by talking about the acting and the characters. The actors are all great but stand outs for me are Tony Curtis who plays Sidney and Burt Lancaster who plays J.J.. Even though the charcters are both very manipulative and horrible people, the two actors play them very differently, which makes it super fun to watch. Sidney is always on his feet and you can practically see how many gears in his head are turning to devise a new scheme. Tony Curtis portrays this very well through nervous gestures and facial expressions. He is also very good at showing Sidneys deceptive side and his charme. The movie establishes his motivation in the very first minutes, which is great because everything he does comes back to a desire to find financial and social success. To achieve his goals Sidney does not really care about anyone, however he is very nice to most people, in case they could be useful later. There are always a lot of people greeting him when he comes into a bar and he himself even says that he is basically keeping up appearances 24/7.

J.J. on the other hand is very calm and seems threatening even in seemingly normal conversations. In stark contrast to Sidney he does not seem that occupied with being nice and keeping appearances because he can get away with it. He doesn’t need to appease someone, peoply try to appease him.

The movie is very interesting because it portrays different kinds of power struggles and power dynamics. From a first glance it seems like J.J. is basically at the top. He is very influencial, super intimidating (like damn, I would be very scared of him in real life) and commands every conversation he is in. But inspite of all of that he still has his limitations. One of his biggest limitations is his sister Susie herself. I think she is the only person he at least tries to keep a friendly relatinship with, while also controlling every aspect of her life. I think he knows that when she decides to leave that he can’t really do anything about it, so he pressures her into staying by intimidating her, while also trying to not push her over the edge. And at the end their whole dynamic switches, which leaves him standing quietly and kind of in a crouching position behind a door. It is a little difficult to explain tob e honest and if you are someone who watched the film let me know what you think.

Another thing is that, while Sidney definitly ranks beneath him in the power pyramid if you will, he still needs him to accomplish his goals. Because as I said before Sidney is very cunning and fast to not only devise a plan but to execute it as well.

There is a lot more to say about the characters and their dynamics however I’ll stop here for now to talk a little bit about how the movie structures it scenes.

Most oft he time the Movie follows Sidney and his schemes, and there are just some scenes here and there with him missing. And it is so much fun to see scenes building on each other, while his plans get more complicated. And to be honest at least for me there never is a dull moment. Because the movie is very good at making even little scenes matter later.

Maybe I can give you an example. These scenes are mostly there to show how Sidney works and acts, so they primarily exist to characterize him and I think they are very cool. So, Sidney goes to J.J.’s Column (I think) where he visits some kind of secretary who has information on what will be printed in the next issue. He flirts with her a little (again showing how charming he can be) however she already knows that he only wants information and tells him about a comedian without existing press agent who will be featured in the paper under the headline « Funniest man in New York » or something similar like that. That scene alone is fine, however it gets really cool when he later meets said comedian. He obvously wants to get hired so he tells the Comedian that he has connections that can get the comedian into J.J.‘s paper (which is a big deal). He then proceeds to fake a phone call with J.J. (It’s hilarious because he just calls his own secretary who hangs up confused about what he is talking about). He pretends to suggest an article about the comedian and even uses the same Headline he found out about earlier. After that he goes back tot he comedian, knowing fully well that the article will be published the next day. And later in the movie the comedian comes back to hire him. (At that point he get’s ignored though, because Sidney has bigger plans). Like, Sidney is awful, sexist, racist, manipulative and overall pretty bad but it is a real delight to see what plans he comes up with.

I want to also mention the visuals of the movie. Because they are gorgeous! The movie is in black and white which I did not like for a long time because I thought it made everything look washed out and kind of dull. However the contrast in Sweet Smell of Succes is very nice! There are bright highlights and deep shadows and the lighting is often used to convey a specific athmosphere. For example when half of the face of a character is completly covered in shadows. Another neat example is how the glasses of J.J. cast some sharp shadows on his face to make him seem more menacing. A lot of it is shot at nighttime in New York, where are a lot of lights, which makes a very cool backdrop.

It is also very cool how each indovidual shot subconsciously tells us something about the relationships between the characters. J.J. is often sitting but takes still more space up in the frame to show his dominance of a scene. Or sometimes the focus of the camera shifts slightly away from a conversation that is happening in the foreground to show Sidney in the back, because he orchestrated the situation.

In general the movie is full of cool, little things and tricks. That is in the script and the visuals. In one of my favourite scenes (not because oft he content but because of how it was shot) Susies Love interest gets surroundet by corrupt police men and before anything happens it cuts tot he drums oft the Jazz band that is playing in the club he just left. Our mind automatically makes the connection that he was beaten up pretty badly, without even seeing it.

Why is all of this important? Well, as someone who likes to watch movie reviews on Youtube I feel like a criticism I hear a lot is that a movie treats ist viewers like they are too dumb to understand subliminal messages and thus becomes boring or even insulting. It is also just a lot more fun to watch a movie that does not take you out of the story wit exposition and instead let’s you figure stuff out for yourself.

This all may sound like Sweet Smell of Success is a movie without a lot of taking. But that is very far from the truth. I would actually say that the dialogue is one of its biggest strengths! Not only informs you a lot about the characters, it also includes some of the coolest lines I have heard in any media. The lines  „Cat’s In The Bag … ” and “. . . And The Bag’s In The River” even served as episode titles for a show I also love very much : Breaking Bad. Side note, Sweet Smell of Sucess is also one of the favourite movies of the creator of Breaking Bad. Haha maybe that’s a more convincing argument to watch it that anything I could say. Anyways, the dialogue is also great at referencing itself at later points and creating awesome foreshadowing. 

I also want to talk about the music very briefly. I think the soundtrack fits the story and overal vibe of the setting perfectly. A cool little easter egg is that the Band of which Susies Love interest Steve is a part of is also the band who made the soundtrack fort he movie.

Just for fun I want to talk about my first viewing experience, which might include Spoilers. Maybe you can watch the movie first and come back later to compare your experience to mine. However the movie does not get ruined through Spoilers. I watched it a few times already and noticed something cool and new almost every time.

 For a little bit of context : I actully only watched the movie because I already liked Tony Curtis. By chance I caught Operation Petticoat on TV. And to be completly honest I just thought he was very handsome, so with nothing better to do I started to watch more movies he starred in. I did not expect to find one of my favourite movies of all time XD So I started watching and the first thing I noticed was that it was interesting to start the movie with the main character already stressed and angry. I feel like normally we get so see the characters in their „normal „ state, which get’s disrupted by an inciting incident. Sweet Smell of Success throws you right in the action though. On second thought, stressed and angry might me Sidneys default state…

Something to know is that a lot of the audience back when the movie was released did not like that Tony Curtis portayed such a scheming character. They expected him tob e a nice guy like he was in pretty much all of his other movies. And the funny thing is, I did too. It took me soooo long to finally realize that Sidney was just not meant to be a nice character. I think in one of his first scenes he even says „I‘m not a good person“ or something along those lines. For an explanation: A lot of the movie was very difficult for me to understand in english, partly because I just didn’t know the words they were using and partly because Sweet Smell of Succes’s story line is not that simple. So fort he majority oft he film I sat there a little confused but still intrigued. And then came the scene in which Sidney tries to persuade a woman into sleeping with a man for his own gain and clearly against her wishes. And I was like „???? that is not ok Sidney! How am I supposed to root for you now? Is this a 50’s thing? Did they think back then something like that was ok?“. And then later when he plants the drugs on Steve I thought for sure he would go back and save him from the police, as a redeeming moment. And when he didn’t it finally occured to me that we weren’t supposed to root for Sidney in the first place. And that is when the movie got super interesting. Because Susie pretty much finds out that Sidney and J.J. were behind the assault of her Lover (though it is a little ambiguous). And she and Sidney meet up in her and J.J.‘s apartement and honestly my heart beat so fast while watching this scene! Because you really don’t know what will happen. If there is a happy end for the main character, that would not be really a happy end, because the main character is a selfish, horrible person.

*Major Spoiler incoming* At the end Susie tries to jump of her balcony, however Sidney is barly able to rescues her. She is obviously very distraught by the whole situation and just in that Moment J.J. comes back home. As I said before the movie is not always very clear with what is going on inside of the minds of the characters however this is how I understood the ending: Sidney got a message from J.J. which ordered him to come to his apartement, however when he arrives J.J. is not there… just Susie. I am pretty sure she called him there to make it seem like he was directly responsible for her death. This way she would have taken revenge on Sidney and J.J. simultaniously, while also escaping her current seemingly hopeless living condition. And I guess this ending would have worked, however it would have been pretty dark. I love happy endings and I think the actual ending is as close as you can get to one with a movie like this. The dialogue is very well written, especially at the end. It is honestly a little to difficult to summerize all the nuances, because there are a lot of lies and truths that are made out to be lies and so on. I think you’ll need to see it for yourself.

I love the ending because it seems like every character gets what they deserve (except for Steve, poor guy is in the hospital) Sidney told Susie the truths about their schemes, which made J.J. turn on him and send a corrupt cop after him. Not only gets he beat up and who knows what happens after that but also are the chances of him achieving the goal he chased after the whole movie : finding succes, pretty much down to zero. Susie finally breaks free from her brother and goes to her boyfriend. I am really glad she did not need to die but instead gets to have a better future, symbolized by a ray of light she walks into in her last scene. You could say that J.J. gets of a little to light, however it is stated that Susie is the only family he has and that he cares for her (though in a crontrolling way). And with her breaking free from him he lost the only human connection he actually wanted in his life. At any rate it feels like a very satisfying conclusion to me.

[homemade-ghosts]

I know this is a kind of weird question, but why do you think you never got into EJ and Gina?

I saw a comment saying was season 3 was backtracking, "how their relationship was so genuine and supportive in the first two seasons then suddenly all the development was gone in s3 with EJ back to being inconciderate and Gina is back to having feelings for Ricky'

Not a weird question at all! 

I’ll start with things I think I’ve mentioned in previous PW-related asks (just to get the repetition out of the way lol). They share no common ground beyond both initially being seen as the scheming antagonists when the series began. They don’t understand each other — nor does EJ ever make a concerted effort to understand Gina, beyond asking her (literally one time) what it feels like to be constantly moving. They don’t communicate well; EJ put no effort into maintaining their relationship. + EJ essentially refuses to support Gina the second it becomes inconvenient for him (sure, he’ll pick her flowers to congratulate her on landing the lead, but then he’ll negate that by immediately talking about himself and his failings without giving Gina a moment to celebrate her own success). 

& on top of EJ & Gina being, on paper, not compatible — regardless of who they are being played by — there’s also the fact that I have never once felt an ounce of romantic chemistry watching Sofia & Matt on screen together. Chemistry is, in part, something that just is. You either have it with your scene partner(s) or you don’t. They don’t. (IMO) That’s problem #1. & even actors who establish that natural onscreen chemistry can’t coast on that alone, to really get the audience (in this case, me lol) invested, they both have to have the emotional range to back it up. 

Which brings me to problem #2: I don’t think Matt has the kind of depth, as an actor, that it takes to be a good scene partner to someone as incredible an actor as Sofia. I don’t want it to sound like I’m just trying to dunk on Matt, he seems like a nice guy and I by no means think he’s a bad actor (I don’t think anyone on the show is a bad actor) but, in my opinion, he doesn’t bring much, if any, nuance to his performance. It’s always very…shallow — meaning that Sofia, too often, has to carry (most? all?) the emotional weight in their scenes together. Josh, in contrast, is a much stronger actor who can hold his own in a scene with Sofia because he’s capable of giving a layered performance. Like Sofia, there’s so much going on behind his eyes, so much in the slight change of a facial expression. She doesn’t have to do all the heavy lifting in their scenes together, it’s more of an equal partnership.

I should probably also mention that I have never exactly loved EJ as a character, for reasons completely unrelated to Matt’s portrayal of him. Even when s1 was airing and he was in everyone’s “Big Three” edits on Twitter, I didn’t really get the appeal. I thought he was funny sometimes and a necessary part of the show’s narrative, but I had a hard time rooting for him because his problems were often so trivial compared to other characters’. Like, Ricky’s parents were in the midst of a divorce and his mom was miles away, seemingly starting a new life with a new relationship, without him. Gina had finally found a home and friends and somewhere to belong, only to have all of that ripped away from her, out of nowhere, the instant her mom gets a call from work. Meanwhile, EJ…lied and lost Instagram followers because of it ?? & I’m expected to sympathize with him? Then, in s2, Gina is heartbroken, without her mom to comfort her, Ricky is forced to move out of his childhood home & Nini is finally embracing her independence and learning not to see herself through the eyes of others and EJ just…doesn’t get into one Ivy League school until his dad effectively buys his way in and again, I’m supposed to feel for him because he's sad he couldn't earn that spot on his own? The only thing I feel is that he’s incredibly privileged. & when he was desperate to please his dad in s3, I tried to care (because it's the closest he's ever come to genuine struggle on the series) but I couldn’t because he was doing it at the expense of Gina & her feelings — something he never took responsibility or apologized for, by the way. Ricky makes a mistake, learns from it and does his best to make up for it. EJ makes a mistake and…well, that’s it. He keeps making it, but it’s supposed to be okay because he’s a good guy who’s always trying to do the right thing, even if he doesn’t succeed. & I’m tired of it, honestly.

TLDR: In order for me to root for a couple, they need to have chemistry, the actors need to have comparable acting abilities & I need to sympathize with both characters, to like both of them &/or to find them both interesting (I specified the “&/or” for that last part because I do have a couple ships where I don’t necessarily like one of the characters, but I do feel for them at times & find them interesting/compelling). PW has none of that.

As for the second part of your ask, the old “EJ & Gina’s relationship was great in s2, but the writers ruined everything in s3 by having EJ go back to being selfish and Gina go back to being in love with Ricky.” Ugh. Here’s the issue with that: neither of these factors ever changed. EJ has always been an inconsiderate & insecure boyfriend and Gina has been in love with Ricky this whole time. Neither of them went “back” to being anything, they just never left. EJ had all the same negative qualities in his relationship with Gina that he displayed in his relationship with Nini in s1 — jealous, insecure & secretive, with an inability to own up to his own actions & a tendency to blame Ricky for something that was entirely his own doing. That isn’t a sign of character regression. You can't regress if you never learned, never changed, in the first place. PWs only convinced themselves that EJ had changed because he was single for nearly all of s2 and that allowed them to completely forget what he was like in a relationship. Out of sight, out of mind.

 & I don’t know where PWs get the idea that Gina was completely over Ricky once her & EJ got together. She only accepted EJ’s offer of a date after making it clear (at the sleepover) that she thought Ricky was no longer an option, not that she didn’t still harbor feelings for him. There was no closure between them, they never talked about Opening Night and, in order for EJ & Gina to get together, she had to literally not be on speaking terms with Ricky.

Also, about the whole “EJ was so supportive in s2” thing: I’m guessing their idea of “support” is 1. EJ asking how she was one time — even though he didn’t ask because he noticed she was emotional and wanted to check in, he asked as in, “how do you feel about everything you’ve pulled off tonight?” because she had helped plan the entire party and performed that musical number for Carlos in front of everyone. Gina, feeling alone & dejected, took it for more than it was. & 2. EJ bringing Gina that ass granola bar from his back pocket at the airport. Both of these aren’t so much expressions of support as they are the absolute bare minimum, which required little effort on EJ’s part. Like, wow, in the entire time they’ve know each other, he’s asked her about herself twice and picked her up from the airport once — boyfriend goals, am I right?

[taekooktimeline]

November 24, 2022

Hi everyone 👋🏾

I haven’t posted any reminders since about August, so I thought I’d just share a few friendly reminders, more so for new followers, while I’m thinking of them and have a moment:

I’ve said this before but it doesn’t hurt to reiterate. Please remember I do my best to be objective, but sometimes I like to voice my opinion. In that instance, I disclaim where I want to speculate. Clips are provided for you to draw your own conclusions. Taekook speak for themselves so letting their actions and words do the talking is very easy to do☺️I have a total blast chronologically archiving their beautiful bond over the years, sourced by fan cams and official videos. When there are opinions, or even controversies surrounding a moment, I add those for posterity as well. With time, moments get forgotten, or antis try to distort things (which is incredibly sad). I’m determined to do my best to archive Taekook interactions for preservation. Anything that delves into theory will always be disclaimed as such. I addressed this more deeply late 2021 but here’s the recap - https://at.tumblr.com/taekooktimeline/hello-in-light-of-some-comments-ive-come-across/te337t9us2jm

I only have one Twitter (kakostel) and I just set up a fan IG (KaylaTK9597). The IG page will probably collect dust since Twitter is still existing😆but feel free to follow and I’ll follow back.

Because I have a tendency to follow back, especially if it’s not a brand new account and we have moots in common, it should go without saying but I’m not responsible for opinions expressed by others. Everyone is entitled to their opinion on things. I refuse to police, nor do I care to. I also can’t possibly keep track of what all my moots are up to. The big reason why I’d break being mutuals is if someone is not equally supporting and respecting both Taehyung and Jungkook. That’s an absolute must to me. Otherwise, you do you and I’ll do me❣️

I’m NOT in DMs❌ This version of the timeline and my tweets speak for me. There’s nothing I need to say in private.

I’m equally Taehyung and Jungkook biased☺️

I’m here to support Taehyung and Jungkook - individually and together, in all the ways I can, to the best of my ability. I’ll never stop saying that the sky's the limit for them because it’s true, and I’ll forever be proud of these two. They’re beautiful humans inside and out and I have all the confidence that things will always work out for them in their favor.

I’ve done my best to make the platforms I use safe and positive spaces for me to support and love Taekook. My anxiety dictates firm boundaries and I’m determined to keep them. I’m not interested in anyone’s background noise, negativity or insecurity. All of that is irrelevant. I am here for Taehyung/ Jungkook / Taekook. I posted this on November 7 but think it’s good to share here -

For Twitter, this tends to mean I RT posts, with the occasional fun Taekook video edit when I have time to make it. I’m not as active as some in being vocal but, again, I think the blog and my video edits speak for me. I addressed this around August 2022 but here’s the recap - https://at.tumblr.com/taekooktimeline/hi-everyone-i-hope-youre-all-doing-well-i-feel/z1pmufm4scky

I think most who follow me know but I’m studying Japanese. It seems to help my mind when I get too anxious, though it’s a very hard language to learn (とてもむずかしいよ😭). Some pieces in the blog have Japanese translations I worked hard on. I’m quite proud of those because it shows my progress in my personal life, while also giving me a means to verify a Japanese subtitled Taekook interaction, or J ARMY sighting, without the need for translators (I still have so many years to go, though. I tend to panic when someone speaks the language and my mind goes blank. I’m at a third grade level with kanji which means I still tend to fall back on hiragana, which is a problem when kanji is pretty prevalent). Two links to posts I built around my studies -

Winter Package 2020: https://at.tumblr.com/taekooktimeline2020/end-of-november-december-2020/sf0hh6q335o1

February 2022 post related to spotting Taekook at Ahgassi Gopchang in LA: https://at.tumblr.com/taekooktimeline2022/taekooktimeline-february-19-2022-released/3q1uckm8yapo

I provided a Taekook Spotify playlist link in my mini update but here it is again. Please keep streaming and supporting them 💜

Taehyung’s “Christmas Tree” MV:

Jungkook’s “Dreamers” MV:

We’re getting into the holidays, which is my favorite time of the year. Please remember to prioritize yourself and your mental health, and set boundaries where they’re needed. Social media is quite draining and toxic so take breaks if you need them. I’ve been fortunate to meet a lot of ARMY in person, some I consider best friends. Please believe me when I say ARMY outside of SM is a massively stark contrast to the ugliness you see when there’s anonymity behind screens. Keep that in mind and try to ignore the noise of others. And remember that real life should always comes first💜

[helluva-dump]

Turning all my asks off for now

Sorry guys, I just got caught up with a family situation right now… I didn’t talk about this but it’s been a situation I’ve been dealing with since October.

It has something to do with my grandfather and I’m very worried if he may have cancer or not… his test results are coming today.

So I’m gonna turn off these asks and I’m gonna probably take a month break from tumblr and delete the app for the time being.

All this shit is affecting my mental health and I really don’t want to hear fandom discourses at the moment.

I do have an Instagram and Twitter account that I’ll link here (I may stay off it twitter to avoid fandom discussions )

I know this seems sudden, but my family comes first. And so does my mental health.

When I’m in a better mood, I’ll share more of my art and Heaven AU stuff since I want to put most of my drive on that.

But I do want to thank all of you for being supportive. I’m surprised fans followed me but were being respectful of my opinions and I’m thankful for that. I’m also thankful for other critical people for being understand. I won’t delete this blog, but I just need some hiatus breaks.

This was a very rough year for me… but I’m glad to find a middle ground of this community to enjoy a work and it’s potential but without having an unhealthy parasocial relationship with said creator.

Actually, I rather you guysdm me for my IG I don’t feel comfortable displaying here in public yet

[lavndrnhoney]

I never post or write any more than 280 characters at a time so this’ll be interesting. And probably just a stream of my consciousness.

Hi. I’m Meg. I’m an Alabama transplant from Kansas City. My husband LB and I moved at the end of April (it’s now August 5th) and it’s been an exciting adventure since. I’m a plant-mom, a step-mom (Ma/Mum) to four, a Memaw to two, and a fur-mom. I’m also a big&little sister, an aunt, and a great aunt. I have no children of my own, but we’re working on that. It may never happen, but I’m surrounded by children so that’s kinda cool.

I post on Twitter (now, X) often enough that you’d think I’d have a bunch of followers, but after being stalked and harassed by an ex on social media, I started a new account and made it a closed account so I have 6 followers. I go by the same name on there, if anyone reads this and feels some kind of way about following me. I learned my lesson the hard way with followers, though. A girl at my last job outed me for posting on my closed Twitter account that I was angry at someone in HR for unfair treatment. I went too far and I was terminated for it. We blocked each other on Twitter, but now I’m terrified to post anything. So, we’ll see how long this post stays up.

I work as a pharmacy tech. I’m still on the fence about the job as a whole. Most everyone is nice, but some of the discussions are questionable at best; the pay isn’t great but the potential is there; and there’s an unpredictable schedule. But the work is easy, I have most weekends off, and I’ve kind of connected with a couple of the girls that work with me which is nice.

I am diagnosed with bipolar 2 (manic depressive), major depressive disorder, and general anxiety disorder. This makes every single interaction I have difficult and uncomfortable. I don’t have many friends left and now that I’m in Alabama, I REALLY don’t have much in the way of friends. I’m often weird and I either don’t talk or talk too much - which causes me more anxiety no matter what. My meds work most of the time, but they prescribed me trazodone for anxiety and it doesn’t work. Just makes me feel kinda sick and oddly highly aware of my eyes and forehead. I could talk for hours about mental health and the drugs associated with different ones but I’ll just leave it at that.

I like anything related to plants. I love them. I have like 50 plants and I could talk about them all the time but no one is interested in listening to me about them. I find that that’s a common theme in my life: no one listening to me. But I talk to my plants and they continue to grow and give me something to look forward to as they sprout more leaves and roots. I’ve successfully propagated 8 Monstera deliciosa clippings and they probably give me the most joy. I’m going to build a small moss wall to prop against the backside of an aquarium and stick the roots in the water and add fish. My husband already signed off on it. I’m not sure what kind of fish get. Maybe some tetras. And a goldfish. The post that inspired me had a beta but I’d like a small school of fish. Stay tuned on that.

I guess I’m writing this because I’m lonely. I have LB, but it’s not the same as having girl friends to bullshit with.

I’ll write more again soon.

Trust me, it’s the tip of the iceberg.

Xoxo, Meg

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Today in things that scared the living shit out of me for a moment: fucking this.

It’s happened a couple of times before. I remember when I saw Russell Howard say this:

That scared me for about two seconds, before I remembered that all it meant was a writer on the show found a meme, probably didn’t even come across it in its original context, but worked out that it originated on Tumblr so they said that when they put it on the show. It’s fine. Russell Howard isn’t here.

When you go to David O’Doherty’s website and click on “future shows”, it leads here. By far, the thing that freaks me out the most about that is that it’s up to date. It was up to date the last time I checked it, and… yep, just checked it again, and it’s still up to date. His Tumblr account has one actual post from the beginning of the pandemic and besides that nothing since 2015, but he has been on here to update his tour dates. So that’s not great. I mean, I assume he goes straight to that page, updates it, and logs off. Probably. What the hell would he hang out Tumblr for?

When I first saw that DO’D had a Tumblr account, I did read all of his posts, and they’re quite entertaining, he threatened to buy a lion for someone in 2013. I almost hit “follow” because I’d like to see it if he makes another weird post, until I realized that would mean the next time he goes on there to update his tour shows, I’ll appear in his notifications. I would like to not do that, thank you. So obviously I didn’t, but it freaked me right out to realize how easily I could.

Chris Addison has a Tumblr account. He definitely doesn’t use it or anything, but it exists, and it also freaked me out when I discovered that.

I do not understand how people make posts about famous people on Twitter, knowing those actual people are on Twitter and might see the posts. I am on this website because the rest of the internet is under the impression that it died in about 2015. I use it to say things about famous people that they will never, ever see.

Anyway, the latest installment in my adventures of learning that Tumblr technically exists on the same internet that’s used by these famous people and it’s technically possible they could have been on it at some point – this latest installment might have freaked me more than any of the others. I know I said I was done with the Daniel Kitson radio episodes, but it turns out there was one episode I missed from his 2013 run. I wasn’t sure, at first, whether I had heard the episode and it was just mislabeled or deleted, or if I hadn’t heard it at all. I’m listening to it now, and can confirm that I have definitely never heard this one before. Because I would have fucking remembered that.

I don’t really know what the hell talking about in that clip, by the way. I’m pretty sure Tumblr was never a “.org” website. Obviously I checked to see if the account he mentioned is still there, and obviously it isn’t. Besides that, it’s a weird thing he discussed, but not that weird by his standards. Wanting to collect the sound of asthmatics’ breathing and thinking you could make music out of it sounds like a pretty standard Kitson thing.

I wasn’t that that freaked me out. Obviously that’s some shit he thought would be a good idea in the middle of the night in January 2013, and will have long since forgotten. He’s not still on here checking that account. It was just jarring to learn that he has ever heard of this website in any capacity. Because Daniel Kitson has a bunch of material about how much time he spends Googling himself, how he talks like he’s above social media because he doesn’t post on there, but he still searches his own name on Twitter all the time. Which is fine. You go right ahead and search your own name on Twitter, Daniel. Just don’t do it here. Because I have used Tumblr’s search function enough to know there are very few people on here who ever talk about him; if you search for Daniel Kitson’s name on this site, quite a few of the results are from my blog.

I’ll occasionally do a Google search for some niche Britcom-related thing that I want to know more about, and if it’s sufficiently niche, then the top few Google search results will include posts from my own blog. That always freaks me out too. Because what if the comedians suddenly start thinking about this niche thing that concerns them, and decide to Google it? What if David O’Doherty and Daniel Kitson do a Google search to see if that rap battle they did in 2003 is still on the internet, and learn that when you try to look that up, I am a significant part of the results? Because apparently, for some reason, not many other people are talking about the 2003 rap battle between David O’Doherty and Daniel Kitson.

I realize this is genuinely unlikely. I get a bit paranoid about it sometimes, and then I remember that there are thousands of people on Twitter actually wanting to get noticed by these people, and the vast majority of them will write Tweets that never get seen by the person in question. The internet is huge and no one is looking at this supposedly long-dead website. It’s fine. It’s all fine. I’m quite sure David O’Doherty is not actually going to search on Google in 2023 to see who’s talking about the Chocolate Milk Gang.

Seriously though, hearing the word “Tumblr” spoken in Daniel Kitson’s voice made my blood run cold for a moment. I prefer to imagine that Tumblr exists on an entirely different plane of reality from Daniel Kitson, that he uses a different internet where this does not exist. Go away, Daniel. There is nothing here for you. And if... I mean... in the extremely unlikely event that you somehow did manage to stumble upon... I mean... in the infinitesimal chance that... look, I can only apologize.

[usernu11]

I don't use tumblr very often but thought that I'd crosspost all my fics here and maybe chat a little bit about my interests. Please keep in mind that twitter is my main platform though so I might disappear here and there while being active mainly on twitter;

Request Status: open

about me*

// hello! you may call me either user or null or both // i'm 20+, i might mention my exact age but for now the range is fine // i use he/him and they/them pronouns. please don't use feminine terms with me (sis, queen, ect) // i exclusively write for gn!reader, male!reader and transmasc!reader. i also only write mlm pairs overall. i might do wlw if i feel particularly inspired // i also write or talk about a lot of suggestive themes, so i prefer 18+ followers //that being said all nsfw will be under cut and i do write casual stuff sometimes so it's not a hard ask

main interests*

// obey me! one master to rule them all: lucifer, beel (sometimes paired with belphie), levi, mammon (i might write for the others, just not as often) // chainsaw man: yoshida/denji, aki/angel // fire emblem three houses: dimitri (i love him lots) // nijisanji: luca kaneshiro (i might not write full on fics however i am very much down to chat about him) // mystic messenger: ge!saeran, unknown (big love), ray (particularly v route ray), jumin, 707 // slow damage: towa (i love him so much please play the game), towa/fujieda //genshin impact: childe (i hc him as a menace and i will gladly ramble about it), zhongli, maybe others mainly the male cast

smaller interests*

// visual novels: dramatical murder, cupid parasite (still playing), collar x malice, // games: hollow knight, stardew valley, pokemon (N my love), omori, the summ // general likes: plushies, classical music, kpop (TXT), vocaloid, vtubers

FAQ*

what fandoms will you write for?*

// anything listed in my main interests in my stated above ; anything else (like things mentioned in my smaller interests) i can consider if i’m in a certain mood, but otherwise these are the only fandoms i’m knowledgeable enough to write about

do you do scenarios? drabbles? headcanons? full on fics?*

// well, honestly i can do almost anything if i’m inspired enough. please keep in mind, i will only write for transmasc, male or masc readers. and i write mainly mlm pairs, but can consider wlw if im comfortable enough for it.

any kinks or things that you don't write for?*

// piss, scat, stuff like this ig. i’m okay with dub-con and things dealing with blood or violence. when it comes to non-con, i used to say i was alright with it but i'm a little hesitant upon further thought; i'll just say i'm unsure for now. i will absolutely not write nsfw for luke from obey me! shall we date.

anything i, the requester, should keep in mind?*

// my brain simply works in the worst of ways, please keep in mind that my interpretations of certain characters might be vastly different from yours. i love to view some characters as creepy, odd and pathetic men that act like virgins in the face of genuine feelings (looking at you levi, lucifer, yoshida and childe). of course, this can change depending on the situation they are placed in, as i do like a dom!lucifer on some days. it just depends! it’d help immensely if you could clarify what sort of vibe you’re looking for, otherwise keep in mind that the character might seem different than you’re use to. if you’re unsure, just ask what my headcanons are for a particular character.

how long should i expect to wait for my request to be done?*

// forever? haha honestly im not so sure, i’ll probably go through casual asks a lot faster than requests since i tend to lose motivation real easy. the most i can say is that if its been a month, it’s not likely i’m going to do your request

can i resubmit my request?*

// im hesitant to say yes, but if you are particularly passionate and a month later you still have the brainrot then sure, resubmit it.

anything you like to write for?*

// my guilty pleasure is omegaverse au’s. i absolutely love them and you will absolutely see hc’s and fics about it whether you ask or not. however, if you request something dealing with abo stuff i might have a higher likelihood of writing for it lol.

my asks are open all the time so feel free reach out for casual chatter. if you are wanting a request of some kind please read my request faq first

ao3 *** writing tag

[sullidotinfo]

More social, less media

It’s Thursday and apparently all the journalists, banned by the new boss of the Former Site, are heading over to Mastodon.  Good for them, and I wish them the best of luck!  But most of them I won’t follow, and I’ll probably mute them, even if they were a key part of my Twitter feed.

Why?

I’m not the first one to say it, but “social media” sucks.  It conflates two completely unrelated things - making friends, and reading and reacting to the news - in a way that inevitably leads to toxicity.   I know I’ve been part of that - the little endorphin hit you get from a really good dunk and a post doing numbers is great, I won’t lie - but over time it’s made not just Twitter but every other site that has tried to share news and commentary a trash pit.

Remember when Microsoft, fresh off the success of Windows 95, decided to merge the file system with the web browser?  Before Internet Explorer, there was Windows Explorer, which was (and remains) the way to find documents on your system.  But Gates and Ballmer wanted to make that the “default browser” for the web, and then added ActiveX, and billions of malware infections later, Google Chrome ate their lunch.  (Remember those spyware “toolbars”?  Yuck.)  Now you would not think of combining the browser with the file system!  But for several years in the 1990s, Microsoft insisted it was the right thing to do.

So also “social media.”  Social networks are awesome and I have met hundreds, perhaps thousands, of friends that way.  I still remember how nice it was to find long-lost friends on Facebook, and post “endorsements'' on Friendster, and create Circles on G+, not to mention the many communities I’ve joined and lifelong friends (maybe you!) I’ve made on Slashdot, Plastic, Livejournal, Multiply, Discord, Flickr, Tumblr, and Reddit.  And media are great too - I read a lot of newspapers and blogs, and I subscribe to many of them (even the ones that don’t charge a standard monthly rate), and it’s nice to hear from journalists, artists, and musicians first-hand.  

But combining them together just doesn’t work for me anymore.  When I want to chat with friends, or share cute dog and bird pix, or share a darth meme, or talk about what’s happening in San Francisco, I just don’t need to have that conversation (Discourse?) polluted with Brands sharing whatever they want to share, Breaking News of whatever TFG did, or even the most correct Housing Twitter hot take.  It’s just not fun and it doesn’t build connections. Instead it leads to stupid arguments, echo chambers, and all the other crap that turns something nice into “the hellsite.”

And - sorry, content creators - we don’t owe you an audience.  Or, rather, it’s better to be an audience or join a conversation in a nicer way.  Let us enjoy and interact with your media in a way that doesn’t lead to dunks and harassment and feeling like we pissed away the time we should have enjoyed when we were reading what you created.  Maybe this is via blogs, or RSS, or YouTube, or Patreon, or email newsletters, or some kind of pay-per-view site for news (Post?), or some other service - but social it ain’t, at least for me.

So that’s why my approach on mastodon is: more social, less media.  There are hundreds of ways to read news, commentary, and Hot Takes.  I’ll read the news and blogs I care about on the web (I still have that Inoreader account!), but here?  No thanks.  Here I’m here to connect with people and build community, in SF and the world.  I want to share stories and music and photos and make friends along the way.  Follow me and be part of it!

[ultimablades]

I want to be more active in this space again, I’ve missed it! I’ve had this tumblr since 2009, so I don’t want to remake it but I also feel like it’s a bit of a mess right now, it has been through…many fandoms LOL. Most of you probably remember me (if you remember me at all) for mostly posting about MCR, Merlin, Ben Whishaw, figure skating/Yuzuru Hanyu, then back to MCR. These days I’m mostly playing final fantasy XIV! So I’ll probably blog about that a lot, though there will probably also be a healthy dose of MCR in there lol.

Im on Twitter mostly these days @UltimaBlades, though I do mostly talk about ffxiv there. Specifically the NPCs from the bard quests lol.

I think I want to change my URL here too since I neither really follow Ben or Merlin related things anymore. But this has also been my url since like 2013 so I’m like who would I even be…I’ll figure it out lol

[reincarnatedonthefirst]

Client Recap… Again

The Twitter client showed up last night and he was even nicer than I expected.

I didn’t put him through my normal screening process. He was a little resistant about some of the screening items and I didn’t see the need to push him. I knew he would be be safe to see. He’d given me enough information for me to know he was cool and all I wanted was to get his damn money.

Not only was he safe to see but when he arrived, he actually showed up with a vase of flowers. After he parked, I sent him a text and told him to come up. I went to the window and looked through the parking lot, waiting to see which car someone would emerge from. In the distance, I could see a white guy coming out of his car. But he walked to the other side of the car when he got out. I realized that he was probably taking a gift off the passenger’s seat. He pulled something out and set it on top of the car. I could tell it was a vase of flowers.

That was cool. But I didn’t like that he also brought sex toys with him. 🙄 I have no interest in using toys during sex. Why are you trying to make me do the most?? Focusing on two things at once is not something I relish. But some guys really like to see women orgasm because they don’t have the skills to help her orgasm themselves.

Also, I found out that he has a difficult time with orgasm as well. He said that he has an enlarged prostate. Yikes… He’s 63 years old so you know what that’s about.

Anyway, that was definitely the more difficult appointment from yesterday. The sex was bad but I got through it. He made noises during sex that sounded silly but I just ignored it.

He also suggested I sign up for a hobbyist review platform. He thinks it would be a good idea for me to have a profile there. I’ll look into it. I really don’t want to be on a platform with hobbyists but I’m willing to explore.

I’ve nearly hit my revenue goal for the month. Some sex workers and former sugaring pros and sex workers I follow on Tumblr often talk about manifestation and positive thinking. Those posts have helped me to believe and finally start manifesting on my own. I’ll make a post about how manifesting has been working for me.

[agapeeternal]

Gigi gained 30k followers from her posts about the cheating/breakup. She’s playing the narrative that Glen was horrible meanwhile she still follows his entire family (even though everyone wants to say his family ‘helped him cheat’). Also Gigis mother still follows Glen and so do many of her friends. If it was ich a nasty breakup, they would have cut ties completely.

No, Gigi and Glen were over in November. They reconciled in January but I really think that was for the Golden Globes because Glen probably didn’t want to go alone and Gigi might have had a deal with a designer for the dress and jewelry.

She’s posting stories to further her modeling career now with no regards to Glen or the comments that are destroying him. I’ll say it again, I worry for his future because he isn’t well known and now because of this, he is not well liked on Twitter. There’s a picture of him on meme pages just making fun of his smile and face and saying he looks like an animal.

Hope it was worth it for Gigis 30k additional followers. She had 70k likes on her walk away video but her newest photo is back to her normal 7k. She will most likely be forgotten quickly but her damage is going to stay with Glen and Sydney for the rest of their careers.

And before everyone screams misogynist, I’m sorry but Gigi was literally posted with another guy in March at a restaurant in Manhattan getting very cozy. She is not so heartbroken victim, she’s a business woman. She knows EXACTLY what she is doing. (Cough- Jennifer Anniston video- cough).

I don’t like injustice and I’m sorry I don’t believe the mantra believe all woman. If they cheated, you’d be seeing photos in hotels or grainy security feeds of them kissing- NOT TOURIST PICTURES THAT THE COUNTRY OF AUSTRALIA PAID THEM TO POST.

End rant

So much for people saying she didn't do it for the clout. Honey gained 30k since she dragged Glen without actually dragging him. I mean, if whoever I was dating cheated on me and we broke up, I'd unfollow them and their family with the quicks. And my family definitely wouldn't be following them, so that doesn't even make sense. And why would his family help him cheat? Honestly, make it make sense. She's definitely milking it and letting Glen get dragged through the mud over it. Immediately people took sides and she knew it.

I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't wanna go by himself and she got a deal to wear a certain designer to the awards.

She's literally giving zero shits about him and what it's doing to his career and, for all we know, how it's effecting him personally. People are cruel sometimes and to know people are making fun of him and calling him names, and a lot of it stems from her and her posts just pisses me the fuck off. He seems like a genuine person and I hate to see that happen to someone.

I think as she's seeing that follower count tick up, she's probably thinking it was worth it for a while, even if she's damaged Glen in the process. At least she got a little bit of a ride out of it. It's so gross to me.

I can hear the misogynist comments coming but oh well, the facts are the facts. It's okay for her to actually be seen being cozy with somebody and people will defend it, meanwhile Glen is out here taking touristy pics with the WHOLE CAST and his family. She knows how to play the game and if she didn't, somebody working with her does. She's going for that victim narrative without outright saying it so if someone says "she said he cheated" they can come back and say "well she never said that".

I mean, I'm all for believing the victim and listening to their stories. But when you're clearly walking all over somebody to further yourself and not caring about what's happening to them, that's where I draw the line (*coughs* Amber Heard *coughs*)

Thank you for coming to our Ted Talk.

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

This week will be slightly appreviated. I’m in California for a funeral.

It’s 4:50AM here and I really need the juice. ☕️

Inessential

The internet’s town square should never have been one specific website with its own specific rules and incentives. It should have been, and should be, the web itself.

The open web is still the best web and weblogs play a big role in making the web better. When I post to my blog it generates an RSS and JSON Feed so you can point your feed reader of chioce to it and get updated when my blog changes. It’s nice in that way because it’s completely decentralized.

Mastodon also works that way. It’s a collection of different servers participating as a collective. I can follow folks from many different servers around the world and it just works.

I see my weblog as the central hub of communication and use Mastodon and other social networks as a means of broadcasting posts to a wider audience.

To subscribe to my Mastodon account all you have to do is point your favorite feed reader to my Mastodon account with a .rss extension appended and you get an RSS feed! How awesome is that?

Here’s what it looks like: https://curmudgeon.cafe/@fahrni.rss

Jalopnik

Formula 1 drivers are truly athletes at the top of their game. As such, they all follow strict diets, have nutritionists on hand to monitor what they’re eating and make sure that they’re only consuming things that keep them in tip top shape over a race weekend. For Alfa Romeo driver Valtteri Bottas, this includes coffee. Lots of coffee.

I got into F1 a little bit while watch Drive to Survive on Netflix. If you haven’t seen it I’d recommed giving it a try. It’s fascinating.

While I’m in California I’ll probably visit Exeter Coffee Company and Dutch Brothers.

It’s nice to see others with an extreme coffee addiction. 😀

Robert Reich

What worries me most about Trump’s dinner last week at Mar-a-Lago with Nick Fuentes, the outspoken antisemite and racist who is one of America’s most prominent young white supremacists, and Kanye West, whose recent antisemitic outbursts have rocked the entertainment world, isn’t just that a former (and possibly future) president would dine with such avowed bigots.

The GOP is not even trying to hide their antisemitic and racist ways. It’s seriously pathetic and signaling to every other garbage human it’s ok to openly talk about and act on their hate.

Jesse Skinner

I signed up for Mastodon back in May 2019 and, at the time, I wrote on there: “I just heard about Mastodon a few days ago. I keep spelling it Mastadon. It’s a really cool platform and architecture, and I would love to see it completely replace Twitter one day. Do you think it could?”

I also spelled it Mastadon at first, whoops.

As far as replacing Twitter, I think it will for me as a place to collect, perhaps as a public square. 😀

MacRumors

Tapbots, the company behind the popular Tweetbot app designed for Twitter, is working on developing a new app called Ivory that integrates with the Mastodon social network.

I’ve been using Ivory for a while and it’s absolutely gorgeous and works the way you’d expect it to work.

Mastodon has turned into an iOS App playground and I’m loving it.

chaos.social

The past month has changed the Fediverse, and, by extension, our instance. We’ve continued as normal (apart from limiting sign-ups) to give ourselves time to figure out which changes were only temporary, what seems to be changed for good, and how to react. A month seems ample time, and here we are with a set of changes in how chaos.social will work in the future.

Folks thought Mastodon would be the wild west, without good and proper moderation, but many instances take things very seriously and are making changes as needed to make their instance a better place. The chaos.social instance is one such example.

Jason Kottke

Hey everyone. Tomorrow, after almost 7 months of a sabbatical break, I’m resuming regular publication of kottke.org. (Actually, I’ve been posting a bit here and there this week already — underpromise & over-deliver, etc.) I’m going to share more about what I’ve been up to (and what I’ve not been up to) in a massive forthcoming post, but for now, know that I’m happy to be back here in the saddle once again. (And that my fiddle leaf fig is doing well!)

Welcome back, Jason! Jason has been a mainstay of my web consumption for well over 10-years, most likely since 2001-2002 timeframe when I got into blogs and blogging.

WillowTree

Charlottesville, Va. – December 1, 2022 – Piedmont Virginia Community College (PVCC) will launch a new Associate of Applied Science Degree Program (AAS) in Technical Studies-Software Development, co-created with WillowTree, in the 2023 spring semester which starts January 9. The two-year degree program will provide high school graduates and those seeking to advance in or change careers with the digital and data skills needed to fill current and emerging jobs in software development.

I thought I’d humblebrag a bit. I was honored to be part of the group who helped define this new program at PVCC. The working group was full of wonderful WillowTree folks and I think we wound up with a great program.

Since I don’t have a degree of any type I’ve been thinking about signing up for this program.

Thank you PVCC!

Why does software need so many people and take so long compared to the recent past? Let's compare! 🧵 cc @realGeorgeHotz

— Peter Yared (@peteryared) November 26, 2022

Ahh, the life of the modern developer. 🤣