#i think this mv may have altered the course of my life

[mybodyfails]

han - recap 2023

(tumblr user @mybodyfails' ramblings under the read more)

jan

230120 manila: stay with bench - fanmeet

blue jeans, dress shirt AND beret?! we're off to a great start.

he was hitting the dougie too. of course.

feb

230213 skz-record: volcano

definitely my soty! when the drums come in and the song explodes? literally erupting like a volcano? 🫠

honorary mention:

230226 chan's room ep. 199

i keep coming back to this stream whenever i feel down, they were just so hyper and giggly!

mar

230311 manila: maniac world tour - day 1

the one where he had to sit out bc he was sick. who knew you could slay a performance like that. in the end all of us were seated i think.

also gave us this beautiful moment: beethoven who

april

230401&230402 los angeles: maniac world tour encore

toddling around in his gigantic dungarees and adorable hat, han quokka clipped to him. all i need tbh.

may

230523 bbl: life advice

tape the blanket to yourself and you won't catch a cold, apparently.

but also, not a specific month - but i'm putting this on behalf of all the mini concerts he did for us on bubble, taking suggestions for covers or writing songs on the fly 🥰

june

release: topline mv feat. tiger jk

aka the day where jisung got adopted but was too shy to get his number. 🥺 LOOK AT HIM! elated hamster! fanning himself w his fake money!

jul

230701&230702 3rd fanmeeting pilot for 5star

the life-size skzoos and their interactions were such a cute surprise 😭 rmbr when he kept gently smoothing down han quokka's velvety fur 😭

230722 paris: lollapalooza

he was on fire that day. HOTTER THAN HOT.

aug

230816 fukuoka: 5star dome tour begins

and with it came his 'don't say' solo stage and him playing the fucking guitar. wasn't just me, we all lost our marbles over this.. right?

honorary mention:

august was also the month were han didn't open an individual ig account 😸

sep

230924 new york: global citizen festival

they were five members short but 3racha gave it their all. i am a big fan of the hoop earrings, personally.

oct

231013 lil durk release: all my life (skz remix)

they took that song and gave it a very distinct flavour, especially jisung.

231015 skz-record: want so bad

minsung and their gay little song, didn't expect anything less from thems two.

nov

231111 mbc show! music core & mini fanmeeting

life-altering duality, wearing that CROPTOP on stage and turning into the sweetest babushka right before our very eyes immediately after..

dec

231214 manila: asia artist awards

what's with jisung and his best moments happening in the philippines?! that's the third time this year! petition for skz to move there. 🙏

3racha winning the best creator award was already a highlight, but hannie en route to the bathroom.. running back.. having to hold his pee for the acceptance speech - a classic.

now please come to me and tell me your fave jisung/your bias/skz moments of 2023!

[mingiswow]

I was rewatching the Halazia MV to write my Seonghwa brain rot smut (and perhaps become a series?) and there are some things that I didn’t notice before that I don’t if makes sense but I decided to put here to hear your opinions.

Each one of them have an specific background they only appear in that alone, except for Hongjoong

Seonghwa and Mingi are the o Lu one that share the same scenario: the center of this place full of people.

Seonghwa looks like the leader, and he mocks (?) the position of the hala hala scarecrow

Sometimes this scarecrow looks like a person, it’s a bit morbid but reminded me when ancient warriors would keep the heads of their enemies on stakes

Yunho is one of the two who appears alone, with no crowd and he appears to be a kind of time bender?? The way the scenario is built and the sand reminded me of an hourglass

Yeosang looks like a prisoner and also appear alone. there’s a specific scene that he arrives at that place that looks like a mall and it seems to have a crowd waiting for him, which reminded me a lot of gladiator fights

Wooyoung is the other that appears alone and he seems to not be part of that world, like he is an entity waiting for the things to burn (may that’s why he has the red hair?? Just tripping here)

San also looks like a gladiator

I am 100% sure that their white and black clothes have something to do with past mvs and who they represent in the timeline

Jongho also appears to be a leader of some sort but he looks like she’s preparing some plan, some attack (I think that’s why he’s hiding underground, to not be found)

Both Mingi and Hongjoong seem like they are not part of the story, they are just there, watching everything

Mingi is the only one that appears alone at the room where woosan are fighting and the hat hides most of his face, I think he might be a time traveler?? Not sure

I still couldn’t identify where Hongjoong appears on his last verses (where he’s singing with the microphones) because the shot is really close but it seems to be the same fight room

I never been able to understand their story and timeline but I think halazia is the one that kinda connects them all together

But I think Seonghwa might be the leader behind it all? Idk the confident way he poses in front of that crowd and how he stands tall and how the camera always film him from a low angle, like he’s looking down on us

And Yunho is almost always recorded from a high angle, like he’s small, maybe he made a mistake he regrets and that altered the course of things (remember the scene that he gold those stones/crystals/broken glasses? Maybe he broke the hourglass of life? Idk again, just tripping)

Anyway, just small things that I haven’t noticed before and may have some sense. Or maybe I’m just tripping really bad here lol

[daesaurus]

Meaning of flowers in EXO The War teasers

Note: the quality of screenshots is shit, because I used screenshots from YT so if some kind soul would let me use their edits (with credits of course!) it would be amazing and you’d get my love forever. And this is a long post. Really long.

So. We all have seen teasers, the aesthetics are incredible, our boys look amazing and all the songs sound like they’ll be #1 on charts. But there was something that intrigued me.

The flowers.

I mean they could give them just for aesthetics and to get the summer and tropical vibes.

But what if they didn’t?

So I checked all the meanings in the Internet and I have so many tabs opened that it keeps crashing, but I’m writing this post anyway.

(the order of screenshots is random)

So, here on the wall with the KoKo Bop (clever, clever) we can see yellow hibiscus flowers. What the Internet says about it?

This is considered a very feminine flower and so is usually given or worn by women. In North America especially, a hibiscus means a perfect wife or woman.

In Victorian times, giving a hibiscus meant that the giver was acknowledging the receiver’s delicate beauty.

In China, hibiscuses symbolize the fleeting and beauty of fame or personal glory. It is given to both men and women.

The hibiscus is the unofficial national flower of Haiti. A yellow species called the Hawaiian hibiscus (Hibiscus brackenridgei) became the Hawaiian official state flower in 1988, despite it not being native to Hawaii. This is Hawaii’s second official state flower. The first was the red hibiscus (Hibiscus kokio) which was native to Hawaii. Fame is fleeting.

Hibiscus flowers are delicate and very beautiful just as young women appear to be, so hibiscuses often symbolize young women.

White stands for purity, beauty and the female. Yellow is associated with happiness, sunshine and good luck. Pink is not only the favorite color of many little girls. It also stands for friendship and all kinds of love, not just romantic love. Purple is associated with mystery, knowledge and the higher classes. Red is a symbol of love and passion.

Youth, fame and beauty are very much like hibiscus flowers, which have short lives. Although the flowers may die, they do grow back as long as their bush or tree is cared for. Enjoy beautiful moments while they last.

(source)

I’ve bolded the most important things that are the meaning in Asian countries and the colour. Also, the interesting this is that the person who discovered it was a doctor in Roman army, so we have some connection with the war theme. Basically, for me the flower means “we’re happy because of our victiories and we hope for more with your help so take care of us”. (and it's delicious with black tea, really, try it)

There’s also Xiumin with flower tucked in his shirt but I can’t tell what it is, sorry.

Woah, where do I start? Okay, Mr.Mullet Baek looks the simpliest. I believe these are raspberries. Again, what can we find about it? “The blood red hue of raspberries naturally allied them with passion, energry, health and the primal forces of creation. (...) Other associations for red inculde sexuality, good fortune (Japan and China) alterness and happy marriages (India).” Here it is. We have good fortune, passion and energy. It matches the hibiscus flower. But it’s just colour, what does the fruit mean? “In the Victorian Language of Flowers raspberries symbolize the heart or kindness” - If it isn’t our Baek the I don’t know what it is. Also, the raspberries are believed to come from Asia.

Then we have Minseok in blue shirt (I believe it's him because of album details' photos, he wears the same shirt). He has anthurium flower.

“The anthurium flower is known universally as a symbol of hospitality, as this exotic beauty thrives in nearly any location in the home or office. It requires little care other than watering and occasional fertilizing and tolerates a wide range of light conditions. As a cut flower, the blooms are long-lasting and retain their beauty and form in floral bouquets. They are often used in bridal bouquets or other wedding arrangements. As a potted plant, the anthurium plant symbolizes abundance and happiness to the home. It makes a delightful hostess or housewarming gift for this reason. “ (source) White colour of the flower also means innocence and purity. (don't try to fool us, we've seen xiudaddy on the stage, innocence my ass)

I have no idea who's next to him and I can't really recognize the flowers. I only see the white ones, which are clearly lilies of the valley. I don't know the orange and pink ones, sorry. The flower means sweetness (probably because of the scent, it's so beautiful), return to happiness, humility and chastity. It is also said to bring luck in love. And it’s white, so of course - purity. (source, source) The return to happiness is the most important to me. Other flowers also were connected to happiness and I think it matches the songs we heard in the teasers, at least to me.

I tried to find this flower even though I can’t really see it. I think it could be either peony, carnation or eustoma. My best guess is peony, because it has really big meaning in China, especially the red ones. Peony:

Honor, especially for people who are bringing honor to their entire family through success

Wealth and riches

Romance and romantic love, with a particular focus on love between two strangers

Beauty in all forms

Bashfulness and shame (in Victorian era)

“The Peony is most important in Chinese culture. This stunning flower is an official emblem of China, and it plays a big role in many holidays and religious traditions. It’s the flower with the longest continual use in Eastern culture, and it’s tied in deeply with royalty and honor in those societies. The Chinese name for Peony even translates to “most beautiful”.“ (source)

The second guess is carnation, because there are special meanings for this flower in Korea, but I can’t see any to the connection to the mv. Carnation:

Love

Fascination

Distinction

“Korean Culture: The Koreans use the carnation to foretell the fortune of young girls. Upon placing three freshly cut carnations in her hair, the young girl is charged with observing which of the three will die first. If the top flower dies off first, it indicates that the latter years of the girl’s life will be filled with strife. If the middle flower fades first, it indicates she will experience turmoil during her youth. If the lower flower dies and fades first, it indicates that the young woman will face great challenges throughout her lifetime.” Also, every flower has its own meaning, depending on colour. Light red means admiration, dark red love and affection and yellow disappointment and rejection. I couldn’t find orange ones, but the colour itself means energy, passion and enthusiasm. The name of the flower is also interesting, it is believed to come from word “crown”, because it was often used in coronation ceremonies. So, yeah, bit of royal concept here. (source)

My last guess is eustoma, mostly because it’s tropical flower and it naturally comes in orange. Eustoma:

Long and happy life

Contentment and peace with what you already have

Appreciation for peace and joy in your life

Heartfelt emotions towards someone else

Friendliness and congeniality

Portraying an air of charisma and charm

Admiration for a supportive or loving friend

Sweetness and kindness towards others and yourself

The desire to be more outgoing.

(source)

An orange eustoma means love, but not in romantic way, rather friendship as in “I appreciate you as my friend and I want you to know that I love you”. I also bolded joy in life, because it matches other flowers that we’ve seen earlier.We’ll see soon what flower it is. Our cotton candy boy has also a flower on his shoe somewhere, but it’s lily of the valley, which I described before. And I’ve seen that he has different flower in Baekhyun’s teaser, but, again, I can’t tell what it is. It looks similar to the ones that I described before but it’s pink.

Here we can see KoKo Bop burger Baek wearing lilies of the valley again. But I’m more interested in Jongdaes’ flowers. Again these are the ones that I can’t really tell the species, but I’m guessing gladiolus red-yellow hybrid or amaryllis.

Gladiolus:

Strength of character

Faithfulness, sincerity and integrity

Infatuation

Never giving up

Honor, remembrance

As you can hear in the name, it’s connected to the Gladiators, it’s also called “the sword-flower”. These flowers are considerated to come from Africa or Asia. Red means love (what a surprise),  yellow cheerfulness and pink feminity. The problem with this flower is that it’s too small to be the flower on Chen’s chest. But don’t worry, we can see the flower in Chanyeol’s photo (what’s with him and flowers that mean feminity?)

See? The flowers are way too small to be on Chen’s jacket. So we’ll go with amaryllis, which is better because it’s tropical, like the rest, and it’s big enough.

Amaryllis means pride, but in a good way. Red means passion, love and beauty, but in China it’s also a lucky flower. Yellow means happiness, luck and good times ahead. Purple means royality and spiritual side of life. (source)

We can’t forget the most important flower, which is one of the logos. It’s flower called “bird of paradise” and it means:

the 9th wedding anniversary for a married couple

Freedom and the ability to travel, due to the flower’s resemblance to birds in flight

Magnificence, excellence and success

Royalty and a regal bearing

Paradise on Earth

Joy through challenges and successes alike

Faithfulness in romantic relationships

Optimism towards the future (source)

I’ll add more info about flowers after today’s teaser. I’ll also try to include other flowers that we can see in promo photos. For now the mean message is happiness, good luck and looking towards future. So basically “we’re kings and we’ll slay this comeback, hope you’ll be happy with our new album”.

[mrrolandtfranco]

How-To: United States of Craigslist, Chalkboard Style!

Ah the trusty old, well-worn, United States of [Thiessen Polygon] Map. But at least I was a relatively early adopter (the original version was made in…yikes!…2011). Sure, this post will show you how to make these boundaries, but more interestingly, it will show you how to make a chalkboard-style map! Now pay attention or teacher will rap your knuckles with a ruler.

There are only a couple key tricks to getting the chalkboard style rolling. The first is using a nice seamless chalkboard texture. The second is in hacking that stippled chalky line style. Here are some resources to get us going…

Data & Resources

A Geocoded table of Craigslist Sites (an Excel file of places, site URLs, and their coordinates) More than meets the eye. Tons of Craigslist sites are combinations of named places (“saginaw-midland-baycity”), generic places that imply specific places (“mendocino county”), and geographically broad generic places (“northeast SD”). So there was lots of manual placing, and heaps of site-duplication to represent the shotgun pattern of multi-city sites.

The United States of Craigslist (link to polygon shapefile download page) You are welcome! This represents lots of dissolving (for multi-location sites), and manual crafting (so orphaned peninsulas actually get assigned to the most drive-able site). I’ll show you how it was made, but in the meantime just cheat and download the results.

Chalkboard Image Assets (a zip with two PNG images) This is the green chalkboard texture used for the background. It’s not easy making a texture image that repeats without obvious edge patterns. This will save you lots of time! Also included is the over-the-top-skeuomorphic image overlay with cute little pieces of chalk and dusty corners, etc. Just adorable.

Ok, time to start dragging our fingernails down this map…

How These States Got Their Shapes

If you’ve ever read this book, or watched this show, you are keenly aware that the United States were carved out in a surprisingly arbitrary, and sometimes accidental, fashion. Let’s take a crack at generating some new states, based on pragmatic economic zones.

I went to Craigslist’s sites page, and copied all the sites for the United States, dropped them into an Excel table (splitting up all the multi-city sites) and geocoded them. While Craigslist shows their own point-map of sites, we need to be more specific, since we’re turning them into polygons.

I added them to ArcGIS as XY events. I marvel at the goodness of visualization every time a table is accribitzed into a map. Fortunately for me, a cartographer, this means I marvel a lot.

Now for some whiz-bang polygon generation! I used the “generate Thiessen polygons” tool. Thiessen (or “Voronoi” to non-map people) polygons divvy up areas that are considered the closest to a seed point, before getting closer to another seed point. In real life, there are lots of practical conditions that would alter these, like natural barriers or road network conditions, etc. But they’ll do for now.

Speaking of natural barriers, the Thiessen polygons stretch out into the oceans. Let’s pull in a shape of the US land and have a look.

Using a “clip” tool, we can chop off the parts of the polygons that don’t intersect land. Like a cookie cutter. Don’t worry, Alaskans and Hawaiians, I’ve included you too, you just don’t play well for screen-captures.

Remember those pesky sites that had multiple places in their name (akron/canton, dallas/ftworth, etc.)? So far, we have a zone for each named place in a craigslist site. The orange lines represent the within-site divisions that we’ll have to dissolve.

Running a “dissolve by attribute” merges the geometry of same-named sites. Now we have some slightly weird, but more truthy, polygons.

Chalkboard Styling

Let’s style this sucker up! Did you know that you don’t have to use a solid color to fill polygons? You can use a hatched pattern (fun), a gradient (use judiciously), or a picture. Since I want the map to look as much like a chalkboard as possible, a simple black or slate colored background won’t cut it. I’ve made a chalkboard texture image to fill my background shapes. Beware, lots of green from here on.

I have a shapefile of continents, and a shapefile of oceans, which happen to combine to fill the screen. You can use whatever file you want, as long as it covers your whole view. Using the chalky image as the picture fill for these polygons gives us a nice chalkboard-looking “basemap.”

In the Layout, you could alternatively just add a rectangle and use this image as a picture fill. Whatever’s easier for you.

Now, to bring in the Craigslist states. But how to make them look like they were drawn with chalk? To me, chalk lines have a chunky, stippled, look from one material being scraped over another material.

If I give the stroke a dashed effect, then randomize the dash-iness (a series of numbers telling the map how many pixels to draw and skip and draw and skip), it has a sort of chalk-like feel. Then if I do the same thing for a second version of the lines, but with a thicker and more transparent stroke, they combine into something that looks pretty good!

Here’s what I used (but, it’s like, random, so feel free to type out your own set of numbers):

Thin Line 2pt, #FFFFFF, 40% transparent Dash template: 4 3 1 6 1 4 8 1 2 3

Thick line 5pt, #FFFFFF, 80% transparent Dash template: 3 2 4 5 2 3 2 5 4

Here’s a closer look at my hack chalk lines…

Time for some United States of Craigslist labeling. I’m using the site name. I chose one of the chalky outline layers, and I turned labeling on. You can monkey with specific details like letter spacing, placement properties, arcing along latitudes, etc. But here the chalk-specific things: Font, color, and effect.

I spent about three minutes looking at script-style fonts on my machine and found MV Boli to be fine. It looks an awful lot like Comic Sans, which I find to be cheeky, but it’s not, so I’m shielded from specific scorn by a technicality. Anyway, it looks reasonably hand-scrawled (I pushed it to all caps).

A pastel color (lighter than you may be thinking) helps convey chalk. I used #BEFFE8 with a transparency of 30%. Then I applied the same color as an outline but with a 70% transparency. This helps with that fuzzy irregular edgedness of chalk.

Since I’m proposing a radical, blood-soaked, re-thinking of states and re-drawing of their borders, it is helpful to draw in the current state boundaries for some context. I picked a similarly pastel-ish chalk color of #FFBEBE. Like my other lines, I applied a somewhat random dash pattern and made a version that is thinner and slightly transparent, and a version that is thicker and more transparent. There. States.

Craigslist states, and real states.

Chalkboard Layout

Ok, time to fine-tune some of the layout and design elements of this thing. I’ve inserted a new layout and added my map. I also made an Alaska version and a Hawaii version in separate map views (just copy/paste the layers) so I can add them to the layout as insets.

Whew. All that geography stuff out of the way. Now it’s time to lob delicious skeuomorphic clutter all over this thing!

In a graphic design tool, I made an image overlay to fit on top of my layout so that its full chalkboard potential could be realized. It includes some vignetting, leftover chalk dust in the corner that never gets fully erased, and of course a fine wooden tray to hold the chalk and eraser.

Yes!

Always sign your work.

Then I dropped in a title image, and we have it! A chalkboard map of the United States of Craigslist. Good times.

Happy Chalkboard Mapping! John

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