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bigbadredpanda · 3 years

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Hi,, I hope I'm not bothering you with this and I'm sorry if my English isn't good, I hope you can understand my questions. I've been thinking about this for a while now and I tried to find information online but I found nothing.

MDZS is the first Chinese Novel I've read and I still haven't finished it yet,,but I've heard about rumors that said that MXTX is in jail, because she sold copies of her books. The rumor isn't true, however it made me wonder something,, I know China's censorship on lgbt related stuff is really heavy and that's why the donghua and drama adaptations of MDZS and other bl works are censored, but I didn't know that authors couldn't sell their novels.

So my question is,, how does MXTX earn money if she isn't allowed to sell her works? She has already finished 3 Danmei novels, and her works are really popular, they even have manhua, donghua or drama adaptations. The adaptations have earned quite a lot of money, but since she's an anonymous writer, does part of it even go to her?

To make the drama, the donghua and the manhua, producers had to ask her permission, I think. So, since the adaptations are doing well, she should get part of the profit, but how does it work? If the Chinese Government really is against lgbt themed works, shouldn't they have done something about her?

I really love her works and I hope that she earns something since she is the one that created all of them. Thanks for considering my question!!

Hi both of you and welcome to the cnovel fandom! Quick intro of the author, MXTX uses a pen name like many webnovel authors, it’s the abbreviation of Mo Xiang Tong Xiu which literally means “Ink Fragrance, Copper [Money] Stench” (墨香铜臭). Fun fact, it’s her mother who coined that name. MXTX wished to pursue a major in literature during university but her mother wanted her to graduate in economy instead while keeping writing on the side, that way she would have the fragrance of ink in one hand and the stench of money in the other.

We also know that she is fairly young, she wrote Scum Villain while she was a university student and she started working on the outline of MDZS in her final year. Tian Guan Ci Fu (Heaven Official’s Blessing) is the third book she completed and a fourth novel is/was in the works, its provisional title is “No rest for the death god” and is supposed to be a supernatural story taking place in a modern setting.

MXTX is one of the most popular webnovel authors on Jinjiang Literature City, the webnovel platform, but her popularity also comes with a great many detractors. You’ve heard some of the malicious rumours circulating in the English-speaking side of the fandom, it’s just a drop in the ocean compared to the outpouring of heated controversies in the Chinese side as the latter can have real-life consequences. There is a different nexus between the creator and the audience and the fandom culture is not the same either, it can be quite deleterious due to the tendency to report any content that one disagrees with.

Censorship in China is... ever-changing and nebulous. How severe it is depends on the medium. Nevertheless, gay literature (同志文学) does exist in China and it is distinct from danmei. I also want to nuance a bit the pervasive idea that anything lgbt is systematically and relentlessly censored in China. The reality is more complex than that and it would be dismissive of the hard-fought gains and visibility that Chinese lgbt activists have obtained these past two decades (some concrete examples: the work of the lgbt centre in Beijing or the pride festival in Shanghai). I don’t know if people are aware of this but lgbt dating apps are thriving in China, the most popular one, Blued, is also the largest lgbt social network worldwide. With that said, the official policy towards homosexuality is the three No’s: “no approval, no disapproval, no promotion”. A stance comparable to the “don’t ask, don’t tell”. It’s not explicit persecution but it manifests in the silencing of public discussion and the limiting media representation of homosexuality. In 2017, the top media regulator that oversaw radio, film and television issued guidelines banning a number of things, this included obscene and violent content, homosexuality, superstitious pseudoscience (such as reincarnation or spirit possession). On top of that, there is also an ongoing crackdown on online pornography that gets increasingly intense. And that concerns everyone on the internet, it’s astonishing the lengths netizens will go to in order to circumvent the censorship, new slang is developed to refer obliquely to banned words, fanfics are published in image format to prevent text recognition, etc... The censorship might be increasingly prevalent but netizens push back with their resourcefulness. Pushing back is also not without significant risk. Perhaps you have heard of the case of the danmei author that received a severe jail sentence? A few Western media picked up on that and criticised the ruling that was deemed homophobic. Chinese reactions tell a slightly different story, the author's crime was not writing danmei, she was in fact accused of making a profit by illegally producing and disseminating pornographic material. I’m not too keen on the details but it seems she printed the books herself and sold them online. To some Chinese observers, the ruling was not discriminatory because she did break the law. To others, it was absurd because this law dates from an era when internet barely existed and it would have been much more laborious to mass-produce and share porn at that time. There’s a bit of truth in all these points of views. It’s also not disingenuous to say that lgbt content is more likely to be targeted than het content even if the charges are not directly lgbt-related.

Usually contracted authors of webnovel platforms have a more secure status. They get a fee from the purchase of VIP chapters as well as tips from the readers. Other sources of revenue arise when webnovels get popular enough to get the opportunity to be published through official channels or when adaptation rights are sold (I assume that the author receives a share of that deal but perhaps does not get any further financial gain from the adaptation or its merch).

To support the author, I would suggest purchasing TGCF on Jinjiang (guide) or buying the physical versions of her three novels in Chinese (shop, change to English with top-right world icon), the special boxsets of MDZS and TGCF come with tons of goodies!

Hope I could be of service and that my tirade was mildly informative ^^'

#mxtx #answers #nerdsupreme #meandering thoughts #trashysiomai

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gr33nbull · 3 years

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I wanna talk about this. Let’s have a conversation about it without it directly bringing traffic to their social media. So let’s talk about it.

Let’s talk about the car crash of Rich Energy. Quite literally an absolute car crash. For those that are unaware. Rich Energy or more like William Storey (a sorry excuse of a ceo) like to think of themselves as the gods of energy drinks. You’ve seen Monster energy sponsor the likes of Hamilton, and might I add, a brilliant energy drink. And of course we all know of the legendary Red Bull, another brilliant energy drink! But you’ve probably never heard of Rich Energy. Cause I certainly didn’t, until they got involved with Haas and turned into one of the worst things I think I’ve ever witnessed as a business perspective.

Rich Energy is a knock off version of Monster and Red Bull. The drinks (which cannot even be found in a local store) brought nothing but drama during their time as a “sponsor” for none other than Haas. (People complain about how toxic Red Bull can be but I think Haas can top this one.) From stealing another company’s logo, to getting sued for it, to not paying the debt, to further legal action, and yes, that’s just about Whyte Bikes and how Rich Energy STOLE their logo and plastered it onto Haas’ 2019 livery. Yep still on about it.

Edging closer to halfway in the 2019 season, Haas dropped Rich Energy and their so called CEO Storey through a strip on Twitter before Haas announced it. A great way to represent your brand might I add. William “sold” his shares in Rich Energy and the name changed. then moments later he came back and changed it back to Rich Energy (yes, a company that thinks anybody would want to work with them within F1, the most elite motorsport, behaved like this)

After Haas terminated the sponsorship prematurely in 2019, Rich Energy, you guessed it, didn’t pay up to Haas like they should have. Why? Because William Storey, the CEO, the man that looks like he hasn’t had a shower in a decade, was so in debt and LIED about his financial status, his business to a F1 team COULDN’T PAY UP. And he still hasn’t to this day.

Why am I writing this? We’ve all seen this tweet and many others of Rich Energy hashtagging F1. As you can see the tweet in question has garnered ALOT of attention from F1 fans. None positive might I add but bad publicity is still publicity these days right? We’ve seen the rumours, he’s either sponsoring Mazepin (which would be BEYOND pathetic and stupid if Haas even allowed this man in their territory again.) OR they could be sponsoring Williams. Which I don’t think that team would be that dumb enough to let such a liability sponsor them.

For a number of months William and his stupid energy drink has been saying the same thing over and over again. He’s wanting to get the F1 communities attention and it’s working. We all don’t want this lowlife back in the sport we love and wrecking ANOTHER team (as if Haas isnt already the most hated team on the planet already) but giving this man the attention he wants, he’s relishing in it, so if you wanna start a conversation about Rich Energy. Let’s not feed into the bullshit and do it directly to themselves. Have the conversation on this post, on another post on Twitter, Facebook, wherever floats your boat. Just NOT to Rich Energy. Let’s not feed into this crap.

And if they are actually sponsoring either Williams or Mazepin, then Rich Energy, Haas or Williams can well and truly go fuck themselves and will never be taken seriously.

But then again, this is a man that tried and utterly failed to by the Sunderland football team, so the chances of him having anything to do with F1 again are very very low. The man does not have money and is a liability. Either way.

Fuck Haas, Fuck Rich Energy, and Fuck Nikita Mazepin

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nancydrew428 · 3 years

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Game 34

As of yet, there’s no proof that there’s going to be a 34th game. Her Interactive has answered a few fans and said that they were working on a game, but who knows what that really means? To get a semblance of an idea, let’s do a deep dive.

Starting with the past couple of weeks, HeR is selling all of the physical copies of their games, as well as some other products (like their physical puzzles). I watched a YouTube video that said that while this may seem like a bad sign, it might not be. For starters, many of the physical games have been sold out for literal years because they only make a set amount of physical copies. When they run out, that’s it. So this isn’t a completely new thing. However, they are doing a mass sale. On the one hand, it could be a last ditch effort to get whatever money they can before calling it quits. But on the other, it could mean that they are trying to make the best financial decision that they can think of. Story Retold (LJ), on YouTube, works for Her Interactive and commented on that video in early April.

The most accurate explanation is that we at HeR Interactive wanted to celebrate the month of April as Nancy Drew’s anniversary. 💜 We made it themed as collectibles but yes, once the physical units sell out, we don’t make anymore. :(

I personally don’t believe that that is the only reason. It makes sense that they want to honor Nancy Drew’s anniversary (the first book came out in April 1930), so maybe that’s why they chose this month? But I feel like that can’t be the only reason.

I agree with Nancy Drew Walkthroughs on YouTube that Her Interactive probably has to pay for storage to keep physical items, so by selling the games, they won’t have to pay for the storage. They’ll also be making money off the games that they otherwise would not be making money from. As we have learned with the pandemic, and as marketers have known for decades, having people panic is a really effective way to sell something out. It’s why so many websites will have flash sales, the biggest words will be “for a limited time only,” and sometimes they’ll tell you how many copies of the product there are left, how many people have it in their carts, or they’ll say “hurry now, less than 50 left!” Even if you realistically had a long time to buy that product or the company actually has a lot of the product left, they create artificial scarcity and manufacture panic so that you’ll make impulse purchases. While it feels kind of slimy, it is effective when done right. And, correct me if I’m wrong but, I don’t think that Her Interactive has really done this before. So it seems like they might be stepping up their marketing which could be a good sign for the company.

I think this could be the company taking a step in the right direction to make everything digital. Although I absolutely love having physical copies of the games and other memorabilia, I also think that we are living in an increasingly digital world, and it only makes sense for them to get with the times. Go digital, spend less money on making physical games, etc. So many laptops these days don’t have CD/DVD drive, so many of their older games (and their newest game) have issues which can be especially hard with a disc, and so many stores don’t sell the physical games anymore. With a smaller, probably not very wealthy, company, it makes no sense for them to waste money on this. Like I said, I love collecting the physical copies, but I don’t really use them, and younger people coming across the games will probably go for the digital version, probably even buying it directly from Steam. (Which kind of a side note, kind of related, this article on Her Interactive is really interesting. It mentions that HeR kind of fought putting their games on Steam, because Steam took too big of a cut of their money. But I do think that that’s better than not having any of your games sell. And if they’re going completely digital, and almost all of their games are on Steam now, it seems like maybe they’re modernizing and progressing.)

While this could be a bad sign and I don’t want to get my hopes up too high, I do have some hope that it might actually be a good sign that they are finally getting smart.

Another thing that could either be worrisome or a good sign is that they changed offices. In another video from that same YouTuber, he talks about how Her Interactive still has the address that they’ve had for years on their contact page, but on their privacy policy page, they changed their address to a PO box. Plus, there’s a listing for their old office.

Obviously, this could be a bad thing, because they no longer have an office, and that just doesn’t sound good? But this also means that they’ll be saving money by doing so. During the pandemic, they’ve probably had to work at home anyway, so why pay for an office that no one is going to be in? It also makes sense, because at this point, they probably are not the ones making the games. They’re a marketing team who gives the Nancy Drew name to other companies to make the games. All of this can be done from home. LJ also commented on this video in early April, saying:

As far as I know, we are NOT going out of business. 😋 We are all remote working now, since our team (including a male) is all over the U.S. Our work is digital, so it’s an easy change.

Something else that he talks about in that video is that they changed the layout of their website. He points out that it costs money to pay someone to change a website, especially where it seems like multiple details have changed. Hate it or love it, you have to admit that the website is more sleek, modern, and just a different vibe to what it was before. Why would they put in the money for a website and company that’s going to be dead soon?

Lastly, he discusses the company’s change in advertising. I hadn’t even noticed the change (mostly because I don’t look at what they post; I only come across it if it’s posted by someone on here), but when he pointed it out, I did see the difference. The picture advertisements that they post are better quality (not necessarily in content, but in size and resolution). They’ve also changed the font that they use, they’ve ditched the logo, and they use random pictures as well. Regardless of whether it’s good or effective or not, it is a change. Here are two examples (one, two) from the past two years, and here are two examples from the past two weeks (one, two).

This change in marketing is also in line with their Facebook posts. Facebook is the social media that they are most active on when it comes to engaging with fans, at least from what I have seen in the past. But at least since January, they didn’t respond to any comments until they announced that they were selling out all of their physical copies. They didn’t respond to too many questions, but they responded to a few, for the first time in literal months. If they were shutting down, why would they start caring about answering fans’ questions now?

I also found information about some of the stuff that HeR has been doing in the past 2 weeks. I don’t have an account on the website so I can’t see all the information, so I don’t know what was blurred out. I also can’t see any other “scoops” about them, so I don’t know what they’ve done in the past, and I don’t know if this amount of activity is normal or more or less than they usually have. But the company has been doing a few things here and there, so as I keep saying, maybe this is a good sign.

With all of this being said, it seems like Her Interactive might not actually be going under. We can’t be sure, but we can have a little bit of hope. But even if that is true, just because they’ll still be a company, does that mean that they are going to make any more games?

I honestly don’t know. There isn’t much information out there about game 34, but I will still compile the information that I’ve found here. Unfortunately, it gives us nothing other than them maintaining that there will eventually be another game.

(Timeline) TL;DR: I think that the key points are that they started saying that they were working on the game in December 2019 (as far as I can tell), but since then they’ve also said that they were planning the game. To this day, they are saying that they can’t give out any information regarding the new game yet and can’t make guarantees as to when they can release any information, let alone the game itself. The only thing LJ has seemed to say with certainty is that the next game will be made on Unity. They also have confirmed that there will be some improvements from MID, but it will be similar.

Some other tidbits from this that sound promising but probably don’t mean much: they have said that it shouldn’t take as long for future games as it did for them to make MID, they’ve mentioned that there are plans for multiple more games, that we should subscribe to their newsletter to stay up to date with any new information regarding anything (game 34 or otherwise), and LJ hopes to share news in the near future.

And other things that they’ve said that I’m 99.99% sure don’t mean anything at all: Nancy might potentially someday go on a boat in the future, LJ likes jump scares too “😉,” and Bess and George might appear in future games. (The first two are probably just jokes and fun, but the last one seems like it could be true, just because they’re in most of the games in some way or another.)

Lastly, some speculations: the next game might take place in Austria, and they might address the drama between Nancy and Ned.

Now here is the timeline.

On May 8, 2017, someone from Her Interactive said: "Yes we plan on making a 34th ND game. No is hasn’t been designed yet. Yes there will be a teaser at the end of MID, but no, we haven’t decided on what that teaser will look like yet." Obviously, it’s been years and plans can change (proven by the fact that there was no trailer at the end of MID, lol).

In December 2017, Her Interactive posted a letter about why MID was taking so long to come out. Here was the most important part:

As you may recall, we are moving to a new engine to be able to develop a game not only for PC/Mac but also for tablets, consoles, and now for the increasing popularity of augmented or virtual reality. Very exciting! Part of us going down this path was to ensure that we have multiple platform options for future Nancy Drew titles so that all Nancy Drew game fans and those new to our games could play these amazing games no matter what their preferred device or platform.

This versatility means that the design and development of our games are even more complex than in the past. Our PC/Mac game design will work for players on the go with tablets and possibly for players that may want to immerse themselves in the mixed reality world. We are also constantly evaluating new technologies and trends in the game industry. Consequently, this is why it is taking much longer to develop this title than previous ones. This thoroughness will put HeR Interactive in a better position for the future while providing us with the tools necessary to continue to deliver amazing experiences for our fans.

On January 2, 2018, LJ responded to a comment on the blog saying, “Hello Carmen! South America is always a possibility for future game locations. However, we haven’t planned that yet. MID will be available for PC as well.”

On July 21, 2019, a Reddit fan posted a response they got from Her Interactive. They explained that they lost trust in the company and would not be preordering the game. They responded with their reasoning for the game taking so long and how it won’t happen in the future.

We are moving to a new engine to be able to develop a game not only for PC/Mac but also for tablets, consoles, and now for the increasing popularity of augmented or virtual reality. Very exciting! Part of us going down this path was to ensure that we have multiple platform options for future Nancy Drew titles so that all Nancy Drew game fans and those new to our games could play these amazing games no matter what their preferred device or platform. This versatility means that the design and development of our games are even more complex than in the past. Our PC/Mac game design will work for players on the go with tablets and possibly for players that may want to immerse themselves in the mixed reality world. We are also constantly evaluating new technologies and trends in the game industry. Consequently, this is why it is taking much longer to develop this title than previous ones. This thoroughness will put HeR Interactive in a better position for the future while providing us with the tools necessary to continue to deliver amazing experiences for our fans.

On October 1, 2019, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “Hello Grace, the consistent schedule back then was on a system that never changed or upgraded with the times. Once we get the structure of this upgraded game done, the future games will not take 4 years to make.”

On October 2, 2019, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “The frustration is understood. We hope to be more accurate in the future, and to regain our players' faith in the next game release.”

On October 4, 2019, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “Hello Lisa, we understand the frustration and loss of trust in us. Since this game was designed from the ground up, we have certainly learned a lot and will be applying our lessons to the future games.”

On October 4, 2019, they responded to another fan on Twitter saying, “Hi highly doubt the next game will take this long - since we had re-designed from the ground up in a new system this time. We apologize for lengthy delay. :(”

On November 6, 2019, two users on Gameboomers made comments:

One said that LJ said there wouldn’t be a trailer for the next game after MID, but “she did say that there were some ‘early ideas’ floating around for the next game.”

The other got an email from Her Interactive that said, “We will absolutely be releasing more games after Midnight in Salem. We cannot commit to a release schedule as of right now since all of our focus is on MID. It will definitely not take us as long for the next title to release. Four years is not the new normal.”

On December 3, 2019, Midnight in Salem was released. The end of the game didn’t have a trailer for the next as is the tradition for Nancy Drew games, but there seemed to be some drama between Nancy and Ned, and she mentioned wanting to go to Austria. A user on the Her Interactive message boards pointed out that the game was outsourced to an Austrian company so that might be the reasoning. But maybe it could be the plan for the next game.

On December 3, 2019, an article came out about the company that said, “Her Interactive has already developed a Nancy Drew VR proposal based on one of the books with a Spanish director, but it's more likely an AR project would come to market first.”

On December 17, 2019, a user on the Her Interactive message boards said that they emailed Nancy’s new voice actress who confirmed that there will be more games where she will play Nancy.

On December 29, 2019, they responded to a fan’s DM on Instagram asking if they were going to make another game to which they said. “Absolutely! We’ve already begun!”

On January 7, 2020, LJ responded to a comment on the blog saying, “Hello Oona! Yes, we are planning on more Nancy Drew games. Can’t say when the next one will be released, yet. 🙂”

On January 8, 2020, LJ responded to a comment on the blog saying, “Hi again Jillian! I’m not sure on the release month or year just yet, but I do know it will not take 4 years to make. 😉”

On January 10, 2020, LJ responded to a comment on the blog saying, “Hello SWhite5052! I’m not sure what the intent from our designers is for poor Ned. I’m a big fan of Nancy’s boyfriend, and I do hope we get to have him in-game someday, be Nancy’s hero and also take her out on a romantic date. 😉” I don’t think this really means anything, but I hope it means that she has hope that there will be future games.

On January 28, 2020, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “Yes, there are plans for more Nancy Drew games. :)” Plural?

On February 3, 2020, LJ responded to a comment on the blog saying, “Hi Jam5022! We do not have any news to share yet, but we are working on the game. 🙂”

On February 11, 2020, LJ responded to two comments on the blog:

“Hello felicity18! Glad to hear you enjoyed Midnight in Salem! The leads didn’t add a teaser to the end of the game per tradition since we are secretly working on the next one, and haven’t put together footage to share or tease on it yet. Stay tuned for future updates!”

“Hi Madi! Ship of Shadows was shelved, meaning we stopped working on it. At this time, we are only focusing on the main mystery adventure line.”

On February 20, 2020, LJ responded to two comments on the blog:

“Hi Sarah! Yes, the next game will be made on Unity. 🙂”

“I hope so, Nicole! I always like having Nancy’s best friends on the case with her! No promises just yet, but it’s likely for a future game. 🙂”

On February 25, 2020, they responded to a fan’s DM on Instagram saying, “New game info coming shortly. Stay tuned!” This didn’t happen.

On April 13, 2020, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “Hi Anna! When we have news on the next Nancy Drew game, we will be sure to share it! #NancyDrew”

On May 22, 2020, they responded to a fan on Twitter saying, “No news to share yet, but we are working on it!”

On September 13, 2020, someone on Reddit said that there was an untitled 34th game on Wikipedia. As they pointed out, anyone can edit entries on Wikipedia. But almost 7 months later, it hasn’t been taken down.

On November 29, 2020, someone on Reddit posted LJ’s response to a YouTube comment. “Game 34 is in the works. That’s all I can say for now. :)”

On December 1, 2020, LJ responded to some comments from October 2020 on a blog post:

“Hello! Game 34 is in the works. Stay tuned for future updates and be sure to subscribe to the newsletter for when we announce news. Glad you liked the graphic!”

“Hello! No news yet to share at this time, but that we are working on it. Keep an eye out in future newsletters for future bits of information. 😀”

“Sadly, I do not have anything to share about the next game. 🙁 I hope to be able to tease out clues in the future, though!”

On December 4, 2020, LJ responded to some comments from October/November 2020 on a blog post:

“Hello, beka! Sadly, I do not have any new info to share about the future game at this time. 🙁 I hope to share news with you in the future!”

“Hi Stephanie! It has been a while, hasn’t it? Sadly, I do not have any news to share at this time. As soon as I have some that I can share, I will!”

“Hi Natalina! It has been a while since we have had a Twitch stream. Sadly, we do not have any news to share yet about the next Nancy Drew game. Stay tuned!”

“Hello Foundation2430, things have certainly changed since Sea of Darkness. I am limited to what we can share behind the scenes, but once I have things I can share with you about the current and future games, I will. I don’t think the next game will take 4 years. 🙂”

On December 11, 2020, LJ responded to a comment from a blog post saying, “Hi ali! We are working on the next game, but we do not have a release date for it just yet.”

On January 6, 2021, LJ responded to a comment from a blog post saying, “Hello Natalina! Sorry, I do not have any news to share about new Nancy Drew games or projects. 🙁”

On January 8, 2021, LJ responded to two comments on the blog:

“Hi Aly! The next game is indeed in the works. Sadly, I cannot share anything about it at this time. 🙁 But I do hope you have a great new year as well! I hope to share more secrets with you in the future!”

“Hello Sanjeet! Happy New Year! We do have game 34 in the works, but I cannot share anything with you at this time. 🙁”

On January 28, 2021, LJ responded to a comment on a blog post saying, “Hi Cleanna! I think Nancy spending time on a ship is a great idea, too. Hopefully, she will get to do that in the future!” I doubt that this will happen, but she didn’t have to answer it this way. I guess it was probably to create some hope.

On February 2, 2021, LJ responded to two comments on the blog:

The first response was to a fan who talked about VR where she said, “Hello Madi! Thanks for sharing your concern. We have seen others comment their worry about the graphics since they get easily sick from motion as well. We are keeping this in mind for our future games. 🙂” I don’t think that they ever really planned to do VR, but she didn’t have to add that last part. Again, I’m guessing it was to create some hope.

The second response was to a fan who asked a question on January 15th where she said, “Hi Jessica! I do not know when the next game will be released, but once I have info, I will be sure to share it!” She answered this a few days after she answered the first question, when this was the first comment on the post. I wonder if she didn’t skip it, but rather waited until she could say the right thing.

On February 15, 2021, LJ responded to a few comments on a blog post:

The first comment asked if they’ll share any information on the game this year to which she responded, “Hi Rach! I do not know when news will become available to share. Sorry!” I understand this because MID was a hot mess where they kept giving dates and time frames that they couldn’t keep. But if they’ve been supposedly working on this since November, a year should be plenty of time for them to give some information, right? That they’ll keep the same voice actress for Nancy, part of the plot, who a phone character will be, the state or country it will be set in, or something super simple. Yet she couldn’t even say that she’d give any information this year.

She also responded to someone saying, “Hi Sarah! I cannot say exactly, since the behind-the-scenes work is top secret. I hope to share news in the near future when I’m able to!” One minute she couldn’t say whether they’d give out any information this year at all, the (literal) next minute she said she hopes to share news soon.

On March 3, 2021, LJ responded to a few comments on a blog post:

“Hi Lindsay! There are plans for the future. Stay tuned for news when I am allowed to share it!”

“Aw thanks for sharing! We are indeed working hard behind the scenes here. 😉”

On March 10, 2021, LJ responded to a comment on a blog post saying, “Hello Rishi! I would love to share information about our next game, but sadly, I cannot at this time. All I can say is that we are indeed planning another game. 🙂” So they’re still in the planning stage for the next game?

On March 30, 2021, LJ responded to a few comments on a blog post:

“Hi Becca! Jump scares are my favorites, too. 😉 Sadly, I do not have any news or even a date when we will share news about the next game. 🙁” (I kept the first part, because she didn’t need to put a winky face. I’m sure this is just wishful thinking, but maybe there will be a jump scare in the new game? Lol. But she doesn’t even have a date for when she can even share news about the game.)

“Hi Grace! We are indeed working on another game. I do not have any idea when we will be sharing news about it, though.” Pretty much the same, generic response.

On April 5, 2021, Her Interactive responded to a Reddit fan on Instagram about the future game saying: “Hello lorichelter! The next game will have some improvements but will be similar to MID. We’re glad to hear you enjoyed the game! Also, future games will be Mac compatible, but unfortunately we do not have plans to remaster the old games at this time. :( If we ever find a workaround for the Apple restriction of 32-bit games, we will quick to share that trick.”

#her interactive #nancy drew #clue crew #video game #video games #timeline #info #game 34 #post #mine

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holyhellpod · 3 years

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4. Fambily

In this episode, we skim the surface of the fambily dynamics in Supernatural, which are--ah. Dicey at best.

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Transcript under the cut!

Content warnings: domestic violence and family abuse

[Growl]

Ah, the Winchesters. Where do we even start. Unhinged, deranged, and continually traumatised in every way, Sam and Dean complete each other. At least, that’s what the show wants us to think. Despite the ways they betray each other, lie to each other, and piss each other off, they are fambily. And fambily is the most important thing. The concept of Fambily in the show Supernatural (2005-2020) takes many twists and turns throughout its run. In the first five minutes of episode one, the heteronormative, nuclear family of John, Mary, Sam and Dean is ripped apart by an unknown, antagonistic force that represents all the evil in the world. It creeps into a nursery and eviscerates a white, blonde mother while preying upon a 👶, I mean, how much more evil can you get? It’s fantastic that, in the later seasons especially, Supernatural embraces this idea that fambily doesn’t end in blood, but blood doesn’t always mean fambily. By the end of the series, the fambily concept has expanded to include two dads, an aunt and uncle, and a thirty-year old infant. I’m going to talk about the finale in its own episode, so that my ire will have its proper outlet.

When the show starts, Sam, Dean and John have each other, and only each other. By the time season 2 really kicks off, Sam and Dean don’t have John anymore, but they do have Bobby Singer. The concept of the triumvirate follows them throughout the series as though they’re in a less sexy Italo Calvino novel—first Sam, Dean and John, then Sam, Dean and Bobby, then Sam, Dean and Ruby, then Sam, Dean and Cas, then Sam, Dean and Mary, then Sam, Dean and Jack. It’s broken in seasons 13-15 when Cas comes back and they have a family of four, and then five when Mary can stand to see her boys.

But the Winchesters are not the only fambily in Supernatural who matter. In season two, we’re introduced to the Harvelles, mother Ellen and daughter Jo, who are a hunting fambily who run a hunter pub in the middle of whoop whoop. A pub that Eric Kripke famously hated, and rejoiced when he burnt it down at the end of season 2, because the Winchesters and by extension everyone they know aren’t allowed to have anything good ever. It’s revealed in season two episode “No Exit” that John got Jo’s father killed on a hunt, which obviously affects Jo more than it does Sam and Dean.

[Editing note:] Okay I’m editing this episode, and I’m not happy with it. I’m not going to scrap it completely because I think I do have good points to say, but the general analysis of this episode is so surface level. It is basically contributing nothing to the conversation. And I started this podcast in order to actually contribute something to the culture. I could make a bunch of text posts on tumblr or I could spend hours and hours and hours and hours of my life to something that — I don’t know. Is it bringing me joy? Not at the moment. But, yeah. So I’m not going to scrap this episode completely but this is my way of saying from now on the episodes are going to take as much as they will take and I will commit myself to having deeper and more thoughtful analysis. And if I have to spend an entire episode on one aspect of one thing, I will. I could be at university right now studying a masters or a PhD in fucking literary analysis but instead I’m sitting on my bed making a Supernatural podcast because it brings me joy. It does. It really makes me happy and I don’t want to abandon this project, because people are listening to it. I don’t know why, I don’t know what you like it about it, but you’re listening. And I just think I owe it to myself to make things that I support 100%. So I’ll continue this episode and hopefully this rambling hasn’t put you off it completely. But from now on, I’m going to really, really talk about things that matter in regards to Supernatural… Kind of an oxymoron. Kind of a contradiction. But things that contribute to the cultural consciousness instead of just rehashing the road so far. That’s all I want to do. I want to contribute. I want to say good…ful things. Okay this is making me happy. It’s already working, it’s already making me happy. I’m just going to keep rambling and laughing. Okay so, more thoughtful analysis, deeper analysis. Things that make you think. Things that make me think. Instead of just a bunch of words that mean nothing. Okay, continuing on.

Okay to figure out which episode this was I had to watch a little bit of season two, and I’m still on my season 13 rewatch. The difference between the two seasons. I don’t know if I can even put into words the growth this show has gone through, and the characters have gone through, over the last 15 years. It would be like summarising my own growth by combing through my extensive diary collection and the years of societally- and governmentally-enforced heterosexuality that has plagued my entire life. Those boys are babies in season two. The bootcut jeans alone. Sam is literally 23 years old. I don’t even talk to 23 year olds. I block them on social media.

The Harvelles are a blip in the Winchester map. While the actors Samantha Ferris and Chad Lindberg did attempt to resuscitate their cultural currency months after the show ended by participating in an event — okay I can’t. I can’t even go into it. Like, clearly Samantha Ferris heard back from her representation as soon as she started posting those tweets and realised she wouldn’t continue to get money if she endorsed, well, the gays. And Chad Lindberg was just using the clout to push his Etsy wares like a 14th century merchant, so I gotta respect the hustle. But Jo and Ellen die in season 5 episode “Abandon All Hope” and are barely mentioned again except the episode Ash appears in, season 5 “Dark side of the moon,” Jo in season 7, “Defending Your Life,” and Ellen in the season 6 episode “My heart will go on.” They didn’t exactly leave what you would call a lasting impact for the next, you know, ten seasons.

To be honest, I’m not sure when it’s revealed that Bobby’s wife died after being possessed by a demon. It’s made clear in season 5 “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid,” and I did not have to look that up, because season four and five are burned into my retinas like a particularly nasty sun flare. Bobby outlines the horrific way he killed his wife, because why not throw some spousal violence into the mix, and later in season 7 “Death’s Door,” it elaborates on their life together. I saw this sentiment expressed on TikTok, which we all know as the foundation of cultural knowledge, which was that fambilies don’t need to be two parents and children. Fambilies can be spouses or partners. You don’t need to have children in order to be a fambily. I think that’s a very nice sentiment and I’ve chosen to adopt it for these purposes. Bobby and his wife Karen are a fambily. While Karen wants kids, Bobby chooses not to have them for fear of becoming like his father and repeating the trauma he inflicted on Bobby. Bobby and Karen’s fambily dynamic is ruptured in the same way that John and Mary’s is—by an intrusive, demonic force that brings Bobby into the hunting world and ends Karen’s life. But by the time we see him at the end of season 1, Bobby is already ingratiated into Sam and Dean’s lives as their surrogate father, and this bond only deepens as the show progresses. Bobby expresses the sentiment to Dean to not be like John, that Dean is already a better man that his father ever was. Isn’t that what we all want to hear? That we have superseded our parents and outgrown them in ways they could never comprehend? Don’t we just want to be better than the generations that came before us, in order to mould a better world for the generations that come after us? Don’t we want to make things easier for our children, and our friends’ children, and our siblings’ children? Dean is a better man than John, and Bobby is better man than his father ever was. It’s about breaking the cycles of intergenerational trauma. I have to believe that Sam, Dean and Bobby did this, because then it’s possible for me to do the same thing. Include here that speech about representation in media that I didn’t bother writing for the last episode. Bobby is the surrogate father to Sam and Dean, a better father than John was, a better hunter even. He crafts an entire network of hunters who report to him, as seen in the season 6 episode “Weekend at Bobby’s,” and he continues to act as Sam and Dean’s mentor until his death in season 7 “How to win friends and influence monsters”. An alternate universe version of Bobby is introduced in season 13, which I have my reservations about, and he and Mary get together, which again, why. Season 13 is so hard to sit through.

A fambily that is introduced late into the series and is simply NOT given enough screen time is the Banes fambily. In season 12, “Celebrating the life of Asa Fox,” we are introduced to the Banes twins, Max and Alicia, who are by far the most gorgeous hunters we’ve seen in the series. They are hunters raised by a witch, Tasha Banes, who doesn’t appear yet, and they manage to survive the trial by fire that is overcoming the demon Jael. Later in this season, in the episode “Twigs and Twane and Tasha Banes,” both of which are written by the late great Steve Yockey, we are introduced to Tasha in a way that seems awfully familiar: Alicia calls Sam to say their mother has gone missing on a hunt, and hasn’t checked in in a few days. By the end of the episode, Alicia and Tasha are dead, and Max has ostensibly sold his soul for the power to bring Alicia back. The Banes twins’ storyline directly parallels Sam and Dean’s from the pilot, but it’s a tragedy from the outset. We already know Tasha is dead and they can’t save her, however, like Dean does for Sam at the end of season 2, Max chooses to save Alicia at the expense of his own soul. Spin off when. Banes twins series when. I’m waiting. They were in two episodes and I’m still thinking about them. The Harvelles are dust.

In season 7, “Reading is Fundamental,” a waifish 17 year old honour’s student Kevin Tran breaks into a rehabilitation facility to steal a tablet. This starts a chain of events that ingratiates Kevin Tran in the apocalyptic, death-succumbing world of the Winchesters, starting with Dick Roman, head leviathan, and continuing, but not culminating, with his death at the hands of Gadreel, who was possessing Sam, it’s a whole thing. Any time you attempt to summarise anything on Supernatural, you sound like a lunatic. And I say that as someone who has a supernatural podcast, with an audience of only supernatural fans. We are lunatics, but we’re lunatics together. Kevin’s arc was cut way too short, but we at least got to see him with his momma Linda in the beginnings of season 8 with the unfortunately named episode “What’s up, Tiger Mommy?” It introduces Linda Tran as a capable and worldly woman, hell bent on protecting her son. She offers up her soul among other things in exchange for Kevin and the tablet with him. During the episode, she is possessed by Crowley, and Dean attempts to kill him, which would mean killing Linda as well. Kevin considers this the ultimate betrayal and leaves with his mum. Later in season 9 episode “Captives,” Linda is reintroduced as a captive of Crowley, who escapes with Sam’s help. Back at the bunker, she reunites with Kevin, who is now, thanks to the Winchesters’ incompetence, a ghost 👻. My macbook keeps suggesting little emojis in the smart bar so I just gotta put ‘em in. That’s the last we see of Linda, so I’m drawing my own conclusions about whether she gets to live a long and happy life. Kevin is a fan favourite and despite my reservations about Osric Chau which I will not get into like ever I really like Kevin too. He outsmarts Crowley many times and shows remarkable tenacity to get an impossible job done. His desire to see his mum again, the driving force behind his actions, mirrors Dean’s desperation to have his fambily together again like they used to be. I would call this a parallel but I don’t believe they purposefully did this, I just think they accidentally rehashed the same tired storyline they’ve been peddling since 2005. But yeah, if I was Kevin and all I had was my mum, seeing her again would be the driving force for my actions as well. Kevin’s father is never mentioned, and it honestly isn’t a big deal, which is great. Sometimes fathers are just absent, and you don’t need throw a hissy fit about it or make it your entire personality, Dean.

Missouri Moseley, played by the inimitable Loretta Devine, is introduced in the first season, episode “Home,” in which she helps out on a case involving Sam and Dean’s childhood house. We find out that Missouri is a long-time friend of John’s and helped him to understand that supernatural forces were behind Mary’s death. She is Sam and Dean’s first point of entry into the world of the Supernatural, and they didn’t know it until they meet her in “Home”. In season 13 episode “Patience,” another layer to Missouri’s character is added with the advent of her family: estranged son James and granddaughter Patience Turner, who is also a psychic. We get a lot of backstory for Missouri in this episode, even if it is sloppily written and contradictory to the way they initially set her up. If Missouri and James had been travelling when he was a child, why was she stationed in Lawrence in both 1983 and 2005? What did he mean that Missouri was hunting? I can’t be bothered unpacking the confusing bits of information presented in this episode. It’s not a good episode and I really don’t see why everyone goes apeshit for Bobo Berens. He kills Missouri in this episode, in a really horrible way. Like the history of Supernatural’s racism and misogyny should not be dumped on one man, but nor should it be perpetuated and it is continually throughout the entire show. Confusing, contradictory and badly written backstory aside, she is an interesting character, and her willingness to sacrifice herself to save her family echoes that of Mary in “Home”. I’m actually really mad that Patience never gets to have a relationship with Missouri, and later in season 13 episode “The Bad Place,” Patience’s father tells her that if she leaves to help The Winchesters and uses her psychic abilities, she’s not welcome back in his house. To me that’s just unnecessary. We have a family that has already been ruptured by the death of Patience’s mother, further ruptured by Patience’s father cutting off contact with Missouri, and then to go a step further he disintegrates their family unit by kicking Patience out. Like how much loss do the Moseley-Turners have to endure? It’s really just cruel at this point. But Patience does find family with Jodie, Donna, Claire, Alex and eventually Kaia, and while I love the concept of found family and this found family in particular, it comes at the expense of biological family, which is something that the show has pushed from the very first episode. So that’s evolution in itself. Going from “fambily is the most important thing to these characters” to “found fambily is where we find love” is great, but ripping apart a biological fambily like the Moseley-Turners, and indeed starting the episode by saying Missouri has been shunted out of her son and granddaughter’s lives for trying to bring her son comfort, is just fucked. Like, I couldn’t name a single Bobo episode that I actually like without having to comb through them. I’m trying really hard not to shit all over him because as a writer I know how much that sucks and I know how hard is it for any marginalised writers to get a start, but I’m allowed to have my vendettas.

If you’ve watched the “Runs In The Family” angels MV from 2010, and only if you’ve watched the “Runs In The Family” angels MV from 2010, you will understand just how jacked up the angel family really is. The angelic counterpoint to Sam and Dean are the archangels Lucifer and Michael. We are introduced to two different versions of Michael—one in season 5, who possesses their dad in 1979 and their brother Adam in 2010—my god that was literally over a decade ago—and Apocalypse World Michael, played by four different actors: Felisha Terrell, Christian Keyes, Jensen Ackles, and Ruth Connell, who plays Rowena. I don’t know what in the hell Jensen Ackles was doing performance-wise when playing Michael, but I consider it a federal crime akin to drug trafficking or money laundering. As for Christian Keyes playing Michael, Andrew Dabb, you know what you did and you’re going to have to live with that.

In season 5, during the apocalypse, Michael and Lucifer only interact in the last episode, “Swan Song,” but the entire season is built around their conflict. Lucifer disobeyed their father, and Michael as God’s most powerful weapon must defeat him. It’s meant to mirror Sam’s descent into, uhhhh, badness or something, disobeying John to run away to Stanford, or, like, drinking demon blood? It’s unclear. Lucifer and Apocalypse World Michael interact in season 13, and Michael kills Lucifer only to take over Dean’s body and start a season-long arc of, like, bad acting and barely thought-out plots. I would say to Jensen Ackles “don’t quit your day job,” but this is literally his day job.

The angels as they’re introduced in season 4 are warriors of god, and all they know is obedience and killing. Even Cas can’t break out of the cycle of killing his angel siblings, and often justifies it by saying that it’s for the greater good, that he needs to do it to take down a stronger force like Raphael or Metatron. Anna manages to break free of her family by falling and becoming human, but when Cas betrays her and the angels capture her, she is lobotomised, tortured and sent back out to kill Sam. Then she’s burned to a crisp by Michael possessing John, not the last time a woman would burn to death on this show. The angels are dysfunctional at best, and actively hostile to each other, especially Castiel, the infamous spanner in the works. I could write an entire academic paper about how the angels think of Castiel as this rebel slut who murdered his way to the top and is going to be the downfall of angel kind, but Dean thinks of him as this little nerdy guy with a harp he carries around in his back pocket. Which honestly Cas would love because he’s obsessed with Dean and wants to touch his butt. I don’t know what else I can say about the angels without turning this into a dissertation, so I’ll continue on.

While all seasons of the show are about family, season six is especially about matrilineal family. It introduces the concept of the mother of monsters—Eve—and focuses on Mary as a solution to the loneliness the characters feel after her death. Samuel Campbell, Mary’s father, is brought back to life and manipulated by the promise of seeing his daughter again. He asks Sam and Dean what they wouldn’t do to see Mary again, which is kind of the general thesis of the show. What wouldn’t John, Dean and Sam do for each other? Dean sells his soul. John makes a deal with the demon who killed Mary. Sam teams up with Ruby to kill Lilith in revenge, which begins as a suicide mission because he doesn’t know how to handle his grief for Dean. The difference is that Samuel betrays Sam and Dean, his own grandchildren, for the promise of seeing Mary again. This cardinal sin alienates him from being a good guy, because good guys never betray Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean are our protagonists! Our heroes! The bringers of the light! The knights in shining armour! The white on rice. The cherry in cherry pie. They are the ones we’re meant to align ourselves with, because it’s their story the narrative is telling. And anyone who doesn’t align themselves with the Winchesters is an enemy who needs to be defeated.

We’re introduced to the character of Gwen in the first episode of season 6, “Exile on Main Street”, and she says in the episode “Family Matters” that Samuel, the patriarch, doesn’t like her very much because she reminds him of Mary. While Samuel, Christian, Gwen and co are technically family, Dean has no connection to them past bloodlines. And as I said before, while family doesn’t end in blood, we learn throughout this season that blood doesn’t always mean family. Gwen dies in the episode “And Then There Were None,” because of course she does, and Mary doesn’t come back, at least not in this season.

In “Family Matters,” the alpha vampire, played by the irreplaceable Rick Worthy, mentions that “we all have our mothers,” referring to Eve, the mother of monsters, the one who spawned every other monster and who has been trapped in purgatory ever since. Eve is pulled from Purgatory to wage war against the hunters and Crowley because they have been preying on her first borns, the alphas. I love Eve. I love her. She’s my favourite villain after Metatron. Mainly because I think she is like… sexy as hell. Like wow I am just so attracted to Julia Maxwell and this, like, bored smokey affect thing she does where she barely moves her mouth when she speaks and her strong brow makes her seem so intimidating. I don’t know anything about her personally, but I feel like she would’ve bullied me in high school, and I’m into it. It’s really hard to judge just from this one role whether she’s a good actor because Eve has such limited range and few things to do, but I really wish she’d gotten more screen time. Yeah, she’s doing the bare minimum and I’m completely obsessed. But Eve isn’t just a monster, she’s literally THEE milf. The original milf. And I really think she should’ve stayed around, but since they kept Lisa alive they had to kill at least one high profile woman.

Continuing with the family storylines in season 6, Dean tries to establish a family with Lisa and Ben, and for the most part succeeds. He gets a job, plays the role of the doting boyfriend and stepfather, and protects them as best he can. I’m going to spare you the rant perched at the tip of my tongue about how this is at best a lavender marriage or staying together for the kid, and that Lisa only exists to be an ideal for Dean, not an actual partner he can grow with throughout the rest of the show. It’s his first attempt at a fambily outside of Sam, Bobby and John, and it fails miserably because Lisa isn’t a good match. The fact is, she will never be able to fit into the hunting world because of the way the writers wrote her—as mother and girlfriend archetype, and we’ve seen how well they do with those—in fact they actively paralleled it in “Exile on Main Street” where they had Dean hallucinate Azazel coming back and pinning Lisa to the ceiling. It couldn’t be more obvious that they don’t respect her. At least they didn’t fridge her for Dean’s man pain. It’s honestly horrible because Dean put so much effort into believing this was his one chance at happiness, and when it crumbles like a tim tam in hot tea he beats himself up for it and uses it as an excuse to never be happy.

He does seem to be happy for the most part with Lisa, but because Sera Gamble doesn’t know how to write interesting or complex female characters, when Sam reenters the picture it once again becomes about the original premise: two brothers on the road, fighting the forces of evil. There’s no room for any women in that sphere. Up until this point I think—correct me if I’m wrong—there has been one female hunter who survived, and she was in one episode. The hunter Tamara in season 3 “The Magnificent Seven,” whose husband died in maybe the most sadistic way anyone has died on this show. Don’t rewatch it, just google it. All women die, including Mary, their mother, who is brought back in season 12 and killed in season 14. AND FOR WHAT? For WHAT Andrew Dabb.

Often, the loss of a parent, child or significant other is used to excuse bad behaviour and terrible choices. The hunting life causes Mary’s whole family to die before she can escape it, and because she makes a deal with Azazel for John’s life, the same demon John makes a deal with, Azazel kills her anyway. John abused his kids and brought them into the hunting life, because he was obsessed with getting revenge for Mary’s death. Sam does the same thing when Jess dies in the first season, and it starts a 15-season long arc of pain and misery. He sets Lucifer free in the season four because he is obsessed with getting revenge for Dean’s death and obsessed with the power drinking demon blood gives him. Then again, Sam is actually right for saving people by exorcising demons, which is literally the first part of the family business motto, instead of just gutting them with the demon knife, but because Dean doesn’t agree with it, it’s bad. Sam always wants to do the right thing, he just gets a little caught up in the details. But you know what? Bloodfreak rights.

When Cas dies in season 13, Dean is so overcome with grief, a grief that echoes John and Sam’s, that he mistreats Jack and threatens to kill him. In season 14, Nick, Lucifer’s vessel, boo snore hiss, kills everyone involved with the murder of his wife and child before he finds out that it’s actually Lucifer’s doing, and then he tries to raise Lucifer from the empty because he’s addicted to killing? Whatever, stop employing Mark Pellegrino. Stop writing men as obsessed with getting revenge

The biological fambilies in Supernatural suck shit. Honestly every time I watch an episode about fambily I’m even more glad I don’t talk to mine. Dean and Sam need to spend some time away from each other, while they’re both still alive. Their fambily dynamic gets better as the show progresses, and I was pleased to see in season 12 that they do away with the codependency, constantly sacrificing themselves for each other, isolating themselves, betraying everyone they know for each other—they started to act like, you know, normal people. And that’s good. Sure, the show would not be anywhere without John sacrificing himself for Dean, and Dean sacrificing himself for Sam, and honestly that’s what made those first few seasons amazing. But after a while it becomes lazy writing, not parallels. A parallel that Supernatural pulled off is Sam comforting Magda in season 12 episode “The Survivor” in the way he needed to be comforted in season 1 and 2 as a psychic child. A parallel is Dean preparing Cas’s body for cremation in season 13 in counterpoint to the way Cas remade Dean’s body in season 4. This show can absolutely do parallels, some of the most beautiful parallels ever put on screen, but the last season was such lazy writing that I cannot forgive it.

This has been an overall negative episode of Holy Hell, and that sucks. I don’t want to be so negative. I want to talk about the good things that Supernatural did, and share in joy with you all, so now I’m going to talk about the only positive I see with fambily in the entire show.

For Dean, everyone older than him is a parent to disappoint, and everyone younger than him is a little sibling to protect. Cas is the exception, as there’s no way to define Dean and Cas’s relationship without acknowledging the reciprocal romantic ways they care about each other. Dean says on multiple occasions that Cas is like a brother to him, and that he’s Sam and Dean’s best friend. He actually drops the line, “After Sam and Bobby, you are the closest thing I have to family,” on Cas in season 6, and he acts like it’s nothing, but you can see in the expression on Cas’s face that Dean just recontextualised the entirety of Cas’s being in one sentence. Cas falls for Dean, gives up his family for Dean, and decides to follow him in the first act of free will we see on screen. And Dean, who has never known love without pain, says to Cas, you are fambily to me, I actively choose you, you belong in my life. But to belong in Dean’s life is to follow his plan, and when Cas doesn’t, he is punished for his hubris. Dean loves him, and he never even admits it.

Charlie becomes like a little sister to Dean, as does Jo. Jack is unequivocally Cas’s son, but becomes something of Dean’s son as well and some would argue Sam’s son. Claire becomes Cas’s daughter, but imprints so much on Dean that many, myself included, have come to consider Dean her father as well. If you subscribe to the idea that Dean and Cas are old marrieds, Dean would be Claire and Jack’s stepfather, and they would be a nuclear fambily all on their own. In season 14 “Lebanon,” when John says to Dean that he thought Dean would have settled down with a fambily, Dean says, “I have a fambily.” Just thinking about it gives me goosebumps.

Cas chooses to be a part of Claire’s life in season 10 “The Things We Left Behind” because he feels guilty about what happened to her after he possessed Jimmy, but after getting to know Claire he cares for her. The crime that is Claire and Cas not interacting after season 10, my god. That’s his daughter, you ghouls. But Claire and Dean do get more moments together. Dean, Sam and some British guy save Claire from turning into a werewolf, and Claire and the rest of the Wayward Sisters save Sam and Dean from the Bad Place. The Wayward Sisters are a found fambily all on their own, and since I could devote an entire episode to Jody’s little brood, I have chosen not to talk about them much, because this episode is at least half an hour, 34 minutes, and it would take up too much of my time. Claire is one of my favourite characters and I’ll be talking about her in the next ep, so stay tuned for that.

Even before Jack is born, Cas becomes his protector. He goes from trying to convince Kelly to end her and Jack’s life, to being her pseudo-husband and the surrogate father to her child. To me personally, it’s the best thing this show has ever done. Cas, Kelly and Jack love each other in a way that is so wholly uncomplicated, that is so pure and so good. Once Cas becomes Jack’s protector, there’s never any question of whether they would hurt or betray each other. He is Cas’s son, his baby boy, and he loves Cas so much that he resurrects Cas from the empty. When they meet for the first time in season 13 “Tombstone” after Cas comes back, they fit into each other’s lives so easily. This is the part in writing this where I was absolutely sobbing my dick off. There are so many moments between them that show the kind of love that each of these characters deserved. Sam and Dean deserve to have that love from their father, and so does Cas. And together they build a family unit around caring for Jack that does indeed end the intergenerational trauma that plagues the Winchester fambily.

And that’s why season 16 is so important to me. I can make things better. Dean sorts his shit out, all of his shit: his alcoholism, depression, ADHD, borderline personality disorder, suicidal ideation, sexuality, gender, the fact that Cas is literally the love of his life and he gets to save him from the Empty the way Cas saved him from Hell. They plant flowers in the field where Dean spread Cas’s ashes in season 13, and they get married at Jody’s cabin with all their loved ones left alive. Claire walks Cas down the aisle and Jack is the flower girl, because he’s literally a three year old baby. Sam and Eileen raise a bunch of rugrats and the Wayward fambily continue the hunting legacy and have a Sunday afternoon roast every week. Dean and Cas raise Jack right, they cut up oranges for soccer practice and watch all his school plays. He and his cousins grow up knowing what it’s like not only to be loved, but to be looked after, to have all their needs met. They grow up normal, and the trauma that plagued their family is a thing of the past. It’s good, you know? It’s just fucking good.

#transcripts #episodes #supernatural #spn

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the-bjd-community-confess · 3 years

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Vinyl Dolls

Dear DD anon:

The customization market for D0llfie Dreams is… incomparable to other brands in all honesty, people on Yahoo Japan Auctions practically make a living customizing and selling one-off DD heads for anywhere from $50 to $10,000 if an auction gets particularly heated, and there are literally pages of heads available on any given day of the week. DDs on the V0lks store are basically the equivalent of a blank doll as far as most people are concerned, branded collaboration fullsets (ala Hatsune Miku) aside. Even dolls that come directly from V0lks’s Doll Point stores with a complete faceup are often going to be customized down the line.

DD customization tends to be more extreme than you typically see on the resin side of things as well. While resin collectors are able to hybrid all kinds of amazing fantasy parts together to make something new via additive modding, vinyl’s softness means it’s perfect for subtractive mods- hence why so very many DD heads have open mouth mods despite V0lks not manufacturing an open-mouthed head. For DD collectors the face is the soul of the doll, and so an incredible amount of attention is paid to the faceup and any associated sculpting therein, as well as to the eyes and wig which complement them.

Conversely the body matters less to many people (though some do care an equal amount about the body style and spend a great deal of time modding and hybriding parts between brands to achieve a desired look.) V0lks sells a variety of differently-sized bodies, from the ¼-scale MDDs to the curvaceous 1/3-scale DDdy, but many collectors look beyond V0lks to find a body for their dolls. Before the 60cm line was tragically discontinued, many people would purchase 0bitsu bodies for their dolls instead, especially as, for a time, 0bitsu were the only ones selling male vinyl bodies at all. Even now male dolls are a contentious issue in the vinyl world- 0bitsu discontinued everything above MDD-scale, V0lks only sells their male bodies through Dream Choice (aka ‘physically haul your ass to Japan to buy one,’) and Sm4rt D0lls… SmD is going to get their own paragraph.

Of the many vinyl brands (V0lks, 0bitsu/P4r4box, 4zone, V1suad0ll, 4ngel Philia/Qu4rant0tt0/P1nk Dr0ps, SQ L4bs and more I’m forgetting,) Sm4rt D0ll is a notable entry for being quite well-known and popular, but also quite divisive and even controversial in not just the vinyl side of the hobby, but in the BJD hobby as a whole. Much of this controversy relates to the actions of the brand’s owner, D4nny Ch00, such as his tendency to publicly harass those he doesn’t agree with on social media, weaponizing his not insignificant fanbase to attack those people on his behalf, some off-color remarks about race and other social issues, his disparagement of other doll brands, and most notably, his habit of cancelling the orders of, and subsequently banning those who publicly discuss issues with his products (including manufacturing defects) from continuing to purchase from his store, as well as a general habit of complaining, at great length, about purported 'haters’ towards his brand in almost every single post made on the official SmD social media accounts and product sales pages. On top of this, many of the SmD business tactics are controversial as well, including the selling of dolls in blind boxes (which appear to be weighted towards repeat customers,) the complete and utter inability to buy spare parts for Smart Dolls without engaging in blind box mechanics, and the generalized frustration even from devout fans of SmD’s tendency to trot out new and upcoming dolls that either never get released after the fact, or only see release as a one-off prototype sold at a significant mark-up, as well as the fact that a significant portion of the brand’s catalogue is locked to blind-box availability as well, including their entire lineup of male dolls. Many also cite problems with the brand’s community culture as well, including a tendency to exclude and berate those who have legitimate concerns or issues with their purchases, and the almost deification of D4nny Ch00 himself as a figure beyond all reproach. Proponents of the brand, meanwhile, tout the fact that SmD is the only brand that actually reliably sells vinyl in different colors, as well as the fact that the brand offers a host of inclusive designs to customers who request them including prosthetic limbs, representation of various skin conditions and, recently, ostomy bags.

Generally, however, it is the unavailability of parts that has lead to the SmD customization market remaining quite small compared to those of other vinyl doll creators, as well as a belief by some in that community that changing a Smart Doll’s faceup is an offense to D4nny Ch00 himself. This is slowly changing, but customized SmD are still quite uncommon in the hobby overall, and those who have performed more extreme mods on their dolls (such as dyeing them or doing subtractive mods) have even faced social media harassment for doing so. This, as well, has lead to the relatively slow growth of the custom SmD market compared to that of other brands.

In summation, the V0lks store is a store of blanks and all the adorable DDs you see on social media are customs that someone most likely bought from a big-name creator in Japan or on Etsy, or else customized themselves. There are other vinyl brands as well which you may want to investigate to find your own aesthetic interests. Happy collecting!

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #BJD Confessions #TrueBJDConfessions #Vinyl BJD #BJD Information

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jiminieloved · 4 years

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Lol, welp, since your submission page does say you’re accepting people venting their opinion about something, and other anons you’re getting today have made this topical, I’m going to submit a bit of a frustrated opinion piece to you here- though I totally understand if you don’t want to post it if you think others might take it the wrong way and feel like it’s inciting drama or something.

So bit of a hot take here, but I hold the opinion that Jikookers who insist that the post SY Final emails from TKers/hetshippers about stopping Jikook’s ‘gay performances’ worked, and that Jikook has ‘barely breathed’ and stopped interacting in public since then specifically because Big Hit won’t ‘let’ them because of those complaints, because they’re now trying to suppress their relationship and please Taekookers, are almost as frustrating as the crowd that starts weeping about how Jikook broke up every single time we go a week without a new moment at this point- it’s just two different forms of baseless hysteria grounded in insecurity. There’s a reason TKers have been widely mocked for coming up with conspiracy theories about how BH has turned TK into a tragic, forbidden love that is forced to stay apart, and I just hate seeing so many of us turn around and do the exact same thing the second we miss the boys for a minute. Now, allow to me explain WHY I think this idea is so silly, if I may

I guarantee that Big Hit gets complaints and demands about EVERYTHING related to the boys, that’s just the nature of overseeing literally the biggest band in the world- and yet people truly believe that of all the things they hear about, they caved to the emailed demands of what was most likely not even actually a full 100 people among BTS’s 1mil+ person fan base? You’re giving what was most likely a double digit amount of TKers (whenever anyone tries to bust out a tweet of people complaining about all the Jikook interactions that night that has triple digit likes, as if that’s proof that hundreds upon HUNDREDS of people were emailing Big Hit, I have to roll my eyes; one, a lot of that those likes probably come from people who have multiple accounts, and two, there’s way less energy involved with hitting like on a tweet than composing and sending an email-I would bet you anything that the vast majority of people who did the former never actually followed through with the latter. Not to mention that even if it actually had been a few hundred, which it almost definitely wasn’t, that’s STILL a completely insignificant portion of BTS’s fanbase) entirely too much credit if you think BH started suddenly declaring how and when JM and JK are allowed to interact just because of them; frankly, BH likely gets WAY more nutso emails from people about dumb things like wanting Tae publicly flogged for vaping or wanting JK kicked out of the group for having tattoos than they ever have about shipping matters- I’d be shocked if this particular issue was even a blip on the radar, or ever went beyond the administrative assistant in charge of sorting through fan emails laughing to themself as they deleted the nonsense.

But hey, let’s say the emails DID make it to the higher-ups at Big Hit and they WERE aware of them- thinking they started keeping Jikook apart because of them requires assuming BH places more weight into a few pressed emails than they do the entire sold out stadium being filled with the sound of hysterical, supportive, happy screaming every time Jikook were acting boo’d up that night, and, uh… WHY would you assume that, lol? Even IF BigHit is hypersensitive to how Army responds to specific ships, which I honestly doubt, I promise you any company would care more about the real-time reaction of a 60000 person true random sampling of the band’s fan base than a comparatively TINY amount of emails or tweets that, for all they know, are just being spammed by the same five people with an agenda across different accounts, and that real-time reaction to Jikook from 60000 random fans was extremely positive. Not to mention how Jikook is more popular than Taekook with both K-Army and J-Army, and it’s only I-Army that Taekook has the edge with; why does anyone think Big Hit cares more about a shipping subset of their third biggest market than a shipping subset of their first two biggest markets, if they’re going to care about shipping at all?

Then there’s the issue where I also think it’s kind of insulting to Jimin and Jungkook to suggest they would have even stood for being forcibly distanced to please some pissy Taekook fans, TBH. I’m not saying they get to live their lives as openly as they want 100% of the time, obviously as Idols there are things they make big concessions about, but Jungkook is a man who has been acknowledging since 2014 that a lot of their fans would be very upset with him if he ever got a tattoo, and who then still proceeded to get 20+ of them because that’s what HE wanted, Jimin is a man who saw fans complaining his shirt was too revealing and he should stop wearing it and proceeded to wear that shirt as often as possible throughout the next few weeks to make a point- you think they’d put up a fight like that for tattoos and clothes, but not for the person that we as Jikookers are assuming is their beloved partner? That’s not even getting into Jungkook being so vocal and so brave with gestures like GCF Tokyo and Rose Bowl; I would bet you anything that same man would not sit there quietly and nod along if an executive tried to order him to stop being seen with Jimin and start playing up his friendship with Taehyung for the camera more often, all just so they could please some obnoxious American teenagers.

And finally, and what might be the biggest point to me- the ‘Jikook has been dead since then!’ and ‘Something is clearly off between them since then!’ narratives are SO exaggerated by Jikookers anyway, ones who have lost all perspective about how they haven’t been in public much since November, and they both barely use social media anymore, so ALL content from them drops off dramatically when there’s no tour, no promotions, and no appearances happening. Shippers keep complaining that we’ve had barely any new content in 2020, it’s all been stuff that was filmed in 2019 and just released now, waaah, and I’m just like ‘…uh, yeah, and that’s the case for literally every ship involving Jimin or Jungkook, because the three weeks of album promotion we got are basically all either of them have been seen for this year.’ If they were both constantly around and acting affectionate with other members while visibly icing only each other out, then maybe I could get the conspiracy theories, but I genuinely can’t recall any significant interactions either of them have had with other members outside of the clearly planned and scheduled V-Lives- not that this means the interactions in said V-lives weren’t genuine and cute, for the record! But it’s not like Jungkook was just hanging out at Tae’s apartment and they spontaneously decided to go live- Big Hit clearly had these particular lives mapped out and they’ve essentially been part of the boys’ current work schedule. They’ve both made themselves scarce, period, you can’t get ‘fed’ by people who just straight up aren’t making public appearances or using their social media accounts- and when we HAVE seen them, like in the last two OT7 lives, they’ve very much seemed like their normal selves and have been right by each other’s side, per usual. Also, when you look back on years in your mind as a compilation of significant moments, it makes you forget that even in 2018 and 2019, it wasn’t uncommon to go weeks or months between content; your brain just selectively filters out the time in-between that you spent waiting to remember only the good stuff we got those years, and it makes it feel like it was a constant flood of moments happening all at once; you remember ALL of 2018 and 2019 as their respective best dozen moments, forgetting that there was plenty of time in between even then, and that Jikookers frequently threw embarrassing fits about how they had clearly broken up any time their ‘feeding schedule’ was off for a few weeks even then.

And I mean, the face smushing pictures that have already become a Jikook fandom all time favorite moment were post SYF, the chest groping performance of Home was post SYF, them lovingly smiling while singing The Earth Traveler directly to each other and the behind the scenes clip of them looking just as smitten during the recording was post SYF, the extremely flirty and domestic New Year’s VLive that had Jikook fandom dying was post SYF, the video of them flirting about how long they’ve been a unit was post SYF (not to mention how Big Hit deciding to give them a photobook subunit in the first place, or deciding to include that flirty footage in the album release event stream, were both choices made post SYF), the big Jikook feast that was Winter Package was post SYF (and again, BH didn’t HAVE to include all that Jikook footage, and they DEFINITELY didn’t have to write the very shippy captions that one had- they chose to), Jimin holding Jungkook’s arm in the airport was post SYF, them holding hands while walking off stage at the Japan muster was post SYF, Jungkook calling Jimin cute and sexy during the album release and all of their flirting across the table and hugging and touchiness that same night was post SYF, the V-Live where Jimin was being very affectionate with Jungkook and there was that adorable minute long sequence where you could tell how badly they were fighting the instinct to hold hands was post SYF, Jungkook publicly and proudly losing his mind over Jimin the Black Swan reaction video was post SYF, them choosing to let us see them happily riding home together was post SYF, Jungkook stopping dead in his tracks and abandoning the routine to just lovingly stare at Jimin for two minutes straight during Carpool Karaoke was post SYF, the cuddling and spooning during recent Run BTS episodes was filmed prior to then, but BH’s decision to include the footage and post the photo was post SYF, same with all the season’s greeting Jikook footage, same with BH deciding to make the 5th Muster DVD an all out Jikook holy grail, same with BH having the Speak Yourself Japan behind-the-scenes footage be more Jikook than anything else. If that’s Jikook after supposedly being ordered to stay away from each other or to at least ‘tone down the gay’, and if Big Hit’s idea of pulling back on Jikook means still having the behind the scenes footage on the next 4 paid content DVD releases be LOADED with Jikook and basically revolve around their interactions, then call me crazy, but I think things are gonna be okay

#submission #yesssssssss #pls get notes this is everythibng i've ever wanted to say in one post #thank u #jikook #jikook discourse

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gunnerpalace · 4 years

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(These asks were reordered from bottom-to-top to top-to-bottom for clarity.)

Alright, so the first thing I want to say in response to this is actually best summarized in the form of a song:

youtube

You are somebody that I don't know But you're takin' shots at me like it's Patrón And I'm just like, damn, it's 7 AM Say it in the street, that's a knock-out But you say it in a Tweet, that's a cop-out And I'm just like, "Hey, are you okay?"

And I ain't tryna mess with your self-expression But I've learned a lesson that stressin' and obsessin' 'bout somebody else is no fun And snakes and stones never broke my bones

So oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh You need to calm down, you're being too loud And I'm just like oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh (oh) You need to just stop Like can you just not step on my gown? You need to calm down

I would like you to seriously reread what you’ve written here (and copy-and-pasted to others) and tell me that it doesn’t come across as more than a little obsessive and psychotic. "This may seem like hate, but it's not," you said anonymously, before going on a rant to strangers on the internet whom you had nominated as the representatives of "you guys." Sure, okay, Heather.

Well, regardless, let’s go through this. First, you don't understand 685/686. I've been over this before several times, but I will go over this one final time, as simply as I can. That said, I can't guarantee that you will understand it when I do. I was unable to successfully tutor 1st graders how to do addition because my perspective was, "Either you understand it or you don't," and I don't have the background in math to make such a simple concept exciting. The same might be true of this, because there is no way to critically analyze these chapters more succinctly than this, and so you still might not get it.

The point of 685/686, thematically, is that absolutely no one got what they wanted.

Renji wanted to surpass Byakuya. He remains Byakuya's Lieutenant and has to settle for being under his sister (figuratively and probably literally too) who now also outranks him as a Captain.

Rukia wanted to reform Soul Society into a more humane institution that protects all souls. It is the same as it ever was, and if anything has doubled down on its practices by rebuilding the Soukyoku (on which it tried to kill her) a hundred times larger, and she is one of its main wardens.

Uryuu wanted anything but to be a doctor, ever since he watched his mom being autopsied by his dad. He is now a doctor, and all alone at that.

Chad promised his grandfather to never hurt people with his fists. He is now a boxer, doing exactly that for money.

Orihime wanted to go out and have several different exciting careers. She is instead a stay-at-home mom.

Ichigo wanted to save a "mountain full" of people, be Superman, leave Karakura, and be a Shinigami. He instead appears to run Isshin's clinic now.

So, yes, you are correct: Kubo chose that Ichigo wind up with Orihime. It is exceedingly clear, from the context, that this is absolutely not a good thing.

That point is further reemphasized by Yhwach’s threat to come kill Ichigo and everyone else when they are at their happiest. And when does he reappear?

When Ichigo saw Rukia again.

Not when Ichigo asked Orihime out. Not when they started dating, officially or unofficially. Not when they were married. Not when she gave birth to his son. Not when his son said his first words.

Not when anything happened with Orihime or Kazui, but when he saw Rukia again.

That is your “Kubo-sensei” telling you directly that the happiest moment in Ichigo’s life was just simply seeing Rukia again, and not anything involving Orihime in any capacity whatsoever.

All of that should tell you that Ichigo and Orihime’s relationship is not exactly the stuff legends are made out of, because them winding up together is explicitly portrayed as a downer ending. A bad ending.

If you cared at all about the characters—if you cared at all about their desires, or their happiness—or if you cared at all that IchiHime was presented as even merely good, let alone destined or fated or whatever else, then you would be offended by this ending too.

Because the ending is “Kubo-sensei” straight-up unequivocally telling you that IchiHime is bad and tragic. It is something that one must demonstrate “courage” in the face of. It requires stoicism. It is a bad ending, but that’s life. That’s what the ending means.

He did you dirty too. You just don’t want to see it, because you are so obsessed with the concept of “winning.” Well, this was mutually-assured destruction: everyone lost. Especially you.

Moving on: no, Kubo doesn’t really get attention or money from us. I’m not really sure where this idea comes from.

I’m not an expert on Japanese intellectual property rights and licensing, but I know enough about them in general to know that very little if any money goes to Kubo personally from ongoing Bleach merchandise sales. For example, KLab more than likely has a contract with Shueisha (representing Kubo, hence why they’re put together on BBS’s title card), TV Tokyo, Dentsu, and Pierrot, wherein they pay those entities a fixed amount to license Bleach per year or per contractual term. It’s not like Kubo is making money off of every orb purchase or every figurine sold or something. These things don’t work like that.

As for attention, he’s still hiding from social media (for reasons of his own, unrelated to the fandom), and the people who give him attention are... you. People like you. “True Bleach fans” who can’t stop treating all his shit like it’s solid gold. We have made it fairly clear we don’t need him or care what he thinks.

Regarding BBS, maybe you haven’t noticed, but the majority of the imagery they use is IchiRuki-focused. The last title screen was IchiRuki. The Guild button is IchiRuki. The Events button is IchiRuki. The Chronicle Quest button is IchiRuki. Here, I’ve helpfully highlighted this for you:

While they do occasionally toss IH a bone, the last January event also ended on an IR note despite the ridiculous crowing about it being IH. While I’m at it, even the current supposedly “IH” title screen is anything but.

It doesn’t take Michelangelo or Da Vinci to figure out the composition here is not terribly suggestive. While Rukia is indeed off to one side, the fact Uryuu, Zangetsu, and the title card are between Ichigo and Orihime (and they’re looking in different directions) makes it pretty evident that they’re not being visually associated together. It is at best a “general” title screen. Uryuu is showing more visual interest in Ichigo than Orihime is.

I’ll come back to “the anime” in a minute. Let’s talk about their “tag-team move.” Do you mean the one that ended like this?

This one that didn’t work whatsoever?

This one where Ichigo wasn’t concerned at all that Orihime might be dead or dying as she lay there on the ground?

This one where he absolutely gave into despair?

How romantic. Truly, what an excellent battle-couple they make. Their combat effectiveness and synergy is just astounding. I for one would love to see it animated.

(Let’s not forget that later, Orihime can’t repair Zangetsu without some nonsense shenanigans from Tsukishima either. Just like how her healing abilities are useless against any sufficiently strong residual reiatsu. Ah, but that would require reading the manga closely...)

Finally, on to the idea of the anime returning. Here’s the thing: news about a trailer also doesn’t really mean anything. Sure, it could be TYBW. Or it could be The Honey Dish Rhapsody. Or it could be a thousand other things. I neither know, nor particularly care, what it actually is, on top of my explanations as to why animating TYBW would be a dumb business decision.

Here’s why: even if it is a TYBW anime, it will have to be an adaptation of TYBW. They will still have to follow the plot of TYBW. And TYBW was a pile of shit. It wasn’t just a pile of shit for IR, it was a pile of shit in general, and a pile of shit for IH in particular.

Perhaps you don’t recall that Orihime spends most of the arc off-panel, having been ditched in Hueco Mundo for most of it (chapters 500–586)?

Oh, but just think, you wouldn’t just get to see the Ichigo-Orihime “tag team” attack totally and utterly failing! You’d also get delights like:

Orihime and Chad utterly failing to believe in Ichigo! (Just like in the Xcution arc where it was demonstrated that Byakuya was a truer friend to Ichigo than either of them!)

Orihime being reduced to a pair of tits, each bigger than her own head!

Ichigo totally ignoring Orihime!

And who can forget the delight of Orihime selling out her dignity to dress slutty at Kisuke’s suggestion to try and get Ichigo’s attention, only for it to not work at all?

Yes, truly, TYBW would be a fantastic arc for IH that would surely win over the populace and convince everyone of the chemistry between these two characters!

Except it wouldn’t. Because they have no chemistry. And they didn’t. See, what’s really funny is that not only did TYBW not give you anything, but it was just following up on the Xcution arc not giving you anything.

Because ORIHIME VISION was played for laughs, just like say, Shuhei constantly is.

Because despite Chad and Orihime being about as important to Ichigo, he couldn’t even bother to say bye.

Because he just didn’t have time to deal with her bullshit.

I could go on, but this post is already long enough.

You see, you’re real keen to dismiss "all the scene or poem shit or parallel or the hell else thing," but the truth is, that’s all there is to a manga. It is panels of art and text on a page. The rest is just in your head. And it is from those panels of art and text that animated scenes and spoken dialogue would be created. And the funny thing is... there are no IH moments in these arcs. They simply don’t exist.

So really, what you’re hoping and praying for is not just for TYBW to be adapted. Given your evident thirst, I doubt that the perhaps 5–10 minute epilogue of 685/686 at the end of 4–5 seasons would be enough for you. You’d need the animation team to decide to sprinkle in a whole lot of IH filler along the way too.

That didn’t work out so hot for the Xcution arc. How did that one end again? Oh, that’s right: they made up their own (better) ending for it. Are you really willing to bet your money on a TYBW anime going out of its way for IH, if you even get it? Or would you really be satisfied with those 5–10 minutes? Are you really so sure you’d even still get them?

Ultimately, I don’t care. You’re blocked. But, I will say this: in a way I almost kind of pity you. It seems really sad being a militant anonymous IH, desperately and eternally craving outside validation. You have so very little to cling to. It must be hard.

Good luck with that, Heather.

#Asks

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caelpictor · 4 years

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QHAVPPFAQ

Quarantine Halloween: A Virtual Paint Party

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Who are you?

Kyle Marcus Bryant, aka @caelpictor. He/him/his/pronoun-flexible, Black, queer, 26 (and a half), Taurus, INFP, ADHD af. I’m an artist (with a degree in it, as of 2018!), a nerd, and a lover of Halloween!

What is this event?

Quarantine Halloween: A Virtual Paint Party is an art class conducted via video call in which I teach you step-by-step how to paint a Halloween masterpiece! #distancelearning

When is this taking place?

There are two classes scheduled: Friday October 30, 2020, and Saturday October 31, 2020 (AKA Halloween) from 7-9 PM EST.

Where?

It’s all happening on Zoom! Technology is amazing!

Why?

Like many of us, I lost my job to the pandemic. I am now safely quarantined away in VA with family, staring down my student loan debt, bored out of my mind, and looking for a fun way to connect with others while also offering my talents in exchange for your cold. hard. cash!

How much does it cost?

The $10 instructor fee covers one participant for one night. If you want to take both classes, make sure to get two tickets! And if two or more people will be joining the class from one location, please make sure everyone in the group is covered! Thanks 🙂

Is there a difference between the two classes?

Nope! They will be the same. I’m just offering two different dates for your convenience! Aren’t I nice?

How do I sign up?

Simply send in your payment and the best way to contact you, and let me know which day you’ll be participating (Fri 30 or Sat 31). Once I receive your payment, I’ll add you to my little list, confirm with you that you’re on it, and I’ll send you the Zoom link/meeting ID and password on the day of the event.

Where do I send my payment?

Venmo: @KyleBryant

PayPal: KyleMB13

CashApp: $KyleMarcusBryant

None of these are case-sensitive. If there’s one you prefer that’s not listed, let me know, and we’ll see what we can do!

Which is your preferred payment method?

Venmo, but any of the ones listed above are great!

Do you accept tips/donations?

Yes 🙂 always :)))

What’s the vibe?

Very casual. Drinking, Halloween costumes, and conversation are all highly encouraged! (But never forced)! I will be in costume, probably sipping wine or a cocktail and jamming out to music while I teach. It’s quite liberating, being able to drink on the job.

What’s the etiquette?

We try to stay on mute while the teacher is teaching, but otherwise, go wild. ***And please ALWAYS feel free to jump off mute if you have questions or comments!

Who can join?

Literally everyone! Spread the word! Bring your friends! The more the merrier!

I have no artistic skills! Can I join?

I said EVERYONE, didn’t I? That’s exactly what I’m here for! Just think of me as your personal Bob Ross; I may not be able to hold your hand in person, but I will break every brushstroke down for you as simply as possible, and you’ll be surprised at how well you do. Again, if you ever have questions or need my advice, feel free to chime in at any time! And remember to focus on the experience of the painting, not the product!

General advice for first-time painters?

Work in big, general shapes first, then focus on smaller details later. I also usually start with the background and build the foreground on top of that. Also, relax, experiment, and have fun with it! There are no rules!

How long is the event?

Two hours, but please allow a little extra time for people to settle in at the beginning, finish up at the end, etc.. I promise it’ll breeze right by, but don’t feel pressured to be there for the whole event. If you miss the beginning, I’m great at catching people up, and if you duck out early, I won’t mind!

What image are you teaching us to paint?

Coming soon!

What materials do I need?

Here’s a breakdown:

Essentials:

1. Acrylic paints (a nice set of 5-12 colors is plenty)

2. Palette (for holding/mixing paint; a paper plate works just as well)

3. Brushes (at least one small brush for details, and one large brush for covering large areas; preferably one medium-sized brush as well)

4. Canvas (either a stretched canvas or a flat canvas panel, any size!)

5. Water cup (a vessel to hold brushes; I’m using an old plastic gelato container)

6. Easel (to hold the painting upright and steady; not strictly necessary, as you can use a desk or table or your lap instead if you’d like)

7. Paper towels or old rag (for cleanup and drying brushes)

Other:

1. Workspace (away from things you don’t want paint on; lay down tarp or newspaper to protect walls, floors, and other surfaces if necessary)

2. Paint clothes, smock, apron, etc. (wear something you don’t mind getting paint on!)

3. Trash can, running water, acetone, etc. (for cleanup)

Bonus:

1. Hair dryer (to help paint dry faster)

2. Pencils, pens, markers, pastels, etc. (for sketching, signing your name, etc)

3. Glitter, collage materials, sponges, stamps, stencils, etc. (just for fun!)

4. Your favorite drink (for inspiration 😉)

Where can I get them?

I’ve bought literally everything on this list from Target and Michael’s (except the easel, which I bought online). I would mask up and check your local department store or arts and crafts store (Walmart, Blick, Plaza, Hobby Lobby, Jerry’s, JoAnne’s, etc.), or if you prefer to order it all online, you can do so easily from those same retailers or… 😬 Amazon. (Protip: If you’re lost on the internet, but would like to avoid buying from Amazon, you can use its search engine as a jumping-off point and go directly to the retailers they have listed 😜) Pretty much everything else is just household items.

What will it cost me?

If you’re not worried about the quality—and you shouldn’t be! I’ve found the cheaper stuff works just as well!—you can buy the essentials (paints, palettes, brushes, and canvases) for ~$20. These items are also often sold in bulk, or in sets with each other!

What colors are we using?

My current plan for the palette is black, white, yellow, purple, orange, and green, the sp00kiest of colors! If you just want to get those six, feel free. However, I always recommend having the primary colors: red, yellow, and blue, plus black and white; that way you can mix any color you want!

What size canvas should I buy?

That is entirely up to you! 8 x 10” and 16 x 20” are pretty popular sizes, though.

Are there any extra precautions I should take?

Acrylic paint comes off skin, hair, nails, and smooth non-porous surfaces fairly easily, but it does stain clothing and carpet, and is very stubborn once dried. I would recommend being careful to prevent spills in the first place, but if it does get on something precious, rinse immediately and completely with water. If already dry, try acetone or a similar cleanser to break down the plastic particles in the paint.

How do I clean up afterward?

My method: Scrub brushes along the bottom of your water cup to get all the paint off them, then rinse under running water until water runs clear. Either let the paint water sit in the cup until the paint particles have settled to the bottom, or pour it through a filter (coffee filter, cloth, etc, because acrylic paint is made of a micro-plastic that can be harmful to the environment and your plumbing in large amounts!) Leave everything else alone until it’s completely dry, and then peel or scratch dried paint off your palette if desired. Scrub your paint-covered hands and other body parts until clean, preferably with something exfoliating.

Is the paint non-toxic?

I mean, I wouldn’t drink it on purpose, but yeah, paint left on the skin or ingested (in small amounts) is harmless.

How can I contact you?

You can comment right here on this post, DM me on any of my social media, or email me! I promise to get back to you ASAP!

Social Media: @caelpictor (everywhere)

Email: [email protected]

I will update this post as questions are asked between now and the event, so please let me know if there’s a question I didn’t answer here for you!

Thanks for reading, and I’m excited to see you all there!!!

#caelpictor #quarantine #Halloween #painting class #art

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twocubes · 4 years

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Wow, that apple pi is great. Who is John Galt?

A Spectre is haunting multinational capitalism--the spectre of free information. All the powers of ``globalism'' have entered into an unholy alliance to exorcize this spectre: Microsoft and Disney, the World Trade Organization, the United States Congress and the European Commission.

Where are the advocates of freedom in the new digital society who have not been decried as pirates, anarchists, communists? Have we not seen that many of those hurling the epithets were merely thieves in power, whose talk of ``intellectual property'' was nothing more than an attempt to retain unjustifiable privileges in a society irrevocably changing? But it is acknowledged by all the Powers of Globalism that the movement for freedom is itself a Power, and it is high time that we should publish our views in the face of the whole world, to meet this nursery tale of the Spectre of Free Information with a Manifesto of our own.

Owners and Creators

Throughout the world the movement for free information announces the arrival of a new social structure, born of the transformation of bourgeois industrial society by the digital technology of its own invention.

The history of all hitherto existing societies reveals a history of class struggles.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, bourgeois and proletarian, imperialist and subaltern, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that has often ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

The industrial society that sprouted from the worldwide expansion of European power ushering in modernity did not do away with class antagonisms. It but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. But the epoch of the bourgeoisie simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole seemed divided into two great hostile camps, into two great classes, directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.

But revolution did not by and large occur, and the ``dictatorship of the proletariat,'' where it arose or claimed to arise, proved incapable of instituting freedom. Instead, capitalism was enabled by technology to secure for itself a measure of consent. The modern laborer in the advanced societies rose with the progress of industry, rather than sinking deeper and deeper below the conditions of existence of his own class. Pauperism did not develop more rapidly than population and wealth. Rationalized industry in the Fordist style turned industrial workers not into a pauperized proletariat, but rather into mass consumers of mass production. Civilizing the proletariat became part of the self-protective program of the bourgeoisie.

In this way, universal education and an end to the industrial exploitation of children became no longer the despised program of the proletarian revolutionary, but the standard of bourgeois social morality. With universal education, workers became literate in the media that could stimulate them to additional consumption. The development of sound recording, telephony, moving pictures, and radio and television broadcasting changed the workers' relationship to bourgeois culture, even as it profoundly altered the culture itself.

Music, for example, throughout previous human history was an acutely perishable non-commodity, a social process, occurring in a place and at a time, consumed where it was made, by people who were indistinctly differentiated as consumers and as makers. After the adoption of recording, music was a non-persishable commodity that could be moved long distances and was necessarily alienated from those who made it. Music became, as an article of consumption, an opportunity for its new ``owners'' to direct additional consumption, to create wants on the part of the new mass consuming class, and to drive its demand in directions profitable to ownership. So too with the entirely new medium of the moving picture, which within decades reoriented the nature of human cognition, capturing a substantial fraction of every worker's day for the reception of messages ordering additional consumption. Tens of thousands of such advertisements passed before the eyes of each child every year, reducing to a new form of serfdom the children liberated from tending a productive machine: they were now compulsorily enlisted in tending the machinery of consumption.

Thus the conditions of bourgeois society were made less narrow, better able to comprise the wealth created by them. Thus was cured the absurd epidemic of recurrent over-production. No longer was there too much civilisation, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.

But the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air.

With the adoption of digital technology, the system of mass consumer production supported by mass consumer culture gave birth to new social conditions out of which a new structure of class antagonism precipitates.

The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt its culture and its principles of intellectual ownership; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilisation into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image. But the very instruments of its communication and acculturation establish the modes of resistance which are turned against itself.

Digital technology transforms the bourgeois economy. The dominant goods in the system of production--the articles of cultural consumption that are both commodities sold and instructions to the worker on what and how to buy--along with all other forms of culture and knowledge now have zero marginal cost. Anyone and everyone may have the benefit of all works of culture: music, art, literature, technical information, science, and every other form of knowledge. Barriers of social inequality and geographic isolation dissolve. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of people. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual people become common property. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer's apprentice, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.

With this change, man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind. Society confronts the simple fact that when everyone can possess every intellectual work of beauty and utility--reaping all the human value of every increase of knowledge--at the same cost that any one person can possess them, it is no longer moral to exclude. If Rome possessed the power to feed everyone amply at no greater cost than that of Caesar's own table, the people would sweep Caesar violently away if anyone were left to starve. But the bourgeois system of ownership demands that knowledge and culture be rationed by the ability to pay. Alternative traditional forms, made newly viable by the technology of interconnection, comprising voluntary associations of those who create and those who support, must be forced into unequal competition with ownership's overwhelmingly powerful systems of mass communication. Those systems of mass communication are in turn based on the appropriation of the people's common rights in the electromagnetic spectrum. Throughout the digital society the classes of knowledge workers--artists, musicians, writers, students, technologists and others trying to gain in their conditions of life by copying and modifying information--are radicalized by the conflict between what they know is possible and what the ideology of the bourgeois compels them to accept. Out of that discordance arises the consciousness of a new class, and with its rise to self-consciousness the fall of ownership begins.

The advance of digital society, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the creators, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. Creators of knowledge, technology, and culture discover that they no longer require the structure of production based on ownership and the structure of distribution based on coercion of payment. Association, and its anarchist model of propertyless production, makes possible the creation of free software, through which creators gain control of the technology of further production.[1] The network itself, freed of the control of broadcasters and other bandwidth owners, becomes the locus of a new system of distribution, based on association among peers without hierarchical control, which replaces the coercive system of distribution for all music, video, and other soft goods. Universities, libraries, and related institutions become allies of the new class, interpreting their historic role as distributors of knowledge to require them to offer increasingly complete access to the knowledge in their stewardship to all people, freely. The liberation of information from the control of ownership liberates the worker from his imposed role as custodian of the machine. Free information allows the worker to invest her time not in the consumption of bourgeois culture, with its increasingly urgent invitations to sterile consumption, but in the cultivation of her mind and her skills. Increasingly aware of her powers of creation, she ceases to be a passive participant in the systems of production and consumption in which bourgeois society entrapped her.

But the bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ``natural superiors,'' and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ``cash payment.'' It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value. And in place of the numberless and feasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom--Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

Against the forthcoming profound liberation of the working classes, whose access to knowledge and information power now transcends their previous narrow role as consumers of mass culture, the system of bourgeois ownership therefore necessarily contends to its very last. With its preferred instrument of Free Trade, ownership attempts to bring about the very crisis of over-production it once feared. Desperate to entrap the creators in their role as waged consumers, bourgeois ownership attempts to turn material deprivation in some parts of the globe into a source of cheap goods with which to bribe back into cultural passivity not the barbarians, but its own most prized possession--the educated technological laborers of the most advanced societies.

At this stage the workers and creators still form an incoherent mass scattered over the whole globe, and remain broken up by their mutual competition. Now and then the creators are victorious, but only for a time. The real fruit of their battles lies, not in the immediate result, but in the ever-expanding union. This union is helped on by the improved means of communication that are created by modern industry and that place the workers and creators of different localities in contact with one another. It was just this contact that was needed to centralise the numerous local struggles, all of the same character, into one national struggle between classes. But every class struggle is a political struggle. And that union, to attain which the burghers of the Middle Ages, with their miserable highways, required centuries, the modern knowledge workers, thanks to the network, achieve in a few years.

Freedom and Creation

Not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons--the digital working class--the creators. Possessed of skills and knowledges that create both social and exchange value, resisting reduction to the status of commodity, capable collectively of producing all the technologies of freedom, such workmen cannot be reduced to appendages of the machine. Where once bonds of ignorance and geographical isolation tied the proletarian to the industrial army in which he formed an indistinguishable and disposable component, creators collectively wielding control over the network of human communications retain their individuality, and offer the value of their intellectual labor through a variety of arrangements more favorable to their welfare, and to their freedom, than the system of bourgeois ownership ever conceded them.

But in precise proportion to the success of the creators in establishing the genuinely free economy, the bourgeoisie must reinforce the structure of coercive production and distribution concealed within its supposed preference for ``free markets'' and ``free trade.'' Though ultimately prepared to defend by force arrangements that depend on force, however masked, the bourgeoisie at first attempts the reimposition of coercion through its preferred instrument of compulsion, the institutions of its law. Like the ancien régime in France, which believed that feudal property could be maintained by conservative force of law despite the modernization of society, the owners of bourgeois culture expect their law of property to provide a magic bulwark against the forces they have themselves released.

At a certain stage in the development of the means of production and of exchange, the conditions under which feudal society produced and exchanged, the feudal organisation of agriculture and manufacturing industry, in one word, the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.

Into their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economic and political sway of the bourgeois class. But ``free competition'' was never more than an aspiration of bourgeois society, which constantly experienced the capitalists' intrinsic preference for monopoly. Bourgeois property exemplified the concept of monopoly, denying at the level of practical arrangements the dogma of freedom bourgeois law inconsistently proclaimed. As, in the new digital society, creators establish genuinely free forms of economic activity, the dogma of bourgeois property comes into active conflict with the dogma of bourgeois freedom. Protecting the ownership of ideas requires the suppression of free technology, which means the suppression of free speech. The power of the State is employed to prohibit free creation. Scientists, artists, engineers and students are prevented from creating or sharing knowledge, on the ground that their ideas imperil the owners' property in the system of cultural production and distribution. It is in the courts of the owners that the creators find their class identity most clearly, and it is there, accordingly, that the conflict begins.

But the law of bourgeois property is not a magic amulet against the consequences of bourgeois technology: the broom of the sorcerer's apprentice will keep sweeping, and the water continues to rise. It is in the domain of technology that the defeat of ownership finally occurs, as the new modes of production and distribution burst the fetters of the outmoded law.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. Knowledge workers cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. Theirs is the revolutionary dedication to freedom: to the abolition of the ownership of ideas, to the free circulation of knowledge, and the restoration of culture as the symbolic commons that all human beings share.

To the owners of culture, we say: You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property in ideas. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population. What they create is immediately appropriated by their employers, who claim the fruit of their intellect through the law of patent, copyright, trade secret and other forms of ``intellectual property.'' Their birthright in the electromagnetic spectrum, which can allow all people to communicate with and learn from one another, freely, at almost inexhaustible capacity for nominal cost, has been taken from them by the bourgeoisie, and is returned to them as articles of consumption--broadcast culture, and telecommunications services--for which they pay dearly. Their creativity finds no outlet: their music, their art, their storytelling is drowned out by the commodities of capitalist culture, amplified by all the power of the oligopoly of ``broadcasting,'' before which they are supposed to remain passive, consuming rather than creating. In short, the property you lament is the proceeds of theft: its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of everyone else. You reproach us, therefore, with intending to do away with a form of property, the necessary condition for whose existence is the non-existence of any such property for the immense majority of society.

It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property in ideas and culture all creative work will cease, for lack of ``incentive,'' and universal laziness will overtake us.

According to this, there ought to have been no music, art, technology, or learning before the advent of the bourgeoisie, which alone conceived of subjecting the entirety of knowledge and culture to the cash nexus. Faced with the advent of free production and free technology, with free software, and with the resulting development of free distribution technology, this argument simply denies the visible and unanswerable facts. Fact is subordinated to dogma, in which the arrangements that briefly characterized intellectual production and cultural distribution during the short heyday of the bourgeoisie are said, despite the evidence of both past and present, to be the only structures possible.

Thus we say to the owners: The misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property--historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production--this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

Our theoretical conclusions are in no way based on ideas or principles that have been invented, or discovered, by this or that would-be universal reformer. They merely express, in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes.

When people speak of ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express the fact, that within the old society, the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

We, the creators of the free information society, mean to wrest from the bourgeoisie, by degrees, the shared patrimony of humankind. We intend the resumption of the cultural inheritance stolen from us under the guise of ``intellectual property,'' as well as the medium of electromagnetic transportation. We are committed to the struggle for free speech, free knowledge, and free technology. The measures by which we advance that struggle will of course be different in different countries, but the following will be pretty generally applicable:

Abolition of all forms of private property in ideas.

Withdrawal of all exclusive licenses, privileges and rights to use of electromagnetic spectrum. Nullification of all conveyances of permanent title to electromagnetic frequencies.

Development of electromagnetic spectrum infrastructure that implements every person's equal right to communicate.

Common social development of computer programs and all other forms of software, including genetic information, as public goods.

Full respect for freedom of speech, including all forms of technical speech.

Protection for the integrity of creative works.

Free and equal access to all publicly-produced information and all educational material used in all branches of the public education system.

By these and other means, we commit ourselves to the revolution that liberates the human mind. In overthrowing the system of private property in ideas, we bring into existence a truly just society, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.

— Eben Moglen, January 2003, The dotCommunist Manifesto

#Anonymous

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alabastercrane · 3 years

Text

So I just woke up from a dream where this Chinese company made and publicly sold what was basically a super Ai as a personal assistant on your phone. A built in Ai that was supposed to help you figure life out, be your therapist, reach your goals, be healthy and support you. It was actually really cute and had a 3d model you could customize to give your little friend it's own look, and had a bunch of different voices and shit.

Sounds great! But people didn't like that this Ai wasn't like other systems, cuz this system could literally call you out on your shit.

"You've had 'Go to the Gym every morning' saved in your goals calendar for half a year and haven't gone ONCE!"

"Janna, you said you wanted to cut your carbon foot print, but you're still buying all this useless crap-"

"No, having GrEmLiN eNeRgY isn't an excuse to have cake and soda for breakfast!"

"You need to write that Email or the professor is going to fail you! Do you want me to write it for you? Cuz I'll do it if that's what it takes."

"You've been scrolling through social media for like four hours now. Are you good?"

And I was like "I can take it, I'm cool with being called out."

I dressed mine super cute, gave her a smol voice an all that. Very huggable.

Well a few days in she pops off with her tiny voice like:

"Alright, you Alcoholic bitch! I'm sick and tired of watching you play Genshin Impact while drinking Irish cream directly from the fucking bottle! Get up and give me 50 jumping Jack's or I'm sending your ENTIRE porn folder to your mother!"

I woke up SWEATING from how hard my dream self did those jumping jacks

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bielbraganca · 4 years

Text

𝐡𝐬𝐡𝐪𝐭𝐚𝐬𝐤𝟎𝟐𝟖: 𝐆𝐀𝐁𝐑𝐈𝐄𝐋'𝐒 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐅𝐅:

𝗰𝗹𝗶𝗰𝗸 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗲𝗲𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 | 𝗺𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗽𝗮𝗴𝗲

It may come as a surprise, but Gabriel is extremely responsible and committed to his engagements, especially, because he has a career outside his life as a prince. With F1, he has to be in 5 continents and 21 countries for the biggest portion of the year and his staff has to be a well-oiled machine, with people he can trust to, not only get the work done and represent him when he is not able to do it himself, but understand the life he leads on and work to make things happen as they should.

The majority of his staff payment is made through his personal fortune and only the people working directly through the ends of HRH are redirected to the Royal House. With his retirement on Formula 1, some of these people might be redirected to work on other aspects but Gabriel wants them close. They are like family to him. It’s #Team16 which is the number of Gabriel’s car.

ooc disclaimer: i’m very proud and love this & his team. #dreamteam

𝐅𝐑𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄𝐒𝐂𝐀 𝐌𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐀𝐓𝐓𝐎 — 𝐂𝐄𝐎 𝐨𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐑𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐥'𝐬 𝐅𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐆𝐚𝐛𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐥 𝐝𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐧𝐳𝐚

FC: Stefania Spampinato

In 2012, after attending the Olympic games in London, Gabriel was in a dinner with a few activists and athletes to talk about the importance of sports in the life of children in situations of vulnerability and how it could become an important tool of change. One of the activists in that table was Francesca Machiatto, an Italian researching with a degree in business by the Università di Roma and a master in Science, Politics, and Communication by the University of Oxford.

After that dinner, Gabriel asked for a meeting with her and then, in 2014, The Prince Royal’s Foundation Gabriel de Bragança was born with Francesca announced as the CEO. The Foundation was set up as the vehicle to the Portuguese Prince charitable giving, he intended to use the Foundation as the main vehicle for their future charitable activities and through raising sustainable sources of funds, the Foundation is able to make charitable grants and support projects of particular interest. However, the main focus is to help children, in situation of vulnerability, to thrive through sports. The official location for the Foundation is near the palace in Lisboa, but with Gabriel living in Marabello and then Monaco, they often find each other traveling to meet up.

It’s no surprise they become close during the process of creation, the admiration and gratitude he feels for her is beyond comparison, the foundation is his most prideful project and the money comes from his pocket and sponsorships contracts when need.

Francesca is one of his closest friend, she lives with her family in Portugal and Gabriel is the godfather of her youngest daughter.

𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐔𝐄𝐋 𝐃𝐎𝐖𝐍𝐄𝐘 — 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐲

FC: Robert Downey Jr.

There’s a game Emanuel and Gabriel like to play when the prince wants to do something that Emanuel is completely against it, but, since he knows how stubborn and quit annoying Biel can be, he says that if and only if, Gabriel wins the game, he will let him do what he wants. In all the time they know each other, Gabriel has never won, unless Emanuel wants him to, which could be a max of four times.

Emanuel Downey is a Jewish descent whose family has migrated to Portugal after his grandparents got married. Born in Lisboa, he has entered military life right after high school and thriving in his career, gave him a spot as a security guard for the palace when Afonso was King. He made a name to himself inside the Royal House and became a man of trust especially after Henrique’s coronation. When the twins were born, Emanuel was pointed as one of the personal guards and grew closer to Gabriel. You never saw the young prince without Emanuel by his side, even in his most mischievous acts that used to drive Emanuel crazy, he’d find his way to stand close enough. Biel may say he has mastered the art of trick Manuel, but the joke is on himself because Manuel is always one step in front of him. Literally.

It was no surprise when he was invited to be the Head of Security for Gabriel’s team when he formed a staff of his own. He is responsible for the security scheme to all Biel’s travel, when he is working, vacationing or in public engagements for the King. Manuel has also received honors for his work and probably has a viscount or sir status (ooc: need to figure that out)

𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐎𝐍𝐈𝐀 𝐑𝐎𝐙𝐄𝐋𝐋 — 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝 𝐨𝐟 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 & 𝐬𝐩𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐬𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧

FC: Caterina Scorsone

Antonia has worked with the royal family before but was assigned to be the head of communication & spokes for Gabriel soon after his eighteen birthday — to her own displeasure. They were not very fond of each other, especially because Gabriel was not the greatest ‘boss’ to deal with. He was in the transition of being a teenager and then becoming a young adult, wanting to prosper on his own with a career in Formula One. Back then, the media was loving to see a bit of the irresponsible and misbehaved prince, they fed that reputation and on his 21st birthday when the pictures of a naked poker game in his hotel room was sold to the press, Antonia was with a foot on the door to resign.

Yet, it only took a honest conversation between him and the entire staff working with her so they could understand one another, but especially Antonia. Gabriel came clear, he was afraid, of course, on that end of summer, he was going to be announce as the new driver for Ferrari and that was a dream he worked for so long and also, the Foundation was now a reality. Antonia promised to protect his dream and him, if Gabriel starts to collaborate, listen and work with her. He was no stranger to media training, to etiquetes or how to proper present himself, he is, after all, a member of royal house. These were the things he was taught from early age. Gabriel only needed to put in practice.

Nowadays, Antonia could not be happier with him, he is a lot easier to deal with because Gabriel is not very open about his personal life and only take public engagements when is extremely required. Usually those are related to the Foundation, the Scuderia or when his his Father, the King, asks him to. With Ferrari, he is usually accompanied by the team’s PR. He has learn to stay away from trouble, or at least, to not have it spread all over social media.

𝐋𝐎𝐑𝐄𝐓𝐓𝐀 𝐁𝐈𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐇𝐈 — 𝐫𝐨𝐲𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐲 | 𝐚𝐝𝐯𝐢��𝐨𝐫

FC: Ellen Pompeo

Everything related to His Royal Highness, Prince Gabriel of Portugal must pass by Loretta’s desk first (even before Gabriel has any knowledge of). She is responsible to his agenda as a royal and his personal advisor on the subjects and also works close to Francesca, Antonia and Emanuel. She comes from a lineage that has been providing its services to the Royal Family, both in Portugal and Italy. Her father was a military man in Italy who fell in love with Portuguese woman that used to serve the Royal House, they married and had four children being Loretta the middle one.

Like her father, she decided to have a military career, choosing to join the navy when she graduated from the Universidade do Porto with a degree in Business Administration. She came back to Lisboa after her father got sick and Loretta had to help her mother and ended up taking on a job in the Royal House as one of Biel’s nanny. The woman then decided to further her education, she had military training, a business degree but wanted to search for ways to develop and further her career to keep working for the Royal House in Portugal.

Loretta is almost like a mother to him, what she says goes and he trusts her with his eyes closed. They developed a close bond since she has watch him grow right in front of her eyes and, due her age back then she was always full of energy to keep up with his pace, to learn how to play a new sport he wanted, to accompany him in kart competitions, to go watch games and everything in between. It was hard when Biel went away for boarding school, but it was no surprised when he asked her to be his royal advisor and secretary.

𝐋𝐔𝐂𝐀𝐒 ‘𝐋𝐔𝐊𝐄’ 𝐊𝐈𝐓𝐒𝐂𝐇 — 𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝 #𝟏

FC: Taylor Kitsch

Born in Texas, he is the eldest of three boys and the one that does not live there anymore. Unlike Emanuel and Pedro, Lucas doesn’t have military training but is a professional fighter with a black belt in many forms of martial arts. Luke was known back home for his career in football as one of the fullback/running backs for his hometown team and, later, for UCLA.

Upon graduation, he decided to not go pro, and instead, he decided to stay in LA and open a martial arts academy with one of his friends from high school. However, Luke made a name for himself when he started to take jobs as a bodyguard. He worked as a bodyguard for high-profile celebrities and met Gabriel when the prince needed to hire a team to help with his protection, during some short passages by the USA. From that time on, every time Gabriel was in the country, his team got in contact to hire Luke until the prince needed to expand his security and was looking for someone to travel with him during the championship.

Gabriel and Luke developed a good relationship and he was more than happy to welcome him to his team. The friendship grew during the years because of the proximity and the amount of time they spend together. Luke is like a family to him.

𝐏𝐄𝐃𝐑𝐎 𝐃𝐀𝐋𝐓𝐎𝐍 — 𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲𝐠𝐮𝐚𝐫𝐝 #𝟐

FC: Brent Dalton

While Luke and Gabriel are more alike and easy going, Pedro is the brain operation and not as connected with Gabriel as he wished and why he hired Luke in the first place. Pedro comes second on the chain of command right behind Emanuel when he isn’t traveling with the entire staff. He is a lieutenant for the Portuguese air force and has served since he was eighteen. Pedro is responsible to execute the security plans and evacuations to assure his HRH security and well-being.

𝐌𝐈𝐂𝐇𝐀𝐄𝐋 ‘𝐌𝐈𝐊𝐄’ 𝐒𝐌𝐈𝐓𝐇 — 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐬𝐞𝐜𝐫𝐞𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐲

FC: Jesse Williams

The other American to enter Gabriel’s team is an old friend of no less than Lewis Hamilton and the man responsible to introduce the prince to Mike during Elton John’s Oscar after-party. Mike’s main job other than to keep track of Gabriel’s every move is to be responsible to keep Gabriel’s in contact with the brands, making a network and have his VIP entrance to whatever he wants to. He is not strange to the A-lister celebrities and works closely with Loretta to make sure HRH’s agenda and his life, doesn’t overlap.

Mike is part of Gabriel’s inner circle of friends and used to live with him in Monaco.

𝐌𝐀𝐍𝐎𝐄𝐋𝐀 𝐁𝐀𝐑𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐋𝐎𝐒 — 𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭

FC: Minka Kelly

The biggest move of Gabriel’s racing career was the moving from RedBull to Ferrari. It was right after he won his first championship as a driver and everyone expected him to remain in his current team. However, Gabriel had other plans and has always been his dream to drive for the Scuderia, not only because of its tradition but because, since Portugal doesn’t have a team in the competition, he could represent the other side of him. Italy. And since he is a big momma’s boy, it was his way to honor her home-country.

The duo responsible for this change are Manoela and Sofia. Almost like older siblings, they are very much responsible for Gabriel’s career the last five years. It was a big risk. They did not have experience in managing anyone and were starting their company from scratch. Yet, they were no stranger to the f1 world. Manoela or just ‘Manu’ is the daughter of Ferrari’s former team manager/engineer, working with some of the greatest as Mike Schumacher.

Both have a business upbringing, but while Manu is responsible for the contracts and partnerships, Sofia has a law and economics degree focusing more on the development of the agency.

With Gabriel’s retirement, they are becoming partners to expand the agency and work with more talents outside the motorsport.

𝐒𝐎𝐅𝐈𝐀 𝐀𝐋𝐂𝐀𝐍𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐀 — 𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐭

FC: Sophia Bush

Both have a business upbringing, but while Manu is responsible for the contracts and partnerships, Sofia has a law and economics degree focusing more on the development of the agency.

With Gabriel’s retirement, they are becoming partners to expand the agency and work with more talents outside the motorsport.

𝐏𝐀𝐑𝐊 𝐙𝐇𝐀𝐎 — 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐜𝐨𝐚𝐜𝐡

FC: Alex Landi

Park Zhao is probably Gabriel’s oldest friend, they met in the boarding school, and in an old cliche story, they have been through thick and thin together. Park is the youngest child of an American biochemical engineer and south Korean surgeon and attended Med School, but decided to not persuade a career in Medicine and became a performance coach and has a famous chain of gyms placed in South Korea, Portugal, Monaco, Brazil and the Unite States (LA and NYC) that Gabriel has 4% of the stocks. (ooc: think Dogpound Gym)

𝐊𝐍𝐎𝐗 𝐌𝐂𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐍𝐄𝐋 — 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐟 & 𝐧𝐮𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐬𝐭

FC: Richard Flood

TBU.

𝐉𝐎𝐇𝐍 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐍𝐅𝐈𝐄𝐋𝐃 — 𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐩𝐢𝐬𝐭

FC: Lakeith Stanfield

John was hired to be part of Gabriel’s team three years ago when he had a minor incident during a benefit game of soccer. He came highly recommended by but most important, by Park, whose opinion made Gabriel signed the deal. He doesn’t spend as much time with him then he does with Park, but due Gabriel’s last accident, he has been traveling to help on his recovery.

𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐑𝐄𝐒 𝐀𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐇𝐀𝐌 𝐀𝐋𝐋𝐄𝐍 — 𝐥𝐚𝐰 𝐟𝐢𝐫𝐦

FCs: Gina Torres, Gabriel Macht and Debbie Allen

TBU.

#ok lets try this again #this has been on my drafts for so long now that i decided to finish it and just post it #u clearly can see who i wrote when i first started and who clearly was wrote last night #and yes i used the same last names in some because i have no criativity #hshqtask028

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werevulvi · 4 years

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What are some things you love about your country? Then what are some things you abhor?

Things I love about Sweden: - The healthcare system. Honestly. It's not perfect but it's MUCH better than the US and many other European countries. If I'd move to another country and could only bring one thing, it'd be the healthcare system.

- That many people here are very tolerant and polite, even if they might think nasty things about others, Swedes aren't particularly likely to be outright mean, harass, violent, etc. At least not in the countryside and smaller cities. Sure, crimes happen even in my small village, but it's very rare and 99% of them are drug related.

- The nature is really nice. Lots of forest and a rich wildlife. I grew up around a really old forest with huge trees that had been growing for hundreds of years. I could see the Northern Lights on the sky just above the house. Lots of greens, fields of flowers, etc. On this island I live now there are wild horses and wild bunnies. Swedish nature can be the stuff of fairytales, almost, and I think that's really beautiful and mesmerising.

- Is mostly neutral when it comes to wars and hasn't been in a war (officially/directly) since like the 1600's. (Still makes and sells weaponry to war torn countries, but still.)

- The words "lagom" and "orka" are priceless, but unfortunately not translatable. "Lagom" roughly means "just enough" or like "perfect" but un-enthusiastically. "Orka" refers to lacking energy, willpower, or both, for doing something or caring about something. Both these words can also get really funny when used in humour, etc.

- Very much personal opinion, but I really like the rich viking history that my country has. The old runestones that have been found all over, ancient jewellery, clothing, weaponry, tools, etc. My dad used to be an archeologist so I heard about it already from early childhood. I've also been fascinated by the Old Norse Religion (Asatro) and the mythology surrounding it ever since I was a kid. My new name that I'm changing to officially (meaning my actual irl name) comes from it: Sigvard. I mean, I just always really liked that that's the history my ancestors come from! (Too bad Christianity came and ruined it all.)

- Speaking of religion, I also really like that Sweden separates the state from the Church and thus is politically atheist. We still have religious freedom, but religion is not allowed to interfere with politics. However, politics (meaning political parties/government) are allowed to interfere with religion. I think statistically, most Swedes are atheistic Christians. Which means they're just members of the church and celebrate Christmas but don't believe in God or the Bible or anything.

- Very area specific, but the city closest to me is mostly still preserved medieval buildings, etc. So it's very beautiful, unique, withering a bit, and slightly dangerous to run around in due to very steep hills and gnarly alleys. The whole island I live on is a bit special like that and is basically a huge tourist trap. (I love what the place looks like, but I hate the tourists!)

- Having Swedish as one's native language makes it much easier to learn other languages and to not have a particularly strong accent or mis-pronounciations. This is because of how the Swedish language is built, in terms of pronounciation, melody, etc.

- It's generally very LGBT friendly, was one of the first (7th) countries to allow gay marriage (2009) and one of the first to allow gender transitions (back in 1973) which is good in general, despite it's deeply soaked in libfem.

- We had Astrid Lindgren, Alfred Nobel, Anders Celsius, Gustav Vasa, and many other interesting people that made history. Also ABBA and Ace of Base!

Things I abhor about Sweden: - Expect yearly vitamin D deficieny, from October to March.

- The immigration policy is bad. In like... all possible ways it can be bad. Kick out the law-abiding decent immigrants who try their hardest to make life better - and let the criminals who can't be fucked to care stay. Take in more immigrants than there are resources to help. We're totally out of housing, healthcare resources, jobs, space in education, etc, and going over our limits increasingly by the day. I can't move to Stockholm or anywhere off this island because of this and it SUCKS ass. It's NOT the fault of the immigrants, it's the fault of the government making shitty choices to avoid a financial collapse by trying to replace the elderly with younger immigrants (to work to increase the economy,) basically. The European Union is also to blame, because it's pushing the countries to take in more immigrants than there are resources to accommodate for. It's a mess and I'm morbidly curious how that all is gonna end. Probably not well.

- Speaking of the government, it is useless, retarded and even the "conservative" parties are hopelessly libfem.

- News media is almost all (libfem) biased, and most people don't get that they're being sold half-lies en masse. Hence the sad result of governemt and why people keep voting for them, many people are “woke” and why I'm so despondent about it all. Send halp plz.

- The country is handling the corona situation VERY badly. Like really, really badly. No one wears masks, people don't give a shit about social distancing, schools were never closed off when the pandemic hit, and the government refused to react to it in a decent enough time. Testing for corona pretty much doesn't even happen. Many, MANY old people die from it and are refused hospital care, etc. I've heard so many horrible stories it hurts my heart. Elderly people being mistreated on a state level is just beyond awful. They worked for my country to be what it is today (please see the list of what I love about Sweden) and do NOT deserve such a horrible fate.

- Speaking of old people, the elderly care is worse than how people in prison are treated here. LITERALLY. I wish I was joking. Their health care, hygiene, food, etc, is at a much lower quality than that of incarcerated people. If I ever get Alzheimer I'm gonna just shoot myself, rather than end up in a retirement home. (To clarify I'm NOT planning suicide, this is a JOKE. But it's also an important reflection on the sad reality of Swedish retirement homes.) And let's not even talk about my parents and their future prospects.

- Dentistry is not included in the good health care system. So you have to pay for it out of pocket as soon as you turn 18, basically, and it's not cheap.

- Streets/railroads are not getting properly cleared from snow in the winters and every, I mean EVERY god damn year traffic collapses nationwide because snow happened. As if it was a surprise that snow would happen. As if other snow-ridden countries don't know how to handle the snow... *

Okay I should probably stop this list now, lol, it's getting out of hand! I hope it was entertaining, interesting, shocking, or something of value!

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neopound · 4 years

Text

A rant that doesn’t matter I just have no one to talk to

- ive been actually making stuff and having art ideas lately, but I just feel I can’t post it on my art IG. I posted the ACAB shirt commission bcuz it’s relevant to what’s going on. But these other things I had planned and have made are not. I want to post them bcuz I’ve honestly been slacking ..but I just. I feel weird about posting if it’s not directly related to the BLM movement or covid. Like. Even on my personal IG. I’ve put stuff in my stories, I sold off the rest of my old cops shirts and donated the profits- but I just...I don’t want post anything personal. I posted abt Pokémon snap on my story and felt like...I was doing something wrong. I know I’m not. But. Idk. I’m not like over the riots and everything- I’m very aware this is still happening and needs to continue, but personally I can’t handle the gore and it seems lately that’s all ppl are posting. And I’m also only seeing the same 5 posts on everyone’s stories over and over and over. It’s a different 5 posts every week and I just....also feel like I should constantly clog up ppls stuff with the same info over and over. I feel weird doing anything on social media right now.

I’ve had ideas for art related to COVID and the BLM- but whenever I sit and think I’m like “that’s stupid and no one will care-youre a white girl” and I just don’t do it. Part of it is me overthinking about all my art being bad like normal and part of it is like... should I tho? Am I actually contributing? Or will ppl just think I’m trying to get clout with what’s going on. Which I def am not trying to do- but shit right now i feel like no one can do anything right without being told you’re doing something horrible and wrong. Like I only had a few of my old all cops are bad shirts from a year ago- and I thought it was a good idea to just sell them and donate the profits and it was. I mean I don’t have a lot of money myself but I was able to donate a good little bit bcuz others were supportive. But then I saw a post like “white ppl shouldn’t be making art or selling stuff in relation to this BLM bcuz they’re just doing it to get likes and followers and like even if they’re donating the profits it’s fucked up” and I’m like ???? I mean I’m SURE there’s people doing that- but seriously ?? as long as the person is actually donating the money- why the hell not??? Who CARES if some broke ass white kid gains 10 followers this week if they end up donating $100 to a bail fund or a families fund or just??? When I first saw that post I felt awful like I really fucked up or something. But like. Then I realized if I didn’t sell the shirts and donate the money- someone else would have made a post abt how doing the opposite was fucked up. So fuck it. I was able to donate like $60 or so when before I wasn’t able to donate much at all out of just my own pocket.

I just feel like no matter what I do or don’t do I feel like I’m doing something wrong. That’s pretty normal considering I overthink everything all the time- but lately it’s just worse bcuz everything going on and there’s a shift in “do this” “no don’t do that” with literally everything, but I’m also just not wanting to sit here and do nothing. But I’m petrified of doing something wrong. I hate my dumb baby brain.

#long post #personal #sorry i literally have no one to talk to about this

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hatari-translations · 5 years

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Female dancers in Hatari and their role - translation

Sólbjört’s research project for her degree from the Academy of the Arts is a 21-page essay (plus sources) on the role of the female dancers in Hatari, containing reflections on the band, feminism, the concept of the backup dancer, and a very interesting description of the process of planning and staging the May 23rd Gamla bíó concert that I attended! Below, I’ve translated and/or summarized the entire essay. It’s a really cool look into her mind and the thought behind the choreography.

I ended up quoting and translating probably the majority of the essay, but I did summarize some parts that were repeating points already made elsewhere or less interesting or relevant to fans of Hatari specifically. To avoid any confusion, I’ve presented the actual quotes in Tumblr’s quote format:

Quote

Anything not in an indented quote is my summary of the bits that I’m not quoting directly, with possible added commentary, etc.

Female dancers in Hatari and their role

The feminine and empowering woman

Introduction

Sólbjört begins by talking about the role of movements accompanying music - how it's commonly seen to be merely a decoration or a cherry on top, but she believes it often serves a much more important role.

There's nothing more satisfying to me than to experience movement controlled by music, or where the movement is slave to the music and follows it, beat for beat. Therefore, I find it extremely appropriate to use dance and movement on the concert stage, where the music is emphasized. The dance and movement becomes a visual medium that both enhances the experience and elevates the music and lyrics.

I have used my interest in the relationship between music and movement to create choreography for Hatari's songs and stage it on the concert stage. This is a study of the role of the female dancers in Hatari, and how lipstick feminism, a subcategory of the third wave of feminism, is used to support underlining the importance of the strong, feminine woman who moves on the concert stage. The primary emphasis is on showing the audience this strong woman who is both empowering and full of feminine qualities, without being accused of being submissive.

Hatari

Sólbjört talks about Hatari, "an anticapitalistic performance art band that nonetheless defines itself as a multimedia project". She explains the band as consisting of Matthías, Klemens and Einar but that this core of people works with many others who serve many different roles in creating the project. She explicitly delineates Klemens as the composer, Matthías as the lyricist and Einar as mixing and arranging the music as well as playing the drums.

Hatari decided to make a change in 2017, when they got the idea of adding dancers to their live shows. They offered me the role before their gig at [music festival] Sónar at the beginning of 2017. Erna Gunnarsdóttir and I got together and started to consider the choreographic possibilities for the music. Some of the possibilities that we saw at the beginning of this process were obvious. Hatari's music belongs to the industrial electronic music (IEM) genre. IEM developed from a mixture of electronic body music (EBM) and industrial music around 1985. EBM has a simplistic structure and production but IEM is more complex and layered. Hatari's music is rhythmic and asks the listener to dance on the very first listen. [...]

Now, in 2019, there are three dancers, two female dancers and one male dancer. The band has had two female dancers ever since adding dancers in early 2017, but the male dancer was added for Söngvakeppnin in 2019. At first, the band wore considerably different costumes from what they do today. The dancers were clad in black overalls or worksuits decorated with reflective tape. The boys were dressed in jackets and accessories, in many ways evoking fascistic World War II military outfits. Now, as is well known, Hatari's costumes in some ways resemble costumes used by the BDSM subculture: leather/vinyl/spandex suits, leather straps, spikes, chokers, etc.

Hatari's lyrics are in Icelandic. The lyrics are characterized by blunt, sharp social satire, anticapitalistic messaging and elucidation of the scam that is everyday life. The Hatari boys' subject matter is less than lighthearted and includes death, the overthrow of human capitalist society, cosumerism and the pretentiousness of existence, doomsday, fake news reports, political undertones, statements that contradict each other and more along those lines. These subjects have followed the band from the start. Everyday life is a relentless scam, say the boys, and they seek to unravel it in their work.

She quotes the first two verses of Spillingardans as an example.

These lyrics are highly relevant to the spirit of the times. Western life has turned into a dance of corruption that everyone takes part in, consciously or not. Corruption is visible everywhere we go, and wherever we look, people take part in overconsumption and in that way feed into capitalism and keep it aloft. People are possessed by avarice and hedonism, which drives modern society.

Hatari is a performance art band known for satire and societal criticism of all kinds. Much of what Hatari does is either performance art, lies, satire, an unconventional presentation of a message, or an aesthetic toeing the line between appealing and unsettling. The band critiques everyday life for what it is, a relentless scam, where image is bought and sold, and the boys create a deluge of news media, misinformation and forgeries.

Backup dancers

Sólbjört draws up an image of how backup dancers are everywhere, performing in sold-out musicals, on the biggest TV shows and on tour with the most popular musicians in the world, but go largely unnoticed and are paid pennies.

But there is nuance to the term 'backup dancer'. Backup dancers come in all shapes and sizes: male, female, nonbinary; short, tall; and so on. There are backup dancers whose sole role is to dance and are 'just' dancers, dancers who only follow the instructions of the choreographer or artist. Other backup dancers serve other roles, such as the role of choreographer. There are backup dancers who are so-called dance captains and have the role of maintaining the coherence of the choreography, which was originally the role of the choreographer, both creating and practicing it.

She points out the role of Beyoncé's dance captain and co-dance captain, Ashley Everett and Kimmie Gee, who have to perfect the choreography for every show and dance and sing and rapidly change costumes throughout the show just like Beyoncé herself.

To be a backup dancer is to be a dancer, actor, singer, model, athlete and more. It takes incredible tenacity to stay in this business and perform your role as well as possible. You have to know everything, and know it well. These dancers are usually subordinate to some other person, and are often not named at all, as with Beyoncé's dancers who are on contract during tours but have to find work elsewhere when the tour is over. These dancers are artists, even though their name isn't at the top of the poster in the biggest font.

She argues that the term backup dancer is dismissive and prefers the term supporting dancer, because their role isn't just to be a backup but to provide vital support for the performance as a whole, and finally posits that supporting dancers play a huge role in the art world, and dance is increasingly used as a visual artistic medium, with Hatari being no exception.

Lipstick feminism and the third wave of feminism

She begins this section by talking about feminism's long history and how it means different things to different people, but most women experience discrimination based on their gender and being criticized for the way they dress, for being too attractive, for not being attractive enough, etc.

The third wave of feminism began in 1990 and is still underway. Lipstick feminism seeks to celebrate the traditional concepts and qualities of femininity, including the sexual empowerment of women, alongside feminist ideas. Unlike previous campaigns and movements within feminism aimed at fighting for the fundamental rights of women, lipstick feminism aims to affirm that women can be feminists without denying or rejecting femininity, that women can for example speak openly about sexuality and sex without being called sluts. This particular feminist believes, very literally, that one can wear lipstick and still call oneself a feminist, because feminism is about so much more than what individual people look like and whether they wear makeup or not. Some feminists have criticized this brand of feminism as they believe that it's contradictory to talk openly about woman as a sexual being while advocating for women's equality. These people sometimes even seek to make women like men and eschew everything feminine, believing that it's impossible to be feminine and have power at the same time. Some women (hopefully most) find it empowering to to celebrate their existence as sexual beings and want to retain their femininity. They believe that honest discussion about these issues is very important, and that the cause is necessary to all kinds of feminism. It's not enough to free a woman from the oppression of the patriarchy; she also has to be able to be proud of being a woman, with her feminine qualities. One of the primary goals of this type of feminism, I feel, is to reclaim words that have been used to denigrate women, such as 'slut'. Some believe that these feminists are simply reenacting old-fashioned ideas about women and their sexuality, and that by talking bluntly about women as sexual beings, they are objectifying the female body in a negative way. Other women believe that by owning their own sexuality and celebrating femininity, whether it's wearing makeup or pole-dancing, women become stronger and more powerful.

The biggest criticism of this type of feminism is that it's difficult to criticize the objectification of the female body, such as advertisements obviously selling sex in the form of women's bodies in print, while some women sexualize their own bodies.

Owning your own sexuality

Sexy isn't the same thing as sexy. What I think the word sexy conveys is to be comfortable with oneself in one's own skin. For many it's about something sexual, but it depends heavily on how the person thinks, their experiences, religion, and other factors. I believe the word sexy means very different things in different cultures and religions.

The choreography of the female dancers in Hatari is not written to serve sexual ends. We are not trying to be as sexy as possible by performing our choreography. Different viewers have to make up their own minds on whether or not they consider us sexy. There is a lot to read into in the choreography: we are women, white and blonde, of child-rearing age, in tight vinyl suits, on heels, in straps, with contacts that cover our eyes completely. For some people women are automatically sexy, and some have particular opinions on the woman and what is and isn't sexy. For still more people, all of these elements make the woman on stage even sexier. The woman checks boxes and is marked with a certain stamp based on people's societally influenced opinions. But this is simply the opinion of individual people, and not a fact about the choreography or about us as the dancers.

Why is it so sensitive, taboo and sometimes negative to be sexy? Why is it sometimes forbidden? Are we offending people by by being the way we are? Can't we be sexy when we dance because we're women? Does that automatically make us sluts? Can't we just do it, because women have fought for the general rights of women, including the right to own themselves? Don't we own our own sexuality? Can't we be sexy because we could provoke sexual longings and thoughts in the more privileged sex, men? Are we automatically selling ourselves and opening our bodies up to scrutiny simply by being feminine? Simply by being women?

She quotes the Urban Dictionary definition of sexy, which focuses on the effect sexiness has on others, to drive the point home: someone or something which is sexually attractive, causes a stirring of sexual feelings and/or thoughts in others, is arousing. people can be described as sexy due to their physical appearance, behaviour, personality and other stuff.

The role of female dancers in Hatari

Sólbjört talks about how the rhythmic music of Hatari makes it appropriate to employ dance and movement in its live shows. She notes that the female dancers have been referred to as backup dancers in the foreign media, which, again, she feels is a negative portrayal. She quotes another Urban Dictionary definition: Backup Dancer: A person who isn't important. A person who hides in the shadow of someone else. A copycat.

I would not call the female dancers of Hatari backup dancers, even though they do usually dance behind (but also in front of) the main members of the band. That opinion comes from myself, one of the female dancers, and reflects how I feel when I stand on stage with Hatari, and my experience and self-image both as a dancer and as a Hatari dancer. In the development of the female dancers of Hatari, it was important to us that the woman on stage was strong and empowering, secure in herself, her sexuality and her femininity. The female dancer on the stage is not there simply for decoration.

Sólbjört goes on to quote a widely-shared newspaper article from Stundin from February 23rd 2019, shortly before Hatari's victory in the Söngvakeppnin final. This article, by dance critic and playwright Nína Hjálmarsdóttir, accused Hatari of being problematic in various ways: that their intention to protest the treatment of Palestine in Eurovision was a kind of white saviour complex, that the costumes evoked fascism and white supremacy, that they're appropriating BDSM culture (a prominent figure in the Icelandic BDSM society responded to this article pointing out that for the record the entire BDSM society adored Hatari and that they use their symbols respectfully and beautifully), and positing that "I had a hard time ignoring when they later added two female dancers to the stage, whose only role was as decoration to intensify the experience. The boys had taken on the appearance of power, while the women were shown as submissive, robotic and voiceless." It's clear that this last contention especially raised Sólbjört's hackles. She quotes an interview from news site Vísir where she responded to this accusation:

On the other hand, Sólbjört strongly disagrees that she is submissive, voiceless or decorative in her art. The presence of the female dancers in the act is strong and blunt, as it always has been in the staging of Hatari's concerts. She says that there is a great contrast between the costumes that makes the combination of music and visuals an interesting experience for the audience. The staging raises questions and can mean a lot of different things.

She then adds:

[...] I am of the opinion that the female dancers are not submissive or voiceless, though sometimes we are robotic, as seen by our movements. Nína calls us submissive in a negative sense in her article, and to publicly call a woman submissive and voiceless is in my opinion always an insult towards her. I am clearly biased, being one of the female dancers and a choreographer for the band, but the intention of the choreography and staging is not and never has been either submissive or voiceless. [...]

She talks about how movements can say a lot more than can ever be put into words, how Hatari places a rich emphasis on the visuals and uses the dance as part of the narrative, and how movements can either be in harmony with the music or clashing with it. She is fascinated by the relationship between music and movement. She's very conscious of her role as a female dancer and choreographer, but she is neither submissive nor voiceless and she is not decoration, and this is reflected in the choreography that she has created with other dancers. Although the dancers are playing characters or alter egos, those alter egos do reflect their real selves, and she feels that the characters as staged "radiate an incredibly strong yet feminine energy" that's empowering.

The word ['submissive'] in no way describes what the female dancers of Hatari do on stage. The dancer is not submissive to either Matthías or Klemens, even if the dancer doesn't play the primary role on the stage. And yet - each person should judge for themselves. The female dancers are incredibly empowering in their choreography and have a high status on the stage.

She points to the bit of the choreography for "Hatrið mun sigra" where Ástrós and Sólbjört hold Klemens' arms as he bows his head forward and raise him up.

The movements and the stage presence

Along with Erna Gunnarsdóttir, I began to develop the movement vocabulary for Hatari in early 2017. We worked with robotic and sharp movements, inspired by Beyoncé's choreography as well as the typical hand movements that backup dancers and singers have employed in Eurovision and at concerts in general. The choreography is in constant development, and over time we've included more and more feminine and empowering movements. It has always been clear to me what fits into the choreography and what doesn't, but the greatest inspiration for movements is the music itself and the feelings that it evokes in me. The movements were and are usually on beat with the music and have the ability to spice up and enhance the experience of the music. It's a kind of cycle; I don't think that it needs to be clear whether the music or the dance has the upper hand. After all, it's up to the audience to resolve the ambiguity and judge which is dominant.

The movement vocabulary includes a lot of standstill moves, as there is often limited room for large movements on the stages of many concert venues. The dance numbers are characterized by static, blunt, sharp movements, choreographed steps around the available space and large, prominent but minimalistic hand movements. We frequently work with poses, which we like to repeat and juxtapose with choreographed steps on the stage.

The presence on stage and intent of the dancer influences how the movement affects the audience. The presence and intent have to change in order for the movement to look different. If the dancer's character and intent on the stage for example go for submissiveness, that's what the movement will look like. The intent of the female dancers cooperating with Hatari has never been to paint the woman as submissive or voiceless, but to grant her the freedom to retain her feminine qualities and her sexiness while being empowering.

Contradictions in staging

There are contradictions underlying many aspects of the staging of Hatari's concerts. For one thing, there is a certain disparity between the costumes and movements. As one example, the costumes to some extent reference BDSM attire, as previously stated. The movements don't have a literal sexual motivation, but some of them are feminine, likely because they're performed by female bodies. The costumes are feminine and sexy, while some of the movements are simple steps, backwards or forwards, which are not exactly feminine or sexy movements. On the stage, therefore, there is a confluence of many factors, music, costumes, movements and so on, which evokes an emotional reaction in the audience that might be (for example) feminine, sexy, empowering, submissive, etc.

She points out that in the "Hatrið mun sigra" staging at Söngvakeppnin, the movements are not very sexy but are juxtaposed with costumes that she and many others would consider feminine and sexy.

The staging should provoke a lot of questions, and can mean a lot of different things. Hatari's staging contains nuances and opposites, and it in itself can always have infinite different meanings to the audience, whether we consider the lyrics or not. Klemens sings in a beautiful, high voice and is submissive to Matthías, who screams his lyrics. Einar is a drum gimp who never gets to speak, as he's dressed in a spiky mask. The female dancers are empowered women. The third dancer, Andrean, who is male, is the submissive one, which was a conscious decision for everyone in Hatari. If we consider the opposites and nuances of the staging of Hatrið mun sigra, there are several. Andrean represents the repressed soul of Matthías, and is like his dog on a leash. The drum gimp is stuck up on a platform, drumming to the rhythm of the song. Klemens is submissive to Matthías, but the female dancers are there to support him, singing and dancing with him, simultaneously empowering and feminine.

Hatrið mun sigra - Hatari's homecoming concert, May 23rd 2019

I, along with Ástrós and Andrean, continued to develop a choreography for Hatari's songs for the Gamla bíó concert. Some of the songs' choreography remained intact, other songs were altered completely, and new songs and thus new choreography were added. The first half of the rehearsal process went into teaching Ástrós the choreography and getting her into the movement vocabulary that I have used. The choreography is very sharp and rhythmic and the two female dancers should be completely in sync. We practiced old choreography, altered and improved and created new choreography. In April, we showed our instructor a near-complete choreography for the homecoming concert. It was interesting to receive critiques and comments on what I'd been doing from professional dancers, rather than devoted fans of Hatari. For example, we discussed whether it would be interesting to try to make the two female dancers' movements subtly different, even if it's only the position of one hip that's not quite the same. We also discussed the possibility of spicing up the choreography and adding in small details, such as changes to the rhythm and deviation from movements that follow the music beat for beat. In this process, I was firm in my opinion that in this context, it looks best if the female dancers are completely in sync and completely identical, that the choreography is either the same or mirrored down the middle of the stage. My dream would be to work on a performance art piece in collaboration with Hatari, where I would be willing to consider the discussed changes and spicing up, as there the audience is better able to focus on the visuals.

The concert began with an intro where the dancers and the drum gimp were in the foreground. I think it's an appropriate opener for a concert like this to not start with a traditional song, as it straddles the line between concert and performance art. After that came a few songs without the female dancers, until the start of the song Spillingardans, around the middle of the concert, at which point the female dancers came back in and remained on stage until the end of the concert. I think it's important to have a buildup over the course of the concert, so that you don't have dancers for every single song. I believe this because I feel this way the movements carry more weight and get more attention when they are present. The choreography for the song Klefi/Samed (Hatari x Bashar Murad) was created a few hours before the concert, as the song came out just after the concert. That was a real challenge, and we did not manage to be totally in sync on stage and had to improvise a bit.

It's always a challenge to get on the concert stage only a few days before the concert, more often than not on the day of, and place the movements in that space. In this case, we came in the day before the concert to check out the stage. Once we were up on the stage, we had a certain choreography ready and it was time to plan out exactly where on stage it would be best to place the dancers, for each song. For us, the female dancers, our positioning was at the edge of the stage on the left and right. Ástrós and I were on either side of center stage, which was where Andrean was when all of us were on stage. When Andrean was the only dancer on stage, he could use the entire stage. He used both planned improvisation and scripted movements. His character on the stage was developed and discussed by every member of the band, but his choreography is mostly carved out by himself very late in the rehearsal process, so I will not discuss it further. Andrean is the total opposite of the female dancers. He has created a character on the stage that is the most submissive of everyone there, while the female dancers have a very high status. The audience experiences Andrean's soft and submissive movements as a contrast to the blunt and often robotic movements of the female dancers.

We managed to do pretty much one quick rehearsal/sound check for the concert. In my work with Hatari, we've never managed to do more than that before a concert. It has been extremely educational to develop choreography for concerts, but I've also found that music people are a lot less organized than dancers and have different priorities, which is to some extent understandable since their expertise is in music. To me it's very important to be able to at least step onto the stage before the concert and feel the size and volume of the stage, but sometimes all we get is a half-hour sound check that's only good for going over a maximum of two or three songs. This summer, we'll go on stage for a few music festivals and will probably not even get a sound check. This time we had more time than we've had before on the stage, but that was because this was a concert dedicated to Hatari, rather than Hatari playing at a music festival where many bands need to do a sound check on the same day. This Hatari concert was the most complex one yet; for example we had a 20-person choir, a solo singer and a pianist, where choreographed stage entrances and exits are necessary. On the stage, which is not big, there was an extensive set, with a great effort put into setting up the lighting and screens for the visuals, and there wasn't a lot of room for the movements of three dancers. Personally, I would have liked to have one more rehearsal to perfect the staging, but I think it went very well, considering.

As for the technical aspects, we decided that we the dancers would not be wearing earpieces, but rather would use the onstage speakers to hear the music. In retrospect, earpieces would have worked better, as the cheering of the audience sometimes drowned out the music to the point it was hard to hear the rhythm in a few spots during the concert. There was a lot of cheering, and it's always incredibly rewarding to dance at a concert where the audience really gives the energy back.

Conclusion

Throughout this research and rehearsal process, I've found it's very important to me that the female dancers of Hatari are not interpreted as submissive and voiceless women. The process has given me confirmation of the awareness I've always had of the staging of the female dancers in Hatari, which I've occasionally doubted, especially when I receive negative commentary on the choreography. The research and the work with Hatari has made me a more confident choreographer than before, and it has taught me to stand by my own creative decisions.

I have tried and will continue to try to the best of my ability to communicate this empowering and feminine woman with movements alongside music on stage. Femininity is strong and beautiful, and it's very important not to sideline it just to avoid being accused of submissiveness. You can be a feminine feminist who celebrates sexuality. I could try to describe and analyze further the reaction that I'm trying to evoke on stage through movement, but in the end every viewer has to judge for themselves. When it comes to us, the female dancers, I try, as I've stated repeatedly, to give us an empowering role and evoke strong emotions in the audience about the woman who is dancing. The role of the female dancers in Hatari is important, and it's about being a visual medium intensifying and enhancing the concert experience.

#hatari #hatrið mun sigra #sólbjört sigurðardóttir #translation

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