#probably out of spite. hammer philosophy

[b4kuch1n]

hi! birthday. which means it's finally time t

yo what the itch store is fixed up now

damn what? I don't know where this came from. look all the comics I put on g*mr**d a year ago are back here again with all the formatting and typesetting by @fireflysummers as well as the exclusive bonus art wtf who did this. my werewolf comic on here too what the hells!! that one also got re-toned for printing if u want to AND an exclusive cover spread !!! what the fuck!!!!! come see for urself I can't make this shit up

[prometheanfolly]

On Philosophies of Power in Teen Wolf, Through the Lens of Scott and Theo.

Impressively pretentious title, right? Nevertheless, it amuses me, so I’ll roll with it. Also, in spite of just how pompous it sounds, it’s kind of on the money for what I’m about to blather about.

—

TLDR: A Theo who says “I never *just* wanted power, and I don’t regret pursuing it. It was the right thing to pursue, it is the first and best form of freedom. I don’t seek it now because I no longer need it, but don’t come at me with your ‘ooh power is evil’ bollocks.” A Theo willing to stand up for the pursuit of power as an emancipatory tool against a pack that seems to make a virtue of being initially less powerful than whatever they’re facing.

—

So, quite often in fics that I read which feature some kind of rehabilitated Theo, conversations end up taking place about how ‘Old Theo’ related to power, vs the new, improved, and oh so much more altruistic Theo. Common tropes include: someone saying that basically all the bad guys seek power for its own sake, and Theo doesn’t anymore; someone saying that they can tell he’s changed because he’s no longer so power hungry; being gobsmacked when someone points out to him that he now cares for more than just some dumb, monomaniacal obsession; a more or less universally accepted assumption that the pursuit of power is a) inherently bad, and b) done by baddies for its own sake. For domination and general bad-vibes-ish-ness.

I’d like to take a moment to push back against both of these ideas, ‘a’ and ‘b’. I’ll start with the joint ideas that the pursuit of power is, even in the most shallowly written of baddies, seldom done for its own sake, and that its pursuit is not inherently bad. Let’s define power, crudely and tentatively, as the ability to exercise one’s will on the world. Taken in this way, it should be clear that power is only ever a tool, and so not sought for itself. Why would one ever want a hammer, if not to hit something, and why would one ever seek to have the ability to impose their will on the world, if not because they had some will they sought to impose?

As to the idea that it’s inherently wrong to pursue power per se, well, sort of. If you pursue power for its own sake, sure, that’s wrong, but not in the sense of being immoral (it’s no worse than seeking other self-serving goal, such as personal happiness), rather, it’s wrong in that it’s silly. We’ve just established, haven’t we, that the pursuit of any tool without a purpose beyond its acquisition is foolish? So what’s going on when people like Theo explicitly state that they seek power, full-stop? Well, I think it’s a little like walking up a hill with false horizons, you know? Like, you say to yourself I want to get to the top of this hill, and as you start walking, you become unable to see the summit. What you can see is a ridgeline, and even if you know it’s not the actual top, as you get increasingly tired, it becomes increasingly attractive to think of it as your destination. At first, you say ‘this ridge, then three more, then I’m there!’, then your legs start to ache and you say ‘this ridge, then a rest!’, and finally, as your lungs start to shout at you to just give the fuck up and *please* sit down, you say to yourself ‘I (pant) only (pant) have to (pant) get to (pant) this ridge!’. You have made, in your mind, a destination out of a stepping stone. The same applies to power. You might start with some overarching desire, and say to yourself ‘well, I need more power to be able to achieve this’, and as the struggle for enough power becomes all the more consuming, you narrow your horizons so as to be able more fully to focus on that. You shelve the greater idea to dedicate yourself to the smaller, but necessarily prior, one. That, I would say, is probably what’s going on in most people who say that all they want is power. All I want is to get to that next ridgeline.

What, then, might be those more fundamental goals that those seeking power actually aim at? Well, I think it’s worth remembering how inextricably linked power is to freedom. There are two ways to increase your freedom. One is to reduce your constraints, and the other is to increase your ability. For Theo, who spent so much of his life under the constraint of the doctors, and unable to reduce that constraint, might he not have somewhat deified the ideal of freedom? And might the way he sought to pursue that freedom not have been to increase his power, resigned to the constancy of his constraints? So now, when he is charged with having been a power-hungry monomaniac, and told by others that he clearly no longer is, shouldn’t he be able to respond that he never ‘just’ sought power, and that he is willing to defend the will to freedom that so long motivated him, and that he isn’t changed, just freed from an unimaginable oppression? That he’d defy anyone in his place to have done otherwise? More generally, when Scott starts waxing lyrical about how an obsession with power is a hallmark of a bad guy, and how we should never pursue its own sake, might not Theo reply that power, in fact, is nothing but the path to freedom? That we all seek power, that the person who speaks 5 languages is more powerful than their otherwise identical twin who only speaks 1, and should be praised for it? That the pack vilifies power only because they have wilfully forgotten that skills are power, that knowledge is power, and that tools are only ever rendered good or evil by their use. In fact, I can imagine him saying, it is incumbent on goodies to seek power, precisely so they are ready for the baddies.

Sorry- done now. I know I prattle on. Just wanted to share an idea of how the mind of a post-hell Theo might work in such a way that it is fundamentally on the right side, but jarringly different enough from the pack as to still create ideological friction. Hope you enjoyed!

[thelanor-s-astame]

Oh you'll prolly be fine, esp if you got people helping you along But the journey is gonna be tough

Eh fuck it no more pussyfooting around I'm just gonna write the damn paragraph Path of Exile has a *lot* of stuff I really like in it, it is undeniably the most expansive ARPG, not just in terms of build diversertiy, but also in *stuff to do* I've been playing since the beta and man oh man has this game grown to a monolith of fun gameplay elements out of a relitivly simple loop. The best ones are modes like Heist and Betrayal which just add a weird board game on to it. Those are so much fun tbh Unfortunately, it is a game built on the back of spite in the most spiteful time videogames have ever seen. It was made as a response to the WoW artstyle and simplification of Diablo III. It was trying to be Diablo II 2. Which of course is fine, the dark atmosphere and fucked shit in it are wonderful and I love that atmosphere But this also came around the Dark Souls Discourse where everyone was complaining that games were too easy, and games should be more like Dark Souls. Path of Exile wanted to be difficult like Diablo II as well. Now I assumed the difficulty in the endgame was kind of a given. I mean it was hard. But it probably wasn't Dark Souls Hard I recently played Dark Souls and... uh... naw PoE's endgame is kind of bullshit. Dark Soul's design philosophy is essentially "Oh, did you get the shit beat out of you by the demon with a big hammer? No shit idiot it's a demon with a big hammer, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and sprint back in there, just run past everything and they won't bother you to much. He has to get lucky every time, you only need to get lucky once, just keep trying, you'll get him. All you lose for trying is some souls, and buddy, he'll give you more than you lost by a long shot." Path of Exile's endgame is catered to people who want to break the game. IF you lose to an endgame boss, Fuck you. You lose XP, and you lose a portal. If you lose all your portals, you gotta go back to mapping to get a chance to fight the boss again. You should have built good enough to survive this. Now this becomes a hell of a problem because of the games massive customization. If you don't have the correct balance of damage/defenses (incld Health, your damage negation type, and your resistances, if you're lacking in any of these areas you're fucked.) you lose quite a bit for even trying the bosses. Now, I will say, it's waaaaay easier to get back to fighting the boss nowadays, you essentially only need to do one map, instead of Several endgame maps. but you're still limited in your attempts to beat the boss.

But lets say you're not deterred by this. Well if you want to endgame you can follow a build guide to the letter and then you'll be able to break the game enough to be able to challenge the endgame bosses. If you were not... Well you need to start from the beginning and make a new character.

Now, the problem with this, is you probably got into PoE because it kinda lets you do whatever you want with your build to a degree that not a lot does. So maybe you jsut want to tweak your build to get it right. For that you'll need... uh... some stuff. Firstly you'll need to start trading. You can buy stuff, but you need to go to the PoE website to see the trade listings. You'll also need to know exactly what stats you need to filter for and it, unfortunatly, is not obvious what you need. You'll also want to get a little more curency to buy things. This means you'll need to purchase a stash tab, so that you can start selling, but also, you need to install Awakened PoE Trade, a seperate open source program that allows you to price check items without having to scroll through the website manualy. You will also need this if you're following a build guide, you will need to have the same or extremely similar stats on your gear Chris Willson prefers that there not be an auction house in the game. Even if trading, as it stands, is just sending a person a messege, inviting them to your hideout, handing them the thing, and have them hand you money, and then you leave. But of course, to optimize your build for endgame, you'll need a helova lot more build info than the game will give you. So you need to install another program, Path of Building. This will also be necessary if you're following a build guide because the skill tree they use will likely be a PoB code that you need to copy and paste into the program. You'll also need an item filter. Which you'll set up on Filterblade. You probably already have that one taken care of, especially if you got friends helping you out. The reason for all of this, and i cannot stress this enough, is because this is how it was in Diablo II. Trading was a 1 to 1 interaction with another person, and building was a race to the most damage with the very limited skill trees/stats that Diablo II had. And that's the game Chris Wilson is still trying to make, even if PoE has kinda grown beyond being a game that set out to spite Diablo III for looking like WoW and playing like a point and click adventure. All that said, I still have thirteen-hundred hours in the dang thing it is fun. There is a lot to like

And also... based on the way PoE II is looking, the gameplay changes, the genre mixing, I honestly think that game will remedy quite a bit of this. But tl;dr Good luck with maps. This is where the game shoves you into The Bullshit Locker for not being *enough* of a nerd

path of exile so good im almost ready to start mapping

[fishmongeringstudies]

scene fifteen: in moments of deep and debilitating anxiety remember that someone out there is thinking about how to fit a horse-shaped figurine up their ass and that they will probably succeed

in the history of sexuality: volume one michel foucault puts forth the idea that we as a society have gotten bad at dying due to a lack of practice. in the place of death, he posits, we obsess with life. every tedious stage of it, spotlit and burnt into our retinas so that even when we lie awake in bed with our eyes shut, visions of the future stalk through the darkness like specters. we are categorically unable to predict what lies ahead on the yellow brick road and obligated to try. as a result, we have become shrewd, planning creatures.

we have lost our touch with death. we are out of touch with it. we do not die enough, even though everyone you speak to will likely agree that each of us only dies once.

in a half-hearted bid to help its students cope with the fact that the world had been consumed overnight by a pandemic which was steadily eating away at the sanity and sanctity of life as we knew it and everything was fucking terrible, my college came up with a plan wherein instead of four classes in the fall, we would only have to take three. in exchange january would be given up to a four-week speedrun of one more class, so as to complete the holy rectangle. consumed with hubris and distracted by the legend of zelda: breath of the wild, the game which had eaten up the last five months of my life and promised to follow up with the rest of it, i decided to take a philosophy course on personal identity. on the first day of class i logged onto zoom, my personal sleep paralysis demon, at eleven on a monday night to my professor asking us completely seriously: what makes you you?

my toes, i guess? i have ten of them. i mean most people have ten toes, but mine are pretty weird looking. are we done here?

we were not done here. we proceeded to investigate every aspect of the twenty-first century conception of the self, from the lumpy flesh bag which contained our affectionately soft and squishy parts to the memory, the continuous narrative that held all our dimmest and brightest moments together. we doubted each one, flirted with it; then we cast it away. was the self the brain? no. was the self the body? no. was the self the memory, the shreds of past glories, was the self actually a collection of selves? is the you who plucked that goldfish out of the pond at age seven because you thought lungs meant you were invincible the same you who wrung their hands nervously together as they stood in front of the cashier this morning, waiting for the person behind the counter to ring up your groceries?

there was a counter for everything, you see. i know this because i presented a quarter of them. it's fun to shoot things down, less fun to be shot at; having been gunned out of the sky several times in my life i make it a point to keep my eyes trained on the horizon when i am out and about these days. so yes. people are not really. really what? they simply aren't. we have been living in a farce of reality, telling ourselves we matter when we have never been able to articulate with certainty the exact nature of that 'we' to begin with. or should i say me?

one night in late january while lying in bed after a three hour breath of the wild korok hunt, drifting peacefully into the ether, a thought flashed across my mind: WHERE DO PEOPLE GO WHEN THEY FALL ASLEEP.

i bolted upright in bed, heart hammering like there was a hammer in my chest and a little man holding the hammer and that motherfucker was swinging like he had hell to pay.

it turns out my extensive history of making jokes about immortality isn't just a reflection of my overinflated ego. it's a reflection of this:

michel foucault was sometimes criticized for his armchair philosophy style of tackling what were, at heart, deeply empirical human issues. even if the epistemic foundations were sound, there was often a clear disconnect between the ideas he espoused and the communities which they were to be applied to. this is a criticism every philosopher deals with at some point in their life. this is a critique of philosophy as a whole. stop smoking your damn bong and get back out here, skinny academia man. there's a whole world to see.

in season three episode eighteen of the penumbra podcast by sophie takagi kaner and kevin vibert a character named buddy aurinko stops in the middle of a debilitating fit of coughs, and admits in a wet, cracking voice that she does not want to die. 'i don't want to die,' she says to herself, standing in her office and overlooking a heist of astronomical proportions. her heart is made of steel; it pumps gasoline through a body more metal than flesh. she is half human in the most literal sense, with a clockwork soul and a gunmetal smile. in spite of the alarming state of decay the radiation exposure has left her body in, she wants to live. she fights for it. she leaves the heist to her crewmates and escapes to a room that will protect her from shock waves that would otherwise stop her mechanical heart. kicking her heels off and running and stumbling down the hallway, she makes it to safety just in time to hear the explosion go off.

life is a firework show in the sense that we are surrounded by highly-flammable and explosive objects which look nice from afar and are a threat to our safety up close. this analogy made sense when i started typing it but it seems i've come up short. life is a firework show. i like things that eat darkness. i am a firefly. i make fire take flight.

i think michel foucault was right, in some ways. we are living in abundance. i do not mean a physical abundance, a pile of tailored suits at the foot of the bed; i mean an abundance of life. the distribution is disastrously uneven. but the average is high. we emerge into a life which assumes we will stay for a long, long time, which fluffs the pillows and plans the high school graduations and sets aside money in a bank account for our first car, our second apartment, our third lover. we emerge into celebration. happy birthday. cue candles. cue applause.

but on a purely individual level, is it really that bad to be gorilla-glued to life? should we expect the other shoe to drop at thirty instead? what about the mid-life crisis? what about the cat on the windowsill? as death grows to terrify us, so does life. they are two sides of a coin which, when flipped, always lands heads-up. but i propose a counter-argument. i propose joy. joy in standing in the supermarket and running your hands across rows of blushing apples. joy in starting an argument you know you will win. joy in waking up to the shrill screech of your alarm only to discover that today's morning classes have been canceled due to the snow piled up outside your window. we have progressed too far down the yellow brick path to be caught up in false dichotomies. you can love something you fear. you can soak yourself in it, drench yourself in it, tip it down your throat like champagne. flip a coin and it lands both sides up. flip two coins. flip the table and sit on its belly for a while.

are we done here? never. not in a thousand years.

06.04.21

[throwinggrapesoffthebalcony]

preface to LAVENDER SOAP

You can feel apocalyptic in a number of ways, even while living in peaceful times. But what many times looks like peace, isn’t. And so a piece may arise during our own suppressed apocalypse. That was the case with Lavender Soap and my life in 1996. Very few places have had the energy to influence me as a writer, to feed into my tendencies, and even fewer places that could provide a sense of peace, that I was only ever able find in the water; buoyant saline, under the warmth of the ray’s of the sun. Even in storm, or the dead of winter, it was a tranquility, a sanctuary, that I could never find on land. Depending on your life, it’s a beautiful separation.

The epoch and the hotel was very different then, it was at peace tucked into the trees. It wasn’t decimated  by this new cheap world yet. The perfect air was still influxed with the smell of foliage and perfume and of old materials, plaster ruined and repaired a thousand times, regrouted with the tiles left intact, the aging glue of wallpaper is sweet. Decor should be timeless during our lives. Life is so short after all. It was a hotel imbued with and not completely claimed by the past yet, with the past, absorbed into the walls and woodwork and tapestries. The faint voices, rapes, murders, sufferings, and suicides of a more glamorous past, saved like metal oxide on tape in the walls; played when the atmosphere is right. The first element that effects me are women I’ve been involved with sexually and their particular fashion and our conversations, the other is the inspiration of architecture; this necessity to remove and protect ourselves from the elements of nature. And the third being that wild energy of nature itself, weather, thermal dynamics, etc. I’ll save the commentary about the energy arising from the earth and surroundings for the preface for SSHS, which was more influenced by the raw energy of a geographic location and life’s tragedies than it was about architecture. And writing that piece was never about silence for me, while Lavender Soap was born, not in the clash of an apocalyptic scene, but in the very opposite, in the midst of the most pleasurable quiet, not an absolute silence, but a perfect quiet. The sound of air moving through trees, the sound of a rotary telephone ringing, faint voices speaking somewhere, the existence of humanness, not intruding on your life, when it doesn’t need to. That was a time when I think everyone had their own scenario, there were bounds, and knew that your scenario wasn’t their scenario; which is called sanity. Perfect separation of lives, we were humans not insects. And because of this, meeting someone was always much more interesting than now. Lavender Soap is, besides being a psychological piece delving into my experiences at the Chateau, it’s also to a great extent a retrospect, and a regression to my childhood. It was in a childhood bedroom that I perfected disassociation, disconnection, and detachment in, out of necessity, for survival. A house of continual violence, week after week, year after year, leaves you with nowhere to go but down. Fantasy and pictures, allowed me to drift off. A calendar out of date, a hopeful month of lavender fields is where all of my loves stood. They never take you up. Sleeping with my weapon of choice, a tapered necked ball peen hammer. And with the faint smell of WD40 and rust the angels never come to save you from the screaming. A movie about war, that’s pretty in a way, is the only way I can remember that film.

In 1996, experience wasn’t found on a cell phone. I was young and if you wanted to feel something or experience something, you had to shower, dress and traverse whatever plane you were on. And from one location to another, so much could happen, and in-between there was discovery, moments. Forget the set pieces, that’s not what this life is made of. This life is made of moments. In my opinion, that curiosity is what the young are absolutely lacking in today’s world, that and not feeling like individuals. There was a conversation that I read, I think around that same time, where a film editor, I think Murch, if not, one of the other prominent film editors, was talking about editing on a Moviola. And because of the linear nature of working with whole strips of 35mm film, he would have to pass through a lot of footage that he hadn’t previously considered, and that he would have, if working in a non-linear manner have never encountered. And there, he would find moments that worked more profoundly than what he was intending to use. And I think that lack of an analog approach in living, has people missing the more profound encounters, the accidental encounters, encounters more enlightening than what they might experience with a premeditated itinerary. But wait, they had an exchange on tender; what a fucking joke. I feel sorry for them. I’ve never fallen in love with this new digital era, a work of spite and bitterness, a reaction to a world that didn’t feel inclusive enough, so it’s become a strategy of slash and burn. And how do you tell someone to fuck off so they truly listen in today’s era? Must it be an apocalypse for the stalkers. Are people always drawn into that state of darkness. And it’s so easy to lose sight of the jungle you’re in, when the modern world disguises the archetypes so well. The weeks become months and the months become years and years become a decade, while I was creating the philosophies of a man facing death, even while undeservedly healthy, and unfairly able to fuck.

Arriving at the hotel in 96’ was serendipitous, or fateful, whether you want to believe that life is steadfast or whimsical. It felt whimsical when I met a couple of cute girls named Hanni and Sunny at Beverly Connection one evening; one lovable, the other the type to want to watch, then try to explain what each of the other really wanted. I jotted down a few impressions I had of them at the time. They told me that they had this special place they wanted to show me. I thought they were full of shit. But one evening they picked me up and took me to the Chateau Marmont. The weather was terrible that night. I was dressed for the woods. It was a quiet place, empty, with an entrance of willow branches hanging dank over the drive. We sat in the living room and even while I tried to concentrate on the conversations we were having, I was only half there, while the other part of me had already wandered off into the hotel, amongst the spirits and whispering lips. Sunny called, with the concern of the other on mind. It was against her religion to have sex before marriage, and she was confused as to whether oral copulation was sex. I gave the wrong and less comforting answer. Of course it is. People go stagnant just as places do. I went looking for Hanni where she worked at Milk and Honey as a hostess. I saw her through the windows, but the place was busy and I didn’t want to get her into any trouble, so I continued on my walk. I didn’t see them much anymore, but I kept going back to the Chateau. It was just as quaint during the afternoon as it was at night. On most nights, it was desolate, like a huge spaceship had hovered over and removed every last trace of guests. This was before they began to monetize the mythos of the place, and run it like a circus. The hallowed courtyard had eyes in 1996, and then in 2006 it had the eyes of a cheap set looking for anything edible. Drug dealers intwined with movie moguls and music producers. When first arriving there, there was peace, and I would explore the floors unimpeded. I felt strangely allowed. One afternoon that week after the two girls had shown me the place, I went and stood on the landing on the shady side of the hotel. I could have stood there for centuries. I thought about a life with her, while still in love with what I couldn’t have. I wasn’t apart from those feelings yet. They choked me up, but I would never cry. I probably set the record for being on the verge of tears, while they dried. The people were more reclusive and weird then. With so many people in those rooms, so few went about. They come out for air. They ask each other, never asking you. Even while asking me, would be the quickest way to find something out. Strange quirks with some of these who reside here. Notes I wouldn’t even have to look back upon to remember. I didn’t know about the inner workings of Hollywood yet, even while I was already pitching ideas, but wrote literature and not scripts. I didn’t know there were those perpetually green-lit, only needing content, and those perpetually in the red light. But on the surface, everything was crystal clear, with my young primo lenses at the time, seeing even the minute texture in anything like glitter in the dust. I suppose speculation has always been a turn on. But the place was an immediate enchantment, and people were actors, so forgiven, and no idiosyncrasies of the fauna would keep me from going back. I loved the place. It gave me a chance to linger in that aesthetic. There were occasions when I’d stay in the living room until dawn, undisturbed, when I could have stayed and ordered breakfast if I’d wanted to. Hollywood and this hotel had already had a long history before I arrived. The materials, the curtains and rugs and upholstery was already soaked to the bone, damp with the secretions of the body, the blood, the saliva and vaginal fluids of the past. In the present, you can smell the distinction of a vagina from a mouth perfectly. But through time, it becomes this amalgamated scent, so fine and subtle that it could be bottled as perfume; an aphrodisiac for the intellect. I want to stay and live here, but it costs a fortune. Check out time is like another death, the woman who spreads the sheets might be the perfect fuck. Dreaming in a bed that saw the golden age. The ghosts of a thousand whores arise. But that was the wet part of the dream. They all say the same thing, they all dance the same way. They all want to stay in this world. This, while everyone claims to live in a higher plane. They want freedom without the label being emblazoned upon them. Today’s perfect. That’s just a desirable label and we all have desires. You wish you could turn them all into someone someone would have loved. On the landing on the shady side of the hotel, the rush of thoughts has me without sight, the sun penetrating my eyes. I wouldn’t even know what a strange thought was then, always in the wine. I went into the shadows falling over me. The strange trees don’t know my past, but it seems that they love me. She was cold, goosebumps on the skin, she never warms. She’s not of this world. But this place is like heaven’s turnkey, and here I can dream, that I’m living a spectacular life. My every thought here like a disco in the dark light. It’s coming up river with the blackness gleaming to take my life. In the past one only had to return to civilization. Now, there is no civilization to return to. Modern society is like a plague that has no brains. That dies out, not by heat or cold or is prevented by the razor wire of another man’s desires for peace of mind. Death is the only peace. Just as I was told of my literary pursuits, that all the hours were wasted, and to think about the fact, that all those I admired in that craft, are all dead, and so was the craft. I was sitting at a drive-in theatre. Hail memory. Prefaces are life, when a form of death has already occurred.

On the subject of soap balls, they were always perplexing. My grandmother, a strange woman, born in New Braunfels, Tx, who never opened her presents, wouldn’t let me wash my hands with them. They were decorations, to be dusted and sniffed for their essence. One lathered by mistake and placed back into the bunch looked funny, and you wondered if she’d notice. They looked like dull gum-balls in a decorative bowl, and I’d acquired a taste for soap, or at least I wasn’t as disgusted as they’d wanted me to be. You can frustrate the hell out of a nun that way, by loving it, and asking her for more. But I was curious as to whether they were different flavors. I couldn’t tell; perhaps because sometimes smell and taste are inseparable. Perhaps their mystery lays in their not being of a practical shape, and round always tends to represent the erotic, like ovaries, representing the female anatomy. But there’s also a aspect in the work that I didn’t consciously think about until after writing the piece. And that was that in the victorian era, in the psychological journals, they often considered masturbation an attempt at suicide, or a suppressed death wish. And even while much of what they believed in then is laughable, maybe the act of masturbating with lavender soap was my fragrant wish to kill myself. I don’t know if I’m trying to cum or kill myself in the present either. My theory is that it keeps me from being desperate and at the mercy of women, when they aren’t readily available to me.

Dark blue was a piece I was more in love with writing, a story about a woman who’d committed a sin, that caused me to become an exile to femininity. When you can no longer trust women, there’s no longer a church to visit, there’s no safe place to hide. Dark Blue wasn’t as spontaneous as Lavender Soap, it was more evolved, I wanted to think carefully about it, I wanted some past world to be impressed. I wanted to stay immersed in a calm exile. Those who could even judge literature, now were few and far between. And because Dark Blue was also set at the Chateau, it was slowly being devoured by this more delirious work. It was like one stage of my life devouring another. And I wasn’t even in that careful mood to make a copy of it before I began cutting it up, and making fodder of it for a pop piece. I’ll probably extract Dark Blue from Lavender Soup and make it the subtle, psychological piece I’d wanted it to be; another conversation piece, the finite texture of dark blue polyester, a comfortable face and beautiful thighs, and a line, ‘I can’t believe you’d ever do this to me.’ You never expect a woman to be a criminal. It’s subtly frightening. You take the time to stare more deeply into the mystery of a pair of eyes. And when you can no longer believe in the feminine, when that door too, says deception, when it says enter at your own risk, it leaves you with no sanctuary at all in this world.

Lavender Soap was a chance to dwell on audiophilia and woodworking, even though much of the elaborations ended up on the cutting room floor, when it began to feel like This Old House. I think in every field, there’s an equilibrium with our humanness. And I think that wood and glass and analog technology was something that we can never rise above. There was no dissonance between it and the human body. We evolve technology, but the whole while we’re devolving. Like an individual, as a society, we cannot admit to wandering onto the wrong path, out onto a branch that leads to our demise, and while looking back at our past selves in arrogance, at our own expense. They’re already like zombies, and I think 5G will finish them off. Lithium, lithium, lithium. War, an OLED screen, and a sickening.

There was that first period of time exploring the Chateau when LA was magical, then I moved to D.C. and New York for a number of years. And as I did, many of the stories I’d started in my notebooks about or taking place in that setting were put on the back burner, while I was experiencing more of the in between and writing what I considered more significant novels. I’d visit Los Angeles on occasion, and the first place I’d want to get to was Venice, then after that, the Chateau Marmont. There were no marriage vows on the east coast, so I moved back to Los Angeles around 2006. I’d seen the Chateau become a less mysterious and more clamorous place during my visits but that was confirmed when I started going there frequently again. The magic was gone, for sure. And that magic was peace and quiet. Literature was becoming a dead beast, that had no place in this frivolous nature. I myself was disenchanted. I met a girl named Emma while I was living up Larrabee. I thought, maybe. And for the record, it was unfair to her that I quickly had such high expectations. I wanted a family. She said I was too smart for my own good and proceeded to eat my heart out. But I admit, I had her on the most perfect day of her life. No one will remember her so fondly. And so, at this breaking point of my life, I’d gone to a bicycle shop down Robertson and bought a chrome Bianchi Pista, trying to remain relevant and alive. I belonged in nature with a risk to life and limb; this was a crazy city now, homogenized, ceaseless, hungry. It was a point in my life when I had to seriously contemplate a return, a return home, or to academics, even while I despised its limitations, and had already fallen in love with studying outside of those restraints. I needed to give hard thought to returning to create some stability for myself, a life of normalcy, even if in some nowhere place. I already knew I’d been on a blacklist for some time by then, and well aware of the futility of trying to make it, while there are those determined to keep you down. But I kept writing, even without those motivations. And so I was riding around with that last chance to return on my mind, like always being conscious of death. The new technology had everyone riddled with something more invasive than neutrinos that just pass through everything. I was trying to shake off the stogy thoughts of literature and avoid the lack of patience that had infected everyone. And disappointment only aggravates your pride. You want to prove something, so you slip even in the bright sunlight, further into the heart of darkness. I’d try to ride through it, and write through it; the dystopian nightmare that everyone had feared would come, if they had their way, and they had their way. Without an exit strategy, the delusional self-induced Berkeley type archetypal bitch, had a plan. The illusion of an alternate world onto the real world. It had me dreaming of a landslide or a flood or a ball of fire heading right for us more than ever at the time. The freeze of disappointment settles on the brain. The billiard balls cease to scatter with infinite possibilities. You have to begin to look for your moments, then get the hell out before they burn down around you. But I would ride and when moving at the right speed, I could still say, that it was the place I first fell in love with. I played dead riding with no hands. I brought my old notepads out and began burning into Lavender Soap on a silver airbook. And again I’ll save this subject matter of writing tools and how they effect the process, for SSHS; the pen as opposed to a laptop, as opposed to a typewriter, etc. etc.

Why my father or anyone else for that matter was so miserable is about a past we cannot know. My father lived a life before I was ever born, I can’t judge him. It’s just the sight of an underwater knife and old scuba gear; everyone dives and that’s their life and no one else’s. And despite the terror in the household, he made an effort to educate me. He was a musician, so I was dragged around to Jazz festivals, which I always found fascinating, even while never being my favorite genre of music. More importantly, he loved film, and would take me to see first rate films while I was still at an impressionable age. It was Texas at a very different time. I don’t think he would in today’s world ever be able to sneak me, as a child into movies like The Godfather, The Deer Hunter, or Apocalypse Now. At least without being escorted by the police past the ‘no such thing as gender’ restroom doors, which the icon of the beast and word androgyny. Apocalypse Now is still my desert island movie, it was like candy to a child’s mind. I leave it in the DVD player for months at a time playing on a loop. It’s a movie I never tire of watching. I love when someone hates what I love, so maybe it’s a way to turn the stalkers off. Let them dwell in what will break them. It’s based on a book called Heart of Darkness, which is also one of my favorite works. It’s about the primordial model that we can’t get away from. We can build empires, then die over the wrong look. And when you’re a child, you see everything so differently, your eyes move to different parts of the screen, you take a different path through the film. You may not understand the poetry yet, or the subtext, or every word uttered, but you see another layer of beauty, that an adult might miss. And so your memory of certain elements are vivid. What’s written on a helicopter as it lands, ‘death from above’, and lavender smoke in the air making the ravages of life so pretty; like makeup on the whorish face of humankind. Then all the years have gone and it becomes like a masterpiece of background noise to a life in the continued, but post modernistic bloodbath of tribal animosities and nepotistic tendencies. The Heart of Darkness was a perfect model, because it’s the only model that makes any sense. We will die of a spear in the modern world. That dark model dwells in the modern city, and she’ll fuck us when she wants to. The end is always a bright pink clit coming down with bitterness and animosity. I can’t wait. 

When I first arrived in Los Angeles, we were consumed by the talk of lenses and cinema and the craft of filmmaking, when the craft was religion, and not political correctness. We knew our lenses. How’s political correctness done as an industry?, you may ask. Fairly well it seems. The advertisers don’t give a fuck what they’re selling or what Greco Roman history they’re destroying. They’re mercenaries. They’ve not replaced civilization with anything that will last. But now, nothing’s supposed to; not even history. Once again we can’t escape the analog nature of ourselves and how other methods aren’t as conducive for the flesh or for externalizing our fascinations for the world to see. Our inability to get away from that period will see us shrinking as human beings. We won’t be strong enough to fight off the virus. Analog is more evolved than digital, and I call this the ‘prism effect’; if you’ve ever seen a prism penetrated by sunlight, and how it separates white light into a spectrum of colors, it’s a beautiful sight. Now imagine the energy it takes and the technology to do what the prism does so simply, and without the need for batteries. We’re trying to digitize and synthesize nature until it resembles nature again, or sounds analog again, or feels like flesh again. Why? So someone can shut it off when they’ve lost control. The digital age has allowed a bunch of really strange and ‘awkweird’ people to rule over earth; and as it’s turned out they’re not immune to the thirst for war and destruction or terror. They just like to fuck things up from a distance, and don’t believe in repercussion. But someone at a pseudo think tank can cost so much life then walk to Starbucks to get a cup of coffee. We’re all vulnerable to nature. 

We can try to escape to places like Topanga or Malibu, but they want to stay connected. They don’t want the natural world to take place, even with all the natural beauty that still exists. Off the grid, makes them nervous, they’re so used to spying on everyone’s every move. It’s become their addiction, their lithium. I’m not your lithium. And it was during a time I was trying to escape, living out old Topanga road that something that might be considered trivial happened, but that in my mind was like some completion to an era of my life, like some forgiveness to put that part of my existence to rest. It was an afternoon that my girlfriend at the time and I made a stop at PC Greens along the Pacific Coast Highway, headed for a beach higher up. She waited for me while I ran in to buy a few things. And there, roaming around the store, was Martin Sheen. An old man now, but with the same face and voice. I looked into eyes I felt I knew well. I’m never one to bother actors, I know they fight for their private lives as well. But when heading for the checkout he came towards me like an old friend, and he was in a sense. And like perfection, what was playing and what was he singing to me? ‘The answer my friend is blowing in the wind.’ And he sang it as if disappointed, but as if there were time. We can’t know each other’s lives, but it was a beautiful sentiment. I went back out into the sun, elated, as if spared. Interesting. The wind took us up. We could have dissolved at that point with the waves breaking over us. Never complete, never finished.

And now, on another now. I leave the menu screen on flickering for hours, with the droning sound of the helicopter over fiery palms sweeping across my life, before I can bring myself to hit ‘play film’ again. 

-Alan Augustine

Los Angeles, 2020

[eldunea]

hear me out: lotor sincline as muggle studies professor and head of slytherin house.

would happen probably in his late 20s/early 30s after he designs the sincline mech and gets the wizarding space program up and running. at that point he’d probably hand off official control of his project to his mother honerva (though he’d still have some influence over it) and start focusing some of his energy on his decolonization project where he wants to bring back POC customs of wizards and muggles living side-by-side. to achieve this end. his aim as muggle studies professor is to get students used to the idea that wizards and muggles can and should coexist peacefully.

he has four main focuses in teaching his course: customs, history, philosophy and science. he tends to focus more on the last three than the first because those are more within his realm of knowledge. he also has more of an international focus rather than simply a european one when talking about history, philosophy and science--he could go on forever about how indigenous mesoamericans domesticated and bred 3,000 varieties of plants, or about the intricacies of lao tzu’s tao te ching, or about the hidden role of claudette colvin in america’s civil rights movement. and if there’s one thing that he nerds out about more than pre-contact histories of his parents’ peoples, it’s muggle jewish inventors. 

he has a special unit that he teaches to third years about 20th century atrocities and totalitarianism. he spends literally the entire second semester of third year talking about why dictatorships form, the tactics of corrupt leadership in controlling peoples’ lives, and how it’s every citizen’s duty to prevent this shit from happening again. he drives the message home by doing a comparative study of the rise of voldemort and the rise of hitler, and talking about how muggles’ racial biases toward POC have always influenced how wizards felt as well. one of the underlying themes of this unit is that wizards are more influenced by currents of muggle society than many would want to admit, and that’s why muggle studies is important.

one of his biggest messages as a professor other than the fact that wizards and muggles can live peacefully with each other is that muggles are the real wizards. literally when he starts class with third years he starts off with “wizards are fucking useless, i have the stats to prove it, we’ve technologically stagnated since the 1900s and we have the lowest proportion of inventors and scientists of any people in the world. muggles discovered the inner workings of nature through the likes of newton and einstein and hawking, and meanwhile in our corner we have bartholomew briggleby still pooping in the backyard and vanishing it like a dog because he’s never heard of a toilet.” he is vociferous about the notion that wizards are technologically lazy and complacent and it is imperative that the next generation starts being more like him and going out and inventing.

his domesticated foxes kugel and brisket have free run of the hogwarts grounds and all the students love them. occasionally a third fox--lotor himself--shows up with them. students, not knowing that it’s one of their teachers, have affectionately named it “blintzes.”

he’d also teach alchemy to the 6th and 7th years if there’s sufficient interest. the workload in the years where he has to do that is hellish but he pulls it off.

and some separate headcanons about lotor as head of slytherin house because HO BOY he’s about to start a revolution up in this bitch

he’s the first POC head of slytherin as well as its first jewish head. he goes to the chamber of secrets and takes a picture of himself leaning against the giant head of his house’s founder and writes a giant magical blogging post about how slytherin was antisemitic, how he said “jewish blood is just as dirty as muggle blood,” how he wanted to use the basilisk to purge the school of jewish students as well as muggle-born ones and how lotor literally became head of slytherin house out of PURE SPITE. he just.

“this isn’t your house anymore. it belongs to the people who live in it. it belongs to the ambition of the muggle-born who wants to show he’s just as good as any pureblood, or the romani child who wants to be the first in her family to graduate hogwarts. the cunning of the abuse survivor who has done everything in their power to survive. the leadership that young indigenous activists show when we fight to save the planet from the point of no return. the fraternity found in solidarity between jews, christians and muslims. I REFUSE to let hogwarts be a place where one house remains a bastion for prejudiced slander and hate, because if one house isn’t safe for the marginalized, the whole school isn’t safe either.”

half of his house hates him for that. if it’s not the conservative snob students calling for his removal, it’s their parents who most likely silently supported the death eaters while voldemort’s campaign was raging. but many of them learn very quickly not to mess with him for a reason stated below.

with all this feel-good talk, he seems more of a gryffindor or a hufflepuff. but to those students who break the rules or who try to make his life hell on the basis of his identity, he has steady reminders of how much of a slytherin he actually is. students who try to undermine him or others in sneaky ways are surprised to learn that he’s twice the filthy piece of shit that they all hope to be; no matter how clever they think they are he’s at least ten steps ahead, and it drives the lesson home when he manages to beat them at their own games. he sends the students off to detention with a smirk on his face, telling them “you can’t outfox a fox.” most of the time he takes absolutely no shit from troublemakers and isn’t afraid to teach them lessons the hard way. but if someone is looking to go after a known bully or something along those lines…he might look the other way.

he’s also damn good at keeping people in his house from going down the wrong path. he’s seen both sides of the coin--having been abused by white supremacists all his life and then experimenting with dark magic to get back at his abusers--so he knows real trouble when he sees it and he always puts a stop to it. 

this is where his persuasion comes in: he knows those kids won’t listen if he appeals to conventional morality, because he sure as hell didn’t listen either. so he appeals to their value systems instead. like if he catches someone with a hand of glory stealing stuff from other students who wants to be a master thief, he won’t blather on about why stealing is wrong, he’ll say “wow, i didn’t know your biggest dream in life was to be a petty felon. you’re a slytherin. where’s your ambition? don’t you want to be more than that?” or if someone wants to hurt someone via dark magic to achieve their ends, he’s like “well that’s not very clever of you. aren’t you smart enough to think of another way to get what you want?” of course, he always makes sure to walk them through the ethics of it later, but he knows he has to appeal to their self-interest, their ego and their childish still-developing emotions in order to hook them in. basically it takes a bastard to know a bastard and lotor is a supreme bastard so he can get inside their heads like nobody else.

one of the things he often has to do as a result of keeping kids out of trouble is confronting blood supremacist and otherwise bigoted parents when he talks their kids out of following their values. it’s fucking exhausting for him having to deal with their bullshit on a yearly basis but every time this happens he tells his students, “arguing is the jewish national sport. i was born for this” and goes right in.

if the parents get real bad, whether through hammering in bigoted ideologies or other forms of child abuse, lotor will straight up invite them to stay in hogwarts year-round. some of the nastier parents have straight up refused to let their kids go to hogwarts anymore and opt to send them to durmstrang, so this is their only option if they want to continue their education in a school that like, doesn’t teach the dark arts. he sometimes lives in the slytherin common room during the summer to keep an eye on the kids that stay there because they can’t go back home in one way or another and he’s more of a parent to them than some of their parents ever were.

[oumakokichi]

On one hand everyone has the right to their own interpretation, on the other hand, I'll defend to my dying day that Ouma cared a lot about every single member of the V3 cast, including the ones he treated like absolute garbage. Kiibo and Maki in particular developed a lot in opposition to all the things Ouma implied about them, and I don't think that was an accident--it was just one more way to play the villain and strengthen a group that might have to go on without him.

You definitely make some goodpoints, anon! While I do think Ouma had personal reasons for disliking certain members of the grouplike Maki and Kiibo, I also agree that he did care in the sense that he valuedliterally every single life among them.

Arguably the most important part ofOuma’s character is that human life is the single most important thing to him; understandingthat he abhors murder and killing is central to understanding anything elseabout him, and there’s really no room for doubt in the narrative that Ouma hadto value human life very strongly, or else he would have had no reason to dothe things he did. If he had wanted everyone dead, with as unbelievably smartas he was, he could have killed every single one of them.

But since he didn’t do this, we canonly surmise that he did not want their lives to be lost. No matter what hethought of them all as individuals, as living, breathing human beings he wantedthem all to stay alive for as long as possible.

Even with Kiibo, the very fact thatOuma couldn’t bring himself to do anything to “disable” him or put him out ofcommission means that in spite of the fact that I think he certainly wanted toview him only as a robot being piloted by the audience, he couldn’t really denyto himself that Kiibo had free will and consciousness. Ouma was more thancomfortable with the idea of disabling machines like the Exisals, Monokuma, andthe Monokumerz—if he had actually been able to convince himself that Kiibo wasa mindless robot and nothing else, he would probably have used the electrichammers or bomb on him, moreso already suspecting that he was the “traitor” whowas the link with the audience in the outside world.

That he didn’t do this is unarguableproof that he had to view Kiibo as “alive” in some capacity, even if he didn’tparticularly like doing so. As muchas he tried to make snide comments about Kiibo supposedly not understandingthings like human emotions, humor, philosophy, etc., the fact of the matter wasthat Kiibo did show understanding, and Ouma could recognize that and respect itas Kiibo having his own “life,” so to speak. And knowing that Kiibo wastherefore more of a pawn than anything else, Ouma was also probably able todiscount the possibility of him being the mastermind himself, since there’s noneed for the mastermind to be their own pawn.

With Maki, things are of course, alittle more complicated. Unlike Kiibo, who from Ouma’s perspective was aticking time bomb waiting to go off at worst and an unwitting pawn at best, Makion the other hand is an actual human andwas the biggest obstacle to his plans besides the mastermind themselves. Hertalent as an assassin was the antithesis of everything he stood for and valued,and his instinct to doubt and suspect human nature meant that he knew if anyonewas likely to slip back into old habits and kill again, it was her. Because shehad been trained to do so, because itcame as naturally as breathing to her, and because she had learned from a youngage not to question it, at all, she would kill again.

I think Ouma did on some levelunderstand and respect the fact that her efforts to open up to Momota andSaihara were some way of trying to personally better herself, and that she wastrying to move past her “programming” and the things she had previously beenavoiding in her past. The reason he outed her talent to the group at all was, Ithink, not only because he wanted to make sure that everyone knew what she coulddo and that she was dangerous, but also because he was hoping for preciselythat result. If he had never mentioned anything about her talent at all and she’dbeen allowed to keep hiding it and remain distant from everyone, then she wouldhave never confronted her own past or tried to start questioning herself.

And as it turns out, he wasultimately correct to tell everyone to doubt Maki. When push came to shove, andwhen the mastermind themselves got serious and put their own counterstrikeagainst Ouma’s attempts to end the game into action, Maki became a perfectlymanipulated pawn precisely because of her talent, and because she hadn’t triedto question herself or change herself enough. Her instinct was to kill, tocompletely eradicate Ouma from the game as a “threat” even when he himself hadalready declared the game to be “over.”

And she showed clear signs of havingthis sort of mindset and plan long before putting it into action. Even in Chapter4’s trial it was very clear that Maki is the sort of person who can barelycontain herself when her anger really gets touched under her cold, seeminglycomposed façade, and Saihara and the others should have doubted her when shetold them to their faces that she wouldn’t kill Ouma and had no intentions ofdoing anything on her own, because she was lying, and it was easy to tell.

Ouma wanted to play the villain andmake the group hate him in order to unite them, it’s true, but I think he wasfrustrated and tired of their lack of incentive to think for themselves. Hehimself is much too cynical and at the extreme end of “doubt everyone, trust noone but yourself,” but it’s true that his point about doubt and suspicion beingnecessary is valid, and that in a way, refusing to doubt anyone at all is justa refusal to think for yourself.

Maki’s plan to kill him wasultimately what set not only his and Momota’s deaths in stone but was also thespark required to ignite the entire killing game back up again, when Ouma hadbeen doing everything in his power to try and force it to grind to a halt. She messedup, badly, and while I do think that it’s still a good decision from anarrative standpoint to show that she really, honest to god has flaws—big, bigflaws that ruined things for everyone—it’s still true that she fucked upmajorly, and that her disregard for human life and instinct to kill withouteven stopping to think for one second about things is exactly the sort of thingthat Ouma kept commenting on with immense dislike all throughout the game.

By the end, it’s really evident thathe really was trying hard to find a reason not to hate Maki. And honestly, evenif he did hate her, he’d be justified in doing so, just as plenty of the othercharacters are justified in their hatred for him. Her recklessness not onlycaused him to have to make a sacrifice he wouldn’t have had to make otherwise,but also jeopardized everyone else’s lives in a school trial once again, anddespite all her efforts to train herself and seemingly confront her past, inthe end she did exactly the kind ofthing he had been worried about her pulling from the start.

But even despite all of this, Oumastill tried to calm himself down, think rationally, and came to the bitterconclusion that even if Maki had done this out of her own free will, she wasstill manipulated into doing it because it was what the mastermind wanted. Inthe end, it is very true that he still values Maki’s life as a human being farmore than he disliked or hated her personality, because even though he had theperfect opportunity to get her killed, and everyreason to want to do so after what she did to him, he still chose to go with aplan that would get himself killed but ultimately at least let her and everyoneelse have a shot at going on.

Ouma is fascinating preciselybecause while he does value people’s lives and detest killing and humansuffering on a very personal level, he’s still not without traits like pettinessand bitterness. He still very clearly shows what I would call personaldisliking towards several of the cast, and yet is interesting because he canstill set his own feelings aside and recognize objectively why they might dothe things they do, or how useful they might be to the group.

Even his decision to team up withMiu was something that illustrates this: clearly he doesn’t like Miu’s loudmouth or her tendency to put people down to make herself look good, because heturns her exact same kind of behavior back on herself. But he still tried toforge an alliance because he knew she could be useful, knew her talent wasessential to helping all of them, and ultimately knew that despite personaldifferences, the two of them were perhaps not so different under the surface.

This was really fun to write about,and I’m glad you brought it up, anon!

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON INDIGO’S MAIN RAP, VOCAL BAN JISUNG…

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: N/A CURRENT AGE: 25 DEBUT AGE: 20 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 17 COMPANY: MSG ETC: This member has become involved in acting since the group’s shift in popularity

IDOL IMAGE

outer

actor face, model proportions, nobody rapper. the weight of the last moniker is the card that knocks it all off balance, locks him (them) into this seemingly never-ending cycle of shoddy luck, until that survival show miraculously turned the tides for the better. before that, he’s the dissonance that msg likes to play off of–softer visuals of his sort don’t scream “rapper,” but that’s precisely the point.

with this wave of newfound fame now, he’s this: actor face, model proportions, indigo’s lead rapper; now with a more extensive list of footnotes tacked to each label following his name. there’s still a lot of focus on how he looks, surface-level perfection that plays off a criss-cross of intimidating and downright ethereal, a physical symmetry that at times (even on the account of the most grainy, pixelated fantaken shots) is difficult to fathom whole.

it’s enough to gain him some traction in advertising, something the company has pushed along with acting, both which he’s complied with wholeheartedly.

the rule of thumb? stay aware of your image, but never fail to be humble–being projected to the same spew of lovely compliments on loop of course makes this awfully easy. they want him to be relatable, down to earth. another trick with contrast that’s enough to entertain the masses and gain empathy. jisung’s own personal touch being to never cross the threshold into straight up delusional territory (exhibit a: attitude controversies? what the fuck are you smoking? exhibit b: saying they don’t need girlfriends when they’ve got their fans? no thank you).

the same philosophy is applied when it comes to his place among the boys–give credit where its due and be thankful for what’s given and got. anything that goes above and beyond and enters peak uncharacteristic excessive tomfoolery? then on god, he’s gotta be the one that’s smoking mad.

inner

his single crime is having a backbone. a human spine can only take so much pressure before it snaps under the weight of the unimaginable. humiliation stings (they’re next to nothing, close to it), sure, but there’s a reason why language exists. the pen’s mightier than the sword, and a mouth that knows how to strike someone numb than the slap of a palm works the same way. it’s not loyalty here, but merely an honest defense of everything that has his name associated with it. in the past, he’d been notorious for it–particularly in the wake of senior groups who don’t know when to can it, like they’re not only on top because fortune favors the fucked up and vice versa. the truth hurts, and the only thing that’s changed in the name of it is that he now has ground that is more solid than it’s ever been before if he’s to take the fall. evolutionary tactics for the sake of survival. it’s that simple.

IDOL HISTORY

baggage? pass. any brand of mommy-daddy issues or familial dysfunction both nuclear or extended? forget about it. there’s absence, but in a world this big, who doesn’t want some negative space in their lives? brooklyn is being pushed and pushed til it spills over, and he’s caught in the flood. childlike wonder keeps him distracted most days–that, and a schedule of extracurriculars that has him up and running. life moves by the rhythmic click-clack of the L, the school bell ringing for every hour, and earbuds glued in on his way to baseball practice. the blueprint, epmd’s strictly business, odds and ends of music mixes and archives he clicks through, building up a little world of rat-tat and snares.

there’s a meaningfulness to it, a to-the-point truth, the same sort that his parents jot down or announce through television screens. he takes to it like breathing, and from then on it’s kind of all-consuming. experimenting with different sounds, moods, flows–ranging from embarrassingly bad efforts to perfectly decent with some polish.

opportunity knocks after high school graduation. the rare trip to seoul to visit his grandparents turns to an msg talent scout handing him a card for consideration. if there’s anything to be thankful for, it’s that he’d sprouted like a beanstalk the summer before–paired with him growing quite nicely into his features, there’s a chance here. and with passing auditions, it expands. jisung weighs the percentages in his head, a diploma in journalism versus the paper-thin degrees of (possible) fame and affluence. his parents look at him as if to say with their eyes, god, eighteen years, and only to raise atall dumbass?

the prideful creature that he is, jisung doesn’t know how that could be possible. it’s only when the trainee days hit that he realizes with silent horror that oh. they might’ve had a point.

being familiar with singing and rapping gives him a leg-up in evaluations, all for that to be for naught the second they have to learn how to dance. it’s probably the first time having legs this long and inflexible nearly screws him over, but that’s where fake it ‘til you make it is exceptionally handy.

it all ends sooner than anticipated, anyway (like all fever dreams do, you could suppose). a year and then some, and he’s slotted for msg’s upcoming boy group. they’re multifaceted and (for the most part) interesting. neither of these qualities, jisung also comes to understand, mean shit. but he clings anyway, because there’s that so-called “meaningfulness” to it that might as well be the proverbial titanic in the face of the iceberg called public opinion. and if there’s nothing else going for him, face and body aside, he’s got a nose for smelling out bullshit, and jisung knows, this is anything but. jumping ship isn’t happening anytime soon.

they keep releasing songs, performing, and releasing more songs, rinse, repeat ad nauseam. hope is a thing with feathers, except those feathers are molting real fast for some of them. the years drag on, the calls from his parents offering to terminate that damned contract once and for all more tempting by the minute. but he’s a twenty-something by now, and with it the buddings of adult responsibility. emphasis on buddings, because as far as the msg execs are concerned, he’s not doing anything along the lines of responsible.

case in point: what he says, or rather, does. his transparency is a double-edged sword, simultaneously refreshing and well, sharp. not in the way that they like, and especially when he uses it against (senior) industry mates taking the liberties to drag their lack of reputation through filth. pity is the last thing desired, but there’s something about soon to be has-beens themselves picking on small fry that doesn’t sit well with him. so (allegedly) ignoring such folks on broadcast to forgoing the honorifics with a drop of the hat, no doubt it’ll get the rumor mill running. it’s not until the public eye starts zeroing in on an apparent pattern of him not bowing to other acts on stage does msg bring the hammer down–reflecting the obvious resort, but the reminder-slash-warning of the bigger consequences if he isn’t careful.

but by then, he’s a different kind of desperate as is. re:group is taken to like a second chance, fever dream-like training sessions that feel like deja vu and all. three years in, and dignity be damned. he’s grateful for the chance. exposure feels both like a second skin and a novelty, fits him glove-sleek in spite of not lasting there all that long, let alone making it to the final cut. it’s enough of a catalyst, enough of tiny, tiny nudge to skyrocket them into an overnight success.

compromise, along with this “nothing to something” narrative, makes for a winning combination. it no longer becomes a matter of being talented but being marketable. the love calls begin soon after, and so starts the growing repertoire in endorsement deals and acting projects, and he’s looking to expand his horizons a little further. he’d been here solely for the music from the start, and always will be, but in the face of a changing sound, there’s something oddly relieving in filling a different path to success that is hard to deny.

[viralhottopics]

Dubai: Insider Travel Guide

(CNN)Dubai may be famed for its bigger, bolder, brighter design philosophy, but it’s not all shiny buildings and alligator-skin Rolls-Royces. Dubai’s origins as a small fishing settlement centuries ago remains within the cracks.

Dubai has become a go-to career stop for tax-averse foreigners — it’s Arab at its core but capitalist at its edge. That means glistening shopping malls, outrageous hotels and a lifestyle that’s been acclaimed by Mercer as the best in the Middle East.

While you’re in the neighborhood … Abu Dhabi: Insider Travel Guide

With a population of just more than 2 million (about 75% male), it’s flashy and it’s ostentatious. Let’s get started:

Hotels

Luxury

Al Qasr

Compared with the city’s glitzy and unashamedly gaudy Burj Al Arab and Atlantis The Palm Hotel, Al Qasr, which translates as “The Palace,” offers a distinctive Arabic flavor (Persian rugs and ornate oil lamps) without resembling Ali Baba’s grotto.

Step inside the lobby and the scent of freshly cut rose petals — which are scattered into a center pool — hits you square on, while rooms look out onto Arabesque waterways and the Persian Gulf.

One&Only Royal Mirage

Despite the name, there are in fact two One&Only resorts in Dubai, both within a couple of miles of each other.

Celebrity favorite Royal Mirage is the more worthwhile of the two.

Guests have included Michael Jackson and David Beckham, who’ve slept within the Arabian architecture, immaculately cultivated palm tree gardens and probably lounged on the crisp white beachside cabanas.

It’s also a great place for water sports — expert South African instructors offer wakeboarding and wakesurfing lessons in the calm waters right off the beach.

Kempinski

One of your few chances in the Middle East to wake up with a penguin.

Kempinski Mall of the Emirates

Not only is this five-star hotel a shopper’s dream (it’s attached to Mall of the Emirates), it looks out onto the most bizarre scene in the desert — Ski Dubai, one of the largest manmade ski slopes on the planet.

The hotel has crafted its suites accordingly, with chalet-style decor, Molton Brown hues and fake fireplaces.

From the bedrooms and dining room, visitors can see the piste, tobogganing track, chair lifts and even a gaggle of penguins flown in to live in the 22,500-square-meter fridge.

Mid-range

Amwaj Rotana Jumeirah Beach

Though in the moderate range, you still get five-star accommodation at the Amwaj Rotana.

For half the price of the luxury resorts you get a room on JBR Walk, the area where locals show off their souped-up Jeeps and million-dollar Ferraris.

Here you can also kick back with a shisha pipe in the dozens of al fresco restaurants along the beachfront.

Unlike most areas of the city, you can actually walk around.

Budget

Citymax Al Barsha

Cheaper than some and in a good location 20 minutes from all areas of Dubai, these digs are small, new and squeaky clean.

Each room comes with international TV channels, fridge, kettle with tea and coffee, Wi-Fi and cleaning services.

You have to buy your water from the vending machine down the hall.

The bottles in the room aren’t replenished after check-in.

Don’t stay here for the decor; stay for the lively American-themed rock bar on the ground floor, where a blonde bombshell singer (often in white Lycra) belts out everything from Nirvana to Cranberries covers.

Dining

Fire & Ice

A hypertrendy loft space complete with NYC-style brickwork, Fire & Ice is set in one of Dubai’s most unusual architectural feats — Raffles Dubai, a 19-story pyramid tipped with gold that’s worth the journey alone.

This carnivore’s Eden is as elaborate inside — the meat is singed in pans at sub-zero temperatures.

Prime cuts are served alongside beautifully presented minimal veg and flavored foam.

Beef eaters can challenge themselves to identify each of the imported slabs of meat on the sampler plate, which comes with mini-cuts of Irish Angus, Aussie Angus and wagyu beef.

Levantine

This restaurant may not offer the best Lebanese cuisine out there, but it does bring eclectic fantasy decor at Atlantis The Palm.

On the outside you’ll find salmon-colored walls and a casino-style spade shape in the center of the building.

On the inside it’s psychedelic, swirly patterned carpets, under-the-sea motifs on the walls and a ceiling-high blown-glass sculpture coming out of a shell-shaped fountain.

At Levantine you can sit outside on the terrace and take it all in, while chomping on a selection of hot and cold mezze, grilled meats and Arabic breads.

Cabana

Although the food selection here won’t make your jaw drop — expect shwarmas (chicken wrapped in bread with garlic paste), grilled prawns and vegetables — the setting will.

This sleek, outdoor restaurant does exactly what it says on the tin: serves you while you lounge around on poolside seats.

There also happens to be a staggering view of the world’s tallest building.

Aprons & Hammers

Set on a docked boat, guests at this novelty eatery get an apron and a variety of utensils, including lobster forks, claw crackers, hammers and tweezers with which to dismantle shellfish.

There are a variety of buckets filled with cooked crabs, claws and legs, or lobster and shrimp.

Bussola

The resort-like palm tree, swimming pool and beach backdrop make you feel like you’re holidaying in the Bahamas rather than the desert.

The menu includes simple Mediterranean dishes such as imported cold cuts, pomodorino salad with sun-dried tomatoes and chunks of orange and parmesan, salami-slathered antipasto and lots of pizza cooked in a stone oven.

Ravi’s

In spite of the gritty canteen-style decor and plastic dishes, Ravi’s is busy every night of the week.

You’ll find incredibly tasty Punjabi curries, such as spicy chicken jalfrezi, full of Indian vegetables.

The haleem is a slow-roasted porridge-style dish with lentils and lamb.

Freshly cooked rotis are served with a variety of tangy dips.

Bu Qtair

In the fishing village to the right of Umm Sequim beach you’ll find plastic tables and chairs scattered around a car park, and a white Portacabin serving fish, fish and fish.

At the counter, a selection of curry-slathered morsels is stacked high in a metal tray.

Chefs fry snapper or hammour in front of you and serve it with a bowl of curry sauce, home-cooked paratha, rice and salad.

Smiling BKK

It’s not easy to find this hipster Thai restaurant, which is hidden in a back street in the Jumeriah district.

Look for the neon-mustached Mona Lisa sign on the outside.

Inside is a creative medley of kitsch memorabilia — walls covered higgledy-piggledy with picture frames and a pin board filled with Polaroid snaps.

In the corners there are tongue-in-cheek pictures of naked Thai girls with their bits covered by humorous phrases.

Tables are adorned with place mats made of recycled magazine pages.

Typical Thai dishes come with fun names such as “Masters Of The Universe.”

Dubai in the sky: 12 restaurants with a great view

Nightlife

Jetty Lounge

This beach bar set on The One&Only Royal Mirage’s private beach exudes cool.

It attracts a young, professional crowd on weekends, who lounge around in their designer threads on the crisp white couches overlooking the sea and yachts, while listening to down-tempo beats and sipping expensive cocktails.

At.mosphere

If you’re looking to show off, get the elevator to the 122nd floor of the Burj Khalifa and take a seat at At.mosphere’s bar.

Though this place is predominantly a restaurant, it stocks rare whiskies and vintage wines.

You can sip on them while enjoying a 360-degree view of the city while sitting 1,450 feet (442 meters) above ground level.

Nasimi

Nasimi specializes in beach beanbags and novel cocktails — made from vodka, midori, fresh melon, lemon and sugar, the Nasimi Signature is worth a try.

A roster of one-off events at this popular spot make it worth checking in on frequently. Chicane, Zero 7, 2manyDJs, Roger Sanchez and Pete Murray have all appeared for the series of daylong “Sandance” parties.

360 Bar

Set on the end of its own pier, hovering on Gulf waters, 360 is a hotspot for sundowners who love the views of the iconic sail-shaped Burj Al Arab hotel, yachts pulling into the marina and the city skyline.

It’s got an Ibiza vibe, as the DJs play down-tempo soundtracks to the panoramic sunset cinema, then crank up the tempo at night for a club-vibe that inspires ravers to keep their sunglasses on.

Irish Village

One for homesick Europeans, the Irish Village pub is decorated to look like a friendly village shop, tobacconist and pub, all kitted out with wooden fixtures imported from Ireland.

It has a pub garden, Guinness, roast dinners and Irish stew.

Barasti

Here you’ll find hundreds of expats of the Aussie, Kiwi and South African variety, who come to relax with a shisha on the sand, dance to the cheesy bar band on the wooden decking against the night sky.

Drinks are reasonably priced and it’s always packed, but call ahead in case of special events on weekends.

Promoters often bring in international DJs or artists such as N-Trance, The Streets and Sister Sledge.

Shopping

Dubai Mall

This is the world’s largest mall, with 1,200 shops and a retail floor area of more than half a million square meters.

It’s also filled with more luxury designer brands than you can shake a credit card at — Gucci, Dior, Prada, Burberry and so on.

When it comes to outrageous, Gold Souk takes the gong. The most amazing thing about this place is the fact that there’s seemingly no one guarding the large amount of precious metal behind its regular glass shop windows.

Madinat Souk

Attached to the adjacent Jumeirah Beach Hotel, this labyrinth of high-end market stalls selling everything from expensive shisha pipes to antique furniture and jewelry is Dubai’s take on a Middle Eastern souk.

There’s no hustle and bustle, no dirty corridors or fake goods.

Instead shoppers can browse in perfumed, air-conditioned corridors and rest in between stress-free shopping at one of the many bars or restaurants in the complex.

Unsurprisingly, locals and expats don’t shop here, although it has become a social hangout, and visitors can pick up a well-made gift at an inflated price if they’re so inclined.

BurJuman Centre

Ironically, this high-end mall is set in a poorer area of Dubai, yet it houses Cartier, Bvlgari, Versace and Louis Vuitton outlets as well as mid-range brands Guess and DNKY.

Despite the staple luxury goods, this mall has a different feel than the other mega indoor complexes, with outdoor gardens to explore in between earth-shattering purchases, a rarity in Dubai.

Ibn Battuta Mall

Well worth a visit, this mall not only offers a selection of familiar stores, including Top Shop, Next, H&M and Accessorize, it also sports off-the-wall decor inspired by the travels of 14th-century Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta.

Here you’ll find a giant model of a ship and an elephant, plus displays telling the story of Battuta’s travels.

The “Persia” section of the mall has an incredible hand-painted dome; the “Egypt” section has walls covered in hieroglyphics.

Bur Dubai Souk

Parallel to the Creek in Bur Dubai, the souks in this area sell pashminas, dishdashas, spices and gifts.

It’s a touristy area, but a good place to try your haggling skills with friendly shop vendors.

The end of the souk offers a fascinating glimpse into the local community.

Here you’ll find the Shri Nathje Jayate Temple and a Hindu lane, where hawkers sell flower garlands, Indian sweets and incense.

Holographic Shiva pictures and packets of bidis go for a couple of dollars.

Bur Dubai Souk, behind the Grand Mosque; off of Abi Talib Street

Activities

Skydiving

If you feel the need to launch yourself out of a plane over the Palm Jumeirah and hurtle toward the ground from 12,000 feet (3,660 meters), Skydive Dubai would love to have you.

It’s one of the busiest jump zones in the world, with bird’s-eye views of Dubai’s skyscrapers, the Gulf coastline and desert in the distance.

You can even train for a paragliding license here on one of the Skydive Dubai courses.

When you’ve completed it you’ll be qualified to jump solo anywhere in the world.

If you’d rather watch, the annual Dubai International Parachuting Championships is held during winter.

Waterparks

At Wild Wadi Waterpark you can surf the 10-foot (three-meter) flow-rider (artificial wave machine), zip down the largest freefall water slide outside of the United States or fall though a plug hole.

Or you can try Aquaventure Waterpark where you can drift around on the lazy river or experience the 90-foot (27.5-meter) near-vertical drop, called the Leap of Faith, which propels your body through a see-through tube inside a shark tank.

A wild ride in Dubai: A visitor’s guide to the city’s new theme parks

Desert Safari by four-wheel drive

Twice daily, convoys of Jeeps hurtle around an area called Big Red in the desert close to Dubai.

Dozens of companies take cars of up to six people over the distinctive orange-tinted dunes.

Tell your driver the kind of adventure you’re looking to have, whether it be dune bashing or a relaxing drive, and he’ll oblige.

Afterward, guests are taken you to a mock Bedouin camp for a feed, Arabic dancing, henna drawing and camel riding.

Water taxi

The best time to ride a traditional Abra water taxi is at sunset.

Cross the river in Bur Dubai for photo ops of the protruding domed mosques against the red skyline.

Local boat drivers also offer longer scenic tours for tourists up the river and out to sea. Dinner cruises are also available.

World’s 100 best beaches

The best airline meals

World’s best wine tours and trails

Read more: http://ift.tt/2es8AXl

from Dubai: Insider Travel Guide

[idolizerp]

LOADING INFORMATION ON INDIGO’S LEAD RAP BAN  JISUNG...

IDOL DETAILS

STAGENAME: N/A CURRENT AGE: 25 DEBUT AGE: 20 TRAINEE SINCE AGE: 17 COMPANY: MSG SECONDARY SKILL: Modeling

IDOL PROFILE

NICKNAME(S): jiji, cat dad, face genius INSPIRATION: the hip hop legend himself, tiger jk. SPECIAL TALENTS:

beatboxing.

solve a rubiks cube in under 30 seconds.

remain unflinching during “don’t laugh” challenges.

NOTABLE FACTS:

mom and dad are reputable journalists living abroad.

is an only child.

can play the piano and drums.

owner of a one year old maine coon kitten named piper.

turned down an admission to nyu in order to become an idol. 

IDOL GOALS

SHORT-TERM GOALS:

keep working, pushing forward, pulling his weight. idol contracts are temporary, but the grind is forever. they’ve made it despite the odds, and he’s wholly focused on having that ball stay rolling. a nifty name brand deal (or three) would be nice to end the year, but he’s not picky.

LONG-TERM GOALS:

do everything, leave nothing–establish himself as the go-to brand face, dabble in acting, put out a solo (though given msg’s track record, he’ll give himself another couple of years before giving it a chance), establish some sort of music collective a decade down the line, roll around in CF money for the rest of his days to come.

IDOL IMAGE

outer

actor face, model proportions, nobody rapper. the weight of the last moniker is the card that knocks it all off balance, locks him (them) into this seemingly never-ending cycle of shoddy luck, until that survival show miraculously turned the tides for the better. before that, he’s the dissonance that msg likes to play off of–softer visuals of his sort don’t scream “rapper,” but that’s precisely the point.

with this wave of newfound fame now, he’s this: actor face, model proportions, indigo’s lead rapper; now with a more extensive list of footnotes tacked to each label following his name. there’s still a lot of focus on how he looks, surface-level perfection that plays off a criss-cross of intimidating and downright ethereal, a physical symmetry that at times (even on the account of the most grainy, pixelated fantaken shots) is difficult to fathom whole. it’s enough to gain him some traction in advertising, something the company has pushed and he’s complied with wholeheartedly.

the rule of thumb? stay aware of your image, but never fail to be humble–being projected to the same spew of lovely compliments on loop of course makes this awfully easy. they want him to be relatable, down to earth. another trick with contrast that’s enough to entertain the masses and gain empathy. jisung’s own personal touch being to never cross the threshold into straight up delusional territory (exhibit a: attitude controversies? what the fuck are you smoking? exhibit b: saying they don’t need girlfriends when they’ve got their fans? no thank you.).

the same philosophy is applied when it comes to his place among the boys–give credit where its due and be thankful for what’s given and got. anything that goes above and beyond and enters peak uncharacteristic excessive tomfoolery? then on god, he’s gotta be the one that’s smoking mad.

inner

his single crime is having a backbone. a human spine can only take so much pressure before it snaps under the weight of the unimaginable. humiliation stings (they’re nothing, were nothing), sure, but there’s a reason why language exists. the pen’s mightier than the sword for a reason, and a mouth that knows how to strike someone numb than the slap of a palm works the same way. it’s not loyalty here, but merely an honest defense of everything that has his name associated with it. in the past, he’d been notorious for it–particularly in the wake of senior groups who don’t know when to can it, like they’re not only on top because fortune favors the fucked up and vice versa. the truth hurts, and the only thing that’s changed in the name of it is that he now has ground that is more solid than it’s ever been before if he’s to take the fall. evolutionary tactics for the sake of survival. it’s that simple.

IDOL HISTORY

baggage? pass. any brand of mommy-daddy issues or familial dysfunction both nuclear or extended? forget about it. there’s absence, but in a world this big, who doesn’t want some negative space in their lives? brooklyn is being pushed and pushed til it spills over, and he’s caught in the flood. childlike wonder keeps him distracted most days–that, and a schedule of extracurriculars that has him up and running. life moves by the rhythmic click-clack of the L, the school bell ringing for every hour, and earbuds glued in on his way to baseball practice. the blueprint, epmd’s strictly business, odds and ends of music mixes and archives he clicks through, building up a little world of rat-tat and snares.

there’s a meaningfulness to it, a to-the-point truth, the same sort that his parents jot down or announce through television screens. he takes to it like breathing, and from then on it’s kind of all-consuming. experimenting with different sounds, moods, flows–ranging from embarrassingly bad efforts to perfectly decent with some polish.

opportunity knocks after junior year. the rare trip to seoul to visit his grandparents turns to an msg talent scout handing him a card for consideration. if there’s anything to be thankful for, it’s that he’d sprouted like a beanstalk the summer before–paired with him growing quite nicely into his features, there’s a chance here. and with passing auditions, it expands. jisung weighs the percentages in his head, a high school diploma versus the paper-thin degrees of (possible) fame and affluence. his parents look at him as if to say with their eyes, god, seventeen years, and only to raise atall dumbass?

the prideful creature that he is, jisung doesn’t know how that could be possible. it’s only when the trainee days hit that he realizes with silent horror that oh. they might’ve had a point.

being familiar with singing and rapping gives him a leg-up in evaluations, all for that to be for naught the second they have to learn how to dance. it’s probably the first time having legs this long and inflexible nearly screws him over, but that’s where fake it ‘til you make it is exceptionally handy.

it all ends sooner than anticipated, anyway (like all fever dreams do, you could suppose). a year and then some, and he’s slotted for msg’s upcoming boy group. they’re multifaceted and (for the most part) interesting. neither of these qualities, jisung also comes to understand, mean shit. but he clings anyway, because there’s that so-called “meaningfulness” to it that might as well be the proverbial titanic in the face of the iceberg called public opinion. and if there’s nothing else going for him, face and body aside, he’s got a nose for smelling out bullshit, and jisung knows, this is anything but. jumping ship isn’t happening anytime soon.

they keep releasing songs, performing, and releasing more songs, rinse, repeat ad nauseam. hope is a thing with feathers, except those feathers are molting real fast for some of them. the years drag on, the calls from his parents offering to terminate that damned contract once and for all more tempting by the minute. but he’s a twenty-something by now, and with it the buddings of adult responsibility. emphasis on buddings, because as far as the msg execs are concerned, he’s not doing anything along the lines of responsible.

case in point: what he says, or rather, does. his transparency is a double-edged sword, simultaneously refreshing and well, sharp. not in the way that they like, and especially when he uses it against (senior) industry mates taking the liberties to drag their lack of reputation through filth. pity is the last thing desired, but there’s something about soon to be has-beens themselves picking on small fry that doesn’t sit well with him. so (allegedly) ignoring such folks on broadcast to forgoing the honorifics with a drop of the hat, no doubt it’ll get the rumor mill running. it’s not until the public eye starts zeroing in on an apparent pattern of him not bowing to other acts on stage does msg bring the hammer down–reflecting the obvious resort, but the reminder-slash-warning of the heavier consequences if he’s not careful.

but by then, he’s a different kind of desperate as is. re:group is taken to like a second chance, fever dream-like training sessions that feel like deja vu and all. three years in, and dignity be damned. he’s grateful for the chance. exposure feels both like a second skin and a novelty, fits him glove-sleek in spite of not lasting there all that long, let alone making it to the final cut. it’s enough of a catalyst, enough of tiny, tiny nudge to skyrocket them into an overnight success.

compromise, along with this “nothing to something” narrative, makes for a winning combination. it no longer becomes a matter of being talented but being marketable. the love calls begin soon after, and so starts the growing repertoire in endorsement deals and magazine spreads, and he’s looking to expand his horizons a little further. he’d been here solely for the music from the start, and always will be, but in the face of a changing sound (which he privately wishes wasn’t so piano-driven now, but hey, money talks), there’s something oddly relieving in filling a different path to success that is hard to deny.