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pikatrainer99 · 7 months

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Happy Pokémon Day! (My history with the franchise and how it changed my life)

So, I always post Pokémon stuff here on this blog, but I haven't posted anything about HOW I fell in love with this franchise...so what better time to do that than on Pokémon Day!

I got into Pokémon during the Gen 4 era, when I was about nine years old. I was on vacation with my family and having my quiet day at my grandparents' vacation rental while my parents stayed at ours with my younger brothers (two of them were just tiny little babies, so that's a lot of noise). I was just left to my own devices since I was having quiet time (as an autistic person, quiet time with no sensory overwhelm is a necessity), and I was flipping channels on the TV when I came across an episode of the Pokémon Diamond and Pearl anime on Cartoon Network. I found myself completely sucked in and fully immersed in the battle Ash and Pikachu were in, and from then on, I was hooked! There was just one problem... Pokémon was still seen as a little kid's thing by everyone around me, and there weren't any kids at school or anything that liked it, so I decided to keep this newfound special interest a secret from everyone, including my own family...actually, ESPECIALLY my family, as I already liked too many little kid's things for my parents' liking (read: my dad's liking).

So how did I keep it a secret? Well, I kept everything I consumed limited to the anime, and I always watched it in my own room with the door locked and the key with me inside my room so no one could get in and see what I was doing. Everyday after the living nightmare that was school, I came home, took the family laptop up to my room to do research on the franchise on Serebii.net and Bulbapedia. I looked up all the Pokémon, all the characters, and found older episodes of the anime from the 4kids era to watch, which I enjoyed immensely, especially Ash's voice (yep, I started with Sarah Natochenny's Ash but I still like Veronica Taylor's Ash better...no hate to Natochenny though, she really improved over time and really made Ash her own, so I appreciate the life she brought to the character, I just prefer the sound of Veronica's Ash voice a little more). And at the end of each Pokémon knowledge-seeking/anime-binging session I would always delete ALL the search history on Google AND the watch history on YouTube (I didn't have my own YouTube account at the time), so no one would ever suspect a thing. I did this for YEARS...in fact I did this well into HIGH SCHOOL!

It wasn't until 2015 that I discovered PokéTubers...and from there my world opened up more, as I had finally learned that there were plenty of older teens and adults who loved Pokémon, I just had to find them (which, the whole social thing is really hard when you're autistic like me). MandJTV was the first PokéTuber I watched, and it only expanded from there, to the point where I now watch almost exclusively PokéTubers. Watching PokéTubers made my love of Pokémon feel valid, that I wasn't the only one, and that there's probably more adult fans than kid ones at this point. And when I entered my final year of high school, I met someone new to the school who liked Pokémon! But I had to act like a complete newcomer to the series since I had never outwardly shown interest before. It made me inwardly cringe every time I purposely butchered a Pokémon's name pronunciation, or said my favorite Pokémon was Pikachu when it's really Infernape and always has been, or pretended I didn't know type matchups, etc, etc. But the best part about finding someone in my actual life who liked Pokémon meant I could finally tell my family about it!

When I told them, they were surprised as they never thought I would be into something like Pokémon, but I was finally FINALLY allowed to embrace my love for it, and get merchandise and play my first Pokémon game! I got Pokémon Art Academy for my 3DS that year for my birthday since I was always drawing Pokémon characters on any paper I could find, and this was actually what got me to start taking my art seriously and gave me the drive to improve! Pokémon also gave me the inspiration to start creating my own original characters for original works, and now I basically live in my own creative universe! For Christmas that year, I got my first Pokémon games, Y and Alpha Sapphire, also for my 3DS, and I played Y all day and hyperfocused so hard that before I knew it my dad was yelling at me to "put the pokey-man down and come eat supper" or else they'd take my 3DS away for a little while...oops. 😅

The best part about all this is, this was all just in time for Pokémon's 20th anniversary celebration! I had an amazing time getting exclusive merch from Toys R Us (RIP TRU, I still miss that store...) and starting my Pikachu collection (it's my number one comfort Pokémon, so of course I collect Pika merch) that is steadily growing to this day. I also got almost every Mythical Pokémon from the big giveaway events each month in my game! And then came the cards...oh Arceus, the cards...this is what got two of my three younger brothers into the franchise, and now opening packs is like a huge event in my house. My mom and dad just roll their eyes when we do it but they are happy for us whenever we pull something good from a pack. After the cards came the PokéSpe manga, which I most constantly post about my precious little autistic bean of an OC Orange on this blog (thank you so much for all the support on those posts btw), so obviously I love PokéSpe with all my heart just like I do the rest of this franchise...especially the Sinnoh Trio!

Ever since 2016 I've been living my best life as a Pokémon fan! I made my first true friends through Pokémon, I've learned many valuable lessons through Pokémon, my special interest in Pokémon helps me process the world around me (trust me on this, I know it sounds weird but I don't know exactly how to explain even though I usually can explain things better through writing). I still play the games, watch the anime, read the manga, etc. I've found so many relatable characters as well! And I somehow also can't stop seeing autistic or neurodivergent coded characters in any form of Pokémon media I consume...it's like I have a radar in my head because I'm autistic myself with three neurodivergent brothers as well so it automatically makes spotting the signs easier for me I guess. At the end of the day, it's all headcanons anyway, but it still feels validating to see so many characters in the franchise that is my main special interest possess many of the same traits and deal with many of the same struggles that I do in my day to day life. I will most likely continue to make character analyses on those characters here as well since I've become more confident in my ability to do that ever since my Crispin analysis became my most popular post BY FAR (thank you all for the support on that one btw)!

All in all, Pokémon has really changed my life for the better and helped me through so many hard times in my life. I honestly don't know where I'd be right now if Pokémon didn't exist, but let's not think about that too much, eh...? I'm just happy living life as a Pokémon fan, and I will continue to be a massive fan forever.

Happy Pokémon Day everyone! Thank you for reading this huge post, sorry about the length. 😅 And happy 28th Pokémon, here's to many many more years to come!

#pokemon #pokemon day #my pokemon history #and how it changed my life #long post #really long post #pika talks #pika rambles about his special interest

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huffle-dork · 2 years

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JSE Community Greet

Preferred name: Huffle! If you know my irl name don’t use it please unless you actually know me irl uwu

Preferred pronouns: She/Her!

When did you start watching JSE? (this is not a competition, old or new you're a member of the community) I started watching Jack probably around when I started watching mark so like- mid 2014-2015? I was a much bigger fan of mark though and really only saw Jack in collabs- I think I thought he was a tad bit screamy even tho early mark was also very loud hvhgh I got super into it Fall of 2017 though!!

Why did you start watching JSE? right after WKM came out I was so invested in egos cuz of dark and wil and ego content always overlapped between Jack and mark! I had no idea who anti was in the dark fics I was reading but I looked it up and just- fell in love with everything Jack did- it was really perfect timing- I had just graduated with my painting degree but hadn’t drawn for fun in a couple months and I was feeling so listless until I found the fandom and it got me drawing again!!

What's your favourite things about the channel? I love seeing sean get super invested in the games stories cuz I’m the same way! And just the way he does stuff is so ADHD and he also got late diagnosed so just… it’s comforting- I also just love listening to his voice :)

Do you have a fave ego? MARVIN THE MAGNIFICENT MY BELOVEDEDDDD!!! Jackie is a very close second but I love my cat boy sooo much I dunno why I attached myself to him so much but god I dunno if ive ever loved a character so much- which is funny cuz I remember when I was learning about the egos until sean actually named him I was like- this guy isn’t an ego he’s just Sean in a cat mask! 😂

What type of community member are you? (lurker/artist/theorist/editor/shitposter/author etc) artist uwu but also a fic writer though I’m not as constant with that as I wanna be ^^; (Pssttt all my fics are in my description ohhh you wanna go read them so badly especially if you like ausss~)

What else do you enjoy? Doll customizing is my latest fixation ngl 👀 if I could find not ugly boy dolls I kinda wanna make some egos or my swap boys also video games I wanna try to stream again more!!

Are you open to nice messages and new friends? Sure!! I’m not the best conversationalist sometimes but you never know when you’ll meet a good friend! Hell my best friends all met cuz of some asks on here through the community ^^

Find the original prompt here! Thanks @archivefullofyoutubers what a fun idea!!

#jacksepticeye #jacksepticeye community #Jacksepticeye community greet #Huffle talks

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stormblessed95 · 2 years

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Jikook RUN BTS Ep. 1 - 2

So episode 1 is just their introduction video to the app and to the show. It's adorable they are so cute. Lol and i can't watch this now without thinking of them reacting to it later 🤣 but I adore it so much. It's also a good place for me to point out that I can't tell you exactly which days, lol but Episodes 1 - 6 were filmed during the time frame of June 14th - 27th of 2015 as my best guess. I'm giving 2 weeks to be generous to myself. Lol but the only one I know for sure is that episode 5 was filmed 150623.

Episode 2 is the who is the best man challenge. I swear I have SO MANY questions about how these challenges relate to being manly. Because WOW. Lol who can hold out the longest being tickled? Seriously that was a lot of groping going on between all of them. Lmfao Who has the biggest mouth? Musical chairs? There is just a lot happening and I need someone to explain to me how any of this relates to who is the greatest man 🤣 I just think there is a lot that could be unpacked here lmfaoo

The members tickling JK so aggressively to the point where his shirt was literally falling off. Lmao like damn, chill 🤣 And JK still won. I'm not surprised Mr. Competitive as hell and likes to torture his senses. Twice during Musical Cushions lol Jimin states his confidence in JKs win. Once before the game even starts that they flashback too, and once after the second round as well. Lol

Reminds me of a later episode of them all being scared of JK getting too aggressive at musical chairs with his big muscles in an effort to win. Lol and win he does. Jimins confidence is well placed in Jungkookie clearly.

#jikook #kookmin #jikook run episode 1 #jikook run episode 2 #jikook in 2015

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brandybradyrandyandyndy · 4 years

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Mark Forster's role in the Ace Attorney franchise

Okay, first off:

I'm not a fan of Mark Forster's music, please don't take this post the wrong way

There might be some aa trilogy spoilers

Also, I admit this title is pretty bold for what I'm going to say on this topic, but I watch The Voice of Germany with my sister every week and one of the coaches is Mark Forster who I only know like five songs of in total, but his song "Au Revoir" (which is actually a terrible song btw. It's so catchy, I've had it stuck in my head since I woke up this morning and it ruined my day.) kind of reminded me of the whole "Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth chooses death." thing, because the only thing I knew about this song was the refrain:

which would be roughly translated to:

"There is nothing that's holding me back, au revoir / Forget who I was / Forget my name / It will never be the way it was before / I'm off / Au revoir"

But as I looked further into the lyrics I found out there is a "rap part" which tells you about the places the lyrical I will go to when they're away and it contains a passage that adds a beautiful twist to my theory/headcanon (I'm not sure what to call this yet).

"I'm sitting on the Mayan throne in the jungle / [...] / The phoenix is taking off now"

You see where I'm going with this? I know, it's not Phoenix who's leaving and I know the lyrics refer to the Maya Civilization from Mesoamerica, but I thought it was a funny coincidence, that not only does the word "Phoenix" appear in the lyrics of this song, but so does "Maya".

So when I first saw this part of "Au Revoir", I started imagining how Miles Edgeworth would listen to this song and like dramatically sing along to it and start crying or something, but this only posed another question:

How could this scenario happen? How and why would he even come in contact with this song?

My first guess was, Miles probably went to Germany after he left his note, because he grew up there (I think), when he had been adopted by Manfred von Karma as a child, and he heard the song somewhere in the radio because in Germany they blast Mark Forster's music in almost every public space, so there is no escape from it ever. I tried to find out, during which timespan Miles left America, just to make sure if there was a chance that he actually could have heard it on the radio.

In the Ace Attorney wiki this timespan isn't clearly mentioned, but since the last case (Rise from the Ashes) from the first game is set in February 2017 and Edgeworth returns to America in March 2018 I'm guessing, this is exactly the time window in which he's in Germany* (minus some days/weeks of course, because I don't think he'd just leave on the exact same day he had his last trial in America). *to make this easier for me I'm just assuming he spends the entirety of his travels in Germany

But this brings me to my problem, the German Charts of 2017/2018.

As you can see, the only songs by Mark Forster that were in the charts while Miles would be in Germany are the ones above. This means that it is highly unlikely that he knew of "Au Revoir" from the radio, because why would they play this old song if they could also play Mark Forster's more recent songs that are popular right now?

But when exactly was "Au Revoir" popular enough to be in the German Charts?

During my research I looked up these years, too, and it came down to 2014 (the year "Au Revoir" was released) and even a year later in 2015. So there is no way he could have known of this song if his most recent stay in Germany was in 2017, right? (I mean, unless the German people he met then, had literally no taste and forced him to listen to it.)

But I have a pretty simple and logical explanation on how he could have still known of this song, even though he probably wouldn't have heard it in Germany in 2017.

I tried really hard, but I couldn't for my life find real data on Mark Forster's demographic, so just believe me if I tell you that his demographic is mostly preteen and teenage girls. Also, it's worth mentioning that Mark Forster's music is pretty much only known in German speaking countries like Germany, Switzerland and Austria. Now, let's take a closer look at the years, in which Au Revoir was most popular: 2014 and 2015

Who could Miles Edgeworth possibly know, who in 2014/2015 is 1. German, 2. a teenager and 3. a girl? The answer is quite obvious:

His younger sister Franziska von Karma.

Considering that she was either 14 or 15 when "Au Revoir" was released, she fits Mark Forster's demographic perfectly and although I'm not 100% sure if she was in Germany then, I still believe, she must have had at least some connection to Germany in some way, maybe a German friend who she still was in contact with or maybe she had access to German tv, maybe German YouTube channels or social media. And don't get me wrong, I love Franziska von Karma and I wouldn't wish anything bad on her, but at the same time I strongly believe that she'd be the kind of girl who'd have gone through a Mark Forster phase as a teen.

Now remember that I, myself, have a sister. I know what siblings do to annoy each other and I just know from the bottom of my heart that if Franziska really was a fan of Mark Forster's music, she would blast it on any opportunity she'd get. Or she would at least talk about him and his songs with her brother. Believe me. If Franziska really listened to Mark Forster, Miles would have known of him, too. There is literally no other way. (For reference, I know every 1D member's name, birthday and relationship status, although I literally do not care about any of them at all, only because my sister is obsessed with them and talks about them 24/7. Meanwhile the only MCR member I know, is Gerard Way, even though I listen to their music on the daily.)

So here is my conclusion.

Miles Edgeworth definitely listened to "Au Revoir" by Mark Forster on the plane from Japanifornia to Germany and he also definitely cried, after he made sure nobody could see him (especially during the part "Der Phönix macht jetz 'n Abflug"/"The phoenix is taking off now"). Also, he probably listened to the song multiple times during his stay in Germany and you literally can't prove me wrong on this. I mean you could try, but I invested way too much of my time in this to actually care about another person's opinion on my shitty headcanon.

Also, the moment Franziska met Phoenix and Maya, her memories vaulted her right back to her Mark Forster phase and her hatred against Phoenix wasn't solely based on the fact that he was accountable for the conviction of her father Manfred von Karma, her hatred was also ignited by the fact that she probably had "Au Revoir" stuck in her head because of these two for the rest of the day and I just know that this must have completely ruined it for her.

Also, unrelated to anything I've said prior:

Klavier Gavin would definitely collaborate with Mark Forster on at least one song and however severe Franziska's Mark Forster phase might have been, I am convinced Klavier would have outdone her by far. I haven't played AJAA yet, but as much as I've gathered from the fandom, he's like a weeaboo but with Germany, I think? I'm absolutely sure, he wouldn't ever miss a chance like this.

Finally, here is the song this whole post is about:

#ace attorney #aa #miles edgeworth #franziska von karma #manfred von karma #narumitsu #wrightworth #phoenix wright #maya fey #german #german culture #mark forster #klavier gavin

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thequeenofmyownscreen · 3 years

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Thirteen things I noted about CR2E23 "Have Bird, Will Travel" and the Talks Machina about it :

(the ten things thing is getting harder and harder to limit myself to)

Liam presented a sketchbook that traveled around the world in the Critter community, for the artists to draw in it. He was weeping, and rightly so, it's amazing.

The decision to go after the troll who has Febron's body, with the 100 gold (which is more important) is a risky one, but I understand. Plus, dynamite !! What could go wrong haha ?

If I had a nickel every time Sam's character went to put fire to something, only to realise in the moment he had nothing to light a fire with, well...I'd have two nickels, which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice ! And now I want to watch that epic Scanlan scene again.

Alas, for all their warning, some members of the Mighty Nein do close combat, and with tgis troll, it turns into an almost catastrophe. Fjord ! Thrice ! Went down ! And was almost killed if it weren't for Slow !!

Molly is a shifty motherfucker who needs to calm down with the use of Charm Person. I love him, but he definitely thinks he knows better than everyone, in his own way.

Yes, talking secretely about your backstory in front of the bird who can only repeat words to express herself will go great, Nott.

I'm with Jester, I want to go to Hupperdook just because of the name.

Beau, a useless lesbian, trying to flirt with Yasha : "Your eyes are like the swamp. Super muddy (...) One's like the swamp, one's like the sky (...) It's... very diverse biodomes in your eyes." I also love Travis' comment at this attempt : "... How ?..."

The bandits are back !!! Those poor assholes, twice now they found the Nein and got scarred for life.

Hupperdook is amazing. I imagine it as Minas Tirith but with more industry workers. Matthew Mercer, you did it again.

Oh this is the moment ! The moment when CR became his own thing. They quit Geek&Sundry. Ok story time. When I first became more interested with tv in general years ago, one thing I loved doing (and still loves) was searching to understand how the industry was built. So when I came upon the story of the writers's strike in 2007, and the cataclysm it was in Hollywood, I started watching Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog, and then The Guild created by Felicia Day on Geek&Sundry. To this day, it's still a favorite thing of mine. It's just a very good webseries. And I also watched Geek&Sundry's rising, I watched the Wil Wheaton's series about table-top games. Just before I got distanced, because of the shit-ton of things to watch otherwise. Just before Critical Role started actually. Isn't it ironic ? All of this to say I know the history of the channel, being bought by Legendary Entertainment, and then slowly and sadly dying... It's visible in the background of Critical Role, by the way. To the plethora of shows there was in 2015, many of which Marisha Ray created, there is a visible rapid decline starting 2017, and since 2019, I believe the channel is in stasis, if not dead. It's sad. Geek&Sundry brought so much to the Internet as we know it. But Critical Role separating was a very good decision for them. History is being made retrospectively before my eyes, history in which I was a part as an early audience. Wow.

KIRI HAS ONLY 6 HIT POINTS stop bringing her into battles, the Mighty Nein, I beg of you

They discuss Joe Mangeniello's guest spot last campaign and his great love for D&D, and in the anecdote on how he waited barely 2 seconds at Matt and Marisha's wedding to talk about D&D and how his wife rolled her eyes so hard, I re-learned the fact that he is married to Sofia fucking Vergara.

#my thoughts #critical role #cr campaign 2 #CR2E23

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keepingupwithlinmanuel · 4 years

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Lin-Manuel Miranda: I’ve been writing in lockdown

In his head, Lin-Manuel Miranda has an alternative timeline of what he would be doing right now. The 40-year-old would have recently finished filming his directorial debut, for one, the Netflix adaption of the Broadway musical Tick, Tick... Boom!, which survived just ten days of shooting before everything shut down. Right now, he says, he should be in the edit.

Instead, he’s on a Zoom call, talking to GQ from his home about a filmed version of Hamilton, which wasn’t due out for another year, and he’s apologising for the fact that it doesn’t say “Lin-Manuel Miranda” on his screen, but “Lin-Sebastian’s dad”, as it “defaults to the time I did a parent-teacher conference”.

...

So, Hamilton is coming to Disney+, which is incredibly exciting – and a year earlier than planned. Talk me through how that decision was made.

We realised pretty early, even when the show was off Broadway, this is going to be a tough ticket. And we sort of realised there’s value in capturing what it feels like in the theatre with this company. And the three days we shot this film was the week before the principals started to leave. We all left the following Friday. So it’s the best rehearsed cast maybe in the history of movies – we were performing and what we’d spent a year doing. When lockdown happened we had around 75 per cent of it – enough of an original, a rough cut, to be able to sell it to Disney and partner with Disney. We didn’t have a final edit. We didn't have a sound mix, which in a musical is pretty important. But once it became clear there was not going to be any theatre for the foreseeable future, we all kind of pivoted and said, “Oh, this is actually an opportunity to remind people of the power of theatre when there is none.” And so we got to editing and then it just became like racing. We turned in the final cut, like, two weeks ago.

How do you feel generally about the future for Broadway? Are you optimistic that it’s going to bounce back?

I’m optimistic. I’m not optimistic about any kind of timeline. Like I don’t know what theatre looks like on the other side of this, particularly in the absence of a vaccine. One of the books I've been reading during this lockdown is Will In The World, the biography of Shakespeare by Stephen Greenblatt. And I read it because I wanted to know what did Shakespeare do when the plague shut down the houses? Because there was that sort of meme going around, you know, “He wrote King Lear, what the fuck are you doing?” It’s not entirely accurate. He did write some sonnets. Those are pretty good. But it's, you know, that uncertainty. When we make our calling where people gather, it’s a real one. And what I'm encouraged by is honestly the fact that given that there are no shows right now, it’s actually a time to tackle some of the more systemic issues with our theatre we need to talk about. How to get an audience for Hamilton that is as diverse as the cast on stage. We're in talks, just for ourselves in this moment – at a time where we're talking about systemic racism in the United States – on how to make backstage look more like on-stage; how to address some of the inequities when it comes to black folks and people of colour in the theatre industry. It’s still so predominantly white backstage and at the top, so I think we're seeing people getting their houses in order because there's time to do it and no one has the excuse that we're very busy programming our season. So I can only speak for the Hamilton company, but we are hoping that when we come back, we come back into a world where we're addressing some of these issues and we're having the tough conversations.

...

Yourself and Hamilton are natural kind of bedfellows with the Black Lives Matter movement. But you did take a bit of criticism for not maybe speaking out early enough? Was that just an oversight?

Yeah, absolutely. And I called it a moral failure. And I stand by that, you know. I had been tweeting about Black Lives Matter since 2015. I remember us rehearsing “My Shot” for the first time when we heard the there was an acquittal for the police officers who murdered Eric Garner and how heavy that felt in the room and how we cried in the room. But for some reason, the moral blind spot is not bringing Hamilton and its social channels as a brand in alliance with that earlier. And so, you know, I think we're making up for lost time in that regard. And you're right, there are natural bedfellows. We are a company made up of black and brown actors who reckon with the origins of our country every night on stage.

...

Something that always stays in my head is when you hosted SNL just before the 2016 presidential election and you sang at a picture of Trump in the corridor “Never gonna be president”, which was so funny at the time but is hard to watch now. How do you look back on that?

The night before we'd heard the Access Hollywood tapes. I don't think we've ever heard such vulgarity from a presidential candidate full stop. The fact that that was not career ending, I don't know what that says. But whatever it says ain't good. But, you know, it is unprecedented that a moment like that happened. And still millions of people said, “This is our guy.”

How are you feeling about the upcoming election?

I am feeling… I don't know. I'm feeling uncertain, as everyone else is. I think people are certainly energised. I think there is a lot of… I think a lot of what you're seeing in the streets and in the world is the country really loudly saying, “This guy does not speak for us” and “The integrity of our voting system is more important than ever.” And that's a big concern of mine. But I have no doubts that the majority of this country does not believe that this president speaks for them. It's just a matter of that being reflected in the voting booth or in the mail and voting situation that we will probably find ourselves in. We've seen there's no bottom. There's no bottom to the guy's actions. I feel positive that more people are speaking out. I feel positive seeing that the overwhelming majority of these protests have been powerful and peaceful and, like, with masks and people handing out sanitisers… I've seen the peaceful protests myself in my own neighbourhood. And none of that changes unless we actually dismantle the systems that set them up. You know, it has to be followed – the lip service has to be followed up by meaningful change. I'm encouraged when I see that Minneapolis is looking to reallocate those police funds to the community. I'm encouraged when I see action. It’s very easy to tweet, but much harder to dismantle these inequities.

...

I guess everyone would want to know if you’re working on another stage show. Any ideas in the locker for that?

Yeah, but I can't tell you. I mean, it's weird, because I kind of messed it up because Hamilton had such a public birth, right? Like, I didn't know the Obamas would call and say, “Do you have anything about America and can you perform it at this podium?” But I did. And so that that was the most public writing I've ever done, because I kind of showed everyone the ultrasound in 2009 and then I didn't finish it until 2015. So I can't write that way again, because the scrutiny on me is so much greater now. And, you know, the best idea to kill an impulse is to talk about it. But, yes, I'm writing some new things that I think would work nicely in the theatre and I have some time to do it.

OK, so without asking you to give the game away, can I ask how far you are through the writing process for it?

I'm writing the first three or four songs, which I'll rewrite once I find out what it's really about. You know, because you start thinking you know what it's about and then if you get lucky in a place, it starts to tell you what it's about. And you go, “Oh, shit, I thought I was writing it for this reason, but I'm really writing it for this reason.” So I'm writing the initial impulse songs right now and it'll tell me how much I did.

#lin manuel miranda #GQ #representation #hamilton #politics and advocacy #hamilfilm #unnamed new theatrical project #unnamed disney project #interviews

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ollyarchive · 4 years

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Olly Alexander: ‘I want to make the community proud. I don’t know if I've always got it right’

David Levesley

As Ritchie Tozer in Russell T Davies’ devastating 1980s-set drama It's A Sin, Olly Alexander told a story from a tragically formative decade in gay history. As himself and as frontman of synthpop trio Years & Years, he contributes to a new narrative. But, as he reveals here, the insecurities and anxieties written into minority identities are not just a personal challenge: they can shape stories told by, for and about all his peers

It is the afternoon before It’s A Sin is broadcast to the nation and its star, 30-year-old musician and actor Olly Alexander, is buying a cat cushion. “It’s for a friend!” he says, mortified to be caught in the act of buying a plush feline.

Where once being the star of a primetime Channel 4 drama might mean greenrooms, watch parties and a celebratory afters, this is January 2021, so a flame-haired Alexander is sitting in his kitchen, drinking a smoothie the exact same lilac as his top.

“I’ve had a lot of restless energy,” he says, having binge-watched The Real Housewives Of New York City in between doing lots of squats and “watching homoerotic YouTube workout videos”. It’s not quite the normal build-up to a game-changing drama, but is there a better way to remember peacetime than watching a show filled with period pieces such as “friends drink indoors” or “strangers have guiltless sex at a house party”? It’s A Sin is both a masterpiece and a reminder that someday we will, once again, be able to be eaten out by hot men. “You’re so welcome,” Alexander says, laughing. “If I can bring anything to the British public, it’s a lesson in anal hygiene.”

Anal hygiene are two words we have probably never published together in GQ, but, more importantly, are probably not the subject of many – if any! – scenes in a piece of media not uploaded to OnlyFans. They are, however, the subject of a crucial scene in the first episode of It’s A Sin, in which Alexander’s character – an 18-year-old fledgling queer from the Isle Of Wight called Ritchie Tozer – gets rimmed by his campus crush, Ash Mukherjee (Nathaniel Curtis). No gay men watching came out of that scene not feeling seen and, like all the other sex scenes in It’s A Sin, it feels deeply realistic and fantastically homosexual.

“I can tell you I’ll never forget being practically butt-naked with my arse in the air in front of colleagues,” says Alexander, laughing. But by that point, he says, he had done so many sex scenes that it felt somewhat rote. “‘Ritchie’s got a dirty bum! Stick that arse in the air and look disappointed!’” What was interesting, he says, was the dynamic of trying to produce the most authentically gay experiences possible on camera.

‘WE UNDERSTOOD THESE CHARACTERS WITH A KIND OF SHORTHAND THAT GAY PEOPLE UNDERSTAND’

They were working with Ita O’Brien – a movement director and arguably the OG intimacy coordinator – but, for her sins, not a gay man. So while everyone would have an input in how a sex scene would be best shot, “There came a point when they would say, ‘Please tell us, because we’re not gay men.’” So then the writer, the performers, the director and O’Brien’s team would come to a consensus on how to make a threesome look like three men shagging, yet also make it look the best it could on camera and make sure “you never touch each other’s genitals, basically”.

Alexander says O’Brien’s input was a “lifesaver” for him on set. Although by the end he felt comfortable, he was at first intimidated by just how exposing this would be. “I had a bit of a hysterical breakdown. I was really worried I couldn’t do it. I just didn’t feel safe.” This was interesting to hear from Alexander, the proudly queer frontman of the band Years & Years, who “spent four years on the road performing and finding this character that I do feel sexy in”. It was then that O’Brien and the team asked him to bring whatever made him feel comfortable on stage into the room before the cameras rolled. “So I would sing before the takes, be a little bit of Olly on stage,” he says, laughing. “That was my way of tricking my brain and thinking it was a character. Which, of course, it was.”

Before he was Olly Alexander, consummate gamine artiste, Olly Alexander Thornton was a singled-out kid at a primary school in Gloucestershire (where his mother ran a music festival). He was, like many other gay kids growing up, bullied and harassed for being something “other”, which everyone is able to see long before you can define it yourself. “I remember being in primary school and I had long hair and people would call me a girl,” he says, and the wound still feels raw when he recounts it.

“I knew that was bad for boys. I didn’t like the things that other boys liked: I just wanted to play with the girls and watch Disney movies. Which obviously straight boys do as well,” he mentions, always making sure to provide caveats to include all facets of the human experience. Although the bullying began to subside by secondary school in Monmouthshire, he still stood out: he had big curly hair – “I was trying to hide my ears” – and would wear make-up or a choker sometimes on nonuniform days. “I think I was trying to figure out who I was,” he says. “Imagine getting to discover your own sexuality without any preconceived ideas! I mean, maybe that’s impossible. But it would be nice, right? Why should people bullying you be your first brush with your own sexuality?”

Like Ritchie Tozer, Alexander moved to London at 18 to pursue acting, but he also had designs on becoming a musician. “Because when you’re writing a song, you’re the director, the star, the producer, the writer. I wanted all of that! I needed that to be able to express myself,” he proclaims with faux hysteria. For years he found success as an actor in a diverse selection of roles: he appeared in Gaspar Noé’s Enter The Void, costarred with seemingly every other white British actor in The Riot Club and also in God Help The Girl, a musical film written by Belle And Sebastian’s Stuart Murdoch. “Then Years & Years just got to a place where it was going to take over and needed my full time,” Alexander says. So his focus moved to the music.

‘IMAGINE DISCOVERING YOUR SEXUALITY WITHOUT ANY PRECONCEIVED IDEAS!’

It was on their third single, “Real” – released in 2014 – that Alexander first felt his art and his sexuality really intermingle. “It was the first time I put in a male pronoun – I say ‘Do it, boy’ – and it’s quite subtle, but it was a big deal for me at the time.” This was when Years & Years were trying to get signed to a major label, so doing something so consciously queer felt like a risk (the band went on to sign with Polydor later that year).

While pop music has long had an element of queerness about it – you need only look at the artists featured in It’s A Sin to see how gay 1980s pop was – Alexander has long been frank that sexuality and success are not always seen as natural bedfellows. At a Stonewall event in 2018 he recounted being told during his media training, “Maybe it’s better not to say anything about your sexuality at all.” In the same year, he told NME there had been progress, but that “I just know there are people who are hiding their sexuality, so it’s still not gone completely”.

Alexander doubled down on it with the music video – featuring his Bright Star costar Ben Whishaw – where he “purposefully made it gay. There’s a cruising element to the very beginning. It’s slightly ambiguous, though, because back then I wasn’t quite ready to launch into being the gay crusader I think I am now.” In 2015 the band won the BBC’s Sound Of 2015 poll, releasing their first album, Communion, the same year. It became 2015’s fastest-selling debut album from a UK-signed band.

‘I JUST WATCHED LIAM PAYNE TAKE HIS TOP OFF, BUT NOW I’M NOT ALLOWED TO?’

But despite the success, and the realisation that audiences were either supportive of – or simply unfazed by – the queerness of Years & Years’ music, there is always an anxiety for Alexander about just how accepting people are willing to be. “I’ll tell you for real,” says Alexander, “I go out on stage – even if it’s for our own audience – and I’m like, ‘What if some of them don’t like me? What if some of them have an issue with me today?’ I always feel like I’m going to try a bit harder next time, try to do a bit more.”

While the character of “Olly Alexander, Years & Years frontman” is one that bespangles its performer with confidence, being queer in the music industry isn’t always an easy thing to navigate. He remembers seeing a tweet from someone who said Alexander’s sexuality was a ruse to try to attract the pink pound – a term for the spending power of gay men – “And it had an impact on me, because I’ve consciously tried to [be openly gay] in a lot of circumstances where I wouldn’t normally. And then for someone...” He tries to think of how to put it and comes up short. “It can chip away at you.”

He wouldn’t change a thing about his success, he says, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t times when it isn’t hard to be out and proud while also getting your foot in the door. “When we’re playing a pop music festival, I’m looking at the other acts in the lineup and there aren’t that many gay people on them,” he says. “You see how quickly your show isn’t family friendly any more because I want to take my top off and I’m like, ‘Well, I just watched Jason Derulo and Liam Payne take their tops off and have all these women in underwear, but now I’m not allowed?’ What do you do with that?”

It’s A Sin marks a return to acting but, also, a chance to refresh Alexander’s musical batteries too. Following Years & Years’ second album – 2018’s Palo Santo – the third album was proving hard to pin down. “I’ve been trying to make this album for about 18 months at this point, stopping and starting, listening to all the songs and... it’s just not feeling relevant any more.” Alexander had always loved Russell T Davies’ work, so when he heard Davies was making a new TV show he “had to be in it. I would just jump at the chance to work with him. And that was before I read the script.” Years & Years had just finished touring Palo Santo and, to Alexander, it felt like the stars had aligned.

While the anxiety of performing queer sex scenes might have been particularly exposing for a gay man like Alexander, there were huge benefits for him being in a cast and crew that were predominantly LGBTQ+. “It was a revelation. I’ve never been on a set with so many queer people. I’ve never even worked with a gay director, so it was a completely new experience.” Plus, being asked to play part of a group of gay best friends, portrayed predominantly by gay actors, meant the chemistry came very quickly: “We understood these characters [with a] kind of shorthand that gay people understand.”

An inclusive, comfortable environment was beneficial for more than just sex scenes and simulating a decade of friendship. It’s A Sin also required its cast to grapple with the issue of HIV and aids, not just as a part of the furniture – as we do in the 21st century, with our knowledge of viral loads, sleeping with undetectable partners and new medications such as Prep – but really putting a forgotten part of British queer history under the lens, who it affected and how it changed the LGBTQ+ community irrevocably. “It’s an issue that is deeply surrounded by stigma and there’s a lot of trauma there and a lot of fear,” Alexander explains. “I know, personally, it was an area that I was scared to really engage with.”

He mentions that just before filming he made friends with an older gay couple at his gym and in talking about the show with them he was offered a rare opportunity to hear about personal experiences of the aids crisis. “It can be so difficult as a gay person to feel like you have intergenerational support,” says Alexander. “Elders are so important in our community. You can get so much from the people who have gone through so much before and fought that fight.”

For Alexander and the cast, It’s A Sin was a rare opportunity: a chance to be brought together with a whole group of men and women who were there at the time and who were willing to share their experiences with them. “I feel so lucky that I got to engage with that and keep learning. I was just scratching the surface and there are so many stories you can tell from this period. It’s impacted us all the way until now and it will in the future.”

Starring in It’s A Sin has also changed what Years & Years’ third album is going to sound like. After the initial writer’s block, Alexander says, he focused instead on the music of the show (Bronski Beat, Kelly Marie, the titular song by Pet Shop Boys) “and it really took my mind back to the club” – especially in the midst of a pandemic, when the queer nightlife venues that are the backbone of our community are so desperately missed.

“All the music I wanted to listen to in lockdown was high energy. It was dance floor. It was club music.” This was the music that had played such a huge role in his early life in London, had inspired the first Years & Years album and a genre that owes a great debt to the LGBTQ+ community. “I think at their heart, lots of these songs are about joy despite crushing pain. I just thought, ‘God, imagine hearing “I Feel Love” on the dance floor for the first time.’ What a transcendent experience that would be.”

‘ELDERS ARE SO IMPORTANT IN OUR COMMUNITY. YOU CAN GET SO MUCH FROM THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE FOUGHT THAT FIGHT’

And so Alexander went into the studio – as soon as it was safe to do so – and created a bunch of new songs. Is it easy to find collaborators behind the scenes who get it when he says, “I want it to feel like Britney meets Rihanna meets Hot Chip via New Order”?

“It can be a challenge to find someone that really understands,” admits Alexander. He recalled being sent round the songwriters and producers in Los Angeles that all artists are sent round at a certain point, “And some of those people are amazing – some amazing queer people as well – but predominantly... You know, they’re straight, so it can be quite challenging.”

Feeling safe with his collaborators hasn’t been an easy journey, but now he’s in a good place for it. He also pointed out that it’s not just queers who can understand his vision: his bandmates are straight, he points out – “I really believe in working with straight people! Some of my best friends are straight!” – and his frequent collaborator, the producer Mark Ralph, “is a real ally to us gays”, who was always willing to vibe along to Paris Hilton singles with him.

A new sound – a queerer sound – isn’t just a risk in a world where Alexander’s performances are held to double standards and the linchpins of queer culture can still be seen as synonymous with perversion. The impossible standards queer work is held to don’t just come from the straight world: gay men can be terrible recipients of work designed for them too.

Russell T Davies has dealt with it his entire career: “There’s the problem of lack of representation, but there’s the problem that when you are represented, it’s just not seen,” he explained when I spoke to him recently. “You just learn to cope. I worry about it. I probably worry about it more than I say here, but at the end of the day it’s never stopped me writing the next thing.” But he gets it because he, too, is a gay man who consumes art and he sees the same biases coming out when he watches other queer-centric work.

Yet he was amazed that artists younger than him are still dealing with the same crises: “It’s what comes with being a minority. It’s what comes of oppression and you kind of expect this to pass. But then you talk to young people like Olly, who’s a different generation from me, and you find them thinking the same things,” Davies said. “I was lucky to have my training during an age when you’d be lucky to get one review in the Times. Now you live in a world of reviewers.”

When I ask Alexander if he worries how gay men will respond to a gay artist’s work, it is no easier for him to respond than it was for Davies. “Oh, God, you’re making my heart race now,” he says, breathless. “I should be careful, because I don’t want to demonise anybody. But I tried to really unpack this myself and... I’ll just sort of say it.” It is clear that this is intense for him: his eyes are looking watery as he tries to phrase it delicately.

“I have this – I think irrational – anxiety about gay men tearing me down. And I tried to interrogate that within myself and I think it’s complicated, because a lot of it has to do with internalised phobias and shame, about how I see myself versus how other people see me.” He begins to cry. “What I do know is that I want them to not hate me. And I want to make the community proud. It’s been at the heart of pretty much every decision I’ve ever made. And I don’t know if I’ve always got it right.”

‘I HAVE THIS – I THINK IRRATIONAL – ANXIETY ABOUT GAY MEN TEARING ME DOWN’

It’s tough being an actor asked to shed light and humanity on a complex phase in British LGBTQ+ history; it’s just as tough to be a gay man trying to make pop music that speaks to the queer experience. But Alexander is doing both and, what’s more, he’s being unapologetically queer in the public eye. There aren’t many LGBTQ+ people in the position Alexander is in and it must be exhausting, I suggest, to be expected to speak for the needs and fears of an entire spectrum of sexual and gender identities. After all, he’s just one man who wants to be proud of who he is. “Sometimes, when I feel the most anxious, I have a voice in my head that goes, ‘Oh, Olly, why on earth did you put yourself in this position? You really are not the strong person people think you are.’” But, he says, he is learning he can’t speak for everyone, even if people expect it of him.

Instead, he’s focusing on being proud of what he’s done – the visibility, the audacity, the bravery – rather than the critique of his anxieties or Twitter trolls. “I’m always thinking about me as a teenager and how I’m creating the person I wanted to be in the world. I’m actually doing it! Holy fuck!”

#olly alexander #years & years #yearsandyears #years and years #gq #interviews #fashion #magazines #acting #its a sin #boys #articles #queer #lgbtq #lgbtq+#issues #aids #hiv #music

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purplesurveys · 3 years

Text

1155

survey by shanynx73

Do you have a dry erase board? We probably do somewhere here at home. We don’t throw school supplies like that away just in case we’d all of a sudden need them.

What do you remember most from last summer? Thinking if I’ll ever get a graduation ceremony (which I didn’t); lots of pressure about applying for grown-up stuff like a bank account and social security; and being naive about my relationship that I had no clue was already quickly going down the drain.

Where is the last place that you shopped? If online spaces count, I was just at Lazada around an hour ago trying to see if there’d be a local shop somewhere selling Good Dye Young.

What kind of shoes did you wear today? Didn’t go out today so no shoes were worn.

Have you painted lately? No but it would be nice to, now that you’ve mentioned it.

Which season has the best clothes? We don’t get 4 seasons, soooooo can’t relate.

Do you know about the many uses of coconut oil? Not too familiar.

Do you watch Dr. Oz? Back when we still bothered to have cable I remember occasionally catching his show on TV as I’d flip the channels, but it never looked all that interesting to me.

When was the last time you got balloons? My dad’s birthday, three months ago.

What color is your favorite purse? I don’t have a favorite.

What are your plans for tomorrow? Take more surveys, try not to spend money, and maybe do a couple of daily reports I usually have to do at work so that I don’t have to skim through 4 days’ worth of data by the time I get back to work on Monday.

How was your past Christmas? It was amazing; it was the time I put my foot down and finally firmly decided to start moving on from Gab, so there was a lot of self-love and self-acceptance going on. It was a very personally enlightening time for me. It also helped that I got to spend time with my extended family (in the most socially distancingy way possible) to keep me distracted and remind me of what I do have.

Do you prefer the game Sorry or Trouble? I’ve never tried playing either and I can’t remember each of their main concepts off the top of my head.

What color are the sheets on your bed? They are blue.

Do you prefer pull-over sweatshirts or zip-ups? Zip-ups, so at least I have the option to open or close it.

Have you ever had quiche? Sure.

Have you ever had a conversation with a priest (etc.) outside of church? I might have. It wouldn’t be a kind of memory I’d save in my head, but a part of me thinks there is definitely a chance this has already happened before.

What do you order when you go to McDonald's? I feel like I’ve answered this recently lol but I usually get a Burger McDo. But now that I can afford to get pricier meals, I’m looking forward to the time I’ll finally be in the mood to get a 20-piece box of McNuggets all to myself hahaha.

What do you like to put in your coffee? I don’t really make my own coffee...I prefer mine made for me already, which is why 3-in-1 sachets work perfectly for me lmao.

What is a political issue you feel strongly about? Locally speaking? All of them. Being apolitical is just privilege at work. I do take breaks from reading the news once in a while for the sake of my mental health, but I’ve never stopped giving a shit.

How often do you have to charge your phone? The battery’s health has started to slowly dwindle down; and let’s be real, it was thanks to the time I had YouTube videos on 24/7 as a coping mechanism after my break-up. So for that reason I have to charge it 2–3 times a day; it now gets drained a little faster than it used to when it was still at 100% health, but overall I’d say it’s also still holding up well.

Do you have a song stuck in your head? Sugar on the Rim - Hayley Williams. I swear I listen to other artists too.

What makes a good movie to you? Screenplay. Lines can so very easily make or break a movie.

Do you have any yellow shirts? Yes, and other kinds of tops as well.

When was the last time you wrapped a present? 2015. That was the first and only time I attempted to, and when I saw that I proved to be terrible at it, I’ve since either 1) just bought paper bags, or 2) paid my sister to wrap the gifts I’ve bought.

Do you normally win or lose at rock, paper, scissors? I typically win, actually. No idea why.

Do you like Fruity Pebbles? No. This is honestly not a Filipino/Asian thing and I had absolutely never heard of it until The Rock started calling John Cena a big bowl of Fruity Pebbles like a decade ago on WWE TV. My tween ass felt like I had to fit in so I had my mom buy me a box of Fruity Pebbles the very next day even though it cost like a bitch, and it wasn’t even that delicious.

Do you have any stuffed animals from when you were younger? Nah, I wasn’t big into stuffed toys even as a kid.

What is the craziest thing you've heard or seen on TV lately? A guy getting arrested for picking up his own McDonald’s order outside of his own house. That is the clownery of the country I have to live in.

Have you ever hyperventilated? Yes.

What was your favorite book to read in English class? Without Seeing the Dawn.

Do you wear scarves? Nope.

Are your nails painted? They are not.

Do you like to dress up? Sure.

Are you looking forward to anything in the next week? Eh, not really. I was looking forward to this week because of the Holy Week break, so I’m actually dreading next week because there won’t be any other work break as long as this anymore until Christmas.

Do you buy lottery tickets? I’ve never done so.

What is your favorite flavor of Gatorade? I’m traumatized by Gatorade lol. My mom made me chug that shit down endlessly when I was 4 when I had multiple doubts of diarrhea or whatever it was, and I never got over it. To this day I refuse to even smell it.

Do you think most people wear masks? LOL I had already typed out a full-blown answer for this talking about Covid until I double-checked and saw that this survey was made in 2013, so it must’ve been talking about masks in the metaphorical sense...that’s my “ohhhhh” moment of the day for sure lmao. Anyway, yeah sure.

What feature do you get complimented on most? Skin.

What are you planning to do next? Look for another survey to take, and maybe some nice instrumental music to listen to.

#survey #surveys

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fangirlthings7 · 4 years

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BANGTAN SONYOENDAN

BTS SHOWS IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER

A beginner's guide to the fandom. Get to know BTS on a deeper level with their performances, guestings and variety/reality shows starting from their debut up to present. I myself is new to the fandom. So, I did some research myself and also with the help of my ARMY friends on what I should watch so I can relate to them. I hope this can help you get to know them as well. Let's take this beautiful journey together! - From your fellow baby ARMY Borahae! 보라해!

2013

061313 BTS DEBUT

Sukira/Kiss The Radio 130629 Sukira/Kiss The Radio 131005 (A/N: Their radio guestings is also a must. Date is in year/month/date format.) After School Club Episode 24 Rookie King: Channel BTS (8 Episodes)

2014

American Hustle Life (8 Episodes) (A/N: You should watch this first in reference on their other guestings because they mentioned it there. MUST WATCH!!! LOL.) Sukira/Kiss The Radio 140301 True Color Radio 140614 Volume Up 140912 BTS on Beatles Code 3D 140401 BTS on Weekly Idol 140430 MNet 4 Things Show 140513 (A/N: The legendary hidden cam of RM.) After School Club Episode 46 After School Club Episode 95 A Song For You 3 Episode 12 BTS at Yinyuetai (3 Episodes) (A/N: Personal favorite. I like how they were treated and welcomed in China.) A Little Dangerous Chuseok Hope Delivery at Love Food Bank Go! BTS (A/N: Their first Kcon in LA. Actual performances are on Youtube, KCON 2014. Jungkook's "International Playboy" line can be seen here.) BTS Festa 2014 (1st Anniv) BTS Now in Thailand Seasons Greetings 2015 Skool Luv Affair DVD Showcase Memories of 2014 (A/N: Includes ARMY 1st Muster, other overseas fan meetings and BTS Live Trilogy II: The Red Bullet)

2015

True Color Radio 150307 Sukira/Kiss The Radio 150505 Changnim's Gayo Plaza 150510 Kim Sungjoo Music Plaza 150521 Love Game Radio 150629 Sukira/Kiss The Radio 150702 Changnim's Gayo Plaza 151220 Hello Counselor (RM&V) After School Club Episode 158 Weekly Idol 150617 After School Club Episode 191 Weekly Idol 151216 BTS on Idol Show My Pet Clinic ( Jimin, V, JHope) BTS: Bokbulbok (5 Episodes) (A/N: This is only short, like 10 mins. per episode. It's available on V Live if you want to watch it with better quality and subs.) BTS Gayo Season 1 (9 Episodes) (A/N: This one is also available on V Live. Episodes are also about 10-20 mins. only. You can finish it right away.) Run BTS! (Episodes 1-10) (A/N: First season aired 2015 so I added it up here. Season 2 was aired later on 2017. This is also on V Live.) BTS Now 2 (Europe and America) Summer Package 2015 in Kota Kinabalu BTS Festa 2015 (2nd Anniv) BTS Undercover Mission: Volume 2 (A/N: BTS Japan Official Fan Meeting like Jap version of Muster.) BTS Wake Up: Open Your Eyes (1st Japan Tour) BTS LIVE HYYH ON STAGE BTS LIVE HYYH ON STAGE JAPAN EDITION At YOKOHAMA ARENA Seasons Greetings 2016 Memories of 2015 (A/N: I suggest to always watch this last because it's long. This one consists of 4 disc. Includes BTS Live Trilogy I: BTS Begins)

2016

Cultwo Show 160512 Cultwo Show 161013 (A/N: This is where fans sent in messages of encounters/seeing BTS in random places. BTS also shared their conception dreams.) Running Man Episode 300 (7vs300) The Boss Is Watching 160202 Star Show 360° 161107 Celebrity Bromance (V&Minjae) (A/N: You can watch it on V Live or Youtube) Celebrity Bromance (Jungkook&Minwoo) (A/N: Jungkook doll. "House was smaller but had more memories." uwu) King of Mask Singer Episode 72 (Jungkook) BTS Now 3 Chicago Bon Voyage Season 1 (Northern Europe) Summer Package in Dubai BTS Festa 2016 (Youtube) BTS Festa Birthday Party (VLive) BTS 3rd Muster ARMY.Zip+ BTS Japan Official Fan Meeting: Reaching You BTS Live HYYH Epilogue on Stage BTS Live HYYH Epiloge Japan Edition (Kayo Nenka on Stage: Epilogue) Seasons Greetings 2017 (A/N: If you're looking for the clip where JK is fighting with a chicken. You can find it here. You're welcome.) Memories of 2016

2017

Cultwo Show 170921 Law of Jungle in Kota Manado (Jin) King of Masked Singer Episode 93 (Jimin) Hello Counselor (Jin&Jimin) Let's Eat Dinner Together Episode 50 (Jin&JK) New Yang Nam Show Episode 1 Idol Party Ep. 11 Please Take Care of my Refrigerator (Jin&Jimin) Knowing Brothers Epidode 94 BTS Gayo Season 2 Bon Voyage Season 2 (Hawaii) Summer Package in Palawan Run BTS! Season 2 BTS Festa 2017 (Youtube) BTS Festa Home Party (VLive) The Wings Tour in Seoul BTS Live Trilogy Episode III: The Wings Tour - Japan Edition BTS Live Trilogy Episode III: The Wings Tour - In Japan Special Edition at Kyocera Dome Seasons Greetings 2018 Memories of 2017

2018

Summer Package in Saipan Bon Voyage Season 3 (Malta) BTS Festa 2018 (Youtube) BTS Festa (VLive) BTS 4th Muster Happy Ever After BTS Japan Official Fan Meeting Volume 4: Happy Ever After Wings Finale (VLive/Weverse) Burn The Stage Burn The Stage Documentary Seasons Greetings 2019 Memories of 2018

2019

Run BTS Season 3 (Episode 57 - Present) Bon Voyage Season 4 (New Zealand) Summer Package in Korea BTS Festa (Youtube) 5th Muster in Korea: Magic Shop 5th Muster in Japan: Magic Shop Love Yourself Tour in Seoul (DVD) Love Yourself Tour New York (Citifield) Love Yourself Tour Europe Love Yourself - Japan Edition Love Yourself: Speak Yourself in Wembley (VLive/Weverse) Love Yourself: Speak Yourself in Saudi Arabia (VLive/Weverse) Love Yourself The Final in Seoul (VLive/Weverse) Love Yourself: Speak Yourself in Sao Paolo Love Yourself: Speak Yourself - Japan Edition Bring the Soul Bring the Soul Documentary Seasons Greetings 2020 Memories of 2019

2020

I-Land Episode 7 Winter Package in Helsinki BTS In The Soop Bangbang Con The Live BTS Festa 2020 (Youtube) Map of the Soul: ON:E Break the Silence Break the Silence Documentary Seasons Greetings 2021

2021

Winter Package in Korea Excluding V Lives and Youtube channel contents. I suggest you also watch their performances at award shows.

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thepriceofbeingaroseisloneliness · 5 years

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The Freedom of Expression #1 28th February 2020 “The radio program with the concept of “ask for freedom of expression in the world” is back in Youtube! We will unravel the hot topics and the news related to the concept of Freedom of Expression.

Appareance:

Kaoru (DIR EN GREY direngrey.co.jp/) Joe Yokomizo (Writer / DJ) Tasai Reporter (Tokyo Sports) God ?

You can watch this program here Notes before reading: If you haven’t watched any of the programs or you are not familiar at all with The Freedom of the Expresion, you will be a bit lost because they make some references to previous programs. The program has sudden edited cuts, that’s why the topic changes suddenly without any introduction. This program was previously a radio show with about 70 episodes from 2015 to 2016. You can find most of them in youtube.

For parts with subs, I tried to do a literal translation but for parts without subs I felt more confident summarizing it as translating one by one got confusing and too long. I skipped some bits and lots of “hahaha” and “sou desu ne”. Be aware that at some parts, their talk is really random.

Feel free to correct me if you spot any mistake or any confusing as they are talking so casually and relaxed that it’s hard to get some parts.

(Intro)

Kaoru: Hello, I’m Kaoru from Dir en grey…. The Freedom of Expression…. I have heard it somewhere…it feels like something I have already done….

Joe: That’s is, yes…. but it’s not a feeling, I think that it’s certainly something we did (laughs)

Kaoru: It looks like that right?

“A radio program in which Kaoru (Dir en grey) was the main host aired from 2015 to 2016 at InterFM.” (Top left on screen)

Kaoru: The program was made from 2015….it was 2015, right? How could I say it? It’s having a revival in YouTube.

(Revival kanji appears on screen)

Joe: That’s amazing right? At first, we were talking, it was said that there would be a revival…

Tasai: Unexpected! (laughs)

Joe: I was really happy.

Kaoru: Right? I was surprised too (laughs)

Joe: Ah, this… I don’t mean that it was Kaoru who revived….

Kaoru: The talk got off track….

Joe: It got off track? At some point….

Kaoru: It felt like “don’t try to do it” …. ( he says it in kansai-ben)

Joe: I see. It got off track because of Kansai-ben (laughs)

Kaoru: It felt like “we will try to do it” Joe: It felt like that…let’s start (laughs)

(cut)

Joe: (At the Interfm Era) We did a lot right? Even special programs, right?

Kaoru: Yes

Tasai: Is that so?

Joe: We also made a sticker, right?

(cut)

Tasai: Brazil? You did a Live broadcast for the Olympics!

Joe: Dobashi-san…. Bishibashi Dobashi-san…(he appeared in this special)

Tasai: As this year there are Olympics again and in Tokyo…. I hope you can do a live broadcast

Joe: In this YouTube channel? (laughs)

Tasai: In YouTube (laughs)

Joe: It seems hard regarding broadcasting rights…

Kaoru: That …. *secret gesture* (laughs)

Joe: Secretly? Even though it was asked by Tokyo Sports Tasai (laughs)

(cut)

Kaoru: About Freedom of Expression….

God: Wait, Wait, Wait, Wait…

Kaoru: Yes? Yes?

God: Well…God has come down….

Joe: Ah, it’s God (laughs)

Kaoru: By himself…. (laughs) I thought about if he would come here in case it came down…

Joe: Usually it does! If you call him, god will come down (laughs) A god that comes down by himself at his own convenience.

Kaoru: Was that stance made before? Before I guess he should be preserved a bit more…

Joe: It can’t be helped that he comes out….

God: Because you forget about God!

Everyone: (Laughs)

Kaoru: We haven’t forgotten (laughs)

God: Don’t forget about God!

Tasai: We haven’t forgotten!

Joe: God is always inside your heart, right?

Tasai: It is! It is!

God: I see I see! (Happy) I didn’t think so…

Joe: God is not at the studio today though… Why?

God: It’s because I’m off night duty.

Joe: Off night duty? (laughs)

Kaoru: He did that before right?

Joe: Still having a night shift job? Are you really a God?

Kaoru: It’s been a long time, right?

God: That is…well…it’s seasonal…

Joe: This season is the night shift season?

God: No, it’s not like that…

Tasai: You did a job that paid 1000 yen per hour….

God: That is, that is…But the hourly wage was raised a little! You can say it’s like a holiday break…. the income has decreased (tears)

Joe: It’s the so-called labour reform.

God: That is, that is

Joe: Being God seems hard too…

God: Yes… its hard (laughs)

(cut)

Kaoru: As usual…. nothing changes…the feeling of tension…. I think we should get started…

Joe/Tasai: Yes

*Before getting into the main topic, Kaoru asks Tasai about a person who was with Bishibashi. It seems to be someone called Hiranabe who “it’s like a beast” according to Tasai. Then, Joe proceeds to tell a strange story (I think about this Hiranabe person?) *

Joe: When some celebrity passes away, he would call me and ask, “was this person your acquaintance?”. When I reply, “I barely knew them”, he suddenly hangs the phone (laughs)

Tasai: That’s mean

Joe: He is a mean person!

Tasai: That Hiranabe has finally been promoted by the director…

Joe: Eh? What is he now?

Tasai: Board member….

Joe is shocked while Kaoru asks if that it’s ok.

(cut)

Kaoru: I want to find news that have been attracting attention under the concept of Freedom of Expression…

*The topic is about Haruna Fuka, internet personality, former child actress. She seems to have a twitter account since she was just 9 years old (she is now 19) and she has used SNS to be open and vocal about several social topics. The topic now is that she filed a lawsuit against someone who slandered her in the net. It seems that someone posted that “her parents failed/ are a failure” and she and her mother filed a lawsuit asking for economic compensation. It seems that also some of her personal information was leaked. The discussion of the topic is mostly about the “price of fame” and how it can’t be helped that being famous you are exposed to this kind of things. Joe states discuss “at which point it becomes defamation” and it is not freedom of expression in SNS. He says that it might be difficult to draw a legal line online, but if that it’s not done, it can’t be helped that it gets worse. Then he asks Kaoru what he thinks about it, and he says:

Kaoru: Like, for example people write in SNS like they were talking with their friends in a room…. it’s better not to look at it (what people says) right?

Joe is like “But it’s real people, right?” and then ask if Kaoru searches himself and Kaoru says he doesn’t but he hears it from the staff that checks it so he kind of knows.

Tasai: When you are in the show business, from 100 opinions, 98 or 99 are good ones, but when there is one nasty/hateful one, it really comes through your eyes and hurts your heart.

Joe asks him as a Tokyo sports journalist. Tasai mentions how you can report it (I think?) like you can inform a legal corporation. Then, Joe again makes the million-dollar question.

Joe: How far it’s ok to guarantee the freedom of expression for tweeting? I think it’s a difficult thing.

Kaoru: Tweeting is about expressing yourself, right?

Joe: Of course, originally.

Joe adds that tweeting has an influence in things. He says that nowadays in Japan is like a hot water boiler when a topic comes out. He understands it especially for important topics, but he thinks that it’s just complaining and not trying to solve anything at all. Later, Kaoru says that it can be helped that you focus on the bad sides, even if, as Tasai said before there are 99 good things and just one bad. They go back to the Haruna Fuka topic and mention some extra information about her lawsuit.

Joe: I made an Instagram account for myself and most of the times when social things are done at The Dave Fromm Show! YouTube Channel and the topic is raised, my followers decrease…Finely, they decrease. They are going up and when the channel is updated next week, each time that is updated, they decrease. Treating with social topics….

(cut)

They discuss again about Fuka. Joe says something about young people complaining mostly in SNS and at some point, he is like “when I say young people, it feels like we are old” and they laugh, and he adds that it feels like there are 3 taboo topics: 1. Gender discussions 2. Political discussions and 3. Things that we hate to talk about but we have to talk about.

Around 13:05, God is back.

Joe: What do you think about it, God?

Kaoru: Is God there?

God: You know, God keeps being slandered right?

Everyone laughs.

God: Like God’s liar, even if I tell God there is nothing that he can do…. they even say that there is no God!…

Joe: I see, you are denied…

God: If you care about those things, you lose…

Joe: I see, do you search for yourself, God?

God: I do!

Everyone laughs.

God: There is only those things when I do research

Joe: Surprisingly, God knows how to handle SNS really well…

God: I do!

Tasai: God is amazing…

Joe: Does God use Iphone as one would expect?

God: I have two

Tasai: He owns two!

Joe: God has two (laughs) *makes gesture on having one phone in each hand* That’s so cool

God: It is! It is! I don’t use them while I’m working though…

Tasai: You signed a contract (laughs)

Joe: He is God, right? (laughs) I don’t know if this God is amazing or not…

God: If you care about those things, you lose!......It’s better to be hated than being indifferent!

Kaoru ask God about playing video games for an hour and God answers that its good that there are so many kids that are good with games? The answer seems to let Kaoru and Joe a bit confused. God adds that it’s better to become good with games quickly, which Kaoru replies jokingly with something like “if you are not good, it’s better not to play them?” and God replies “it’s better, it’s better”.

God: It’s like playing during a whole day and not being able to clear the game.

Kaoru: Because it’s a waste of time, right?

They talk about it a bit more.

Joe: Well, due to night shift, there is a feeling of tiredness right?

Kaoru: we are tired too. We were told to finish early

Joe: Sure! (laughs)

Kaoru: We have to make it interesting right?

God: I heard it was interesting…

Joe: Oh thank you!

They comment that they are being praised by God.

God: You can’t say that God is a liar!

Tasai: Please write that it was interesting in your SNS.

God: Yes, yes.

Joe: Please do it…

God: I’m pretending to be a human in SNS, so they don’t know I’m God…

Kaoru: It was the first program of The Freedom of Expression…how was it?

Joe: Doing the program after a long time feels fresh…

Kaoru/Tasai: That’s it!

Joe/Tasai: I’m happy…

Kaoru: Well…. mmm…. we started it with that feeling (laughs)…..but this time there is a only camera, right? This background with nothing on it…. if a a lot of people watch us…at this place…

Joe: A little more…

Kaoru: The number of cameras might increase…

Joe: Oohhh…

Kaoru: I don’t know how much Joe’s fee for appearance will be…

Joe: Eh? Is that so? (sweats) Today’s fee is written here…

Kaoru: It might be lower…

Joe coughs hard lol

Joe: That is only going to happen to me? (laughs) But please everybody, subscribe to the channel!

Everyone: Please do it.

Kaoru: Please look forward to the next programn

Everyone: Thank you!

and that’s all....

#dir en grey #kaoru #the freedom of expression #translation #kaorutranslations #Joe Yokomizo #Tasai

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nickburn · 4 years

Text

Things I Enjoyed in 2020 Despite Everything

Seasons Greetings! This year has felt like an eternity for so many reasons, and before it’s over, I’d like to take a look back on the distractions that got me through it. Along the way, I’ll occasionally point out where I was emotionally at the time and whether I got into a particular thing before or after the pandemic hit in mid March. I hope you enjoy this little retrospective of some of my experience during one of the worst years of human history!

Games & Mods

Might & Magic VI: The Mandate of Heaven

When I was making my 2020 resolutions list late last year, one of my goals was to play more old games in my backlog and not buy many new games this year. That goal largely went on hold, because, well, I sought out enjoyment wherever I could find it instead of forcing myself to play one thing or another. But before Covid, I was really enjoying my new playthrough of M&M6. I’d made attempts at it before, but it was really GrayFace’s mod that made the game click for me. Modern features like quick saves and mouselook make the game much more accessible, and I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to try an old-school RPG. It’s a great stepping stone into a mostly-dead genre. I’m hoping to get back to it soon. I just jumped ship to simpler ventures like Doom Eternal after the pandemic hit and haven’t looked back since.

Pathologic 2

I learned about the Pathologic series late last year and have since become a little obsessed with it. Hbomberguy’s lengthy video essay on the original game really intrigued me and lead me to trying the sequel/remake in April via Xbox Game Pass. In a weird way, it was cathartic to be a doctor in an even more dire situation than our current one and still see signs of the townsfolk trying to help each other deal with a supernatural plague and little help from their local government. The game helped me express a lot of what I was feeling at the time, when I was still getting used to working from home and wondering just how long this could go on for. I’ve gone back to it recently, and I’m hoping to finish it someday, if I can find a way to stop dying. Above all, Pathologic 2 teaches you how to make choices in no-win scenarios with little information or resources and still persevere, despite the world going to Hell around you. And that’s maybe the most important thing to practice at the moment.

Overwatch

I’ve continued to look forward to weekly Overwatch nights with my friends every Thursday, and it’s really important to have something like that right now. Even if it’s just a new episode of a show airing, a new video from a favorite YouTuber, or a regular Zoom call with coworkers, it helps so much to have something to anticipate from week to week and month to month. Otherwise, it’s really easy to feel like nothing’s going on besides the entropic deterioration of the universe. Overwatch itself helps with this, because it’s such a positive, bright, and optimistic game, as only Blizzard can create. And it’s improved a ton in the past couple of years, in a lot of ways. If you haven’t played in a while, hop in and check out all the new content with your friends; I think you’ll have a great time. It’s looking more and more like Overwatch 2 is right around the corner, and I’m very much looking forward to it.

I learned how to play Go after watching a documentary released this year about AlphaGo, the computer that beat the Go world champion, and I have a huge appreciation for the game now. I think it’s even more beautiful than chess, though even more insidious to learn. If you haven’t played before, start with a 9x9 board, teach yourself the basics, and try playing with another beginner friend. I guarantee you’ll be amazed at the amount of strategy and imagination that a game ostensibly about placing black and white stones on a grid can inspire. Go’s one of several new hobbies I’ve picked up this year, and those new hobbies have really helped me pass the time in a way that feels productive as well as take my mind off whatever depressing news just got blasted across Twitter.

Doom 64

Doom Eternal was fine, but Doom 64′s where my heart lies. The PC port on Steam is great, allowing everyone to easily play the game with mouse and keyboard. Its levels are tight and colorful, often asking the player to backtrack multiple times through the same areas to unlock new ones and take on whatever new twists await down each darkened corridor. It’s a surprisingly fresh experience. Unlike many modern Doom mods that strive to be sprawling marathons, 64′s levels are short but memorable, and the game is a great entry point to the series for newcomers because of that. Retro FPS’s continue to inspire and entertain me, and Doom 64 is one of my new favorites.

Golf With Your Friends

I’m not usually that into party games, but Golf With Your Friends strikes the right balance between casual tone and skill-based gameplay. The maps are vibrant and devious, the different modes are creative and often hilarious, and the pacing is near-perfect. If you’ve got a squad itching to play something together for a few nights, I guarantee you’ll have a lot of laughs trying to knock an opponent off the course or turning them into an acorn just as they’re about to attempt a nasty jump.

Quake 1 Mods

I probably sound like a broken record by now to a lot of you, but I won’t rest until I get more people into retro FPS’s. The outdated graphics and simple gameplay can be off-putting at first, but it doesn’t take long at all to get hooked after you’ve played the likes of excellent mods like Ancient Aliens for Doom 2 or Arcane Dimensions for Quake 1. And it’s only getting better, with this year marking probably the best year for Quake releases ever. The industry even seems to be taking notice again, with many talented mappers getting picked up for highly-anticipated, professional indie projects like Graven and Prodeus. And while the marketing around the retro FPS renaissance as the second coming of “boomer shooters” should be much maligned, the actual craft involved in making mods and brand new games in the genre has never been stronger. I even contributed four levels to the cause this year, but you’ll have to play them yourself to decide if they’re any good: https://www.quaddicted.com/reviews/?filtered=burnham.

Streets of Rage 4

I had not tried Steam Remote Play before this year, but it works surprisingly well if you have a decent internet connection. Because of Remote Play, I was able to complete Streets of Rage 4 with my friends, and it was very close to the experiences I had as a kid playing brawlers like Turtles in Time on the Super Nintendo. The game is just hard enough to make you sweat during the boss fights but just easy enough that the average group of gamers can complete it in a night or two, which is ideal for adults with not a lot of free time.

Hard Lads

Hard Lads is a pure delight of a game by Robert Yang about the beauty of a viral video from 2015 called “British lads hit each other with chair,” which is even more ridiculous than it sounds. It made me smile and laugh for a good half hour, and I think it’ll do the same for you.

Commander MtG

The Commander format for Magic: the Gathering is one of my favorite things, and in 2020, I dug into it more than any other year. More so even than playing or watching it being played, I created decklists for hours and hours, dreaming up new, creative strategies for winning games or just surprising my imaginary opponents. I sincerely believe this little ritual of finding a new legendary creature to build around and spending a few days crafting a brew for it got me through the majority of this summer. I didn’t have a lot of creative energy this year, but I was able to channel the little I did have into this hobby. Especially during the longer, more frustrating or depressing days at work when I had nothing else to do or just needed a break, I could often dive back into card databases and lose myself in the process of picking exactly the cards that best expressed what I wanted to do for any given deck. And it’s nice to know I can always fall back on that.

Yu-Gi-Oh!

I played a lot of Yu-Gi-Oh! growing up but never had the cards or the skill to be particularly good at it. I just knew I enjoyed the game and the 4Kids show, but I quickly them behind when I got to high school. Fast forward to 2020, and the game and franchise have evolved substantially, not always for the better. But I do find it so intriguing, with a skeptical kind of adoration. It’s not nearly as well-supported as Magic, but what it does have are gigantic anime monsters on tiny cards with enough lines of text to make your head spin. And it’s so interesting to me that a franchise like that can continue to thrive alongside more elegant games like the Pokemon TCG and Hearthstone. And the further I’ve delved into how the game has changed since I stopped playing, the more invested I’ve become, going so far as to start buying cards again and looking into possible decks I might enjoy playing. An unequivocal win for Yu-Gi-Oh! is Speed Duel, which seeks to bring old players back to the game with a watered-down, nostalgia-laden format with fewer mechanics and a much smaller card pool. So if all you want to do is pit a Blue Eyes White Dragon against a Dark Magician, that’s 100% still there for you, but the competitive scene is still alive, well, and astoundingly complicated. And I think that’s kind of beautiful.

Black Mesa

I wasn’t expecting to have the tech to play Half Life: Alyx this year, so Black Mesa seemed like the next best thing. And it really is a love letter to the first game, even if it’s far from perfect. I even prefer the original, but I did very much enjoy my time with this modern reimagining. If you’ve never played a Half Life game before, I think it’s a great place to start.

VR via the Oculus Quest

Around halfway through this year, I started to get really stir crazy and yeah, pretty depressed. It seemed like I’d be stuck in the same boring cycle forever, and I know for a lot of people, it still feels like that. So VR seemed like the perfect escape from this dubious reality where you can’t even take a safe vacation trip anymore. And you know, I think it works really well for that purpose. The Oculus Quest is especially effective, doing away with cords or cables so you have as much freedom as you have free real estate in your home. I don’t have a lot of space in my studio apartment, but I have enough to see the potential of the medium, which is completely worth it. Next gen consoles are neat and all, but I’ve got my heart set on picking up the Quest 2 as soon as possible.

* Beat Saber

I was most looking forward to trying Beat Saber on the Quest, and I was not disappointed. You’d think rhythm games had reached their peak with Rock Band and DDR, but the genre keeps on giving with gems like this. It’s hard to convey if you’ve never tried it, but the game succeeds so well in getting your entire body into the rhythm of whatever song you’re slashing through.

* Half Life: Alyx

Again, I really did not expect to be able to experience this game as intended this year, and I still don’t think I really have. The Oculus Link for the Quest is admittedly a little janky, and my PC barely meets the minimum specs to even run the game. And yet, despite that, Alyx is one of my top three games of 2020 and maybe one of my all-time favorites. Even as I was losing frames and feeling the game struggle to keep up with all the AI Combine soldiers running around, I was still having a blast. For me, it is one of the best reasons to seek out and own VR and a pinnacle of game design in its own right.

Hades

For me, Hades has mostly been similar to every other Supergiant Game that I’ve played: fun and well-polished but ultimately not engaging enough to play for very long. And there’s always this sheen of trying to be too clever with their dialogue, narration, and music that rubs me the wrong way. But Hades is certainly their best game, and I can’t deny the effect it’s had on people, much like Bastion’s reception back in 2011. And I’m really hoping Hades gets more people into roguelikes, as a more accessible and story-driven approach to the genre. Timing-wise, I wish it hadn’t come out around the same time as Spelunky, because I think it did make some people choose one over the other, when the best choice is to play both and realize they’re going for very different experiences. The precise, unforgiving, arcade-like style of Spelunky isn’t fun for everyone, though, and Hades is thankfully there to fill in that gap. I’m really glad I found more time to play it this year at least to succeed on one escape attempt; it’s a fun game to think about in a game design context. And I do think the game has a lot of merit and is doing some clever things with difficulty that the studio likely could not have honed nearly so well without the help of Early Access. The most impressive part of the game to me is not the story or the music or the combat but the massive amount of contextual dialogue they somehow found time to program, write, and record at a consistently high level. All of this is just to say, Hades is obviously one of the best games of the year, and you should play it if you have any interest in it at all.

Spelunky 2

I’ve spoken a lot about this game on Twitter, so I’m not going to rehash much of that here. For me, it’s been a journey of over 1,000 attempts to learn the intricacies and secrets of a deep and demanding game that’s been as frustrating as it’s been rewarding. But it remains a constant source of learning and discovery as well as mastery and pride for me, and I still have hopes of reaching the Cosmic Ocean and getting all the trophies someday. It’s been a joy to watch other Spelunky players too, even as some fair worse than me and others fair far better. And the Daily challenge keeps me coming back, because seeing my name high up on the leaderboard just makes me feel so damn good (or at least I’ll get a good laugh out of a hilarious death). At its heart, Spelunky is a community endeavor, and I think it succeeds at that better than almost any other game this side of Dark Souls. I think it is my Game of the Year or at least tied with Alyx, I really can’t decide. If you don’t think you’d enjoy it, all I’ll say is, the frustration and difficulty are integral to the experience of discovery and surprise, and your brain is better at video games than you think.

Chess

Okay, yes, I watched and enjoyed The Queen’s Gambit, but I think 2020 had already primed people to get into chess this year regardless. Like Yu-Gi-Oh!, chess was a childhood pastime of mine that I really enjoyed and then quickly left behind as I discovered things like music and the internet. If I had to assign a theme to my 2020, it would be rediscovering old hobbies to remind myself how good life actually is. And now I’m more committed to chess than I ever was before. I’m watching international masters and grand masters on YouTube (as well as the incomparable Northernlion), I’m playing regularly on Chess.com, and I’m even paying for lessons and probably my own theory books soon. Like most fighting games, chess is a complicated form of dueling a single opponent with zero randomness, so mistakes are always on you. And modern chess platforms offer extremely good analysis tools, showing you exactly how, when, and why you screwed up so you can do better next time. Like Hearthstone, it’s a quick, addicting, tense, and rewarding way to train your brain and have fun. And it seems more popular now than ever, in part due to a certain Netflix original TV show...

The Queen’s Gambit

I think a lot of people want to be Beth Harmon, even if they know they shouldn’t. It must feel so good to be the best at something and know you’re the best, even while under the influence of certain substances. It’s what makes characters like Dr. Gregory House so fun to watch, though you’d never want to work with the guy. For me, anyway, I always wanted to be a prodigy at something, and what little success I’ve had made The Queen’s Gambit very relatable to me. More so, it’s easy to relate to growing up in a conservative environment with few real friends and fewer outlets of expression, only to realize you’ve finally found your thing, and that no one can take it from you. That’s mostly what I’m going to take from The Queen’s Gambit anyway, more than chess or the Cold War commentary or the problematic relationships Beth has with her cadre of rivals/boyfriends. The show gets a strong recommendation from me for fans of chess as well as lovers of optimistic coming-of-age stories.

March Comes in Like a Lion

Similarly, March Comes in Like a Lion features a protagonist who is scarily close to a version of myself from like eight years ago. My best friend has been urging me to watch this show for years, and I’m still only a few episodes in. But I love how it portrays a young person who’s moved to a big city away from home for the first time, with nothing more than some meager possessions and the hopes of becoming the best in the world at something. And Rei is not confident in himself or outgoing at all, he’s extremely depressed despite pursuing his dreams and trying to distance himself from his somewhat toxic family. It’s a great reminder that the smallest kindnesses can often change our entire perspective on the world, and that even the people that seem the most well-equipped to handle life often still need help. I’ve been very fortunate to have people like that despite mistakes I’ve made, and I hope to be that person for others too.

Umbrella Academy

I’m pretty burnt out on superheroes, but UA put a good enough spin on them that they felt brand new. The show is rough in places, but it’s surprising in some really clever ways. And the comics are some of the wildest stories I’ve ever read, like Hitchhiker’s Guide meets Watchmen.

HunterXHunter

I binged about 100 of the 148 episodes of HxH this year, which I recognize is not a significant number in the wider world of long-running shounen anime, but it’s quite an undertaking for me to finish a show of this length. The series goes places I never expected and made me care so strongly for characters I thought I’d hate at first. It’s the smartest and most endearing show about a band of misfits going on crazy adventures and punching people for the good of the world that you’re likely to find.

Hannibal

This is the rare show that’s simultaneously comforting and nightmare-inducing if watched for extended periods. I can remember nights after binging a few episodes where I couldn’t get many of the disturbing images out of my head. Fair to say, Hannibal is not for the faint of heart, nor is it without some low points. But for those who enjoy gory thrillers or gritty detective dramas, it’s a must-watch.

Yu-Gi-Oh! Original Series, English Sub

You can probably imagine my surprise as I discovered this year that the Japanese version of the Yu-Gi-Oh! anime is not only much better than the 4Kids version we got in the States, but it’s actually a decent show. The plot makes much more sense, it’s more interesting, the stakes are higher, the voices are better, and overall it’s just more enjoyable to watch. I don’t know if I’ll stick with it long enough to finish it this time, but this is definitely the way I’d do it and would recommend to others.

Fargo Season 4

It’s a miracle we even got another season of Fargo this year, let alone on time and of the same high quality as the first two seasons. It has a great setting, cast, and conflict. I love Chris Rock, and it was so cool to see him act so well in such a serious role. There’s a Wizard of Oz homage episode that is nearly flawless. And the post-credits scene at the end of the season is just the cherry on top. If you haven’t checked out Fargo by now, you are really missing out on some of the most interesting stuff happening in TV. I can’t wait to see what Noah Hawley does with the Alien franchise.

Movies

Cats

I had to include this one because it was the last full movie I saw in theaters before the pandemic hit. I technically went to Sonic too, but my friends and I walked out after about 30 minutes. The less said about that movie, the better. Cats, though, is a strange and curious beast (pun intended), adapting an already unruly animal (pun intended) to the big screen and yowling to be recognized (pun intended). But for every awkward or embarrassing scene, there’s one of pure joy and magic, like the extended ballet sequence or Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat. The film knows exactly what it is and leans into it hard, like a familiar yet slightly insane feline begging to be stroked, which I imagine is exactly what fans of the musical wanted.

Children of Men

There’s not much I can say about this film that probably hasn’t been said better elsewhere. I was intrigued to watch it when I learned it was one of my friend’s favorite movies. And I have to say, it’s really profound in a prescient way. Clive Owen gives one of the best performances I’ve ever seen. You should watch it, but only when you feel like taking a severe hit to the feels.

Basic Instinct

Vertigo is probably still my favorite film, so when I learned this year that Paul Verhoeven made a bloody, sex romp homage film to it in the 90s with Michael Douglas starring, I simply had to watch it. And you know, it’s not bad. It’s nowhere near as good as Vertigo, and you can see the ending coming a mile away. But what it does have is the immaculate Sharon Stone, who you cannot take your eyes off for the entire movie. And the movie knows it, making her look as alluring and suggestive as her character is to the detective investigating her. You could do worse than to watch it, just don’t expect any of Hitchcock’s subtlety or looming dread to seep into the final product.

Books

Dune

I finally finished Dune this year, and I can genuinely say it lives up to the hype. It’s not the easiest book to get through, but it’s by no means one of the most difficult either. I’m still bummed that the new film was delayed, but it might give me time to read the rest of the original book series.

The Fifth Season

Another fantastic piece of fiction, I cannot recommend this book enough. N.K. Jemisin is one of the best living authors of our time. If you want an original setting with a brilliant magic system and complex, compelling characters, look no further.

Video Content

Northernlion

I’ve been a fan of NL for years, though I’ve never been that into The Binding of Isaac. He just has a charismatic intelligence to him that sets him apart from most “Let’s Play” YouTubers to me, and he’s very funny to boot. I guess I’d say he seems a lot like me or the person I could picture myself being if I were a professional video content creator. So I was really excited for NL’s series of Spelunky 2 videos, and I still watch them every day, months later. And now he’s teaching me how to get better at chess, being a good 600 ELO higher than myself at the moment. His sarcastic and improv-laden banter have withstood the test of years and gave me some much-needed comfort and laughter in 2020. Somehow, the man even found a way to keep up his prolific output this year while raising his firstborn child. There are those who said it couldn’t be done...

The Command Zone - Game Knights

Josh Lee Kwai and the rest of the crew at The Command Zone continue to put out some of the most well-produced tabletop gameplay videos on the internet. It’s perhaps no surprise, seeing as how Lee Kwai created trailers for such blockbuster films as Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World and Jimmy Wong had a supporting role in the live action remake of Disney’s Mulan. But the crew around the two hosts are just as important and talented, and it’s clear that they all share the same singular vision for the channel’s future. They’ve carefully crafted a team of expert editors, animators, cosplayers, and voice actors to deliver one delightful video after the next at a consistently high level. If you’re into Magic: the Gathering at all, you simply need to watch Game Knights.

Cimoooooooo

I found Alex Cimo’s channel shortly after the algorithm learned I was interested in Yu-Gi-Oh! again, and at first, I was less than impressed with him. But it’s clear to me now that he not only loves what he does, he’s an expert Yu-Gi-Oh! player and analyst. Plus, he’s very good at explaining some of the more complex concepts in the game in a way that newcomers can understand. I’ve watched every new episode of The Progression Series and The History of Yu-Gi-Oh! so far, and they’re the best way I’ve found to learn how the game developed and changed over the last 20 years.

Team APS

This is another great Yu-Gi-Oh! channel, focusing more on skits, gimmick videos, and casual games rather than analytical or theoretical content. Mostly, they seem like a really great group of friends that just have a blast playing Yu-Gi-Oh! together, and their love for the game makes me want to play more too.

Tolarian Community College

Somehow, a community college English professor’s channel went from a quirky little deckbox review platform to the most popular Magic: the Gathering channel on YouTube in only a few years. But it’s easy to see why when Brian clearly loves what he’s doing more than most people ever will. He’s not only a fantastic reviewer and MtG scholar, he’s one of the most outspoken voices for positive change in the community and the game. Is he too hard on the Magic team at Wizards of the Coast? Perhaps, but without his measured and well-reasoned takes on all things Magic, I think we’d be much worse off.

IRL

Cooking

Even I get tired of eating the same things every day, so I’ve taken it upon myself to learn how to make more dishes, mostly out of sheer boredom. And I know I’m not alone in that, but I have to say it’s been a rewarding and fun adventure. It’s really surprising what you can throw together with a decent recipe and a little creativity in a modest kitchen when you decide to break away from the microwave for once.

Chinchillin’

Like many people, I felt that I needed a pet to survive this year, and I’ve always wanted a chinchilla. So I took a risk and bought one from a seller on KSL a few months ago, and my life has definitely changed for the better. No longer simply alone with my thoughts all day, I have a furry little companion to commune and bond with. And it’s more difficult to find time to feel sorry for myself when a basically helpless tiny creature depends on me for almost everything. Not to say it’s been a perfect experience however, people don’t say chins are difficult to care for for nothing. And I have learned more about them than perhaps I ever cared to know before, but that’s only made them more interesting to me as a result. Overall, I would recommend them as pets, just be prepared to give them a lot more time and attention than you would to say, a fish or a hamster. I’ve seen the commitment compared to that of a large dog, and I think that’s fair, though chins seem far more difficult to train and are far less cuddly. Basically, imagine a fluffy, super fast squirrel that can jump half your height, shed its fur at will if grabbed too tightly, that sleeps all day and bathes in dust, and that cannot get wet or too hot or eat 99% of human foods without serious complications. And they get lonely, and they all have their own surprisingly distinct personalities, some shy and mischievous, others bright and social, and everything in between. But I’m glad to be part of my little buddy’s life and hope to make it a long and enjoyable one for him. Part of why I wanted a chinchilla so badly is they typically live between 10-20 years, much longer than the average rodent or even many cats and dogs. And they’re sadly endangered in the wild, poached for their incredibly soft fur, which is why I believe it’s critical that we care for and learn more about them now. And above all, I adore my chinchilla’s antics, even when he continually tries to dig up and eat the paper bedding below his cage when I’ve provided perfectly edible hay and pellets for him in much easier to reach locations.

And that’s all, folks...

If you’ve read this far, know that I really appreciate it and hope you learned something new about yourself, art, or the world. And please do let me know what’s kept you going the most this year too, as I suspect I’ll still be searching for new distractions next year, even after I’m able to get a Covid vaccine injection. As Red Green would say, we’re all in this together, and I’m pullin’ for ya. <3

#2020 #hobbies #art #youtube #reviews #entertainment #games #books #film #tv #netflix

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darksaiyangoku · 5 years

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Monty Oum & What RWBY Means to Me

5 years ago, the RWBY and Rooster Teeth community was stricken with the tragic news that Monty Oum had passed away at the young age of 33. He was a very talented young man with a knack for creating some of the most bizarre yet fucking awesome concepts, his fan films Haloid and Dead Fantasy, his work on Red vs Blue Seasons 8-10 are considered landmarks in the show’s history and RWBY is now one of Rooster Teeth’s top franchises.

Today, I want to honour him and show the world that they’re missing a bright star.

A Brief History of Monty Oum

Monty Oum was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1981. A highschool dropout, he was making fan animations as early as 2002, with his most famous, Haloid, being released in 2007.

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This got him noticed by many people in the gaming industry and he even managed to get a job at Midway Games and later Bandai Namco as a combat designer in 2008. However, he soon realised that the gaming industry wasn’t as appealing to him as he thought, so he left to peruse filmmaking.

In 2010 he met with Bernie Burns from Rooster Teeth and was hired as lead animator for their hit series, Red vs Blue, for their 8th season.

Now I’m not familiar with Red vs Blue, outside of a few clips that my friends showed to me back in college. But from what I’ve seen, Monty brought a level of energy for Seasons 8-10, featuring a lot of his signature stylistic fight choreography. It was during this time that he had an idea for his own series that he wanted to make. He pitched it to Bernie, who agreed to it if he could deliver Season 10 of Red vs Blue.

Once Season 10 wrapped up, featuring Elijah Wood no less, Monty teamed up with his friends and fellow Rooster Teeth employees, Kerry Shawcross and Miles Luna, and created his crown jewell; RWBY.

RWBY

Between late 2012 and mid 2013, four trailers were released promoting a new series for Rooster Teeth. These featured four girls wearing elaborate and colourful outfits, an anime styled aesthetic, kickass music and the epic fight sequences that would soon become synonymous with this series. The trailers were named after the colours associated with each of the characters; Red, White, Black and Yellow. It would later be revealed to coincide with their names; Ruby Rose, Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna and Yang Xiao Long.

Once the final trailer hit, it was announced that the premiere of the first episode would be held at the next RTX Event. Following the premiere, the series would be released on a weekly basis on Rooster Teeth’s YouTube channel and their own website. 7 seasons later, RWBY has proved to be a huge hit and has since become Rooster Teeth’s flagship series.

I first heard about RWBY when my friend showed it to me in college back in early 2014. Before heading to my first lesson early in the morning, he took out his phone and showed me this cool trailer of a cute girl killing demonic wolves with a scythe-gun. My jaw was on the floor and I was really impressed with it. He told me that it was part of this new anime series and that I should give it a watch. Unfortunately I never did, as I was busy with other anime and TV shows at the time.

Then 2 years later, tragedy struck. During one of our weekly sessions in our anime club, it was announced by my friend and leader of the club, that Monty Oum had unfortunately passed away. For the rest of the day, we dedicated ourselves to watching the original four trailers and some clips of Red vs Blue in his honour.

I was shocked to say the least, especially considering the fact that I wasn’t very familiar with his work at the time. But from watching glimpses of his work, I could tell that he had so much talent and passion and he was dedicated to leaving his mark on the world.

Fast forward a few years later into 2018, I was at my lowest point. I returned home to my parents and reconnected with my family again after a period of isolation. After a rough patch, which I’ll talk about another time, I was beginning to feel like myself again and it was on one faithful day that I decided to boot up YouTube and watch RWBY.

Not only did I love it, I was hooked! The characters, the storyline, the influences from fairy tales and mythology, the anime aesthetic, the fight scenes and the music. I loved it all and watching it brought back a creative spark in me that I didn’t feel in quite a long time. Throughout 2019, I was hit with new motivation to resume my own project; a novel series inspired by superheroes and mythology. Alongside that, I also delved deep into the RWBY fandom and discovered a whole host of amazing fan-content such as comics, fan art, cosplayers, fanmade music, AMVs and of course, fanfiction.

RWBY fanfiction really cemented my love for the series and it moved me how much fans looked up to Monty and his creation. Their expression of love through this medium was heartwarming, to say the least and their creative passion really shone through with their own alternate takes on RWBY lore. But at the same time, all the admiration I had was accompanied by guilt. I felt so horrible that I never looked to Monty Oum or watched RWBY much sooner and I if I could go back in time, I’d watch RWBY when it first started airing.

Even beyond the amazing fan content, I’ve also met great friends through this fandom and many of them on tumblr and Discord. We share ideas, theories and our own works because this series and the man who made it filled our hearts with joy.

So to Monty Oum, I thank you for creating such a wonderful series and inspiring me to get back into writing. Thank you for building a community where other creators can get together and share their works through you. Your legacy will live on, through us and through RWBY. My wish is to become a creator that’s just as talented, inspiring and amazing as you.

R.I.P Monty Oum. 1981-2015. We will carry on your spirit, as fans and as aspiring creators.

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#monty oum #rwby #red vs blue #haloid #rooster teeth #rwby fandom #rwby fans #rwby fans united #tribute #thank you #thank you monty #cold rwby #casey lee williams #jeff williams #monty oum tribute #rip monty oum #rest in peace

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riredrhodyblog · 4 years

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Appreciating Seán While He Is Away

Day Thirteen: The Beginner’s Guide (2015)

You can’t talk yourself out of loneliness. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t be the one writing both the questions and the answers. Then there’s no movement! Then there’s no circulation!

If all of your anxieties are being channeled into your work, then if the work ever fails you have no backup and you’re just going to crash.

— Davey

This might be hittin’ a little too close to home.

— Seán

Immediately what always strikes me, as I’ve revisited this powerful experience many times, is the fact that Seán felt the need to preface it with a disclaimer:

He told the segment of his viewers who only come to his Channel for the yelling and the swearing, those who aren’t interested in longer, slower-paced types of games, that this video wouldn’t be enjoyable for them.

I definitely don’t think he would do that now, which makes me very happy!

Written by author of The Stanley Parable, Davey Wreden, I feel strongly that The Beginner’s Guide reflects so much about who Seán is as a person.

Some people, to this day, still pigeonhole him as that loud, swearing Irish YouTuber and nothing more.

But he’s shown us, right from the start of his career, that he’s always been more than that:

This is the same man who was moved to complete silence and quiet awe when he played Journey

This is the same man who sobbed unabashedly at the end of Valiant Hearts

Who couldn’t speak towards the end of his Pacifist run of Undertale, because again he was overwhelmed

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The Beginner’s Guide, in my opinion, is one of the best experiences to see through Seán’s eyes!

You could probably watch this video a hundred times and each time see something that you missed during the previous viewing.

This is why, to reiterate ad nauseum, I get so pissed when the top comments on Seán’s videos are: “Who else was yelling at their screen when Jack missed__ blah-bu-blah__?” No doubt a lot of the comments in this video said something similar. To which, I reply:

I’ll guarantee you that nobody who wasn’t recording this game for an audience of what, (I believe) in 2015, was around 8 Million Subscribers saw the twist that was coming! On a side note, the view count for Beginner’s currently sits at 9,216,093.

Because I sure as fucking hell didn’t when I watched this video for the first time! I was right there with Seán, empathizing with Davey. Feeling sorry for “Coda.” The fact that playing this game for us evoked so much of what Seán was thinking and feeling at the time, means that the game did exactly what it was supposed to do!

In hindsight, I can definitely see why this game had such a profound impact on Seán and others like him. As always, I cried more when he cried. I wanted to reach back (from my 2017 self who saw this, for the first time, two years after he uploaded it) to his 2015 self and give him a hug! Because I had come to know that those nine days off, which he mentioned toward the end of his video, were not days off at all.

They were preceded by preparing eighteen videos, for those nine days, just so that his viewers would still have content while he was taking time off that wasn’t really time off!

Just let that sink in.

I actually made myself cry while I was typing this and I’m glad it happened! Because— I’ve said it a million times and I’m gonna keep on saying it— that is the kind of relationship Seán has fostered between himself and the people who watch and love him.

For that, I’m going to keep saying thank you.

#jacksepticeye #youareloved

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the-u-s-s-enterprise · 4 years

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This is a long one, but I love Undertale.

Eighteen-years old, fresh out of their sheltered hometown and onto a liberal arts college with more diverse people than they had ever experienced in their life. They’re nervous about school, the up in ante, the new lifestyle, the new freedom. They found their place with some friends that they wouldn’t think about in a few years time, people that would come and go, and a couple that would stay, but the first step on their journey into adulthood.

This is fall of 2015. Their parents dropped them off with a teary goodbye less than a month ago, and Undertale comes out today. They don’t know about it. At least not until Steam Train plays it not too long later. They watch a cute game played and commentated by a duo from their favorite YouTube gaming channel. It’s exactly their style, a cute, fun game with interesting and lovable characters.

The first episode doesn’t even span the tutorial, and the kid doesn’t bother waiting for the rest. They load up steam and buy it, playing it well into the night, sobbing at the heartbreaking conclusion and not knowing that five years later they would break into tears over hearing “Home” for the first time in years.

I played Undertale because I thought it was cute, the designs were fun, the mechanics were interesting, the story was easy enough to follow. I liked video games, but not enough to spend money on them only to get bored halfway through, so I watched a few Let’s Play YouTube channels to experience them without having to devote my constantly overstimulated brain to playing them.

Undertale was different. I don’t choose the things I become obsessed with (do you think I would be thinking about It: Chapter 2 over a year later if I could?), but when I fall into something, I fall hard.

I played it through, and then I watched Steam Train, and then I watched Press Heart to Continue, and JackSepticEye, and Markiplier, and Dan and Phil, and streamers I don’t even remember the names of in order to see every single reaction and playthrough I could see. Don’t get me wrong, I played again and again, too, even forcing my friends not to play it if I wasn’t there to watch.

In fact, I distinctly remember a friend, I was watching him play and telling him where the secrets were and the background for every little thing that wasn’t explicit in the game. He loved it. We played the entire game in three sessions, the first involved us going through the Ruins and saving after meeting Sans and Papyrus, the second going about halfway through Waterfall, and the third was the rest of the game in a six-hour session.

All in all, I can’t even count how many times I’ve witnessed the game, nor how many times I’ve read the Wiki pages, clicking “random page” over and over again until I had circled back around to the start. If I had to guess, I’ve played the pacifist playthrough about ten times on my own, and watched it anywhere between 20 and 30 between different YouTubers and rewatches of the same playthroughs. I’ve seen the genocide run a fair number of times, likely close to ten, and various neutral runs in the teens.

Not only that, I spent hours in the library with my headphones on doing homework, listening to not the OST, but the ten-hour extended versions of my favorite songs, “Bonetrousle”, “Hopes and Dreams”, “Death by Glamour”, and the ever so aptly named “NGAHHH!!” just to name a few.

And don’t get me started on the glitch characters. The hours I spent looking up information on Gaster because I was too scared to mod my own game are endless.

So, I guess you could say I’m very familiar with the game. It meant a lot to me as a young adult with fresh freedom, a story about a lost child finding a family of their own. My first and only tattoo is of the delta rune (although people will try to tell me it’s from Legend of Zelda).

It’s hard to talk about, but I don’t have the best mental health, with constant long-running depression, social anxiety, and mild OCD, my brain tends to run a mile a minute, and I had a really hard time making friends in high school, which resulted in me not having any friends at all after my friends from middle school decided they were too good for me.

I spent the better part of my four years in high school eating lunch alone and not going out on the weekends because no one wanted me to. In senior year, I managed to make friends with a few people, but nothing deep or long lasting.

Cue college, a fresh start where I could be exactly who I was supposed to be. I came out as asexual on the second day there, not knowing that my involvement with the LGBT organization would lead me to realize that I was also nonbinary and a lesbian. But needless to say, I was an outcast looking for a place to call home.

I found it at school, making a couple lifelong friends (I love you girls!) and finding a place in coming to my own leadership abilities and my desire to be a role model and resource for young LGBT people. Always in the background was Undertale.

Here was this game, though with a few flaws, was the greatest game I had ever played, as I remarked on every little detail from the stunning backgrounds to the fun yet challenging fight mechanics to every little piece of witty dialogue.

I remarked on Toby Fox and his ability to create this game almost entirely on his own, coding and designing and writing music. He didn’t do it alone, but so much of the game was him, and seeing someone accomplish something that meant so much to me was an inspiration.

I looked at this game and saw a breathtaking story, hints of the twist being woven into every pixel, parallels at every turn, tidbits that you had to play the game ten times (like I did) to catch pieces of backstory that were so vital to fully understanding a character.

Not only that, but I looked at this game and I saw me. I saw the cute and honestly rather stupid love story between Alphys and Undyne, between a shy (presumably) bisexual lizard girl and a buff (presumably) lesbian fish lady. They were awkward and uncomfortable and bashful and I loved every part of their interactions. They cared for each other and their story being thrown in and accepted, not a word said about it except outside the game. And don’t get me started on the guards.

But beyond that, I saw Frisk, a child without a denoted gender, which many people took to mean you could impose the gender you wanted, but to nonbinary people, to people like me, they saw a main character that used they/them pronouns without it being a joke, without it being asked about, without the characters ever slipping up or even having to guess. They did it because that’s who Frisk is, and they love Frisk.

I see this game, this funny, heart-wrenching, sweet, and wonderful game, and I see found family. I see a child who we know went up Mount Ebbott knowing that children who went up there didn’t come back find people (monsters) that loved them, cared about them, even after only knowing them for what we can assume is a day.

Frisk finds these monsters and they loved them for who they are. The love these characters share meant more to me than I ever could have imagined they would, the background to my introduction to freedom, the meeting of my best friends, the discovery of myself, the growth of my leadership and motivation. They were there. They were always there for me, and now, today, on the day of the five year anniversary of my own self discovery, I listen to “Home” and I cry.

I cry for Toriel, who lived alone in the Ruins for years, I cry for Sans and Papyrus who take care of each other in more way than they know, I cry for Undyne who’s desperate to prove herself and protect her people, I cry for Alphys who lived with the guilt of her mistakes and wanting nothing more than to make amends for the monster she thought she was, I cry for Asgore who was so overcome with grief he became the worst version of himself.

I cry for Asriel for obvious reasons. And I cry for Frisk, a child that wanted love and found it in the journey, just like I did.

I listen to “Home” and I cry because it is home. It’s a story about love in the time I needed it the most, shaping me into the person I am today, even five years later.

Because despite everything, it’s still me.

#undertale

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