#then we could have 8 consecutive weeks which I would like

[gunsatthaphan]

Regarding the Our Skyy2 theories today was Aprils Fool and a lot of account faked things like translations and turned themselves to look like actors twitter account, there were also a fake Our Skyy2 account! so maybe some of the stuff circulating since yesterday is fake?🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻 either way I have to say that if MSP has a swapped lifes as their main plot... I am not amused😒 tho this is the only one that seems to have a somewhat of a supernatural theme even tho they had VV tho maybe the supernatural theme is gonna come back in VV? we shall see tho I am now kinda scared...

The Twitter theories on Our Skyy2 are getting out of hand lol!

I get that everybody is excited about it but I really don't want any crossover! I am sorry but keep each episode dedicated to each show I just want to see my silly little couples be cute and sweet and NO BODYSWAPS I am OVER them 2 last year was already too many!

I saw some people say that based on how the couple where positioned in the poster the one diagona to them is the one they have a crossover with? and they where probably joking I hope cuz NO!

Other theories or more like hopes are that they will not do certain things because they want to wait for season2 like: The Eclipse not using the second novel and going for original content(the author said he was non involved in the script and production of Our Skyy2 and that it does not involve any storyline from the new book), or the MSP boys still being highschoolers because they will be uni students in s2 tho I think this is just them coping with the end of a show they like(me with Eclipse lol)

The only theory I like are the ones over who proposes to whom lol

Either way the episodes are pretty much done so we can only wait and at this point it could pretty much come a lot sooner! I just hope they air it 2 eps per week like MLC or Midnight Museum cuz 16 weeks of this is too much! we already had SIMM and SIYH that lasted 18 WEEKS! between the main series and thw special episodes and that is too much especially for a compilation of special episodes.

IF that life swap thing is true, I have to ask... WHY?? Why would you do that? Msp is literally one of the easiest shows to do an Our Skyy episode on because they finished high school at the end of the series, meaning all they had to do was show them in college (like maybe the Chinzhilla guys all come back home for the break between semesters and they all meet up again) and them being cute and thriving. Why is this life swap thing necessary? Frankly, I don’t want shit like that in msp so these spoilers are doing the opposite of getting me excited. 😑

-------------------------------------------------------------

well I sure hope these theories are an April fool's joke because I'm done with all of them lmao.

I don't really feel like talking about this anymore lol so all I'm gonna say is that I still hate body swaps so please spare us @ gmm 😩 and even if it's just a life swap, I don't want that either.

The only episode where I could tolerate something supernatural is Vice Versa because that would fit the show's original genre so if puen & talay end up swapping something - whatever it is - then so be it. I would be somewhat fine with that I guess lol. But the rest? nah.

All I want for this show is 8 cute little episodes full of fluff and carelessness because god knows all of these couples went through enough in their respective shows lmao. all of them have the foundation to give us something cute so,,,, is that too much to ask.

xxx

[perfectlypanda]

The Geography of the South Pole in AtLA vs. the Graphic Novels

Of the many inconsistencies between Avatar: the Last Airbender, and the graphic novels, there is a particular bit of world building that always bothers me; the geography of the South Pole.

In the first two episodes of AtLA, the viewer is introduced to the South Pole at almost peak summer. Sokka makes a reference to this when he first meets Aang:

Sokka: Giant light beams, flying bison, airbenders … I think I got midnight sun madness. I'm going home to where stuff makes sense.

“Midnight sun” is a term that describes how during the summer months places north of the Arctic Circle or south of the Antarctic Circle experience consecutive 24 hour periods of sunlight (so the sun is still out even though it’s midnight). From Sokka’s dialogue, it is explicitly summer. 

The two part episode “The Winter Solstice” takes place over episodes 7 and 8 of the first season, and occurs some weeks following the opening episode. It’s important to note that this refers to the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere, where the Gaang is at the time. Thus, the summer solstice is simultaneously occurring for the southern hemisphere.

Why spend time establishing that at the start of the series, the South Pole is experiencing the middle of their summer? Well, because it’s important you understand that the version of the South Pole we see is the South Pole at its warmest. At its warmest, Katara and Sokka go fishing surrounded by massive icebergs, snow and ice completely cover the ground, and the Southern Water Tribe has a wall and several buildings made entirely from snow. 

Continues after the cut.

The Water Tribes were inspired by different indigenous peoples in and around the Arctic Circle. However, the real world northern regions where many of these people live do see true, if brief, periods of summer where there is snow and ice melt. What does this mean? Well, it means plants can grow. And trees if you get below the tree line.

Even at the peak of summer, no exposed land is visible at the AtLA South Pole. So unless AtLA has special plants that can grow in literal ice or snow (and can somehow pollinate without major pollinators like bugs…), that means that the South Pole cannot support traditional plant life. More importantly though, the South Pole cannot support trees. Trees have roots that need to be able to dig into soil. Soil that is not visible even in the summer in the South Pole, so even if soil does exist under all that ice and snow it’s going to be too frozen for roots to be able to take purchase.

That the ice and snow cover is permanent year round is further be backed up by how the Southern Water Tribe disabled a Fire Nation ship back in Hama’s youth… and it’s still frozen in that same ice some 70 decades later. If that area got warm enough for the ice and snow to melt, the ship would have shifted, and likely been damaged or destroyed by the ice expanding and contracting against it for years. 

Which is why, from almost the very start, the graphic novel North and South is inconsistent with the worldbuilding established in AtLA:

It’s a stretch how much wood is seen in the modern buildings in the *new* South Pole, but the use of wood in so much of the building materials could maybe be explained as part of the industrialization of the South Pole, with lumber being imported. It would be a ridiculous amount of lumber to import but... *suspension of disbelief*

Buuuuut the trees on the other hand…

These trees cannot exist in the version of the South Pole as depicted in AtLA. In order for these trees to exist, the parts of the South Pole near where the Southern Water Tribe is would have to get warm enough for the soil to thaw for trees to take root (AND have soil somewhere underneath all that ice and snow). As we established, even in the middle of summer, the ground is still completely covered by ice and snow. And North and South depicts scenes in both daytime and nighttime so we aren’t even seeing the South Pole in summer when it would be its warmest.

It wouldn’t have been hard to be consistent with the worldbuilding of the South Pole. The Rise of Kyoshi by F. C. Yee shows that someone can pay attention to the original show’s worldbuilding, and make it work.

In the first act of The Rise of Kyoshi, Kyoshi accompanies a group that is going to negotiate with the Fifth Nation (a massive sea fleet led by a Southern Water Tribe pirate called Tagaka).

In their negotiations, Tagaka agrees to release the captives she has taken from the Earth Kingdom. Why? 

“The captives are useless to me anyway. … Out of a thousand people or more, not one was a passable carpenter. I should have known better. I needed to go after people who live among tall trees, not driftwood.”

Yun frowned. “You want… carpenters?” he said cautiously.

She glanced at him, as if she were surprised he was still there. “Boy, let me teach you a little fact about the pirate trade. Our power is measured in ships. We need timber and craftsmen who know how to work it. Building a proper navy is a generational effort. My peaceable cousins in the South Pole have a few heirloom sailing cutters but otherwise have to make do with seal-skin canoes. They’ll never create a large, long-range war fleet because they simply don’t have the trees.” 

Tagaka turned and loomed over the table. “So, yes,” she said, fixing him with her gaze. “I want carpenters and trees and a port of my own to dock in so I can increase the size of my forces.” (RoK, 93)

The Southern Water Tribe doesn’t have carpenters because they don’t have trees. There are some wooden ships but just “a few heirloom sailing cutters”. That they are “heirloom” boats reinforces the idea that, although the Southern Water Tribe can get some wood (likely through trade or sale), it is not something they have readily available, so things made from wood are precious.

Whenever the Southern Water Tribe warriors are depicted in AtLA, their ships do utilize wood. But not all SWT boats do. For example, in the first episode, Katara and Sokka are in a boat that looks to be of stretched hide and bone (maybe a “seal-skin canoe” like Tagaka mentions). The only parts that might be wood are the seats (which… okay).

So the idea that the Southern Water Tribe has some wooden ships, but that they are the most valuable ones, works with the AtLA canon because it makes sense that the warriors would take the best ships that the tribe has available. 

(Admittedly, there are a couple background moments in AtLA that are a bit inexplicable. For example, in one shot in 1.02 there’s a woman holding what appears to be a bundle of firewood before a fire. We’ve seen the surrounding landscape. It’s not like she could just go take a short walk and collect kindling, so where did it come from...?)

But to circle this back to the bigger issue of the inconsistency between the worldbuilding in AtLA and the graphic novels - changing the environment of the South Pole also changes what resources are available, and what conditions the Southern Water Tribe would have to adapt to and survive. These are factors that shape a culture, particularly a culture that is located in an extreme environment. If you live in the South Pole in AtLA, farming is impossible, as is foraging because the ground is ice and snow, neither of which can sustain plant life. This limits your diet to hunting and fishing (*in AtLA they do mention sea prunes and it’s implied that they’re vegetarian since no one stops Aang from eating them, but that’s the exception not the rule). This also largely limits your resources to those which come from animals. Which impacts the types of homes you can build, the types of clothes you can wear - it even changes how you would make and sustain a fire.

The South Pole in the graphic novels would produce an entirely different Southern Water Tribe than the one in AtLA, and so it’s frustrating (and sloppy) that the graphic novels got the geography of the South Pole so wrong. There are many metas about the differences between AtLA and the graphic novels, but putting trees in the South Pole really demonstrates just how little attention the graphic novels paid to the canon worldbuilding established in AtLA. ~

Thank you for coming to my ramble. As a parting gift, enjoy this visual depiction of how Katara and Sokka have learned that wearing something cute and shapely is definitely way more important than not freezing to death.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 7, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

JUL 8, 2023

For more than a week now, I have intended to write a deep dive into the right-wing Moms for Liberty group that held their “Joyful Warriors National Summit” in Philadelphia last week, only to have one thing or another that seemed more important push it off another day. This morning it hit me that maybe that’s the story: that the reactionary right that has taken so much of our oxygen for the past year is losing ground to the country’s new forward movement.

Today the jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics pushed ahead of them by showing that the U.S. economy added 209,000 jobs in June. The rate of job growth is slowing but still strong, although the economy showed that the Black unemployment rate, which had been at an all-time low, climbed from 4.7% to 6%. Since Black workers historically are the first to lose their jobs, this is likely a signal that the job market is cooling, which should continue to slow inflation.

In the Washington Post, Jennifer Rubin called out the media outlets so focused on the idea that Biden would mismanage the economy and that recession was imminent that they have ignored “29 consecutive months of job growth, inflation steadily declining, durable goods having been up for three consecutive months, 35,000 new infrastructure projects, an extended period in which real wages exceeded inflation and outsize gains for lower wage-earners.” As reporters focused on the horse-race aspect of politics and how voters “felt” about issues, she noted, “[w]e have seen far too little coverage of the economic transformation in little towns, rural areas and aging metro centers brought about by new investment in plants, infrastructure projects and green energy related to the Chips Act.”

Also of note is that today is Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s first day of talks with top Chinese officials in Beijing, where she will also talk to U.S. business leaders. At stake is the Biden administration’s focus on U.S. national security, which includes both limiting China’s access to U.S. technology that has military applications and bringing supply chains home. China interprets these new limitations as an attempt to hurt its economy. Yellen is in Beijing to emphasize that the U.S. hopes to maintain healthy trade with China but, she told Chinese Premier Li Qiang, “The United States will, in certain circumstances, need to pursue targeted actions to protect its national security.” 

Meanwhile, China’s faltering economy has led to new rules that exclude foreign companies, leading U.S. businesses to reconsider investments there. Chinese leaders have tried to reassure foreign business leaders that they are welcome in China, while Yellen told U.S business leaders: “I have made clear that the United States does not seek a wholesale separation of our economies. We seek to diversify, not to decouple. A decoupling of the world’s two largest economies would be destabilizing for the global economy, and it would be virtually impossible to undertake.”

The success of Biden’s policies both at home and abroad has pushed the Republican Party into an existential crisis, and that’s where Moms for Liberty fits in. Since the years of the Reagan administration, the Movement Conservatives who wanted to destroy the New Deal state recognized that they only way they could win voters to slash taxes for the wealthy and cut back popular social problems was by whipping up social issues to convince voters that Black Americans, or people of color, or feminists, wanted a handout from the government, undermining America by ushering in “socialism.” The forty years from 1981 to 2021 moved wealth upward dramatically and hollowed out the middle class, creating a disaffected population ripe for an authoritarian figure who promised to return that population to upward mobility by taking revenge on those they now saw as their enemies. 

In the past two years, according to a recent working paper by economists David Autor, Arindrajit Dube, and Annie McGrew, Biden’s policies have wiped out a quarter of the inequality built in the previous forty. And at the same time that Biden’s resurrection of the liberal consensus of the years from 1933 to 1980 is illustrating that the economic problems in the country were the fault of Republican policies rather than of marginalized people, the extremism of those angry Republican footsoldiers is revealing that they are not the centrist Americans they have claimed to be.

Moms for Liberty, which bills itself as a group protecting children, organized in 2021 to protest mask mandates in schools, then graduated on to crusade against the teaching of “critical race theory.” That, right there, was a giveaway because that panic was created by then-journalist Christopher Rufo, who has emerged as a leader of the U.S. attack on democracy. 

Rufo embraces the illiberal democracy, or Christian democracy, of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, saying: “It’s time to clean house in America: remove the attorney general, lay siege to the universities, abolish the teachers’ unions, and overturn the school boards.” Radical right activists like Rufo believe they must capture the central institutions of the U.S. and get rid of the tenets of democracy—individual rights, academic freedom, free markets, separation of church and state, equality before the law—in order to save the country. 

Because those central democratic values are taught in schools, the far right has focused on attacking schools from kindergartens to universities with the argument that they are places of “liberal indoctrination.” As a Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana put on its first newspaper: “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.” While this quotation is often used by right-wing Christian groups to warn of what they claim liberal groups do, it is attributed to German dictator Adolf Hitler. Using it boomeranged on the Moms for Liberty group not least because it coincided with the popular “Shiny Happy People” documentary about the far-right religious Duggar family that showed the “grooming” and exploitation of children in that brand of evangelicalism.  

Moms for Liberty have pushed for banning books that refer to any aspect of modern democracy they find objectionable, focusing primarily on those with LGBTQ+ content or embrace of minority rights. During the first half of the 2022–2023 school year, PEN America, which advocates for literature, found that 874 unique titles had been challenged, up 28% from the previous six months. The bans were mostly in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina. A study by the Washington Post found that two thirds of book challenges came from individuals who filed 10 or more complaints, with the filers often affiliated with Moms for Liberty or similar groups. And in their quest to make education align with their ideology, the Moms for Liberty have joined forces with far-right extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, sovereign citizens groups, and so on, pushing them even further to the right.

Although the Southern Poverty Law Center labeled Moms for Liberty an “extremist group” that spreads “messages of anti-inclusion and hate,” the group appeared to offer to the Republican Party inroads into the all-important “suburban woman” vote, which party leaders interpret as white women (although in fact the 2020 census shows that suburbs are increasingly diverse—in 1990, about 20% of people living in the suburbs were people of color; in 2020 it was 45%).

When Moms for Liberty convened in Philadelphia last week, five candidates for the Republican presidential nomination, including Trump, showed up. Former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley told them: “When they mentioned that this was a terrorist organization, I said, ‘Well then, count me as a mom for liberty because that’s what I am.”

But here’s the crisis for the Republican Party: Leaders who wanted tax cuts and cuts to social programs relied on courting voters with cultural issues, suggesting that their coalition was protecting the United States from radicalism. 

But the Republican embrace of Moms for Liberty illustrates dramatically and to a wide audience how radical the party itself has become, threatening to turn away all but its extremist base. A strong majority of Americans oppose book banning: about two thirds of the general population and even 51% of Republicans oppose it, recognizing that it echoes the rise of authoritarians.

As historian Nicole Hemmer points out today for CNN, Moms for Liberty are indeed a new version of “a broader and longstanding reactionary movement centered on restoring traditional hierarchies of race, gender and sexuality” that in the U.S. included the women of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s and segregationists who organized as “Restore Our Alienated Rights” (ROAR) in the 1970s. Hemmer observes: “The book bans, the curricula battles, the efforts to fire teachers and disrupt school board meetings—little here is new.”

In the past, a democratic coalition has come together to reject such extremism. If it does so again, the Republican marriage of elites to street fighters will crumble, leaving room for the country to rebuild the relationship between citizens and the government. When a similar realignment happened in the 1930s under Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Republican Party had little choice but to follow. 

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[outrunningthedark]

re: lone star and ratings. I don’t know where the other anon is getting their info but, as someone who follows LS’s spoilers, it’s all but confirmed that the wedding is not happening in the first half of the season. people are speculating ep 12 based on something ronen said, but it could also be later. I think they want to keep this big thing for later in the season which is probably smart. anyway I agree that it’s going to be tough going agains fbi and the rookie this season, but something to consider is that, due to starting so late, LS will air 18 consecutive episodes with no breaks (or maybe one 1-week break at most), while fbi and the rookie only have about 8-10 eps left, so they will have breaks, even of several consecutive weeks, so LS might get better ratings on the weeks it’s not up against them

Tbf, as someone who doesn't follow the inner workings of LS, I would have also thought (sorta already assumed) the Tarlos wedding was in the first half of the season because Ronen did his best to call these first handful of episodes "big" deals (which is what he's basically done for 4x12, hence the speculation). I lowkey find his behavior cringey, ngl. Tarlos fans are his target audience, but telling people to tune in for THOSE episodes makes it look like he wants to prove a point re: their popularity (we know he's now bitter about Buddie because they're not actually canon and yet remain more intriguing to viewers).

I agree with you about the timing of LS premiere allowing for some weeks where it doesn't have any competition - probably part of the strategy when on Mondays, too, since NCIS and whatever else weren't always going to be new episodes. What's going to be most interesting (IMO) is how the season finales line up. If FOX is smart, wouldn't they want 4x18 to air on a Tuesday when at least one of those shows is already off air?

[lisxdumbr]

GOOD DAY LIS !! I am sorry this has been around a week late, please tell me how could I make it up to you </3 Stuff became busy in school sooo :'> I did typed my responses for a total of an hour too... I apologize for you to type such a lengthy response <//3 but if you did enjoyed doing so, then that is fine ♪ I'd def love to see your previous themes!! but it would be quite troublesome to ask of you that now, so maybe in the future when it crosses your mind once more! I love love LEMON SQUASH CHEERS too, to think that you've made a theme based on that... <3 !! OHH so it's THEM.... it's nnatsume :0 hehe, it makes me quite the curious being after hearing your praises about their prev themes... For now, I'll imagine it as the safest option :> About the gallery thing too, yeaahhh... i would find myself saving pictures for "future use" and then it gets buried </3 Why I think Yuuta is the moon is that he is the quiet one in 2wink (the vibes), but if we think about it... Him and Hinata can interchange between the sun and moon because they function as 2wink, as the sun and moon compliments each other. The following words mightt not be accurate as I do not hold much of a great understanding about them, however I'd still let you know! Hinata is supposedly the one who works in the dark (as the moon) to give shine to Yuuta (as the sun), for Yuu is Hina's sun, the one whom he cares much that even if he becomes insignificant, at least Yuuta can continue to shine. On the other hand, Hina's bright nature makes Yuu thinks he must be the sun, always working hard and excitable about things, when he, Yuuta, seems to feel that he must do something to shine together with Hina and not stay at his zone, selfishly basking in the light of the sun that makes him glow. The 2winkversary is a pleasant read, go insane however you like, you know we would honestly enjoy it either way~

I tend to stray away from unpleasant things in the internet as much as possible, so hearing these stuff that new enstarries have done…. there's much more to uncover, huh? There's so much too in Tiktok, which is common knowledge already. I understand the gatekeeping stuff, it kinda becomes meh when many people like it… like it spreads and gets liked by people who should be out the fandom… This is the reality of things, unfortunately.. The ratio of the unsafe fics to the fluff ones is like,, 8:2. I thought the tag would contain more sfw but OKayy… my expectations crashed so hard after seeing the consecutive unsafe ones. "Help me jesus 0(-(" no words better than this to describe it. ALSO anon lore, because this is significant. Admittedly, I'm one of the new enstarries… I had quite a few immatureness back then due to the magic of misinformation, but I'm now on the track of improving (hopefully). There's this huge eichi cancelling thing which, until now does not stop ? That matter is like a mystery case to me. I got quite immersed in understanding his character, and I guess it's fun to misprove misphrased and poorly researched info that spreads around. I came in the investigation room disliking eichi, I came out of it thinking and felling (this is a reference to that one meme textpost) that I possibly relate to him a bit. That's all, I believe ! This has to be said, because… I ain't here for too long yet. That one post that goes, "liking a media at the right time".. I wish to see that golden era, yanno? But maybe, even if things stands how it is now, there is still hope. You could say, moments are beautiful because they don't last forever, but I personally can't say anything to it yanno;; Speaking of which ! I have plans on bringing a bit of peace on the tag, though I can't say myself if I could actually do so. I just thought that it's interesting to try my hand at writing </3 The idea scares me, however it is wonderful if you think about it. I'll do my best to shorten this ask response (which isn't really happening) ♪ Yuuta bug protector Lis.. omg !! that is such a cute motivation… I am so impressed ??!?!? he's just like me… AND PLEASEE tell me about the fun fact about scorpions!! I guess talking about most insects are alright, except the dreaded and terrifying butterflies-but-in-their-baby-phase. (i aint gonna say the word. but generally, it's the W**m word… help me. ) The only thing I could say to you is that I only knew monster high, but vaguely and only the popular characters through their appearances. I haven't gotten the chance to watch them before, since we had no cable TVs ;; djdgfkjgdfdk I'm happy to know bout Skelita either way, it makes me think what if things were different, what words would i had spoken to you instead? !! so ! about the final project ideas, let me send that in another ask <3 I always have to remind myself that gacha can return later, so focus on saving up for events first… I am so sorry to the fallen soldiers (spent dias) we have deployed in the battlefield (gacha pulls)… One day, they will be avenged <33 yes, tw stars is like kr stars too. i just dont know if en server will follow through their system because.. why is en server's ribbon shop not including outfits (they're event point locked instead).. my tw server dias are alive and breathing again ! "Noir Neige my beloved and the ultimatum of my insanity"… I love your words so much…. It is the ultimatum of insanity.. omg.. I grinded Ritsu out of objectiveness and spite (to Rei)… He is here with me.. in taiwan server.. I'll prepare a tea party♪

Fun fact, I never really had many ritsus.. But he comes home easily, what a good boy. MAY YOU GET MEOW MEOW RITSU !! that card is so cute… myon myon! It's so hilarious when you think of your friends getting your oshis instead of you. God help us. Being an EccentricsP will never be just a be phase to me.. it is eternal ;; and Thank you for the wishes !! <3 if rei would dare to show up in my pulls, he should prepare x100 amount of apologies for the mental damage pulling for him cost me. that $%&^*#$@#!!! hmff. also kidnapping your yuuta services are free of charge, with tape in the mouth and all ♪

That concludes my response !! please enjoy this plentiful amount of dish, i have to serve my final project ideas as the dessert <3 You don't have to reply to this all to save time ( i reassure you!) and just read this like newspaper so we can have new messages if that's fine with you! , like the gacha part,, & if you have nothing to say ! Conserve your energy for better things !! Once again, I enjoy reading through your responses, they're so ??!??! respectful, even if there is conflict, you know how to take it in a way that isn't harsh. i love that for you. See you~ I don't have to mention the valkatsuki collab, fine halloween and modelgumi story in here, but ya know those ones(so golden!), might mention in a fresh ask.

— 🌻.

HELLOOO SUNFLOWER. I apologize for taking so many days to reply </3 I understand your struggle, school is just. Clenches fists. But it's ok !! You're not forced to reply or anything, so this is already an act of kindness from your side <3 ok, let's see

I would love to show you my themes, I promise I will scroll down my gallery to see if I have any screenshot, even if they're poor quality,, (I hope I find at least some themes) and yes <3 my friends are so cool, but I don't want to talk about the past too much because I'll get nostalgic and cry ahwbfjejd (im not ok)

ALSO, WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT YUTA??? you're so right, I love the little analysis you made. They're an eclipse, maybe that's why Hinata is the day and Yuta is the sunset.. I may love them too much, falls to my knees.

Yes, I was actually thinking about the new community just today, I feel really burnout from these people lately. I miss my friends, I miss the tiny place we held but, you know, "0(-("

Omg anon lore, I kinda imagined it 👀 I recognize patterns of speech (I talked about this before actually) and I indeed didn't recognize yours from old anons from enst community. Immaturities are ok, as long as we learn from them and regret them. I remember I was very furious with TikTok (idk why I'm talking in past, I hate them) because of the misinfo they were spreading on purpose and the canceling issues. If you believe that you should cancel Eichi instead of understanding the moral value and greyness of his character, maybe enstars isn't for you...? Akira wouldn't like them either.

That being said, welcome! Eichi is permanently canceled, this has been going on since the game first came out tbh, don't worry too much about it. AND PLSSS YOU'RE JUST LIKE ME. I'll use this as a confession since ik most followers don't read my anon interactions so ! I am actually a silly Eichi kin (low-key) I remember I didn't like him much at first and then I was like "he's ok" and then I read checkmate and I was like "h- ..hhh-" and yeah, mecore.

Your message is really heartwarming, yes, moments are beautiful because they don't last forever, and I cherish those moments like anything in the world. That made me happy, the happiest, and sometimes I wish I could go back and express my gratitude much more often. They say you don't appreciate things until you loose them, and that's how I feel sometimes. I hope this golden day returns to us one day, maybe it'll be different, a different form of it, but light still.

ALSOOO YOU WANT TO TRY WRITING? that's so cool, I wish you the best !!!! I could never honestly, writing intimidates me a lot but wahh, you're really brave about it.

ー・ー・ー ♡ ー・ー・ー

I love Yuu so much because he's such a scaredy cat <333 I love how. He's the type of teen to go "I'm so mature, I'm not a kid anymore, I'm an adult >:(" and then behaves like a child because, he gets so scared, and so excited about the little things of life. AND I ADORE THAT ABOUT HIM, it's the best thing ever seeing him acting as a person his age in such a complete organic way, I just want him to enjoy the phase he's going on without having to worry about being "stronger" or "more mature" because that gets him to feel bad about himself and deprecate sometimes and it's aughhhh :(((( let him enjoy things and have fears, that doesn't make him less valid than the rest.

Ok so the fun fact about scorpions is that. well, you know hoe there are little scorpions? Because there are the big ones and then the little ones, we have a different name for the small ones, alacranes or alacrán in singular. Well, when one of them stings you, you can later on feel when one is around because your, wound..? will start beating, like a presence. It's kind of dreadful but useful if you don't want to. be attacked. (I understand your fear towards the other insects, they're. yeah 0(-( )

I'm glad you know MH !! I saw it literally being created (I was a child when the first 3 dolls came out and I fell in love ever since) and ! Yeah I never watched through cable TV. I remember I saw the webshow in YouTube and then I bought the pirate movies in the market and played them in the DVD <33 good times. I miss the goth aesthetic they had so much.

I'm glad your savings are good again !! I have. 900 dia in JP and I'm thinking If I should grind for that Kohaku because ahaH crazy:bP here. I want him. I missed my bees, 8 months without seeing my beloved :( (because I will not count USA). Please let this be a signal for me getting kitten Ritsu. I haven't gotten anything from the free pulls so 🙏🙏 being EccentricsP is the best feeling ever, I hope you continue to enjoy them ! (And pls read Secret Labyrinth I'm insane over them)

I HOPE YOU HAVE A GREAT DAY AND LIFE !!! people do tend to say I talk in a respectful way even when I disagree with things, I see that as an advantage <3 have a good one !

[dailyaudiobiblechronological]

10/20/2022 DAB Chronological Transcription

Matthew 16, Mark 8, Luke 9:18-27

Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible Chronological, I'm China. Today is the 20th day of October, welcome. It is so great to be here with you today. Today we are in the book of Matthew, chapter 16, the Book of Mark, chapter eight, and the Book of Luke, chapter nine starting in verse 18, going to 27. And we continue on with the Modern English Version for this week.

Commentary

So we read the same story consecutively. And honestly, this is a really great scripture passage for a lot of different reasons. But what I really find so fascinating is that it ties in with one of the last things that we read in the Old Testament, if you can remember, about 20 days ago, 21 days ago, we were in the book of Malachi. And it talks about some, like when it's like the foretelling of Jesus coming when he comes, when the Messiah comes. Some will say that he is Elijah. Some will think that he is a risen prophet. There isn't necessarily a prophet speaking about John the Baptist. But what's confusing to me about people thinking that he's John, I'm not sure the timeframe of when John died to when this current moment was happening with Jesus or when people were thinking that this was John. Some thinking, are they thinking that it's John raised I know that's one of the translation said that. Or are they just thinking that it's just straight up John? You know what I'm saying? Like they are just like, well, John and Jesus were around at the same time. Maybe John doubled himself or maybe it was like a holographic version, I don't even know. But the reason why I brought that up is to say why this was so a prevalent question. What makes it such a prevalent question is that there's so much talk of who Jesus is. They're trying to figure this out, right? He's saying things that are quote blasphemous. He's doing things that they were not expecting the Messiah to come and do. He's claiming that he is the Messiah, which is I'm not sure if they were expecting the Messiah to come and reveal who he was and say here I am, or if they were expecting. I don't know. I don't know what fully they were expecting. But I don't think that they're expecting Jesus, especially someone of Nazareth or to be claiming to be the Son of God. There's all these things or to be healing on a Sabbath, right? There's all these things that they're like, these do not check our boxes, as if God had given a checklist of like, listen, this is what to be aware of and this is what not to be aware of. So check for your false claiming Messiahs and this is how you will know to my knowledge that it wasn't anything of that sort. But we have the Holy Spirit that comes and comforts and confirms and upholds the truth. And so we see the Holy Spirit even before it descending, all the disciples in the upper room, we see it being prevalent. And I mean, we read about that. I believe in Proverbs, right, where we read that wisdom presents herself as a female and almost like this intertwining with the Holy Spirit and being present as God was hovering over the waters. And so we see that Holy Spirit was present. He/she/it whatever you want to call, whatever feels true for you. I like to refer as she don't come for me with your theological standpoint, just sometimes it's what feels natural to you. How Holy Spirit has revealed his or herself to you, that's up to you. Maybe we'll get to heaven one day and find out everyone's wrong. Who knows? But anyways, I think this is a great question to sit with, though, because we can sit here and say, if I were to ask you, if we were sitting down, we're getting coffee or tea, and I'm like, who do you say that Jesus is? We would want to have our best written answers, right? We would want to have the best written answers so that we could, like, quote, pass this question as if it's like a test. But really what it is is it's a moment for us to reflect and say, who do I truly believe that Jesus is? And what are my actions and my beliefs in my posture of heart, saying that he is? What I mean by that is, are we sitting down over coffee and saying that he is one thing, but our actions and our faith and our belief is saying that he's a different thing. And breaking that down, dissecting it a little bit further is, are we like, yeah, me and Jesus, we're buddies. He's my best friend, I love him. Praise the Lord. Hallelujah, amen. All these things that when it comes time to believing and trusting and hoping, are we still saying, like, Lord, you are good, and I choose to trust that you are the risen Christ, that you are the Son of God, and I'm choosing to believe even in this moment that you are who you say that you know what I'm saying? Even in those low moments and those hard points, who are we saying that he is? And I know that Jesus is really trying to ask them a little bit further, more like, I'm trying to get some feedback from you guys. You guys are the ones following me the closest here. Everybody else is just trying to piece this together. But of course, like, you're watching this firsthand. I'm discipling you, teaching you, stewarding you, and I'm curious what you think. And it is revealed to Peter who Jesus is. And in some translations, Jesus is like, yes, you could have only known that unless my Father in heaven revealed that to you. And he must have. Great, let's keep walking and he says, upon this I'm going to build my church, upon this rock I'm going to build my church, and the gates of hell cannot prevail. And that's a big deal. And so kind of going back to the question that I was talking about earlier that really Jesus asked. I think it would be important for us just to have a moment of reflection. To actually think about who am I saying that Jesus is. Whether it is my written answer. But then also like with my words. Thoughts and deeds.

Prayer

So Father, I just pray that as we enter into a moment with you, God. I pray that you would just bring things to mind that we are needing to be convicted of. Whether we are claiming one thing and saying another with our actions. God, I pray that everything would just align with Your truth. And I thank you that when we seek you, we find you. And when we ask for Your presence, we are just aware of the fact that You've already been with us. And so Lord, I thank you for Your goodness and for Your word and Your truth that covers us and preserves us. And I pray that we would just have some quiet time space with you to really process out who do we say that you are, who are we believing that you are? And just to reflect what our actions and our faith and our trust, maybe it doesn't lie. And God, I pray that it would continue to strengthen and to grow even more. And if it doesn't, God, I just thank you that you're meeting us where we are and that you are showing us how to look more like you. And one of My favorite things in the Bible, God, we believe that help our unbelief, and so it is in Your name we pray. Amen.

Community Prayer Line

Hi Chronological family, this is Chris from Indiana and I wanted to stop this morning and pray for Risa from Florida. It's Saturday, October 15, and I heard your request this morning and I understand and feel your concern. My son is 20, so I completely understand what you're feeling and going through and have had similar battles and know what it is to have family that's going through this. So Jesus, we come before Your throne right now and I pray in Your mighty name, Jesus, that you would just heal Reese's, grandson of this suicidal thoughts that he's having. Jesus, I pray that you would bring someone special into his life that would be able to speak truth and encouragement to him. I pray that our prayers would above and beyond, go beyond the thoughts that he's having. And Jesus, I pray that he would feel selfworth and that he would feel love and that he would feel value. I pray God, that you might make some counseling available to him to where someone could shed some light into his life and hope. And Jesus, we know that you can overcome. And even this morning in the devotionals, if anybody has gotten this far, you are casting demons out. And I pray in your name, Jesus, that you would cast these demons of doubt and fear and worry and anxiety that are causing him to want to harm himself out of his body at this moment. And I pray that Risa would start seeing some differences. And we will praise you in advance, Jesus, for all that you do. We love you, Jesus. We thank you. Hope you all have a good Saturday

class, one moment. Thank you all. I love you all so much. Have a blessed day.

Good morning, family. This is Kim from Kentucky, and it's Saturday, the 15 October, and I'm just out walking my dog and looking at the beautiful fall colors that our Father God has painted for us. And I'm hearing your prayer request. I want you to know I'm praying for your sons and your daughters and your grandsons. And this year the Lord has prompted me to fast more. And I just want you to know if y'all would join me in fasting. According to Isaiah 58 six, God said, is this not the fast that I have chosen to loosen the bonds of wickedness, to undo the bands of the yolk, to let the oppressed go free, to break every yoke. And I hear that in your prayer requests for deliverance from oppression and demonic spirits and lying voices and just health issues. And I don't think we've got to it yet in the Gospels, but Jesus said of a demon spirit, this kind only goes out with prayer and fasting. And so I've added fasting regularly to my prayers because he gave me those words. We're fighting for our sons, we're fighting for our daughters. We're fighting for our houses, our sisters and our brothers. We're fighting till we see revival in the streets. We're fighting till the enemy goes down in defeat. We're remembering our God who is great and who is awesome. And we stand and we fight for ourselves and all others, for we know he has called every family by name, and we know that his will is for all to be saved. So, yes, I'm praying and I'm fasting for deliverance in Jesus name. Love y'all.

Good morning. D-A-B-C. Family, this is Rodney from Atlanta. It just hurts my heart. And I guess I'm not really surprised how the enemy is coming after our young people, the next generation. I heard the request of a grandmother from Florida of our 19 year old grandson who has been put on suicide watch. And I want to pray for that young man. Father, in the name of the Lord Jesus, you are our God and you are our Father. And you said that we could come before you, come before your throne at any time. God, we need you all the time. Lord, I lift up this young man before you now, God, I pray that someone would come his way and begin to minister life until this young man satan, you are a liar. You are yet defeated. I come against those dark thoughts that you're trying to place in this young man's mind, God. I think, Lord, for life right now, Jesus touches mine with your nail scarred hands. And I think, Lord, right now that you are going to do it. You want to cause this young man to rise for you. Send Your word you come that we may have life and have it more abundantly. So, Father, I declare life with this young man. I declare you erase them up and use them for Your glory. He becomes a great testimony for the kingdom of God and Satan would have lost again. I plead the blood of Jesus over his heart, over his mind and comfort, even his grandmother in Florida now. And God, we thank you and we praise you that it is done. In Jesus mighty name we pray amen. Amen. And amen.

Hello, DABC family. This is Diana from Florida and I want to pray for Michelle Ellison and praying in the desert. Dear Heavenly Father, we come before you and we lift up Michelle Ellison, the wife of a pastor in Atlanta who is in critical condition in the hospital after receiving a stray bullet in the head. Dear God, I pray in the name of Jesus that you would heal her, O Lord God, that you would use the medical professionals mightily to restore her, Lord God, and hopefully bring her to a place where she is stabilized. Her father in Jesus name, I pray for this church community. I pray for her husband that you would bring comfort to their lives in this moment of mourning for her life. I pray that they would continue to pray and have hopeful god, you can do a miracle. I also pray for praying in the desert. Father God, she is crying out to you for restoration in her marriage. Her husband is not a believer. And I want to pray that you would use her to show respect and kindness, to demonstrate a submissive and quiet spirited response to him and in this, O Lord God, be able to win him over to salvation. I also pray the Lord God, in the name of Jesus, that she would get help, that she would find either a therapist or people in the community that can help her handle any verbal abuse that she is experiencing. And Father God, that in the name of Jesus, that they would be able to lead her and give her God the advice as to how she should proceed in her marriage in order for them to I pray for restoration, Lord God. In Jesus name, amen.

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 11/03/2023 (Nicki Minaj, j-hope/J. Cole)

For an eighth consecutive week, “Flowers” by Miley Cyrus reigns on top of the UK Singles Chart. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS!

Rundown

I’d like to say that this is a pretty calm week, which I’m somewhat glad about, though it does mean I don’t have all that many observations so let’s just get straight into our notable dropouts, which are songs exiting the UK Top 75 – the chart that I cover – after five weeks in the region or a peak in the top 40. This week, that list includes “Me & You” by Central Cee (good!), “METAMORPHOSIS” by INTERWORLD, “Here with Me” by d4vd (right after peaking as well), “The Color Violet” by Tory Lanez, “Lionheart (Fearless)” by Joel Corry and Tom Grennan and finally, “When I Was Your Man” by Bruno Mars.

Considering we don’t have any returning entries, it’s just the gains filling up the space left by those songs, and we have an interesting selection of songs gaining traction, with “In Ha Mood” by Ice Spice at #58, “Snowfall” by Oneheart and reidenshi of all songs at #57, “REACT” by Switch Disco featuring Ella Henderson and the late Robert Miles at #54, “Bad Habits” by Ed Sheeran inexplicably picking up at #53, “Here” by Tom Grennan up big at #50, “I Ain’t Worried” by OneRepublic at #43, “Shut Up My Mom’s Calling” by Hotel Ugly at #41, “Another Love” by Tom Odell at #40, “Oh Baby” by Nathan Dawe and Bru-C featuring bshp and Issey Cross making the top 40 at #35 (great!), “Whistle” by Jax Jones featuring Calum Scott also making the top 40 at #34 (not great!), “22” by JayO flying way up off of the debut to #32, “Pretty Boys” of Caity Baser at #26, and finally, making its way to her first top 10, we have Libianca at #8 with “People”. It’s a fantastic song, and I’m very much glad it’s here – now the task the UK has is ensuring she stays there.

The top five of this week’s UK Singles Chart consists of “Sure Thing” by Miguel at #5, “Kill Bill” by SZA at #4, “Die for You” by The Weeknd at #3, “Boy’s a liar” by PinkPantheress at #2 (I would credit the remixes for those two if OCC did) and of course, “Flowers” at the top. As a little aside, if you’re wondering what the best way to tell a slower or quieter week from a standard or busier one on the chart, you could look at the low sales in the top 100 or simply see where “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers is. It’s up five spots to #65. It’s even above a new Justin Bieber song. Speaking of...

NEW ARRIVALS

#74 – “Private Landing” – Don Toliver featuring Justin Bieber and Future

Produced by Cardo, Omar Guetfa, Rob Bisel and 206Derek

So Don Toliver released his newest album, Love Sick, and it was a bit of a commercial disappointment. I haven’t heard the record, but given it has credits such as James Blake, TisaKorean, Teezo Touchdown and Toro y Moi, I can only assume it’s a more adventurous project that paid the price for being so, debuting at #36 on the UK’s albums chart, his lowest showing yet. If Don had a Justin Bieber and Future collaboration, one does wonder why he couldn’t have pushed this as a single to save a flailing rollout, but commercial success isn’t the only thing that matters, of course... well, okay, financially and statistically it is, but is the song any good? No, of course not. Don’s voice is very situational so placing his nasal riffing over intimidating bass knocks with an odd bass mix and a monotonous bell loop that sounds accidental just doesn’t work, especially if the song is going to refuse any attempt at being actually catchy. Whilst Future obviously fits well within these kinds of textures, his verse isn’t particularly interesting, and then we get to the Justin Bieber “verse” and it’s pretty clear that this is an attempt at bridging gaps like Travis Scott did so successfully on Rodeo, pitting Bieber against Future but his “verse” consists solely of droning Auto-Tuned repetition over a “psychedelic” beat that both goes nowhere and doesn’t end up feeling as much of a trip as it does just an unfinished demo, especially if Bieber’s going to put as little effort in as possible, seemingly not understanding the purpose of all the trap-rap he clearly listens to. When it comes to constructing a song, whilst Travis has his problems, especially in the mixing department, at least there’s ambition but with “Private Landing”, absolutely nothing happens between the first and final chorus that makes either stand out. Also, I guess Future’s really into feet now, which is brand new information.

#73 – “Freezing” – Mimi Webb

Produced by Andrew Wells and The Nocturns

Mimi Webb has released her debut album, Amelia, which debuted at #4 on the albums chart and the new single is seemingly less popular than “Mr. Brightside” by a decent amount. I could leave it at that, right? It’s a breakup track with an “anthemic” hook that sounds way clunkier than I think Webb realised before recording, going for that final wham line in the chorus that could work if it weren’t so tackily connected to the rest of said chorus. The synths are hazy and lacking in punch unlike the drum machines which just pummel cheap gated synthpop in your ears like a conveyor belt. Yawn.

#70 – “Right Hand” – Unknown T featuring Knucks

Produced by R14 Beats, Chucks and HONEYWOODSIX

Unknown T’s back with a song about his right-hand girl, who doesn’t understand his life but is still precious to him... I don’t care, there are no stakes and his verses are not really funny or interesting so I have no interest in this relationship. T has his awkward charisma that he always has, but it comes off as a bit on-the-nose when he’s rapping with obvious punch-ins over a very minimal beat with softer keys. His gruff ad-libs and flows that sound really bizarre under his constantly snivelling, menacing cadence just doesn’t really work over this instrumental. Knucks is way more predisposed to work on this material, and his flow is way smoother, telling a short narrative within the little time he has about this girl whose boyfriend is toxic so Knucks kills him, but only as an act of selflessness because he’s not interested in this “groupie” he’s now acquired. I mean, it’s misogynistic, sure, but at least slightly compelling compared to Unknown T? Regardless, there’s just not much to this song, so let’s move on.

#63 – “Rhyme Dust” – MK and Dom Dolla

Produced by MK and Dom Dolla

These little duos make sense for now, but the next one goes against that trend as much as possible. For now, however, Mark Kinchen teams up with Australian producer Dom Dolla for a song that may require a bit of a history lesson. In 1971, Kool & the Gang, legendary funk group, released a live album that contained the great jam track “N.T.”. Like many tracks from Kool & the Gang, it has been sampled extensively in hip hop over the years, by a grand roster of rappers including Nas, ScHoolboy Q, Dr. Dre, Run-DMC, Common and more, as well as several times by Q-Tip. Whilst several of Tip’s uses of the song’s drum break were in music by his group A Tribe Called Quest, he reached #12 in the UK as a solo act with “Breathe and Stop”, a catchy, percussive track produced by the late J Dilla that honestly I’m not a fan of. I just find it a bit dull, as whilst Tip’s verses are sometimes impressive, the flows are monotonous and the breathy percussiveness of it all ends up actually hurting the groove. Hey, if Q-Tip and J Dilla will fail, which they rarely did, they will fail in an interesting way. Naturally, 23 years later, MK and Dom Dolla scrape up some vocal loops from that song for a propulsive house banger that sets a pretty unsettling atmosphere at first with its door-knocking sound effects, sirens and incessant mantra from Q-Tip until the buzzy synths come in and the hype starts to click in... yet it doesn’t come immediately. Instead, a soaring, ambient synth gradually comes in aside a growing sprinkling of atmosphere, and by the time we get back to that lead synth, we’re without a bass. It’s a pretty intricate, club-ready track, but it’s also damn near eerie, especially since once that bass knock finally comes in the whole song becomes a minimal almost-pastiche of itself, using those same loops that are familiar to you but without much effort regarding an actual groove or melodic base, just fluttering out as soon as possible. It’s pretty difficult to hear how this came from a funk jam by Kool & the Gang until you realise how much this sounds like an essential moment of tension within a DJ mix, and that’s definitely one I want to hear. I’d be surprised if it lasted on the charts, but it’s a welcome addition to this week’s chart at least.

#59 – “Can’t Tame Her” – Zara Larsson

Produced by MTHR

Much like Miley Cyrus before her, Zara Larsson can’t be tamed, and is proving so through one of the tamest genres possible: an 80s synthpop pastiche. That is really a wild and untamed sound to tackle in 2023, truly. I don’t even know why I’m being sarcastic, I actually like the song a fair bit, given how the synths are ACTUALLY 80s in the way they stab in and out instead of always phasing in, and they hit particularly hard against the sweet pianos that add a lot of melodrama to the song. The writing is fun too, with Larsson observing this party girl who is unbothered by any attempt to tie her down, which I actually think is more interesting than her directly taking on that role. If I have a problem, it’s probably that the drums just don’t hit as hard as they really good, as whilst they are pretty choppy, I’d prefer for a fully propulsive and overwhelming rhythm section, yet the chipperness of the lighter production here, especially with the cheesy bass synth wobble in the second verse, probably fits the content more. Some of Larsson’s melodic tendencies and inflections are a bit awkward and stuffed in, but that’s pretty much a nitpick, especially since I love the infectious gang vocals in the chorus. The song does feel like Ava Max should be singing it, since she could actually kill that bridge with her performance that Larsson kind of dips out of, especially when she’s needlessly distorted in the mix, and Cirkut could add a bit more pulse to it, but Larsson holds her own fine and ultimately, it’s an insanely catchy pop song that I think will be a hit, and absolutely deserves to be.

#37 – “on the street” – j-hope and J. Cole

Produced by Pdogg

Our final duo, like I said, makes a lot less sense, though also more than you’d expect. Sure, j-hope is a member of BTS, and K-pop as an industry is very separated from American hip hop, especially the semi-conscious brand that Cole makes. As an art form however, K-pop cannot exist as we know it without its rap influences, and BTS is a group that made its rappers a large part of their music for much of the time that the band was together. j-hope has referenced and remixed J. Cole before, and he even met his idol at a festival last year, so the collaboration makes a bit more sense, especially given it’s been nearly a decade now since BTS first released their “Born Sinner” remix. Oh, and continuing the trend the last two songs set, this is seriously great. The whistle and acoustic guitar had me worried but against the overwhelming boom bap drums and record scratching, this has a really nostalgic pop-rap feel that j-hope matches with his melodic rapping (even though his verse is annoyingly short for all its passion), as well as the chorus that doesn’t show much vocal range but instead acts as one of those casual rap choruses that everyone can sing along to: if j-hope were to show more of his vocal prowess, it wouldn’t be nearly as casual and chill, especially with the multi-tracking making it sound like he’s hanging out with friends and they’re all singing together. Of course, we then have J. Cole, whose verse is absolutely transcendent. I am not a fan of Cole’s, in fact quite the contrary, but his more homely verses always get me, and this one starts with some flexing but it’s all founded in genuine anxieties that he’s gotten over, all with an effortless flow and slick rhyme schemes. The way the beat envelops around him when he gets into the compelling anecdote about why he personally believes in God is just really sweet and excellently crafted by Pdogg, especially with those smooth keys in the back and the distorted drum fills. Cole is definitely in his typical bag when going all meta and referring to his place in the rap game, but him contemplating retirement sounds a lot more genuine this time around, especially when his bars about a father crying when seeing his daughter walk down the aisle, and easing off to “let her grow”, in some ways mirror both the fact that j-hope will himself be enlisting in the military, as well as the fact that Cole has a record label now for his younger talent, that recently with JID and Ari Lennox is showing a lot more potential, meaning Cole’s preparing for his role as an elder statesman. It’s a fantastic verse then topped off by Cole showing his singing skills for once, with some of his most impressive harmonies backing j-hope in that final chorus, which really highlights the role model dynamic Cole balances against j-hope. Goddamn, a song by a BTS member and J. Cole actually made me feel something other than regret. I know it’s only in the top 40 because of those K-pop stan sales, but it’d be a breath of fresh air if it stuck around for any longer.

#30 – “Red Ruby da Sleaze” – Nicki Minaj

Produced by Go Grizzly, Cheese Beatz and Tate Kobang

“Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)” by Lumidee is a very interesting song. It’s an oddly ghostly, pitchy vocal performance over a percussive, kind of lo-fi drum pattern that not even Timbaland would have approached yet in 2003, yet is still mind-numbingly catchy. It hit #2 in the UK on release, and has since been somewhat of a staple, recently finding success as a sample for Chip and most notably Anne-Marie and Little Mix with “Kiss My (Uh-Oh)”, which is pretty fascinating considering how singular the song really is. I was pretty compelled by Nicki’s use of the sample since it kept the awkward intensity whilst adding Nicki’s similarly singular rap delivery, with some pretty detailed, aggressive bars dissing her competition... but with the chorus, the awkward, trap-adjacent percussion comes in alongside Nicki’s lazy, Auto-Tuned singing that never sounds good, and all of that intensity just leaves the song, since she ends up in goofy sex-rap territory once again. The second verse, once again, is pretty intense and uses the ghostly essence of the Lumidee track as a great foundation for some hardcore bars, even if she becomes less tense and more reminiscent of boring flexes as it goes on. Honestly, I know it wouldn’t have been a hit, but she could have just made a drumless track – she was raised in New York so a grimey, Griselda-esque sound would be a natural fit, and it would take out all of the need for the “contemporary” production since it would reach a more niche audience alongside her core base of fans who already buy everything she makes. I don’t think it would alienate nearly as many fans as she thinks it would, and it’s a shame that there’s a pop hook tacked on to what could be a heavy-hitting, toxic diss track otherwise. With Nicki Minaj, for me, it’s always been hit-or-miss, and yes, usually, within the same song as well, but I REALLY wished I could have liked this more because it could have been well up my alley.

Conclusion

Well, it’s an interesting batch of new songs and most of them are pretty alright. Worst of the Week easily goes to Don Toliver, Future and Justin Bieber for “Private Landing”, although I’m mostly blaming the producers... okay, and Justin Bieber. Mimi Webb bags the Dishonourable Mention like clockwork for “Freezing”, but as for our best it wasn’t even that difficult either. Of all people, j-hope and J. Cole take away Best of the Week with “on the street”, whilst I think MK and Dom Dolla are just barley eeked out by “Can’t Tame Her” by Zara Larsson for the Honourable Mention. All three of those songs really pleasantly surprised me. As for what’s next on the horizon, I suppose we’ll see what damage that Miley Cyrus album does, but for now, thank you for reading and I’ll see you next week!

[steamishot]

setbacks

in my last post, things between matt and i were getting better. however, he since had a 100+ hour work week, one day on days and then 7 days on nights for a consecutive 8 day workweek. he became very irritable/sensitive and impossible to communicate with (imo) which led to bad communication and useless arguments again. 

we had a couples therapy session last friday with a new therapist cindy that we both like and find helpful. she’s a POC (i believe some kind of hispanic) so it seems like she’s more understanding of the immigrant mentality. in summary of the session, i learned that i tend to have a fixer/”how can i solve the problem” mentality before offering emotional support. L has pointed this out to me recently when he was going through a hard time emotionally. he mentioned multiple times that he wants me to empathize and reassure him that everything will be okay, but i just try and ask questions or use logic to help solve what i think is the problem at hand - this makes him feel worse. 

in the case between matt and i, i become a fixer when matt has anxiety/OCD attacks or starts spiraling. i try and remove the stressor (by handling it for him), or try and talk him out of the anxiety using logic (which almost never works when he’s at what cindy calls “cloud 9″ of anxiety). this dynamic has caused me to feel depleted when dealing with matt’s anxiety/OCD and act as an enabler, almost coddling him. he depends on me more to help assuage things, which in turn makes me more irritable/short fused whenever he does have anxious spirals. i overextend myself to try and “solve” his problems, when all i should do is offer emotional support and tell him it’s going to be okay. 

cindy provided a very good analogy that really helped me put things in perspective. when matt has anxiety/OCD crises, it’s equivalent to him drowning. he is only using his reptilian brain at this point to go towards flight or fight. it has been over “small” things such as using the wrong credit card to pay for something (i.e. one would get 2% back vs 5% back as an example). would it work while he’s drowning to use logic and teach him how to get out? or is it more effective to throw a life jacket to help him ground instead? all this time, i’ve been stupidly trying to use logic and explaining to him why X is not probable/not worthy of being anxious over and probably making him feel dumb for feeling certain things. 

she explained the difference between coping and grounding. coping is the consistent activities one takes to manage their stress/anxiety: exercise, yoga, meditation, socializing, etc. grounding is what one does when they realize they their anxiety is reaching a peak. she said it is the time to use one of your 5 senses to help distract your mind from reaching “cloud 9″. this could be something like smelling a perfume you like, watching something calming, listening to something soothing, etc. 

i will need matt to really put in effort in the coping and grounding aspect, and i will also try and stop my fixer tendencies because it makes matters worse. i need to be more emotionally supportive instead of coming off as blaming when someone else is mentally suffering. 

highlights of this week off:

book of mormon BOGO broadway. i watched it in LA with my brother and his friend (coincidentally named matt) back in 2014. they have since rewrote the play. it was hilarious and very liberal. the best performers are really in nyc

my director confidentially reached out to ask if i’m interested in a payroll manager position. i thanked him for considering me and said i’m very interested. it was really happy news because i’ve been at the same position for like 4 years now and itching for a promotion lol. i’ve also been helping my manager and him with faculty payroll the last half a year or so. nothing is confirmed at this point but he and the CAO both think there is a big need for this position. they would still be supportive of my remote schedule. fingers crossed that this will come to fruition. 

autocamp trip in catskills for one night. the trip was too short but it was a super nice glamping experience. we cooked in the dark in 35F weather, got to have a nice hot shower and sleep on a tempurpedic (my fav mattress thus far). this time, we did the manager’s special at hertz and got a gigantic car - the dodge durango. 

booked roundtrip business class flights and hotels (pending 2 nights) to portugal (lisbon and porto) in march. thanks to matt’s travel hacking expertise, the roundtrip flights only cost us $900 out of pocket +220K points that i’ve been hoarding in amex. the cash price of the fights would have been $20K for the two of us. 

we decided to cancel our return stay at the equinox hotel. it would have still been ~$700 so we thought we should use it towards new experiences

loved our autocamp stay in catskills; immediately booked autocamp in cape cod for april 

[pick-em-pool]

WEEK 10

TEN WEEKS DOWN 🔟 AND WE ARE IN THE BACK HALF OF THE SEASON 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️ Gabby and Lisa are trying desperately to hold on to the top spots, while Juliette and Abby are looking to maneuver their way out of the basement. This week featured the LARGEST 🗻 difference between the best scores and the worst scores so far 🤩 let's dive in. ARRRRRRRRRRRR YOU READY KIDS?

JULIETTE - 11 POINTS

I'm getting WHIPLASH watching Juliette shoot up and down each week 😵 as the Arizona Alto goes from last week's LAST PLACE 📉 score to this week's FIRST PLACE SCORE 📈 I have to keep reminding myself this week's winner is only 15! I've seen her Instagram, she's got a better chance at getting into the bars than Brady 🍸 Which Juliette are we getting next week? The CHAMP or the SCRUB??? I don't know, but it will be like watching on of Gabby's reality T.V. shows, love is blind: I'm shocked, I'm appalled, I can't look away!

GABBY - 10 POINTS

OOOOOHH BOY 🚨🚨🚨 KEEP CALM EVERYONE, AS GABBY HAS TAKEN THE LEAD 🚨🚨🚨 She's all alone at the top after great picks for Minnesota AND Pittsburgh ✅ Gabby's here to collect on some deferred revenues in the back half, and increase her FREE CASH FLOW 💲💲💲 with a WIN. Can She Do It? I'm loving this, Gabby the champion!

RUSTY - 10 POINTS

Rusty has now moved up in the rankings for THREE consecutive weeks 😎 Could he be the DARK HORSE candidate to win some cash this year??? He's playing FEARLESS 🏂 right now, with excellent calls on the Detroit and Green Bay upsets 🔥 Not only is he getting better at football, he can maneuver his boat trailer backwards through a corn maze blindfolded while eating a chicken chalupa. I've never seen anything like it, especially considering my attempts, where I need to make a 657 point turn to back in

LISA - 9 POINTS

FOOTBALL IS TOUGH PEOPLE 😣 as just the slightest 🤏 slip-up means Lisa drops down to second place. SHE'S NOT OUT YET 🥊🥊 As she's only a single point behind 🏇 But she's got to stay LASER FOCUSED 🤓 I'm worried about Big Mamma's concentration, as she's be hitting the GYM to improve her golf game🏌️‍♀️ THAT'S TIME THAT COULD BE USED STUDYING PICKS LISA

JJ - 9 POINTS

If the season ended today, JJ would be in his best finish EVER 🏆 as our favorite hockey star is rock-solid in 4th. HOWEVER 🛑 We still have 8 weeks to go. Can JJ keep his improbable streak alive, or will he have to return to THE BOYS IN THE BACK in ignominy? JJ has been as much as a RIDE OR DIE for Aaron Rogers as you can be, picking Green Bay almost every week. To me that's a weird horse to bet on 🐴 considering Aaron looks like he's an 98 year old who has never had a full night of sleep in his entire life 👴🧓👵 With a TOUGH matchup against Tennessee tonight, will JJ stay loyal to Aaron?

JANIE - 7 POINTS

I'm not going to lie, I'm glad I'm not in the Daigneault household right now 😬 as Janie stumbles YET AGAIN with a tepid 7 point performance 🥴 I'll bet the angry sounds of the stair-stepping machine are going as we speak 😡 She's not done for yet, but the reigning CHAMPION is nine points behind gabby. For shame, Gabby! Janie spends 22 years raising you, and you repay her by CRUSHING her in fantasy football 😗 After everything you put her through growing up!?

ABBY - 7 POINTS

Well Abby got one single week of fresh air before being sent back down to the basement, now in LAST place after a paltry seven point performance 😞😭 I think her mental fortitude is lacking 😤 Who can blame her though, her College mascot I a symbol for wieners and her University mascot is a hat... a. hat. 🤠 Anyway, I won't worry about Abby for too long, she has a way of being able to drown her sorrows

VAL - 6 POINTS

Val I SWEAR ON MY GREAT AUNT ETHYL'S GRAVE 🙄 Last week I officially crowned her a contender 🎖🥋 for the throne, and then she takes my praise and promptly scores a measly SIX POINTS 👎 Dropping her all the way from 4th to 7th 💥 Val has been picking the Rams EVERY week. And what is their record? 3-6. First the jets ✈ and now the Rams? Val has some sort of attachment to underperformers (lucky for Peyton HOOOOOOO GOT EM 💯💯💯)

PEYTON - 5 POINTS

Speaking of underperformers, we're rounding it out with Peyton 🏉 Who freefalls down to NINE points behind Gabby 🪂 With misses on the New Orleans pick, the Las Vegas Pick, BOTH Los Angeles picks, it's ugly over here ���� Someone please inform Peyton that this is not Frisbee Golf and that one point is a BAD thing 1️⃣ Lewistown? more like LOSERtown 💥 O.K. I have another one: Peyton? More like PeyTONs of bad picks 💥 O.K. O.K. This one is better: Radford? more like BADford 🤔 Hmmm the commissioner needs to work on his zingers

ANYWAY folks somehow someway you all make it interesting every week 🎉 and I am on the EDGE of my seat 🪑 waiting to see who is going home with the big bucks 🦌 💲🤑💸💰 Until next time everyone!

[gunsatthaphan]

I have a question about Our Skyy 2, but not just for you but to all people seeing this

From the series they picked we get more then one actor that played in 2 of those shows: Khao in The Eclipse and ATOTS, Drake in BBS and ATOTS, Pawin in the Eclipse and Star in my mind, Neo in The Eclipse and VV, ON in Bad buddy and Vice Versa, Mark in MSP and BBS and Satang in MSP and Star in my mind

Do you think that it could be possible for all of them to participate in both shows or are they gonna prioritize the one where they have a bigger role? for example Khao just in The Eclipse or Satang in MSP(Sound), like they did in the og Our Skyy with New cuz he was both in Sotus and DBK and he acted only as Kao and M wasn't in the Sotus episode...

I can understand if they wanted to have them act in only the show where they are more important but they have a lot of people that played in more than one show so it is trickier than in the og our skyy.

p.s. onestly I am asking this specifically cuz I really want to see Longtae again in the ATOTS episode/es cuz I love the boy so much and I would never get tired of seeing my adored Khaotung🧡

hello anon!

you make good points and I'm gonna leave this question for the public to answer as well but I personally don't think any of the main actors will appear in each other's episodes as different characters. I feel like that would be strange, especially if they air 1 episode a week for 8 consecutive weeks and put actor x as character y in episode z and then actor x as character q in episode z+1 the week after like that would be so weird. IF they have only 1 episode per couple then I'm pretty sure they will solely focus on the main pairing and not include any side characters. even if it ends up being more than 1 episode which I think some of them hinted at.

but who knows.

xxx

[pleaserelaxfc]

NWSL Thoughts: Week 3

With last week's games disrupted by Challenge Cup-induced reschedulings, the NWSL will have its second full weekend of games this week, and despite only being ten games into the regular season, we have already seen some surprise results.

This week's games

Thorns vs. Reign (10:30 Fri., CBS Sports Network)

Pride vs. Current (6:30 Sat., Paramount+)

Gotham vs. Courage (7:00 Sat., Paramount+)

Racing vs. Dash (8:00 Sat., Twitch)

Wave vs. Red Stars (5:00 Sun., Paramount+)

Spirit vs. Angel City (5:00 Sun., Paramount+)

Games to Watch

To see a potential Championship preview: Thorns vs. Reign. Of course, the Reign were the top seed overall in the group stage of the Challenge Cup, and despite some underwhelming results over the last two weeks, they're still expected to make a strong run in the regular season playoffs. The Thorns looked like they were easily going to make it to the Challenge Cup playoffs as well, until the very last game of the group stage, which they lost while missing several players to COVID protocols - despite some massive turnover here, they are also expected to do pretty well in the regular season, and could make just as strong a run in the postseason with Sophia Smith in form and Janine Beckie added to their front line. The Thorns are coming off of what essentially became a rest week, and while the Reign played a lot of games last week, they will probably be coming into this long-term rivalry matchup feeling like they have something to prove, so I would expect this to be a very exciting game.

To gauge where things stand: Pride vs. Current. The Pride did almost unbelievably poorly in the Challenge Cup, and then started off the regular season with a resounding loss to Gotham (their second loss in three games against Gotham this calendar year), but did eke out a win against Angel City last week - with Syd Leroux back from injury, they may be on their way to righting the ship. On the other hand, the Current did well in the Challenge Cup, winning the midwestern region, but then suffered three consecutive defeats across all competitions in the last two weeks. This game could be a good indication of which direction these two teams are heading.

To see a lot of goals (or just something completely different?): Gotham vs. Courage. I don't know who is going to score them, but I think this game is going to have a lot of goals. Gotham won by 3 goals in their first game of the season, and then lost by 4 in their second, and at least 3 goals have been scored overall in every game that the Courage have played in since the international break, so it seems reasonable to think that maybe there will also be a lot of goals here this weekend. However, after I started writing this, the injury report came out and, you know what, it's bad! In addition to the regular types of injuries, Gotham has four players out under COVID protocol, all of whom I would have expected to start (Purce, Dydasco, Harris, and Krieger), and the Courage has seven (Boade, Bowen, Solaun, Pinto, Gray, Rowland, and Carson Pickett), three or four of whom I would have expected to start. So, it's possible that both teams will have very unusual lineups and we will get to see some largely-unknown players in this game.

Predictions:

Thorns vs. Reign: Draw, 2-2

Pride vs. Current: Current wins, 2-1

Gotham vs. Courage: Courage wins, 3-1

Racing vs. Dash: Racing wins, 1-0

Wave vs. Red Stars: Wave wins, 1-0

Spirit vs. Angel City: Spirit wins, 3-0

[pequenaotaku]

Episode 04

"The Seasons Along With You"

That's it, we come to the last episode and, consecutively, to the last post about Alternative Life Lysander. I trust that Armin and Kentin's routes will arrive too, but I still don't know if I'll create oc's for them...

I loved playing these four episodes, the scenes were heart-warming, I felt satisfied and blah blah blah, all that stuff you guys are already tired of knowing. But this ending was a little... special. As I mentioned before, it's a climactic and anticlimactic ending at the same time. In my case, I think it would have worked better if Candy had really dropped out of college, after all, unlike UL, here she doesn't show much passion or attachment to her course (and you still have the option to choose that she's not sure anymore about liking the course in episode 2). Continuing the course out of pity ironically strikes me as a pity. But I understand, the company also can't just encourage you to throw everything up to go live who knows where with the love of your life. That said, it's still just a game, I want more entertainment and excitement.

Oh, and I can't forget: the beginning of this episode was insanity beyond measure. Did Candy really think she could travel 8 hours a day, every day for 2 semesters? If that's not crazy, I don't know what is. Also, when she finally comes to reason and realizes that it would be better to spend the week in Amoris and the weekends at the farm, it's the biggest senseless drama, it's like they'll never see each other again! I say it and I repeat it: they went 2 years without seeing each other or connecting within a relationship, going 4 or 5 days without seeing each other is a breath for the heart. Or at least it should be... Nhé.

CREDITS: The white shirt from the third look was taken from @mcl-links​.

Anyway, enough with the opinion on the episode and let's go to my headcanon.

(As always, sorry for any spelling mistakes. English is not my first language and I end up relying on Google Translate.)

The next morning they traveled back to the farm early, and as soon as they arrived they went straight to the errands they were used to.

The rest of the week flew by. They spent a lot of time together, went out to the countryside by bicycle, walked through the forest, watched movies in bed on their laptop, played and talked with the animals, spent hours inside the office writing and drawing. It was a lot of fun, but finally it was time for Margot to leave for the city. And so, Sunday afternoon, her bags were packed and she was ready to go.

Lysander made sure to take her back with his truck, as he wasn't a fan of her traveling alone. Even though him being with her on the trip wasn't a guarantee that an accident couldn't happen, it did make him feel safer because at least this time he would be around to protect her. Traveling was a necessary evil for them to see each other, he knew nothing could be done about it either, but that didn't make the situation any less tense, it was even more worrisome. Understanding this, Margot didn't argue with him when he offered to take her, but she also insisted on traveling alone and by surprise to see him.

I feel like I need to give a little context here. Margot wasn't Lysander's first girlfriend in my headcanon. At school, he dated a girl named Evelynn, who is the equivalent of Candy in this storyline. It happened as you already know: after finishing high school, her father got a promotion at work and they had to move to another city. Evelynn and Lysander were in a long-distance relationship and didn't talk much on the cell phone due to lack of time or simply forgetfulness, but the girl was wasting all her allowance to travel to Amoris every weekend to see her boyfriend. And on one of those trips (this is where it differs from the original story), which incidentally was made in the middle of a storm, the car she had rented to take her skidded on the track and had an accident. Evelynn unfortunately did not survive. While it's obviously not his fault, Lysander always felt a little responsible for it, after all, if she wasn't going to see him every week just because he forgot to communicate sometimes, or if at least he was also taking trips to go see her, maybe she hadn't had the accident. After that, his father died, and a year later his mother too. He moved permanently to the farm after that because he needed some fresh air since everything in town reminded him of his ex-girlfriend. And although his parents no longer lived in the countryside, he still had fond childhood memories that could distract him a little from that mental chaos. After a year living in the countryside, where he saw everything in black and white, he tried to return to the city to try to take his first post-mourning step and went to spend Christmas in the apartment he shared with his brother, but now he also belonged your sister in law. He just didn't expect to find a girl capable of making him see the colors of the world again.

In front of Anteros, they said goodbye with a passionate kiss, promising that they would talk to each other by phone as soon as Lysandre arrived at the farm again. Margot wasn't worried that he'd forget this time, and besides, she'd also left a colorful post-it note taped to the steering wheel of the truck before she left, with a sweet little note.

The days passed and the two faced that old routine they were used to, each on their own side. Sometimes they texted, other times they made phone calls, and on a few rare weekends, they would show up at each other's house by surprise.

The months flew by, soon the second semester was ending and graduation was scheduled.

In this last year of study in particular, Margot caught the attention of an agent named Yael, who quickly made the girl known for her arts, and despite her insistence that she stay in town and keep growing, after receiving her diploma and celebrating with closest friends (who were also graduating), her boyfriend, her younger brother and her father, she packed her bags and moved permanently to the farm. So, Yael eventually relented in helping her to open a gallery in the countryside, but also convinced her to exhibit some of her works in the city, to make it even more prestigious.

His father, who showed up at his graduation, ended up moving to Amoris again, and Mark stayed with him until he finished his studies, which did him good, but whenever he could, he traveled to the farm too.

And things with Lysander were going from good to even better. Of course, she took time off to work on her projects, but now she could take breaks when she saw fit, go see him or see the animals, play games, watch movies, lend a hand, or even take a little walk in the surrounding countryside without having to worry about those ridiculous tiresome trips. On Saturdays, she helped with the visits, which became more and more frequent, so she could not always be present as she had to pay attention to her small gallery which, by the way, was also starting to grow.

And so, little by little, the two found themselves facing a radiant future, living in a peaceful house.

[absolutebl]

This Week in BL

May 2021 Wk 3

Being a highly subjective assessment of one tiny corner of the interwebs.

It’s a cray cray Friday when Vietnam gets its eng subs up before GMMTV Thailand. What alter-reality are we in? Well, the Vietnamese offerings are better right now anyway. (Oooo, feel that burn.) 

Ongoing Series - Thai

Top Secret Together Ep 2 - pulping it up in the best possible way. Sure sound and production values are pants, and in classic Thai fashion the editing in post is exacerbating (rather than fixing) pacing issues, but it’s still CUTE AF. I don’t even mind the added university storyline, because they’ve got good chemistry (and a confident gay fresher after a panicked gay hazer is an old favorite... what can I say, SOTUS was my first love). We aren’t spending too much time with any one couple, so it’s weighted a lot better than Brothers was, but also character development is slow. 

Siew Sum Noi Ep 2 - Unfortunately, it’s just too hard to find, plus no subs. I’m dropping it in the hopes it comes back on my radar some day. 

Y-Destiny Ep 8 - (Thurs) It’s rough having a ghost boyfriend, half your friends are scared, the other half think you’re crazy, and kissing shortens your lifespan. This was a cute couple even if I wasn’t wild about the surrounding story. 

Close Friend Ep 5: (Dear My Star/JimmyTommy) - about high school penpals. It had to rely entirely on voice over work as the actors only meet face to face at the end. It’s a good thing they are appealing screen presences on their own, with good vocal control. It’s hard to imagine any other BL pair carrying this kinda plot. It’s by far my favorite of the series so far, and I’m not even a big JimmyTommy fan. 

Fish Upon The Sky Ep 7 - no subs. Do we care? Not really. Because we have... 

Nitiman Ep 3 - currently my favorite out of Thailand. It’s the university Thai BL i’ve been waiting for since... when was the last good one? My Engineer? Yowza. Anyway we got: head on my shoulder, baby is a floppy drunk (but still wants to be in control), proximity alert, boyfriend’s closet, seme gets seriously jelly, and a cute twist on feeding him. There’s something fun and complex about Jin’s character. He’s not a panicked bi. He knows exactly what’s going on, he just hasn’t decided if he wants Bb or not. He clearly enjoys being looked after, the compliments, and the attention, but he’s not sure if he’s going to like what happens if he gives in. I like that twist on the usual tsundere uke archetype a lot, cautious rather than willfully obtuse or freaked out. We can see Jin realizing in stages: I like this person, I like that they like me, I like the romantic attentiveness. But in the background is... do I actually want to f*k him? It’s a dynamic we don’t often see on BL. 

Ongoing Series - Not Thai

HIStory 4: Close To You (Taiwan) Ep 10 fin - the most ridiculous show using BLs worst tropes in a sort of weird smoothie of bitter greens and too ripe banana. The ending was the sappiest cheesiest thing ever, like cheese syrup tapped from the cheese tree. So of course I loved it, but I’m pretty sure I giggled through all the bits meant to be profound. Because, in the end, to tolerate this show at all, you just can’t take ANY of it seriously. RECOMMENDED (with some SERIOUS reservations and trigger warnings.) Full review here. 

Be Loved in House: I Do (Taiwan) Ep 1-2 - I don’t mind a damaged seme character but this one is a bit weird for me. Like creepy Cheese in the Trap level weird. On the bright side, the story has given our tsundere uke good motivation for his angst and great existing friendships, loyalty, and likability. Plus I’m invested in the cafe owner/innocent puppy side dishes. So if it’s only the seme character I’m not jiving with, and he’s the most established actor, it should all turn out fine. I believe in you, Taiwanese BL. 

Papa & Daddy (Taiwan) Ep 6 fin - speaking of belief. This such a good show but they gave us a cliffhanger ending. Now we must hope against hope for season two. That’s never guaranteed with Taiwan tho. So, I’m docking a few points and saying, RECOMMENDED so long as you realize it’s a cliffhanger. 

Love is Science? (Taiwan) Ep 1-9 (BL subplot) - this is a good het romance, but the fact that the BL subplot is a beautifully acted disaster bi + confident gay means you’re hearing about it whether you want to or not. Plus they just added in some GL! Come on! I gotta support Taiwan normalizing queer to this extent. They are fighting the good fight and if I also have to watch a career lady and her much younger softest straight boi get it on, too? Twist my arm with that service sub subtext. Go on Taiwan, TWIST IT. It’s on Viki. Join the revolution.   * Incidentally if you actually like the D/s het dynamic of this show, I highly recommend Japanese Kimi wa Petto - career woman keeps a hot young dancer boy as a pet. Oh yes, an actual pet, that IS the pitch. Never doubt Japan when kink is on the line. It’s also on Viki. Go get your kink on, thank me later. (If it helps: That was not a request.)  

Most Peaceful Place 2 (Vietnam) Ep 2 (AKA 5) - love triangles aren’t my thing, but if you’re gonna do it short form, by all means bring in the lead’s other BL pairing so the chemistry is on point. Now I've no idea who I want him to end up with. Can’t they just be in a poly triad? 

My Lascivious Boss (Vietnam) Ep 7 - I’m still enjoying it a lot. It’s still unabashedly queer and the tension is ramping up. We now have secret identity, blackmail, femme fatale, faen fatale, and incoming seme confrontation. Best of all, the series is still airing, which makes it longer than any other Vietnamese BL I’ve seen (aside from Tein Bromance - which is just too weird to count). 

Gossip - Thai BL 

SEVEN PROJECT TEASERS

No one is entirely sure what Studio Wabi Sabi’s Seven Project/7Project will entail. 

It might be like Close Friend (1 episode per couple, no linking), 

or Y-Destiny (2 episodes per couple, loosely linked), 

or The En of Love (4 episodes per couple, linked but independent consecutive stories). 

They’re giving the couple’s arcs separate titles. So each one would be what? Seven Project: Once Upon a Time or the like? We’re in Taiwanese title territory people and NO ONE WANTS TO GO THERE. Anygay... 

Once Upon a Time is the BounPrem (og UWMA) anchor story, and seems to be the most dramatic and likely saddest. These two can handle most of what’s thrown at them at this juncture, so it should be good. 

Vs Love is a BoomPeak (og Make it Right) university vehicle. Since I thought Boom was done with our nonsense, I couldn’t be more thrilled and surprised this pair is doing another show together. I don’t think either of them are the greatest actors but I find Peak very endearing and Boom charismatic on screen, so I’ll watch. 

Would You be My Love is the hotly anticipated SantaEarth launch. They’re a (cultivated) IRL ship and Earth is an established BL actor. They have great chemistry and high energy so this could be lots of fun. 

We are also getting a GL from this series from established BL actresses Samantha and Pineare. Nothing teased yet on that, but I’m looking forward to this installment the most. Also curious to see how the ladies handle the branding and promo side, not to mention the culture. (Thailand variety shows gonna force *girls* to play the Pepero game?) 

Secret Crush on You upcoming Thai BL with no release date, co-produced by and featuring (but NOT staring) Saint and directed by Cheewin (sigh) with all fresh faces. (Previously known as Stalker the series.) It looks like pure pulp and I’m not wild about the plot but could be better than expected as it’s adapted from a novel. Cheewin is an okay director when he has an actual story to follow. 

Don’t Say No the series. Coming from the producers of TharnType this is the JaFirst vehicle many have been waiting for. Friends to lovers + a good boy/bad boy pairing on a sports romance foundation. It’s basketball so they tapped Meen as well (he’s semi-pro). The bad news? You get one guess as to who is writing the darn thing? Yep it’s MAME. So, ya know, expect some slam dunk kidnapping, a light dribbling of rape, and me turning into a basketcase. AKA... 

Will I have to live blog this series in order to survive it? That seems to be the only way I can. So probably. Which means the bad sports puns will continue. Look, if I’m suffering, SO ARE YOU! 

Rumors of a new YinWar vehicle The Best Story (mini series) coming in July. Also rumors that their previously announced Love Mechanics (full length series) has either been delayed, is facing money issues, or is moving studios, or all three. 

Breaking News 

DELAYED (I’m talking these three off the watch list until we get new airing dates) 

Love Area’s release was pushed out but it got a trailer. 

Golden Blood was supposed to drop Weds but comments in MDL report that it is delayed due to C19.  

Love’s Outlet (Taiwan) is supposed to have started a 50 episode run (only 3-5 min each, what utter nonsense). Sadly, this delay is due to a surge in cases in Taiwan which was doing so well, but also doesn’t have many inoculations. 

Bad Buddy has started workshopping at GMMTV actual. 

Kang Insoo’s BTS for Nobleman Ryu’s Wedding is SO FLIPPING CUTE. You have to watch it. Trust me, I don’t rec behind the scenes stuff often. 

Next Week Looks Like This: 

Some shows may be listed later than actual air date for International accessibility reasons.

Upcoming 2021 BL master post here.

Links to watch are provided when possible, ask in a comment if I missed something.

[neoheros]

how would haikyuu boys react to you hitting them up at 3 am? feat. gym three squad !

tsukishima kei

listen LISTEN

i know everyone thinks he’s the punctual kid who got his shit together and has a nice bed time and stuff

but like ??? tsukki is just a lil boy who collects dinosaurs and has a crippling addiction to tiktok

this boy is awake at 3 am because he cannot for the love of god put his phone down 

he’s basically bouncing back and forth from twitter to tiktok, he’s TIRED OF IT

at this time he’s got a pretty picture of you cozily asleep in bed cause it’s like almost the crack of dawn and he’s chill with the fact that you’re healthy and taking care of yourself

so imagine how betrayed he felt when you snap him a picture of yourself holding up a peace sign with a silly grin at 3:36 am captioned “wanna get ice cream w/ me? 😗✌️”

he doesn’t reply but he does leave you on opened

and you were low key hurt cause 3 am do be the time you’re on your feels

he snaps you back though after a minute or two

it’s a video of him rolling his eyes at you but then flipping the camera to show you that he’s already on his way out the door with car keys in his hand

he’s gonna pretend that he’s annoyed but cmon guys let’s be real

he wanted some ice cream too and his fyp was showing the same stuff over and over again

plus he missed seeing you ok 👉👈

once he arrives at your door, he’s all grumpy but you don’t buy it !!! nah you see right through his act !!

tsukki: we’re buying ice cream and then we’re going to sleep or so help me i’ll lose my mind and never function again 😤

you: so i’m guessing you wrecked your sleep schedule too this quarantine huh?

tsukki, on the verge of a meltdown: if i see the sunrise without sleeping again for the eight morning in a row i’ll cry

you pat his back and you enjoy your ice cream together in his car while you both scroll through tiktok again

kuroo tetsuro

ok so contrary to popular belief, kuroo is in bed by 11 pm and wakes up at 8 am

like have y’all SEEN that man !!

y’all think he’s staying up til 4 am with THAT figure ?????

he’s got the body of a 6’2 nordic god and skin that is smoother than a baby’s bum

this boy takes care of himself and it SHOOOOOOWS !!!!!!

so anyways it’s 3 am and you’re still awake because who the hell isn’t these days like please

you knew that your boyfriend was most likely asleep by now but if you knew anything and i mean anything about kuroo is that he never puts his phone on silent

so you weigh out the pros and cons on asking him to come eat out with you and it didn’t take you that much time to decide tbh

pros: he gets to see you and it’s been so long since he has

pros: think of all the hugs and forehead kisses you both are missing out on

pros: you can ask him to bring his grey sweatshirt which always smells like his cologne that you forgot to take from him

cons: bro after thinking of that last one, the cons didn’t even matter at this point, you just missed your man like damn :(

so you facetime him and it takes numerous of rings before the call got dropped

you: oh so he’s SLEEPING sleeping :/

but then like before you could ring him up again you’re already getting another call from him

you take a second or two cause your heart was just so warm like !!! that’s my baby 🥺👉👈

you answer and he’s so pretty y’all it’s unfair like how did this man just wake up

his hair was all messy and he’s rubbing his eyes and stuff but also you can clearly see his silver chain on his exposed collar bone and NGJEJDKSKZKA

you, out of breath: h-holy shit

and his bed voice !! it’s all deep and groggy like who gave you the right ??

you swear you felt your heart stop when he went “babe, it’s 3 am,”

sir we are supposed to be social distancing please do not make me act up

kuroo, half asleep: did you need anything baby 🥺

you, on the verge of tears: i wanted mcdonald’s but instead i’m getting attacked 😤

and you just watch him stifle a yawn before his face erupts in a goofy ass smile as he goes “mcdonald’s it is.”

KENSKWNS I LOVE KUROO

bokuto koutarou

BABIE !! HE IS !! AN ACTUAL BABIE !!

i’m just gonna be flat out honest here, he’s the one who hits you up at 3 am to hang out

bc it’s quarantine and social distancing has taken so much from him already and he just wants to see his babie ok is that too much to ask

so it’s not a surprise to anyone when it’s 3 am in the morning and he finds himself in his feels cause both you and akaashi fell asleep on him and he’s just !!! 🥺

he’s nowhere near falling asleep too cause every time he tries to sleep his messed up body clock is just like nah bruh it ain’t 9 am yet 💀✌️

so he’s contemplating either going out to get starbucks alone or dragging you or akaashi out of bed

he goes with the latter cause you know what it’s what he deserves !! 😤😤

he calls you in a heartbeat after making up his mind and his heart falls to his stomach when you don’t pick up

but two minutes later you snap him a photo of you in bed rubbing your eyes with the caption “this is the earliest i’ve woken up in 3 weeks”

he laughs aloud at that and his heart is doing jumping jacks cause you’re so cute and it’s like YOU !! WERE !! MADE !! FOR !! HIM !!

he snaps you back with him in his hoodie, a wide smile and his keys brought up to his face with the text, “starbucks w/ me?”

the two of you end up falling asleep in his car on a parking lot and you wake up to see that he took off his sweatshirt to cover you from the cold 🥺👉👈

akaashi keiji

akaashi keiji is the most perfect boy in the world

so y’all can bet that the latest he’ll stay up is 11 pm with the ensured fact that he’ll wake up at 7 am

he’s a pretty light sleeper though but he never puts his phone on silent because what if he’s needed and there’s an emergency 🥺

yes he is That kind of person

he tells you everyday to try and have a better sleep schedule to train your body clock but do you listen? no 👉👈

so he’s kinda alarmed but also not really when his phone lets out a consecutive amount of notification pings

they’re all from you and at first he’s worried because woah that’s a lot of snaps and texts

but then he remembers that oh they’re all from you

anyways he wakes himself up, running his hand through his hair as he goes through the span of messages you sent him

basically ranging from “hey keiji in the tiny TINY chance you’re still awake do you wanna play imessage games with me” to “i’m so upset look how pretty that cat is,”

he had a smile on his face the whole time he read through them

he sends you a snap of his sleepy face with a soft grin and captioned it with “are you still bored and awake?”

and it takes you a minute and a second of tearing up over having the most amazing boyfriend ever before responding to him

you send him a snap of you with your hand over your chest saying, “i’m hungry now too 🥺”

akaashi, already on his way out the doorway with an extra hoodie and a bucket of ice cream: omw ❤️👍

[path-of-my-childhood]

CABIN FEVER - Aaron Dessner: Producing folklore and evermore

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Tom Doyle

The pandemic gave Taylor Swift a chance to explore new musical paths, with two lockdown albums co-written and produced by the National's Aaron Dessner.

Few artists during the pandemic have been as prolific as Taylor Swift. In July 2020, she surprise-released folklore, a double-length album recorded entirely remotely and in isolation. It went on to become the biggest global seller of the year, with four million sales and counting. Then, in December, she repeated the trick with the 15-song evermore, which quickly became Swift's eighth consecutive US number one.

In contrast to her country-music roots and the shiny synth-pop that made her a superstar, both folklore and evermore showcased a very different Taylor Swift sound: one veering more towards atmospheric indie and folk. The former album was part-produced by Swift and her regular co-producer Jack Antonoff (St Vincent, Lana Del Rey), while the other half of the tracks were overseen by a new studio collaborator, Aaron Dessner of the National. For evermore, aside from one Antonoff-assisted song, Dessner took full control of production.

Good Timing

Although his band are hugely popular and even won a Grammy for their 2017 album Sleep Well Beast, Aaron Dessner admits that it initially felt strange for an indie-rock guitarist and keyboard player to be pulled into such a mainstream project. Swift had already declared herself a fan of the National, and first met the band back in 2014. Nonetheless, Dessner was still surprised when the singer sent him a text "out of the blue" last spring. "I mean, I didn't think it was a hoax," he laughs. "But it was very exciting and a moment where you think it's like serendipity or something, especially in the middle of the pandemic. When she asked if I would ever consider writing with her, I just happened to have a lot of music that I had worked really hard on. So, the timing was sort of lucky. It opened up this crazy period of collaboration. It was a pretty wild ride."

Since 2016, Aaron Dessner has been based at his self-built rural facility, Long Pond Studio, in the Hudson Valley, upstate New York. The only major change to the studio since SOS last spoke to Dessner in October 2017 has been the addition of a vintage WSW Siemens console built in 1965. "It had been refurbished by someone," he says, "and I think there's only three of them in the United States. I heard it was for sale from our friend [and the National producer/mixer] Peter Katis. That's a huge improvement here."

Although the National made Sleep Well Beast and its 2019 successor I Am Easy To Find at Long Pond, the band members are scattered around the US and Europe, meaning Dessner is no stranger to remote working and file sharing. This proved to be invaluable for his work with Swift. Dessner spent the first six weeks of lockdown writing music that he believed to be for Big Red Machine, his project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. Instead, many of these work-in-progress tracks would end up on folklore. Their first collaboration (and the album's first single), 'cardigan', for instance, emerged from an idea Dessner had been working on backstage during the National's European arena tour of Winter 2019.

"I sent her a folder and in the middle of the night she sent me that song," Dessner explains. "So, the next morning I was just listening to it, like, `Woah, OK, this is crazy."

On The Move

As work progressed, it quickly became apparent that Swift and Dessner were very much in tune as a songwriting and producing unit. There was very little Dessner had to do, he says, in terms of chopping vocals around to shape the top lines. "I think it's because I'm so used to structuring things like a song, with verses and choruses and bridges," he reckons. "In most cases, she sort of kept the form. If she had a different idea, she would tell me when she was writing and I would chop it up for her and send it to her. But, mostly, things kind of stayed in the form that we had."

Dessner and Swift were working intensively and at high speed throughout 2020, so much so that on one occasion the producer sent the singer a track and went out for a run in the countryside around Long Pond. By the time he got back, Swift had already written 'the last great american dynasty' and it was waiting for him in his inbox. "That was a crazy moment," he laughs. "One of the astonishing things about Taylor is what a brilliant songwriter she is and the clarity of her ideas and, when she has a story to tell, the way she can tell it. I think she's just been doing it for so long, she has a facility that makes you feel like you could never do what she's capable of. But we were a good pair because I think the music was inspiring to her in such a way that the stories were coming."

Swift's contributions to folklore were recorded in a makeshift studio in her Los Angeles home. Laura Sisk engineered the sessions as the singer recorded her vocals, using a Neumann U47, in a neighbouring bedroom. Live contact between Swift, Sisk, Dessner and Long Pond engineer Jonathan Low was done through real-time online collaboration platform Audiomovers.

"We would listen in remotely and kind of go back and forth," says Dessner. "We used Audiomovers and then we would have Zoom as a backup. But mainly we were just using Audiomovers, so we could actually be in her headphones. It's powerful, it's great. I've used it a lot with people during this time. Then, later on, when we recorded evermore, a lot of the vocals were done here at the studio actually when Taylor was visiting when we did the [Disney+ documentary] Long Pond Sessions. But Taylor's vocals for folklore were all done remotely."

Keeping Secrets

Given the huge international interest in Swift, the team had to work with an elaborate file-sharing arrangement to ensure that the tracks didn't leak online. Understandably, Dessner won't be drawn on the specifics. "Yeah, I mean we had to be very careful, so everything was very secretive," he says. "There were passwords on both ends and we communicated in a specific way when sharing mixes and everything. There was a high level of confidentiality and data encryption. It was sort of a learning curve.

"I'm not used to that," he adds, "'cause usually we're just letting files kind of fly all over the Internet [laughs]. But I think with someone like her, there's just so many people that are paying attention to every move that she makes, which can be a little, I think, oppressive for her. We tried to make it as comfortable as possible and we got used to how to get things to her and back to us. It worked pretty well."

Drums & Guitars

For the generally minimalist beat programming on the records, Dessner would sometimes turn to his more expensive new analogue drum generators - Vermona's DRM1 and Dave Smith's Tempest - but more often used the Synthetic Bits iOS app FunkBox. "There's just a lot of great vintage drum machine sounds in there, and they sound pretty cool, especially if you overdrive it," he says. "Often I send that through an amplifier, or through effects into an amplifier. Then I have a [Roland) TR-8 and a TR-8S that I use a lot. I also use the drum machine in the [Teenage Engineering] OP-1. So, a song like 'willow', that's just me tapping the OP-1."

Elsewhere, Dessner's guitar work appears on the tracks, with the intricate melodic layering on 'the last great american dynasty' from folklore having been inspired by Radiohead's In Rainbows. "Almost all of the electric guitar on Taylor's records is played direct through a REDDI DI into the Siemens board," he says. "It's usually just my 1971 Telecaster played direct and it just sounds great. Oftentimes I just put a little spring reverb on it and sometimes I'll overdrive the board like it's an amplifier, 'cause it breaks up really beautifully.

"I have a 1965 [Gibson] Firebird that I play usually through this 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb. So, if I am playing into an amp, that's what it is. But on 'the last great american dynasty', those little pointillistic guitars, that's just played direct with the Telecaster through the board."

Elsewhere, Aaron Dessner took Taylor Swift even further out of her sonic comfort zone. A key track on folklore, the Cocteau Twins-styled 'epiphany', features her voice amid a wash of ambient textures, created by Dessner slowing down and reversing various instrumental parts in Pro Tools. "I created a drone using the Mellotron [MD4000D] and the Prophet and the OP-1 and all kinds of synth pads," he says. "Then I duplicated all the tracks, and some of them I reversed and some of them I dropped an octave. All manner of using varispeed and Polyphonic Elastic Audio and changing where they were sitting. Just to create like this Icelandic glacier of sounds was my idea. Then I wrote the chord progression against that.

"The [Pro Tools] session was not happy," he adds with a chuckle. "It kept crashing. Eventually I had to print the drone but I printed it by myself and there was some crackle in it. It was distorting. And then I couldn't recreate it so Jon Low, who was helping me, was kind of mad at me 'cause he was like, 'You can't do that.' And I was like, 'Well, I was working quickly. I didn't know it'd become a song."

Orchestra Of Nowhere

Meanwhile, the orchestrations that appear on several of the tracks were scored by Aaron's twin brother and National bandmate, Bryce Dessner, who is located in France. "I would just make him chord charts of the songs and send them to him in France," Aaron says. "Then he would orchestrate things in Sibelius and send the parts to me. I would send the parts and the instrumental tracks to different players remotely and they would record them literally in their bedrooms or in their attics. None of it was done as a group, it was all done separately. But that's how we've always worked in the National so it's quite natural."

On folklore standout track 'exile', Justin Vernon of Bon Iver delivered his stirring vocal for the duet remotely from his home in Eaux Claires, Wisconsin. "He's renovating his studio, so he has a little home studio in his garage," says Dessner. "It was Taylor's idea to approach him. I sent him Taylor's voice memo of her singing both parts, and he got really excited and loved the song and then he wrote the extra part in the bridge.

"I do a lot of work remotely with Justin also, so it was easy to send him tracks and he would track to it and send back his vocals. I was sending him stems, so usually it's just a vocal stem of Taylor and an instrumental stem and then if he wants something deeper, I'll give him more stems. But generally, he's just working with the vocal layers and an instrumental."

Vernon also provided the grainy beat that kicks off 'closure', one of two tracks on evermore that started life as a sketch for the second Big Red Machine album. "It was this little loop that Justin had given me in this folder of 'Starters', he calls them. I had heard that and been playing the piano to it. But I was hearing it in 5/4, although it's not in 5/4. 'Closure' really opened everything up further. There were no real limits to where we were gonna try to write songs."

Given the number of remote players, Dessner says there were surprisingly few problems with the file swapping and that it was a fairly painless technical process. "It was pretty smooth, but there were issues," he admits. "Sometimes sample-rate issues, or if I happened to give someone an instrumental that was an MP3, that sometimes lines up differently than if you send them an actual WAV that's bounced on the grid. So, sometimes I'd have to kinda eyeball things.

"If there was trouble it started to be because of track counts. I probably only used 20 percent of what was actually recorded, 'cause we would try a lot of things, y'know. So, eventually the sessions got kinda crazy and you'd have to deactivate a lot of things and print things. But we got used to that."

Soft Piano

Aaron Dessner's characteristic dampened upright piano sound, familiar from the National's albums, is much in evidence throughout both folklore and evermore. "The upright is a Yamaha U1 that I've had for more than a decade. Usually, I play it with the soft pedal down and that's the sound of 'hoax' or 'seven' or 'cardigan', y'know, that felted sound. It kind of almost sounds like an electric piano.

"I always mic it the same way, just with two [AKG] 414s, and they're always the same distance off the wall. I had a studio in Brooklyn for 10 years and then when I moved here, I copied the same [wooden] pattern on the wall. And the reason I did that is 'cause of how much I love how this piano sounds bouncing off that wall. It just does something really special for the harmonics."

When on other folklore songs, such as 'exile' or 'the 1', where the piano was the main sonic feature of the track, Dessner played his Steinway grand. "A lot of times we use a pair of Coles [4038s] on the Steinway, just cause it's darker. But sometimes we'll have the 414s there as well and choose."

Keeping Warm

On both folklore and evermore, Taylor Swift's voice is very much front and center and high in the mix, and generally sounds fairly dry. "I think the main thing was I wanted her vocals to have a more full range than maybe you typically hear," Dessner explains. "'Cause I think a lot of the more pop-oriented records are mixed a certain way and they take some of the warmth out of the vocal, so that it's very bright and it kinda cuts really well on the radio. But she has this wonderful lower warmth frequency in her voice which is particularly important on a song like `seven'. If you carved out that mud, y'know, it wouldn't hit you the same way. Or, like, `cardigan', I think it needs that warmth, the kind of fuller feeling to it. It makes it darker, but to me that's where a lot of emotion is."

Effects-wise, almost all of the treatments were done in the box. "There's no outboard reverbs printed," says Dessner. "The only things that we did print would be like an [Eventide] H3000 or sometimes the [WEM] CopiCat tape delay for just a really subtle slap. But generally, it's just different reverbs in the box that Jon was using. He uses the Valhalla stuff quite a bit and some other UAD reverbs, like the [Capitol] Chambers. I often just use Valhalla VintageVerb and the [Avid] Black Spring and simple things."

In some instances, the final mix ended up being the never-bettered rough mix, while other songs took far more work. "'cardigan' is basically the rough, as is `seven'. So, like the early, early mixes, when we didn't even know we were mixing, we never were able to make it better. Like if you make it sound 'good', it might not be as good 'cause it loses some of its weird magic, y'know. But songs like `the last great american dynasty' or 'mad woman', those songs were a little harder to create the dynamics the way you want them, and the pay-off without going too far, and with also just keeping in the kind of aesthetic that we were in. Those were harder, I would say.

"On evermore, I would say 'willow' was probably the hardest one to finish just because there were so many ways it could've gone. Eventually we settled back almost to the point where it began. So, there's a lot of stuff that was left out of 'willow', just because the simplicity of the idea I think was in a way the strongest."

The subject of this month's Inside Track article, 'willow' was the first song written for evermore, immediately following the release of folklore. "It almost felt like a dare or something," Dessner laughs. "We were writing, recording and mixing all in one kind of work stream and we went from one record to the other almost immediately. We were just sort off to the races. We didn't really ever stop since April."

Rubber & Vinyl

Sometimes, Dessner and Swift drew inspiration from unlikely sources; `no body, no crime', for instance, started when he gave her a 'rubber bridge' guitar made by Reuben Cox of the Old Style Guitar Shop in LA. "He's my very old friend," says Dessner of Cox. "He buys undervalued vintage guitars. Stuff that was made in the '50s and '60s as sort of learner guitars, like old Silvertones and Kays and Harmonys. These kinds of guitars which now are quite special, but they're still not valued the same way that vintage Fenders or Gibsons are valued. Then, he customizes them.

"Recently he started retrofitting these guitars with a rubber bridge and flatwound strings. He'll take, like, an acoustic Silvertone from 1958 and put a bridge on it that's covered in this kind of rubber that deadens the strings, so it really has this kind of dead thrum to it. And he puts two pickups in there, one that's more distorted and one that's cleaner. They're just incredible guitars. I thought Taylor would enjoy having one 'cause she loves the sound. So, I had Reuben make one for her and she used it to write `no body, no crime'."

Another friend of Dessner's, Ryan Olsen, has developed a piece of software called the Allovers Hi-Hat Generator which helped create the unusual harmonic loops that feature on `marjorie'. "It's not available on the market," Dessner says of the software. "It's just something that he uses personally, but I think hopefully eventually it'll come out. I wouldn't say it's artificial intelligence software but there's something very intelligent about it [laughs]. It basically analyses audio information and is able to separate audio into identifiable samples and then put them into a database. You then can design parameters for it to spit out sequences that are incredibly musical.

"When Ryan comes here, he'll just take all kinds of things that I give him and run it through there and then it'll spit out, like, three hours of stuff. Then I go through it and find the layers that I love, then I loop them. You can hear it also on the song 'happiness', the drumming in the background. It's not actually played. That's drums that have been sampled and then re-analyzed and re-sequenced out of this Allovers Hi-Hat Generator."

The song `marjorie' is named after Swift's opera-singer grandmother and so, fittingly, her voice can be heard flitting in and out of the mix at the end of the track. "Taylor's family gave us a bunch of recordings of her grandmother," Dessner explains. "But they were from old, very scratchy, noisy vinyl. So, we had to denoise it all using [iZotope's] RX and then I went in and I found some parts that I thought might work. I pitch-shifted them into the key and then placed them. It took a while to find the right ones, but it's really beautiful to be able to hear her. It's just an incredibly special thing, I think."

Meet At The Pond

Taylor Swift finally managed to get together with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in September 2020 for the filming of folklore: the long pond studio sessions, featuring the trio live-performing the album. It also provided an opportunity for Swift to add her vocals to some of the evermore tracks.

"It did allow us to have more fun, I think," says Dessner. "Y'know, drink more wine and just kinda be in the same place and have the feeling of blasting the music here and dancing around and just enjoying ourselves. She's really a lovely person to hang out with, so in that sense I'm glad that we had that chance to work together in person.

"We were using a [Telefunken] U47 to record Taylor here," he adds. "Either we were using one of the Siemens preamps on the board, which are amazing. Or I have Neve 1064s [preamps/EQs] and we use a Lisson Grove [AR-i] tube compressor generally."

One entirely new song, `tis the damn season', came out of this face-to-face approach, which Swift wrote in the middle of the night after the team had stayed up late drinking. "We had a bunch of wine actually," Dessner laughs, "and then everybody went to sleep, I thought. But I think she must have had this idea swimming around in her head, 'cause the next morning when she arrived, she sang 'Us the damn season' for me in my kitchen. It's maybe my favourite song we've written together. Then she sang it at dinner for me and my wife Stine and we were all crying. It’s just that kind of a song, so it was quite special.”

National Unity

One key track on evermore, 'coney island', features all of the members of the National and sees Swift duetting with their singer Matt Berninger. "My brother [Bryce] actually originated that song," says Aaron Dessner. "I sent him a reference at one point - I can't remember what it was - and then he was sort of inspired to write that chord progression. Then we worked together to sort of develop it and I wrote a bunch of parts and we structured it.

"Taylor and William Bowery [the songwriting pseudonym of Swift's boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn] wrote 'coney island' and she sang a beautiful version. It felt kind of done, actually. But then I think we all collectively thought, Taylor and myself and Bryce, like this was the closest to a National song."

Dessner then asked the brothers who make up the National's rhythm section, drummer Bryan and bassist Scott Devendorf, to play on 'coney island'. Matt Berninger, as he often does with the band's own tracks, recorded his vocal at home in Los Angeles. "It was never in the same place, it was done remotely," says Dessner, "except Bryan was here at Long Pond when he played. It was great to collaborate as a band with Taylor."

No Compromise

folklore and evermore have been both enormous critical and commercial successes for Taylor Swift. Aaron Dessner reckons that making these anti-pop records has freed the singer up for the future. "I think it was very liberating for her," he says. "I think that's the thing that's been probably the biggest change for her has just been being able to make songs without compromise and then release them without the promotional requirements that she's used to from the past. Obviously, it comes at this time when we're all in lockdown and nobody can tour or go on talk shows or anything. But I think for her probably it will impact what she does in the future.

"But I also think she can shapeshift again," he concludes. "Who knows where she'll go? She's had many celebrated albums from the past, but to release two albums of this quality in such a short time, it really did shine a light on her songwriting talent and her storytelling ability and also just her willingness to experiment and collaborate. Somehow, I ended up in the middle of all that and I'm very grateful."

INSIDE TRACK - Jonathan Low: Secrets of the Mix Engineers

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Paul Tingen

From sketches to final mixes, engineer Jonathan Low spent 2020 overseeing Taylor Swift’s hit lockdown albums folklore and evermore.

“I think the theme of a lot of my work nowadays, and especially with these two records, is that everything is getting mixed all the time. I always try to get the songs to sound as finalised as they can be. Obviously that’s hard when you’re not sure yet what all the elements will be. Tracks morph all the time, and yet everything is always moving forwards towards completion in some way. Everything should sound fun and inspiring to listen to all the time.”

Speaking is Jonathan Low, and the two records he refers to are, of course, Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore, both of which reached number one in the UK and the US. Swift’s main producer and co‑writer on the two albums was the National’s Aaron Dessner, also interviewed in this issue. Low is the engineer, mixer and general right‑hand man at Long Pond Studios in upstate New York, where he and Dessner spent most of 2020 working on folklore and evermore, with Swift in Los Angeles for much of the time.

“In the beginning it did not feel real,” recalls Low. “There was this brand‑new collaboration, and it was amazing how quickly Aaron made these instrumental sketches and Taylor wrote lyrics and melodies to them, which she initially sent to us as iPhone voice memos. During our nightly family dinners in lockdown, Aaron would regularly pull up his phone and say, ‘Listen to this!’ and there would be another voice memo from Taylor with this beautiful song that she had written over a sketch of Aaron’s in a matter of hours. The rate at which it was happening was mind‑blowing. There was constant elevation, inspiration and just wanting to continue the momentum.

“We put her voice memos straight into Pro Tools. They had tons of character, because of the weird phone compression and cutting midrange quality you just would not get when you put someone in front of a pristine recording chain. Plus there was all this bleed. It’s interesting how that dictates the attitude of the vocal and of the song. Even though none of the original voice memos ended up on the albums, they often gave us unexpected hints. These voice memos were such on‑a‑whim things, they were really telling. Taylor had certain phrasings and inflections that we often returned to later on. They became our reference points.”

Pond Life

The making of the National’s 2017 album Sleep Well Beast and the setup at Long Pond were covered in SOS October 2017; today the studio remains pretty much the same, with the exception of a new desk. “The main space is really big, and the console sits in the middle,” says Low. “In 2019, I installed a 1965 WSW/Siemens, which has 24 line‑in and microphone channels and another 24 line channels. WSW is the Austrian branch of Siemens usually built for broadcast. It’s loaded with 811510B channels. The build quality is insane, the switches and pots feel like they were made yesterday. To me it hints at the warm haze of a Class‑A Neve channel but sits further forward in the speakers. The midrange band on the passive EQ is a huge part of its charm, it really does feel like you’re changing the tone of the actual source rather than the recording. Most microphones go through the desk on their way into Pro Tools, though we sometimes use outboard Neve 1064 mic pres. Occasionally I use the Siemens to sum a mix.

“We have a pair of ATC SCM45 monitors, which sound very clear in the large room. The ceiling is very high, and the front wall is about 25 feet behind the monitors. There are diffusers on the sidewalls and the back walls are absorbing, so there are very few reflections. Aaron and I will be listening in tons of different ways. I’ll listen in my home studio with similar ATC SCM20 monitors or on my ‘70s Marantz hi‑fi setup. Aaron is always checking things in his car, and if there’s something that is bugging him, I’ll join him in his car to find out what he hears.”

Low works at Long Pond and with Dessner most of the time, though he does find time to do other projects, among hem this last year the War On Drugs, Waxahatchee and Nap Eyes. When lockdown started in Spring 2020, Low tacked up on supplies and "had a bunch f mixes lined up". Meanwhile, on the Eest Coast, Swift had seen her Lover Fest our cancelled. With help from engineer aura Sisk, she set up a makeshift studio which she dubbed Kitty Committee in bedroom in her Los Angeles home, and began working with long-term producer nd co-writer Jack Antonoff. At the end of April, however, Swift also started working with Dessner, which took the project in different direction. The impressionistic, atmospheric, electro-folk instrumentals Dessner sent her were mostly composed nd recorded by him at Long Pond, assisted by Low.

Sketching Sessions

The instrumental sketches Aaron makes come into being in different ways," elaborates Low. "Sometimes they are more fleshed-out ideas, sometimes they are less formed. But normally Aaron will set himself up in the studio, surrounded by instruments and synths, and he'll construct a track. Once he feels it makes some kind of sense I'll come in and take a listen and then we together develop what's there.

"I don't call his sketches demos, because while many instruments are added and replaced later on, most of the original parts end up in the final version of the song. We end up in the final version of the song. We try to get the sketches to a place where they are already very engaging as instrumental are already very engaging as instrumental tracks. Aaron and I are always obsessively listening, because we constantly want to hear things that feel inspiring and musical, not just a bed of music in the background. It takes longer to create, but in this case also gave Taylor more to latch onto, both emotionally and in terms of musical inspiration. Hearing melodies woven in the music triggered new melodies."

Not long after Dessner and Low sent each sketch to Swift, they would receive her voice memos in return, and they'd load them into the Pro Tools session of the sketch in question. Dessner and Low then continued to develop the songs, in close collaboration with Swift. "Taylor's voice memos often came with suggestions for how to edit the sketches: maybe throw in a bridge somewhere, shorten a section, change the chords or arrangement somewhere, and so on. Aaron would have similar ideas, and he then developed the arrangements, often with his brother Bryce, adding or replacing instruments. This happened fast, and became very interactive between us and Taylor, even though we were working remotely. When we added instruments, we were reacting to the way my rough mixes felt at the very beginning. Of course, it was also dictated by how Taylor wrote and sang to the tracks."

Dessner supplied sketches for nine and produced 10 of folklore's 16 songs, playing many different types of guitars, keyboards and synths as well as percussion and programmed drums. Instruments that were added later include live strings, drums, trombone, accordion, clarinet, harpsichord and more, with his brother Bryce doing many of the orchestrations. Most overdubs by other musicians were done remotely as well. Throughout, Low was keeping an overview of everything that was going on and mixing the material, so it was as presentable and inspiring as possible.

Mixing folklore

Although Dessner has called folklore an "anti-pop album", the world's number-one pop mixer Serban Ghenea was drafted in to mix seven tracks, while Low did the remainder.

"It was exciting to have Serban involved," explains Low, "because he did things I'd never do or be able to do. The way the vocal sits always at the forefront, along with the clarity he gets in his mixes, is remarkable. A great example of this is on the song 'epiphany'. There is so much beautiful space and the vocal feels effortlessly placed. It was really interesting to hear where he took things, because we were so close to the entire process in every way. Hearing a totally new perspective was eye-opening and refreshing.

"Throughout the entire process we were trying to maintain the original feel. Sometimes this was hard, because that initial rawness would get lost in large arrangements and additional layering. With revisions of folklore in particular we sometimes were losing the emotional weight from earlier more casual mixes. Because I was always mixing, there was also always the danger of over-mixing.

"We were trying to get the best of each mix version, and sometimes that meant stepping backwards, and grabbing a piano chain from an earlier mix, or going three versions back to before we added orchestration. There were definitely moments of thinking, 'Is this going to compete sonically? Is this loud enough?' We knew we loved the way the songs sounded as we were building them, so we stuck with what we knew. There were times where I tried to keep pushing a mix forward but it didn't improve the song — 'cardigan' is an example of a song where we ended up choosing a very early mix."

The Low Down

"I'm originally from Philadelphia," says Jonathan Low, "and played piano, alto saxophone and guitar when growing up. My dad is an electrical engineer and audiophile hobbyist, and I learned a lot about circuit design and how to repair things. I then started building guitar pedals and guitar amps, and recorded bands at my high school using a minidisc player and some binaural microphones. After that I did a music industry programme at Drexel University, and spent a lot of time working at the recording facilities there.

"This led to me meeting Brian McTear, a producer and owner of Miner Street Studios, which became my home base from 2009 to 2014. I learned a lot from him, from developing an interest in creating sounds in untraditional ways, to how to see a record through to completion. The studio has a two-inch 16-track Ampex MM1200 tape machine and a beautiful MCI 400 console which very quickly shaped the way I think about routing and signal flow. I'm lucky to have learned this way, because a computer environment is like the Wild West: there are no rules in terms of how to get from point A to point B. This flexibility is incredible, but sometimes there are simply too many options.

"l met Aaron [Dessned] because singer-songwriter Sharon van Etten recorded her second album, Epic [2010] at Miner Street, with Brian producing. Her third album, Tramp [2012] was produced by Aaron. They came to Philly to record drums and I ended up mixing a bunch of that record. After that I would occasionally go to work in Aaron's garage studio in Brooklyn, and this became more and more a regular collaboration. I then moved from Philly up to the Hudson Valley to help Aaron build Long Pond. We first used the studio in the spring of 2016, when beginning to record the National's album Sleep Well Beast."

Onward & Upward

folklore was finished and released in July 2020. In a normal world everyone might have gone on to do other things, but without the option of touring, they simply continued writing songs, with Low holding the fort. In September, many of the musicians who played on the album gathered at Long Pond for the shooting of a making-of documentary, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is streamed on Disney+.

The temporary presence of Swift at Long Pond changed the working methods somewhat, as she could work with Dessner in the room, and Low was able record her vocals. After Swift left again, sessions continued until December, when evermore was released, with Dessner producing or co-producing all tracks, apart from 'gold rush' which was co-written and co-produced by Swift and Antonoff. Low recorded many of Swift's vocals for evermore, and mixed the entire album. The lead single 'willow' became the biggest hit from the album, reaching number one in the US and number three in the UK.

"Before Taylor came to Long Pond," remembers Low, "she had always recorded her vocals for folklore remotely in Los Angeles or Nashville. When I recorded, I used a modern Telefunken U47, which is our go-to vocal mic — we record all the National stuff with that — going straight into the Siemens desk, and then into a Lisson Grove AR-1 tube compressor, and via a Burl A-D converter into Pro Tools. Taylor creates and lays down her vocal arrangements very quickly, and it sounds like a finished record in very few takes."

Devils In The Detail

In his mixes, Low wanted listeners to share his own initial response to these vocal performances. "The element that draws me in is always Taylor's vocals. The first time I received files with her properly recorded but premixed vocals I was just floored. They sounded great, even with minimal EQ and compression. They were not the way I'm used to hearing her voice in her pop songs, with the vocal soaring and sitting at the very front edge of the soundscape. In these raw performances, I heard so much more intimacy and interaction with the music. It was wonderful to hear her voice with tons of detail and nuances in place: her phrasing, her tonality, her pitch, all very deliberate. We wanted to maintain that. It's more emotional, and it sounds so much more personal to me. Then there was the music..."

The arrangements on evermore are even more 'chamber pop' than on folklore, with instruments like glockenspiel, crotales, flute, French horn, celeste and harmonium in evidence. "As listeners of the National may know, Aaron's and Bryce's arrangements can be quite dense. They love lush orchestration, all sorts of percussion, synths and other electronic sounds. The challenge was trying to get them to speak, without getting in the way of the vocals. I want a casual listener to be drawn in by the vocal, but sense that something special is happening in the music as well. At the same time, someone who really is digging in can fully immerse themselves and take in all the beauty deeper in the details of the sound and arrangement. Finding the balance between presenting all the musical elements that were happening in the arrangement and this really beautiful, upfront, real-sounding vocal was the ticket."

A particular challenge is that a lot of the detail that Aaron gravitates towards happens in the low mids, which is a very warm part of our hearing spectrum that can quickly become too muddy or too woolly. A lot of the tonal and musical information lives in the low mids, and then the vocal sits more in the midrange and high mids. There's not too much in the higher frequency range, except the top of the guitars, and some elements like a shaker and the higher buzzy parts of the synths. Maintaining clarity and separation in those often complex arrangements was a major challenge."

In & Out The Box

According to Low, the final mix stage for evermore was "very short. There was a moment in the final week or so leading up to the release where the songs were developed far enough for me to sit down and try to make something very cohesive and final, finalising vocal volume, overall volume, and the vibe. There's a point in every mix where the moves get really small. When a volume ride of 0.1dB makes a difference, you're really close to being done. Earlier on, those little adjustments don't really matter.

"I often try to mix at the console, with some outboard on the two-bus, but folklore was mixed all in the box, because we were working so fast, plus initially the plan was for the mixes to be done elsewhere. I ran a couple of mixes for evermore through the console, and `closure' was the only one that stuck. It was summed through the Siemens, with an API 2500 compressor and a Thermionic Culture Phoenix and then back into Pro Tools via the Burl A-D. I will use hardware when mixing in the box, though mainly just two units: the Eventide H3000, because I have not found any plug-ins that do the same thing, and the [Thermionic] Culture Vulture, for its very broad tone shaping and distortion properties.

"The writing and the production happened closely in conjunction with the engineering and mixing, and the arrangements were dense, making many of the sessions super hefty and actually quite messy. Sounds would constantly change roles in the arrangement and sometimes plug-ins would just stack up. So final mixing involved cleaning up the sessions and stemming large groups down."

Across The Rubber Bridge

The Pro Tools mix session of 'willow' has close to 100 tracks, though there's none of the elaborate bussing that's the hallmark of some modern sessions. At the top are six drum machine tracks in green from the Teenage Engineering OP-1, an instrument that was used extensively on the album. Below that are five live percussion tracks (blue), three bass tracks (pink), and an `AUX Drums' programming track. There's a 'rubber bridge' guitar folder and aux, OP-1 synth tracks, piano tracks, 'Dream Machine' (Josh Kaufman's guitar) and E-bow tracks, Yamaha, Sequential Prophet X, Moog and Roland Juno synth tracks, and Strings and Horns aux stem tracks.

"Most of the drum tracks were performed on the OP-1 by Aaron. These are not programmed tracks. Bryan Devendorf, drummer of the National, programmed some beats on a Roland TR-8S. I ran those though the Fender Rumble bass amp, which adds some woofiness, like an acoustic kit room mic. There's an acoustic shaker, and there's an OP-1 backbeat that's subtle in the beginning, and then gets stronger towards the end of the song. I grouped all the drum elements and the bass, and sent those out to a hardware insert with the Culture Vulture, for saturation, so it got louder and more and more harmonically rich. There is this subtle growing and crescendo of intensity of the rhythm section by the end.

"The 'rubber bridge' guitars were the main anchor in the instruments. These guitars have a wooden bridge wrapped in rubber, and sound a bit like a nylon-string guitar, or a light palm mute. They're very percussive and sound best when recorded on our Neumann U47 and a DI. On many of those DI tracks I have a [SPL] Transient Designer to lower the sustain and keep them punchy, especially in the low end. There's a folder with five takes of 'rubber bridge' guitar in this session, creating this wall of unique guitar sound.

"I treated the 'rubber bridge' guitars quite extensively. There's a FabFilter Pro-Q3 cutting some midrange frequencies and some air around 10kHz. These guitars can splash out in the high end and have a boominess that's in the same range as the low end of Taylor's vocal, so I had to keep these things under control. Then I used a SoundToys Tremolator, with a quarter-note tremolo that makes the accents in the playing a bit more apparent. I like to get the acoustic guitars a little bit out of the way for the less important beats, so I have the Massey CT5 compressor side-chained to the kick drum. I also used the UAD Precision K-Stereo to make the guitars a bit wider. The iZotope Ozone Exciter adds some high mids and high-end harmonic saturation sparkly stuff, and the SoundToys EchoBoy delay is automated, with it only coming on in the bridge, where I wanted more ambience."

Growing Pains

"Once we had figured out how to sit the 'rubber bridge' guitars in the mix, the next challenge was to work out the end of the song, after the bridge. Taylor actually goes down an octave with her voice in the last chorus, and at the same time the music continues to push and grow. That meant using a lot of automation and Clip Gain adjustment to make sure the vocal always stayed on top. There also are ambient pianos playing counter-melodies, and balancing the vocals, guitars and pianos was the main focus on this song. We spent a lot of time balancing this, particularly as the track grows towards the end.

"The vocal tracks share many of the same plug-ins and settings. On the main lead vocal track I added the UAD Pultec EQP-1A, with a little bit of a cut in the low end at 30Hz, and a boost at 8kHz, which adds some modern air. The second plug-in is the Oeksound Soothe, which is just touching the vocal, and it helps with any harsh resonance stuff in the high mids, and a little in the lower mids. Next is the UAD 1176AE, and then the FabFilter Pro-Q3, doing some notches at 200Hz, 1kHz, 4kHz and close to 10kHz. I tend to do subtractive EQ on the Q3, and use more analogue-sounding plug-ins, like the Pultec or the Maag, to boost. After that is the FabFilter Pro-DS [de-esser], taking off a couple of decibels, followed by the FabFilter Saturn 2 [saturation processor], on a warm tape setting.

"Below the vocal tracks are three aux effects tracks, for the vocals. 'Long Delay' has a stereo EchoBoy going into an Altiverb with a spring reverb, for effect throws in the choruses. 'Chamber' is the UAD Capitol Chamber, which gives the vocal a nice density and size, without it being a long reverb. The 'Plate' aux is the UAD EMT140, for the longer tail. These two reverbs work in conjunction, with the chamber for the upfront space, determining where the vocal sits in the mix, and the plate more for the depth behind that.

"At the bottom of the session is a two-bus aux, which mimics the way I do the two-bus on the desk. The plug-ins are the UAD Massive Passive EQ, UAD API 2500 compressor, and the UAD Ampex ATR102. Depending on the song, I will choose 15ips or 30ips. In this case it was set to 15ips, half-inch GP9. That has a nice, aggressive, midrange push, and the GP9 bottom end goes that little bit lower. There's also a PSP Vintage Warmer, a Sonnox Oxford Inflator, plus a FabFilter Pro-L2 [limiter]. None of these things are doing very much on their own, but in conjunction give me the interaction I expect from an analogue mix chain."

[hotchkiss-and-tell]

Dates or Time of Year for Each Nancy Drew Game

whatamagicalplace made one of these charts last year. Those efforts gave me a starting point but I wanted to tweak it after doing my own research. I decided to share my final result since my version differs from hers in several ways. My reasoning for each game is discussed below; but if you have any evidence to add, feel free.

SCK: Nancy says in the opening letter she took a semester off school to visit Eloise in Florida. The banners for Senior Prom are still prominent throughout the school and the event is scheduled for May 23. Game takes place in a single day but that day could be any time in late spring semester prior to May 23.

SCK2: Homecoming banners are prominent and the event is scheduled for Sept 23. A flyer with Jake’s secret messages has a date of Sept 05, so let’s assume Jake was still alive then. The game says Nancy is there to investigate after Jake was murdered “last week.” That could mean three to seven days after the murder since it happened on a Thurs. Thus Remastered takes place in a single day but that day could be anywhere from Sept 08 to 22.

STFD: Nov 13 (confirmed with calendar). Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.

MHM: “Winter Festival” and Charlie studying for finals indicates late Nov to early Dec. Newspaper about the lost gold at the end is dated Mar 03; it could’ve been published after money settlement and the renovations completed though. Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.

TRT: December. The Spanish letter from Lisa’s friend is dated Nov 30 and acknowledges that Lisa is already in Wisconsin. By now, time should be well into Dec. 

FIN: Possibly Nov (game’s release) but there are no confirmed dates on anything. It’s likely during the school year since Maya is doing the interview for the student newspaper. Game takes place over three days.

SSH: Calendar on Henrik’s desk is for the month of April. The book version takes place during the DC Cherry Blossom parade which usually occurs last week of March or early April. Game takes place for as many days as player needs. (Early April timeline would match with end of game trailer and dates for DOG.)

DOG: Jeff’s calendar is open to April. Culprit’s log book says Sally is due to move in to the cabin on April 19. Sally says she spent four weeks at Moon Lake, implying the game starts May 18. But I really don’t see Jeff’s character forgetting to change the calendar, so either Sally moved in early or she means four weeks total including seeing the property, bidding, and the final sale plus moving in. And let’s remember there’s no safe water source, so it’s unlikely Sally could live there for four weeks straight. Sally says the dogs howled a full week before they attacked the house and then they appeared every night since; maybe Sally lasted 9-14 days with the ghost dogs. The game could likely begin anywhere between Apr 28 and May 18. Then continue for as many days and nights as the player needs.

CAR: Culprit’s emails with black market dealer date from May 23 through June 04. Harlan’s appt book opens to June 09-13 with the significant clue on June 10. Game is a single day, likely on June 10, but could be as early as June 05.

DDI: June 17 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.

SHA: Sept 15 to 17. Nancy’s airline ticket confirms arrival date in AZ. Timeline of the game takes place in three days. (Tex’s b-day is Sept 16!)

CUR: This is anybody’s guess. Hugh and Linda were married Aug 22. The lawyer’s letter to Mrs. Drake states Linda must live at the manor for another three months to fulfill the “six-month-habitation-clause” and those six months must be consecutive in the first year of marriage. Game could be late Nov at the earliest. However, frogs are chirping when Nancy arrives at the manor which is a spring thing and Bess and George say they are attending sailing camp. The fact that no one is suggesting that Linda can leave due to health reasons and start the six months over when she’s well again makes me think the year is half gone already. So the game could also be taking place in April or May at the latest.

CLK: May 07 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.

TRN: We see snow in Copper Gorge, but it’s in Colorado and snow can be any time of year there. Frank and Lori are wearing the puffy vests and everyone else has jackets and sweaters. Fatima says it’s the off-season now and summer is the busy season. Makes me think winter is my best guess.

DAN: Game takes place for as many days as player needs. The newspaper on Day 1 is dated Aug 28. Newspapers continue to appear through Sept 06, which publishes that the journalists are negotiating for raises and the sounds of the impending strike are occurring outside JJ’s apartment. Day 11 (Sept 07) and onward have no more newspapers appear on the kitchen table. Let’s say Aug 28 to Sept 07 for simplicity.

CRE: Mike’s calendar is set to March. Quigley’s tape recorder log updates as of Mar 28. Craven’s shipping records say his latest sample was sent to Aikens Biotech on Apr 09. Game takes place in a single day, probably Apr 09 or 10. (Mike just hasn’t turned over the calendar yet)

ICE: Newspaper in the lodge is dated Jan 13. Elsa’s resignation letter is dated Jan 15. Lodge computer says Lupe checked in on Jan 15 and she noticed the lack of maid services for days. Game likely takes place that same week, starting maybe Jan 18 at the earliest, and lasts over several days and nights.

CRY: May 31 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.

VEN: Newspaper in the Ca’ terrace says chalice was stolen “this morning” and the police records say the theft happened Jan 25. When Nancy nabs Nico on the stakeout, the next day’s newspaper is dated Feb 03. Since game takes place over several days, it likely plays from Jan 25 to Feb 03.

HAU: Night of May 28. The wedding is set for June 01. The end dialogue says Kyler and Matt couldn’t stop saying “I love you” from when the rocket launched to four days later, which was their wedding day.

RAN: The float plane pilot says resorts like Dread Isle shut down in the summer for “hurricane season” in the Bahamas. And the game was released in July. Since we see the map that charts all of Nancy’s past cases (including HAU) so the game is after the wedding on Jun 01. But there is no reference to the current date aside from “summer.” Single day of gameplay.

WAC: The essay Mel receives from her teacher with the plagiarist comments is dated Nov 21. Since two more nights of sleep are required to trigger events in the game, we can figure that the game takes place from Nov 21 to 23.

TOT: Scott’s calendar is open to May and filled in with code until the 19th. The log book of precipitation is filled out until May 24. Game likely takes place from May 20 to 25.

SAW: The TE-Japan brochure in Nancy’s teacher tote says her exchange program runs from Jun 01 to Sept 15 with different durations of 2 weeks, 3-4 weeks, and 5-8 weeks. With no specific date in the game and the player taking as many days and nights as needed to solve the mystery, we have to settle for saying it takes place in “summer.”

CAP: Karl’s daily calendar is on page March 12. When Nancy finds the final forged email from “Markus” she remarks that it has tomorrow’s date, which is Mar 13. Game is a single night of play on Mar 12.

ASH: Newspaper and police report of Nancy’s arrest say the game is done in a single day of August 18. The fire took place on Aug 17.

TMB: It’s the desert and there are no dates on any clue in the game. Since Lily is a student and Abdullah and Jon are professors, perhaps the game takes place in summer between any busy semester/class schedules.

DED: Ellie’s notepad in the control booth says she gave the coil demo to Nancy on Oct 29. Nancy arrived in daylight hours but since Ellie is on the night shift, the demo could have taken place on either side of midnight which means the game could start on either Oct 28 or 29. (Nancy arrived 10/28, night fell and midnight passed, then Ellie gives demo 10/29 OR Nancy arrives 10/29, night fell and it’s not midnight yet, then Ellie gives the demo still on 10/29.) Game continues for as many days and nights as the player needs.

GTH: Jessalyn’s phone recorded her bachelorette party antics from the night of Oct 27 to early morning of Oct 28. Addison says Jess had vanished for the second time after sun-up. It is unclear how many days Jessalyn has been missing before Nancy arrives on the island. Nancy was deep asleep when Savannah calls her for help, which means Jess has been gone at least a full day. Then Nancy arrives on the island at night which either means it’s evening on the same day of Savannah’s call or another day has passed by the time Nancy gets there. Oct 29 is the earliest possibility. Game takes place over three nights. Likely set between Oct 29 and Nov 01.

SPY: The newspaper reports that July 14 is near and it will be the eighth anniversary of Revenant’s first attack. Alec’s letter documents that his sister was kidnapped on the first of the month and has not been seen since. Game takes place between Jul 02 and 14. While Nancy cannot sleep or change the time of day, it is hard to believe that traveling back and forth throughout Scotland’s towns and the different phases of the spy operation all take place in a single day.

MED: Summer in the southern hemisphere, so datewise it’s set between Dec and Feb. Again there’s no sleep or time of day transitions but the elimination rounds likely take place over several days.

LIE: Employee timecards are recorded through July 05, the artifact exchange log is filled out through July 06, and the packing slip on the open crate says received July 06. Game is a single day of play, likely on July 06 or 07.

SEA: Soren’s winter guest log says Nancy is visiting in January. Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.

MID: Minion’s plane ticket TO Austria where the game begins is dated Oct 26 and the game goes into Halloween.