#this has been episode 1000 of 'This Fucking Country'

[elephantbitterhead]

Just realized that I may not have mentioned this: in the UK, a five-year mortgage is about the longest mortgage term you can get. Most are more like three. They are JUST NOW beginning to consider offering longer terms, but the interest rates on those are dramatically higher. I have been extremely mad about this ever since I discovered it when we first started looking for a house. My attempts to get mortgage brokers to explain the difference between US & UK options have gone absolutely nowhere, which I can only assume means they don't know the answer. This is obviously a scam that benefits only banks & those who can squeeze fees out of you when you have to refinance repeatedly. Mind you, when I suggest that to them they hastily deny it but offer no alternative.

[honoviadakai]

Rating the Hazbin crew based on how much I trust them to drive me places 🚗 😈

(This idea comes from @not-just-another-hazbin don’t think I didn’t see your reblog my friend, it’s been making me cackle for a week now 🤣)

Charlie 🏨🎶:

8/10

Oh this is the SAFEST person you could get in a car with

Although

9 times out of 10, she’s probably not the one driving

It would be Razzle and Dazzle

That being said

When she DOES drive, you’re guaranteed to get from point A to point B in one piece

She’s a little too safe though….

She follows all traffic laws to the letter

And that wouldn’t borne a problem…if you guys weren’t in hell

Traffic laws in hell are a suggestion more than anything else

So more often then not, people are yelling slurs and insults at you two

Also, she’s lowkey a s low driver

She refuses to go above 30mph unless absolutely necessary

And that’s usually never with her

So if you have an appointment at 4pm and she’s the one driving you

No you don’t

It’s at 2pm

3pm at latest

She honestly gives off massive “trying to be the cool mom” vibes when driving

But her some slack, it’s the daddy issues that make her give that vibe

Vaggie 🦋🗡️:

8/10

She’s pretty ok at driving tbh

She’s gonna keep you safe and she’s more than capable of navigating you through the hellscape of hell’s roads

But her road rage is insane

Like you’d think someone like Husk has horrible road rage right?

Nah

It’s Vaggie

She genuinely might actually start ramming into people if they’re being truly unreasonably unhinged and threaten your safety

She truly just wants to keep you safe so that’s exactly what she’s gonna do

Just keep your seatbelt on…please

She’s also just not gonna let anyone eat in her car

No exceptions

Alastor🦌📻:

-100/10

Why…oh why in the ever loving FUCK would you get in a car where the RADIO DEMON was behind the wheel!?!

Get out of the car!

NOW!

He’s gonna cause an accident on the freeway on purpose!

And god help you if you say you’re in a hurry!

He’s gonna grove even slower than Charlie!

Like 5MPH kind of slow!

DO. NOT. LET. ALASTOR. DRIVE!

Angel Dust🕷️💕:

6/10

He’s an average driver tbh

Well…

When he’s being chill/sober

He’s pretty good at staying out of trouble and getting you from point A to B in the time you need

Now if he’s having a manic episode or had too much coke….

Please for the love of god buckle up

He’s speeding so fast it makes Sonic the Hedgehog look like a tortoise

He’s there for a good time, not a long time and he wants to see some shit get wrecked

But tbh he might not let you in the car if he’s doing this

He doesn’t care what happens to him

But you?

Your safety matters so much to him…

Thankfully he hasn’t done stuff like that in a long time so for the most part, he’s a good person to go to if you need a ride

Husk🐈‍⬛🥃:

9/10

He’s got the soul of a grumpy old man and he drives like one too

First of all

He’s gonna complain when you ask him to take you anywhere

He’s gonna drive you ofc

But he’s gonna act like you took him away from something important

It was booze

You took him away from his quiet drinking time

How dare you

He’s gonna get you from point A to B as quickly and as safely as he can

Nothing crazy, he just wants to hurry back home with as little chaos happening as possible

Low key I feel like he plays country, blues and/or rock music from around the time he was alive

It’s mostly sad music if you really listen to the lyrics

He honestly doesn’t care if you eat in the car but if you make a mess, he’s making you clean it

It’s honestly like getting a ride from you’re very tired and jaded uncle

Niffty🐞🪡:

-90/19

No

Absolutely not

First of all

Look at her

She’s like 3 ft tall

How is she supposed to reach the pedals or look over the steering wheel????

Second

Even if she was tall enough to drive properly….would you honestly get in the car with her???

The best way I can explain her driving….

And even then…I think she’s 1000 times worse than this guy

She’d tumble it hard enough to make it explode while you’re both still inside

And she’s laugh gleefully….

Just get a cab…it’s much safer

Sir Pentious🐍🥚:

-60/10

Ok

I know he’s capable of piloting his war machine

But piloting a ship and driving a car and very different for him

Ships are easy for him

But cars????

It’s like reading a foreign language to him

You’ll eventually reach your destination sure

But the town you just passed through is somehow on fire

And so is the car

And it’s only being held together by duct tape and prayers…

Just walk

Your chances of coming home in once piece is much higher that way

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Doctor Who, but Chronologically 30

Okay OKAY so we have just watched the Christmas Armistice of 1914, but now we move on to one of my favourite episodes of ALL TIME. In fact, full disclosure, this is one of my favourite TV episodes of anything ever. This is one of my go-to options for comfort TV. If I’m ill and sad and cwtched up on the sofa, this is in the Emergency Elanor First Aid Kit. I love it. I love it so much that I will not be quoting any of it, because if I do, I will be posting the whole script. You cannot imagine the extent to which I had to sit on my hands so I wouldn’t do a full episode review accidentally.

It is 1926, my friends, and this is the Unicorn and the Wasp.

Tennant and Donna are back!!!! DREAM TEAM. We haven’t seen them since they were running around Pompei in episode one, my lord that was a while back now. And Jesus, what a return to quality. The companions have been failing the Sexy Lamp Test for so long. The only break was Martha in the Human Nature two-parter, and that was an emotional wringer. But here!!! Donna!!! You could NEVER replace her with a sexy lamp. She is 1000% the co-protagonist. She and Tennant are best friends and they love each other intensely and platonically and they travel through time and SOLVE CRIME while being, at all moments and seconds of every single scene, two halves of a whole idiot, and it is joyful and wonderful and amazing.

Okay okay so

They land in a country manor in England, a part expertly played by Llansannor Court in Wales if I’m not much mistaken, and the interiors are 1000% Tredegar House because I know my Welsh country manors. The Doctor and Donna get ludicrously excited about going to a garden party in 1926, all giggly. They even go and get dressed up, by which I mean Donna does – she exits the TARDIS and gives a twirl.

“What do you think?” she teases. “Flapper, or slapper?”

“Flapper, definitely,” the Doctor beams. “You look lovely.”

… I am having violent flashbacks to Capaldi calling Clara ugly.

Anyway they meet Agatha Christie in time for an honest-to-god murder mystery. It’s fucking phenomenal. It’s silly and camp and the murderer is a giant wasp, except in true Agatha Christie style, there’s a complicated twist involving a secret pregnancy, an expensive gem, the hot young woman (played by her from Rogue One) actually being an accomplished jewel thief impersonating a socialite, and a prodigal reverend. One of these people is the aforementioned giant wasp, except the joyful sci-fi plot is really running around a playground with a balloon and giggling, so it has been primed to kill people in libraries with lead piping like a Cluedo game.

I literally cannot list every moment I love. It’s just too many. So I shall try to name check some top moments:

“MAIDEN”

“It was a good once”

“I am Inspector Smith from Scotland Yard, and Miss Noble is the plucky young girl who helps me”

“Copyright Donna Noble”

“Major snap out of it. No, right out of it –“

“HOW IS HARVEY WALLBANGER ONE WORD”

The ENITRE reveal scene holy shit

“Ah, let’s see, it’s filed under C” *box contains a Cyberman part, a Carrionite egg, a bust of Caesar, and cables*

Fuck. I just. *clenches fist* I love this episode so damn much

Okay so plot threads. Well! No new info about Donna’s back, unfortunately, so nothing to tick off there. Only, as ever, things to add. There’s a scene where Donna is comforting Agatha (and finding vital clues), and she explains that her last partner ran off with a giant spider. That’s a hell of a thing. Oh, also Donna made her second reference to bees disappearing. But that’s it.

Fuck me but I would burn so much Capaldi for so much more Tennant/Donna.

Anyway the list of plot threads is now going under a read more, Christ on wheels

“She” (an unknown person) is returning (perhaps River returned as Missy. Maybe Me? Maybe Clara???!)

There is something on Donna’s back

An entire planet, Pyrovilia, just… disappeared, somehow. (Maybe because the TARDIS is exploding??? Saturnine was also lost, and that WAS because of the TARDIS exploding. The lion man’s planet was also lost but he was a bit of a knob about it if I’m honest.)

Amy is maybe dead (she’s not)

The Doctor has been cubed (he’s out, but how?)

River is possibly blown up  (unless she’s Missy)

The TARDIS has blown up  (It’s fine now. Except it’s sort of melting now because it’s corrupted, but it’s fine again)

The universe appears to have ended  (the universe is back again)

The Doctor has employed(?) Nardole

(And Nardole was “reassembled???” Nardole had glass nipples and invisible hair?? WHAT THE FUCK IS HE)

There’s a vault in the TARDIS and it contains Missy but we don’t know why (sometimes she knocks for the bants)

What has happened to all these companions and where are the new ones coming from?

There’s an immortal Viking girl now. Her name is Me and she’s now looking after the people the Doctor abandons

What’s With The Silence?

Why was Rory entirely unconcerned by the entire world suddenly going silent when that is Not Normal and should have been, at the very least, extremely disconcerting?

What did the Doctor do to Queen Lizzie One?

Who is Captain Jack Harkness? (Is he the one who gave the companions a warning about the lone cyberman?)

Why is Amy seeing a one-eyed woman in a vanishing window?

What’s with the Doctor’s future involving getting shot by an astronaut?

Is Amy pregnant and why is it inconclusive?

Who is Sarah-Jane Smith?

How is the Doctor Bill’s teacher and why/where does he have an office?

What is going on with the Cyber War and the Cyberium???

Who did the Doctor lose to Cyber Conversion?

What happened with the Other Cyber War?

What happened with the Third War that deleted the void?

Why does Rose seem particularly important?

What’s with the Weeping Angel statues, and why can’t you blink at them?

What order do these Doctors go in? (Eccleston, Tennant, uncertain, Smith, Capaldi, Whittaker)

Which companion just… forgot the Doctor, and how?

Yaz and Vinder are about to die as Mori/Mwri/Muuri

There is a Lupari shield around Earth.

What’s a Time War?

What’s the Rift?

What’s Bad Wolf?

What happened with Amy’s pregnancy?

In which war did the Doctor become a war criminal, and how?

Who is the Master?

Why has Amy forgotten Rory?

Is Rory plastic or not?

Why is the Doctor sulking on a cloud?

How exactly does the Doctor have a cloud?

What exactly happened with Strax to, uh, tame him?

Which friend killed Strax?

Which friend brought Strax back?

Where did this lesbian lizard and human couple come from?

What happened with Clara as Souffle Girl and the Daleks?

How does Clara actually join?

Why so many Claras?

Why is Missy apparently in robo-heaven?

Why is probably!Missy pushing Clara and the Doctor together?

What is Trensilor and what happened there?

Who is Handles?

The Doctor is about to be dissolved by a beautiful geode man

The universe is being crushed by the Flux

Will the Doctor open the fobwatch?

Sontarans are invading Earth again

Who is Kate?

Who is Osgood? Another name of Clara’s again?

The fuck is the deal with the Grand Serpent

Does Martha get to go to an ice cream planet with 12-fingered massage aliens?

How did the Doctor forget Clara?

Who is Bill’s puddle girlfriend Heather?

How did Nardole die?

When does Bill get Cyberman-ed and die?

When does the Doctor shrink and enter a Dalek called Rusty?

Whittaker is falling to her death rn

Was that ring relevant?

Does anyone know the Doctor’s name?

When did Yaz talk to Dan about fancying the Doctor?

When did Dan talk to the Doctor about fancying Yaz?

Who was the Doctor’s wife?

What's happening with the bees?

What happened with Donna's ex and a giant spider?

[redditreceipts]

Regarding the anime with the sexualized girl you've just posted.

I don't know whether you watched the show itself, if you didn't, I regret to inform you that this isn't the worst thing about the series (I've dropped it after a couple of episodes).

For example, you've got weird scenes with Kanna (little girl, white to purple hair) and some other little girl (her classmate, if I remember correctly, and there's even no ShE's 1000 yEaRs OlD bulshit excuse this time). Or Luoca (green gradient hair, black top) with a little boy with purple hair.

I can't remember exactly what they've said in the show, it's been a couple of years, however, I can't forget how uncomfortable I felt during those scenes. If you want to see them, I'm sure they are still on YouTube.

I think you're referring to this post?

yeah I am not a cultural relativist so I'm sorry to say this to all the weeaboos out there, but from the information I've heard about Japanese culture, it is insanely pedophilic and misogynist. of course that's not true for every Japanese person, but generally, I am kinda weary when it comes to Japanese media (even though some of it is great, admittedly, but I have had to sit through too much pedo anime to take the risk. I only watch anime when a trusted person has assured me it's safe)

I am also not saying that China is necessarily better in that aspect, just because they censored one pedophilic anime once doesn't mean they are perfect or anything, but how fucked up does a society to be to let that shit happen?

also yes, this doesn't only apply to Japanese society, but to every society that has a large audience for that kind of pedo anime, which includes western countries. a normal person should feel like throwing up after seeing sexualised images of children. If you find that arousing, I advise you to go into the next clinic and let yourself be chemically castrated

[captnjacksparrow]

if you had to rank your fav naruto characters how would it go? love your blog btw!!

Hmmm... Complicated ask, anon.😂

[My personal life would be splashed here and there. Please bear with me]

Before 5 months, if you asked me about Naruto, my response would be ‘What the fuck is that?’. I absolutely had no idea such a treasure existed. For me, it started out like a blockbuster movie for the sheer variety of fights and the resulting emotions it brought within me. 

However, there was a point I stopped and thought, ‘Wait a fucking second. This resembles my family dynamics. This person is speaking the exact same lines I spoke to my parents few years ago. This person’s situation resembles mine. Did this creator a time traveler?’. Naruto is the only piece of media that gave me such feel. Am not even exaggerating, believe me. 

I really liked so many characters very much but am going to try my best to list just 10. 

The only characters I hate in this series are Danzo, Sakura and Hinata in no particular order. Meaning, I absolutely cannot see any positives in them. They are crassy, cringey and completely detestable.

FAVOURITE NARUTO CHARACTERS

10. Killer Bee

HaHaHa :-) Just seeing this character makes me smile and light-hearted.

It’s a pity that he is the only character who don’t belong to Konoha in my Top 10 rankings who was developed well apart from Gaara.

I loved him from Frame 1 onwards and I sincerely wished Team Taka should be packed up with their ass beaten up mercilessly. And that’s what happened.

Despite being a Jinchurikki, he never bothered to mind his surroundings and filled his heart with love from his over protective Brother alone was nice to watch.

He makes a great Tag Partner with Naruto next to Sasuke. No doubt.

The way Killer Bee treated Team Taka like some annoying flies and his cool and don’t care attitude was top notch. It’s not just with Sasuke, Bee treated Naruto with the same IDGAF attitude at first.

Best Moments:

Lariat punch to Sasuke (TBH, Sasuke deserved it. LOL)

Blasted off every member of Team Taka like a doll

His entire conversation and fight sequence with Kisame (Their banters and exchanges are way too hilarious)

His dynamics with his Elder Brother (God!!!! Whenever Raikage gives him an Iron Claw.... What a hilarious duo!!!!)

9. Hatake Kakashi

Kakashi was my most favourite character when I started the series for simply being ultra-cool with the way he conducted the Bell-Test and taught a valuable lesson for those bratty kids in Team 7 called ‘Team Work’. 

Best Moments:

Kakashi vs Obito Hand-to-Hand Combat (the best in the series)

Kakashi in the Gaara retrieval arc (His fight with Itachi & Deidara gave a good start to the shippuden series. His Mangekyou reveal was surprising).

Kakashi & Guy teaming up with Naruto to reveal Obito in a twisty and tragic way. (Kakashi couldn’t handle the truth at all and neither did I)

Kakashi vs Zabuza (That’s when I realized that the series was getting real serious)

8. Jiraiya

Jiraiya was my next favourite to Kakashi during my Part 1 days. His open perversion and his entire dynamics with Naruto was one of the best things during the Chunin Exams arc. Taught Naruto about Chakra Control and about the way of a shinobi by just enduring. Naruto follows this even today.

Best Moments: 

Kuchiyose No Jutsu training (Man, I never expected him to push Naruto off the cliff)

Rasengan Training (One of the best arcs in part 1 and it was soo satisfying to see Naruto punching his first Rasengan on Kabuto, He also acted like a quasi parent to Naruto... heartwarming)

Jiraiya Vs Six paths of Pain ( 6 vs 1 was always doomed but still he had the guts of a shinobi and plunged ahead)

7. Uchiha Madara

Geez. What is there to not like him?? 

Everything he did was absolutely wrong ever since he broke up with Hashirama in a romantic way much similar to how couples break up in my country.

I am an Uchiha. You are a Senju. I wish it had been different.

This roughly translates to how 75% of lovers break up and marry someone else from their own clan in my state. (Duh!!!)

I am from XXX clan, you are from XXX clan. So we can’t love each other and my parents won’t accept this relationship. So let’s break up.

Alright, my first shipping couple in this series is HashiMada for this exact reason. (I started shipping SNS only after episode 478). 

Just like Hashirama, Madara had an extensive build up right from episode 1 where Kurama compares Sasuke with Madara. And flashbacks from Itachi and Tobi spiked my curiosity and I wanted to see his face so badly ever since.

But the moment he landed gracefully like a diva in episode 321.... Woaahhhh!!!! He literally danced in the battlefield and ate up 100′s of guys with just a fucking Sharingan. 

Best Moments:

Going Shirtless before 1000′s of people with Hashirama’s face, no less (Well, I literally went heart-eyed for 5 minutes. Sorry Sasuke, your ancester was way much sexier than you in the Orochimaru hideout and beats you by a million points).

Screaming Hashirama’s name like a cockatoo for 300 times even till the very end (Sorry Naruto, your obsession towards Sasuke for about 6 arcs is pale in comparison to Madara’s obsession which was established in just 6 or 7 episodes.)

I have 25 clones now. Do you want me to put Susanoo or not? You can’t answer. The answer is yes. (Man, his I don’t give a fuck attitude is just an alien level thing)

Openly admitting Only Hashirama Can Beat Me (Say what you will about Sasuke, Madara has no qualms about accepting his inferiority in terms of power. An absolute Straight Forward diva-queen)

Awakening Sharingan for breaking up with his ‘friend’ rather than for his 3 dead brothers. (Geez, Poor Soul. He is the forefather of a Romantic Uchiha. That romantic blood still flows in Sasuke)

6. Senju Hashirama

Man, I would have placed him somewhere in top 5 if only he was introduced early or had more scenes. I started watching Naruto only because of this very name. There is a local podcaster in my state who goes under the alias of Senju Hashirama and in his podcasts, he hinted about this character and how he was inspired by his ideals. I just googled and saw that this character belonged to Naruto series and I considered watching it. Here I am, making analysis on that very series.

There was this excellent build up for him right when we got introduced to Captain Yamato. He was constantly referred in flashbacks from Itachi and Tobi especially.

But the moment he was reanimated again..... Geez..... It was an hilarious ride all throughout. Out of all the flashbacks we got from this series, Founders Era flashback was my absolute favourite.

From where I come from, we are still under the stupid influence of Clan infrastructure and are not growing up in many aspects like people in western countries do. For me, I hope, one day, someone like Senju Hashirama appears in our state and change our lives for better by uniting all clans as one and treats everyone equally without the shitty favouritism for their own children, friends, parents, siblings.

That’s why this dialogue struck a thunder in my heart

“Be they a friend.... Be they a sibling.... Be it even my own child. I will not forgive anyone who threatens the village.”

Because the clan leaders in our place are absolutely selfish, trash bastards who serves their own needs with no regards for other people from other clans. For a person like me, Hashirama is not just a fictional hero, he is someone who many aspires to become. No wonder that podcaster chose this name as his alias.

He rightfully deserved the title ‘God of Shinobi’. And no one can surpass him, not even Naruto.

Best Moments:

Wood Style vs Eternal Mangekyou sharingan + Kurama powered Madara (He just beats Madara’s ass by a wide margin. This shows he was a whole fucking different level than Naruto + Sasuke combined. In terms of strength, nobody surpassed him YET. Sorry Naruto and Sasuke, you guys are no match even now with your Rinnegan and Kurama lost forever).

His entire banters with Madara (ROFLLLL. Without him, it would have been just another lifeless arc.)

5. Senju Tobirama

Hmmm, let me tell you something about him.

First off, he is not a racist or fascist as many hardcore Sasuke fanatics claims. He is one of the best hokages according to me. He is abso-fucking-lutely practical, rational, logical and holds no grudge. And Sasuke resembles Tobirama with all these characteristics as compared to soft and naive Naruto. If only he had more screen time, he would be easily in my top 3. 

Just because he didn’t lick the boots of Uchiha (many people’s favorite clan or may I say the only clan that was given any shit about in this series), it doesn’t make him a racist or fascist.

No, he never persecuted the Uchihas. Danzo, the crass bastard, driven off the Uchihas only after the Kyuubi incident. It was explicitly mentioned in the databook and was clearly explained in the series. 

He literally gave the highest position in the village for the entire clan. That is, a military power inside a military village. ‘Shinobi who can cause crimes can only be stopped by shinobi who are even better’. In my state, if a powerful clan decided to persecute another clan, they simply start by cutting off basic amenities like Water and Electricity. Compared to what I’ve seen, Tobirama did nothing but given the Uchihas, the highest position in their village. 

Orochimaru only said giving such a power made them conceited (arrogant). Tobirama had a trusted subordinate called Kagami, an Uchiha in his team. He suggested Kabuto to help Sasuke and even teleported him on his request. He even spited Madara for killing Sasuke, an Uchiha. He openly claimed Uchiha clan exceeds Senju in terms of Love. He openly appreciated Itachi and Kagami as someone who sees beyond their clan. In what world, would a racist or fascist do all this for a clan he hates??? 

Yes, he was cautious of Sasuke at first because he saw him with Orochimaru and even went full-on battle mode because of Sasuke’s carefree threat to destroy the village. But once he decided to go to the battlefield to fight Madara, he simply forgot everything that happened before and started to work with him as a comrade, and even helped him twice. In which world, a racist or fascist behave this way?

Believe me, a person like me who was grown with these clan politics surely can say who is a fascist. He was not. He was just cautious of them because of their ability to attain superpowers with just emotions alone. Let me ask you all this, ‘Would you be okay with people getting crazy powers whenever they are depressed?’. Being cautious is not racism. It really disrespects people who faced real oppression under fascism.

What Madara and Danzo did was a classical example of fascism. 

And No, Izuna didn’t die only because of Tobirama. He died because Madara was too arrogant to instigate war with Senju clan. And this was way before forming Konoha. If Tobirama killed Izuna after the alliance between Uchiha and Senju, I would agree that he was a racist. Izuna lost his life just like any other Uchiha and Senju soldiers in that battlefield. 

Just because he shitted your beloved ‘Sasuke-Kun’ doesn’t mean he is a racist too. Tobirama saw Sasuke along with that scoundrel Orochimaru who once used this very two hokages to destroy the very village they strived hard to create and protect. What will you do, if you were in his place?? Please don’t lie and say ‘I wouldn’t be judgemental’. 

And Imagine you are Tobirama, Sasuke is threatening to commit genocide against the entire village who had no idea about this coup detat instead of going against those old hags. Will you sit quiet as a Hokage?? 

He was the first person to suggest his brother, Itama, that Revenge against Uchihas are futile. All we need is an agreement to make truce. That gave the idea for Hashirama to pursue his dream. And Tobirama was happy to follow that dream and very supportive. 

It’s because of all these reasons I placed him above Senju Hashirama.

Best Moments:

Amazing power display against Sasuke & Co with just an index finger (It was a pleasure to see everyone’s face trembling with mild sweat including Sasuke).

Acted as a decoy to save his young subordinates. (The way he sacrificed his life saying young wills of fire must be protected is just Woow!! I wish his subordinates listened to his words and passed the mantle to the younger ones rather than playing game at such an old age and screwed up many lives. Pfft!!!)

Any time he says ‘Shut Up’ to Hashirama (ROFL)

His absolute ‘I don’t give a fuck’ attitude to Naruto, Sasuke, Hashirama, Minato and Madara (He trolled them all mercilessly and I love it)

4. Senju Tsunade

It hurts me to say that Tsunade is the only female character in my list because every other female characters were written in a much more piss poorly way. Only Konan came close to Tsunade but her role was very short. 

Despite her character’s purpose revolved around another male character (Dan) and a blatant objectification of her breasts, I liked everything about her other than those mentioned above. 

She is the Second Best Hokage who took Konoha right after the destruction made by Orochimaru, excellently handled the aftermath by making friendly relations with Suna (Sand village), provided her best medical support to Konoha in the Pain Arc and successfully handled the fourth Shinobi world war. 

She is such a badass who developed her own original jutsu called Byakugou no Jutsu, which can heal herself. 

She is just way too amazing and it’s a pity that we got very less scenes in Shippuden.

Best Moments:

Took 25+ stabs from Madara’s Susanoo like a piece of cake (Man, I simply couldn’t describe that scene. All the other Kages were shocked and even Madara too)

Lifted her advisors like a cabbage sack (Those fucking old hags deserved it. Those shits should’ve died)

Her index finger flick assault on Naruto (Aww, Naruto was definitely bratty in his first meeting and Tsunade didn’t hold back at all)

Played Orochimaru like a basketball (In that same arc, she fought Orochimaru mercilessly like a devil left and right. Someone who claimed to have surpassed Tsunade never even dared to fight Orochimaru’s student and crying for his attention after just receiving one stab from Madara. Just saying)

3. Uzumaki Naruto

Naruto is the titular character and your emotions evolve along with him. He surely deserves a spot in Top 3. The only reason I didn’t place Naruto even more higher is because he didn’t experience something very important which many characters in this list faced. That is, Losing a loved one before his eyes. Every villain in this series became what they are because they lost someone important before their eyes like Nagato, Obito. (Nope, I don’t count Neji as his loved one). I think this tests the mettle of any character and Naruto failed to experience this. The only person he ever lost was Jiraiya and that too from off-screen. That’s why I felt his journey to his dreams seemed little easier compared to the rest of the characters.

His best block of episodes will always be the part 1 Episode 1, 2, 3. Episode 1 is the character defining episode for Naruto and what he learned there will be applied everywhere till the very end of the series. He learned 3 things

Forgiveness, Empathy and Acceptance

Talk-No-Jutsu

Kage Bunshin no Jutsu

From then on, this boy wins many friends to his side, not only from Konoha but from other villages too and even made them to acknowledge his strength only through his sheer hard work. 

However, there is this person, whose acknowledgement he wants the most.  That person is his most important bond along with Iruka Sensei. He is none other than Sasuke. One day, Sasuke left him alone for some unavoidable reason at the end of part 1 which left a huge scar in him and he vows to bring him back to the place where he belongs. That becomes his ultimate goal rather than becoming an Hokage.

The way he goes to any extent to protect the people he cares about is just simply entertaining to watch.

Every time he makes an heroic entry to save the day was never boring, not once. 

Best Moments:

Sobbing from his heart after hearing Iruka Sensei acknowledging him (It just makes me feel heavy for no reason. The anime team did an awesome job to capture his emotions convincingly)

Awakening Kyuubi Mode for the first time after seeing Sasuke die in his arms (Man, out of all the collective hatred he got from the villagers, this moment affected him a lot speaks volumes)

Punching Neji from the underground to win the Chunin exams (God, I honestly believed Naruto lost but he just surprised us heavily from nowhere. And that failure speech was just pure bliss to watch even today)

Pain Vs Naruto (One of the best arc for Naruto. Because unlike other arcs, where Naruto fought with a team, this arc he was all alone fighting a person with Rinnegan. Be it the exuberant landing from the frogs with a dramatic kabuki music, creating multi-step attacks, coming up with novel solution in that difficult situation, finally ending the conflict without killing the enemy, becoming an hero. Superb journey. The only thing I didn’t like in that arc is some shitty selfish proposal. PUKE!!)

Bearing the burdens of his most important person and die along with him (This boy always shouts he will never die until he becomes an Hokage. But for Sasuke, he was ready to die along with him in order to not leave him alone proves how much he loves him. This shows his emotional maturity rather than shouting at Sasuke like he always did before which never reached his ears. This time it did)

Final Good Bye to Minato (Honestly, I was bawling just like Naruto in that scene no matter how many times I watch it. It started out slow but as he speaks more and more, he simply couldn’t hold back and wept a sea of tears 😭😭😭)

2. Uchiha Sasuke

One of the well written characters in this series, with all the flaws and positive stuffs which makes him more of an Anti-Hero. He always subverts my preformed opinions and never ceased to surprise me.

Despite being aloof and cold, his warmer side will always be exposed towards Naruto. This is evident by many things he had done for Naruto which he don’t have to or no reason to. Starting right from roasting Sakura, offering lunch, asking for tips, enquiring about breakfast, protecting him many times and dying for Naruto. 

Why I placed him above Naruto is because of his unavoidable decision to tread in a complicated dark path primarily due to the trauma he carried and was stirred up again by collective factors such as Orochimaru’s cursed seal, Itachi’s arrival and Naruto’s growth. Compared to Sasuke, Naruto had an easier path because he never saw anyone die before his eyes and hence he don’t carry any trauma which can divert his path.

Even after watching his entire clan and family members murdered before his eyes at an age 8, he managed to pull himself and never snapped out like many other good characters does. But the moment when he found out that Itachi was good all along, he simply couldn’t tolerate the truth and gave himself to Vengeance. Because, he loved his brother more than he hated him all these years. This shows he loved his brother more than his parents. His resolve to destroy Konoha was perfectly understandable. But is it good? Nope. He can kill Danzo and those old hags but killing other people was never justifiable.

But still, his resolve to have his vengeance was diverted by Naruto and weakened by Itachi, at some point. So, he decided to know the truth and when he heard it, he understood the Hokages also sacrificed many precious things to protect this village just like his Brother Itachi. He understood the mistakes of his clan and decided to protect the village which he swore to destroy. [Many Sasuke fanatics think that he succumbed to the Government and Kishi wrote Sasuke to bootlick them. Their idea was to tackle genocide with another genocide. What a stupid idea!!!!]

And No, I don’t consider him trying to kill Sakura, Karin and Kakashi as his bad moments (though I feel bad for Karin). For the simple reason being, he became a monster by losing himself in the darkness who lost the rationality to differentiate friends from foes. Much similar to how Naruto lost himself to Kyuubi’s hatred against Orochimaru and in Pain Arc. It’s so hypocritical to ignore Naruto and accuse Sasuke here. Plus, Sakura had no business to be there otherwise Sasuke would not have tried to kill her. 

But does it mean Sasuke did nothing wrong???

Nope.

He definitely shouldn’t have joined Akatsuki and hunted Killer Bee like an animal. Because, he knew that Tobi was the one who helped Itachi massacre the clan. When fighting Itachi he specifically vowed to kill Madara (Tobi). On top of that, Itachi passed on Amaterasu in his eyes specifically to stay away from Tobi. Why did he ally with him? Plus, Sasuke was one of the few characters who was exposed to the name ‘Akatsuki’ in part 1 itself. He clearly knew that this organization targets Naruto, his closest bond. Why did he join there? This is where the stupid part of Sasuke came out. I was grunting... ‘Oii Where did that clever Sasuke, who faced 1000 soldiers without killing any of them, went??’. 

And his plan for Revolution???? I thought it would be reasonable. But his vision was eerily similar to Danzo’s vision. Grrr..... Danzo also wanted to create his ideal village by destroying the current Hokage. He wanted to unite the Five Village and put himself on top of everyone as evident from the Kage Summit arc. 

I appreciate him that he finally adopted the Will of Fire, by wanting to protect the village at all costs just like Itachi and Hashirama did. But his methods are not very democratic. Plus, he wanted to do it alone. I was screaming at him... ‘Grrr, Sasuke, did you listen to Itachi at all???. He failed because he did everything alone. Why can’t you understand????’ This is also another instance, Sasuke’s stupidity glanced out.

I am happy Naruto knocked some sense into him by telling him not to do it alone but together.

Many fanatics also ask, ‘What did Sasuke do wrong to atone for his sins at the end?’.

I was like ‘Reallly????’

He joined Akatsuki, an organization which terrorized all the 5 villages and he hunted someone like an international criminal.

He spoiled the Kage Summit and attacked Raikage who lost his arm because of him. I know what happened over there is not Sasuke’s fault. But these are the kages who was loved by many people in their own villages. How can the world forget it and simply let him go?

It’s exactly because of all those lovely stuffs he did in Part 1 and all these mistakes he did in Part 2 but willing to correct his mistakes by sharing the burdens of his other half in the end made him more interesting, complicated and exciting and that’s why I love this character.

I also have a personal bias to love this character sooo much because of the character on top of my list.

Best Moments:

Defending Naruto before Sakura (Awww!!! Such a good boy he was. Eventhough I thought he was a typical arrogant K-Drama hero, he just subverted my opinion in that one scene. I always have a thing for people who stands up for someone even though they don’t have to. This is where I started to like Sasuke)

My body moved on its own. (Is there anything that trumps this scene in terms of emotions and love in this series?. This moment is where I understood the depth of Sasuke’s emotions towards Naruto).

What is a Clan? What is a Village? What is a Shinobi? (I was really hoping for Sasuke to question himself something similar to this. Because he was so self-absorbed in his hatred and failed to look outside him ever since he left the village. It was so gratifying that he did that)

Killing Orochimaru (I always thought Sasuke will kill him only after he tries to take over the body. Never imagined that he will strike the snake first)

Killing Danzo (Man, what an amazing battle!!!. It was so gratifying to see such a crass bastard die many times over and over).

His dramatic confession through his monologue (After the mystery of Who is this Tobi, Sasuke’s obsession towards Naruto remained a mystery for me. Why did he listen to Naruto under the bridge? Why did he protected Naruto in the War? I got the answer only after this confession. It was so heartwarming to see this mellow side of Sasuke)

1. Uchiha Itachi

I could write pages about him. The foremost reason I like Itachi and earns the top spot in my rankings is because he shockingly resembled me in many ways. As I already said, I come from a place where clan politics plays a major role and when I see Sasuke’s flashback in part 1, I was simply dumbstruck by such a detailed similarities.

Elder child of the family - ✅

Have an adorable younger sister who loves me more than my parents - ✅

Same age gap (5 years) with my sister as Itachi and Sasuke - ✅

Parents paying total attention on me while ignoring my sister completely - ✅

Parents constantly comparing my achievements with my sister - ✅

A sister who bear hugged me every time I entered the home after returning from my school - ✅

Despite my mom being a teacher, my sister always prefers me to teach her stuffs as she considers me to be way too better than my mom -  ✅

Love my sister more than my parents - ✅

Clan-Obsessed parents - ✅

Used me as a tool for the benefit of the clan - ✅

Sending another person from my clan to spy on me - ✅

Strained relationship with my parents - ✅

Disgusted with my clan - ✅

Most importantly, this dialogue from part 1 episode 129,

Clan? Clan?

Obsessed with the organization, Obsessed with the clan, Obsessed with the name, that’s merely the detestable action that restrict yourself.

I have given up all hope in this worthless clan

Because, people obsess themselves to their clan, a thing so petty, they lose sight of the things that are truly important.

A real change cannot occur under restraints and controls

I confronted my parents with the exact same dialogue (almost 98% similar) in my own native language some years ago. 

I didn’t even know the existence of Naruto series at that time. I was simply shell-shocked by all these similarities with this character. 

And Yes, The moment I heard these dialogues, I knew Itachi, was a good guy, who had a very strong reason for his actions and I instantly knew Sasuke’s revenge will not bear him any happiness. 

It is exactly because of all these striking similarities of myself with Itachi, and my lil’l sister with Sasuke, my family dynamics with the Uchiha family.... I could understand the magnitude of Sasuke’s love towards Itachi. 

And precisely because of that, I could understand Sasuke’s love towards Naruto is not fucking ‘brotherly’ one but something that leans towards Attraction. 

No wonder, Itachi left Sasuke in Naruto’s care. 

Anyways to speak objectively, 

Itachi is an extremely self-sacrificial person whose life is full of pain and miseries but never blames it on the world unlike other Uchiha members like Madara, Obito and Sasuke to an extent.

He did things considering the bigger picture which never benefitted himself in anyway and was willing to go to any extent even at the expense of his own family and his brother’s happiness. That is, Uchiha Clan Massacre and Joining Akatsuki. None of this benefitted him in anyways but he did it anyway, for the village of Konoha. 

His ideals are shockingly similar to Hashirama, Which Sasuke pointed this out and Hashirama acknowledged that Itachi was a better shinobi than he was. ❤️❤️❤️

Now, does this means I support Uchiha clan massacre?

No way. Even Itachi didn’t.

This massacre happened because of the huge clusterfuck from Hiruzen’s incompetence, Danzo’s paranoid arrogance, Uchiha clan’s devious plan to over throw the government by force rather than approaching it in a peaceful way, say, a peace talk or a protest. 

All these people acted on their own self-interest. Itachi and Shisui caught in their whirlpool, bear their burdens and paid for it with their life. Sasuke suffered for it.

But, it’s not the only reason I love this character. It’s because, the moment he decided to massacre everyone, he marked his own death by the hands of his beloved brother. I love people who owns up their mistakes and face the consequences rather than making excuses (even though it’s not entirely his mistake).

Itachi is also the only character in this series who realized his failures on his own without anyone’s interference or Naruto’s Talk-No-Jutsu. 

And he apologized for everything he did to Sasuke.

Again, some hardcore Sasuke fanatics criticize/hate him for torturing their poor ‘Sasuke-Kun’ with his Tsukuyomi. I was like ‘Hmmm...What?’. 

First off, Itachi apologized to Sasuke for not thinking out from his point of view and also for not telling him the truth earlier.

Second off, Sasuke never even blamed Itachi for anything (even he didn’t hold him for killing their parents). If Sasuke himself, forgiven Itachi... Why are his fans being so rabid?

Third off, for all of his supposed ‘crimes’, he paid for it by dying as a disgraceful Madman rather than a Hero who really saved the village. He is someone who should be celebrated like Naruto but instead died proudly as a Traitor of Konoha.

All in all, One of the wonderfully written character I have ever seen in the media. 

Best Moments:

Itachi vs Sasuke (That battle was a pure brilliance and highly emotional especially after knowing the truth. When Sasuke released his Kirin, Itachi showed off his ultimate armour Susanoo like a badass. Seeing Susanoo for the first time gave me chills. No, Sasuke didn’t kill him. Itachi died on his own)

Itachi vs Orochimaru (Man, Itachi may look mellow but when it comes to Orochimaru he is a pure Sass. He screwed that snake up both the times by a wide margin. It seems Uchiha brothers like to fuck up Orochimaru, LOL)

Talk-No-Jutsu’ing Naruto (Geez, Naruto was being completely bratty and was full of saviour complex like he was going to bear everyone’s hatred by himself. I was almost annoyed. Thanks to Itachi, he realised. Probably he is the only character to shut Naruto using his own jutsu)

Izanami’ing Kabuto (Other than Naruto, he is the only character to go out of his way to empathize with a villain and put extreme effort to change him. I think this is why Sasuke loves Naruto, for seeing these similarities??? ).

Goodbye to Sasuke (The first time when he said ‘Forgive me, Sasuke. This is the last’ by poking his forehead and finally closing the distance by butting with Sasuke’s head softly saying ‘I will love you always’.... It always evokes uncontrollable tears in me, no matter how many times I watch it 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭)

HONOURABLE MENTION

Uchiha Obito

God, Am such a sucker for Uchiha guys individually, though collectively as a clan they fucked up big time. I simply couldn’t find the place for him in the top 10. He is a classic example of What Naruto will be like if he becomes a villain?

However, all those horrible stuffs he did just for a girl whom he had a crush on which was never reciprocated seems childish. That’s why I couldn’t put him in Top 10.

And his understandable but weird obsession on Naruto was always enjoyable to watch. 

One cute thing I liked about him was, whatever criminal stuffs he may have done, he was never a cheapskate though. He had every chance to take back Kakashi’s Sharingan to activate his own Susanoo. But he never even thought of such an idea. He was a bad guy. But a good friend, no matter what. 

Pure Baby!!! But lost his way!!!

Best Moments:

Importance of Team Work (’In the ninja world, Those who break the rules are  scum. But those who abandon their comrades are worse than scum’. This very legacy he left to Kakashi came to defeat him later. And Naruto follows this motto even today)

Sacrificing his Sharingan (’I am giving you my Sharingan. No matter what the villagers say, you are a great Jonin. Please take it’. Awww!!! Obito. He left his Sharingan which helped Kakashi to complete a jutsu called ‘Chidori’, which is a go-to jutsu of Sasuke)

Thanks for the ask, anon. I thoroughly enjoyed writing this. ❤️

[onlyhereforangst]

WWR

The Talk™️

lololol just kidding sorry Laura I love you here’s the real thing just in time 😘😘

We start with Ellie being veeeeery sus 👀 checking out Eastern Europe and the various countries, I mean yes there are plenty of nice, beautiful places there but this is a procedural aka obviously that area can only be shady. I also love that Nick came up silently and waited, watched what she was doing very intently, before announcing his presence. Almost like he’s been suspecting something is up with her for a little while now and seized on this perfect opportunity to do a little digging. But at the same time he doesn’t let it go on too long, and he almost gives her an out- he doesn’t accuse her of being shady AF, instead he’s like oh clearly she’s planning a trip because she’s always talked about loving Eastern Europe not the Bahamas like we’d just gotten jealous over a year ago…right, Ellie? A trip? And then her response ooo girl. She starts to get uber defensive and then realizes that oh wait, he handed me an out on a silver platter so yeah let me take it real quick. AND HE DOESN’T CALL HER ON IT. That’s the real good stuff in this scene- he’s a trained federal agent with years of undercover work, he can tell when someone is outright lying *especially* when that someone is Ellie. So he takes her defensive hesitation and than blatant lie and rolls with it. Beeeecause he trusts her. He trusts her to tell him when she’s ready. He saw how hurt she got when he kept bothering her after the kidnapping, and also saw her tell him once she was ready to. So yeah, he gets it now. He may be seriously concerned for her underneath that joking exterior, but he trusts her to tell him when the time is right, and also likely feels she wouldn’t keep anything huge huge from him. *cue getting ready for heartbreak in the finale it’s fine everything is fine*

Of course we move on to the flirty stuff because we avoid serious talk here 🙄 Ellie still sus though don’t get it wrong, shutting that laptop real quick when he rounds the corner taking no further chances. And her crossing her arms while he offends her choice of “vacation” hahaha she’s so obvious, honey you got the hots for him it’s ok. Little middle school flirting like oh yeah you can do better? Prove it jerk. And Niiiiiick 🥵 I wish you could see the screenshot I’m paused on right now after he says it depends on who he’s going with before he asks her who she’s going with because DAMN that look. He can think of one (1) person and one person only who he’d go on a trip with. Her little smirk back before she decides to throw all pretense to the wayside and says fuck it I don’t care that we’re in the bullpen out in the open lemme flirt with you ~*Agent Torres*~ AND HE’S LIKE TWO CAN PLAY AGENT BISHOP PLEASE INVITE ME ON YOUR TRIP THAT I KNOW DOESN’T EXIST BUT I’D LIKE TO KNOW I’D BE INVITED IF IT DID. And please her giddy smile afterwards and then she goes from leaning back in her chair to leaning forward towards him because these two are absolutely drawn to each other bitches and I can’t get enough of them and their little playful smiles and body language. AND NEITHER CAN JIMMY. 

Jimmy is the ellick fandom. Because yes, keep going this is ✨just delightful✨ and I never want it to stop unless you’re kissing. Thank you. And pleeeeease them stumbling over their words when they realized they’ve been caught I CANT. They both look *so* uncomfortable and it’s hilarious, and then Ellie can’t help but laugh at Nick’s dumb joke making fun of Jimmy because it’s her man and he’s so *funny*. 

Bring us to Jimmy redeeming himself. But also yes this just confirms to me that he told Nick what he needed to hear back when he said zero chemistry. And now Jimmy’s observed silently, see where Nick has come in the last year and everything the two have been through and knows he ready to hear it for real. Well Jimmy was ready a while ago for them to move it along so yeah he’s like where’s my spoon I’m gonna STIR THIS POT. And then it is born, the slogan of the episode, the point of the WWR (please don’t have PTSD Laura), The Talk™️. Nick’s face oooo man, he initially tries to deflect like no we aren’t talking about that cozy scene nuh uh and then it turns into his worst nightmare- being called out by James Palmer of all people with Ellie literally five feet away. (ALSO MCGEE IS LITERALLY A FOOT BEHIND THEM. He 1000% heard this entire conversation if Ellie heard it. Bro better not try to deny a single thing later I’m watching you sir 👀) Nick’s expression is screaming what the fuck shut UP Jimmy this can’t possibly be happening so let me try to joke and deflect again (small smile because it was still a little funny) and then back to what the fuck he’s undeterred shit shit shit oh thank god McGee has started talking yes we have a goddamn huge problem autopsy gremlin won’t take the damn hint. 

And woooooow the first time I’ve seen Nick at his desk in a while 👀👀 he said shit people are on to me let me put ✨space✨ in between us for like five seconds while we still shoot each other cute smiles. 

Oooooooh now we here for the evisceration. The Here Lies James Palmer moment of the episode. Catch me dYING in the club, not crying. Because holy shit Ellie this was not only brutal and Brian absolutely killed it during this scene with his reactions to Ellie ripping him apart. His “oh…Oh…oooh.” Had me cackling. And Ellie you are the poster child of defensive, pulling out all the stops. Let me deny everything, let me then be a slight hypocrite because people shouldn’t be talking about me (because I’m terrified about considering broaching that topic too) but I can talk about Gibbs and Sloane previously, and then also like sort of admitting to it by asking Jimmy what people think is going on because that’s the question she would *love* to know the answer to but hasn’t gotten yet. All the while cue me laughing hysterically at jimmy, top tier scene right here lets be honest. Because then Kasie comes in and it’s just perfect 🤣🤣🤣 this was his sister, Painful. Couldn’t have said it better myself Kasie 😭💀

Lol at McGee telling Ellie not to tell Nick he was right about it being a coincidence 😂

HOW CLOSE DO WE NEED TO STAND TOGETHER Y’ALL. HOW CLOSE. THERE’S A WHOLE GODDAMN BULLPEN. Remember when I said Nick wanted space for 5 whole seconds, yeah this is why. They’re straight magnets - drawn together indubitably 👀

Quick detour for the continued storyline of sus!Ellie and it makes me even more and more excited for the finaleeeeee. Because honey why do you know it takes 10 pounds of pressure to rip a trachea out and yes we all know it’s Odette and I can’t wait for the aaaaaangst. Also Kasie always coming in clutch with the humor, I live for it. “No you right I got nothing” 🤣🤣

Once again, Nick forgot about his desk, it was short-lived wasn’t it? 😅 

Now to another fun scene, and I feel like there’s a little double meaning to when Nick talks to Ellie about Phineas going through a lot this year, “more than most of us, which is saying a lot this year” - obviously covid but also maybe a callback to the kidnapping/jail cell stuff they dealt with?? Maybe?? Anyways, them being so awkward cute together because there’s a slight lull in the case so they revert back to their middle school selves, “so” “so…” I can’t with them omg. And then, and THEN of the two to bring it up, it’s Nick!!!! Yes!!! The GROWTH. This man used to be so emotionally closed off and now he, HE is bringing up The Talk™️ and he almost chickens out, he almost says haha you’re right we don’t have to have The Talk™️ after Ellie has a minor freakout because good god this girl is on *edge*. Her mind has probably been going a mile a minute the second she heard Jimmy call them out at the crime scene because she’s been living in blissful ignorance the past months/year whatever and now everything is smacking her in the face. But Nick, ugh I love the growth. He brushes it off and then has a moment where his face is like, no, no I’m not a wuss and he admits that yes he’s thought about it (the way he pauses when he says “not that it hasn’t been on my mind…us…” and I’m like yeah you two as a couple has been on your mind hasn’t it Nick 👀) and yes I want to have The Talk™️ with you Ellie Bishop. And not only does he admit this he’s also the one that’s like ok yeah cool BUT WHEN. Let’s nail this down please, I need it in my planner asap. And then she gets all giggly again “I don’t know when do *you* think?” Like omg I’m literally in middle school again. They’re so fucking cute and awkward it’s precious. Especially when they have to end their conversation and suddenly act normal when talking to McGee 😅😍 then they go separate ways and the look Ellie shoots Nick ahhhhhhh it’s almost like a let’s table this but also shit we really did half open that can of worms in the middle of a work day. Nick sighs and looks briefly to the sky like shit what did I do in a good way and bad way haha. 

Back to Kasie with the ✨iconic✨ lines I love herrrr. Ellie being sus again with being resistant to change. I can’t decide if she’s not only talking about the possibility of dating Nick (once again defensive because Kasie about came for her throat hahahah) but also maybe about whatever is going to go down with Odette 👀👀

HERE WE ARE. THE MOMENT WE’VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR. Back to being cute little awkward idiots in love that need to have The Talk™️. I mean come on they’re trying so hard to avoid the actual talk and just dancing around it “so” “so” “talk a roo” “talk a reeno” excuse me what the fuck are you saying just SAY IT. And Nick is still ready and rearing to go but also wants to respect Ellie and give her space if needed so he offers to just agree The Talk™️ needs to be had. And of course she counters with “need is a strong word” because damn this girl is spiraling. She’s so terrified of the outcome of this talk she wants to deny it needs to exist but still she can’t help it at the end of the day. And Nick is still like ok BUT WHEN. I WANT TO TELL YOU I LOVE YOU AFTER YOU TELL ME YOU LOVE ME. SO LIKE WHEN ELLIE WHEN. And he once again plays off her deflection (a theme of this episode) with yeah yeah they’re super tired not at all wired just thinking about this talk that is at the tip of his tongue. At least Ellie is finally seeing the light and realizes that they should promise to have The Talk™️ but as she sits there staring at the elevator in front of her she’s like oh fuck, it can’t be soon can it. Fuck fuck fuck I can’t hold this in longer, we can’t keep dancing around it. fuck. So when Nick once again tries to press her to nail down a time she’s like well fuck it let’s do this shit now. Then she can’t realized that shit I actually said it, I actually said that. I said we should have The Talk™️ now. And Nick’s genuine surprise mirrors hers because she’s been the one half-denying The Talk™️ all day and now she wants to do this right here right now??? But at the same time he’s got a little smile to his face because he loves the idea of her being on board and finally getting this done. Finally getting to hear how she feels. 

So they walk into the elevator with a MUCH better vibe than the last time they walked in all serious at night (looking at you dumb Nick with Elena) but I guess the Elena Elevator Talk walked so the Ellie Elevator Talk could run 👀

And Nick while yes he’s ready for this shit to finally happen he’s still vulnerable, still terrified of opening himself up because he’s seen his dad (recently) and how commitment and relationships run in the family 🙄 plus this is all very new to him outside of Sofia and this is definitely not new to Ellie (Jake, qasim). He needs to hear she’s all-in too, needs to know he hasn’t built something up in his head for something serious when she views it as just a flirtation between friends. So he nervously says ladies first and while Ellie gives him a look of protest and wtf man, I think deep down she knows this is all so difficult for him despite how much he’s pushed it over the course of the day plus SHE is ready to get this out in the open. The moment she decided to stop denying and spiraling she went full force head on let’s talk about us. She hedges for a second and Nick continues to be nervous as she’s clearly building up her own nerve. Then she says probably the exact same moment he’s thinking of- or at least one of them- the jail cell. The defining, triggering moment that set this thing at full speed. He can’t believe she’s really saying the words, about to hear what he hopes is his feeling of that jail cell reciprocated in her words and his head turns quickly to look at her, unable to believe his ears that what he’s been dying for all along is going to happen. The Talk™️ is happening and damn it seems like it’s happening in the right direction. 

Of course we have no damn clue what was said and I’m jaded and don’t think they’ll ever tell us- RIP the note. BUT I’m so glad it actually happened (and the cinematographic parallels of course), a STEP towards canon!Ellick I’m fine. 

Now to see where they take this from here in the last two episodes and I can only hope an angst filled canon!Ellick because duh. 

[dex-xe]

Ghosts watch the Euros?

Am I about to write 1000 words of cringe about dead fictional characters watching a football tournament?? yes I am and I'm thrilled!! XD

This primarily focusses on Pat btw but most of the ghosts feature a bit too.

So basically Alison didn’t really care that much about the Euros before they started, Mike however was decently optimistic regarding Engliand’s chances but isn’t the world’s biggest sport fan. But one evening they’re all watching TV and stuff and then there’s one of those animated ads that play before any major sports competition starts and Pat sees it and gets incredibly excited.

He hasn’t been able to watch a major football tournatment (live) since he was alive because Heather never had sport on at all. He begs Alison that he gets control of the TV during England matches and after using the whole “pleasseeeee I’m no trouble, I don’t usually ask for much!” Alison agrees to adjust the TV rota, much to the others ghosts disgust (the Captain is peeved about his afternoon day time TV History Channel documentaries being overwritten, and Fanny’s evening period dramas often get pushed aside but Alison eventually manages to use the Sky Box to rearrange everything for them).

For most of the group stages it’s just Pat watching, Mike will occassionally sit in but is genrally on his phone. Julian will also offer the occassional comment which Pat just rolls his eyes at and tells him to go back to his computer games. Also Pat is amazed just quite how young the team is but I digress.

So once it becomes apparent that England are doing surprisingly well (and Mike’s mates stop talking about anything else at the pub) Mike starts paying attention and by extension Alison sits in bringing multiple ghosts in her wake.

Kitty doesn’t like the idea of competition much and just wants people to have fun, she gets upset when people get kicked out but congratulats them for doing their very best. Thomas however, stands behind the sofa muttering about how it’s a barbaric sport and the lowest form of entertainment (“Polo!! Now that takes real skill!!)

The Captain wasn’t much of a football fan in life (cricket was much more his bag) but he’ll gladly sit and enjoy some friendly competition, anything he can get these days to be proud of his country. Robin doesn’t understand organised competition much but he quite like the idea of playing a game like that, he kinda misses running around and burning of energy, physical performance was super important for hunting when he was alive.

Anyway, once England makes it into the quarters (and Mike claims to have been totally invested from the beginning) Mike and Alison both start to get more and more involved, they decide to buy England flags and bunting to put across the front of the house - much to the Captain’s pleasure cause it reminds him a bit of VE Day.

Alison does actually manage to convince everyone to gather round for the final - even Fanny who literally couldn’t care less is overwhelmed with patriotism and hovers in a nearby armchair. Pat parks himself on the floor right in front of the TV so he can hear the commentary even when the others are rambling on about their analysis of the game (their analysis is incredibly poor given they’ve been dead for centuries - Kitty announces that the strikers should “use thier hips more” and no one is quite sure what that means but Thomas does suggest sending correspondence to Southgate to give him that advice.)

Anyway (I keep going off on tangents) the final obviously begins with England scoring mad quick which erupts the TV room into cheers. Mike jumps up to celebrate and puts his foot into where Pat is also sat cheering - Alison has to catch him around the waist to pull him back towards the sofa to stop Pat from gagging.

Pat then starts going on about how, with a start like that, there’s no way England can lose now. Julian rains on his parade very quickly and tells him worse things have happened and Alison jokes about what a show off Julian will be if he’s right and England lose… (Julian is obviously incredibly patriotic and wants England to win but he wants to be right much more).

Thomas quickly begins to think of himself as an expert at this “pauper’s sport” and starts to shout the generic “I know nothing about football but don’t want people to question me” phrases (“they had better begin playing it forward more, they shan’t achieve anything with cowardice like this!!)

They remain kinda optimistic going into the second half apart from Pat who is potentially the only one who recognises England slolwy losing control - but, much like with his scouts, his puts on his usual optimistic front to stop the team from becoming deflated (the team can’t hear him becuase a) he’s not at Wembley and b) he’s been dead four decades but it’s just his natural reaction).

As soon as Italy score, that’s when the deflation starts to set in. They all become slightly quieter until England start mounting an attack and then the shouting begins again.

Pat tries to explain the concept of extra time to the others but few understand and begin suggesting their own tie break ideas. Kitty suggests a draw would be better, everybody wins. Fanny suggests someone should concede (she doesn;t specifiy who but it’s very much implied). Robin’s idea is to continue with extra time then release a bear onto the pitch at a random point “for the drama” (I would watch that though).

But no, Pat and Mike are both very quiet throughout extra time. Thomas is thrilled because he believes Southgate has listened to his ongoing generic advice to “bring on Grealish” - realistically he’s peeved Love Island isn’t on, he likes to make fun of it and announce repeatedly how “the modern world has no concept of love!!”

Once it gets to penalties Kitty is off. She can’t stand the tension and covers her eyes to avoid having to watch somebody lose in this way. Mary sits beside her on the sofa petting her hair like “ooh cry not, ’tis but a game child” which really doesn’t help the mood. After every single shot, there’s just a little burst of gasps and strangled noises from everyone except Pat who is just waiting and praying that his first tournament in 40 years is going to be a dramatic win.

When England (spoilers from over a month ago) lose, silence falls across the room before Julian finally breaks it: “I don’t mean to say I told you so but…” he is interrupted VERY quickly by shouting from everyone else. Eyes quickly fall on Pat who hasn’t said anything since the penalties began, he hadn;t even turned to look at anyone else yet. He slowly stood up and said with a very fake smile “well it was a deserved win… if you’ll excuse me” and then he fazes through the wall behind him never to be seen again.

“Julian, that really was uncalled for,” Alison tells him. Pat seems normal for the next few days but most people can tell he’s very disappointed, especially as Mike has to get the ladder out again to do the really sad “flag taking down ceremony” everyone did the day after.

Pat’s finally brought out of his slump by Kitty who asks him what he would do if his scouts failed at something - he says he’d tell them they did really well for trying their best and give them some tips to improve. “Exactly,” Kitty says. “You’d still be proud of what they achieved, right?” All the ghosts are pretty excited by the prospect of a world cup next year.

So there we go,, cheers for the ask!! I apologise for this being cringe as fuck and I really hope it gets to the right people XD I’m having a day of trying to finish as many projects as I can over the next few days before series 3 so I can essentially start afresh after the new episodes are out - I know I’m going to have a lot of ideas and inspiration.

[star-anise]

An ask I got recently:

hi so i’m a transmed and i’m not sure if you’ll answer this because of that but i saw your post about transmedicalism and was wondering if you could expand on that? you seem like a genuinely kind and judgement-free person, thank you darling x

My response:

Heh, you call me “judgement-free” and ask for my opinion on a topic I’ve formed a lot of judgments about… I get it though, I’m not into attacking people for what they believe so much as providing FACTS. As a cis queer, my insight into transmedicalism isn’t really about the innate experience of trans-ness so much as using my education and professional experience to talk about social science research, diagnostic systems, and public health policy.

This ended up really long, so the tl;dr is, I think transmedicalism as I understand it:

Misunderstands why and how the DSM’s Gender Dysphoria diagnosis was written,

Treats the medical establishment with a level of trust and credibility it doesn’t deserve, at a time when LGBT+ people, especially trans people, need to be informed and vigilant critics of it, and

Approaches the problem of limited resources in an ass-backwards way that I think will end up hurting the trans community in the long run.

TW: Transphobia; homophobia; suicide; institutionalization; torture; electroshock therapy; child abuse; incidental mentions of pedophilia.

So first off I’m guessing you mean this post, about not trusting the medical establishment to tell you who you are? That’s what I’m trying to elaborate on here.

I have to admit, when you say “I’m a transmedicalist” that tells me very little about you, because on Tumblr the term seems to encompass a dizzying array of perspectives. Some transmedicalists believe in what seems to me the oldschool version of “The only TRUE trans people suffer agonizing dysphoria that can only be fixed with surgery and hormones, everyone else is an evil pretender stealing resources and can FUCK RIGHT OFF” and others are like, um… “I have total love and respect for nonbinary and nondysphoric trans people! I qualify for a DSM diagnosis of dysphoria but that doesn’t make me inherently better or more trans than anyone else.”

Which is very confusing to me because according to everything I’ve learned, the latter opinion is not transmedicalism. It’s just… a view of transness that acknowledges current diagnostic labels and scientific research. It’s what most people who support trans rights and do not identify as transmedicalists believe. But I kind of get the impression that Tumblr transmedicalism has expanded well past its original mandate, to the point that if a lot of “transmedicalists” saw the movement’s original positions they’d go “Whoa that’s way too strict and doesn’t help our community, I want nothing to do with it.”.

Okay so. Elaborating on the stuff I can comment on.

1. DSM what?

The American Psychiatric Association publishes a big thick book called The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, called the DSM for short. This is the “Bible of psychiatry”, North America’s definitive listing of mental disorders and conditions. It receives significant revision and updates roughly every 10-15 years; it was last updated in 2013, meaning it will likely get updated sometime between 2023 and 2028.

The DSM lists hundreds of “codes”, each of which indicates a specific kind of mental disorder. For example, 296.23 is “Major depressive disorder, Single episode, Severe,” and  300.02 is “Generalized anxiety disorder.” These codes have information on how common the condition is, how it’s diagnosed, and what kind of treatment is appropriate for it.

Diagnostic codes are the key to health professionals getting paid. If there isn’t a code for it, we can’t get paid for it, and therefore we have very few resources to treat it with. The people who actually pay for healthcare–usually insurance companies or government agencies–decide how much they will pay for each code item to be treated. They’ll pay for, say, three sessions of group therapy for mild depression (296.21), or they’ll pay for more expensive private therapy if it’s moderate (296.22); they’ll pay for the cheap kind of drug if you have severe depression (296.23), but to get the more expensive drug, you need to have depression with psychotic features (296.24).

Healthcare companies, especially in the USA where the system is very very broken and the DSM is written, are cheap bastards. If they can find an excuse not to fund some treatment, they’ll use it. “We think this person who lost their job and can’t get off the couch should pay this $1000 bill for therapy,” they’ll say. “After all, they were diagnosed as code 296.21, and then saw a private therapist for five sessions, when we only allow three sessions of group therapy, and you’re saying they haven’t had enough treatment yet?”

A lot of the advocacy work mental health professionals do is trying to get the big funding bodies to pay us adequately for the work we do. (This is a much easier process in countries with single-payer healthcare, where this negotiation only needs to be done with a single entity. In the USA, it needs to be done with every single health insurance company in existence, as well as the government, sometimes differently in every single state, and then again on a case-by-case basis as well.) Healthcare providers have to argue that three sessions of group therapy isn’t enough, that Medicaid needs to pay therapists more per hour than it costs those therapists to rent a room to practice in, or else therapists would lose money by seeing Medicaid clients. DSM codes exist a tiny bit to let us communicate with each other about the people we treat, and a huge amount to let us get paid. The fact that their existence lets people make sense of their own experiences and find a community with people who share common experiences and interests with them is a very minor side benefit the DSM’s authors really don’t keep in mind when they update and revise different diagnoses.

So when it comes to convincing insurance companies to pay for treatment, humanitarian reasons like “they’ll be very unhappy without it” tend not to work. The best argument we have for them paying for psychological treatment is that it’s economical: that if they don’t pay for it now, they’ll have to pay even more later. If they refuse to pay, let’s say, $2000 to treat mild depression when someone loses their job, and either refuse treatment or stick the person with the bill, then that person’s life might spiral out of control–they might, let’s say, run low on money, get evicted from their apartment, develop severe depression, attempt suicide, and end up in hospital needing to be medically resuscitated and then put in an inpatient psych ward for a month. The insurance company then faces the prospect of having to pay, let’s say, $100,000 for all that treatment. At which point somebody clever goes, “Huh, so it would have been cheaper to just… pay the original $2000 instead so they could bounce back, get a new job, and not need any of this treatment later.”

Trans healthcare can be kind of expensive, since it often involves counselling, years of hormone therapy, medical garments, and multiple surgeries. Health insurance companies hate paying for anything, and have traditionally wanted not to cover any of this. “This is ridiculous!” they said. “These are elective cosmetic treatments, it’s not like they’re dying of cancer, these people can pay the same rate for breast enhancements or testosterone injections as anyone else.”

So when the APA Task Force on Gender Identity Disorder (a task force comprised, as far as I can tell, entirely of cis people) sat down to plan for the 2013 update of the DSM, one of their biggest goals was: Treatment recommendations. Create a diagnosis which they could effectively use to advocate that insurance companies fund gender transition. Like when you go back and read the documents from their meetings in 2008 and 2011, their big thing is “create a diagnosis that can be used to form treatment recommendations.” So that’s what they did; in 2013 they made the GD diagnosis, and in 2014 the Affordable Care Act required insurers to provide treatment for it.

A lot of trans people weren’t happy with the DSM task force’s decisions, such as the choice to keep “Transvestic Fetishism,” which is basically the autogynephilia theory, and just rename it “Transvestic Disorder”. The creation of the Gender Dysphoria diagnosis, basically, was designed to force the preventive care argument. They didn’t think they could win on trans healthcare being a necessity because healthcare is a human right, so they went with: Trans people have a very high suicide rate, and one way to bring it down is to help them transition. One of the major predictors of suicidality is dysphoria. The more dysphoric someone is, the more likely they are to attempt suicide (source).  Therefore, health insurers should fund treatment for gender dysphoria because it was cheaper than paying for emergency room admissions and inpatient psychiatric hospitalizations.

I have spoken to trans scientists about what research exists, and my understanding is: The dysphoria/no dysphoria split is not actually validated in the science. That is, when you research trans people, there is not some huge gaping difference between the experiences, or brains, of people With Dysphoria, and people Without Dysphoria. Mostly, scientists haven’t even thought it was an important distinction to study. The diagnosis wasn’t reflecting a strong theme in the research about trans experiences; that research showed that trans people with all levels of dysphoria were helped with medical transition. The biggest difference is just that dysphoria is a stronger risk factor for suicide. Experiencing transphobia is another strong risk factor, but that’s harder to measure in a doctor’s office, so dysphoria it was.

(I’ve seen some transmedicalists claim that dysphoria’s major feature is incongruence, not distress. And I’ll just say, uh… in psychology, “dysphoria” is the opposite of of “euphoria”, literally means “excessive pain”, and is used in many disorders to describe a deep-seated sense of distress and wrongness. As a mental health professional, I just can’t imagine most of my colleagues agreeing that something can be called “dysphoria” if the person doesn’t feel real distress about it. If you want a diagnosis that doesn’t demand dysphoria, you’d need Gender Incongruence in the upcoming version of the ICD-11, which is the primary diagnostic system used in Europe, published by the World Health Organization.)

2. Doctors are not magic

Medicine is a science, and science is a system of knowledge based on having an idea, testing it against reality, and revising that knowledge in light of what you learned. We’re learning and growing all the time.

I don’t know if this sounds painfully obvious or totally groundbreaking, but: Basically all medical research is done by people who don’t have the condition they’re writing about. Psychology has a strong historical bias against believing the personal testimonies of people with conditions that have been deemed mental disorders, so researchers who have experienced the disorder they’re writing about have often had to hide that fact, like Kay Redfield Jamison hiding that she had bipolar disorder until she became a world-renowned expert on it, or Marsha Linehan hiding that she had borderline personality disorder until she pioneered the treatment that could effectively cure it. Often, having a condition was seen as proof you couldn’t actually have a truthful and objective experience of it.

So what I’m trying to say is: The “gender dysphoria” diagnosis was written and debated, so far as I can tell, by entirely cis committee members. The vast majority of psychological and psychiatric research about LGBT+ people is written by cisgender heterosexual scientists. Most clinical and scientific writing has been outsider scientists looking at people they have enormous power over and making decisions about their basic existence with very little accountability.

And to show you how far we’ve come, I want to show you part of the DSM as it was from 1952 to 1973. It shows you just why so many older LGBT+ people find it deeply ironic that now the DSM is being held up as definitive of trans experience:

302 Sexual Deviation This category is for individuals whose sexual interests are directed primarily toward objects other than people of the opposite sex, toward sexual acts not usually associated with coitus, or towards coitus performed under bizarre circumstances as in necrophilia, pedophilia, sexual sadism, and fetishism. Even though many find their practices distasteful, they remain unable to substitute normal sexual behavior for them. This diagnosis is not appropriate for individuals who perform deviant sexual acts because normal sexual objects are not available to them.

302.0 Homosexuality 302.1 Fetishism 302.2 Pedophilia 302.2 Transvestitism […]

Yes, really. That is how psychiatry viewed us. At a time when research from other fields, like psychology and sociology, were showing that this view was completely unsupported by evidence, psychiatry thought LGBT+ people were fundamentally disordered, criminal, and incapable of prosocial behaviour.

My favourite retelling of the decades of activism it took LGBT+ people and allies to get the DSM to change is from a friend who did her master’s thesis on the topic, because she leaves in the clown suits and gay bars, which really shows how scientific and dignified the process was. The long story short is:  It took over 20 years of lobbying by LGBT+ people who were sick and tired of being locked up in mental institutions and subjected to treatments like electroshock training, as well as by LGBT+ social scientists, clinicians, and psychiatrists, to get homosexuality declassified as a mental illness. And that was homosexuality; the push to change how trans people were listed in the DSM is very recent, as seen in the latest version listing “Transvestic Disorder”, a description very few trans people ever use for themselves.

Here are a few more examples of how people with a condition have had to take an active part in the science about them:

When HIV/AIDS appeared in the USA, the government didn’t care why drug addicts and gay people were dying mysteriously. Hospitals refused to treat people with this mysterious new disease. AIDS patients had to fight to get any funding put into what AIDS is, how it spreads, or how it could be treated; they also had to campaign to change the massive public prejudice against them, so they could be treated, housed, and allowed to live. Here’s an article on the activist tactics they used. If you want an intro to the fight (or at least, white peoples’ experience of it), you could look into the movies How to Survive a Plague, And the Band Played On, and The Normal Heart.

Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a little-understood disease that causes debilitating exhaustion. It’s found twice as often in women as men. Doctors understand very little about what it is or why it happens, and patients with CFS are often written off a lazy hypochondriacs who just don’t want to try hard. There are basically no known treatments. In 2011, a British study said that an effective treatment for CFS was “graded exercise”, a program where people did slowly increasing levels of physical activity. This flew in the face of what people with CFS knew to be true: That their disease caused them to get much worse after they exercised. That for them, being forced to do ever-increasing exercise was basically tantamount to torture, so it was very concerning that health authorities and insurance companies began requiring that they undergo graded exercise treatment (and parents with children with CFS had to put their children through this treatment, or lose custody for “medical neglect”). So they investigated the study, found that it was seriously flawed, got many health authorities to reverse their position on graded exercise, and have made strides into pointing researchers to looking into biological causes of their illness.

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rare but debilitating disease that isn’t researched much, because it affects such a small portion of the population. The ALS community realized that if they wanted better treatment, they would need to raise the money for research themselves. In 2014 they organized a viral “ice bucket challenge” to get people to donate to their cause, and raised $115 million, enough to make significant advances in understanding ALS and getting closer to a cure.

A common treatment for Autism is Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA), which is designed to encourage “desired” behaviours and discourage “undesired” ones. The problem is, the treatment targets behaviour an Autistic person’s parents and teachers consider desirable or undesirable, without consideration that some “undesired” behaviours (like stimming) are fundamental and necessary to the wellbeing of Autistic people. Furthermore, the treatment involves punishing Autistic children for failure to behave as expected–in traditional ABA, by witholding rewards or praise until they stop, or in more extreme cases, by subjecting them to literal electric shocks to punish them. (In that last case, they’ve been ordered to stop using the shock devices by August 31, 2020. That only took YEARS.) Autistic people have had to campaign loud and long to say that different treatment strategies should be researched and used, especially on Autistic children.

So I mean… I get that the medical model can provide an element of validation and social acceptance. It can feel really good to have people in white coats back you up and say you’re the real deal. But if you get in touch with most LGBT+ and transgender groups, they’d say that there’s still a lot of work to be done when it comes to researching trans issues and getting scientific and governmental authorities to recognize your rights to social acceptance and medical treatment.

Within a few years, the definition you’re resting on will turn to sand beneath your feet. The Great DSM Machine will begin whirring into life pretty soon and considering what revisions it has to make. You’ll have an opportunity to make your voice heard and to push for real change. So… do you want to be part of that process of pushing trans rights forward, or do you just want to feel loss because they’re changing your strict definition of who’s valid and who’s not?

3. Scarcity is not a law of physics

One of the major arguments I see transmedicalists push is that there’s only a limited number of surgeries or hormone prescriptions available, so it’s not okay for a non-dysphoric person to “steal” the resources that another trans person might need more. This makes sense in a limited kind of way; it’s a good way to operate if, say, you’re sharing a pizza for lunch and deciding whether to give the last slice to someone who’s hungry and hasn’t eaten, or someone who’s already full.

When you start to back up and look at really big and complex systems–basically anything as big, or bigger, than a school board or a hospital or a municipal government–it’s not a helpful lens anymore. Because the most important thing about social institutions is that they can change. We can make them change. And the most important factor in how much the world changes is how many people demand that it change.

I’ve talked about this before when it comes to homeless shelters, and how the absolute worst thing they can have are empty beds. I used to work in women’s shelters, which came about when second-wave feminists started seriously looking at the problem of domestic violence in the 1960s and 70s, It was an issue male-dominated governments and healthcare systems hadn’t taken seriously before, but feminists started heck and did research and staged demonstrations and basically demanded that organizations that worked for the “public benefit” reduce the number of women being killed by their husbands. Their research showed that the leading cause of death in those cases were when women tried to leave and their partners tried to kill them, so the most obvious solution was to give them someplace safe to go where their partners couldn’t find them. Therefore the solution became: Women’s shelters. When feminists committed to founding and running these shelters, local governments could be talked into giving them money to keep them running.

(Men’s rights activists, the misogynist kind, like to whine about “why aren’t there men’s shelters?” and the very simple answer is: Because you didn’t fight for them, you teatowels. Whether a movement gets resources and funding is hugely a reflection of how many people have said, “This needs resources and funding! Look, I’m writing a cheque! Everyone, throw money at this!” In other news, The BC Society for Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse does great work. People should throw money at them.)

When the system in power knows there are resources it wants and doesn’t have, it finds a way to make them appear. For example, in Canada, the government knows that it doesn’t have enough trained professionals living in its far North, where the population is scarce and not very many people want to live. Doctors and teachers would prefer to live in the southern cities. But because it’s committed to Northern schools and hospitals, they create incentives. For example, the government offers to pay off the student loans of teachers or health professionals who agree to work for a few years in Northern communities.

Part of why trans healthcare resources are so scarce is that for a long time, trans people were considered too small a part of the population to care about. Like, “Trans people exist, but we won’t have to deal with them.” Older estimates said 0.4% of the population was trans, which meant a city of 100,000 people would have 400 trans people. A single family doctor can have 2000 or 3000 clients, so the city could have maybe 1 or 2 doctors who really “got” trans issues, and all the trans people would tell each other to only go see those doctors because all the rest were assholes. And the cracks in the system didn’t really seem serious. A couple hundred dissatisfied people not getting the healthcare they needed? Meh! Hospital administrators had more to worry about!

But the trans population is growing. A recent poll of Generation Z said 2.6% of middle schoolers in Minnesota were some kind of trans. which is 2,600 per 100,000. That’s enough to make hospitals think that maybe the next endocrinologist or OB/GYN they hire should have some training in treating trans people. That’s enough to make a health authority think that maybe the state should open up a new gender confirmation surgery clinic, since demand is rising so much.

Or well, I mean. Hospitals have a lot on their minds. This might not occur to them as their top priority. They’d probably think of it a lot sooner if a bunch of those trans people sent them letters or took out a billboard or showed up by the dozens at a public meeting to say, “Hello, there are a fuckload of us. Budget accordingly. We want to see your projected numbers for the next five years.”

When you’re doing that kind of work, suddenly it hurts your cause to limit your number of concerned parties. Sure, limited focus groups or steering committees can have limited membership, but when you put their ideas into action, to protest something or lobby for political change, you need numbers. If you want to show that you’re a big and important group that systems should definitely pay attention to, you don’t just need every trans or GNC or NB person who’s got free time to devote to your campaign, you also need every cis ally who can pad out numbers or lick envelopes or hand out water bottles or slip you insider information about the agenda at the next board meeting. You need bodies, time, and money, and you get them best by being inclusive about who’s in your party. Heck, if it would benefit your cause to team up with the local breast cancer group because trans women and cis women who have had mastectomies both have an interest in asking a hospital to have a doctor on staff who knows how to put a set of tits together, then there are strong reasons to do it.

Basically: All the time any marginalized group spends fighting over scraps is generally time we could spend demanding that the people handing out the food give us another plate. If you don’t think you’re getting enough, the best answer isn’t to knock it out of somebody’s hands, but to get together to say, “HEY! WE’RE NOT GETTING ENOUGH!”

That kind of work is complicated and difficult! It’s definitely much harder than yelling at someone on Tumblr for not being trans enough. But if you do any level of getting involved with activist groups that fight for real systemic change, whether that’s following your local Pride Centre on Twitter or throwing $5 at a trans advocacy group or writing your elected representative about the need for more trans health resources, you’re pushing forward lasting change that will help everyone.

[drivingsideways]

k-drama rec list

Prior to 2020 I’d maybe watched 2 k-dramas in my entire life, but this year I got sucked in, thanks to some great recs, and y’know, *gestures * everything.  

I think I’d held off watching kdramas because my impression of them was limited to romances that I didn’t enjoy at all. But this was the year I discovered the equivalent of “gen fic” kdrama- dramas that had wonderful ensemble casts, strong story lines that weren’t entirely romance focused and also a variety in terms of themes and styles. A big plus was that I found so many of these dramas had women leading the writers’ room, and seeing the effect of that in the story telling. (Notable exceptions: a certain “star” writer who should please stop inflicting her badly written, formulaic crap on the world, yes Kim Eun-Sook, I mean you, and whoever wrote that trashfire Flower of Evil)

So here I am with my own rec list! Caveat- these are mostly not the dramas released in 2020, I’m still playing catch up! :)

Under the cut for length

My Mister/ My Ahjussi  (2018, Written by Park Hae-Young, Directed by Kim Won-Seok, starring Lee Sun-kyun and Lee Ji-eun aka IU) 

This was definitely my absolute favourite of the shows I watched this year across western/ asian media. It’s a story about the thread that binds us all and the ineffability of human connection. It’s also a story that deconstructs ideas of masculinity and honour and shame in a non-western context, but with an extremely compassionate touch.  It’s a story that doesn’t shy away from showing the consequences of material and spiritual poverty; and how one can so easily feed into the other. It’s a love story that isn’t a romance, except that it’s a Romance. It’s about finding salvation in one another and in the kindness of strangers.  It’s about choosing life, and picking yourself up off the floor to take that one last step and then the next and then the next. The one quibble I have with the series is that it could have been better paced, it does get extremely slow after the half way mark. But god, do they land the ending. Both Lee Sun-kyun and IU turn in absolutely heartbreaking performances, and fair warning, be prepared to go through an entire box of tissues watching this series. 

Life  (2018,  written by Lee Soo-yeon  and directed by Hong Jong-chan, starring Lee Dong-wook, Cho Seung-woo, Won Jin-ah, Lee Kyu-hyung, Yoo Jae-myung and Moon So-ri.)

Medical dramas are very much not my thing, and I wouldn’t have taken a chance on it except that @michyeosseo said I should, and she was right! It’s a medical drama in the sense that it’s set in a hospital, but rather than a “case-fic” format, this is actually a sharp commentary on the corporatization of health care, and the business of mixing, well, money and what should be a fundamental human right. Writer Lee Soo-yeon was coming off the global success of Stranger/Secret Forest S1 when this aired, so I understand that expectations were probably sky-high, and people were disappointed when this show didn’t give them the adrenaline rush that they wanted. On the other hand, I thought that this outing was really much more nuanced in terms of the politics and also how the ending doesn’t allow you the luxury of easy-fixes. This show has a great ensemble cast, and while it took me a while to get used to Lee Dong-wook’s woodenness (i ended up calling him mr.cadaver after watching this and was surprised to learn that he’s very popular?), in the end I was quite sold on his version of angry angst-bucket elder-sibling Dr.Ye Jin-woo. His best scenes were with Lee Kyu-hyung who turns in a lovely, achy performance as the paraplegic Dr. Ye Seon-woo who just wants to live a normal life. The love story between the two brothers is actually the emotional backbone of the story, and I think they landed that perfectly. 

My one quibble with writer-nim is that she ended up writing in a forgettable and somewhat (for me at least) uncomfortable romance between the characters played by Won Jin-ah and Cho Seung-Woo. I think part of my uncomfortable-feeling was that I got the strong sense that the writer herself didn’t want to write this romance, it was as if she was being made to shoe-horn it in for Studio Reasons, and she basically grit her teeth and did the worst possible job of it.  I do wish we could have absolutely had the OT3 of my dreams: Moon So-ri/Cho Seung-woo/Yoo Jae-myung like, c’mon TV gods MAKE IT HAPPEN, just...look at them!!!! 

Anyway, that apart, I think this was a very engaging series, and by engaging, I also mean thirst-enabling, see below. 

 Stranger (aka Secret Forest  or Forest of Secrets) S1 & 2 : (2017-, Written by Lee Soo-yeon, directed by 

2017′s smash hit aired a much anticipated second season in 2020, and I managed to catch up just in time to watch that live, so that was thrilling :D . Writer Lee Soo-yeon  mixes up thriller/office comedy/political commentary in an ambitious series. I think S1 is more “exciting” than S2 in terms of the mystery and pacing,  but S2 is far more dense and interesting in terms of political commentary because it takes a long hard look at institutional corruption and in true writer-nim fashion doesn’t prescribe any easy solutions. Anyway, please enjoy public prosecutor Cho Seung-woo and police officer Bae Doona as partners/soulmates kicking ass and taking names in pursuit of Truth, Justice and just a goddamn peaceful meal, along with a stunningly competent ensemble cast. Also yes, Han Yeo Jin is a lesbian, sorry, I don’t make the rules. 

Search: WWW  (2019, Written by Kwon Do-Eun, directed by Jung Ji-hyun & Kwon Young-il, starring  Im Soo-jung, Lee Da-hee, Jeon Hye-jin)

GOD. Where do I start? +1000 for writer Kwon Do-Eun saying “fuck the patriarchy” in the most grandiose way possible, i.e. absolutely refusing to acknowledge that it exists. Yes, this is that power fantasy, and it’s also a fun, slice-of-life  tale about three women navigating their way through work, romance, national politics and everything in between. It’s true that I wasn’t entirely sold on the amount of time spent on the romance, and I really wish they’d actually had a textual wlw romance, though the subtext through the entire series is PRACTICALLY TEXT. But still, it maintains that veneer of plausible deniability and I think queer fans who are sick of that kind of treatment in media have a very valid grouse against the show. On the other hand, personally I felt that the queer-platonic vibe of the show is very wonderful and true to real life, and it was only reinforced by the ending. This is a show written by a woman for women (like me), and it shows. 

Hyena  (2020, Written by Kim Roo-Ri, directed by Jang Tae-yoo & Lee Chang Woo, starring  Kim Hye-soo and Ju Ji-hoon )

Those of you who’ve been watching hit zombie epic Kingdom are probably familiar with Ju Ji-hoon’s brand of sexiness already. I had not watched Kingdom and got hit in the face by Mr.Sexy McSexyPants’ turn as a brash, privileged-by-birth, up and coming lawyer who gets completely runover by the smoking hot and incredibly dangerous fellow lawyer/competitor from the other side of the tracks in the person of Kim Hye-Soo. When I say they set the room on fire, I mean it, ok. Every single scene between these two is an actual bonfire of sexual attraction and emotional hand grenades, and they’re both absolutely riveting to watch. “Flower of Evil” wishes they had what this show has- an actual grown up romance as opposed to a thirteen year old twilight fan’s idea of an adult romance. 

The “lawyer” shenanigans and the “cases” are hit or miss, and I think the occasional comedy fell flat for me. But that’s not why I mainlined like 6 episodes of this series overnight like a coke addict, and that’s not why you’re going to do it either. It’s so RARE, even in these enlightened days to find a female character like Jung Geum-ja: hard as nails, unapologetic about it, and not punished by the narrative for it. The best part for me is that she feels like a woman’s woman, not a man’s idea of what a Strong Female Character should be. Anyways, when I grow up I want to have what Kim Hye-soo has ok?

Other dramas that I watched this year, quickly rated:

The King: Eternal Monarch (3/10 and those 3 points are only for the combined goodness of second leads who deserved better- Jung Eun Chae, Woo Do Hwan and Kim Kyung Nam. Please head over to my AO3 and read my attempts to fix this garbage fire and rescue their characters from canon)

Flower of Evil (-10/100, dont @ me)

Tale of the Nine Tailed (5/10, I think it succeeds at what it set out to do, which is a light hearted, sweet fantasy-romance-melodrama, plus “second lead” Kim Beom will make you cry as the hot mess of a half human/ half fox spirit ALL TEARS character. I think if you’re into kdrama romances as a genre, this is probably a good bet?)

Signal  (7/10,  This was the first full kdrama I watched this year and would definitely recommend. It’s a police procedural with time travel shenanigans and has an engaging plot, good pacing, texture and compelling performances. My one disappointment with it was the way they wrote Kim Hye-soo’s character. As literally the only female character to survive in any way, she was given short shrift, and toward the end it really began to grate on me.)

Six Flying Dragons - (7/10, also would recommend if you’re interested in Korean historicals. It definitely already feels a bit dated in terms of styling and production values, and even scripting and acting choices. But it has a good balance of fantasy and history and political commentary. I was not a fan of Yoo In-Ah’s performance in this series, but it’s not anything that would make you want to nope out of the series. It’s GoT , if GoT was thoughtful about politics and characters and not the misogynist, racist trashfire that it became.)

My Country: The New Age - (3.5/10, and that’s 3 points to Jang Hyuk’s fan and 0.5.points to Woo Do Hwan’s heaving bosom. If you like your historical drama/fantasy with very pretty men, very gay subtext -seriously RIP to show makers who thought they could hetero it but didn’t account for Woo Do Hwan’s Tragic Face- lots of blood and tears and very nonsense plot, this is right up your alley. I probably would have enjoyed it more in other circumstances, I think? But this one just annoyed me too much at the time! 

I have a couple of more dramas to watch on my list, that’ll probably carry me over into 2021, so see ya on the other side! :D

[bridgeferro]

(SHELLEY HENNIG. SHE/HER. CIS-FEMALE. ) Did I just see (BROOKLYN “BRIDGE” FERRO)? This ( TWENTY-NINE ) year old ( SALES REPRESENTATIVE ) has been living in Chicago for ( ELEVEN YEARS ). Some say that they are ( DRIVEN and BOLD ) as well as (HYPOCRITICAL and  TENSE). If they had a theme song, some might say that it would be ( 21 by SAMIA ). All I know is that I can’t wait to see what they bring to the Windy City. - (jess/24/aest/she/her) **filling in the hoodie twin sister connection / @hocstarters​ 

full name:  brooklyn ferro nicknames: bridge, brooke, age: twenty-nine gender: cis-female birthplace: east st. louis, illinois current location: chicago languages: english sexual orientation: pansexual relationship status: single traits:   outgoing, sarcastic, intelligent, competitive, brash, impulsive, stressed, artificial,

twin sister to @hoodiefm born and raised in East St.Louis by their aunt and uncle. also has a stupid nickname!! Bridge, which she’s grown out of but can’t get people to stop

she was pretty angry the whole time growing up, at their mum for not being around, and their dad for not giving a fuck. but she is very very grateful for her aunt and uncle, even if both her and her twin brother caused them grief over the years (and still probably do)

less restless than Hoodie, still impulsive, more reactive than anything - Hoodie set her hair on fire when they were seven, so Bridge retaliated by chucking his Gameboy in the washing machine  🤷

kind of a mess™  but in a way that she’s trying really, really, hard to make it in the ‘real world’ and not become like their mum. probably to the point where she ignores the bits of her mother that she Does have, & sort of lost sight of who she is/who she wants to be

Her resentment turned into drive, which turned into Bridge working her ass off, and getting into the University of Illinois on a scholarship, with the only goal to get the fuck out of East St. Louis. She found succeeding in college a lot harder than others who were supported by their parents, mostly from balancing studies, college life, working and having to pay for everything. She simultaneously resented those who had the money behind them, and wanted to be them as well. So she went into business, currently doing sales and working her way into a management position, rubbing shoulders with the very people her and her brother used to laugh at as kids

she does love the thrill of the sale though, and riling up her team members to hit their KPIs. a ferro though and through, it’s her own brand of an adrenaline-kick

Bridge got really close, to living that ideal life when she met Sam Caine, close enough for them to get engaged. However insecurity, abandonment and trust issues (thanks to her parents) convinced her he was hiding something which lead to her pushing him away and Sam calling off the engagement ( her instinct was right and he had a secret kid)

gives back just as good as she gets with her brother, they argue a LOT about nothing and everything. nobody gets under her skin like him, but he’s the most important person in her life. 1000% worries about what she’d do if he wasn’t around, knows she probably couldn’t make it without him, and has always been jealous of his ability to do whatever he wanted

lowkey on edge, all the time? mostly just from the pressure she puts on herself and the desire to solve all her family’s problems at once even though nobody asked/expects her to.  it’s getting worse with their Aunt being sick,  the hospital bills racking up, all while Brooklyn tries to climb the corporate ladder despite her brother’s judgements

vibe --- fake!bougie street rat / champagne dreams on a beer budget / kinda like that episode of the Simpsons where Marge goes to the country club but only wears the one dress / the season of Shameless where Fiona gets into investing / upward swings & crashing down

[cynthiaandsamus]

Custom Toonami Block Week 79 Rundown

Code Geass: Lelouch is establishing the official United States of Fuck Imperialism which is like the UN but actually does stuff, plus he has to deal with the fact that CC’s lost her memory and is acting like a demure slave girl harem choice from a VN. Charles is still trapped in the Human Instrumentality Shadow Realm so everyone figures this is a great time to unify everyone against Britannia. Kallen beats the shit out of Suzaku for being a dick to her all this time and the Knight of Ten is making his rounds because they realize they forgot to give him any buildup and he’s going to be a miniboss later so they have to cram all his being a dick personality into like five minutes while all the Knights of the Round assemble to prepare for an attack on Japan once the National Federation is formed. Llyod and Cecile for some reason enhanced the Guren for Suzaku even though he’s clearly more used to the Lancelot but apparently they enhanced it too much and made it a death machine like the Talgeese in Gundam Wing so Suzaku has to stick with the Lancelot. Looks like the Guren will have to sit and collect dust unless a certain pilot is rescued and then immediately has a convenient upgrade. Amazingly all the countries go along with everything Zero says and give up their militaries and have the Black Knights be the official military of the Federation. I don’t know how that works given that the Black Knights have been struggling to fight off one nation’s military idk how it’s supposed to substitute for a dozen nations’ military but I guess they conscript support and troops from the other nations or something. Charles comes back on the tv after the Federation is formed and is all “Awww what a cute little UN you have, fuck off bro.” which you’d think this’d be the perfect time for him to just out Lelouch as Zero and wreck the Black Knights’ morale but he doesn’t for some reason and they’re just gonna fight. Lelouch is freaking out and knows that having everyone want to murder the Britannian royal family includes Nunally so he calls Suzaku who just straight up goes “Bro cut the crap are you Zero or not?” and after so much plotting and scheming Lelouch just comes right out with it. Suzaki agrees to protect Nunally as long as Lelouch meets him alone at the Kururugi Shrine where this all began.

Inuyasha: This is another one of those Modern Day filler episodes which are always fun. There’s just something about Inuyasha running around in modern Japan being Spider-Man and saving people and catching bank robbers on the way to deliver Kagome’s lunch that’s so thoroughly entertaining. Basically Inuyasha spends this whole episode jittery that everyone’s so chill and ready to relax after Naraku just got away and is probably an inch from death but after a big adventure in the modern era where Kagome is as usual unprepared for her test, he ends up passing out on the bed after insisting a little battle with Naraku wouldn’t exhaust him. It’s a really cute little episode to let everyone bide some time and reflect on the past arc now that we’re starting a new wave of filler before we get to the Band of Seven and Mt. Hakurei stuff.

Yu Yu Hakusho: The first match of the tournament is about to begin and Botan, Shizuru, and Keiko come in with Koenma who is sick of baby jokes and puts on his bishonen disguise to impress everyone. There’s some neat lore about how they gave Koenma the guest team every year to bribe him into not shutting down the tournament without giving him anything of value and how the bloody show of the Dark Tournament pacifies the demons so they kill fewer humans, so that’s cool. Since Yusuke is still passed out, Kuwabara is de facto Captain and decides on simple one on one matches while the other team Captain just kinda roasts an eight of the crowd to see if it’ll wake Yusuke up. Kuwabara’s in the first match versus Prototype Killua, complete with afterimages and yo-yo tricks. They size each other up for a while and Kuwabara shrugs off getting his fucking neck broken surprisingly well while they go back and forth with “Well I can track YOU better” for a while. Togashi really loves his yo-yos of death so those have Kuwabara on the ropes and turn him into a fucking kite ready to slam back down into the arena, so yeah, Kuwabara’s having a rough time of it.

Fate Zero: Waver’s been having strange dreams about Iskandar, and not the ones people usually have about him. So he goes to get a basic history lesson on the historical figure that’s been chilling on his couch for a few weeks and spending all his money on xbox live arcade. They also go through all the ridiculously obvious historical inaccuracies and Iskandar’s just like “idk bro, I’m here so the book must be wrong” which is hilarious because Fate also does this with more modern historical figures that we have pictures of and shit so they basically sit there saying all historians have no idea what they’re talking about and gaslighting the field of history as a whole. On the way back Waver’s upset that Iskandar’s so awesome that it basically takes any effort on his part to win and it won’t be an actual achievement despite the fact that they’ve taken out like… one servant, MAYBE, and most of the other historical figures are equally over the top. But still Iskandar says that if your aspirations are big enough it doesn’t matter how big or small you are, everyone’s tiny in the grand scheme of things and clawing at greatness you can’t truly perceive is what matters. Also Caster and his boy have found the wreck they made of their workshop of dead bodies and are kinda fucked up about it but also ready to fuck up more people because God sucks or some shit. So Caster summons a Bloodborne monster which you think more people would notice and mention during Shirou’s time, like nobody in UBW ever said “Hey remember like seven years ago when a giant Bloodborne monster appeared in the river?” so I’m guessing there’s some kind of perception blocking going on. But yeah everyone’s gonna jump on the Bloodborne Monster next time for the season premiere.  

Konosuba: So we pick up where we left off and Kazuma is working off his debt by… killing more toads. Wow this world really is like a video game, we get the same five enemies over and over again. However they’re fucked without Darkness throwing herself into monster orifices looking for a good time so Yunyun has to save them. We already met Yunyun in the OVA so it’s kinda weird to be re-introduced to her here in basically the same way but their relationship is basically like Gai and Kakashi if they only did the lame dorky challenges Kakashi suggested when he’s too lazy to think of a good one. Also there’s a cat now, I don’t think that really comes to anything, just a scene of Megumin going “we have a cat now” and everyone’s like “kay”. Kazuma and Megumin play Naked Chicken to see who can get more naked before the other backs down and end up taking a bath together because they’re both stubborn assholes. Also we get a quick snippet of Yunyun and Megumin’s backstories which you can basically make Yunyun’s the swing scene from Naruto (idk why Yunyun is bring out the Naruto references in me today) and Megumin is stealing bread like Les Miserables in increasingly bizarre and disgusting ways because she’s ridiculously poor or some shit.

Sailor Moon Crystal: So turns out that Usagi and Mamoru BOTH had their shots with the ‘fucks everything up’ sword with a pocketwatch and… the discarded gems of the four knights? Idk how that works given they were humans and also dead but what baffles me more is that both Usagi and Mamoru very obviously did not get hit by the sword but decided to fall down dead and not move for a couple minutes despite their shots very much being blocked and there being no blood. Anyway Queen Metalia has the crystal, bullshit is happening, 1000 years of darkness, you’ve seen Xiaolin Showdown, you know the drill. The remaining four Guardians get a cute little flashback of Usagi saying what she likes about them and then they give up their lives to revive her inside the dark energy blob of Queen Metalia and crystals and lights and shit happens and swords and wands are pulled out of nowhere and you know how a final boss goes, they beat it with the power of believing in themselves and shit like that. Also apparently the only difference between sealing Metalia away and killing her is hitting the giant bullseye on her forehead so yeah, hopefully she’s down for good this time. I don’t want to complain because this show was genre-defining but it’s hard to find things to say about something so generic and milktoast, it’s the Seinfeld problem where there’s been so many more interesting iterations that it’s just kinda “get on with it already” at this point. The only real markedly noticeable thing about it is how plainly and unashamedly it is about being a power fantasy for teen girls, and there’s something to that, harmless power fantasies can be fun but it just feels like the physical mechanics of this kind of progression being “She feels this shit REALLY HARD” is less exciting than some of the alternatives

Durarara!!: It’s the big Masaomi backstory episode and we get the whole deal of how he formed the Yellow Scarves and got into a relationship with Saki because Izaya wanted to orechestrate a gang war because that’s what Izaya does all day is orchestrate gang wars. It’s kind of amazing how many kids in this show are like “I don’t know how it happened but one thing led to another and suddenly I was at the head of one of the largest gangs in the city” like they kinda really yadda yadda over how that actually happens. But anyway Saki gets hurt in the gang war and Kadota’s gang has to save her because Masaomi’s adrenaline wears off at the last second and he can’t try and rush in and save her. I mean Dota’s van got there first anyway so how much he’d have been able to help would be doubtful but he feels bad about not even being able to try and Izaya says that fear and failure of his past will dominate his future actions which is exactly what he’s doing by letting his paranoia and frustration lead him to a war on the Saika army. Dota-chin tells him to face up to it and stop running or live with the shame of lying to Saki but Masomi can’t do that and his shame and determination to reverse the situation leads everyone into chaos as Anri discovers his secret.

[justamusicpodcast]

Sup, I’m Laura Cousineau and welcome to Just A Music Podcast, where I, Laura Cousineau, tell you about some music history, how it relates to the world around us, and hopefully, introduce you to some new tunes. This show is theoretically for everyone but I will swear and when it comes down to it and sometimes we may need to talk about some sensitive topics so ur weeuns might wanna sit this one out.

Folk music! What a fucking blanket of a genre title isn’t it? We got 1960s folk in america, we got different folk genres in terms of mixed genres like folk metal, we got folk music as sort of an interchangeable term for ethnic musics, it’s all fuckin folk from here on out folks! But what is folk music where does it come from, what are we talking about when we talk about folk music? Well that’s what we’re going to talk about this week to kick off our North American music genre analysis with North American folk musics! Truth be told I did wanna start out with an episode on North American Native musics but as I’m whiter than sour cream on rice and there isn’t as much scholarship on it as I would like to confidently do a whole episode on it without input from actual native peoples. That all being said, if anyone listening is native and would like to give me some input on their musics, I would be more than happy to cover it.

But for now folk. North American folk musics. You notice I mention musics, it’s because north American folk music can be defined as a lot of things. So what are we talking about when we talk about the genre of folk musics. Well that’s gonna change depending on who you ask from what I explained before, we have some kind of mish mosh, multiple definition, popular idea of what folk music is and that’s not surprising given how that definition has grown and changed over time. Some of you will be surprised to hear that when we talk about north American folk music’s we’re actually talking about A BUNCH of different musical genres, not just one. Sure we have what people would usually associate with North American folk, the very Appalachian sounding bluegrass, country and then of course western, but we also have native musics (which again, I promise I will talk about at some point), and Maritime Canadian folk musics, we have cajun and creole musics, we have a bunch of racist shit too unfortunately but like legit we have so much stuff to talk about this episode I might have to break it up into two episodes.

Like all other musics, it all started from somewhere… I know, that’s the take of the century isn’t it. I mean it would be so much cooler if all folk music started cause some little gnome hopped out of the ground and was like imma invent music, but like that gnome would also be incredibly racist so I dunno, gnome theory sucks. So where did North American folk music come from? Well that’s a matter of looking at the mostly euro populations that colonized North America and this will change depending on the regions that we’re looking at. So WE need a SHORT HISTORY of the beginning of exploration.  

So, there’s some debate as to who we should credit with the “discovery” of north america, cause on one hand we have the Viking settlements in eastern Canada in the year 1000,  there’s some speculation that there were even other visitors before then, and of course we have the populations of native people’s who have lived here for forever, but in terms of the European colonial pattern we’re looking for, for our needs we’re looking at Christopher Columbus. So as y’all know Christopher Columbus, Portuguese adventurer, getting permission from Queen Isabella of Castille in 1492 set sail across the Atlantic to try and find a passage to India to get some of them good ass spices everyone was raving about. Though he didn’t find India he managed to find the Caribbean also known as Central America. Now I know in the news for a little bit with the ever increasing prevalence of the Black Lives Matter movement y’all been hearing about people tearing down Christopher Columbus statues in the news and there is a very good reason for that.

So as I’ve already told you Chris didn’t discover North america but he also was, and this is gonna be a massive understatement, but the dude was a massive asshole, like take the biggest asshole you can imagine and times that by about 10. It’s estimated that his colonization of the Caribbean resulted in the deaths of over 8 million people, or or about the entire population of Switzerland. You can’t even use the product of his time excuse because even Queen Isabella, the person in charge of the Spanish Inquisition, which famously saw hte torture and death of tonnes of people under the guise of religious purity, was even like yo dude you need to slow down. I will talk about him more once we reach central American music genres but just for now yeah he existed, yeah he kinda started the wave of north American exploration, but he was also an absolute asshat and there should never have been a statue let alone a day to commemorate the shitheel of a man.

So we get the start of this wave of immigration into what will become northern South america, Central America, and southern north America by Portuguese populations who mainly speak, well, Portuguese, bringing music from the Iberian peninsula. But we’re more concerned with what’s happening up north and for that we’re gonna have to look at later waves of immigration that started with Roanoake starting in the 1520s.

So the start of British colonization started with Roanoake and Newfoundland (which, yes, for our non canadian listeners it’s pronounced newfinland not new found land like the name would suggest, which to be fair would also be cool, I’ll welcome the Fins in my land anytime, they do fantastic music). One of these settlements was infinitely more successful than the other with Newfoundland becoming what we know now to be the east most province of Canada and while Roanoake is still there it failed so hard that a population of 112 people disappeared without a trace. Like legit we still don’t know what precisely happened to them. Some assume they integrated into the local native populations, some assume they were all murdered, some assume cannibals, essentially it was a bad time for all involved.

What this means for newfoundland though and other English colonies is that musically we hear a very British folk song base to the music that’s being established here, with newfoundland being very much established as a fishing colony the musical style echoes that. Since we’re talking about the Kingdom of England more broadly this meant that there was an absolute tonne of Irish and Scottish influence to the music. This is why when you listen to the folk musics of Newfoundland (established in 1583), Virginia (established in 1607), and Parts of the Carolinas (established in 1712), you hear it sounds very similar to that of their colonial forefathers. This means that there was commonly a lot of fiddle, flute, English guitar, a string instrument with a long handle, rounded body and ten strings that was a version of a Renaissance cittern, simple stringed banjos; zithers, which were flat, shallow boxes with strings running the length of the body that were plucked by the fingers and and hammered dulcimers, various shaped (like trapezoidal and peanut shaped) sound boxes with strings across them that were hit with small hammers, Much like this!

So we have all these people coming into the area, and with that too you’re also going to get jigs and reels too. Jigs and reels are both types of dance music widely enjoyed across the British Isles but are most associated with Scottish and Irish dancing musics. The difference between the two is mostly the time signature as the instruments used to play both of them are roughly the same, that being said Scottish musics tend to have more pipes and irish does traditionally use a type of handdrum which are both excellent. Jigs are in compound duple time meaning that there are 12 8th notes in a bar of music and reels are played in simple time like 2/2 (two half notes per bar) or 4/4 (4 quarter notes in a bar). They sound like this.

Its important to note here too that when we talk about all of these peoples from the British Isles that we don’t unintentionally assume that they were all nice and cozy with one another. Many of the Scottish and Irish parties, often referred to simply as the scotch irish or scotts irish came to america as a form of Religious punishmen because they didn’t precisely fit in with the church of England, some of my ancestors were scotts-irish and came to what would eventually become America because they were Quakers.

It is from these traditions that the music then evolves into something different over time and actually we’re gonna take a quick detour into linguistics for a second because it will be particularly helpful in demonstrating my point and y’all will be able to hear something way cool. So for those who are not aware, linguistics is the study of, well, language. (big brain moment right?) But what does that mean? Whereas when you take English, Igbo, Japanese, Arabic, or any other established language in an academic setting (so like learning in school when you’re growing up) the emphasis is on spelling, grammar, how to write and speak your language in the way that it has been determined is the best way to speak it (which isn’t always ACTUALLY the best way to speak it but we’ll get into that in a second.) Linguistics is the study of pretty much every other component of the language. So linguists study the phonemes or the sounds that comprise the word and how they change based on the dialect that a person is speaking (a dialect being a regional difference of a language such as how someone from Scotland speaks English and how I as a Canadian speak English), they study how languages become standard languages and why (spoiler alert there’s a lot of elitism involved), they study meaning and why we put certain words in the order that we do (for Example in English we put adjectives (or the words that describe things) in very specific order being quantity, quality, size, age shape, color, proper adjective and purpose or qualifier so describing a thing could be a shitty old triangular purple metal pair of shoes, but if you were like the triangular purples old shitty pair of shoes you would lose your gourd.)

But why does linguistics matter? Well language actually acts a lot like music in the ways that it travels and changes over time which makes sense doesn’t it? When a people move around and interact with other cultures or are even just are separated from a larger group, over time their language will change! One change that is easy for us to see in our life-time is in word usage, for example, you use different phrases and slang that your parents and your grandparents didn’t use. The same goes for accents this means that your accent is going to be different than your parents and their parents. In some cases this will smooth it out or ramp it up, it will accentuate features, or drop features entirely. And actually this is where I’m going to give you over to a linguist to better explain this because where I do know about some linguistic shift they will definitely explain it better.

Why this is important is BECAUSE music functions similarly in terms of drift. Though musical drift doesn’t happen as FAST as language because language you use everyday with incredibly intensity and music you do not, it does still happen. Even more helpful in the tracing of language is how and where it moves over time. Because language is contingent on people speaking it and music is also contingent on those who play it, you can track how music and language changes and who it interacts with based on the stylistic attributes and or instruments that it acquires over time. If we wanna think about this in a real practical sense come with me into the theater of ur brainhole for a second. Imagine for a second there is a group of people who live in lets say India in like the 500s C.E for some reason or another they’re pushed out of India and into the west where they met like Turks and hung out with them for a couple hundred years. So they pick up some Turkish words, incorporate some of their musical elements and then move farther west. Then they meet the Greeks! The Greeks are pretty rad, they got some good shit going for them, so they stay for another couple hundred years! Again, they pick up some Greek words, some Greek musical elements. After that let’s say some of the people from this group were captured and held as indentured workers in a country forcing them to integrate into the culture of the majority but another portion of the population was fortunate enough to be able to get away and keep moving west into the Balkans where they also picked up a bunch of words and musical elements. You see where I’m going with this? Cultures are all contingent on how often or how little they come in contact with other cultures, this goes for music, this goes for language, hell this pretty much goes for all sorts of art. For the sake of our example I used the Roma who also just serve as a crazy good example for this because we didn’t really even know their history until one scholar was “like hey they got some Indian words in here” and launched a whole study into it which is rad as hell but we’re gonna save that for another episode. BUT YES CULTURE IS CONTINGENT ON THE INTERACTION OR LACK OF INTERACTION WITH OTHER CULTURES, THIS IS A THING AND WE’RE GONNA BE TALKING ABOUT IT A LOT.

SO we were with settlers from the British Isles and they came to north america and then their music changed!

In Canada and Louisianna we also have the addition of the French colonies which make our music a little different. In Canada those colonies would be Acadia in what is now the province of Nova Scotia (established in 1604), Montreal (established in 1642), Quebec (established in 1608), and Trois Riviers (established in 1634)  along the Saint Lawrence River with the voyageurs or courier de bois who were fur traders dealing primarily in beaver. In the southern US it’s the colony of Louisianna in the states which is much larger than what is currently the state of Louisianna. All of these colonies together formed one mega colony commonly referred to as New France. Differences between the musics performed by French colonists vs. English colonists was, well first of all the language, obviously French colonists sang more often in French, due to them being… French. But there were also differences in content too. In Canada especially many settlements were originally set up with the intention of converting native populations to Christianity which is a form of cultural genocide by the way. Thus, Jesuit populations often brough a lot of religious music into the area. Sometimes it would be mixed with musical and cultural traditions of the native populations but often it would just be very Christian. An example from the area I grew up in would be the Huron carol which blends native cultural heritage from the area with Christianity. It sounds something like this.

As French populations began intermarrying into native populations this became a more common sonic combination to hear. In Canada we also have a larger amount of music based on or around or deriving from sea shanties due to the fishing populations that settles in East originally as fishing colonies. As I plan to do a whole episode on sea shanties one day I don’t want to go too much into them but quickly speaking sea shanties tend to be broken down into categories based on the task they were performed around. So there were three principal types of shanties: short-haul shanties, which were simple songs sung for short tasks where only a little work was needed, halyard shanties, for jobs such as hoisting sail, in which a certain rhythm was required to signal when it was time to exert effort and when it was time to rest (often referred to as a pull and relax rhythm), and windlass shanties, which synchronized footsteps. I find them incredibly infectious, which is probably intentional because they’re meant to kinda keep spirits up as well as set a pace for work, but I’ll try and sell ya more on that when the time comes. In the meantime you can content yourself with singing drunken sailor to yourself, probably one of the most well known shanties.

French Canadian music also has some very fun additions to it that come from the body itself, like ur own dang body. The first one is a singing technique but also song style. It’s technically a form of non-lexical vocable which is a fancy way of saying “sounds that comes from ur mouth in music that aren’t necessarily words.” In fact sometimes it’s also just referred to as French Canadian mouth music. This specific one I’m talking about kinda, lord how do you describe this, it’s like a scatting but much slower, less bombastic, and more rhythmic. I’m gonna fuck up the pronunciation because, again, even though I have a French Canadian background and had to take it from grade 4 to grade 9 in school I remember it about as well as one might remember an event they’ve never been to, that is to say not at all. The form is called a turlutte (ter-lute) which uses a lot of D, T, and M sounds to kinda fit the sound that ur looking for in a song. It sounds something like this!

French Canadian music also has the real fun addition of podorythmie or foot rhythms which are complex rhythms that people keep with their feet. For those who don’t know what a rhythm is, it is defined as a strong, regular, repeated pattern sound so lets say that you start clapping, and each clap is spaced exactly by one second, now on the first and third claps you clap a little harder, that would be a rhythm. Rhythms can be incredibly simple like that one or they can be really complex and the ones that you will hear in French Canadian music are of the more complex variety. Usually if the person performing them is also playing an instrument they’ll often sit in a chair with a little wood box or hard surface underneath which they will use to tap their feet on. Sometimes they will wear special hard bottomed shoes made with leather or wood to do this in order to accentuate the sound. Less commonly people can also stand while performing a podorythmie turning it into a kind of dance. Here’s my favorite example of what that sounds like.

Some of this style was eventually transported to Louisianna when the Acadians were eventually pushed out of Canada by the English in 1755, many of them ended up actually settling in Louisiana forming the ethnically Cajun population, Cajun deriving from the word Acadian. Not to say that life wasn’t hard for damn near everybody who wasn’t nobility in the 1700s, but the dramatic shift for Acadians made it particularly hard for a long time. People had trouble adjusting to their new way of life at first, coming from a mostly trading based economy to agrarian based was hard on the population, not to mention the massive change in climate that came with moving all the way from what would now be modern nova scotia all the way down to Louisiana. To give a real succinct idea of where exactly they were moving imma quote Loyola university in New Orleans that have done a really good succinct history on the Cajuns of Louisianna ”Few Acadians stayed in the port of arrival, New Orleans. Some settled in the regions south and northwest of New Orleans and along the Teche, Lafourche and Vermilion Bayous. Far more went further west to the marshes and prairies of south central Louisiana. They became hunters and trappers and farmers. It is a popular misconception that most Cajuns live on the bayous and in the marshes, poling their pirogues and hunting alligators. Far more became farmers in the grand triangular prairie that stretches from Lafayette north to Ville Platte and west to Lake Charles.” Like shit man, my giant canadian ass if forced to live in Louisiana would probably catch fire as soon as I got there let alone back then with no air conditioning and what have you. Their music also then changed to reflect their new way of life, not that the music was about catching fire in a corn field (although that would fucking slap), music was written and sung about hard times and hard livin’.

From the same Loyola University document: The music these people brought was simple. It was made by singing, humming, and rhythmic clapping and stamping. Instruments were brought to the colony, with a violinist's death recorded in 1782. Early instrumental music was played primarily on violins, singularily or in pairs. One violin played lead and the second a backing rhythm. A simple rhythm instrument was created out of bent metal bars from hay or rice rakes: the triangle or 'tit fer, meaning little iron. Musicians wrote original songs telling of their life in the new world. The song J'ai passe devant ta porte tells of the suddenness of death from accident and disease. The singer tells of passing by his beloved's door and hearing no answer to his call. Going inside he sees the candles burning around his love's corpse.

In the south they would have been influenced by other settlers in the area, more scotts and irish of course but also eventually African descended peoples. Some were brought as slaves during the French and Spanish colonial period or brought in by settlers after the Louisiana Purchase. Under Spanish rule, slaves were allowed to buy their freedom (which I cannot emphasize entirely how fucking difficult that would have been), leading to an early population of free Blacks in southern Louisiana. People of African descent also came from the Caribbean, including the colonized French-speaking islands. During the revolution in Haiti between 1789 and 1791, French-speaking Haitians who fled the violence often chose the Louisiana coast as a destination due to having a familiar linguistic population and ease of access. These populations would become to be known as creole. The term Creole comes originally from the Spanish criollo, for a child born of Spanish parents in the New World. The French borrowed it as Creole. Creole could refer to anyone of European parentage born in Louisiana. Over two centuries it began to be used to mean a person of mixed foreign and local parentage. One use today is to refer to someone entirely or partly of African descent.

Now, it’s incredibly important that we don’t discount the influence of slaves and former slaves in the creation and dissemination of creole musics because they are absolutely integral to the process. Creole songs originated in the French and Spanish slave plantations in Louisianna and thus contain tonnes of African musical elements from the instruments they used to the syncopated rhythms. For example, original instruments you would have heard could have been percussion instruments made out of gourds, known as shak-shak which would be shaken to create a rhythm, the mouth harp, a type of metal instrument that one holds in place in the mouth and plucks with their finger opening and closing their mouth hole to create different pitches and textures of sound, the bamboula, tambou, or tombou lay lay which are types of drums; and as I mentioned before, a type of banjo known as a banza might have been played if someone could fashion one. Because that in essence is what we’re talking about, when we talk about Creole music we’re talking about music slaves could make with the limited resources that were available to them, in order to make the music they wanted to hear. This is why overtime we also see the addition of the washboard as an instrument because it was something that would have been available to them. A washboard for those who don’t know is most literally a board, usually made out of ridged wood or metal that one would put into a source of water, either a basin or a river, and methodically rub the dirt and stains out of your dirty clothes as well as you could with soap if you could access it, believe me it’s about as fun as it sounds.

So what was this music they were playing? What did it sounds like? Well as I already mentioned there was a lot of African influence to the music. One of the most prominent features of this influence is the syncopated rhythm. A syncopated rhythm is a rhythm that is built so that the strong beats eventually become the weak beats. So if we continue our example from before, where we clap harder on the first beat and third beat, a syncopated rhythm would move to become the opposite of it on the 2nd and 4th beats or the off beats, like this. Don’t be worried if that’s something you can’t do yourself, I still find it hard to switch between.

As no type of culture exists independently of time or location though, the type of music they played was also influenced by the culture of their oppressors. While there was music that existed independently that slaves brought from their Native African groups such as the Bamboula, Calinda, Congo, Carabine and Juba, over time, a lot of their music also began to incorporate French and Spanish influence. A type of French dance called a quadrille for example was worked into the repertoire, a Spanish dance called the contradanza or the habanera actually became some of the first written music to incorporate the aforementioned African rhythms. Even the language used in these musics grew and changed. For the slaves, and even free black folk coming from the Caribbean, they would bring with them what is now known as patois, a language that is a combination of English, French, Spanish, and African languages. So when we think of what creole music is, it really then is a patchwork of different cultures mainly driven and compounded by the efforts of African slaves.

Now I will say before I play this example here that it is difficult when looking for early musics belonging to oppressed peoples because 1. It wasn’t written down for the most part, at least not in the way it would have been originally performed, 2. Pieces that were written down, recorded, or coopted were often done by white people looking to profit off of African music (which we’ll see way too fucking much of as we continue our north American music excursion), which seems like a rather disingenuous way to present it to you, and 3. Because music recording as far as actually recording audio didn’t exist until 1860. So if we’re looking for songs from the periods that they were written or invented we still have to find people who are alive that remember them. Even as I was researching this I was trying to look for recordings that would make it easier to hear the differences between the dance genres I mentioned earlier. Unfortunately there isn’t much in the way of albums or popular bands dedicated to these types of genres, so instead I’m going to play a clip of a bamboula rhythm being played by some students at the Asheh Cultural Arts Center's Kuumba Institute in New Orleans, and then a clip of another group performing a Calinda.

From where we’re currently standing in the year 2020 there is still Creole and Cajun distinct musics but they also created a fusion genre which has become it’s own thing, this genre is called Zydeco. Zydeco developed out of both the Cajun and Creole though (hard core purists will insist that it is a mostly creole development) which then further changed when German Immigrants started moving into the area. The accordion, which was invented in Vienna about 1828, was brought to Louisiana by the German immigrants many of whom lived adjacent to or among the Cajuns. Though it arrived in Louisiana as early as 1884, it was not immediately incorporated into Cajun music. This is because where fiddles were tuned differently than the accordions coming into the country. What I mean by that is that some instruments have pitches they’re better at playing naturally. So for example, you’re standard run of the mill trumpet, like if u look up a trumpet on google, well they’re most suited to play in the key of B flat because the sound that you get when you blow into one without putting any of your fingers on the buttons is B flat. For the accordions that were coming with the Germans, they were tuned to the keys of A and F, so it wasn’t till much later in 1925 that accordions tuned to C and D started appearing and thus started to be better incorporated into the music around it. The guitar was also added pretty late coming in in around 1920ish. The word Zydeco itself is actually derived from the title of a French song Les haricots sont pas sale or The snap beans are not salty! You can hear in the French if you put a little punchiness into it, the transition between the les and haricot sounds like a Z (yes I’m a Canadian that says Zee, I blame it on my American mother, plus it just sounds better, zed sounds like a bee flew into a hard surface). So because of the Z sound it became abbreviated to zarico and through time morphed into Zydeco! We got BEAN music.

And how does this bean music sound, well I personally think it sounds pretty fucking rad, kinda like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kPztofSd5Y

fun fact about that one, I’ve known this song for roughly 5 years I knew it I definitely just thought these dudes were scattin, like WHOA BA BA WHOA BA BA WHA BA PA BYE BYE DOO DOO, I did not realize until roughly 2 years until after I heard it that it had lyrics…

Now you may have noticed I haven’t touched on Appalachian folk music yet and I’ve done it very strategically for 2 reasons. One is just simply because if I had put it any earlier yall would have been like HUEHUEHUE I HAVE HEARD ALL I NEED and then absconded into the night like a raccoon after finding half a cheeseburger in the trash. The second was because Appalachian folk music and next week’s episode are gonna be pretty instrumental in the episode after that, so to keep it popping freesh in ur brain bits I figured I’d stick it at the end of the episode.

So appalaichan music turns out is actually a really tricky genre of music, if we wanna go by the United States Library of Congress introduction to Appalaichan music: The term "Appalachian music" is in truth an artificial category, created and defined by a small group of scholars in the early twentieth century, but bearing only a limited relationship to the actual musical activity of people living in the Appalachian mountains. Since the region is not only geographically, but also ethnically and musically diverse (and has been since the early days of European settlement there), music of the Appalachian mountains is as difficult to define as is American music in general. I should also probably say before we get too far that like the Appalachian mountains (which first of all that I pronounce incorrectly because it’s pronounces with a CHian not Shan) but the appalachian mountains are the mountain range that run through a lot of the eastern United States, so like Appalachian Mountains extend 1,500 miles (or 2414 km for everyone else) from Maine to Georgia. They pass through 18 states and encompass the Green Mountains of New Hampshire and Vermont, the Berkshires of Connecticut, New York's Catskills, the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. The region known as the Southern Highlands, or Upland South, covers most of West Virginia and parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, Maryland, the Carolinas, and Virginia. In colonial times, this area was known as the "Back Country."

It was in these areas that Cherokee and Algonquin people already existed but then colonists would come from England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales and eventually from other parts of Europe came the Germans, French Huguenots, Polish, and Czechians. So we’ve already looked at the influence from the British Isles before (the jigs and reels and English folk music) but these would evolve into Square dances with a little help from French influences as well. A square dance for those who don’t know is a dance usually with 8 sets of partners who perform steps that are either established and vary based on song or thencaller which then the dancers perform. But just as we saw with instruments and musics being carried by free or escaped slaves to different parts of the southern united states and being integrated into the musical cannon of the area, the same thing happened in this area by the other people settling here as well. For example, the hammered dulcimer I told y’all about earlier (which if you haven’t seen one I would recommend lookin one up they can come in really fun shapes, ) but yeah those same hammered dulcimers were not an invention of the British isles carried over by those settlers but it is almost a direct descendant of a German instrument (the Germans btw came in a couple different waves the first big one being in 1670) so this instrument they brought was called the Scheitholt. Even African American instruments entered the scene in around the 1840s just in time for minstrel shows to start travelling around the country which I will be doing an episode on by the way because you can’t talk about American music without talking about the fucking disaster that is minstrel shows. It was these same free black peoples that also really popularized the call and response type of vocals which is pretty much just what it sounds like. The main singer will call out a line of lyrics sometimes as a holler, sometimes more musically, and other singers will answer it by doing it right back at them. This can be found in all sorts of music but just for the kicks of it here’s an example of it in gospel music.

But we’re gonna back track a little bit back to the Germans because we really haven’t talked about them enough and have left out one of their biggest influences on developing Appalachian folk music which is yodelling. If you’re from the states you’ll probably know yodelling from that kid that got famous a couple years ago and was in a Walmart commercial or something but for those of you who don’t know or people who do know that kid and are just curious about the mechanics of yodelling: The main components of a human singing voice are the head voice and the chest voice which I CAN and will demonstrate but to explain first, the head voice and chest voice are the two registers humans typically have. There’s also falsetto which is slightly different as it is kinda a pushing of the voice to a place it isn’t really supposed to be but I digress. So the head voice is where we get all our higher notes where the chest voice is where we get all out low notes. This is mainly due to the resonators we are using in creating these sounds as well as how tense or thick or thin and how long or short your vocal chords are. Resonators are simply just the air passages and open spaces in your body that sound resonates through. So for head voice you’re pushing the sound up and into the head using like ur nasal passages and all ur skull space for the sound to vibrate through which are all really small so you get a higher often sharper sound and chest voice mainly resonates in the chest (or ur LUNGS) which is a lot more space and so more low and rumbly. You can tell the difference between the two by putting a hand on ur chest while you’re singing, start with your lowest note you can comfortably reach and just start ascending, eventually you will feel your chest vibrate less and less and should be able to feel the switch into head voice. I’ll just give you a quick demonstration as to how different they are. Please bear in mind I am a natural soprano so my low range isn’t incredibly low but here it goes so the head voice “as I don’t do remembering, can’t give this song a ghost of past, I wander, I ponder, why there is weight in time” and again the same line but in chest voice “as I don’t do remembering, can’t give this song a ghost of past, I wander, I ponder, why there is weight in time.”

So if you tried it yourself you’ll notice that there’s a little, what vocalists call, break between where ur chest register is and where ur head voice is, it happens for everyone don’t worry. What yodelling does then is fluctuates between the head and the chest voice really fast and most importantly smoothly like this:

ahh shit man, the sounds of my ancestors, you can almost smell the leiderhosen, taste the octoberfest, YOU CAN ALMOST SEE THE SCHUPLATTING. But yes so Germans brought this with them from their homelands along with their accordions and it established itself the Appalachian folk tradition. Now it’ll probably interest you to know that yodelling isn’t a genre without purpose, as I’d like to do a whole episode on it though at some point I don’t wanna spoil too much but it is good for communicating across mountain ranges because of how it echoes and the types of inflection you can put into it. This makes it easier to understand why it survived the shift from the mountains in Germany all the way to the mountains of America. The Germans also brought something else with them, but it wasn’t just Germans, the Polish, and Czechian influences also brought it with them too! And what is it that they brought? The waltz of course! The waltz is a type of dance that focusses on a ¾ time signature, and has one heavy beat on the front and two lighter beats after. For any of you who’ve ever seen the musical Oliver, this is precisely the type of song Oom Pah Pah is.

So these collections of music and the things they developed into can be called Appalachian folk musics. It’s hard to pin down precisely what Appalachian music then sounds like at times because of all the different influences depending on place that you were living in, if you had to pick out a few things though you would head that firstly you get a lot of stringed instruments like guitars, fiddles and banjos. Secondly  the themes were often similar and reflected day to day life living in the region such as mining or logging, there’s the fun little genre of murder ballads which I wanna do a whole episode on some day, and after the civil war we also get the addition of a lot of war songs. Thirdly this music would vary depending on purpose but would definitely include dances, campfire songs. So Imma play you a few samples then, first we just have a good old mountain song

if these sound familiar to other genres of music like bluegrass and country that’s because Appalachian folk music was the predecessor for both genres but those I’m gonna save for their own episode sometime in the future. It might be a part of the north American genre business it might be just another nebulous episode I do in the future at some point. But for now at least you know the history of some of the biggest Genres of American folk music. BUT WHAT ABOUT FOLK MUSIC TODAY, LAURA, WHAT ABOUT MUMFORD AND SONS, HOZIER, FUIMADANE, AND KORPIKLAAN? And I know, they’re ALL fantastic acts and I’ll get to people like them eventually, but for now at least you know where it all started.

So with that, hat’s all for just a music podcast this week, I hope you’ve heard something new, and I hope you’ve heard something that you like. If you haven’t there’s always next week where we’ll be getting heavy with slave and gospel music. In the meantime, though if one of y’all would like to suggest a topic I would love nothing more than to answer your musical question or talk about topics that interest you guys in music. Feel free to drop me a line at justamusicpodcast@gmail.com

Bye!

1.   Over the Hills and Far Away - 17th Century English Traditional - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MR7VihPm2E

2.   Woodsong Wanderlust Solo Hammered Dulcimer by Joshua Messick https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayAvzVdOJJY&list=RDfD0rNyjDAa0&index=13

3.   Out on the Ocean https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynKDggMtMww

4.   Rakish Paddy & Braes of Busby (Reels) Uilleann pipes Chris McMullan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0umOtiKyUc

5.   A Quick Lesson on Southern Linguistics https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNqY6ftqGq0

6.   Huron Carol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgPeEvUl06Y

7.   La Bolduc - Reel Turluté https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASW3Cejl5oc

8.   Le Lys Vert https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASW3Cejl5oc

9.   J'ai passe devant ta porte https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtchvhughFw

10.New Orleans Kuumba camp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItRuHjjGMhg

11. Calinda (Stickfight) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LaM0PI3T1s8

12. Bye, Bye Boozoo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kPztofSd5Y

13. Call and Response in Gospel Music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMgNTwZW5gY

14. Underthing Solstice https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anMKMu9Tpoc

15. Yodelling Franzl Lang https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQhqikWnQCU

16. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles – Ost – Maggie is Everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Fn1Pw-LxU8&

17. Ola Belle Reed High on the Mountain https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsRRY5k5Psg

18. Traditional Tennessee Square Dance Caller Gerald Young of Pulaski https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7-DWvegcL8

[chekovsphaser]

Crown of Candy ep 5 thoughts

Okay, so here’s my understanding and my questions about the unfolding situation in A Crown of Candy

Church is evil. Pontifex is bad. The trouble with that is, that in essence there is no one nation that can be trusted – anyone from anywhere could dedicate their allegiance to the Bulb above all, even privately. I think Plumbeline is probably one of these. She was clearly coordinating with the Pontifex to set up Amethar, so we can assume she KNEW that the Pontifex had dangerous information and quite likely even where she got this dangerous information. However, I don’t think simple spite at having lost the joust, especially due to the goodwill Amethar showed her in offering her a council position, and her seemingly solid relationship with her father who held no ill will towards Amethar or Candia would have been enough to turn her to this kind of action. However, an honest belief that Candia suffers heresy and devil-worship lightly and that such a thing would corrupt the empire if her father’s choice was honoured seems a much less petty and more logical motivation.

A similar notion applies to Stilton Cordeau, though while I think Plumbeline’s involvement is partially opportunistic – the Pontifex may have reached out to her or her to the Pontifex due to the way the situation was unfolding, Cordeau clearly has been working for the church and the Pontifex for a long time. I agree with Theo that the intent is for Cordeau to marry Primsy Coldbottle and become the ruling monarch of the Dairy Islands as a way of ingraining the church into politics on even more fronts. It might even be of specific import that the church have a secure foothold in the Dairy Islands, as Candia’s greatest ally, and its general location close to the Meatlands, both countries which as far as I can tell, have the weakest church affiliation. I think the attack on the Sucrosi road was definitely church orchestrated. However, I don’t think that the majority of the cheese people are aware of this. I don’t think Amethar’s allies turned against him (I think it’s pretty safe to say that, on account of how we know the Pontifex tortured Manta Ray Jack). I on’t think Primsy or Anabelle Cheddar or anyone are actually aware of Stilton Cordeau’s plot. Primsy is what, 16? Stilton is her childhood sweetheart whose courtship of her was described by Anabelle as “aggressive” and having started ages ago. I think the odds are pretty good that Primsy’s emotions are being manipulated by Stilton who, again, being around 16-17 and having been involved in the church from a young age yadda yadda brainwashing manipulation and so forth but ultimately the perpetrator of the actions. I think Anabelle was just trying to do her cousin a solid and not mess up the order of ascension of the Dairy Islands even more. Maybe her own sweetheart died in war or whatever and that’s why she never married and she wanted her cousin to avoid the same fate. Maybe she was afraid that Primsy might choose to be stubborn and not marry at all and then also be disqualified from ruling the country as she herself has been. Because if she had been in on the church plot to involve itself deeply into the politics of the Dairy Islands, as the former Princess, it would have been much easier for her to back out of her no-marriage decision and take on the throne in the name of the church than to try to institute Stilton in this roundabout way. Unlike Amethar, it is relatively clear that while she holds no personal spite towards her cousin, the fact that she was removed from her position is considered her greatest shame – ruling is not something she is actively averse to.

Now that brings us to Primogen Alfredi and Senator Ciabatta. When we first saw Alfredi’s headquarters, and how the Bulbian stuff there was all fake, I was like “Oh, so the Pontifex isn’t behind the assassination attempts, because she wouldn’t align herself with a heretic knowingly”. However, with how the rest of the episode played out, I think otherwise. Alfredi’s miracles were shams, but unlike Lapin’s they weren’t shams made by the powers of other deities, just alchemy and panache. Because of this I think it is not impossible that the Pontifex knew and endorsed Alfredi’s actions. Saint Citrina’s book was imbued with the true power of the Bulb. And it must be very disheartening and downright threatening to the worldview of the One True Church that there has been a singular saint that can be proven to have wielded the power of the God in question and that saint was not only from a nation which consistently fails to pledge itself as fully to the God as is desired, but also was the loving sister of a known witch and presumably actively consorted with animists, pagans, and witches. Then along comes another miracle worker in the name of the Bulb, and he’s also from fucking Candia. That’s threatening. So the Pontifex sets up Primogen Alfredi with alchemical “miracles” to be used in service of the Bulb and better curate the image of the Bulb as a One True God. I don’t, however, think that Alfredi was working 100% on the up and up for the Pontifex – namely because of her possession of documents concerning heresies and bizarre doctrines as they relate to the Pontifex herself. As a skilled blackmailer, I think if she hadn’t been arrested for execution, things would have turned sour eventually between the Pontifex and Alfredi.

As for how this relates to Ceresia and Senator Ciabatta, I’m not entirely sure. I think he was being genuine when he invited Lapin to go expose Alfredi’s secrets and retrieve what blackmail she had on members of the senate (himself included presumably). I think Amethar is probably right in that he is trying to use this blackmail material and the way it was used to manipulate the senate into doing whatever the church wanted in order to institute another imperatorship in Ceresia. But I don’t think that that is actually tied to any of the rest of it. So far my opinion is that this is a dude who is doing some internal politics stuff with his country, but isn’t actually actively involved in the international aspects or political church machinations that are currently happening. I could be very wrong on that front. A lot of the Ceresians we have seen put a lot of faith in the Bulb, this could be another Plumbeline “to the church above all” situation but I don’t think so. Yet.

Wow this was over a 1000 words of speculation and meta and I didn’t even get to my biggest question which is WHAT THE FUCK BRENNAN????

[fantasyinvader]

I kinda want to do a post on heel-face turns with regards to Edelgard. Specifically, those done by Kamen Rider over the last few years.

Let’s start with this year’s model, Gai Amatsu or as I like to call him Bitchboy.

What did he do? Well, in addition to owning an extremely punchable face when he got to work with his idol on creating a city where man and robots live together, Gai sabotagued the project because (due to his upbringing) he couldn’t accept the idealistic goals of the project. Instead, he only viewed it as a matter of profits. So, he showed the satellite that was supposed to oversee the city the worst of humanity. This taught the machine to hate humanity, believing they should go extinct, causing the city to end up at the bottom of a lake. However, some robots survived and went to form a terrorist cell...which Gai covertly aided.

Gai is the cause of everything that happens in the series, and once he’s introduced he proceeds to challenge Hiden Intelligence to a contest in order to take them over. The robots they create versus humans equipped with his Zaia Spec, a pair of glasses that allows hooks a person’s mind up to a computer. Gai initially talks about humanism and how the robots are just tools. However, he’s shown to cheat, drive the robots berserk in order to have an excuse to kill them, corrupt the hero’s belt so all he has is a transformation that sends him into a berserk rampage, reveals that he has chips in the brains of Fuwa and Yaiba to control them (in addition to wiping Fuwa’s memories and implanting traumatic ones to turn him against the robots) and does everything to turn people against the robots so he can sell both Zaia specs and weapons.

How does he turn into a hero? Well, after he won the contest and took over Hiden Intelligence, the show basically shat all over him. He lost time and time again, to weaker riders who were discovering their own dreams. His victory was all for nothing, but then when it was revealed the terrorist robots could hack not only Zaia specs but also Raidraisers and send people berserk, Gai decided to promote Raidraisers as a means to protect yourself. Even arranging to corrupt the code of the Zaia specs to make them even more hackable in order to drive up sales. The people working under him have enough and collect evidence of his wrongdoings to get him kicked out of his position.

At his lowest point, Gai reveals his backstory of having a father who told him he had to strive for not 100% but 1000%. He also gets reunited with the only friend he had, the AI of a toy dog he owned as a child. This dog acts as his morality pet and saw Gai turn to the heroes side...which everyone feels is just super weird, out of character, and still hold him accountable for all the shit he’s caused. The show doesn’t drop what he did, it just acknowledges there’s a bigger threat now.

Next up is Gentoku Himuro, from Kamen Rider Build.

Gentoku was present when an alien artifact from Mars activated, creating walls that split Japan into three countries as well as having an effect on his mind. He became more aggressive as a result. Wanting Japan reunified under his pacifist father, Gentoku founded Faust, a secret organization that created weapons in addition to human experimentation. He does a lot of scummy things, including triggering the war to reunify Japan, before he is exposed and his father disowns him.

In an attempt for more power, he is further experimented on. However, this clear up the effects of the alien light, causing him to return to his normal state of mind. He continues to fight because he is forced to due to a bomb planted in his head, and feels guilt over what he has done. Though he also still believes he’s doing this in the name of the greater good. It’s even in his Rider catchphrase.

"Be a sacrifice for the greater good!"

He eventually wises up to what’s really going on, and leaks information to the heroes. Eventually, the bomb is removed but his father ends up taking a attack for him, dying as a result. Since everything he did was to give Japan to the one person he believed should govern it, he falls into depression and ends up joining the heroes seeking atonement for all he’s done. He eventually begins to understand what his father believed, that the power of the leader comes from his people, and in the end sacrifices himself in order to weaken the final boss (see above).

Next up is everyone’s favorite meme, Kuroto Dan.

As a teenage game designer hailed as a genius, Dan discovered a version of the Y2K bug that could infect human beings through exposure, digitalizing them if they succumb to it. This included his mother. However, at the time a young boy sent fanmail to him, which included a few suggestions for what he’d like to see in the next game. This enraged Dan to the point of sending a game with the virus to the boy, turning him into Patient Zero to spread it among the population. This boy ended up being the series lead, Emu.

People ended up being digitalized because of this, in addition to some committing suicide. Dan made it a point to appear to fight this problem in addition to the video game characters coming to life and attacking people, creating the Kamen Riders. But in reality, it was all a ploy for him to collect data to make the greatest video game ever, Kamen Rider Chronicle. He also wanted to see Emu suffer, and killed/digitalized Kiriya (Kamen Rider Lazer), who was investigating what was going on, during the Christmas episode. Eventually, he was stopped by Emu using what amounted to a game shark, but the data was enough for the video game characters to begin Kamen Rider Chronicle so that they could kill humans in revenge for them being killed in their games.

Kamen Rider Chronicle saw people turn into pseudo-riders, able to fight the Bugsters. When one of them defeated all of the bosses, the final boss would appear and the player would be able to transform into Kamen Rider Cronus with more powerful abilities to defeat them. When the game is cleared, that player would be the hero of mankind and all the digitalized people would be released. However, once you start playing you end up infected with the virus, needing to seek out the bosses to keep yourself alive. If you lose, you end up digitalized. Tough, but Kuroto intended for the game to be clearable.

That is until his father came in, and attempted to use it to assert control over the world in addition to claiming Cronus for himself. This led to the heroes searching for and finding a backup of Dan’s data, allowing him to return and aide them (giving Emu his final form based off the stars in Mario along with a save option to stop Cronus from resetting things). This coincided with him declaring himself a genius and a fucking god, and his control freak tenancies made it so that he wanted the game to be cleared as it was intended.

However, they still held him accountable for what he did and at the end of the series was shown in digital jail for his crimes.

Finally, the former owner of the title of Bitchboy. Mitsuzane “Micchy” Kureshima

Micchy actually starts off on the Heroes side, as Kamen Rider Ryugen. A rich kid dancing with Kouta’s old group, Micchy looked up to Kouta and when Kouta was unsure if he wanted to continue as Gaim after nearly dying, Micchy used his family name to become Ryugen and aide him.

However, as time went on a dark side of Micchy emerged. He wanted Kouta to do as he wanted while Kouta was more prone to heroic actions. Micchy also discovered that one of the monsters Kouta killed was the leader of their dance group as he ends up under the wing of his brother, Takatora aka Kamen Rider  Zagetsu. Following his brother’s belief that they would have to make hard decisions in order to survive, Micchy ends up undermining Kouta and the other’s attempts to deal with the threat of Helheim.

However, when Kouta reveals to Takatora there may be an alternative to solving the problem rather than leaving most of humanity to die, Takatora wants to work with him on this. This angers Micchy as once again Kouta isn’t doing what he wants, and now his brother is as well. This leads to him attempting to kill his brother, assuming his identity and Zangetsu Shin, and attacking Kouta in disguise. As time passes, Micchy is shown to try and save those he wants, including the girl he likes.

He eventually gains even more power and seemingly kills his brother yet again. Then he attempts to kill Kouta, whose power is slowly turning him into a Overlord of Helheim. The girl he likes is killed from having her heart removed by the guy who told Micchy to kill Kouta, though she ends up gaining god-like powers from the McGuffin that was implanted in her heart.

In the end, Micchy has lost his friends, the girl he likes, Kouta and her go off to be gods on some distant planet while also saving Earth. Micchy has lost nearly everything, with the exception of his brother who barely survived the last fight. His brother helps him cope with what he’s done, and as the last person able to fight and transform Micchy resolves himself to be the hero Kouta was in atonement for his actions.

Trust me, Micchy’s fall to villainy is gradual and very well done.

These are characters who all, to varying degrees, go from villains to heroes. And these are all in children’s shows. But how does Edelgard make the transition? Simple.

She doesn’t.

Crimson Flower isn’t a route about Edelgard redeeming herself. Fuck no. Instead it’s about the player, after seeing all that she’s been a party to during the first half, deciding to join her. There’s no atonement from her, instead it’s all based on the idea that everything she’s done was right, while she argues some form fo the greater good. You absolved her of the events of part 1 by joining her, while part 2 implies there’s a whole bunch of shady stuff she’s keeping from you. You endorsed her actions during White Clouds, believing she wasn’t the heel but rather the face.

[purplesurveys]

994

Basic Information

What's your name? Name’s already posted on my Tumblr but so that nobody has to check that anymore, Robyn.

Where do you live? I live in some city east of Manila, and that’s all you need to know.

When's your birthday? April 21st.

What's your astrological sign? Taurus.

Do you actually believe in that stuff? Never did.

How old are you? 22.

Do you have a high school diploma or the equivalent? Yeah I got a diploma.

Do you have an undergraduate degree? If so, in what? Yup. I’ve graduated but I haven’t received the diploma nor did I get to walk on a stage because of the stupid virus, but I majored in journalism.

What is your favorite...

Quote? I don’t have any. My brain doesn’t really store quotes for me to go back to; I don’t find the majority of them interesting.

Color? My main favorite is pink, but I enjoy looking at pastel shades and muted colors in general too.

Song? Picking an all-time favorite song is impossible, but for now I really like putting Hayley Williams’ Why We Ever on repeat. It used to be just a sad song that I love listening to but unfortunately the lyrics have since become relatable, so now there’s a sting whenever I hear it.

Band/singer? My favorite bands are Paramore and Against Me! while my favorite solo act is Beyoncé.

Book? I never had one. I was a big bookworm as a kid, but I didn’t get to keep it up as a teenager and now as an adult. Most of the books I own today are still just the novels I had nearly a decade ago, and it’s been a struggle trying to find a genre to get into.

Author? Same situation as book.

School subject? History. A lot of the social sciences are also great – anthropology, pol sci, psychology, etc. In another universe I definitely would’ve taken up a degree in a social science instead of journalism.

Science (chemistry, biology, physics, etc.)? Biology has always been a strength of mine and a favorite. I find memorizing terms fun, and I’ve always enjoyed studying living things instead of chemicals or energy or force or any of that boring stuff. 

Math (algebra, geometry, calculus, etc.)? Advanced algebra is fun. So is geometry, but only as long as you know all the formulas and theories; otherwise it’s so easy to fail it.

Language? I don’t have one. I think all languages are individually beautiful.

Operating system? Wow this is random lol. macOS, I guess. It’s what I’m using.

Instrument? I like the sound of many instruments, but in the grand scheme of things the piano has to be my absolute favorite.

Letter? I don’t pick a favorite letter.

Number? 4.

Car? I don’t know the first thing about cars but I suppose my dream car is a Mini Countryman, if that counts as a favorite. I swoon every time I see one in real life; they’re just so pretty to look at.

Pattern (polka spots, stripes, plaid, etc.)? Stripes are my cup of tea, but polka dots are also cute.

Word? The word that’s been my favorite for a while is ‘poignant.’

Animal? I love animals, but I’m biased to dogs and elephants. :)

Country? I don’t have a favorite country. That’s a pretty odd favorite but *shrug* I guess some people have theirs.

Drink (alcoholic or otherwise)? Water, milkshakes, and cocktails.

Food? Sushi, curry, cheeseburgers, and macarons. You can’t make me go with just one choice when it comes to food, my dude.

Restaurant? Yabu and Torch.

Website? I rely a lot on YouTube for my sanity these days so it’d be fair to call that my favorite, at least for the meantime.

Sport? If it counts, pro wrestling. If it doesn’t, I like playing table tennis and watching volleyball and tennis.

Flower? Peonies, roses, and sunflowers.

Ice cream flavor? Cookies and cream is a classic.

Television show? Breaking Bad is my favorite ever, but I also enjoy Friends, The Crown, and Bojack Horseman, and at one point The Walking Dead before it got honestly boring.

Shirt? I don’t really have a favorite shirt, but my favorite type to wear is anything sleeveless. I like giving my skin air to breathe, lol.

Shape? I don’t pick favorite shapes.

Eye color? Olive is beautiful.

Hair color? I’m indifferent to hair colors. Whatever suits a person.

Movie? Two for the Road and Good Will Hunting.

Gum flavor? Fruity ones.

Random Stuff About You

Do you have your drivers' license? Yeah. I had to get it as soon as I graduated high school because no one else was going to be able to bring me to school in college. I was in driving school like a week or two after marching on stage for my high school diploma haha.

Have you ever been swimming in an ocean? I don’t know if I have. In the vacations I’ve had, I don’t really keep track if I’m swimming in a sea or if I’m already in one of the oceans.

What's the last song you listened to? No clue but it was probably something by Hayley.

Do you prefer coloring pencils, crayons, or markers? Coloring pencils! I miss coloring. I just can’t see myself going back to it at the moment because I had bought a really cheap set of coloring pencils that have to be sharpened every five minutes. During my coloring phase I’m pretty sure I spent more time sharpening my pencils than actually filling in my coloring books. I’ve yet to find a replacement set with better quality.

Can you make any origami figures? If so, what? I’m terrible at origami and have always been. Even if I’m given a one-on-one session, I’ll for sure get lost early on in the process.

Do you still sleep with a stuffed animal? I never did. I always preferred pillows.

Do you get cold easily? I do haha, but I don’t mind it. I’d rather shiver or have my teeth chatter than have a pool of sweat on the back of my shirt from being too hot.

Have you ever been to a chiropractor? Nope.

Do you have great eyesight, or do you wear glasses or contacts? It’s very poor. I’ve had glasses since I was 11, but I needed them a lot earlier, like since I was 8 or 9 maybe. My mom refused to believe me when I started telling her my vision was getting worse because she legitimately thought I just wanted glasses to look like other kids. God, how shitty was that parenting? I can’t believe I just fucking let that go as a kid. My eyesight was getting increasingly blurry by the day and I stopped learning at school and her worry was that I wanted to fit in. I’m gonna get more stressed and hurt if I continue to think about this, so let’s just move on...

Do you know how to play chess? Never learned. I’ve watched my cousin play and he tried to teach me so many times, but I just never understood.

Do you know how to play checkers? At one point I think I did, but I didn’t enjoy it.

Do you like Sudoku puzzles? No. I never got the hang of that game either.

Do you like word searches? Love them.

Do you like crossword puzzles? They’re fine but the ones on our newspapers are too hard and use too many references or plays on words that I’m not able to pick up.

Do you like logic puzzles? It’s a hit or miss.

Can you play any card games? Other than solitaire, no.

Do you play board games? Hmm I played some as a kid, but I’ve always been too competitive and I’m never able to just sit down and have a friendly game so I’m not too big on board games now. I’m a lot happier sitting on the sidelines and watching my friends play because it’s more entertaining that way.

Do you do jigsaw puzzles? Not normally but I’ve been thinking of investing in one of those 1000-piece puzzles to take my mind off of things whenever I get depressed or when my mind starts to think about things it shouldn’t.

Do you listen to the same song on repeat for a long time, even occasionally? Yes. Sometimes I do it on purpose when I’m REALLY feeling a certain song at the moment; other times I don’t even realize the repeat button is turned on and I don’t notice I’ve been listening to the same song over and over.

Do you take any prescription medications on a regular basis? Nope.

Would you prefer to be too hot or too cold? I’ve said this a few questions ago, but too cold.

Do you like to swim? Sure. Being in the water calms me down instantly.

Have you ever been to a farm? I’ve probably been. I just can’t pinpoint a certain memory right now.

Do you like instrumental music? Depends on what the genre is, but I do generally prefer instrumental music when I’m working or have to focus.

Do you drink diet soda? Nope.

Do you drink soda? Andddddd nope.

Have you ever put Mentos into soda? I haven’t but I know what it does. There’s already like a million videos of other people doing it so I don’t need to do it for myself. 

Have you ever combined baking soda and vinegar? No.

Did you ever make Oobleck in science class when you were a kid? We never did and I learned about oobleck from watching a Good Mythical Morning episode, not in school. But I’ve always been curious as to what the texture is because it looks so fun to touch hahaha. I’d try making it myself but idk if we ever have cornstarch at home.

Do you know any HTML? Yes. Early days of Tumblr, man. People customized their themes and text posts all the time.

Have you ever read any of Shakespeare's work? Well, yeah. I had to read four of them - one for each year in high school.

Do you write poetry? No.

Do you read? Occasionally. A lot less than I used to.

Can you throw a frisbee? Sure. My friends and I played back in high school.

Do you watch a lot of television? Eh, not really. It’s rare that I discover a TV series I’m willing to invest in; I’ve always preferred movies since they can tell me a story within 2-3 hours. Following an ongoing show is just exhausting.

Do you think that you have a good sense of humor? Humor is subjective. I could mesh well with certain people but others might not find my sense of humor funny. I don’t think either of those can determine if my sense of humor is good or not.

Are you a mean person? Well, I try not to be...I think that’s what most people strive to do.

Do you have any bruises? If so, how did you get them? I have one on my knee because a few days ago I knelt to the floor to try to look for something under my bed, and I ended up landing on the floor quite hard and it was purple in minutes lmao. It’s mostly healed now though and I can barely tell where it is.

Does the thought of public speaking make you nervous? It only does if I ultimately also have to pitch something, because I don’t consider myself persuasive at all. But if I had had something memorized or had enough practice or if it’s a topic I’m fairly knowledgable about then I don’t have much of a problem with it.

Are you afraid of heights? It doesn’t bother me as much as other things and I’ve always wanted to go to the top floor of those towers where the floor is glass lol, but like I’d absolutely piss my pants if I found myself standing on a tightrope between two really tall buildings.

So, what ARE you afraid of? Flying cockroaches, plane crashes, and fire.

Are you listening to music? No.

Has anyone ever called you 'disturbed'? I don’t think so, at least not to my face.

Have you ever been kicked out of a place? If so, where? And why? Yeah. From a McDonald’s, but it was my noisy friends’ fault. I knew they were being loud (they were playing some card game) so I just stayed at the very edge of our table, pretended not to be associated with them and waited for a customer to complain about us lol. Normally I’d speak up and tell friends if they’re being too immature, but in that friend group in particular I was the shyest and didn’t really hold a lot of influence so I didn’t have much of a choice.

Do you take a lot of these surveys? Yeah I have this entire blog dedicated to just them, and even before this account I had another survey blog.

When was the last time you fingerpainted? No idea. Kindergarten maybe? If we even ever did?

When was the last time you sent an e-mail? Yesterday afternoon.

A text message? 1 AM earlier.

Called someone on the phone? I think it was around two weeks ago.

Tripped over something? I’m sure I tripped over Kimi fairly recently, like sometime this week.

Do you like chocolate? Sure but on its own it can be too sweet for me, like the Hershey’s milk chocolate bar. I do love chocolate-flavored stuff or if it’s incorporated into other meals or snacks, like chocolate chip cookies.

How many pillows are on your bed? Right now there aren’t any because I brought the two pillows, that I do normally have on my bed, to my desk where I’m currently sitting at.

Do you have any pets? Yeah one of them is licking their balls behind me. The other one is probably playing with their toys downstairs and miraculously being quiet this morning.

Have you ever been on a horse? Yep.

Have you ever climbed a tree? I don’t think so. Most trees here have fire ants anyway.

Do you like art? Sure do.

Do you use any sort of social networking site? I mean normally yeah, but I’ve deactivated all my accounts for the meantime. Depression is a bitch. I’m no longer updated on the news nor am I familiar with the trendy memes anymore but idk, this seems to be the healthiest thing for me right now.

What time is it? 9:11 AM.

Have you ever been in a car accident? Super minor ones where the car I was in only got a paint scratch or, at worst, a dent or two.

When was the last time you felt embarrassed? Yesterday when I almost sent a message talking about a certain person to that certain person. It was nothing mean, but I was horrified nonetheless.

Did it rain today? No. I’m not sure if it will but I hope it does.

Have you ever had a poison ivy rash? No. When was the last time you felt immensely happy? LOL Do you take a multivitamin or any other supplement? We have vitamin C tablets at home but I’m so bad at taking them. What household chore do you absolutely hate? Washing rags. Not really a chore, but once they get all dirty and I have to clean them up it just feels so icky and ueughdhffgbduifhsuf Tell me something random about yourself. I’ve won a couple of spicy noodle speed eating challenges. Can you cook? No, but I’d love to learn. Do you like to be silly? I’m a little more serious than silly for the most part...but when I’m in the right mood at the right time with the right crowd, I can be silly too. What kinds of things have you wanted to be 'when you grow up'? The first was astronaut. Then I came across this interview with a veterinarian and I wanted to be one too. Lastly, a firefigher. Have you ever been on a boat? Yeah, lots of times. Sometimes it’s the only way to get to certain provinces or cities in the country so we’ve had to take boats for a few trips. Do/did you like school? For the most part, yes. I like that I made a lot of friends in school and I don’t have complaints about learning. What I hated the most about school is the scheduling, I guess. In my first school I had to wake up at 5 AM everyday to catch the school bus; and then in college I had to take several 7 AM classes and those were just the biggest, most inconvenient bitches. I also did not enjoy the concept of Catholic school. Do you have a camera? I used to have a DSLR but I’ve since handed it down to my sister since she’s taking up film. The camera on my phone works just fine. Have you ever been bitten by a tick? I don’t think so.

Have you ever seen a wild snake? I don’t really know what counts as a ‘wild’ snake but I’ve handled and held snakes before. Have you ever gone hiking in the woods? Hmm I’ve gone hiking, but not in the woods. Do you have a lot of friends? There’s a lot of people I can call friends, yes. We aren’t constantly in touch, though. All my friendships are super low-maintenance which I appreciate. Do you keep a diary/journal/blog? I have a journal and this blog where I write my thoughts and emotions down. What color are your eyes? Dark brown. Answering this yet again this week... Do you like snow? I’ve never experienced it so I can’t say. I think I would enjoy snow though. I feel that I’d be able to find comfort in it, like rain. Would you prefer to sing or dance in front of other people? Both sound awful. But I’d go with sing because at least I don’t have to move my body as much. Would you prefer to sing or dance when you're by yourself? Sing.

Can you spell really well? I’d say I can. I was really inspired by the movie Akeelah and the Bee as a kid and that made me want to be constantly good at spelling. Do you mind poor grammar? If it’s coming from a native speaker of whatever language, yeah. Like people who can only speak English but still use ‘would of’ or ‘I could care less.’ I’m more forgiving towards people who speak one language, or those who are speaking in a language they know they aren’t 100% fluent in. What's your favorite texting/IM abbreviation? I don’t have one. ‘lol’ I guess? It’s convenient. Do you wear a watch? No. Do you shop at thrift stores? Sometimes, if I find their offers interesting enough for me to want to go inside. What is your dream job? It’s pretty straightforward but it’d be nice to be able to work my way up and end up as an executive at a PR or media agency that I look up to. What is one thing that really freaks you out? Charlie Kaufman movies. Do you like bananas? They’re okay. I don’t hate bananas as aggressively as I do other fruits. Do you eat meat? Yes. Do you drink coffee? Yuh. I can go for a cup right now, actually...maybe when I finish this survey. Do you clean your computer screen often? Not often. Just every once in a while or once I start seeing too many smudges. Have you ever sneezed onto your computer screen? Probably.

Let's talk about numbers.

How many people live with you?

Four. We also have two animals.

136+95=...?

231. That’s essentially 136 + 100 - 5.

How many digits of pi do you have memorized?

Just the first five.

Can you count using binary numbers?

No. Never understood those, not interested enough to start learning.

How many states have you visited?

Zero.

How many countries?

Six. Would’ve been seven or even eight if Covid never blew up. I know my dad mentioned there were plans for us to go to Vietnam this year, and I also asked for a Thailand trip as a graduation present. Damn bat soup or whatever it was.

How many browser windows/tabs do you have open?

I have three Chrome windows in total. On the one I’m on, there are 13 tabs.

How many times have you blinked in the past minute?

I dunno, I never count that?

How many seconds are in a minute?

60.

Are you afraid of mathematics?

Calculus and trig, yeah. The other ones aren’t so bad.

What's the square root of 121? 11.

Sorry, sorry, the nightmare is over :) How about some more random questions to let you relax?

Have you ever read the webcomic xkcd?

I doubt it. I don’t think I’ve heard of it before.

Can you play an instrument?

Barely.

Can you read sheet music?

Not a chance.

What's your favorite kind of sandwich?

Monte Cristo! Omg, that sounds so good right now :( Banh mi is great too.

Do you have a bedtime?

Not strictly but I always try to get 7-8 hours of sleep on weeknights so that I’m sufficiently energized for work the next day.

Have you ever gone sledding?

No, I haven’t.

Have you ever carved a pumpkin? If so, what kind of face did you make?

Also no.

Do you ever make funny faces at yourself in the mirror?

I guess it’s happened before, but it’s not a regular occurrence.

Have you ever played the classic shaving-cream-in-the-hand prank on someone?

No.

Do you think that's a mean thing to do?

I don’t think that prank in particular is since shaving cream is harmless, but some pranks can definitely go too far which is why I’m generally not a fan of them.

Do you like cake?

Only very certain types. I can think of more cakes that I don’t like than the ones I can never get tired of.

Do you like pie?

Just savory ones, like chicken pot pie. Those are more up my alley than sweet pies, which are for the most part stuffed with a kind of fruit.

Do you like popsicles?

Sure, they’re refreshing.

Do you use the television or computer more?

Laptop.

Do you have a favorite chair to sit in?

Not really lolAre you getting tired of this survey?

It’s lengthy but I knew about it when I started this so I can’t complain about that; and the questions haven’t been annoying too so no, I wouldn’t say I’m tired of it.

Do you like to wear hats? When I have the chance to, yeah. They’re never a must for me though.

Do you wear your seatbelt in the car?

Most of the time no. Oops.

Do your shoes provide lots of arch support?

I...don’t know. I don’t really pay attention.

Do you like to go to yard sales? I haven’t gone to one since I was a kid.

Have you ever had a yard sale at your house? I don’t think we ever did.

Do you like apples? I like some apple-flavored things like juice or candy. I can’t stand the actual fruit but y’all know that by now, haha.

Do you like peanut butter? Yessssssss. I love peanut butter and any peanut butter-flavored food.

Do you like licorice? Not really. They’re not common here so I don’t seek it out.

Do you like lima beans? It doesn’t sound like something I’d enjoy.

Do you like limes? Not particularly.

What color are your bedroom walls? White.

Guess how many questions you've done. I don't know either, so just guess. Before clicking on it I saw it had 200 or so questions, so I’m guessing we’re at the 180 or 190 mark considering how many questions are left below this.

What's your favorite color to wear? I feel prettiest in dark green or maroon. Do you tell secrets when people confide in you? I’m not sure what this is supposed to be asking, but I’ll give two answers. (1) I don’t spill other people’s secrets when they confide in me, and (2) When people confide in me, sometimes I’ll be inspired to share a secret of my own too, especially if it’s relevant to their situation. If I don’t think it’s going to be helpful, I just keep it to myself. Do you listen to your music with the volume up really high? Only when I’m extremely upset or furious. Do you like to try new foods? Absolutely. How many different programs are you currently using? Like applications? Currently, I have Chrome, Viber, and Notes turned on. How many different operating systems have you used? I’ve gone through Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 8, and then whatever updates have been done on macOS since 2015 - I don’t really keep track of their names lol. What time is it now? 12:03 PM. Are you wearing socks? Nope. Are you comfortable with yourself? These days, no. Do you lose small things (like your car keys) often? Hah, yes. Is your mind in the gutter? No. Have you ever broken a bone? I haven’t. Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert? I’m a healthy mix of both, I’d say. Which is still a great improvement for me because I used to be an introvert all the way through. Do you read the dictionary for fun? I literally did this for a time right after watching Akeelah and the Bee and having that movie change my life. It made me want to join a shit ton of spelling bees, but my interest waned when I realized there weren’t any being held here.  Tater tots or fries? Fries, only because I’ve never had the first. Do you like to wear flip flops? No. The thongs irritate my skin all the time and they always give me wounds. Are you more of an optimist or pessimist? I’m normally optimistic but it’s easier to be pessimistic nowadays. Do you like animals? Yes :) Do you like little kids? If they aren’t being a giant, rude pain in the ass. Are you a 'people person'? Yes. If I can’t satisfy everyone it bothers me. Have you ever seen a rainbow? Sure. How was your day? I haven’t cried today but I’m still sad. Otherwise, I don’t have a lot of strong feelings about this day just yet. What do you plan to do tomorrow? I don’t know yet. When was the last time you did laundry? Around two or three months ago. Have you ever played Snake? On the really old Nokia phones? For sure. Have you ever played Scrabble? Yeah. I took it up for one semester as a PE, hahaha. I also played it a lot when I was younger. Are there any television commercials that really get on your nerves? At the moment no, but this has happened many times before. Do you like scary movies? Sure. Are you itchy anywhere on your body? The left side of my forehead started to feel itchy when I read this. What's the title of the last book you read? Midnight Sun. Do you read more fiction or nonfiction books? Nonfictionnnnnnn. Are you a member of any clubs or organizations? I used to be, but now I’m an alumna because I’ve graduated college. What color is your favorite pair of socks? I don’t have a favorite pair. Do you own a lava lamp? No. Do you have anything else to say? Thanks for serving as a distraction and letting me kill some time.

[zalrb]

If you could rank tvd male characters (not by looks ofc) but by character wise & development from best to worst what would it look like? & if you’ve already answered this sorry

I mean, development is difficult because with the exception of Stefan, it’s mostly wasted potential. Tyler had pretty good development in season 2 and 2x05 encapsulated this because he did something that Damon never did --- he snaps at Jeremy and then apologizes and says he’s working on being better and not such a dick all the time and throughout season 2 we see that in effect, we see a different side to Tyler, a vulnerable side, someone who asks for help and admits he’s scared and leans on someone (Caroline) but at the same time, his development with the werewolves was done horribly because they don’t give him enough conflict --- to be fair, they don’t give Bonnie, Caroline and Elena enough conflict around it either --- but if he’s being divided between his friends and his new supposed family, if Damon kills his uncle and his friends cover it up or help them and then his new werewolf family is torturing his friends, like the crisis of loyalty and identity crisis Tyler should’ve gone through should’ve been massive and it wasn’t. Plus after season 2, it’s like the show doesn’t know what to do with him emotionally anymore. Plot-wise him being sired to Klaus and then trying to start a hybrid army against him and then wanting revenge for his mother’s death is fine but I don’t really see how Tyler emotionally develops throughout all of that so the potential is wasted.

Matt. Matt had so much potential, I talk about it all the time:

With each and every episode I’ve been like, how has Matt not set fire to Mystic Falls yet? How has Bonnie not snapped on her friends and just released all of her magic on them yet? Like the most they make Matt do is get grumpy at Stefan for a minute and then refuse to let Elena feed him her blood? And Bonnie shows Damon what she went through in the nineties with Kai and she’s done venting? Are you fucking serious? People keep saying that Matt is a useless character but I see the potential in him because he and Bonnie would make the perfect opposition to the ‘core’ group and imagine how deranged they’d be? Like a psychological break would happen between them and they’d give absolutely zero fucks. And then we could deal with the ‘core’ group being so surprised that the two people they step on the most are ‘fighting back’ in a sense and are refusing to be ignored.

Him taking out his anger on Tyler didn’t bother me, it’s that the scale wasn’t big enough. He said a few words and he didn’t let Elena heal him like that’s a big deal. It’s not. It’s inconsequential. I don’t buy that he’s resentful because he doesn’t act resentful, he acts sullen; he shouldn’t be friends with any of them. His rage should destroy the entire town. He’s been bitten how many times, he’s been hit by a car, he’s been stabbed, he’s been used as bait, he’s been buried alive, he’s been driven off a bridge, like no, a few words here and there about how vampires suck isn’t going to cut it. It shouldn’t be respectful or respectable or small or at the right times, he should hate everyone with a passion, it should be to the point of insanity, like he should be obsessed with either destroying them all or getting the hell out of town but to make it more interesting it should be destroying them all; the line between enemy/friends should be gone and Bonnie should join him with it.

My point is that Matt’s anger should be directed at everyone, including people who don’t necessarily deserve it at the time. He should have a prejudicial hatred against all things supernatural, like it should be a fury that has a rational base and spirals out into irrationality because he’s at his wit’s end and he has a psychological break, it shouldn’t be logical and strategic, it shouldn’t just be about Damon and Stefan, that’s what I mean by how in my opinion it shouldn’t be “respectful resentment” everyone should be a threat or a target in his eyes and same with Bonnie after everything they’ve been through. They should have serious PTSD.

A psychological break doesn’t necessarily mean that Matt wouldn’t be effective at what he’s doing, it just means that he wouldn’t follow certain guidelines and he wouldn’t be confined. I like the idea of psychological breaks, I like the idea of snapping because the only characters who have been allowed to do that are Damon and Elena and I guess Stefan. Caroline turning off her humanity wasn’t a “snap” in my opinion. A snap has a lot of potential to be messy and I like it when characters get messy, I like it when they go off the deep-end because there’s so much you can do with that. I like the idea of Matt and Bonnie just having a disconnect and going beyond logic and reason and playing dirty because neither of them have done that before, it’s an unexpected route for both of them to take but one that still keeps in line with their characters after everything they’ve been through. I’m not interested in the “by-the-book” approach because we had that with Bonnie’s dad and we had that with Connor and we had that with the Council, it’s more of the same thing and the point is that the show should go in a different direction and to see the psychological and emotional scars that being around the supernatural has done to both Matt and Bonnie would be AMAZING and heartbreaking and it’d be intense for the other characters to see just how far they’ve pushed them.

in my opinion, Bonnie and Matt should be the “big bads” that everyone has to face but instead of it being an external villain, it’s an enemy they/the town created. That, in my opinion, would make sense for both characters and would be such an interesting storyline for the show to take on. Not these one minute/two minute/one episode gripes that go absolutely nowhere or get shut down quickly.

I mean they had ample opportunity to really push that forward but it’s like they’re too scared to do anything that has actual consequences. For me, Matt’s descent should’ve happen in season 5. He was in a house full of vampires and none of them heard Nadia take him and none of them found him buried alive? Instead Caroline took Klaus’ word for it (Klaus above all people) and everyone else was preoccupied with other things and were all at the Salvatore mansion when he finally got back? Like THAT should’ve been the beginning of the end. I have so many problems with that episode.

How would you write the team up of the psychological break with Bonnie and Matt against the main group?

I always said that one day Matt would just snap, like some bullshit will happen to him again and he’ll just set Enzo on fire on something and Bonnie would walk in on him and he would just rant about how he’s sick of being the guy who gets run over and stabbed and buried alive and shot and be like dude, we were FINE until the Salvatores showed up and Damon killed Vicki and wanted to get into the tomb so Grams died and Bonnie being like Matt, c’mon, bad things would’ve happened anyway, Elena was the doppelganger Klaus would’ve  — and then he just scream and say this is what I’m talking about the constant defending, don’t you get sick of it Bonnie, think of everything that happened to you, like aren’t you just MAD? And then Bonnie leaves and gets taken advantage of again or lied to again or has to put her life in danger again with great emotional and/or physical cost but that’s a secondary thing to the core group (again) so she just goes to Matt like yeah you’re right.

So since it’s all-in for him, does Matt die or win? Knowing you, even if he dies, there’ll be far reaching consequences of this arc, right?                        

I think what I would do is Stefan and Damon argue about how to handle it with Stefan wanting to lock him up and Damon wanting to kill him. If he did die then I think the consequence of that would be the Salvatores leaving MF, like either Bonnie has been pulled back already and she’s like you guys drove him to this then murdered him, either they go or I do and Elena and Caroline choose Bonnie or after Matt dying they don’t trust the Salvatores to not kill Bonnie so Elena “banishes” them before it becomes a everyone tries to kill Damon and Stefan gets involved and puts his life in danger because of it

I meant to say if he didn’t die, then I’d Azula him where he just is so mentally deteriorated that they lock him up and Bonnie goes to the group and is like, yo this is what you do to people eh?

But we never go there.

Jeremy --- Jeremy doesn’t even have an emotional arc, really. I mean we’re meant to believe he gets to this state of acceptance of becoming a hunter, which was a storyline that came out of nowhere.

Enzo never should’ve been introduced.

Klaus I have issues with because homeboy does not act like a 1000 year old vampire and his goals are SO small-scale, it’s EMBARRASSING:

  I know you say that Klaus’ daddy problems were very unoriginal and that another storyline could have explored which I do agree with. But what storylines do you think they should have done instead?            

To be honest with you, I’m not sure I would’ve given Klaus anything, I’d just lean into him being a megalomaniac and give him greater ambitions, like him being like you know, I’ve been alive for 1000 years, I’ve lived under kings and prime ministers and presidents and I legit could just do a better job than anyone, so first he wants to rule vampires, then the supernatural world in general and then the world at large. I’m not saying it’s original but I would prefer that over my dad was mean to me and my family hates me even though I stake them all the time so let’s make hybrids so I can rule one town in one country. OK…

Damon is Damon.