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rahleeyah · 2 years

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So I have SO MUCH second hand embarrassment and anxiety over people commenting to the new show runner. Like walrus was one thing bc he was so ugh, but cmon people! 🫠

Like for one, it’s crazy what people say to him on his Instagram. People have no shame. Leave the man alone, especially when the comments are negative in nature.

Secondly, I wish the comments would just stop, mostly the negative ones as mentioned, bc just like m, he will pull away from the fandom OR start responding in a negative way. Also, could the fandom cause some negative consequences? 🤷🏻‍♀️

People are also veryyyy flip floppy. (I.e. the news about kelli today) Unless you are a diehard rollisi, there is no room to complain. No one should be taking this out on the new show runner when he doesn’t make those decisions? Esp when everyone was all over him until recently and praising him.

We all wanted eo, and if rumors are true and this is the way to get that, im personally ok with it? The way I’m looking at it is there have been SO MANY arrivals and departures over the years of cast members and characters and this would just be the latest one. Although Amanda has been there for 12 years, that is usually the exception and not the rule.

Wasn’t it canon that the average to be in svu was like 2-4 years bc of the nature of the job? It makes sense for her to want to see her girls grow up and have a more steady work/life balance and get out of svu (major speculation on my part here). Bring in some new blood, characters, diversity, story lines, etc.

Although disclaimer: I am indifferent to the Amanda Rollins character. I do not love her nor dislike her. I would for sure feel different if it was someone I had more of an attachment to, admittedly 😂

I know you stay out of the drama, but I just needed to vent. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk lol.

Congrats to you anon for being the one to break the kelli news to me, literally got this message and had to be like "hang on babe lemme check twitter real quick" so thank you for that. lemme try to hit this in order.

yeah first up i'm not gonna tell anyone else what to do but engaging with the showrunner directly is never gonna be something i wanna do. i firmly believe that fandom and creators are happiest when we stay in our respective corners but. again. that's just me and what i prefer and what i would do. i don't check david's insta so i don't see what people post there, except for what gets reposted other places.

i wouldn't worry about the fandom causing negative consequences. like. these people have a job to do. they get some negative comments, they get lots of positive ones, they go to work, they do their job. fandom sometimes overestimates its own impact; no amount of comments on insta is gonna change the plan for tptb. if that was the case they'd have thrown out eo bc of the people on fb. for good or bad, they're gonna do what they're gonna do.

i agree no one should take this out on mr david as it obviously wasn't his call, and the responses of his that i have seen have been graceful. i understand that people are upset - were we not all devastated when chris left the show? - but like, that upset needs to be directed at the people who are responsible.

i don't see any connection between kelli leaving and eo. i have a hard time imagining they were sitting around going "we can't do eo unless we get rid of a cast member." that just doesn't make sense. yes losing a long time cast member frees up some $$ but they are bringing in new people and i promise they are gonna find ways to spend what's left of that money that aren't solely eo. the math isn't mathing. and the only people i've seen make that particular connection aren't making the most reasoned arguments in general.

they try to say early on that most people only last two years in svu which is laughable now considering how long most of the cast has been there. i do think they need some fresh blood - still salty about losing kat, tbh - if only bc these characters have been there for so long and new perspectives are necessary from time to time. 1.0 didn't shake up the cast too much after s2 but they had new adas all the time and that kind of helped keep things fresh,

i'm not sure what i want rollins's reasons for leaving to be. i don't really see her wanting to leave svu, tbh, i think it would have made more sense for carisi to go work with a different branch and amanda stay on in svu to avoid the conflict of interest but obvi that's not what they're doing. i'm wondering how much of carisi we're going to continue to see after kelli's exit and if they will use carisi to keep amanda alive and fresh for us even when she's not there.

idk anon it's a lot

#anonymous #e.o asks #s.vu

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iampikachuhearmeroar · 3 years

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another unsolicited relationship advice post:

okay. i know that there’s probably thousands of relationship advice posts on here. but anyway. to my younger followers, if i have any:

if anyone that you’ve just met declares that you’re “girlfriend material” or “boyfriend material” and that you must simply meet their parents NOW! or some other ridiculously short interval (like a week say), instead of, idek, like a month or two into your relationship, know that that is a possible red flag for trying to push the relationship too fast.

i say this as again, bc on some buzzfeed fb post about supposed “nice guys” i commented about my high school stalker/creeper from 2012/2013. who, when i first met him in 2012 at public school, he insisted that after two days of knowing him that i simply “have to meet my (his) mum and my sisters right now! bc you’re girlfriend material and i LOVE you!”

like woah! dude! i’ve known you for a grand total of two fucking days! i absolutely don’t have to meet your family RIGHT NOW (although if i’d ever been stupid enough to actually date my stalker back then, i would’ve had to meet his mum or one of his 4 sisters/all of them at once; at some point anyway…. bc they would’ve had to drive us to dates etc bc neither of us had our Ps (provisional drivers licence here in aus) yet at the time)). because i’m pretty sure the normal window is about 1-2 months? maybe 3-4 months? why the fuck are you so obsessed with the term “girlfriend material”??? what the actual FUCK does that EVEN mean?? get away from me. bc this isn’t love. it’s something else, that i can’t put my finger on.

compare this to clear braces boy from catholic school, who literally took almost 3 years to ask me out; and to even ask for my number. when he’d finally asked for my number right before one set of the winter holidays at the end of term 2/before the start of term 3 in 2010, i was so oblivious as to why he wanted my number…. when he’d never wanted it/asked for it before.

so when he called me, while i was still on the bus home from school, i was panicking like “OH FUCK THATS WHY HE WANTED MY NUMBER!!! HE WANTS TO ASK ME OUT!!!!! FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!!!! WHY THE FUCK AM I SO SLOW AND FUCKING DUMB???!!!” he never pressured me to meet his parents (although at 14/15 it was very obvious that that was a standard practice since we couldn’t drive ourselves anywhere lmao). we were basically on equal footing, except for my slowness with cottoning onto him asking me out and why he asked for my number lol.

CBB had never pressured and harassed me about my virginity. he had NEVER harassed me with porn, most especially while at school, unlike mr creeper who LOVED pulling out his porn filled phone and school laptop to show me his overly violent, degrading and aggressive porn. CBB’s flirting method was showing me norwegian black metal bands (or normal metal bands like parkway drive) and making me watch repeats of family guy on his ipod at lunch bc he loved family guy. he never brought up the term “girlfriend material” ever. he treated me like an actual person. and not his own personal fuck doll, that had holes that were conveniently for sticking his useless and clueless ass teenage dick in, again unlike creeper who was hellbent on wanting to act out his favourite violent etc porn on me to let him “take your virginity in a wonderful weekend of sex down the coast and you have to do all things that I LIKE BC THAT’S THAT AND I SAID SO!!!” 🤮🤮. although if i had progressed further than those few weeks with cbb, and my constant *karen from mean girls voice* *fake cough, fake cough* i’m sick *regina george voice* boo, you whore!” act every time i didn’t turn up on date that he’d asked me on…. maybe he could’ve treated me like that. but i’ll never know lol.

so cbb was unlike mr stalker; who was obsessed with my supposed “girlfriend material” status. mr stalker was obsessed with the fact that i had the ability and audacity to basically tell him “no”, by coyly letting him down with “my dad says i can’t date bc it distracts me from school and getting good marks 🙄😑” (which probably wasn’t true, looking back lmao)….. where he then whined PUBLICLY on facebook about it, with a status like “today sucks”… and then naming and shaming me in the comments when someone asked in the post comments what was wrong like: “*insert my name here* said no! she’s being a bitch!”. that at the time, made me roll my eyes and still does today when i think about it. because bro. i had literally only known you for two fucking days at that point. of course i’m going to say no. what the hell??? two days is nowhere near enough time to know a person well enough (although the conversation we had together on misguided trip to his house one day while we were wagging (skipping class/playing hooky for americans) aboriginal studies told me MORE THAN ENOUGH about his piece of shitness tbh) to “date” them imo.

because to me, the title “girlfriend material” doesn’t mean any fucking thing. but when it comes from a creep like mr stalker; it means “you’ll be my girlfriend forever and have my kids bc you’re such a nice girl and you’ll fix me bc that’s what nice girls like you do; bc you’re SO LOYAL AND NICE!” which i also saw as a MASSIVE RED FLAG back then, because we were literally 16yo kids (he literally told me this when we were on his bed in his bedroom in the aforementioned misguided trip to his house). and i also saw it as a red flag bc…. just because i’m “loyal” and “nice” doesn’t mean that i’ll spend LITERAL Y E A R S trying to “fix you” while you fuck around and never bother to change your behaviour all bc you think it’s “girly” to do just that. it definitely DOES NOT MEAN that i’ll have KIDS with you, what the actual fuck. like i’m a hopeless romantic, to an extent, mr creeper. but not to the extent where i’ll give myself up to someone like you, all because i’m “nice and caring” and it’s apparently what “nice girls do!!!” or whatever else fucked up guilt trip views you’ve got on why girls/women supposedly have to waste their time with and on you.

and also, on another front. CBB never FOLLOWED me home (considering he lived in a suburb 20mins away from mine lmao and we both lived at least 15mins away from the catholic school we attended) despite me telling him REPEATEDLY to “fuck off and walk home your way”….. whereas unfortunately, mr creeper lived just over the other side of my suburb.

so one day mr creeper decided to stalk me home (despite me saying the above “fuck off and walk home your way” comment constantly to him in the 10min walk home). and then when we got to my street and in front of my house he decided to joke that “oh now i know where your house and bedroom are, i’ll come to hide under your bed naked one day!!!! and when you get home (bc i’ll obvs do it when you’re out doing something), you’ll just have to FUCK ME because you’ll be so surprised that im there and ready to fuck you!” as if i’d be so overcome with supposed lust & love for him, after knowing that he’d broken into my room against my will and messed with my shit….. all for some cutesy love prank…. like in, idk, love actually (???) or himym (specifically the “naked man!” episode from season 4) or some other shitty romcom. bc no. you’re overstepping SO MANY fucking boundaries that i’d literally call the police on your stupid fucking stalker ass. what the actual fuck.

finally, cbb never forced me to try to kiss him, unlike mr stalker…. who whenever he got the chance, he’d grab my head and force me to kiss him…. and then gave me back the utterly disgusting & controlling GALL to tell me that i was “kissing wrong” and whinge/bitch that i “wasn’t into it”. and then he’d force me to kiss him again with a “im so sorry does this fix it 🥰🥺???” like NO???!!! forcefully kissing me DOES NOT FUCKING FIX ANYTHING YOU STUPID CUNT! please just get the FUCK away from me. like if you force me into anything, of course i’m not going to enthusiastically enjoy it??? and moreover, don’t you think it’s YOU who is “kissing wrong” (whatever the FUCK that bullshit actually means) and not me???? why do you think GRABBING MY HEAD and FORCING me to kiss you is appropriate in ANY of these situations????

just. to end this. to anyone and everyone, regardless of their gender/sexuality/age etc. NEVER trust anyone who uses the term “girlfriend material”/“boyfriend material”, to describe you, most especially when you’ve JUST MET them.

they’re using it as a means to control you and possibly trap you into an unhealthy (or potentially abusive) relationship like i would’ve had with my stalker/creeper. but most especially, this goes out to my younger followers, if i have any. be aware of this. watch out for the small red flags and run at the earliest time.

#life #about me #shut up ilona #relationships i guess #i’ve probably said this before lol #i can’t remember though

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dukeofriven · 3 years

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I have something truly terrible, utterly vile, and deeply shameful I need to confess. It has been sitting with me for the better part of a week now, every element of my soul has cried out in anguish to come forward, and my guilty conscience has demanded I hide the shame no longer. All I ask is that you hear me out, let me explain and contextualize, let me try to make you understand the good reasons behind the awful thing I am doing.

I…

Oh God…

I... I have started to re-read Harry Potter-

NO WAIT COME BACK THERE’S A VERY GOO- oh, no, fuck, they’re gone.

Sigh.

Well, to the three of you who are left, please come in close, you can’t really have a sharing circle this spaced-out, it just looks like we’re social distancing on the internet like a bunch of weirdos. Come close, my remaining friends, and listen to my tale.

I fell out of love with Harry Potter long, long before it became a social necessity. I think my break-up with the series came in the years after the publication of Order of the Phoenix - which I’d liked but, on reflection, hadn’t loved 0 and it was firmed by the publication of Half-Blood Prince, a really depressing and glum book (Liz Rosenberg of the Boston Globe said of it that “the book bears the mark of genius on every page,” which is just… well, it’s a bit much, Liz. It’s a bit much.) By the time Deathly Hallows came out I didn’t rush to pick up a copy, and not just because, after six great, striking book covers, Bloomsbury/Raincoast absolutely shat the bed with Harry Potter and the Body-Oil Treasure Bukkake Threesome. By that point I simply didn’t care about the series and when I eventually got around to reading Hallows, I didn’t like it. My love of Potter - which had started all the way with buying Philosophers Stone as a voracious-reading nine-year old back in 1999, was over. I liked the movies, thought Curséd Child was a fascinatingly bizarre bit of dreck, thought the Fantastic Beasts films were pretty appalling. Go read Diane Duane instead, I tell people all the time - imagine if Potter was written by a smart, kind, progressive person who wasn’t full of hate. That’s an imperative, by the way - go buy her books, damnit.

Right now.

I’ll wait.

Rowling’s reputation has slipped somewhat in recent years. Curséd Child was too outré a script to be very beloved (though I understand that seeing the stage show was a really incredible experience), and the FB films didn’t show off her best qualities, but we all know that what tanked her in many fandom spaces is her toxic, noxious, somewhat shockingly virulent doubling-down on a kind of antiquated, second-wave feminist transphobia. If you’ve gotten this far you don’t need me to explain all the details - there are many think-pieces out there on the subject, good ones by people far more affected than I. Go and read them.

But as I said the other day, this fandom backlash against Rowling-the-person has led to some pretty lousy criticism about Potter-the-Book-Series, criticism that isn’t rooted at all in the text of Potter but in the anger, hurt, and pain caused by Rowling’s late 2010s behaviour. And frankly as someone who has been calling the books mediocre for years, this really bothers me - there are serious issues in the series, but people are wielding Rowling’s Modern Betrayal as a cudgel of critique. I’ve seen so many bizarre, bad takes come across my dash - you know the kind that are all about feeling satisfied that you’ve taken a slice of flesh out of something despicable, those feel-good mutual-hate sessions where everyone adds on with their two cents about ‘another thing’ Rowling did once, and everyone goes ‘oh yeah that was awful’ even if it was something totally mundane or completely unobjectionable because in the moment all anyone really wants is a shared community of commiseration? There’s nothing wrong with that, I get it - I just found a creator I love is an anti-vax PETA zealot and it really hurts and were I of a different temperament I’d probably go start my own kind of reckoning thread.

But the critic in me bristles. I’ve have been saying for years that Potter has serious structural problems, that Rowling’s world building is not very good if anyone would actually stop and think about it for a little while, that her characters make weird choices, that’s there’s some dreadful moral failings that nobody ever focuses on, that Hogwarts is a really badly run school, and that from a textual standpoint Voldemort has the curious distinction of being a villain who is defeated but never proven wrong. I’ve been ranting fo years! Years I say! I built this little anti-Rowling clubhouse and I have lived here by myself for the better part of fifteen years and all of a sudden this huge angry crowd has pushed into the central hall and knocked over everything, eaten my larder dry, given some very wrothful speeches and now y’all are singing a song about smashing my plates and I don’t want to go to the Lonely Mountain and fight a Rowling Dragon but I guess I don’t really have a choice do I?!

Essentially y’all are making me go on an adventure - to set out into the wilderness of Harry Potter and come back with some of that Treasure Bukkake of wisdom and understanding, and yes this extended Hobbit metaphor is going really well, thank you for asking. The thing is, in order to properly critique Potter, well… there are insanely wealthy Tik-Tok stars who weren’t even born when I stopped reading the series, so I kind of need to do that again if I want to do this right.

Because here’s the thing: Potter isn’t going away. Its the most insanely successful creator-driven franchise of our time, and it has a momentum and an inertia all its own. Most people don’t care about Rowling’s embrace of hate speech - I am sorry, they really don’t. Entire Twitter scandals of career-defining proportions have come and gone without the majority of consumers being aware of them, or giving a shit (this is why cancel culture only ever ends up affecting people whose entire audience is always-online internet folk.) This is no-less true of J.K. Rowling: Harry Potter profits hit a record high this year - people don’t care that she’s full of hate! Not on numbers that seem to be meaningful! There’s equally no rival to the Potter throne in Pop Culture. Twilight, Game of Thrones, Hunger Games - all of these touted as the next Potter-level franchises haven’t gone the distance, and I am not entirely certain anything ever will again. Potter is sui genesis - we’re stuck with it. Forever. It will never go away.

And so we need to talk about it - and I mean REALLY talk about it, not just fume because an author that meant so much to so many of us turned out to be an absolute piece of shit. That sucked, but she also always had some real odd failings, and we didn’t seem to care about it at the time. And that matters too. I said this the other day:

“That the most profoundly popular work of our time - one beloved by millions of us - is what it is despite its flaws says something about us as a society, and its also worth critiquing ourselves and our own mythmaking, historiography, and hagiography when it comes to Harry Potter.”

And that’s what I want to do.

The upsetting thing is that there is good in Harry Potter, and we don’t know how to live with that. That’s what makes some of these bad takes so lousy - they’re so angry and hurt that they need to rewrite the past to make it bearable. The fact that Potter is as big as it is is, in the viewpoint of some of these takes, nothing but a fluke, an accident. Something that happened in and of itself.

It would be so much easier if that we true. But it wasn’t then, and it’s not true now. We loved, and in many cases clearly still seem to love, these books for a reason, and it wasn’t that we were all transphobes back in the late 90s happy to financially support a kindred spirit. (Okay, culturally speaking I’d argue we totally were almost all transphobes in the late 90s, but the Potter books really aren’t about that - that’s not what made them popular.) And so if we’re going to live with this deeply, deeply problematic franchise that all this outrage, anger, fury, and shock have done absolutely nothing to halt their popularity - again, record profits - well damnit, then at the very least we’re going to critique it properly!

(And I guess I’m going to have to do it, because a lot of y’all are just… super bad at it. Really you are. I am so, so sorry, but your takes are… they’re dreadful. Can’t put it any nicer than that. I mean, I won’t say that mine are the only correct takes, but they definitely are. You’re welcome in advance.)

So that’s why I am re-reading Harry Potter. Because I loved this series and I fell out of love with it, and that the love died well and away before we all found out that Rowling’s such a shitty person.

And I want to talk about why.

#Harry Potter #JK Rowling #Bloomsbury #Diane Duane #RivenReReadsPotter #tw transphobia #the hobbit

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yuzusorbet · 4 years

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Continuing Kikuchi-san's book 'Strongly, beautifully,....'

If you have not read the earlier parts, please read them first. See my previous posts in tumblr, OR the master post on FB.

Chapter 2, part 6. The gold medal that the goddess smiled upon.

I was at the rink side, holding Yuzuru's luggage, watching his free skate performance. He fell on his opening jump, the quad salchow. Another jump also had a mistake. In the 2nd half of the programme, he was running out of stamina and he finished a performance that was far from the original.

He returned looking very dejected and mumbled, "Gold medal is finished." I myself could not say a word. Waiting for the score at the Kiss&Cry, Yuzuru did not show much emotions.

The confirmation of Yuzuru's gold medal happened later, during the interview with the media. Both Yuzuru and I thought it would be a silver medal, but Patrick Chan who skated after Yuzuru, did not get a score that could take him ahead, and thus, the gold medal went into Yuzuru's hands. Surely, it was a moment where a goddess smiled at Yuzuru.

"I am first...... I'm really surprised. I'm not satisfied with my performance today....."

Yuzuru who was being interviewed by the media from various countries, looked a bit confused. As for me, I was putting ice on his feet, doing icing, and my tears were falling. Of course, this was because I was so happy that he had won the gold medal. However, from the time the free skate ended, he had never looked satisfied with the title of Olympic champion.

To him, the gold medal that he won at 19, is only one of the checkpoints. What he desires is to succeed in a technique that no one has done before, such as the quad axel jump. And even more, to do a perfect performance with no mistakes.

In that sense, it was a failure, the Sochi Olympics that he had envisioned in his mind. He was not intoxicated by the euphoria of the gold medal; the period when he was in Sochi, whenever he found some time, even if it was just a bit, he went to the rink to practise.

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

For Parts 7 and 8 of Chapter 2, I did a partial translation, some sentences are summarised or left out.

Chapter 2, Part 7: Start of new battles

During the Sochi Olympic period of about one month, my clinic was temporarily closed for business. As such, it was tough financially. Although before the Olympics, 'okachan' (wife) had said, "Going around the world is one of otosan's dreams, just go if you want to," and sent me off, I think it was hard on the household budget. After the Olympics is over, this role as Yuzuru's trainer will end and I will treasure the time I have with okachan, that was how I thought. (translator's note: Couples with kids often call their spouse 'mama' or 'papa' because of how their kids address them. 'Okachan' (okaasan) = mama/mum. 'Otosan' = dad.)

After Yuzuru became the Olympic champion, there was a great change in his environment. Sponsors were flocking to him. The attention he got was on a completely different level from what it was before. Naturally, top-notch trainers active in the world would also be quickly going to him, I was thinking like that.

The difficulty level of Yuzuru's programmes continued to rise. He continued to evolve. To me, he was like a presence that was out of my reach. So as not to cause any shame to him, I thought about what I could do, on this path of mine.

One of those things was to use my experiences to help the patients at my clinic.

Chapter 2, Part 8: Responding to the athlete's "izui"

If a patient said "the pain is gone", I would say "oh good, good!" and feel satisfied. However, those who are aiming to be sports competitors and athletes have different demands. They require something of a higher level.

For example, in the Sendai dialect, there is a word "izui" 「イズイ」. It means "doesn't fit / doesn't feel right" or "a discomfort somewhere" or "not smooth". Sports competitors will not be satisfied with just having no pain; they will say, "But it's still 'izui'." And they leave my clinic with an 'izui face'.

But, through Yuzuru, I felt the earnest heart of the athlete. "If it was him, what would I do?" I had to become more serious and sincere.

In itself, doing treatment for others, one can learn many things. 2 years after I started my clinic, there was a patient who said, "I have not come here in a long time, but sensei, your treatment methods have not changed at all," and he left with a downcast expression on his face.

At that time, my methods were low frequency therapy, massage, stretch tape, compress (t/n. or poultice) and taping. Is there anything wrong with these.......

From then on, if I hear that ancient Thai massage is good, I go to Thailand to check it out. If I hear that Ayurveda is good, I go to learn about it from an expert. In the area of pain treatment, I saw information that spiral tape is good and I went to learn more. Gradually, I was very much into the profound depths of Oriental medicine.

I want to be good at "taking away pain". After being led by Yuzuru to experience the world's stage, the inquiring spirit welled up within me once again.

Because of my big failure as a trainer in Sochi, I also started to study and search for the most suitable ways of adjustment for athletes preparing for competition. Is warming-up simply for relaxing the muscles and joints to warm up the body? Warm-up exercises should also be different for different sports. For figure skating, what would be good? Many questions like these came into my mind.

I spent time researching warm-up suitable for top athletes and also improving my own skills. However, the more I studied, the more I realised how extremely narrow my previous world was, and I felt like I would be crushed, and then I would crawl up from there; and this kept repeating itself.

In all this, there was the apologetic feeling for having embarrassed the gold medalist. Plus, there was a bit of the thought that, if one day Yuzuru calls for me again, this time I want to give proper support and be of good use.

After Sochi Olympics, I received many requests for interviews by various media groups. Some even came to my clinic to ask me personally. But when I thought of my failures at Sochi, I felt very ashamed and could not accept any interview.

Later, one section of the media started to call me names like "dubious therapist" and "chakra hermit/wizard". There was also a rumour that "Hanyu-senshu has been brainwashed". But I did not mind at all. I really am a strange old uncle. It's fine.

More importantly, I want to do something for patients who are bearing pain. Underlying it, are strong feelings of wanting to support Yuzuru.

To solve their 'izui', not just for athletes but also for patients and for all people who are building up their bodies. This became my new goal.

[end of Chapter 2]

Translated by me from this Japanese book by Akira Kikuchi: https://www.amazon.co.jp (just doing partial translations for fellow Yuzu-fans)

Photo credit: getty images

#Yuzuru Hanyu #Akira Kikuchi

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youcantfiremebecauseiquit · 3 years

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idk if u care but crispin gray recently had an interview about his entire career and it kind of changed my perspective of queenadreena…idk if for better or for worse lol. it was weird to see him so dismissive of a lot of his catalogue w katie except for ‘love your money’ just because that was the only remotely chart successful song. i get you want to be able to sustain yourself but jeez him and katie really had a weird back and forth relationship

Sorry i'm replying late, i've seen the interview pop up on Youtube but honestly i was too invested in university shit recently & generally not in the good mood for that but i'm planning to watch. How did it change your view on Queen Adreena, did he say something mean specifically on QA or Katie? I mean i gotta watch it but honestly? Not surprised in the slightest. A few years ago he was asked to describe fave songs he recorded throughout the years and he listed more of Daisy Chainsaw ones than anything else, with Love Your Money as number 1. The differences in their points of view are real something, Katie Jane absolutely HATED Love Your Money, same as Daisy Chainsaw. Kinda apparent he wanted bigger fame but DC dropped fast and QA failed to live up to their predictions.

i had a time when i liked to dig up old Queen Adreena interviews that are lost in the old internet & generally not available for years (which i planned to post on is-she-suffering but my investment in that site is... varied in its intensity). Also that was back in the days when i wrote Queen Adreena book during manic phase and tried to sell it but lost motivation Well since i don't do anything with that knowledge anyway i'll put what i know here as i love fan discussions

So they sure had/have odd back and forth love-hate relationship & that's the reason why their career went how it went. There's been a huge tension between them at some point. I'm sure you know she had a major mental breakdown (probably schizophrenic episode) after Daisy Chainsaw, or even beginning before her leaving, and then she went into isolation and lived with an old woman in Lake District for awhile. She left Daisy Chainsaw cause Crispin didn't want her to come up with her own songs (all of DC was by Crispin except for Lovely ugly brutal world by KJ).

They almost split up as Queen Adreena after Drink Me. The material for The Butcher and The Butterfly was written at different times, originally it was meant to be called Atom Bomb at Bikini but it was constantly delaying and they eventually recorded everything they've got live. So that's obvious right? But i was surprised to find out they were writing songs separately. Some of them (i forgot which though) were written by Katie Jane and Pete Howard's sons band (they're even credited) + some with Melanie Garside, Richard Adams + some other musician. Katie Jane didn't like it. They intended it to be their last album at the time. She also hated live at ICA show but they released it cause they were broke

But that's a digression. I just wanna say that at this point they were done with each other but kept pushing it. Katie had her own art projects and stuff, Crispin started Dogbones with Nomi and i just remember how vaguely pissed at Katie he waas in the interviews. Like he stressed that Dogbones is his number one priority and if Katie wants to do something with Queenadreena, she must wait til Dogbones have a break first or something, and it sounded oddly bitter.

RaCH and Djinn era are just so weird, they had opportunities but let them go in a way. I don't think many people know but they were huge demand in Japan. They entered album charts and were interviewed by 11 magazines and 6 (!)TV stations there (wtf happened to that material i want to know???). But they only played 5 times or less.

Katie said she considers the band dead but they decided they can try to play for a couple more months. But aside from that she 100% lost the interest in the band around Djinn. There's an interview where she says "the overall image is Crispin but the shape will change again at rehearsals". And you can hear it, it’s more blues rock than anything. IMO it's their worst production wise. Instruments are fine but Katie's voice is so badly produced that sometimes i find some songs fucking irritating, cause they didn’t cut out her breaths and the vocals are TOO LOUD, to the point of distorting. As if she stands too close to the mic. The album is fine but it feels unfinished.

And here we come back to Crispin... here's what he said after the QA split:

Why the Dogbones started? “I needed to work more than the previous band I was in was working, the previous band who shall remain nameless, haha… um… Queenadreena. I wanted to work more than the singer of Queenadreena wanted to work… so that’s why it started. Fine by me… but I really like to be in a band, I’m not a solo project kind of guy. The last album (‘Djin’) did come out in the UK, but it was so low key because Katie kind of disappeared so there was little point in promoting it. Personally it’s my favourite by far so it was a shame but there you go… So here are Dogbones, it’s not been an easy ride but we are trying very hard.

Ok so the bitterness is kinda apparent isn't it. I think there were two reasons why they argued so much, first musical differences. Katie at some point lost interest in loud rock music for some years and went the folk way in Ruby Throat. I have a theory that Taxidermy and Drink Me are more influenced by Katie Jane and Butcher and Djinn are more Crispin. During first albums i think Katie more actively took part in music composition and choosing arrangements. She wrote lyrics, melodies but also composed a lot of songs on some little electronic keyboard thing and 4 track (Heavenly Surrender, Pray for me, My Silent Undoing, all Lalleshwari +more). Plus she wanted more peaceful/dreamy sound on Taxidermy than full on rock, Crispin complained about it in some 00's interview, that he'd like it to be more rock. Then there are 2 versions of Drink Me, the original has rough and alt versions of songs (it was sold by Katie and it's leaked on FB and probably YT). Crispin Gray apparently really hated the final Drink Me. Now next album is The Butcher & The Butterfly and it's more standard blues rock, no more crazy dreamy things of previous albums etc., Djinn is even more blues rock but darker. Djinn was his favourite at some point while KJ hated Butcher, not sure about Djinn. So i think they had different views on where they should go, Katie made her weird simplistic creepy tunes (like Lalleshwari) and folk melodies adding that strange things to noise rock. Crispin probably wanted blues & rock.

Other than that, i’m convinced they are bitter exes, lol. There’s been rumours about them dating during Daisy Chainsaw for years, plus Katie had a history of dating band members. Crispin wrote X-ing off the days about her. I don’t know if they dated again in Queen Adreena. Then there’s this interview, timeline is unclear, either The butcher & the butterfly or later:

„Katie writes all the songs herself and often looks for melodies and structure with the drummer. With Crispin - her husband or ex-husband, which is not entirely clear to me - for almost three years she has no longer been in a room. "Sometimes we send him a letter with a new song and that's all we can do. All we have are our lungs and our musical talent and we have to do with it. It is repugnant difficult life, I know most of the time how I should deal with it." But Queenadreena will still remain even exist? "I think so, we are now pretty busy and I see where the ship aground.”

I always wondered what exactly happened after Djinn, i’ve seen Katie Jane say „i think they gave up on me” while others said she disappeared. Other times CG said there’s no bad blood between them but at the same time there’s been some weird tension. As of recent i thought they reconnected somehow through the internet and had a good relation but who really knows.s

I get why Crispin gets irritated when people compare everything he does to „stealing from KJ” but honestly, he gave them good reasons, at least in the 90’s. I can believe Starsha Lee singer isn’t copying Katie cause she’s from Brazil or something and she didn’t know Queen Adreena before. But everything else… Crispin’s problem is that he doesn’t know what he wants. He spent 90’s chasing something, tried singing himself, had girl singer replacements and even one KJ copy. Dogbones was ironically his most original non-Katie band, even with all their grunge influences. In a way he wants to be a frontman and at the same time doesn’t. Idk if he’s very controlling, but Daisy Chainsaw shows he valued his songs/lyrics first & in Queen Adreena he had to step back a lot, cause Katie’s condition was she would be in charge of the lyrics. I don’t think he realizes how strongly Daisy Chainsaw issues affected Katie, i mean from her own words you can read that aside from media attention/hate, her being unable to write lyrics had a role in her breakdown. I think she now let go but for years she hated remembering Daisy Chainsaw and she felt kind of worthless cause she was only somebody else’s mouthpiece. I’m not trying to say he’s cruel or anything, but i firmly believe rock lyrics writers should sing their own songs or else there are problems.

They both were writers-composers with different vision and i have impression they struggled a lot while shaping their songs, cause they both stuck to their ideas. Hence 2 versions of Princess Carwash maybe. Katie once said that he „gets terribly upset with her” cause she writes her songs on a simple wind organ and uses a few chord buttons only. Clash of writer ways/personalities/egos and at some point they had to let go.

Maybe he prefers music/bands where he was 100% in control including lyrics (note he wrote/sang some lyrics in Dogbones too). Daisy Chainsaw achieved bigger success US and UK wise as they were offered to play Top of The Pops, and they’re more well liked/remembered by „general alt public”. Queen Adreena however is way more valued as a cult band, with cult following and admiration in UK & France. Most people think Pretty Like Drugs and other QA songs are his best work and he probably finds it irritating cause truth is, he never managed to be more successful than Daisy Chainsaw/Queenadreena. Love Your Money is ironically the least Crispin Gray/DC/QA sounding song in my opinion. I kinda find it irritating that he downplays Queen Adreena cause it was probably his best work in this band but whatever

So yeah sorry for the word spill, that’s what i can think of it right now but as i said, i haven’t watched the interview yet, it’s just this kind of treatment is in a way consistent for him

#asks

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connan-l · 3 years

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All right, so now that I finally digested the final a little I have some random messy thoughts about Fruits Basket 2019. It got really long lol, but this has been stuck in my head for a while so I needed to get it out!

Honestly, it was a very good adaptation and I’m still in awe I was able able to see the whole manga animated. Fruits Basket is pretty important to me, as I read it for the first time when I was around twelve and it was definitely one of the series that impacted me the most — the way it tackles themes of cycle of abuse, loneliness, grief and moving forward still feel very special to me even now (I briefly wrote a post about it months ago after rereading the manga), so of course I was delighted upon hearing the reboot announced and for the most part, it didn’t disappoint. I’d never truly thought I’d be able to see characters like Rin or Machi actually move on screen in my lifetime so in a way it still feel surreal lmao (RIP to Komaki though). It was really refreshing to revisit the story in that way, especially given amusingly enough I am myself in the middle of some big changes in my life where I have to leave things behind so it felt sort of... well, I won’t say empowering per se, but quite encouraging and satisfying to watch Furuba, and especially its final, at this timing, in a way. It wasn’t perfect, there are certainly a lot of flawed directive choices that I question and unfortunately quite some important cut contents — but even at its lowest it stayed all in all good. I’m genuinely a bit stunned there are people who thinks the entire thing is worthless or a failure, because man, I have seen what a bad anime adaptation looks like, and Fruits Basket 2019 definitely isn’t one. Natsuki Takaya herself was clearly very invested and satisfied in that adaptation — I mean, just the fact she drew arts for every single episodes or for the season 3 ending really shows that I think. And while there’s a part of me who will always have a soft spot for the 2001 anime, there’s no contest that the 2019 one is the superior one and more representative of the original manga as a whole.

I believe some people really don’t realize how... uncommon it is to get such a consistently good-looking and complete anime adaptation for a shojo manga? Shojo really aren’t lucky in that prospect usually; they rarely get animated, and when they do they’re usually very bland or outright bad, or they get one short season of like 13 episodes that never receive any follow-ups — even shojo considered like classics tend to get poor treatment, unless they’re Sailor Moon of course or a long-running magical girls franchise like Precure (and even then we could have a discussion about the way Sailor Moon’s treated compared to say Dragon Ball for example, but that’s another topic entirely). So yeah it is quite awesome we were able to get this kind of anime adaptation that covers the full manga with good quality from start to finish, and I am so, so glad it exists and that it managed to revive and makes the series so popular again. (Hopefully its success means we’ll be able to get more good anime adaptation of shojo manga from now on!)

But yeah, that doesn’t mean there wasn’t problems with it and I also understand why some of the manga fans had issues. We were kind of hyped with the fact this would be a complete adaptation and in the end we only got a... sort-of-complete one lol. The art and animation stayed fine during the run (there certainly were some episodes that were uhhh, lacking in that sense, but that’s just how it is sometimes with productions and budget), but I admit I was a bit letdown regarding the direction, where it often seemed… a bit uncreative or heavy-handed. There was some very beautiful and smart shots here and there, but on the whole I really had an issue with the adaptation failing to actually take more ambitious decisions on its visual aspect, especially compared to the pretty pannelling of the manga — and when it did take these decisions it just was… kind of obnoxious and in-your-face, like the show is trying to hold the watcher’s hand (with unnecessary things like Kyo’s father record player derailing or the whole big ropes symbolizing the curse that often slapped you all over the screen, which usually just made me want to roll my eyes because of how annoying it felt.) Multiple people also pointed out the overdramatization of some scenes like the Kyo and Tohru’s confrontation at the end of season 1 or Akito and Ren’s fight which was, indeed, not very good and a weird choice. Fruits Basket is already a pretty dramatic show and these scenes are already intense, there was no need for such over-the-top theatrical display of emotions that only made them comes off as comedic. I’m probably nitpicking here but it also bothered me some characters’ expressions didn’t feel properly retranscribed (Shigure especially, whose characterization depends a lot on that, really suffered from this), or that odd habit of making some big panorama plans instead of focusing on the faces and bodies, which particularly sucks during emotional scenes (like the backgrounds were pretty I guess, but that’s not what was important here lmao).

Also that might be just a personal thing, but can I point out that the openings were pretty disappointing to me... They're not bad, but they all looked so... bland. The songs are fine but the rest feel so uninspired and it's kind of sad... I dunno, I wasn't asking for much but I just think they could've done more than just scrolling each character looking vaguely melancholic or making them walk randomly one after another :/ The endings have at least pretty illustrations and I'm okay with them (I liked what they did with Kyoko’s photo in season 3 too), but the OPs kind of feel as if they ran out of budget and ideas for them or something. I kind of feel the same with the OST as well, where they’re generally fine but were a bit lackluster, and sometimes… they were kind of played at bad times? I remember the Rin episode in season 2 were the music felt a bit out of place and took me out of the immersion, which is a shame cause it was otherwise a pretty good episode. But that might just be a me-thing here lol. The voice actors were awesome though! (The Japanese ones, at least, I didn’t watch any other dubs). I’ve said it before but special kudos to Maaya Sakamoto cause damn she’s so perfect as Akito, and Shimazaki as Yuki and Toyosaki as Rin truly delivered too. I didn’t know Manaka Iwami at all but I was really impressed by her Tohru, especially in season 3 — she really was good at capturing her character’s subtle emotional turmoils (I think she makes a better Tohru than Yui Horie too, although I admit I missed Horie a little lol.)

Anyway, on the topic of lack of ambition, that might be an unpopular opinion but there’s also the fact that I’m sad they didn’t actually... try to change or add more original scenes. By which I mean, obviously we had some changes, but not ones that were really interesting (when they’re not actively detrimental to the story). For example, I was really hoping that we’d be able to get at least one original episode focused on Ritsu (and Mitsuru too why not) in season 2 or 3, or on Kagura or Kisa; I dunno, it would’ve been a good occasion to give something more to the characters that got sidelined in the original manga, or add some moments that would’ve been nice to develop like about Akito post-cliff confrontation, but we never got that. And well, that makes sense now that we know they seemingly had an episode restriction (at least on season 3), but, yeah, that’s still a shame. Honestly in the end Ritsu’s character made even less sense in the anime, because like, it was nice they tried to adapt his introduction episode so that it feels less “you have to adapt to gender norms to feel better about yourself,” (the gender non-confirmity is definitely one of the bits that aged the less well in FB) but then they still made him cut off his hair and give his feminine clothes to Kagura at the end so why lol. (And speaking of his episode introduction, I dislike that they cut off his conversation with Tohru after the suicide attempt, not only for Ritsu but also for Tohru cause it is one of the small instances bringing up her issues that is set up early on and that is crucial to her, but I’ll come back to this later.)

And now about the biggest problem to me being, the cut content and episodes rearangement. So, just so we’re clear, I definitely don’t think an anime adaptation needs to be a page-by-page adaptation of the manga to be good. Every decent adaptation needs to have changes, and the ones that tries to just follow the source material without any heart often tend to get pretty bad. So changes are good! Cut content are needed sometimes. But in Furuba 19, it really... wasn’t the case.

And the most unfortunate thing being that the one suffering the most from this is the show’s main character herself, Tohru.

So, obviously other characters also got done dirty by this; Yuki and Machi’s relationship was so incredibly shifted in the background and rushed it’s almost funny. I’m one of the people who thinks that, while I do think they’re cute, I definitely agree on the fact their relationship was a bit underdeveloped in the manga — and that Machi’s character especially suffered as a result by being a bit reduced to just "Yuki’s love interest" when she was a character with so much more to offer (and as a whole I also tend to agree with the fact that Yuki probably didn’t need a romance at all and that his arc is more meaningful while focusing on his platonic relationships, but that’s another topic entirely) — but man, if the manga already underdevelopped them, then ohhh boy, the anime just completely dropped the ball. It feels very odd because to me it seemed like season 2 was taking their time with setting them up, so if they knew they had only 13 episodes for season 3 then they should’ve started the changes there; instead we got 1 nice Yuki/Machi/Kakeru episode, and then it’s like "Yep, they’re in love, just trust me." (It does makes me wonder if season 3 wasn’t originally supposed to be longer but then got restrained because of budget or covid or something…) Kakeru also very much suffered because of them cutting off his girlfriend and his complicated relationship with Tohru… Now, to be honest, I’ve always found the Kakeru/Komaki/Tohru subplot pretty... contrived and useless, and Komaki’s not so much a character more than a device for Kakeru’s development, but it does have some good moments relevant to the story’s themes (I like the ‘‘you can’t play suffering olympics with people’s pain’’morale) and it is important to his character (and Komaki is cute, I admit), so it was still sad they shafted it entirely. (Also I kind of like the tense relationship between Tohru and Kakeru. The fact they both seem to not appreciate each other even afterwards feel sort of refreshing even if it’s never explored unfortunately orz.) I was still surprised they didn’t actually try to make a Komaki cameo at the end? Cause I think it would’ve fitted and Kakeru’s girlfriend had already been mentioned in season 2 but... for some reason they... didn’t. (Mayyybe we’ll get an OAV like with Kyoko and Katsuya? Who knows.)

One scene that was skipped/rearranged that I’m very bitter over is the whole Tohru/Kagura confrontation and Kagura/Rin scene — it might not seem like much, but the moment of Tohru refusing to forgive Kagura is very important, and I was pretty annoyed they turned Rin’s trauma response to Kagura’s violence and her subsequent apology/hug to a gag, it legit felt tasteless. The Tohrin scene they removed at the very end too was frustating; it was great they managed to fit in the "Rin doesn’t want to forgive Akito" bit at least (I was afraid they’d cut it off entirely), but it was so essential for her to say to Tohru, not to Haru and Momiji (plus the way they put it in felt very random and awkwardly placed there, when they were initially talking about Tohru before orz). OH AND the Akito/Hana friendship too! Yeah I know it’s not a Big deal but I absolutely love the little glimpses of their friendship and it’s very important to me so I’m disappointed over them not including the ‘Ah-chan’ scene… (It was kind of weird that the show sort-of implied Hana and Kazuma got together too cause that’s… not the vibe at all from the manga… oh well.)

Most people I’ve seen generally only bring up season 3 regarding the cuts/rearangement because it’s the most obvious and the biggest offender, but I personally think there were already problems with season 2 and 1. At first glance I didn’t have much issue with some of the rearrangement, because early Furuba can indeed be pretty episodic, but thinking back on it as a whole I think it might’ve been better to leave some stuff, like Hana and Uo’s episodes for example, to season 2 (I do wonder if they did this specifically so the reboot would offer original content and differ from 2001 early on...) and cut off other not-so-important things from S1 & S2 — because as a result season 2 kind of suffer a bit by being The Yuki Season, which, for as much as I love Yuki, did end up being a bit annoying and made his development feel less natural and gradual, as well as the fact it sidelined the other characters a little and left them with not much conclusion in its final. So this added to how much they ended up cutting in season 3, it makes the show as a whole feels really unequal. I think they did overall a good job in season 3 with what they had, and they really nailed some of the dramatic and Kyoru moments (the sheets scene, cliff confrontation and post-hospital confession were practically perfect), but it is a shame that it ended up as an extremely marathoned emotional roller-caster rather than a more well-paced watch that we would’ve had if it had been 20 or so episodes. (I know others argued that season 3 was what it was because there wasn’t enough content left to cover for 22 or 24 episodes, but I disagree and even if there weren’t, it would’ve been the perfect occasion to add original episodes then. But I think it was more of a budget and Covid issue personally.)

But anyway, all of this isn’t actually what I’m the most annoyed with (and YES that’s a already a lot lmao), those are stuff I can live with, but like I said earlier the most problematic is what they cut off from Tohru’s character. And that indeed includes her parents’ backstory.

So, just so I get this out of the way; yes, I do understand why people were relieved to not see Kyoko and Katsuya’s relationship play out on screen, and yes the age gap and teacher-student thing is creepy and I do kind of wish it hadn’t been written that way. (Though I was a bit amused by people who thought we didn’t get the backstory because of the questionable age gap when, uh... you know I very much doubt the anime industry has an issue with that. Like, to start with, we wouldn’t have had Uo and Kureno’s romance if that was the case (even if Uo and Kureno is less problematic, it’s still the same basis of a underage high school girl/20+ adult man relationship), and second there was a literal romcom anime about a high school girl and an adult man that was broadcasted at the same time as Furuba season 3 lmao. So nah, it wasn’t there the problem to them, it was just time and episode restriction, which was pretty much confirmed with the announcement of the OAV focused on them.)

So, Kyoko and Katsuya is definitely Problematic and I agree on their relationship being uncomfortable; however, I’m a bit baffled that people were literally cheering on not having that part in the show, because it is... it is not just like a small bit of family trivia, it is Extremely important and actively essential to Tohru’s character and Fruits Basket’s themes and narrative as a whole. It’s very important to understand Kyoko’s character, of course; to humanize her and finally present her as a very flawed person and not just the idealized mother that Tohru project upon her, and it is extremely important simply to understand Tohru herself as well; to understand where her way of thinking, her trauma and attitude stems from, and this in a way that just isn’t possible to see with the little fragments of that flashback we got or the bits of Kyo and Kyoko’s interactions.

See, Tohru’s character is principally constructed around two things; her grief over her mother and her almost-pathological selflesness and people-pleaser needs that comes from her abandonment issues and loneliness, and her arc is very much about letting go of both of these things and finally moving forward and letting her life change. There’s this perception of Tohru I see sometimes that she’s not a very interesting character especially compared to others like Yuki or Kyo, or that she ‘‘stays the same kindhearted, naive girl from start to finish,’’ and while I deeply disagree with this I know where it comes from. The thing with Tohru is that she is firstly an extremely emotionally repressed character, and so a lot of her depth and development is made through small, gradual details scattered throughout the manga. It’s done in such a way that except for some obvious scenes those small, apparently insignificant moments are easy to miss or disregarded, and unfortunately it is a lot of these details that the 2019 anime cut, or rearanged in a way that feel less impactful or makes less sense; such as, like I pointed out earlier, her conversation with Ritsu after his suicide attempt. As I’ve seen others point out, this result in altering Tohru’s portrayal and rendering her character mostly about her romance, undercutting and downplaying all of her small, subtle character moments and developments, and miss a bit the second part of the story where the narrative actively challenge the ‘savior/therapist/mom’ that other characters and Tohru herself projected upon her.

And as a result it also means undermining things like her parallel and relationship to Akito, which idealistically should’ve been slowly built up throughout the last season but because of how rushed season 3 was in the end felt a little flat. (Akito’s character in general had some issues also because of the unequal pacing and rearranged scenes, though admittedly I think this was also an issue present in the original manga.) Kyo’s character and his romance with Tohru is the one element that managed to get out of this mostly unscathed (although Kyo also does suffer a bit from it), but because of what was removed from Tohru’s character it still inevitably impacted them by making their characters as individuals lacking. It’s not like it is a complete failure, mind you; I think the anime at least did a decent job at showing Tohru is Not Okay even at the beginning in season 1 (they certainly did a better job at it than the 2001 one lol) and managed to roughly portray her issues well enough overall, but it is just… lacking in the subtlety and nuances that, to me, makes her character and writing really special and unique.

(This post explains what I’ve tried to say here in a much more eloquent and better way that I ever could, and this all put into perspective what I basically love so much about Tohru and Fruits Basket in general.)

And, you know, it would’ve been sad but comprehensible with any other character, but here we’re talking about the story’s literal protagonist, which is why it is the part of the adaptation that makes me feel the most bitter. Tohru and her story is truly amazing and well-written, the thing I was looking forward to the most with this reboot — and while I do understand the episode restriction and I do believe they still did their best with what they had — her arc still deserved to receive a full proper adaptation, not a kind-of-half one.

So, yes, I am at least glad they’ll adapt Kyoko and Katsuya’s story in OAV, but the fact that it will never be included in the actual main narrative is still actively detrimental to it, and it will never have the same effect that if it had been played out before the Kyoru sheets scene where it should’ve been. (I hope they also won’t cut the fact that their story is narrated by Kyo, because that is also a very important detail for both Kyo and the story, but I have the feeling they will…)

Welp, that was quite a long, messy rambling. Not sure if anyone will actually read all of it but if you did then congrats lol. I feel in the end I’ve been really harsh and negative with the reboot… I do love it a lot! If someone asked me I would wholeheartedly recommend it (though I guess I would still argue to read the manga first if you really want to experience the story in all its nuances). I think they truly did an impressive job — even with season 3, which a lot of its episodes were beautifully done and did make me tear up a few times lol. I’m just sad it couldn’t actually offer a better, more nuanced delivery of the story’s depths and of one of my favorite manga protagonists that means a lot to me. But that’s an adaptation that so many fans wanted for years and I’m happy and grateful it’s here cause Fruits Basket deserved at least that much!

#Fruits Basket #Fruits Basket (2019)#Long Post #Connan's Ramblings #Text #Fruits Basket Anime

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marzipanandminutiae · 4 years

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a bit of an explanation

if you came to my blog from the Historybounding FB group, welcome! I am also in that group, and I was very flattered by all the attention

there seems to be some debate around my post, so let me clarify a few points:

I am a woman. A few people wondered about that. Specifically I’m a white, cis lesbian in my late 20s.

I am not fat. Some folks mentioned hiding from fat-shaming as a reason they thought I wore historical clothing. Not so much. I’m not model-skinny, either- 4′11″ and between 110 and 120 pounds depending on the day. I do have a fairly curvy butt and proportionally large hips, which (as I mentioned) sometimes draw unwanted male attention.

This is also relevant because someone pointed out that fat women often struggle with the opposite societal message, being urged to cover their bodies as much as possible instead of show them off. That’s a great point! The discussion around fashion, oppression, and empowerment is highly nuanced, and multiple points of view must be considered.

I do historical costuming for the love of it. Trust me, nobody spends this much on silk just to hide their body. This is a purely elective hobby that I get a lot of joy from. I feel attractive and confident in the clothes I make- and Victorian stuff is pretty form-fitting to the upper body. I’m not doing this to escape the patriarchy or anything like that. I noticed that hiding my lower half with skirts made me, personally feel more empowered, but only as a fringe benefit.

I don’t hate my body. It’s an excellent body. I even think it’s a good-looking body. Anyone who says otherwise can go suck eggs. I just feel more comfortable presenting that body in certain ways in public.

I know empowerment looks different for different women. I did mention that in the post. If your best life involves crop tops and booty shorts, go for it. Godsspeed. All my applause and hearty good wishes to you. The post was just about how I, individually, feel the most comfortable, beautiful, and in control. And what bugs me about the modern fashion industry.

One person said that women should feel empowered to show off their bodies, and THAT’S the real way to stick it to the patriarchy. I must confess, that rubbed me the wrong way. Women should feel empowered to have choices. Remember being 11 in 2004 and unable to find children’s jeans that weren’t low-rise? I do. For me, it’s been a constant push to be “sexier” since early adolescence. Your empowerment is not my empowerment, and vice versa- and that’s okay!

I acknowledge that the past was not paradise. No “born in the wrong era” here. I like voting, antibiotics, and being able to legally marry for love. But progress isn’t always linear or universal, and just as the fashion industry of the 19th century had its issues, we have ours today.

Anyway. Welcome, and I hope you enjoy the blog!

EDIT: Forgot one

Sexual harassment is never the victim’s fault, nor contingent on what they wear. I mentioned that tight-fitting modern clothing makes me uncomfortable because of male attention (in part) and that one time I retired an outfit temporarily because a guy at work was being a creep about it. That does NOT MEAN that I dress primarily to avoid sexual harassment, nor that I think any particular garments justify or prevent said harassment. I have been sexually harassed in a Victorian ball gown, and jeans, and a sundress, and pajamas. Absolutely the only way to stop it is to address the root cause: misogyny. The post was not intended to be prescriptive- again, it’s only about how something makes me, personally, feel.

#long post

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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Big mail providers block indie mailing lists

There's lots of reasons for the renaissance in "newsletters" (what we used to call moderated mailing lists), but top of the list was the realization by all kinds of companies, organizations and individuals that trusting Google or Facebook was a very bad bet.

Google delivered the first warning shot when it started shuttering its social networking tools based on inscrutable business logic.

But FB showed us the worst endgame when it deployed algorithms that located vibrant "fan pages" and dialed down their ability to reach subscribers who'd asked to see updates; then approached those neutered page owners with offers to "boost their reach" for pay.

Allowing a Big Tech company to hold your customers hostage was obviously a losing bet. But thankfully, there's one major, federated platform left online, the original one: email.

By switching to email to communicate with stakeholders, businesses, orgs and individuals could insulate themselves from the arbitrary decisions of Big Tech execs whose indifference or greed had destroyed so many successful, hard-built lists.

And what's more, a raft of companies - Mailchimp and its competitors - sprang up to help these companies run their lists. But these companies leave a lot to be desired, starting with their widespread deployment of "read receipts" and other privacy-invading tricks.

And then there's their role in enabling a bunch of toxic behavior (I've unsubscribed from hundreds of Mailchimp lists, but I never signed up for any of them, and the company won't tell me which other lists I'm on and let me unsubscribe from them, too).

But running a moderated mailing-list isn't rocket science. If you operate your own mail-server, you can set up a free/open list-management tool like Mailman in minutes.

Email is federated, right? So you don't need to pay Big Tech or a spying, spammy mailing list company.

Well...

Email is much more federated in practice than it is in reality.

Most of us get our email from one of a few giant email providers - Google, Apple, or our ISPs, like AT&T and its myriad subsidiaries - as well as secret rules for selecting blocking or passing email means that sending mail from your own mailserver is harder than it's ever been.

I've been running my own mailserver since the 20th century (more accurately, Ken Snider has run one for me!).

I routinely find that I can't exchange email with people because their mail provider has blacklisted my mailserver for looking spammy, despite the fact that the server has one user, me. I admit that I live in email, but I don't send THAT much.

For example, AT&T - and its subsidiaries - blocked email from my server for FIVE YEARS, despite calls, emails, and public shaming on Twitter and elsewhere.

Needless to say, spam is still alive and well (and inspiring even more onerous, secretive mail procedures).

Now, I have a newsletter, the plura-list. It's a small, cozy thing that I started in January as a way of getting the threads I post to Twitter (and mirror to my blog, Pluralistic.net) in a single daily email.

https://mail.flarn.com/mailman/listinfo/plura-list/

This weekend, I lost every single subscriber who had used a Mac.com, Me.com, or other Apple-controlled mail provider.

Why? Because Apple had been rejecting email from my server after an algorithm flagged it as spam.

(It's not spam. The list uses a double opt-in where you have to sign up and then click a link that's sent to your email).

Now, if you get bounces from a mailserver and don't unsubscribe the bouncing account, there's a good chance the mailer will block you as a spammer.

So after my mailing list manager saw a bunch of bounces from Apple's mailservers, it kicked every Apple user out automatically.

Which raises the question, why did Apple start bouncing my emails?

That's not clear, but the best guess is that some subscribers didn't open their emails for several consecutive days, which caused Apple to assume that the list was spam, and start to bounce ALL messages sent to ALL Apple users.

There are ways around this. I could sign up with Mailchimp or one of its rivals - companies that have done deals with the big mail services to treat their email as non-spam. Or I can dial the number of bounces before unsubscribe way up (and risk being blocklisted for that!).

I'm manually resubbing all those Apple users today (which has its own email death-penalty risk), and if you are a subscriber and want to ensure that the mail isn't blocked, you can add the list address ([email protected]) to your address book.

In the early days of the spamwars, open internet advocates warned that making it harder to send mail would lead to concentration and monopolization of the original federated channel, and that it would drive professionalization among spammers.

Which is exactly where we've landed.

#pluralistic

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zanguntsu · 4 years

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what are ur thoughts on each bleach arc o: like quality wise!

oh boy this got longer than expected. Whoops.

substitute arc: i rlly like this arc! its short but i love how it sets up the characters and i adore the integration between ichigos human life vs shinigami life And i like the monster of the week set up its a fun and its a lot more character focused in the beginning. the fights were very character driven, like with grand fisher, sora, the hollow that went to hell. all the fights felt like they had a meaning that had a strong impact on a character, like ichigo having closure after defeating (he should have killed him tbh) grand fisher.

soul society: one of the best if not the best arcs imo. theres a good amount of development, the fights are good and have emotional weight (ichigo v byakuya, uryu v mayuri, chad v shunsui, yoruichi v soi fon) and the newly introduced characters are interesting! very iconic and cool! there was a lot of character arc conclusions? Closure? like with uryu and yoruichi as well as rukia. the characters are a strong point here too and the introduction of soul society brought in world building and it was something we really needed to see. soul society as the villains was pretty good and it did show them as a threat. its a good arc and had a good cliffhanger ending to the next arc

arrancar arc: its a pretty good arc but this is where i feel like bleach was starting to fall off in quality since kubo didnt plan for the series to go past ss. like the plot was a little repetitive with the rescue arc the placing was pretty bad and its where the kubos problem of having too many characters started forming. there are some pretty good moments though, i really love the ichigo vs grimmjow and ichigo vs ulquiorra fights along with rukia vs aaroniero (rukia development time,,). the arc just felt pretty slow at times ig? But there are some very good moments

fake karakura arc/deicide: i like this arc even though i know half of it was bullshit. there are some good fights, soi fon vs barragan is one of my faves bc her bankai and it was just interesting to see the captains more involved even though i wish they didnt just stand there. like cmon the fate of the world is at stake gang up on ppl u have numbers. i do think its bullshit to have aizen be That powerful (i will excuse the hogyoku use bc thats his trump card and was set up) but having him take down everyone like that was eh. like i know it was meant to show how powerful aizen was but honestly i wish there was a better way. maybe make them all fight amongst each other like with momo but its all mind games and shit i feel like that was a better way of showing how strong aizen was. also speaking of aizen i wish there was more character to him like take away his manipulative badass thing and its just nothing. what drives him to kill the soul king and why? was it loneliness (which is a poor motive tbh), injustice? what brought him on this path? i feel like tousens goals had more to it then aizen tbh

the deicide arc was pretty okay i love mugetsu but im sorry there was absolutely no lead up to him. i love that form but its pretty bullshit that it didnt get as much as a mention in the past and i wish it did bc that would have made mugetsu have a lot more impact. i remember how ppl theorized that it was how isshin lost his powers even though it was proven otherwise but i wish they went with that. but i did like seeing zangetsu again and that touching moment with him and ichigo was good also the rukia and ichigo goodbye was very emotional. was it a good arc? maybe not plot wise but its pretty beloved

fullbringer: oh this is where the quality definitely dropped which sucks because i feel like this arc had a very interesting premise and plot set up. i know that i havent watched/read all of the fb arc but i do know enough of it just not much in between the beginning and end. i wish that the fullbringers had more focus bc they were all forgettable except maybe riruka and they should have had more screentime and the concept of fullbringers is genuinely interesting?? humans with hollow powers is a good concept and its a shame kubo didnt expand upon this more

oh and i have some beef with the villains bc its a fucking tragedy of wasted potential. ginjo is like. almost there to be considered a good villain. hes the previous substitute shinigami and u only bring it up at the end?? thats such a huge chunk of information and it sets up a connection between ichigo and ginjo. idc about tsukishima he can be whatever but i do think ginjo could have been a pretty good villain if he wasnt as blatantly evil. like i know the betrayal schtick is getting old but i would have preferred him as a villain with good intentions, like having him against soul society is a good motive bc ss commits war crimes but it was never clear in this arc (aside from ss monitering the substitutes) but it just didnt feel as strong as a motive to make him do what he did.

one good thing i do have to say about this arc was i do like ichigo in this arc and how much conflict he experiences and we get to see him commit murder although i do wish this had repercussions on him. i feel like soul society’s intervention was unnecessary but thats just me. the fullbringer arc being centered around humans was a good idea, bringing the series back to its roots and i just wish we spent more developmemt with the humans before jumping back to soul society, like more time on the aftermath of the last arc. also this arc should have been the chad arc im dying on this hill.

tybw: wow! this was a trainwreck of an arc! i have. So Many issues with tybw and its where kubos writing weaknesses truly shine. the biggest issues are its pacing which is absolutely abhorrent and it takes up at least a third of the entire series (literally. tybw had 206 chapters out of 686 since tybw officially starts on 480). we had periods where the main cast dont show up for like. 50 chapters. the other biggest problem were the characters. why did kubo think it was a good idea to introduce 26+ characters. why. there is absolutely no time to develop them and while some may receive screentime the majority have no impact to the plot beyond their fights with the characters we actually care about. there is no reason for people to give a shit about them. i can barely remember their names, much less their backstories

and one of the bigger problems was the antagonists themselves. they have a motive and while i understand hatred towards soul society. yhwach’s motives were the worst out of all the villains. i cannot fathom what motivates him because it went fucking everywhere. did he have beef with ss? was he waging war out of self preservation? did he want to end death? like the narrative hints at all of these but it just feels like a mess of a character! i never liked yhwach to begin with since his very concept is awful (seriously? giving a previously thought group of people who experienced genocide a nazi motif? what the fuck kubo). hes a villain but theres no substance. his powers could have been cool but it was on the point of needing a deus ex machina to take him down.

and the fights are forgettable with the occasional good ones (shunsui v that one fuck, rukia v that other fuck) but there are some bad fights (askin v yoruichi, the quincy thor guy). there are some good moments, like all the bankai reveals, it adds more to the characters but it also causes so much jumping around in the plot and this is what happens when u have this many characters and some will be forgotten (so sorry chad). it sucks. some of the fights dragged on longer than necessary and it was just. so much. all of these issues really downgraded the arc and thats what made it the mess it was.

and a lot of the ideas brought in to tybw are criminally underused. ichigo being a quincy may have been wack but i did like the idea but it really only had some sparse moments like masaki and zangetsu development, creating a connection between ichigo and yhwach but that was really it. it was not like his hollow powers which coexisted with the plot and had huge moments and was just a constant presence. you could forget that ichigo was a quincy tbh and we needed more quincy moments. and the soul king was horribly underused because it did have set up from the arrancar arc, it was aizens entire goal! but kubo never really explores the ideas of the soul king and only in cfyow do we really get more info about it and thats no good because the soul king is a vital piece of bleach lore and worldbuilding.

anyways thats my two cents sorry this was rlly long

#ask #anon #sorry this was more of an essay #i just have a lot of feelings about this laundrey detergent show 😔#ramble tag #long post #nazi mention #its brief but i hate the vandenreich so

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shesawriter39049 · 5 years

Text

BTS -HS-HEADCONS

(Slightly NSFW ) ..JUST A LIL

Mkay ..disclaimer this is all in good FUN, I’m also a fellow 94 liner, so if the boys were in the US, we would’ve been in HS together!

This is Obv very Westernized and I’m writing this as if they aren’t the art school AU’s people typically write

(EDITED 8/5/2020)

Jimin-

-A whole thot thot, I mean don’t get me wrong he’s a total sweetheart but he’s still a walking thirst trap, no cap, no filter! He’s kinda ”famous” on social media(Prob like 15-20k) Snap, IG, FB, you name it...for some reason he always seems to work out shirtless. LOVES to take pics so you KNOW he worked out shirtless!

-Please don’t let any form of R&B play at a party...It’s a wrap, what you tryin to see? Some grind work? A little hip roll action? You want a lap dance? Tongue out and all! The Asian alllll the black girls girls love(Obviously not just black girls but lets be real..it takes a certain...appeal..and Jimin has it!)

- Gives off that whole “My dad owns, about 5 nail salons and beauty supplies in the hood” kinda vibe! (Meaning hes comfortable around different walks of life,he doesn't feel out of place easily, hes the type of person that everybody can gravitate towards) The boy has swag and he knows it…got everybody from Megan to Brian thirsty as all hell!

-Will win best hair his senior year..without a doubt, well if he doesn't fry it first!... Looks like a walking Pantene commercial, yes, more so because he can’t go two seconds without running his fingers through his scalp!

-KING of subtle shade...knows all the tea but acts like he doesn't as he slowly sips his Starbucks. The type to honestly forget he’s told 3 different girls they could wear his jersey/Letterman jacket! Until they all text him Thursday night ....

-A jock that’s cool with everybody! The type to cuss out his fellow athletes that are total dick wads and bully people... I feel like he’d be a damn good running back, he has the right height a muscle build up for it.

-Owns a pair of buffs, don't lie to yourself you know you could see it too...wears skinny jeans with Timberland's 😒, still wears 3878374 rings. Believe it or not he gives me like Tilly’s/Zumiez/PacSun vibes!

-Drives a red obnoxiously loud scat pack that’s tinted way past the legal shade! He drifts on the weekends. Jimin would be your local plug IDC,IDC,IDC...LOL I said what I said, got a whole eighter hiding in a fake bottle of orange juice!

- Just flirting his way through high school living his best life… will fuck someone up if need be, has a slight temper, sassy as hell, can roll his eyes with the best of them. ”Would it be ...too extra if I changed outfits and dates during the dance?..Serious question guys! ”

- He’d be the one that all the girls say gives the best head ...I mean..those lips..that tongue..HELLO! Stroke game on point...I feel like he’d have no filter when it comes to talking about sex publicly. No shame, loves to tease you, at the worst times, down to sneak off to the bathroom, or the janitors closet! Will bend you over behind the bleachers after they win a football game...if your down...gang, gang!

Namjoon-

-An Asian with light skin tendencies ...the one that low key may think he’s black (I’m joking!! lmao,,,maybe)

-He’s that one person that legitimately everyone likes...no matter how hard you may try..you just can’t dislike him!

-He actually is class president!

-Hangs out with all the basketball players and has the freshest Jordans..but can’t hoop! He’s on the school newspaper..writes the sports column...is still that free spirit telling you to live your best damn life.

-Either looks like he’s going to a business meeting or like he just picked out damn near everything from Champs there’s no in between!

-Makes and sells beats on the side, would also have a strong social media presence! He’s be the type to have a ton of followers on Sound Cloud and Spotify!

-The type to try and talk is way into and or around everything “I understand hats are against the wardrobe but I’m just trying to express myself and I think it’s right to give everybody self expression” Wears glasses, though none of us really know if he needs them forreal forreal…. Wears a snowman on his wrist (A big iced out watch).

-Drives a white BMW 430, puts cones around his car in the parking lot..Yoongi and Jimin kick the cones...faithfully..everyday!

-Don’t let his niceness fool you, will cook your ass in the blink of an eye if need be! Prefers a good verbal situation though, the king of a good word battle will have you all types of trying to check the dictionary to understand what he just said! Got you standing there like a misplaced student in honors English…

- If shit get’s physical well..we can’t let the president fight soo...he’ll call Yoongi or Jimin to handle it for him…. Because...well his Jay’s are brand new..and only 10 other people have them...sooooo..OR maybe it’s lowkey because he can’t fight all that well...baby’s not coordinate OKAY!? Don’t @ me!

-Oophfff daddy long leg! Lmao nah but you know he’d be the one...the one that every girl says he’s packin..and he is...He’d be little more reserved..and modest when it comes to his skills but he’s damn sure not shy! Would deff skip lunch, for a quickey at the park..yes the park.....would leave for lunch in a suit...come back in some joggers....real subtel....

Yoongi -

-The unexpected jock ...the one who can kick your entire ass in basketball, one of the stars on the team! Shooting Guard, has a championship ring from every year he’s played!

-Picks and chooses when he wants to be social. Just judge his mood based on his face that day!

-DJ’s every party and school event. Often gets into trouble for not playing the clean versions of songs!

-He’s on the morning broadcast with Jimin and Jin...also forgets to censor himself. I.E “Peter Pan opened last night and it sucked actual ass!”

-Lowkey highkey funny AF, king of sarcasm and one liners!

-Purposely owns an old school Chevelle instead of a new car, also drifts on the weekends.

- Lives in like the flyest loungewear...joggers, hoodies,Jays..doesn't look like he tried but still looks bomb AF.

-Another one that will creep up on you when it comes to his skill in bed, the one that girls say there surprised with how passionate and attentive he is! In contrast to how hard his exterior can be, the type to take his time and make sure your more than satisfied….

-Always, ALWAYS has his headphones in, lives and breathes music! He raps on the side, competes in underground competitions, and win’s without even trying! Refuses to ever participle in the schools talent show because he can’t swear therefore they are hindering his creative flow!

-Constantly looks like he’d rather cut his own testie off than be “here” right now.

-Will walk out if you don't let him go to the bathroom when he feels like it, actually he’ll just walk out period…”Yoongi where are you going!?” .

“Oh I need another espresso shot before I sit through this extremely falsely sugarcoated reality of how Columbus “discovered” a place that was already there!”

Jimin: “Aww man, sit down I got you! I was just about to have Pizza Hut sent to the office, you wanna add into my postmates order!!?”

😩😂😂😂...I canttttt ..maybe I’ll do the other four!? Again all in good fun!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I often wonder what the boys would be like if they were born in the states. Then I realize the lack of filter they’d all have especially JIMIN and I’m grateful for the cultural differences that come with them being Korean born !

UPDATE- 7/29...I think I might turn these headcons into a lil sum sum...writing these reminded me that I actually enjoyed HS (For me my “shitty” period was like elementray and part of middle school) But I made HS my bitch, and had so much damn fun lol !

7/30- PART 1

#jimin #jimin smut #jimin headcanon #namjoon #namjoon smut #namjoon headcanon #yoongi #yoongi smut #yoongi headcon #bts #bts smut #bts high school au #bts au #bts headcon #kpop headcons #jimin hs #park jimin #kim namjoon #min yoongi

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lockdownuk · 4 years

Text

Lockdown Diary Part 2

A personal account during the lockdown in the UK due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

23/03/2020 8:30pm Boris Johnson, UK Prime Minister, gives a live address to the nation to, effectively, put the country on lockdown to stem the spread of the deadly coronavirus strain, Covid-19.

Many of us have been self-isolating for days but this latest development within the UK in reaction to the pandemic feels very serious and very scary. I decided to keep a simple diary and where better but online.

Day 31: I went to Tesco’s at Hampton at @8pm. It was weird. But I made it less weird by buying (amongst all the legit stuff I needed and some stuff for Karen’s mum) more booze. I have, atm about 30 assorted cans and 60 assorted bottles. I’m gonna stop buying booze now until I’m down to the last dozen. I don’t want owt to happen and I leave many behind!

Day 32: More than a calender month! I was rung up by a recruitment agent today about a contract with DHL as a remote support engineer to their aviation section. €400 a day! I’ve applied. Few beers tonight, watching a new Netflix release (Extraction) and catching up with Fog, Ham, Andy and Rog later at 10:30pm - yikes, might be pissed.

Day 33: Typing this on day 34. Dossed around during the day, few beers and another video call with fog, Ham and Rig plus I invited John Monk along. He was his usual self and signed off from the call with a moonie! Later on I had the pleasure of Scottish Louise video calling me! She was pissed, in her shed drinking den at her home with some neighbour called Ronnie and her daughter Ellie. She was her usual outrageous self who imaprted such gems as “Tim, you look old” and “Roger on coke is the only time I’ve taken it up the arse”. Nice.

Day 34: Today I skyped Laurie and ‘met’ Matthew and Nicholas for the first time. It was bloody fantatsic. Janine was there as well.I cannot believe it takes lockdown (plus an idea to get Laurie to add me to his regular Monday skype chat with Dad) that managed to get us doing something that should have happened years ago! It was so great to talk to them all face-to-face. Janine hasn’t changed a bit, Matthew is very quiet with Nicholas being the more gregorious twin. And Laurie is still Laurie. I’m reminded of how much I sort of miss him! It was all so comfortable. I loved it! Tomorrow is Dad’s 85th hence the 3-way chat idea. I hope it comes off!

Day 35: So dad and Laurie and I skyped. It was OK but my video feed was very dark, (still dunno why) and Lauire’s kept freezing. I dropped out so as to leave them to it, my thinking being the extra person takes up bandwidth, with the promise I’d call dad later. Before I could, Rita called me and suggested Dad and I skype, which we did. So, all in all, a good day of comms! And Dad seems his happy usual self - 85 years old! Amazing.

Day 36: I am really struggling to motivate myself this week. Today, I’ve done fuck all of note. That is all.

Day 37: A similar day to yesterday. All I have really managed to do is lay down audio from Pink Floyd (Absolutely Curtains) to a video I shot of a cow on yesterday’s walk. I am having a downer of a week without any good reason why, ld aside. I have worn my new walking boots today (’cos my old ones are leaking, I found out yesterday) and they fucking hurt, despite having tried to wear them in for months, albeit pathetically. Also, a few days ago (Friday 24th April), I got notification from HM Revenue & Customs that I’m getting tax rebate (from 2018-19) of £392. Yay!

Day 38: I received notification today that I’ve got a speeding ticket…last Thursday back from Tesco’s - 87mph somewhere between the A1 and Elton. I am hoping it’s a fixed penalty. I dunno whether it is yet, I just have to send the form off confirming it’s my car and I was driving. I spoke with Lynda from Woodfords asking her to ask for a rent reduction before I sign for another year. Plus, I let her know that I will be Howard and Sue’s eyes as the look at rental properties in Oundle - I do hope they return although it would be a shame for them that their plans have been scuppered (she’s lost her job in Oz due to Covid-19)

Day 39: Today I started another piece of exercise - up and down the stairs 26 times. Not sure why 26 - it was some thing online to do with the London Marathon, I think. It fucking killed. I used 13 clothes pegs for a counting system. I asked Karen to pick up some stuff when she was shopping (burgers, radishes) - Dan dropped them off, He was with Shaggy (driving his van) and going to see Jonah. That pisses me off - they should be social distancing, ffs.

Discoevered, today, that Cornershop, post-Brinful are fucking excellent. listening to the album ‘England is a Garden’ as I type.

Day 40: That 26 times up and down the stairs is fucking hard. I did videos about it today. My legs are aching like fuck right now.

Day 41: Just done Young Sam’s (Sam Clews) quiz. 3rd week running and it’s now become a habit and something I look forward to. Out of all the internet driven socialising I’m undertaking in ld, this is the weirdest - I feel totally detatched from all others taking part but, now, would feel pissed off if I didn’t or couldn’t join in. I got 47/70 this week. My best score and only about 8 off the winning score - most others aren’t doing it on their own!

Today’s walk was a cloudy one - I captured some fine, dramatic pics of the clouds. I am getting into this photography lark, albeit very amateurish. But, when I post any pics online (mostly FB), they seem to be widely appreciated, which is nice.

Day 42: Applied for a remote service delivery job with a firm called TTEC. £60k. Finished watching The Outsider. The creepiest TV show I have seen in years. Really great use of background music.

Day 43: Finished Mindhunter S2 last night. It’s so good but I cannot quite put my finger on why. Today has been a nothing day apart from day 2 of me not typing the letter ‘e’ in any post or comments on FB for a week. It’s hard.

Day 44: Watch Anna last night. A Luc Besson film that starts a kick-ass suprermodel. It’s right down my street. Today I have been lazy af. I need to pick up my online learning again…tomorrow, maybe! I watched Andy Murray Resurfacing. A documentary on Amazon. Fantastic. What a top man he is. Completely human and completely inhuman!

Day 45: Much talk in the news of possible lockdown relaxation. I am off the opinion we should stay the course until we are completely assured of beathing this thing i.e. a working, widely available vaccine. Dad and I Skyped - he is doing well, as usual. So is Rita. They both seem very happy in lockdown! Today has been a glorious day, weather wise. I had my walkk at 10ish this morming and it was very warm. Hottest day of the year so far I reckon.

Day 46: Bank holiday Friday (75th anniversary of VE day). Nice walk. Chat with Karen letting her know about being caught speeding just in case I am banned and need some out of town shopping. Watched second episode of DEVS by Alex Garland. It’s good and intriguing. Now, @7pm, gonna eat and hit the beers and smokes.

Day 47: Typing this at 15:45 on day 48. I had lots of beers and a good old chat with Rog…

Day 48: Today’s daily press conference was eagerly anticipated today with rumours of a relaxation in lockdown. It seems it was a fuss about nothing with no clear instructions - I didn’t watch it but, skimming the BBC news site, I shan’t be doing anything different over the next few weeks, not that I would anyway - furlough and self isolation are the order of the day and I won’t change that until I am sure it’s safe. Meanwhile people, including Danny flaunt the rules, it’s been pointed out to me plus I know he spends time with Jonah and Marc. It really fucks me off. So, the actions of the few mean I will lock myself down for as long, if not longer, as it takes. Attended Sam Clews quiz again. It passes the time. Also, I had half a scotch bonnet chilli with tea tonight (roasted veg, cous cous and sausages). Ridiculously hot!

Day 49: Received the speaker I ordered a few days ago (from eBay). It’s an AudioPro Addon T10. I got it for a very reasonable price from a German shop. As a result, the power lead isn;t three pin and that has seriously fucked me right off!

Meanwhile, I did my 26 stair climb before my daily walk today. It was easier than usual (surprise surprise) and I did 7km - but that was tough! ‘Cos I am on (yet another) free trial of Amazon Prime, I am ramping up watching stuff available. Last night I watched Booksmart - really nice little film with a great soundtrack. I am listening to Dan the Automater as I type. Today I watched half (3 eps) of The Night Manager and the film ‘The Founder’. The former is a superb series, the latter an OK film about Ray Kroc - the supposed founder of McDonald’s. Except he wasn’t; he was the wrong side of ambitious and a cunt.

Day 50: Stripped the 2 pin cable from the speaker I received yesterday and wired up a 3 pin plug and it worked. Win. And it sounds great. Win-win. Went to go shopping in Hampton but the car wouldn’t start. Loss. But it was the battery so I managed to borrow Karen’s jump starter which worked. Win.

Spent £107. Loss. But just under £40 was booze plus £10 for two big pizzas, two sides (dirty fries) and some dips. Win. Didn’t do any online learning - seriously fucking letting myself down. Loss.

Did my usual walking and 26 stair climb. The latter is hard but defo getting easier. Win. Day 51: Sam’s 51st birthday on day 51 - coincidence! Today I received my face mask from Lou - House of Stewart tartan. I’m pleased with it and that I have got a mask now. I managed to get up at a reasonable hour, just left 09:00, and revisit my web design course. Module 1, lesson 5 and I am fucking stuck. Trying to code an online CV with a side nav bar and I cannot get it to fucking work. Grrrrrr. Later, i got into a FB dispute (easily distracted due to the above) with someone over his statement of fact (Tim Martin’s treatment of Whetherspoons’ employees) when he doesn’t know it’s fact. It probably is, but that is not the fucking point. I wish I could leave these sort of spats alone. I am drinking, at 20:45, peppermint tea as I type. Jeez, what’s happened to me?

Day 52: Well, last night took a swift chnage. Rog message me and, to cut a long story short, I hit the beers, also called Foggy later, got trashed. I got up today at gone 1pm. Sam posted on fb that Paul had forgort her birthday yesterday. Oh dear! The 26 stair climb and walking each day is noticeable for how knackered my legs feel all the time, I noticed today!

Day 53: My birthday! Nice comments and banter of FB. Rachael brought round a bottle of whisky; gobsmacked. Karen popped round some beers and sausage rolls. Sam sent a card, as did dad with a £50 cheque. Dan’s ordering me a pizza later.

Chuffed! Day 54: I went to bed late after a lot of beers, huge pizza and chips, a few smokes and a long call with WWJ and video chats with Fog then Rog. Got up around 1pm and dossed with my usual exercises and I made fish pie with a scotch bonnet. Day 55: Late one last night but up early today (11ish). Really fretting about hospital tomorrow. Nervous anyway but the safety aspect, in terms of Covid-19, isn’t helping.

Day 56: Hospital appointment was just for an eye scan so the consultant can review it. I was very surprised to see how few people were wearing face masks! I did two lots of washing today. (After the hospital) I went to Morrsions, Asda (queue too long though), B&M (queue too long though) then Tesco’s. All to buy a baseball cap ‘cos I’m fucked if I’m going to wet my hair each time I go out and want it to look presentable! In Morrsions (no mens’ clothing apart from underwear!) I stocked up of 10 cans of sugarfree apple Caraboa….I was only thinking of this drink just the other day. Yesterday I finished The Night Manager on Amazon. I liked it a lot but, also, expected much, much more from it consdiering the hype. Hugh Laurie has come a long way from comedy sketches with Stephen Fry!

Day 57:Received an email from Sueanne yesterday asking ( as designated spokesperson for everyone) how I am. The most interestring piece of news in a rather uninformative email was that the US has started to open resorts!

Day 58: I am writing this on Day 59. I started a two walk a day regime. The first walk I do is shorter, around 4km. my aim is to be ready for 1,000,000 steps Diabetic UK challenge (throughout July, August and September). I need to do just under 11,000 steps a day. The relaxation in ld rules makes this achievable. On that score, I am allowed to visit a friend’s house, as long as it’s just the two of us, outside, 2m apart. I went round Karen’s last night. I was desperate to have a Happy Hour (I allow myself a midweek beer - today (well, yesterday) is/was Wednesday!) of sorts with another human (rather than a video chat). I was there for about 2 hours, very enjoyable, and then came home. Then I had usual roasted veg with rice and sausages but I couldn’t eat it. I used half a scotch bonnet rather than the usual birdeye chillis. It was too hot, had to sling it! Had a few more beers and, hence, neglected my diary duties!

Day 59: It’s 01:20am. I don’t know why I am still awake and up, but I am. But, also, I am now going to bed. Nothing else to report, really.

Day 60: Half way through 12 weeks furlough. I was discussing this with Dad and Rita earlier - I am expecting that, at the end of 12 weeks, I’ll be laid off. I hope I’m wrong but I reckon it’s well on the cards. Off to have a beer round Karen’s in a sec which will be pleasant. Just a hour or so. It’s fucking windy today so I shall wrap up!

#diary #Tumblr diary #lockdown #COVID19 #lockdownuk

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iampikachuhearmeroar · 4 years

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okay so. i probably shouldn’t talk about this considering that i have never experienced it myself.... but whenever i see a story about some hollywood star relapsing into their addiction of/maybe overdosing on whatever drug, there’s always a difference between how people react when it’s a female star (say demi lovato overdosing back in 2018 after a few years of sobriety) and a male star (most currently dax shepard relapsing after 16 years of sobriety).

for example, back in 2018 when demi overdosed on heroin, there was a whole stream of people on the buzzfeed articles, alt press articles and even just the normal news stories about it commenting things like: “demi’s just an attention-seeking bitch like she’s always been. she wanted to be in the headlines and that’s what she got. SHE NEEDS TO CONTROL HER ADDICTION of being an attention whore for the press and also her drug addiction, obviously. but shame on her for relapsing!!!! how lazy is she??? she is NOT TRYING HARD ENOUGH!” or there were also streams of “i have absolutely NO SYMPATHY for this spoilt brat girl doing this for media attention! snooze button on a slow news day. she needs to learn to control herself! the world doesn’t revolve around you and your drug addiction, honey. go back to therapy to get your head out of your ass!” type comments on every article about demi. like woohoo for you, brenda or coleman. here’s your “stupid fucking asshole of the day” award 🥇.

whereas with dax sheppard in the last week (and ok i just read an upworthy article about it on fb just now bc i’m bored) and everyone’s like: “oh how BRAVE of dax for speaking out about his relapsing into his addiction!!!! the poor man! fame must be hard with lockdown!!! what a good hearted man, addiction is hard in general anyway! good for him for speaking out again, i don’t have much else to say.” and the like. in other words, all i’ve read in response to dax’s relapse into his prescription drug addiction is is an outpouring of support. although, then again, it’s probably because i’ve only read one article on it.... or maybe i did read another stream of comments the other day..... but i can’t remember them.

but my point is: why the fuck is the backlash so virulently derogatory and hurtful when it’s a woman relapsing into their addiction or overdosing???? whereas when it’s a dude, everyone’s all chill and supportive and calling him brave for admitting that he’s relapsing???? like if another female celeb said something similar during this time, they’d be hit with the stuff that demi received when overdosing two years ago.

okay yeah, obvs there were people supporting demi back in 2018 saying things like the fake comment i wrote for dax, saying things such as: “addiction is a cycle that’s hard to kick and leave behind. i’ve been there, and most of us will be at some point in our life. but i’d never wish it on anyone. that’s the one thing no one understands about addiction: that relapse can happen for most people. my heart goes out to demi!” or the like. but mostly it was the virulent bullshit attacking her for being weak and being an attention whore and not allowing her any empathy or sympathy bc “shame! shame! shame on her for breaking! how weak she is 🙄! where IS HER self-restraint as a YOUNG W O M A N?? this is why young women don’t know how to control themselves these days!” as if demi, as a young woman in hollywood, is responsible for teaching young girls and women to control themselves. like shut the fuck up doris/henry. that’s YOUR goddamned fucking job as parents/was your job as parents. it is no ones fault but your own if your parenting methods are/were defective enough that you think people solely rely on tv stars to raise kids (much like barney stinson in himym thinking that bob barker from the price is right was his dad growing up). the raising of someone’s child is not some young celeb’s fucking job, unless it’s THEIR OWN FRICKIN KID. for fuck’s sake.

whereas everyone seems supportive and understanding of dax’s admission of relapse and sending him “love and strength is this dire time 😊!” and other overly nice stuff and saying stuff about hai family going through this time as well. all like “oh his family must be struggling to but that’s okay because he’s open about his struggle with everyone! so BRAVE!” etc etc etc. there is no mention so far of him having to “control himself”. or maybe i haven’t read far enough. not that i will, considering i read like one celeb story a month at the very least, so as to not overload myself on bitterness like i did back in my teens with constant access to the E! news/celeb channel.

all i’m saying is that people need to have more sympathy and empathy towards people who struggle with addiction and relapsing, regardless of wether they’re male or female (or obvs trans and non-binary etc as well). like obvs this is coming from someone who has never experienced it herself/themself, but that doesn’t mean that i show no sympathy or empathy for their struggle. and i also so say this regardless of their background, no matter whether they’re rich stars or the poor drug addict on the street.

because i easily could become an alcoholic or whatever else, myself, at any point of my life.... because life can throw any fucking thing at you and out of nowhere..... then suddenly you’re using drugs or alcohol to cope. then you develop an addiction over many years. obviously this is more endemic in hollywood, considering that you can get your hands on literally everything and anything..... if you know the right people etc. and it’s also why i ended up ditching my idea of wanting to be a hollywood star when i was older, back when i was 16. because even when you can have the worlds best therapists and drug rehab facilities at your service/disposal as a hollywood star, that doesn’t exclude you from struggling with drug addiction and relapse or needing sympathy/empathy and support. it’s easy as fuck to fall back into your addiction when you’re unfortunately surrounded by it in hollywood on a frequent basis anyway.

anyway yeah. here’s another rant for october; on a topic i probably shouldn’t rant on lmao.

#life #about me #shut up ilona

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justlightthefirstspark · 5 years

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As promised, my analysis/opinion/thought piece on today’s MUWFC game vs Spurs. Everything is chronological which I feel like should go without saying but in the interest of clarity 🤷🏽‍♀️ but not everything is tagged to the minute cause I am an idiot that didn’t realise that that would be helpful til like the 2nd half. Also, if I missed anything, or got players mixed up or anything pls lemme know and I’ll edit accordingly! I’ve never really done any from of sports based writing before (I don’t think tweets count lol) so pls be nice, merci 😘

Line up as follows, I guess this is pretty common knowledge but you know, coherency and such.

Tbh it was kinda hard to see *a lot* of this game, especially on the far side of the pitch and by both goals because of the weather, felt like I was watching Silent Hill for a little while there, but I did my best. My wifi is also horrendous atm, and we all know that the FA Player can be problematic so there’s a very good chance I might have missed something due to a lag or buffering btw. Just drop me an ask if you notice anything that mightn’t be quite right, and I’ll fix it asap! Some ~analysis~ (if you could call it that lol) is more detailed than other bits cause there was a lot happening and today I learned that it’s kinda hard to write one thing and watch another at the same time lol

First half:

Quick, fast and almost successful start. A much-needed improvement on the stagnancy vs Bristol a few weeks ago, and obviously we couldn’t see the midweek game vs Brighton so I can’t compare them.

I have to say I’m not a massive fan of all the back passes, all the time. I think a more attacking FB might be needed in the summer, or maybe Ökvist should be given some time to acclimatise to the WSL soon? I was never the biggest fan of Harris last season, I personally don’t think she’s fast enough – she gets outpaced down the flank by attackers 90% of the time, which isn’t good. I think A. Turner is the strongest FB option currently, at least defensively, and she’s shown she has a decent attacking ability, and has a wicked long ball, as well as crossing. My only issue is sometimes those tackles of hers can be a liability, giving away unnecessary fouls. It’s almost like she doesn’t think before she flies in sometimes, which is a shame, cause I love them. A lot.

There were a couple of really good chances in the first half, including a great ball in and run up from Galton, which should have resulted in probably the opening goal but whether it was as a result of the weather or just misjudged timing and placement from both Ross and Sigsworth, the chance went to waste. Groenen had an excellent chance to net her first for United but unfortunately sent it just wide. Another glorious link up between A. Turner and Galton led to another decent chance, a gorgeous cross in from the right to the opposite side of the box, and the perfect header which unfortunately was aimed straight at the keeper. Very unlucky to head in at the break with nothing.

There was an incredible double save from Earps around halfway through the first half. I have to say, I have some anxieties with her sometimes. She is quite good, but has a tendency to make some silly mistakes, and doesn’t always make the right call for a save. But my god she was on her game today, even if a potential error might have led to the first save. Didn’t disappoint me anytime she was called on this afternoon.

A few frustrations started to show around the 30 min mark, a few sloppy passes and challenges making the rounds. It was also around this time that I realized I’d picked a pretty poor game to start this thing on because I could barely see anything.

Zelem seems to be back in form, which can only be a good thing. But I would very much like it if somehow she could drag some of the other girls back up with her.

There were a fair few soft calls going Spurs way, which I wasn’t entirely convinced by. But then again I’m probably just naturally biased towards my girls.

Another great ball in to Sigsworth from A. Turner which was just *chefs kiss* but unfortunately came to nothing. There was also a spin move either to commit or avoid a challenge, I couldn’t really tell tbh, which was very impressive, as was her chase down on Mitchell at around 43 mins. (Amy’s my favourite player, can you tell?)

Booking for Kirsty Smith just before half time, but I gotta be honest I couldn’t see it due to the fog, so I have no idea what happened. Couldn’t find anything about it in the United post-match report either so apparently we’re just deleting that from the history of the earth which is completely fine by me to be honest.

Second half:

My main takeaway from this game is that both Sigsworth and Ross always seem to be looking for the same ball in the penalty area, and there very rarely seems to be anybody else around looking for a potential rebound. I think that James (who missed today’s game due to suspension) seems to be our main (only?) front line creator and finisher; Sigsworth is fine, that girl works like a dog and always gets the job done, I think she may have just needed another goal to boost her confidence, but I have no real concerns with her. Ross, however, I’m not entirely convinced by, I think a lot of her finishes have been a bit lucky and flukey so far. I’d start Toone over her for the rest of the season to be honest, Ross hasn’t done anything that tells me she deserves the starting place. Feel free to disagree with this of course, this is just my own personal opinion.

56 mins – confusion has entered the chat. McManus ends up pretty much through on goal, and then the ref whistles for what I assumed to be an offside. So naturally I nearly kicked my laptop out the window. The ref then awards a United penalty, and I’m even more confused now than I was in the beginning. I genuinely didn’t see anything but did hear a few shouts from what I’m assuming was the United bench for handball, so I have no idea what happened here.

‘58 – GOAL. Who else? God bless Katie Zelem is all I’m saying.

‘61 – Hanson 🔁 Ross. I think this was a good swap. I don’t think Ross was particularly good today, and Hanson immediately sparked that RW. I would have subbed Ross off sooner but that’s my only issue.

’64 – GOAL – Sigsworth with a pretty perfect if slightly scruffy strike from a corner.

A much better corner than previous attempts, and Spurs hadn’t defended any of them particularly well. I think that we have a major issue with set pieces, I dunno what exactly the problem is, whether they need to allocate a new taker or whatever but before today had we scored from a corner all season? Lemme knowwww.

’65 – A few decent chances for Spurs around this time. One pretty clear run in from the right, and one or two shots bounced right of the crossbar and the post. Basically my heart stopped for about 8 mins.

’66 – I DO NOT WANT TO SEE BACK PASSES IN THE BOX AS OPPOSITION PLAYERS SWARM IN. CLEAR IT. I DON’T CARE WHERE IT GOES JUST GET IT OUT. (sorry for the caps but my anxiety was out in force this afternoon)

United started playing much better after both goals, think they just needed a kick up the arse. *Ahem* A confidence boost. 👀 Much better intensity for the final 30 mins than the previous 60 imo.

’68 – Another decent chance for Spurs, with Earps coming way too far off her line than sat right with me. Very lucky nothing came of that.

’69-72 – Around this time I started to get *very* confused between Amy and Abbie cause they both had yellow boots on and literally the only thing I could see on the far side of the pitch was feet. That was fun.

’73 – The wasteful corners made a return. Slightly less panicked about that one considering we were already 2-0 up but still, I would like to see the glaring set piece issue sorted asap thanks girls x

’75ish – Toone 🔁 Groenen. Man I love Jackie Groenen. She really has been immense for us so far, and there’s a definite difference in how we play without her.

’78 – Harris 🔁 M. Turner. I’ve said my piece about Harris above but man, can we take a second to appreciate Millie Turner. She never, ever stops. Literally the heart of our defence.

’86 – GOAL – Oh captain, my captain. Beautiful strike from a free kick just outside the box, with the perfect bend around the wall and subsequently the keeper to make it 3-0.

United were very obviously stronger in the second half, almost looked like a completely different team at times. Whether they just got the hairdryer treatment at the half (I would imagine Casey is terrifying when she’s mad.) or the goals gave them that spark they desperately needed to kick on, they definitely made up for all the missed chances in the first half.

’90 – 4 additional minutes.

’92 – Another United free kick. McManus found herself almost clear in (again!), but due to an unlucky fumble with the ball at her feet unfortunately nothing came from this one. Surely a 4th goal otherwise.

’93 – FIIIIIIIIGHT. Kinda. You love to see it. Spend a little while conducting some, scientific research 🌚 and have concluded that Toone was tackled from behind just as the ball left her feet, which led to the ~scuffle~. Have to say that Amy walking away with Ella was extremely 🥰🥰🥰 (This is my research - https://twitter.com/48hours8/status/1218896406020349953?s=21)

’94 – Red card for Tooney. I would assume for her reaction more than anything but the camera didn’t catch it so I guess we’ll never know. I would have thought a yellow would suffice, considering that’s all the Spurs player in question received, but apparently not. 🤔 I’m still kinda confused tbh.

’95 – Full time.

Thus concludes what was certainly an interesting match. Please enjoy this comparison of United vs Spurs chaotic energy from @danieljamesmufc

Also thanks for reading if you got this far, it’s a bit stop-starty and clunky cause I just wrote down thoughts and whatever as they came into my head and then pieced it all together later on. I also just wanna say that I was massively impressed with Smith today. She hasn’t had many chances to prove herself this season, but that combo of herself and Galton down the left was lethal today imo. 🔥

Some extra thoughts:

I’m not a huge fan (like, at all) of fans singing men’s orientated chants. Let the women’s rivalries develop on their own, in their own way, and don’t drag the vulgarities across! That said, I do think that particular group of United fans has the potential to be a very, very good thing.

Also, just wanna say that these are my girls, and I would die for every single one of them. None of my criticism is meant to be intentionally negative, I just tried to be as objective and realistic as possible, without being a fangirl lol. Even my faves aren’t immune to criticism unfortunately.

And this picture is now my favourite thing ever to exist

#that was actually pretty fun to write #living for katie and jess scoring in the same game #this took longer than i care to admit #pls be nice i’m fragile lol #muwfc #manchester united women #my writing

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scarletwelly-boots · 4 years

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(I’m so sorry, it won’t let me read more)

Four years ago today, I woke up. I was freshly graduated, starting my first teaching job in two months, and it was a beautiful summer morning. It was also the middle of Pride month, and I was out and proud as a bisexual person. (I was still exploring my gender identity, but I fully intended to let everyone know once I had figured it out.) Life was good. Sure, there was a long way to go in rights, and that marriage equality was just the start, though at the time I was only vaguely aware of the form that long way to go needed to take. And sure, a goddamn Disney villain was running for president, but he was alienating a different group of people every day; he couldn't possibly WIN, right? And then I woke up, June 12, 2016.

I pulled up tumblr and I stared at the first post on my dashboard. I pulled up Facebook, and saw the same thing trending in the sidebar (FB looked different then). I googled the business name I had never heard of, in a city I'd visited once, and the breath left my lungs. Pulse. Fifty people, mostly queer POC, some friends and family. The largest mass shooting in our country's history, and it was a hate crime. The breath left my lungs, and it was as if I didn't breathe again for the rest of the day. In some ways, I'm still holding my breath.I was in shock. That's the only way I can describe it.

I went through the same motions I had with the Parkland Shooting, with Charleston, with Sandy Hook. I reblogged and shared awareness and lists of names and sympathy and sadness and anger. I didn't cry. I argued over gun control with Facebook friends, trying to make them see that if these laws don't get stricter, it could be me next. It could be them. Some didn't understand. I didn't cry. I mentioned it to my mom, but we spoke about it as if this was another horrific mass shooting. It wasn't what I needed, but I didn't know what I needed. I didn't cry. I thought about it all. day. long. Every second: taking a shower, watching non-news-related tv, making lunch, taking the dog out. I didn't cry.

It was the same day as an awards show (I'm sorry, I don't follow these, so I have no idea what it was called). I never watch awards shows. I watched this one. I think it was the one for Broadway, because Hamilton performed and Lin Manuel Miranda won something. He came to the stage and spoke, thanking people probably, though I don't remember his speech. And then at the end he said, "And love is love is love is love--" Cheers drowned him out. And I finally cried. It was the shock blanket I needed I guess. I allowed myself to mourn.

It took me years to realize that Pulse has followed me. When I started teaching that fall, I was not the same person I had been on June 11. I was not out and proud and damn those that didn't want me to be. I didn't come out to my coworkers. In four years, only one coworker has been told, explicitly by me, that I am queer. And we were not at school, and I whispered it, and I still spent the next day terrified other people would be told. It took me a long time to realize this was the catalyst, but knowing it was and doing something about it are two different things. I think twice about coming out to anyone now, whether it be my genderfluidity or bisexuality. I have anxiety, you see, so while I know a coworker is not going to pull out a gun on me in the middle of school even if they are homophobic, there is still a part of me that is afraid. Afraid for my life, afraid for my job, afraid of losing friends. And I hate being afraid because of who I am. But I look around, and I wonder what has really changed in this country? We have a VP who thinks I'm better off dead. We have a president whose daughter had the audacity to tweet "Happy Pride" when her father tells the government they can't fly pride flags from the government buildings in June. We have politicians in various states trying to pass Bathroom Bills, because they are so insecure in themselves they have to police where trans people take a piss.

But, you know? I'm trying. It may take me awhile to officially come out to coworkers, but I'm trying to advocate elsewhere. I'm seeing children's shows with queer storylines (Arthur, She-Ra, Steven Universe) be the representation I wish I had. I'm seeing people fight the Bathroom Bills. I see the main street in my town still full of pride flags even though pandemic cancelled Pride. And I'm seeing the heroes of my childhood, Daniel Radcliffe, Katie Leung, Emma Watson, Evanna Lynch, etc., stand up for me and my queer family against the transphobic creator of my childhood heroes.

I didn't write this essay to take a platform. (Thank you for reading till the end, though). I wrote it because I'm still grieving for Pulse. I wrote it because those fifty people who lost their lives four years ago should not be forgotten. I wrote it because I may not be out to everyone in my life, but I am proud of who I am. I am trying to let go of the shame and fear, because no one should be ashamed of who they are or afraid to be themselves. Happy Pride, Queer folks. We are resilient, we are brave, we are perfect just the way we are.

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