#vox media how does it feel to lose this bad

[threetrenchcoatsinatrenchcoat]

psst Jenna Stoeber is writing for the next season of Um, Actually! every day my dream D20 cast grows closer toward reality

[deeply-unserious-fellow]

Vox and Velvette continuing to work with Valentino confuses me. Like, not even from a morality standpoint or "oh he treats them like shit", it's just a weird fuckin business choice. That man almost ruined one of Velvette's shows because he was throwing a tantrum, Vox regularly has to prevent him from causing scenes in public, he ACTIVELY ENCOURAGES VOX TO CAUSE A SCENE IN PUBLIC, he just seems like more trouble then he's worth, y'know? And on the surface it really does seem like he'd be pretty easy to get rid of. Since Vox could ABSOLUTELY kick his ass to kingdom come(like c'mon he can hold his own against ALASTOR-), and Vox and Velvette combine control literally all of the media in Hell(sans radio), they could kick Val out, or even straight up kill him, and then flood Hell with propaganda painting themselves as Good and Correct for this(which to be fair wouldn't be hard...). So then like. Why are they still working with him.

And then I remembered ~soul contracts~ and was like. Wait nvm that makes sense.

Right out the gate gotta make it clear that I do NOT MEAN THAT VAL OWNS THEIR SOULS OR ANYTHING that would be stupid. I mean like, social/political/whateverthefuck overlords got going on power works differently in Hazbin Hell then it does in any other setting. The Vees don't just have their reputation, they also have their soul contracts. And Valentino owns a LOT of souls. So, no matter how much propaganda the other two throw out there, no matter how low they drag him, Hell even if they kill him!, Vox and Velvette would lose a LOT of power by getting rid of Val. No matter how much damage he could do to the brand, they keep him around because he's better off as an ally then he is as an enemy, and he just. Hasn't done anything either consider egregious enough to outweigh any possible benefits of working with him, I guess. Small, fixable incidents that may damage the brand VS losing all those souls? The answers kinda obvious. There also might be a contract going on between the Vees but that's less about their souls being bound or whatever and more about like. Business. So. Not particularly dangerous for any of them I don't think.

Also there are two smaller reasons I'd like to discuss before I stop rambling: 1; Velvette probably uses Val's spit to make the love potions and 2; emotional connections with the other Vees.

The love potion thing is kinda obvious. Without Val, Velvette wouldn't be able to make her roofie juice, and since this is. Hell. Where all the sexually deviant freaks go to rot. Of course that's gonna be a popular item. And while I think the Vees would probably be fine if they took it off the market, that would still probably take a sizable chunk out of their profits, y'know? They can't really make it without Val's weird, disgusting pheramone spit.

And reason number 2: emotional connection. The Vees are a horrendous toxic polycule and we all know it. While I, personally, don't think Velvette and Valentino are dating(I still don't fucking trust that man and it's bad enough that he's involved with Vox), they do both have chemistry with Vox, and probably are at least on decent terms since they like. Sit together sometimes. WHATEVER THIS ISN'T A VEES RELATIONSHIP ANALYSIS(Im saving that for later)- basically what I'm saying is that Vox and Velvette probably, on some level, do care about and trust(?) Val, and vice versa. How much do they care? Unclear. Val's capacity for love is still TBD and Vox and Velvette's relationship seems a bit shakey at best, like they don't *fully* trust eachother, but there's still affection there!!! The Vees are exactly why we don't let villains discover the power of friendship, people!!!!!!!!! Like their part in the Finale is all the proof I need. You don't dance around like that with your business partners/fuck buddies lmfao, there's gotta be some genuine feeling there. So, at least a small part of why Val is still. Here. Is because Vox and Velvette do care about him. And, despite the fact that the three of them are entirely morally bankrupt and will probably die next season(god please don't let Vox die he's so silly :(), I can't help but find it sweet that they do kind of care about eachother. Like it's nice <3

(Genuinely though I am still worried for Vox and Vel's safety like idc how bad those two are idc if they're on decent-ish terms with Val most of the time he is still the most realistically dangerous character in the damn show besides *maybe* Alastor's serial killer ass and anybody within a 10 foot radius of him should be considered At Risk)

[patdroid]

Regressor! 철춘희 Lore

🐵 Chul Choon-Hee’s age range of regression is usually 2-5, but has the rare occasion of going up to 6. (It’s rare because 6 years old is when the trauma started for Chul)

🐵When she’s regressed, she only speaks Korean, meaning that unless someone can translate what she’s saying by voice or figure out what she wants by her movements…you’re only going to get “bad English” from translation sites and so many failed attempts at what she wants.

🐵Ryeley’s usually the main caregiver when Chul’s regressed, but if she can’t do it, or she needs extra help, Ryeley resorts to getting the rest of the hotel involved. (And if it’s happening when the hotel can’t help Ryeley…she brings Chul over to Vox and Velvette or Rosie. Valentino isn’t allowed near her…and neither is Susan)

Ryeley, holding an age regressed Chul: Keep her away from Susan?

Rosie, looking a bit irritated: Keep her away from Susan.

🐵If Valentino somehow comes near Chul, she instantly slaps him with her tail, as a way of defense. And even though she’s regressed, her powers are still very much active, meaning that when Valentino gets slapped, he’ll be asleep for quite some time afterwards. (If this happens during the time when Val and the other workers are…well, working, all of the workers are forced to get a mandatory break. And if Angel Dust is there when it happens, he thanks Chul for allowing a break to happen.)

🐵During one of the first few times that Chul regressed, she received a pair of gloves from Vox and Velvette that have special technology, making her feel like she didn’t lose any of her fingers. Now, if someone sees her regressed, they instantly go and get the gloves before Chul sees her hands.

🐵If one fails to get her gloves in time, she instantly cries. The reason why she does that is because her trauma seeps through her regressed mind if something reminds her of it. (That includes seeing her hands with a finger missing)

🐵Chul regresses whenever she gets bad nightmares about her life before becoming a sinner or if something triggers her to remember her past. This is especially true during certain days of the year, including the anniversary of the day when she first entered Hell. (Note: She considers her anniversary of appearing in Hell being September 25th, not the 24th. This is due to her time zone being ahead of my time zone. For her and a few other places, it was a Saturday, while for me and lots of others, it happened on a Friday.)

🐵Chul doesn’t like restricting clothes when regressed, so when it does happen, she actually wears an outfit similar to the one that gave her her Overlord name, but without footwear, it being in all green, her hair getting tied up like how Jasmine from the animated Aladdin movies and series had it done, and the gloves being a part of her look.

🐵She doesn’t use pacifiers when regressed…at least, in the normal way. The way she uses them is almost like they’re dolls... (That’s one way to use your imagination) …or bouncy balls. Whichever one comes to her mind at the moment.

🐵Chul’s really energetic, especially in regards to what her human life had, so playtime can turn into “Chase the Monkey Demon” time at a quick moment’s notice. This also causes Chul to quickly set up innocent pranks or to draw on the walls with markers and manage to not get caught. (Niffty personally wishes that those things don’t happen, but she can’t really control it)

🐵Tantrums and meltdowns aren’t common for Chul, but if one does happen, someone gently calms her down. (Usually Ryeley does it, but others also do it on occasion)

🐵And finally, if Chul is ever in the mindset to watch television, Vox always finds a way to come over (even if Alastor is around him) and watch cartoons with her via special tablets. (Yes, Vox is the TV Demon, but in my AU, he’s learning about newer technology, social media and streaming services from Velvette; sometimes using some of the stuff he has learned and using it in his programs) As for what Chul will watch when regressed, she usually goes for shows with a TV Y rating whenever possible, but can settle for certain TV Y7 shows if needed. Just…don’t play any cartoons from the country that she was in as a human. She’ll attack the tablet if that happens. (Vox learned that the hard way when Velvette forgot to clear the tablet off one time)

And about Chul’s look when regressed…I’m not joking. Here’s a picture for proof.

[badger-writes]

Scalding take incoming but I feel like the Vox Populi, in concept and as executed, is worth re-appraising as more than just “an idiot political centrist’s idea of what The Left is like”

Like, criticism of how they end up being caricatured as rabid bomb-throwing anarchists by the end of the game is pretty earned, there’s no denying - a lot of Binfinite is pretty bad at shorthanding most of its elements and skimming over the places where there ought to be more depth and nuance - but at the same time, there’s a lot of really unfortunate and problematic left-wing history that’s bound up in tempers boiling over and extremely needless bloodshed arising out of longtime institutional mistreatment. When people think about lefties resorting to violence they do tend to think about the excesses of the French and Russian Revolution, the Cultural Revolution in China, the depravity that the Khmer Rouge got up to - all points in history that Binfinite is consciously drawing from in trying to make its point about the excesses of “righteous” revolution, where you don’t have to worry about the nuance or morality of what you’re doing because all your “enemies” are either perpetrators or complicit, so fuck ‘em all, amirite. Which, yes, portrayals like that do tend to poison the well when the left tries to articulate points like “this is an institutional oppression that we are angry about and feel needs to be dismantled” in real life

But at the same time, even today you have people on social media - who ought to know about the shadows this kind of history casts on the present, who ought to know better than to invoke it casually - who are just. openly salivating at the prospect of someone calling open season on everybody above a certain tax bracket, or demanding that spaces where progressive ideas are getting a platform push out everyone that’s not far left enough for fear that their pet movement will end up soiled and neutered when the normies get their mitts on it, and generally just. constantly pushing the window for “moral” left-wing thought and discourse further and further to a place that most people find really uncomfortable and alienating when more palatable alternatives exist

And I know in today’s day and age where fascists are Back and Real and actively trying to drag everybody around the globe back into the dark ages the last thing we want to do is like. present a divided front I guess, but I feel like there are some big questions here like “Who should we platform and entrust with progressivism as a movement”, “How does it survive in an oppressive environment without losing the values which define it”, “Can the movement survive on anger alone without becoming twisted into a desire for revenge rather than justice”, “How do we ensure that in attempting to reach our goals we don’t stoop to the same banal depravities as our opponents” that are worth pulling out and asking ourselves, especially in this day and age when people are generally mad as hell to some extreme and waiting for somebody we consider worth listening to to give us the okay to Do Something About It.

[ear-worthy]

Vox’s “Land Of The Giants” Podcast Launches Season Seven: Are Dating Apps Safe?

If there is a topic that unites people on the right and left, it’s the malfeasance by Big Tech. People on the Right seem to feel that Big Tech muzzles them and favors more progressive messages. People on the Left see Big tech as enabling misinformation and stoke the fires of hate and grievance. People with a more moderate view still view Big Tech with suspicion and as “bad actors.”

That’s why Vox’s Land Of The Giants podcast has, through six seasons, pulled back the curtain on Big Tech. For those who have not listened to these seasons, I highly recommend them. The seasons are not hatchet jobs of evil tech companies, but more an investigation of what they are, what they are trying to do to us, and how we can respond.

Last week, it was exciting to hear that Land of the Giants, the Vox Media Podcast Network’s award-winning narrative franchise, has launched its seventh season, Dating Games. Marking a collaboration between two of Vox Media’s editorial brands, The Cut and The Verge, the six-episode series will examine the multi-billion dollar dating app industry and explore whether the business goals of the companies behind them are aligned with users’ romantic aspirations.

In this season of Land of the Giants, The Verge and New York Magazine’s The Cut trace the evolution of the multi-billion dollar dating app industry. Hosts Sangeeta Singh Kurtz and Lakshmi Rengarajan delve into users’ burning questions, from the functional — like how the apps’ algorithms affect your matches — to the sociological, like “Why does dating feel broken?” Episodes will cover the business models of the leading apps, the upstarts and niche platforms that are angling for a share of the market, the measures that users take to gain control over their dating app destinies, and how the future of dating is being shaped by the lessons of today’s dating app marketplace.

Land of the Giants is Vox Media’s narrative franchise about big technology and its impact on our lives. In previous seasons, the show has told the stories of companies like Meta, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, and Google, and unboxed the evolving world of food delivery.

Hosted by Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz (senior staff writer, The Cut) and Lakshmi Rengarajan (host, Paired by the People), the season will feature interviews with the founders of apps like Tinder and Bumble, Match Group executives, as well as former Tinder engineers, data scientists, neuroscientists, psychologists, app users, and more. The first episode is out, and available here.

Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz is a senior staff writer at The Cut and New York Magazine, and a contributor at Architectural Digest, A24, and more. She was previously a writer for the global business publication Quartz, where she reported on technology and culture.

Lakshmi Rengarajan has spent over a decade building ways for people to meet others beyond the dating apps, first by reimagining the singles event. Starting as a leader in the in-person dating space, she was then recruited by Match.com as their Director of Event Design. After Match, she went on to become WeWork’s first Director of Workplace Connection to build actual strategies and tactics to address the changing nature of work relationships. (Wow! She must have stories to tell about WeWork.)

Her podcast Paired By The People takes a look at the forgotten art of the set-up.

“Last summer, New York polled thousands of daters about their habits, horror stories, and what they’ve learned from a decade of using dating apps. I spoke with hundreds of them,” says Singh-Kurtz. “Almost everyone felt burnt out by the apps, and almost everyone blamed themselves, but after nearly a year of reporting this series, we can confidently say daters aren’t the problem — the apps are.”

“I’ve often said, ‘It’s not the existence of dating apps that we should worry about — it’s their dominance.’ What do we lose as individuals and a society when dating apps become the default way to find a relationship?,” says Rengarajan. “I’m excited that Sangeeta and I will be shedding light on this industry and how it’s fundamentally changed us, so that people will be more informed as they choose whether to download or delete.”

Named by Adweek as 2021’s “Hottest in Podcasts,” Vox Media Podcast Network has over 150 active shows featuring industry-leading editorial voices and storytellers from Vox Media’s networks and beyond. Learn more about the Vox Media Podcast Network here.

Dating apps can facilitate long-term relationships and friendships, but they can also be a marketplace where the strong prey on the weak. Care is always needed. Consider that one woman recently told the media that she went on a creepy date after meeting Idaho murderer Evan Kornberger online on a dating app in 2015.

Check out Land Of The Giants. Then maybe swipe left.

[notophelia]

Vax, the Briarwoods, and things both lost and gained in adaptation

[Spoilers for The Legend of Vox Machina episode 3 "The Feast of Realms" and also for Campaign 1 episodes 24 "The Feast” and 25 "Crimson Diplomacy," as well as a minor allusion to events later in the arc.]

In the midst of half the internet (quite understandably) losing the entirety of their shit over the hotness of the Briarwoods, and specifically of the Briarwoods toying with Vax (and Matt cheerfully assuring Mica during the watch party that the horny implications are "VERY intentional"), I've been utterly fascinated by that moment as a microcosm of how beautifully this whole adaptation thing is working.

As at least one post has pointed out, it's a very different experience from the first time around, not only because of the streamlining/tweaking of various plot details, but because it's a dizzyingly fast chain of events as opposed to a solid 40 minutes (not counting a WEEK in the midst of it, because cliffhanger) of mounting stress between paralysis and healing.

And that's true, and a function of the tools building the story making things read a bit differently, but there's also the factor of audience knowledge and expectation.

When we're watching them at the table, the game mechanics are always there. One of the key ways Matt facilitates immersion is by describing magic effects as perceived by the characters instead of naming them - for instance, telling Liam what Vax feels when his body is paralyzed without saying "Hold Person," and even giving him the cue of feeling something trying to penetrate his mind when he succeeds on the WIS save and isn't affected... which then leads to the hilariously bad attempt at pretending to have been affected.

Which, not gonna lie, I kinda missed in the TLOVM version. But it wouldn't really  have worked, and the way it does play out (a) is fucking terrifying, and (b) sets up the challenge they're about to be facing in a completely different, but equally effective, way.

The tools at Matt's disposal for the workings of Sylas' power in-game were clearly delineated: Hold, Charm, Suggestion, Dominate. He could keep a certain amount of mystery about what he was rolling behind that screen, and with things like making us wonder exactly what he intended to do to Vax's mind if Liam hadn't made that save. But it's the nature of the game for the mechanics to show.

In the animated series, though, things have space be... murkier. And they take full advantage of that - we see Vax struggling, and clearly he can't move, but we don't know if that's all of it.  Especially when it involves the same eye-glow visual effect established a few minutes before, when Sylas was very definitely manipulating Uriel's mind. Add in the way Vax's physical reaction (as noted by half the internet including Mica Burton) can be interpreted in more ways than just fear, and Sylas taking a moment to play with his food with that jaw-trace before the big chomp, and things get very murky indeed.

At this point, by the classic conventions of vampire media, Vax is presumed compromised. If I were coming to the show cold, with no prior knowledge of Critical Role or even of D&D, I would expect/hope to see increased vulnerability to Sylas' influence, probably being used against the group, drawing on the love of his sister and friends to resist and ultimately prevail. (And, as a side note, would think it was a nice little trope inversion to put him in that position instead of, say, Keyleth.)

Funny thing is... I do have that prior knowledge, and I still instinctively have those thoughts about it. Not only that, but I can see certain events as they played out in-game reading as exactly what I just described above.  It'll be interesting to see if they do!

(Also of note: All these people are children of the 70s and 80s whose formative vampire media experiences mirror my own. They know damn well this is what they’re doing. :-D)

[letterstothemidnightsociety]

It’s crossroads and psychics and shipping, OH MY! Join me as I continue one millennial’s journey to discover why a show about beefcakes and demons managed to last on network television for over a decade. It’s Supernatural! 

So now that we’re in the thick of it, there are two moves that the writing team of Supernatural pulled that make a season 2 work, or, more specifically, work for me. The first is that rather than Level Up their heroes, they allow our heroes to lose, and I discussed that in my last post. Now we don’t know what’s gonna happen - they didn’t defeat the bad guy, their ace up their sleeve (John) is dead, and they don’t even have wheels to roll around anymore. 

Equally important, the second thing they do at the top of season 2 is World Build. I’ve read this article from Emily VanDerWerff at Vox like, 8 times so I’m just gonna go ahead and quote her directly:

Season two of a great drama usually finds a way to explain why the show isn’t just a story about the protagonist but a story about a whole cast and a whole world. With the premise having been thoroughly explored in season one, the show, by necessity, has to start looking for other ways to tell stories. This usually means turning to the other characters within the ensemble... but it can sometimes mean pivoting to explore a new corner of the show’s setting ...or diving further into core themes...

Side note: I know few TV critics by name but I find Emily VanDerWerff’s tv and media analysis to be particularly insightful and brilliant and if she ever reads anything I write about TV, I just want her to know it. Definitely go read/listen to some of her stuff at Vox.

So let’s break that down, shall we? The job of season one on a television drama (which SPN undoubtedly is), is to set up the show as a story about a hero(es) (which SPN season 1 undoubtedly does). We know the Winchester Brothers. We know their wants, we know their obstacles, we know their pressure points and triggers, they’re standard MO’s. We’ve seen them move as a cohesive unit against a big antagonist and with the start of season 2, we get to see how they handle failure at the hands of that antagonist. 

But now season 2 has a bigger job: “explain why the show isn’t just a story about the protagonist but a story about a whole cast and a whole world.” As fun as it’s been riding with Sam and Dean across the country, that Impala does start to feel a little claustrophobic. We’re so focused on just these two characters that it’s hard to believe there’s a great wide world out there. Now, I call it claustrophobic now, but the chemistry between our two leads was definitely enough to carry the show without 3rd or 4th or 5th wheels through that first season and possibly future seasons. I was certainly happy to stick with just Sam and Dean for another 13 seasons when I watched this show for the first time back in 2008/2009. But after many years and many more TV shows, I understand that that model can’t be sustainable for the long haul. And that’s the goal, isn’t it? To get to a season five (and the sweet, sweet payday that is syndication) or farther. If your only regulars in series are two brothers and a car, that’s gonna get a little stale, at least for a broad audience anyway. And frankly, watching season 2 now and knowing what I know about the rest of the series, I’m excited to see new Found Family members show. If there’s one running theme throughout all 15 seasons it’s that Sam’s and Dean’s lives are deeply, tragically lonely.

So the writing team opens up a whole wide hunting world for our brothers to reside in - first with Bobby (AKA Poppa Hunter), then with The Roadhouse. But Bobby plus The Roadhouse crew don’t just expand on the SPN Scooby Gang. They show us, the audience, that Sam and Dean aren’t actually two lone guns out in the wilderness. Sure, season one gives us Missouri Mosely and then the deaths of Caleb and Pastor Jim, but these characters seem few and far between, unconnected to each other except by chance meetings with John Winchester. Introducing the new characters in season 2 shows us that there’s a network, a community out there, one that works together to stem the tide of evil from overtaking the Normals and their Apple Pie Lives. 

Quick side note: Can we talk about how this, specifically, was a real disservice John did to his children? In “Everybody Loves a Clown”, Ellen tells Dean that she knew John was closing in on the demon and Dean responds “What, was there an article in the Demon Hunters Quarterly that I missed?”, and that’s probably a throwaway line for the joke, but it inadvertently signals that John really kept his sons isolated from having any kind of life at all. Sure, nobody wants the life of a hunter, but what if you had, oh, a community of hunters who took care of each others’ children and called people out on their bullshit abusive behaviors and watched each others’ backs so that there were fewer casualties and also were there so you could talk about all those things that Sam and Dean have spent their entire lives keeping secret from everyone? Ellen says John was like family once, and, like, whut? Why doesn’t Sam or Dean know who any of these people are? Why isn’t there a team trying to take down this yellow eyed demon? Why is it that Sam and Dean have, like, no support system other than their father?? I mean there probably IS a Demon Hunters Quarterly and John should have gotten his boys a subscription! 

Of course, the Wider Hunting World isn’t all good guys like Bobby and Ellen and Jo and Ash. There’s also Gordon and Dean’s new Father Substitute, who’s a straight up psychopath, but they can’t all be winners, can they? That episode, as mentioned in my last post, also opens up the world of Team Monster - they’re not just mindless Evil devouring innocent victims. There’s also people out there with hearts and souls and consciousness’ who happen to have monster-like physical attributes, making the Winchesters’ mission that much more complex and fraught with drama and the potential for more storytelling opportunities.

And, in “Simon Said”, we start to see more of the Special Children, which is a fandom term that I do not like. Special Children? Special Children?? THAT’S what you went with?!? Anyway, we get the second instance of 20 year olds touched by the yellow-eyed-demon. There’s new abilities, stronger psychics, and just generally more to these children than Sam and Dean even knew existed. And I actually really love Andy a lot and really enjoyed this episode a lot. Andy is just an instantly likable character and I feel like, with his skill set, he could have been a real asset to the team. I mean, the guys get arrested by the feds at least once a season. But apparently Kripke decided, like, two episodes into the Special Children plot that he hated it and *spoiler alert* kills them all by the end of this season. 

Just looking at the three other episodes on the same disc as “Simon Said” (yes, I am still watching the DVDs) I’d say “Crossroad Blues” is another expansion episode. Though it was hinted at in the first episode, the Crossroad Deal is now A Thing, and one that’s gonna come back to bite us later. So our lore is getting bigger, deeper, more involved in the plot. “The Usual Suspects” doesn’t do a whole lot of expanding the world, but that one feels more like filler/light fare to balance out the drama from the first 6 episodes anyway. I’ll add that even though it doesn’t have a lot to offer, “The Usual Suspects” is an A+ episode that does a great job of remixing the formula. 

But back to our World Building - At the end of “Simon Said,” you get another taste of what this life should be for Sam and Dean. When Dean starts to pull the same secretive crap his father did, Ellen cuts back “This isn't just your war, this is war. Now, something big and bad's coming and it's coming fast, and their side holds all the cards. Now, at best all we got is us. Together. No secrets or half-truths here.” REALLY, John, you could have gone about your whole life of vengeance in a way that didn’t royally screw up your children and yet…

But Ellen’s complaint sums it up nicely - this show isn’t just about the Winchesters anymore, it’s not their war, it’s a whole world’s war, a world that the show now has the opportunity to explore and expand to their hearts’ content. 

And here’s where things get sticky. 

Like I said, the first go around, I was happy with only two protagonists and now that I worry about characters’ feelings, I’m really glad that the show tried to expand the Winchesters’ social circle for you know, mental and emotional and spiritual wholeness. And all the new characters that got introduced at the beginning of season two are generally well-liked characters...now.

I mean, nobody didn’t like Bobby Singer, right? The boys lose one father figure and he is replaced by another - better, stronger, more paternal than the one before. He’s the perfect blend of back country tough love and big ol’ softie and everybody loves Bobby, right? 

I don’t think anyone hated Ash either, although, you know, he’s kind of barely there. I gotta say, I do appreciate the amount of mullets that show up in the show. I mean, that’s commitment to a bit right there. Ash is their Guy in the Chair and he’s ridiculous and I am not ashamed to admit that I kind of love him.

Then there’s Ellen. Ellen “Definitely Didn’t Sleep With John That One Time” Harvelle. And she is GREAT. She comes right out of the gate with that Big Mom Energy. Ellen is your mom, if your mom could also drink you under the table and still shoot you between the eyes without spilling her glass. A+ job on this character, would recommend, would watch again. Why she disappears for so long, I’ll never know, but it’s probably some kind of bullshit reason that has to do with misogyny and “bad” attitudes and unequal pay. 

Honestly, in a sea of testosterone, there emerged a much needed island of femininity, and that island was The Roadhouse. But The Roadhouse also brings us Jo. 

Oof. You guys. Now listen, I’m gonna say a thing and that thing might be controversial but here goes: there is nothing wrong with Jo. I’ll say it louder so that Me back in 2008 can hear: THERE. IS. NOTHING. WRONG. WITH. JO. 

I’ve done a little digging and it seems the “official” complaint for Jo is that she comes off too naive, too innocent. I...do not agree. At least one site I read through says fans called her “immature”, but watching it this time around, she’s light and bubbly, sure, but she seems very much aware of the world she lives in. If anything, it’s the people around her who treat her like a child, it’s not the character herself who comes off that way. This watch, I see a character who is confident and pretty damn capable. I think “No Exit” shows a character who is maybe more fully realized than I gave her credit for the first go around - she’s tough, she knows how to handle herself in a fight, and she’s quick on her feet. But she’s also a human person, capable of making mistakes and getting in over her head and we see her deal with that once she’s captured by Holmes. She holds her own in both Sass and Skill against Dean and I think, at the very least, she could have made a good addition to the team on a regular basis. She makes a nice foil for both brothers - Sam, who never wanted this life, and Dean, who is already struggling to remember why he does what he does. Given time, I think her character could have settled into something that really stood out in the show. But that’s the problem with new characters who are written to be green - they need time to grow. Supernatural never gave her that time. 

I think the REAL problem is that Jo is very obviously introduced to be a love interest for Dean and yeah, that feels pretty shoe-horned in there. But I think we have to hand it to Alona Tal - she really is doing the best she can with the material she’s given, considering that the writing team seems to have done very little work on fleshing that character out up front. It’s like the writers were shocked that they had to write? A person? And not? A sex appeal????? And that feels very on-brand for CW. 

Do I ship Jo and Dean? I don’t know. My OTP at 19 was Dean + Me, so I’m real thankful I had no interest in writing fic at the time and there’s no incriminating author-insert work out there. But if asked me to chose an OTP for this entire series now, I’d say I ship Dean and Happiness and I feel like these two could have been happy. 

But fans hated Jo, so much so that the writers completely abandoned the love interest subplot and all but wrote her out of the show for good. She was not well liked in 2006 when this season aired and according to several fan sites I looked through, attitudes towards her didn’t warm up until she comes back in season five, basically just to die. Sure, she sacrifices her own life to save Sam and Dean, but she literally comes back to be cannon fodder and that’s what changes peoples’ attitudes towards her. Listen, I’m not saying there isn’t some weird gross misogyny to talk about down the line, but I think we have to acknowledge that this fandom is also guilty of some real girl-on-girl crime. 

Now I was curious - what was it exactly that so many fans hated? Why was the backlash against this character particularly passionate? And boy guys, did I find an answer.

I knew this was coming. I knew I couldn’t avoid it. And I’m not happy about it. But I said I was gonna dive into this show and you can’t dive into SPN without acknowledging the darker spots of the show and one of those spots is: Wincest. 

I just. Hoo boy. Listen, I am a Ship and Let Ship person. My kink is not your kink, your kink is not my kink, and we can all still get along. At least I hope we can all still get along, cuz fandom is occasionally terrifying and I don’t want anyone coming after me. But also, I did not realize...that they were so...prevalent? Like, seriously. I am very glad that I never actually used LiveJournal as I intended to use LiveJournal because 19-year-old me was not READY for that kind of Fandom. 

And hey I...understand why this happened? Sort of? Like, for all of season one, this show is only about two VERY attractive men folk who have VERY good chemistry with each other. And I will admit, in the spirit of honesty, that I too disliked Jo because I felt that introducing a girlfriend character would destroy the brother-character dynamic that was the heart and soul of the show. And I don’t want to dig too deeply into that sense memory because I don’t know that I like where it leads. 

But where this becomes a real problem is the implication that Jo was written out of the show because it interfered with the Wincest community? The idea that the Wincesters had that much power is chilling. Chilling. I mean, it’s one thing for a creator to take their fans into consideration when creating, it’s another thing entirely when the fandom makes a major plot point disappear. I mean, I don’t know what Alona Tal’s contract for season 2 was, but I do know that contracting for actors on a television series is affected by how many episodes they appear in. The number of episodes you’re in is also tied to things like pay rates (like those mandated by SAG) and where your name goes in the credits (top billing vs. end credits) Are you a guest star or a recurring character? Are you recurring or a series regular? Now, as a new character, it’s probable that Alona Tal was considered a guest star/recurring role and contract was per episode and not by the season - after all, that’s how the majority of the cast of The Office worked for all of season 1 and most of season 2. Angela, Oscar, Kevin, Meredith, Creed, Stanley, Phylis - they were all recurring characters, only contracted for each episode as it was being produced and they were in way more episode than Tal had in SPN. In fact, it was not until half way through season 2 (episode 11, “Booze Cruise”) that they were promoted to series regulars and received season-long contracts. But as the love interest for their lead, she was probably hired with the promise of getting promoted to series regular at some point in the future. Now imagine being Alona Tal, and finding out three episodes in that you’re not getting that season-long contract and you’re probably not coming back for season 3 because the fanbase is more into Brother-Lovin’ than your character. I mean. Guys.

Now can we really say that the Wincesters derailed a woman’s career? I don’t want to believe it, so I’m gonna say no. I am sure there was a lot of testing the character in key demographics and screenings with diverse audiences and graphs and charts and it wasn’t just that the producers of the show were endlessly scrolling through message boards on LiveJournal to see what kinks the fandom was into. I’m sure that was not the case because that is not the world I want to live in. But also, it definitely seems to have played a part. A REAL part. 

So let’s move back to television structure instead - why is this world building important? The key lies in a lot of the “prestige” shows that stream today. A lot of them have really strong first seasons, but a sophomore slump in their second seasons. Emily VanDerWerff calls out Stranger Things specifically, which had a tight, streamlined story that wrapped up so nicely at the end of season 1 that season 2 was left to flounder, trying to find its feet and its new story to tell. And they're not the only ones - this is a trend we see in a lot of premise driven shows.

How did we get here?The trend in shorter seasons has been really appealing to a lot of writers and directors who would typically work for feature length films. That means that a lot of the best shows are being written more like long-form movies than television series. The first season is a complete storyline from beginning to end with little deviation from the Main Quest. There’s less wandering like you’d see in a 22 episode season. Less of those filler/self-contained episodes where the writers get to explore new concepts and character work. This leaves less to detract from the single stream-lined story, but it also leaves little for the writers to explore once the season is done. When you wrap up all the loose ends by your season finale, you’re stuck wondering what’s left of the story to tell in future seasons? By not wrapping up the loose ends in “Devil’s Trap”, and by using these first 8 episodes to expand on more lore, allies, and world to inhabit, SPN is able to make space to create more story for years to come. 

NOW - can they keep that up for the next 14 seasons or will it get boring? Will we end up with comically overpowered heroes and villains that result in lower stakes? I mean, all of the characters die at LEAST once and come back, so how can SPN sustain the audiences’ concern for the characters when we’re never that worried for them? How much of the world is there left unexplored as you get farther into the series? How are they going to keep plots and arcs and characters new and fresh and exciting when we’re so familiar with everyone and everything? So many questions and so many episodes left to answer them! 

[powerbottomblake]

RWBY and Masculinity

I love RT’s, and specifically RWBY’s take on masculinity so much. The show subverts all expectations wrt their male characters and their development, which is why the male viewers experience major cognitive dissonance between what they expect and what story is actually being told (and then have the gall to call it bad writing). Under cut because this has gotten so long so fast.

The two main male characters - Sun and Jaune - are subvertions of genre/medium staples.

Jaune specifically hits all the beats of the typical male self-insert in a harem anime: he’s catapulted into a world he knows nothing of, instantly establishes 3 different dynamics with 3 different female characters/archetypes - Cheery, Ice Princess and Hot Tall and Earnest - one of whom he immediately sets his eyes on, he’s surrounded by women that are a whole lot more powerful than he is (and arguably THE most powerful one is instantly drawn to him), he’s essentially powerless and dealing with self-esteem issues and is nondescript enough to be a vehicle for any male viewer to project themselves onto. Which is why you have a good chunk of Jaune’s fandom from V1 being the embodiment of the Venn diagram intersection bewteen weebs and incels like That, and why there’s so much harem fanfic revolving around Jaune. 

CRWBY have heavily drawn from anime when making rwby so I don’t think this was coincidental; they laid out the groundworks to subvert a specific trope. Male fans, however, bought into the facade and kept waiting for Jaune to essentially steal the spotlight, be the focal point of several love interests and get a power up that’ll let him be their own power fantasy to boot, but CRWBY took his character in the very opposite direction. 

Jaune makes a lot of mistakes but what defines him is how earnestly he learns from them and redeems himself. He apologizes for lashing out at Pyrrha as a result of his own feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness when bullied by Cardin and then accepts her offer to teach him, sincerely taking instruction from her and then taking inspiration from her strength. Once he realizes his seduction skit with Weiss is not only ridiculous but wrong, he instantly changes his approach and prioritizes Weiss’s wants and needs over his, giving her space and knocking sense into Neptune so that Weiss can have her “ideal” date. Jaune doesn’t get embittered about being essentially rejected and most importantly he doesn’t let it affect his relationship with Weiss. Both of them become actual friends from that point on, and we get to see Jaune develop a certain measure of emotional intelligence starting that moment, which becomes part of his skillset and is shown to be part of what makes him a good leader. One of the best examples is how he and Ruby team up in V6E1 to get the hunter on the train to turn the turrets off. Jaune heals the hunter’s wounded arm and gently assuages his fear, in clear contrast with Qrow abrasively manhalding an injured and panicked man and expecting him to comply. The writing essentially puts down the show of arms and props up Ruby and Jaune’s approach; Jaune specifically is the example of masculine leadership the writing looks favorably on.  

And that’s the kicker here: Jaune’s strength comes from his set of soft skills as opposed to traditionally portrayed masculine strength, which usually careens into toxic power fantasy land. His whole arc in V1-3 is about learning to shed any distorted notions of chivalry and strength and knowing that his end goal shouldn’t be to become a hero for the sake of it or to live up to societal expectations, but to do what he can and as good as he can for the sake of everyone. Jaune is a good strategist and he knows how to make the best out of everyone’s powers. He’s there to enhance how people use their semblances together. His big power-up, his semblance reveal is basically him getting confirmed for a cross between a cleric and a paladdin (DnD players amongst us please correct me if I’m wrong): he is the ultimate support, acting as a healer and an amplifier to everyone around him, and that’s why he’s a good leader. His power on his own loses its entire meaning: Jaune takes strength from the people he loves and endlessly, earnestly gives back to them, never once stealing the spotlight in combat because that’s not his role and that’s okay.

And as for Jaune’s romantic prospects, think Forever Fall established once and for all that Jaune’s already found the One and I don’t think we’ll see him get any other love interest, especially now that arkos parallels oz/salem and with how vehement CRWBY are about lancaster being platonic. 

Now Sun. I want to tackle a specific expectation I’ve seen from male fans and that’s about him becoming more significant to the plot by coleading/leading the new White Fang movement...which would be hijacking Blake’s storyline. Blake is the one with drive and a cause, she was literally born inside the movement and has since seen it get derailed AND was the one to reclaim it from Adam and give it a new vision, as opposed to Sun who apparently wasn’t even aware of the systematic oppression Faunus had to deal with on a daily basis outside of Vacuo. So why is Sun, who has exactly 0 qualifications for this job and no interest in it, still expected to get it by a good chunk of his fans? Aside from the pervasive misogyny permeating fandom culture, there’s a specific trope media has served to us for decades now and that’s of a Semi-Competent Male Hero with his Hyper-Competent Female Side-kick (Vox published an article about it a few years ago and I really recommend checking it out), where a male character who’s semi good at best and not nearly as well-versed into whatever field he shares with his infinitely more competent female sidekick somehow walks in and saves the day and most of the time the female sidekick also, unsurprisingly doubles as a love interest. Time and again, male characters get rewarded for being half as good as their female counterpart at best AND they get the girl most often than not. 

But Sun’s whole character is, again, the very opposite of this. Sun never outweighs Blake on her own narrative (as is literal common sense) and shouldn’t be expected to. Sun actually gets schooled into the Faunus cause by his more competent female counterpart, Blake acting as his mentor and introducing him to the fight and why it matters. Blake and Sun basically reenact the plotline of Journey to the West (Sun quite literally references it by calling it a “Journey to the East”) a story whose main character is the legendary monkey king Sun Wukong, who’s the mythical figure Sun’s based on. Sun’s arc about finally knowing the cause and fighting for the right reasons happens thanks to Blake’s guidance - which Sun earnestly complies with and never questions because he knows she’s the expert and he doesn’t usurp that spot from her - and never overshadows her own narrative. Quite the opposite, it builds up to her own arc as a future leading figure of the WF and face of the Faunus cause by having her politicize someone who has no real stakes in this fight even though they should have.  

And then even his endeavor with Blake as a love interest falls through, with their relationship getting entirely recontextualized in V4-5 where their dynamic gets rebuilt as a friendship. Incidentally, that’s when it finally starts actually developing, instead of being stuck in the V1-3 limbo of mutual fleeting attraction where they’re constantly missing each other’s cues because they literally do not understand each other on a fundamental level. V4-5 is when Blake understands Sun isn’t what she needs in a romantic partner, but she does need him as a friend and ally. And Sun, whose premise falls in line with the Nice Guy trope, actually subverts it: he never makes Blake’s emotional journey about him, never expects anything in return and gracefully bows out of the narrative (for the time being) without ever pressuring Blake into acknowledging or returning his feelings. He doesn’t agonize over the initial attraction not going anywhere and doesn’t expect to be rewarded for being a decent person; again Blake’s feelings and well-being are his priority because that’s what good friends do. Their relationship developing into a steady friendship is never a point of conflict between them, and it’s actually lived as a positive event for both. 

And then, to top it off, CRWBY parsed together every bit of toxic masculinity and wrapped it into a power fantasy package and named the end result Adam Taurus, who’s the absolute worst abusive piece of shit. Adam is every single thing bad about men as a power structure: abrasive, entitled, controlling, takes violence as an indication of power and doesn’t take kindly to his leadership/vision being questionned. It’s not really coincidental that he steals the power seat from a woman and acts like he deserves it in any way. But male fans were so starved for their power fantasy fix and traditionally masculine cool calm collected and complicated male character that they were ready to minimize/outright ignore the abuse he’s put Blake through and just how awful a human being he was just to be able to hard project onto him. And CRWBY’s answer to that is basically this:

TL;DR: RT says if your masculinity isn’t humble, nurturing, supportive, compassionate, selfless and earnest then we don’t want it.

[c-is-for-circinate]

WOOPH I wish I was as smart as you in unpacking and understanding M9 and Vox Machina kids that I love

I love these kids VERY much, and they are packed with so many things.

(Also I spend...kind of a lot of time alone with my own thoughts right now, which has its pluses and minuses.  On the up side, it definitely results in a whole heck of a lot of meta, so there’s that.)

Honestly, though, as far as story/character analysis goes, it’s very much a combination of years of practice, years of watching and listening to a great many very smart people do the same thing, and a whole lot of hyperfocus.  If you want to try your hand at more analysis, go for it!  It’s a game with no losing conditions.

If you (or anyone!) want advice/a place to start, my three recommendations:

I look for parallels and compare/contrast a lot.  “Huh, these two characters both do the same thing/plot lines begin the same way/situations make me feel the same emotion.  I wonder what else is similar about them?  I wonder what is different about them?”  I find this an especially useful way to tease out answers to questions about nature vs nurture, since the different results you get when different characters go through the same situation can help you figure out how those characters were unique to begin with.

Nothing ever really has a clear and final solution.  Characters, stories, themes, settings, etc, are conversations, not statements.  I find it a lot more successful to try and figure out what questions I have about a story, or what questions a given character might be trying to solve (or avoid!) in themselves, than to look for a clear-cut answer.  A good story poses a couple of questions, and then explores lots of different possible answers.  A really good story refuses to definitively land on just one.  (Critical Role is, by the way, a really good story.)

I work really hard to take everything in a story for what it is, not what I think it should be.  If a character choice, plot twist, etc bothers me/strikes me as odd, I try to stay away from the question of bad writing altogether and just focus on things that’re much more objective.  Not ‘this thing shouldn’t have happened’, but, ‘this thing did happen--so what does that mean?’  Why did the character do that, even though I didn’t think they should/would?  Why did it surprise me--what was I expecting to begin with, and why?  What missing pieces would make this make sense?  Sometimes all I manage to do that way is figure out why I personally hate a particular twist or story, but that can be satisfying in its own way, and look, it makes analysis and media consumption in general so much more pleasant if you program yourself to follow up every “Wait, what?” moment with, “oh, that’s interesting” instead of “I’m so fucking mad.”

[laniakeabooks]

January Wrap Up

I read 11 books in January which is a personal record. I’ve included the synopsis pulled directly from Goodreads and my (short) thoughts on the book. If you’d like a longer review of any of the books I read this month, feel free to request it!

The Innocence Treatment by Ari Goelman - ⭐⭐⭐

Lauren has a disorder that makes her believe everything her friends tell her--and she believes everyone is her friend. Her innocence puts her at constant risk, so when she gets the opportunity to have an operation to correct her condition, she seizes it. But after the surgery, Lauren is changed. Is she a paranoid lunatic with violent tendencies? Or a clear-eyed observer of the world who does what needs to be done?

Told in journal entries and therapy session transcripts, The Innocence Treatment is a collection of Lauren's papers, annotated by her sister long after the events of the novel. A compelling YA debut thriller that is part speculative fiction and part shocking tell-all of genetic engineering and government secrets, Lauren's story is ultimately an electrifying, propulsive, and spine-tingling read.

 Nothing I found particularly impressive… it had potential but didn’t quite meet it.

 The Memory Book by Lara Avery - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 Sammie was always a girl with a plan: graduate at the top of her class and get out of her small town as soon as humanly possible. Nothing will stand in her way--not even a rare genetic disorder the doctors say will slowly start to steal her memories and then her health. What she needs is a new plan.

So the Memory Book is born: Sammie's notes to her future self, a document of moments great and small. It's where she'll record every perfect detail of her first date with longtime crush, Stuart--a brilliant young writer who is home for the summer. And where she'll admit how much she's missed her childhood best friend, Cooper, and even take some of the blame for the fight that ended their friendship.

Through a mix of heartfelt journal entries, mementos, and guest posts from friends and family, readers will fall in love with Sammie, a brave and remarkable girl who learns to live and love life fully, even though it's not the life she planned.

 I am shocked. I never expected to like a contemporary this much... especially "sick-lit" or whatever people are calling it. Maybe it was because I found a lot of what Sammie said to be so relatable, or maybe because NPC is exactly the type of disease I'd like to research in my future. Maybe it's because one of my greatest fears is getting dementia and losing my memory.

Whatever it was, I hope I can find it again in another book.

 Vox by Christina Dalcher - ⭐⭐

 Set in an America where half the population has been silenced, VOX is the harrowing, unforgettable story of what one woman will do to protect herself and her daughter.

On the day the government decrees that women are no longer allowed more than 100 words daily, Dr. Jean McClellan is in denial—this can't happen here. Not in America. Not to her.

This is just the beginning.

Soon women can no longer hold jobs. Girls are no longer taught to read or write. Females no longer have a voice. Before, the average person spoke sixteen thousand words a day, but now women only have one hundred to make themselves heard.

But this is not the end.

For herself, her daughter, and every woman silenced, Jean will reclaim her voice

 Uh, yeah, not impressed. Disappointed. Annoyed. It felt like Dalcher was trying too hard and was clearly ridding on the coattails of The Handmaid’s Tale’s recent re-emergence.

Also, the narrator on the audiobook and pronounce Wernicke’s area which just grated on my nerves and honestly pissed me off.

 First We Were IV by Alexandra Sirowy - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 It started for pranks, fun, and forever memories.

A secret society – for the four of us.

The rules: Never lie. Never tell. Love each other.

We made the pledge and danced under the blood moon on the meteorite in the orchard. In the spot we found the dead girl five years earlier. And discovered the ancient drawings way before that.

Nothing could break the four of us apart – I thought.

But then, others wanted in. Our seaside town had secrets. History.

We wanted revenge.

We broke the rules. We lied. We told. We loved each other too much, not enough, and in ways we weren’t supposed to.

Our invention ratcheted out of control.

What started as a secret society, ended as justice. Revenge. Death. Rebellion.

 Wooooowwwww... I am starting off this year with some pretty good reads. Granted, I read probably 3/4 of this one in emerge on my birthday after having twisted my knee skiing the day before...

This book didn't take the path I thought it would. It just felt like the climax and conclusion occurred in the same paragraph? I don't know maybe that's just me...

I'd love to see this as a TV show (maybe Netflix since they tend to do a rocking job).

 Day 21 by Cass Morgan - ⭐⭐⭐

 It's been 21 days since the hundred landed on Earth. They're the only humans to set foot on the planet in centuries...or so they thought. Facing an unknown enemy, Wells attempts to keep the group together. Clarke strikes out for Mount Weather, in search of other Colonists, while Bellamy is determined to rescue his sister, no matter the cost. And back on the ship, Glass faces an unthinkable choice between the love of her life and life itself.

In this pulse-pounding sequel to Kass Morgan's The 100, secrets are revealed, beliefs are challenged, and relationships are tested. And the hundred will struggle to survive the only way they can -- together.

 I still much prefer the Netflix adaptation. Although I enjoy this recovering from an apocalyptic event storyline the books take, I find that they lack the action that I love so much in the show… not to mention that my favourite characters don’t exist.

 52 Reasons to Hate My Father by Jessica Brody - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

 Lexington Larrabee has never to work a day in her life. After all, she’s the heiress to the multi-billion-dollar Larrabee Media empire. And heiresses are not supposed to work. But then again, they’re not supposed to crash brand new Mercedes convertibles into convenience stores on Sunset Blvd either.

Which is why, on Lexi’s eighteen birthday, her ever-absent, tycoon father decides to take a more proactive approach to her wayward life. Every week for the next year, she will have to take on a different low-wage job if she ever wants to receive her beloved trust fund. But if there’s anything worse than working as a maid, a dishwasher, and a fast-food restaurant employee, it’s dealing with Luke, the arrogant, albeit moderately attractive, college intern her father has assigned to keep tabs on her.

In a hilarious “comedy of heiress” about family, forgiveness, good intentions, and best of all, second chances, Lexi learns that love can be unconditional, money can be immaterial, and, regardless of age, everyone needs a little saving. And although she might have 52 reasons to hate her father, she only needs one reason to love him.

 Be prepared for a spoiled, bratty, unlikable main character. If you can’t stand characters like this, then I suggest avoiding this read, especially since we are trapped in her head (1st person narration) for the duration of the book. However, Lexi does have a great character arc, so if you are able to tolerate her for the first half of the book, you’ll actually start to like her.

Another contemporary I really enjoyed… not sure if this is because I’m not as picky when it comes to my favourite and least favourite genres anymore, but then again it my just be that I stumbled across two contemporaries that suited my fancy this month.

 The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James - ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

 Romy Silvers is the only surviving crew-member of a spaceship travelling to a new planet, on a mission to establish a second home for humanity amongst the stars. Alone in space, she is the loneliest girl in the universe until she hears about a new ship which has launched from Earth – with a single passenger on board. A boy called J.

Their only communication with each other is via email – and due to the distance between them, their messages take months to transmit across space. And yet Romy finds herself falling in love.

But what does Romy really know about J? And what do the mysterious messages which have started arriving from Earth really mean?

Sometimes, there’s something worse than being alone . . .

 Okay. First of all, the UK paperback cover is gorgeous. This would have one hundred percent been a cover buy if the synopsis hadn’t also intrigued me.

I went in thinking that it would be a space-based romance, but boy was I wrong. And good thing too. I’m not a huge fan of romance (more like I tolerate it for a good plot), and this book did not focus of the blooming romance as much as I thought it would.

Space, suspense, beautiful cover? Sign me up!

 Crash by Lisa McMann - ⭐⭐⭐

 Jules lives with her family above their restaurant, which means she smells like pizza most of the time and drives their double-meatball-shaped food truck to school. It’s not a recipe for popularity, but she can handle that.

What she can’t handle is the recurring vision that haunts her. Over and over, Jules sees a careening truck hit a building and explode...and nine body bags in the snow.

The vision is everywhere—on billboards, television screens, windows—and she’s the only one who sees it. And the more she sees it, the more she sees. The vision is giving her clues, and soon Jules knows what she has to do. Because now she can see the face in one of the body bags, and it’s someone she knows. Someone she has been in love with for as long as she can remember.

In this riveting start to a gripping trilogy from New York Times bestselling author Lisa McMann, Jules has to act—and act fast—to keep her vision from becoming reality.

 Not bad but not amazing either. It’s your typical psychic teen struggling with her newly found gifts and trying to prevent a tragedy. I’ll continue on with the trilogy since I have the bind up, they’re quick reads, and they’re a good distraction from my stressful studies… so basically just what I need.

 Bang by Lisa McMann - ⭐⭐⭐

 Jules should be happy. She saved a lot of people’s lives and she’s finally with Sawyer, pretty much the guy of her dreams. But the nightmare’s not over, because she somehow managed to pass the psycho vision stuff to Sawyer. Excellent.

Feeling responsible for what he’s going through and knowing that people’s lives are at stake, Jules is determined to help him figure it all out. But Sawyer’s vision is so awful he can barely describe it, much less make sense of it. All he can tell her is there’s a gun, and eleven ear-splitting shots. Bang.

Jules and Sawyer have to work out the details fast, because the visions are getting worse and that means only one thing: time is running out. But every clue they see takes them down the wrong path. If they can’t prevent the vision from happening, lives will be lost. And they may be among the casualties…

 This second book in the Visions series took an interesting turn on the whole psychic thing, but a lot of the book was spent going back and forth between “No I don’t want to do this” to “Yes I’m in” and “No I don’t want to help” to, again… “Yes I’m in” which was kind of a drag.

 Number of Pages Read: 3438

Average Rating: 3.5

Favourite Book of the Month: The Loneliest Girl in the Universe by Lauren James

The cover, the space adventure, the thriller-type aspect to the plot… everything I love all in one.

Least Favourite Book of the Month: Vox by Christina Dalcher

I was just… really disappointed.

  Keep up with me on Goodreads!  (https://www.goodreads.com/LaniakeaBooks)

[willow-bolton]

like a match in gasoline || a willow and riley mix (or how this was intended to be about their relationship and turned into a if they ever worked together they’d be hell to deal with mix- so basically badass bitches AU) (in no particular order, 21 tracks)

@rileymadden26​

01.  hell to pay- five finger death punch Feels like I'm running in place/A past I can't erase/I'm breaking, breaking apart/(I know they're after me)/It's like I'm fading each day/They took it all away/Left nothing, nothing but scars/(They make it hard to breathe)/Don't know where it went wrong/But my love for this is gone/I tried to numb the pain/But I can't get away/Hiding behind this disguise/The games I had to play/The hell I had to pay/Everything comes with a price

02. go to hell for heaven’s sake- bring me the horizon For the love of God, will you bite your tongue/Before we make you swallow it?/It's moments like this where silence is golden/And then you speak/No one wants to hear you/No one wants to see you/So desperate and pathetic, I'm begging you to spare me/The pleasure of your company/When did the diamonds leave your bones?/I'm burning down every bridge we made/I'll watch you choke on the hearts you break/I'm bleeding out every word you said/Go to hell, for heaven's sake/I'm burning down every bridge we made/I'll watch you choke on the hearts you break/I'm bleeding out every word you said/Go to hell, for heaven's sake

03. king of the world- porcelain & the tramps Keep your head down/Until I tell you to speak/And not giving me the run around/When you fall back into my coffin/No, you shouldn't stay in my way/Dare you test me/I'm the fucking king of the world/Get on your knees/I'm the fucking king of the world/Do as I please/So get up and get out and I'll show you/What it takes for me to control you/'Cause I'm the fucking king of the world

04. gasoline- porcelain & the tramps Don't get in my face/Don't invade my space/I'll put you in your place/I'll only tell you once/I'll never tell you twice/And this is me being nice/You cross me once and you'll see/It's like a match in gasoline/Gasoline'/Cause I'm highly flammable/A caged up animal/I will go off for you/You better take it back/I'm about to snap/I will go off for you, oh

05. love the way you hate me- like a storm I don't care if I'm not good enough for you/I don't care if I don't live the life you want me to/I don't care what you wanna think of me/'Cause all you are/Is everything/That I don't wanna be/You say/I'm a/Freak/I say/I am/Free/Come take a shot at me/I love the way you hate me/You say/I'm insane/I say/You're afraid/I get stronger from the pain/I love the way you hate me/Take another shot at me/I love the way you hate me

06. anti you- blue stahli Another command to succumb/To sucking you off with a smile/A vanity culture like a congregation/Identity dogmatism/The image is always in style/Stroking the ego with media masturbation/Conditioning to canonize/Gospel of this vox populi/Force feeding/Misleading/I'm burning the altar/And I'll pass right through/Erasing/Debasing/I want to be the anti you

07. fragile minds- silent theory Cut me open and you'll find/A brain, heart, liver, lungs/And a knife in the spine/It's chilling to know that the last place you go/Might be where the fat lady sings/Does it hurt? I don't know, and where do we go?/We don't tease fragile minds with such things/So sell me down the river/First help me sell my soul/It's something I know I can deliver/I think we've finally broke the mold

08. disarray- lifehouse I faced my demons/Wrestling these angels to the ground/And all that I could find Was a thin line between/All the saints and villains/It was crossed in my own mind/Someday I'm gonna find it/Wish I knew what I was looking for/Inside the disarray (inside the disarray)/I woke up this morning/Don't know where I'm going/But it's alright/I wouldn't have it any other way

09. the one who laughs last- downplay There's a war inside of me/And you watch it silently/Any idiot could see/That I killed all the hope that I had/There's a war inside of me/Burning red and honestly/And I wave it constantly/Like a flag, like a flag, like a flag/This knife that's in my back keeps twisting/Anxiety attacks/This is a battleground, I'm caught in the crossfire/My words are weaponry and I'm waiting patiently/You win the battle now but I will return the fire/'Cause I'd crawl on broken glass/To be the one who laughs last

10. i get wicked- thousand foot krutch I'm a beast came to rip this spot up/Stick to chords cause the devil wears prada/We want peace but we can make this rowdy, stop/We don't want to hurt nobody/You can't hate me cause my nature's nice/And my heart's for the people of the world tonight/If you got a problem with it take it up with life/Cause if you try to push me it ain't going to be nice/I get wicked, wicked/I get wicked/There's no escaping it/Wicked/You wanna kick it/Watch me get wicked/Step up and get it/'Cause I get wicked/I am not afraid of this mountain in my way/You can push me to my knees I believe/And I am now awake/Uncontrolled and not ashamed/When it washes over me I feel free

11. waste- seether Go unnoticed, let the freedom wash away./Losing focus, the pretense is second nature/It's a broken life that I cling too/Trying to make right/I feel dismayed, just like you do/I feel decayed../So find me a way, to leave this wasted life behind me. (this wasted life)/So find me a way, to leave this wasted life behind me after all/Yes, I see you surrounded by the hopeless/When they need you you're much to good and bloated/By the hopeless life that you cling too/Trying to make right.  

12. kill the lights- the birthday massacre This story's missing a wishing well/No mirror to show and tell/No kiss that can break the spell/I'm falling asleep/Every prince is a fantasy/The witch is inside of me/Her poison will wash away the memory/We kill the lights and put on a show/It's all a lie/But you'd never know/The star will shine/And then it will fall/And you will forget it all/And after midnight we're all the same/No glass shoe to bring us fame/Nobody to take the blame/We're falling apart

13. had enough- diamante I hate everyone that I meet/But I'm getting better/Think before I speak because I/I know I've got a temper/Think I've blown a fuse/There's blood on my knuckles/The smile on my face is fake/And the vein on my head suggests you get running/I've had enough, had enough/Had enough, had enough yeah/Cause I've had enough/I think I'm reaching the limit/You should keep your distance/Cause I've had enough/Take a deep breath and count to three/And then I'll be behavin'/I feel like people just don't get me/Maybe I'm crazy

14. paint it black- ciara I see a red door and I want it painted black/No colors anymore, I want them to turn black/I see the girls walk by, dressed in their summer clothes/I have to turn my head until my darkness goes/I see a line of cars and they're all painted black/With flowers and my love both never to come back/I see people turn their heads and quickly look away/Like a newborn baby, it just happens every day/I look inside myself and see my heart is black/I see my red door I must have it painted black/Maybe then I'll fade away and not have to face the facts/It's not easy facing up when your whole world is black/No more will my green sea go turn a deeper blue/I could not foresee this thing happening to you/If I look hard enough into the setting sun/My love will laugh with me before the morning comes

15. curbstomp- meg myers I'm a sinner/I'm a liar/Want forgiveness/But I'm tired/I'm addicted to the fire/Let go, I'm ready for it/Let go, I'm ready/I'm a victim/I'm a coward/Try to wake up/Don't have the power/I'm a daughter in the choir/Let go, I'm ready for it/Let go, I'm ready

16. gasoline vs. savages- marina & halsey Is it running in our blood? Is it running in our veins?/Is it running in our genes? Is it in our DNA?/Humans aren't gonna behave as we think we always should/ Yeah, we can be bad as we can be good/Underneath it all we're just savages/Hidden behind shirts, ties and marriages/How could we expect anything at all?/We're just animals still learning how to crawl/We live, we die, we steal, we kill, we lie/Just like animals but with far less grace/We laugh, we cry like babies in the night/Forever running wild in the human race

17. moments- tove lo I, I'm not the prettiest you've ever seen/But I have my moments, I have my moments/Not the flawless one I've never been/But I have my moments, I have my moments/I can get a little drunk, I get into all the dont's/But on good days I am charming as fuck/I can get a little drunk, I get into all the dont's/But on good days I am charming as fuck

18. calm down- krewella Got all my keys don't you follow me, call on me/Ain't mood for no drama/Outta my face, didn't you read my policy/I do what I wanna/You ain't my therapist, ain't got the formula/So stay in your corner/Last thing I need is my head underwater/Didn't I warn' ya'/Wanna feel the good/Wanna feel the bad, feel it all/Got a human heart/I'ma let that fly and fall/When I feel insane/And I rap that pain/No doubt/I'ma spell it out/Don't tell me to calm down/I'm about to tear this fuckin' place down/Kinda like the way I let it go.../Don't tell me to calm down/I'm about to tear this fuckin' place down/No, I ain't afraid to let it go.../Don-don't tell me to calm down/Don't tell me to calm down

19. middle finger- bohnes You show me love then spit in my face/Making your money off all of my pain/You put an eagle inside of a cage/And you think I'm not strong enough to escape/But I refuse to let you make me feel like I can't fly/Not only will I soar again, I'll own the fucking sky, yeah/So I put my middle finger up/I'm done being your slave/My generation's had enough/And you should be afraid/Oh-whoa, oh, not your prisoner/Oh-whoa, oh, better listen when I say/I put my middle finger up/I'm done being your slave/You couldn't even look me in the eye/When you let me go and then left me to die/There was no question that I would survive/An artist on fire is one that's alive

20. dead af- krewella Throwing pretty pennies/Down a wishing well/We ain't fucking with you/But we wish you well/Wonder where your friends is/Are they heads or tails?/We ain't fucking with you/'Cause we see you/At the bottom of the party/With the silver spoon under your tongue (under your tongue)/You're all about the money/But your bullshit doesn't add up (doesn't add up)/Dancing with the skeletons out of all the graves you dug (graves you dug)/All your friends are Benjamins call 'em but they won't show up/'Cause everybody dead as fuck.../'Cause everybody dead as fuck.../'Cause everybody dead as (Brah! Brah!)/Dead as fuck

21. bones- ms mr Dig up her bones but leave the soul alone/Boy with a broken soul/Heart with a gaping hole/Dark twisted fantasy turned to reality/Kissing death and losing my breath/Midnight hours, cobble street passages/Forgotten savages, forgotten savages/Dig up her bones but leave the soul alone/Let her find a way to a better place/Broken dreams and silent screams/Empty churches with soulless curses

[postguiltypleasures]

The Magicians Page vs Screen

I recently finished the audio book version of Lev Grossman’s The Magicians trilogy while anticipating the third season of SyFy’s adaptation. I have some thoughts to share, in no particular order.

I should first mention that, in addition to having watched the first two seasons of the TV show, my expectations of the books were colored by reading some reviews, in particular that Emily VanDerWerff whose interpretation of changing perspectives of the narrator’s focus representing growing up and becoming more aware is true in the abstract, but also kind of misleading. The books increase the number of perspectives, but they are still primarily that of Quentin Coldwater. I was under the impression that every chapter in The Magician King would alternate between Quentin and Julia, but it was really more like three chapters from Quentin’s perspective for every one from Julia’s. (I’m going to struggle with my thoughts about Julia’s changing narrative status from page to screen. In general I think the TV show improves things for her.  Nothing in the books is as pleasing as her friendship with Kady, she gets her shade back and in general having more time for her point of view is an improvement.) Also in her review she states that the books have very little plot, but that’s only true of the first book in the trilogy. The subsequent ones are tightly paced thrillers.

Around the first season and (not accidentally) the release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Vox also published an article about the annoying cliche in sci-if and fantasy fiction in which a male protagonist is helped by a more talented female character who is never allowed to be the protagonist. I tweeted the article and a fan got defensive about how the Quentin/Alice relationship doesn’t fall into the same pattern as that of  Luke/Leia, Neo/Trinity, or Harry/Hermione. At the time, I admitted that I had yet to watch or read the full series, but agreed with the larger thesis. This did not assauge the person in my Mentions, but now I want to say, Quentin/Alice is a much stranger, more fraught relationship than the others are allowed to be. (And I love it.)

Also, one thing that appealed to me about the show, is that I caught the start of the second episode after an episode of Lost Girl. It starts with a sequence set to “Intro” by The XX’s from their first album. I had owned the album for years but could never get into it until I saw this sequence. I really like it when one art form brings another to life like this.

Using the audio book version makes the experience time-conscious in a way that reading silently does not. This really struck me with regards to the difference between book and TV Fillory. In the books the clock trees are a very prominent part of Fillory in a way they aren’t in the TV show. TV, as a medium, is already self conscious of time, which made me wonder if the clock trees are a tool to make the reader think of time, which would be redundant in TV. (This is broadcast TV, streaming TV, with it’s less tight running times is an exception, perhaps to its detriment.)

The TV show gave me a sense that the Fillory and Further series-within-the-series was basically The Magicians’s version of Narnia. So I was surprised that in the books we get so much more detail about the plot of the series-within-the-series and resembles a cross between Narnia and Oz. The backstory of the writing also reflects this. I think that in the TV show, the Chatwin kids are in the country due to Operation Peter Pan in World War Two, just as in The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. But in the Books, it’s World War One and the kids are in the country because their father is in the war and their mother is indisposed. Between the time change and having the novels within the novel’s author, Christopher Plover be an American expatriate in the English countryside the books feel like they are explicitly placing Fillory as a midpoint between Oz and Narnia.

Incidentally, the name Christopher Plover is reminiscent of Winnie the Pooh’s Christopher Robin who reportedly felt miserable and exploited by his father’s writings.  TV series Plover is English and played by Charles Shaughnessy of The Nanny fame, which feels like calculated way of enhancing the affect of his abuse of Martin Chatwin.

The TV series Fillory may lose some of the direct links to Oz, but its attitude about growing up is closer to Oz than Narnia.

There was a lot of criticism about how the TV show’s pilot was overstuffed and muddled, so I was surprised that so much of the information that had to be communicated in the pilot is exposed early in the first book.

On the other hand, The Beast’s first appearance and Alice’s backstory with her brother are brought up much faster in the TV show. In the case of Alice, her story definitely has more impact and pathos in the way it’s brought up in the book, so that’s a loss on TV. But I do really like bringing the threat of the Beast up so quickly.

One of the most surprising differences between the Books and TV series is that in the Books, the first trip to Fillory is made just because they can (and because they need something to shake themselves out of their post-graduation lethargy).  On the TV show it’s because the Beast is regularly threatening them. TV really isn’t a great medium for portraying lethargy, it isn’t intimate in the way reading is. Quentin isn’t sympathetic in the events leading up to the trip to Fillory in the books, but you’re in his head, so you’re with him. Then the key act of Quentin cheating on Alice in a threesome with Eliot and Janet/Margot comes off very differently in the two media. In the Books it’s a personal nadir and a major betrayal. It’s compounded by the fact that Quentin was thinking about Janet while feeling frustrated with Alice. On the Show, it mostly feels like a case of bad timing rather than a personal choice.  They had literally bottled up their feelings to practice Battle Magic, when they retrieved the feelings back they’re confused and stronger.  They also self medicate.  As group falling into bed feels inevitable and it’s just bad luck that Alice isn’t there to be a part of it.

Both Book and TV versions of Quentin are more emotionally attached to Eliot than to Janet/Margot. After the threesome, Book Quentin obsesses over how stupid he was to betray Alice with Janet, but he can barely acknowledge that he was also with Eliot. In the TV fandom, there is a lot more focus on the Quentin/Eliot coupling than on the Quentin/Margot one. The schism reminds me of Crime and Punishment (of all things) where Raskolnikov obsesses over one of his victims, and the detective focuses on the other. Considering that a major theme of The Magicians is crossing over from fan to participant/creator, it feels appropriate that fandom would be part of a literary parallel (and impossible to plan.)

TV Margot is much more of a character than Book Janet, but we don’t yet know if they share backstory or if that’s as different as their names. Show and Book Penny also have little besides a name in common, Kady and Asmadeus have even less.

The Beast’s design on the show kind of reminds me of the cover of La Oreja de Van Gogh’s “El planeta imaginario”. Seeing it this way kind of undercut how unnerving he could be, and made the album cover scarier than I think was intended. I was surprised that the Book’s description is so different, just a man with a tree branch in front of his face. I get why they’d want to redesign that for the camera, but I like how René Magritte-like that description is.

Finding out that the Beast is Martin Chatwin is such a great twist that I wished I could be shocked by it when I experienced it in another medium. (I’m having kind of the opposite experience with Game of Thrones, I’m not eagerly anticipating those twists.) It was distracting in trying to stay involved in the book’s version of the plot. TV’s Beast has much more on-screen time, there are more than two confrontations with him, and our protagonists seek him out as an enemy, all of which is very different in the books. But, otherwise it feels like Martin and his tragedy really saturated the Books’ story in a way that hasn’t really happened in the series. The TV series characters have to deal with the physical damage the Beast leaves in Fillory, the way he abuses its resources, something the Books don’t really address. But the books are more interested in the psychological damage he leaves behind. His family never recovers from his defection. The TV series only really focuses on how that affects Jane, and how their interaction is a lot more direct here than in the Books. I don’t know if the TV series is ever going to do anything with Rupert Chatwin, but his book-within-The Magician’s Land was beautiful and poignant. Nothing in the TV series quite matches it.

That said, the lessening of The Beast’s presence allows Reynard to be the Big Bad for most of the second season. This gives greater value to Julia’s experience. Also, his comeuppance and Julia’s experience of finally meeting Our Lady of the Underground are more satisfying on the show. I had no idea how much I appreciated that Our Lady restores Julia’s Shade until I found out that she doesn’t do so in the Book. (She just transforms Julia into a Dryad after which Julia disappears for most of the third book.) I was also surprised and a little disappointed to realize that the “Julia was rejected from Breakbill’s because of the timeline experiments on how to best defeat the Beast” is not in the Book. Good job, Show in creating that plot.

(Another Game of Thrones comparison: George R R Martin famously said that one of his goals in his series was to go where fantasy series generally don’t and get into the process of governing. The Magicians books really aren’t interested in that. Ruling Fillory is treated as a whim, even though the decision to collect taxes is one of the events that kickstarts the plot of The Magician King. The show, however, is interested in what it means to run Fillory.)

I like the continuous contact with characters that the medium of TV demands. I like that we see Penny joining The Order of Librarians, rather than having him disappear for hundreds of pages and then showing up as a member of The Order.

In general, the books are more sympathetically sensual and the TV show replaces the sensuality with crassness. That may sound more critical of the show than I intend.  I really like the show and think it improves upon some aspects of the plot significantly. (For example I’m much more invested in Julia and Free Trade Beowulf’s quest to meet our Lady of the Underground and in it’s tragic aftermath in the TV Show than the Books. In fact, I’m kind of annoyed that it’s mostly a B-plot in the Books when the TV show gives it the time and weight it deserves.) I think the best illustration of this difference would be the wealth of details the book provides in exploring how it feels to be transformed into a different animal.  The characters on the show are much more preoccupied by their bodily functions than in the books. Think how much of the second season’s plot was about how the god Ember, defecating in the well that was a source of magic messes things up for everyone. This is what I mean by crass.

The gods of Fillory, Ember and Umber, are surprisingly different after transitioning from page to screen. Some of the changes are predictable, such as changing their physiques from pure ram to humanoid with ram features. But they also forgo the idea that Umber is Ember’s shadow and they’re really one aspect of the same god in the Book.  On TV they’re separate gods one of chaos and one of order. A major themes in The Magician’s Land is the evolution from being a fan to a creator and then letting go of the creation so that new fans can go through that process. Storytelling is a combination of setting rules and creating chaos. Quentin killing Umber happens under very different circumstances and earlier in the narrative in the TV Series. I’m not sure where the letting-go-so-you’re-fans-can-do-their-thing part comes in for the show.

I like that the TV version has musical numbers.

[easyfoodnetwork]

Inside David Chang’s New Memoir

David Chang on “Ugly Delicious” | Courtesy of Netfix

10 telling quotes from “Eat a Peach”

David Chang is one of the most influential restaurateurs of this century, a position he regards with no small amount of trepidation. And in Eat a Peach, Chang’s first memoir, the chef wrestles with his success as he chronicles his rise to prominence and the fame he’s experienced since. The beats of the book will be familiar to those who have followed Chang’s career, and much of it reads as if Chang is responding directly to those same people, critics included.

Chang gives the behind-the-scenes play by play for each of his restaurant openings, from growing pains at his first restaurant, the East Village’s Noodle Bar, to the “art project” that was fast-food, fried chicken restaurant Fuku, to his regrets around Momofuku’s critically panned Italian restaurant Nishi. He addresses his reputation for anger in the kitchen, the fallout from the shuttering of beloved food magazine Lucky Peach, and that time he reduced Bay Area cuisine to figs on a plate. He also lays out his struggles with mental health, including a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and examines the ways in which this fact of his life is linked to his mistakes as well as his undeniable ascent in the restaurant world.

Here are some of the highlights:

Eat a Peach is available now on Amazon and Bookshop.

On his management style at Noodle Bar:

“I didn’t know how to teach or lead this team, but I was getting good results. My method, if you can even call it that, was a dangerous, shortsighted combination of fear and fury. My staff was at the mercy of my emotional swings. One second, we were on top of the world. The next, I would be screaming and banging my fists on the counter. I sought out and thrived on conflict. My arrogance was in conflict with my insecurity. Our restaurant was in conflict with the world.”

“I never resolved any conflicts between staff. On the contrary, if I heard that two cooks weren’t getting along, I’d see to it that they worked together more closely. That was one surefire method, I told myself, to ensure the place had a pulse. You could feel our anger the second you walked through the door, and that was exactly how I wanted it.”

On developing the Momofuku style:

“Roll your eyes all you want. God knows it sounds clichéd. But at that time most chefs in America were giving their customers different food than they were eating themselves. What we ate after service was uglier, spicier, louder. Stuff you want to devour as you pound beer and wine with your friends. It was the off bits that nobody else wanted and the little secret pieces you saved for yourself as a reward for slogging it out in a sweaty kitchen for sixteen hours. It’s the stuff we didn’t trust the dining public to order or understand: a crispy fritter made from pig’s head, garnished with pickled cherries; thin slices of country ham with a coffee-infused mayo inspired by Southern redeye gravy. My favorite breakthrough never made the cookbook: whipped tofu with tapioca folded in, topped with a fat pile of uni. So fresh, so cold, so clean, and so far outside of our own comfort zone. There were so many ideas on the menu that we’d never seen or tried before. The only unifying thread was that we were nervous about every single dish we served.”

On success:

“The only benefit to tying your identity, happiness, well-being and self-worth to your business is that you never stop thinking about it or worrying over what’s around the corner. If I have been quick to adapt to the changing restaurant landscape, it is because I have viewed it as a literal matter of survival. I have never allowed myself to coast or believed that I deserve for life to get easier with success. That’s where hubris comes from. The worst version of me was the one who, as a preteen, thought he had what it took to be a pro golfer. I believed my own hype and was a snotty little shit about it. The humiliation and pain of having it all slip through my fingers is something I’d rather never feel again. And so, I choose not to hear compliments or allow myself to bask in positive feedback. Instead, I spend every day imagining the many ways in which the wheels might fall off.”

On the demise of Lucky Peach:

“For anybody who thinks I didn’t feel a responsibility to the magazine, or that Lucky Peach wasn’t tied into the very heart of my own identity, let me explain something to you. To this day, it’s still something journalists ask me.

“You know what the name Momofuku means?

“It means ‘lucky peach.’”

On embracing his role as chef and restaurateur:

“All I ever wanted was to be normal, to think normal. I’m not a naturally loquacious person. I’m not outgoing or inclined to be a leader. I’m a wallflower. It’s been like that since I was a kid. For the majority of my life I was somewhere between ashamed and afraid of my Koreanness. I wanted not to be me, which is why drugs — both illicit and prescribed — appeal to me.

“The restaurants changed all of that. When I started Momofuku, I killed the version of me that didn’t want to stick his neck out or take chances. Even at its earliest larval stages, when it was more theory than restaurant, Momofuku was about carving out some sort of identity for myself. It would be my way of rejecting what the tea leaves said about me.

“Work made me a different person. Work saved my life.”

On rage and his diagnosis of bipolar disorder with “affective dysregulation” of emotions:

“Dr. Eliot describes it as a temporary state of psychosis. I can’t tell friend from foe. It’s as though I’m seeing the world in different colors and I can’t switch my vision back. It doesn’t only happen at work, either. I will lose it at home, which is horrifying. I lose all sense of what’s real and wish the worst on people I love most. My wife, Grace, tells me that when I’m angry, I seethe with such intensity that it can’t simply be emotional. It’s like I’m an animal registering dagner. There are times when Grace and I will be arguing and she’ll plead, ‘Hey, I’m on your side, I’m on your side.’ It will take hours for me to hear her.”

“I hate that the anger has become my calling card. With friends, family, my co-workers, and the media, my name has come to be synonymous with rage. I’ve never been proud of it, and I wish I could convey to you how hard I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve been entrenched in a war with my anger for many years.”

On his place in the world:

“‘What the hell is going on?’

“I call my friends and ask this all the time. They’ve heard me complain over and over that I have a problem accepting reality, because there’s no way I deserve the kind of good fortune I’ve had. I used to call it imposter syndrome, but now I understand it better as survivor’s guilt. All these people around me have died — literally and figuratively — and I’m still here. It truly feels like surviving a plane crash.”

On his first restaurant flop:

“I was on the verge of getting back on my feet after a very bad year, but the reviews of Nishi knocked me flat on my back again. I’m hesitant to admit this, but having to live through it a second time when The New Yorker published its profile of Wells put me in a bleak state of mind. I’m embarrassed that I let criticism affect me so intensely, but I felt closer to suicide in that periodthan I had in years.”

On being a part of the boys’ club:

“I’m literally one of the poster children for the kitchen patriarchy. In 2013, Time magazine put a photo of me, René Redzepi and Alex Atala wearing chef whites and satisfied smirks on the cover of their magazine and called us ‘The Gods of Food.’ I didn’t question whether any women would be included in the issue’s roundup of the most important chefs in the world because frankly it never occurred to me to ask. Even years before #MeToo started in earnest, the backlash to the all-male lineup was swift and deserved.

“At the time, I thought the point was about representation: there should be more women chefs covered by the food media, just as there should be more people of color. But no, we’re talking about something much more vicious. It’s not just about the glass ceiling or equal opportunity. It’s about people being threatened, undermined, abused, and ashamed in the workplace. It’s embarrassing to admit how long it took me to grasp that.”

On blindspots:

“Even this book, written with the benefit of greater knowledge and better perspective, is still riddled with problems. I’ve talked a great deal about the importance of failure as a learning tool, but it’s really a privilege to expect people to let us fail over and over again. There are too many dudes in my story in general, and you can still see my bro-ish excitement when I tell old war stories. Almost all the artists and writers I mention are men, and most of the movies I reference can be found in the DVD library of any frat house in America. It’s my truth, which is why I’m leaving them in here, but I wish that some of it were different.”

Disclosure: David Chang is producing shows for Hulu in partnership with Vox Media Studios, part of Eater’s parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2RaDQMs https://ift.tt/3hhFoPk

David Chang on “Ugly Delicious” | Courtesy of Netfix

10 telling quotes from “Eat a Peach”

David Chang is one of the most influential restaurateurs of this century, a position he regards with no small amount of trepidation. And in Eat a Peach, Chang’s first memoir, the chef wrestles with his success as he chronicles his rise to prominence and the fame he’s experienced since. The beats of the book will be familiar to those who have followed Chang’s career, and much of it reads as if Chang is responding directly to those same people, critics included.

Chang gives the behind-the-scenes play by play for each of his restaurant openings, from growing pains at his first restaurant, the East Village’s Noodle Bar, to the “art project” that was fast-food, fried chicken restaurant Fuku, to his regrets around Momofuku’s critically panned Italian restaurant Nishi. He addresses his reputation for anger in the kitchen, the fallout from the shuttering of beloved food magazine Lucky Peach, and that time he reduced Bay Area cuisine to figs on a plate. He also lays out his struggles with mental health, including a diagnosis of bipolar disorder, and examines the ways in which this fact of his life is linked to his mistakes as well as his undeniable ascent in the restaurant world.

Here are some of the highlights:

Eat a Peach is available now on Amazon and Bookshop.

On his management style at Noodle Bar:

“I didn’t know how to teach or lead this team, but I was getting good results. My method, if you can even call it that, was a dangerous, shortsighted combination of fear and fury. My staff was at the mercy of my emotional swings. One second, we were on top of the world. The next, I would be screaming and banging my fists on the counter. I sought out and thrived on conflict. My arrogance was in conflict with my insecurity. Our restaurant was in conflict with the world.”

“I never resolved any conflicts between staff. On the contrary, if I heard that two cooks weren’t getting along, I’d see to it that they worked together more closely. That was one surefire method, I told myself, to ensure the place had a pulse. You could feel our anger the second you walked through the door, and that was exactly how I wanted it.”

On developing the Momofuku style:

“Roll your eyes all you want. God knows it sounds clichéd. But at that time most chefs in America were giving their customers different food than they were eating themselves. What we ate after service was uglier, spicier, louder. Stuff you want to devour as you pound beer and wine with your friends. It was the off bits that nobody else wanted and the little secret pieces you saved for yourself as a reward for slogging it out in a sweaty kitchen for sixteen hours. It’s the stuff we didn’t trust the dining public to order or understand: a crispy fritter made from pig’s head, garnished with pickled cherries; thin slices of country ham with a coffee-infused mayo inspired by Southern redeye gravy. My favorite breakthrough never made the cookbook: whipped tofu with tapioca folded in, topped with a fat pile of uni. So fresh, so cold, so clean, and so far outside of our own comfort zone. There were so many ideas on the menu that we’d never seen or tried before. The only unifying thread was that we were nervous about every single dish we served.”

On success:

“The only benefit to tying your identity, happiness, well-being and self-worth to your business is that you never stop thinking about it or worrying over what’s around the corner. If I have been quick to adapt to the changing restaurant landscape, it is because I have viewed it as a literal matter of survival. I have never allowed myself to coast or believed that I deserve for life to get easier with success. That’s where hubris comes from. The worst version of me was the one who, as a preteen, thought he had what it took to be a pro golfer. I believed my own hype and was a snotty little shit about it. The humiliation and pain of having it all slip through my fingers is something I’d rather never feel again. And so, I choose not to hear compliments or allow myself to bask in positive feedback. Instead, I spend every day imagining the many ways in which the wheels might fall off.”

On the demise of Lucky Peach:

“For anybody who thinks I didn’t feel a responsibility to the magazine, or that Lucky Peach wasn’t tied into the very heart of my own identity, let me explain something to you. To this day, it’s still something journalists ask me.

“You know what the name Momofuku means?

“It means ‘lucky peach.’”

On embracing his role as chef and restaurateur:

“All I ever wanted was to be normal, to think normal. I’m not a naturally loquacious person. I’m not outgoing or inclined to be a leader. I’m a wallflower. It’s been like that since I was a kid. For the majority of my life I was somewhere between ashamed and afraid of my Koreanness. I wanted not to be me, which is why drugs — both illicit and prescribed — appeal to me.

“The restaurants changed all of that. When I started Momofuku, I killed the version of me that didn’t want to stick his neck out or take chances. Even at its earliest larval stages, when it was more theory than restaurant, Momofuku was about carving out some sort of identity for myself. It would be my way of rejecting what the tea leaves said about me.

“Work made me a different person. Work saved my life.”

On rage and his diagnosis of bipolar disorder with “affective dysregulation” of emotions:

“Dr. Eliot describes it as a temporary state of psychosis. I can’t tell friend from foe. It’s as though I’m seeing the world in different colors and I can’t switch my vision back. It doesn’t only happen at work, either. I will lose it at home, which is horrifying. I lose all sense of what’s real and wish the worst on people I love most. My wife, Grace, tells me that when I’m angry, I seethe with such intensity that it can’t simply be emotional. It’s like I’m an animal registering dagner. There are times when Grace and I will be arguing and she’ll plead, ‘Hey, I’m on your side, I’m on your side.’ It will take hours for me to hear her.”

“I hate that the anger has become my calling card. With friends, family, my co-workers, and the media, my name has come to be synonymous with rage. I’ve never been proud of it, and I wish I could convey to you how hard I’ve tried to fight it. I’ve been entrenched in a war with my anger for many years.”

On his place in the world:

“‘What the hell is going on?’

“I call my friends and ask this all the time. They’ve heard me complain over and over that I have a problem accepting reality, because there’s no way I deserve the kind of good fortune I’ve had. I used to call it imposter syndrome, but now I understand it better as survivor’s guilt. All these people around me have died — literally and figuratively — and I’m still here. It truly feels like surviving a plane crash.”

On his first restaurant flop:

“I was on the verge of getting back on my feet after a very bad year, but the reviews of Nishi knocked me flat on my back again. I’m hesitant to admit this, but having to live through it a second time when The New Yorker published its profile of Wells put me in a bleak state of mind. I’m embarrassed that I let criticism affect me so intensely, but I felt closer to suicide in that periodthan I had in years.”

On being a part of the boys’ club:

“I’m literally one of the poster children for the kitchen patriarchy. In 2013, Time magazine put a photo of me, René Redzepi and Alex Atala wearing chef whites and satisfied smirks on the cover of their magazine and called us ‘The Gods of Food.’ I didn’t question whether any women would be included in the issue’s roundup of the most important chefs in the world because frankly it never occurred to me to ask. Even years before #MeToo started in earnest, the backlash to the all-male lineup was swift and deserved.

“At the time, I thought the point was about representation: there should be more women chefs covered by the food media, just as there should be more people of color. But no, we’re talking about something much more vicious. It’s not just about the glass ceiling or equal opportunity. It’s about people being threatened, undermined, abused, and ashamed in the workplace. It’s embarrassing to admit how long it took me to grasp that.”

On blindspots:

“Even this book, written with the benefit of greater knowledge and better perspective, is still riddled with problems. I’ve talked a great deal about the importance of failure as a learning tool, but it’s really a privilege to expect people to let us fail over and over again. There are too many dudes in my story in general, and you can still see my bro-ish excitement when I tell old war stories. Almost all the artists and writers I mention are men, and most of the movies I reference can be found in the DVD library of any frat house in America. It’s my truth, which is why I’m leaving them in here, but I wish that some of it were different.”

Disclosure: David Chang is producing shows for Hulu in partnership with Vox Media Studios, part of Eater’s parent company, Vox Media. No Eater staff member is involved in the production of those shows, and this does not impact coverage on Eater.

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[vinayv224]

Read Obama’s inspiring commencement address to 2020’s high school graduates

Former President Barack Obama speaks during the “Graduate Together” television special. | Getty Images for EIF & XQ

“Leave behind all the old ways of thinking that divide us: sexism, racial prejudice, status, greed,” Obama said. “Set the world on a different path.”

In his second commencement speech of 2020, former President Barack Obama implored graduating high schoolers to be brave in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, and to reject old ways of doing things while working together to solve pressing problems, from economic inequality to the climate crisis.

“If the world’s gonna get better, it’s gonna be up to you,” Obama said during the television special, “Graduate Together” on Saturday. “Leave behind all the old ways of thinking that divide us — sexism, racial prejudice, status, greed. And set the world on a different path.”

The speech followed one Obama delivered to graduates of historically black colleges and universities in which he offered both pointed criticisms of the Trump administration — specifically that “this pandemic has fully finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they’re doing” — and his signature optimistic rhetoric.

Saturday evening’s remarks also contained a few gentle rebukes of the Trump administration, with the former president telling the graduates that adults “don’t have all the answers. A lot of them aren’t even asking the right questions,” and that “things are so screwed up” because “a lot of so-called grownups — including some with fancy titles and important jobs” do “what’s convenient, what’s easy” rather than what is right. But its focus was on inspiring the graduates to use the pandemic as an opportunity to improve both themselves and their countries.

“Your graduation marks your passage into adulthood,” Obama said, noting that passage can be frightening, but arguing that with adulthood comes new agency. “With all the challenges this country faces right now, nobody can tell you, ‘No, you’re too young to understand.’ Or, ‘This is how it’s always been done.’ Because with so much uncertainty, with everything suddenly up for grabs, this is your generation’s world to shape.”

“This is your generation’s world to shape.”—@BarackObama to graduating high school seniors #GraduateTogether Join us at https://t.co/aGSLPSDtgE. pic.twitter.com/3OOnbPa3Gu

— The Obama Foundation (@ObamaFoundation) May 17, 2020

Read the full rush transcript of Obama’s speech below:

Hi, everybody! Aniyah, thank you for that beautiful introduction. I could not be prouder of everything you’ve done in your time with the Obama Foundation. And, of course, I couldn’t be prouder of all of you in the graduating class of 2020. As well as the teachers, and the coaches, and most of all, parents and family who guided you along the way.

Now, graduating is a big achievement under any circumstances. Some of you have had to overcome serious obstacles along the way. Whether it was an illness, or a parent losing a job, or living in a neighborhood where people too often count you out. Along with the usual challenges of growing up, all of you have had to deal with the added pressures of social media, reports of school shootings, and the specter of climate change. And then, just as you’re about to celebrate having made it through, just as you’ve been looking forward to proms and senior nights, graduation ceremonies, and — let’s face it — a whole bunch of parties, the world has turned upside down by a global pandemic. And as much as I’m sure you love your parents, I’ll bet that being stuck at home with them and playing board games or watching Tiger King on TV is not exactly how you envisioned the last few months of your senior year.

Now, I’ll be honest with you. The disappointments of missing a live graduation, those will pass pretty quick. I don’t remember much of my own high school graduation. I know that not having to sit there and listen to a commencement speaker isn’t all that bad. Mine usually go on way too long. Also, not that many people look great in those caps. Especially if you have big ears like me. And you’ll have plenty of time to catch up with your friends once the immediate public health crisis is over. But what remains true is that your graduation marks your passage into adulthood. The time when you begin to take charge of your own life. It’s when you get to decide what’s important to you — what kind of career you want to pursue. Who you want to build a family with. The values you want to live by. And given the current state of the world, that may be kind of scary.

If you planned on going away to college, getting dropped off at campus in the fall, that’s no longer a given. If you were planning to work while going to school, finding that first job is going to be tougher. Even families that are relatively well-off are dealing with massive uncertainty. Those who were struggling before, they’re hanging on by a thread. All of which means that you’re going to have to grow up faster than some generations.

This pandemic has shaken up the status quo and laid bare a lot of our country’s deep-seated problems. From massive economic inequality, to on-going racial disparities, to a lack of basic healthcare for people who need it. It’s woken a lot of young people up to the fact that the old ways of doing things just don’t work. And it doesn’t matter how much money you make, if everyone around you is hungry and sick. And that our society and democracy only work when we think not just about ourselves, but about each other.

It’s also pulled the curtain back on another hard truth, something that we all have to eventually accept once our childhood comes to an end. You know all those adults that you used to think were in charge and knew what they were doing? Turns out they don’t have all the answers. A lot of them aren’t even asking the right questions. So, if the world’s gonna get better, it’s gonna be up to you. That realization may be kind of intimidating, but I hope it’s also inspiring. With all the challenges this country faces right now, nobody can tell you, “No, you’re too young to understand.” Or, “This is how it’s always been done.” Because with so much uncertainty, with everything suddenly up for grabs, this is your generation’s world to shape.

Since I’m one of the old guys, I won’t tell you what to do with this power that rests in your hands. But I’ll leave you with three quick pieces of advice — first, don’t be afraid. America’s gone through tough times before. Slavery, civil war, famine, disease, the great depression, and 9/11. And each time, we came out stronger. Usually because a new generation — young people like you — learn from past mistakes and figured out how to make things better.

Second, do what you think is right. Doing what feels good — what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately a lot of so-called grownups — including some with fancy titles and important jobs — still think that way, which is why things are so screwed up. I hope that instead, you decide to ground yourself in values that last. Like honesty, hard work, responsibility, fairness, generosity, respect for others. You won’t get it right every time, you’ll make mistakes like we all do. But if you listen to the truth that’s inside yourself — even when it’s hard, even when it’s inconvenient — people will notice. They’ll gravitate towards you, and you’ll be part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

And finally, build a community. No one does big things by themselves. Right now, when people are scared, it’s easy to be cynical and say, “Let me just look out for myself or my family or people who look or think or pray like me.” But if we’re gonna get through these difficult times, if we’re gonna create a world where everybody has opportunities to find a job and afford college, if we’re gonna save the environment and defeat future pandemics, then we’re gonna have to do it together.

So be alive to one another’s struggles. Stand up for one another’s rights. Leave behind all the old ways of thinking that divide us — sexism, racial prejudice, status, greed. And set the world on a different path. When you need help, Michelle and I have made it the mission of our foundation to give young people like you the skills and support to lead in your own communities. And to connect you with other young leaders around the country and around the globe. But, the truth is, you don’t need us to tell you what to do, because in so many ways, you’ve already started to lead.

Congratulations, class of 2020. Keep making us proud.

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[timalexanderdollery]

How the Washington Post’s TikTok became an unofficial 2020 campaign stop

Andrew Yang poses for a selfie. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images

For politicians, the buzziest new social video app presents a risk and an opportunity.

In 2015, Hillary Clinton was “yas queening” all over the internet. She had an official Snapchat account with a “Yaaas, Hillary!” logo that was also a T-shirt, a posed #yas photo with the stars of Broad City, custom Hillary Bitmoji, ironic cross-stitch art, and other signifiers of “yas” culture that’s since become emblematic of a certain kind of blinkered white feminism. An attempt to reach millennials with a passing familiarity with stan culture, it was also an extremely strategy easy to mock. As Amanda Hess wrote at the time in Slate, “American culture does not exactly appreciate the image of the ‘authentic’ older woman, but boy does it hate the older woman who strains to stay relevant.”

Hillary Clinton lost the election. That fact certainly can’t be attributed solely to a social media voice that many criticized as insincere and pandering, but it had a lasting impact on the ways we expect politicians to behave online.

It also might offer a clue on why so few politicians have a presence on the buzziest social media app of the moment, TikTok. Since its US launch in August 2018, the short-form video app has exploded in popularity, having been downloaded more than a billion times in 2018 and boasting 27 million active American users as of February 2019. Both Facebook and Instagram have launched competitors (or clones, depending on whom you ask), and celebrities like Will Smith, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, and Reese Witherspoon are now flocking to the app en masse.

Politicians, meanwhile, have been understandably hesitant to hop on board. Like all social media apps, TikTok has its own vernacular, and any transgressions of that shared language and sensibility stick out like, well, septuagenarian politicians on a social media app meant for teens. The fear of coming off as insincere or being flooded with “ok boomer” comments is a real one. The other outcome? A TikTok presence that fails to leave a mark, like Julian Castro’s account, which currently only has 470 followers.

Still, that leaves an opportunity. Enter: the TikTok account of an equally stodgy publication that has, against all odds, managed to feel truly native to the TikTok ecosystem. It’s the Washington Post’s, which since its debut this spring has amassed a quarter-million followers and a legion of superfans who praise its goofy premises and unserious tone. So far, three candidates — Andrew Yang, Beto O’Rourke, and Julian Castro — have appeared on it.

The Washington Post’s TikTok’s success is the direct result of its creator and biggest star, 28-year-old Dave Jorgenson, who previously created humor and satire videos for the newspaper. A scroll through the Washington Post’s TikTok account will show Dave making self-deprecating jokes about being an adult on the app, Dave occupying the role of “the TikTok guy” in meetings, Dave doing silly 15-second sketches with the paper’s fashion, gaming, and economics reporters.

Jorgenson attributes the growth and fanbase of the account to his spending two months watching and listening to videos on TikTok instead of rushing to quickly turn around content. “If you’re gonna launch anything, whether you’re a newspaper or a brand or a company, you need to understand the app, otherwise people will see right through you,” he says. “Especially on TikTok, because the whole thing is that it’s mostly just raw videos set to music.”

The Washington Post, however, has what regular TikTok users don’t: access to very important people. In October, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang just happened to be scheduled to visit the Washington Post’s offices filming an unrelated segment when Jorgenson was able to strike a plan with Yang’s team about filming a TikTok.

Yang’s team was already a fan of the Post’s TikTok account; the campaign has also leaned heavily on the fact that he is a tech entrepreneur. “We didn’t really have to sell it to Andrew Yang,” says Jorgenson. “He was like, ‘If they think it’s great, I’m going to do it.’” It’s a particularly impressive feat considering the resulting video was actually poking fun at Yang’s low polling numbers. “Finally relaxing after a full day of interviews and meeting people,” reads the caption on the first segment, followed by “Still polling at 3 percent” against a backdrop of Yang dancing in celebration.

The paper has since done equally self-deprecating videos with both Beto O’Rourke, who ended his campaign on November 1, and Julian Castro, whose video was a play on how much he looks like his brother, Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro. All three videos took off, garnering between 40,000 and 400,000 likes.

Though neither Beto’s nor Castro’s team replied to a request for comment, Yang’s press secretary told Vox, “We’re constantly exploring ways to reach new audiences and voters, and the TikTok video with the Washington Post is certainly one of those ways.”

Since the election of Donald Trump proved politicians could tweet rambling, often nonsensical stream-of-consciousness sentences and still win over voters, politicians have approached social media with an increased candidness. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has posted her skin care routine to her Instagram stories; O’Rourke live-streamed his haircut; Elizabeth Warren posts videos of herself calling small-dollar donors to social media and makes a point to pose for every single person who wants a selfie after her town halls. In an age where we expect to be welcomed into the homes and lives of everyone we follow online, connecting with politicians has never felt so intimate.

Politicians have historically been pretty terrible at social media. A cursory glance at Mike Huckabee’s tweeting habits will illustrate as much — the former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate was once described by Fast Company as “the least funny person on Twitter.” Even cool-ish, young-ish presidential candidates are sometimes bad at tweeting. Cory Booker has made the same joke — a bit of PG-13 wordplay about coffee and sleep — 14 times over the past decade.

There are now more avenues than ever for politicians to embarrass themselves online. Instagram, for instance, has gained popularity among politicians faster than any other social media platform over the past few years, and was also the site of O’Rourke’s now-infamous live-streamed dentist appointment.

Aidan King, a senior strategist at Middle Seat consulting who has worked on presidential campaigns for both Bernie Sanders and O’Rourke, says that there’s a certain degree of apprehension in approaching any new social media platform. If candidates don’t know precisely who they’re speaking to, their message can be warped into something else. “There’s nothing worse for a political campaign than going viral for the wrong reasons,” he says.

TikTok, with its legions of irony-steeped teens, presents a specific danger. “The zoomers can be pretty ruthless, and it’s also clear which candidates they like a lot,” explains King. “Young people are really into Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, Elizabeth Warren, so I can understand why other candidates in the 2020 races just don’t really want to mess with [TikTok]. Joe Biden going on a platform that adores Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a recipe for disaster. They know the audience well enough to know they wouldn’t really get along with the people there.”

The Washington Post’s TikTok, though, is a controlled environment where candidates have little to lose, even when the content is unlike anything a political PR team would have typically come up with. “There’s just this very positive feeling around TikTok. Even if they are self-deprecating, they’re pretty wholesome,” Jorgenson says. “While the text in front of Andrew Yang was deprecating, it’s very funny. How could that hurt you?”

Jorgenson hopes to get every 2020 Democratic candidate in a video and has reached out to multiple candidates, but there is one white whale in particular. “I think if we get Bernie, then we have done our job, because I don’t know how we’re going to. But I’d be very proud of myself,” he laughs.

There are concerns over TikTok’s ties to the Chinese government (its parent company Bytedance is based in Beijing) and its willingness to bow to conservative governments by censoring pro-LGBTQ content, but the app has always wanted its content to remain politics-free. It recently announced it would ban political advertising out of a desire to remain a “positive, refreshing environment.” While nothing is stopping politicians from using the app, they may be hesitant to engage with one that will soon be under investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

It’s also likely it simply isn’t worth building a following on an app where a sizeable portion of its users aren’t even old enough to vote. For now, one-off sketches with the TikTok expert over at the Washington Post will do.

Sign up for The Goods’ newsletter. Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters.

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[gracieyvonnehunter]

How the Washington Post’s TikTok became an unofficial 2020 campaign stop

Andrew Yang poses for a selfie. | Ethan Miller/Getty Images

For politicians, the buzziest new social video app presents a risk and an opportunity.

In 2015, Hillary Clinton was “yas queening” all over the internet. She had an official Snapchat account with a “Yaaas, Hillary!” logo that was also a T-shirt, a posed #yas photo with the stars of Broad City, custom Hillary Bitmoji, ironic cross-stitch art, and other signifiers of “yas” culture that’s since become emblematic of a certain kind of blinkered white feminism. An attempt to reach millennials with a passing familiarity with stan culture, it was also an extremely strategy easy to mock. As Amanda Hess wrote at the time in Slate, “American culture does not exactly appreciate the image of the ‘authentic’ older woman, but boy does it hate the older woman who strains to stay relevant.”

Hillary Clinton lost the election. That fact certainly can’t be attributed solely to a social media voice that many criticized as insincere and pandering, but it had a lasting impact on the ways we expect politicians to behave online.

It also might offer a clue on why so few politicians have a presence on the buzziest social media app of the moment, TikTok. Since its US launch in August 2018, the short-form video app has exploded in popularity, having been downloaded more than a billion times in 2018 and boasting 27 million active American users as of February 2019. Both Facebook and Instagram have launched competitors (or clones, depending on whom you ask), and celebrities like Will Smith, Ariana Grande, Ed Sheeran, and Reese Witherspoon are now flocking to the app en masse.

Politicians, meanwhile, have been understandably hesitant to hop on board. Like all social media apps, TikTok has its own vernacular, and any transgressions of that shared language and sensibility stick out like, well, septuagenarian politicians on a social media app meant for teens. The fear of coming off as insincere or being flooded with “ok boomer” comments is a real one. The other outcome? A TikTok presence that fails to leave a mark, like Julian Castro’s account, which currently only has 470 followers.

Still, that leaves an opportunity. Enter: the TikTok account of an equally stodgy publication that has, against all odds, managed to feel truly native to the TikTok ecosystem. It’s the Washington Post’s, which since its debut this spring has amassed a quarter-million followers and a legion of superfans who praise its goofy premises and unserious tone. So far, three candidates — Andrew Yang, Beto O’Rourke, and Julian Castro — have appeared on it.

The Washington Post’s TikTok’s success is the direct result of its creator and biggest star, 28-year-old Dave Jorgenson, who previously created humor and satire videos for the newspaper. A scroll through the Washington Post’s TikTok account will show Dave making self-deprecating jokes about being an adult on the app, Dave occupying the role of “the TikTok guy” in meetings, Dave doing silly 15-second sketches with the paper’s fashion, gaming, and economics reporters.

Jorgenson attributes the growth and fanbase of the account to his spending two months watching and listening to videos on TikTok instead of rushing to quickly turn around content. “If you’re gonna launch anything, whether you’re a newspaper or a brand or a company, you need to understand the app, otherwise people will see right through you,” he says. “Especially on TikTok, because the whole thing is that it’s mostly just raw videos set to music.”

The Washington Post, however, has what regular TikTok users don’t: access to very important people. In October, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang just happened to be scheduled to visit the Washington Post’s offices filming an unrelated segment when Jorgenson was able to strike a plan with Yang’s team about filming a TikTok.

Yang’s team was already a fan of the Post’s TikTok account; the campaign has also leaned heavily on the fact that he is a tech entrepreneur. “We didn’t really have to sell it to Andrew Yang,” says Jorgenson. “He was like, ‘If they think it’s great, I’m going to do it.’” It’s a particularly impressive feat considering the resulting video was actually poking fun at Yang’s low polling numbers. “Finally relaxing after a full day of interviews and meeting people,” reads the caption on the first segment, followed by “Still polling at 3 percent” against a backdrop of Yang dancing in celebration.

The paper has since done equally self-deprecating videos with both Beto O’Rourke, who ended his campaign on November 1, and Julian Castro, whose video was a play on how much he looks like his brother, Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro. All three videos took off, garnering between 40,000 and 400,000 likes.

Though neither Beto’s nor Castro’s team replied to a request for comment, Yang’s press secretary told Vox, “We’re constantly exploring ways to reach new audiences and voters, and the TikTok video with the Washington Post is certainly one of those ways.”

Since the election of Donald Trump proved politicians could tweet rambling, often nonsensical stream-of-consciousness sentences and still win over voters, politicians have approached social media with an increased candidness. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has posted her skin care routine to her Instagram stories; O’Rourke live-streamed his haircut; Elizabeth Warren posts videos of herself calling small-dollar donors to social media and makes a point to pose for every single person who wants a selfie after her town halls. In an age where we expect to be welcomed into the homes and lives of everyone we follow online, connecting with politicians has never felt so intimate.

Politicians have historically been pretty terrible at social media. A cursory glance at Mike Huckabee’s tweeting habits will illustrate as much — the former Arkansas governor and presidential candidate was once described by Fast Company as “the least funny person on Twitter.” Even cool-ish, young-ish presidential candidates are sometimes bad at tweeting. Cory Booker has made the same joke — a bit of PG-13 wordplay about coffee and sleep — 14 times over the past decade.

There are now more avenues than ever for politicians to embarrass themselves online. Instagram, for instance, has gained popularity among politicians faster than any other social media platform over the past few years, and was also the site of O’Rourke’s now-infamous live-streamed dentist appointment.

Aidan King, a senior strategist at Middle Seat consulting who has worked on presidential campaigns for both Bernie Sanders and O’Rourke, says that there’s a certain degree of apprehension in approaching any new social media platform. If candidates don’t know precisely who they’re speaking to, their message can be warped into something else. “There’s nothing worse for a political campaign than going viral for the wrong reasons,” he says.

TikTok, with its legions of irony-steeped teens, presents a specific danger. “The zoomers can be pretty ruthless, and it’s also clear which candidates they like a lot,” explains King. “Young people are really into Bernie Sanders, Andrew Yang, Elizabeth Warren, so I can understand why other candidates in the 2020 races just don’t really want to mess with [TikTok]. Joe Biden going on a platform that adores Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a recipe for disaster. They know the audience well enough to know they wouldn’t really get along with the people there.”

The Washington Post’s TikTok, though, is a controlled environment where candidates have little to lose, even when the content is unlike anything a political PR team would have typically come up with. “There’s just this very positive feeling around TikTok. Even if they are self-deprecating, they’re pretty wholesome,” Jorgenson says. “While the text in front of Andrew Yang was deprecating, it’s very funny. How could that hurt you?”

Jorgenson hopes to get every 2020 Democratic candidate in a video and has reached out to multiple candidates, but there is one white whale in particular. “I think if we get Bernie, then we have done our job, because I don’t know how we’re going to. But I’d be very proud of myself,” he laughs.

There are concerns over TikTok’s ties to the Chinese government (its parent company Bytedance is based in Beijing) and its willingness to bow to conservative governments by censoring pro-LGBTQ content, but the app has always wanted its content to remain politics-free. It recently announced it would ban political advertising out of a desire to remain a “positive, refreshing environment.” While nothing is stopping politicians from using the app, they may be hesitant to engage with one that will soon be under investigation by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States.

It’s also likely it simply isn’t worth building a following on an app where a sizeable portion of its users aren’t even old enough to vote. For now, one-off sketches with the TikTok expert over at the Washington Post will do.

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