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#at this point i think theyre just targetting the women in this game.
fr4ncium · 4 months
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Me to those annoying ass Tiktok ppl getting upset over a villain being a LITERAL villain
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daremna · 2 years
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NOTE: Do not take any of this personally, I am not a professional astrologer. I'm also mostly refering to the underdeveloped/immature versions of these placements. If the shoe fits, slay Cinderella, if not, congrats this isn't about you. PS I do not support misogyny!! Most mean girl archetypes are rooted in patriarchal views and villanising femininity, I'm just using these characters for fun and to base some of my observations on.
Aries placements Including 1h and mars. Known as the 'baby' of the zodiac, ruling the head, aries placents can often have an inflated sense of self, petty and childish tendencies. Because they are ruled by mars, they tend to be very easy to anger, argumentative and driven.
1h/aries mercury are straight to the point and will tell you what they really think without sparing your emotions. Will press your buttons just to rile you up and get a reaction out of you.
1h lilith + chiron placements can have have an unstable/toxic relationship with women and be extremely competitive with them. Can receive a lot of unwarranted negativity and jealousy from other women which in turn will make the native see other women as untrustworthy. (I have lilith in the 1h and I've noticed I tend to rub a lot of women the wrong way. My entire school experience was getting bullied and targeted by MULTIPLE women. I've also had to work through a LOT of internalised misogyny).
1h lilith + pluto will have an intense and heavy energy around them whether they like it or not. Command attention in every room. People will fear or respect you, most likely both. They crave power and don't care if they step on anyone along the way. Will get what they want, or else...
Leo placements including 5 house and sun. The stereotypical 'qeen b' sign. Can often struggle with extreme self esteem & self worth issues. When not worked on, they will project their feelings onto other people to regain a sense of power and control.
Narcissistic to overcompensate for what they think they lack in. Similar to Regina George, they will keep people around that they look down on to always feel on top and like theyre the star/ main character at all times. "She's the queen bee - the star, those other two are just her little workers."
They are ruled by the sun, so they feel like the centre of everyone's universe is their rightful place, they can't help it🤷. (Yes, I'm a leo, and what about it?)
Leo risings can have the typical 'mean girl' look. Attitude, confidence, great outfits and big/poofy hair. "That's why her hair is so big, it's full of secrets." Big Shelby Cummings energy.
When paired with aquarius placements, they can have an even more inflated ego. Theyre the two signs with the biggest god complex.
Virgo placements including 6h. The 'know-it-all' of the zodiac. Can come off as pedantic. Trying to outsmart anyone. Big emphasis on virgo mars and mercury.
When paired with leo placements, they can be self-righteous and very judgemental. "I'm just better than everyone" energy.
Scorpio placements can be as fierce as aries placements, as they are both ruled by mars in traditional astrology, but they will mostly keep it bottled up/hidden to maintain their mysteriousness.
Sun-pluto aspects can make an assertive and driven individual.
Scorpio/1h mercury: "So you agree, you think you're really pretty" energy. Calculating and manipulative. Will play mind games with you. Watching your every move. "Gretchen Wieners knows everybody's business, she knows everything about everyone." Like a cat playing with it's mouse.
Can come off as cold and rude at first regardless of their character (especially scorpio rising). But that's just their rbf. Unless you actually give them a reason to dislike you, then all hell freezes over.
Scorpio mars will become vindictive and spiteful. They hold onto grudges like no other. When vengefuly, they play the long game. WILL remember that time you made fun of their outfit when bumping into you 20 years later. Selective memory🙄.
Gemini placements including 3h and mercury. Stereotypically fake and two-faced. A social chameleon. Extremely charming and persuasive. Can have a tendency to lie and gossip like no other, they love the mental stimulation it gives them. They are ruled by mercury, the planet of communication after all.
Mars/Mercury in gemini or in the 3h love to argue for fun. Will start a verbal altercation just for the hell of it, if they're feeling particularly bored. Gemini-mercury placements will come up with the most creative insults lmao. "You put the "suck" in "liposuction" You put the "ooo" in "jiu-jitsu" You put the "ism" in "This is all just a defense mechanism". Truly a poet, they have a way with words.
Not easy to anger. Like they'll fight you but they don't actually care unless you really got to them. The type to make fun of you if you're really angry and riled up.
If paired with scorpio placements, girl........ They can really be scary is all I'm gonna say (and i hate to stroke people's ego's so this should say a lot).
Libra placements including 7h and venus. Ruled by venus the planet of love, and represented by the scales but don't let that fool you. When underdeveloped they can be highly superficial, shallow and fake. Love to gossip.
Libra rising look innocent and sweet, borderline angelic untill you past it and the mirage slips away~ Remember, biblically accurate angels are scary as hell. Can have the typical 'mean girl' aesthetic, very pink and feminine.
Libra mercury/ venus can be a sweet talker, very charming and persuasive.
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Heavy moon aspects especially harsh moon-pluto and moon-mars. The 'mommy issues' placements (I'm sorry. Me too tho). Can become manipulative, fake, cold and detached. Can see women as the enemy and fail to make connections with them due to the maternal trauma they experienced. Have a hard time trusting other women.
Capricorn/10h placements can be dedicated and power hungry. Their workaholic tendencies, if mixed with more vindictive placements or character traits can make the person very ruthless. Goal oriented, focused on the bigger picture. Gets shit done, it's not their fault you were in their way. Big Blair Waldorf vibes! “Destiny is for losers. It’s just a stupid excuse to wait for things to happen instead of making them happen.”
“If you really want something, you don’t stop for anyone or anything until you get it.”
Yh you get my point.
Sagittarius placements are known to be brutally honest. Born without a filter, trust them to tell you the truth. Can come off as rude but usually without malicious intent. "What? I'm just being honest." Truth hurts sometimes.
Mercury-mars and mercury-pluto aspects (heavy on the mercury-mars) know exactly what to say to hurt someone. They can say some awful things in the heat of the moment and regret them afterwards. Their comments can really stick with you, they'll go right for the jugular with no hesitation.
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*Remember, these are just for fun, based on my own research and observations. I'm not a professional, I don't know shit. There's no such thing as an evil sign, all placements have a dark side. It all depends on you and how you deal with your issues. I have like, a lot of these placements so I'm not targeting anyone*
~Jules💖
© 2023 Daremna All Rights Reserved
Edit: To the one's reposting this on tiktok with no credit, it's pathetic babes, stop. If you're that interested in astrology try coming up with your own takes🥰💋
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jackienautism · 1 year
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i rant about resident evil and their writing / inclusion of the girls.
i jsut want 2 girls to go on their fucked up little adventures together is that too much to ask
i finally got to the halfway point of code veronica X and GODDDD i fucking knew they were gonna do this goddamn shit w/ steve and claire. i knew from the goddamn beginning even if i didnt want to admoit it...... residetn evil just cant be normal w/ a girl being paired w/ a guy. they just fucking cant
i understand that this is seen more among the older games (ashley + leon from re4 as well) and i cant speak for the og re3 nemesis but the way they wrote carlos and jill? its just.... why make these male characters say such bizarre and degrading and just ? nasty comments towards the female protag? do you really expecvt us to root for them? i just dont fcuking undeerstand, and this occurs in a remake too! they didnt bother to maybe just maaaybe take that bulllshit out. because jill's uncomfortable. IM uncomfortable. its just. godddd who the fuck caaaares STOP THIS TROPE
you see this same thing w/ steve and claire.... not oonly is steve incredibly fucking annoying the first second we meet him, he also continually acts as a nuisance towards her for a good quarter of the game. yeah sure theyre just building up to the Ground Breaking Emo backstory drop later, but. you already made me fucking hate this loser so goddamn much meaning im not gonna give a single shit about his development later. I JUST DONT CARE FOR HIM !!!!!! THEM MAKING HIM SO ANNOYINH RUINED ANY CHANCE OF ME CHANGING MY MIDN LATER.......
and GOD havent even mentioned this yet but. when i saw the little preview thing w/ the 3 characters w/ claire + chris i saw [steve] and went.... [eyeballs] hello whos this? long story short i thoiught he was a butch lesbian and i got SO excite d b c residtn ebil has yet to pair a girl up w/ anothner girl around the same age but noooooo instead i got this pathetic loser of a man (derogatory). the closest we have to 2 girls being fucked up together is mia and zoe in re7. but thats like. mainly a side thing. and mia isnt even the protag so
which leads me to the next thng i wanted to talk about. i think mnmen are super cool ofc and i hate to be that Bitch and pull that Card but good freaking god why must there be a man FOR EVERY SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER IN THIS GOD FORSAKEN SERIES...... andit woudlnt be huge deal if they were noraml w/ these pairings but theyre NOT..... THEY MAKE IT WEIRD EVERY SINGLE TIME..... STEVE LITERALLY ALMOST KISSES CLAIRE WHILE SHE'S ASLEEP........ CARLOS CONSISTENTLY MAKES UNNECESSARILY WEIRD COMMENTS TOWARD JILL......... ASHLEY RANDOMLY AWSKS FOR SEX AT THE END OF RE4............ WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT AOBUT? good for ashley for shooting her shot i guess though but considering yhe game's previous comments towards ashleu and her figure.... it was blatantly put in to sexualize her furtyher
maybe its thr lesbian in me popping out maybe its the aromantic in me popping out WHO KNOWS all i know is that. resident evil makes me very upset sometimes dflkgnjg i love the games i love the characters (esp the girls big surprise i know) but jesus christ. somethings i just can't ignore. and this is cerrtainly one of them. a girl just can't exist out of a guy according to capcom. and that sort of idea is suuuper evident in how they portray and include their women. you could have a girl protag (re3, recv etc) but theres always a 99% chance theres gonna be a man tagging along + continually saving their asses and theres almost alwaysa an even HIGHER chance that theyre meant to be seen as a romantic interest! and its exhausting@!!!!!
long story short . i get im not resident evil's target audience . but im still gonna be pissed and annoyed . the girls deserve better .
im def gonna have to go more in depth abt resident evil and their writing of relationships (or lack thereof) some other time but just for now. the best written ones are claire + sherry and mia + ethan goodbye
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kingjasnah · 4 years
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actually. actually let’s talk about diversity in fantasy let’s give that a go. im mad and im gonna be that way for a while
don’t want to read all this? fair. tldr: fantasy writers who rely not only on the medieval europe model but also hide behind historical accuracy in 2020 (fuck it, from ‘95 onwards) are lazy and unimaginative and should be held accountable no matter how many white 20 year old dudes jerk off to whatever power fantasy is embedded in the plot. so lets chat about that lads. (slightly) drunk rant under the cut
now prelim shit: we know fantasy is used both as escapism and as a way to deal with various traumas via magical metaphor. staples of the genre. even if jk rowling busted out the laziest and at times offensive metaphor for ww2 and racism ive ever seen, she still adhered to time and true tropes. whatever.
so why have we, in this post game of thrones era, become insanely obsessed with realism? i can hear sixty 20-something year old men crying at me rn like oh ohh oh its based off the war of roses oh wahh all medieval fantasy fiction is based off england and the crusades anyway so women should get raped and people of color should be demonized its not racism its xenophobia and also gay people dont exist and disabled people are systematically killed off and if we stretch the magic fixes mental illness thing a LITTLE further we have straight up eugenics.
we all know where the england but myth thing came from. now the thing about tolkien is that while i will always absolutely love lotr, looking at the LAZY state of fantasy? damn i kinda wish he hadn’t revolutionized the genre. the bitch was still racist. he still didnt give a shit abt women (eowyn was just a vehicle to show how much he fucking hated macbeth anyone holding jrrt up as a feminist icon for that needs to sit the fuck down and explain to me why i can count the woman speaking roles in lotr, a story with a name and fleshed out backstory for every minor character, on one hand but thats! another post). he had something to say abt class with sam i’ll give him that but he is still 100% NOT what we need to hold our standards to in 2020. 
i dont want to talk about old school fantasy, like 80s early 90s cause theres literally no point. its sexist, racist, ableist for sure, this we know. david eddings (not even that old school tbh) can rise from the grave and explain himself to me personally and i still wont forgive him for ehlana. 
so let’s talk historical accuracy. quick question. who the FUCK gives a shit? WHO is this elusive got fan who’s out here like blehh actually??? this method of iron production is TOTALLY anachronistic of the time. ummm these vegetables in this fictional world were NOT native to english soil so how are they here? cause i know this is the classic argument but ive never actually met someone who cared about the lack of dysentery as much as they care abt the women getting raped on screen/page. 
god forbid you have to worldbuild for a second god forbid you can’t rely on the idea of fantasy readers already have in their head god forbid you have an original idea god forbid you spend more than two seconds thinking about ur setting (oh i should mention i dont....really blame GoT for its setting cause of how long ago it was og written but trust me i sure as hell blame grrm for writing a 13 yr old giving ‘consent’ to sex with a grown man within the first couple of chapters) 
If we accept the basic premise of fantasy as escapism, and i AM drunk so i will NOT be finding fuckin. quotes and shit for this but come on tolkien said it himself and as much as i’ll drag him he crafted the simplest and most powerful fantasy metaphors on the board rn. But if we know its escapism. If we know. then who is it escapism for? certainly not for me, the gay brown woman who busted through all of GoT in 10th grade. 
modern fantasy lit used as an excuse for that white male power fantasy is literally disgusting. calling historical accuracy is so fucking dumb ESPECIALLY cause we, as ppl in the 21st  century, KNOW women have been consistently written out of the story. poc ppl, gay and trans ppl, anyone with a god forbid disability has been WRITTEN out of history as we know it, INCLUDING the fucking war of the roses so HOW can we hold up testimony we know is flawed to support our FICTIONAL. STORY. just to??? support the white power fantasy?? literally noah fence but if you are a white guy who felt really empowered by every time jim butcher described a woman tell me: how do you think that’ll hold up in classic HisToRiCaL fantasy. you think thats a fucking noble pursuit? or are you grima wormtongue out here. 
(side note: jim butcher stop writing challenge i dont need to know abt every woman on page’s nipples. anyone who hides behind subgenre like that? ‘ohhh its a noir story thats why hes sexualizing everyone’ shut the fuck up an author isnt possessed by a fuckin muse and compelled to bust out 500k they have agency and they have choice and they MADE the choice to reserve said will for none of their female characters)
which brings me to point 2: target audience and BOY is the alcohol hitting me rn but WHO is this for? this isnt the fucking 80s we know poc and other marginalized folk read fantasy FOR the escapism. on god ive had a cosmere focused blog for nearly three years and. im just gonna say it im interacted with A LOT of yall and ive managed to talk to VERY few white straight ppl as compared to everyone else. 
like....who deserves to see the metaphor on homophobia or racism. joanne rowling? the bitch who literally tried to sell us happy slaves and the disgusting aids metaphor and the worst case of antisemitic stereotypes i ever saw in an nyt bestseller? yall think that was for US? or was it for the white guilt crowd. 
literally white people can find any book about them that they can relate to. but hmmm maybe theres a reason gay women care so much about stormlight archive’s jasnah kholin, a brown woman who’s heavily coded as wlw. or kaladin, the FIRST fantasy protag ive ever seen with clinical depression. hmm i wonder why a bunch of millennials are vibing all of a sudden. im not saying sanderson is perfect--but its the best ive seen from a white author tbh
maybe theres a reason a lot of poc vibe with a literary way to express trauma, and maybe thats why i specifically get so pissed when its not done well. theres a REASON books about outcasts pushing through and claiming their own lives are popular with people who arent white and straight and able bodied. Junot Diaz had a point. maybe lets STOP catering to those assholes who think theyre joseph campbell’s wet dream personified. ive lost respect SO many authors who are objectively talented. pat rothfuss can write so beautifully that ive cried to bits of name of the wind but literally i will never pick that series up again (not just because of the felurian. women in general tbh. mostly the felurian ngl) cause 1) i personally KNEW men whod jerk off to that shit and 2) there was no need for it there was no plot reason for ANY of that shit 
so like obviously thers an issue with authors of color specifically not getting recognized for fantasy and genre work but on god??????? im still mostly mad at the legions of white authors churning out the same medieval england chosen one books year after fucking year. have an original thought maybe. also im sorry that you as an author lack the basic empathy needed to examine the way that women? or any group of people that youre explicitly writing about see the world and would specifically see YOUR made up world. 
yes your fantasy should be diverse, but more than that it should be kind. if you as a writer cant respect groups of people who deserve it....what the hell are you doing in a genre that traditionally is about finding ways to express injustice through metaphor? tolkien’s hero was sam. fantasy was NEVER about the privileged. yall know who you are so stop acting so fucking entitled. peace out. 
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mathieubellamont · 4 years
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man in relation to that last post, and its not really related to this blog outside of it but its weighing on my mind
ive seen two things lately about audiences and content creators, specifically those of the Edgy kind. And, as a disclaimer, i am both LGBT and mixed race and oh, also disabled, and i am not saying “yes their content is offensive But you should care about them more” like ofc im gonna care more about the people who are hurt by the spreading of harmful shit but. anyway
whats been on my mind is the fact that these creators create, with all their edginess and their discarding of feelings for Facts and whatnot forms these audiences that, even if mild in their reactions, have and hold no place for feelings, and people who they disagree with. Even the ones who just have “Comedic” content thats laughing at minorities and whatnot, it breeds things in the audience - and attracts peole who’re already infected by it - that focus on laughing and making fun of people and tearing people down who they just mildly disagree with. We all knew that, but specifically whats weighing on my mind is that........... When you do that, theres no backing down. If you realise youve been wrong somewhere and the people youre attacking have been right, if you realise you dont want to make this content anymore, if you realise you’re tired or stressed, or the environment youve created has gotten too toxic, how are you going to back down? People look to you for their vicious entertainment, people look to you for things to tear apart however lightly, to Roast or to offend or to seriously hurt, and if you arent providing fresh bodies to that audience, theyll take it from you. You have to either be sure when you go into creating edgy content that youll be doing this for the rest of your life, or youre ok with being the subject of what youre inflicting on others when you stop. That, or you have to hope to god that your audience gets bored of you before you call it quits
like...... It all boils down to this. Edginess attracts two main kinds of people, people who are clueless about the harm theyre doing and looking to parrot others/who want to make people uncomfortable or upset/who want to make people feel like they feel, thats one category, and the other main category is genuinely fucked up people who like to see the hurt and the offence it causes, who want women/other minorities to be uncomfortable at best or unwelcome or feel in danger at worst, people who show through their humour that theyre willing to act in ways that hurt people for fun. The first category, people who dont get the harm it causes and just want to shock people (which, as a person clueless to microaggressions and racism and why things actually offend people could either be just surprise Or serious harm they label as shock), theyre clueless about the power youre breeding in them and the cluelessness, but the second group of people are actively harmful. Either way, when you finally need your audience to be understanding, when you need to post your “my mental health is going downhill and i cant ignore it anymore” video or post, youre stuck with these people, and obviously others outside those categories, but youre stuck with them. The people who are willing to beat down already beaten down minorities? Who reduce everyone to a set of stereotypes and if they disagree with any quality you have youre their target? Who think doxxing and swatting are funny, who think harrassment and death threats are just edgy and, well, you know edgy is totally fine right?? Edgy is good right?? what are you going to do?
Maybe when youre in your hour of need your audience will have a change of heart, but if you attract an audience who follow you for and approve of your disregard for peoples needs, who make fun of and attact people saying they need help (”i suffer at the hands of oppression” “im disabled” “im a targeted minority” “ive suffered from harassment” etc) what do you think theyre going to do to you when you dont want to play the game anymore? 
Like theres a leap in logic here between being an edgy content creator and definitely reaching a point where you wont do it anymore. Yes, maybe youll be edgy for the rest of your life....... But as someone who was an edgy teenager slinging around slurs constantly and racist and homophobic and transphobic shit...... The end to that was the singular logical conclusion for me as someone trying to be a good person. When you actually learn about these things, or when you start to live it as an lgbt person or you reconnect with your nonwhite half, or you have a family member who is assaulted, or a friend who finally confesses their online harassment and the severe damage its done to them, and you have an audience waiting for you to tell them who to laugh at/treat like shit if they want to because well, theyre wrong and stupid arent they, why should anyone treat them well - thats the conclusion a lot of these people take from seeing people be made the butt of jokes.......... What are you going to do?
Ive always tried to make this blog a mentally and emotionally safe place. Ive made mistakes, but ive always tried to own up to them and learn from. Like, yeah, theres been some racist shit on this blog before, probably some transphobic shit too, ive had this blog since i just turned 17 in dec. 2013....... Its important for my followers that i cultivate a place that is good for them, that isnt stressful, that focuses on good content or. me having fun in video games lmao. and why is that good? well, because i want to. Its not necessarily the right thing to do nor the wrong thing to do, it just Is morally. But when it comes to cultivating an audience based on constantly shocking people, and making people uncomfortable, and making innocent people scared to exist or ashamed of their existence or hurt because theyre reminded that what they are is disgusting to people like you, whether you mean it or not? Thats where I feel things like this become a moral choice. Like, first of all, even if youre doing it jokingly, if youre having fun pretending to throw punches and kicks even if the point is to laugh at you, you run the risk of people getting hit. Thats why we dont do that in public spaces. When youre jokingly throwing metaphorical punches even if the joke is that youre being an arse purposely, youre in that corridor, and the traffic in that corridor is every single person that sees your post, possibly hundreds, possibly thousands, and so the chance that youre going to hit people - many people - is huge. But to get back to whats on my mind, even if you dont give a shit about all the people you hit accidentally or on purpose, when you train an audience to expect you to feed them meat, when you stop feeding them meat theyll still be looking at you, and if theyre hungry enough - entitled enough, angry enough, uncaring enough, tired of life and other people enough, unknowing enough, ready enough to bring the fight to other people - theyre going to pick at you if not take chunks off you if not tear you to shreds. When you call people who think shock humour and hurting other people is acceptable, well, thats what youve done right?
You dont need to make a blog like mine thats purpose is to be safe. You dont need to actively try to make sure people feel like they fit in with your content, you dont need to create a space for other people to enjoy at all, maybe you just wanna do what makes you laugh. But the less space we hold for people to hurt people the less people are going to get hurt, shocker i know, but also the less harmful people’s anger we are unknowingly feeding, and the less fucking clueless kids who are going to grow up parroting things theyve heard and never understood, that truly evil people understand, and the less content creators in the future we’re going to have to dig out of the hole they back themselves into
anyway. odd post, its done now
#i cant proofread this ugh im at my limit. kinda defeats the point of making this post if its not understandable but anyway#sorry this. i put it here because its directly related to the below post and its about content creators#this might make very little sense and theres probably a lot of logic leaps i didnt explain and maybe im super wrong and whatever but#theres absolutely no need for anyone to address this and its better if it isnt addressed but im in a bit of a bad space mentally right now#(dont worry im going to bed after i do the dishes)#unknowingly hurting people and hurting people in general and people unknowingly backing themselves into corners is just.#on my mind except on my Heart ad emotions right now i just need to talk about it#i just keep thinking if i can save one fucking kid from getting into trouble#hell even the content creators i thoroughly disagree with. the ones echoing harmful ideas and Haha Offensive oppressive content#the idea that some of them are still doing it because they cant escape...... the idea of anyone realising their mistakes and being stuck#and not being able to get out of it#theres so much anger in the world and i Know everyones tired and theyre aching emotionally#everyone including the people i really dont like are all doing what theyre doing because. anyway#its just. the more we can talk about this - and i understand as Many Minority Statuses Overlapping that we dont owe any assholes conversatio#n - the more people who can talk about this talk about this and bridge the gap and drag people who dont know better out of their edgy#phases to become better more conscious people..............#oof. its almost 5am#traitor's ramblings#assault#mention.
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survivorbehemoth · 4 years
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Episode 15: "congrats daisy for winning season 7 of celestial: behemoth!” - Jules
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congrats daisy for winning season 7 of celestial: behemoth!
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JIOFEOJIFEWOJIWOJI THAT SOUNDS SO BITTER BUT DYLAN SIR U HANDED HER THE GAME! HANDED IT TO HER! GOD! and its what she deserves!
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anyways. let it be known this was NOT MY FAULT.
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let the record show, before last night's tribal, I SAID SOMETHING WAS NOT SITTING RIGHT WITH MY SPIRIT!!!!!!!!!! AND???? what happened. look what happened.
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still practicing my slide puzzles WJIJIEFIJWJIFIFWJEJWIEEJWIF
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OH MY GOD I HATE THIS GAME I HATE THIS GAME I HATE THIS GAME!!!
this final 4 is absolutely amazing and i literally love all of them so much, but that just makes things 10x worse. i think that playing my idol on daisy was a huge risk and the fact that it is now a final 2 makes things a bit more interesting. my ideal plan was to have daisy in the final 4 with me so that i wouldnt be the next target, but now that she won immunity it just didnt work out how i intended at all!!
voting out jules and szymon is purely going to come down to which one of them will sway my way and it's going to hurt to send one of them to jury no matter what, but i just feel like i came all this way and not making top 3 would just suck so badly. so yeah, this sucks. i hate that no matter what i do im going to be upsetting people and hurting feelings but... i guess that's just the game! at this point im not even sure if i can win against daisy but it seems like she will take me, it just depends on whether or not i stay loyal to her if i win FIC or if i take whoever is with me in final 3.
much to think about, BUT I JUST CANT BELIEVE I MADE IT THIS FAR !!!!
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Jules is voted out 3-1. She becomes the 8th member of our jury.
Watch the Cast Assessment take place below:
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Szymon is voted out by Daisy. He becomes the final member of our jury.
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idk thought this would be cute to include my voting log and stuff hehe <3 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RiA0RUWX4TRpqBTgRzLJJ3fHu2jBqZ-bCJozFd3HcRs/edit?usp=sharing
Jules: https://youtu.be/6zKeJuOJKeY 
https://youtu.be/5dV_-X6Rv2U
https://youtu.be/N5tnq-4QAT8
someone (zach) asked me to rank the jurors from nicest to meanest...so here we go. ily all <3 <3
1. seamus (this will def come as a surprise, but seamus was the most levelheaded and nice one on the jury. he really never made a bitter comment even though he had every right to, especially at me/daisy/dylan and really anyone who was in after him except chips. like. he was the only person to reach out in pms after and it was immediate, he really comforted me and i really admire men who can have like good relationship w/ women that are platonic??? i know he's been like terrible in the past and i did call him on some stuff in hydravivor and ill be the FIRST to admit that i called him a crackhead on a daily basis but i think he's grown a lot!!!!!! idk. i think he's also the MOST self aware!!!! im a seamus stan, what about it?)
2. brandan (while brandan was kinda irrelevant game wise this season -- but not in our hearts -- he was very objective and a peacemaker. he had good reason to be MIA too so the fact that he got as far as he did means to me that he did form some strong social connections. and he did!!! with me, i think w/ conor, so idk, he had a role like i did in the game imo. i really liked him and he really brought a fresh perspective on things!!!)
3. szymon (he's only not ranked higher bc he's pissed off rob and he stands his ground a lot more outwardly than the first two, at least in the jury chat. also he's not had as much time as a juror. but even then, i think szymon is not a bad guy like some of the ppl make him out to be. like, idk, i think he made a mistake on a game level and he even admitted it and idk he's a legend. truly. im so glad to have met him and i think he was a really nice juror to have around while he was ACTUALLY around bc he stood up for me/daisy the way seamus did)
4. lovelis (lovelis makes some pointed comments but.....he's not dumb at all and so i don't think he's been bitter. also his pointed comments have been funny and mostly radiating the energy of the other Bitter Jurors so idk. i really like him on a personal level as well and have for a while so idk. i dont KNOW KNOW him but he's never been the type to make harsh comments without them having some merit to them. so i kinda trust his judgement even though he wasnt in the game long/an early merge boot. idk i think he's open minded enough and he's also someone who admits when he's done a Lil Too Much but he's really lovely. just competitive.)
5. chips (i dont think chips is MEAN per se, in fact, i dont think he has a mean bone in his body on a personal level. like WFIJFJIFWE I DONT KNOW HOW ELSE TO SAY IT HES SO FUCKING NICE!!!!!!! but thats why it's so funny to see him in games bc he's a lil lying, a lil backstabby and sometimes he's a lil passive aggressive. but its not undeserved. its also a pisces thing WEFJIEIEJWEFJIWEF i think what i saw in the jury house was sometimes chips going along w/ things, but i dont know, i really do not know much about chips game and ill probs ask him more afterwards?? but idk he was REALLY nice to me tho so FWIJFWEWFIFW i just dont trust him in games.......i dont know whats on his mind half of the time......)
I WANNA SAY FOR THE NEXT 3 MEN THEYRE HEAVILY INFLUENCED BY THEIR FIRE SIGN PLACEMENTS SO while i know some of them do hold resentment, its a lot easier to deal with and work with and with all 3 of them we've talked it out with/are going to talk it out. only #8 has been the MOST stubborn but idk imma let him do his thing & try not to pass too much judgement u know cause i dont need to waste my braincells on that
6. conor (knowing conor's astrological placements makes this make sense to me. but i wanna say that i think he's the type of leo to like be upfront, get it out, vent, and be fine? which is why i respect him a lot and i think we do have a mutual respect for each other. some of the comments he made were kinda rude tho and him fake liking astrology for social game was SO UGLY TO ME!!!! like i'll clown him for it for as long as i know him now cause....JOKE'S ON HIM!!!!!!! WJOEFWEOWEFO but that was kinda mean but def conor's come around and seen the light / has also reached out to me to talk. he's also admitted he left a mean speech in sbbb9 and regretted it so i think he might just shoot off at the mouth a bit. but BETTER THE DEVIL U KNOW THAN THE ONE U DONT and i appreciate the transparency NOW as opposed to the fakeness of him saying he liked astrology for social game. THIS IS A HILL I WILL DIE ON!!!!! im a fan of leos tho and he's a leo moon like me. so. i think we'll be fine. )
7. rob (i actually really REALLY like rob on a personal level but i really do not know if i could play another game with him, at least survivor, id be open to playing bb. i think ill say that the best thing about rob is that he's also apologized, was one of the first to when i confronted them all, me and him have a good personal relationship tbh!! but some of the game comments he made were p harsh and he's definitely a lil bitter but again, he's admitted it, i think while he's more up front -- i dont think i ever wanna be on his bad side in a game. EVER!!! cause we didnt even have any loyalty to each other in the game but he was SO harsh on my game like it was wild bc i dont think id ever be that harsh to ANY OF THEM ABOUT THEIR GAMES LIKE THAT???? anyways. its fine bc again he's apologized and he's owned it but PHEW he got a lil bit of a sharp tongue. really eloquent tho!!!!!!!!!!! love hearing him speak)
8. gage (last but least the southern belle himself................this man an aries and i dont know his other signs but him being an aries man is enough. they POP OFF!!!!!! a lot of times there's some truth to it, sure, but sometimes they just be popping off and FOR WHAT!!!!! i do understand gage's frustrations though but even he apologized for being too mean in HIS FUTURE FUCKING CONFESSIONALSSSSSSSS TO MEEEEEE so. idk. he's got an issue with letting things go in games and miss annajane calls him on a lot of BS and it does NOT seem to really knock him down but. gage is really wht u see is what u get, doesnt really own his faults but at least u kinda know where ur at w/ him. but he's still probs the meanest one in there but i do understand from a game level why he was so fucked up about it, especially after hearing FTC. its just that. i understand his position. BUT HE NEEDS TO TAKE A XANAX SOMETIMES I S2G GAGE I WILL GIVE YOU ONE!!! girl it is NOT that serious!!!!!!)
also forgot to mention that i admitted to gage that chris from s1 was NOT actually my brother and his jaw was on the floor <3 I GOT TO DO ONE TROLL THING RIGHT!!!!!! rip me/seamus' showmance serious!!!!!!)
okay just to add onto my last confessional -- the songs i think represent me best from this playlist game wise are: - perfect for you - punchin' bag - stayin' alive - flip - femme fatale/future nostalgia (for the girls alliance that never was....rip but also me/daisy at merge vibes) - X - the shortchange - TAKE ME AS I AM!!!!! THAT SONG IS THE ONE THATS BECOME MY SONG!!!! for this game especially!!!!! - over yet (the lyrics literally speak for themselves) - tough on myself (sorry for stealing ur song vincent) - seven devils - villains pt. 1 (i dont think i was a villain but i did stuff in this game that i usually dont and would consider villainous for myself FEWIWFEJIFEW i was in my feelings!) - passion & pain taste the same when i'm weak (me coming into the jury house and realizing they'd all snatched my wig w/ the edges and the glue.....i DID cry to this song for at least 2 hours! yes i did! WIFJWJIWEIJE) - tar ('under the stars -- pull yourself from the tar'. at the end of the day, this season was fucking stacked and there wasn't one person who was a bad player at all. at all.stars, if you will. i was under a lot of stars and from all the breakdowns in my game to me actually breaking down -- i GOTTA PULL MYSELF FROM THE TAR!!!! learn!! grow!! be better!!)
TOP 5 (not 'perfect for you'): - punchin' bag - take me as i am - over yet - tough on myself - tar
good for my whole journey imo!! the last 3!!! okay this is my ACTUAL last confessional okay thank u for everything!!! bye!!!
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https://youtu.be/T5wRzWwlOp8
and here's my personal playlist for the org: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2E8KGCo1SrBgoJIQ9DycfM?si=96PWq-6ERCyisacQr3zPww
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it is literally an hour and a half until the winner reveal and i really just have no idea what's going to happen. like in the back of mind i just have a feeling that im losing bc, yeah you know self-deprecation woo! but yeah idk i think i really gave this game my all and while i dont think i played it flawlessly, i still think i played a strong game i can be proud of :,)
having it be a live final tribal for my first ever like, jury questioning was just--- ugh wild but i actually think it went really well. just based on what people were saying it definitely seemed as if some of the jurors didnt really want to see me and daisy at the end or like, really werent consider voting for me but i think i was definitely able to sway some people who were willing to listen and definitely gave some of the jurors something to think about. so whether or not i win i do think that i had a really great final tribal performance, maybe it was even enough to sway enough people into giving me their vote?? WHO'S TO SAY
anyways this has been such a wild experience and it's surreal to think that it's ending in like, a little over an hour but no matter what happens i can say confidently that i will be able to look back on this season fondly and will be leaving it with my head held high bc I REALLY DID THIS LIKE!!! I REALLY MADE IT TO THE END!! WOW I STILL CANT GET OVER IT HAHAHA!! but yeah bye forever <33
Rob’s Last Video:  https://youtu.be/X3krxxfJ3oo
________________________________________________________________
Daisy wins in a 7-2 vote!
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nanigma · 5 years
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Id like to hear your take on the four childhood friends from BL! Theyre nice and deserves all the love :) except maybe sylvain lol (im kidding)
Ooh boy, four in a single post! Here we go:
Dimitri
When the game was first revealed, I never imagined I would love him like that. Before this, the only Lord I considered a fave was Micaiah. Most left me indifferent to them. But Dimitri himself is a really great protagonist with a journey not many have been allowed to take as he was. 
His portrayal of mental illness isn’t perfect, but it’s still pretty respectful all things considered. I like how they explicitly establish that his darkness is part of him and he needs to atone for the crimes he committed while stuck in it. I don’t know, it just felt like they took him seriously as a human being, rather than just your standard woobie archetype. 
Felix
The boy, the man, the wonder. I guess this proves that my type is tsundere boys with communication issues. Keep an eye out for that when the next FE’s roster gets revealed. Anyway.. I really really appreciate him as a character. Typically the Navarre type doesn’t hold much appeal for me, but they made it work here by having Felix just care so goddamn much about other people, he can’t stand their suffering. So he just stands on the sidelines and verbally jabs at them in hopes of getting them to notice their errors. 
I also love how done he is with knightly ideals in his country and can openly criticize what is usually endorsed by the series. His intense relationship with Dimitri is always an important point for him. Dimitri’s fate directly affects his own. Then there is his supports with Sylvain, where they get this close to being an official couple, if it wasn’t for Intsys being cowards. Like his relationship with these two is always going to matter, regardless of who you actually pair him with. I can dig that.
(stopping myself here, because I need to get to two others still)
Sylvain 
Before I got into tsundere, I had a different kind of fave. The type best describe as “red-headed flirt, who hides his inner pain behind a laid-back/jokester attitude”. It sounds really specific, but you’d be surprised by the amount of characters like that in fiction. Anyway, teenage me was kind of starved for attention, so the thought of a good-looking guy coming onto me was pretty appealing. This obviously changed in the last years.
Encountering Sylvain gave me a good chance to reexamine the character type and recognize some of the more toxic parts in how he treats women. The game seemed to note this too with Dorothea pointing it out. Sadly it never really goes the entire way in making him think about it and change his ways. I do like how Sylvain is someone who has experienced his own pain, but become too wrapped in it to see other people suffering in very similar ways. His way of coping is by lashing out at the society and the people he feels did this to him. Yet because of his lack of perspective, he doesn’t see how he is actually mostly targeting the innocent.
It makes for a very intruiging character that sadly was never allowed to live out his full potential.
Ingrid
I’m a bit torn on Ingrid actually. On the one hand, I like how she is usually the one keeping the gaggle of boys in line. She also has very sweet supports with a lot of people (I like her with Ashe personally). And her wanting to be a knight despite her father’s wishes, yet struggling with disappointing him is great. However, I am not entirely fond of how they handled her relationship with Glenn. Sure I can buy her being sad about his death, but am I really expected to believe that a betrothal made when she was child, which ended when she was just 13, was really the big first love of her life to which all other relationships have to measure up first?? I don’t know, I can’t really get behind that. 
It would be one thing for them to play it up as her talking from nostalgia for something that could have been, but it really doesn’t seem to be the case with how everyone talks about it. I am also not entirely fond of how they handled her racism against people from Duscur. Did they really have to go the “you are a credit to your race” route? Anyway, aside from those things I still like her. Unlike the boys I always make sure to recruit her and give her a happy ending, because god knows at least one of them should have that.
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EPISODE TWO
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“I'm starting to feel more comfortable with my position in the game.” - dem
HOH: Josh C UPSIDE DOWN: Nick & Joshua NOMINEES: Emma & Nash POV: N/A FINAL NOMINEES: N/A EVICTED: Dem (Expelled)
EMMA
I been struggling in this game which is sad i want to have fun but yesterday made me feel like maybe having a meltdown and leaving 90 percent of servers was a good idea for me i really hope not i just really want to have fun and win for some reasons i always have trouble prejury in games trying to find my footing but at jury and late prejury i always know how to rise ASDFGH the people i really like rn are Jakey loml jev loml aria queen saira queen and also joshua is easy to talk too!!! nathan is also great
DEM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSgjyUhGTng
NASH
i simply think men should stop winning hoh and trying to nom me. its week 2 go target someone else j*sh. jev and i are cool now though <3 love him
DEM
I'm starting to feel more comfortable with my position in the game. I think I'm not in anyone's bad graces so far, which is good. But I really need to win one of these next HoH's so secure my social relationships. My plan moving forward is to see win HoH's. I want to win the next to HoH's I'm eligible in back to back. I also want to try to secure my relationships with Gina, Jev, and Jake. Those are three people I want to be close with in this game. Also maybe Joshua? He's pretty cool and chill.
SAIRA
I'm still getting a sense of how the game works but I feel pretty good, there are some people that are much easier to talk to than others but everyone is still so nice! i feel good about josh c as hoh! we get along pretty well and I don't THINK im in any danger but you never know! imma be honest, I don't have an actual plan, i'm mostly playing this by ear, just talking to people, bullying beck when the chance arises, and being myself! 
JOSH C
HELLO GIRLIES!
well, we won HOH and that's really EXCITING. i probably didn't need to win this week but i figured that i'd get a win under my belt while nominating people would still be EASY. i can establish trust with some people and get a "i didn't nom you, please don't nom me" situation going on. i also feel like the two people i'm going to nominate would have NOMMED me anyways because we just haven't talked..
who those people are? nash & emma. (vl don't hate me for only nominating women i didn't want it to come to this either)
but i just.. both of them have really only put in any effort to talk to me now that i'm HOH and i don't really LOVE that tbh. i've already told a few people that's who i'm thinking so i kind of accidentally locked myself in on these noms because there isn't any sense in throwing out more names than i have to!!
i have an alliance with kiki, brianna, jacob, jake, and aria. (i think that's the people in it? i wanna say that's right. LKFMSDG love this game for me) and i feel pretty good in that because i like all of them enough and they're people that will watch out for ME and each other. but i know my social connections go beyond that so i'm feeling pretty good with my spot in the game? i have a solid relationship with almost everyone in the game and i think i should be able to play a cute lil utr game for a few weeks. i don't think that i'll get targeted first if my alliance gets outed and if so.. i have ENOUGH faith in my comp strength and relationships to save me against MOST of the cast.
people kind of want me to nominate DEM because apparently he starts drama with people and has been a bit inactive. he's talked with me more than other people so im not super keen on throwing him on the block RIGHT AWAY but i'm thinking he's a good replacement nom because if people think he's MIA then no one other than him will be upset with me. maybe a backdoor? could be spicy..
i don't really know what else to say here so.. i hope this is enough! love u guys <3
BRIANNA
https://youtu.be/mJw3qxsZ-Bg
JEV
Okay so I feel like pretty comfortable this week because me and Josh have gotten pretty close and bonded over our mutual love of Lucas HOWEVER he's just let me know he's gonna be nominating Nash and Emma which isn't GREAT since I'm in alliances with both of them and they're the only 2 alliances I have so I really wouldn't want to see either of them go home this week, this SUCKS ASS
JAKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tt2xRQqqax8
ARIA
how is it ONLY week 2 i feel so hecking exhausted fhsabfd, but that might also be the fact that is 2 am so,,,oop. Um okay recap time!!!! Recaps are so hard because theres minor details that i still want to note without seeming super annoying so heres a minor list of things im noticing 
-Dem wants to "start playing the game" I told this to Jake (wish i could bold names ugh)
-Gina & dem told me they were gunning hard for hoh- i told nathan/monty/nick/,,,,and someone else this
-emma feels unconnected from cast
-Jake doesnt like Gina
-Josh likes Me Jev Kiki (told joshua)
-emma knows alliances are starting to form
-joey can get pwr hungry and chaotic + good comp ability
-told gnia my thoughts on the sides being "connected v unconnected" and other tidbits of info
-GIna (potentially joshua) doesnt like nash
-Nathan/Nash ARE CLOSE!!!!! WEE FUCKING WOO!!!!
-Told Jake that Jacob has the power (and the bs excuse he told gina pretending he doesnt have it,,,sure jan)
-jake is GREAT at lowering his threat lvl im sick
-Jev-Josh-Nathan-Nash all bonded p well on vc potentially an alliance
-jake tried to get gina nominated
-Emma Nash noms
-Jake doesnt want emma to leave
So,,,thats what you missed on GLEE! Honestly glee sucks but yeah thats all my info i would weave everything together with cute transitions but im TIRED and lots of this information doesnt really connect well so,,,have a bullet list! 
okok nvm heres some general thoughts bc JUST a bullet point list is so boringgg im honestly not too sure what i want to do this week bc i think emma doesnt have a lot of people (although she has jake apparently,,,she might just be putting up a front of being unconnected ffs) so i would rather keep her around based on our relationship alone esp compared to nash whose been busy w/ irl things to reply i think (nash would prob do gr8 in old school bb,,,but new school is a whole other beast) HOWEVER!!! I need to protect gina who isn't the best conversationalist (sorry bb ily but its true <3) and keeping nash around ensures people have another "inact" target besides her but also nash is such a god connection for people like nathan and jacob and i would rather get her out sooner than later before we have another renee on our hands ...
Also i havent talked to the pasio peeps (omg if we ever make an alliance,,,that should be the name hehe) in a while and idk if theyre distancing themselves or if theyre just busy fndsjafd god im too paranoid for this game its awful. Also i think i mentioned the alliance with josh kiki bri jake jacob last time and it still isnt made and im PRAYINGGG it never gets made bc i have SUCH an awful feeling like SIX FUCKING PEOPLE??? S I X?? THAT IS GOING TO FAIL AND BLOW UP!!!! but i cant say no to an alliance so here i fucking am :/ also im trying to think of my longevity in this game and like,,, idk im nervous. I mean ive mentioned going to the end with multiple people but i have such a bad feeling im gonna go out 9/10 as a big move and i REFUSE to let that shit happen, not on my fucking watch no sir!! Not sure what to do about it yet but i feel like monty in particular doesnt trust me and i need his ass OUT! or maybe not if he comes around but like??? sir pls talk to me- i mean this phase of the game is early im setting up the pawns for later, but before later theres gonna be a couple explosions of my game which i'll have to deal with,,, or maybe not actually i mean in my first org i did a really well mastermind game with it- nvm it did explode on me once FDBSHFDS yeah so theres gonna be an explosion period but i think im getting good at dealing w/ the backlash from it and reintegrating myself..
oh also yeah im safe this week lol
anyway sorry for rambling so much LMAO have a trust ranking!
1.Gina (MY QUEEN!!!!!!!! i LOVE her!)
-BIG BIG FUCKING GAP-
2.Jake (listen,,,my thoughts go back and forth but he did tell me the noms so,,,have some rights)
3.Saira (we never talk game but i dont think she talks with anyone about game beyond maybe nick and also shes nice and im a sucker for nice girls)
4.Emma (if this isnt all just a front shes gonna make a great number for me,, might need to fact check some of her statements tho)
5.Joshua (honestly? i love him hes so funny and i think he has my back although he could be more act)
6.Nathan (literally havent talked in 3 days but also i have a soft spot for him <3)
-GAP-
sorry the Js are just kinda scary lmao JFNSDKF
7.Nick (!! we gotta an actual connection folks!! heck yeah!)
8.Josh c (im safe! but he D E F trusts others more than me such as Joshua and Jacob)
9.Jev (honestly a king but hes a little quiet although his reccs are the BOMB)
10.Jacob (i know youre being sneaky,,,idk what youre being sneaky with but im getting the vibes)
11.Dem (might be weird but i think he trusts me? at least a little bc he ranted about losing to me so O.0)
12.Brianna (youre adorable and deserve the world but everyone likes you,,,is this how people view me omg fhsabfhds)
13.Kiki (youre SO hecking sweet and actually u probs have a connections to nash but we havent talked ANY game yet)
14.Nash (p,,p-please talk to me uwu)
15.Joey (i dont trust you at ALL! Why? good question-)
was that mean? sorry in advance ilyall but also its 3 am brain empty no filter
NASH
i think jev and nathan might end up being good allies of mine (inb4 betrayal)! despite the mistake he made nomming me, talking to jev has been lovely so far he's getting me into loona LMFAO. and i just love nathan's energy & i feel like as the season goes on i can see him winning comps. i'm excited :3 hope josh c does not end my existence this week
JOEY
I feel FANTASTIC about Josh being HoH. I’m making sure that others are coming to me about gameplans, and I’m making sure I don’t come off as too pushy or aggressive in PMs. With most of the players, I’m trying to give them all the same energy and hype. It seems kinda weird to say this, but I’m not concerned about being nominated at this point. What I need to ensure is building my social relationships with people outside the “Crackhouse”, and yes that big ol friend group moved to Discord in 20 minutes like 6 months ago. 
This is the first major game I’ve ever played with Skinny Nick(yes, I’m absolutely confused as to what to call them, I’m so used to calling Nick “Eve” that its going to take time to adjust.) Speaking of Nick, my social relationship with him is actually surprisingly similar. In the past, I felt as though it would be as “on-sight” as Tom & Jerry, and it actually isn’t turning out that way, which is surprisingly refreshing. Every day, I’m making sure I send Nick something different to diversify my social game with them. Yesterday, I asked Nick about his preferred streaming services for music and TV, and I discovered we have the same music service(Apple Music).
I’ve played one game with Monty before, but it was a disaster. We were in pairs, and it felt like we were on different planets. I did tell him to not worry about personal feelings when it comes to this game, because I compared the relationship of BB Netflix and the Crackhouse to the separation of church and state. I made that comparison because the two entities of church and state should never cross, but when they do it becomes disastrous, and I feel as though that same principle applies to this game.
Overall, I feel good, Emma may be going up on the block, but it shouldn’t affect me that much. We’re in the early stage, I want to make sure I’m good with everyone.
ARIA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFeox7LM1-E
JAKE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLkZ-BIIjTU
HOUSE MEETING
https://youtu.be/BZMorvWvyKY
HOST WEEKLY CAST ASSESSMENT WEEK 1 & 2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc-iMpkfrdw&list=PLFEwPPy8j010XXwntq80VSU0qLNTNpSIN&index=3&t=0s
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tenitchyfingers · 4 years
Note
1 oh, youre italian so i think (?) we're in the same timezone so I do see you a lot going after antis but I guess it is merely coincidence. anyway I indeed stated that they won't understand, and that most argument and presentation work is for the people who are undecided on who to team with. more "sensical" antis use very compelling arguments for people who do not know the discourse and its implications (think of the children/fiction has an emotional impact) and it appeals to vulnerable people.
2 and my point mostly is posting bernie saying "lmao go outside" or "just admit you hate women" after someone said "gay men arent for womens consumption" without the walls of explanation people bother to write about entertainement, representation and all and how actually Yes ! it is fine to consumme mlm fiction as a woman. is pretty counter-productive for all the undecided people who lurk in these threads. and nor is pretty much falling for the insult game and waving them as "just idiots".3 and i guess im also not one for hypocrisy. we cant point that antis' smear campaigns are awful, then try to bully them and insult them just the same. like you said, it is noticeable to most normal people that the shittier ones are nonsensical. so its therefor useless to make fun of them. the only thing there is to do is develop on what the sensical ones say to exactly explain the full consequences of such a mindset. and explain that the problems theyre exposing arent solved through censorship.4 anyway antis exist because vulnerable people exist, and they dont always find the "beware this mindset has crappy, crappy consequences" posts. antis recruit because there's people who are in a bad place and are told "we're trying to fix society and make it safer for you", and it's easier to blame society than an individual (an abuser for ex) for their suffering, and then target other individuals (esp some unrelated to their abuse) for what they think is wrong in society.5 i do think that we ARE helping people through walls of explanations. were not gonna be able to sway everyone of course because personal culture and desires is always gonna influence things ("im weird and proud of it, doesnt mean i dont deserve equal rights" queers VS "im not that different/i should be seen as normal and have equal rights as such" LGBT people is a big split in culture for ex) but in the end i wouldnt fall for that cynism. you do what you want tho. however tags ARE neat :o6 anyway you do what you want in the end of the day. i just think that simple mockery isn't a solution to the current tensions about medias we have, and I disagree when you say that explanations do not work, or that antis still existing is proof of it. its just that many people who gave up the mindset hide themselves so because it's outright dangerous. that's it.
yeah, you do make very good points. I’m just tired. I’m tired of being shamed for being queer, for being the “wrong” kind of queer, for being a woman and into nerdy shit, for being the “wrong” kind of woman into the “wrong” kind of nerdy shit, and tumblr used to be the only place where I could nerd out and be around peers and not feel shamed for it, it was the literal only place where I could be myself without getting shamed for it. 
I’m tired, and I don’t have the energies for debate anymore. I’m baffled that this website went from being welcoming and warm and good to oppressed people, women, queer people, disabled people, mentally ill people and from being an actual community to being... whatever the fuck this is. I’m sick of it. I shouldn’t be debating my right to be a woman in a public space. I shouldn’t be asked to give space for discussion about whether I have a right to be a woman and to exist in this world without hiding anything about who I am. That’s all. This is my and other women’s right to existence that we’re talking about. 
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dunewizard · 5 years
Text
Session 3: The Cutlass
I wrote a write up for the last D&D game I was a player for, we’re attempting a duet campaign, so I finally got to play my Evil Aligned Gunslinger Drow character Carric Do’Rae! (Level 4 Rogue with 2 Revolvers found from the Dungeon Masters Guide)
I wanted to post one of the write ups here, i’d keep it under a readmore, but yeah! I added Heroforge figurines to help visualise people and scenes. Carric is a bit edgy and definitely isnt the type of character I go for, I just realised a Chaotic Evil character isnt... fit for most party scenarios. Its got a killer end to the session so if you do feel like reading a session recap written in first person - be sure to read to the end! :D
Session 3: The Cutlass
  I surfaced in Southern Luskan, amidst the graves of the dead I rose as the zombies would. I knew The Cutlass was in the south side of town, and under the cover of the midnight moon I stepped out to the streets and hugged the darkness like a shield. I didn't get far before I felt like I was being followed, that hobgoblin from earlier was wreathed in an ominous shadowy cloak, I nodded to him but he seemed intent on getting me back on my mission. Fair enough.
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Heading towards the wall I figured I must have been close to the docks, the stench of the muck I was in earlier has washed into the very cobbles that dot the ground in this city. Their stench brought in from seagoers and tradesmen alike, and speaking of them, a sextuplet of ne'er-do-wells approached me reeking of alcohol and rage. I kept to myself but I was more than ready to hit them up the moment they took a step in the wrong direction. They opted to call me out. "Oy! What do you think youre doing walking the streets at this hour?" they queried, slurring their words as they spoke. "I could ask you the same question, do you really want to do this? Incur the wrath of the mighty Spirton Baensek?" I bluffed. They seemed bewildered, the name was shared by someone I would care to forget from my past, but their name became a bit of a personal joke, so i used it. They seemed to ignore the name, and replied in turn with their own - I admit, I wasn't impressed with them in the slightest. At first I took them for a shift of Luskan Guards coming off work, I hadn't seen what they perhaps wore for a uniform so this was the best they had, I mean they appeared to be a Navy division perhaps. But it was evident from their demeanour and their willingness to slash me to death with their cutlasses implied they were Pirates to some degree, once they said they were the So-and-So Pirates, I knew they were little to no threat to me. “Oh! So youre not Luskan Guards? Well that makes this easy!” and With a quick flourish I doffed my cloak and drew my revolvers, I aimed them at the gang.
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"Uh oh lads, he's a Wizard," they whispered among themselves "We'd better scram." They began to cower. "Uh - Sorry! Sorry Mr Baensek - we'll be on our way! Don't turn us inside out!". I put my cloak on once more, and motioned for them to clear off, and out of my way. I turned to watch them leave, and out of the corner of my eye I see the Hobgoblin was inches away from sending a deadly arrow into the eyes of their charismatic leader. At least I had a watching angel in case things go sideways. I reached the Inn, a brothel it seemed, brazzieres and bodies were being thrown everywhere upstairs, and stabbings were going on in the lower floor that contained the bar. Quaint. I didnt plan on staying long. There were two tough looking Grunts outside standing guard, I take it they wouldnt like drow - but I wonder about Elves in general. I posed as my Wizard persona Mr Baensek once more and held my tinderbox like a book. Without so much more than a "Get out of here you rapscallion - filthy - no good - snake in the grass - back biting - arrow slingin - stinking ELF" I was sent away like a street rat. Welcoming. Well, I needed to get in, and I didn't feel like waiting outside this location for the next 5 days on the hopes my man Morick wants to pay them a visit, even if I knew what he looked like I'd be up the River Rauvin without a paddle. So I needed a better plan. I took to the thieves highway up on the rooves, hoping to land a shot on one of the bouncers.
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Hiding atop a roof, I aimed my Shortbow and took a shot.
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His large frame was such a large and easy target.
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He dropped like a feather brushed by the wind. Screaming in pain.
Noticing the noise I hightailed it out of there, I had a plan to circle the block and take a similar shot on the other bouncer, who hadn't moved from his post. Dedicated I guess. No one suspected a thing, noone was helping the sod on the floor - this town has been the first I can agree with in a long time. I couldnt quite find my mark on the second bloke, this angle was weird, but I wasnt going to risk being spotted here. I wedged my feet into the beams supporting a drainage pipe and attempted to fire a shot hanging off the side of the building, it was the closest to a sure thing that I had. Something shifted in my weight, and suddenly I realised I was too heavy - but it was too late. I began to fall towards the floor, I didnt want to miss this opportunity, so I aimed my bow while falling, and pincushioned the second bouncer. He dropped like a stone much like the first. But I was falling now, and I was falling fast. Reaching out I managed to grab onto a ledge, and met my falling speed perfectly. In fact It was so perfect that my momentum was held and sent me through the nearest window - waking up the resident of the house, an old man. In bed, barely awake, he begins fumbling for a broadsword under his bed, I was swift in taking his life. I drove my shortsword through his gullet, and he coughed blood everywhere, but it seemed he was not done dying - so to be sure I pulled his covers over him and made sure to stuff his mouth with his sleeping cloth. Meanwhile I could hear outside - the boucners were screaming about "Finding that damned Elf". Looking to the old man's meager table, there was some charcoal and writing paper with scribblings of death threats and extortion papers. I scribbled a note quickly: "Shut up about Elves" - a simple effective note. I tied it to another one of my arrows, and sent it into one of the bouncers who had began to stand. After reading the note he walked over to where I was, calling out to the old man - telling him to knock it off with his notes. This moron was creating such a ruckus, why didn't I just kill them and call it a day? Ugh. Searching around the Old Man's apartment I located the sword he was reaching for, I've never quite held something so hefty - let alone knew how to use it, I threw the sword out over my shoulder, not quite looking at where it would land. As luck would have it, the sword met the mouth of the bouncer quite well. In fact it slid down his gullet like a wet fish, killing him instantly. Bizarre  These encounters took me all the way to morning, as I approached the bar it was coming to first light, parting the nightly fog. Stepping over the bodies of the bouncers, I made my way inside The Cutlass. A crew were cleaning up the exploits of last night, a small crew of women in bodices and corsets were on cleanup duty - they quickly tried to shoo me out, telling me to come back at midday when they open again. I had to insist, I was in a hurry to find Morick. I announced my business, that I was after Morick, I had heard he frequented this bar, and that I could find him here. I would be willing to pay for the information, and flicked the Hostess of this Inn a lantanese golden coin. A hush fell upon the room, "oh no, theyre that poor" I think to myself. I reach for my gold bag, and can you believe it, one of the maids were already reaching to grab it! The nerve! I kick the swine in the stomach, and with her out of grabbing distance I draw my Revolver and point it at her head. "You don't want to see what this does" I warn.
With eyes crossed, looking at the barrel, she stands up and begins to shuffle away. The Hostess suddenly straightens herself up, asks her workers to leave us alone - and takes me a little more seriously. I mean, I've come in with some serious money by the sounds - and I am willing to kill on a single attempt at thievery in a town famous for it’s thieves? I'm glad I made that impression, because it was dead on. 
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I sit at the bar with one hand on my purse, and the other hand on my gun, I couldn’t trust anyone except except my guns - that much I knew. The Hostess takes my measure and inquires what I'm looking for, I repeated that I need to locate Morick and that I was lead here, the rest was a mystery to me. I knew that money talked, so before she could land a deal I placed my price on the table. 5 Lantanese Gold Coins. The gold alone would likely have been enough but that crystal in the Lantanese made them a near collectors item this far from Lantan. I lay them on the bar and pushed them to her, I then made a case for her. "You don't really like this backwash town do you? With this sort of money you could sell this place and head as far as Baldur's Gate, if you fancy. Start up somewhere new, somewhere fresh, away from the grime of this city. I know I won't want to stay long, why should you?" She considered this for a moment, and the reserved look on her face knew it was enough for her, but for good measure to secure accurate information I threw in an extra coin anyway - she could have made an attempt on my life if she wanted, and then I'd have to kill her, so I'm working good faith into her now. In the true illuskan way, she sells her information of Morick as soon as she sees that 6th coin hit the bar.
She told me that he doesnt really come to this bar, but it was a bit of a trap to catch out those who wouldnt know any better, or learn how to be worth his time. Turns out Morick is a big time thief, assassin, and general ruckus-maker. His real haunt was a second location, across from the Winter Palace on the second floor. She warned he was known for his traps, so I should be prepared to dodge or disarm a bunch if I plan to break in uninvited. She then explained that If I were to flash a light at the 2nd story window facing the street, I may be granted entry but I'll need to learn the pattern as it changes every week.
Rats
She then explained that it'll take her a day and a half to skip town, so I'm not to make my move until she's ready. We'll see if I honour that with time. We’ll see if I honour that in time. This whole conversation was observed by the Bard who was sitting on the other side of the bar. I wasnt threatened by his stance, he was idly tuning a fiddle hoping I wouldnt notice him, I wager. He has been checking out the bag of Gold I have swaddled to my person. I turn to him, and address him directly. "Bard, I'll give you some of this money if you write a song about me - detail the fearsome might of the dreaded Gunslinger, Carric Do'Rae". 
"... Sir... pardon... but what is a Gunslinger?" he said, quivering almost. At this point, one of the bouncers who were bleeding out just an hour earlier came to, and woke up. " YOU! " he screamed, pointing at me.  He began to charge across the room at a breakneck pace. 
While not breaking eye contact with the bard, I raise my right Revolver over my shoulder, and with a BANG I plant a bullet between the eyes of the brute, killing him instantly.
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"... That's a Gunslinger"
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sorry im really bad at wording stuff but do you think its okay to like something, for example games/animes about idols (which has a lot of fetishizing) as long as you understand the wrongs? (like i dont like the outfits that are supposed to be "sexy" i think theyre gross but i like the series a lot..)
Hey that’s basically me with fire emblem! I really really love the games but the sexualized outfits make me severely uncomfortable and the way they do a lot of things for fanservice (putting the female characters in sexy bunny outfits for spring) angers me.
Unfortunately it’s really common in video games and media. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy that. I think it’s awesome that you recognize the issue of how women are objectified, and it’s important to point these things out and discuss them (just be really careful where, because men in the community can be extremely nasty and cruel about this stuff..) Sometimes you have to dig past the fanservice aspect, and realize that games are still heavily targeted towards their male audience so they will do whatever they can to exploit that and make as many sexy female characters as they can to draw in the money. That’s just how it is and it’s sad and upsetting and degrading, to me.
But the sexualized female characters can have more to them. Sometimes their personalities are amazing, and they have really great aspects about them. It’s ok to like them, it’s ok to enjoy these characters and love these characters despite them being mainly for fanservice. So in short: it’s ok to enjoy games, it’s ok if you’re favorite character wears a skimpy outfit. You can recognize that the sexualization of women in video games and media is an issue and still enjoy the games/media overall.
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johnnythirteenguns · 7 years
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logan, not spoiler free thoughts (it got long):
anyways i saw logan yesterday and im still sensitive from it and i wouldnt know where to begin having a conversation about it with people who want to see it
as a film it’s pretty good. i didnt feel too much time was wasted, if any really, it’s tropey though. so like once it gets going it is point a to b to c to d with no variation and you spot the chekov’s guns right away and you can figure out how it’s going to end half way in. which im fine with as long a movie doesnt patronize me, and i didnt feel logan did. it was just formulaic. but it was good and watchable. there is a lot to be said for exploiting a tried and true formula for story telling but fitting it to the aesthetic of the characters therein.
also although i dont talk to movies i have realized that i am increasingly more involved with reacting to them and i dont know if this means i am more empathetic with the characters on screen because i am becoming more empathetic or if im more emotional and have nowhere to direct that emotion in my real life so i put it all into relating with the characters on a given screen and so when stuff happens to them i just really React.
that being said like im really. tired. of white characters being allowed to use brown bodies as stepping stones and footstools. there are a lot of dead brown people in this film. the main characters are all white. although dafne did an admirable job as laura, if i had the chance id recast her immediately. i wouldnt have cast her at all to be honest. i hope that when an older or adult laura shows up that they cast an actual mexican actress (not a white one). in logan they imply that the babies are clones, but there’s also implication that it was actually just in-vitro using the stolen dna the way you would use donated sperm? unless i watch it again i wont know because the language seemed unsure of itself.
but yeah. i dont. know. it’s literally too much at this point like we’re just constantly thrown under the bus so to save, create, or help white characters. for example, you know the horse family is gonna die, you know it because it’s a Trope. but it’s a black family, and they die gruesomely, which okay, everyone that dies in logan dies gruesomely and violently. but theyre the only black characters with speaking parts, and there is a dearth of them elsewhere in the fox marvel universe. rictor, one of the escaped 23s, is mexican in the comics, apparently so in the movie, and i can safely assume his actor is latinx as well (but he’s a baby and so doesnt have a ton of stuff on his imdb). he’s also the only one of the kids who is shot when they’re being chased through the woods.
i honestly dont know if i would have preferred they keep it on screen or leave it off screen. clearly brown children are afterthoughts anyway? to be used as plot devices and target dummies as needed. i dont know. i do know that i was waiting for it and i thought he was going to die. they do have a line of dialogue immediately after rictor is shot to reassure you that he isnt going to die, which is something i guess.
at any rate i really cant with child death or child abuse in media lately. i dont know how i feel about laura’s self-harm scene. not good but self-harm in media in general needs to be looked at in a case by case basis i dont know about this one.
which btw wow the actress that plays gabriela is straight up from the bronx born and raised in new york and i knew she couldnt be a primarily spanish speaker that accent grated on my ears so badly  i would have preferred they find a way to have her speak spanish and english at some point to illustrate their point because whenever she spoke that accent made me desperately wish she would shut the fuck up or get to the end off her sentence if i could somehow physically share how fucking tired i am of fake mexican accents like youd faint for ten seconds from the force of my anger.
like of all the things to be that angry about but it’s honestly just One More Thing at the point and im so tired.
im really over the disposability of brown bodies and i wish it would stop.
all that being said ive been listening to this podcast and my love for the x-men and x-men adjacent characters has grown immensely over the last year and going in i was emotional about film history, about the x-men cinematic history (honestly hugh jackman has brought his a-game every time when playing logan and i thank him, even when the films themselves were lackluster), i was emotional about x-men comics history, like. i really loved how they all chose to portray the characters and the relationships between them and it was really hitting a lot of perfect notes like.
it turns into a really rough father daughter story really quickly and it got to me because of my own father, because of my possible future, it was a lot of deeply personal levels being affected. um, there’s a lot of symbolic stand-in stuff, like the canadian border, brown children crossing it alone (all their caregivers are implied to be dead to the point that they pretty much are dead due to their absence, so more dead disappeared mexican women, along with the dead teenage girls we’re told about much earlier).
i think i may have just gotten too sucked into it and too emotionally invested and am maybe looking at it through too much of a like film student lens because i was studying it for form and execution obviously and i dont feel like tropey is bad, and i say this because there were moments where most of the audience was laughing but they werent particularly funny? like haha funny moments they were a little more light-hearted (and i mean a Little, not much, to me they illuminate how very tired and hopeless logan is in comparison with other characters and the rest of the world) but because the rest of logan is couched so firmly in the same sort of world weary americana (despite none of the main characters being american, which is neither here nor there) that a film like hell or high water is that i didnt find them Funny. theyre still painful moments meant to illustrate a turning point in the characters’ relationship.
i do say this as someone who at this point just completely started crying for the rest of the movie. i was holding it back since close to the beginning because i Do like these kinds of films and stories and so im already primed to get really invested and then it just kept hitting me and. even gabriela running away with laura and how desperate but fierce they as the characters being in that situation really got me.
also there is no stinger scene so dont wait unless you want to listen to the man comes around which i love so i was fine with waiting anyway. also you see a special thanks given to all the comics creators that had a major hand in shaping laura kinney which got me and marjorie liu is listed.
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junker-town · 6 years
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The 10 jumps off of that fancy hotel’s canopy that Eagles fans later destroyed, ranked
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This takes ‘Fly Eagles Fly’ to new heights
After the NFC Championship Game, Eagles fans absolutely lost it in downtown Philly including that one guy driving a damn ATV up the Rocky steps. The authorities greased the light poles downtown and that was all with 60 minutes still between the birds and the title.
I’m a native of a college town, and know a good post-championship riot when I see one. I may or may not have participated in one, but that is neither here nor there.
In anticipation of what was to come should the Eagles beat the Patriots, I tweeted this:
I'm rooting for the Eagles because I'm interested in what it looks like when a city makes all crime legal for 24 hours in real life. https://t.co/zPvUdkdQHM
— Richard Johnson (@RJ_Writes) January 31, 2018
Of course, the Eagles would prevail, and my goodness Philly fans did not disappoint when it comes to the depths of depravity they would soon sink into.
Beyond that guy who ate horse shit, I was most aghast/impressed at what happened outside the downtown Philadelphia Ritz Carlton where multiple people dive-bombed off of the canopy. The scene looked like a cross between a rock concert and post-apocalyptic looting, and there were reports of a few injuries that police couldn’t confirm.
By the end of the evening, this was the fate of the canopy:
These people was on top of the ritz Carlton
A post shared by Syreeta D. Williams (@reeta_theblackbeauty) on Feb 4, 2018 at 9:01pm PST
People are running through the streets with fragments of the Ritz-Carlton awning
— Ben Livingston (@bliv94) February 5, 2018
But before that happened, Twitter user @a6dulai and others shared with the world a landmark display of human evolutionary progress. Multiple Eagles looked gravity in the face and in one — probably drunk -- voice said: “No. I can, and I will fly.”
No. 10 — Man in black Brian Westbrook jersey
Give or take a few feet, the canopy looks like it’s around 15 feet from the ground.
#SBLII RITZ CARLTON SKY DIVING pic.twitter.com/6F9P8MyXFD
— Abdulai Turay (@a6dulai) February 5, 2018
The most impressive part of this clip is how quickly he falls. He accelerates at an impressive clip. We can’t see if there was any run-up to the leap. It also looks like he misses the target just a bit.
No. 9 — The man who caught some serious air
THEYRE STILL JUMPING pic.twitter.com/K62YHcTZBS
— max (@MaxOnTwitter) February 5, 2018
Out of all these I think this guy ended up getting the most air, or at least it looks that way from the angle shot. My man really went for it on the jump, and he gets points for that.
No. 8 — The man who belly-flopped
Part 7 honorable mentions pic.twitter.com/VtZw1kjpeh
— Abdulai Turay (@a6dulai) February 5, 2018
I think this one might have had the most potential to end extremely badly from our canopy divers. If my man wasn’t caught here, uhh, he probably wouldn’t have a face anymore.
Nos. 7 & 6 — Two women jumping off one after the other
#FlyEagelsFly part 2 pic.twitter.com/l6UzUpLeXz
— Abdulai Turay (@a6dulai) February 5, 2018
I’m much more impressed with the first woman’s plunge. She’s in an Eagles jersey, but I have to point out the execution here. She jumps and rolls mid-air to protect herself and lands almost perfectly in some guy’s arms.
I do appreciate the courage of the second woman’s jump it’s much more of an ambitious leap. Just take off without a plan and see what happens.
No. 5 — The Rey Mysterio push
#FlyEaglesFly Part 8 honorable mention (peep Rey Mysterio) pic.twitter.com/noalhHMWJU
— Abdulai Turay (@a6dulai) February 5, 2018
The subtly best part of this clip is the people in the lobby of the hotel through the doors just kinda standing there and watching. I mean, what are they gonna do unless they’re law enforcement.
But the main event is the person in full luchador mask and title belt. They gave their fellow Eagles fan the wings to truly fly by counting down and giving a push.
No. 4 — The woman who did it for the ‘Gram or Snapchat or whatever
#FlyEaglesFly part 5 lmaoooo pic.twitter.com/ImW37ETuZN
— Abdulai Turay (@a6dulai) February 5, 2018
Excellent catch by the crowd below, ensuring that she’s ok. But I’m very impressed by her holding onto the phone all the way down and through landing into multiple arms. You can’t coach that type of selfie skill.
We all have much to learn from this woman.
No. 3 — The man who really sells it
#FlyEaglesFly part 4 my personal favorite lmaooo pic.twitter.com/WFOBeVvoa5
— Abdulai Turay (@a6dulai) February 5, 2018
This is theatrical both in build-up and execution. There’s a little dance before the jump then a pause. A brief moment of mental reprieve where the thought must be going through his head “shit, am I really going to do this?”
Yes, sir, you are.
He hits the ground, and I thought he was done. Did I — did I just watch a man suffer a horrific injury after the Super Bowl?
Nope. He pops up and celebrates as the conquering hero his football team has made him out to be on this night.
No. 2 — The man who does backflips before falling off
People are doing backflips and jumps off the Ritz-Carlton! #SuperBowl #FlyEaglesFly pic.twitter.com/rFOzhL1T0k
— Melody Blockchain Starling (@pixelyunicorn) February 5, 2018
The only thing preventing this from being No. 1 is that he didn’t actually backflip off of the canopy. If you’re going to tease the athletic skill and gumption it takes to flip on top of a canopy that is certainly not flat, you’ve gotta bring it on the dismount too.
I remain very impressed with the flips, however.
No. 1 — A kid
#FlyEaglesFly part 3 A KID YOOO pic.twitter.com/sm5si47snw
— Abdulai Turay (@a6dulai) February 5, 2018
I mean, it’s a kid, how could it not be No. 1? So fervent is the city’s passion that at least a few people felt it was a good idea to let what is quite clearly a child leap off this canopy. We don’t know where his parents are, although I hope at least one of them was on the canopy with him encouraging this entire thing.
There are multiple generations of Philadelphia residents who look back on their childhood days as a fan with pain caused by the Eagles after going nearly 60 years without winning a championship. This kid isn’t one of them. When he looks back in old age after a full life lived, he’ll remember that the Eagles of his adolescence won the damn Super Bowl. And he got to jump off of a hotel canopy into a throng of rabid fans way past his bedtime.
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olaluwe · 5 years
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Recently I was going through Facebook, and I stumbled on a post with a pictured couple. The man in the said post was a young African dude; while the woman on the other hand is an older white lady. Ordinarily, I shouldnt be bothered because things like these have been long coming. Besides, it is the norm especially in the western world where younger men are known for marrying women who are way older than them and vice versa for a number of reasons. In Africa nay Nigeria, it is the way older men marrying younger ladies, whether single mothers or not, and not the other way round. Or way older men marrying under-age girls. This is prevalent in the predominantly Muslim north of Nigeria. Music divas like Madonna and Tina Turner are classic examples of older white ladies, and celebrities for that matter, who had reveled in toy-boy bliss at some points in their life  . If my memory serves me right, Tina Turner's current husband is way younger than her.
As for the material girl, Madonna, she once dated the youngster Ibrahim Zaibat, (picture above) who as of that time was 24, while Madonna was 53. However, I dont know if she ended up marrying him but speculations were rife then about engagement and stuff . But why would a young African dude settled for an older white woman? By far the most popular reason is financial gains. Another reason is companionship. There is also the need to get the necessary documents as immigrants in Europe or America. Like I said earlier, I don't give a f*ck whichever of those brought the couple in the post together like any other. Over and above that, they're adults and it is their life and what they do with it is certainly their call and not mine. So, why should I take pain killer over their headache, like they use to say in the local parlance? That's if they have one. To cut the lengthy story short, I ended up clicking through, against my earlier resolve, specifically, to see the comment section. And as I was scrolling down, my attention was drawn to a comment, written certainly by an aggrieved Nigerian lady. She trolls the young African dude for doing what according to her many of them wouldn’t do for the younger African single mothers that are with just a child. Arent that posturing defeatist and her indirect call for sympathy done out of ignorance of the fact that it is ill-advice for people to marry out of pity? It is like a black American lady ranting and accusing the single white ladies of taking away their few finest men. Is it the fault of the white ladies that there are only a few good black American men? Perhaps, I should also add by asking who says there are a few finest black American dudes. Obviously, the Nigerian lady disapproves of the any young African dude marrying an older white lady for whatever reasons no matter how germane. More so, when there're many single mothers at home wasting away. The way she talks you'd think white single mothers young or old don't have the right to desire for themselves what's good just like the Black single mothers. Whereas, what's good, they say, isn't just for one person or a select few. It is for everybody. Besides, many like my African sister have forgotten we now live in a globalized world where the chances of dating and marrying from other cultures are greatly enhanced by a lot of factors. And I remembered I replied her criticism of the union by saying it is nobody's right to tell two grown-up adults of opposite sex what to do with their lives as regards marriage whatever the races involved and the age differences of the two provided it is consensual. This brings me to the issue of what I dislike in most African single mothers, especially those who fall into the category of modern-day Baby Mamas as theyre called. I've dated one or two of them in the past. So, I would be making statements that may appear generalized but I can bet they are empirical as well. If you know, you know. Now, let's double down to the details of the matter. In no particular order, here are the 14 things I dislike about the most African single mothers: 1) They see men generally as unfortunate lot. Many of them see men as unfortunate lot just because a man disappointed them and at times they shut the door against even men with promises. 2) Self-pity. I've found out that most of them wallow in self-pity. They think everybody owes them sympathy just because of their single motherhood status. And as can be perceived even in the comment I alluded to above, the lady obviously would prefer all eligible bachelors consider them ahead of others like they're the one responsible for their predicament or misfortune. Im sorry if that sounds harsh. But it is the truth. 3) They think only men jilt. From what I've seen of many of them, there seems to be this generalized notion that only men jilt. They so easily forget or gloss over the simple truth that women just like men jilt making it a non-gender issue. 4) They demand that men who are wooing them to love their child (ren), in some cases, more than their Exs who got them pregnant. They do it even as a precondition for dating men and so missed out on the chance to get hooked sooner than expected. 5) They mournfully argue child bearing is no disease. Indeed, nobody thinks it is. However, when their relationship suffers a setback, they are quick to think it was as a result of their being single mothers. They tend to overlook other remote reasons that might be responsible for such. This they also do, when in truth, their kid(s) is standing in the way of a new relationship, especially, if the new guy sees it as a burden he cannot carry. 6) They want the new guys to take them with their baggage even if the guys dont have the means to do so. More so, they do it when they're not prepared to make amends. 7) They usually think their status is the fault of men who got them pregnant forgetting they owe it to themselves to say no or at least insist some form of preventive measures are adopted. 8) They are always the suckered ones. They assumed they are about the only ones that are the target of men whose game plan is to fool women. This is a false or wrong attitude to take into a relationship. 9) They over-dramatized the necessity for caution. Yes, having suffered disappointment in a previous relationship should be an eye opener to the pitfalls in a poorly handled affair. Nevertheless, it shouldn't call for over-dramatizing caution when it comes to starting a new relationship. People rise and people fall. When one has fallen, don't hesitate a second to get back on your feet. There's a Yoruba proverb that says: ' if one stumbles while learning to ride a horse, it's only normal to immediately mount it all over again'. 10) They struggle to gain adjustment. Adjustment is when a person or people come to themselves after straying into the wrong path in life. The first step to gaining adjustment from love related maladjustment is the consciousness or realization one has erred as a result of wrong priority or taking things for granted. Afterwards, the next thing is to approach the challenge frontally like a man with a broken down vehicle would. He calls in the trained specialist and his car gets fixed. 11) They overly play the victim. A victim is anybody who receives either a reversible or irreversible injury or ill-treatment from nature or from people. And it is only normal they traumatize or agonize. It's also normal they are on the lookout for support. But over playing the victim is when you refused to be healed even when there are ample time and a measure of commensurate assistance to help in mitigating the impact. 12) They scarcely add value to their men. Most African single mothers scarcely add value to the life of the new men who try to court them. Instead, they come with liability or unrealistic expectations which they expect their new male suitors to resolve unlike their white counterparts who are more or less an asset to have around. 13) They suspect all men but themselves. There is nothing worse than to live a paranoid or suspicious life. This many of them do under the guise of not letting down their love guard. As a single mother, the moment you start to become apprehensive or suspicious of the intention of men who approach you for a relationship; it deprives you of opportunities to have a chance at love again and to live a healthy love life with members of the opposite sex. As such today, you have many of them who are still single because they are unable to overcome abuse or breach of trust in a previous relationship. Yes, you cannot wholly trust every man that comes your way, but at least you must trust someone. 14) They think their world have come to the end. Many a time, the typical African single mother thinks her world has ended when it comes to getting another man to love them especially if there suffered one or two disappointment in the process of doing so. And instead for them to always prep up themselves ready to mingle, they sometime withdraw into the shell of inferiority complex brought about by their past mistakes. P.S: I want to salute the African single mothers who became single again either because of the untimely death of their husbands or to safe themselves from abusive relationships that have the potential to lead to death or permanent disability but are courageously forging ahead with the hope of remarrying and living a healthy marital life again. If you feel up to it, you're free, as a reader, to disagree, remove or add to this list as you wish.
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The best way to understand Troom Troom, the YouTube channel devoted to bizarre DIY tutorials, “hacks,” and “funny pranks,” is to spend multiple hours watching it until your brain turns into sprinkle-covered neon slime that can somehow also be used as lip gloss.
Because this is precisely the sort of thing that Troom Troom traffics in: do-it-yourself how-tos that no person could or should ever replicate. The most popular videos currently on the channel are tips on how to sneak food and makeup into class in laughably arduous ways: One suggests removing the glue from a glue stick and inserting a block of hard cheese into the container, while another recommends cutting an apple in half, using an Exact-O knife to remove the center, and then stuffing an eyeshadow palette inside. Of the apple!
Troom Troom is just one of many content factories of mysterious international origin that have gamed YouTube’s algorithm with bright, clickbait-y thumbnails and SEO keywords like “DIY,” “hack,” and “prank wars.” And to stand out from the thousands of other channels peddling the exact same service, they’ve turned to stranger and stranger content.
[embedded content]
That’s how you end up with a video that recently went viral on Twitter, featuring a woman cutting off a (very long) strand of her hair, trimming it down to less than half an inch, and attaching it to the end of a pencil to create an eyeshadow brush. This, produced by the equally wild YouTube channel 5-Minute Crafts, is apparently an easier way to apply eyeshadow than using one’s fingers.
And yet it’s working. 5-Minute Crafts currently has the fifth most subscribers of any YouTube channel, nearly 40 million. According to Social Blade, its total of more than 10 billion video views translates to anywhere between $2 million and $34 million in annual earnings (the discrepancy here is from the varying possibilities of cost per impression). It’s estimated that Troom Troom, which currently boasts nearly 10 million subscribers and almost 3 billion total views of its surreal, pastel-plastered videos, pulls in between about $500,000 and $8 million each year.
Not only are Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts wildly successful in their own right, but they’re also part of the growing network of reaction videos to cringe-inducing content on the site, creating a cycle that generates millions of views for the YouTubers who engage with it.
But creators I spoke to also expressed concerns about these types of channels, ranging from their clickbait-y strategies to plagiarism to manipulating children’s internet behavior. The DIY YouTube space may not be all rainbows and unicorns, even if its thumbnails are full of them.
Troom Troom’s essential weirdness doesn’t just come from its how-tos being absurdly useless. They’re weird because they are narrated by a voiceover actress with a perfect American accent speaking a kind of English that sounds like it’s been run through about three layers of Google Translate. They’re weird because they feature a rotating cast of very thin white women who are referred to by nicknames like “the Blue-Eyed Girl,” “Redhead,” “Mrs. Smith,” or “Dolly,” and weirder still because those identities sometimes switch among them. They’re weird because it’s impossible to tell whether the whole thing is satire or if it’s part of a malicious Russian cyberattack targeting the YouTube-obsessed children of the world (but more on that later).
Besides being odd in its content and tone, Troom Troom is also incredibly elusive. No one can agree on who makes the videos, who owns the company, where it’s based, and who is making money off it. But that elusiveness invites speculation, and internet detectives have managed to puzzle out a few key pieces: first, that the website is registered under the name Eugene Miroshnykov, and second, that many of the videos are likely filmed in Odessa, Ukraine, judging by the Ukrainian Cyrillic script on many of the products used and the locations tagged on Troom Troom’s Instagram.
[embedded content]
The identities of the actresses, too, have been largely exposed via their Instagram accounts. Most of them say they live in Odessa and are models and artists. The channel launched in 2015, and it’s clear from watching its earliest videos that Troom Troom began with standard DIY and didn’t reach its full weirdness — and biggest views — until about a year ago.
But there are still the requisite conspiracy theories: that Troom Troom is actually run by a millennial woman in San Francisco, or that the Troom Troom girls are being held against their will, forced to make weird DIY videos for ransom. Two media outlets that published stories on Troom Troom also failed to find out much else.
Which is why I was surprised when the email I sent to the address listed on Troom Troom’s YouTube page actually garnered a response. The sender’s name was indeed listed as Eugene Miroshnykov, confirming what I’d seen on Reddit, but after one back-and-forth, the name had been changed. To protect his anonymity — he expressed concerns about sleuths finding his phone number or other personal information — I agreed to refer to him by the nickname Zeon.
[embedded content]
Zeon told me that Troom Troom was actually started by a collective of professional artists “that wanted to do something fun.” Zeon is not among these founders — he says he was hired when the channel already had a million subscribers and described his job as a “salesperson.” Writers and directors are based in Europe and the US and brainstorm video ideas via Skype, and then execute them within their own team. He described the company structure as similar to a “holacracy,” in which there is no top-down management and the content is instead “the result of the collective mind.”
“We got inspiration from [the world of] DIY text and picture tutorials,” he wrote. “Most of our team [is made up of] professional artists, so they found usually all the tutorials in text form, but not in the videos. We tried to solve that issue. Firstly, it was more educational and serious videos that [were] fun. Currently, we try to mix entertainment with DIY value. We found that any video should entertain if you want to make an impact on the viewers and not just to get them bored.”
[embedded content]
This explains the heavy lifting that narration and plot serve in the average Troom Troom video — a “funny pranks” video is never just a list of pranks; it’s a story about how, say, “Dolly” sticks a plastic lizard into “Samantha’s” toothpaste and then replaces the inside of a lemon with a tennis ball. Later, Samantha gets back at Dolly by cutting out a hole in an iPhone case and placing it over a book so that it looks like Dolly’s phone literally burned through. The back-and-forth pranking only gets more complicated from there (I am not kidding).
Zeon says Troom Troom is independently owned, does not have any outside funding, and is profitable. “[It] has plans to grow, but the direction is currently confidential,” he adds. Zeon declined to connect me with the founders, nor did he provide any other details about his background or those of his co-workers, but I was easily able to find detailed Facebook and LinkedIn accounts that matched the name on his later emails, which leads me to believe that Zeon is, indeed, a real person.
The origins of 5-Minute Crafts are, for what it’s worth, far less mysterious. 5-Minute Crafts is owned by TheSoul Publishing, which says it produces an absolutely wild 1,500 videos a month, has 550 employees, and operates 40 Facebook pages in 10 languages. It owns mega-popular YouTube channels like Bright Side (animated videos that are a mix of riddles, facts, and “hacks”) and the 8 million-strong Facebook page You’re Gorgeous (your standard Facebook content farm content). Neither 5-Minute Crafts nor TheSoul Publishing responded to requests for an interview.
[embedded content]
Notably, TheSoul Publishing is also based in Eastern Europe. According to a 2017 Forbes piece, the company was founded by the Russia-based Pavel Radaev and Marat Mukhametov, both of whom have backgrounds in social media content. To answer the implicit question, unlike many viral Facebook posts that came out of Russia over the past few years, TheSoul Publishing’s content does not appear to be overtly political.
5-Minute Crafts has four times as many subscribers as Troom Troom, but it’s supported by a 550-employee business. This raises the still-unanswered question: How many people work for Troom Troom? The channel is able to publish a 10- to 15-minute video every day, which requires a relatively large team, not to mention lots of money. For the most part, how they’re able to pull it off remains unclear.
To understand the rise of peculiar DIY videos, you have to understand the rest of YouTube. Videos on the platform succeed largely based on how well they cater to popular SEO keywords, and if they create a sense of urgency in the title (which often means using all caps and a ton of exclamation points), and use a visually striking thumbnail image — that’s why you’ll see a lot of disembodied lips biting into a strange object.
“I started noticing these really distinct, super-saturated, photoshopped thumbnails showing up in my recommended videos feed last year,” says Cristine Rotenberg, the 30-year-old YouTuber behind the nail art channel Simply Nailogical, which has 6 million subscribers. “It’s really strange. It’s like a lot of channels realized around the same time that photoshopped pictures of putting things near mouths get a lot of clicks.”
Bizarre projects with bait-y thumbnails is a strategy that plenty of channels have embraced, but that other established crafting players have rejected. Nifty, the crafting vertical owned by BuzzFeed, has invested in projects that its audience requests and is interested in actually attempting (unlike, say, an incredibly complicated DIY to make a mini box of Altoids as a prank, as one Troom Troom video offers). On these “normal” crafting channels, for lack of a better term, you’ll find how-tos for things like fall porch decor, headboard making, and pumpkin carving with thumbnails that reveal the actual product.
[embedded content]
Erin Phraner, the supervising producer of Nifty, acknowledged the pressure that YouTube crafting channels face to game the algorithm and rely on bait-y titles. Nifty has also had its projects stolen by other craft channels. “It’s the reality of playing in that space,” Phraner says.
“Those types of thumbnails and titles and crazy hack projects definitely skew toward clickbait-y,” she adds. “But I think for us, our feeling is that you might see that pop up in the feed and click to watch it once because it seems kind of outlandish, but our whole business is we’re trying to build trust and create things that people actually want to bring into their home.”
“It’s like a lot of channels realized around the same time that photoshopped pictures of putting things near mouths get a lot of clicks”
For its part, YouTube says it’s already done the work of combating clickbait on the site. A YouTube spokesperson explained that since 2012, the algorithm has rewarded longer watch times over video clicks. So for instance, if users watch a video for a few seconds, realize it isn’t what they were expecting, and click out, that video wouldn’t show up in users’ feeds as often as one where viewers stuck around.
Plus, the term “clickbait” might not even apply when the actual tutorials on Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts are as wild as they are. Zeon explained that Troom Troom’s strategy is the opposite of Nifty’s — the videos are about entertainment, not service. And it’s their bizarro entertainment value that makes them perfectly suited to the current climate of cringe on YouTube, and commentary about that cringe.
“There’s so much unintentional humor in Troom Troom videos,” says Rotenberg of Simply Nailogical. “I could make Troom Troom parodies every week and laugh for the rest of my life.”
So far, she’s only made a few. In one, she attempts Troom Troom’s “20 banana hacks,” which include making a “banana holster” out of felt and painting a smile on a banana peel; in another, she tries some back-to-school pranks, such as putting hay in somebody’s backpack.
[embedded content]
Rotenberg’s videos are but a small sliver of the cottage industry that is the Troom Troom reaction video. Other popular creators like Danny Gonzalez, Cody Ko, and Jarvis Johnson have each garnered millions of views by satirizing Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts, using the standard YouTube reaction video format in which the host talks to the camera and reacts to clips from other videos.
It’s a cycle that’s lucrative for both the reactionaries and their targets. Johnson, who’s 26 and also has a full-time job working for Patreon in San Francisco, says that a reaction video he made about 5-Minute Crafts was a “huge catalyst” for growing his YouTube channel, which now has nearly half a million subscribers. Since then, he’s published a mini investigation on Troom Troom, as well as a video about the “dark side of Bright Side,” the sister channel to 5-Minute Crafts.
[embedded content]
He says that while on the surface these sorts of channels are pretty innocuous, he does share concerns about clickbait, plagiarism, and their large audience of children. But ultimately, his reaction videos started as a joke — or rather, an exercise in telling jokes. “I thought commentary videos were a brilliant vessel for comedic writing that also fit in with what YouTube’s algorithm promotes,” he explains. “I happened upon a 5-Minute Crafts video called ‘20 Tips If You Spend Your Life in Front of Computer.’ At the time, I felt like I’d struck internet gold because I didn’t see anyone else talking about their absurd hacks.”
Because that’s the thing: Troom Troom videos are incredibly ripe for parody. The joy in watching them is largely based on their obvious absurdity — the uncanny narration, the knockoff–Disney Channel set design, the outlandishness of the projects.
Troom Troom videos are arguably part of Cringe YouTube, the ever-expanding network of uncomfortable and earnest videos that encompasses TikTok compilations, Instagram comedians, and former Vine dudes with creepy hair, among others. It’s difficult to point to a YouTube video that isn’t a little cringey in its own way, but within Cringe YouTube, it isn’t just the original videos that get views — it’s the never-ending cycle of reactions and commentary. PewDiePie, the most-subscribed YouTube channel of all time, for example, has built a career on making fun of other YouTubers’ attempts at earnestness.
[embedded content]
On why the genre is so popular right now, Johnson guesses it’s because of “mystery, community, and the whole ‘so bad it’s good’ thing. If someone sees something super absurd and can share that with someone else, there’s a catharsis there.”
He also compares Troom Troom to a movie wildly considered to be one of the most unintentionally laughable films of all time. “As someone who is a die-hard fan of the Tommy Wiseau movie The Room, I see A LOT of similarities between The Room and Troom Troom,” he adds. “I feel like I should start a conspiracy theory about how Troom Troom is short for ‘The Room The Room.’”
“If someone sees something super absurd [on YouTube] and can share that with someone else, there’s a catharsis there”
And much like The Room, the question around Troom Troom, 5-Minute Crafts, and anyone who has ever made a bonkers video for the internet will always be the same: Are they in on the joke?
In the case of Troom Troom, it seems like the creators embrace the absurdity, even if it isn’t intentionally ironic. Zeon is aware of the intense, morbid fascination with the brand, and said that often, the “story creates the crafts,” meaning that at least some Troom Troom videos were not actually produced with the intent of teaching people how to make a thing — they’re just for fun.
But is weird DIY YouTube an exercise in satire? Probably not. And while there may not be an appetite for glue-stick cheese, there’s certainly an appetite for looking at it.
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Original Source -> YouTube is full of cringey, clickbait DIY channels. They’re even weirder than you think.
via The Conservative Brief
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YouTube is full of cringey, clickbait DIY channels. They're even weirder than you think.
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The best way to understand Troom Troom, the YouTube channel devoted to bizarre DIY tutorials, “hacks,” and “funny pranks,” is to spend multiple hours watching it until your brain turns into sprinkle-covered neon slime that can somehow also be used as lip gloss.
Because this is precisely the sort of thing that Troom Troom traffics in: do-it-yourself how-tos that no person could or should ever replicate. The most popular videos currently on the channel are tips on how to sneak food and makeup into class in laughably arduous ways: One suggests removing the glue from a glue stick and inserting a block of hard cheese into the container, while another recommends cutting an apple in half, using an Exact-O knife to remove the center, and then stuffing an eyeshadow palette inside. Of the apple!
Troom Troom is just one of many content factories of mysterious international origin that have gamed YouTube’s algorithm with bright, clickbait-y thumbnails and SEO keywords like “DIY,” “hack,” and “prank wars.” And to stand out from the thousands of other channels peddling the exact same service, they’ve turned to stranger and stranger content.
youtube
That’s how you end up with a video that recently went viral on Twitter, featuring a woman cutting off a (very long) strand of her hair, trimming it down to less than half an inch, and attaching it to the end of a pencil to create an eyeshadow brush. This, produced by the equally wild YouTube channel 5-Minute Crafts, is apparently an easier way to apply eyeshadow than using one’s fingers.
And yet it’s working. 5-Minute Crafts currently has the fifth most subscribers of any YouTube channel, nearly 40 million. According to Social Blade, its total of more than 10 billion video views translates to anywhere between $2 million and $34 million in annual earnings (the discrepancy here is from the varying possibilities of cost per impression). It’s estimated that Troom Troom, which currently boasts nearly 10 million subscribers and almost 3 billion total views of its surreal, pastel-plastered videos, pulls in between about $500,000 and $8 million each year.
Not only are Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts wildly successful in their own right, but they’re also part of the growing network of reaction videos to cringe-inducing content on the site, creating a cycle that generates millions of views for the YouTubers who engage with it.
But creators I spoke to also expressed concerns about these types of channels, ranging from their clickbait-y strategies to plagiarism to manipulating children’s internet behavior. The DIY YouTube space may not be all rainbows and unicorns, even if its thumbnails are full of them.
Troom Troom’s essential weirdness doesn’t just come from its how-tos being absurdly useless. They’re weird because they are narrated by a voiceover actress with a perfect American accent speaking a kind of English that sounds like it’s been run through about three layers of Google Translate. They’re weird because they feature a rotating cast of very thin white women who are referred to by nicknames like “the Blue-Eyed Girl,” “Redhead,” “Mrs. Smith,” or “Dolly,” and weirder still because those identities sometimes switch among them. They’re weird because it’s impossible to tell whether the whole thing is satire or if it’s part of a malicious Russian cyberattack targeting the YouTube-obsessed children of the world (but more on that later).
Besides being odd in its content and tone, Troom Troom is also incredibly elusive. No one can agree on who makes the videos, who owns the company, where it’s based, and who is making money off it. But that elusiveness invites speculation, and internet detectives have managed to puzzle out a few key pieces: first, that the website is registered under the name Eugene Miroshnykov, and second, that many of the videos are likely filmed in Odessa, Ukraine, judging by the Ukrainian Cyrillic script on many of the products used and the locations tagged on Troom Troom’s Instagram.
youtube
The identities of the actresses, too, have been largely exposed via their Instagram accounts. Most of them say they live in Odessa and are models and artists. The channel launched in 2015, and it’s clear from watching its earliest videos that Troom Troom began with standard DIY and didn’t reach its full weirdness — and biggest views — until about a year ago.
But there are still the requisite conspiracy theories: that Troom Troom is actually run by a millennial woman in San Francisco, or that the Troom Troom girls are being held against their will, forced to make weird DIY videos for ransom. Two media outlets that published stories on Troom Troom also failed to find out much else.
Which is why I was surprised when the email I sent to the address listed on Troom Troom’s YouTube page actually garnered a response. The sender’s name was indeed listed as Eugene Miroshnykov, confirming what I’d seen on Reddit, but after one back-and-forth, the name had been changed. To protect his anonymity — he expressed concerns about sleuths finding his phone number or other personal information — I agreed to refer to him by the nickname Zeon.
youtube
Zeon told me that Troom Troom was actually started by a collective of professional artists “that wanted to do something fun.” Zeon is not among these founders — he says he was hired when the channel already had a million subscribers and described his job as a “salesperson.” Writers and directors are based in Europe and the US and brainstorm video ideas via Skype, and then execute them within their own team. He described the company structure as similar to a “holacracy,” in which there is no top-down management and the content is instead “the result of the collective mind.”
“We got inspiration from [the world of] DIY text and picture tutorials,” he wrote. “Most of our team [is made up of] professional artists, so they found usually all the tutorials in text form, but not in the videos. We tried to solve that issue. Firstly, it was more educational and serious videos that [were] fun. Currently, we try to mix entertainment with DIY value. We found that any video should entertain if you want to make an impact on the viewers and not just to get them bored.”
youtube
This explains the heavy lifting that narration and plot serve in the average Troom Troom video — a “funny pranks” video is never just a list of pranks; it’s a story about how, say, “Dolly” sticks a plastic lizard into “Samantha’s” toothpaste and then replaces the inside of a lemon with a tennis ball. Later, Samantha gets back at Dolly by cutting out a hole in an iPhone case and placing it over a book so that it looks like Dolly’s phone literally burned through. The back-and-forth pranking only gets more complicated from there (I am not kidding).
Zeon says Troom Troom is independently owned, does not have any outside funding, and is profitable. “[It] has plans to grow, but the direction is currently confidential,” he adds. Zeon declined to connect me with the founders, nor did he provide any other details about his background or those of his co-workers, but I was easily able to find detailed Facebook and LinkedIn accounts that matched the name on his later emails, which leads me to believe that Zeon is, indeed, a real person.
The origins of 5-Minute Crafts are, for what it’s worth, far less mysterious. 5-Minute Crafts is owned by TheSoul Publishing, which says it produces an absolutely wild 1,500 videos a month, has 550 employees, and operates 40 Facebook pages in 10 languages. It owns mega-popular YouTube channels like Bright Side (animated videos that are a mix of riddles, facts, and “hacks”) and the 8 million-strong Facebook page You’re Gorgeous (your standard Facebook content farm content). Neither 5-Minute Crafts nor TheSoul Publishing responded to requests for an interview.
youtube
Notably, TheSoul Publishing is also based in Eastern Europe. According to a 2017 Forbes piece, the company was founded by the Russia-based Pavel Radaev and Marat Mukhametov, both of whom have backgrounds in social media content. To answer the implicit question, unlike many viral Facebook posts that came out of Russia over the past few years, TheSoul Publishing’s content does not appear to be overtly political.
5-Minute Crafts has four times as many subscribers as Troom Troom, but it’s supported by a 550-employee business. This raises the still-unanswered question: How many people work for Troom Troom? The channel is able to publish a 10- to 15-minute video every day, which requires a relatively large team, not to mention lots of money. For the most part, how they’re able to pull it off remains unclear.
To understand the rise of peculiar DIY videos, you have to understand the rest of YouTube. Videos on the platform succeed largely based on how well they cater to popular SEO keywords, and if they create a sense of urgency in the title (which often means using all caps and a ton of exclamation points), and use a visually striking thumbnail image — that’s why you’ll see a lot of disembodied lips biting into a strange object.
“I started noticing these really distinct, super-saturated, photoshopped thumbnails showing up in my recommended videos feed last year,” says Cristine Rotenberg, the 30-year-old YouTuber behind the nail art channel Simply Nailogical, which has 6 million subscribers. “It’s really strange. It’s like a lot of channels realized around the same time that photoshopped pictures of putting things near mouths get a lot of clicks.”
Bizarre projects with bait-y thumbnails is a strategy that plenty of channels have embraced, but that other established crafting players have rejected. Nifty, the home vertical owned by BuzzFeed, has invested in projects that its audience requests and is interested in actually attempting (unlike, say, an incredibly complicated DIY to make a mini box of Altoids as a prank, as one Troom Troom video offers). On these “normal” crafting channels, for lack of a better term, you’ll find how-tos for things like fall porch decor, headboard making, and pumpkin carving with thumbnails that reveal the actual product.
youtube
Erin Phraner, the supervising producer of Nifty, acknowledged the pressure that YouTube crafting channels face to game the algorithm and rely on bait-y titles. Nifty has also had its projects stolen by other craft channels. “It’s the reality of playing in that space,” Phraner says.
“Those types of thumbnails and titles and crazy hack projects definitely skew toward clickbait-y,” she adds. “But I think for us, our feeling is that you might see that pop up in the feed and click to watch it once because it seems kind of outlandish, but our whole business is we’re trying to build trust and create things that people actually want to bring into their home.”
she attempts Troom Troom’s “20 banana hacks,” which include making a “banana holster” out of felt and painting a smile on a banana peel; in another, she tries some back-to-school pranks, such as putting hay in somebody’s backpack.
youtube
Rotenberg’s videos are but a small sliver of the cottage industry that is the Troom Troom reaction video. Other popular creators like Danny Gonzalez, Cody Ko, and Jarvis Johnson have each garnered millions of views by satirizing Troom Troom and 5-Minute Crafts, using the standard YouTube reaction video format in which the host talks to the camera and reacts to clips from other videos.
It’s a cycle that’s lucrative for both the reactionaries and their targets. Johnson, who’s 26 and also has a full-time job working for Patreon in San Francisco, says that a reaction video he made about 5-Minute Crafts was a “huge catalyst” for growing his YouTube channel, which now has nearly half a million subscribers. Since then, he’s published a mini investigation on Troom Troom, as well as a video about the “dark side of Bright Side,” the sister channel to 5-Minute Crafts.
youtube
He says that while on the surface these sorts of channels are pretty innocuous, he does share concerns about clickbait, plagiarism, and their large audience of children. But ultimately, his reaction videos started as a joke — or rather, an exercise in telling jokes. “I thought commentary videos were a brilliant vessel for comedic writing that also fit in with what YouTube’s algorithm promotes,” he explains. “I happened upon a 5-Minute Crafts video called ‘20 Tips If You Spend Your Life in Front of Computer.’ At the time, I felt like I’d struck internet gold because I didn’t see anyone else talking about their absurd hacks.”
Because that’s the thing: Troom Troom videos are incredibly ripe for parody. The joy in watching them is largely based on their obvious absurdity — the uncanny narration, the knockoff–Disney Channel set design, the outlandishness of the projects.
Troom Troom videos are arguably part of Cringe YouTube, the ever-expanding network of uncomfortable and earnest videos that encompasses TikTok compilations, Instagram comedians, and former Vine dudes with creepy hair, among others. It’s difficult to point to a YouTube video that isn’t a little cringey in its own way, but within Cringe YouTube, it isn’t just the original videos that get views — it’s the never-ending cycle of reactions and commentary. PewDiePie, the most-subscribed YouTube channel of all time, for example, has built a career on making fun of other YouTubers’ attempts at earnestness.
youtube
On why the genre is so popular right now, Johnson guesses it’s because of “mystery, community, and the whole ‘so bad it’s good’ thing. If someone sees something super absurd and can share that with someone else, there’s a catharsis there.”
He also compares Troom Troom to a movie wildly considered to be one of the most unintentionally laughable films of all time. “As someone who is a die-hard fan of the Tommy Wiseau movie The Room, I see A LOT of similarities between The Room and Troom Troom,” he adds. “I feel like I should start a conspiracy theory about how Troom Troom is short for ‘The Room The Room.’”
glue-stick cheese, there’s certainly an appetite for looking at it.
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Source: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/11/12/18065662/troom-troom-5-minute-crafts-youtube-diy-prank
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