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sammy8d257 · 4 years

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Masterlist For Object Head Media

LAST UPDATED: April 1st, 2020

Google Doc: HERE

Welcome! Ever wanted to find out if there’s any types of media that feature Object Head characters that aren’t just one-off or background characters?

Well you’ve come to the right place!

Here I hope to create a comprehensible list of all types of media that contain Object Headed characters!

But I’m only one person who doesn’t know every piece of Object Head media out there

SO IF YOU have a suggestion for a piece of media that would fit on this list

Send me a message through my Tumblr @sammy8d257

or on Twitter under the same name

With your help, I hope this list becomes very long with all sorts of amazing Object Head media!

Other than that, have fun exploring to your heart's content!

- Sammy

(List under “Keep Reading”)

Comics/Webcomics:

Saga - written by Brian Vaughan, illustrated by Fiona Staples

Gene: Space/fantasy

Rating: M+

Language: English

Status: 54 issues, On Hiatus (as of 4/1/2020)

Read On: Physical Comic

Description: Saga is an epic science-fiction/fantasy drama about two lovers from long-warring extraterrestrial races, Alana and Marko, fleeing from authorities from both sides of a galactic war as they struggle to care for their daughter, Hazel.

Object Heads: TV Heads, in Saga there is a whole race known as Robots Kingdom that are made entirely TV Headed characters.

Character Status: The object head characters turns from side to supporting character in the main cast

Warnings: Nudity, Sex, Death, Violence, its a war setting, blood, drugs, etc.

MyStereoBot - by bioatomic

Gene: Sci-fi, Romance, Comedy

Rating: M

Language: English

Status: 537 pages + 24 page Epilogue, Completed on 6/6/2017

Read On: Smackjeeves or Tapas

Description: Infinity, a stereo head robot, finds himself conflicted with his worth as a person, as a partner, and as a friend. Having trouble with feeling at home on Planet Ribbon and finding happiness, his boyfriend, Cloudburn, and his cousin, Ohm, do the best they can to help him feel worthy. Things seem to go downhill when Quence, a new friend, worries Cloudburn about Infinity’s motives towards him. That is, until an outer-worldly encounter changes all of their lives, for better or for worse, and may just show Infinity what home really is.

Object Heads: Stereo heads, radio heads, tv heads, box heads, etc. There's a lot of different Object heads in this comic

Character Status: Main characters and other side characters are object heads

Warnings: Swearing, partial nudity, drugs

Notes: You can find more information on Tumblr - @mystereobot

Sebastian - by Amanda Heard

Gene: Slice-of-Life, Romantic, Comedy

Rating: pg-13 to M

Language: English

Status: On-going, 80+ pages (as of 4/1/2020), Updates Tuesdays and Thursdays

Read On: http://www.sebastiancomic.com/, Tumblr: https://sebastiancomic.tumblr.com/ or @sebastiancomic

Description: Sebastian is about a pessimistic thief and a happy-go-lucky dork finding each other through unexpected circumstances and learning about forgiveness, love, and loss. Also CRIME!

Object Heads: Pumpkin Heads

Character Status: Main characters are object heads

Warnings: Swearing

Notes: Created by @batberryboo on Tumblr

The Property of Hate - by Sarah Jolley

Gene: Fantasy/Adventure

Rating: Pg 13

Language: English, translations in French, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, Japanese, Norwegian, Dutch, Portuguese, Breton, Brazilian, Tagalog, German, Chinese, Swedish, Spanish, Esperanto, Latin, Korean, Italian, Hebrew, Greek, Czech

Status: On-going, 400+ pages(as of 4/1/2020), Updates Sundays

Read On: http://jolleycomics.com/, Smackjeeves

Description: When offered a chance to be a hero by a strange figure with a TV for a head, a young girl is whisked away to a whimsical land in desperate need of a hero. This journey will take them across the lands where emotions manifest into physical forms and the inanimate becomes animate.

Object Heads: Tv Head, Radio Head, etc.

Character Status: One of the main characters and a few secondary characters are object heads

Warnings: None

Notes: Created by @modmad on Tumblr

The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn - by Tri Vuong

Gene: Fantasy, slight horror

Rating: PG 13

Language: English

Status: 100 Chapters, Completed on 5/21/2019(maybe on Hiatus?)(as of 4/1/2020)

Read On: Webtoons

Description: Follow the journey of the world's greatest paranormal investigator - Oscar Zahn. Friend to lost souls, enemy of evil, he may lack a body but that doesn't mean he's missing a heart!

Object Heads: Skull Head

Character Status: Main character is an object head

Warnings: Some disturbing imagery

Robot Dream - by Robot Dream, written down by Paulie Godbout, illustrated by Sandra Grygier

Gene: Action, Drama

Rating: PG 13

Language: English

Status: On-Going, 70+ pages (as of 4/1/2020) No Solid Update schedule

Read On: https://www.robotdream.com/mystory (up until page 73), Tapas (up until page 70)

Description: When a lonely human-robot-hybrid refuses to live a life of seclusion, he discovers a community of outcasts in the world of electronic music. But, when he begins creating his own remixes, and discovers they somehow have the power to heal broken hearts and minds, he must learn that revealing who you truly are comes at a price before he is captured by the people who “created” him.

Object Heads: TV Head

Character Status: Main Character

Warnings: References to manipulation and abuse

Notes: You can also read it on Webtoon under the same name but it is only up to page 32

Third Shift Society - by Meredith Moriarty

Gene: Supernatural, Adventure

Rating: PG 13

Language: English

Status: 24 Episodes, On Hiatus(as of 4/1/2020)

Read On: Webtoon

Description: Life’s funny. One minute you're jobless, deep in debt and on the verge of eviction; the next you’re in a fight with a monster and getting a job working for a Paranormal Detective with the head of a Jack-o-Lantern. It’s an age-old story. Now the financially-challenged Ellie (who’s just discovered she has strong psychic powers) and her Pumpkin-headed boss Ichabod have to team up and fight the things that go bump in the night.

Object Heads: Pumpkin Head

Character Status: Secondary Main Character

Warnings: None

Notes: Created by @meredithmoriarty on Tumblr

Rice Boy - by Evan Dahm

Gene: Surreal fantasy, Adventure

Rating: PG 13

Language: English

Status: 439 pages, Completed as of 2008,

Read On: http://www.rice-boy.com/see/, or on Soft/Hardcover Graphic Novels,

Description: Rice Boy is a simple creature torn from his mundane life by an immortal “machine man” called The One Electronic, who suspects that Rice Boy may fulfill an ancient prophecy. Now tasked with trying to fulfill a prophecy he did not choose, Rice Boy must explore the vast, fantastical, and surreal world of Overside and encounter the dangers that it hides.

Object Heads: Circular TV Head

Character Status: Secondary Main Character

Warnings: Chapter 19 contains one page of suggestive incest, Slightly disturbing imagery, violence, drug use

Notes: Dahm also runs a Rerun blog of Rice Boy where he does commentary on the pages as he posts them on Tumblr: @riceboycomic

Film/Shows/Anime:

FLCL (also known as Fooly Cooly) - written by Yōji Enokido, directed by Kazuya Tsurumaki

Studio: Gainax

Gene: Comedy, drama

Style: 2D Animation

Rating: PG 13

Language: Japanese, with an English sub and Dub

Status: 1 season(6 episodes), Completed as of 2001

Description: A boy's humdrum life turns upside-down when he encounters a maniacal girl who causes strange things to grow out of his forehead and draws him into conflict with a mysterious, otherworldly organization.

Object Heads: TV Head Robot

Character Status: Side Main Character

Warnings: Sexual innuendos

Notes: There are 2 more seasons of FLCL known as FLCL Progressive and FLCL Alternative, I haven’t watched them but I don’t believe there are any object head robots in them

The Amazing World of Gumball - created by Ben Bocquelet

Premiered on: Cartoon Network

Gene: slice of life, comedy

Style: Mixed Media Animation

Rating: PG

Language: English,

Status: 6 seasons(240 episodes) + a 6 episode miniseries, Completed as of December 2019

Description: The series revolves around the misadventures of blue cat Gumball Watterson and his adopted goldfish brother and best friend, Darwin. Together they spread mischief across the weird and wacky city of Elmore.

Object Heads: Bomb Head, Boombox head, whatever rob was

Character Status: Secondary and background characters

Warnings: None

Notes: This one really shouldn’t be on the list but I added it because I literally could not think of another show or film that has Object Head characters

Video Games:

Cuphead by StudioMDHR

Gene: Classic Run and Gun

Style: 2D Handpainted Visuals

Rating: E

Language: English

Released: 9/29/2017, DLC (coming soon 2020)

Playable On: Steam, Xbox, Windows 10, Mac, Nintendo Switch

Price: $19.99

Description: Cuphead is a classic run and gun action game heavily focused on boss battles. Inspired by cartoons of the 1930s, the visuals and audio are painstakingly created with the same techniques of the era, i.e. traditional hand-drawn cel animation, watercolor backgrounds, and original jazz recordings.

Play as Cuphead or Mugman (in single player or local co-op) as you traverse strange worlds, acquire new weapons, learn powerful super moves, and discover hidden secrets while you try to pay your debt back to the devil!

Object Heads: Cup Heads, Apple Head, Dice Head, Fork Head, etc.

Character Status: Playable Main Characters, some secondary characters, and some of the Bosses

Warnings: Cartoony violence

BattleBlock Theater by The Behemoth

Gene: Platforming, comedy

Style: 2D Graphics

Rating: E

Language: English

Released: Xbox Live-4/3/2013, Steam- 5/15/2014,

Playable On: Steam, Xbox, Microsoft Windows, Linux, macOS, Macintosh operating system

Price: $14.99

Description: Shipwrecked. Captured. Betrayed. Forced to perform for an audience of cats? Yes, all that and more when you unlock BattleBlock Theater! There’s no turning back once you've started on your quest to free over 300 of your imprisoned friends from evil technological cats. Immerse yourself in this mind bending tale of treachery as you use your arsenal of weapon-tools to battle your way through hundreds of levels in order to discover the puzzling truth behind BattleBlock Theater.

If solo acts aren't your style, go online or bring a buddy couch-side to play a thoroughly co-optimized quest or enter the arenas. The game also includes a level editor so you can craft your own mind bending trials!

Object Heads: Heads are customizable but the main game gives you many heads to choose from. Block heads, Shape Heads

Character Status: Playable Characters

Warnings: Cartoony violence, crude humor

Pumpkin Noir by PumpkinNoirDev

Gene: RPG Adventure

Style: Pixel Graphics, RPGMaker

Rating: E

Language: English

Status: Demo as of 6/19/2017

Play On: PC, demo link - https://rpgmaker.net/games/9817/

Price: Not available

Description: Stop, Drop, Noir!

Perched on the precipice of endless void-- a single seedy city. Detectives “Smoke & Fire” Rem and Wednesday face a puzzling situation as the curtain lifts on Halloween night. Go broke, or investigate a rollickingly risky mafia mystery? The answer is clear.

Search for the void’s greatest criminal minds, uncover the shocking secrets of the underworld!

Object Heads: Pumpkin Head

Character Status: Main Character

Warnings: None

Notes: This game is still under development, for more information visit the dev’s blog- https://pumpkin-noir.tumblr.com/ or @pumpkin-noir

Other:

Object Head Zine - hosted by @potentialforart on Tumblr

Style: Mostly 2D Illustrations and short comics

Gene: Genes differ per year

Rating: PG-PG 13

Language: English

Status: On-Going Project, This zine is a yearly thing

Read On: Tumblr- https://objectheadzine.tumblr.com/ or @objectheadzine, Buy Physical/Digital Copies here - https://gumroad.com/objectheadzine

Price: Prices Vary

Description: The Object Head Zine is a collection of artwork from different artists coming together for a common love of object heads. The Object Head Zine is a yearly project with a new theme chosen for each year. Such themes include Forks and Utensils, Spooky, Flora and Fungi, Superstitions, and Science and Technology.

Object Heads: Yes

Character Status: Main Focus

Warnings: None

And if you have any more suggestions for this list, please let me know!!

#object head #object head media masterlist #object heads #object head character #objecthead #Sammy8D says #Sammy8D257

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kunalsoriginals · 4 years

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Pearls of Wisdoms for Pakis

Beloved Janta of Pakistan,

I would also like to share a secret with you, which you might never apprehend from a person from any other country, especially from an Indian. We LOVE YOU, We are obsessed with you. We enjoy infatuation comparable to that of a 14-year boy who has one on a girl living in his neighborhood, like that teenager whose heart warms up with the girl's sight. Still, he tends to tease her or plays whimsical pranks on her. It is his way of showing his affection.

Accept it, my fellow former Countrymen, you guys are in deep love with us as well. I have felt it first-hand. You folks love watching our Movies and fantasy our starlets. Sing Bollywood songs while proposing to your love. Ache to enjoy Mumbai and Delhi's nightlife. Some of you would even love to reside permanently here for a better future. There is also constant discrimination in every viewpoint; it may be Cricket or politics; in all honesty, you think of our day and night.

Keeping this indefinable affection for each other aside for a while, there is a bitter revelation that you people will have to accept and even feed it in the brains of the future generations to come. I am sure that maximum people over your side of the border should by now have conceded that India will never ever surrender Kashmir in your Lap. It won't be possible in at least another century ahead.

You see, in the manner where India's GDP had expanded from 10 Thousand Crores in the 1950s to more than 10 Lacs Crores in 2019, our sentiment of Nationalism has additionally, grown in a comparable pattern. There was a phenomenal hike in this feeling after India's general elections 2014 onwards; the reason for such an increase is unknown to me. So, the moral is, with such a vast Nationalism level in the hearts of the Aam Janta here, I don't think so parting away an inch of land to anyone would be possible.

Won't it look dishonorable for us in the front of the entire world if we lose the land to you guys who are quite behind then us in all the aspects? You will have to accept that technically both our countries are 73 years old this year. Over this side of the border, we have gradually upgraded in all aspects a Nation has to grow. I could virtually challenge you in where you guys can prove to be better in any improvement zone. This is the land wherein the year 1981 Indian Actor Amitabh enacted on the evergreen song "Dekha Ek Khawab " and his Dame Rekha in the movie Silsila hence parting away with Kashmir is painful to us as it will not only hurt our Ego and furthermore offer grief to Amitji.

Forget the BJP led NDA, Even the Congress-led UPA cannot think of such a gormless deal. The primary reason is that they want to come into power next term too to provide Public service. Now you people only tell which government will be such dimwits to kick their own rear and be signed on the history textbook of 10-year-old kids as the People who gave away Kashmir.

Realize this, Pakistani Government, Your Army and also ISI can't withhold the idea of getting the region of Kashmir in your Nation's Map, even they know that your national flag will never rise in Capital of Srinagar but since it was an Inaugural Political Agenda when your Country was created in where the principal objective of this agenda was to collect vote from you guys and funds from other countries in the name of Kashmir. It is their lollypop for you fellows that their respective parties if came in power, an ideal environment will be created where; a newly wedded couple from Lahore can drive to Srinagar for their honeymoon without a stamp on their Passport and enjoy a bite of Kashmiri Apple laying in the front deck of a Shikara in Dal Sarovar. It's All Fake, acknowledge it, and move on.

So to my Indian friends,

There was a massive inspiration for me to compose this article. It was shocking that it came from the other side of the border. In the great Indian lockdown of 2020, I who was ideally workless like many of us all, I went through many videos of this Pakistani Newsreader and Political Debate Show Host Dr. Fiza Akbar Khan on YouTube. By her venomous language, the passion for thrashing India and people over here and that high pitched voice made me think of another Indian Debate Show Host. I am convinced that they are unquestionably biologically related to each other. So I should not have a problem with her blabbering rubbish towards my Country as her Bhaiya here likewise.

But I have to admit that her language did hurt me because, unlike her Bhaiya over there who trashes Pakistan in the English language, she uses Urdu, which sounds quite similar to the Hindi language to illuminate unpleasant garbage, the reason is entirely psychological for me being hurt. For example, If somebody calls you a Motherfucker, you might not be offended in the same manner if you are called Madar***d (Pardon my Language).

This Pakistani Anchor goes on and on that How Poor, Uneducated, Physically and Mentally Weak, Shelterless, we Indians live in this Country where our economy is going into the drain. We are foolish people to elect Shri Modi as PM of our Country and that too twice. There is a vast level of discrimination on minorities over here. The world's biggest Democracy is over. In the distant future, if Kashmir is not given to them its freedom, then Islamabad will be the next capital of Pakistan and India.

Can you believe this, she has mentioned all this on her show and that too in a language which can easily pierce in our heart. Let's not get also angered about this and start calling her names. She is just doing her job. She is giving favored content to people of over there what her Bhaiya is doing over there.

As pragmatic as I can get about whatever she says on her show about us, I just can't accept it, I am too egoistic as an Indian to even reply or curse on her Video on YouTube comment section. Hence, I planned to dedicate this entire blog to Dr. Fiza Khan, whom I seriously don't mean to offend as Women, her Nation, and especially not her Religion and would like to give her some advice.

Avoid Echoing about Nukes: A round of applause towards Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan for building Nuclear Weapons, a program from a stolen uranium centrifuge design and a network of grey-market suppliers. But stop jabbering in your show that Pakis can nuke India in case a War erupts between us. Even If Jinnah Sahab from Heaven above commands your Arm Force to it, they will effortlessly deny his orders and don't stress. We likewise won't squander our atomic weapon on you. These weapons are like those expensive Portraits which you can proudly hang in your Living Room, but can't take it out on a date. Stop even using the word Nuke in your show.

Comparison between the PMs: PM Imran Sahab seems to be a jolly good fellow who also appears to try to administrate better than any other PMs or Military leaders of your Country. Let me tell you bluntly that there is no comparison with his Counterpart over here; in fact, he even doesn't stand anywhere nearby India's previous Prime Minister.

Paki's Diplomatic Policies Debacle: This is a typical miscue. You and many colleagues of you have repeatedly misguided your Citizens that Pakistan can easily use the benefit of its diplomatic relationship with a few First World Country and pressurize India on Kashmir Issue. Well, Honey, This is an open challenge to your PM, along with Mr. Qureshi Sahab go to any so-called super Power for assistance or call end numbers of meeting in OIC ( Organisation of Islamic Cooperation ). Nobody will be ready to intervene in the Valley issue for one of the main reason, Why would any country create enmity with the Country will more than 100 Million Population which is a significant business open doors for their corporates.

Playing Second Fiddle: I initially watched your Debate show of earlier years. You always mentioned the US as your elder brother and will still stand next to you along with Saudi Arabia. These were the two countries which you saw as your personal ATM. Lately, these ATM machines stopped removing Cash and Kinds, which they earlier showered on your Country, so you bashed them and accused both these Super Power for adultery. These started leaning towards us. Then you went to China and become a Virtual Puppet who dances on their tunes. Now the problem arises that the entire world started forming against your elder brother and accused them as the creator of the Pandemic of 2020. So you began a rigid assembly against them as well, and now your nation is in an arrangement for another development with Malaysia and Turkey. Understand this dear Fiza ben that in distant future you will have to abuse these two countries also while your government will go and beg to some other countries, maybe North Korea.

Last but not least, which I have already mentioned why Kashmir will never be part of Pakistan earlier in the blog. Read repeatedly till the concept is glued by heart, and if possible, explain it to your people there.

Defense products will be purchased in the name of Kashmir. For Fiscal Year 20-21 Defense expenditure of Pakistan is 1,289 Billion Dollars. India's expenses on the same would be around 66 Billion Dollars. Can you believe these Figures? This Moolah could otherwise be used in Infrastructure and improving the lifestyle of citizens of the respective Country. Civilians and Soldiers' blood will be shed on the name of Kashmir. Approximately 120000 deaths have been registered since 1989, which also includes unsympathetic deaths of militants and terrorists. Television Media will go on with Live debates inviting aficionados and enthusiasts to increase their TRP on the name of Kashmir. Newspapers and magazines will publish viperous articles vocalizing each other's blame for being troublemakers on Kashmir's name. Many commercial Movies and Web Series will also be produced on Kashmir's name. Still, by endeavoring all means of Peace or War, this dream of some of yours will never be fulfilled.

#pakistan #kashmir #fizakhan #india

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fuckyeahcharmcaster · 4 years

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Pot, Meet Kettle

So, was looking for more Charmcaster content and came upon these comments related to the reboot episode “What Rhymes With Omnitrix?” And...wow. I won’t name names out of respect for privacy and will put this all under a cut so that only those interested can read it, but the hypocrisy here is just so mind-numbing that I needed to comment on it.

Kevin stans unwilling to admit to his faults, do not engage.

What she did to Kevin was not conning in any way, that was clearly and blatantly magical enslavement complete with chains, torture, and mindcontrol. You can’t just downplay that shit like this and expect me to go along with it, not when the sequel series already tended to pull that, especially with regards to Charmcaster doing that sorta shit. You do not get to blatantly show Kevin being forced to do things against his will, being tortured for fighting back, and then try to pass it off as him having been tricked into working with her. What the fuck is with this franchise with having Charm do horribly evil shit and then just waving it off?

Remind me: how much horribly evil shit did Kevin commit, even in the sequel series themselves where he was a good guy, that got downplayed, justified, waved off or swept under the rug? Murder, war profiteering, aiding other criminals when it suited his interests, letting his friends take the rap for his crimes, etc?

Sequel series Charm was incredibly shitty, there’s no denying that, probably shittier than sequel series Kevin honestly given the sheer lack of consistency in her character and over-the-top extremes they had her go to. But guess what, that doesn’t make sequel series Kevin un-shitty. If you’re not holding the same standard to how they’re written, your argument loses credibility because it is intellectually dishonest.

More to the point, what about all of the crap that reboot Kevin has pulled? Does none of it bother you? Is him walking free sensible given the stuff he’s done? Ex: he enslaved Glitch, who is a sentient being, against his will twice. He wasn’t taken to task for it afterward, even though he felt no remorse and went on to do more evil deeds. Before getting controlled by Charm, he was about to beat Ben to death. And even before he got his Antitrix he was a vicious bully who traumatized Ben to the point of being scared of public bathrooms. So why is all of that excusable and you can “go along with it” when the show doesn’t dwell on any of it afterward, but you draw a line in the sand when Charm, a villain, does something bad to Kevin, another fucking villain? That’s like hating on Kevin for manipulating the Weatherheads or Steam Smythe and expecting the show to make a bigger deal out of that, or hating on Zombozo for screwing Vilgax over or hypnotizing Kevin and expecting the show to make a bigger deal out of that; it makes no logical sense. Villains are gonna villain, it’s what they do.

With Charmcaster, it was a case of Kevin trying to puff himself up and seem big and bad and Charm responding with ‘great, let me have your brain for my own’, followed by an episode of him fighting viciously against her control until she took 100% over. But he was ‘working with her’, the writers say. And given how much the sequel series were into brushing the awful shit she did under the rug, I really don’t have patience for it here.

Again, I ask if you’ve checked under Kevin’s rug from the sequel series lately. Lot of awful shit there. And if you had the patience for all of that, you can have the patience for this.

And as for what sparked this whole outburst, the ‘working with her’ thing was in reference to that in his puffing Kevin outright said that she ought to take control of him. She told him upfront that she wanted to control Ben against his will to have him attack Gwen, and told him to be on his way because he wasn’t Ben. Kevin could have gotten out unscathed. But, not thinking straight because of jealousy, he protested and said that she should want to control him because he’s more powerful. Charm’s response (basically “OK, if you insist!”) made him realize all too late what he had just said and what it actually meant would happen to him.

It’s not trying to excuse what Charm did as right or justifiable or undermine it in any way, it’s just acknowledging that Kevin also played a willful part in making it happen too due to his hate-boner for Ben, just as Charm did due to her hate-boner for Gwen. He wasn’t just minding his own business until Charm up and took control of him for no reason: he was about to murder Ben and got accidentally pulled over to Charm who mistook him for Ben, she told him to leave when she realized her mistake, and then Kevin insisted that her plan to control Ben was dumb because Ben was weak; she should want him because he’s stronger. His claim of Charm “conning” him into getting controlled is him lying to himself about what happened, acting as though Charm deliberately manipulated his jealousy to make him say what he did, rather than admit that he had been a stupid, jealous kid who badly fucked up.

It’s not even that they don’t treat her as being in the wrong, it’s that they want her to both be redeemable and also to do things that may or may not be irredeemable. It’s a theme of every sequel series and now the reboot as well.

Except that Charmcaster hasn’t done anything remotely irredeemable in the reboot series. And if you think that she did, then you’re being intellectually dishonest because, again, Kevin has done literally the exact same things and usually for the exact same reasons. He’s not against controlling, enslaving, manipulating or relishing in inflicting pain on people either. He may not be a psychopath, but he still is written as lacking in basic empathy, just like Charm.

It was also absolutely a theme for him as well in the sequel series, probably even moreso since they did a whole fucking arc about it w/ Ultimate Kevin, where he did horrific things that were irredeemable and yet he’s still redeemed and those actions are swept under the rug with the whole “it wasn’t his fault, it was the energy he absorbed that made him do it!” excuse, which is the same kind of cop-out as the Alpha Rune was for sequel series Charmcaster. If you can buy wholesale into that excuse but can’t for the Alpha Rune, you are operating under a double standard. Either both are cases of awful character writing that exist purely for the writers to avoid having to write actual redemption arcs, or neither of them are. Pick one.

SO they have her do these things and then either sweep them under the rug, downplay the shit out of them, or tell us that we should feel sorry for her that she felt the need to do that.

....I...I really can’t right now. I just can’t.

This literally describes Kevin too. Swap names and gender pronouns, and it’s the same.

And yet every time Kevin does something horrible, your reaction seems to be “oh, my son!”, sweeping it under the rug or downplaying it, and you feel sorry for him that he felt the need to do it; you still understand and sympathize with his troubled mental state regardless of what inexcusable acts of villainy it drives him to do. But when it’s Charmcaster? Fuck that bitch and cue violent fantasies of what Kevin should do to her for revenge just because he happened to be the victim of her actions (oh yeah, and about those: what the actual fuck!? Honestly, the hypocritical bitching about Charm being some kind of writers’ pet wouldn’t bug me half as much without this totally uncalled-for shit accompanying it.)

It sounds to me that this has nothing to do with morality: it has everything to do with a bias toward your fave and anger that he got hurt. It sounds to me that Kevin can hurt Ben, Gwen, Grandpa Max, Glitch, or anyone else and you’re fine with it - heck, he can hurt Charm and you’re fine with it given the aforementioned fantasies. But when Kevin is hurt, the one who did it MUST be held accountable at every turn and suffer the painful consequences!

He’s your fave, I get it, but the emotions involved with that should not rule out objectivity. Nor should it fuel torture porn fantasies toward another character, especially a female child one who already has being physically abused by a boy as part of her goddamn backstory. (Humiliating slapstick like the show itself uses is fine though, she definitely deserves it.)

The way you are going about it, you come off as a pitiful MRA-type always bitching about how them damn women get away with everything and men get screwed as a result, even when it’s not at all reflective of reality. If you really think the writers of the Ben 10 franchise have historically held some kind of bias toward Charm and didn’t toward Kevin, then just look at Kevin’s screentime throughout the franchise compared to Charm and then come back at me with that shit (same goes for Gwen for that matter; stack her up against Ben and Kevin in terms of significant arcs, actions and development, and you’ll find she falls woefully short.)

And the thing is, for the reboot at least, she’s young enough I’m willing to give her some leeway, but the tempering damages that by making it feel like the writers don’t see what she does as an issue.

It’s not that the writers don’t see what she does as an issue. It’s that you see it as way too big of an issue while also not seeing the same thing happening with Kevin as an issue at all. It’s a double standard, pure and simple: Kevin is your fave and so he can get away with anything in your eyes and you don’t consider it to be troubling writing if he gets let off with a slap on the wrist for it. But you can’t do the same for Charm because she’s not your fave and - more importantly - Kevin is negatively impacted by what she does. If he wasn’t, then I’m pretty damn sure that no evil deed she commits would actually bother you at all. You want the show to fixate on how evil what she did was not because you hold some standard against magical mental enslavement in general, but because you’re angry that she did it to Kevin. This is all about you taking offense on behalf of your fave, not about the writers messing up in any way.

And before anyone gets on my case for bashing Kevin, I’m not! I love reboot Kevin! None of what I described above about him bothers me in any way because I can look at him objectively and enjoy him as the troubled but undeniably nasty little shit that he is, just as I do with reboot Charm. They’re both villains who do villainous things, and the show’s lax attitude toward it is due to its light-hearted tone and the fact that they’re both children (ditto for the likes of Billy Billions and Simon Sez). But more to the point, they’re supposed to be hypocrites in regards to each other, because what they hate about each other is actually the worst of themselves reflected right back at them. They are the same kind of person and they project like crazy, this is a certified fact per Word of God. Their FANS, however, shouldn’t be following their example because they ought to be smarter and more mature than that.

It goes all the way back to this post, and what I said there still applies: Why are male characters allowed to be bitter, angry, hateful, vengeful, insolent, insulting, anti-social, violent and manipulative without reproach while female characters always get demonized for it? Why does such behavior in a male character get the “my precious son!” reaction, while the exact same behavior in a female character get the “that horrible bitch!” reaction? Why are bad things a female character does to a male character considered irredeemably awful, but what bad things that male character might do to her for revenge considered an appealing fantasy and totally justified? Why can a male character be allowed nuance despite their deplorable acts of villainy, and yet when it’s done with a female character it’s proof that “the writers don’t get that what she did was wrong because otherwise why try to make her appealing or sympathetic in any way?” Why this double standard?

I don’t know, but I do know that it’s wrong and I am not here for it.

Tl;dr: don’t hate on Charm for things your fave is equally guilty of or things that a witch-themed supervillain is gonna naturally do just because it’s your fave who gets hurt by it.

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divagonzo · 5 years

Text

Review of Captain Marvel:

Under the cut for spoilers and more, 'cept this:

100% Ace safe.

EDIT: Since one of my followers did ask, I will say this now: If you have epilepsy, this movie is not safe, not from the first 10 minutes. About 1/3 of the scenes can trigger an episode and I want y’alll to be safe.

TL;DR - worth watching.

First of all, the rating on Rotten Tomatoes by the self-centered bois who have a case of butthurt because Captain Marvel doesn't have a white male protagnist can go sit on soe cactus. They can protest all they want but they will miss out on a fun movie with an amazing theme, one that is important for anyone, guy, girl, NB, and more.

The movie was enjoyable, trope filled but also subverts some tropes in it. The plot had a couple of holes in it and somet things were a little cliche overall I enoyed it and will go watch it again in the theatre sooner than later.

The plot.... I'll be able to make a better review on the plot once I watch it a second time. There are some plot holes and some of the elements are a bit off chronologically (as someone who lived through the era at that age, too.) but they won't distract from viewing it ('cept us picky as fuck writers but I digress.)

I know I was in stitches in one scene where there is an Anachronistic search engine used for the film and my niece (who is 15) was in stitches by the time to wait factors happening. (What a flashback on how much time was wasted waiting on information or data recovery!)

The storytelling was enjoyable at the start, making it a bit of a mystery but anyone who hasn't watched anyting of Marvel movies can pick up on the story fast enough to understand. As the story unfolds and the pieces of the story start getting filled in, the story turns predictable but nothing that distracts from the overall enjoyment of the movie.

Djimon Hansou was good but I'd have enjoyed seeing him on screen more in a larger role (but that's just me.) and the CGI work on SLJ was good - you couldn't tell unless you'd have done a side-by-side of him now. ('Cause he looked like he did pre-Pulp Fiction but without the Jheri curl.) Clark Gregg had a small part for the movie but it’s an influential part. They CGI’d him some and it’s subtle but not painfully obvious. Jude Law is Jude Law and while he's not on my 5 list anymore he still is pretty to look at. The big surprise is Ben Mendelsohn. I didn't recognize him 'til I saw the name at the end and appreciated the banter and subtlety he brought to his role. But y’all keep your eyes open for Akira Akbar. Lt. Trouble is adorable as all get out - and brings a sass that only she can pull off.

Where I want to brag is the addition of Annette Benning.

She’s over 60 now and the fact that an older woman is featured, with her showing some age and also having her in a pretty important role and second important role is a good if not excellent showing of how older women are making a name and more in films now and not just the pretty faces of younger women. It's an excellent balance in that she's not there because she's someone's wife or Mom or anything so trite. The same goes for Brie Larsen. Shes not there strictly as a focus for some romantic subplot. She gets some of the typical manspaining and gets told to smile more which has a funny reaction from her along with everyone who has heard that from a man and doing what we'd all like to do in response to being told to smile more.

Thing is, she does smile. She laughs. She's cheeky and sassy and sharp as a tack and smart as a whip. Her backstory is told well along with how she earned her place and the glass ceiling she faced in the mid 90s. The explanation for how she became who she is is demonstrated and works well, even if it's been used countless times, especially in the Marvel Universe.

She has her moments of weakness, of questioning things, and wondering what to do. She's not cold, frigid, robotic or any of the other complaints that men make regarding women actresses. She's not a Mary Sue but she is a male power fantasy but with a woman in the role, it's subversive simply because it's a woman in the role. Had the MRA’s bothered to watch it and not blindly disabuse it because it wasn't a white man as the main character, they'd see the elements of the male power fantasy: smart, earned their place, willing to do anything to protect, stands up for what is right, incorruptible, do the right thing even if it's not easy, etc.

Had it been a white man in the role, the reviews would be off the chart, even if the plot had been weaker. Had it been a white man in the role, no one would complain that she has resting bitch face because men are never told to smile more or demonstrate overt emotional labor for anyone who is a man.

The intersectional feminism is wonderful stseeing two women interacting in a heart-felt way was so rewarding. There are some friendly competition moments and banter but it's far removed from any catty antagonism you'd expect. The rewarding part for me was how the Hero gets called out for what happened and why they were gone like they were. You get to see a competent, incredibly emotionally strong black woman in a role that only a few treads (like Dr. Mae Jemison.) The Hero trusts her friend completely and has no worries that she's capable. That demonstration of platonic love and trust warms my heart.

In short, it does pass the Bechtel test. It passes the Sexy Leg Lamp test. It passes the Mako Maori test. I can’t say for certain it passes the Sphynx test. The protagonist has an incomplete backstory but you get snippets and anecdotes explaining enough about her and her attitude towards life and more.

The CGI was excellent and pay attention to Goose and the 4 ginger kitties that play Goose.

And no, the cat doesn't die.

Back to the CGI thought. It's excellent and it's obvious in some places and spots but some of the CGI is very subtle which is nice, too. The movie has a sci-fi feel to it, where the ideas for future technology would be excellent leaps forward.

Colourful language? Only 1 or 2 that I remember, and one is a sexist reference.

The misogyny is present and it comes from many aspects, from institutional to familial to competitive. Part of it is expected in the 90s when institutional sexism was accepted in the early days of the opening of MOS billets in the military and the intentional glass ceiling limited opportunities for women then.

There is one incidence that could be considered questionable for the Ace test but it’s played up as humourous and cheeky rather than a tension charged moment and plays on some caricature stereotypes.

Violence is present in the movie in some abundance and there are some fatalities but mostly casualties and more where the outcome is left to viewer discretion. The two main antagonists don't perish and it fits in the storyline brilliantly but there are some that happen.

There are noticeable trope elements borrowed from some other movies, like Matrix and Men in Black (you'll know them when you see them) as well as Independence Day, Wonder Woman and even Star Wars. The blend is nice but not too overwhelming to be called derivative.

I’d say it’s worth buying a ticket in the theatre.lem

#Dragon's Thoughts #review #Captain Marvel #I'll give it a B #because I need to watch it one more time for tropes and plot reasons #to look for thematic elements #and just to watch the last 20 minutes #Queue Up for the Dragon #Epilepsy Warning

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gritsandbrits · 5 years

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Ben 10 OS OC: Jora Lockenky

*This only applies to the original series as I am doing a overhaul of Alien Force, Ultimate Alien, and Omniverse.

Name: Jora Marigold Lockenkey

Age: 9; late 30s (Ken 10 episode)

Species: Human

Physical Appearance

- Black curly hair in two pigtails

- Dark Brown eyes (visually represented by black irises)

- Deep brown skin and dark lips

- Pink t-shirt

- Cream colored shorts

- Beige sandals

- Assorted hairpins in designs like flowers, starfish, even food

- Has a boyish figure but is actually feminine

Personality

- Meek and soft-spoken

- Tends to get exasperated

- Very observant

- Compassionate but not to the extent of being a doormat

- Accepting of others

- Likes to tease but not in a mean-spirited way

- Surprisingly clever

- Self depreciating but not to the point of self-hate

- Bit of an oddball

Family

- Jeremy (father, alive)

- Mavis (mother, alive)

- Latasha (older sister, alive)

- Pattibelle (paternal cousin, alive)

Friends

- Ben and Gwen (sometimes)

Ben 10k timeline

- Kenny (future son, fanon)

- Miranda and Gloria (future twin daughters)

- Belle (future youngest daughter)

- Grandpa Max (future grandfather in law)

- Kendrix (alternate daughter)

Background

Jora is a young girl who is also on a road trip with her family the Lockenkys. On several occasions they cross paths with the Tennysons, with Jora tagging along Ben and Gwen whenever they have their adventures. The twist is that she knows Ben's secret identity but likes to pretend she doesn't. Over time she admits it and decided to help out more stopping bad guys by using her own strange powers for good. Eventually, she becomes a superhero in her home town named The Midnight Foilage.

Episodes (in order of season)

- Tourist Trap

- Framed

- Ken 10

- Ben 10 vs The Negative 10

Actually that's about it since I'm limiting the amount of chapters Jora appears in so she won't be a Spotlight Sue and it's episodes I've seen and remember. I might add more episodes later on but she won't appear in every single one.

Powers and Abilities

- Swamp Witch (basically earth, water, and plant manipulation)

- Rot Inducement

- Seasonal Affinity (autumn)

- Harvest Magic

- Control the rate of decay and at her strongest can even reverse the process

- Limitations are that she can't make inorganic matter decay, and her powers are limited based on the laws of nature and science. She also doesn't really use her powers for combat as a kid, preferring to trick the enemy rather than engage them directly. Not quite as skilled in raw magic as Gwen and other magic users.

Hobbies and Interests

- Fantasy novels

- Sketching

- Gardening

- Has a fascination with creepy things

- Costume design

- Red Delicious apples

- Vanilla cupcakes

- Black licorice

- Video games, mainly platformers and puzzle games

Pet Peeves and Least Favorite Things

- People making fun of her hobbies

- Getting confused for a boy

- Clashing colors

- Ugly costumes

- Irrationally strict authority (she doesn't mind authority but she hates people abusing their power)

- Being lied to

- People threatening her loved ones

- Getting involved in Ben and Gwen's arguments

- Her decaying powers acting up whenever she wants to eat fruits

- Messing up on her drawings

- Hypocrites

- Heights

- Breaking her nails

Misc

- If Jora was the star of her own show, her theme song would be Let's Just Live (RWBY) as the opening and Tobira wo Akete (Card Captor Sakura) as the ending theme. I don't watch the former but I do love both songs and feel that they could be good themes for her.

- Originally Jora was named Kaysha but I changed it to a name that fits the nature of her powers, as well as it's uniqueness and for the fact that I didn't want her nickname to sound similar to Kai.

- Jora and Ben are a couple because I do not like BenKai. Also, I think they might make a cute couple, much healthier than BenKai or any of Ben's relationships for that matter.

- Jora's name means "Autumn rain" in Hebrew

- It is unknown how Jora got her powers but she is not the only one in her family. Her cousin Pattibelle also has powers.

- Jora is technically an AU character since the Continuity is my fanmade one taking elements from UAF and Omniverse. So she would never exist in canon

- Jora took to wearing a beanie in her teen years before switching to a hippie headband by the time the 10k future rolls in

- Jora doesn't have an archnemesis*

- Jora believes that people can be redeemed. However, she doesn't believe in picking favorites and rather give the benefit of the doubt than giving certain people treatment, so she actively helps Elena and Sunny with their problems

- Jora eventually gets an animal familiar, a beetle named Beatrice

- Jora named herself the Midnight Foilage because she is mostly active at midnight and she foils the villains plans. It's also a pun on her power set.

- 10k!Jora looks like a stereotypical swamp witch but is actually very friendly if weird.

- Jora's favorite colors are black, pink, and orange

- Jora is tall for her age and towers over much of the cast as a young woman, before Ben got his growth spurt

- Jora's motif is the season fall, swamps, and fashion

- Jora designed the future characters' costumes

- Jora and her family are more like comic relief characters but unlike a lot of comic characters they actually have depth and development

- Jora's surname is a pun on the term "lock and key." This highlights her role as a Secret Keeper for the Tennysons as well as her deisre to keep her own weird powers a secret. It also refers to a glamoring spell Gwen gave her as a birthday gift where she uses a lock and key to shift into her Midnight Foilage form

- Jora is African American but I wanted to avoid the common tropes often associated with black women in the media (aka the Sassy Black Woman) which is why she has a more softer, gentler personality. Also her timid personality makes her stand out from the hammy boldness many Ben 10 characters tend to have.

- I left the origins of her powers unexplained because I wanted to be left to reader interpretation. I think a problem with Ben 10 was that some things SHOULD have been left unexplained for the sake of mystery or to allow the fans coming up with their own theories instead of trying to justify every paranormal occurrence as "aliens did it."

- Jora took sewing class just to make her own costumes. She also goes into thrift stores to find clothes that she can repurpose. All in all she has five variations of her costume

- For the sake of everyone's sanity, including my own, there will be no love triangle. Jora doesn't involve herself in that kind of mess nor does she see Ben as a trophy. If she thinks a love triangle is about to start she backs out immediately

- Jora is not afraid of many things actually. She does have a bit of a scaredy-cat reaction when she first encounters scary things but other than that she tries to keep her calm

* This might be subjected to change as I'm currently thinking on what (Original) villains she can fight

*** Decided to add some extra stuff about Jora to make her more fleshed out

**** Updated. Again.

#ben10oc #ben 10 oc #cartoon network oc #ben 10 fancharacter #ben 10 original series #benxoc #ben10xoc #magical girl oc #oc bio #ben10os #cn #fan-character #original character #my ocs #ben 10

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hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger · 6 years

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There was so much wrong with this I was compelled to debunk it line by line.

“The biggest successes in the business, character-wise, tend to have more than one axis that they revolve around; take away one, and everything goes wildly off course. ”

This isn’t universally true. Spider-Man for example is defined by power and responsibility. Responsibility can be somewhat broad though and relate to work, family,self-respect, community as well as being a hero so if that’s what you meant then okay. Similarly power can mean more than just super powers. After all Spider-Man’s original sin with the burglar was something he didn’t need super powers to have prevented.

“Yes, Batman’s very much about Justice, that’s what he teaches us about…but as a character, he’s defined by the idea of Family from the start, with the deaths of his parents to the various Robins, Alfred and Gordon, and even up to his old, familiar relationship with Gotham itself.”

This is somewhat debatable given that Batman’s family ties were not present in his first appearance and Alfred was not truly a father figure to him until post-crisis, nearly 5 years after his creation; arguably the same is true of Gordon. But because of his origin and Robin’s and his relationship with Robin okay it does make a lot of sense to say he’s about justice but justice in specific relation to family ties.

“Superman wants to show us how to hope and work for a better world, but the kink that gives his relationship with humanity weight and definition is his alienation from those he loves so much. Even if it’s subtle in its presence, stories from All-Star to Birthright have taken that principle to heart in their portrayals of Clark Kent: take that away, and you end up with something like the largely unconflicted, uber-patriotic Man-God of John Byrne’s Man Of Steel (which I know to be many people’s benchmark for the character, but that’s a discussion for another time). ”

This however was your first big misinterpretation.

That particular interpretation of Superman was absolutely absent from his character until like the Silver Age when, to cash in on the science fiction craze of the time, they leaned harder on his alien origins.

Post-crisis they went back to him not feeling all that alienated if at all, and outright rejecting said alien heritage, codifying that he is a human first and foremost.

Some say that these are two equally valid interpretations but the truth is they really aren’t. The entire premise of Superman as originally envisioned by his creators was an immigration allegory combined with a power fantasy. But it wasn’t just any given immigration allegory, it wasn’t as broad as to be anything. It was specifically the allegory of the idealized ultimate American immigrant, the American dream played out in a superhero/science fiction outlet. He wasn’t merely an immigrant, but very much an integrated immigrant who adopted the ideals of his new home and brought with him helpful traits from his place of origin with which to enrichen and help out his new home.

The idea that he felt alienated and not a part of humanity and that was a great tension between himself and those he loved like his parents or Lois...that was honestly an invention after the fact and a huge betrayal of the fundamental defining point of the character. Practically the opposite.

It is in truth a MISinterpretation.

Does that mean Birthright and All-Star Superman and Byrne’s Man of Steel are mutually exclusive?

I don’t know.

But it isn’t merely a case of Byrne being the benchmark for many people. Fact is...he got it objectively correct because he was doing what Siegel and Shuster were doing. If Birthright/All-Star are mutually exclusive then I guess yeah, sorry Waid and Morrisson did in fact get it wrong.

Which shouldn’t be surprising. Waid and Morrisson wanted to effectively reboot Superman BACk to his pre-crisis self circa the 2000s and Morrisson and Waid used said ideas for those stories, with Morisson kinda of rebooting Superman in the Nu52. Cut to 2016 and nu52 Superman was unrebooted back to his post-crisis self (more or less) after the Nu52 (inspired very much by pre-crisis Superman and leaning even harder on the ‘I’m so alienated, let me date this Amazonian demi-godess from an isolated mythic nation’ than pre-crisis itself ever did) utterly failed.

“Many, if you asked them what Parker’s second irreducible element is, would say that the big idea in play is the experience of being a teenager.”

No it isn’t.

“And it’s hardly unfounded.”

Yes it is.

“Voices throughout the online comics community, from Chris Sims[1][2] to Sequart’s own Colin Smith[3] (R.I.P., TooBusyThinkingAboutMyComics) to David Brothers[4], among many others, put forward that idea to greater or lesser degrees.”

And those voices are grossly mistaken.

“And they’re not wrong, not really.”

Again, yes they are.

Let’s contextualize things properly.

Circa the early 1960s the true concept of ‘the teen’ was at best incredibly new and at worst didn’t truly exist. Indeed as originally envisioned by Lee and Ditko Peter was a SENIOR not a 15 year old. He was going on trips out of town on his own within the first 10 issues. Aunt May was talking about him getting married within the first 20 and he considered proposing to Betty before he even hit college.

In those high school years Peter actually DIDN’T spend most of his civilian time in a high school setting. It happened but he was mostly centred upont he Bugle, a place of work.

He was working to support himself, Aunt May and generally financially support the household as the man of the house in lieu of Uncle Ben.

THAT...is the exact opposite of being defined by youth. Even in the early 1960s a teenager wouldn’t have been defined so heavily by their employment, let alone an employment as the breadwinner for the family, the one upon who’s shoulders everything rested.

That is very much an ADULT responsibility. Which makes sense. Realistically lsing your father and having to adopt that responsibility would cause you to grow up faster in many respects. Couple this with the fact that neither Lee or Ditko were even of the same generation as 1960s teens and from a time period where the teenager truly didn’t exist and you as a youngster had to step up earlier and basically go from child to young adult with little in between and it makes a lot of sense, whereas ‘he’s about youth and being a teenager’ absolutely doesn’t.

That’s nothing more than a modern idea we project backwards onto those older stories.

The experience of being a teen had little to do with defining Spider-Man’s character, it just happened to be something relatively different for the time period and indeed Stan Lee stated he called him Spider-MAN in the first place because he intended from the outset for Peter to age into adulthood eventually, and keep going at which point calling himself Spider-BOY made little sense. This is corroborated by the fact that Lee in the stories and in other interviews has repeatedly stated he always intended Peter to eventually marry (a decided adult experience) Gwen Stacy. He equally stated he was pleased in the comics and newspaper strips to see Peter’s character development from teen to married guy and looked forward to him eventually having children.

If part of the core idea of Spider-Man was his youthfulness then these ideas should’ve been anethma to his co-creator. A character defined by youth and the experiences of being a teen can never age out of that period of his life or be intended to age out of that period without destroying the fundamental core of the character, or at least a huge part of the fundamental core.

But that didn’t happen. Spider-Man left high school within the first 3-4 years of his existence and it is in fact the ROMITA era in college which until the early 2000s (when USM began being pushed as the definitve Spider-Man ever) was seen as the true blue golden age of Spider-Man.

There is after all a reason why versions of Spider-man set in high school USE so much stuff from the college era. Few TV shows, movies, video games or alternate universe comics set in Spider-Man’s high school years DON’T feature college era characters like Harry Osborn, Gwen Stacy, Mary Jane, Joe Robertson, Norman Osborn, Black Cat or plot lines relevant from the college years, such as Harry’s drug addiction, Norman being unmasked as the Goblin, the debut of the Rhino, the Shcoker, the Kingpin, Silvermane/other gangsters. Few in fact ever depict Spidey in a relationship with Betty Brant or in a love triangle with her and Liz Allan. Liz herself hasn’t gotten as much play as the above listed college era characters and whenever she does it’s usually in a second fiddle position to said college era characters.

Indeed in the majority of adaptations prior to 2008 (a mere 10 years ago) placed Spider-Man in college instead of high school or else transitioned him into college very quickly. Sam Raimi’s first movie, which is the single most reverential one to the Ditko run, has Peter transition into college by the halfway point of the film.* In the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon (which had a huge influence upon the Raimi trilogy and Venom over all) Spider-Man was only n high school for one flashback sequence and in college the rest of the time and that show had very direct involvement and consultation from Stan Lee. In the upcoming and highly anticipated Insomniac video game, Spider-Man’s story begins POST-College. In the 1970s Spider-Man newspaper strips by Stan Lee himself, the story begins in college and Spider-Man’s origin is even retold to take place in college. Again that’s by the CREATOR of Spider-Man.

It’s very obvious that the teenage/high school experience is NOT key or relevant to the character at all.

Indeed the Ditko issues depicting him in high school don’t place much focus upon his schoolwork, zits, or high school dating and the like. The most it is relevant is being bullied by Flash but that wasn’t in every issue or got half as much panel time as Jameson and the Bugle stuff. Which again, was affiliated with Peter’s work, work being an ADULT aspect of life, not a particularly youthful/high school experience.

You are correct in your assessment that power/responsibility isn’t the sole axis for Spider-Man’s character.

But wholly incorrect that ‘youth’ is the other axis. In truth it’s...being a normal guy.

THAT was the actual point Lee and Ditko had in mind. The Hero who could be YOU! Spider-Man was the everyman hero, the hero with relatable problems. His other axis was that he was ORDINARY relatively speaking, not that he was young.

This is corroborated by long term (as in began in the 1970s) fan and Spider-Man analyst J.R. Fettinger:

Peter's appeal was not that he was a loser (although his hard times was a big factor in his popularity), but that he was ordinary.

I remembered something that one of Hero Realm's co-creators, the "late" George Berryman, told me in the early days of the Realm was that Marvel President Bill Jemas "hates MJ, hates the baby, and wants Spidey to be a kid again."

Hmmm.

For some reason I became hung up on the phrase of wanting Spidey to be a kid again. And finally, I figured out why it was bothering me - and that's because it presumes that Spidey was a kid in the first place. And he wasn't. Not really. At least not the kind of kid the Marvel execs who have been desperate to de-age him think he was.

You doubt?

First of all, we do have to acknowledge that while many of us related to Peter Parker in one way or another (which is the root of his popularity), how many of us are really like him? The second part of that question is how many kids did you know in high school who were like Peter Parker? Let's establish that Peter was 15 at the time of the spider bite (supported by the recent Civil War where Peter tells the media he has been Spider-Man since he was 15 years old). He probably turns 16 before too long and is 17 by Amazing Spider-Man #16 when Matt Murdock, whose radar senses are pretty accurate, estimates his age. Let's look at what kind of "kid" Peter Parker really was in the Lee-Ditko, Lee-Romita, Sr. days:

After the death of Uncle Ben, Peter becomes the head of the household because Aunt May becomes too frail and senile to do much of anything (the way she was written at that time). Although Aunt May cooks him wheatcakes and worries about him being sick, Peter is the one with the primary source of income, and he is also her primary caregiver, a very atypical situation for a 15 or 16 year old.

Speaking of Peter's employment, I probably really don't need to talk about the inherent absurdity of a high schooler becoming one of the premier photographers of that great metropolitan newspaper, the Daily Bugle.

Peter's (and Spidey's) quick, razor-sharp witticisms tend to be the product of a more mature, experienced, well-read individual given the topical references, like maybe a middle-aged writer. Just a guess. There are too many to mention, but one of my favorite of Peter's overwritten zingers occurs in Amazing Spider-Man #26, when having had enough of Flash Thompson's big mouth, he states "I'm in no mood for your musclebound mirth today! And the same goes for your gang of grinning hyenas." Hey, I love this stuff, but if Peter were doing this on TV in one of those typical teen-age oriented shows where the kids have all the brains and wisdom and the parents are largely ineffectual buffoons, his character would be pilloried by the critics for being too highbrow, clever, or simply obnoxious for a teenager. I did know someone in college who was the quickest with a great comeback as anyone I have ever met before or since, but he was an English and literature major, not a science major (he's now an English professor and writer, so there seems to be a logical connect).

Speaking of the science major thing, I am probably in the minority opinion on this, but the extent of Peter's genius leaves me a bit cold. I do like the idea that he is this brainy guy whom everyone thinks is a nerd, but is really this terrific superhero. But seriously, an expert in complex polymers by age 15 (as Roger Stern once illustrated - in order to demonstrate that Peter was already on the road to the web fluid thing)? And then there's that anti-magnetic inverter he uses in Amazing #2 to take out the Vulture. And don't forget how he whipped up an antidote to temporarily cure the Lizard all in the space of a couple of panels in Amazing #6. I have a feeling that any kid this smart would not be in the New York City public school system, or any public school system.

So, ultimately, Peter Parker was never a real kid, not in the sense that real kids are, but he was really an adult in a teenager's body. He had the weight of the world on his shoulders like an adult, and he had true adult responsibilities. In a way, Peter Parker was very much like Charlie Brown of Peanuts fame. Charles Schulz's famous character was never really just a plain kid - he was a neurotic adult in the body of an eight year old (or however old he was). And talk about topical references, Peanuts was loaded with them. However, Schultz's clever writing, wit, and keen understanding of human foibles made this accessible to both young and old. It wouldn't have mattered whether Charlie was five or 15, Schultz's marvelous writing would have carried the message in an entertaining style.

Now, I am not implying that no teenager has ever become head of the household, or held a permanent job before graduation, or had a lightning fast wit, or been a super-genius and still at a public school (but was there ever anyone who was all of those). Nor am I trying to take anyway any of the fun of the early days of Spider-Man, nor ruin any of the fantasy conceits, because that's what it is - fantasy. We recognize that and enjoy it anyway. The point I am making is that for anyone, whether they be a Marvel suit, editor, writer, or someone from Wizard to get hung up on Peter's youth being the core of his popularity, and something that must be repeatedly revisited in order to make the titles popular again, is either blind, in denial, or simply not doing their homework on the character.

And if you want to handwave his views because he is a fan and observer (like Sims et al listed above) then consider this...Tom DeFalco agrees with him. Tom DeFalco has stated more than once that Spider-Man is about responsibility and NOT youth.

To get why that is a big deal, Tom DeFalco is also a long time fan. As in began reading in 1962 with Amazing Fantasy #15. He edited Spider-Man for years. He wrote THREE runs on Spider-Man and a 10+ year long run on a pseudo sequel called Spider-Girl. He was EIC of Marvel for a time and wrote a book literally called ‘Spider-Man: the Ultimate Guide’.

He is infinitely more qualified to discuss Spider-Man than any of the other people listed in this article or in my response sans Stan Lee himself.**

And he corroborates my and Fettinger’s point, that Spider-Man is definitely NOT about youth/the teenage high school experience.

“Moreover The high school years, and everything that comes with them, are indisputably at the center of the earliest adventures.”

Yes and no.

Spider-Man was in high school for the first 28 issues so yes.

But high school EXPERIENCES were 100% indisputably NOT the centre of the stories for that time period and again, Spider-Man became MORE popular and his true golden age was defined AFTER high school.

“ It’s a well people have been going back to for years from the late, lamented Spectacular Spider-Man cartoon; to David Lapham and Tony Harris’s With Great Power; Marvel Adventures Spider-Man; Sean McKeever, Takeshi Miyazawa and David Hahn’s Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane; twice over with Ultimate Spider-Man by Brian Bendis and assorted artists (in my opinion, the most effective comic at recapturing the spirit of the Lee / Ditko years during the first run with Bagley…though again, that’s a topic for another time); and soon enough once more with Dan Slott and Ramon Perez’s “Learning To Crawl”. ”

And again, notice how all of those within Spider-Man’s 55+ year history only relate to stuff from the last 18. Spider-Man hit 56 years old recently. 18/56 is merely less than 33 percent of all of Spider-Man’s history wherein the high school era is being revisted over and over and over again.

It has even less weight when you consider the trend merely started because

a) USM was popular and USM’s success owed much more to Bagley’s art and the accessibility afforded it by being a singular self-contained narrative with a clear starting point. Read issue one or volume 1 of the trades and then keep going, no need to crossover into Ultimate Spectacular or Ultimate Web of Spider-Man

b) USM got started up by the disastrous EIC Bill Jemas who ignorantly believed Spider-Man to be defined by youth

c) The Spec cartoon was set in high school first and foremost to simply differentiate itself from almost every adaptation prior to it which DIDN’T centre things in high school and a desire to try something that had never been done before. The long term plan was for the show to run 5 seasons of high school before transitioning into DVD movies set in college

d) Spider-Man Loves Mary Jane was aimed as a tweenage all ages audience thus centring things on high school experiences made more sense as that was more directly relating to the age of the audience

e) Around the same time period Superman’s origins were revisted multiple times because people just LIKE going back to the early years inherently.

This doesn’t spell out ‘high school is more inherently Spider-Man and better for the character’. It spells out ‘this is something different we’re milking for all it’s worth whilst getting stuck in a rut creatively.

Hell THAT IS WHY Insomniac are NOT doing high school OR college for their game.

Additionally USM DID NOT recapture the spirit of the original Ditko stories. People believe they did because they liked it or else because that narrative has been repeated. But a simple analysis of the Ditko High school years to USM reveals countless differences between he two, differences which very seriously alter the spirit of the original stories. Ditko Peter had no real friends and his first romance wasn’t serious at all. He was constantly anxious over May’s health and being a provider for the family. Jameson was a constant source of harassment in and out of costume and a major force impacting his life, with his whole job as a photographer meant to get one over on his harasser. Ditko Peter was over all lonely and on edge a lot emotionally.

NONE of that applies to Ultimate Spider-Man under Bendis. Peter is more chilled out and whilst not a member of the in-crowd, clearly isn’t lonely having a friendship group. His first romance with MJ isn’t not serious, it’s a very deep committed love that involves her acting as a confidant which was absolutely NOT the case in the original Ditko stories. Jameson is barely there and his smear campaign against Spider-Man is not the most important aspect of their relationship or has a huge impact upon Peter’s life. Gwen Stacy lives with him. Nick Fury has an important presence upon his life and Aunt May is the bread winner, provider and is never a source of worry due to being pretty healthy for her age.

It is truly NOT a spiritual successor to the Ditko run at all.

“Those earliest of stories are at the center of everything good about the character…”

Again, no they aren’t. Mary Jane, Gwen Stacy, Harry Osborn, the Green Goblin and everything awesome about the College era (which I will remind you was MORE popular than the High school era) proves that assessment incorrect.

“The Parker Luck, in those earliest days? Largely amounted to costumes shrinking in the wash, or misunderstandings with his girlfriend(s… You unmitigated cad), or his aunt just not getting it, man”

Aunt May not getting it was a college era thing, not prevalent in the high school era.

“but from any objective standpoint the boy was leading a charmed life. So why the misery? Because he’s a teenager. ”

No. The misery was because he didn’t lead a charmed life. This is patently obvious from the stories.

He had no friends.

His girlfriend Betty Brant was often unreasonable and became insanely jealous whenever Liz like...talked to him!

His mother figure was often in poor health creating huge financial burdens.

Jameson verbally abused him and shortchanged him at work.

The public hated and feared him and believed him to be a criminal.

He risked his life routinely.

He was ostracized and bullied at school.

Oh yeah...and his father figure was dead and he blamed himself for it.

To dismiss all that and chalk up his misery via ‘he’s a teenager of course he’d be moody’ is a gross misinterpretation of the character and a highly unsympathetic attempt to analyze him.

I’m not saying his woes weren’t over exaggerated due to his age, but serious and justifiable cause for sadness Peter absolutely had.

“Because it’s always the end of the world at 16, when in truth the world isn’t set against him (something we’ll be getting back to), but his problems simply result from misunderstandings, from the basic realities of his situation, and from screw-ups entirely on his own part. ”

Again this is objectively wrong. SOMETIMES yes there are screw ups of his own makings, but Flash’s bullying, Jameson’s smear campaign and May’s illnesses were the biggest sources of woe in his life and none of those were his fault. Those were instances where thw world really was unjustifiably against him. Jameson had no right cause to smear Spider-Man. Flash wasn’t in the right to bully Peter. And May and Peter didn’t deserve to go through May’s frail health.

“His was a situation entirely relatable, a lonely boy hiding behind a false face and acting as the man he wants to be, getting the strength over time to become that man himself. ”

No he WAS a man who’d had to grow up in a lot of ways fast just to cope with the burdens of life. See what Fettinger wrote above as well as Amazing Fantasy #16 and ASM #400’s backup story by DeMatteis, both of which have Peter in the past and in hindsight referring to himself as a growing up with the death of uncle Ben.

You are channelling Sims misinterpretation here.

Both his and your argument hinges upon Spider-Man being a facade Peter adopts when he becomes Spider-Man like he’s Superman or Batman in reverse.

But that isn’t the case. Spider-Man isn’t an ACT Peter performs, it’s just him, freed from certain constraints.

In or out of the costume he is who he is.

“A kid who refuses to tell the people closest to him about himself, in theory for their own good, but deep down because he’s terrified of being rejected the same way so many do when you’re growing up and defining your identity. ”

Or because you know nobody in the high school years were shown as trustworthy besides Aunt May who a doctor more or less told him ‘If you surprise her enough she WILL die!’

The more people who know something the bigger the chance that it’ll slip out. If May found out then as far as Peter knew that WOULD kill her, end of story.

So who was he SUPPOSED to trust with his big secret besides her?

Betty Brant? The woman who worked directly with the millionaire news mogul who HATED him? The woman who’d proven herself to have some criminal ties and who was generally unreasonable far too often?

Liz Allan who partook in the mocking and bullying of Peter until she abruptly started to like him?

Flash, his bully and tormentor?

Jameson his OTHER tormentor?

There was NOBODY for Peter to safely tell his secret to without risking it coming out to Aunt May.

And his fear of rejection wasn’t stemming from teenage angst (because AGAIN, the concept of the teenager as we know it today didn’t truly exist in the 1960s) but from Jameson painting him as a criminal.

In fact Peter DID come clean in ASM #87 during the college era to people who HAD been close to him and whom he sincerely loved and cared for and had infinitely more reason to trust than anyone in the high school era.

Know what happened?

They DID reject him!

“As the challenges increase, so too does he rise to meet them, maturing into the sort of person capable of realizing the responsibilities he’s taken on, and the storytelling engine I mentioned earlier purrs, as do sales figures.”

Or you know he meets those responsibilities from the outset and as word of mouth and confidence in the series grows so too do sales until Romita took over, aged Peter into adulthood and told fun less angsty (so...less teenaged) stories which resulted in stratospheric sales.

“Lifting some big-ass machinery aside, that’s the comic where his puppy-dog relationship with Betty Brant comes to a conclusive end, not out of manufactured concern that revealing his secret will somehow lead to her demise (that worry wouldn’t come to the forefront of his concerns until…oh, let’s say about 88 issues later), but from the simple and adult acknowledgement that it would never work between the two no matter how they feel. ”

No. Peter and Betty ENDED their relationship in ASM #30 not #33. ASM #33 just underscored the ending. It ended in ASM #30 because Peter realized Betty didn’t and couldn’t want to marry a man who risked his life as he did.

He’d already ended it, ASM #33 just confirmed his decision as correct.

“That’swhere he finally meets JJJ on his own terms and gets one up on the skinflint. That’s where he finally, at least in theory, manages to overcome the shame of his first and greatest failure by saving Aunt May. It had been getting built up to for a while, with Peter graduating high school and getting into college, but things were still on hold with his preoccupation with his aunt’s medical problems distracting from his rapidly-growing new cast. ”

I don’t necessarily disagree that Peter completely corsses the threshold into adulthood with the Master Planner trilogy but this actually undermines your earlier argument that the character was built around and doesn’t work without being defined by youth.

I’ve already laid out how that was never the case but for the sake of argument let’s say you are right and he had been about youth up until ASM #33 when he grows up.

How comes the character dealt with mostly similar social and personal issues (exempting lonliness and bullying) after that point in addition to new more adult ones and sales and acclaim went UP?

“In the last Ditko issues, you see Peter going out of his way to connect with his new classmates, an idea that would have been anathema to him not many issues earlier, and turning down the advances of a potential Betty Brant in the making in ASM #36 because he’s managed to figure out where that will go”

Again no, your assessment is that Peter turned down that girl because he figured out it’d be a retread of Betty brant. In truth that was a mistaken presumption he made naively. He believed she valued his brains and therefore it’d turn out like Betty. He was wrong.

“Suddenly the stakes are higher. Aunt May’s condition worsens. The fabled money problems start to come to the forefront, though at the moment they’re mostly limited to not being able to pay for dates or his snazzy new motorcycle, rather than the life-or-death issue it would become later. ”

Again this is a poorly researched assessment. Aunt May had been having health problems throughout the Ditko run, with 3 near fatal health problems alone. Peter had money problems related to those and other things literally from ASM #1.

Your assessment is that these things didn’t exist or didn’t exist as prominently until the Romita era but this is probably incorrect. They were there in big ways and merely continued into the Romita era.

You could argue they were more prominent because there were more instances of those things, but the Romita (more accurately the post-Ditko Stan Lee run) lasted LONGER than the Ditko era over all so of course that was the case.

“And even as the situation worsens, he doesn’t crumble under the pressure, because he’s changed enough as a hero and a man to rise to those challenges, even if he’ll never rise above them.”

But he didn’t crumble before such challenges before during the High school years and in certain cases DID rise above such challenges.

“But with exceptions like Mary Jane’s arrival, “Spider-Man No More” and the rightly famous Harry Osborn drug issues, Stan’s remaining time on Spider-Man would never reach the heights of his collaboration with Ditko. ”

Yeah, remember how sales went down after Ditko left...except they didn’t.

Remember how all those Ditko stories like Kraven crashing Flash’s leaving party, or the Petrified Tablet Saga, or the Brand of the Brainwasher, or Doc Ock boarding with Aunt May, or Captain Stacy’s death or the first Rhino stories, the first Colonel Jupiter story, the debut of Shocker, Kingpin or Norman Osborn remember he was the Goblin the first time, were so much better than everything after Ditko left and got acclaimed or revisted in adaptations, retellings and flashbacks over the course of decades?

Oh wait a minute all of those were post-Ditko stories.

“It started to congeal into familiarity, the never-ending soap opera that others would come to imitate—after all, it’s far easier to replicate the success of something when it can be reduced down to a formula, rather than a constant series of innovations—and would eventually be accepted itself as an essential element of the character.”

Yes but this applies to the majority of comic book runs wherein a writer lingers for too long. Lee’s F4 work dipped in quality over time.

Post-Gwen’s death the quality markedly improved.

“And as a result of this, and the desire to reduce Spider-Man to an easily-repeatable equation being applied to the earlier stories causing the strip-mining of only the surface elements, the core character philosophies of the Spider-Man franchise would be twisted into Loss and the Soap Opera dynamics mentioned earlier.”

No they weren’t. They were twisted into ‘he’s a loser’ and even that wasn’t a perennial thing. It applies to the Woflman run, the Mackie/Byrne reboot, Brand New Day and Slott’s run.

“One good example of the problem is the relatively recent “Mysterioso” arc of Amazing Spider-Man #618-620, by Dan Slott and Marcos Martin. Good writing, ”

There is no such thing as a Dan Slott Spider-Man story with good writing because Dan Slott is an objectively aweful Spider-Man writer.

In this story alone you have him nonsensically ignore Mysterio’s death in Daredevil saying he faked it. How the Hell does Mysterio fake out DD’s hyper senses?

“What, you don’t remember Carlie Cooper’s father, introduced in that arc as having been a cop who died years earlier but actually being alive and really being in the crooked pocket of Mysterio but is taken down by his daughter getting her to make an emotional breakthrough, none of this having anything to do with Spider-Man himself and actually completely distracting from the engaging main plot and it worked about as well as this overlong sentence?”

See you just spelled out a huge reason why this arc cannot logically be said to have good writing.

“It’s gone from Peter having trouble explaining himself to the person who can’t be trusted with even the simplest tasks—and in fact, he has become truly forgetful and neglectful a great deal of the time. He’s gone from a whiz-kid who has to take pictures of himself to pay the bills because of his aunt to the 250 I.Q. mega-genius who can barely scrape by, an empathetic naturally good-humored friend who can’t hold a relationship, a trouble-magnet whose luck once explainable by his own mistakes and misfortunes can at this point only be explained by witchcraft. He’s become the loser he was always afraid he was. What are we supposed to learn from this irresponsible schmuck, exactly?”

This is the single most poignant and insightful comment in the article. But this only applies to Spider-Man from 2008 onwards. This WASN’T true of the JMS era Spider-Man.

“So if he isn’t about loss (at least not, I’d argue, in a manner that can really work long-term at such a high level as what’s been going on for so long), but he’s not really about being a teenager either, what is he ‘about’?

He’s about growing.”

Jesus Christ no, he isn’t.

He’s not about growing, about being a teen or about loss.

He’s about power+responsibility within the context of being a relatively normal person.

THAT’S WHY HE’S CALLED SO RELATABLE!

THAT’S why he’s referred to by Stan Lee himself as the hero who could be you.

“That scene above in ASM #8 (by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, which is as official as if Marvel the corporate entity gained sentience and started writing comics on its own), where Spidey’s hogtying the Human Torch? Johnny’s not secretly the Chameleon in disguise, nor is he being mind-controlled by Dr. Doom or the Ringmaster. Peter’s doing it because he’s angry at the guy getting all the breaks he doesn’t, and feels like publicly ruining his day. This was not, by the way, the slightest bit uncharacteristic of Peter Parker as we’d seen him up to this point.”

Actually it absolutely was, especially when you consider the story actually happens after ASM #21 when Peter had already matured a bit.

You need to understand that this story whilst being published IN ASM...in truth is actually more of a Strange Tales Human Torch story.

There is no personal life stakes for Spider-Man and Spidey is himself the only character from his own comic to appear, everyone else from the Torch to the FF, Dorrie Evans and the other Torch supporting cast are from Strange Tales. And as if to confirm things, this was the ONLY Spider-Man story during the Ditko era published in ASM and it’s annuals NOT worked on by Ditko himself.

We all know of the Marvel method which rendered the artists of each story vital contributors to the stories at hand. Well if Stan Lee was working with Ditko vs. Kirby on a particular project the end results, including the characterization, were not necessarily going to be the same. In fact they often were not.

Kirby didn’t create or understand Spider-Man. Ditko did and Ditko DIDN’T characetrize Spidey like this during most of his run, including up until this point.

Additionally to differentiate themselves from DC, the Marvel pantheon routinely had the heroes bicker and dislike one another whenever they met up. It was rare for that to NOT be the case in the Silver Age.

And routinely in the Silver Age the guest stars were painted more unfavourably than the resident main character(s). This was the case for most of the F4’s appearences in ASM.

ASM #8 is a reversal because like I said, it’s not actually a Spider-Man story. It’s a left over Strange Tales story. It’s a Torch story which means Torch is painted positively whilst Spider-Man is painted as a jerk, synergy and consistent characterization be damned.

“In the earliest material, Peter Parker was a dick, and that went on long after the mugger got turned in. ”

No he absolutely wasn’t. Moments where he was a dick perhaps but this is a toxically cynical and unsympathetic misinterpretation of the character in line with the bullshit of ‘he lived a charmed life’.

I’ve seen it before and it never holds up.

Worse is the notion of he was a dick even after the mugger was turned in. Like...his Dad just died dude FFS.

“ His immediate response after Ben was killed? Keep on going with the show business until Jameson starts going after him.”

Yeah in order to earn money to support Aunt May and allow them to keep their home because they were facing eminent eviction.

He wasn’t resolving to continue with show business INSTEAD of fighting crime, that was evident from ASM #1 and #2 as well as from the untold stories from Amazing Fantasy #16-18.

“His first couple saves are at least in part about His Good Name, whether saving Jameson’s son with the idea that it would get him on the old man’s good side, or going after the Chameleon for impersonating him, and even once he starts going after criminals on a consistent basis it’s initially only for photography money. ”

Again you’ve not properly paid attention and your interpretation is rooted in cynicism.

Yeah IN PART he was going after those things for the sake of his reputation. But that wasn’t the root of it at all.

He saves John Jameson because he saw someone in need he doesn’t even mention the idea that saving him will help his reputation until after the fact and it’s an afterthought. He simply saw someone who needed help and so he acted as he hadn’t done before with the burglar.

In the Chameleon story he spots the Chameleon getting away with government secrets (a HUGE deal in the Cold War 1960s) and sees his helicopter getting away so he leaps into action.

Is he doing it to exonerate himself or would he have done that had he realized a spy was making away with stolen secrets right in front of him anyway?

Given how in the same comic book he leapt into action to save a life immediately it’s very obviously the latter that doubles up as the former. And even it was to exonerate himself that’s hardly a selfish dick move.

A criminal committed a crime and framed him for it. It isn’t selfish or a dick move to bring him to justice.

Equally even if he was fighting crimes to rehabilitate his reputation, again his damaged rep was how he lost a reliable source of income that he needed to survive and support his aunt and household. It isn’t selfish and dickish to attempt to help your reputation under those circumstances.

As for going after criminals for photography money this is again a misrepresentation of Spider-Man’s motives.

In ASM #2 it’s implied the Vulture’s presence isn’t huge. Some people don’t even believe he exists. It’s ambiguous as to when exactly Peter himself learned of his existence and even if he did already know he had the more pressing problem of earning money to pay the rent for himself and aunt May, he might not have figured out or gotten a routine going for actively crime fighting yet.

He seeks out the Vulture for profit initially yes but again earning money isn’t selfish or a dick move. He needed to do it to survive and support Aunt May. He GETS the pictures and therefore his source of income after being beaten by the Vulture but states that he’s already resolved to be a costumed adventurer before upgrading his belt. In other words he had already decided to fight crime and just saw a way to (pardon the pub) kill 2 birds with one stone. To this end he initiates a rematch with Vulture even though he didn’t HAVE to if he was in it just for the money. He already had the pictures he didn’t NEED to end the public menace of the Vulture and he wasn’t naive enough to believe that doing so would change Jonah’s tune.

But he did it anyway because he WAS trying to be a hero.

“He takes stupid chances. He’s desperate for cash. He insults and attacks undeserving people. ”

Apart from being desperate for cash (which would mean his efforts for helping his rep or earning money WOULDN’T make him a dick) he literally never does this at any point in the Ditko run. He maybe insults ONE person who doesn’t deserve it once.

“He fakes pictures of Sandman and Electro with the flimsiest of moral justifications.”

No. He faked pictures of the Sandman out of youthful naivete and then did it with Electro to earn money to SAVE AUNT MAY’S LIFE!

Journalistic ethics can go suck the big one if they need to be sacrificed for the sake of saving a human life for God’s sake.

He felt bad about the latter showing how he wasn’t a dick and had grown and consequently accepted the reprimands that eventually came from faking such pictures.

“He’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Queens and can barely begin to control his temper.”

Again bullshit. He controls his temper plenty hence he only once lashes out at Flash twice and obviously not fully since he never used his strength to seriously injure him.

As for having a chip on your shoulder no shit. His Dad’s dead, his mother is sickly and he’s trying to hold it all together whilst some asshole on the news lies about him and he’s bullied at school.

OF COURSE he has a chip on his shoulder.

“He’ll lash out at people on suspicion or anger alone,”

Again he literally never did this.

“ and in some early stories he just plain gave up or ran away until he learned his lesson or circumstances changed. ”

Yeah he did but that doesn’t make him a dick. It makes him human. He quit TWICE by the way. Once after Doc Ock owned his ass and broke his confidence (which can happen to anyone of any age) and once when everything went wrong and Aunt May was dying. She got better and gave him a pep talk.

This again is something that can happen to anyone and isn’t an example of being qa dick.

Does it maybe show him as being a kid.

Sure.

But that wasn’t the POINT. Stan Lee wanted him to be realistic and he happened to be a youngster. So he relatively speaking wrote him believably within that context, but as I said youth was never THE point.

Nor was growth because EVERY Silver Age marvel character grew and developed, whether they were teens like Rick Jones, Spider-Man and the Torchor adults like Doctor Strange, Reed Richards and Ben Grimm.

“He’s a bitter, arrogant know-it-all who looks down on virtually everyone around him, and even if we can’t blame him with all he goes through, he’s often far afield of anything resembling “likeable”.”

Except for all those readers of the time and sine who called him likable and relatable you mean.

Your just being utterly cynical.

I mean who does he ACTUALLY look down on really? Flash and the people who bully him who display anti-intellectual tendencies. Jameson who is a blowhard slander hound. Oh and the super villains who waste their talents on hurting people so fuck them.

Beyond those people he looks down sometimes on fellow heroes but every hero looked down upon basically every other hero in Silver Age Marvel and real talk, Spider-Man had it rougher than most of them anyway so he wasn’t wrong to think he WAS better than them.

But he didn’t look down on Betty or Aunt May or Uncle Ben or other people. SO he isn’t that arrogant most of the time (a little bit early on when he hasn’t faced down major foes like Doc Ock yet but then that stops by issue #3) and his bitterness is well earned.

So you are again misinterpreting.

Moreover those things apply to many differnet Marvel Silver Age characters.

Reed, Ben, and Sue, all adults, had plenty of moments of aggression, immaturity and the like. Not because the point was they are those things but just because that’s how Stan happened to write most of his characters back then. Hank Pym could be an aggressive jerk. Captain America could be an aggressive immature jerk, e.g. when he tried to inspire Hank Pym by attacking him.

“But he changes, so completely many seem to forget he was ever anything other than the official co-saint of the Marvel Universe alongside Steve Rogers. Perhaps it’s in part because of this misunderstanding that Spider-Man 2—starring Peter Parker being Very Sad because he won’t trust the people around him with information that directly impacts their safety, and pushing himself so hard he can’t even effectively fight crime anymore, defeating the purpose altogether of him taking the pain of the entirety of New York unto himself like a bargain-basement Christ—is widely considered the high-water mark of the character’s modern history, while the Peter Parker of The Amazing Spider-Man—who actually acts like a teenager, keeps on making mistakes and operating under selfish motives even after the mugging and has to learn, and is willing to place hope in tomorrow and try and still make a happy life for himself alongside the obligations he must shoulder—is quite widely considered a “douchebag”.”

Dear God this is so wrongheaded it hurts.

In the Raimi movies Peter thinks that entrusting MJ with his secret will endanger her because she likes Spider-Man so she’d want to be with him more. Which HAPPENS. He was 100% correct, she literally ditches her wedding for him!

But he WANTED to push her away because in her NOT being too close to him she would be safer. Which is also 100% correct but he evolved by the end of the second movie to be at peace with that risk and accepting that it was her choice.

It didn’t defeat the purpose it was a lesson he needed to LEARN. But his logic can’t be questioned.

As for Harry or Aunt May, he feared May would hate and reject him and that’s his goddam MOTHER so obviously he wasn’t going to tell her until he couldn’t stand it any more. And the other guy was his best friend and in his case he already wanted to kill him and then TRIED to do that in the third movie so again peter was right.

In Spider-Man 2 Peter doesn’t push himself too hard, he merely tries to balance everyday life with being a hero and finds it a struggle as was the case in the comic it was originally based upon. His mind and body suspend his powers because subconsciously he wants to be free of the burden but it wasn’t like if he’d taken things easier it wouldn’t have happened. He wasn’t going too hard, he was going normally but normally is hard when you are a hero. In fact the whole ‘he loses his powers because he doesn’t want them’ thing IS from a Ditko issue so your point is moot.

As for Garfield Spider-Man unless you grade him on the curve he was kind of a douchebag. Not so much in what he does but how he did it. He was overly cocky for the character, e.g. his dip and kiss of Gwen in the second movie. That movie that along with the first one you know...killed the franchise so hard Marvel Studios had to save them.

So...why is Spider-Man 2 not a high water mark again?

No to mention comparing the two by damning Spider-Man 2 is foolish because they are not the same ages or at the same points in their lives.

“He grows, he shifts, he learns lessons and forgets them and falls and picks himself back up, and he never stops pushing forward. He takes on the responsibility of becoming the Man he claims to be, that others need him to be, even if he doesn’t consciously realize it at first. That’s how he was built, and how he was visibly meant to keep going at first. That’s the “in”, that’s what makes him an everyman we can all relate to, because no one ever stops growing up.”

Yes and no.

Yes he was designed to grow and develop, but everyone stops growing up when they hit adulthood, they just don’t stop growing as people.

No though that wasn’t what made him relatable. The reltability WAS the point, not the growing up. He was relatable because he dealt with down to Earth normal life problems along with relatively realistic problems spiralling out of being a superhero and just having normal life experines anyway.

Countless movies present everyman characters who are NOT teenagers or people in the midst of reaching adulthood but who are already there. The Ghostbusters for example. These are not characters who grow up but are relatable nevertheless.

Peter remained relatable in the 80s and 90s and 2000s even though he HAD grown up and HAD hit adulthood a long time before.

“It’s what differentiates him, makes him real, compared to Superman or Batman or the FF or Captain America. ”

But THEY all grew and developed too! Less so with Superman and Batman but all the Silver Age Marvel characters grew and developed!

“And while the steps needed to keep that wheel moving are still implemented, one aching step at a time, it’s still drowned out by a deluge of perfectly satisfactory but no longer cutting-edge superhero adventures (that is, when such steps aren’t rolled back altogether, Mr. Quesada). ”

I don’t even understand this part.

“*describes the Joe Casey Bounce comic* So again: is that the only future? Is that the sole way any trace of Spider-Man as originally envisioned and executed can survive?”

First of all the Bounce sounds like it has a shallow misinformed grasp of Spider-Man.

Second of all the vision and execution of Spider-Man doesn’t need weird Indie AU knock offs to survive.

Spider-Man works at any age because he’s about being a normal guy defined by responsibility. He merely HAPPEND to start off as a teen for the sake of some novelty but it was never going to be the forever more status quo or inherently the appeal of the character.

Consider how many Spider-Man fans were forged in consequent decades via media adaptations of the character where he was more or less at a static age. He might’ve developed and grown but he didn’t begin as a teen or a high schooler in those?

How many people jumped into the comics in the 80s-2000s where Spider-Man was an adult and not aging much but was still written as a vibrant three dimensional character defined by being relatively down to Earth....and it worked.

I’m not saying character development isn’t critically vital at all, just that the notion that it’s dependent upon going from youngster to adulthood is not the inherent necessity of the character outside of adaptations which seek to replicate the mythology. 616 Spider-Man is in his early 30s and can keep going forward from there and work just fine because character development can still happen regardless of his age.

Fundamentally your logic here is Spider-Man grew up therefore that is the point of his character. But as I’ve said or implied before this, that applies to every Marvel character.

The X-Men being teens wasn’t truly the point, the point was bigotry and they became MORE popular when they were replaced by adult characters in Giant-Sized X-Men. They even graduated very quickly. But growth wasn’t the point for them either. Nor the F4 who grew and changed nor Daredevil nor the Avengers.

Growth is just part of many examples of good storytelling and part of what definied the Marvel Universe as a whole .

It’s blind to remove Spider-Man from that context and codify that it’s what he specifically was about.

“While limited, growth has happened for the character, and it tended to be in some of the better stories of the last decade plus. Whether starting to guide children like he himself once was in the solid early sections of J. Michael Straczynski and John Romita Jr.’s run on the main title; confronting the nature of his role as a superhero in relation to his villains and Peter Parker’s own role in society in Mark Millar, Terry Dodson and Frank Cho’s Marvel Knights: Spider-Man (a largely overlooked gem by the former, and the most traditional of his modern work besides perhaps his Fantastic Four run); having him take his mission to the next level in both technology and dedication in Dan Slott and Marcos Martin’s modern classic “No One Dies”; showing what would happen if Peter Parker finally started to pursue his dreams as well as his duties in Slott’s “Big Time”, or revealing what would happen to a Spider-Man who couldn’t grow in Superior Spider-Man under Slott again, Peter Parker can still keep moving forward one step at a time, still undergo the growth that informs his responsibilities which informs his growth and so and so on into forever, and still maintain what he is: the normal guy in the world of giants.”

Okay...I actually agree with this but not the way you reached this conclusion via ‘He’s obviously ABOUT being a teen/growing up.’

“At the time of writing, I’m soon to pick up the newly relaunched Amazing Spider-Man by Dan Slott and Humberto Ramos. Given that he wrote three of those examples I just listed, I have fairly high hopes.”

Slot progessed Peter, then regressed him and even amidst all that he didn’t progress him in the right direction.

You stated that he should be a normal guy. Slott turned him into a super scientist and then later a 1%er

“This is going to be by the writer who had him come back from the dead in part by admitting that being Spider-Man is actually pretty fun.”

It was also by the writer who turned Doc Ock into a rapist and proceeded to use him and variant versions of Spider-Man to show use how lame the original was before mutating the original into an Iron Man rip off.

Hindsight sucks the big one I guess.

*Even if you say he came of age at the end of the movie the movie was one part of a three part story in which he spent most of his time NOT as a teen or someone growing up. He was just an adult.

**Also he more than anybody advocated and pushed for Peter to age forward into adult life experiences, such as parenthood even though his favourite era was Spider-Man as a high schooler (makes sense that was the era he began with). The fact that his fav era was Spider-Man as a teen and yet he maintains SPider-Man was never about youth and advocated for him to be MORE adult adds much to his credibility.

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gaymusicchart · 7 years

Video

youtube

GAY MUSIC CHART – 2017 week 38

Welcome to the Gay Music Chart, the LGBTQA related music videos TOP 50 actuality and most request.

Vote for your favourite LGBTQA related music videos by leaving a comment for this post on :

YOUTUBE (in the comment section of the video of the week) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz7yfp-xq-b08tD6mAWwclA

BLOGGER : http://gaymusicchart.blogspot.fr

FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/GayMusicChart/

TWITTER : https://twitter.com/GayMusicChart with #GayMusicChart

TUMBLR : http://gaymusicchart.tumblr.com

Here is the recap for this week :

OUT : Katy Perry feat. Nicki Minaj - Swish Swish (LW: 02 / WO: 7 / PEAK: 02)

OUT : Jay Arseno - Shine! (DJ Sean Mac Remix) (LW: 14 / WO: 11 / PEAK: 14)

OUT : Lara Fabian - Growing Wings (Offer Nissim Remix) (LW: 22 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 22)

OUT : Cub Sport - O Lord (LW: 23 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 17)

OUT : Goldfrapp - Everything Is Never Enough (LW: 24 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 24)

OUT : Filthy Friends - Despierta (LW: 25 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 25)

OUT : The Hound - Can't Let You Go (LW: 29 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 29)

OUT : Rainbow Riots - Freedom (LW: 35 / WO: 7 / PEAK: 12)

OUT : Ricky Rebel - If You Were My Baby (LW: 36 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 36)

OUT : Arturo Cardelús - Sherwin and Jonathan (In a Heartbeat OST) (LW: 38 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 34)

OUT : Garek - Mr. Kellyanne Conway (LW: 39 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 28)

OUT : The Human - The Uninvited Guest (LW: 40 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 40)

OUT : Lazaro Carrasco - Feliz de mentira (LW: 43 / WO: 4 / PEAK: 42)

OUT : Projekt 100% MENSCH - Wir sind Eins (LW: 46 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 16)

OUT : Bjartmar Thordarson - Hollow (LW: 47 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 47)

OUT : Courtney Barnett & Kurt Vile - Over Everything (LW: 48 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 48)

OUT : BFF - Techno Gym Love Affair (LW: 50 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 44)

01 (+ 43) : Logic feat. Alessia Cara, Khalid - 1-800-273-8255 (LW: 44 / WO: 5 / PEAK: 01 (x1))

This powerful music video, which is also a promotion for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, follows a gay teen couple and is the incarnation of the "It Get Better" slogan.

02 (+ 3) : Leon Else - What I Won't Do (Lyric Video) (LW: 05 / WO: 14 / PEAK: 02)

The British singer has recently came out on Facebook.

03 (+ 14) : Kevin Chomat - Sens Interdit (LW: 17 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 03)

This new single of the French singer reached the top 10 YouTube trending in France. His first album will be released next September 25, 2017.

04 (+ 5) : Alfie Arcuri - If They Only Knew (LW: 09 / WO: 11 / PEAK: 04)

This is the new music video of the winner of The Voice Australia 2016. What must do a gay man when he's in love with his best male friend, who's dating his best female friend?

05 (+ 25) : P!nk - What About Us (LW: 30 / WO: 4 / PEAK: 05)

The music video includes audio contents from the tragic events in Charlottesville for denouncing the hate speeches from the supremacist movements, and shows several people dancing under the intimidating eye of the authorities, including two men together.

06 (+ 39) : Alvin Point - Il a dit (LW: 45 / WO: 51 / PEAK: 01 (x4))

The first single of the 24 years old singer is talking about a romantic gay love story. The title means "he said".

07 (+ 20) : Wrabel - The Village (LW: 27 / WO: 7 / PEAK: 04)

This engaging song was written the day after US President Trump removed new federal protections for trans students in public schools last February. Trans actor August Aiden plays the role of a young transgender who tries to be himself despite the hostility of his father in the music video.

08 (=) : Eli Lieb - Shangri La (LW: 08 / WO: 8 / PEAK: 03)

Eli Lieb is completely bare in his new music video.

09 (- 5) : Myckael SG - Strong or Best (alternate version) (LW: 04 / WO: 4 / PEAK: 04)

10 (+ 24) : Lizzo - Good As Hell (LW: 34 / WO: 40 / PEAK: 02)

This is taken from the EP "Coconut Oil".

11 (+ 5) : Sam Smith - Too Good At Goodbyes (Official Audio) (LW: 16 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 11)

The British singer is back with a new upcoming album.

12 (- 2) : Kevin Chomat - Un homme à terre (LW: 10 / WO: 32 / PEAK: 01 (x3))

For his third single, the French singer is talking about infidelity, with his boyfriend who cheated on him.

13 (NEW) : Zayn feat. Sia - Dusk Till Dawn (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 13)

14 (- 3) : La Prohibida - Baloncesto (LW: 11 / WO: 9 / PEAK: 03)

15 (- 12) : Martin Garrix & Troye Sivan - There For You (LW: 03 / WO: 16 / PEAK: 01 (x1))

16 (- 4) : Benny - Boys Will Be Boys (LW: 12 / WO: 37 / PEAK: 02)

It took two years for the 17 years old YouTuber Ben J. Pierce to release a new music video after "Little Game", but the wait was worth it, because it's really good. It talks about toxic masculinity and the effects it can have on a person.

17 (+ 2) : Benny - Never Apart (LW: 19 / WO: 15 / PEAK: 17)

His new single is a tender gay youth love declaration.

18 (- 3) : Paris Bang Bang - Poseída (LW: 15 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 15)

The drag queen is from Mexico City.

19 (- 13) : Michele Bravi - Solo Per Un Po' (LW: 06 / WO: 18 / PEAK: 01 (x1))

The Italian singer has came out earlier this year, just before coming fourth in the San Remo 2017 music festival in the Champion category. This single is the second single of his album "Anime di carta" which reached #1 in the top album in Italy.

20 (NEW) : Marc Devigne - Çà va (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 20)

From the Canadian TV miniseries "Shadowlands", Marc Devigne and Charlie David play a couple whose time together is cut short. Originaly posted on Vimeo.

21 (- 14) : Harel Skaat - Radio (LW: 07 / WO: 20 / PEAK: 01 (x3))

This is the new single of the Israeli singer, shoot in Paris.

22 (- 1) : PVRIS - What's Wrong (LW: 21 / WO: 13 / PEAK: 01 (x2))

A portion of every ticket sold for their upcoming fall tour will be donated to The Ally Coalition in support of LGBTQ equality.

23 (- 22) : Greyson Chance - Back on the Wall (LW: 01 / WO: 8 / PEAK: 01 (x2))

The 19 years old singer has recently came out on Instagram. He was revealed with his cover of Lady Gaga's "Paparazzi" at a school talent show 7 years ago (almost 60 millions views on YouTube) and is produced by Ellen DeGeneres.

24 (RE-ENTRY) : Neon Trees - Feel Good (LW: - / WO: 5 / PEAK: 17)

After a break for his first solo album "Excommunication", Tyler Glenn goes back with his band for a new song.

25 (NEW) : MRSHLL 마샬 - Circle (visuals) (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 25)

Sadly, there isn't an entire music video yet for the first solo track of the first openly gay kpop singer.

26 (+ 11) : Beth Ditto - We Could Run (LW: 37 / WO: 5 / PEAK: 10)

This is taken from her first solo album "Fake Sugar."

27 (+ 22) : Tom Bleasby - Where Is The Love (audio) (LW: 49 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 27)

The former contestant of X-Factor UK has recently came out publicly as gay.

28 (RE-ENTRY) : GAREK - Stray (LW: - / WO: 49 / PEAK: 01 (x2))

The single taken from the album "Take the King" is a conversation with his 8-year-old self about accepting who he is, the talk he wishes he had as a child, because he "spent so many years hating [himself] because [he] listened to the voices around [him] saying that people like [him] were disgusting".

29 (- 16) : Autoheart - My Hallelujah (LW: 13 / WO: 11 / PEAK: 11)

30 (NEW) : Superfruit - How You Feeling? (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 30)

This is the eighth single taken from their first album "Future Friends".

31 (NEW) : George Michael feat. Nile Rodgers - Fantasy (Audio) (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 31)

This track is taken from "Listen without Prejudice/MTV Unplugged" – out in October 20th.

32 (- 6) : MUNA - I Know A Place (LW: 26 / WO: 32 / PEAK: 01 (x2))

The new song of the L.A. queer trio band is an LGBT anthem which imagines a place where none of them would need to be afraid. This is taken from their first album "About U".

33 (NEW) : Bronski Beat - Smalltown Boy (Arnaud Rebotini Remix) (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 33)

This classic gay anthem is a remix for the OST of the French movie "120 battements par minute", which depicts a group of HIV/AIDS activists in the early 1990s. The movie won the Grand Prix in the 2017 Cannes Film Festival.

34 (NEW) : Brockhampton - Junky (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 34)

35 (NEW) : ERASURE - Just A Little Love (Official Lyric Video) (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 35)

36 (- 8) : Namuel - Yugoslavia (LW: 28 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 16)

The Chilean singer is back, and is playing Adam and Steve in his new music video.

37 (- 4) : Falko - Undercover (Official Lyric Video) (LW: 33 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 33)

It took 5 years to the former contestant of the Flemish version of Idol (he was 16 and out at this time) to release his second single.

38 (- 18) : Mickey Taylor feat. ØMC - In The Night (LW: 20 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 20)

After "All Day", this is the part two of a 7 part series.

39 (+ 2) : Superfruit - Worth it (LW: 41 / WO: 10 / PEAK: 02)

This is the third single of the duo taken from the "Future Friends - Part One" EP. The music video breaks down gender norms with these two young dancers.

40 (RE-ENTRY) : LP - No Witness (A Night at The McKittrick Hotel) (LW: - / WO: 3 / PEAK: 18)

41 (- 9) : Chester Lockhart - Save Me from Myself (LW: 32 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 32)

42 (- 24) : Pabllo Vittar feat. Mateus Carrilho - Corpo Sensual (LW: 18 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 18)

The new song of the famous Brazilian drag queen is with one of the member of Banda Uó. Quente...

43 (RE-ENTRY) : PVRIS - Anyone Else (LW: - / WO: 2 / PEAK: 31)

A portion of every ticket sold for their upcoming fall tour will be donated to The Ally Coalition in support of LGBTQ equality.

44 (NEW) : Detonautas Roque Clube part. Leoni - Dias Assim (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 44)

This music video is full of straight, gay and lesbian kisses.

45 (- 3) : Germán Díaz - Dentro de tí (LW: 42 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 42)

This is the new track of the Argentinian singer.

46 (RE-ENTRY) : Ria Mae - Bend (LW: - / WO: 5 / PEAK: 07)

This is the new single of the Canadian singer.

47 (RE-ENTRY) : Tuure Boelius - Eikö sua hävetä (LW: - / WO: 2 / PEAK: 43)

This is the first single of the teenage Finnish YouTuber who came out last November 2016 at the age of 15 on YouTube.

48 (NEW) : Tokio Hotel - Something New (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 48)

49 (NEW) : State of Sound - Heaven (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 49)

This music video is full of straight, gay and lesbian kisses.

50 (- 19) : Tom Goss - Click (The Interactive Music Video) (LW: 31 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 15)

This ambitious project is an interractive and immersive music video where you will have a total liberty for searching your future boyfriend or girlfriend. You have the choice between 11 love interests !

ALSO NEW THIS WEEK

Giovanni Falchetti - Entonces que somos

This is the new single of the Chilean singer based in Mexico.

Michael Perry - Perfect Love

After "Underwear Model", this is his new single.

Marc Almond - How Can I Be Sure

From the forthcoming album "Shadows & Reflections", out 22nd September.

St. Vincent - New York

NU3L - Ventre

VIZIN - You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real)

This is cover of the classic gay anthem by Sylvester.

Chumina Power - Quiero un Ángel

Taken from the album "No Soy una Señora" from the Spanish drag queen.

Pupi Poisson - Tienes to la cara

Taken from the OST of "Un marido para Pupi".

Sunkee Angel - Slut Walk

This is the new song of the transgender singer, inspired by Amber Rose.

MUNA - In My Way

Taken from the album "About U".

Shamir - 90's Kids

Bonnie McKee - Thorns

Macy Rodman - Born

Michael Resin - Only Human

This is the new track of the Swiss singer.

See you next week and don’t forget to vote for your best LGBTQA music videos ! Here are the rules :

1 ) You can vote for many videos as you want under the videos on YouTube in the comment section. It could be recent or past music videos, which must provide at least one among the following conditions:

- the music video has LGBTQA related content, in the lyrics or the music video

- the artist is LGBTQA, an LGBTQA icon or eventually ally

- LGBTQA medias talked about it.

2 ) You can’t vote more than 3 songs of a same artist per week.

3 ) In case of an artist who receive votes mostly by a fan base, we will count only one song, in a limited time of 10 weeks of presence in the top.

4 ) You can vote with only one account.

5 ) If you make 5 votes or less, your first vote will represent 5 points, your second vote 4 points, etc… until your last vote and following 1 point. If you make 6 to 10 votes, your first vote will represent 10 points, your second vote 9 points, etc… If you make more than 10 votes, your first vote will represent 20 points, your second vote 19 points, etc…

6 ) People who make 1 to 5 votes form the amateur ranking, those who make 6 to 10 votes form the fan ranking, those who make more than 10 votes form the expert ranking. We form the jury ranking. The Gay Music Chart is the addition of the four charts. In case of equality, the number of votes and the dates of votes will count.

7 ) The votes will close on Thursday, 8 PM, European time.

#GayMusicChart #gay #music #chart #top #singles #videos #lgbt #queer #lesbian #transhender #bisexual #drag queen #2017 week 38

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a-moon-child-28 · 7 years

Text

The challenge game...

Challenge Game... Rules: Answer all questions, add one question of your own and tag people you want to do it but whoever wants to do this feel free :):) I don't remember who tagged me but I searched forever to find this again :):)... 1. Coke or Pepsi: If I have to Coke but I'm more of a creamy soda drinker lol 2. Disney or Dreamworks: Disney! Mainly for Mulan  3. Coffee or Tea: Tea, coffee gives me the jitters 4. Books or Movies: books, but I love movies too  5. Windows or Mac: Mac 6. DC or Marvel: Marvel, although I love Aquaman(the original comics not the new movie) 7. Xbox or Playstation: PlayStation 1 lol I game on the laptop mainly or my Nintendo DS 8. Dragon Age or Mass Effect: Dragon age. 9. Night Owl or Early Rise: Early Rise only since this year all the years before I was a massive night owl  10. Cards or Chess: Chess but I'm super shit at it lol 11. Chocolate or Vanilla: Chocolate unless you mean French vanilla  12. Vans or Converse: Vans ! But I love converse too!!  13. Lavellan, Trevelyan, Cadash or Adaar: Lavellan 14. Fluff or Angst: To write, Fluff. To read, Angst. 15. Beach or Forest: Forest for sure 16. Dogs or Cats: Cats although I have a dog but she acts like a cat, it's barking inside dogs that's made me lean more towards cats tbh 17. Clear Skies or Rain: Rain if I'm inside  18. Cooking or Eating Out: Cooking, eating out as a vegan is shit -_- 19. Spicy Food or Mild Food: Mild 20. Halloween/Samhain or Solstice/Yule/Christmas: Christmas ^-^ 21. Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot: Too Cold! I hate being hot it always makes me a miserable bitch. 22. If you could have a superpower, what would it be? I'd usually pick talk to animals but I don't think they'd really have that much to say lol so I'd go with healing powers. 23. Animation or Live Action: live action but not animated turned into live action they're usually always shit  24. Paragon or Renegade: Paragon 25. Baths or Showers: Showers 26. Team Cap or Team Iron Man: Team Cap sorry iron man but in the comic you were kind of a dick :/ 27. Fantasy or Sci-Fi? Both? Both! Both is good!! 28. Do you have three or four favourite quotes? If so, what are they:  “You're never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream" -C.S.Lewis "Not all those who wander are lost" -J.R.R.Tolkien "It takes nothing away from a human to be kind to animals" -Joaquin Phoenix There's more but they're pretty long ones lol 29. YouTube or Netflix: YouTube. Australian Netflix sucks 30. Harry Potter or Percy Jackson: Harry Potter, I've never read Percy Jackson  31. When You Feel Accomplished: Usually my uni teacher tells me to resubmit and then I loose that feeling  32. Star Wars or Star Trek: How dare you make me decide!! BOTH!! But maybe Star Trek a tiny smidgen more  33. Paperback Books or Hardback Books: Hardback  34. Handwriting or Typing: Handwriting even though my handwriting is legit unreadable  35. Velvet or Satin: Velvet! I love touching it lol 36. Video Games or Movies: Movies! 37. Would you rather be the dragon or own the dragon? Own it! I can't drive so free dragon rides to uni and the shops hells yeah ;);) 38. Sunrise or sunset: Sunrise !  39. What’s your favourite song? Of right now? Run boy run by woodkid 40. Horror Movies yes or no: YAS !! My favourite genre of everything lol  41. Long hair or short hair: Go for what you feel people! But personally I'm myself I keep it above the shoulders cause I'm a lazy ass and don't want to deal with long hair  42. Opera or Theatre: Theatre I've never been to the opera  43. Assuming the multiverse theory is true and every story ever told has really happened somewhere, which one of the movie/book/tv show/game/etc worlds would you pick to travel to first? Star Trek universe as long as I'm a crew member  44: If you had to eat only one thing for the rest of your life what would it be? Pasta 45: Older guys or young guys? Older because younger would be teenagers and I can't deal with teenage boy hormones I just can't  46: If you could erase any show from TV history, what would it be? Neighbours I'm sorry Australia but that show is fucking shit I'm over it get rid of it !! 47: Singing or dancing? Dancing it's fun and it's counted as a workout  48: Instagram or Twitter? It depends but I like scrolling through the memories on Instagram  49: What quote or saying do people spout but is complete BS? Make America great again... like bro, again? It was never great in the first place, no country is great we're all just as shit as each other. 50: If there was a time period that you would gladly time travel to to live or visit, what would it be? The 50s  51: If you could take one fictional character into this world to live with you and what not, under the contingency that the movie/book/tv/game universe they came from acts as if they never existed, who would it be and why? Yuri Plisetsky I want to be his bestie and take him away from Viktor and Yuuri ! 52: What’s the story behind your tumblr account? At the start I always had things related to the show or book I was obsessing over but I'd end up changing my user like twice a month so I picked three things I really like and just suck them together lol  53: If you were suddenly rendered invisible for the day (your clothing also, you don’t have to be naked… unless you want) what is the most mischievous thing you would do? I would just fuck with people who where being dicks on public transport... 54: if you could change the ending of a movie/tv/book what would it be? The darkest part of the forest, I wanted more Ben action! 55: If you could move to a country for a year where would you go? Russia, I've been learning the language and I'd like to just go there and write a book the Far East Russia though. 56: Do you believe in aliens? Yeah bruv... x files mate. 57: If you could take away someone's fame who's would it be? Trump... or the kardashians 58: Favourite colour, make it specific: Forest Green or Emerald green. Ok that's it if you want to do this tab please feel free :):) !!

#challenge tag #challenge game #tag yourself #get to know me #questionnaire

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sinceileftyoublog · 5 years

Text

Pitchfork Music Festival 2019: 7/19-7/21

Stereolab

BY JORDAN MAINZER

You’ve heard it by now: The weather was mostly shit. Triple-digit-feeling temperatures for a day and a half, a torrential downpour that had half of the security guards incorrectly telling people the fest was cancelled for the rest of the day when it was only Kurt Vile for the 50th time. Those who came back were rewarded with Stereolab, those who left hopefully came back for a beautiful day on Sunday that was also unexpectedly the best day for music. After all these years, Pitchfork is still full of surprises. Here are some of the sets that surprised us.

Great Black Music Ensemble

Part of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), the Great Black Music Ensemble were a bold choice for the festival to choose as the kick-off performance. In the past, equally far out acts like Sun Ra’s Arkestra and Irreversible Entanglements have at least played early on the third day of their respective years. But this year’s group started out undoubtedly captivating, starting chanting backstage before entering, continuing to chant while filling up the stage, their backs turned to the audience. When they turned to face us, saxophonist Ernest Dawkins, the animated maestro, led the band with finger-pointing and swooping direction through grooves and scatty jazz, backing off for percussion solos and swells of horn. As hot as it was, it was an invigorating set to start the day.

MIKE

Whether or not you were familiar with New York-based MC MIKE, it was easy to be swept up in his infectious energy and positive vibes. For one, before he rapped any words, he humbly shouted out the Great Black Music Ensemble that had just finished, along with future performers that day Standing on the Corner, Rico Nasty, Valee, and Earl Sweatshirt. Then, with family members in attendance, he delivered a lyrically dexterous, no-bullshit set that nonetheless left room for him to show his appreciation to the crowd. “Y’all ready for bars?” he asked before showing off his spit skills. “Make some noise for yourselves,” he repeatedly demanded of the crowd; when he spelled out the first three letters of his name and the crowd responded with a loud “E!!”, he laughed, “Y’all could have said anything...but you said ‘E!!’” The bouncy beats got the crowd in the mood to move and yell even as the weather continued to scorch.

Standing on the Corner

Like their jazz brethren Great Black Music Ensemble, Brooklyn-based experimental collective Standing on the Corner consisted of a bevy of musicians, orchestrated by a leader, Gio Escobar. Unlike the soulfulness of GBME, SOTC were noisy, their jazz venturing as much into surf punk and neo-classical music as it did hip hop. In the quieter moments, you could hear Rico Nasty booming across the park, but for the most part, the genre-bending crew held their own, never descending into chaos. Collaborator Earl Sweatshirt, standing on the side of the stage, looked impressed.

Valee

If you’re gonna wait this long to appear on stage and pump up the crowd for minutes, you better as hell bring it. About the only thing Valee brought on stage was his dyed red Chihuahua. Whether “I’ve Got Whatever”, “Juice & Gin”, “Extra”, or “Miami”, the local rapper’s set embodied the most disappointing of what rap sets can be: lazy and overdependent on the backing track disguised as some semblance of “chillness.” (See Earl Sweatshirt below for how to do that well.) By the time he played his beloved banger “Womp Womp”, you wished he had pulled an ILoveMakonnen and played it twice instead of something else.

Sky Ferreira

In a career filled with missteps, Sky Ferreira has managed to release just enough brilliance to not just stick around but become an anticipated artist. Friday’s set was that quintessential mix of misstep and perfection. Her follow-up to 2013′s Night Time, My Time has been in the works for the better part of the 2010′s but has only yielded one comeback track: “Downhill Lullaby”. She didn’t perform that song on Friday (it was sound-checked); in fact, she didn’t perform many songs at all. Teasing the crowd with audio of untouchable classics like Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams”, Talking Heads’ “Naive Melody (This Must Be The Place)”, and David Bowie’s “Fame”, Ferreira walked out late. By that time, her band members had already been on stage taking pictures of the crowd and each other. With a deadpan “Hi”, she launched into “24 Hours”, “Boys”, “Ain’t Your Right”, and the powerhouse “I Blame Myself”. Unfortunately, that’s when the technical issues started. Backing tracks of her voice started prematurely playing, inadvertently revealing her cover of choice, an otherwise flawless rendition of Til Tuesday’s “Voices Carry”. “Everything that’s gone wrong has,” she told the crowd, unable to hear herself sing, the band trying to start the shoegazey new song “Descending” multiple times before she just decided to do “Everything Is Embarrassing”. She and her band were eventually abruptly cut off by an impatient Earl Sweatshirt, leaving her set in the same thematic category as The Avalanches: Legendary performances that never were.

Earl Sweatshirt

As I was saying: This is how you use the crippling heat to your advantage. The slow, cloudy, warbling production of all of Earl Sweatshirt’s songs is as perfect for barely swaying and slightly nodding as it is hands-up palm pumping. Starting off with the gentle surf-and-horn tones of Some Rap Songs’ “Riot!” and getting the one sexually aggressive remnant of his pre-I Don’t Like Shit days out of the way (Doris’ “Molasses”), Earl delivered standouts with no fanfare: “Grief”, “December 24″, non-album tracks like “Wind In My Sails”. And while he began the set with Some Rap Songs’ closer, he finished it with his latest masterpiece’s opener, the soulful “Shattered Dreams”, as if to emphasize that his music puts you in such a haze, that it becomes cyclical, never-ending, never-beginning. It just always was, and that’s not sun poisoning.

Pusha T

The excellence of Daytona aside, a Pusha T greatest hits set--solo standouts, features, Clipse--was always going to be the best festival move. He delivered, and then some. Barging onto the stage with full force, speedily spitting the entire first verse of “If You Know You Know” sans backing track, Pusha relentlessly burned through song after song of dragon fire. My Name Is My Name highlight “Nosetalgia” and banger “Numbers on the Boards” and King Push’s hard-nosed “F.I.F.A.” proved to be the show-ready hits we always knew they would be. It’s hard to believe that My Name is technically Pusha’s solo debut, since his rapping often dominated both features and Clipse, so when he dedicated a string of songs to those who had “been with him since the beginning,” I did sort of a double-take. What he meant was his verses on My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’s “So Appalled” and “Runaway” as well as--wait for it--Clipse’s immortal “Grindin’”. By the time he got to the original Drake diss track, you didn’t even care whether he would follow it up with “The Story Of Adidon”. You were already out of breath and in awe.

Mavis Staples

If you had told me that a singer’s new album contained the line, “All that we are is the living ghost of our youth,” Mavis Staples would have been my last guess as to who that singer was. Then again, the reflective, often somber nature of her latest great album We Get By makes sense: her sister Yvonne passed away last year, and she’s only six years removed from the death of her other sister, Cleotha. As such, she’s mourning again the absence of both of those women and her father, Pops. Combine that with the current political climate, one that Staples has spent her entire life fighting, and you start to become surprised that the album’s not straight-up dour. But Staples doesn’t do depressing: She finds beauty in the darkest moments, using them to raise up both herself and others. It was this spirit that pervaded her Friday evening set. “I’m a fighter, I’m a lover, there is no other way,” she admitted on “Anytime”, “Could be one or the other on any given day.” The ambiguity of the title track, meanwhile, paying tribute to the power of a relationship that could be a lover or a friend--really anyone--meant that the difference between the Ben Harper-featuring album version (he wrote and produced the album) and vocal presence of one of her singers was negligible. It was the emotion that counted.

But what made her set brilliant was that in the context of her new album, the songs chosen outside of the album fit its themes of political urgency and self-improvement. “I’m working on me,” Staple sang on “Take Us Back”, her voice as gravely and powerful as ever. The necessity of change detailed on “Build a Bridge” mirrored that on the first track of We Get By where she asks, “What good is freedom if we haven’t learned to be free?” To Staples, freedom means the constant improvement of society, a sentiment as far-reaching back as The Staples Singers’ “Touch a Hand, Make a Friend”. She could have performed more from We Get By--album closer “One More Change” is Staples’ promise to do everything she can to get us out of this current shitstorm--but a quick sign-off of “No Time For Crying” is just as effective. Staples’ set was the rare one that made her new album AND old albums even more affecting.

Album score: 8.5/10

Lala Lala

Mid-day heat was not enough to offset the whispery voice of Lala Lala’s Lillie West combined with the dreamy instrumentation of her band of Chicago all-stars, which included V.V. Lightbody’s Vivian McConnell, Nnamdi Ogbonnaya, and Sen Morimoto. West and company played largely from last year’s breakout album The Lamb, but the true standouts were “Siren 042″, her collaborative track with WHY?, the band’s sweeping, blistering cover of Perfume Genius’ “Slip Away”, and statement of identity “Lala Song”. “Do you guys like screaming?” West asked the crowd, sure of the answer. The propulsive, saxophone-filled dirge consisted of wordless harmonies and the increasingly loud repeated mantras of “I’m not even listening / You’re not even nothing,” an anthem if there ever was one. Oh, and unlimited props to the band for donating all merch proceeds that day to RAICES.

Ric Wilson

Like MIKE on Friday, Ric Wilson brought the type of set you could walk into with no prior knowledge and leave a huge fan, almost entirely due to his charisma. It’s not just that he knows how to make a crowd feel good. He knows how to make a crowd feel good about themselves without sacrificing what makes him unique. Sure, on the surface, leading off with a song called “We Love Us” could cause some curmudgeons to walk away for a beer. But Wilson came to play not for those people but to pay back to the crowd of the first music festival he ever attended, delivering a positive mix of hip hop and soul: “Black art, not bad art,” he proudly declares on “Banba”. As such, he brought out Kweku Collins and the Lane Tech Marching Band and led what his band claimed was the world record for the largest soul train, jumping in the crowd to dance during it. He channeled D’Angelo on the funk of new song “Yellowbrick”. Oh, and nothing to bring a crowd together like rapping about traffic on the Dan Ryan, right?

CHAI

The Japanese quartet CHAI believes you can be Kawaii while still subverting standard definitions of beauty and femininity. Or really, they argue that there’s no such thing as the “standard.” They exist somewhere between individualism--arguing that you’re a “Fashionista” as long as you’re dressing the way you dress--and collectivism, donning a band uniform of an orange top and pink pants with white stripes, tightly harmonizing and chanting with equal pitch. That dichotomy in and of itself is unique, especially in Japanese culture. They call it PUNK, their terrific second album. From freedom anthem “CHOOSE GO!” to the propulsive beats of “THIS IS CHAI”, the band’s instrumental variation (the funk of “FAMILY MEMBER”, banging dance of “Curly Adventure”) is always tied together by the four women and the spirit each of them brings to the performance combined with the sum of parts that the band CHAI represents. And their radicalism is present in songs like “GREAT JOB”, a reclamation of housework as therapeutic, but it’s never so strong as when they shout their simple proclamation: “We are CHAI!”

Album score: 8.1/10

Cate Le Bon

“It has got to be hot in that long purple dress,” I thought looking up at Cate Le Bon. A few songs later, she admitted it. Thankfully, many of her songs are low-energy, and a set comprised entirely of Reward and Crab Day material suited the weather. She started with the first few songs of Reward, showed off her immaculate guitar tones on “Love Is Not Love”, extended a jam on “Mother’s Mother’s Magainzes”, and ended with the krautrock of “What’s Not Mine”. Perhaps she would have been ideal at the shadier, notoriously more chill Blue Stage, but Le Bon made the most of her time and location.

Parquet Courts

Entering to The Skatt Brothers’ “Walk The Night” seemed appropriate for the new version of Parquet Courts that released the funky, Danger Mouse-produced Wide Awake! last year. Yet, the band played a (storm-shortened) set full of songs that reminded you why you fell in love with them in the first place: the classic one-two punch of “Master of My Craft” and “Borrowed Time”, “Donuts Only”, “Dust”, and “She’s Rolling”. The songs they did play from their latest record for the most part were ones that could have fit on past records: “Total Football”, “Almost Had To Start A Fight / In And Out of Patience”, and “Freebird II”. The standouts, then, were the ones whose style is unique to Wide Awake!, the political “Before the Water Gets Too High” and the dance-punk of the new album’s cowbell-laden title track, a perfect party before the park was evacuated due to oncoming storms.

Stereolab

"This is French Disko,” is never a sentence I thought I’d hear Laetitia Sadier say. Not because I didn’t expect to ever see Stereolab live; rather, the nonchalance with which she introduced one of the band’s most beloved songs was striking. I don’t blame her: Since the band’s 1st North American festival appearance in 10 years to be rain-shortened, she wanted to play as many songs as possible. It was everything I wanted it to be: Emperor Tomato Ketchup hits “Metronomic Underground” and “Percolator”, “Miss Modular”, “Lo Boob Oscillator”, fucking “Infinity Girl”!!! Besides occasional guitar issues preventing Tim Gaine from shredding into oblivion, the band sounded perfect. Spotted at the side of the stage enjoying it: the Savage brothers from Parquet Courts, Jay Som’s Melina Duterte, and a stoked Kurt Vile who didn’t seem to care at all that his set was cancelled.

Belle and Sebastian

For one of the trademark albums of 90′s indie rock, Belle and Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister is generally pretty quiet, which made their grand, orchestrated performance of it Saturday night even more impressive. From the start of “The Stars of Track and Field”, it was apparent that even non-fans or even detractors would appreciate the band’s live presence. The chaotic harmonica playing of usual set closer “Me and the Major”, bouncy pop of “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying”, and climactic “Judy and the Dream of Horses” offset the preciousness of songs like “The Fox in the Snow” and the title track. They played the record so fast that they actually had time for an encore: Girls in Peacetime Want to Dance’s “The Party Line”, which saw Stuart Murdoch enter and dance in the crowd, and Chicago-appropriate “The Blues Are Still Blue”.

The Isley Brothers

Are The Isley Brothers still good? Yes. Do they belong headlining a festival that prides itself on alternative music? I’m not convinced. Maybe Pitchfork isn’t that anymore, but seriously--you can see these guys play at casinos all across the country, and that’s exactly what the set felt like. Sure, it was immediately full of classics, many of which have gained second life as primary samples for famous hip hop songs, like “That Lady”, “Between the Sheets”, and “Footsteps in the Dark”. The Isley Brothers stay new actually by embracing that, having band members rap a verse or two from the contemporary songs, or Ronald Isley singing, “I love it when you call me Big Poppa.” Their choice of covers, including Bob Dylan’s “Lay Lady Lay”, “Twist and Shout”, Stephen Stills’ “Love the One You’re With”, and Todd Rundgren’s “Hello, It’s Me”, showed their versatility. But Ronald’s voice couldn’t hold its own compared to Ernie’s scratchy funk guitar riffing, and the dancers and backup singers changing outfits every other song was more distracting to the actual music than adding to it. I’d have loved to see The Isley Brothers as an earlier set, but as headliners, their bravado failed to make up for their lack of dynamism.

Black Midi

Another band who met at BRIT school who learned to play guitar from Franz Ferdinand? Yeah, but Black Midi transcend even the hype they deserve. The very fact that hours of jamming contributed to a few bars of songs on their instant classic debut album Schlagenheim is already legendary, and the band covers territory from noise punk to jazz to surf rock to Slint-esque post-rock to chaotically played and sung math rock and...I’m out of breath. “We won’t build to this code,” Geordie Greep sang on “Speedway”, a standout from Schlagenheim, the band’s statement of purpose denoting that they’re truly trying to do something new with all of the above. Album and set “953″ is as good of an offering as any of their palate, starting immediately with complex time signatures, morphing into straight-up grunge, giving way to circular riffs and rhythms as Greep sounds like a coked-up Daniel Rossen, ultimately ending with fast punk.

Out of context, a song like “Of Schlagenheim” might seem the only one on the album a product of men the age of the band members (19 and 20). In it, Greep acts like realizing the ideal woman doesn’t exist is depressing rather than a statement of righteous feminism. Its live performance was likewise the most masculine and primal. But in context of “bmbmbm”, you realize it’s an act. On that song, he impersonates an uncontrollable creep obsessed with a woman, and Black Midi are too smart to fall prey to the cognitive dissonance that would come with both songs being genuine statements.

The band didn’t play everything from Schlagenheim. The gorgeous, 8-minute “Western” wouldn’t have fit the energy of their set, though the blistering “Years Ago” would have. Still, since the album is perhaps the best debut of the year, Black Midi gave arguably the best set at Pitchfork. Yeah, better than Stereolab.

Album score: 9.0/10

JPEGMAFIA

The most energetic set at the festival? That belonged to Barrington DeVaughn Hendricks. Performing from his album Veteran, inspired by his stint in the military and growing up experiencing racism in the South, JPEGMAFIA didn’t rap so much as screamed to the point of coughing fits, especially notable over his off-kilter, slow beats. He’s also as much of a troll as Vince Staples, repeatedly referring to the fest as the Condé Nast Pitchfork Music Festival, and performing a song he purportedly had retired in the U.S.: “I Can’t Fucking Wait Until Morrissey Dies”. He jumped in the crowd so much that he rewarded himself at the end of the set: “I’m about to get high,” Hendricks declared in victory as he left the stage.

Amen Dunes

When we first saw Amen Dunes touring Love back in 2015, he probably wouldn’t have garnered a set at the Blue Stage so late in the day. This set was a victory lap for his most acclaimed album to date, Freedom, and apart from a cover of Tim Buckley’s “Song To The Siren” and Love standout “Splits Are Parted”, he stayed faithful to the album that got him here. The title track, “Blue Rose”, “Calling Paul the Suffering”, “Miki Dora”--they all sounded immaculate, Damon McMahon’s trademark sneer rising above his excellent band, which included Delicate Steve on guitar.

Neneh Cherry

“I’m an old bitch,” joked legendary singer-songwriter and rapper Neneh Cherry. It’s funny, but most of her set was her strong most recent album Broken Politics, “Shot Gun Shack”, “Deep Vein Thrombosis”, and “Synchronised Devotion”. The two best songs performed, though? The noisy Blank Project title track, and of course, her immortal first single, “Buffalo Stance”.

Charli XCX

Midway through her set, Charli XCX proclaimed herself to be one of the top 15 pop stars in the world. It seemed dubious; after all, this is someone whose biggest hits are merely songs she wrote or on which she was featured secondarily. Plus, what would that make headliner Robyn?!? Well, with a performance like the one she gave--alone onstage, save for two giant orange cubes, and one CupcakKe guest appearance--she made the case that she should have been the headliner. Opening with “Track 10″ from her best yet Pop 2, Charli delivered banger after banger, slowing down only for the undeniable “Boys”. “Gone”, from her upcoming Charli, held its own without Christine and the Queens’ Héloïse Letissier. Charli even made time for a little Spice Girls tribute. In a perfect world, she’d be as popular as they were.

Robyn

Perhaps the most anticipated set of the festival after Stereolab, Robyn finally answered the question everyone was thinking: What would Union Park look like filled with thousands dancing on their own? It was blissful, followed by “Missing U” and “Call Your Girlfriend”. But honestly? Before that, the set was...fine. Her vocals were turned far too down. The songs were good, the stage set and dancing artful, but it slowed down the festival experience, the party atmosphere everyone hoped the final headliner would finally deliver. The ending three, plus an encore of “With Every Heartbeat”, were worth it, but Robyn’s set capped yet another Pitchfork where the headliners were really not the main event.

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foamingkitty · 6 years

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Angela McAllister’s Top Ten Favourite Children’s Books

Angela McAllister is the author of A Year Full of Stories and the recently published A World Full of Stories. Two wonderful books which my girls are really enjoying at the moment. Angela’s ability in collecting such wonderfully rich stories and comprising them into these two beautifully illustrated books is a gift and I’m so happy she agreed to share her top ten children’s books with us. You’ll agree it’s a fabulous list and I’m rather inspired to look up a few from her list for my girls. Enjoy and thank you Angela!

1. Next Stop Grand Central by Maira Kalman – This book is a masterpiece. On my first trip to New York I had to get an extra suitcase to carry all the books I bought and this one is my favourite. It tells of the extraordinary variety of people who work in Grand Central Station and the life that goes on there from dawn to dusk; the maintenance, the services, the restaurants, the greetings and partings, the hints of exotic destinations, all of life is here, full of colour and quirkiness. Even minor characters are so fascinating that you want to follow them out of the book into whatever life they came from. Maira Kalman’s vivacity is expressed not only in her compelling illustrations but also in the way she paints pictures with words. It’s a great book to inspire young writers.

2. Over and Under by Kate Messner – Illustrated by Christopher Silas Neal. In contrast to the more zany books on this list, here is something as gentle and full of wonder as snow itself. A girl and her father ski through the snowy woods, while we are simultaneously shown the secret world under the snow where the smallest forest animals stay safe and warm. This is a wonderful example of the exciting growth of non-fiction picture books and has become an instant favourite. I particularly like the pages at the end with extra information, further reading and links.

3. A Near Thing For Captain Najork by Russell Hoban – Illustrated by Quentin Blake. This sequel to the equally wonderful How Tom Beat Captain Najork And His Hired Sportsmen is a riot of a story about a boy who invents anti-sticky while fooling around with his chemistry set. When he uses this amazing new technology to create a mechanical jam-powered frog, his adversary, Captain Najork, pursues him in a five-man undulating snake, to settle an old score. The climax is an arm-wrestling match between two of the most extraordinary female characters in children’s literature. I love this for its exuberant nonsense. It’s the perfect pairing of two masterful picture book creators.

4. The Man Whose Mother Was A Pirate by Margaret Mahy – Illustrated by Margaret Chamberlain – I can’t possibly have a top ten without pirates in it, or either of these brilliant Margarets! An ‘ordinary little man’ who works in a drab office is persuaded by his mother, an old retired pirate, to take her to visit the sea. In a liberating journey of discovery, the man comes to understand his true nature and becomes a pirate himself. This is the book to read if you ever need reminding how good it is to be alive, but beware, you may feel an irresistible urge to go the sea afterwards.

5. The Green Ship by Quentin Blake – This is a magical book that tells the story of a summer holiday in which two children, staying with their aunt, discover a topiary ship in the neighbour’s garden. A beautiful relationship grows between the old neighbour, her gardener and the children. Together they make imaginary voyages around the world, cross the equator and brave a storm. Quentin Blake’s sketchy, atmospheric illustrations here have quite a different feel to those in the first book on this list. It’s a lovely evocation of how age and youth can make believe together. Perfect for anyone who would love to play in an old, overgrown garden.

6. The Two Admirals by David McKee – When a famous retired Admiral moves into a quiet village the locals are proud to have him there. They don’t complain about his powerful presence. They tolerate him boasting that he can do everything better than anyone else. However, when a second self-important admiral moves in and the two start to compete with each other in absurd ways, life becomes intolerable for the villagers. If only all larger than life, boastful characters could be dealt with by offering a prize to the one who could keep the peace longest! David McKee also gave us the wonderful Mr Ben and King Rollo books along with many others. Most of all, I love the tremendous wit and warmth with which he observes people. Pure joy!

7. The Witch’s Children by Ursula Jones – Illustrated by Russell Ayto. How I wish I’d written this book! It’s a fairy tale fizzing with energy and invention. I love the great design and characterisation in the illustrations and there is so much content that you find something new with each reading. The story is packed with drama – it’s almost like watching a play.

8. In The Attic by Hiawyn Oram – Illustrated by Satoshi Kitamura. Another fabulous exploration of the imagination, showing how creative the state of boredom can be. With so much constant stimulation around children now it’s more important than ever to allow the quiet time needed to develop imagination. It takes tremendous skill to write such a spare, evocative text as this and Satoshi is a genius with astonishing poetic energy and inventiveness in all his work.

9. Time To Get Out Of The Bath, Shirley by John Burningham – This is a great example of how a picture book can offer a distinct visual narrative alongside the text. While Mum busies about in the bathroom, the reader shares Shirley’s imaginary adventure as she shrinks to be very small and rides her toy duck away through the waste pipe, to a land of witches, knights and an eccentric royal joust. At once familiar and strange, there’s plenty of delicious detail to discover and lots to discuss when sharing this. The world of fantasy plumbing on the endpapers inspired hours of inventive drawing in our house.

10. Bijan and Manije by Ali Seidabadi – Illustrated by Marjan Vafaian. This ancient Persian story, rewritten by Nicolette Jones is one of several books from Tiny Owl who are bringing wonderful Iranian writers and artists to our bookshelves. When I went to the Sharjah Book Fair in the UAE last year I was particularly moved by some of the illustration from Iran and this rich, colourful book is a great example of the exciting work from that region. Folk tales and legends have universal appeal and never age. How wonderful that we can tell our children a story that began in the 10th century!

Vanessa x

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houseinva · 7 years

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For 10 months our fling was absolutely perfect, we didn’t have a single argument, not one. No joke: Ben and I got along so freaking well that in 10 months we didn't have one, single argument that left either of us (apparently) angry. Ben could completely conceal all his emotions, but I also know from future experience just how angry Ben gets when he chooses not to hide his true sentiments, so I think us getting through nearly a year as best friends with benefits speaks to the dynamic we shared.

We got along better than anyone I’d ever been with in my entire life. He couldn’t have seemed happier himself, and I was ecstatic, too.

But Ben and his beau had ended up not breaking up, but they weren’t having sex or getting along either, at least according to Ben. So instead he was always with me, my friends all thought we were together. Ben was growing increasingly angry and hostile towards his boyfriend and his never-ending cheating, too, and it looked like their break-up was once again imminent in the very near future. When Ben spoke of his boyfriend’s lying and cheating, I found it a bit hypocritical. According to Ben, he was cheating on him with random guys here and there all the time; whereas Ben was having an all-out affair with me and spending more time over than he spent at home. Ben only had negative things to say about his boyfriend, though, he vented to me all the time and as a result I never heard anything good mentioned. I never imagined that he actually had feelings of love for him.

Instead I wondered why he even bothered remaining in the relationship, although when I asked he told me something that I wasn’t expecting: “He was the first guy that made the noise in my head go completely silent.” Hmm… that was rather interesting. I asked him about me, and he responded: “You on the other hand are quite the opposite. But I’ve learned to tune out all your noise, Alex, I’ve learned to deal with you quite well, unlike during round 1.”

Regardless of my noise, Ben continued to treat me like royalty. I believed in my heart of hearts he felt really bad for what he’d done to me in round 1: I’d just been intentionally infected with HIV by my ex, he came along and could have been my rock, but instead he treated me like shit and discarded me; that discard was one of the most painful experiences of my life. And all over as stupid word: narcissist.

Ben still was devoted to his boyfriend despite never saying anything positive about the guy – for example, he never missed picking him up after work, although he said that was because he had to stay true to his word. Just like he did with me, me went above and beyond to make sure he was a man of his word and he was accountable to the things he promised others. I found it impressive, it was like he was forcing himself to break out of his nature and stick to doing things for others, he was adamant about being a man of his word. He admitted to me one day that he did have narcissistic “traits,” but claimed that this way of thinking, behaving and living was against his life philosophy and so he chose to live a different path. I believed him; I picked up where my blog had left off and began this, because I was now convinced my blog could have a happy ending. I believed that people with personality issues, narcissism and the like, got a bad rap; that all those negative articles you’d read were one-sided, written by people with bad experiences. You never came across an article actually written by someone with the disorder, you only saw the opposite. So this portion of my story was intended to show the other side, only I didn’t know at all what I was dealing with at that point, that the other side was pure evil and hell fire. Instead I was distracted by the beautiful promises, and all that sex, sex, and more sex.

Only I never once considered that word had maybe enraged him to the point where all this song and dance was merely a way of silencing me for calling him out on his secret. I never once considered this a possibility; with Ben’s never-ending attention, constant sex, incredible compliments, and his offers to help out with everything, what I saw was someone that genuinely wanted to see me succeed and find happiness. He was perfect to me. Only that he did have a boyfriend, and didn’t seem at all phased about dragging me along, subjugating me in a role that was somewhat demeaning. Ironically, Ben’s concern about me isolating myself from the world kinda turned out to be how things ended up for me. But I was clueless as it was happening, little by little, instead I was captivated by his words, overflowing with kindness, and oozing with charm and admiration.

Our feelings became so intense that one night Ben professed his love to me: he said he loved me just as much as his boyfriend, he called me his boyfriend without the title, he swore that if forced him to make an ultimatum, he’d never pick one over the other; must be nice for Ben to have the luxury of so many offers at his disposal. He swore nothing would come in between us, and I believed it. I remember the look in his eyes and the smile on his face when he speaking these words: it felt like the room was growing fuzzy, I felt like he was hypnotizing me to be completely honest; it felt slightly fake even, but it still felt beautiful. And I chose to go along with it, it felt like it was coming from a good place, from his heart, although in hind-site I doubted Ben could truly love to be honest. That was just my gut instinct, whether I wanted to acknowledge it at the time or not…

I was in utter disbelief; I was certain from round 1 that Ben falling for me was not possible, yet somehow the impossible managed to occur. I was shell-shocked, I was perplexed, I was ecstatic.

I’ll admit that I eventually began to take Ben’s “love,” attention, and sexually grooming me for granted; he came over so frequently, the thought of things ending didn’t cross my mind. Our relationship wasn’t just physical sex and talking about love. Ben could find no fault with me, he seemed to be enamored with everything about me, and he made me happy.

Ben never stopped stressing that our friendship was so solid, so important to him, that nothing could ever impact it; time and again he reinforced that nothing – not his current boyfriend, not any future boyfriends – would ever impact what we shared. He was a gentleman, he was glowing light, and he was a master con artist and manipulator, he took pathological lying to a level so advanced that when I became aware of his lies, I didn’t bother questioning him. I can’t put into words the power a narcissist can have over his prey… it’s something that’s not even believable until you actually experience it. I even read up on the disorder while he was courting me, and continued throughout the relationship, only I didn’t believe a word I read as being applicable to Ben. I believed it was a “spectrum” disorder like autism, Ben being only a slight big effected. Or maybe I’d gotten it all wrong I thought, there were soooo many times when I was certain he’d done something horrible to me, only to have him come over with a smile on his face, saying he forgave me for going overboard regarding whatever it was that I accused him of doing. Perhaps I was wrong about Ben having narcissistic ways? Or perhaps the textbooks got it all wrong? Or perhaps the textbook got it right: I would be the one always apologizing, he would be the one always acting like the victim, and every time I’d catch him in the act he’d gaslight me into doubting myself.

When I expressed concern that I could be scapegoated as the cause of Ben and his boyfriend’s problems, suggesting that it might be easier than facing their actual inner demons, he was quick to reinforce that I was incorrect:

Out of any guy I’d met in my life, Ben turned out to be the best one, I felt so lucky to have him in my life, I was so proud to claim him as my bestie. He was so kind, so thoughtful and so good to me; Ben was definitely wild and crazy but yet well-behaved, he was “just right.” He was social when he needed to be, yet still reserved and perfect to be with one-on-one, which I loved. Ben was always so damn mellow and peaceful. I never saw him get upset, at least not yet in round 2. He was always so polite, never rude, never boastful, he was so humble yet he was secure, he was attractive, he was vivacious sexually, he was everything I needed, everything I’d ever wanted, I felt so comfortable with him and I’d never, ever felt this way in my life, not even with my ex during his fake honeymoon phase – this was truly a gift, I’d finally met my match. It was like Ben had been made just for me almost, nobody had ever complimented me this well. As pathetic as this may sound, my experience with round 2 and Ben was the absolute highlight of my life; I’d do anything for that boy, and he knew it, too. I adored him, and I could tell he loved the attention. It was amazing, and I felt like finally – at last – I’d met a true, loving friend that was meant to be.

I always felt safe when I was with Ben. He always left me feeling like nothing bad could happen to me as long as I was with him. I’m not sure why but I knew he always had my back, no matter what.

Despite Ben not speaking highly of his boyfriend, as I mentioned – sexually – he was far more liberal than I was. On several instances, he’d repeatedly asked me to have a threesome with he and his boyfriend, suggesting it was his fantasy, and it might also help re-spark things at home, also. I kinda said yes – although I didn’t really want to, and Ben knew this, too. I’m not portraying myself to be Mary Magdalene, I have nothing against 3-ways – if it floats your boat, more power to you. But for me, personally, while I’d attempted a few in the past, I found that they weren’t my thing. Ben brought up the topic a handful of times, but I managed to always divert the topic elsewhere.

Then one night Ben came by; I was asleep. He woke me up and said, “Come with me, we’re going to my place and having that three-way.” I was lifeless in bed, I was still half-asleep, I told Ben that I had no interest. But he wasn’t taking no for an answer. And suddenly Ben was pulling me out of Bed, grabbing my clothes, and insisting I come with him. I slept during the ride to Ben’s house and went in. What ensued was the worst attempt at a 3way in history; the whole time I clung to Ben like he was my husband, showing little interest towards his boyfriend. It was a flop; I soon fell asleep and Ben eventually dropped me back in my bed. The next day Ben apologized, although he acted like this 3way had been a success when it was nothing but a total failure. I felt embarrassed, I felt lame; but at the same time I’d warned Ben that I was in need of sleep, not sex, so I tried rather hard to get out of this.

In a few days Ben stopped texting every day like he’d always done; when I continued texting like normal, he became short with me. When I tried talking to him by phone he seemed distant and cold, not saying much before hanging up abruptly. Despite these changes, I was blown to smithereens when everything suddenly did a complete 180 in the blink of an eye.

Ben said he needed space, only he was rather abrupt and vague with his words, he didn’t explain anything at all honestly: he just kinda blurted out that he needed a break out of nowhere, and it went straight over my head initially. Ben needing “time off” seemed odd since he did all the making plans, initiating our time together, all the sex, everything was on his time already – I just took whatever he gave – so he already controlled our time together and our space apart. I wasn’t texting more frequently than before, and he was the one that started doing it daily to begin with. It seemed like a double standard and I couldn’t understand why Ben was blaming me for his sudden change in character. He was suddenly not the person I’d just spent 10 perfect, blissful months with.

Just like in round 1, everything came crashing down in a whirlwind of drama, everything I thought was real and truthful, showed itself to be the polar opposite. Here Ben had set the pace for everything, and the moment I started going along at the same exact pace – I didn’t do anything he hadn’t been doing the entire time – he then slammed on the breaks and didn’t give 2 shits about doing this to me. Why all the sudden was he saying he needed space, and a break, and time to focus on… his boyfriend? Wait a second, who’s that, I thought it was… kinda me? HUH? His boyfriend… that guy who was only described in positive words by me, and not Ben? What, what, what?

Just like in round 1, everything erupted unexpectedly, everything I thought was real, was truthful, showed itself to be the polar opposite. Here Ben had set the pace for everything, and the moment I started going along at the same exact pace – I didn’t do anything he hadn’t been doing the entire time – he then slammed on the breaks and didn’t give 2 shits about doing this to me. Why all the sudden was he saying he needed space, and a break, and time to focus on… his boyfriend? Wait a second, who’s that, I thought it was… kinda me? HUH? His boyfriend… that guy who was only described in positive words by me, and not Ben? What, what, what?

I hadn’t gone after Ben at all; I didn’t have any feelings towards him until he brought up being in love with me. I’m not trying to lay the blame all on him, but in all sincerity, this relationship had been his creation.

He was suddenly a different person, he was exactly the opposite of who I thought he was. Here he’d said he had me exactly how he’d wanted me, how he’d envisioned having me all along since round 1. So what the hell was this going on?

Not once did I ask him to give up time with his boyfriend to be with me, that was all his doing. Never once did I ask him to stay when he’d leave my house to go and pick his boyfriend up. I actually gave Ben good advice on his relationship, it was advice that wasn’t aimed at derailing it either, but rather advice on how to keep things on the positive. I was shocked reading his texts, initially I thought he was joking. But then I realized: Ben was flipping the script, he was painting me out to be the aggressor, the one going after a guy that already had a boyfriend, whereas this had been the opposite of what he said. Was he delusional? How could he not be seeing reality? Our entire relationship was Ben’s creation. But I didn’t read Ben’s mind apparently, and failed to realize that despite his harsh words about his boyfriend, that he was still in love, and they were having issues and he needed space apart to deal with them. Yes, he’d asked me to back off but without any other explanation, it was kinda text-shouted among other things, I didn’t get it at first as it was thrown in among other things. He was so hard to read, often what I read him as being I’d later discover was incorrect.

Suddenly he wasn’t at all understanding and kind like he was prior; suddenly everything changed, and I didn’t seem to know the person I was texting, it was someone totally different. Suddenly my perfect Ben wasn’t so perfect after all, he went off on me like a wild animal showing no mercy, no concern for my feelings at all. This was bizarre, this was strange, this was something out of the twilight zone I never foresaw happening only… it was.

Thinking about Ben’s words that summer, and how much they contradicted all he was saying now… it really hurt, I felt betrayed, I felt beyond confused, I felt like I was in the twilight zone. Only I wasn’t; I was at my house, holding my phone in my hand, shaking. And this was actually happening.

I truly believed Ben viewed me as his second boyfriend, I believed in his promises of our friendship lasting forever, but all of this was suddenly meaningless to him, and I was crushed. The boyfriend without the title, me being on the same playing field as his boyfriend, his selflessness, his kindness, his helping me get better, those were all things he said without me ever enticing him to do so.

Could he have done those all to maliciously ensnare me into letting my guard down and letting him take over my mind with lies? He said these remarks all out of his own free will, how could he suddenly flip-flop like this? I assumed he was under stress and displacing his anger on me at the time. Then several days later I got word that he’d broken up with his boyfriend. I tried to be as polite and understanding as possible, and I told Ben that he’d be missed as we’d initially made plans that Friday night, me tellng him to be good despite the breakup. Only his reaction took me by surprise, it wasn’t something I had expected given my words weren’t rude or mean-spirited.

I didn’t know how to respond; I didn’t know why he was so pissed off… how was I guilt-tripping him with anything? But the next text I sent came back saying that it couldn’t be sent, Ben did exactly what he did in round 1: he blocked me. I was beyond pissed off. This was the ONE thing that I hated more than anything, as it triggered me right back into feeling like I was in the past, in the midst of abuse, and I was livid, I was sad, and I felt desperate, I felt like a part of me died that day.

Ben had broken the one promise I made him agree to in order for me to participate in his vision of us being together. I became angry, and one thing was certain: I was not going to let him get away with it again.

No way in hell.

Ben was going to be held accountable for that one damn promise, after all, I’d stayed true to my word in everything I’d said I’d do for him. Ben came into my life, he’d brought me the warmest, brightest, most intoxicating love I’d ever experienced; he’d made me all these promises I didn’t ask for – and they all were nothing but words in the end. I was somewhere between having a seizure and a panic attack as I tried reaching him by phone using various numbers, only to have him hang up as soon as he heard my voice. If I thought the feeling his first discard left in my stomach was queezie, this was 10 times worse. I was set on a mission to make him keep his word… after all… he knew about the psychopath in my recent past. For him to do something like this, which resembled that incident quite a bit, went against his entire mission statement: to help me get better. This didn’t help me get anything but worse. Why the hell did I even want him in my life if he’d done this to me… twice? Why couldn’t I clearly see the writing on the walls and leave? All it took was noting his smell on my pillow, or anything that reminded me of Ben, and my mind was right back stuck on him. And it wouldn’t stop being stuck either… at least not for quite a while.

First and fourth songs written / performed by me, and as always, for Ben.

Narcissists are very cunning creatures and it is virtually impossible for a ‘normal’ person to wrap their head around this because Narcissists can and do act as if they are perfectly normal, and SANE! They are magicians that use ‘smoke and mirrors’ to get you to BELIEVE in their magic – but in the end you realize it was ALL hocus-pocus!

Click Above For Next Page

Scroll down read about covert narcissism in the Huffington Post.

Imagine that a dear and beloved friend gave you the gift you always dreamed of — your very own Rolex watch! Not only did you treasure the gift, but you have been ecstatic ever since your incredibly generous and kind friend bestowed you with this wonderful and thoughtful gift. Although surprised with the gift, it didn’t shock you, as you were privy to stories about his generosity and kindness to others, who similarly longed for something he was able to give them.

A few months after receiving your gorgeous Rolex, you notice that the crystal has taken on some scratches, which seems unlikely since Rolex watches are known for their scratch resistant sapphire crystals. Three months after that, the unbelievable happens: the watch begins to lose time! You don’t dare mention it to your friend for fear of appearing ungrateful and disrespectful. You choose to keep it a secret, as the watch is more than just a timepiece to you; it is symbolic of the closeness that you and your friend share. After all, you think, it’s not a big deal that your beautiful watch loses only a few minutes a day. No harm, no foul.

To your great surprise, six months after first receiving your cherished gift, your scratched and poorly functioning but beautiful Rolex stops working altogether! Confused but curious, you bring it to a watch repair shop, where you learn that the treasured gift from your treasured friend is a fake; nothing more than a $75, made in China, counterfeit!

With the best intentions, you kindly and sensitively email your friend to let him know he was duped into buying a counterfeit watch. You recommend that he pursue some form of compensation from the criminal jeweler who sold it to him. Although “duped” and “criminal” may not have been the best choices of words, you trust your friend to take it in the spirit in which it’s intended. His response confuses you, as the shared experience of disappointment and frustration you expected was countered by anger and defensiveness. He blames you for prematurely jumping to conclusions, judging him, and being irresponsible and reckless with the valuable gift he unselfishly gave you. The situation gets even more bizarre when you realize that the group of seven men who belong to your shared social circle are carbon-copied on this particular email conversation.

Shocked and dismayed, you reflexively respond to him alone with a firm “chill out” and “back down” message, while asking why he would include the guys from your group in this conversation. This response lights him up like a match thrown into a puddle of gasoline. In a fit of indignant anger, he demands that you return the watch to him so he can disprove your “baseless and vindictive” allegations.

Following your well-meaning attempts to calm him down, diffuse his defensiveness and get him to stop blaming you, you notice that his personality shifts to one that is aloof, cold, and disinterested in hearing anything more about your experience of disappointment. Being confused and stunned by the sum total of his anger and apparent retaliation for your simple heads-up about the watch, you naturally comply by returning the watch to him. You don’t dare challenge his bizarre request because its abundantly clear that doing so would trigger him to an even higher level of histrionic and displaced anger. Plus, you are already embarrassed because all the guys in your group are now privy to this private matter. Little did you know that, by returning the watch, you also forfeited any possibility of clearing your name and restoring your reputation that has been tarnished by this unfortunate and unfair smear campaign.

You will be left trying to reconcile how and why your friend’s empathy, altruism, and sincerity disappeared in an instant and unexpectedly transformed into a laser-focused crusade to hurt you. After careful consideration, you decide to let the whole situation go, as the cards are already heavily stacked against you. Unfortunately, it’s too late and the domino effect can’t be stopped as you learn through the grapevine that your former friend has masterminded a smear campaign that will culminate in an expressed directive to exclude you from all future group activities. The “out of left field” abandonment by your friends will add another layer of trauma and betrayal.

You will be left with a “WTF” set of feelings, while trying to piece together what happened and why. Similar to other victims of covert narcissists, you will sadly realize that your “friend” and the friendship were never real. You may also come to the deeply disappointing conclusion that your counterfeit friend deceived you and others by creating multiple layers of fabricated personality traits, which were designed to benefit him. In other words, you will be shocked at the realization that your friend’s generous, unconditionally loving and altruistic persona was nothing more than an Oscar-worthy performance that was developed, practiced and honed through a long list of other discredited and discarded “friends.”

What you will soon learn is that this beloved friend was always a covert narcissist and the friendship you so dearly appreciated and valued was nothing more than a counterfeit, much like the Rolex watch.

Covert narcissists are masters of disguise — successful actors, humanitarians, politicians, clergy members, and even psychotherapists who are beloved and appreciated, but are secretly selfish, calculating, controlling, and vindictive. They create an illusion of selflessness while gaining from their elevated status. Although they share similar basic traits with the garden variety narcissist, i.e., the need for attention, affirmation, approval and recognition, they are stealthier about hiding their selfish and egocentric motives. Unlike the in your face narcissist, who parades his narcissism for all to see, the covert narcissist furtively hides his real motives and identity.

These narcissists are able to trick others into believing they are honest, altruistic and empathetic individuals. They are successful at pretending to be a more likable version of themselves, knowing that if their true identity was uncovered, they would not be able to maintain the respect, status and prestige that they have so manipulatively obtained.

Compared to overt narcissists, covert narcissists are more reserved and composed. By not advertising their deeper narcissistic values and motives, they are able to achieve their goals, while protecting their innermost insecurities and vulnerabilities. Unlike overt narcissists, they expend a great deal of psychological energy containing or hiding their callous, indifferent, and manipulative inner selves. Even though covert narcissists have repressed the full scope and magnitude of their personality disorder, on a semi-conscious level, they are aware that their fantasies are embarrassing and unacceptable.

Because covert narcissists are able to create and maintain a facade of altruism and unconditional positive regard, they are able to function in positions that are traditionally not attractive to narcissists, e.g., clergy, teachers, politicians, psychotherapists and others. Even though they are able to replicate the known characteristics of these positions, they are often deeply insecure and secretive about their lack of knowledge or inability to perform the most essential tasks. For example, a covert narcissist who is a psychotherapist will have mastered the stereotypical career-specific, idiosyncratic behavior patterns such as reflective listening, supporting and accepting feedback, and gestures that mimic unconditional acceptance.

However, this covert narcissist psychotherapist will be deficient in the most critical area of the job. Although they attempt to demonstrate honesty, sympathy and empathy with their clients, they ultimately fall short. They are simply unable to master the key elements of the position, as they are inherently judgmental, controlling and emotionally aloof. These therapists often become agitated at their clients when challenged or questioned. Clients who do not let them control the process will often trigger a narcissistic injury.

These secretive and slippery narcissists react to their unmasking with the full force of their arsenal of weapons that you would never guess existed. When they perceive a threat to their carefully and meticulously crafted public persona, all bets are off! Since their personal and professional reputation is built on a foundation of lies and misrepresentations, they will protect it by any means necessary. Their reflex to attack the perceived threat is fueled by an adrenaline-infused survival instinct that is no different than if they were cornered by a pack of hungry wolves. They will try to crush the threat, while positioning themselves as the victim of a premeditated vindictive and grievous harm.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ross-a-rosenberg/unmasking-your-counterfei_b_10367886.html

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GAY MUSIC CHART – 2017 week 39

Welcome to the Gay Music Chart, the LGBTQA related music videos TOP 50 actuality and most request.

Vote for your favourite LGBTQA related music videos by leaving a comment for this post on :

YOUTUBE (in the comment section of the video of the week) : https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCz7yfp-xq-b08tD6mAWwclA

BLOGGER : http://gaymusicchart.blogspot.fr

FACEBOOK : https://www.facebook.com/GayMusicChart/

TWITTER : https://twitter.com/GayMusicChart with #GayMusicChart

TUMBLR : http://gaymusicchart.tumblr.com

Here is the recap for this week :

OUT : Benny - Never Apart (LW: 17 / WO: 15 / PEAK: 17)

OUT : PVRIS - What's Wrong (LW: 22 / WO: 13 / PEAK: 01 (x2))

OUT : MRSHLL 마샬 - Circle (visuals) (LW: 25 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 25)

OUT : Tom Bleasby - Where Is The Love (audio) (LW: 27 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 27)

OUT : George Michael feat. Nile Rodgers - Fantasy (Audio) (LW: 31 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 31)

OUT : Bronski Beat - Smalltown Boy (Arnaud Rebotini Remix) (LW: 33 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 33)

OUT : ERASURE - Just A Little Love (Official Lyric Video) (LW: 35 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 35)

OUT : Falko - Undercover (Official Lyric Video) (LW: 37 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 33)

OUT : Mickey Taylor feat. ØMC - In The Night (LW: 38 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 20)

OUT : LP - No Witness (A Night at The McKittrick Hotel) (LW: 40 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 18)

OUT : Detonautas Roque Clube part. Leoni - Dias Assim (LW: 44 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 44)

OUT : Germán Díaz - Dentro de tí (LW: 45 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 42)

OUT : Tuure Boelius - Eikö sua hävetä (LW: 47 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 43)

OUT : Tokio Hotel - Something New (LW: 48 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 48)

OUT : State of Sound - Heaven (LW: 49 / WO: 1 / PEAK: 49)

OUT : Tom Goss - Click (The Interactive Music Video) (LW: 50 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 15)

01 (+ 2) : Kevin Chomat - Sens Interdit (LW: 03 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 01 (x1))

This new single of the French singer reached the top 10 YouTube trending in France. His first album will be released next September 25, 2017.

02 (- 1) : Logic feat. Alessia Cara, Khalid - 1-800-273-8255 (LW: 01 / WO: 6 / PEAK: 01 (x1))

This powerful music video, which is also a promotion for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline, follows a gay teen couple and is the incarnation of the "It Gets Better" slogan.

03 (+ 9) : Kevin Chomat - Un homme à terre (LW: 12 / WO: 33 / PEAK: 01 (x3))

For his third single, the French singer is talking about infidelity, with his boyfriend who cheated on him.

04 (+ 2) : Alvin Point - Il a dit (LW: 06 / WO: 52 / PEAK: 01 (x4))

The first single of the 24 years old singer is talking about a romantic gay love story. The title means "he said".

05 (=) : P!nk - What About Us (LW: 05 / WO: 5 / PEAK: 05)

06 (- 4) : Leon Else - What I Won't Do (Lyric Video) (LW: 02 / WO: 15 / PEAK: 02)

The British singer has recently came out on Facebook.

07 (+ 3) : Lizzo - Good As Hell (LW: 10 / WO: 41 / PEAK: 02)

This is taken from the EP "Coconut Oil".

08 (+ 13) : Harel Skaat - Radio (LW: 21 / WO: 21 / PEAK: 01 (x3))

The Israeli singer has uploaded on his channel a full concert. Go check it!

09 (+ 20) : Autoheart - My Hallelujah (LW: 29 / WO: 09 / PEAK: 11)

10 (- 3) : Wrabel - The Village (LW: 07 / WO: 8 / PEAK: 04)

11 (+ 8) : Michele Bravi - Solo Per Un Po' (LW: 19 / WO: 19 / PEAK: 01 (x1))

12 (+ 1) : Zayn feat. Sia - Dusk Till Dawn (LW: 13 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 12)

This is the new collab of Sia.

13 (+ 26) : Superfruit - Worth it (LW: 39 / WO: 11 / PEAK: 02)

This is the third single of the duo taken from the "Future Friends - Part One" EP. The music video breaks down gender norms with these two young dancers.

14 (+ 14) : GAREK - Stray (LW: 28 / WO: 50 / PEAK: 01 (x2))

15 (NEW) : Maggie Szabo - Don't Give Up (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 15)

In this Canadian music video, a teen couple is going to prom, but one of them isn't really excited about it, until the other let his transgender lover to dress as a men. Part of the proceeds will be donated to the Ali Forney Center which helps LGBTQ youths.

16 (- 12) : Alfie Arcuri - If They Only Knew (LW: 04 / WO: 12 / PEAK: 04)

This is the new music video of the winner of The Voice Australia 2016. What must do a gay man when he's in love with his best male friend, who's dating his best female friend?

17 (- 9) : Eli Lieb - Shangri La (LW: 08 / WO: 9 / PEAK: 03)

Eli Lieb is completely bare in his new music video.

18 (+ 8) : Beth Ditto - We Could Run (LW: 26 / WO: 6 / PEAK: 10)

This is taken from her first solo album "Fake Sugar."

19 (NEW) : Mainland - I Found God (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 19)

This music video shows people running to found their love. Several real LGBT couples are featuring in it.

20 (- 5) : Martin Garrix & Troye Sivan - There For You (LW: 15 / WO: 17 / PEAK: 01 (x1))

21 (NEW) : Charlotte Gainsbourg - Deadly Valentine (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 21)

Charlotte Gainsbourg & Dev Hynes are lifelong lovers for this music video from the French actor and singer.

22 (- 11) : Sam Smith - Too Good At Goodbyes (LW: 11 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 11)

The British singer is back with a new upcoming album.

23 (NEW) : Cassandre - Paris la nuit (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 23)

The French duo sings a love declaration to the city of love. It's perhaps a little cliché, but, as Parisians, we are probably not really objective. Sorry not sorry :)

24 (+ 22) : Ria Mae - Bend (LW: 46 / WO: 6 / PEAK: 07)

This is the new single of the Canadian singer.

25 (NEW) : Pierre Lapointe - Sais-tu vraiment qui tu es (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 25)

This is the new single of the new album "La science du cœur" from the famous Canadian singer.

26 (- 12) : La Prohibida - Baloncesto (LW: 14 / WO: 10 / PEAK: 03)

27(- 18) : Myckael SG - Strong or Best (alternate version) (LW: 09 / WO: 5 / PEAK: 04)

28 (NEW) : Mr John - Neon (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 28)

Instead of covers, this time, the Brazilian singer delivers an original song.

29 (NEW) : Jeffery Austin - Bulletproof (Official Audio) (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 29)

This is the new single of the out former contestant of The Voice 2015 in the USA.

30 (- 14) : Benny - Boys Will Be Boys (LW: 16 / WO: 38 / PEAK: 02)

31 (NEW) : Michele Bravi - Diamanti (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 31)

This is the third single from the Italian singer taken from the album “Anime Di Carta”.

32 (+ 4) : Namuel - Yugoslavia (LW: 36 / WO: 4 / PEAK: 16)

The Chilean singer is back, and is playing Adam and Steve in his new music video.

33 (NEW) : Macklemore feat. Kesha - Good Old Days (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 33)

An unexpected collab.

34 (- 10) : Neon Trees - Feel Good (LW: 24 / WO: 6 / PEAK: 17)

After a break for his first solo album "Excommunication", Tyler Glenn goes back with his band for a new song.

35 (NEW) : Superfruit - Hurry Up (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 35)

This is the ninth single taken from their first album "Future Friends".

36 (+ 5) : Chester Lockhart - Save Me from Myself (LW: 41 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 32)

37 (- 7) : Superfruit - How You Feeling? (LW: 30 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 30)

This is the eighth single taken from their first album "Future Friends".

38 (NEW) : Bjartmar Thordarson - Hringd´í mig (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 38)

This is the new track of the Icelandic singer.

39 (- 7) : MUNA - I Know A Place (LW: 32 / WO: 33 / PEAK: 01 (x2))

The new song of the L.A. queer trio band is an LGBT anthem which imagines a place where none of them would need to be afraid. This is taken from their first album "About U".

40 (- 17) : Greyson Chance - Back on the Wall (LW: 23 / WO: 9 / PEAK: 01 (x2))

41 (RE-ENTRY) : Rainbow Riots - Freedom (LW: - / WO: 8 / PEAK: 12)

This is the second single of the album "Rainbow Riots", an album composed and produced by Swedish Petter Wallenberg with queer artists from Uganda, South Africa, Malawi and Jamaica, to fight LGBTphobia.

42 (NEW) : Perfume Genius - Wreath (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 42)

This is the third single taken from the album "No Shape".

43 (NEW) : Sia - Rainbow ("My Little Pony: The Movie" OST) (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 43)

Team Bronies: paws up!

44 (RE-ENTRY) : Cub Sport - O Lord (LW: - / WO: 4 / PEAK: 17)

This is the debut single of the Australian band from Brisbane, taken from their album "Bats".

45 (- 25) : Marc Devigne - Çà va (LW: 20 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 20)

From the Canadian TV miniseries "Shadowlands", Marc Devigne and Charlie David play a couple whose time together is cut short. Originaly posted on Vimeo.

46 (- 28) : Paris Bang Bang - Poseída (LW: 18 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 15)

The drag queen is from Mexico City.

47 (- 5) : Pabllo Vittar feat. Mateus Carrilho - Corpo Sensual (LW: 42 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 18)

The new song of the famous Brazilian drag queen is with one of the member of Banda Uó. Quente...

48 (- 14) : Brockhampton - Junky (LW: 34 / WO: 2 / PEAK: 34)

49 (NEW) : Michael Perry - Perfect Love (LW: - / WO: 1 / PEAK: 49)

After "Underwear Model", this is his new single.

50 (- 7) : PVRIS - Anyone Else (LW: 43 / WO: 3 / PEAK: 31)

A portion of every ticket sold for their upcoming fall tour will be donated to The Ally Coalition in support of LGBTQ equality.

ALSO NEW THIS WEEK

La Pelopony - Desastres De Un Capítulo Final

Yeyo feat. La Pelopony - Llegará El Día

Johnny Robinson - Flames Of Love (Matt Pop Mix)

The British drag queen is back with a new track.

VELO - Oye Papi

From the album "Cruzin".

Gussy - In Order to Love

This is the new track of the Australian singer.

CRIMER - Badface

This is the third single of the EP "Preach" from the Swiss singer.

Girls' Generation - 소녀시대 All Night

There is three drag queens in this South Korean music video from the most famous kpop girlband.

Ольга Бузова / Olga Buzova - Мало половин / Malo palavin

This Russian music video is full of shirtless dancers hunks.

Mia LJ - Ambiguous

The young singer shows she's attracted to both men and women in her music video.

Conchita Wurst feat. Russkaja - Wanted More (live @ "Willkommen Österreich")

A cover of Betsy from the Austrian drag queen.

Miley Cyrus - Malibu (live @ BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge)

Miley Cyrus performs her track from her own Rainbowland Studios in Malibu.

Miley Cyrus - Younger Now (live @ BBC Radio 1's Live Lounge)

Miley Cyrus performs her track from her own Rainbowland Studios in Malibu.

Miley Cyrus - Week Without You (Audio)

Taken from the album "Younger Now".

Kim Petras - Hillside Boys (Official Audio)

This the second single of the young German transgender singer.

Subside, Brayton Bowman - The Second I'm Rich

Eli Lieb - Kissing Your Tattoos (Lyric video)

J Pee - Jellyfish

After "I'm Not Gay" 4 years ago, this is the new comic song of J Pee, where he thanks a jellyfish to give him the opportunity to realise his dream to pee on his best friend.

Pablo Hernandez - Toys (Parody)

This is a naughty parody of "Boys" by Charli XCX, with Laith Ashley and Manila Luzon in the music video.

Mikey Bustos - I Wear Speedos (Parody)

This is a parody of the song "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi ft.Daddy Yankee.

The Hound - Sissy That Walk (RuPaul Cover)

See you next week and don’t forget to vote for your best LGBTQA music videos ! Here are the rules :

- the music video has LGBTQA related content, in the lyrics or the music video

- the artist is LGBTQA, an LGBTQA icon or eventually ally

- LGBTQA medias talked about it.

2 ) You can’t vote more than 3 songs of a same artist per week.

3 ) In case of an artist who receive votes mostly by a fan base, we will count only one song, in a limited time of 10 weeks of presence in the top.

4 ) You can vote with only one account.

7 ) The votes will close on Thursday, 8 PM, European time.

#GayMusicChart #gay #music #chart #top #videos #singles #lgbt #queer #lesbian #bisexual #drag queen #transgender #2017 week 39

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