#arbiter sports

[maranello]

if you want to make F1 an exclusively British sport you should just say so instead of acting all like you’re a global sport when really the only thing global about what you do is the money you’re willing to take. in THAT regard I can truly see how international Formula 1 is willing to be

#sink england. #i am literally sick of their existence. #society has progressed beyond the need for self-important ex-imperialist fuckers who still think they should be the arbiters of sports #and culture #and news #like why SHOULD F1’s official broadcast essentially be British and we should just accept it as a ‘neutral’ natrative #why should I even give a rat’s ass about whoever sits on their iron throne or whatever

[beesmygod]

who fills the pot holes in “lore olympus”?

the thing about criticism is this: you can absolutely think “too hard” about something intended to be light fare and the delicate balancing act of art criticism is about threading various needles to avoid as many retorts as possible accusing you of opening discussions in bad faith. one of the many ways to obliterate trust in your critical audience is to become so derisively nitpicky that your attempts to draw attention to the pre-existing holes in the setting or the structure of the story will look like petty sabotage. i recognize this is the risk im taking when i get set off by the existence of sports luxury vehicles within a fictional universe created entirely to cater to a specific sexual appetite. indeed, there is no type of pedantry more obnoxious than the sexual pedant.

BUT.

the work doesnt exist in a vacuum. if we’re going to be honest about the work’s intent (or, how the work’s intent explicitly reads to the audience), part of the fantasy is to be completely taken care of. i mean, who among us hasn’t dreamed of this, at least briefly. it’s one of the most fundamental of all human desires. but to be taken care of, in settings which are founded in capitalist societies (everyone groans at my shit), begs the obvious question: where is the money coming from?

author’s note so everyone knows im not insane (hahahaha): i’m not here to argue the virtues of communism over capitalism or imply that depicting capitalism favorably in your comic is a moral failing. it is not capitalism itself that i have a problem with (...in artistic depictions), it is the way that it is invoked within this comic specifically that bothers me; it demonstrates a terminal thread of thoughtlessness that threatens to unravel the entire setting, premise and moral ambiguity of what is being presented as a desirable fantasy. this element is the catalyst that sparks the degradation of the taboo into the unconscionable. 

look i’ll be up front: my primary motivation is that this comic sucks and im a hater. the anti-feminist overtones are their own kettle of fish but the runner up contender for most concerning (oooueerrrg, everyone is groaning again) element is the complete lack of class consciousness. look, i mean concerning in the sense of “why has none of this gone recognized by, like, anyone?” every time i show someone a real LO panel they react like i’m went out of my way to fuck with them in an ultra specific way. it has completely recreated the feeling of being the only person in my friend group watching riverdale, if riverdale were the crown jewel of the WB.

to strip the pretension from the phrase “class consciousness” and put it in plain text: the insertion of modern capitalism into the comic has necessitated the creation of an underclass to serve the gods (the focus of the comic). as a result, the comic has repeatedly needed to justify the abuse, exploitation and acts of dominance over the subjugated class in order for the main cast to remain sympathetic. the author is incapable of envisioning a world that does not operate on disparity, in spite of the immutable fact that the gods are the sole arbiters of seemingly infinite creation.

and i’m capable of comprehending that there are times when a work has grotesquely unlikable asshole protagonists on purpose. it could be argued that the fickle behaviors of the gods is SUPPOSED to be detestable and there are obviously times where that is the intended audience read. but this is not “succession” and the entirety of the work does not indicate that it is trying to create quiet commentary by inviting the audience to draw their own conclusions on the characters by simply presenting them with the truth of their actions and deeds. additionally, if the romantic hero also engages in that behavior and it’s unremarked on or encouraged by the author or the heroine, what is the intended audience read?

regardless, all this to say: i do not want to alter the content of the comic, but to verbalize how it reads to me as an audience member. the purpose of criticism is to demonstrate and encourage reflection and to help refine one’s own perceptions.

okay. right. the cars.

this is minthe. i could write 100000 more words about the treatment of her by the comic and, by extension, the author. her introduction is about as subtle as a brick: she serves as the evil whore foil to persephone’s virgin perfection. her introduction as hades’ randomly abusive, hyper-sexual, and cruel younger girlfriend is contrasted with persephone’s naivete, chastity, and sweetness. shes literally smoking a cigar and wearing lingerie. somehow she is not the hero.

like i said, there’s a lot to unpack with her but i need to stay on target. minthe is a nymph, one of many “beast races” (for lack of a better term) that populate olympus and fulfill menial tasks and jobs. for example, this guy runs a modeling agency.

a modeling agency that include car shows. or...dealerships. its not really clear. anyway: she is introduced to hades in a flashback through his brother zeus who sexually harasses her during her shift.

lol uh. or comes as close as he can without becoming objectively villainous instead of “rakish”. as a result, what plays out is all VERY schoolyard behavior.

he executes a 0/10 prank that still kills for some reason.

and then it happens. “it” isn’t a singular event limited to just the example im about to give. “it” is the complete undercutting of the dramatic and logical tension within the story and “it” happens with alarming frequency as the comic introduces more and more modern elements. each additional luxury vehicle or department story or cell phone comes with the artist being forced to depict the people (or in this case, beast races) providing those services. the author cannot imagine a world where luxury is not predicted on service or a product, even or especially when the existence of the service or product does not make sense.

back to “it”...hades poofs away:

if gods can poof and fly (as its been implied some or all of them can), what in the hell is the purpose of the luxury vehicle on olympus? the beast races are sure as shit not buying them as they are explicitly the working class in every single one of their appearances. what does it run on? who pumps the gas? who services the cars? the streets of olympus have been paved so that cars can be driven so this would suggest the city’s infrastructure was centered around the use of vehicles. does he hire someone to drive him around in it, despite the fact that he can teleport? he and persephone clearly use it to get around even though she can fly. these cars are so successful despite having an extremely limited number of buyers, they make enough money to hire booth babes all day explicitly so they can be sexually harassed by the men (of a superior magic immortal race) buying the cars.

why does an entire seemingly unnecessary industry exist within the confines of the universe?

all of the above questions are overthinking a basic logistical problem with the setting for anyone with a moral center: in order to be served, one must have servants. the entirety of the universe in LO is constructed around not a modern re-imagining of the ancient myth, but instead a lazy and depressing hodge-podge of various products and physical items the author places great value on as status items in the real world. and, sadly, this is not as a bit within the universe. this isn’t setting up any message other than the central one of the comic: love and worth can be quantified with a dollar amount.

hades’ department store (staffed entirely by beast races who are delighted and eager to serve their master) offers a purse that two beast race women drool over, only to be informed:

this scene has a direct and obvious purpose: through it, we establish that hades’ store caters to the ultra-ultra-rich. this is a level of rich that is unobtainable to anyone except the pantheon of gods, whose unique abilities maintain the fabric of reality and thus set the terms for the world they unilaterally control. at best, minthe, a nymph, experiences a fraction of this wealth when sugaring for hades. on the other hand, persephone is the heiress to a cereal empire (who is eating the....?.........you know what dont even get me started on that whole thing) so she is all but assured to be independently wealthy even if she was temporarily without funds during certain events of the comic.

back to the purse: hades and persephone arrive at his own department store so that she can have a restorative shopping montage. she learns a heart-warming lesson about how its okay to be rich in what i think is one of the most gratuitous and absolute dog-brained moments of the entire fucking comic, thus far, including the part where persephone gets big and accidentally steps on (real, human, ancient greek) people and has to go on the lam. her accidental manslaughters evidently require a tribunal and a trial of her peers, which is odd when contrasted with the justice meted out on the beast races indiscriminately and unilaterally by individual gods who act as judge, jury, and executioner.

granted these are not the nice gods (i can think of an event with demeter, persephone’s confusingly controlling mother, specifically, as seen above), but there’s an echo of this behavior when hades bullies two beast race women into divulging information about persephone. in one example, a woman purchases a hair comb from a pawn shop, ignorant that it was a gift from hades and persephone is the one who pawned it for emergency funds. when hades shakes her down and demands where she stole the comb from, she directs him to the pawn shop and he just...takes it. to give it to persephone again. whether or not she was made whole or is even okay with this is completely inconsequential to the author but left me, the reader, in a total lurch. the complete disregard for addressing this within the narrative is less shocking when taken into total account with everything else ive been talking about.

the sequence in which hades takes her on a shopping spree to both improve her mood and express his love was too grotesque for me on every conceivable level. it is not just the shockingly antiquated “women b shoppin!” stereotype presented as a healing process, but the open and shameless conflation of money and love, net worth and self-worth. what possible message could come from this except to reinforce that within the fictional universe of LO, it is the place of the lesser to fawn over what persephone is ultimately entitled to. it is her birthright as the protagonist/self insert and as a literal goddess who determines the creation of food...and nymphs. the underclass. the gods are responsible for the creation of their servants.

the industries exist because they are 1:1 representations of or conductive to what the author considers to be a desirable luxurious fantasy. i do not think there is a more complex reason than that, as that is the reason why the entire comic exists: as a personal love letter to the author’s tastes and desires. and frankly, that’s the point of comics. ALL comic artists should succumb to this desire. what continues to vex and haunt me however is the complete lack of reflection occurring despite the author putting these elements together and presenting them for an audience who then lapped it up without questioning what, specifically, was appealing about this and why. it is by sheer accident that these elements combine together to paint an unflattering picture of a culture that has created artificial disparity for no apparent reason than personal gratification.

my question, is this:

who fills the pot holes on the roads built exclusively so that the gods can drive their luxury cars? why do they do it? to get hades some pussy????

#long post #lore olympus

[antialiasis]

Chess (2018 Kennedy Center revival)

So I was just going to briefly mention all the other different versions of Chess I have consumed in the big essay post I’ve been writing on and off, but there was just too much to say about this one which made it really awkward to fit it in, so fine, here is another individual chesspost. Nearly 7500 words of rambling under the cut, oh my god.

This production represents the latest official full overhaul of Chess. It sports an all-new book written by Danny Strong, also known as the actor who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is some whiplash (Sarah Michelle Gellar is apparently a big Chess fan, too). It was later staged again as a concert with some further modifications in 2021, but I listened to an audio bootleg of the 2018 version. (There exist some videos of it online, but only scattered bits.)

The Story Changes

This version has London’s basic plot structure with the distinctive two chess tournaments (this time four years apart, which is neither the original number nor the actual number of years between world chess championships), but rearranges Act I, adds a lot more quippy dialogue and swearing, reinterprets the characters, and recenters real-world politics in the whole thing — sort of the exact inverse of what Chess på svenska did with the material. It opens with “Difficult and Dangerous Times” to set the scene in the Cold War and features the Arbiter narrating with sardonic omniscient commentary between songs/scenes throughout, which does feel a bit more consistent than the Arbiter suddenly having a narrator role for the duration of one song in Act II.

All the main characters in this version are reinterpreted with significant new background context, which is a very interesting way to rewrite it that I definitely dig in principle. For example, Florence’s first scene here involves Walter threatening her with deportation from the US unless she can make Freddie behave for the duration of the tournament. Most versions of Chess make the political scheming very symbolic and vague — exchanges of mostly unnamed political prisoners or handwaved concessions — but this version is noticeably specific, with specific nuclear arms treaty negotiations that the CIA believes would be negatively affected if Freddie keeps openly antagonizing the Soviets. She tells Walter to go fuck himself (told you it adds more swearing) and that nobody can control Freddie Trumper, but ultimately she doesn’t have much of a choice but to reluctantly play along. This addition recontextualizes her character and her interactions with Freddie in Act I a fair bit — it’s pretty significant, after all, that she is under threat and may lose her home if she doesn’t somehow control what she really can’t.

Meanwhile, Freddie himself here suffers from a full-on mental illness which he takes medication for. Walter asserts on a phone call early that they’re dealing with a “genuine paranoid schizophrenic”, but then later calls him a “bipolar bitch”; I take the blatant inconsistency combined with the obviously insulting nature of these remarks to mean probably we’re not meant to take either of them at face value, but these two lines from Walter are the only ones suggesting any specific diagnosis. (I unfortunately suspect Danny Strong didn’t have a specific condition in mind and research it so much as just slap him with a Generic Ambiguous Mental Illness for which he takes Pills.) One way or another, Freddie’s ambiguous mental illness gives him bouts of intense paranoia, driving him to do things like trashing his and Florence’s hotel room to look for listening devices at one point. Florence keeps insistently, frustratedly telling him to just take his goddamn pills even as he’s in genuine distress; it’s pretty uncomfortable, and also definitely one of those things that are at least more human when his episodes could cost her the only home she has: she’s desperate and in distress too.

(I do kind of feel as if this whole bit would make more sense if Florence and Freddie had a strictly business relationship here to start with, instead of being explicitly portrayed as a couple — when they have a committed intimate partnership going on, one would think Florence getting deported would also be pretty obviously significant for Freddie, and Florence quietly playing along with the CIA and crossing her fingers that she can indirectly coax him into behaving with seemingly no serious thought given to whether it’d be better to just tell him why he needs to stop feels stranger. The scene with Walter sounds like Walter/the CIA are not aware of their romantic relationship and Florence wants to keep it that way — they both refer to Freddie strictly by his full/last name and as “her player” — so I guess Walter would have assumed she wouldn’t tell him, but surely the calculus would at least look a bit different to Florence herself. Even if it just prompts her to realize Freddie would still be liable to react by becoming even more erratic and vocal about his paranoias, that feels like it’d be significant enough, at least for her feelings on this relationship going forward, that it never actually coming up or being suggested within the story starts to feel marginally odd. Not a major complaint, though, just a bit of overthinking.)

Freddie in general is noticeably portrayed much more sympathetically here than usual throughout. Where other versions of Chess tend to present Freddie as an attention-seeking drama queen who plays up ludicrous arbitrary demands for money and press, here things like his walkout from the first chess game are made to come from a much more genuine place: he has major sensory issues and is intolerably thrown off balance by distracting noise and lights (which really are deliberately arranged to sabotage him). “Florence Quits”, the song with the misogyny verse, usually reads as being triggered by his jealousy and inability to accept that Anatoly’s just playing better than him, but this version makes it feel more about how he feels persistently gaslit about the ways he’s being sabotaged than anything else: he accuses the Soviets of having a hypnotist in the front row to throw him off (which they do, and Freddie literally saw him and recognized him) and Florence of working for the CIA (which she has been, if not by choice) while they deny it and brush it off, and the tense opening notes of the song play under him desperately yelling “You’re lying to me! You’re all lying to me!” (Which doesn’t make the misogyny okay, obviously, but it does make it feel more like a desperate, paranoia-fueled lashout where you don’t know how much he really means all that.)

When he subsequently forfeits the match against Anatoly, he makes a speech that sounds absolutely despairing where he says chess has been taking a toll on his health since he first became champion at eleven years old, and he doesn’t feel he can trust anyone, even himself. In Act II, before “The Interview”, he even actually apologizes to Florence for how he treated her; heck, his motivation for going so hard after Anatoly in “The Interview” itself is portrayed as being that he is genuinely disgusted by Anatoly leaving his family so callously (which is a lot of fun given Freddie’s own issues about his father leaving him and his mother behind) and wants Florence to hear the truth about what a despicable man he is, which is still unpleasant to her but clearly comes from a much more sympathetic place than either simple spite or reluctantly complying with Walter’s orders.

As for Anatoly… he was taken from his parents when he was a small child to be groomed by Molokov and the KGB into becoming a chess champion, and he’s well aware from his very first scene that the state had killed the previous Soviet champion after Freddie unseated him. (Freddie excoriates the press early on for not covering why the former champion disappeared off the face of the Earth because they’re too busy bashing Freddie, which sounds like paranoia, but the narrative has actually told us Freddie is right and they really did execute him but no one but Freddie seems to notice or care — another way in which Freddie is jarringly sympathetic here. In general, Freddie is portrayed as paranoid, and the other characters treat him like he’s just paranoid, but the narrative keeps proving Freddie’s paranoia right.)

Anatoly, though, isn’t afraid of the same fate, because “The state cannot execute a man… that is already dead.” (This general sentiment could press my buttons, but it just feels super corny and melodramatic the way it’s presented and performed, especially with that dramatic pause in there.) He is deeply depressed, thinks his marriage to Svetlana is fake and his kids hate him, and says repeatedly in Act I that he hates chess and just wants to be free of it, though he also describes a particular championship match he watched as the only time he’s felt love. At the end of Act I, he defects to the UK along with Florence as usual (his defection fully blows up the treaty Walter was worrying about despite Anatoly’s victory, so Florence’s refugee visa is indeed revoked, and that’s why they end up in the UK). Theoretically he should be free of chess now, but it bothers him intensely that he only won by forfeit (here they never finished playing a single match), resulting in him returning to defend his world champion title, and win it ‘properly’, four years later in Bangkok against Viigand.

Unknown to Anatoly, by Act II, after the election of Ronald Reagan, the Soviets are extra on edge and believe a planned NATO military exercise is actually the US mobilizing for a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union. Walter tries to convince Molokov it’s just an exercise; Molokov insists unfortunately the generals are going to believe it’s an invasion and be ready to retaliate unless Viigand wins the championship (if Viigand wins they will take it as a ‘sign of goodwill’ from the US, which will change their minds on the apparent invasion because, uhh, unclear). Throughout Act II, the larger stakes in this version are set up to be that if Anatoly should win the match, the Soviets are liable to start a nuclear war.

Does Walter go to Anatoly to frankly tell him that apparently the Soviets have lost their minds and are basically threatening nuclear war over a chess match and try to convince him to throw on that basis? Does Molokov realize that if he’s telling Walter to go rig the chess match so the generals will call it off, he clearly doesn’t actually believe that the US is about to invade, so probably he should be trying to convince the generals not to go for the nuclear option himself? No, of course not; this is Chess, so we have to have the songs that are in Chess. So instead, Walter and Molokov just go through the same indirect schemes as usual to unbalance Anatoly and convince him to throw the game, with some minor twists. Molokov actually actively threatens Svetlana with being sent to a gulag to die if she doesn’t convince her husband to return — and Svetlana does straight-up tell Anatoly this, only for Anatoly to brush her off and tell her they won’t do that. Florence learns the same from Walter and initially dismisses him, and fully doesn’t believe him about her father being alive, but does ultimately sympathize with Svetlana and worry for her, which I like. But Anatoly is obsessed with winning this championship above all else and fully convinced Molokov is bluffing.

In the end, he plays the game to win, oblivious to the nuclear threat; as he checkmates, Walter makes a desperate phone call to his superiors to call off the training exercise. (Why he didn’t just do that immediately when Molokov told him the Soviets were taking it as an attack, instead of spending all this time playing along with this elaborate chess mind game, is a mystery.) Only… they don’t, and the Soviets watch with their fingers on the nuclear button, but ultimately they don’t fire. The Arbiter’s narration informs us this was the closest the world ever came to destruction, even closer than the Cuban missile crisis, and that this then served as the wake-up call that prompted negotiations about nuclear deescalation.

Anatoly, meanwhile, returns to the Soviet Union as usual, this time successfully exchanging himself for Florence’s imprisoned father, and Walter gives the two of them visas so that they can return to the US together.

Broad thoughts

I feel profoundly weird about the mixing of real-life history and completely fictitious alternate history here — you can’t just assert in narration that the fictional events in your musical were what taught the US and Soviet Union that maybe they should just talk to each other, while making a specific comparison to an actual thing that really happened, after spending the musical asserting that the Soviets murdered chess players for losing the world championship. I think mixing history and fiction can work fine if we can imagine that for all we know this is what really happened, or alternatively that this is what might have happened in some alternate universe similar to but distinct from ours. But here, we’re creating highly significant and publicized events that are obviously fictional, making it absurd to pretend this is what really happened, while also presenting these fictional alternate-universe events in objective hindsight narration alongside real events that happened in the real world and as a supposed cause of them. This ending narration just feels like it’s weirdly trying to have its cake and eat it too.

All in all, though, I think this is definitely one of the most interesting efforts to rewrite Chess. It definitely has something it’s going for, there are several neat ideas in it, and in particular I appreciate that it tries to give extra attention to the characters, more context to their actions, and more messy, humanized depth, inner conflict, and complicated motivators and stressors behind what they do. I genuinely enjoy what it’s doing with Freddie in Act I, in particular, even though it feels somehow both jarringly like it’s woobifying him (I genuinely think he ends up coming across as the most sympathetic of the three mains here, with so much of his erratic, childish and unpleasant behaviour being recontextualized to be more understandable and the way his hatred of the Soviets keeps being validated by the narrative) and like the narrative is weirdly harsh on him (this much more sympathetic Freddie who suffers from an actual mental illness is treated like absolute irredeemable scum by every other character including the fourth-wall-leaning narrator, even more than usual).

I also think the restructuring of Act I was pretty solid for the most part, though there’s definitely some awkwardness, like how Freddie’s expanded encounters with the press sort of clumsily repeat the same beats a bit. On the one hand, I can get what Danny Strong was going for in choosing to introduce everyone first and then go into “Merano” instead of doing several minutes of narrative meaninglessness before the main characters are even introduced; on the other hand, that kind of just half-defeats the sole original purpose of “Merano”, which is to provide a very jaunty more stereotypical musical theater song so that Freddie can be introduced via barging in and interrupting it with his very different vibe, and if I were Danny Strong I would definitely have just removed “Merano” at that point. But the “Difficult and Dangerous Times” opening works great, and it nicely avoids the “almost nothing of note happens for nearly forty minutes” and “several meaningless fluff songs in a row” problems of the London script, introducing conflict and stakes early and keeping the narrative going.

Ultimately, though, a lot of what it’s trying to do doesn’t quite come together to me, and some of it is variously misguided or just strange.

The Politics

To start with, I can definitely get wanting to emphasize the role of Cold War politics in the narrative, and I basically enjoyed the increased political focus and higher stakes in Act I — but I don’t think making Anatoly unwittingly almost start a nuclear war works here, or fits properly into this narrative at all. The Soviet generals have to be holding idiot balls; Molokov has to be holding an idiot ball; Walter has to be holding the biggest idiot ball of all; and most importantly, the ludicrously massive stakes being pasted on top of the match despite none of the main characters even knowing about it means we zoom thoroughly out of the character drama of the situation: “Endgame” just becomes grotesquely trivial with that hanging over it without Anatoly’s knowledge, rendering the actual drama of the climactic song completely irrelevant to what’s really at stake.

I also dislike, in a version that emphasizes the politics, how distinctly slanted it is. One of the things that I like in the London strain of Chess is that Walter and Molokov are both slimy, manipulative bastards in different ways, both sides’ political actors cruelly toying with the lives of the players for their own impersonal ends; the righteousness of each state as a whole doesn’t really matter to this story, only the impact that the whole conflict and the mutual scheming has on the main characters’ lives. But in this version, the Soviets and Molokov are cartoon villains who literally abduct children to force them into chess camp and then murder them if they don’t win the world championship, while Walter may be a condescending asshole who’s willing to threaten Florence but is distinctly the ‘good guy’ in his interactions with Molokov, which comprise most of his screentime, especially in Act II. Walter even gets a humanizing moment where he explains he has a nine-year-old son and has nightmares about him suffering a nuclear winter (Molokov, meanwhile, tells Walter in Act I that Anatoly is like a son to him but could not more obviously not care about Anatoly at all when he proudly presents his new champion material Viigand in Act II). I just find it really detrimental to Chess’s narrative to make it about Soviets Bad, US Good, and more so the more you focus on that — to whatever extent you highlight the politics in this story, it should be done in a way that’s about how the political machinations of the Cold War impact the character drama at the center of it, and it’s distracting when instead you make it into a loosely related B-plot about Walter’s desperate diplomatic efforts to stop the evil Soviets from destroying the world with their shortsightedness.

I think a successful more politically-focused Chess could definitely exist, but I think it’s always going to function best if Walter and Molokov feel at least narratively like just about equal scumbags. It’s not even impossible to imagine nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction coming up in the course of it — but it needs to be using that to make us enraged at all of this on behalf of Anatoly/Florence/Svetlana/Freddie, not enraged at Molokov on behalf of Walter.

The Character Work

Meanwhile, I do basically like the setup and recontextualization done for all of the main characters in Act I, but unfortunately none of them quite delivered as well as I hoped in the end.

Let’s start with Florence. I actually quite liked the deportation threat, putting Florence herself under personal pressure in a way she usually isn’t. I dig characters being put through the wringer and making decisions under stress. But the story doesn’t quite do anything with that other than using it as silent context behind her early interactions with Freddie and technically as the reason she and Anatoly move to the UK offscreen. We don’t, for instance, ever see Freddie learn that that’s why she moved or that he was unwittingly indirectly responsible for that, or otherwise address that in any way, and as far as Florence in the rest of the story is concerned, it might as well never have happened — we never see her having any kinds of feelings on it, or even confronting Walter about that nasty little part he played in her life when she meets him again (she doesn’t even comment on it when he offers her the chance to go back to the US at the end!). To an extent this is, of course, because Florence being deported was never originally part of the story of Chess, so of course it doesn’t come up in any song or have any significant specific impact on the core series of events — but if you’re going to add it in at all, you really ought to be taking that somewhere in the rest of your additions that isn’t just briefly handwaving that she gets to go back at the end.

Like Long Beach, this version brings Florence’s father back at the end — but unfortunately, it feels really unearned here. Compared to other London variants, it actually ditches the bit of “The Deal” where Florence is tangibly emotional and riled up by Walter’s offer of her father — she fully dismisses the idea of her father being alive as bullshit, and instead it’s Svetlana who moves her to have doubts when she sees her begging Anatoly to return on video and realizes Svetlana still loves him. I do really like that, by itself, and it’s probably my favorite thing about this version’s portrayal of Florence; her empathizing with Svetlana to the point of feeling genuinely guilty for having taken her husband from her, and believing maybe the right thing to do would be if he went back to Svetlana for her sake, is actually very good, serves as a great lead-in to “I Know Him So Well”, and makes Florence’s character feel far more sympathetic in a production where she’s otherwise pretty lacking in that department. But it leaves us with no emotional connection whatsoever to Florence’s father — we’ve only heard her mention him twice before Walter’s offer, very briefly, in Act I, and not really with any sense that she misses or is all that invested in him. Seeing her reunite with him means nothing for her or her arc; it just comes out of left field, and winds up being another thing slanting this version towards Good Guy Walter, Bad Guy Molokov, what with Walter offering her visas back to the US for both of them seemingly out of the goodness of his heart.

It would have been possible to actually build up to this in a way that would make it satisfying. Florence and Anatoly have several conversations; we could have used some of those to have Florence actually talk about her father and how she feels about him being gone, and that could have been part of building up her relationship with Anatoly, made it meaningful that Anatoly’s parting gift to her is to ensure her father’s return. I suppose Danny Strong’s thought process may have been that if he built up Florence’s father too much, that should become her main concern once Walter brings that into it, and he wanted her concern to be about Svetlana instead, which I guess is fair; it also means Anatoly only really has to dismiss the potential harm to one other person in his obsession with the winning the game. But if you do make the decision to not build up her father, then bringing her father back is not an ending that makes any sense, and there was no need to do this — they could have easily cut out all suggestion of her father being alive entirely and it would only have made things smoother. I think the only reason she gets her father back in this one is in some hasty effort to make Florence’s ending less bleak, but because it doesn’t have any emotional resonance, it’s just not the right way to do that here.

Speaking of Florence and Anatoly, the romance here… once again has some neat, interesting things it’s going for but doesn’t quite come together as a whole. The two of them do have some actual conversations where they bond a bit, which is already a marked improvement over the default London script — but their very first conversation features Anatoly asserting out of nowhere that Florence has “a way of brightening his spirit”, despite not even knowing her, which isn’t super convincing and just comes off kind of creepy-awkward. Florence asserts a few times that he’s sweet and kind, but we don’t really see much of him actually coming across as sweet or kind — his lines tend to be either melodramatic or sardonic moping interspersed kind of jarringly with awkward jokes. He’s less charming or sweet and more like a lonely, kicked dog, which is fine if Florence is into that but doesn’t quite make her descriptions of why she likes him ring true.

This production actually goes back to the concept album a bit when it comes to Florence and Anatoly — namely, more than political manipulation and external pressures forcibly tearing them apart from the outside, there’s a more substantial internal tension between them as Anatoly genuinely simply prioritizes winning the chess match over her and dismisses her as she tries to question him about Svetlana. The two approaches can both work but do different things for the narrative; this internal approach puts more focus on the personal conflict and character drama and makes the relationship more interesting, which is definitely good, and in principle I think this is built up to in a pretty solid way here — Anatoly, raised to become a chess champion to the exclusion of all else, being maddened by the notion of not actually beating Freddie in Act I and needing to prove he deserves the championship to himself in Act II before he can feel “free from chess” works as a coherent reason for him to be so strikingly, unhealthily obsessive about it.

But I think the biggest problem is that Florence and Anatoly individually don’t hit well enough as characters to create investment in them. Florence is ultimately not developed enough and mostly just acts kind of unpleasant, especially to Freddie, all the way up until that Svetlana bit in Act II. More importantly, I just can’t like or understand or sympathize with Anatoly at all, beyond recognizing that core of what his arc is going for. Part of it is probably down to the writing of his lines, which I’m just not a fan of in general. I already named one example from his first scene. Here’s how Anatoly and Florence’s very first conversation starts:

ANATOLY: It’s not his fault. This game drives us all crazy. FLORENCE: I’m fine. Aren’t you even a little bit scared? ANATOLY: Of Trumper? FLORENCE: No, that they’ll kill you if you lose. ANATOLY: Oh. To quote the great Leo Tolstoy, “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.” FLORENCE: What does that mean? ANATOLY: I don’t know exactly, but it is very Russian.

I just don’t find this dialogue very convincing. Why is he reciting a dramatic irrelevant quote if he doesn’t know what it means and just thinks it’s “very Russian”? It feels like a generic quippy exchange off a snarky TV show. Does Anatoly use humour to cope with his situation? Not really; this is pretty much the only time he says anything that might be taken as that. This feels like a joke that’s there only to get a laugh out of the audience, not because Anatoly would actually tell it — and consequently, it doesn’t tell us anything real about Anatoly. Meanwhile, Florence responds to this with “Oh, you’re funny,” as if that’s one of the reasons she falls for him when I would decidedly not name that as a character trait he has. I feel like most of his dialogue just doesn’t have a great sense of character — in stark contrast to Freddie, who oozes character. I can’t get a good sense of who he is and how he thinks. He’s just there. And this also makes it harder to see what Florence sees in him and believe in the relationship.

Moreover, this Anatoly just comes across as kind of a terrible person, not in the fun coherent intentional way Freddie is a terrible person but in a flat, confusing and kind of unintentional-seeming way. Svetlana here is actually really sympathetic, with lovely little additional bits of dialogue that make her feelings hit harder (her voice as she tells Anatoly that “You left us!” breaks my heart), and this is possibly my favorite version of Svetlana in any Chess. But Anatoly is really, really terrible to her, by which I don’t even mean the cheating on her but the bit where he keeps angrily insisting to her face that she never loved him and she brainwashed their children to hate him and of course they’re not going to kill her (hey, Anatoly, guess who’s already well aware that the Soviet government in this universe is not above executing people over chess?).

And even that could be made understandable, given his situation — he could just be in hard denial about it because the thought of them having been suffering with him gone and being punished for his actions is so horrific he just shuts it down — but there’s never any sense that that’s what’s really going on. We don’t see him privately upset about the possibility later, for instance — he just keeps insisting the same and dismissing Svetlana to Florence, too. We know it’s not that it’s true — we see Svetlana admit to Molokov that even though he ruined her life and she never wants to see him again she still loves him, and we hear her sing “Someone Else’s Story” and “I Know Him So Well”. Nor do we ever get any hint at exactly what Svetlana or his kids did to make him think this of them, if anything (his own kids!). Anatoly just seems to sort of bitterly, adamantly believe this for no reason at all. And that makes it impossible to empathize with. Okay, sure, Anatoly, you were taken from your family as a child, but that really doesn’t even start to explain any of this. There could have been ways of making it feel at least believable, tragic in a deeply fucked-up way, but the story here just doesn’t do the work. And once again, Anatoly being so unpleasant for no reason just makes it harder to feel at all invested in his relationship with Florence or sad when they part.

The best fix here isn’t quite obvious, and I can’t say I envy Danny Strong trying to put all his neat little ideas together and make them work. If Anatoly were to appear substantially conflicted about Svetlana and put any real stock in Molokov’s threat, that would render “Endgame”, where he doubles down anyway, kind of jarring and inexcusable as he’d be not just refusing to return to her but refusing to care if she is killed. So in order for this to properly work with “Endgame”, he probably does need to be very deep in denial about whether they’d really kill her. I think what I would do, if I were writing this plot where groomed-as-a-chess-champion Anatoly knows the Soviets killed Boris Ivanovich and they’ve threatened to kill Svetlana too, is to emphasize better how irrational Anatoly is being and try to show it more as a consequence of growing up among the constantly plotting KGB.

Let him go off on a proper paranoid rant to Florence about the reasons why he thinks Svetlana is just plotting against him, and some innocuous things he saw his kids do once that mean she brainwashed them. When Florence tries to challenge him on how batshit he sounds, he just storms out, saying she’s being taken in by their lies and just wants to sabotage him, and disappears — and she doesn’t see him again until he appears at the final game and plays this manic, desperate match while insisting to himself that Svetlana and Florence both just never understood him and hated his success. Afterwards, we can perhaps see him finally, quietly asking Molokov if they’re really going to kill her, showing that on some level he already knew the threat might be real and had just firmly blocked it out (in the actual ending as it is Molokov simply tells him unprompted that she really will be punished unless he comes back, and he just asks why with no addressing of his previous adamant insistence that that wouldn’t happen). His and Florence’s final conversation could then involve a bit more of a reckoning with that and with what his relationship with Svetlana was really like, through a more honest lens.

I’m actually pretty tickled by this scenario because that would really drive home a pretty fun parallel between Anatoly and Freddie — which in hindsight I think this version must in fact have been trying for, but didn’t quite do in a focused enough way for it to really hit. Anatoly and Freddie are both chess players with deeply abnormal childhoods and bouts of paranoia that cause them to behave in toxic ways, which ultimately drives Florence away from both of them.

This production shows the first chess game as the “Chess Game” instrumental playing under Freddie and Anatoly having alternating inner monologues about the game and their issues, deliberately drawing a comparison between the two of them; they both say they hate chess, that they don’t feel like real human beings. It’s not exactly subtle, but I liked the way this was used to build up their respective brain gremlins and was intrigued by the parallel being set up. I didn’t feel they ultimately did much with the parallel, though, because the story then didn’t really continue leaning into it much from there. By emphasizing this Anatoly’s paranoia as paranoia and not just as him legitimately thinking the marriage was never real and the KGB wouldn’t kill her, we could properly build the story around that parallel, and I would genuinely dig that.

The one place after the chess match where the actual thing does sort of try to get at the Anatoly/Freddie parallel again is in the dialogue scene that precedes “Endgame”. This scene is not sung (though it has the “Chess Game” instrumental in the background, which connects it neatly to that previous bit comparing the two of them), but it’s clearly based on “Talking Chess”: Freddie approaches Anatoly to tell him Viigand’s weakness lies in his King’s Indian Defense, and:

ANATOLY: Why are you helping me? FREDDIE: Jesus Christ! Am I the only one who cares about this game? ANATOLY: It’s more than a game now. There is so much more at stake than who wins or loses. FREDDIE: No! No, winning is everything. Fuck politics! Fuck the KGB, fuck the CIA, fuck them all! We are the ones who have dedicated our lives to chess. We are the ones who have given up everything for greatness — our childhoods, our sanity, our loves. Anatoly, we’ve sacrificed everything. They’ve sacrificed nothing. What’s the number one rule of a chess champion? ANATOLY: Play to win. FREDDIE: As long as you do that you can never lose, even if you do.

Much as I love “Talking Chess”, though, this on the surface similar scene just didn’t feel right in this context when I listened to it. In Anatoly’s last scene here, he told Florence firmly that he just wanted to win and that his marriage with Svetlana was never real and it’s all KGB mind games. Him going “It’s more than a game now, there’s so much more at stake” suddenly now comes out of nowhere — if he believes that now, it could only be if he actively reconsidered something offscreen, but he doesn’t say anything elaborating on what he’s thinking now or what he might have reconsidered or why, just that vague, generic line that contradicts everything he’s expressed up until this point. It’s another example of Anatoly’s dialogue just feeling really flat and meaningless to me — his lines here don’t say anything, just serve as vague filler to prompt Freddie onward. And because unlike London proper the setup leading up to this is all about him already being absolutely determined to win the game at all costs, this just feels redundant, unnecessary, going through the motions of something that’s in London without realizing that with the changed context it doesn’t quite make sense anymore.

I think that’s unfortunately the case with Freddie a bit here too. I enjoyed Act I’s quite different take on Freddie, and his establishing narration for Act II petulantly stating Anatoly won the championship last year “by forfeit, I might add”, and “The Interview” is recontextualized in a very fun way as I mentioned before — but after that it feels like Danny Strong doesn’t quite know what to do with Freddie anymore and just has him sort of arbitrarily go through the motions of London in a way that doesn’t necessarily hang together with everything he’s established of Freddie so far. It made sense that this Freddie, despite being decidedly hostile towards Walter and the CIA, conducted the interview to show Florence what a bastard Anatoly is — he’s not doing it for Walter, he’s got his own reasons to want to do it once Walter’s shown him the Svetlana video. But I find it a lot harder to swallow that this Freddie — whose usual problem seems to be that he’s compulsively blunt about how he really feels — would then be easily persuaded to play his part in “The Deal”, which involves exaggeratedly trying to be all buddy-buddy with Anatoly. Maybe if there was better setup around it, like with “The Interview” — but “The Deal” only has seconds of kind of half-assed leadup here, and from there it moves directly into “Pity the Child” (after a segue featuring the recording of Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita, because nuclear war).

Freddie’s next appearance after that, then, is this “Talking Chess”-esque dialogue where he’s realized the parallel between the two of them, how they’ve both sacrificed everything for chess and the political schemers have sacrificed nothing and that’s why he should play to win. I can appreciate how the low point of “Pity the Child” would trigger that particular realization, contemplating how much he lost and sacrificed to achieve his status in the game and perhaps afterward realizing Anatoly is the only other person here who might understand that. That feels like it basically tracks and is interesting.

But… it also means that fun very specific contempt for Anatoly in particular based on him having left his family like Freddie’s own father did is just kind of… gone, I guess, or at least Freddie doesn’t consider it relevant enough for it to stop him from going out of his way to pep Anatoly up for the game with no mention or hint of it. (At least Freddie probably isn’t aware of the threats made against Svetlana in particular, so he doesn’t know Anatoly winning would shatter his family even further.) And we’ve lost the bit in “Talking Chess” where the notion of the political scheming actually leading to Viigand winning the match just personally offends Freddie because Viigand is not even that good; instead Freddie is just putting forward “Play to win” as some kind of general inviolable chess principle, which is kind of generic and not nearly as characterful, in my opinion. I’m not saying we ought to have had the “Viigand is mediocre” bit here — I don’t think it would quite fit in for this Freddie, whose feelings about chess itself are very conflicted and who is more concerned with showing up these political hacks who have sacrificed nothing while they sacrificed everything — but as a Freddie moment I would really have wanted to end on something stronger there than this vague assertion that “The number one rule of a chess champion is to play to win.”

Like in London, this is Freddie’s last substantial scene, but he does have a part in “Endgame”, and it’s also an interesting one: he gets Sixty-four squares / they’re the reason you know you exist (but not the preceding How straightforward the game…), but also a couple of other verses usually sung by the chorus, and the lines he gets are clearly very purposefully chosen to reinforce that final resolve regarding the sacrifices they’ve made for greatness, which I really appreciate: Listen to them shout / They saw you do it / In their minds no doubt / That you’ve been through it / Suffered for your art and in the end a winner and They’re completely enchanted / But they don’t take your qualities for granted / It isn’t very often / That the critics soften / Nonetheless, you’ve won their hearts / How can we begin to / Appreciate the work that you’ve put into / Your calling through the years / The blood, the sweat, the tears / The late, late, nights, the early starts?

All in all, Freddie is still definitely my favorite part of this Chess, but while the parallel itself is neat it’s too muddled and I find the second half of Act II pretty uneven for him. What would I do if I were writing this bit?

I’m not totally sure how I’d want to tackle “The Deal”, but as for the “Talking Chess”-but-not scene: I would ditch the bit where Freddie is trying to advise Anatoly on strategy and the bit where Anatoly is apparently suddenly not determined to play to win just so Freddie can then tell him he should be again. None of that is contributing anything in what this version has been building up. Instead, they just sort of bump into each other, Anatoly fresh off his paranoid rant to Florence about Svetlana, Freddie fresh off “Pity the Child” and the strange realization Anatoly might be the only person who’d understand him a little bit. At first they just sort of stop and look at each other. Freddie starts, guarded, with some kind of oblique accusatory prod about the leaving his family thing, which he still deeply resents.

Anatoly has calmed down now, but he tells him what he told Florence: that it was always a fake marriage, a fake family, that the video was just a lie set up for him by the KGB, that Svetlana had brainwashed their children to despise him.

This incidentally plays into Freddie’s existing preconceptions pretty well. He’s probably not instantly convinced but it checks out enough he’s willing to reluctantly leave it alone for now. Probably mutters something like, “Fucking Soviets.”

Anatoly says something like, aren’t you going to try to make me a deal to get me to throw the match and go back? Freddie says no, fuck that. Says the whole bit about how we are the ones who have dedicated ourselves to chess, who have sacrificed everything, childhood, sanity, love, and they’ve sacrificed nothing. Why should we listen to those CIA and KGB assholes? Draws out that parallel. The two of them are probably standing in symmetrical positions on the stage.

Anatoly just nods slowly, agreeing. “I would have beaten you.”

Freddie scoffs and says, “Dream on,” but not quite with the spiteful arrogance he would’ve said it in Act I.

Then they part, and we move on to “Endgame”. The scene isn’t about Freddie helping Anatoly, or about Freddie convincing Anatoly to go for the win; it’s about the Freddie/Anatoly parallel, about Freddie realizing it and in his profound loneliness finding a smidge of connection with this guy he hated because he’s the only one who sort of Gets It, and about showing how Anatoly’s conviction has developed since the first chess match where part of his inner monologue went, “I can’t beat him, he’s too good.” Anatoly is so ready to prove that he really is the world’s best chess player.

Conclusion

Man, this version is so interesting. It’s a mess, but it’s a fascinating mess with a bunch of tasty potential and a real sense that Danny Strong had some genuine thoughts on what the show was missing and how to rework it to fix that, even where his attempts were ultimately confused and don’t succeed. In some ways it’s the most me-core version of Chess and in other ways it’s deeply antithetical to me and in most all ways it’s trying to do something neat but does it in a flawed way. Special shoutout to this Freddie, who honestly deserves better than this Florence.

#musicals #chess musical #chess the musical #ramble #review

[ddarker-dreams]

Nexus Character Database.

"Hey, Lear, why are you ignoring my texts again? What if I was getting robbed at gunpoint and needed your help?"

"Why would they let you use your phone during a robbery, Nona?"

"Stop getting all wrapped up in the little details. The important thing is that you check what I sent."

"Alright, alright, let's see... huh. A personality test? Aren't those a pseudoscience?"

"What a lame thing to say. Just take it already. I'll tell you what Our-Lord-And-Savior-The-Exalted-One got if you do. Woah, geez, calm down, at least let it load!"

Nexus index.

Name: Lear (Nickname given by Miss Phaeales, birth name name is Vincent Metellus) Age: 118 Species: Nymphalian Faction: LOTUS-EATER World: Eris Path: Abundance Combat type: Ice Birthday: June 28th Sexuality: [First] Phaeales (he’s het) Height: 5′8 Hair color: Sandy blonde Eye color: Blue, with a white ring around his pupils Favorite animal: Penguins Favorite food: Pasteli, hot cocoa with marshmallows Least favorite food: Gummies, green olives Favorite things: Cooking, baking, gardening, sewing, mixology, sales at the food market and his red hairpins. Least favorite things: Group chats with more than three people, ads, sports and anything that causes Miss Phaeales distress. Clothing style: Casual. Lots of sweaters, turtlenecks, and the occasional trench coat. Prefers warm neutral colors. MBTI: INFP

Lear is considered by his co-workers to be a diligent yet reserved worker. He rarely calls out sick, never slacks off, and can get along with anyone. Most sigh in relief when they're put on the same shift as him. He wordlessly carries out tasks without anyone's prompting. Despite his solid reputation at the LOTUS-EATER, not much is known about him. He doesn't accept invitations to social outings or seek the companionship of others. These requests are turned down with a soft smile and apologetic look, which makes harboring any ill-will toward him difficult.

In his heart, he can't bring himself to enjoy the freedoms deprived from the one he treasures most. He swore he'd remain by the side of a girl who abruptly stumbled into his melancholic life. This unruly girl would go on to bring excitement and adventure wherever she went. Those boring cycles spent on his lonesome were no more. Her happiness became his, a fact that's never changed. He contents himself on caring for those who he's come to be close to.

Name: Nona Age: 113 Species: Nymphalian Faction: LOTUS-EATER, Arc's Pinion (formally) World: Eris Path: Nihility Combat type: Fire Birthday: November 3rd Sexuality: Pansexual Height: 5′3 Hair color: Chestnut brown Eye color: Amber Favorite animal: Octopi (specifically the dumbo octopus) Favorite food: Red velvet cake Least favorite food: Legumes, fatty meats Favorite things: Punk rock, video games (racing in particular), drumming, clothes, accessories, makeup and plushies Least favorite things: Work, 99% of the people she meets, capitalism and the IPC Clothing style: Gothic lolita and sweet lolita, anything super cute MBTI: ESFP

"A place where anyone can enter, but few can leave."

This would best describe Arc, the purposefully forgotten quadrant of Perianth II. Most who are born here never get to see light, artificial or otherwise. Although Nymphalian's have excellent night vision, Nona was never able to accept navigating a world of darkness. She joined a group of likeminded folk who supposedly sought to better the conditions in Arc. For many years, she sacrificed plenty to realize this dream. After overhearing two of the most prominent leaders squabble over the most insignificant things, she realized the futility of relying on others for a better future.

There had been talks of Nona infiltrating the LOTUS-EATER, as she exhibited the traits necessary for an Arbiter's field of work. Her application for Thelx citizenship was readily accepted. Instead of carrying out her group's wishes, she decided to live for herself. Though Nona was initially standoffish toward her fellow LOTUS-EATER co-workers, she soon formed a bond with her mentor, [First] Phaeales and the bartender Lear.

#nexus

[rosewaterandivy]

a fool without a cause | track 1: the plan (fuck jobs)

🎶 My body is a temple, how much d’ya think I could get for it? 🎶

summary: a meet ugly

word count: <700 words

warnings: 18 + for eventual smut, empire records AU | The gang are in their early twenties, college-aged, cursing, name calling, vague mentions of crime

a/n: ah yes, this brainrot sees the light of day. here we go!

Series masterlist | Playlist | Currently spinning: 

Eddie Munson was decidedly not a morning person.

So his presence at the old opera house of Recycled Books & Records before his usual shift was startling, to say the least. Even more so was the fact that he seemed to be awake.

Smoking a cigarette by the service entrance of the building as the sleepy town of Hawkins rose to greet a new day. Leaning against the wall like he could not be bothered to hold himself upright in his usual spot near the graffiti’d red devil. Just minding his own business, enjoying the last drag from his cigarette when a Prius careened around the corner like a bat out of hell.

He stubbed out his cigarette in an abandoned planter that had long ago been sacrificed for the cause. RIP Audrey II. Crossing his arms, he leaned back against the wall waiting to see who emerged from the car. It was well-maintained, from what he could tell, a ding or two on the bumper with a sticker that proclaimed ‘Ask me about my lobotomy!’

It also had an above-average stereo system, based on the volume and reverb of the baseline thumping from the car. Eddie could just make out the driver in the front seat singing to themselves as they flipped the visor down to mess with their hair. He can faintly hear the impassioned exclamation of “There will be feasting and dancing in Jerusalem next year!”

The driver bopped in their seat to the rest of the song and donned a pair of wayfarers that would give Harrington a run for his money. The engine was finally cut, and the door opened and you stepped out, still singing the final verse of the song you made your way to the sidewalk in front of the store.

Eddie straightened up a bit at that. Around his age, if he had to guess, give or take. Sporting denim cut-offs, Converse that had been beat to hell, and a flannel tied into some sort of cropped thing which he very much approved of. Now, it wasn’t that this mystery girl hadn’t intrigued him, just a rather unfortunate case of foot-in-mouth-syndrome.

Case in point:

“What the hell were you listening to?”

And yeah, that was on him. His tone could’ve been more genial and less frustration laced with exhaustion. He scrubs a hand down his face, mortified at his implication.

A slow turn accompanied by a withering stare. “Excuse me?”

“Sounded like some indie shit.” He leans against the wall again, “Weird choice of hype song s’all I’m saying.”

“Huh,” You scoff. “Well, I don’t recall asking for your opinion, dickbag.”

“Woah there, sweetheart! Wouldn’t wanna give a guy the wrong idea there.” He shoves his bands in his pockets, “I mean, at least it wasn’t Fall Out Boy or something.”

“Fall Out Boy is pop-punk, first of all.” Followed by a huff, an arched brow and crossed arms. “My apologies for not rolling through with Between the Buried and Me or some other prog-metal bullshit, I didn’t realize I’d be in the presence of the arbiter of taste this morning.”

Oh.

Eddie likes the scathing bite to your retort more than he should. He appreciates a good banter, thinks you can give as good as you can take.

He shrugs, benevolently. “S’not your fault you don’t have good taste. Can’t win ‘em all.”

“Isn’t it time you drop dead from emphysema or something?”

And before he can reply and dig himself in deeper, Hopper unlocks the front doors of the store. Without so much as a goodbye, you turn on your heel and leave.

Great job Munson, another successful human interaction!

Eddie yanks open the service door and stomps into the employee lounge. And makes himself comfortable on the couch, mentally replaying the interaction and highlighting everywhere he’d gone wrong.

On the bright side, at least he’d never have to see you again.

Famous last words.

#eddie munson x reader #eddie munson x you #eddie munson fanfiction #eddie munson fanfic #modern!eddie munson #nightmanager!eddie #fic: fwac #Spotify

[jellogram]

I fucking despise how ticketmaster has absorbed every other ticketing avenue. Used to be that you could buy tickets direct from the venue or the artist's website and ticketmaster was for resales and special offers. But now every time I click on an artist's official tour info, or a venue schedule, or an instagram post or what have you, I'm directed to ticketmaster. Unless it's a small local artist in a bar or a tiny basement venue, you pretty much have to buy through ticketmaster. How is this not a monopoly? Everyone knows their fees are bullshit but they can charge them because somehow in the last 10-20 years they became the sole arbiter of concerts and sporting events. The controversies section on their wikipedia page is a mile long. They make me not even want to go to shows anymore.

[sepublic]

Back from Godzilla x Kong! Gotta say, I love how you have this dynamic of... Mothra is Lawful Good, Kong is Neutral Good, and Godzilla is Chaotic Good. Because sure, Godzilla is officially the arbiter of nature's balance, he's the one keeping things in check; But boy does he not care about what he needs to do to get it done. I like how the Monsterverse has made Godzilla into quite the anti-hero as well; It's a nice mix of both heroic and villainous depictions. He has no real love for humanity, even if he begrudgingly acknowledges its right and need to exist.

If Godzilla needs to get from Point A to B, it doesn't really matter to him too much if there's a fully-populated city he needs to stomp through, especially if he's on short time (Conversely, Mothra and Kong seem much more sensitive to that sort of thing, Mothra especially). It really does make Godzilla feel like a wild card that humanity just has to accept and deal with, and coexists with uneasily; You know, in theory, he has your back. But you're still rightfully terrified of Godzilla, and hell so are other titans. He's the scariest kaiju on the block for a reason, and I love how he's still a mean city-destroying menace while technically being a 'good' guy. Portraying Goji from Kong's perspective, where he's often an antagonist, was a good way to maintain that terror that was alleviated with King of the Monsters' depiction.

Also, I can't help but imagine how relieving it was for Jia to find more Iwi! Trapper makes a good point about how she ends up having a lot of weight on her shoulders with saving the world, but you know what? She ends up having so much other weight taken off knowing there are other Iwi alive and thriving. For years, Jia must've been saddled with the burden of keeping her entire culture alive, finding a way to somehow preserve it and keep it going; But now she can relax, she knows it'll live on with or without her, and that makes Jia's decision to stay with Andrews all the more natural because she's free from obligation.

You know, seeing Monarch successfully augment Kong with cybernetics... I'd love to see the Monsterverse tackle Gigan soon, because with how technology has become so much more advanced since the first film in 2014, it feels plausible that some would see the success of Kong with the gauntlet and think; Hey, let's bring back that project full-force! Maybe they find Gigan, originally flesh and blood, deeply injured and torn apart after fighting Godzilla. Initially he's on life-support with artificial organs, but at some point investors decide, let's just reprogram him into a cybernetic attack dog to defend humanity with!

Alas, Gigan breaks free of his programming; And he ends up going on a killing spree. Because while other antagonists like Ghidorah or Skar King are ambitious warlords, Gigan is a pettier sadist, a bully who likes to hurt and torture. He kills for sport, and that's literally all he's going to do once he gets his upgrades, doing it all for no other reason than fun.

Of course, another part of me would really like to see Gigan still associated with aliens, too; Monsterverse has clearly become modern Showa, we've basically got magic now! And I like that, the weirder and more fantastical, the better. There's an underground civilization that uses ancient technology bordering on magic, the Iwi of the Hollow Earth are like the Monsterverse's Seatopians. So it seems a natural evolution to introduce a more one-to-one counterpart to Seatopia in another film, another group of Hollow Earth humans who want to destroy those on the surface, and worship Megalon's power to tunnel through the earth itself. And if you have Megalon, you should have Gigan, and if you have Gigan, you may as well throw in aliens, not just in the sense that they're from space like Ghidorah, but I mean like. Actual UFOs and the like.

#godzilla x kong #godzilla #kong #king kong #monsterverse #jia andrews

[wario-speedwagon]

Dave and Old Sport Adopt a Kid: Chapter 10

Happy post-holidays, everyone! Here's another chapter of these two gays and their daughter to celebrate the new year! Full chapter under the cut as always :)

Chapter 1 Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Jack had finished placing the last dirty dish in the sink for dealing with later.

“We should probably head out soon,” he declared to the drawing aubergines at the cleared table.

“Ugh, fine,” Dave sighed, putting his pencil down in dismay. Pruny didn’t take the hint as she continued doodling unbothered.

“So, what’s our grand plan for today, then?”

“Huh? I dunno, show up?”

“I meant your ‘Aubergine’s handy dandy three-step plan’ or whatever you called it?”

“Oh that!” he finally recalled. “...Yeah I don’t remember.”

“What do you mean you ‘don’t remember’?”

“I dunno, with Pruny showin’ up and all, things kinda got sidetracked. We can probably save the plan for next time, eh?”

“What, so we just show up and… do our job then?”

“...I guess?”

“Well that’s unexpectedly anticlimactic…” Jack quietly admitted to himself. Though he couldn’t decide if he was relieved or disappointed. Honestly, it was probably both. Still, this was quite out of character for the Dave he’d come to know up to this point.

“C’mon, Prune, time to go.” Dave lightly nudged her arm, finally getting her attention as she quickly gathered that the time for drawing was sadly over.

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

The colorful cast exited the car, stepping foot onto the Fazbender’s parking lot as they headed for another accursed day shift at Freddy’s.

“Well hey! Look Pruny!” Dave exclaimed, suddenly kneeling down to her level and pointing.

“There’s the dumpster where we first met! Now ain’t that just nostalgic! …Gosh, it feels like so long ago with how much’s happened, but it hasn’t even been a whole day yet!”

*sigh*

Pruny didn’t quite read much of what Dave had rambled about, so she hoped they weren’t expecting any sort of special reaction about the dumpster Dave had just pointed to for… some reason? Jack seemed to ignore the matter altogether, so it was probably not important.

Weird as this Fazbender's place was, though, she was content to be back. She often hung around this building but never had the nerve to actually go inside and see it for herself until they’d (forcefully) taken her in. It didn’t live up to her every dream, but it was still exciting to her nonetheless. She’d never really been inside any fun place for kids like most kids had been, so it was nice to finally have her turn.

Jack and Dave pushed open the heavy doors into the pocket dimension of hell at which they worked. To where its phone-headed arbiter “happened” to be waiting for them.

“Yo, Scott. How’s ev—”

“I may just be stressed to the point of paranoia,” Scott harshly interrupted, “but I really don’t find it a good sign that you’re arriving with Dave now considering his… reputation.”

“Love ya too, Phoney—”

“—Yeah, well, that’s only because someone left his kid behind with me—”

“And you brought her BACK here!? Why would you do that!?”

“It’s… bring-your-child-to-work day again…?” Dave weakly attempted.

“Yeah no, uhm… there’s a whole… situation.” Jack resisted the urge to rub his temples while recalling all of last night’s and this morning’s headaches.

“C’mon, Phoney, just admit it! This place is a glorified daycare and you know it!”

“—Okay, whatever! I don’t care!” he finally snapped out of sheer resigned stress. “I have much more concerning problems than your ‘parenting style’ to worry about right now! If you don’t somehow already know, four children have gone missing yesterday, and so far things are looking to shape up into yet another Freddy’s threatening scandal that I have to deal with!”

“Oh, well, that’s not so bad! It coulda been five kiddins!”

“No, no, it’s very bad actually! And if I don’t… no no, I’m not gonna think about that right now…”

Scott wandered away, hands practically attached to where his temples would be.

...but then heel-turned back around to add:

“Now go make yourselves useful for once, before I make this your problem too! Go on, get! Saferoom! Now! And don’t you even dare mention a word of this to anyone!”

He then promptly marched off toward a group of children who were all encouraging each other to climb on top of the animatronics on stage.

“Sheesh Louise, he sure woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”

“No kidding. I suppose that’s what happens to a guy who has to single-handedly save a sinking ship from a child murder scandal. Must suck to be him right now,” Jack shallowly sympathized as if they didn’t have a direct hand in Phoney’s current situation.

“Alright kid, you’re free to do whatever the hell you want while— …Prune?”

But she was already long gone from sight.

“Oh. Well, she really takes after me, huh?” said Dave rather proudly.

“...Sure.”

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

The three men had been talking for a while with no sign of wrapping up anytime soon, so Pruny took it upon herself to wander around like kids are supposed to do here… right? Those guys worked here, so they’d be too busy to watch her all day anyway.

As she continued wading through the large, crowded dining space to the other side, she recalled that there was that gigantic present box next to the Prize Corner that had her curious from yesterday. Of course, that creepy guy was still there smiling blankly behind the counter, but she figured that she could easily sneak from the other side without him noticing pretty easily for closer inspection.

Approaching the box, Pruny hugged up against it to get a sense for how big it truly was. And in doing so, she felt some sort of plucking vibrations reverberating through it, kinda similar to clock ticking, but definitely different; this thing apparently seems to play some sort of music or sound, she gathered. That only piqued her curiosity even further.

So she naturally opened up its giant lid.

And then it slowly, grandly emerged from the box, rising to its feet as it began to tower over her.

And it then looked down at her with its rather haunting clownish mask face.

She naturally stepped back, partially out of natural fear but also to behold it better at a distance, but her fascinated stare at it remained unbroken.

The puppet’s head tilted.

And then the question crossed her mind, whether this thing also had a robotic voice or not, because to her frustration, it seemed like all the robots here had some sort of voice, even the strange Phone Guy, but obviously no moving lips to read. Although, she could sometimes detect the faintest sound of muffled voices from them, yet she heard nothing of the sort from this ominous… thing.

She didn’t know if she preferred its eerie silence or not.

And then it stepped out of the box. And then it extended a creepy hand out to her.

She carefully considered her options. Was this safe? What did it want with her?

…

She decided to take its hand.

(Chapter 11)->

#heehee guess who's finally heeeeere~! #dayshift at freddy's #dayshift at freddys #dsaf #jack kennedy #dave miller #jack dsaf #dsaf jack #dave dsaf #dsaf dave #peter kennedy #dee kennedy #dee dsaf #peter dsaf #dsaf fanfic

[dreadfutures]

Hello! :D Don't know if you're accepting prompts and sorry if you just reblogged the list but... Hug prompts, “you’re not okay, you’re shaking." for Ixchel and Solas? :3

Hello I can't sleep and I can't bear to thesis any longer tonight and I *miss them* so: a prompt fill. Perhaps set on the way to Serault? We'll see if it fits.

-:-:-

At last, Ixchel found a moment to slip away from the rest of the party, and she went in search of Solas. The ruined villa was sun-soaked and warm, and the Veil did not feel particularly thin, so she did not suspect any harm or serious mischief had befallen him. It was odd, though, that something had drawn him into seclusion when it might have otherwise been opportunity to impart ancient truths to an attentive Dalish audience.

She found him in the shade of a half-collapsed pavilion, kneeling at the paws of a large statue. She would have called the wolf a Knight's Guardian if she did not know that this place predated the Emerald Knights by aeons. Stranger still was how out of place Solas seemed beside it. Despite their shared origins, she had grown accustomed to seeing Solas as a fixture of the modern times, rather than the stoic relic of a bygone time. He seemed... diminished, seated here before the truly ancient statue. Smaller, and separate.

Ixchel was a little surprised at how sad she was upon realizing that.

Solas startled a little when she approached, her armor clanking with every step.

"Ah, 'ma'lath, have I taken too long?" he wondered with a dry laugh. "I apologize for dawdling."

Ixchel stopped him from standing with a gesture, and instead she joined him in the sun-baked ground.

"Which part is it that has you in such deep contemplating?" she asked genuinely, but Solas looked away as though he had something to hide.

Ixchel studied the side of his face a moment with a small sinking feeling in her gut. She wanted to follow-up, to drag the truth out of him--painful as it was.

Instead, she did not even allow herself a sigh, for she did not wish to guilt him further. Silently she reached for his hand and covered it with one heavy gauntlet of her own. With a physical connection established, she was then willing to wait an eternity for whatever he might trust her with as an answer.

It seemed he might wait an eternity indeed before telling her what was on his mind. Somewhere behind the boughs of the vallasdahlen, the sky darkened and revealed the hidden stars. Ixchel watched the canopy above them, and the stone around them, and the dirt beneath them, while she waited.

At last, Solas sighed and turned his face back to her, though instead of meeting her eye he buried his nose into her hair.

She felt then what she had not, simply holding his hand: he was shaking.

"Vhenan," she said worriedly.

"I am fine," he replied into her hair.

"No," she reprimanded, "you're shaking. What's wrong?"

The breath he drew was thin, ragged, and it trembled pitifully.

"I know this place," he said. "I once presided here, taking audiences with the People to hear their pleas and to act as an arbiter of Mythal's Justice. It was not the only place I had done so. But I thought... I thought they had all been destroyed. The memory of my judgements, erased--perhaps rightfully so!" A barking laugh escaped him, and he flinched at it himself. "And yet this place has been preserved... occupied... honored... even after the creation of the Veil."

He raised a trembling hand and summoned a cascade of Veilfire sparks along the base of the wolf statue--revealing an inscription left by the ancient stewards of the villa:

"Gone are the false gods, who hunted the People for sport and sacrifice. Gone is Fen'Harel, He Who Hunts Alone. The People remain, and here we make what might be a home for him upon his return, no matter the ages that pass. Ar-melana dirthavaren. Revas vir-anaris."

"Amae lethalas," Ixchel finished aloud, and she felt something in the air change as her lips shaped the words.

Solas laughed again and squeezed her hand more tightly. "Yes," he said disbelievingly. "We are among friends here."

#prompts #broken mirrors #solavellan #bloodied and broken bits #long post

[punishedcrow]

the croatian team was rude as hell and the arbiter was a fucking coward i ain't good sport about this at all

#copaposting #bra x cro #futbol #futebol #world cup #brazil #brasil #brazilposting #brazilcore

[endorphinmachine]

CHESS 1984 TRANSCRIPT

wrote it all down for you, as written, including the comma errors of which there were a few. added some notes here and there for things i thought were worth interesting or worth knowing AND i'm on mobile browser so i hope it posts alright. enjoy 👍

Act One

The World Chess Championship is about to take place in Merano, a Tirolean town in North Italy. The champion (The American, in his mid-thirties) (T/N: Huh?) is defending his title against a new challenger (The Russian, in his early forties) (T/N: Huh???). The people of Merano are by and large very enthusiastic about the great event that is taking place in their small community. The American is enthusiastic about the potential financial rewards of the match and about his own skill at bringing what has hitherto been a minority interest sport to the frenzied attention of world media. (Merano)

The American gives a press conference in his hotel at which he behaves petulantly and aggressively, denouncing his opponent, every other Soviet and the press with equal vigour. His performance is watched on television by the Russian and his KGB-employed second, Molokov, in their hotel. Molokov is inclined to dismiss the American as a nut. The Russian concedes that his opponent is eccentric but realises that every outrageous move made by the American is a calculated one. The Russian reflects upon his own rise to the top. (The Russian and Molokov/Where I Want To Be)

The Opening Ceremony is a hugely colourful event. Merano has pulled out all the stops. The Arbiter of the match points out with great gusto that his word is final during the series of games while Merchandisers, Press, Politicians, Businessmen and Diplomats all struggle to get everything they can from the excitement building up to fever pitch around the contest (The Opening Ceremony)

The American stages an effective and insulting walkout during the Arbiter's lengthy recap of the match regulations immediately after the Opening Ceremony. None are more insulted than his own second, Florence Vassy, who is left to defend her player's indefensible behaviour to a sneering and pompously protesting Molokov. During this exchange, she meets the Russian player for the first time. The Russian shows some sympathy for her situation. The Arbiter continues to prattle on about the rules. (Quartet– A Model of Decorum and Tranquility)

Florence confronts the American back at their hotel, telling him that she cannot tolerate his treatment of her much longer. We learn that she was born in Hungary, left that country when only two with her mother in 1956 during the uprising, and is now a naturalised British citizen. She has never discovered what happened to her father who 'disappeared' when the Hungarian uprising was crushed. She is determined to find out. She has worked for the American for seven years, since meeting him during a chess tournament in England. We suspect their relationship is almost like that of a mother and child, although both are around the same age. (T/N: They aren't. Florence is likely in her late twenties and the American is five to ten years older– Tim is a nut.) Their argument reinforces her belief that the only person she can ever really rely on is herself. (The American and Florence/Nobody's Side)

The first game of the contest begins with an atmosphere of mutual loathing hanging over the proceedings as the two players make their first moves. Tension builds as much offboard as on with both men resorting to underhand tactics to distract or enrage the other. Suddenly, high drama as the two players fling the board up into the air. They walk out after coming near to blows. Consternation everywhere. (Chess)

Florence and Molokov have an unofficial meeting to discuss the collapse of the match, which no one really wants to abandon. After some spirited insult-trading, Florence takes the initiative and tells Molokov where and when he is to deliver his player for a secret, off the record, meeting between the two contestants, in order that the match can resume without either party losing face. Molokov attempts to rattle Florence at one stage by implying that he knows some Hungarian history she might like to learn about.

At a private room in a restaurant halfway up a Merano mountain, Florence and the American arrive for the secret meeting. The Russian is late and the American leaves the restaurant in mock disgust. Almost at once the Russian and a junior member of his backup team arrive to find no opponent waiting for them, only his opponent's second. During the conversation that follows, the Russian and Florence are quickly attracted to each other, the almost romantic mood interrupted when the American returns. (Mountain Duet)

The American and the Russian argue, trade insults and jokes but thanks largely to Florence's delicate touch, they both agree on a press statement sharing blame for the breakdown and to resume playing.

Some days later, the American and Florence are discussing the progress of the match. Things are going badly for the American who is unpleasantly agitated. The cause is all but totally lost. He blames Florence for his failure and as they hurl abuse at each other, she tells him she is going to leave him after the match, even if by some miracle he won it. The American is devastated and alternates between fury and pleading with her to stay. His paranoia about the Reds surfaces – he is convinced that the Soviets have something to do with both his loss of form and Florence's desertion. The finish of their argument is a "squalid little ending" to their relationship. Even after Florence has left, the American continues to justify his actions to himself (Florence Quits) (T/N: Pity The Child #1 is included at the end of this track.)

At an unidentified Western embassy some days later, the Russian, the newly-crowned world chess champion, asks for political asylum, although he has problems winning the instant support and interest of the civil servants in the embassy. (Embassy Lament)

Eventually, he gets the forms and freedom he wants. Certain he has made the right decision, he is equally certain of what he will never be able to leave. (Anthem)

Act Two

One year has passed. The Russian is to defend his title against a new challenger from the Soviet Union in Bangkok, Thailand. The American and some locals discuss the unusual venue for the championship. (Bangkok/One Night in Bangkok)

Florence and the Russian, who have been lovers since his defection, are in the Oriental Hotel, Bangkok. They discuss his new opponent and wonder why the American is in town, as he has played no serious chess since his defeat in Merano. They also talk about the refusal of the Soviet authorities to let his wife out of the U.S.S.R. The Russian leaves to discuss tactics with his seconds; Florence, alone, speculates about their future together. (Heaven Help My Heart)

Molokov and his team are confident that this time around they have a player who is totally trustworthy and can be relied upon (a) to win and (b) to stay in Russia. Their new champion is a rather weird introvert who only seems to be able to function at full steam when talking or playing chess.

The Russian is interviewed on Thai TV. To his amazement he discovers that his interviewer is the American who proceeds to ask him about his personal life, about Florence and about his politics – never about chess. The American finally tells him (on the air) that arrangements have been made to fly his wife into Bangkok in time for the match. Enraged, the Russian storms out.

The Russian and Florence watch his wife (Svetlana) on television arriving in Bangkok. The event brings the tension between them to a climax. (Argument). (T/N: The second period after Argument appears to be an error; this period after the track title only appears once elsewhere. While I'm here, this is my favorite song and I'm mad it never reappears.) The Russian says he must leave Florence for the duration of the competition. Florence is left alone with the TV still showing Svetlana's image. She recalls how well she knows the lover who has just left her. Svetlana recalls how well she knows her husband. (I Know Him So Well)

The American forces his way into the Russian's quarters to offer him a deal. Despite the personal pressures already weighing heavily on the Russian, he has begun the match in great style, winning the first two games. The American now says that if his winning streak should suddenly come to an end then Florence will not be given information he claims to have received from the Soviets about her father. This information is extremely unpleasant, revealing her father to have been a traitor to his people, not a hero, responsible for a score of deaths. The Russian does not know whether to believe him or not, but throws him out. The American then approaches Florence, suggesting that if she would only return to him, not only would they once again be the greatest chess team ever witnessed, he would also be able to provide her with news (he does not say whether it is good or bad) she has always wanted about her past. She too rejects his offer (The Deal)

His frustration and rejection by Florence cause the American to explode in a fury of self-pity and anger. (Pity The Child). (T/N: Same deal with the period after the track title.)

The deciding game in the match begins. Memories of former champions are evoked. Molokov and the American have a conversation which reveals them to have been in league against the Russian, albeit for very different reasons. Florence, watching the match, although not knowing that her lover has been put under pressure to lose, sees his obsession with victory destroying his ability to care for her.

The Russian, defying everyone, plays like a dream and annihilates his opponent. He finds himself amused and delighted by the fact that his various enemies have so misjudged his will to win. He may have failed in his efforts to sort out his private life but he has succeeded in his professional, public life and he now knows that this is the only success he really wants. He rejoices in his victory, but even as the crowds acclaim him and as his wife vainly attempts to make some kind of contact with him, he almost immediately feels a sense of hollow anti-climax. He despises himself for the narrow selfish ambitions and desires that satisfy him. So does Svetlana; any chance of reconciliation between them is gone. They both acknowledge, she with bitterness, he with resignation, that henceforth their "one true obligation" is to themselves. (Endgame)

Whereas the Russian for the first time has been able to put his career before everything else, the change has gone the other way for the American. He hardly thinks of chess now; only that his machinations have failed to alleviate his personal despair – Florence will not return to him even if her relationship with the Russian has floundered. He plans his revenge on both Florence and the Russian, while Molokov, apprehensive about his own future, prepares suitable treatment for his failed protégé.

EPILOGUE: But has that relationship floundered? Florence and the Russian reflect, simultaneously but separately, upon their story that they thought was a very happy one; like the game of chess the game of love can be played in an almost limitless number of variations. Perhaps this was just one of many games that end in stalemate. "Yet we go on pretending, stories like ours, have happy endings." (T/N: It's "but." It has always been "but.") (You And I/The Story of Chess) As they finish, the American is seen approaching Florence. He has some news for her…

#chess musical #chess the musical

[soverane]

kindred is yuri btw. kindred is death. kindred is formless. but kindred is yuri. wolf and lamb? predator and prey, as one, as death? never one without the other? separate, but never parted? the twin essences of death? final arbiters of fate? the lamb's arrow striking those who accept their fate, and the wolf's teeth breaking those who run from it? THIS, TOO, IS YURI.

they are soooo. THEY ARE SO MORBIDLY INTIMATE.

"and then will you run from me?"

"i would never run from you, dear wolf."

LIKE WHAT IN THE YURI

they treat death like sport and yet there's something still so pious about the ways in which they find people about to die. god i love them.

#kindred #you can tell how clearly starved i am for more stuff about my faves and i'm falling back into the rabbit hole bc of the new cinematic.

[beautifulpersonpeach]

Hi BPP,

Thank you for your posts about the Billboard article. I hadn't seen it and I find the whole Billboard conversation fascinating (albeit frustrating at times).

I thought the NYTimes had a much more nuanced and less judgmental take on the whole Billboard thing, talking about how country music stars including the “Rich Men North of Richmond” singer and Jason Aldean have recently benefitted from tactics perfected by Taylor Swift and BTS fans to rule the charts -- especially the use of digital downloads. (Quote below because I couldn't link to the article)

"[T]here was a more targeted digital savviness at play, too. Much of the consumer activity that drove the track to No. 1 came via 99-cent digital downloads from outlets like the iTunes Store — an outdated format that is declining in popularity faster than CDs.

Despite streaming now accounting for more than 80 percent of music consumption overall, paid downloads are weighted more on the charts, a quirk exploited regularly by pop superfans devoted to acts like Ms. Swift or the South Korean group BTS. In often coordinated efforts, they use downloads to show support and earn chart milestones that are celebrated like wins in sports or political elections."

I feel like Billboard is just unhappy that they're being outsmarted by fans and instead of trying to figure out a way to truly determine which songs are most popular (whatever that even means anymore), they're just trying to blame it on Jimin and BTS. What else is new?

***

Hi @waitingforyouapm

I agree. Until fans began directly impacting the charts more, Billboard was fairly comfortable with music labels, streaming platforms, promoters, and other industry middlemen being the sole arbiters of what’s deemed popular and profitable. But now that fandoms are able to show that the artists they support (and with k-pop these artists are increasingly non-white and non-American), have enough demand to show up in the top 10 - an achievement historically relegated only to artists with the influence of the middlemen who always got their cut, Billboard is now in a tough spot having to explain to those industry middlemen and labels why their usual tactics no longer guarantee their artists the top spots. By making a scapegoat of non-American artists and fandoms using the same tools that white, American fandom-supported artists like Taylor Swift continue to rely on in broad daylight, they successfully redirect the blame, when all Billboard really has to do is revamp their charting paradigm completely to account for active and real demand as it’s shown in the 21st century / digital economy. It’s just easier to tap into good ol American prejudices about Asian artists, “rabid blue-haired 14 year old girls”, “Chinese femboys”, “easy to manipulate and bait female dominated fandoms”, etc. Like, the ending conclusion of the Billboard article was that Western labels should lean more into merch and building/leveraging active fan communities to spend more money lmao. Compare that to the NYTimes article that more comprehensively showed the landscape of music charting year to date, pointing out how American conservative politicians have moved their front in the culture war to music charts, pushing racist country artists to the top of the charts with tools Taylor Swift, k-pop fandoms, and other American and Latino/x artists already use.

Everybody knows exactly what the Billboard article was, because every year since 2019, we’ve gotten an article almost exactly like that one. It’s just this time, they were less shy about naming names and had an easy time painting a compelling picture given the evidence from Jimin fanbases and funding they easily linked to, to justify deleting all his D2C sales forever from charting considerations. Since ARMYs / BTS are the non-American pioneers on those charts we’re certified persona non grata lmao. In fact, going by the end conclusion of the Billboard article, I won’t be surprised if considerations for other k-pop groups are pushed this year at various awards, instead of for Jimin, or even any artists related to HYBE since they had no issue naming NewJeans. It would give them the engagement and then some, while neutralizing some of the worst criticism of their prejudices that we’re all seeing play out.

Like I said, it’s a gutter job. But one that’s unfortunately par for the course. This won’t stop BTS, Jimin, or the fandom. Not one bit.

#bts #bangtan #Jimin #billboard #bang pd

[f0point5]

Well the more a driver is constantly criticised the more the fanbase will get defensive towards the criticism the driver will get it’s the case with a lot of Hamilton fans, it’s the case with a LOT of Max fans and it’s the same « normal » processus with Leclerc fans, it’s a normal thing in sport/motorsport fanbase tbh

Normal, maybe. Should it be normalised? I don’t think so.

Maybe people think it’s fun to be genuinely arguing and using inflammatory language on social media about sports, I don’t. I think it’s really icky.

And I’m not the arbiter of taste everywhere, god knows, but I kind of am on this blog so people can’t come do that indiscriminately in my inbox.

[polyhexian]

Okay. Finished Bambi. The movie really only encompasses a little more than half the book. It ends showing Bambi running off with faline into adulthood, happy. The book however continues and shows Bambi growing older and wiser in the ways of the forest and ultimately becoming the new prince of the forest. He is alone all the time, has no companions, has lost interest in faline and not seen her in some time. The book ends with him encountering some frightened fawns calling for their mothers and chastising them for not being able to take care of themselves. Ultimately this is a book written in 1929 about the life cycle of a wild prey animal that is like, directly pushing the narrative that hunting is bad and hunters are evil.

Which... I don't really agree with. There are no predators in this book, not of deer. The only thing the deer have to worry about is humans. They're not afraid of wolves or lions or any other large carnivores. Which means... Yeah, letting them run unchecked probably isn't actually great for the environment. Especially when we see how devastating winter already is. Now, maybe it's just that the meat industry was not as evil yet in 1929 as it is today? But I am of the distinct opinion that meat from a wild deer is more ethically sourced than meat from a factory farm cow. The conditions those animals are put through are so beyond inhumane it's indescribable. That deer had a life, a natural life, and fell victim to a predator. Its life was better than that cows ever was. Now, sport hunting is different- sort of, plenty of people who sport hunt do still use all the meat and pelts they harvest, and what harm is there in enjoying the work you are already doing?

I don't think anyone will disagree with me that killing animals for fun with no purpose isn't really... Good. If you're shooting deer and just taking antlers and letting them rot and it's not got some other purpose like culling the herd or preventing the spread of disease... Don't do that? Not that animals don't sometimes kill for fun but. We don't need to cause more suffering in the world than we have to.

It's hard for me to really get into the mindset of what the author might have really been trying to convey with this. I don't know what it's like to live in Germany in 1929 so I can't really imagine what kind of world he was living in, the world of humans and his morals or the world of ethical hunting and animal welfare. It is certainly presented that the best way to survive, to be proud and noble and regal, is to have no relations with anyone, to speak to no one, to have no friends or curiosity, to trust nothing and no one and to rely only upon oneself. Also to just get up and leave your wife one day and never go back.

On one hand, on a completely literal level, this is probably a very accurate depiction of a deers life cycle and how a deer survives long enough to become an elder. Only the lonely survive. On a message level I'm really not sure what it's trying to tell me. It does feel a bit like it's making a broader statement than just a brutal accurate depiction of wild animal life. It also hit me with a steel chair out of left field by dropping what I think the thesis statement of the book may be and it's that god is to us as we are to all other animals. Arbiter of life and death. Incomprehensible. Beyond understanding. Something greater than man is out there.

That shit was wild I wasn't expecting this to suddenly reveal Oh Fuck It's About God. So like. It's saying something. It's definitely saying something. I'm really not sure I have the context to fully understand what and I'm not sure I'd agree with it even if I did.

[skippyv20]

This is what Catherine has had to deal with….meanwhile Diva planned her own car chase….

Privacy and the media

The death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in Paris while being chased by paparazzi in 1997,[363] influenced her elder son, William's, attitude towards the media.[364] William and Catherine have requested that, when off-duty, their privacy should be respected.[364]

After her graduation from university, Middleton was faced with widespread press attention and was often photographed by the paparazzi.[65][67] On 17 October 2005, she complained through her lawyer about harassment from the media, stating she had done nothing significant to warrant publicity and complained that photographers were permanently stationed outside her flat.[365][366] Former royal press secretary Dickie Arbiter stated that her treatment by the press drew parallels to the tumultuous experience of William's mother in the early years of her marriage.[367] Between 2005 and 2006, Middleton's phone was hacked 155 times according to former News of the World royal editor Clive Goodman, who was involved in a phone hacking scandal by the newspaper that targeted the royal family.[368] In 2005 after Middleton was chased by the paparazzi on her way to an interview, William consulted her and her father and penned a legal letter to newspapers requesting that they respect her privacy.[369] In April 2006, her lawyers issued new warnings to the Daily Mail, the Daily Star and The Sun and the picture agencies Big Pictures and Matrix after they published photographs of Middleton on a bus during a shopping trip.[370]

Media attention increased around the time of her 25th birthday in January 2007, where twenty photographers and five television crews photographed her leaving for work.[371][365] Warnings were issued by the then Prince Charles, Prince William, and Middleton's lawyers, who threatened legal action.[372] Two newspaper groups, News International, which publishes The Times and The Sun; and the Guardian Media Group, publishers of The Guardian, decided to refrain from publishing paparazzi pictures of her, but continued to use photographs of Middleton at public events.[373][374] In March 2007, her lawyers filed a formal complaint to the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) over a photograph published on the Daily Mirror that was taken as a result of harassment.[375] In April 2007, Middleton reached a settlement with the Daily Mirror, which was followed by a warning by the PCC over press treatment of Middleton.[376] In July 2007, MPs on the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee stated in a report on press regulation that Middleton was the victim of "clear and persistent harassment" by the paparazzi and criticised the lack of intervention by the PCC, who circulated a letter from Middleton's solicitors on the issue of press harassment but said they were not directly asked by her lawyers to act.[376][377]

In 2010, Middleton pursued an invasion of privacy claim against two agencies and photographer Niraj Tanna, who took photographs of her playing tennis over Christmas 2009 while on holiday in Cornwall.[378][379]Middleton was awarded £5,000 damages, legal costs, and an apology from the photographic press agencyRex Features Ltd.[380][381] She announced that the money would be donated to charity.[380] In 2011, close associates of Jonathan Rees, a private investigator connected to the News International phone hacking scandal, stated that he had targeted Catherine during her period as William's girlfriend.[382]

In May 2011, the Middleton family complained to the Press Complaints Commission after photographs of Catherine, her sister, and their mother in bikinis while on holiday in 2006 on board a yacht off Ibiza were published in the Mail on Sunday, Daily Mail, News of the World, and Daily Mirror.[383] One of the photographs showed Catherine's sister topless, which prompted the family to complain about newspapers breaching the editors' code of practice by invading their privacy.[383] In September 2011, Daily Mail, the Mail on Sunday, and Daily Mirror all agreed to have the images removed from their website and never publish them again following a deal negotiated by the Press Complaints Commission.[384]

In September 2012, the French edition of Closer and the Italian gossip magazine Chi, published photographs of Catherine sun-bathing topless while on holiday at the Château d'Autet[364] (a private château on a 260-ha estate 71 km[385] north of Aix-en-Provence). Analysts from The Times believed the photographs were taken from the D22 (Vaucluse) road half a kilometre from the pool—a distance that would require an 800-mm or a 1000-mm lens.[386] On 17 September 2012, William and Catherine filed a criminal complaint with the French prosecution department and launched a claim for civil damages at the Tribunal de Grande Instance de Nanterre.[387] The following day the courts granted an injunction against Closer, prohibiting further publication of the photographs and announced a criminal investigation would be initiated.[388] Under French law, punitive damages cannot be awarded[389] but intrusions of privacy are a criminal offence carrying a maximum jail sentence of one year and a fine of up to €45,000 for individuals and €225,000 for companies.[390][391] In September 2017, Closer was fined €100,000 and its editor Laurence Pieau and owner Ernesto Mauri were each fined €45,000.[392]

In December 2012, two Australian radio hosts, Michael Christian and Mel Greig, called King Edward VII's Hospital where Catherine was an in-patient for hyperemesis gravidarum. Pretending to be the Queen and the Prince of Wales, Greig and Christian spoke to a nurse on Catherine's ward, enquiring about her condition. Following a hospital inquiry and a public backlash against the hoax, Jacintha Saldanha, the nurse who put the call through to the ward, committed suicide.[393] The radio hosts subsequently apologised for their actions.[394]

In February 2013, Chi published the first photos of Catherine's exposed baby bump, taken during her vacation on the private island of Mustique. The British press refused to publish the paparazzi shots.[395] While Catherine was visiting the Blue Mountains in Sydney, a picture was taken of her bare bottom as her dress blew up. Many newspapers outside the UK published the picture.[396] In October 2014, Catherine and William sent a legal letter to a freelance photographer who had put their son George and his nanny "under surveillance", asking the individual to stop "harassing and following" them.[397] On 14 August 2015, Kensington Palace published a letter detailing what it stated were the "dangerous" and invasive efforts of the media to get paparazzi pictures of Prince George and Princess Charlotte. Jason Knauf, communications secretary to the Cambridges, wrote the letter to media standards organisations in various countries.[398]

In March 2019, the royal family introduced new rules for followers commenting its official social media accounts in response to the online abuse aimed at Catherine and her sister-in-law Meghan.[399]

In May 2020, Kensington Palace said that the cover story of Tatler magazine titled 'Catherine the Great' contained "a swathe of inaccuracies and false misrepresentations". Despite the palace's statement that most of the material was not given to them before publication, the magazine's editor-in-chief announced that he would stand behind the story as the palace had been aware of it for months.[400] In September 2020, after pressure from the couple's lawyers, the magazine removed remarks on Catherine's family and other similar claims from the online version of the story.[401]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine,_Princess_of_Wales#Early_years_and_childhood_development