#because its fucking june 2020

[cartierre]

QUEEN'S GAMBIT | cl16

SOCIAL MEDIA!AU charles leclerc x latina!chess player!reader (fc: alexa demie)

part two: giuoco piano

♡ liked by charles_leclerc, anyataylorjoy, netflix and 61,230 others

tagged: anyataylorjoy, netflix

yourusername it has been an absolute pleasure and honour to help my fellow latina anyataylorjoy on set for netflix's new series 'the queen's gambit' as a professional chess player. it's available on the 23th of october, only on netflix.

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user1 so we're all here because of the dating rumour, huh? ⤷ user2 kind of mad her whole content is just chess. girl i wanna know how you look ⤷ user3 just google her she's a literal grandmaster, i'm sure she has wikipedia with some pictures

user4 'fellow latina' she's latina?? omg now i know i have a chance with charles ⤷ user5 charles expanded his taste in women and i'm here for it

anyataylorjoy the most fun i had on a set in a long time! ⤷ yourusername <3

♡ liked by charles_leclerc, magnus_carlsen and 34,492 others

yourusername i guess someone's eager to learn how to play chess. magnus_carlsen feel threatened because he's serious competition. (for context; magnus carlsen is the currently best ranked male chess player)

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magnus_carlsen i'm going to feel threatened once i see his rankings ⤷ yourusername don't tell him i said that, but i fear there's no hope for him

user6 confirmed: charles dates y/n to have a chess teacher for free ⤷ user7 i mean honestly chess players aren't known to be pretty ⤷ user8 ??????????

user9 charles liking every post, yet y/n not tagging him or mentioning his name is so funny. like bffr we know you're dating just admit it ⤷ user10 it's giving saying 'my ex' instead of their name like we all know who you're talking about

♡ liked by yourusername, charles_leclerc and 123,207 others

tagged: yourusername

sportsillustrated Meet the grandmaster Y/N Y/L/N in an exclusive interview about chess, representation and working on set for Netflix' new series 'The Queen's Gambit' in our November issue 2020!

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yourusername it was such an honour and privilege to work with you! i'm thankful to have had a chance to bring some awareness to chess, its greatness as well as some issues as a poc and woman in the sport! comment liked by charles_leclerc

user11 you're telling me THIS is the girl charles BAGGED?? ⤷ user12 absolutely gagged because why does charles lowkey look crusty now that i know his girlfriend is this gorgeous

♡ liked by charles_leclerc, anyataylorjoy, samohtsangster and 62,049 others

tagged: netflix

yourusername such a fun night at the premiere of 'the queen's gambit'! thank you so much for the invite netflix. an unforgettable night for sure!

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user13 just confirm you're dating charles already we're getting sick and tired of this game ⤷ user14 fr they're so obvious. she's wearing red, she gets picked up by a ferrari, the hands??!!

user15 it's been enough soft launching i need a hard launch

anyataylorjoy looking absolutely gorgeous! ⤷ yourusername my favourite colour <3

♡ liked by 29,301 people

tagged: yourusername, charles_leclerc

f1wagupdates for the first time, y/n y/l/n has been spotted attending the first gp of the new season in bahrain. she's been seen arriving to the paddock next to charles leclerc.

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user16 i'm at a point where i don't even give a fuck wheter or not they officially confirmed their relationship. i'm deciding that it's canon from now on ⤷ user17 fr their relationship has been rumoured about since june last year, we're tired.

user18 this is enough confirmation i need, they're dating.

user19 she's the definition of minimal effort maximum beauty ⤷ user20 still shocked she's dating charles. no offence, he isn't ugly but girl she's multiple levels above him for sure!

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tagged: charles_leclerc

yourusername confirmation enough?

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#charles leclerc #charles leclerc imagine #charles leclerc imagines #charles leclerc x reader #charles leclerc x you #charles leclerc fluff #charles leclerc fanfiction #f1 instagram au #f1 social media au #f1 imagine #f1 imagines #f1 x reader #f1 x you #f1 x y/n

[eliotquillon]

just finished the rwrb movie and although i really enjoyed it (and was kicking my feet giggling the whole time) i do have a couple of major criticisms, some of which i think aren’t really the movie’s fault because they had to fit a whole book into 2 hours, but some of which left me kind of disappointed:

-i feel slightly icky that bea and nora got their screentime SIGNIFICANTLY reduced even after june got cut entirely (which i was upset about, but did understand). i loved zahra and adored her on screen but i do think it’s very odd that she is pretty much the only major female character in this movie since bea was nonexistent and nora got permanently spirited away to pez’s bed or something sometime during the second act

-it felt like a lot of the internal conflict in alex and henry’s relationship was very unbalanced and henry heavy - alex’s neurodivergence was erased, his bi epiphany was barely even an epiphany, and him not being explicitly kicked off the campaign after ellen finds out about him and henry essentially killed his whole subplot about realising he doesn’t need to have everything achieved at thirty and deciding he wants to apply to law school instead. which wouldn’t have been terrible but on the flipside it felt weird that we didn’t see very much of henry’s family considering how much they affect and shape his fear of being outed and his feeling of being in a glass cage - e.g bea’s treatment by the media during her active addiction (which was entirely erased), the extent of the tension between him and philip. felt like henry’s pov scenes were a super wasted opportunity for that and we were mostly just being Told about all of these things

-i am not actually that mad about oscar and ellen still being together lol but i felt like in the scene with oscar smoking the cigar on the balcony they were kinda building up to there being significant strain in his and ellen’s relationship that just wasn’t explored. especially since it’s clear oscar would never be able to be president because he’s not a natural born citizen + the sacrifice of his career for ellen’s is so much bigger now that he’s first gentleman in this version

-pacing in general was a bit off but the worst offender was the fact that there was a complete time skip between the alex henry confrontation/reconciliation and the outing. so much of the tension and desperation from that outing scene comes from the fact that the risk of it happening was slowly increasing throughout the book and it felt almost inevitable (the elevator cctv being leaked, henry having to fake date june) and honestly making it so abrupt weirdly reduced a lot of its impact for me

-similarly i actually completely understand why the richards plot / rafael luna plot was cut (i suspect republican election interference hits a bit too close to home after 2020) but my god was miguel a lame fucking villain and him being queer and hispanic erased a lot of the original commentary about racism and homophobia that the richards plot lent itself to. like in general this movie was a lot lighter than the book which is fine! but for a movie where the main subplot is a presidential election So Much of the political themes were heavily neutered or cut to the point that it seemed like the pressure on henry and alex’s relationship was disproportionately coming from henry’s side when in the book it was more balanced

again on the whole i really really loved this movie and i knew going in that certain changed were going to be made. and i hope more movies get made like it! these r just my Thots and i may change my mind when i rewatch it with my friend tomorrow

#rwrb #red white and royal blue #putting this in the tags but the movie actually kind of emphasised a lot of the problems i have with the book #re: gender at least #i remember first reading the book in 2019 and being upset that june giving up so many of her dreams #to support her family wasnt explored more #like with her ex boyfriend who it was implied she still kind of had feelings for but had moced to california #it also feels slightly disingenuous that casey hyped up bea/nora so much after the teaser scene of them talking was revealed #except that was the only scene they ever interacted in. ever #and i know it’s not that deep I KNOWWWW #but i’ve been thinking a lot about fandom treatment of women lately #and weirdly this movie kind of exemplifies a lot of the issues i have witb fandom as a whole and not just rwrb #anyway.

[3terna15unshin3]

Then Because She Goes

Instagram AU (volume ii)

volume i �� back to masterlist — volume iii

a/n: These are far too fun make lmfao so expect more in the future maybe no promises tho

—

trumanblack

Liked by patriciavillirillo and 322,992 others

trumanblack Tell me you like my hair or else

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1975adam Covid crazies at its finest

_fake_nudes_ sickkkkkk

este.manansala 2013 you wore it better

↳ Liked by rass1975 and 112 others

↳ trumanblack You love it

-- ↳ este.manansala K fine u look fit

whatashaaame i like it ..? i think?

19 April, 2020

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1 May, 2020

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este.manansala

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este.manansala a studio-matty pic on main since Notes is out today✨ it is without a doubt the1975’s best work and well worth the wait

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softsoundd_ Fav song???

↳ este.manansala tough to pick but probably Then Because She Goes or Me & You Together Song :)) or Jesus Christ bc i’m a _fake_nudes_ stan

-- ↳ trumanblack Good taste👍

jamieoborne ❤️

22 May, 2020

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28 May, 2020

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trumanblack

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trumanblack Fuuuuck I miss being on stage💔 but happy pride, my girlfriend is bi so does she deserve rights yes or no?? Comment below👇👇👇

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_catekeeling no none of that gay shit

↳ g3orgiaheadley Agreed x

parisagain GIRLFRIEND........????????

↳ elsie.ahmed babe this is old news where have u been

-- ↳ parisagain Omg fr?😭😭

---- ↳ elsie.ahmed yeah literally i've been following her since he reposted a pic of hers in like Jan of last year💀💀 they're really cute

este.manansala Drop the f slur again like in Roadkill. As a gift to me and the gays

↳ trumanblack Yo chill wtf

2 June, 2020

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7 June, 2020

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trumanblack

Liked by sc0tt__street and 210,248 others

trumanblack Getting healthy so I can be more toxic

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este.manansala Stop bragging about the fact that you've read Infinite Jest

↳ trumanblack Well have u read it???? No

este.manansala cute pic tho very wholesome & Pinterest

↳ trumanblack Thank u love u

11 July, 2020

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este.manansala

Liked by newamericana88 and 6,843 others

este.manansala currently streaming folklore as u all should be as well ! but not my tears ricochet bc that's MY song...

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loveitifwemaadeit_ sooooo gorgeous wow

trumanblack Holy shit

trumanblack How are u real

trumanblack Give me a fucking break

↳ este.manansala are u saying I should delete ?

-- ↳ trumanblack I mean if u do I've still got the real thing so

_catekeeling goddess xx

↳ este.manansala I miss uuuuuuu call me !!!!!!!

25 July, 2020

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25 July, 2020

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trumanblack

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trumanblack If low rise jeans are rlly coming back here's a pic of me wearing them last year so that u know I was ahead of the trend

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este.manansala Hi x

↳ trumanblack Heyyy

poesiedanslarue Oh the hip tatt wow

bedforddanes75 Gay

20 September, 2020

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este.manansala

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este.manansala This weekend

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trumanblack God what’s with my hair

↳ este.manansala u literally made it that way

9 November, 2020

#tbsg #matty healy #the 1975 #matty healy fanfiction #matty healy x oc #the 1975 fanfiction #matty healy fic #instagram au #matty healy instagram au

[soop-musical-fool]

Ok I said I would make a pin full of music so here it is

First off, I mentioned KNOWER. It's a long project that started a really long time ago, but their best stuff is probably coming out like right now. As in, they are just about to release a new album, KNOWER FOREVER. The singles on it are incredible, like I'm The President just comes right out the gate with the fattest walkdown I've ever heard from a horn section. The B section makes it feel like I'm enjoying a song like I would a multiple-course meal. Then Crash The Car just transfixes you. Yes, yes, you should listen to those, but don't neglect the fire they put out in 2017 because you owe it to yourself to watch the live sesh of Overtime:

Oh god this post is gonna make viewing my blog super annoying isn't it

Anyway the next thing I gotta mention is Vulfpeck. These guys are famous for scamming Spotify, basically. They released an album full of 30-second tracks of pure silence, just absolutely nothing, titled Sleepify. They got online and said "Yo guys, help us raise money for a free concert by listening to this on loop while you sleep." What they were actually doing was exposing a loophole in the way Spotify calculated royalties, and before they could pull the album (citing "content policy violations," of course), Vulfpeck had already bagged around $20,000, so they put on the completely admission-free Sleepify Tour, which was incredibly fucking based of them.

Vulf went on to become several spin-off projects, all entirely independently released and full of some of the stankiest funk fusion that I cannot stop listening to.

My favorite of these projects, The Fearless Flyers, is headed by Cory Wong, with a guitar idol of mine for 5+ years Mark Lettieri and of course the government subsidized active bass of Joe Dart, but the keystone of the group is no doubt Nate Smith on drums. Dude makes a three-piece set onstage sound like a full kit.

Like just look at what they can do with the added power of sax:

And yeah, I could just talk about those guys, but let's get weirder.

I'm talking modal. The kind of stuff that makes my choir-trained mother cringe inward at the dissonance. Let's talk about the crunchiest, most feral fucking harmonies and keyboard solos that make you question what you thought you knew about chord progressions and key centers.

Obviously anyone super into this stuff will have already heard of Jacob Collier, so I won't show him. But THIS:

I listened to this the first time and it was just.. too much. I put it in its own specific playlist titled "very complex shit" immediately. When I went back to it, enough time had passed and I had learned enough that after way too many listens I can actually follow along with this insanity. This track blew my fucking mind, dude. I have never heard a chorus use so many of the 12 chromatic notes and still sound heavenly. The groove changes add so much texture. The flute solo goes off way too hard. The slower final section is just disgusting syncopation when the drums come back in. Everything about it is incredible, and this album came out in 2007. I am staring back at years of my life I spent not listening to this and ruminating my lack of music theory knowledge. And when I wanted to see if some kind transcribing jazz grad student like June Lee had uploaded anything of System, I found a 2020 reboot with 24 musicians playing System for over twice its original runtime, and guess who did the showstopping final solo??

JACOB FUCKING COLLIER.

Look him up if you don't know. The other musicians I obsess over inspire me. This guy makes me want to quit.

#196 #r196 #rule #music #jazz funk #modal jazz #free jazz #jacob collier #music nerd #infodump #like massive autistic infodump #sorry again for this #oh btw #did you notice the four grammys behind him? #yeah

[thecultofmalcom]

So. Its out. This is obviously pretty awesome sauce (sorry not sorry jas) and like.

wow.

so it started, middle/late 2011, almost 12 years ago. Some silly little university kids making a stupid horror puppet show. Becky Sloan and Joseph Pelling, creating Dont Hug Me Im Scared. What a way to start of the 2010s huh.

After a series of short videos, created for the Kickstarter, the sequel was created. Tony The Talking Clock was he spectacle of 2014 tumblr, eventually winning the most coveted title a fictional outcast could probably get, ‘Tumblr Sexyman.’ The fandom at this time was WILD, with the whole IceHell genre and the ‘Paige x Tony’ fanatics. Not to mention that kids react video.

At this same year, my personal skrunkle scrimblo came around. The Love Cult was introduced by the ringleader Shrignold, worshipping a stone who they fed gravel. Nobody knows why or how the living FUCK they managed to start a cult like this, but here we go. This was the first time the gang was seen outside, and this circled around Yellow Guy (whos a pig??)

Along comes 2015, introducing the absolute LEGEND, COLIN. THE. COMPUTER. Legend in the making, stupid self absorbed fucktwat, and the computery guy!! Also, the outro was a bop. By now, the DHMIS community had grown a fanbase, the watch count of the series so far over 3 Million!!1!

AND NOW. THIS IS WHEN SHIT GETS REAL!!

dhmis five. the talking point of every internet kids trauma. This episode was about being helfy!,2 Joined by the silly goofy Healthy Band, duck guy and yellow (red guy, whered he go?) learned all about why you shouldnt eat food from a strangers plate!! What made DHMIS special was its unsettling gore, which was shown perfectly in the scene where duck gets his. organs took out! graphically! Awesome!

then the finale came. dhmis 6, 2016, 6. years ago now. 6 whole years. introducing the harsh reality of the real world, the absoloute CHAD which we call Larry, Lars, Larson, Lamp Guy, THE LAMP1!11 Teaching (drunk, on drugs, sleep deprived, who knows?) yellow guy all about the wonderful dreams you can have, including eating a drink, buying a hat, losing your friends and drowning in oil of course! This episode was what made this whole puppet show a real nightmare. skrunkle yellow guy gets (unfortunately) mind-tortured by all the teachers, including the saxaphone. still really wanna know how to buy a canoe. At the end, we finally found out who was the brains behind all of this, none other than yellow guys DAD himself, ROY. This is why, perhaps, this whole fever dream nightmare was based around June 19th Fathers day. This is what, we all though, the end was. 5 years of youtube wonder, Becky Joe and Baker created a phenomenon that shocked the internet in perhaps a million different ways. But the positive feedback was overwhelming, woohoo!

By now, the improvement was MASSIVE. as shown below :

And now. This is when we all thought it was over. Until 2 years later, in 2018, all hope was lost. Until those 2 words,

WAKEY WAKEY!!

this was a 30 second short trailer for the DHMIS Pilot, showing at the 2019 Sundance film festival!

This is where it gets a bit weird, because not only is the original Wakey Wakey deleted, the full thing was never shown anywhere else. the only surviving footage of this was the bad quality pirated videos , with those 2 girls laughing thunderously in the background. A new sexyman, MEAN STEVE (🤤, sorry not sorry) WAS INTRODUCED! WE ALL WANNA SEE HIM IN HIS FULL METAL STICK GLORY! But nah we didnt get that. We didnt get a show, which we all because suspicious of.

well. thats what we thought.

2020. the year of the corona. no hope, isolation. until a lovely woman named Becky Sloan posted a lil thing on her instagram. ‘Were making a tv shooowwww! 📺👀📺👀📺👀📺👀’ AND THIS IS WHERE IT GOT WILDER AWESOMER EPICER!!! WE WAITED AND WE WAITED AND WE FINALLY GOT SOME CONFIRMATION! THIS WAS AWESOME! it got picked up by a charity project by the name of BFI YAC,, hoping to pick up on small industries work! AND IT DID!

time went by, still no show. we all thought it was over, cancelled, whatever.

2021 ROLLS PAST.

FILMING WAS WRAPPED! IN THE TIME WE WERE ALL GRIEVING AT THE THOUGHTS OF NO TV SHOW, THEY WERE WORKING ON IT THE WHOLE TIMEEE!!

‘WAKEY WAKEY’ as the fandom called it at the time, was coming!

now we wait. until FEB 25 2022. They finished the final sound recording. It was all done, we were all waiting for that special day, June 19th

, Fathers day. , 3 months ago.

and what did we get?

FLY.

THE TRAILER FOR THE NEW SHOW, PREMIERING CHANNEL 4 IN SEPTEMBER!! OH !EM GEE!

Now, we were all anticipating for the new series, we waited EXTREMELY PATIENTLY for this, 4-5 years no less. Honestly we shoulda won an award for the most patient fandom at this point.

SEPTEMBER 2022!

WE GOTTA GET THINGS READY FOR THS BIG DAY! BIG DAY! THE TRAILER WAS OUT! COMING SEPTEMBER 13TH!

but then, disaster struck! ohh no!

HRH Queen Elizabeth fell ill and kicked the bucket. Obviously , this meant not only is the country in ruins now lol! (fuck liz truss basically) But the show (we thought) was in jeopardy! (not really) The 10 days of mourning began, and the All 4 Website announced that the show would be slightly delayed, but coming this month.

THIS MONTH! NOW! FRIDAY 23RD, 2022. THE BIG DAY HAS ARRIVED! 6 SHINING BRAND NEW EPISODES, PREPARED FOR THE BIG TV DEBUT FRIDAY 30TH SEPTEMBER!

THE IMPROVEMENT, BY NOW WAS STUNNING AWESOME EPIC!! LOOKLOOKLOOK!

this new series, which is 1 day old!! fresh new awesome! is AMAZING! 3 WHOLE HOURS FULL OF OUR FAVE TRAFFIC LIGHT TRIO!

(Yes. we know, you still find red guy sexy.)

(AND COLIN. AND THE LAMP. AND A BIT OF TONY TOO!)

JUST THREE OF THEM! CLAYHILL HAD, UNFORTUNATELY, SHRIVELLED UP OR SOMETHING! (I RECKON)

this was obviously a sign that Wakey Wakey is now Lost Media. But we got this! all thanks to that one silly dumb stupid epic 3 minute long short on youtube, made by 2 people, in their free time, DONT HUG ME IM SCARED!

This post is basically, appreciation for Becky Joe and Baker, and the fandom, and everyone who helped in the making of this phenomenon!

Along the way, we’ve encountered our askblogs, most notably @sketchbook-and-tony-adventures !! And the awesome, probably most noted artists of DHMIS tumblr, the epic awesome amazing @amii-stuff @frootrollup? whats the username again? @hecklefreckled & @bernold ! Obviously more as well but i honestly dont remember the usernames :/ And our epic news sharer @creative-time !! Thanks you guys! And some awesome others, like @creechurfoundincheckerboardvoid @dhmispaint and the bezzie mate @xzumichannn !! Woohoo! Thank you guys so much, without this crazy massive fandom, we probably wouldnt have even got this far, crazy right!

So far, the best moments of this 2011-2022 era for me have been

- ‘Where are all you nasty clockfuckers! did you finally fuck that clock?’

- Sketch has a small face

- LisWeegee Adventures In Lurning dubs

- Whoever the heck that spanish dhmis gacha person is!

- That one ‘No bitches’ meme with shrignold :

- My amazing askblog i could never be bothered to do!

- Whoever that tiktok guy is

- “FREELANCERS DESERVE TO DIE!”

- Money Man. Deserves to be a sexyman fr!

- “BYE GUYS! I LOVE YOU!”

- Hearing the first few seconds of the first episode intro. those bells man. something, a feeling im never gonna feel again. ever. something i could experience only once.

The only bad thing. LAMPS SOBERED UP?? WHERED THE DRUGGIE INSOMNIAC VOICE GO?

Anyways. I love yall your all awesome, were finally trending on tumblr again, and we all have worms in our brain!

What have we got to look forward to now?

- DELTARUNE NEW CHAPTERS, 2023? The finale will probably be ready for 2027…

thats literally it. sorry. Hazbin Hotels coming to tv? i guess? lol.

this is obviously a national highlight of 2022 🥱 well no. Its internationally an internet milestone. duh!

LONG LIVE DHMIS!!

#dhmis #dont hug me im scared #bigday #dhmis wakey wakey #wakey wakey #2022 highlights #red guy #duck guy #yellow guy #traffic light trio #becky sloan #joseph pelling #baker terry #thecultofmalcom

[shuttershocky]

Hello! Do you have advice on how to use Mudrock S3 effectively? I've been obsessed with her since I started the game in June 2020 and finally got her today. She's at E2L60 already and I put one point of mastery into her S2 because the SP cost reduction is so nice for everyday use, but the S3 is what really drew me in, and it's already en route to M3. It seems like it can be an emergency survival tool for Mudrock herself, a lot of AOE crowd control, and shit-tons of damage, depending on what you need at the time. It's cool, but complicated.

Mudrock is like Kal'tsit to me. 90% of the time I keep their skill on S2 for the sheer convenience and their brute force usually being enough to solve anything.

And then when I'm sufficiently annoyed by a stage and just want to win, I swap to S3.

Due to its many features, it's best to talk about Mudrock's S3 by breaking it down into its 2 phases: Fuck Around, and Find Out.

Fucking Around

For 10 seconds, Mudrock becomes invincible, has 0 block, and doesn't attack. Instead, she channels energy in the ground that inflicts a 60 percent slow in a large AOE around her. After 10 seconds, the ground explodes and all enemies within her slow field are stunned.

It's for this reason that you usually see Mudrock's S3 used as crowd control in maps with chokepoints. The slow is just as powerful as Saria's S3, while the stun it inflicts at the end is very long 5 seconds at M3).

When you've got a lot of powerful enemies coming in and Mudrock's S2 just isnt enough brute force (such as say, during Contingency Contract and wow look at what's currently online in Arknights!), Use this skill to buy time for your ranged units to throw everything and the kitchen sink at the crowd. The invincibility can also be used to help Mudrock stall by activating the skill as she's about to die while slowing the enemy she's no longer blocking, or by being a timed stun bomb for combos with Ash.

And then after the stun's over? It's time to find out.

Finding Out

In Phase 2 of her S3, Mudrock shortens her attack interval by 0.3 (meaning she can squeeze out more attacks in the same timeframe), gains a huge ATK and DEF buff, and can hit multiple enemies at once equal to her block count.

If enemies are still alive after Mudrock finishes channeling, it usually means they're a group of powerful elites or a boss of some kind. In this case, Mudrock plays cleanup crew and starts killing them all herself. Her lowered attack interval and very high ATK boost gives her tremendous physical DPS, and her DEF boost means even if the enemy breaks all her shields, she'll still be able to stand her ground.

If you have any buffs, this is when you throw them at Mudrock. If you don't, she'll probably still win that brawl, just look at her stats.

TL;DR - Use Phase 1 in chokepoints with ranged allies to slow down crowds, or use the invincibility to stall enemies at the last possible second for Mudrock

Use Phase 2 to bonk things that Phase 1 couldn't. This is a very, very powerful physical DPS skill, one that will make short work of most enemies.

#arknights

[bizarrequazar]

GJ and ZZH Updates — June 4-10

<<< previous week || all posts || following week >>>

This is part of a weekly series collecting updates from and relating to Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan.

This post is not wholly comprehensive and is intended as an overview, links provided lead to further details. Dates are in accordance with China Standard Time, the organization is chronological. My own biases on some things are reflected here. Anything I include that is not concretely known is indicated as such, and you’re welcome to do your own research and draw your own conclusions as you see fit. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or additions. :)

[Glossary of names and terms] [Masterlist of my posts about the situation with Zhang Zhehan]

06-04 → Nothing of note.

06-05 → Flora made a tweet showing that On Aura Tout Vu, the design company that posted the previous week about making one of the outfits at the Zhang Sanjian concerts (“for the amazing new collaboration ... for Zhang Zhehan”), had posted photos of the same outfit almost a year ago being worn by a showgirl. Their older posts (plural) are still up. In fact, the oldest post they have of the outfit is from March 2020, advertising it as part of their summer collection for that year. The black suit that On Aura Tout Vu also posted about was likewise a re-embellished older piece and the jewelry they’re advertising as “custom-made” for him is also from 2020.

→ 361° posted a video using Gong Jun’s travel photos to tease the video they would post the following day.

06-06 → Gong Jun posted nine scenery photos to Weibo. Caption: “The heart is steady, the results are good, and the seven-coloured clouds* are for everyone, jiayou!” The caption is presumably because it was national exam day. *symbol of good fortune Fan Observation: The post as a whole, especially the photos, are very similar in style to the 不想匿名 account (see the bottom of this post). The previous day, the account had been restricted by Zhihu and required to change its username; the specific reason is not known at the time of this post, but it was noted that another account with “匿名” in its username had the same happen.

→ 361° posted a video celebrating the second anniversary of their endorsement with Gong Jun.  

→ The Instagram posted a video of “Zhang Zhehan” playing guitar.

→ #ZhangSanjian trended on Twitter.

06-07 → #TheRealZhangZhehan trended on Twitter.

→ A post was made by Sina TV announcing the passing of Ma Tao, Word of Honor’s producer, reportedly from liver cancer. A number of other staff who had worked on the show made posts in mourning. 

#Word of Honor producer Ma Tao passed away# and #Word of Honor# got on Weibo’s entertainment hotsearch, Word of Honor and Ma-jie trended on Twitter.

→ The Instagram posted three photos of “Ma Tao” and “Zhang Zhehan” because these people have no fucking souls.  Fan Observations: None of the photos are real, just fyi—obvious signs of photoshopping and “Ma Tao’s” teeth are wrong. Zhang Sanjian’s hair in the photos is the same as in the 2022-05-04 divorce video, so it’s suspected that these were prepared last year but weren’t used for some reason (likely because Ma-jie would have dragged their asses through the mud for trying to use her in their scam.)

→ The Rising with the Wind Weibo account posted a group promotional image featuring Gong Jun.

06-08 → Lexus posted a fake chatlog with Ma Tao in his Instagram story “in mourning” that claimed Zhang Zhehan had stayed with her while registering his case in 2021. Lexus is reportedly in Japan right now if anyone wants to go punch him in the gut.

06-09 → Tiffany & Co. announced a jewelry line using jellyfish imagery and whalers embarrassed themselves trying to claim that one of the most famous luxury brands in the world is trying to appeal to haizhes. The jellyfish brooch at the centre of the line was designed in 1967.

→ 361° posted three photo ads featuring Gong Jun.

→ A private wake was held for Ma Tao’s funeral, attended by Gong Jun. It is rumored that Zhang Zhehan was also in attendance, but this has not been confirmed in any capacity.

→ Zhang Sanjian paraded around the Shanghai airport in black, nominally “on the way to the wake,” because the scam gang have to make every moment about him. Fan Observation: It’s reported that the wake was held in the morning, while this Zhang Sanjian appearance was in the afternoon. The scam gang either didn’t know the time it was to be held at or they were trying to avoid the possibility of running into Gong Jun, who flew back to Haikou via the same airport after the wake.

6-10 Addition 06-14: The Singaporean paper Shin Min Daily News published an “email interview” article about Zhang Zhehan, taking the Zhang Sanjian scam and concerts as legitimate, with the first line of the article saying that Zhang Zhehan visited Yasukuni Shrine. This article was celebrated by whalers, with some blatantly omitting this first line—when confronted about this, they claimed it was no big deal for the very smears at the centre of 813 to be repeated here. The article also went on to say that Zhang Sanjian was “grateful for the opportunity” that his cancellation gave him.

→ Gong Jun posted a promotional video for 361°. (1129 kadian) Caption: “Walk in love, act in life, and protect beauty with green life. Be a green guardian with @ 361 Degrees” The same was also posted by 361° ten minutes later along with the catalogue of their new line.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted a video of behind the scenes footage from his recent endorsement ads. Caption: “Happy weekend! A wave of @ Gong Jun Simon's small daily work, gaining a moment of indulgence in a hurry~” BGM is Babe by Evenings.

→ QuelleVous tweeted a thread about Xiao Chu, Word of Honor’s scriptwriter, explaining that her husband has connections to 6Rooms (a livestreaming platform tied to CAPA) and that she has not had a script project since Word of Honor due to a contract dispute at the company she works for.

→ Fresh posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

Additional Reading:  → N/A

<<< previous week || all posts || following week >>>

This post was last edited 2023-06-14.

#Lots of upsetting stuff this week :( #Zhang Zhehan #Gong Jun #Word of Honor #woh cast #lld timeline

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

Well here's a fucking Chortle headline for the roundup:

Holy fuck. I cannot believe that. Never for a moment did it cross my mind that this might happen. It's been nearly ten years since he left, and this never once seemed like a possibility.

I remember exactly when he left. I know it was announced in February 2015, because I was sitting in my bedroom in the city where I lived in 2015, where I'd moved to join their bigger and more impressive sports team and ended up just being miserable and lonely for two years because I did not have any of the skills required to fit in there. Anyway, it's fine, not the point of this post. The point is I know it was 2015 and I know it was February because I vividly remember sitting in that bedroom and scrolling on Facebook, and seeing a mock Valentine's Day card that said "May Jon Stewart be the only man to break your heart this week." And that's how I found out he'd announced he was leaving The Daily Show.

I know when he actually left, too. It was August 2015. Because Donald Trump walked down that fucking escalator in June 2015, and announced he'd be running for president. I remember watching The Daily Show that night, and Jon Stewart, incredibly pleased at the comedy gold mine that was about to befall all political comedians, looked into the camera and said to Donald Trump: "Thank you for making my last six weeks the best six weeks." Then he stayed on for six more weeks and made Trump jokes every night, then he left, and the world immediately ended. Looking back with a bit of perspective, Jon Stewart really did happen leave the show right as the Western world was on a precipice of having the norms as we thought we knew them all crumble at once. I'm thinking of that timeline that says 2000-2015=nostalgia, 2016-2019=2016, 2020-present=plague. Those are pretty much my life's eras. And Jon Stewart was there for a hell of a lot of that first one. (Not actually the first era of my life, there is also 90s=childhood, but I'm pretty sure everything was fine then, right?)

It's a bit weird to me now to see Jon Stewart as having an individual career, if that makes any sense at all. If you'd asked me in 2009 who my favourite comedians were, it wouldn't have occurred to me to say Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert, even though I watched them both every night and loved those shows. I hardly even though of those as things that people had to make by being comedians and writers. They were just fixtures. Part of the landscape. I was so confused when he left the show, I didn't think it could exist without him. It didn't really feel like television could exist without Jon Stewart coming on at the end of the night. I remember learning some time ago about Marc Maron's feud with Jon Stewart over their days on the comedy circuit, and that was so weird. Jon Stewart didn't have days on the comedy circuit. He didn't have a career you could object to or admire, or opinions you could agree with or disagree with. He was just a fixture in the landscape.

I remember the first time I saw Jon Stewart. I think it was probably 2006, maybe 2005. I was really into Rick Mercer, this Canadian comedian who did TV shows where he made fun of the news. My mother put on a TV show, pointed to the guy behind the desk, and said, "That's Jon Stewart, he's like an American Rick Mercer." It only occurred to me relatively recently how funny it is to call Jon Stewart "an American Rick Mercer". But anyway, I watched that episode with my mom and then I kept doing that every night for many years.

I remember watching his final Daily Show episode with my mother, in August 2015. Bruce Springsteen came on live and played him out. My mother and I both got fairly emotional.

I kept watching The Daily Show for a long time after Jon Stewart left. I even followed a lot of the similar spinoff shows by its correspondents. I watched Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, and The Opposition with Jordan Klepper, and Larry Wilmore's The Nightly Show, and Hasan Minhaj's Patriot Act, and Michelle Wolf's The Break. Obviously, I followed John Oliver to Last Week Tonight (and would also if necessary follow him to the ends of the Earth, but that's beside the point).

I quite like Trevor Noah too; when he took over the show I read his autobiography and watched his stand-up specials and the documentary about him. I even saw him live in 2019. So I wasn't one of those people saying the show could never recover from Jon Stewart leaving. I watched a lot of the Trevor Noah years, and only dropped off from following it so closely fairly recently. It was around 2022, I think, when I just stopped keeping up with it. I had so much Britcom going on, and the world was so fucking depressing, getting all my news from actual news sites (as everyone should always always do, do not get your news from comedians, use political comedy as a way to lighten the mood of the regular news that you should first get from actual journalists, for the love of God please do not let the industry of actual journalism be steamrolled by entertainment) was stressful enough and I didn't want to keep having this other way of going over it.

So, those are a few disjointed memories that came into my mind when I saw that story this week. Here's another memory: I remember reading an interview with Jon Stewart from just after he left The Daily Show, in which he was asked if he would ever watch Fox News again. He replied that if he were ever in some post-apocalyptic scenario where Fox News was the only way to find out where to find vital life-saving information, he still wouldn't watch it. Because doing that job that required him to watch so much Fox News had destroyed him mentally and he could not wait to never ever ever ever ever do it again.

I was one of those people, after he left, saying, "I get it, it's high-pressure and difficult, I see why he wants to move on and have a break. But I would pay to have Jon Stewart just broadcast once a month in his sweatpants from his living room couch. He can't just be gone. He needs to keep telling us about the news, what will we do without him?"

We did do without him for nine years, and the world we thought we knew has crumbled around us in about twenty-five different ways since then, and I have absolutely no idea how the fuck Jon Stewart could fit into the landscape as it exists today. Like. I don't know what to do with this information. It wasn't on my radar. It's like finding out they're rebooting Buffy with the entire original cast and writing crew. Or if the girl I had a crush on from the ages of 9 to 14 showed up and told me she was in love with me. Of course it's what I wanted, but... what? Really? Why? Why now? Do I even still want this? You mean everything pre-2016 wasn't just a dream and we still technically exist in the same world as that one and the things in it are still out there and could just come back?

...There are people like @lastweeksshirttonight who actually know things about the US late-night comedy show scene, who have always understood that Jon Stewart is a person with a backstory who entered and then left an industry that also had a backstory and those things affected each other and this will have a significant effect on the ecosystem. Those people will have intelligent takes on what's happening right now. But I do not. Jon Stewart was on TV when I was in high school. He can't be on TV now because I am no longer in high school (even though I was 24 when he left in 2015). What the fuck?

[apureniallsource]

Ahead of new album, The Show, Niall Horan on how he 'lives' for touring, his desire to connect with fans through his songs, and the challenge of going out for chips in his Irish hometown

It’s almost a cliché to call Niall Horan a “super-nice guy”, but really, there’s no getting away from it. He may have named his new album The Show, but Horan feels no need to put one on for a journalist. In fact, the Irish singer-songwriter is so laid-back and likeable when we meet at a smart London hotel – fresh flowers everywhere, bottled water waiting on the table – that I ask how he’s stayed so well-adjusted. “It’s probably a combination of the upbringing I had and the fact I already had enough character at 16 [to deal with it],” he says. “It might have been a different story if I’d started doing this when I was 10.”

Now 29, he has been scarily famous for almost half his life. After auditioning for The X Factor in 2010 as a solo artist, 16-year-old Horan was eliminated at the boot camp stage, then given a spectacular second chance as one fifth of a hastily assembled group called One Direction. He and his new bandmates – Zayn Malik, Liam Payne, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson – didn’t win that year’s show, but still used it as a springboard to become a chart-topping global phenomenon. By the time One Direction announced an indefinite hiatus in January 2016, they had sold 70 million records and debuted at number one in the US with their first four albums – something not even The Beatles achieved. When asked what he would say to his pre-1D, 16-year-old self, Horan replies: “Get ready. Your life’s about to change on a level that most of the world can’t even quantify.”

Horan says he still speaks to “the lads” on a regular basis, but like all of them, he has worked hard to carve out an identity as a solo artist. If Horan’s individual achievements still feel slightly underrated, that’s probably only because his flashier bandmate Styles is now a stadium-filling superstar. Released in 2017, Horan’s debut album Flicker was a deft blend of soft rock, folk and country that debuted at number one in the US and Ireland. His 2020 follow-up Heartbreak Weather added a dash of swagger to the mix – particularly on the Brit-poppy single ‘Nice to Meet Ya’ – and became his first UK chart-topper. Because it dropped in March 2020, just as Covid-19 was taking hold, Horan never got to take the album on the road. “I haven’t toured since 2018 – that’s wild,” he says. “I love live music and I love touring – I live for it. So, it’s sad that I haven’t done that.”

Happily, a few weeks after this interview, Horan announced The Show: Live on Tour, a 50-date trek across Europe, North America, Australia and New Zealand that will keep him busy from February to July of next year. When Horan last toured five years ago, he mainly played large theatres, but now he is aiming to pack out arenas from Birmingham to Brisbane. During our conversation, he hinted that he was ready for the step up. “In my eyes, the bigger the venue, the better, because I fucking love looking out at an ocean of people,” he says. “For me, it feels like the bigger the venue, the better the show is gonna be.”

Horan also makes no bones about wanting The Show to become another UK number one after it drops on 9 June. “There’s nothing better than getting that little statue sent to your house,” he says with an impish grin. At the time of writing, he seems well on course for another express delivery from the Official Charts Company. The album’s breezy lead single ‘Heaven’ cracked the UK Top 20 in February, and its sprightly follow-up ‘Meltdown’ is now climbing the charts. A few hours before this interview, I watch him perform both songs in the Radio 1 Live Lounge. Horan is just as relaxed with his band during rehearsals, but when he spots that his vocals are getting buried in the mix, he quickly and calmly gets it corrected.

Horan began working on ‘The Show’ while holed up at home during the summer of 2020. The album title had come to him earlier in the year, but he “didn’t really know what it meant until the pandemic”. When he sat down at the piano that August, the lyrics that came out seemed to capture the confusion of the Covid era: “If everything was easy, nothing ever broke / If everything was simple, how would we know? / How to fix your tears? How to fake a show?” At this point, Horan says he realised ‘The Show’ was both “a metaphor for life” and an overarching concept he could run with. “When there’s no heartbreak [to write about], you have to come up with a different concept,” he says. “I realised quite quickly that what I wanted to talk about was the ups and downs and good and bad of life. That’s ‘The Show’.”

Having “no heartbreak” is about as much as Horan will say about his personal life. “Keeping that stuff quiet”, he believes, is one reason he remains so grounded. Since 2020, he has been dating Amelia Woolley, a designer shoe buyer who never appears on his work-focused Instagram. But when we discuss ‘You Could Start a Cult’, an idiosyncratic folk ballad from the album, Horan does offer a teasing glimpse into their home life. He says the song’s eye-catching title was inspired by the true-crime series they like watching. “I always try and write weird stuff like that, then see if I can flip it on its head and make the song [itself] not as dark as the title,” he says. In this case, Horan flipped it into a “love song, effectively”, albeit an intense one. “It’s about… not the desperation feeling, but the ‘I think you’re the best fucking thing in the world’ feeling,” he explains. “And if you started a cult, I’d follow you into the fire. You know, that kind of angst, though I don’t know if ‘angst’ is the word I’m looking for!”

Horan spends a lot of time in LA because his record label and producers are based there. His main collaborators on The Show were Joel Little, who he brought in because he liked his work with Taylor Swift, indie artist Noah Kahan, and long-time co-writer John Ryan, a veteran of four One Direction albums. “I think it’s really important first of all to be loyal,” he says of his enduring partnership with Ryan. “And you know, if it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” Still, working with Little felt just as comfortable, partly because they could pick things up at a moment’s notice. “If I get the green light at the top of my street [in LA], I can be at Joel’s house in less than a minute,” Horan says. “It’s a fucking dream!”

But during the pandemic, Horan was grounded at his main base in southwest London. “I’ve never been fitter in my life because I was cycling 80 or 90 miles around Richmond Park every week – it’s gorgeous out there,” he recalls. Like many of us, Horan has conflicting feelings about the way Covid placed our lives on hold. “I don’t want to say I enjoyed it because I didn’t – it was such a horrible time,” he says. “But I got to a point about two or three months in, where I was like: ‘This is the longest I’ve ever had off.’ He particularly appreciated having to stay in one place for a sustained period of time. “Normally, I’m packing a suitcase every three or four days,” he says. “At Heathrow Airport, the guards at the [security] desk just laugh when they see me coming. They’re like, ‘How do you do this?’”

Having lived in London since he was 16, Horan says “it’s definitely the best city on the planet”. But at the same time, he still regards Mullingar, the Irish market town where he was born and raised, as home. His debut solo single ‘This Town’, a UK top 10 hit in 2016, was incredibly charming because it harnessed his ineffable longing for the place. Horan reckons he returns to Mullingar “seven or eight times a year”, although walking down the high street is pretty tricky. “I can’t just pull up outside the chip shop, run in and get the chips, then run back to the car,” he says. “Everything has to be thought through. Like, where am I going to park? How many streets am I going to have to cross? What am I going to wear?” Horan says all this with no hint of frustration: by now, he knows what is expected of a homecoming hero.

Horan knew he wanted to be a musician from a young age and says he “tried to make this as clear as possible” to his parents. They were “supportive up to a point”, but because the family didn’t have much money and Mullingar wasn’t a creative hub like Dublin, his mother urged him to “get some sort of qualification”. “I still don’t have any,” Horan says with a laugh, “I didn’t do GCSEs or anything like that because I didn’t finish school.” At 16, Horan made the 50-mile journey to Dublin to audition for The X Factor and grabbed hold of the One Direction rocket with both hands.

Did his parents come up with any ideas for a Plan B? “We didn’t get that far. Honestly, I just packed my bag and never came back – that’s the way they look at it,” says Horan. “My father worked in Tesco for 35 years and my mother worked at a pewter genesis company making little bits and pieces – clocks and things like that. They both had very regular jobs.” Horan notes astutely that some kids from a working-class background “like to spread their wings and leave the nest” – as he did, quite spectacularly – whereas others “like to stay in their hometown, or maybe can’t get out”. Horan pauses for a second, perhaps to ponder what might have been. “I don’t know what they would have wanted me to do, but I’m sure it would have been a good life,” he continues. “Like, my parents are having a good time.”

Thirteen years after he left to become a pop star, Horan’s own ambition remains undimmed. “I’ve achieved a lot in my young life, but I’m still fired up to do as much as I can,” he says. “My career has felt so good because it reminds me of everything I thought the music industry would be when I was a kid. I got the good end of the stick [in terms of] travelling the world and playing to millions. And I still want more of that.”

For this reason, the audience is always at the forefront of his mind. “When I’m writing, I ask myself, ‘Have I gone too specific to the point where it only makes sense to me?’” he says. “And then I try and broaden the thought to make it as relatable as possible.” ‘Never Grow Up’ from Horan’s new album was partly inspired by his girlfriend’s parents, who are “still madly in love”, but its lyrics will chime with One Direction fans who, like him, are close to turning 30. “Hope we still drink like we’re back in the pub,” Horan sings. “Hope we grow old, but we never grow up.”

In Horan’s eyes, the songs that fully stand the test of time – from Simon and Garfunkel to Whitney Houston and Adele – are “the ones that really mean a lot to the people”. It’s this kind of universal connection that he is always striving for. “These are the things that go on in my head when I’m writing,” he says. “I don’t want to alienate anyone, and I don’t want to be introspective to the point where I ruin it for everyone. So, if they can connect to it too, then we all get what we want out of this.”

#niall horan #rolling stone uk #01june

[smileymoth]

This is Daniel!! He is my pride and joy, and drawing him truly makes me feel really happy ^_^

Under cut is a whole lot of information about him!!!

I originally created him in April 2013, but he was a girl named Kristina back then. I feel like I have to acknowledge the mess that was Kris the Cat before I get onto more relevant information: She was THE scene kid, THE evil girlie who wanted to poison everyone. THE one with dark blue wings and awful lot of make-up even though IRL I couldn't dream of putting make-up on ever (Repressed emo kid with "grr tomboy" mentality). She stayed with me for a whole year until 2014 June when I decided... hmm what if I Genderbend Her since I had seen some artists who I liked genderbend their own ocs. So I did. (That artwork I made is lost in the sauce forever, i think i deleted it off the web and then my dads computer got fucked so its gone permanently.) And that design of him kind of stuck with me more for unknown reasons so I made him my main sona.

Here's the timeline of his designs that I made back in 2020:

The reason why his name is Daniel is mostly due to Danny Murillo and Danny Worsnop, the lead singers of the 2 bands I was extremely in love with at the time. Hence my own name too. At the time I was 12, and because me and my bestie (hi Evan!!!!) were playing toys with our ocs on DeviantArt and wanted to make a band, we came up with 3 extra characters (he made Ethan and Aiden, I made Jack) and Danny became the lead singer of Fallen Soldier (epic cringey band name from cringey teens!!! I even made a failgirl logo for them!!) (The name originates from them probably listening to too much Rise Against and 5FDP)

I haven't changed his backstory too much from since we made it up the first time, since there's really no need to. When I say that my best friend is very intertwined in this world, I mean it. We built the world for these furries together and I will cherish it forever :3

ANYWAY let's get to the character info

***

Name: Daniel Varing, stagename Danny Smileymoth. (when I gave him that last name I was 12 so do not bully me for it literally meaning 'avalanche'. it would be an excellent scene kid name on myspace. danny avalanche. lol)

His friends call him Danny or Dan Dan sometimes.

Birthday: 1. February, (aquarius sun, libra moon, cancer rising) <- this part matches w me too

Gender: non-binary, he/she pronouns. (he doesn't care about gender since he doesn't understand it's importance)

Personality: He's very sweet and kind, and enthusiastic about the things he enjoys. He gets attached to people quickly, that also means he can be quite possessive over them, sometimes feeling unnecessarily jealous when his friends don't pay as much attention to him as he'd like. He understands that this is a personal flaw and doesn't act upon it. His social battery drains real fast when he's out in crowded places, and mostly just enjoys spending time alone or in a small circle of friends. He enjoys art and music greatly. He needs a little bit help sometimes understanding social cues and such. She hates the Sun and tries to stay in the shade as much as possible, it makes her overheat. He likes to purr and knead when he's happy... he sometimes forgets to retract his nails so umm yeah. Meow. He likes people watching. He's normal I promise. (lie). He likes taking care of his friends.. he will make them gifts, buy them clothes or treats. He does have a bit of a short temper but he feels guilty about it, and tries to not lash out over stupid things that have no importance.

I mostly draw Danny wearing feminine clothes that can be related to emo/scene/goth/just alt fashion. Aka a lot of black. He does really like velvet and skirts though!!! Unlike me he does actually wear jeans too. :3 he just doesn't like them to be ripped, is all. He almost always keeps his hair down.

He loves the paisley pattern, velvet, corduroy, leather jackets, lacey skirts and shirts, leather shoes... you get the drill. He also always wears the metal bracelet on his right hand and the 2 necklaces around his neck. (just like meee)

Backstory Factoids:

As of right now he lives in California. He grew up in Estonia. He has been best friends with Jack since early childhood. He met Kratis at a local library where the mans was working. He got introduced to Kratis' friends, Ethan and Aiden. They had been planning on starting a band, and since Danny could sing, they just took him and made him the lead singer. Jack joined the band later on after Danny introduced him to the rest of his new friends.

He found Inbawez (weird freak of a pet) when wandering around a nearby forest, Inba took instant liking to him and never left.

Beside being in a band, he goes babysitting every now and then. He is also a freelance illustrator who does cute art commissions on the web.

The "California" they live in is not a representation of the actual USA Cali since I have never been there and we refuse to change their living location. All we know is that Daniel lives in the middle of the forest in a 2 story house with his boyfriend.

pre-danny lore Kristina lived in a hollow tree with her shadow pet Inbawez. She was obsessed with Kratis and due to forgotten circumstances she and Kratis are blood bound. lol

I think this is about it? I am definitely missing something but I want to post this since IT'S BEEN A MONTH SINCE I FINISHED THIS REF AAHH!!!! my pride and joy. feel free to draw her if you want :3 :3 :3 meow

#oc #danny #smileymothart #furry #this was supposed to be posted a month ago its been sitting in my drafts for too long. i am releasing my baby into the wild #reference sheet

[palukoo]

💖🧐⏳if you'd like!!

thank you so much for the ask :) i always end up making my answers so long so its under a cut

💖 What made you start writing?

so this one is basically impossible for me to answer. the first story i remember writing/trying to write was when i was 6 years old, and i think it was just bc i had ideas i thought were cool! the first fanfic i remember writing was when i was in like 5th grade and i remember i would do some writing and then my friends basically being like oh would you write this and i would handwrite fic during class or lunch or recess or whatever and give it to them, and at that point i was also constantly writing parts of original works, and then it just all spiraled! so at this point it's literally like. why wouldn't i write, what would that be like?

🧐 Do you spend much time researching for your stories?

oh my god yes. it's awful. i mean, okay, it really really depends on the fic but there tends to be at least one detail i get really hung up on and spend hours researching, which honestly more often than not doesn't end up in the final product? i mean, long time followers, embarrassingly, may remember the agent carter roller derby au which i did research on the history of roller derby to try to make it actually reflect the state of the sport, in some way, in the 1940s. its extremely inconsistent though, even internally. like, for the cats that walk alone, i read the whole play of the women and the short story i named it after and read a little about reno divorces but i did not in fact even rewatch the film before posting it (i did watch it after posting and go oh so i got the timeline a little off but the title works out so much better than i originally intended??) probably the most gratuitous example is the amy fic, because i literally would have well over twenty tabs open in like congress.gov to try to incorporate bills/legislative debate that would actually be somewhat accurate for the early 2000s, and i also did a ton of research on like electoral maps and various theories and whatnot. more of that actually probably shows up in the second, currently unfinished and unpublished part which isn't exactly abandoned but its been a hot minute, because since that's post canon it involves a lot more of me making shit up and often drawing inspiration from actual real bills from corresponding or close to corresponding legislative sessions and modified numbers from elections. which was always :/ bc like. neither early 2000s politics nor tww ideas of politics are really things i agree with but i was like really committed to a degree of real world and canon accuracy. more recent examples for things that are unfinished and unpublished would be like doing research on the climates and demographics of various parishes and towns in louisiana, trying to find a map of railroads in 1940s arizona, reading about the state of maternal medicine specifically with regards to childbirth in the 1940s, and trying to find real postcards sold in melbourne, australia in the 1940s. the first i'm probably never gonna actually really write the fic associated with it and the last three i basically ended up getting vaguer in the writing to avoid specifics. typing this out is fascinating bc damn i've done some specific research abt the 1940s...

⌛ How long does it take you to write a fic, or a chapter?

okay this depends so fucking much. i mean like, in 2020 when i was starting the amy fic, i wrote so fast. like its long as hell so it took me a long time but i would write like 5k in a day some days and i wrote that whole thing at a velocity that i had never done before and never have since. some things i also agonize over more than others i guess? my kiradax body swap au was a wip that i rewrote multiple times over the course of multiple years, but the final version probably didn't actually take that long? idk. the cats that walk alone is the most recent thing i have published and i made the file for it in mid june and published it in early september, but i think i had it mostly done sitting in my docs for a while. my current high focus wip is one i've been working on since november, but its also multi-chapter and shaping up to be longer than anticipated... i'm gonna say the answer varies but tends towards several months, but at a very uneven pace within that. ultimately, i also have the adhd thing of like, if i don't finish a project within a certain amount of time/at a certain level of hyperfixation, it usually will die, and that timing tends to max out within a year, give or take a few months.

#would that i could answer asks concisely... im a rambler; a qualifier and overexplainer of every statement i make #(which works out great writing fanfic lmfaoo) #asks #answered #hideyseek #my writing #side note the brain rot is severe... read 'if you'd like' in the voice of anne baxter as eve harrington <3

[wartakes]

When Domestic Politics Become a National Security Concern (OLD ESSAY)

This essay was originally posted on June 29th, 2022 - not long after the verdict overturning Roe v. Wade was handed down by the Supreme Court.

Basically, this was me commenting on how I increasingly see crossover between the world I operate in (national security, defense, etc.) and the domestic political environment in the United States - which is needless to say, NOT A GOOD THING.

(Full essay below the cut).

I hope for a lot of things these days. I hope for better things for myself, for my friends and family and loved ones, for people all over the world at large.

But more than anything, I really just wish we could stop having history for just a day or two.

Like, fucking really. Can it just take a smoke break? I’d really like to write one of these about something else for a change instead of whatever event is sucking my soul out that month and it feels like there’s been even more of that already this year than the last couple years combined.

The big event most recently of course was the U.S. Supreme Court overturning its own prior decision on Roe vs. Wade, stripping nationwide abortion rights and immediately putting the lives of countless women at risk. As if this wasn’t bad enough in its own right, it seems that there are troubling signs on the horizon for what the majority-Republican appointee court has its sights on next when it comes to stripping away rights that many of us thought were settled at this point. Needless to say, it’s been an utterly demoralizing week for myself and just about everyone I know.

Now, you may be asking yourself: “KomodoDad, why are you writing about this here? Aren’t you a war guy? Why are you going on about domestic politics?” First of all: if you really are unironically asking that, go fuck yourself, I’ll write about what I want to. Second: all of this is fast becoming a national security issue and that’s really bad and we should all be concerned (that is, those of us who haven’t already been concerned for a long time now).

I started thinking about this on the friday that the Roe decision was passed down and it festered in my head even more over the weekend that followed. I could see it not only in the reaction of victorious right-wing forces celebrating their accomplishment and lashing out further at their opponents, or in the various police crackdowns on people rightfully showing their displeasure at this rollback of bodily autonomy. I also saw it just in the reactions of people I know, a great many of them struggling to keep from saying something that would get them banned off of social media or worse. Even more than I saw during the George Floyd protests of 2020, I’ve seen this bubbling rage coming to the surface in so many people who A.) haven’t been prone to outrage before; and B.) aren’t all necessarily leftists or as far left as some of us are online.

I look at the pattern we’re locked in, with a powerful and vocal right-wing minority continuously ramming through its agenda even when the majority of Americans oppose it, and that majority of people getting more and more frustrated when nothing seems to be done to try and roll it back, and I suddenly get very concerned. I get concerned because I am a national security weirdo, and when I look at what’s going on now and I look at what’s been going on the past five, ten, twenty years, I start to see patterns that if I noticed them in a foreign country I’d be going “uh oh, that doesn’t bode well for them.” Basically, it feels like more and more of our domestic political issues are turning into national security concerns due to their intractability and that’s not good.

I want to stress before I go any deeper that I’m going to try and not make this a doomer piece. I speak every other minute about how I abhor doomerism in all its forms and that’s the last feeling I want to encourage with my writing. But I do want this essay to be something that at least makes you feel concerned if you weren’t already and motivate you to action. I’ve actually avoided writing about this topic for a while to be perfectly honest with you. I’ve seen more than a few articles and several recent books about the possibility of Civil War II and by and large I’ve felt they’ve been scare pieces trying to make a quick fear buck. While I’ve admittedly still had a low-level concern about that sort of thing, it’s been just that: low. I hadn’t yet felt a need to address it. But after this past week, I think I’ve finally felt like it’s necessary to talk about the risk of civil conflict for everyone’s sake because I feel shit like what’s happened with Roe is only going to keep coming hotter and heavier and we need to understand what we’re dealing with if we’re going to do anything about it.

Worrying Signs

As usual, I feel the need to define some terms and explain some of my concepts a bit more. If I casually say “everything is national security now” with no context, that can be taken a lot of ways. After all, national security and national defense do touch upon or are connected to multiple corners of our economy and day to day lives, even if we don’t always see it. When I say “everything is national security now” what I mean is that more and more political issues are rising to the level of contention or intractability where they carry with them a threat of widespread violence – be that violence against civilians, the state, or whatever or whoever else. They start to rise to the level that they’re disrupting or preventing the carrying out “good governance” (or whatever might pass for it) and all the things we might consider part and parcel of being a “normal”, peaceful, functional country. Things as simple as being to go to the grocery store or go to school or wherever without the threat of getting merc’d being off the scale. They rise to that level because their intractability prevents any kind of solution through existing non-violent channels for whatever reason – such as those channels being flawed and broken, or just being plain non-existent in some cases.

This is nothing new (unfortunately). We’ve seen this before to varying degrees. The most notable and destructive instance of this in American history is of course the original U.S. Civil War, where the issue of slavery became so intractable that it could not be resolved by peaceful means and became a violent conflict when the South took up arms in defense of it (if anyone ever tries to tell you it was about “states’ rights” just ask “states’ rights to what, motherfucker?). Other examples also exist at varying scales and intensity of violence. The Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 against the Federal government and its powers of taxation is one example, which involved a large-scale Federal and state military response but very few killed or injured. There are of course, other examples that don’t quite rise to the level of civil war or outright rebellion from multiple periods of American history, such as violence against activists in the Civil Rights movement. Another pertinent example in light of the Roe vs. Wade decision is the history of attacks – sometimes deadly – on abortion providers in the U.S. (which have consequently skyrocketed over the past year in case you were wondering).

So, yes: certain political issues becoming increasingly unsolvable by peaceful political means and becoming security issues as well as political issues is not new. However, whenever it happens, it should still be cause for concern even if its “mild”, because it signals greater problems afoot. In that vein, if you start getting more and more issues that are becoming security issues all at the same time, it stands to reason you should be even more concerned. That’s why I feel it’s even more cause for worry now due to the fact it feels like more and more issues are all reaching that point simultaneously in recent years.

There’s also the matter of the way in which the issues become intractable or contended, because sometimes it creates the false impression that the problem is no one is “compromising” or finding “middle ground” like “adults” (or at least that’s what braindead columnists in major newspapers are trying to get us to believe). With many of our “controversial” issues today, there often seems like there’s actually a majority of people who are in favor of some kind of progressive change or action. We’ve seen this with gay marriage, abortion rights, gun control, and with multiple other issues that we’re told are “controversial.” The problem is that the minority of those who oppose any positive change on these issues are mostly unwilling to cede any ground what-so-ever; with more and more issues are seen by them as being hills to die on (or kill on). Even mild amounts of change are cause for outrage and screaming bloody murder, as we’ve seen with what it took to pass even lukewarm gun violence legislation in the aftermath of multiple mass shootings this year (and the reactions to said lukewarm legislation from some on the right). Every single political battle becomes one that these reactionaries want to fight to the death over (both figuratively and – increasingly – literally).

And that’s what they are: reactionaries. Don’t let these people fool you into thinking that they’re only “conservatives.” This is not to say that conservatives are necessary “good”, but this just isn’t what they are. A philosophical conservative (on paper) isn’t supposed to necessarily be opposed to all change, but only wants gradual, limited, incremental change (the subtext here for anyone on the left of course, being, that they want that change so that they can “manage” it and maintain power and privileges in the process). But reactionaries want to actively turn the clock back and re-fight past battles that they’ve lost. It’s not just good enough for them to slow down change or even halt change, they want to go back and undo change to fit their own worldview.

The Rachet Effect of Rage

Therein lies another problem, because the deadlock we’re in isn’t really even strictly a deadlock. Movement is certainly possible, but it feels as if the only movement we can achieve lurches us further to the right. You’ve probably heard this described before by people more politics savvy than I am: the idea of the rachet effect; where the design of the political system prevents moving back to the left and only allows movement to the right. It becomes harder and harder to dismiss as you have the Democratic Party – the supposed guardians against the sort of setbacks we’re experiencing (if their campaign literature is to be believed) the party currently in power, failing to do anything to substantively improve our material conditions while continuing to allow the right to drag us further into their corner despite not even supposedly being in power anymore. The Democratic Party seems fundamentally incapable of exercising power once it has notionally achieved it, while the Republican Party has spent the last two to four decades building up power and institutions in such a way that it can continue to wield power even when it is – on paper – still in the opposition.

That brings us to the situation we’re in. Where when we’re not at a standstill, we’re being ratcheted further to the right with various court challenges and other manipulations of the structures of power by the right. Any attempt to move further to the left is blocked or thwarted by the mechanisms developed by the intractable and reactionary right – be it the Republicans or various other far-right groups that have sprung up like mushrooms in the past decade – and aided by the incompetence, unwillingness, or even outright complicity of the liberal establishment. This is a situation that has left many – myself included – feeling disenfranchised and powerless to act on our own or to convince those in power to act positively.

You may not remember, but I’ve written about this sort of thing before in a different context, when I discussed insurgency and counterinsurgency and our failings in understanding it. Insurgencies, rebellions, civil wars – all the various kinds of intrastate violence, start when domestic political grievances become unresolvable by peaceful means. Eventually, at least some of those who are advocating those grievances – after it’s become clear they have no way of affecting change or even negotiating for the possibility of change under the current systems – feel that they are forced to take up arms and use violence in order to do so.  

Maybe now, if you weren’t already concerned with the buildup of impotent rage many in this country are feeling at the same time that those on the right seem more than willing to resort to violence to drag us back in time and keep us there, you might start to understand why I am.

As the right dig in deeper with their extreme stances, you have the opposing current of everyone else who want change slamming up against them. While the right stands as a bulwark against change while shoving everyone else backwards, the frustration and the rage of everyone else builds. What happens when you have more and more people who aren’t somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan increasingly feel they have no other way to try and stop it or to improve things the way the system is currently constituted? What happens when they feel voting does nothing, that politicians aren’t willing to engage with them, and where it feels like any other response ends up with them being beaten and tear gassed? You can fill in the blanks. It’s not good.

All is Not Lost

If you know me, you know I don’t like treating the future as written in stone. Time is not, in fact, a flat circle. We do all still have agency. We can still affect things in the world around us. We are not absolutely doomed to a certain large-scale conflagration of civil violence and destruction along with all manner of other misery. We are not completely powerless to stop events. There are reasons for hope. But if things don’t change in a big way, if enough people don’t act and soon, we’re definitely on the road to something bad.

I have no idea what that something could potentially be and no one else can be absolutely sure either – so if anyone else tries to give you any prediction other than a series of plausible possibilities, take it with a large grain of salt. I don’t want to get too deeply into those because I don’t want to scare or depress you any more than you absolutely need to be right now. All I will say is it could be anywhere from something as high-key and violent as the Syrian Civil War, to something more on the level of Italy’s “Years of Lead” or the Northern Irish “Troubles.” A lot of that really depends on what happens more in the years to come/years preceding any hypothetical conflict (which again, is not certain to occur). But even if only the “less bad” types of civil conflict break out, it would still be horrific for large swathes of society and the world at large. We shouldn’t want any of that in any shape or form.

Again, I try not to be alarmist or doomsaying – the exact opposite, in fact. What I’m telling you today is not meant to fill you with dread for the sake of dread; it is not meant to black pill you or turn you into a nihilist or a doomer. What I want to do is simply drive home the seriousness of the times we’re in – to reinforce what the last few years have taught us: that this is not just a game, or a temporary phase that will eventually fizzle out on its own. We are, in fact, in a real crisis. We are in a Wikipedia article that has not been written yet – or exists and is going to be retitled sometime in the near-future. How that article will read in the future is on all of us. This is meant to be a drive to action to try and improve this situation and prevent it from spiraling further out of control, not an attempt to get fear clicks and paralyze you with foreboding. We need to channel our fear, our anger, our frustration; channel it into meaningful action.  

Part of me isn’t entirely convinced we’re not already well into the early stages of what might be some kind of civil conflict. That with all the mass shootings, street brawls, and other violence, we may already be in some kind of “Years of Lead” or “Troubles” or Weimar Republic-esque disorder. If that’s the case, that only reinforces the call to action to make sure that the conflict we may or may not already be in does not progress to more destructive phases – not only destructive for us as people living in this country, but destructive for the effects it would undoubtedly have on the entire world due to the centrality of the United States in its day-to-day affairs. We owe it to not just ourselves, but to all people everywhere out of solidarity.

What are some of the things we can do now? A lot of the things we need to do are things people have already been telling us to do and that we need to double down and commit more to as we move ahead. Getting to know your neighbors and your community and participating in mutual aid; joining, starting, and supporting progressive organizations be they labor unions, advocacy groups for specific topics or general change, or organizations that help people get resources that they may not be able to usually access; participating in direct action and pressure campaigns when necessary; also, while we’ve learned that voting alone doesn’t bring about change, I’d still say that it’s something we cannot ignore as a too (I’m not going to give you an electoralism lecture because I don’t buy into that myself, but voting isn’t a useless gesture and is critical to prevent more backsliding, with some of the progressive victories we’ve seen this year being proof of that).

I know that last paragraph is a very generalized, non-specific list of suggestions. In my defense, at the end of the day, I am still a national security and international relations professional, not a domestic political animal. There are people out there you can and will give you more specific and helpful advice on this front that I can. I just want to make sure that you’re taking home that there is a real urgency to seek out said advice and guidance and act on it. All is not lost, do not despair; but know that the pressure is real and the need for action is real. I leave you with this: all of our lives have intrinsic value; when something has value, you fight to defend it.

Stay safe out there and keep on keeping on.

#essay #War Takes #War Takes essay #Donald Trump #socialism #leftism #democratic socialism #far-right #fascism #terrorism #domestic terrorism #insurrection #internal conflict #civil war #war #roe vs. wade #roe v. wade #roe versus wade #ratchet effect #authoritarianism #anti authoritarian

[providnce]

hii!! i consider myself a independent catb fan since i got into then in 2019 and i obsessed over the songs and lyrics and stuff but never actually got to the fandom? like never knew the fan side of things just the surface level (i was the obsessed and totally into the fandom from another group so i stayed at my comfort zone haha)

with that being said!! im here to ask you kindly if you could tell what happened between them? like what the fans knows with details because i only know the facts about the show being canceled, bob, benji and bondy left and they unfollowed/blocked van but since i was looking around those days i've seen memes and stuff and a few things i missed out and i wanted to understand :(( if its too much to ask like too much work for you its okay!! but i think it would help other people who feel a little lost about everything as well :)

thank you in advance!

hello lovely, and welcome, we're glad to have you here! might i ask which band you were obsessed with instead? and i can definitely understand, i was actually the same way before i actually got involved in the fandom over the summer. c:

and yeah, I can give a quick rundown! i don’t think there’s an official post detailing what went on since lockdown, so here we have:

A (brief) Summary of CaTB’s Decline

Silence from the band once the pandemic hit. Lack of communication ever since has gotten fans quite frustrated, and remains so today. Since March 2020.

A fan noticed that Bondy, Bob, and Benji resigned on Companies House, which made the fandom wonder if the band had split. March 2021.

Catfish play Reading + Leeds Festival, collectively relieving everyone that they were there. August 2021.

However, Bob announces his departure a month after R+L on Instagram. He’s been working on his own music ever since. September 2021.

Bondy’s friend releases the Hide and Speak podcast, with him as a guest. More speculation on him leaving the band as he’d exclusively used past tense when speaking about his time in Catfish, along with a few statements he made towards the end that people interpreted as slating Van. December 2021.

Unfollowing commences. The fandom freaks out upon seeing Van’s following count go down, thinking he’s been active on IG. Chaos. Turns out, it was simply Catfish’s ex-tour manager Steve removing him as a follower. Later on, Bondy seems to unfollow Van and Larry, with rumours that he’s even gone as far as blocking both of them. Odd since Van hadn’t been on IG since 2017. Start of 2022.

^ As of today, Van follows Benji and Larry. Benji follows Van and Larry. Bondy only follows Bob. Bob only follows Bondy. Larry follows nobody.

Bondy got drunk on Tom Ungerer’s (bassist for Sam Fender) IG live, where he says he’s not fond of Van. When asked if Catfish were splitting up, he laughed, looked away, and said “I have no fucking idea, it’s got nothing to do with me.” Bondy also stated he’s working on new music, “trying to make music fun again, last time I was in Catfish and the Bottlemen, I was never allowed to make my own music.” With this live, Bondy had essentially confirmed he and Van have fallen out, and his creative freedom was limited when he was in the band. February 2022.

Larry logs onto social media for the first time in literal ages to unfollow everyone, and remove all his content. February 2022.

Catfish were supposed to open for Stereophonics in Cardiff in mid-June, but they pulled out two weeks prior due to unforeseen circumstances. June 2022.

More silence. Then, Bondy made his statement, confirming he officially left the band back in March 2021 and hasn’t had any affiliation with the band since, due to “reoccurring intolerable behaviour” within the band. This means he had stepped in as a session musician in the last 4 summer shows that Catfish had played. He also described relationships in the band as dysfunctional. Fans have taken this to be at the cause of Van, though there isn’t much clarification on whether this is true or not. Bob then came back on IG and blocked Van and Benji. June 2022.

Dave Sardy (producer for The Ride) posts photos in the studio, teasing possible new music from Van/Catfish by putting the Catfish hashtag in captions on IG. The fandom collectively exploded, again, and so we do every time he makes a post with Catfish in the caption. And every time he likes a comment asking for new music from Van. Since June 2022.

Now, to the present. Van’s disappeared off the face of the earth, the last time we saw him was 400+ days ago when Catfish played Neighbourhood Weekender 2021. Benji recently got engaged. We have snippets of Bondy and Bob (now Rob) working on new music.

in conclusion: rip catb lmfao

who knows wtf is happening with the band 😭

if i missed anything or got something wrong, feel free to add on! i have the memory of a goldfish, so thank you @icouldntfindquiet and @catb-fics for helping me put this together!

#van mccann #catb #johnny bond #bondy #benji blakeway #bob hall #asks 💌 #thlasthours #bookmark

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

(belated) reading update: may 2023

upon realizing I was over a week late on my book report for May I considered just waiting until the end of June and rolling the two together, but thing is that I have a Theme for June (spoilers: it's the very predictable theme of only reading books by and/or about queer people) and lumping them together will really throw that off, so! onwards we go.

I should also say that this will be a real shorty, tied with March for the LEAST amount of books I've managed to finish in a month so far this year. in March that was because the month mostly revolved around a weeklong vacation to crash at my mom's place on the beach with a gaggle of friends, which was very fun but seriously cramped my time to read for pleasure. May ALSO saw a very exciting weeklong trip to a brand new city (WHAT'S UP NEW ORLEANS) as well as genuinely some of the shittiest and most harrowing events of my adult life so far so. can't blame a bitch a bitch for slipping!

ANYWAY.

what have I been reading?

People From Bloomington (Budi Darma, 1980; trans. Tiffany Tsao, 2022) - a strange short story collection set in the Bloomington, Indiana, where the Indonesian Darma studied during the 1970s. these stories take the mundane drama of Americana and turn it on its head, crawling deep into themes of alienation and ostracization and the ways they turn people against themselves. over and over again Darma tells tales of lonely boarders driven to obsessive and antisocial behavior by the loneliness that eats them alive amid pleasant-looking suburbs. the prose is overall a little on the dry end for me to really love it, but I do think about how fucked up these protagonists are, like, constantly.

High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America (Jessica B. Harris, 2011) - a delight! an absolute gosh dang delight! Harris is a PUN FULL INTENDED delectable writer who takes you on the most unexpected tour of how African foodways have shaped the culture of US cuisine. beginning with the obvious roots of the transatlantic slave trade and journeying on to America's first Black restaurateurs and sit-ins at diner counters, there's no facet of culinary life too small to be interwoven with Black American history, and Harris eagerly explores them all while painting a vivid picture for her readers. this book will absofuckinglutely make you hungry, so it's a good thing that recipes are included in the back.

Gay Bar: Why We Went Out (Jeremy Atherton Lin, 2021) - a heady powerhouse of a read, seamlessly blending the historical with the editorial with the personal. Lin's on a journey to resurrect the history of the gay bars that shaped he and his husband's intertwined lives - from their roots before his time, the state he found them in as a young man searching for a place in the queer scene, and their apparently dwindling status in the 2020s. Lin's writing is dreamy and grimy, unflinching and romantic, horny and bored all at once. this isn't an uncritical glorification of the gay bar but an interrogation, the pressing question of what community even means and where on earth it's going.

D'Vaughn and Kris Plan a Wedding (Chencia C. Higgins, 2022) - that's right, still on that kick of reading one romance novel a month. if you spend any amount of time perusing lists of LBGT book recs, particularly LBGT romances, it's inevitable that you'll run into D'Vaughn and Kris. this book has so much #representation that it's pretty much catnip for list compilers: both leads are Black lesbians, D'Vaughn is fat and not yet out to her very Christian mother, and Kris is a butch Afro-Latina (and also part of the most marginalized community of all: influencers). but what about the story, is that actually good? straight up no, not at all; I feel pretty comfortable saying this is maybe my least favorite of the romance novels I've read so far. totally aside from lackluster writing, clunky exposition, and slapdash plotting, this book is uninterested in engaging with its central premise - Kris and D'Vaughn meet on a reality show where they are paired up to plan a wedding in 6 weeks without letting their families figure out that their relationship is a sham - to such an absurd and infuriating degree that I have to wonder why Higgins even bothered.

that's all for now, June will hopefully be MUCH more full considering I've already finished three books and still have nearly three weeks to go + a whole heap of queer books checked out from the library! xoxo

#reading updates #bookblr

[zuko-always-lies]

Yes but Bryke are still bitter to this day that Zutara is so much more popular than Kataang . I just find it weird why Zutara shippers are called the weird ones when all the stats and fanfics show they are the most popular ship by far. Instead they get treated like a weird unpopular minority of shippers which is not the case at all. Stats don't lie. Kataang is boring at best and people who are actually excited by it are the real minority despite canon forcing it. That should tell you something.

I don't like a lot about Bryke and their visions for the series(they made the fucking comics, for god's sake), but "Bryke are still bitter about Zutara" is something I hear getting thrown around a lot without a shed of evidence.

And argumentum ad populum is never a good argument about why one ship is better. There are about 36,000 ATLA fics on AO3; only about 6,600 are Zutara. 84% of fics do not include Zutara. Zukka, with 5700 fics, is nearly as popular as Zutara, despite having no canonical basis whatsoever. Does that prove that it's the "best ship" that the show "was clearly leading up to?" Even the majority of Zuko shipping fics don't ship Zutara.

And the situation is even clearer when we take a snapshot of the more recent fandom: Since June 2020, there have been 5101 Zukka fics updated, 4388 Zutara ones, and 2978 Kataang ones. Zutara is not the most popular ship among the current fandom. It's a very popular ship, but clearly a minority one in the fandom as a whole, especially since fans who are satisfied with canon's story and ships are probably significantly less likely to write fics(the "Azula Redemption" category would probably have vastly fewer fics if Azula got a good canon redemption, for instance).

I think it's pretty clear that Zutara is a large minority, but a minority none the less. I don't think this is a sign that it is a "good" or "bad" ship, one way or another. Certainly a lot of stuff that is insanely popular in the fandom ("Zuko is an awkward turtleduck," for instance) is also dumb, noncanonical, and nonsensical, and represents a flattening of the show and its characters, but being unpopular doesn't mean something is good. "The Fire Nation did nothing wrong" isn't nearly as popular anymore, thank god, but it's an incredibly bad take. The reason Zutara tends to receive a lot of pushback is because it's heavily pushed by a large and vocal minority, many of whom who frequently shove their very bad takes in the faces of everyone else. For example, the only reason I have somewhat of a distaste for the ship is that so many Zutarians demonize Aang, Mai, Azula, and Jet. Another example of this is you personally sending asks to an Azula blog about how Zutara was totally supposed be canon.

Again, Zutara is a fine ship, but I just don't think canon particularly supports it. We're talking about fanfiction, though. The operative question is not "is this canon," but instead "is this interesting," and I definitely think Zutara can be interesting.

#anti Zutara #god why did I write so much to answer a dumb ask

[qqueenofhades]

Continually astonished by the Online Leftists in my notes who are now /checks notes/ angrily blaming Biden for enacting the VAWA renewal, including the granting of sovereignty to Native tribal courts to persecute non-Native sexual offenders, in... early March 2022. Because doesn't he know that SCOTUS just issued Oklahoma vs. Castro-Huerta on.... June 29, 2022, which takes that right away! Fuck him!!!

A) You're so close to blaming the right governmental entity (SCOTUS) for what's going on right now, but instead you revert to blaming Biden for not inventing time travel.

B) The Oklahoma decision is a dismal and predictable bit of white supremacist intervention from SCOTUS, reversing some of the Native rights and land/legal jurisdiction granted in McGirt vs. Oklahoma (2020), but it doesn't actually take those rights entirely away! It was a complex and abstract question involving whether federal, tribal, or state authorities have the right to prosecute non-Natives for crimes on Native lands according to which statute, and returning some (but not all) of the authority to state officials to do so, vis-a-vis federal/tribal authorities. Even fucking Brett Kavanaugh noted, "a state prosecution of a crime committed by a non-Indian against an Indian would not deprive the tribe of any of its prosecutorial authority. That is because, with exceptions not invoked here, Indian tribes lack criminal jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed by non-Indians such as Castro-Huerta, even when non-Indians commit crimes against Indians in Indian Country."

C) So technically this doesn't invalidate the ability of tribal courts to prosecute sex crimes by non-Natives under VAWA statutes; it just reassigns some of the prosecutorial responsibility for non-Native crimes on Indian lands in general back to the state. Which is stupid from a tribal sovereignty perspective, yes, but things are already bad enough!! You don't have to lie about making them worse for Biden Bashing Points, and yet you people do that constantly!!!

D) Neil Gorsuch wrote the dissent because for some weird reason, Native Americans are the only people aside from white Christian men that he consistently does, in fact, legally view as people.

E) Just to show how much they respect women despite having feminine-adjacent pronouns in their bio, said Online Leftist closed with "fuck your [Biden's] performance you old c---."

F) GOD DAMN BIDEN, DIDN'T INVENT TIME TRAVEL TO PREVENT SCOTUS FROM TAKING AWAY SOMETHING THREE MONTHS AFTER HE DID IT, DESPITE THAT IN THIS PARTICULAR CASE, FOR ONCE, IT TECHNICALLY DID NOT EVEN DO THAT!

G) They are very smart!

#hilary for ts #politics for ts #the idiots are back and critical thinking is still very hard for them #not to mention so much as checking the timestamp on a tumblr post #hoo boy