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gothmedia · 5 years

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Youtube Drama

Okay, everyone’s freaking out over the drama going on youtube, but everyone’s just speaking over each other and completely missing any of the points being made. So, since a little clarity is always appreciated, we’re going to go through each point people are making, their misconceptions, and how they effect the subculture at large. 1. I’m too poor to be goth? A bunch of babybats have come put of the woodwork as of late saying they can’t afford to be goth. By this they tend to mean, they can’t afford to buy name brands such as Killstar or Punk Rave. They can’t afford to put together extravagant outfits and dress that way every single day. They can’t afford limited edition vintage Bauhaus vinyls or regal black velvet thrones to adorn their bedrooms. But do they really need all that? No. You just have to have an appreciation for the subculture and music. That’s it. You don’t need to buy an entire wardrobe worth more than a car. But this sentiment only goes so far. The older goths can’t reach the ears of the new comers as much and so the worry sets in. Heck, I still worry sometimes if I look “goth enough”. But I’ve been in the subculture for over a decade now and I realize that no matter what anyone says online, I’m still going to enjoy Sisters of Mercy and I’m still going to go to events and try to support the local scene. So what if I don’t have expensive clothes? I’m going to enjoy myself anyway. The subculture doesn’t revolve around Killstar’s marketing and that’s one of the reasons “#gothisnotkillstar” came about. (More on that later in the week!) You don’t need Killstar to be goth. You don’t need Punk Rave to be goth. You don’t need Demonia or Tripp or any of these expensive, fancy outfits to be part of a subculture. You are enough. Sure, seeing others post about their wonderfully spooky lives with their wonderfully spooky possessions on Instagram and Youtube is neat, but you have to remember that NO ONE is that way all day every day. Social media is something people curate and have control over. They’re only showing what they want you to see, but they too have to take a break and become a normal person once the camera is off. 2. DIY or Die. On the other side of things (Though this argument is more rare than the latter), you get people who are completely rejecting the consumerist approach to goth and are telling people that they need to only ever DIY all their clothes and goth completely rejects a fashion orientation at all. Which is also garbage. Yes, Goth is a music based subculture but it did have a strong style influence right from the get-go. Did it always look the way it does now? No, the style evolved over time into it’s own, highly identifiable self. Do you have to look like this 24/7? No, that’s ridiculous. Like hell I’m going to get dressed in a studded vest and custom chain belt to walk a block to the corner store to pick up Tums when my stomach hurts. I don’t even wash my hair to do that. For such a strong stance against name brand fashion, this group sure likes dictating what people should wear, saying DIY or die. I admit, DIY is pretty fun once you learn how to do it and you do truly get unique clothing and accessories out of it, but it does take time and skill. For a lot of the more intensive projects you need to learn how to sew, dye, paint... Sometimes attempts don’t work out like the time I tried to turn black boots red with a spray-on rubber that ended up cracking off. Sometimes materials like lace or studs or chains are expensive, sometimes you can’t find anything good to work with in thrift stores, and sometimes you’re just really bad at sewing. Not everyone has what it takes to DIY. That, however, shouldn’t turn people away from it. DIY is something that takes time to learn, but the process of doing it is really fun! It’s fun creating new and interesting looks, figuring out how to mess with something to make it your own and you end up with a one-of-a-kind piece all your own. But it’s not necessary. You don’t have to have a completely custom wardrobe just like you don’t have to have Killstar.

3. What any of this has to do with Youtube. So, what does this have to do with Youtube? Well, think of the most popular goth youtubers. You think of two. They’re pretty and very fancy and do a lot of haul videos with brands like Killstar. Is that a bad thing? Yes and no.They are their own people and these are their channels. They can make videos on whatever they want to and no one really has a say in that. Also, if an expensive clothing company sent me a box of free stuff and said, “You can keep this if you make a video,” I’d probably make a video. Everyone likes free stuff. It’s helpful to see some of these brands on actual people, too. I like the fact that neither of these people are a size small. Almost all marketing for brands such as Punk Rave and Killstar are on extra small models and that just isn’t everyone. I want to see how the dress will look on someone who isn’t model thin because I’m not model thin. If these brands advertised with models in a variety of sizes, shapes, skintones, and disabilities then maybe more people could see themselves in these outfits as well, but as it is they don’t and the only way anyone sees something that looks remotely like themselves will be these try-on hauls. But what happens when that’s the epitome of goth youtube? New-comers to the subculture will think that’s what goth in it’s entirety is. I’ve met a few new goths who are like this and were shocked when I said I didn’t own any Killstar. It creates a mind-frame that to be in the subculture you have to buy this one (frankly overpriced) brand and that’s it. Is this the fault of BlackFriday and Toxic Tears? Sort-of?They’re considered influencers now. They INFLUENCE the younger generation of goths and they influence how people outside the subculture see goth. Sure, they’re popular, but they’re popular because they’re not only watched by goths but also people into fashion and mainstream viewers. They refuse to do anything outside of fashion to avoid fights about music and the “gothier than thou” crowd, but they fail to realize they’re creating these people themselves. There’s a handful of people in youtube comments who go on the pages of lesser known goth youtubers telling them they need to look extreme to be goth and they cite It’sBlackFriday and Toxic Tears as examples of how a goth should look. They also deride the people who delve deeper than the fashion as elitists, a word that’s simply getting out of hand now. If someone wants to talk about the subculture and it’s music you get tons of little gothlings telling them that they’re gatekeeping the subculture and that you don’t have to listen to goth music to be goth. Then they turn around and gatekeep on what name brand clothes others aren’t wearing which is frankly silly. The subculture is more than clothing and you have to dig a little deeper to find other goth youtubers with more than fashion and hauls on their channels. Speaking of hauls, that’s another point of contention. It’s not only that these name brands are all over youtube now, but that they’re being advertised by people in haul videos. In these videos, the youtuber gets sent a large package of free things from the company and is told that they can keep the items if they make a video on it. Good for them, but the viewers are the ones who will be spending money on these items. Yes, the youtubers say their reviews are non-biased, but they were just sent several EXTREMELY expensive pieces of clothing for free. The dress might be nice, but is it $300 nice? Specifically from Killstar, many of their clothing items are similar to those found elsewhere for much cheaper. How does this get fixed on the web, then? A solution that makes everyone happy. For one thing, influencer youtubers could do a bit more than fashion. It’sBlackFriday used to do really funny skit videos with Mr. Owl back in the day and they are missed. Toxic Tears had two videos for “What not to say to goth girls” and I’d look forward to a third one. Funny videos about the subculture are sorely wanted because now-a-days we take ourselves WAY too seriously for people who look like rejects from Dracula. If they want to keep the fashion spin, they can talk about the history of the fashion as well. Where did all the circus and cabaret themed stuff from the mid 2000s go? I miss it. They can showcase designers and small businesses within the subculture, not just big name fast fashion companies. Places that make truly unique clothes, places that fit all sizes and shapes. They can point goths in the directions of other youtubers/podcasts/blogs that they might learn from. Simply teaching babybats about goth isn’t an elitist thing to do. The newcomers should WANT to learn more if they actually like the subculture. And overall, they need to space out the haul videos. Not only is it making the impression that one needs a five thousand dollar wardrobe on hand at all times to be goth, but it also makes for a really boring playlist. Toxic Tears has started doing some little DIY stuff which is pretty cute and hopefully It’sBlackFriday will do something or other. Perhaps vlogs about goth festivals? I know she’ll be attending one on the other side of the country soon so that should be interesting. This can be fixed, it just needs a little work and it needs us as viewers to stop having such a stick up the ass about what goth should look like. 4. It’s okay to shop at Walmart. Or Target. Or any regular store at the mall. In fact, I suggest getting all your basics at super cheap places like these. You shouldn’t be breaking bank on a black t-shirt and jeans. You could also go thrifting. I recently found a blazer that I loved in a thrift store. (They also had a Shrine vest for $20! You never know what you might find.) But never feel bad because you got something from a “mainstream” store. Not only are they good for basics, sometimes you can find pieces to practice DIY on (I did this with a vest from Target.) or sometimes they sell something that just speaks to your aesthetic. (Black lace and fishnet were really in last fall season.) It’s okay if you have normal clothes and aren’t goth all day every day. I have a day job where I wear a yellow polo and kakis and sell churros. Am I less goth? No. Some may claim that not being decked out all the time will make me a weekender, but I’m still running this blog and try to contribute to the subculture. But I have bills to pay. I have a cat to feed. Sometimes you have to sacrifice a bit of freedom of expression just to get by and you can get back in black and fall asleep to Thoushaltnot on the way home on the bus. Just don’t worry about it. You don’t need to DIY everything you own. You don’t need to buy name brand boots. You don’t need to be Instagram ready 24/7. Just enjoy the subculture. And maybe look up some of those other youtubers. Angela Benedict has some great storytime videos on drama not partnering to Killstar.

#gothgoth #goth #gothisnotkillstar #drama

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wee-chlo · 5 years

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Sitcom AU where after Five disappears, Reginald has an epiphany and commits to being Less of a Dick. It’s rocky going, because Reginald is still a stiff, socially inept curmudgeon who is terrible with children but his efforts include:

Awkwardly attempting to use the names Grace gave them. Eventually becomes so obviously painful that they all just give him an out and decide the number system is just a bunch of nicknames.

Giving Grace a room and more autonomy while also maintaining her upkeep so that she’s sharp as a tack well into their late twenties. Wins points with everyone with this but especially Diego.

The uniforms are worn during ‘school hours’; otherwise the children can wear what they like. Grace is given leave to take the children out for day trips and the first one is to go out and get them whatever clothing they want. Allison, Klaus and Vanya ask if they can get makeup. “Ask your mother.” “Of course!”

Sadistic abusive testing is completely done away with but the children are still trained in combat techniques, teamwork, strategy and tactics, etc. for the future. The creepy posters are taken down though.

Giving Grace and Pogo leave to celebrate things like holidays and birthdays (hitherto dismissed as pointless waffle). Reginald rarely attends these festivities, but at least one of the children will usually have something for him. As the years pass, more of these gifts are actively used, worn, or put in places where they can be seen.

Coming clean about Vanya’s powers. Vanya goes no/low contact for years but she’s told about her powers in a way that doesn’t trigger every trauma she’s ever had. He makes sure she’s aware that she can keep the violin. She does.

After Klaus’ first (and successful) stint in rehab, he very reluctantly agrees to family therapy despite constantly insisting that he is not their father, he is their guardian, there’s a difference, they are his wards and charges, not his children. Results are mixed but predominately positive. The therapist is very straightforward about the consequences of his actions.

As a result:

Luther and Diego still snipe at each other but it’s more friendly and brotherly. Both of them are better adjusted emotionally and engage in vigilante crime-fighting antics together. They bicker about who’s the sidekick. Luther lives in the mansion, Diego has his own apartment and receives a stipend from Reginald for expenses.

Luther is more mature, not mutated, and has a much more relaxed relationship with Reginald and his family in general. For awhile he didn’t really have much aside from training and crimefighting so the others encouraged him to get a hobby. Grace taught him how to cook and bake. He also adopted a puppy he named Orion. He has no authority over his dog. He initially intended to train Orion has a sort of sidekick attack dog to fight crime alongside him but then Orion curled up next to him on the bed that first night and he realized that if anything happened to Orion, he would kill everyone in the tri-state area and then himself. Orion stays home and keeps Pogo company.

Diego’s relationship with Eudora is still somewhat tumultuous but his emotional stability means it’s still pretty positive, with Luther and Diego having a much less abrasive relationship with the local police. Diego and Eudora still go on dates sometimes but not consistently. He doesn’t go on dates with anyone else though.

Allison is still a starlet but her relationships with her husband and child are much healthier and she uses her Rumor power much less. She used it pretty liberally early on but conversations with her family made her realize it wasn’t appropriate. She lives across the country but keeps in close contact with everyone and visits for holidays. She doesn’t receive a stipend, but did early on in her career. She and Luther have long since decided that they’re better as friends, and she encourages him to find someone because he really does need that kind of support and intimacy.

Klaus succeeded in kicking hard drugs and while he’s still a shameless pothead and disaster gay, he’s also much more stable. He’s an actor at the theater with plenty of friends and is a staple designated driver and mom friend of local gay bars and raves. He lives in the manor, where he and Luther have become very weird friends as Klaus tries to get Luther out of his shell. Klaus was most recently in a production of Les Mis as Grantaire. Everyone, including Grace, Pogo, and (reluctantly) Reginald, attended. Reginald declared it “surprisingly adequate”. It was the nicest thing he’d ever said to Klaus.

Klaus got a Siamese kitten on a lark after Luther adopted Orion. Her name is Schatz and she is an absolute terror but always comes when Klaus calls her and will frequently ride on his shoulder like the cutest parrot in the world.

Ben is alive and is going to college to be a nurse. He still lives at the mansion but actually does pay rent (not a lot, but still) and works as a bicycle courier on the side. He and Klaus are besties; Klaus drags him to every gay bar in the city and he has lots of admirers. Klaus also hooks him up with the therapist he started seeing after rehab. For therapy. Not for romantic liaisons.

Vanya’s therapy actually works because she knows why she needs it. She goes off her power-inhibiting meds, starts taking meds that will actually help her, and retreats to a quiet, isolated place to focus on learning how to control her powers without hurting people. She went no/low contact with the others both because of her hurt and anger and because she didn’t want to hurt them while she experimented. She doesn’t write a tell-all book, and Reginald quietly sends her a stipend to live on while she trains herself.

The Story

Instead of Five dropping in right before Hargreeves’ memorial service, he drops in right before the family’s “Welcome Back, Vanya, We’re Still Super Sorry and Love You Very Much” party as Vanya finally feels comfortable enough to return to the mansion.

Everyone is still outrageously distracted from Five’s Very Important Mission accept for Hargreeves, who immediately pulls out the uniforms he’s had prepared for them for just this instance. Five’s is too big. Five puts on the school boy uniform and is very weirded out when Reginald apologizes because he assumed Five wouldn’t be a literal child when he returned but he really should have been better prepared.

“Dad, you told the therapist you got rid of those.” “I lied.” “.... alright, asked and answered.”

Instead of being distracted by things like trauma, dysfunction, drug abuse, etc., everyone’s distracted by mundane, goofy nonsense. Luther is set up on a blind date by Klaus with the girl who played Eponine, and is reluctant to leave when Five tries to drag him out of the restaurant. Allison’s husband has the flu so she can’t leave, she doesn’t know anyone here and who would take are of Claire? “... HOW ABOUT MOM, ALLISON?”

Klaus helps for awhile but is immediately distracted by a very cute soldier in line to discuss a prosthetic leg who introduces himself as David Katz. Five admits through gritted teeth that yes, he has a great smile, but you know what he’ll have in a week if we don’t get this done? A really bad case of death.

Vanya’s better but then she meets Dave’s sister, Esther, and becomes as distracted as Klaus and Five wonders if it’s not too late to just let the apocalypse happen.

Only Reginald is helpful but even his assistance is limited because he basically hasn’t left his manor in actual years and looks like he’s straight out of a Dickens novel. Grace is only moderately more believable. Pogo is a monkey.

On the plus side, the group is much better at working together because despite deciding that brutal psychological abuse wasn’t the best way to go about things, Reginald still made sure they were prepared and well-trained. Hazel and Cha-Cha are still terrifying but Klaus isn’t kidnapped and they’re sent scurrying away after the attack on the academy.

Eventually, Five learns that Hazel and Cha-Cha weren’t sent to ensure the apocalypse but to attempt to instigate it because it’s basically been stopped in it’s tracks by the Hargreeves family being Weird-But-Chill instead of Insane-and-Dysfunctional. However, between Hazel becoming both infatuated with Agnes and increasingly disinterested in causing the destruction of the world as we know it, Cha-Cha not really getting any backup, and the Umbrella Academy’s impressive (if frequently distracted) competence, it just becomes a big circus of black comedy, slapstick, and slice of life nonsense with Five and Reginald trying and failing to get the others to keep their eye on the birdie for longer than six minutes at a time but everyone’s too distracted by things like cute girls and anatomy tests and families and being really gay.

#the umbrella academy #tua #tua spoilers #klaus hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #reginald hargreeves #luther hargreeves #allison hargreeves #ben hargreeves #diego hargreeves #number five

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petri808 · 5 years

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Renewal

@zenoobsessed I’m mostly a Hakyona fic writer but I hope you like it ^^ Happy Easter!

As the group begins to pack up their belongings, the village elder walks into the hut that had been provided for them that winter. Yona looks up, welcoming the man.

“Huizong, is there something you needed help with before we leave?”

“No, no,” he waves a hand, “you and your friends have done so much for us already. I’ve come instead to request you stay another day.” As the dragons, Hak, and Yun gather behind Yona, intrigued by this sudden request, the man continues on. “Each spring when the flowers bloom once more, we celebrate it with the Haru Saku Matsuri taking place tomorrow.”

Everyone turns to Hak for a response, but it is Yona who speaks up, “we would be honored to stay,” her eyes crinkling in a smile. “Huizong, if there is anything we can do to help prepare, please let us know.”

“I wouldn’t have it,” the man responds. “It was a blessing that you came to our village this winter. Had it not been for Yun’s medicines and warming techniques, we would have lost several children to illness and for that we owe a great debt. Please, as our guests of honor, I simply ask you to enjoy yourselves.”

“As you wish,” Yona bows lightly.

As soon as the village elder leaves the hut, everyone starts talking excitedly about what they are looking forward to at the festival. Zeno and Shin-ah, well mostly Zeno, raves about all the wonderful foods they’ll probably be serving. Yun and Kija wonder what kind of amusements, maybe dancing or music that might be performed. Hak and Jae-ha hope to get their hands on some fine baijiu’s or soju’s, maybe the elders secret stash. But Yona carries on like nothing special had just happened, grabbing her bathing supplies, ready to make the short trek to the natural hot springs that drew them to this village in the first place.

Ever the faithful and observant guardian, Hak follows behind at a slight distance to make sure no one bothered her or dared to take a peak. He settles on some nearby boulders with his back to the pond and waits.

Yona lets out an exhale the moment her body submerges and the balmy waters, warm her through and through. The last 3 months have been like a dream she didn’t want to wake up from. So peaceful, just living the life of a normal villager, well as normal as it could get being surrounded constantly by an entourage of six guys. She chuckles inwardly, yes, it was always the odd spectacle to many a passerby of the lone young girl with a reverse harem.

Some days she almost forgot she was once the Princess of this Kingdom. Too caught up in just surviving or just too busy to remember. It wasn’t that Yona didn’t want to stay in the village, of course she wanted to stay. It was just the idea of a spring festival brought back memories of Hiryuu Castle that could just as easily stay buried right now.

“Is everything okay Princess?” Hak opened his eyes as Yona came closer and turned to look at her. He made no immediate move to get off the boulder, choosing to stay seated with his arms lightly crossed as if he had just awoken from a nap.

Yona stops walking, “mmhmm,” she hugs her supplies to her chest, “why do you ask?”

“You didn’t seem so excited to stick around.” Hak finally stands up and jumps down next to her. “If you want to go, we can go. We don’t have to stay.”

“No, it’s okay I want to stay,” she smiles a little forlornly, “it’s just, Hak do you remember the cherry blossom festival back home?” He nods. “Those were some of my fondest memories growing up each spring.”

“I used to pick you up and carry you on my shoulders so you could reach the higher blossoms,” he chuckles at his own memories. Yona nods, a slight smile upon her lips, but averting her eyes to the ground to hide some of the moisture developing in them. “Hey,” Hak steps closer, tilting her face back up, “you’ll see it again someday, I promise you that.”

“Will you…” a slight rouge tinting her cheeks, “will you carry me on your shoulders again too?”

Hak smiles, “I’ll make sure you can reach the best of the blossoms.” He sticks out his hand, “come on, we should get back to the hut before it gets too dark. Yun probably has dinner made by now.” With a nod, she takes his hand and lets him lead.

~~~~~~

It was as if the village had timed it to perfection or that maybe the Gods really favored them for the morning of the festival, all the trees in the area were covered in flowers! Her eyes scanned the area hoping that there would be a cherry blossom in the scatter but no such luck. ‘Oh well,’ she takes a deep breath as her sadness withers away. This may not be Hiryuu Castle… she watches her friends, so animated and alive as they rush to all the different booths. But this, she smiled, was even better.

“Princess?!” Yona turns to the voice of Kija waiving her down. “Let’s go see, they’re about to perform a skit!”

“Sure,” she beams.

Yun and Zeno join them and the four make their way over to a makeshift stage area. As they walk, Kija fills them in about what the locals have told him about the story. Typical bad guys versus good guy story line where the hero defended the townsfolk from invaders. But there were a few strange details that weren’t so common.

“That sounds ridiculous,” Yun crosses his arms and rolls his eyes, “whoever heard of a caped crusader running around with a mask and no pants?”

“I think it sounds like a fun outfit!” Zeno claps his hands together and begins to bounce up and down excitedly. “Can we wear masks too?!”

“No,” Yoon shakes his head, “I am not making you a mask.”

Zeno pouts, “Aww!”

“We’ve already got one guy in a mask and one that wears a cape in our strange bunch, that’s enough.”

Yona mumbles under her breath, “Well I wouldn’t mind seeing one of this bunch in no pants…”

“Did you say something miss?” Zeno and Yun look at her with curiosity.

“Huh?” She waves her arms, “no, no, I didn’t.” Pushing them along and changing the subject, “oh look, there’s a lot of people, we should find a seat quickly and I see Shin-ah’s already here.”

A few of the townsfolk upon seeing Yun and the others arrive, hustle them to the front by the stage. The group does their best to politely decline, wanting to simply watch from the back but the villagers insist. Just as the others settle down ready for the play, Yona sees Hak standing near the edge motioning to her with his finger. She huffs a little annoyed but stands up and goes over to him.

“The play is about to start Hak…”

“I know but you’ll like this better I promise. Besides, you live in a hero story already, isn’t that enough?”

Well hell, he was right about that. She rolls her eyes exaggeratedly anyways, “it’s still fun to watch a play.”

Hak takes her hand, “if we hurry you can still see the end.”

He takes Yona below the village, not far, maybe a 5-minute walk just through the forests borderline when he stops and crouches down. Yona looks down at him confused. “What are you doing?”

Wrapping his arms around her legs, “lifting you up,” and hefting her onto his right shoulder before she can respond. “Just look up Princess.”

Yona gasps, how did she not notice this?! “Cherry Blossoms!”

“Told you, you’d like it.”

It had to be an older tree, tall with a trunk slightly gnarled and twisted. Cherry blossom season was barely beginning and this one only had a spattering of blossoms along its branches. But it was still beautiful to her, as a few rays shone through, bouncing off of the light pink blooms. She reaches out to the nearest branch, running her ringers over the delicate petals. It was one of her mother’s favorite flowers and her father had made sure to have them growing around the castle grounds.

“How did you find this tree Hak?”

“I mentioned how much you loved cherry blossoms to the elder and he told me where to find it. Pick a couple if you like, for your hair.”

“Mmm,” Yona shakes her head, “I think it’s pretty just where it is. You know, after the harsh winters,” she touches another bloom, “it’s amazing how life just renews itself.” Smiling down at Hak, “don’t you think?”

He laughs, smiling back at her, “whatever you say Princess.”

A loud scream rings out from the direction of the village snapping them both to attention. “Was that Kija? Put me down Hak,” she taps his head, “we should go back.”

He does as he’s told, grumbling under his breath about how that idiot ruined a moment. Sure enough, two minutes later after they’d run back to the scene of the play, they find Kija bawling and being consoled by Zeno and Yun. Shin-ah and Jae-ha are attending to another man in a costume.

“What happened?” Hak and Yona both speak at the same time though in opposite tones. She emphatic, and he annoyed.

“Kija panicked when he saw the guy in the costume over there,” Yun answers, pointing towards where Jae-ha and Shin-ah are standing. “The actor guy is fine, just in shock from Kija freaking out and screaming like he’d seen a ghost.”

“Spider!” Kija perks up, waving his arms. “It was a spider! I thought he had a huge spider crawling on his chest!”

“Oh, brother,” Hak rolls his eyes, “bugs, we ran back here because you thought you saw a bug. We were having such a... ahh! Never mind.”

“It was just a symbol on the guys costume,” Yun explains, “remember the hero stuff, it’s like the villager’s mascot or something.”

“I…” running a hand down his face, “I need a drink,” Hak walks away from the group towards their hut.

Yona calls out several times at his retreating image but the young man never turns around. “Maybe I should go check on him?” Why was Hak so upset? The whole thing with Kija was funnier than upsetting, and kind of odd. Or maybe he was mad because he had wanted to spend more time at the tree? She had to admit, sharing those peaceful moments with him alone were always nice.

“Yona… Yona…”

Yun shakes her again. “Yona?”

She opens her eyes, “Yes Yun?”

“You should get up already, it’s time for breakfast.”

“Breakfast?” Yona sits up confused for a moment when she realizes she’s back in the hut on her sleeping roll. “Did I fall asleep at the festival? H-How did I get back here?”

Yun places the back of his hand against her forehead. “You don’t have a fever, don’t seem sick. I’m not sure what you’re talking about Yona, cause it’s the morning of the festival.”

Yona blinks, “so we didn’t go to it yet?”

“No,” the young boy smiles.

She plops back onto her bedroll, “wow, that was all just a dream…”

lol I think the Easter eggs are kinda easy to figure out, but I had fun writing it in to the story :)

Haru Saku Matsuri (Spring Blooming Festival)

Baiju- an ancient Chinese alcoholic drink

Soju- Korean or Japanese alcoholic drink

#Easter egg hunt #Akatsuki no yona #fan fiction #hak #yona #hakyona #zeno #yun #kija #shin-ah #jae-ha #petri808

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gifsbysimplysonia · 5 years

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Tell me about something crazy that happened to you

If you don’t want to read THE LONGEST TEXT ENTRY OF YOUR LIFE, do NOT click on the cut!

THE RAVE - MILWAUKEE - BAMBOOZLE 2010 - JUNE 11, 2010

Mmkay, so the day after my birthday, I headed up to The Rave Milwaukee to see Good Charlotte at the Bamboozle Roadshow Festival, and it was my first time seeing them since October 2006, when I’d last seen them also at the Rave in Milwaukee :P

Not even 3 minutes after arriving, I randomly ran into Tezzie my Fangirl Soulmate (one of the first friends I made on Livejournal back in the 00s; she was visiting all the way from Sweden and was a member a group of the most dedicated fans I had ever witnessed). I was trying to call the # she had given me and was leaving a voicemail as I began walking around the building, along the MASSIVE line that was already formed, full of TEENS and PRE-TEENS. And as I walked and talked…suddenly before me appeared a tiny ginger pixie :) We hugged, we smiled, and that was that. The very dedicated group was in attendance (though I believe there were more members): Krisse (Tezzie’s wifey), Tez, Ashley, Isabel & Jasmine. Tez was with her friend Ashley and they were going to Ashley’s car for something. I went with them and they were filling me in on everything. They and their friends had gotten to the venue at SEVEN IN THE MORNING and had been there the whole time (I think it was after noon by the time I arrived)!!! They were nice enough to let me in line with them.

When we first got in, we all rushed to the GC merch table. They were running this promotion where if you are 1 of the first 6 to go to the table and say “I wanna rep GC!” you get to go to the meet n greet. Being that Milwaukee was Krisse & Tezzie’s first show of the tour, they were going to try for it as the other girls had already got to go to a meet ‘n greet at a previous show. And wouldn’t ya know, they got THE LAST 2 PASSES??? How’s that for luck? The merch dude told me I could try going with them and telling them it was my bday because he’d seen them “let people in,” so why not give it a try? I thanked him for the tip and decided that’s what I’d do.

Meet n greet time rolled around at about 3 and I was SO READY to have to lay down this big sob story and BEG for them to let me into the meet ‘n greet. But when it came time, the lady from the Buzznet table told the lady in charge of the meet ‘n greet that it was my bday and I wanted to know if I could come in, and the lady just shrugged and said, “Sure, why not?” LMAO! As usual, I stressed for hours FOR NOTHING!We went up about 7 flights of stairs, no sh*t, to get to the very top of the venue. And once there, we waited a while for the band to show up. I took some video of Tez & Krisse, wanting to document their nervousness. They were very cute. Tez hadn’t seen the band in 2 years; 2 years and 2 months. Krisse hadn’t seen them in a year and 11 months. They were both SO NERVOUS. The guys finally showed up, late, but it was all of them. Being used to a7x and only getting 3 of 5 members of the band, I was really surprised! But there all 5 of them were :) The big bald security guy wanted it to be very organized so he immediately lined us all up and told us to have cameras ready, 1 thing to sign, and began pushing people through right away.Somehow, I ended up in line first, meaning before K & T. The lady who let me in took my camera from me and then I was going up to the guys, my ticket in hand for them to sign!

I was determined to be well mannered so I made sure to introduce myself to each member & shake everyone’s hand. First up was Paul. He told me I had a lovely name *blush* God bless him, he’s super cute. I was going to ask for a hug because “Paul hugs” are supposedly the best ever BUT the dude was MAD sweaty O_o I had no idea from what, so I didn’t ask. Deano was next and he gave a nice firm shake. I told the two of them it was my birthday and they replied with huge smiles and “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!” like it was the best news ever. Totally adorable. Then Deano told me I’d like the new song they are playing and asked me if I’d heard it yet. I told him no and he told me it was called “Like It’s Her Birthday” so I should like it :) Then … there was Joel. Sigh. So funny to think JUST a few years before, I was totally gaga for the dude. I shook his hand, he stood there and for a second? I couldn’t figure out what he was staring at cuz it wasn’t my face, but I realized he was checking out my Vengeance University switchblade pendant :P Benji was next to him. I THINK I shook his hand and intro'ed myself but I’m NOT sure. What I remember about being in front of the Twins was explaining that I hadn’t seen them in 4 years so I was SUPER excited about seeing them live again, to which Benji replies, “I hope we’re not a let down.” O_o As I learned later that day, this kid is a total “Sour Patch Kid.” LOLI said, “Why would you say that?” He just kinda shrugged. So I told him, “You guys never let me down.” Joel liked that because he nodded and went, “Yeaaaaaah,” then held his right fist up for me to pound, so I did :P Then I quickly introduced myself to Billy and shook his hand. He said his name to me, as if I wouldn’t know it, bless him. And then I was being prompted to pose for my photo.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~LATER THAT EVENING~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

After the show, behind the venue at the back door, we ended up all standing there with Benji, and he was just talking for QUITE a while. That’s never happened to me before. The longest convo I’ve had with someone famous lasted about … 3 minutes? And all I did was argue with the poor guy. But the girls talked to him for longer than that. They continued to talk to Benji, and understand Ashley, Jasmine & Isa had already been to a BUNCH of Bamboozle shows and they plus Tez & Krisse (and more friends they were meeting up w/at different shows) were going to quite a few more! They became known as “Team Good Charlotte,” that’s how used to seeing them people on Bamboozle got! Anyways, they began talking about how excited they were for CARDIOLOGY to hit in September and Benji was talking about how excited he was for us to HEAR the new album.And I wish I could tell you HOW the transition happened, but I honestly don’t know. All I know is one minute they were all talking about the album … and the next, Benji was talking about letting us hear some. I remember saying something like, “You can go on the bus and crack open a window while you play it,” before SCOLDING HIM about saying that’s what he’d do last time I saw them with regards to “The River” but then NEVER DOING IT :P He said he was sorry.But instead of going THAT route, Benji had a talk with this guy whose name is Danny (I think). The girls told me that he kept up GoodCharlotte.com and ran the GC Twitter account; he was also at the meet n greet taking video and photos. Anyways, he showed up and he and Benji talked, and next thing we knew?

WE WERE INVITED ONTO THE BUS TO HEAR A TRACK OFF OF THE UPCOMING GOOD CHARLOTTE ALBUM!

I know. I wouldn’t believe me if I were you either, but it’s absolutely what happened. Benji & Danny made it clear NO cell phones or cameras could go with us, though, so we all crossed the street so the girls could put their stuff away. I was waiting for my ride so I couldn’t put anything away so I just put mine in my bag. We went back across the street but instead of going onto GC’s bus, we were let onto “Danny’s bus.” He actually said “I’m such a diva, I get my own bus.” And as the last on board, even AFTER Danny, I got to close the bus door behind us and IT WAS HEAVY. I had given my bag to him and he had just placed it on the front passenger seat which I sat down on because I didn’t want to have to squeeze my fat a$$ past him AND past Benji & the girls who were all already seated on two couches and the “aisle” was so small, I didn’t wanna do it. But Danny looked at me and said, “You can come in. Come on, you can sit there,” and he pointed at a bench next to one of the couches, so I said, “Oh thanks” and proceeded to squeeze my fat a$$ past everyone, probably murdering everyone’s feet as I did.Anyways, I sat down in a solo seat. Across from me on the couch were Krisse, Tezzie & Benji. Next to me on a couch were Isa, Ashley, and Jasmine. Danny was standing in the driver area with a camera pointed at us THE ENTIRE TIME so we knew that it was all on video! He asked Benji what he was doing and Benji told the camera that he was letting us hear some tracks off of the new album.Benji played us the “intro,” cause GC always has an intro on their albums and then he played us the first track which I believe is called “Let the Music Play.” As a joke, I took a box of Kleenex that was on the window behind me and let the girls all take one because they SWORE they were going to cry. But y'know what? They actually did, bless them. At one point, Tezzie buried her head in Krisse’s chest as Krisse hugged her very tightly and I realized just how sacred this moment & experience was for those girls. And honestly? I felt so out of place. I felt like I was intruding, y'know? I just happened to be with the right people at the right time and get to tag-a-long for this episode and I am TRULY GRATEFUL for it.I bowed my head to listen to the song, and as I listened to the lyrics, tears rose in my eyes. Because once again, as SO OFTEN IS THE CASE with Good Charlotte lyrics, they hit me in my heart. In June of 2010, I’d gone through a LOT of crap in my personal life, and I just have felt so inferior and so bad about myself. Well, this song that Benji was playing us? It was talking about those feelings, letting me know AGAIN that I wasn’t alone in how I felt (which is what Good Charlotte’s music has ALWAYS done for me and it continues to do to this day):

“When the world tries to beat you down, let the music play.”

And THAT lyric just … hit home for me. So I got teary eyed, but the tears never fell for me. When the song was over, though, I had one of those moments where I actually was so overwhelmed with emotion, I HAD to say what was in my heart, which only ever happened with Eddy Guerrero.“Can I tell you something?” I asked Benji as he started scrolling for another song to play us, or maybe to shut off his iPod.“What?” he asked without looking at me.“I call Good Charlotte my 'gateway band’ because you guys led me to so much, musically. But it ALWAYS comes back to you because, lyrically, no other band GETS ME like you guys do, and that song right there? Just reminded me of that.”“Amen,” Ashley said, and I laughed to myself. I don’t remember if Benji had a reaction or not because I realized that Danny still had his camera pointed at us and I wondered about what I’d just said and if it’d end up anywhere.Benji then played us some of the track that GC is playing at the Bamboozle shows called “Like It’s Her Birthday.” The girls ALL ALREADY KNEW ALL THE LYRICS and were singing along :) I had just heard the song for the first time a couple hours before so I just sat there, bobbing my head like a jacka$$.

But someone knocked on the bus door & Benji and Danny had to get going so we didn’t get through that whole track. As we all got up to disembark, I imagine everyone was as overwhelmed and feeling surreal as I was. We got outside and thanked Benji SO VERY MUCH for allowing us to be a part of that. Outside there were a couple of girls leaning against a tree, very obviously wanting to go up to Benji but for some reason, not doing so? And they were giving us the Evil Eye BIG TIME! Funny thing is, I recognized them from A7X shows.Danny took testimonials from the girls on his camera about what we all just heard. And he told us that he would upload the video THAT NIGHT if that was ok. None of us argued. I don’t think he ever did upload anything, BUT, to all of our surprise, the quickest clip ever of us on the bus that night ended up in a Good Charlotte music video for Counting the Days:

I am FOREVER GRATEFUL to have PROOF that this totally insane thing happened to me. And it only happened cuz I was hanging out with the right people, but they were nice enough to let me 6th wheel it with them and it was one of the best birthdays/memories and craziest experiences of my life.

Sometimes I think I live a really small life but then I remember stuff like this and I’m like, “How many people can say that they got to chat with a member of their favorite band, were invited onto a bus to preview brand new music NO OTHER FANS had heard at the moment, AND ended up in one of the band’s music videos??”

I mean, maybe that’s a really big pool and I don’t know it, but I’m just grateful I can be included in it. And in addition to getting to attend a meet n greet I was NOT scheduled to go to and meet the band I refer to as “my heart band,” this day FOR SURE was one of the craziest of my life :)

#personal #get to know me #Good Charlotte #anonymouse

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kyleisme14 · 5 years

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My trip to Area 51 - unedited

On Facebook, a kid from Bakersfield created an event. He uses his page, perfectly named, shitposting because my life is in shambles and makes 'storm area 51, they can't stop us all' and seemingly overnight a million people said that they would be attending. I did attend. Shitposting because my life is in shambles is inadvertent the most zeitgeist worthy name for this page. Shitposting is when you share terrible content that you know is bad just to get a reaction. You are sharing a low effort joke for the sense of connection from others. Because my life is in shambles, this anonymous statement of personal vulnerability, I shall try and make a low effort attempt at connection. This is what our age is all about. We are doomed to be as connected and as isolated as possible. This had a chance of being a real life meme where we'd be isolated no longer.

The page became an immediate stronghold for memes. It adopted other internet jokes like Karens asking to see managers, Kyle's drinking monster energy drink for invincibility, and Naruto runners being faster than bullets, as ways of infiltrating the base. And also generated new ones about what people would find inside Area 51 like the 10th doctor to recommend a toothpaste or where my girlfriend wants to go for dinner or how we'd sneak in with a minivan but escape with a space ship. The killer meme was how once we 'free them aliens' we'd keep them as lovers and bang them so hard that we 'clapped them cheeks'. This was the low effort comedy that this meme page generated.

Was it a joke or would people actually go? At first I did not know why I needed to go to area 51, and everybody seemed to ask me. I failed to recruit any friends to join me on the quest, 7 hours driving to the infamous base. Most thought I was crazy for going. My brother told me to be safe. My sister thought I was joking, and called to counter my bluff. Whenever somebody said they couldn't go, I pittied them because I was sure they were going to miss something incredible and life affirming. I was excited because I had no idea what was going to go down, and nobody in the whole world did. I stopped at the army surplus. I thought we'd either see a humanitarian crisis like fyre fest or a government crackdown. Don't forget, 2 million people clicked GOING online, so even if 1% came that'd be 10,000 people to a town with a population of 1000. The airforce released a warning about 'raiding' active military bases being a bad idea and the use of deadly force being a possibility. Lincoln County, one of nevadas sleepiest, had to call in enough police to potentially break up a neo-woodstock.

I always wanted to go to area 51 since I first learned about aliens as a kid. When I asked the big question of are we alone in the universe? If there was an answer, if somebody had the evidence, if it was anywhere, it was stored at area 51. UFO's and little green men were hiding somewhere in Nevada... at least according to pop mythology. In grade school I would check out the same book over and over from the library, about aliens and the search for exterterestrial life and the scientists who were looking at the stars. There was a spooky section about times aliens might have visited early humans based on cave paintings and statues. And then the next page was all about area 51, where the government did secret expirements on alien artifacts and maybe had a specimen. So I've been captivated since at least then. Area 51 represents a big secret. A mystery! And somebody powerful, a general or established congress person, knows and is keeping the answers from us. So as an anti-establishment, meme and alien lover, I was fascinated with this 'movement,' that would of 'raid the base'. I wanted to go and find out how many people like me were out there! Turns out I wasn't completely alone! But... for the ignorant... What is Area 51? I could never believe people weren't following the biggest BREAKING news of our lives. But for those out of the loop, Area 51 is an infamous hotspot for UFO lovers. It has a rich history in alien folklore. But here is the factual history: Nevada is almost all federal land. and it was used back in the day for nuclear testing. an original tourist attraction to Las Vegas was watching nuclear testing in the distance...

Some airforce commanders were flying around dropping bombs when they spied a dried lakebed next to a mountain, Groom Lake. They landed on it and found it to be a perfectly flat natural runway. Excellent for testing expiremental aircraft. The facility became known as Area 51. And was where the airforce and Lockheed Corp developed the U-2 stealth bomber. They brought the best and brightest scientists and engineers to develop new aeronautics and weaponry for the US military. At the height of the Cold War, any foreign technology that was aquired would be brought to Area 51 to be tested and backwards-engineered. You can imagine Chinese reactors and Russian jets being taken apart and used by the best tinkerer's and best test pilots. People at the highest levels of classified access. Because if you are one of the folks who are handling stolen foreign items, you are so classified that your spouse isn't supposed to know what you do all day. Yes honey, I was testing out the Ruskies new fighter plane! They don't even know we have it! These were experts in aeronautics and weapons science who could decipher technology even if the instructions were in another language... so perhaps if the US government were to encounter any other 'foreign technology' of an unknown origin, maybe they'd send it to Area 51 to be backwards engineered? That's the set up, those are the facts, the rest is conjecture and tinfoil hats stuff. Like unexplained phenomena, military released sightings that definitely aren't weather baloons and general mysticism. Do you believe in aliens or not?

If you believe that it's more likely that our government would keep aliens a secret than releasing that information to the public... welcome to the club! If not, do some reading. As I drove across the desert, down lonesome roads and through one horse towns, I realized what I was doing. I was driving into the middle of nowhere, likely to stand around doing nothing... and boy was I excited. My plan was to go and maybe film something and if that didn't work out I'd put on an alien costume and hold a sign. I figured that there'd be a bunch of cameras and I could use it to collectively protest all sorts of wrongs in the world. One of the initial reacitons to the playful event was, 'hey there are more imporant places to raid! why not raid the border detention centers, why not congress, why not the oil companies?' To which I say, hell yes... but that's not shitposting. That's being earnest and noble. This was about being ironic and part of a joke. This was about chasing an internet meme into the ground and disecting it until all that was left was the human connection. I had a sign and costume and figured that even if nobody showed up at least news organizations would be covering it. The sign I held said, Peace on earth ain't coming from outer space, and I really believe that. We shouldn't expect peace to come from somewhere else in the universe, it has to start right here at home, inside each of us. I wanted to get that message out. The day of the event, due to classic internet decentralization, people debated whether the raid meet up (located at the Area 51 gate) should be at 3am on friday morning or 3am on saturday morning. Most people kind of agreed to just gather sporadically between those two times. I monitored a live stream late on thursday to confirm that millions of people weren't gathering to make American History. Instead, about 30 people gathered for that 3am moment. I only missed a photo-op. I awoke on friday morning and drove towards my destiny. There were two events scheduled. One hosted by the facebook Shitposting kid who decided to use his 15 minutes of fame to organize a rave in the desert at the local Little Ale'inn, a motel close to the gate. The other was set up by a filmmaker who made a movie about Area 51 at the Alien Research Center. Both locales are alien themed tchotchke paradises designed to sell the eager UFO tourist any manner of t-shirt, shot glass or Alien doll. These spots have a fun feel and would be desert trinket spots selling only desert sage and gems if not for the boon of being next to an infamous mystery base.

The dueling events were both hoping to capitalize on the rush of people to the desert for the raid. Alienstock, as shitpost called it, was going to be a kumbaya style gathering. But everybody thought it was an alibi for shitpost incase anybody got in actual trouble at the gate and roped him in. Shitpost from bakersfield ended up not even going to his own event out of fear. Also the county sued him for the cost of preparing for a potential fiasco. The Alien Research Center event was going to have famous Alien Community folks speak and some high end music performances. But as I drove down the dusty route 375, known as Exterterestrial Highway, I saw very few people on the roads. Lots and lots of cops. It became obvious that the whole county and the organizers of these events had been preparingor at least 30,000 people. They had nearly 200 port-a-potties. Which makes sense, if 1% of the people who claimed they were coming online came! The reality was that maybe only 1% of 1% showed up to these sleepy nevada towns on the edge of a fabled military base. The imediate reality of the events was that they were extremely underattended, but that was also a blessing. it made everything a little bit more intimate and accessible. I pulled into the dusty parking lot of the Little Ale'inn to find a rag tag DIY music festival set up. People were essentially tailgating on the side of the road. It was a scene and it was dusty. All sorts of folks were jovially milling about, some in alien themed costume, many with cameras. Many folks with booze, despite the morning. I pulled out a camera and tried interviewing people, but found that everybody I talked to had the exact same talking points. Do you believe in aliens? Duh. Why are you here? Free them Aliens. Do you really think they are in the base? Yes, but maybe now they've been moved. What did you think would happen if we charged? We'd all get killed or arrested. Nobody seemed to have really believed in the facebook post's idea of 'they can't stop us all.' Most people were sure that, especially with the meager turn out, the military and police could stop us all. Everybody just wanted to see what would happen, expecting anywhere from fyre festival 2.0 to a bloodbath to nothing. Everybody had listened to the same Joe Rogan podcast, where he'd interviewed Bob Lazar who claims to have worked at the base. That podcast was the bible of this gathering and was what had inspired Shitpost to shitpost.

It was special that everybody was a believer. That's rare that strangers are all on the same wavelength. Nobody seemed to have any doubts that the government knew about aliens and weren't telling the public. And it was agreed that UFO's had been tested and stored at the base. Everybody I ended up meeting seemed pretty prepared. They had plenty of water and booze and camping supplies, so the idea that a humanitarian crisis was going to occur dissapated completely and reminded me of a group outting to the desert. Most important was that everybody at the event seemed to be in on the joke. They might believe in aliens but had no plans of raiding the base in actuality. Aliens might exist but the might of the US government is way more certain. The police presence alone was insane, but they merely hinted at the military might behind the base's perimeter. The police actually became quite friendly once they realized it wasn't going to be a boodbath. But the silent and hooded guards behind the gate remained terrifying with big guns and big dogs. There was definitely the threat of violence if you crossed. But we all joked that maybe if a million more people showed up we'd actually start Naruto running passed the guards.

After a while of milling around quasi-interviewing people I decided there were enough people with cameras that I should just put on my alien costume and go to the gate and get in front of the camera. I was taken to the gate by some friends I'd made while trying to get interviews. Evan and Kevin were two dudes I became super weirdly close on the day of the Raid. Each of us had come by ourselves from far away, San Francisco, Boston and Los Angeles, with a vague intention of documenting it in some way. I had a vision of either a mini doc or article, Evan was a photographer and who took some insanely beautiful photos (featured here).

Kevin was a video creation guru who just wanted to make as much instagram content as possible. Kevin was by far the most successful, he's got that showman's knack to always get on camera with insanely high energy. There were a lot of cameras and each one he'd run up to and start lecturing about how the governemnt needed to release the secret documents! It was a great bit especially with his Boston Townie accent turned all the way up.

Evan explained how he was drawn to the site by a mysterious desire to see what would happen. He expressed it best as, 'this is like a reddit safe post.' People will find safes while remodeling or cleaning a house and say, 'hey reddit, look i found a safe, i'm going to open it and see what's inside!' Then people get excited trying to guess what marvelous jackpot could be in that old dusty safe. They wait desperately for the original poster to share an update. More often than not the poster never returns and people are left waiting for nothing.

Once and a while there will be an updated post to show what was found inside and sometime's it's a haul of trinkets and dubloons and rare items that were saved throughout time to be found by some noble internet user. but then most of the time it's like, wow a roll of coins from 1953! "so yeah i felt obligated to go and find out what was in the safe and share it with reddit even if there actually was nothing inside. reddit deserves to know.' evan said. Because sometimes those posts are just as important, the safe find coming back to say, 'hey we cracked the safe, but turns out there was nothing in it! here's a picture of an empty safe."

So I was beginning to realize that I was standing inside an empty safe. But wow, all of these people had also come to be here and that was something special. It's not often that we get to organically be around likeminded strangers that all have such clear and imediate shared experience. Here we all were, because of a a meme, just to see what would happen. The gathering had a magical quality because we were an internet joke that had left the cyber space and entered the meat space. It was a silly idea that was reaching a physical end point.

I stood around the gate for a good while, we chatted with everybody, shook hands with the police guarding the gate, exchanged instagram handles and shared jokes we'd heard on the internet. You could tell people were really cutting loose. Most people spent most of their time on their computers it seemed. Hey, me too. We shouted 'clap them cheeks' and 'let them out.' We were all in on the joke. There were still mainly cameras and I got interviewed and photographed by dozens including history channels ancient aliens and the nytimes and countless youtubers and instagramers. It all kind of culminated when Kevin and Evan were getting cold and saying we should leave, I heard a distant 'clap them cheeks' chant and booty shuffling down the lonesome road to the infamous Area 51 gate was Riley Reid! Pornhub's number 1 star. She's somebody I have searched for all my life, on google. She did a strip tease and pretended to rush the gate. She was an internet hero in the flesh, and she was in on the joke too! A perfect metaphor, eh?

The next morning, hungover from the excitement and extrovertism of the day before I was sitting in a diner scouring news websites for mentions of the raid and looking for photos of myself. Behind me I heard some locals discussing, a gravelly voice said, "usually this town has 1 car every 10 minutes. this weekend we've got like 1 car every minute!" The townsfolk seemed to have had the wildest weekend of their lives. Me too. I managed to get into a few articles in my green alien suit. A USA Today affiliate newspaper even printed a whole write up about me and my sign. On the way back, realizing I expected nothing, and found little more than nothing, I was completely satisfied. I had held my sign for peace and found a version of it, internet strangers, weirdos from all over had gathered peacefully to celebrate an idea. A silly and anti authoritarian conspiracy idea, but an idea none the less. I decided the reason I was drove all this way through beautiful american desert land, was because it's something I would have thought was cool as an 11 year old. A mission to see aliens and the people who wanted to meet them. Radical.

#area 51 #journey #journalism #adventure #aliens #clap them cheeks

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alexwinfield-blog1 · 5 years

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Digital Footprints: Put YOUR stamp on it.

It’s Monday morning. A new day. Another week of school. You turn off your alarm and head straight over to Twitter. “Monday already !!!!!!! (Crying emoji X10) Can’t w8 to get back into bed”. Your phone pings. It’s Lizzie. Your BFF. She never lets you down. Except not today it seems. “Soz bbe. Sooooo ill. Grab any hw sheets for me plzzzz (blowing kiss emoji) xxxx”. Mum shouts up the stairs “Are you getting up at any point today? The dog needs walking and you need to take your brother to school!” You slam your phone into the duvet, roll your eyes and take a deep breath. You’re annoyed and the day has only just begun. Toast in one hand and dragging your brother out the door by the other, you smile at the postman. “Morning”, you say. Knowing full well he loses your packages ALL THE TIME. Be nice mum always tells you. Manners cost nothing.

You get to school. The mean girls stare you down as you walk to your English lesson. You try to look cool. You tell yourself that one day they’ll take you in as one of their own, but maybe today just isn’t that day. You find your seat, unpack your books, your pencil case, tucking your phone under your hideous plaid skirt. Silly really. Illuminating skirts aren’t exactly the school uniform market’s latest innovation. You’re top of your class. You know you shouldn’t be scrolling through Instagram in a lesson, but everyone else does, and you for sure don’t want to stick out any more than what you already do. You get A’s in nearly every assignment and you compete in nearly every extra-curriculum sport in the school, but you can’t help but fantasise about that Instagram #gymbod. Your parents are immensely proud, and your teachers? You can’t do enough to please them. You love school. Never too shy to raise your hand in class, never too eager to stand in front of the WHOLE of year 11 to deliver a speech about the school’s litter policy, and never too embarrassed to admit to your friends that you’ve not even kissed a boy.

It’s lunchtime. You and your best friends of 12 years gather around the canteen table.They tell you about their exciting weekends. How their heart throb boyfriends distracted them from getting any work done. How they got ridiculously drunk at a family party and how their mum grounded them for coming home at 10:33 – 3 minutes later than expected. And you? You just listen. For the most part, you spend your break and lunch times talking in the hockey team WhatsApp group chat. They’re a laugh. Sometimes you tell the girls about your boring weekend, or even fluff it up slightly by telling them you actually got out of your pyjamas. They would never believe you. You’re well and truly the plain Jane out of the bunch. The new boy in your year asks if the seat next to you is taken. The girls think he’s a nerd but you think he’s quite cute. You say no. The girls sigh as if to say “you’re such a loser”, but you don’t care. You have to pretend you don’t know his name, that you don’t have an unhealthy obsession with checking his Facebook. You know his cat goes by the name of Clive, but you pretend you don’t know that. You know he plays for the local rugby team, but you’re not supposed to know that either. You don’t know that his birthday is the 6th of June, and most importantly, you must NOT show any bitterness towards his girlfriend of 3 years.

Home time at last. You’re loosening your tie as you get closer to the front door, eager to jump straight back into bed. PING. It’s the girls group chat. “House (girl dancing emoji) Sat nite. 8.30. B there or b (square emoji)”. NOOO. You promised mum you’d have a film night with her. Saturday night rolls around. You’ve been plotting all week how you could get away with this one, but she’s a mum. They find out everything. Not this time. You divert from the party situation. It’s now a revision sleepover situation with the girls. You ask to go and of course you’re allowed. School first, partying second. It’s 10pm. You’re having the best time but you assured mum updates on the revision sesh. So, as promised, you load up Instagram stories. On your second Instagram account, obviously. By second, you mean the only Instagram account your mum thinks exists, right? You locate the photo album named “revision”. You browse this until you find the most colourful, most mind-map-ful, most hard working-esque photo you can find. And voila! A little later, in comes a text from mum. “Wonderful stuff. Looks like you’re really working hard. See you in the morning :)” . Little does she know, over on what might as well scream @yourerliar101, several stories and photos were posted of your amazing night with your besties. In the morning it seems the party was a huge success. Tweets and Instagrams raving about the night – “Can’t believe Josh taught every1 to do the (worm emoji) (cry laughing emoji)”. “Had the best nite EVAAAAAA (tongue out emoji)”. “Me and the gals last night!!!!!!! (cocktail emoji) (heart eye emoji) #lovethem”.

Sound familiar? Well, this may not be too dissimilar to a day in the life of your late teenage years. (Millennials, this one is for you!) Through this artificial account, we learn that in just 24 hours, you are likely to perform a variety of different roles. You’re a reliable friend and a caring sibling. You’re also studious, a potential lover and occasionally a liar. But sometimes it’s for the best, right? So, quite literally, how can these personalities become transparent online?

Just like this teenager, the average social media user, whatever you may define this to be, can be traced online. Social media can speak volumes about a person. Not just what they get up to on the weekend, but the finer details. For example, they’re obsession with their house rabbits, how much they can’t stand their boss, and more recently, how they’ve jumped on-board Facebook’s latest bandwagon, “rate my meal”.

Social media, such as Instagram and Twitter allow me to present the most favourable, or sometimes least favourable, versions of myself. If you were to rewind to old school Alex on Twitter, you would definitely find tweets containing homophones, such as “u”, with my favourite acronym, still to this day, being “lol” – only used sarcastically of course. As well as this, I was a sucker for, and admittedly still am, a cluster of exaggerated punctuation, but mostly “!!!!!!!”. Although Crystal (2008) claims that young users of social media, especially in SMS, will use abbreviations such as “GTGMIW” (Got to go, mum is watching), this wasn’t necessarily the case when I was growing up with social media. Nowadays, it’s all about filtering what you put online. This screening allows you to hide your online activity, for example by disguising your wild Friday night shenanigans by deselecting your mum from viewing your Snapchat story. Or, creating a separate Instagram just for your friends’ entertainment. You can be as embarrassing as you like and you won’t have 800 followers judging you.

Goffman (1974) refers to this online social interaction as “audience segregation”. We ultimately filter aspects of our lives from certain people in order to curate and maintain a multitude of personalities depending on the context we are in. So, for me, this means presenting a sensible, family-friendly Alex on Facebook, an interesting and good-humoured Alex on Twitter, and an exciting, adventurous Alex on Instagram. Let’s take a look…

So, 2017 A-Level Results day. Here, we’ve got a definite exaggerated use of punctuation and excitable capitalisation. Not only this, I clearly thought the use of the extreme smiley emoji X2 wasn’t enough, resulting in going the extra mile with a #. What am I doing here? Looking back on this, this for sure could have been Facebook worthy. This could have bagged me a gushing army of comments from overjoyed family members bursting with pride. But why Twitter? My friends would see this. People I know, but don’t really know, would see this. Those 23 likes - those 23 people thought this was worthy of a tweet and that’s all that mattered. In this moment, I. Was. Clever.

Evidently, over the years, I desired to either be desperately funny or desperately embarrassing. You decide this one.

Would I have found any of these tweets to be bland if I weren’t to use homophones? Or exaggerated punctuation? Or hashtags? Were these attempts for me to moan about how busy my life was? Did I want sympathy or just someone to relate to?

Here’s Instagram Alex. Holidaying in the Dominican Republic, Lanzarote and Greece. Eating Wagamamas at least once a week. Being overly obsessed with a French Bulldog, attending fancy-dress parties and the occasional festival. This is what I choose to share online. Not very exciting, but a fairly accurate representation of me. You can guarantee nearly every other caption incorporates an excessive use of emoticons, sarcasm and most definitely a little too much of this “!!!!!”.

What do these linguistic features allow me to achieve?

If I asked a complete stranger to read my Twitter, browse my Facebook and scroll through my Instagram, they would probably argue that my presence across these social media platforms doesn’t really differ that greatly. You could say that for the most part, I present the most authentic version of myself online. I’m not one to shy away from no-make up selfies, or tell the world about how groggy I feel after waking up from that 3- hour nap, or in fact how much I moan about going to my 20 hours a week part-time kitchen job.

However, for some people, this is not the case. Without audience segregation there would be a context collapse. Employees would start saying “lmao” when their boss asks for a coffee. Students would use inappropriate emoticons to sign of their “sorry I can’t make it to the lecture today, I’m ill” email. Parents would text, or even worse, tag you in their FB status announcing “#DINNERISREADY” instead of actually calling you down for dinner, and we definitely don’t want to live in a world full of parents who hashtag EVERYTHING.

So, what can we learn from this?

For both professional and personal matters, it’s important to present yourself online in a way that is consistent. You don’t want people to think you have 25 different personalities. Keep this for the real-life stuff. No one likes a catfish. After all, if 70% of employers screen candidates’ social media before they consider hiring, it’s important to avoid branding yourself as a fool online. Keep those drunken night out videos OFFLINE and maybe consider deleting those 2012 “Like for a rate <3” cringey Facebook statuses. However, don’t go erasing yourself offline completely in fear that you’ll never get a decent job. After all, 47% of employers argue that having an online presence allows them to learn a bit about who they’re hiring. So, be open, but not TOO open. Be YOU. However, if “you” means writing Facebook statuses about how much you love playing Angry Birds at work, or how you’re easily persuaded to go clubbing on a Monday night, maybe it’s best you don’t share the real you online. Be mindful about the digital footprint trail you’re leaving behind.

References:

Driver, S. (2018, October, 7). Keep It Clean: Social Media Screenings Gain In Popularity. Retrieved from: https://www.businessnewsdaily.com/2377-social-media-hiring.html

Jones, R. H., & Hafner. C. A. (2012). Undersatnding Digital Literacies. London: Routledge.

#week5

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aion-rsa · 3 years

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Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage Review: Behind the Scenes of a Musical Disaster

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That ain’t teenage spirit you’re smelling. HBO’s Music Box documentary Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage reeks of righteous condemnation, judicial indiscretion, and conspiratorial obfuscation. But it’s okay. This is a disaster film masquerading as a documentary, and the found footage makes it all pay off. Director Garrett Price personally opens the film in the voiceover, explaining how the 1999 celebration itself was written to be a comedy, but “played out much more like a horror film.”

Music festivals have come to represent generations. The original Woodstock: an Aquarian Exposition: 3 Days of Peace & Music concert in the summer of 1969 brought half a million people together with the artists who spoke for and to them in a communal love bond. The organizers lost money, the capacity was underestimated, but the audience came together to share what they had to make the weekend legendary. In December that year, the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont was marred by the pool cues and knives of the security team, the Hells Angels. It was deemed the end of the ‘60s.

Woodstock ‘94 happened at the height of the Grunge Revolution, when Kurt Cobain wore a dress but didn’t shave his stubble, and Riot Grrrls blasted personal dissent with the passion of the punk elite and no one cared if they shaved their legs. The organizers lost money, but the fans and the bands were one unit who achieved the common goal of joy. Woodstock ‘99 happened five years later and enjoyed the accessibility of the mainstream’s greatest unifier: MTV. The organizers made money and 200,000 people attended, but the audience got such a raw deal, even the musicians who played got scared. It is remembered as “the day the ’90s died.”

Opening on the 22nd anniversary of the festival, the documentary deems Woodstock ’99 a disaster. They even call in a guy from FEMA, who says it was worse than Hurricane Katrina and the great flood. Told chronologically, Price, who previously directed Love, Antosha, the 2019 tribute to Anton Yelchin, begins with the excitement of a three-day festival. Held on a former military installation in Rome, New York, the Griffiss Air Base was set up to keep the grounds free of ticketless celebrants.

The security team is exposed as a bunch of amateurs specially trained on which boxes to check in a multiple-choice test, and how to find someone’s personal stash of bottled water in a backpack. “There’s a festival grounds in Germany that was literally built by Hitler,” The Offspring’s guitarist Noodles says in an interview. “It’s a great venue, a lot of fun. The air base was less hospitable than the venue built by Nazis.”

There were nonstop performances held a mile apart from each other on the grounds. One highlighted its mosh pits, the other the dance floor. The biggest electronic artist in the Rave Tent proves his genre’s atmosphere opens doorways to perception. “There is a sixth sense that you develop when you spend your life going to venues,” Moby says in an interview. “We got off the bus and I was like, ‘Something is not right.'”

The film is very generous with behind-the-scenes footage. We are treated to aerial shots of cramped campsites, long ATM lines, leaky Port-O-Potties oozing something that only looked like mud, and $4 water bottles, which sold as much as beer in temperatures over 100 degrees. We are told in advance three people died, 44 were arrested. There were 10 reported sexual assaults.

The lineup for the concert was a mix of hard rock bands, pop stars, and hip-hop acts like The Roots, and ICP. Rapper DMX’s epithetic call and response performance gets special notice. “The Black performer is essentially licensing the people in the crowd to say this word with him,” New York Times’ Wesley Morris says in an interview. “If you got each one of these guys after the show, and pulled them aside and said, ‘is it OK to say the N-word under any circumstances?’ They would, to a person, say, ‘I mean, the right answer is no, right?’”

For returning music aficionados with remnants of the first gathering still in their memories, organizers booked jam bands and a few older acts like Elvis Costello, Willie Nelson, and The Who’s John Entwistle. “The ’99 Woodstock seemed like it was trying to relive a nostalgic moment, along with commercialism and capitalism, but not having a real soulful purpose for the show,” singer-songwriter Jewel says in an interview.

As the documentary points out, a lot of the younger attendees had no idea what Wyclef Jean was referencing in his solo guitar performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” They ask one kid, who can’t remember who did it first even though he’s standing directly under a huge stencil of Jimi Hendrix’s name. When Bush’s Gavin Rossdale begins Country Joe & the Fish’s “Gimme an F,” the chanters only seek Amy.

Music is supposed to have charms which soothe the savage breast. Many people think the final word of the phrase is “beast,” and the documentary further blurs the line. The early ‘90s music artists were anti-misogynist, anti-racist, anti-homophobic and radically informed. Happening at the end of the Clinton era, when MTV pitted boy bands and pop girls against nü-metal rockers, a fur-coated Kid Rock could call Monica Lewinsky a ho and pass it off as a political statement.

Toxic masculinity’s dirty sister framed Britney Spears as a “Girls Gone Wild” extra, and magazines like Maxim and FHM encouraged the idea young men could shout “show your tits” to Rosie Perez without getting bitch-slapped, the documentary posits. Only three women were invited to perform at the weekend-long, two-stage festival: Jewel, Alanis Morrissette, and Sheryl Crow. “I’m baffled how it went from the progressive, enlightened values of Kurt Cobain and Michael Stipe to misogyny and homophobia and the rape-frat boy culture that was at Woodstock ‘99,” Moby ponders in the film.

Of course, none of wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t all pre-staged. This is where Price dips into the era’s obsession with paranoia. It was the end of the millennium, the Columbine shootings had happened, and the Y2K bug was coming. It was finally time to party like it’s 1999. “Really, the biggest problem was that MTV set the tone,” organizer John Scher says in an interview.

But he downplays it, like he might have been warned by Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files. “There’s no question that a few incidents took place. But if you go back in the records of the police and state police and stuff, we’re not talking about 100. Or even 50. We’re talking about 10. I am critical of the hundreds of women that were walking around with no clothes on, and expecting not to be touched. They shouldn’t have been touched, and I condemn it. But you know, I think that women that were running around naked, you know, are at least partially to blame for that.”

Partial blame is all the rage in Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage. The documentary points out how history paints the original Woodstock like it really was a return to the garden, with peace and love and former flower children having babies to Santana’s “Soul Sacrifice.” But music journalist Steven Hyden reminds us about a group of disgruntled shoppers called “’The Up Against the Wall Motherfuckers,” who didn’t like food prices and burned dozens of stands down.

After Woodstock ’99 grounds started smoking when the candles handed out for a vigil for Columbine victims became torches to burn the place down, the documentary says Rome Mayor Joseph Griffo asked Anthony Kiedis to douse the crowd’s misplaced enthusiasm. The Red Hot Chili Peppers launched into a scorching rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Fire.” History blames bands like Limp Bizkit, Korn, and Rage Against the Machine for the destruction. But really, the artistic decision of that song to those circumstances is a no-brainer. “Smoke on the Water” would have been too easy. “Disco Inferno” would have been too obvious.

The documentary talks with the event’s organizers, as well as performers like Korn’s Jonathan Davis, The Offspring, Scott Stapp of Creed, The Roots’ Black Thought. Wesley Morris and Spin‘s Maureen Callahan put things into perspective. The only person the documentary doesn’t talk with is Fred Durst, the frontman for Limp Bizkit, who became the poster boy for the event’s bad behavior. Oh, they talk about him, though. They talk about him like he’s not there, and because he’s not there they must think he won’t see it. At the height of Limp Bizkit’s set, the singer encouraged the crowd to “Break Stuff.” But let’s be fair, it is the name of their song, and Durst is the guy who told the crowd to pick someone up if they fall, not to grope them.

This is what happens when the counterculture makes money. Everyone wants a piece. Woodstock 99: Love, Peace, and Rage is an even-handed dispenser of blame, and has slices for all. The first in a series of music-based documentaries from Bill Simmons’ Ringer Films, this immersive journey bodes well for upcoming tunes.

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Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage is available to stream on HBO Max now.

The post Woodstock 99: Peace, Love, and Rage Review: Behind the Scenes of a Musical Disaster appeared first on Den of Geek.

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champagnechica7 · 3 years

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Human bill boards & iguanas

I had a dream about a recurrent place/event that only exists in my dreams...in my dream i was attending my 3rd annual time...its like some sort of weekend art festival type thing. With like creepy/unnerving but somehow not scary vibes...don’t even know the name haha and can’t think of anything similar in real life.

My old manager scott was there. He always gave me those kind of vibes. He was a cool boss but also sometimes said or showed us some off the wall things but he would never hurt a fly.

Anyway i got at the tail end and i was arriving from somewhere, felt like i had been on a trip. I got there and it kind of gave me resort vibes. There was like grass surrounding a little lazy river looking type River. Inside the river there was a bunch of iguanas swimming, and there was stepping stones you could jump across if you didn’t wanna get wet or eaten by iguanas (i think they’re omnivores but honestly wasn’t gonna test it out in my dream) so i jumped across.

Got into the building on the otherside...it looked light and open. Inside it looked like a bathhouse/bathroom type of place...what is it with me dreaming about those kinds of places? I don’t think ive ever even been to a place like that in real life. Anyway im going somewhere in a rush, maybe i was going to try to make it to a class or exhibit or just explore...but instead i bumped into some kid - they were like old enough to be worrisome but not old enough to know their gender, they were about my size. And they had a friend of the same size and they were in a fighting mood. So i had a stand off with them.

Then i forgot who came to my rescue and i think we stalled (dream got fuzzy) but then it seemed it was closing time and the mass exodus started. Like when a rave festival ends and everyone heads towards the exit. So he jumped in the current of people and made out escape without getting into a fist fight...somehow i had a bunch if things i had to grab before we left and i was scrambling. I got like two bags on my shoulders and was carrying things in my hands like when i want to carry all the groceries up to my place in one trip.

On my way out i ran into my manager scott and in my dream i knew he never missed this particular festival. He was wearing his art. It was like a three sided coffins shaped board display. It reminded me of those sandwich boards or human billboard people used to wear in tv shows. And anyways the board had like band logos or something on it he did a little circle so i could see. I let him know i missed the festival experience again, apparently i came the last 2 years and also did not get to make art like i had wanted to. Apparently the year before leah had come for a house warming event or bday...

It was a very odd dream.

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howveryheather · 3 years

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pandemic songs + self discovery

My Spotify Unwrapped for 2020 looked remarkably similar to every other year of my life recorded on the platform. The number one song, for what has to be at least four years running, is an ambient track from a video game that I listen to while I’m working. Most of my top musicians are a mix of film and television composers and Enya. This is true even in a pandemic. So many of my existing musical influences are still here to weather the many storms of life that are ahead — whether I am ready for them or not.

In every moment where I was not working, I was listening to a lot of music. Pouring over my Spotify, I’m able to see so many different moods and feelings. I have always kept one enormous playlist that lets me go back and know exactly what music I was listening at various moments in my life. Moments in time where the world felt like it had lost its balance, but music kept me grounded. Kept me thinking about the past, present, and future. The way I see it, the best is still yet to come for everyone. Better times are on their way. People I don’t yet know are coming into my life. Places I haven’t lived in yet will be here soon. And there will be even more songs that will define those moments in time for me.

I didn’t know the songs I’d be listening to during the pandemic and yet, here we are... with the music that defined this uncertain time in my corner of the world.

youtube

“Say So” — Doja Cat

In the aftermath of getting knocked out with one of the worst flus of my life for a week this year, I spent the remainder of February desperately trying to regain my strength and sense of self. Little did I know that in March the entire world would change because of the coronavirus. This song feels like the last music video of our “normal” time. Nostalgic for roller skating rinks and hanging out with friends.

“Geyser” — Mitski

Have you ever heard a song that emotionally rocked you to the core so badly that you had to get into the fetal position and think afterwards? This one did it. Screaming while crawling and rolling around in the dirt is a real 2020 mood.

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“Too Late” — The Weeknd

The entire After Hours album, and the red suit character, is a real quarantine/lockdown mood if there ever was one. Abel can’t miss.

“The Chain” — Fleetwood Mac

Everyone else might have been on a Dreams kick, courtesy of the Ocean Spray skateboarder but I was all about The Chain.

“Me And You” — NERO

In the movie montage of your life, this is the song that plays to emphasize you’re a boss who can do anything. I stopped drinking for the better part of this year, which is pretty cool. Then I attempted the keto diet. That lasted for... less than 48 hours. The message is simple: I will just exercise instead of giving up carbs!

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“Ocean of Mine” — Kennedy One

Before I started paying for Spotify Premium, I was trapped in a world of endless commercials. Once in a great while, the streaming service would recommend music that I might like. Kennedy One’s Ocean of Mine was one of those recommendations. I listened to this while I had my first crown put on at the dentist. You know I love anything that sounds like the wind, the water, and the promise of the shore.

“Joan of Arc on the Dance Floor” — Aly & AJ

These sisters came through so many times in 2020! The Up All Night event on YouTube and the Viper Room streaming show made it feel like concerts had, in a slow but sure way, been able to make a return. Just in time to kiss 2020 goodbye we have an explicit version of Potential Breakup Song... MVPs!

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“Moscow Invitational 1968″ — Carlos Rafael Rivera

Many hours spent writing require a specific kind of soundtrack for staying in the zone. The moment I heard this score play during The Queen’s Gambit, I knew it was going to be part of my background noise whenever I’m working from this moment moving forward. It’s inspiring to listen to and helps me stay even more concentrated on the task at hand. Whatever challenges are ahead, I know I can reach them and keep leaping onward to the next hurdle and beyond.

“forget me too” — Machine Gun Kelly feat. Halsey

This is why we need concerts again: recreating a mosh pit feeling alone in your bedroom is simply not possible.

“Shine Ibiza Anthem 2019” — Paul van Dyk, Alex M.O.R.P.H.

In a pre-COVID world, I had plans to see Ultra 2020 in Miami. In a post-COVID, vaccinated world, I still have these plans for the future! I so look forward to the return of music festivals again, particularly those of the eat, sleep, rave, repeat variety.

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“Violence” — Grimes & i_o

This is my December song that will carry into January and beyond. I love, love, love it! (RIP Garrett Lockhart.)

As 2020 comes to a close, I have discovered some things about myself.

There were three times I cried, and I mean sobbed my eyes out, during this pandemic. The first was during the news of the initial lockdown. That was pure fear and confusion and chaos. The second was when I started to see news footage of miles-long lines of people waiting for food to feed their families. That was an aching sadness that I felt deep in my bones because a lot of people lost their jobs and had nowhere else to turn for food. And the third was when I heard Governor Newsom ordered 5,000 body bags for California. Hearing news like that makes it impossible to never un-hear it again. It’s the reality of how badly this virus has rampaged our country.

It really bothers me when I see people saying that they want normal again. I get the root of the desire which is that you’d like to enjoy a drink at the bar or have a dinner out or spend time with friends, etc. But there were a lot of problems with our normal world. Too many. To me, it feels like signaling that you’re okay with continuing to live in a society where so many people have to work multiple jobs to survive, the healthcare infrastructure is buckling, and the education system is completely fractured (among many other issues!).

What it seems, at least to me, is that people only want the aspects of normal that they were fortunate enough to receive but come at the expense of others. I suppose the best analogy is to consider the super rich. Once they exit their bunkers, they will want someone, likely paid on barely liveable wages, to make and serve them brunch. One can only hope this time has changed enough people to do and be better, but human nature is a fairly predictable beast. A number of people failed what I consider to be a basic human experiment and revealed seriously selfish true colors. I could rant about this topic for awhile — and believe me, I have THOUGHTS — but it’s too easy to dwell on bad news and opinions.

There was a lot of good, just news in the mix. Some of it made the news, some went under the radar, but it was still there and it’s still happening. Here’s a few links:

There has been an animal discovered by scientists (a jellyfish-like parasite) that does not need oxygen to survive.

CRISPR was injected into a live patient’s eyeball this year, to treat genetically-caused blindness.

PG&E plead guilty to 85 counts in the 2018 Camp Fire, the same fire that wiped out Paradise, California.

A Michigan jeweler named Johnny Perri buried $1 million of gold, silver, and diamonds for a real-life treasure hunt this summer.

Princess Beatrice and Edo Mapelli Mozzi had one of the prettiest, socially distanced weddings I’ve ever seen.

American Girl launched a new doll, Courtney, born in 1986. (They’re catching up to my age now!)

And the 2021 Super Bowl is inviting healthcare workers to attend the big game.

In the post-coronavirus “new normal” when I have been vaccinated, I know some aspects of my life will go back to their bubble. A lot will change though.

What I really want is to do is get involved, hands on, in the community again. I want to volunteer at local food banks, soup kitchens, and/or churches for a few hours each week, when possible. (I also have a thought surrounding the idea of making a whole bunch of travel-size feminine product care kits for women in need if this isn’t already happening...) And if I can’t physically be there, then I want to donate and offer support in other ways. I am not helpless. I am a helper, as Mr. Rogers would say, and I would like to be able to help out more and contribute to the well-being of others once it is safe to do so.

I hope people will find it inside of them to want to work together again and come together as a community. It means a lot of hard work and energy and time, but it’s gonna make our world a lot better — far beyond the normal one we left behind.

#personal #2020 #2021

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sfw-haikyuu-nsfw · 6 years

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ayy girl! since you're into the whole rave scene I wanted to ask you, do you have any music recs? I live in the middle of nowhere so I've been admiring the scene from afar and never was able to actually attend anything t_t

OH BABE DO I EVER. I’ll link you so some of my top favorite songs and artists and I’ll even give you some from a couple genres that I really like!

First, I LOVE Illenium. This man speaks to my soul in a way I never thought possible. And he’s making a big jump into the scene, which is great because he’s amazing and deserve all of it! I was supposed to see him this October at Escape, but that went down to drain and just waiting until he gets back into this area again!

Crawl Outta Love (feat. Annika Wells)Fortress (feat. Joni Fatora) The Sound of Walking Away (feat. Kerli) Fractures (feat. Nevve)

Another great artist is GRiZ. This dude is so freaking awesome and quite honestly, I have no idea what genre you would put him in. He’s in his own playing field and he’s just great! I also heard that he plays the trumpet live while he’s mixing! I want to see him so badly! And he’s all over the place with the songs he remixes too, jazz and soft rock and R&B, it’s just so cool!

Good Times Roll Wicked PS GFY Can’t Hold Me Down

Lastly for DJs, KSHMR is a musical genius. He understands space and how sound works in it and his music totally reflects it. Even when you’re listening to his music in the car, it has that feeling of depth that makes you feel like you’re there live. And his live performances are AMAZING (I was able to see him at Escape last year!) They also have this exotic sound with a lot of them that I’m just in love with!

Memories Sleepwalk Dharma Touch

Okay, genres. You can never go wrong with house music! House Nation on Youtube has a ton of good songs!

Kaskade - Play With Me Avicii - Without You (feat. Sandro Cavazza) DEVI - You & Me Galantis - Pillow Fight

Then there’s trap!

Unlike Pluto - Let It Bleed (feat. Cristina Gatti) Pluto - Fight For You ft. MAX (William Black Remix) Kygo & Ellie Goulding - First Time (R3HAB Remix) I Want U - Alison Wonderland (this chick is BADASS!)

Dubstep!

Birdy - Skinny Love (Vanic Remix) Adventure Club - Breathe ft. SONDAR (Ra Remix) Alan Walker - Fade (Mich Remix) Knife Party - Boss Mode

Drum and Bass!

Koven - Figure Pendulum - Trail of Sevens Michael Seary x Luke Cusato - Can’t Say It Back

Then there’s Glitch Hop! Which is always fun!

Elysium - Gutter Butter Glitch Mob - Fortune Days Yutsuki - かみまみた

And, I mean, there’s so much more. But this, I suppose, is a pretty extensive jumping off point. Oh! I forgot Trance! Oh, well, just look up Above and Beyond Group Therapy and they have TONS of Trance DJs! And another radio to listen to is Night Owl Radio, Pasquale Rotella plays a huge variety of DJs and genres on that show if you wanna start figuring out what you like!

Also, listen to remixes! That’s how I managed to find Illenium, he made a remix of Chainsmokers Don’t Let Me Down and it is legit my favorite song in the entire world. I always lose my shit whenever it comes on.

There is a whole bunch of music out there, especially just under the scope of EDM, but it’s fun to explore and dive into the mix! When you start listening to a lot, you kinda start getting an ear for what beats and noises are generally associated with what genre, which is pretty cool!

Enjoy the music, love! And I hope that you manage to get to a festival one day!

#this got extensive #Thank you for letting me rant about music!#hope you find something you like on here!

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kootenaygoon · 4 years

Photo

So,

I was fascinated by the totems.

As I hiked my way around the Salmo River Ranch taking pictures for the Nelson Star in 2016, I was repeatedly drawn to the elaborate totems people hoisted into the air. One featured Garey Busey’s bug-eyed face. I started asking people what the deal was, and learned that they were used in the rave pits to keep certain crowds of people together. They were supposed to be a sublime expression of your soul, but half the time it just meant you were a particular type of drug dealer. After asking a pair of women whether I could take their picture, I asked one about the totem she was carrying. On one side it said “WANT” and on the other side it said “NEED”.

“Well, sometimes I have a hard time differentiating between my wants and my needs,” she said. “This reminds me that they’re two sides of the same coin.”

I chewed on that, nodding, as they continued on their way. After waking up in the back of my RAV that morning, I’d now spent three or four shirtless hours wandering the circumference of the ranch in my nearly dead flip flops. I was parked right beside Niles’ campsite, and he’d brought along $60-worth of a drug he called Champagne Moonrocks. He told me it would be more than enough to get me through the festival energy-wise while still delivering a wicked high. It was powder folded into a little square of tin foil. That morning I’d placed some on the back of my tongue, then settled into a camping chair with an issue of Harper’s. That’s when the nearby parking attendant started shouting at me.

“What are you doing, man? Are you reading?”

I shrugged, glancing down at my magazine. I was partway through an article about the “New Narcissism” of my generation.

“Dude, you’re at a rave!”

I decided his argument was compelling enough that I walked out to where he stood in his safety vest and offered to share my joint with him. Niles appeared from his truck and joined us, pulling on his glittery yellow tights and adjusting his Elvis sunglasses. The three of us spent the next four hours back-slapping and story-swapping, and before long we’d attracted a crowd, including a dude from Edmonton named Trippz and a tattooed party-goer with “Reality is an excuse for limitations” tattooed inside his bicep.

“I’m realizing that the hyperbolic, fictional version of Shambhala that I invented in my head doesn’t even touch how crazy it actually is here,” I told my friends. “I mean, look!”

Two rainbow-coloured men were nude-sprinting past, paint dripping from their danglers.

“What were you guys doing?” I asked, flagging one down.

“We covered ourselves in paint and rolled on the canvas to make art,” he told me, whooping. “Happy Shambs!”

I made a mental note that I wanted to remember this conversation for my Nelson Star column, so I rushed over to my notebook and jotted it down. When I came back the parking attendant asked me what I was writing down. I explained that I was a journalist, and I was trying to understand Shambhala on a deeper level than it had been engaged with in the past. I wanted a firsthand, raw experience I could translate into something more meaningful than all the negative coverage it had received over the years. The thing was a cultural juggernaut, and it was key to understanding the mental health realities of the Kootenays.

“Dude, that’s fucking dope,” he said.

“This year I’m going to all these different music festivals and writing a column about each one. I did ‘Three Days at Tiny Lights’, `Three Days at Kaslo Jazz’ and now I’m doing this one.”

“Word. You have a cool job, bro. Going to music festivals for free? I mean, look at this shit, man. I’m a fucking DJ but I still gotta do like a 12-hour parking shift.”

My eyes widened. “You’re doing a 12-hour shift?”

“Yeah, man. Two of them. That’s how I earn my ticket, like trade.”

This guy was fascinating me, and suddenly I wanted to know everything there was to know about being a Vancouver DJ. I asked him what it felt like to stand in front of a surging crowd at some nightclub, how exactly he created his music, and what sort of musical tradition he came from.

He laughed at that. “Musical tradition? Man, we’re not talking about Classical Music here.”

“But genre-wise, what would you call it?”

He then spoke for a minute or two, shrugging and cringing, trying to get his description just-right. He named producers and MCs and DJs that I’d never heard of, and probably never would hear of again. Electronic music was a purple swamp my brain just couldn’t immerse in. One thing was becoming increasingly clear to me, though: drugs were the key to understanding it’s appeal. The power was in their pairing, the marriage of drugs and music. He’d been a believer in this music for over a decade now, and he wasn’t sick of it. I respected his dedication to a craft.

But I had bigger questions. At this point Niles was no longer with us, so I asked the scrawny DJ how he felt about the fundamental culture of it all. So much of it seemed silly, needlessly dangerous, and often toxic. He nodded.

“I’ve got a story for you, man,” he said. “You wanna hear about some of the shit that happens in this world? Dudes drugging girls and raping them? This shit is out of control.”

He then settled into his story. It begun when a girl approached him, and told him about a particular DJ he was friends with. She described how she went home with him, but shortly after arriving there became paralyzed from some sort of drug. She was still conscious, though, when he forced himself on her.

“That motherless fuck. I would rip his throat out,” I said. “What did you do?”

He shook his head apologetically, and sighed. The other DJ was a very good friend of his, and they were entangled professionally in a number of ways. He wasn’t sure enough of the girl’s story to risk crossing him, so he did nothing. He continued to perform with the guy. That’s when a second girl came to him.

“She had the exact same story. She went back to his place, she was having a drink and then all of a sudden she’s paralyzed and he’s naked. It was like word for word the same story.”

I was starting to shake. These sorts of stories overwhelmed me. I didn’t say anything this time, just let him finish.

“Then finally, one of my very best girl friends came to me. She was crying and I knew before she said it, I knew what she was going to tell me. I’ll tell you what, Will, I’m ashamed that I didn’t act the first two times but now I was straight up murderous. Like I was going to fucking put the boots to this guy.”

I shook my head, thinking about the episode of The Sopranos where Dr. Melfi gets raped. I remember how desperately I wanted vengeance. This was the real life version of that.

“So I called up like six of my guys and we rolled up on motorcycles. He was waiting for us, right? He knew we were coming for him.”

“This was in Vancouver, like downtown Vancouver?”

“Yeah, he was waiting outside his apartment building with a bunch of his buddies. But we had them outnumbered by two.”

I couldn’t believe it. “So what happened?”

“Well, it kind of got broken up early. But we put him in the hospital. And that fucker hasn’t gotten a DJ gig in Vancouver ever since.” The Kootenay Goon

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newyorktheater · 5 years

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Britney Spears, 20 years ago

Will Roland in Be More Chiil

Cast of Mean Girls

Andrew Barth Feldman in Dear Evan Hansen

Isabelle McCalla and Caitlin Kinnunen as high school girlfriends in The Prom

“I’m not a girl, not yet a woman…I’m in between,” Britney Spears sang some two decades ago, and it could almost be the new anthem (gender-adjusted) for Broadway. The opening of Be More Chill this week adds yet another to the New York stage shows that focus on teenage characters (mostly portrayed by non-teenage performers), many of which attract a large teenage audience. These include Dear Evan Hansen, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Mean Girls, and, yes, ok, Wicked. (The Prom has a dual focus; and the audience for, if not the characters in, Frozen skew younger.) Teen angst has made its way Off-Broadway as well, with Superhero.

Shows about teens and tweens are hardly new: 13, Bye Bye Birdie, Carrie, Hairspray, Matilda, Newsies, School of Rock, Spring Awakening come to mind. But we’re seeing a particular trend now, and not an especially welcome one. It’s of course a good thing to broaden the demographics of the Broadway audience, and at least one of these shows is widely viewed as of high quality. Yet their focus is largely on angst and on stereotypes. How accurate or fair are the depictions of teenagers in these shows? Yes, high school may be a time when some people are trying out identities, and too many of them might like to assign reductive labels to their classmates or even to themselves. But surely this is not the full picture, nor a constructive one. As I say in my review of Be More Chill, the actual high school students we see regularly in the news are taking the lead in attacking such crucial problems as climate change and gun control — problems that have stalemated adults.

Incidentally, “I’m Not a Girl, Not Yet a Woman,” along with “Baby One More Time,” Spear’s first pop single when she was 17 years old, are likely to be two of the 23 songs from her repertorie that will be in the new musical “Once Upon a One More Time” aiming for Broadway, announced today. The book, thankfully, is not about teen angst. (For more details, see Week in NY Theater News, below.)

The Week in New York Theater Reviews

THE B-SIDE: “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons,” A Record Album Interpretation

In “The B-Side,” three men sing along with an album on a record-player — or, as people prefer to say these days, a vinyl on the turntable. But there’s a reason why the Wooster Group’s encore presentation of its simple and odd hour-long piece, first performed at the Performing Garage in 2017, is filling St. Ann’s Warehouse every night. The album is “Negro Folklore from Texas State Prisons”…

Austin Scott as Alexander Hamilton and Carvens Lissaint as George Washington, the new cast members of “Hamilton” on Broadway.

Hamilton on Broadway 2019: New Cast, New Clarity

I recently saw Hamilton again on Broadway, during a rare open captioned performance, and it was a revelation in several ways.

I would love to see this show but there are not enough OC performances for those of us who want to attend. It’s nice to pat yourself on the back about access, but the reality is that an occasional Wednesday OC performance with limited tickets is not access. #captionallshows

— Dr. Petrified Tree Sap (@a_joy_martin) March 9, 2019

The Cake Review: “This is Us” writer on Christian baker’s Lesbian wedding dilemma

In “The Cake,” Debra Jo Rupp (the mother on “That 70s Show”) portrays Della, a Christian baker in North Carolina who refuses to bake a cake for a lesbian wedding. If the story is inspired by the Supreme Court case decided last year, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, playwright Bekah Brunstetter, who is a writer for “This Is Us,” makes it personal in several ways…One of the future brides, Jen (Genevieve Angelson), is the daughter of Della’s best friend, who died five years ago. Della, who is childless, views Jen like a daughter…Bekah Brunstetter has told interviewers that she wrote “The Cake” as a way to explain her support for gay rights and same-sex marriage to her parents. Her father, Peter Brunstetter, is a Republican politician from North Carolina who supported an anti-gay state bill that defined marriage as between a man and a woman.

Be More Chill on Broadway

Somebody wrote “NYC Loves BMC” in chalk on the sidewalk outside Broadway’s Lyceum Theater, the new home of “Be More Chill,” the high energy, high decibel pop-rock musical that stars Will Roland as a self-proclaimed high school “loser” who swallows a pill containing a supercomputer and becomes cool. I tweeted a picture of the scrawled public love note; the tweet was retweeted nearly a hundred times. “Be More Chill” has some seriously devoted fans, most of whom seem to be 15 years old. It’s a thrill to see such teenaged enthusiasm for live theater. I wish I could share more fully in their ardor for this show

The Week in New York Theater News

The first annual Rave Theater Festival is asking for submissions. Artistic director @kendavenportplans roughly 20 plays, musicals, multimedia, and cross-disciplinary projects, as well as family shows, which will each receive up to five performances, August 9-25, 2019 at Clemente Sito Velez Cultural and Education Center on the Lower East Side.

Simpsons theme song composer Danny Elfman will make his Broadway debut by composing music for “Gary: The Sequel to Titus Andronicus.”

Twenty-three of Britney Spears’ songs will form the score for a new Broadway-aiming musical, “Once Upon a One More Time” with will have a try-out in Chicago from October to December of this year. “Once Upon A Time… Cinderella, Snow White, and the other fairytale princesses gather for their book club, when – oh, baby baby! – a rogue fairy godmother drops The Feminine Mystique into their corseted laps, spurring a royal revelation.” The Times reports that the run at the Chicago theater “had been set aside for “Don’t Stop ’Til You Get Enough,” a Michael Jackson jukebox musical that canceled its Chicago plans on the eve of an HBO documentary detailing abuse allegations against the pop star. That show’s producers say they are still hoping to come to Broadway.”

The Arts Are Good For You

Three articles that show that the arts are a good thing.

Article 1, by Isaac Kaplan in Artsy: Arts Sector Contributed $763.6 Billion to U.S. Economy—More Than Agriculture or Transportation, New Data Shows

Article 2, by Tom Jacobs in Pacific Standard: How arts can help struggling science students do better

A large study released last month found that Florida middle-school students who study music, theater, or visual art subsequently get higher overall grades than their peers.

Article 3 by Robert Ruffin in HowlRound (from 2018) We Need Theatre to Exist, and Maybe Research Can Prove Its Necessity

A new Broadway By The Year, musicals of 1943 and 1951, will be presented at Town Hall of March 25th, “created, written, hosted and directed” by Scott Siegel — for whom 2018 was not a great year, having gotten into a bad bicycle accident. Here is an article about his accident and his show in the Times, written right before the last Broadway By Year, last month.

Alexa’s new skill lets you scour Ticketmaster using your voice

Robert Barry Fleming has been appointed artistic director of Actors Theater of Louisville, the theater that brings us the annual Humana Festival. He’s been an actor, director, choreographer, arts administrator (at Arena Stage and Cleveland PlayHouse), and championed or commissioned such shows as Dear Evan Hansen and Sweat.

Daryl_Roth – Producing with a Purpose. Theater producer for 31 yrs “Marvel action hero” – Paula Vogel. One of the few female producers on Broadway…she chooses work by women, LGBT folks, and people of color not usually seen as commercially viable

Daveed DIggs is back in New York, for the play White Noise at the Public Theater, and he’s happier to be here than last time.

The last few years I have had not a great relationship with New York, but this time feels really good. The Hamilton experience here was so intense, and it became a pretty stressful place for me to be. That was a show that, at the bottom of it, it’s a bunch of friends getting together and making rap songs. I was involved with that show for a long time because my friend wrote it and asked me to come along for the ride. Everything on the inside of it felt very small, and everything on the outside of it felt very big.

…I love performing in smaller houses. I think you get a different kind of connection there. I’m excited to be doing any play, period, after spending a couple years being in front of a camera. This is a very welcome return. You get a different kind of intimacy in a small space, and I think everybody gets to know each other a little better.

As much as I loved performing on Broadway, I don’t care if I ever do that again. I like telling stories in places where everyone is part of the storytelling.

Oskar Eustis and Suzan-Lori Parks chat with one another about their new collaboration as director and playwright, White Noise, It begins: Oskar Eustis doesn’t believe in giving audiences a heads-up. “When you have a trigger warning, you’re implying that people need to be protected from pain,” says Eustis, the artistic director of New York’s Public Theater. “I think real art says, ‘No, you don’t. What you need is the chance to face it.’”

If you’re working on a play– especially a new one– and you’re not checking in with your ushers on a regular basis during previews, you don’t actually know how it’s going.

— Evan Cabnet (@evancabnet) March 11, 2019

Thanks Broadway Twitter for having my back. Being a working parent in any profession is really challenging. I never want to disappoint audiences as I am beyond grateful to them, but the health of my family will always come before my job. Thanks to those who understand that 💛

— Laura Benanti (@LauraBenanti) March 11, 2019

.@FosseVerdonFX cast includes: Sam Rockwell as Bob Fosse & Michelle Williams as Gwen Verdon@kelli_barrett as Liza Minnelli@biancamarroquin as @Chita_Rivera +@BranUran as Dustin Hoffman @TheTylerHanes as Jerry Orbach@ethansaslater as @joelgrey Premieres on FX April 9th. pic.twitter.com/lvokxwZUFl

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 11, 2019

If you’re an aspiring playwright, this thread by @MikeLew4 might change your life. https://t.co/WouQGQXNUh

— New York Theater (@NewYorkTheater) March 8, 2019

My favorite line: “Get that EXT/INT shit outta there! Dead giveaway your “play” is a pilot.”

Play Formatting PSA: In undergrad one of the 1st things Donald Margulies did was teach us proper play formatting. Which felt like a huge bummer. Shouldn’t it be story first? Who cares about formatting?! Don’t you see that l WILL CHANGE THE FORM, WITH THE POWER OF ART? 1

But now that I’ve done a ton of reading committees, I can see he was right. In the same way you wouldn’t show up to a job interview dressed wrong for the job, when I’m reading a ton of plays my first cut rejections boil down to, “Does this manuscript LOOK like a play or not?” 2/

And the most screwed up thing is that published plays don’t look like manuscript-form plays, so you can’t just learn by picking up an acting edition at the bookstore or your submission’ll look weird. To wit, a thread about formatting. ARE YOU EXCITED?? 3/

A full-length play is approx 100 pgs in length (50 pgs per act). Sure your length may vary. You may have a lean 75 pg straight-through-no-intermission piece or a 120 pg 2-act that “should read really really fast”

Now the formatting nitty gritty! *character names in all caps & centered *dialogue left-justified *in-dialogue stage directions like “(she exits)” should be in parentheses and italics *longer stage directions should be tabbed in and (optionally) italicized 10/

New scenes get their own line (i.e. “Scene 1”) – bolded and numbered *Get that EXT/INT shit outta there! Dead giveaway your “play” is a pilot. *Start a new pg for each scene *End the act on an all-caps “END OF ACT 1” “END OF PLAY” etc – and bold it too cuz that feels GREAT 11/

youtube

Teens Take Over Broadway (but is it real?). A Britney Spears Broadway musical? Hamilton Reconsidered. #Stageworthy News of the Week “I’m not a girl, not yet a woman...I'm in between,” Britney Spears sang some two decades ago, and it could almost be the new anthem (gender-adjusted) for Broadway. 2,063 more words

#Britney Spears #Daveed Diggs on New York #getting tickets through Alexa #Hamilton and Broadway #Mike Lew on how to format a play script #the arts are good for you #We Kiss in a Shadow Jelani Alladin and Matt Doyle video

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funnythingshere0-blog · 6 years

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Assassin's Creed Origins, Six Months Later

New Post has been published on https://funnythingshere.xyz/assassins-creed-origins-six-months-later/

Assassin's Creed Origins, Six Months Later

Half a year ago, Ubisoft released Assassin’s Creed Origins. It was in some ways the most ambitious Assassin’s Creed game ever made, and in other ways noticeably less ambitious than its predecessors. In the months since then, Origins has become considerably more interesting.

Join me now as we climb into the Animus and travel back in time to the world inhabited by our distant ancestors, those people who lived in the fabled era of October, 2017. From there, we’ll embark on a journey through our unusually exciting first six months with Assassin’s Creed Origins.

Assassin’s Creed Origins came out on October 27, 2017. It was released simultaneously for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. It shared that release date with Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus and Super Mario Odyssey, making it probably the biggest single video game release date of the year. It received generally positive reviews. In my review for Kotaku, I said that for all its extraordinary visual splendor, it was ultimately an ordinary video game. But I liked it overall.

A couple months later I recorded a spoilercast with fellow Kotaku Assassin’s Creed fans Luke Plunkett and Stephen Totilo, where we talked more in-depth about what we made of the story and the game overall.

There was one weird wrinkle just as it was coming out, as bots flooded the game’s Metacritic user reviews with fake, positive reviews that were often total gibberish. It’s still unclear why or how that happened, though Metacritic’s boss said that it does happen from time to time.

The game immediately got some quality cosplay and plenty of glitch videos, of course. It was a Ubisoft game, and despite its level of polish relative to other recent Assassin’s Creed games, it still had some funny bugs. In particular, we liked the flying boat, a bug that was patched several months later in January.

There were a few interesting small details hidden inside the game, including some irrefutable evidence that Assassin’s Creed’s present-day timeline and Ubisoft’s Watch Dogs series take place in the same universe.

The game also proved shockingly large, earning some praise as players discovered more of its vast expanse. Its sheer scale somewhat made up for the fact that the game leaned so hard on its straightforward numbers-based RPG leveling system and dropped many of the interesting gameplay experiments (support assassins, grappling hooks, city takeover, pirate ships) of past games.

There was also a fascinating story behind the explorable tomb the developers placed within the Great Pyramid of Giza. Just as the game was coming out, news broke that scientists had discovered a previously undetected space within the pyramid… but that space was already in Origins. Turns out that was because the developers based their design on the work of a French architect who had already theorized the location and general size of the chamber, and correctly, as it turned out.

The developers were clear up front that there’d be a lot of stuff coming to Origins after release. A couple weeks before the game came out, Ubisoft launched a trailer detailing the two main DLC packs Curse of the Pharaohs and The Hidden Ones, which you only got if you bought the game’s season pass. They also detailed a bunch of free post-release stuff including the Trial of the Gods and a Horde Mode, and the ambitious Discovery Tour, a combat-free mode that would offer guided historical tours of the game’s re-creation of ancient Egypt.

The Trial of the Gods consisted of a series of limited-time boss fights that would pop up on players’ maps. Go to the spot on the map, and an Animus glitch would crack open and a massive boss would emerge, fashioned after one of the Egyptian pantheon. They started hitting the game in November, but as Stephen pointed out at the time, that was actually a little early for most players to be high enough level to try them. Fortunately they’ve repeated many times since then, and just about everyone has had a chance to defeat all the gods. Ubisoft eventually even offered harder iterations of the gods.

In December, Origins got an extremely important patch that changed the backdrop color of your throwable item from blue to gold. That made it possible to make your entire gear screen show gold items instead of having a single one remain blue. And I mean, let’s be real, that was basically been a game-breaking problem, so it’s a good thing Ubisoft fixed it. This was also one of many patched changes that showed Ubisoft being swiftly responsive to numerous complaints about the game offered in its subreddit or official message boards.

In a December “Developer Q&A” blog post seemingly written with an awareness that some fans found the amount of the game dedicated to the franchise’s modern-day storyline lacking, Ubisoft wrote that Ubisoft wrote that “The main story in each game is the one set in the past.” That frustrated some fans who’ve wanted more from the game’s present-day storylines, and reinforced the series’ clear trend toward minimizing the present-day stuff compared with the first few games. Sorry, present-day-lore junkies.

The 1.1.0 patch also brought a couple of other notable new features, including a new Nightmare difficulty mode, enemy level scaling to keep low-level areas engaging for high-level players, and a more intuitive way to customize Bayek’s look in the “gear” menu. That last option made it much easier to make sure Bayek was always rocking a beard, a shaved head, and no hood, which is objectively his best look and I will hear no arguments to the contrary.

It’s just true.

One funny addition to the game in December was a bit of crossover content tied to Square Enix’s Final Fantasy XV. If you went to a spot in the desert and solved a puzzle, you could get a chocobo-lookin’ camel to ride and unlock some weapons that look like something Noctis would use. The Origins content corresponded to a much more elaborate event that took place in Final Fantasy XV, which included an entire mini story-campaign tied to an Assassin’s Creed festival that Noct and his bros attended.

The game’s first expansion, The Hidden Ones came out in January, and while it offered some nice-looking new environments, it was really just more Assassin’s Creed Origins. Not such a bad thing, though given how absurdly huge the base game was (I STILL haven’t finished every sidequest!), the expansion didn’t really stand out that much from what players already had. Entertainingly, the expansion was accidentally released a week early on Xbox One, though it was subsequently pulled by Ubisoft.

In advance of The Hidden Ones, Ubisoft added a free bonus mission that set up the events of the expansion. It was a cool way to stitch together old and new parts of the game, and was a trick they’d done earlier to set up a free horde mode, and then in March for Curse of the Pharaohs.

Also in January, Ubisoft patched in an audio message to a tomb that you come across in the main game. That set players theorizing that it was meant to hint at some as-yet-unveiled secret, but Ubisoft claimed it was just rectifying a mistake. The message had been meant to be in the game at launch, but for some odd reason had been left out.

Discovery Mode hit in February, and it basically turned the game into a museum. It was a neat idea, and it was particularly cool that Ubisoft sold it as a separate standalone game on PC. Many raved about it, though there was some drama over Ubisoft’s decision to censor naked statues (there are no nude statues in the Discovery Mode version of the game). John Walker at Rock, Paper, Shotgun, offered a more critical look, pointing out that the tour’s lack of clear sourcing and transparency undermined what could otherwise have been a nice educational tool.

In February Origins also got a New Game+ mode, one of several post-release additions aimed at letting players draw out their time with the game and get even more out of it.

The second DLC, Curse of the Pharaohs, hit in March, and Luke Plunkett liked it a lot. It goes buckwild with the story, introducing phantoms from the afterlife, mystical curses, and all sorts of other dimension-shifting shenanigans. Even from the little I’ve played it’s clear that this expansion is special, and will doubtless rank among the best Assassin’s Creed expansions Ubisoft has put out.

At the Game Developers Conference in March, Ubisoft developers shared how they managed to make a game as vast and full of stuff as Origins. The answer, as it turned out, was to have not one but several full studios working on the game, a practice they’ve been refining over the years to allow them to make such vast games on a somewhat consistent timetable.

In April, Ubisoft put out the “Animus Control Panel” for PC players, which lets you tweak all sorts of parameters for the game like enemy awareness, maximum number of tamed animals, and even enemy hitboxes and attack speeds. It’s a nifty bonus, and it’d be nice if console players will eventually get it. That was the last thing added to the game, and no further additions, features, or expansions have been announced.

As you can tell just by reading through this post, Origins has gotten an unusually large amount of post-release support, even for a game from a major-label publisher like Ubisoft. Like Ghost Recon: Wildlands before it, Origins demonstrates how Ubisoft is testing and recalibrating their approach to converting their most well-known series into service games. In the case of Origins, it also demonstrates how an entirely single-player game can still function like a service game, keeping players engaged and coming back months after they ordinarily would’ve stopped.

I’ve grown fonder of Origins over the six months since I first played it. That’s been at least in part because Ubisoft has done such a good job of refining, expanding, and deepening the game. Origins will never be as varied, experimental, or interesting as some other Assassin’s Creed games, but it’s beautiful and relaxing, and makes for a pretty splendid way to spend an evening unwinding after a long day.

It is a testament to Origins’ ambitious scope that after dozens and dozens of hours, I’ve still so many more things to do. It’s a testament to its quality that even after all that time, I’m still glad I’m not finished.

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