#i linked a twitter post and not any of the trades because FUCK the trades

[montanabohemian]

OH MY GODDDDDDD!??!??!?!!!!!!!!!!!!

SAG-AFTRA GOT A (tentative) DEAL

SAG-AFTRA GOT A FUCKING (tentative) DEAL

SAG-AFTRA GOT THEIR FUCKING (tentative) DEAL

LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

edit: HERE'S THE OFFICIALOn a black background. A white figure with its right arm upraised. Next to it. In white tex: SAG-AFTRA. Below. In yellow text: STRIKE IS. Below. In white text: OVER. Below. In small, yellow text: Strike is suspended as of 12:01 AM (PT) November 9.

#sag aftra #sag strike #sag afra strike #sag after strong #actors strike #union strong #JUST LIKE WITH THE WRITERS IT'S TENTATIVE AND MUST GO TO MEMBERS FOR A VOTE #BUT HOLY SHIT FUCK???????????????????????? #i hope it's a good one #i hope they shoved AI up AMPTP's ass because the execs were NOT budging on AI (like full on we want to use your likeness when you die) #i linked a twitter post and not any of the trades because FUCK the trades #i don't yet have anything 'official' from SAG itself #but the twitter post is from a member of the NEGCOM AND THAT IS WHO I FUCKING TRUST #i trust negcom members more than anyone #also: fuck the trades and i hope everyone remembers that forever #I WILL EDIT WHEN I GET THE OFFICIAL OFFICIAL WORD FROM SAG THEMSELVES #GOD I WANT TO READ THE FUCKING DEAL SO BAD #LET ME SEE IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT #THE OFFICIAL SAG ANNOUNCEMENT DROPPED SO I HAVE LINKED IT

[thefirsthogokage]

Fuck AMPTP and the bullshit going on. I'm tired, might not do this well:

(link to article in above picture) From The Article

Receiving positive feedback from Wall Street since the WGA went on strike May 2, Warner Bros Discovery, Apple, Netflix, Amazon, Disney, Paramount and others have become determined to “break the WGA,” as one studio exec blatantly put it.

To do so, the studios and the AMPTP believe that by October most writers will be running out of money after five months on the picket lines and no work.

“The endgame is to allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses,” a studio executive told Deadline. Acknowledging the cold-as-ice approach, several other sources reiterated the statement. One insider called it “a cruel but necessary evil.”

The studios and streamers’ next think financially strapped writers would go to WGA leadership and demand they restart talks before what could be a very cold Christmas. In that context, the studios and streamers feel they would be in a position to dictate most of the terms of any possible deal.

[Image IDs: Twitter thread by David Slack posted July 12th, 2023 that reads in totality:

And right on cue, here’s the inevitable Deadline article claiming that the AMPTP and their CEO bosses are ready to wait us out and let us “go broke.”

They’re not. They can’t. This studio propaganda, and here’s why.

In the increasingly mega-merged and hedgefundified Hollywood, these companies live or die on their quarterly earnings reports. It only takes one bad quarter for their stock price to plunge, putting the company and the CEO’s job in jeopardy.

But their stock prices are holding steady, right? Right. For now. Because our industry is a pipeline that starts with writers. The TV and movies they’re releasing now are shows we started making for them 4-12 quarters ago. But what happens when that pipeline runs dry?

What happens is they run out of product. No new shows in streaming to drive and sustain subscribers. No new shows in broadcast and ad-supported to bring in ad revenue.

No shows, no money.

No money, bad earnings report.

Bad earnings report, bye-bye stock price. Bye-bye CEO.

After 70+ days with no writers to create their product for them, the pipeline is running dry.

Their stock price isn’t tanking yet. But if they don’t make a deal with us, it will.

And they know it.

If they make a deal soon, they might be able to weather it. Stretch out releases. Rush some new stuff through.

But the longer they keep us out, the longer that pipeline runs dry, the more unavoidable a catastrophic dip in new high-quality shows becomes.

And they know it.

So yeah, the studios are planting articles in the trades that make it sound like they’re so determined not to pay us the 0.02% of company revenues we’re asking for that they’re willing to hold out forever.

Bullshit.

I’m sure the AMPTP bosses would love to break our union. But they love their jobs more. They love money more. They can’t make that money without us.

And they know it.

Ignore the trades, walk the line, stand together, and win. #WGAStrong

/End ID]

Bonus: John Rogers' Reaction

[Image ID: A tweet from John Rogers that he posted July 12th, 2023 that reads:

I was trying to be cool and professional about this strike, but this AMPTP “we want to drive them to homelessness” shit means I’m going to be dug in at WB Gate 4 like Hiroo Onada. They’re gonna have to send @ellenstutzman with a bullhorn to order me out of the bushes.

The second image is Ellen Stutzman's Twitter bio that says:

Cheif Negotiator for WGA MBA, Assistant Executive Director, Writers Guild of America, West; Cornell ILR and UCLA Anderson alum. Views are my own.

/End ID]

EDIT: Please see the update on this HERE

#david slack #wga strike #wga strong #john rogers

[pawstepsinthesnow]

On DeviantArt, DreamUp, and Lies

I’ve had things to say about the whole situation, mostly on Twitter, but Twitter is a horrible place to have an actual conversation. Warning: this is going to get long. There will be links in the body, I understand that this will tank visibility, but I need to have this written out.

If you haven’t already heard about DeviantArt’s extraordinarily failed rollout of AI scraper protection and their own AI image generator, DreamUp, I’ll quickly summarize it here for background context going in. 

On November 11th, 2022, DeviantArt debuted their own AI art generator in a huge, splashy announcement talking about how they were going to protect your art from scraping for AI datasets, and to that end, they’d made their OWN, ETHICAL AI generator only trained on opt-in art on dA.

There was just one little problem.

Every single artwork on DeviantArt was opt-in by default. 

[Nobody liked that.]

Now, I like to get my story straight-- the earliest snapshot I can find of the announcement did not say that it was trained on dA specifically. However, multiple news websites reported that it was trained on dA.

After a few Twitter spaces in which they patronized the fuck out of Major Artists (if I can find the backup of this, I will update the post to include it), they updated their policy to opt-out all art by default.

This is a distraction.

I’ll refer you to this twitter thread first, because I think it’s a brilliant summation, but for a quick summary of what their opt-out actually does:

Webpages have tags in them for web-crawlers to read, such as the ones Google uses to index webpages. dA is proposing a new one, “noai”. In order for this to actually have any effect, web crawlers need to be programmed to recognize it. You can probably guess the obvious problems with this.

[image desc: popular meme image from the show Arthur, captioned “that sign can’t stop me because I can’t read”]

Additionally, dA’s own ToS says they won’t take any legal action to enforce their noai directive, meaning it has all the weight of a “take one” sign on a Halloween candy bowl.

Very notably, this does not affect any images that have already been scraped for datasets such as LAION, which Stable Diffusion is built on. It is well known that LAION is rife with stolen artwork.

DreamUp is built on Stable Diffusion.

The Main Point: Lies

As of the time of this writing, DeviantArt is claiming that no artwork from DeviantArt was used to train DreamUp. (ARCHIVE.ORG snapshot taken while I was writing this post for proof) This is blatantly false, knowing what’s in LAION, but in an interview with the Verge, dA’s current CEO gives a more nuanced take: “no dA-specific training”.

That is unfortunately also a lie, and trivially proven.

Before I can say how, you need to know two things about me, and a bit about the technology.

The first thing about me: I’m a cybersecurity master’s student in a very rigorous program, and my particular flavor of neurodivergence ended up trading a lot of points in “basic life skills” for “really good at computer shit”.

The second thing about me: I’ve poured years of my life into community management on dA, helping build art RPGs. It’s a little bit of a weird space if you’ve never been exposed, but what  you really need to know is we have our own lingo and our own systems of IP. 

So, Stable Diffusion is a neural network. People really hype this stuff up, but what it really is in the end is an extremely complicated math problem. What you need to know is that these neural networks undergo two phases: a training phase and a usable phase. A pretrained neural network can be retrained on additional data, but it cannot be untrained. Once trained, its training data is an intrinsic part of it. It’s actually a little worse than a human being-- we forget shit all the time, but these things can’t. All products of a neural network are mathematically dependent on its training data.

As a text-to-image generator, these generators need a specific type of data: described images. In order to generate an image from a caption, it needs to know what’s in it, after all! 

LAION is an intrinsic part of Stable Diffusion. DreamUp has stolen art in it. This is a fact. What I’m seeking to disprove here is dA’s CEO’s claim that there was no dA-specific training. In order to do so, I asked a basic question-- does DreamUp understand the shibboleths I pose it? If I ask it to generate images that use terms that would only be understood by those who work in my opaque-to-outsiders closed species groups, then it has dA-specific training. 

In order to run tests, I used Hugging Face’s official Stable Diffusion test space as a control. Any differences in Stable Diffusion’s output vs. DreamUp’s output would be down to DeviantArt’s additional training. Please also note that these tests were run on the 12th, before any username bans went through.

Here are my results:

(Please note that an “import” is a certified character for use in an ARPG. Ketucari is an arpg I help run.)

“ketucari import by matriarchs haunt”

STABLE DIFFUSION:

A lot of textures, rope, and horses. (Horses might be a factor of the dA data already in the dataset, horse arpgs are extraordinarily popular and I believe outnumber closed species arpgs like ketucari).

Dreamup results:

These pictures are recognizably in the style of ARPG imports, to the point where I swear I’ve seen similar ones. The beasts on them are twisted horses, likely due to the sheer amount of horse ARPG imports in the training data. 

Additionally, with the names of multiple popular horse groups, a fellow ARPGer was able to generate an even more convincing import. (I’m sorry I don’t know your username, though your name is so familiar!)

For comparison: a ketucari import of a character I own, another import of a popular arpg with a character I own -- please note the basic format of a character with color-your-own lines posed on a background. 

A second test:

Stygians ARPG is a different flavor of ARPG I don’t help run, but I generally hang out in. This is the reference art for the Stygian species. Their name is a common word that can be easily confused for other things, but they’re a large group. Stygs do not follow the above ARPG format but have free-drawn adoptables, so they won’t have quite the same GLUT in the training data that imports do. 

“legendary stygian by zoomutt” (Zoo is a sweetheart and the species owner, and legendaries are a specific lore subclass)

Stable Diffusion:

Predicatably, it has no fucking clue what I’m on about.

Dreamup:

This is the most damning, and convincing example yet-- these are recognizably deer-shaped creatures. The left has a four-critter lineup like an adoptable sale, and the middle has a frame and a label, though notably in a different style than Zoo usually uses for her sales. One person in the Stygs discord did point out there’s an MLP character named Stygian who might be contaminating the results, which I do want to make note of (I stopped watching the show a while back). I do also want to note that none of these creatures are at all MLP-styled. 

So, how is dA generating recognizable closed species and ARPG imports?

Because they fed it additional, tagged data from dA. It knows people’s styles and IPs. That’s why you have to block your username to begin with.

#deviantart #dreamup #ai art #lies

[hyperiongremlin]

Modern au chapter 7

this took a hot second to finish because half way through I stopped, wrote a serial killer outtake from this universe and decided to make it vampires. 7,400 words later I got back to writing the longfic. In this chapter Rhys makes a shocking disovery that isn’t all too shocking, Tim gets doxxed and there’s a lot of talking. Find the chapter here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37983421/chapters/110152173

Tws: Firehawk (Lilith) doxxes someone's deadname, posts a pretransition photo and misgenders someone and uses a lot of terf rhetoric in this. she is not a good character here. also tw for a bit of Jack typical violence.

excerpts

“the boards making me do an ama so ask away kiddos” -hj69 (Handsome Jackass🔫) Friday, 4:33 pm. Rhys scowled, he’d missed an opportunity to ask his idol about some of his theories, though he doubted Handsome Jack would have replied to him. He tapped the thread to see what questions had been answered, maybe there would be enough material for new conspiracies.

“Are you hot? 🔥” - mtxx67 ( Coleslaw slut) Friday, 4:34 pm

“duh” -hj69 (Handsome Jackass🔫) Friday, 4:52 pm

“Is Hyperion going to continue its forays into the arms trade?” - noahblack (Noah Black Pandoran Times) Friday, 4:36 pm

“guess u have to wait and see” -hj69 (Handsome Jackass🔫) Friday, 4:59 pm

“Face reveal when?” - pissbaby23 (Hyperion SIMP) Friday, 4:40 pm

“soon patience is a virtue u know” -hj69 (Handsome Jackass🔫) Friday, 4:57 pm

“At least tell us what color eyes you have!” - xx_Skullfukr_xx (Step on my neck) Friday 4:52

“colors kiddo not color” -hj69 (Handsome Jackass🔫) Friday, 5:00 pm

......

“For coffee he drinks 6 shots of the strongest espresso money can buy and chases it with a disgustingly sweet energy drink. At night he takes his psych meds with whiskey, which is by the way a horrible idea,” he said, a tinge of annoyance in his voice. Rhys was a bit confused as to how Tim knew this, the second part was a pretty intimate detail of the CEO’s life.

“Handsome Jack’s on psych meds?” Rhys asked, that really did make him seem human. Jack laughed and took Rhys by the hands.

“Oh yeah, he’s on…” he looked down at his pill box “ …two….five… eight nine … nine medications,”  he said. Was Jack fucking with him? He’d just counted his own meds…

“Wait,” Rhys said, attempting to gather his thoughts. There were a lot of things that just sort of added up, the money, the tech, the trans healthcare, the twitter callout, and the eyes.

“No… nuh uh. You’re not…” he stuttered. Jack just smiled. The theories were all lining up. But Rhys had heard Handsome Jack’s voice on a few leaked recordings, jacked off to it even, and he had never once heard that voice and thought “hey that guy sounds like my pal Jack Lawrence,”

.......

Apollo’s lyre posted the following the previous year:

“Y’all I work at a certain company and while I can’t reveal any info about its CEO especially what he looks like but he’s hot  (sorry I know), I do have a few recordings I snuck out from my job. I know you sick fucks love this guy so here’s some food. Enjoy,” Below it were several full links. Each link had a title.

“Handsome Jack humiliates department head”

“I think he killed this guy? For mentioning his wife? Unclear since the paramedics took the guy away but he looked dead to me”

“Handsome Jack chokes a guy but it's actually strangulation because apparently there’s a difference?”

“Warning this one’s pretty graphic but Handsome Jack shoots a guy with a prototype weapon”

“Handsome Jack threatens a man? Honestly I don’t know what's going on here”

#longfic #borderlands #rhackothy #handsome jack #rhys borderlands #timothy lawrence #fanfic #ao3 #modern au #golden threads to a shattered heart

[chaotictomtom]

thanks @egirlgarak for tagging me!!

tagging anyone who wants to do this hehe im too shy to tag ppl smh

Were you named after anyone?

only one of my middle deadnames lol, my grandma italian's name she had to change when getting to France. adam came from seeing cool ppl with that name + movie with hugh dancy getting me to finally pick it. i mean i DID a strawpoll on twitter back then to help me choose lol. so not really after anyone ig technically. thomas was given to me by people calling me this name umprompted even before i came out to myself so like. alright will keep it I GUESS random people in my life chose it for me

When was the last time you cried?

ppl say T will make you unable cry and....prob depends on the person. i still do cry seeing videos of cute dogs getting groomed and seeing general good in life and people 👍 so i think it was 2 days ago watching daily dose of internet last vid cos a bit about a kid trying to make friends made me tear up lol. humanity.....<333333 cries like a baby instantly

Do you have kids?

if da bébé (cat) counts yes. but no.

Do you use sarcasm a lot?

i don't think! a lot! but i guess i do use it sometimes. more irl tho i just realised i never really use it online in case it doesn't read as sarcasm. mibbe when i rant in the tags on my own posts tho lol

What sports do you play/have you played?

played a bunch of different sports during my school years but it's been years of not doing anything and it's a struggle between thinking how my knee can suddenly fuck up and needing exercise to be healthy </3

What's the first thing you notice about someone?

i honestly don't know............. ig i try are they. like not a cunt and a bigot. can i exist without them thinking im out of line by just. being me fdhglkjhdflkjd. also. do they think im funneyyy >:)

Eye color?

light brown. i think

Scary movies or happy endings?

not picky i like em all 👍

Any special talents?

that pepe silvia scene with charlie kelly but it's me linking everything to Die Hard. not kidding. it's a curse i could think "pff no way what im watching rn is linked in any way to Die Hard" and i can while saying that already do the mental exercice to link the two things. everything is fucking linked to these movies. even bands. mcr! weird al! talking heads!!! movie/tvshow is easier to link up to Die Hard but still anyway been thinking abt doing twitch stream abt this for years now. like that wikipedia speedrun game thing but. mmm die hard......

Where were you born?

South-ish east of France, didn't live there long at all was a babey when we left to get further south 👍👍👍

What are you hobbies?

movies 👍 tvshows 👍 music 👍 im so original ik. i like to draw too!!!! computer stuff yumyum!!!! viddie games 👍👍👍👍

Do you have any pets?

How tall are you?

da bébé (basically garfied if he slayed more + had longer hair)

</3333333333 like 5'2. jerma voice why are u short because god doesn't fucking love me that's why

Favorite subject in school?

honestly don't remember much </3 ig art back in middle school. and i liked learning about everything we had but highly depended on the teachers + class too. learning is fun!!!! not in france's school system tho

Dream job?

scary question..................... currently having a "realistic" work project (very long term) to be a cyber café owner!!!! but capitalism wasn't a thing i guess would like to do my shit, drawing and creating other things to trade for other things................ wanted to work in space as a kid so ig this too

#tag game #yipee!!!!

[currymuttonpizza]

okay so since i don’t like to bring too much fandom onto my twitter account bc i have non-fandom internet friends on there (i really should make an alternate at some point) i am going to ramble here about pros and cons and general ?? about the big “reveal” on HRE’s profile page in the collezione book (spoilers are behind the cut if you care, but it’s just character profile shit so idk)

this is purely from a “now i have to collect my headcanon” perspective which will be austria-centric and not any kind of claim of authoritative stance sjklf these are MY PERSONAL BEEFS so anyway, MASSIVELY long post incoming

so HRE is Germany’s older brother. source 

PROS:

-music-related headcanons are now more angsty. Pieces of music I always imagined hitting Austria hard: Erlkönig and the soprano solo from Mahler’s 4th symphony - the latter of which a coach told me while i was studying it, was supposed to be portrayed like a message from a deceased child to their parents or relatives. link to the video if you want to join in this specific angst because whew

-geraus is slightly less weird now. i ship it regardless (mostly unrequited and/or not as a “romantic” thing, idk, if Germany returned the feelings it seems very passionate and heated but very deeply functional i don’t really know how to put it, their dynamic is really unique). i always saw HRE as much less dependent on Austria than Italy was, their interactions have much less of a guardian dynamic and much more of a “this is my responsibility to keep him alive and well, but he’s ultimately my peer” dynamic, and if HRE was Germany then there would have been a long period of separation between 1806 and 1871 where Austria would have grieved it like a death anyway, so it’d be starting from scratch no matter what. the only reason i say “slightly less weird” is that you’re trading “this guy doesn’t know i used to know him back in the day and i’m trying to get in his pants” for, potentially, “you remind me of someone i grew up with. also, completely unrelatedly, i am trying to get in your pants.” like. both are weird. there’s no getting around that. nation dynamics are weird and those two in particular are very weird. the sheer amount of repressed baggage with those two is inevitable.

CONS:

-selfishly, HALF OF MY MOST BELOVED RP THREADS ARE AU NOW, I KNOW THEY WILL HAVE A SPECIAL PLACE IN AU-LAND BUT I WANTED IT TO BE REAL AND IT’S NOT REAL

-gerita is not my main ship but i have a MASSIVE soft spot for it and, for the reasons expressed above, it’s now VERY FUCKING AWKWARD. Italy has always seemed scared of committing because everything just feels all too similar anyway, but there’s a huge huge difference between “maybe one day if he remembers his past, i can return the feelings without feeling like i’m living some sort of imitation of what i once had with my childhood sweetheart” and “they’re not the same person, HRE’s brother is not and never will be a substitute for HRE himself.” this one is pretty big, and idk, i’d need to do a canon review focusing on these two but as of right now i am of the view that hima hadn’t really let go of the “leaning towards gerita eventually becoming canon” route. so this is. awkward LMAO

GENERAL “????”

-when the fuck. Okay so. Brothers Grimm published their first novel in 1812. That means the Grimm strips are AFTER 1806, which is the actual historical fall of the HRE, plus it had said “should have been dissolved, but is hiding at Prussia’s house.” The German Confederation began in 1815, so I always thought the implication was, at the very least, that HRE = German Confederation. I had it in my head that Prussia took HRE from Austria all like “you don’t know how to take care of him, I’ll take care of him” or “Italy doesn’t need to see this kid suffer.”  Either way-- this other strip (from the requests section of 2011 Christmas)

has Austria and Prussia fighting in the last frame (hair curl + gilbird), which, if HRE = German Confederation, this makes sense for anywhere between 1815 and 1866 -- especially with the mention of Bavaria in the first frame, because Bavaria’s sort of “grey area” status was a hot button topic (Catholic so would have been on the Habsburgs’ side in terms of what the dominant religion for the new country would be, and Bavaria fought on Austria’s side in the Austro-Prussian War too; on the other hand Bavaria fought with Prussia against Austria on multiple occasions, and I need to also read up on the War of Bavarian Succession but ultimately I mean, Bavaria ended up being part of Germany). So between that and HRE’s physical age here, in my mind this strip was in the date range for German Confederation era. Looking at it again now it LITERALLY DOES SAY HRE MEETING and also Hungary is there, which would suggest it’s likely he was still living at Austria’s place at the time, which would put it at 18th century. But it’s a LOT of conflicting info because while the Austria/Prussia rivalry obviously was a thing before the fall of HRE, my impression is that it wasn’t nearly as focused on that “custody” issue as it was after 1815. Even in canon I seem to remember that being expressed.

-bruh 

if you tell me the buon san valentino strips are no longer hard canon i will THROW A FIT because i mean besides the fact that WHAT THE HELL IS THIS RETCON, it is also that HALF MY CHARACTERIZATION OF AUSTRIA IS DRAWN FROM THESE STRIPS. HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH GERMANY, HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HUNGARY, HIS .... REALLY WEIRD INABILITY TO FLIRT WITH MEN COMPARED TO THE RELATIVE “EASE” THAT TRADITIONAL STUFFY BY-THE-BOOK HETERO “COURTSHIP” ALLOWS FOR, THE FACT THAT HE VOLUNTARILY TOOK HIS PANTS OFF AND THEN BLAMED GERMANY FOR IT AND THEN WENT TO GO HANG OUT WITH HIS EX-WIFE ON VALENTINE’S DAY LITERALLY THE DAY AFTER

i mean!! he seems to generally Be Like This in the later strips regardless. there is plenty other evidence for austria’s prudish facade being extremely fake, and that he actually is not all that monogamous or traditional, he just wants you to THINK that. there are other instances of this. but i’m sorry you might be able to pry “gerita = childhood sweethearts” from me, i’ll cry about it but i’ll get over it. but you CANNOT take austria’s bizarre, cryptic valentine’s day sluttiness away from me, you CANNOT

#hetalia #hws hre #hws austria #hws germany #headcanon #i just want to know what the other profile pages say too.

[breezeinmonochromenight]

You know what? Fuck it, everyone in Shinra has a Twitter/Instagram account (but the Turks have finstas because they're spies, y'know?) Hojo's got links in the dark web. Zack tries entering the deep web by going in incognito mode and typing "drugs" in the searchbar. Genesis is starting Twitter beef for whatever reason, Sephiroth's account is virtually nonexistent, Kunsel's a tea account, and everyone likes Angeal because he's unproblematic

(Anon, I want you to know I was on the phone with my grandmother when I read this. And I hit the Zack bit and lost my fucking shit ugly laughing ahdhsjdjd he.

I’m gonna try to expand on this but I highly doubt I’ll be able to match your god tier takes lmao.)

—o—

President ShinRa — has an account on Twitter but refuses to let a PR person run it. Accidentally Horny on Main Incident Counter: 3 (so far)

Cloud — Hates social media but has one at Zack’s insistence. Has a random username with like his birthday in it but it’s so forgettable you’d think it was just an auto-generated one he didn’t change. He only posts obscure photos, never selfies. Zack is the only one that follows him until he convinces the firsts to do it and starts posting photos of the blonde and tagging him. The rest is history.

Zack — Kind of really fratboy-ish on his accounts. Lots of photos of him in cut-out muscle shirts, megawatt grin in place, etc. It’s broken up by cute, soft pictures of him and Cloud or like Cloud sleeping or smth. He tags Cloud in them, too, and that’s how Cloud’s own follower count explodes, despite having a fairly empty page (Seph is sympathetic).

Also. He totally went on what he thought was “the dark web” on like Angeal’s tablet or smth. He’s currently running laps until he fucking dies.

Angeal — The most unproblematic and fun person to follow. Has the prettiest Instagram by far given his interest in photography. Accidentally aesthetic. Not really a selfie person and rarely posts to twitter.

Trouble in paradise only happens when a shirtless photo of him in some low-riding sweats that are clinging just a little too tight from exercise pops up on a rapidly growing tea spill account. It’s made worse when Gen reblogs it like 6 times and even fucking Sephiroth likes it. He can’t even look at his DM’s anymore.

Reno — Secretly has a personal insta that he think he cute about, and no one will ever find it. But Tseng knows. Because he always just knows. He just doesn’t say anything because he uses it as a quick way to keep tabs on what infraction(s) Reno has committed at any given time.

Tseng — Runs the top secret Turk ‘kawaii’ finsta + twitter used for spying purposes but does, at times, enjoy looking at some posts. Waterscapes are a favorite.

Scarlet — She’ll post stuff that’s either interesting or aesthetically pleasing, but like every 5th post or so she’ll post some wildly misinformed or straight up shitty “hot take” a lose a shitton of followers.

Genesis — Honestly just fucking loves drama and posting his semi-lewds somewhere. Adores attention. Starts shit for the fun of it if he can’t find anything to insert himself into. Loves to pick fights with Scarlet over her shitty takes.

And yes, he has used a copy of LOVELESS as a makeshift censor bar before.

Sephiroth — Accounts have millions of followers but like. They’re basically empty. If the default picture has been replaced, it’s by like a blurry photo of... something... but a black, gloved thumb is blocking half the lens.

(Also why do all these people keep asking about his hair?)

Hojo — Welcome with open arms on the dark web, IP banned on every social media site. Truly a mystery. Go figure.

Kunsel — Has not just a tea spill page, but the tea spill page. The one that has almost eclipsed all three famous 1sts + Zack combined. Literally no one knows it’s him, either. Not even Zack.

Communicates regularly for info trades with different accounts, one seemingly harmless kawaii account tends to trade him some really good dirt, more often than not.

(He also knows it’s you, Tseng.)

Lazard — keeps everything professional but you best believe he keeps checking the tea spill page frequently. He is not immune to enjoying drama.

Reeve — Relatively unknown account with a small amount of followers until some movie about an assassin who’s dog gets murdered comes out. Then, holy shit, does his popularity explode. Turns out, ‘looks hot in a suit and cares about the environment’ is a lot of people’s ‘type’.

Rufus — Hes one of those rich kids of Beverly Hills type instagrams as a teen and then sort of grows out of it as an adult. Takes too long to retort on twitter and when he does, it kind of feels like something he’s practiced saying in a mirror for quite some time. Kind of feels like he read 50 Shades and is trying to impersonate the main dude, sometimes. The much better public face of the company, though, but a few too many food selfies.

Roche — Also kind of fratty but like 60% of his photos are centered around his bike. Makes the mistake of calling Cloud a ‘hot piece of ass’ and saying some pretty... suggestive... things about him in a photo Zack took and posted of the blonde when they were in Costa del Sol.

I’m sure you can guess how that went.

#shinra electric blues #crisis core headcanons #ff7 headcanons #shinra #tseng #tseng of the turks #reno #reno of the turks #reno sinclair #sephiroth #genesis rhapsodos #cloud strife #angeal hewley #roche ff7r #kunsel #roche #lazard deusericus #rufus shinra #zack fair #aszgc #clack #ff7 #ffvii #cadet cloud #ff7r #crisis core #crisis core: final fantasy vii #final fantasy 7 #protective zack fair #zakkura

[strawberrielarrie]

Music Industry Stunts and why they happen

Stunts are a big part of the music industry, you may not know it, but they are.  The purpose of stunts is to push a certain narrative to the general public. Now this could mean many different things, PR relationship; coverups; or to peak the publics interest. Why? You may ask, why would the artist do this, why wouldn’t they just be truthful? Well, many don’t have a choice, the music industry is a place that I wish no one would have to be in, it is a cruel and awful place to be if you don’t know how to get around it, or if you don’t have the correct connections. In the past (and still now), many big brand music industries, such as Sony Music and Warner Music have controlled artists immensely.

George Michael

As a legend in the music industry, George Michael is a well-known name in the average household. From his time in the hit duo “Wham!”, Michael’s music was distributed through CBS, but in 1987 Sony took over and that’s when things went downhill. Michael reveled in the popularity of his hit album “Faith” in 1987, and so did Sony, because he was earning them money.

But that ended quickly with the news of his next album “Listen Without Prejudice” in 1990, Sony refused to promote the album and appear in the music videos for it. Michael in turn, disputed his contract with Sony, but he could not do close to anything, because Sony possessed the power of approval over everything that he put out. Meaning, George Michael could not release music without it going through the board of Sony, and if he did, he could get sued and fired.

(Sony is a whole other world of fucked up, they fucked MJ up so badly, Sony Kills)

During this whole time, George came clean, saying that the board of Sony, used many different homophobic slurs against him, and wouldn’t let him release any music that seemed to allude to the fact that he was gay.

George Michael brought Sony to court in 1993, claiming that between 1987-1992, he had made worldwide profits of £7.35 million ($9.8 million) compared to Sony making £52.45 million ($70 million). Ultimately, the case lasted till June 1994, and Michael had lost, the judge claiming that it was fair. Michael retaliated saying how Sony is “Professional Slavery”.

Suzanne Kessler, Entertainment attorney at Bone McAllester Norton and former in-house attorney at A&M Records and Universal Music Group stated, “There are two sides to this tale,” she said. “The music business is a relationship business, and he was uneasy with what was happening. A label often wants an artist to continue to trade on their established brand with the public. But after “Faith” Michael was trying for a new direction, to be taken more seriously as an artist instead of just as a pop star sex symbol.”

This brings me to my next point,

 Closeting in the Industry

(Now I could go on for day about closeting in the music industry, but I will only give you the basis and then I will link another post that goes further in depth.)

Closeting is not a rare thing in the music industry, it in fact happens more than you might think. Many different artists have come forward, saying how their management said they should remain closeted to the general public, in order to maintain the brand that has been established. A popular example of this would be Sam Smith, they were offered multiple times by their management to have a beard. More closeting in the industry comes from Colton Haynes, who has been open about how his management closeted him because he “could not be gay and work in the industry”.

Colton link

Beard: A woman or man who fake dates a person of the LQBTQ+ Community, to hide their real sexual orientation or identity

 The Types of Stunts and Stunt Songs

“Pap Pics”

Stunts are common, we all should know that. From the amount of staged paparazzi pictures and videos that get posted to twitter on the daily it is not surprising that stunts happen. One of the main reasons stunts happen is for publicity, I can tell you now, living in LA for as long as I did, the paparazzi aren’t at every corner just waiting for a celebrity to walk past. They are called to meet at a place where the celebrity is going to be, in order to get pictures. This call is made by the artists management normally, and many times it is done against the artists will.

“Relation-shit”

These types of stunts are the relationship stunts, normally it is two popular celebrities dating to gain publicity for a movie or song that they are doing. A popular reference to this would be Joe Jonas and Demi Lovato, Joe was approached by a head of Disney, who asked him to date, at the time, co-star Demi Lovato. This stunt was to push the new Disney movie that both were starring in, Camp Rock 2: The Final Jam. Now at the time Demi was unaware that Joe was approached to do this, so when Joe and hid dad approached her about it… wow that must have hurt.

Another example of a relation-shit would be Shawmilla. Now before you attack me for this, let’s look at all the facts. Everything that relationship has done has been staged, let’s look at the timeline.

 August 2015

-       the first time they publicly hung out (at the 2015 VMA’s), sparking rumors of them dating

September 2015

-       pictured together at the iHeart Radio Festival, sparking rumors of Camila branching off of Fifth Harmony

November 2015

-       “I Know What You Did Last Summer” was released and performed many different times, Camila was still in Fifth Harmony at the time

June 2016

-       Shawn and Camila win an award for IKWYDLS and accepted together

-       Camilla ultimately starts her solo career

December 2017

-       Shawn is pictured with Hailey Baldwin (Bieber)

February 2018

-       Camila is in a serious relationship with Matthew Hussey, confirmed by a trip to Mexico together

April 2018

-       Shawn and Hailey go to the Met Gala together (Iconic)

December 2018

-       Camila hints at music between her and Shawn on twitter (6 months before Senorita)

https://twitter.com/Camila_Cabello/status/1070381510740598785?s=20

May 2019

-       Matthew and Camila last spotted together, returning from a vacation in Italy

-       Met her family on May 14th

June 20th, 2019

-       Senorita is released, now this had been in the works for over 6 MONTHS, so this was all very planned out

-       On release day, the Senorita music video was also released, which is literally soft porn, I do not know how it is still on the internet, gross

-       But, Camila? Aren’t you still dating Matthew? Why would you release this very VERY touchy music video with Shawn, if you are still dating Matthew?

June 21st, 2019

-       Shawn and Camila in V Magazine, still very touchy

June 26th, 2019

-       Breakup articles about Matthew and Camilla, Weird since he met her family only a month before.

July 3rd, 2019

-       Staged photos of Shawn and Camila out and about

4th  

-       more staged pics

5th

-       Camila at Shawn’s Concert

6th

-       Shawn denies that him and Camila are dating

 https://twitter.com/PopCrave/status/1147700409919778816?s=20

7th  

-       Shawmila in San Francisco all day

12th

-       That god awful making out pics that shook the entire internet

-       More pics in SF

 Ok you get the point, they are pictured together only when one of them has music to promote, In this case its Senorita. Now for more recent proofs of this entire relationship being a sham. Shawn just released an album called “Wonder” and guess what we wonder Shawn? Why do you not post any pictures of Camila until you have an album to promote? And now you have a puppy? Pulling an Elounor are we?

Senorita is a total stunt song to “prove” to the public that they are together.

“Style”

Now this type of stunt gets its name from the queen of stunt songs herself, Ms. Taylor Swift. The notorious song Style, supposedly about “Ex” Harry Styles, is probably one of the most stunty stunt songs I have ever heard. Like come on! “James Dean Daydream look in your eyes” if you didn’t know, here is a short recap on the icon himself James Dean.

Taylor has time and time again written amazing songs, I would be lying if I did not call her one of the greatest lyricists on the 21st century, the woman can write extremely well. So why would she put a nod to James Dean, a famous actor, who was a closeted, RAGING bisexual in a song so clearly about Harry Styles? She knows what she is doing.

Talking more about the “Haylor” stunt, can we please end that? It was a 3-month PR stunt that happened 5 years ago, please just get over it, they never really dated. And to the hardcore Haylor fans, there is no chemistry between them.

Haylor; The Stunt

“I hate you because I’m getting paid to!”

Now I do not go into this one much, but basically it is when you see two artists publicly fighting and releasing diss tracks. A popular example of this would be, Machine Gun Kelley and Eminem, with their songs called “Rap Devil” and “Killshot”. Their “beef” was totally staged to boost views on both sides, its even more prominent because they have the same record label, INTERSCOPE.

Eminem v. MGK

 I will be adding to this the more things happens, but it you have and questions feel free to ask them!

#I cantbelievesispent3daysonthis imsotired imgladadderallexists #Stunts Taylor Swift George Micheal Haylor Larrystylinson James Dean shawnmendes shawn mendes camilacabello harrystyles #harry styles #ihateithere #idontknowhowtagswork

[popculturebuffet]

Scotrospective: Scott Pilgrim Vs the World (The Comic)

Hello, Hello, Hello scottaholics! And what a beautiful day it is: After decades lost in the lost woods, at least it had that catchy tune to keep it company, Scott Pilgrim Vs the World: The Game is FINALLY back and performing for you on all platforms!

Even Stadia, the platform most likely to disappear like this game did for a while! Cheap shots at the stadia aside as a huge fan of the franchise as a whole and of this game who played it back on the 360, and had since sold said 360 so I had no way to get it back or ever play the dlc packs. Seriously who didn’t want to play wallace but never got to? Everyone, everyone is the answer. But with those the entirety of what I consider to be the main cast is playable, it has online so you can beat up hipsters, guys in costumes and robots with your friends, it’s a good damn feeling.  And since i’m in a celebratory mood, naturally i’m also feeling like a review. And since it just so happens the next volume up in my look at the comics is Vs the World, seriously I planned this review for this month without thinking to have it come out on the same day as the game until a week or two in, I felt there was no better way to celebrate the biggest day for Scott Pilgrim fans in some time.. and for Brian Lee O Malley as he’ll stop getting twitter asks about it. So with all the exposition taken care of LAST TIME, and the link right there if your curious, we can jump right in. On with the show!

After our opening titles, and yes this comic has opening titles, with Ramona sitting solmely in the rain. 

And Scott caught in the title. The rain shot is real pretty by the way. But yeah once we get past those we’re taken back 7 years ago. Finn found out his father was an asshole, and voiced by Stephen Root so hey you take the good with the bad, Steven just learned the horrifying truth about Gem Monsters, Guardians of the Galaxy saved the MCU and I was trying to find work after college.. wait... sorry sorry that was 7 years ago from THIS year. The comic came out in 2005, though the comic takes place on a sliding timescale where only like 2 years pass so I dunno when this is. Let’s just say 98.  Okay so 1998: Bill Cllinton’s sex scandal breaks, and puts way too much of hte blame on the young intern whose life came to be defined by one stupid mistake she made with a man who was way older and should’ve known better, the tide of the Monday Night War turned in favor of the WWF as Stone Cold Steve Austin became a household name, and it was an utterly standup year for video game relaases with Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Crash Bandicoot: Warped, StarCraft, Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, WWF: War Zone, Pokemon Stadium, Spyro The Dragon, Pokemon Yellow, WarioLand 2, Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus, Star Wars: Rogue Squadron, Pokemon: Trading Card Game and Sonic Adventure. It’s like someone took a good chunk of my childhood and squeezed it into one year holy shit, I did not expect this when looking up what came out in 98. 

And while the movie pool wasn't’ quite this amazing, we still had The Wedding Singer, The Big Lebowski, the dude abides, Batman and Mr Freeze: SubZero, The Truman Show, Mulan, the good one not the one made near concetration camps that makes her into a demigod, Saving Private Ryan, Blade, Simon Birch, Scooby Doo on Zombie Island, Rushmore, Bride of Chucky, HalloweenTown, Plesantville, and the Prince of Egypt. And in music Weird Al changed from his first signature look to his second, getting Lasik and growing out his hair. Seirously had no idea that was this year. Good to know. Also Elton John got his knighthood. Super shooters. I could go on with 1998 triva for days but I cannot go on for 8 weeks so let’s get to the point here.. during alllla this  Scott Pilgrim, age 16, was starting St. John’s Catholic School and a couple of guys who were up to no good started making trouble. . by threatning to beat him up for no real reason. A fight insues and we cut to the principal’s office as Scott’s still a minor and not allowed to get into death fights just yet under the people’s freedom of choices and voices act. 

It’s here he meets Lisa Miler, a peppy and sarcastic blonde, who’s intrigued by the fact Scott somehow got beat up after being here just 15 minutes and wants to be friends. Naturally for scott next we see him he’s busy playing video games, and annoyed someone else is around and wondering who this person whose now in his basement is. God no wonder teenage me related to him. So for the next few pages we see their friendship in time lapse: Lisa joins him at lunch, then geninely wonders since Scott’s Untentionally a dick if he hates her.. it’s part of why I think Scott has some form of autisim. And not just because I tend to belivie a character is on the spectrum all the damn time, it’s because of the way he acts: while he is nice and charming at times.. he also clearly has trouble relating to people or realizing how his actions effect them and as seen here in a younger form can often be compeltely distanced from normal social queues, not getting how his actions might be seen until Lisa outright talks to him about it. I mean.. it’s not a huge stretch, and it dosen’t mean he’s nto responsible for his own actions, but it does EXPLAIN a lot of them better: why he just sorta forgets about Knives post-ramona but at the same time still cares enough he dosen’t want to hurt her despite you know, that ship sailing just by having moved on. 

But now the two are friends and his parents, who we meet for the first time and sister inquire about her being his girlfirned.. and by next jumpcut his parents apparently don’t want him hanging out with girls? What exactly the fuck? Also they mention Laurence, Scott’s brother whose missing for most of the books and has no real payoff for not being around. Next cut we get KIM!

Thank you Prissy. And she’s.. not all that different, assuming, correctly that their partner project, how she meets scott will just result in her doing all the work.. which not only is how these things usually went when I was in high school a decade later, but reminds me of the time me and my friends curtis and justin were put on a project and when asked who the alied powers were, guessed “Germany?”.... you can understand my fear. And also Curtis punching him for getting nothing done.. and not hard or brutally mind you just once quick in the gut and with full warning. Ah... the adaquate old days. 

So back to Lisa as, since Scott’s Mom has a guitar.. a fact I.. never honestly thought about. Seriously I never realized her children, since the Bass Scott has for most of the books is Laurence’s, getting into music was probably due to her. Also Lisa makes her case for WHY be a band: the school has a regular event called Lunchapalooza, where everyone goes to and since by teen logic, just being in a band is automiacally cool, she figures they can jump from not QUITE being in any cliques to being super cool. Which honestly yeah... while I didn’t know any bands in high school, the fact one of my friends, ironically named Scott, was a DJ automatically made him pretty damn cool once he got past his awkard phase. I never got past mine but somehow was loved by all except that one douchey kid in our group who mocked me for naming my Luxray kim, assuming it was based on Kim possible and not Kim Pine... though frankly how that’s an insult when Kim Possible was a fucking awesome show and character is beyond me but he was just 17 and also a douchebag, it didn’t have to make since it just had to piss off the easily pissed off kid with aspergers. So Scott poses how they can be a band with just their guitars and Lisa concedes drums WOULD help.. I mean it’s what MADE Shallow Gravy. 

So while Kim wonders if Scott is dating Lisa, because teenagers don’t really get girls and boys can be friends without wanting to be together, though not often as teenage boy brains can be rather stupid and horny... can confrim from personal experince. So it becomes clear Scott has a thing for Kim, and when Scott tries broaching it with Lisa she dosen’t take it well and he backpedals to asking her to be her drummer and plans to monday, proving Scott has somehow not gotten better at reading women, or anyone after 7 years. Can relate. 

So yeah he decides to ask Monday, same day as their presentation.. and thankfully missed the bus as he arrives to find the Benvy Tech boys came in, took everyone out and abducted Kim. Because yeah, just in case you were wondering Scott’s life was always like this.. or was it? Questions for later. So one Canadian Version of River City Ransom later, Scott’s made his way to simon... who, since most of you have probably seen the movie or art of the movie.. looks an AWFUL lot like Gideon. Hrmmm. Simon is naturally the final boss here and wonders if this is the best St. Joels can muster. Scott quips back as only Scott can. 

So cue an unsuprisingly awesome actoin sequence. IT’s part of why I love these color editions: While they already LOOKED thoroughly fantastic the added colors really help the series shonen manga meets old school video game vibe REALLY fucking pop. So Simon pleads mercy which like Scott delivering a good quip.. should’ve really been a red flag to younger me and is foreshadowing for later in case I was too subtle. He then does what any noble hero would do.. kicks simon into the sunset, tells Kim how he feels and asks her to play drums. They then make out. Awwww. 

Lisa suprisingly takes it well as the next montage shows.. granted we’ll learn in Feburary she wasn’t QUITE as over scott as it seemed, but the three, along with a friend of Lisa’s whose name I forgot and who DOSEN’T come back so I’m not going to bother learning, form their own friend group, Scott and Kim get an A, and Scott, Kim and Lisa’s band is dubbed sonic and knuckles, which is an objectively awesome band name. Something the series really does great: Video Game Based Band Names. Crash and the Boys, Sex Bomb-Omb, Clash at the Demonhead... we need more bands like this in the real world dammit. So then they play their big game, the two loose their vrigniity.. and then Kim asks scott “your moving to tornoto?” And.. for now.. that’s that. 

While the framing of that will be VERY important in the last volume, as notice how KIM’S the one who brings it up and it’s not explicitly stated scott actually told her, this flasback is great. While it does contribute to the volume’s drifty pacing, more  on that as we go, it brilliantly sets up a LOT of stuff for later, paticuarlly Lisa who I assumed wouldn’t be back and younger me’s jaw fucking DROPPED when she popped up in Volume 4. Granted i’m spoiling that suprise for you now but odds are most of you reading this have either alreaddy read these or were probably wondering if the girl from the animated short ever had any actual relevance in the books. So yes, yes she does. She’s also the pink haired girl you see pop up in the game in the background, as a nod to O’Malley’s comic strip style which had her and Kim as the leads.  Also yeah for fans of the game or movie or even the comics who were unaware.. this prologue got an animated adaption on adult swim to promote the movie. Naturally Micheal Cera and Allison Pill reprised their roles as Scott and Kim, with Mae Whitman voicing lisa.. and honestly being perfect for the roll, and Jason Schrwartzman voicing Simon naturally. While the animation is slightly limited, it still looks decent and expertly translates O’Malley’s art, while sliming things down slightly where needed to fit a short, and the anmation takes a huge bump for the fight scene which like the comic is short but awesome. While it has no real bearing on the film as Kim’s former relationship with Scott never really comes up or has any impact, as the Film while good was based primarily on volumes 1-3 with small pieces of 4 (paticuarlly the iconic “Lesbians gag”), with Wright working off outlines and drafts of 5 and 6, so the last half hour or so is mostly Wright’s invention. 

Not a bad thing as it’s still awesome and not o’malley’s fault but it means kim dosen’t get to do much, and is a big reason why I want an adaptation on netflix or hbo max. While i’d still want changes both because there’s no sense doing an adaptation if your not going to make some tweaks of your own and because it’d be intresting to update the series to modern day, both in societal conventions and so everyone stops saying the r word. Seirously the most telling sign of the series age is that word showing up quite a bit during the first half of the series. Point is there is merit in doing another remix of the story and doing a longer form one so we can get more of the characters, as well as flesh out ones like Steven, Neil (Who was done WAY better in the movie adaptation thanks to the wonderful Johnny Simmons), and Stacey who got the shaft in the books. Again, not slagging off the movie, it’s really great. Just saying there’s always room for more Scott Pilgrim content and we all know it. 

We’ll get back to the comic proper, and the present day of 2005, after the cut. 

So the story proper opens with Scott dreaming of playing video games... because of course he is with Ramona walking in. and finding it charmingly pathetic but wanting her boyfriend to you know, get out of bed. It’s 11:30.  So with Scott’s ass out of bed, we find Scott, Age 23 idiot with a heart of gold and Wallace, 25 king of all gays, on the bus as they talk it getting warmer and Lucas Lee, movie star and jason lee stand in coming to town to film a movie.. and Scott being Scott gets him confused for Luke WIlson. He’s also seen Bottle Rocket which.. good on him. Seriously while not wes anderson’s best film, those were made long afte this comic was published, it’s still a damn good one.. where was his career at this point... looking it up life aquatic was his most recent films and is still one of my favorites. So yeah he was in a good place career wise. 

Scott proudly talks about having Ramona over in a couple days so she can see his place and meet Wallace. But as explained by Wallace for those of us just tuning in, he already met her last volume. You know during that time Stacey thought she could magically make her date not be attracted to someone else.. and yes even almost a month later not letting that one go. Stacey should know better. Not saying i’ts right Wallace keeps poaching her boyfriends, but she still shoudlnt’ try and force a relationship with a guy or even finish a date with one who makes out with someone else, regardless of gender, mid date. She deserves better. In general not just in this one scenario but we’ll get to that. 

Point is while Scott, as usual, is a bit pissy about this Wallace.. has no time for that and issues an ultimatium

And he’s not bluffing, as he fully intends to tell Ramona the minute she walks in the door if he dosen’t break up with Knives. It really shows Wallace off at his best and why he’s Scott’s closest friend: Kim and Stephen do care about him but Kim both has a LOT of unresolved issues and sexual tension with him and keeps eveyrbody including Scott at arm’s length. And Stephen.. while he will OCASIONALLY call Scott out mostly just enables him, either ignoring his college buddy’s shittier behavior or playing along with it and backing him up when Kim rightfully calls him on being a dickhead. While both love their friend they just aren’t the best at dealing with his shit or getting why he does the things he does good and bad.  Wallace on the other hand geninely likes Scott. He’ll lock him out of the house and tell him to sleep elsewhere so he can bang one out, he’ll not wear pants if he dosen’t have to and he’ll certainly hit on Scott just to get a rise out of him, phrasing.. but he also genuinely cares for the guy’s well being. He lets him sleep in their house basically rent free since scott has no money, buys most of their stuff, and is, as we’ll see in this one, the ONLY one of his friends to take an active part in the fight against the exes, training Scott and researching his opponents when he can get info. He won’t baby Scott as seen here, but he will help him, and he will be the harsh voice of reason his friend needs.  And he did TRY doing a softer approach last time, simply telling scott to break up with his fake high school girlfriend. Scott had every chance to dump Knives during the last third of the first book.. it’s just a combination of both Knives and Ramona being in the same place and Scott getting panicky meant he balked. He NEEDS to be pushed into leaving Knives or he’s not gonna. And he also gets it’s not just Scott being a shifty coward: Scott DOES like Knives.. he just found someone who actually challenges him, intrests him and connects with him on his level, versus someone who worships and adores him like a puppy who just happens to be skilled with knives. The relationship with Knives. was an ego boost, an unequal paring that gave Scott the illusion of moving on from Envy. Ramona is him ACTUALLY moving on and given how badly Envy fucked him up, which comes into play in this book and the next, Wallace recognizes that Scott does need her... but this relationship can’t go anywhere if Scott is seeing someone else, and they both know it. Wallace is just the one who’s willing to do something about it to force scott to do something about it. He’s doing this for Knives too: it’s very clear he cares about the girl, was against this from the start, and knew this was going to end in pain and the faster Scott rips off the Band-Aid the faster she can move on to someone closer to her age and far more equal to her. Scott.. takes this about how you’d expect, even calling Double Standard, as Wallace does sleep around.. and while Wallace will be a homewrecker to Stacey.. otherwise it’s not remotley the same. Wallace does his sleeping around either casually or when he does get a partner, with their consent from what we can tell. He never cheats or anything, he just likes to bone. So yeah Scott doesn’t have a leg to stand on and acts accordingly. 

One of my faviorite gags in the series and one that’s etched in my head for keeps. So with a justified Ultimatium over his head Scott calls knives to hang out. Knives.. shows off that as adorable and trusting as she is.. she’s also kind of creepy and shows up just outside the phone booth he’s calling her from.  So the two go to a record store and Knives tries to get Scott into Clash at the Demonhead, her faviorite band. But since i’ts you know, headlined by Scott’s ex as we’ll find out, he’s not into it. But before that can get awkward.. it gets awkward in another way as Knives invites Scott to dinner at her parents place. Which is an objectively bad idea even before you get into the fact Scott wants a way out and as Volume 4 will show us her dad is both not happy with the idea of her dating a white guy and willing to use a katana to prevent it so he dodged a bullet there. Scott TRIES weasling out of it, but his “I’m too old for you” thing falsls on deaf ears.. and actually explains why she thinks this is normal: her parents are 9 years apart. of course obviously two consenting adults with a decade between them is a mite bit diffrent than 5 years between a teenager whose taking this way too seriously and a grown man whose taking this not seroiusly at all and dosen’t get how effed up this is. But Knives is too naive to get that, and papers over any possible concerns about her parents not wanting her to date a white guy with i’m in love.  Seeing that he has no EASY way out of this, as he shouldn’t, Scott just rips off the band aid and bluntly breaks up with her, saying it’s not going to work out. Knives.. is clealry devistatd. To her this was a serious relationship.. and Scott realized that too late.. and thankfully while he didn’t break up with her in the best way, at all, simply syaing i’ts not going to work out and confirming to her he means it, it’s clear from his face this hurts to do and he knows he’s REALLY hurting her and REALLY shoudlnt’ of dated her to begin with. IT’s why Scott dating a teenager dosen’t make him a morally rephrenisvie monster: because he was genuinely intrested, didn’t use her sexually, and there are tangible consequences for his actions. Knives just dosen’t disappear neatly into the sunset so he can be with ramona. The rest of the series covers her emotoinal recovery from being with Scott, and how she very horribly handles it and that’s why this plotline works at all: she’s not some act one contrivance to be thrown away, sh’es a human being, and more than that a young woman who got hurt REALLY bad and got way too in over her head with someone who just..wasn’t the one fo rher no matter how much she can’t admit that. 

We also get one of my faviorite sets of pages as Scott relfects on things and the sheer devistation on Knives face, which credit to a series that even at this early point loves it’s big bold facial expressions.. her’s being more subded just makes it sting MORE. 

This bit to me is vital to keeping Scott sympathetic and to his character. We see he really does regret what happened, dosen’t know how to process it and genuinely feels awful. As I said instead of some exgerated face that would still hurt him.. her face is quiet, clearly unable to process this and clealry lost and hurt.. and that hurts more than any fuck your or sobs he was probably expecting. Just her clearly not getting WHY he’s doing this or why he hurt her, and he KNOWS why he just knows telling her the truth would hurt her even more. But.. as he thinks.. his thoughts move to something else.. and the WHY of why he did this. 

He did it for Ramona. Wallace was as harsh as he was right: he needed a clean slate to actually give this relationship a shot and the smile comes off less as him being a calous dick whose just happy to move on, I mean he is a little, but more jus tsomeone READY to finally move on. He found the right person, he let the wrong one go if clumsily.. he has a future to look forward to and he can smile about that. 

Granted he’s still his usual unteitonally callous self and his way of telling his friends he and knives broke up is to casually say so and say “dont’ worry you’ll meet my new girlfriend soon.” Their reaction.. is my own. 

Look just because Scott is a nuanced douchebag dosne’t stop him from being a Douchebag. It just means he isn’t intolerable to watch and you actually care about him growing as a human being is all. 

So with that out of the way, it’s date night and Ramona is coming over.. also Scott is considering calling her Ramy which no. I'm genuinely in favor of a pet name that’s just a variant on someone’s name but a bit cute, as it’s just the right level of obnoxious, but no, just no Scott. No.  Ramona enters, meets Wallace again and sits down while Scott tries to shoo him out.. because turnabout is fair play bitch. They also see Ramona’s new hair as she dyes it something new for the first time, in this case a very lovely two tone, the purple from last volume but with a darker purple bellow it. I honestly wish she went for multiple colors in her hair again, but likely didn’t since the book was originally in black and white... which still dosent’ make sense as it would’ve been EASIER that way. Regardless Wallace makes himself scarce proving that he’s more than willing to be equal in terms of one of them spending the ngiht elsewhere. What a guy. 

Ramona finds out a few things about Scott: That his apartment is VERY small, just one room with a bed, a cabinet, a small kitchen and a bathroom, which despite what scott says I REALLY dont’ count as another room. Just common sense. She also learns that he can COOK. Yeah while you’d expect Scott to just get a wad of “I did the ultimatum thing okay now gimme” money and buy dinner but no.. he made the whole thing himself from his own recipe.  And once we cut to them eating on the floor.. turns out yeah he not only can cook but is REALLY good at it. She wishes there was a table which, small as the place is.. fair point. I mean at least get some tv trays. You have chairs. Or at least the easy chair. You can get nice padded folding chairs so you have a second chair guys. I know your poor but come on. Also Scott leanrs bread makes you fat. Good stuff. Also Scott freaks out when , while making out with Ramona in bed later, she mentions his hair’s getting kinda long and could use a cut... which turns out to be a thing for him. He isn’t an ass about it he just panics a bit because he’s partially convinced his last relationship’s nightmarish breakup was because of a bad haircut he got. As we’ll see next week, that’s a no but as someone whose a touch neroutic myself I get blaming a larger issue on something trivial. 

So we then get to the next chapter where it’s KIM’S turn to have a dream.. and the only time we see someone else's dreams. Honestly.. I really would’ve liked if it was a recurring device, even have Ramona pop into other people’s Not used ALL the time but I could easily see it being used with Knives to convey her obsession with Scott and her pain or kim again to help move her plots along or Wallace because I want to know what’s going on in his head. It must be a maze of male gentalia and fine liquor the likes of which has never been seen. It’s scotts funeral as Simon killed him and Scott’s corpse wonders if she dreams about this a lot. 

So we see her get ready and wake up her roomate Sarah whose a bitch. And as we’ll see in one of the backups, so’s the rest of her roommates. So drifting into work. Hollie is a character I really liked... the past tense will be explained later. And the first scene is probably why as her and Kim banter effortlessly, with Kim suggesting maybe she was a happy kid... only to admit quickly no she wasn’t, she was pretty withdrawn and then pretty angsty over someasshole who will be named Scott. “Your a holy terror kim, and i’m glad your on your side”> It’s a short scene but the kind this series excells at: just realistic, fun little exchanges bursting with character. I also GENUINELY wish we got more of this kind of thing, as only Knives really gets these kind of scenes to herself for the most part. There ARE scenes without Scott, but not enough like this that just give us as look into what his friends lives are like during the moments they aren’t putting up with his dumbassery or watching him engage in mortal combat. It’s why i’ve been hoping a spinoff will happen even though it likely won’t SOON. I’m sure O’Malley will return to this world some day, but between Snotgirl and Wicked World, which will come out when it’s ready but should be good.. he’s just really busy. But i’d love to see more of Kim.. or Wallace or Knives. The latter two are a no brainer: Knives is the tritagonist of the books, and it’d be intresting to see what she’d be like 5 years at the book, at the same age and stage in life as Scott. And with Wallace it’s because we really DON’T see his friend circle, life or what goes on with him. We hear him talk about a new boyfriend, who we don’t meet until near the end of the series, though you can see him in stage 3 of hte game if your curious, we see him with some random friends in volume 4, but we really don’t KNOW what hyjinks and lojinks wallace gets up to. He’s pretty isoalted from the rest of the main cast, something I hope an adaptation could fix as while realistic i’td be curious to see what his relationship with Kim or Steven would be like. Just food for thought. 

Point is this was a good scene. But as is typical for Kim’s life just when she has some serenity her ex crashes back in. In this case Scott needs to rent some movies, kim works at a rental store and god teenage me really wanted a clerks style spinoff.. but enough spinoff talk. Scott asks kim to bororw them, of course and explains he’s training for his fight with Lucas.. which Kim reacts to finding out her second best friend is in a series of death matches. 

She has understandable questions such as how the hell doe she know that and is he stalking Lucas and just hoping he’s an ex.. which let’s face it would be a very scott move. But nope Wallace told him, likely learning in an interview he dated Ramona or is coming for scott because he knows everything. We also get one of my faviorite exchanges when Kim wonders why Wallace and Scott are roomates.. a valid question he deflects by saying i’ts a long story. 

Also yeah, as much as casting Micheal Cera backfired for the movie.. that panel there proves there wasn’t another choice at the time. When you want a loveable, somewhat douchey, but also somewhat innocent and oblivious slacker.. who you gonna call. Also before we move on.. Kim.. how are you this suprised. You were there for the fight with Matthew. And Ramona giving out the exposition on why he’s there.. and you even did that whole weird space channel 5 thing no one ever did agian and to this day I will never understand what O’Malley was going for and only know the refrence by hearing that’s what it was. Point is you shouldn’t be this suprised.  Anyways we next cut to Ramona and Stacey, as Ramona enters her workplace, second cup, and they talk and Scott’s spider sense goes off... 

I mean it’s just a bad feeling but still.. weird. WE’ll get back to that later. Scott is in the middle of his training.. and I love the mentor side of Wallace and feel it didn’t get used enough as the series went on. As said before he cares about Scott, so he serves as his Shounen Mentor and a great one: he’s stern and makes Scott work, but he also gets his student and what Scott needs to work. I just wish he’d taught Scott some actual combat, but as we see Wallace’s combat skills boil down to yelling useless info from the sidelines.. I mean he can be useful, we’ll see that next week, it’s just he’s not an action guy. But spirtually he’s the guy scott needs to kick his ass into shape. That being said his “training” consists of watching Lucas’ movies, playing tony hawk and when Scott wants to play more Tony Hawk, having Scott do pushups while Wallace plays Tony Hawk.  Before we turn... there is an elephant in the room I just gotta shoo out: Lucas.. is easily the worst setup of the 6 exes. Patel SEEMINGLY comes out of nowhere but his letter and email hint SOMETHING is coming up, and his flashy dynamic entry intro is damn cool and is what turns the series on it’s head, from an indie comic about a guy getting it together.. to that but with huge shonen dustups with epic visuals. Todd is introduced masterfully here, and is a presence from the start of volume 3 as a result, Roxie gets a slight tease in the free comic book day issue, and her not attacking for two months not only sets up tension but allowed for a red herring.. im’ not only hiding that the fourth ex is a she because anyone whose seen the movie or played the game knows the fourth ex is a woman. The cat’s out of the bag, no sense hiding it. The Kentangis show up pretty early on and Gideon is hinted at and built up, as this towering, mysterious figure, his relationship with Ramona, who he is, why he set up the league, and just how fucking strong he is is all obscured, with his only four apperances simply teasing the big final showdown and giving him that much more mysitque. 

Lucas.. is just sorta intorduced like “Hey I gotta fight this guy”. There’s just.. nothing. Scott’s just gotta fight him because he’s next up and Wallace knows that because plot convience. It’s VERY lackluster given what comes before.. and frankly while I like Lucas, he’s the weakest plot and character wise. HE’s not even really EVIL, just a sellout and is more doing this because he has to I guess, and likely because of stuff we find out in Book 6 but sssssshhhhh. We’ll get more into that when the fight happens but it’s one of the books weakest points. The evil ex.. just feels like an afterthrought again despite there being no reason to. Thankfully this would never happen again as I said, but it dosen’t make this any less frustrating. 

So we cut to Sex Bomb-Omb practice, and after that we get more tease for Clash at Demonhead. And Stephen.. is cool with them and entirely happy one of them made it, while Scott is understandably pisssed off about it and not happy one of his best friends is you know, promoting the band of his ex who broke his heart and as we’ll get more into next time, said rising career is what tore them apart. So yeah Stephen’s a dickhead, and I was wrong last time that he got better. He really.. dosen’t. He gets less CREEPY.. but out of the main 6 characters he’s the weakest: he dosen’t have much of an arc, does some very questionable shit in the second half, and his being around means we have to suffer through Julie. I’ll tear into him more on a case by case basis but for once Scott’s not overreacting. While Kim does nothing she also has no idea just HOW bad things were and Scott won’t tell her. Stephen was there the whole fucking time. He just saw Scott’s rebound with a teenager. He knows he was kind of messed up after this. Dosen’t justfiy knives but still he looses the moral high ground he tries to have at times. 

So while Scott shops a song for Ramona to her, Knives calls Scott’s place clearly setting up another suprise apperance. Wallace.. figures out what sh’es doing quick and simply gives her a stern “You have to go” And to me it’s not him being a dick.. he’s both trying to save her from seeing Scott with Ramona and fucking her up worse... and is looking out for her. She needs to move on and moving up to stalking Scott’s not going to help that. Scott dosen’t WANT her anymore, and while he handled it bad, Wallace gets she needs to see that. Granted he could’ve you know explained it to her and tried talking, but as i’ve said he’s not a perfect person and he was also on a time table to get her out of there in case Scott you know, showed up with his new girlfriend and made things a billion times worse. And the two are indeed headed to his place to watch one of Lucas’ movies, and part of that weak setup is that Ramona.. just has no connection with him. It was high school. Scott also pretends he dosent’ remember his. You are a lying liar sir stop that.  So they watch the film together hanging out, and it’s.. really bad. The good one was rented out. I miss rental stores.. a magical time. I mean i’ts better now, streaming means 80% of movies are avaliable if you have a bunch of services and even if you just have netflix or hulu or hbo max, you still get a pretty decent selection each month. Plus digital rentals are super easy. Do miss redbox though. I mean it’s still there I’m just warry of something that relies so heavily on touching things in a state with a lot of trump morons. You CAN get Covid twice and I don’t wanna. Also we get some dated Dialouge as Scott commenting on Lucas being hot, he is good taste Scott, is given a “good job convincing me your not gay”. He and ramona end up having sex though so .. yay? I dunno. The series has a really weird thing about not getting bisexuals exist and as someone whose bi, and really against bi errasure it bothers me, it bothers me a lot. Though given O’Malley apparently has not only far more queer rep in snotgirl but a bisexual lead, he’s clearly learned so i’m not going to drag him too hard on this. It was the early 2000′s. People were pretty damn stupid about this. Creators have gottten MUCH more important issues much worse. 

So the next morning, Scott gets a call from his well meaning but ditzy mom, and reacts like you’d expect. His parents are in Europe to keep them out of the action and what not. Though apparently according to the last book his mom did read volume 3 at least. Or Wallace told her about the relevant bit. You make the call. 

So i’ts Ramona’s turn to meet Sex Bomb-Omb. The group hang out and discuss Gordon Downie. 

Look I don’t know indie bands. I have no idea who the tragically hip are I just know the name is really hipstery. We also get the recipe for Vegan Shepards Pie. None of them are vegan they just wanted to try it and I.. really want to make this some time. Just to see if it’s any good. But yeah it’s in general a fun casual scene, as Kim reveals she and Scott dated, just to break the tension, and Scott tries out Rammy but quickly backpedals. Just fun slice of life stuff. Oh and Knives is watching them from the window and takes Scott dating someone else as well as you’d expect. 

So she gets some hair bleach to do some highlights and calls her friend Tamara over. We met her last volume as she dragged her along to the show, but it’s here we really get to know what she’s like.. i.e. the sane one in the duo, rightfully pointing out Scott’s not that great. Also Knive’s points out ramona’s “fat”, which is thankfully portrayed as petty sniping as while Ramona does have some curves it’s you know.. not remotely a bad thing and the kind of thing a teenage girl would harp on. Still she’s just in STEPS from this happening. 

But yeah.. it’s clear here Knives has some underlying issues to address and really needs therapy  not to go after her ex’s current girlfriend with knives. I mean it’s in the name but still. Then again volume 4 has her dad going around with a katana or something like it wanting to murder her daughter’s older ex boyfriend he dosen’t realize is ex so it’s clear her whole FAMILY needs some therapy. But this does round her out and show there’s more to her.. a pretty violent and obessive side sure, but it shows she wasn’t just some one dimensional ego boost for scott but a person. One whose just as flawed as the rest of the cast.. but more sympatheic because they’ve all got about 6 or 7 years on her and at this age that’s a lifetime. And while Scott DID set this off by dating her which was objecitvely a bad idea... the rest of this isn’t remotely on him. He handled things BAD.... but all he wanted was for both of them to move on. Knives.. simply can’t admit Scott is not a nice person, was probably two timing her as Tamara points out, which as we know he 100% was, and is not some perfect guy she can’t replace: like Knives.. he’s just a person with faults and she’s too blind to see that. 

So before we can get to the crazy stalker ninja fight, let’s instead get to Scott and Ramona hanging out where we meet Gideon, Ramona’s Cat who i’ll call Cat Gideon, both because I love steven unvierse and because it’s less confusing. This is a pretty slight scene as Ramona admits not a lot happened with Lucas and Scott’s apartment is a hole.. which yeah, yeah it is. Also she DEFINTLY dind’t cheat on him with any cocky pretty boys. Which would come off worse if it wasn’t for the pact Ramona was clearly doing it out of regret and Scott just liked like 50 pages ago about rembering his exes when one of them is his second best friend.. which neither would admit but you know it’s true. Stephen is third where he belongs. 

So next morning it’s fight time, and Scott is glad wallace is going with him. It’s awkard going to fights alone. Which leaves me to wonder if before this comic Scott just.. fought random guys letterkenny style. Like they’d call up, schedule it and then he and one or more of his friends would go beat up a guy. It’s just.. hilarious knowing that this kind of thing is common in canda minus the ki attacks , flash effects, wizards, vegan psycics, ninjas, and roboticists. But damn I now want a scott pilgrimized letterkenny now more than ever. You know you do too don’t deny it. I”d love to see the hard right jay fight but iwth a loud “KO!” when he gets his ass knocked out. Also Casa Loma is a very real, very cool Toronto location, as I never realized as a kid, to the point that the lucas fight was filmed there for the movie. 

So Scott approaches Lucas a bit star struck and upon finding out scott is.. punches him out as seen in the header image and throws him into a tower. When Scott regains conciousness, Kim and Neil have arrived and Lucas calls a time out. And it’s here we get to, while being the weakest of the 7, why I like Lucas.. he’s actually a pretty nice guy. At WORST he sold out. But the two have a pretty nice conversation over ritz and baby carrots, with it turning out, unsuprisingly Ramona did cheat on him with a cocky pretty boy, and while like Ramona he’s clearly moved on, it still hurts a bit and understandably so. He also warns scott while she might seem nice i’ts an act. 

I mean it isn’t ALL an act, but she does have a tedency to put up walls and act pretty badly as we’re slowly finding out.. though given Scott does the exact same it only means.. she’s human. She’s not MUCH higher above him in terms of morality and this is where we get our first peaks into the fact the series isn’t just about Scott’s development but hers. But it’s understandably absent from volumes 1 and 2 since we need to know her first, and this volume is about getting to know her a bit and get a feel for who she is, something I ddin’t really get a grip on as a teen, but do now. We see more of who she is good and bad as the walls go down. She’s more SURFACE LEVEL functional than scott, but beneath it has a lot of the same exact issues.  Lucas and Scott continue to GENUINELY bond, as Scott genuinely thinks the guy is talented and Lucas want’s an Oscar this year.. maybe not for the current film which is a romantic comedy with a teen star but hey, stars have done far worse in their Oscar years. I mean at least he’s not making a comedy about himself in a fat suit domestically abusing himself in a wig while he also plays an asian sterotype. He explains he almost didn’t get into the league but felt too important to ramona’s past.. plus he looks cool. Plus they let Patel in despite barely being in a relationship with her and being kind of a tool so they kinda had to let the handsome affiable movie star in. Scott wonders “wait league” and Lucas is understandably frustrated to find out Patel just sent a letter Scott didn’t read.. and at Matthew let’s be clear. I mean.. Gideon has to have known Scott wouldn’t read that since he’s been in his head. We’ll get to that in part 6. Point is they formed a league, hence why their organized enough to come after him like this and Scott understandably glares at Wallace for you know, having him play tony hawk and watch movies yet missing the fucking obvious clue they were all working together and they were only coming at him one at a time by choice. 

Lucas offers to just.. take a bribe and SAY Scott beat him, Scott calls him a sellout jokingly and Lucas proves that while not AS bad as the rest of the League, he’s still a dick by telling him to kiss ramona’s sweet ass goodbye pilgrim. Okay either he’s seen her since high school or he’s fondly remembering a high schooler’s ass. Neither one is nice to think about. But Scott gets out of his ass beating by pointing out a ramp, real thing too used for the movie, and asking him to skate down it. Lucas says i’ts impossible, and Scott just whistles. So Lucas tries skating the impossible and dies via velocity. Yes really. Scott collects his change and gets a gift, a mytryil skateboard he.. can’t use because he dosen’t have a proficency for it and bemoans not picking it up in 5th grade. Also he didn’t get his autograph. He does get some coins though so neat.   Yeah I mentioend Lucas was the least of the exes and I stand by it: He’s an intresting character, not a GREAT person but clearly a charming and nice enough guy who likely offered the bribe not because he’sd a sell out but because he genuinely liked scott, and is easily the best adjusted of the exes. But obviously a near non existant setup and a really hilarious and unsastifying finish just.. don’t really feel sastsifying. I mean i’t slampshaded, but after all the build up of her having 7 evil exes, the next one is just..filler. Not BAD, but not really anything special and giving Scott a an early pokemon victory, but unlike ash having done nothing to really DESERVE it.  Thankfully both adaptations so far VASTLY improved on this. While Lucas is still affiable in the movie he’s also smarmy, if on better terms with Ramona, saying “he seems nice” after the tower throw and throwing in some stunt doubles. His fight goes from one of the least satisfying and weakst of the series, to easily one of the best of the movie. We’ll talk about that more there but obvious Chris Evans version is far superior, keeping the good traits while giving us an intresting fight.. and still keeping the skateboard death because it’s fucking hilarious and the movie improves on THAT too by having scott give flat wows as he slowly dies. The game likewise keeps teh skateboard death, if shortening it, and the skateboard, and while not changing his apperance does make him a hell of a tough boss. Took three tries and some online grinding to take him out. Still a hell of a fight. Point is while I genuinely like Lucas story wise.. this just dosen’t work for me and is pretty damn weak, even if it gives us some godo character insight we could’ve got that, and a fight and still had the finish we did. 

That being said.. we DO get a fight instead, likely why the Lucas fight was so truncated. Next chapter and that evening or the next day or whatever, we pan over the real life tornto refrence library. It is a VERY nice touch thatt the comic and it’s adpations use either real places in toronto or reasonable subsittues. While not canadian myself I love the place and hope to visit Tornoto some day when the world isn’t a living nightmare and it’s really nice that like New York for Marvel, Brian Lee O malley really makes the city feel integral to the comic, like it’s own character. But Knives is ominously perched above.  At second cup Scott is horrified to find Julie. Seconded. Julie takes the moment to give out to scott about him dating Ramona despite telling him no. Okay... 

Yeah as you can probably guess I don’t like Julie. She’s not a good character. The movie did her better, with the bleeping gag and aubrey plaza’s performance, but in the comic.. she’s just the worst. She sucks bad. If she were an ice cream flavor she’d be pralines and dick. While she’s fine on OCCASION, and actually works in the next volume, outside of that she just gets more unplesant, more unlikeable, more bitchy, more unfathomabbly assholish every. damn. volume. I”ll give out about that a bit then too but I have to put up with her for the entire damn comic. Now her being bitchy to Scott is fair to a point: Scott is a mess, and she’s loyal to Envy in the breakup, and Scott’s own friends drag him on a daily basis.  The problems are that she’s like that to EVERYONE, even Knives who isn’t about to stab her much as i’d like that. She’s unberable to Stephen whose tolerance for her is unfathomable, though the ending bits of volume 6 show maybe he just has terrble taste. She’s just a throughly unplesant, social climbing bitch who thinks she’s better than everyone. And it sticks out badly against the main cast; Scott is very bad with women and relating to people, but is also nice, charming and most of the damage he does is not intetional. Ramona puts up walls to keep others out but is also a responsible adult and often cuts through Scott, and at times others, internal bullshit. Wallace is an alcholic, but still a very responsible, very loveable guy who clearly cares about scott and supports him finacially and emotionally. Kim is VERY emotionally distant, very misntrhopic.. but also a good person who as we see as the series goes, has an inner light to her and often drags on Scott because she’s been putting up with his shit the longest and WANTS him to be better. Knives is an obessive and violent stalker.. who was also deeply hurt by an older man, dosen’t GET that her realtionship with scott was wrong and uneven, and is clearly not emtoinallyr eady for the deep feelings she’s having. And Stephen.. well he’s a talented guitarist but also enables scott and julie. Especially him enabling Julie. 

Point is their all pretty well rounded, llikeable characters with flaws. Julie.. is just an ass. And this scene demonstrates that with flying colors. While Scott does ignore her because he’s too worried about his sister and girlfriend becoming friends, understandably given Stacey knows all his dark secrets, Julie spends two pages giving out and treating scott like some bad guy for persuing Ramona against her orders. And i’m going to break down why.. this dosen’t work.. on any level for her.  1) Ramona is not Julie’s property. She’s a big girl with her own free will. They aren’t even remotely close: Julie met her only barely before Scott, and given the dream thing probably not even that. And you could say Julie is just looking out for her... she dosen’t know Ramona well enough to KNOW if Ramona is still smarting over Gideon. She probably was.. but she readily, once the awkwardness passed, went out with scott and dove right into the relationship. While there’s still some scars as we’ll see.. she CHOOSE to move on and that’s her choice. If she wasn’t ready, she woudl’ve turned him down or broke it off by now realizing it was a mistake.  2) Scott has no reason to listen to her. She hates his ass, somewhat justifably but still, she hates him and has been against him since fucking colllege. She took his exes side in the breakup despite Envy still being partly in the wrong but paints him as some abusive dickhead and not just an insesntive dickhead. To him he’s just some villian she needs to reign in for her cool friend who wants nothing to do with her and grows to justifably hate her over time. Scott and Julie TOLERATE each other. They are not friend,s they do not like each other and never will. They are around each other because of Stephen. That is it. If Kim , Wallace or Stephen had asked, or at least made him wait for kinves. he probablyw ould’ve or at least considered it since while they take the piss out of him, they genuinely care about him and actually have shown they care about something other than themselves! Speaking of which the cou de gras 3) She’s a selifsh bitch: She is NEVER not  in any volume seen as out for anyone but herself, and thus scott has no reason to trust her judgement. She berates Stephen, him and anyone who will listen, is only so loyal to envy because she’s famous, and as I said treats EVERYONE like dogshit.  And given Scott is still a very flawed guy.. it takes a LOT for him to be so right and he runs out screaming when Julie mentions her.

So back at the library, Ramona brought Stacey along because the place is a maze. Scott calls Stephen and calls julie evil.. which given the last two paragrahs. Yeah. She is. She really is. But that goes nowhere as he dosen’t have Stacey’s number. He also thinks Julie was responsible for this which while she’s very much not.. would it REALLY be that suprising that if Julie were there she would’ve introdcued the two and set up their little hangout just to piss scott off? God I’m  so sick of talking about her. 

So the two after dropping off Ramona’s package decide to hang out a bit.. not long as Ramona’s got shit to do, but hey I agree with her logic i’m curious about this palce too. But before they can go up an elevator Ramona spots incoming.. and thus we get the fight of the volume. Though given the next one has two climatctic fights and one or two before that, they easily could’ve had both.. this is still the highlight of the volume.  So Ramona snaps off a railing and before Stacey can give out about that she finds out WHY as Knives attacks with a pair of sais. And O’Malley did his homework as while you’d THINK it was just another dumb white person mistake.. O’Malley is asian, thoughw ether he’s candaian korean or canadian chineses, as his last name is korean but he has a large chinese cast in this very comic that might come from experince, I do not know and if you do know tell me. I’d like to refer to him properly as I don’t LIKE lumping all asian cultures into one basket. But not only that he did his home work, as Sai’s, while popularized in Okinawa Japan, were also used in other countries. I bring this up since I assumed it was just a simple mistake even knowing Brian was mixed-race, and was plesantly suprised to fine that know, I was the moron. And i’m fine with admitting that. 

So we get a damn good fight.. and Knives figures out Scott WAS cheating on her. Granted she assumes so due to seeing Ramona at the refrence Library, before he actually cheated and clearly blames Ramona for it, but still, it fucking hurts. Plus while her attacking Ramona, who initally assumes she’s gideon’s doing, which.. yeah sending a teenage assasian just to mess with her head does sound like him. So while Stacey does complain “ramona you can’t just tear out art objects” to which I say... yeah high, Stacey? NOT THE POINT RIGHT NOW SCOTT’S EX IS TRYING TO KILL HER. SHE’S DEFENDING HERSELF.  So we get one hell of a fight. It not only shows off that Ramona is one hell of a fighter herself, as is knives, but just how immature knives is, resorting to constnat fat jokes and taunts showing just how immature she is.. and unlike volume one where it was endearing and we just saw how sweet she was here it just comes off as mean, bitter, and uncomfortable. But again part of the series biggest charm is the main cast are all well fleshed out and throughly human. She’s doint this because she dosen’t know better and was raised in a house where, again as volume 4 will bear out, finding out her dad is going after scott with a samurai sword just warrants a “dad’s are so weird aren’t they” my point is her frame of refrence is a mite skewed. Plus this is a world where everyone but Stacey just calmly accepts big shonen fights break out, so it’s not that unsuaul to want to settle things with a fight and while i’ve joked about her killing Ramona we genuinely don’t know that was the goal> Could’ve been, easily given murder is peachy in this setting and just leads to a respawn according to O’Malley and would’ve just sent ramona back to her apartment. But I genuinely don’t think she has it in her to do it and while she could’ve planend to, she never would’ve. Plus Ramona easily leads the fight as while Knives uses hit and run tactics and tries make her follow.. Ramona is more annoyed than anything as she has shit to do. Knives only gets one hit in and while i’ts a pretty nasty scratch on the cheek, if thankfully not scarring.. Ramona shrugs it off when she brags about it and easily takes knives down with a potted tree. Knives runs and while she tells herself it’s to fight another day.. its really because her opponent was WAY stronger and way more ready for something like this than she probably planned on. She did defintely want a fight, she just wasn’t prepared to be outmatched so handily. It’s also a nice  parallel to last book’s fight: Like with Scott and Matthew,  while the fight SEEMS pretty even, in reality our hero/heroine was alwasy teh one in control and easily took care of the less experinced and less ready upstart, who likely wasn’t expecting a fair fight much less to loose. 

So Ramona and Stacey wisely get out while Stacey explains Knives is indeed Scott’s ex, though is unaware of the cheating thing. Speaking of Scott he’s playing sonic and knuckles, and in fact kept wallace on the line before just to get advice because of course he did hence why stacey didn’t get through to him, but gets a call... from Envy. 

This is easily the second best sequence in the boook, which was lovingly and wonderfully adapted to film and as a result I cannot read it without hearing Brie Larson’s voice for Envy , a nice mixture of seduction and condescension. It’s CLEARLY painful fo rhim, and we do get some things established as Envy toys with him, that it’s been about a year and that she left him for a cocky pretty boy, familiar.. and while Scott claims to not know what he looks like.. given Todd is clearly on her band cover... it’s not exactly hard to put two and two together. So after some awkard catchup and Scott telling her about ramona against his will, we get to the reason she’s here with Scott understanndbly being supscious and calling her a user.. which while Envy denys.. she ends up admitting to. She’s coming to town as estalbished and her opening act backed out, and since Scott has a band, and one that 2/3 of which she knows, she wants them to open for her.  Scott naturally isn’t too intrested and thinks it’s just pity. The sequence. is masterful, using a watchmen style 9 by 9 panel layout and intercutting scott’s pained reactions and clear lack of comfort with flashes of envy on her side.. never showing her proper, but showing his memories or what he’s seen in magazines. It’s really striking and really sells the sheer discomfort Scott’s going through.  So soon after Wallace gets home.. and finds Scott, drained and miserable on the floor, not even responsive. And this really is the scene that shows me that Wallace cares for the guy and cements that asshole he may be, he loves his buddy. He goes through possible scenarios that fit scott: Food poisoning, finding out Wallace saved over his final fantasy save (though he rules it out as last time that happened he was crying), that ramona dumped him.. before Scott let’s out a pathetic and miserable “Ennnnnvvv”. Wallace , who was at ground zero for that relationship as we’ll find out, realizes this and lets out a little shit, unsure how to help and pissed off at that bitch for once again hurting him like this. As I said it shows how Wallace knows scott in and out and loves him dearly.. and how he knwos about this paticuarly heartbreak better than anyone but Scott and Envy themselves. IT’s just a really tearjerking scene, as we get a sense of WHY scott spiraled into an ego boost of a relationship: His last one REALLY tore him in half, and he’s still not completely healed from the emtional bisection. 

So Scott gets more bad news next chapter as Stacey tells him about the fight and he’s worried he’s going to loose ramona on top of this. I mean he desrves it.. .but it’s clear she’s the best thing to happen to him after a really rough year of denial and poor decisionss and loosing her will likely only make him WORSE. He also breaks the bad news, to him at least to the band about the gig. Stephen, being kind of a dick who while understandbly excited about a big gig fails to see his friend REALLY isn’t happy about this nor remembers you know, that the person offering this tore his heart out indiana jones style and while they should take the gig despite the risks, it’s too big an opportunity not to, he should be fucking senstive about this. Kim however... has a suprising and heartbreaking reactoin to this. Which is spread over a few panels but i’m gonna string into one image for convince sake. 

Just.. DAMN. I honeslty missed this both as a teenager and as an adult when I read through the books last time but holy shit is this a heartbreaking little moment, even more with the development she gets in later books. Keep in mind, over two books so far, Kim.. really hasn’t shown a lot of emtion. The most upset she’s gotten was getting a bit pissed about another a girl drummer. The only other time we’ve seen her sad was at 17 when Scott left. Her only emotions that we could see were angry and surly. But here? She’s genuinely upset and we see her walls break down for the very first time.. and it’s with the clear indication she NEVER really got over Scott. She never got proper closure and while she hasn’t let it so.. it’s been VERY clear she's been grossly uncomfortable with how he just likes to brush off their history, something that very clearly still bothers her and understandably so: 6 years , while a lot of time, still really isn’t long enough to just .. FORGET your first boyfriend , how he made you feel or the fact he took your virginity and you took his. Stuff like that sticks with you.. I’m ony assuming on the virginity thing but my point remains: To Scott it’s SEEMINGLY nothing, when really he’s probably just trying to brush it off because he dosen’t like dealing with things and given how Kim is wrongly assumed she can’t feel pain. I mean to anyone else i’d be a fair assumption and even i’m not convinced if she touched a hot stove she’d burn, but that’s phsysical this is emotional. DIffrent playing fields. Point is Scott’s kind of a dick and not having ANY closure for anything, Kim is still smarting from him leaving as much as Scott is smarting from Envy dumping him.  And it somehow gets MORE painful.... which should’ve been the tagline for Bojack Horseman now I think about it but yeah: her line is what cuts me up the most “I saw her on the cover of Now. She’s pretty”. It’s a little line, it’s easy to see why I missed it .. but the subtext really stings. It’s that despite being VERY pretty, I had a crush on her as a kid and I still do now.. Kim just can’t help but compare herself to someone whose now a glamrous rock star.  Their equally attractive but all Kim can see is ANOTHER person who Scott cared about more than her. Which seems petty but again he just.. abnadoned her. His moving wasn’t his choice but his not telling her as was framed earlier sure as hell was. And then just.. look at the next people he dates: A glamorous rock star (She wasn’t at the time but that’s for next week), a much younger girl who can’t possible challenge him, and an ultra cool american. To her.. it must feel like he just looks right through her to every other person intersted in him and never even consdered her as a person anymore. I mean.. jesus christ that hurts.. and makes me hate Stephen more since you know he dosen’t notice any of this.. though at least unlike with Scott it’s a bit more understandable because Kim’s so unflappable and he’s already ignoring very obvious and transparent emotional pain why shouldn’t this be any diffrent.  So yeah no one’s happy about this, and that ends up including Stephen as he’s so insecure about his band’s talent he’s pretty sure they suck when their probably at least adaquate. 

So while Scott dosen’t say anything, it’s clear he’s at least consdiering the offer as when we next see him he and ramona are heading to Envy’s show. And honestly it’s just a really sweet scene as Ramona asks about envy and the two banter and hold hands. A really nice palletee clensar since hte last few pages were like I was the one lucas socked in the gut. Also she assures him she dosen’t hate him, and asks about how the breakup happened, turning down any offers to hear the good times.  It was new years eve one year ago, and he mentions it was over her leaving to meet some guy named Todd.. and Ramona finds the story familiar but brushes off Scott wondering if her todd and Envy’s todd wer ethe same guy as a douchey joke. When prying about what happened otherwise, Scott admits it was all a blur.. Ramona isn’t ahppy with the answer.. but it’s nto like it’s that unresonable: he was in deep with Envy, and the breakup was damn bad to the point it took a year for him to recover and end up in the relationship he is now and the one before this was clearly a cry for help. It also helps reinfroce just how much Wallace was there for him and probably WHY Wallace hates Envy so much. They probably live together simply because Scott needed a place after college, was in zero condition to get a job or do anything given his zombie like state.. and Wallace just had him move into his bed, platonically and into his place. It’s probably why while Wallace will complain ocasoinally he isn’t that on scott to find a job. He dosen’t need a paying roomate, they do fine just on his sallary and he has a steady, secure job in some sort of calling office, probably working in medical stuff like my mom. He needs his friend to be safe and happy, then he can get on his ass about being functional, as he is in present day. If nothing else this volume made me realize just how good a person Wallace is.  The one thing he CAN remember, to Ramona’s disbelif is a restraunt opening up, the job story he hinted at last volume: basically it was a fancy tex mex place called, and this is one of the best restraunt naems in the history of fiction brace yourself: The Gilded Palace of Flying Burritos. Naturally, as would I as I love tex mex and that name, Scott loved the place, ate there most of the week and like me with some places I liked waited impatietly to get a job. He did and they were even super generous as the food was FREE.  Which is a euphoric feeling I relate to, though I also liked any discounts I got. seriously when I worked at Bagel and Bagel a good chunk of my paycheck was eating there for dirt cheap every shift. I miss that place so much. Like even after I left there I still like a good bagel sandwitch. And it wasn’t covid or anything it was just low staffed and slowly coming apart due to a lack of a solid manager after Crystal, the manager who hired me, transfered to a store closer to her home, which I do not blame her for. 

Point is I get it even if Ramona thinks this is all made up. Anyways at Lee’s Place, based on the real life Leo’s place, everyone’s gussied up: Steven got an awful haircut and Kim... 

But no time to dwell on how great kim’s..everything is.. who DID  Neil bring to the concert? 

While Kim is VERY much enjoying this, everyone else is a bit freaked with Ramona getting assurance her and Scott dated breifly, with Kim quipping her and neil will probably date even breiflyer, and Stephen.. freaking out, wondering if she seduced him, and asking if they should take him out back and kick his ass.. 

Just..... that’s a lot of douche to unpack and this review has been VERY long and suprisingly hard already.. but fuck it, we don’t have much left to go let’s do this. Okay one did she seduce him.. I mean I GUESS, but really let’s be clear here: Neil is a horny, lonely, monosolobic 19 year old who lives with his sister’s college friend and whose life revovles around said guys band. Knives is adorable. She likely barely had to flirt with him to get him to say yes .As someone who was a lonely 19 year old doofus, I guarantee no matter the red flags I probably woudl’ve said yes provided she was 18 instead of 17, despite the abudant red flags such as neil vaugely looking like scott, neil being the one single man within scott’s circle to get her way back in, as Knives hasn’t realized she’s bi yet or given how much she looked up to Kim, she probably WOULD’VE gone for it. As would any sane person, which neither knives nor I entirley are. So she didnt’ so much seduce him as offer him a girlfriend he didn’t have and him being too intrested in having a sweet, caring girl on his arm to see the giant army of adrestian soldiers needed to carry all the red flags this presents. 

And as for “do we need to kick his ass. “ Stephen.. did you kick SCOTT’S ass? No, you fucking abetted him and only stepped in for the good girl thing. You did NOTHING to stop his relationship with knives or tell him he was screwing up or look out for that girl’s well being. This will bite him in the ass even harder in volume 5, but even now it just makes him look REALLY fucking bad that, even if he probably dosen’t mean it, that’s at all on the table. Also.. Neil, unlike scott is doing slightly less wrong. While he is 20 to her 17, three years.. it’s HALF of what Scott and her’s age diffrence is, and far more equal in power structure. It’s still not.. GREAT, but my point is you did NOTHING when Scott did this, for far flimiser and less forgiavble reasons.. but when NEIL, whose been nothing but weirdly loyal to you dates her, you want to kick someone’s ass. I mean yes he’s being stupid: in a clear role reversal of the Scott and Knives situation, it’s obvious just from her expression that KNVIES is the one in control here, and the one using someone to ease her own pain. Granted it’s wrong, if not as wrong as Scott should techincally know better and Knives very clearly dosen’t, as well as get into a show of her faviorite band. Is what she’s doing wrong.. yeah... while she can’t see it again it’s what Scott did just not QUITE as fucked up due to not being AS embalanced. Should neil probably be dating her after scott did ? No. But should you be threatning him and not scott for you know, setting all this in motion? No. Jesus christ you suck Steven. 

Thankfully while Scott presumibly calms Stephen down, Kim spots Hollie and her roomate Joseph, who will be suprisingly important. He’s very gay, very quite, very bearded and is only hear because the bass player is hot and when prodded on it....

Well said. Also I read that with John Heder’s voice fo rsome reason.. don’t know why, his career ended as quickly as it began because he REALLY did not pick his films well. He saw that he was going to be in a film with David Spade and Rob Schinder and didn’t fire his agent for suggesting it. Meanwhile Scott and Ramona run into Sandra and Monique, Scott’s old classmates who just sorta.. show up every so oftne, often backing up Julie because every Alpha Bitch needs a posse. As Boscha has proven once you loose your posse you loose your bitchy powers. They also ask if Scott and Ramona are an item which leads to a fantagious visual gag. 

Also Stephen awkardly talks to the new couple, about how much Knives loves the band, and because why start reading the room now just sorta.. CASUALLY slips in the fact he knows her is because she and scott dated. 

Granted Knives action this book really EARNED her that curveball.. but still, it’s transparently clear she’s both not over Scott and Neil’s a placebo, and that she loves the band... how the fuck did you get through college, much less get two loyalish friends Steve. 

Kim tries to hide when she runs into Sarah whose with.. someon O Malley does not know, literally captioning it “I don’t know htis girl”. Fucking love that gag even if SOMEHOW kim is the roomate they all hate. Despite hte fact as the side story will bare out, her roommates are all pretty obnoxious, so i’ts probably because she’s the only sane person in that group and their VERY lucky kim just dind’t set the place on fire on her way out and let god do what he should’ve a long time ago. Also we meet Lynette, the band’s drummer who smokes “She must be evil” “Still hot though”... both accurate. Also Luke wilson is there.. no really. Just holy shit that’s awesome.  Okay so with all of that out of the way, it’s time for the show. So after a full volume’s build up , and a really cool build up in the page before we finally properly meet clash at the demonhead, and miss envy adams. 

Heck of  a reveal and not the only one as ramona realized what the audience probably already guessed....

Dun dun dun! And since I don’t like leaving a cliffhanger dangling lest I have to... we’ll be getting to this next week.. what you thought i’d say right now or tommorow? This was a lot. But no i’m not leaving you too long. Next week, Evil Ex Crossover! Ramona and Wallace become BFF’s! We learn what the deal with Scott and Envy is! Scott faces the Ken to his Ryu! And Wallace gets a boyfriend. All this and more next week. for now...

Final Thoughts: This one.. was a VERY rough one to review and it ties back to this volume’s biggest problem: it is not paced very well. Like the series as a whole it has a pretty easy going, slice of life pace. The only ones without this kind of easy pacing are 3 and 6, and even 3 has some slice of life bits, their just both more focused due to the events going on. This one... well....

Pretty much. While this one has very important stuff going on, Scott and ramona getting closer, ramona getting more fleshed out, Wallace showing how deep his character is, Kim also getting fleshed out quite a bit, Knives showing off her crazy side, setting up the next volume, the second ex fight.. it’s all just kinda.. jumbled together. It’s not really until the knives fight onward the book takes on some really solid pacing and really gets going.It’s not a BAD book: ther’es some REALLY good character stuff as I dug into.. but the pacing is just really loose and without the Evil Ex fight as an anchor and with ramona and scott just sorta.. getting to know one another, in both biblical and non biblical senses, it dosen’t have either of the series main narrative thrusts. Even the knvies subplot really amoutns to nothing for now, as Ramona dosen’t find out Scott’s a cheater, and only distrusts knives now. That’s about it. It does improve on book one in characterization, with eveyrone being MUCH cleearer in terms of who they are and settling into their iconic selves nicely. Wallace’s more selfless and protective side pops up, Ramona starts to show mroe of her personality good and bad, Scott’s better traits are mixed a bit mor eeven with the douche ones,  Knive’s far more unstable and violet stalker side emerges, and Stephen.. well fuck him, point is things are coming together.. but O’Malley still isn’t quite at peak power yet. Not bad and still worth a read like last time, just a bit uneeven is all. That being said... if you want O’Malley at his peak.. well then come back next week. Until then i’ll be doing my usual buisness of reviewing birds, refrencing simpsons and letterkenny, and putting my eyes back in after kim’s look up there. For now the sun’s setting and i’m out of here. 

#scott pilgrim #scott pilgrim vs the world #ramona flowers #kim pine #stephen stiles #wallace wells #envy adams #lucas lee #oni press #Brian Lee O'malley #knives chau #neil nordgraf

[maeve-of-winter]

I stopped reading omgcp a while ago, but Kent was always my favorite. Can you tell me what the update about him was? I don't want to slog through the rest of it to find it.

Sorry it took so long to respond to this anon, but I really appreciate the ask. I’m going to give a summary of what actually happens in canon in Kent’s ending, and then a short breakdown of why I dislike it.

This turned into a lengthy post and a collection of what I’m sure is only a fraction of the retcons surrounding Kent’s character, so I apologize for that.

If there’s one takeaway to understand from this ending, it’s that this ending really isn’t about Kent or for Kent’s fans, and I’ll explain below.

The canon ending:

—Bitty is taking out the trash at the Haus one night after a kegster when Kent unexpectedly pops up, dressed like every one-off drug addict character ever seen on any crime drama ever. He says he didn’t know how to contact Bitty (I guess Bitty’s Twitter and Facebook must still be on lockdown at this point? Can anyone confirm?), hence why he appears out of the blue. He says he wants to talk.

Note: Kent mentions here that he’s been getting kegster invites from Ransom for years now. It’s unclear why he didn’t try to contact Ransom to get Bitty’s contact info, but that’s really just a nitpick.

—Kent says he wants to wish Bitty good luck in the playoffs (which I guess he’s been following?) and to wish him good luck with Jack. Bitty responds by inviting him in for pie.

—Kent proceeds to try Bitty’s pie and gush about it at length, like every character in the comic has at this point. Actual quote: “Oh my God. Oh my fucking God. This is. Wow. Jesus. Thank you.”

—Kent mentions again he really does want to wish Bitty good luck, and then mentions Jack and wanting to tell him something.

—Bitty asks if Kent would apologize to Jack. Kent seems surprised and says no, but then he says maybe. He brings up the last time they talked, and specifically points out the last time he and Jack spoke and comments, “Not like I said anything terrible.”

—Bitty informs Kent that he was there and confronts Kent about how he treated Jack. At this point, there’s yet another retcon, this time more subtle, about what Kent said.

4.19 version:

Parse Part III (2.09) version:

Note: No mention is made in 4.19 about anything the could be interpreted positively or sympathetically about Kent’s conversation with Jack, including his offer to Jack about freeing up cap space on the Aces so that Jack can be a part of the team [basically that means trading away current Aces players to make room for Jack’s salary], telling Jack repeatedly that he misses him, expressing frustration that Jack shut him out, or telling Jack that he and others still care about him even if Jack thinks of himself as worthless. More on that last part here.

—Kent looks defeated and responds that there was no excuse for what he said, and follows up by saying he’s sorry that Bitty had to hear what he said and also expresses that he’s sorry for saying it at all.

—In the next part, Kent explains his thoughts. Actual quote: “When Jack left hockey, it sucked. And...yeah, he shut me out of his life. But he was taking care of himself. The shit I was doing at eighteen, as a rookie, in the league...wasn't good for him. And if he thinks he owes me an apology for that, he doesn't. I made it about me. But at this point, trying to say all that to him, yeah, that'd still be more for me than for him, you know? He's way, way past...Zimms has done so much for himself...It might sound weird, but I'm proud of Zimms. Even though I was shit to him. I'm proud he's moved on in a big way. He's a great player and Jesus....I'm twenty-six and our shit was forever ago."

Note: Kent unequivocally stating that Jack doesn’t owe him any apologies is a direct narrative retcon of this panel from 2.10.

Second note: Many fans speculated Jack completely cut off all contact with Kent after his overdose when Kent went ahead into the NHL as Jack took time to recover. Kent’s statement in 4.19 is explicit canon confirmation.

—Bitty responds that they were both kids at the time. Kent dismisses that notion in regard to himself. Actual quote: “"Yeah, but Jack grew up. And seeing you guys together? That center ice kiss? Holding the cup? Listen, when I said I came here to tell you good luck, I meant it. That's why I came here, because the more things work out for you, being out and stuff...you know? The more things could work out for everyone else. You guys are doing good stuff. So thank you for that."  

—Kent follows this up by effusively complimenting Bitty’s pie again and telling him he should open a bakery.

—Kent goes to leave and finds Scraps (the one other named Aces player besides Carl) hanging out with Ford and Tango. Scraps was helping them both clean up. It’s unclear if Kent is actually out to Scraps at this point.

—Kent thanks Bitty for the pie again, wishes him luck, and then leaves.

—Also, as an extra, Ngozi responded to an ask about “What’s Kent been up to?” with another drawing of Kent with Bitty’s pie and paying thousands of dollars for it because he loves it so much.

Link here.

My thoughts:

     1. It’s been said before, but this scene taking place between Kent and Bitty is utterly bizarre. These two characters have no history together to make this conversation compelling or meaningful. They’ve never even spoken a word to each other on page before. Additionally, Kent is a closeted NHL player whose career could be destroyed with this information, and so he’s used to keeping his emotions in check. His decision to have this conversation with a stranger at all severely stretches the willing suspension of disbelief and makes it clear that this conversation isn’t occurring because it’s a natural decision for the characters, but for narrative convenience. 

And when you factor in the part about Kent being Jack’s ex-boyfriend who was seemingly in love with him for years after their relationship ended painfully for them both, and that he’s having this heart-to-heart with Jack’s new boyfriend, it shatters the willing suspension of disbelief into a million tiny pieces. Why would Kent want to talk about his baggage with Jack to Jack’s new BF who he’s never spoken to before? There’s no real reason for it. It only happens because Ngozi wanted to have Kent apologize to Bitty regardless of how weird or illogical the scenario for them to talk. And so that’s what happens, even if it’s utterly absurd.

     2. This ending really goes out of its way to paint Kent in a negative light as possible while still having Bitty be the righteous but charitable arbitrator of what’s Good and Decent behavior.

Notice that Bitty offers up an excuse for Kent’s behavior: “Y’all were kids.”

But the narrative makes it clear that the audience is not meant to excuse Kent’s behavior, as Kent then rejects that excuse and shoulders responsibility: “Yeah, but Jack grew up.” (Implying here that Kent did not.) “And seeing you guys together? That center ice kiss, holding the Cup? . . . Listen, when I said I came here to tell you good luck, I meant it. Because the more things work out for you, being out and stuff . . . you know? The more things could work out for everyone else. So thank you for that.”

And I know that as an audience, we’re meant to nod our heads in agreement with Kent and be like, “Yes, what he said was beyond the pale, good for him for admitting it, and good for him for admitting that it was perfectly fine for Jack to spend years refusing all contact with him.” But I’m definitely not nodding in agreement, and the narrative’s refusal to allow this justification really bothers me, because Bitty is right: they were kids. Jack and Kent were kids of the same age and in almost identical situations. So why is it that Jack gets a free pass for his bad decisions while Kent doesn’t?

The answer is, of course, to pacify the section of fandom that really, really wanted to see Kent come crawling back and beg for forgiveness or “get called out”, but that really isn’t any kind of satisfying answer within the story itself.

Simply put, everything about the situation and the dialogue goes to great lengths to paint Kent as the one in the wrong who’s now doing the right thing at long last by shouldering responsibility, all while simultaneously playing down any culpability Jack might hold for the tensions between the two of them.  It is the “Kent Was Wrong” show, and it’s being aired because a certain portion of the fanbase thinks that Kent is villain who needs to repent for all of all of the terrible crimes against Jack and Bitty that he has committed, while Jack is an innocent smol bean who has never done anything wrong in his life.

From 1.05.

However, I will point out that while the 4.19 accomplishes that specific goal, it also fails in the area of character development. Because the narrative works so hard to make it known that Jack is completely blameless, Kent, a minor character whose appearance here in 4.19 marks only the fourth time he appears in canon proper, ultimately winds up growing more as a person than Jack. As much as I dislike his ending, Kent is someone who can admit when he’s done wrong and apologize for it. Jack, to date, has never apologized for how he treated Bitty during the latter’s freshman years. At the end of the day, Kent’s refusal to accept any excuses for his behavior, even the ones that are reasonable and justified, paints him as a more mature individual than Jack.

     3. It’s impossible to ignore the equivalency of Jack and Bitty publicly kissing and coming out with “growing up” and implying that Kent’s decision to remain closeted is therefore immature. This bugs me for several reasons, which I’ll explain below.

The NHL is a highly homophobic environment, as is juniors hockey, where Kent and Jack met and became romantically involved. There’s recently been a lot of discussion on these points from former NHL players Akim Aliu and Dan Carcillo. Conformity is perceived as commitment to the team, and being different or even showing off too much is frowned upon and criticized. RL NHL players like Alex Ovechkin have been criticized for celebrating too much after scoring a goal, and just to show you how extreme it can get, player PK Subban faced ongoing tensions within his then-team the Canadiens because he opted to start his own personal charity for the Montreal Children’s Hospital rather than use the team’s established program. The incident is actually speculated to be a factor in the reasons for his trade to Nashville. That’s right; conformity is so valued that players are criticized for giving to charity the wrong way.  

So, yes, Kent’s growth is very likely to be stunted because he’s coping in such a highly pressurized homophobic environment, dealing with at least one homophobic teammate. Yes, he has chosen his environment insofar as joining and continuing with the NHL, but he didn’t specifically chose its homophobic and toxic culture. And it’s worth mentioning that he’s being contrasted with Jack, a character who took several years off from hockey following a drug overdose, attended an LGBTQ-friendly liberal arts school for four years where he could find himself and grow comfortable with his sexuality and build a strong support network, and then landed on an NHL team where every member was miraculously accepting and not homophobic.

Of course Kent is going to look immature in comparison to Jack if you compare them that way. Kent has been locked into a culture of toxic masculinity and homophobia since he was a teenager and forced to be closeted so he could have a career. And why should he have thought differently? He was being exposed to homophobia on his team, which would have cemented his fears of not belonging in hockey or having a place on his team if he came out as gay.

Meanwhile, with every Falc unfailingly supportive of Jack and Bitty, Jack really had nothing to fear. Honestly, from the way the story develops, it seems as though Bitty’s life was made more difficult by their post-Cup kiss, rather than Jack, who is the celebrity athlete, and, according to canon, the first gay athlete in the history of pro sports.

So while Kent (and canon) might continually praise Jack for growing up and coming out, Jack had far more time to become comfortable with himself and the idea of being openly gay, given that he’s had Samwell as a safe haven for years and multiple close friends he trusts. Kent hasn’t had either of those things. Of course he’s not ready to come out like Jack and Bitty—after all, he’s not out, and he ends up having to listen to Carl’s mockery of queer individuals. And yet, canon would have us think that this decision means he’s not “grown up” like Jack is. So Kent essentially ends up being implied to be immature for . . . being afraid of the homophobia that he already experiences.

From 3.16.

Also, I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again: it’s never sat quite right with me that Jack and Bitty both gets teams that are unfailingly supportive of their sexualities and relationship, while Kent isn’t even out as gay but is stuck dealing with open homphobia from a teammate and has no known support system. Almost as if canon is okay with protecting its main gay couple from homophobia while pushing the struggle against homophobia onto a gay minor character, all while proceeding to put the main couple on a pedestal for “growing up”. I don’t care if Ngozi told us not to worry about it; it really annoys me that no one on the Falcs or SMH is homophobic, but at least one person on the Aces is, and we’re supposed to be okay with it. After all, Ngozi herself told us: “Okay, first of all, ignore Carl”, as if homophobia is something that queer people can totally dismiss and forget about.

Link here.

So, as far as the OMGCP narrative is concerned, homophobia is meant to be something that’s should be easily shrugged off and ignored, and being afraid of it and unwilling to deal with it means that you’re immature and not ready to “grow up” in the way that openly gay individuals have already chosen to. 

     4. The implication that Kent was wrong to be bitter or upset about Jack cutting him off.

This is a fairly simple one, and one where the characterization does an exceptional job at refusing to admit normal behavior. It is perfectly fine for Kent to be upset and hurt that Jack ghosted him. Canon has him accepting all of the blame and saying that he was wrong to not want to let Jack go, but let’s examine the scenario. 

You’re dating a guy for several months and then he abruptly overdoses in a deliberate suicide attempt right before the jump-start to both your futures. You’re forced to abruptly move away to begin your new life without any real closure from the incident, so you’re left hurt and traumatized and wondering if you could have done anything to stop him. You try to reach out to him so you can heal, only for every attempt to be rejected. This behavior and your attempts continue for years. Now, even if you decide to move on, are you going to think fondly of this guy going forward? Or are you going to be hurt and confused and questioning your entire relationship and what you could have done differently whenever you think back about him?

Jack did not overdose in a vacuum. This is not an incident that had zero effect on Kent. And yet, canon seems to want us to think that this highly emotional and traumatic event should have washed right over Kent and that he chose to bear a grudge against Jack due to, like, petty vindictiveness or something. When the real issue is that Jack deliberately refused to give Kent any closure over the incident. And if that’s the case, if Jack is just refusing to speak to Kent over and over, why shouldn’t Kent feel bitterness towards him? Maybe Kent honestly wants to give Jack up and get over him, but needs this resolution to move on, and can’t get anywhere without it. Maybe he’s still hurting from watching Jack almost die. Whatever the reason, Kent being upset with Jack is only human.

     5. Finally, the complete lack of acknowledgement from Bitty or Kent regarding Kent’s individual accomplishments. It’s less obvious than the rest of what’s on page, but I find that this omission speaks the most strongly out of everything that this ending is written by someone who doesn’t really like Kent, specifically for people who don’t like Kent.

Kent was introduced with a multitude of accomplishments. Thirty-one game point streak, one of the best players in the sport, a recent hat trick (three goals) during a game, which earns him congratulations from Holster for it. And he’s not arrogant about his accomplishments—Shitty refers to him as a “modest bro”. Additionally, even though Kent is only at the Haus to see Jack, he still takes the time to take pictures with various Samwell hockey team members.

From 2.08

From Notes on 2.08.

But glaringly, none of these positive qualities are found here. Instead, all Kent does is compliment Jack on growing up, compliment Bitty on his pie, wish them both luck, and apologize to Bitty (for his treatment of Jack). There’s no mention of what’s going on in Kent’s life, no compliments about his hockey or mentions of any recent milestones he’s reached. There’s no exchange of praise between him and Bitty, even though there easily could. Just as an example, one of the many lines where Kent is gushing over Bitty’s pie could have easily led to a response from Bitty congratulating Kent for reaching the five hundredth goal of his career or something similar. 

Or Bitty could have wished him luck at his next game—maybe the Aces are up against their division rivals, maybe they’re up against the top team of another conference. But there’s no mention of anything that has to do with Kent’s present or future, and that’s because this ending really isn’t about Kent or for Kent’s fans. It’s written for Jack/Bitty fans who think Kent is mean or abusive and really wanted this scene of Kent groveling to Jack and/or Bitty. Why else would Jack be absolved of all responsibility for treating Kent badly for years while Kent is left shouldering the blame?

Kent might appear in this chapter, but what we get isn’t actually Kent. This appearance is Kent being used as a device to state information to the audience instead of using interesting and emotional storytelling. We are being told via Kent yet again how Jack is a flawless cinnamon roll, that Jack is oh-so-noble, that Jack and Bitty are brave, that Jack and Bitty are special, and that Bitty’s pies are unnaturally wonderful. And that’s nothing we haven’t seen before.

We ostensibly got an ending for Kent Parson in this chapter. It was just an ending written with a certain audience in mind, and that audience wasn’t people who actually like the character or wanted better for him.

#kent parson #Anonymous #my asks #parse positive #omgcheckpleasecritical #check please #kent parson ending

[youtuberswithalex]

hold on i found all of my old Christian music and im emotional, the nostalgia, so im just gonna do a react post--

first song was Hope is Coming by Nate Deezy and oh boy. oh boy. i met the dude and knowing how he talks and listening to his music. oh boy, he was kind of mimicking AAVE and it’s. not great to listen to now. the song is a bop music wise but. yikes

Overcomer by Mandisa. I used to BOP to this song and you know what? I still do. I saw her in concert and she was AMAZING

The The Earth Is Yours came on, which already was one of my favorites, and it was the cover by Gungor (or their original? I can’t remember) and I almost started crying because. Gungor’s music always made me feel really close to God, like He was my best friend. and now I kind of feel like I’ve lost a friend in stopping being Christian, and though I know I can still pray and stuff while still not being Like That, it just... hurts too much because it was so weaponized against me. I miss relying on Him for everything though.

Pause to get lunch

Good Morning by Mandisa and TobyMac. Hearing “top of the morning to ya” set off a visceral reaction to high five the air. also hearing them interact at the end is adorable

COME ALIVE BY CROWDER OHHH IT’S A BOP!!! 

YOUR LOVE!!! 

IS A LEMONADE

call me out by gungor?!?! how could i have forgotten this one!!!!! OH MY GOD AND I JUST REALIZED??? HOW RELEVANT THIS IS????? IF YOU TAKE OUT THE CHRISTIAN STUFF THIS IS STILL HOW I FEEL?????? CALL ME OUT WHEN I DO THINGS WRONG PLEASE

could i......... do a sanders sides animatic to this

WHITE MAN BY THE MICHAEL GUNGOR BAND. THE SAME BAND BUT A DIFFERENT NAME. THIS SONG NEEDS TO BE PLAYED TO EVERY CHRISTIAN WHITE SUPREMECIST. GOD IS NOT A MAN. GOD IS NOT A WHITE MAN. GOD IS NOT A WHITE MAN SITTING ON A CLOUD. GOD IS LOVE AND HE LOVES EVERYONE.

i just copied and pasted a link to the song on facebook jfkdlsjf pray for me (no pun intented)

Beautiful Day by Jamie Grace... I’m pretty sure I first heard this song on Veggietales? or maybe i freaked out when I saw it on Veggietales bc I already loved this song lmao. But it is still... you guessed it... a bop

i also just realized how much more diverse my music was back then versus now... out of the four artists I’ve listened to, half (if not 3 of them? i don’t remember what Gungor looks like) are POC. bruh current alex, I know all you listen to now is the RWBY soundtrack, but like. Diversify my dude

OHH HEAVEN BY GUNGOR??? THE CHILLEST CHRISTIAN SONG I ADORED

YOU ARE!!!!!!!!! CROWDER AGAIN

oh my god. oh my god jesus freak by newsboys. this song is fucking WILD to see in concert. the drummer goes up on a platform that goes sideways and starts SPINNING. while he’s going H A R D. also this song totally matches up with what i listen to now, style wise??

oh my god im getting dizzy from jamming to this one

R E S T A R T WE’RE GETTING ALL THE NEWSBOYS JAMS SUDDENLY

if anyone’s wondering what im doing as i listen to these, i’m currently checking out these artists’ twitters to see if they’re like... White Supremacist christians. Michael Gungor has made me happiest by blatantly retweeting and talking about the BLM protests, along with a tweet stating firmly that he accepts LGBTQ+ people. I knew I could trust this guy. I followed him. Crowder didn’t have anything blatantly for or against but he did make one post about not hating people using that one Dr Suess book, so like. he can slide for now but im not following him

DO LIFE BIIIIG!!!! JAMIE GRACE!!!!! THIS WAS THE ONE ON VEGGIETALES... WAS IT??? IT WAS AT THE END OF THE STAR TREK KNOCK OFF, I THINK???

OH BABY, FISHERS OF MEN BY NEWSBOYS

GO-O-O-O, GO-O-O-O-O

please be my strength by Gugnor? I don’t remember thohhhhh my heart i remember now

i used to harmonize to this all the time. it was one of the first ones i did that with :(

Steal My Show!! it’s pretty alright still. TobyMac didn’t really Get Me Worshipping like he did with a lot of other people, but I respect him at least-- wait let me check his twitter

alright i can respect him, he’s alright

Ah. Oceans by Hillsong United, AKA the song that every church-goer in 2015 hated because everyone played it every week. good reason to-- it’s really good still. are people still sick of it?? I remember holding my hands up to this a few times. and harmonizing many more

.......but oh man is it long. i do remember that now. eight minutes.......... why....... i definitely cried my eyes out and calmed down at conference one time during the length of this song

just realized that Jesus is a Friend of Mine isn’t on this playlist. Wow, Alex. Wow. What a waste of a Christian playlist.

THAT’S HOW YOU CHANGE THE WORLD

it’s so unfair that so many Christian artist put out That Kind of christian music, while Newsboys just. stole all of the talent. like come on guys spread it a bit. not EVERY song has to be a bop, you know /j

Speak Life by tobyMac. i... think im gonna skip this one jfkdlsj im just so not in the mood for this. He is definitely that That Kind of Christian Music style

LORD YOU ARE GOOD AND YOUR MERCY ENDURES FOREVERRR OH HOW WE JAMMED TO THIS AT CONFERENCEoh god it’s a live version and you can hear the Presbyterian Clap in the crowd

OH MY GOD MUSCLE MEMORY JUST BROUGHT BACK THE DANCE THAT WE HAD AT CONFERENCE OH MY GOD I COMPLETELY FOR GOT ABOUT THIS

i wish it brought back more than just the bridge before the chorus lmfao

alright skipping the rest of this because oh boy is it repetitive

STRONGER BY MANDISAAAA i forgot about this one omg. i loved this one, it used to be my Uplifting Song

Got another tobyMac and just skipped it jfkdsl

OH GOD’S NOT DEAD BY NEWSBOYS the movie was a lot of christians-are-oppressed propaganda but the song is pretty good still, i catch myself singing it sometimes still tbh

TRADING MY SORROWS?!?!?!?!? TRADING MY SHAME???!!!!! LAYING THEM DOWN FOR THE JOY OF THE LORD?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? A BOOOOP

this was another one we had a dance for!!!! i remember this one more bc it was so much easier lmfao

HAPPY DAY!!!!!! THIS WAS MY FAVORITE ONE TO SING AT THE BIG MORNING AND EVENING MEETINGS AT CONFERENCE!!!!!! but this version is so slooooow but i couldn’t find any other version

....You Have Me. The song I always said that, when I die and go to Heaven, I’m going to find God and dance with Them to this song. Maybe, if They’re up there, we still will. This song gave me so much comfort in a time when I felt so alone.

I hope They aren’t mad at me for abandoning them. I hope They understand why I stopped going to church and listening to my parents about Them. That I remember who They truly are supposed to be, and that it’s not Them I left, but the church, and I struggled to disconnect the two. If They’re real... I hope they know that. And I hope They aren’t upset with me. I hope They know I’m sorry.

Fuck. I’m crying.

They DO still me. They DO still have my heart. But it’s the people that pretend to know Them that ruined me. I need to find a way to sever the connection. I want my best friend back. I miss Them. I miss being able to talk to Them about things and trust that They’ll take care of things and take care of *me* because They love me, no matter what my parents say, and They know who I am and They don’t love me despite that, but because of it.

THAT’S what I was taught. THAT’S the God I worshipped. Not the fake one the White Supremacists have taken hold of and ruined. The God that gave up Their only son to prove to us that They love us.

I don’t understand a lot about religion anymore. But I miss Them. I miss that comfort and love.

Fuck. Maybe that’s a good place to end this. If you made it this far, congrats! Thanks for coming on this journey with me. It was a long one. You’ve seen a piece of my heart that I’ll probably stamp back into the closet within a couple of hours lol

#long post #alex communicates #religion tw #abuse mention #caps #there's a lot of caps here jfdklsj

[madamebaggio]

Has Arthur Pendragon and Sansa Stark’s feud just escalated?

What is going on in the music industry? Stark and Pendragon’s feud seemed just like any other pair of celebrities bickering over Twitter.

However, as off last week... It escalated to covers.

No, you didn’t read it wrong: the rockstar and popstar have been exchanging covers via Youtube, and leaving fans confused. Does this mean they made up? Or is it just another episode to the feud?

Chapter 4

“SANSA!”

Sansa almost rolled out of her bed with the shock of having her name screamed like that.

Arya was spending the weekend with her in New York and her sister had always been an early bird, but she hardly ever woke Sansa up like this.

“What the hell, Arya?” Sansa groaned, confused.

Arya barged into her sister’s room, skin almost vibrating with a strange energy. “You won’t believe this!” She was nearly screeching in her excitement.

Sansa couldn’t hold back a fond smile. Her relationship with Arya had come a long way in recent years. They had a hard time connecting as girls because they were too different. Then Sansa started listening to Cersei as if the woman was her new Messiah and things got even worse for a while. She could hardly believe how blind she’d been, and could only be thankful for her sister’s forgiveness and support.

Seeing Arya so at ease with her, to the point she entered Sansa’s room and threw herself onto the bed like this, made Sansa extremely happy.

“Sansa, you have to see this!” Arya was looking like a maniac, waving her tablet in front of her sister’s face.

“What?” She chuckled, picking the tablet up.

Then her eyes went to the screen.

She spent a whole minute in shocked silence, while Arya just bounced in excitement. “He’s got to be joking!” Sansa screeched.

She was going to murder Arthur Pendragon! He covered one of her songs!

And not just any song; he’d chosen “Soap Bubble” -which was from her first album and her first hit- and made a freaking metal cover of it!

It was on YouTube with thousands of views already, as he screamed the lyrics of her ridiculously sweet and innocent song.

It was absolutely ludicrous.

“How did you find this?” Sansa wanted to know.

“He put it on his Twitter.” Arya informed her in glee.

Sansa grabbed her phone and saw that Shae had called her 5 times and Brienne -her agent -another seven. She groaned as she went on her Twitter. Arthur had actually tagged her on the post.

“No hard feelings?” It asked.

The little…

“This is priceless.” Arya snickered, going back to the beginning of the video one more time. “He sounds stupid screaming how his heart is like a soap bubble.”

“That’s it!” Sansa kicked her sheets and got up.

“Where are you going?” Arya called after her.

“I need to find the poppest beat possible. I’ll show him.”

XxX 

Arthur was a bit bummed out. It’d been four days since his cover of Stark’s song had gone viral and she hadn’t said a word.

The internet had gone crazy over it, retweeted it, complained about it, praised it, but nothing from Sansa herself.

Had she hated it?

It had looked like a good idea at the time…

“Hey, you prick.” Back Lack called, putting his head inside the room where Arthur was resting. “Check your Twitter.”

Arthur arched a brow, but grabbed his phone. The band had been weirdly cool about doing the cover. He’d expected protests; instead he got a lot of snickers and pitying looks he was still trying to understand.

Sansa Stark had replied his tweet.

Her reply to his “No hard feelings?” came with the words “None whatsoever” and a video.

He opened the link and almost died. “Holy fuck!”

She’d repaid him in kind! She got his song “Stone Saints” and made a fucking pop cover with it. It had a choreography and backup dancers! Dear Lord, it looked as ridiculous as his had.

He loved it.

The sheer cheek of that woman, using one of his heaviest songs to dance.

Arthur liked the tweet, then grabbed his tablet. He had some research to do.

XxX

“He did it again!” Shae announced, barreling into the room.

Sansa sighed. It was a sad state of affairs that she didn’t even need to ask who Shae was talking about.

After she replied Arthur’s tweet with her own cover the internet had nearly broken. There had been a lot of offenses coming from his fans, because she’d ‘desecrated’ the song. However, many people thought it was hilarious.

She should’ve guessed he wouldn’t be able to keep quiet.

“What song now?” She asked resigned.

“Oh no. You have to see it.” Shae seemed particularly delighted, and Sansa felt a bit worried.

She still hadn’t figured out Arthur’s game. What exactly did he expect? Was he doing this to promote himself? He didn’t need it. Or at least she didn’t think he did.

Sansa took a deep breath before opening the new link.

It wasn’t what she’d expected.

He wasn’t making a screaming cover of one of her popper ballads; he’d chosen one of her new ones, “Cathedral”, a slow and sad song she’d written for this last album. He was alone in this video, just playing the guitar and singing.

And he was good! His voice was strong and evocative; she’d heard some of his softer songs before, but this…

It should be annoying, she should be pissed at him.

But she wasn’t. Not even close.

And that pissed her off.

She threw the tablet on the couch. “What’s wrong with him? He has way too much free time.”

Shae was trying to hide her amusement and failing miserably. “I read his band is on a short break before going back to the studio.”

“That explains it.” Sansa grumbled.

She felt challenged now. Like he was showing her he could do something different. “He asked for it.” She declared mostly to herself.

“Hey!” Shae ran after Sansa. “He might be on a break, but you aren’t!”

“This won’t take long.” Sansa threw over her shoulder.

Shae just sighed. Let the girl have some fun.

XxX

Arthur wasn’t sure what Sansa would do, but he knew she’d do something. He spent the next days glued to his phone and focused on his Twitter like he’d never been before.

His second cover of Sansa’s song hadn’t created as much noise as the previous one, probably for sounding more serious and being way less ridiculous.

When he started looking for a new song to cover, the pitying-slash-amused looks came back. His bandmates didn’t seem inclined to share the source of all those looks, just to keep providing them.

He’d thought long and hard before choosing “Cathedral”. He’d considered doing another funny one, but...

Why lie? He wanted to impress Sansa Stark. He wanted her to like his cover, but he didn’t want to analyze why he wanted that. It was already bad enough he was admitting he wanted it.

Two days after he posted it, he got an answer. He was talking to the band about the plans for the next album when his phone pinged, announcing he’d been tagged in a post by Sansa Stark.

“Just take it, mate.” Back Lack rolled his eyes. “We all know how much you want to.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” He challenged.

Wet Stick snorted. “You’ve been sleeping with this phone for the last two days. Just check the fucking thing.”

He gave his bandmates his most unamused look, but he checked his Twitter anyway.

Fuck, she was trying to break him.

He’d chosen “Cathedral” because the lyrics were powerful, the words really made him feel something. He liked putting his touch into it, and just playing the guitar.

She’d done exactly the same thing, or so he believed. She’d picked “The Sword” and sang it alone, playing the piano. He didn’t even know she could play.

It was…

“Just call her.” Back Lack asked, clearly beyond tired of this bullshit. “Please, mate, do us all a favor, and call her.”

Arthur cleared his throat. “She probably doesn’t wanna talk to me.”

Nimue gave him an incredulous look. “Since when to you care about that?”

“Oy.” He hit her with a pillow. “I’ll just…” He indicated the door, and they all kept looking at him with those fucking pitying looks.

Arthur closed the door behind himself and cleared his throat one more time, before looking for her assistant’s contact.

He could do this. She was just a girl.

He pressed the call button. Shae -the amazingly nice assistant -picked the call in the second ring. “Took you long enough.” She threw at him, before he could say anything. He didn’t even have time to reply that before Sansa’s voice came over. “Why am I not shocked?” She asked bemused.

“Because you know I have no self-control, Stark.” He couldn’t contain a smirk. “Did you like the songs?”

“I didn’t know you could sing without screaming.” She teased.

“I didn’t know you could sing without backup dancers.” He threw back.

She chuckled. “Touché.”

“So… Friends now?”

He heard her scoffing, could even picture those pretty blue eyes rolling. “Don’t push your luck, Pendragon”. She hung up.

Arthur knew he had the stupidest grin ever on his face, so he decided to take a break before going back in. His friends would never let him leave this down otherwise.

Notes: I wasn’t planning on posting this today, but I couldn’t resist. I love this chapter, because it goes deep into fluff and wishful thinking. Two super famous people trading covers give me warm feelings... lol

A few observations...

Apparently “to cover” is a verb. Or so I’ve been told. I’m mostly confused by it, but one of my friends insisted it works. Let me know if she lied to me! Lol

Sansa’s songs are all translations from Brazilian songs. There is an axé song called “Soap Bubble”, that does say that a guy turned her head and heart, making it like a soap bubble. Not joking. “Cathedral” is a deeper song. I wanted Sansa to have something like her own “Skyscraper” (the one by Demi Lovato), but didn’t want to just steal Demi’s song… Arthur’s are all Slipknot songs. I’d say Stone Saints would be something like “Psychosocial” and “The Sword” could be something like “Snuff”. Funny fact: I went to a Slipknot concert a few years back, completely alone, because I couldn’t find anyone to go with me. I was the only one wearing white.

I wasn’t sure if “pop” became “poppest”, but according to the rules I learned in school… It should be, so I just went for it XD

I absolutely love when people cover pop songs with a metal twist. Unfortunately I couldn’t find any cover that was the other way around, but if you know anyone that turned a Metallica song into something like Baby one more time, please, let me know ASAP.

Anyway... Let me know your feelings!

Next chapter: Arthur gives an interview, Sansa finds out that the internet is shipping it pretty hard and the Stark clan has an opinion on the matter.

#madame baggio #fanfiction #CrossOver #Crossover Pairings #game of thrones #king arthur legend of the sword #modern au #Sansa Stark #Arthur Pendragon #Sansa x Arthur #theres no way

[microkittycosplay]

(Sorry didnt finish that) Reason people who buy your stuff are respectful is because we want more and dont want you to stop doing what your doing because we like it. And we also arent shits Reason people who dont buy are shits is because they are jealous and want to ruin it for everybody

rant warning / tangent warning: People who steal stuff are for sure 100% shits, people who don’t buy my stuff aren’t bad people. I don’t buy content from everyone I follow, I would be bankrupt if I did! If you can’t afford content from someone, but want to support them, the best thing to do is hit the retweet, retumble, share, like, comment on things. Here’s a handy guide to helping your favorite content creators if you aren’t paying them: Facebook: comment (even generic (beautiful!) is great!) hit a reaction like “wow” or “love” Instagram: hit like and comment Twitter: retweet if it doesn’t embarrass you, liking and commenting will also result in it showing to people who follow you though! Tumblr: retumble that shit. Why^? Websites use algorithms. So Facebook serves a post to say, 500 people, if only 50 people like it, it won’t get served to anyone else. Any time you see your creator uncredited: if you see your fave content creator posted without credit, credit them in the comment section. Link people who are looking for who they are to their pages, Facebook, store, patreon or whatever. I watermark “microkitty” on my shit so people don’t catfish as me and so people who want to find me from ripped / reposted images can find me if they want to. ——————I end most of my posts with “you don’t need to pay me if you don’t want to or can’t” and I truly mean that. I would rather go a day without pay than have someone unable to afford something they need. I’m happy people want to pay me to see more. I wish there was a way to give people who truly care about me to get a discount, but the discounts are constantly abused by people looking for a cheap deal and often when I post an emergency discount because I NEED money (like medical or urgent fucking need) my sets are leaked and people post about me being desperate. So I agree with some of your statement, but I really need to stress and defend my non-paying audience, because only like .... 5% of people are fucking pieces of trash, everyone else seems to be a-okay in my book. But also, don’t steal my stuff (or other peeps stuff) guys. We aren’t being paid by views, we get paid when peeps spend money. Some months I barley scrape by, and that’s fine cause that’s the life I chose for now. Having people constantly treating me like I make as much money as larger creators like j.niggs or whoever is stressful and damaging. I know a lot of the misunderstanding or “drama” around me is how I market myself, but I have a lot of issues with the state of like.... porn and porn culture. I’m comfortable doing what I’m comfortable with, but the way people treat cam girls and porn and really any woman making money off her body is really toxic. So like.... idk, if you find yourself demanding free content from an artist or cam girl or really anyone, just stop. We aren’t big corporations, we’re never going to be on that level. Respect is something a lot of people have to learn to give sex workers and artists and people who do trade work. We make our own prices because we decide our worth. If you don’t think someone’s prices are worth it, just don’t pay them. That’s not on you 🤷🏼‍♀️ just don’t try to steal their shit and call them ugly and fat while you do it 🤦🏼‍♀️

[kanyeweth]

#rip-sad-frogs-district?

Earlier today, the Sad Frogs District NFT collection was removed from OpenSea’s marketplace. In lieu of an extended eulogy (which is probably unnecessary), let’s take a look at what happened here. 

Sad Frogs District is one member of the horde of generative NFT art collections that have been released in the wake of projects like Bored Ape Yacht Club, Gutter Cat Gang, and The Wicked Craniums. 

SFD’s launch checked all the boxes for us: a functional and well-made website, a (relatively) smooth minting process, an active community, and art that is — dare I say it — kind of endearing: 7,000 algorithmically generated Pepe-esque frogs with a cyberpunk vibe.

So what went down? Cash grab rug pull lol fuck you? Disappearing dev team? 

Neither. The collection seems to have been taken down by OpenSea itself in response to a DMCA claim from Matt Furie, creator of the 2005 comic Boy’s Club (AKA the creator of Pepe the Frog). That cartoon frog’s rise in popularity and subsequent adoption as a symbol of hate — which was truly unfortunate but neither here nor there in regard to this post — prompted Furie to launch a flurry of copyright claims on the character’s likeness being used.

As of right now, it looks like the SFD team is working its way through the issue: 

The team has already sent on over the counter DMCA to OpenSea, please be patient with us while we await a response. If you have any questions, please join our discord linked in our bio and we will assist your questions as best we can. #FreeSadFrogs — SadFrogsD on Twitter

In the NFT realm, it’s easy to be insulated and forget about the rules and institutions that run the real world. There’s a real sense that you’re operating within a whole ‘nother world technologically (which may be true), financially (which won’t be true for long), and legally (which isn’t true at all). 

OpenSea’s status as the space’s premier trading platform has, in the wake of today’s action, led to questions about the decentralization of the NFT space in general. If they need (or feel the need) to bend to the whim of any DMCA claim or legal action (leaving Sad Frog holders to trade on lesser-known and lower-prestige exchanges), are we really operating in a decentralized environment?

No. Of course not. 

Is that good or bad? Depends on who you ask. 

Way back when, a core feature (philosophy?) of the crypto/NFT space was that trading was largely unmolested by pesky exchange commissions, legislative assemblies, and so on. There’s something wild and romantic about that, but it is fundamentally incompatible with reality. We both think copyright is important and we don’t think artists should get ripped off. Is that what happened here, though? That’s not for us to decide.

Crypto and NFTs boomed in 2021 largely because so-called n00bs entered the space and brought lots of money with them. Every next mainstream media piece about NFTs (the New York Times wrote about Pudgy Penguins for god’s sake), will bring more in, and then more, and then more still. It would be foolish to assume regulation isn’t far behind. 

OpenSea is a business, and makes money when people buy and sell things. It doesn’t care about centralized vs. decentralized, it cares about money. As such, you can argue that it is in OpenSea’s best interests to be the Wild West and just as easily argue that there’s more money to be made by being as “legitimate” as possible.

— rrn pitched most of the game here, and hotel closed it out

#nft #nfts #sad frogs district #sad frogs #opensea #rarible #bored ape yacht club #bayc #gutter cat gang #gcg #the wicked craniums #wicked craniums #twitter #regulation #new york times #money #pudgy penguins #kanyeweth