#kara being turned on is hashtag relatable | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

quell-tea-salon · 7 years

Photo

SolidS QUELL Party (SQP) event report~! (Warning: I ramble. A lot.)

The concert was over a month ago and unfortunately I have a memory on par with a goldfish, but it was one of the best experience I’ve had in Japan so far and I’ll try to recall as much as I can ;;;

The event took place on July 16th at the Kokugikan in Ryogoku. I was blessed enough to win tickets for the afternoon session, and arrived early to queue so I could enter the hall without standing in the sun for too long. There was a booth outside selling official concert merchandise like character goods and light sticks; I didn’t buy any, but there were loads of people near the booth who had laid out their purchased merchandise for trading (since most of the character goods are blind boxes). I should’ve brought along my SolidS merch to give away, since I’m really only into QUELL. (OOT: QUELL and SolidS are usually grouped together in blind box merch. I love everyone in QUELL so my chances of getting something I like is preeeeeeeetty high, but for some reason I keep getting Shiki?! So if anyone wants Shiki merch, let me know. I have... lots.)

There was probably life-sized standees of the characters somewhere in the lobby but I couldn’t find them ;; I went to look for my seat which was on the 1st floor and quickly realised that half of my view of the stage was blocked by the speakers...grr. Couldn’t complain too much though, since I was lucky just to be there. The photos above were taken while waiting for the rest of the crowd to take their seats. In the meantime, SolidS and QUELL PV’s were played on the projection screen. Every time SolidS appeared on screen, the audience screamed lol. There was some noise for QUELL too, but definitely not as loud... I was quietly cheering for my sons in my heart ;w; Started chatting with the girl sitting next to me and found out that she was a SolidS fan (of course), and that her favourite was Dai-chan (good taste). I really wanted to give her my SolidS merch.......

About 15 minutes before the show started, the two Lizz squirrel mascots (purple for SolidS, blue for Quell) emerged on stage, dressed in sumo gear (in reference to the venue, which is usually a sumo wrestling ground), to say hi to the arena audience. They were so big and round... ;w; I was super jealous of people who had tickets for arena seats, they got to be so close to the stage!!

The lights dimmed and SolidS appeared on stage as the audience went crazy. They opened the set list with KARA DA KARA, followed by Quell’s HIKARI. My heart was about to beat out of my chest, I was just so happy to be able to see my Quell sons in the flesh ;_______; I don’t know if my seat position in relation to the speakers had anything to do with this, but I couldn’t really hear the vocals well ;_; The music was too loud and vocals sounded muffled.... Nevertheless, getting to hear the groups sing live was a magical experience.

Next, everyone came back out onto the stage for introductions and opening talk (while admiring the 360 degrees seating). I only realised this after the concert, but they were all dressed in the same clothes as the characters in the official concert art! SolidS all slick and deadly in urban monochrome outfits, and Quell looking all breezy and relaxed in loose charcoal and blue. The twins of course were wearing matching clothes, down to the accessories....... ugh... angels..... Nogami even had Ichiru’s hairstyle T_T

The Lizz squirrels popped up on stage occasionally and the cast members gave them lots of love; Takeuchi kept hugging the Quell Lizz and squeezing his tail lol (he really loves cute animals). Nishiyama and the twins took turns holding his hands or gently guiding him around the stage (family aura!!). SolidS......... grabbed their Lizz by the crotch....

Moving on to the solo performances. Shiki took the lead with Tide, followed by Tsubasa with Canaria. I wasn’t familiar with any of the songs, but i could tell that the audience loved them. I don’t particularly appreciate Eguchi and Saito’s singing styles, but they had a lot of energy and really knew how to work the crowd.

After that, it was QUELL’s turn. First to perform was of course Shu, with End of Night. Takeuchi was completely at home on stage, strutting around and engaging the audience. I was surprised that he had backup dancers and i don’t know if he was meant to know the choreograph, but he danced along with ease and at other times swayed his hips in a way that made my inner mom voice want to yell at him to behave lol (I can’t help it, he’s so young). In recordings, Shu’s vocals are bold and precise; during the concert, Takeuchi was singing as himself - messing around with the melody, using short, breathy notes, and just having lots of fun. It sounded very different from the recorded version of End of Night, but it was a great performance regardless.

Issei took to the stage to sing Hoshizora (starry sky) as the audience changed their light sticks to blue. IMO Shugo gave the most solid performance of the show. Issei’s voice was clear and powerful, but sweet and delicate at all the right moments. And he thanked us for showing him a beautiful starry sky with our light sticks T_T At this point the CD actually hadn’t been released yet so all we had was the demo. The full song was incredible. FYI, Shugo played the guitar for Hoshizora; I would’ve died if he had actually played the guitar at the concert too...

After the song, the rest of Quell joined Issei on stage. Ichiru ran STRAIGHT at Issei and gave him a tackle hug T___T I can’t deal with these two...

The next segment was SoriRaji (SolidS radio) and QueRaji (QUELL radio). Again, my memory is pretty fuzzy, but I’ve tried to jot down as much as I can remember.

Eichi was probably nervous and kept messing up his lines. The twins cheered him on together with “Eichi, faito!” godddddddd so cute ><

Question for Shu: When did you realise that the twins had opened up (to you/Quell)?

Shu: I took a nap on the sofa one day, and when I woke up I found the twins asleep next to me

Ichiru: WAAAAAAAAAAAAA DON’T SAY ANY MORE

Issei: You looked so comfortable sleeping there, we couldn't help joining in...

Ichiru: Though it was creepy waking up to find Eichi STARING at us

Eichi: I was so jealous!!! I wanted to join in but there wasn't enough space on the sofa ;_;

There was a question directed at Shu, I don't quite remember what it was but it had something to do with Shu's schedule being busier than the others and whether it was hard for them to spend time together.

Eichi: Shu's usually the first one awake and out at work before the rest of us are even out of bed.

Twins: We should try to get up earlier sometimes and have breakfast together!

Shu: *Weeps into hands* My children are precious... (#Mychildrenareprecious became the official twitter hashtag for SQP lmao)

Question for the twins: What kind of cakes do you like?

Issei: I like mille crepe and cream puffs

Ichiru: I like cream puffs too! And mont blanc, and chocolate cake, and strawberry short cake! Anything with whole strawberries on top!

Mom, dad & audience: Aww...

Ichiru: W-what?! I just like desserts with lots of cream, what's wrong with that?!!!

Shu: That's cute ^^ I don't eat a lot of sweets but if I had to pick one, it'd be rare cheese cake

Eichi: Ti. Ra. Mi. Su <3

Question for the twins: Issei, as the older sibling, have you ever wanted Ichiru to call you "oniichan?"

Issei: I’ve never really thought about it before and I don’t think that it’s necessary, but now that it’s been mentioned I kinda want to hear it...

Ichiru: .....Hear what

Issei: You calling me oniichan

Shu: I’m filming this :)

Ichiru was reluctant ofc, but after some prodding from mom and dad (and the audience)...

Ichiru: (smol voice) .....Oniichan

Shu, Eichi, Issei: *FIST PUMP*

Audience: *DEAD*

Question for everyone: If QUELL was to go on holiday together, where would you go?

Ichiru: Okinawa!! I reaaaaaaaally wanna go to Okinawa!!!

Shu: *fond dad face* Let’s go ^^

Ugh they were 1000000% Happy Family, it was the CUTEST thing to watch.... I was trying not to die from how cute the twins were and it was reassuring to see Shu also trying his best not to burst into tears whenever the twins did or said something cute (which was ALL THE TIME).

I don't remember much from SoliRaji (SolidS radio), but #PHO~! became the other designated SQP tag because Shiki kept yelling that word LOL. It started with Shiki answering a question about his favourite south east asian food or something, and his reply was Vietnamese pho ("PHOOOO~!!"). That became a running gag throughout the rest of the concert wwwww Dai answered Thai green curry :3c

And oh, in response to a question about who had the biggest hands in SolidS, all 4 pressed their hands together to compare sizes (Tsubasa and Dai even snuck in a lovers grip). Cue lots of dying screams from the audience, haha. In the end, Shiki was the largest, followed by Rikka, Dai, and Tsubasa (obviously based on the seiyuus hands, though I was surprised that Hanae’s hands were bigger than Umehara’s).

In a nutshell, Eguchi and Umehara were wrecking havoc by running their mouths, so Saito had his hands full running damage control... as usual ww

After a short break the show continued with the solo songs, starting with Rikka’s Good Night My Darling. I always enjoy hearing Hanae sing live, he has such a pretty voice! Next was Dai’s Jinsei Hard Mode. Umehara’s singing improves every time I hear it... and obviously we all know he’s ikemen, but in person he’s even more gorgeous, goddamn.

Ichiru’s Akaku Somaru Sora (red sky) was as energetic and straightforward as in the CD! Tbh i think singing as Ichiru stifles Nogami’s skills (apparent when you hear Nogami singing in his own voice, and yes, that’s Shugo next to him) but he’s great to watch live and i LOVE that he waves enthusiastically at the crowd as Ichiru!!

When it was Eichi’s turn to sing his solo, Niji (Rainbow), we were all super excited because the song’s demo isn’t even out yet, and here we got to listen to it live, in full!! It was a fun, summery pop tune, befitting its title, and the whole time Eichi was hopping around and waving at the audience with a huge smile. He really was emitting rainbows and flowers T___T Nishiyama’s not the strongest singer in QUELL, but he definitely embodies Eichi’s cheerfulness.

SolidS returned to the stage to perform Tokyo LOVE Junky, followed by Quell with Aoi Mizu. I had mixed feelings when I first listened to Aoi Mizu since it felt completely out of place on a Quell album, but i figured they probably needed at least one upbeat concert-friendly song, and sure enough it seems like Aoi Mizu was written for this purpose. It’s definitely a lot easier to shake your light stick in time with the song compared to Hikari, or even Believer ^q^

We were asked to participate in a recording for the Tsukipro anime that’s airing in October. They wanted us to yell out the characters’ names or scream “kya~!” to use during actual concert footage in the anime!!! They were only recording for SolidS in the afternoon which meant that Quell’s would get done during the night show... I wanted to be there for Quell too >< Anyway, SolidS took turns going up on stage and used hand signals to indicate when we should start/stop yelling. Each recording lasted 30 seconds iirc? The audience was happy to comply haha, we went WILD. Shiki went first, then Tsubasa. When it was Rikka’s turn, Hanae wanted some variation lol he asked us to whisper when he put his hand down, and tune up the volume as he raised his hand. It was a lot of fun, I was laughing half the time because he was contorting his body (bending over backwards etc) while moving his arm, just being a clown really. We did our best to match his hand movements and got praised for it at the end :3 Lastly, Umehara got up for Dai and his first words were “Don’t call me Dai-chan” JKSDGJLHGDFLJ CUTE he used the same system as Hanae and ofc most of us screamed “DAI-CHAAAAAAAAAAAAANNN” ^q^

The show came to a close with the obligatory event ending song Sexy☆Sense. Obviously performed by SolidS as it’s their song, but Quell stuck around to join in. There was a lot of activity on stage but I mostly kept my eyes on the twins ;w; I have to admit that SolidS’ music is not really my taste, but Sexy☆Sense is super catchy and it’s hard not to sing along. A supercharged ending to an amaaaazing concert!!!

I’ve pre-ordered the SQP DVD so that I can watch what happens in the night session >< Can’t wait!! To those of you who managed to survive my TL;DR, thank you for your patience!

#QUELL #SolidS #tsukipro #SQP #takeuchi shunsuke #nishiyama koutarou #nakamura shugo #nogami sho #eguchi takuya #hanae natsuki #saito souma #umehara yuichiro #event report

49 notes · View notes

sheminecrafts · 5 years

Text

Twitter opens applications for its ‘prototype’ program, first tests to focus on fixing conversations

They will include a new design for replies to make it easier to follow a conversation; rounded shapes on reply tweets; indents to follow responses; hiding engagement and sharing behind a tap to bring out the content of replies; and introducing colors to add more context.

We got an early look at these features when we saw the “beta” app in January (which is now referred to as a prototype rather than beta effort); read on for more on all the features.

Improving the look and feel of how Twitter works is a tall order, to say the least. Many have pointed out, and the company now admits, that back-and-forth tweets are too hard to follow. Given that Twitter’s core premise is that of a platform for conversations, that not only limits the product’s usefulness, but it potentially puts off newcomers as well.

These issues recently came to a head when Twitter’s own CEO Jack Dorsey attempted to participate in a tweet-based interview with journalist Kara Swisher. As their conversation continued, Twitter’s failings on this front were on clear display. Despite the use of a public hashtag, people were confused as to how to track the reporter’s questions and @jack’s answers.

“This thread was hard,” Dorsey tweeted at the end of the interview. “Need to make this feel a lot more cohesive and easier to follow.”

While interviews with major tech execs aren’t an everyday occurrence on Twitter (yet?), longer conversations with threaded replies are, and they’ve perhaps become even more prevalent after Twitter doubled its character count from 140 to 280 in late 2017. That change allowed people to share their expanded thoughts with more nuance, which in turn prompted more thoughtful replies.

Around the same time, Twitter turned “tweetstorms” into an official product, allowing people to tweet out a series of connected thoughts, each which invite their own related series of responses.

With all these changes, tracking the growing amount of back-and-forth has become overly complex, especially when a conversation has a lot of participants.

That’s the problem the new testing program aims to better understand and eventually solve.

“It’s kind of a new take on our thinking about product development,” Sara Haider, Twitter’s director of product management, said in an interview in January. “One of the reasons why this is so critical for this particular feature is because we know we’re making changes that are pretty significant.”

Within a separate, standalone app, the company will roll out experiments that allow the Twitter community to more directly participate in the early development process. At launch, that means fixing conversations. But over time, Twitter aims to use this platform to try out new ideas before they make their way to the public product.

Fixing conversations could be one of the biggest changes to Twitter to date, she noted, which is why it’s critical for the company to get it right.

“We need you to be part of this process, so that we know we’re building the right experience,” Haider said.

Above: the development build at CES; the new product will look different, we’re told

Like the build TechCrunch previewed in January, the soon-to-launch Twitter prototype will feature an entirely new design for Replies where the conversations themselves have a rounded, more chat-like shape and are indented so they’re easier to follow. It won’t be the first time it has tried this, but softer edges, it seems, are thought to look more human.

The company isn’t yet sharing images, but says you can imagine the Replies look more like the chats you see in Direct Messages — that is, they’re more rounded, but not exactly speech bubbles.

Engagements, sharing options and other tweet details, meanwhile, will also get hidden from view to further simplify things. You will have to tap on the tweets in order to view them, Twitter says. Again, the aim here will be to put the focus more on what’s being said, not to act on it. This is actually an interesting shift, since so much in social media has been focused around engagement. Now, Twitter’s going to see if taking away some of those engagement nudges will, essentially, keep people around longer.

Above: Engagements are hidden on the development build seen at CES

Making conversations color-coded to highlight the tweets from the original poster as well as those tweets from people you follow is a straight play at giving more visual cues to the reader of a conversation.

“Reader” might be the operative word here. One of Twitter’s big issues with conversations is that they can be too noisy when too many people get involved. One solution to that might also be to try to think of how that might get limited, either so that only certain replies are seen (which is something that Twitter is already doing to some extent, by putting replies from people you follow at the top), or perhaps so that not all people can reply — an idea that the CEO himself has teased as a possibility. Both position Twitter as a reading-first, not engagement-first, experience, which is why making those replies easier to read is so important.

In the development build we saw last month, those colors were overly saturated for testing purposes. In the prototype, they’ve been dialed down. Now, people you follow will be in blue and the responses from the original poster are gray.

The reply highlighting is now just a shadow line along the reply, as opposed to the entire reply being colored, Twitter tells us.

The company says it will only accept a couple of thousand testers into the program. But unlike many beta programs, which are closed, testers aren’t under NDA. Instead, they’re encouraged to tweet about the test and discuss the changes with the broader Twitter community so more people can weigh in with their thoughts.

In addition, testers will be able to submit feedback through a closed form or they can just tweet to Twitter’s teams.

The tweet-and-reply system has been a thorn in Twitter’s side for years. Because Twitter was originally designed as a short-form, SMS-like platform, it never anticipated how it would evolve into the discussion platform it has become today.

The company has tried in vain to figure out how to simplify things for users for years. For example, it added connecting lines between tweets and responses, made @usernames in replies a part of the tweet’s metadata and even changed the Reply icon itself. Recently, it added an “original tweeter” badge to conversation threads, too.

The company says it will mostly invite English and Japanese speakers to the testing program. Participants must follow the Twitter Rules to be invited. However, they don’t necessarily need to be longtime Twitter users. In fact, the company tells TechCrunch it aims to have a range of people involved, from those who don’t use Twitter often to those who use it consistently.

Those interested in applying to the program can do so from the tweet posted by the @TwitterSupport account or can use this link. If accepted, users will receive an email informing them of the next steps.

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2IrLJvE via IFTTT

#IFTTT #iraidajzsmmwtv

0 notes

readersforum · 5 years

Text

Twitter opens applications for its ‘prototype’ program, first tests to focus on fixing conversations

New Post has been published on http://www.readersforum.tk/twitter-opens-applications-for-its-prototype-program-first-tests-to-focus-on-fixing-conversations-2/