#we reblog ourselves constantly because nobody else will and maybe to make our work look like it has more notes than it does

[miwtual]

im so fucking tired of the disrespect gifmakers get on the gifmaker website

#kai.txt #negativity tw #(sorry these are gonna be a lot of tags. i have a lot of feelings and i dont know where else to put them) #we make gifs and nobody reblogs them #when they do get reblogged all people want to tell you is that your gifs arent good enough to them and rip it to shreds #'you're missing x' 'why didnt you do y' 'if i made this i would have abc' 'hey op ur wrong and this is why' 'i dont like this op' #reposters dont even reblog your fucking gifset but they'll save your gifs to repost later asking for how to do something #that they could have asked you how to do in the fucking first place #we reblog ourselves constantly because nobody else will and maybe to make our work look like it has more notes than it does #to make ourselves feel better about the lack of interaction we're getting #and then when we TALK about this frustration we have. people who are too afraid to say it to our faces #go on anon in our askboxes and tell us how we're somehow selfish for wanting people to interact with the sets #that we spent time on. hours. days. WEEKS in some cases #or we get anons who tell us the reason we dont have notes are because we arent good at gifmaking in the first place #but this is all on anon. because they're too scared to tell it to our faces #they're too scared for us to see that they ARENT a gifmaker and that they dont know how to do it any better either #they dont see us as people doing something we love as a hobby. they see us as content machines that dance like court jesters #im just so fucking tired of the disrespect #and this sentiment goes for more than just gifmakers. graphicmakers. artists. literally any creative hobby shared on this site #we get treated like shit and for what? literally for fucking what.

[beansprouts]

Bean’s Eurovision 2021 Top 5!

(aka Bean’s Eurovision 2021 Song Ranking: Part 5)

This is the S-tier for me, and I would be ecstatic if any of the following artists won.

5) Manizha - Russian Woman [Russia]

I genuinely don’t understand how, Russia being the way it is, this pro-LGBT Tajik refugee utter goddess managed to catapult her modern feminist anthem to winning the Russian national competition. Maybe after charming everyone with internet darlings / rave trolls Little Big last year, Russia decided a conventional Eurovision act was for squares? Or maybe Manizha is just that good? Honestly probably a bit of both. This song is a tour de force. If you’re like me you might need multiple listens to be ready for it, because it exists somewhere outside of conventional genre expectations, but I promsie it’s worth it. If it wouldn’t be insulting to Manizha I would suggest it comes from an alternate universe where electronic music is more freeform and you could combine Russian girl-rap with a sick synth guitar (sitar??) drop without it being weird. I feel I need to mention again how good that drop is. It’s not a dubstep-type drop, but when that first beat kicks in you feel the energy, and it makes the subsequent slowdown for the lyrical belts (”Борются, борются Все по кругу борются, да не молятся”) all the more impactful. That her message reduced so many Russian viewers (and a fucking cultural committeeperson) to pearl-clutching only proves how much it’s needed. People hate to see an immigrant woman win. But, have you seen her? She’s fierce and she cannot be shut up <3

4) 10 Years - Daði og Gagnamagnið [Iceland]

If you follow my tumblr you’ve probably seen me reblog stuff about Daði Freyr, because I think he’s delightful and I love everything he does. In the wake of Hatari’s BDSM-with-a-message shaking the world in 2019, Iceland swung in the complete opposite direction in the best possible way by introducing us to Daði Freyr, potentially one of the most wholesome musicians of all time, and his high-school-found-family-turned-band-Gagnamagnið. Their 2020 song Think About things was written as a sort of letter of hope and acceptance to Freyr’s young daughter who’s too young to form opinions. It’s utterly charming and probably would have (deservedly) won last year’s Eurovision if the pandemic hadn’t caused it to be cancelled. 10 Years, in turn, is a love letter to Freyr’s wife, with whom he’s been married a decade. Freyr’s style is both unusual and distinctive: smooth and simple yet irrestibly catchy vocals, funky brass fills, and the gorgeous experimental synths of a self-trained internet hobbyist. His attachment to his old-school 8bit aesthetic makes him not just endearing to my own nerdy biases, but refreshing to a generation of Eurovision viewers tired of the overproduced and inauthentic bombastic power ballads of yesteryear. Freyr is clearly the musical genius of the group (as evidenced by his frequent covers, streams, and other fun experimental breadcrumbs he clearly releases just for the sheer fun of music) but I also love that he’s always surrounded by his buds. That one in the front is his wife :) You can tell they’re friends, you can tell they’re having such fun, and it’s a straight rush of serotonin to me and anyone else who goes buckwild for found family in fiction. I want to play video games with him. 🎵How does it keep getting better????👯‍♂️

3) Discoteque - The Roop [Lithuania]

The Roop’s Discoteque is the ultimate theme song for dancing by yourself in your room. That is it, I have condensed its essence into one sentence for you. It’s really not hard to get the appeal of that. Haven’t we all been trapped in our rooms for the past year? Don’t we all need to be told that “it is ok to dance alone”? I feel like The Roop made the accompanying dance simplistic for other viewers on purpose. Discoteque is for everyone. Discoteque is a sealed package of pure fun, and it’s addressed to everyone who has heard the chorus of this song. Even though everyone is isolated in their own home right now, we can do the dance ourselves, and it is ok to dance alone. Dance alone, dance alone, dance alone.... 🕺

2) SHUM - Go_A [Ukraine]

Songs like SHUM are the reason that Eurovision exists: a blend between Ukrainian folk (heralding the beginning of spring) and utterly banging hard techno. Where the fuck else would I find Ukrainian technofolk? And more importantly, where else would I find one that goes this hard? There’s a reason why in the past week I have seen videos of almost every Eurovision performer dancing to SHUM, and it’s because SHUM is a fucking banger. I’ve already posted that I think I played this song so much my neighbours are getting sick of it, and I’m trying to teach myself the Ukrainian lyrics. It’s not out of effort, really, it’s just because if you like EDM at all you will fall in love with this song and have it in your brain constantly, and next thing you know you’re learning Ukrainian folk tales about the metaphorical resonance of sowing hemp. It’s such a good song purely on a musical level that anything else it could offer is just extreneous, frankly. But we also have Kateryna Pavlenko’s god-tier cyberpunk queen aesthetic, Ihor’s brilliant flute-playing, and a genuinely very punk video of the band visiting Chernobyl to benefit from Go_A too. The band that never stops serving.

1) Dark Side - Blind Channel [Finland]

Ok, look, nobody is surprised to see me simp for the Finnish nu-metal band. But give me a few paragraphs to convince you that they (or at least this song) merit just a bit of simping. As a treat. From the perspective of Eurovision this song came pure out of left field: electronic pop and hard rock in a harmonious marriage the likes of which the music scene hasn’t seen in decades. Apparently they like to use the term “violent pop” to describe themselves. In many ways the feel like a Linkin Park revival, if maybe a bit more energetic: dark, emotionally vulnerable, and the kind of thing you would belt out in the shower on a bad day. It is also technically perfect. Considering the simplicity of the lyrics it’s easy to overlook all of the compositional details at play here, but from the vocal effects to every guitar riff to the drum solo in the bridge to the sheer energy of the performance, everything is both perfectly engineered to be musically effective yet authentically hard rock as fuck. These boys may have the aesthetic of someone who spends their days crawling out of dive bar dumpsters (affectionate) but they are extremely hardworking with their craft and I wasn’t surprised to see the release of their mini-documentary wherein it’s obvious they are working themselves ragged and should probably be getting more sleep. Not to forget, of course, the message of Dark Side. This song is a tribute to the outsider, to feeling lonely, to being emotionally stuck and needing release. It embodies catharsis. Every human out there (even though some may claim not to) know what it’s like to want to stick your middle finger up at everyone. And it’s that often-maligned part of you this band is channeling with this amazing rock song. I want Dark Side to win because I think, after 2020, what we as a society collectively need is to put our middle finger up, take a shot, throw it up and don’t stop.

Previous parts of my ESC 2021 song review: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4

#eurovision #esc 2021 #beansprouts commentates #music review #long post #me? be late to my vaccination appointment because i had to get this out before the first semifinal? it's more likely than you think