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kenkamishiro · 3 years

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Lost in Translation: Choujin X chapter 1

Fun fact, I was planning to do fan translations for Choujin X with a scan group until it could get a simulpub release, though I didn’t expect it to get one from the very first chapter lol. I’m happy though since it means everyone can read it right away and it doesn’t mess up my schedule.

So instead I’ll be making comparison notes between the EN and JP text to supplement the official translation. I’m not doing this because the official TL is bad (I actually think it’s pretty solid and I hope it will maintain this quality) but because it’s inevitable for something to be lost in translation, and it’s nice to have that additional context for theory crafting and whatnot.

If you want to read it on Twitter instead, the original thread is here, but this is the proofread and way more detailed version 😄

This translation isn’t wrong, but there’s an emphasis on それ (which is TLed as ‘it’) that connotes a stronger, “other, that thing” feeling that isn’t present here. The general idea behind this sentence is: That [becoming a Choujin] resembles more of a disease [than a transformation].

Ely talks like a tomboy, she uses rougher speech patterns and the pronoun オラ (ora), a derivative of the masculine 'ore'. But it's a bit old-fashioned (eg. すまなんだ) which makes sense considering her upbringing with her grandfather on a farm. Hence her country bumpkin speech pattern in English.

Not sure if I should use Ellie or Ely? Ellie makes more sense based on the kana, but Ishida explicitly called her Ely so I might stick with Ely for now... (also istg that blond guy with the huge chin is a reference, I've seen him somewhere)

Tokio, I know your teacher is annoying, but it's rude to call her that lol. This is basically the oppai equivalent of paisen (senpai backwards, it’s slangier). Similar thing actually happened with Ely describing her dream hubby as Goldilocks instead of blond; ‘kinpatsu’ (blond hair) was inverted to become ‘patsukin’, hence the translation as Goldilocks.

Kurohara Tokio (黒原トキオ) and Higashi Azuma (東アヅマ). Kurohara is a common surname, means 'black fields'. Tokio is in katakana, so it’s hard to say what kanji it could be. 'Toki' could be 時 (time) or 外喜 (outside + delight). The 'o' can be the common male name suffix 男 (boy).

But when I think of Tokio, I think of TK's song called 'tokio'. You can read the translated lyrics here. If these lyrics end up being relevant to Tokio's character development I will eat my shoe lol.

Higashi means 'east'. Azuma (which can also be romanized as Aduma, it’s a softer ‘zu’ sound which is why Tokio called Azuma ‘Aju’ earlier in the chapter before correcting himself) is an archaic form of ‘east’. So...this guy is literally East East. The Choujin X equivalent of Moon Moon 😂

Someone also informed me that Higashi Azuma is a station in Tokyo, though the kana are slightly different (アヅマ／あづま vs. あずま). They effectively sound the same though nowadays, if I have to be honest. It’s like comparing the difference between 애 and 에 in Korean.

Tbh this is minor, but worth mentioning just cause it changes the meaning a bit. Tokio is saying something more like, “Why are we even talking about this [the roly-polies] again?”

I think I heard people talking about how the official TL doesn’t match the original text, but personally I really like how this was translated! Sis is using the expression 「爪の垢を煎じて飲む」, which literally means “boiling the dirt under someone’s fingernails and drinking it”. By taking the dirt/grime under the fingernails of someone that you admire, and boiling it and drinking it like a tea, you can become more like them.

But because idioms don’t tend to directly translate well between languages, translators often have to adapt it so that the meaning still remains the same. In English the closest idiom we have to this is “rubbing off on someone.” The “holding hands” bit was added to replace the physical aspect of “taking the dirt from someone’s fingernails” and also contribute to Sis’s sassy and very informal way of speaking.

So Sis is saying in JP (ignoring her personal speech style for now):

You should take the dirt from under [Azuma's] fingernails and boil it so you can be more like him.

And now in ENG it becomes:

You guys should hold hands or something, then maybe he’ll rub off on you.

It now sounds natural in English, still carries the same meaning as the original text, and also suits the character’s speech pattern.

Moving on, in that same panel the literal TL of Tokio’s dialogue is, “Policeman Azuma got dispatched again today,” emphasizing Azuma’s heroic deeds along with his family connections to the police. Another thing I want to note is that this is the second time Azuma has been called 偉い (erai) so far - noble, and now great guy. I’ll just dump the general English definition of 偉い from Jisho here so you get the general idea:

Great; excellent; admirable; remarkable; distinguished; important; celebrated; famous; eminent

But you can tell from how people describe Azuma as 偉い that others look up to him, think he’s a great person and Mr. Perfect. Always being placed on a pedestal by others. (What are the odds this will affect his mentality after the Choujin serum?)

The meaning is still pretty much the same, but I’ll offer a slightly different perspective. Sis mentions that if she were Tokio, she’d burst from the [Azuma] complex. (Clearly Tokio and Azuma's relationship is gonna crack at some point)

Tokio mentions an idiom about hawks (taka) before recalling his childhood memory about vultures. Vultures are called 'hagewashi', but in the chapter it mentions they can also be called 'hagetaka' (buzzard/condor, literally bald hawk).

The kids call him names like "Hagetaka Tokio" and "Hageo". But Hagetaka Tokio only really works in JP cause Hagetaka kinda mimics his last name (Buzzard Tokio doesn't give the same vibe). Same with Hageo. Hage-o = Bald-o = Baldy.

I also think Buzzard was chosen over another name for a vulture like Condor because Buzzard can pass off as an insult.

I would have translated this as, “I wanted to be a lion too...” but this is just personal preference.

A continuation of the 「爪の垢を煎じて飲む」 expression Sis used earlier. Without the adapted idiom the exchange goes something like this:

Tokio: My sister said I should bring home the dirt from under your nails. Can I have some?

Azuma: ...huh? What for, that’s scary. No way.

Tokio: I have to boil it and drink it, apparently.

Azuma: Don’t even think about boiling or drinking it.

But since the 「爪の垢を煎じて飲む」 expression was modified to make it sound natural in English, it means this conversation has to be modified too.

JP: My sister said I should bring home the dirt from under your nails. Can I have some?

EN: My sister says we should hold hands...so I can be more like you. What do you think?

The “dirt from under your nails” part got adapted to “holding hands”, hence how the 1st line from Tokio becomes, “My sister says we should hold hands...so I can be more like you.” “Can I have some?” makes no sense now in this context now, so it was changed to “What do you think?” as a question to Azuma to keep the similar conversation flow going.

JP: ...huh? What for, that’s scary. No way.

EN: Huh? What’re you talking about? No thanks.

Azuma’s next line is similar enough to the JP text except for the removal of “scary”. I think the reason it was most likely removed is because leaving it as it is could be constituted as homophobic (2 boys holding hands, absolutely nothing scary about it as bible thumpers would like people to believe).

JP: I have to boil it and drink it, apparently.

EN: She said to hold hands so you’ll rub off on me.

Tokio’s response to that is explaining what he meant by his proposal. In the original text he lays out the latter half of the idiom (he doesn’t even realize it’s an expression, poor boy), and in English he does something similar by going into why his sister said they should hold hands (so Azuma can rub off on Tokio).

JP: Don’t even think about boiling or drinking it.

EN: C’mon. That’s not how things work.

Azuma’s then rebuts Tokio’s proposal as ridiculous. In the original text he drops a typical straight man response (don’t do *insert whatever ridiculous thing the idiot suggested*). But since Tokio’s proposal in English isn’t as preposterous, his rebuttal is toned down in response by telling him not to take it literally.

Ultimately, even though a lot of this dialogue was changed, I still think it was successful in maintaining the original’s intent. Tokio takes his sister’s sarcastic suggestion literally and brings it up to Azuma, who dismisses it as silly. It would be nice if we could keep the expression as it was in Japanese, but in instances like this where it’s played off of in multiple lines, that’s easier said than done.

軟体 isn’t an actual word, it’s made up of the kanji soft + body. So kinda like Elastigirl, but Flexi was chosen instead. It doesn’t sound 100% right, but I don’t think I could come up with anything better.

Replacing the しい in 楽しい with the C plus that elongated pronunciation makes Johnny sound even more like a stereotypical Yankee, which is why he sounds like that in English 😂

Random but I found it interesting how Azuma called Johnny a youkai (妖怪) instead of something like bakemono (化け物) or obake (お化け) since they’re shapeshifting monsters.

Tokio is worried that if he doesn't do something right now, he's going to lose his friendship with Azuma. The sentence is fine as it is though.

Azuma’s line can also be worded as, "No hard feelings, okay?"

Bestial = 獣化 (juuka) = beast+change = beast transformation

That’s it from me, if you have questions about the TL feel free to send an ask or reply to this post, I promise I’ll check my inbox more often this time 😂

#Choujin X #Translations #fyi i also went into the holding hands TL #tl;dr i don't think it's bad and suits it well #but that's just my opinion

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yellowocaballero · 3 years

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Percy Jackson meets a Landlord, a Tax Accountant, and a Tree Growing in Brooklyn

“Golduck, use hydro pump!” Percy whispered. He moved Golduck so he hit Batman on the chest, and then hit Batman a few more times for good measure. “Die, landlord!”

“Aren’t you a little old to be playing with toys?”

Percy almost fell out of his chair.

He twisted his torso around, looking behind him with wide eyes. But the only person there was a white girl, no older than him. She was wearing a really severe expression to match her tight little blonde ponytail, and she was carrying a clipboard in both hands. There was a piece of string tacked to the clipboard, with a pen tied around one end. She looked like she asked the school librarian if she could help shelve books.

Percy decided instantly that she hated him, so he decided to hate her back.

“Aren’t you a little young to be doing your taxes?” Percy sneered. “Buzz off.”

That made her mad. The girl’s angelic little chubby face twisted in rage, and her grip on the clipboard turned threatening. “I’m accounting the chores! And I could do taxes if I wanted!”

“Yeah?” Percy asked, unimpressed. “Name one tax.”

“Sales tax,” the girl said instantly.

Damn. She got that one.

Short fic that I am considering extending into a much, much longer fic. Thank you Ami for the translation of the card (I would definitely translate it yourself, it’s important). The entire backstory and premise of the AU isn’t immediately apparent, but if I extend the fic it’ll be more explained (spoiler: Luke Castellan, age 14, said fuck Olympus and moved all of Camp Half-Blood into Brooklyn to live in a child-run utopia). I haven’t reread Percy Jackson since I was 10, I barely remember anything that happens or any of the characters, so don’t expect much - but aren’t the best children’s novels the children’s novels that live in our head, anyway?

Rest under the cut.

2005

180 Olive Apartments was a dump. Batman said so.

Batman felt very strongly about this, and as a result Percy did too. It was not Percy’s own, private, personal opinion. Batman informed Percy that the apartment complex was shabby, gross, not in Staten island, and smelled weird. Batman made a very convincing argument that they should live in Staten Island instead, which Percy had done his best to relay to Mom. Mom hadn’t been impressed.

“This is the best place for us, Percy,” Mom had said, with that pinched look on her face. It was the ‘Percy’s Making My Life Really Hard’ face. Percy had been seeing that face a lot lately. “Let’s just try to make this work, please?”

There was no ‘best place’ for them, and Percy and Batman knew that. But that was another thing Mom didn’t want to hear.

So Percy had suffered in stoic silence as Mom dragged him out of the motel, made him miss the new episode of Pokemon, and forced him to ride the subway forty minutes into smelly Brooklyn so he could sit in this smelly chair outside of some smelly office in a smelly apartment. From inside the office, Percy could hear the faint rise and fall of voices: Mom’s, light and lyrical and very polite to people who were not Percy; and some landlord guy. His voice was really light and high too, but he was probably a real jerk.

Percy was so bored he could die. He sat up on his knees, turning around so he could prop his elbows against the dusty windowsill with grimy frosted glass. He plopped Batman down on the dirty windowsill, smearing his chipped feet through the tracks of dust. Parkour. He unzipped his pocket and grabbed his slightly dusty Golduck rubber toy, putting it in front of Batman. Golduck was from McDonald’s, so it had a bad attitude.

Percy waggled Batman. You have a bad attitude, Golduck. You can’t live in my house anymore, because you get water all over the tile and you make the wood go bad.

Golduck jiggled when Percy shook him. It wasn’t Golduck’s fault that the water went everywhere! Water just goes places sometimes. Golduck was a water type, so water followed him around and got into wood and made the wood go bad and made other people mad at him. It’s not Golduck’s fault, so don’t make him move!

I don’t want to hear it, Batman said. I’m going to make you live in a crummy motel and make your Mom go on a lot of boring websites looking for new places to live. The motel’s bananas are going to taste weird. Mom’s going to cry a lot. And it’ll be all your fault because you’re a bad kid.

“Golduck, use hydro pump!” Percy whispered. He moved Golduck so he hit Batman on the chest, and then hit Batman a few more times for good measure. “Die, landlord!”

“Aren’t you a little old to be playing with toys?”

Percy almost fell out of his chair.

Percy decided instantly that she hated him, so he decided to hate her back.

“Aren’t you a little young to be doing your taxes?” Percy sneered. “Buzz off.”

That made her mad. The girl’s angelic little chubby face twisted in rage, and her grip on the clipboard turned threatening. “I’m accounting the chores! And I could do taxes if I wanted!”

“Yeah?” Percy asked, unimpressed. “Name one tax.”

“Sales tax,” the girl said instantly.

Damn. She got that one. Percy just rolled his eyes instead, sitting back down on his seat and stuffing his toys in his cargo pocket. He couldn’t help but feel a little embarrassed, even if he knew that he wasn’t too old to play with Batman and Golduck. What did tax accountants know, anyway.

The girl sniffed, and made a show of inspecting the grimy windowsill and carefully making a note on her clipboard. Her pen had a pom-pom at the end. Percy bet she made hearts over the top of her ‘i’s.

“Nick’s been slacking,” the girl muttered threateningly. “I’m surrounded by incompetents.”

“Why is it Nick’s job to clean the leasing office?” Percy asked, unimpressed. “Don’t you have a janitor for that?” Was Nick the janitor? If this pinched-face little girl was harassing cleaning staff then Percy was going to file a complaint.

But the girl just looked surprised, as if the idea of having a janitor was foreign and strange. “No janitor would even make it through the doors.” But then her eyes narrowed, as if a thought just occurred to her. “Wait. How did you…”

However Percy did what, he would never know. The door to the leasing office cracked open, and Percy scrambled off his seat in excitement. The girl stood stiffly at attention, clipboard on her hip, as Mom stepped out of the office. She looked very tired, but weirdly relieved.

There was a man right behind her, just as white and blonde as the girl. Percy wasn’t surprised: he could pick out a real ‘daughter-of-the-manager’ type right away. The man didn’t look like every other landlord Percy had ever seen - no moustache, for one - and he didn’t look old enough for the part anyway. He wasn’t old, but he definitely wasn’t an elementary schooler. He had a broad, honest face, but he was too muscular and strong looking and landlordey to be trustworthy.

Percy decided the weird landlord, with a mop of yellow hair like golden thread and a scary eyebrow with one long scar cutting straight through, was twenty five years old. Clearly the result of nepotism in the landlord industry.

Mom smiled when she saw Percy, who quickly pasted on his most innocent expression. Her eyes caught on the girl, who was glaring daggers at him. The landlord’s eyes caught on Percy’s own wrinkled nose. “Percy, good! Are you making friends?”

It was not an innocent question. It was a ‘please don’t ruin this for me too, Percy’ question. It was a ‘I’m very tired and I need you not to make things hard’ question. Percy was well acquainted with them. But maybe the girl was too, because when the landlord looked at the girl she also abruptly quailed. “I hope you’re being a good host, Annabeth.”

The unfortunately named Annabeth and Percy glanced at each other in silent and instant understanding.

“Yeah, Annabeth’s really fun!” Percy said instantly. He was not going to ruin this for Mom again. Or, at least, he would try to hold off ruining it for her as long as possible. Even if this stupid apartment wasn’t in Staten island. “She was telling me about -”

“Taxes!” Annabeth said smoothly, a much better liar than Percy. “And Percy was telling me about Batman.”

They both looked very cute and very low matinence on command, the perfect picture of children who did not make their moms live in motels.

Percy was rewarded when Mom smiled in relief. She put a hand on Percy’s shoulder, squeezing tightly. “I’m so glad. Percy, this is Mr. Castellan. Why don’t you say hi?”

“Hi Mr. Castellan,” Percy said obediently. “My name’s Percy Jackson, I’m in third grade.”

The landlord smiled at him with closed and tight lips, but it was Annabeth who spoke in interest. “Percy like Percival, King Arthur’s knight who searched for the Holy Grail?”

Uh, whatever? “Percy like the Greek hero Perseus,” Percy said shortly. “But I’m not Greek. My Grandma was from Guadalajara.”

Annabeth’s eyes widened. She glanced at the landlord, whose expression was impossible to read. “Are you sure?”

“I know where my own grandmother is from!”

“She didn’t say that you didn’t, sweetie,” Mom said, and Percy guiltily shut up. “Percy, why don’t you and Mr. Castellan talk in his office for a little while? I have to fill out some paperwork, and I think you two have a lot to talk about.”

Percy looked up at her with wide eyes. Mom never left him alone with strangers. And paperwork already? “Are we moving in today?”

“You two talk for a bit,” Mom said firmly. “I’ll be right back.”

When Percy was pushed into Mr. Castellan’s office it felt more like he was a Roman Christian being tossed into the lion’s den in punishment for heresy. And when Mom settled him into an uncomfortable and weird-smelling chair in front of the teetering desk and kissed him on the temple before leaving the office, he abruptly felt like he had jumped into Grandma’s book of Bible Stories.

Mr. Landlord’s office was as dirty and run-down as the rest of the complex. The big box AC rattled with clinks and whirrs as it shuddered against the sticky summer heat, and the landlord’s desk was covered in thick stacks of paper and chewed-up pencils. When he sat back down behind the stained wood, the chair seemed just a little too big for him. He sunk strangely in it, the vinyl flaking off and floating into the ground. There were a lot of crayon drawings taped to the wall, and there was a light dusting of crumpled post-it notes on the ground.

Mr. Landlord tried to smile at Percy. Tried being the operative word: when he smiled it was too thin and without teeth, more pained than reassuring. It didn’t reach his watery blue eyes.

Percy hunched on the rickety chair. This guy set off every alarm bell he had, which was plenty. And no, it wasn’t just because he was a guy, Ms. Brown. For added security and self defense, Percy casually slid a capped ballpoint pen on the old desk in front of him into his sleeve. Batman was always prepared, and Percy was too. He can hack up any creepy guy and protect Mom any day of the week.

The landlord smiled wider, even worse. “Sorry, I forgot to introduce myself. My name’s Luke Castellan, and I’m the supervisor here. Running into Annabeth first thing’s pretty bad luck, huh?” At Percy’s unimpressed eyebrow, he quickly added, “Annabeth keeps the whole place running, really. She’s...pretty convinced that this complex rests on her eight year old back, so she’s a little stressed out all the time. If she gets frustrated at you, don’t take it personally, okay?”

So she does help shelve books. Percy was a keen judge of character. “Why does she do it? You can’t make her be the superintendent. That’s child labor.”

Luke Castellan stared at Percy unblinkingly. He blinked about as often as a snake, but five times as quickly: as if he didn’t want to let you out of his sight for even a second. Finally, he said, “I’m fifteen.”

Percy gave Mr. Luke the stink-eye, clearly communicating that he did not trust even fifteen year olds (who were high schoolers, and even less trustworthy than adult-adults) as far as he could throw them. Especially fifteen year olds like Luke: who were too tall, with too-mature eyes and a particularly unhappy expression. Percy communicated perfectly that there was nothing trustworthy about this family of juvenile landlords, but he was just too polite to say so.

But that just made Mr. Luke sigh, as if he was tired instead of angry. “Annabeth’s my...ward, I guess. I just look after her. But she doesn’t like being looked after, so she makes up for it by looking after everyone else. I’m not saying I do a good job.”

He’s a landlord and he has a ward? Percy finally perked up. “So you’re like Batman?”

Mr. Luke stared at him unblinkingly, before finally saying, “Yes, except Batman doesn’t have superpowers.”

Percy had the sense he was being made fun of. “You don’t have super powers,” he accused, crossing his arms. “Nobody has super powers.”

Mr. Luke smiled, wan and weak. “Not even you, Percy?”

Percy froze.

Five seconds too late, Percy made himself laugh stupidly. People were quick to believe that Percy was stupid, and sometimes Percy helped them think that. It got him out of trouble sometimes - not always, but enough that it was useful. “If I had superpowers, I’d run super fast everywhere just like the Flash!”

But Mr. Luke just hummed, and flipped through some of the papers in a folder in front of him. Percy abruptly began sweating. Mom had given him those papers. They were records. This was like every time a principal had drawn up ‘proof’ against him in a court of law. “Your mom said that you both had to move out of your Queens apartment because it flooded.”

“I didn’t unscrew the taps,” Percy said reflexively. “They just came loose! I didn’t even touch them! I didn’t touch the boiler either!”

“The boiler?” Mr. Luke flipped back a few pages. “Oh, right. Your school.”

Percy slouched in his seat and folded his arms across his chest, stewing. He always sounded guiltiest when he denied it. He should go back to playing dumb. Pretend that he had no idea what water was. He had gotten away with it when he was six during that one birthday party at the aquarium, but something about being a third grader meant that people expected that you have basic observational skills.

It was stupid. There was no way to win. If he said that he didn’t do it then he sounded guilty. If he tried to point out how it was impossible for him to break the boiler and destroy the gym or whatever, using facts and logic and a rhetorical argument like the Youtube videos taught him, then they just told him he was making excuses. Sometimes Percy had the impression that everybody just wanted him to supervillain cackle like the Joker and brag about how terrible he was. Maybe he’d give that a shot once he entered middle school. It seemed like an evil teenage thing to do.

Percy Jackson was a liar, a thief, a cheat, a menace, and a bad kid. There was nothing more to be: not for someone like Percy.

But Mr. Luke didn’t threaten him, or give him ‘one last chance’ or anything. He just leaned forward, hands folded on the desk. His thumb was worrying at a small starburst scar on his hand, betraying a strange nervousness.

“Percy, can I talk to you man-to-man?”

Percy, who did not like men, squinted at Mr. Luke suspiciously. “Why.”

“Because this isn’t a topic for a kid. It’s a topic that...kills children, and turns them into little adults. I wish I didn’t have to broach it with you. But I think that you haven’t been a kid for a long time, Percy, and I don’t want to insult you by pretending otherwise.” Mr. Luke frowned, and Percy found himself involuntarily straightening. What was he talking about? “You were right. There was no way for you to have flooded your apartment, much less twice. There was no way for you to ruin your gym, or damage that aquarium. Much less...everything else in your file. No kid is that much of a miniature hurricane when he isn’t even trying. It sucks. It’s not your fault. And now your Mom’s credit score is so bad that she can’t afford another apartment. If it wasn’t for the fact that she saw our really generous listing in the paper, she would have had to move you two away from her home.”

She was thinking of moving them both to New Jersey. Percy’s lips tightened, and he knew that Mr. Luke saw it.

“This is an apartment building that provides shelter to a lot of special cases, just like you. It’s...full of kids who break things when they don’t mean to. Kids with a parent couldn’t handle them, or who couldn’t protect them. We have a lot of ways to keep families like yours safe, and to give you a home.”

Percy stared at Mr. Luke. He seemed deadly serious, as serious as anybody had ever been to Percy, despite the crazy stuff he was saying. Safe? Safe from what?

Safe from those weird, giant dogs that chased Percy and tore off half his jeans? Safe from that old lady in the deli with the slobbering bag and beady eyes? Safe from broken water pipes, from ruined floors and busted walls, from Percy himself?

Finally, all Percy could think to ask was, “How do you know that I’m a special case?”

“Because not just anyone could see that listing,” Mr. Luke said. “And - uh, no offense - but you are one of the most obviously inhuman children I’ve met in my life.”

Percy’s jaw dropped in complete, unadulterated rage, and without even stopping to think through his actions he withdrew the ballpoint pen from his pocket. He uncapped it, fully intending on doing something dramatically yet harmlessly violent with it, but he didn’t get the chance.

The ballpoint pen turned into a gleaming bronze and silver sword. Percy screamed. Percy fell out of his chair. Percy did not get the opportunity to look cool and dangerous at all.

****

And now Percy had Greek god stuff to worry about!

Didn’t Percy have enough problems? He couldn’t stay in a school, they couldn’t keep an apartment, their new landlord didn’t blink enough, and now he was the kid of a Greek god? Apparently he had been spending his entire life running from monsters and he just hadn’t noticed? That explained the stupid scary dog!

Percy knew much more about Greek gods than the average kid, since Mom was a huge fan. Yeah, Mom! Apparently you were a big fan! Jesus, Mom!

What’s this dumb stuff about Poseidon! That had freaked out Mr. Luke, and made him ask a lot of questions like ‘are you sure’ and ‘there’s a lot of minor gods who like to pass themself off as someone more impressive to mortals’. Then Annabeth, who had been listening at the door like a sneak and who ran in all heroically when he almost accidentally stabbed Mr. Luke, freaked out and called his mom a liar. His mom!

Then Percy tried to stab her with his new sword. Mom made Percy apologize for trying to stab Annabeth. Mr. Luke made Annabeth apologize for insulting Percy’s mother. Percy was beginning to worry that he and Annabeth may be mortal enemies.

Mr. Luke had tried explaining a bunch of stuff about monsters and ‘the Sight’ and why Percy’s life was terrible to him, but Percy already knew his life was terrible and he wasn’t interested. Percy ended up furiously swinging his new sword at a tree outside as Mom signed a bunch of forms and talked with Mr. Luke some more, but she hustled him home pretty quickly afterwards.

Percy didn’t give the sword back. Mr. Luke, wisely, did not ask for it back.

Mom kept on making a face on the subway back to the motel like she had been waiting her entire life for Percy to ask all of these questions, and she was preparing herself for it. She kept on glancing at him out of the corner of her eye, watching Percy kick his feet against the hard plastic seat. It was obvious. But Percy didn’t have anything to say to her. They spent the rest of the day in silence, just focusing on packing up and getting everything ready to move. Jacksons were practical, Mom said.

Jacksons were practical. Percy was practical, too. It was only in the deep pits of night, as Percy lay in bed holding up his sword and watching it reflect the soft lamplight above the creaky wooden table where Mom was doing work, that he asked.

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

The sword was really cool. It was pure bronze, with the middle gleaming pure silver. There was some Greek writing inscribed down the center that Percy had no idea how to read, although he had spent an hour scouring the internet looking for a translation. The handle was tough white cord, stiff and starchy but fraying a little at the edges.

Mr. Luke said it was named something, but Percy forgot what it was. He had been a bit busy almost impaling the guy.

Mom’s fingers froze over the keyboard. Her back was turned to him, so he couldn’t see her face, but her spine was stiff and rigid.

Finally, after a long silence, she said, “I didn’t want you to think that there was anything different about you.”

“So what?” Percy asked, his eyes pricking rebelliously. Stupid water. “You let me think that I was a bad person who ruined your life?”

“Percy, no!” Mom turned around, expression crumpled. The dim light showed the heavy bags under Mom’s eyes in sharp relief. “You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me, baby. None of this is your fault, you understand? That’s what this business with your father means: that none of it was your fault. That’s all it means.”

If that was true, Percy thought, then why couldn’t she have told him before?

But Percy was afraid that if he said that, then he would start crying, and Percy was way too old to cry. Only weak little babies cried.

“I’m sorry my dad’s a loser who ruined your life, Mom,” Percy said.

“Percy…”

But Percy refused to answer her, putting his sword down next to him and pretending to go to sleep. He kept it next to him in bed all night, gripping its hilt tight, and the firm and cool pressure of the steel in his hand soothed him when the thought of a father didn’t.

***

They moved in the next day.

The next day! Percy was livid. He barely had any time to pack up his toys into his backpack, and Mom didn’t even have time to help him back up his blue Spider-man suitcase. He had to do it all by himself, and then Mom came in and told him he was folding everything up wrong and that he had to redo it. If she had so many problems with it, she should have helped him and gave him more than one day to move out of their dumb motel!

When people moved on TV there were always moving vans and buff dudes in baseball caps. But Percy was much better at moving then any of those idiots: all it took was a suitcase (of clothes and toiletries and stuff) and a backpack (of toys and school supplies and stuff).

Percy’s backpack had the Power Rangers on it, in glossy plastic. Its contents were always the same, through every move: Batman, Golduck, Bulbasaur, Blue Eyes White Dragon, Raphael, a stegosaurus with a missing tail named Hedward, and a little book full of pictures of him and his mom and some cards and stuff. There was a picture of him and Grandma in the apartment in Staten Island that he lived in until he was six, and a 5th birthday card she had given him six months before she died. Written inside, in her looping and faded script, was a sentence Percy had read over and over and over again. ‘Tu angel de la guarda trabaja horas extra por tí. Así que acuérdate de decirle gracias ¿Sí, mi niño?'’

Percy was inclined to agree with her. God should pay his guardian angel overtime. That, or pay one to go to Olympus and collect child support.

The image was funny to Percy - the idea of his angel with her wings and halos showing up at Poseidon’s door and tapping her watch as she held out her hat. It was so funny, it was the first thing he told Mr. Luke when they met him at the gates to the apartment complex. Mom was huffing behind him with her two suitcases, while Percy was busy juggling his own backpack, suitcase, and sword.

Mr. Luke looked alarmed to see the both of them, although Mom had called ahead and arranged to meet him here. Worse, Annabeth was next to him, still holding a clipboard. She didn’t look alarmed, just mad.

“Did you bring Riptide onto public transportation?” Annabeth squawked. “You have no sense of discretion!”

Was Riptide the name of the sword? Whatever. Percy would have named it Hurricane. “I know words you don’t know too, you don’t have to brag,” Percy said flatly.

“Yeah, the gods are filthy little child support evaders,” Mr. Luke said easily, instantly endearing himself to Percy. Mom rolled her eyes as she put her suitcases down, but she was clearly fighting a smile. “Don’t worry, I dragged them to court. Sued them for all they’re worth.”

“How on earth did you do that?” Mom asked, interested.

“Trickery and rhetoric,” Annabeth said proudly.

“Swords,” Mr. Luke said.

“What did you squeeze them for?” Percy asked, excited.

Mr. Luke winked. And he still didn’t ask for his sword back. Maybe he wasn’t all bad.

The apartment complex itself wasn’t nearly as big as a lot of Brooklyn complexes, looking more like the little apartment complexes in Queens that Percy was used to. It was three separate three-story buildings arranged in a square, with one side holding the small leasing office and a parking lot. It was open-air, with the apartment doors opening directly outside. There was a really big courtyard in the center, and despite himself Percy got a little excited.

It was awesome. There was a huge, sprawling tree right in the center of the courtyard. It was gigantic, bigger than any tree Percy had ever seen in his life. It seemed like it didn’t even belong in New York, like it was a transplant from the California Redwoods or Canada or something. Its leaves were waving in a nonexistent breeze, and something about it just seemed so magical and otherworldly to Percy.

But that was only half of the awesome things. The other awesome thing was that there were kids everywhere.

The tree provided shade to a couple scattered gangs of kids, sitting around and laughing. There was a rusty set of monkey bars, which some kids were playing on, and there was a big dirt rectangle where other kids were hitting each other on the head with wooden plastic swords. There were groups of girls eating lunch, and a gang of boys playing soccer in the corner that made Percy immediately want to jump in and play too. Percy dominated at soccer.

“The East and South buildings are where we all live,” Annabeth informed Mom. “The West building is where the training rooms and storage rooms and administrative rooms - that’s my office - and everything is. It also has guest units for the local spirits that like to visit. We just had ten Bacchae stay for a week. They were backpacking to Woodstock. We have very good inter-community relationships here.”

“That’s amazing,” Mom said faintly. Mr. Luke was smiling faintly, eyes fixed on the big tree. Percy found himself staring at Mr. Luke, watching with interest the soft but firm pride in his eyes. “Luke said that this property’s safe from…”

She glanced at Percy quickly, cutting herself off. But Annabeth just huffed.

“I almost got eaten by monsters twenty times when I was seven,” Annabeth informed Mom imperiously. “We’re not babies. Connor Stoll says if you’re old enough to get eaten by monsters then you’re old enough to know that they exist.”

Percy decided immediately that he liked Connor Stoll, and maybe even Annabeth too.

“The tree protects us,” Luke said. “Wherever the tree is, we’re safe. Not even the gods date step foot beyond the leasing office here.”

“Because of the tree?” Mom asked.

Luke smiled - sharp, piercing, and strange. “Sure, let’s say that.”

But Mom just frowned. She looked over the courtyard of kids - some of whom were already starting to whisper and stare. Annabeth waved at a gaggle of identically blonde children, and for the first time Percy wondered who she was the daughter of. Probably the bossiest god. Maybe Athena. Or, like, Hephaestus. Definitely Hephaestus.

“You said that there’s nobody over eighteen here,” Mom said to Luke. “Luke, there’s a six year old on those monkey bars.”

“If you’re under thirteen, you live with someone over thirteen,” Luke said to her. Annabeth was still frowning in disapproval at Percy’s sword. He stuck his tongue out at her. “Two people to a unit, we try to pair the oldest with the youngest. Lucy lives with Henrique, he’s seventeen. It’s the best we can do.”

“Surely there has to be someone…?”

“Adults have never helped us. They never will.” Luke looked away sharply. “We’ve been in Brooklyn a year. You’re the first adult who’s made her way here. Most other parents with a kid as powerful as Percy would have -”

He cut himself off sharply, glancing at Percy, and Percy scowled up at him. He thought that Luke was being honest. Maybe he was just another old guy afraid to say what everybody else knew.

“I’ll help Ms. Jackson settle in,” Annabeth said suddenly. She held out her hands to Percy, who reflexively hugged his luggage to his chest. “You guys are in unit 5. It’s on the bottom floor. If you flood it, then we can fix it okay. Give me your luggage, I’ll put it in your unit.”

Percy stared at her, overwhelmed with that simple signal of care. No threats about if he flooded it, no warnings or sickly sweet faux-concern. Just understanding, and acceptance.

He silently gave her his bags.

She seemed surprised when she felt how light they were. Percy shrugged awkwardly at her face, crossing his arms tightly around her chest. “Don’t touch my stuff, okay?”

“Sure,” Annabeth said, before pausing a beat. “We have a TV in our place. #1. Do you want to come over tonight and watch Winx Club?”

“Yeah,” Percy said, overwhelmed. “Sure.”

Mr. Luke put a hand on Percy’s back as Annabeth guided Mom to a corner unit. Percy couldn’t help but notice that the door to the unit was already propped open. Wait - there were people going in and out!

There was a tall, buff teenager, carrying two chairs underneath each arm. There was another group of three teenage girls, carrying a table between them. Two other younger kids were carrying boxes and laughing. They were bringing everything into the unit, and other younger kids were running in and out with cleaning supplies.

From a distance, Percy saw Mom stop in her tracks. Annabeth tugged at her shirt and got her to bend down, whispering something in her ear. A boy with sandy brown hair ran up, taking Mom’s suitcases from her and bringing them into the unit.

“Your Mom mentioned that you were missing some furniture,” Mr. Luke said. “The Hermes and Aphrodite kids all pitched in to get your home looking like a home. I hope you’ll like it.”

Percy clutched his sword to his chest, speechless.

Mr. Luke smiled down at him, that same wan and weak smile, and put a hand on his back. He gently pushed Percy forward, towards the tree. “Come with me for a minute?”

They silently approached the sprawling, ancient tree. As they came closer, Percy could see that its bark was gnarled and knotted, with perfect handholds for climbing and perfect boughs for resting in the summer sun. He could already see a few kids resting in high boughs, taking a nap in the humid and sticky sun.

“Percy, I’d like to introduce you to someone.” Mr. Luke’s voice was quiet, like he was in church. He looked up at the tree, peering far into the leaves as if he was trying to find something hidden within them. “This is Thalia. Thalia, this is Percy. He’s the newest member of the family. He’s also your cousin.”

Cousin? Percy looked up at Mr. Luke, eyes wide. “I’m related to a tree?”

Tilted up at the tree, Percy couldn’t see Mr. Luke’s expression. Maybe that was on purpose. “Thalia’s a kid, just like us. Daughter of Zeus. I used to think that she was the closest thing to an adult I knew, but...I’m as old as she is, now. I guess one day soon I’ll be older than she ever got to be.”

Oh. The tree was, like, from the ashes of some dead girl. Awkward. Percy stared at the thick and arching roots of the tree, feeling weird.

“Thalia, please protect Percy. I can already tell that he’s going to grow up to be very strong and brave. Please help us make sure that Percy never has to be strong. That he’s never brave. I can already tell he’s going to need a lot of your help.” He looked down at Percy for the first time, and for the first time Percy could see just a little warmth in those icy blue eyes. “You’re going to have to work overtime for him. So make sure to say thank you, Percy. Okay?”

“Thank you, Thalia,” Percy said obediently. He bowed awkwardly, uncertain what to do. The sword scraped awkwardly against his thigh. “Thanks for letting me into your home.”

“Welcome home, Percy,” Mr. Luke said, and for the first time Percy almost believed it.

#pjo #percy jackson and the olympians #percy jackson #annabeth chase #luke castellan #pjo fanfic #percy jackson fanfic #I'm bouncing between a lot of different projects right now and trying to decide which one to dedicate time to #I promise I DID take a break and I will CONTINUE TO DO SO because work's been exhausting #but sometimes that means just writing low-effort self-indulgent stuff #anyway my friend had to sit down and explain the worldbuilding of pjo to me and I was like WOW THATS FUCKED so I wrote this #I also dislike some of the ways that pjo handled percy's backstory so that's being addressed #my writing #I FORGOT THE CUT LOL

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somedayonbroadway · 3 years

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more.. please?

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Okay, no quote for this one, but this is a scene I had in mind since I started writing this fic!

So, as Spot was discovering, things at the Larkin home tended to get a little intense when it came to bedtime. True to his roommates words, the twins did try to convince him that they were quadruplets. Spot still had no idea how they’d gone in through one door and magically ended up behind him when he turned around but one thing was for sure. They were witches.

So many children around here were yelling and Spot was only trying to get to the safety of the quiet guest room. Jack was busy downstairs with Medda. Something about an elf and a shelf and a “do not tell the kids!” so Spot figured he would just go to bed and try to figure out what these feelings were that were swirling around in his chest.

Everything in this house seemed to be some kind of friendly competition. As Romeo had held his hand walking to see the tree lights and the light snow, others had been racing around him to see who could get there first. Somehow, and Spot may never know how, it had been Charlie. He’d looked very smug when he’d turned around to greet the rest of them.

Even after that, it seemed the boys had a bet to see who could see who could sing the loudest. Jack mostly just danced around with Smalls and signed the lyrics to countless Christmas carols with her. It was honestly one of the most adorable things that Spot had ever seen.

He needed to get away from it all before he actually melted. So he made his way past four of the twins and a tiny Smalls who tried to sign to him only for Charlie to translate that she was only saying goodnight and then he ducked out of the way as Henry kicked and writhed over Specs’s shoulder to eventually open the door to find Racer sitting on the floor of the guest room.

It seemed only appropriate to make a joke at first, after their established relationship from the last couple of hours had only been a chaotic mesh of playful flirting — which Spot needed to put an end to. He knew he did. The kid was only that. A kid. But when the boy didn’t even look up at him, Spot paused as it occurred to him that the boy might not actually be in here to see him. “Racer?” he ended up asking. It was almost amusing how the boy nearly jumped out of his skin, but Spot held back his laugh as he shrugged. “You okay?”

“Oh, yeah!” Race grinned. “I’m so sorry, I totally forgot that you, like… are gonna be sleepin’ in here…” This kid was really entertaining. “Sorry, I just… normally come in here ta look at Jack’s painting before I go ta sleep.”

As amused as Spot was, he had to admit to himself how incredibly sweet that was. With a sigh, Spot made his way down to the kid, sitting with his legs crossed as his back leaned up against the bed, just as Racer’s was. “I’m still just tryin’ ta figure out what it means,” he said.

“It’s our story,” Racer said with almost no thought at all.

Spot glanced over at him. “What?”

The blond stood easily, walking over to the wall. “To everyone else it just looks like a bunch a’ squiggly lines but… it ain’t, just like how ta most people I just look like an innocent kid, when I can assure you that I’m very mature for my age and—“ the boy spouted out so dramatically.

“I’m gonna stop ya right there, Juliet,” Spot teased, standing and nodding over to the painting. “So, what’s the story?”

Clearing his throat and straightening up his non-existent tie, Racer turned back to the painting. “Well, you see here,” he began, pointing towards two intertwined lines, one blue and one golden. “These two lines are seen more than one time throughout this painting in various positions, always drawn towards each other. Blue is Jackie’s favorite color and he associated this particular shade of gold with me, so you’ve gone from point A to point B, you’re a master of the arts now, you’re welcome.”

Letting his mouth hang open a bit Spot laughed. “Oh my God, I’m a genius now? Wow, I’d like to thank so many people—“

Racer just scoffed and nodded, shoving Spot’s shoulder a bit as he spun back around and sat on the bed. He looked like an adorable little puppy with his curls, a huge mess from the wind outside and his matching pajama set and slippers. “For real though… it’s me and Jack. Sort of… I usually come in here before bed because… I don’t know, it makes me feel closer ta him. It’s stupid—“

“It ain’t,” Spot assured, sitting down beside the kid. “You n’ Jack… ya must a’ been through a lot together…” he said, gesturing to the very complex mural he was now staring at. Maybe Jack was actually more interesting than he’d originally though. To be completely honest, that was already true. Spot hadn’t even known that Jack had been adopted, much less that he had nine siblings or was this good of an artist. Sure, he knew that Jack was an art major, but that didn’t mean anything.

“Yeah,” Race smiled. “Everything… see the first lines I pointed to was when I was born, n’... ya see how they get separated after that? Then the blue one starts ta get smaller n’ thinner n’ almost disappear n’ the gold one’s tryin’ ta get to it n’ then… the opposite happens… we had quite the eventful childhood,” he explained, sounding all too happy about what sounded like a truly awful story. Spot’s heart broke a little for him but it was hard to be sad when the kid smiled at him like that. “Oh, ain’t ya so attracted ta me now that ya know I have a dark, mysterious past?”

Spot rolled his eyes. “Okay, kid, ya should leave before I take my shirt off, I don’t know if it’s a good idea for you ta—“

“Oh dear God, please take off your shirt,” Racer begged as Spot stood back up and shook his head.

“No, I was told not to encourage you,” Spot chuckled lightly.

The boy pouted. “But I’m so encourageable!” he whined. Spot was beginning to wonder what this boy saw in him. He supposed that he was very much in shape, but that was about it. The kid didn’t even know if he was gay.

He didn’t really tell anybody.

Maybe he was drawn to the boy because he was so confident and forthright with what he was thinking and who he was. That was something to be proud of and Spot wished he could just live like that, just be outright himself. It sounded so much easier than it was. “If Jack finds you in here—“

“He can’t hurt me. He loves me too much,” Racer shrugged. “Okay, that sounded like a joke, but it’s one hundred percent true. This family is like… ours n’ we love them, but we were all each other had for a long time… man, I love that guy.”

Hearing it all made something in Spot’s chest tighten because so long ago, he’d known what that felt like, to have an unbreakable bond like that with a person, to just understand that no matter what they’d be there for each other. But that was a long time ago.

Before Spot could come up with any kind of response, the door was knocked on and then opened and a very annoyed looking Jack peaked in as he leaned against the doorframe. He whistled and used his finger to gesture to his brother to come closer. “Hey, you. Out,” he ordered easily. The way Race pouted and let his head hang low just made him look even more so like the little puppy Spot was convinced he was. Still, the boy did as he was told, giving one sly glance back to Spot. Spot refrained from sending him a quick wink. Instead he just smiled as Race was pushed gently from the room. “I said no encouraging—“

“He was in here when I got here,” Spot defended. “Told me the story a’ this paintin’... at least, what it’s about.” The young man shrugged, admiring the craftsmanship again.

Jack bit his lip. “Yeah… like I said… it’s complicated,” he shrugged, glancing back down the hall towards Racer’s room. He sighed. “Ma’s real happy you’re here, by the way. Told ya she’d adopt ya in three seconds.” The man yawned. Spot never cared much to actually get a good look at Jack, but now that he was, the man looked so young and somehow seemed so wise. It wasn’t like Spot didn’t know he was an idiot who had once nearly jumped off their apartment balcony on a bet, it was just that something felt different now. The things that Racer had said were swirling around in his mind. He wondered what the disappearing of the line meant, though he didn’t wonder for long, not knowing if he actually wanted the answer at all. Maybe it meant nothing but he knew that probably wasn’t the case. “Anyway, tomorrow’s the annual Christmas Eve party so there might be a lot a’ noise out here in the mornin’, but there will be Christmas Tree shaped pancakes, or… ‘ornament shaped’ pancakes if Henry lets Specs make a few,” Jack informed.

Spot nodded with a small smile. “Thanks.”

The older boy nodded back, offering him a small wave. “Goodnight, Spot.” Jack almost turned to walk away. “Oh, and uh… if ya don’t want kids — or Racer, for that matter, barging in at God knows what hour, I’d lock the door.”

And just like that, Spot was left alone. He did lay in bed but he spent a long while staring at the painting on the wall. He pulled a small necklace out from beneath his shirt. It was nothing much, just a little key. He held it gently in his hand as he stared at the painting, watching the story pass before his eyes until finally blue and gold were back with each other on the other side.

Before he knew it, Spot was fast asleep, something a little lighter in his chest.

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aijee · 3 years

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hello aijee!! what are your thoughts on mingyu and wonwoo's bittersweet?

Oh anon. Oh anon, anon, anon. I have very many feelings about this remarkable intersection of ley lines. I’m sure the WWxMG spheres of the Internet are in some state of madness, and I felt like my meager offerings would be nothing in comparison. But you are now my excuse to write up a Pandora's box answer that I've done my best to organize below the cut. It’s honestly not that exhaustive, but I have to catch a flight soon.

The short of it is: I really liked it! It was nice to see WW/MG doing something distinctly not hip-hop, or eye candy-centric, or “let’s fight over this random girl for no reason other than to give (female) fans the feeling of being sandwiched between two hot guys.” The urban imagery was also wonderful. I’m a big, big sucker for Japanese films set in cities in the 80s/90s, so this video definitely hit a specific aesthetic nerve for me. ALSO LEEHI MY BAE!!

But, fair disclaimer, I do have some reservations. Nothing is perfect!

The song itself

It was refreshing to hear a softer song with WW and MG doing so much of the vocals. I’m so used to eleven other guys contributing (I’m personally a bigger fan of the group/non-solo tracks), it was almost jarring to hear only two male voices in something very much not hip-hop or rapping. And LeeHi? My ex-YG BABEE?? I honestly wished I heard more of her!! And saw her in the video! Her voice was a perfect addition to a song that sounds more, as its name suggests, bittersweet.

I feel like all three of the artists involved have a much more dynamic range that could have been utilized, even for a muted tone. The song overall doesn’t really stand out to me, especially within Seventeen’s wonderful discography and selection of ballads. The instrumental was kinda weak ngl. But I still very much enjoyed the song! The lyrics from an English-speaking standpoint were also very lovely and definitely struck the heart on my sleeve, as you can imagine from the types of themes I tend to write about. Kudos to MG and WW for participating in it! Always love seeing SVT showing off their creative chops.

The video/cinematography

Frankly, I wasn’t impressed by it. 3.5/5 stars. I’m personally not a big fan of the blurry type of slow motion. I get that, perhaps, it was meant to evoke a sense of reminiscing on old memories, which can be blurry and choppy. But I felt like those extra seconds could have been used for more evocative cinematography between the trio or combinations thereof. There was so much potential to have a more unified sense of “story.” I felt like the acting really carried it, but overall the visual artistry didn’t hold together in my opinion.

I also thought that the imagery paired with the lyrics was often too on-the-nose. (Take this with a grain of salt from someone who doesn’t know Korean, only the official English translations.) In other words, I thought that the shots could be too literal when paired with the lyrics.Yes, yes, eyes are are meeting but something still feels far apart because the girl ain’t lookin at WW. Yes, yes, the scent of a moment fills hands because we see a glass of alcohol in presumably WW’s hand. I do like that the lyrics actually match the video to some degree (since so many Kpop MVs are just dancing in a fancy room), but, again, it felt too one-to-one without much thought otherwise.

Also, those AirPods lmao. I don’t know why, but that took me out of the immersion. WW and MG had one each, and I’d be knocking furniture down at that observation if they both weren’t wearing right-side pods, thus eliminating the possibility of sharing. Imagine!! Turning the act of sharing AirPods into something symbolic! Remembering things when someone else “plays that old tune”, being disconnected and connected at the same time, etc. To think that I’d be yell-writing about the potential symbolism of AirPods...

The duo/trio

My first thought seeing this video was: Are Mingyu and Wonwoo okay with this? They clearly had a say in the lyrics, so I feel like they’re okay. Instinctually, I get concerned about how a company can push idols pairings in official content to the point of undermining the real-life relationship; I felt like WW, as a naturally shyer and introverted person, stepped back from the WonGyu pairing at some point. I think this was a bigger concern in the group’s earlier years, and I feel like they and the fandom have matured significantly over time. Fans reading this are certainly free to educate me on their takes regarding this, since I follow Seventeen’s official content more (as much as I am able to, at least) than fan content, like fancams, and I try not to make too many legit assumptions based on official content.

All this being said, I think they looked really comfortable with each other in the video! Which I loved the most, honestly. The premise didn’t didn’t feel like guys fighting over a girl (yawn). I’m not a fan of the overused K-Pop trope of “let’s have a random girl act as a stand-in for fans to feel like they’re being pursued by their oppars.” I felt like, while MG and WW expressed clear interest in the girl, there was interest expressed in each other as well—especially MG towards WW in my opinion, cont’d below. And the interest was never forced to be romantic, even though it could be! LOVE that for them. (I highly recommend reading up on “queer platonic relationships”, which a friend of mine taught me recently. Made the mistake of writing “romantic” instead of “platonic” so sorry 😬)

Motherfuckin Kim Mingyu AKA my interpretation of the story

*I did read the little summary in the description box about “three longtime friends”, but I’m choosing to ignore it because I don’t think the video portrays that well and I like my interpretation better haha!

That sequence of WW putting a hat on MG, with WW’s fond but exasperated face of a hyung (I’m okay, not okay).

The cut from that shot of WW and the girl breathing heavy and looking at MG, to MG staring vacantly behind a rained-on glass window (I close my eyes but thoughts of you...).

The way MG steps out first into the rain and smiles back at WW in that last sequence of shots (Eyes meeting but hearts apart); MG looks so content despite the sadness usually meant to be evoked by dramatic rain sequences.

As someone who normally connects with WW, I really connected to MG’s character this time around. I interpreted MG’s character as going through a really complex series of emotions towards both the girl and WW, platonic, romantic or otherwise. It’s hard to pin down, but the small age difference between him and WW felt so much more apparent in the MV. I almost got the impression that maybe MG’s character felt new, naive and lost in the city (he has a few shots of wandering or being in front of urban areas). Then he found stability with the girl and WW, the consequence being the whirlwind of feelings he must be experiencing because of them. I wish there was more exposition hinting at what happened to the girl, since she sorta just...blipped out of existence by the end.

At the start of the MV, WW’s character looked like he was at the end of his rope, drinking away his woes, maybe because of what seems like a nice job based on the suit. But then he found solace in the female bartender, who was kind and had open ears. The two of them became friends (maybe more, perhaps one-sided in WW’s disfavor). Then WW met MG through her. He saw MG’s character as a cute dongsaeng to be nice to, mostly on the whims of the girl, even dancing with them after closing time. But maybe WW’s character started having complicated feelings for MG’s character throughout it all. He started seeing MG more (more than the girl? Hard to say), based on how he was staring at MG at the end of the running sequence at around 2:08, not even looking back at the girl. He ended up liking MG so much, that he followed MG into the rain despite them both avoiding it, staying indoors, before the end sequence.

That’s sort of the dirty and quick of my initial thoughts. Honestly, I wish I had the energy and speed to throw out a proper written work because I LOVE stories that are basically just complicated feelings with relationship boundaries that are hard to define. Also, gotta say, that little sassy look the female actress gave at around 0:30 was real cute. 👀

#askaijee #might as well be an aijeepost

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antialiasis · 4 years

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The Character Assassination of Pilate, or: why the Swedish JCS misses the point

So we rewatched the 2014 Swedish JCS (this wasn’t even me, Shadey wanted to, I swear), and I spent most of it complaining, and it also reminded me exactly why I’d felt Pilate was totally unsympathetic in it... which as it turns out was largely the translation! Again! So let me talk some more about the Swedish translation and this Swedish production generally.

One of the many cool things about Jesus Christ Superstar is that it makes a point of making all the major figures involved pretty sympathetic. Jesus is starkly a human being, distressed at how things are developing. Judas is sympathetic and has valid concerns, betraying Jesus because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, not for the money. The pharisees are assholes (especially Annas), but they also basically have reasonable concerns about the Romans getting fed up with the Jewish populace. Pilate condemns Jesus to death, but he doesn’t want to at all, and is instead pushed into it by an angry mob and a Jesus who refuses to defend himself or let Pilate help him. Even Herod is comic relief but he totally wants to free Jesus if he’ll just show he’s the real deal (which Jesus of course refuses to do, because he believes this has to happen).

So the translation choices made in the Swedish translation of “Trial Before Pilate” are... extremely disappointing. I already mentioned how Jesus’s “There may be a kingdom for me somewhere, if I only knew” is rendered as “Where you do my father’s will, that is my kingdom”, which completely misses the point of that line. But let’s take another look at Pilate himself and how his lines are translated.

Most of them are just your average translation, phrasing things differently but saying basically the same things. But then things start to go off the rails. Here are the major differences, backtranslation from Swedish courtesy of the YouTube fansub by fish -d:

Original English lyrics by Tim Rice:

He’s just misguided

Thinks he’s important

But to keep you vultures happy, I shall flog him

Swedish translation by Ola Salo:

Still, he is lost

and a little pompous

But maybe we can take it out of him with the whip?

The point of these lines becomes completely different. English Pilate feels nothing but contempt for the crowing crowd, these vultures, who scream for the execution of an innocent man, but he reluctantly decides to flog him anyway, in the hope that that’ll be enough to appease the crowd without actually sentencing Jesus to death. (The crowd is basically threatening to riot if he doesn’t crucify him, and it’s Pilate’s job to keep the peace.)

Meanwhile, Swedish Pilate... just thinks sure, they have a point that he’s pompous, maybe they can take Jesus down a peg by whipping him. The nuance of why he decides to flog him is just gone. He seems to agree that Jesus deserves this.

Then, after “39 Lashes”, once Jesus has said everything is fixed and Pilate can’t change anything:

Original English lyrics by Tim Rice:

You’re a fool, Jesus Christ!

How can I help you?

Swedish translation by Ola Salo:

You are sick, Jesus Christ!

Beyond all kinds of help!

Originally, Pilate is desperate. He wants to help, but Jesus won’t let him, which he thinks makes him a fool.

Swedish Pilate, instead, seems repulsed, and that’s how the actor plays it. He calls him sick and beyond help instead. This isn’t the worst of the changes, but it’s still a noticeable difference in tone.

And then:

Original English lyrics by Tim Rice:

Don’t let me stop your great self-destruction!

Die if you want to, you misguided martyr!

I wash my hands of your demolition!

Die if you want to, you innocent puppet!

Swedish translation by Ola Salo:

Don’t let me spoil the spectacle!

Die, if you want to, you deluded wretch!

I wash myself clean of your sick fate

Sad wretch! Prepare yourself for death!

This is night and day! Tim Rice’s Pilate recognizes Jesus is an innocent bent on being a martyr, and throws his hands up: if Jesus wants to get himself killed, so be it. His final words to Jesus are regretfully calling him an innocent puppet.

Meanwhile, Swedish Pilate... is really contemptuous of Jesus. He insults him and calls this a “spectacle”. There’s no recognition that Jesus clearly believes he’s a martyr for a cause; instead Pilate just seems to think Jesus is some kind of twisted exhibitionist masochist who wants to make a spectacle of himself. The final line is this spiteful, vengeful “Prepare to die!”

The overall effect of these edits is that Swedish Pilate seems to just come across as an unsympathetic asshole. He sort of vaguely says he wants to help Jesus, but then just drops him like some sort of gross unpleasant insect. There is no real sense that he’s conflicted about this and thinks Jesus’s fate is tragic.

Originally, Pilate is contemptuous and dismissive in “Pilate and Christ”, but his tone changes in “Trial Before Pilate”, when he’s seriously being petitioned to sentence this poor fool to death. He argues fiercely that Jesus hasn’t done anything wrong, tries to talk to him again and again, makes no secret of how much he abhors the crowd’s pointless bloodthirst. He does think Jesus is a misguided fool, but he feels obvious sympathy for him and regret for his ultimate fate.

Swedish Pilate pretty much just seems to remain contemptuous all the way through. If he has a glimmer of sympathy for Jesus at some point in there, it’s minor and vague and seems decidedly gone by the end. He’s contemptuous of the crowd too, but there’s nothing likeable or sympathetic about this Pilate. He’s just the guy who sentences Jesus to death. Which is wildly missing the point!

In general, I feel that this production is noticeably unnuanced. The pharisees, Pilate and Herod all just feel distinctly like villains here, played as deeply unpleasant with all signifiers thereof. Annas is a real bastard in the original, but here they play him up into this incredibly creepy cackling vampire pimp reveling in violence and hookers. There are just good guys and bad guys here, and it feels like they actively worked to hammer all nuance and sympathy out of the ‘bad guys’.

As for Jesus... It just feels like this production is mostly trying to portray him as a hedonistic rock star sort of figure, because haha Jesus Christ Superstar I guess. So accordingly, the apostles are basically his groupies, and he loves flirting with them and appearing before his adoring fanbase and being wheeled around a shopping cart and so on - but it doesn’t feel like he actually cares about anything. It doesn’t feel like Ola Salo has any real idea what to do with Jesus’s actual character arc, with the lashing out and the worries and the stress he’s under, or any kind of clear or consistent idea who he is as a person or why he acts the way he does. The serious Jesus scenes in the first half just by and large feel super flat and unconvincing or at best like he’s being kind of a drama queen fishing for sympathy; in “Gethsemane” he finally seems properly in sync with what Jesus is supposed to be feeling, and it’s different but okay as I mentioned before, but then afterwards he’s back to just... kind of... not acting much? He’s just there and doesn’t seem like he cares terribly much what’s happening or is very convinced of anything he’s saying and I just can’t make myself feel for him at all.

Meanwhile, Judas is definitely my favorite part of the Swedish production; he’s the one character who actually gets to have some kind of complexity and dimension, his actor does a great job with his conflictedness and torment, and I actually like how he’s translated - even when his lines are changed pretty significantly they still feel true to Judas’s character. (Why is it so dark? and God, I’m freezing! in “Judas’s Death” particularly get me.) But even then it feels like the director still wanted to villainize him. Ultimately this production mostly just portrays him as Jesus’s jealous, vengeful ex. He repeatedly violates Jesus’s boundaries, and this “Superstar” does the taunting thing - even having Judas reach out for Jesus, and Jesus reach back, only for Judas to snatch his hand away just before they touch, chuckling. And his concerns about politics and ideals are there in the lyrics, and still sound really reasonable and he performs it like they’re genuine, but ultimately they just don’t come off nearly as strongly in the staging as his obvious jealousy of Mary and attraction to Jesus, which again just kind of flattens the nuances of his character and makes that seem like his main motivation.

All in all I just don’t feel like the people behind this production thought very hard about what actually makes JCS as scripted interesting, which is a huge shame. Wanting Jesus and Judas to make out is all well and good, but there needs to be more to it than that.

#jesus christ superstar #translation #ramble #negative #character analysis

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koiryuu · 4 years

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Jitterbug (Hashiya Nanashi, feat. Hatsune Miku & MEIKO) analysis, from an autistic point of view

youtube

Disclaimer: This is based on my personal experience growing up with autism, and the experiences of the people around me. This song is also really gay by nature, so if MikuMei isn't your thing, this is your warning. Obviously this is in no way any sort of official analysis, and actually, ironically due to my autism, I may misinterpret some things or have a hard time not taking lines literally, so don't get mad at me if I get something clearly wrong. I'm just very passionate about this interpretation, and this song comes very close to representing a real (canon) autistic experience. No one else seems to comment on it from that point of view though, so naturally I had to write this up! This is also my first full analysis, and I'm not good at being concise, so please bear with me!

[[MORE]]

Overview: The video, for me, is a major factor in how Jitterbug comes across as an autistic narrative. The name itself, while it is still a reference to a 1920s dance (befitting of the electroswing style of the song), doubles as a meaning for someone who can't sit still, and actually on a personal note was an affectionate nickname my family called me as a kid, so that tipped me off right away. All throughout the video, I noticed most of all, the way Meiko moves her hands while she dances is very close to stimmy behavior, not really like how a neurotypical would normally dance (nor is it a part of the jitterbug itself). While Meiko is moving her hands like that, Miku very often has something in her mouth, either a kind of stick, or the laser pointer, definitely suggesting an oral fixation. Of course, both girls obscure their eyes with sunglasses (I think Meiko's aviators look so cool), and while that definitely has some metaphorical meaning as others have pointed out in their analyses of the song, it's really not uncommon for autistic people to wear shaders and/or noise dampeners to combat overstimulation and sensory issues. None of these things on their own prove anything, of course, as the video is often a small part of a song's meaning, so let's dive into the main course!

Lyric analysis:

I can't talk about any wishes, nor my ideals

Giving out the same, invariant answer all the time

For being the first line in this song, this really already punches home the idea that Miku is dissatisfied with herself, and, as is often the case with autistic people, doesn't even know how she's supposed to navigate the world. She either doesn't know her aspirations in life, or doesn't know how to talk about them without being judged.

You don't need a rotten yesterday

Dump it before you get betrayed

Meiko, being the free spirit in contrast to the masking, frustrated Miku, assures her that she can't just hold onto bad things that happened, being judged or not knowing herself, she needs to dump her perfectionist tendencies and learn to live as herself a little before her own precariously-built persona comes crashing down on her.

Just fully utilize it, tame it

Can't give it away nor dye it tomorrow

I'm fully ready

Meiko tells Miku that she has to learn to work with herself the way she is, find her talents and use them fully, rather than constantly trying to change or push her feelings deep down. She can't give away her personality, and she can't truly make herself different inside, no matter how hard she masks on the outside.

Hungry critics that can't even move

are just glancing at you sideways

The people who would judge Miku for who she is are just hungry for something to laugh at, someone to other or exclude, but when it comes down to it, they're no real threat. If she can just get over that initial hurdle, she'll realize her haters are just pathetically lapping at any entertainment they can get, and they're really not that scary at the end of the day.

Who cares! Ignore those idiots

Given this is the first line they sing together, it almost feels like an admission on Miku's part, she wants to believe Meiko and stand up for herself for once, even if it is just among them for now.

Come at nights, grab my hand and dance

The girls are obviously fond of each other (just gals being pals), and in a way, understand one another on a deeper level than other people understand them, having similar neurotypes. Dancing itself is sort of a wild, energetic activity, that can help express a wide variety of pent-up emotions, and the jitterbug itself is a pretty manic dance that fits the image rather well.

Use your eyes only for me and let's light it up,

Your one and only, scorching laser light

This line is honestly just gay. I don't think there's any deeper meaning to the laser light specifically, but it is a cute thing to call your funky spunky girlfriend, isn't it? It actually may be a reference to how Miku really is on the inside, bright and strange, and often blinding and scorching to others. She hides that side of her pretty well normally, but with Meiko it's not only fine to be bright and weird and full of personality, but actually encouraged.

Fitfully ranking things and aligning them vertically

Abandoning my heart, I convert them to numbers out of impulse

Honestly, upon my first translated listen of this song, I didn't think absolutely anything autistic was happening until this line hit me. This is so autistic in nature, I'm surprised that a lot of analyses leave it out. Miku not only sees the world in sets and orders and numbers like many autistics do, but actually feels (most likely from outside influence) that by her brain being wired to see the world like that, she's abandoned her humanity and become a robot.

The magic gradually faded out

Instead, pessimism flowed in and was entrenched

I'm taking a little liberty here, but many autistics with savant syndrome (and/or gifted kid syndrome) are praised in their youth for the amazing things they can do, such as doing complex math quickly or reading at a faster speed than their peers, but later in life, when those skills are either no longer relevant or have averaged out, the things they used to be praised for become seen as annoying, not something to brag about, or a burden. Miku no longer sees the way her brain works as magical and special anymore, it's a curse and proof to her that she's not like the people around her.

Struck speechless by the awful scenery,

Very clearly overstimulation.

I linger in the raining streets, soaked from head to toe

Some wait for the sun, some grumble about the rain

All pointing at me inside their umbrellas

This line could very well be taken literally, but it's most clearly just a way of describing how different Miku is truly. She doesn't see the same things as bad as other people, she doesn't see the same things as good either. She could be the type that embraces darkness in life, both literally and figuratively. People may not actually point, but she can feel eyes on her, and it makes her feel even more alienated. Even when she tries so hard to fit in, there are some parts of her that are too obvious to change, and she knows she draws attention anyway.

Who cares! Ignore them right now

Let's smile, choose my hand and sing

Feel the rhythm with your heart and dance

I'm not sure exactly why, but the line about feeling the rhythm with your heart made me feel really connected to the song. It might just be because of my own personal music stim habits, but either way it's another line about leaving behind your facade, being as true to your nature as possible, and just dancing out your worries to the beat of the song.

On this rainy stage, as bright as the scorching light

This line embraces the idea of Miku preferring the rain. No one else has to like the stage they set for themselves, because when they're together, it's just about them and what they want to do. Miku can soak herself in rain and bright, scorching light, and just exist with no one around to point and stare.

Eyes go dim and words are lost

While this can just be a reference to depression in general, it's worth noting that many autistics have trouble showing expressions, and/or go nonverbal, often in response to stress or unusually upsetting circumstances.

The colors of today have faded out

Still, it couldn't end because of someone

This can be a way of insinuating that Miku is actually suicidal due to how she's seen by others, and Meiko is the one thing keeping her here, or it could just mean that Meiko stopped her days from getting too bad in a moderate sense. Either way, pretty gay, and shows more how much the girls depend on each other in mutual understanding.

Who cares! Ignore those idiots!

Come at nights, dance and grasp your aspirations

Referring back to the first line, Meiko does assure Miku that not everything needs to be worked out for others' sake, but by spending time with your true self and unpacking your feelings, the future you're supposed to have and the things that truly make you happy will become clear.

I shall dedicate my entire life to you

Let's shine on, like the scorching light

Reach your hands out, until the very end

Miku is in lesbians with her. Ending the song on such a gay note is never a bad thing of course, but it is a little anticlimactic for this analysis. Though, the line of reaching your hands out might actually refer to their hand movements in the video, symbolizing to keep being weird and authentic as long as you can, but that may be a bit of a stretch (or a reach, if you will)

Final thoughts: I have seen other analyses (though not as in-depth) about the meaning of the song, and while they definitely do have some meaning and I can see it from that point of view, there are just some obviously autistic cues that I couldn't ignore that just swayed my perception of the song entirely that direction. I'm not sure if I only picked up that meaning because of my own experiences biasing my view, or if I actually am onto something with the original intention of the song. If you guys have any insight to offer on any of the lyrics, or if I missed or misinterpreted something, feel free to let me know! Thanks for reading this far, honestly! 🌸

#vocaloid #vocaloid meta #meta #jitterbug vocaloid #vocaloid analysis #jitterbug analysis #actuallyautistic #hopefully the readmore works #suicide ment #mikumei #edit: the readmore does not indeed fucking work and i cant edit it on desktop so im sorry #long post

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sophielovesbooks · 5 years

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Sophie’s Queer YA Rec List

Hi everyone! :) I’m back with another list of book recommendations! Yes, two of the books on here cross-feature on my Dark Academia Rec List, but here, the focus is different.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy my YA LGBTQ+ Rec List!

Her Royal Highness (Rachel Hawkins)

Listen, we’re starting off strong, because this one is an absolute GEM. American girl goes abroad to a fancy boarding school in Scotland. Also, she’s bi, her roommate is the princess of Scotland and the cutest haters-to-lovers situation ensues!! Read if you like fluffier reads, if you’ve ever been on a year abroad, if you’ve ever wanted to go on a year abroad, if you love Scotland or if you’re a girl who likes pretty girls! <3 (Note: This is the sequel to “Royals”, but I didn’t read that one either and you 100% don’t need to in order to understand this one.)

As I Descended (Robin Talley)

Okay, now this one is a lot darker. It’s a queer Macbeth retelling, which is a pretty amazing concept in itself. Also set at a fancy boarding school, but in Virginia. The main girls are a closeted power couple who more or less succumb to the darkness in their strive for even more power. This book is super diverse with Hispanic characters, wlw, mlm and one of the main two girls being disabled (though some people have criticised the way she was written). Read if you want a spooky story, if you love boarding school settings or if you love Shakespeare retellings!

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Benjamin Alire Sáenz)

This book is a classic of the queer coming-of-age genre, and it reads like one, too! The style is fairly simple, which may take some getting used to, but the author nailed the narrator’s voice, the story is meaningful, the characters feel complex and real and Ari’s fight to accept himself for who he is will break your heart! Set in the 1980s in El Paso, Texas. The two main boys are both Mexican American. And for reasons I can’t exactly put my finger on, this read like a modern-day Catcher in the Rye! Read this book if you want boys fighting to accept the fact that they love boys and complex family dynamics!

If I Was Your Girl (Meredith Russo)

Can ONLY recommend this one! The main character is a trans girl who goes to live with her dad after a traumatic event. At her new school, all she wants is to blend in, but she ends up suddenly popular for the first time in her life and dating a cute boy! This book was definitely fluffy at times, but still dealt with the darker aspects of being trans in this world (trigger warning for depression, dysphoria, a suicide attempt!) Read if, like me, you’re a cis person looking to get a better idea of what it’s like to be trans or if you’re trans and want to see yourself represented! The author is a trans woman herself and the book ends with a really emotional and thoughtful author’s note (that, yes, made me cry).

You Know Me Well (David Levithan & Nina LaCour)

Out of the books on this list, this one focuses the most on LGBTQ+ themes. It’s literally set in San Francisco during Pride Week, and it’s about a gay girl who is madly in love with another girl, but self-sabotages at every turn, and a gay boy, who is madly in love with his best friend, who fools around with him occasionally but doesn’t love him back. One thing that bothered me a bit was the insta-friendship between the two main characters, but I’m here for the gay-lesbian solidarity, and I thought the wlw romance was so cute! Read for a slightly fluffier dual-perspective book with strong LBGTQ+ and coming-of-age themes and a central friendship!

We Are Okay (Nina LaCour)

Oh God, this one. Read only if you are ready to be emotionally destroyed! The main character grew up with her grandfather, and after losing him, too, she feels completely alone. Set during Christmas break of her first semester of college, which she spends on campus in New York. Alone! Until her friend/lover comes to visit and emotionally reconnect with her. Hauntingly and lyrically written, this book is an absolute beauty that had me in literal tears and made my heart hurt. Can only recommend!

People Like Us (Dana Meele)

This one cross-features on my Dark Academia rec list, because it’s set at yet another elite boarding school (yes, this is my thing) and begins with a murder. The wlw themes in this came as a very pleasant surprise! Read if you’re looking for more of a mystery thriller that still includes wlw, but not as the main focus. Personally, I had certain issues with the plot, but the book was still a very engaging, quick and fun read!

Radio Silence (Alice Oseman)

ONE OF MY FAVOURITE BOOKS OF ALL TIME! The main character is Frances, a biracial, bisexual girl whose main goal in life is getting into Cambridge. Her friends see her as nothing but a study machine, but secretly, Frances is the biggest fangirl and draws fanart for a podcast called “Universe City”. The book is all about her close friendship with Aled, who turns out to be the podcast’s creator, academic pressure and figuring out what actually matters to you in life. I connected strongly with the themes of working so hard toward certain goals and not being seen by your friends for who you really are. Read if you want the most adorable platonic friendship EVER (between a bi girl and a demisexual guy), internet culture being represented accurately, wlw and mlm and an incredibly relatable main character!

Autoboyography (Christina Lauren)

Tanner is bi and was happy and out when his family still lived in California, but is forced back into the closet, basically for safety, when his family moved to Provo, Utah, where there are more Mormons than non-Mormons. His best friend Autumn convinces him to sign up for a very special class with her in their final year of high school, where the idea is that every student writes a novel. This is where Tanner meets Sebastian and falls head-over-heels! The problem? Sebastian is Mormon and not allowed to be with another boy. Even worse? He’s the bishop’s son! Read this one for two adorable boys actually going through something incredibly hard together and breaking your heart in the process! What I loved about this was that religion was shown in its full complexity, the good and the bad, and Sebastian’s struggle was so realistic! Also, this love story was much more high stakes than the usual “I’m sure he doesn’t like me back!” non-issue and it really drew me in!

I Was Born For This (Alice Oseman)

Another Oseman book!! (Spoiler alert: It’s also very good!) Told in dual perspective. The first one is Fereshteh, who tends to go by the English translation of her name: Angel. The biggest source of joy in her life is the popular boy band “The Ark”, and she plans to go to London to finally meet her best online friend in person, then go to an Ark concert together with her. The second perspective is Jimmy, a trans boy and one of the three members of the band. Things definitely don’t go as planned that week in London, Angel and Jimmy actually meet, chaos ensues. Read this if you’re looking for a fandom-based story that just gets internet culture and also has a very diverse set of characters! But be prepared for this to actually become very dark and intensely emotional at times! (The characters, especially Jimmy, were struggling more mental-health-wise than I had expected, and it wasn’t always easy to read, so be safe, everybody!)

These are the ones I’ve read so far, but don’t worry, I’ll update this list soon with many more! Already on my TBR (and in some cases even already on my shelves!) are These Witches Don’t Burn, Let’s Talk About Love (asexual main character!!), Tash Hearts Tolstoy (another asexual main character!) and I Wish You All the Best (non-binary rep!!!)

#queer books #queer ya books #queer book recommendations #lgbtq books #lgbtqplus books #book recommendations #ya books #booklr #her royal highness #as i descended #aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe #ari and dante #if i was your girl #you know me well #we are okay #people like us #radio silence #autoboyography #i was born for this

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imbellarosa · 3 years

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Okay so every time people question individual lines of lyrics, all those BNFs in particular practically come at people's throats for merely asking a totally valid question. Look, I get it. I've been a Lit student. I get that you can't take everything literally bc often in poems esp, it's all a carefully constructed metaphor which you have to dig deep to understand. But in terms of lyrics, everyone is always prattling on about not taking it word for word, understanding it can refer to arguments

& just emphasising 'the whole picture' & DO NOT FOCUS ON THAT ONE LYRIC. But sometimes I am so lost, like with all those lyrics e.g. 'we were in love, now we're strangers' or 'Maybe one day you'll call me and tell me that you're sorry too', what other way are you supposed to read them if not literally? I just don't understand. This is not a question craving reassurance that they're not broken up or whatever. I have faith in them, and I'm not looking for that. But really, at the end of the day,

3. I truly do not blame people for thinking that. I know all those BNFs LOVE to have their superiority complex and snub anyone who has doubts or asks questions about hl's lyrics bc gosh they've been there since day 1 and are NEVER wary/cynical of their lyrics bc hl are perfect & it's impossible they broke up (as if we actually know them??), but I get it. I don't have an anxiety attack over lyrics like that, I don't think they are broken up, but I am mystified as I mull over them to my wits end.

4. Alright whoops so I may have gone off a tangent (unexpectedly so) but I hope someone can at least see where I'm coming from. There was supposed to be a question in there haha but I just rambled on a lot. Since I admire your flair for reading lyrics like literature and really capturing the nuances of their writing in your analyses, I wanted to know, how do you deal with lyrics like that? What thoughts do you have and how do you read them more metaphorically when it seems far too literal?

hahahaha UR TRYING TO GET ME IN TROUBLE WITH OTHER FANS I SEE U ANON kasdjfkjdak but thats okay. first of all i LOVE this rant let’s DISCUSS lyrics! I think there are two possible scenarios here, that we can explain in different ways, as long as we are in agreement that they at least fudged some parts of the truth. There was no two-year gap, just with the timeline, there was no uni, things like that. Those things have been shifted to fit with a narrative, and I get that - they’re storytellers! So, given that, I see two possibilities.

The first possibility is what I call Operation: Superman. By day, these guys are Superman, flying around, flashing their ability, being a rock star. By night, they’re mild mannered reporter Clark Kent who just wants to go on a date with their pretty coworker (I actually really love this metaphor lmao). This means that, just like Clark Kent (or Lois Lane I think she did most of the writing), the feelings behind the words they write are true (”Superman strives to be a symbol of hope, truth and justice”) while the actual words written (”Superman is an unidentified alien who likely is *insert massively untrue thing here* irl”). For these guys, that might mean that “We were in love, now we’re strangers” translates into “people used to see that we’re special to each other, and now they see us as strangers” (lmao @ the story that they wrote perfect in separate rooms), and “maybe one day you’ll call me, and tell me that you’re sorry, too” could translate into “we really got into it, and this feels like a delicate moment, and you SUCK at saying sorry, and I wish you would, because you were wrong, too”. Heartbreak comes in many different forms, and using one kind of grief to write about another is a tactic that I’ve used a lot in the past for my own healing process. So maybe that FEELING of being alone and lost and desperate for someone to reach out and see you is real, but the situation (i.e. ‘this is about a break up’) is made up. Goodness knows that much more has been made up for much less, and this way, no one knows who Superman really is.

The second possibility is that they broke up for a period of time. Looking at some of the more extensive archives, if i had to guess when, I would say that it was likely Feb 2016-Oct/Nov 2016? Because Louis has talked quite a bit about how when his mother took a turn for the worse, his partner was really there for him, and how it brought them closer, and the lessons it taught him about being a partner. Let’s be clear: “we were having a hard time and they stepped up and we became stronger because of it” does not have to mean “we were on a break” - it could totally mean ‘we were fighting a ton and had no clue what would be next and it wasn’t fun anymore’. But if we take it to be that they were on a break, then the lie isn’t ‘we broke up’ the lie is ‘i was broken up with someone for a few years’.

I can see the arguments for and against both of these possibilities, and idk which I’m more inclined to believe. Sometimes I’m like “they’re Superman!” and other times I think “eh, they probably did take a break in there somewhere”. So the way I look at the lyrics is as if the whole thing was a story, and I look at them in context of the larger story.:

The first step is “what is literally being said in this song”

The next one is “what is the theme of this song/the emotion driving it, and what does that say about the person writing it”

the third one is “where does this fit in the time it was written? who would have influenced the song? what was happening at the time?”

And from that, just like from any book, we can build an analysis. I *really* feel that answering those three questions can tell you what you need to know about how literal any given song is! We can even do a quick run through - let’s do ‘Miss You’:

The song is literally saying that they miss the person they’ve been with for a long time, and that they wish they could go back to what they used to be

The emotions driving the song are regret, loneliness, bitterness, and longing

They were massively pushing ‘ reformed (ish) party boy Louis’ at the time, and the song fits that narrative well. When the song was released (Dec 2017) , he’d just gotten back together with Eleanor (Feb [?] 2017)so it would have been a reflection of that time they spent apart, and how he felt when he was alone. Given that we know he’s not actually dating Eleanor, we can assume that they narrative and the things that push that might also tilt towards “not literally true”. The song was written by 7 people, and any number of people could have taken the emotions driving the song and come up with different lines, and Louis could have connected with those lines for different reasons, some of them being more literal, and some more emotional/metaphorical.

And then, taking all those components, you decide on what you think is the most likely read of that song. I can’t tell you what to think things are about, you know? No one can! I can only tell you what *I* think makes most sense when you put art in the context in which it was written, because nothing is ever created in a bubble.

#Anonymous #anon asks #i answer #whoa this got super long hahaha #sorry i really really can talk forever #come back and talk to me about things like this any time okay!!!#This was such a fun thing to talk about omg!!!

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bodhirook1138 · 5 years

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The Problems with Aladdin: Orientalism, Casting, and Ramadan

Originally posted on Medium.

Edward Said and Jack G. Shaheen did not do the work they did so that movies like Aladdin would still get made.

I say this as someone who has had a complicated relationship with the 1992 Aladdin animated feature. I loved it when I was a kid. For a long time, it was my favorite Disney cartoon. I remember proudly telling white friends and classmates in third grade that Aladdin was “about my people.” Although nothing is said in the movie about Aladdin’s religion, I read him as Muslim.

When I grew older, I read Jack G. Shaheen’s book, Reel Bad Arabs, which analyzes about 1,000 American films that vilify and stereotype Arabs and Muslims. Among these films is Aladdin, which Shaheen reportedly walked out of. Shaheen spoke out against lyrics in the film’s opening song: “I come from a land from a far-away place/Where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face/It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” Although he convinced Disney to remove the lyrics for the home video release, the final verse was still there: “It’s barbaric, but hey, it’s home.” As a 1993 op-ed in The New York Timeswrote, “It’s Racist, But Hey, It’s Disney.”

In Edward Said’s seminal book, Orientalism (1978), he described orientalism as a process in which the West constructs Eastern societies as exotic, backwards, and inferior. According to Said, orientalism’s otherization of Arabs, Muslims, and Islam provided justification for European colonialism and Western intervention in the Middle East and Muslim-majority countries, often under the pretext of rescuing the people — especially Muslim women — from themselves. In addition to orientalism’s practices of constructing the “Orient” as the West’s “Other,” Said asserted that another major facet of orientalism involves a “western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the ‘Orient.’” In other words, it is not the Arab or Muslim who gets to define themselves, but rather the West does.

There are plenty of excellent and detailed critiques out there about how the original Aladdin is filled with racist, sexist, and orientalist tropes, so there’s very little, if anything, to say that already hasn’t been said. In her extensive report, “Haqq and Hollywood: Illuminating 100 Years of Muslim Tropes And How to Transform Them,” Dr. Maytha Alhassen argues that Hollywood’s legacy of depicting Arabs and Muslims as offensive caricatures is continued in Aladdin, where the main characters like Aladdin and Jasmine are “whitewashed, with anglicized versions of Arabic names and Western European (though brown-skinned) facial features” and speak with white American accents. Alhassen notes the contrast with the “villains, Jafar, and the palace guards” who are depicted as “darker, swarthy, with undereye circles, hooked noses, black beards, and pronounced Arabic and British accents.” In another article, “The Problem with ‘Aladdin,’” Aditi Natasha Kini asserts that Aladdin is “a misogynist, xenophobic white fantasy,” in which Jasmine is sexualized and subjected to tropes of “white feminism as written by white dudes.” Not only does Jasmine have limited agency in the film, Kini writes, but her role in the film is “entirely dependent on the men around her.”

When Disney announced plans to produce a live-action remake of Aladdin, I learned through conversations that the Aladdin story is not even in the original text for Alf Layla wa Layla, or One Thousand and One Nights. It was later added by an 18th century French translator, Antoine Galland, who heard the story from a Syrian Maronite storyteller, Hanna Diyab. Galland did not even give credit to Diyab in his translation. Beyond the counter-argument that “the original Aladdin took place in China,” I am left wondering, how much of the original tale do we really know? How much did Galland change? It’s possible that Galland changed the story so significantly that everything we know about Aladdin is mostly a western, orientalist fabrication. For a more detailed account about the origins of the Aladdin tale, I recommend reading Arafat A. Razzaque’s article, “Who ‘wrote’ Aladdin? The Forgotten Syrian Storyteller.”

Disney has been boasting about how the live-action Aladdin is one of the “most diverse” movies in Hollywood, but this is an attempt to hide the fact that the casting of this film relied on racist logic: “All brown people are the same.” It’s great that an Egyptian-Canadian actor, Mena Massoud, was cast in the lead role, but there’s inconsistency elsewhere: Jasmine is played by British actress Naomi Scott, who is half Indian and half white; Jafar is played by Dutch-Tunisian actor Marwan Kenzari; and Jasmine’s father and a new character, Dalia, are played by Iranian-American actors Navid Negahban and Nasim Pedrad, respectively. The casting demonstrates that the filmmakers don’t know the differences between Arabs, Iranians, and South Asians. We are all conflated as “one and the same,” as usual.

Then there’s the casting of Will Smith as the genie. Whether deliberate or not, reinforced here is the Magical Negro trope. According to blogger Modern Hermeneut, this term was popularized by Spike Lee in 2011 and refers to “a spiritually attuned black character who is eager to help fulfill the destiny of a white protagonist.” Moreover, the author writes that Lee saw the Magical Negro as “a cleaned up version of the ‘happy slave’ stereotype, with black actors cast as simpleminded angels and saints.” Examples of the Magical Negro can be found in films like What Dreams May Come, City of Angels, Kazaam (which also features a Black genie), The Green Mile, The Adjustment Bureau, and The Legend of Bagger Vance. In the case of Aladdin, the genie’s purpose is to serve the protagonist’s dreams and ambitions. While Aladdin is Arab, not white, the racial dynamic is still problematic as the Magical Negro trope can be perpetuated by non-Black people of color as well.

I need to pause for a moment to explain that I don’t believe an Aladdin movie should only consist of Arab actors. Yes, Agrabah is a fictional Arab country, but it would be perfectly fine to have non-Arabs like Iranians, South Asians, and Africans in the movie as well. That’s not the issue I have with the casting, and this is not about identity politics. My problem is that the filmmakers saw Middle Eastern and South Asian people as interchangeable rather than setting out to explore complex racial, ethnic, and power dynamics that would arise from having ethnically diverse characters existing within an Arab-majority society. Evelyn Alsultany, an Associate Professor who was consulted for the film, states in her post that one of the ways Disney tried to justify casting a non-Arab actress for Jasmine was by mentioning that her mother was born “in another land.” However, this seems to have been Disney doing damage control after they received some backlash about Jasmine’s casting. The result is convenient erasure of an Arab woman character. Moreover, the change in Jasmine’s ethnicity does little, if anything, to reduce the film’s problematic amalgamation of Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures. Alsultany writes that “audiences today will be as hard pressed as those in 1992 — or 1922, for that matter — to identify any distinct Middle Eastern cultures beyond that of an overgeneralized ‘East,’” where “belly dancing and Bollywood dancing, turbans and keffiyehs, Iranian and Arab accents all appear in the film interchangeably.”

Other examples of how the film conflates various Middle Eastern and South Asian cultures is highlighted in Roxana Hadadi’s review: “Terms like ‘Sultan’ and ‘Vizier’ can be traced to the Ottoman Empire, but the movie also uses the term ‘Shah,’ which is Iranian monarchy.” Referring to the dance scenes and clothing, she writes they are “mostly influenced by Indian designs and Bollywood styles” while “the military armor looks like leftovers from Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven.” An intersectional approach to the diverse ethnic communities represented in the film would have made for a more nuanced narrative, but this would have required a better director.

Speaking of the director, it is amazing that, of all people, Disney hired Guy Ritchie. Because if there is any director out there who understands the importance of representation and knows how to author a nuanced narrative about Middle Eastern characters living in a fictitious Arab country, it’s… Guy Ritchie? Despite all of the issues regarding the origin of the Aladdin story, I still believed the narrative could have been reclaimed in a really empowering way, but that could not happen with someone like Guy Ritchie. It’s textbook orientalism to have a white man control the narrative. I would have preferred socially and politically conscious Middle Eastern and Muslim writers/directors to make this narrative their own. Instead, we are left with an orientalist fantasy that looks like an exoticized fusion of how a white man perceives South Asia and the Middle East.

Lastly, I have to comment on how this movie was released during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan. In fact, the film’s release date, May 24th, was just one day before the last ten days of Ramadan, which are considered to be the most important in the month. During Ramadan, Muslims around the world fast — if they are able to — from dawn to sunset every day for 30 days. The time when we break our fast, iftar, typically involves dinner and prayer with family, friends, and/or the community. But Ramadan is more than just about fasting, it’s a time of self-reflection, compassion, and strengthening our connection with Allah, our loved ones, and community. I don’t believe Disney released Aladdin during Ramadan intentionally. If anything, I think the film’s release date is reflective of how clueless and ignorant Disney is. It’s so ridiculous that it’s laughable.

I don’t want to give the impression that Muslims don’t go out to the movies during Ramadan. Of course there are Muslims who do. I just know a lot who don’t— some for religious reasons and some, like myself, for no other reason than simply not having enough time between iftar and the pre-dawn meal, sehri (I mean, I could go during the day, but who wants to watch a movie hungry, right?). Even Islamophobic Bollywood knows to release blockbuster movies on Eid, not towards the end of Ramadan.

But this isn’t about judging Muslim religiosity during the holy month. No one is “less” of a Muslim if they are going to the movie theater or anywhere else on Ramadan. My point is that Disney has not shown any consideration for the Muslim community with this movie. They did not even consider how releasing the film during Ramadan would isolate some of the Muslim audience. It’s clear that Disney did not make efforts to engage the Muslim community. Of course, there is nothing surprising about this. But you cannot brag about diversity when you’re not even engaging a group of people that represents the majority of the population you claim to be celebrating! In response to Shaheen’s critiques of the original Aladdin cartoon, a Disney distribution president at the time said Aladdin is “not just for Arabs, but for everybody.” But this is a typical dismissive tactic used to gloss over the real issues. No doubt Disney will follow the same script when people criticize the latest film.

I don’t have any interest in this movie because it failed to learn anything from the criticism it received back in 1992. The fact that a 1993 op-ed piece titled, “It’s Racist, But Hey, It’s Disney” is still relevant to the live-action version of a film that came out 27 years ago is both upsetting and sad at the same time. As I said earlier, Edward Said and Jack Shaheen did not exhaustively speak out against orientalism, exoticism, and vilification to only see them reproduced over and over again. Of course Disney refused to educate themselves and listen to people like Shaheen— their Aladdin story was never meant for us.

#Aladdin #aladdin remake #Orientalism #Disney #Muslim

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kuuxkat · 6 years

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[EN] Interview with Aki Hata

Original CN TL and Pictures: here CN TL： zegao (nyamazing) EN QC by: @yujachachacha

Yuja did lots for this TL. Thank her guys =)

It was mostly delayed due to IRL stuff.

Disclaimer: This is a Chinese to EN TL, there would be things that would be lost in translation between the languages.

I’m not posting the image of the TL, sorry about that. Stealing images aren’t cool.

Please refer to my policies for more details and do not use the translations for commercial use.

The contents are under the cut.

Interview With Aki Hata

The Radiance of Aqours: Searching for the Answer

Aki Hata—the composer and lyricist of all of the songs of “Love Live! Sunshine”.

The “answer” that was obtained from the youthfulness of Aqours as they ran with all their might is...

From the song that gave Aqours their initial fame, “Step! ZERO to ONE”,

To the song that lit up Season 2 Episode 12, “WATER BLUE NEW WORLD”.

In addition to the songs for the subunits as well as the lyrical world of Saint Snow,

In this interview, she discusses the feelings she had placed on the 1st and 2nd seasons of the TV anime.

Q: How did you view the story of Season 2 of the TV anime Season 2?

I was reading the script as I wrote the lyrics, and I really cried every time. There are some things in this world that are unattainable no matter how hard one tries. The way they met that challenge really made me feel that it was “indescribably beautiful”. In addition, I feel that the 2nd season was a reflection of reality, it was really compatible. I was still in a state of confusion when I first wrote “Step! ZERO to ONE”, but at this point, in my heart this song has become a key note of the story. And afterwards when the second season kicked off rapidly, in the process the lyrics were gradually woven into the story. From there, I felt that fate had a hand in it. I personally feel that “this song being used here was really fitting, right?”. I don’t know if everyone has the same feeling that I did. From a state of confusion to hearts being one, it was really incredible.

Q: Did you see the performance at Metlife Dome during the 2L tour?

I did. Although the stage itself was very energetic, in terms of the atmosphere it was quite frigid (laughs). In a half-exposed environment, looking at their posture where they wanted to make the entire venue fall (for them), and to let their intent be transferred to everyone, I feel their determination in accepting this huge vacuum and to go all the way (with it).

Q: So that means you felt self-awareness and responsibility during the performance?

That’s right, I felt the intent and realization of “I wish to let everyone enjoy more”. As the previous project was hugely popular. “They’ll definitely be compared to that”, “if the effect wasn’t ideal, would it be my fault?” -- For them to be able to take on all of this burden, I feel that they are very strong too.

Q: I feel that the songs by Aqours during 1st season, the charm point resides in a sense of “stumbling around”. The impression of the many lyrics was that: “Although I don’t know what the end result would be, but in any case let’s try it”. A feeling like that. It’s evidently different in the 2nd season. Or rather, should we say that feeling of stumbling was harmonized?

As by the 2nd season, they would have found their own goal. They weren’t becoming anyone, but rather were radiating their own light. They would have kept that glow firmly etched in their hearts. At that time, I was thinking, life’s own answers would remain in one’s heart’, this fact and the story are seamless aligned. It let me feel that there was a resonance -- the answer was truly in one’s heart huh? For the lyrics side on the 1st season, I wrote them with being very straightforward and plain in mind. For example, in “Kimi no Kokoro wa Kagayaiteru kai?”, I thought: Did they discover “it” at the very end by relentless asking questions like this? As without asking, they wouldn’t have found the answer.

Q: Let’s turn the focus to the period between Season 1 and Season 2 then. After “HAPPY PARTY TRAIN”, should we say that the model changed? It feels that the stumbling part of the lyrics was set aside for a while too.

That’s right, amongst them I added an element of more maturity in then. Although it is a new way forward, but it wasn’t 100% a happy feel to it. As I feel that, everyone would want to see an Aqours that grew up and would be able to sing sad songs, right? Thus, although the main focus would be running towards the end goal, and how the destination could barely be seen, secondly it’s the reality of the story itself. Everyone would have realized it, if vaguely, but meeting any obstacle in reality, at times you would feel that: “Although you are seemingly able to ‘see’ the turning point, but in reality you can’t do anything about it.” I feel that for this current generation, there are more harsh situations in reality that the current younger generation has to face. Rather, I should say that this is a generation where dreams are hard to achieve? Even if they wish to stumble and do their best, but problems in reality would be blocking them immediately. The story exists in a setting like this, so I feel that I definitely need to let everyone have that sense of foreboding to it.

Q: So that is to say, rather than searching for the truth between the layers of the story, you would rather focus on what is projected on the observers?

That’s right. I hope to create a situation where everyone would be able to accept it fully. At such times, one should let everyone enjoy a little “sadness”, as sadness is also a form of enjoyment too (laughs).

Q: (Laughs) Hata-sensei, among the songs in the 2nd season, which songs touched you the most while you were writing them?

I guess it would be “WATER BLUE NEW WORLD”? I like the beginning parts. So it has the lines, “Ashita e no tochuu janaku / ima wa ima da ne” (“It's not halfway to tomorrow, now is now”). Basically it’s all towards the future, but there are no complex rhetorics to it at all.

Q: The incomparable happy “today” that only exists for that very instant - for one to understand this perspective and to sing this line, is truly saddening.

And, although we are speaking of the future, but I feel that everyone wouldn’t be able to project their mind set for going ahead. I feel that, the girls probably don’t totally know how their future would turn up. Although they noticed lots, but they won’t know everything. The world is filled with unknowns. They might not know, but they also seem to understand lots of things - rather one can say that it is a paradoxical sadness then?

Q: That is to say they have their own degree of self-awareness then? But for now, “this” is enough.

That’s right, that’s exactly it. As there aren’t many people who would be able to enjoy the present without being bound by the past. I feel that enjoying the present is a very wondrous thing, so I hope that everyone would try to enjoy it. As we all know, even if we truly wish to enjoy the present, we’ll be robbed of our feelings and vision by many various things. To express this point without complex jargon is difficult. Although adding the phrase “instant” would solve problems, I feel that they shouldn’t say that.

Q: I feel that, the 2nd season’s OP “Mirai no Bokura wa Shitteru yo”, the most defining line of the lyrics was, “Mirai o doushiyou kana!? (“What shall we do about the future?!”). Although the future can be freely chosen, but the end result isn’t always what one hopes for. But at this stage, everyone still believes everyone’s future is up to their choosing.

That’s right. Singing “What shall we do about the future!” would perhaps have that unbelievable feel of “perhaps we can truly force the change” I guess? “Having the sky and seas as comrades” would also make one think: “Really??” This could also be due to them being exposed to warmth from lots of people, perhaps their inner soul having being touched by a sense of enjoyment to being loved as well? I feel that, acceptance the truth that one is loved is something that is very difficult. If one is loved too strongly, one would always be a little suspicious, right? But I feel that for them, perhaps they won’t ask “why”, but would rather “be able to accept straightforwardly” the truth that one is being loved by everyone. So for “the sky and sea as comrades”, the meaning of that should be their own hometown, the place that they lived on as their comrades? Everyone really loves their hometown, this is what they call jimo ai (lit. “local love”) (laughs).

Q: With regards to “Awaken the power”, seeing the animation on Episode 9 of the TV anime I felt that, here comes a very incredible song, huh (laughs).

(Laughs) Ah, I really am very happy (about this). How do I put it, I have my own self-awareness on how narrow my views are, admitting it openly, will let one grow swiftly? However, process of noticing this point, I guess would be very painful? As one must let something that one had firmly believed in be wrecked after all. But that is only because one’s view is too narrow -- briefly looking around the surroundings and one would realize, previously one would feel saddened about wasn’t depressing at all. The moment one’s view is expanded, they’ll really want to try it out. You can also choose to retreat if one is afraid of being injured, so as long as you tightly hug the world you had previously, you’ll be able to be protected. But if one knows all this, but still has the realization to say, “wait a minute...”, I would really want to have a toast to that courage (laughs)!

Q: (Laughs). The songs by Saint Snow are very low-toned with high BPM, in some sense the entire feel is the direct opposite of Aqours “sparking” feel. Are there any particular points of note while writing their lyrics then?

It’ll be “a battle with one’s heart inside” then, I guess? Their attitude towards dreams, the level of their self-awareness -- through these comparisons, they displayed a sense of gentle innocence that is different from Aqours.

Q: For “DROPOUT?!”, the parts where Leah sings, the lyrics included, were especially great.

My goal was to show that: “Even if they were going to fall into despair, the soul would remain beautiful”. From the angle of my personal interest, I like this song very much as well. Suffering will let one grow up rapidly, so I also tried imagining in the direction where “Saint Snow” would need to go through many difficulties, this very harsh and serious route.

Looking at Aqours, I became aware that being innocent isn’t embarrassing.

Q: For the second wave of the subunit songs, I even felt that Hata-sensei was being too serious about it! (laughs)

Well~~ Looks like the fact that I love the subunits is exposed, huh (laugh). Should I say I like them? I should say that I’m given more freedom to express them?

Q: CYaRon!’s “Kaigandoori de Matteru yo” is truly a masterpiece.

I especially like that song (laughs).

Q: The tune started off as a gentle stroll, but in the end nothing happened at all. That point itself was startling enough.

I thought about trying various things while writing songs about friendship, so I thought of how there I heard of a song from overseas that’s akin to a story by itself. That song would be like an image of youth. It would actually just be depicting something trivial, but everyone would have a strong and deep resonance of: “I can empathize with this feeling”. Although by itself is purely how one would not get along with friends, and was stubbornly walking down the streets by the seaside (laughs). But it carries a huge weight in one’s heart. It’s simply a small minor thing, but seemingly carries with it 80% of the world’s sadness with it.

Q: For Guilty Kiss, firstly the title song “Kowareyasuki”—it’s a staple Guilty Kiss song.

A sense of having absolutely no confusion.

Q: As for the coupling song, “Shadow gate to love”, I would like to ask directly, what exactly is “Shadow gate”? (Laughs)

(Laughs). I guess it’s… the self in one’s heart? … It’s like, “I might not let you turn back, all right? I would exist in one’s heart too.” Like that, although it does seem to be stirring it up a little. I considered two sides of things at this part. Although I do think that high school girls would say the phrase “musk” I guess (laughs), but I do want to let them say that.

Q: Amongst the lyrics of the second wave of the sub-unit songs, the phrase binetsu (微热, lit. feverish) didn’t appear even once, right?

It’s something that I sealed away intentionally. I’m trying to see how long I can hold it in without using it -- while right now it’s getting hard for me to hold back (laughs).

Q: (Laughs). Speaking of this, I hope Hata-sensei could explain to us the charm of the phrase “微热/binetsu”.

All right. So we are chatting how Aki Hata likes about the phrase binetsu, right? (laughs). This is something before passion, the state where passion first began to show itself. That very brief, mythical state, that is the passion that I like the most. It still exists at the stage of fantastical love, or it perhaps can be something very brief. And I guess it means a disguised innocent passion? One’s thoughts might be pitiful but beautiful, amongst them it would reveal a tangible strand of mystic to it. One would be slightly dizzy with that knowledge - it would be a feeling like this. In one’s life, perhaps this is the state of mind that I would love the most. A young girl’s love can be called “binetsu”, a girl’s thoughts is surely “binetsu”. Perhaps all girls could emotionally understand this state of “binetsu”? A mystery that only girls know, a secret that belongs to girls -- this would let people feel that it’s cute, right?

Q: The way that AZALEA let one immerse in them comes out strongly as well.

Of course I do like all the subunits, but AZALEA would probably have the highest synchronization with my personal feelings? I feel that this subunit, is a manifestation of priestesses to something that I would like to express. I guess this change happened during the 1st Live? After seeing their performance, it is my personal opinion that, I can let them carry even more (on their shoulders), I could let them walk on the direction of passion x philosophy (laughs)**. **TL Note: Although uncertain, it could be a pun on “Tokimeki Bunruigaku” instead.

Q: (Laughs) I feel the same, that is why “GALAXY HidE and SeeK” became a MVP-level title as well.

Thank you very much. I feel that AZALEA expresses the sense of “loneliness” very strongly. Or should I say that that they are able to match the sense of unrealism and loneliness very strongly? I guess it’s probably in the direction of “the me that no one else notices were discovered by you”. A secret held between you and me?

Q: From now on, for 3rd Live Tour as well as the movie are waiting for Aqours. Do you have anything you wish to say to them?

For them who are on the stage, I guess I would like to say is probably, “Do show us more of what you got”? I purely hope to be able to continue watching on. Everyone have been working very hard, so I hope I can sing and play along with them more.

Q: At this point to Hata-sensei, what is “Love Live! Sunshine!!” and what is “Aqours”?

I guess it’s something like “an innocence that’s on the verge of being forgotten”? Looking at Aqours, I became aware that being innocent isn’t embarrassing at all. Although right now, as an adult there are things you wish to conceal, but looking at them I do feel that, showing that side wouldn’t be wrong at all.

Aki Hata’s stories with books

If we’re counting data/information, my monthly intake would be huge. So if I really start sharing, one book wouldn’t be enough. But if it’s a recent one, then Leonardo’s Judas (レオナルドのユダ) by Mayumi Hattori (服部まゆみ) gets my shoujo heart thumping again.

#articles #chinese to english #teamonibe #aki hata #lovelivesunshine #nyamazing

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secretradiobrooklyn · 4 years

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SECRET RADIO | 10.19.20

Secret Radio | 10.19.20 | Hear it here.

1. Melome Clement & Tout Puissant Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou - “Gnon Nu To Min Lin”

One thing that consistently amazes me about this TP music is that it’s like listening to classic oldies

I just read that Melome Clement died right at the end of 2012. I hope that means he lived a long life.

2. Fela Ransome Kuti & His Koola Lobitos - “Wa Dele”

Absolutely awesome footage of Fela Kuti, some from before and after the period of this song. Hell, it opens with a shot of him hugging Ginger Baker. He’s clearly a massively charismatic guy. There’s great footage of the horn players too, and tons of amazing dancing, both onstage and (I think?) backstage. There is also one very bad moment in the footage that is super jarring… but I think on balance the footage gives a huge dose of color to an already colorful song — I know I fell in love with this song long before I saw these shots!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVYqMQ5PKXM

3. Panbers - “Haai”

One side effect of running a music magazine was that music would be sent to us, solicited, unsolicited or otherwise — and I loved it. Part of why I started writing about music was that I loved getting CDs in my literal mailbox. One set that arrived at Eleven before I got there was a beautifully made collection called “Those Shocking Shaking Days: Indonesian Hard, Psychedelic, Progressive Rock and Funk 1970-1978.” It wasn’t the kind of thing I was listening to, or for, at the time, but it made a certain impression. Now I’m amazed at how Indonesia, Turkey, Nigeria, France and Benin were pumping out great music in 1978 that all seems like they were part of the same scene… but they couldn’t have been. Right? Italians, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Estonians, Peruvians — just great music being made all over the planet at the same time. Wow.

4. La Femme - “Welcome America”

This band seems to me like a more modern version of the band Little Rabbits from the ‘90s-‘00s, whose music I totally love. I really like the spoken style of some French pop — like the lyrics aren’t being sung, they’re being announced. I get the impression that this is an indie sort of band in modern French music but not crossed over into the French pop stratosphere.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KomjRIqlF7g

A Town Called Panic! soundtrack

If you haven’t seen this movie, we highly recommend it. Don’t even look it up, just pop it in at the top of your queue. It’s really weird and completely rewarding.

5. Serge Gainsbourg & Brigitte Bardot - “Initials B.B.”

This is one of the foxiest songs ever recorded, in my opinion. I mean, she’s beautiful and he’s beautiful for SURE, but also it’s written into the chords and arrangements. It’s so royal.

For the eye makeup if nothing else:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPOYtC1n5bE

Paige adds:

I should note, Chris and Christine when I dedicated this to Bridget, I was only thinking of the chorus “initials, initials, initials, B. B.” Immediately when it started playing, I realized I’d completely forgotten there were verses and that I have no idea what they’re saying. But considering it’s Serge and Bardot, there’s a high chance it might be a song for grown ups. So just the B.B. part is for Bridget.

6. Betti-Betti - “Guikolo”

From Bridget to Brigitte Bardot to another B.B.: Betti-Betti. I love the character and timbre of her voice, and the way the horn hits anticipate the beat — everything seems to be out ahead of the beat, it’s amazing. And this is only a hunch, but I think she does the amazing mouth drumming in the middle of the song. If anyone knows whether that’s actually her doing it, I would love to know. I feel like it happens in several of her songs. It just knocks me out every time.

7. Guided By Voices - “Hot Freaks”

This song will always be deep in the heart of my Seattle self. I feel like this is the moment that Guided By Voices became ineluctable.

8. Techniques Band - “And I Love Her”

So languid, so strangely refracted.

9. L’Oeil - “Bernadette”

This song comes from a collection called “Wizzz: French Psychorama (1966-1971), Vol. 1.” Everyone sounds so locked in together on the groove, the vocals can go off on their own TV comedy scene. I want to know more about this band.

10. William Onyeabor - “Tomorrow”

The rhythm of this song grows so gradually that you don’t even feel it growing ever more complex until the backing vocals start to wind around each other in an ascending ladder of harmony. Meanwhile, the lead vocal just keeps expressing an absolute truth about life: No one knows tomorrow.

11. Marie Lafôret - “A Demain My Darling”

Lijadu Sisters - “Sunshine”

This is such a pretty song in the verses… but then it opens up into an extended instrumental passage built around this perfect little guitar phrase. I assume great hip hop songs have been built around this sample, but I haven’t heard em yet. In headphones the instruments are being slowly panned around the room in different directions, which is pretty great as well.

12. T P Orchestre Poly Rythmo - “A O O Ida”

When I’m digging around for T.P. tracks I haven’t heard, sometimes a song really lands. I make a note, come back to it a few times, realize I’m into it, cue it up and realize that I should have recognized the song from its place on a comp or something I’ve already heard. But they sound so different from copy to copy! The version of “A O O Ida” here is from a recording of the 1976 original pressing. The version I knew but didn’t even recognize is on Analog Africa’s excellent “The Skeletal Essences of Afro Funk.” At first I thought they were entirely different takes, but they’re not — just really different EQs and mastering. I love all of Analog Africa’s remasters on all of their amazing, amazing compilations, but in this case I prefer the version here. It sounds so sharp and wild.

13. Teddy Afro - “Mar eske Tuwaf (Fikir Eske Meqabir)”

Teddy Afro must be the biggest entertainer in all of Ethiopia, and he is internationally revered as well. I first heard his music as background music in Ethiopian restaurants, but as I’ve come to explore more music around the world, I find his songs’ production to be really fascinating. He kind of floats over the top of a giant cumulus cloud of orchestral music and telling stories. In this case, he’s relating the story of Seble and Bezabih, the heroes of a famous Ethiopian story called “Love Until the Grave” that I gather doesn’t end well.

14. Salah Ragab - “Black Butterfly”

Josh Weinstein told us about Salah Ragab, and this song makes me feel like I’m living in a cartoon.

15. Giant Sand - “Temptation of Egg”

In Seattle I went to see Grandaddy at the Crocodile, opening for a band I’d heard of but never seen so figured I’d check out. Giant Sand was touring on this album, “Chore of Enchantment,” and I’d never seen anyone play both keys and maracas AND guitar while singing and somehow seem like he was barely doing anything at all. I got the CD but it didn’t seem like the same thing… until the day after I met Paige, when we found ourselves at my place and I pulled out this album. It unfurled like a genie from a bottle.

16. Blonde Redhead - “En Particuleur”

Blonde Redhead was for a long time my absolute favorite band to see live. I think the first time was at Under the Rail, and literally the second she first screamed I burst into surprised tears. The twins looked like one angel and one devil. John Goodmanson worked with them before he worked with Harvey Danger and I was honestly in awe of them. They were also my path into Serge Gainsbourg, for which I will always be thankful.

17. Michel Polnareff - “La Tribù (Hippy Jeeeh!)”

It’s amazing how many layers of reverb this recording is soaking in, which helps keep it super spaced out, along with that synth sound firing straight up out of the atmosphere.

18. Fabio - “Lindo Sonho Delirante”

Another find via Now/Again Records. The original cover for the single featured a photo of Fabio with his arms outstretched, enwrapped in text. The breathless, almost torn quality of the backing vocals is trés classique. Also, another great example of mouth drumming.

19. Os Bongos - “Lena”

*A great find own my quest to find Muxima! I love the guitar tone on this.

20. Avolonto Honore et l’Orchestre Poly-Rythmo - “Avi Yaman Houé”

Avolonto Honore belongs to that first group of four — plus of course T.P. Orchestre — from the original “Legends of Benin” that basically makes him a saint in our book. He’s definitely one of the most amazing-looking players among them. This track they’re working is a super deep groove… and then when the horns come in, they sound surprisingly like Adriano Celentano’s “Prisencolinensinainciusol.” I believe that is Papillon on the guitar as well, another top favorite musician ever.

21. Yuri Morozov - “Neizyasnimoe”

Johnny Fantastic is probably the person we know who knows the most about Russian history and culture. Also American presidents. He is who I want to talk Russian psych and underground music with. So far, I’ve mainly found cool stuff from Estonia, which is plenty exciting, but I feel like there must be a whole Muscovite weird-rock scene that we just haven’t met yet. What do you think, Johnny?

22. Flavien Berger - “La Fête Noire”

Via roundabout paths, this one gets totted up in Julian’s column. Thanks, Julian. This was one of the first batches of songs that Paige heard of French music made after the ’70s, and it clearly stuck. Sometimes she sings along with the ending, which is my favorite. One translated lyric that sticks out is “I leave the comings and goings of the souls / On the other side of the diving board”

Hailu Mergia - “Embuwa Bey Lamitu”

We have been so glad to have “Wede Harer Guzo” in our collection. Every track is a pleasure. Great for working creatively alongside.

23. Ram Jong Vak - “Twist (Dance Twist)”

More Cambodian pop wizardry.

24. Rocky Horror International - “Alltid Lys Hos Frankenstein”

I tried to convince Paige, when we were leaving our art castle on Cherokee, that we couldn’t have Halloween that year, because we were going to be way too busy. She agreed — and then got us tickets for “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” the weekend before, which isn’t technically Halloween… and thank god! It was my first live Rocky, and I may not’ve ever done it if I didn’t do it then. Truly a singular experience, there’s nothing like it no matter how hard people try.

Paige adds: The church of Rocky!

25. Arsenal - “Bolero”

Still just reading about this track. One guy wrote in on a track, asking, “Is there any place in Russia where I can still buy this music? I have been searching all over the western planets, but no success so far.” Which made my whole existence feel different. The western planets? How far do you have to go to find a copy of this record?!

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giarts · 4 years

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Celebrating Juneteenth with Black Artists!

Submitted by admin on June 18, 2020

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It’s a great holiday to be sharing with each of you today, Juneteenth! As we gather – remotely – to honor and celebrate the power and jubilation of this day, liberation for ancestors and elders, we hope to echo the voices and experiences of Black artists who have brought us joy, made us feel seen, challenged, supported, and taught us so much. We come here with deep gratitude and deeper commitment to investing in a future of liberation for Black peoples everywhere.

Today, we join many of you commemorating the emancipation of enslaved folks in the U.S. and working toward an equitable and just field and future. This Juneteenth, the GIA team offers some reflections on personal experiences with a Black artist who has contributed to our lives.

We hope our reflections inspire sharing of your stories with Black artists who have been central in your life.

From Sherylynn

I could write an entire book on Black art, art while Black, and how inspiring it is.

Black artists continue to create despite the fact that creating art while living in a Black body will always be “a political statement.” If your art leans too much into the Black experience or is too Afro-futurist, it’s radical or controversial. If it leans too much into the Eurocentric style, it’s political because “what makes you think you belong in this space?” Yet still, we keep creating art to teach, heal, entertain, find solace and fulfillment, and spread joy. I love that.

Jean-Michel Basquiat said it best, “I don’t listen to what art critics say. I don’t know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.”

Thank you, Black artists. Keep creating unapologetically. Here is to more life and more freedom, (raises glass), Happy Juneteenth!

From Carmen

As I write these words, Prince and Janet Jackson take turns in my Spotify. I can’t decide which of them has been more influential in my life, since as a die-hard music lover, I grew up with both as MTV and VH1 filled my after-school hours.

Video after video, Janet taught me many dance moves and, in doing so, she taught me so much about confidence and joy. In my senior year, I took many of those lessons and translated them to an interpretation of one of her classics, “If.” Back then I asked four friends to dance with me and we spent many afternoons rehearsing our choreography. I remember feeling that Janet’s strength and energy got directly into my soul when I took the stage.

Queen Janet is still queen Janet in my life. I would have seen her for the first time this year, but her Black Diamond tour is one of those that lost to the cancellations due to the coronavirus pandemic. I’m still heartbroken (insert “That’s the Way Love Goes” for this moment in my life’s soundtrack), but I’m hopeful I’ll be able to dance with her someday, even if it’s from a very far away seat.

Photo by Manu Kumar on Unsplash

Songs from Prince like “Nothing Compares to You,” on the other hand, are equally integral to my soundtrack. I would daydream thinking that the love of my life would dedicate lyrics to me like the ones in “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” I still love that video and its diverse cast of women because I saw myself in many of them!

His death in 2016 left me with a void (similar to how I felt when David Bowie died earlier that year), but Prince’s memoir, “The Beautiful Ones,” has provided me a special way to connect with that beautiful – and complex – mind.

As I write this brief love letter to two of my greatest inspirations I cannot help wanting to sing and dance my heart away (in a very fashionable way, of course).

From Sylvia

youtube

I AM (HEAR), directed by Olympia Perez

Black Trans Media is an organization run by Sasha Alexander and Olympia Perez for the Black trans and gender nonconforming community – one of the few organizations run by, and in service and support of the Black trans and GNC community. Sasha officially founded the organization in 2013 to shift and reframe the worth and value of Black trans people everywhere through media, art, advocacy, and community organizing, but I have known Sasha since 2004, and they were making space and time for racial and gender justice and liberation long before we even met. Thank you for being part of my family and for the adventures through the years and always driving me home because I don’t have a license (I will not give away more dates because Sasha and I have aged very well and we have reputations to uphold).

From Yessica

circa 2005.

I was so fresh, I mean perm fresh (really a relaxer. IF you know, you know).

I entered a lecture hall in a college, not my own, in upstate NY somewhere. I listened to the words of Professor Kaba Hiawatha Kamene, words that would bend my world, and force me to forge a new path. Teaching me that unlearning is only the beginning and probably the hardest to do. Realizing what I had learned in so many classrooms before this one didn’t stick because it wasn’t our truth. You said to never fear and continue to plant seeds for we do not know which ones will sprout. 15 years later, I still remember the conversations we had in that room, and look at how far I’ve come. I am eternally grateful. The warrior in me honors the warrior in you. Onward and forward, with love and light, Professor Kaba Hiawatha Kamene, Meta Netur Scholar.

From Champ

“Christ You Know it Ain’t Easy!!” was the title of the show that introduced me to Deborah Grant’s work in 2014, but it could be a mantra for many of us – any of us – and you know what I mean by that. She contains multitudes, and everything is grist for her mill. “Everything in life is accessible and it needs to be looked at over and over and over again” she says, and “The key is how well you transform those aspects into something that is unique and of your own hand. If you are going to steal, then DO IT WELL!” Her sources and allusions and motifs range everywhere through art and culture and history; she breaks down the labels that are used to segregate one set of experiences from another. I can’t say it better than John Yau: “There is nothing essentialist about Grant’s investigation of identity, but what she does is essential.”

Installation view, Deborah Grant, The Birth of a Genius in a Midnight Sun, 2012. Photo by Tyler Green, Modern Art Notes Podcast.

From Steve

John Coltrane was the last giant of jazz. But he was my first meaningful touchstone. I arrived in college with plans to eventually get a seat in a symphony, pull together a basket of students, maybe a find a steady teaching job. I was well-versed as I could have been in the classics. My jazz experience was limited to the big bands my parents enjoyed from their youth. And that didn’t conflict or expand upon my notion of musicianship as a virtuosic effort. Hit every note, nail the auditions, win the seat. Perfection.

So it was a surprise to me that I quickly began to gravitate toward the jazzers. They spoke a new language around music that elevated expression and feeling and connection. So I jumped in and John Coltrane was the first landing.

He wasn’t a revolutionary, though he recorded with Cecil Taylor. He wasn’t a be-bopper or a hard-bopper, though he came into himself through those musics. He was a devotee and a tenacious seeker. The patriarchs of his family were preachers, and he internalized their cadence and modulation and made that his music.

He was spiritual and humble, so confidence was difficult for him even though he was playing next to Miles and Monk in their respective bands which were at the top of the jazz world. He couldn’t immerse himself in spectacle of stardom because he felt that he had to work on his own thing. Following a performance, Miles and the guys would find the party and come back to their hotel the next day to find Trane asleep with his horn in his mouth.

On Kind of Blue, you can hear him finding higher gears in the sublime modal music of Miles and Bill Evans. On Giant Steps you hear him shift into those gears. He would speed through the last seven years of his life recording what seemed like an album every month. By the release of one he was disappearing over the horizon. In 1964, he disappeared to his home in Dix Hills, New York, and emerged a few weeks later with A Love Supreme, the record that was my introduction to Trane. It is reasonably considered the greatest jazz record ever made. Everything that followed would challenge and divide the critics and fans. His music was entirely a personal and spiritual endeavor.

He barely noticed when the critics complained that he was riding on his previous fame while making “unlistenable” music (a widely-held perspective that I don’t agree with). He barely noticed that he was terminally ill.

He’s called the last giant because the music called jazz became a niche in the cultural landscape; African-American folklore to be studied in music school. His genius was undeniable. But his important late-period work could be hard to digest. For most, it took an act of faith to sit through 40-minute doses of group improvisation. After Trane’s death, Miles went towards Rock (a scandal of its own) and the music seemed to lose most of its casual audience and mainstream exposure.

My exploration of his music was not casual. I grabbed anything I could get and once or twice I took it in from start to finish. It is a remarkable trajectory over a short period of time. And it changed me. I saw the act of artmaking very differently after finding Coltrane.

From Eddie

Fred Wilson is an artist who changed my life through his work. Fred interrogates unspoken assumptions that inform museum display – what we choose to reveal and what we choose to conceal – as his artistic strategy. Using existing objects – oftentimes objects that are not displayed to the public – and placing them in relation to objects that are often displayed, he reveals how institutions conceal histories of racialized treatment of people. In this way, Fred’s exploration of race and racism is through revelatory critique of institutional practices.

In the words of Angelique Power, president of the Field Foundation of Illinois, “People use racial equity as a substitute for diversity… Racial equity is about shifting power and resources. It involves dismantling AND rebuilding systems. This is an important point since for many of us it stops with dismantling; rebuilding involves shifting resources and power, acknowledging history, and in some ways rethinking history that you have been told and, from that lens, building something new.”

My first real exposure to institutional and historical critique – and critiques of systems – was through Fred’s art.

Fred changed my life in another essential way. He was the first director of Longwood Art Gallery, located in the South Bronx. After years of his leadership, he stepped aside for a new era under Betti-Sue Hertz (who hired me as her gallery manager when I was still a college student). Fred continued to periodically visit to see exhibits as well as lend his name and his work to our efforts to raise funds and increase our profile.

Through Fred, I had a model of a person of color from the Bronx who engaged the art world on terms that were his own. I am humbled and grateful to know him. Thank you, Fred.

From Nadia

I knew of Kara Walker’s brilliant and critical work, art reshaping narratives, meanings subtle and bold, long before I saw it in person. The first instance was upon arriving at graduate school. I was met by Walker in a two-story tall mural transcending the open stair. It was a piece that provoked dialogue amongst students in a private, (self-identified) Marxist institution (quite a juxtaposition to navigate already) about race (the besieged topic of non-discussion amongst solely-class-based social analysis). The space Walker’s piece created was unlike the other white-walled boxes where “Art” was made. It was a space pressing us with histories politely avoided and self-reflections sidestepped.

Photo by metacynic, Flickr, Kara Walker’s “A Subtlety,” 2014.

The second time I got to experience Walker’s art was closer to home. Living adjacent to the in/famed Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg (both North and South, there is a difference), I got to visit the former Domino Sugar Factory where “A Subtlety, or the Marvelous Sugar Baby” was installed for a several weeks in the midst of local struggle around gentrification, privatization, fare wages, and the fight for self-determination in Black and Brown communities, among others.

I share these stories of my time with Walker’s art because it feels like no coincidence that the timing corresponded with my learnings about systems change. The physical embodiment of that work was so apparent in Walker’s forms. The inescapability was palpable. The lessons still ongoing.

Posted by admin on June 18, 2020 at 03:04PM. Read the full post.

#arts #philanthropy #nonprofit

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furinjuru · 6 years

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Our Sea Of Today - Chaper 8 - The Beginning

I really need some kind of masterpost to make it easier for you guys to read...I’ll get on that!

You wakes up on Wednesday morning, completely drained of energy. Not due to physical fatigue, of course, but rather mental exhaustion. Her mind’s filled not with theories and definitions, but the complicated relationship and possible love-triangle consisting of the second-year trio of Uranohoshi. On top of that, she’s being roped into making costumes for them, which are supposed to be done by tomorrow.

It has only been two days since school started.

Although that does remind her of something. She checks her phone for any messages from Yoshiko, and finds one in the midst of other texts. Opening it, she sees the early designs of the costumes for their first live performance. On a single sheet of paper divided into three parts, each shows a single person wearing a different costume, along with a few extra drawings around it detailing certain, more complicated parts of the outfit. It’s ambitious for something she’s planning to get done tonight, but they might be able to pull it off if they’re quick enough.

‘you owe me one yoshiko’, she replies in jest, putting down her phone to get ready for today’s activities. After they come home from school, she’ll come with Yoshiko to look for costume materials.

-----

Her phone buzzes when You’s putting on her uniform, her bag slung over her right shoulder. She picks the phone up to check the new message while walking towards the kitchen. It’s Yoshiko again.

‘it’s yohane’, then another after that, ‘i know. thanks’

‘it’s cool’

The message is soon marked as read, but Yoshiko doesn’t look like she’s going to respond, so You shuts her phone and focuses on breakfast. What’ll I have today? she asks as she scours the fridge for leftovers. There’s some steak left from dinner that she can use to make a sandwich, but she was thinking of something lighter. She could just fry an egg and use that for the sandwich, so that’s what she decides on.

While cracking a few eggs into the pan, You glances at the clock hanging on the wall. She still has a lot of time until the bus arrives, even considering the walk from her house to the bus stop. Maybe she can make two sandwiches and give the other to someone else?

That’s a dumb idea. Who would she even give it to? Yoshiko should’ve already had breakfast, as well as Kanan, Dia, and Chika. And as embarrassing as it is to admit, she’s not close enough to anyone else to consider sharing food with them. She’s still trying to fix that last one. After a few minutes and You deems the eggs ‘good enough’, she grabs two slices of bread and puts the egg between them.

She waits for it to cool before taking a bite. As good a cook as You normally is, it’s relatively bland. Still, she can’t just choose to not eat breakfast, and the food isn’t bad, so You finishes the quick breakfast after a few more bites. Luckily, You won’t have to cook her own lunch; it’s already neatly wrapped and placed on the dining table. Considering her own cooking skills came from both her parents, she’s sure that whatever is in it today will taste delicious.

With everything she needs for the day packed inside her bag, You finally goes out of the house, making sure the door is locked behind her. The walk to the bus stop is boring, but You is greeted by what’s becoming a common sight at her destination.

“Yo.” Yoshiko nods in acknowledgment, tapping mindlessly on her phone; You thinks Yoshiko’s always playing with her phone whenever they meet. “You okay? You look a bit tired.”

“Really? I don’t feel tired.” At least physically.

“Just a tiny bit.” A look of concern crosses the second-year’s expression. “Are you sure you don’t mind shopping later?”

“Yeah, I’ll be fine.” You brushes off the girl’s concern. “We’re just going around Numazu, right? I know all the good places for fabric and accessories!”

“Right. And then we’ll go to your house to actually make them.” Yoshiko stares at her lap, still tapping on her phone nervously. It comes to You’s attention that her phone isn’t actually on.

“You okay? You look off.” You repeats the question Yoshiko asked her, getting closer when Yoshiko shakes her head in denial. “Really? Do you remember that you can tell me anything?”

Yoshiko’s resolve crumbles after the question, and she finds herself once again spilling the truth to You. “It’s nothing. I’m just a bit...stressed.” When You doesn’t respond, she continues. “Chika’s already done with the lyrics. And Dia is Dia, so she’s been bugging me nonstop about the outfits. It’s kinda scaring me, like what if I can’t finish them even with your help?”

“Oh.” That’s understandable. Even You, someone who has some amateur experience making outfits, is intimidated. Still, she can’t help but play with her, just a bit. “I thought fallen angels weren’t afraid of anything?”

“I’m not scared!” Yoshiko shouts, glaring at You. “My little demons are making too many demands for me to fill at this time. I have no fear.”

“You just said you were scared. Also, she only made one demand.” You sighs, watching as their bus rolls to a stop in front of them.

“It’s a big demand! I’m not built for this kind of delicate work. Yohane was trained to defend herself in the pits of Hell.”

“That’s fine. I’ll train Yoshiko to sew.” You grins at the pouting girl, before walking into the bus. She sits down at the back, which is now their official go-to seats. “But seriously. It can’t be that bad learning something new. Plus, you’ll be making more outfits when you do more lives.” When Yoshiko seems like she’s about to object, You cuts her off. “You can’t just wear the same outfit for all of your lives. People are going to get bored.”

“I thought you can’t have too much of a good thing?” The dark-haired girl grumbles, although she doesn’t stay in a bad mood for long, eventually switching the subject. “So, have you mulled it over?”

“Mulled what over?”

“Dia’s offer. Joining the school idol club. It’d be nice to have another member around.” Yoshiko remarks.

“You mean it’d be nice for you to have someone else as a costume maker.”

“That’s not what I meant....”

You pretends to think about the offer while staring at Yoshiko, watching the other girl get flustered. “...I think I’d rather do the choreography and help take some burden off Dia.”

“But you’re great at making costumes!” Yoshiko argues.

“I’m also great at dancing.”

“Ugh, fine!” Yoshiko goes back to pouting mode, staring out the window. Only after a few minutes of silence did she realize what You said. “So is that a yes? To joining the club?”

“...I guess I’ll join. But,” You adds when she sees Yoshiko moving to hug her, “I’ll decide after the live. So try to impress.”

“You don’t have to worry about that.” Just like that, Yoshiko’s confidence returns twice-fold. “Just you wait! It’ll be the best performance you’ll ever see, with the most sparkling outfits ever created!”

“You’re starting to sound like Chika with all that ‘sparkling.’” You points out, before bursting into laughter at Yoshiko’s offended look. “What? It’s true!”

“W-well...Chika is kinda....inspiring.” Yoshiko huffs, turning her away from You. “Since she first encountered the fallen angel, she’s been kind to me. A magnificent person such as that deserves recognition for her efforts.”

“’Chika is really nice, and she has a positive influence in my life, which is why I’m in love with her.’ Did I get that right?” You ‘translates’ Yoshiko’s fallen angel speech, eliciting a whine from the now-blushing girl.

“Ugh, maybe I shouldn’t have told you about my crush if all you’re going to do is tease me....” She pouts, hardly startled when You hugs her.

“Don’t be like that! Aren’t we friends?” You holds back a laugh at the sight of Yoshiko’s cheeks getting progressively redder. “Besides, I’d tell you about my crush if I get one.”

“...I guess so,” Yoshiko sighs, “do you have one?”

“A crush?” Seeing Yoshiko nod, You shrugs. “Not really.”

“Seriously?” The older girl seems surprised, before speaking in a lower tone. “...are you straight?”

“What?! Of course not.” “But everyone in Uranohoshi is cute,” Yoshiko says, “how can you not have a crush on any of them?”

“I-I just don’t. You like Dia and Chika for more reasons than them being cute. It’s like that for me.”

Yoshiko seems understanding, resting her head against the window as they begin to move towards their destination. Then, she chuckles.

“You’ll have to find a crush this year or the next one.” When You looks at her, confusion evident in her expression, Yoshiko’s smirk grows wider.

“Because, you know. When you’re a third-year, your complex is going to make it hard for you to find a younger girl.”

“...I don’t have a complex.” You pouts.

“Of course you don’t.” Yoshiko seems to be enjoying the payback; she’s had enough of You’s teasing. But she seemingly decides to change the subject. “Did you know that my fallen angel powers allow me to predict the future?”

“Oh?” You doesn’t buy it, but she plays along. It’s better than relentless teasing.

“Exactly.” She closes her eyes and You admits that if she didn’t know better, she would think that Yoshiko was actually thinking. “...I see a vision.” She eventually says.

“What do you see?” Yoshiko grins and points a finger at You, which tells her that she made a mistake by trusting Yoshiko,

“You’re going to end up dating an upperclassman!”

“Mou, Yoshiko-chan! Stop talking about my complex!”

“So you admit that you do have one?” Yoshiko is practically cackling now, attracting the eyes of curious passengers and making You want to sink into her seat.

-----

The rest of the journey to school was spent with the two teasing each other. When they finally get off in front of Uranohoshi, mercifully dodging the gazes of passengers who had definitely been listening to them, they both sigh in relief. On one hand, that was the most embarrassing bus ride either of them has experienced, but on the other, it’s refreshing to be able to joke around like that. It reminds her of middle school when she’d do the same with Chika.

At the realization, You stops in her tracks. Did she just replace Chika with Yoshiko? Chika, her childhood friend since birth, the reason she began swimming, the reason she’s somewhat interested in idols, the person who helped her realize that she’s gay, the reason she is the way she is today. She knows that they’re not as close as they were before, but she didn’t realize it was so bad to the point that she hasn’t even had the chance to talk with Chika alone.

You wants to have more friends, but not at the cost of her old ones.

Yoshiko, upon realizing that You is no longer walking with her, stops and looks back. “You?” She asks, mild concern lacing her tone, “are you okay?”

Having been shaken out of her thoughts, You laughs and smiles. “Yeah. I was just hoping that you can make up with Chika-chan and Dia-chan soon.”

Yoshiko laughs a bit as well, saying in a small voice, “Yeah, I hope so too.” The two walk together again until they go inside the school building, where Yoshiko asks, Where should we meet up after school?”

“What about the cafeteria?”

“That’ll work.” Satisfied, she waves as they walk in opposite directions, Yoshiko to the second-year classrooms and You to the first-year one. It’s still mostly empty other than a few students, one of which is Ruby. She’s tired, trying to rub the sleep out of her eyes while focusing on her phone. You can imagine Dia having to drag her to school early in the morning. Not even Hanamaru’s here, making this one of the rare times she can talk to the redhead without distractions.

“Ruby-chan, good morning!” She salutes. Ruby, who’d normally be startled by and loud noises, seems too tired even for that. She just looks up and returns the greeting.

“You-chan...good morning.” She mumbles tiredly.

“Are you okay? You look out of it today, no offense.” She places her bag on her own desk before going back to Ruby, sitting down in the chair that would normally be Hanamaru’s.

“Uhm, really?” The smaller girl looks a bit embarrassed at the statement. “I hope the teachers don’t realize...I’m trying to hide it.”

“Well, it’s not a bad job.” The makeup Ruby is using hides any signs of fatigue, and otherwise, she looks normal. But You, who has become victim to extreme exhaustion multiple times in the past, can sense Ruby’s unfocused gaze, too-calm breathing, and lack of energy. “So, why are you tired?”

“My sister wanted to watch μ's lives...something about choreography.” Ruby yawns. “I decided to watch it with her...we ended up watching all of their concerts.”

“All of them? That’s hardcore....” You is amazed at how far they’re going just to get ready for the performance. Only Chika didn’t spend much time doing research, but if Dia likes the lyrics Chika spent only a few hours making then they must be really good. “So you like idols too?”

“I love them!” Ruby suddenly exclaims, before blushing and covering her mouth with her hands when she realizes that she had just shouted. “I-I love them a lot. Maybe not as much as my sister, but I know about all kinds of school idols.” Then, as if she became a different person, Ruby smirks at You. “...do you want to test my knowledge?”

You shakes her head, feeling a bit disappointed as Ruby pouts and goes back to her shy self. It seems that the girl who normally lacks confidence has an abundance of it when it comes to school idols. “To be honest, I don’t really know a lot about idols. I only know about μ's.”

“Oh?” Ruby’s confident attitude seems to be returning. “There’s a lot of interesting stuff about μ's.”

“Yeah!” You smiles, glad that she can at least talk about the subject for a bit. “Oh, yesterday I was hanging out with Yoshiko-chan and we were messing around, and we found out about their first performance. I think it’s amazing that they were able to go from that to Love Live champions!”

“Oh, do you hang out with Yoshiko-san a lot?” Ruby asks curiously. The sudden subject change is slightly jarring, but You answers anyway.

“Kinda. We’ve hung out more than most people do, and we’ve only known each other for a few days.”

“Oh.” Ruby nods. “That’s nice. She’s my sister’s close friend, so I kinda know her.”

“So you also know Chika-chan?”

“Yes. And Kanan-san. My sister and I don’t really have many close friends, so not a lot of people visit our home. It’s why I know all of her friends, and she also knows Hanamaru-chan.”

“Are you two talking about me?” You jumps in her seat as she hears the voice beside her. Facing the source, she sees Hanamaru smiling smugly after surprising her.

“No, we weren’t.” You says, standing up to let Hanamaru sit down. “We were just talking about idols. Nothing big, you know.” Hanamaru then rummages into her bag and pulls out a magazine. When she places it face up on her desk, You can see that it’s a magazine featuring an idol group that she’s unfamiliar with. Ruby immediately perks up, recognizing the students on the cover.

“A-RISE!” She exclaims, opening the magazine without a moment’s hesitation. “Hanamaru-chan, where did you find this?”

Hanamaru looks even more smug now as she watches her best friend going through the magazine. “I found it when I was shopping for more books yesterday, zura. I thought you’d like it, so I bought it for you.” She answers, before letting out a yelp as the redhead suddenly lunges at her, hugging her tightly.

“Thanks a lot, Hanamaru-chan!” Ruby exclaims, maintaining the embrace for a good few seconds. In that short period of time, You sees Hanamaru’s cheeks coloring, but You’s snicker is quickly silenced by a glare aimed at her. When Ruby finally pulls away and goes back to the magazine, she begins talking about it in great detail.

“This is a special issue celebrating Love Live’s recent anniversary.” Ruby explains, “The organizers collaborate with a lot of different magazines, and each releases a special issue featuring a winner from one of the competitions. For example, this one features the first winners, A-RISE. A different one features μ's.”

Hanamaru seems crestfallen. “Your favorite is μ's, right? Ahhh, Maru messed up, zura....”

“N-no, it’s fine!” Ruby attempts to salvage her friend’s mood. “I also like A-RISE! A-and my sister is probably going to buy the μ's edition anyway, so this’ll complete our collection! You didn’t mess up at all.”

“Really?” The brown-haired girl seems a little happier, although she seems aware that Ruby is saying that just to cheer her up. “Thanks, Ruby-chan. Maru’ll take you to the bookstore and let you pick out another magazine next time.”

Ruby shakes her head frantically. “You don’t have to do that! If anything, I should be the one buying you something, since I haven’t even gotten you anything.”

As the pair continue arguing about who should be treating who, You is painfully aware that she’s not really involved in this conversation. After giving them an excuse about needing to finish her homework, she steps away from the pair and goes back to her own seat. But before she can actually get some work done, the intercom suddenly bursts to life.

“Hello?” Kanan’s voice, although a bit distorted, distracts the students in the class from whatever they were doing. “Good morning, students of Uranohoshi. This is your student council president, Matsuura Kanan speaking. Before any formal activities begin, I would like to make a formal announcement.”

The sound of papers being shuffled in the background is heard before Kanan continues. “As of today, the student council is proud to announce that the president of the next generation has been decided. I personally would like to congratulate Kurosawa Dia of Class 2-B for showing determination, a strong will, and an excellent work ethic. Unfortunately, the vice-president has not yet been selected, but will have been decided by the time they officially take over their responsibilities.”

Ruby seems excited at the announcement, clapping when Kanan stops for a breather. You does as well, albeit quieter; if she had to pick someone to fill that role, there’s no doubt in her mind that she would pick Dia.

“To help new students who might not be familiar with Kurosawa-san, we will be holding a program every few days. Through the intercom, we will occasionally ask her questions about her goals, as well as more general information about herself. Anyone with a question is allowed to submit it by putting it into the box now located outside of the student council room. And now, a word from Kurosawa Dia herself. Go ahead.” A few seconds of silence follow, with the other students in the classroom chattering excitedly. Some are disappointed that they won’t be seeing much of the ‘hot student council president’ anymore, but change is always interesting in a place like Uchiura. In You’s opinion, Kanan and Dia couldn’t be more different.

“Good morning, everyone.” Kanan’s voice is replaced by Dia’s, drawing everyone’s focus back to the sound. “I’m Kurosawa Dia. It’s a pleasure to-” Dia stops, and You can faintly hear her and Kanan conversing. From what little she can hear clearly, it sounds like Kanan is sick.

“Apologies for the interruption.” Dia continues speaking after a few moments of silence. “I’m Kurosawa Dia. It’s a pleasure to have the chance to speak to all of you. I’ll be in your care from now on.” Just as abruptly as it began, the intercom buzzes before going silent.

The moment immediately after is probably the most active she’s seen Ruby for anything other than idols.

“Sis!” The younger girl exclaims, standing up and walking in circles while almost everyone else talks among themselves, whether it be about the announcement or how weird it is that everyone is talking about the announcement. You and Hanamaru are watching Ruby as she paces around, her expression showing anxiety, panic, and happiness all at the same time. She seems distressed, even though she’s probably the first person Dia talked to about wanting to be the student council president.

“I have to help her!” She says before dashing out of the room, with Hanamaru giving chase.

“Ruby-chan, wait!”

“H-hold on, class is...” You begins, only to realize they’re too far away to hear her “...about to start.”

Well, maybe Dia’s new status will help them get out of trouble this time.

------

“Dia,” Yoshiko greets when she sees the dark-haired girl walking into class, “I didn’t expect you to be back so soon.”

“I’m not supposed to,” Dia opens her bag and searches for something, “Kanan isn’t feeling well, so we’ve decided to cut it short today. I’m taking her to the infirmary.” At her answer, Yoshiko tries to mask her feelings of jealousy. Why does she care about how Kanan’s feeling but she never asks me about how I’m feeling? “Oh, there it is.” She pulls out a small container and takes something out of it; an influenza mask. “It’s for Kanan.” She answers when she notices Yoshiko’s curious look.

“So,” Chika interrupts, “you’re going to be skipping class today?”

“I’m not skipping, per say.” Dia corrects, “I’ll be accompanying Kanan while learning more about the student council. It’s important. I’ve been given official permission, so the teachers know where I’ll be.”

“It must be nice being able to skip class.” Chika sighs while ignoring Dia’s fierce glare. “If only I was picked to be the student council president...”

“The student council would collapse in a matter of days,” Dia states matter-of-factly, “You didn’t even apply for that role. I was the only one who signed up.”

“Really?” Yoshiko knows that she shouldn’t say anything, that she should just stay quiet. Of course, her big mouth doesn’t agree. “So...you just got the job handed to you without doing anything? I thought you didn’t like getting freebies.”

If looks could kill, Dia would be charged with manslaughter. “This is different. They already know that I’m the best person for the job.”

“How humble,” Yoshiko replies sarcastically, “but it doesn’t change the fact that you got the role without any competition.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I guess you wouldn’t understand. I don’t think anyone would ever trust you with a something like that.” Dia’s insult strikes a nerve. Noticing the rising tension, Chika awkwardly laughs while stepping in between them.

“Dia, didn’t you say that you’re going to take Kanan to the infirmary? You should do that.” They watch as Dia frowns, then turns around and walks out of the classroom. Chika looks at Yoshiko, as if asking her ‘what was that?’.

“I was just joking,” Yoshiko mutters, “stupid Dia taking everything seriously....”

"Well, it's Dia. She takes everything seriously." Chika sighs, going back to her seat. "But it's kinda lonely without her."

"I guess so...." Yoshiko might not want to admit it, but she does enjoy the other girl's presence even without considering her stupid crush. "But she'll be busy with student council duties for a while, so we'll just have to live without her."

"That's no good! We need to find someone else to hang out with."

"Like who?" Yoshiko asks, wondering who else would willingly subject themselves to their insanity.

"What about Riko-chan?" From her peripheral vision, Yoshiko sees said girl tensing up at the sound of her name, before continuing to distract herself with her book that had been on the same page for the past few minutes.

"Sakurauchi-san? Isn't she a bit too formal?" One thing Yoshiko knows after frequent visits to Tokyo is that it's far too big. Unlike Uchiura or even Numazu, where everyone knows each other, people there are polite and formal, almost artificially so.

"Yeah, just like Dia-chan!" Chika answers excitedly.

"Chika...." Yoshiko stops to consider this new information "...you're right. She'll be perfect." With oddly wide grins on their faces, they stand up and approach their target, who's sweating bullets at the sight of the two getting closer and closer. When they're close enough, Riko closes her book and directs her attention to her two classmates, trying not to show her nervousness.

"T-Takami-san. Tsushima-san. How are you two?" She greets politely, proving Yoshiko's theory correct.

"Just Chika and Yoshiko's fine," Chika says, the grin never leaving her face. While she distracts Riko with small talk, Yoshiko's gaze wanders to the book on her desk. It's plain with an orange cover similar to the notebooks Chika has. However, there's a small gap in between the pages, and she can see something sticking out. Is she hiding something?

Slowly reaching towards the book, Yoshiko opens it to the last page read by Riko. She’s able to get a glimpse of something like a book before Riko notices and slams the book shut, barely missing Yoshiko’s fingers. “Y-you can’t look at that!” She takes the notebook and clutches it to her chest. “I have to go!”

Chika can only look on as Riko runs out of class with the book in hand. “...I think you scared her.”

“Yeah, I think I did.”

--------

The rest of the school day was uneventful, to say the least. You rejected Chika and Yoshiko’s offer to have lunch together in favor of having it with Ruby and Hanamaru, the pair accepting You’s request although Hanamaru with more reluctance. She’d like to believe that they all became closer by the end of it, and they invited her to have lunch again sometime. And even better, it wasn’t Ruby who asked her, but Hanamaru!

You can’t hide her happiness as she packs her belongings into her bag. Ruby and Hanamaru have left already, saying something about how no one is at Ruby’s house and that she’d get scared if she’s alone for too long. She’s curious about Ruby’s house. Is it modern or traditional? How big is it? Does she have a garden, or maybe a swimming pool? She’ll have to check when she comes over to play. Or study. She reminds herself that she asked Dia to tutor her, and Dia isn’t someone who forgets something like that.

Once out of class, it takes her a few minutes to get to the cafeteria. There, she sees Yoshiko at one of the tables, drinking something that seems to be chocolate. The girl looks up and waves when she sees You, offering the seat next to her that You accepts.

“So, are we heading out now?”

“Not yet, we have to think about where we’re going,” Yoshiko says, playing with the straw of her drink. “Since you’ve done this before, you know where to buy the stuff we need, right?”

“Of course!” You answers proudly. “There’s a shop in the middle of Numazu that sells all kinds of fabric and accessories like hairpins or ribbons. We can get everything we need from there.”

“Excellent. As expected from one of my little demons.” Yoshiko chuckles, but it’s hard to take her seriously when she’s loudly sipping on her drink. “Just let me finish and we’ll be on our way.”

“I kinda want one too...hold on.” Standing up, she goes to buy a drink for herself. From all of the choices, strawberry juice seems the most appealing to her. After a brief wait, money exchanges hands and she takes the glass of freshly made juice before returning to the table. Yoshiko’s looking up something on her phone, showing it when You sits down. “Is this the place you were talking about?” You checks the name of the store.

“Yeah, that’s the one.” Yoshiko then tries to find directions. To their relief, it’s not too far from the bus stop, which is on the same route as their usual one. It seems like the shopping trip isn’t going to take very long after all.

However, when they finish their respective drinks and walk towards the entrance of the building, they see that the weather has changed. In direct contrast to the clear skies and the warm sun shining just a few hours ago...

“It’s raining.” Yoshiko frowns, watching the heavy downpour with a sad expression.

“They said that it would be sunny all day.” You opens her bag, sighing as she confirms her worst fear. She didn’t bring an umbrella with her.

“No umbrella?” Yoshiko asks, looking even more guilty. “Sorry. I...I have really bad luck. It always rains when I’m trying to plan something. I should’ve warned you.”

“It’s not your fault.” You closes her bag again. “...then I guess we can’t do anything about the outfits, can we?”

“Guess not. Looks like we’ll have to use something from your collection.” The two make it to the bus stop, waiting longer than usual before the bus shows up. Yoshiko still looks dejected, so You tries to cheer her up.

“I’m sure Dia-chan and Chika-chan will understand.”

“It’s just...frustrating.” Yoshiko answers softly, staring blankly at her lap while the bus continues moving. “I really wanted to do this. Not just for me, but for Chika and Dia and you.”

You has no answer for such a statement. She understands Yoshiko’s disappointment at failed plans, and it’s worse when it affects other people.

“I might have some fabric left over.” You offers. “It might be enough for one outfit. If you show them a proof of concept tomorrow, I’m sure that’ll be enough to satisfy them.”

“Maybe Chika. Not Dia.” With nothing else to talk about, Yoshiko pulls out her phone to play a game, which You decides not to interrupt.

------

After a long wait, they arrive at the bus stop near their houses. You stands up and begins heading out, only to realize that her companion is still seated.

“Yoshiko-chan?” No response, although she’s obviously awake. “Come on, this is our stop.”

Slowly, Yoshiko shakes her head, and You knows that whatever happens next won’t be good. “I’ve...been thinking. I’m going to buy the fabric. I have to.”

“You’ll get sick.”

“I’ll be fine by the time of the performance. I’m already used to getting colds.”

“You’re...not joking.” Another shake of her head, and You walks back to their seat. “I’m coming with you.”

“No.” She stares directly at You, her expression serious. “You’ll get sick.”

“I don’t care.”

“You....” Her expression softens, “Please just let me do this. I don’t want to drag you into this. I’m already enough of a burden by making you help me sew these things, I can’t let you get sick too.”

“What if I want to help you?”

Yoshiko’s expression hardens once again. “I don’t want to push you out of the bus, since you could slip and that’s dangerous. But if it means that you won’t risk yourself for my sake, I’ll do it.” Yoshiko sighs. “Please. I care for you. I don’t want you to get sick because of my stupid decision. I’ll be at your house before you know it, I’ll be fine.”

The other passengers are staring at them. Even the driver, who’s waiting for You to make up her mind before moving again. She looks back at Yoshiko’s determined look before making up her mind.

“Fine.” She says, “Don’t make me wait for too long.”

“I won’t.” With that, You walks out of the bus. The door closes with Yoshiko inside, and You can only watch as she leaves her friend to the consequences of her choice.

In hindsight, You thinks that this is the moment everything went south.

#love live #love live sunshine #fanfiction #you watanabe #riko sakurauchi #chika takami #kanan matsuura #ruby kurosawa #dia kurosawa #hanamaru kunikida #yoshiko tsushima #chikadiayoshi #our sea of today

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thesinglesjukebox · 7 years

Video

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TAYLOR SWIFT - LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO [4.39] Man, look what she made US do.

Elisabeth Sanders: Here is the thing about Taylor Swift: anybody that has truly loved (despite themselves) Taylor Swift has done so because of her sharp, frightening edges, because of the way in which she is the mean girl in the midst of a panic attack, because she's petty, because she's crazy, because she believes in things and at the same time when those things aren't as they seem wants to crush them in the palm of her hand. Any interpretation of Taylor Swift that doesn't incorporate this is simply bad research. In 2006: "Go and tell your friends that I'm obsessive and crazy--There's no time for tears / I'm just sitting here, planning my revenge." In 2010: "And my mother accused me of losing my mind /But I swore I was fine /You paint me a blue sky /And go back and turn it to rain /And I lived in your chess game /But you changed the rules every day /Wondering which version of you I might get on the phone, tonight /Well I stopped picking up and this song is to let you know why" In 2012: "Maybe we got lost in translation / maybe I asked for too much / or maybe this thing was a masterpiece / til you tore it all up." And finally, in 2014, a culmination of the songwriting combined with the publicity--well, just listen to "Blank Space." I can't quote the whole thing. At the time it was brilliant, a parody that dipped just enough into the real, a joke about both media extrapolation and actual content. But we're past the time for parody. It came, it was good, it went. The criticism still followed, for other reasons, for deeper reasons, for real reasons. Along with, I'm sure, superficial ones. But if "Blank Space" was Taylor Swift's petty Gone Girl fan fiction, "Look What You Made Me Do" is the unfortunate chapter in which we have to acknowledge that the fiction was never that self-aware, and that an excavation of complication, when confronted with complicated times, sometimes reveals not a complex sympathetic maybe-villain, but simply a person not equipped to be making mass art right now. Taylor's pettiness, her villainy, her strangeness, has always been her most interesting feature. Maybe, now, too many years into seeing but not seeing it, it's just--not that interesting anymore. She's not your friend, and she's not your enemy, she's just--well. As she says, "I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me." I think that might be her final truth. [3]

Stephen Eisermann: I've never been a big Taylor Swift fan -- I like her music well enough, but there was always something about the details she painted and the cards she showed that it felt a bit... made-up. Still, I always had a weird feeling that Taylor and I had very similar personalities and personal life trajectories (bear with me) and this song reinforces that. When I was younger and "straight" (16-18), I was very quiet, nice to a fault, and introverted. Thanks to my name and skin color, a lot of (racist) older people always said it was hard to believe I was a Mexican teenager because I was so quiet, polite, well-spoken and bright. Much like Swizzle during the "Taylor Swift" and "Fearless" era, I was considered naive but genuine-hearted and people loved to love my niceness. However, I soon started coming to terms with my sexuality and started being a bit more open with myself and others about who I truly was, just like we saw glimpses of pure pop and more evocative lyrics in "Speak Now" and "Red." I still built stories and a narrative that painted me as more mystery than gay, just as Taylor toed the line between squeaky clean young adult and Lolita, but I was a bit more willing to explore. Soon after, the inevitable happened and I finally had my first NSFW encounter with a man, and was even MORE willing to be who I really was. I let my gay flag fly and if people asked, I wouldn't dance around the question, but own who I was. Taylor didn't hesitate one bit when she announced 1989 would be a pop album in its entirety, and I didn't so much was stutter when telling questioning friends my realization. Still, a part of me hid things from ass-backwards family members and people who I knew wouldn't "understand," just as Sweezy continued to play the victim card to hold on to some of the innocence that was slowly falling through her fingertips like sand on the last day of vacation. However, there is only so much sand one hand can hold and BAM -- my family became aware of my sexuality and Taylor was exposed. I was at a crossroads -- do I drop my family and throw out ALL the dirty chisme I had accumulated over the years at different holidays, effectively exposing the most bigoted family members, or do I keep my mouth shut and weather the hate, being all the stronger for it? I wanted so badly to be vindictive and evil, but I choose the high road for reasons I'm not really sure I can effectively communicate. Taylor, however, has opted for the darker route. "LWYMMD" lacks detail, yes, but it's intentional. I just... I just know it. She has secrets up her sleeves she will soon reveal -- nobody willingly takes the villainous role without ammo, and Taylor has been MANY things throughout her career, but unprepared is not one of them. This song is calculated, petty, unnecessary, and very much beneath her, but it allows me to live vicariously through her and I want her to drag her detractors just as I want to drag my family members through the mud they continue to think I belong in. And just as my bigoted family members will get theirs, so will Taylor's enemies, I'm sure. [10]

Will Rivitz: "I think I have a part to play in this drama, and I have chosen to be the villain. Every good story needs a bad guy, don't you think?" -Lorelei Granger, Frindle (Andrew Clements, 1996) [9]

David Moore: Phonogram: The Immaterial Girl Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie (Image Comics, 2015) Synopsis: Years ago, a young woman obsessed with music videos and mythic pop celebrity made a deal with the King Behind the Screen -- she gave up half of herself to gain the mystical power needed to eventually lead a coven of music obsessives. Now the deal's gone sour, and her darker, sacrificed self has switched places to destroy the coven with an ill-advised electroclash revival. [7]

Alfred Soto: Electronic swoops, piano on the bridge, lots of boom boom bap -- this single could be the new St. Vincent, or, to return to once upon a long time ago, to a track from Lorde's estimable Melodrama, a flop also largely co-written with Jack Antonoff. A skeptic of her first singles since 2009, I approached "Look..." with caution; on the evidence she's anticipated this caution. "I don't trust nobody and nobody trusts me," she sings while soap opera strings add the requisite melodrama, and for a moment I thought she sang "I don't trust my body." I've never cared about biographical parallels in any art, especially in popular art where the insistence feels like conscription; the blank space where she wants the audience to write his/her/whatever's name is a sop to us. Less persuasive is the talk-sung part informing her audience that the "old Taylor" is "dead," as if Fearless fans needed an 808 dug into their faces. It will sound terrific on the radio. I'll skip it when I buy the album. [5]

Crystal Leww: The emerging narrative of Jack Antonoff as the next king of pop production is perplexing because his resume is honestly pretty thin. It's unclear what Antonoff actually brings to the table other than an amplification factor; Antonoff's songs have only been as good as his collaborators. This works when artists are working with a strong vision they can execute against -- e.g., CRJ's "in love and feeling like a teen again" on "Sweetie," Lorde's earnest wide open heartbreak on Melodrama. It is damning if artists are falling into their worst habits. Taylor Swift is a very solid songwriter -- it's nearly impossible to have the kind of career she had in country music if you're not -- but it always falls back on specificity, the emotional connection that she can forge with her fans when she knows what she's trying to convey. "Look What You Made Me Do" fails because it's unclear what it's about -- is this song about haters? Kim and Kanye? Her exes? The media? -- and Antonoff using Right Said Fred makes it all seem very clunky. The song sounds like it could have really leaned into a psycho ex-girlfriend vibe, but it's not self-aware, not funny, not sure of itself. Ultimately, "Look What You Made Me Do" isn't awful, but it's not catchy, which is its worst sin of all. Taylor Swift's still a decent songwriter ("Better Man" was great; "I've been looking sad in all the nicest places" almost made up for that Zayn collab), but this isn't even yucky -- it's just kinda boring. [4]

Katherine St Asaph: The curse continues. Maybe it's that the past month I've been listening to very little but "Anatomy of a Plastic Girl" by The Opiates and "Justice" by Fotonovela and Sarah Blackwood, and here's the exact conceptual midpoint. I've heard comparisons to electroclash, NIN, mall emo, Lorde, but I hear more Jessie Malakouti or Britney on Original Doll: frantic tabloid petulance, slightly updated with a "Problem" anti-chorus, but otherwise things I like. Otherwise, Swift's style has not changed: self-referential ("actress" and "bad dreams" shuffle her images to make her the heel) and threaded with subliminals ("tilted stage" is literal, "kingdom keys" keeps up with the konsonance) Just as "Dear John" parodied its subject's lite-blooz guitar, "Look What You Made Me Do" parodies the austere tracks of 808s and Heartbreak on, like "Love Lockdown" in curdled Midwestern vowels: trading soporific for loaded. The song has inevitably become about everything but itself. Her milkshake duck brought all the boys to the yard, and they're like, this is garb, and I'm like, the Internet deplorables haven't adopted this in any better faith than they did Depeche Mode; any of pop's myriad songs about the tabloids would read as "political" if transplanted into 2017 (is Lindsay Lohan's "Rumours" about FAKE NEWS?), and Swift's suffocatingly prescriptive "Southern" "values" pre-Red were as politically suspect as this, and more insidious. The next salvo of attack: its rollout being unprecedentedly gimmicky and exploitative, never mind how aforementioned Depeche Mode did the same pre-order thing, or Britney Spears upholstered-carpetbombed "Pretty Girls" in everyone's Ubers, or Rihanna's Talk That Talk was launched with gamified "missions", or Srsly Legit Band Arcade Fire spent months on fake Stereogum posts and fake Ben and Jerry's. Doesn't help that when Taylor is bad, she's stunningly, loudly bad; the second verse, in its magnification of the cringiest parts of "Shake It Off" and "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together," seems to last forever. (The phone call is fine, though; no one had a problem with "How Ya Doin'" or, like, "Telephone.") It's no good for catharsis, definitely not relatable, maybe on purpose: like being too sexy for your shirt, all you feel is cold. [6]

Katie Gill: On the one hand, Taylor using the language of abusers in the chorus of her song is clueless at best and worrisome at worst. On the other hand, blatantly riffing off of "I'm Too Sexy" is a surprisingly smart choice for a chorus and I'm shocked that I can't think of anyone who's tried it before with this level of success. But on the one hand, for a song about how she's getting smarter and harder, the lyrics don't reflect that, giving us some petty Regina George level nonsense instead of anything remotely resembling depth or nuance. But then again, that snake is pouring Taylor Swift some tea and all the Taylor Swifts are beating up the other Taylor Swifts in a battle royale hahaha this video is so amazingly dumb. I guess I'll split the difference and give it a [5]

Alex Clifton: I've always wanted give-no-fucks Taylor Swift, but I'm dying for context, as this album (and sing) will sink or swim based entirely on the narrative she creates. She's clearly setting herself on fire in order to rebrand herself, although I question her self-awareness. The music video indicates yes, with a brilliant 30-second scene featuring various Taylors mocking each other. Yet "Look What You Made Me Do" is also curiously passive, with a reactionary title and a bored chorus--more a sign of privilege and status. The ambiguity between honest, wronged victim and villainous persona here is intriguing, especially given Swift's penchant for earnestness; obviously she cannot be both, but the tension drives the song. The song itself is a mixed bag; Swift returns to the messy rapping last heard on "Shake It Off" with an equally cringey spoken-word interlude, but her voice is simutaneously delicate and confident as she comes out swinging. While I love seeing Blood!Swift writing a hitlist of enemies like an evil Santa Claus and the hint of confronting the less attractive/more honest parts of her role in the spotlight, only time will tell whether this is truly a playful new direction or more of the same old tune. (Also, what did we make her do? The answer is classic Swift, diabolically obvious: we made her write a song about it.) [7]

Jessica Doyle: A week on I still hear more self-loathing than anything else. Nothing the supposed New Taylor offers up comes off particularly convincingly; there's no glee in her reinvention. Compare the way she rushes through honey-I-rose-up-from-the-dead when she once sounded like she was thoroughly enjoying Boys only want love when it's torture. She doesn't sound smarter, or harder; look what you made me do, when she's spent the last eighteen months making a point of not doing anything. There's no air in here, no space beyond the multiple annotated versions and multiple thinkpieces declaring her a walking horsebitch of the Trumpocalypse. Just Taylor Swift practicing telling herself to shut up, Taylor Swift wondering about karma, Taylor Swift reading Buzzfeed and taking careful notes, Taylor Swift unable to make a point about anything at all except Taylor Swift. You don't realize, when you're in the thick of it, that self-loathing is just as relentlessly, narrowly egotistical as any other kind of self-obsession. It gets old, finally. It wears you out. It wears everybody out. Right? Yes? Can we all agree to be worn out now? Are we going to allow her to move on? She can't rise up from the dead if we don't let her die first. [3]

Cassy Gress: There was a time when I thought 1989 pajama-parties-and-kittens Taylor was the "real Taylor." I don't know if that really was. What I do know is that trying to figure out who the "real Taylor" is, and arguing on the internet about it, is fucking exhausting. So much of her musical output has been autobiographical, or meant to sound generically autobiographical to women listeners; so much of her reads as "pussycat with claws." Sometimes she emphasizes the pussycat side, soft and vulnerable; "Look What You Made Me Do" is the claws side. But Taylor, who we know has the ability to be nuanced and evocative, is here transmitting her intent (to destroy Kanye, or Katy, or Hiddleston, or her old selves, or just to be the cleverest sausage) like a hammer to the skull. This, like much else about her, is exhausting to watch/listen to. I would much rather close the blinds and put on my headphones and watch GBBO reruns in my jammies. [2]

Olivia Rafferty: Washing in with the arrival of her sixth album are a tidal wave of thinkpieces on Swift, all set within the context of her A-list feuds, miscalculations and politics, or lack thereof. We've all sifted through stories of fake boyfriends, cheap shots and oblivious colonialism, and I'm going to speak for all of us when I say we probably should just all take a goddamn break from the vortex. I'm placing LWYMMD in a vacuum for now. Reaching into the embarrassing depths of my personal history, I can draw up two different past-Olivias who would be a perfect fit for this song. I'm gifting the verse, pre-chorus and middle eight to my 10-year-old self, and the chorus to my 17-year-old self. Olivia at 10 would lap up the overly-dramatic opening lines, the "I. Don't. Likes" and their thick punctuation. It's served with the attitude that would have made you want to stick on a crop top and pick up one of your tiny handbags to fling about during an ill-prepared dance routine -- no, Mum, it's not finished yet! And the moment of absolute pre-teen glory is the cheerleader delivery of the spoken half-verse, "the world moves on another day another drama drama," I can literally see the Beanie Baby music video re-enactment. All of these melodic aspects are playful but lack the precision or maturity you'd expect Swift to deliver on this "good girl grown up" song. When the chorus hits you suddenly mature into that 17 year-old whose friends-but-not-really-friends played that Peaches song at someone's house party. You could probably embarassingly attempt a slut-drop to it in your bedroom, pretending you're a dominatrix who's just split some milk on the floor. But the overall impression is that if Swift is trying to be naughty, sexy or dangerous, she's missed the mark a little. Now at 25 I'm listening and thinking that the chorus still snaps, but if this track was an attempt at sexualising Taylor in a way that's not been done before, it's only made it clear that she's still got a lot of growing up to do. [6]

Joshua Copperman: From the first bar chimes sound effect, I was worried, and I suppose my feelings didn't improve by the time the "tilted stage" line happened. On "Out Of The Woods", Antonoff and Swift brought out the best in each other (Jack's big choruses, Taylor's specific references), but on "Look What You Made Me Do", they bring out the worst (Jack's obnoxiousness, Taylor's pettiness.) Antonoff can do flamboyant earnestness, especially when it blends with Lorde's self-awareness and quirkiness; he just can't do dark and edgy. Or even campy, apparently: the glorious video mostly takes care of that, giving the song an intensity and glamour that it doesn't have nor deserve on its own. Yet even the video often misses the humor inherent in moments like the terrible rap in the second verse, or the already-infamous lift from "I'm Too Sexy". The ultimate effect is like John Green praising a burn of himself without realizing why the burn was deserved in the first place. In this case, it's one Taylor saying to another Taylor "there she goes, playing the victim, again", even though the preceding song couldn't even play the victim or villain well enough. [4]

Mo Kim: There was a time in my life when I looked up to Taylor Swift. I was eighteen once, clearing my throat of all the doubts that haunted it, and the only way I had to express myself was through songs about slights that exploded like firecrackers. But a voice with that strength comes with responsibility. Sometimes you need to stop reveling in the volume of your own speech to see the platform of power you stand on; otherwise you might build a version of yourself on the rickety foundation of innocence only to find it crashing down. On "Look What You Made Me Do," she's still trying for the pottery shard hooks that once made her so important to petty queer kids like me. It works in bits and spurts: that second verse is a bucket of water and an emergency siren to the face, and the pre-chorus utilizes a sinister piano and eerie vocal production to great effect. Too bad, then, that the flimsy chorus and winky-face lyrics cave in on themselves more easily than almost anything she's written before (like a house of cards, some might say). That it so blatantly abjects responsibility onto her audience, however, is the biggest point against it: instead of personability, or at least the pretense of it, there's just layer after layer of metanarrative. Instead of a telling that acknowledges her history -- a complicated, troubling, rich one -- there's just Queen Bee Taylor, sneering over a landfill heap of old Taylors before she discards of all her past selves. I used to hold stadiums in my chest as I listened to the stories Swift spun; now I feel like the lights have finally crackled out, and here she is, dithering in the debris of her crumbling empire, and here we are, looking down. [5]

Josh Love: If Taylor wants to go in, that's her prerogative, but because this is a song that none of us plebes can actually relate to, it's only fair to judge it solely based on whether it goes hard, and I'm sorry to report that Taylor has no bars. "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and "Shake It Off" seemed like wild stabs at first too, but they possessed an inclusivity that's curdled into Yeezus-level petulance here. There's nothing here to suggest she's capable of making Reputation her Lemonade. At least the video gives me some hope that maybe she realizes she's a complete dork. [3]

Anthony Easton: This is the hardest for me to grade, because I still don't know if it is good, but it is constructed in such a way that people like me (critic, liberal elitist, homosexual) are pressed to have opinions. It steals with such quickness, and with such weirdness that the opinions give birth to other opinons, somewhere between a snake hall and the ouroboros she already quotes. It sounds like Lorde, it samples Peaches, it plays with electroclash, which was a genre that was already heavily recursive. It tries to be without feeling, but it feels all too deeply. That is enough to spend time with, that is enough to unpack. It sounds like Lorde because they are both working with Jack Antonoff. Who is cribbing from who here? Is Lorde playing like Swift, is Swift cribbing Lorde's lankness, are both pulling outside of their influence, by the commercial, mainstreamed weirdness of Antonoff? Swift was always pretty; her main skill was using guile to a stiletto edge. This edges on ugliness, but it is still "ugly." Women like Peaches or the cabaret singer Bridgett Everett know how to sing, have the ambition to sing well, but chose to reject good taste for social and political power. Taylor playing with being ugly, with being flat, with kind of half singing, with no longer being the cheerleader, is not a formal refusal of beauty as a political means but has the louche boredom of a hanger-on, with maybe a bit of anger at not being cool enough. It's a capital blankness that raids and doesn't contribute. Part of the ugliness of Peaches, part of the joy of electroclash, is not only how it absorbs the amoral around it--Grace Jones, The Normal, Joy Division, Klaus Nomi--but that the sex of it works so hard. The fucking is less pleasure than hard work--the grit of dirt and sweat and bodies. When Swift quotes Peaches, she is quoting the reduction of pop to a stripping down of bodies through a formal aesthetic choice. When she quotes noir, it is an attempt to self-consciously think of herself as a body who is capable of doing real damage. Swift flatters herself as someone whose suicide could be a nihilist aesthetic gesture. She flatters herself as a fatale. She's still the kid who does damage, and plays naif. You can't be pretty and ugly. You can't be a naif fatale. You can't pretend not to care about gossip and make your career about what people think of you. You can only be so much of a feminist and rest on your producers this much, and you cannot play at louche blankness if it is so obvious how much work you are doing. This might suggest that I hate the song, but I can't. Swift doing an "ugly" heel turn fills me with poptimist longing, and I want to hear more. [9]

Eleanor Graham: There is a bit in an old Never Mind The Buzzcocks where Simon Amstell says to Amy Winehouse, "We used to be close! On Popworld, we were close." And Amy Winehouse runs her hand down his face and says, half-pityingly and to thunderous laughter, "She's dead." I don't really know why I'm bringing this up except to illustrate that a woman killing off her former self, against Joan Didion's worldly advice, has a kind of power. The crudest hyperbole. Like Amy in Gone Girl. You don't like this thing about me? You wish I was different? Well, guess what -- I'M DEAD! This line, which Swift delivers with the manic kittenish venom of Reese Witherspoon's character in Big Little Lies, is the only redeeming feature of "Look What You Made Me Do." And yet -- even as someone who has openly thrown politics to the wind in the face of such forever songs as "Style", "State of Grace" and "All Too Well" -- this single is too hallucinatory to be a flat disappointment. Quite aside from the Right Said Fred debacle, the "aw" is reminiscent of Julia Michaels, the second verse of a lobotomised Miz-Biz era Hayley Williams, the production ideas of a mid-2000s CBBC show, and the whole thing of a middle-aged man in a wig playing Sky Ferreira in an SNL skit. Disorientating. Almost euphorically horrible. Say what you want about T Swift, but who else is serving this level of pop Kafkaism in 2017? [2]

Maxwell Cavaseno: Weirdly, everything works for me sorta kinda with the second verse. The percussion thuds in the distance just a little more effectively, and Taylor's whining drone of a rap screams up into that high-pitched melodrama, only to crash and burn into an anemic "Push It," as written by someone who forgot Lady Gaga once could fool us into thinking she was funny. Past that subsection and prior, however, the record truly never clicks. You get the sense that Swift, someone so eagerly to seize the moment, doesn't realize that the horror campiness plays her hand too hard. [2]

Edward Okulicz: Saved from being her worst ever single by an out-of-nowhere, brilliant, Lorde-esque pre-chorus (and the existence of both "Welcome to New York" and "Bad Blood"), this is pretty thin gruel for the first single off a first album in three years. Remember how dense her songwriting used to be? See how clumsy it is on this. Taylor Swift's devolution from essential pop star to somewhat annoying head of a cult of personality is complete. At least there'll be better to come on the album. I hope. [4]

Rachel Bowles: I am guessing (and hoping) that "Look What You Made Me Do" is Reputation's "Shake It Off," a comparatively mediocre introduction to what is ostensibly a good album with some timeless songs ("Style" in particular on 1989). Functionally the same, both songs have to reintroduce Taylor in a new iteration to a cultural narrative she cannot be excluded from, both heavy on self-awareness and light on her signature musical flair. Where "Shake It Off" felt anodyne and compressed, "LWYMMD" is beautifully stripped back, chopping between lowly sung and rhythmically spoken word over a synthesiser, strings or a beat -- verses, bridges and middle 8's passing, though ultimately building to nothing -- the chorus of "LWYMMD" being the swirling void at its centre, one that cannot hold, however fashionable it is to build then strip to anti-climax in EDM and pop. What did Taylor do? The absence of her critical action, the bloody, thirsted-for revenge, can only leave us unsatisfied, like watching a Jacobean tragedy on tilted stage without the final release of death for all. What's left is a painful, public death of media citations of Taylor, played over and over, joylessly. [5]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: 1989 is Taylor Swift's worst album, but that shouldn't necessarily be seen as a bad thing. For an artist whose vocal melodies were able to effectively drive a song forward, it was a bit odd hearing her rely so heavily on a song's instrumentation to do all the heavy lifting. Additionally, the painterly lyrics that drew me to her work in the first place were mostly abandoned for ones more beige (simply compare the most memorable lyrics from 1989 and any other album and it becomes very obvious). It didn't work out for the most part, but I was fine with the mediocrity. And considering how stylistically diverse the album was, I very much saw it as a stepping stone for a future project. Which is why I'm completely unsurprised by the doubling down of "Look What You Made Me Do" -- it's a lead single that's heavily tied to her media perception, finds her abandoning any sense of subtlety, and utilizes amelodic singing to put greater emphasis on the instrumentation itself. It's conceptually brilliant for all these reasons, but it doesn't come together all too well. Namely, the lyrics are almost laughably bad and distract from how physical the song can be, and her calculated attempts at announcing her self-awareness have reached the point of utter parody. That the music video ends with Swift essentially explaining the (unfunny) joke only confirms this. [3]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Every new Taylor Swift single is Vizzini from "The Princess Bride," letting us know that she knows that we know that she knows that we know that she is Taylor Swift, and since she knows that we know (etc. etc. etc.), she can be confident drinking the goblet in front of her, since she knows that she switched around the goblets when we weren't looking, and she's laughing like she's clearly outsmarted us, but little does she know that we've been building up an immunity to her odorless white poison for years. [2]

William John: The hyper-specificity is gone. There are no references here to paper airplane necklaces or dead roses in December or in-jokes written on notes left on doors. In their place, platitudes abound, choruses are forgotten, "time" rhymes with "time", and "drama" with "karma". The latter is pursued with a maniacal intensity, the parody spelled out rather brilliantly in "Blank Space" quickly undoing itself. Rather obviously, "Look What You Made Me Do" does not exist in a vacuum, and the timing and nature of its release are what render it particularly dismaying. Its author, not playing to her previously demonstrated strengths, is seemingly at great pains to fuel fire to certain celebrity feuds, all the while insisting on her exclusion from them. It wouldn't matter so much were she to denounce some of her new fans with the same fervour, but for some reason this era she's opted out of interviews, perhaps at the time when some explanation driven by someone outside her inner circle is most needed. It's one way to forge a reputation, indeed. I do like the way she screams "bad DREAMS!" though. [3]

Leonel Manzanares: An auteur whose entire schtick is about framing herself as a victim, now emboldened by the current climate to address "the haters" using the language of abuse, embracing villainhood. No wonder she's considered the ambassador of Breitbart Pop. [4]

Thomas Inskeep: "Don't you understand? It's your fault that I had to go and become a mean girl!" Yeah, okay, whatever, Ms. White Privilege. [2]

Anjy Ou: For the woman who singularly embodies white female privilege, it's kind of embarrassing that she doesn't have the range. [2]

Will Adams: If you had asked me three months ago, "Hey, between 'Swish Swish' and whatever Taylor Swift ends up putting out this year, which is the more embarrassing diss track?", I wouldn't have thought I'd need to think about the answer this much. [2]

Anaïs Escobar Mathers: "Taylor, you're doing amazing, sweetie," said no one. [1]

Sonia Yang: With an artist as polarizing as Swift, it's easy to make the conversation a messy knot about the real life conflicts she's had, but I find it more interesting to tune that all out and focus on the simplicity of her work as a standalone. "Look What You Made Me Do" is Swift at her most coldly bitter yet, but betrays the resignation of long buried hurt. It's "Blank Space" but with none of the fantastical fun; it toes the line between wary irony and jadedly "becoming the mask." Most telling is the dull echo of the song title in place of a real hook, which is actually a favorite point of mine. Reality doesn't always go out with a bang; it's more likely for one to reach a gloomy conclusion than stumbling upon a glorious epiphany. Musically, I'd call this an awkward transition phase for Taylor -- it's not her worst song ever, but it's admittedly underwhelming compared to the heights we've seen from her. However, I've sat through questionable attempts at reinvention from my favorite artists before and I'm still optimistic about the potential for Swift's growth after this. [7]

Jonathan Bradley: There is nothing Taylor Swift does better than revenge, and this is not that. This is the first Swift single that exists only in conversation with Swift's media-created persona -- even "Blank Space" turned on internally resolved narrative beats and emotional moments -- but it offers little for those who hear pop through celebrity news updates, not speakers or headphones. Compare "Look What You Made Me Do" to "Mean," a pointed and hurt missive that scarified its targets with dangerous care; this new single, however, barely extends beyond the bounds of Swift's own skull. "I don't like your little games," levels Swift, her voice venom, "the role you made me play." The central character -- the only character -- in this narrative is Swift, and she enacts an immolation. Her nastiness is the etiolated savagery of Drake in his more recent and loutish incarnation: lonely and lordly, "just a sicko, a real sicko when you get to know me." "I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time" could be Jesse Lacey on Deja Entendu but sunk into the abyss of The Devil and God -- only it's delivered over ugly, the Knife-like electro clanging. The line that succeeds is classic Swift in its brittle theatrics: "Honey, I rose up from the dead; I do it all the time." The spoken-word bridge -- the song's most blatantly campy and deliciously gothic moment -- acts as a witchy incantation, walking most precariously the line between winking vamp and public tantrum. Swift has brought her monstrous birth to the world's light; contra the title, what it is we've made her do isn't even apparent yet. [8]

Lauren Gilbert: I was 18 when "Fearless" was released, and listened to it on repeat my first term of undergrad, feeling freedom and joy and hope. I listened to "We Are Never Getting Back Together" on repeat in an on-again-off-again relationship that should have ended years before it did. I listened to 1989 over and over again after recovering from a nervous breakdown and for the first time, really, truly focused on choosing a life of joy. I should be Here For This. I am not. Pop music thrives on specificity, and Taylor Swift in particular has made a career of writing about hyperspecific situations. This is... generic; it could be sung by Katy Perry, by a female Zayn, by Kim K herself. Taylor offers no hooks to her own life here, and perhaps that's not a flaw; female songwriters have the right to choose not to expose their own lives, and to write the same generic pop song nonsense that everyone else does. But as someone who bought into the whole TSwift authenticity brand -- even while I recognized it as a brand, even while I knew that she was a multimillionaire looking out for her own interests first and foremost, even as she was the definition of a Problematic Fav -- I can't really say I care that much about new Taylor. I could fault Taylor's politics and personality -- and I'm sure other blurbs will -- but the primary failing here isn't Taylor's non-music life. It's that there's no feeling here; it feels as cynical as the line "another day, another drama". Next. [4]

Andy Hutchins: "I'm Too Sexy" + "Mr. Me Too" - basically any of the elements that made "Mr. Me Too" compelling = "Ms. I'm Sexy, Too." [4]

Tara Hillegeist: Let's leave this double-edged sword hang here for a minute: Taylor Swift's personhood is irrelevant to the reality that she is a better creator than she ever gets credit for. Since her earliest days of the demo CDs she'd like to keep buried, Taylor Swift has never been less interesting or more terrible on the ears than when her songs are forcibly positioned as autobiography. For a decade she has cultivated an audience of lovers and haters alike that never felt her--or truly felt for her--because she never wanted them to know her, driven to own her brand even as she's deliberately averred to own up to what lies behind it. Witness the framing of an Etch-a-Sketch of a song like "Look What You Made Me Do": she releases a song about vengeful self-definition mere weeks after finally winning a years-long case against a man who sexually assaulted her and tried to sue her to silence over it on the sheer strength of her own self-representation, and the air charges itself with intimations that she instead meant it for Katy Perry, whose flash-in-the-pan "friendship" she publicly and memorably disowned in a bad song about bad blood an entire album ago, or perhaps Kim Kardashian-West, a woman whose "feud" with her arguably began with Taylor Swift's attempt to paint herself as the victim in an argument with Kim's husband but ended inarguably and decisively in Kim's favor. To claim someone would mangle her targets so ineptly even the conspiracy theorists have to resort to half-guesses and deliberate misquotes to draw out the barbs is a claim it's especially ridiculous to pin on a musician like Taylor Swift, a control freak who once built a labyrinth of personal references into an album full of songs about protagonists nothing like herself just to prove a point to anyone listening to them that closely about how sturdy the songs would be without knowing any of it. A public conversation that misses the point this drastically can only occur if there's a deliberately blank space where any sense of or interest in the person it's about could exist. There is a hole where this most powerfully self-determining popstar lives where a human life has never been glimpsed--because she cast that little girl and her frail voice aside years ago in search of something altogether more influential than such a weak vessel could ever hold. The girl who cajoled her family into spending enough Merrill-Lynch money to cover for her inability to sing until she had enough professional training to sing the songs she wanted to put to her name was never the girl who could truly be a flight risk with a fear of falling, was never the girl who never did anything better than revenge. But she wanted to be the girl who sang the words for that girl, who put her words in that girl's mouth, more than anything else in the world. She staked her name on nothing less than her ability to capitalize on the reputation she acquired. The Taylor Swift of Fearless and Speak Now was a Taylor Swift who believed she could be someone else in your mind, a songwriter dexterous enough to slip between gothic pop, americana-infused new wave, and pop-punk piss-offs without shaking that crisply machine-tooled Pennsylvania diction. A decade on, she's learned a lesson enough women before her already learned it's shocking she wasn't ready for it: when you're a girl and you make something about being a girl, everyone thinks you just had yourself in mind. The proof that she was more than that--more than the songs on the radio, you might say--was always there; it wasn't hidden, it wasn't obscured. But from Red onwards that Taylor began to die; a straighter Taylor Swift emerged in more ways than just her hair, all the kinks ironing themselves out in favor of her remodeling herself into a different sort of someone else's voice. Where once stood a Taylor Swift who sang for the sake of seeing her words sung by someone else's mouth back to her, there now stood a Taylor Swift who sang everyone else's words about her back to them. Tabloids cannot resurrect a life that a woman never lived, and no amount of retrospective sleight of hand about the girl she might have lied about being can hide the truth that neither can she. Conspiracy theories only flourish when people treat the mystery of human motives like a jigsaw puzzle waiting to be solved--ignoring that she already made it clear that was, still and always, the wrong answer to the questions she wouldn't let them ask. She wanted fame, she wanted a reputation; she wanted them on terms she defined; she never wanted anything else half as much as she wanted that. She has used every means available to her to earn them. Her awkward adolescence took a backseat to her life's dream of conquering America's radio. It's no shock, then, that all this gossip-mongering rings as hollow as a crown. The messy melodrama of Southern sympathy and thin-voiced warbles that defined the sweethearted ladygirls of generations before her and beside her and will define those that come after her, the sloppy humanities of Britney and Dolly and Tammy and Leann and Kesha Rose; these fumbling honesties, these vulnerabilities have never been tools in Taylor's narrative repertoire the way she uses the white girlhood she shares with them has been. She owned her protagonists' anxieties; but those songs have never defined her. This was always the moral to the story of Taylor Swift, to anyone--condemning or compassionate--who cared to really hear it: behind her careful compositions and obsessive pleas, Taylor Swift was never interested in making herself a real person at all. That would have cost her everything she ever wanted. And we, the Cicerone masses, ought very well to ask ourselves, before we let that double-edged sword finally fall: would it have been any more worth it, to anyone, if she had been? [2]

[Read, comment and vote on The Singles Jukebox ]

#Taylor Swift #Look What You Made Me Do #reputatio

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sarcastic--fantastic · 5 years

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Olympics, Music, Broadcasting And A Sense Of British Pride

This will be a bit different from previous posts, but it’s something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while. This is a story set in the Summer of 2012, and focuses on music, animation and technology used by the BBC in their television programming for the London Olympics.

A Mammoth Preparation

(photo courtesy of LOCOG, photographer unknown)

Let me set the scene - it’s a cold wet Winter in the British Isles, preparations are well under way for the Games of the XXX Olympiad and the XIV Paralympics, more commonly known as the London 2012 Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games happening the following year in July. Venues are having their finishing touches added to them, the London Mayor’s office is planning transport links for the huge surge in visitors, athletes are training in their home countries to get ready for the Games and the BBC are laying out their plans for television and radio coverage. Before anything kicked off, the hype was big enough in the UK that they even made a mockumentary about organising the Games.

I don’t work in media (yet), I certainly don’t work in the BBC but I can have an idea about the huge undertaking that broadcasting the Olympic Games (in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s home country and city) must be. And for 2012, the BBC were going full out; they planned to broadcast all 5000 hours of sport across 27 channels including the red button, Sky, Freeview, Freesat and online.

There’s a lot to prepare like: what programming they’re going to have and what features they want to produce and what filming locations they will be at and which presenters and commentators they want and what additional visual and audio equipment they’ll need and all the hundreds of behind the scenes crew that come with that as well as additional systems they need to set up to facilitate such a large amount of television being sent over the airways. And a big chunk of the BBC’s coverage is live which adds a whole layer of complexities.

I could quite easily nerd-out on the audio-visual and broadcasting technicalities the BBC/OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services) set up for the 2012 Olympics like suspending the BBC Parliament channel to make room for more sport and how the Games were broadcast in 3D across the world but that’s not the main focus of this post today.

A Song For The Olympics

The BBC isn’t new to this shindig - they’ve broadcast live coverage of every Summer Olympic Games since 1960. A small but significant part of this coverage is a theme tune and a title sequence, and that’s actually what this post is about.

In November 2011, it was announced that Elbow, an English alternative/indie rock band would compose the soundtrack for the BBC’s Olympic coverage. This is on the back of the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games, in which Jamie Hewlett and Damon Albarn (the musicians behind the British virtual band Gorillaz) produced music and animation for the opening titles.

"This builds on our recent tradition of using great British contemporary artists to deliver our music, as we did with Damon Albarn in 2008; and we reckon Elbow have a unique combination of credibility - hence their Mercury Prize - with a style that can be enjoyed by people of all ages." - Roger Mosely, BBC's Director of London 2012. [source]

"For our music to be sound-tracking it, there was a big feeling of responsibility but also we're just dead proud to be doing it. And strange as well with none of us really being athletic." - Guy Garvey, lead singer of Elbow. [source]

The BBC asked Elbow to come in and consult on composing the soundtrack. It’s reported they said: “if we asked you to do the Olympic theme, what would you do?” Garvey was told he had been invited along because of Elbow's 2008 single One Day Like This (an epic, anthemic, art-rocky track), which has been used on countless sport montages. Garvey replied: “Well, we can give you something similarly rousing. Something anthemic and bold. And we'd put lots of different parts in it for different parts of the coverage.”

And that is just what they did.

First Steps - Elbow (A.K.A. BBC London 2012 Summer Olympics Theme)

(First Steps cover art courtesy of Elbow and the BBC, artist unknown)

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kj3_3vvHDwE

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Elbow-first-steps-lyrics

The track isn’t available on Spotify or officially from Elbow due to it being a commission by the BBC (of which royalties were waived in support for charity). Additionally, it was only released as a digital-download through selected retailers, none of which still seem to be selling it. So unfortunately this YouTube rip is the best quality I could find.

“First Steps” by Elbow is an epic 6 minute 21 second lasting tidal wave of sound that hits you with incredible emotion. The anthem was composed in secret by Elbow in Salford over the 2011-2012 Winter and recorded with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra and the NovaVox gospel choir in Spring. Although the full version lasts more than six minutes, it was intentionally composed to allow different clips of one or two minutes to be played during montages of winners or losers. Additionally 40, 30 and five second edits along with a title sequence were used throughout the BBC’s London 2012 campaign.

The first bars of it would be aired around the time of the torch relay beginning in May 2012, with the full work revealed near to the Olympic Games opening ceremony. A one-minute edit of the track, accompanied with video sequence (more on that later) was first shown on BBC One during half-time of the UEFA Euro 2012 final on Sunday 1 July 2012. A four-minute edit of the track was premiered on Chris Evans' Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2 on Friday 27 July 2012 (the morning of the opening ceremony). It was used in the opening and closing title sequences of BBC Sport’s Olympics coverage on the first and final days of the Olympics as well as throughout the Games.

"It should be just about the most heard piece of music in 2012." - Roger Mosely, BBC's Director of London 2012. [source]

"I've written something called First Steps. The song can be parents looking with pride at their kid walking for the first time, but also those hopes and aspirations - marvelling at what's going on, the human element of it - translates quite well to watching your finest athletes doing their very best." - Guy Garvey, lead singer of Elbow. [source]

It is in my opinion the perfect backdrop to an incredible event and an important time for the country as a whole. It’s so jaw-droppingly powerful and inspiring, it gives me goosebumps every time I listen to it and I have to commend everyone who worked on the track for such an accomplishment of music. Furthermore, Elbow are such nice chaps that they even waived all fees and royalites from digital downloads of the track in support of Children In Need (a BBC charity and annual fundraising telethon).

But this is only half the story, as while the music is incredible and served as brilliant theme/incidental/identity music for BBC Sport throughout their Olympic coverage - they still needed a title sequence.

Stadium UK - Red Bee Media (A.K.A. BBC London 2012 Summer Olympics Title Sequence)

(BBC Olympics 2012 wallpaper courtesy of BBC Sport, artist unknown)

Full Sequence (YouTube rip): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cVrjFlt4hI

Shortened Trailer (original quality): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ViLiXA0E70

“Stadium UK”, named for the concept (seen in the sequence) of a giant stadium encircling the UK with athletes preparing and competing in a variety of landscapes, was devised by creative agency Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe Y&R. The animation was created by Passion Pictures and it was produced by Red Bee Media in conjunction with the BBC and Elbow.

The anthemic composition and the accompanying visuals were intended to sum up the achievement of reaching the Olympics, the emotions of those who win and those who do not, and the coming together of the whole country to support the event. The title was inspired by a child of one of the band members of Elbow learning to walk during the composition of the song, symbolising the hope and achievement of the moment.

As previously mentioned, this “trailer for the Olympics” was first shown during the Euro 2012 final and many more times leading up to the Opening Ceremony. It’s hard to get across the collective hype that was being experienced in Britain before the start of the London Olympics, because for a lot of people it would be a once in a lifetime event that simply couldn’t be missed. Olympic fever was really was everywhere you went. In the news, on signposts, in casual workplace conversation, on banners in pubs. To be fair though, us Brits love a big ol’ national celebration, we’d done the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee just a month prior.

“Across the 17 days of the Games, some 24 million viewers watched at least 15 minutes of our Red Button service - and what was particularly gratifying is that all the different sports proved to be a draw for the audience, with each of those 24 'channels' receiving at least 100,000 viewers at some point.” - Ben Gallop, BBC Sport Editor. [source]

I can say with some degree of certainty that this Summer in 2012 was one of the biggest, and uncharacteristically, happiest moments for the country in many years. Many people were still reeling from the 2008 recession, the coalition government was struggling to co-operate following the 2010 general election and resulting hung-parliament and just a year ago many major English towns were something akin to a war-zone during the 2011 riots. The Olympics were a distraction, and the relative importance of sporting contests can be argued, but what can’t be is how much of a mood-lifter it was for much of the population. This title sequence got people excited - it had a major impact as it showcased the best of Britain. It not only reminded people that some of our own athletes are some of the best in the whole world, but that the upcoming Games would be a chance to show the world all of the wonderful, impressive and sometimes strange things about the United Kingdom. And that was something to look forward to.

A Legacy For Decades

(Ellie Simmonds’ golden postbox photo courtsey of Express and Star news)

The impact of the 2012 Olympics continues to this day, mainly in the form of sport centres with signs that say “home of the 2012 Olympic [sport] events” and golden postboxes on the sides of streets emblazoned with the names of winning athletes. The BBC have long since scaled back their broadcasting following the conclusion of the Games although due to the huge and somewhat slightly unexpected huge popularity of their coverage, many features of those Games’ coverage that were being trialled for the first time were implemented in wider usage must faster than they would have been without the Games. Notably; Twitter and social media interaction, live-blogs on the BBC Sport website and additional Red Button live broadcasting, which has been re-used for basically every Wimbledon tennis tournament since.

Elbow’s music hasn’t been entirely forgotten either (I hope this post proves that). I heard it recently during the BBC’s coverage of the annual London Marathon, they’re certainly getting mileage out of it. And why not re-use it for future sporting events, the track’s emotion and feeling is just as applicable to something like the London Marathon as it is to the Olympics. Not mentioned up until now but there was actually an official song for the London 2012 Olympic Games called “Survival”, by another English rock band: Muse. It does deserve a very honourable mention as Muse are a great band and it’s a brilliant song, but it’s very different in style and I would argue is not what people think of when you ask the question “what was the music for the 2012 Olympics?”. There were also two soundtrack albums for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, but these are mainly live cover performances from those ceremonies.

To conclude, the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games were incredible, and I get rather patriotic when talking about them. Bar a few controversies it was largely a huge success. Millions of people who were not able to attend events in person were able to be part of the action thanks to the impeccable British Broadcasting Corporation. Fantastic programming and coverage, great features and analysis and one stellar title sequence and music track. We all know the on-screen presenters but I don’t think the behind-the-scenes crew get nearly enough praise - so personally I would like to say thank you to those hundreds upon hundreds of people who worked thankless tasks so people like me could be a part of one of the greatest events this country’s ever hosted. And thanks to Elbow, for a work of musical genius, that continues to inspire and send chills down the spine of every hopeful athlete or just plain old regular person to this day.