it finally happened people are complaining abt blades 2 before it even comes out and are writing essays in the tag LMFAO

i haven’t played p5/r in a while so forgive me that this entire thing is mostly off dome.

what i mean when i say “ryuji is the heart of the phantom thieves” is that i do genuinely believe that he is the glue that holds them together. without him, the group inarguably loses its charm, and would simply not function without him there. he’s outspoken, protective, and might be the only one who i feel has a genuine love toward every member of the group.

i need to replay to do a whole thinkpiece, but for now i do want to share the ryuji moments i remember the most, and why they are part of the concrete evidence that shows ryuji is the most important piece of the phantom thieves.

first of all:

such a casual dialogue that is amplified by a thousand simply because of ryuji��s unadulterated love for his friend… i am moved to tears by this interaction. i love him very much, and he is near and dear to the deepest parts of my heart.

secondly:

i admit im not in the know about a lot of persona fandom stuff, but i personally don’t see a lot of people talk about this? ignore joker on the right this ain’t about him. this is, i think, the first of many instances in which u notice how quickly ryuji jumps to defend his friends, namely his female friends, and it’s a huge part of him that draws me to his character.

since it’s atlus, it’s not hard to miss that ryuji is definitely victim to their “perverted male character” trope, but for me, the moments where ryuji is having genuine thought put behind his character, are the moments when he so intensely - and is usually the first to - defend the other phantom thieves.

another example:

the phantom thieves are each others biggest support system, as they’re a team, but ryuji is definitely the one we see show that off the most. i will not be going into details as this is all off the top of my head, but trust me i am thinking about his confidant and backstory as i write all of this out.

more:

this has always been on my mind as well, because not a day goes by where i don’t think about how quickly ryuji reassures his friends, since they r the most important people to him in his life.

more and more:

a less serious one, but i do genuinely enjoy the thought of ryuji just bragging about his friends because of how cool he thinks they are. when i say ryuji is the most obvious about how much he loves them, i am deathly serious. that is his family.

was excited to include this as well, as it goes to show even people ryuji has only known for a month are still worth going to war for. ryuji holds such an affection for his friends that it’s like i don’t even have to say more. he is literally speaking for himself here. i will never understand how anyone could dislike someone so passionate for the happiness of their own friends?

lastly:

i am personally not a huge fan of the negative dynamic atlus likes to portray between ryuji and morgana a lot of the time, so this is why this frenzy(?) is one of my favorites in p5d. morgana is the character ryuji fights with the most, and yet when morgana is feeling dejected, ryuji is there to pick him back up. obviously i know this is how the dance works and whatnot, but u cannot lie and tell me ryuji making him happy again didn’t make u almost cry a bit… it’s okay, i did too…

conclusion:

this ryuji shit gets serious, be prepared to die behind it.

i fucking love lubelles goal of being to explain everything and ruin the joy and wonder of what makes up the damn show. feels like a backhanded acknowledgment of old nv criticism (and honestly criscsim in sci-fi and fiction these days) where people used to say “okay but whats the point, whats the plot, why does the weird stuff happen with no consequence, i dont like that its not linear, how come this happens, theres no continuity wah” Baby it was never about the plot its never been about a plot its been about the magic and joy of fucking sitting there and listening to another world for 30 minutes from a man whose just has got a lot on his plate and has two braincells. Its commentary its jazz its free form fucking word poetry that sometimes stabs you in the gut. If thats not your cup of tea then thats completely and utterly fine but that doesnt automatically define it as bad. i know i joke a lot about them having no continuity but i dont care! Id listen to anything wtnv makes bc theyre playing in the space and breathing life into new stories and changing things because they want to and each episode feels like a weird thinkpiece on whatever’s going on in our world. Not everything needs an explanation or a grander purpose sometimes its just there for the joy of writing sometimes a story can be built from talking about everything but the thing that its talking about just how cecil palmer is defined by the people around him and we are never given a description of the guy. giving explanation destroys the beauty and wonder and dont u fucking get why i fucking LOVE LUBELLE and what this arc is doing and commenting on because above all else wtnv has been commentary even in the places its stumbled and failed dont u freaking see.. question why you’re asking what the point of something is question why you care so much about numbers and things lining up and working out perfectly. people are ugly and emotional and small towns are weird and stuff gets rehashed there over and over and over again dont you see the layers? Dont you see the fucking romance in a man who praises science above all else refusing to explain something to his husband to keep the magic alive? No No? In your quest to find the answer did you forget about the joy of the question?

ok. tumblr sent my other post about this into the void. but ummm I'm going to talk about fangirl by rainbow rowell because it is a very important book to me but I take issue with SO MUCH of it and I wish it was different. so here have the longest dissection ever of a book I've read a million times

So brief context: cath, the central character, is a girl going off to college for the first time. She is a fanfiction writer, and is a BNF in her fandom (a fictional parallel to harry potter). She has mental health issues (textually anxiety, but I read it as undiagnosed autism, which we'll get back to later.) Being in college means, for the first time, that she'll be living life away from her twin sister, wren. the book charts her struggles with family, fanfiction and romance as she tries to navigate college on her own.

so point A is the racism. rainbow rowell is racist. this is known. I'm not going to go into it here, but her book Eleanor and Park is full to the brim with anti-Asian stereotypes. if u Google it you'll definitely find thinkpieces with explanations and screenshots, but take my word for it here, it's a shitshow. anyway.

so first off. there are no major characters of colour in this novel. cath in this book has an extremely limited social circle, due to the aforementioned mental health issues. by the end of the novel, she's only managed to make 2 friends that aren't directly related to her. u could argue that rowell gets away with it on these grounds, but she really, REALLY does not. I want to discuss the character of abel, who gets dealt an extremely shitty hand in this book.

abel is cath's boyfriend of 3 years. Relevant here - cath's family apparently grew up in an all-mexican neighbourhood, and yet this is as close to a Mexican character as we ever get. he appears to be the only significant friend she has, apart from her sister. is this an important relationship, though? no, not at all. they've broken up by page 75 of a 460 page book. is this upsetting for cath? not really, apparently. she doesn't even cry.

the first thing to note about this is that abel and his family almost never come up in the text without being related back to food in some way. abel's grandmother owns a bakery, and every time cath thinks about her boyfriend, she thinks about the cakes she gets from this bakery. she seems more upset to have lost access to abel's grandmother's cakes than she is to have lost abel. always, always, this relation to cake. no reflection on what their relationship was like. no happy memories. always just cake. a common criticism of white people writing POC is that the POC are described using words for food. rowell takes this a step further. described with food? no! abel is directly connected with food. you almost never see him out of this context, when he's mentioned at all.

the second thing to note is that this relationship is utterly inconsequential. you could edit this relationship right out of the book and lost nothing. it might even make more sense - cath's conviction that she is doomed to fail in a relationship would make more sense if she'd never had one. and this is extremely frustrating to me because from what little we see of it, this should be an extremely important relationship for cath, and deserving of far more than than the ambivalence it gets. The book brushes off their relationship as 'safe', as 'boring', as cath never really liking him, but it doesn't stick the landing on this point to me.

cath is deeply socially isolated. she struggles with anxiety to the degree that she cannot make herself go to the dining hall, and resorts to living off protein bars for MONTHS. she's terrified by everything and everyone. and not to out myself to the world here, but her struggles are deeply, soulwrenchingly relatable to me. so I speak from experience here when I say - there should be nothing insignificant about a relationship where she feels 'safe'. she's afraid to tell anyone about her fanfiction, in case anyone thinks she's weird. and yet not only does abel know about it, he reads it. he keeps up with it. we are told that he once got her a laptop charger for her birthday. it's laughed off as a boring gift - but cath is welded to her laptop in this novel. It's almost an extension of her. like yes as a gift it's 'boring' - but its practical, and its kind. abel KNOWS her, enough to get her things she knows she'll appreciate having. there is so much potential in this relationship that just goes completely untouched. It might be very true that they aren't romantically compatible, or can't make the relationship work long term - but that should have been explored!!! That is a genuine source of conflict that could serve as a great subplot, especially when paired with the other interpersonal issues that cath is having. like why, in a novel about your relationships with your loved ones changing as you grow up, is a three-year-relationship just... discarded? there's no weight to this relationship at all. it comes off as desperately shallow, and a bit.... amatonormative is the word maybe? misogynistic? yes you might be isolated with no friends and bad social skills, but you can't be seen to not have a boyfriend. that's a step too far.

OK. So now onto my next point of contention with this book. it is WILD to write an entire book revolving around gay fanfiction and then.... just not include any LGBT characters. at all. cath writes gay fanfiction nonstop for like 5 straight years and apparently never ONCE considers her own sexuality? her own gender? she reads gay fanfiction to her eventual boyfriend to calm herself down and... what, we never probe further than that? I know this book came out in 2013, so trans ideas might not have been as high on the radar, but... idk. I would LOVE to see a trans man's take on this book, because I could certainly see cath as one. but as it is, the book is just deeply, painfully cisheterosexual. all the time. the possibility of cath being gay comes up once, as a joke. other characters express suprise at her writing gay content, and cath always approves when they are accepting.... but no gay characters. not a one. it comes off as a bit fetishing, to be honest. yes, we'll obsess over the gayness of these characters. but an actual gay person? seems a bit unrealistic idk

I have other, smaller nitpicks with the book, too, which I'll just list:

- the actual 'fandom' isn't really portrayed that well. cath is isolated there, too. she posts her own fic and reads a little bit of other fic, and that's it. And while that's fine, it might have been good to at least nod to other types of fandom experiences. this fictional fandom is the size of Harry Potter's and there's no fandom drama? None?

- her final assignment, worth fifty percent of ONE class, is ten thousand words long? in UNDERGRAD???? is that real? are American colleges crazy

- she writes romantic gay fanfiction with her SISTER? Possibly spicy stuff? girl you do you but I would sooner die

- speaking of, there's some weird parallels drawn between the gay romance and the relationship between the sisters. stop that please

- medication is not evil stop acting like it is

GRRR okay done. you may now be wondering what I see in this book at all. so here we go.

- she isnt written that way, and I don't think it was intended on the authors part, but cath is one of the best portraits of a certain kind of autistic person I've ever seen. like before I had any inkling that I was, myself, autistic, I had ONE character in all of literature I could point at and say 'this person is like me'. and I could never really explain why until post-diagnosis. this is why reading one-star reviews of this book gives me hives. you don't understand her, you don't understand ME, shut up forever.

- cath's relationship with the world of mages is textbook special interest. it makes her feel happy and safe, the one activity she can always turn to. she's been writing about it nonstop for YEARS. it's the bedrock through which she understands the world. she doesn't necessarily understand the way her sister has grown out of it, when cath hasn't. just the way in which this affects her relationship to other people is SO well done. cath not understanding why everyone else outgrew it when she didn't. her sister taking shots at the world of mages when she wants to upset cath, because that's the thing that will bother her most. at one point, cath submits a piece of fanfiction to her fiction professor for an assignment. objectively stupid? yes, of course. when the professor calls her on it, cath is most upset by the fact that she can't make her professor understand how important it is to her. other characters help cath understand why it was wrong, of course, but the point remains - she didn't turn in the fanfiction because she was being lazy or stealing, but because its the most important thing in the world to her. every single thought cath has about the world of mages reads as special interest to me

- cath being unable to visit the dining hall on own because she doesn't understand the rules, and can't Google them. she resorts to living off protein bars and peanut butter. she's only able to go to the dining hall after someone goes with her and shows her how. which. look. I avoided my college canteen for nearly two full years because I didnt understand the rules and couldn't Google them. I only got over it after someone brought me there for coffee two months ago. also developed weird eating habits because of it. maybe proves nothing but it was nice to see someone else experience that

- stunted social skills mean you don't make friends so much as you kind of drift into friendships. People adopt you, get used to you just because you're there

- the isolation. the loneliness. God I've never read another book that manages autistic loneliness like this one. the way that just showing up and going to class and having one (1) friend can be genuinely all you can do, the best you can manage, and it still leaves you so far behind compared to everyone else

- idk. I read a lot of YA when I was a teenager, and even when the characters explicitly did have mental health problems, there was always this fear of letting the characters struggle. of letting them be genuinely isolated from their peers. the weirdo always goes to all the parties. the lonely character always has a circle of friends. the loser always gets the girl. because no one could ever be that weird, that lonely, that much of a loser.

- well fuck you, man. some of us are.

- the way neurodivergence is handled in this book is kind. levi's probable dyslexia is treated in a gentle, nuanced way, and so is cath's father's bipolar disorder. I can't speak to what it's like to have either, but they're certainly not demonised here.

- I don't know. This is already long as fuck and I don't know if it makes any sense. tl;dr I wish there were more books about the autistic college experience. especially from a trans perspective

hello! how are you?

for the series ask, could you do lotgh?

hi! this question is framed so politely… im hangover grumpy but other than that im doing well..

Favorite character

cheating a little by doing this in tiers so empire side i like reinhard, kircheis, oberstein, reuenthal & hilde… alliance side i like yang, jessica, schonkopf (u notice i like good ideological challenges to MCs in this series) & julian

Second favorite character

n on the next tier of faves is mittermeyer, dusty, dominique, elfriede (an enemy of reuenthal is a friend of mine), frederica (if only tanaka knew women had interiority amirite), and many more

Least favorite character

its not so much least favorite character so much as it is i feel like bc tanaka really is so harsh about religion (& i say this as a nonbeliever myself but u cant deny that religion is a powerful social force) the entire earth cult as a concept really suffers in the writing of canon... and ova designers what the fuck was they doing w machungo’s design

The character I’m most like

ummmm ..i think if i said it id be subject to fines and cancellations so... u can decide ^_^

Favorite pairing

reinhard/kircheis, mittermeyer/reuenthal, reinhard/reuenthal, everybody/yang .. getting into crack pairs here dominique/el & ferobe :3

Least favorite pairing

its not hate cuz i love their dynamic but framing reinhilde as a love match is hilarious .. i can buy yang/frederica cuz yang is need of mommy doms but reinhilde is a lavender marriage. also ry would also be a lavender marriage to me the appeal of reinyang is yang to reinhard is like the girl that got away .. reinhard’s one true ‘equal’ that he could never gain supremacy over or sublimate into his camp. and yang has a sort of abstract admiration for reinhard as a historical figure but also recognizes that hes his ideological foe/nightmare of sorts in the present lol

Favorite moment

the kunmel incident itself, when reuenthal is at his desk in the ova and is like ‘this is everything in my life that built up to this incident’ (literally have a drunken thinkpiece about it somewhere on this blog), hilde saving reinhard at vermillion, reinhard & yang meeting..the dishonor gaiden (ngl i need me some thyoxin)+ ‘dont be nice to anyone but me and my sister kircheis’ gaiden …oberstein’s REDACTED

Rating out of 10

7.5/10, to me history, mini odysseys n shit n mythmaking by characters in a narrative is something tanaka seems to have a consistent interest in if u take his other works into account and i feel like u can tell that lotgh was his first foray into space opera & milsf w/o even getting into his other works .. theres lingering plot threads that dont rly go anywhere or arent answered satisfactorily (the entire earth cult-fezzan-lang connection is rly weak in terms of writing. yang disavowing conspiracies & terrorism as ‘impacting the flow of history’ couldve been a cruel stroke of irony if the terrorist conspiracy was in anyway narratively coherent).& an overarching motif of the series being the idea of ‘might makes right’ not only attracts an unsavory crowd of fans to say it politely.. but it also weakens a good bit of the series as yang is physically ‘weak’ but mentally + strategically a genius , he has no real conflicting force in his camp outside of schonkopf at a certain point where reinhard has oberstein hilde + reuenthal who all have their own ideological deigns on him as hes the leader of his camp. yang being so cerebral + very easygoing/bereft of the desire to have power dynamics despite being a military leader (seeing his subordinates as friends, rather than lord and master) makes him a very fun character but in later arcs it lends him to being a bit of a device/ insert for meta ideals more than having internal conflicts as a character of his own right & it makes me so sad bc just when he has one of his biggest dilemmas he CENSORED. also if the story dealt w/ reinhard’s final arc more (namely the revelation he has of REDACTED considering how much of his identity is built around his militaristic might) id rly love it. im speaking vaguely bc my friends r watching & ion wanna spoil and i also feel like im being mean to this series but i rly do like this series TTvTT

Yes just as that anon said I don't think that a fuckboy au is for me. Like if somebody hurts me or make me jealous, either I would ignore that person totally (I am the kind of person who doesn't fall for someone's antics or manipulation at all because I myself am a little manipulative so I can easily guess and resists) or be petty as hell to them (if they are already close to me).

I also have this in me that I don't get attached to people normally. Like we would be friends for a year or so and if they aren't talking to me now then I don't feel anything and just move on. I am only emotionally attached to my family and 2-3 people who are with me from start. Like if s new person is coming in my life and staying as long as thry want then leaving, I wouldn't mind them leaving.

So yeah I think I am not that kind of person who get hurt easily or let's say let someone hurt my feelings.

So please warn me about it already so that this fic won't mess with my mind afterwards please. BTW love the crack > 💌

listen. i don’t wanna be rude at all but bear with me

i’ve been getting a lot of anons telling me they don’t like fuckboy aus but still end up reading my fuckboy stuff.

can i ask why? why read something you don’t even like? it still has all the elements you dislike so i’m confused on why i’m being told in my inbox several times “i usually avoid this type of fic but” but what? what’s the difference ?

fuckboy aus are so very typical and repetitive so i’m questioning why you even view this one as different when it isn’t

you say you’re not the kind of person to get hurt easily but then ask me to ‘give you a warning about my fic so it won’t mess w your head’, babes it’s literally a fanfiction. like it’s a made up story. it’s not real. some random stranger pulled the idea out of their ass and i am freestyling it as i go, why would you need a warning about something like that if you don’t get hurt easily anyway?

it’s just a story, y’all like i really just went with what the very first anon asked, took the idea and just freestyled and improvised as i went and now there are several anonymous thinkpieces in my inbox about people swearing how they don’t like fuckboy aus to someone that’s actively writing a fuckboy au like i just don’t understand

no disrespect at all but a lot of you guys are also 30+ in age and i need you to understand this oc is in college so yea she’s not gonna be as wise or strong as you yall it’s literally just a made up character why has this become a controversy in my inbox i just wanna write stuff😭😭😭

thank u for loving the crack tho !

So basically what I understand so far and also what I have heard is that

Hanni believes she’s a phone

Haerin believes she’s a cat

Hyein thinks she’s part of a fairy tale and has princess syndrome as said before

Minji believes she’s not a patient and instead is a doctor

And Danielle is the only one who realizes that they’re actually new jeans

But ive also seen people say that Hanni could be the one who is calling Heesoo in the Ditto MV during side b and also that hyein could’ve perhaps been hurt or killed by the bear shown in OMG and also ditto(you see the same teddy bear from omg in ditto)

I’ll let you know if I find out more as well!

yeahhhhhh that all makes sense 😄😄 the things they each think they are r really funny to me like what’s the pipeline from cat to iphone LMAO

another thing i just realized while watching ditto side b is that heesoo starts ignoring newjeans towards the end ,, like u can see her walking away from them, ignoring their calls, and overall just not being around them . and then she went to the rooftop and deliberately dropped the camera that she’s been using to film ,, that’s probably some sort of signifier of her beef towards newjeans because she’s the one filming them all the time so if she breaks the camera it means she doesn’t want to be around them anymore and in omg in the beginning during her iphone thinkpiece u can see hanni writing ‘heesoo please talk to me’ on a piece of paper

so smt happens that causes heesoo to distance herself which idk if it has to do with the guy in side b but it’s possible that heesoo may have caused newjeans to go to the mental hospital somehow or she may have been involved in it happening but her guilty conscience is making up stories about them and stuff (bc at the end of side b u see her looking through old tapes of them and smiling) and it would also explain why she’s not with newjeans and is probably being isolated somewhere else

i could be completely off but heesoo was definitely ignoring them at some point

pointing out that adora’s entitled whiteness shines through in every episode while her poc friends are expected to coddle and comfort her at every turn isn’t unhinged at all. she’s the literal epitome of a white savior and she gets held up in favor of the poc characters constantly. She’s socially incompetent and the epitome of privilege, and she uses her traumatic past to excuse her actions while never being made to own up to her racist, tactless behavior.

Hhhh thank u sm i felt a bit like i was getting annoyed for no reason when ppl were calling that anon insane for having that opinion ffjgjjk.

Like... i personally dont agree that adora wasnt abused "as much as other characters" or whatever cause i believe emotional abuse can be just as bad etc etc but i cannot deny that so much of the narrative was focused on her all the time as a victim + never fully had her grapple with her own mistakes wrt to her friends. And this coupled with the shows already god awful visual treatment wrt to its white vs non white characters-- whitewashed mara 😑 and in general.... everything abt this white blue eyed saviour character...... lmao it does not paint a good picture and poc have every right to be pissed abt it for as long as they like. Im not going to begrudge them for not liking it cause as much as i love this character, even i can see it. I dont think it was intentionally racist, i think they just didnt rly think abt it H cause shes already a protag but 😔 certainly comes off that way.

Idk but ppl arent "insane" or w/e for being mad or annoyed abt it. I have many shows/movies i can think of too where the obvious bias like this still makes me mad years later. Even if i dont quite relate to anons opinion but theyre wholly entitled to that opinion and i dont vibe with the number of white ppl saying its "insane" or w/e cause anon didnt like a show they liked.

If u wanna write a thinkpiece on noise music i would be v interested tbh

ok buckle up 🤠

so in this essay i'm going to only focus on and compare nct and skz because they're the forerunners on noise music. full disclaimer: i ult both groups and love the (majority) of their music and i adore the members. this thinkpiece is only to give my most objective opinion on their artistry and music.

what constitutes noise music? and what elements of noise music make it "good music"? to me, noise music has clashing instrumentals, that separated would not sound cohesive at all, but when put together have at least some semblance of musicality. this definition excludes sticker and thunderous from the category of "noise music". ik this might be a controversial opinion, but sticker simply does not have enough instruments in the song to be considered noise. i can practically count on one hand how many instruments are used. yes the weird synth base and flute clash, but there is too much empty space (for back of letter word). i think sticker is definitely experimental, but i would not classify it as noise music. nct noise music includes (but is not limited to) songs like kick it, limitless, chain, mad dog, and to an extent, punch and simon says. i would not classify thunderous as noise music because there is not enough clashing instruments. sure, the song has brass fanfare, but at no point when i'm listening to it do i think it is itching my brain. don't get me wrong, it's a great song, but it is not similar to their other songs like miroh, side effects, god's menu, go live, or cheese. that's why i think trying to compare nct and skz by their newest releases is kind of dumb. however, you can definitely compare and contrast their previous songs

NCT 127

now i'm going to focus on nct 127. although nct dream has some songs that are defined as "noise music" (see: go and hot sauce) it is primarily nct 127's "brand". the main element nct has that turns their music from "bad bad music" to "good bad music" is their vocals. their songs often have small breaks from the clashing instruments to give the listener a relief, and during that break, they showcase what sm is known for (amazing, industry-standard vocals). not only does it break the monotony of the noisy instruments, but it also creates hype for when it resumes! limitless is a great example of this! please do yourself a favor and listen to the instrumental ver of the song on youtube. i get legit goosebumps every time the beat drops all over again. i do have two complaints. 1) there are times were their raps are lacking, and it really kinda almost breaks the whole vibe of the song because it makes me cringe a little. see lemonade as an example, even though i would not classify lemonade as noise music. 2) this is off topic but i kinda rip apart skz a little bit so i feel like i need to be balanced and fair but i literally hate sticker so much and the album, although has good songs, is bland and has little variety

STRAY KIDS

stray kids are the younger cousins of nct. they too focus on noise music, but they have their own twist on it. skz comparitively have better rappers. not saying mark and ty are bad by any means, but there are some nct members that also rap that ... should not and instead be vocals. but skz continuously show hard, impactful raps that nct usually lacks to some extent. this is both a good and bad thing for noise music, depending on your baseline opinion on noise music to begin with. if you generally don't like noise music, raps add even more clashing. if you do like noise music, rap can be used as an additional "instrumental" element. i think a great example would be cb's rap in miroh and god's menu. it hypes up the song either right before the beat drop or at the beginning respectively. nct doesn't really have that, they rely on vocals for the lead up. skz definitely have their own spin on noise music and i'm glad they do, variety is the spice of life. i only have three complaints. 1) they do not use their vocalists to the best of their abilities. sm and in have lower toned voices, yet they are consistently forced to sing notes in a very high register, which can understandably sound strained. to combat this, skz use han for the really high lines. 2) when they do have vocal breaks, they should really utilize lino more. part of the reason why nct's vocal breaks are so good is because they are such a contrast to the rest of the song. have you ever watched judges on cooking network? they often say "i wish you used a spalsh of lemon to lighten up this dish". well in this scenario, light, airy voices are the lemon and the noise music beats are the heavy cream. nct has light voices (dy, hc, jw, and to an extent tl). look at kick it. the very first vocal break is jw and hc and it really elevates the entire rest of the song. now skz really only has lino as a light voice (bc and han also too an extent) yet they very rarely use him, which is disappointing. 3) this is kind of off topic but i'm disappointed that their lastest album, literally termed "noeasy" which is a spin-off of the word "noisy" has only one noise music song. like i said before i do not classify thunderous as noisy, but cheese fits the description. don't get me wrong, noeasy is literally one of my favorite kpop albums now but it does kind of fall short of its given name.

conclusion: i really enjoy nct and skz's music. i think the introduction of the noise genre is a great illustration of why kpop is so unique. kpop is MEANT to be experimental. it is meant to be in your face. it is meant to be loud and colorful. it is meant for you to initially think "wow that's weird" because in the end, 9/10 you'll fall in love with it. i think nct and skz can both improve on different aspects and i think it's interesting to compare the two, but in the end, they both have their own takes on noise music

listen i dont love when people get preachy or write long thinkpieces on this site but this has seriously been bugging me. IF YOURE WRITING SUBTITLES FOR A VIDEO, MAKE THOSE SUBTITLES JUST A TRANSCRIPT OF WHAT IS SAID IN THAT VIDEO. i know it sounds obvious, but i see this so often that i need to address it. Deaf or hard of hearing people, people with auditory processing problems, or honestly just nondisabled people who prefer subtitles, use subtitles as a way to know what is being said in the video. this is not the platform for your commentary. i was watching a videogame playthrough, and four of my absolute pet peeves all showed up at once (pushing me over the edge to make this post lmao), so here’s what not to do

....spoil the video?? like i hate jumpscares but if you want to warn people, many people check the comments for timestamps they can avoid. the captions of the video is not the place. you just ruined the immersion of everyone watching.

share your reaction to the video. like. sorry u cant see it?? why did you feel the need to share this with every person trying to know what the youtuber is saying in this video. like not to be a bitch but we dont care, you know?

insert your own opinions into the video. dude. this ISNT your video. we watch this to hear what the person behind the camera has to say, their opinions or reactions. dont “argue” with them in the captions? comment it or tweet it if you really feel like his opinion on color theory is so off base. hes not gonna see this anyways

this is the big one. people love to put their own little jokes about what is being said in the captions...this is often the most accurate to the actual audio transcript, but is also by far the most widespread. i would be lying if i said that no sarcastic comment, joke, or weird way of typing the words has ever made me laugh. ive seen a lot of people celebrate this going “XD TURN ON THE SUBTITLES!!!” about whatever cheeky remark is in there. but you really just have to try to understand....this just makes the subtitles a more hostile environment for people who need them. when watching a video, you are supposed to be able to scan the subtitles quickly, absorb what they are saying, and focus on the video, and these sorts of things are often distracting in a way that pulls you out of the video. its bad that i have to use this example, but i know some people won’t understand bc the video is in a language they understand easiliy and can hear what the person is saying....so, pretend you are watching an anime with subtitles. if you were trying to watch but all the subtitles were like “i hate you!! *uwu little dumb noises like a lost puppy hehe*” you wouldnt be able to follow it nearly as easily, right?? subtitles are a great resource but unless people start taking them seriously its really not going to get better. we are watching bc we want to see the CONTENT OF THE VIDEO. nothing more. again, please, just use the comments section to tell your joke. i promise people will appreciate it

christopher loses his marbles (or why i’ve decided to start blogging)

even though prodonktivity is a social construct, my irls on social media seem to be obssessed with it, so i found myself subscribing to this mythical school of thought because the hive mind is real for dumb bitches like me who are unable to think for themselves. since then, i wasn't able to do something without me questioning myself whether it's actually productive or not. which is annoying, because really, who the fuck cares?

and anyway, what constitutes an activity as productive? what exactly are the parameters of "productivity" and how the hell do you quantify that shit?

i had so many questions.

i have this much needed break from being in the academe and yet here i am figuring out how to spend my time in a way that would be deemed acceptable to the capitalistic zombie society who's wired to do nothing but work, work, work. by no means am i being held at gunpoint to actually *BE* productive, i've just been a tiny bit brainwashed, but in the end it is still my prerogative to participate. the onus is on me to deal with how to go about it.

so why blogging? one might ask, and the answer is incredibly simple: i like to write... even though the process is an incredibly stressful, aggravating, and frustrating experience. be it that i may have read too many books during my adolescent years and had no one to tell me writing is not as therapeutic as i thought it would be, then maybe i wouldn't have considered doing this today. however, i have been putting my foot on the gas pedal of this writing thing for too long that i have honestly no idea how to stop it without it ending in a fatal crash. years and years worth of works ranging from cringy softboy poems to fanfics of heterosexual korean boybands whose sole career focus is to capitalize on queerbaiting naive, innocent pubescent teens prove that fact. i AM in this for the long haul.

yes, i could have chosen to churn out another 20k words worth of abo smut of kim junmyeon and oh sehun but what exactly does that achieve? (except deposit more material for depraved faggots like me's spank banks?) i would like to believe i could contribute something more important to society than writing about suho getting rawdogged in some department store fitting room because he conveniently "forgot" to take his heat suppressants. i would like to think i'm better than that (i am NOT, but a boy can dream).

but as i sat down to write what i hoped would be a movement-inspiring blog post, my brain immediately went blank. dumb and dumber refused to cooperate. as much as i would have loved for this blog to be filled with revolutionary political thinkpieces, dumb and dumber's outcries of needing a space to be unapologetically stupid was too enticing.  twitter is all well and good a platform for the same purpose but of course, i am a hag who cannot keep things concise.

so here we are.

if at any point in reading do u feel like an old hag is rambling at you, you're right and that is absolutely valid. despite my initial intentions of what these blogs are supposed to be, in the process of writing i have discovered the nirvana that is the catharsis of letting my thoughts stream freely onto the page. contrary to what i used to believe, writing is indeed therapeutic! hallelujah, i have finally seen the light. no more ass-clenching nights spent trying so hard to write junmyeon being knotted by 8 different men and pumped full of cum as descriptively as possible. AND it gets better because i even get to post these useless stuff under the guise of being productive because the "collective" thinks blogging is acceptable!

let's be real, not many people will read my blogs, and the few that will, will certainly have those that cannot fully comprehend the whole mess. for the most part, these will be enshrined in vague, unclicked "new blog" instagram story posts, facebook statuses, and tweets that serve to solidify my status as an upstanding, productive member of our society. each post will be my "fuck you" to all the karens who say "fake it till you make it" after peer pressuring you by subtly flexing everything they've achieved during the quarantine. you can all suck my fat productive cock.

Not to write a thinkpiece that prompts someone to add the “you should care about other people” image bc while I wholly agree with that statement it’s another thing entirely to just like. Expect strangers online to help you through you suicidal crisis.

You literally have no context for what any given person you know through the internet is doing irl in their corner of earth and to have this largely unhealthy idea that people over reddit and twiter and tumblr just SHOULD talk you out of your thoughts/through your crisis and foster a genuine connection with you from here on out is so....damaging for both parties.

I’m willing to bet that most people, in any ideal world, would do anything they could to help out their fellow human beings through rough patches but I’m also willing to bet that a vast majority of the same people on social media that frequent forums and corners where mental illness is heavily discussed do not have the proper tools and resources to help someone in crisis mode, and are most often in some kind of a rough patch themselves and to place this unrealistic and unhealthy standard on strangers online that they should for some reason help form and foster your need for connection to help you recover is NOT fair to them and it’s not fair to you either bc if you place those projections on someone you will only end up hurting both them and yourself at the end of the day, and this is coming from someone who has had ample experience in both roles....

Idk it’s just like.....I’m sorry you are going through a crisis but also ppl u meet and have a perception of through the internet have their own lives, problems and mental health to take care of in their own way and are not obligated to be your therapist and there comes a point when you have to realize that that is OK and doesn’t make them like a horrible person either yk? It’s not so black and white ig.

You can't preach about how accepting of questioning ppl u r then write 45 thinkpieces about  people having “oppression fetish” ,“cishets invading the lgbtqa community bc they wanna feel special” , and saying that everyone using certain microidentities is a cishet because i assure you 8/10 times thats EXACTLY what a questioning person will consider themselves as while wondering if they “truly” belong in lgbtqa circles or not.

This whole trend of cracking down on people with “weird” or “complicated” genders or orientations bc they might be a “cishet trying to feel special” and interrogating people about each detail of their orientation before you “let” them be considered “valid” enough to be in lgbtqa community is just so shitty bc it ends up turning away more questioning people than those “cishets” you are so concerned about.

Many questioning people will use “wacky” microidentities like "heteroflexible" etc bc they find it easier to say “Im straight but sometimes shit happens ;)” than suddenly admit that they are someone who their parents,governments and society hates and might inflict violence on them just for being them.For many people its a back and forth between going against what they are told to be by their peers and considering the possibility of not being cis/straight to going back to the comfort of compulsory heterosexuality and if they want to exist in the middle of it till they figure their shit out then i really dont see whats wrong with that.

Im not saying that we should never call out how wrong and horrible these identities are or not discuss how these identities further push people back into their closet.But at least we should stop this trend of mocking and bullying everyone who uses these identities bc they “MIGHT” be a cishet.If you cant help queer questioning people and educate everyone using these identities about how wrong they are and help them learn about lgbtqa identities,then at least dont harass and make fun of them.

If u really care about questioning people, then realize that in real life its not popular to be non cis straight and its more likely that its non cis straight questioning people who are identifying with many “wacky” overly-specific-microidentities identities which describe their situations and help them make sense of their identities while staying in lgbtqa spaces than cis straight people.

Be kind to questioning people,even if they dont meet your standards or views of who questioning people should be like

Yeah you dragged that anon who’s wishing death on the person who just worked with DOR for 5 fucking minutes instead of actually saying “yk what hw is fucked cause dor is still making movies” BUT in your last ask you went on and said the same thing that the other anon implied so what’s your point even that Taylor should be crucified for doing a cameo lol okay guys Selena and Timmy worked with woody and every other Hollywood star has worked with directors accused of rape,pedophilia and the list goes on lmfao y’all got nothing to say about that but are quick to drag Taylor which is fine but keep the same energy pls

That’s not what I said at all plz develop some reading comprehension babe.

I said “in a world where Polanski was making movies post #MeToo even and winning awards it’s no surprise DOR hasn’t had to face consequences and isn’t that fucked up??”

I said “it’s fair to unstan Margot and Taylor and write thinkpieces.”

I said “it’s messed up to defend Margot and Taylor but they’re not the ultimate bad guys.”

I said “no one should be bullied to the brink of suicide and defs not someone who worked with someone shitty but is not shitty themselves.”

That’s like all there is to say on that idk what more u want to hear babe. Do you want me to suck this woman’s dick for betraying like the only remaining thing she’d kinda had going for her values lol???

She’s not the antichrist but she LITERALLY stands for nothing at all.

i’m so bad at essay writing (except thinkpieces) but history!! bane of my existence. i’m really good at art, foreign languages, maths and sciences.. but not literature or history. I feel dumb because i’m a bookworm and i like reading about everything incl history but writing about it? i can expand on thoughts verbally but not in writing. any advice for this sad soul? (sorry my writing isn’t good as u can tell)

for me personally, i find that if i go into an english essay or a historical writing or a speech or basically anything that requires stringing a bunch of words together into a coherent thought with something rehearsed or with a strict outline, i mess up

but! especially in history, if you jot down the major points you’re supposed to make in the order you need to say/write them, you aren’t restricted by what you think you need to say. it’s easier to let your thoughts flow freely around an idea than around a rubric.

and if you struggle with history but enjoy reading/are a bookworm, think of history as a story! it’s just a long story that progresses as time goes on with multiple levels of complexity, and thinking of it in terms of characters and motivations can help you understand historical themes better!