#this is a direct continuation to my other 3 about Etho feeling things only because Joel feels them
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They're burning.
Etho feels Joel's alarm before he steps through the portal. He's awash in it, staggered by it, before he even knows what it means. There is the blistering hot of the nether, the blistering hot of panic and indignation, the knife-twist of betrayal, and then Etho realizes they're burning.
Time slows. This too, is a sensation he wasn't prepared for. Humanity is amazing. Humanity is amazing. No wonder Joel survives so long every time they play this game. So long and always so red. The seconds turn to years turn to eons. Etho is used to living years quickly, watching stars form from nebulas, devouring time like a wolf devours bone. He has never felt a second move so slowly before. This is human, determination, the refusal to end, clinging to the sparks of life as they flicker in and out in the instants between heartbeats.
He turns to Joel, whose face is too furious to show pain. He's backlit in the murder-red of lava and fire. Black traces his skin where Etho's own burning inflicts itself on him. It's too hot for smoke, nearly too hot for words. One breath in and their lungs are searing, their voices hoarse.
"Go back Etho! They've trapped the portal!" Joel screams. He digs his hands through is pack, trying to find anything that will save them.
Maybe it's in Etho's nature to admit defeat too soon, but even in the bullet-time of Joel's panic, of human tenacity struggling against every second to survive, Etho recognizes there's no getting out of this. Like every star, like every galaxy, like their home, it is in their nature to burn out. Maybe if he'd known the Relationship would be so symbolic, he would've taken better care of it. He would have kept himself from getting lost in Joel's emotionality and made it of something stronger. He could've hollowed out the world and filled it with iron, gold, diamond and stone. Gravity might hold them together a little longer. They're splintering apart like dying stars and there's nothing he can do about it.
Almost nothing.
There is some good to being mostly void, partially human. To recognizing sometimes fate hands you futility because the moments before it are bright and vibrant and worth the view. Etho is awash in Joel's anger and panic, they are surrounded by the bruising colors of a nether portal unable to send them to safety. They have only each other and a handful of fading seconds.
For the first time since their souls have linked, Etho pushes back against Joel's emotions. He refuses to bask in the glory of feeling everything all at once, with everything he has. He draws Joel's hands from his desperate searching in his pack and cups them in his. Joel looks up at him, and his eyes are full of indescribable things, colors and feelings Etho has barely felt the prickled edges of. His mouth is open to protest. His skin is blistering. The fire makes embers of the red streak in his hair.
They are burning, and they can no longer feel it. That is the void, after all. It is nothing. It is the complete and utter absence of sensation. It is an endless ocean, drowning. It is cold. It is quiet. They stare at each other and they're floating in nothing. Around their furthest edges, muffled sound and light persists. Purple red and orange mingle in the impressions of the world they're dying in. The black and blistering of their skin still prickles like goosebumps. The ticking of their lives, slowed to a crawl by Joel's panic, continues. There isn't much of them left.
Joel doesn't seem nearly as enraptured by Etho's nothingness as Etho has been of Joel's everythingness, but maybe that's to be expected. Maybe Joel doesn't know what to do with so much void, so surrounded by it that even all his everything can't fill the gap anymore.
"They betrayed us!" Joel shouts at him accusatorially, like it's his fault. "What a stupid way to go!"
"No kidding," Etho chuckles at him, their hands still cupped together. Joel's fingers are warm compared to his, vibrant and sparked full of life even now. Etho is going to miss that warmth when it's just him again, just like he missed BDubs' when he lost him, and The Red Army's before that. Such beautiful, vibrant sparks, all of them more beautiful than stars, all of them vanishing in instants like the embers of a kicked campfire.
Well, he may not be able to do anything about their dying, but Etho can do something about their time spent listing in between living and death.
"Do you wanna get out of here?" He asks.
Joel laughs at him, harsh and high, and he's grinning. "Is that a pick-up line? I'm married you know!"
And they were soulmates. Were. Time has never seemed to pass so quickly. Just moments ago they were the present, vibrant and full, and somehow like it always does, the past has crept up and devoured Etho whole.
"And where is she?" Etho chuckles. "Someplace close?"
Joel looks around, taking in the endless horizon, the edges of their loss, and the distant stars beyond it.
"She's in Empires, wherever that is from here."
"It probably doesn't exist yet."
"What?"
"Which was made first Joel? Empires, or Life?"
"But that's... How long are we going to be stuck here, Etho?"
Not long. That's the thing about nothing. Its absolutely no time at all.
Joel respawns on a floating island, familiar, a place he's made and adored. He is a god. He is surrounded by the works of his hands.
His hands are cold.
Somewhere in the void, in the space between stars where Hermitcraft exists and doesn't, Etho slips his hands in his pockets and smiles.
"GG buddy."
#the barking writer#ethoslab#joel smallishbeans#boat boys#smalletho#eldritch horror etho#void creature etho#double life smp spoilers#dlsmp spoilers#dlsmp s6#my boys :(#oh well! better luck next time fellas!#this is a direct continuation to my other 3 about Etho feeling things only because Joel feels them#ill try and remember to combine them all on AO3 tonight
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Hi!! I'm a college student about to graduate and my dream is to teach English in China and I was wondering if you could somehow help me and give me some advice. I have been studying Chinese during my years at university (and I love your blog!), along with my physics degree. I don't know if any of this is relevant but my level of Mandarin is not very high (HSK3), I study in the UK and I'm planning to get a TEFL 120 hour certification in June. Is this a solid plan? Love your blog, Isa
Hiii! Sorry it took me so long to get to this, I have my final exams at the moment and am on semi-hiatus. First, what an amazing dream!! You'll have a wonderful time :D
SO in general having a degree not in English language and a TEFL certificate is most definitely enough to secure you a job, but at the moment it is a rather 'special period', as every job advert says, and so finding a job is a little trickier because of visa problems.
Basically, there are no work or study visas available at the moment for people from the UK. The only people who can get into China are those who the Chinese Embassy deems 'foreign experts' and therefore 'crucial to China's progress', and your company or school will have to provide something called a PU letter. This grants you the ability to actually apply for the work visa, though itself doesn't grant it. At the moment there aren't that many companies available who can offer that.
Because of this, I'd recommend going through a recruitment company. I do not necessarily mean a graduate scheme (the ones advertised as such are not very well paid and you don't have much control over where you go), but a recruitment company. You can find these on any general site if you google 'ESL jobs China'.
In terms of actual jobs - generally speaking there are three categories, private language schools, state schools, and international schools. International schools are by far the best in terms of packages, but they rarely take graduates without 3 years of teaching experience. The good news is that if you do find somebody who is looking for recent grads (if you go to a particularly prestigious university like Oxbridge, for instance), you might be able to teach Physics or Science rather than English language. International schools will also be the easiest to deal with in terms of communication and visa applications, but the competition is quite stiff, and most people who apply will be teachers in their home countries already.
State schools are another good option if you want 'normal' teaching hours, good holidays, and older children. The position I have next year is in a good state school that has two programs, the Canadian curriculum and the GaoKao (the Chinese university entrance exam). The main disadvantage is that you may be the only foreigner in the school, and communication might be difficult. I don't just mean with Chinese but in general: you will be not told things, you will be excluded, you will turn up to your class and find someone else teaching it and be told just to go back to your office. If you can be flexible and have an open mind, state schools are great, but they may be quite exhausting especially if this is your first time in China. You will also have to teach to exams, and the curriculum might be tight. For me personally though, I would much rather teach in a state school than the next option -
Which is private language schools. These are very good - sometimes. This is the main problem: the quality of the schools, the teaching, and the ethos all vary from school to school. You may be teaching very young children, and you may be teaching exclusively in the evening. The schools may be very supportive of creativity in the classroom, or you may be literally forced to teach the flashcards they give you. The plus about these schools is that they often have competitive relocation packages, are not too bothered about how experienced (or not) you are, and that there will be a community of other English speaking colleagues (natives and not) to help you integrate.
The reason I add this is that it's so, so important. It's very laudable and easy to wish for immersion and want to make Chinese friends - and you should!! - but living in another country without easy access to internet you are used to can be exhausting at times and even the staunchest believer in immersion is going to be stressed and tired and teary far from home. Having colleagues who want to improve their English can also be a good basis for a (somewhat awkward at first) friendship.
Some general tips: brush up on your English grammar. Seriously. Because the amount of teachers who have no idea and bluff their way through it is shocking and disrespects those who try very hard to make it a proper profession. Also having students ask you when you use the present perfect continuous and the present perfect simple and not knowing the answer is a very special kind of pain!! I'd recommend bringing a reputable grammar book with you, and using it when making your lesson plans.
Re Chinese: if you already have a little, your Chinese will improve so much when you're there!! Don't stress about it because China is a wonderful environment for learning - it's literally perfect, few people speak English and EVERYBODY wants to speak to you as many people are direct and very curious - but at the same time, the more you can learn, the easier it will be. Don't neglect your characters!! Learning useful menu characters and signs will be hugely helpful too. You won't need Chinese in your job really, but you definitely will in your daily life, so well done for learning and keep at it!!
The other thing I would say is: sort out your music and your social media and your banking before going to China. This includes a good VPN. You can't download apps on the google App Store, and to make the transition to the Chinese internet easier, I'd recommend getting a Weibo account, any music app, Baidu translate and maps and so on, and accustoming yourself to that before going.
Re where you are going and the package: you should have your flight paid, help with your visa, and transparency about quarantine procedures. You should also have accommodation or an accommodation allowance of between 2000-5000 (2000 is more than fine). Public or international schools may pay for your food during school-time as well. Re cities: prioritise what is important to you. If you want to save, bear in mind that China is extraordinarily cheap and that even in places like Shanghai, you can still save a lot if you live somewhat sensibly. To give you some context: I lived in Tianjin, a second-tier city, and I got 'pocket money' of 2000 every month (with accommodation and food paid), and I managed to save enough to do martial arts for a month at an academy after 5 months. And I was living well - going out about twice a week, taking taxis, eating out almost every evening (cheap food). So don't prioritise one position over another solely because of money, and also bear in mind kindergarten teachers may only be getting about 2000-3000 a month - so regardless of whether you earn 10,000 or 15,000, it's a) SIGNIFICANTLY enough to live very well and save very well too, and b) considerably more than many of your coworkers will be earning.
Also, different cities have different costs of living: 10,000 somewhere like Hangzhou will go considerably further than 16,000 in Shanghai. Another thing to bear in mind is the air quality, and the environment, and the access to green spaces. DO NOT UNDERESTIMATE THIS. If this is important to you, go somewhere smaller or in the south with access to nature - I nearly went crazy living in such a big city with such poor air quality. The positions I had to choose between were one in Shanghai, better paid and at a better school, and a position in Zhuhai in a campus in the mountains, in a third-tier city by the sea. I know now how important green is to me, how much I prefer a more relaxed pace of life, and so I chose the latter.
Lastly, don't be intimidating and don't be afraid to ask questions about your job. Make sure that everything they say is in the contract, in both the English version and the Chinese version. This is important because only the Chinese version is legal, so if you have a friend, get them to check that the same stuff is in each bit of the contract. Communication might be difficult, but don't be afraid to be direct and press for answers, don't just accept what you're told. You might be messed around with a bit, so it's important to 'shop around' for positions - don't feel bad if you do so, and don't be afraid to turn things down that don't suit. Finally, don't feel terrified if you can't find information about a school online - a lot of stuff isn't on Google, and will also be better accessed via WeChat or mini programs. Not finding information about your school or city does not mean it doesn't exist!!
So be prepared for a wild ride - and enjoy! If you have any more questions about any of this, please feel free to ask at any time!
meichenxi out :P
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Sundial blurbs
So most of my part of the Sundial au has been locked into general au chat on our server in the form of joking, theorising and sometimes writing as much as the discord character limit allows me to. I did the two first blurbs in this post today and @pomodoko commanded i actually post it and tag them so here they are, sorted into story chronological order and not the order in which i wrote them
Also this is the link to the document with general information on the AU
--- Dreams POV, the inciting incident
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8- NINE
It has been ten seconds since Fundy landed at the bottom of the stairs at the lowest level of the building, there had been a noticeable thud that sounded distinctly unpleasant but Dream hadn't picked up on any cracking noise that'd indicate broken bones. Not that it'd be easy to hear over the commotion that led to later events.
Because it'd been seven seconds since Techno had lost his balance because of the falling fox mentioned and seven seconds since he stood back straight, almost brushing against Wilburs taller frame.
It had only been five short seconds, that might have felt like weeks to others, since Wilbur in turn furrowed his brow and geared up for retaliation. Four seconds ago techno had been pushed. Three, Wilbur had gone into the wrong portal. Two, Philza had with Fundy still leaning on his shoulder tried to stop them both. One, they were gone.
It was surreal. The room had been filled with chatter before the fight, louder during the fight and now it was quiet.
One second in the future, after it had all happened, the silence broke by no one who had seen it happen but by Tommy, babbling on about something with Fundy that didn't matter to anyone but himself.
He quieted down when the person he was intending to talk to was nowhere to be found, confused.
"Where'd Fundy go?"
"He and Wilbur already went through" the lack of effort it took for Dream to bend that truth would be concerning if not for his record, and technically they already had.
"Oh-" an unsatisfactory answer but not one that would send him towards the throat of Noxite.
"You can just talk to them back home. Come on." The portal after the hermits was supposed to be theirs, something quickly confirmed as they enter the community house with a crisis averted, or rather pushed back until a later date, and two people lost to another server.
--- Omniscient/Unknown POV, the dreamsmp aftermath
un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq, six, sept, huit, neuf... sept, huit, neuf... sept, huit...
Seven hours later was when the lie couldn't hold anymore. Tommy already didn't trust Dream much but Tubbo had been a help in convincing him that Wilbur and Fundy were just away building or something. But the truth comes eventually.
He sent a clear message of;
<TommyInnIt> stop lying to me
Hour eight was the worst, accusations being thrown and swords being drawn. Screaming and explanations that never really felt enough.
The ninth hour was bad in another way, depressing. Tommy's anger had simmered into bargaining as if Dream, George or Tubbo had the power to do anything of substance. It never got to begging, Tommy's pride forbade that but the things he put on the line for help that he couldn't get made it almost seem like it.
Noxcrew was contacted and they confirmed that the hemits had talked to them about the guests. Solutions were suggested and just as quickly rebuffed. Hour ten was a loss and the eleventh hour was one where Tommy and Tubbo got to speak alone.
"Can't you just use your powers or whatever to make the portals take us to hermitcraft" he was exhausted.
"It doesn't work like that, probably, and Noxite has probably already tried it"
"Yeah but Tubbo could you do it?"
"I mean... maybe?" To that something glinted in Tommys eye, hope that Tubbo didn't want to extinguish as fast as it needed to be.
"But I'm not allowed into the MCC world anyways so it wouldn't work"
"FUCKING CHRIST TUBBO everyone here's useless!"
--- Technos POV, first night on hermitcraft
It's the first night and bones tower above him.
There were other buildings around, and the area was lit up well but eyes followed him from the darkness, eying the stone tools he'd manage to scrape up while leaving the group now probably settled in a warm house far away.
This world scared him, the monsters and the way his sword hit differently, and the fact that the air itself felt new.
A pair of eyes glowed at him from it's place under one of the ribs of a beast too huge to want to think about. Techno readied his sword, but the dog decided that it'd rather go back to sleep.
This world scared him and he just knew he'd gotten lost now because his goal had been to retrace his steps, the path that Xisuma and Bdoubleo had shown them to the little village far away by boat, to find the house cleft in two and then head straight out to sea until he could find a better place to stay than the tension thick cabin that their hosts had suggested.
Another dog offered a quiet bark in his direction and with an embarrassed sssh, covering fright, he continued forward.
He had found the water, true, and he remembered something vague about a neighbour... but... No. No he decided that he'd choose a direction and if there weren't any light he'd just have to turn around or dock and make a little cave to live out of. It wouldn't be glorious but neither is 5 million potatoes.
A boat is placed into the water at the straight of Joebralta and a pig starts to row.
Clang.
He is confused. The boat shakes in the middle of open water, he's been turned around.
Clang.
A trident, something he's only really seen in Skyblockle, shoots into the air a meter to the right of his boat. He speeds up.
Clang.
It misses, but he has decided that the sea is no longer safe.
--- Technos and Ethos POV, the first days in hermitcraft
He's starting to feel bad for leaving. Still justified, but also bad. He felt horrible the instant the championship room disappeared from right in front of his eyes with Wilbur still in it, and still worse when Wilbur then Phil and Fundy appeared next to him in this world, all statues as unseen confused messages fill the communicators of the worlds inhabitants.
When they arrived he was surprised that a lot of the hermits knew about them, or at least him, from the returning cast of hermits that played in MCC and their apparent tendency to tell stories as soon as there was space for it. It'd made it less awkward but the looks from the others stopped him from talking much about his side of the tournaments.
This was perhaps night four? He had stepped ashore in a jungle a bit from an area he could almost feel at home in with its skyscrapers reminiscent of some survival games arenas. But it was built by someone and someone should be avoided so he had trudged through plains and deserts walking around it only to find more tall buildings in another jungle.
The jungle was... safe? Safe from people at least, less so mobs. He had a little cave with a bed now that kept the hot and humid air out most of the time and while small and cramped and utterly horrible it felt far safer than returning to the others... even though he could practically hear Phils calm and nonchalant reassurances.
Leaving the small home he searches for the water he remembers spotting nearby. The bright orange tracksuit wasn't something he wanted to wear but there wasn't much of anything else and it still needed to be washed of stone dust and sweat no matter how much he disliked it. He leaves with a compass and map to find his way back, and around other peoples territory.
And water is found easily with these. Stone, coal and redstone is scrubbed away in the freshwater lake that's only relatively cold, but it still feels nice, like the wind on his island in skyblock or in the skywars arenas.
Not too far away a man is working in a terrarium of his own design containing no animals but currents in thin snakes coiling around comparators and observers. The change to the nether has been an exciting one but it did come with problems for the technicians and thankfully for this one the Google hasn't broken too far beyond belief and is back in functioning order faster than expected.
Satisfied he looks at the path that he paradoxically want to end and to continue and decides to wait, flying up to sit near his portal instead to think about it and access the expansions he's already made.
Something bright orange is spotted in the distance which at first is ignored, it can wait, until the realization of a possible abandoned shulker, so very common in this group, grabs him and almost instantly leaves as it moves around.
Several seconds later the orange turns brighter and the idea of lava pops in and out of his head in a flash.
<Etho> Beef have to lost an orange llama?
<VintageBeef> no?
<VintageBeef> at least I dont think so...?
<Etho> o_o
He's been keeping out of the way for a while, like usual, and only knew some of the news about new people on the server. That they'd gotten there with Rendogs sports gang by accident and that they'd been living mostly over at Bdubs' place to avoid having them be excluded to their own little village. Apparently something had happened, he'd missed the details but it was looking like there was a manhunt for someone or something that he should by all means be more invested in.
Curious he misses the orange go out of view in favour of finding out about this missing thing in case he's found it. A person and a description, hidden deep in other messages. His height, human pig hybrid, last seen wearing...
Does he want to do this? He knows his way around a jungle but it's still annoying and Xisuma lives close by... but he's most likely AFK. Well, you make a good first impression on the new guys if you find their missing friend.
--- Omniscient/Unclear POV, Technos time with Etho
Silence is golden in silver light.
The hermits can stay up days on end without sleep, working through nights when it’s needed and even with guests this doesn’t change.
Like the sliver of moon in the sky, Ethos hair glows radiant from inside the redstone machine he calls the Googler and Techno does nothing but look on as repeaters are moved and redstone is smeared in new paths into blocks he has never seen before, something he’s had to get used to lately.
His host works in silence until a question breaks the jungles chime and an answer is given with the rhythm. The redstone had changed and he thought he had fixed it, an unhelpful follow up is posed and a pause is moved into a somewhat oversimplified version of the circuit. They both know that Techno is no help here, but the company is nice and something is learned.
Etho in the day when working the fortress tells Techno about the old days and in turn Techno admits to never having left those old days for long.
Etho talks about Pause and Beef.
Techno fails to talk about his own team.
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Transmedia Storytelling: A Perspective on the Homestuck Epilogues
First of all, thank you for reading my first post! I created this blog to document some of my research for a directed study project. I’ll be looking at Homestuck from an interdisciplinary lens but focusing especially on its formal artistic qualities and place in art history. The blog will contain various points of analysis which I develop over the course of the project. For my first piece of writing, I wanted to tackle (from a new perspective) what I view as a complicating factor in the controversy surrounding the Homestuck Epilogues.
Rather than critiquing the Epilogues’ content or making a judgement about their overall quality, I want to explore a specific criticism which has been echoed time and time again by fans. In an article for the online journal WWAC, Homestuck fan-writer Masha Zhdanova sums up this criticism:
“No matter how much members of the creative team insist that their extension to the Homestuck line of work is no more official than fanwork, if it’s hosted on Homestuck.com, promoted by Homestuck’s official social media accounts, and endorsed by the original creator, I think it’s a little more official than a fanfic with thirty hits on AO3.”
Between attacks on the Epilogues’ themes, treatment of characters, and even prose-quality, fans have frequently referenced the issue of endorsement and canonicity as summarized above. Although the Epilogues and Homestuck’s other successors (including Homestuck^2 and the Friendsims) attempt to tackle themes of canonicity within their narratives, critics of the Epilogues contend that this philosophical provocation falls flat. While the creators argue that the works should form a venue for productively questioning canonicity, fans point to issues of capital and call the works disingenuous. In Episode 52 of the Perfectly Generic Podcast Andrew Hussie explains that, to him, the Epilogues are “heavily implied to be a piece of bridge-media, which is clearly detached from the previous narrative, and conceptually ‘optional’ by its presentation, which allows it to also function as an off-ramp for those inclined to believe the first seven acts of Homestuck were perfectly sufficient.” As Zhdanova paraphrases, a critical view posits that this “optional” reading is impossible. The company ethos and production of capital inherent to the Epilogue’s release—their promotion, their monetization—renders their “fanfic” backdrop completely moot, if not insulting.
Why does appropriating the “aesthetic trappings” [1] of AO3 strike such a chord with critics, though? What’s wrong with the Epilogue creators profiting from their work? Other officially endorsed “post-canon” materials, including the Paradox Space comics, Hiveswap and Friendsim games, have not inspired such virulent opposition. The issue comes down to the association between the AO3 layout and the separation from canon. The Epilogues ask us to read them as “tales of dubious authenticity,” but critics assert that this reading makes no sense in the context of their distribution. It’s not exactly the endorsement or monetization that prevents a “dubious” reading, though. After all, Hiveswap is also endorsed and monetized, yet fans have no problem labeling it as “dubiously canon.” So what is it about the Epilogues’ presentation that seems so incongruous with their premise as “dubious” texts?
I’ve come to understand this issue through the lens of transmedia storytelling. First conceptualized by Henry Jenkins, “transmedia storytelling” involves the production of distinct stories, contained within the same universe, across different media platforms. [2] This allows consumers to pick and choose stories across their favorite media outlets, since each story is self-contained, but superfans can still consume All The Content for a greater experience. The Marvel franchise with its comics, movies, TV shows, and other ephemera, is a great example of the transmedia phenomenon.
How does Homestuck fit into this theory? In an excellent article [3] for the Convergence journal, Kevin Veale lays out a taxonomy for Homestuck’s role in new media frameworks. Rather than dispersing different stories across multiple media platforms, Homestuck combines the “aesthetic trappings” of many media forms into one massive outlet: the Homestuck website [4]. It’s almost like the inverse of transmedia storytelling. Veale describes this type of storytelling as “transmodal.” He further defines Homestuck’s storytelling as “metamedia,” meaning that it manipulates the reader’s expectations of certain media forms to change the reading experience. So, despite its multimedia aspects, Homestuck structures itself around one monolith distribution channel (the website), the importance of which directly feeds into what we know as “upd8 culture.” The Homestuck website itself, as a “frame” which encapsulates Homestuck and the other MS Paint Adventures, takes on a nostalgic quality; the familiar grey background and adblocks become inextricably linked with the production of the main, “canon” narrative.
Homestuck itself—the main narrative—is a transmodal venture. However, as of writing this post, the Homestuck franchise has taken a leap into transmedia waters, starting with the Paradox Space comics and continuing with Hiveswap, the Friendsims, and Homestuck^2. All four of these examples fit the definition of transmedia ventures: they contain distinct stories still set in the Homestuck universe and are distributed through fundamentally separate media channels from the main comic. Which is to say, crucially, none of them are hosted on the Homestuck website.
This is where I think the issue arises for the Epilogues. The Epilogues, from what I can tell, aimed to present themselves as a transmedia venture rather than a transmodal one. Firstly, they try to act as a “bridge-media,” or self-contained story. They can be read as a continuation of Homestuck, but can also be separated or ignored. Secondly, they take on a distinct format (prose). Hussie notes in PGP Ep. 52 that the Epilogues were originally only meant to be published in print, functioning as a “cursed tome.” In short, they were intended as a transmedia venture: a self contained story, distributed through a separate medium (prose) and separate media channel (print), to be embraced or discarded by consumers at their whim.
Instead, when the Epilogues were released through the main Homestuck website, readers couldn’t help but interpret them as part of Homestuck’s long transmodal history. Rather than interacting with a new distribution channel, readers returned to the same nostalgic old grey website. The AO3 formatting gag makes no real difference to readers, as Homestuck patently appropriates the aesthetics of other platforms all throughout its main narrative. This issue of distribution (print versus website), which in turn produces either a transmedia or transmodal reading, is the crux of the criticism I mentioned before. Despite the creators’ protests, readers failed to see any “question” of canonicity because the Epilogues fit perfectly into the comic’s preexisting transmodal framework, supported even further by the nostalgia of the website’s very layout. The Epilogues read as a transmodal contribution to Homestuck’s main channel rather than a post-canon, transmedia narrative (like Paradox Space or the Friendsims) as they were intended. This created a profound dissonance between the fans’ experiences and the creators’ intentions.
How things might have turned out differently if the Epilogues really had been released solely as “cursed tomes,” the world will never know. In PGP, Hussie cites the importance of making content freely accessible on the website as a reason for the online release, which is certainly a valid consideration. Even though the print format offers a much clearer conceptual standpoint as a transmedia “bridge-story” [5], issues of capital and accessibility may still have come to the forefront of discussion. As it stands, though, I think the mix-up between transmedia and transmodal distribution was a key factor in the harsh criticism the Epilogues sparked.
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[1] I love this term, “aesthetic trappings”, which Masha Zhdanova uses, so I’ve overused it to some degree in my post.
[2] Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, 2007: pg. 98. You can also find a description of transmedia storytelling on his blog.
[3] Veale, Kevin. “‘Friendship Isn’t an Emotion Fucknuts’: Manipulating Affective Materiality to Shape the Experience of Homestuck’s Story.” Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 25, no. 5–6 (December 2019): 1027–43. https://doi.org/10.1177/1354856517714954.
[4] Although the Homestuck website shifted branding from mspaintadventures.com to homestuck.com before the Epilogues’ release and has shifted its aesthetic somewhat (re: banners and ads), I treat the core “website” as the same location in my post
[5] Hussie points to numerous fascinating experiences which might have arisen from the print distribution. He describes a tome as “something which maddeningly beckons, due to whatever insanity it surely contains, but also something which causes feelings of trepidation” and references the sheer size of the book and “stark presentation of the black and white covers” as elements which produce this trepidation. The ability to physically experience (through touch) the length of the Epilogues and the impact of the book cover were lost in the online format. Although the Epilogues have been released in their intended book format now, the printed novel still won’t be a “first reading experience” for most fans.
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"Infinite Frontier": has DC actually learned anything and will things actually be better?
‘Learned anything’ might not be the right way of putting it, because this doesn’t seem to be a refinement on anything they’ve done before so much as - as Bleeding Cool speculated in November (that’s a donotlink so go ahead and check it out) - laying the groundwork for a much bigger shift a little ways down the road to fully digital-first titles collected in trades and only a handful of remaining regular periodicals centered around the biggest marquee names and aimed more at bookstore and supermarket audiences than the comics direct market, presumably alongside OGNs and some prestige/Black Label material. They’re consolidating their titles around recognizable names, making a Walmart-style anthology a tentpole Batman title and experimenting with fewer but thicker monthly comics with backups, and slapping relatively few #1s on even major shifts like Bendis/Marquez on Justice League which would seem to suggest the BIG change is still to come. For now, and again this seems to line up with this being the endgame, the goal seems less than a handful of remarkable titles than linewide consistency; few if any of these books are going to end up all-time classics even if there are several standouts, but even the worst of the bunch look merely tepid rather than total disasters in the making, and in that regard it feels like the improved version of the basic Rebirth creative ethos. They’re here to button up their shirts, demonstrate some professionalism and competence, and prove they can make a model aimed outside the Wednesday Warriors work.
Anonymous said: You know how you wanted Superman writers to start harping on how “he’s just a regular guy” and do cosmic space god Superman? Apparently PKJ has said he plans to do exactly that with Superman in his run. Also seems like Jon will get one of the main books and Clark will take over the other, so Bendis won’t be writing him, he’ll be written by PKJ or Lewis most likely. Interview is on Coliseum of Comics YT channel.
Anonymous said: I don’t think Bendis is writing Hon as Superman. Given that FS seems to be dictating the direction of the line, Lewis or Watters seem more likely for that job. Would prefer either of them, they’re both good indie workers.
Between tweets, this interview that I’ve had relayed to me by a friend, and new solicit material: the plan seems to be that PKJ will only be handling both Superman and Action Comics for about a year, and after a big Action story illustrated by Mikel Janin he’ll remaining on that while Superman goes to someone else. And with very pointed notes that there should be space for both Clark and Jon ‘between the two books’, Jon standing in front of Clark in multiple promotional images, and Superman #29′s mention of “a new Superman”, it seems likely that Jon will in fact be taking on the title himself in the present along with Superman proper (probably as you said with Lewis or maybe Watters - if it’s not a self-contained future book I doubt Bendis is doing it after all) while Clark and PKJ remaining on Action. He even apparently said he was involved with the original 5G plans as they morphed into Future State, and that stuff from that is going to continue to be mined: between this and the Future State Batman being in the Infinite Frontier group shot along with Yara Flor Wonder Girl and the Flash of Future State: Suicide Squad, I think we’re gonna see a lot of legacy characters taking over in the present and that’s when we’ll see the big new wave of #1s absent here (probably paired with some cosmic type like Waverider or Spectre going “events are happening earlier than they were ordained!”). I’d go so far as to guess the digital first vs. few remaining periodicals will be divided between the new generation heroes and ‘classic’ material, though which is which would depend on DC’s priorities and which they feel would be best serviced where.
Further thoughts on the books outside my previous immediate initial takes now that full solicits are out:
* Is Justice League just being used as a catch-all for all the stuff the other ‘Infinite’ branded covers didn’t cover, or is this indicative that Bendis/Marquez Justice League will rope in a lot of characters beyond its immediate cast, given the big DCU group shot for this line was already on Infinite Frontier proper? The solicit mentions Flash for instance being part of the team even though he’s only on this cover, not the main one.
* That Superman Red & Blue is being launched alongside this - with further King stuff in the works for Black Label too - would seem to suggest that DC’s actively going to continue putting together prestige works, rather than putting those entirely by the wayside in favor of the mass-market stuff. There was word awhile back that Black Label might be going under as part of this shift, so glad that a place for a more creatively free approach seems to be remaining intact. Also they got the Final Fantasy logo guy to do a Superman cover, so cool!
* Ok, so it’s a new Swamp Thing altogether, along with more next generation stuff maybe that’ll be an in for me.
* Oh thank god the Batman logo is finally good again after a decade. Not exactly excited though for these Williamson backups with Damian, even should him seeming to rejoin Talia turn out to be a misdirect.
* “In the aftermath of Dark Nights: Death Metal, catch a glimpse of brave new worlds within the DC Universe...but what are these strange planets? As we delve into the parallel lives of the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight, we'll meet new villains, new heroes, alternate realities, and a transdimensional collision that you will need to see to believe! It's the dastardly debut of a cadre of new villains, including the Spider Lady and her poisonous webs, Dr. Atom, who sports a Kryptonite pendant, and the maniacal machinations of the Unknown Wizard! You've never seen Batman and Superman like this before—so buckle up and get ready for the start of a new era courtesy of writer Gene Luen Yang and artist Ivan Reis!” THIS IS EVERYTHING I WANT FROM COMICS, INJECT IT INTO EVERY VEIN IN MY BODY. I assume this is where we’ll see Calvin Ellis given his presence on the Infinite Frontier cover? And is Reis gonna stick around, or will it be a different artist each issue for this multiverse story?
* Spoilers for the apparent new Wonder Woman status quo behind rot13: Fb rfcrpvnyyl nsgre ure nccnerag qrzvfr va Qrngu Zrgny naq gur pbfzvp fgnaqneq frg ol Vzzbegny Jbaqre Jbzna, vg frrzrq bqq gur svefg fgbel ol gur fnzr grnz gnxvat bire ure obbx jnf tbvat gb or nobhg ure svtugvat Ivxvatf. Ohg ab, fur'f va Inyunyyn, orpnhfr fur'f nccneragyl nyy nobhg fbyivat TBQ CEBOYRZF abj. Tbq, cyrnfr yrg guvf grnz fgvpx nebhaq naq svanyyl znxr guvf obbx nyy vg fubhyq or.
* And as one era begins, another ends with Grant Morrison’s alleged final DC comics arriving on the same day in March with Wonder Woman: Earth One Volume 3 and The Green Lantern Season Two #12.
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LoL Chapter 3- Gildara
Master Post
A Wizard Hermits tale (AU belongs to @theguardiansofredland )
In the Northern fields of Lairyon, Gildara waits for the Order of Hermits. The land around them is different...dying. Is this what the Magistrate sent them to discover? What kind of creature, what kind of plague causes this? The only way for them to find out is by going deeper- literally.
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“It’s like a sea of grass. Look at how it rolls like waves.” Scar whistles, watching wheat dancing in the wind.
Doc nudges Grian. “I see where you stole your hair now.”
Grian takes off after Doc, shrugging off the hybrid’s attempt to puppeteer him and tackling into the ground. Iskall steps over the two, deep in conversation with Ren. The two share a fistbump, before Iskall casts his magic circle. A molded rod of radioactive material, which he’s dubbed iskallium, appears before them. Iskall grabs his creation and gives it a flourish. Ren attempts to mimic Iskall’s magic, his own magic circle starting red before turning a muted green.
Just behind Iskall and Ren practicing, Cub, Scar, and Joe are deep in a conversation about the land around them. Wide fields of wheat, surrounded by row after row of carrots, potatoes, and more. This is the breadbasket of Lairyon. At the edge of the fields that surround the road, tall pines loom at the base of rocky mountain climbs. They’re south of Foresta, yet to cross Turtle River, but still within the fertile soil that the city is known for.
A shadow passes over the traveling guild, before red wings flap to the ground. Tango turns around, red eyes anguished as he grips his flaming hair. TFC notices the body language of their scout, and steps forward. The entire road goes quiet, the guild the only travelers on this route. “What did you see?”
“Its… I don’t know how to explain it. It’s big.” Tango’s wings fold away and disappear.
“The monster?” Zed asks, creeping closer to his friend.
“The destruction?” Impulse adds, following. Both trying to comfort Tango. He looks like he’s on the verge of tears.
Tango shakes his head, his fiery hair half a step slower than his initial movement. “It looks like a black scar, like a dark bruise against the land. But nothing is destroyed. It- I can’t describe it, man. You just gotta keep walking. We’ll see.”
And so they do. Tango seems shocked by what he saw, and the hermits try to ease his fears. With time, the emotions are eased and everyone relaxes when Tango can smile again. They’re more than just a guild. They’re a family. Most of them only have each other, and as chaotic as their guild can be, they’ll do anything to make sure each person is happy and safe. They care about each other, comfort each other.
Ren stays near Tango, telling jokes and stories to keep up everyone’s morale. His brown ears prick up as he hears a change in the wind around him. He feels something brush against the skin of his feet, and looks down. “Whoa, my dudes.”
Everyone stops, turning to look at Ren. He’s gazing beyond his sandaled feet, to the ground. A swirl of grey, clawing along the dirt like a vine reaching for a tree to choke from life, reaches out towards the gilded fields and verdant forests. Ren scrapes the sole of his shoe against the dirt, trying to scrape away the ash. But no matter how deep he digs, it remains monochrome. And it’s growing before their very eyes.
Another skein of grey reaches past Joe’s feet, and he hops away from the strange phenomenon. He shivers, pulling his cape closer to his body. Despite being a warm summer day in north Lairyon, he feels like an icy breeze has just dug right into his bones. Into his core, striking at his heart and soul. He looks around, but Stress is nowhere near him.
“There’s more.” Scar whispers, pointing down the road. The creeping darkness reaches out towards them. Out from Gildara. “This has to be that ‘discrepancy’ that the magistrate spoke of.”
TFC bites his lip, but nods for the team to move forward. “Keep a tight watch, gang. Report anything out of the ordinary.”
They continue forward, walking into the monotone ground. Around them, the fields wither to ashen plains. BDubs steps off the road, picking up a stalk and looking closer at it. The color looks like it was burned, but he can still see each individual grain on the wheat. It looks like it wilted, poisoned or left without the ability to grow. The entire field looks the same way. Every field. Dead farms on colorless land.
The small town of Gildara rises in the distance. Tucked against the safety of a pine forest, with the open plains as it’s front yard. A short bridge rises over a dried creekbed into the village.
“It looks like they had a drought.” False whispers, pressing forward with the braver souls. Mumbo and Jevin slip into the middle, spooked by the village.
“It’s not a drought.” Grian responds, fingers playing with the ash colored needles of a tree. “These trees still look like they got a recent rain. That creek should be flowing.”
“And things just beyond this grey stuff are well fed.” Zedaph adds.
“Guys?” Iskall calls out, hurrying back to the group as they continue through the monochrome town. “Wh-where is everyone?”
TFC stops, looking around. The town is small, but the houses look warm and welcoming. With large windows and open porches, but not a soul is to be seen. There’s no voices, no wails or whimpers. Not even a birdsong. No bodies, no bonfires. Doors remain closed, but shops are propped open, inviting customers to peruse wares. It’s like the entire town just simply...vanished. Everyone, every moving creature is gone.
“Cleo?” TFC looks over his shoulder, but she’s already on it. Turquoise blue magic wisping and waving across the open air, Cleo’s arms and fingers moving in a choreographed series until the spell is cast. But the circle goes nowhere, hanging in the dead air with nothing to attach to.
“There’s no bodies anywhere. No ghosts either. There’s nothing.” Cleo reports, letting the magic fizzle away. Beneath her, the ash colored ground sparks and swirls.
“It doesn’t look like a monster or bandits came through.” Xisuma notes. “There’s no sign of a fight, no claw marks or blood even.”
“So where is everyone?” Keralis rubs his arms, looking around. He coughs, his throat feeling tight and lungs feeling heavy, his body exhausted. Like a storm is moving in, the wall of high pressure sending them into lethargy. Well, most of them. Grian gets excited, but even now he looks pressed.
“Let’s check town center. If there’s anywhere we’ll find clues, it’ll be there.” TFC points down the road. The guild stays silent, as silent as the world around them. Devoid of color, until one of them looks up the mountainside. Beyond the clawing darkness, they can still see the dark green of alpine forests. The further into town they walk, the more the pressuring feeling rises. Like they’re being crushed, like air trapped deep within a mountain. Far underground, and just as dead and unmoving. Even the wind has stopped blowing.
“What is that?” Etho questions, pointing towards the well at the center of the town square. The grey turns as black as ink, crawling free from the stone well and dispersing out into the grey blemish across the land. Etho tries to slip into the shadow of the darkness, but there’s nothing. It’s not a shadow- this is something else.
Cub peers down the well, into the dark hole. “It’s coming from the water supply. Are we sure this isn’t some plague or poison?”
“It’s not like anything I’ve ever seen.” Doc points out. Beside him, Scar activates his magic and creates a series of steps. Down the well’s stony walls, the hermits descend into darkness. Into the maws of the beast.
“Anybody got a light?” False questions, the only visible thing before her being Cub and Scar’s eyes as they glow a faint blue.
“I got it.” Impulse pushes Tango forward, his hair illuminating the cave system they are within. Following the underground stream that terraforms the rock.
Tango sighs. “I think I can do better than just my hair, man.” He draws his scrawling magic circle, summoning up flame that dances just above his hand.
“And this is why having the explosives mage and a fire mage living in the same house is a bad idea.” False groans, but let’s Tango take point. He directs the flame, funneling the light as best he can forward.
“Or we could just make Grian get his archangel aura.” BDubs adds.
“We’ll be blinded then.” Mumbo adds, feeling his friend shift beside him nervously. He’s still healing from the last time he used his ultimate power.
The cave around them opens up into a cavern, and Tango’s torchlight stops. Tango pulls his hand down, blowing on the flame. Trying to get the fire to burn brighter. But no matter how fierce the fire burns, it can’t make it through the darkness around them.
Because the crystal before them takes it all. Absorbs all his light, leaving none to bounce along the walls of the cave. It hurts to breathe, the air thick as water and as heavy as rocks. The crystal hovers in the air, just above the spring of water. As soon as the creek wells, it evaporates. Turns to darkened ash, neutralized by the crystal above it. Tango steps back, behind TFC. “Alright man, this is your thing. What kind of creepy crystal makes water and color disappear?”
“And what did it do to the town above us?” Cleo finishes, watching as TFC steps closer. He raises a gloved hand, pressing it against the cool, smooth crystal edge. He immediately retreats his touch, waving his hand like it burned him.
“Whatever it is, it isn’t good. We should break it, and hopefully it’ll break whatever curse it’s causing on the town.” He steps back, feeling dizzy and fatigued. His head feels fuzzy. Impulse steps up first, a bright yellow circle quickly drawn and tossed onto the crystal. Seconds later, the magic explodes and the air shocks outward.
The crystal is unharmed. Impulse tries again, this time with Ren mimicking him on the other side. The gem is as smooth as before. Xisuma steps up, snapping his fingers. But the destructive void magic is useless. Even when Ren’s imagination magic tries it’s hand in joint with Joe’s poetry, the crystal remains.
Things get more aggressive. BDubs wraps a vine around the crystal, but upon touching the gem the plants wither and turn to blackened ash. Scar tries to pierce the jewel with stone, but it falls apart like silt, raining over the guild. Finally, False gives in and charges the gem. With a two handed sword raised, she leaps and swings the blade into the ebony stone. And immediately, the metal rusts and decays.
“How do we break this?” Stress questions, picking at the rusted remains of False’s sword.
“I don’t know, but Magistrate Dolios needs to know about this.” TFC steps up, despite the sickening feeling he gets near the crystal. He feels weak, tired. Using a diamond and his magic, he’s able to break off a tiny piece. Hardly even bigger than his pinky fingernail, but the best he can do. For a second, he swears he can feel the crystal vibrate beside him. “Let’s get out of here. I don’t like this.”
The whole guild is in agreement, turning back the way they came. But the way is blocked. Grian’s face lights up as he sees the faces of farmers and villagers. “Look, this must be where the townfolk have been hiding!”
“Grian wait-” Iskall reaches out, grabbing Grian by his cloak and pulling him back. “They...something doesn’t look right.”
Tango raises his flame, trying to see the strangers. Trying to get a better look through the black and grey air. But they’re the same color, and the edges of their bodies, their fingers and limbs flaking away like embers and ash. “I… I think the crystal has grey-ificated them as well.”
The woman’s eyes snap open, revealing haunting white eyes. The iris is gone, only glowing luminosity remaining. Her hands raise up, and a magic circle appears. It doesn’t look right- her motions are sloppy and the inscriptions are poorly drawn. Magic snaps and seethes across the air, uncontrolled and uncontained.
The ground beneath the hermits feet turns soft, rock and dirt turning into quicksand and engulfing the legs of the hermits. A farmer behind the wizard raises his hand, pointing blankly to the crystal. And behind the struggling guild, the swearing and grunting to escape the mud scape, the crystal awakens. A black mist swirls around the crystal.
Then strikes towards the captured hermits.
#hermitcraft#LoL#light of lairyon#hermitblr#wizard au#wizard hermits#wizard scar#gtwscar#wizard grian#grianmc#hermitcraft au#wizard tango#wizard ren#wizard tfc#wizard cleo#tango tek#rendog#tinfoilchef#zombiecleo
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2099 Alpha #1 Thoughts
This was a confusing set of teaser trailers.
This is partially a post covering the issue and a rant about the entire premise of the series.
Throughout this comic book (and F4 2099) one prevailing question kept crossing my mind.
“Who is this even for?”
It was a question that became louder when I looked at both the cover and the blurb at the back explaining how this project came to be about.
Matthew Rosenberg, author of the most controversial and derided X-Men run in recent memory (so you know that bodes well), pointed out that 2019 was both the 80th anniversary of Marvel comics (even though most people would argue Marvel truly started in 1961 with F4 #1) and also 80 years away from the real life year 2099.
The idea was dismissed but then Nick Spencer decided he liked it and after one thing led to another this event was born.
This event being a ‘reimagining’ of the 2099 universe but with ‘a similar methodology’ to the original 1992 line (that is to say avoiding the ‘common traps’ of descendants of known characters*), with a mind towards how the future was perceived in 2019 vs. 1992.
Right off the bat there are inherent problems with that entire premise.
First of all the original 2099 line presented a version of the future that if anything is MORE relevant now than it was in 1992.
Futurism in any era is never just one thing, but the futurism of 2019 is generally speaking understandably cynical and nihilistic. It’s a world which foresees a future where there isn’t even an illusion of freedom, where the gap between rich and poor has grown even wider than it already is with little-no feasible way to close it, where corporations run the show (more openly than they already do) and where environmental disaster is ravaging mankind if not having already wiped it out. This is to say nothing of a world where artificial intelligence and mechanisation will probably compromise a lot of people’s employment opportunities, and pose direct physical and mental dangers to human lives.
That is the general ethos of how a lot of people and a lot of fiction reflects the future NOWDAYS. And that’s what the 2099 was doing in 1992! Not only was the line set in the future it was literally ahead of it’s time as the world we live in if anything has grown to reflect it more and more.
Secondly when you are approaching the notion of making a futuristic version of Spider-Man and the Punisher in the year 2099 and applying the same ‘methodology’ as the LAST time someone tried to make a futuristic version of Spider-Man and the Punisher in the year 2099 the results at best are not going to be that different, rendering the exercise pointless. In fact in all likelihood you are going to be worse or at least derivative. Even if you are not the fact that the 2099 line resonated with people enough for it to continually pop up every so often for nearly 30 years means that your new take is unlikely to hold up to people’s nostalgia.
And make no mistake, this is a project that exists for nostalgia. It doesn’t exist just for the sake of exploring a possible future for the Marvel universe, otherwise why revive a popular and famous Marvel brand to do it?
And therein lies my fundamental question.
If this project exists because people are already invested in 2099 then why reboot it and thus mitigate their emotional investment?
Nostalgic 2099 fans don’t simply want to see any iteration of these characters. They want something at least mostly in line with the original 1992 iteration, which is why when Spidey 2099 was scheduled for a spin-off in 2014 the fandom spoke with one voice, they wanted Peter David back. And whilst the iteration of Miguel and 2099 as a whole he presented was not identical to the 1992 version(s) it was at least a helluva lot closer than 2009’s Timestorm (a pathetic attempt to essentially do Ultimate 2099) and wound up being more successful as a result.
This is literally the exact mistake the Nu52 made in that it erased the iterations of the DC characters and DC universe people knew and loved and replaced it with new versions (‘coincidentally’ closer to the versions the DC higher ups knew and loved as kids). It alienated readers to the point where DC Rebirth practically reverse rebooted the Nu52, rendering the characters much closer to their pre-Nu52 counterparts, and in Superman’s case having the pre-Nu52 Superman literally replace his successor.
With the 2099 event though the attempt at rebooting is even more wrongheaded considering that this isn’t even a lasting universe that might in theory develop new readers over time. It’s a string of connected one shots associated with a Spider-Man story arc. If there is any aftermath to this event at all it will be fairly minimal and at most follow Miguel O’Hara.
And that brings up the other end of this event’s problems. This holds little appeal to (the already miniscule number of) potential newer fans.
Consider how this event started. You are a newer fan reading Spencer’s ASM run. You pick up issue #25 and randomly this other Spider-Man looking guy you maybe recognize from some video games and the post-credits scene from Into the Spider-Verse shows up, looking half dead.
For less than 20 pages across 3 issues you follow him stumbling about spouting nonsense before he delivers some weird line about possible futures (that you’ll only understand if you already know about the 2099 lines) and then he blows up.
Okay, at best you get the idea. He is a Spider-Man from the future and the present day has erased his future, that’s bad.
Then you pick this up and you maybe figure out that this Miguel character in this comic book is in fact the same guy, or a VERSION of the same guy you met back in ASM. That’s confusing. It’s confusing because you need to deduce that this issue is the newly rewritten timeline, making your investment in the preceding ASM issues kinda pointless. It might also be confusing because time travel stories tend to be confusing unless written with a lot of clarity.
But say you just picked THIS up, maybe because you recognized Spidey 2099 on the cover (and god forbid you picked it up due to recognizing the classic 2099 characters).
Spencer in this comic book doesn’t write a story. He writes a series of teaser vignettes strung together by the Watcher and Doom spouting a load of cryptic nonsense.
Nothing is explained, nothing is clearly conveyed, the world building is quite frankly awful, you merely get an impression of this future, you are not actually organically introduced to much of anything. In comparison the first few issues of Spider-Man 2099 already gave you a great idea of what this world of the future was like.
It’s not just that the presentation is bad and thus likely to alienate newer readers (I was lost with it and I’m familiar with the older 2099 stuff to a degree) but it’s also frankly inferior to the 1992 rendition of the future.
Perhaps the 1992 Marvel line wasn’t the single most original vision of the future ever conceived, but it at least combined older ideas together and presented a consistent vision. Perhaps the microcosm of the 1992’s vision of the future was the notion of the ravaged ruins of old New York being the foundations upon which new super sky scrapers were built, the rich literally living above the poor.
But this issue never brings that up, it doesn’t bring up the narrative and literal foundations of the world this takes place in. My personal impression was that this 2099 doesn’t even incorporate such an idea. It’s a microcosm of how off the rails this reboot is.
Everything feels downright generic sans the city of traffic and the colony of Thor/Asgardian worshippers.
Even those are derivative though. Transverse City rips off (a much better executed) idea from a 2007 episode of Doctor Who ‘Gridlock’ which is regarded as something of a modern classic by fans. And the Thor worshippers was something that came directly from the original 1992 2099 line, but weirdly is being used to tease...Conan the Barbarian???????? Conan hasn’t got anything to do with Thor besides coming from a warrior background. It might as well be Silver Samurai!
Perhaps the best microcosm of this issue’s failings at world building and presentation, can be found in the opening scene.
In the scene Thor’s hammer is frequently relocated and seems to be maybe or maybe not moving on it’s own volition. That isn’t to say the story is building in mystery as to whether or not it is moving on it’s own. It’s just that poorly conveyed to the audience. I honestly have little idea what was happening in that scene sans the authorities going to war with Thor’s worshippers.
The scene also contains a microcosm of this book being for nobody. In said scene a police officer gets their face revealed and is referred to as ‘Jake’. If you didn’t already realize it, this is Jake Gallows, Punisher 2099. He does nothing else in the course of the issue beyond get injured fight and tell his friend a confusing police story. Then the issue ends teasing him as Punisher 2099.
Like I said nostalgic 2099 fans will be turned off by this on principle because it’s not the character you know and love (his costume will also be different too) but if you are a newer reader...what are you even supposed to make of this? He’s just a random cop, it might as well have been his cop buddy who was the Punisher. It was at best a lame first impression.
And that’s true of virtually EVERY character teased in this comic exempting maybe Ghost Rider 2099.
He at least got a little more personality, you got a little more insight into how he operates, but only as a normal guy not as anything associated with the classic Ghost Rider or the 2099 counterpart you know and love.
Miguel’s background was confusing as he seems to already have his powers but is chummy with his dickhead boss/Dad/archnemesis Tyler Stone and the brief flashbacks to his origin are both different to the original 2099 line and nonsensical.
Conan didn’t even appear to my recollection but he’s still teased.
And the F4 tease was laughable as it didn’t even feature the F4 but rather HERBIE and a newly imagined take on Venture, effectively the first super villain of the 2099 line.
When this event was announced I was sad that Peter David was uninvolved.
But now I see why.
They didn’t want him involved and this is frankly an insult to his and the other 2099 creators’ works.
Don’t read this.
*Gotta love that subtle shade thrown out at the MC2 universe, a universe which lasted longer than the original 2099 line and you know....was way better than this reimagining has been so far. Why does modern Marvel punch down on Spider-Girl.
#Spider-Man#Spider-Man 2099#Marvel 2099#Nick Spencer#Miguel O'Hara#Fantastic 4 2099#Ghost Rider 2099#Conan 2099#Conan the Barbarian#punisher 2099#MC2 Universe#MC2#Spider-Girl#Tyler Stone
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Sundance 2020: Preview
Earlier in the month, as I frantically made my selections for the limited public tickets Sundance generously makes available for the press, I was struck by just how much of a crapshoot the whole process was. That’s the thing about this particular festival, virtually no one outside of the filmmakers and Sundance programmers have seen the films yet. It’s a great unknown (and, yes, Cannes is also similar in this way, but whereas Sundance is selecting primarily indie films, the festival on the French Riviera gets to choose anything they damn well please, from big Hollywood studio fare, to auteur International work), which leads to lots of hunch choices, based on gut feeling as much as anything else.
As you might imagine, one’s hit rate on such matters is volatile. I looked back to previous years’ selections, and found, on rough average, choosing solid (or better) films at about a 45% clip. That is to say, of the films I deemed most worthy of my attention, about half of them were less — or even far less — than I hoped. To be fair, randomly watching regular studio films opening from week to week at home in Philly, I would imagine that percentage would be a good bit lower, so there’s nothing inherently wrong with Sundance’s percentages.
Still, it does speak to the embracing-of-the-unknown ethos that this festival instills in you. We pays our money, we takes our chances, etc. Having said all that — and perhaps having chiseled down the enormous boulder of salt with which to read this piece — here are our best guesses for what looks like (on paper, at least) some of the more interesting films in this year’s fest. We’ll see how it turns out.
Downhill: The U.S. remake of Ruben Östlund’s 2014 Swedish film about a family on a skiing trip in the Alps, who experience serious disruption when a controlled avalanche terrifies the father of the clan to ditch his family in order to save himself. Normally, I would steer far clear of American remakes, but this indie remains intriguing, even if it is directed by a pair of actors (Nat Faxon and Jim Rash). Casting Will Ferrell and Julia Louis Dreyfus together as the parents is also a draw. We can only hope the film retains the razor-sharp acerbity of the original.
Falling: Viggo Mortensen, best known for all time as Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings triad, has many talents — he speaks French fluently, writes poetry, and paints with some apparent aplomb — but we’ll see how he handles writing and directing for the first time with this film, in which he plays a gay man living with his family in L.A., whose arch-conservative farmer father (Lance Hendrickson) comes to live with him. The set up sounds on the definite hokey side, but any film that casts David Cronenberg as a proctologist has got something going for it.
Horse Girl: An awkward loner of a woman (played by Allison Brie), with a predilection for crafts, crime shows, and, yes, horses, endures a series of lucid dreams that infiltrate her day-to-day existence. Sounding just so perfectly Sundanecian, Jeff Baena’s film nevertheless holds some attraction, especially because the director (whose previous film was the well-received The Little Hours) has a solid track record. He co-wrote this effort with Brie, a collaboration that might well lead to something more compelling than its initial description.
Kajillionaire: I guess you could call writer/director/actress Miranda July something of an acquired taste. Her previous films, including Me and You and Everyone We Know, and The Future are filled with a kind of creative whimsy, along with intense character insight. Her new film is about a pair of grifter parents (Debra Winger and Richard Jenkins) who throw together a big heist at the last second, convincing a newcomer (Gina Rodriguez) to join them, only for the newbie to disrupt their relationship with their daughter (Evan Rachel Wood), whom they have been training her entire life.
The Last Thing He Wanted: Working from a novel by the resplendent Joan Didion, Dee Rees follows up her 2017 Sundance rave Mudbound with another literary adaptation. Anne Hathaway plays a journalist obsessed with the Contras in Central America, whose father (Willem DaFoe) unexpectedly bestows her with proof of illegal arms deals in the region. Suddenly, a player in a much more complicated game, she connects with a U.S. official (Ben Affleck), in order to make it out alive. It’s a particularly well-heeled cast, which at Sundance doesn’t necessarily mean a good thing, but Rees has proven herself more than up to the challenge.
Lost Girls: At this point, I will literally watch Amy Ryan in anything — her exquisite bitchiness absolutely stole last year’s Late Night — so Liz Garbus’ film would have already been on my radar, but here, with Ryan playing a Long Island mother whose daughter goes missing, my interest is sorely piqued. Based on a true-crime novel by Robert Kolker, Ryan’s character discovers her daughter was part of an online sex ring, and goes through heaven and earth to draw attention to her plight, taking on the local authorities in the process.
Never Rarely Sometimes Always: Eliza Hittman has a way of adding lustre and temporal beauty to the otherwise roughneck scenes of the teens she depicts. Her latest film is about a pair of young women living in rural Pennsylvania, who find the means to escape their repressive town after one of them becomes unexpectedly pregnant, making their way to New York City. With a storyline eerily reminiscent of Cristian Mungiu’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, Hittman, as is her want, has cast two relative unknowns (Talia Ryder and Sidney Flanigan) as the leads.
Palm Springs: Lightening things up a smidge, Max Barbakow’s off-beat comedy stars Cristin Milioti and Andy Samberg as reluctant wedding guests, who somehow find each other at the same time as some kind of surrealistic episode leads them to recognize that nothing really matters in the first place, allowing them to lay havoc upon the proceedings for their own amusement. Barbakow’s debut feature is stockpiled with strong castmembers, including J.K. Simmons and Peter Gallagher, and it’s always a treat to watch the continuing evolution of Samberg from mop-haired SNL performer to certified big-screen actor.
Promising Young Woman: The #metoo movement begets this revenge thriller about a once-victimized woman (Carey Mulligan) who works by day as quiet barista, but spends her nights seducing men in order to punish the living hell out of them for trying to take advantage of her. When she runs into a seemingly sweet old classmate (Bo Burnham), it would appear as if salvation is at hand, but apparently it’s not quite that simple. Filmmaker Emerald Fennell, whose outstanding work on the series “Killing Eve,” earned her a pair of Emmy nominations, makes her feature debut with a film that sounds appropriately searing.
Shirley: There were those critics at the 2018 festival who found Josephine Decker’s Madeline’s Madeline one of the best films of the year. While I wasn’t among them, there was still much to appreciate with the writer/director’s improvisational visions. Her entry into this year’s Sundance promises to be at least somewhat more grounded, if not still effervescent. It concerns famed author Shirley Jackson (Elisabeth Moss), writer of “The Lottery,” whose literary inspiration is stirred after she and her husband (Michael Stuhlbarg) take in a young couple to liven up their household.
#sweet smell of success#ssos#piers marchant#films#movies#sundance 2020#park city UT#promising young woman#shirley#never rarely sometimes always#palm springs#lost girls#the last thing he wanted#kajillionaire#falling#horse girl#downhill
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During the last few months, I read through the the entire archive of Luann comics from 1985 to the present day, as it’s freely available through GoComics. Don’t judge me. Or do judge me, I don’t care. Luann is entertaining and nostalgic (at least the period from the late 90′s through 2006 or so when I was regularly following the strip in the newspaper). Some thoughts below. (I actually wanted to write this a month and a half ago when I had just finished and everything was fresher on my mind, but that’s when holidays and all my distractions hit. This turned out to be very long and I’m not sure if any of my followers is actually interested in a review of Luann, but if anyone wants to scroll down to the final bulletpoint, that is a bit less Luann-specific and more on the lines of my usual discourse topics.)
Never mind bulletpoints; some of these are too long to be easily readable without breaking up into paragraphs!
1) I was impressed, almost all the way through, with how much sexuality is conveyed in the dialog and relationships between the characters while somehow staying within the content restrictions for a newspaper comic. (I do recall back around 2000 a particular comic coming under fire because the dialog between Luann’s parents implied that they didn’t wait for marriage, one which I was able to identify this time around.) I think Luann possibly has the most sexuality in it of any newspaper comic I’ve come across.
2) I understand that daily comic strip artists typically have to do their Sunday comics some six weeks more ahead of publication than their non-Sunday comics, resulting in each Sunday strip usually having nothing to do with the story happening in its neighboring strips. Luann consistently seems to be an exception to this, where either the cartoonist is able to follow a schedule of drawing the Sunday strips contemporaneously with the rest or he is extraordinarily good at planning a further six weeks in advance what will be going on in the story by the time a given Sunday strip will come out. That said, while I remember being annoyed that my newspaper growing up didn’t include Luann in its Sunday comics section, I see now that I wasn’t missing all that much: the Sunday strips are still mostly independent, shallow gags that often look like they could have been carried out just as easily and more space-efficiently in a daily strip.
3) Luann’s relationship with her brother Brad, which was clearly meant to reflect a classic snarky sibling dynamic, went further with the insults, name-calling, complete reluctance to acknowledge caring feelings, and occasionally outright malicious behavior than I was comfortable with (until recent years when this has simmered down now that they’re more fully grown up). Are typical siblings really treat each other by default in such an antagonistic and adversarial manner? I appreciate that I had an idyllic relationship with my sister growing up -- I mean really the closest to ideal of any siblings I’ve known -- but I wouldn’t have thought that the norm was really closer to Luann and Brad.
4) On the flip side, there’s another aspect of Luann’s life with her immediate family which strikes me as probably healthier than what I imagine as the default: the openness with which she and Brad air all their personal trials and tribulations to their parents. Luann in particular is often venting about her crushes (especially her main crush, Aaron Hill, always referred to with his full name) and coming to her parents for support over whatever teenage-style drama she’s caught up in. I suppose the fact that I didn’t feel free to be open about these types of things with my parents has much more to do with me than with them: I’ve always been neurotic about open discussion of certain things, especially my romantic interests or feelings of sexual attraction, and was somewhat more so as a teenager than now. (It would take a much longer post than this to pick apart this neurosis.) I remember actually getting into an argument with my parents over whether it’s within a normal kid-parent dynamic to mention at dinner “I met/saw the most attractive girl today!” with me convinced that it wasn’t. I have to concede that the Luann universe (fictional, but clearly based on the cartoonist’s impression of reality) is a point in their favor.
All that said, I would think that Luann might have felt kind of silly blabbering so much about her obsession with Aaron Hill to her family members (not to mention her school guidance counselor!) knowing on some level that it must come across as immature. Yet, in writing this I’ve remembered that I did plenty of blabbering as a young teenager to my family about whatever Interests I was obsessed with at the time, in a way that I kinda-sorta knew was immature but not enough to stop me... but that just wouldn’t have included romantic or sexual feelings. Also, the desire or ability to feel comfortable sleeping on the sofa in the middle of my family doing things (as Brad is constantly seen doing) is utterly foreign to me, but that touches on another of my neuroses.
5) This strip has obviously changed a lot over its nearly 34 years of syndication, which shows most obviously and superficially in the vast improvement in drawing style. In terms of content and stories it changed a lot too, and I think in a very positive direction. In fact, if I hadn’t known that it would improve in this way, I don’t think I would have bothered getting through all of the first decade of Luann. The basis for Luann in its early years was simple gags meant to reflect life of a typical teenage girl in a typical nuclear family. But there was something very pessimistic about all of it: the lives of the DeGroots, each entrenched in their roles as mother, father, teenage daughter, and teenage son, seem weary and at times slightly on the dysfunctional side. The strip could have practically be titled “The Woes of the Modern Middle-Class Nuclear Family”. It predated but was rather similar to The Simpsons in this way. Moreover, Luann, depicted as an awkward and not very attractive 13-year-old, seemed hopeless in all of the Average Teenage Girl ways, including hating everything about school; not really excelling at anything in school or out; being constantly wrapped up in spending hours on the phone with the same two friends; and never, ever, ever being able to get her the object of her long-time super-obsessive crush, Aaron Hill, to so much as glance in her direction (this theme was dwelt on ad nauseum for over a decade to the point that it got extremely tiresome and I’m surprised I got through that period; maybe what got me through was occasional acknowledgments in the voices of Luann’s friends that this obsession was over-the-top and getting pretty old).
And yet... Luann has grown up into a beautiful and talented woman with ambitions and a number of dating relationships under her belt, and the DeGroots are now held up as an example of a really admirable and healthy family (one that TJ clearly wants as his own family). While Brad’s transformation from teenage slob who lay around and ate Oreos all day into a happily married, responsible, and fit fireman is openly remarked upon, the drastic change in the ethos of the strip as a whole isn’t explicitly acknowledged. Of course the evolution happened very gradually, but if I had to point to a single turning point, my choice would be obvious: things began to drastically turn around for Luann in early 1997 when she bared her feelings to Aaron Hill by giving him a scroll containing all her memories of him (a move that would be considered obsessive and stalker-ish in another context but which finally won his attention here).
6) I think there’s a sort of trope, which the Luann character exemplifies about midway through the strip’s history, where she’s supposed to continue representing the insecure girl who feels unattractive and unpopular so that people can relate to her, while at the same time she seems to constantly attract boys (most of whom she considers really hot) and gets dates with them, so as to make for more interesting stories. I got annoyed at times at how these two things seemed to be in tension. At one point, if I remember right, Luann had no fewer than four of the boy characters super into her, including Aaron Hill even though she had temporarily decided she was through with him (this was unacknowledged later on when she went back to complaining that all those years she was in love with Aaron but he never truly noticed her). Other examples of this trope perhaps include Gus Cruikshank and George Costanza.
7) I would feel amiss if I didn’t put in a word about the Gunther character here. He’s my favorite character in the particular sense of reminding me extraordinarily of myself. If Butters from South Park is the most similar animated cartoon character to me (at least in the opinion of some friends), then Gunther Berger is, a hundred times more so, the most similar comic cartoon character to me. Not only do most of his personality traits match almost perfectly with mine (although I’m not as good with kids and don’t know anything about costume-making), his physical appearance is strikingly similar to mine, especially the way I looked as a teenager (plaid shirts and all). In fact, I sometimes wonder if, had there been (say) a call for auditions for a Luann movie back when I looked slightly younger, I might have had a decent shot at winning the part due to my physical similarity to Gunther -- I’m not an amazing actor, but there’s not nearly as much acting involved when you’re basically playing yourself.
One of the rather negative aspects of the early Luann ethos for me is not only the mildly negative way that Gunther was portrayed as the stereotypical socially-inept nerd but the level of disdain Luann treats him with (despite her own insecurities) which she’s only occasionally called out on. I’m glad to see that Gunther soon became one of the most likeable and admirable characters in the strip. Rather than feel ashamed of our likeness, I see him as reflecting some of the best parts of me and, when it comes to standing up and speaking his mind, an inspiration for me to be better.
8) Luann, throughout its history, addresses stereotypical norms, particularly with regard to gender, in an interesting (although not at all unusual) way. Let’s first keep in mind that the strip and main characters were established in 1985. The original intent of the cartoonist was clearly to portray middle-class nuclear family life, with a special focus on teenage girlhood, as honestly and relatably as he knew how. This meant in particular making each member of the DeGroot family a sort of every(wo)man: Frank is the typical father, the main breadwinner, always the one to worry about money (and the parent to go to when one of the kids wants money or something expensive), and taking a backseat with housework; Nancy is the typical mother, more emotive, burdened with all the housework and daily discipline of her kids; Brad is the typical older teenage boy, a lazy slob with little regard for cleanliness or manners spending all his time either being a couch potato or working on his car; and Luann is the typical 13-year-old girl, hating school and obsessed with boys, shopping, fashion, and talking on the phone. The strip positively revels in stereotypes (especially once we add the blonde cheerleader “mean girl” Tiffany, the unattractive nerd Gunther, and the goof-off Knute). A particular theme is gender stereotypes; in fact, it felt like a good 50% of Luann’s non-story strips, particularly Sunday ones, revolved around the differences between the genders. All of this looks pretty tiresome now and was probably tiresome already back in the 80′s.
And at the same time, the cartoonist was clearly socially progressive and a feminist (at least in the old-school sense) from the start. He made many points about the particular burdens women face and wrote many sympathetic strips about how Nancy willingly did all the housework and cooking but was expected to by default and felt unappreciated because her work went unacknowledged by everyone else. There’s a lot of focus on how the fashion industry puts pressures on teenage girls and women and how women should free themselves from basing their self-worth on how their looks compare to other women’s and on what boys think of them. In fact, the artist very deftly points out the tension between Luann’s awareness of this unreasonableness and her desire to be superficially attractive and objectified by boys anyway!
What reads as a tiny bit strange about all of this -- but only from a very modern point of view, I think -- is that all of these stereotypes are remarked upon and criticized while still being exemplified by pretty much every single character and everything they do. (Compare to Zits, debuting in 1997, where the father, a rather sweet, huggy, un-stereotypically masculine character, is shown doing the laundry from early on.) I get why someone would go with that formula, because as I said it seems at least naively like the best way to maximize relatability, but it comes at the expense of creating a subtle tension and not fully promoting the intended messages. I believe this underscores a fundamental distinction between a bare anti-conformist message and anti-conformist representation and suggests that representation as a social justice concept just wasn’t a big thing back in the 80′s and 90′s in the way it (fortunately) is today.
#luann#comics section#sexuality#sibling relationships#sex casuality#personal quirks#the simpsons#love (netflix show)#Seinfeld#south park
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OPINION: I Don't Know Who'll Win the Anime Awards, But Here's Who Should 2021 The More Correct-er Edition
Ah(hhhhhhh!), the Anime Awards. It comes earlier every year. It was only some 360-ish days ago that Demon Slayer took the coveted title, and I went 0/6 on my predictions for who would win. But as another awards show comes, much like the changing of the seasons, does a whole new collection of hot takes begin to bloom. And oh how I have been taking care of them like my new pandemic succulents (poorly)!!
There's a lot you can say about the last year. There's a lot you can say about the last year in ANIME! But since I don't have a Clubhouse invite yet, you're gonna have to hear about it right here in written form. This is also the only opportunity I have on company time to talk about who should win and who actually should have gotten nominated in the first place, as well as make up my own totally fake awards because this is my article!!
When presented with the likelihood of something being infinitely close to zero, Simon from Gurren Lagann said that means it isn't inherently zero, so as far as he's concerned, that makes it the same as a 100 percent chance. That's the sort of cartoon logic that is very healthy to bring into the real world, as well as guessing who is going to win an awards show, so let's get to it!
1. Best Director: Shingo Yamashita
While he is not nominated, Shingo Yamashita has had an incredible year, not only directing two of my favorite openings, but also ones I could consider all-time highs. Simply put, I really like the guy and his art direction, and he always seems to deliver something unique and interesting when he is in the director's chair. Through that unique style, he was able to work with a team of really talented animators to make that statement right from Episode 1. Pay attention to the people in your life who have opinions on the direction of the Naruto vs. Pain fight, but then turn around and talk about how cool the aforementioned openings are.
2. Best Japanese VA Performance: Mamoru Miyano's Kansai Accent
This is a very indulgent choice (well, this whole article is), but out of all the voice actor performances this year, I'm still thinking about Mamoru Miyano's Kansai accent. Playing the volleyball star Atsumu Miya from Inarizaki High in HAIKYU!! TO THE TOP, either Miyano or the people he worked with really made sure to train him to have the thickest Kyoto accent imaginable, and I was enthralled. It's kinda hot? I think Miyano works best when he plays characters with a bit of an edge and goofiness to them (see his performance Kotaro Tatsumi in Zombie Land Saga), so having him star as the eccentric setter was a perfect fit. I do wonder if Atsumu Miya and Kotaro Tatsumi ever met if it would be an unstoppable force/immovable object situation.
3. The "You Were Right" Award: Akudama Drive
Image via Funimation
This is not a real award in this year's Anime Awards, but I think it deserves mention for a series that was so under-nominated. So, Akudama Drive started last October and everyone was losing it. One person (I think it was our own Adam Wescott) described it as "a show where every episode feels like the season finale." But I continued putting it off. Sure, the first episode has a guy who swings around Osaka like Spider-Man on his motorcycle, but there's no way it could keep up. I also haven't played any Danganronpa, so I wasn't familiar with this sort of Kazutaka Kodaka romp, as his storytelling and style is written all over it. But after the show finished, I went back and gave it an honest shot ... and you were all right! It's really great and doesn't let off the octane at any point! This was definitely one of the strongest series I watched this last year, with its pointed cyberpunk storytelling and a particularly fantastic season finale — which might be my favorite episode. So whatever categories Akudama Drive is nominated in, sure, I think it should win ... wait, it was only nominated for Best Fight Scene!?
Anyway, I should have listened to you all sooner. Mr. Kodaka, I'm sorry for doubting you.
4. Best Animation: Beastars
Image via Netflix
As I wrote in our Best of the Decade list last year, Studio Orange's utilization of 3D animation is a treasure to behold and a jewel of the industry. Eiji Inomoto and the staff at Orange are putting out shows that are frankly the gold standard for the form. Beastars is no exception, far exceeding any expectations I had for what an adaptation of Paru Itagaki's animal drama would look like. However, in the case of Beastars, it's not only the CG, but also the multitude of other animation styles the staff integrated throughout the show, and none of those unique styles ever repeats! I think it says a lot for a studio and a show that not only perfects its main style but also includes phenomenal companion pieces that are fantastic on their own. For such drive and direction, and excellence in their field, not only would it be a win for Beastars, but also a win for the everlasting creativity coming out of Studio Orange.
5. Anime of the Year: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
In any other time, I would have chosen Beastars as the Anime of the Year winner (see my praise above). But this hasn't been any other year. It's been quite a terrible one, to be honest. But in some sort of cosmic irony, Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! started 2020 as one of the most optimistic and deep-hearted series I've ever seen.
A lot of people pitch Eizouken as an anime about making anime. I agree, to an extent. Anime seems to be the surface for the themes the show is playing with, as it's far more a series about the creative process and the imaginative fuel artists use when molding their ideas into something tangible. It's also about the interpersonal relationships of those creatives and how people can create community and teams around their strengths and weaknesses. It's also about how tiring and expensive it is to make one of these things! Truly, it takes a village.
Eizouken grabbed a lot of anime fans' attention early last year, particularly those who enjoy these sorts of explorations of the artistic mind. My former editor and good friend Zac Bertschy was one of them and wrote the episode reviews for Eizouken every week. Each time I read one of his articles, that passion and enthusiasm lept off the page. And let me tell you, when Zac was passionate about something, he'd let you know. His thoughts and takeaways were genuine to an extent I hadn't seen in a while. This series truly was something special to him.
Zac's passing still hurts, and seeing Eizouken's nomination continues to remind me of what was not so long ago. But seeing it nominated in the first place gives me confidence that anime fans around the world also saw that passion Masaaki Yuasa and Science Saru were presenting. Seeing Eizouken take a big win would be a triumph for the art and artistry we all love so much, as well as an exemplary showcase of the drive that truly makes this stuff magical.
Jonathan Clements ended his book Anime: A History with a line I've been thinking about recently: "... the future of anime as an art form, and as a thing of enduring value, still rests as it did at the time of its inception, in the hands of artists and artisans with vision." I truly believe Eizouken is a celebration of that ethos. And for that, I hope it wins Anime of the Year.
Anyway, as always, waitin' for the big one when I'm 5/5 on these predictions.
Kyle Cardine is an Associate Editor for Crunchyroll. You can find his Twitter here!
By: Kyle Cardine
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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight
Welcome to FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.
sarah (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Next week, former President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial is finally scheduled to begin, which should give us some insight into how far Republicans are willing to go to distance themselves from Trump. (Hint: not much.)
But first, House Republicans must face a dilemma of their own, which in many ways underscores the dynamics we’ll see at play in the upcoming impeachment trial: Either strip the No. 3 GOP House leader, Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump and publicly rebuked him, of her leadership role or strip Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who made racist and conspiracy-ridden comments before she got to Congress but who has Trump’s ear, of her committee positions. (House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has, at this point, signaled that he condemns Greene’s previous comments, but he will not look to strip her of her committee assignments and instead blames Democrats for politicizing the issue, as they will push the issue to a vote.)
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has thrown his support behind Cheney and without directly naming Greene made it clear in a statement to The Hill on Monday that he thought her “loony lies and conspiracy theories” were a “cancer for the Republican Party.” But it’s also possible that McConnell and other members of the Republican establishment are just out of touch with where the party is headed.
What do these two very different calls for action in the House tell us about the direction the GOP is headed and Trump’s continued influence in the party?
lee.drutman (Lee Drutman, senior fellow at New America and FiveThirtyEight contributor): I think it tells us that the party is deeply torn between two theories of how they win elections. One theory is that the GOP has to play to the Trump base to keep them voting, because these are the voters most likely to not show up. The other theory is that if the GOP gets too associated with the “loony” wing, they can’t win suburban districts. Both theories are probably right, which is why the party is so torn.
perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): I am not sure what we’re seeing play out now is really about Trump specifically. Cheney’s joining the Democrats to back Trump’s impeachment is viewed as an anti-Republican/pro-Democrat action by the party’s conservative base and conservative lawmakers, so that’s Cheney’s problem. Her move also broke with the “own the libs” ethos of today’s GOP. Greene, on the other hand, at least before she officially started in Congress, went too far in the “own the libs” direction — her campaign literature showed her holding a gun and calling herself the “Squad’s Worst Nightmare.”
And the GOP mainstream is somewhere between Cheney and Greene.
Kaleigh (Kaleigh Rogers, tech and politics reporter): It seems to me that the party is trying to thread the needle, neither distancing themselves from Trump nor actively conjuring his ghost, in an effort to reap all the benefits of Trumpian politics without the pitfalls of Trump himself. And it’s understandable why. As Julia Azari wrote for FiveThirtyEight in her look at the future of the Republican Party, Trump capitalized by tapping into white grievance, and that is only going to continue.
The GOP can’t just put Trump behind them if they want to maintain voter support: 65 percent of Republicans said they were much or somewhat less likely to support a candidate who voted to impeach Trump, according to a recent survey from Echelon Insights, and a Washington Post-ABC News poll last month found nearly 6 in 10 Republicans said the party should “follow Trump’s leadership” rather than move in a new direction.
The notion that support for Trump is somehow a fringe ideology or doesn’t represent the broader GOP doesn’t bear out. And, to me, Greene represents the “Trumpian with Trump” part of the equation that they may be trying to tamp down without fully censuring her.
lee.drutman: Perry’s onto an important point about the “own the libs” ethos. I haven’t seen any polling that gets at this directly, though self-identified “Trump Republicans” (those who consider themselves “mostly supporters of former President Donald Trump”) are much less likely to want to compromise with Biden than “Party Republicans” (those who consider themselves “more supporters of the Republican Party.”)
laura (Laura Bronner, quantitative editor): I thought that stat was really illuminating, Lee, especially because it shows that the split within the Democratic Party is not nearly as large as the split within the GOP — just a 10 percentage point difference compared with 30 points within the GOP. Of course, the question is about working with Biden, so that might explain some of that gap, but with Biden in power now, that difference still points to a key discrepancy about how different factions in the two parties think about the right way forward.
Kaleigh: And that split would be particularly concerning for Republicans if Trump was to make good on his threat to start a third party.
lee.drutman: Indeed, Kaleigh. According to that NBC poll, Republicans are equally split between “Trump Republicans” and “Party Republicans.”
laura: I’m somewhat skeptical of polling about a potential third party, though, which is how I feel about polling about a hypothetical party landscape in general.
sarah: More than two* parties in American politics!?! You all jest.
*Two successful parties, I should say.
Agree with Laura on this one.
lee.drutman: Well, we’re not going to get more than two successful parties until we change the way we vote. A more proportional voting system would allow those different parties to operate independently of one another. And this would be a very good thing, as I argue in my book, Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America.
sarah: Kaleigh, I was thinking about Julia Azari’s piece, too. On the one hand, I think Perry’s point about this not entirely being the latest loyalty test to Trump is right. Cheney’s actions just aren’t representative of where the party is (i.e., compromising with Democrats).
One question I had, though, and something Julia mentioned in her piece, was that when it comes to someone like Greene or Madison Cawthorn, another GOP member of the pro-Trump faction is that “there is still a key difference between them and Trump in terms of power and influence: A group of representatives can make up a faction of a party, but only the president serves as the party’s mouthpiece.” What do we make of that? It’s something Sen. Marco Rubio also echoed earlier today in a tweet.
Reporting that a politician believes in/flirts with conspiracy theories is legit, but the attention they get should be proportional to their ability to influence actual public policy
Don’t make them famous, help them raise money or elevate conspiracy theories
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 3, 2021
That is, do we have a sense of how representative of the GOP someone like Greene is, or someone like Rep. Lauren Boebert is? Or Cawthorn?
perry: I happen to think Republicans are split in three, not two: the rule of law/very pro-democracy people (Rep. Adam Kinzinger and Cheney; Sen. Mitt Romney), the anti-democratic folks (Trump, Greene) and then a big group of people (McConnell, most other Republicans) who are fine with laws making it harder for Black people to vote but uncomfortable with more overt actions to disqualify Black people from voting, like disqualifying the results from the Detroit area, for example.
sarah: We’ve touched on it a little already, but how much data do we have on the share of Republicans who share Greene’s POV?
In other words, how big a slice of the GOP is in Greene’s faction?
lee.drutman: So, I think we need to define what Greene’s POV is.
Is it just basically supporting QAnon?
sarah: Or is it espousing anti-establishment views more broadly?
lee.drutman: If it’s just QAnon, there’s not wide support even within the GOP.
Kaleigh: Well, according to that Echelon Insights poll I cited before, 43 percent of Republicans think Trump won the election, so this is not a small faction within the party.
lee.drutman: Similarly, 41 percent of adults who identify as Republican say QAnon is good for the country, according to a poll by Pew Research.
And about 23 percent of Republicans still said in December that they believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to an NPR/Ipsos poll.
I think the basic calculus in the Republican Party is that they are going to need these Q voters to show up.
laura: Yeah, there was also an interesting (and mildly terrifying) Ipsos poll recently that shows that when asked a series of nine true-or-false statements around misinformation, just 31 percent of Republicans got four or more correct. That’s compared with 88 percent of Democrats. So, the misinformation scourge has really taken hold of the Republican Party, particularly on election-related misinformation (i.e., whether Biden legitimately won, whether voting machines falsified votes, etc.). Just about one-fourth of Republicans gave the correct answer, though many said they didn’t know. Additionally, just 23 percent of Republicans said the Capitol rioters weren’t undercover Antifa members. And on QAnon, less than half said it was false that “a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.”
lee.drutman: I saw that too, Laura — it’s interesting what they got correct and what they didn’t.
Kaleigh: There’s also a real resistance among the right in general to reining in politicians too tightly. They reject what they see as “thought policing” and gatekeeping on the left and consider it a source of pride that there is room for a wide breadth of ideology within the Republican Party as part of its “big tent” branding. So, even voters who reject QAnon might not want to see QAnon supporters rejected wholesale. And this is something that party leaders like McCarthy might lean on if pressed about why they aren’t censuring Greene more explicitly, for example.
The risk is that leaning into the Q contingent will push away more centrist conservatives, which is why I think Republicans are starting off with a kind of quiet acceptance rather than an embrace or rejection of these ideas — they don’t want to scare off either end of the spectrum.
lee.drutman: Another thing about Q supporters is that they are generally very anti-establishment. It can be difficult to distinguish between the Q conspiracy and generally anti-establishment views.
Kaleigh: And QAnon is a very a-la-carte kind of conspiracy! You can believe parts of it and disbelieve others and still feel like a part of that overall community.
sarah: Yeah, it’s hard for me to make sense of a lot of this polling. This was published by The New York Times’s Emily Badger long before the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, so keep that in mind, but there does seem to be some evidence that Republicans don’t always literally mean what they say in polls.
That is obviously fraught, because we saw what four years of taking Trump seriously and not literally culminated in; however, I do think Greene’s POV is one that is more anti-establishment than core conservative policies, and that is gaining traction in the party.
The Morning Consult poll showing that Cheney’s and McConnell’s favorability is down among Republican voters should be taken as a sign of where large sections of the GOP base are headed. And maybe that’s a sign that the GOP establishment types, like Cheney and McConnell, are increasingly out of touch.
Lee wrote last summer that there were already very few moderate GOP members left, and with high-profile retirements of GOP moderates like Pat Toomey and Rob Portman in the Senate, it does seem as if that wing of the party is shrinking. How does the current battle over Cheney and Greene in the House encapsulate this?
perry: The anti-establishment wing was already big and growing in the electorate. I think they are now growing increasingly big in the House. The Freedom Caucus is larger, for instance. And in my view, McCarthy is really limited in how he can take on Greene because the House members aren’t really inclined to do that. The members who rejected the election results are pretty anti-establishment, and they are the majority. But in the Senate, the anti-establishment wing hasn’t taken over yet, so you have lots of senators defending Cheney and opposed to Greene.
I think the Romney wing (anti-Trumpism) is smaller than the Greene wing (very pro-Trumpism) on the Hill, but the Rubio/McConnell wing (more generic Republicans) is way bigger than each of those other two.
lee.drutman: But the anti-establishment wing is growing in the Senate. If you look at who supported overturning the election, it was a lot of recently elected Republicans (either in ’20 or ’18): Tommy Tuberville, Rick Scott, Roger Marshall, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Josh Hawley, Cynthia Lummis. Ted Cruz has been around a little longer, though, as has John Kennedy.
sarah: Democrats in the House will now push the situation with Greene to a floor vote to strip her of committee assignments. Is this a risky move for Democrats?
One thing I’m struggling with is how this is substantively different from what happened to former Rep. Steve King — other than the fact that he made those comments while he was a congressman.
lee.drutman: Well, one big difference is that stripping King of a committee assignment was more significant, since he was on the Agriculture Committee, which meant a lot to his Iowa constituents. My sense is that Greene, though, could care less about committee work, and so stripping her of committee assignments will only make her more powerful as an anti-establishment figure.
perry: The most important thing McCarthy has done, at this point, is meet with Trump in Florida. It was the opposite of a power move. It was basically kissing the ring and almost suggesting Trump is the boss of the House Republicans.
I find these “what Democrats should be doing” discussions kind of hard to have. If the other party is heading in an anti-democratic direction, they don’t have a lot of great choices. Ignoring the behavior could lead to more of it, and condemning it creates the risk of tit-for-tat, but I think we are well past this now. Republicans have suggested they’ll go after Rep. Ilhan Omar’s committee assignments, but it’s not just that Omar has to worry about congressional Republicans taking her off committees if they have the majority — she has to worry about them also encouraging their supporters to kill her right now, as does fellow Squad member Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
The remarkable thing about where we are now is that Cheney has been doing some outreach to fellow Republicans about her vote to impeach Trump, trying to rebuild whatever goodwill she might have lost. Greene, on the other hand, is not backtracking at all.
laura: My impression is that after Jan. 6, there may have been somewhat of a potential opening: For a while there, even a substantial chunk of Republicans were shocked about the Capitol riot, and it seemed to me at least that they were more willing to consider how that event was tied to the party itself: Right after the riot, 39 percent of Republicans thought their own party was on the wrong track, and 36 percent disapproved of Trump’s handling of the situation.
perry: You mean GOP voters or members?
laura: I mean voters — in polls at least, many seemed to express shock. But also, just 17 percent of Republicans in our tracker of public opinion said they supported Trump’s impeachment when we launched. That dipped some, but not much.
But I’m thinking GOP members of Congress, too. Cheney is a prominent example.
lee.drutman: Laura, I admire your capacity for hope post-Jan. 6.
I think what’s happening here, though, is an example of elite leadership operating on public opinion. Following Jan. 6, enough Republican leaders were expressing criticism that some Republican got the idea that there was enough support to say they support impeachment.
perry: It seems like members — McConnell, in particular — saw Jan. 6 as a way to break not only from Trump but from the kind of “own the libs” style of the party. But the party’s base and its activist core wasn’t there then (and isn’t there now). In fact, McConnell faced an effort in Kentucky to have him rebuked in a GOP party resolution. There was also an effort to start primarying the members who voted for impeachment.
And the activists seem to have succeeded in getting the party leaders to back off from any real change.
sarah: And now that elite GOP criticism is more muted, we see a dip in public opinion, as Laura said?
lee.drutman: Exactly. Once Republicans got in line, Republican voters followed the elite cues.
sarah: So where does that leave us with the upcoming impeachment trial? Is it the latest litmus test of GOP support for Trump? Or is that the wrong way to think about it? And how does it tie into these issues we’re seeing play out in the House over Cheney and Greene?
perry: So I think the story is party activists/Fox News pushing members to back off any rethinking about moving on from Trump or Trumpism. Then members got voters to stop rethinking — that sequencing is important.
McCarthy is less powerful than Fox News, in short.
lee.drutman: That seems exactly right, Perry.
It seems as if everybody just wants to be over and done with the impeachment trial, and as a result, it will go somewhat quickly. Democrats have their agenda to pass, and Republicans don’t want to have to dwell on anything potentially divisive within their party. The sooner they can get to rediscovering the importance of “fiscal responsibility,” the happier they will be.
laura: In looking at polls on average support for the impeachment trial, one interesting thing that stood out to me is that there is greater support for barring Trump from office — around 57 percent overall support that — compared with convicting him (51 percent support this). And that split exists among Republicans, too: 19 percent support barring him from office, compared with 12 percent who support convicting him.
Of course, it’s unclear — and unlikely — that Trump can actually be barred from office absent a conviction.
perry: The impeachment trial has already happened on the conservative side.
The party activists balked at the idea of convicting Trump, the party leaders heard that and quickly found a position that accommodated the base’s activists: A president can’t be convicted after he leaves office.
But I don’t think this is necessarily a show of support for Trump — impeachment was a way for the libs to own the conservatives, and the GOP was never going to let that happen.
Kaleigh: I concur. Any Democrats with dreams of this impeachment trial being anything more than a repeat of Trump’s last impeachment trial are going to be disappointed.
sarah: On that note, are there any bigger implications or takeaways if impeachment fails for the second time in the Senate?
lee.drutman: Now that Republicans have latched onto a theory that this impeachment is somehow unconstitutional, they can shake their finger at Trump’s actions and distance themselves from it but still say this would set a bad precedent, that voters have already made their choice, that we should move on, etc. Democrats know this so they just want to put stuff in the historical record for posterity.
laura: In the 2019 impeachment trial, by the end of the process, 61 percent of voters thought impeachment was a bad use of time — including 37 percent of Democrats. One can only imagine that share would be even higher now that Trump’s survival in office is no longer at stake.
perry: I don’t expect we will have future presidents incite riots at the Capitol or encourage foreign nations to investigate their political rivals, so I don’t think we can draw much from these Trump episodes. The Democrats basically had to impeach him in both instances. Those were very serious offenses.
Kaleigh: I agree with Lee that there’s this fatigue among the general public. After the election, the pandemic still upending everyone’s lives, and the economy, I think the average citizen might not want to have to think about anything “big” like impeachment right now…as depressing as that is for politics reporters.
lee.drutman: A lot will happen over the next two years. By the time of the next election, and by the time of the next Republican presidential primary, what’s happening now will be a distant memory.
sarah: But the divisions we’re seeing play out in the Republican Party won’t be.
lee.drutman: Maybe, maybe not. Once the Democrats start passing legislation, Republicans can unite in opposing it, just like they did in 2009-2010.
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CARLY RAE JEPSEN - CUT TO THE FEELING
[7.40]
Take us to the "Feeling"...
Will Adams: For a year whose first half has been dire in terms of its pop music -- between Katy Perry's hamfisted attempts at swagger and seriousness, Ed Sheeran's turgid reduction of R&B, the One Direction boys flailing about, everything else blurring into one dreary headache -- "Cut to the Feeling" feels practically beamed from the heavens. It wastes no time cutting to its own feeling, a starburst chorus of unabashed emotion and confetti. It's quintessentially Carly, and it's a breath of fresh air.
[9]
Ryo Miyauchi: My, what a classic Carly Rae Jepsen chorus: hitting with the boom of a jet engine, it's the indestructible space where she can confess it all, even if she ends up sounding like she wants a little too much. Now only if everything leading to it gambled with the same risk.
[6]
Alfred Soto: "I wanna wake up with you all in tangles, oh!" is a pop lyric for our times, worthy of a caffeinated chorus into which Carly Rae Jepsen pours a half decade's worth of lived euphoria -- after all, isn't "cut to the feeling" the Jepsen ethos? The verse melodies didn't grab my ear, though, and after a couple listens "Cut to the Feeling" sounds closer to a b-side than "Cry" did.
[6]
Tim de Reuse: Exuberant, glossy, candy-sweet, a pleasantly meaty arrangement, and a subtly pop-savvy hook; yeah, it's CRJ again, but a cumulative hour and a half of Emotion-related material in recent memory forces a comparison, and this isn't nearly as exciting. Sound design compromises were made to fit this tune seamlessly onto the soundtrack of a summer blockbuster, I imagine; it's not bad within the constraint that the end result sound like ten thousand other things that have come out in the last five years, but I don't know if it would have caught my attention with anyone else's name on it.
[6]
Alex Clifton: We all know Carly Rae Jepsen is truly #queenofeverything, and this comeback single proves it. Soundtrack songs can be hit or miss (see "Love Me Like You Do," the dreariest thing Goulding's ever done, vs. the effervescent "Can't Stop the Feeling!") but this transcends both of those. I'm glad that this was left off Emotion, as I'm not sure it would've fit in with that particular set of songs, but this is a hell of a B-side that she saved for us. When she screams "I wanna cut to the feeling!" and her voice breaks, I'm filled with vicious joy and I want to shout it with her -- which is all I can ever ask for pop music. I'm left breathless and needing more. As 2017 gets increasingly darker, I thank the gods every day for Carly Rae Jepsen.
[9]
Anaïs Escobar Mathers: Humans don't deserve dogs or this planet, and we definitely don't deserve Carly Rae Jepsen, but we have them so let's be grateful. Synthpop summer vibes at their best, and was that a little sample of "Lucky Star" in the intro? Carly Rae Jepsen is audio Zoloft.
[10]
Thomas Inskeep: The world is going to shit; every single day brings awful headlines, starting from but not limited to the White House. Things can sometimes feel hopeless. But then Carly Rae Jepsen, the true current queen of pop, surprise-releases 3:26 of pure fucking sunshine. And for those three-and-a-half minutes, things aren't as bad, and might even feel good. "Cut to the Feeling" shimmers with the same ebullience that made Emotion such a perfect pop album from start to finish. This is a car-windows-down summertime singalong, full of joy and light and energy and love. This is exactly what we need from pop right now. This is pure happiness.
[10]
Anthony Easton: The production is a giant steam roller, handclaps and kick drums obliterating anything else in the track. It's a good thing that her voice has been so nondescript anyway. It also destroys any sense of eros and any ambivalence. I would like this more if she owned her ambition. An obligation towards joy is as grating as an obligation towards melancholy. Lastly, how do you cut to a feeling when this completely refuses anything human, and doesn't even do anything interesting with the possibility of a production so robotic it could be inhumane?
[2]
Joshua Minsoo Kim: As someone whose patience is easily tested by the early, formative stages of a relationship (romantic or otherwise), "Cut To The Feeling" seems terrifyingly unhealthy. It relentlessly provides the sort of delirious joy that I would be content to soak in, completely ignoring the wellspring of "authentic" emotional experience available from repeated interactions with actual people. I often ask myself: can any lived experience truly compete with the stuff I'm feeling from X or Y piece of art? And if so, why even invest in all that energy when a 3 minute pop song comes close enough? The thing is, Carly Rae Jepsen doesn't make music that allows you to be satisfied with what it offers on a strictly musical level. Because in the act of putting ineffable emotions to song, she paints them as the irresistible high they are, and it overflows into an encouragement for you to pursue them yourself. It's no different on "Cut To The Feeling," and Carly has everything here down to a science. I took a look at the numbers, and that chorus really does hit early. Of the 26 officially released songs from the Emotion sessions, "Feeling" gets there the fastest. It's also one of only five tracks to contain a four-bar pre-chorus. Coupled with those pounding drums, the anticipation you have suddenly tumbles into the chorus' contagious energy. It took me by surprise on first listen, and the best thing I can say about the transition is that it feels like a natural representation of unforced euphoria. And Carly's a killer pop star because she knows how to transfer that experience with complete, relatable authenticity. "Cut To The Feeling" is a song about finding the value in a certain end goal and making conscious steps to reach it. That this song makes me want to do just that in my own life is a blessing, and for Carly I am grateful.
[10]
Katherine St Asaph: The natural endpoint of Emotion's maximalism: an intro of "Lucky Star" and Cinderella glitter, a metaphor as evocative of cinema as slicing through bone, a chorus that sends Carly's voice into overdrive and pastiches about three different A*Teens songs. It's almost enough to make you ignore the fact that she forgot to write a pre-chorus.
[6]
Jonathan Bradley: She wants to get straight to the good bit, and that goes double for the composition: "Cut to the Feeling" procrastinates through its verses. Jepsen is in these moments not an overwhelming melodic and emotional force; she hangs back as the track centers on its heart-thump boom of a kick drum, sidelined from her own tune. The good bit though; oh my gosh, it's good. As with "I Really Like You," Jepsen wants to go too far too fast, but she was bashful there, and here she charges into her desire. Smashes of synth and guitar launch her "I wanna..." out of daydream and into the literal: cut, and now she is dancing on the roof, now she is waking up intertwined with you, now she is playing where angels play.
[8]
Edward Okulicz: Somewhere in my DNA there must be a mutation that makes me immune to Carly Rae Jepsen songs that by all rights should send me into fits of high rapture. I hear the delicious ingredients -- an irresistible beat for fist-pumping or banging on the dashboard, a clever nick from the intro to "Lucky Star," and a plenty-vibrant vocal performance -- and some of the lyrics are tingly and evocative. But those verses are spinning their wheels instead of doing tricks over the terrain, the pre-chorus "aaah"s must be placeholders and the chorus is a fine description of euphoria, but I don't feel that euphoria.
[6]
Maxwell Cavaseno: Liking Carly Rae Jepsen is an ugly business. The songs are never that bad, they're usually very pretty and still maintain an earnestness that everyone loves. But with her continued edging around the traditions of linear career momentum (I think doing a Broadway Cinderella musical was honestly more appreciable in my mind than her being a critical darling headlining music festivals but not actually doing fuck all as far as radio airplay) the divisions among who "THE REAL CRJ FANS" are is getting a bit strenuous. "Cut to the Feeling" having a hint of controversy because it makes people argue this "Kiss vs. Emotion" debate is shocking because yes, it's an okay Carly Rae cut (which let's be honest, that's all the B-Sides record so many of us appreciated really contained, and there's a lot more of those than we like to pretend). But the biggest irony is that Jepsen is sampling Madonna... by this point in her career Madonna was making True Blue. If you ask the real world, the world outside people who become super passionate about the songs the big bad world doesn't touch? She's barely Debbie G.
[6]
Stephen Eisermann: I've spent a lot of time wondering what everybody's fascination with Carly Rae Jepsen stems from. After spending more time with her last LP than I ever cared to, I was left just as dumbfounded as the first time I spun it. With this song, I think I finally get it. I don't agree with it, but I get it. What I said about J Hus applies here: Carly fucking commits. It's so hard not to be infected by her happiness and infatuation during the first verse, similar to how it's hard not to want to dance while listening to "I Wanna Dance With Somebody." Unfortunately, though, the infatuation this song infects me with is short lived, because the strain on her voice in the higher parts of the chorus sober me up real quick. Imagine crushing hard on someone for, like, a week and making up pet names and stuff only to realize the crush is a good friend of your ex. It's all heart eyes and winky faces until it's not, and this is definitely not.
[3]
Ian Mathers: This is great, but I guess where I'm at is I just don't get the people who think its quality means it's weird that beloved national treasure Jepsen isn't a bigger star. Far as I can tell highest this has charted is #68 (in Scotland!), and it feels to me like it's a great example of some modern, non-rock based equivalent to power pop -- absolutely beloved by its fans and well regarded critically, and failing utterly to get wider traction for reasons that baffle us but will never change. I'd be thrilled to be wrong, but our girl feels distinctly subcultural at this point.
[8]
Eleanor Graham: CRJ's lyrical genius stems from her respect for the nameless. It reminds me of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf: "I just miss you, in a quite simple desperate human way. You, with all your un-dumb letters, would never write so elementary a phrase as that; perhaps you wouldn't even feel it. And yet I believe you'll be sensible of a little gap. But you'd clothe it in so exquisite a phrase that it would lose a little of its reality." That elementary, naked phrase, "cut to the feeling," does exactly what is stated. Like "take me to the feeling" and "all that we could do with this emotion" before it, the line captures the very essence of the thing without caring to elaborate. And loses nothing of its reality. What a gift.
[8]
Juana Giaimo: What makes the songs of Emotion so especial is, as Andrew Ryce put it in 2015, that each of them "takes a different feeling and makes it seem like the most important thing in the world." "Cut to the Feeling" also fits this idea, since it's from the same era. This is the time to scream out loud your shameless devotion to your emotions, or as the lyrics say, "I want it all or nothing; no more in-between." The only purpose of the verses' tension is to serve the explosion of the chorus. There is a sense of urgency that saturates the whole song -- there is no time for subtle flirting -- that is joined by a certain dreaminess, resulting in a song that is looking to go beyond reality -- because isn't finding the one you want beyond reality too?
[8]
William John: I'm not entirely sure when it was that my cynical attitude as to whether we needed yet another treatise on ebullience from Carly Rae Jepsen dissipated -- either at the moment the first chorus of "Cut To The Feeling" hits, not so much with any conventional lead-in or slow build, but as though a freight train has arrived early, or upon hearing the somersaulting "whoops" peppered throughout the choruses, serving as metonymy for the overarching sheer delight. Either way, by the end of the song my doubts had been long washed away by Jepsen's wide-eyed elation. If anything, I'd been convinced that too much sincere effervescence is never enough.
[8]
Lauren Gilbert: I write this blurb after checking the news: another attack, another death, another headline blaming innocents. At this point, I don't feel outrage so much as exhaustion; I am old, and tired, and perhaps this is just the world we live in now; this is reality. And then there's the spin-up of the intro, the drums kicking in, Carly's exuberance infectious. It makes me feel like I'm 17, but not the 17 year-old I actually was (stressed, rushing to class, afraid I wouldn't Make It, whatever making it meant); some idealized 17 where dreams really do come true. It's a rush of joy, the feeling of flooring it on the 5, of your life and your future opening up before you. It's the aural equivalent of the feeling of the sun on my face and the thin blue line of the Pacific in the corner of my vision. This is Jepsen's greatest strength as an artist: conveying emotions in bright colors, all in on life.
[9]
Will Rivitz: You know the "Band Geeks" episode of Spongebob? Where, after enduring about nine minutes and thirty seconds of aggression and humiliation from his nemesis Squilliam, Squidward enjoys a massive rush of schadenfreude as his motley band of Bikini Bottom ne'er-do-wells pulls off a glorious '80s power ballad to conclude the episode? "Cut To The Feeling" is "Sweet Victory" minus the comeuppance. It's the audio equivalent of powersliding to the front of the stage as a bitchin' guitar solo mirrors every motion of your exultation, except instead of guitars it's synths as big and bright as the sun. This is Jem and the Holograms, this is a Sailor Moon transformation sequence. It's "Run Away With Me" but completely different, except the point of both is exactly the same. Carly Rae is a savant with respect to many parts of pop, but perhaps her most satisfying trick is her ability to kickstart the most vivid sprints through euphoria I've ever heard. "Cut To The Feeling" is the perfect name for this song; I've rarely felt The Feeling so immediately and tangibly present.
[10]
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A (Somewhat) In Depth Analysis On Why (And How) Danny Phantom Should Go Ghost Again
Part One - Three Possibilities
There are three possibilities as to what is going on with all the hype surrounding the return of Danny Phantom, and these can be simplified as the “good,” the “bad,” and the “ugly.”
The good option, which I personally believe is the least likely, is that Nickelodeon HAS greenlit a fourth season, and we just don't know about it yet because it's so early in production. If this is the case then we probably won't see any news or promos until at least 2018, seeing as how the hype train really got its start around August 24, 2016, when Butch uploaded a video called “Danny Phantom 10 Years Later” and the green light would have happened not long after that. Again, this seems extremely unlikely, but if it's true, then Butch has been doing a good job building up hype while keeping it a secret.
The bad option, which will be the main focus of this post (and also isn’t so bad), is that as much as Butch wants to bring the show back, Nickelodeon isn’t so keen on the idea, and that's why he’s turned to the fandom to build up hype, and THEN maybe Nick will listen.
The ugly option is… Well, it’s ugly. I hate that this is even a possibility, but as I’ve stated before, the good option is the least likely, making this one a decent possibility. Maybe there are no plans to #goghostagain at all, and the hype is all just a ploy to rake in the views and attention. Maybe it's all just one big promotion for Bunsen Is A Beast (which by the way I think is a sub-par show, but I'll get to that later). It’s disappointing to think about, but if it is the case, then here's what I have to say: Butch, you are better than this. If you aren't serious about this, then don't go around trying to get people excited for something that doesn't exist. Please and thank you.
Part Two - Forget The Hype
I wouldn't be surprised or upset if nothing ever came out of all this hype, but since we’ve come this far we might as well take the extra step to convince Nickelodeon this is a good idea. Of course, there's not a whole lot the fans can do to sway the opinions of the executives, and at this rate we’re DEFINITELY not going anywhere. Most of what I've seen has been “I love this show so you should bring it back” with no other reasoning. It's all based on pathos with little to no logos or ethos, and that's what I'm hoping to make up for with this analysis. There are plenty of reasons for Danny Phantom to get a fourth season, it's just a matter of letting them be heard through the multitude of YouTube videos saying “Look, Butch said this one thing this one time!! Season 4 confirmed!!!! I am so HYYYPE!!!1!!!!1!”
Part Three - The Passage Of Time
Like many good shows, it ended too early. Apparently the ratings were a bit too low for Nick’s liking, so they told Butch to find a way to end it. (I don't have a very good source, so if you can find one with real numbers and add it in, that would be great.) This is a common trend. Good shows don't get the advertising and promotion they deserve because the network wants to spend more time on their cash cows like SpongeBob and Teen Titans Go, and then the good shows get cancelled because, “Well no one was watching it, so it's not worth keeping, right?” Then, as the years go by, more and more people find the show and say “Why was it cancelled? It’s so good!” The good news here is that if an old show comes back with a much larger and stronger fanbase, it will do really well! Unfortunately there is one problem with the way the fans will probably watch it, and that is the internet. After watching the original episodes online, that's the way they’re probably going to expect to continue watching them. This was a HUGE problem with The Legend Of Korra! (Again, source needed) So I guess this is more of a message to the fans than the executives: Watch the show on the TV, or AT LEAST set it to record!
Another problem that The Legend Of Korra had (it's really only a problem in the eyes of the execs) is that the audience was mostly adults and older teens. You know, the people who either 1) Where the same people who originally watched The Last Airbender and are now a bit older, 2) Were old enough to use the internet in a way that allowed them to find ATLA in the first place, or 3) Are the type of people who enjoy more in-depth, plot-driven, mature-themed shows. I think that the third option is what networks like Nick, CN, and Disney are most afraid of when it comes to choosing which shows to pick up and air. These channels are supposed to be for kids, right? Well, first of all, these networks are wrong to think that kids can't enjoy more complex shows than SpongeBob or that the most important thing in determining a show's worth is how much money it brings in, but I digress. Instead, I’d like to talk about how Nickelodeon SHOULDN'T worry about having a repeat of TLOK if they were to continue Danny Phantom.
Part Four - Plot And Audience
Unlike the Avatar series, which were extremely plot-driven and weren’t afraid to get a bit dark, Danny Phantom is a lot more episodic in nature. Now, if it were too episodic, then I probably wouldn't be arguing for it to come back. I mean, I love My Life As A Teenage Robot, but there’s no real reason for it to come back other than the usual “This is one of my favorite childhood shows! Why did it have to end?” You see, Danny Phantom had a nice balance of episodic plot vs overall plot that made for a great show for kids and teens alike. If it were to come back using the original formula, it would probably do really well with the “intended” audience of preteens. Hardcore fans (the ones who have been begging for a fourth season ever since it ended) might have mixed reactions, though. It all depends on the direction the show goes.
Again, the original formula will work, but what exactly should the plot be? Should there be a time skip or not? These are all questions that I’ll talk a little bit more about later, but ultimately can not answer. The biggest question that I CAN answer, though, is should it cater more towards the new preteens audience or the older, hardcore fans? The answer is a resounding “HARDCORE FANS!!!” We KNOW there are plenty of things that were planned that didn't make it in, and we want to see them happen in a way that satisfies our nostalgia and our (slightly) older tastes. I personally think that even though the episodic nature works from a business standpoint, this continuation should have just a little bit more of an overarching plot. Just a little bit.
Part Five - Butch’s Other Shows
I don't want to dwell on this topic too long, but it's important enough that it's worth mentioning.
Fairly Odd Parents: To put it bluntly, it's dying. We could talk about how Sparky and Chloe are terrible characters, but there's no point because the whole show has been moved to NickToons. It's the channel where Nickelodeon shows go to die, and as unfortunate as it is that FOP has been drawn out to the point that the original fans don't like it anymore, soon enough it will get low enough ratings that it will finally be cancelled. Rip
TUFF Puppy: I didn't really watch this show, but from what I've seen and heard, it's not that great. I mean, it's not horrible, but it just doesn't have a whole lot going for it that makes it worthwhile to talk about. It ended in 2015, so whatever.
Bunsen Is A Beast: This is another show that I haven't seen a whole lot of, and I don't really want to. I feel that even though it has a good message of being inclusive and stuff, it doesn't really go about it in a unique way. You know what show has a similar setup of a character from another dimension going to a human school but is actually good? Star vs the Forces of Evil. I know I'm not the intended audience for Bunsen, so I'm not really in a position to complain, but between it's obnoxious loudness, ugly characters, and seemingly random-for-the-sake-of-random humor, it isn't as good as it could be. Don't get me wrong, I respect Butch for trying new character styles and whatnot, but it just isn't working.
Basically, what I'm trying to say is that there IS room for Danny Phantom to return. FOP is dying and it wouldn't hurt for Bunsen to die off as well. Good programing is what we should be after, not money makers.
Part Six - Questions And Suggestions
This is the part where I re-introduce the hype and fangirling. It’s not part of the main message that the show should come back, but it is important for the follow up question of how. So here are some important questions for Butch. *Takes a deep breath*
How will season 4 go? What’s the plot? Is it gonna pick up where it left off or will there be a time skip? How big of a time skip will it be? Will the intro be the same or will it be something new? What, if anything, will be retconned? What new characters will be introduced? When and how will Vlad return from space? Did Vlad meet Wheatley? Will Dark Danny make a return? Is Danielle gonna be adopted by the Fentons like you said? How are you gonna make up for the fact that the technology is so outdated? What about the Unworld and the Elsewhereness? What is the meaning of the universe??? *Incoherent screaming*
…I might have gotten a bit carried away just then.
Well, time to answer some of my own questions. I think that a decent sized time skip would be a great way to have the characters age with the show’s original audience, and it would also avoid any weirdness with the outdated technology. I’m not sure how big it should be, but 10 years does seem like a good benchmark number. If there is a time skip, this could also be a convenient excuse to brush over a lot of nothingness and say “It took Vlad [this long] to find a way to return, and now, after a long time of peace and quiet, the main antagonist is back to wreak some havoc.” Maybe the first episode of the new season could be a recap and summary of everything that happened between seasons 3 and 4, including an introduction to the new plot. There should be little to no retconning because this is a continuation, not a reboot. If something small needs to be changed to help the overall flow of the story, then so be it, but don’t go erasing the entire last episode just so Danny’s powers are still a secret or something like that. There should definitely be a new intro and theme song that are more related to the new story, even if there isn’t a time skip. The overarching plot should heavily focus on that Elsewhereness stuff mentioned in the video “Secrets of the Ghost Zone Revealed” and somehow include the conflict of ending up in the Unworld. As far as new characters go, I would much prefer to see older characters more in depth, but a few new villains couldn’t hurt. Dark Danny NEEDS to return because he’s my favorite character of all the one-off villains, he’s the only one with an entire two-part episode dedicated to him that basically ended with the promise of his return that never got the chance to happen. I only mention this guy above all the other villains because he’s my fave he is literally an alternate version of the main character. And if there is a 10 year time skip, then that would make Danny the same age as his evil counterpart and--
You know what? I could go on about this hours, but this post is already long enough as is, and I don’t want to turn it into a fanfiction. I think I’m going to leave this here for now and allow all of you to add on to it as you wish.
Part Seven - Sources???
I’m really bad at including sources, so if any of you can find good and relevant ones for me, that’d be great. Just reblog this post and add them along with any other comments or theories you have related to the return of Danny Phantom. Let’s make this one big cluster of ideas, and hopefully we will one day see that our efforts have paid off.
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Success = Experimentation
Today’s most successful companies, the ones that are “crushing it,” started as a series of crazy ideas, followed by experiments to test just how viable those ideas might be.
Experimentation is a crucial mechanism for driving breakthroughs in any organization.
If you want to create a successful, hyper-growth company, you've got to focus on empowering your teams to rapidly experiment.
Over the years I have had the pleasure of sitting down with wizards of experimentation, including Jeff Holden, Uber’s Chief Product Officer; Astro Teller, CEO of X; and Jake Knapp, Design Partner at Google Ventures.
Through my conversations I have compiled a suite of best practices for running great experiments and building a culture of experimentation at your company.
In this blog we will discuss:
Building a culture of experimentation
Running effective experiments
Google Ventures design sprints
Building a Culture of Experimentation
The only constant is change, and the rate of change is increasing.
Ultimately, standing still equals death, and the only way to succeed is to be constantly experimenting and innovating (think of it as Darwinian evolution in hyperspeed).
Hyper-growth and experimentation are very closely linked.
Jeff Bezos likes to say, "Our success at Amazon is a function of how many experiments we do per year, per month, per week, per day…"
Jeff Holden, who has built experimental engines at Amazon, Groupon, and Uber, agrees: "The philosophy is you have to build your company to be a big experimental engine and it has to start right at the beginning."
It's not easy to just "retrofit" your company with that engine later – it's a cultural shift. You have to be in the mindset of constantly testing crazy ideas, new business models, new products and new processes.
At Amazon, in the early days, they created a standard experimental platform that was available to almost everyone – meaning, if somebody wanted to test a new button or new feature on the website, they could.
The problem was that many of these experiments were useless.
Jeff Holden continues, "They had no chance of yielding any value. There wasn't any point to them. We were just kind of curious. We were just running a lot of experiments -- which have a cost, by the way -- and were taking up experimental slots [so others couldn't experiment], and things started colliding with each other."
Their solution was to create an 'Experiments Group' – if you wanted to do an experiment, you had to run it through this group.
The first question the group would ask was: What's your hypothesis?
The second question: What's the value proposition to our company?
"If you couldn't articulate your hypothesis crisply, or your hypothesis didn't matter for Amazon or Uber or Groupon, then they must not do that experiment. Oftentimes you'll send folks back to the drawing board or ask them to recast the experiment. The company learned, and we got much better."
Finally, "You have to be able to interpret the experimental results really well. It's statistics. Know the difference between statistically significant and insignificant results."
Uber, for example, runs thousands of experiments per month to test different features. They A/B test key features that are core to the business and choose the one that performs best.
"Build a team inside your organization that has an experimental ethos, and make sure that the experiment, value proposition, and hypothesis are really thought through before you invest the time and energy to actually do them."
In general, only hire people who are familiar with the experimentation/data-driven mindset and set the stage for experimentation in the beginning.
How to Launch Good Experiments
Astro Teller, Chief of Moonshots, explains that the following three principles describe a good experiment:
Principle 1: Any experiment where you already know the outcome is a BAD experiment.
Principle 2: Any experiment when the outcome will not change what you are doing is also a BAD experiment.
Principle 3: Everything else (especially where the input and output are quantifiable) is a GOOD experiment.
Seems simple enough, right?
You must ask the kind of questions to which you don't currently know the answer, but if you did, you’d change the way you operate.
If you already know the answer, or if you are testing an insignificant detail that doesn’t matter, you’ll just be wasting time and money.
To get good questions/experiments, you must create a culture that incentivizes asking good questions and designing good experiments.
Astro describes a very unique approach to doing just this:
“At X, we set up a ‘Get Weirder Award.’ The whole point of the Get Weirder Award was to focus the team on experiments and to drive home they needed to think in terms of experiments.”
Teams would be challenged to ask “weird” questions – to put forth crazy ideas around framing problems differently and to design experiments that really push the limits.
Critically, Astro only gives out the Get Weirder Award after the experiments are run.
“If you give out the award after they’ve run the experiment, independent of the results, then people start to really feel that you don't actually care about the outcome. You care about the quality of the question. So every two weeks, we would give out an award for the best experiment.”
Doing so constantly (and viscerally) reinforced the behavior of asking good questions – accordingly, at X, they’ve built a culture around celebrating the questions themselves.
Google Ventures: Design Sprint
A Sprint, invented by my friends Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky of Google Ventures, is a fantastic tool for rapid experimentation in your company.
I have leveraged the Sprint process across all of my companies.
Participating in a Sprint orients the entire team and aims their efforts at hitting clearly defined goals.
Sprints are useful starting points when kicking off a new feature, workflow, product, business or solving problems with an existing product.
Here are the five phases of a Sprint, typically done sequentially over the course of five days, that you can try with you team:
Day 1: Understand: Develop a common understanding of the working context, including the problem, the business, the customer, the value proposition and how success will be determined. By the end of this phase, you should also aim to identify some of your biggest risks and start to make plans to mitigate them. Common understanding will empower everyone’s decisionmaking and contributions to the project. Understanding your risks enables you to stay risk-averse and avoid investing time and money on things that rely on unknowns or assumptions.
Day 2: Diverge: Generate insights and potential solutions to your customer’s problems. Explore as many ways of solving the problems as possible, regardless of how realistic, feasible, or viable they may or may not be. The opportunity this phase generates enables you to evaluate and rationally eliminate options and identify potentially viable solutions to move forward with. This phase is also crucial to innovation and marketplace differentiation.
Day 3: Converge: Take all of the possibilities exposed during phases 1 and 2, eliminate the wild and currently unfeasible ideas and hone in on the ideas you feel best about. These ideas will guide the implementation of a prototype in phase 4 that will be tested with existing or potential customers. Not every idea is actionable or feasible, and only some will fit the situation and problem context. Exploring many alternative solutions helps provide confidence that you are heading in the right direction.
Day 4: Prototype: Build a prototype that can be tested with existing or potential customers. Design the prototype to learn about specific unknowns and assumptions. Determine its medium by time constraints and learning goals. Paper, Keynote, and simple HTML/CSS are all good prototyping tools for software products and 3D printing for hardware. The prototype storyboard and the first three phases of the Sprint should make prototype-building fairly straightforward. There shouldn’t be much uncertainty around what must be done. A prototype is a very low-cost way of gaining valuable insights about what the product needs to be. Once you know what works and what doesn’t, you can confidently invest time and money on more permanent implementation.
Day 5: Test & Learn: Test the prototype with existing or potential customers. It is important to test with existing or potential customers, because they are the ones for whom you want your product to work and be valuable. Their experiences with the problem and knowledge of the context have influence on their interaction with your product that non-customers won’t have. Your customers will show you the product they need. Testing your ideas helps you learn more about things you previously knew little about and gives you a much clearer understanding of which directions you should move towards next. It can also help you course-correct and avoid building the wrong product.
Sprints offer a path to solve big problems, test new ideas, and accelerate the decisionmaking process. BTW, you can learn a lot more about the Sprint Process here: http://www.gv.com/sprint/.
Happy experimenting!
Interested in Joining Me? (two options)...
A360 Executive Mastermind: This is the sort of conversation I explore at my Executive Mastermind group called Abundance 360.
The program is highly selective, for 360 abundance- and exponentially minded CEOs (running $10M to $10B companies).
If you’d like to be considered, apply here. Share this with your friends, especially if they are interested in any of the areas outlined above.
A360 Digital Mastermind: I’ve also created a Digital/Online Community of bold, abundance-minded entrepreneurs called Abundance 360 Digital (A360D).
A360D is my ‘onramp’ for exponential entrepreneurs – those who want to get involved and play at a higher level. Click Here to Learn More.
P.S. Every week I send out a "Tech Blog" like this one. If you want to sign up, go to Diamandis.com and sign up for this and Abundance Insider.
P.P.S. My dear friend Dan Sullivan and I have a podcast called Exponential Wisdom. Our conversations focus on the exponential technologies creating abundance, the human-technology collaboration, and entrepreneurship. Head here to listen and subscribe: a360.com/podcast
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GAME OF THRONES
True to form, I wrote the crux of this entry one week ago today and coincidentally the phone clocked in at 11:11pm when I hit the save button (sidebar b/c I navigate the region so sublimely) But real talk, I was inspired last Friday and took pen to paper knowing I would tweak/edit the draft before publishing. Also knowing I would be in Jamaica in just a few short days, it seemed only fitting to complete it there…over some Real Jamaican Food ;)
When I initially penned this op piece, there hadn’t been any replies on record. It was and still is about the excitement of a rap battle between two respected and revered artists and less of a critique on the actual raps and/or who won or would win. That said, I’m continuing this Op piece from my initial train of thought - more of the possibility of what it could be instead of where we are presently, round 2 in what has shaped up to be a very disrespectful battle.
So that’s what was going on. I, like most people was just casually minding my business, excited about what’s emerging musically within the culture and all the heat set to drop and seemingly out of nowhere, a shot is fired. Pusha T, the remaining half of rap cult group Clipse, through his infrared beam shot his shot at hip-hop’s reigning Golden Child, Aubrey Drake Graham. In truth, the subs between these 2 gentlemen have been building for some time but this was a focused and direct attack. I imagine Drake had been minding his business as well when the sneak hook occurred and like a reflex – responded immediately, calculated and concisely. By midnight on Friday May 25th a full on battle had ensued. An official rap battle and it’s exciting to be honest. It’s good for the culture! It’s like a GoT season 6 episode 9; Battle of The Bastards sort of moment in the culture. Only this time I believe the underdog is actually the man currently on top. I don’t think y’all understand, I love this rap shit – I can’t lie. The art of it all, it’s the BEST! If both sides are ready and prepared I think it could be great. A lot of people sleep on Drake and forget that he can actually rap.
One thing’s evident with this crew, they do not half step. It’s like that moment in the movie Heat, when Al Pacino realizes he’s been made and says to his team “this is the No Fuckin’ Around Crew.” Nothing is done impulsively no matter the expedience at which something might appear to occur. If they shooting, believe they got magazines racked up ready to let off. It is not a one off. Perhaps it’s the “slept on, stay ready” mentality. A smart one they’ve perfected and so they stay winning. Drake’s consistently put out great music. Feature after feature, album after album, hit after hit – since he stepped foot in the door, The Boy has not missed - a first in this art form. Personally, “Nothing Was The Same” is my favorite body of work in his catalog to date. Top to bottom it’s an all-encompassing complete album full of earned flexing. It’s that “I’m not a freshman, no longer new to this but still feeling like the props I deserve are not being shown and why not, I’m really that nigga!” Is it because he’s foreign that he’s scrutinized more heavily? Hating on Drake is the fuel he uses. This coupled with the fact that the boy is really talented (a fact few of his peers want to acknowledge) is the exact reason why he’ll continue to win. Hate in their veins. Who God Bless, No Man Curse - understand this.
And then there’s Push. Ties and affiliations aside, Pusha T is a lyricist. That rap lyrical respect thing is something else and Clipse is deeply entrenched in the culture. They had/have a cult following! Mix in his crews (Pharrell – Startrak/iamOther x Kanye – G.O.O.D. Music – musical geniuses) this just thickens and sweetens the pot. No offense but this is nowhere even close to that lukewarm Drake x Meek Mill sandbox scafuffle a few seasons back. This battle is a level!
The “battle” is the ethos of rap. This is hip-hop in its truest form. Rap is a contact sport and at times the most deadly because there are no rules. These men, both gifted and skilled in their own right, are sparring right now. Survival of the fittest. I understand this may be new territory for today’s mumble/drug rap generation – “sensitive thugs” purveyors of the ice-cream saccharin sweet sound. You guys are bearing witness to legacy! There is nothing fair about a rap battle. Just ask Ja Rule. It’s eat or get eaten and apparently it’s eating season right now. Personally speaking, I love a great rap battle! I remember candidly the beefs between KRS-1 & MC Shan, Roxanne Shante & The Real Roxanne, Dr. Dre/NWA & Easy E, Ice Cube & Easy E, Cool J and Canibus, the fatal beef between Biggie & Pac that divided a nation and of course the most epic battle of all that birthed the term “ethered”, the beef between Jay Z & Nas. I’ve been a die hard Jay fan since I first heard him on Stretch & Bobbito’s radio show on 89 tech 9 back in the mid-90s. I’ll never forget driving down 2nd Ave in New York City on a surprisingly balmy day in November 2001 listening to Hot 97 FM. Nas had just recorded his answer to Jay’s diss record Takeover and they were about to premiere it on Flex’s show. The moment the beat drop, my heart sunk. “Fuck Jay Z!” chopped and screwed up. The dj drops an atomic bomb adlib effect, starts the record over. “Fuck Jay Z!” I knew in that moment Jay was done. Takeover was volcanic. Jay in a very comedic way pretty much “sonned” Nas with hard truth and the truth is sometimes tough to bear. But then Nas, maybe as a result of feeling disrespected by this “Judas trader”, went nuclear! Ether was the Nasir Jones we loved and had longed to see. Jay tried a feeble attempt at retaliation with the lack luster “Super Ugly” but the winner was clear. There was no coming back after Ether. The crown prince took the L he never saw coming.
As far as this Pusha x Drake beef goes, to date, some really unsavory and defamatory things have been said, I do not disagree. And other people have been dragged into the conversation unjustly. My assumption is unless this wraps up quickly, more things will be said. But all of that aside, understanding the players involved and how much each of them love this real hip hop shit to their core, there has to be a slight tinge of excitement though no one enjoys being on the tail end of a joke. I haven’t been this tuned in to a rap beef since Jay & Nas (50 & Ja Rule’s local Queens catty shit bored me to be honest. {and dudes from Queens be so fuckin’ extra for NO reason} though it did result in the end Ja’s career). So I’m thanking both Drake and Push right now. If for no other reason then for reminding (by example) these other clown rappers what this wave is really about. Good Rap Music!
IMO, the question was never about whether Drake was good or skilled enough to battle Push. Clearly Push believed Drake to be a formidable opponent or he wouldn’t have baited him in the first place. Pusha T is a rapper’s rapper. He wouldn’t have wasted his time, which says a lot about The Boy (a fact some love to argue) The question is can Aubrey be as ruthless as Push? Would he be? If you’re at war or in a battle, you have to fight. This is muthafuckin’ Game of Thrones…Watch The Throne! This is rap music! Kudos Kiddos. This is a music industry bucket list moment. Something you’ll talk about like hip-hop folklore. You’re generation is living through it’s first official rap battle. And it’s real one! –APIMM
Soundtrack for this entry from my schizophrenic iTunes Library.
“Nice Time” –Bob Marley
“Hypocrites” –Bob Marley
“Duppy Conqueror” –Bob Marley
“The Bridge Is Over” – KRS-1
“Set It Off” –Big Daddy Kane
“Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nothin’ To Fuck Wit” –Wu Tang Clan
″4, 3, 2, 1,” -LL Cool J feat. Method Man, Redman, Canibus, DMX
″Second Round K.O.” -Canibus
“The Ruler’s Back’ –Jay Z
“Takeover” –Jay Z
“Ether” –Nas
″Infared” -Pusha T
“Duppy Freestyle” –Drake
“Ego”-Clipse
“Momma I’m So Sorry” -Clipse
″The Games We Play” -Pusha T
“Lord Knows” –Drake feat. Rick Ross
“Yes Indeed” –Lil Baby feat. Drake
“Camay” –Ghostface Killah feat. Raekwon
“Planez” –Jermih feat. J.Cole
“Fuckin’ You Tonight” –Notorious B.I.G.
“Sexy” –Tank
“When We” – Tank
“Keep Calm” -dvsn
“Be With You” -112
“I Need You” –Alicia Keys
“Full of Smoke” –Christion
“I’m The Only Woman” –Mary J Blige
“The Beggar” –Mos Def
“Back to Black” –Amy Winehouse
“So Simple” –Alicia Keys
“The Waiting Line” –Zero 7
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I Tried an Intense Korean Skincare Routine Everyone Seems to Love
http://fashion-trendin.com/i-tried-an-intense-korean-skincare-routine-everyone-seems-to-love/
I Tried an Intense Korean Skincare Routine Everyone Seems to Love
What I seek most from my skincare routine — bouncy, clear, hydrated skin — is probably pretty basic, but I have yet to achieve it to any level of satisfaction. (Philosophical question: Has anyone?) When I first heard of the seven skin method sometime last year, it sounded like it might finally deliver exactly that. A solution for dehydrated skin that promises to plump and soothe with just a few (okay, seven) layers? I was sold.
The method involves patting on seven layers of a hydrating toner before going on with the rest of your routine. It became popular around 2016 in South Korea, and it migrated over to the U.S. as K-beauty exploded, says Charlotte Cho, co-founder of Korean beauty retailer Soko Glam.
I’ve battled dehydrated skin for years. While my skin is oily, I tend to get dry patches and flaky skin if I don’t take proper care of it, especially during the winter. The seven skin method seemed right up my alley.
As Cho explains, the seven layer trend follows the Korean beauty ethos of prioritizing hydration. “Korean women are always looking for methods to deeply hydrate their skin, because they know that proper hydration leads to youthful-looking skin.”
Okay, but why seven layers? “Although you can do as many layers as you’d like,” Cho says, “seven layers is the optimal number of times according to the trend.” A little digging on my part revealed the trend reportedly started after Korean actress Lee Ha-nui went on TV and explained her secret for glowing skin was seven layers of toner. I couldn’t find any scientific research to back this up, but remained intrigued nonetheless. It just sounds so appealing in its simplicity, doesn’t it?
As for how to actually execute it, Cho recommends “cleansing and exfoliating your skin so that it is clear of any dead skin cells, impurities and debris and so the next step can be absorbed better.” Then, add a dime-sized amount of a hydrating essence or “skin,” another term for toner in Korea — not a drying, astringent one — onto your hands and fingertips and pat into your skin. After this absorbs into your skin, repeat this process six times. She says you can stop here, finish the rest of your normal routine or end your routine with an emollient moisturizer to lock it all in, depending on your individual needs.
Seven layers sound like a lot, but Cho says it sinks in pretty easily. Hypothetically speaking, the seven skin method should work for all skin types: Oily skin types can hydrate their faces without a thick moisturizer, and dry skin types can follow the method as a way to pack in layers of hydration when their normal routine isn’t cutting it. The idea is you cocoon your skin with layers of skin-benefiting ingredients to see results, Cho says.
Ever the bouncy skin pursuer, I tried the seven skin method for one whole month, mid-December through mid-January.
Here’s how it went.
I used Pyunkang Yul Essence Toner, a $12 hydrating toner made with 91.3% milkvetch root extract (also called astragalus root — which supposedly has antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties) and followed the method every morning and night. I chose Pyunkang Yul because one of my favorite beauty YouTubers, Gothamista, raved about using it for the seven skin method in particular.
Off the bat, I liked how easy this method is to follow — it doesn’t require any additional products, and because the Pyunkang Yul is relatively thin in consistency, it felt like nothing on my skin, even after seven layers. It left my skin feeling bouncy, in fact. That said, once I got into the groove of doing seven layers of toner twice a day, there were times it felt like it took FOREVER. I would let each layer sit for a few seconds before adding another, and while my skin did feel bouncy, it felt no bouncier than with only one layer of the Essence Toner.
Here’s the worse news: the seven skin method also didn’t make my skin look any better. I don’t notice a difference at all! Well, other than a few pimples that popped up over the month (likely unrelated) and the fact that I nearly ran out of a massive bottle of toner in a single month. But by far my biggest critique is that, as the weather grew drier and colder, I could still see some dry patches around my nose and chin area, especially when I wore foundation.
When I asked Cho why the method might not have worked for me, she says it could be any number of things, ranging from my skin type, my choice of toner and the routine I followed it with. (I continued using the rest of my normal routine, including a hyaluronic serum and a lightweight moisturizer.) In other words: She wasn’t sure.
Perhaps my experience is the exception. The seven layer method has been hailed on beauty sites like Allure and The Gloss and forums like Reddit, which many consider a straight-to-consumer goldmine for beauty tips. Of the seven layer method, one Redditor wrote: “[I] decided to try it [at] night with Kiku[-Masamun] High Moist Lotion and maaaaaaan was my skin plump and glowy. I was super fascinated with the results because my skin is super dehydrated but I didn’t even have to use my moisturizer on top on it.”
Convincing, no? And there are many other posts just like it.
If you’re interested in trying it for yourself, here are Cho’s tips for application:
1. Apply your skincare in the order of consistency, from thin to thick so that you allow the products to absorb into the skin. Do the seven skin method wherever your toner falls in that order.
2. Make sure the ingredients in your toner include a humectant, such as glycerin and hyaluronic acid. She says these will hydrate your skin and help it retain the moisture. “Retaining moisture is the most crucial step, as a lot of your skincare products can evaporate,” Cho says.
3. Following up the seven skin method with a sheet mask can help your skin absorb all the goodness from your toner by forming a barrier so that the ingredients do not evaporate.
4. If you have particularly dry skin, consider using a humidifier in your bedroom along with the seven skin method.
Would I try this again? Sure, but I would probably use a different product. Cho says the Pyunkang Yul Essence Toner might not have been hydrating enough. I also wouldn’t use it every day — it felt like too much for too little reward! — but rather on the days my skin felt drier than usual. For the time being, I’ve moved on to other products that I suspect might better suit my dehydrated skin, like a snail mucin essence. It’s an endless pursuit, really.
Photos by Louisiana Mei Gelpi; Art Direction by Emily Zirimis.
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alunasky-blog
Alunasky