I've had lazy autumn just to jump in ITS THE SECOND WEEK OF THE YEAR YOU HAVE TO DO 186469 THINGS FOR WORK AND 789 THINGS FOR SCHOOL AND 4 THINGS FOR ENSURING A NICE WEEKEND TRIP AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Hey yaz! I was just wondering your opinion on why you think Liam's mgtm would have him "date" a 17/18 yo. I dont follow m*ya at all and know p nothing abt her except that she is a model (?) and her dad is famous (?). I just feel like its weird they would pick someone a decade younger than him. My friends who arent 1d fans all have bad opinions abt him bc of this so like why do you think she was the choice? I understand publicity for her and stuff but just curious on what you think.

hey! i honestly think they just don’t care that much about the age aspect of it (and probably didn’t even consider the fact that the reaction would be so icky or maybe they did but just didn’t care), i think it’s mainly just the old/usual tried and true PR and Promo for an Up and Coming Model™ gimmick that they’ve done time and again (because they know it works. because they’ve done 867 times now and still the het side of the fandom manages to fall for it every time and swoon their idiotic asses off) and the age gap was just a secondary thing that they were maybe hoping ppl either wouldn’t pay much attention to or wouldn’t care about. apparently they didn’t learn their lesson from the way ppl reacted to him and c and the whole gross pedophilic predator aspect of that whole scenario (w/ the stories of her flirting and preying after liam since he was 14, etc. smdh). but as pretty much everything has shown, 1dhq (or whoever is running shit now) and the entertainment industry in general tends to always be about 42 5-10 years behind when it comes to being cognizant of general public changing sentiments over things. i mean just look at how many shows and movies from within the last couple of years are STILL portraying relationships between adults and underage teenagers and acting like that’s normal and perfectly acceptable (riverdale, pll, shameless, etc.). maybe in the early 2000′s no one was really batting an eye that much (cause it was so normalized on tv/in movies over all these decades that a lot of us didn’t really think too hard about it) but that shit certainly ain’t flying in post-MeToo era and yet...asshats still out here showcasing it. 

and the same with representation i mean shows like glee and modern family were a game-changer for sure but it still took like 5-10 or so years after those shows’ inceptions for the rest of hollywood to get with the program and start putting more queer characters in their shows and movies and just generally engaging in more diverse representation on a whole (as far as race, religion, gender/gender identity, neurodivergence plus-sized, and handi-capable representation, etc. as well). hollywood/the industry in general has always been super slow to change and get on board with the progression of the rest of society, and super reluctant/resistant to change at that. i mean i know all this is only tangentially related but they are largely still fighting the rise of streaming services tooth and nail despite the fact that most of the big ones have existed now for around a decade. i have a friend who works in the music industry who’s talked to me in-depth about how much the big record companies are still remaining super set in their old dinosaur ways and insanely obstinate about changing their business methods in a way that would make much more sense with the direction of the market and the heavy skew towards free streaming because they just refuse to accept that the entire market has changed and is only gonna continue to change. but instead just wanna sit and wallow and try to force ppl to play by their old games in a way that just is not sustainable and very likely only gonna wind up losing them money and business in the long run. and ofc we see the same with politics. 

it’s all just old dinosaurs who can’t let go of the way things used to be and we’re unfortunately seeing that all play out in a weird way with this whole let’s make liam date a teenager bit. whoever came up with it, whether it was her family or 1dhq or both or whoever, is clearly wayyy behind the times when it comes to public sentiment and either did not even foresee/consider all the ways this was gonna be digested in a largely super negative way by the public (and by extension blow back on liam in a super negative way), OR is so fame-hungry/money-hungry and so desperate to get this girl some attention that they just did not care at all how it would look or be received. 

...or both. honestly i’d be very willing to bet it’s a little bit of both lol

anyway short story long the gate-keepers of every major industry in this country (and lbr, the world in general) can’t deal with the fact that their breed and their business models are rapidly going extinct or becoming obsolete. they can try all they want to force their old (gross) ideals and outdated business practices on an unwilling public but the fact of the matter it’s very likely only gonna end up biting them in the ass and having the exact opposite result than what they wanted.

(that or it’s a huge concerted negative campaign against liam that’s going swimmingly lol but that’s way too tinhatty and conspiratorial even for me and i highly doubt they would do all this and expend this much time, effort, and money into something that was purely meant for the purpose of sabotaging liam and nothing more, and that didn’t also in some way guarantee mutually assured gain in the form of promo for m and her family. this is compounded by the fact that liam’s very clearly spent the majority of the last two years being photographed almost exclusively with either her, or shady people in the business and fashion industries that also seemingly happen to have strong ties/connections to her father. that’s not a coincidence. this is clearly largely for her benefit. but - as what i’m sure is a nice bonus for whoever made the other end of the agreement on liam’s behalf - also doubles as a continued opportunity to perpetuate the already highly problematic public image liam has unfortunately been saddled with, as well ofc the usual perpetual bearding and closeting) 

ppl have been asking me my opinions on space channel 5 vr... and i guess since i bought a vr headset off craigslist just so i could play it and speedrun it before work the day it came out... i should talk abt it now... i dont rly think i’ll be able to separate it into ‘good’ and ‘bad’ things i think i’m just going to do a rambly stream of consciousness bc i have a headache... but i DO have good things to say abt this game... so st.... sta stay t tune  d

right off the bat, the thing i appreciate most abt this game- i like that space channel 5 vr doesnt have cash grab vibes. i Do genuinely believe that they Wanted to make this game For the people who are still obsessed with it, and that they ultimately did what they set out to do when they intended to scale certain aspects of the series up conceptually to match the way the fandom perceives it nowadays. but like i’ve said before... i’m not going to Disagree with the very common conclusion that it Needed to be longer, or at Least more intricate plot-wise. one of my fun and fresh excuses for sc5vr being as short as it is is because you arent really supposed to be playing vr games for too long anyways, its really disorienting and kinda painful, but even that doesn’t account for why so much of the game that we got is a rehash of old settings, concepts, songs, and characters. [i dont even have a problem with reusing old songs, i just think the ones they chose ended up being misleading]

for example i think it makes sense that the first report is a remake of the first games first report on the surface, it’s meant to take you back to the way the first game felt and give you an idea of what it means that the games classic scenery can be rendered in actual high quality detail now [same with the recurrence of events like encountering the space pirates in the asteroid belt/the last battle against a villain being singing to it about what it’s done wrong], but i really thought, like, report 1 was going to end up being a simulated scenario for the benefit of lou and kee’s training... which i dont think ended up being the case??? i think they really did write ‘ok here you are in the first game’s setting again, fighting the old enemies again, because... :^) ok have fun playing report 2!’

and then whats report 2... you fight another old boss from the first game... but theres Still no clear villain or motivation for anything thats happening... and there wont be until like... basically the end of the game...

like, glitter is a really cute character, but its kind of underwhelming that shes just a random citizen who was kidnapped by an entity that we NEVER LEARN ANYTHING ABOUT... like part 1 was extremely notable for being about corporate greed and corruption, part 2 honestly wasnt that political in comparison but at least made you do a think wrt purge’s motivation and his methods, and this game just has a plot device that feels like it’ll do smth but then ends up not doing anything beyond what we already learned about it from the information on its character bio before the game was out. if it turns out that cell x is actually relevant again in a future entry in the franchise and they do have a more developed concept for what cell x Is in mind, i’ll do an entire backflip, but for now its just chalked up to being the result of More Space Hijinks that dont need to be explained

ESPECIALLY WITH ALL OF THE ALLUSIONS TO CELL X BEING AN ENTITY THAT FEEDS OFF OF DANCE ENERGY... it had me thinking that there would have to be some New Method of fighting it off that didn’t just lend it more power in the process, but nah apparently just tacking on the disclaimer ‘*this dance energy is not for glitter’ is enough to turn it from smth it can consume for power into big attacks you can use to kill it... like honestly it sounds like im asking for a lot from a game that has Never made too much sense, but considering that in part 2 they could add details like ‘oh didnt you know purge can open pocket dimensions? ulala is capable of manifesting tangible dance energy and the only other person who can do that is purge???’, its not like they havent come up with weird new shit for dance energy to do within the plot before. they just didnt do it in this game fsr

like did anyone else think that cell x/glitter was going to be the result of tossing purge out into deep space and him encountering the sc5 universe’s equivalent of an eldritch alien creature, smth more bestial than morolians?? even if purge wasnt part of it, when you say ‘uh oh, this guy Eats this society’s only source of energy!!!’ i expect the stakes to get HIGH, and i want the ramifications of it to be kinda STARTLING, because blank wanted money and purge wanted to ritualistically end the world but something this near to an ecological disaster that would force an entire paradigm shift hasn’t occurred yet in the series?? its totally new!!! there’s a lot they could do with this but OH DONT WORRY ABOUT IT EVERYONE ulala knows how to make dance energy kill cell x instead of feed it she’s got this we’re good no need to investigate more into all that

i can’t explain why the game is like this. and i dont expect grounding to address it in any meaningful way either. i’m sure they’re Aware of these complaints by now- the game reviewing community has Not been kind to sc5vr specifically due to all of these shortcomings [i didnt even touch on the issues with motion sensing and how many of the games mechanics were removed in favor of smth presumably easier to program yet much less satisfying, like Secret Moves just being mini quicktime events and Turning Your Ratings Into Stars just being replaced with the standard Three Strikes You’re Out method of scoring], but the pr team still seems very enthusiastic abt the game and is still promising dlc and potentially even more games in the series after this one- heres hoping that they’ll at least take these grievances to heart and consider making the experience not only more accessible [aka it will... go back to being a rhythm game with controller input.... and not... an exclusive vr experience...], but also as immersive and detailed as the old games, with less reused plot beats. i can let some of it off the hook in this game simply because i’m aware that it began its life as a tech demo that was only supposed to be that initial first report from the first game But Happening All Around You!, but i Really dont think they could get away with doing this little to expand upon the groundwork set by the first two games again. not with the way people remember part 2 being such a vast upgrade from part 1... the bar had been set so high that this just felt like a huge backslide into something even sillier and harder to take seriously than part 1 before we had any idea what kind of staying power the franchise would have as a hallmark of sega’s quirky antics. like... this game is what i think space channel 5 looks like to people who don’t understand the appeal of the first two games. and that scares me

but i guess for the most part, aside from wishing they had done more to revitalize the setting and the lore of the sc5 universe itself, im kind of glad it didnt do a lot to change the existing storylines the characters have kinda forged for themselves- here i was stressing out that they would pull out some plot development that would utterly and drastically change the way we talked abt the series for the rest of time, but so little happened and so little was added to the bank of sc5 lore that we can kind of all just carry on as usual and keep having the same headcanons we always had.

BUT!!! there ARE a lot of cute little details here and there that make the experience feel wholesome and like i said not an utter cashgrab- like so many of the character profiles referencing previous games [all of the references to npcs in this game being relatives of the npcs of the last games made me lose it] and how often ulala changes her expressions up and looks right at you and talks to you. the new music they wrote for the game also all slaps and everyones redesigns [if they got a redesign... rip pudding] are stunning

one of the most important things they did in this game was give a nice sort of Update to every character.... for example explaining that ulala isn’t a rookie reporter any more like she was in the first 2 games, that she’s moved up to being in charge of training new channel 5 reporters, and that while pudding is still somewhat stuck on her rivalry with ulala her career isn’t stagnant either, she was just cast in a romcom series as the lead... which is really nice considering how in the past she was portrayed as somewhat of a loser with almost no remaining fans left from her idol years

and you knew i was going to bring up jaguar at some point HES ALL OVER THIS GAME AND IT LITERALLY MADE ME FEEL LIKE MY LIFE WAS WORTH POWERING THROUGH THESE LAST FEW YEARS AND ALSO LIKE IM A GENIUS FOR SPENDING SO LONG POSTING EVERY SINGLE DAY ‘NO REALLY, HE’S THE SECONDARY PROTAGONIST OF THE STORY, ITS ABOUT CHANNEL 5 AS A COMPANY AND THEIR IMPACT ON EVERYONE WHO HAS EVER ENCOUNTERED THEM AND THAT INCLUDES JAGUAR AS WELL AS ULALA HES INTEGRAL TO THE PLOT BC SHE WOULDNT BE ALIVE IF IT WEREN’T FOR HIM’ i feel like it’s really incredible how in this game he has genuinely nice energy and doesnt withhold praise from ulala just to be helpful in a mysterious way later and he like HAS FRIENDS now. like consider how he went from disgraced former ch5 employee who got mad every time he saw them, to kidnapped robot henchman kinda humbled by the fact that now the turns tabled and ulala had to rescue Him, and now 3 years later his bio is all about how he has a new tv show thats super popular and he has a new entourage of ladies who he considers his '’’’’’comrades’’’’’’’ within the station he founded??? AND AFTER 20 YEARS THEY WERE FINALLY ABLE TO GIVE HIS MODEL JUICY ASS CHEEKS??????????????? NO MORE PANCAKE BOOTY???? THE BOY HAD A GLOWUP AND NO I WONT STOP TALKING ABOUT IT

WHEN I SAY MEOW MATCH THE POSE MOTHERFUCKERS THIS BLONDE BASTARD GETS TO BE IN CHARGE OF THE HUNDRED STAGE BATTLE NOW TOO THIS IS THE YEAR OF THE SPACE PIRATES BAYBEE

lmao im kind of afraid of talking to my profs from major thesis project course about my project, cause im THIS CLOSE to going off on both of their stuck up faces. I didn’t want to talk about this on this blog for at least a month now cause i know its gonna turns to 30 paragraphs and everybodys gonna hate me for that. but i have to talk abt this now cause i gotta cope lol!!! 

i s2g everybody in the class knows that they have been anything but helpful when it comes to supervising our project, and their suggestions are usually so subjective af. The fact that they structure a 4th year THESIS course with full year course load into ONE TERM is already hazardous as it is, they literally failed several people’s mid term progress report presentation on ARBITRARY TERMS (i passed, fortunately, but my grade was not pretty). it was twenty fucking five present of people’s overall grade, and it’s not like people didn’t meet the very VAGUE guideline they provided for this presentation--which is just to show them what we have done so far. It was a progress report, and I’ve talked to several people in class about it, we all agree that we are not supposed to be graded on WHETHER OR NOT THEY LIKE OUR WORK OR NOT, they are supposed to grade us on how much we’ve done. In their feedback for me, they makes suggestions of what i should have done and it’s like??? well you didn’t tell anyone what you wanted from this presentation, so are we supposed to just KNOW? Also, they literally could not muster a convincing reason for FAILING PEOPLE in the class on that mid term presentation!! and 5 fucking people went to the department head about their shit experience in the course, and if worst comes to worst, i WILL be the sixth person to go the department head. 

last time i talked to one of them--frances-- about my project, she obviously didn’t like my unfinished rough cut of my short film, and decided that it was garbage based on that. Like i didnt do sound editing, colour correction--ANYTHING yet, i just put together some raw footage!!! she hasn’t even SEEN the entire thing, and I’m drawing inspiration from a director with very volatile and strange visual style and editing! A director that she obviously isn’t at all familiar with!!! (its wong kar wai, btw) SHIT even some of his films are hard to appreciate if you are not used to his kind of cinematography, and he’s a internationally acclaimed director that shoots his films on A. BUDGET, with PROFESSIONAL ACTORS WHO ARE MOVIE STARS, professional cinematographer and a decent sized crew of professional people, AS WELL AS BOUGHT EQUIPMENT THAT PROBABLY DOESN’T BREAK ALL THE TIME. Whereas im a film student shooting with no crew, no help from my goddamn profs that are supposed to supervise our projects, and shitty ass equipment that does not WORK sometimes (it’s such a thrill to work with audio equipment because oh bOY sometimes the shotgun mic just doesn’t record for no reason lol).

Honestly ive been really fucking depressed bc of this project, well im depressed in general but there is also this fucking project that makes it worse but its fine lol, and bc of that i had a hard time even touching the project. I reshoot two core scenes last Sunday and that’s all i fucking did. We are supposed to present our WIP for final feedback this week before presenting our work for real next week, and obviously im not ready since i can’t edit this film i just can’t. Every time i opened the editing program, and started editing i just couldn’t do it after a while cause i felt like no matter what i do its gonna be horrible and i will get a bad grade on my final project. I started to doubt my script, i started to doubt everything, and i couldn’t edit anything after Frances basically passed final value judgement on a VERY ROGH AND WIP version or something she doesnt like or yet to understand. And its stupid, but because of that fear of not achieving what i wanted to achieve, i couldn't do much editing. After I talked to Frances 1-2 weeks ago, i accommodated by planning to make a video essay to give context to the short film i will be screening either fucking way. I was gonna do a paper before deciding to concentrate on shooting the film. Frances straight up told me that i shouldn’t even show this film, she’s like “do you want to show people this?”, yes bitch i actually do, and how do u know its gonna be shitty when it’s NOT EVEN close to finished??? 

im just ranting here so i can calm myself down a little before going to see her today. I had good experiences in three of her classes before (got all As from them), PLUS she WROTE my reference letters for grad school, so i dont really want to end up in her bad book; but i know shes not the best prof and i took issue with how she structured her courses before (dude i learned NOTHING from screenwriting class, cause she just goes through the processes of writing a ten page screenplay and that’s fucking it. it doesnt matter i got an A from that course i just didnt learn much). Believe me, i was raised to not question teachers’ teaching methods and authorities, and if i take issues with profs and teachers it’s usually because they have done something seriously wrong. I dont think they gonna budge on giving me a better grade for mid term, but at least i want her to know what my main argument is in the video essay, just so i know if she has any constructive criticisms to give, because there is no point showing her a slightly updated version of the rough cut lol. im gonna have to muster all the strength i have to at least make the video essay by tomorrow morning to show to the class, and maybe a good clip from the film. Jesus Fucking Christ, i actually need this course to graduate cause its a 400 level 4th year course. Even tho i dont think im gonna fail i kinda want a decent grade for this course lol. 

talkin abt school stuff, yet again

so i technically really didn’t have to go anywhere today because my only class on tuesdays is the painting one but since i already went to the monday session i didn’t have to show up for the same introductory first day stuff a second time right

so i could’ve just stayed inside of my lovely air-conditioned abode and avoided the 110 degree heat but since i love 2 die i decided to check out the computer art class instead, even tho it was supposed to be my last resort in case i didn’t get into the other classes (which i did, so there really was no need) 

i hadn’t actually registered for the painting class yet because i was waiting for my teacher to get back to me with a new add code so i was just like ok......... im just gonna check out the computer class and if i like it i’ll take that one instead of painting because like

my main issues with the painting class are that it starts so early and that im not all that into painting anyway, right, and the computer class seemed like it might be the perfect solution because 1. it starts at 11:30 and 2. it focuses on digital art programs, which are directly relevant to my interests

but..... i dont think i’ll be taking it..,,.,,..... ahhh

because ok so basically the computer art class is about teaching u how to use adobe illustrator and photoshop, and like yeah those are two very useful programs to know, especially as a digital artist, but like. idk, we started today by messing around with illustrator and the teacher didn’t really.... explain things enough? like he showed us the pen tool and some selection and transform shit, super basic things, but he didn’t really give us a proper tour of the program, it felt more like “here are some things you can make, you can do this and this and this” but he wasn’t very thorough and went kind of fast and mostly was just silently messing around while the rest of us kind of just ended up doing our own thing

and the way he put it was that rather than guide us through the program he wanted to just throw us into the deep end right off the bat and help anyone who seemed to be floundering and boy did i flounder today

i mean overall the way he teaches is probably fine and i’d probably get the hang of it eventually, like today was the very first time i’d ever used illustrator so of course i was gonna struggle, but. it seems like it’ll be more struggle than it’s worth??? like okay, here’s the thing

first of all, when am i ever gonna use illustrator or photoshop outside of this class. i mean, probably if i end up going to art school i will, but that’s not even a definite thing at this point. right now the main art program that i use (or am at least learning) is clip studio paint; adobe programs cost money that i don’t want or need to spend, and honestly, when it comes down to it, if i ever need to learn those programs for any reason i could just look up fuckin youtube tutorials and get all the same knowledge for free and with a more straightforward teaching method

like, this class might be convenient, and i even talked to the teacher at the end about my situation with digital art and what i was hoping to gain from this class, and i mentioned that i usually use a tablet to draw and he was like “yeah we have tablets in here that we rent out to students, we even have cintiqs” like, it would be cool to try out a cintiq right

but then he showed me examples from previous classes of the types of assignments we’d be doing, and just...... they looked incredibly fucking boring ok they didn’t look challenging at all, i feel like the most challenging aspect of the class would be wrestling the program to get it to do what i want, and that doesn’t.... appeal to me at all....... like i think this class would eventually teach me a lot about illustrator and photoshop but i’d be bored to death the whole time and frustrated constantly (and besides i pretty much already know a ton about photoshop anyway?? i mean my version is so basic and watered down but i get the gist of it)

so yeah i think i’m just not gonna even bother with this class, though i feel kind of bad because i got an add code from the teacher and everything,;,,,. i told him i needed time to think it over & decide whether i’d be taking his class or painting but at that point i’d almost pretty much settled on painting,,, i shouldn’t feel bad tho bc im literally just this random student he’ll forget abt in like 2 seconds but i still feel guilty like i Lied by being there or smth

anyway the computer class was a nice fantasy with its connection to digital art and lovely late-morning start time but i guess now it’s time to face reality, break out the art store coupons & set my tuesday-thursday alarm for 6:50 am with the caption “rise and fuckin shine, BITCH” for the next three and a half months oh boy