#update 2: the way i was proven fucking right immediately after posting this. you people are not real.
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so like are we done with the idea that james is a victim of the internet harassment mob or whatever you guys like to call it when in reality no one like forced him to be part of the public eye again. he had multiple times to disengage but he threw himself head first into the spotlight with some half assed apology where he used his dead mom, illiterate dad, and like 293 mental illnesses that he was in the right to do a widdle plagiarism but it’s not his fault! it’s everyone else’s fault for not being nice to him about it!!! how dare these people bring these issues to the public not thinking how james would feel about it! like ppl are forgetting there was notable period of time james went off air entirely. and every time he’s jumped back it’s always attempts to paint himself as the victim.
like be real for a second if anyone was weaponizing the internet harassment machine it was james somerton. he knew what he was doing when he posted that note. he knew the shit his victims would get for having the crime of (checks notes) voicing out their issues with him. he knew there’s people out there who are foaming at their mouths to use anything they can get their hands on as a “gotcha!” at hbomberguy (right wing people yes, but don’t act like it’s just them i’ve seen plenty of lefties trying to prove they’re superior to harry). they don’t give a shit about james, not really. he’s the dude who hbomb did a “hit piece” (yes that’s a term i’ve seen people use) and that’s what matters.
not to mention the writing that’s also very clearly targeting nick who’s basically cut ties with him at this point. james pushed all the burden on nick by saying it’s their fault, actually. he’s one of the co-writers and everything going to shit was nick’s fault when they had the audacity to move. james is faultless! with james still trying to monetize stolen content on the blatant lie that he’s doing this for nick’s sake as a portfolio. acting as if nick isn’t an sentient human being who could upload their own content, as if nick would even want to be associated with james at this point. this isn’t a teenager being harassed for an honest mistake, this is a 35-year old con artist who’s stolen hundreds of thousands and peddled the most vile shit as actual history but realized he was in deep shit and weaponizes very serious mental health issues as a “i’m just a poor little gay baby!! my alter ego did it!!!”
for the record if you’re among the people who tried to wash down james’ crimes as “he just did plagiarism!! it wasn’t that bad of a crime!” fuck you, man. i’m not kidding.
the fact i’ve witnessed people whitewash his acts of racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia, antisemitism and misogyny (in fact i’m probably still missing a few things here), and say he’s being harassed by the internet just because he stole articles makes it so clear they have no fucking idea what they’re talking about. his shit isn’t fucking erased just bc he realized that he has to handle the consequences. he’s grasping at anything he can at this point to make sure that even if he’s not coming back, he’s sure as hell trying to take anyone he fucking can down with him.
he doesn’t get a second chance to be a content creator at this point. he doesn’t get to show himself to do better. he needs to fucking leave. and if he tries to publicly make himself the victim then he better know that he’s going to get public backlash.
if anything situation proves to me that he can never be trusted with a public platform ever again because he will immediately guilt people into feeling sorry for him.
#i’m going to be bitchy about this for the record#james somerton#hbomberguy#the funniest option is if james fakes his death like a fourth time and someone takes a pic of him in like a burger king or something.#updated i’m not 100% sure on nicks pronouns but i’m using they them just in case#update 2: the way i was proven fucking right immediately after posting this. you people are not real.
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Alright, and I am back with another update! But first, some stuff a friend noticed in the first few pages and mentioned to me that I didn’t take in when I went over them on my own the first time:
The park they’re in as kids is pretty close to the apartment complex Izuku and his mom live in! Considering that said apartment complex is right there in the background. Which probably isn’t a huge thing, but a neat thing to note.
The age these kids manifest their quirks at seems to be more preteen / teenage years, though I don’t know whether that’s just because it is later activation or because there were (subtle) quirks before that, with the glowing baby just being the one that had people sit up and realize something was actually going on.
Endeavor ad! And it has the time of that event that day, too - 8:14 AM! I wonder what he’s advertising… or perhaps it’s a news report? An interview of some kind? It might just be a ‘breaking news, we got Endeavor on our channel’ sort of thing. The only part that I can read is the first three katakana for the biggest text, which is ‘E-n-de’ and matches the wiki’s katakana for ‘Endeavor’. If anyone can get a good enough look at the smaller text in order to tell me what the rest says, I would appreciate it!
Just a few things, but obviously I need to up my observation game if I want to catch all this stuff!
[No. 1 - Midoriya Izuku: Origin]
So now we’re at Aldera / Orudera Junior High, with Izuku’s class being in their last year before high school. Since Japan’s schools start on the second week of April, we know this has to be that first week of school, because Katsuki’s still 14 and his birthday is April 20th, which would almost always be the third week of April / second week of school.
What is that writing stance. You are going to have an old man’s back by the time you graduate high school. I mean, I wouldn’t know anything about that personally, cough cough…
Anyways! We get a look at Izuku’s class and their quirks, and what a collection. Also, with an attitude like that, no wonder this school is seen as bad, like, what the fuck dude. Not exactly a competent homeroom teacher, are you?
The ones that I can see, from leftmost row to rightmost row, are [1] floating hair, stretchy fingers, dark matter, [2] smokey arms, spike fists, stretchy eyes, frog throat, some sort of flash/illumination quirk, [3] rocky body, ???, stretchy neck, flamethrower arms, extra arms, [4] sharp hair, big chompers, wedge face, [quirkless], mouth face (seen in the next panel and holy FUCK new sleep paralysis demon), [5] horns, telekinesis, [explosion], buff bod, ???, [6] wind control, ???
WHY.
But yeah, this also establishes the first rule of ‘don’t use quirks in school’ thing that… also gets promptly ignored the several other times we see stuff set in this school. Which, what a shock, people sort of sliding around inconvenient rules.
Anyways, Katsuki has proven that he hasn’t changed since those first few childhood panels way back (checks) ten pages ago. And Izuku is being… very shy and trying to avoid drawing attention. But no shaking, particularly, just… wallflower mode, more like.
But yeah, Katsuki is not exactly on great terms with the rest of the class, who are rightfully pissed off at him treating them rudely and calling them extras. Though honestly, I’m surprised that they’re surprised he’s aiming for UA, it’s not like he wouldn’t have been obvious about that for, like, years at this point. You’d think they’d all roll their eyes and be like ‘yeah yeah we’ve heard this spiel before’ or something. IDK.
Oh man, and Izuku already KNOWS what’s coming, look at how he’s hiding his face!
Katsuki is, of course, Fucking Extra and hops on his desk, and gets right into bragging, where, AGAIN, this should have been stuff this class has known about for ages, why are they so shocked?? And huh, interesting, he’s not only interested in surpassing All Might, but also in being one of the richest people in the world. Wow, I cannot even with him, especially knowing he lives in this house in particular:
Which, it should be clear, is an EXPENSIVE lifestyle when most families live in modest apartments because of space being so valuable in Japan.
God this is a fantastic image. I wanna frame it on a wall somewhere. Hori managed to convey all the emotions in one face and I admire the man for it.
With the whole class laughing, there’s a thing I want to note that fandom seems to not pay attention to: they note that Izuku gets good grades! I’ve seen fics that basically have him forced to sabotage his own grades to avoid getting backlash, but like… no, I don’t think that’s actually a thing.
[Also an aside, we finally see one more class quirk, which seems to be some sort of bulked up arm? It looks a bit like mummy bandages, as far as I can tell.]
Izuku gets into defending himself, saying there’s no precedent, but he IS defending himself against them, so again, he’s not cowering as much as some people seem to think he does based on fics, and clearly he’s still willing to stand up for himself to some degree.
...then of course, Katsuki blows up Izuku’s desk and sends Izuku sprawling. And is pissed that Izuku apparently thinks he, who is quirkless, can somehow be on the same level as Katsuki. Izuku swears up and down that it’s not about Katsuki, that he just really wants to try, and this somehow pisses Katsuki off even more.
I want you all to remember this image - save it on your computers, bookmark this post, whatever you need to do. We’ll come back to it in, oh (checks watch) about 284 chapters. Or maybe sooner in a separate post where I can put it under read more and avoid spoiling people more than this does. Because DAMN can I gush on this moment.
Anyways, we have a change of scene, right after noon, with a thief with a sludge transformation and,,,,,,,, legs and pants,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,
Where the fuck did those pants go, sir. Sir. What the fuck, sir.
Also, we get our first meeting with the OG dad, the sunflower man himself, who blooms into 255 kilos of muscle in one panel. Also, man I forgot about the fucking giraffe neck Hori used to draw him with, holy heck, why are you so l o n g.
L O N G.
...right, anyways, back to the school, which is apparently over for the day. The rest of the class is heading out, and Izuku’s back to his chipper self, even humming a happy note as he grabs his notebook-
Before Katsuki nabs it from his hands. There are a few people who’ve hung back who notice the title and pick fun at izuku, so I guess Izuku actually… doesn’t talk about his desire to be a hero that much in middle school, if the others are all so surprised about it. He apparently doesn’t even make his notebooks obvious to them, since this is the first time any of them seem to be seeing it. Which I mean, it makes sense if the class will tease him for it, but like. Even with Katsuki stealing the book, Izuku’s not super panicked or having a nervous breakdown.
But yeah, Katsuki just blasts the book, but! It’s just the cover singed (and edges) when we know he could have demolished that book entirely. Again, he’s definitely being a bully and a jerk here, but he’s got way more self-control than fandom likes to assume.
Izuku’s upset because of his damaged notebook, and Katsuki just huffs and throws it out the window while saying he’s gonna be the only kid from Aldera to go to UA. And Izuku, EVEN WHILE STRESSING, thinks of him as vain for thinking that way! That’s not the first thought of someone too terrified to do anything.
Edit: As pointed out to me in [this post], it was Katsuki’s crony who was thinking of him as vain, not Izuku. My bad!
Also note the lack of damage to Izuku’s school uniform. I know I’ve seen fics where there’s a hole made and a burn scar left that Izuku has to tend to, but Katsuki, again, has not directly used his quirk against Izuku. We’ve never seen it, just the smoke and flash used for intimidation. I’m getting more and more confident that Katsuki has never actually used his quirk against a person, which I’m probably gonna get a bit more into during the battle training in a few chapters.
But yeah, the cronies / extras basically call Izuku lame and that he can’t face reality. And then we get this scene:
That’s not the face of someone afraid. That’s Izuku’s determined face.
Izuku is about to stand up to Katsuki again. The way he always has, the way he always will. There has never been a point in the series where Izuku has NOT stood up to Katsuki when he feels it matters, and that’s part of the reason Katsuki is so pissed with him every time he does - because Izuku REFUSES to see his place! Not once!
(Please, for the love of god, respect the Izuku who didn’t need a quirk to stand up to others. Who isn’t ‘broken’ or ‘terrified’ of Katsuki or anything like that. He’s a stubborn kid and we Stan That.)
Izuku, however, is not confident enough in this situation to want to press the issue, so he relents and says nothing when Katsuki prods him to escalate things. And then we immediately get to the ‘you idiot, don’t fucking suicide bait!’ but you can tell it’s been a stressful few moments for him.
So yeah, the summary of this section is ‘Izuku is not an uwu suffering babey, and Katsuki is way more restrained than people seem to think.’
I’m cutting it off here since, again, we got a lot of info and character examination, and honestly this whole chapter is a long ass one (55 pages!!!!) and it’s establishing the entire setting from the ground up. And honestly, I’m just vibing in being Right about how I’ve been viewing the characters at the start of the series… even if i am guilty of sometimes playing with fanon for my own means…
Still, this is fun! Hopefully y’all are having fun too!
#chapter 1#opening arcs#readthrough#boku no hero academia#my hero academia#midoriya izuku#bakugou katsuki#yagi toshinori#we respect canon characterizations in this household#I love how hori handles characters and I will definitely be taking notes through this#this time with the formatting done BEFORE I post it
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Podcasts in review
Simple and nice list of all the podcasts I discovered in 2020. I had to go to the office alone during quarantine, don’t @ me. So, let’s start with fiction.
- numbers in brackets the number of episodes listened and existing, not rating
- * indicate currently ongoing productions
- cursive is for the cool kids
Friends at the table (a lot/a lot)
Hands down, the best actual play podcast out there. It rarely happens that an improvised TTRPG would end up creating a world that is as rich and engaging as the Divine universe. Also Austin Walker is my second philosophy teacher (first was Detective Pony).
Tomorrow the void (8/8)
Quantum entanglement runs in the family. Moody. Sad mad old men. Includes a robot ball.
This planet needs a name (5/5) *
The most heartwarming post-apocalyptic tale, a rare sci-fi with a soul. Instills the desire to grab coffee with all the 7 characters after the prologue. Hopeful, mindful, soothingly slow paced. The new world will be better if we try.
Lighthearts (4/4) *
A new queer community space is learning to cope with ghosts and new ways to connect people. Just all around warm and nice. From the same people who do This Planet Needs a Name.
Murmurs (10/10)
A very well produced (from BBC, duh) loose anthology (separate stories loosely connected to each other). An art house movie in audio form. Episode second includes an extremely touching love story and an instance of fucking a ghost.
The tower (7/7)
It's Celeste. Climbing the tower to face the challenge and free yourself from the human condition for a while. It's not literally Celeste, but you know.
Middle below (10/10)
A nervous ghost whisperer has one friend. The tag line of the show is "bad things will happen", and which has been an anxiety reliever and a call to action.
Folxlore (3/3)
Short horror stories from, by, about and for queer people from Scotland. The last one about pregnancy really hurted.
Dungeon economic model (10/10)
Less than 5 minute vignettes about why you should invest in dungeons. Some nice background worldbuilding.
London necropolis railway (7/7)
Ghouls and humans learn the true value of friendship and acceptance and defiance.
The vanishing act (2/?)
The promise of urban fantasy set in the 1930s Berlin underground culture, despite its magnificent appeal, is dwarfed by how annoying the MC is. He's the not funny type of an asshole - dumb, mean to his friends, hates women, utterly insufferable (and I can tolerate a lot of mediocre audio fiction). The production quality is top notch though.
Station Arcadia (3/?)
They are trying, and it's admirable. Would really benefit from a link to the map.
Midst (19/19)
Fantasy story set in the world where the accounting is worshipped as a religion, following three protagonists, and told by three narrators - simultaneously, which had proven to be an incredibly fun technique. Worth a listen to at least check it out.
Null/void (9/?) *
Anti-capitalist digital goddess preventing the marketing stunts of a malicious company. Way less cool than it sounds.
Circles (4/4)
Beth Eyre is great. The rest of the story (even though it has demons) - eh.
Forgive me (4/4) *
Sitcom in the form of confessional testimonies of people revealing their sins to a pastor, who himself is running from something. Yes. Surprisingly well made.
Next stop (10/10)
Sitcom about three wacky millennials. More energetic than endearing.
Less is Morgue (5/?) *
Sitcom about a ghoul and a ghost with an annoying voice.
Me & AU (11/11) *
Turns out, love can blossom on the battlefield of fandom shipping.
Old gods of Appalachia (12.5/12.5) *
Good spooky stories with impeccable atmosphere that are hard to follow for me, for some reason.
Temujin (5/5)
A small, tidy and inscrutable audio drama depicting Genghis Khan's origin story. I have not read The Secret History of Mongols, but I doubt it's that accurate to the text.
Godshead Incidental (4/4) *
There is a girl who tries to live in the world after her sister's disappearance. There are gods. There is an endearing fixer/private consultant with some family drama. Looks to be a very promising show about getting to terms with your trauma set in a fun world with fun characters. Updating slowly, but surely.
Left Right Game (10/10)
Audio adaptation of a serialized story on r/nosleep. High production values, alluring mysterious world, characters that exist only to be killed off every episode.
Valence (12/12)
MC with a special depression inner voice learns to meet new people, overcome trauma, find love, fight capitalism. Would not call the world or the characters particularly interesting, despite most of them being magic users.
Unseen (5/?)
A new anthology about magic from Wolf 359 people. One can listen to them say "are you watching closely" only so many times.
Whirlwind for hire (4/?)
Musicals are very ambitious undertakings, by default. This one has immortals, gods, nature spirits? Good for them.
Fall of the house of sunshine (8/a lot)
Podcast musical about a murder on a children’s tv show, accordingly fast-paced. A ton of tiny wacky details about the world of teeth and its pearly truth (and more!). The only even remotely sympathetic story was left to the antagonist.
Mockery Manor (6/?) *
An old amusement park, twins, family secrets. Even features a tiger! Not as cool as its premises promises.
Brimstone Valley Mall (10/10)
A band of lovable misfit demons trying to survive the reckoning from their dead end jobs.
In Strange Woods (3/?)
A musical that is unfortunately structured as a true crime. Features Patrick Page from Hadestown, so any and all faults are immediately forgiven.
The Cipher (2/8)
Textbook YA about a 16 girl that revels a bit too much in the pain it causes her. At first you think “oh, poc representation”, but it’s just so she can be an orphan chosen one.
Non fiction
Into the Zone (8/8)
An actually thought provoking and well crafted podcast. By pitting “opposites” against each other, valuable philosophical and sociological ideas reveal themselves in the space in between.
HiPhi nation
Real life alarming and amazing stories used to broach philosophical subjects. Sometimes veers into “we need more female drone pilots”, but for the most part interesting.
How to save a planet
Literally, how people survive catastrophes individually and communally - and how should you.
Reset
First contact
Rabbit hole
Things that go boom
#my blog i get to choose the music#the music is people talking into my ears#like ghosts#pod heaven#c:
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Gob Or Not? An Extremely Scientific Examination Of The Mighty Nein
A couple weeks ago, as an attempt to lure my friend Grim into Critical Role, I made a Goblin Inventory of the M9. this post is an updated survey of the team, slightly reformatted, mostly to be more accurate to my current understanding of the characters (as of Episode 58) and also funnier.
Abstract:
The goals of the initial report were two-fold. First, to examine the differences between being a member of the goblin species and Being Goblin, and second to determine whether Nott The Brave was truly the most Goblin of the group. The first findings showed that Nott scored a 40 out of 77 on the Goblin Scale, not an especially high score and far from the highest in the group. While the conclusions of this survey are not wildly different, the key to Science is repeating your experiments and coming up with not-exactly-identical findings, and doing this roughly a billion times and then you can say that you’re Probably Right (Most Of The Time).
The Goblin Quotient is determined by quantifying, on a scale of 0-11, how fully a person embodies each of the 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Goblins. These are, 1) Collection Of Crap, 2) Chaos, 3) Minionhood, 4) Gooey Center, 5) Laser Pointer Focus, 6) Furious Devotion, and 7) Hideous Cackling.
the full text of this very serious academic paper is under the cut and not behind a paywall.
1) Collection Of Crap
Top scorer, Caleb Widogast
As a wizard, Caleb has purposefully immersed himself in Collecting. He is constantly filling his pockets with spell components including, but by no means limited to, sulfur, molasses, honeycomb, bits of copper wire, and literal bat shit. it’s all just. in his pockets. being slimy. Other Caleb Collections include: Books, Paper, Friends, Magic, and Pain. unfortunately, he still has not collected a fantasy therapist to help him KonMari some of it into healthier boxes.
Nott’s new form has upped her Collecting habits, but this is a fundamental hobby of Veth’s. This quells some uncertainty about how much of this is truly Her. turns out, lots!
(Runners up: Jester, with the animals and haversack of holding, Nott, with the buttons. Special mention: Fjord, with his balls.)
Lowest Scorer, Yasha: a 6 of 11 ain’t shabby, but it’s not much compared to the others. This might be due to her having had less screen time, but she does tend to travel light.
Trait The Second) Chaos.
Top scorer, Jester Lavorre:
The M9 are a pretty Chaotic group, but Jester is the only one who’s built a religion out of chaos. She’s a high priestess of drawing dicks on things. Her magic powers come from a divine mandate to fuck shit up. Pets (to which she has added Yarnball) up the chaos meter, and their virtually indestructible plot armor means they’re not going anywhere execpt maybe home wth Yeza. In general, Jester’s childhood in the Lavish Chateau was sort of like a pandora’s jack in the box getting wound tighter and tighter and tighter past all physical comprehension, and though the lid has been lifted, the spring is only just starting to sproing. we haven’t even reached the Zenith yet!
After seeing some more of Veth and Yeza, it’s clear they’re not the most sedate of couples. Some eyebrows have definitely gotten singed in the Brenatto lab. However, since they aren’t the ones who burned it to the ground, a bit of Safe Science Techniques have to at least be assumed.
(Runner up: Molly, with the egg dick incident)
Lowest scorer, Beau: She’s not settling down, but she is… settling. Beau does her share of the check-ins, and has made the highest number of Agreements To Not Be Assholes Together. She might be in the running for mom friend??
C) Minionhood.
Top scorer, Fjord “No-Name” Swordvjore.
In CR, goblins are not often leaders. They will work together to target weaker and easy opponents, but aren’t typically masterminds. They aren’t prone to individual heroism and rarely, if ever, go out of their way to save a friend. In their villages, little value is placed on familial relationships or education, they’re not big team players, and everyone has a terrible sense of humor. So how does Fjord factor into this? By showing the other side of the coin, like how tactics that don’t rely on using yourself as canon fodder are more successful, or like how the power of friendship and diverse skill sets makes your team stronger.
Nott is not much of a follower, though she is an aggressive supporter. Though both these green kids were outcasts when they were younger, finding love with Yeza, stating a family and running a business has given Veth a strong sense of what she wants, and it’s not to be a leader or a follower.
(runners up: Caduceus Clay, committed WildMinion and Jester, Travelerite)
Lowest scorer, Caleb Widogast. He’s had his brush with Minionhood and the further and safer from it he feels, the more he wants revenge.
Four) Gooey Center
Top scorer, Yasha Nydoorin.
The Gooey Center is protected by a spiky, brittle, intimidating, crunchy, and/or off putting exterior. Yasha is our big, scary, tenderhearted wlw. our giant soft-hearted, angelic, full-of-boiling-murderous-rage, lightning-punching, funeral-not-having runaway who loves her wife and makes us cry. she shaves her arms with her sword. she uses books in non-traditional ways. she vanishes into the night sometimes in a very mysterious and tragic manner. she is our most Romantic player character, and she is super ripped and super queer, which are all aspirational goblin qualities. in practice, most goblins connect with their gooey center by being squished by someone like Yasha, maybe with a giant hammer.
Nott does more to protect others’ feelings than her own, really. Poking at her sore spots makes her stab at yours, but she’s pretty up front about how she feels. When actually fighting, she’s proven to be pretty adept at not being hit.
(runners up: Caleb, glass canon with a very crunchy exterior, Fjord, known horc twunk, Caducues, mystery boy, and Molly, who rudely showed us just how how close that center can be to the surface)
Lowest scorer: Nott! She’s actually…. Relatively well adjusted? Has emotional intelligence?
5️⃣) Laser Pointer Focus
Top scorer: Caduceus Clay.
Related to Minionhood, this is the aspect of Goblinry that the leader uses to achieve goals. the dogged focus of a True Goblin is powerful and direct, but can be redirected with the proper pressure or leadership, or lost when a cause or leader is not compelling enough or doesn’t provide adequate payment. the Laser Pointer Focus has an investigatory aspect as well, gathering little bits of info from every which way in moments, though the information gathered is rarely put to use immediately. Caduceus, who sees all but doesn’t always act on it, and is content to support the Nein and follow their meandering path to his goal, checks many of these boxes.
Nott knows exactly what she wants in life, which is her old life. She knows how to get it, which is to keep Caleb alive until he can learn a powerful enough spell. The difference between her pursuit of her goal and Caduceus’s lies in the fact that this isn’t a Hero’s Quest for her, with no Tests of Character or Symbolic Goals set or arbitrated by an outside force.
(runners up: Fjord, spiritually chasing a laser pointer at all times, Jester, whose laser pointer always points at chaos. Special mention: Frumpkin)
Lowest scorer: Beau. Maybe she’s still figuring out what her driving forces are. She knows what they aren’t, but Not Being The Same Type Of Shitty As My Dad isn’t a full thesis. She’s dedicated to protecting her friends, but until we see exactly what it is that she defines herself in opposition to (ie. get that sweet sweet Loregard) her intentions might remain a bit fuzzy around the edges.
VI) Furious Devotion
Top scorer: Beauregard Lionett.
Also going hand in hand with Minionhood (Minionhood has two hands), this is the trait that makes goblins actually willing to die in battle against adventurers and town guards and shit. It doesn’t require any comfort with or willingness to follow authority, it’s the more feral side of love that is reigned in by Minionhood in true Goblins. this is the part of the Goblin that drives the Collecting of Crap because it genuinely loves all the shit it finds. Beau is a prime example of this trait, especially because as she gets more and more invested in a person or ideal, her willingness to let go, even in the face of likely death, decreases dramatically. see episode 55 for reference, among others. she also has a rather Goblinish inability to effectively communicate the depths of her feelings, though this is sort of an aspect of her defense of her Gooey Center and something she’s actively working on.
Now here’s something Nott’s got. So much love. More love than can be contained by one family. Angry love, protective love, throw-all-the-dishes-on-the-floor-in-a-pile love. Draw the dragon’s attention so her friend she’s had for less than a day can get away love. She can and will sacrifice herself for the people she cares about.
(runners up: Nott, whomst loves, Yasha, very good at using the Fury to pursue the Devotion, Jester, whose love is so powerful it brings people back from the dead, and Caleb, even less able to discuss his feelings than Beau)
Lowest scorer: Fjord. This does NOT mean he doesn’t love his friends, or that he’s not sometimes very angry, but they aren’t connected. He’s still keeping everyone at arm’s length, tbh. Again, this is something that will be easier to judge with more backstory.
and finally 7) Hideous Cackling
Top Score: Mollymauk Tealeaf.
This is what a Goblin does when surveying their Collection of Crap and the Chaos they have caused. This is how they communicate with fellow Minions in the know, how they react to seeing someone else’s Gooey Center, to catching the Laser Pointer. This is the easiest way to express their feelings of Devotion. The Hideous Cackle of a True Goblin is un-selfconscious and entirely for the benefit of the Cackler. Cackling Hideously is an act of self love. You can find your goblin group by listening to the Discordant Chorus made by Cackling together, and when you’re all reveling in the cacophony, there you are. It’s a little hedonistic and a little punk and a little queer, disregarding conventional expectations of beauty or family or polite behavior, and all about diving deep into the things that you are and the things that make you happy. An extremely Molly philosophy, truth be told.
Nott Cackles, sometimes. More since Yeza is back. Unclear whether this arc ending in safe Brenatto Boys will leave her more prone to Cackling, or if she’ll miss them and be too sad :(
(runner up: Jester, gleeful agent of chaos)
Lowest scorers: Caleb and Fjord. Part of their higher charisma is being careful with their words and presentation. A truly Hideous Cackle doesn’t have time to be self conscious.
And now, the rankings themselves!
Nott The Brave
Collection of Crap– So. Many. Buttons. 10/11
Chaos– FLUFFERNUTTERRRRRRRRRR! 8/11
Minionhood– Eh. She’s more of a supporter than a follower. 3/11
Gooey Center– She’s not particularly secretive about her feelings or opinions 4/11
Laser Pointer Focus– Her main goals are all inwardly motivated and have not changed during the campaign. 3/11
Furious Devotion– Her love is extremely powerful. 10/11
Hideous Cackling– Reunited with her husband, she has felt freer to Cackle, she also seems to appreciate her current job a lot 6/11
total score: 44/77
Caleb
Collection of Crap– keeps everything in his pockets except for his cat, which is in his heart. 11/11
Chaos– Absolutely creates it, and is starting to revel in it. 6/11
Minionhood– Formerly a Minion, he is now hellbent on the destruction of the System. Good for him. 0/11
Gooey Center– Easily smashed by any large or medium-sized hammer, but maintains staunch denial of inner Gooeyness. 8/11
Laser Pointer Focus– Has goal, will travel. Difficult to redirect. 5/11
Furious Devotion– Slow to accept his own devotion, but very committed once he has. 10/11
Hideous Cackling– Having friends and talking about his feelings is good for him. He’s getting better at this. 3/11
total score: 43/77
Yasha
Collection of Crap– A whole book of pressed flowers! 6/11
Chaos– She doesn’t really revel in it :/. 5/11
Minionhood-- Serves a higher power and follows along the decisions of others in the group, even when not super enthused about them, like going to Xhorhas. 8/11
Gooey Center– All the Gooeyer for being well protected, and though her emotional walls are not the most formidable in the party, the amount of protected feeling was unexpected 11/11
Laser Pointer Focus– Loyal to two guides, the Stormlord and the M9, though the Stormlord can pull her easily away from the group. 9/11
Furious Devotion– Very very angry. 10/11
Hideous Cackling– Could stand to be a bit more open about it. 4/11
Total score: 53/77
Fjord
Collection of Crap– Collection is limited in scope and volume, but high in Strangeness. 8/11
Chaos– a troublemaker, for sure and certain. 7/11
Minionhood– Literally A Minion right now, summons demonic minions on occasion. 11/11
Gooey Center– Desperately wants somebody, anybody, to tell him he’s doing a Good Job. Adamantly refuses to admit that. 8/11
Laser Pointer Focus– this man cannot resist pushing buttons, be they physical, emotional, or likely to end the word. 10/11
Furious Devotion– He is angry, but it’s not focused. To get more points here, he needs to be less angry at himself. 3/11
Hideous Cackling– too self conscious! loosen up! needs to Cackle in his own voice. 3/11
total score: 50/77
Beau
Collection of Crap– Wants to know everything, is building a family. Some points lost for minimalist monk aesthetic. 8/11
Chaos– Aspiring member of Nott the Best Detective Agency, punches people to learn about them. BUT she is apparently a Voice Of Reason, which makes it harder. 4/11
Minionhood– would destroy me for even suggesting it. 1/11
Gooey Center– just! wants! everyone! to! get! along! 7/11
Laser Pointer Focus– Is becoming a moral compass? 2/11
Furious Devotion– JUST! WANTS! EVERYONE! TO! GET! ALONG! 11/11
Hideous Cackling– Tries too hard to be cool. Like yeah, she is cool, but she tries too hard to make sure people know. 5/11
total score: 38/77
Molly
Collection of Crap– Behold the coat. 8/11
Chaos– He has that certain je ne se quois. 10/11
Minionhood– The Moonweaver in not a fan of her followers following anyone’s orders. also he has his own minions and doesn’t want them 3/11
Gooey Center-- Loves openly and without reservation. and also…………………… 8/11
Laser Pointer Focus– Molly’s focus is loving his friends and knowing fuck all. 5/11
Furious Devotion– Found a tall sad lady and made his circus adopt her. gives money to orphans. 7/11
Hideous Cackling– Genuinely personified this action for two years. 11/11
total score: 52/77
Jester
Collection of Crap– In addition to being the Holder Of The Bag, she also collects doughnuts and cool shit. While most of her random shit has potential uses, it’s also a whole lot of random shit. Some of its weasels. 10/11
Chaos– Spreading discord is a religious mandate for her. Her powers come from chaos. 11/11
Minionhood– A champion of the Yes And, she is more likely to voice her opinion of an existing plan than come up with her own. She is definitely a better minion than the Traveler’s other ONE. 10/11
Gooey Center– Physically well-defended, she has the luxury of wearing her heart on her sleeve. 6/11
Laser Pointer Focus– It might seem like she’s easily distracted, but that’s actually because her surface level attention is secondary. her primary goal is actually Fucking Shit Up, and she’s good at it. 7/11
Furious Devotion– Gets attached and does. not. let. go. 10/11
Hideous Cackling– The end goal of practically everything Jester does is Cackling With The Traveler, and she often succeeds. 10/11
total score: 64/77
Caduceus:
Collection of Crap– Dude has a swarm of bugs living in his staff, and his backpack is full of tea. 8/11
Chaos– NOT a fan of stuff that disrupts the proper order of nature, but he is developing a wonderful and unique sense of humor. 5/11
Minionhood– Of all the M9, Caduceus has the strongest adherence to an ironclad and pre-written set of ethics and willingness to follow the path a greater power has laid out for him. 10/11
Gooey Center– Encourages everyone else to talk about their feelings, yet doesn’t talk about his own in the same way. Mysterious. 7/11
Laser Pointer Focus– Has a well-defined goal, but not a well defined path. 11/11
Furious Devotion-- You can’t be On A Quest To Save Your Home (And The World?) if you’re not devoted to your home. However we haven’t seen the fury? Structured devotion is different and not exactly Goblin. 5/11
Hideous Cackling– Cackling is a bit more intense than what he does, but he’s on the right track. 5/11
total score: 51/77
final ranking (out of 77)
38, Beau 👊
43, Caleb 🐱
44, Nott 🏹
50, Fjord 🗡️
51, Caduceus 🐞
52, Molly 🎴
53, Yasha ⚡
64, Jester 🦄
All in all, a pretty Goblin Group, and Nott, the only one who is physically a goblin, is not even in the middle of the pack. Clearly, true Goblin Spirit is something else all together.
It seem that perhaps the True Goblin Was The Friends We Made Along The Way. also Jester.
#critical role#cr2#the mighty nein#nott the brave#veth brenotto#caleb widogast#beauregard lionett#fjord#caduceus clay#mollymauk tealeaf#yasha#jester lavorre#critrole#is this a Whole Lot? yes#was it fun? also yes#is it better than the original version? yes
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Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta Hungary to Eurovision with yet another father song apparently
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Hungary, I love you, but you're bringing me down...
Never in my life have I wanted to fight a NF as much as A Dal 2019. The lineup was considerably less engaging with me than the previous year's one (but in the end it turned out to be even MORE engaging than the previous year's one), the design update (to which I got used to like 10 minutes later anyway) happened, the jury exterminated a handful of favourites, and a common Eurofan's worst fear apart from not having at least one glitzy-schlager-fiesta-wrapped entry a year occured yet again - the under/over-staging of songs with potential. What could've been a smooth sailing sweet ballad sung by a man with all his heart turned out to be a confused fisherman's piano boy tune with little to no emotional connection with the televiewer; a killer electropop soundscape piece sprinkled with intensity, fragility and neon-like colors was supposedly performed by a lost-on-stage housewive who probably has 2 kids and 2 cats at home; and that one folksy melody set to campfire suddenly lost all its fire with a snow backdrop behind. Truly a wrong time to become a full-on Hungary stan.
And yet, out of all this hot savaging and rampaging mess, entangled with fan-fave losses and one eliminee too late thanks to a common ESC song's worst fear (plagiarism accusations), emerged one gloriously victorious soul in the shape of a brave man of gypsy 'origo' who once has been elected to Eurovision to make his country proud with his killer ethnic track 2 years ago, and he nailed that right to the T, with the help of an onstage dancer and violinist (both female) to create some space for the song to breathe and exhale the passion of what he sang out of his heart by then - Joci Pápai. Yes, him again! Who did you expect, András Kállay-fucking-Saunders??
Anyways, his song this year is titled “Az én apám” (My father), written by him and partially co-written by a man hiding himself behind the name Caramel (and I prefer caramel candy more than the actual raw caramel tbh), who is probably finally lucky enough to see a composition of his go to Eurovision after he himself couldn’t quite make it as himself right back on the very first A Dal. This year he also wrote a cute little harmless ballad for a 16 year old girl but we’ll discuss her later (maybe), because it’s Joci’s time. Again.
As the title already indicates, it’s another song about a father, and unlike for AWS’s lead singer, Joci’s father is... alive and well, surprisingly, considering Joci is 37 and, at the time of his fatherly loss, Örs Siklósi from AWS was approximately 24-25. That definitely does not mean the parents’ loss can’t come in at any time of your year - A Dal 2019 had a contestant whose mother was murdered when he was NINE. 0_0 Not to mention that some mothers die during childbirth, too. Or even maybe some fathers die before children were born because all they need to be in part of babymaking is to give her satisfaction at the right time and boom, 9 months (or even earlier/later) of wait. But I digress. This is much different song from “Origo” as “Origo” had this ethnic upbeat rhythm to it, with violins included, and was mostly a captivating song with a little bit of rapping because Joci couldn’t fit so many words in all of the other verses he could have thought of for this song without having to extend the song for A Dal submission, so he had to do the rap, sorry “Origo” rap bit’s haters. “Az én apám”, meanwhile, has him project his feelings against a musical backdrop of a little bit more softer, acoustic, chill tune with a little poppier arrangement (and add some violins during his live performance on two of the A Dal shows, that are now a permanent part of the ESC version of the song!). And instead of the Romani onomatopoeia we’re getting “na na na, ya ya yah” in the chorus, which is as nice, but I’d rather “jalomaloma” out some bitches than have this.
For this one, he’s all alone, on his own, except for the other songwriter’s aid (dare I say that this personal song’s lyrics weren’t even written by Joci himself??? Not even a microscope??? Caramel you mastermind you). But mostly on stage, he’s alone. And shoeless. And with a starry-ish backdrop. Simple enough staging for a simple enough song, right? As it’s proven that simplicity can work in the past Eurovisions (see Sobral), and maybe, just maybe, Hungary does stand a chance for once again for being just simple, like Boggie was (but mostly she was more inoffensive and singing about a topic that’s still beaten to death every now and then, although this topic has fizzled out lately, which paved the way to all the love songs dominating NFs now, as well as the Latino craze). Though I doubted it was gonna remain so “simple” after it was revealed the Hungarian team is looking for everyone’s fathers’ pictures to be submitted to them. Yes, it was supposed to be one of THOSE kind of backdrops. I don’t even know what kind of use did Michael Schulte have of the fatherpics people sent HIM! Most of the backdrop focused of his lyric video aesthetic on the choruses, and I remember more of THAT, not the photos... so I doubted it was gonna work out on this one either. But in the end Joci wasn't satisfied with how all of those pics looked, so he will go for only showcasing his very own papi now.
Oh shit I forgot to talk what I feel about the song myself... well, safe to say that I didn’t warm up to it when I first heard the snippet ahead of every other A Dal snippet, but as in full, it just so happened to be nice enough, although I preferred “Origo” because reasons - not to mention that looking back at the A Dal 2017 state that I’ve seen from, I’d probably have had Joci as a legit fave to win it! And I already found Tótova to be too strange at first, unsure if it’s worth it to give them a second shot (post-2nd-listening-note: I did and it wasn’t that... bad?). And so, with low enough expectations, I didn’t even look into his chances all that further, especially with him being sick on the heat 3 day and only managing to barely tie-win in his heat just so he could dominate further rounds. But man did it turn out to be a beast later on.
So let’s, for now, say that I like it, but it’s just one of those artist return expectations that let you down because you really wanted to maybe see them again, but there would never be another song like the first one. Time will probably make me forget it all happened though and I’ll be able to enjoy it as much as “Origo”, as the “na na na” chorus part is really lovely enough. The song though, it is bafflingly too much reliant on too long verses in order to make the song just only have 2 of them and 2 choruses, and for the person that is biased for ‘2 verses - 3 choruses - bridge somewhere in between’ kind of songwriting that I am, it’s lowkey a glaring problem (as I'm finishing this weeks later than initially planned I actually got used to this structure and it even slightly compliments the song, but only slightly), as “Origo” has not only an engaging song but an engaging structure - nothing seems throwable out, nothing seems needed to additionally to be added. This one, however, is just there with its structure, and although hearts and minds are swayed by this, I don’t think I’ll get used to it this as a whole easy, unlike, like I said, time makes me forget the NF messfest and focus my love and support towards those that ARE going, not those that COULD’VE BEEN going. For now, I am not sure if I finished my review rant this properly, but for now, I’ll just wish Joci the best of luck, eventhough he’ll 1) never read this and 2) never understand this :( But still ^_^ Don’t let your nation down, big man and a father of two!
Approval factor: Despite reasons I’ll detail a little later, I’ll approve this entry, as I can’t be mad enough at Joci, for the humble man that he exists as, and the message he’s spreading, and the man he teamed up with. I approve of him but not of the background things.
Follow-up factor: From substance things, let’s just say it’s a bit of a yes and a bit of a no. No because ‘omfg it’s too soon for him wtf!!’ and I agree but if that’s what the juries initially wanted after seeing him in the lineup, and this return of his is now a bit more unnoticed and anonymous... but yes because it’s not a bad choice after AWS, because it was to be expected Hungary will send something softer after going out hard the last time, and they delivered the softness.
Qualification factor: depends on how does the audience feel for this emotionally, if Joci transmits his love for his father and that other supposed message as well well enough to the audience, in this simple staging of things (well if the fatherpic concept is still considered as ‘simple’ and nothing too cheesy or creepy). For now though I’ll be optimistic enough for Hungary - they won’t break their streak this year. If this simple-ish enough staging with just the singer on it doing his best worked for our lovely Ieva last year (despite these two not being a comparable songs), this would as well! And then settle around in top 15 provided enough people are there to give Joci just the right amount of love and patience that he needs (jury is a different question but since it’s not ethno-aggressive I think they might warm up to this as well, despite this being Hungary). Or even 16th-20th.
NATIONAL FINAL BONUS
A Dal 2019, with all things considered, needs to immediately die in a hellhole. Mainly because of the juries doing their dirty work by drowning the public favourites yet again, and especially the good ones (I've mentioned some of them earlier in the first paragraph by description). Let me demonstrate two of my favourites to the unsuspecting audience:
• Let’s get the elephant out of the room first. LEANDER FUCKING KILLS. Would you even think they’d have had any sort of victory of a NF potential?? Well, not off the AWS’s heels, considering both them and AWS play metal music. But their 2019 entry, "Hazavágyom", was something else. It’s if your dad went out with a couple of his friends to start a campfire somewhere in the woods, and then he took out a guitar because he remembered that he wanted to play something new he learned after listening to a lot of Irish folk music. And they all go off together - one rhythm drum, one guitar, the others jam out to the rhythm and create a fully-fledged campfire song, and a mysterious violinstress appears out of nowhere to help keep the party going. No really, it’s in the music video. Them being the most positive surprise of the lineup 2019 really melted my heart as I didn't expect so many people siding with another shade of their music. And even I started to draw myself into that song more and more, of how dancy and heartfelt it sounded with them decent lyrics about some sort of personal affection (maybe??), hoping that the jury will listen with their hearts and minds open to this Leander’s change of things and let them win the selection that way. But in the end... you know that Assi Azar quote. That’s right. And even so guess what - their first hurdle was their last. Sure, you can say they had a flawed live performance (no violinstress :( too rough vocals at the last chorus :((((((), but if you crush a future of good potential ahead, you’ll never know what might have you lost and how much would you have liked it better if things were slightly improved according to what you thought that needed to be changed in it. As it is for now, both "Hazavágyom" and Leander Kills ended up being robbed of Tel Aviv 2019. Hats off for trying, though.
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• And then we have this fantabulous guy down here, with the name of Gergő Szekér and his journey-like legendary folk-tale, written for us guys, to let the past go, just like a (little) bird, and keep what matters only - “Madár, repülj!” mesmerized me from its first snippet (with me additionally commenting on that he’s a nice guy somehow), and then the full version came - with some rapping, wavy electronic bassline (that we haven’t seen striving since last days of dubstep’s relevancy), great choice of instruments, THAT gorgeous way of singing this whole song - I was ready to run away from the disappointment I had from Leander’s flop and immerse in this song fully knowing that it’s gonna be ‘such a jury darling!’... but a-MOTHERFUCKING-las! The boi missed the mark by 4 points in the superfinal vote-up in order just to tie with the unexpected new jury darling that was even BEATEN by Gergő in the semi, Bogi Nagy (the 16 year old I mentioned earlier)... the last juror thought that shooting up Bence Vavra to the superfinal spot was a good idea, and I can’t blame him as Bence deserved to go to the A Dal final for the little that he has participated in, but NOT AT MY BOI’S EXPENSE. ;_; I truly doubt that at this day and age there’ll be anyone capable of filling in the Gergő shaped hole in my heart... well, I can certainly TRY cutting him out of me, but the pre-NF-hype-build, his song’s remix with his X Faktor’s friends and my imagination of him dancing in the Telavivian postcards and engaging with his new Eurofandom fam through live interviews will haunt me from here on end... ugh.
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And normally I hype up the NF participants that I supported last time previous year but then they become just artists for me and I wanted more of their song but not of the actual performer in Eurovision and therefore I don’t want them to ESC anymore, but if both of those above artists go to Eurovision at some point, I’m likely stanning both the hell out of their songs AND themselves, for who they are and who they stand for (hopefully nothing too controversial, we already have had a fanfave oppose gay marriage once so imagine a Hungarian A Dal winner doing the same at some point :O). Leander for his overall talent, Gergő for everything he is (and plus a little bit of mutual acknowledgment I’m gonna talk about later UwU bias is strong ahahaha).
Now with my sorrows out of the way, let’s highlight some more of this shit-fest:
• How the fuck wasn’t Dávid Heatlie’s staging a big meme during the season?? At least nationwide?? Seriously. “La Mama Hotel”, his actual entry, might not be too much of a standout (considering it’s just some by-numbers-synth-heavy song with its only major saving grace being a kickass guitar solo), and he did not perform all his best, BUT THE LAMPS. THE FUCKING LAMPS. Too many of them, and they’re slightly too oldfashioned, but so aesthetically-satisfying out of nowhere. If I were a moth, I’d immediately run to his lamps at any given time, and even stay with them after they’re eventually returned to MTVA’s stage props garage or to a Hungarian IKEA. Yes I know the moth meme is dead btw but so what?
Not to mention the guy himself is a bit of a meme in my eyes.
• I already discussed about this on my only one-time “Fanwank Assimilation” bulletin and I have no intent to reiterate all that I said from there on this one word-for-word but let’s go on anyway. Olivér Berkes, the hipster friend of Zävodi from A Dal 2017, returned on his own to win many more hearts with a soft piano/acoustic ballad “Világítótorony” (lighthouse), which couldn’t have been staged more... disconnectingly. To summarize, it’s somewhat of a love song inspired by a lighthouse symbol (quite literally lol), staged as if it was like fisherman taking care of one lighthouse himself, coming and going to do his thing. And like, there was no click with people that made Olivér stand out with something else other than just this ballad, like he did by constantly tele-qualifying with Ádám Szabó’s current girlfriend back in A Dal 2016 and being put in the superfinal with aforementioned Zävodi in 2017. His song itself was just a nice song and kind of a lot people liked it it seems, but I wasn’t really getting it until too much later on after Olivér’s heat was over, so I was surprised with his elimination, but my feelings I got from this song off my first impression weren’t disappointed over this. Check his performance here.
• Can I call Rozina Pátkai a highlight? You might have not heard of her unless you’re Hungarian and/or THAT into their jazz scene, as she’s big on there. This year though she has had a “noisy electropop” song through to the chosen 30 of the A Dal selection, and it was of the name “Frida”. Nothing was too bad until she also ended up having some unfortunate first-hand mis-staging. I did say at the beginning of this post that she kinda looked like “lost-on-stage housewife who probably has 2 kids and 2 cats at home”, and that’s just me not being fond of the outfit she got, though I don’t really imagine in better clothes, or do I? Nevertheless, the Rubik’s cube visuals of her pictures and bright pink lighting (where visible) looked great on her staging somehow (and the on-screen effects), just not the visual aesthetic of the singer’s. Witness it here. Also witness what I meant with the visual parts of things:
Triple woman?? now I’m scared
who’s this shocked gal in the background that got cubed???? UwU
curious woman telling you a bedtime story on TV
Sorry, these captions are a little too silly, but still. The jurors were alright with it except for one (and that’s also the one who killed Olivér’s chances too a little) and the televote was harsh (5 points, yikes, the lowest ever telescore of this A Dal year). Well, if it was studio, we’d probably see her through, but me personally, I saw it as a semifinalist at best when I first heard her song. Now I think it would have been decent enough for a final too maybe? As at least the chorus of this is good but I was never too hooked on the first verse as it always reminds me of the annoyingly soft indie pop that dominates the current music trends... well alas.
(Sidenote: maybe her moterly styling was dedicated to her future child she’s currently carrying? Yep, turns out Rozina is currently pregnant, just like one other A Dal contestant this year!)
• A personal highlight for me, besides that one time Gergő Sz. spoke out to an ESCBubble interviewer that “there’s this, like, a guy or a girl from Lithuania, and [he] said “yeah, I’ve some re-LAH-tivs [sic] ... in Lithuania and she was like *exasperated gasp noise* “Lithuania! Oh my God! We love you so much!”” (and for a matter of fact, it was me :) I’ve been only acknowledged once ever but the acknowledgement still exists!!), was discovering Fatal Error (and USNK but mainly just Fatal Error) before they entered A Dal 2019 with THE EXACT SAME SONG I FIRST HEARD OF THEIRS. Yeah. “Kulcs” music video featured Örs Siklósi, your favourite Hungarian screamer/singer, as a presenter rather than a part of the song, and a good-ass metal song did he present. And as the A Dal 2019 season rolled on at the beginning, Fatal Error were on my hyping target until some better songs came on and I didn’t feel like stanning Fatal Error’s song as much as I only stanned them because they’re here for the fans even more at even more times than I expected them to be - liking their comments on the band’s Instagram and Youtube posts - nothing against other contestants though (Leander included), if they have their lives to carry on and only sit down to check Instagram twice a week or so, it’s perfectly fine. :) I am quite sure Joci is probably like this also. Nevertheless, Fatal Error totally rocked, despite coming off AWS’s heels, and they’re at least encouraging other rock acts to come over to A Dal to open themselves to the world of many eager people discovering new artists every now and then. Just like the victory of AWS sort of did. Also one of the guys from that band said that their mother was delighted to see his band live, which brings us to...
• ...The Middletonz, a fresh new band for András Kállay-Saunders to leech on through next few A Dals now that the band of his name is no longer a thing. They, and yesyes, were the first ever fan favourites to emerge, mainly for sounding modern and having these artists people hate seeing back to A Dal only because of so many tries in the show, but happy to see back in hopes for them finally taking A Dal by their hands (and for András it’s a ‘finally AGAIN’ moment), but problems arose when the juries weren’t fond of both Middletonz AND yesyes, so much so that the frontman of the latter band spoke that he’s not coming back to A Dal again (unless he lies to us by coming back in 2022 or so). What amuses me more about The Middletonz, other than the song (which is fine for the most part, the D’n’B + acoustics mix is neat and catchy, but the beat drops harder than my will to live, and it IS bad (okay further listens later it’s not THAT bad but still... you gotta have had tried harder, men), is their nationality. Besides the hidden phantom member of the group that we never heard on any interview but appeared to be present (at least on the heat stage of the NF), here we have András, which is Hungarian-American, and his friend of the (nick)name of Slashkovic, which is Dutch-Iranian! That’s a colourful palette of double nationalities. And not to mention, despite it being a minority language, therefore a perfectly fine addition, some Russian language is heard in their song, courtesy of Slashko himself. That and on the A Dal 2019 final night Slashko had his parents watching him perform live for the first time... and based on the amount of years he has hidden that from his parents, it took him SO DAMN LONG somehow to reveal himself. Damn. Anyways, anyone up here to bet we’ll see András again, especially after him being reminded to “never give up” by one of his fans? Well, now that he has definitely seen Joci win A Dal twice on his both attempts, it’s highkey positive. Now with or without Slashko? We’ll see.
• The infamous plagiarism incident, which actually hung like a shadow on one of the contestants and those accusations probably scared him for life, and then the scandal outright knifed out a completely different contestant, Petruska (if you remember him from 2016, you know who he is), a little too late into the competition. If you were so certain his song sounded alike, you’d have either eliminated him in the heats or not accepted his song at all, which... maybe did sound like a Vampire Weekend song, I’ll let you judge.
I can’t be arsed to highlight anyone else because there was a lot to go after. Like, two young-bun A Dal acts that came from the same kidshow (different season though) and one did the song all by himself but couldn’t carry it quite as far despite his basic technotronic visuals, another was completely dependent on Caramel’s songwriting capabilities and fared WAY better than everyone else expected, tied-winning the heat with Joci, being the 3rd qualifier on the semi and beating Gergő Sz. during the superfinal vote-up by 4 points (and Feró’s endorsement lol). Yes the latter person I was talking about was Bogi Nagy. Have her song linked too if you want to listen to it. (I could have also talked about her sitting on a hula hoop and having a long extended projector dress to showcase her childhood pictures onto, but that’s just a song-saving gimmick in my opinion, and I don’t wanna waste my thoughts on her any longer tbh.) And USNK, those two that won X Faktor 2018, Soundcloud-rapped a song about HASHTAGS HASHTAGS HASHTAGS, gave a needlessly over-colourful stage show and took Leander’s spot of qualification to the semis through televoting (and additionally pissed me and borisbubbles off. Ya welcome for an indirect tag too!). Wow. But enough being a bitter Betty, I’ll have to let the bird fly until the next NF season and wait for some more eager names to cheer for, even if they don’t have an exciting “#háttérzaj” of nationalities. Until then, A Dal, my love...
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Never Too Late [Chpt. 2]
A/N: So over on my poll, people voted for me to get the next chapter for this and Welcome To Gotham out before I posted the 1k+ Celebration fics, so I worked on this update, then comes WTG Chpt. 3, then comes the 1k+ Celebration fics!
I hope this was worth the wait!
Warnings: Jason’s mouth.
Pairings: None.
Jason stretched, popping his back, and shook his arms out after. Patrol tonight had been mercifully slow after that major gang bust two nights ago, and he was content with enjoying the calm before the proverbial storm started back up again. The entire patrol had been peacefully silent, his comm muted, save the Bat chatter in his ear. As far as he knew Barbara was off on a vacation with the Birds, which was why she hadn’t kicked him off the frequency. She, to put it mildly, was not a remote fan of Jason’s. He didn’t care. It wasn’t a loss; Barbara had made her dislike for him known even when he’d been Robin. Yeah, it’d hurt back then, but at this point he was used to it. They’d never really had any sort of relationship—as friends or otherwise—so nothing was really lost.
He yawned, shifting to stand as he started contemplating whether or not he could make a quick stop by that Thai place by his safehouse when a certain bird’s chatter was addressed to him. Jason groaned, his head leaning backwards. In his ear, the bird wouldn’t shut up, even with the lack of response.
“Hooooood. Red Hood. Heyyyy, Little Wiiiing. C’mon, Hood, we know you’re probably there. Maybe. There’s the chance.”
Jason didn’t answer. Instead, he stubbornly shook his head—though nobody could see it—and marched off for the Thai place.
In complete honesty, he was in a good mood because of the slow patrol. So he was thinking about answering even as he heard another, smaller, bird chirp back at the older one angrily. Then a certain bat got into it, and his ears processed it as a bunch of screeching, chirping, and growls that were starting to give him a headache.
Suddenly, he realized that there was another little bird who hadn’t make a peep the entire patrol, and he wanted to hit himself with something. How hadn’t he noticed sooner? It’d been a slow night—nothing to distract his mind, except for thoughts about turning it in early.
…okay he was trying to think, right now, and the noises in his ear weren’t fucking helping, at all.
Before he could think about the decision he was about to make, Jason turned his comm on.
“Can you guys shut up for one fucking minute? I can’t hear myself think!”
Fuck.
“LITTLE WING! I knew you were there! See, Robin?”
“You have only proven that Red Hood is someone who cannot be trusted to keep to his own business without Oracle forcing him to do so.”
Jason snorted. “Fuck you, half-pint.”
“Language, Hood.”
“English, thanks no thanks you ugly-ass furry.”
He was surprised when Dick didn’t try to comment on the profanities and instead asked if he was done with patrol yet.
A brow raising—that literally nobody would have or did notice—Jason answered skeptically.
“Yeah… Why? What’re you going to ask me for?” He scoffed. “If you want to know my kill count for the day, it’s a whopping zero, same as it’s been every day for three months straight.”
He was trying, okay?
“No, no! I wasn’t saying anything like that—I wanted to know if you could check up on the other Red for us. He couldn’t patrol today because he pulled a muscle in his shoulder pretty bad two days ago. He’s been pretty upset about it, actually, because B won’t let him work on any of his cases.”
“What did you want me to do, let him use his shoulder maneuvering the machinery?”
“Yes, father, for then he would have further delayed his recovery and we would be spared his irritating and unnecessary presence at least whilst on patrol. I find it a satisfactory choice of yours to allow him to spend the duration of his recovery in his own apartment.”
“Robin…”
Dick’s sigh carried surprisingly well and Jason grinned a little. Little brat was really wearing on the all-patient Grayson, huh? Not his problem.
“So,” he interrupted before any of the others could start an argument or lecture, “you want me to make sure the baby bird isn’t messing with his injury and doing work.”
“That is a gross simplification.”
Jason rolled his eyes. “Shut up, bat-brat.”
“Yeah, basically!” Dick abruptly piped in before Damian could start cursing Jason out. “Would you mind?”
Pretending to think long and hard about it, Jason waited about three minutes before shrugging. He’d made up his mind when he noticed Tim wasn’t on patrol. He figured the annoying urge to make sure the kid was okay was just something left over from last month when he’d let Dick crash at his place and actually fucking rest for once in his damn life.
Jason always heard them prattling on about getting proper rest and taking good care of their bodies to Tim, but they’re all hypocrites. Bruce didn’t sleep; Jason was convinced of that now. Bruce had been Batman so long that he’d actually become a vampire, like the idiot thugs always whispered about whenever Halloween rolled around. Dick had the tendency to overwork and stress himself and his body. He always took on more than any human being could handle and was ridiculously hard on himself if he didn’t accomplish them all perfectly. It was annoying.
For them to go and tell Tim off about not getting enough sleep was such bullshit from them. At least Jason took better care of himself than they did—hell, Damian probably did too.
“I’ll do the solid, but you owe me one.”
“Awesome! Thanks, Hood!”
He’d been just about to crack a sarcastic response when Bruce spoke up and made his thoughts—and body, which was already heading in the general direction Tim’s apartment was—screech to a sudden halt, making him trip and nearly fall.
“…thank you, Red Hood. I appreciate it.”
Damian’s immediate squawk of alarm and cry of “Father!?” registered through the sudden rush in Jason’s head and he blinked twice before clearing his throat, yanking his thoughts back by the scruff of their proverbial necks, and replying.
“I, uh. No problem B.” Quickly he tacked on, “I’m not doing it for you, though.”
Then he was shaking his head—the sarcastic comment of that was traumatic popping into mind—and resuming his quest for Tim’s surprisingly comfortable apartment, muting his mic again as the birds started talking.
Getting to Tim’s apartment was pretty quick. Jason was crouched by a pretty big window—really Tim? Human-sized windows for an apartment in Gotham?—as he contemplated either knocking on the window or just cutting all the alarms and helping himself inside.
“Fuck it,” he mumbled as he started pulling out his stuff. Disarming security measures it was.
Tim was ridiculously paranoid or something. It took Jason five minutes to get everything, and even then he couldn’t rely on the scanner in his helmet because Tim knew about those, so he had to find the rest by eyeballing it and asking the classic, ‘If I were Tim’ question.
Only when he was sure the measures were all disabled did Jason crack the window a little and promptly exhale in relief when no lasers appeared to detach his hands from his body. What? Jason didn’t know what the things he’d taken apart did, he knew how to keep them from doing those things.
“Yo, Timbit!”
Jason looked around once he was inside, having removed the helmet, and a scowl etched onto his face when he flicked the lights on. God, the kid lived like his home was a garbage disposal. It was disgusting. Alfred would have a heart attack…
Where even was Tim? The place was moderately-sized and Jason knew for a fact that his voice carried well.
“Tiiim. Timber. Timmy. Timothy. Timmy bird. Timberly. Kid. Timothy Jackson Drake. Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne. Young emancipated adult who lives in bio-hazardous waste.”
Nothing.
Jason’s scowl deepened as he started walking to the bedroom, the only place where Tim had better be fucking sleeping, because if he wasn’t, there would be consequences. Jason would snitch to Dick who would immediately dive into panicky mother-hen mode and not leave Tim alone for more than a minute. No way was Jason above that. If he found out Tim was still doing work while he should be recovering…
Alfred was always an option, too, but Jason would pick up a little—a lot—to prevent any premature death by aneurysm.
Gently opening the door, Jason poked his head inside the room and waited for his eyes to adjust to the low lighting. There was a small lamp on the nightstand beside the bed, the warm orange-y glow softening the room, and it helped Jason make out a sleeping figure on the bed.
Eyes narrowing in suspicion, because he knew about the pillow and wig tricks—had pulled it once or twice with Bruce—Jason walked over silently, crouching beside the messy mop of hair and tilting his head a little as he shifted some of the hair. Tim’s sleeping face came into sight and Jason calmed down, satisfied.
He stood, gently carding a hand through his little brother’s hair on some weird instinct, and didn’t have to make sure Tim was sleeping on the good arm. If he were on the bad arm, there wouldn’t be a bulge where his shoulder was poking visibly from under the blanket.
Silent as he’d been when he’d entered, and feeling a little bad for being so loud calling Tim’s name, Jason moved to exit the room.
Or, well, he tired to make himself get out, because all the trash and clothes everywhere was seriously bothering him. Did Tim not know how to do laundry or maneuver a broom? Christ.
With a deep and silent sigh, Jason gave up controlling his urge to at least pick up, and bent down to start collecting clothes in his arms. Once he’d gotten it all and dumped it in a pile on the floor of the main room—after he’d cleared a space to dump it in—Jason hunted down a broom and dustpan to set to work sweeping Tim’s room up. He ended out taking a trash bag into the room too, because he had no idea what the hell half of the rancid-smelling stuff in the room was, and opted to just dump it in the bag and toss it out with everything else.
There were no words to describe how Jason felt once Tim’s room was clean. He still had to wash the sheets and stuff, but Tim was using them and Jason didn’t want to wake the kid. Instead, he took out his phone, checked the time, then texted Dick.
Game-over: Tim’s asleep.
Game-over: His laptop and stuff is still in the main room, but it doesn’t look like he’s used it.
Game-over: Did you know he lived messier than you?
Messages sent, Jason sighed and went to go clean the rest of Tim’s apartment. It was something he could do to help, and he was already thinking about helping the teen out on some of his casework. Jason really doubted he’d be getting any sleep tonight, as he finished filling a second black bag of trash and moved on to the third.
His phone buzzed and Jason checked the notifications.
Dickaster: He is?! You didn’t do anything to his drink or something?!
Jason scoffed.
Game-over: Fuck you. No I didn’t drug him. He was passed out when I got here.
Dickaster: wow.
Dickaster: Thanks for checking up on him, Jason.
Game-over: Just remember you owe me.
Dickaster: ;)
Conversation ended, Jason turned some music on quietly and went back to cleaning.
Three hours later it was four in the morning and Jason was finishing up, wiping down the last dish, because dishwashers were just a waste of water and time since they never really cleaned the dishes their entire purpose was to clean. Jason would die before he used a dishwasher.
Yawning when he’d put the plate on the drying rack, he stretched a little and sighed, plopping down on the recently-cleaned couch.
Propping his head up on his fist, and resting his elbow on the arm rest, Jason closed his eyes. He’d sit, just for a little.
Fuck. He’d earned the damn rest.
Jason woke up with a jolt, shooting up and off the couch before he got his bearings.
Where the fuck am I and why am I here?
His head whipped around and he calmed when re recognized Tim’s recently-cleaned apartment. Huh. Jason had forgotten about that.
Lifting a hand to rub at his eyes, Jason’s hand touched the domino instead and he groaned. Damn it, he’d slept with it on. Taking the fucking domino off now would be a bitch.
As he walked to the kitchen to make some breakfast, Jason didn’t think about the possibility of Tim not having anything inside of his refrigerator except for milk and—are those fucking goldfish.
He stood there, looking into the fridge, stunned, for about five minutes before he was grabbing an over-sized jacket that was probably Dick’s from the clothes he’d folded and washed, throwing it on over his armor to hide the red bat, and walking to the nearest supermarket to do groceries.
Were they going to need to hire a caretaker for Tim? The kid couldn’t seem to be able to take care of himself for shit.
The grocery run was quick and Jason regretted not swiping Tim’s car keys as he made his way back to the kid’s apartment with bags both dangling from and in his arms, as he also plotted.
Maybe they could get that Fox girl—the fuck was her name again? Sam? Pam? Tam? Tam. Tam sounded right—to at least check up on his little brother. Tim had told him about her, and Jason had sensed feelings that went past ‘just friends’. It would be good for him.
Once he was back at the apartment, Jason dialed Dick’s number—it was only six in the morning and Dick had probably gone to sleep around three, but three hours was fine since Jason knew Dick would go right back to sleep after the call—and waited for his older brother to answer as he started putting groceries away.
“H’llo?”
Yep. Dick was just waking up.
Pausing to word it just so it would spark Dick’s curiosity, Jason said, “Wake the fuck up, Dickface. I need to scheme with you,” and waited for it to work.
It worked.
“Scheme? What kind of scheme, and what are we scheming about?”
Grinning, Jason explained his master plan to help Tim get both his shit together and the girl. Dick laughed by the end of it, and agreed to help, saying he’d talk to Bruce about it later in the day. The call ended with Jason wondering what the fuck he was doing setting Tim up and making him breakfast.
What. The. Fuck.
His time to wonder where it all started turning into this ran out when he heard sounds from the bedroom. Jason quickly served up a plate, filled two cups of coffee from the pot he’d started, and slipped out the apartment from where he’d entered.
The alarms and traps were re-enabled faster than they’d been disarmed and Jason was gone by the time Tim made it to his kitchen.
Tags: @mizmahlia @boosyboo9206 @an-all-write-life @lovelywally-deactivated20181210 @avengerdragoness @crazyfreckledginger @red-balistic @solis200213 @emmadevr @tomscaprisun @whambamthanksbatfam @queen-fighter @jaybird-rednerd @shirokokuro @aaren-27 @osejn
#nxttime writes#my writing#my fanfiction#my work#fanfiction#Jason Todd#Red Hood#Tim Drake#Red Robin#Batbro bonding
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Hey dude, I'm sorry if my tag give you negative impressions and it triggers problems god knows you don't want to experience. It would be hard to accept different opinions on tumblr because we're communicating in a third medium, misunderstandings are bound to happen. If people in the fandom are actually making your life hell and actually personally attack you, I'm offering ears to your story. I know how shitty people can give anxiety and maybe sharing it can ease your burden. That if you want to
I have calmed down now (who knew chores could clear your mind right?). Also, I want this ask and answer to be public so people know what happened and don’t send either of us hate or whatever. (That’s happened before so it’s for mine and your protection). But if you feel uncomfortable with that, I will gladly delete this post and send it via submission.
Hey I want to say thank you, for apologizing. I would also like to apologize. I was already in a beginnings of a manic episode that I felt in me, and when that volcano just erupted, I “spewed the lava” onto you and you didn’t deserve that so I’m sorry about that. I’m trying to do better with it. And I probably should have been more clear, I will work on that too.
Yeah the five years of being on here were hell. (In fact I have a post labeled “Five Fucking Years [link]” that is the summary of the hell - but no where near explains exactly what I’ve had to deal with.) My blog archive on this one only shows 3 years, but I had two different blogs—and a failed remake for this blog—until I remade into “teamsharoncarter” (tsc is like, my tenth url on this blog omg).
I kinda ranted about the Five Hell Years of Fandom below, it’s kinda long, so it’s under a read more.
So my Fandom Life started way back in 2012 on fanfictiondotnet, and 2013 on tumblr.
First thing negative I ever had happen to me, is that a person reported and had my fanfic deleted because I “falsely advertised on the fanfic summary” as stated on the last review before my fanfic was just Gone. FFN didn’t even warn me or back it up at all. And because people badgered me for an update because I wasn’t Spitting Out A New Chapter Every Hour, the demands made a deadline for something that wasn’t supposed to have a deadline made me worry that people would hate me if I didn’t Immediately Post Now, so I posted One Paragraph chapters that were rushed and gross, because I thought they just wanted quantity, not quality. So then I started getting Hate Reviews because it was rushed and not “proper length for a chapter.” (Thank God for James Patterson for his One Page Chapters that taught me, who cares if it’s one page? You wrote down what you wanted in the story without somehow jamming it into another chapter.)
Imaginary deadline made me anxious like a school deadline, which made me feel bad for not posting anything for months which lead to more anxiety which lead to feeling like crap everyday for not posting which eventually lead to spiraling depression.
So I left fanfictiondotnet behind me. And did a dumbass decision to join tumblr. I’ve seen other authors on FFN talk about visiting their blogs and chat with them and stuff, so I thought it would be a fun place to hang with fellow fans.
I was right for a little bit.
Then I reblogged a post that upset one of my few followers. Next thing I knew, I was getting sent messages about how I’m a menace to society for liking this one couple or something (like if I remember correctly, it was a think it was thalico - about 7 months before Nico was confirmed gay). And so because I said “fuck off” because like, 13 years old, why do you wanna worry about that stuff when all you want is fun right? So whenever I got a message from them, I’d delete it. I’d block them over and over again, because either they were using friend’s accounts or a different computer, I’ll never know. After they were Proven Right that their headcanon was canon, they were like “see! i told you!” as if it was okay for them to constantly harass me because their headcanon that a character was gay was confirmed.
What made me finally leave that blog was that I kinda got into a fight, like we did, but they twisted the words I was trying to say, which I got irrationally angry at, and they vagued me, and also not so vagued me, (which is why I don’t take kindly to that anymore) to their followers, which lead to hundreds of anons in my inbox about how I should die and should kill myself. I tried to tell the person, but they had me blocked after they vagued me, and so I had my friend tell them, but all they got was a laugh in the face about how I was childish for trying to stop what I deserved.
So I deleted that blog, remade another one, where I would just reblog, not comment, not have ask open, not post personal opinions, nothing. Just a simple reblog blog. That didn’t work either because I started to feel lonely, and the only follower I had was my sister.
So I tried FFN again, new account, new fanfic ideas, new ships, new identity, and put a link to my blog on my bio and decided to open up my ask for any convos my readers wanted for the fanfic—specifically things like theories for the next chapter. I even made sure to have three chapters ready, so I would post one chapter per week, which gave me time to write the next one, to give a nice flow. Which was a big mistake. I started to get the same “UPDATE!” messages, so I would post the next chapter anyway because I have a compulsion to please people, which restarted the spiraling because I no longer had the cushion to have more time to write. I though the update demands would shut up if I gave them three in the same day. But then, I also got hate reviews for my fanfics in my ask. About how everyone was Out Of Character or Not Together With Their OTP. And so I deleted the accounts and just started over again.
With this blog.
I started not talking to anyone but the few friends I made on my previous blog. I reblogged a lot of gen stuff, then as a month went by with nothing, no sign of hate, I decided to reblog shippy stuff, I changed my icon to my OTP.
Which upset practically everyone.
I was sent not only that I should die or kill myself, but death threats and rape threats and just weird ass shit. I get sent messages that my otp/fave character was abusive (steve/tony, fave character is tony) and that I was an abuse apologist and that I should be filled with concrete to they could “smash me into a million piece or sculp me into a human being with more decency”. So since then I just would, block anyone who I saw was even a little negative toward the things I loved, because I thought, if I put up the barricade now, they can’t get me later. But then I started showing love to other ships and characters and it would just start all over again. And then people I already had blocked would somehow find my posts, screenshot them, post it making fun of it without removing my url, then send hoards of people after me. And when asked to stop, they laughed at me more.
I changed my url, and saved the old url with a redirect to a “not found” page so they thing I deleted and I was save for awhile.
I posted a picture of me as sharon for halloween - I didn’t have a white catsuit, but I did have a vest like Sharon did in CW so I wore that (2 people recognized who I was trying to be) - and then I got this ask: “You are ugly. So is Sharon. [link]” and yeah my answer was basically “wow anon lol pathetic hate”, it still got to me?
I don’t know what has made me stick it out with this one for so long. Maybe because I have a lot of followers now, maybe because of the friends I made, maybe it’s my “fuck this fuck you i’m staying” spite. I don’t know. I just know that I’m tired.
I’m tired of defending myself and the fiction characters I love. I’m tired of constantly being told by my own invasive thoughts and by real people, that my life doesn’t equal that of a fiction characters. That fiction characters are somehow worth more than me, a living breathing human.
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A Flashpoint Opinion Post
I promised I’d do one of these, and here it is! I have a lot of thoughts on the latest Flashpoint episode and I’m not going to lie to any of you: it’s not really all that positive. Of course, as always with these sort of posts, this is just my personal opinion and experience; plenty of other people might feel totally different and that is a-okay. My inbox is always open to asks if people have questions or want to talk about it, and I try my best to keep an eye on replies, so if anybody reads this and wants to open a discussion, you’re welcome to. <3
And as always, posted under a read more so it doesn’t clog up anybody’s dash if they aren’t interested.
But we’ll preface with a summary: what the fuck is going on with the writing in this living story? Also: spoiler warning.
Flashpoint has left a bad taste in my mouth. I’ve never been so quick to put down Guild Wars 2 after an update (I played it on release day and the Wednesday that followed and I haven’t touched it since,) and I’ve also never found myself so oddly jaded. I actually said to myself that if episode six doesn’t actually start making some goddamn sense in any respect and answering an increasing number of questions, I might not even buy the expansion.
Honestly, truthfully?
I don’t like the direction that Guild Wars 2 seems to be going in these days. Of course some of this ties into the big ol’ leaks going around, and I won’t discuss these on my blog at all until ArenaNet confirms them because I believe in confirmation from developers rather than taking leaks at face value, but I have some real concerns. Ever since Colin left, the direction of the Guild Wars 2 flagship has been slowly changing... and I kind of wish Mike would find somebody to permanently replace the position he’s temporarily put himself in in Colin’s absence, because truthfully I think he’s better at running a company than he is at implementing good game direction.
The biggest stickler for me that I’ll open with, as a really big Charr player : why are the Charr following Balthazar?
I haven’t, in my admittedly short time playing the game, seen any given reasoning for Charr to be following a human god. And I emphasise both of those things, because of all the known Charr factions that we have, not one of them fit the profile for following Balthazar.
The Flame Legion were the legion that spearheaded the Searing. They are Charr as we knew them to be in the first game: they’re sexist, they’re a cult that will believe in deities where there is some good profit to be seen in it for them, and they are incredibly racist. Now while some people claim that Balthazar, as a god of War and of Fire, would appeal to the tastes of Flame Legion, I want to contest this with the fact he is a human god. If any deity in the world were to be the one deity that the Flame Legion deem to be inconsequential and not worth following, any human deity falls into that category. I find it extremely unlikely that they would ever, even in desperate circumstances, come to align themselves with the god of the one race in Tyria they spent so many years fighting.
Our regular Citadel Charr are equally unfit to follow a human god: because they’ve cast aside deities entirely. Embittered to the notion of religion as a whole after the antics of Flame Legion, Citadel Charr out and out do not recognise gods in any form. Things can be big, and powerful, and in some cases beyond complete comprehension, but they aren’t gods. They’re just big, powerful and sometimes beyond comprehension - and also potentially killable. They wouldn’t put their faith blindly into anything claiming to be a deity, never mind a human deity. And sure, sure, there’s a truce right now that they’ve actively fought to keep alive, but just because there’s a tense peace treaty that doesn’t mean that Charr are about to abandon their history to go and follow a human god. Flame Legion have proven time and time again why gods don’t work: Citadel Charr outright say they killed their gods. Nothing is infallible.
The only other known faction of Charr are the somewhat disorganised Renegades. And I shouldn’t need to explain why these Charr - you know, the human hating Charr that strive to rekindle the fires of war between humans and Charr - wouldn’t suddenly start following a human god.
So again: why are there Charr in these mercenaries? I haven’t seen any Norn, for example, and this makes sense: Norn don’t recognise the human gods as gods. So why would they follow Lazarus or Balthazar? Naturally they wouldn’t. No sylvari either, from what I’ve seen, and this also makes sense: if Batlhazar is so gung-ho against dragons, he probably doesn’t want dragon minions in his mercenary army. (You know, despite Mordremoth being dead at this point.) It just makes no sense to see Charr there at all, and while I was playing I could see no reasons given or stated. (If somebody has found any dialogue clips, by all means please share them with me!)
I feel much the same way about the appearance of the Inquest, too, but at least the Inquest can be half-assed into the mercenary army through the use of Zinn and his research. No, they don’t recognise Balthazar as a god either, but they stand to gain from Balthazar’s actions via getting access to all manner of research that at one point was probably considered lost to the ages. It’s a flimsy excuse, I feel, but at least the excuse even exists.
Secondly: Balthazar’s entire scheme makes very little sense.
Of all the disguises that Balthazar could have used to come down to Tyria with and amass an army using, he chose a Mursaat so that he could employ the use of the White Mantle. You know... the one human group that doesn’t recognise the human gods as gods. Of all the humans in the world that he could have chosen to utilise, he used the only one that would have gone immediately rogue if they found out who he actually was. Instead of appearing to Separatists for example, who are begging for a war with Charr and would have probably thrown themselves at Balthazar’s feet as long as he promised them their war, or even just regular Krytans who are dealing with the war with centaurs and would have also likely been keen to at least listen to their god, Balthazar chose the White Mantle. And... we have no explanation why. Beyond that, he then had to hire mercenaries because he was concerned the White Mantle would discover his deception and no longer follow him - something he could have avoided if he had appealed to any other group of humans in the entirety of Tyria. It makes just no sense.
Beyond that, we really have no evidence that any of the human gods were involved in setting up the White Mantle to be able to even think they could find the aspects of Lazarus. So from where I’m sitting, not only did Balthazar choose arguably the worst human group to try and manipulate, but he did so simply because “Oh hey, I guess I could do this.” Now maybe there’s more to it than that, as the developers have said that his story arc isn’t over, but right now I’m just... not impressed. For saying he’s a god with some considerable power at his disposal - you’d think - he’s made a lot of stupid choices.
Thirdly: Balthazar didn’t make an intimidating foe... at all.
The last time we were dealing with a rogue god, it was in Guild Wars 1 and it was Abaddon. And I didn’t even play much of GW1, but you know what I remember? There was an entire campaign based around that. Abaddon was an intimidating villain simply on the principle that the original plan was to, you know, prevent the release of Abaddon. When that failed, the last ditch option of desperation was to defeat him outright - and that took some serious firepower that included the blessing of all the other gods. The threat was very, very real.
Balthazar... yeah. Not so much, huh?
We dispel his illusion through the use of Kasmeer, who admittedly may or may not be far more powerful than we know in fairness, but that means we pretty easily smash through a relic enchanted by Lyssa herself. Well, okay. How about Balthazar, then? Well, his puppies aren’t shit, frankly. You beat them down into submission and then utilise Taimi’s machine to completely destroy them, but the fact you physically beat them down so easily is... underwhelming. Haha, humans, not only was your racial elite skill trash in the first place but it’s now just been officially murdered in the game? Honestly. And as for Balthazar, while we know he hasn’t been destroyed and will likely resurge at a later date to continue what appear to be nefarious schemes, he just never felt threatening. You just blew up the machine he had sort of put himself into an oh, hey, I guess he’s just gone for a bit now.
What?
The human gods were never fully elaborated on at any given point in time, but Guild Wars 1 made it extremely clear that they were powerful. Extremely so. So unless Balthazar was half-assing his own plan and not using his full power, or unless he’s been somehow weakened by something happening on Tyria, his appearance has been critically underwhelming. Hell, it took more effort to defeat Zhaitan - and I remember that boss fight, I just pressed 1 a bunch. Yet somehow Zhaitan still made a more imposing threat, because it took serious work and preparation to even face him. You didn’t just talk so some slightly irritable druid spirits, get a nice fancy shield so you could jump into a volcano and then throw a bit of dragon magic at an Asuran machine to watch it go pop.
I have more gripes with Flashpoint beyond these three things, including the fact I think the new map is a good-concept-gone-horrifically-bad and is possibly one of the worst maps in GW2 since Tangled Depths and the utterly boring set up of one tiny but mildly intriguing instance, one bad map and then one tiny, eye-searing instance with a clusterfuck fight giving no real payoff considering how close to the end of the living story season we are.
Frankly, ArenaNet...
If you want me to buy your expansion hot off the press, this final episode of Living Story better see some real improvement when it comes to writing and see some genuinely good answers to these questions. I’m getting real tired of investing in your stories only to have you leave them half fucking finished and glaring lore discrepancies and plot holes that you then just never come back to.
#Felidae rambles#long post is long#spoilers#gw2#gw2 flashpoint#flashpoint spoilers#thoroughly unamused
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yellin’ at songs, week twenty-five
capsule reviews of the pop songs which debuted on the billboard hot 100 the weeks of 30 June 2007 and 1 July 2017
30 June 2007
87) "Teenagers," My Chemical Romance
Y'know, I find Welcome to the Black Parade mostly disagreeable, but heck if this song ain't a bright spot, insofar as a song about bringing concealed weaponry of some kind to school is a "bright spot." (Hey, I dunno, if you have to add a disclaimer to the video saying "violence isn't the answer," you should consider a different song for the single? Just a thought, don't wanna backseat record executive, here, but that seems bad.) Like, apart from the "under your shirt" line, it's kind of a perfect angsty vibe, not Linkin Parky fml angst, more angsty in that eternally adolescent sense of "all adults are robots and I will never conform," it channels that really well, and it has a dope guitar solo. I don't think I've mentioned a guitar solo being fun, and I can't tell if that's because I don't typically care about guitar solos or this is the first memorable guitar solo we've gotten, but either way, best guitar solo of the project so far. I am spending a lot of time on this song because I'm like 60% sure it's gonna be the only song I like this week. (spoilers: it isn’t!)
93) "Imagine," Jack Johnson
You know what's another thing about "Teenagers?" Like, even before I ever listened to Welcome to the Black Parade, I could draw a line from "Welcome to the Black Parade" to "Teenagers." I could make sense of how "Teenagers" would fit in a narrative that began with "Welcome to the Black Parade," how that kid would become angry and sullen and start scaring adults. I wish more singles had some sort of thematic throughline, like I don't necessarily mean Future should write a rock opera, I mean that I should be able to get the sense that like "Shape of You" and "Castle on the Hill" are from the same album. But maybe I'm just projecting, maybe I'm stuck in MUSIC WAS BETTER IN 2007 mode when, as seen here, it clearly fucking wasn't.
94) "Shawty," Piles ft./T-Pain
wait hold up is that the "shawty, yeah-e-yeah, yeah" from the start of "i'm on the boat." did t-pain start all his features with "shawty yeah-e-yeah yeah" and i'm just noticing it now, or did t-pain reuse a run. anyway, piles is the goat: grossest of all time. he drops bars that would make yachty wince. like, this is just the first verse:
"i pointed at the donk & told her this s'posed to be yours/showed her a couple stacks and told her i'd let her blow it"
what body part is the donk in this context. if piles calls his dick 'the donk' i might throw up, especially since he believes being able to suck on it is a wonderful privilege.
"i taught her how to talk to me while she take pipe"
well, communication is key to any healthy relationship, i'm glad piles understands its importance
"i gotta train her, now she suck me with ice"
oh okay that's cool, yeah no, women need to be trained to give pleasure, i get it, totally, chill attitude
that was the first verse. piles is the worst. i can't believe we squandered this hook and the "bust it baby, pt. 2" hook on this gross gross boy. oh hey second verse
"member she used to run from me, now she like pain"
cool. coooooooooooooooooooooooool. what a song!
no updates to the 2007 top 20 week but we’re gonna publish the top 20 because i didn’t last week and you may have forgotten
20) "Get Me Bodied," by Beyonce (5.26.2007)
19) "Lip Gloss," by Lil Mama (6.9.2007)
18) "I Don't Wanna Stop," by Ozzy Osbourne (5.26.2007)
17) "Stolen," by Dashboard Confessional (4.21.2007)
16) "Beautiful Liar," by Beyonce & Shakira (3.31.2007)
15) "Cupid's Chokehold," by Gym Class Heroes ft./Patrick Stump (1.13.2007)
14) "The River," by Good Charlotte ft./M. Shadows & Synyster Gates (2.10.2007)
13) "Say OK," by Vanessa Hudgens (2.17.2007)
12) "Alyssa Lies," by Jason Michael Carroll (1.13.2007)
11) "Never Again," by Kelly Clarkson (5.12.2007)
10) "Can't Tell Me Nothing," by Kanye West (6.16.2007)
9) "Get Buck," by Young Buck (4.14.2007)
8) "And I Am Telling You I'm Not Going," by Jennifer Hudson (1.13.2007)
7) "Thnks fr th Mmrs," by Fall Out Boy (4.28.2007)
6) "Candyman," by Christina Aguilera (1.13.2007)
5) "Because of You," by Ne-Yo (3.17.2007)
4) "Umbrella," by Rihanna ft./Jay-Z (4.28.2007)
3) "Beautiful Flower," by India.Arie (6.16.2007)
2) "Dashboard," by Modest Mouse (2.17.2007)
1) "The Story," by Brandi Carlile (4.28.2007)
i still enjoy all 20 of these songs. alright, 2017, low bar for ya. maybe you wanna clear it?
1 July 2017
16) "2U," David Guetta by ft./Justin Bieber
There's something I really don’t like about Justin Bieber saying "Watch me speak from my heart when it comes to you," and then having that line immediately followed by an EDM drop. Like is the drop supposed to be a substitute for words? Is the drop supposed to communicate what's in Justin Bieber's heart? Because all I hear from the drop is "what a nifty drop I am!" But this feels less like a criticism than it does like pedantry. It's OK. David Guetta is a proven programmer of pop music, and this is another solid song that he has made that I wouldn't have been able to pin to David Guetta if I listened to this blind.
70) "Love Galore," by SZA ft./Travis Scott
Worth pointing out that the first autocomplete result for love galore is "love galore travis scott," which is cool. I'm also gonna cop to having this album in my library but letting it sit because there's so much else I have to get to and this wasn't a priority. This song doesn't move the album higher in my queue, but it does have me excited to get to it. This is a dope song, this portrait of an awful relationship neither party much wants to be in, but are staying together because they love each other, whatever that means. SZA regrets hooking up with Travis Scott, Travis Scott admits he was only looking for ass and titties, they both operate independently of one another, but there's love, so there's that. And then the end, when that extremely pleasant bass line disappears, there's that single note on the keyboard and SZA going "woah," then that beat switch into SZA saying "I came here to have sex with you, and if it weren't for that, I wouldn't be here," that's just so cool, like this song is complex and intricate and it does the thing "4 AM" did last week where the music occasionally goes out of tone and it does that thing to great effect. SZA's dope. I'm excited for whatever time I get to spend with her in the future. ...OK. OK, fine, I'll fucking leave this nice dark place and go to countrydudetopia.
79) "Do I Make You Wanna," by Billy Currington
Time for a YAS REWIND, because remember last week when we talked about how many people have made it from the 2007 Hot 100 to the 2017? THIS IS RELEVANT TO THAT, because Billy Currington just became the 29th member of the Decade Dance Party! We will share the full list later in this post, because there are only 10 songs this week and most of them blow so I'ma give you some other #content this week, but it's worth noting right here that 9 of the 29 members of Decade Dance Party are country dudes. You drive down enough dirt roads, you're gonna get stuck in the mud at some point. This is a song in which Billy Currington asks his girlfriend if he makes her feel complete and safe, which is either incredibly arrogant or pathetically needy.
89) "Escapate Conmigo," by Wisin ft./Ozuna
HELL YEAH LATIN POP. Gosh, the renewal of Latin pop as a thing we listen to has been one of the best things about doing this silly thing. Like, all the Latin pop is my second favorite thing about YAS, just ahead of Kendrick week but, let's be real, a million miles behind Ashley Tisdale's cover of "Kiss the Girl." This is such a nice song. The beat bounces nicely, Wisin's flow is like "what if Lin-Manuel Miranda rapped in Spanish and was also good" (like maybe it's been a while since I heard that dude rap, but they sound so very alike), and it has one of the best mis-translated lyrics of the year with "My supergirl/The one whose smiles steal me/Tremendous wolf." Tremendous wolf. I adore that.
93) "What Ifs," by Kane Brown ft./Lauren Alaina
I see you, dude. First off, this dude's voice is incredible. Like, after listening to dude after dude either whispering softly over EDM or bleating twangily over the country beat, hearing this dude belt was An Experience. I wish the production would calm down a little bit, like this dude and Lauren Alaina could have made this song an epic ballad on their own, but nah, gotta have the electronic drums spoil a perfectly good opening guitar line, gotta have the standard pop/country things choke the life out of what could've been some cool moments. This dude's a lot like that Luke Combs fella from a few months back, not stylistically or anything, just in the sense that I bet he's cooler than he is on this song, and I trust he's not just some bro country yutz, but I'm not in any rush to check out what else he's got, despite how appealing the song title "Used to Love You Sober" is.
95) "It's a Vibe," by 2 Chainz ft./Ty Dolla $ign, Trey Songz & Jhene Aiko
This was also OK! As stated, this song was a vibe, and gosh darn, if it didn't do much more than vibe, though. A fun way to kill three minutes, a less than fun thing to listen to if you're charging yourself with the task of coming up with some unique point to make about it for to generate likes and the whatnot. S'a'ight, y'know? I'm supposed to write, what, 100 words about something thats'a'ight? I mean, I don't have to, no one ever asked me to and they clearly don't want me to, but like. It's a vibe! It's another one. Fuck it, I don't, sigh, just give me the country dudes and let's get out of this actually-pretty-decent week.
100) "It Ain't My Fault," by Brothers Osborne
OK. OK! OK, hell yeah, no, I'm sorry for calling you country dudes, 'cuz hot damn, this was great. Like, Chris Stapleton gets a lot of hype for making classic country music, but he only makes the sad slow acoustic country music, and like Johnny Cash had "Folsom Prison Blues" and "A Boy Named Sue," y'know? Not to compare this song to those, but this is uptempo classic country, this is classic country with got damn STOMP, and it's dope as hell.
Two new songs in the Top 20 for 2017!
20) "It Ain't My Fault," by Brothers Osborne (7.1)
19) "Slide," by Calvin Harris ft./Frank Ocean & Migos (3.18)
18) "Felices los 4," by Maluma (6.3)
17) "Now & Later," by Sage the Gemini (2.25)
16) "Love Galore," by SZA ft./Travis Scott (7.1)
15) "Bad Liar," by Selena Gomez (6.3)
14) "DNA." by Kendrick Lamar (5.6)
13) "It Ain't Me," by Kygo x Selena Gomez (3.4)
12) "Craving You," by Thomas Rhett ft./Maren Morris (4.22)
11) "That's What I Like," by Bruno Mars (3.4)
10) "Chanel," by Frank Ocean ft./A$AP Rocky (4.1)
9) "Strangers," by Halsey ft./Lauren Jauregui (6.17)
8) "Either Way," by Chris Stapleton (5.27)
7) "Run Up," by Major Lazer ft./PARTYNEXTDOOR & Nicki Minaj (2.18)
6) "Green Light," by Lorde (3.18)
5) "ELEMENT." by Kendrick Lamar (5.6)
4) "Despacito," by Luis Fonsi ft./Daddy Yankee (2.4)
3) "Issues," by Julia Michaels (2.11)
2) "iSpy," by KYLE ft./Lil Yachty (1.14)
1) "Hard Times," by Paramore (5.13)
I bumped “Selfish” this week. I have no idea how that happened. 2017′s slowly becoming stacked, and/or I’m an idiot.
Who won the week?
2017. Like? 2017.
2017: 13
2007: 12
Yooge opportunity for 2017 to widen this gap, too, so I’m stoked for a solid two weeks of Chainsmokers songs and memes. Anyway, THE IMPORTANT THING.
The Decade Dance Club
30 people have made or been featured on songs that charted in the years 2007 and 2017. They are:
1) Daddy Yankee (”Impacto,” “Shaky Shaky”)
2) Dierks Bentley (”Free & Easy,” “Black”)
3) Luke Bryan (”All My Friends Say,” “Fast”)
4) Gucci Mane (”Freaky Gurl,” “Make Love”)
5) Jason Aldean (”Johnny Cash,” “Any Ol’ Barstool”)
6) Lil Wayne (”Sweetest Girl” (feat), “Running Back” (feat))
7) Missy Elliott (”Let it Go” (feat), “I’m Better”)
8) Maroon 5 (”Makes Me Wonder,” “Cold”)
9) Nick Jonas (”Year 3000″ (w/jobros), “Bom Bidi Bom”)
10) DJ Khaled (”We Takin Over,” “Shining”)
11) Beyonce (”Get Me Bodied,” “Shining”)
12) Jay-Z (”Blue Magic,” “Shining”)
13) Linkin Park (”What I’ve Done,” “Heavy”)
14) Rihanna (”Umbrella,” “Selfish” (feat))
15) Josh Turner (”Me & God,” “Hometown Girl”)
16) Rick Ross (“We Takin Over” (feat), “Trap Trap Trap”)
17) Faith Hill (”I Need You,” “Speak to a Girl”)
18) Tim McGraw (”I Need You,” “Speak to a Girl”)
19) Miranda Lambert (”Famous in a Small Town,” “Tin Man”)
20) Enrique Iglesias (”Dimelo,” “Subeme la Radio”)
21) Flo Rida (”Low,” “Cake”)
22) Kenny Chesney (”Beer in Mexico,” “Bar at the End of the World”)
23) Paramore (”Misery Business,” “Hard Times”)
24) Miley Cyrus (”Nobody’s Perfect,” “Malibu”)
25) Blake Shelton (”Don’t Make Me,” “Every Time I Hear That Song”)
26) Shakira (”Beautiful Liar,” “Me Enamore”)
27) Rascal Flatts (”Stand,” “Yours if You Want It”)
28) Trey Songz (”Can’t Help But Wait,” “Nobody Else But You”)
29) Billy Currington (”Good Directions,” “Do I Make You Wanna”)
30) Wisin (”Sexi Movimento,” “Escapate Conmigo”)
Shout out to Wisin for making the list, too! So that’s 30, out of hundreds, who have had a career on the pop charts that spanned a decade. Specifically, the last ten years, there’s a few folks who’ve charted in 2017 that didn’t chart in 2007 despite being things back then, such as Darius Rucker, Eminem, John Legend, Mariah Carey, and Pharrell Williams. There’s also some folks who hit in 2008 that have hit in 2017, your Katy Perries and Ladies Antebellum, that cannot make this list because, hey, it’s kind of a dumb list. But music is dumb, and this list should illustrate how hard it is to last in the music business (unless you’re a dude who makes country music), which is why it’s vitally important we spend hours and hours dissecting Lil’ Yachty lyrics.
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