#I've seen the special and like clips and chunks but that's it

[captainsparklefingers]

*shows up fourteen years late to Tumblr with very cold Starbucks* So that Sherlock show is pretty good, huh!

[woso-dreamzzz]

Birthday II

Hardersson x Baby!Reader

Part of The Big Adventures Universe

Summary: It's your first birthday

Morsa is living in the phone again.

She's a lot smaller when she lives in the phone than when she lives with you and Momma. You think that's kind of weird but there's some cake sitting in front of you so you don't dwell on it for too long.

Today is a special day apparently.

Today is the day that Morsa is supposed to be visiting. It's your birthday too but you're more focused on the first thing rather than the fact that you're getting older now.

Morsa is meant to be coming today but she isn't here yet and now she's stuck in the phone again.

"And here's the birthday girl," Momma says to her," She's about to enjoy her cake."

You look down at your slice of cake. You don't get given cake a lot, especially not fancy cake that has writing and pictures on the top. You don't really care about the stuff on top but you know the cake is fancy because it's there.

You grab a chunk of cake in your fist and raised it to your mouth.

It tastes really nice and you grab more.

"Birthday girl looks very happy," Morsa comments," Is that right? Are you enjoying your cake, princesse?"

You grunt as you shove cake into your mouth.

"She's very much enjoying it," Momma agrees," Birthday girl got spoiled a lot today."

"I'm glad. I'm sorry I couldn't be there."

A match late last evening had Magda unable to fly out yesterday night. She'd booked an early morning flight today, hoping that it meant she could still spend your first birthday with you without missing much.

But she'd gotten to the airport and found her plane delayed. There was no eta and it kept getting pushed back further and further to the point where Magda has to spend your birthday on the phone rather than in person.

The presents in her carry-on feel like weights as she watches you shovel more and more cake into your mouth until your plate is empty.

You're sitting up in your high chair with a beaming smile in a tiny Wolfsburg kit that Magda knows was given as a present to you. A big birthday badge is clipped to the jersey and a discarded birthday hat is sat on the tray next to your now empty cake plate.

It makes her heart ache thinking about how much of this she's missing.

It's just not the same seeing it all through a phone screen.

"My flight should be taking off in a few hours," She tells Pernille as you entertain yourself by picking up the birthday hat and shaking it," I'll probably get to yours around midnight."

She can't see Pernille with the camera on you but Magda's sure she's frowning.

"We can pick you up from the airport," She says," You don't need to get here on your own."

"It'll be too late for Princesse. She still needs sleep."

"Are you sure? I don't mind. She'll fall asleep in the car anyway."

"I'm sure," Magda insists," It's fine. I've got keys. I'll let myself in."

You drop the birthday hat and pout.

"Oh," Pernille chuckles," What's with the long face, princesse? Did you drop your hat?"

You kick your legs impatiently and point at it, whining. You look like you're about to whine more but Pernille places another slice of cake in front of you and suddenly you're distracted again.

You cram as much cake possible into your mouth, smearing your face with crumbs.

The cake is nice but you do feel a little bit cheated. Momma woke you up this morning saying that Morsa would be here to celebrate with you both but it's rapidly approaching bath and bedtime and she's nowhere to be seen.

That's a little mean of her.

It's even meaner of Momma to put you down in your crib and make you sleep before Morsa got here. They're both quite mean today even though it's your birthday and people should be nice to you when it's your birthday.

You wake up the next day ready to let your displeasure at being lied to known to Momma when she comes to grab you.

You don't get the chance to though because someone lifts you out of your crib with a smile and a soft voice.

"What's with the pouty face?" Morsa coos," Is being a one year old really that bad?"

For a moment, in your sleepy haze, you don't recognise her, a big pout and a grumpy look upon your features. Slowly, you blink awake fully and your pout morphs into a big happy smile.

"There she is," Morsa says," There's my happy baby! Look at you, my happy little one year old."

Your legs kick out as Morsa presses soft, ticklish kisses all over your face.

"I'm sorry I missed your birthday, princesse but I brought presents!"

You know that word. After yesterday, you've decided that you really like presents.

You hope Morsa's brought you some good ones.

You giggle.

"Yeah?" Morsa says," You like that? I've got lots of presents for you to open!"

[chaos0pikachu]

Okay so just a couple things I wanna contribute here, and I'm putting a chunk of this response behind a cut to save folks the scrollage (especially mobile users).

TLDR: I disagree with some of the "trends" listed here, specifically the stuff about the remakes, Korea not knowing what sex and kissing are, and especially that BL is being overly influenced by "modern romance trends out of the west"; the latter two read a bit, hm, xenophobic to me ngl and spread a bit of misinformation about the media from countries like Thailand, Korea, and Japan. I also added some of sources from academics, journalists, and publishers as well. Also James Cameron is a weeb so jot that down.

So regarding Japanese IP stuff, I keep seeing people talk about how ~crazy~ Japanese copyright law is, but the general laws aren't that much different from international standards.

I'm not sure if I'm like, missing something here no one provided any sources to any case files or articles on the subject when the issue with Cherry Magic came up. Which, I can only assume since I don't have access to the contract, it wasn't a copyright issue it was a distribution issue. It's complicated, as distribution falls under copyright, but it's a subset, and typically in my direct experience, creators will sell their distribution rights or share them with their publisher (or studio) so the company can handle actual distribution negotiations.

It's very typical to only have distribution rights in select countries for adapted works (which are why VPNS are a big thing). Gmmtv more than likely, only had distribution rights for Thailand, not other countries which is why their youtube broadcast got got. That's not Japan - y'all realize this is like an entire country right?? - being assholes. It's one copyright holder - SquareEnix who publishes Cherry Magic - asserting their rights b/c gmmtv was stealing money from their - and the authors - pockets.

Now like, Nintendo is highly protective over their copyright but no more so than Disney (source 02) or Taylor Swift.

Remakes like Cherry Magic aren't even new for Japan, Korea, Thailand, etc, even for gmmtv. Their series, F4 is a remake of insanely popular Japanese manga Boys Over Flowers, which does have clips of the episodes on youtube with no issue. Boys Over Flowers has also been remade by Taiwan, Korea, China, Indonesia, China (again), and India.

It's not just the rights to remake the media, usually the IP owners also get a slice of the capital as well. Japan, China, Korea and lots of other Asian countries have been cross exchanging for decades with their television and films.

The series Mr. Queen (2020), a popular Korean drama (that's very queer until the ending, but the original story is also even more queer) is an adaption of a Chinese show called Go Princess Go (2015) based on a novel of the same name, is one example, another is My Absolute Boyfriend (2019) a kdrama based on a Japanese manga of the same name.

Also, while I'm only familiar with American contracting for IP rights (and no I'm not a lawyer I've just seen and been in the room for a lot of these contract negotiations), it's entirely possible gmmtv has optioned many 90s manga.

Optioning is just the set up, its the handshake agreement between two parties "yes I would like to make a thing out of your thing" and that's it. Lots of stuff gets optioned with no announcement b/c optioning isn't a promise or an agreement it'll go into production.

Kate Mckean, one of the best agents imo in publishing, breaks down optioning really well in her article What "Optioned" Means.

So I would argue this isn't really a "trend" so much as normal film making? This stuff happens all the time, it's picking up in BL because of the rise in popularity making it monetarily valuable, but I wouldn't argue it's at all special or a new trend since this is baked into general cultural exchanges in media of which is longstanding between all these countries. Like there's already pre-established history here of this happening for decades so it's not really a "trend" nor "new".

Okay so like, I'm not gonna front I find it a bit xenophobic to say "Korea figured out boys can kiss" this is something I've seen a lot in BL fandom discussion. That Korea "doesn't know what sex is" or similar takes and I just, y'all are talking about an entire country of people here.

I find it trips a bit into a historic trend of desexualizing Asian Men in the west (<- article by Andrew Kung about the desexualization of Asian men in the west, and his exploration of sexuality, identity and discrimination).

Which, I know we're all watching BL which includes nothing but Asian men, and yet.

Like, yes porn is "technically" illegal in Korea but Koreans still know what porn is. They still watch it. In fact it's difficult even for the government to enforce those laws, as detailed in this article by Business Insider:

""It's like shoveling snow in a blizzard," Nuri Cop Moon Tae-Hwa told Hyung-Jin Kim of The Huffington Post." (source)

The existence and debate around porn in Korea is also a complex one, with a lot of historical context. This article talks a bit about Korean feminists and porn. I also find this line of thinking discounts real world politics that effects how media is made and reflected. Like activist groups fighting for discrimination protections currently in Korea.

Like, we know this to be true in American and European cinema but it stops being true for non-white media? That's weird ain't it?

Also like, manwha is really fucking explicit. Korea absolutely knows what boy kissing, sex, and queer narratives are.

Multiple kdramas or films like Hometown Cha Cha Cha, Out of Breath, Schoolgirl Detectives, and Love Alarm, all feature queer characters, narratives and romances. They may not be "BL" - tho I would argue Schoolgirl Detectives and Out of Breath toe into GL tho Out of Breath is more of an romance film for adults - but if we count Love is Science as an honorary BL b/c of Mark and Ouwen then idk why we can't count at least Out of Breath.

Beyond that tho, like whether we count these series or not, to say that Korea doesn't know queer narratives or what boy kissing is b/c one singular sub-genre of romance wasn't delivering (which is an opinion not media analysis) is discounting all the other work being done in Korea by film makers.

Painter by Night is one of the most erotic and sexual comics I've ever read (beautifully drawn as well). Semantic Error also has sex in the comic, and there's a slew of porn comics that exist in Korea and are available to read right now.

I get that a majority of Korean BL isn't sexy, but for a long while a majority of het kdramas in the mainstream weren't either. Hometown Cha Cha Cha only has a post sex scene that's hilariously chaste.

But now? Somebody a 2022 kdrama thriller had explicit sex scenes (multiple of them!), My Name, Old Boy, Squid Game all also come to mind. Has Korea been chaste in the past? Yes and no, for mainstream stuff absolutely because the mainstream will almost always play it safe for capital value, but Old Boy came out in 2013 and has nudity and explicit sex.

I just want people to realize that by making definitive statements "Korea doesn't know what boy kissing/sex is" you're distilling an entire country of people down to 1) a singular genre of media and a niche one at that 2) ignoring cultural context and history that influences said media and 3) being moderately condescending and xenophobic.

It's misinformation and it's frustrating to see this repeated over and over by numerous people in fandom.

Lastly, the "modern romance trends out of the west" with omegaverse used as an example. I'm a good 99% positive Pit Babe was not at all inspired by Teen Wolf or Supernatural.

While omegaverse originated in the west - specifically via Supernatural - it's been popular in Japan and China for almost a decade, if not longer. The earliest omegaverse manga I can think of is Pendulum: Juujin Omegaverse by Hana Hasumi which was released in 2015, almost a decade ago.

There's countless popular omegaverse manga too, and the dynamics only moderately resemble the ones we're familiar with in the west. Juujin is part omegaverse and part furry/beastmen - the alphas are all beastmen the omegas are humans - while something like Ookami-kun Is Not Scary only slightly resembles omegaverse dynamics as a hybrid series - since beastmen are really popular in Japan in part b/c of historical mythology (you see the combination of romantic Beastmen and Japanese culture & folklore in Mamoru Hosoda's work The Boy and the Beast and Wolf Children).

I mean Megumi & Tsugumi (2018) is so popular they're an official English edition published by VIZ's imprint SuBlime and that's a straight up omegaverse story.

So if Pit Babe was influenced by anything, it certainly wasn't the west it was Japan, Korea and China.

I take contention with this line of thinking, because it centers the west way to much. Like mafia settings, why is that considered a "western" trope?

Korea alone in the last 3 years has had The Ballerina, Believer 2, My Name, Bloodhounds, Bad and Crazy, to name a few, and this isn't even getting into the cinema history of popular crime dramas many of which make up a huge chunk of Don Lee's career like The Gangster, the Cop and the Devil, or Unstoppable.

When I saw the trailer for Red Peafowl I didn't see influence from the west, I saw influence from Hong Kong.

The trailer took more inspiration from Jet Li (The Enforcer, Fist of Legend) and Donnie Yen (Flash Point, Raging Fire, Kung Fu Jungle) films than anything I've seen recently here in America. Which makes more sense, the filmmakers working now in Thailand, Korea, Japan, etc would have grown up watching those now crime action masterpieces and are now making their own work today.

So I disagree that BL has become all the influenced by "modern romance trends out of the west" I think that does a huge disservice to these individual countries who have their own histories of cinema and influence and cultural exchange. Like, do I believe American film making has had an influence over Japanese or Korean film making? Yes, absolutely - Train to Busan is a good example of this - however, the opposite is also true.

Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Nolan, the Wachowski sisters, George Lucas and James Cameron have all been influenced by Japanese film making, especially the works of Akira Kurosawa, Satoshi Kon, and Mamoru Oshii. Like, dios mio James Cameron is a damn weeb y'all.

John Wick's entire gun-fu sub-genre is heavily influenced by classic Hong Kong action films and the works of Bruce Lee. Legend of Korra, The Boondocks, Voltron, Young Justice, My Adventures with Superman are all obviously inspired by Japanese anime but animated by a Korean animation studio (Studio Mir). Beyond that, the rise in adult animated dramas like Castlevania, Critical Role Vox Machina, and Invincible to name a few are very clearly taking inspiration from anime in terms of style.

So yes there's totally cross cultural exchange going on, that's been true as far back as 1952 with Astro Boy who's design was inspired by Walt Disney's work on Bambi.

But do I think BL is following specific trends set by the west? No. At least not to the degree of an entire trend, because the influences I'm seeing in BL currently aren't from the west (by which we really mean American/UK don't we?) but by other Asian countries.

For example, The Sign is taking clear inspiration from Chinese & Korean costume dramas, especially Chinese ones like Ashes of Love, Fairy and Devil, White Snake (and it's many adaptions), & Guardian.

Sidenote: curious where all the femme gay chars in BL in 2023 are? Genuinely asking, I can't think of any that are very recent. I see femme gay characters more often in films than in TV shows like Marry My Dead Body (2022, Taiwanese) and Tokyo Godfathers (2003, Japanese). But for BL I'm coming up blank.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "messy gay" there's been loads of novels, comics, film and tv shows with messy gays like Shinji Ikari is the messiest bisexual put to screen. But I'm not sure what's the qualifier for "messy gay" here. Are we thinking Only Friends? B/c the only messy gay in that show is Boston, Playboyy features actual messy gay men but it's also one of the queerest BL around right now.

Again, I only take contention with this point because it centers the west and our supposed individual importance way to much. It removes the existence of history these countries have which are rich, varied, and nuanced. BL doesn't exist in a vacuum you can trace the development of Korean BL to the development of Korean het dramas almost to a T.

You can also trace their development to the queer history of each country and how Thailand interacts culturally with China, Japan, Korea, etc and vice versa. It also ignores the history of these countries influencing American cinema as well. The exchange doesn't only go one way.

Overall it feels like we're separating BL into this completely separate category of film making and acting as though we, westerners, are the target audience for any of it. Which we're not. We're a second or third tier audience, Thai studios are probably way more focused on targeting Japanese and Korean audiences than American. It feels as though we're not viewing these countries with a nuance lens, where they aren't just static producers of a singular piece of content people consume rather than a fully fledged individual country we should be engaging with.

TOP 10 BL Trends of 2023

This is just me with my analysis hat on. 

1. 2023 = the year EVERYONE went outside their lanes

Everything went topsy-turvy this year in BL. 

For example, Korea gave us agonized yearning and outright queerness (The 8th Sense, The New Employee) while Japan served up soft office workers and tender family (Our Dining Table). 

The BL world went askew for a while, especially in the spring of 2023. 

Not that we still didn’t still get Korea’s soft angsty bubbles or Japan’s “what are you doing and why does it hurt?” kink-fests. But there were quite a few BLs that made us chronic watchers sit up in confusion and wonder if Korea was dabbling in Taiwan’s territory or Japan in Thailand’s. Then they fudged the kisses and we were like… okay, back in familiar territory. 

In contrast, Thailand stayed course-correcting for the damage they’ve done in the past with tropes (2022) and self referential meta criticism (2021), but also almost aggressively returned to their BL roots after last year’s series of shockers. Certainly, they are reexamining those roots, transplanting some, aerating others. But they really went back to classic Thai university and high school BL and pulps in a big way in 2023. 

Taiwan is always difficult to gage because they produce so few but they seem to have stuck with what they do best with no deviation while producing more this year than they have in ages. I’m happy for that, why change a good thing? But there is a tiny part of me that really wants them to hit it out of the part with a quality piece soon. For me, We Best Love still reigns supreme, but I would really like the HIStory franchise to give us that level but longer - like a happy version of Your Name Engraved Herein. I think Taiwan has the chops to give us something as good as The 8th Sense or Old Fashion Cupcake but in their style, and I would like to see them exercise their talent for good rather than just profit. 

I know, what a very odd thing for me to say. But if any BL is going to break into the mainstream American market, I genuinely think it’s most likely come from Taiwan. 

Vietnam and the Philippines are falling behind, in general. They just didn’t bring out very many shows in 2023, and what the brought out tended to fub the endings. This is forgivable in Japan (because of their style and quality) but not what watchers want in the lower production value propositions. In other words, if you do a pulp, you can’t mess up the ending (by romance standards). that doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon. 

2. The Office Romance Dominated

After years of Thailand serving us an endless (and slightly bland) buffet of university (and a few high school) BLs, this year Korea was basically like…

Ofiice. We like the Office. It’s cheap to film we can use grown up actors, acting (mostly) their actual age. 

And yeah… it totally worked. 

To be fair, Japan has always given us office live action yaoi from the beginning (they had the source material) but this year everyone else, including Thailand, seriously started playing in this setting. 

3. Boys Danced with Boys

The darling @heretherebedork​ was a big fan of this one, and I rather like it myself. Prior to this boys dancing together was very very rare in BL, but this year we got way more than our fair share. It was lovely. 

Never Let me Go

My School President 

Bed Friend 

The Day I Loved You 

Step by Step

Be Mine Superstar

Tie the Not 

Dangerous Romance

I think there were a few more. These are the ones I remembered to write down. 

4. Getting (even more) Meta With Tropes 

BL has been getting more and more meta over the past few years but this year they really focused in on tropes specifically. Calling out their own biggest and most favorite tropes in a massive way, especially Thailand and especially GMMTV. 

Like they tunneled in on damaging tropes with Bad Buddy and the like over the past 2 years, and now they are just having fun with us. 

I mean they just started the dancing trope and already they are calling it out? That’s like rapid-fire regurgitated meta there, GMMTV. 

5. Cameos are the norm now 

Taiwan has always loved cameos but in the past the other countries have been show and steady with only one or two a year. (Unless Japan does a parody.) 

This year Korea got in on the game.

Korea rarely starts trends but they do adopt smaller and lesser known existing ones and make them super popular. 

This year they did that with cameo couple appearances, even borrowing a few of Thailand’s pairs (TutorYim and MaxNat traveled north). They did it so much I stopped tracking. Love Class 2, Why R U?, and Jun & Jun were the heaviest hitters. 

Taiwan, of course, came back swinging. Kiseki was the gum-ball machine of pair cameos. (In Taiwan mafia = gay.) 

6. We are entering the cross pollination age

The number of remakes picked up or started this year was startling, not just countries revisiting their own content (Thailand, Japan) but countries revisiting OTHER countries stuff.

Lemme explain…

Korea has started remaking Thai content (Why R U?) alongside cameo'ing Thai pairs.

Thailand is doing Korean IP (My Dear Gagster Oppa) and has 2 Chinese ones slated for next year. 

GMMTV acquired a lot of Japanese IP (Cherry Magic, Ossen, and My Love Mix Up) - and then had problems distributing it. 

This is probably the most surprising trend for me. Especially the Japanese stuff. I would have thought these properties well outside of Thailand’s price range (even GMMTV’s) not to mention Japan’s legendary IP issues (I swear I typed this pout before the pulled TayNew’s excellent Cherry Magic). 

Also why not option some of the older popular manga instead? Bet that’s much cheeper. (I did see a NEW Thai translation of Finder into Thai, which is 90s yaoi, so I have my fingers crossed on that front.)

I shouldn’t be too surprised. 

Thailand is running out of y-novel content. Their publication industry is just not robust enough (I was just talking to a friend about this at length recently). But I didn’t think they had the funds to option, especially from Japan. 

Perhaps the option deals are for peanuts?

7. Korea got cheeky

I’m not sure quite how else to put this. 

After finally figuring out boys can kiss, Korea started to do not just higher heat but playful higher heat, with more aggressive word play and linguistic innuendo, like they are entering their racy rom-com teenage years (Why R U? Love Class 2 and Jun & Jun in particular.) 

I guess: Welcome to your BL teens, Korea? 

It’s cute of them. I am very much enjoying it. 

And now that comedy is warming them up, we get to see them play with actual queer burgeoning physicality in shows like The 8th Sense. 

It’s nice. I like seeing Korea stretch its wings. They still stick to their bubble, but that bubble seems to be expanding. 

8. The Amnesia Trope is back

And I, for one, would prefer to forget about it. 

9. BL got trendy 

I’m not quite sure how to articulate this category but basically we started seeing a lot of “modern” romance trends out of the west (like a/b/o) show up in our BL. Not a ton and sometimes quite small, but there has a been a steady rise of things like: no seme/uke, femme gay, out gay, condom use, messy gay. 

We also got an increasing range of sub genre frameworks (like mafia, office setting) that’s moved BL pretty firmly (even in Thailand) out of school and into the workplace, whether actual working is involved or not. 

It’s not to the point where it feels like we get more non-school BL than school BL (if I include all countries in this assessment).

Japan, in classic Japanese fashion, quietly started moving in the opposite direction. It’s what they do. 

10. The Vampires are coming 

This is an announcement trend, which I don’t usually report on but it’s so CLEAR. 

So last year we had a spate of announcements of possible Omegaverse (2 from China, 1 from Japan, 1 from Thailand - the only one that’s happened). 

This year we got 5 Vampire (or vampire-esk) Thai BLs announced including one from GMMTV. 

Whether all 5 will actually get made is unlikely, but having had (basically) none prior to this (Kissable Lips), I’m pretty confident that we will get at least 2 of them. And I wouldn’t be surprised if at least one other country made one as well. (Side eyes Taiwan with interest.) 

Final thoughts

It feels like we are also seeing a decline in BL (both by quantity and quality) from Vietnam and the Philippines. As you all know, I don’t track or really watch either of these two very closely. But it feels like, now, no one else is either. 

I think we have likely seen the BL heyday already in both places and their industries are now on the decline. 

We might be witnessing a thinning in the players in the BL field. 

FYI we had approximately 

136 BLs in 2023

Previous Years

2022: 117

2021: 95

2020: 62

2019: 40

2018: 30 

2017: 44 (China’s last gasp)

2016: 27

2015: 17 (50% micro)

2014: 17 (50% micro)

And that’s it! Let me know in the comments if you’ve spotted any additional trends you want to call out.

Last year, 2022′s trend report

2021′s Trend report

Last Year’s Stats & Predictions

(source) 

[lewisbian]

CRISTINA GUTIÉRREZ - X44 driver - on LEWIS HAMILTON, their relationship, his texting habits, and the end of the 2021 F1 season.

translation under the cut

TN: this clip was chopped and screwed by me, chunks were left out either because they weren't interesting to me or because the man in the video said something i disliked and didn't wanna waste time and energy on. inbox me if there's a part of the interview you want translated, though, and i'll help.

jordi wild: what's lewis hamilton like in person?

cristina gutiérrez: it's incredible, the first videocall i had, i was told "you have a call with lewis hamilton and sébastien loeb."

jw: both?

cg: both! and me! i was like, is this real?

(...)

cg: yeah, so lewis is - he's lewis, people are like who is lewis? i used to call him lewis (leh-wees) but it's lewis! so anyway, lewis is a very special person. you can tell he's lived through some rough things, because of the values he wants to transmit as a driver and as a person. sometimes he texts me and he talks about energy, about motivation -

jw: he's a very spiritual guy.

cg: yeah. super spiritual. super super. he doesn't speak to me like any other driver, he's very special. when i got injured he really looked out for me. and he really wants to raise awareness about minorities.

jw: yeah, these past few years he's really into that, sometimes it even seems like he pushes it too hard.

cg: he's criticized for it.

jw: but he lives it?

cg: yes. it's real. it's not just on paper. i've seen it, i live it, it's an everyday thing. he created a great association recently, mission 44, he supports black people, women in motorsport for example, or, well - minorities, because he's been a minority. he was a black boy in karting, which was elitist. so i think he's lived through stuff which was made him empathize a lot with those types of people, and he wants to help.

jw: if you whatsapp him tomorrow, will he answer?

cg: yes.

jw: always?

cg: not always. when he had the whole thing with the end of the season, the one that he was robbed of -

jw: (laughs) is that friendship speaking? or reality?

cg: i'm redbull, of course, and i love redbull. but in this case, my heart was with lewis hamilton. i have more empathy for lewis than for verstappen, verstappen doesn't motivate me much.

jw: do you like him?

cg: no (laughs). and i don't know why, in spain they cheer for him a lot.

jw: a lot of those people come from the years of alonso vs hamilton, there's still some resentment there.

cg: lewis has a lot of haters.

jw: yeah, also probably because he's so "progressive," maybe there are people that are kinda like - shut up already!

cg: i get it because it looks fake, like-

jw: of course, a millionaire, mega millionaire, right? but according to you he's a guy that lives it exactly like that.

cg: yes. what i like about him is he visibilizes a lot. he's a figure that raises so much awareness that he helps, only by doing that.

jw: for you, the end of the championship, would you have intervened?

cg: if i were whom?

jw: if you were the organization's boss.

cg: the fia boss, for example?

jw: yes.

cg: i think they fucked up, honestly. the last three races were very dirty, i mean, of course making decisions in the moment is hard, you only have a few seconds, you don't have a lot of time, you press a button, safety car comes back in, it's complicated. but either way, in this case, hamilton had reasons to be angry. so i texted him, like "don't worry about it blah blah," and that time he didn't reply (laughs).

jw: can you text him now, say hello? see if he texts back before we finish recording?

cg: you think he'll reply? i'll say it's good to have him back.

jw: that's really nice, let's see what happens!

- she looks up his contact, texts him it's good to have him back -

cg: this is his profile pic.

jw: that's wes snipes! you didn't know?

cg: no i didn't. see? he's cool!

jw: no, i like him! i am pro hamilton!

(...)

cg: see, now that i think about it, he replies to me more on instagram. now i'm gonna message him on instagram, on twitter-

jw: (laughs) but the same message! copy paste!

cg: (laughs) he'll be like "i think she's sick."

- lewis doesn't reply before the end of the podcast -

cg: well, seb loeb did reply.

jw: you texted both of them? yeah, of course! i mean, sébastien loeb, huge respect.

cg: it's not hamilton, but it's loeb.

(...)

jw: what do i do with this (X44 beanie), then? i'd burn it, i was excited about lewis hamilton.

cg: nah! he must be training, c'mon.

jw: that's a good excuse! no, he's saving somebody in the world, surely.

cg: he for sure is.

[prettyoddfever]

Hello! I saw on your YouTube you said that there are a lot of videos you haven’t posted because they got taken down. You could try using Vimeo to post those videos because they aren’t strict with copyright and things like that. I would love to see some videos I haven’t seen before on there!

I started to do that last year with a couple videos, but then I took them down because I'm nervous about the legality of that... like if it gets straight up removed from youtube during the uploading process then I don't think I should post the full thing anywhere else. I've tried to add very short clips of the best moments from some of those videos into my longer edits, though! but in some cases even a few seconds of just the audio from an interview gets the whole edit blocked. And that seems silly because all of this content used to be available to download on fan sites like nbd... and I especially don't get why the SNL performance gets blocked when the rest of that episode seems to be on youtube just fine.

But it's not like I'm over here sitting on hundreds of videos that aren't online, sorry. There are only maybe 10-20 that haven't worked to upload. I'm missing a tragic amount of content. I really regret not saving more... I never planned to have an account like this where I'd be trying to recap stuff, and I didn't realize things back then were so temporary either. Blame Viacom. Here’s a list of some of the content I think I’m missing so far.

side tangent that’s slightly relevant:

Youtube wasn't that widely used in 2005 when P!ATD started touring. I remember using it more by spring 2006 (and then it was huge by that summer), but for a while fans were most likely to upload their videos from shows to sites that no longer exist, like buzznet. That's why there are only scraps of random videos from fall 2005 left on youtube... and those were often uploaded later from someone who didn't film them. For example, there are a lot of GroveStBrent's videos from a Chain Reaction show in December 2005 left on youtube because that person lost their original files around the end of the Fever era and asked if anyone had saved their videos. Those got collected, put into a zip file, passed around, and then someone put them on youtube. So the fact that there are way more youtube videos from that one show at Chain Reaction than anything else in late 2005 doesn't mean it had any special significance... those videos were just shared at a point when youtube was more commonly used. I think this is important to point out because it seems like some teens these days are under the impression that P!ATD wasn’t very big yet in fall 2005 since there are barely any videos from that season on youtube. The reality is that P!ATD was already quite popular in fall 2005… but youtube wasn’t. 

Anyways, people starting using youtube more as 2006 progressed and there was SO much content shared from shows & interviews during the last half of the Fever era. The problem was that apparently MTV owned a ridiculous amount of the shows/channels that P!ATD was featured on (even stuff like Razer). Viacom sued youtube around the end of the Fever era, which meant a good chunk of the Panic fandom's videos were deleted and some channels were removed for repeatedly trying to re-upload banned content. That's why so many of the Fever-era interviews that are left have an upload date of 2007 or later. And that's why we're left with scraps like that pathetically blurry short clip of Brendon holding Ryan's hand instead of the whole series of those T-Minus Rock episodes. 

Basically, I'm trying to share some basic content that the fandom had in 2006-2008, but I'm also trying to not do anything sketchy. The majority of the videos that I'm missing or just can't upload are tied to Viacom in some way... and it's so sad because what is any company even doing with that footage at this point. 

[nolonger-humann]

w/ my reblog about the CGI stuff don't get me wrong i'm not AGAINST CGI because like one of the rebloggers said it's not like there should be NO CGI, at some points it may even be necessary if using effects puts the actors in danger. In /minimal amounts/ it's okay. Like, a bit of a drastic example, but say uhhh Final Destination and the Saw franchises.

I know that Saw isn't exactly /known/ for it's special effects but I'd far prefer to see, like, early Saw traps over that lazer trap in Jigsaw. Holy shit seeing that guy's head-orange-slices flop like octopus arms was horrendous. Can a head even DO that ?

Also did you know Saw traps were Like That in the og movies to keep the actors safe. Like they wanted to do a back-breaker trap but they literally couldn't because it was too dangerous for the actor. Interesting little tidbit, completely unrelated to my rambles.

But !! Liike. Later FD movies sure did have. . . effects. Like I was stunned to learn that the logs were CGI (so they could bounce, real logs wouldn't bounce), but seeing that guy get launched into a fence and his body became like chunks of meat. Again I am asking can a body. . . do that ? Actually the whole race track vision scene was kinda. . . Hm. Questionable at best.

I know Final Destination is meant to be dramatic and shit. Like the point of these deaths are to be over the top because Death was feeling petty as fuck today but hghghg.

And yet I'd still prefer to watch the questionable effects from FD and the old Saw movies and maybe even Jigsaw over current MCU movies. I'm sorry but I've seen clips and seeing how dead those CGI fights look. . . Thanks, I'll stick to my silly horror movies and whatever else I decide to watch.

(ALSO ALSO I WAS SO IMPRESSED WHEN I LEARNED HOW MANY OF THE JURASSIC PARK DINOS WERE ANIMATRONICS LIKE HOLY SHIT ? the kids had NIGHTMARES bc of the t-rex car scene. cuz like . holy shit that's a VERY REAL LOOKING REX PUSHING INTO THEIR CAR)