#We made it through FOUR YEARS of it being a pandemic without getting it!

[very-lost-hobbit]

I have covid :(

[seshathawk]

I’d like to address something from season four that I haven’t seen anyone else address yet, though some people have spoken critically of the plots surrounding it.

A quick caveat: this is based off of my own experiences, and is not by any means an attempt to excuse, forgive, or erase any of the many mistakes that season four made. (This is going to be about parenting, for anyone who would like to avoid said topic.)

Hi. I’m the mother to a 4.5 year old child. When I met my husband, we were both working jobs, although he made more than me. I quit my job eventually for reasons that don’t need to be detailed here, and three years later had a baby and ended up being a stay-at-home mom to our child. At the height of the pandemic, I felt this was lucky; we wouldn’t have to scramble to find child care or anything like that.

Two years later, I was absolutely miserable and a completely different person.

Parenthood changes a person. A lot. Like, a lot. You have to sacrifice things, things that used to be important to you, again and again, in order to support your children, and you do it because you love them so much and you want them to succeed.

But something else happens, specifically to women who become parents. Some women intend to go back to work and never do. In some families, it’s cheaper for mom to provide childcare than it is to pay for daycare. Somehow, women end up being the managers of the household and primary caregiver for any/all children, all day, every day. This isn’t to say that these women don’t love their children. But, rather, that women end up carrying the burden of the invisible load for their entire household, including their husbands.

And this also isn’t to say that those husbands aren’t loving, or that they don’t take care of their kids too, or that these women don’t love their husbands. But it’s a huge burden.

Some examples of the invisible load: meal planning, grocery shopping, packing bags for outings or school, managing the family (kids) schedule, arranging for childcare, managing communication with childcare or school, making all appointments for kids or entire family, planning parties, making holiday (Christmas/Easter/4th of July/take your pick) magic, finding activities for kids to do, packing lunches, restocking things like toiletries or pantry staples, cleaning up clutter or getting family/kids to do same, putting away laundry, doing laundry, and…the list goes on. The list is eternal. There is no end to the invisible load.

And when you’re managing all of this and your husband does things like not know if you have a pantry staple at home, isn’t sure where your child’s clean underwear is, or forgets to do something very simple such as grab extra milk, it’s really easy to feel frustrated and resentful.

This is never explicitly stated in The Umbrella Academy, that this is how Lila feels. But it was pretty obvious to me. Her random statements like, “Why are you doing the cake now?” and “I told you to do the pinata two hours ago!” and “This isn’t about you!” felt true to me. Like, OH MY GOD, I do this every day, HOW ARE YOU DOING THIS SO WRONG. And, also, Diego casually says, “Hey, let’s just up and leave just like the old days, the kids will be fine with your family,” without appearing to have ANY IDEA about what goes into planning for kids to stay with relatives for what has to have been at least two days. (Sidebar: I’m not sure if the writers thought that bit through but I definitely read into it that Diego thinks it’ll be easy to slip away while Lila understands the intense logistics of this suggestion.)

So, when Lila said, regarding book club/undercover operations that she just needed something just for herself, I felt that, SO hard. Because you know what happens when you’re a mom? You’re doing the invisible labor and the emotional labor for (in Lila’s case) a family of five. When you finally have some time to yourself, it’s maybe an hour, and your choices are to try to do something relaxing by yourself, spend time with your husband (who you might resent a little), or do something for the house/family. Getting to escape and do something fun, just for you? That’s SO magical.

I do wish we’d seen more of their domestic life together, because I think that could have said a lot about their relationship. But I didn’t think for one second that Lila was unhappy because Diego is never present and never stops complaining, although I’m sure that’s part of it. I saw instantly that she was unhappy because her personhood has been crushed under the weight of motherhood and wifehood and that she was struggling. And that all she wanted—all any of us in similar situations want—is for her husband to understand that and step up, in a way that husbands really don’t understand, because patriarchy.

Does it mean she’d cheat on Diego? Does it mean she’d cheat on him with his brother? Not necessarily. Does it mean she might look for companionship or friendship elsewhere, outside of her family life? Does it mean she might be happy, for a while, living a more adventurous or quiet life, away from the demands of her family? Maybe! Would have been great if the show had explored that a little instead of turning her into part of a love triangle.

But I thought that Lila, burdened with motherhood in a way that Diego cannot ever truly know (because patriarchy), felt true to me and was one of the highlights of season four to me.

[robertreich]

Why Does Flying Suck so Much? 

You might not believe this, but I’m old enough to remember when flying was fun.

Now I'm sure you've got your own airline horror stories, which I hope you’ll share. But what happened to make flying such a nightmare?

The answer is simple: the same things happening across most industries. In fact, a close look at airlines reveals five of the biggest problems with our economy.

Number 1: Consolidation means fewer choices.

While there were once many more airlines, a series of mergers and acquisitions over the last three decades has left only four in control of about 80% of the market.

This kind of consolidation has been happening all over the economy. For example, four companies now control 80% of all beef production, and two control over 60% of all paper products. This lack of competition has led to:

Number 2: Companies Charging More for Less

Even before recent airfare spikes, air travel was getting more expensive because of new fees for things that used to be free, like in-flight meals, checked bags, or even carry-ons.

Spirit Airlines even charges $25 to print your boarding pass at a ticket counter! It’s just a piece of paper!

One of the ugliest ad-ons is the fee some airlines charge for families to sit together. That doesn’t even cost them anything!

Airlines are leading an economy-wide trend of adding often unexpected new charges to goods and services without adding value.

And you’re getting less in return. Airlines have cut an estimated 8 inches of legroom and two inches of seat width in the last two decades. Doesn’t bother me (I’m short), but many of you may feel the squeeze.

This parallels other industries where you’re paying more for less — just look at how cereal boxes, rolls of toilet paper, and candy bars are all shrinking.

Number 3: Exploiting Workers

While their jobs have become more difficult, many flight attendants haven’t had a raise in years.

And a lot of their hardest work is totally unpaid, because most flight attendants don’t get paid during the boarding process. They’re off the clock until the plane’s doors close.

And if the flight is delayed, those are often extra hours for no extra money.

Again, this mirrors trends in the overall economy, where too many workers are pushed into unpaid overtime or made to do work or be on call during their off hours.

Number 4: The Illusion of Scarcity

Airlines pretend they have no choice but to raise prices, cut services, and limit payroll. But their profits are in the stratosphere. In the five years before the pandemic, the top 5 airlines were flush enough to pay shareholders $45 billion, largely through stock buybacks.

During the pandemic, they got a $54 billion bailout from taxpayers (you’re welcome).

In the years since, they’ve resumed flying high, with nearly $10 billion in net profit expected across the industry in 2023. They can afford to take care of workers and customers.

Whether it’s multi-millionaire movie moguls pretending they can’t afford to pay writers or a grocery chain blaming “inflation” for high prices while raking in record profits, this illusion of scarcity is a sham.

Number 5: Misdirected Rage

Instead of being mad at the people at the top, we’ve been tricked into being mad at each other. Fights have broken out over whether it’s ok to recline a seat or who gets overhead bin space. But reclining’s only an issue because airlines intentionally put the seats too close together. And bin space is only running out because they’ve made it expensive to check bags — and also risky, with the rate of lost bags doubling over the last year.

Airlines are pitting us against each other the same way billionaires and their political lackeys pit groups against each other in society, hoping we’ll blame unions or immigrants or people of other races or religions or gender identities for why it’s so hard to get ahead, and that we won’t notice how much wealth and power is in the hands of so few.

So what do we do?

A lot of these problems could be solved with tougher antitrust enforcement — which we are starting to see. The Justice Dept is suing to block JetBlue from buying Spirit Airlines. We need that kind of anti-monopoly protection across the board.

Another part of the solution is unions. Airline workers are among the wave of American workers organizing to demand better pay and working conditions.

And then there’s your power as an informed consumer. Companies get away with bad behavior when we accept their excuses that there’s just no other way to run a business. They’re counting on us not knowing what’s really going on. So share this video, and share your airline stories in the comments.

Finally, try to be a little nicer to service workers and your fellow passengers — on planes and in life. After all, we’re all on this journey together.

[autistichalsin]

I love my mom but the lying and guilt tripping gets to be so much sometimes.

IE she overheard me talking about getting my brother a ticket to fly to comic con with us. She got pissed about money (fair enough I guess since he still lives with her and my dad) but then I brought up we were helping, and she got mad at me saying she missed my college graduation because of money so why didn't we help?

I just about lost it. I BEGGED her to come. I offered to pay for all the hotels or plane tickets. She's scared of flying so wouldn't do that, and won't let my dad go anywhere without her, so that was a no. And she said the drive was way too long, she'd be really uncomfortable, and my dad couldn't take that long off work.

She didn't come because she didn't think it was important. Bottom line.

In fact, I even mentioned at one point before the graduation I was grateful, as much as the pandemic sucked, that the graduation would be getting livestreamed because it meant she and my dad would see it no matter what. And she (granted, drinking at the time, but still) said it was horrible for me to celebrate people dying just so I could have a graduation.

EVERY TIME I brought up my graduation, she never showed the slightest interest, nor the slightest bit of sympathy that she was missing it. She went out of her way to blame me, act like I was the one being unreasonable. She continued showing absolutely no interest for my Masters graduation, so that I ended up not even bothering to travel (online program) because I knew no one would be there for me anyway, so why bother.

I didn't even get to go to my high school graduation, because it was an online program on the other side of the state. I had to be held back a year when depression hampered my academic performance, and my older siblings had already dropped out; in desperation, trying to motivate me not to do the same, my dad promised me that if I made it, they would too. So I worked through, got the credits I needed... and nope. My mom screamed that my dad spent too much on getting the car up to pass inspection standards (how does that even make sense) and that we therefore couldn't afford to go. So I didn't get to attend that either.

And you know what? Honestly, I made my peace with it- with the fact that my mom will never care about me the way she cares about my sister, that she just doesn't think my successes are worth celebrating (unless she can brag to someone online to seem like a good parent, I guess) and lacks the empathy to understand why me having my parents with me at major life events is a big deal. I worked through that and made my peace with it and have quietly decided I am not even going to bother inviting them to any future events I have, unless maybe I get married one day, I guess, though I feel she'd still try to find excuses not to go to that if it was more than a four hour drive from her.

I could deal with all that. But she fucking LIED about it to guilt trip me. She lied that she WANTED to come and it was money preventing her. That I never tried to help her get to me. And that's the part that hurts the most. That she wasn't there to celebrate when it mattered, but now has the nerve to lie about it and play victim, as though I'm the reason she wasn't there.

She always does this shit! When I was a senior in undergrad, there was an undergraduate research symposium everyone in my major was required to present at. It was ALSO on Zoom, so no excuse not to make it. I asked her and my dad multiple times if they'd like to see my present my research paper on a Japanese death cult and the effects it had on Japanese culture. They BOTH declined. So I invited my grandma, who was happy to be invited, and my best friend even walked her through setting up Zoom for the first time. AFTER the event, when I was telling my mom and dad on the phone about my grandma loving my presentation, THEN my mom got livid and said she had NEVER been invited, and of COURSE she would have come if she had the chance, why did I invite my grandma and not her?

She doesn't want to share in important things with me but then she gets pissed if I then share them with others instead. I guess she wants to feel so important that her declining would make me refuse entirely instead (as with my Masters degree ceremony?) I don't know.

I'm just tired of this man.

[eisforeidolon]

Question: What episode are you guys most proud of, that you just made and you really knew this is something special?

Jared: What episode are we most proud of that we made - of Supernatural?

Question: Of any show.

Jared: I'll go with Supernatural because we've got some Supernatural family members up here. What episode - I guess I'll start - sorry, I hear a little "Eeeeeeeeeeee" Was E.T. just up here? Why are we hearing "Eeeeeeeee" - just kidding, kidding. I think for me, this may seem obvious, the episode I'm most proud of and the most difficult episode to shoot was the series finale. It was rough. It was really rough. And it was a weird - I think when the COVID strike happened, we got - Jensen and I got sent home from Canada on Friday March 13th, Friday the 13th, appropriately, of 2020 because they thought they were going to shut the borders down. So they were like, get across the border, go see your family, we don't know what's going on, you know, there's a worldwide pandemic. And so we had the scripts by then, we had the last two scripts of the series and we got home and didn't go back to Vancouver until August 1st-ish? So I had four months - and a half - to sit there and read through the dialogue, I couldn't read through the scene, the barn scene especially, without crying. And so I'd like go - yeah, we have a little treadmill at our house - and so I had nothing else to do, I'd be like hey Genevieve can you take the kids for a second, I'm gonna go and just get a little run in and read through the episodes. And she's like, yeah, do it. So I'd go and I'd come back and my face would be all puffy and red, and she'd be like, oh shit, are you okay? Like, thinking I got bad news about a friend with COVID or something, and I'd be like yeah, just read the finale, it's cool, it's cool. Yeah, so that was very difficult. But I was very proud of that and it was very heartbreaking as well. Guys and gals?

[Julian Richings talks about being proud he was able to hit his mark in the big boat of a car Death drove in his intro, Sam Smith talks about all the little missing pieces character moments of Mary in Absence, and Alaina Huffman reminisces about getting "to kick the shit out of Crowley" and how great Mark Sheppard is.]

Mitch Pileggi: I'm gonna keep it with Supernatural, because I've been so fortunate to have such a long career and I can't remember most of it, so I couldn't remember moments from it. Probably the hugest, one of the hugest moments of my life was the day that I met Jared Padalecki. And, I mean, I've got the job, so I don't need to say that. Yeah, he ain't gonna fire me. So it was huge, I met an individual that has been so giving and so - to my family, to me and to my family and everybody around us on the show that we're doing now. I have to say that the show that we're doing now is my favorite show that I've ever done in the forty plus years of my career. Without a question, without a doubt, if you haven't seen it, start watching, please. But I think as far as Supernatural, I didn't understand most of what that character was doing and I'm still trying to figure it out. So, I mean even Bob Singer was like, what the hell is going on with those Campbells? So. But I have to say, the scene that I had with Jensen where he turns into the Yellow Eyed Demon was a blast. I had so much fun. I got to get up and sniff on Jensen real good and it was fun, I really enjoyed doing it. And just - like for both of them, when I met both of them, I think I took Jensen aside about four days working on the show and I said I just want to say that you two guys have got your heads screwed on right. Keep it that way, because this business can really twist you up and it hasn't done it to this day, so.

[13docwriting]

NOTE: this post was made on November 26th, 2023, before the 60th specials aired. I wasn't going to post it but due to the recent episodes, I feel it really fits. It's me, more than a year after the Power of the Doctor! As time moves on and more spoilers / interviews / trailers / content comes out for the 60th (and then some), my already limited hope continues to dwindle for human kindness. Why? Here's my twenty page essay down below! (I'm not kidding, it's 20 pages)

The Thirteenth Doctor has been a life changer for me, as many could tell from my username. Chibnall's series came to me in the midst of the pandemic and a very hard time in my life. Ironically, my motivation for watching DW once again after more than a four year hiatus of the show was actually the idea of the Doctor being a woman. My reason to stay, however, was the stories we received. I've lived through the Chibnall and Jodie bashing on this hell-site in real time. I've read downright nasty comments on any/all of Doctor Who's social media posts about thirteen's series. I've seen people call each other horrible names for simply liking one of the Thirteenth Doctor's episodes... And now, as her series has ended a year ago, I'm even more saddened to see her era get pushed to the side as if to be forgotten. Nobody came at me with the whole "it's not because of Chibnall/Jodie's era! DW just needed a reboot!" I would have agreed! I would have agreed that a fresh coat of paint would have helped DW gain some more traction, especially in the states! The more people who watch DW, the better! But the change RTD is presenting and the continued changes come at the cost of dealing with bullies online and defending something I love with all my heart.

I'd like to remind everyone that Chris Chibnall did not just barge his way into Doctor Who. He has written episodes for DW for a while before he took over as showrunner. Tenth Doctor: 42 Eleventh Doctor: The Hunger Earth, Cold Blood, Pond Life, Dinosaurs in a Spaceship, the Power of Three. Recognize some of those titles? Yeah, even when I was a wee lass, those were some of the best episodes DW had ever done. "42" scared the crap out of me in the best way, "Dinosaurs in Spaceship" had me smiling ear to ear, etc. etc.

Don't just take my word for it, read some of the reviews for those episodes. They are highly positive if not still mid-range.

That being said, I have a hard time believing that every single one of Jodie's episodes have been awful. And, if not outright stated as awful, certainly below every single nuwho Doctor.

Was there some not-so-great episodes? Yeah, of course! But every Doctor has had some questionable episodes. With a show that has a new plot nearly every episode, you're going to have some misses! My point being... Chibnall CAN write good episodes and, with that being said... Why HAS Thirteen's era been considered one of the worsts? Well, I think it's because, as always, people hate change. We've just come off of Twelve's era which was rooted in deep and meaningful conversations with a underlying of, dare I say it, Time Lord Victorious. Twelve holds a special place in my heart for the amount of care he showed through his era. From the Twelve's darkest moments, Thirteen is born. Thirteen is a ray of sunshine that holds hope in the palm of her hand. She's happy, bubbly, and ready to smile. She wants the universe and everything it has to offer and she's ready to travel the stars again.

Chibnall introduces a series of stories that are rooted in that hope. There's kindness at every turn, there's compassion, there's empathy... Is that the reason people hate her era? No. A new Doctor has never stopped anyone from getting back into the show. So, it's the writing, you say? I have one thing to say to that: Prove it. Point me in the direction of bad writing without ONCE mentioning the word "woke". If you found Jodie's era to be preachy, perhaps there's a reason that you take offense to it. DW has always been a progressive show and it will forever stay that way. And I am the first one to admit that, again, there are weak episodes. There IS some bad writing, but the hate that Jodie's ENTIRE era gets, I feel, is unjustified. So, if not writing, must be the acting! Where? When? I had no problem watching Jodie Whittaker be the Doctor. She's quirky and fun and eccentric... She has a thousand different emotions on her face at one time. Any actor that knows how much a smile can hide is a talented one. Besides that, her work on Broadchurch and her newer works (One Night, Time) have some raving reviews. She clearly has talent. So, not the acting or writing... Companions, then? Why? "The fam" had all of their moments to shine. I won't say their character arcs were perfect, especially for Ryan and Graham, but they did have their own arcs. Was it the fact that there were three totally separate companions at once? Was it just too big a job? I can't answer that one. I personally felt that they all got a good ending, one that makes sense and that isn't tragic for the sake of tragedy. This my be my opinion piece, but I liked having multiple companions that had their own little storyline, but that's MY opinion and I'm fine with someone calling me out on that. Let's go really basic... It's because the Doctor isn't meant to be woman, right? Oh, so, the Master can be a woman and that's totally fine, but when it's the Doctor... Woman can be villains but they can't be the main protagonist, right? I didn't see people up and arms over Missy, why was Thirteen so different? I remember seeing her very first introduction trailer and having people immediately be upset by the gender change. Well, forget my opinions, let's look at the statistics and viewings numbers, right?

HOW ABOUT NO. Remember the writing strike that just ended? Remember how regular cable has been nearly done with? Remember how writers are fighting to earn something for streaming services? We can't rely on normal/live views while a literal pandemic was happening, while streaming has become the norm, while watching online for free has existed for so long... Views have CHANGED. The way people consume media has changed, especially during the pandemic. Now, for an excuse... The pandemic happened. It changed how people were filming, it changed how close people could get to one another in terms of acting, it changed filming times and locations. I can't confirm, but I know that the Flux storyline was cut by two whole episodes, which could be the reason a lot of people felt disappointed by the end of the Flux. Chibnall and Thirteen's era had so many real-life obstacles to overcome that past era's did not have to deal with.

I'm tired, alright? I'm tired of defending my love for a character. And to have that love be spat out in the form of a different writer by.... 1. Discarding the Thirteenth Doctor's iconic outfit after a regeneration for the first time ever (under the guise of calling it "drag" if Tennant was to wear her outfit even after a male co-star had just worn it.) 2. Introducing a very popular Doctor back into the show ("to gain views") 3. Doing a soft reboot by calling the new season "season 1" (could be Disney's fault, but I'm not entirely sure of that fact) Every day I read another article about how RTD is "saving" Doctor who when I myself have been saved by the Doctor already. I didn't ever need to justify my love of a character until today.

[epithetical]

2024 UPDATE (OFFICIAL)

Hey, everyone. Longtime no talk. Despite being weirdly active on this account, I haven't really made any textposts since high school. So I've decided to fix this by giving a gigantic update post about my very busy 2023. If you're new and don't know anything about me, or knew me as a teen and are wondering what I'm up to now: buckle up.

TL;DR:

Dropped out of art school. Released an award-nominated(???) dating sim, ValiDate. Killed the Golden Girls Take Manhattan DX. Conquered Jaw Explosion Disease. Hung out with some friends. (Also, a lot of NDA shit that I can’t talk about.)

ART-SCHOOL DROPOUT

From 2021 to 2022, I was attending a prestigious and overly-expensive art school for their (brand new!) game design program. When I first graduated from high school, this college was my dream choice, and coming off the success of my early game dev career, it seemed like a perfect opportunity to polish my skills while I kept working on the side. My first commercial game was still in development, but we were feeling comfortable, and I felt like getting greedy.

Pride before the fall. Full Icarus mode. You know how it goes.

The school itself was…alright. Satellite campus, mid-pandemic, hybrid learning. Close enough to commute comfortably, classes just long enough for masks to not give me a headache, and the handful of remote courses helped keep my medical problems at bay. Problems that the school was a little unequipped to help with, though the disability office did their best. I had to drop a class because my body, at the time, couldn’t handle eight hours of classes without some Crazy Side Effects. 

(Keep in mind that every class was, minimum, four hours. And I had to take at least five a semester. Each class also saw me make an entire game from scratch. My body was already at its limit.)

If you knew me in high school, you’re probably waiting for the shoe to drop: I was, famously, the worst at academics. Never did homework, rarely finished projects, slept through first period at least once a week. Surprise, though: I was fucking great at this. My GPA doubled. Turns out that going to school for a discipline you already have a career in, and are kinda obsessed with, kinda does wonders for you. Unfortunately, I picked the worst time to care about school, since my commercial game’s release was the same exact night that my five school games were due.

TL;DR, I didn’t sleep for a week, almost fucked both up, and got burnout so bad that I couldn’t do anything for a calendar year. So I dropped out! Now, about a year of job hunting later (the game’s industry is imploding right now, and the only studios that considered me were… questionable, to say the least), the expensive art school wants me back. So badly. Turns out the whole school is so broke and understaffed right now that they’re basically chomping at the bit for that tuition money. Got a week to decide. Jury’s still out.

VALIDATE POST-MORTEM

So, if you couldn’t tell from the above section, we released a game in 2022!  I was supposed to write a post-mortem for it, but… burnout from the above, combined with general “post-release depression,” and I didn’t feel like touching it. 

Part of me still doesn’t! 

Yet I kinda think the feeling of me not wanting to talk about ValiDate is still worth discussing, so here we go:

For those of you that aren’t aware, I was a head dev on ValiDate, a dating sim that released in 2022. Volume 1 (of 3) did, anyway.

Did a lot of music, did a lot of writing, created some characters people really care about, created some characters people really want to fuck, made a couple Tweets that my boss hated, got accused of being reverse racist a few times. It was truly one of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. And, yes, we’re still working on Vol. 2 behind the scenes. 

That’s actually the reason why it’s kinda hard to talk about Vol. 1!

It was my first commercial game, my first publicly released game, and I think there’s always gonna be a… natural embarrassment toward your first “real” project. Combine that with my natural “if you stare at me for too long, I will kill myself” tendencies, and the game’s release was a special type of torture. It’s one thing to watch people play through a game that you poured your blood, sweat, and tears into, knowing full well that they might hate it (or just misunderstand it), but shit gets so much worse when you know that you could have done better. 

It’s a very special kind of psychological torture to have creative decisions you feel were mistakes, things you half-assed because of burnout or deadlines, or things you did wrong because you just didn’t know any better! The embarrassment was overwhelming, so I just… dipped for a while. Didn’t watch gameplay or read reviews, didn’t do much of anything.

Took me a while to realize that me being embarrassed about the project isn’t because ValiDate was bad or anything. I was embarrassed because it was an incredible learning opportunity for me. The amount that I picked up on game design, community management, leadership, marketing, pitching, porting, etc. in two years is more than any school could teach you in four. Volume 1 was a game made by amateurs, still wet behind the ears, trying to build something from grassroots. 

But Volume 2 is a game-ass game. 

And having done all the work we have on Vol. 2 (which, while I can’t talk about it publicly, is a lot!), looking back at our first release feels like… revisiting your awkward middle school photos. Sometimes it’s hard to not feel contempt for who you were when your biggest struggle was becoming, but learning to choke down that shame? It taught me to feel grateful for the you of yesterday, who clawed their way through uncertainty so that you, today, can stand on sturdier ground. Growing up is embarrassing, and it turns out you keep doing it well into your twenties! Sucks. 

For the past few days, Dani and I have been watching a Twitch streamer play through Volume 1. We’ve been so deep in planning for the future that we figured, hey, may as well revisit the past. Detached from all that embarrassment of becoming, I gotta admit: we made a fun little dating sim. People like it. Hell, I like it. Sure, I know all of its flaws and shortcuts, and I have my fair share of critiques… but fact of the matter is, if I have a problem with something, I can just fix it. 

Admittedly, In the past, that attitude of mine has actually been more of a problem than a solution. “I can fix this myself!” is all fine and good when you’re a solo dev trying to throw something together, but it turns out taking on excess responsibility in a collaborative setting is a way to make shit suck for you and your team. During the Kickstarter demo era, I was literally on every team besides art. Writing, programming, music, I got my fingers in all those pies. It was fun to me, and more importantly, it was sustainable. 

Until it wasn’t.

Volume 1 coinciding with my tenure at [art school], using a (finicky and, frankly, shitty) new game engine, being much larger in scope, introducing minigames (which, surprise, I was team lead on)... I pretty much killed myself trying to get it all done. Honestly, I blame half of our day-one bugfixes on me specifically. Every single one of them was an oversight made because I was pulling the classic “I’m unmedicated so crunching is the only way I can feel alive” type shit. 

Except for the OST. That one sucked because art school sucks all the joy out of creating.

Happy to say that our workflow for Volume 2 has been much more sustainable for me, even if I’ve officially broken my “no art” rule for it. Yeah, turns out I’m finally making use of that animation major. Sucks.

Self reflection over. Except for one last note:

If you’ve followed ValiDate, played our demo, donated to the Kickstarter, replied to our Tweets, played our second demo, bought our game, or just talked about us to a friend… I am so, so grateful. Beyond what words could possibly describe. It’s been my dream for as long as I can remember become a game developer, and I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you guys. Vd8 wasn’t what I expected the cornerstone of my career to be, but honestly? I couldn’t have asked for a better one. We have Vriska in our game. How many people can possibly say that?

And to those of you still waiting for Volume 2:

You haven’t seen anything yet.

GAYMING AWARDS

Speaking of ValiDate… Did you hear we were nominated for some Gayming Awards last year? We were! 

Three other head Vd8 devs (Dani: Production, Alexis: Art, Cam: Code) flew out to beautiful New York City for the award show last March, which was actually our first time actually meeting up IRL. Really funny how I’ve known Dani since I was fifteen, but here we were, a decade later, finally meeting face to face. She’s so much taller in person. I’m still taller, but barely.

Meeting up with internet friends is one thing (and more on that later!), but meeting up with internet coworkers? It’s interesting. This was the first moment that ValiDate felt “real,” seeing as it was suddenly important enough to give us comp’d flights and a hotel room, but more than that: the people I’ve been working with for years exist? We’re all hanging out together? We’re wandering through Manhattan all day? We’re eating the most disgusting food at Junior’s in Times Square? We’re trying to figure out what this mystery liquid is? How much did this food cost again? (Seriously, my onion rings were 90% dough and 10% onion.)

While I won’t bore you with the minutiae—I think my friends would prefer the privacy anyway—the entire trip to NYC was fun, exhausting, and a dream-come-true.

Except for that goddamn award show. Jesus CHRIST, what a trainwreck.

No, I’m not saying that just because we lost. We did lose, though. (Personally, I was fine with it, but I also had to travel the least distance to get there. So…) I’m saying that because the entire Gayming Awards industrial complex was, uh, kinda busted this year?

So imagine, you’re us: bunch of twenty-somethings on your Sex and the City shit. Big award show tonight, formal attire. We’re talking high heels, long dresses, full suits, the whole nine yards. Now what do you do in Manhattan? Walk. Sure, we weren’t walking in formal attire the entire time, but it was still a good five blocks to the award center where—wait, what do you mean they relocated the ceremony? The hall they rented is closed for mysterious reasons? Where the hell are we doing the award show?

If you answered “the drag bar where the afterparty was supposed to take place,” congrats, here’s $20. Way further away from our hotel, which meant more walking, and also a way smaller venue with a lot less… formality, let’s say. But we’re young gay people, we don’t care about formalities, who gives a shit! As long as it can seat all of us, then—oh there’s no seating. Ohhhh. Oh! Okay.

I’ll admit, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. There were a handful of couches, VIPs only. Realizing quickly that, oh shit, we’re VIPs, we managed to snag some front-seat couches before any of the pesky old people could. (We’re young! We deserve to sit! You’ve had your entire lives to sit, established games industry people! Let the new generation have a turn!) Unfortunately, when I got up to cash in my free-drink voucher, my seat was stolen by some white lady. 

So I sat on the floor.

March 2023. You, sitting at home, have decided to tune into the Gayming Awards “live” on Twitch, curious to see what Britain’s premiere gayming magazine had to say about, uh, esports. 

This is important to you. 

Fortunately, this year you’re watching a decently shot and scripted award show filmed in a (noticeably claustrophobic) little bar, complete with charming presenters (many of whom are local drag queens) and a myriad of corporate sponsors. You can hardly tell that the entire show was uprooted and moved hours prior!

Yet, for some reason, whenever the cameras cut to the audience… There’s some large man, right in front of the crowd, slumped down on the floor as if he’s bleeding out. With every award given, his clapping grows weaker. The more the camera cuts to him, the more life drains from his body, as if his existence itself is anathema to “gayming.”

Imagine, for a moment, that this man is nominated for an award. 

Imagine that he, after a lifetime of potassium deficiency, has been teetering on the edge of a Charlie Horse Reckoning for hours.

Imagine that the microsecond that his game’s name is called as a nominee, the Reckoning begins. 

Now imagine a world where he wins that award. 

A world where he is forced to stand—from his corpse’s rightful place on the ground!—in front of his peers and superiors, pretending as if he’s not afflicted with a life-ending muscle cramp.

So, yeah. I was pretty fine with losing.

Later, we ditched the “afterparty” to drink at Applebees. (Turns out “green tea shots” don’t have any green tea in ‘em?)

EULOGY FOR THE GOLDEN GIRLS TAKE MANHATTAN DX

Big announcement! I was a team lead on The Golden Girls Take Manhattan DX, a certified Tumblr Gold™ fan-project (by the immortal Grawly) about the eponymous Gold Girls in a Persona-esque parody game! 

Slightly bigger announcement! The game got cancelled. Sorry.

Feels a little weird talking about this, since the year-ish I spent working on the game passed in the blink of an eye, and I’m not going to lie and say that I was an instrumental piece of the team or whatever. I was lucky enough to lead a very talented team, and to play with some very fun devtools, but the game was definitely more important to me than I was to it. (Grawly, if by some off-chance you’re reading this, please click off now. You can peek back in at the Jaw Explosion Disease subheader. I promise I’m very nice and respectful.)

I was in high school when I was first made aware of TGGTMDX. My friend group was very into Persona (in the pre-P5 days), and one of our favorite video subgenres was “videogame UI on top of sitcom scenes.” It didn’t take us long to stumble onto early-build footage of TGGTMDX on Tumblr, and what spawned was a years-long fascination. I’d even consider it one of my many… game dev awakenings? The idea that the only thing stopping me from making “American Persona”—one of my many white whales—was commitment to the bit. Just one of the many things that fueled my teenaged suicidal overconfidence.

Speaking of suicidal overconfidence, about a decade later, I was invited to work on the game! Coming fresh off ValiDate, I was desperate for a chance to make a real portfolio piece (visual novels, while popular, will never get you a job), and this sort of opportunity only presents itself once in a lifetime. Fulfilling a teenage dream while furthering your career? What could possibly go wrong!

That makes it seem like there was some explosive drama behind the scenes that ruined everything. Sorry to say that most game cancellations aren’t that exciting, and that this game’s death was by a thousand microscopic cuts. Most of which are not my place to talk about: this game wasn’t my baby, and cancelling it wasn’t my choice to make! Many people worked on this for much, much longer than I even knew how to code, and they deserve to have their feelings prioritized. Whenever that post mortem gets published, I’ll be the first to reblog it, trust me. 

Instead, I’d prefer to talk a little about this as being my first real “loss” as a game dev. Certainly not my first project to go under, and I’ve had my fair share of shelved prototypes, but something about this cancellation was… different. Working on your dream project is all fun and games until you feel partially responsible for it dying, y’know? It felt Sisyphean at a point, like trying to dig a hole in the sand with a pitchfork. I would work at the game, and work at the game, but nothing I did felt like it made a dent. 

Part of me knew I wasn’t giving it my all, between the school-based burnout (above), jaw explosion disease (below), and ValiDate (omnipresent), it’s not like I could’ve afforded to put more of myself into it. Besides, I was literally a team lead, half my job was telling other people what to do. But the spectre of “you’re not doing enough” was hard to shake. Even when all these other responsibilities ebbed and I could afford to give this game my all, the difference felt minimal. 

We spend a lot of time pitying Sisyphus for having to push that boulder uphill over and over, but none of us ask ourselves “could we even move that big fucking rock in the first place?” Apparently, I couldn’t.

I wasn’t the only one that felt that way, it turned out. In fact, pretty much all the friends I made on the project felt the same. If there’s any “real” reason why the project got cancelled, it’s that. No big falling out, Disney didn’t give us a cease and desist, no secret rebrand going on in the background. Just a bunch of lads getting sick of pushing a boulder. Hell, Grawly’s been doing it for a decade. Let him rest.

Not too much rest, though: we’re already working on a different game together (Date Knight: check it out if you haven’t!), and some of us ex-Golden Girls devs have some ideas for what else we can cook up. 

For money, this time.

JAW EXPLOSION DISEASE

Probably the biggest “development” of 2023 was my sudden horrible nerve pain in July, which started as a sinus infection on the left side of my face, and soon became a horrific jaw pain. Long after my sinus infection healed, the jaw pain remained, which is a pretty bad hand to draw when a considerable portion of your day is spent “talking,” or “eating.” So, for the back half of 2023, I didn’t do much of either.

Instead, I had to take a considerable amount of ibuprofen, visit one doctor, three dentists, two hospitals, and four oral surgeons to figure out what the hell is wrong with me. The dentists discovered an exposed nerve, caused by wisdom tooth removal complications (sick!), the oral surgeons went “okay, we can fix that,” got me all numbed up. But it turns out that my left jaw is immune to local anesthesia! Thinking this was an infection, they kept putting me on antibiotics over and over in the hopes that it’d suddenly work. Took a note from my childhood dentist explaining that, “no, he’s always been like this” to find a surgeon willing to put me all the way under. (And then, the first time they tried, I woke up in the middle anyway! I got a full refund on the copay, at least.) 

Ultimately, I found a very nice surgeon in December that treated me same-day, and did it perfectly, but the damage to my liver from all that ibuprofen was… bad. But it turns out that livers just… regenerate naturally? So, give it a few months, I’ll be at 100%. Hopefully.

OOMFCON

Hilariously, six months after we met up for the Gayming Awards, Dani and Alexis found their way back to NYC for a little combination meet-up/vacation we affectionately titled “Oomfcon 2023.” This time, with bonus friends! Our entire friend server, whose name I’ve been advised not to post publicly, had rented an AirBnB for anyone willing to drop everything and go to Brooklyn. 

It took about a year of planning (mostly by Alexis) to get us all out there, but Jesus Christ, it actually worked.

Admittedly I’m a bit hesitant to talk at length about “taking a vacation”—even though I’m already… from here?—but it really was the highlight of my year. First for actually happening, when most friend groups I’ve had would have written the idea off as a pipedream, but mostly for being a really good time. A lot of walking, a lot of talking, a lot of drinking, a lot of dining. (This was during Jaw Explosion Disease, so you can imagine how my body took most of that.)

To Dani, Alexis, Miles, Haven, Grim, Xtine, and Ty: thanks for coming up here! The city is a lot more boring without you guys in it. I promise to have less health issues when we do this again!

And to everyone else outside the groupchat that I met and bored with my job hunt stories: Nice meeting you guys! Sorry that fate decided every single one of you is forced to keep in touch with me. (And I didn’t even get the shitty corporate job!)

[hezuart]

Why did you switch from animation to reviews? Also, do you still plan on doing CGI like you mentioned multiple times?

oH BOY..... you may need to sit down for this one

So it all started back in 2012. I was around 14 years old and just saw Rise of the Guardians and Wreck it Ralph. The stories, the characters, the world-building, the animation... now I never really went to movie theaters as a kid, but as a teen I started going and I instantly fell in love.

I went to community college for a few years and made some amazing friends. Loved some of my teachers and we participated in fun events like the 24-hour challenge and Campus Movie Fest. I had gotten in the top picks for Campus Movie Fest at some point and was supposed to go to the Cannes Film Festival in France to showcase my short film, but then the pandemic hit and it got canceled indefinitely.

So get this, for community college, I got a certification in 3D Animation and Video Game development. It's basically an AA degree but without general ed. (Why do you need general ed to get a degree in something? Math and PE have nothing to do with Animation. College is ridiculous. People have to pay you more simply because you were forced to spend more money in college. Wild.) Out of the 20 classes I had taken to get this certification, only 3 of those courses were hands-on 3D animation. And only one of those courses was hands-on video game development and I dropped out of that class because it was PC only and I only had a Mac at the time. I applied to the class without realizing it was accommodating only to PCs. So even my certification is barely reaching the basics for the title of it, but I did take another online course or two for 3D animation which I have a different certification for.

Now even with my 3D animation, I was never taught the physics engine. I was never taught hair or cloth simulation, but I do have modeling, rigging, animating, and texturing experience. For gaming, I have very little experience. I've only modeled things and found my way around Unity, but otherwise, I suck at coding. I hate coding with a passion. Making a video game without coding isn't really possible.

Now, when the pandemic hit, a lot of things were shutting down. I had no idea where I wanted to go next. People kept asking me where I was going for my higher education, but I kept getting warned not to waste money on college if you're trying to become an artist, especially at University. It's a money pit, and competition is so high, you're not guaranteed a job, you're just gonna be in debt. Even colleges like Cal Arts, who charge over $1K per class, I've been told are a "Pay to get in" kind of place. Where the money is used to nab professionals from their work to teach students or talk about their company or programs, and through that, you get a bigger chance to get your foot in the door because you know someone. I've unfortunately been told that's the more realistic way to get into animation: networking. If you're a shy introvert who doesn't know any famous people, you need to be extremely talented and unique to stand out to get the chance of being noticed. I don't really want to suck up to people nor do I want to waste thousands of dollars and 5 more years on college that I may not even need (let alone be able to afford) especially if there are online classes that may be even more valuable.

Now after I got out of college and started applying a few places, I discovered a LOT of unfortunate information.

Most animation these days is done overseas. South Korea, India, Japan, and Canada are the big ones.

Invader Zim, Steven Universe, Miraculous Ladybug, The Simpsons, OK KO, Star vs the Forces of Evil, Kipo and the Age of the Wonder Beasts, Adventure Time, Twelve Forever, and the Powerpuff Girls Reboot were animated in South Korea. The Ghost and Molly Mcgee is animated in Canada.

(The first four seasons of the Simpsons were animated in America until it switched to South Korea and India.)

2D traditional animation is no longer viable. Puppetry is the industry standard because it's the cheapest. Luckily, Toon Boom Harmony has allowed us to push the boundaries of 2D puppetry. Puppetry these days, if done well, can look really great, like Tangled the Series, but if you don't have Toon Boom Harmony, you're probably not gonna be hired.

Not even all 3D is made in the USA. If it's Disney, Dreamworks, or Pixar, then it's usually USA. But streaming service movies, like Sea Beast, Kid Cosmic, The Willoughbys, and Klaus, while they claim to be a "Netflix Original" that "Netflix Animation" animated, that's a lie. Klaus was animated by Yowza! Animation in Canada. The Willoughbys: Bron Animation, Canada. Kid Cosmic: Mercury Filmworks, Canada. Sea Beast: Sony Pictures Image Works, Canada. (X)

Go Go Cory Carson is written and storyboarded in America, but the animation is shipped out to be done in France. Sonic Boom is also French Animated.

Even Sony Pictures? Open Season, Surf's Up, Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, SMurfs, Hotel Transylvania, Over the Moon, The Angry Birds Movie, Sea Beast? Sony Pictures Imageworks is based in Canada. They're doing all the animation for them. It's not animated in America, it's merely funded by them.

I should also clarify: I only want to participate in stylized animated media. I don't want to do CGI for hyper-realistic films, which eliminates most of the animation jobs out there these days. It's just not my thing. The insane amount of details and uncanny valley are just so unappealing, I can't do it.

The closest animation studios are still far away. Most companies are located in LA. I'm over 7+ hours away from there. LA also has a high poverty rate, terrible air quality, is overcrowded, and is just generally not a good place to live, especially if you're low middle class. You're not gonna survive there.

Pixar is located in Emeryville, a few minutes north of San Fransisco city. Emeryville is the most crime-ridden city in that area. They tell you not to walk home alone at night. You're more likely to get robbed there than anywhere else according to the population ratio there. There are a lot of gangs that hide up there, and there's a lot of poverty there, even outside of San Fransisco. It's basically a trash pit. Not an ideal place to live, and commuting through 3-hour SF city traffic is also not gonna work. (X)

I have also been informed some people who work at Pixar are petty that the interns use their facility. Pixar has a heated pool, soccer field, gymnasium, and a few other nice things on their property. I was informed there was a person or two who got mad that an intern was using their basketball court.... when the intern was on break. As though they weren't part of Pixar, as though they had no right to touch the property. Apparently, they also used to make the interns push around little tea carts to serve refreshments as a way to "talk to the fellow animators" to probably get them interacting, but hearing that the interns were basically chored with butler duty to bother the animators hard at work seems like such a forced thing. That makes me uncomfortable. Of course, the person who told me these stories has been working with Pixar for over a decade or two now, so things could be very different as the years went on. Pixar itself on the inside of the animator building is gorgeous. They all decorate their office spaces in crazy ways, it looks like a movie set. But they have a bar and "whiskey club". They're apparently allowed to drink at work and have often had parties that got a little out of hand. There's also an old chain smoker room where the founders used to play poker and spy on people outside of their room with hidden cameras; I've even been inside. I don't think they use it anymore, though I'm not totally sure. Some of this info was fascinating, but the drinking made me uncomfortable. I kinda want to work with sober people here.

The sex ratio in the animation industry is also interesting and unfavorable. 70% of the animation and art school ratio is women, but only 34% of the actual animation workforce is women. 34% female to 66% male. More women study animation than men, but more men get hired and hold positions than women. Animation, ironically, has always been a male-dominated workplace. This unfortunately contributes to the "you have to know someone" or "be rich" to get-in situation. Men know a lot more men and not as many women. So the 30 to 40-year-old guys hire the other guys they know rather than a young poor girl with a passion. This makes it even more difficult for me to get in. (X)

20th Century, Netflix Animation, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, Bento Box, Vanguard Animation, Universal Studios, Titmouse, 6 Point Harness, ShadowMachine- all LA / South California.

There are a few places I could apply to, but what they do, I just don't care for. Niantic(Pokemon Go), Lucasfilm(Effects), Whiteboard Animation(Marketing), Sharpeyeanimation (Marketing), EA games (Mass Effect, Battlefield, Dragon Age 2, all those hyper-realistic war, sports, or fantasy games.)

So whether it's outside of the USA or within the USA, I need to move. I don't have the money for that yet.

Just find a company that does remote work, right? It should be easy, especially in pandemic times! Wrong. Most animation companies don't permit remote work. It's probably a security issue. But I've done research on this. The only big animation company I've found (so far) that allows remote work (or is HIRING for remote work) is Mainframe Studios in Canada. They have a 3D animation job list, and I guess they focus on animating Barbie movies(???). (X) But that's about it. And even if you're a remote worker, there's a high likely hood you still need a Visa to be allowed to work for a company belonging to another country. So that's a whole other legal process to deal with.

Disney is becoming a huge corporate monopoly over American animation. They bought Blue Sky only to kill them off. (Disney also just recently laid off 7,000 people due to their stock price drop and failed movies they released the past year with deliberately bad marketing for political reasons. (X) Disney also bought Pixar and is pushing for sequels because weird or bad, sequels and terrible live actions make them a LOT of money. Did you know Disney's terrible Lion King CGI remake is amongst the top 10 highest-grossing movies ever made? It's criminal. (X)

Because Disney is such a big name in the USA, there's a huge association of animation = children's media, which is not true. Animation at the Oscars also has its own category, when it's not a genre, is a medium. Disney often wins at the Oscars too because no one sees the other animations. Granted, Disney has an insane marketing budget in comparison, but it's clear no one cares to seek out animation outside of heavy CGI live-action these days. No small-time studios, no limited releases, no anime. The fact that Disney also now OWNS the Oscars is SUS as hell. (The fact that Disney-owned ABC threatened the Oscars, forcing them to cut 8 categories or else there wouldn't be a show that year is wild. There isn't even an oscar for stuntmen. What the fuck, Hollywood?) (X)

Dreamworks nearly went bankrupt and sold itself to Comcast back in 2013. Comcast also owns Illumination. Dreamworks has been focusing on making bad tv show adaptions of their IPs. So yes people, Jack would sooner meet the Minions than meet Elsa. Disney is the biggest corporate monopoly, but it's definitely not the only one. The animation industry in America is snuffing out its competition by buying it out for itself. It's insane the kind of power they have.

Competition is HIGH. Because of this, the only ways to get in? If you're rich or you know someone. Pixar gets over 3,000 intern applications every summer. Less than 100 are seen by actual hiring managers. The most interns Pixar has ever taken in a single year were 12. The least they ever took in a single year was two. A 12 to 3,000 ratio is not favorable. That's a 3% chance to get into a big-shot animation company.

And again, because remote work isn't permissible to new hires, you need to live in the area to commute to the campuses. This is one of the reasons why LA is so crowded.

If you get into an animation company purely remote and maybe even for a different country? You are the luckiest person alive.

Programs are expensive. The animation industry is very strict on what programs they use. The industry standard for 2D puppetry is Toon Boom Harmony; the industry standard for 3D animation is Maya, and the industry standard for video game development isn't as clear but Unity is one of them.

Some of these programs are free, as long as you are a student. If you are attending college or a certain online program, you can use your school-issued email through them to apply to get the program for free for about a year. Otherwise, if you're using it to make your own animations solo?

Autodesk Maya: $225 a month or $1,785 a year (X)

and guess what? Maya removed its free render service. Arnold is now built in by default, however, if you want to BATCH render (Meaning render a full scene or several slides) it will slap it's ugly watermark over it.

Fun fact, this very rendered watermark can be seen accidentally in a single frame for the Kingdom Hearts Frozen cutscene

Well, you need to batch render if you're trying to animate so let's see what Arnold costs- $50 monthly to $380 annually.... are you kidding me?! The rendering PLUG-IN BUNDLED TO MAYA COSTS MORE TO USE THAN THE OWN PROGRAM?! (X)

Now, there are other rendering plug-ins you can probably use with Maya. But they all have their ups and downs and their own costs as well. (X) Pixar's Renderman is $595 per license. I can't seem to get info on Octane. V-ray solo is $39 monthly while premium is around $60 monthly.

Now there IS Blender, an alternative to Maya. It is free and I have it. That is ideal to work in for people like me. I tried it a while back, but I hated the interface windows. It was hard to work on it when you can't close them properly. It's possible they've fixed this in an update, but I haven't touched the program in over three years so I wouldn't know. It's different from Maya a little, so it has ups and downs in comparison too. But Blender is a savior to 3D artists everywhere.

Toon Boom Harmony isn't as bad but still high: Lowest price is $27 monthly / $220 annual and the highest is $124 monthly / $1,100 annual (X)

Unity has a basic version that is free, but Unity Plus is $399 yearly while Unity Pro is $2,040 (X)

So some programs are clearly more viable than others. But imagine you're trying to model, texture, rig, animate, simulate, and render a short film all by yourself in Maya. That's gonna take you over a year or two, and you'll have several thousand dollars out of your pocket by the time your free trial ends. And might I say, for an industry-standard program, Maya sucks. It's almost unusable without those plug-ins for not only rendering but also for the models to even be able to SELECT their BONE rigs.

Do you want to practice on your own when school is out of session? Fuck you! Fuck subscription services! Welcome to capitalist hell, baby!

Again, using Blender is more viable, but you're still going to be basically doing everything yourself. That's gonna take years. Do you have the patience for that? Do I?

Because of the pandemic, movies aren't even hitting theaters anymore. They're going straight to streaming services. Streaming services of which, gain sole rights to and can take media off their platforms at any time without warning. Thanks, Discovery+ ! Does everyone remember the HBO Max Animation & DC purge? It could happen to other streaming services too. Piracy will save the future of animation at this point. (X)

And again, Streaming services like Netflix will purchase films and claim they made them by slapping their logo over it; but no, they either bought the distribution rights or produced them through funding and maybe storyboarding. Often times from a Canadian film studio. (Link again X)

Even stop motion companies like LAIKA are losing money and may have to shut down or be bought out in the future, especially considering how much work and money they put into their films vs. how much money they actually make. (X)

All of this? Naturally made me fall into a depression. My god, the layers of hopelessness. My animation and modeling is pretty average too. I'm decent. I can maybe make a good shot. But I can't blow people away like James Baxter can. I mean, I shouldn't compare myself to people. If I worked really hard, maybe I could get into a good company. But again, I have to move! A part of me gave up. I don't really do 3D animation anymore, though part of me misses it.

I still 2D animate. I'm trying to make a short film and though my college friends who were working on it with me have given up, I have done my best to keep going. Even if it has been produced at a snail's pace for the past three years, I still intend to finish this animation. It's gonna be beautiful when it comes out, and it will be a wonderful portfolio piece regardless.

So with nothing else to do and no other kind of job experience really under my belt(plus my family is prone to covid so getting a job in the pandemic was just kind of out of the question) I decided to go to youtube. I heard some people can make a little money on there, but the truth is I had actually wanted to become a youtuber for a few years prior. I've always looked up to animators and reviewers on youtube, I've loved the stories they tell and their incredibly detailed analysis essays on movies, tv series, books, etc. I wanted to be one of them. I wasn't sure exactly what I'd do, so I just followed the Youtube Partnership program set up which took a few months, and then jumped in! I found I only had the time to upload once every month or two. I had a ton of audio issues and I'm not outputting at the proper 1920 x 1080 quality that I should be doing either. It's a huge learning process that I still haven't perfected, but I'm taking notes to try and get better.

Even though Youtube is fun, I only make $300 a month, and that isn't even consistent. With patreon, I make maybe another $80 or $100 on top of that, so overall $400 a month average. That's really nice and pretty cool! But it's not enough to survive.

Now I work part-time at a coffee shop. My mental health is a lot better and I love my coworkers. I make roughly $400 a week in comparison to the $400 a month. It's still not enough to live off of (the cheapest rent around is over $1,000 a month, not ) and it's still a temporary job in the long run. I intend to work here for maybe another two years to save up money.

But what do I do now?

Am I welcome in animation spaces anymore?

As a critic of popular media, it could be likely that they could fire me or deny my application because of my critique of their past films or tv series. They could see my youtube persona and assume I'm a raging untrustworthy nitpick instead of a passionate, kind person.

Vivziepop's Spindlehorse company? What Viv was doing was a dream. I was so inspired by her. She made her own company, made a super successful pilot, and was even creating more jobs for traditional, high-quality animation. However, for Hazbin Hotel, she required more funding, which is why she sold it off to A24, who now has corporate say in the show. A24 is known for letting creators be more lenient, but otherwise, Viv won't have full control over it anymore unless she managed to get them to sign something over to her; but with the rumors of her being kicked off season 1? I don't know anymore.

Her own company Spindlehorse; they rely on youtube revenue and/or merch sales to fund Helluva Boss. That's a tricky business practice, but it's kept them afloat so far.

However, Spindlehorse is hiring a lot of people as of late. This could be a bad sign; that people might be leaving the company due to potential mistreatment or unhappiness. With the way the show is going, I don't really want to be part of that company regardless, but maybe before season 2 of Helluva Boss, I would have considered applying. Had I made any critique videos prior, there's no way they'd accept me. "Aren't you that one YouTuber that said my writing is bad for season 2 episode 2?" And you expect me to hire you?" Like yeah, that application process would go down well. Not. By critiquing artists' work, some of them are very sensitive. I'd be kicked out for a lot of things, when really, we artists should be critiquing each other all the time, trying to improve. That's how the writer's room always is, ahaha... hours of fighting goes down in those meetings. It's intense, but fun.

But yeah, it's such a shame. Even small companies need to sell out to corporate to survive. Either that or be HEAVILY crowd-funded, which again, can be a slippery slope.

I see a ton of small projects on Twitter looking to hire people, or looking to become a big studio to release a pilot or game. I've joined a few of them, but most are unpaid because of COURSE they are, and then these projects?? Just don't go anywhere. Because it's unpaid. Because we can't afford to work on a project for free. IRL comes first. Some of these projects seem so great but they don't go anywhere, and it's hard to have faith in start-up studios anymore. (Game creators might have a chance, but tv series or films? Good luck, folks.)

At that point, should I just make my own company? I don't have the money or knowledge for such a thing! It's insanely expensive to start a business and get licensing. So much paperwork, so much everything! And the USA Government is so behind in understanding technology. If you want to create a remote business and/or copyright something, you're still required to put an advertisement in a local newspaper about it, even if your business isn't selling to locals. 💀 The number of fees and ridiculous legal hoops you need to jump through... it's a ridiculous waste of time and money. But you need to do it. The question is, am I willing to do it? Am I willing to tackle such an insane thing by myself?

I want to keep my internet persona and IRL persona separate, but can I? I value having a private, quieter life away from the screen. I worry about getting doxxed one day because of the nature of the internet. I worry about people finding my IRL resumes or profiles for work I want to do outside of youtube for security's sake. My art style is unique and very recognizable. I don't have a lot of private art that is worthy of being in a portfolio. But for absolute safety, I'd need to password-protect my websites or portfolios so the public doesn't have free access to them; only companies I'm applying to. But at that point, does password-protecting my resume and portfolio make it less likely I'd be hired due to the inconvenience? Due to the private, hard-to-find nature of my work? Being a YouTuber with great story skills and art skills with a fanbase could be a big plus to getting hired somewhere, but it could also be a horrible disadvantage that would get me fired. It's a double-edged sword that I cannot work around and I don't know what to do.

I've considered the video game industry, but even that isn't ideal. A lot of the indie ones I adore aren't made in the USA. Gris and Monster Camp were made in Spain. Ori and the Blind Forest: Austria. Hollow Knight: Australia. Little Nightmares and Raft: Sweden. LIMBO & INSIDE: Denmark. Outlast, Don't Starve, Spirit Farer, Bendy and the Ink Machine: Canada.

SuperGiant Games did Hades, Transistor and Bastion and is located in SF, but they're not hiring. Janimation, a multi-media company located in Texas isn't hiring. Frederator in New York isn't hiring.

I don't want to work for a studio that does nothing but first-person shooters or sports games. If I want to get into the gaming industry, I probably need to crowdfund and make a company to make a game myself.

If I make my own game, which I've wanted to do for a long time now and still want to... I can't code. I guess I could try to hire someone that could? But a game to the extent I want... I'd need to start small. I'd need to practice. It's several years of work. Will it even be worth it? I don't think I can do it alone. I'd need crowdfunding and workers; which again, here comes the "make my own studio" issue...

Do I even want to animate anymore? I prefer traditional animation in comparison to puppetry. I prefer 2D animation to 3D animation simply because it is more accessible. But even then, I'm finding myself drawn more and more to writing, storyboarding, and character design. If I were a 3D animator, this is mostly what I'd be working with all day: Naked models in an empty room. I'd do none of the physics simulation or texturing or lighting.

Animating naked & bald people all day... I don't know... 3D Animation kind of lost its appeal. You only work on such a small portion of a film, you almost never have the bigger picture. You won't see the final result until the film is done. As an animator, you're almost kept in the dark. Maybe that's how they want it anyway, since leaks are a huge issue they keep quiet under strict NDA.

But yeah, anyway... I'm an artistic digital generalist. I can do almost anything. 3D animation, storyboarding, writing, photo editing, illustration, rendering, modeling and so much more. It's hard to choose what you really want to be in this industry. I feel like Barry Benson dfklgjdflkjg

I don't know what I'm gonna do anymore. There's gotta be a solution to this but I just can't figure it out. I don't want to give up my youtube channel so I can be an animator. I don't want to give up a safer, quiet countryside house to be able to survive financially. Am I even willing or able to move countries? Is my career more important than friends and family?

I think I'm thinking too much about everything. I should start small. Move less than an hour away first and move in with roommates to get a feel for independence instead of jumping into it immediately. Get a job at a small time company, maybe not for what I want at first, but it'll get me some experience and maybe I'll learn some things along the way to understand where I can go next. Take it slow and don't panic too much over trying to be a young big shot. Take things one day at a time? That's my current goal, I suppose.

So you know... to answer your question... why did I switch to youtube for a current career? Because of a classic existential & career crisis in my 20s. Will I ever go back to 3D animation? Maybe. Maybe one day.

[ystk-archive]

A behind-the-scenes look at CAPSULE's VR concert "CAPSULE Live in VRChat 'Metro Pulse'" (Sound & Recording Magazine, 23.08.17)

On August 5th, 2023, electro duo CAPSULE held their concert for the album Metro Pulse. The location was a metaverse space known as VRChat. An audience of around 1,200 people gathered, many from overseas, in spite of the high technological requirements for entry. People shared their excitement for the event via social networking websites (SNS), but as artists have increasingly returned to in-person concerts following the coronavirus pandemic, how did Nakata Yasutaka, the brains behind CAPSULE, decide to go with a virtual performance instead? We'll take a look at the story behind the production with Nakata and the show's director, computer graphics artist ReeeznD.

Translation by ystk-archive ・ 3,712 words ・ Original interview ・ Concert

【Start of VR live project】 The virtualization that stemmed from VR meetings

I'm going to start off with some basic information about VRChat. Also known as "VR SNS," VRChat is a platform where users create avatars and communicate with one another. Areas in VRChat called "worlds" serve various purposes that range from conversation hubs, to places where one can enjoy beautiful virtual scenery, to hosting fashion shows or, in this case, live concert events. Putting it simply, VRChat is being improved by the day through social input, and its cutting-edge atmosphere is part of its allure.

─ When did the plan for this VR concert start?

Nakata: The music videos for our latest album Metro Pulse already featured virtual worlds, but the MV creator Saisho Kentarou-san suggested that if we could use a videogame engine, it'd be possible to move around those worlds in real-time. The music videos had to be done using Cinema 4D, but I kept thinking about getting more usage out of my virtual avatar. So it didn't start with the idea of doing a concert in VR, but rather it came about from wanting to make stuff that could go into a CAPSULE music video.

─ In addition to the VR concert hall area, you also created a space called the "CAPSULE HOUSE" for users to explore.

Nakata: It's a building that looks exactly as it did in the "Virtual Freedom" music video. I designed it alongside the director [Saisho] with a "resort studio" concept, and I proposed that we use it as a sort of lobby area for the concert hall since we already had the data.

─ At what point did you earnestly begin working on this VR concert?

ReeeznD: I was asked to work on it sometime in March this year. Since the most important thing was to make sure the concert would be a success, I started by considering how much could be put into it, all while being conscientious of how much time I had until the concert date. Because of that, I suggested a realistic duration of four songs/fifteen minutes, but even with it being that short it was still worked on up to the last second (laughs).

─ What sorts of back-and-forth conversations did you two have?

Nakata: Those took place in VR without us realizing we were in VR.

─ What do you mean?

Nakata: Everyone wore headsets and entered the VR space to work on it, just like if it was a venue in real life. We had discussions like "it'd be better if the height was like that" and "the view from the audience seating should be more like this" and whatnot. Instead of everyone discussing while having one screen to look at, each of us could move around in the 3D environment and gesture towards things. It was pretty different from how we made the music videos.

─ So you held your meetings as avatars in the VR world.

Nakata: Yep, that's right. It was an interesting hands-on experience, but it's difficult to explain how fun VR is to people who haven't tried it. I think it's hard to convey the coolness of it to people reading this article and looking at the screenshots on a flatscreen monitor, so I hope they'll get ahold of a headset and jump in, no matter what it takes (laughs).

─ Lots of users on SNS who had never been in VR before were posting about their excitement for the show. The experience has an impact that's indescribable.

Nakata: That's true. I think it's important for a VR concert to be seen in VR in order to be fully experienced, just like live shows in real life. If you don't see it in person, you can't appreciate it properly. And it's amazing that VR concerts have gotten to the point where they can give attendees the same sort of feeling they'd get at concerts in the real world.

─ Being there as it's happening is now the same experience whether it's VR or in real life.

Nakata: It is different from just watching something on a screen by yourself; users can chit-chat together before the concert starts. In the early stages of development when ReeeznD-san and I were going over what they'd made so far, I altered the sound accordingly. You could say the audio initially sounded sort of dry, like it was left as-is the way it sounds on the CD release, but I wanted the audience to get the sense that there was more space for the music to permeate. VR differs from in-person concerts in that it's up to the user how they experience the music, but we still consulted about sound effects, like "how would it sound if someone moved over here?" and "we should alter it depending on how wide or small that part of the soundstage is." So from there ReeeznD-san would show me his progress and I'd add sound effects as I saw fit.

ReeeznD: Here's an example for you: during "Give me a ride," Nakata-san added an explosion sound when the logo appears.

─ So not only does Nakata-san handle the music for the performance itself, he also does sound effects. That's very like him, considering how much he loves film.

Nakata: That logo scene was originally supposed to happen at a key moment (laughs). But since it shows up after the song ends, I could put in a sound effect without messing up the music.

ReeeznD: Sound effects were supervised by Kinu-san. He works on his own VR concert projects, doing everything from sound to stage direction, and if the sound effects aren't good enough he'll add them in himself. But other artists' music is untouchable in a sense, people on the production side can't do whatever they want to it without getting permission. The two of us talked about how sound effects were going to be difficult to pull off for this particular show, so we added the logo and explosion visual when there was a lull in the action. I was really impressed when Nakata-san put his own sound effect in that part because we didn't ask him to — Kinu-san was excited too (laughs).

─ That's some valuable insight into what it's like for people working on a creative team together.

Nakata: Also while we're talking about it, I added a 40-50Hz, rumbling sort of low sound effect between each song. Just for the sake of giving it some ambience. I don't even know how many users could hear it, but I think if you wear headphones it's audible. I'd like for people to listen to the show using their best possible audio set-up.

【Building VR sounds】 Sounds that can "only be heard in that spot" while accounting for attenuation and venue dimensions

Although you could watch this concert with only a PC, it's infinitely more enjoyable to connect via VR headset and get immersed in the environment. Compared to VR's first year on the market (in 2016; so nostalgic...), with offerings like the Meta (Oculus) Quest 2 and HTC Vive et cetera, the technology is now widely available: Apple just announced their Vision Pro, and the Meta Quest 3 goes on sale this year. The only major disappointment is that VRChat is currently only available on Windows, with no Mac support. Regarding audio, you can listen via the headset's internal mic or, as Nakata suggested, connect your preferred DA converter and use your headphones.

─ How did you tackle the issue of sound quality?

ReeeznD: In VRChat, worlds are created using an engine called Unity, and many creators leave the audio up to Unity as well. However, since this was a concert, we wanted to retain as much quality as possible. What's challenging about doing a concert is the amount of people in the audience can cause the frame rate to lag, which slows down the visuals of the show, so because of that we were searching for a way to maintain sound quality without weighing down the processing. We compressed the audio while checking the quality and processing load in Unity.

─ You set it up with speakers on the left and right sides of the stage.

Nakata: We sourced it via stereo, but ReeeznD-san adjusted the sound within the world to give it a stereophonic, 3D effect. I added ambience to the stereo source, and ReeeznD-san set up attenuation processing on his side of things.

─ Of course the way head tracking works causes the left and right sides where the sound comes in to change, but height and distance also impact how things are heard. How did you go about managing that?

Nakata: Because the space itself is interactive by nature, users aren't, for example, looking at pre-rendered visuals, but are seeing things moving in real time. The music side of things also involves real-time positional processing. When we first did a VR soundcheck, it sounded like the music was coming from a tape deck that was left onstage. I wanted it to feel encompassing, so ReeeznD-san focused more intently on sound sources, and from there adjustments were made to things like from how many meters away sound is heard and so on.

─ In regards to a sense of distance, was there a particular tool you used to tweak the sound?

ReeeznD: Using VRC Spatial Audio Source, I was able to simulate the music in a 3D environment and make it stereophonic. The attenuation is essentially a graph that simulates the actual real sound, but for our purposes I rewrote the whole thing to create a live listening environment that's pleasant on the ears. However, only using stereophonic sound would cause the audio quality to drop, so I mixed in an unnoticeable amount of non-3D sound to balance it out.

Nakata: The concert audio is different depending on where you're listening to it from. I wanted to get that aspect of it right. There may be people who want to hear it the exact same way from no matter where they're standing in the venue, but I want it to be a listening experience you can only have in VR.

ReeeznD: Initially the floor of the concert hall was completely level instead of being an amphitheater. Partway through development, Nakata-san suggested changing it, and this altered the acoustics as well. Since my background is in music video production, I was thinking at first that people would be happy with a final stereo mix like you hear in a video, but Nakata-san was very considerate of the fact that this was a VR concert and made suggestions to capitalize on that, so we kept coming up with ways to match his expectations.

Nakata: There a lot of things you could call VR, like fixed images that have a 360° camera but won't allow the viewer to move around in the environment, or even non-3D objects, but in that sense of the term I think this was the most "VR" live show I've seen so far. Users could have conversations with each other and them moving around would change what they could see and hear. I'd like as many people as possible to know about the world of VR.

【VR and DTM* production environment】 An amazing era where you can do anything with a modern PC *DTM = desktop music, or music that's created using MIDI/computers

With the mention of the game engine Unity, a DTMer reading this may think that VR is a whole separate world from music creation. On the contrary, Nakata sees similarities between the two fields. ReeeznD agrees: "Actually, the difference isn't that great."

─ From the sound production side of things, producing VR content seems extremely challenging. Being able to do both would make one a force to be reckoned with...

Nakata: Basically, people who do music and people who create VR content are not entirely dissimilar. Both can be done in real time without the need for rendering. Just a CPU is enough for today's DAWs, and you can work on projects in real time without having to write things out in advance; there's a lot you can achieve. I think we live in a time where we have an incredible amount of power to take advantage of that. It's huge that someone could do this in their own individual environment.

─ It's a time where anyone with motivation could do anything.

ReeeznD: Yes. The path is open, and there are outlets to showcase it.

Nakata: Of course having skills and good taste are important, but the means to create are widely available now. That's amazing, to me. ReeeznD-san, how did you get to the point where you can create content like this using game engines? From studying Unity, right?

ReeeznD: I worked as a director at a game company for about ten years. Afterwards, I went freelance, doing CG and music video production. I first started using Unity as part of motion capture work with lower-priced consumer goods; I'd bought an HTC Vive for somewhere around seventy- to eighty-thousand yen to do mo-cap with. After that, I started seeing screenshots on SNS from VRChat servers like Ghost Club and thought it looked really fun, so that's how I got into the world of VRChat.

Nakata: It's interesting to me how in VRChat, you have hobbyists' work intermingling with that of professionals. It'd be fun if I could get to the point where I can make my own world.

ReeeznD: I was influenced the most by hobbyist worlds while making this VR concert, rather than pros. There are a massive amount of music worlds in VRChat and I've been to a lot of them. Kinu-san, production team member tanitta-san, and cap.-san, they've all got more experience in VR than I have, and they've made worlds as well as avatars.

Nakata: You see the same sort of thing in music. When you're trying to create something, it's not helpful to take cues from what the people at the top are doing. I think the more interesting creations come from regular people.

─ That seems to be how it goes with new cultures, they spread out from a grassroots origin but eventually become commercialized.

Nakata: I think a whole lot of people would agree with that (laughs). VR as a platform is relatively young, isn't it? I was really lucky to be able to work with ReeeznD-san and Kinu-san along with numerous other people active in the field. If I only concerned myself with music production and nothing else, I don't think I would've done this, but I'm interested in the tech part of it and I think the culture around VR and the user experience are important. VRChat wasn't designed for music performances in the first place. If we'd just thrown the songs into a VR concert without any care, we wouldn't have been able to accomplish so many things. I learned — and goofed off — with others throughout the whole process and it was a very meaningful experience. I really want to learn how to make my own world. Even though I know how hard it is to start from zero when learning something like DTM (laughs), it's easy to blindly dive into a new thing.

─ For someone starting out with no knowledge of it, how long would it take to learn Unity well enough to create a VRChat world?

ReeeznD: Assuming it's their first time ever using Unity... I think it's doable in about a month.

─ In that short amount of time?

ReeeznD: Making your own VRChat world is a daunting task, but resources for them are plentiful, so I recommend starting there by changing things to suit your preferences. That way you'll learn the basics, like adding music and placing a video player, and it'll most likely be about a month until you feel ready to publish the world. Once you've done all that, you can gradually make it more original by replacing purchased assets with your own modeled ones.

Nakata: Similarly in DTM there's something called a construction kit that has pre-made loops in it that you can use as a basis when making your own songs.

【Possibilities of VR live】 A future where avatars can switch the presets on a synthesizer in real time

I experienced firsthand through attending this concert that it's a different experience from simply watching something on a screen. Terms such as "virtual" and "immersive" are overused, and it's understandable how someone only familiar with VR in its current early stage of development would write it off or just imagine what it's like before they've seen it. To be entirely honest, I was one of those people. However, Nakata points out the tremendous entertainment potential of VR live shows, which brings to mind certain prejudices myself and others have about the superiority of "real concerts." Maybe a lot of creators who read this interview will come away from it wanting to learn more about this new field immediately.

─ Before, you mentioned that the production during the concert was done in real time. In which specific parts is this noticeable?

ReeeznD: An easy example is during the chorus parts of "Hikari no Disco," you can see streaks of light going every which way, and since the only instruction given was for light to scatter within a certain area, there's an element of randomness. But above all, the true random element is how users can view the performance from any vantage point they like. Even the sound changes depending on where in the 3D environment they're standing. It's difficult to notice because this kind of thing is obvious in real life concerts, but it's only possible here because a computer is undergoing real-time processing to achieve it.

Nakata: It's important not only to create the environment in real time, but to be actively working on behalf of the user's experience too. If I learn a bit more about the sound aspect of it, I think I'll be able to amp up the interactive elements. For this concert I prepared the music ahead of time, but if we could do it in real time I could make it more interactive and it would better convey the advantages of the VR format. If we really wanted to, we should be able to have the avatar up on stage push a preset button on the synth and change the music.

ReeeznD: Actually, there is a world called Fractone where you can play the synthesizer and program a sequencer.

Nakata: But if we try to implement things like that, your workload is gradually gonna increase (laughs). Honestly, out of all my performances, this show was the one that utilized the most of my ideas. When you try to do it in real life, it's difficult to find a venue to begin with, or what you want to do is flat-out physically impossible, or you just can't do it regardless of budget. However, in VR there aren't limitations like these. Rather, you can add aspects that give it a more realistic feel.

ReeeznD: When I talk to people familiar with the VR experience, nowadays they aren't sure if what they're seeing is fiction or reality. Another way you could look at it is Disneyland was made from fiction, but going to Disneyland is a real-life experience. I think that's the kind of sensation happening in VR. It may be a world created with CG, but it's still a place you can experience with your friends that isn't any different from reality.

Nakata: For example, when an online meeting concludes, I just think "it's done." But when I've been in a VR world, I take off my headset and think "I'm heading back." Like I'm going home (laughs). I can really tell the difference. It's as if I left the house for a bit.

─ Between ReeeznD-san and Kinu-san's talents and Nakata-san connecting with them, this turned out to be a great collaboration between fellow creators.

Nakata: Oh, no, not at all, it's more like I was lucky to get mixed up with some VRChat pioneers.

─ How are you planning to make use of VR in your future activities?

Nakata: Places where music is played bring with them a set of experiences, I think. Festivals are definitely like this, but there's a lot of people who just enjoy the process of going to them in itself. So I consider music to be a part of the production of an event like that, and I feel it's best to create things that suit each respective platform. In VR's case — as we were talking about sound effects a little while ago — sound doesn't have to be created under the assumption that it'll only be coming out of two speakers, so it's necessary to create a different mix specifically for a VR environment. It's been a rule-of-thumb to do things like increase the low end for songs meant to be played in clubs, or to make a song slightly louder for karaoke purposes; this is just the VR equivalent of that. It's just like how a film's multi-channel audio is mixed differently from its soundtrack. Since I mastered a stereo file this time, I want to try parallel processing for the next one.

─ With Nakata-san having cut the ribbon, if other artists get involved in the VR concert arena, I get the feeling we'll be able to see a new sort of future.

Nakata: I think so too. Then again, I'm worried about ReeeznD's schedule if everyone starts doing this (laughs).

[tellthemeerkatsitsfine]

I'm still trying to not drink alcohol. It is difficult. Writing things down about it is helping. Posting them makes me feel a bit better even if no one reads them. TW for alcohol problems. Regular posting about radio shows from 2015 will resume shortly.

What’s up, everyone? I am not drinking in January, and I am not enjoying that. Honestly, it continues to be harder than I’d expected. I think I thought it wouldn’t be that bad because I went down to once or twice a week pretty easily. I was drinking too often during the pandemic years, and also during the ten or so years before that. I’d think I was doing pretty well if I only got drunk on one weekday in a week, and then again on the weekend. Usually it would be more like two or three or four times in the week.

Pre-COVID, I wouldn’t hesitate to drink when I had to work or go to school or coach tournaments the next day. But that changed during COVIDtimes, when I stopped being used to doing stuff in person. I got so anxious about whether I’d be able to get through the day during an in-person job at all, I can’t risk making it even harder for myself by adding a hangover, so I never have even one drink if I’m working any time the next day. So when I started working full time in person halfway through 2022, I quickly went from being able to drink any time to only being able to do it on Friday and Saturday nights.

I thought that might be difficult, but it wasn’t really. I mean, the transition to working full time in person was really, really difficult. I think that was so difficult that it shut out everything else. During the week, I was so busy worrying about whether the next day would be the one when trying to keep up social interactions all day would be too much and I’d have a panic attack while on the job and get fired, that I didn’t really think about wanting a drink. I just thought about getting through the day, how to eat enough and sleep enough to make that happen.

But I think that made the drinking on weekends even more important, as I get so very stressed during the week and then rely on being able to drink a bunch of whiskey at the end of it to relax and calm down and then feel reset and able to do the next week. Which I didn’t realize until I tried to give it up. I thought, at the end of December, that if it was not big deal for me to give up alcohol five days a week, it might be annoying but not that much harder to give it up just two more days.

That has not been my experience, as I do a second weekend in a row without alcohol, and yes obviously I am aware that if going two weeks without alcohol is this difficult then that is a sign of a problem. I keep reading and hearing things about how giving up drinking makes you feel better, but I’ve had the opposite effect so far. Last weekend I felt like I never properly relaxed, and then last week at work was even harder due to not having relaxed before it, and now it’s happening again. It’s not great. I realize this won’t get better until I find some other way of decompressing, but I’m not coming up with much.

I have tried going for several runs on the used treadmill that I recently bought and put in my basement, and those are nice, but then they end. What else do people do to relax when they’re being mentally healthy and not just locking themselves in their bedroom listening to old comedy recordings all the time? I guess socialize, but my entire social life is tied to a sport that I have stepped back from and hearing stories about it just makes me depressed about how I’ve stepped back from it, and the only thing I do with those friends besides talk about the sport is drink (well, we drink and talk about the sport and watch videos of it and play music). I’ve just moved in with my best friend, which is great, but he’s gone all weekend coaching a tournament and just texted me to ask if I want to have a drink when he gets back and I had to remind him that I already told him I’m not drinking in January.

I did tell him I’m doing dry January, I didn’t mention that it’s sort of meant to be the beginning of me trying to cut back significantly on drinking. It’s hard to tell people that, because then I’ll have to stick to it. Even on here. I made a Tumblr post a couple of weeks ago about realizing I drink too much and wanting to try to cut back drastically and/or stop, and to be honest, I’ve started writing a post like that several times in the last six month or so, and then stopped. Because if you say it’s a problem, then you have to change something.

It doesn’t mean you have to quit immediately; lots of people admit to having a drinking problem and then don’t quit for years or ever. But it does change things. If you tell a friend you think your drinking is a problem, then drinking with that friend won’t be fun anymore, that friend will watch you drink and get concerned rather than think it’s a good time. You won’t even be able to tell that friend stories about you drinking, because they won’t find it a fun story anymore, they’ll find it worrying.

Posting on Tumblr.com is the lowest possible level of this. No one on this website has the inclination to hold me accountable for not drinking, or would have the ability to do so if they did. No one sees me in person or knows what I’m doing, I could be drinking as I write this and no one would know (I’m really, genuinely not, I have honestly not had a drink since December 30 and I will honestly keep it that way until the end of January and then I will see). But I still hesitated for months to write a post about that, because I occasionally like posting on here about beers I had at a pub, or drinking whiskey on a Saturday night and then writing a Tumblr post about how I drank some whiskey and here are some things I think about comedy. And I didn’t want to cut off the option of being able to do that and have it be fun, instead of an admission that I have failed in my efforts to stop.

Also, I wouldn’t lie on Tumblr, even though I could. I’d feel too guilty. If I were to drink in January after specifically informing Tumblr that I’m not doing that, I wouldn’t even enjoy the drinking night, I’d just feel bad about being dishonest. Which is kind of why I made the post. Even if no one else is reading it and it doesn’t matter, I know I’ve put the information out there, and therefore, I have ruined my ability to have fun while drinking in January. You will notice that I did not make any hard promises about after that, because I didn’t quite feel ready to ruin my ability to have fun while drinking forever. I’m working on it, I really am.

But I made that post at the end of December because I decided I finally wanted to be really really serious about not drinking for at least a little while, and when you’ve decided that, you get to be honest about stuff. Normally, when I’m talking about my drinking habits in general, I tend to minimize things, refer to something as “once or twice a week” when it’s more like two or three times, say I only had six beers last night and not mention all the whiskey that went alongside them, that sort of thing. Or I’ll put a divide between social drinking and drinking alone – that’s a good way to lie to others and/or myself. If I drink with friends on weekends and at pubs after practice a couple of times a week, I figure I’m fine because I’m only drinking as much as they are. Not considering that after they get home from the pub they go to bed and after I get home from the pub I drink a bunch more by myself, and also I’m drinking by myself on other nights. Or I’ll say I’m doing okay because I only had one drinking night a week for the last while, in which I define “drinking night” as drinking a bunch of beer and whiskey alone in my bedroom while watching videos and listening to music, and I do not count the several times that I drank with friends.

Because you can’t admit how much you’re actually drinking until you’ve decided to cut back. “I drink this much, it’s way too much, I’m trying to stop” is a reasonable thing to say. “I drink this much, I know it’s probably too much but I really really like it so I’m going to keep doing it” is not something you can say. So I guess the advantage of deciding to cut back is I get to be honest about how much I was doing, instead of finding creative ways to minimize. The drawback is that I don’t get to have alcohol and I really really like alcohol. And once you’ve been honest, you can’t take it back. You can’t say “actually I’m drinking and it’s all fine now”, because no one will believe you, and rightly so.

The point is that I told Tumblr I think I have a drinking problem and want to try to stop, and I’m going to use dry January as a first step toward that and then see where I can go from there. While I told my friend/new roommate that I’m going to not drink in January, and I didn’t tell him more than that. Because he actually could keep me accountable, and I don’t want to have someone holding me to a promise to never drink again yet.

I’m trying to figure out if there’s some way I can do something besides quit completely forever, and have it not be unhealthy. I genuinely don’t know. I do think the month off from it is going to help in some way (it fucking has to, right? Because I’m really not feeling those promised benefits yet, I’m just more anxious). If nothing else, it’ll reset my tolerance a bit. If I could come out of this being able to get to a level of drunk that feels relaxing off significantly less alcohol than that used to require, then maybe I could keep that up? I did try that last year and it didn’t really work, but I didn’t go a month without drinking last year.

I made that post about my drinking habits a couple of weeks ago, and I kept referencing comedians’ way of talking about alcohol to explain what I mean. Because obviously you shouldn’t take major life advice from comedians, but also, hearing from them does sometimes help in really concrete ways. I’ve Googled signs that you have a drinking problem before, and it’s all stuff about how you know it’s a problem when you drive drunk (something I’ve never done and would never, ever do) or disappoint your children (I haven’t got any) or get fired from your job (I’ve gone into work hungover before, but never still drunk, and not even hungover anymore). It kind of helps to hear comedians talk about their “realizing they drink too much” stories, and those stories sound a lot more like my own experiences (just having too much in a pub or in a hotel while traveling or in your own house, hating yourself and getting paranoid about whether you were a terrible person the next morning), and I figure if they could have those experiences and think they have a problem, then maybe drinking can be a problem even if you don’t crash a car or anything.

Which brings me back to John Robins and Elis James, again. They have this ironic catchphrase “Keep it sessions” (the irony being that they’re self-aware of it sounding like a sort of bro catchphrase, though it also about something they genuinely do so it might not be all that ironic), which refers to John Robins’ preference for drinking session ale, which is beer that’s less than 5 percent. Because that way you can have more drinks before the point where you start drinking and the point where you get too drunk to keep going. So it sounds like a good way to engage in responsible drinking, and then turns out to just be an excuse to drink as much as possible.

I haven’t actually employed the method of drinking beer that’s less than 5 percent before, because that sounds a bit terrible, but I have done similar things. I remember in about 2019, explaining that to a friend of mine. I talked to him about the nights I spend drinking by myself in my bedroom, watching videos from my sport, and I find it fun to play a game where I drink for every point scored (this is a sport where several points get scored every minute, it’s not, like, soccer). I said I really like the game but have started taking smaller sips each time so I can play it for longer and do more matches. And said I was considering buying less strong beer so I could have more drinks in a night.

And he didn’t understand that. This is a guy who’d been my drinking buddy for ages, he liked alcohol quite a bit, I’d assumed in the same way I did. He certainly understood the idea of wanting to be able to get more drunk throughout a night, in a way that could be achieved by having stronger alcohol. But he didn’t see why I would be motivated to find a way to take more drinks – like literally take more sips of alcohol – between the beginning and the end of the night. And I remember that conversation making me realize there was a difference between what I got out of alcohol and what he did. I like the feeling of being drunk, but not just that. I like the psychosomatic experience of taking a sip of alcohol and feeling like I’m doing something that’ll make the world go away a bit. I like the feeling of whiskey burning in my throat and my chest for a few seconds after it goes down. I like the ritual, I like verbally (if I’m with others) or mentally (on my own) toasting to something or someone before I take a drink. I’d like to do that more times throughout a night, and my friend had no interest in it. He was in it for things like the pleasant buzzed feeling and the taste of craft beer.

So it is interesting to me, to hear that John Robins, when he was my age (I’m currently into the late 2015 episodes, when he was 33, as I am now), had the same idea that I did, trying to find ways to take more drinks throughout a night. And the way he talks about his drinking rules reminds me of the way I plan my own drinking as well. The rule about not starting before or after a certain time and then doing it right in the way you’ve perfectly worked out will maximize what you’re looking for.

I don't suppose there's a way to do the "keep it sessions" thing that that's actually healthy? Like drink low-percentage stuff while having a low tolerance, possibly achieved by not drinking at all for a month, and then you get to have the ritual of taking a bunch of drinks throughout the night and enjoy yourself, but you don't need to drink massive amounts of it just to get drunk?

I did look back last week and was a bit distressed to think of just how much time in the last few years I’ve spent trying to set everything up perfectly to have drinking go the way I want. Oh, and to avoid those next mornings where I become convinced that I behaved terribly and hate myself for it, even though my way of avoiding it involved drinking when my roommate wasn’t home and always using headphones so I couldn’t bother the neighbours and not letting myself message anyone, so I couldn’t have behaved terrible in front of anyone, but I’d still have the feeling that I’d done something horribly wrong that I should feel guilty about. I guess the lack of anxiety hangovers is one advantage of not drinking that I’m getting now? Kind of. I now just have a sort of low-level anxiety all weekend instead, I’m not sure that’s better.

I had all these other comedy references in this post I made a couple of weeks ago, but the one comedian quote that has gone through my mind over and over and over today is that Ed Night one where he said he doesn't understand how sober people just wake up every single morning and say "I'm going to experience the world exactly as it is today, with no modifications at all."

I was hoping I'd reach some sort of conclusion or point with this post, but I don't have one. Well, maybe a bit. Part of the ritual of drinking for me, part of the thing that I spent way too much time and energy setting up beforehand to make sure it all went just right, is having a night where I can spend some hours just drinking alcohol and listening to my favourite music and re-watching my favourite videos (used to be sports, these days it's always comedy). I have a folder on my computer specifically for comedy that's only funny when I'm drunk, or at least much funnier when I'm drunk (there a fair bit of Frankie Boyle-era Mock the Week in there, some Amstell-era Buzzcocks, Nathan Barley). And I'll write things down about it, save it in the Word document and usually use a "write drunk, edit sober" policy for turning it into a Tumblr post (though occasionally, I do go with a "write drunk, post while still drunk" policy). I've thought that maybe I can try to recreate that sort of ritual without the alcohol. Maybe I'll do that. If I start posting a bunch of indefensible Frankie Boyle quotes in the next little while, you'll know why.

[anastacialy]

you know, with this third episode of hbo's the last of us series, the writers strayed farther from the source material than i ever thought possible, telling what was almost an entirely different story than the original game intended.

and i wouldn't change a single goddamn thing about what i just watched.

major spoilers under the cut.

my heart has been ripped from my chest. i wasn't expecting that in the slightest — i thought, yeah, we'd see a bit of bill and frank's backstory, then the content from the game would pick up, but i didn't think we'd get this beautiful feature-film about the two of them.

i had even made a comment to my partner just saying i hoped they'd make their relationship clearer as it had been mostly implied in-game. my expectations were low. and then they were completely blown out of the water. i'm trying to articulate my thoughts but it's so difficult. i cried so hard my chest felt like it was going to split open.

i feel like they stayed true to the characters, while changing the circumstances surrounding them. if this version of frank had been bitten, he'd have made the same choice as he did in-game. they even showed them fighting, both hot-headed, not always seeing eye to eye. bill would have grown far more bitter and angry without him, especially had he died while they were in an argument. but i am so glad that wasn't the choice the writers went with. yes, there were some imperfections about this plot, obviously i'm not going to deny that, but it may be a discussion for a later post. right now, i'm just taken aback by the whole thing.

i'll try to start at the beginning. obviously, there was a bit of interaction with joel and ellie, which i loved. they just went through something awful, they're still being defensive and standoffish and joel's life has just been torn apart yet again. and now he's saddled with this angry teenager who loves running her mouth. but we get some glimpses of his caring for her. him being worried when she's getting herself in trouble — i could write a separate essay about the choices she made in the shop basement, honestly, i probably will — and him trying to steer her away from the carnage and cruelty of FEDRA in the earliest stages of the outbreak.

i loved her acknowledgement of the fact that she was raised by FEDRA and therefore has gaps in her knowledge about how the outbreak occurred — "they don't teach us how their shitty government failed to prevent a pandemic" what a line. i loved joel's explanation of the events. no one knows for sure, but it's stated so factually: so how many times must he have run it in his head? how many times must he have done the math, figured out why he didn't get sick, why sarah and tommy didn't get sick? why what happened happened the way it did. what an amazing addition.

and then, bill. ah, bill. made one thousand times more incredible by this adaptation of him. living every survivalist's dream. not without the tragedy we know lends him those resources, of course, but what a way of establishing how he came to be, his securing of the area, etc. it was believable, but more importantly incredibly fun to watch him work through each issue he faced. it was interesting to see they chose for him to live alone that way for four years, until frank stumbled into his life.

frank, who started out with ten people leaving his quarantine zone behind and ended up as the last alive. who knew how hard it was going to be to survive on his own. who took a chance, asking a stranger for help, and found his next sixteen years of joy beyond that electrified fence. i loved the way it was clear he may have been doing part of this all — the flattery, the flirting — in order to keep himself safe. but it was subtle, and it ended up working out, growing into something beautiful.

the way their first meeting went, the dinner and the wine and the piano. and the unexpected scene upstairs. it was so sweet and well done and they were a fantastic amount of awkward, and shy, and it was amazing. bill's nervous hands. the way that their kisses grew more familiar and natural as the episode went on. i feel like i'm already going on far too long — what could be said has been said by the show itself.

and what was also left horribly, tragically unsaid when it came to tess and joel. compared directly to the very-clearly-a-couple bill and frank, joel skirting around their relationship yet referring to tess as 'mine,' seeing her bright, excited, hopeful face interacting with frank when the wound of her death is still fresh on our minds. and that last heartbreak, which i'll circle back around to.

every scene with bill and frank was incredible. i loved the way they were written, both imperfect, both selfish and stubborn and frustrating in different ways. both incredibly loving toward one another. their fight, frank's insistence on making their home nice, the stores nice, the boutique nice. "let me love it the way i want to." frank growing strawberries in secret to surprise bill. tending to his bullet wound — i was truly afraid, as they had changed so much of their plot already, that was going to be the end of him. then, another ten years pass with a sigh of relief. bill carrying frank to bed, giving him his pills, caring for him.

and a heart wrenching decision made in the face of pain and health in decline. i liked that this now had little to do with the outbreak itself and instead with those who get left behind (pardon the title reference) in the thick of it. of course there are still other illnesses and disabilities, those don't just vanish in a pandemic. and without doctors, without access to medical care, what other choices get made. feels poignant for the moment, but again, the connections to real world events could be a separate post. and they likely will be, hah.

but frank's final day, what he has chosen to be his last day, mirroring their first day together absolutely ruined me. my heart, torn asunder. they dressed in their finest from the boutique frank had insisted on fixing years prior. "love me the way i want you to." marrying one another on the piano bench (something, maybe, that they hadn't thought too much about doing, before. their marriage wouldn't have been recognized when the outbreak started, certainly not everywhere. so they left it undone until it was almost the end.) the dinner. bill turning the plate with a little flair the way he had before. the wine. the fact that, in classic tragic romance, bill's wine was already drugged. that we don't know if he'd have even told frank he was choosing death too, had frank not called him out on it. but that he did, and we got to see them know they were going out, peacefully, in sleep, together.

and that last letter to joel, the final wrench to my heart. "there was one person worth saving. that's what i did. i saved him. then i protected him. that's why men like you and me are here." [...] "i leave you all of my weapons and equipment. use them to keep tess safe." again, acknowledging she was who joel cared for the way bill cared for frank. that final mention of her made me weep even harder than her death scene had. because it was a glimpse into the joy they might have had, if things were just a little different. a glimpse into what joel has just lost.

and that final shot a bookend to bill and frank's story, which had opened, unbeknownst to us, at the end of episode one. eighties music and two closed windows. then their song, and an open one.

this was all so far and away from the game's story. and i am so, so thankful that they changed so, so much.

[yokelish]

So here's a fun story of mine.

I respect medical professionals. And by that, I mean good medical professionals.

About four years ago I started to seriously try to figure out why my headaches and migraines were getting progressively worse with age. And other symptoms started to appear too: nausea, sensitivity to light and sounds, loss of time and vision, absence of short-term memory, extreme exhaustion, and neck pain. So much pain. There were days when all I wanted to do was lay in bed and whine from pain.

So, I did what any rational adult would. And got a medical appointment. A physician looked at me, ordered a few blood tests, and asked about my family history, etc.

In the end, I was given a very mediocre medication the details of which don't matter. But I had to take it every day because it was preventative. And for a while, it seemed like it worked. But I had a bad reaction to the medication and it had to be removed. Once I was put off the medication, it all returned just as before. I remember telling my partner at the time without a hint of irony if I had a gun in this house, today would be my last day alive. That's how miserable I felt at that time.

So, I was directed to a neurologist. And I went. And he did what a neurologist does. Then I asked him if I should get an MRI, just to be sure, just so we know it's definitely not the brain. He said it wasn't needed.

He said it wasn't uncommon for women to have migraines. In fact, women are more likely to get them.

Yes, some of your other symptoms are a bit unusual but they are temporary.

He said I passed all the tests, and I was fine.

He said if I didn't have any recent head traumas, it was quite unnecessary.

It's a complex procedure (spoiler: it isn't), why would you want to be on a waitlist for months for nothing?

And so I didn't push him. I had to go through a drug trial to find what worked for my migraines now. I was tested for intracranial hypertension; they suggested lifestyle changes. Little adjustments to help out with the headaches and neck tension. And then slowly I grew complacent with it. Put the frog in boiling water and it will jump right out. But put in cold water and slowly heat it up, it won't be able to tell the difference. Life started to happen. I buried a friend. The pandemic. My MDD started to take priority over the headaches.

And then I almost went fully blind in one eye for 15 minutes. For no apparent reason.

What were you doing when it happened?

Uuugh, nothing. I was just reading in bed, laying funny. When I started losing vision in my left eye, I thought it was eye strain. But about two minutes later I realized it sure wasn't that. I immediately got up and went to my partner. When I explained what was happening to me and we got ready to go to the hospital, it started to come back. That's why I am here.

That didn't happen.

What?

And the neck pain was increasing. The intensity of the pain in my head kept increasing. The periods of those episodes continued to grow.

I have since moved. Got a new physician. And, I guess, I had a bad episode. There was a day I was in pain, I was miserable. I made an appointment ASAP. He is a great doctor. He is willing to put up with my demands for MDD medication, migraines. Even the smallest ear infections. There wasn't a time I came to him with a problem and he tried to rationalize it to me.

Ear infection?

Yes, you have it. It doesn't seem serious right now, so just over-the-counter medication will do. But if you don't feel any better, or even worse tomorrow, do let me know.

So, after that bad episode, I decided I can't be fucked anymore. Enough is enough. The pain was unbearable. I am a working, reasonably healthy adult, I can't be in this much pain without a cause. Unless they've checked for everything, EVERYTHING in the books and it came empty, only then would I accept that this pain was something I had to live with.

What I did was fucked up. Don't do that. But what I said to him, I meant with every cell of my being.

I want an MRI. And if it comes empty, order whatever test you can think of, no matter how invasive. Because this pain is getting worse, there are days when holding up my head is a conscious task. There are days when doing anything other than lying horizontally is a teeth-grinding endeavor. When I lower my chin, I can feel something along my spine, like a cord being pulled, not in a healthy muscle-stretching way, there is a tension that I don't think should be there.

And then he asked me how bad I would rate the pain on the worst day.

If this pain continues to increase at the rate it has been, I won't be alive by the time I am 31. I will take my own life.

And I was ordered an MRI. Not to say how ridiculously long I had to wait for an hour-long procedure where a big loud machine just scans your head.

And the doctor's office for the first time asks me to come in for the test results.

Your brain is healthy. But we found something in your neck.

And I felt giddy like a child who was promised candy. I wasn't insane. It wasn't "one of those things that women have to deal with". Fuck you, the professional who told me this. I sincerely hope you get sued. I'd sue you myself but I can't be fucked to be bothered with that right now.

My health care professional suspects syringomyelia. A fluid cyst in my spinal cord. I will have to go through more tests to see what it is for sure, what is the cause, and how bad it's gotten.

The point is

If one fucker decided to listen and not to rationalize a woman HER OWN Pain, if one fucker agreed to order a fairly simple medical test, perhaps this cyst probably could have been discovered THREE-MOTHERFUCKING-YEARS AGO.

[kyndaris]

Country Lights

It’s a yearly tradition that when the weather gets cold and the nights lengthen, Sydney celebrates the coming of winter with a light festival. VIVID has been an annual event for many long years, although I couldn’t tell you when exactly it all began. During the pandemic years, of course, VIVID was cancelled as people were shut inside, but since the ‘official’ end of the COVID-19 pandemic, VIVID has returned with a vengeance. 

Events have even sprung up in other parts of the state of New South Wales. One, of course, was held in the country town of Bowral. Known for its flower festival in October, the town is about a ninety minute drive from Sydney.

So, upon hearing of the event, my mother most definitely wanted to take a look and experience it for herself. She had seen a few videos and photos on the most holiest of phone apps: WeChat and wanted in. Thus, I and a few of her friends were roped in to accompany her for an all-women day trip to Bowral to see the sights and make some great memories along the way!

Of course, knowing that the lights wouldn’t be on until night covered the land, we had set up an itinerary for the day that would take us all around the Southern Highlands.

Our first stop was actually a town just past Bowral. One of my mother’s friends had done a search online for places that would tickle our tastebuds or be visually appealing. After driving down from Sydney, we headed to Berrima. There, we visited a small patisserie shop renowned in the area: Gumnut Patisserie.

As my mother was a lover of all things pecan, she ordered a pecan tart (although a perusal of their website actually advises that it’s a macadamia tart, so who can say), and one of our other members put in an order for a passionfruit tart. Once our coffees, and hot chocolate, arrived, we dug in. After all, life’s short so dessert ought to come first.

Once we had warmed ourselves up, we headed towards Harper’s Mansion. Bult in 1834 by James and Mary Harper, it is now a heritage-listed house. What made it stand out in little Berrima, of course, was the fact that the house was much grander than the other residences in the villages during the time it was built. Most houses in the area were slab cottages. In fact, it was modelled on those favoured by the middle-classes in Sydney with walls that were three bricks thick, laid upon a foundation of sandstone. 

After the Harpers passed away, it was bought by the Catholic Church in 1853 nd was used as a presbytery for the nuns of Daughters of Lady of the Sacred Heart. Later, it was rented out before being sold in 1970.

In 1978, it was acquired by the National Trust who repaired the house and it is now managed by local volunteers that provide simple tours of the house. On its land, however, a hedge maze was built along with an impressive garden. The maze, of course, was a must see and our small group of four Asian women found our way to its centre as well as out without too much trouble.

Our tour of Harper’s Mansion over, we decided to take a gander at the Book Barn. The Berkelouw Book Shop is located on the Bendooley estate, which is a winery. As for the book shop itself, it also serves as a restaurant. Sandwiched between the stacks, tables had been placed allowing guests to wander through and pick up whatever they may wish to peruse for lunch or an evening meal.

If there was a place akin to heaven, this would have been it.

From there, we headed to Bowral properly to check out a family-run vintage and antiques market called Dirty Janes. Lunch would be had at Harry’s @ Green Lane in the 2 PM slot. Why the restaurant only had two lunch slots was a mystery but I had to say that its main selling feature, which I wasn’t able to see a lot of, were the books that were crammed on shelves. 

But while the ones at Berkelouw could be flipped through and read, I had a feeling that the ones at Harry’s were most likely props to sell a particular atmosphere. Which is honestly a shame.

Still, it didn’t detract me from the collection of knives and beautifully displayed insect taxidermy cases that could have been bought at Dirty Janes. I, unfortunately, didn’t buy anything to commemorate it but I must admit that there were some pretty good paper weights to be had. Although, there were also pinned spiders...and that’s a real big fat no from me because they’re terrifying. AND WHAT IF IT WAS REAL?!

After looking through the wares of Dirty Janes, we strolled through the heart of Bowral before heading to the nearby lookout to see the sunset.

Once the sun had set, we headed to Centennial Vineyards where the light show would begin.

Words fail to describe the beautiful array of lights that shone up onto the sky. In an attempt to recreate the Aurora Borealis, so named from Boreas, the personification of the North Wind, the clever minds at the vineyards used light and smoke. To be perfectly honest, I’m unsure why it was called Borealis as Australia has its own name for phenomena that can be seen in Tasmania: Aurora Australis, but I suppose Borealis is the one that most people can identify.

This, however, was no show. Rather, it was a whole event with food trucks and space for families to lay out the picnic blanket to watch the sky above them change from red to green to blue to purple. Were it not so cold, it might have been a lovely night out.

As it was, my hands were near frozen until one of our group went and bought us some hot tea from a nearby vendor.

After about thirty minutes of admiring the colourful night sky, we headed back home to Sydney, which was a whole lot warmer than frosty old Bowral. And where I could catch up on some gaming as I raced to finish off a short indie game as Diablo IV had just released that Tuesday.

And also because SOMEONE bought it for me - the DELUXE edition, no less - despite the fact that I had only joked about friends getting it for me as an early birthday present. I wasn’t serious! And I didn’t expect it to be bought! 

I am, after all, an independent young woman who could have afforded it if I had really wanted it (which, I mean, I was probably going to buy it on the day of its actual release).

So, I’m warning you! They-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named! You know who you are! You read this blog!

I AM WATCHING YOU!

Stop being nice to me! I don’t deserve it!

Okay, now that my rant is over, I have to say that the Bowral light show, while not as comprehensive as the one in Sydney still had its highlights. Beyond that, it was a good day out with family and friends in what would prove to be a hectic long weekend in June.

[consistentsquash]

Hi ConsistentSquash, thank you a million times for recommending Pandemic. I finished reading the series at 3 am today. It is the most fantastical, magical, cathartic story I have read in fandom. It captured the essence of the hell years and the world that we have afterwards. Subversive, heartbreaking, towering and ultimately healing.

" The shadowed places in Harry's heart that had known only loneliness gleamed bright as he held in his hands what he had longed for, through four decades of keening want and wish."

"Storge is the love of a man for his family."

"She had an affinity for hawthorn trees and a horse with no name."

"2020, he had believed, would be the year he found the One."

hiya!! sorry this took so long. life is really complicated right now. but yeah! anyway.

Yay!! You found Pandemic from my rec <3 Thanks for telling me! It's so amazing when that happens. Really gives me the motivation to do more reccing.

Yep! Pandemic is incredible. Absolutely love it.

"2020, he had believed, would be the year he found the One."

I feel like a lot of folks had big plans for 2020. Then the world kind of went into suspend mode and we didn't really get back from there.

Also it's got lots of personal meaning for me. The fic that got me motivated to write my first serious rec because I really wanted to read more fics like that but those fics don't exist. I wanted to do something to encourage/celebrate the fics that actually exist.

Diversity in type of fic can be super hard to find in big fandom recs/movie recs/anything big enough because folks just read/rec the same tropes/beats... which means folks are going to write the fic that's going to get read!

Also there is a horns/halo effect. Folks feel better about reccing/reading books/movies/fic/whatever others like. They also feel more comfortable criticizing things others criticize. Sometimes that's got good reasons but a lot of times it's just because something is out of our comfort zone. There's a pretty famous letter by Scorsese abt how it can be hard for things outside the comfort zone to be taken seriously because we are looking for more reasons to criticize it.

It doesn't mean the big recs are bad/anything derogatory. These things are super subjective. Apples and oranges. But when everybody's reccing apples sometimes and you really want an orange you have to do a lot of searching by yourself to get that orange :D Some folks hate oranges. That's ok. Folks are allowed to have totally different tastes.

I love Pandemic. It made me think. It really was pretty different from the endorphin hit I get out of reading good executions of classic tropes I love. It took me outside my comfort zone like crazy. Just that part was different enough compared to what I read before and because of that reason alone worth reccing. Another commenter got the vibe spot on.

Pandemic strikes me as inescapably, painfully, bluntly in-your-face human. Whatever being human means in 2020 and 2021 for us.

The trauma. I mean Harry literally becoming an Obscurial because of depression/loneliness/lack of connection during the lockdown. oof. that fic hurt.

It was my first time reading that type of prose. The technique. Really precise until it kind of explodes into poetry? But then you realize the whole thing was poetry building up.

But more than that. It really really owns cringe. Like it decided to be cringe and owned it.

Because there is this thinking like even inside fandom how cringe means w/o talent/sophistication. We can be sometimes afraid to love something cringe unless others rec it/love it. I am the same ofc! it took me forever to own how much I like dubcon to HEA in fic. But one of the million things I love about Pandemic is how the whole concept of cringe gets turned upside down/deconstructed without getting preachy and also at the same time having one of the best stories I have read in fandom.. Just thinking abt some of the cringe/cringe adjacent things Pandemic subverted

Mary Sue/OC - Delphini Lestrange. I mean. HP fandom is more or less aligned on Cursed Child being pretty mediocre. taking that and changing it into this competent Healer archetype is pretty out there. It works. Idk if you really need to understand the trope to get the point because the first layer of the story is pretty direct.

Songfic - peak FFN baby's first fanfic cringe type thing. Pandemic is pretty intentional about using that genre with respect. A horse with no name (the Narcissa POV) is probably one of the best examples of that. Also the Shelley poetry in the Grindeldore/the jazz in Sugar Plum (the Dumbledore POV) are some of my favorite things ever.

OOC - I mean. This can be pretty gatekeeping and controversial. Sometimes folks don't want to read something they think is out of character which is totally cool. I am pretty picky about Snape characterizations. But also canon Snape is not gay so idk if my fav slash fics are in character or anything. I guess I can justify it as Canon Snape but he's gay or something like that. Anyway what I loved about Pandemic is how it starts out with OOC characterizations and builds to pretty IC characterizations. Another reccer said

Well written set of interlocking fics, with HP characters that are OOC, but have well developed back stories that bring them close to canon behavior by a totally different route

It was really cool because this is definitely the spirit of The Life of Brian/Monty Python the fics took inspiration from. Anyway I love how it did something new without worrying about getting called OOC. It owned that and made it work.

cottagecore - depending on which side of cottagecore discourse you are on folks can be pretty intense on the gatekeeping about what it means. Pandemic is cottagecore with a twist... If your cottage is the sentient Hogwarts Castle which is eating the magic of its Headmasters. But the tropes it uses are peak cottagecore. esp the dark side of cottagecore gatekeeping abt how fluff/slice of life is the only real way to do that style.

Rationality stuff- ofc depending on which side of the fandom you are in you probably know about HPMOR/adjacent type of fic which generally goes for OP/Mary Sue Harry with lots of philosophy quotes and libertarian takes. Pandemic does something pretty wild with that take. It has the philosophy of the characters in their POV keeping it super unreliable and subjective. Also feels pretty reclaiming abt philosophy. Like no its not just a weapon folks use to justify things. It's got some beauty and humans connect to it? YMMV. Idk I don't normally go for this type of thing but this was such an incredible takedown of a lot of modern political stuff and how folks justify their takes.

Modern life/loneliness. I feel like we just accept loneliness as part of modern life a lot of times because it's somehow kind of in our head that it's pretty cringe to accept we are some age and alone. Lots of reasons for that. For me personally mental health is a big one. Anyway this is a pretty incisive fic on that front. It doesn't preach. But it's super gentle and comforting/accepting? Idk I felt super comforted. Pretty different from litfic tropes abt loneliness/alientation. YMMV about realism and things like that but I don't need slashfic for realism :D

I probably got a lot of stuff wrong because the fic doesn't come with meta or serious A/N. So like don't quote me on this. Definitely not an easy read but the thinking the fic made me do is totally worth it for me.

Anyway. Pandemic is the type of fic which probably took a lot of courage to write/put out there. Because the tip of the iceberg is pretty cringe and you really need to sit with it to get the big picture. I mean a pandemic mental health/modern life loneliness fic including Cursed Child Canon and combining with mythology, astronomy and lots of economic theory and adding some of the writing tropes we normally call cringe in fandom is definitely a choice. But it worked for me. It's one of the two fics which made a huge difference in my life. So yeah! <3

[taigastyle]

Why am I seeing so many people convinced P**k is coming back and soon.. I’m not strong enough to go through it seriously… if ratings aren’t currently “doing well” and how is bringing back *that* one person a major win? Isn’t it kind of troublesome that ratings will improve because one person returns? I think that says a lot about the company is they’re propping up this person and giving them “quality” and not to the rest…

quick answer: because chris jericho tweeted that he had always loved working with @ punk so obviously everyone who were clowns and thought jericho was the only/main anti-punk voice in the locker room are celebrating thinking this means they've won!! he's back. and jericho is a goat and the best ever etc. the rest of my reply is beneath the read more because i got rambly and long winded

longer answer: the ratings aren't even doing that badly, january was really strong both for ratings and for in person ticket sales (their walk up tickets sales were really good) but one meh week and one bad week means the sky is falling and we have got to bring back in the hero cm punk because he is a ratings mega draw (which ignores the reality that the aew product had never been hotter in the june and especially july lead ups before punk even stepped foot in the company at the end of august, but again people don't really care about the real facts, it is simply that hurr durr purrnk is a draw).

now when hangman was champion the bad ratings were put on his head, but the good ticket sales/ppv numbers weren't accredited to him. which i think is unfair, as people were invested in the hangman and hangman/kenny story for all the years building up to the crowning moment of his win. and it was kind of thrown away in favor of guy who was having a goldberg run burying over talent he could leech off of (if that sounds familiar to say cody rhodes fans: hi!! how ya doin, welcome, hope you enjoy his mania moment). i genuinely think you can look at these bad ratings and see there's been a decline since mox lost the title. mjf is not over like he was, his character is stagnant, and his offensive promos aren't edgy they're just bad.

people think punk coming back will fix the ratings, but i genuinely don't think so. he was very protected when he was on tv, given the best spots so of course his numbers look good, but if you really look - and especially say the time he returned from injury - the numbers weren't great. punk talked about how he made that million dollar gate but they've done three of those without him, and a lot of the fans of aew from before punk showed up have said that the original feel of the company is gone and it is soulless. good wrestling alone cannot keep a company hot.

all that being said here's where we're at, pretty much every journalist is sniffing around it and afraid to say it outright but kenny omega's working on either injured time or a handshake agreement. aaa who had a fine working relationship with aew until wwe hopped in have said they're not working with aew anymore, but they'll work with kenny omega. the bucks contracts are up at the end of this year. hangman's contract is up this year. tony is at a cross road right now where he can pick the four guys he chose and made this company with, who the fans are invested with, who are younger and have proven they'll work through injuries and pandemics to make aew work. who have scouted and brought great talent in, who have invested into the company from day one, or a guy who has maybe a year, two years max left (if he doesn't get injured again) who was offered day one to be a part of everything and said nah and waited until everyone else had made it clear aew was successful and came in to rapturous applause and love and killed that good will throughout the fanbase and locker room as the months ticked by.

four vs one.

wwe have said they're not as aggressively pursuing jay white because they're focusing on a bigger talent, and i know everyone wants that to be ibushi, but it's gotta be Kenny or Hangman. ibushi would be a great book end to nab as well, but both kenny is the bigger name, kenny is who they wanted in 2018, who they were so sure they had that vince, trips, steph, and shane all came out and cut a promo smugly alluding to the fact they had them, only to be made to look like geeks over it. or page who is young can go in the ring/cut a promo and is so beloved he could be one hell of a top guy for them.

do i think punk will be back soon? idk maybe, they've set up a precedent about what he has to do to be welcomed back with thunder rosa. she stood before the locker room and apologized/owned up to all of the things she did that had hurt people and if you think phil brooks is capable of going mea culpa! then sure he's coming back.

do i think punk vs any elite match would happen? no. and i do think if punk comes back the elite will leave. do i think that in the long run this will be better for the aew numbers? not one bit! i personally won't start watching wwe again i watched it for years and not even a golden lovers reuinion could make me watch their product on a weekly basis again. it's bad, it's production is nauseating, and on a 'parasocial note' it would be incredibly disheartening to see guys that i respect and who have been consistent in calling out the fed and the fans of the fed go over there it's gonna be crushing.

would i keep watching aew? idk probably not. there are wrestlers i love within the company, but largely the stories they're telling right now, and their top champion (and their potential next tag champs) i actively dislike and don't enjoy. so there's not much impetus for me to keep watching a product for a couple wrestlers i like. again, i did that with wwe and it became insulting as a viewer to do that, and was in part what made me stop watching for years! so i think i would stop watching wrestling again and move on with my life. sucks, but i'm very into watching things i like and not giving my time to things i don't.

so all this to say there's no actual anything that says he's coming back, and the earliest he could be back is still a couple months away. but people love to work themselves over the winks and nudges some people who maybe know something might have maybe implied. but you're right bringing one guy back to save the show means you've fucked up the show, especially when it was pulling in over 1mil viewers before that guy came in. if you're fumbled the bag over making the show just about him once (and i think that is easy to say, no matter how good the matches were you cannot point to a guy he was in a feud with who was better off after losing to him! but i can point to a good few who were worse off.) at the expense of guys who are fan favorites (twitter and tumblr are a bubble, it's seen time and time again. remember when everyone hated britt baker and were tired of her and wanted her off their tv except she was still getting the loudest pops from crowd after crowd?) idk

it's bad all around, contract szn is always miserable but who knows where and what will happen. show to show my enjoyment for dynamiate & rampage remains about the same because i have fun watching it with friends/family and talking about it, but everything outside of those three hours i am just not having fun with wrestling unless it is fun i am making for myself. so i'd just say if you're in a similar boat as me then have fun! make your fun, i love doing my silly little edits that make me insane, and talking to friends about the hot guys who beat the piss out of each other. and if i don't have fun i solve that by muting it when mjf speaks <3

[city-of-longevity]

Innovation against isolation and loneliness and the role of cities.

Nic Palmarini, Director, UK's National Innovation Centre for Ageing.

The four horsemen vs. the wonder drug.

We know very well who are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse who - typically in late adulthood - come banging on the door of our lives and who amount to over 80% of deaths in people over 50 who do not smoke: Atherosclerotic disease (comprised of cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular disease), Cancer, Neurodegenerative disease (Alzheimer's disease being the most common) "Foundational disease", a spectrum of everything hyperinsulinemia to insulin resistance to fatty liver disease to type 2 diabetes.

We know just as well that to counter them, besides the science on which the redeeming business model of cure is based, there is only one actual wonder drug: prevention. The literature is vast and consolidated on choices and virtuous behaviours: sleeping well, staying active, a balanced diet, keeping the mind engaged and sustained by a purpose, and a strong network of relationships.

On the first four aspects, much technology has made its fortune in recent years by exploiting the mobile + IoT boom boosted by increasingly effective and sophisticated machine learning systems thanks to the mass of data generated by us, with thousands of applications combined with sensors to measure performance, metabolism, stress or the level of attention, in other words, our quantified self. Much less, however, has been done to help us live 'with' and 'in' a society whose social and economic dynamics are prone to exacerbate phenomena such as isolation and loneliness. It must be admitted social connection - the structure, function, and quality of our relationships with others - is still an underappreciated contributor to individual and population health, community safety, resilience, and prosperity.

Technology-supported innovation solutions have mainly focused on care - formal or informal - led by the American trailblazers (the historic Papa and Honor, the now defunct Heroes, and the rising star CareYaya), which have inspired hundreds of start-ups all over the world that have literally copied their logic and services, and then declined some aspects of it until arriving at the various' grandchildren rental' we have in Italy. A mainly "care-like" approach, we were saying. Without forgetting the founding pillars of Apple, Meta, Google, and Amazon - the enablers of the digital dynamics of relationships - who invest in innovation to promote relationship, engagement, participation, and inclusion?

In fact, the first question would be: what kind of society finds itself renting grandchildren to make up for its lack of essential interaction? To answer - however superficially and without opening what would be a necessary chapter on the founding values of each culture - we are obliged to refer to an 'advanced Western society', even in its relational decline. It is no coincidence, in fact, that grandchildren rentals are the clone of what, eight years ago, it seems like a geological era, Chuck McCarthy observed in Los Angeles as a dramatic social phenomenon and - to that - responded with The People Walker [1].

Faced with the emergence of the isolation of men and women in the inner cities as well as in the suburbs of middle-class America, and well before the phenomenon was amplified by a devastating event such as the COVID-19 pandemic, McCarthy accompanied hundreds of strangers on foot for thousands of miles walking people who were isolated in their home and without anybody to have a walk with, to earn a few extra bucks and get himself out of the house more too.

"Twice a week for the past month, I've paid an underemployed actor $30 an hour to walk me through the hills of L.A. like a Labrador. Chuck McCarthy isn't a dog walker, though; he's a people walker."

Attesting to a cultural difference between the smooth social fabric of U.S. megacities where larger cities are basically two-tiered (a wealthy downtown professional class relies on inexpensive labourers who can't afford to live near their workplace or drive a car; who are forced into long commutes creating a sort of a social vacuum) and that of old Europe is as obvious as it is necessary.

Europe, particularly Italy, has a profoundly different urban context, population distribution and social fabric. Without going into the merits of factors such as population density per square kilometre or the role of the Church, one fact suffices: in Italy, among people aged 75 and over, 51% live no more than one kilometre from their nearest child and 20% live with them. Only 8.9% have no children and live alone, and only 0.9% have children far away abroad[1]. And yet, even though this figure is all in all an exceptional dimension, isolation is a phenomenon that - in the face of a society that is progressively older, urbanized and increasingly enveloped in the violent polarization of its digi-social loops - shows all its disturbing pervasiveness.

Isolation and loneliness are not the same thing.

Social isolation and loneliness are often cited as one Siamese brothers, inextricably linked. But they are not the same thing.

We have often associated old age with loneliness out of principle or narrative convenience because, all things considered, it is more effective and easier to narrate. Loneliness is a feeling that develops when there's a perceived difference between desired and actual levels of social interaction, meaning, and relationships. Loneliness is a subjective state and more easily strikes the imagination because it appeals to that feeling we all know well, that fear we all had as children when, for a second, we lost sight of the reassuring face of mum or dad. We felt lost, abandoned, and deprived of that need for care that accompanies puppies of all species like the whole life suddenly has no meaning. We felt lonely. Imagining an older man alone strikes at the heart because it strikes at our childhood self.

And so, we talk about the 'pandemic of loneliness', not distinguishing it from isolation, which instead refers to social relationships, social roles, group membership and the social interactions that ensue. Not only that, isolation relates to not only 'presence' but also to inclusion. Its form is, therefore, more insidious and more challenging to portray. People living alone can still feel content with their level of social activity, and people physically surrounded by others can still feel lonely and disconnected.

The relationship between isolation and loneliness is dynamic and interconnected, where one dimension contributes to triggering the other with often devastating consequences. But the triggering process seems straightforward. An observational Harvard study published in SSM–Population Health sought to find out if one problem might be more dangerous than the other. Researchers analysed the health data of almost 14,000 people (ages 50 or older) who were followed for four years. Both loneliness and isolation were associated with poor health outcomes. But, social isolation was a stronger predictor of physical decline and early death. Loneliness was more predictive of mental health issues, such as depression or feeling that life had no meaning[2].

In ancient times, humans relied on social bonding and communication with others for "mutual aid and protection"; becoming socially isolated was essentially a risk to one's survival and almost a sentence to death. Today, we have enough data to give dimension to the evidence that common sense has always suggested. The lack of social connection poses a significant risk to individual health and longevity. “Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk of premature death by 26% and 29%, respectively. More broadly, lacking social connection can increase the risk of premature death. In addition, poor or insufficient social connection is associated with an increased risk of disease, including a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke. Furthermore, it is associated with an increased risk for anxiety, depression, and dementia. Additionally, the lack of social connection may increase susceptibility to viruses and respiratory illness”[3].

Although these data refer to late adulthood, which is the subject of our interest on this occasion, to think that loneliness and social isolation are phenomena of old age is a distortion, again, driven by common stereotypes such as thinking of young age as that of lightness, carefreeness, social relations and therefore free from the phenomena of disconnection and participation. We know very well that this is not the case, and recent data, in some worlds, suggested by the Pandemic, have indeed shown us the extent and seriousness of these phenomena for the younger generations with a particular risk of social isolation not only experienced but also simply perceived.

These include and are amplified by changes in peer development, autonomy development, identity exploration, cognitive maturation, social perspective development, and physical maturation. This is baggage whose weight then spills over throughout life with consequences that are still difficult to measure objectively longitudinally but which to ignore would be a colossal mistake both contextually and prospectively. It, therefore, becomes clear that in the face of this scenario, social isolation and the resulting risk of loneliness no longer represent a mere contextual dimension to the horsemen of the apocalypse: they are often its initiator and silent accelerator.

Innovation means fighting the root causes.

As we usually do, addicted to a pathology-centric and cure-centric model (the current medical and pharmacological business model), we focus on the effects with little interest in the causes. If we do not focus on the causes, in fact, not only do we content ourselves with promoting palliative forms whose efficacy is yet to be proven (least of all, in this case, the idea of a 'magic pill' that 'cures' isolation or loneliness makes sense) but we also actually limit the development of that innovation capable of suggesting system solutions instead of praesidium solutions.

In our analysis of root causes, 'Loss' appears to be the main trigger factor[4].

Loss of physical and mental ability: Health issues can limit one's ability to attend and participate in social activities with others;

Loss of family and friends: Social networks naturally shrink over time if not maintained, eventually leading to isolation;

Loss of professional identity: Many underestimate retirement's emotional impact from the sudden reduction of daily social interactions;

Loss of recognition in media and market: Aging stereotypes perpetuate older adult portrayals as dependent on others and non-contributing;

Loss of social status: The concept of ageing often becomes associated with loss of social status, recognition, and value;

Loss of a purpose in life: Difficulty in finding purpose after retirement can be an isolating experience that drives societal disconnect;

Therefore, if we want to stimulate system innovation, we must ensure that any solution designed to mitigate loneliness and isolation must target the underlying cause – loss. And like treating similar devastating physical ailments like heart disease and diabetes, the most effective solutions support identification and preventative action.

To prevent loss and keep older adults connected and engaged in their communities, we must re-think many aspects of society, from employment to education, transportation, housing and more. Researchers, advocacy groups, and public health workers need better tools to aggregate and mine data, identify at-risk people and communities, and deploy interventions more quickly. And when loss does occur, older adults need tools and support to build and enhance their social capital in the same way they might nurture financial capital. Serving older adults involves many stakeholders – family, caregivers, healthcare practitioners, and social workers – all of whom want to work in a more connected way but lack the underlying structure or tools to do so. 

Currently, there's no effective or accurate way to screen for isolation or loneliness – no standard tool or protocols exist. Loneliness can often hide in plain sight as it often presents with other conditions such as poverty or depression. And in North America and northern Europe, cultures that can place a high value on independence and stoicism, there's a real stigma to admitting to loneliness and an unwillingness to seek help.

There is also a pervasive assumption that older adults are reluctant to use technology, but did we ask them? Did we provide a meaningful, usable, accessible technology for them?

Abstract from Loneliness and aging: Navigating an enduring crisis [6]

As usual, where we see an issue related to ageing, we should also be open-minded enough to see the opportunity since - given the global economic system in which our society is rooted - the only way to reduce inequalities and scale solutions that can help a broader population is to identify the opportunities for the potential stakeholders. Which might not be "the usual suspects". There is enormous opportunity across multiple sectors, and no one industry or organisation will have a "magic button" for this issue – instead, the best solutions will cut across industry silos, from universities working with communities to create inter-generational housing for students and seniors, to telecom providers working with electronics vendors on virtual town-square projects, to self-driving vehicles – whose more enthusiastic audience may be older adults, because the reward to risk ratio is so high. The potential of cognitive and IoT technologies to deliver data integration, personalisation, natural language processing and scalability will be essential to support these solutions.

How do we create a new kind of village?

Three main questions can drive innovation:

Even if isolation and loneliness can happen in every context – a crowded condo, a school room, a dance hall, a public park in a village or a neighbourhood -it is also true that we are part of the global urbanization trend that suggests that the "new kind of village" described before resembles more and more to cities.

For the first time in human history, in 2008, most of the world's population was living in urban rather than rural contexts, and rapid global urbanization means cities are the dominant environment in which we will live not only as younger people but also into later life. Cities are the symbolic and physical representation of the intersection of our cognitive, affective, and behavioural components and the highest expression of the evolution of our intelligence and social systems we have created.

This – seems an unstoppable trend – makes cities more exposed to the consequences of age-related social and demographic changes, the different stages of individual human experience and social interaction. "With more complex social composition and variation in living standards, and the greater degree of human design and initiative that their functioning requires (for example, in terms of mobility, digital environment and built environment), they have the potential to help us accelerate the understanding of not only how we mitigate, adapt, or manage changes in society but also proactively influence it and transform from passive, adaptive, assisting containers, to being active tools for our through life well-being, health - our longevity. Cities have a fundamental role and clear opportunity to suggest forward proposals rather than reactive responses to living longer, better lives, with better social circumstances and sustainable, economic growth"[2].

Benjamin Barber and others have suggested that cities could succeed in various areas of public life where nation-states have struggled to make progress.

"The challenge of democracy in the modern world has been how to join participation, which is local, with power, which is central. The nation-state once did the job, but recently, it has become too large to allow meaningful participation even as it remains too small to address centralised global power… The solution stands before us… Let cities, the most networked and interconnected of all our political associations, defined above all by collaboration and pragmatism by creativity and multi-culture, do what states cannot."[9]

Furthermore, "City and local governments are in a prime position to tackle the social determinants of health because of the breadth of their responsibilities over a defined geographical area, with powers cutting across different areas of public policy. This ability to take a place-based approach is important because of the way that health needs and outcomes are distributed spatially. In most cities, the greatest levels of need are concentrated in neighbourhoods where poverty levels are highest and social outcomes are poorest. Improving health outcomes in these areas requires multi-sectoral action and leadership from those with an overarching responsibility for place"[4]. Most of the actions taken by city governments impact the health of citizens, and most of that is not about health care per se but about transport systems, urban design, planning and all the other functions and tools that city governments have at their disposal.

It is a mistake to think of the city as a unicum. There is a central government of the city, which is what we need to strategically direct policies. Still, the city is an aggregate of villages, of communities with such specific peculiarities that they have repercussions on the health and lives of citizens. Take London, for example. The highest life expectancy for both women is in Kensington and Chelsea, with 84.1 for men and 87.9 for women. The lowest life expectancy is found in Barking and Dagenham for both men (77.0 years) and women (81.7 years). This makes it a whole seven years less than in Kensington for male residents. The next lowest was Greenwich, Newham and Lewisham. Healthy life expectancy for women ranges from 57.8 years in Tower Hamlets to 70.1 years in Wandsworth. In contrast, for men, life expectancy ranges from 58.1 years in Barking and Dagenham to 70.2 in Richmond upon Thames[5]. It is clear that while London is narrated and imagined as the city we all know for the Big Ben or Piccadilly Circus, it is also evident that it is made by so many different nuances so well described by data on healthy life expectancy.

So, in these contexts, we must develop innovation policies to combat isolation and loneliness, but with a central government that identifies a common goal, which can only be the health-adjusted life expectancy of its citizens or HALE. In the recent past, for too long, we have focused on measuring life expectancy tout-court. Still, the transition we are experiencing from an ageing society to a longevity society requires us to imagine policies and services that aim to create not only a citizenry that lives long but does so healthily. I will not dwell on why this is a crucial step, as I would like to emphasize how this must become the pivotal' policy effectiveness' objective to be shared between city departments.

Every single initiative, from a more effective sewage system to the redesign of public transport to speed limits in city centres, must always and in any case be contextualized and measured against its corresponding 'Return in Healthy Longevity'. Suppose we establish this KPI as our focus. In that case, we can not only easily understand where to prioritize our interventions (perhaps Chelsea can be placed in the queue compared to Tower Hamlet) but also more quickly understand the drivers of the reasons for such a difference. Economic and social factors (per capita income and education) underlie these macro-differences but understanding "how" and "how much" these factors, along with all the other components that impact our health, influence isolation - which, as we have said, is probably the spark from which loneliness is amplified - is what can allow us to intervene quickly.

Historically, the moral thermostat of politics is fixed on a point somewhere between duty and prudence. Unhinging this dynamic is intrinsically complex, and perhaps the only way to do so is to unlock a basic principle, namely to formally acknowledge that, as we have said, no one industry or organization will have a 'silver bullet' for this issue, and therefore to involve each actor in a hybrid model not by offloading responsibility onto one another, but by coordinating interaction with one another and developing an ecosystem opposed to the current fragmented and partial one.

By leveraging data and technology to establish an absent shared screening and detection model. Who can tell if a person is isolated? How can we distinguish whether depression is caused by loneliness rather than by other factors? Who communicates the data with whom? Who cares to act? Just the usual charities or voluntary groups in the area? And even if so, can we systematize volunteering? Can we launch campaigns to combat the stigma associated with old age and the shared celebration of independence as a symbol of a healthy and progressive society? Are we sure that it is only up to the U.N. or a ministry to run such campaigns? Wouldn't it be more effective and pervasive if brands were the ones to convey this message?

Isolation and loneliness should be tackled with the same vigour we strive for a net-zero footprint. Where everyone is involved, where everyone offers joyful communications to keep our planet habitable. Where everyone sells an opportunity with a return on their investment, which is not merely social, it is economic. The opportunity for innovation is contextualized (mostly) in cities and concerns every business sector.

The city, the enabler of innovation.

It would seem, therefore, that the city bears most of the responsibility for the solutions and that it is up to central, local, and hyperlocal public administrations to find the investments and provide the tools to implement them. At least, this is how it should be in the welfare state that we have, perhaps at one point in history, idealised in an eternal debate between hyper-liberalism and the nanny state. This is a distorted representation. As Michael Lyons says: "The local government is not an agency responsible for delivering a specific set of statutory services. Rather, it is a government unit responsible for the well-being of a community and a place, and independent of, whilst also being connected to, the wider system of government".

 In other words, it is up to local (and hyper-local) governments not to deliver the solutions but to build the ecosystem in which they can be born, proliferate and resolve. A function of knowledge, promotion of evidence, prioritisation, and coordination. In an economic and social context, it is radically different from when many of the policies that are still in place today were designed. A context plagued by new forms of isolation and loneliness exacerbated by new social dynamics, digital ones above all. A context in which solutions based on the intelligent interpretation of data are no longer a possibility but the baseline on which to build solutions. This is what local authorities should do: indicate the priorities and where they are most urgent and stimulate the market to innovate. One example above all.

In 2011, Michele Vianello, Deputy Mayor of Venice, argued that "building a WIFI network in a municipality is not dissimilar to building a nursery or kindergarten"[6]. Compared to Vianello as a universal right of citizenship, Broadband access explains well which axes it can and should evolve. It is not very different from public school children's right to healthy nutrition. More data will become available if the city increasingly moves its services to digital ones. This data can then be the basis for measures and effectiveness of our interventions.

Providing broadband access will be strategic and socially essential to provide access to services and receive feedback from citizens. Tel Aviv, Barcelona, Perth, Wellington, Osaka, Tallinn, Helsinki, Milan, or Leeds, Bradford, Oxford, Manchester, Salford, York, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Newport, all cities which have been equipped with free public Wi-Fi, are excellent examples. However, a lot more can be done from an infrastructural point of view (diffusion, and – moreover, speed and signal reliability), sharing with the public (access information) and usability (ease of access).

Since the risk is what Citizens Advice in the UK found: during the first lockdown, certain groups, including people with children, disabled people, people from Black, Asian or ethnic minority backgrounds, those who were shielding and young people were particularly struggling with their broadband bill. Towards the end of 2022, an estimated 2.3 million people had fallen behind on their broadband bill, according to the charity[7]. How can we suggest access to education, information, and data if we can't grant the bare access? How can we keep people connected? How can we prevent them from being at risk of total isolation (physically and digitally)? We know it might sound against any current market logic. Still, probably – following Vianello's provocation – it is time Telco provided free broadband access to people (at least those at risk? But, who are they? Is age the only KPI?) and develop services to sustain costs using data and technology to create low-cost systems for analysing isolation risk, or developing hybrid 'town squares' with increasingly customised community-based content, resources and services that can finally intelligently bring together the physical and digital, connecting places and people.

This is the innovation that the authorities should stimulate by involving all industries. From Electronics, Consumer Goods, & Retail to Target new markets with enhanced insight into consumer behaviour and preferences, to real estate providing novel inter-generational living solutions and empathic homes, to healthcare developing active screening for early signs of loneliness with integration to social services, to travel and transportation improving mobility with self-driving vehicles, offering new experiences with VR travel libraries or more intelligent shared services, to government and business redesigning retirement concepts and create new work and volunteer opportunities, to education offering new curriculum and skills training. These are just simple suggestions which are translated already into actions by companies like Getsetup, Rendever, Volunteroo, onHands, Virtual Leap, Start-Up for Seniors, Call and Check, CHC - Create Healthy Communities, Dorot, Civic Dollars, Informetis, VOICE, Centaur Robotics to name a few of dozens exploring alternative ways to engage older people in everyday life and combat isolation and loneliness as an ecosystem instead as a laser-focused solution.

However, it is not so much the output that interests us in this context as the city's role in becoming the epicentre of an ecosystem dedicated to sharing evidence and research, acting as an integrator and facilitating both the development of new solutions and their distribution to citizens. A striking example of how this flow has been implemented egregiously is that of New York State, where the director of the Office for the Aging, Greg Olsen, leads a task force that collaborates with accelerators, start-ups, federal offices and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) - whose mission is 'Turning Discovery Into Health' - to interpret citizens' needs, interests, life patterns and risk of isolation and decline.

It is enough to realise how the State of New York and the City of New York are working jointly to bring innovation into people's homes for free. The agreement with New York and ElliQ, a voice-operated care companion designed to alleviate loneliness, empower independence and support people in taking control of their social, cognitive and physical well-being, is an example of the central role of cities in fostering innovation. ElliQ, one of the few products specifically designed for older adults who are living alone or spend most of their day alone, was on the market for almost a decade and only found its profitable go to market when it signed framework agreements with the State and the City of NY which were offering the entire technology free of charge to citizens selected by precise criteria based on data from local operators.

The results? In 2023, NYSOFA issued a report[8] showing a 95% reduction in loneliness and a significant improvement in well-being among older adults using the platform. ElliQ users throughout New York have also consistently demonstrated exceptionally high levels of engagement over time, interacting with their ElliQ over 30 times daily, six days a week. More than 75% of these interactions are related to improving the older adults' social, physical and mental well-being, not to mention giving ElliQ a revenue 'pipeline' to convince other investors to invest in the company and thus give it a chance to develop more and more sophisticated technologies based on Machine Learning that will benefit more and more people. These results have allowed to serve from about a thousand homes to over twenty thousand planned in the coming months. All are funded with the New York State budget as part of a package of programmes through NYSOFA to address social isolation and provide support for caregivers.

So, will the solution to isolation and loneliness be a cognitive robot in our homes? Of course not. It will be more cohesive and inclusive communities, city neighbourhoods redesigned in the spirit of Barcelona's Superilles, more effective tools to manage volunteering, programmes to engage commuters to be part of the social fabric around their Office and not only where they reside, campaigns to promote interdependence instead of stigmatising it, solutions to learn how to recognise isolation and identify it, harnessing local touch points as catalysts for engagement and - of course - it will also be technologies capable of being there when it is unfortunately impossible to do so in person.

Involving and selecting innovation in all its forms - digital, process, financial - having the courage to experiment with it and support it, helping it to prove its effectiveness: this, too, is the role of cities and their administrators if we really want to imagine how to tackle and solve loneliness with the tools that our ingenuity makes available to us, every day.

Originally published in the “Silver Economy Meets Innovation: Aging Better, Together. Strategies and Startups to Tackle Loneliness” by AC75 Startup Accelerator.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_People_Walker [2]https://www.istat.it/it/files//2020/04/statisticatoday_ANZIANI.pdf [3]https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352827323001246 [4] Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation: The U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory on the Healing Effects of Social Connection and Community, 2023 [5] N. Palmarini, H.Fraser, S.Zinck et alter, “Loneliness and ageing: Navigating an enduring crisis”, Institute for Business Value Press, 2017-2020 [6] N. Palmarini, H.Fraser, S.Zinck et alter, “Loneliness and ageing: Navigating an enduring crisis”, Institute for Business Value Press, 2017-2020 [7] N. Palmarini, H.Fraser, S.Zinck et alter, “Loneliness and ageing: Navigating an enduring crisis”, Institute for Business Value Press, 2017-2020 [8] N.Palmarini, L.Corner, “City of longevity: a new paradigm for cities in a longevity society”, 2023, NICA. [9] B.Barber, “Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age”, University of California Press, 2013 [10] C.Naylor, D.Buck, “The role of cities in improving population health”, the Kings Fund, 2018 [11] https://trustforlondon.org.uk/data/life-expectancy-borough/ [12] https://www.michelevianello.net/wifi-gratuito-diritto-universale-cittadinan¬za/ [13] https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/about-us/about-us1/media/press-releases/more-than-one-in-six-struggling-to-afford-broadband/ [14] https://aging.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2023/08/nysofa-and-elliq-engagement-report-july-2023.pdf