#also generally tiktok instagram and twitter are not a safe place for me they all speak before they think

[hamiltonvi]

this fandom is fucking me off

[roodles03]

🌈 Roodles03 🌈

My name is Roo, and my pronouns are they/them! I'm 21, queer, and autistic.

OTHER SITES

Instagram: Roodles03 (Currently on Hiatus)

A03: Roodles03 (Fanfics)

Youtube: Roodles03 (Animatics/Speedpaints)

Spare Blog: Roodles03-reblog-account

NOTE: I DO NOT have Twitter, Tiktok, Facebook, Bluesky or ANY other social media platforms. (Excluding Discord with is NOT listed here for privacy.) Any art of mine that you see on those sites IS A REPOST. Anyone with my username on other sites IS NOT ME.

(Last Update: 11-21-24)

I post Hazbin Hotel & Owl House fanart/comics and shit like that. Pretty much exclusively Alastor, radiosilenece, and Huntlow/Dadrius content because those are all my hyperfixations right now. If you love those things then you've come to the right place! I actually do more than just art! I also post fanfics on my A03 and occasionally post memes and discussion posts here on tumblr.

DNI LIST:

Pedophiles, Queerphobic people, racists, misogynists, ableist people, or if you support any other form of bigotry. (Obvious)

Trump Supporters. (Also obvious)

Proshippers. (This is a mostly* minor safe blog, so please keep your weird fantasies far away from of places where minors can see it. FFS be responsible.)

If you are an AI-Bro without believing regulations or protections for people (Go fucking make something productive on your own.)

Huntlow/Dadrius/Hazbin Hotel antis who are going to be a dick about me liking those things. (Ffs just ignore and/or block me and move on. There's no reason to be nasty about it. Polite antis of each are welcome.)

Pro-Iseral (Get the everloving fuck away from me)

Minors can interact but be aware I swear a lot within my own speech and speaking patterns. Most of my TOH content I try to keep swear free outside of shitpost comics. HOWEVER, I personally don't consider swearing taboo and don't see it as an adult topic. Like I know most of us started swearing when we were like 10 lmao. Anything sexual I consider an adult topic. Hazbin just naturally has these elements. Please acknowledge that Hazbin Hotel is out of your age range if you are a minor. 16+ is the MINIMUM age. I know there's not much I can do to stop children from consuming the show and therefore my fanworks, but In the future if I ever include something remotely sexual in a Hazbin comic even if it's as small as a sex joke, I'm going to slap the 18+ fliter on it for safety purposes. I will geninuely try to do something.

Repost Rules:

Thinking about reposting my art/comics? Please check this list first.

Are you just reposting the art/comic by itself with no original spin on it? DO NOT REPOST UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. IF YOU ASK I WILL NOT GIVE PERMISSION.

Are you reposting my art/comics on youtube? ASK ME FIRST.

Do you want to voice dub my comic? ASK ME FIRST, AND YOU MUST SPECIFY HOW YOU'RE DUBBING IT. I ONLY WILL GIVE PERMISSION IF YOU HAVE REAL VOICE ACTORS IN YOUR DUB. I WILL ALWAYS REFUSE IF YOU WANT TO USE AI GENERATED VOICES. I DO NOT WANT AND ACTIVELY REFUSE TO HAVE ME OR MY WORK ASSIOATED WITH AI IN ANY WAY.

Do you want to dub my comic in another language? LET ME KNOW FIRST, AS I WILL ACTUALLY HELP YOU. I WILL SEND THE PANELS WITHOUT THE ENGLISH DIALOGUE.

Do you want to use my art for a meme? NO PERMISSION NEEDED JUST GIVE CREDIT.

Do you want to use my art in an edit? ASK ME FIRST.

Do you want to use my art as a profile picture or header? NO PERMISSION NEEDED JUST CREDIT.

Do you want to color one of my unfinished drawings? ASK ME FIRST. PERMISSION WILL ALWAYS BE GRANTED.

Do you want to redraw one of my drawings? ASK ME FIRST. PERMISSION WILL ALWAYS FOR GRANTED (JUST DON'T TRACE!)

Do you want to take inspiration or use my art/comics as references? NO PERMISSION OR CREDIT NEEDED.

If you have any questions or if something here isn't listed, ASK ME FIRST.

Other things:

Please be resonable when simping over my art. All of my art is strictly SFW (outside the occasional sex joke) and it makes me really uncomfortable to make visually suggestive shit. (Asexuality spectrum coming in lol) So again, if you simp, please keep it reasoable. Don't say some fucking vile shit you wouldn't say to me irl if you want to simp over my art. When people over sexualize shit it makes me uncomfortable.

However, this all goes out of the window if you simp over a character I've drawn that's a minor, unless you specify you're a minor yourself, that's an instant fucking block.

Blank/Default PFP blogs with no content will be blocked due to safety concerns with all these fucking tumblr bots swarming the site recently.

Feel free to send me asks in the askbox!

Commission Status: Closed until I can get my name legally changed. (No idea when that will happen.)

I don't really do requests, but if you send an ask and I happen to like your idea, there is a small chance I'll put it in my queue.

[toomanythoughts2]

do you consider yourself proship

Hi Anon. 👋

So, I'm going to be as specific as I can to answer this question so as to not misconstrue anything.

I do not follow the "Proship/Antiship" discourse as I believe it does more harm than good for the fandom at large.

I have watched from the sidelines what it has done to fandom on Tumblr, Twitter, Tiktok, and Instagram. This type of discourse has alienated, harmed, and scared genuine fans away from fandom. From what I have witnessed, I believe that this type of discourse has caused major harassment issues within fandom under the guise of good intentions. While the identifiers at first might have started off as something positive (A way to quickly pinpoint which blogs you'll mostly likely get along with based on shipping preferences), I do believe that is has turned itself into a tool to harm people. This does not mean that anyone who labels themselves Pro/Anti harm people or participate in the discourse itself, but that the discourse surrounding the identities have caused major issues. Whether or not you believe that to be true, understand that this is from my perspective.

I do not consider myself either one of these titles. I'm never going to label myself as one of them. As someone who has been here since before the "Mishapocalyse" of 2013, I have watched fandom literally evolve with the new generations. I have watched trends rise and fall, edits about different presidential elections starting with Obama, I've witnessed the creation of "Nice shoe laces." "Thanks I got them from the president." I have learned a thing or two about fandom, how it grows and changes and shifts.

And I have also learned how to curate, support, and ignore to create a safe space for myself in fandom.

As my pinned post states, I believe in a "Ship and Let Ship" mindset. I do not tolerate hate or bullying. If you want to label me as something, you can label me as "Anti-Harassment". Or, you can label me as "Pro-Blocking." I firmly believe in curating your fandom space around the blogs and people you enjoy listening to, enjoy looking at, and enjoy involving yourself with. For every fandom space I enter into, I always tell people what I'm about and if they don't enjoy that, then I always tell them to please block me. There is no point in being unhappy or being annoyed by my presence in your fandom space. I have also done the same thing, where if a person writes out what they're about and I don't like it, I block them. I've been a Season 1, Izzy Hands stan on Twitter before. I know exactly how to curate my fandom space.

Life is much too short to not block blogs that you don't like. Fandom space is what you make of it.

I do not condone shipping harassment, anon hate, bullying, or doxing. I do not believe in stalking blogs or screenshotting posts to edit them or dog-piling. I do not think it is valuable to spend our precious free time (less of which you have the more you grow) hating and harassing others about ships that you may not like or agree with. If you don't like something or if you don't agree with it, block that blog. You deserve to have a safe place within fandom that makes you happy.

This is not to say that I like or agree with every ship I encounter. There are plenty of ships in plenty of fandoms I have been a part of that I didn't or don't like. Not once though, have I ever harassed or harmed a person over a ship. I learned how to curate my space so that I wouldn't see these ships. Blocking and black listing tags helped me avoid certain areas of fandom. For that, I created positive and rich online spaces where I could grow and enjoy my part of the fandom. These spaces were the best parts of my childhood.

This doesn't mean I can't stop liking a ship once I got into it. Many ships that I once shipped as a child or a teenager (or hell, even last week), I can look back on and go, "Oh, actually, maybe I don't like this after all." I am allowed to grow and change my mind on certain ships the older I get. All people are allowed to change their minds.

Anon, my blog here is simply to have fun, write my little posts, and put up my crudely done art. The Metalocalypse fandom has been incredibly kind to me these last couple of months, especially as a new fan of the show. I truly have so much fun every time I log on here and look at the engagement within the tags. I have not been on Tumblr in a long time so to see such an active community, a kind and thoughtful community at that, it fills me with happiness. I forgot how much fun creating and being a part of a fandom community like this can be. I enjoy creating and talking and learning and sharing and laughing with others about our silly little band. I am eternally grateful for every bit of engagement within the community, no matter how small or large.

Anon, I would not enjoy my life on Tumblr nearly as much if I did not curate it that way.

I am 26 years old, Anon. As an American woman, I have a good 53~ years left in me before I croak, less than that if I am unable to get healthcare. I simply do not want to waste a moment of my free time worrying or getting upset about things I can not change or ships I don't like. Especially not when there is so much more to the fandom that I do like, that I love. I want to spend my time surrounded by a community that I enjoy being around and enjoys having me around.

My dear Anon, I will not label myself as either one of these identities. At any time that you look at my blog and do not enjoy my presence, I implore you to block me. Curate the space that you want based on their presence in the community, not by an identifying marker.

I'm sorry if this isn't the answer you're looking for but, to me, it's my honest answer to your question. Have a good day, Anon.

Ok, bye, love you <3

Tl;dr: Love what you love. Block what you don't. Enjoy your life. Curate your fandom space.

[gordontheengineswifenirmal]

Agreed. Repblogging because this is important.

I remember some years ago, I had a bloke who was I think like 15 years younger than me contacted me. He was friendly, he was cute. Let me clarify something here - by cute, I mean he was cute as in headway cute. He was nice looking, but the age difference made me feel uncomfortable. I will NOT be a cougar. I forget if he was even 21. He was supposedly over 18. He had slight face hair, but looked rather young. To b fair, I too look younger than I am. Still - nope.

People say love has no boundaries, but that is extremely misleading. There r some things where absolutely- being petty about is not cool. However, some things are a healthy boundary, and are often ignored. These days, anything goes. As progressive and wonderful as that seems in theory, in practice, it’s much more complicated, and being overly naive causes more damage than good - if not to you, to others.

People on social media who have to show off constantly for praise, money, etc. especially- not NOT limited to being of vastly different cultures is a red flag. They don’t understand what hidden dangers, such as using them for citizenship, scamming, or because they are a status symbol can really do. They laugh at it, and purposely ignore things meant for their safety. (I know, this doesn’t apply to all, but it is a common concern.) Huge age gaps are another, no matter what ur gender. U can respect others whilst respecting urself and using common sense. Sadly, common sense is frequently binned in favour of validation. It becomes worse when enablers cheer them on, and chastise detractors. Detractors often (not always) are the voices of reason that u should listen to. It depends on the comments they make.

Even believing in n promoting the wrong things can be a form of conditioning that can be potentially dangerous. Also, avoiding all adults isn’t fail safe either. Peers of a similar age can also be dangerous. Learning extreme common sense n developing a healthy sense of logic is the best bet.

To be honest, they’re not just on TikTok n this isn’t recent. It happened in MySpace, happens in instagram, Facebook, twitter, private blogs and websites, even here on tumblr, and other places. This has gone on since e the beginning of social media, in chat rooms before that, n for ages. The problem is that many negative behaviours have been normalised and dismissed as being permissible. These folks (often but not always young) are then conditioned to think these things are ok. They spread misinformation, and then insult and harass the detractors who are trying to look out for them. As such, figuring out who u can trust is hard. Theres no correct general answer.

Even now, I enjoy drooling over fictional engines instead of actual people. I’m happy to laugh with people over them, n do share some bawdy jokes. However, there r other favs that humanise them, and/or want to discuss things about them that are too sexual for me - not only because I don’t feel comfortable with the conversation, but also because I don’t know the age of the person I’m talking to, and I do NOT want them crossing a line, or thinking that I’m crossing a line. This also feels uncomfortable to me.

reminder to all 14-19 year olds girls. that grown man does not like you. you are a victim

[magdasabs]

Wmow has almost 4k followers on twitter and posted a statement there about the discussion we had on tumblr and that they don’t use tumblr

This is not against them because they don’t use this app and probably don’t know, but to add about this ’what happens on tumblr stats on tumblr’ i think a huge part of it is not talk about this app at all or very limited. People who wants to be here will find it and that is perfectely fine, the app itself is not a secret nor closed for the public to find. But if you tell someone something like yesterday, and they post it on their account with 4k followers (as they kind of had to do to explain themselves), we are just one unfortuanate step away from having thousands of people finding this app at once, and they won’t know the general rules here and it wouln’t be a safe space anymore

We see more people coming here after every big tournament and that it takes some time to realise this is not like twitter, instagram, tiktok etc, but that is usually not a problem because those who find this app that way have usually good intentions and has kind of gradually started to use it after searching for certain team/players. We don’t want thousands of people without those intentions to find it all at once and then go on twitter to again talk about all the stuff they found here

I don't want to keep going deeper into this but yeah, I agree with all of that. It's such a shame cause now tumblr is associated with something bad for dean and all of his followers, if I wasn't on here and I just read that I'd also assume it's an Lchat type place which is obviously an awful association to have.

I may come off as an asshole for this but when you enter a new environment, it's you who needs to adapt, not the environment. Learn how woso tumblr works and follow the patterns or unspoken 'rules' we have. I spent months observing when I first joined, without posting or interacting with others. And I don't think me or others have been unwelcome in any way to newbies but if it comes across that way it's because we want to preserve this special community that's been built here.

[writing-for-me-at-this-point]

ii. Fun Facts About The Cast | Actor Au | Obey Me

Request: Its not, I love this AU tho

Word Count: 2303 words

Page Count: 6.5 pages

A.N. Hope you guys all like this! Fun facts about the cast lmao

[ Actor AU Masterlist ]

Fun Facts

Benjamin ( Lucifer )

- Is the dad of the cast.

- In any scenes with Dmitri ( Luke ), he makes sure to know if he is alright, and often will stop scenes to ask.

- He also is an overall joker, so he has trouble filming most of his scenes, will often start laughing in the middle of filming and can break character the easiest.

- Best with kids overall, probably due to having his own, keeps their lives private tho.

- His hair was white for a past show, but the directors liked the look, so that's why he has white tips.

- One of the few male characters who cannot do those diets to accentuate his abs- so that's why his character is always covered up.

- He's in shape! But, he likes the fat that protects his muscle, he says he needs to stay soft to hug his kids.

- Known diabetic, so there's a table full of foods so his sugars are stable, the cast has glucagon shots all over the sets to be safe.

- Is in his early thirties, but people say he can pull off early twenties- he just snorts at this.

Avery ( Mammon ) 

- Takes the job seriously, and his scenes are easiest to film.

- Dark humor and often is the "Lucifer" of the cast.

- Seeing him switch from Avery to Mammon leaves the rest of the cast and crew fucking s h o o k.

- Will always be seen looking his finest.

- No, no one has seen him in public in sweatpants or anything like that. His image is very serious.

- Is a sweetheart when with the rest of the cast tho.

- His eyes are actually that blue.

- No one is sure if his hair is actually white or not, the way he speaks about it is vague, and fans are always theorizing.

- Watching over Benji ( Lucifer ), and is usually the one to tell him to check his sugars, since the other is quite forgetful.

- Is an immigrant from Turkey, so he has an accent, makes people thirst for him more.

- Helps aspiring actors and directors get into the field, and goes on hard work and talent, not who tries to pay him off.

Jackson ( Leviathan )

- Is the resident fuckboi.

- Always with males and females hanging off him, at this point the pop gave up, no- they aren't his partner.

- Flexes a shit ton.

- Wearing chains, a Rolex, and anything designer.

- Donates half of his salary to ocean reserves and protection funds, he has the money for it, and the show pays him well.

- Always at the beach, or near lake houses and shit, the one ( 1 ) thing he likes about his character.

- Hates the fringe he wears with a passion.

- His hair is actually a light shade of brown, his eyes are a darker shade, but still pretty light.

- First generation, his parents are Korean, so you can pick up hints of their accent in his speech patterns. Gets heavy when he's sleepy. 

Ross ( Satan )

- Is a stoner.

- Goes on Instagram lives with either MC and gets high, talking about the dumbest shit or he's alone in his room and his cats join in.

- "So, if you think about- oH MY GOD PRINCESS. YES, COME TO DADDY."

- Has a kitten curled up on him, purrs loud as hell because mf is so warm, and the lives turn into purring ASMR sessions.

- Into self care, has a line of vitamins, face masks, and everything you can think of.

- Calls his fans his SaStans.

- Dmitri ( Luke ) is his younger brother.

- Will never let him out of his sight, and they love to be as mean as they can to each other, they love each other but love to bully one another.

- Is from the Bronx, so his accent is what Avery ( Mammon ) mimics for his character, often just records Avery's lines and sends them to him so he can practice.

- Owns an animal shelter he funds.

- "Carol Baskin? Who's that?"

- The REAL tiger king.

- Gets all his cats dyed to look like tigers.

Micheal ( Asmodeus )

- Chill as fuck.

- Has like 5+ kids, so the role fits him perfectly, and now it's an on running joke among fans that they are all his illegitimate children.

- You know why Asmodeus on the show wears so much makeup? 

- His eldest daughter is one of the makeup artists, and she loves to try new looks on him, and the producers think it would fit the character well.

- People speculate his age, looks young but is in his late 30's.

- His first child was born when he was 16, so he likes to support safe heavens and things like that for struggling youths- from being kicked out to needing assistance with mental health.

- Tired af.

- Always in sweatpants, him and Ross ( Satan ) are the trademark bums of the cast.

- Thinks it would be hilarious that when Micheal is revealed, in the show, that he plays the character.

- Is a writer as well, TSL is a real series and he writes it, so they let him use it in the show.

- Vlogs in his car, in a Wendy's parking lot, eating a shit ton of food and talking about the most random shit.

- Half asleep in all interviews, wearing a hoodie and sweatpants, it's gotten to the point where everyone memes it too.

James ( Beelzebub )

- Himbo.

- One of the few cast members closest to their character.

- Absolute sweetheart.

- He's 20 years old.

- But how is he so fucking big???

- Comes from a big ass family, the middle child, he's baby 4 out of 9.

- All his siblings are redheads too.

- Very playful tho, with the cast always going along with his antics, making for the best bloopers.

- The contacts he wears make him blind af, which doesn't help since he's so tall, and will bump his head on the doorways and such.

- Can speak Scottish-Gaelic, and even has an accent to top it off.

- He is an absolute unit, and one of the characters who does the stupid diet to show off his form.

- Literally on the verge of passing out sometimes, so he needs to rest with Benjamin ( Lucifer ).

- All pictures, shirtless scenes, and such are filmed first so he can rest after and go back to a normal diet.

- Quiet guy, but loves talking about sports and his siblings tho.

- Is always carrying MC and Dmitri ( Luke ) around, now there are many off-guard photos posted to the casts shared twitter+instagram accounts

- Still pretty new to acting, but is amazing at emotional scenes, to the point fans actually think he's having a breakdown.

- Nah, he's just thinking about being alone, without his family- and it gets him bawling for said scenes.

Conner ( Belphegor )

- Crackhead 

- Will not stay still, either for filming or just when everyone is chilling.

- Scenes where he's asleep? He's usually turned away from the camera, cause the idiot is smiling and giggling.

- Has tripped over his tail multiple times.

- Comes from a farm-life, literal cowboy, his southern accent just hits hard.

- He hides it very well, but it comes out at times or with certain words.

- Sees Benjamin ( Lucifer ) as a mentor, he's in his early twenties and new to the scene, but they are best friends.

- Benjamin ( Lucifer ) has now acquired a new child.

- A living meme.

- You know how Tom Holland can't keep a secret?

- Yeah, he's worse.

- Rest of the cast have all had to physically stop him from talking at one point.

- The cow pillow? It's actually his, when he got the role his father has sewn it himself, so he will bring it with him.

- It's basically free promo for the show and comforts him in the city space.

- Gets overwhelmed in large crowds, so he usually makes sure to have another cast member close by, or he will literally leave to a less crowded place to take a breath.

- Apologized to MC after the scene in which he kills them.

- His mama raised him right, so he takes MC to his house for a movie, in which they cuddle and relax for the night.

- Felt really bad for like... a whole week.

- "Country boy I love you~"

Thomas ( Barbatos )

- Brat.

- This is one cocky man, he's smooth as hell, and one whisper can make you weak in the knees.

- Grew out the one side of his hair, but he slicks his hair back or will pin it back, dyes it himself when it's time to film.

- Loves to piss Alex ( Simeon ) off.

- Has a true crime podcast with Roman ( Diavolo ), Alex ( Simeon ), and Benjamin ( Lucifer ), because they're all old friends.

- Donates to the cold case foundation because he knows what it's like to lose someone and not know what happened to them.

- He has a twin who is his stunt double, they love to fuck with the rest of the cast, both of them are little shits.

- Is the motherfucker who makes a channel and reads the crackhead fanfics

- Loves every word of it tho.

- Responds to every fans dms. Every. One. As a whole account for this shit.

- Walks with a bit of a limp, so he wears a brace to help even himself, but during wide-shot scenes you can catch it sometimes.

- Took actual classes to be a butler for the role.

Roman ( Diavolo )

- Himbo 2.0

- Catch this man tweeting what he's trying to search up at 2 in the morning.

- Leaves them because it's hilarious, makes videos where he reads them out sometimes, it's all in good fun.

- He has a set of triplets at home, so that dad energy radiates into the show too.

- You know how Diavolo seems sus at points of the game? Yeah, he's still like that IRL.

- The rest of the cast was put off at first, but that's how he is, and everyone eased up pretty quickly.

- Makes jokes that he has family in the Italian mob, but needed to stop once his father called him, saying that there were too many eyes on the family now.

- Man was s h o o k.

- Has sensitive skin, so all his makeup and body paints need to be specially made, made with all natural products.

- The bags under his eyes are baby bags.

- Will bring his kids on set, to which everyone will gush over, and watch them when they aren't filming.

- Very private with his kids ( to the public ), doesn't post about them much, and only the cast really sees them.

- Wine dad.

- Catch him bringing the whole cast out for "family trips"

- People nicknamed him Caesar

- So many JoJo references now

- "SHHHHIIIIIZZZAAAAAAAA"

- "Please, no."

Dmitri ( Luke )

- Is actually 12.

- Quotes vines, tiktoks, and other memes.

- Is one of the few people that Alex ( Simeon ) is openly nice too.

- Also has an accent, but since he's young and is learning, can now mimic every other cast member's accent.

- Wear earplugs for certain scenes, because of how raunchy and dark the scenes can get, so Simeon and Barbatos are always conveniently in the way, hiding the plugs.

- Is Ross' ( Satan ) younger brother, and if he isn't hanging off of him he's with James ( Beelzebub ), Benjamin ( Lucifer ), or MC.

- They know there are some sick fucks in Hollywood so he has an adult with him at all times.

- Posts pictures of him cuddling up to his brother and the kittens, new foods he is trying, and some pictures with family.

- He often is considered the new Gordon Ramsay.

- Had a collaboration with him.

- It was amazing.

- Best boy, catch him taking a nap in his ( and Ross' ) trailer, surrounded by tiger kittens.

- The TIGER PRINCE.

Alex ( Simeon )

- Avatar of wrath who?

- The embodiment of "No talk me, I angy"

- Jkjk, though he does have a temper, he only loses it with Benjamin ( Lucifer ), Roman ( Diavolo ), and Thomas ( Barbatos ).

- A sweetheart with all children though, like you know Simeon on the show? 

- Yeah, he's only like that with kids.

- And respectable adults.

- Mama raised him well 2.0

- Grew up in NY

- Born in Gucci and Balenciaga.

- Was a child model and slowly expanded to acting.

- Dark humor galore.

- If Simeon met Alex, he'd probably have a stroke, cause THOSE WORDS are coming out of HIS mouth.

- Says the weirdest shit too.

- "Put your hand on my ass and call me a virgin."

- Bro are you okay???

- He is fluent in five languages and has a high IQ.

- Speaks: English, French, Italian, Arabic, and Mandarin

- Has a support system for children who struggle to learn conventionally, with trained tutors who are affordable, he knows what it's like to need certain needs met to learn, and he wants every kid to get that chance.

- Rough around the edges but has a heart of gold.

Derek ( Solomon )

- Loves to smoke with Ross ( Satan )

- He is more aloof than chill.

- One of the more awkward members, doesn't know how to socialize well, and is very shy.

- Watch out for Dmitri ( Luke ) on the down low.

- Didn't have the best life growing up, so he is a lot more street smart than book smart.

- Doesn't have a big social media influence.

- Very nice to fans, gives full hugs to them, and everyone feels so appreciated.

- Has a husky named Blue.

- Also has an owl, who he took in when he found it on his porch with a broken wing, and nursed it to health.

- He set it free, but she comes back often, and has a nest in the tree closest to his house.

- Named her Lovely.

- Animal person, so he helps Ross out with his animal shelters.

- Uses Blue as a living pillow, and only sleeps in his boxers when Blue is on his bed, because goddamn does that dog radiate heat.

- Him and MC live together, having grown up together, and made their livings together. 

[ficsnroses]

Different - Keanu Reeves x Reader

[not my gif]

summary : you attempt to explain social media to your oblivious boyfriend, Keanu, during a cute impromptu evening cuddle session.

warnings : loads of fluff! age difference [not specified], x f! reader.

words : 1.9k. 

notes : slowly working through my requests. this was requested by a lovely anon. lemme know whatcha think! as always, feedback is so so welcome.

“Hey, babe, you wanna go on a motorcycle ride?” A pondering Keanu wonders, worn out arch hat held in thick fingers. “There’s supposed to be a killer sunset soon.” Long hair outgrown freshly, his shining threads of raven hair had begun to host sporadic specks of silver; managing an appearance all the more handsome.

“Yeah, sure.” You return, eyes focused to the black mirror screen of your phone; inattentive to say the least. Eyes absorbed to the blue screen below, your breathes move slow, deliberate; relaxed. Normally, you weren’t one to centre immense attention to social media, or the raging world at your finger tips. Nonetheless; your feed just happened to be far too fulfilled today, far too many intriguing eye catchers spattered upon your personalized canvas.

“Where did uh-…” You start, eyes still motionless, caged to your device. “Where did you uh…wanna,” Paused, brows thread slight, absorbed. Eyes scrunching with your head shaken slightly, your mind struggles to produce the proper word, momentarily consumed by the images in front of you. “Go.” You blink, snapping; slight emphasis on the word when it finally finds your tongue. “Where did you want to go, baby?” Sparked interest, your tone holds curiosity; attentiveness. All hues you’d hoped Keanu understood you did have in the moment; just momentarily distracted. “You said something about motorcycle…?”

“Yeah, a ride…” Keanu begins again, observing your occupied form situated on the crème couch of his home. Keanu and you were still quite fresh, still adjusting to life together. Merely a firm 4 months into your relationship, you’d figured out one thing quite swift.

You’d keep each other around as long the universe would allow, as long as the skies let. Love is blind, you’d heard; and blind it would stay. The age difference was a factor you’d had to talk out, factor into what had grown. Yet one datum would ring true, triumphant above all.

        You love him, and he loves you.

        It was as simple as could be.

“Yenno, a ride down sunset maybe,” Keanu speaks, distracted to his train of thought when your eyes stay intent to your screen. “Up the hill to our favourite spot and…uh…” Stocky hand ran through his hair, Keanu’s voice retracts, baritone gently higher when he asks aloud. “Hey, babe, are you even listening?”

Breathing a deep inhale, your eyes flutter to your tall, deliciously handsome boyfriend. In blue jeans and a simple black shirt, he miens delectable; soft features with his full beard tamed to a beautiful fresh groom; your heart races by the second. “Of course I’m listening.” You giggle, patting the vacant spot beside your frame. “C’mere.” You smile, cellphone discarded to the fluffed cotton of the opposite pillow. Keanu carefully situates himself down adjacent, sighing with his heavy palms rested to his jean clad thighs.

He smells of pine, and a cigarette smoked hours ago. Lingering, the scent of your special shea shampoo radiates off his mane; you’d been leaving considerably more of your belongings at his place recently.

“Motorcycle ride. Sunset.” You chime, arms wrapping delicately snaked to his neck, with a gentle kiss placed to dark, stubble ridden cheek. “I was indeed listening.” Finishing, your head rests softly just under his neck to the broad of his chest, arms finding refuge wrapped around his toned torso. Keanu sighs, his own arms finding your body when they engulf around your waist, one hand rested to his thigh as his other soothes gentle, caring brushes to your hip.

      His heart thuds gentle, a quiet pacify;

      calm as that first pepper of dew on damp earth, and you sigh,

      similar to the way mother earth gratifies to the feel of fresh rain,

               kissing her roots.

“Gosh I feel old seeing you so…” His voice is full, a heavy drum like the confident sky that brings deep puddles, clear velvet gold. “…fixed on that thing.” He laments, and your hand moves to rest to his chest; offering gentle, tender rubs with the soft pad of your thumb.

“Hmm?” You wonder, gazing up to his chocolate eyes in question. He silences a moment longer, before enduring. “What even is so…interesting about that stuff?” He asks, his own palm moving to rest over yours that stills to his chest. “I mean, I’ve heard about that uh, Instant-gram thing?” He offers, hearing your soft giggle below, against his chest. “And Tweeter, I know Tweeter. Some friends use it.” He justifies, stare locked to the ceiling above. “But what even is the big deal, yenno?”

Quiet, and discreet; your chuckles struggle to contain hearing your boyfriend absolutely butcher the names of rather popular platforms. He’s adorably oblivious, and you feel yourself fall a little harder for him by the second. With a tender squeeze to his arm, you correct. “Instagram, honey. And Twitter, not Tweeter.”

Keanu throws his head back against the couch, a thick smile creeps his lips midst his own blunder. You smile a simper, fingers reaching up to scratch his abrasive beard in a tender stroke. “Also, what do you mean, Ke? It’s just…yenno, social media. It’s fun, keeps me entertained.” You explain, head still rest to his chest with your fingers mindlessly grazing, scratching his cheek. “You know, how you read books when you’ve got time to spare?” You attempt a connection.

His hold on you tightens. “I guess I just don’t get it.” Frowned, his fingers lace with yours toying; gently twining your much softer ones. “I’m too old for this stuff.” He chuckles, head thrown back yet again in a deep sigh.

You recognise Keanu often beats himself up for being older than you, habitually worries he won’t be able to give you the fun, exhilaration, adventure he would have been able to offer easier when he had been a decade fresher; less drear to his timeworn bones, scarcer gray to showered his beard.

Consoling, your grip to his delicate palm firms. “Hey. You know what, lemme show.” Reasoned off your pink stained lips, a soft kiss embeds to his shirt arrayed chest, figure stretching to grab the bulk of your phone. Excited, you open your screen, routinely beginning with Instagram. “Alright.” You enthuse, holding the phone out in between your interwoven bodies. “So, this is my feed. It contains all the accounts I follow, so I can easily see what they’re up to.” You explain, soft padded index scrolling through the stream. “In turn, people who want to see what I post follow me as well. They’re called my followers, see?” You enlighten, showing him your wide compilation of names.

“So you mean like…trackers? These are your trackers?” Keanu’s eyes squint as he gapes the screen, russet eyes struggling to focus on one certain aspect of the screen. It was all much, all new.

Intriguing, but very new.

Already, he’d been struggling to keep up. “No, Ke. That’s weird, and creepy.” You correct. “Followers, okay?” You emphasize, shifting to position your legs up on the couch in a cross seated station. “Anyway, so, I scroll through my feed, and see what people post. I can also give them a like, to show them that I’ve seen it and like it.” His head nods slowly in captivation, although those tender, chocolate eyes still break muddled; wonder dense to his brain. “Alright, and this is my explore page. It has customized posts just for me, complied of all the things I like.” You smile, showing him the screen.

“How does it know what you like?” He genuinely asks, hand raked through his generous, roasty strands. Leaning forward, his figure looms beside you, fully engaged.

“It…it just does. It sees the stuff I usually like and just…does a thing.” You half successfully explain, shifting yet again to get more comfortable.

“Well, sweetheart, that doesn’t sound too safe.” Keanu quietly doubts. “Are you sure this is safe, Y/N?”

Giggling, your arms capture around his bicep, tugging his warm, broad body closer. “Yes, grand dad. It’s safe, the entire world uses it.” Teasing, your eyes scrunch to offer him a bantered, playful expression; a smile vast situated on Keanu’s thin lips in return.

“Alright, here hold it and give it a scroll.” You offer, watching the way your phone appears rather small; dainty in his heavy grip. Keanu grasps the casing with one hand, from the base; similar to the way a middle aged women perhaps would, scrolling very slow through the page with his index finger of his spare hand accompanying.

“Why is the world dissolving?” He timidly, low toned asks, in reference to an Avengers meme. Chuckling, you rub his bicep to a beaming smile of his inability to understand internet culture, allowing his eyes to scan further in.

“Oh! Lemme show you tiktok.” Beaming, your fingers retract the phone, opening the app for him to see. Nonetheless, upon arrival to your home screen, a baffled Keanu gasps, deep baritone questioning in query. “Why are they all screaming?” He ponders, baffled with the device in grip,

and with a raging laugh, your hands exit the screen, leaving your phone to discard to the table below, yet again. “Alright, maybe we’ll save the world of tiktok for another day.”

Sighing, Keanu positions back on the couch, opening his toned arms for you to snuggle into, yet again. Against your cheek, his deep tone rumbles, voice certain with statement. “I still don’t get it.” He confesses, a gentle chuckle apparent to his suave tone. “Hey, sweetheart,” He assures, your hand taken in his. “I’m sorry these things aren’t really what I’m into. I know you like them, and care about them. I’m a little lame.” He jokes, gentle exhale to a rasped chortle.

Awed, your frame moves, just enough to tower over him slight, yet still staying situated in his embrace.

“Well,” poking his chest, you smile. “I think I like you better anyway.” Slow; gentle, your legs drape over his thighs, situating your body to straddle in his lap, arms loomed around his chest, you warmly beam between delicate kisses to his visage.

       “You make me laugh more,” a kiss to his cheek,

       “You keep me company,” a kiss to his forehead,

       “You listen to me when I need you,” a softer one to his nose,

“And, you kill spiders for me.” A final, gentler one to his silken lips; the most luxurious delight you’d ever relish in. “You live in the moment. And that’s pretty freaking cool if you ask me.” Heavy palms place to your hips, his love drunk gaze watching you shower him in nothing but pure, unconditional adoration. And he smiles,

he smiles, wholly. Knowing he had the woman he’d been waiting for, for countless lonesome nights and secluded days.

“You want to take me on a motorcycle ride to see the sunset, because you know it’s my favourite. You really are something else.” You quietly express, awestruck. “Something special grows inside you.” Sincerely, your eyes pierce into his soul, illuminating. Quiet, content, gratified, you pull him closer, whispering; “You’re really something else, Ke.”

Finally, to the sound of his appreciative hum, you soothe, flattening a wrinkle on his shirted chest, grinning. “Now. I believe you owe me a sunset, Reeves.”

And to the sound of your silken tone; fresh as summer flowers and soft running water, Keanu grins, his voice a knowing smile, gentle kiss daubed to your forehead.

        “A thousand sunsets fall nothing compared to you, baby.”

➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴➶ ➴

My taglist will be posted in reblogs, let me know if you want to be added or removed! :)

[failedprototype]

I hate demonizing any technology in general.

But in all honesty seeing some of the messed up stuff churning out of tiktok, Instagram and Twitter makes me wonder something.

Remember the elsagate thing a couple years back on YouTube? How horrifying and disgusting content wiggled itself in YouTube kids app? I'm beginning to wonder if that was a testing ground for finding ways to spread fetish and outright porn to kids. Like seeing how tiktok markets itself as a fun kids app and creeps are preying on it are connected.

As for Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram I'm thinking also that sites that give a false sense of security coupled with algorithms that might be actively targeting kids and teens might be a source of many problems. Saying these are safe places for family friendly fun your grandma and family are on it so it's all fine and dandy. Then as the parents are looking at one feed, their children are viewing something else drastically different. Plus this puts kids in a very bad position in more conservative settings. Like to a lot of conservatives knowledge of something bad or scary gets the old "why do you have knowledge of that" question. Or the assumption why did you google that? When it wasn't a kid asking for something as it was an asshole placing harmful content in an innocent tag.

[thecolorsthaticantchange]

what serious conversation do ziams need to have

if you’re not on twitter, tiktok, instagram, or other platforms, ignore this.

we’re always fighting over the most stupid stuff. when someone says they’ve noticed something happening on a particular platform, it doesn’t mean they’re hating on all people on that platform. the thing ziams on platforms that aren’t tumblr have to realize is that no one here is here for the drama or fighting antis or arguing about home every week. you can do you, but stop bringing it here onto what a lot of us consider our safe space. i love it when my anons ask for my favorite ziam moments or ask me something about the stunts, because that’s focusing on zayn and liam (this also applies to the other boys). when a ziam on tumblr is annoyed that someone (probably from twitter, ig, or tiktok) is here, asking redundant questions, it’s not because they hate people from those other platforms. my observations on twitter larries are starting to apply to ziams, and it’s really sad. watching larries become more and more divided for no good reasons other than downright ignorance is bad enough, but watching the same thing happen to ziams, who have put time and effort into research (as a generalization, solo larries, ily) is fucking terrifying, especially because i’ve developed friendships with a lot of these people. there’s a reason larries and ziams alike on twitter and ig feel looked down upon, and it’s because of shit like this. no one actually believes you don’t deserve compassion from the fandom, but we can’t help your situation if you’re not willing to address it yourselves.

this is not a burden i want to put on anyone here on tumblr, but i feel like this is a much safer place to discuss it. i’m willing to talk about it in twitter/tumblr dms, my inbox, and my cc.

[megbox]

2020 Year in Review

Previous Posts: (2019) (2018) (2017) (2016) (2015) (2014) (2013) (2012) (2011) 

2020 is a weird year because as the world goes through something collectively extremely traumatic and that is radically changing the structure of our lives, our workplaces, the way we connect socially, our mental health… our response to disease…. SO MUCH ABOUT THE WORLD…. And yet the day-to-day of living in a pandemic is so… mundane. I am privileged enough to have that opinion. I have stayed securely employed and it is privilege for my main reaction to something as intense as this pandemic to be boredom. But really, 2020 was a year of absences. It was a year spent largely alone, in my own company. It was a year that forced me to rest. It was a year that made me feel so terribly lonely but also forced me to get acquainted with myself and enjoy my own company in a new way. And it was a year of running. 

I would also like to thank Connor for making this post happen by reminding me to do it and not to break tradition. 

January & February 

I am combining these months because they were not altogether all that memorable. My resolutions, as I noted on Twitter on January 2, were to 1) Keep running and 2) Learn how to make fresh pasta dough. I can safely say – mission accomplished on both fronts. 

On January 14, I had the privilege of presenting a suicide intervention lecture to students at the medical school where my brother goes. By that time, I’d done a million of these presentations so nerves aren’t really a factor (imagine that! Me, no longer remotely afraid of public speaking…), but this one meant a little extra to me. My brother is so highly accomplished, and I am so proud of him, and I enjoyed having an opportunity to show him what I do and make him proud of me. I wore my favourite dress and did my hair all nice and he described it later as “exceptional.” It was a really, really good feeling. The first weekend of February, Ali and I had planned to go to Jasper. We wanted to go for a hike or two, and get super stoned and go to the planetarium. A huge blizzard hit Alberta just before we were supposed to leave, so we ended up having a staycation here in Calgary. We rented a hotel room, went swimming, drank wine, went to Japanese Village, had drinks in the lounge and then later to a punk rock band roulette night at the Palomino and finally crawled into our giant hotel bed and fell asleep to Remember the Titans… of all movies. It was the kind of night where you simultaneously feel 18 and 35 years old. 

March 

March was when the pandemic really started to become real. I don’t know exactly why, but I did not take the threat of coronavirus very seriously until the last minute. My coworkers would whisper about it in the hallways and I just rolled my eyes. But then, people started deciding they would work from home, the number of us in the office dwindled. The vibe was bad. Nobody could really focus. They held meetings at 8am and 4pm every day just for COVID-19 updates and we all waited with bated breath for them to finally tell us to go home and not come back. I really feel like I didn’t acknowledge the true implications of this virus until we got the official work from home order, and I had to tell my boss, my laptop at home is too old to run this software, I need a work tablet. My first official work from home day was March 23, 2020. I don’t remember much about that time except that the general sense of panic and anxiety made my job a lot busier, and it is hard to do a job like mine from home because it is hard to counsel or reassure clients through anxieties that are hitting you just as hard. I coped with wine, a lot of running, and listening to Ben Gibbard’s afternoon live streams where he would play acoustic versions of Death Cab songs and other covers. He played New Slang by the Shins one night and I burst into tears. I also coped with teaching myself how to make fresh pasta dough, and enjoying what was, at that point in the pandemic, the novelty and fun of Zoom. 

April 

In the absence of being able to have a party for my birthday, I decided to be obnoxious and do a “challenge” on my Instagram story. I asked my friends to record a distance run and/or walked and send it to me as a birthday present. My actual birthday ended up being a cold and windy and pretty miserable day. I ran 12km myself, came back home and watched both Magic Mike and Magic Mike XXL, and then went to my parents’ to celebrate both Scott and I’s birthdays with our family. My friends dropped off presents to my door and drove past my house and honked and I felt very loved and appreciated. I drank a lot of Prosecco with my brother and we listened to Kacey Musgraves. 

It was also in April that I become “acquainted” with my neighborhood running nemesis. I put acquainted in apostrophes because I have never actually spoken to him. On one fateful run in April, I happened to catch up to him on my regular route. This was at the height of the COVID fear and so, while I would usually just pass someone on the sidewalk, I went out into the street. He saw me out of the corner of his eye and SPED UP. WHICH IS SUCH BAD RUNNER ETIQUETTE LIKE DUDE I’M IN THE ROAD LET ME PASS YOU. And then we ended up in this like, all-out 100m-finals-at-the-motherfucking-Olympics sprint challenge when all I was trying to do was go for a leisurely training run. And then I finally passed him, turned a corner and had to like collapse on to my hands and knees to catch my breath. Since then, I see this man running all the time. Sometimes while I am also running, sometimes from my car when I am driving through my neighborhood. He’s like… 16. And we are very competitive with one another. I hope to one day actually say hello to him. I both hate that guy and have to thank him for the motivation. 

I ran my first half marathon on April 13, 2020. I was very hungover because I had stayed up quite late with someone on Zoom the night before on a virtual “first date” that had gone much better than anticipated. I don’t know why but I woke up the next morning in such a good mood that I decided I would go for a long, slow run. I got to 18km and figured, what’s 3.1 more? And so, I did it. The first thing I did upon finishing was call my mom. The second thing I did was contemplate calling an Uber to drive me the 2km left to my house. The other notable thing in April is that Maddy moved back from Australia, begrudgingly and a LOT earlier than planned, because of COVID. 

May

May was kind of a blur. It was the first month of the Great Virtual Race Across Tennessee, which I signed up for while coming off of the high of actually running a half marathon all by myself. The GVRAT was fucking awesome. It was created by Lazarus Lake, of Barkley Marathons fame. The ask is to run 1022.68km between May 1 and August 31, an average of about 8.3km per day. Well, you could run, walk, or hike. This is the actual distance it would take you to cover the state of Tennessee. Myself and about 20,000 other weirdos from around the world signed up for this challenge. I figured I would never get a chance to run in a Lazarus Lake race for real, and being home all the time opened up a lot more opportunity for training. It was one of the very best things I did for myself in 2020. So May involved a lot of running, because I was fresh and naïve and fully intended to be ahead of the curve. I was running about 10-12 per day, sometimes more, and not taking any rest days. 

In between these runs, I spent a lot of time going on long, ambling quarantine walks with Maddy. We would either go for a long walk or she would come over and we would get absolutely hammered in my backyard playing beer pong just to pass the time. We would send snapchats to our exes and make TikToks like 18 year olds. I know we never really said it out loud but having eachother during this time made these months bearable. We were lamenting the loss of a summer, and Maddy’s time in Australia, and all of the expectations we had for ourselves. We were watching our friends in relationships move in together or get closer due to the quarantine. We needed companionship, and stupid things to laugh about, and love, and distraction. And I can genuinely say I would not have gotten through this quarantine period if it weren’t for the nights I spent shooting Pink Whitney and dancing to Party in the USA in my living room with her. 

May 13th was my one year anniversary of working at the university. It felt good to have accomplished so many things in that time, and have moved up already in my job, and to have a full-time, permanent contract.

And May 16th was when I ran my second half-marathon as part of a virtual challenge put on by a friend of a friend. My parents came and sat in lawn chairs in the park while I did loops. They cheered me on and filled my water bottle for me when I ran out. They’re my number one supporters and I love having a family that does that kind of shit for me in the face of something arbitrary like a virtual half marathon challenge. I knocked 7 minutes (!) off my original time. Amazing what not being hungover can do for your fitness levels. 

June 

I don’t remember many important things about June, other than Maddy moving to Banff. It was depressing but I was also happy for her and happy to have an excuse to go out there and visit. I went the very first weekend after she moved. Halfway through June I seriously contemplated quitting the GVRAT. My shins were bruised, I was dreading every single run, and I could not fathom doing it for 2.5 more months. I was dragging behind in the standings and losing my motivation. 

I spent a lot of time with friends reading in parks. Sometimes, often, with wine. I met a stranger in Canmore Park and ended up kissing him. He was lovely. 

Ali and I had one really good day in June where we went to the Farmer’s Market and then came back to her place and watched Ru Paul’s drag race for like eight straight hours. It was one of those days where we hadn’t seen each other in so long and you just feel totally high off of friendship and absolutely everything is funny and you just can’t stop laughing. I vividly remember it as one of the best days of the year. 

July

Again, July kind of passed in a blur. I did a lot of hiking, and a lot of running… keeping up with the GVRAT. I hiked Picklejar Lakes, Castle Mountain, Little Beehive Lookout. 

I went to Banff for a weekend to hang out with Maddy. We had a predictably wild weekend with her roommates and friends. We had dinner at Chili’s (hell yeah) and then went to High Rollers for beers and bowling. The “thing to do” at that point for all of these Banff people was to meet at the “rec grounds” aka public firepits and drink. The police would generally leave you alone so long as you weren’t being rowdy. I sat next to an Australian named Josh at a picnic table and later took him back to my hotel room and he gave me the world’s most unbelievable obvious hickey. Maddy and I sweat out the tequila shots the next day with a long ass hike, and then had a nap before her brother came and took us climbing at the Sunshine slabs – an activity I was not very good at but I wanted to be good at. It was the kind of weekend where you feel like, okay, I definitely indulged my wild side. And you drive home just like totally exhausted but smiling. I sent Maddy’s brother a voice note on my way into town thanking him for taking us climbing and saying it was nice to see him.

August

Okay – August was actually really eventful. Like most of the year’s events happened in August, honestly. A lot of running and hiking. I did Ha Ling Peak for the first time, and we did a 30km hike to Aylmer Pass one day that was a fricken GRIND. I spent the long weekend in Saskatchewan. We went to a cidery, and I ran laps around my Dodo’s acreage, and then we got to visit Wakaw Lake and reunite with our old next-door neighbours. We took the boat out and went tubing and lit fireworks and had an amazing dinner and honestly it was like reliving my childhood in the best, best, best way. I fell asleep on the car ride home. 

I went camping with Ali in Sylvan Lake. We got ice cream and cooked fish tacos over the campfire. She told me that Cody had a date planned for the day they took possession of their house, that she wondered if he might ask her to marry him but didn’t want to get her hopes up in case it didn’t happen and ruin what otherwise was supposed to be a celebratory day. Spoiler – he did ask her to marry him  I was running when she called me. I was listening to Epsilon by Kygo, and now when I hear that song I always think of them. I stopped my watch and just openly bawled on the street out of happiness for them. 

Steven successfully defended his master’s thesis. We went camping in Waterton to celebrate with Matt, Kennedy, Regan, Scott, and Rie. They brought cake. We did a sunrise hike. I slept in the back of my Ford Escape. 

On August 27, Ollie passed away. It was both expected and unexpected. He had been having some issues with seizures. The vet didn’t think it was anything to be too concerned about, he was old and it wasn’t uncommon for them to happen. It happened suddenly. I had a terrible sleep that night, and woke up in a cold sweat somewhere between 3 and 4 am. In the morning, my mom called me and told me the news. He had a giant seizure in the night and was crying and yelping. They woke up and took him to the emergency vet, they made the executive call to put him down to prevent any further suffering. He died right around the time I woke up in the middle of the night. I like to think that was his way of saying goodbye, maybe. I cried all day. Well, let’s be honest, I cried all week. I burst into tears at the mere thought of him. He was such a good and lovely dog. He was so loved by us. He had a good life. It is always sad when we lose pets so early. They bring so much joy to our lives, and still when I go to my parents’ place the first thing I want to do is call for him or pet him. I hope he is running around in whatever the pet afterlife is. I miss him. 

And on August 31, I ran my last kilometre of the GVRAT. I finished with 733.78 run, 83.18 hiked, and 205.09 walked. 

September

September was a nice break from running. I got to start coming to campus one day a week, on Thursdays, which was good for my mental health and work productivity. I got to spend September long in Vernon with Maeghan and Madison at Michael’s family’s cabin. They took us boating and made us meals and didn’t judge us for drinking margaritas with Michael’s sister literally all day. It was the best. It was the epitome of every summer weekend you dream about. I was so happy I got to go. 

I met a boy in September. It’s always September, isn’t it? It feels weird to write about him. Like, that makes him significant. But. He is significant. And I met him in September. And it was unexpected. Last minute. And essentially not a day has gone by since that day in September that I have not thought about him.

I also joined a Calgary Sport and Social Club team with my friends for softball and it started in September. We played two games and then I tore my hamstring running from second to third base. I tore… my hamstring…. Running like 30 metres…. After a summer of literally running 10+ km every day. I… it was the worst day ever. Softball itself was amazing and so fun even though I really do suck at the sport but highly recommend Rec League C-level beer league softball with all of your best friends. There’s just no way that isn’t fun. 

October 

A lot of pouting about my hamstring, I went to two physio sessions and then decided to just start running again. I’m bad. I’m a bad example. Don’t do what I do… but also…. It worked. 

I went to Victoria to visit Sydney over the Thanksgiving weekend. We went to a Thanskgiving potluck party at my old coworker’s place. It was a nice experience to be the new people at a party, to have a room full of new people to meet and who ask you questions about your life. We got really drunk and they tried setting Sydney up with one of their roommate’s brothers, and gave us lipstick to try, and poured us tequila shots. We had such an amazing meal. It was honestly so fun. We laughed in the cab the whole way back about how we were going to need to debrief that evening HARD the next morning. We watched a lot of All Gas No Brakes, and went for dinner and brunch and I limped up Mount Doug with my hamstring. It was a very very chill weekend, like we spent a lot of time just lounging at Sydney’s apartment and doing nothing. Because that is the kind of friends we are. It was so relaxing and lovely. I was sad to leave. 

Karla, my roommate, left for New York at the end of October. Her aunt was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and she and her mom made the executive move to go there to basically be with her for the end of her life. She wasn’t going to be back until December. I was happy, because it’s nice to have a place to myself, but also sad because Karla is lovely and I knew it was going to be a stressful situation for her. 

November / December

I am combining these two months because they have also been largely uneventful. In fact… I don’t know if I could really tell you anything significant that happened. We’ve been in a lockdown. I’ve spent my time playing piano, watching Netflix, listening to podcasts, basically doing all of the things I usually do when I’m bored. Lots of Among Us. Lots of outdoor things… skating… more running. We’ve been in a lockdown since early December. Time has dragged on since then. I spent Christmas with my parents. Scott and Rie stayed isolated, because Scott is in and out of the hospital for school. My mom and I watched shitty Christmas Hallmark movies and made fun of the guys who star in them. We drank a LOT on Christmas Eve and both spent Christmas with a wicked hangover. My dad and I ate edibles and I was launched into the stratosphere. I spent New Year’s Eve with Boy from September. We played beer pong, and card games, and he tried to use a coat hangover to pick the lock on the mysterious room that my landlord keeps locked. We spent most of the night kissing, honestly. I was happy to spend the last moments of the year with him.

2021: 

Honestly... at this point... who really knows? 

[nadiawrites14]

voice of gen z

word count: 2784

for english class. tw for school shooting and police brutality mention

AN INTRODUCTION.

“GEN Z is too afraid to ask a waiter for extra ketchup but will bodyslam a cop.”

Dated June 5th, on Twitter. Many of us sit holed up in our rooms, laptops resting in our crossed legs as we scroll through social media, or the blue light of a phone screen on our face as the world around us is sleeping. Many of us are also the ones organizing, the ones leading, the ones fighting. News spreads that in Dallas, Providence, and in many more cities, teenagers were the ones organizing, the ones fighting. Teenagers were the ones turning viral memes into protest signs, organizing protests and sharing methods of resistance through apps like TikTok and Instagram. It echoes the methods of the Hong Kong protestors, using technology to battle their government head-on. 

Teenagers who dance along to songs such as Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage”, as well as teens who live in the world of ‘deep-fried’ memes, whose bizarre absurdity reach ungodly levels of abstractism, are the ones leading in this young revolution. Teenagers are the ones who chant ‘no justice, no peace’ in filled city streets; teenagers are the ones working to create graphics and share information, a new form of armchair activism. K-pop fans fill conservative hashtags with videos of their favorite performers, burying rhetoric and dismissal of the protests with dances and songs. In hours, #BlackLivesMatter trends. It’s hard to believe that these new pioneers and leaders in activism and technology are children who are scared to give class presentations, share Juuls in bathrooms, and find humor in the most strange and ironic of places. While the old term goes that ‘the revolution will not be televised’ in many ways, this growing movement will be televised, publicized, expanded, through its own means and methods.

I.

We are the generation of school shootings. 

December 14th, 2012. My mom tells me, as I hobble out from the red doors of my elementary school in Stamford, Connecticut, that something very bad has happened. I don’t understand. Nobody does. I see the faces of startled adults. I don’t remember the rest of that evening, or the day that followed it. Every time I think about Sandy Hook, the senseless school shooting that left 28 dead, I think about the multicolored walls of my school’s hallway, my sneakers on the white linoleum, the fear in my mother’s voice and in her eyes. That day was the first day I began to accept that I was a child in the United States of America in the 21st century. That day, and the brutal and confusing months that followed it, solidified something in my peers and I. Not just in Stamford, or even Connecticut, but within all young American students. The people in power didn’t care that a gunman marched into a wealthy and predominantly white Connecticut neighborhood and slaughtered kindergarteners. Because as I grew older, I saw the patterns, the televisation of suffering and permitted slaughter among my peers, our youngest, our posterity. This was normalized to us, just another school shooting, another period of brief outrage followed by inaction. The slaughter of children, the preventable slaughter of children shouldn’t be normalized. But it was.

February 14th, 2018. A gunman kills 17 students in Florida. As I’m waiting in a doctor’s waiting room with my mother, I lean over and tell her, “On Monday, all my teachers will talk about is school shootings.” I was wrong. School was another silent funeral march, my teachers quiet and solemn as they assigned us our work and progressed with their work. At dinner with my dad, I tell him, “It’ll never change.”

That isn’t entirely true. Leaders are found in teenagers who now walk through haunted hallways with clear backpacks. They are the face of a new movement, a march for our lives. Many are summoned to Washington and elsewhere a month later to organize, to fight. On March 27th, a day meant for students to walkout and protest the preventable slaughter of students, my school barricades the doors.

No legislation is passed. Nothing changes. The resistance lulls and fades, despite a number of school shootings following the tragedy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. Gen Z is a symbolic Sisyphus, haplessly pushing a boulder of pleas up a mountain of indifference.

II.

Suzanne Collins published the Hunger Games on September 14th, 2008. It finds its way into the hands of teenagers of all shapes and sizes years later, and it has its cult following. Maybe the televised murder of children strikes a chord within the audience of young adults, as does the story of a growing revolution and a coup against a selfish government.

Gen Z gets its hands on theory at a young age, through Wikipedia and the uncensored vastness of the internet that we are handed. We are denoted as the generation born with the phones in our hands, but all I can remember is having a technology class from a young age, where we were measured on our abilities to type and memorize a keyboard. Our ability to cite and surf and stay safe in the face of danger. This wealth of information at our fingertips molds us.

Dystopian fiction is popular among young teens and young adults. Titles like Divergent the Giver, Harry Potter, the Maze Runner, all influence the devouring young readers. We are raised to see atrocity, in a place where atrocity is accessible to us in every way, shape and form. We are exposed and we are no longer innocent as we rise to 6th, 7th, 8th grade. Girls wear makeup for the first time and scream at the sight of bloodstained underwear. Boys become privy to the joy of video games and self-exploration. In this time, the internet truly consumes. There is no more script taught in classrooms, whiteboards have been replaced with Prometheans, and chromebooks are becoming normalcy.  

In 7th grade I receive my phone. The niches and underground media I discover shape me. I find acceptance, friends, in places where I had lacked them before. As my classmates begin to enter into weeklong flings that end in Instagrammed tragedy, I take a quiz online to find out if I’m gay. I begin to think for myself, and I find independence and a voice on internet circles.

By the time we are promoted to high school, something has shifted. Something is different. Something’s coming, something good. Gen Z keeps calm and carries on.

III.

Donald Trump is inaugurated on January 20th, 2017, to much outrage, but also to much support. In my town, there is a protest around his building that overlooks much of our city center. It’s peaceful, energetic, and beautiful. A Planned Parenthood sticker is on my bedroom door, and I have accepted that maybe, just maybe, I’m into girls.

In 2018, we are in high school. Little fish in a big pond. I don’t have friends in my grade, but stick closer to my premade friends in the Class of 2021. My teachers are lovely, kind, and supportive, and I shine in this new environment. Politics is a force in my life as I begin to write, and as I begin to form opinions and do research. 

It’s easy to say that all of Gen Z is progressive, but this isn’t true. It’s actually very incorrect. The internet is a miraculous tool, one that can provide and produce and create new forms of communication and spread new ideas. But it is still an ocean that is widely uncharted, and young teenagers will fall into holes constructed by right-wing superstars. The racism and homophobia circulated by 4chan is on the internet for anybody to see. New popular figures and icons pledge their vote to Trump. Right-wing rhetoric overtakes in the forms of Ben Shapiro, Pewdiepie, 4chan, Reddit. There’s a neutrality to all things, but the dogwhistles and the normalization of prejudice are dangerously overbearing. As the 2016 election divided our country, it divides the new generation. A divided house cannot stand, and that is for certain. 

It is around this time, in my Freshman summer, where the politics makes a crescendo. I have broken 1K followers on my Instagram art account, where I draw fanart for a variety of musicals and plays. I discover Shakespeare, and lose myself in Hamlet. I am happy with my identity and with myself, and as the 2020 election nears, I stay informed on current events, common issues, the things that need changing.

Sophomore winter. My dad and I take two-hour drives spanning Connecticut, and we talk. He says, “You know, your generation’s fucked. You’re the ones who are going to have to cope with our mistakes.” I tell him I know. I tell him about my feelings towards racial injustice in America, the battle for a higher minimum wage against growing costs, issues in healthcare, housing, poverty, climate change, all thrown aside and discarded. Our generation, of course, when most of our white and male politicians are dead and buried, will have to deal with the repercussions of rising sea levels and global temperatures, volatile weather and crippling natural disasters, all overlooked due to blatant ignorance. “You guys are going to have to fix all of this.”

“I know.”

I’m sick of the battle being placed on the backs of teenagers. I’m sick of our faces being the fight for climate change, the faces of Greta Thunberg and Emma Gonzalez and young revolutionary congresswomen being mocked and heckled by throngs of keyboard warriors. I’m sick of the battle our leaders and representatives should be fighting being placed on our backs, when we are already our own Atlas. Ignorance is dangerous, biting, and overwhelming. We look back to the images and words we were raised upon, the story of the Hunger Games and the broadcasting of school shootings for us all to see. 

It is 2020. Happy new year! I watch from my living room as the ball drops. A brief Twitter moment about a newly discovered disease pops up in my recommended, I brush over it. Photographs of Australian fires are surfaced, and we joke about what a fantastic start it is to the year. 

Sisyphus reaches a fork in the road.

MMXX.

At around 11PM on Wednesday, March 11th, I send a strongly worded letter to the principal and local superintendent. The coronavirus has picked up worldwide, and has made its way into the states. Johns Hopkins has an interactive map that shows bubbles above cities where cases have been reported. Stamford, Connecticut Dead: 0

Recovered: 0 Active: 3.

New York’s cases are on the rise. On that same day, I began to realize the severity that would soon overtake us. I spent the afternoon first at what would be our last rehearsal for our school musical, James and the Giant Peach, and then I went to the library. I did my homework, read The Cripple of Inishmaan by Martin McDonagh, then bought a Subway cookie from the mall. I always keep a copy of King Lear in my backpack, and as my dad pulls up to the sidewalk I gloss over Edmund’s first monologue.

It’s the last normal day for a while.

March 12th comes in like a lion. In my first period class, civics, a classmate yells out, “Trump 2020!” A period later, my friend pulls me aside in the hallways, and asks if I heard that school was closing. 

“It can’t be true,” I said.

“Schadlich just showed us.”

I take my route to my next class, and find the hallway a chaotic mess of energy and camaraderie. What was meant to be kept under wraps has been instantly transferred across the student body over Snapchat stories and texts. People dance, sing, hug. It’s branded as a “Coronacation.” Broadway announces its closure, and I walk out of the front doors for the final time in my sophomore year.

Once again, ignorance overtakes. Within months, the death toll skyrockets, spikes, as we stay holed up in our online classes. My focus wavers, but I press on. Many other students resort to simply neglecting their work, choosing to take this time to focus on their own health or fill up their new time with their own hobbies. Teenagers find solace in each other, through social media and through the connections we’ve built online. As ignorance mounts among our leaders, teenagers jokingly refer to Covid-19 as the famous “Boomer Remover”. It trends on Twitter. Graduation, prom, is cancelled. The generation whose childhood began with 9/11 is once again cut short by a tragedy of preventable errors. Gen Z is subject to adapting once again to an unfamiliar environment, and we undertake.

Protests take over the streets, screaming against government tyranny. The deaths crescendo to nearly 100,000. A video surfaces of a young black man, Ahmaud Aubery, being publicly killed on a road while jogging. Ignorance continues as cases spike, and the political climate is ripe for change. On May 25th, a black man from Minneapolis named George Floyd is killed in a brutal act of suffocation by a policeman. More names resurface -- Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Joao Pedro. Names neglected to injustice are once again in the limelight -- Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Philando Castile, Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Terence Crutcher, Atatiana Jefferson, and more. 

Sisyphus has had enough of pushing the boulder, and Sisyphus takes to the streets. It is the perfect storm. A storm fueled by ignorance and the preventable death of thousands, by decades of injustice, by the mere political climate in the United States of America. Gen Z, our generation, my generation, has lived the darkest hour. We were born at the cusp of a millenia, in an awkward position where society has begun to find its footing in an unfamiliar time. A time of domestic and overseas terrorism, shaped by 9/11 and a countless number of school shootings and slaughtered people of color. Where the new generation has accessibility to the injustice and wrongs committed by those before and those above, right at our fingertips. We have new ways to organize, new ways to televise, new ways to fight. In our armchairs and in our streets, wearing masks as we hold up our hands in surrender.

Generation Z marches. They lead. They throw tear gas back at officers with no hesitation. They create chants, organize through grassroots, and find a chorus of support online. 

Generation Z leads. As politicians and leaders sit in ivory towers, like President Snow in Panem, our generation cries for change. We witness and feel the repercussions of their ignorance in our daily lives, from cuts to education to the publication of school shootings to the absence of American atrocity in our history textbooks to a pipeline that directs BIPOC and low-income students to prison or the military as they step off the graduation stage. Each year, our winters get warmer as our summers turn boiling. The preventable pile of corpses rises in front of us, and we have been taught to sit by and let it occur while the world burns. 

No longer.

Sisyphus steps aside and allows the boulder to descend down the mountain. They are bruised, bloodied, their palms calloused and scuffed and their feet lacerated and sore. Up ahead, shrouded by clouds, is the mountaintop. Sisyphus wipes their mouth, finds their footing, and begins the march.

A CONCLUSION.

We have a future.

It’s awfully dim right now. Barely a light at the end of the tunnel. We began a dead march towards it from the moment we were born into this decaying way of life, held together with glue and string by leaders with fumbling hands and staunch indifference. Our backs are tired, and we are barely adults. Generation Z is tired of fighting a fight that shouldn’t be theirs. How desperately we still crave childhood joy and humor and innocence. 

Change is necessary. It is something that is especially necessary in our time. We can no longer let people die because they can’t afford food or medicine or housing. Students cannot go into school wondering if it will be their last day. Black people should not fear for their lives while wearing a hoodie, driving, jogging in their neighborhood, shopping, or sleeping in their own homes. Elderly white men which encompass most of our political elite can no longer sit on their hands as their population suffers.

The voice of Generation Z screams louder than anything else. It screams in its silence, its activism, its useless martyrdom and battle. Change belies itself within our voice, and it has gone unheard for too long.

Change is the voice of Generation Z.

[kerishaharris]

Why the cool kids (and brands who hope to be perceived as such) are on TikTok

Being what I like to describe as a “tail-end millennial,” I’ve grown up both with and in the digital age. I still remember turning in school assignments completed on a typewriter as well as playing Oregon Trail in computer class on those box-shaped, neon green Macintosh screens (I’m still heartbroken that my wife died of dysentery, btw). I remember pleading with my mom to hang up the phone so I could log onto AOL, and how much thought I’d put into curating the perfect AIM away message. I joined Facebook my senior year of college when it was still “the Facebook” and for college kids only, and remember how big a deal it was to rearrange my MySpace top eight (funny how we were full-on coding and didn’t even realize it). But now, as a mom of three tweens, I can admit that despite digital and social media being both my personal experience and my chosen career, there are media formats out there that I know nothing about, and that my kids’ knowledge far trumps my own. None of these formats feel more foreign to me, yet obviously influential and equally important to the next generation, than TikTok.

What is TikTok and (dancing humanoid dogs aside) who uses it? TikTok is, by and large, the newer, cooler and way more sophisticated version of Vine (RIP to a real one). On its own website, TikTok says its mission is to “inspire creativity and bring joy.” Produced and manufactured by Beijing-based video-sharing service ByteDance, TikTok reportedly boasts 800 million users worldwide, and as of 2019, has surpassed one billion installs (Yeh, 2019). It creates and curates an experience driven by its powerful algorithm, turning all of its users into a connected network of mini-influencers through the use of trending hashtags, leveraging of popular music, and push for engagement with other users through duets and viral dance challenges, making for a meaningful, organized, and dare I say it, super fun experience for users of the app (Herrman, 2019).

In exploring the app, what I found especially interesting was the way TikTok employs a vertical feed experience prompting the user to swipe up, which sets it apart from similar apps like Instagram Stories or Snapchat. This “endless scroll” approach seems, in my opinion, very conducive to creating an almost addictive experience which can lock you in for hours and hours. TikTok appears to cleverly take advantage of the way users normally engage with our vertical screens, filling up the entire real estate of our phones with engaging video content coupled with popular music that’s perhaps a little too easy to get sucked into.

Who is TikTok really for?

As not only a mom of tweens, but also having worked in communications within the education space in various capacities since 2016, TikTok’s popularity among young people comes as no surprise to me. TikTok is primarily used by youth between the ages of 16 and 24 (Brucker, 2020). It is used by about 69 percent of young people in the U.S., and these users spend at least 80 minutes per day on the app (Perez, 2020). This is the same group that, if you ask them, considers Facebook to be that “cringey” old people app that your grandpa thinks is cool, and Twitter to be that thing where journalists and politicians bicker with other journalists and politicians. It’s unsurprising to me that young people would be attracted to TikTok, a space that can feel exclusively like their own.

For me, it is that young people's exclusivity that keeps me away from TikTok. Despite being what many consider to be a subject-matter expert on social media, I am admittedly intimidated by an app I don’t completely understand or feel welcomed on. I feel more comfortable with the apps I’ve come of age with and whose functionality is more native to my own digital experience, most notably Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I worry I may look like I’m “trying too hard” by exploring TikTok, or worse, that my presence there as a 38-year-old mom will render it an uncool place to be. My own kids reacted with horror when they noticed I had TikTok installed on my work phone, it didn’t matter that my job was to manage my then-employer’s institutional presence on social media. “Mom, please don’t make Wesleyan University a TikTok” they begged (too late guys, already secured the username for posterity). It was clear that they viewed TikTok as their safe space, and that my presence, as well as my employer’s presence despite it being an elite, well-known university, was not welcome.

Are any grownups or brands doing TikTok “right?” Interestingly, several marketers have managed to get past this “eww, adults and brands” factor to effectively market to TikTok’s growing audience through clever advertising and engagement campaigns. Capitalizing on the popularity of hashtag challenges on TikTok, Universal Pictures turned to TikTok as a way to promote their 2018 film, The House with a Clock in Its Walls, through a #FindYourMagic campaign which prompted users to film themselves doing their own magic tricks. Leveraging the power of influence, Universal got a group of popular TikTok influencers to post their own DIY magic videos, which naturally prompted others to do the same. As a result of the campaign, Universal received 1.3 million likes on the influencer videos, generated 19,000 pieces of user-generated content, and gained 11,000 new followers (Brucker, 2020). Whether it prompted people to actually go see the film, I’m not really sure.

(Source: TikTok for Business) In my work as a higher education social media manager, I often came across other universities (typically, with bigger teams and even bigger budgets) doing great work on TikTok. From a marketing perspective, it makes sense why a university would want to invest in building an exceptional presence on TikTok. Each year, so much of your energy and efforts are dedicated to marketing to prospective students and their families, convincing them that your school is the school to attend. Based on user demographics alone, TikTok offers a captive audience for the exact age range higher ed marketers are working so hard to reach. I’m proud to say that my undergraduate alma mater, the University of Florida, was one of the first to leverage TikTok and is considered one of the best in the game. With nearly 97,000 followers and more than 1 million likes, it’s clear they’ve figured out what resonates with their audience. Most of their TikTok videos feature the beloved school colors (anyone who went to UF will tell you we bleed orange and blue), Al the Alligator (we obviously weren’t terribly creative on the mascot name), fave spots on campus and the like. 

(Source: University of Florida on YouTube)

Other major schools like Brigham Young University and Florida International University capitalize on TikTok’s penchant for dance trends and employ their mascots, Cosmo the Cougar and Roary the Panther respectively, to jump in on these trends.

...this same video on BYU’s Cosmo the Cougar TikTok has a staggering 28 million plays, 4.8 million likes, and more than 24,000 comments.

Is TikTok here to stay?

As a perpetual student of digital and social media, I see TikTok as the wave of the future for digital and social communications and marketing. The question for me, however, is whether or not I’m going to ride that wave as a communications professional. While digital marketing is still somewhat new on TikTok, my constant fear is that the moment brands step in and try to inject themselves onto a platform, mimicking and profiting off of the way it is organically used, its core users become disinterested, abandon the platform, and look for the next big thing they can call their own. If I’m lucky, perhaps I’ll get the next big idea and launch that platform myself.

Funny but true story. As I was putting the finishing touches on this blog post, my 12-year-old daughter came up behind me chanting the following.

Her: Racism? Stop it. Bullying? Stop it. Homophobia? Stop it.

Me: Is that from a TikTok?

Her: Yeah.

Me: Figures.

SOURCES:

Brucker, N. (2020, January 6) Who is on TikTok and how can brands reach them? Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2020/01/06/who-is-on-tiktok-and-how-can-brands-reach-them/#1a2fe28343be. 

Herrman, J. (2019, March 10) How TikTok is rewriting the world. New York Times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/style/what-is-tik-tok.html.

Perez, S. (2020, June 4) Kids now spend nearly as much time watching TikTok as YouTube in the US, UK and Spain. Tech Crunch. Retrieved from https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/04/kids-now-spend-nearly-as-much-time-watching-tiktok-as-youtube-in-u-s-u-k-and-spain/.

Yeh, O. (2019, February 26). TikTok surpasses one billion installs on the App Store and Google Play. Sensor Tower. Retrieved from https://sensortower.com/blog/tiktok-downloads-one-billion.  

[secondhandnewsradio]

SHN INTERVIEW: Mia Giovina

by Claire Silverman

Originally from New Jersey, 20-year-old singer-songwriter Mia Giovina is taking the internet by storm! Using her platform to share her message and incredible vocals, Mia is dedicated to having her music create a safe space for listeners everywhere. In March, Mia released her debut single "Sirens" and recently released her second single "Time Machine,” both of which have been featured in SHN playlists and on the air.

CS: Hi Mia! I just wanted to start off by saying I think you're really killing it, and I've been loving the music you've been putting out.

MG: Thank you.

CS: So how did you get started in music? How did you know that this was the direction you wanted to go?

MG: As cheesy as it sounds, music has always been something that I love, and I knew I wanted to do it as a career. My freshman year of high school was really when I started to take it seriously. I started performing at coffee shops and writing my own music, and I taught myself piano and guitar. After high school, I decided to do music full time instead of going into college. I'm very lucky that I get to do music full time now and I wouldn't have it any other way.

CS: I think it's amazing that you're going down a different path than the people around you at school. I always love hearing about people who are pursuing their art and are thriving. I'm happy for you that it’s working out. Earlier in the year, you released your first single “Sirens” and went from posting covers on Instagram to having original music out for everyone to listen to. What was your process like for writing that song and choosing it to be your first release?

MG: When I first connected with my manager, Tori, in the summer of last year, one of the first conversations we had was “when is original music going to come out?” I didn't have anything I wanted to put out yet. I didn't want to write or create or put out a song just to do it because I had this platform now. When I wrote “Sirens,” and I posted it on TikTok, so many people seemed to resonate with it and love it. It all felt like it happened at the perfect time. Something I've learned so far through my career is to trust your intuition and instincts, which was definitely the situation with “Sirens.” I faced a lot of bumps in the road during the production of this song, which looking back makes more sense because this was my first song ever. Everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong, but eventually, we finished the song and it turned out to be everything I could have dreamed up and more.

photo: Tori Sokalski

CS: Well, it’s a great song and I’m glad you got there in the end. Your other song that you have out now is “Time Machine,” which I absolutely love. It's stuck in my head all the time. Was the writing and production experience a bit different than your first song? 

MG: Yeah, definitely. I think in comparison to the release of “Sirens,” “Time Machine” was just a piece of cake. I got to work with this band called Sleeping Lion with Nate and Noah. They reached out to me and originally we were actually working on a different song. Basically right after I wrote “Time Machine,” I sent them the voice memo. It was very different, getting to work with producers that are super collaborative and reliable. It took a little bit of pressure off my shoulders. I think with “Time Machine”  in general, from the writing of the song to the production to the cover art and release, everything kind of fell into place, which was a super refreshing feeling after “Sirens.”

CS: I love the cover art for “Time Machine.” Who made it? What was the artistic connection to the song?

MG: I reached out to one of my good friends, Missy Pavorsky. I had this idea that I wanted the cover art to be me looking into a mirror and have the reflection be a picture of my younger self. I took some self-timer pictures to try to get an idea of what I wanted it to look like. Missy is a photographer and she came over, and we tried a couple different ways of taking the photo. It was a really collaborative process, and like I said before, even with the cover art, everything just fell into place, which was really cool.

CS: You said earlier that you've kind of been doing music your whole life. Who are your musical influences? Do you have a singer or band that you think has influenced you the most?

MG: Yeah, I think that Taylor Swift has always been my biggest influence. Lyrically and sonically she's so smart. She's definitely been my biggest influence since I was about six years old. I also started listening to Phoebe Bridgers and Lizzie McAlpine probably a little over a year ago and I think that they really changed the game for me, songwriting-wise. I also love Harry Styles, I think he kind of changed the way I look at and create music, because he is somebody who doesn't necessarily keep himself in a box, in terms of genre. I think that that's what I try to do now, even if it's just like posting something on TikTok. I try to share music with the world because I'm passionate about it, and I'm proud of it, not because I think it'll get a lot of streams or a lot of views.

CS: Nice. Some of my absolute favorites as well. You’ve mentioned TikTok a bit, and I know that’s been a pretty big resource for you and your career. What do you think about TikTok? And what has TikTok done for you in terms of your music career?

MG: I talk about this with other musicians and my manager all the time. I think TikTok completely runs the music industry right now. If a song is going viral on TikTok, it's most likely going to be climbing the charts, which is so crazy. So it's definitely like a machine. I have to give TikTok a lot of the credit for where I am today. I probably wouldn't be sitting here doing this interview if it weren't for TikTok. The platform has opened so many doors for me and connected me with so many amazing musicians and connected me with my manager, Tori, and has given me such a great platform and amazing supporters. Sometimes I have to step away from the app, though. I think that because the app is so powerful, sometimes you can get really caught up in the super unhealthy cycle of chasing views or a viral video. That is a really dangerous thing to do to yourself mentally, especially for a musician. I think it's really important that you share music for yourself first, and for the viewer second. I think that once I start chasing views and followers, it doesn't feel as fulfilling for me. So yeah, there's definitely a love/hate relationship with TikTok. It's amazing and powerful, but it's definitely a little bit dangerous.

photo: Tori Sokalski

CS: I totally agree with everything you just said. I’m curious, what music have you been listening to recently?

MG: I just recently made a new playlist with the songs that I'm going to be listening to for the next few months. Right now I'm really loving Catie Turner's EP Heartbroken and Milking It, it's so good. Every single song on the EP is incredible.

CS: Now one last question, do you have any news you can share of any exciting things coming up in the near future?

MG: I'm gonna be starting work on my third single very soon. I have no idea when it will be released. But I am going to start working on it soon. So I'm very excited for that.

CS: I'm excited to hear it when it comes out! Thank you so much for sitting down with me today to chat about your music. I'm really excited to see what you do next in the industry.

MG: Thank you so much!

Listen to Time Machine here 

Follow Mia Giovina on Instagram Twitter Spotify TikTok

[spotifypremiumapks]

Who is Abigail Elphick? Wiki, Biography, Age, Family, Video, Instagram

Abigail Elphick Wiki - Abigail Elphick Biography

Abigail Elphick is the New Jersey woman nicknamed "Victoria's Secret Karen." Video of an incident involving her at the Short Hills Mall has gone viral. The 25-year-old woman was seen in a video charging a black woman, Ijeoma Ukenta, and later claiming to be the victim. Ukenta posted videos of the incident on TikTok and YouTube. On Twitter, some people criticized the Millburn Police Department and mall security for not doing more to protect Ukenta. “There were many egregious violations of her rights and general welfare by both the Millburn Police Department and Short Hills Mall security. Abigail Elphick should have been arrested {and still needs to be arrested} and at least charged with assault and intent. of theft, ”wrote one Twitter user. NJ.com reported that the incident began when Ukenta, 38, of Newark asked Elphick to move six feet away from her. At one point, Elphick appears to raise his hand towards Ukenta in the video. The police report says this caused Elphick "to have a panic attack, at which point she followed her to stop recording her," according to the news site. The police did not make any arrests. "Pending further review, the Millburn Police Department believes that our officers acted in a professional and competent manner to defuse the situation and restore calm and order," the police statement reads to NJ.com. “I was banned from Tik Tok, yet everyone else was able to tell my story. I'm traumatized, ”Ukenta wrote on Twitter. Victoria's Secret issued a statement saying that “the safety of associates and customers is our top priority and we are committed to creating a safe and welcoming environment for all. The video taken at our store is disturbing and we have launched a full investigation. Our associate followed our protocols and immediately called our Emergency Operations Center, as well as mall security, to provide support during the altercation between our clients. We are dedicated to continuing this critical conversation and demonstrating our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion through our actions and our words. "

Abigail Elphick Age

Abigail Elphick is 25 years old.

Elphick can be seen in uploading videos

The video series begins with Elpnick charging at Ukenta and trying to hit her and the camera. She backs off when Ukenta says, “My God. Oh, Lord. See this? Oh, Lord. I never thought anything like this would happen to me. She tried to run and hit. "Elphick then crouches down, holding her head in her crying hands, and says," No, I didn't. "She says," I don't want to be recorded. " Ukenta tells other customers and workers: “Did you see that? … Karen had a nervous breakdown. She tried to hit me. "Elphick again states that she did not try to hit Ukenta and says," I don't want to be recorded, "while crying. While Elphick continues to cry, Ukenta, holding a coupon in front of the camera, says:" I tried to come to get my free panties. "Elphick then yells," Why aren't you defending me? I just don't want to be recorded. " Elphick then yells and yells, "Don't record my mental breakdown, please. Please please please." The second video begins with Elphick lying on the ground, screaming and kicking. "She's recording me. Tell her to stop," she squeals. "You keep lying saying I'm threatening you, so I'm filming to protect myself," Ukenta replies. She doesn't seem to be very close to Elphick. The video shows Elphick yelling and running towards Ukenta, who was filming the scene. Ukenta kept repeating that she was concerned that the police would believe Elphick if she claimed that Ukenta attacked her when the video shows Elphick charging at Ukenta and Ukenta doing nothing more than recording the scene. "She's trying to attack me, no, no, no," Ukenta says at one point. "Once the law comes, who are they going to believe?" She says that she is concerned that the police will believe Elphick about Ukenta because Elphick is white and Ukenta is black. Elphick, who makes a phone call at one point, yells, “Stop her so she doesn't record. ... She is recording my mental breakdown. ... My heart races ". Ukenta narrates: "She's lying on the phone. I don't give a damn if she's sick. I'm worried about myself. This is real. This is really happening to me. She's on the phone with the police for me and she was chasing me around the damn thing. store ". At another point, Ukenta says, "I just came to get a free panty, that's all.… This lady chasing me. Now she's calling the police. I can't believe security isn't here. This is how black people die. Do you see what these people do? They call the police and they call in a panic and tell the police that you are doing something to them when clearly she was chasing me around the store. " She also says, "I don't want to turn my back on this white lady, sorry. She's crazy. Did you see her trying to accuse me again? That's the third time." The video does not show Ukenta attacking or making any moves towards Elphick. Read Also: Who is Angela Alberts? Wiki, Biography, Age, Trev Alberts’s Wife, Children, Instagram

GoFundMe campaign

Ukenta created a GoFundMe page that had raised over $ 38,000 as of July 13, 2021, a day after it was created. "I am a black Muslim Nigerian AM and I was treated like it was 1920 in Short Hills Mall. I was assaulted and harassed by a white woman and neither security nor police did anything," she wrote on the page. “I am looking to hire an excellent lawyer who can help me clear up this problem. All videos and updates on the situation are on my YouTube channel: Mama Africa Muslimah. They threw me a TikTok for posting what happened to me and they let someone else post and get millions and millions of views, however, they deleted 2 of my accounts. … One that I have for my garden that was my original account and another 1 that I created after my main account was deleted. I have been harmed by Abigail Elphick (Karen in my videos), Short Hills Mall security, the Millburn Police Department, and most of all, humanity. Please help!"

Elphick told officers that he wanted the video to be recorded

In a video, Ukenta read what he said was a police report: I spoke to the "crazy lady" and told her that she had spoken with the store clerk and that they replied that what Miss Ukenta had said had happened. Miss Elphick seemed to admit that she was wrong and she said she was worried about losing her job and her apartment if the video was posted online. She was having a panic attack from the video recording. I told you that Miss Ukenta has the right to videotape. I asked her several times if she was okay and if she needed an ambulance. And she repeatedly refused. She kept expressing her concern for her job and her apartment. She finally said that she was going home, I asked her if she could drive and she answered yes. At this time, Ms. Elphick voluntarily left the mall with mall security. Ukenta says in a video update: “I see everyone asking me for an update. I'm at the police station. I have the police report, which is somewhat true, but very, very long. I'm happy I recorded because even the officers said that I only showed him the video of her lying on the floor when I showed it to him. Of course, first, they took a statement because she, of course, she called the police. And she completely lied. She is trying to say that I started recording her, which triggered a panic attack, at which point she followed me to try to get me to stop recording. " She adds: So, I am filing a complaint against the two officers who responded. I did not feel protected. I am also filing a complaint against the mall security. Victoria's Secret, in my opinion ... what can we expect? Grab this woman? The manager even sent someone to walk to get security because they were taking too long. So, I really don't have a problem with them ... not at the moment. Now if they give us trouble getting the video, we'll talk about that. That will be another story. "The Internal Affairs Division is now investigating the matter to assess how the officers behaved," the police department said in a statement to NJ.com. "The second woman who was filming much of the incident asked officers to remove the first woman from the mall because she felt threatened," NJ.com said, as described in the police report. "The officers explained that they did not have the authority to do that because they had no indication that a crime had been committed or a crime that could be arrested." Heavy has contacted the Millburn police to get her response as well as police reports, both of which will be added to this story if received.

Elphick says she has worked as a teacher's aide

Elphick posted a short biography on a site that lists people who have a colostomy. In it, she said that she is a teacher's aide. "My name is Abby Elphick," she wrote. “I was diagnosed with chronic constipation and pelvic floor dysfunction. I am a 24-year-old woman who has a colostomy. I am a paraprofessional assistant/teacher who works with children. I love walking outside, shopping, eating out at restaurants! I want to feel comfortable with people who have an ostomy like me to know that I am not alone! " Online records show that she has ties to Cedar Grove and Newark, NJ. The Cedar Grove School District has denied that she is an employee there, writing in a note at the top of its home page: “The person involved in the Mall at Short Hills that took place on July 11, 2021, is missing and she has never been employed by the Cedar Grove Board of Education. " Elphick wrote on a Classmates.com profile: “I am 24 years old and I am going to school to become a Child Development Associate in teaching preschool-age students. I graduated in June 2014 from Cedar Grove High School when I was 18. " She stated on the profile, "I got good grades" and "wrote a book." The Verona-Cedar Grove Times mentioned Elphick in a 2013 article about her brother with a developmental disability and indicated that she had a colostomy. Elphick appears in a photo with her brother and her parents, Kim and Andrew Elphick. There is no state professional license for Elphick listed in the New Jersey state database.

Elphick is not related to a Secaucus

A police lieutenant created a Twitter account just to counter what she wrote were false accusations that Elphick is related to her. "Wrong. This is me and I have no kids. I also have no idea who Abigail is," she wrote in response to one such statement on Twitter. Police Lt. Kim Elphick added: “Additionally, this incident occurred at the Short Hills Mall, which is covered by the Millburn Police Department. Secaucus has no relevance to this case at all, other than the last name. " She added: “Because I am the officer that everyone says is my daughter. I don't have children and I have no idea who Abigail is. Coincidentally, I have the same name. " She concluded: “I received personal messages about what was being published. I created this account to fix it. It spread too fast to get ahead of me and tackle it. Feel free to call the agency tomorrow and I'll be more than happy to verify my identity. " FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK Read the full article

[lunapaper]

The year was 2010. Emo was just starting to die out (long live the scene). I was studying to become a secondary school teacher, and Katy Perry was shooting whipped cream out of her boobs...

Second albums, more often than not, fail to live up to the hype. And yet, Teenage Dream has somehow endured.

While Perry’s 2008 debut, One of the Boys, launched her into the mainstream, it really hasn’t aged all that well. On tracks like ‘Self Inflicted’ and ‘Fingerprints,’ she tries way too hard to emulate Paramore’s bold pop punk. On others, she attempts to rebel against her gospel roots by turning the bawdiness up to 10.

It can also come off pretty juvenile at times. The singer was almost 25 when she sang on the title track: ‘So over the summer, something changed/I started reading Seventeen and shaving my legs/And I studied Lolita religiously/And I walked right in to school and caught you staring at me.’

But let’s be honest: Even though it’s been declared ~problematic~, you still jam out to ‘I Kissed A Girl’ when you hear it, don’t you? I hadn’t listened to ‘Ur So Gay’ before this, either, but its slinky, jazz-infused vibe absolutely slaps.

Like Teenage Dream is also a product of its time, presenting pop at its most sugary, hook-laden and bombastic. It managed to spawn 5 No.1 singles, the second album in history to do so after Michael Jackson’s Bad, as well as a documentary, Part of Me. There’s even a deluxe edition, cleverly titled The Complete Confection. It was Perry at her peak.

You know the title track, of course. Evoking images of cherry red lipstick, tight denim and driving down an empty highway in summer, Perry desperately clings to the memory of young love, breathlessly pleading ‘don’t ever look back, don’t ever look back.’

‘The One That Got Away,’ meanwhile, is its bittersweet sequel, Perry's lovesick nostalgia now tinged with regret. Yet, the only thing I really remember about the song is the video starring Cassian Andor himself, Diego Luna, as Perry’s past love, the beautifully dishevelled and tortured artist of my dreams (Dear God, that penetrating stare...) He’s also the only reason why anyone bothered to watch Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights, if it wasn’t already obvious.

First single ‘California Gurls,’ on the other hand, is pure pop exuberance at its most campy and carefree, indicative of a more innocent time when it wasn’t driven by algorithms or social media. ‘Firework’ is still a go-to empowerment anthem for just about every kind of montage imaginable. ‘ET’ (featuring a pre-’presidential’ Kanye) is heavily-synthesised cyber pop that doesn’t get nearly enough love.

But Teenage Dream, in retrospect, has quite a few misses. ‘Peacock’ is just one big, long, glitchy dick joke. ‘Not Like The Movies’ is big ballad schmaltz. The brassy soft rock of ‘Hummingbird Heartbeat,’ meanwhile, opens with a hell of a line: ‘You make me feel like I'm losing my virginity/The first time, every time when you're touching me.’ And I’m pretty sure ‘What Am I Living For?’ is partly plagiarised from Justin Timberlake’s ‘My Love.’ Even Pitchfork awarded Teenage Dream a rather tame 6.8 in their recent retrospective review.

By the time Perry released Prism in 2013 – her ‘darker, moodier’ record - she had shifted further into ‘inspirational anthems.’ There was the inescapable mega-hit ‘Roar,’ the saccharine power ballad ‘Unconditionally’ and the Eastern-tinged ‘Legendary Lovers,’ complete with wellness and spiritual motifs.

But it wasn’t without its bangers: ‘Dark Horse’ (featuring Juicy J) jumped onto the trap pop bandwagon just in time with its subterranean bass and eerie, otherworldly synths. Even the slick, 90s-indebted ‘This Is How We Do’ has a certain charm.

Prism also marked the point where Perry’s invincibility began to wear off. Where the masses once lapped up her candy-coated antics, they were now calling her out for wearing braids in the video for ‘This Is How We Do’ and dressing up as a geisha during a performance at the American Music Awards.

And they would only get louder during her era of ‘purposeful pop.’ Released in the aftermath of the 2016 US election, Witness was meant to cement Perry as ‘Artist. Activist. Conscious’ - as her Twitter bio read at the time. She had joined Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail. On Instagram, she was quoting the likes of Socrates and Plato. She was Woke now, and she was telling anyone who’d listen.

Yet you’d be hard pressed to find much trace of this ‘purposeful pop’ on Witness, bar the first single, ‘Chained to the Rhythm.’ Written with Sia and Max Martin, the singer implores listeners to ‘put your rose-coloured glasses on and party on’ amid whirling, colourful synths.

The rest of the record, however, is made up of either soppy, overly sentimental ballads (‘Save As Draft,’ ‘Pendulum,’ ‘Into Me You See’), awkward lyrical turns and CHVRCHES/Purity Ring knock-offs (‘Hey Hey Hey,’ ‘Roulette,’ ‘Deja Vu’).

Funnily enough, Purity Ring’s Corin Roddick produced some of Witness’ better tracks: ‘Mind Maze’ and the soaring ballad ‘Miss You More, along with ‘Bigger Than Me.’

Final track ‘Act My Age,’ meanwhile, feels like a pre-emptive strike against the criticism Witness would inevitably receive (‘They say that I might lose my Midas touch/They also say I may become irrelevant/But who the fuck are they anyway?’).

Then there’s the godawful ‘Bon Appetit’ (featuring Migos) with its food-related double entendres. It was ‘Yummy’ before ‘Yummy’ existed. Seriously, I just wanna see Orlando Bloom say he likes this song with a straight face...

But I will still defend ‘Swish Swish’ to the death. Do the lyrics suck? Yeah, but Perry’s never been the strongest lyricist. But its pulsing 90s house beat does a lot of the heavy lifting, along with Nicki Minaj’s spitfire verse.

The promotional rollout for Witness, meanwhile, proved just as messy. Among the most infamous was a 72-hour livestream, where voyeurs got to witness Perry sleep, meditate, do yoga and welcome a random assortment of guests, including Gordon Ramsey and activist DeRay McKesson. Then there was the meme-laden video for ‘Swish Swish. She literally served herself up on a platter in the clip for ‘Bon Appetit.’ She tried reigniting her feud with Taylor Swift on James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke. Needless to say, it reeked of desperation.

Looking back, though, you can’t help but feel a little bad for Perry, trying so hard to please only for it to blow up spectacularly in her face. So devastated, it sent her to the Hoffman Institute, which offers an abridged version of therapy. As she later told the Guardian:

‘I think the universe was like, ‘OK, all right, let’s have some humble pie here […] My negative thoughts were not great. They didn’t want to plan for a future. I also felt like I could control it by saying, ‘I’ll have the last word if I hurt myself or do something stupid and I’ll show you’ — but really, who was I showing?’

But although Witness lacked the perkiness of Teenage Dream or the cartoonish charm of One of the Boys, it shines best on its darker moments.

‘Dance With The Devil’ has the kind of smoky allure that wouldn’t look too out of place on a BANKS album, while ‘Power’ is a revelation. Produced by Jack Garrett, what could’ve been yet another dull empowerment ballad is turned into a gritty, groaning slab of vaporwave pop, with sultry sax riffs that sample, of all things, Smokey Robinson’s ‘Being With You.’ It’s electric as fuck. You believe it when Perry sings: ‘’Cause I'm a goddess and you know it/Some respect, you better show it/I'm done with you siphoning my power.’

If the singer had just done away with the whole ‘purposeful pop’ concept and stuck with Garrett, Roddick and Terror Jr’s Felix Snow as her core producing group, Witness probably wouldn’t have been half the failure it was. It could’ve had a chance to grow on people, the kind of slow burn Perry could’ve gotten away with at this point in her career. The cyberpop dystopian feel also could’ve gone hand in hand with her newfound wokeness, echoing people’s fear and anger in the aftermath of Trump’s win. But alas, we’ll never know...

While the rollout for Witness over the top, Smile’s was lacklustre and wildly inconsistent.

First single ‘Never Really Over’ came out a whole 15 months before the release of Smile to little fanfare, along with a hippie-inspired video to match. ‘Harleys in Hawaii’ later followed, which also stuck with the flower power aesthetic. Other singles - ‘Daisies’ and the title track – seemingly came and went without a trace.

So how did Katy Perry get to this point? And is there any chance of coming back?

It’s hard to say. A lot of artists go through a rough patch or two:   Miley's twerking antics divided audiences when she released 2013’s Bangerz. Taylor Swift’s reputation divided audiences. Only in recent years has Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP been vindicated. Such is the nature of music and pop culture in general. It’s fickle, just one vicious cycle after another; an endless quest for trend-bait that'll never end.

Right now, disco pop is going through a renaissance, while hyperpop reigns supreme. Dua Lip and Charli XCX are basically untouchable at the moment. TikTok has taken over from Top 40 radio when it comes to breaking hits, while the gap between album releases has also grown shorter and shorter. Even the nature of fandom has changed, shifting from old-school elitism to the bloodsport that is ‘stanning,’ along with an unhealthy amount of ‘endless simping’ (to quote a close friend of mine).

Perry, meanwhile, has failed to keep up, choosing to play it safe in order to avoid further scrutiny. But in doing so, she strips away the humour, the mischief and other idiosyncrasies that fans fell in love with in the first place.

But what choice did she have? As Junkee’s Sam Murphy notes in his own piece about Perry’s rise and fall:

‘At that point, you have two choices as a popstar — hunt for relevancy or make what comes naturally to you. Perry chose the former and came unstuck. She inserted vague wokeness into her songs as cancel culture infiltrated pop, tacked on rap features as hip-hop became the dominant commercial genre, and worked with producers who may have been able to find her credibility.’

(Full disclosure: I started writing my piece on Perry back in December 2020, so the timing of Murphy’s piece and mine is purely coincidental).

Even if you don’t believe in cancel culture, no one actually wants to be cancelled. It’s just not good for PR, especially for someone with an image as glossy and as carefully put-together as Perry’s. Even now, she continues to atone for Witness, telling the LA Times: ‘Having more awareness and consciousness, I no longer can just be a blissful, ignorant idealist who sings about love and relationships […] Even my travels have afforded me a new perspective on cultures, class systems and the inequality around the world, not just in the United States,’ though she carefully avoids the subject of politics on Smile.

But redemption is possible. Swift – Perry's one-time nemesis - was a total pariah back in 2016, mocked for her Girl Squad, for diddling the Hiddles while on the rebound from Calvin Harris and criticised for remaining coy on her political leanings. Now she’s earning indie cred with two of 2020’s biggest albums, folklore and evermore, and has thrown her support behind a number of social causes.

The devil works hard, but Swift’s PR team work harder. I might not be her biggest fan, but Taylor works Kris Jenner levels of mastery when it comes to rebuilding public sentiment. Thanks to her newfound indie cred, you’ve almost forgotten about the pastel atrocity ‘Me!,’ her 2019 duet with that insufferable drama kid cliché, Brendon Urie. Shifting her songs away from petty grievances to more original storytelling was also a smart move.

But while Swift has managed to move on, Perry seems to have fallen into the same adult contemporary trap as Gwen Stefani, Kelly Clarkson, Christina Aguilera and Pink, one that ensnares many female artists over 30 (Though many have also managed to escape – Gaga, Taylor, Beyonce, Rihanna, Kesha, Robyn...)

As ‘woke’ as the industry and fans at large might think themselves to be, they’re still pretty ageist. There's still an expectation to ‘mature’ your sound as you age, to become more ‘serious.’ No more fun, no more experimenting, boomer. But when you do end up filing away the edges, you’re called dull, generic and past your prime. Perry said as much on the aforementioned ‘Act My Age. You just. can't. win.

And yet, many female artists over 30 have created some of their best work yet in just the past year or so: Hayley Williams made the dramatic shift from pop rock to low-key, Radiohead-inspired tunes on her solo debut, Petals For Armor. Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters was hailed by critics as her most bold, urgent and visceral. Jessie Ware’s What’s Your Pleasure? was a cut of understated disco pop elegance. Carly Rae Jepsen, meanwhile, released an equally stellar companion to 2019’s Dedicated.

At this point in her career, Perry could afford to follow a similar path to that of the Canadian singer. Once the meme value of ‘Call Me Maybe’ wore off, along with her mainstream appeal, Jepsen finally had a chance to discover real creative freedom, pushing her sound to greater heights and earning critical acclaim, all without having to compromise her love for catchy hooks and bold synth pop arrangements.

A couple of years ago, a Reddit user made a post about participating in a focus group held by Perry’s label to discuss why she’s ‘no longer one of the[ir] most notable female pop artists,’ and ‘what can [they] do with her image or marketing to make you care about her again?’

It’s depressing to think that an artist as accomplished as her needs a focus group to help solve her identity crisis. There really is no easy answer. Hopefully, Perry will be able to return more vibrant and assured than ever, on her own terms...

-Bianca B.

[womenofcolor15]

Netflix, Hulu & More Support #BlackLivesMatter Amid George Floyd Protests + NFL Interestingly Speaks Out + Joe Biden Calls For Peace

Several big brands are speaking out in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement as protests for George Floyd continue to sweep the nation. Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video and several other brands are showing support. More inside…

Tons of big brands are speaking out in solidarity with the #BlackLivesMatter movement amid tense protests that are demanding justice for the killing of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer.  It's interesting, as just a few years ago most brands and most of America wanted nothing to do with any #BlackLivesMatter affiliations.  Things have changed, likely due to incessant protests, pressure on companies who take black dollars and use black talent to sell their products, and more evidence of injustice that anyone with sense can't ignore.

Netflix, STARZ, Hulu, and Amazon Prime Video posted messages on their social media accounts in support of the black community:

To be silent is to be complicit," Netflix tweeted. "Black lives matter. We have a platform, and we have a duty to our Black members, employees, creators and talent to speak up."

"Together we stand with the black community - colleagues, artists, writers, storytellers, producers, our viewers - and all allies in the fight against racism and injustice. #BLACKLIVESMATTER," Amazon Prime Video wrote on Instagram.

  HBO and HBO Max changed their Twitter handles to #BlackLivesMatter along with posting messages of solidarity:

TBS and TNT changed their Twitter handles also with the same message.

YouTube has pledged $1 million to support social injustice efforts:

TikTok issued the following statement:

  pic.twitter.com/14AeOCP5va

— TikTok (@tiktok_us) May 30, 2020

  “At TikTok we deeply value the diverse voices among our users, creators, artists, partners, and employees. We stand with the Black community and are proud to provide a platform where #blacklivesmatter and #georgefloyd generate powerful and important views with over 1 billion views. We are committed to fostering a space where everyone is seen and heard.”

Of all companies to speak out during this time, the NFL had the nerve to address George Floyd's killing - the reason Colin Kaepernick initially took a knee. 

Sports analyst Jemele Hill perfectly sums up our thoughts about the NFL addressing George Floyd's killing:

  You gotta be fucking kidding me https://t.co/K8vST8IaCo

— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) May 30, 2020

  The NFL tweeting about what happened with George Floyd is the equivalent of when the CIA recognizes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday. Loved him so much y’all helped to kill him. Get outta here with the bullshit.

— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) May 30, 2020

  "The NFL tweeting about what happened with George Floyd is the equivalent of when the CIA recognizes Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday," she tweeted. "Loved him so much y’all helped to kill him. Get outta here with the bullsh*t."

  If we are complacent, if we are silent, we are complicit in perpetuating these cycles of violence.

None of us can turn away. We all have an obligation to speak out.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 30, 2020

  Skincare company OLEHENRIKSEN released a statement:

          View this post on Instagram

                  A message from our founder: We all deserve love, respect and safety—no matter our race, gender, sexual orientation or religion. We are donating to the Black Lives Matter movement. Link in bio for ways to show support, including how to spread the word or places to donate if you can. #blacklivesmatter

A post shared by OLEHENRIKSEN (@olehenriksen) on May 30, 2020 at 2:07pm PDT

  Former Vice President and presidential hopeful Joe Biden is calling for peace amid the raging protests.

We are a nation in pain, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us. We are a nation enraged, but we cannot allow our rage to consume us. Please stay safe. Please take care of each other. https://t.co/Y224rANwUF

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 31, 2020

"These last few days have laid bare that we are a nation furious at injustice. Every person of conscience can understand the rawness of the trauma people of color experience in this country, from the daily indignities to the extreme violence, like the horrific killing of George Floyd," he said addressing the protests that have swept the nation.

"Protesting such brutality is right and necessary. It’s an utterly American response. But burning down communities and needless destruction is not. Violence that endangers lives is not. Violence that guts and shutters businesses that serve the community is not."

"And I also know that the only way to bear it is to turn all that anguish to purpose. So tonight, I ask all of America to join me — not in denying our pain or covering it over — but using it to compel our nation across this turbulent threshold into the next phase of progress, inclusion, and opportunity for our great democracy."

"We are a nation in pain, but we must not allow this pain to destroy us. We are a nation enraged, but we cannot allow our rage to consume us. We are a nation exhausted, but we will not allow our exhaustion to defeat us," he continued.

You can read his full statement here.

Biden also spoke with CNN's Don Lemon about the protests:

  You can't defeat bigotry; it only hides. And when leaders give it oxygen — as Donald Trump has done — it comes roaring back.

We all have a moral obligation to stand up, speak out, and hold people accountable. pic.twitter.com/vES2aIXVGl

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 30, 2020

  Forever President Barack Obama and forever First Lady Michelle Obama both released statements on George Floyd's killing:

  My statement on the death of George Floyd: pic.twitter.com/Hg1k9JHT6R

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) May 29, 2020

  Like so many of you, I’m pained by these recent tragedies. And I’m exhausted by a heartbreak that never seems to stop. Right now it’s George, Breonna, and Ahmaud. Before that it was Eric, Sandra, and Michael. It just goes on, and on, and on. pic.twitter.com/lFWEtTzVT8

— Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) May 29, 2020

  And more celebs - Jill Scott, Waka Flocka, Fabolous, Ice-T & Jimmy Kimmel - are speaking out about the protests: 

        View this post on Instagram

                  These bitches are egging on destruction, causing destruction and breaking things disguised as protesters!!!!!! How COINTELPRO of them. Do you see?

A post shared by Jill Scott (@missjillscott) on May 30, 2020 at 9:06pm PDT

            View this post on Instagram

                  This Atlanta!!!! That Brown & Black Pride hit different!!

A post shared by WAKA FLOCKA (@wakaflocka) on May 29, 2020 at 6:47pm PDT

            View this post on Instagram

                  Racism is everyone’s enemy!! Racists are the real Opps!!

A post shared by Fabolous (@myfabolouslife) on May 30, 2020 at 9:18pm PDT

    If YOU don’t understand why ALL these people are Revolting. You’re possibly part of the problem..

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) May 30, 2020

    Now they wanna take a knee.... I’m done. pic.twitter.com/cSRwK6kfWR

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) May 31, 2020

    Alotta your so called favorite celebrities wont say a Fn word right now... They never have.. And they never will.. Pay Attention.

— ICE T (@FINALLEVEL) May 31, 2020

    Facts.

  My thoughts on George Floyd, the riots in Minneapolis and @RealDonaldTrump's violent stupidity... #JusticeForGeorgeFloyd #ICantBreathe pic.twitter.com/kgFTaMxWoz

— Jimmy Kimmel (@jimmykimmel) May 30, 2020

    Photo: Facebook

[Read More ...] source http://theybf.com/2020/05/31/netflix-hulu-more-support-black-lives-after-george-floyd%E2%80%99s-death-nfl-has-the-nerve-to-spe