#and this hotel i guess had some programming or like. a youtube channel because they were filming shit

[chipadip]

last night, glenn haunted my sleep invading my dreams

i awoke. and there he was front and center on my dashboard

i stand in line nervous, and tug on my ear, like he is prone to do

i am afraid i've let some insidious evil in my heart and all i can do is grin in glee

[thepriceofbeingaroseisloneliness]

Kaoru (DIR EN GREY) & Hazuki SPECIAL INTERVIEW 1/2 Translation

Notes before reading: This is the first part of the special interview broadcasted on Hazuki’s Youtube channel, you can still watch it there. The special interview is 45 min long, this part covers until minute 24. I will upload the second part in a day or two.

You can watch the interview here  Please watch and support Hazuki’s channel!

Feel free to correct me if you spot any mistakes or any confusing parts. Links or credits to this post when the content is reposted or captured in other SNS is appreciated :) ----- Hazuki: Today’s guest is already here! Kaoru from Dir en grey! Kaoru: Thank you (laughs) Hazuki: Thank you for being here! (laughs) Kaoru: Well, somehow as the tension is different than usual, I got a bit surprised…(laughs)  *he means the program started suddenly* Hazuki: (The program started) In a single blow…I cut in with a single blow…. I’m sorry… Well, I’ve been on Youtube since last year….I already had Ryuichi Kawamura (Luna Sea’s vocalist) and an acquaintance who is a death metal/death growls instructor….being able to do talks like this it’s a bit special so I want to do more and more….like for example, telling everyone stories about Kaoru they’ve never heard before….I would like to see that more and more….I asked you (to come here) and you agreed immediately so thank you so much… Kaoru: No,no…you don’t need to (thank me)…. Hazuki: I’m really thankful…. Kaoru: But, the first time we talked about this was last year…. Hazuki: It was actually a while ago, that’s true… Kaoru: But somehow, I wondered if there was something good we could talk about here…. Hazuki: This time, “Oboro” will be released on 28th April….so I’d like to talk about that as well…there are also a few things here *pointing at the table* so it’s not just that…. I often met Kaoru but there are times we meet from the beginning but sometimes we meet in a second or third different stages…. Kaoru: After eating… Hazuki: There are some patterns about coming together, like sometimes it’s the two of us at the beginning…. Kaoru: Yes Hazuki: Or both of us staying until the end…..to this day, I haven’t get used to that situation at all….*laughs* Kaoru: At those times, you are a bit…..like this…..*starts imitating Hazuki, making awkward movements* Like this…..*Hazuki laughs, Kaoru too* At that moment I feel like  “ohh” *ego boost gesture lol* Hazuki: No,no…. (laughs) It feels exactly like that to me…..yes….I feel it…. So, before these talks, I get a drink for the guest that is here. I brought a lot of things but for the time being, let’s open a beer and after getting some alcohol in our bodies… Kaoru: That’s right… let’s start with this, right?.... because if you don’t drink, you won’t say anything…. Hazuki: I’m sorry….as there is a little distance between us…. I’m nervous so I need to drink alcohol…because you are a big senpai for me….cheers! Kaoru: Cheers! They both toast with their beer cans. Hazuki: It’s good…everyone is curious about one thing…. It’s really in the way….*Hazuki puts his hand on a bottle that it’s on the centre of the table, covered by a cloth* It’s really an object that stands out but,  the drink that I want to serve for Kaoru today is….well, for me this…..how long has it been?  I think 15-16 years… but in this long time there is especially one drink that left an impression in me…. Kaoru: Is something we drank together? Hazuki: We did….I get to know this type of alcohol/sake from Kaoru…. I couldn’t drink it at that time… Kaoru: I wonder what it is… Hazuki:I couldn’t drink it but as you were really into it and drank it….I was like….”I want to drink it with Kaoru”, so I tried  and it was delicious….so I was able to drink it that’s why today I brought it…do you know what is it?...*pointing at the cloth* Kaoru:*Laughs* I wonder… what can it be?.... Because of the size I would say it’s whisky… Hazuki: Ah yes the size…..but it’s not….it’s another thing…. Kaoru: Sweet potato shōchū? Hazuki: Ah, you are quite close….it’s a type of shōchū…. Kaoru: Eh? Hazuki: It’s not Sweet potato shōchū Kaoru: Is it Tantakatan? * Tantakatan is a shōchū made with perilla leaves. It is produced in Hokkaido, Japan. Hazuki: *screams* AH!...that’s it…..*Kaoru and Hazuki laugh* That’s amazing *Hazuki starts clapping* You knew it so well…*Hazuki takes off the cloth of the bottle* Kaoru: It’s been a long time! Hazuki: It’s Tantankatan…. Kaoru: This makes me feel really nostalgic…. Hazuki: How many years ago? Kaoru: A lot…. Hazuki: I think it was 23 years ago…. Kaoru: I used to drink this a lot…. Hazuki: Drinking this kind of alcohol on the rocks…. I was still young at that time, I’ve only drank beer, shōchū and highball shōchū. I thought “I should really try this”. When you asked me to join you, drinking this, I drank a lot and got really into it. After this, there was a boom in potato-fermented drinks *Kaoru laughs* But because you asked me to drink it together, I got to like it. *Kaoru laughs* *On the rocks” means serving an alcoholic beverage in a cocktail glass with ice. I think Hazuki means is “a fancy drink”. Kaoru: How nostalgic….I barely drink this anymore…. Hazuki: I drink it…. I thought “this is definitely the drink I want to share with him”…..after drinking this beer…. Kaoru: Let’s drink it….let’s finish the beers… Hazuki: You don’t need to hurry….we still have time…. Hazuki seems to be amazed by Kaoru’s reaction towards the Tantankatan. Kaoru: This makes me feel really nostalgic! Do they sell this at convenience stores? Hazuki: They do. Hazuki wants to know when Kaoru had the first chance to try Tantakatan. Kaoru: Maybe on tour… Hazuki: I see, because it was popular/a trend…to drink it with everyone… Kaoru:  Maybe the first time I drank it…. It was with Mr Ito, from the security company of X (X Japan)….that person’s face looked like a gorilla….*Hazuki laughs* when we started going on tour together, I started drinking it with him…. *Mr. Ito was popular for being in charge of the security of  X Japan and Luna Sea. He worked later with other bands like Dir en grey. He is said to be the saviour of many fans as he worked sometimes in the front lines. Hazuki: He gave it to you and you drank it together….I see…. Actually, it’s not the first time you appear in a program I’m doing…. Kaoru: You mean the radio one? Hazuki: Yes, the one called 「Weekly lynch」. When was it? 8 or 7 years ago. At that time, you were about to release “The Unraveling”. You were releasing “The Unraveling” so you came to the program. Since then, probably most of the people who are watching this haven’t heard that radio program, especially Lynch fans so, roughly I’d like to talk about how we ended up here….I would like to talk about this again…our first encounter….do you remember it? *Hazuki starts laughing softly but ends up laughing loudly when he sees Kaoru struggling to remember it* *Kaoru appeared as a guest in「Weekly lynch」in NACK5 FM on March 2013. Kaoru: It was because of Reo, right? Hazuki: That’s it, that’s it…. Kaoru: I remember it was Reo (Lynch’s guitarist)  who introduced you to me…. About where it was…..I think it was at some hotel lobby… Hazuki: That’s it, that’s it…at that time you were staying at a hotel in Nagoya…. Reo and I went to the lobby to meet you and we went to a shop…..I was really really nervous…I was thinking “finally I’m going to meet Dir en grey”,  as I knew the band since I was in high school…I was really nervous about meeting you for the first time but….at that hotel lobby there were many fans showing up as well…like waiting for the members….I was thinking “as expected from stars/famous people” when you were getting off quickly…*Hazuki laughs* Kaoru: I see….it was at a hotel…

Hazuki: That time we hardly talk…. Kaoru: That’s true….I talked to Reo mostly… Hazuki: But I was listening to you in the sideway….at that time I already liked to drink…. But Reo doesn’t drink right?...*Kaoru nods* I guess he can’t drink…. I don’t know though….but he didn’t drink…the next time you came to Nagoya, I find the courage to invite you, I was like “tonight I’m going to invite Kaoru!”, but at that time you have another plan with other person so you told me “I’m sorry”…so I went back home…. The next day, you contacted me by email to meet in the afternoon… Kaoru: Suddenly? Hazuki: Suddenly…I thought it was weird because it was your day off… I got super excited….and we went to “Mountain”… Kaoru: Aaaaaa Hazuki: (Mountain) in Nagoya….I want everyone to google it….it’s a pasta place among other things… Kaoru: I’m sure your fans know it well….I get to know this place from you…. Hazuki: Is that so?-….*laughs*.. I was the one who introduced this place to you… Kaoru: That’s it, that’s it…. Hazuki: Well….since that moment….. each time that Kaoru came to Nagoya with Dir en grey…we would usually drink together….it was almost like a perfect attendance award, right? Kaoru: Right…. Hazuki talks a little bit more about attending Dir’s live when they came to play at Zepp Nagoya even though he lived in a rural area. Hazuki: At that time, I lived at my parents house in a really rural area of Nagoya.  As going by train to Nagoya was hard, coming back was also hard, manga cafe… Kaoru: *cutting in* That’s it! They both starting laughing. Kaoru: I asked you if you were ok (staying there)…. Hazuki: The first  time after the live was over….at the first after party…..the other members were there….there were many people gathering there… every one was talking and I didn’t do much there… the second time you told me to wait for you….when we finished drinking it was past midnight….early in the morning…. There wasn’t a night bus and I didn’t have money to come back by taxi….so I came to the manga café, slept a bit and came back by train in the morning… Kaoru: That’s it…. Hazuki: For me, that you came to Nagoya and we could drink together….it was something really valuable for me….it makes me feel nostalgic….those days have kept going these 15-16 years….it might feel a bit like “why a vocalist and a guitarist *laughs* but you are really a big senpai that I respect…that’s right…this program….for this talk corner….nothing has been decided…*Kaoru nods* I really didn't decide anything….what could be the first topic?....mmm…I think we could talk about the moment you got into rock music…. Kaoru: Like when I started playing? Hazuki: That’s right….for example, I only listened to kayōkyoku ( Japanese popular music from Showa Era) when I was an elementary student….at that time it started to sound “Rosier” by Luna Sea and I was like “what is this?” so I got into the rock world…is there something like that for you? Something like “oh that’s amazing!” or so…. Kaoru: The first time I listened to something and thought “that’s rock” was BOOWY. Hazuki: Eh?? Is that so? Kaoru: I think it was a thing for my generation…..everyone listened to BOOWY. Hazuki: They were still active? Kaoru: Barely….it was before their disband.…. Hazuki: I see… Kaoru: But at middle school everyone listened to them….but the band I listened to before them was Seikima-II…. Hazuki laughs. Kaoru: Singles at that time were records (LP), right?.. Hazuki: Yes… Kaoru: I bought it and listened to it….even at that time, like when it comes to bands and rock music it was like…..something amazing and flashy… Seikima-II felt like “this is it”….that’s how it felt when I listened and looked at them….I didn’t listen to them with the image of “this is rock” or a “band”…. But when I heard that kind of band, the guitars, the bass….everything together I thought “this is cool”….as expected, BOOWY’s (activities) at that time were decreasing but there was also bands like Barbee Boys and Ziggy…. But among all those bands I listened to….when I was in middle school, a transferred student came to my school to my class….he looked  very serious…in that class he felt like the calm type….he sat next to me….and once we were going back home he invited me to hang out with him…even thought he was a middle school student….his room was full of records…..he had everything….an amplifier, record player, tapes…he also have CDs that were a recent thing at that time….he also had this huge speaker…of course he had a bed as well as it was his room…. Hazuki: But it was your friend’s stuff? Not his father’s? Kaoru: It wasn’t his father’s stuff, all belonged to him… Hazuki: Ehhhh Kaoru: It was amazing….it looked like an unknown world to me….I went to his house often to hang out after school…we would listen to the records that he had, he told to listen to the music he liked….one of the things he made me listen to was metal…. Hazuki: Western music? Kaoru: There was a lot of western music as well…like Iron Maiden and Judas…also Japanese metal and so but….it was like a “no way, no way” for me…. Hazuki: At time it wasn’t your cup of tea? Kaoru: At all…. Hazuki: Eh… Kaoru: I liked music in English….like Michael Jackson…I like Pop….music from the UK…..I listened to new wave bands for example….but that kind of hard rock or metal….I have this image of muscular guys playing in shorts jumping around energetically while playing….with those things in their shoulders that made them look like Saint Seiya….*Hazuki laughs* I had that kind of image… Hazuki: This is after BOOWY? Kaoru: It’s after BOOWY….I still was listening to BOØWY’s all the time….*Kaoru mumbles something about BOOWY’s CD covers?* Hazuki mentions Japan ( A new wave band from the Uk). They also mention again BOOWY’ and finally, X Japan appears. Kaoru mentions X’s Vanishing vision and that he didn’t like it at first because of the fierce and fast tempo songs. Hazuki: Eh? *laughs* I really can’t believe what you are saying right now… Kaoru: It was like a “no,no” for me…but among them, there were one or two songs that I liked… Hazuki: Yes, yes… Kaoru: Then, at high school…..I graduated from middle school and I started high school on April…and the 21st of April “Blue blood” was released…. Hazuki: Oh! Kaoru: At the bookstore and so there were X stuff there, I already knew them….and I preordered the CD…. Hazuki: *Laughs* How did that happen? Kaoru: I don’t know….I just did it… Hazuki: But you didn’t like them at that time….*laughs* Kaoru: But somehow for the first time, I was interested in them so I went the day of the release to buy the CD, I went back home,I listened to it at the radio-cassette and I was like “what on Earth is this?” *Hazuki laughs* Hazuki: That wasn’t too fast and fierce for you… Kaoru: It wasn’t….at all… Hazuki points out that the song called like the album “Blue blood” is fast and fierce but Kaoru seems to not care about that as he was amazed by the album. For Hazuki, it was too fast and fierce so it was a “No” for him at that moment. Kaoru: I was like “what’s this”?.... Hazuki: And because of that opportunity, even though it was fierce and fast, as you bought the CD yourself… Kaoru:  For me, it was the feeling of the whole “Blue blood” album….it was like listening to something amazing… Hazuki: But you got interested in that album when you saw that add (at the bookstore)…. Kaoru; That’s it, That’s it…. Hazuki: From there, you got into that world-view…. Kaoru: Certainly…that’s it, that’s it…at first, as expected, I didn’t know much about instruments and their sound….but the songs…and the atmosphere when I listened to the songs….I saw there was a live at the medium hall of the Kousei Nenkin Kaikan in Osaka but the tickets were already sold out. I feel like going to the venue at that moment…. Hazuki: But you didn’t have a ticket…. Kaoru tells next the story about how he got the ticket after walking around the venue. It seems  he was first offered a ticket by a old guy who asked for 5000 yen for the ticket (the real price was 3000 yen) but Kaoru didn’t have the money for it as he needed some for the train back home. Kaoru gave up about getting a ticket and he was wondering if he should buy some merch as people started to gather for the concert.  Then, another old guy guy approached him and offered him a ticket, that was a seat in the last row of the first floor, and Kaoru got it. Kaoru adds he was kind of careless for doing that? ( getting a ticket from a scalper) And Hazuki starts laughing nervously. Hazuki: Well, well it’s ok…..because  it’s an old story…. Kaoru: Then at the live I was on the right side…. Hazuki: That was Hide’s…. Kaoru: When I saw him….I was shocked…. Hazuki: Like it was something you shouldn’t see…. Were you a middle school student at that moment? Kaoru: A High school student…. Hazuki: Ah, you were in high school…. Kaoru: After seeing him, I just could see this person… Hazuki: But you are Dir en grey’s leader, right? Everyone…that fast and fierce songs were a “no” for you *laughs* Kaoru: It was really a “no-no” for me….for real….no way… Hazuki: And after that, the most intense and fast songs……but you didn’t like that at the beginning….but because of Hide…..X japan at that time was really fierce/violent….*Kaoru nods* With their hair up this way…*makes the gesture of the hair* Kaoru: All of them have their hair up…..but at the beginning, I was a little reluctant to get into foreign metal…. Hazuki: I understand that, it was the same for me….I was reluctant to it…. Kaoru: It was like it felt hard to get into it…. Hazuki: But when I was reading interviews of the artist I liked, they wrote about other musicians they liked, right? I wanted to try to listen to them, but I couldn’t really do it….because I didn’t like it…. Kaoru: That’s right… Hazuki: It was like that….was it the same for you? Kaoru: Like Alice Cooper with all that heavy black make-up…..he looked scary….when I listened to it, I didn’t really understand it… Hazuki: Like “X is better”, right?….it was like that for me too…. Kaoru: Hide was into pop music so I got into some artists because of him. Hazuki: I see… Kaoru: It’s stuff that I still listen nowadays….at that time he introduced these artist to his fans and I got into it. Now I listen to it and I think it’s cool...somehow it became like my roots….but at that time when it comes to rock, it was like “I don’t get it”…. Hazuki: I see….at that time, the members of Luna Sea would talk about Guns N' Roses or Nirvana….I rent some stuff from them but I was like “it’s not fierce, it’s not dark or bright, it’s just different”. Another time I listened to Korn and Slipknot and I was like “Oh, I like this”…until then, I barely listen to anything like that…. Kaoru: So since that time, you started to listen to western music…. Hazuki: Yes, I started to listen to it properly…..you already finished your beer… Kaoru: I did…. Hazuki: Oh, I’m sorry….*Hazuki grabs the bottle of “Tantakatan” to open it* That guy you talked about, the guy with the audio equipment, what happened to him after that? Kaoru: At that time, we graduated from middle school and…. Hazuki: Is that so? Kaoru: I don’t know what he is doing since then at all…. Hazuki: Eh??? Kaoru: Truth is….I would like to try to meet him…. Hazuki: If he is watching this…..if you see this, you can definitely contact us….so,  about music....this talk is because you are going to release  a single and it would be strange to not talk about it… Kaoru: It feels weird… Hazuki: It’s embarrassing for me because I’m not used to this. It’s a bit embarrassing but I really want to ask you about it…. “Oboro”, which is going to be released on 28th April… ....Tbc....

[askcharaandfriends]

Some Things to Know

(Frequently asked questions and other information)

What is this blog?

It's an underswap ask blog comic based on @askfriskandcompany . From the beginning I got Trash Queen's blessing. Many themes story elements, back stories and characters come from there. It's not a direct remake in swap style. The broad strokes are the same, but due to the nature of ask blogs and the fact that the askers know things ahead of time, I expect certain things to turn out differently. That's the fun of it!

Undertale is by Toby Fox.

What will the swap be like?

My goal is to keep the core of the characters the same (ie: Chara likes chocolate) while moving them around to a new destiny. To see how putting a character in a different situation would change them, and in turn change the situation. Kinda a nature vs nurture deal.

The ships remain the same, because everyone's heart/ attractions are the same, and I think it would be weird to do it some other way.

Not everything in the world is swapped, (mostly because that would be super complicated) but a few key things are, things that might be funny or interesting. But History (besides some dates and maybe names due to interference from the monster war) is not swapped. All the wars and things happened the same, ended the same, and had the same impact on the world.

List of swaps I have so far: Chara/ Frisk, Sans/ Papyrus, Toriel/Asgore, Alphys/ Undyne, Asriel (Flowey, Maverick Chaos Dragon)/ MK (Tem, Maverick Kayos Drake), mettaton(hapstablook)/ Napstablook(napstaton), nicecream guy/ burgerpants, Bratty n Catty/ Otto n Owen (RG 1 and 2), Grillby/ Muffet, Shop Bunny/Hotel Bunny

People I don't think I will swap: Onion-san, Gerson, Jerry, The Royal Guard Dogs, Mad Mew Mew(mad dummy), Amalgamates. However small details about them may have changed for example, Gerson "hit the jackpot" and became an eccentric millionaire and bought whatever Chara sold him, sometimes randomly changing the price on something he "had to have." You can also choose to donate to his scholarship program for Rowdy teens and after 1000 G the college sends him exclusive historical armor which he will sell to you at a discount if you have died in battle a lot. (It's not like you paid for the armor, your donations were a small percent of his donations)

Will there be a dub/ can I dub it?

Yes!!! I'm doing a dub now, on my YouTube channel miamouse!

If you or someone you know would like to dub it, I would love to hear it!!! I ask you to let me know ahead of time, credit me as Miamouse with a link back to the blog. Maybe send me a link to your video if you can! I wanna seeeeee!!!!

Fanart?

Same rules! I would love to see it!!!! Tag me, either with this blog or @miamouse-va or you can submit it directly. I would not like to see heavy gore or sexual content. Don’t do it. Don’t be weird.

Memes are ok. Go for it!

How do I send an ask that can be in the comic?

Please use the ask feature. There should be a link on top of the blog. Not submit, not in the notes, not fanmail, not YouTube comments. I'll do my best to answer questions from there, but the ask feature has the format I need for the comic, ya know?

Try to keep it current to what is going on. Make sure you read the whole comic before asking! Try not to get too off topic as well (a little is probably ok) changing the subject is fine in moderation.

It's ok to send a couple variations but please don’t spam the same thing!!

Keep it clean. Minimal swearing, please. Nothing weird or gross.

Keep in mind that I may not be able to use your ask, even if it meets the criteria. I can only use so many. Or maybe I'm saving it for later. Just gotta get lucky, I guess.

Crossover with AFAC????!!!

TQ said she was down. It would be some time after her current arc, and sometime after Blue Echoes (current arc). We've discussed some ideas but obviously I can't say much because spoilers!

Other crossovers?

Sorry, no Man Who Speaks In Hands or Ask Drunk Chara. I don’t want to do that to either Rei or Hawker. They are both done with their comics and burnt out on Undertale. It wouldn't make sense anyway. Ima let them rest. I did get permission to use Afac Harlow Garamond, but that's a different matter entirely.

I am also planning one with @askthedreemurr-fontfamily !! (Please read their comic!!! And Ask Young Chara too)That one has a good vibe and they have portals and visitors to their world so crossing over is not such a stretch. I dont know what the crossover would be about or when it could take place, but we'll talk about it later. There’s a lot to figure out. (I'm thinking it would serve the same purpose as the drunk Chara crossover)

Other crossovers besides that? Maybe. Crossovers are hard.

Send stuff to characters??

I have a chocolate pile in my corner of the 4th wall zone where askers can send normal (technically magical, and can be various degrees of dark) chocolate bars. Up to 10. That I may send to Chara's fridge one at a time as needed and in a way that is not suspicious. No other chocolate please. No matter how clever. They can't stand out!! I'm at 50+ right now. [CHOCOLATE BOX IS CLOSED]

There is also Toriel's Recipe Binder that you can add recipes to!! You can send as many cleaver recipes as you want! (Just not duplicates, for example I revealed that Frisk likes strawberry cake and I got a couple of those, in which case I will take the first one) It works because her binder was made so that anyone from the house can put in their own recipes so it could be a compilations. So new recipes that suddenly appear there, aren't much of a surprise.

Other things should be sparingly. Like the nicecream someone sent Hermann. Something simple and not too big, expensive or OP. I don't get them from the garbage( a personal choice) my Character Mia Mouse is a Therapist and buys them with her money. So it should be things that are reasonably affordable and easy to obtain that exist in that world.

Asker powers?

Since when were you in control? For real though, you have some limited powers to say things, mage hand stuff. send minor things. influence the course of events. but anything you want to do is always over-ridden by Miamouse powers. i drive this crazy train. I can allow or deny whatever i dang well please.  

Update schedule?

>_>; once a month or more often if I can. [Though sometimes I lose track of time all together,] I don't have a consistent day or anything. I go at my own pace, and that tends to be kinda slow. I have 2 real life jobs that takes a lot of my energy. I also have the dubs to do. Also I get distracted by video games frequently. This is a fun project/ hobby and I'm not gunna let myself get overwhelmed by it.

Commissions?

Possibly! Message me @true-miamouse for details. 

Fowey the Flowers?

They live in a greenhouse and Asgore tends to them. they’re not much for conversation and won’t play much of a role.

Why no Grayscale?

Technically, it was never AFAC that was black and white, it was the askers who were colorblind. That changed when Alphys poked the portal while MWSIH Asriel was busy Being rainbow hyper death, (this effected several adjacent universes!)

One Watsonian explanation could be that this event also effected ACAF universe but it is on a different time scale than AFAC so it changed the color blindness prior to Chara getting a blog.

Another Watsonian explanation could be that Erica who controls the AFAC camera, was blind in life and possibly colorblind as a ghost?,(not physically nothing afflicted her anymore,) but she just didn’t realize she was missing anything before that event. In ACAF, Paolo controls the camera, and with their glasses, they can see fine.

The Doyalistic reason is that Trashqueen chose not to color the comic early on, and changed her mind later. And I simply chose to have things colored from the beginning. In the end, it’s just a personal preference.

Name all the characters favorite XYZ!

this kind of question is hard to answer. especially all the characters at once.. maybe i should make stat cards with heights, age, b-day, favorite color, song, food, Disney movie, game, anime etc. but for now, please don’t be sad if this type of ask doesn’t get through. it’s just that it’s overwhelming.

Why isn’t this like other underswaps? 

it’s not supposed to be. i wanted it to only loosely be the idea of under swap. not any particular canon. for example: Napsta Blook became Napstaton instead of Napstabot. why? because that’s just the name they wanted when they became a robot. Alphys wields ninja tools instead of an axe. why? obviously it’s because she’s a weeb. Sans doesn’t like to be called Blueberry. things like that. i want this to be a little more me flavored, ya know? 

Is the underground different?

A little, here and there. but mostly it looks the same. each area has a new name because Toriel named it tho. Home= Timeless Gardens, Snowdin=Winter Wood, Waterfall= Glittering Falls, Hotland= Sizzling Springs, The Core = El Nucleo, and New Home = Quiet Gardens. One interesting difference is that Blue Echo Flowers do not exist, and instead, Red Echo Flowers live near lava.

[updated: 1/15/23]

[sparksswifty13]

HOW I BECAME SWIFTIE. @taylorswift

Hiiii!! My name is Rima, 23 years old. I was born and raised in japan. I was 12 years old when I first found out about Taylor as an artist. Fun fact; I was obsessed with Disney channel and it was when I found out that taylor and Joe Jonas were together. LOL and I was like “who is this chick????” (kinda mean way back then. 😂) then I went straight to YouTube and searched “Taylor Swift”. The very first video I saw was “Our Song”. and I FELL IN LOVE WITH THE SONG. Sooo it became from Joe Jonas’s girl to Taylor Swift in my mind. lol Fearless came out right after I found about you. I bought the album and listened all day everyday. Fun fact part 2; I brought your album to my junior high school and asked broadcasting club to play “Love Story” during lunch time. hahaha so yeah, I became a huge fan of you and I was literally stalking you on MySpace and Twitter. Lol (I made my fan account on twitter back in 2009 as @SparksSwifty13 )

February 7th 2010, you came to japan for the very first time for one night only show at Zepp Tokyo (the small music venue and the capacity of 2000 people). I went to the show with my big sister and I had an amazing night!!! Everyone was singing so loud and you were having so much fun too!

Exactly one year after, February 7th 2011, you came back to japan for Speak Now Tour at Nippon Budokan. I was right in front of you with my sister. I was so emotional and tried my best to remember the feeling of seeing you on stage. (If you know what I mean.) I was planning on going 2 days but I had very important exams for I gave my ticket to my other sister. (And my sister got to touch your hand 😭)

So off the topic, i was dreaming to study abroad to the states since I was 10. (Because I watched High School Musical, everyone was obsessed with it right??). I started studying English by myself. I did everything I could. I asked my dad to buy my a book to learn alphabets. I went online for pen pal friends. I exchanged emails and letters with American friends. I Skyped to practice for speaking. by the age of 15, my English has gotten really improved and I still wanted to study abroad but my family wasn’t rich so it was kinda hopeless.... HOWEVER, when I was 17, I was given an opportunity to apply for the scholarship from the exchange program organization. I had to take tests and some interviews. After trying 1 year to the scholarship, I GOT IT. I was so happy and I literally cried my eyes out. Then, the organization picks places to stay for us. It was random for us. we could have sent to Alaska or Hawaii. One day, I got an letter. They found the host family who wanted to have me as an exchange student. Guess where they lived? TENNESSEE. They lived in the city of La Vergne ( I don’t know if you know the city.) I looked it up on google map if the place was close to Nashville and it was literally 45 mins away. I SCREAMED. I could live where you grew up and where you got your dream!! My year was really tough. I had hard time getting along with people from my school. And keep up with senior classes. but I didn’t give up. I asked my teacher if they could give me lessons during lunch time. I talked random students and ask them if I could sit with them during lunch. I ended up having amazing family and friends.

It was also during RED Tour so I begged my host family if they could take me to the Bridgestone arena. I went the show by myself because I didn’t have close friends at the moment but I HAD THE BEST NIGHT BECAUSE OF YOU.

Then, 1989 to Reputation. I have never missed one tour. It was my thing. I couldn’t miss them. I also go back to Tennessee once in every 2 years. so I could meet my amazing friends and family.

The summer of 2018, I went visit again with my boyfriend because my friends from school were getting married!!! yay! I couldn’t go to the Nashville show but my friend’s mom offered me a ride to St.Louis show only so I could see you 🥺 they drove 6 hours from Nashville. They fed us. They booked hotel room for us. They did everything for me. They did all of that just to make me happy.

I love you from bottom of my heart and it will never change. sorry that my story is a mess but I wanted to tell you how i have been as a swiftie. I’m so excited for the new album and I hope someday, I get to hug you 💕💕💕💕💕

@taylorswift

[cougardraven]

A Life Through Actions, or Who I Am is What I’ve Done

When I was fifteen, my grandfather passed away. To date, he had been the closest thing I had had to a father figure in my life. My own father wasn't really in the picture (for a lot of reasons that boil down to "two people who probably shouldn't have had kids at that point in their life did anyway, and it destroyed them both"), so it was kind of a big deal. So I collapsed in on myself and shut down, and stopped going to school altogether, and got expelled for excessive absences some weeks after I turned 16, and had to go through summer school to get back in.

Two weeks after the start of that new school year, though, I wasn't feeling well, and I decided that I needed to stay home because I was sick. This happened to be the second time that had happened (I'm still not sure if it was emotional bullshit or a legit physical thing), and my mom decided that I had become unreasonable, and sent me to live with my father (who had come back into the picture during that summer) in a completely different state. I uprooted my life literally overnight. It wouldn't be the last time. (Fun fact: one thing that may have made a larger difference, may have not: on my way from my old home in Michigan and my new home in Illinois, I took too long while packing and my father was thus unable to take me to a football game at the Big House in Ann Arbor. Who knows? Maybe that would have put us off on a better foot and paved a better path. It's been almost fifteen years now, so it doesn't matter, but it's a bit of food for thought.)

During the summer before my senior year of high school, now in Illinois, a friend of mine introduced me to this website that was fairly popular among people our age. It was called Gaia Online. (Don't sweat this, I'm laying some groundwork here.) At that point, I was 18, pining hard for the recent ex-girlfriend of one of my closest friends (but not for long), and living in a homeless shelter, as I'd been kicked out of my dad's house less than a week after I turned 18.

The next summer, a few months after I'd graduated high school, I got word that my grandmother was on the cusp of passing away, so I was bundled back to Michigan with the intent that I would stay a week to attend the funeral, and then return to Illinois to resume...whatever it was I was doing. (Waaaaaay too much drinking and smoking, of various substances.) Instead, I stayed in Michigan for the better part of a year, couching it with friends.

While I was there, I cultivated a few relationships on said website, Gaia: the first, with a guy who shares a lot of my fractured understanding of the world, and the second, with a woman I'd met through friends, and the next summer, she came up to visit and we spent most of a three-day period in a hotel room. On the last day, I had a dispute with my best friend at the time that was fairly bad, and I decided then and there to leave, and I moved, on the spot, to North Carolina, with my future wife (and also future ex-wife, because life's just funny like that).

About a year and a half later, we'd bounced from place to place, not just in an apartment sense, but in a North Carolina -> Arkansas -> Oklahoma -> Alabama sense, and we were living with her mother at the time. Now, my former mother-in-law is a crazy drunken evil person, so it was difficult on the best of days, but in late December, shit came to a head and she drunkenly decided to try to force us to live in the uninsulated garage (and shit, I know it's Alabama, but my ex was *pregnant*, and it did get a bit chilly that winter), and when we balked at that, quite reasonably, I felt, she flipped the fuck out and kicked us out of the house altogether. So we bailed on Alabama, and drove back up to Illinois. (We considered Michigan, but I had had previous experience with the homeless shelter structure here, and to this date I'm not even aware if one exists in the Detroit Metro outside of the city proper.)

Fast-forward to a year and a half later, where two things happened, in some order: the friend I made on Gaia years before introduced me to a little webseries that had been popular on Something Awful, and was starting to spawn similar series: Marble Hornets; and I went up to the local community college and took a calculus placement test with the intention to start school in the fall. I did not.

A little over a year after that, my ex left me and forced me out of the apartment with a restraining order. I, being in no state of mind to really do much of anything rational, ended up in a psychiatric hospital for a little over a month. While I was in there, I made a contact with a local support service provider, but nothing really came of it. When I got out, having nowhere to go, I entered the homeless program. Again.

During the first winter I was homeless, I met a dude who seemed chill and shared my love for comic books and other generally nerdy bullshit, including things like Red vs. Blue. We became friends, and when he got a place at the end of the next summer, he let me crash there sometimes when the weather was really harsh. He also introduced me to another friend of his, who also became my friend.

After the second summer I was homeless, I was put back into contact with the service provider I'd talked to two years before, in lieu of going back to the hospital, and they got me into housing, where I still am. The next winter, I started school. At the beginning of the following fall semester, in the second or third week, someone joined my calculus class from another section that they couldn't actually be placed in. I took note of them, and after a couple of weeks, they took note of me and we started to hang out occasionally.

About eight months later, at the end of the spring semester, we had taken another class at the same time, and I was at their house for some gathering or another, when their stepfather happened to be outside and asked if I could use some extra work helping his company pull wires.

That was three years ago. I just attended an A/V industry expo in Chicago today, and in a few weeks I'll be able to put "professional audio engineer" in my work information on Facebook. (Technically I probably could have done it sometime early last year, but I didn't.) I have a nine-year-old daughter that I never see because she and her mom live across the damn country from me, and my own piss-poor living situation has led to my parents straight up not letting me know when she's in town. I have ridiculous trust issues and maybe four real friends. (Who they are depends on the day, sometimes.) And I have this life because of one decision.

Except I don't, not really. The decision to not go to school when I was fifteen may have been the thing that opened the door, but I walked through it. Others walked through it. It's odd that I can trace the course of my life to one thing. To my giving up on trying to be a social being. I accept that. I accept that things would have been different, would have *had* to be drastically different. I would have graduated a year earlier than I did. I very likely would have gone to college. I would probably have lived at home with my mom until I got a degree, and then I would probably have started teaching math, or been cajoled into going to law school or some shit. At least, that's the best guess I have playing out from that timeframe.

But I'm okay with that not being my reality. Changing the decision points in my life might not feel like they would have made a huge difference at times, but they would. Staying in Illinois after high school wouldn't have changed me ending up with my ex-wife, I was already on that path before I left. But it might not have happened at the same time as it did. If I hadn't bailed to North Carolina, I would have eventually (probably) moved down there eventually anyway. Even if I didn't move to Oklahoma, we almost certainly would have ended up in Alabama sooner or later. But without that experience, I wouldn't have a Zippo that's probably the only actually significant "thing" I own, because it's been with me longer than anything else I own that isn't clothing. If we'd moved to Michigan instead of Illinois when we came back north, I wouldn't have been in the places I needed to be to have anything else happen. I certainly wouldn't have come here to visit.

If my friend hadn't introduced me to Marble Hornets, I wouldn't have met a community of people that supported me when I needed it most, but then cast me aside. If I had gone to school when I originally intended, I wouldn't have been in a calculus class a few years ago that introduced me to someone I've worked with for years. If I hadn't met my friend in the homeless system, I wouldn't be on the verge of starting a second YouTube channel with him and our other friend.

Everything that I am is the sum of the things I have done. All the little things that don't seem to make much sense at the beginning, add up to the picture of a complete person. Broken, dejected, volatile, sure, but complete.

[tamboradventure]

How to Be a Travel Hacker in Canada

Posted: 4/2/2020 | April 2nd, 2020

Travel hacking is one of the best ways to lower your travel costs. Flights, accommodation represent two of the biggest expenses travelers face so getting those to zero allows you to travel more for less. When money isn’t a worry, the world is your oyster.

While I have tons of travel hacking resources on this website for U.S. travelers, I get a lot of questions from Canadians about whether they can take advantage of travel hacking too. And the answer is always yes!

While the U.S. has the most deals and opportunities, Canada isn’t too far behind and is the second biggest points market in the world.

To help you understand the Canadian travel hacking world, I reached out to my friend and fellow travel blogger Ricky Zhang from Prince of Travel. In this interview, he shares his tips and tricks.

Nomadic Matt: Hey Ricky! Thanks for doing this! To begin, tell us about yourself. Ricky: I’m based out of Montreal and Toronto, and I’ve always loved to travel and get the best bang for my buck when doing so. For the past few years, I’ve run the Prince of Travel website, which is dedicated to helping my fellow Canadians maximize their frequent flyer miles and credit card points to travel the world at a fraction of the price.

How did you get into travel hacking? I first became interested in points and loyalty programs back in 2013. As a university student in Canada, I was making frequent trips back home to China to visit my family and I was trying to figure out how I could get airport lounge access.

It turns out that there was a little-known opportunity to earn top-tier Star Alliance Gold status very easily with the loyalty program of Aegean Airlines, the Greek national airline. I figured out that I could simply credit the miles from one or two of my round-trip flights to Aegean and I’d end up with Star Alliance Gold, which would get me the lounge access I wanted.

That led me to the online blogs and forums, where I quickly learned that credit card points — and specifically the signup bonuses — was the key to racking up the points and funding many trips around the world (often in business class or First Class) at a fraction of the price.

From there, I was hooked and I’ve just continued honing my craft over the years!

The U.S. is known for its awesome travel credit cards. How does Canada compare? Many outside observers would probably guess that the Canadian travel credit card market is less lucrative than the US and, while that’s true in some ways, there are also ways in which Canada is the more favorable place to be.

The US has a wider range of travel credit cards, provides access to a greater number of airline and hotel programs, and also gives consumers larger quantities of signup bonuses (for example, 100,000-point bonuses are a regular occurrence whereas, in Canada, the single-highest signup bonus is 75,000 points).

However, the US credit card issuers are also stricter about limiting the number of signup bonuses that a single individual can obtain (or imposing limits on how often you can obtain them), whereas the Canadian issuers haven’t imposed such limits, making Canada much more favorable in terms of earning the signup bonuses repeatedly.

Almost all the cards in Canada let you double- or triple-dip on the bonus (although the terms and conditions may not always say so). It’s easy for issuers to update their terms and conditions to say that you’re only eligible for a once-in-a-lifetime bonus, but much more challenging for them to actually enforce that from an IT perspective.

In addition, there are ways for Canadians to apply for US credit cards as well, thus letting us play the game on both sides of the border!

Really? How can Canadians get a U.S. travel credit card? Well, to do that, you need three things:

A US address

A US bank account

A social security number (or something equivalent)

The address is easy. Just use a friend or family member’s address, or a mail-forwarding service. The bank account is also easy. Just use the cross-border banking service of your favorite Canadian bank to set up a US domiciled bank account with your US address listed on it.

The social security number part is tricky. You can’t just get one unless you actually study or work in the US. Instead, you can get an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number (ITIN), which is an equivalent number that many issuers also accept in place of an SSN.

Any foreign resident can get apply for an ITIN from the IRS if they show that they’ve earned income in the US (for example, if you’ve earned $5 gambling in Vegas) but need to be exempt from withholding taxes on that income as a foreign resident. Once you have your ITIN, you can use that in place of the SSN on US credit card applications – and voilà!

What are some of the best credit cards in Canada right now? The single-highest signup bonus one can obtain in Canada is the American Express Business Platinum Card, which gives you 75,000 Membership Rewards points upon spending $7,000 (CAD) in the first three months.

This card is also very valuable for its referral bonus of 25,000 Membership Rewards points, which you earn simply for referring a friend or family member to a card of their own, and can add up very quickly after just a handful of referrals. Then you’ve also got the unlimited Priority Pass lounge access and the Marriott Gold Elite status perks as well.

However, the Business Platinum does come with an annual fee of $499. For those who are more interested in First Year Free offers to minimize their out-of-pocket cost, I’d recommend the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite, which is offering 30,000 Aeroplan miles + First Year Free.

Moreover, RBC Avion points can be very valuable due to how flexible they are, so in that regard the RBC Visa Infinite Avion is another great card to pick up, offering 15,000 Avion points at signup.

In most cases, you don’t need to be a small business owner in the traditional sense to get a business card. Instead, you apply as a “sole proprietor”, which is a form of doing business in which you operate under your own name. Just enter your own name as the business name and apply, and most issuers are happy with it.

And what about debit cards? When it comes to avoiding ATM fees abroad? The frontrunner in this regard is the Stack Prepaid MasterCard, which does not impose any foreign transaction fees on foreign ATM withdrawals. Stack is free to apply for and to load funds, and only charges you the fair currency exchange rate when you withdraw money at a foreign ATM (although the local ATM fee may still be charged). It’s my go-to method for withdrawing cash while I’m traveling.

Are there any ways to manufacture spending in Canada to earn more points? At any given moment, there are always a handful of manufactured spending methods floating around in Canada, although they tend not to be discussed publicly out of a fear that they might end if they were too widely circulated.

The best way to learn about manufactured spending methods would be to attend in-person events with fellow Miles & Points enthusiasts. I host one or two of these events every year and there are always other informal meets going on in every Canadian city as well.

What tips do you have for new travel hackers in Canada? There’s always a ton of reading and scouring online blogs and forums at the start of the learning curve, but the best way to actually get started would be to think about one or two places you’d like to go over the next year (which places, what time of year, how many passengers, what class of service, etc.), then research specifically the best ways to make that trip happen using points, and then put together a strategy for earning those points using credit card signup bonuses.

Having this strategy in place will allow you to learn the ropes and reap rewards much faster than if you simply opened credit cards left, right, and center without a clear goal in mind.

Besides that, try to make it out to an in-person event or meetup at some point so that you can get to know other members of the community — that’ll accelerate your learning process by leaps and bounds. You can learn about them from some of the following groups/websites:

Prince of Travel Elites

PointsNerd.ca

FlyerTalk

RedFlagDeals

Churning Canada (Reddit)

I try to host in-person events for Prince of Travel readers about twice a year, and I’m also looking to host a larger-scale PointsCon event sometime later this year, so stay tuned for details on that one.

Otherwise, the Prince of Travel Elites community regularly hosts small informal gatherings, which are known as “Miles & Pints”, in cities all across Canada, so make sure to join the group and keep an eye out for the next event in your area!

Where can people find you online/on social media to learn more? I can be found sharing Miles & Points knowledge, industry news and analysis, travel tips, and reviews from my own trips every day at princeoftravel.com and sharing weekly videos on my YouTube channel. Also follow me on Instagram, where I post the highlights from my travels, and get to know the rest of the community on my Prince of Travel Elites group on Facebook!

Book Your Trip: Logistical Tips and Tricks

Book Your Flight Find a cheap flight by using Skyscanner or Momondo. They are my two favorite search engines because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned.

Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld as they have the largest inventory. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. I use them all the time.

Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. I’ve been using World Nomads for ten years. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:

World Nomads (for everyone below 70)

Insure My Trip (for those over 70)

Looking for the best companies to save money with? Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel! I list all the ones I use to save money when I travel – and that will save you time and money too!

The post How to Be a Travel Hacker in Canada appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site.

from Nomadic Matt's Travel Site https://ift.tt/34aN6WD via IFTTT

[briteboy]

stealing @bratsims format because i need a less ugly way to mass answer your messages which will hopefully motivate me to stay on top of this! at least i can say i tried

so if you sent me an anon message in the past...idk MONTH (i’m bad i know) it might be here. (older ones are near the bottom) if not, check my faq because it’s probably answered there. (and if you’re the person/people who sent the twin flame & 7th house asks, i plan to answer those separately because i have a LOT to say. get ready)

game of thrones, nuclear war, real life santis, lou theories, i’m evil, HERE WE GO!! i literally had to cut it off at the last one because it was just too much for now. i’ll try to answer some more later ok

we’re starting off on a great note

Anonymous said: gaddamn rooney's tiddies lookin' hella ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

STOP!!!!!!!!!!! THAT’S MY CHILD soaidfnjds she’s supposed to have like b/c cups (goals for me tbh, the big boob life is not fun) and sims 4 pregnancies just fuckin make them...NYOOM i’m mad you can’t edit sims’ bodies during pregnancy even with cas.fulleditmode on -___- so i let her live with her giant preggo tiddies for now

Ngl I want a kiss between Santi and Gianni (I'm sorry I'm literally trash)

then i’m here to satisfy your desires: they do kiss periodically because gianni is one of those people who’s like “why shouldn’t you kiss your friends?” free love 4 everyone

IM SCREAING AT UR YOUTUBE CHANNEL OK!!!! I LOVEEE IT, WOW

DON’T IT’S UGLY EXCEPT FOR LIKE TWO VIDEOS

hey this is kinda random but i thought joe seaward from glass animals looked kinda like santi? he has quite a weird face too lmao

oMG i actually love that, i know what you mean. that dude reminds me of a bull terrier lmao i actually saw glass animals like two weeks ago!! i didn’t really get a good look at the drummer but now i wish i did. missed connection

i just finished reading santi's story and ugh it almost had me in tears! beautiful, your story telling skills and editing skills are perfection!

ahhhhsdkgkds thank you so much ;____; that means the world to me <333

Unpopular opinion: im so done with game of thrones tbh. It's not even good anymore :/ I liked the first season but since then i've skipped through episodes because they are just sooo fucking boring and dragged out!

see like the first three seasons were pretty good because they stayed true to the books. (actually that’s a lie, littlefinger’s chaos speech in the s3 finale was real fuckin bad because guess what: it was original material LMAO) the fourth season was where it started to get messy and then the fifth season was a fucking shitshow because they completely IGNORED the fourth book and cherrypicked all the “good” parts out of it (read: the most action-y parts, while ignoring all the most important pieces of character development) and they botched the dorne storyline, oh and who could forget the iconic moment of throwing in a rape (THAT DIDN’T HAPPEN IN THE BOOKS) just for fun :) love it! but anyway if you think the show is boring i probably wouldn’t recommend the books, they’re even slower getting through them lmao. but it’s worth it in my opinion. there’s so much they don’t include in the show and it makes me Angery

Okay, game of thrones fan here, I haven't read the books (yet at least, I bought book 1) but I feel like dany is going to practically turn into her father, this season she is already showing traits like his.......

OH YEAH i definitely feel like they’re moving in that direction in the process of revealing jon as the “true” king of westeros and it’s so bad lmfao. the thing is, like...cersei is already mad king 2.0? why do we need another one?????? the entire point of dany’s arc is that she’s constantly trying to deviate AWAY from the way her father ruled, demonstrated by the fact that she freed the slaves (whereas all the targaryens before were slave owners), the fact that she’s not perpetuating the whole incest thing (LMAO GUESS AGAIN BECAUSE JONERYS HAS TO HAPPEN FOR SOME FCKING REASON), the fact that she has dragons which haven’t existed in how many years...like, if she ever ends up being like her father in the books, it’s NOT gonna fucking happen like this. but i don’t think she will anyway, george rr martin has been pretty clear about her trajectory thus far. anyway this show is so ugly, next question

rooney's eye are so BIG

just like her tiddies lmao i kno sometimes i forget how big they are and then she does one of those silly endearing animations and i’m like o ;-; hello big dumb baby cow eyes

Cows? Are you secretly Matthew Daddario?

WHO i had to google him lmao i was about to say “oh the teen wolf guy” but jk @ myself u idiot it’s shadowhunters damn i literally googled “matthew daddario cows” and

tru

I love how fragile Lou looks like but the truth is that she is strong af and you can't play with her bruh

SHE IS ;-; and that’s a huge theme in her story, i’m excited <3

ima leave ur blog and come bk and spam you so you will finally notice me

im part of this online forum of girls that talks about our period and weather or not one of us might be pregnant and once this girl posted saying that her husband invited his mom without telling her to thier honeymoon and she didnt find out until they arrived at the hotel and she was already there. the most recent part reminded me of it. but long story short, her dad moved all her stuff out of his house and her friend came to pick her up and they got a divorce.

OISOJDFAKNLJSD WHAT!!! i’m guessing you sent this because of that thing i said about the reddit post lmfaooo imagine your mom on your honeymoon. why. that’s soooooooooo good 4 her u know. u don’t need to be married to his mom as well

thanks 4 trusting my love santi. he's beautiful

thank u he thinks ur beautiful too 💘

do you have any tips for runing game in good quality and fast?

euhhhhh the only tips i have for you are to merge your cc, close all other programs while you play your game, maybe invest in a cooling pad uhhhhhh yeah idk any other tips you can probably find on google

You told that thing about unfollowing people and I thought you unfollowed me, but then I checked and you didn't and I'm crying omg

lmao omg ;-; i literally cut my following list in half, it was so chaotic and it was making me anxious. so if ever unfollow any of you please don’t take it personally (i know it’s a stupid thing to say, and it’s a lot easier said than done) it’s just my brain explodes when there’s too much going on at once and some content blends into others, i’m trying to only follow people who i’m genuinely interested in enough to keep up with their posts from now on

I haven't been able to sleep in over 72 hours thanks to the constant fear over the looming world war. I'm fine. Completely fine

Oh shit, have you noticed that the media has been putting out more 'what to do during a nuclear attack' kinda articles? This world is slowly going to shit, for real. I'm not even near any of the danger really, but it still absolutely terrifies me to see all of that bc it could very well go wrong and hit my place as well yknow? I have no idea why i send this to you but you seem chill and calm so thanks for reading my freakout askfjsls

YEP it’s pretty terrifying. but at the same time don’t let fear overwhelm you, fearmongering is an ugly, ugly thing and you don’t want to live your life constantly worrying. so just prepare yourself for what might come, but at the same time, just spend as much time with your loved ones as you can, do all the things you’ve ever wanted to do, and then if it doesn’t turn out as bad as we thought it would, you *tim mcgraw voice* lived like u were dyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyin’

@ Jesus anon: I really don't think it's the right time to complain about "using the lord name in vain" when there are people terrified of leaving their homes bc they are afraid to get killed (aka that poor, poor Jewish anon in charlottesville)

yeah idk like i want to respect everyone but it seemed to be in poor taste to bring that up at a time like that lmao. and also i’ve literally never in my entire life met someone who actually takes “don’t say the lord’s name in vain” seriously. 

I asked about the poses and HOLY CRAP THANK YOU SO MUCH! I finally have good poses to use for story telling. Thank you soo so so so sooooo much!

YAY i’m glad you found some good stuff <3 and honestly just going through lana’s blog you’ll find a ton of good poses, it’s a gold mine

Idk how much tv you watch, but have you've ever come across a tv show that used music from The Sim? Because once in a while I'll hear Sims 3 build/buy music on some random show and I'll get a lil shook because I find it so weird that the generic music they're using comes from a major game title.

OMG LMAO NO what i wish i’d come across that tho. one time i used sims 1 music in a video i made for school and someone recognized it

I love your stories gosh I check your page "it's everyday bro with femmesim flow" Lol sorry for that awkward Jake Paul "poop" ❤️

lmao thank u i had no idea who jake paul was until my friends started talking about him

yo, I also remember once in french class real life santi asked me what videos games I like to play. When I told him the sims, he looked at me for a while and shaked his head. He was like, "why do you want to watch your sims use the toilet?"

WHY DO YOU WANT TO WATCH YOUR SIMS USE THE TOILET SAME that’s all i care about when i play

that rooney face in the 5 facts is so iconic, its my fave picture of her. You should blow it up and frame it

i should tbh. i should print it out and put it in my wallet to show everyone because she is my child

sorry the bother you, merging cc makes your game smoother? can you explain to me please?

boop

hi i love you ♡ pass it on

I LOVE U

Can I say that hearing a MacBooks fans screaming for dear life as they try to cool down when playing the sims has actually started to haunt my nightmares

SAME my macbook is actually doing it right now for no reason. thanks laptop

Maybe Santi should go to therapy to talk out his issues.

maybe he should 🤔  but tbh he’s already talked out everything, there’s nothing really more to talk out. he just has to cope with it. he’s treated lou like his therapist thus far and that’s not okay

i love ur story and omg i totally get where lou is coming from with being tired of being compared to molly by santi, thatd hurt so much esp with how much she cares about him

thank youuu ;-; i’m glad you understand, this was a part i’d wanted to get out for a loooong time now, and i know you guys were always like “um why does she put up with this” lmao. she just loves him, that’s why. but you’re right, it does hurt.

My theory is very similar to the other anons in that Fiona's dad/Lou's ex had a mental illness (schizophrenia, depression, what have you) but he actually did kill himself and that's why she's not completely losing it on Santi because I feel like most people in that situation would have not handled it as well as Lou did

🤔 you’re right about the last part, and there’s a reason she has so much patience, das all i’m sayin

i started your story from the beginning last night and i am in awe. Its amazing. It inspired me to put a little more effort in learning to edit and write. It was like reading screen caps from a movie! I didn't want to stop reading. Anyway thing was a super sappy ask, but i appreciate your stuff. And i'm bad at putting my thoughts into words.

omg ;__________; when people tell me i inspired them it means the most to me, my brain just can’t process it lmao. so thank you so so much ;-; <333 THE MOVIE THING ESPECIALLY GOT ME IN THE HEART because i feel like that’s my aesthetic with most things i create because i’m such a film person lol. don’t worry i love super sappy, and you did a good job of wording everything because it got me right in the feels <33

Okay I've been snickering for about 43 minutes bc SANTI GOT THAT GRU CHINNN

WOT is that i googled it and the only thing that came up was the dad from despicable me lmfaosdkjfs but ok

Please, please do punk edits of your some of your characters! I'd die.

WHAT DOES THIS MEANNN do you mean like. those 2010 tumblr edits of punk disney characters and then the joker from suicide squad looked like one of them. do u want santi to be the joker. because my boyfriend already relates him to suicide squad joker because of his face tatt lmao

You love to make me cry

i do i’m sorry. if it makes you feel any better i love to make myself cry too. but my biceps grow stronger with every tear

I reeeally dont think those chancla comments were offensive??? Why would they be?? I'm hispanic (born and raised in the sunny Dominican Republic, received a fair amount of chancletazos myself) and I laughed out loud when i read them 😂😂

I JUST WANT U TO KNOW I SHOWED @ichosim THIS MESSAGE AND SHE LAUGHED FOR 12 HOURS AT “CHANCLETAZOS”

whATT my little brothers name is santiago n we call him santi for short!! guess it's not rly that uncommon but we live in a small country and he's also 4 so like,, no other santiagos!! idk why im saying this its completely irrelevant just kinda surprised me :'))

OMG wow hell yeah another real life santi...santi acts like a 4 yr old so he might as well be your brother

Just curious.. Do you play sims or just use it for storytelling? Sorry if thats weird haha

well my recent gameplay pics should answer your question lmao. i do like to play but i don’t have enough time to both play and pose scenes so i mostly just pose scenes for now. :[ i am gonna be off work for like two weeks tho so hell yeah gameplay here i come!!

I'm starting a Fiona appreciation movement because she is the real star of santis story RT and i love her and she is way underappreciated and I love her KThxBi

SHE IS THE REAL STAR!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i’ve said this before but santi’s relationship with her is the most important to me, out of every relationship he has in this story. i’m so glad you love her so much, sorry about what’s about to come in the next few scenes tho

Oh my heart, Santi is alive, god exist

I have a pretty hard time understanding Santi's story mostly because I'm not English but I'm sure I'll figure it out:)

ahh oh no D: i’m sorry i wish i spoke every language in the world lmao. if you want, you can message me off anon and i’ll help you understand it!!

Lou is an angel honestly

“there are worse things than seeing an angel before you die”

what tablet do you use? or how do you draw hair? it looks so pretty.

omg haha i don’t have one! i wish i did tho. all of the brushes i got from deviantart, i’m trying to find the specific ones but they’re all elusive wtf. i’ll post them when i find them! for now, here’s a good guide to drawing hair, by airi <3

Nah nah I always knew you'd save him.....eheheeh.....THANK YOU FOR NOT KILLING BABBY SANTEEEEEEEEE DNDDNSKANW YOU WOULD HAVE HAD SO MUCH BLOOD ON UR HANDS AS ALL UR FOLLOWERS COLLECTIVELY DIE FROM A BROKEN HEART BUT DW WE DIDNT BECAUSE UR QN ANGEL....but I toooootally knew you'd save him... /sweats/

I’M GLAD U HAD FAITH <3 i know omfg i would’ve expected a mob at my house if i’d actually killed him. if i ever killed him i would just lay down somewhere and die. that’s it for me

Lou & molly almost always have teeth showing, do you draw them on each pic?x

no, only sometimes i’ve drawn them when i felt like their mouths weren’t matching the expression i wanted. but most of the time it’s just the pose.

is it too late to send 16k dollars to guarantee santi's inclusion in a loving home with loving friends

it is absolutely never too late to send me 16k i promise you that

I just bought school books for $550 who knew studying marine biology could be so fuckING EXPENSIVE

EWW WTF...i’ve been lucky and haven’t had to spend a ton on books in my college career (one time i even went to such lengths that i got access to free trial version of one of my school books in a pdf, screencapped EVERY SINGLE PAGE, which was more than 400 pages, just so i wouldn’t have to spend $70 on it. i love cheating the system)

waIT i never saw ur selfie where is it, must see

u could probably just search “selfie” on my blog and find it, or enjoy the ugly closeup drunk snap i posted last night

Hey guys I'm a happy trans man that has no mental illnesses. I'm fucking pissed about Trump's ban. And to any one that says it's logical FUCK YOU! I'm having flashbacks to don't ask, don't tell because this is the same fucking wacked up logic. I'm so angry, like I'm a human, yes I may require testosterone shots once a month but that's it, I even administer them to myself. I pay for them with my own god damn money so fuck you transphobic bigots who say this law is fair. It's not. WE ARE HUMAN TOO Also same anon that ranted. Sorry about that I'm just really pissed and I love and thank you for sticking up for the community. We love you and I love you. And you're right not all trans people transition. We all do what we want to. Some start on T or E and have the full surgery. Some just have top surgery. Some just do testosterone or estrogen. Some never do anything. We're all still trans and we're all valid.

YES ALL OF THIS, sorry i didn’t answer this when it was all happening. but askdkjfas thank you for this message, I LOVE YOU TOO, SO MUCH <333 and i’m glad you feel comfortable enough to voice this in my inbox. yes every trans person is valid no matter what they decide to do with their bodies <3

One of those old hot topic shirts that said " if Darryl dies we riot " but with santi instead of Darryl.

OMG LMAOOOOO NOW THAT’S A CONCEPT who’s making these i want one

your use of references and reaction pics and gifs fucken KILLS ME

Crystal anon here. I googled around my area to find there are none of those y'know, crystal, candle, incense, magic type shops. I have panic attacks when I go outside and I wanted to look into alternative stuff since I'm on meds and w/e. I wanted to know if you or friends had any experience or recommendations for buying crystals online like on etsy or amazon. How can you tell if they're real?x

ooooh ok. usually there are shops like those in cities or even in towns with like kitschy little promenades with independent shops. (i know there’s one around the town over from mine, which is so random lmao) i do have friends that have crystals but i think they mostly just collect them for the ~good vibez~ and don’t really look too far into the healing aspects of them. i would say first go with the one that coincides with your birth because those are the ones that are like specifically catered to you and strengthen your being. as for buying online, hmmmmm i mean i don’t really know any specific trustworthy sellers because i don’t have much experience with this, but definitely read the reviews! those will help you a lot <3

Hello could you please tell us how you edited the pic of rooney in that one post that the anon asked for the unedited version?

i honestly didn’t do much of anything that differs from my usual editing process! i made her eyes a bit bigger by using the clone tool, cloning the top of her eye and applying it a little bit farther up...if that makes sense. it’s hard to explain how to use that tool lmao. and i think i used the liquify tool to bring part of her eyebrow down to look more worried.

there's still a part of me that says she ain't dead and molly is just in a coma lmao end mE

OMFLDKGKJS yeah she’s not dead surprise. i WILL say there is still flashback stuff that will be revealed. well not “revealed” like molly’s death was revealed, like i just still have to showcase some things that happened afterward. because it doesn’t just end with molly’s death, there’s stuff after that as well :~}

I'm Mexican, have lived around Mexicans, have been to Mexico multiple times growing up, just came back from a family trip at practically the border between Mexico and Guatemala and never in my life have I ever heard the word "joder" i had to look it up xD (not hating or anything I just thought I'd mention it cuz I found it funny...lol) k bye...

OK NOT SURE IF the ppl you’ve been around just don’t curse or whatever but...joder is DEFINITELY something i’ve heard mexican people say before lmao

Okay so this is random, but i was telling my sister the name of one your characters in ur story (santi) and she kinda just starts singing his name, and she said "santi high, santi low, santi go." And im just sitting there, like woah.

LMFAO WHATKNJDSKJGD “woah” same

u gonna incorporate fis hat into a really like emotional sad thing in her story huh

oMG i wasn’t planning on it but hmm 🤔

Why no el chingo? NO ME GUSTA (I'm joking btw ily)

LMFAOOOO because i didn’t wanna have to defile my son by downloading the penis mod RIP

let santi grow out dem eyebrows 2kforever

omg he does let them grow out except for the little line he shaved in when he was 14 that never grew back RIP

in ur bio it says "kt" and i know why,, it means killing them as in killing off ur characters slowly i see u gurl

i bet this story was just an excuse for you to see the world burn. well done.

OMG i mean, that was definitely one of the side effects of it all. but really it was just that i NEEDED to get this story out after it had lived in my brain for so long.

ur dead 2 me

I... just.... can't... too much pain Y U DO DIS 2 UZ?!?!!!

[recentnews18-blog]

New Post has been published on https://shovelnews.com/storytime-a-decade-on-heres-what-life-looks-like-for-career-youtubers/

Storytime! A Decade On, Here's What Life Looks Like For Career YouTubers

We went to VidCon Australia and talked to YouTuber veterans like Hannah Hart, Hank Green and Thomas Sanders about the weirdest job in the world.

At Vidcon Australia, I’m flung against the glass revolving doors as a pack of aggressive teens stampede past me. They think they’ve seen a famous YouTuber, and want to mob her with furious affection and awe. It is not a famous YouTuber however, it is just a tiny baffled looking blonde boy, and everyone is disappointed.

Later on that day, I exit the hotel after interviewing some of the VidCon celebrities, and a very tired mother points me out to her pre-teen daughter. Who knows how long they’d been waiting outside, hoping to catch sight of someone important.

“Is that a YouTuber?” she asks, wearily but with hope.

“Omg, no mum,” answered the daughter with infinite disdain.

“Oh, he just has the pants for it,” she answered.

It seems that everyone is looking for YouTubers — but as I discover over the weekend, maybe there’s maybe no such thing as a YouTuber. Not really. Not anymore.

But it’s fine! That sounded way too dramatic.

My idea of what constitutes a YouTuber is about ten years out of date.

YouTube as a medium started back in the fabled days of 2005, and anybody who uploaded videos of themselves at the zoo or falling over on the snow was technically a “YouTuber”. But by around 2010, there were a handful of regular users with widely followed channels, who were given the title of YouTubers. Some of them fell to the wayside or segued out into other careers, and others are still on the site today, still making videos.

There’s a very good chance you’d recognise some of them, even if you aren’t amongst their fan group — they have millions of followers and a whole bunch of viral content.

You probably have seen in passing some of the astronomically big names — the controversial people like Logan Paul or PewDieiePie, who individually can boast over 66 million followers, but if you’re not in that space, you could easily forget that there are thousands of other YouTube based celebrities making a career (and often a very good one at that).

“I guess it’s like I think the biggest misconception about YouTube is that people think it’s one thing,” Hannah Hart tells me.

Hannah is one of the vanguard YouTubers from the olden days, made famous for her excessively funny My Drunk Kitchen series, which she first started uploading in 2011. I used to watch it a lot, instead of doing my extremely repetitive captioning job at the time.

This sort of introduction makes her sound venerable and aged, but it’s not actually true. It’s just that she’s been using YouTube as a big part of her career for over seven years, and has kinda been watching the whole thing mutate and evolve to what it is today. Also, a lot of her newer peers on the medium are literally 16 years old or younger. YouTube is massive with the youth.

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“Broad strokes, I feel like people refer to YouTube and ‘YouTubers’ as if they are a type. Now, you know, YouTube has become household, mainstream, and so, of course, we have all the same iterations as in mainstream pop media.  You know, we have your superstars, your pranksters, your this-that, your musicians… like whatever, it’s just a different set of people using the same tool, I guess.”

YouTube is huge these days, and varied like Hannah says. There are multiple genres, from the million dollar makeup YouTubers to the insanely popular people who play games to an audience, to those people who open up boxes of things and earn money from it. Arguably, the only thing that connects them is a shared medium.

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“There are lots of online video communities,” says Hank Green. I’ll explain who Hank Green is later. “It would be like saying, what’s going on in the music community this week. No, there’s no music community. Like, country western singers are different from hip-hop artists, and don’t hang out with each other.”

But that doesn’t particularly interest me — YouTube is a huge baffling multi-million dollar industry, filled with an upsetting number of rich talented teens who I don’t know.

What interests me is those early days, when YouTubing was only new, when you could list the rising stars of the medium on two hands and maybe an errant foot, when everything just seemed like a weird scrappy accident, and some video weirdos who did odd shit in their rooms suddenly found themselves with a weird career.

It’s Hannah Hart’s seven-year YouTube anniversary this year.

Her first video was simply called ‘My Drunk Kitchen’, and it was scrappily recorded on her Macbook’s Photobooth program, as a homesick way of saying hi to her friend back in San Francisco. It was halfway between a private joke and a parody of a cooking show. In it, Hannah paid homage to her habit of attempting to cook things by getting drunk and trying her best to cook a grilled cheese sandwich, without any cheese.

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The results are a pretty spectacular mix of messy and hilarious. It’s very funny, and managed to hit that sweet spot of showcasing Hannah’s natural charm and wit in a cool and shareable idea. Whatever! The point is, she didn’t make the video in an attempt to become a viral YouTube hit.

It was a happy accident.

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Those first few years of YouTube have this scrappy and DIY attitude that’s markedly different to today — nobody really knew what they were doing, and there was no established formula to follow. People were doing weird, funny things, without the wealth of trendsetters there are now. Hannah wasn’t even one of the first people doing it — but she is one of the older names recognisable in the community.

It seems that the idea of a “YouTuber” kinda grew organically, as soon as the tool became popular, became mainstream.

“It was just all collaborative, all just encouraging, all okay,” says Hannah Hart about those early years.

“Everybody was just like, ‘Oh, how cool that you’re doing something.  How cool that you’re making something.  What technique are you using for this?  Oh, wow!’”

There was a spirit of collaboration, a sharing of how to use this strange new format. Hannah gives us an example:

“Beauty YouTubers brought the ring light to everybody, because they were the first ones to use ring lights in their videos for lighting.”

The ring light is a fairly established tool for lighting in Vlogging now, but it’s kinda indicative of the pioneering attitude to the entire YouTube process that happened. They were all finding out shit together.

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“I don’t know, I guess I’m just really happy that I had the generation I had, because it was like we were all going to school together and we were all graduating.  Nobody was watching, you know what I mean? Nobody was saying whether or not we were at a good college. There was no competition with each other at all. Nobody cared about being the number one YouTuber.”

There wasn’t as much scrutiny.

While Hannah Hart didn’t start YouTubing with the intention of building a career, it was pretty quickly obvious that it was a thing that was happening.

She first noted that things got real “when I had reputable organisations like Time Magazine asking for interviews, that was really disorienting — I had like six videos out the first time that ever happened.”

Obviously, she had to adapt quickly.

“I paid a photographer to take a picture of me because I didn’t have any headshots or anything.   I was like, literally — I’m not in entertainment.” Hannah worked three jobs at the time. The opportunities not only gave her the opportunity to eventually leave those, but also to work creatively, and to change her life.

“It’s insane to me, you know?  It’s too good to be true and I feel like I cannot speak for any other creator, but for me, I feel like all of this privilege is responsibility.  I choose to be … I’ve been given so much and I’ve got to be the best version of myself.  You know what I mean? I’m like, ‘Oh my God, so wait, I’m sorry I get to pursue my dreams and I’m making more money than I ever thought I would make?’”

There still seems to be a problem of categorisation for YouTubers — at the time, it was particularly difficult for mainstream media and the hordes of offline folk to get their heads around the concept of an online celebrity, of a niche superstar.

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Hank Green and his brother John Green basically helm an entire media empire now, including the popular Vlogbrothers channel.

They started off with the very popular Brotherhood 2.0 project late in 2006, which was a series based on the premise that the brothers would cease all text-based communication for one year and, instead, converse by video blogs every weekday. One of their first viral videos from the channel was a very cute ode to the final Harry Potter book (’twas the times) —  the first Vlogbrothers video to make the front page of YouTube, and a starting point of the brothers’ success as Vloggers.

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The Brotherhood 2.o project is a great example of their work — it’s funny, goofy and somehow personal, without giving too much away. You feel like you just picked sat down with two nerdy brothers having a nice chat.

It seems that even now, it’s that idea of connection with another person that drives the popularity of YouTubers.

Hank Green kickstarted his career from his YouTuber popularity, but for him, the happy accident was always in the back of his mind.

“Before we were getting paid, I felt like it was important and interesting and cool. I didn’t think it was a career. But I figured it would help me with my career, you know? Like if that was going to be, you know, working in media or consulting with magazines or online publications or whatever, this would be a good way. If I did this for a while and I had an audience, I’d be able to get a job. And then we started making money. That’s when it was like, oh, can I not have my other jobs? Can I stop freelancing? Can I just do this? And that was wonderful.”

YouTubers are entertainers first and foremost, and that means they spend most of their time doing really silly stuff.

Most of the people I talked to at VidCon worked in comedy or comedy adjacent video, so pretty stark examples of people who got to enjoy their jobs. But, even for people whose schtick is literally getting drunk on camera like Hannah Hart, it’s important to remember it is still a job.

“It’s a funny show but it’s also funny because of the rhythm, the timing and the editing.  People are like, ‘Oh, my God how drunk do you get?’  I’m like, ‘I don’t know, pretty drunk.  Anyway, it takes me like four hours to edit.  That’s not the important part!”

A career in YouTubing requires a massive amount of hours, some business savvy, a ton of creativity and talent. But one place where it differs from other jobs is in the weird opportunities it offers. I wanted to find out whether the sheer amount of fun that people imagine YouTubers have all the time actually happens. I asked everyone about it, and the answers were frankly quite uninteresting: yes, they have fun. All those videos we watch of them having fun? They’re fun.

Revolutionary.

“I’m literally so thankful that my silliness that I did on Vine and on YouTube has gotten me the opportunities like coming here to Australia. Which I never thought I would have that chance, in this capacity. And it is just a whirlwind of wonderfulness. There’s so much more of that good that outweighs any of the scariness or carelessness,” says Thomas Sanders, one of the worlds biggest Vine (RIP) and now YouTube stars.

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He is a ball of sunshine, a real Labrador boy, and his content is generally wholesome and funny, as best evidenced by his ‘Storytime’ series, which could be best described as a concerted effort to make the world a better place.

During our interview, we’re cloistered off in the corner of the ‘Instagram Lounge’, a bizarrely curated playspace for influencers and stars (and the media) to get away from the fans. Literally, every corner of it is optimised for visual content and selfies, and we sit on a bench surrounded by a literal garden of emojis, bathed in flattering purple light.

He tells me a story about the time he filmed himself out the front of someone’s house while singing a jingle for one of his regular video series, and was questioned by the owner. Sanders found it difficult to not only explain exactly what he was doing at that moment, but also what he did in general.

“And I explained. Because I was like, this is pretty ridiculous. This is a very ridiculous thing. I know it. And I tried to explain it. I showed them as much as what I could, they went back to their house, and then shortly after, I’m at church. And I get a call from my mom and she’s like, ‘Thomas, we have two police officers here who say that you have been outside of somebody’s property acting sketchy.’”

“My parents tried to explain who I was, because my parents still, it’s hard for them to explain what I did. And so one of the cops was like, ‘Oh, Thomas Sanders. Oh, I know him.” He turns to his partner, is like, I watch his stuff. He’s a Viner.’”

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But, as the famous saying goes, along with great silliness comes great responsibility. It’s not news that entertainment in all its glittering facets has the power to educate and inform, and YouTube is no different.

Six years ago, Hannah Hart posted a coming out video on her channel.

It was before the era of coming out videos as a kind of standard for Vloggers, and hers was a heartfelt, personal, beautiful thing. It meant a lot to me at the time, being a weirdly repressed, semi-closeted queer who didn’t want to talk to anyone about anything. I was able to relate to a stranger’s video somehow.

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It’s an experience shared by lots of other people. YouTubers have a powerful ability to talk directly to fans, in ways that are more intimate and less curated than other mediums.

Ashly Perez explains to me that my experience isn’t really an outlier, that queer people are drawn to YouTube for a reason.

“The LGBTIQ community helped build so much of what YouTube is, because it’s a niche community and that’s why so many people went there. Tyler Oakley, Hannah Hart, all of these big first creators who were first there helped create that.”

Ashly Perez uses her platform to talk all things feminism, body-positivity, queerness and race among other things. She started out making sketch-based comedy videos with BuzzFeed, before leaving and focusing on her own channel, wanting to diversify out of just one medium. She is passionate about using a digital medium like YouTube to reach places like the queer community.

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“Frankly, marginalised audiences need digital. It’s free, they have access to it, it’s global. I’m in Australia right now and I have so many fans here because I’m on YouTube and if I was on TV it might not be the same because you don’t know what the pick up’s gonna be.”

She also points out that as YouTube grows in popularity, it provides a larger platform to help spread social messages.

“The one thing I will say about causes and being political, particularly in America in this day and age, with Trump as our President, I do think that social has provided me with the best place to have a direct audience with people who are hurting right now and who don’t feel heard, and who don’t feel like their voice is being made a difference.”

That said, she also tells me that there are problems with YouTube doing shifty things like de-monetising and de-prioritising videos from creators with specific LGBTIQ content.

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“And I think the thing for me too is, I have tried specifically to make content and to make things that are still positive and that remain positive in this environment and I think that’s the coolest thing about social. And, you know, even if I, I’m working on TV deals now and books and things that belong to the traditional world, but I’ll always, always make content for digital because there’s no audience like it.”

These days, pretty much every long-term YouTuber is better described as an entertainer — they have multiple book deals, they have TV shows, they appear in films, they have podcasts and businesses. They’re highly diversified media stars.

Hannah Hart, for example, has two books and has appeared in two fan-funded feature films and had a show on the cooking channel. She’s working on a new project with Ellen Degeneres, as well as a really cute podcast called Hannahlyze This. YouTube is just one feather in their big flamboyant hats.

YouTube itself is only growing in popularity, but it’s skewing younger than ever before with its audience. According to this article, in March of 2018 alone YouTube drew 31.8 million US users aged 18 to 24,  who spent an average of 10 hours, 15 minutes on the site. For this generation, you can argue that YouTube has replaced regular usage of most social media, as well as filling in for things like network television. It’s huge.

This is reflected not only in the median age of the people at VidCon, but also the extreme youth of the huge amount of wannabe YouTubers attending the conference. VidCon acts both as a venue for fans to meet their favourite creators, as well as a kind of professional pathways experience, with lessons from more experienced creators, with introductions to brand, with marketing and branding workshops.

YouTubing is seen not only as an extremely cool career option, but also a viable one. Whether or not that’s actually true is debatable, with statistics that show that more wannabe YouTubers are gonna live below the poverty line than make the desired millions, but that’s pretty true for all creative industries really. The dream is real, and young idealistic idiots are always gonna throw their hat into the ring (I can call them idiots because I WRITE for a living, like a fucking doofus).

The goal is to be a YouTube superstar.

As someone who’s been extremely involved in the rise of YouTubery as a career, Hank Green believes that the new fervour for the job can be dangerous:

“Yeah. People are working very hard and it is seen as a career. And especially for young people. It’s not just seen as a career, it’s seen as one of the most desirable careers. And so people will work very hard. And I worry about that. I worry about how hard people will work. And I worry about sort of like the things that they will do to get that.

“Whereas, for people in my generation, it was like, oh, this thing. This dumb hobby we had turned into a job. And there was a lot of complaining about not feeling legitimate, or not feeling recognised by the traditional media industry. But now that it is recognised by the traditional media industry, it’s actually much worse.”

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“It’s just a lot harder. There’s a lot more pressure. And you have to not worry about whether you’re being recognised but how you’re being recognised by the media industry and what data points are they looking at, what matters to them. And so instead of being like, nobody’s paying attention, it’s like, they are paying attention. And it’s a pretty intense kind of scrutiny…”

But it’s not just about the danger of struggling and failing — the older YouTubers I speak to are worried about the cost of very young people trying to become famous online personalities.

“I don’t know, I get worried about the generations that are growing up having to define themselves,” says Hannah Hart. “I feel really lucky that I was in my early 20s when I started, because I got to have that.  A lot of these kids they are sacrificing the privacy of their learning curve.”

I note that where once a coming out video like Hannah’s was a fairly new and revolutionary idea — something that really helped both the people posting their experience and the small community of queers who would see it, nowadays its almost expected for every gay personality to contribute to the form, to brand themselves through that format.

“I’m trying to be delicate because again I’m not trying to necessarily shit on it,” says Hannah.  “The commodification of these moments, I think for me it’s like I would never share something because I should share it —  I only share things because I want to share them.”

Daily Vlogging is not only the most popular form of YouTubing at the moment, but it’s also almost the only way to create enough video content to actually create a sustainable channel in terms of growing and retaining an audience, and getting those lucrative clickies. That means that a trend of sharing, revealing and above all commodifying your life and personality has become accepted and standard.

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“They’re Truman showing themselves, it’s so weird.  I mean not weird.  It’s interesting but also that was kind of Livejournal for my generation.  We all wrote embarrassing shit, posted it, thought we were geniuses, etc.”

I had a LiveJournal too. But we take a moment to relish in how easy it was to delete those, and how few people ever saw them.

It’s unclear what the future holds for YouTubers (if they even truly exist anymore).

Some people are convinced that YouTube will die like Vine did, or suddenly get populated by every mum in the world like Facebook, and the children will flee onto other, hypothetical platforms. Perhaps Instagram will take over with a more intuitive video interface. Perhaps there will be a completely new social media platform. Perhaps swarms of the walking dead will rise up and eat our faces.

Or, recently there’s been a rise of massive media companies taking over from individual personalities, such as the behemoth T-Series company, who just may knock PewDiePie off his perch as most followed content creator. Perhaps conglomerates will be the death of the YouTuber.

Regardless, it’s clear that we’ve already passed through a certain era — the time of the accidental YouTuber, of the vanguard YouTube star. They’re obviously still around, still doing their thing, still being successful and making great work across new and exciting mediums — but everyone proceeding in their wake is an entirely different animal.

Not better or worse, but definitely different. It’s worth taking a moment to note exactly how weird and wonderful their whole business was.

Patrick Lenton is an author and staff writer at Junkee. He tweets @patricklenton.

Source: https://junkee.com/career-youtuber-interview/174121

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Datzen and the Art of Project Cars – LS-Powered 280Z!

Building a YouTube show is not unlike building a project car: they’re both seen by many, judged by all, and take more work to assemble than anyone can imagine. These things engulf people in the pursuit of perfection and creativity, as both machines are often a doppelgänger for the personalities behind them. Maybe that’s why folks have become endeared with Emily and Aaron Reeves’ Flyin’ Sparks Garage, a YouTube channel that’s dedicated to the seeds and soil of grassroots hot rodding. The show is produced in their home shop in Mabank, Texas – just an hour outside of Dallas – and their projects are centered on honest, low-buck swaps and upgrades on everything from 2005 Pontiac GTOs to 1978 Datsun 280Zs. The channel has a dedicated following, with over 3.2-million views since the channel’s launch in 2013, and recently the duo announced their upcoming Velocity Channel show, Live, Love, Wrench.

But for Emily and Aaron, this story goes back 18 years to a mechanical fail that left the “Datzen” on the back burner as Aaron and Emily grew up. The Datzen was there when the duo met in church; it was Aaron’s first car. As they dated and grew up together, however, it became something of an albatross.

“Didn’t you pay $50 a week for it?” Emily asked as our interview began. “Yeah. I couldn’t afford it, it was 1,500 bucks,” Aaron recalled. “This was 18 years ago and I made payments on it for about two months to pay for it. Originally the car was parked just because we were kids and didn’t have any money. It was a very old fuel injection system that I didn’t understand. I didn’t have the skills to deal with it, and as a young man, there are a lot of things you go through that build the pieces of your view of yourself. And this one did not do me any favors, this entire car.” The Datzen’s archaic fuel-injection wiring was ultimately failing, and they parked the car while moving on down life’s road while the two found their own careers in diesel repair and fashion modeling (we’ll let you guess who did what).

They continued building a few project cars, like Emily’s “Roxy” GTO, but the Datzen sat with no plan in sight. While it hit Aaron hard personally, it’s one of the most venerable and relatable stories out there – short of the ones that “should’ve never been sold.” That first project car, especially as a young adult, is one of the first things someone wholly owns, but that personal investment can really hurt when yet-to-be-had wisdom and experience is met with seemingly unsolvable hurdles.

Then in 2013, the Texas couple launched Flyin’ Sparks Garage on YouTube. It came out of a dream for sharing what they felt was the reality of spinning wrenches at the home shop. The cable TV car shows, to their credit, focused on dramatic “one-week” builds, dream team parts combinations, and a departure from what they felt was how folks really experienced their own projects.

“One of the coolest things is hearing people say, ‘Man, I watched some of these shows, and the car is built in a half-hour and I think, ‘I could never do that. When I go out, I have problems with every little thing!’” Emily explained. “We show the obstacles and overcoming them — and in doing it, having fun. This is part of hot rodding, and part of building stuff is overcoming problems. Nothing’s gonna be perfect.

“It’s very back country — just make it work — and that was a huge insecurity of ours, but we realized that the bulk of our audience likes it. ” Aaron continued, “It struck a chord with them, and it became more interesting than if we had given them lots of technical advice, so we were able to settle into that place and just what we do.”

In 2016, with for their 10th wedding anniversary approaching, they were looking for a way to pull all the tangents of their lives together to celebrate and began thinking about Datzen. There was roughly a year to rebuild it before the 2017 HOT ROD Power Tour, and they wanted it to be there because the Power Tour is where they spent their honeymoon ten years prior. If they were to make the 2017 Power Tour, they’d be committing to a complete re-think of the car. Though electrical issues had side-lined it, the car had also rotted while sitting in project purgatory.

First the original 2.8L L28E inline-six with its tiny manual gearbox were yanked out before the car was set back on the ground to have its floor pans punched out. New sheet metal was hammered and stitched into place by Emily while Aaron reinforced the chassis rails with box tubing.

A set of CX Racing coil-overs were installed to get the car into the weeds, while a Silvermine Motors Stage 4 big-brake kit clamp down on a custom four-lug set of American Racing’s 18-inch VF502, 8-inches-wide up front and 10 inches out back. To huddle over those big meats, a venerable set of pocket flares were bolted on.

This work was all done to pour a new foundation for an LS2-based build that packed CP pistons, a Comp cam, and the set of Patriot heads from her previous GTO project. To keep it from being “just another” LS swap, they decided to fabricate a set of 180-degree cross-over headers (for a unique engine note) and topped everything off with an eight-stack Inglese intake backed by FAST’s XFI fuel-injection. A T-56 six-speed was bolted up behind the combo, and a custom mount was fabricated to hold it while a set of mounts from Dirty Dingo suspended the engine block.

A friend of theirs, Aaron Sellers of Pac Fab, CNC milled a custom set of valve covers for the build.

And then it happened — Murphy and his maligned laws visited the Flyin’ Sparks Garage. A miscalculation in their custom pistons meant that it didn’t take much for the new CP bullets to tap the freshly-installed Patriot heads, bending valves in cylinder six and killing compression shortly after firing up the motor and getting it dialed-in. They had checked for valve clearance during the build, but the pistons were too tight to the combustion chamber and still made contact while running. This meant a last-millisecond long-block swap with a 5.3, giving Datzen a functional heart for their odyssey.

They were able to slam it together in the days leading up to the tour, but like any project, there were teething issues. “I was at Texas Motor speedway doing a job, so I couldn’t leave until the races were done. Aaron picked me up at the speedway, left Roxy there, and we headed out,” Emily recalled. “The build was messed up, like the alternator wasn’t charging. So we ended up stopping the car in a parking lot. I jumped in Roxy and got another alternator. I had to go to South Dallas to the only 24-hour Auto Zone!” With a healthy 14 volts coursing through Datzen’s wired veins, they were able to cannonball it 18 hours to Kansas City, MS for the start of last year’s Power Tour.

Aaron continued, “I’ll never forget when we actually rolled in to the hotel, I think it was like 10:30 at night, and we finally made it to a place where we could rest — albeit it was a few hours until we got up and went to the next venue — but I mean it was a year of dreaming and then a couple months of just complete thrashing and we rolled in there, set our chairs out, had a few beers and it was just like, ‘Okay, we’ve made it to this point. Anything that goes wrong beyond now is manageable, we can make it to the next venue.’ And that was huge.”

American Racing drilled a custom bolt pattern into their VF-502s for this project, and you can now find a Datsun fitment in the catalog. The stance is locked-in with 18x8s up front, and 18x10s in the rear.

Indeed, it made it the next stop in Newton, IA; then it made it to Davenport, IL, and to every day of the 2017 Tour with the worries behind it. Slowly, the stress of that last minute thrash burned away like fuel in their tank as they made their way to Bowling Green, KY. In fact, one of the few worries left was just over how people would react to a Datsun at Power Tour. Our arms are open to imports, but the event is largely dominated by Detroit-bleeding hot rodders, and the duo weren’t sure what to expect. “People freaking loved it! Everybody had a story. Either they had a Datsun or they had a car that always got beat by a Datsun,” Emily said. “We all have opinions about different people’s style and how they mod stuff, but when it comes down to it, we’re just all gearheads and that was the coolest feeling — to feel so appreciated for our hard work.”

Building a YouTube channel has grown from hobbies to full-time gigs for many, but what’s been beautiful about this era of programming is it allows many niches of the automotive culture to find a home. With their humble roots, Aaron and Emily chose to focus on their channel on attainable, home-built projects. “It doesn’t make sense to only promote $8,000 superchargers,” Aaron mentioned. “Because what Emily and I want is for you to go and work on your stuff and enjoy it, and have adventures. So it only makes sense to direct people in a way that they can afford and enjoy it.” In essence, it was a response to the shows didn’t have the garage-built hot rod in mind, where money is socked over months and years to grab a carefully-selected list of parts that aren’t just set by dreams of horsepower, but also a realistic budget.

This git-er-done attitude eventually caught the Velocity Channel’s attention with Live, Laugh, Wrench, Emily and Aaron’s upcoming TV show. While they might’ve had to change shops, the home-grown philosophy of the Flyin’ Sparks Garage back in Texas is kept as they tackle new builds and carry their persistent spirit. “Rod Rutledge is a friend of ours who died on a motorcycle, but we met years earlier on Power Tour. He basically taught me how to not worry about life. Just roll with the punches, it doesn’t have to be right,” Aaron explained. “Enjoy the process of life and don’t be so uptight about it. It’s changed me, if you met me 10 years ago you would not want to hang out with me because I was just so worried about all the details and what people think. He taught me that even if everything’s going wrong, laugh and just have fun.”

Emily went on to explain it a little further, recalling the first time she built an engine with Aaron. Back then as teenagers, they were rebuilding the engine of her family’s F-150. Aaron had her building the other half of its V8 to learn, working through each step together in torquing down the heads and valvetrain. As the parts on the table dwindled, she could tell things were about to wrap up and nervously asked Aaron to check her work. “And he was like, ‘No, you need to feel the feeling. If you mess something up, you need to feel that feeling,’” she recited. “‘And if you did it all right, you need to feel that feeling. If I check your work, you won’t have any feelings. You know when this engine cranks up and it runs great, you will own that.’ I didn’t know any other girls who were doing that.”

Really, it’s that infectious persistence that’s at the heart of Datzen, and everything they’ve built on screen. Regular viewers of their show will remember that Datzen was named in spirit of The Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert M. Pirsig’s introspective look at the human condition from the perch of a Honda CB77. “It’s the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top,” he once wrote.

“Say a girl wants to get into cars ,and she doesn’t really know where to start — her power steering’s making a crazy noise. She could go get a basic tool kit, research online, and she can have the most amazing experience overcoming something,” Emily reinforced. “But if people have too much judgment about the results or about having to ask people for help, someone could totally be debilitated. I know it’s not always easy, but you have to look at the big picture and think that there’s a goal here and it’s going to feel really cool on the other side of it. There might be a lot of mountains to climb to get to the peak of that one that I’m looking at… but it’s worth it.”

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