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piduai · 4 years ago

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this has been on my mind for a while, i feel like at this point women mangaka are generally just better people than their male peers. id love to hear some manga ud recommend by women, or even counterpoints, but series like Dungeon Meshi and Full Metal Alchemist (among others) handle almost every concept way better and with more tact, from writing complex stories and compelling characters, to treating women like people and not literal naked rubber dolls colored in and posed like p*rn

you are so correct and right and speak the truth. female mangaka are superior. the only thing i’d say women don’t do inherently better is technical skill, there’s a ton of men who are very artistically talented, but arts such as drawing and music are sexless because they come from within and aren’t influenced by external factors such as upbringing and culture like storytelling is. everything else though is done better by women.

the problem with female mangaka is that they’re gatekept in the industry big time. if you google ‘top selling manga of all time’ and go to the wikipedia page, there’s only one woman (kimetsu no yaiba) and she’s hiding behind a male pen name just like arakawa hiromi did when fma was publishing. neither of these are a coincidence. women are generally discouraged from pursuing writing, and if they do so they’re supposed to be kept to female-catering genres such as shoujo, josei and BL, which are all much less mainstream, aka much less known and much less money making, than shounen. women having to go behind male-sounding pen names just so men don’t feel emasculated when consuming their stories has been a thing since forever across many different cultures. misogyny is universal.

however since i personally am more into grittier stuff and i love gratuitous violence and other Mature Themes i just naturally gravitate more towards manime with all its faults. my favorite genre overall is comedy though and women ARE much funnier and wittier and more clever. female mangaka also typically avoid drawing gore, which i guess is cultural but a shame.

i’m not a manga person, i prefer watching anime, so i compiled a list of my favorite anime based on manga written by women a while ago. i am VERY picky and nitpicky and very, very difficult to please so keep in mind that the list is not comprehensive in the slightest, it’s just things that i personally liked. there’s tons of non-shoujo stuff written by women that generally have a good reputation (ao no exorcist, gangsta, kuroshitsuji, noragami, d gray man, magi, xxxholic etc etc etc) that didn’t stand out to me at all so again, short as it may be the list isn’t comprehensive in the slightest, i’m sure that people who are more easily entertained than me could come up with much more names. anyway everything else is copy-pasted, i know you know of fmab but it needs to be included because fmab is my favorite series of all times:

anime based on manga created by female writers that is in fact not heterosexual shoujo/BL garbage and i liked (bc i saw a post talking about female mangakas and all of the examples were in fact heterosexual shoujo/BL garbage that i unfortunately do not like and my anime opinions are super important obviously):

fullmetal alchemist: brotherhood (adventure/action) any comments on why fmab is the best product the anime industry has ever put on the market that will not be outranked ever is tired at this point. fmab is a masterpiece through and through. most of the cast including the mcs is male tho, which is sad

saraiya goyou (historical/drama) if fmab didn’t exist it would have been the best title out there. the word masterpiece was invented solely to have a concept to describe it. the ost makes up about 40% of its greatness and was also written by a woman. too bad all the characters are also dudes

acca: 13ku kansatsuka (drama/political) not quite as good as saraiya goyou but from ono natsume as well. pleasant is the word to describe it. relaxing. most of the cast is male.

dorohedoro (horror/gore/comedy) the best title since like 2006. everything about it is great. i don’t have a single criticism and that’s rare. the cast is actually balanced and the Female Characters™ all 3 of them are like, written like people and are also queens

hachimitsu to clover (slice of life) saddest shit i’ve seen in my whole life in a colorful packaging. heterosexual as hell but not in an obnoxious way. cast seems diverse but it’s predominantly male

3gatsu no lion (drama) from the same great umino chica who is a master at writing uncomfortable truths and playing on emotions. she’s great truly, her character crafting is genuine but it gets under your skin, it’s filled with melancholy. 3gatsu is actually better than hachimitsu to clover but 1) i have history with the former so i like it better and 2) it was produced by shaft which is a sin in itself. they did a great job and all, i just hate the studio. has 3 speaking female characters in total but all 3 are great.

hoozuki no reitetsu (comedy) it’s hilarious it’s fresh it’s pretty it’s original it’s creative it’s clever. i love everything about it. the whole cast is male with like 2 exceptions and a rabbit (best girl).

saiunkoku monogatari (historical) i know it LOOKS like heterosexual shoujo garbage but it in fact isn’t. fits the reverse harem trope solely because everyone is in love with mc, but there’s next to no actual romance in it. unironically a feminist power fantasy. i’m still shooketh at how incredibly pleasant it turned out to be. the mc is a young girl but the rest of the cast is almost exclusively male.

arakawa under the bridge (comedy) surprisingly… by shaft again. maybe i am prejudiced. anyway, hilarious to a fault. is technically centered around a str8 romance but it’s not too invasive so whatever. cast is pretty balanced and the women are written smartly.

saint oniisan (comedy) THE funniest thing i’ve ever watched, or nearly. it’s just great. same author as above. cast exclusively male

doukyuusei (gay romance) which i refuse to categorize as BL simply because it’s not BL. it’s a good gay story, arguably the best one yet. cast is exclusively male but i mean lmao

gekkan shoujo nozaki-kun (comedy) straight to A FAULT but funny nevertheless. is, technically, heterosexual shoujo garbage. but SOME heterosexual shoujo garbage can stay i guess. cast is balanced, there’s still more male characters tho

gokusen (comedy/action) which i don’t remember much about except kumiko being best girl and me liking it. if i remember liking it it means it was good overall just not memorable. cast is exclusively male except mc.

kaleido star (sports) which is the ONLY good, or like decent, or like watchable sports anime, the rest don’t exist. not based on a manga but the writer is a woman which is strongly felt through and through. good story about perseverance and will and optimism and competition. cast is predominantly female and all of them are wonderfully written

michiko to hatchin (adventure) again no manga but main writer is the woman known for creating the skating BL people pretend isn’t BL. michiko to hatchin is way better than the skating BL, but i’m just a humble girl. tons of sexy sexy i could have lived without but otherwise good shit. cast predominantly female.

mushishi (mystery/fantasy) mushishi is just unique. it has similar vibes to saraiya goyou and natsume sure, but ultimately it’s one of its kind. it has what ghibli wants. again no criticism about it at all except that it’s SO chill that binging it is super tiring. cast is predominantly male but it has few reoccurring characters so who cares.

natsume yuujinchou (mystery/fantasy) again similar to mushishi but less grim. chill story, the definition of wholesome unproblematic etc whatever kids are into these days. cast predominantly male but not memorable in the slightest

petshop of horrors (horror) watched it a million years ago so don’t remember shit but i do remember liking it. cast is probably predominantly male

sakamoto desu ga (comedy) well THE actual funniest thing i’ve ever watched, it licherally had me in tears, i watched the new episodes like 3 times on the days they came out, including watching them on tv in real time at like 3 am or whenever it aired in shinya. just really really funny. cast predominantly male.

#anon #ppl have recced me dungeon meshi so many times bc it's similar to gk one day...... one day i will check it out #then again ppl also say that vinland saga is similar to gk and boy it is not i fell asleep like 509 times while watching it so

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things2mustdo · 4 years ago

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Win the morning. Win the day.

Step 1 – Hydrate

The first thing you need to do upon waking is chug some H2O. The average male body is made up of 60% water and you have just spent a number of hours without it. Even slight dehydration can suppress your testosterone and growth hormone production. But getting hydrated is only half the battle. You also have to make sure that you’re not drinking estrogenic water.

Water is one of nature’s best solvents, i.e. the solids it comes into contact with eventually dissolve into it. This can be dangerous given the fact that a large portion of us drink water from plastic bottles. A lot has been said about plastics here at ROK, and for good reason – plastics are a silent killer of masculinity. They contain chemicals like BPA and phthalates, both of which exert potent estrogenic effects on the male body. Avoid drinking water from plastic bottles.

Ideally, you have access to spring water that is pure of chlorine, heavy metals, and contaminants. Findapsring can help you discover a spring near you. The next best option is to opt for a Pur filter to attach to your faucet or a Brita pitcher you can fill up and stick in the fridge. Either way, start your mornings with at least 12 ounces of pure, filtered water.

Step 2 – Make Your Bed

After getting hydrated and using the toilet, go ahead and make your bed.

Admiral McRaven, retired Navy Seal and author of Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life, said it best:

Making your bed will reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can’t do the little things right, you’ll never be able to do the big things right. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made – that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.

Unfortunately, I was unable to find any evidence to support the fact that making your bed boosts testosterone, but do it anyway. It will continue to build on the positive momentum you have moving forward.

Step 3 – Get Lit

Next up, get outside and soak some sun. Your skin synthesizes vitamin D upon exposure to sunlight and vitamin D is crucial for testosterone production. If you’re currently deficient in vitamin D – and chances are, you are – then topping up your levels is perhaps the simplest way to boost your testosterone.

“But Mo, I live in Alaska and the sun barely comes out. Does this mean I’m doomed to a life of low testosterone?”

Worry not my friend. If you live in a part of the world that doesn’t get much sun (or you’re just too lazy to go outside), opt for a daily dose of 2000-5000IU of vitamin D3 to help optimize your levels.

Step 4 – Breathe Deeply

Whether it’s work, family, or financial pressures all of us have something that we’re stressed about. The problem, though, lies not in the stress itself but in our inability to deal with it effectively. This leads to the stress becoming chronic. Chronic stress is a testosterone killer, but deep diaphragmatic breathing is a proven way to conquer it.

Diaphragmatic breathing is a central tenet of the Wim Hof Method. Wim Hof is a modern day alpha superhuman known for setting a number of extreme sports world records and climbing Mount Everest during a blizzard in nothing but his shorts. What’s more is that he has taught groups of men to achieve similar feats. I bought and completed Wim Hof’s 10-week program a while back, but diaphragmatic breathing is a practice that I’ve carried on with till today.

Here’s how to get started:

Inhale through your mouth and/or nose deep into your diaphragm and exhale without any effort. Maintain a consistent rhythm for about 30 breaths. You should begin to feel a slight lightheadedness and tingling sensations in your extremities. This is a sign that your blood is becoming hyper-oxygenated. At this point, take one last deep breath, exhale, and hold for as long as you can. When you feel the urge to breathe again, take a deep breath in, hold for 20-30 seconds, and let go. That is one full cycle of what’s come to be known as the Wim Hof Method.

I do three cycles of this every single morning. I also make it a point to track my breath retention progress. When I started, I could only hold my breath for 45 seconds. Today, I can hold it for over 3 minutes.

Step 5 – Hop Into a Cold Shower

The direct link between cold showers and higher testosterone levels is not conclusive, but there is some evidence to suggest that the testes perform better in cold temperatures. Also, cold showers are a proven way to combat inflammation.

But the biggest reason to start taking cold showers everyday is to exercise your willpower. I’ve been taking cold showers for about 3 years now and I still find myself resisting them. But after the shower is over, I always feel a sense of pride and accomplishment in overcoming that little voice in my head that didn’t want to do it.

As Aubrey Marcus writes in Own the Day, Own Your Life:

In the smithy of life, cold exposure is the anvil against which your character is shaped and your resolve is hardened, so that you might confront your chronic stress and conquer it more completely.

Step 6 – Skip Breakfast

If you believe that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, you’re still plugged into the bluepill world of mainstream consciousness.

Skipping breakfast is a proven way to boost testosterone, skyrocket growth hormone, ward of oxidative stress, regulate insulin, and increase cellular repair. You can read about the science behind all these benefits here.

Simply push your first meal back 4-6 hours after waking. If you get hungry in between, drink some black coffee to suppress your appetite. The second option is to go for the 16/8 method of intermittent fasting whereby you choose an 8-hour window within which to fit all your meals, e.g between 12pm – 8pm, 10am-6pm, etc.

Conclusion

Starting your day with these six steps will not only boost your testosterone levels, but will also help transform you into a more grounded and powerful version of yourself.

https://www.returnofkings.com/195107/develop-your-discipline-with-this-simple-habit

If you’re like most men, there’s a gap between your intentions and your actions. You know what you need to do to get what you want, but have difficulty in following through. Want to get better with women? Interact with more women. Want to get in shape? Eat less, move more. Want to make more money? Leverage your time and focus on income producing activities. Sounds pretty simple when I put it like that, but simple does not mean easy.

Not too long ago, I found it difficult to crawl out of bed in the morning. I was always tired and barely had the energy to stay awake, let alone go to the gym, cold approach women, and build a business. I was caught in a downward spiral, breaking out of which required a tremendous amount of will. Thankfully, I realized that the root cause of my problems could be narrowed down to the simple fact that I lacked discipline. Now, I’ve come to believe that self-discipline is the missing link between everything you are and everything you’re capable of being. I believe that self-discipline is the only difference between success and failure in every aspect of life.

In this article, I’ll discuss the #1 way I’ve found to develop my self-discipline and skyrocket my energy, mood, and focus in the process.

Cold Showers: The Secret to Sending Your Discipline Through The Roof

Picture this: You finally realize the power of rising early and set an alarm for 5:00am the next day. The next morning, you groggily wake up to the sound of your alarm buzzing and a part of you tries to convince you to hit the snooze. The decision you make in that moment – whether to get out of bed or to hit the snooze – is the decision that makes all the difference.

Self-discipline is the ability to do what needs to be done regardless of whether you feel like it or not. Getting out of bed at 5am, even though you don’t feel like it, sets the momentum towards taking right action despite what your emotions tell you. It’s the same with taking a cold shower. When you enter your shower and think about turning the knob to “C,” you will hear the same voice trying to talk you out of it. But when you turn the knob anyway, you have effectively overcome that lower part of yourself and are letting your mind know who’s in charge. Then, later on in the day, when that voice tries to talk you into skipping a workout or reaching for those cookies, you are less likely to listen.

Having taken cold showers relatively consistently over the past couple of years, I know for sure that the days I start with a cold shower are always more productive than the days that I don’t. True freedom is impossible without a mind made free through discipline, and starting my day with a cold shower is the best way I’ve found to practice my willpower, develop my discipline, and learn to associate pleasure with doing the hard things in life.

Can Taking a Cold Shower Boost Your Testosterone?

As a reader of RoK and the manosphere, you’ve probably heard about cold showers in the context of boosting testosterone. Having researched this topic in-depth (check out my ultimate guide here), I’ll be the first to tell you that there is no definitive evidence to back this claim up.

Does this mean that cold showers don’t boost testosterone?

No. What it means is that there are currently no studies that have observed the phenomenon. Understand that the majority of scientific research is driven by economics. Since cold water is cheap and nobody owns the rights to it, there is no financial incentive to drive the research. This is where anecdotal evidence (personal accounts) becomes important – and there is no shortage of that. A simple Google search for “cold shower benefits” will reveal countless testimonials from men who’ve experienced profound transformation by implementing cold showers as a regular part of their life.

Although the direct link between cold showers and testosterone has not been studied, there are a bunch of mechanisms through which cold exposure can indirectly affect your T.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sNpMed1RmE

The Scientifically Proven Benefits of Cold Showers

Anyone who’s taken a cold shower before can attest to the increased levels of energy and focus they feel afterwards. The reason? It all comes down to a hormone called norepinephrine.

Cold water exposure stimulates the fight-or-flight response in your sympathetic nervous system and causes a massive release of norepinephrine. In this study, 1-hour of cold water exposure at a temperature of 57°F (14°C) caused a 530% increase of norepinephrine and a 250% increase of dopamine – both of which go hand-in-hand to cause a massive lift in energy, focus, and mood. On the flip side, low levels of norepinephrine and dopamine correlate with diminished focus, drive, and depression. In fact, part of how antidepressants work is by increasing the uptake of norepinephrine and dopamine in your brain. The positive effect of cold exposure on mood is so profound that researchers have begun studying it as a possible measure against depression.

Furthermore, cold water exposure has also been shown to boost immune function, increase fat-loss, and even speed up muscle recovery.

Conclusion

All in all, starting your day with a cold shower is a quick and easy way to boost your immune system, speed up your fat-loss, increase your energy levels, and massively develop your self-discipline in the process.

Download my FREE 5-Step Testosterone Optimization Blueprint and move towards a life of more energy, health, and vitality.

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ivalice-tifalucis · 5 years ago

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Alright speaking of football, I really and completely dive back into this again. I notice the last time I watch football religiously (like waking up at early morning almost every week just to watch Barca’s game) which was around 2013, I wasn’t active on tumblr yet. I did occassionally reblogged football stuffs. I watched important games like few El Clasicos or Champions League finals. I did sporadic live blogging during the last World Cup. But now that I’m back like really back I notice things are different.

First, women’s football. I once ramble in someone’s post about the inequality of women’s football compare to men in USWNT. I said that women’s football didn’t really develop until 1970s while men’s football was starting to develop since 1900s and so it will take time for women’s football to get more developed. The difference that I notice is that now more mainstream media especially in England, where the center of football is, promotes their women’s team more. I notice Barca also do that for quite a while now, I just couldn’t believe that others do the same!! What I love even more is that if you take a look at let’s say Barca Femeni (who just got a new stadium fyi) or Liverpool’s women videos on youtube, the comments are mostly positive and most come from fanboys. They wish the female team all the best and to succeed, even include them in some banter. People also discuss how to improve women’s football since no matter what female will always going to be physically inferior than men and football is very physically demanding. Like many people suggest that women’s football need to have different regulation with the game. This shows that people care about female football. People also comment on footballers daughter who was just playfully kicking ball with “wow imagine if she becomes a footballer too” like these kinds of comments and discussions didn’t exist 5 years ago.

Second, the wheels are turning. Like a circle of life, there’s also circle of football domination. Last time I’m in, Barca was still a club that everyone are afraid of. Today, we are so poor it makes me sad. Liverpool comeback is just one of those moment. No, not the worst football club yet. We’re just becoming clown now, it’s embarassing. La Masia is also such a mess. That little boy Takefusa Kubo is now Real Madrid young player???!!! I hope we will get better soon (after the board members sacked!!!). I even missed out that Real Madrid won 3 UCL in a row (I only notice 2 until I went to Bernabeu tour and realized they have 13 trophies now 😑). Premier League dynamic has changed a lot. No more big 4 teams, they now have Leicester City too as dark horse. I was shocked when my brother told me they were about to win Premier League like what even the hell was that club?! Manchester United is sucking hard, Chelsea is shifting from rich club who buy everything to so so club to club who grow talents, Liverpool is only few weeks away from ending their 30 years of no league title (no longer a club who only talk about history), Manchester City is undisputedly giant crazy rich team along side PSG. Arsenal is the only one who stay the same, because Arsenal. Germany is suddenly not so good anymore.

Third, best player in the world. Apparently my favorite players are now old and soon will retire (some even have). The banter has shifted to discussion and general consensus that *insert player A* is great player instead of trying to compare A with B. Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo fans have finally find consensus that both players are the best ever. Sergio Ramos is now the best defender ever??? (Make sense tho the guy captained Real Madrid who won 3 UCL in a row, forget the fact that he loves collecting red card so much). Gerard Pique also the best now. Neymar since his departure to PSG has become mediocre, sad. Frenkie de Jong, I root for him to be successful. Who else hmm... Jamie Vardy is top scorer (I like him in a way that his life is motivating that sometime good things don’t come immediately like his life and career is quite insane for pro footballer standard, he supposed to not even become a football superstar!!). Mohamed Salah, I heard a lot about him because I have a cousin who is Liverpool die hard fan and media talk about him, he’s great (and sorta feel proud for him because he’s conservative moslem from Egypt, sadly a politically unstable country, and arab which is great for representation. He manages to lift the image of arab people and moslem especially around Merseyside just by being great). Another talent from Liverpool would be Virgil van Dijk that gd soft tall man and good defender but most important is Trent Alexander-Arnold (corner taken quickly which breaks my heart and amaze me at the same time). Kevin de Bruyne is what Pep really love in midfielder and indeed what a talent he is. Erling Haaland is looking good, I hope he’s not just one season wonder. Manuel Neuer is no longer as good as he used to be since terrible injury (now I understand his bloop in WC 2018) but now there are more sweeper keeper just not as crazy as him. He definitely set standards for future goalkeepers.

Fourth, retired players. One by one, players that I watched while growing up have retired. I saw Puyol and Xavi retired. Then Iker Casillas, the most recent one to retired after heart surgery scare last year, now a candidate for RFEF President. Iniesta is soom gonna be retired. David Villa, Fernando Torres. My favorite Spain NT players are now all retired ☹️. Schweinsteiger, Lahm, Robben, Mertesacker. Mertesacker is now Arsenal youth coach??!!! Mikel Arteta is now Arsenal’s coach. Other star players from Premier League like Frank Lampard (now Chelsea’s manager), Steven Gerrard, all have retired and become football manager. And a bit unrelated because I never actually see him playing (because I only start properly watch football since 2010 and by that time he had retired and I only heard stories) but Gary Neville as Valencia’s manager for short time?? 😂 (of course I would know that’s important information for all Carraville shippers). Everytime I hear news about footballer retirement I would be reminded again that I’m old.

Fifth, shipping. If you don’t notice this already, I now ship Jamie Carragher with Gary Neville which is not surprising since I always low key ship Gerard Pique with Sergio Ramos anyway. Apparently I always have a thing with pinning rivaling defenders who are hot headed, reckless, and hate each other at first until one day they don’t. And I swear that’s the most random ever. I’m not even Liverpool fan and never really into Man United (although my brother is sorta fan because he knows much about MU). But it all starts from me going around Liverpool’s tag on tumblr and found Carra’s instagram live. After watching all of their videos in Sky Sports on youtube, consider my self as a carraville. I even always try to find live streaming from Sky Sports for every Premier League matches that I watch. I must say, they’re the ones that make me want to go back to football fandom again.

All in all, I will never stop loving FC Barcelona. I may watch other games, less Barca games maybe because they’re not that enjoyable to watch these days. But now I understand, the feeling of watching Barca loses is different. It just so heartbreaking 😭 my heart only belong to that team. I’m so happy I finally got to be in Camp Nou even though I just lost my wallet at that time.

#my ramblings #story of my life #football #men’s football #soccer #fc barcelona #lionel messi #premier league #liverpool fc #manchester city #manchester united #carraville #real madrid

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alvadee · 5 years ago

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random ask but i thought u might have some good ideas on it: how do u feel about this new idea of posing nude on social media or in magazines like sports illustrated for empowerment? i feel like its considered feminist now to go naked for everyone to look at but like... havent we been doing that for centuries while men just get off to it? it doesnt feel very empowering

Random ask, random collection of my thoughts on this:

Personally I don’t feel empowered at all by seeing conventionally attractive, thin or small-fat women naked in the media (especially when they’re hourglass shaped and have no belly/flabby parts). And posing for Playboy and magazines in that vein and framing it as an empowering feminist action is simply baloney.

Also it strikes me as performative, white feminism (The type were you still adhere to heteronormativity in all aspects of your life but because it’s “your choice” it’s feminist!) when women pose nude but have some feminist slogan or body positive message painted on their body. Using women’s bodies essentially as a billboard to write a message on, no matter what kind, is something that I feel is objectifying, even when done by women. But that’s just me.

And nudity as a political tool (at least when used by straight sized women) seems pointless to me because what do men care why they’re naked? They’re naked! All they care about are the free booby pics. When they can sexualize the body they can easily ignore the message and context.

I know there are large, conservative groups you can still get a rise out of by showing skin, but I feel like that basically every time nudity is used by women in activism it sidetracks the issues they’re protesting for or against because all that gets reported about is that they were naked (so scandalous!) and no one bothers to read long enough to find out why.

On the other hand I think it’s great if we’d continue to see more fat, disabled and otherwise “imperfect” bodies in a sexy way in the media. Not because I feel like we need to be included in the sexualisation by men but because we simply are sexy and beautiful too (and women can enjoy such depictions too) and we deserve to get representation that will make others like us feel better and seen. Also seeing ourselves more in mainstream media helps that our bodies get normalized and sensationalism and shame gets reduced. Depicting bodies that are not white and thin is still something political because simply seeing our bodies in a positive light is enough to elicit strong (usually very hateful) reactions. We’re not normalized yet.

I do feel empowered by finally seeing that a few women who look like me, who for the longest time have been the butt of jokes and have constantly been desexualized, are now presented as the beautiful, sexy, exciting women they are. I love following women on insta for example who look like me, fat, big belly and all, who wear bikinis and crop tops and do all the things fatties are not supposed to do. It helps me realize that me finding these bodies beautiful was never wrong and that they are not inherently ugly either and I too can wear, do and feel however I want and it’s not cringy. Even I can be whoever I want to be.

And nudity on social media is a slightly different topic for me because these are platforms where we women post ourselves and can control how we want to be seen and what we want to show. And all female bodies there get unwillingly sexualized by policies like banning “female presenting nipples” and shit like that. It’s our right to be naked without being inherently seen as pornographic. I’m for all women expressing themselves there as naked or non naked as they want without being censored in anyway.

(And again, there’s a double standard. On social media sexy/nude photos of fat bodies, even when adhering to the websites rules, get much more often taken down than the ones by straight sized people.)

#Anonymous #alvadees asks

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ppgang · 6 years ago

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Column Parade vol.1 “BiStory and beyond: gang parade!”

Starting 2019 we are introducing new projects, one of them being columns written by fans! Want to write something about GANG PARADE? Perhaps a review? Send us a message and we’ll post it in our blog!!

First one is a look in the group’s history written by cal (@konchugun), admin behind the jun togawa fansite!

BiStory and beyond: gang parade!

Hello and welcome to another timeline of one of the world’s best idol groups. “Know Your BiStory” talks about BiS so this time, we’re going to talk about what a certain bald member did afterwards.

Where we last left off, the BiS tour final and their breakup. They were performing to a sold out crowd of diehard fans, Brand-new idol Society were leaving their mark.

And when one door closes, another opens. Manager Watanabe announced the start of Watanabe Artistic Creative Kabushikigaisha (Corporation) and their first act would be an idol duo featuring Saki Kamiya, the ex-cosplayer and all around vocal powerhouse popular with both men and women~

Just like BiS started with Pour Lui, this new group would start with Saki.

Watanabe already had the backing of thousands of rabid idol fans who were hungry from more, and Saki was a pretty popular member! Pre BiS she already had a name for herself as a cosplayer and model, apart of the Dolly-Style (or Dolly Kei) fashion community.

So… why not combine the two things Saki’s fanbase love her for into one to maximise the profit squeeze? The fusion of idols and otaku, enter… PLANIME/PLA2ME

Dressed like schoolboys at a sporting event in the year 3000, Saki was joined in late august 2014 by her new partner Mari Mizuta!

Mari already had a small but established fanbase as she used to perform as a solo idol under the name Izukoneko. She sound was very… electronic modern style technopop. If you’re familiar with solo idols, think Yufu Terashima (shoutout to leaving BiS!) but with significantly less budget.

They debuted together with the song “Plastic 2 Mercy” at Tokyo Idol Festival, and the music video released with the single was made of footage from that day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g75uL_YApIU

A far cry from BiS or even Mari’s solo work… Pla2me’s debut was drum machine heavy but with an almost synthpop twist on power-pop. The choreography for the song involved involves a lot of physical activity, unlike BiS songs with relatively simple choreo, Paprika now withstanding. Both girls are clearly using all of their strength and using all of that stage as much as they can.

Tokyo Idol Festival is, as you can guess, an idol festival. Typically for your regular idols (since alternative idols were still peeking through into the mainstream at this time), the kind that don’t headbang or have fans who engage in lunatic behaviour. Saki and Mari RAN from the stage, jumped the barrier and finished their performance in the middle of the crowd with a circle of fans around them pumping their fists and headbanging. Surprisingly there was no huge controversy surrounding this but the organisers weren’t happy. Idols aren’t meant to stage dive and fans aren’t meant to mosh even if you are an ex member of the legendary lineup of BiS. Saki encouraging un-idol like behaviour and fan misbehaviour at TIF would land her in some hot water in the future though, but we’ll get to that later~

So, Pla2me were off to a STRONG start and they were more than living up to their name too. The girls even cosplayed together!

They even performed as Ryuko and Mako!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWKNXspDDog

And if the love of anime and nerd culture wasn’t already enough, Pla2me also appeared in a Digimon game as promo for Plastic 2 Mercy:

See that incredibly blurry poster on the right there? That’s them! the other groups are other acts on T-Palette Records (the people releasing their songs in joint with WACK).

Pla2me started in late 2014 and they had a successful last quarter of the year, closing it with the emotional video to new song “UNIT”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8s4TjEUh94

Still their fresh power-pop inspired sound, UNIT is more of an emotional ballad where they talk about never wanting to leave each other, with the video being the two of them literally being chained together and climbing a mountain.

In early 2015 the single was released proper, just like they said there’s no meaning if this unit can’t stay together…

Well… Guess there’s no meaning then! Mari left.

Late into March, Mari was breaking up their unit. “Creative differences” were stated, but remember this isn’t BiS. Saki isn’t Pour Lui and Mari isn’t Yufu. The problem was that Mari lived in Osaka whereas Saki lived in Tokyo and Mari had to travel from Osaka to Tokyo and sleep at Saki’s apartment whenever they performed. Made worse by the fact that Pla2me weren’t getting booked in Osaka. Saki felt bad about things, Mari had talked about how she was struggling and Saki said on her old blog she didn’t feel like she did enough to help her. But they’re still friends so no need to worry! And she still works as an idol albeit under a different group even to this day.

So, a hunt for new members began! Can’t perform as a solo idol if you only have 4 songs and one of them is about staying together with your friend! Watanabe announced that they’d be holding auditions for both girls AND boys. No boys passed the audition though so feminism wins once again.

Meet the new lineup! from left to right we have Maya Inukai, Miki Yamamachi, Saki Kamiya, Yua Yumeno and Ao Shigusawa! Pla2me was out, POP was in. standing for “Period Of Plastic 2 mercy”

Also spoilers Maya and Ao don’t survive. But they’re here for now!

Since Pla2me never released an album and they needed more promo than just a few solo shows and music videos here and there, POP came out with a full release relatively quickly called… POP!

If you’re an anime fan you’ll recognise this art style instantly: their album cover was drawn by Studio Trigger’s own SUSHIO! Turns out he’s actually a huge wack fan! He posts fanart of Gang Parade and BiSH on twitter too!

The album release was marked with a music video for “pretty pretty good”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K07xAFm7x-Y

How many idol groups debut their album by being hoisted from a crane in the middle of the night and being forced to sing while dangling hundreds of feet off the ground? The tradition of being un-idol like idols continues onwards. And yes the uniforms for this era were actually trash bags with chains.

Saki kind of makes it work honestly.

The above picture is actually from a now infamous event… remember Tokyo Idol Festival from last year? The new unit were performing there this year, three days prior to their album release! Remember how Saki managed to piss off the management with her stage diving and encouraging the fans to mosh? Well, there are more things that are basically forbidden at what would otherwise be a pop (not our kind) festival and Saki managed both herself break and encourage fans to break every last one of them.

“Mosh pits, excessive jumping, crowd surfing, touching audience members, removing shirts and throwing objects.”

If you’ve ever been to a rock show all of this might seem… commonplace! Which let’s be real when your fanbase is made up of fans of the disbanded alt-idol group who basically just said “fuck it” and removed any sense of decorum from being an idol they could, this is going to happen at your shows. The fans not only destroyed the stage but POP, notably Saki, helped them! BiSH were playing at the same festival too and their fans did similar things, which led to both groups getting ousted. Pity the janitor who had to pick up after these wild women~

While it’s a theory that Watanabe orchestrated this, as BiSH and their leader Aina the End encouraged similar behaviour albeit on a smaller scale, Saki acted of her own accord. The fans got rowdy and Saki got rowdier while knowing the consequences of this but did it anyway.

Even if this is a post BiS group, disciplinary action was still taken. Watanabe was probably not actually furious with Saki but she was indefinitely suspended from POP. The more time went on, the more pissed off fans were getting. This was Saki’s kingdom and they demanded an audience with their queen!

Saki spent her time while barred from performing helping behind the scenes, effectively becoming a staff member. She helped with taking chekis (polaroid selfies) with other members while being unable to take them with fans herself. Fans were getting even more and more annoyed! So, watanabe gave her an ultimatum, she could rejoin POP…

…if she could complete a 24 hour 100km marathon!

Which sounds daunting but let’s be real, Saki is a young athletic woman. The choreography for Plastic 2 Mercy basically incites violence and you need to be in shape to be a model/cosplayer. There’s also the fact that during a BiS marathon in 2013, Saki was the only one that actually finished.

Saki finished her 100km jog with two hours to spare and returned to her royal court. Just in time to conveniently release their new single! The music video and promo shots of which all contained Saki despite the fact they would have had to be filmed and shot when she was “suspended”. Makes you think!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWOPysoZI2k

“Happy Lucky Kirakira Lucky” was another fast paced aggressive techno-post-power-pop (those are all real genres I promise) bop with a sugary sweet twist. The video shows off the choreography along with… some puppets! Drop some new music Miss Piggy, POP are here.

So, we end 2015 with some destruction, an album and new single! Just as Pla2me went to POP, they also went from strength to strength.

The next major release was another single: Queen of Pop!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnkR0oIYWGk

Another release in their trademark sound which i’m running out of adjectives for, the music video is… I don’t know. There’s morph suits and faux religious symbolism. They had fun with it though!

As was the trend so far, new year, new name! POP were now GANG PARADE. Saki and Watanabe were toying with the idea of a name change and adding new members for a while, and the words that came up the most were “gang” and “parade” so hey let’s just stick them together! Time went by and the name would become more apt but for now: the next single.

“WE ARE the IDOL”

New uniforms, new hair for Saki but… the same sound! WE ARE the IDOL was still typical of a POP era song despite the name change. The music video however was more in tune with the direction they’d be travelling in creatively: it’s very theatrical and heartfelt with some very professional camerawork and cryptic messages written in English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFEIW0k_5u8

Shortly after, Ao’s time with Saki and friends came to a close. She had to withdraw from the group due to a lack of support from her family. We don’t know where she is now, but with or without her family’s support we can hope at least she’s having fun.

The heartbreak doesn’t end here though, Maya had to leave too for family reasons, though hers were more understandable. Her dad’s health had been declining and it was up to her to look after him. Gang Parade had her sisters, but her father needed her more.

Gang Parade as “Gang Parade” really starts here. Between the two members leaving, BiS had reformed and scouted new members. How is this relevant to Gang Parade you ask? Well, the girls who were talented but didn’t make the cut for BiS were placed into a sister group called… SiS. Creative, right?

And of course everything went as planned and SiS to this day have a long career as BiS’ rivals and- just kidding! They disbanded after one show. They disbanded literally less than a single day after the show. Allegedly for their manager (the other manager, not Watanabe) mismanaging something or other.

The SiS girls didn’t become outright unemployed however, three of them were moved to Gang Parade (the fourth works at a clinic in Tokyo now and also entered a modelling contest. Honestly if my idol group broke up after about 12 hours i’d not want to continue as an idol either) and debuted almost right away!

But before the SiS girls were added, new girl Can Maika came along in early October. during Maika’s debut, moshing and stage diving were banned at Gang Parade lives but recording was 100% okay. If you know anything about Japanese music venues, this is genuinely incredibly rare and as a result basically every gang parade live gets posted on YouTube in about 4K HD where you can see the sweat dripping off of Saki’s head.

They also revealed that Gang Parade fans had their own name! Asobinin, which in English you could call… Players! Like a playboy but there’s no gender associated with it, so think a player of love, sleazy, likes to have fun more than they like to work, a layabout… a kind of immoral name for fans of the kind of immoral idols.

So of course now that we have a large troupe of girls, it should be time for an album right? Absolutely! Gang Parade’s “Barely Last” arrived shortly after:

Though if you can count you might notice that there’s a few girls missing… The album was recorded and the promo material all shot before the SiS girls arrived. That’s Can Maika in the orange there. She didn’t get to wear the new uniform for long because promo for the album basically started and ended in a flash, they couldn’t promo something with three of the members missing! The album didn’t even get any music videos.

If I had to describe the sound, it’s basically a stepping stone between the power-pop of POP to the chaos that would become Gang Parade’s trademark.

So a month later… Gang Parade was finally more in tune with how “Gang Parade” are now. To celebrate, they released Plastic 2 Mercy again in December of 2016

Let’s meet the new girls! Please ignore Satan on the left there. From the left we have: dear leader Saki Kamiya (sporting the longest her haircut has been in about 3 years), the quirky and curious Yui Ga Dockson (who’s name is apart of the first thing Buddha said upon being born. “ I alone am honoured ”), the rich girl with a heart of gold: Coco Partin Coco (who’s name is a dick joke because tinco means cock), our old friend: Yua Yumeno, the gravure perfectionist who sure can: Can Maika, the adorable sea otter fanatic: Yuka “Yuyu” Terashima and squatting on the floor sporting the green highlights in her hair that haven’t left since: Miki Yamamachi!

Plastic 2 Mercy even got another music video, featuring the girls making a nuisance of themselves in the streets and being coated in a plastic-like substance while spooning one another.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81rF2jZpB7g

So roll on 2017! Gang Parade are finally the “Gang Parade” they were destined to be and they started performing without a hitch and- just kidding again. This is a group run by an egomaniac remember.

Gang Parade were kicking off 2017 after a long period of touring (which they basically do constantly, GP are genuinely the hardest working WACK group) with a new single! “FOUL”! This also marks a period of… Dockson shaving off her eyebrows and painting new ones on with glitter. For somebody named after the Buddha talking about singularity and serenity she is certainly a deeply chaotic individual.

But chaos is fitting for Gang Parade! The song is slow but it’s heavier than they’ve done before, stepping from power-pop and fusing that with almost synth rock. The music video is a callback to “pretty pretty good”, starting in the same construction yard three of the girls were suspended from a crane in and ending with Saki shaving her hair off in a Tokyo backstreet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6NCSt3dLug

The song is also the source of the phrase “body and 7soul”, which is a huge part of Gang Parade’s identity. Well until they add more girls and they have to rerecord it and change it to “body and 9soul” but that comes later.

If you’ve read “Know Your BiStory” the next part wont come as a surprise, but as a preface 2017 is where WACK as a company starts to get a little… wacky. A temporary rental trade of members was announced! Queen Saki was leaving her kingdom once again to go back to BiS in exchange for Aya Eightprince.

Of course the fans rioted just like when Saki was absent during the POP days and demanded th-I can’t keep pulling these bait and switches. Aya was welcomed to Gang Parade with open arms by both the fans and her new sisters!

In fact, Aya loved being in Gang Parade so much she actually talked about how much she hated being in BiS because of how disrespectful and rude the leader Pour Lui was to everyone - especially her. Gang Parade felt… right for Aya - and the fans felt so too! Of course everyone missed Saki but Aya’s presence in the chaos just worked well. She started touring around with them almost instantly and after a few months, it was time for a new single

Beyond the Mountain! Gang Parade had heartfelt ballads and fast paced songs before but this is #that song. The song that pierces your chest and makes you want to scream the lyrics while crying. About broken promises and broken hearts but, despite being left alone, you should smile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdsASPb4l4Q

And of course promo for this included new member Miss Aya. That’s her on the bar stool looking curious.

And what was Saki doing? On a single in her traded group too but also probably kissing Kika.

During the next few months, Gang Parade and BiS went on a joint tour together where it was announced the rental trade would be extended! Then in October, more label clownery happened and the shuffle unit/supergroup “SAiNT SEX” debuted with their only song. SAiNT SEX featured Aya, Saki, Miki and Yua along with various BiS and BiSH girls.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CbRmVdd-Kk

Even while on a rental trade, the girls from both groups remained close with one another. For the time being.

After this it started to get a little more serious for Gang Parade in terms of promo: they were gearing up for a full album. Gang Parade’s first promo music video for the album was called… GANG PARADE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=100K-pSVWZM

The girls show off their new uniforms in a warehouse while dancing and well… it’s a good thing moshing was made forbidden at their shows because this song was their wildest to date. Aggressive synthy rock with a pre-chorus involving a lot of chanting which turns into an aria of screaming “GANG PARADE EVERYDAY”. Like i said, their most chaotic to date… until “IMINAI UTA” (pointless song) got a music video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQxb88zX2FA

Following in the footsteps of the last song’s harsh sound, this is that but turned up to 11. Electronic screeching mixed with nonsensical lyrics shouted at you and a music video that combines glitch art with vaporwave, their new album was destined to be their most extreme yet. And on stage? It always starts with Coco doing cartwheels.

https://i.gyazo.com/3a8932dd671668b3078ae9be69f584e7

A few days later? “GANG PARADE takes themselves higher!!” arrived

And the name was more than apt, Gang Parade had elevated themselves in sound, image and status. A far cry from the original bubbly drum heavy technopop that Pla2me started with, Gang Parade’s sound can now be described as “sheer chaos”. From Beyond the Mountain to Iminai Uta, they were here to make noise, play with their fanbase of players and just generally revel in anarchy.

They also took themselves higher with their status in the industry - Gang Parade were stepping out of the shadow of “ex BiS group led by Saki Kamiya” and were being written about just as “Gang Parade” - you can even find interviews from the time translated on the English Gang Parade fansite pretty pretty GANG (this advertisement is non-sponsored)!

At the very end of the year, the “Wack and Scrambles” album was released featuring SAiNT SEX. The album also came with voting codes so fans could vote for which members they would want to get a solo debut single. Since BiSH are the most popular wack group, Aina the End placed in first. Our favourite strange siren Yui Ga Dockson placed pretty low, in the band where members would have to eat something called “death sauce curry” - but she didn’t have to do that. Her punishment was a surprise for later~

Roll on 2018 and Gang Parade, now higher than ever, did the only thing you’d expect an idol group to do: new single and music video! Breaking the Road was here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRP-wmdG-fA

A continuation of their aggressive synth rock sound, Breaking the Road is high energy, fast paced… Everything you’d expect at this point! The music video also contains heartfelt messages from members in a serene beach setting~

The b-side to the single also received a video: Sushi Song! No guesses as to what it’s about.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRTTvdrugQI

Meanwhile, back over in BiS, the girls were preparing for Pour Lui’s funeral graduation, marking the end of the trade between the two groups. Aya would go back to BiS, Saki would come back to Gang Parade and Lui would vanish into the ether. “WHOLE LOTTA LOVE” marked Aya’s comeback and “DiPROMiSE” heralded Saki’s departure.

So welcome home saki! The eight of clubs switched hands with the queen of hearts and gang parade continued on as their body and 7soul…

C’mon, this is a WACK timeline! Did you really think it would be that simple?

In march, the next WACK audition camp and exhibition took place. Various girls won and were placed into various groups. Gang Parade gained two new members: the gothic ice princess Usagi Tsukino and the 15 year old baby idol with a cute voice Haruna Bad Chiiiin! That’s four i’s in case you lose count!

There was also a contest which Can Maika lost so she’d have to change her stage name so! please welcome “Can GP Maika”. It’s not much of a punishment but hey, maybe cruelty can be matched with unusualness?

Just as they welcomed Aya with open arms, Tsukino and Haruna found their sisters instantly too. But not without a prank first, on their first day Dockson pretended to be an authoritarian leader with an iron fist! Sushio even drew fanart of it!

So what better way to introduce the new girls to their new fans than with a new single? A month later, “GANG 2″ dropped!

So from the bottom left we have Miki, Yuyu, Coco, Dockson, Yua, Haruna, Saki, Maika and Tsukino sitting in the bottom right.

GANG 2′s sound was closer to Beyond the Mountain than any of their more recent singles more aggressive sounds. It’s still got pounding synths and drum machines but it’s the kind of pounding that matches your heart and not your feet dancing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyaEby0Wu2U

The video depicts Saki as a holographic ghost who regains her physical form, rejoining Gang Parade after having been gone for so long.

The b-side recieved a video too: meet the slightly culturally insensitive love-letter known as “Lai Le”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB5hx0hkioE

Next up in June we finally get to Dockson’s “punishment”. While she didn’t win the election for the solo single, she was getting one anyway! “Now how is that a punishment” you ask? Well! It’s a throwback to the 90′s era of Japan’s eurobeat inspired techno-pop but with a twist! The lyrics are about being horny and involve chanting “HUGE COCK”. Also they made her wear ganguro makeup.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4CytBUpNV-k

Honestly? The song is good. It’s dancey and fun but I think it’s understandable why somebody wouldn’t want to get up on stage and hoot about getting busted in for about 4 minutes. Dockson even had to perform it live a few times, and during one special performance she bought a $1 magician’s wand off of Amazon that turns into a bouquet of flowers when you tug on it. Fans loved it and she hasn’t had to don the questionable makeup since!

The month after, more WACK clownery happened again. A new shuffle unit/supergroup debuted: The HOLY SHiTS! Thankfully the only gang parade girl they managed to torture with this was Maika. Though unluckily for her, the concept was “you have to eat fake excrement from a toilet while singing over a dance track that had a production budget of about $5″.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQpxOBB3ma4

It’s awful and we’re just going to pretend it never happened. Thanks.

August comes along, and it’s new single time once again. The anthem for going against the pain and continuing on even in bad circumstances! No, not the BiS song, Gang Parade got their own song with a similar theme: CAN’T STOP!

The music video shows our favourite body and 9soul pushing against a wall with their heads seemingly without any luck before the wall shatters and they all walk together, as friends, as one cohesive unit, as GANG PARADE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0pEQFo3y78

Gang Parade then embarked on their next tour, which ended with a tour final at Zepp Tokyo where they announced that they’d have a new album out in the first weeks of 2019: LAST GANG PARADE

Of course, this name worried a lot of fans. Were Gang Parade breaking up? What did last mean? Was this Saki’s graduation? What was Watanabe up to? Many other fans pointed out that the “last” could be the “last” in “last night” or “last man standing” which quelled some fears, but fans continued to talk and gossip

And in-between the announcement and album release, the tour final was released as a special blu ray which included re-recordings of old songs with the current lineup. Saki took Aya’s spot on songs from “Gang Parade takes themselves higher!!” and of course the two new girls got their share too. And they finally chant “body and 9soul” instead of 7 in FOUL.

Now for a little detour… instead of Gang Parade we’re going to talk about you!

That’s right! Saki is more than aware that she has asobinin cheering from overseas! The first leader of a WACK group to acknowledge that she has English speaking fans. maybe she reads pretty pretty GANG~

However, she isn’t the first member. International asobinin managed to figure out that Coco uses a third party Twitter application to make private lists and a few lucky fans are more than likely on it, because she keeps liking tweets about her that don’t mention her by name that can be vanity searched and her tweets aren’t tweeted from a standard twitter app. Coco even speaks a little English too! At a promotional live outside of a giant Gundam statue, Coco tried to engage with tourists by introducing Gang parade to an international audience in English. But, a member of the pretty pretty GANG fan community was there and the tourists… Were Spanish. Whoops! Thank you for thinking about us anyway Coco!

In the runup to Last Gang Parade’s release, a week of promo started with a surprise video drop: Yoru Kurai Yume (Night’s Dark Dream)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts8KnDkrrKI&

Written by Yua and Haruna, even with composition by Haruna, the song and video reference… Edo Period prostitutes! Do Haruna’s parents know what she writes about? The video even ebbs onto the more gravure side of idol, with minimal appearances from the GP girls in lieu of some genuine working girls on their walk around a red light district. A relatively laid back sound in contrast to the high energy they’re known for, the song is a standout on the album and unlike the rest of the promo tracks to come.

Over the course of the week, fast paced aggressive bops like “Jealousy Marionette” dropped in addition to emotional heart-pounders like “Message” on Soundcloud until New Year’s Eve… the video to LAST!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y932g_4QfOE

With motifs taken from primal. by BiS, LAST was set to become Gang Parade’s trademark song next to Plastic 2 Mercy. In a similar vein to Beyond the Mountain and CAN’T STOP, LAST deals with the struggle of moving forward against it all, making it clear that the “last” in “Last Gang Parade” is about how long you’ve lasted and how proud you should be.

With the girls all lifting each other’s spirits when things go wrong and generally playing together, the video is a heartwarming playground culminating in the phrase “making a new chaos” floating above them while they run around a football pitch.

And then a few weeks later in 2019, LAST GANG PARADE finally arrives proper

Gang Parade were closer as a sisterhood than ever, going from taking themselves higher to standing tall on a peak beyond the mountain. They were at the top of their game, one of the hardest working and strongest units under WACK.

But then… the second meaning of “LAST” finally came to light…

Just kidding! Not every surprise on behalf of Watanabe has to be awful!

On the first day of the ggWACK tour, a tour celebrating all of WACK’S major groups, Gang Parade announced that they were getting a MAJOR LABEL DEBUT! A sub label under Universal Japan created just for them: Fuelled by Mentaiko! Who says when you’re at the top the only way is down? Gang Parade were continuing to go higher and higher, they can’t stop. The “last” was also their last indie label release! As a surprise and a goodbye to T-Palette Records and their manager, the album contained a hidden bonus track called “PALET”

And that’s the history of Gang Parade! From a badly behaved cosplay duo stage diving over drum machine beats to a power-pop unit who trash the stage to a ragtag band of sisters here to incite a new form of chaos, the ashes of BiS’ legendary lineup had became something new entirely.

Gang Parade refuse to stand in the shadow of another group, they cast their own and with their first major label single coming in April, Gang Parade will keep taking themselves higher and higher and HIGHER.

#GANG PARADE #Column Parade

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officialjameelajamil · 7 years ago

Text

What we need to learn from the Aziz Ansari clusterfuck

This is not actually an article about him, the claw, or anything to do with the night in question that we are all reading about this weekend. I wasn’t there. We haven’t heard his account, and so I have no right, nor inclination, to comment.

But it has indeed sparked an interesting conversation about consent, both technical and more importantly, emotional, and how vital it is to read the room and make sure the other person is not just willing, but damn well enthusiastic. Especially, in my opinion, if that person is the one to be penetrated. You want to enter them. You best ensure you are a welcome guest, not someone who just begged, pressured, guilt-tripped or harassed their way inside.

There are men I know who are respectful and patient in sexual scenarios, who I daresay are actually turned off if a woman isn’t very obviously enjoying herself. These men are sadly the exception, not the norm.

Our society has mislead men. We have allowed pornography to continuously promote that narrative that a woman is a hole for a man to enjoy when and how he feels like it. Very rarely is a woman’s needs paid much/any attention to in porn, and when it is, it’s often illustrated as the woman just happening to enjoy whatever the man does, even if she doesn’t at first, without fail, she always comes round to his brilliant idea, and is the good sport we all hoped she would be.

A lot of pornography is dedicated, quite literally, to the thrill being how much a woman literally didn’t want to have sex at all and how he did it, really violently, anyway. What is going on?

Then we have music videos where the girls are always practically naked and performing rehearsed dance routines for the men, who are sitting there on their arses, sometimes in outdoor winter layers, doing nothing other than enjoying their needs being met.

Then you have music lyrics which went from, “Try a little tenderness,” to MURDER THAT PUSSY. BEAT THAT PUSSY UP. PUT THAT PUSSY IN A TOASTER. SHRED THE PUSSY AND PUT IT IN THE BIN. THROW THE PUSSY OUT THE WINDOW. FLUSH THE PUSSY DOWN THE TOILET.

(Poor old pussy having a terrible time.)

Our society, the internet, and even our most mainstream media, constantly perpetuate the idea that men do not need to worry about what our needs and boundaries are. They just need technical consent, however that consent is acquired.

CONSENT SHOULDN’T BE THE GOLD STANDARD. That should be the basic foundation. Built upon that foundation should be fun, mutual passion, equal arousal, interest and enthusiasm. And it is any man or woman’s right at ANY time to stop, for whatever reason.

We also need to reassure women that their fear of being thought of as “difficult” “awkward” or god forbid, “frigid,” should be completely eradicated, effective immediately. These are stereotypes created by the patriarchy, about women, to rather astonishingly, douse women in shame for feeling ownership over their own bodies and moving at a pace they are comfortable with. If you think that he won’t call you again because you weren’t ready to meet his sexual needs on his schedule, then HE DOESN’T LIKE YOU VERY MUCH. Women have traditionally been taught to please, to placate and to avoid embarrassing a man. This has to stop, and it has to come from us. If a man asks you to put his penis in your mouth, and you don’t want to, but you do it because you want him to call you again, you are doing yourself a disservice and have to accept some responsibility. If he is not actively pressuring you, but you feel pressured by his eagerness, desperation, or the fear of his disappointment, then it is frankly on YOU to say no and act in honour of your needs. (Obviously in a situation where you feel in any danger at all, this is a completely different case.)

It is fairly modern for women to be allowed to choose who they marry. It is very modern for women to be “allowed” to have casual sex. It is extremely modern for women to ask to have their needs met and for that to be considered an achievement for a man. WHAT EVEN IS FAKING AN ORGASM? What does that say about women’s attitudes towards their role in the bedroom? “I’m going to congratulate him for something he didn’t take the time or make the effort to do?!” Women’s magazines forever, constantly writing about “how to please him” Very few men’s magazines with titles about “how to give her the orgasm of her life.”

The subliminal messaging is thorough and it is constant.

If a woman is not enjoying herself thoroughly, throughout your entire sexual engagement, and is not delighted about all the things your are doing together, then STOP. YOU ARE FAILING. This should not be your idea of fun. This is not sex. This is just a wank, you are using another body for, regardless of her needs or desires.

Women must learn that “no” is a right, not a privilege.

I hope one day more young women in the public eye, in music videos and on instagram, use their platforms, when being sexual, to promote a balanced approach to arousal, one that promotes pleasure for both parties involved.

I hope men stop singing about putting pussies in blenders and making Pussy humus out of them, or whatever.

I hope the men (who don’t already) actually realise and come to terms with the fact that porn is a bullshit fantasy and learning sex from pornography is like learning how to drive from The Fast and the Furious. A terrible idea.

And I also hope men start to understand one day, that women have been oppressed since the beginning of time. We are only just starting to find our voices and demand equality. Do not abuse our conditioning to bend to your whims. Especially in the bedroom.

“erm…Ok” shouldn’t be encouragement enough for you.

You can and must do better.

#blog

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heringstuff · 7 years ago

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I already liked her on The Good Place and now I like Jameela Jamil even more. I love that she’s criticizing pornography here.

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justincaseitmatters · 4 years ago

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Rewind: A Man and His Film

L.Q. Jones returns to KC with his cautionary tale, A Boy and His Dog

by Dan Lybarger KCActive.com April 14, 2010

At 82, character actor L.Q. Jones has a lot to be proud of. Even if his name doesn’t sound familiar, it’s a safe bet that he’s been in the movie theater with you or on your TV. The tall Texas-born actor with the craggy voice and a bushy mustache has been in The Wild Bunch, Casino, Gunsmoke, Hell is for Heroes, Rawhide and even the movie version of A Prairie Home Companion, directed by Kansas City’s own Robert Altman.

He’s collaborated with everyone from Elvis Presley to Marlon Brando to Meryl Streep to Martin Scorsese to Charlton Heston to Clint Eastwood to Sir Anthony Hopkins to Antonio Banderas.

Because he’s best known for starring in a long string of television and movie westerns, it initially seems odd that Jones is in his own words “inordinately proud” of having written and directed a 1975 science fiction film that has stayed in theaters like gum under the seats. This is despite the fact that A Boy and His Dog has been on video and “Netflixable.”

The film received the 1976 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation at the 34th World Science Fiction Convention-Mid America. Jones came to Kansas City to promote the film when it originally opened and will be returning to Cowtown with a new 35mm print on Saturday, 7 p.m., at the Tivoli Theater as part of KC FilmFest. Tickets are available at www.kcjubilee.org.

True vision

If Jones seems an unlikely custodian of science fiction writer Harlan Ellison’s vision of a world where the surface of the earth is a vast wasteland because of World War IV, a few minutes on the phone will let you know the source of the film’s droll, sardonic humor.

While setting up an interview, I told Jones I was looking forward to our conversation. He replied, “You may not think so after we’re through.” Before we eventually talked, he politely told his other caller, “Let me lie to this gentleman, and give me a buzz back in a couple of hours.”

When I informed him that I viewed the film online before the interview, he sounded almost sorry and said, “I can’t blow smoke at you because you’ve seen it. I can lie, but you’ll catch me at it.”

When I talked with him about the film’s print, I found out I hadn’t seen the movie properly. On VHS, the film was presented in pan and scan, which means that nearly a quarter of the picture was removed in order for the movie to fit on a standard television. Through much of the film, a pre-Miami Vice Don Johnson is wandering through the frame with only a dog for company, and the sense of loneliness gets lost in the narrower format.

Even on DVD or Blu-Ray, there are some subtle shots that need the big screen treatment. According to Jones, the opportunity to catch A Boy and His Dog on a theatrical screen was almost lost. “They said, you need to put (the movie on stock) where the negative will last 50 years,” he recalls. “Of course, it cost an arm and a leg, but that’s what we wanted to do, so we took it up. Then, of course, they came back and said, ‘Well, we do have a little problem. It doesn’t last 50 years. It’s barely lasted 30.’

“The picture was sliding off the negative. We were losing our picture. When I say losing it, I don’t mean it was totally falling off of the print. But everything was changing. Blues were going to greens. Greens were going to pinks. And everything’s shifting, which is bad for us.”

The restoration was additionally hampered by the fact that the film was shot in a process known as Technoscope, which was initially cheaper than 35 mm film because it took up half as much space. Unfortunately, the machines necessary to print the negatives aren’t readily available so the film had to be restored one frame at a time. This meant the restoration and the new prints took nearly three to four months to complete. Jones says, “When we got through, you have a product just like you shot the picture yesterday.”

Not your typical dog story

Part of the reason the film required restoration is that Jones and Ellison’s story is tricky and requires a clear image to be properly understood. To say the film is out of the mainstream is an understatement. After a prologue of nuclear warheads exploding (which was added in 1982), we hear a couple of voices talking as a scruffy, battered young man named Vic (Johnson) crawls along the ground along a seemingly endless desert. We hear both Johnson’s familiar nasal drawl with a deeper, unfamiliar voice.

Tiger and Vic (Don Johnson) in A Boy and His Dog

Jones says, “We start with the bottom of a shoe. The voice to most people is friendly, courteous, reverent. It’s a father speaking. It’s a brother, a mother. It’s a military man. It’s a professor that’s talking. It’s got all those timbres. And it starts telling you things your eye sees. You go, ‘Ah. It’s the truth. It knows what it’s talking about. It knows what it’s doing.’

“Incidentally, the voice is coming from a dog.”

The animal in question is Blood, played by Tiger, the dog who starred in The Brady Bunch. He has the disembodied voice of Tim McIntire, who also provided some of the film’s music. Blood, through reasons that are only alluded to in the film, can communicate telepathically with Vic and is smarter, more compassionate and more perceptive than any human being left in the world.

“You realize the only smart human thing in the picture is the dog. All the rest of the things have become animals,” says Jones. “Believe it or not, I’m trying to get you to think. If we don’t get our head out of our fanny, what’s on the screen in A Boy and His Dog is going to happen. That’s the way the world’s going to end up if we don’t stop being so damn greedy and beating up on each other.”

This especially applies to the uncouth Vic, who seeks out women for sex when he’s not scrounging for food. Johnson was an unusually brave performer because he played second fiddle to Tiger. Jones recalls Tiger may indeed have been as bright as the character he was playing.

“No matter how brilliant, you can’t teach any animal sequential tricks. You can teach them to do one, maybe even two, but that’s it,” Jones says. “I said, ‘Tiger, god dammit, you’re on the wrong side of the boiler. I can’t see you. I’m talking to the dog. I’m not talking to the trainer. The dog stays glued to (Johnson’s knee). He stays with him. When Don stops, the dog stops, the way an actor should.”

The dog then proceeds to change positions and bursts into tears on cue in a single take. “Now think about that, sports fans. There are eight tricks in a row. I can’t teach a human actor to do that, and the dog did it in one take,” says Jones. “I accused (trainer) Joe Hornok of reading him the script every night because the damn dog knew what to do that day,” Jones says.

Local vibe

Although the film was shot in California, some of the film’s success can be tied to some intended and unintended local ties. Johnson was a born in Flat Creek, MO, grew up in Kansas and went to college at KU. According to Jones, Johnson was seen as a promising talent during the mid-‘70s, even if he wasn’t a household name yet.

“He was doing big pictures, but he wasn’t making an imprint. I talked to a little over 500 people for the male and female (Susanne Benton) leads in the picture. I worked on that for, good heaven, a year and a half to see if I had the right person. In watching Don work, I knew he could do it, and he does a marvelous job. The old adage is don’t ever work with dogs. Nobody’s even saying don’t work with talking dogs, but he did, and he made it work,” says Jones.

Another local connection isn’t immediately obvious. Later in the film, Vic is lured into a subterranean community that seems like a nightmarish parody of small-town life before the nuclear war. The bizarre community resembles Silver Dollar City on crack, only without any willing tourists. Ellison and Jones named it “Topeka.”

As a native of Kansas’ capital, I had to ask him why he and Ellison chose that name for the dystopia, he first quips, “No. Google. You’re now Google.”

“I really don’t. I tried to stay as close to what Harlan what was doing in the book. I’m used to the name. I’ve been there. I know what the people are like. It’s comfortable, Middle America. I said, ‘Hey, it’ll work.’ I’ve asked Harlan. You can talk to Harlan about things like this. Eventually, you realize he doesn’t know what he’s saying anyway.”

According to Jones, Kansas City was where he faced the most puzzling question about his five-year labor of love with A Boy and His Dog. When a radio host asked him why he made it and wouldn’t accept what Jones told him, the director mulled the question for months.

“The real, real answer is they told me I could not do it. That made me so mad that made me say, ‘By God, I’ll show you,’ he says.

While most films or television shows might employ dozens of animals to play a single character. A Boy and His Dog was entirely dependent on Tiger.

“Do you know what we were going to do if the dog didn’t work or if the dog got sick?” Jones asks. He then answers, “Me. I had makeup. I had wardrobe. I was going to be the dog, as a character, not as a dog, of course.”

“We’ve got one dog. His stand-in was a stuffed toy. If he steps on nail or a piece of glass, we’re done. We’ve got 52 tons of crap to build our sets: everything broken, rusty wires, crap, junk from hospitals. If something happens to the dog, I put on the stuff, and I become a human character. That’s losing 99 percent of what’s making it work. But that’s better than not getting the picture done at all. From listening to everybody, they told me it couldn’t be done.”

He laughs, “They were right. I couldn’t do it.

#LQ Jones #a boy and his dog #Don Johnson

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dippedanddripped · 4 years ago

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For almost 40 years, Tommy Hilfiger has changed how young people around the world dress. Pushing the boundaries of what a fashion business looks like commercially as a true global brand that just last year generated $4.7 billion dollars in revenue. In recent years, he’s collaborated with Kith and Vetements.

Business aside, the storied American brand reshaped what, and especially who, drove influence among youth culture. He was a pioneer in seeing musicians, especially hip hop artists, as powerful marketing vehicles that could culturally, and financially, create value for the business.

First it was Grand Puba from hip hop band Brand Nubian, who shouted out the brand in a song with Mary J. Blige. Then came the rest. Britney Spears, Lenny Kravitz, Aaliyah, Destiny’s Child, Snoop Dogg the list goes on.

Remember, this was at a time when fashion brands refused to work with hip hop artist, dismissing them as drivers of youth culture, and believing a too close association with predominantly black artists would be brand dilution. How times have changed for the better.

I called up Tommy who during our call early on in lockdown was on his boat. We discussed it all, from the early days of Destiny’s Child and Aaliyah wearing the brand to why he’s venturing outside of fashion, into tech, hospitality and media.

The below interview is a written version of ‘On the Record’ Season 2, Episode 8. It has been edited and condensed for clarity. The original interview was conducted in the beginning of the Covid 19 pandemic.

On the Meaning of Fashion Brands Today

When I started out in the fashion business, I always wanted to move beyond just being a fashion brand. I’ve always had the vision to become a pop culture purveyor and innovator in the world of F-A-M-E, the acronym for fashion, art, music, entertainment and sports. Because I think that in pop culture, fashion, art, music, entertainment and sports, you need to move the needle, make a difference in society and in the world of youth who are enamored with what’s going on in pop culture, whether it’s music oriented or connected to Hollywood or connected to maybe the tech world but whatever is really becoming influential in the world of pop culture is meaningful. [So] I’ve always wanted to surround my brand with pop culture, pop culture icons, pop culture movements and I continue to look forward and think very much that way.

On Merging Fashion with Sub Culture

In the late eighties, there was this phenomenon that was just beginning to surface. It was called Hip Hop. Hip Hop was really based on rap music and had never been exposed to the [mainstream] public, probably before 1988. The way [artists] formed, the way they dressed, their lyrics, their beats. In the mid eighties kids would walk down the streets of New York City with big boom boxes, pounding music. That was sort of the beginning of it. You would see a guy with a baseball hat backwards and an Adidas tracksuit about four sizes too big. It was just a different phenomenon that was beginning to take place. I was fortunate enough to be connected to the culture, and the Hip Hop kids at the time embraced my brand and viewed my brand as their designer brand.

Russell Simmons, who was starting his own brand, Phat Farm, said, “The reason these kids are really interested in your brand is because it makes them feel rich.” Because in the very beginning, in 1985, when I started creating my brand, I created clothes for myself and I wanted my clothes to be preppy, but I wanted to be very cool. I didn’t want them to be like Ralph Lauren or Brooks Brothers. I didn’t want them to be too aristocratic looking or uptight. I washed everything. I made everything oversized. I made everything super, super casual and relaxed and they embraced my brand as their designer brand.

On Creating His Signature Aesthetic

In 1985, when I started creating my brand, I created clothes for myself and I wanted my clothes to be preppy, but I wanted to be very cool. I didn’t want them to be like Ralph Lauren or Brooks Brothers. I didn’t want them to be too aristocratic looking or uptight. [So] I washed everything and made everything oversized. I made everything super, super casual and relaxed and they embraced my brand as their designer brand.

On His Early Love for Musicians

Prior to starting Tommy Hilfiger, when I was 18 years old, I opened a jeans shop called People’s Place. I sold bell bottom jeans, fringe vest, really cool hippy and rockstar type clothing. It was my dream to really be a musician myself, but I wasn’t talented enough, so I decided to supply musicians with clothing. To dress a lot of different rock bands and performers, but at the same time, build my own cool clothing company. It was always based on my love for music and my love for rock style. I mean the kind of clothing that the groups were wearing in the sixties and in the seventies when I was a young teen, you couldn’t find in stores. Jimi Hendrix would wear the most incredible jackets with bell-bottoms his girlfriend would sew for him. The Rolling Stones were dressing in women’s clothes. David Bowie was creating Ziggy Stardust outfits, Led Zeppelin and the Who were looking more like British Mods. All of that influenced me so much.

On the Hip Hop World Embracing Him

I wanted to connect my brand to the music world, [so] when I was embraced by the Hip Hop community, it was like a dream come true. Then Hip Hop started becoming incredibly popular. Guys like Puff Daddy and Jay Z started jumping into the arena and Dr. Dre and Tupac and the West Coast Rappers. There was this whole phenomenon happening around me, and I was designing into it because I would listen to what they would want [and] they wanted everything way oversized. They wanted all the jackets, all the shirts logoed and very, very bright. They wanted their jeans five sizes too big. They wanted brand new sneakers to wear with their baggy jeans and backwards baseball caps. Then they started wearing big gold jewelry and gold chains. They really created this phenomenal style that was way ahead of the fashion world. What it made me think at the time was that in order to survive, evolve, reinvent, and build a lasting brand, I had to stay ahead of the curve in terms of what was going on in pop culture.

On Staying Ahead of the Curve

I started dressing women in men’s clothes. We dressed Aaliyah in our menswear with pants too big, boy’s underwear, broad tops made out of underwear. Then I met this music group when they were in their early teens. They performed for me during my fashion shows. They were called Destiny’s Child. The lead singer was a girl by the name of Beyonce who also wanted to dress like a boy with Tommy logos. Within underground culture, it was embraced but it certainly wasn’t mainstream. After we ran advertising in magazines with photographs of Aaliyah wearing it, young women from all walks of life were asking for it. They would see it on Salt-N-Pepa, TLC, Missy Elliott. Female urban musicians. It was accepted and that led me to doing really cool clothes for women. But all of this taught me to stay ahead of the game and to stay very connected to music and pop culture.

On Disrupting the Traditional Fashion Calendar

I’d been doing fashion shows for over 20 some years and I thought they were antiquated. I thought just having editors and buyers in the audience and closing it off to the public was an antiquated idea. I didn’t think it was new or modern. I knew hundreds of thousands and millions of people wanted to come to see fashion shows. I thought this was really antiquated anyway that they would have to wait six months to get the clothes into the stores after everybody sees photographs of the celebrities already wearing the clothes during the show. I thought I should reinvent it and really create something brand new. So I wanted to invite the public. I wanted them to have a memorable experience. I wanted to be very democratic and I wanted to really change the rules. [So] I had to figure out how to change the design calendar and the manufacturing so I would have the products available during the show. And that took quite a while to re-adjust, but it’s worked. It’s been very successful. I think a lot of people will probably attempt to do it in the future, but not many people were successful in attempting to do it because of the logistics involved.

On Honing His Design Signature

I love the fact that we years ago established a look, a feel to the brand that is standing with us today. We are, if you close your eyes and you think of a Tommy Hilfiger brand, whether it’s a pair of headphones or a pair of sneakers, you see red, white, and blue. Years ago when Nike took the name off the swoosh, I think it was in ’86. I thought, okay, Phil Knight is a genius. He just took the name of his company off his logo and people know what his logo stands for [today]. I had that dream to do that at some point in time.I did it about, I think, 10 years ago when I felt that most people knew that the red, white and blue flag is. I believe in brand identity in a big way, regardless of what you’re selling or producing. I always think it can evolve and I always think it can change and be reinvented. Whereas I think a lot of people don’t think about those things because they think that the company name is the company name and they’re going to make a certain product line and stay within those confines.

Working With Celebrities as Co-Creators

Well, this all sort of happened while we were thinking of developing the see-now-buy-now fashion show extravaganza. I thought, why are we designing all of these products when in fact, some of these young people like Gigi [Hadid] who was on our runway has a sense of style that’s very cool and relevant, and she could actually influence us? I asked her to co-design with me and we did the Tommy x Gigi collections that were incredibly successful. It wasn’t just having Gigi Hadid as the face of the brand, but as the creative influencer of the brand. Then we did the same with Lewis [Hamilton] and the same with Zendaya. I don’t want to do what was. I want to do what is next. I really believe that a lot of it has to do with a digital experience. A lot of it has to do with the type of shopping experience that is modern and new, as opposed to, I don’t know, just going into a store or going on a website, looking at still images. I really believe it’s going to change. I want to be ahead of that change.

On Expanding the Brand

We’re going forward in a new way. The livestream shopping [platform] we’re creating is really allowing us to build our own broadcast channel through social media. We really believe that getting in front of the consumer in a unique way and a modern way is the best way. I’m [also] looking at new technologies. I’m looking at the digital world and figuring out how it connects with our world. I really believe that media and entertainment are such an enormous part of our lives today. I cannot stress how important it is. I want to be a fashion media entertainment brand. I don’t want to be just a fashion brand. I think being just a fashion brand is very limiting and somewhat boring even. That’s exactly why I’m reaching beyond just fashion. So we’ll go beyond just being a fashion brand. We’re developing products that are connected to one’s lifestyle like electronics, headphones, chargers, gadgets, hotels, residences, experiences, health, and wellness. I like what’s going on in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, in the VR world. [I want to] collide all of this together and come up with our own product ranges that are outside of fashion.

It’s a risk. I think that a lot of fashion brands run by large corporations are afraid of risk. I also think that many brands might not have the vision to do it and might be afraid to do it. Many of them are somewhat myopic in my estimation. Many fashion brands are antiquated. They wouldn’t really think of doing some of the things we do and that’s okay. I do believe that many brands will try figuring out how to do see-now-buy-now going forward, but not every brand. I think that you always have to find your lane and once you find your niche, you have to expand upon it and you have to build a better mousetrap than your competition.

#tommy hilfiger #streetwear blog #nyc brands #fashion blog #fashion brands

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pongpalace · 8 years ago

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too complicated for simple labels (but they sure do help)

So @ericfuckingbittle made these incredible aro!March icons and @abominableobriens mentioned something about aro!March in a qpp with Ransom while he’s still dating Holster in their tags and so I projected all my own grey-aro feelings onto March because I’m really not sure there can ever be enough fic about romantic identities and non-romantic relationships.

March has never understood the big deal about crushes.

She’s never had one if she’s being completely honest with herself, always staying quiet when her friends started talking about whose hand they accidentally brushed and if maybe that meant they should ask them to the school dance. There was that one memorable time in the summer before Samwell when March worked at an outdoor summer camp and got tired of staying quiet while her best friend wouldn’t shut up about how much she liked her new boyfriend, how great he was, how Annie still got butterflies when he held her hand, so March said she had a crush on one of the older counsellors. He looked much better when he kept his avatars on and his mouth shut, but his tattoos were pretty cool and with the long days she worked with him, she really didn’t have the time or energy to crush on anyone else and she wanted to try having a crush anyways.

March scraped the crush after the third time she found herself talking about his calves and his ass in the ugly basketball shorts he always wore when Annie and Félix asked her about her crush during one of their biweekly “we’re-overworking-ourselves-now-to-have-money-in-the-school-year-so-treat-yoself” nights. Annie kept talking about the flowers Greg had sent to her desk job, and Félix was going on and on about the eye contact he’d make with a new barista at his favourite coffee shop and March realizes that she never actually wants to talk to her “crush” beyond planning and organizing the activities so the next time it comes up she tells them that she’s gotten over him and that’s the end of March's crush.

♠ ♠ ♠

March goes to a Samwell Pride Society meeting with April at the beginning of the second semester of their frog year. April’s been a part of the Pride Society on campus since they started; she came to Samwell knowing she liked girls way more than she liked guys (“Anything is more than zero,” she’d say with a laugh when the topic of her sexuality came up) and was somehow able to balance being an active member of the club with their volleyball schedule. If she wasn’t at the team house or with March, it was usually a safe bet that April was in the Pride office, tucked away the corner of the Student Union building with the best view of the parking lot. April made sure everyone on the volleyball team knew that they always had an open invitation to go with her to the meetings every week, but because March’s Intro to Geography course in first semester was at the same time, it takes a semester to accept April’s invitation.

The Pride office is exactly what March pictured when she thought of a place for Pride: bowl of condoms and dental dams on the desk; a shelf on the bookshelf stuffed full of pamphlets on how to have safe sex with all genders; boxes of sex toys piled up under a sign that says BINGO PRIZES DO NOT TOUCH (Liam) ; and a giant rainbow flag pinned up on the wall.

“Guys, March; March, guys,” April says, waving a hand at the two guys on the couch before jumping up onto the desk to commandeer the mouse from the gorgeous dark haired girl at the computer.

“Uh, hi guys,” March says to the room at large, moving her arm in a half aborted wave and wishing that April was better at introductions. One of the guys on the couch waves back, cheeks dimpling and nose scrunched like he’s trying not to laugh at her. The other guy pinches him in the thigh and readjusts so they sit closer together, and March takes the invitation to go sit on the couch with them.

“I’m Mason,” the pincher says. He points over his shoulder to the guy whose lap he’s practically sitting in now. “This is Eli. That’s Isabella.” Mason almost knocks Eli in the teeth when he jerks his head back at the girl behind the desk. She looks up from the computer and offers March a warm smile. March finds herself staring as Isabella is drawn back in whatever April is doing on the computer. She shakes herself out of it when more people come into the office and Mason introduces them to March in between bemoaning the updated reading list his advisor has given him for his thesis.

Isabella starts the meeting when most horizontal surfaces have someone sitting on them by acknowledging the land they’re meeting on belongs to the Wampanoag people and thanking them and the Ones who came before them. Beyond that, March loses track of the meeting as they hash out housekeeping details for the upcoming fundraiser. Her eye gets caught on a poster with the same rainbow flag as the one on the wall at the top and a colourful assortment of other pride flags and their meaning underneath.

There’s apparently nothing else on the agenda other than the fundraising problem because as it gets solved, people start leaving. March stands when Mason and Eli stand, leaving with a fist bump and a salute, but April is still at the computer talking with someone so March continues to stare at the poster. She’s stuck trying to work out what aromantic means, when someone clears their throat. She jumps to see Isabella beside her.

“Oh sorry,” Isabella says, tucking a strand of hair behind her left ear from where it’s escaped her braid. “I just wanted to ask if you enjoyed the meeting.” Her smile is even better up close.

“I did, yeah,” March replies. She didn’t hear a word past the greeting, but she thinks she’s learned most of the identities that make up the LGBTQA+ acronym and their accompanying flags, plus some extras that she didn’t even know existed.

“Kinda overwhelming, isn’t it?” Isabella asks. She jerks her chin towards the poster, having seemingly followed where March’s gaze found the green-white-grey-black flag of aromanticism again.

“There’s so many labels,” March says.

Isabella laughs softly. “They’re are good for people who want them. Especially when you’re usually marginalized by the mainstream, it’s nice to have something to claim as yours, y'know?”

March nods absently, not sure she can really relate. Her experience isn’t much to write home about, but she does know that she likes doing things with men and women. No one has ever made her feel bad about either so she never really thought to give herself a label. Bisexual probably fits if she needs one but doesn’t know enough to decisively choose.

“What’s 'aromantic' mean?” March asks suddenly, stuck on the different ending.

“Do you understand what asexuality is?” Isabella asks. March hesitates before she nods, Félix was pretty vague on the details when he told her about himself, so Isabella explains anyways.

“So simply put, asexuality is the absence of sexual attraction right? Aro is basically the same except it’s the absence of romantic attraction.”

“Romantic attraction?” March hasn’t ever heard the two words put together like that.

“Uh, the part of you that wants to like um, date someone. Crushes and stuff.” Isabella gives March a moment to consider that before speaking again. “So you gonna come back to another meeting?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

Isabella’s responding smile is dazzling.

After her second Pride meeting, March goes back to the apartment Isabella shares with two other poli-sci majors. They’re almost caught bare-assed on the couch but Isabella was smart enough to lock the deadbolt when they came in so March is able to grab their clothes and run as directed to the Isabella’s room (down the hall, second door on the right) while Isabella wraps herself in a throw blanket to let in her disgruntled roommate. The next time March goes to Isabella’s apartment, the same roommate, March now knows her name is Zoey, pointedly turns up her music when she sees March at the door. Isabella says she likes the feel of March’s blush under her tongue when they’re behind closed doors which only causes the blush to go further; a win for both of them really.

♠ ♠ ♠

April catches March on her way over Isabella’s after practice three months after March’s first Pride meeting.

“Off to Isabella’s?” April asks, wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. The effect is ruined by the bruise she’s got across her cheekbone from a spike from the game before last. They won the set off the block so she wears the bruise proudly.

“Don’t wait up,” March replies, wrapping her wet hair into a bun so it’ll stay out of her face.

“Oh damn, it’s getting serious then?” April says.

“No?” March pauses in shrugging on her track jacket.

“Have you DTR?”

“What?”

“Defined the relationship.”

“Why?” March wrinkles her nose. She isn’t sure what to the make of the look April sends her.

“Aren’t you guys like, together?”

“We’re just friends,” March replies slowly, stupidly feeling like it’s the wrong answer even though she knows it isn’t. Her and Isabella aren’t so cliche that they don’t talk when they have sex, or before or after, but the topic of relationships or romance hasn’t ever come up since Isabell’s explanation of aromanticism.

“Oh.” April’s silence feels loaded, but March waits her out with furrowed brows. “You might want to make sure you’re on the same page,” April finally says. March’s frown deepens but she nods and slips her feet into her shoes and leaves the changeroom. She frowns for the entire walk to Isabella’s.

Zoey opens the door when March knocks.

“She’s in her room,” she sighs, rolling her eyes but stepping back to let March in. She goes back to the kitchen table and makes eye contact with March while she puts her headphones back. March can just barely hear a heavy bass coming from them that gets louder as March crosses the kitchen to the hall. She knocks softly on the doorframe, letting herself in when Isabella calls, “come in!”

Isabella, sitting on her bed and dressed only in a sports bra and pajama shorts, smiles when she sees March. “Hey babe, whatsup?”

The epithet makes March’s stomach clench unpleasantly even though Isabella’s called her that before. April also called her babe, but she calls everyone babe and now that March thinks about it, she’s never heard Isabella call anyone else babe.

“Can we talk?” March says instead of hello. She winces at the rudeness and quickly backtracks. “I mean, hey, I’m good. Can we talk?”

Isabella’s smile dims slightly and she stretches to grab the hoodie hangie beside her bed. “Sure.” She pulls it on and doesn’t make room on the bed for March to sit but that’s okay; she wouldn’t sit anyways.

March takes a deep breath. “Are we dating?”

Isabella’s smile is completely gone. “I’m gonna say no now, but know my answer’s changed in the last 2 minutes,” she says carefully.

“I’m aromantic.” March hasn’t said the words out loud before, but the more she thought about it after learning the word, the more the label settled in her bones. Saying it out loud lifts something from her shoulders and she can breathe deeper. March understood now what Isabella had originally meant by the labels being good for people; she just forgot that other people might find knowing your labels is helpful.

Isabella’s expression softens. “Oh.”

“I didn’t mean to lead you on,” March says. “I just uh, kinda thought it was the same for you?” Retrospectively she realizes how naive that is. She forces herself to look up from floor that she made the confession to and sees hurt flash across Isabella’s face. “It wasn’t just sex!” March blurts, stupidly realizing too late how that might’ve sounded. “I really do care about you. I just don’t have uh, feelings for you. And I don’t think I ever will.”

“I know what aromanticism is,” Isabella says softly. She’s looking down at the bed, idly picking at a loose thread.

“I’m sorry,” March says again.

“S’not your fault,” Isabella replies. “Not really.” She quiet for a beat. March watches her jaw work before she finds the words she needs. “I really care about you too. But... we can’t keep doing this.” She motions between them.

March nods. “I’m really sorry.” It comes out as a little more than a whisper. She meant what she said about really caring for Isabella and will really miss her as a friend.

She listened and laughed loudly at March’s jokes even when March laughed through the punchline. They had different enough movie tastes that netflixing and chilling sometimes turned out to just be netflixing and honestly, March will miss having someone to hang out with outside of her teammates.

Isabella must hear something in March’s voice because she gets up off the bed and pulls March down for a hug. “We’ll still be friends,” she says into March’s collarbone. “I just need some time to get over this.”

“‘Kay,” March says, mostly into Isabella’s bun. Isabella runs a hand up March’s spine once, twice, three times, before giving March a final squeeze and stepping back, well out of March’s space.

“I’ll see you around,” she says, smiling for the first time since it was wiped off.

“Not if I see you first.” It’s cheesy but it makes Isabella’s smile turn more sincere when March says it. She manages a real smile back too.

She leaves Isabella’s room, ignoring the questioning look from Zoey and letting herself out of the apartment. The walk back to her dorm is darker than normal, even though it’s not nearly as late it usually is when she makes the walk. She knows that she did the right thing but she’s still sad about having to do it.

If this what not getting crushes feels like, she can’t imagine actual romantic feelings being much fun.

♠ ♠ ♠

March meets Justin at a Student Athlete Leadership Seminar at the beginning of sophomore year. His name tag says Justin but he introduces himself as Ransom when they’re partnered together for the trust obstacle course. March eyes him skeptically at the discrepancy but he easily leads her around the course when it’s her turn to be blindfolded even after she accidentally makes him stub his toe. He’s really good at all of the other teamwork exercises disguised as games too. The woman running the morning session makes sure to compliment their teamwork, and March can admit the high five they exchange is pretty epic.

They sit together during lunch where March learns that “Ransom” is his hockey nickname because, “Bro, Ransom just rolls nicely off the tongue, y’know?” He spends the rest of the break trying to come up with a nickname for her and is weirdly frustrated when nothing sticks.

“What’s your last name?”

“Kobierzyńska.”

“Bless you.”

“That’s rude.”

“Right, sorry.” Justin sounds surprisingly sincere. “I can’t make a nickname outta something I can’t pronounce.” He taps at his bottom lip. “You’ll get one though, don’t worry,” he promises as they take their seats back in the auditorium for the lecture portion of the seminar.

“I’m really not that worried,” March tells him. The wounded noise he makes causes several people to whip around in their seats to shush him, causing March to stuff her fist in her mouth to stifle her laughter.

The lecture actually starts, and Justin is focused, though he mumbles to himself when the lecturer makes points he doesn’t agree with. March is inclined to second Justin's mumbles; the frat boy wannabe 40-year-old giving the lecture seems to have a lot of opinions about women’s sports in college for someone whose career never brought him close to actual women athletes.

“Well that was a waste of an afternoon,” Justin says when they’re allowed to leave.

“It was a full day thing,” March points out, squinting into the setting sun as they leave the building. They walk in the same direction without talking about it.

“Yeah, but the morning was okay. We kicked ass at the games!”

“They weren’t games. And it wasn’t a competition.”

Justin scoffs. “They were. Games rolled up as ‘trust exercises’-” he actually makes the quotation marks, two at the beginning with his left hand and two at the end with his right. “-are still games no matter how they’re packaged to make it seem like we were learning something.”

“Well I don’t know about you, but I learned a lot in the afternoon,” March sniffs, unable to keep a straight face for long.

“Fuck off.” Justin's grinning when he shoves March’s shoulder. She laughs brightly as she bounces off and then on the sidewalk.

They get dinner together at the dining hall, and Justin continues his pursuit of a nickname for March.

“Greater men than you have tried,” March tells him. “I’m unnicknameable.”

“Unnicknameable March?” Justin tries.

“‘S an oxymoron.”

“That’s what makes it funny.”

“No.”

When Justin has to run off to a late practice, he asks for her number just in case he thinks of anymore nicknames. March laughs at the excuse but happily gives him her number. Almost immediately Justin starts their message thread when he texts her about the unfairness of preseason practice with a captain who doesn’t believe in excuses. March has little sympathy for him, Becka has started the year with her sights set on a winning title and hasn't relented yet but comparing captain stories between sports is fun.

Volleyball season is in full swing so March doesn’t get to as many Pride meetings as she did last year. When she make it to events though, Isabella always has a smile for her, though it’s not quite the same smile as before. March will take it though; she missed her over the summer but understood there were boundaries she needed to respect.

April becomes the second person to know March that is aromantic during a tournament roadie and neither can sleep. March speaks into the darkness of their hotel room and April is quiet for so long that March starts to think their shared nervous silence hasn't actually been all that shared after all. April eventually replies and is exactly as supportive a best friend needs to be, though it takes a couple tries for her to completely understand the term.

“But you’ve had sex.”

“Yeah.”

“With Isabella.”

“Yeah. And other people.”

“And did you like her?”

“Yeah, but it’s not the same thing.”

“...start from the beginning again.”

“Okay, like, I liked--like Isabella. I like talking with her, and watching movies with her, and kissing and having sex but none of the feelings I have for her are romantic.”

“But that’s what Kara and I do and we’re very romantic.”

“Yeah but none of that is exclusively romantic.”

“Ohhhhhhhh."

The win the tournament that weekend.

♠ ♠ ♠

Through their excessive texting and snapping once they find each other on all social medias, March and Justin discover that they’re taking the same anatomy class, though in different sections. Weekly study dates become a thing that turn into twice weekly and then three times weekly right before midterms. Midterms finish and November hits and the hockey season is in full swing, completely overlapping the volleyball season and there’s a weird week or so where Snapchat is the only way they see each. After they have a weekend long sleepover to catch up, it’s volleyball finals and Justin brings half the hockey team to cheer when Samwell ends the season in first place. Then it’s Christmas and the new semester and Justin and March sit next to each other in the second half of their anatomy class. Their matching notebooks were gag Christmas gifts from Holster that they unironically use with the fancy pens they gifted each other.

Anatomy gets cancelled in the first week of February and because of their other class workloads, March doesn’t see Justin in person for a couple days. April tells March that she’ll never miss Justin because when he’s not there, March doesn’t shut up about him.

“Sounds like someone’s got a crush,” Nora says from across the cool down circle as March is telling April and Becka about the plans she had with Justin, froyo, and a movie that night.

March frowns at the word crush, her stomach swooping down.

“Not everything has to be about romance,” April tells Nora.

“Thanks A,” March mumbles, wondering if she’s been wrong in assuming a crush had nothing to do with her and Justin’s relationship.

Justin is hands down one of her best friends. They’re in contact constantly and he’s one of the first people March wants to talk to when she gets any sort of news. He knows her order at Annie’s and Denny’s--and she makes a lot of substitutions to the grand slam breakfast. He comes to her dorm if they both need a break from their respective teammates, to watch episodes of How It’s Made with her. They alternate who gets to be the little spoon depending on who has more deadlines that week.

March values her friendships with Félix and Annie and April and most of the volleyball team but she’s pretty sure none of them get her on a level like Justin is able to- he picks around the sun chips when they share a bag of Munchies just because he knows those are her favourite, while simultaneously handing her the orange skittles because he hates them and she doesn’t. And March has met the guys on the hockey team and no offence but they either have no emotions or too many emotions. She thinks Justin finds some relief from both extremes when they hang out together, but now she's wondering if maybe there's been another reason they spend as much time as they can together.

“I gotta go,” March says, getting up out of the butterfly stretch she’d been thinking in. April has wide eyes and kicks at Becka when she tries to stop March.

In the change room, March barely stops to pull sweats over her spandex. She doesn’t zip up her jacket over her crewneck sweater until she’s hit by a blast of February wind and even then she tries to do it up while she walks but just ends up fighting with the zipper for the entire walk to the Haus. She knocks on the door as she’s opening in, waving to Bitty and Jack in the kitchen, saluting Holster and Shitty on the green couch before taking the stairs to the attic two at a time, almost 90% sure that’s where Justin will be based on her familiarity of his schedule. He jumps at his desk when she practically kicks open the door.

“Jesus H. Christ you scared me,” he says, leaning the chair back on two legs like he does when he's ready to take a break from his books but hasn't let himself yet. “I thought I was supposed to come to yours?” His smile is confused but he doesn't look made about the interruption.

March crosses the room and knocks the chair back to four legs with a foot on the rung before she speaks. “Are we dating?” she asks. A wave of deja vu hits her, but Justin’s cheeks colour differently than Isabella’s did.

“Uh, no.” Justin draws the last syllable out while looking guiltily over at the bunk beds him and Holster share.

All the muddled up feelings that powered March’s walk in the cold over disappear and she can breath again knowing that she hasn’t accidentally hurt a friendship by not having romantic feelings again. She’s left with such a sense of relief that it drains her and it’s suddenly an effort to stay standing so she sinks onto the floor.

“Oh thank god.” She leans her head back against the desk, ignoring how uncomfortably her pony tail pushes into her head. The chair scrapes back as Justin joins her on the floor, but he sits, facing March. He grabs March’s ankle and rubs his thumb along the skin between her sock and sweat cuff.

“Um?”

“I’m aromantic,” March says and oh, it rolls off the tongue nicely the third time around too. “It’s like asexual except I can be sexually attracted to someone but I don’t understand or have romantic attraction.”

“Okay?” Justin’s thumb stills for a beat before continuing.

“I was talking about our froyo date night at practice-”

“Because it’s awesome.”

“-and Nora said I had a crush on you. And I don’t.” March makes a face, kicking half-heartedly when Justin clutches his chest like she actually offended him. “I mean I would if I could probably. I just... don’t. I love you but I don’t want to date you.”

Justin’s quiet as he processes. His thumb starts up again. “Same. I mean, I love you too but I don’t want to date you either,” he finally says. He inhales. “I’m dating Holster.” Justin blows the breath out of his nose.

March blinks, “Oh, wow. Uh, congrats.” The news manages to be surprising and unsurprising at the same time. Holster and Justin work just as well together as Justin and March.

“Thanks,” Justin blushes. He has a really dopey smile on his face. “It’s like really new- I was gonna tell you tonight actually, but…" He shrugs, trailing off. "I’m really happy.” The admission comes with a small smile that makes March's heart happy.

“I’m glad.” March surges forward and wraps her arms around Justin’s neck. His hugs are probably her favourite bar-none. “Does that mean froyo date nights have to stop?” She’s only half joking.

“Oh no,” Justin is quick to reassure. March can feel him playing with her pony tail. “Holzy knows you’re my other best friend. He’ll just probably want to come cuddle more.”

“Only if I’m the middle spoon.”

Her pony tail tickles her neck when Justin sighs into it it. “Only every second cuddle sesh.” He squeezes her once more before pulling back. March grabs his face when he makes to get up off the floor though, keeping him in place.

“Thank you,” she says seriously.

“Welcome,” he replies. He kisses her forehead before getting up and that’s not something he’s ever done before, but neither of them have ever said "I love you" to the other either.

“Froyo?” Justin holds out a hand. March lets him pull her up and she zips up her jacket properly while he struggles into his. They race down the stairs, almost taking out Jack in the process. Justin shouts a sorry, bro-ing up what little Canadian accent he has from Toronto, and fist bumps Holster on his way out. Holster offers his fist to March too. She bumps, and even does the explosion that the end just to make Justin laugh. Holster insists they try a three way first bump so it’s another 10 minutes before March and Justin are out in the cold, on their way for froyo.

Crushes to March are an abstract concept, kinda like the concept of doing her dishes right after she dirties them. She doesn’t understand crushes or romantic feelings and it’s sitting across from Justin, who’s got a red ring around his mouth from trying to lick the bottom of his container but gamely offered March a bite of his pineapple froyo when he thought she’d like it, that she really feels okay with that.

She doesn’t need a romantic partner when she’s got the friends she does.

#omgcp #omgcp fic #omgcprarepairs #Check Please #March omgcp #Romantic identities #Queer Platonic Partners #Ransom/Holster as a background pairing #in which i project very heavily onto March #like the whole first paragraph could be in my autobiography if i changed the counselor to a foreman #i hope it's clear that they're technically in a qpp at the end but neither have the vocabulary to call it what it is #this also turned more into march learning about herself and her identity because i think that's a really important part #there's hardly anything about romantic identity anywhere #and every time i remember that i have a word to explain why i didn't have crushes to compare with my friends as a kid makes me really happy #it should be noted that the bit about labels being helpful for people is only true for some people #and it's completely okay to not like or want or need labels #anyways i hope someone likes this and maybe it helps someone with their romantic identity and if you ever wanna talk about aromantiscm i got #everyone's back #i writ i write i wrote

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josie158gaming-blog · 6 years ago

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Responsible for a v bucks generator fortnite Price range? ten Terrible Approaches to Spend Your hard earned money

Players, young types anyway, don’t appear to notice these types of matters. They’re just after assault rifles (if possible the Legendary SCAR), pump shotguns, bolt-motion sniper rifles (the scope is really a boon), chug jugs, slurp juices, bandages, medkits, and defend potions. They see, and covet, skins that glance neat but don't have any bearing on video game Engage in; for 20 bucks, you'll be able to don the Leviathan or the Raven. Or they fixate on dance moves, the so-referred to as victory emotes you can have your avatar conduct, in the heat of struggle or after a destroy. The Floss, the Refreshing, the Squat Kick, the Wiggle—these have spilled out into the whole world. It's possible you'll observe people today all around you, or professional athletes on TV, breaking into Odd dances. The 1 often called Go ahead and take L is massive as of late in the Bundesliga and at Minute Maid Park.

V Bucks for Free Fortnite

An abundance of achieved avid gamers look down their noses at Fortnite, how, Maybe, that some jazz and blues diehards, in 1964, dismissed the Beatles. The dances, the alliterative spot-names, the dearth of true postapocalyptic menace: these can point out a lack of seriousness that to some would seem spell-breaking. A classmate of Gizzard Lizard’s, ZenoMachine, a gamer for longer than would seem plausible (he commenced enjoying Crew Fortress 2 in kindergarten and now develops his personal video games), will be the eighth quality’s resident Fortnite Scrooge. “Firstly, I’m not a supporter from the polygons,” ZenoMachine informed me. We ended up on the park bench, immediately after university—a uncommon strike of daylight. “It's a Hello-res texture but reduced-res polygons.” Gizzard Lizard had warned me that I wouldn’t fully grasp ZenoMachine, but I gathered that he was critiquing the game’s aesthetics. He favored a realer seem. He objected to particular inconsistencies. The pickaxe, one example is, which gamers use to demolish walls and buildings, brings about almost no damage to other players as a weapon. “How can that be?” he explained. “I see why a good deal of individuals like Fortnite. It targets players who aren’t expert. But it surely violates the legislation of regularity.” He claimed that The 1st time he played he gained—by hiding out right up until All people else experienced pretty much been killed off. This is recognized as camping, and is frowned upon by frequent gamers. “If a little something as simple as player preference influences the other players’ practical experience, you’ve acquired a layout flaw,” ZenoMachine stated.

ZenoMachine develops his individual video games employing a platform called the Unreal Engine. Fortnite, since it comes about, is developed to the Unreal Motor, too. The sport will be the generation of a firm called Epic Games, dependent outside Raleigh, North Carolina. In 1998, Epic produced a first-man or woman shooter identified as Unreal, which enjoyed only reasonable results but which, almost by chance, had an enduring impact on the evolution of online video games. Epic made use of Unreal’s underlying architecture, plus some of its sections, to create what came to become called the Unreal Motor, a fundamental platform that supports all manner of online games, be they shooters, brawlers, platformers, or sandbox R.P.G.s. It’s in essence a collection of resources that developers can use to style and design and Establish online games along with other simulations. As opposed to ranging from scratch in, say, C++, the popular graphic-coding language, independent builders and also other firms use the Unreal Motor for making their own personal games. (The licensing on the engine, consequently, presents Epic the money move to dedicate time and methods to the development of strike video games like Fortnite.) Each and every year, Epic works by using existing games, many of them all but overlooked, to soup up the Unreal Engine, to ensure that it could deal with an at any time a lot more complex assortment of calls for. Fortnite was the primary Unreal Motor four release. Amid other items, Epic needed to adapt the motor that will help its servers accommodate the huge degree of knowledge that has to be processed instantaneously when 100 players are competing in only one Struggle Royale spherical. The query of which steps have an effect on Other folks, and from what distance, on this vast storm-sieged island—the aged if-then trouble—is a lot more complex than it would seem.

“Visualize Fortnite as a visible method of media,” Jamin Warren, the editor of the lifestyle-and-gaming journal Destroy Monitor, explained to me. No matter what Fortnite’s allure to be a activity to Participate in, it is also seemingly one of the most beguiling a person to view. As video clip-video game spectatorship fills arenas, and siphons a generation clear of genuine sports activities, Fortnite is now the most considered game on YouTube—by March, there were Nearly a few billion views in the many sessions that players had uploaded—and the very best recreation on Twitch, the streaming platform. Observing isn’t only for spazzes any longer. “It’s developed A sort of worldwide arcade,” Warren explained. “As opposed to some Youngsters on the lookout around the shoulder of the hot-shot more mature brother or regardless of what, down within the mall, you've got many men and women observing, and the individual taking part in the game is actually a millionaire.”

The medium’s breakout star is named Ninja. He is a previous professional Halo player named Tyler Blevins, that has mentioned that he can make more than half 1,000,000 bucks a month by streaming his Fortnite sessions, and his cost-free-associative commentary, on Twitch (that's owned by Amazon). His YouTube channel has over ten million subscribers. Last month, he hosted a Fortnite Event in Las Vegas, within an e-sporting activities arena, and Nearly seven hundred thousand people tuned in to his Twitch stream. I’ve read a lot of teenagers refer to him as The usa’s most significant entertainer—which is not as hyperbolic as it Seems. In April, Ninja ranked increased than any athlete on earth in “social interactions,” a measure of social-media likes, comments, shares, and views. Cristiano Ronaldo was No. 2. In March, Ninja consented to a Fortnite session with Drake.

Blevins, who's twenty-6, comes from outdoors Detroit and lives near Chicago (he won’t say the place) with his spouse, who handles his small business affairs. He streams 10 to fourteen hrs daily, typically from about 9 A.M. to three P.M. after which you can from six P.M. right until Each time. All instructed, he logs about 300 hours per month. What 1 sees is his activity screen, with his avatar in whatever pores and skin he has selected, and, within an inset, a perpetual shot of Blevins himself. A ninja headband girds a Bieber-ish shock of hair that he dyes diverse hues: emerald eco-friendly, platinum, yellow. He’s a lean, boyish person who seems to make an work to take care of some semblance of the smile at all times. His spiel is goofy, caffeinated, and moderately cocky. He does impressions. In March, he was mumbling some rap lyrics as he performed, and by some means the phrase “indica” arrived out given that the N-word. Amid the backlash, he apologized, form of, and, when it came time for me to speak to him very last week, his supervisor’s one particular affliction was which i not check with him about it, as he’d already reported what there was to mention, which was, in part, “I assure that there was no mal intent (I wasn’t even wanting to say the term—I fumbled lyrics and got tongue-tied in the worst attainable way).” A scrupulous journalist may need referred to as from the job interview, but the teens I’d been speaking with about the activity were so amazed that I might talk with Ninja that I caved. At the final second, however, Ninja bailed, saying health issues. Burn! (“I’m very sure which was BS,” one of those teenagers texted me. “I think he was streaming currently.”) At any price, Ninja’s sensitivity is a sign that avid gamers like him are coming into the mainstream. They've got to view whatever they say.

Onscreen, the millionaire maintains the environs from the gamer boy. The digicam usually takes within an acoustic-tile ceiling, wall-to-wall carpeting, bare drywall, in addition to a fourposter bed. There’s a framed Detroit Lions poster propped towards a wall, together with a mini-fridge stocked with Pink Bull. Ninja can be a lifelong gamer, but he helps make a degree to remind his followers, lest they have the drop-every little thing bug, that he did perfectly at school, played soccer and various sporting activities, completed faculty even though holding down a job at Noodles & Corporation, and even appeared, along with his family, on “Household Feud.” The game skill is legit. He wins a little something like half of your numerous online games he performs every single 7 days, against all comers. He’s a crack shot and has a nose for the significant floor. As generally as not, It appears he’s rarely being attentive. He’s examining enthusiasts’ messages out loud, like a communicate-radio host, or jabbering with A further Fortnite star, which include Dr. Lupo or KingRichard, if they’ve teamed up to get a match or two: “The recoil on this detail is stupid”; “You said you experienced an entire protect, ass”; “So hold my dick”; “That dude was attempting to consume a chug jug. What a noob.” All accompanied by occasional bursts of gunfire. “To any person watching the stream, I hope you guys are having fun with the articles, man.”

Gizzard Lizard’s shoot-out in Tomato City happened on the final night time of April, which was the final night of Time 3. Anticipation was working higher. One of the ingenious improvements of Fortnite would be to introduce seasons of about two months, as on a cable-television collection, and to integrate new plot and game components. (Very last week, within a crossover masterstroke, Thanos, the indestructible villain of the new Avengers Film, dropped in on the game—that is certainly, gamers could adopt a Thanos pores and skin—and so, for quite a while, the Fortnite established gleefully schooled a variety of Thanoses in a method that the Avengers couldn't.) On April 30th, a comet that had been hovering over the island was alleged to strike right after midnight. For times, meteors had been showering the sport. Teasers—the most up-to-date becoming “brace for effect”—had influenced a raft of speculation and conspiracy theories. At the outset, persons expected the comet to strike the crowded urban setting generally known as Tilted Towers, but some clues led Some others to forecast, appropriately, the comet would wipe out Dusty Depot, which was thereafter being known as Dusty Divot.

It absolutely was not easy to do homework on a night such as this; Gizzard Lizard returned to the game. He performed over a Computer he’d designed at school. It didn’t Possess a graphics card. He’d under no circumstances been a major gamer—his mom and dad ended up pretty strict about screens and experienced by no means consented to an Xbox or even a Wii—however he’d performed Minecraft for quite a while. This standard of obsession was some thing new. He observed on his uncover-your-mates bar that lots of schoolmates were being enjoying, so he FaceTimed a person who goes by ism64. They teamed up and hit Blessed Landing. Gizzard Lizard wore an earbud beneath a set of earphones, to ensure he could speak with ism64 while listening for your sound of approaching enemies. From a length, it appeared that he was speaking to himself: “Permit’s just Make. Watch out, you’re gonna be trapped underneath my ramp. I’m hitting this John Wick. Oh my God, he just pumped me. Come revive me. Develop about me and are available revive me. Wait around, can I've that chug jug? Thank you.”

I’d been struck, watching Gizzard Lizard’s game titles for a couple of days, by how the spirit of collaboration, amid the urgency of mission and threat, appeared to deliver out anything approaching gentleness. He and his buddies did favors for each other, watched one another’s backs, supplied encouragement. This was something that I hadn’t observed Substantially of, say, down for the rink. 1 could argue the aged arcade, with the ever-existing menace of bullying and harassment as well as problem of proclaiming dibs, uncovered A child to the earth—it’s character-constructing!—but there was a thing for being explained for this type of refuge, even though it did include assault rifles and grenades.

And afterwards the John Wick was on him. “Oh God! Oh God!” Foiled once again.

A John Wick was an accomplished participant who had earned a pores and skin that bears a resemblance towards the character played by Keanu Reeves within the “John Wick” movies. (Officially, the pores and skin is called the Reaper, presumably to prevent licensing costs, but gamers call it John Wick.) It was available to anybody who experienced attained all hundred tiers of the game in Period three—a mix of achievement and practical experience which might have expected taking part in for concerning seventy-five and 100 and fifty hrs.

youtube

As the final several hours of Year three expired, gamers scrambled to reach Tier one hundred, and get their John Wick skins. Gizzard Lizard was nowhere close. He’d started off the year as a noob. Appear the following early morning, Working day One among Season 4, he experienced a plan to place from the several hours to have to Tier a hundred. It could get critical determination. For the first time, he procured a thousand Fortnite V-bucks, for $nine.ninety nine, with which to get skins. He went Along with the Carbide, a sleek one that introduced to mind a wetsuit. This was the first time he—or, far more to The purpose, his dad and mom—had at any time expended anything at all but quarters with a game.

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whatwouldfrogsdo · 8 years ago

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would you be able to tell us what your headcanons are for each character? (from the pride icons) i don't know all the flags off the top of my head! thanks :)

anonymous said:

what are the flags behind nursey in your pride icon?

anonymous said:

What are the flags you used for nursey and ransom in your pride icons?

Pride flags used:

Rainbow Flag (Bitty, Dex, George, Kent)

Bi (Holster, Ransom, Whiskey, Tango, Ford, Tater)

Pan (Jack, Lardo, Nursey)

Ace (Shitty)

Trans (Chowder, Whiskey)

Genderqueer (Tango)

Grey-A (Nursey)

Polyamory (Ransom)

From this post and this one. I’ll put my headcanons and a bit of chatter about them under a read more because it got pretty long.

Nursey: Panromantic (Pan flag in the heart) + Grey-Ace

(it was a while ago that I did his icon and only after I posted it and someone else asked what it was that I realized that this actually isn’t a universal flag, it was one someone made up a couple of years ago and hasn’t been normalized in the community, but it seems like the only one that has been is the Asexual one and honestly I think Nursey would love to have one that wasn’t the mainstream one and was a bit more specific to him. I do actually also headcanon Nursey as not really knowing where he stands on his own gender and thinking gender labels and the binary are complete bullshit but eventually just telling himself to chill over it constantly and not quite getting around to questioning if he is genderqueer/agender/what exactly. And because I had already started on the icons and would have to make their faces a lot smaller to be able to fit a third layer of flags on, I didn’t try, I simply went for 2)

Ransom: Bi + Polyamorous (Blue, Red and Black stripes with the pi sign)

I will go down with Poly!Ransom honestly. I know I’ve hinted at this in fics before, about him, March and April being together all three of them (somehow Bitty got the wrong end of the stick because March is more open about PDA and more likely to be at Samwell on weekends after volleyball season’s ended because she’s from CA and April is from MA and you never assume your bro is dating two girls at once). At that point (at Samwell) his relationship with Holster was bordering on queerplatonic, not that they labelled it as such, but then he moves to Boston with Holster and they’re both busy and suddenly getting down to Samwell at a time when March and April are free becomes difficult and- well he talks about that a bit in this fic (though bear in mind it was written before N crushed our dreams of NHL!Holster). I’m still not sure how I headcanon his endgame with Holster being, but Ransom probably finds someone else as well.

Holster: Bi

For the record in my fic Fresh (more about that later) when he says that he knows of 4 members of the SMH who are LGBTQIA+ he is one of those 4, and so is Ransom. Bros don’t keep their sexuality from each other, bro (but also, like, no need to tell the rest of the team, bro. Love them and all, but they don’t need to know this right now). He takes a long time to train himself out of the sports culture mindset of always only ever attempting to wheel girls, even after accepting with himself that he is into guys as well.

Jack and Lardo: Pan

I don’t have much explanation for Jack except for how I read it from canon, particularly the time he was telling Bitty about his past experiences. Lardo, also, I don’t have much explanation for except that’s just how I see her.

Shitty: Ace

Again this is one I don’t have much explanation for? But I see it anyway. One time he and Lardo had sex because they’re such close bros that if Shitty’s gonna feel comfortable with that with anyone when his libido is pretty high it would be Lardo, but afterwards they agreed that was the weirdest thing they’d ever done and went back to being queerplatonic bros.

Chowder: Trans

For more on this headcanon go and read Fresh. It’s still a WIP but it’s a lot easier to direct you over here than write out the millions of headcanons I have about how Chowder is trans.

Bitty, Dex, George and Kent: Gay

Obviously Bitty’s sexuality is canon (shout out to the one person who tagged their reblog of my icons with how pleasantly surprised they were at his until they remembered it was canon), and the other three are prominent enough in fanon as being gay that I probably don’t have to give this much explanation. George as a lesbian means a lot to me because with the ratio male:female in omgcp it’s so easy to end up shipping the few girls with have with guys in the comic (I mean. I’ve done that with Ford. And I do love any and all people in the fandom creating content where she is a wlw and having relationships with women) and especially when you throw canon relationships into the mix it leaves very little scope for having a lesbian character but George is there and she obviously has a wife? Isn’t that canon now? (It’s probably just fanon but still)

Tater: Bi

Tater going to America because of homophobia in Russia, and then finding his sanctuary with the Falconers with their Lesbian Assistant GM and even though he’s still not going to be out in the NHL, he just feels a lot safer and happier in general, and he wants Jack to know that they’ll have his back. But he’s still going to say that he doesn’t have a girlfriend, rather than a partner (gender neutral) because he is bi, he would date women, and he doesn’t want the media getting suspicious.

The Taddies: All bi; trans!Whiskey, Genderqueer!Tango

If it weren’t for the gender headcanons and aforementioned struggle with getting three flags onto the icons I might have put the polyamory flag on these three too because PolyTaddies or whatever they’re called in fandom are my jam. Which is also why they’re all bi (and nobody gonna try and tell me my girl Ford isn’t sapphic even if she’s in a relationship with a trans man and an enby). Tango’s pronouns change a lot, and the whole thing is more confusing for him than for anyone else in all honesty. (W: just stick to things that you can remember to respond to. T: People can use nouns as pronouns??? English is so cool. F: English is your mother tongue. T: But not my grandmother tongue?? Is that Spanish or Tagalog? I have two grandmothers. W: *facepalms*)

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