#apparently this already has almost 200 likes on Twitter | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

justice4falum · 5 years ago

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do NOT give money to tumblr user roboticwheelchair

Hi, so you’ve probably seen this post or some of its permutations on this website lately! (The old version of this post broke because I mistakenly deleted it. Let’s try this again, shall we?)

This is a “RAFFLE” for a Nintendo Switch Lite and the poster is asking people send them $10 to earn a spot in the raffle, of which there are 52. People have already sent money in.

This post was made by user roboticwheelchair and the name which currently displays on their paypal is “Mick Garcia” - it’s very possible you’ve heard their story already from several weeks ago. User roboticwheelchair claims that they were physically assaulted for being a transgender man, and that they sustained a concussion.

The BAD news is that roboticwheelchair is a blog which has been on tumblr for a very long time, and used to belong to someone named Falum Gibson. You may have heard this name from their #justice4falum campaign ages ago. They are a notorious scammer and has been doing this since 2016. LET’S REVIEW (LONG, LONG, LONG POST AHEAD.)

Part 1: #BieberMeetFalum and Meeting Ed Sheeran

In 2016, Falum ran a Justin Bieber fan account on Twitter called @bieberfreezer (account has since been suspended). They began a campaign called #BieberMeetFalum by posting a Twitter thread about their disability, cerebral palsy, and how they had intended to meet Justin Bieber personally because his music was important to them. However, the venue he was performing at was not wheelchair accessible and Falum uses an electric wheelchair. They were trying to get the attention of him or his team in order to ensure they met. (LINK)

This was a reasonable thing to post about! Accessibility is a necessity. We know this. And they weren’t asking for money. Twitter got this the attention it needed and they were able to meet Bieber despite the trouble. (LINK)

Later on, they gunned to meet Ed Sheeran and succeeded.

Part 2: #TaylorNoticeFalum

In 2018, Falum was on Tumblr as user taylorsgetawaycarxo. At this point they still say they have cerebral palsy, but has also said they have COPD (something they later will drop.) Claiming that they are terminally ill and has 2 years left to live, they talk about how Taylor Swift is their idol and they want to meet her before they die.

This came right after they had done the same thing with Demi Lovato fans, claiming they idolised Demi and needed to meet her, so on and so forth. They ran a GoFundMe for this.

The GoFundMe is now defunct, but the URL was “falumlastwish” I believe. Here’s where the plot gets a little lost, because the sheer number of different GoFundMes, donation posts, and meet-a-celebrity campaigns that Falum was running in these couple of years is... pretty wild. There’s a post from another blog here on Tumblr about the Taylor Swift fandom’s run-in with them. (LINK)

Here’s a GoFundMe they ran from a music fan account on Instagram, where they were asking for help escaping homelessness. They raised almost 5,000 dollars out of the 10,000 they were asking. (LINK)

At some point they also ran a GoFundMe for a PTSD service dog. I’m not sure how much they were asking for this one, but they apparently made $880 off of it.

Part 3: Ellie Elizabeth

This part is a little muddled, because the tumblr blog connected to it has been deleted and it’s really difficult to find archives of the posts, but at some point in early 2019 Falum started using the blog ellie-elizabeth21 to ask for money as well. The story was that they were being sent to conversion therapy for being bisexual by their father, who had them deemed legally mentally incompetent. Further stories they posted about were potential evictions, needs for grocery money, etc.

Here’s a link to an imgur album of some of the posts this account made. Many of them achieved their goal of over $200 or more. (LINK)

“Ellie” also ran a GoFundMe to escape conversion therapy. Although the person running the campaign was listed as Ellie Elizabeth, the “beneficiary” listed on the campaign is Falum Gibson, proving that Ellie was another pseudonym - just a better hidden one. Here’s the link to that GoFundMe, where you can see it for yourself. (LINK)

This was Ellie Elizabeth’s PayPal account at the time, I believe? And anyway, you might note that they apparently made nearly $6,500 on this account.

Part 4: #Justice4Falum

Now in November of 2019, Falum moved away from the world of Fan Internet and decided to try out something new. They made the blog roboticwheelchair in September of 2019 and reblogged a photoset of cats to it, which for a while was the only thing on the blog besides the donation post they initially made. They’ve gone through a cycle of reblogging and deleting things there, basically clearing out the blog every couple of weeks to make a new post.

At this point they were also @falumgibson on Twitter. The account has since been locked. This is when they posted a GoFundMe describing medical abuse they were allegedly undergoing at the Ottawa Hospital. Weird side note, this GoFundMe is still running and can be donated to, though obviously I’m recommending you don’t do so. (LINK)

They made several donation posts on Tumblr about this campaign, frequently linking it or their PayPal account and asking people to donate. Sometimes it was to go directly to their legal fund for this lawsuit, other times they were asking for money for medications or other immediate costs.

Side note, they had claimed to be in the hospital since August of 2019 due to suicidal ideation and claimed they had been psych warded. From what I can tell, the Ottawa Hospital General Campus they claimed to be hospitalised at does not actually have a psychiatric ward. It has a mental health team, but they appear to do outpatient work. It’s not really clear what they were in the hospital for at this point.

#Justice4Falum was originally about fundraising for a place to live because apparently they were in danger of being forced to leave the hospital due to homelessness. Later on they turned it into a legal fund to sue the hospital for mistreatment.

Part 5: Further Fundraising, Coming Out As Trans

While Falum was in the hospital, they started identifying as nonbinary. I’m not in any position to speculate about whether or not Falum is transgender, because that’s honestly not the point. Either way, they have started using their trans identity in much the way they use their disabilities - as a way to garner sympathy and trust, and to scam people out of money.

On their Twitter at this point, they did seem to have kind of a bizarre interpretation of how transition worked and appeared to be under the impression that the first thing trans men do is get top surgery? (LINK)

Shortly after this, still during the November that #Justice4Falum ran during, they began asking for donations to a different PayPal account than their normal one, because their stepdad was dying of cancer. There was a GoFundMe for this as well, but it appeared to feature their parents and was possibly not created by Falum.

No date on this tweet unfortunately, but right after that, they made a post about how they had been outed to their transphobic father and needed to escape living with him.

At this point, Falum has added several diagnoses to those they claim to have. In addition to cerebral palsy, they now claim to have multiple sclerosis and several mental illnesses. No more COPD, though! I’m very impressed that they recovered from a terminal illness!

Now that they’re out of the closet, in early December they begin making donation posts on Tumblr again and have now made a Patreon. (LINK: POST) (LINK: PATREON) Soon after this, they apparently left their home and became homeless, and started posting about this on Twitter and linking their PayPal.

In late December they posted on Twitter about having attempted suicide by taking 75 extra strength Tylenol. Warning for a photograph of their IV in this link. (LINK)

Not very long after, Falum returned to their narrative of being terminally ill by posting about how their multiple sclerosis (something they have only claimed since 2019, I believe) causes them over 20 seizures a day and will eventually kill them. (LINK)

Then they locked their Twitter account and decided to try something new.

Part 6: Connor Kay, “anontransman”

Enter Connor Kay. At this point Falum makes a new Twitter account called @ConnorIsTrans which eventually morphs into @anontransman. They initially link this account to their old main account, saying that they’ve switched in order to be openly trans on their new account because their transphobic father is stalking them. (LINK)

They continue asking for donations on Twitter, now with a Ko-Fi account called Connor Rocks.

They also post a story about an ex-friend of theirs spitting on them for being trans, apparently, and say they’re calling the police on her, which really doesn’t seem like something that’d be safe for a disabled trans person to do but whatever. (LINK)

On their blog at roboticwheelchair, they post stories about how they are being assaulted and mocked for being transgender. I should note that on Twitter they’ve said they are not out IRL and have not taken steps to transition.

Not only does this particular story sound kind of like the “down with cis bus” post, it’s also somewhat suspect that they allege they were called a tr*nny as an AFAB trans person, given who is generally targeted by that word. But. Moving on.

When the COVID-19 pandemic came around, Connor created a Facebook group for disability support. This was run by the Facebook account Connor Kay, which has since been deleted. It was the same account that they used to have and they’d not changed anything except for the name; prior posts showed it was Falum Gibson’s account.

It turns out they deleted this Facebook account because someone on Facebook posted about their years-long history of scamming people online. Here’s a link to an imgur album of some of the Facebook callout and the images the OP posted. (LINK)

So Falum, or Connor, decides to start anew with an all new PayPal, Ko-Fi, Patreon and Twitter account. At this point they begin to break away from linking these accounts to the name Falum Gibson and their past donation posts, although they are still using the same Tumblr blog. They change their Twitter handle to @anontransman and remove links to Falum. (TWITTER SCREENCAP) (KO-FI SCREENCAP) (PATREON SCREENCAP)

Then they tweet about how they have been diagnosed with cancer. (LINK) Then they begin asking for $100k to go to the US for treatment. (LINK)

Soon after, this Tweet has been completely deleted and they have instead started asking for money for top surgery. (LINK) I believe this is in reverse chronological order, but here are a week’s worth of tweets from them - all deleted at random times in order to make room for the others - asking for money for various reasons. Yes, this was all literally within the same week. (LINK)

Note the very last image of that album contains a reference to an “Amazon Raffle” - they were basically telling people that donations would win them a spot in a raffle for an Amazon gift card or something? It seems they moved on from the @anontransman account before the raffle could come to fruition, or possibly that they just deleted all references to it. Not sure.

In April of 2020, roboticwheelchair posted a specific donation post about being attacked for being transgender and sustaining a concussion. They said they did not see a doctor after the assault because they didn’t think it was important, so their concussion went untreated and because of it they were unable to get groceries. The donation post linked to Connor Kay’s PayPal account. It was deleted and reposted several different times, with basically the same text.

Part 7: Mick Garcia

This is a more recent post with the exact same story, now about their multiple sclerosis medication. The only difference is now that the PayPal link sends you to the PayPal of Mick Garcia. Mick Garcia has a different PayPal username than Falum, Ellie, and Connor did.

On April 12th, the @anontransman account deactivated after Falum, or Ellie, or Connor, or Mick decided to leave Twitter. Then yesterday on April 19th, it reactivated and they tweeted once again.

However, around this same time, another Twitter account under the name Mick Garcia with an icon @anontransman used to use and a very similar tone/style cropped up.

The Mick Garcia account has not tweeted yet, as it appears that they may be staying with @anontransman for their current purposes, but it appears that for some reason or another they’ve decided to start going by Mick Garcia now.

I guess it’s probably relevant to note that while I suppose there are probably some white people out there with the last name Garcia, Falum is really seriously white and it’s suspect they would pick out Garcia as a pseudonym, whether they list “white” in their Twitter bio or not.

More from the current state of the roboticwheelchair blog includes many, many posts where they’re either reposting their own petitions or basically grabbing for as many followers as possible. You can probably guess why. (LINK)

As of April 20th, 2020, there are 2 donation posts still standing on their blog. Here are both of them. (LINK)

Finally, The Switch Raffle

Literally today, April 20th, roboticwheelchair posted something that is allegedly a raffle. They claim to be giving away a Nintendo Switch Lite to a lucky winner. There are 52 slots in the raffle; they are asking that people send them $10 over PayPal in order to enter. They’re also claiming this is to further fundraise for their medication.

They are claiming their doctor has put them on an MS medication that costs $450 every two weeks. (Note that if they’re trying to make money for that right now and also going to buy a Switch for the winner, than they’d only have about half of that at the end? The Switch Lite is about $260 in Canada and their total earnings from a full raffle would be $520.)

You should not give money to them for this raffle, or for any reason. The reason I’m compiling all of this is because after months of seeing them pull this scam over and over again, they’re now promising people an actual product that given their history, I would say they are highly unlikely to deliver.

Given their past, it is most likely they will delete this raffle once they have the money they want, and refuse to allude to it ever again. Or maybe they’ll just disappear! Or hell, maybe they’ll have some kind of nebulous problem ordering the Switch when someone wins, and that’ll be that.

But it’s clear based on this history, I hope, that Falum or Ellie or Connor or Mick has a long history of taking lots and lots of money from strangers online. Like, a lot of money. My estimate is that they’ve made over $15k on this, and that’s exclusively based off of the visible numbers on their GoFundMes and Ko-Fi accounts.

Please do not give this person your money. They are not trustworthy. There are other people who need it - like you, or maybe like, someone you personally know and not some complete stranger who keeps telling people they’re terminally ill so they can meet a cool musician.

Disclaimer

I’ve compiled all of this information to the best of my ability, but I am just one person and it took a lot of digging due to the deleted accounts involved.

Falum is actually disabled; I believe they do have cerebral palsy and may have other disabilities. I do not know if they really have MS, but it’s hard to trust them because they previously lied about having terminal COPD.

I have no idea if Falum is really transgender or not. They have apparently taken no concrete steps to transition, which I know means very little. That being said, if they are transgender, they are leveraging their identity in dangerous ways against other people for money and sympathy. Their stories about being assaulted by strangers for being transgender are highly suspect, given their lack of transition and the fact that the scenarios they describe are highly cliche.

Finally, I’m not trying to harass Falum or threaten them in any way. I don’t know them. If they’re interested in talking candidly about what they have been doing all these years and why, that’s fine. I would honestly love to understand, but at this point it seems like the only thing they can do is apologise for their dishonesty and stop doing this.

Reblog this post if you want! The point is to get the word out there, because this person has been a pervasive presence on this website for some time and has not yet been called out.

#tumblr scam #signal boost #donations #falum gibson #roboticwheelchair #anontransman #connor kay #mick garcia #ellie elizabeth

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astonishinglegends · 4 years ago

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Ep 205: Terry Carnation's "Dark Air" and Rich Hatem

“Imagine the universe, compressed on the head of a pin…”

– Scott’s remembrance of a Carl Sagan quote, which, turns out, probably originates from a parody impression of Carl Sagan

Description:

We have a very special guest joining us tonight, metaphysical "astralnaut," philosopher of the liminal, "Pope of the Paranormal," and host of the AM Radio talk show Dark Air, Terry Carnation. Terry first got his start in the paranormal radio genre when unexpectedly thrust into taking over for another show. While working as a late-night rock n' roll Disc Jockey for an FM station in Buffalo, NY, in 1992, Reginald Wilcox, the host of the paranormal call-in show that aired after Terry's slot was mysteriously murdered while Terry was in the bathroom... or so he claims. In his unflappable sense of duty, apparently stronger than his sense of legal obligation, Terry immediately took over the role of consigliere for listeners stupefied by the supernatural. And in Terry's words, "that's how a legend was created." Now, after a three-year hiatus, Terry Carnation returns with a new podcast, also called Dark Air, available starting April 1, 2021, wherever podcasts are given away for free. While you may not have heard of him, there will be something uneasily familiar about his voice and visage. And the audience will come to know his strange power for tearing off the head of disbelief and reaching down deep into our souls to yank out the viscera of our darkest fears and mysteries. Wrapped around our interview with Terry, our good buddy Rich Hatem joins us once again to discuss his latest adventures and projects. We'll also con him into playing our version of a game show, in the spirit of America's NPR radio program Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! and Britain's Would I Lie to You? We'll tell Rich three outrageous paranormal stories, and he has to guess which one is fake. Please join us for an episode of inscrutable levity.

Reference Links:

Terry Carnation’s website, TerryCarnation.com

Terry Carnation and Dark Air on Audioboom, where you can subscribe to the platform of your choice

Dark Air with Terry Carnation on Apple Podcasts

Follow Terry Carnation on Instagram

Follow Terry Carnation on Twitter

Terry Carnation on Facebook

Where to stream DC Titans

“TERRIBLE FLYING JELLY BAGS aka DOMSTEN BLOBS: (SWEDEN)” by Rob Morphy on cryptopia.us

National Public Radio’s Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me!

The BBC One panel show involving true and false tales, Would I Lie To You?

“The Story Behind The Haunted Donkey Lady Bridge In Texas Will Send Chills Down Your Spine” from OnlyInYourState.com

“South Texas Haunted Folklore: The Tale of the Converse Werewolf” from KSAT.com

On a totally unrelated subject…

Rainn Wilson is best known for playing the role of Dwight Schrute on NBC's The Office. Additional film and television credits include Galaxy Quest, Almost Famous, The Rocker, Super, Six Feet Under, Juno, Backstrom, Star Trek Discovery, Thom Pain, The Meg, Mom, Don't Tell a Soul and Utopia. He will also be appearing in the forthcoming podcast Dark Air with Terry Carnation. Wilson co-founded SoulPancake, a digital media company, and the Lide Foundation, an educational initiative in rural Haiti that empowers at-risk women and girls through the arts.

Dark Air with Terry Carnation was created by Rainn Wilson and Aaron Lee and is produced by Thom Harp and Chris Kelly. Dark Air with Terry Carnation is a production of Imperial Mammoth, Audioboom and Kelly&Kelly. Theme music by Marcos Moscat

This episode features the voice talents of Jinous Khjadivian and Dana Davis as the two audience callers.

Please help out our good friend Stan Gordon, by purchasing his books on Amazon and Barnes & Noble – you’re gonna love ‘em!

At Barnes & Noble:

Silent Invasion: The Pennsylvania UFO-Bigfoot Casebook

Astonishing Encounters: Pennsylvania’s Unknown Creatures, Casebook 3

Really Mysterious Pennsylvania: UFOs, Bigfoot, and Other Weird Encounters, Casebook 1

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Credits:

Episode 205: Terry Carnation’s “Dark Air“ and Rich Hatem. Produced by Scott Philbrook & Forrest Burgess; Audio Editing by Sarah Vorhees Wendel. Sound Design by Ryan McCullough; Tess Pfeifle, Producer, and Lead Researcher; Research Support from the astonishing League of Astonishing Researchers, a.k.a. The Astonishing Research Corps, or "A.R.C." for short. Copyright 2021 Astonishing Legends Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

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arcadialedger · 5 years ago

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The Harry Potter Wizarding Schools Map: A Rant/ Meta

*takes deep breath

Okay. I am a huge fan of Harry Potter. I even enjoyed the first Fantastic Beasts film. However, I am not afraid to call out Wizarding World canon when it screws up royally.

And, well, the recent map of all of the Wizarding schools is just that. A royally big screw up.

*le sigh.

Where do I begin with how geographically, culturally, and linguistically egregious this is?

To start off, let’s look at a map which makes things more visually easy to discern.

Let’s move West to East, shall we?

The first absurdity is, of course, the size of Ilvermorny. It is ridiculous already to imply that all of AMERICA would fit into one school, and not have one in, well, pretty much every major city. At least a west coast and east coast school. But the fact we’re supposed to share a school WITH CANADA AND MEXICO? Let’s compare the size of the population this school is supposed to cover vs that of Hogwarts, shall we?

Yeah. NEARLY NINE TIMES AS LARGE. There is a blatant lack of understanding of the world outside of the UK here on JK’s part.

The idea that Mexico would not, culturally and linguistically, be grouped in with a Central American school is also ridiculous, which brings me to my next grievance.

The entirety of South America going to Castlebruxos in Brazil. This is absurd enough already, once again, with the population issue. But there’s another thing here.

An entire continent which is entirely Spanish speaking besides one country going to school in the one country that speaks Portuguese. In a school named in Portuguese.

There should, realistically, be a separate Central American school, Brazilian school, and one for general South America. Probably two, actually, one down in Argentina.

Western Europe is fine because that the region JK Rowling knows. Besides the fact that Italy has no Wizarding School. You know, even though the spells in the series ARE IN FUCKING LATIN (Yes, I am an angry Italian)

Let’s move on to Africa. Ah, Africa, a culturally diverse continent with over 200 languages and hundreds of individual cultures— relegated to one school. In Uganda. No Nigerian Yoruba school, no southern South Africa school.

“It is the largest of the eleven wizarding schools, accepting students from all over Africa”—https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Uagadou_School_of_Magic

What’s the population of Africa, might you ask?

BILLION. BILLION. ALMOST TWENTY TIMES THE POPULATION OF THE UK.

Jk, your ignorance is showing.

Now, I’m fine with Russia having its own school. It actually makes sense and isn’t infeasbale.

But the rest of Asia? Is a travesty.

Not only is there no Wizarding School for the Middle East, the cradle of civilization, but CHINA AND INDIA, THE TWO MOST POPULATED COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD WITH TOTALLY DIFFERENT CULTURES, SHARE A BLOODYDAMN SCHOOL.

There should be a Southwest Asian school, if not multiple schools in India. There should be a separate Chinese school. There should be a separate South East Asian school, not grouped in the bloodydamn Pacific.

China and India ALONE account for 2.8 BILLION PEOPLE. That is over 40x the population of the UK, and this apparently isn’t even the biggest school. Did JK Rowling even think this through?

There are 22 official languages in India alone, not including the hundreds of dialects. There are 297 living languages in China. This. Would. Never. Work. Culturally or linguistically.

Then we have the Japanese school, which population wise is fine, but the name is entirely wrong linguistically, as explained by a Japanese speaker on Twitter here.

And lastly the Pacific School. Size wise this is perfectly fine, as including the populations of Australia and the Pacfic Islands it only rounds out to about 28 million people. Including the southeast Asian countries and New Zealand, I’d say it rounds out just fine. But geographically and culturally? Not likely to work. The Pacific Islands are of tribal tradition, with many of the islands having their own language, culture, religion, etc. Just like Native Americans, the nature of TV wit culture would probably mean the Pasifika people don’t attend a big regional school, but smaller individual schools on their islands.

So there you have it. All of my grievances with this absurd map of the world’s wizarding schools. This truly showcases an exceptional cultural and geographical ignorance of the world.

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allsassnoclass · 4 years ago

Note

Ooooo 48 for mashton for the prompts maybe?

alright alright alright this took a long time because I got distracted by dinner, washing dishes, and then a movie (whoops)

48. I called you at 2 am because I need you

Ashton shifts again and tries to take a few deep breaths, but the uncomfortable feeling in his stomach doesn't lessen. It's been building for a few days, this weight that keeps amplifying the negative voices in his head the second he turns out the light. Things are going well: there's no reason for the feeling of dread that's making his shoulders tense up constantly. Even so, he can't seem to get rid of it.

You are not worthless. You are doing enough. You deserve every piece of success that you've gotten and you are loved by those around you.

Ashton repeats it in his head like a mantra. The words feel empty.

It's been a while since he's had a night like this, but a few bad reviews of the album and some offhand comments on Twitter apparently were enough to help trigger it. Added to the fact that his exercise routine has been slipping, sleep has become elusive, and he's got about 200 unanswered emails of everyone trying to coordinate promo and lock in details for tour, he can see how the spiral started. That doesn't mean he has any better idea on how to end it.

He's reaching for his phone before he fully processes the action, barely glancing at the time before dialing and pressing it to his ear.

Michael picks up almost immediately, and it lessens some of the pressure in his chest.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Mike. Sorry, did I wake you?"

"No, I wasn't asleep yet," Michael says. Ashton can hear the rustle of sheets on the end of the line. While he maybe hadn't woken Michael fully, a few minutes later and he probably could have. A twinge of guilt zips through his veins.

"What's up?" Michael asks.

"Nothing much," Ashton answers automatically. Michael snorts. "Sorry. You don't have to talk to me. I can hang up and you can go to bed."

"Ash, you already called. You might as well tell me what's wrong."

"It's just a bad night."

Michael takes a breath. Ashton can hear him shifting again.

"Are you safe?"

"Yeah. I'm not going to do anything stupid, I just feel shitty."

"Okay. I'm coming over."

"No, you don't have to--"

"I want to," Michael interrupts. "Please? Can I come over?"

Ashton can't really resist Michael when he uses that tone of voice.

"Okay."

"Do you want to talk about it now or do you want to hear about my day until I get there?"

"Your day," Ashton says. Michael stays on the line and gives Ashton a complete play by play of what he did, starting with how his back hurt when he woke up and ending with a detailed description of the game he played before getting in bed. He lets the words wash over him, drowning out the negative thoughts he'd been plagued with. He makes himself get up to unlock the door, and then Michael is right there on his doorstep, hanging up his phone and giving Ashton a once-over.

"Want a hug?" he asks. Ashton nods.

Ashton likes how Michael hugs. It doesn't feel suffocating, but he's a solid presence against him, warm and comforting and letting Ashton know that there's someone else who can hold him up if he needs.

"Come on," Michael says, nudging him further inside. He's wearing pajama pants and his hair is a bit messy, a fingerprint smudge on his glasses. He looks soft. Ashton wants another hug, and this time he doesn't want to let go.

Michael leads the way to Ashton's room, pulling him under the covers and turning on his side to face him.

"So?" he prompts after a minute. Ashton wants to brush his hair out of his eyes, so he does. Michael takes his hand and holds it between them, warm and soft and comforting.

The dam breaks and Ashton releases everything that's been building up inside of him. Michael doesn't interrupt, just silently watches him and occasionally squeezes his hand. That's something he loves about Michael: he understands that sometimes feelings need to be released, regardless of what he's saying or how true these thoughts may be.

When he finally falls silent, exhausted but a bit lighter, Michael squeezes his hand again.

"I love you," he says. "You're a necessary part of the band, and you keep us all together. We put out a good fucking album, and you deserve to feel proud of what you've done. Tomorrow we can get started on chipping away at some of those emails together. It's going to be okay."

Michael doesn't lie to him. Tonight, his words ease even more of the weight off of him.

"Thanks," he says.

"Think you can sleep?" Michael asks. Ashton nods. "Do you want to cuddle, or do you want space? I'm a great cuddler, as you know, and you're very cuddly as much as you try to deny it."

Ashton hates asking to be held, but he has no qualms about turning over and tugging Michael's arms around him until they're pressed together, back to front. Michael spits some of his hair out of his mouth and slots their legs together.

Ashton feels the last of his heaviness dissolve and finally slips off to sleep.

#mashton #my writing #drabble #I just like when Ashton is taken care of

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 4 years ago

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* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 4, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

While coronavirus continues to burn across the country, Trump is focusing instead on continuing to contest the election results and on the Pentagon.

The main story in the country continues to be the coronavirus. As of tonight, according to the New York Times, more than 14,441,700 people in the U.S. have been infected with the virus and at least 278,900 have died. Official daily death counts are well over 2000.

As several states continue to count votes from the November election, President-Elect Joe Biden’s popular vote margin over Trump is now more than 7 million. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan, all states in which Trump contested the vote, have already certified their election results for Biden. In all six of those states, judges have ruled that Trump’s lawyers have provided no evidence of fraud. They have used words like “baseless,” “flimsy,” “obviously lacking,” “dangerous,” and “not credible.”

Trump’s obsession with winning an election he has clearly lost has brought into relief the struggle for control over the Republican Party. Trump is clearly trying to turn the party into a vehicle for loyalty to him and him alone. He has always turned on those who no longer serve his interests: Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions was one of the first elected Republicans to support Trump’s 2016 presidential candidacy, giving it an air of legitimacy. He left the Senate to become Trump’s first Attorney General, only to have Trump turn against him when he recused himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, because he had lied about his own contacts with Russians. Trump forced Sessions to resign, and when Sessions ran again for the Senate, endorsed his rival and attacked Sessions on Twitter. Sessions lost his primary.

Now Trump has turned on men who similarly sacrificed their careers for his. Three days ago, Trump’s loyalist Attorney General, William Barr, undercut Trump’s election fraud arguments when he said that he had not seen such fraud. This apparently so infuriated Trump that he is considering firing Barr. Then, this morning, Trump turned on loyalist Louis DeJoy at the head of the United States Postal Service, who removed mail sorting machines and changed USPS rules to slow mail-in ballots expected to be for Biden. Trump tweeted that the USPS “is responsible for tampering with hundreds of thousands of ballots” and thus stole the election from him. He called the USPS a “long time Democrat stronghold,” although DeJoy is a major Trump supporter and donor.

While Trump is talking about running again in 2024, his turning against his most loyal supporters in the Republican Party will not inspire others to rally to his banner. Instead, it may simply be that he’s keeping the idea of his candidacy alive because it keeps money flowing in. Since the election, he has raised more than $200 million in donations.

While he is fighting over the election results, Trump has done very little else except to replace civilian employees at the Pentagon with his own hand-picked loyalists. This is unusual in a lame duck period, when presidents usually try to smooth the transition to the next administration.

Far from trying to smooth that transition, Trump is making it as bumpy as possible. His appointee at the General Services Administration delayed the start of the transition for weeks. Now that Biden’s team finally has access to Trump’s people to learn about their planning for the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, it turns out there hasn’t been much planning. Biden today noted that “There is no detailed plan that we’ve seen, anyway, as to how you get the vaccine out of a container, into an injection syringe, into somebody’s arm…. It's going to be very difficult for that to be done and it’s a very expensive proposition…. There’s a lot more that has to be done.”

Also disturbing is that the Trump administration has denied the Biden team access to U.S. intelligence agencies that are controlled by the Defense Department, including the National Security Agency (which is the nation’s largest U.S. intelligence service), the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence services with a global reach. The Biden folks have, though, been able to meet with their counterparts at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The refusal of the Pentagon to meet with Biden’s people comes at a time when Trump has been shaking up personnel there. Immediately after the election, Trump fired his fourth Defense Secretary, Mark T. Esper, and replaced him with an acting secretary of defense, Christopher C. Miller. Miller, in turn, has presided over the installation of a number of Trump loyalists both in the Pentagon leadership and on the Defense Policy Board, a group of advisors who consult with the Defense Secretary on specific issues when asked. Pushed out were about a dozen advisers, including former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger, as well as former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Today, there was another major purge at Defense, this time from the Defense Business Board, a nonpartisan group of about 20 volunteers from the business sector who are appointed to give business advice to Pentagon leaders. The White House threw nine people off the board—informing them with a terse email—including its chair, Michael Bayer. Trump replaced them with his former 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and that year’s deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, among other loyalists. Both Lewandowski and Bossie are outspoken Trump supporters who have led the fight to contest the election.

So has another Trump nominee for a Pentagon post, Scott O’Grady, who has endorsed the idea that Trump won by a landslide and that Trump should declare martial law. Trump has nominated him to become an assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, overseeing operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Exactly what Trump is doing with this packing of the Defense Department is unclear. There are, though, three major issues on the table right now that may or may not be involved, but are worth keeping in mind.

The first is that Trump is trying to remove many U.S. troops from around the world before he leaves office, and had gotten serious pushback on that from the people he has now purged from the Defense Department. Today, he ordered nearly all of about 700 U.S. troops out of Somalia, where they have been training local soldiers to hold ground against terrorists. They will not come home, though; they are being sent elsewhere in Africa.

There is also still hanging out there the administration’s sudden announcement of a $23 billion sale of arms to the United Arab Emirates, including a number of advanced F-35 fighter jets and Reaper drones. Lawmakers of both parties object to this sale, concerned about risks to Israel and that the UAE could transfer the technology to China and Russia. The Senate will vote next week on banning the sale.

There is also the effort by the White House to force the Pentagon to lease its airwave spectrum to a private company, Rivada Networks, to create a nationwide 5G network. Rivada is backed by major Republican figures, including operative Karl Rove, but established Pentagon officials have little interest in the project, pointing out that there is no proof that Rivada knows what it’s doing or that the plan would be legal. It’s also not clear that the use of this spectrum for private carriers wouldn’t impact its use for national security. The Defense Department spectrum the White House would like to lease to private investors is worth between $50 and $75 billion.

I always believe in following the money, and that’s especially true now as Trump’s years in the White House, which have given him access to huge sums, are drawing to a close.

—-

[FROM COMMENTS]

Scott M. Krasner

I waver between bewilderment and rage when reading these daily summaries. I can almost "understand" his more political moves - installing loyalists, withdrawing troops, even trying to sell access to the Defense Department's wavebands. I don't agree or condone these actions, but they're consistent with his approach to governance to date.

What's comprehensible is ignoring - in any and every way - the coronavirus and its impact. Unconscionable doesn't begin to describe his failure to acknowledge the deaths of 280,000 Americans, or to endorse any means of protecting each other as best possible. It's inhumane. It's devoid of empathy, morally vacuous, and ethically deplorable. It is unequivocally and unalterably wrong.

And yet 74,000,000 thought it acceptable to return him to office. McConnell has personally obstructed any efforts to extend relief for 8 months and counting. It's Hobbseian in its social brutishness. Even Hobbes might be appalled. And Republican leadership is mute.

I'm almost beyond shock. Since the beginning, many thought each of Trump's transgressions would be the last straw, yet nothing happened. The only apparent imposition of accountability is his having lost the election. Court losses haven't swayed him. Our perverse campaign finance laws have given him license to steal despite the misleading fine print. His Cabinet, always incompetent for the task, is asleep, silent, or in on the game. Each day goes by with no visible effort to limit his efforts to salt the earth in advance of his successor. And Republican leadership ignores or enables him to proceed unhindered.

He's unmoored. He's looking to preemptively pardon family and loyalists who are most likely would be criminally liable but haven't yet been charged. His most ardent supporters are almost insane (read Giuliani and Powell) or seditious (read Flynn and Lin Wood). And still the Republican party watches with bloodless faces and dead eyed stares, saying not a word.

What is one to think? How does one explain this to children? How can one reason with any family, friends, or acquaintances who somehow believe Trump is in the right, brought low only by a grand, silent conspiracy of wrong minded citizens and foreign actors?

Perhaps history can look upon Trump's reign of terror more dispassionately. Today, however, I and many others feel like we're helpless, our minds and sensibilities best represented by the visage of horror in Edvard Munch's The Scream.

Linda Mitchell

Hannah Arendt's book (based on her reporting for The New Yorker), "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" encapsulates the issues TCinLA and the people who posted replies to it raise. I have read only bits of it but what she presents is a picture of evil that is stripped of glamour and that indicts everyone. As she says about Eichmann, "Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all." If you have access to JSTOR (you can read online for free but not download if you don't have access through a library) there is a great short article in The History Teacher (1981) that discusses Arendt and her book in clear and concise terms. https://www.jstor.org/stable/493684

Miller and most everyone else surrounding the Deranged Cheeto--including the criminal enablers in Congress--fit Arendt's description perfectly. They are not monsters. They are not (most of them) pathological narcissists. They are sterile, unoriginal, uncreative people who have decided that personal advancement through doing terrible things is fine with them. It is actually harder, in our modern world, to be a good person than to be an awful one. Empathy, emotional maturity, awareness, and wisdom all require effort on the part of the individual. One has to engage, one has to become self-aware, one has to be brutally honest with oneself. Evil simply requires reaching down to that lowest common denominator of the id: a desire for self-advancement by any means necessary.

This is why they all seem so petty, so puerile, so childish, so joyless. This is why their tantrums are so infantile. And this is why Biden and Harris seem, by contrast, so refreshingly mature, so willing to allow joy. Both have been radically affected by what Hegel referred to as the "slaughter-bench" of history. The subhumans surrounding the Unelected Ex-President have not got enough imagination to be affected by anything except their own hunger.

[LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #political #election 2020 #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP

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freeurlshortener · 4 years ago

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My guideline would be I make use of a URL Shortener to social-media and to get short-term affiliate campaigns. When I write articles or e books whom I hope you'll endure for a lengthier time frame afterward I shall make use of the domain name ... and conceal this when it's too extensive.

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#free url shortener

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newstfionline · 4 years ago

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Headlines

Laura upgraded to Category 4 hurricane (CNBC) Hurricane Laura, a major Category 4 storm, is set to hit near the Texas-Louisiana border on Thursday morning as local officials scramble to evacuate thousands of residents. The storm’s rapid intensification shocked scientists and prompted forecasters to issue warnings of “unsurvivable storm surge” in Texas and Louisiana. “Unsurvivable storm surge with large and destructive waves will cause catastrophic damage from Sea Rim State Park, Texas, to Intracoastal City, Louisiana, including Calcasieu and Sabine Lakes,” the National Hurricane Center said on Wednesday. “This surge could penetrate up to 30 miles inland from the immediate coastline.” The storm battered the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Haiti over the weekend, knocking out power for more than 1 million people, collapsing some homes and killing at least 23 people. Laura is headed toward an area that comprises more than 45% of total U.S. petroleum refining capacity and 17% of oil production, according to the Energy Information Administration. As of Tuesday, producers shut down roughly 84% of offshore production in the Gulf as many refinery plants along the Texas and Louisiana coasts shutter in anticipation of life-threatening storm surge.

Extreme weather (Washington Post) Across the United States, there are signs of climate disaster. In California, two of the worst wildfires in the state’s history took place simultaneously, scorching more than a million acres of land, including a beloved forested national park. On the Gulf Coast, residents of Louisiana and Texas braced for an unprecedented double-hurricane event churned up by exceptionally warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico. In other parts of the Northern Hemisphere, the summer has already seen its toll of heat waves and heavy rains. Record-breaking temperatures in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad this July had my colleagues blistering their hands simply by touching the handle of an office door. The coastal Indian metropolis of Mumbai experiences seasonal flooding every year, but was hit by a year’s worth of rain in the space of a month this summer. Higher-than-average rainfalls in the past weeks led to an arc of destruction from central Europe to the Turkish Black Sea coast to southern China, where, in a grim omen, rising waters submerged the toes of a towering Tang dynasty-era statue of the Buddha that has stood for more than 13 centuries. “This year’s flooding has unfolded not as a single natural disaster, with an enormous loss of life and property,” noted the New York Times, “but rather as a slow, merciless series of smaller ones, whose combined toll has steadily mounted even as official reports have focused on the government’s relief efforts.” Experts are broadly convinced that a steady uptick in extreme weather events of recent years is at least in part the result of man-made climate change. “It seems like every year re-ups the previous year in terms of pushing the envelope, in terms of how much fire we’re seeing in the landscape and how severe that fire is,” Neil Lareau, an atmospheric scientist, told the Guardian about the California wildfires.

Lawyer says Blake paralyzed, protests erupt for 3rd night (AP) Jacob Blake, the Black man shot multiple times by police in Wisconsin, is paralyzed, and it would “take a miracle” for him to walk again, his family’s attorney said Tuesday. The shooting of Blake on Sunday in Kenosha—apparently in the back while three of his children looked on—was captured on cellphone video and ignited new protests over racial injustice in several cities, coming just three months after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police touched off a wider reckoning on race. Some demonstrations devolved into unrest, including for a third night in Kenosha, where three people were shot and two people were killed during the protests overnight, according to Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth.

US crackdown on nonessential border travel causes long waits (AP) A Trump administration crackdown on nonessential travel coming from Mexico amid the coronavirus pandemic has created massive bottlenecks at the border, with drivers reporting waits of up to 10 hours to get into the U.S. An employee at a company that provides support for businesses with Mexican operations saw the huge lines Sunday night from his home in Tijuana, Mexico. A U.S. citizen, he lined up at midnight for his 8 a.m. shift Monday in San Diego and still arrived 90 minutes late. U.S. citizens and legal residents cannot be denied entry under a partial ban that the Trump administration introduced in March to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Going to work, school and medical appointments are deemed essential travel but going to shop, dine or socialize is not. The crackdown comes after U.S. Customs and Border Protection said it surveyed about 100,000 travelers coming from Mexico by car or on foot and found 63% of U.S. citizens and legal residents traveled for reasons that were not essential.

Mexico struggles to get in shape (AFP) With martial arts training on rooftops, virtual exercise classes and outdoor workouts, Mexicans are getting creative as they try to slim down during the pandemic in one of the world’s most obese countries. Mexico has the world’s third-highest coronavirus death toll—and the government says poor diets and health problems including obesity, hypertension and diabetes are partly to blame. Social distancing measures mean gyms remain closed in much of the country six months after the outbreak began, posing a major hurdle to efforts to get Mexicans in shape. “It’s incredible that the bars are open and exercise is almost going underground, because there are gyms that open secretly,” Romero, a 27-year-old physiotherapist, tells AFP. Mexico has the world’s highest obesity rate among children and the second-highest among adults, according to the government.

German Town Fears Ruin by U.S. Effort to Stop Russian Pipeline (NYT) Sitting on the Baltic Sea, the small eastern German town of Sassnitz has been working for years to revive its enormous port, including taking on a role supporting a Russian pipeline being laid offshore to deliver natural gas to Germany. But the port, one of the last great infrastructure projects undertaken by the former East Germany, now finds itself caught up in a geopolitical competition between the United States and Russia, a clash that local officials and residents say is threatening the town and region with economic ruin. At issue are so-called secondary sanctions being proposed by powerful U.S. senators to target companies doing business with Russia and the Kremlin-controlled gas giant Gazprom to finish the pipeline, Nord Stream 2, which is 94 percent complete. The port would fall under the sanctions because of the role it plays supplying provisions to a Russian pipe-laying ship involved in the project. The penalty, if the sanctions are imposed, would mean being cut off from the United States “commercially and financially,” and effectively excluded from the global financial system. The port would essentially be turned into an international pariah, with all its business drying up—not just its work supplying the Russian ship. To German officials and residents in Sassnitz, the sanctions against the port and the company that owns it, Fährhafen Sassnitz, are puzzling and infuriating. They threaten to turn Sassnitz into collateral damage as the town struggles to create enough jobs to keep young people from leaving. “They are firing their cannons at sparrows,” said Edgar Taraba, as he unloaded a morning’s catch of flounder and sole from his dinghy. “There is nothing left here to take.”

Greece battles coronavirus resurgence after early success (AP) Workers in bright yellow vests stand on the dock in Greece’s main port of Piraeus, greeting hundreds of masked ferry passengers with fliers and the occasional temperature check. “Would you like a coronavirus test? Yes, it’s free. Right over there, in the white structure, you’ll see the signs,” they tell disembarking passengers. Free on-the-spot tests for travelers returning from Greek islands where outbreaks have occurred is the latest in an arsenal of measures authorities are using to tackle a resurgence of COVID-19 in a country that has so far managed to dodge the worst of the pandemic. New localized restrictions, including a midnight curfew for bars, restaurants and cafes and a ban on large gatherings have been imposed, mainly in popular tourist destinations such as the Aegean Sea island of Mykonos. The number of confirmed virus cases and deaths in Greece remains lower than in many other European countries, but have been increasing.

France joins military exercises in east Mediterranean (Reuters) France is joining military exercises with Italy, Greece and Cyprus in the Eastern Mediterranean amid a worsening dispute between Turkey and Greece over energy resources in the region, Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said on Wednesday. Tensions between Turkey and Greece escalated after Ankara sent its Oruc Reis survey vessel to disputed eastern Mediterranean waters this month, a move Athens has called illegal. “The eastern Mediterranean is turning into an area of tension. Respect for international law must be the rule and not the exception,” Parly said on Twitter, adding that it “should not be a playground for the ambitions of some.” Relations between France and Turkey have soured in recent months over Ankara’s actions in NATO, Libya and the Mediterranean.

Army helicopters to pluck people from flooded Karachi city (AP) Pakistan’s military said Wednesday it will deploy rescue helicopters to Karachi to transport some 200 families to safety after canal waters flooded the city amid monsoon rains, displacing scores of people, officials said Wednesday. Although rains have lashed many parts of Pakistan, the southern port city of Karachi, located near the Arabian sea, has been the hardest-hit. Streets were flooded Tuesday with sewage water. Sewage and drainage systems in the city are outdated.

Indian lawyer in court over critical tweets (Foreign Policy) Prashant Bhushan, a prominent public interest lawyer from India, was due to be sentenced yesterday over two tweets he posted criticizing the government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In one tweet, Bhushan accused Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde of hypocrisy after he posed with a motorcycle without a mask, despite having put the Supreme Court in lockdown due to coronavirus concerns. In the other post, he said the Supreme Court’s recent activity showed “how democracy has been destroyed in India” under Modi. The Supreme Court has called the tweets a “calculated attack on the very foundation of the institution of the judiciary,” but the case is emblematic of the authoritarian slide India has taken since Modi first assumed power in 2014.

Russian Evangelicals Fined for ‘Missionary Activity’ During Pandemic (Christianity Today) Anatoly Chendemerov was handing out tracts that said “You must be born again!” in the Volga Federal District in southeastern Russia. He was fined 6,000 rubles, the euqivalent of about $80. Sergey Krasnov was passing out Christian newspapers and New Testaments in Krasnodar, a city in the South. He was fined 5,000 rubles, or about $65. Seo Jin Wook, a South Korean, met with about 10 people in a private home in Izhevsk, in the Western Ural Mountains, to talk about the good news of Jesus Christ. He told the people they should come back and bring friends. He was fined 30,000 rubles (about $400) and deported. More than 40 people have been charged with violating a Russian anti-missionary law in the first six months of 2020, according to a new report from Forum 18, a religious liberty news service based in Norway. Government lockdowns and pandemic stay-at-home orders did not substantially slow the multiyear crackdown on unauthorized religious activity. Russia passed a 2015 law that said all religious meeting places needed to be registered and followed it in 2016 with an anti-missionary law. The bill was labeled as anti-terrorism legislation, meant to prevent foreign extremist from exerting influence in the country. Local police, sometimes supported by the Federal Security Service, have fined roughly 100 religious people per year for practicing their faith. Baptists distributing tracts and Muslims teaching people the language skills necessary to read the Qur’an are prime targets, alongside ongoing efforts to completely rid the country of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

US-China trade disputes (South China Morning Post) China should weaponize its exports of medicines and drug precursors if the US cuts the country’s access to computer chips, a prominent Chinese academic and government adviser says, as supply chain security emerges as a key theme in the upcoming American presidential election. The United States is heavily reliant on imported medicines from China, something both US President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden have vowed to address after the coronavirus pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in the nation’s pharmaceutical and medical device supply.

With Hacks and Cameras, Beijing’s Electronic Dragnet Closes on Hong Kong (NYT) To get onto his Facebook account, the police used Tony Chung’s body. When officers swarmed him at a Hong Kong shopping mall last month, they pulled him into a stairwell and pinned his head in front of his phone—an attempt to trigger the facial recognition system. Later, at his home, officers forced his finger onto a separate phone. Then they demanded passwords. “They said, ‘Do you know with the national security law, we have all the rights to unlock your phones and get your passwords?’” Mr. Chung recalled. Emboldened by that new law, Hong Kong security forces are turning to harsher tactics as they close a digital dragnet on activists, pro-democracy politicians and media leaders. Their approaches—which in the past month have included installing a camera outside the home of a prominent politician and breaking into the Facebook account of another—bear marked similarities to those long used by the fearsome domestic security forces in mainland China. Not accustomed to such pressures, Hong Kong lawmakers and activists, and the American companies that own the most popular internet services there, have struggled to respond. Pro-democracy politicians have issued instructions to supporters on how to secure digital devices. Many have flocked to encrypted chat apps like Signal and changed their names on social media.

Workations in Japan (Nikkei Asian Review) Workations are a reliable way that Japanese companies are getting workers to relax in a new environment on the company dime, and also support a tourist industry that’s been devastated by national shutdowns. The Japanese government launched a 1.3 trillion yen ($12.6 billion) travel campaign, angling to get people moving around the country which saw a 99.9 percent year-over-year decline in foreign visitors in the four months leading up to July and business down at travel companies 92.9 percent in June. One solution has been basically a surge in corporate retreats, where companies will send groups of employees to work on the beach on the cheap to lift morale while encouraging some R&R, and the government is actively encouraging it. Japan’s domestic tourism industry struggles because most people tend to travel at specific times—summer and year-end—and workers take the fewest paid holidays of 19 countries and regions and just half their allotted vacation on average.

Outbreak in Gaza (Washington Post) The Gaza Strip has been under degrees of lockdown since 2007, when Israel and Egypt imposed blockades after the militant group Hamas took control of the impoverished Palestinian territory. The same conditions that make life a daily struggle there, and that have obstructed even the most basic preparations for the looming threat of a coronavirus outbreak, have perhaps made it harder for the virus to find a toehold. That could be about to change. The coastal enclave’s few points of entry were largely shut in March. But Tuesday, the territory of nearly 2 million people imposed a 48-hour lockdown after authorities reported the first four confirmed cases of the virus in the general population. For months, aid agencies have warned that the silent spread of the virus through the conflict-weary strip could be calamitous. Gaza has one of the densest populations on Earth, a collapsed health-care system, and small supplies of electricity and clean water. Health-care workers are bracing for further signs of a wider outbreak among already vulnerable communities.

#headlines #news

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eunahfmdarchive · 4 years ago

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idol headcanon / not accepting!

tw: eating disorders under the cut.

send ◙ for an audition headcanon. ( wc: 215 ) eunah auditioned for dimensions entertainment online, with a video of herself singing ‘home’ from the musical version of disney’s beauty and the beast. she sent it in on a dare from a friend, who was a big fan of dimensions soloist one and a casual fan of gal.actic. it wasn’t supposed to be serious, and eunah really didn’t expect anything to come from it, so she didn’t dance for the tape at all, but her being pretty, small, and with a serious set of pipes was enough to pique dimensions’ interests. when they expressed their interest in meeting her in person, eunah was torn, but ultimately decided it couldn’t hurt to try. by that time, she already had quite a bit of experience performing on stage in musicals, and there was a big part of eunah that was already looking for something more than school and community produced amateur theatre. she was due to perform as the lead in her high school’s production of thoroughly modern millie when she received the invitation for the in person audition, and actually used her school’s choreography for the titular song for the dance portion of her audition. the fact that she actually passed, while auditioning in such a discombobulated and theatrical way remains beyond her to this day.

send ○ for a training headcanon. ( wc: 200 ) eunah trained for just under two years before debuting as 7rophy’s lead vocal. she struggled a lot during that time, and she had to spend a lot of time for the first few months there working on her korean, as she didn’t know as much as she thought she did before she moved. she was babied and heavily sheltered back at home by her parents and older sisters ever since she was born, on account of being born a month premature, so adjusting to the much tougher world of being a trainee. her struggles with weight began during this time, when her trainers encouraged her to lose weight and her fellow trainees also started to comment on it - much more maliciously than even the trainers did. eunah was never the strongest dancer, but she had the very basics of musical theatre dance and movement down, so she had to work really hard on her dancing to get it up to scratch, and unfortunately, that fact was something she used to her eating disorder’s advantage, using it to justify her weight loss to her concerned family back in seattle who were starting to ask questions whenever they video called her.

send ♥ for a headcanon about something my muse likes about being an idol. ( wc: 218 ) despite it being one of the first things 7rophy is always criticized for by anti fans and the general public, eunah really appreciates having so much experience in so many different concepts. she’s an actor by heart, and enjoyed shifting into different versions of herself. granted, it’s a bittersweet kind of appreciation, since eunah wishes that their concept changes had been better received by the public, similarly to how fuse’s were. though, she does recognize that fuse were actually marketed by gold star as a concept changing group. whereas 7rophy, on the other hand, just so happened to fall into constant concept flux by ways of dimensions entertainment’s poor management. nonetheless, eunah is glad that they got to try out lots of different styles of music, and at least the constant reinvention managed to save them from disbandment if nothing else, until dimensions allowed lux to have a heavier hand in their songs. and after all of those changes in concept, eunah is also really enthusiastic about the more “self produced” image 7rophy are being marketed with now, what with lux writing the vast majority of their group releases, eunah’s participation here or there, and what she likes most of all, as most people would expect is the control eunah has been given over her own solo music.

send ♫ for a performance headcanon. ( wc: 210 ) eunah is a very clean and polished performer. there’s always room for change and error when you’re doing any kind of live show, so it’s extra important, in her opinion, to make sure you’re as consistent as you possibly could be before it’s time to present it to the public. she has been praised for her precise way of performing by fans, who understand it’s part of the effort she’s making to execute 7rophy’s choreography as best as she can. even if she isn’t anywhere close to being the best dancer in the group, she always makes sure that she’s doing her best to try to match them. as a lead vocal, singing is where she really shines. eunah grew up doing musicals, and that particular flare for the dramatic is something she’s never lost. she doesn’t get to do it very often as a member of 7rophy, but she loves performing ballads and emotional solos. eunah is very expressive while she sings, and can easily fall into the character of a song, and usually she’s performing from that point of view, rather than from her own. even when performing her self written music, there’s a certain level of detachment there that allows her to give a fully developed performance.

send ☀ for a variety headcanon. ( wc: 204 ) eunah is pretty poor on a lot of variety shows. at a lot of hosted shows, she finds it difficult to just relax and get on with what they’re there to do or to play along with any stupid jokes. her personality really does err more on the serious side, and she does end up get teased for that a lot on shows too. she’s known for being kind of difficult to get good responses out of, which means that a lot of her good variety show moments during her career have actually been very, very much scripted. she usually does any english speaking segments in shows, too. overall, she just comes across a little bit awkwardly. eunah ends up faring a lot better on 7rophy’s own reality shows - not that they’ve had more than one or two of them over the course of the last five years - such as to. pepe, that they filmed and produced themselves last year in partnership with kaja beauty while in san francisco. things of that ilk, short segments that are more casual, and hosting are things she’s fine with, but she wouldn’t be able to survive on a show like we got married or roommate.

send ♞ for a non-performance talent headcanon. ( wc: 203 ) eunah’s main talent off stage and off screen that’s actually beneficial to her music career is writing lyrics. it’s definitely a more recent development, and isn’t ever something that she thought dimensions would ever let her follow up with. she only got the bravery to after seeing the success that lux’s lyrics and music brought 7rophy. it isn’t a skill that she’s intentionally been honing for a particularly long time, but she has kept a diary for almost her entire life, ever since she can remember, so she has become really quite adept at expressing herself through the written word. a lot of the lyrics in her first mini album, mezzanine, are directly lifted from either her diary or from her recurring late night thoughts. it’s therapeutic and cathartic for her to do something productive with what are mostly negative and self disparaging thoughts, so it’s a talent that she plans to continue honing. where eunah fails to communicate well aloud, she makes up for it in her diary, in her poetry and in her song lyrics. she’s proud of herself for learning to express herself one way or another, especially since it’s apparently a profitable method for her and her company too.

send ‼ for a career goal headcanon. ( wc: 205 ) eunah would really, really like to act more. her number one priority is getting back on the boards in a theatrical sense, whether that be in a play or in a musical. her number two priority would be to make a television acting debut. that being said, after seeing the success of a-teen, she definitely wouldn’t turn down another role in a web drama either. the bottom line is that she wants to act, and she wants to be taken at least relatively seriously as an actor too. she knows that that isn’t exactly easy for an idol actor to do, but she genuinely loves the craft, so eunah is willing to keep on trying to prove herself. other than acting, eunah is currently preparing for eunah mini album number two quietly in the background of all of her other activities, so she just wants to make sure that the songs on the album are the best that they can be, and that she shows another new side to herself, or at least a shift in herself in the songs. she’s also interested in potentially writing more for 7rophy, whether that be a throwaway lyric here or there or in collaboration with lux or not.

send ♡ for a social media headcanon. ( wc: 208 ) eunah is surprisingly active on social media for someone who’s as reserved as she seemingly is. she only really actively uses instagram, and doesn’t have a twitter, private or otherwise. she posts fairly regularly, at least three or four times a week, and they’re usually selfies or otherwise pictures of herself, sometimes alone, sometimes with crys, her and lux’s cat, sometimes with other 7rophy members. occasionally she also posts part of her creative process - nothing that could be considered a spoiler, just a picture of herself at work and a few sentences about how she’s feeling about whatever she’s working on. eunah finds it easier to be sincere and talkative with fans when she can think things through and write them out. therefore, her use of instagram has been extremely beneficial in clearing up any qualms over eunah being cold or ungrateful to her fans and to the opportunities she’s been given. she kind of also uses it as a public visual companion of sorts to her private written journal. she doesn’t have the patience for scrapbooking or instant photographs or anything like that, but she does enjoy the idea of it, so she uses her instagram has an outlet for that side of her artistic interests.

send ∞ for a future (post-idol life) headcanon. ( wc: 224 ) after idol life ends for eunah, i imagine that she would continue to be active in the entertainment industry as an actor, a soloist and a songwriter. her acting career would be her primary focus, and she would like to finally establish herself as a “serious” actor, and would likely work mostly in theatre, though not exclusively. eunah would really, really have an interest in making a broadway debut one day, potentially moving between seoul and new york regularly. it’s been her dream ever since she was a little girl to be on a broadway stage, and with the experience she’s wracking up under her belt and her american citizenship, she’s pretty sure that she can make it happen. her solo music would come second to acting. i don’t think that she’d necessarily be doing the music show circuit anymore, but that she’d mostly release digital singles and albums, promoting them minimally but ... enough to see success. the goal would be that by this time, her name would precede her to an extent, so that she could really do her music stuff on her own terms. she would love to still be at least collaborating with the other members of 7rophy, and she would rather die than be separated from milk, but she doesn’t expect the group to last forever by any means.

send ✈ for an airport fashion headcanon. ( wc: 202 ) eunah’s taste in fashion is actually rather colourful. she likes most colours, but pink and orange shades are her favourites. she’s also a big fan of clothes that can hide her body relatively well while not being too baggy. she saves the extra baggy stuff for when she’s at home. in airports though, fans are likely to see eunah wearing comfortable, tailored cotton dresses, usually still worn slightly loose fitting on purpose, oftentimes paired with an oversized corduroy or denim jacket. other times she wears cuddly cardigans, usually in white, cream and beige shades, usually paired with high waisted pants. her preferred styles of pants are slightly ill fitting, straight leg jeans and loose, wide legged cotton pants. eunah’s airport outfits, and her outfits in general, are usually affordable. she has one or two expensive statement pieces, but she uses them to death. one example would be her marc jacobs crossbody bag. she’s had it for over three years, and it’s definitely not the height of fashion anymore, but it does the job, and has consistently shown up as part of every airport outfit eunah’s been seen in since she first bought it. eunah also often wears her glasses to the airport.

send ☛ for a public image headcanon. ( wc: 220 ) at the moment, eunah’s public image is mostly favourable, though some people do see her as being too cold and too quiet for her own good. since embarking on her solo career over the last year, the number of people with that impression of her have dropped significantly. the idea that dimensions currently have for her is a shy, girl next door from the us, who can really turn it out on stage, someone who genuinely loves and cares about her craft and art. it’s easy enough for eunah to play into, since it’s not that far from the truth, even if she would never admit to naturally falling a little bit into the typical girl next door role. during the early days of 7rophy’s career, when they were almost nonexistent in the eyes of the public, eunah was really only known for her extremely low weight. she wasn’t even known much by name, she was just a photo and a number on a list of “skinny idols”. this, combined with the weight loss narrative that was spun around her after predebut photos and videos were uploaded to the internet, was very harmful to eunah’s body image and emotional well being, and is something she still struggles with having as part of her history as an idol to this day.

send ❂ for a voice-related (singing or rapping) headcanon. ( wc: 210 ) eunah is a comfortable mezzo soprano, and she has very good control over her head, chest and mixed voice. aside from her vocal training under dimensions, eunah was also coached in singing for musical theatre as a child. she takes care of her vocal chords as well as she can. she keeps drinking to a minimum, keeps dairy to a minimum and always warms up very, very thoroughly. she likes how her voice sounds the most when she sings in her upper range. eunah is also very comfortable experimenting with her voice, trying out pop sounds, jazz sounds and theatrical ballad sounds depending on the mood that she’s in. she never, ever likes to sacrifice technique though. keeping her voice safe is paramount to her. she’s been lucky that the lines she’s been assigned over the years in 7rophy’s songs have suited her voice well, and that she hasn’t had to strain and damage her vocal chords. when she was still just a kid, she heard about the dreaded legally blonde high notes that had to be lowered because of the damage that they supposedly did to the original elle woods’ voice, and it’s the main reason that she’s so careful with her voice. that story made her extremely paranoid.

#fmdmeme003 #eating disorder tw #oh m yGod ... they are all done #it is midnight #i will now sleep #thank you everyone who sent some in!!!#i just powered them out and my brain is BUZZING

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liliaeth · 5 years ago

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Dutch Comic Con meet and greet

I’d been delaying this one, sorry about that, I’ve had way too little time. I’ve been way too busy with overtime at work.

But since it’s weekend, and almost a week since the con.

Now I’ve already made a post on the Q&A (here), though I forgot to mention one or two things, like how Tyler was asked if he’d had a choice, which character other than Scott, that he would have wanted to play on Teen Wolf.

Answer being Derek ;-)

He also talked about what a great dramatic actor he thought Dylan was, and how the two of them are still friends. That often they separate themselves from a crowd just to talk and share what they’ve been going through.

One of the things I noticed about the Q&A is what a natural entertainer Tyler is. He never sits still, and he keeps everything lighthearted and fun. Or how he meandered on the inspiration question.

Now admittedly, my memory is killing me, and I keep mixing up things he said in the Q&A and the meet and greet, so my apologies in advance if I do so. It’s why I probably should have made this post sooner, but ah well..

Now on to the meet and greet.

I’ll admit, I’d never before done one of those. So since I didn’t know what to expect, I’d looked things up online. I figured it’d be a line and getting to talk to him for a moment and then he’d move on to the next. (that actually ended up being the autograph line)

What it really was, is that we were taken to a separate private room near the VIP area. A place with nice comfy seats and one chair in the middle. And then a crew member told us the rules, you know, no taking pictures, no getting out your phone to record anything, no asking questions about Tyler’s personal life, that if the convo got stuck, she’d try and help it get going again. Things like that. And then they brought Tyler in, and we got to talk to him for half an hour, no interruptions...

This would have already been amazing under normal circumstances. Normally these things are for about twenty people, But as I mentioned in my previous post... Tyler had only been announced five days before the con.

Now keep in mind that the tickets for these cost 200€.

That’s not a small amount for anyone to find, esp. in less than a week to think it over. Or with people who do have the money, finding the time to come to Utrecht for it, and be at the con. (and there were two of those meet and greets a day on a two day con)

End result being, there were two of us who’d paid for those tickets in the room with Tyler.

Me and bohentastic (she mentioned it on her twitter, not sure if she has a tumblr)

Now she’s apparantly more used to these things, but as I said, this was the first time I ever took part in one of those meet and greets (and honestly there’s currently only two people I’d pay that kind of money for, Tyler Posey, and Jensen Ackles), so I was nervous as hell, and when I get nervous I get talky, often embarrassingly so.

(which is why I was grateful that there was at least one other person, so I didn’t scare off poor Tyler entirely ;-) )

Now Bohentastic was wearing a shirt from a band called WSTR. I didn’t know the band before, but the fact she wore that shirt, had Tyler totally excited cause he loves that band. (she pretty much made his day)

he’d already started singing one of their songs for her at the autograph line, though at the time he didn’t quite get it right yet.

aka this song:

youtube

(which really makes me want to make a teen wolf vid with it, but that left aside)

Thankfully he’s used to people like me being over the top nervous.

Anyway, one of us, not sure if it was me or Bohentastic asked about his new music, since Five North currently has only one song out. And he let us listen two two of the bands unreleased songs that he was really excited about, and that should get released soon.

I got to say, I liked those songs better than I did the PVMNTS ones. But that might be my taste in music. And I can’t wait for them to be released :-)

He also talked about why he left PVMNTS, said that it was a disagreement on what they wanted out of the band. He wanted to try new things, and his friends disagreed, and there was a constant ‘no’ going on, whenever he suggested doing something other than the style the band already had.

With the new band he gets to experiment more, try new things, new styles, and from what I got to hear of the songs, they’re definitely worth it.

Now before the meeting, I kept reminding myself, ‘do not talk about my dislike of Stiles’, so of course, after two days of telling myself this, I of course just had to mention that I’m one of the few people in fandom that utterly can’t stand Stiles... (sometimes my mouth is faster than my brain, or common sense)

He found it amusing and when I said it’s cause Stiles irritates the hell out of me, he told me that Dylan would apparently love that. (I leave it to you to take it as him amusing me on that one ;-) )

I mentioned some of my views on the show, mostly why I love Scott, how unique I feel that Scott is. And how different Scott is from your average protagonist.

See, most protagonists are pretty generic, they’re generally characters like Derek, or the every man like Stiles. They fit stereotypical tropes, and you see them in every show out there. (aka the broody guy or the sarcastic funny guy)

Scott’s not like that. Scott is kind, determined sure, but he listens to others. (he just doesn’t always do what people tell him to when he disagrees with what they want to do (esp to others)) Also Scott utterly and totally lacks toxic masculinity.

Scott doesn’t try to control others, he’s not brave for the sake of being brave, and his focus is on healing, taking care of others, rather than on violence or taking out the bad guys. He likes to talk things out instead of fight whenever possible.

And chars like that are far too rare, especially in today’s climate.

I was just glad that I was able to tell Tyler this, and that he at least seemed to love that I actually got what they were trying to go for with Scott on the show.

We also talked on how dark s1 is and how it compared to s3b (ever notice how Scott in s1 goes through many of the same things Stiles goes through in 3b)

Bohentastic asked him about his tattoos, and he gave us a better look of them. And he talked about how he has a fave tattoo artist, and how he basically picks them based on what he likes, instead of trying to give meaning to every single tattoo. And how sometimes one spot will remain empty till he gets a new one. he also mentioned how they hurt, esp. apparantly ones on the wrist :-)

For the record, yes I talked too much, and I did try and check to make sure I wasn’t saying too much, cause I’m well aware of how over the top talky I get when nervous. Seems like Bohentastic has the opposite problem and talks less when nervous, after mentioning that, Tyler actually went to lie on the floor to make us less nervous, he’s so damn sweet.

I mentioned that I’m primarily a sceo and scerek shipper, and you know every other Scott ship, and he said he was all for it. My guess is that he’d have been all for bi Scott. Too bad the show didn’t go for it.

He also mentioned still being in touch with Gideon Emery, who played Deucalion, which awesome. (sceucalion is so one of my fave crack ships)

He would love to have had more scenes with Cody in s6b, though he did like the scenes between Cody and Dylan Sprayberry. (which he brought up with no prompt of mine) There was a short moment there, where he talked how Dylan was only 14 when he joined the cast, I said i thought he was 15, but I’m sure he knows better, since you know, he actually knows the guy.

We also talked on how the show was divided in 3a, 3b, 5a, 5b, 6a and 6b, so the producers didn’t have to pay the actors more. Cause now they were basically paid for six seasons, instead of the nine that we actually got.

He talked about Lost Boys, I mentioned how I was sorry it didn’t go to series, since I’d been interested in it, and it turns out he was actually not too happy with it. Seems like he felt the script was cheesy, he was told it was going to be funny though, since he gave it his best shot, but in the end, he felt he really didn’t want to play the character. So for him the fact it didn’t go to series was actually a good thing.

He also talked about ‘Alone’. And how since there were so few actors on set, he wanted to make sure he wasn’t being an asshole on the set, cause if he had been, the entire mood on set would have sucked;

His new band will apparently also be touring in Europe, I mentioned hoping they’d come to Belgium as well, he said they might :-)

Probably missing a few things here, might add those later, but yeah, that was probably one of the best half hours of my life.

And not just because Tyler is even hotter in real life than he already is onscreen,and is the nicest guy ever.

Or because I get another two, or three hugs out of that meeting.

Or that he tried to sing that song again, and this time got it right, which he was so damn happy and excited about. I might have to listen to more of that band’s songs, since Tyler’s love for their music is infectious :-)

#Tyler Posey #five north #scott mccall #dutch comic con #wstr

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the-savewoy-letter-blog · 6 years ago

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A general but lengthy SaveWOY template

Hey, all! I wanted to upload the first letter template I made, from last year. It has a lot more info (and passion) contained, so it’s a lot longer than the other ones that exist so far. Feel free to use it whenever you like! Here’s the download for the word file, and the letter itself will be included below in the read-more as well.

Greetings, Disney.

I am a fan of Wander Over Yonder, writing to express my feelings as to why the series deserves to be finished the way it was intended. About a year has passed since the second season ended, and in that time, much has happened concerning fans of the show, old and new. I think it would interest you to know of the fans’ efforts to keep Wander Over Yonder alive, and to try to someday bring it back for at least one more season.

Over the years of this generation, a trend of reviving series seems to be taking effect. It is not uncommon for fans to work hard at bringing back the shows they love that were ended before their time. The 13-year-old Samurai Jack was revived for a final season due to fans’ support. The 14-year-old Invader Zim was revived for a comic series, and now a tv movie after its fans kept demanding continuation. The 13-year-old Hey Arnold! now has its intended finale in production, since people have been supporting it for so long. Not to mention the series that have been saved before true cancellation, such as Harvey Beaks, as well as Disney’s own Future-Worm! and Kim Possible. With all this being written, it should not be surprising that people who love Wander Over Yonder have come together to join the revival trend and save the wonderful show they all love.

In just one year, the campaign to save Wander Over Yonder– or “SaveWOY”, as it’s most commonly referred to– has made incredible progress.

Almost immediately, when the cancellation of the series was announced, a few fans began a petition to show to Disney how many people wish for WOY to continue (https://www.change.org/p/walt-disney-encourage-disney-to-make-wander-over-yonder-season-3). In only one day, it reached its goal of 1,500 signatures. In one weekend, it reached 4,000. By this year, it now has over 42,000 signatures. This is more even than the petition which Gravity Falls fans are using in an effort to get said series on DVD. Not only that, but a map has been made to show the support of fans around the world (https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/SaveWOY_Petition_V2/S9qbMCKcUL). This does not include the several other petitions that have been made for the SaveWOY campaign(https://www.change.org/p/the-walt-disney-company-tell-disney-to-bring-wander-over-yonder-back-for-a-third-season

https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/wander-over-yonder-let-it-continue).

Fans of Wander Over Yonder have made many pages through which anyone may seek information on the efforts to bring the show back, including, but not limited to, a Tumblr account (http://savewoy.tumblr.com/), a Twitter account (https://twitter.com/savewoy), a Facebook account (https://www.facebook.com/groups/488409891359644/), a Deviantart account (http://savewoy.deviantart.com/), a fan Wikipedia (http://savewoy.wikia.com/wiki/SaveWOY_Wikia), and a page on savedisneyshows.org (http://savewoy.savedisneyshows.org/).

Things such as the aforementioned are only the beginning. WOY fans have created several projects in order to express love for this series, such as videos still in the works that contain a collaboration of fans’ messages and art from around the world, a mass of letters for DisneyXD executives that contain 200 reasons to save Wander Over Yonder (http://peepsqueak.tumblr.com/tagged/200rtsw), a SaveWOY raffle (https://alicia-lvn.tumblr.com/tagged/raffle), a 30-day email project to send SaveWOY emails to DisneyXD executives (http://peepsqueak.tumblr.com/tagged/email-campaign), and a charity project to send holiday cards to children in the hospital (http://peepsqueak.tumblr.com/tagged/savewoy-holiday-card-project). Incidentally, a new project has been made, where people all over the globe plant little flags at popular sites with the character Lord Hater’s face on them as a fun game to pretend to conquer the planet earth for said character, although the true motive is to have fun while making another map of worldwide WOY fans (https://operationforce.tumblr.com/).

Fans not only collaborate with projects, but also meet up with eachother in celebration of the series we love. A potluck picnic was arranged (http://savewoy.tumblr.com/post/152888374823/savewoy-good-morningafternoonevening), and additionally, every month, Wander Over Yonder fans on Tumblr do Secret Santa-esque exchanges with one another (http://savewoygiftexchange.tumblr.com/).

There are things we continue to do as well. Fans are still sending letters and emails to Disney, as well as a flash-drive containing updates of the progress of our campaign. Every month on Tumblr, and from time to time on Twitter, the hashtag #Wander Over Yonder trends. This is because an effort has been made to show our love for the series every monthly anniversary of its second season finale (http://peepsqueak.tumblr.com/Trending%20Twenty-Seventh). Additionally, fans have created certain days of the week to make posts about Wander Over Yonder regularly (http://savewoy.wikia.com/wiki/Wander_Wednesdayhttp://savewoy.wikia.com/wiki/Season_3_Saturdayhttp://savewoy.wikia.com/wiki/SaveWOY_Sunday). The “villain leaderboard” from season two is still ‘updated’ by fans every month as a way to keep the show’s spirit alive. Whenever a page on Thunderclap is made, not only is more than the required support gotten, but ends up in the top five of Thunderclap pages that week. Even in addition to all this, there will still be more to come, and things not mentioned here; Wander Over Yonder fans love the series and will always continue to keep it in our hearts!

It is not only the fandom of Wander Over Yonder that rallies support for the series. It is quite apparent that simply anyone who enjoys it wants to see it end the way the WOY crew wanted. Videos from popular people come out more and more about the quality, and the chance WOY deserves (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD30N7h1pyZU5YV-AYBWRwyFm-sFZJgtb). A show with such positivity and joy and fun has helped countless lives when one simply looks for people’s takeaway, online or anywhere. Furthermore, it is quite apparent that Wander Over Yonder in general is something deserving of praise, and of more chance than it was given.

Wander Over Yonder has not only been nominated for– and won– several Annie Awards for its character design, animation, and overall quality as a series; but has in fact been Emmy-nominated for its overall quality as a short-format animated series. Not to mention, Wander Over Yonder had gained far more attention than ever once season two premiered– already after its cancellation. Moreover, after the middle of season two– the airing of the episode “My Fair Hatey”– an even bigger boom of fans came to realize what a fantastic show WOY is, not even including the fact that the song within the episode, “I’m the Bad Guy”, is nearing 5 million views on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdEo_t-iVbM&spfreload=10), more views than any other Wander Over Yonder video has ever received. It is clear that even people who haven’t watched the show love the character Lord Dominator, and would love to see more of her. Since the current end of the series, more people than ever before are coming out to say how much they love it, and moreover wishing it hadn’t ended with a mystery left unsolved. Now that the Wander Over Yonder reruns have come back, perhaps the viewership numbers will be surprisingly much higher than before.

I thank you for taking your time to read this lengthy letter, and I hope you can see that my message is one that sincerely hopes you can take all that is written above into consideration, and hopefully take into consideration as well the amount that Wander Over Yonder means to so many people, the efforts they have made to spread awareness of the show, and the hope everyone has found from others making efforts just the same and having success come out of it. I hope that the tone in which all of us fans have been contacting the people at Disney means something, and that it helps our message to be seen more clearly and understandingly.

With this letter, and with all that people have done to make their feelings known, I hope you might begin to consider that maybe the show people love so much could be allowed at least one more chance.

Please let SaveWOY save Wander Over Yonder.

Best regards,

-A Wander Over Yonder fan.

#wander over yonder #savewoy #savewoy letters #mod fancy #templates

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spooky274 · 7 years ago

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RSD 2018 - Hunting 4 1999

Let’s flashback to Saturday, April 21, 2018. It’s a beautiful spring day here in the Music City which I was hoping would be a good sign for I was on the hunt. You see, this day was Record Store Day and I was on the hunt for the Warner Bros. single disc reissue of the 1999 album. Since I am one of those nocturnal creatures of the night, I had just gotten off work, quickly changed clothes and Ms. Spooky and I made our way to nearest Wrecka Stow where a line had already formed. We took our place in line like the good obedient automatons that society has turned us into meanwhile I could not shake the image of the lines of children marching into the meat grinder from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. As we stood with the 200 or so other people in front of us, we idly chit-chatted and listened to the banal ramblings of three soon-to-be lawyers as they discussed how they had the solutions to all of the world’s problems. Even as one of them talked about how he couldn’t manage to even parallel park his car. Wait… what? You can’t parallel park your car but you can solve the world’s problems? Okay there Skippy McGriffin!!! Sorry, I digress, but I had to listen to Skippy and the Wonder Twins for almost two hours until the store opened. While waiting in line, I discovered that several people in front of me were also in search of the same record I was. Hmmmm… this did not bode well for me. I needed to come up with a Plan ‘B” but what could that be? Then inspiration struck me. Well, not really. I wouldn't say it struck me or that I was actually inspired at all. You see, what happened was I actually got a message on Twitter from my friend Gina in Ohio. Seems Gina was in search of 1999 as well and was having much better luck. Where I was in line with hundreds of others, she was at her local Wrecka Stow with just a couple of people. So Plan “B” was born. If she could, she would grab an extra copy of 1999 for me just in case I couldn’t grab one for myself. So we waited.

As time crawled past with glacier like speed, I followed Gina’s progress on Twitter since she is an hour ahead of me. She breezed in to her local Wrecka Stow and snatched up her copy of 1999 but alas, a copy for me was not to be found. But not one to give up, the campaign quickly turned to another Wrecka Stow that she knew had a couple of copies of the album. Meanwhile, the line I was in slowly inched its way inside my Wrecka Stow here in Music City. Another update from Gina to let me know that she had arrived at Checkpoint Bravo and that golden goose had flown the coop, in other words, she was at the new Stow but they were sold out of 1999. Damn! Plan “B” isn't looking too hot right now! Finally I make my way into my local Stow and what do you know, no 1999. Not a copy to be found anywhere, which is exactly what I feared. Ms. Spooky decided to ask one of the employees, you know just in case we had overlooked it or it was in some special place we hadn’t thought of looking. So she finds an employee, some 20-something kid with shaggy-mop hair that looks like he’s closer to 12 years old and asks him if they have 1999 by Prince. He says, “Prince? Hmmm… Prince is probably in the ummmm. Probably in the P’s. I’d check in that area.” Wow!!! Thank you sooo much. I would never have guessed to look there. Someone call NASA and let them know that I found their missing rocket scientist. On a side note, do you know how hard it is to type while you are rolling your eyes? Pretty damn hard. Anyway, back to the Mensa-Man of the Year candidate and our search for the ever-elusive 1999. So after the shocking epiphany of checking in the “P” section, I decided it was time to leave. As I slowly walked to the car, head hanging in defeat, I sent Gina a message to let her know that we had failed miserably also but thanks for trying. She replied back, “Good news! I got you one!” Apparently while I was dealing with the rocket surgeon (yeah, rocket surgeon – you know - part rocket scientist, part brain surgeon), she had gone to a third Wrecka Stow and hit the jackpot. Then after a few days wait, I received a package in the mail and I was the proud owner of a Record Store Day 2018 Exclusive single-disc re-issued Prince album 1999.

This is what the Purple Army is all about. True Funk Soldiers coming together in the spirit of Love 4 One Another and helping each other out. So thank you once again, Gina and of course thank you for each and every day, Ms. Spooky! To the rest of you, remember to Love 4 One Another, Love 4 Each Other, Love 4 Us All! Peace, B-Wild & Stay Funky!!!

#Prince Rogers Nelson #prince and the revolution #1999 #record store day #rsd2018 #prince

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imaginationlane · 7 years ago

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So I was wondering...

Over the past couple of weeks, my blog has absolutely slowed down to a snails pace as far as activity goes and why. I was also wondering how I went from over 100-200 page hits on a daily basis, to maybe fucking 10. Like this shit is incredibly off. Normally when I put out new materials, things pop off in my activity. It hasn’t been doing that lately.

Come to find out, that would be because Tumblr @staff fucked up the entire way your stuff now gets seen now. Smh.

They’ve implemented what’s called the “Best Stuff First” feature -- and it’s killing content creators chances of being seen. So if you can, please be sure to GO TURN THAT SHIT OFF IN YOUR SETTINGS!

Apparently if your posts aren’t popular straight out of the gate, you’re not really going to get seen.

Also, another way to defeat this: be sure to visit your favorite tags on the desktop (not the mobile app) through https://tumblr.com/tagged/(insert-tag-name-here) as it’ll still pull up materials in their proper order in the tags. But you have to be on the desktop site to make it work, as the mobile app is shitty.

First of all, this new “Best Stuff First” implementation defeats the entire purpose of Tumblr. Tumblr is an open blogging platform for everyone and gives everyone -- a chance to be seen. Now some actual living and breathing jackass on their team, has completely fucked over everyone else.

I’ve used this site since 2012 -- I use it because it’s open and it’s much easier getting seen / interacting with folks on here, than it is on almost ANY other Social Media site (this includes Facebook and Twitter). Now, they’ve went ahead and sincerely screwed over people from getting seen... Unless they’re already popular on the website. It defeats the purpose.

Also, you’ve heavily screwed content creators (such as myself and countless others). We spent hours or even days getting our materials ready to share with the world, only to realize “hey it’s not getting seen like it once was because we totes can’t have you little guys out shining our sponsored blogs / blog posts!”

So Tumblr Staff, you’ve screwed up --- now you need to fix this utter bullshit. Get rid of this feature. It’s hurting content creators and it hurts our followers as well who are having trouble seeing our stuff unless we’re directly tagging them. You fucked up, time to own it and fix it.

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junker-town · 5 years ago

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‘The Bachelor’ Recap: We have ourselves a champagne crisis

ABC

Drama hits the next level with a case of mistaken bottle identity.

We at SB Nation realize that The Bachelor is very much sports. Therefore, each week we’ll recap all the heartbreak, drama, and excitement. If you missed anything, catch up on last week’s action here.

Welcome back to another week of Pilot Pete’s “turbulent” season of The Bachelor. When we last left our main man, he had invited former love interest/Bachelorette Hannah B. back into the house to vie for his heart. Thankfully, this discussion was short-lived, not even making it to the first commercial break.

It’s easy to feel for the new ladies. If you’re on a date with a new guy you’re trying to impress, it’s already a pretty crummy situation for there to be approximately nine other women there also trying to date him. You certainly don’t want the woman he was madly in love with who sent him home after an epic night of sex to show up.

Honestly, though, I’d probably rather watch the guy I like canoodle with his ex than actually go through with this crap-tastic date of telling sexy-time stories in front of an audience. Luckily for everyone, Peter was so bummed out about re-breaking up with Hannah B. that he canceled the horribly awkward part of the date.

Thanks to last week’s episode ending mid-group date, we got an early cocktail party and tons of shenanigans revolving around duplicate bottles of champagne, giving us the biggest scandal in Bachelor history*.

*don’t verify this.

THE CHAMPAGNE CRISIS

Here’s what we know. Kelsey, our professional clothier, apparently brought a bottle Dom Pérignon with her from Des Moines, IA. Thanks to Twitter, I was able to assess that it was a 2009 bottle, meaning it clocks in around $200. Not insignificant!

Ok, this is where it gets unnecessarily complicated. Kelsey received said bottle for her birthday, and was saving it for a special occasion. She decided that some one-on-one time would be the perfect time to pop that bad boy and set up the Dom chilling by an outdoor fireplace with a couple glasses. Well, due to some confusion and the fact that not everyone knew that she had brought said bottle from home (and also that this whole thing is pretty ridiculous), Hannah Ann and Peter ended up popping the bottle with Kelsey in ear-shot.

LET ME TELL YOU WHAT, KELSEY WAS NOT HAPPY.

Look, it’s easy to see how this could happen. Apparently the show interns — or whomever sets up these little date havens around the Bachelor Mansion — had set up a bottle with a couple glasses in another spot nearby. They sat at the wrong one, and bam. Disaster.

Kelsey confronted the pair, but stormed off in tears like Peter had run over her dog while Hannah Ann cheered him on. Eventually, Peter got Kelsey to calm down and escorted her to the other (lesser) champagne oasis.

Everything seemed to be chilling out as Peter popped the cork. They decided to drink it from the bottle, then this happened:

pic.twitter.com/YWtV4l9mVj

— Steph Driver (@StephaliciousD) January 14, 2020

Tough day for our girl Kelsey.

Before the end of the night, Kelsey confronted Hannah Ann, refusing to believe that she didn’t know about the special bottle of bubbly. Hannah Ann used a lot of language like “I acknowledge your feelings,” but Kelsey wasn’t buying it as she dropped a lot of bleeped-out words at the doe-eyed champagne thief.

Tammy summed it up pretty well: “I don’t want to be involved in this champagne crisis anymore.”

Kelsey received the last rose of the evening, and both Hannah Ann and Kelsey were selected for the group date because if there’s one thing we can all count on in these tough times...it’s Bachelor producers.

The Group Date

Peter meets the ladies in LA at a Revolve store (aka the brand that every Bachelor/ette former contestant has been hawking on Instagram). No, really. Hannah Ann seemingly did a couple posts promoting the brand before the season even started:

Doesn’t really seem fair considering Hannah Ann is literally working with Revolve. #TheBachelor pic.twitter.com/qtarnH5EAN

— Bachelor Chirps, MBA (@BachelorChirps) January 14, 2020

Carson Kressley (of original Queer Eye fame), Janice Dickinson (the first supermodel), and Raissa Gerona (the Chief Brand Officer of Revolve) tell the ladies they’ll be participating in a fashion show. The prize? A shit ton of Revolve clothing (and probably some time with Peter, BUT LOOK AT ALL THE STUFF).

ABC

The ladies take to the runway before our panel of professional models/judges narrow it down to Hannah Ann and Victoria F. After an ending that just made me want to watch Zoolander (WE’VE GOT A WALK-OFF), actual model Hannah Ann wins the competition and therefore the swag.

Victoria F. gets the final laugh, however, when she snags the group date rose. Hannah Ann snitches on Kelsey to Peter, calling her a bully. The episode ends with Kelsey storming off in tears after hearing this info, so we’re sure to be in for a good one next week.

Let’s get to the highlights!

Consecutive weeks of making out with someone on a piece of furniture: 2

Last week, Peter put Kelley on the bar at the hotel. This week, Mykenna got some action on a...credenza? We need a bingo card of surfaces Peter can make out with women on. Please note her oddly flexed feet. I don’t have a joke, I just wanted to point it out.

ABC

Most relatable: Peter forgetting everything about every woman

Peter struggled immensely remembering who was who and what their stories were, which...same. We at home have the benefit of helpful chyrons that remind us that her name is Sydney or that it’s spelled Mykenna. Luckily, Peter has a handy group of producers to help out.

1. Peter did not remember this girl 2. A producer gave him that hot wheels right before he talked to her #TheBachelor

— Demi Burnett (@demi_burnett) January 14, 2020

Best reaction faces: Tammy

Keep Tammy forever; she’s the Jim Halpert of reaction faces.

ABC

Quit what you’re doing and become a model, immediately - Victoria F.

Hannah Ann may have won the challenge (which is a little unfair considering, you know, she’s a model), but Victoria F. slayed. Her first pass down the runway she sported a cute lace top and jean shorts. Victoria showed none of the nervousness she talked about before hitting the spotlight, and she certainly looked confident her second time out as she rocked a long jacket over lingerie.

Victoria’s confidence prevented her from winning the challenge (don’t let Hannah Ann sassily toss her dress towards you), but my goodness, girl. You rocked that.

ABC

Most uncomfortable looking hug - Peter and Hannah B.

What is happening here? There is a zero percent chance this is comfortable for either one of them.

ABC

Best runway accessory - Mykenna

This almost went to Kelsey, who brought Peter a bottle of Andre champagne (college me loved this), but Mykenna went with just a glass of white wine. She took it with her, did an awkward crouch, and made eye contact with the camera. It was perfection.

ABC

Gone Too Soon

Courteney

Lauren

Payton

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