#because the proportion of how much I care about it vs how much an audience cares about it is v different from fandom art

[thenegoteator]

👀 - happy new year!

happy new year to you too!!!

one thing about me is I am obsessed with ponchos. so I drew one that glows!!! Unposted because I'm always quite nervous to post personal art that's not immediately fandom related

[send me a 👀 in exchange for unposted art from 2023]

[cordeliaflyte]

Would love to know your thoughts on the rutger bregman book when you finish it!!!

dearest merle! it took me months to answer this ask - something i'm ashamed of - but i finally got around to finishing the book today.

the below is a condensed version of the ten pages of notes i took while reading it, which are rather chaotic and repetitive at points - but in my defence, bregman repeated his own arguments too.

one of the main arguments that bregman makes is that "evil" or "immorality" - which we'll define as causing unnecessary harm - are rarely caused by the individual, but rather the society they live in. i agree - nothing exists in a vacuum. however, society, as a nebulous concept, isn't imposed on us by some imperceptible power - it is crafted by people. people in society have different levels of power, and the harm they can cause to others is directly proportional to said power - but be it on a micro or macro scale, our actions have an impact on others and while they are influenced by the society we live in, we must nonetheless strive to minimise the harm we cause - and few of us do.

bregman illustrates many of his arguments with heartwarming stories about people coming together in times of crisis - take, for example, natural disasters - and overcoming adversity, selflessly looking out for their neighbours. but crisis very often leads to the creation of divisions, an us vs them mentality, and a complete disregard for the safety of others. the current pandemic is a prime example - see the widening of class differences, the rise in racist hate crimes, and people refusing to take safety precautions because they are inconvenient to them.

another argument repeated quite often throughout the book is the fact that media cherry-picks the most sensationalistic and senseless acts of death and despair, because human suffering is simply more interesting that the mundane - people talking to friends, creating art, laughing and learning. again, i agree with him - many of the more tabloid-adjacent news outlets would have you believe that the everyday norm is dismembered heiresses being found on riverbeds and charming, precocious children being held for ransom in tiny basements. the news doesn't often focus on the mundane - but the mundane isn't just love and work and friendship and boredom and chores, it is also, for billions of people around the world, sexual violence, familial abuse, workplace and housing discrimination, etc. these things aren't sensationalistic either - they're frightfully common, frightfully boring, and thus, they're rarely reported on.

throughout his book, bregman mentions that when he told people what he was working on, they approached the idea that humans are good with a large dose of cynicism, simply because we are raised to believe humans are selfish (which isn't the case worldwide, not all cultures are individualistic). they pick the easier choice - accepting the image of the world and their fellow humans that they are presented with at face value. i'd argue that it is the tendency of humans to pick the easier choice, to obey, to avoid challenging their worldview that leads to - for a lack of better term - immorality (see definition in point 1).

often, when bregman presents his feel good stories about people cooperating in adversity, he also mentions troubling details that, again, show undue harm being done. one of the examples he used were six boys from tonga, aged 13 to 16, who were shipwrecked on an island, and instead of descending into a "lord of the flies" style madness, they built their small community on the basis of communication and cooperation, never resorting to violence, and acting mature beyond their years. after a year spent on the island, they were rescued - and promptly arrested, an event which was probably racially motivated. and the reason they were shipwrecked in the first place was attempting to flee their school, where, according to their reports, they were neglected.

bregman contrasted the example of the boys forming a peaceful society on a small island with the chaos that always ensues when adults in reality shows are put in similar situations. the contestants are pitted against each other by the show runners, who seek to frustrate them and make them lose control for the amusement of the audience. whenever contestants try to cooperate, form a mutually beneficial society for a short while - a radical idea - they are punished. "goodness" - i.e. harm reduction - and radical thought being punished just don't seem like particularly helpful examples for the "humans are inherently good" thesis

bregman seems to be a big fan of primitivism, constantly citing civilisation as a source of harm - a position i'm always sceptical about, because personally i love vaccines and dental care, but i know this is a knee-jerk reaction and bregman isn't plotting a return to a land without dentists. but what i do take ire at is the idea that humans are somehow "corrupt" versions of their natural selves and that our lives have grown too complicated, and only a return to "primitive" society can return us to the aforementioned natural selves.

tied to the previous point - his arguments remind me of the "noble savage"'... archetype? he seems to paint a picture of "primitive" indigenous people as role models for those "corrupted" by civilisation, who in turn must be saved by a return to their "purer" selves, instead of individuals with flaws and agency.

speaking on indigenous populations - bregman also invokes the inhabitants of the easter islands. for a long time, the world at large believed that a hundred years or so before colonization, the islanders effectively perpetrated a genocide, killing off a large proportion of their population - a claim which was later disproven. yay! humans can live in peaceful societies without committing genocide, and thus, are not inherently evil! disregarding the fact that european colonists later massacred a large part of the islands population, and sold most of the survivors into slavery?

i was very excited for one of the chapters, entitled "after auchschwitz". i was interested how bregman would reconcile his argument with the tragedies of the twentieth century - the holocaust, but also genocide, and to a lesser extent war in general.

(this chapter, i might add, was preceded by a quote by anne frank - you know the one, about the inherent goodness of people. i was hoping that bregman would comment on the fact that anne wrote the quote before she and her family were sent to a concentration camp)

so you can imagine my surprise when the chapter was not, in fact, about concentration camps or genocide. but rather about. unethical 70s sociological experiments.

no really! a chapter titled "after auchschwitz" was, in fact, primarily about the stanford prison experiment. an experiment that was, granted, inspired by concentration camps, but still. it's misleading to invoke "real", large scale violence, and focus instead on "simulated", small scale violence.

we all know that the stanford prison experiment was, as far as experiments go, rubbish to legendary degrees. it doesn't prove anything - but it does, perhaps, show that people under large psychological duress are capable of evil, even when they themselves are not "evil".

it is, i'd argue, the human tendency to obey authority and especially to conform to societies standards that poses the largest danger. disobedience is man's original virtue and whatnot.

and when he does briefly refer to concentration camps, bregman treats them like a very 1940s phenomenon, disregarding the fact that they have been around for much longer and still exist today.

in cases like that one experiment with electric shocks. you know the one. do not, perhaps, show an innate tendency to violence, but rather people succumbing to pressure. but history is full of unprovoked instances of violence, of pogroms and lynchings. there is usually an instigator, yes, but judging from reports, people in the right mindset don't need much persuading to butcher other people.

also re: electric shock experiment - those who thought they gave the assistant lethal shocks showed extreme guilt and some even cried but like... so what? what use is a conscience if it doesn't stop you from, to your knowledge, killing someone? are your feelings really more important than your actions?

he doesn't say this, but a lot of the arguments he presents do seem to boil down to "people aren't evil, they're just stupid!" which doesn't sound more encouraging, i'm afraid.

an alternative takeaway would be "people are good, unless they have power" - which isn't exactly a radical, revolutionary idea. most people have heard the maxim "power corrupts". but the thing is that almost everyone holds some amount power over others - the oppressed factory worker in a poor nation who works 12 hours a day for pittance might still execute power over his wife, who relies on him for money, and she in turn might hold power over her children, and so forth. and that power is often used to cause undue harm and exercise control.

he criticises machiavellianism, saying it doesn't reflect how society works, and one of his proofs is that his philosophies were espoused by bismarck, churchill, and stalin - hardly admirable figures in terms of (you guessed it!) causing harm. but i don't see how that discredits machiavelli? like all of the above were very succesful

and he keeps repeating the primitivism argument throughout the book which gets tiring. like i'm truly sorry you were born in the last 5% of human existence thus far when, in your opinion, humanity started going to the shits, but it's getting a bit tiring

he cites money and nations as concepts as harbingers of the current (negative) state of humanity, saying they're very recent concepts and have no basis in reality. they're artificial concepts, sure, but their effect is very much real, and while achieving a nation-less, money-less society is possible on a small scale, i think that at this point they are such large aspects of life that reigning them in seems impossible.

and invokes the noble savage again and again, showing himself in favour of tribal societies, depicting them as egalitarian - i'm sure many of them are, but many also have a strict hierarchy or like. practice fgm. once more he seems to treat tribal people as a monolith of goodness as opposed to... people.

he also cites prehistoric people, their egalitarianism and low rates of violence but. forgive me for my ignorance because i did not research this. how do people know. doesn't the definition of prehistory include a lack of records??

he also mentions that in small, tribal societies, conformism can be a good thing, as it makes people act for the communal good. this is another knee-jerk reaction of mine but i think of conformism as society's most significant vice, so this strikes very much against my beliefs

later on, he also says reproduction is another proof of humanities goodness. perhaps it's a controversial opinion, but i disagree. i find it hard to find reasons for reproduction that aren't egoistic. it's survival instinct, sure, but it's not an "inherently noble pursuit".

later yet, he brings up schools which grant large degrees of freedom to students and shows how they're good for developing their minds. this might be a me thing but i know from experience that when i'm granted freedom without structure, i do nothing - though perhaps that speaks ill of me, and not humanity.

there have, in fact, been many studies on schools like this being helpful to student development and i certainly won't argue with them - but let me nit-pick. bregman says that fewer students have adhd in these schools, as it is a condition caused by being locked inside a room all day which is not only offensive, but also just plain wrong

and also while showing how granting children freedom lets them develop (which i naturally agree with) he brings up that "dangerous playground" study. you know the one. this isn't a coherent argument, this is just my bias speaking , but as a child, i promise i had no desire to play with rusty nails in abandoned warehouses. i liked my boring playgrounds with wooden swings.

then there is a chapter on communism and how it could be a remedy to societies ailments. but bregman and i seem to operate on very different definitions of communism. he naturally starts with saying maoist china and stalinist russia and cambodia under pol pot weren't really communist which... sure, if you want to argue semantics, i'm all for it, but it's an old and essentially useless argument. if "real communism" has never been tried (as the author claims) - why?

and then we pass to perhaps the most bizarre fragment of the book. paraphrasing only slightly: "but why are we now so opposed to the word communism? when we pass each other salt at the dinner table, is that not communism? when we selflessly hold a door open for someone, is that not communism?" i.... no?? no it's not. that's not what communism is girl stop

he then also says facebook is actually communist in many ways since a lot of its value comes from photos people willingly share for free. i could not make this up if i tried.

i think that in most terms i agree with bregman on policy - direct democracy, school and prison systems, changes to the criminal justice system - and our reasoning is partially similar, but i don't think the information we both have access to proves that humans are inherently good.

and then come perhaps my least favourite arguments because i for one am a spiteful bitch but yes. it is time for christian ethics 101 and turning the other cheek.

he cites ghandi and mlk as examples of turning the other cheek working. i think ghandi went too far with his policy, what with saying "jews ought to have marched silently to their deaths or committed mass suicide to make nazis feel ashamed" and like. we do remember they killed mlk, right?

as an example of turning the other cheek, he cites humane prisons in norway, where prisoners are granted much larger freedoms than usual and are on equal footing with the guards, who aren't armed and act more as councillors. i don't really see how this is an example of turning the other cheek, though - the guards are not the victims of the inmates (it was a prison for violent offenders - many of them murderers). i agree with him that prisons, if they must exist, should treat inmates humanely and with respect, but i don't see how this relates to the turning of the cheek. statistically, many of these men probably murdered their mates in a drunken dispute, or killed their wives - and i don't think turning the other cheek would have helped their victims.

he also cites south africa in the sixties as an example of turning the other cheek, when anti-apartheid activists would meet up with pro-apartheid activists and talk - this included nelson mandela who had frequent talks with the leader of a white supremacist paramilitary organisation of afrikaners staunchly opposed to black south africans getting the vote. and it worked - the man, whose aim was starting a civil war, relented. but racism isn't a simple matter that can simply be solved by talking. and it is often a pragmatic policy which i don't disparage, but turning the other cheek and having to treat someone who refuses to acknowledge your humanity with an exorbitantly disproportionate amount of respect is inherently degrading.

skipping ahead, in the epilogue bregman lists ten rules he tries to live by, and one of them is, i shit you not, "don't punch nazis". and punching nazis doesn't stop them from being nazis, but turning the other cheek gets people killed

the rise of fascism is perhaps one the largest threats we are dealing with and fascists are not just isolated and misinformed (and in this day and age, ignorance is a choice). they are dangerous.

this is by no means an essay or an exhaustive list, just a slightly chaotic and much overdue collection of opinions which i don't know how to put under a read more. take care <3

[phynali]

I don't know if you're apart of the Supernatural fandom, but if you are, could you do a speech analysis for Dean Winchester? Thank you.

I am! I’ve fallen into (back) into SPN hell recently and gotten a ton of feels I did not expect, thank you very damn much. But anyway, yes I am happy to oblige. 

Dean’s voice is very distinct, but I can see why it’s hard to grapple with for many writers because very seldom does he say what he means and very often when he does it’s wrapped up in humour or pain. It’s often quippy as a means of deflecting emotion or maintaining a status quo or emotional handle over a situation. He uses commands and charm and pop culture references but he’s a very complex character so sometimes that all disappears and he’s open and vulnerable and raw, and those lines can be hard to draw.

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Notes 

To understand Dean’s focal speech patterns, we first to recognize that we’ve known Dean for 15 years, and that people’s modes of speaking can and will change over time. We’re gonna focus on things that have stayed more or less consistent over time, and his ‘base’ speech patterns that make his dialogue him. I’ll mostly shy away from different eras but may highlight a few things, and the same goes for who he’s talking to because he’s pretty similar with his only major differences being a function of closeness. He’s not much of a conversational mimic so we don’t have to worry about that. 

We’re also gonna state the obvious and contrast the type of conversation he might be having - whether he’s tied up or in danger vs. expressing emotions vs. focused on the job. That’s probably where the meat of this is for people who are interested in these kinds of analyses anyway :)

Also - this is 4200 words so I’m sure there are typos so just acknowledging that up front.

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Sentence Style

Let’s start with overall style.

Dean’s speech is generally straightforward (when he’s not being referential) with a low proportion of adjectives and a decent amount of degree modifiers (more on that below). He uses simple sentences with clear statements, though will add clauses to clarify, reference, or add degree fairly frequently. 

For example:

”Like you said” is acting here as a way to refer back to a previous conversation. Dean does this more when he’s stating something not about himself/his subjective experience, but stating an absolute (or at least something to be taken as absolute). 

Also something to point out about this example: like I said he uses shorter, simpler sentences. While that isn’t always true of course, it definitely it is the case that he doesn’t tend toward long, breathless sentences. Even here he could have said this in one sentence and instead split it into two concrete points. A person could transcribe it differently (”Like you said, we’re family, and we don’t leave family behind.”) but he tends to speak in this manner that implies full stops between these separate statements. 

(Later I’m gonna completely contradict myself by talking about his longer statements btw. He tends to use longer sentences in more serious conversations, and includes clauses that qualify the statement).

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Declarative I-Statements

Dean uses a ton of declarative sentences starting with I. Like - a lot of people do. But Dean’s iconic quotes are often “I”, and a large proportion of his sentences are declarative sentences in the active voice centring around him, his opinion, or his experience of the world. From “I think he wants us to pick up where he left off - saving people, hunting things, the family business.” to “I think I’m adorable”, Dean likes to tell us what he thinks and what he is.

You can also extend this pattern to other sentences that might start with different words but carry the same thesis “Demons I get - people are crazy.” It could be reworded just as simply as “I get demons - people are crazy.” But if Sam were the one saying it? “People are crazy” seems just as likely (although I’d put my money on “what is wrong with people?” as Sam’s most likely statement if he were trying to get the same sentiment across). Sam would express it as an absolute about the world or a rhetorical question, rather than one focused around his view of the world. Which doesn’t make Sam less self-focused or idiocentric than Dean, but their speech patterns express different modes of seeing the world, and in some ways Dean’s vocal patterns do more to acknowledge that his view of the world is subjective (but also that his subjective view is all he really cares about anyway).

(see all the other gifs here. Think “I’m proud of us” and so many other lines. So many I-statements).

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Imperative and Commands

Dean speaks in a lot of commands. Idk what else to tell you. He’s a natural leader and he takes charge of situations, so it’s just kind of a natural facet of his speech. 

He does this with humour:

And without (”He asks, you answer! Then you shut your hole” for example).

Telling people what to do isn’t always met kindly, of course:

And although not an imperative sentence, he also is comfortable using speech to demand compliance:

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Word Choices

One thing I like to always examine is word choice, contractions, and negation, so let’s dive in to that. 

Diction

While Dean doesn’t flower up his language much in terms of verb and noun choice, that isn’t because he has a small vocabulary. I’d wager it’s a choice to being unpretentious because of the world he lives in. He never has any issue pulling out technical or clinical language:

(Also seen here: he tends to be very pithy and flippant, especially when he’s unimpressed with someone or with a situation, or wants to express annoyance and frustration. It’s his first-stop for “I dislike this”.)

We’ve seen him use words like Achilles’ Heel and describe how he made an EMF using technical language, so there’s no hesitancy to drop these terms, but for him it’s a matter of expressing what he wants to in a manner that will be easily understood by the person with whom he’s speaking.

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Negation

For how he uses negation - Dean doesn’t say “ain’t” and he seldom said “[x]’s not”. His typical negation is “isn’t”. 

(Not “this ain’t the Scooby Gang” and not “it’s not / we’re not the Scooby Gang”. Isn’t. And yes, the line “there ain’t no me if there ain’t no you” bugs the hell out of me for this specific reason. When else have we ever heard him say ain’t? “There is no me if there is no you” is way more in keeping with his usual negation style.)  

He also negates using the word Never. “I’ve never had anything this nice.”

Like this. And like this:

This is interesting because it fits into Dean’s pattern (discussed below) of using words (adverbs and swears alike) as ways to modify the intensity of his sentences. A lot of people use qualifiers to create this sense of degree (words like “really” and “very”). While Dean sometimes uses or combines those words with others (”really freakin’ hate this”), he does something that very few people do, which is use the qualifying word ‘never’ to express an absolute quality. Most of us can’t say we’ve never done something. We might say we “didn’t” do something, but we don’t express it as absolute as “never”. Dean does. Dean makes it clear what things simply do not get to be attributed to him or are not to be counted within his sphere of existence.

(He says it under less extreme circumstances too though...)

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Contractions

Dean is liberal with his use of contractions and word shortenings. I’d recommend writing his use of words like “freaking” as “freakin’” “nothin’” and so forth. Can’t, not cannot. 

Gonna, wanna. You are going to want to = You’re gonna wanna. (Also “you’re gonna have to trust me”. He tells people what they’re gonna have to do a lot).

He uses other shortenings like “y’know” and “’cause” as well, when he’s relaxed at least. Like all of us, if he’s emphasizing those words he’ll enunciate fully, so try to match the contraction use to what you want to emphasize and to the tone you want to convey.

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Addressing Others

I wasn’t sure what else to call these (linguists might have some idea), but I’m talking about the use of words like “man” “dude” and “y’know” (and even his “Listen Velma” above). He uses these words like we all do - to ensure the person we’re talking to is clear that we’re addressing them directly, calling them into the conversation. Dean uses ‘dude’ a frequent amount for Sam (and others) but also “Man” at times (especially when annoyed). He uses “brother” for Benny as well in S8 in the same manner. 

Conversely, “y’know” tends to come up when he’s being sly or pithy. He doesn’t really use ‘Buddy’ except for strangers (but not like Sam who essentially uses it as a threat) and I can’t recall him saying ‘pal’.

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Positive and Negative Words

Some generic positives: awesome, super (often sarcastic)

Some recurrent negatives: ugly, bad, douch-y

“It ends bloody. It ends bad.”

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Expressing Emphasis

Look - Dean doesn’t use a lot of adjectives, but he does use a lot of degree modifiers/adverbs. One of those is “just”. “Just do [x].” “Just so you know.” Just.

(Even here, “I just”).

He also does a very neat thing with the word “Uh.” It’s used not to hesitate or equivocate, like most people might use it, but instead to increase attention to what he’s saying. A false-hesitancy which tends to both emphasize and diffuse what he’s saying a bit.

(It’s so neat!)

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Swearing

There is absolutely no doubt that Dean is an avid curser. There’s an excellent 4th-wall-bending implication from 3x13 (Ghostfacers) where we see Dean (and Sam) dropping f-bombs and other swears that get bleeped out in the Ghostfacers documentary. Which allows us as the audience to realize they’re swearing all the time, but that the network doesn’t allow that kind of swearing, so we see a watered down version of their dialogue on screen. 

Dean says “freaking” a lot, and I feel like we can assume that 9 times out of 10, he’s dropping an f bomb. His favourite exclamation is “son of a bitch”, but when he’s really pissed off, we get a “motherf*cker”. Seasons 4-8 his favourite thing to call people is a douche or douchebag if he looks down on them. In general my advice to authors would be not to hesitate to have Dean swear, but make sure you’re using them right. 

While many swears are just exclamations or word replacement (”kicked my ass” instead of “kicked my butt”), a lot of the swearing that Dean does is specifically to increase emphasis to something in his speech. Adding in freaking/f*cking as an intensifier is probably its most common use for him. 

For the record, he uses “hell” in a similar fashion. What the hell, how the hell, where the hell - etc. Expressing intense emotions via swears that increase the degree/magnitude/intensity of the statement.

(Oddly enough, although Dean will insult people casually calling them douche, etc, when he’s pressed and angry and aggressive, his insults toward people don’t become vitriolic diatribes. Threats are more common, typically without an upscale in cursing, and so is being pithy to get them mad and distracted.)

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Questions, Answers, and Emotions

Okay so one thing I have to address: I kind of setup a strawman in the opening about sentence length. Because sure, Dean uses a lot of shorter and more declarative sentences. But he’s a person, which means that the bulk of his speech is just speech. While all else being equal, he uses more shorter, i-statements, and more commanding language than others, he also has conversations. He’s got a great sense of humour and a bit of an acid tongue, even under pressure, so if you’re not writing him with some some glibness or humour (even when it comes out biting, frustrated or falls completely flat) you’re probably missing something.

And often, he expresses himself in questions. This humour and glibness can come out like:  "What are you, the Dog Whisperer now?" in a less strained situation, or it can come out to try to keep his feels under wraps while seeking insight: 

Of course it’s not all questions. Sometimes his glibness, including for his own life, comes out in the form of answers:

He’s being serious but totally glib about life and death, having accepted his fate. (Dean accepting his own mortality is kind of also a must, especially post S1 finale).

And sometimes he expresses pain and feeling as questions without any glibness at all:

So to be clear, don’t write him as only ever using short i-declarations. Pepper those in, but remember that if he’s expressing an emotion or a vulnerability (even if he’s covering it with glibness), he’ll be using this roundabout way with questions or with indirect answers that don’t directly state his feelings but still manage to convey what he’s thinking.

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Pleading

One more thing I want to touch on in this section: there are (probably surprising to some who aren’t looking) a lot of notes of supplication when he’s talking to others and feeling vulnerable. It’s very easy to think of Dean as someone who’ll never ask, never beg or plead. Because that’s what he wants you to think, because he’s the cool, in charge Han Solo type. 

But Dean does ask. He pleads. He pleads to God/Chuck, he pleads to his father, to Sam, to Cass. A major difference between he and Sam is actually the situations in which they’re likely to say “please”. Sam’s likely to use it as a first response (and therefore says it waaaay more) but absolutely refuse to under duress. Dean will never ever use it as a first response, but will fall back and resort to it in the end. We could unpack what that means about their psyche, but we’re here for language.

Not too surprisingly, I’m having a hard time getting the gif search to grant me specific gifs of Dean saying ‘please’, but I can recall some instances. S1 finale, when Azazel is possessing John. First he starts with quips and pissing Azazel off, and then it’s “Don’t you let him hurt me!” and then when that fails, he begs his father to help him. 

He pleads in S1 for Sam not to leave, because Sam is all he has left. He pleads with an angelic APB at the opening of S9 for an angel to save Sam. He tells Cass he needs him when Cass his pulverizing his face. “Please, he’s my brother”. Is that what he says to Lilith? Or was the ‘please’ implied there?

Here, instead of single gifs, you should get the full experience of the duress under which Dean will say please:

To God

To his dad

To his dad again

To Bobby

To Sam in an alternate timeline

And when he wants to be left alone the same thing occurs:

To his mother

To Sam

You get the idea. He doesn’t always say please. Sometimes it’s notes of supplication in his voice and sometimes it’s a somewhat desperate “c’mon man” when he doesn’t want to have to ask but he’s at the end of his rope.

(Okay final characterization note for this section - I also think Dean is probably useless against someone who looks up at him with wide sad eyes and says ‘please’ to him. I suspect part of why it’s his final defense is because he himself would be defenseless to that kind of plea from others, because he was hardwired from a young age to look after his infant little brother, and that involves a certain amount of responding to pleading and helplessness).

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Pop Culture References

Dean uses a lot of highly referential language. He refers to bands and musicians, films, pop culture, current events and modern history, etc. Despite him not being overly tapped into social media (e.g., not knowing what myspace is in early seasons, among other things), it’s equally clear that he’s tapped into film, TV, music - any means through which he can consume content. This makes sense given how much driving time and downtime his life must have, with time in motels and between jobs to watch and rewatch the same media. Try to pepper in these sorts of references in as ways for Dean to describe what’s going on and relate new experiences to what makes sense to him.

If you’re a non-American writing him, or a very young American, it doesn’t hurt to brush up on music and media that were popular from the 80s and 90s, which will make up the core of Dean’s formative years and therefore references. There’s also evidence he knows a lot of pop culture history though so don’t hesitate to make references to films etc from any decade of the 20th century. He’s also a bit of a sci-fi nerd and we know he reads (including Vonnegut) so literary references are perfectly in order. I would shy away from references to historical fiction, Shakespeare, and instead keep it to genres we know he consumes (including cartoons!).

"You were wasted by a Teenage Mutant Ninja Angel?"

(ps - seriously just look at this post - we’ve got scooby doo and blues brothers and batman and I wasn’t even trying to find pop culture references when I gif searched).

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Deeper Emotional Conversations

While I mentioned above that he uses questions and answers to roundabout discuss his feelings, not all chick flick moments can be handled in that manner, and many can’t be handled with glibness at all.

For Dean, directly addressing his deeper negative emotions is difficult, and thus becomes a pained pronouncement. The nuance tends to come through in his face and nonverbal cues so focus on those, but linguistic choices are pretty important here. And this is where directly naming his emotions comes in. Unlike that question/answer section above where his thoughts and feelings are conveyed without directly naming his sentiment, sometimes he is called upon to express his feelings more specifically.

Because let’s be honest, he’s got his A Single Man Tear(TM) and he’s got deep, painful feelings, but he sucks at talking about them.

Let’s create an example that isn’t something that specifically happened in canon, but easily could. So - let’s say that Dean might need to say he’s scared of losing Sam. That would come after some pained discussion and Dean will act like he’s having his teeth pulled, but he will say it. And when he does, it’s either an angry proclamation (”you want me to say it? fine! i’m scared, sam - i’m scared as hell that one day i’ll wake up and you’ll be gone.”) or he cracks himself open completely exposed and vulnerable, and all the air rushes from the room when you see it because his eyes are shining and it’s visceral and real and been sitting right below the surface, suffocated until this moment (”i’m scared, sam,” a crack in his voice, an inhale of breath, and he looks a second from losing it. but it’s dean so he won’t, he’ll hold on by the skin of his teeth with his heart spilling out of his mouth, red with the blood of his own truths. “i’m terrified of losing you.”). 

There’s very little in between. There’s almost never any emotionally removed or more clinical discussion of his feelings like you might get with Sam. (”you want me to say i’m scared? of course i’m scared. i’m terrified, dean, but that’s not the point here. the point is -”). Because Dean struggles to accept and avow his painful internal emotional landscape, he struggles to discuss it in a way that’s removed, so it becomes very intense when he does. 

What this also means for writing emotional dialogue is that although Dean does not lack insight into his emotions, where they come from, and why he’s feeling the way he is, he’ll very seldom provide you an in depth explanation. This may make him seem less emotionally mature, but really what’s happening is a struggle to put those feelings into words. Discussion of anxiety, insecurity, and trauma are put into boxes he can more easily communicate - fear, anger, violence. Less “I overreacted because I was scared of losing you” and more “I’m fucking terrified of losing you. And yeah, it pisses me off.” Dean doesn’t tend to use explanatory statements (”because”), he tends to present emotions and even concepts outside of emotional discussions as separate statements, and it becomes your job to then connect those statements (as the one he’s talking to, and as the audience).

Like I said near the start, Dean also uses longer sentences when having serious conversations. “As long as I’m around, nothing bad’s gonna happen to you.” Note the first half of that sentence acting as a qualifier (implying something bad could happen, but not when Dean is around, creating the condition upon which the whole sentence and sentiment hangs).

- 

Less Declarative Expression

Dean expresses negative emotions like disappointment and frustration as well, but unlike his more intense/extreme negative emotions (terror, fear of abandonment, deep anger) he very seldom will declare those emotions. While he might use question and answer format, he might also control the conversation with a straightforward expression that saves him from having to say what he’s feeling while still getting it across.

For example, "Well that's great, because without your power, you're basically just a baby in a trench coat." Instead of saying he’s frustrated, he says something that gets to the point of what he’s mad about without saying he’s mad. (This is especially true when what he’s mad about is the situation. Because while these statements are about people, on the balance of things, they’re not really directed at them. Because often he’s frustrated because of something they can’t solve and he knows that). 

He’s also liable to not-declare-but-express pent up feelings he’s not ready to unpack in the same manner:

He’s obviously stressed and angry, but he doesn’t want to have to avow that anger and unpack all of where it’s coming from. It’s not the feeling of the emotion he dislikes so much as it is the examination of the underpinning reasons for it, because the dredge it up and unpack it is more painful than to let himself to continue to feel it at this low consistent level while he processes.

-

Outliers and End Notes

No post can fully capture and analyze 15 years of dialogue. There’s probably a million important elements to Dean’s speech that I missed. I think I want to emphasize a few things before we part. 

First - if you really want to write Dean, make sure you write him as charismatic. He uses humor, charm, deflection, questions, commands, and confidence all to control conversations and he does it seamlessly. Despite his rakish nature, he seldom if ever seems to offend people (unless he’s deliberately trying to piss them off) and you should take that into consideration when writing him. 

Keeping him fully in character will therefore involve a sort of fluidity about his speech, and those references. He is personable and exceptionally confident. He does not tend to hesitate or apologize (except in a flippant, superficial way, or in very strained emotional conversations and then only to those he loves deeply). His volume and tone are probably as or more important than his words, so consider when he’s saying something with a purr vs. with a snarl vs. shouting vs. having his voice crack into a whisper. He’s incredibly expressive with his face, but not overly gesticular with his hands (though he does gesture, just not in a way that stands out a great deal).

If you want or need him to give some type of confession in what you’re writing, you pretty much have two options. Either expressing his emotions in ways I’ve described here, or giving it the good ol’ S12 monologue where he bares his soul (when he’s inside Mary’s head). That should be reserved only for very extreme circumstances though - circumstances like saving his mother from brainwashing, discussing his hell trauma, or declaring that there’s nothing on heaven or earth he’d put before his little brother. Because in general long speeches aren’t his style.

And if you can, give some thought to what season you’re writing in. Is he still calling everyone and everything douch-y? Is he in the later seasons and more capable of unpacking his emotions directly? Is he in the early seasons where he’s trying to be Han Solo and too damn cool and smooth about everything, even his impending death?

At the end of the day - Dean is a wonderful, complex character and I hope this analysis helps some writers understanding his speech and character better!

[taww]

Review: Legacy i·V2 Class D Stereo Amplifier

Legacy iv2 stereo amplifier

The Audiophile Weekend Warrior (TAWW)

TAWW Rating: 5 / 5

Class D power going toe-to-toe with Class A refinement

PROS: Nonexistent noise and distortion; tube-like midrange purity; full tonal balance with stellar bass; effortless power delivery; top to bottom refinement.

CONS: Ever-so-slight reductions in top-end extension, low-level resolution and dynamic life; slight mechanical buzz; binding posts could be nicer.

Class D (a.k.a. switching) amps have been around for decades, but really started to hit the audiophile scene in the early 2000′s. My first experiences around that time were a mixed bag, to say the least. A PS Audio HCA-2 sent my way for review blew its output stage when I powered it up. (In retrospect, my subwoofer setup may have been the culprit.) I wrote a review of the original NuForce integrated amp which, despite some sonic promise, felt like an unfinished product. The $30, battery-powered Sonic Impact "Class T" amp became a budget sensation, beguiling even some SET tube lovers, but its magic quickly ran out if you demanded more than a few watts from it. (The magic also ran out for its chip manufacturer Tripath, which went bankrupt.) And then there was a first-generation Bang & OIufsen ICEPower module, packaged inside an integrated amp by a high-end marque. It sounded pretty bad - dry, grainy, lifeless. How much was due to the ICEPower module vs. the rest of the amp is impossible to say, but it wasn't an auspicious introduction to the technology. Given this checkered past, it's little wonder Class D has been battling a reputation for sonic mediocrity with audiophiles. But new technologies make progress quickly, and the increasing number of rave reviews for the latest and greatest from Hypex, Pascal, ICEPower and others had me wondering... has Class D finally "made it" sonically? My time so far with the ICEPower-based Legacy i·V2 (USD $4,785) has been a pretty convincing yes.

Description

I won’t get into all the history and technical details of ICEpower technology - for that, I recommend this excellent audioXpress article. Of note is that ICEPower, after starting off as an independent subsidiary of Bang & Olufsen, split off into its own entity in 2016. The ICEedge controller chip at the heart of the Legacy amp’s 1200AS modules had been under development for 7 years and represents the latest and greatest iteration of ICEpower’s proprietary technology. It can scale in power from 50 to as many as 7,000 watts, and unlike some of those earlier Class D amps I tried, it has an array of sophisticated control and protection features to ensure smooth, bulletproof operation. In many months with the amp I’ve experienced zero clicks, thumps, signs of oscillation or other hiccups.

A kilowatt of clean power from this one board!

The i·V2 implements the ICEdge 1200AS modules as-is without any bespoke customizations to the circuit. (Note that this is the higher-performance mono 1200AS module, not the less expensive 1200AS2 stereo module that’s much more common.) Some other brands add their own input stage, but Legacy chief Bill Dudleston has opted to keep things stock and simple. You might be wondering, why can't I buy these modules myself then, slap them in a Chinese enclosure from eBay, save thousands of dollars and call it a day? The simple answer is ICEPower only sells them to OEMs, and forbids direct sales to consumers. But Mr. Dudleston also mentioned grounding of the modules as an area of special care, saying they were able to achieve a few dB's of additional noise performance through careful experimentation. At this level of power and performance, the little things matter.

Speaking of enclosures, the i·V2 has an extremely solid all-aluminum chassis with rose gold accent trim and plenty of ventilation around the modules. It's reassuringly hefty at 30lbs/13.6kg, so you wouldn't immediately guess it's a class D amp were it not for the 610W continuous (1000W peak) power rating. There's zero flex anywhere and while I have no idea how sensitive the modules are to vibration, knocking on the chassis gives a satisfyingly dull thud - much superior to anything you'd get on eBay or from lower-priced ICEPower resellers. There's a meter on the front, however this is neither a power meter as on McIntosh, nor a bias meter as on Pass Labs, but a measurement of the available AC power line voltage. There's a small pot on the rear panel to center it, and once calibrated it stays motionless during operation. I'm not really sure of the purpose of it, perhaps to monitor if your power lines are sagging when pulling in excess of the 1200 watts that the i·V2 is capable of delivering. The overall look is nicely done though probably a matter of taste... my wife not-so-affectionately nicknamed the amp "JARVIS" [sic] because the triangular meter reminded her of the yellow mindstone on the forehead of Vision, JARVIS's superhero embodiment in the Avengers movies. In what seems to be the fashion these days, the power/standby switch is located under the front panel, and there's an additional power switch at the AC inlet. One set of very standard 5-way insulated binding posts is provided along with balanced XLR and unbalanced RCA inputs. At this price point, I would have liked nicer posts, e.g. Furutech or WBT Nextgen. Not that there's anything wrong with the provided ones, and perhaps these posts were necessary to meet the extremely high power spec, but they feel decidedly prosaic and less pleasant to turn vs. the now-ubiquitous WBT's. A 12v trigger input rounds out the package.

Can’t get enough of rose gold? The i·V2 has you covered.

Setup

I tested the amp in two very different systems: the main reference rig, consisting of PS Audio DirectStream DAC ($6k), Gryphon Essence preamp ($17k) and Audiovector SR 6 Avantgarde Aretté ($25k) speakers; and a second system with RME ADI-2 DAC ($1200), Pass Labs XP10 preamp ($5k) and Silverline Prelude Plus ($2k). As you can imagine, really critical listening was done with the reference rig, but the second setup helped feel out how l the Legacy worked in a less expensive system. Interconnects are my usual mix of Audience Au24 SX and DH Labs Air Matrix; speaker cables were Audience Au24 SX or Furutech DSS-4.1. With the big rig, the Furutech was an excellent match; in the smaller system I used the Audience. I used only the balanced XLR inputs of the amp, so if your results differ from mine and you're using unbalanced RCA, that may be a factor. My system has been fully balanced for several years now and there's been no looking back.

The i·V2 is somewhat sensitive to the choice of power cord. I say "somewhat" because it certainly won't sound wrong or bad with a given cord, the stock one included, but nuances of its presentation can change - bass response, hall perspective, top end extension and soundstage proportion were the most noticeable aspects. For most of the time I was admittedly lazy and used a trusty Audience powerChord SEi without further thought. One day I finally swapped one of @mgd-taww​'s proprietary cords and found it to make a nice difference, which warranted some further tinkering. I found the otherwise superlative Furutech DPS-4.1 to not be a great match - it delivered tons of detail and a huge soundstage, but sounded slightly hollow tonally and lost some of the i·V2's endearing smoothness. The Audience Forte F3 (currently $149) was the big surprise - I actually preferred it to the more expensive powerChord. Audience graciously provided me with a set of Forte F3 cords a few years back when they debuted, but I haven't spoken much about them as I hadn't gotten them to click in my system. With most gear, the Forte was lighter, airier, but lacking some substance and transparency vs. the big-brother powerChord SEi. But with the i·V2, the Forte was surprisingly even better balanced and focused than the powerChord, with a more present midrange, more mid-bass punch and a bit more attack and air on the top end. Some systems and ears may still prefer the more laid-back perspective and silkier top end of the powerChord, but I really liked what the Forte did. At such a reasonable price point, it's a no-brainer upgrade over stock.

Direct connection from the RME DAC worked, but a preamp was much preferable.

A quick word about preamps: you need one with this amp. The RME DAC didn't sound particularly good driving the i·V2 directly and greatly benefited from the Pass Labs XP10. Moving up to the Gryphon Essence preamp was even better, and the i·V2 was more than resolving enough to reveal the Gryphon's substantial advantage in musical resolution and extension at the frequency extremes over the Pass Labs. As mentioned, many purveyors of Class D amplifier modules add their own flavor to the sound with an extra input stage (e.g. PS Audio adds a tube input buffer to the Stellar M1200) and this is one interesting way to go, but my preference would probably be to stick with a vanilla but more neutral ICEdge module as in the i·V2, then tune the system with a proper preamp.

Another setup observation: yes, Class D runs extremely cool vs. traditional amps, but they do still generate some heat and I was a bit surprised that the i·V2 always ran slight warm to the touch, similar to the Bryston 4B Cubed. And sure enough, I measured around 58W of power draw at idle - virtually identical to the Class AB Bryston, or an Ayre AX7e integrated for that matter. The big difference is that the i·V2 will deliver the vast majority of its musical power thereafter into the speakers and not the heatsinks, and temperature rose very little even during some heavy listening sessions. It will never get burning hot, but please don't stick it in an enclosed cabinet - as always, ventilation is still required. If you plan to keep the amp in standby, rest assured it draws only around 0.3W, and sound is delivered almost immediately upon power-up. It does require a few minutes to start sounding its best, but certainly warms up much faster than Class A or AB amps that generally require an hour or more to get close to their full potential.

I do wish the binding posts were fancier...

Finally, while the amplifier is absolutely dead quiet through the 92.5dB-efficienty Audiovector speakers, I noticed a slight buzzing sound from the amplifier modules themselves. It wasn't really audible from the listening position, but you could definitely hear it by the equipment rack. It's comparable to the slight buzz from a toroidal transformer that's dealing with a little DC on the power line, but I'm unsure that is the cause here vs. some intrinsic noise from the ICEPower's switching supply. None of my other components are having this issue at the moment, though in fairness, the Gryphons' exceptional quality transformers that are fully potted and enclosed set a benchmark for mechanical quietness. Not a major issue, just mentioning for completeness.

The Sound

Looking back at my listening notes from the first couple hundred hours of the i·V2's time in my system, it was apparent that I really needed to give the amp more time to break in. I should have known better, as my experience with audio gear employing high-speed switching circuits like DACs and Class D amps is they take a very long time to settle in. The DirectStream DAC needed at least 500 hours to sound its best, and despite cranking the Legacy amp into a 4-ohm dummy load for dozens of hours at a time with my break-in playlist, it took a couple hundred more hours before the Legacy started to click in the reference system. The second system is more forgiving and sounded good earlier on, but I'd still make sure to give the amp many, many hours before passing judgement.

Once that was out of the way, listening impressions were consistent and roundly impressive. Among the Legacy's more enviable characteristics: super low distortion; dead-quiet silence; terrific bass response; seemingly endless power on tap; smooth tonality with no discernible coloration; a surprisingly silky treble and full mid-bass; and a relaxed, slightly laid-back perspective that's a bit less immediate than my Class A amps, but still resolving and involving. Let's delve in...

Head to head with the mighty Gryphon Essence

Tonally, the Legacy struck me as slightly mellower than my reference Gryphon Essence, at least with the Audiovector speakers. I hesitate to say the Legacy is "warmer," or the Gryphon is "brighter.” The Legacy, along with the Gryphon or the Bryston 4B Cubed have less overt tonal coloration compared to, say, the Pass XA30.5 (distinctly but not excessively warm), Valvet A4 Mk.II (more forward in the upper midrange) or Ayre AX7e (crisper and lighter). The upper frequencies were very slightly less prominent with the Legacy than the Gryphon, even though I’d never call the Gryphon bright or the Legacy rolled-off. There’s just a little less air in the soundstage, and instruments with strong HF energy like Donald Byrd’s trumpet in “Witchcraft” (Byrd in Hand, Qobuz 16/44) felt slightly curtailed vs. the ultra-open Gryphon. It might have more to do with the amps’ approach to harmonics than their inherent brightness, which I’ll get to later.

The midrange is smooth and balanced, with a purity that's a step above my aural memory of the Pass and Bryston. As with the treble, it has a sense of warmth and silkiness not for what it adds to the signal, but for what it doesn't. It’s so exceptionally free of any audible distortion that even the lovely Valvet sounded a tiny bit grainy and coarse by comparison. Given that I lauded the Valvet for its midrange purity relative to the Bryston 4B3, which in turn I also liked for its midrange quality, that’s saying something.

Class D amps typically have great bass, and the Legacy didn't disappoint. Earlier in the review period, it easily surpassed the Gryphon in weight and punch, making the Gryphon sound slightly anemic on tracks like Billie Eilish's “all the good girls go to hell” (Qobuz 24/44). It was also more neutral and controlled than the Pass while having even more punch. The Gryphon still has more texture, depth and musical resolution with my speakers, and more recently it has retaken the lead in overall bass response for reasons I'm still trying understand. Either the Gryphon has finally fully broken in its enormous bank of supply capacitors, or improvements to other aspects of the system (e.g. a 20A power line) have favored it. Given that many love the bass performance of Pass Labs and the Gryphon is considered world-class in that regard, the Legacy has to be considered superb, with both the power and refinement to satisfy music lovers across a wide spectrum of genres and tastes.

What really stands out about the i·V2 is how it can combine all of the above qualities with over 600 watts of continuous power, yielding a balanced presentation that's utterly composed regardless of volume level or material. The way it scales its refinement beyond ear-splitting levels makes most every traditional amp seem shouty, edgy or strained by comparison. While the Bryston 4B3 sounded better the louder I played it, it wasn't as smooth and detailed; the Pass XA30.5 got a bit lumpy and loose at the limit; the Valvet gets a little edgy and coarse at moderately high levels; and even the mighty Gryphon Essence can get subtly brighter as you ask more power of it. The Legacy is an effortlessly smooth operator, and I certainly didn't have a speaker on hand that could faze it in any way.

Tradeoffs

Resolution of fine detail is where the Class A stalwarts pull away from the Legacy. There’s a few aspects of reproduction where this exhibits: top-end extension, harmonic resolution, very low level detail and soundstaging, which I’ll attempt to detail...

The top-end is what I would call slightly soft. It's not rolled-off, nor did I find it "dark" as I've seen some people call it. It's more that a level of sparkle and sheen that is subtly omitted from the sound. Instruments like cymbals, triangles and trumpets still have realistic tonality, they just feel slightly softer around the edges. This also affects the feeling of harmonic completeness - the highest overtones of woodwinds are somewhat curtailed. This led my oboist wife to comment that the i·V2 made oboists she was personally familiar with sound even smoother and sweeter than real life, whereas the honesty of the Gryphon Essence gave a more realistic representation.

The Valvet A4 Mk.II and certainly the Gryhon Essence, and by aural recollection the Pass XA30.5, also capture a bit more of the ambient signature in a recording - the "hall" sound, the sense of performers in a space. It’s not that the Legacy is very lacking in this respect, but similar to early SACD players, it does still have a touch of the “velvet curtain” effect where below a certain threshold, subtle parts of the signal seem attenuated. This can also makes listening at very low levels a tiny bit muffled. Resolution is still excellent, at least on par with amps around the $5k price point, e.g. the Bryston 4B Cubed. A pair of Benchmark AHB2’s could be interesting competition, but I haven’t heard it, and it doesn’t have anywhere near the current capability of the Legacy.

The last area where I found the Class A amps superior was dynamic contrasts. Despite the Legacy being the most power amplifier I have ever used by a long shot, it actually didn't sound more dynamic at typical volume than the 50 watt Gryphon, or the 55 watt Valvet monoblocks. Sure, it will play much louder than they can, but loudness isn't the same as dynamics. The Gryphon and Valvet both had a bit more life, a bit more contrast in colors... I hate to say it, but more “PRAT.” I'd put the Legacy somewhere between these amps and the Bryston 4B Cubed, which had a greater tendency to flatten dynamic nuances. (Note: my speakers are quite efficient and tame, so I’d imagine this could be a very different story into something significantly under 90dB/watt and/or presenting a tougher load.)

One more caveat to the above observations: it might be more speaker-dependent with the i·V2 than a typical linear amplifier. Interestingly, I found the i·V2 to kind of be the opposite in terms of speaker interactions and tonality to what I usually experience with my systems. The reference Audiovector speakers, with their ruthlessly revealing AMT tweeters and critically balanced tonality tend to be less forgiving of amplifiers than the much more affordable Silverlines with their soft-dome tweeter. However I actually found the i·V2 to bring out just a bit of upper midrange and lower treble prominence with the Silverline (not a bad thing per se), while sounding comparatively mellow with the Audiovectors. Load-dependent performance is a well-known challenge with the Class D topology, and while designers have found increasingly sophisticated means of mitigating it, it is probably still a factor here, albeit a much more nuanced one than in the past. I have to wonder if this variability is why one still hears of such wildly varying opinions of Class D amps... in any case, an audition with your preferred speakers is highly advisable. 

Further Musings...

The Legacy i·V2's exceptional performance forced me to check my notions of fidelity. In terms of measured performance, it’s among the best I’ve experienced (along with the Bryston 4B Cubed), and my ears registered its sound as correspondingly pure and distortion-free. Could the Legacy's slightly smoother, less bright and less overtly dimensional perspective actually be more accurate than my other amps? It's been shown (by e.g. Nelson Pass) that some judicious 2nd order harmonic distortion can add a sense of dimensionality to a recording, which explains why tubes can sound so "holographic". In the tube case, I find this to be a euphonic (albeit lovely) deviation from the original recording. The Gryphon Essence is also a soundstaging beast, and while it’s far more neutral than any tube amp I’ve heard, could some of its dimensionality also be additive rather than accurate? Could something similar be said of the i·V2 slightly soft treble - is this actually the absence of distortion that exists in virtually all other systems, including the ones used to master recordings? Listening to a bright pop album, e.g. Dedicated by Carly Rae Jepsen (Qobuz 24/44), the i·V2 was certainly more listenable than the crisper and more sibilant Gryphon. On the other hand, the Gryphon has a bracing immediacy, a feeling of being pulled into the mix and enveloped by the music. The i·V2 by comparison is a little tame, a little reserved, perhaps even a tad muffled. Is that extra dynamic verve and contrast I hear from the Gryphon and other Class A amps real, or an artifact? Which is more accurate?

Because of the infinite number of variables in the recording and playback chain, there's likely no clear-cut answer. While no one buys a Gryphon or Pass Labs for the best specs, there’s no denying that the latest crop of Class D amps are on another level of measured performance from old-school Class A machinery. On the other hand, I do feel the i·V2 subtracts a few things from the signal. How much does that matter to your ears in your system? It's a close enough call that I can imagine circumstances of some preferring the Legacy to the Gryphon. For me personally, while I could happily live with the Legacy, I do inevitably find myself returning to the Gryphon for those extra nuances - the fineness of instrumental textures, the palpability of the soundstage, the dynamic inflections - the things that make hifi more evocative of the real thing. 

I recently attended a lovely performance by The Cleveland Orchestra in their summer home, Blossom Music Festival. (Hurray for the return of live concerts!) When I returned home that evening, the Legacy was hooked up in the system. I put on a live recording of the Philadelphia Orchestra - not at all equivalent in venue or performance to what I had just heard, but bear with me - and it struck me that the tonality of the i·V2 was actually quite evocative of the real thing. Live orchestral performances have a ton of energy, and yet they sound so smooth and sweet compared to typical reproduced sound. The i·V2 captured that silkiness to a greater degree than I’ve heard in my system, but was lacking some of the edge and vitality. Switching to the Gryphon gave me more of the excitement of the live event, but tonally it wasn’t quite as spot on. At this point, we’re probably approaching the limits of conventional reproduced sound, so some tradeoff will be necessary. Which one is “better” may depend on your frame of reference. E.g. if you like the neutrality and balance of solid state amps, you'll likely find little missing from the Legacy's presentation; if you favor the tonal color, dynamic verve and larger-than-life presence of tubes, you may find the Legacy a little dull. The very fact that I'm having to finely parse these matters of fidelity and taste is a testament to the overall excellence and refinement of the i·V2. To accomplish that that with 610 watts on tap for under $5k is a significant milestone for Class D technology, and a remarkable feat of engineering.

I must mention the obvious ecological benefits of Class D over Class A - we are drawing literally hundreds fewer watts, we don't need to keep it running or warm it up for extended periods to sound good and we are generating far less waste heat. The electric bill and thus cost of ownership will also be appreciably less. On the flip side, the jury is still out on how long these amps will last, vs. a Gryphon or Pass Labs or Bryston that one can easily imagine humming along for 20+ years. As such, and as is often the case with newer and more commoditized tech, I'd expect resale value to be significantly lower than those marques. Just a couple extra things to consider when you're plunking down a not-inconsiderable amount of money on a piece of kit.

Conclusion

The Legacy i·V2, and Class D amplification more broadly, are emblematic of larger shifts in high-end audio technology. Just as solid state and digital audio took a while to hit their stride and gain legitimacy in the exalted (ok I'll say it, snobby) circles of the high-end, we've hit a point of maturity with Class D where technological sophistication and subjective fidelity can go hand in hand. The fact that I strained my ears comparing the i·V2 to a $24k Class A reference that is far and away the best amplifier I have ever heard in my system is all the proof I needed. For under $5k, the Legacy i·V2 delivers a balance of refinement and power that is unmatched by any conventional amplifier I'm aware of near its price point, and competitive in absolute terms with the better amplifiers under $10k and beyond, regardless of technology. It's a cut above what I heard from the Bryston 4B Cubed, and while I haven't had the Pass Labs XA.8 series in my own room, I would not hesitate to line it up against them. Many may still prefer the more overt musicality of the hot-running Pass behemoths, but my feeling is it'll be more a matter of personal taste or system matching, as opposed to one of absolute fidelity.

I have a few burning questions on my mind now. The first is how Legacy's implementation of the ICEdge 1200AS compares to other ones on the market - could you get similar or even better performance for less? The next one is how does the Legacy/ICEdge stack up against other Class D implementations from Hypex, Purifi, Pascal and others? And finally, I've also heard a lot of wonderful things about the Class H Benchmark AHB-2 from ears I trust. It too is compact, cool-running, superbly specified and relatively affordable, but utilizes a sophisticated implementation of traditional linear amplification technology. I would love to compare and contrast the Legacy with that amp.

In the meantime, I strongly endorse an audition of this amplifier without prejudice. It's a remarkable achievement in amplification - highly recommended!

[thesunnyshow]

Name: Elsie

Writing Blog URLs: @jyeonvoir​, @linochee​, and @cinnominroll​

What fandoms do you write for?: The Boyz, Stray Kids, and NCT (Mostly for dreamie)

Age: 20

Nationality: Indonesian

Languages: Native-level Indonesia, Intermediate English, and Beginner-level Chinese

Star Sign: Aries

MBTI: ESFP-A

Favorite color: Soft blue and pink

Favorite food: Fried chicken

Favorite movie: Along With The Gods: Two Worlds

Favorite ice cream flavor: Chocolate

Favorite animal: Cat and Dog

Dream job (whether you have a job or not): Since I was in middle school, I dreamed to be a news anchor or a tv presenter

Coffee or tea? What are you ordering?: I actually prefer milk more than those two, But if I have to choose, I will go with tea

Go-to karaoke song: Popular songs of the year that I know (Western and Korean)

If you could have one superpower, what would you choose?: Space and time manipulation

If you could visit a historical era, which would you choose?: Srivijaya era (3rd – 14th centuries) or Majapahit era (1293–1500)

If you could restart your life, knowing what you do now, would you?: I don’t think I would. Restarting my life would mean I have a chance to fix my future, but it also means I might lose something I have in the future (and it does not always mean good)

If you were a trope in a teen high school movie, what would you have been?: Either the popular kid or the loner

Would you rather fight 100 chicken-sized horses or one horse-sized chicken?: 100 chicken-sized horses. Normal-sized chicken already scares me, I can’t imagine what will happen if I have to fight horse-sized chicken, even it’s one.

Do you believe in aliens/supernatural creatures?: Yes, I do. Not everything can be explained in science, y’know.

Fun fact about yourself that not everyone would know?: When I was five y.o, I had my parents panicked once. So back then, instead of going home with my little sister, I went to the hospital alone and visited my mother who had just given birth to my little brother without giving any notice to them. My neighbour, who saw my little sister went home without me, worried and called my dad. Panicked, my dad called my mom and told them that I was missing. Lucky, I arrived at my mom’s room just when she answered my dad’s call and they hadn’t called the police yet. Later that night, I got a long lecture from my dad at home.

When did you post your first piece?: If I remember it correctly, it was around early July 2018 on my personal blog -- one or two weeks after I just joined Tumblr. But, before Tumblr, I had posted fics on Wattpad in late 2014

Why did you decide to write for Tumblr?: It’s all because I found a few interesting fics here and then it motives me to write again. I also happened to be looking for a new platform to write since I was bored with Wattpad.

Do you write fluff/angst/crack/general/smut, combo, etc? Why?: I do write fluff and angst fics, but mostly fluff because I’m a sucker for fluff. I’m not good with angst and bad at writing smut

Do you write OCs, X Readers, Ships...etc?: Used to write Ocs, but since I joined Tumblr I write X Readers more often than OCs.

What inspires you to write?: MVs (The one with a story) and song lyrics

What genres/AUs do you enjoy writing the most?: Romance with a little bit of fantasy

What do you do when you hit a rough spot creatively?: Take a break from writing for a while

What is your favorite work and why? Your most successful?: My favorite work of mine and the most succesful, excluding the drabbles and timestamps, is Lee Know’s fic titled “What Are You Up To?”. Among the oneshots I had made, it is the only fic that reached more than 200 notes and I’m quite proud of it. It was inspired by a Korean novel I read and a bitter experience of my junior high school love.

What do you hope your readers take away from your work?: I hope my readers can see many sides of a relationship, either it friendship or between lovers. Sometimes, relationship can’t be smooth and have a happy ending like in movies and novels, and it’s not always sad and dark. Also, since the culture that I have grown up with different from people that I meet from this online platform, I want to show how I see a relationship supposed to be.

Who is your favorite person to write about?: In the boyz, it was Sunwoo and Kevin since they are the easiest out of twelve to write for me. In Stray Kids, It is either Bang Chan, Hyunjin, or Lee Know. As for NCT, I think it will be Jaemin and Jeno.

Do you think there���s a difference between writing fanfiction vs. completely original prose?: Yes, I do. To me, writing fanfiction is easier than an original. In fanfiction, I don’t need to make a detailed characterization of the characters since it’s using a real person as the reference. But as for an original, the more detailed the characterization of the characters the more people could get the sketch of the story since this is the character that I made myself without a reference. 

What do you think makes a good story?: A good description, and language that easy to understand, followed with a balanced proportion of dialogue and description.

What is your writing process like?: I start by writing the outline first and do some research before starting to write it. I don’t have a specific plan like when should I write or how long it should be, but I tend to write when I’m in the mood. I can’t force myself to finish a fic just in one week (If I do, I will not satisfy with it and the ending will feel rushed). That’s why It usually takes a long time for me to finish a fic or req.

Would you ever repurpose a fic into a completely original story?: Yes. Of course I would. I’m actually in the process of repurposing one of my old fics into a webtoon with my little sister. But we don’t know when we will start.

What tropes do you love, and what tropes can’t you stand?: I love strangers-to-lovers, enemies-to-lovers, secret relationship, and bad boy tropes. To be exact, any trope that show a good development of the characters and has a fantasy in it will be in my to-read list. However, I can’t stand the tropes with angst (especially if I’m not in the mood to read angst), break up, and thriller in it. I will still read it, but not on the top of my to-read list.

What has been one of the biggest factors of your success (of any size)?: Supportive friends and family members. 

Do you ever feel there are times when you’re writing for others, rather than yourself?: No, I don’t. I always write for myself and put my satisfaction first before anything. 

Do you ever feel like people have misunderstood you or your writing at times?: No, I don’t. It never happens to me.

Do your offline friends/loved ones know you write for Tumblr?: Some of my college friends who are a Kpop stan do know about it, though they don’t know my blog url. Only my little sister does.

Do you think fanfic writers get unfairly judged?: Yeah, most of the times. Especially for those who write X Readers fics.

Do you think art can be a medium for change?: Absolutely. Art has the power to inspire change in the masses.

How much would you say audience feedback/engagement means to you?: Feedback and constructive criticism on my works are so, so valued! It’s important for me to able to improve and motivate myself.

What is one thing you wish you could tell your followers?: Please stay healthy and be happy. Feel free to talk to me whenever you want because my ask always open for you.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers who might be too scared to put themselves out there?: You will never know your potential until you try it. It’s okay if your first work doesn’t look great. No one is perfect, even me. I used to make so many grammatical errors in my first fic (even in the newest one, though it wasn’t that bad like before). As long as you satisfy with it, you still can improve it in the future.

Are there any times when you regret joining Tumblr?: Nah, There aren’t.

Do you have any mutuals who have been particularly formative/supportive in your Tumblr journey?: Yes, I do. And I’m thankful for that. Because of them, I was able to learn new things and experience many styles of writing by reading theirs.

Pick a quote to end your interview with: “Sometimes you feel like you are alone in this world, but in reality, you have people around you who love and care for you.” -- Huang Renjun

BONUS: K-POP CONFIDENTIAL

Interested in your very own episode of The Sunny Show? Find out how to apply HERE.

[rakuyokoyo]

Heroes:Rising Notes - Deku and Kacchan

My BNHA story, TBE, is currently on hold. However, I am planning on releasing a Heroes:Rising oneshot on FanFiction.net with my OC incorporated in it.

It’s been almost two weeks since I’ve last seen the movie but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it so I’m going to write a series of notes + reviews on Tumblr, as well as an eventual oneshot (story acronym will be T:B). 

[MAJOR SPOILERS—this post will spoil the entire movie!]

I don’t ship BakuDeku in BNHA (or any other pair except KamiJiro) but Heroes:Rising will definitely be a treat for those who do and for those like me who simply love their rivalry.

—

[Climax Transcript] (note: I’ve never learned Japanese so the translations may not be 100% accurate).

B: Bakugo, D: Deku, YB: Younger Bakugo, YD: Younger Deku, N: Nine

B: “This will be the end of your dreams.” D: “That’s fine. There’s no other choice. And even if it’s All Might, he would say that it’s okay [to pass down One for All] if it’s you. ...If it’s you, who shared the secret with me... if it’s you who’s always admired the same person as me... if it’s you—”

YB: “All Might really is cool!” YD: “He’s a really... cool hero!”

YB: “No matter how bad of a pinch, in the end he always—” B: “—I will win!” YD: “No matter how many people are in need of help... with a smile—” D: “I will save!”

N: “Don’t make me laugh!” D: “Detroit... smash!” N: “What... what is that power?! Don’t stand in my path!” D: “Let’s go, Kacchan!” B: “Huh? Don’t order me around!”

[Fight continues]

D: “This will be my final... my final... SMASH!”

D: Goodbye... One for All... thank you.

This is pretty bare-boned considering the sakuga, pacing, and soundtrack makes these lines quite epic, but I really wanted to break down the first few lines as well as Deku’s last inner monologue.

—

‘Deku’ and ‘Kacchan’: There’s been a lot of rumours on Twitter/Tumblr on what Bakugo says to Deku with some of it blown way out of proportion or just simply untrue (though I have heard that the novelization of the script may be more BakuDeku heavy. I do have the book with me but there’s no furigana, so I unfortunately can’t translate it).

But the first line that Bakugo says, “This will be the end of your dreams” really got to me in the theatre. I may be self-projecting, but I think it’s a line that’s both accurately culminated their relationship thus far as well as an acknowledgement of Deku by Bakugo.

I absolutely love the latter simply because he’s one of the most consistently-written characters I’ve seen in anime who’s not just a mindless, senseless jerk, which makes his growth very organic and fun to watch.

What’s significant about that line is that if he really doesn’t care about Deku (and objectively speaking, there really hasn’t been a lot of moments in the canon where he’s shown to care for Deku’s wellbeing—only a gritty rivalry), he wouldn’t care about the fact that he got One for All.

I’m not quite sure if Bakugo’s ever expressed his desire to get One for All, but I’d argue that he wouldn’t want it because he wants to surpass All Might, which is something that the non-canon character, Tokuda Taneo, also echoed in the recap episode of Season Four. Basically, Bakugo is the type of person to say ‘I don’t need your stupid power because I’m going to be the best hero with my strength alone’. The voice actors of Midoriya and Bakugo have also noted that their fight at the end of Season Three was due to a series of ‘why’ questions from Bakugo: why was I the one who ended All Might? Why am I now chasing the back of someone who was always behind me? Was the way that I admired All Might wrong? (I will be writing a separate note on this episode in the future).

But what changed with the line “This will be the end of your dreams” is that there’s a lot of hidden nuance behind it. This is solely my opinion, but in the movie it felt like Bakugo was (1) acknowledging Deku as his rival, (2) feeling sorry that his dream has ended in this manner, (3) pitying him instead of absolute loathing, like he usually does.

The reason why I believe this to be true is because the first half of the movie opens up a lot with Bakugo watching Deku and really seeing what he’s like as a person who aims to ‘save to win’. He eavesdrops on a conversation between Deku and Katsuma (the little boy), a scene that does a really good job portraying the type of person that the hero Deku is. He’s empathetic, patient, understanding, and kind to someone that Bakugo can get irritated by, and this impatience is almost fatal later when Bakugo almost hangs up on Mahoro when the villains attack, thinking it’s another prank. Basically, the first part of the movie does a good job showing both the audience and Bakugo what sort of person Deku really is.

That line is basically saying ‘I may not like you, but I’ve seen you grow up next to me. I know how much you wanted this and how hard you’ve worked for it—that’s why you’re my rival, no matter how much I despise you. But this isn’t how I want to see your dream end.’

There’s no love lost between the two but just that one line made me positive that Bakugo was fully willing to work with Deku (something he’s either always refused to do or has done so extremely begrudgingly) not simply because Nine was too powerful, but because the entire premise of the movie and Deku’s decision to end his dream just to save Katsuma has once again shown that his once Quirkless, crybaby of a childhood friend really is a hero that he must acknowledge as well.

He knows this wasn’t an easy decision to make and one done out of pure desperation, but the interesting thing is that he asks this question after the power has already been transferred.

As if to ask, ‘Do you really think I can have this, even if it means that your dream will end?’

More surprising to me was how quickly and affirmatively Deku is willing to pass OfA to him. Over the series, he’s said multiple times of how unlikeable Bakugo can be, but he was the person who he respected the most growing up, because Bakugo was someone great that was always near him, unlike All Might.

“If it’s you, I trust that you’ll be able to recognize both our dreams.”

Deku doesn’t even give Bakugo a chance to hesitate, quickly listing out all the reasons why he was willing to hand down One for All—and his dream—to his childhood friend.

I don’t think the movie showed a lot of new sides for Deku, but that one line from Bakugo really made me feel that he cared for his childhood friend in an unexpected or different way than other typical shonen rivalries. It’s different from Kageyama/Hinata’s in Haikyuu!!, or the brother-like relationship between Sasuke and Naruto, or the one between Asta and Yuno in Black Clover, where both sides acknowledge their strengths even if others don’t.

Deku has fought so hard for so long, chasing something impossible despite all odds and actually gained the opportunity to realize his dreams. He’s gone through every roadblock, none of which were easy or handed to him, and deep down, I think Bakugo’s always acknowledged this. But I think it’s only from this fight that can really see that he needs Deku.

All Might told them that they will become the greatest heroes if they can both win to save, and save to win. I’m not sure about Deku, but the ‘save to win’ part probably never registered in Bakugo until he began to see Midoriya as a true rival.

But now, with this seemingly endless fight, Bakugo is about to witness his other half—as a friend, a rival, and as heroes—take his final stand. But unlike Kamino, he can fight with the person that he respects this time, rather than just watching from afar like he had to with All Might.

—

Heroes:Rising was emotional for me for many different reasons, but this line really got to me (although I will once again say that I may just be projecting my own feelings). The rivalry between Midoriya and Bakugo has always been filled with so much conflicting feelings such as envy, pride, antipathy, fear, admiration, and rejection (All Might, chapter 63), but this fight felt like those emotions could now culminate into one of pity, acknowledgement, rivalry, trust, equals, and acceptance. Which made the fight even more bittersweet for me.

Thanks for reading this stupidly long post—it’s been on my mind for days now and I just had to spit it out somewhere. I don’t know if I could even call them ‘friends’, but I really love watching their relationship grow in unexpected ways.

My next note will be on Kamino vs. Heroes:Rising.

[lordelmelloi2]

There is like a thin line between running a hentai blog (which isn't allowed on a 13+ website) and helping facilitate child pornography (which is morally disgusting, vomit inducing) and quite frankly I don't trust a majority of people to be checking the characters and their ages before hitting "reblog" anyways. Like do you care about the proportion differences between a depiction of a child vs a petite adult in porn anyways? Do you care about looking up characters & their ages because you personally don't want to have the conscience of jacking it to kids even by accident on you? Do you care, do you actually care, or do you just want to not get caught?

Like I don't believe all... illustrated pornography is bad. I believe an absolute majority of it is (like, 99.9%). I believe also that the running attitudes in creating illustrated porn are "Age up this character so you won't get caught!" and "Think about how sexy this is! No don't think about other people's feelings about it!" and that's how we get rampant child pornography, misogynoir & racism and colorism, transmisogyny & intersexism, oftentimes overlapping in many respects. Like, when you consume pornography, do you care about what you consume? Do you actively steer away from any content that perpetuates these things, refusing to engage in colorist fetishizations of darker toned women, refusing to engage in futanari which harms intersex people and trans women, refusing to engage in pornographic consumption of material of children's series just because you find a single adult character attractive?

Like. Unlearning takes a long damn time but you should absolutely have a double check checklist. You should learn the difference between childlike proportions and petite women being depicted in art. You should learn how to spot sexualization of minors, even when they are "fully proportioned", because sexualizing girls who aren't able to consent to sex harms them. This means not partaking in things like schoolgirl fetishization.

When you reach a point in which you find that you're conscientously consuming non-marginalizing porn, you should then ask if you're consuming realistic, human, natural depictions of people enjoying sexual activity or if you're consuming idealized images of women (which then feeds into internalized misogyny). And then, you should ask if you're supporting sex workers and people who create this content from the ground up- what can you do as an audience to support them? Are there any illustrators you know who like to draw erotic content who are mindful of these things?

It's time to hold yourself in higher esteem and to begin the unlearning process. You can make these changes and work on it.

*this isn't even going into fetish art, which isn't going to be a post because if I have to get nitty gritty into every fetish then there's a much larger problem at hand

[aviscarra19ahsgov-blog]

Media Assessment of Issue

Article #1- https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/06/climate/renewable-energy-push-is-strongest-in-the-reddest-states.html

Article #2- http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/01/22/france-india-to-focus-talks-on-defense-deal-clean-energy.html

Article #3- http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/coming-terms-just-how-dangerous-trumps-pollution-plan

In article #1 the subject is how renewable energy is becoming more and more popular in states that are primarily pro Donald Trump. The author is, Justin Gillis and Nadja Popovich. The article talks about how in these states renewable energy and it’s popularity over these couple of years. I think that the intended audience is anyone interested in the topic and Democrats because I think NY Times is trying to educate the left on how Trump supporters can still be pro-clean energy. The perspective is pretty neutral the authors are just trying to educate people. The significance is that everyone should be working together instead of fighting with each other just because of their political opinion. Yes, I agree with the article because I have the same opinion, we should work together to protect our earth.

In article #2  the subject is how France and India are going to have a meeting to discuss issues about clean energy and a multibillion-dollar deal for combat airplanes and closer cooperation on counterterrorism. The author is the “Associated Press”. The context is hoe France has promised to support the efforts of India’s request for cleaner energy. The intended audience is the right wing because the article is very anti-terrorist rather than talking about clean energy. The perspective is very right-wing/conservative. The significance is to inform the public about the actions of France and India are taking to stop terrorism and to provide India with cleaner air. I don’t agree with this article because it doesn’t really talk much about clean air, it focuses on anti-terrorism. I think the bigger issue is clean energy for India because they are in desperate need of it, the air quality in India is horrible.

In article #3 the subject is how Trump isn't helping the clean energy problem and how he is making it worse. The author is Steve Benen. The context is Trump’s vs. Obama’s environmental policies. The intended audience is anti-Trump supporters. It is very left but it has a lot of good information and it is very detailed. The significance is that Trump’s needs to start caring about the environment and that he is killing it. I agree with the article, but I think they are blowing things out of proportion just a bit. 

The similarities between the articles are that they all talk about clean energy, but some article especially article #3 is very strong with their point of view. With article #2 they the reader can obviously tell it was written from a right-wing perspective the same goes for article #2 instead article #2 was very left. The NY Times article was right in the middle and was very supportive of each side. 

I identify with Article #1 and #3 most because they actually talk about the issues I think that are most important while article #2 just touched the tip of the iceberg with clean energy. 

[theamazingsallyhogan]

In the months since I’ve started watching it, My Hero Academia has quickly become my favorite battle shonen series. It’s not particularly mold-breaking; it uses the same genre tropes as most other series of its ilk. Its main strength is that it brings the genre’s strengths to the forefront, with a supremely likable ensemble cast and exciting battles, while leaving behind many of the genre’s typical weaknesses. One of battle shonen’s greatest struggles has long been how to incorporate its female characters, and My Hero Academia handles the situation with rare grace and aplomb. However, no work of art is free of biases, and while My Hero Academia avoids many issues associated with the genre, there are still many sexist biases deeply encoded in the series.

“Battle shonen” refers to the subgenre of action-driven manga aimed at boys that focus on battles between characters, as the name implies, and are structured around arcs with the series’ overarching goal being only vaguely defined, if at all. They’re dominated by a number of conventions the audience have come to expect, such as a young male protagonist with a core group of friends, a rival, tournament and training arcs, and a series of increasingly powerful villains. Popular battle shonen like Naruto, One Piece, Bleach, and Fairy Tale can run for decades. My Hero Academia is a relatively new entry to the genre, drawing much of its inspiration from Western superhero narratives and synthesizing that with the typical ideas of the genre.

These series have long tended to struggle with what to do with their female characters. They are often introduced early in the series, when the protagonist has yet to set themselves apart from the pack, and become part of the core cast. However, as the male protagonist gets more and more powerful, the girls on their team often lag behind them in ways that the boys don’t. They become relegated to healers or support duties, but rarely get the spotlight in battle. They get designated female enemies to fight against, before they are neatly removed from the conflict. They become damsels for the boys to rescue. On the rare occasions that women are powerful fighters or mentors, they are often sexualized to the point of disrespect.

My Hero Academia neatly sidesteps most of these issues by treating its female characters as interesting, integral members of the ensemble cast. They have varied, likable personalities and appearances, with useful quirks that make them valuable contributors to the team both in and out of battle. No one embodies this more than Ochaco Uraraka, Izuku’s cheerful friend with the ability to make things float. She’s a clear choice for the love interest – a friendly girl-next-door type who meets Izuku by using her quirk to prevent him from tripping and falling on the day of the entrance exam – and he does indeed develop a crush on her. Despite his feelings, friendship defines their relationship, rather than attraction, and they thus far remain close but platonic. His crush on her is so secondary to their camaraderie that it’s easy to forget that it even exists. Such relationships between male and female characters are rare in any genre, but I honestly can’t remember last time I saw it in a battle shonen series; they tend to be mentor-student or focused mainly on romantic feelings. Rather than treating her as a means to an end or an object of Izuku’s affection, mangaka Horikoshi writes Ochaco as a person first, with same amount of interiority and individuality as any of the male characters.

The aniblogger sphere has heaped praise on the episode “Bakugo vs. Uraraka” for its approach to pitting Ochaco against Katsuki Bakugo, Izuku’s longtime rival, and for good reason. Bakugo, whose quirk allows him to combust his sweat made of nitroglycerin, is one of the most powerful and dangerous competitors in their school’s sports festival tournament. Izuku tries to help Ochaco by coming up with a strategy for her to fight him, worried that she’ll be immediately and thoroughly beaten by the volatile Bakugo. She enters the ring with a quavering smile that fails to cover up her nervousness. Once the fight gets going, it becomes clear that she never needed Izuku’s help; she develops her own strategy based around getting Bakugo to blow up the ground and making the rubble float above his head, crashing down at a key moment. She’s a bright girl who has been using her quirk for close to a decade; she is perfectly capable of coming up with her own strategy.

It seems possible that Horikoshi scripted this fight specifically to call out the sexism endemic to the genre. As the fight continues and Ochaco takes explosion after explosion, the onlookers jeer at Bakugo, angry at him for “picking on” her and imploring her to send her out of bounds. Ochaco is cute and harmless-looking, causing them to perceive her as less capable. Their teacher Aizawa jumps onto the mic, calling them out: “Was that a pro saying he’s playing around? How many years have you been a pro? If you’re saying that with a straight face, there’s no point in you watching anymore, so go home! Go home, and look into changing careers! Bakugo is being careful because he’s acknowledged the strength of an opponent who has made it this far. It’s because he’s doing everything he can to win that he can’t go easy on her or let his guard down.” Ochaco may be cute and lacking in raw physical power, but she has made it this far on her own strength; the audience asking him to knock her out because they’re uncomfortable seeing her fighting all-out against a clearly powerful male opponent is selfish and disrespectful, on top of making assumptions and not taking her seriously. Aizawa points out their implicit biases, that they assume she is not a worthy opponent because she is female, and this particular bias rears its ugly head over and over in battle shonen as the female characters are relegated to the sidelines. Even after the fight, their classmates tease Bakugo for looking like a villain beating up on a frail girl – it’s still an uphill battle for female fighters to be taken as seriously as male ones.

It’s not hard to see why the characters would assume girls are weaker; there’s plenty of in-universe evidence to uphold that. Thus far, we’ve only met four female professional heroes: the elderly healer Recovery Girl, Mount Lady, Uwabami, and Midnight, compared to about a dozen male professionals. In the Unforeseen Simulation Joint, not a single villain is female. Even in Class 1-A, under ⅓ of the students are female. In early planning stages, it was only four; two of them, Tohru and Tsuyu, were originally planned to be male. He changed them to make the gender balance more even, but that did not come close to fixing the problem. The rest of the school appears to suffer from the same imbalance. It’s an oft-quoted statistic that men perceive groups as majority-female once more than ⅓ are women, and My Hero Academia perpetuates that issue.

My Hero Academia has a relatively low level of fan service for the genre, especially compared to series like One Piece and Fairy Tail, which delight in regularly displaying the mostly-naked bodies of their female cast. The aforementioned Mount Lady and Midnight are both highly fetishized; Mount Lady, a literal giantess, introduces herself with a coy, “Nice to make your ass-quaintance!” and Midnight bases her whole aesthetic around sadomasochism, with the epithet “The R-Rated Hero” and a flog whip as a weapon. Uwabami makes her much of her living as a TV celebrity and hires her female interns on the basis of their looks. While the students of Hero Academy are quite realistically proportioned, those two are very busty with costumes that highlight their curves. Class A’s Mineta is particularly an affront, so much so that hating him has become a meme on social media. He routinely attempts touch or peep on his classmates without their consent. While the girls may retaliate, especially Tsuyu, these moments are played off as jokes. When he tricks the girls into dressing in cheerleader uniforms, they become angry, but they continue to wear them anyway, to the delight of the boys in the class.

A look through the series’ supplementary material reveals more of Horikoshi’s biases. Each character receives ratings in five different areas, including power, speed, technique, intelligence, and cooperation. Across the board, the girls of Class 1-A have low ratings in power, with an average of only 1.83 out of five, and high ratings in cooperation. While the female cast is truly a delight and I enjoy how they’ve worked together in risky situations, I’d love to see a female character as ornery and temperamental as Bakugo. Instead, this continues to prop up the stereotype that women are naturally better at working together than men, and that they must be sweet and gregarious. In a universe where the majority of people have supernatural powers, there is no reason for a lack of physical strength among the female cast as well. Many of the male characters’ quirks are so powerful we never see them throw a punch, including Todoroki, one of Izuku’s chief rivals. Even if you buy into the idea that women simply lack the physical strength of men, it would be simple for a girl to have a power that strong in combat.

These criticisms are not meant as an indictment of Horikoshi or My Hero Academia; everyone has biases they subconsciously insert into their work. “Bakugo vs. Uraraka” demonstrates a level of awareness that most battle shonen lack in addition to an effort to improve how girls are portrayed in these kinds of stories. Coexisting with the issues discussed above doesn’t make Horikoshi a hypocrite, nor should it necessarily reduce anyone’s enjoyment and excitement all the show’s myriad strengths.

My Hero Academia is a delightful series, and it has merited much of the praise it has received. However, that does not mean it’s immune to criticism or doesn’t have its own unconscious biases encoded in it. Weekly Shonen Jump’s readership is almost at parity; while it may be aimed primarily at boys, its writers and editors should still be aware of the female readers and takes steps toward inclusiveness. My Hero Academia is so close, but we should not simply ignore or excuse its shortcomings.

As someone that hasn’t gotten terribly far into this series (running since 2014), I’m curious what people that have gotten further think.

So far, I’m less forgiving than the author of this piece.  Horikoshi created a world where the majority of the overall population have superpowers, but the superhero population is almost entirely male. It’s Deku’s story so obviously he gets the spotlight, but there’s a huge gulf between the male and female supporting cast. When All-Might needed a rescue (against an all-male group of assassins), it was the boy students that rushed to his side. Fukigkage dispatched of Momo (supposedly the top-scoring female student) and Mina with casual ease.  There’s regular speeches about things like the “fiery passion of youth” and “fated rivalries” directed just toward the boys.  I mean, I’ve seen “battle shounen” treat girls worse, but something so basic shouldn’t get graded on a curve.  Does it get better? 

[douchebagbrainwaves]

DO WHAT DOESN'T SEEM LIKE

And to my horror I started acting like a child. Most people's first impulse when they hear about a lame-sounding idea, I ask What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of? Why are programmers so fussy about their employers' morals? No one can accuse you of unjustly switching pipe suppliers. 94 you hold is worth. A recent survey found 52% of companies are replacing Windows servers with Linux servers. The government has responded with draconian laws to protect intellectual property. By obstructing that process, Apple is making them do bad work, and programmers hate that as much as he expected. We know now that the healthiest diet is the one our peasant ancestors were forced to eat because they were poor. So how can I claim business has to learn from open source, blogging is something people do themselves, for free, but before the Web it was harder to reach an audience or collaborate on projects.

After my mother died, I wished I'd spent more time with her. When you look at the most successful companies and explain why they were not as lame as they seemed when they first launched. And if you want to please people who are mistaken, you can't simply tell the truth. Which is why people trying to sell you expensive things say it's an investment. It's hard to say how much is the natural conservatism that made them work for the love of it: amateurs. No one can accuse you of unjustly switching pipe suppliers. And God help you if you fire anyone. Photo by Margret Wozniak.

And by this I mean software in the general sense: i. Startups usually have to do it. 5 years, during which they spent $50 million. Police investigation apparently begins with a motive. You're always going to have to add a few extra words, to make people feel better? And by this I mean software in the general sense: i. So what will business look like when it has assimilated the lessons of open source and blogging. They were attracted to these ideas by instinct, because they make such great stuff. Then I could put it online right away. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs. Business still reflects an older model, exemplified by the French word for working: travailler.

Which means it's a disaster to have long, random delays each time you release a new version almost every day that I release to beta users. The restrictiveness of big company jobs is particularly hard on programmers, because the moral weight of running a startup, because the remaining. I'd only seen in zoos before. When founders seem unfocused, I sometimes suggest they try to keep their startup mojo. Don't try to fool us just by being here a lot. Just don't wait. T: Scheme has no libraries, and Lisp syntax is scary. When founders seem unfocused, I sometimes suggest they try to keep their startup mojo.

And when you propagate that constraint, the result is that each person gets freedom of action in inverse proportion to the size of group that can work together, the only way I can imagine managers at this point saying: what is this guy talking about? Could civil liberties really be a cause, rather than just an effect? One is that it makes you more attractive to investors. They can practically read one another's minds. Closer, probably, than the men running our government, who for all their talk of patriotism remind me more of Richelieu or Mazarin than Thomas Jefferson or George Washington. They don't have to interrupt working on the Manhattan Project, Richard Feynman used to amuse himself by breaking into safes containing secret documents. Which means it's a disaster to have long, random delays each time you release a new version. It's a worrying prospect.

Otherwise these people are literally taking your life. Normal food is terribly bad for you. Business still reflects an older model, exemplified by the French word for working: travailler. Actually what they need to fix anything? But they're looking for a way out. The financial risk? Imagine an American president saying that today. Users don't switch from Explorer to Firefox because they want to hack the source.

You could just say: this is what you have to quit and start your own company, like Wozniak did. The other reason Apple should care what programmers think of them is that when you sell a platform, developers make or break you. This essay is derived from a talk at Oscon 2005. There's something fake about it. Ramen profitability is an unfamiliar idea to most people because it only recently became feasible. It would improve the average startup's prospects by more than 43%. The huge volume of the spam, which has so far worked in the spammer's favor, would now work against him, like a branch snapping back in his face. Which is exactly how I'd describe the way lions seem in the wild seem about ten times more alive. And if the company merely breaks even on the deal, there's no reason to believe today's union leaders would shrink from the challenge.

If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. It's never just a straight trade of money for stock. It's a consequence of the tree, you're going to face resistance when you do something in an ugly way. 11. In 1977 there was no doubt some group within IBM developing what they expected to be the next generation. Computers are precise and methodical. For individuals the upshot is the same: Darwinian. Auto-retrieving spam filters would make the email system rebound.

[creative-type]

Why Tony Tony Chopper is my Least Favorite Straw Hat

I feel conflicted when I see people list characters from greatest to least favorite. Cut and dry lists in general - whether featuring power levels, most attractive, saddest backstory, etc - tend to elicit this reaction, because they’re so subjective and I think if an author has done a good job then the audience shouldn’t be able to make the list at all.

Which wouldn’t stop people from trying, but still. 

Using One Piece as an example, there are certain characters that resonate with me personally, the chief of whom is Nico Robin. I’m a total sucker for the misunderstood badass bookworm - Raven from the original Teen Titans cartoon, Tris Chandler from Tamora Pierce’s works, Roald Dahl’s Matilda, and Thistle from Daughter of the Lilies are just a few examples of this in other media.

But apart from Best Girl Robin, my feelings about the cast of One Piece tends to vary depending on how you define “favorite”. I love Luffy as a main character, but would hate to meet him in real life. I appreciate Zoro’s place in the crew, but find him boring and long wistfully for the days when he was allowed to be a goofball. Nami, Usopp, and Vivi grew on me over time, and if I could graph my feelings on Sanji over the course of the series it would look like I have ventricular tachycardia 

And then there’s Chopper. 

Just as I’ve liked Robin since her first appearance, I have never liked Chopper. I know typing it is akin to blasphemy amongst the One Piece fandom, but I was left unmoved by his backstory, and he’s never grown on me in the hundreds of chapters since then. The first thing I thought when I first saw his unused concept art was “what a wasted opportunity”. 

 A lot of this is subjective. I work in health care, so the quack doctor Hiliruk rubs me the wrong way on a purely professional level, which in turn makes it really hard for me to care when he dies. I dislike Chopper’s “mascot” status and how it’s affected his character design. I wish he would do more onscreen doctoring. I find his naivete annoying. I think his post-timeskip transformations look dumb. And so on and so forth, ad nauseum.

At the same time, Nami is never shown drawing maps and I regularly have her in my top 3-4 Straw Hats. Usopp and Luffy are just as stupid, but their antics don’t bother me half as much as Chopper’s do. When I decided to sit down and write about Chopper, I had to figure out what made me less tolerant about him specifically when there are plenty of others who share his same flaws. This is what I came up with.

Want vs Need and Forgotten Development

In his book The Anatomy of Story, John Truby describes the difference between a character’s want versus their need. While written with writing screenplays in mind, many of Truby’s techniques can be used regardless of medium. It’s an excellent tool for would-be writers, and I highly recommend it.

When looking at Chopper through the lens of want and need, it’s pretty easy to see what Oda had in mind.

Chopper wants to become a doctor who can heal any illness, but he needs to reconcile his human and reindeer natures and see himself as a complete person. Ironically, in doing so he willingly becomes the “monster” he was so afraid of.

 Since this transformation is for the sake of and with the support of his friends, it’s coded as positive when before it was negative. Chopper is no longer isolated and lonely, but an accepted and important member of an infamous pirate crew. Compare the above to his fight on Fishman Island

So Chopper does have a complete character arc through the first half of the series, and it’s a good one - simultaneously unique to him while bolstering the themes of One Pieces as a whole. Good job, Oda.

At the same time, I think there’s a secondary need that’s overlooked by the narrative, and by this point I doubt will be relevant to the story, and that’s the fact that Chopper needs to grow the fuck up.

To be fair, Chopper is only 15 at the start of the series, had spent the first years of his life as a reindeer and the rest isolated from the world for his own safety. It is understandable that he’d be naive. Dr. Kureha points this out for herself when he first joins the Straw Hat Pirates

What sets Chopper’s immaturity apart from, say, Luffy’s is that it is presented as something that he needs to overcome. This is especially true during the Skyepiea arc.

Remember that early on in the arc Chopper is left alone to guard the Going Merry. Chopper fails, losing quite badly to the Priest with all the strings whose name I can’t remember. Even with Gan Fall’s intervention it was plot armor sheer luck that kept the both of them from being killed. 

This loss nicely sets up Chopper’s battle with Gedatsu, which ended with Chopper’s first solo victory of the series. 

Chopper screams to the heavens that he’s a “real” pirate, which in context refers to reliable, brave, and strong. Note that this ties into his main need of self-actualization as the chapter before Chopper calls himself a monster just before hitting Gedatsu with his finisher. 

In doing so, Oda is effectively saying that Chopper needs to mature before he can become a complete character. In this way Chopper is like Usopp, whose desire to become a brave warrior the sea necessitates that he face his problems head on instead of run from them.

Later during the Davy Fight Back, Chopper is temporarily lost to the Foxy Pirates. He is understandably upset, but he goes overboard with his hysterics, causing Zoro to call him out.

Zoro in essence tells Chopper to man up. Now, masculinity as defined by One Piece is a pretty broad topic, and this isn’t the only time Chopper is told how to act “manly” by other members of the Straw Hat crew, one of the best examples I can think of being Sanji telling Chopper that “a man doesn’t believe a woman’s lies” when Robin tries to leave the crew. In this instance, however, I think “being a man” is interchangeable with “acting like an adult”, specifically in the area of taking responsibility for one’s actions. 

So we have the problem of Chopper’s naivete brought up by Kureha, the first steps of maturity seen during Skypiea, and the exposure that Chopper still has a long way to go during the Davy Fight Back. There’s even a moment during Thriller Bark when he has to deal with the realization that one of his idols is an evil dirtbag of Spandam-like proportion - a loss of idealism that most go through as a normal part of growing up.

The development isn’t fast nor especially profound. It’s never the main focus of Chopper’s arc because it’s not his primary need, and in a gag-happy series like One Piece I think Chopper’s childishness would always be the brunt of some sort of joke. But there is a sense of steadily marching forward toward a goal, and if things had kept trending in that direction I think it would have been enough to elevate Chopper from his dubious position as my least favorite Straw Hat.

But immediately after the timeskip we have this abomination of a scene

Words cannot express how much I hate this scene. Every other Straw Hat gets an awesome reintroduction. Nami and Usopp, who along with Chopper make up the so-called “weak trio”, even get to beat the crap out of some of the Fake Hat Pirates. 

Chopper mistakes creepy cucumber lady for Robin and runs away crying, undoing hundreds of chapters of development in one fell swoop. It’s stupid on so many levels I can’t even articulate enough to type them all out. The gag falls flat and makes it impossible for me to take him seriously going forward. I will admit that I’ve not done a lot of rereading of recent chapters to double check, but where Usopp and Luffy get plenty of moments post-timeskip to display a new-found maturity while maintaining their fun-loving nature, Chopper does not. He’s the same old Chopper.

I don’t have any way to confirm this, but I think part of this stagnation of character is due to Chopper’s status of cute mascot. To disrupt this status quo is to lessen his marketability. There is a reason why Chopper’s so damn cute when Oda originally wanted him to be kind of ugly. I mean, say what you want about Oda’s use of realistic body proportions, but there was a time when Chopper’s head wasn’t bigger than his torso.

Whether I’m right or not, I don’t think that it can be disputed that Chopper has gone through what I call “forgotten character development”. He’s just as immature (and in some places more so) as he was early in the series, and personally I can’t stand that kind of character. 

And again this is a highly subjective thing, but I don’t even think he’s that cute anymore. It’s a serious problem when your mascot ceases to be adorable and has no development to fall back on.

In the larger picture of One Piece, the loss of Chopper’s secondary development is a small thing, but it’s enough for me to not care about him at all. Sanji, for all his polarizing actions, at least makes me feel something. These days Chopper is just...there. 

I will admit that I might have let my initial distaste cloud my objectivity, so let me know what you think about Chopper’s development, or if there’s any other character that everyone else seems to like but you can’t stand. I’ll commiserate with the burden of having an unpopular opinion.

[lazuliblade]

History of YOI fandom

As a YOI fandom grandparent, I felt it was my duty to write out all the fandom explosions for the newer fans who weren’t there to witness the big bang and gradual week-by-week creation of this universe. All the arguments, people blowing things out of proportion, blaming characters, death theories, awesome fans clearing up miscommunications, YOI breaking the internet... 

This isn’t a post to call out specific people on their arguments and theories - I’ll stay respectfully away from restarting flames and picking fights, thankyouverymuch. Rather, this is an overview of the topics and conflicting views that swept across hundreds and thousands of people and prompted strong reactions. I’m doing this now, because I know that 6 months later, 1 year later, 3 years later, etc. there will be new fans who will have many of the same exact arguments. We’ve been there and done that. I see fans now who say things without knowing where the spelling/quote comes from, or who don’t realize how much has changed, or don’t know why there are certain perceptions of characters. So here’s a little bit of passing down history.

I also don’t want to forget the crazy ride this was. Laugh with me at the silly theories; smile with me at how deeply YOI has impacted our lives. For those of us old-timers, let’s take a trip down memory lane. Remember when...

---------------- (Large arguments will be italicized or bold. Special thanks to @sachiro for reminding me of a bunch of stuff I missed, and looking over the draft in its various stages of being written and edited.)

Pre-series

Idea that there would be a love triangle (Yuri P.--Yuri K.--Victor)

Some fans started spelling Yuri Katsuki with two “u” in order to tell them apart.

Victuri ship name created for Victor x Yuri K. (in a comment to the PV)

The title

“lol ‘Yuri’ on Ice? Where are all the lesbians?”

“When it said Yuri on Ice, I thought we would get girls. Y’know what I mean?”

“Yuri on Ice? More like Yaoi on Ice! amiright?”

etc.

J.J. misspelling (English spelling “Jean Jack” instead of French Canadian “Jean-Jacques”)

you can see the remnants of this in the audience banners during the episodes, but it was corrected to “Jean-Jacques” on the official website and the in-show text

Phichit x Seung-gil ship created (there was more art for this than for Victor x Yuuri)

Episode 1

Victor vs. Viktor spelling arguments 

Although “Victor” is the official spelling and seen in-show, people argued that the creators are wrong and that we fans know better than them about Russian culture - thus the “Viktor” spelling was born.

People argued back that spelling is subjective and you can spell a name multiple ways and still be correct - thus transliterating his Russian name into English as “Victor” would be just as acceptable.

The YOI wiki held fast for a time on using official spellings and information from the official website, but the transition of power led to a new team that started using agreed-upon info rather than solely using official info. “Viktor” replaced “Victor” on the website.

this change from “Victor” to “Viktor” on the wiki happened around episode 2~3, but the arguments were in the page comments since episode 1 -- with moderators explaining their reasoning with sticking to official sources.

Victor is a flirtatious over-the-top character who will seduce Yuuri

Victor is the overwhelming seme and Yuuri is the shy whimpering uke.

People dropping the anime because Yuuri is overweight; people commenting that they don’t want to see an overweight main character

in addition, some people dropping YOI due to feeling that the series was “fat shaming” by using Yuuri’s weight as a point of comedy.

Conversely, some people praising that we have a main character that gains weight and actually has an overweight appearance. 

“Japanese Yuri” &“Russian Yuri” or “Yuri K.” &“Yuri P.” were used to differentiate between the two characters since they shared the same official English spelling “Yuri”.

Starting with ep1, “Yuuri” spelled with two “u” became more widespread due to convenience when typing.  

Japanese fandom simply used kanji for Yuri Katsuki and katakana for Yuri Plisetsky. 

Some fans argue that Yuuri is more correct because in Japanese his name is ゆうり(yu-u-ri). Other fans argue that “Yuri” is still acceptable transliteration because there are multiple spelling systems (Hepburn, etc.) and an alternative correct spelling would be with a macron (Yūri).

Fans point out that Yuri’s name would be spelled “Yuri” in official documents anyway due to lack of macrons on many keyboards.

Spoilers for episodes 1-3 were out because of the two Western fans who witnessed the first three episodes of YOI in a Tokyo preview screening.

fans relied on a certain blogger for info on YOI. 

“WHERE DID YOU SEE EPISODES 2&3???” was asked every 5-10 minutes (literally) and became an inside joke with us old-timers.

Yuuri = Yuzuru Hanyu, Victor = Evgeni Plushenko.

Some fans link characters with real-life skaters to encourage anime fans to watch real skating. 

Some fans saw these as one-to-one connections without considering that characters are a mix of various real-life skaters, and then went onto YouTube videos and spammed about “real-life Yuuri.” 

YOI fans being rude to skaters and sending emails to ship these real-life skaters (emails sent even to skaters who are married with kids)

Amazing researching fans:

find Victor’s apartment and the beach from the ending credits Instagram roll.

Love hotel

Makkachin’s name found in magazine Yuko was holding 

speculation starts on what “Makkachin” means and how it should be transliterated (Makkatine, Mocatine, Makkatin, etc.)

Comparisons of Yuuri to the main character from Parasyte due to similar appearances (Tadashi Hiramatsu, the character designer who adapted Kubo-sensei’s initial designs for animating, was the main character designer for Parasyte).

Speculation on the year in-series starts. 

Yoyogi for Worlds doesn’t match with Sochi as the GPF location.

Yuuri’s iPhone model is seen as a clue.

“Yuri on Ice” trends for 6 days on Tumblr

Episode 2

Victor is manipulative:

He’s a playboy and flirting all the time 

In episode 1 Minako mentions that he is desired by millions. 

His wink in episode 1 shows that he casually flirts with fans.

He will break Yuuri’s heart. He came to romance Yuuri, then drop him later.

He’s already pushing into Yuuri’s space with the chin-touching. That MUST mean he’s suave and planning to seduce and drop him.

“Victor calling him ‘piglet’ is so mean!” -- an extension to the fat shaming debate of episode 1.

Yakov’s angry comment to the press = more fodder about Victor being selfish and only there in Hasetsu for his own pleasure.

Victor is horrible because he broke his promise to Yurio x-number of years ago.

All of his happy smiles are a facade and he can’t actually be that nice. 

Counterarguments to trust the creators and wait to see more about these characters because it’s only been 2 episodes.

Koibito translation nitpicking (it’s not “girlfriend,” Victor is saying “lover.” It’s a gender-neutral term.)

people calling this queerbaiting

“It can’t get any gayer!” line starts to make its appearance.

Ship name “Victuri” cemented. “Victuri sounds like victory!”

Arguments about spelling it “victuuri,” because of the trend with spelling Yuri K.’s name as Yuuri to differentiate the two Yuri’s. 

Counterarguments that “Victurio” would be for Yuri Plisetsky, so therefore “Victuri” would be fine for Yuri Katsuki.

Evgenia Medvedeva starts watching around this time and posts comments on her twitter account.

The livestreaming IRC group is started. There were about 15 people tuning in (this grows to the hundreds by the last episode).

Mira makes her appearance (more of an appearance than the brief flash in ep1). Her name isn’t announced yet so some people nickname her “Natasha” (after the Marvel comics character Natasha Romanova/Black Widow)

Episode 3

Yurio was robbed. 

and all the counterarguments against this.

score calculating posts begin to show up.

“Victor is manipulative” evolves into “Victor is evil” 

“he didn’t keep his promise to Yurio”

people ignoring that he actually did keep his promise to choreograph a program

Eros story Yuuri tells Nishigori = parallel to how Victor will abandon Yuuri in the end. Victor is the evil playboy, confirmed!

People fighting this with meta about how Yuuri is the seductress keeping the playboy, and this was all Yuuri’s interpretation -- Victor may have had another story in mind and we’ll never know what it was. (<---until episode 10)

He forgot Onsen on Ice was about the competition and was there playing around as Hasetsu ambassador. He doesn’t REALLY care about the two Yuri’s.

“he didn’t notice when Yurio left and was having the time of his life with Yuuri on the podium”

Victor’s super-serious expression when Yuuri hugged him means he doesn’t care.

“Make a man pregnant” - the start of the ABO fic influx

“Katsudon ga daisuki da yo” is how we say “I love you” in YOI.

Boyfriend shirt has taken on a new level: boyfriend costume.

Yuuri and genderfluidity 

quite a few fics were spawned from this topic too

YOI is not yaoi -  how genre is not the same as tags. Posts clarifying what yaoi actually is and why Yuri on Ice doesn’t fit that genre at all.

Yuuri getting more confident by episode 3 already - initiating hugs and contact with Victor. “How much more gay can we get!? They already said ‘I love you’!”

Fanfic explosion 

due to Victor’s character being slightly more fleshed out, and the relationship between characters becoming more established

Top!Yuuri starts to make appearances

Going in blind to the episodes from here-on-out because the fan report from the screening was only through episode 3.

Real life skaters are noticing and posting on social media about YOI. 

Evgenia Medvedeva, Denis Ten,  Deniss Vasiļjevs & Stéphane Lambiel, Ashley Wagner, Danny O’Shea and many others from here on. 

Masterpost soon created to document all these skaters.

Kubo-sensei tweets about episode 4 being her favorite

Episode 4

Victor has cancer/is dying.

He was so dramatic and playful when he joked about balding. That means he’s hiding something. Balding = cancer. Therefore Victor is dying! (Note that cancer doesn’t cause balding, although it’s treatment with chemotherapy does.) 

Victor being that out of breath must mean something is wrong.

Victor’s comment about injuries = 

he’s hurt but hiding it

we can expect someone to be injured later

Rise of fanfiction featuring Victor with large past injuries he’s kept hidden.

Celestino getting annoyed at Victor = more fodder for Victor being evil. 

No coach likes him - that means he must be untrustworthy and there must be something that he’s hiding that we don’t know yet.

The Old Man in the onsen becomes a fandom celebrity for a while (captain of the ship)

Victor’s comment on Yuuri’s stamina = fic fodder

“You meet me where I am” - fans exploding at how meaningful this all is and how far they’ve come in four episodes.

“What do you want me to be to you”

---Victor said “koibito” but subs say “boyfriend”

---Daddy kink: “A father--” “Yes!” 

this is when we start to see this kink in fics and fanart/comics

Phichit makes his appearance. Fandom explodes with glee. People pointed out his appearance in episode 1 and more explosions of “no detail left behind”

Aeroflot

Enter Lilia and her teaching Yurio.

Evil Lilia and Yakov

“Yurio should have stayed with Victor”

Kubo-sensei laughs at the rumors of Victor dying.

Everyone and their mother tries to learn to make katsudon - various recipes float around; Crunchyroll releases recipe (Nov 4). 

Jokes and critique about YOI dub (Gru!Victor; Russia(Hetalia)!Victor)

Episode 5

Victor obviously knows no Japanese at all vs. Victor obviously knows a little Japanese after living there for 6 months (about whether or not Victor understood Yuuri’s love declaration due to him commenting about the tie and not the confession)

Fan comics/art and fanfiction about burning Yuuri’s necktie

JARAN jacket (that one scene with Yuuri’s jacket misspelled)

Lots of flailing and dozens of gifs of the lip balm scene

awesome fans finding the exact Chanel lip balm

Yuuri’s confident walk = flailing and keyboard smashing moment (gifs with explosions behind him)

Hug meta (back hug; “do the hands on neck mean anything?”)

Minami is a chicken nugget (McDonald’s colors + being small)

First time we hear Victor’s thoughts - people discussing this

Victor’s image shifts away from “evil Victor” towards something a little more positive

Leaks of the Oh! Skatra!!! Tracklisting (Nov 6).

Duetto title makes people freak out

Speculation on who will skate what piece.

Speculation starts on who will appear in which GP series competition.

Pre-episode 6

Jealous/Possessive!Victor due to the ending image in ep5 of him wrapping his arm around a flustered Yuuri.

speculation on where that is and who took the picture

Dengeki, the website that posts teaser pictures and text of various anime’s next episodes, posted a teaser summary on their site that used quite a few innuendos.

Starting from here, YOI episode previews start to be released later and later. This becomes a running gag among fans who stay up to wait for previews. 

Episode 6

Chris makes everyone uncomfortable.

wet ice comments

People freaking out about the hand holding (“koibito tsunagi/lover’s hold”) then about the lip licking

Victor’s innuendo and lewd mouth animation

Victor actually is sexually attracted to Yuuri

Paired with Yuuri being comfortable with Victor clinging naked to him at the restaurant, and worrying that people would think he’s not serious about the competition = fans arguing how far they’ve gone

Queerbaiting arguments still continue ( “fujoshi bait” and “fanservice”)

“Ai ha katsu” (Love wins!)

Georgi is an Evil Witch

Leo = awesome representation (non-white character representing the U.S.A.)

Phichit meme ( “scandalized” with hand on mouth)

Phichit is captain of the Victuri ship

Kubo-sensei posts summary of The King and The Skater 

Pre episode 7

Dengeki, what in the ever living F is that preview summary (twitter)? Along with the shortened version.

Another preview summary wtheck comment - this time from a YOI animator, Itou Noriko

“Drastic measures”??? Will Victor hug Yuuri? Violence? Harsh words? Kiss on the forehead or MAYBE the cheek?

fanfics, comics, lots of speculation

Episode 7

Kiss vs. Hug

drawings/charts/tracings to prove it was a kiss

queerbaiting comments continue

Western fans ask Kubo-sensei for a direct answer; she’s amused that Japanese fans didn’t need confirmation yet Western fans did

Yuri on Ice trends on Tumblr for two days at #1 (previous episodes had trended in top 3 for about a day).

“Japanese censorship is what made them cover the kiss!” -- and the subsequent posts that stopped this misinformation.

“Victor is evil” continues - he was cruel in the parking garage and the queerbait lip hug was obviously just consolation

Chris, stahp! (more wet ice comments)

Guang-Hong is badass, Leoji ship sails further

Georgi is creepy, some people hate Anya, some feel sympathy for her

Georgi’s outfit = figure-skating Elsa (photoshopped pictures)

Head boop

Aired after the U.S. election - “episode 7 is the only good thing that happened this week”

“YOI singlehandedly saved 2k16”

Watchers dropping the anime because Victuri became canon.

some people liked the anime as long as it was still ambiguous. This kiss/hug scene made it much less ambiguous and left them feeling awkward.

some people liked it as long as the pairing was not mainstream - they liked being a niche shipper.

Conversely, more people started watching once they heard it was canon and not queerbaiting/fan service.

Johnny Weir homage with young Victor’s outfit and rose crown at European Worlds.

Johnny hears of this and adds YOI on his to-watch list.

Kubo-sensei tweets about a certain scene - confirms and does not confirm it as a kiss

pre-Episode 8

Will YOI talk about homophobia and LGBT hatred?

They’re going to Russia next - lots of fanfiction about Victor dealing with past and current homophobia, and how Yuuri and Victor would act during their stay in Russia.

Magazine had the titles for episodes 8 and 9 - “Victor returns to Japan” has people theorize about what could be drastic enough to have him return.

Kubo-sensei strikes again:

tweets about looking forward to Dengeki’s summary this week and ends up trolling the fandom.

being one of us and wanting them to get married already.

Makkachin’s name revealed to have no meaning.

Dengeki posts 5 hours later than normal.

Episode 8

Angry fans yelling “Why didn’t they use this chance to address hatred?”

People arguing about how this is nice because we already have so many other series about hatred and would it kill them to let us have ONE nice thing in life? Let’s just appreciate that we get a happy relationship with no prejudice or hatred from the world for once.

Kubo-sensei defending the hate-free world she created.

Seung-gil feather duster/parrot/swiffer comments and comparisons.

Sala vs Sara

official site and subs romanized her name as “Sala” but a more natural spelling would be “Sara.” (sala means living room in Spanish and Italian) 

wihin the week, the spelling was corrected on both the website and subs to “Sara.”

Mila Babicheva was also changed to Mira Babicheva at this time.

Makkachin-related tags and comments

#Don’t die Makka!

#SaveMakka2k16

#Makkachoked

Speculation on what Yuuri will place - and who will make it to the GPF.

J.J. and the cross - many understood it as a religious motion, but it was soon linked by figure skating fans to Yuzuru’s cross motion to check body axis.

Kissing the ice - seen as “J.J. is so narcissistic and kissing himself,” then disputed by other fans as a sign of respect for the ice much like real-life athletes do with the ice, track&field, and court.

Yurio x J.J. shipping starts

Sub!Victor fanfic boom, BDSM, foot fetish, and other related body worship fics

YOI trends over Barack Obama (Nov 24)

Katsudon recipe released by Funimation on Yuuri’s birthday (Nov. 29)

Preview images for ep9 of Sara encroaching on Yuuri - some people worried that this would be in-series drama or that fans would ship it.

Dengeki still posting way later than they used to. This leads to lots of waiting and loss of hope for future episodes until…

Episode 9

Freaking out over the airport scene:

“What did Yuuri’s tears mean???” 

relieved/touched Victor cares for him and returns feelings? All the emotions catching up from their separation and the hard skating? 

guilt over hiding that he will retire soon? Sadness that this will only last 2 more weeks?

Clarifying why Victor brought up “proposal” (“Why does what Yuuri said sound like a proposal?”)

People “fixing” the subs (mis)translate the word “koto” as if it was the word “mono” and end up making Yuuri’s line to Victor sound super possessive/cheesy as a result.

Yuuri mentioning that he’ll win gold prompts discussions about “Does Yuuri need a gold medal to be happy? Is a gold necessary for his character?”

Fandom exploding over Yurio’s pure smile and friendship with Yuuri

People uneasy over Sara and Michele’s sibling relationship.

Mira x Sara ship gains steam and sets sail.

“Hug zombie” - the term given to Yuuri’s hugging spree

Johnny Weir planned to watch YOI “one episode per day,” but failed and watched two episodes the first day. Then binged the rest within two more days and caught up in time for episode 10 on Wednesday.

Naked Victor on the front page of NBC due to Johnny’s tweets

Crunchyroll releases Katsudon Pirozhki recipe (Dec 7)

pre-Episode 10

“Something round and golden” -- gold medal, wedding rings, cock rings, onion rings, golden snitch

Kubo-sensei fanning the flames

we were losing hope for teasers until... our saviors, Animate, took over for posting them. Dengeki still posted the identical teaser pics on their site, but did so at a later hour.

Preview lines about Yuuri recalling the previous year’s nightmare banquet.

Translation confusion led to people thinking it was a “nightmare bucket” “nightmare baguette” (and other attempts to find the correct foreign word) until someone pointed out that figure skating competitions have banquets.

Theories about what happened at the banquet. 

Episode 10

Rings

Yuuri buying one ring (with Victor buying the other) vs. Yuuri buying pair rings as a set 

would later be confirmed in a magazine post-series that Yuuri bought both rings

Are they really engaged or not?

Best plot twist ever.

The ending changes everything we ever knew about this series 

 people analyzing all the interactions since episode 1

“Poor Victor” comments and tags appear

“Victor was pining all along!”

Victor seen as super patient and willing to let Yuuri drive the pace (because he never brings up the banquet in order to respect Yuuri’s shyness). 

Victor flying to Japan with his dick out. 

Victor had a crush on Yuuri since the beginning.

“Victor is a dork who would do anything for love” mentality sweeps away previous malaise.

fanfic and fanart explosion of dorky, loving Victor 

This is when the loving!Victor image squashed any lingering remnants of evil!Victor 

Eros parallel re-interpreted as Yuuri being the playboy and Victor being the woman seduced and left behind. 

Victor is savage for making a program based on the banquet and thinking to skate it for a season. 

Pole dancers comment that the moves in Yuri on Ice reference actual moves (Yuuri is pretty good and has great grip strength; a couple of Chris’ moves are incredibly hard)

Otayuri (Otabek x Yurio) becomes a pairing

Beach scene discussion - was Victor angry or not, and why?

Hype for Kubo-sensei revealing that the GPF would have the most realistic animation of all the episodes.

Animate posted late (only a few hours before airing), but Dengeki even later.

Episode 11

“Scoring system is broken!”

Yurio’s score is literally impossible using the current real-life ISU scoring system (he’s about 5 points too high)

Yuuri scored low despite low number of technical mistakes

J.J. given a higher score than should be allowed because of his huge errors.

Discussion on Victor looking out at the ice during Yurio’s SP (“what was he thinking?”), and discussion about his flashback and burden

Chris’ mystery man ( “Chris’ boyfriend”? “Who IS that guy???”)

Half the fandom dies with Yuuri’s last sentence; half the fandom trusts Kubo-sensei (and comforts the other half)

Evgenia posts a tweet trusting everything will be alright

People’s view of J.J. changes - some sympathy and “??? I never expected to actually care for this guy!”

It seems everyone pitches their predictions about who will be on the podium.

“Phichit’s hamsters predict the podium?” theory

pre-Episode 12

We give up on teasers because they’re so late. Animate releases them a few hours before the episode airs.

Oh!SkaTra!!! Yuri!!! on ICE Soundtrack released about a day before the final episode aired.

“Spoilers” (but not really, because we had the tracklist since episode 5). We confirm the last two songs are the exhibition skates. People avoid Tumblr until the episode airs because of the “spoiler threat.” 

Episode 12

Breaking Tumblr, Crunchyroll, and Animate.

Crunchyroll released a statement on Twitter about YOI’s high traffic breaking it.

Tumblr crashed (traffic volume too high) right after the CR simulcast/subs came out around 4PM EST. It wasn’t fully fixed until several hours later.

Animate’s website crashed for the same reason as above.

“It wasn’t gay enough”

People feeling disappointed about the relationship between Yuuri and Victor because there was no second kiss or explicit “I love you.” People wanted something that could not be denied (wanted an “uncensored” kiss).

Others counter-argued that relationships can show deep love without needing an “I love you,” and point out how the relationship was built steadily throughout the series.

People feeling betrayed because Yuuri didn’t win gold.

“Otabek was robbed!” and “J.J. overscored!” complaints circulate

“I won’t kiss it unless it’s gold” prompted a legion of pictures/comics, and fics.

Gushing over the liberate use of ring flares

“History Makers” in the end credits - the extra “s” felt like an Easter egg to some.

Ice dance vs. Pairs - many fans mistake the final Duetto exhibition skate as Pairs when it’s actually based on an Ice Dance routine

How will Victor do both skating and coaching?

Will we get a Season 2? “See You Next Level” means a second season, right? 

After the series, we saw Oh!SkaTra!!! and the DVD/BD volumes sell ridiculous amounts - easily placing in either 1st or 2nd place on Oricon’s charts for DVD, BD, CD, and CD digital release. The Blu-ray and DVD volumes continue to hold high sales. Magazines continue to be translated. Some ideas/meta are confirmed and others become defunct.

It was a wild ride from way back when YOI was only a website and PV. Every week brought new ideas, writings, meta, art, and discussions. It was to the point where some weeks you would get in-depth meta and polished art just hours after the episode aired. In fact, there was so much made that you could easily reblog hundreds of posts in a day for the more explosive episodes, and meta would either get hundreds of notes or be lost in the current of new stuff appearing every few minutes. At the rate that it’s still going with new campaigns, events, and merchandise, Yuri!!! on ICE will be active for quite some time.

[academicatheism]

More on Street Epistemology

somebodysittingthereallthetime:

Sorry this turned into a bit of a rant. TLDR is: I think that all your arguements against SE work even better against your own approach. So I just don’t really understand you at this point.

Not only everything you say about SE indicates that you know close to nothing about it…

(You did not answer the question about how many actual SE conversations you’ve seen. Of course not seeing any wouldn’t make your opinion invalid, but if you just continue saying things that are simply not true, we’re both wasting our time here. For example you say that “most people are devoted to comfortable opinion rather than facts and truth. SE advocates don’t recognize that.” That is simply not true. Many SE conversations touch on the question of whether the IL believes what they believe because of it makes them feel nice or because of something else. Truth vs. comfort is a recurring question.) …but your last comment shows to me you don’t really understand the backfire effect either. “The backfire effect occurs when, in the face of contradictory evidence, established beliefs do not change but actually get stronger.” In your 5 point strategy the first 2 is also used by SE, but the last three are exactly what causes the backfire effect. The mere situation of you saying you know something better than them is what causes it. The only systematic way around that I know about is SE.

Here’s the thing. Your defense of doing it for the audience is something I kind of agree with. Public debate is different from SE. Both can be useful. But I think your total dismissal of SE is entirely baseless. Basically what you said is that people are not rational enough for SE. That’s just your impression. How is that a good arguement? Do you have any data on that? The backfire effect study is at least some data we have. But what really strikes me is that you say that your style works best while it requires reading a lot, understanding complex reasoning and so on. Are people rational enough for that? That’s a huge contradiction. Same with your line “most people are devoted to comfortable opinion rather than facts and truth. SE advocates don’t recognize that.”

So how are your facts and truth any more help than SE? All your arguements condemn your own style even more than they condemn SE.

Your lines again:  “I don’t and never will have faith in people’s capacity to reason “ later you say your strategy of showing people reasoning is guaranteed to work. How is that not a contradiction?

“All it takes is one question: might I be wrong?“ Yes, I totally agree, but if you’re “slamming the truth on their table and compelling them to respect it“ That’s where the backfire effect comes in. There is a less direct way of leading people to that question, and it seems more effective if they themselves formulate the question. Just imagine the situations! You ask someone or you lead a conversation in a way that they feel comfortable asking it themselves

Peter Boghossian coined the term and made it famous, and now agnostic atheists think Street Epistemology (SE) is the only valid approach. It’s not. In fact, you mischaracterize my approach and what I said in order to drive your points. You act as though there wasn’t context to what I said, so let’s get right to it.

The accusation that I don’t understand x or y is the apologist’s strategy. You don’t care about the right approach; you only want to prove that SE is right and so the accusation is used not once but twice. I outlined SE well enough for you to say that my approach incorporates two points in the SE approach. Then you say I don’t understand the backfire effect -- even though I defined and explained it. The fact that I anticipate it and don’t care to prevent it doesn’t mean I don’t understand it. I want it to happen to the point that someone loses their cool so that onlookers can see just how helpless the view in question actually is. 

If your view is demonstrably superior, there will be no need to curse someone out, threaten them, or even threaten to kill them. The fact that I’ve driven people to that point says a lot about Christianity, Islam, and right wing politics. I’ve never been driven to such a point because my beliefs don’t get stronger when confronted with contrary evidence; I update them in accordance with the evidence and that’s the norm for rational people. Look at scientists, mathematicians, engineers, and philosophers. Generally speaking, their beliefs don’t get stronger when confronted with evidence their view can’t or doesn’t account for; they adjust their beliefs when faced with such evidence. It’s how progress is made in any of those disciplines. Rational people will readily identify the effect and realize that the person guilty of it has a false belief or erred point of view; the backfire effect is a good indicator for deciding which view is right, so it’s not something I seek to prevent.

Then there’s this issue of contrary evidence. Who decides what such evidence is? This is a matter calling for objectivity, so rational individuals in an audience can say “homologies do pose a threat to the Intelligent Design view and yet, the ID advocate is doubling down and even getting testy; the guy arguing in favor of evolution is likely to be right.” Now, an ID advocate can say that Piltdown Man is contradictory evidence. Who decides that? Anyone who looks at that specific case and realizes that a) it was a hoax and b) it was shown to be a hoax by scientists and not creationists will realize that this isn’t evidence at all; that’s aside from the fact that Piltdown Man doesn’t suddenly debase the massive human fossil record we have! An audience is much more likely to have rational members than for any one person to be rational.

When speaking to pro-lifers, I don’t have to write profanity laced responses threatening to hurt pro-lifers. That makes no sense. The fact that they’re easily driven to that point in one discussion after another is good indication to onlookers that pro-lifers are wrong. The backfire effect is useful to me, so I don’t want to prevent it.

In any case, you say I contradict myself -- which would be correct if there wasn’t context. People, generally speaking, are irrational. I did, however, grant that some people are rational. I also said that my concern isn’t the individual I’m debating, but rather the audience. I trust that some people in the audience are rational and therefore, can understand my arguments. So there’s no contraction -- only one of your own making and for your own convenience. On SE, you need most people to be rational in order for your one-on-one approach to work. The person you’re speaking to has to be able to see and comprehend the flaws in their own reasoning. I don’t trust people, in general, to be able to do that -- hence my aversion to one-on-one discussions. I trust that members in the audience will have these capacities, hence making my approach more efficient and effective.

As for data, you’re being disingenuous. That the so-called emotional brain is more prevalent in our decision-making is well-established. That we make reckless decisions when sexually aroused is well-documented. Most men wouldn’t consider sex with underage girls when not aroused. Ask them again when aroused and suddenly they consider sex with underage girls and even women they regard as unattractive. This trend is similar in women as well. Bids in auctions are made due to random digits. 

Never mind all of the cognitive biases we come prepackaged with. Consider SPOT -- the notion that something is of more value just because one owns it. Then there are logical fallacies people are prone to -- a common one you commit here: straw man. People, generally speaking, are irrational and need to learn how to reason and think logically. I don’t trust any one person to have that capacity; that has to be demonstrated to me first and once it is, then I wouldn’t mind a one-on-one discussion. I keep good intellectual company, people I speak one-one-one with about a number of things; we keep each other sharp and polish each other’s ideas and arguments. In an audience of an unidentified number, a decent proportion is likely to be rational and that’s why I have public exchanges rather than private ones. I’ve even made private exchanges public, so that a potential audience can benefit from it.

This is why I’m having this exchange with you, in fact. Anyone who is rational will see that you straw manned what I said in order to say that I contradicted myself. The record clearly shows that I didn’t because I didn’t say all people are irrational. Also, consider who we’re talking about! 

We’re talking about people who believe Iron Age goat herders were right about the entirety of the universe: how it came to be; how life came to be; the meaning of human life; whether or not there are aliens and whether or not they’re intelligent; what can and cannot exist. I don’t expect anyone with such breathtaking arrogance to be rational and, for the most part, believers aren’t. They’re fond of rolling out all sorts of fallacies and cognitive biases, most especially ad hominem, ad hoc reasoning, straw man, abusive fallacy, confirmation bias, special pleading, non sequitur, statistical fallacies like Hoyle’s fallacy, cognitive dissonance, etc. That’s apart from omitting evidence, ignoring contrary evidence, and falsely believing they’ve provided necessary and sufficient conditions for anything they might define, e.g., human being in the context of the abortion debate. I don’t trust a one-on-one discussion with people like that; the audience is what matters and these six years have proven that to me conclusively.

You can go on about the effectiveness of SE, but it’s not as effective and certainly not more effective than the approach I use. I rely on a number of potentially rational people to decide between which case is irreparably flawed and which is better and true. You rely on one person to be rational though it’s highly probable the individual is simply not. Especially in the case of religious believers, they don’t want to know what’s right; they already believe they’ve located the truth and can be given no reason to seek it, unless they learn how to reason and employ logic more effectively -- and that usually happens when they’re part of an audience: online forum, public debate, classroom. Members in an audience are much more likely to have already gotten there and are thus, on the cusp of renouncing faith or are sitting undecided on the fence due to lack of information or even fear. My approach is undoubtedly more effective in disabusing them of this lack of information and fear, for example, of Hell or god’s wrath. SE puts undue focus on one person who is (highly) likely irrational.

I think this is the deciding point: it is much more likelier for an audience to have rational membership than for any one individual to be rational, especially to the degree that they can see the flaws of their own reasoning. This is why my approach works better than SE and always will. SE will work in Kant’s Kingdom of Ends in where all members are rational beings. This isn’t Kant’s Kingdom of Ends. The United States today is far from that! About 40% of people deny evolution; that same figure denies climate change; even more believe fetuses deserve rights over and above women; something around 50% believe in psychic phenomena and the paranormal. This is no kingdom with rational beings. 

There are demonstrably fewer rational people in this country than irrational people; it’s unfortunate but no less true, so SE will fail to work more often than not. My approach relies on much more probable rationality in some members within a crowd; that’s why I’ve changed minds. All I see in SE conversations is “you can’t pretend to know what you don’t know” -- which amounts to an accusation in some cases because sometimes a person does actually know what they’re purporting to know and can show you how they came to know it. SE pretty much guarantees the discussion devolving into a frustrating exercise; my approach doesn’t guarantee that because I’m engaging a medium, but not the audience directly and as such, the audience members are much less likely to become frustrated. 

How did my journey to atheism begin? I was a member in an audience, in a classroom to be more specific. I didn’t engage in a one-on-one discussion with a well-informed atheist. Being in an audience and having an inclination to rational thought catalyzed my journey. I’m certain that most atheists will relate to my experience and will not confirm that an SE-like one-on-one discussion started it all. Heck, I’m reasonably certain an SE discussion wasn’t the impetus of your journey either. What has worked for most of us will continue to work for future members of our community. SE simply won’t fair better for the reasons outlined.

[ghostmartyr]

SnK 90 Thoughts

Have you ever had this perfect story idea in mind, then realized that in order to get to it, you have to write basically an entirely separate book to set it up?

Have you ever decided that you really don’t feel like doing that?

Usually, that is when the words stop and the project goes into a desk drawer. Mostly a figurative one these days.

But--bear with me here--what if...

You just skipped all the boring parts.

There’s something delightful about watching Attack on Titan develop. Art and pacing have come so far since the first chapter, but you still get these glorious flashes where the reveal of our main character’s arch-nemeses is done with such a complete lack of fanfare that you’d be forgiven for thinking you were reading a fake scanlation even if you had the volume open in your hand.

Isayama knows how to craft a story. His telling, on the other hand, regularly spends its time stumbling up to the podium in its pajamas and happily shooting its laser pointer every whichway all over the pretty projections on the screen until you’ve started wondering more about the laser pointer’s battery life than whatever the lecturer was supposed to be saying.

The main reason you don’t want to wrap up a plot point that has been present since day one of your seven years of writing in two pages is because--

Well, presumably that stuff mattered? To the story?

Isayama’s decision to kill off most of the Paradis titans in two pages involves looking at those confused statements, and declaring, “No, not really.”

Authors do not typically do this.

Heck, most stories don’t even get to the point where they can look back at their starting premise (that has survived seven years) and inform the audience that the physical realities of that particular conflict aren’t relevant enough to be worth covering the conclusion extensively.

The story goes that humanity hides away in a cage from the inhuman monsters lurking outside--until they decide to rise and fight.

Those monsters turn out to be human.

We’re technically sticking to the same story we always have been.

We’re just now doing it without titans.

It’s like Isayama looked at his Eldian plot, and thought to himself, gee, this makes that titan problem kind of redundant, doesn’t it?

And the grand solution was to just write the common titans out of the story.

Because that is what you do with plot inconveniences. Naturally.

This is not how satisfying storytelling works.

It is hilarious, and the time frame on dealing with the worldly issues portion of this has adopted a scale that can probably handle it better, and there are a number of things that a time skip can make interesting--but holy fuck how long is that laser pointer’s battery life.

I’m going to harp on about this a little longer than I need to (shocking, I know), because as someone who tries really, really hard to get pacing right, this whole process is incredibly fascinating.

Having introduced the rest of the world to this tiny stage, this one plot detail, it of titanic proportions, it that has guided so much of the story, is so irrelevant to where the story is going that it can be excised in two pages.

That is extraordinary to me.

I don’t think I have ever seen such a prime example of an author recognizing that a prominent plot line has outlived its usefulness. It’s like he went full-on original flavor Vader.

Obviously, ideally, the Eldians vs. The World plot would tie into the common titan problem of Paradis, and the story would be allowed to proceed on both fronts. Doing it smoothly would be a challenge, but that’s writing for you.

Just as obviously, that’s not happening.

In a perverse way, the first 80-some chapters of this series behave like one of those windup toys. We didn’t know why Eren could transform into a Titan. We didn’t know why the titans attacked. We didn’t know anything about society outside the walls. We didn’t know what was in the basement. We didn’t know how the walls came to be. We didn’t know who the real enemy was. Our heroes were isolated in their struggles to rectify all of that.

We have now had our full orientation. We do not need the play-monsters anymore. We have the answers. All that’s left is to put the toy down and see how far it can go.

This is not what I would call good storytelling, but it’s so neat. I don’t think we would get to see this story with someone who was better at timing. Most people whose work is being published wouldn’t look at the series’ most well-known plot feature and put it up as collateral for the story they’re more interested in.

That kind of abandon is not something you usually get to see with a story of quality. You don’t just... gloss over parts of the story that matter. That’s common sense.

Offering the counterargument that those silly details were never meant to matter, when those silly details were formerly thought to be the plot?

That’s daring to suggest that there are parts of the story that are more worth spending time on. If the roaming titans of Paradis are deemed inconsequential, then what’ve you got for us?

It should be something good.

It should not, for instance, be forty minutes of the main character stuck in his own head until he breaks out and a bunch of people clap for him.

While I will continue laughing at the execution, one of the main reasons I’m okay with the time skip is because I’m still down for this story. This is still about humans fighting monsters for their right to breathe free air.

The difference now is that the training wheels are off.

And very promptly thrown into the sea.

It isn’t about mindless monsters eating people. It’s about human beings whose hatred and cowardice lead to them demonizing and abusing an entire race. This isn’t faceless cruelty anymore.

The fight is the same it always has been, but it’s now an informed fight.

So all that’s really great.

...Except then I get to thinking that people in the walls could actually maybe live outside the walls because the titans mostly vanished in two pages and my head starts spinning because who does that.

Never let it be said that this is a graceful story. Just a good one.

Speaking of gracelessness, this chapter was, in fact, longer than two pages.

And Floch exists.

Jean 2.0, featuring none of the insecurity that can pretend to be tact.

Floch’s role in this chapter is painful on multiple levels. He’s the sole survivor of a suicidal charge, and he did everything right. He saves his commanding officer. Humanity’s Commander. He takes them to the people who can save his life. He performs admirably even though he calls himself a coward and cannon fodder.

He’s another broken person, but the first one we’ve seen broken in part through our protagonists’ actions.

He tells the truth as he sees it, but he has no care for the damage he inflicts with it. He might find it important that Hitch get an unvarnished view of what Marlowe’s last charge is like, but he doesn’t offer emotional support. He might hate the decision Levi, Eren, and Mikasa contribute to, and think it deserves to be known, but Armin is the one he hurts, and Armin’s the only blameless party involved.

He lectures the rest of the 104th for what goes down, but Connie, Sasha, and Jean aren’t there for most of the exchange. They show up and have no clue what’s going on. Hell, Sasha’s unconscious during the rooftop discussion, and Connie’s carrying her. Jean’s the only one free, and by the time we know he’s there, Hange’s breaking up the fight.

Floch sits back and watches Mikasa pin Levi to the rooftop with a sword to his throat before he says a word.

He can be mad at Levi and Mikasa and Levi all he wants, but lashing out at Armin and the rest of the gang isn’t a matter of principle. He’s just hurt.

We don’t know enough about Floch to know how much of what he’s saying starts from a good place, but by the end of his sequence, it’s pretty obvious that his honesty, however powerful it is to hear, has its own bite of childishness.

It’s still sad, though. When Armin says Floch is right, Floch doesn’t look happy or victorious. Being right doesn’t change the mess they’re in or make the pain any less.

But geez. He manages to make half the people he talks to look like they’re questioning their will to live. Kid could use a kick to the shin and a hug.

The story has his back on making sure the words land, though. This chapter is a nostalgia trip and a half.

“In other words, you couldn’t throw away what was important to you, right?” --to Armin

“But even a piece of fodder... should at least have the right to assess the situation!” --and to Jean.

Yeah.

“Don’t get mad when you hear this... but Jean... you’re not a strong person... so you can really understand how weak people feel. [...] I mean... most humans are weak, including me.. but if I got an order from someone who saw things like I do... no matter how tough it was, I’d do my damnedest to carry it out.” --Marco, 18

Marco never comes up in happy conversations.

My personal favorite goes to Mikasa, though. For maximum pain.

“You gave up in the end.”

Hello, I am excite.

I’m not capping the whole thing because I adore these two panels on their own, but for the sake of full context, that hand of hers was holding Eren’s shoulder the moment before Floch’s words.

Hange convinces her to stop fighting for Armin on the roof.

Logic and history say she’s going to lose him and Eren.

Mikasa has spent such a long time refusing to give up. The first time the need to truly resonates, she stands and fights anyway.

She always fights. If you don’t fight, you don’t win. That’s what her first moments with Eren teach her.

Then there’s Floch, telling her that she’s more of an adult for giving up. Giving up on her family, accepting the loss.

She’s going to lose them. There’s nothing to fight here, and one of them is only alive now in spite of her, not because she was any help. There’s a hopelessness to Eren and Armin’s situation that won’t be denied, so what, is that the answer again?

Giving up on them?

Watching both of them die?

Mikasa could really use some proper pages dealing with all of the above, but for now I’m really psyched that the little moments are happening. She literally lets go of Eren in paralyzed horror.

Can has more? Please?

Besides making pitiful puppy eyes into the abyss, though, this chapter actually does have me really jazzed for whatever’s awaiting Mikasa.

The conflict that Floch keeps hammering away at is one that’s been lurking in the background for ages. Since the very first volume, to be precise. We’ve since seen in explored at length through Levi, Erwin, and the serum bowl, but like with many things in this manga, we start with Mikasa.

“Humanity is on the brink of extinction and you’re trying to dictate your own rules?!” --Eren, 4

Mikasa’s devotion to her family has been a primary character feature since her introduction. Her development has rarely been highlighted, but constantly in the background and her moments of foreground, she wrestles with the conflict of being a loyal companion and an exquisite soldier. She’s conscious of her decisions and mistakes without letting them tear her to shreds, which is a claim very few characters can make.

When she leads the charge in Trost and neglects to be there for her comrades, she knows it. When she ignores Levi’s commands against the Female Titan, she sees the damage and carries the responsibility forward. She remembers failing to kill Reiner and Bertolt and guilts over it.

Responsibility is seldom actively neglected in this series. Otherwise I wouldn’t have such easy things to quote as an example of a character making a bad choice; if someone does something questionable, you can expect a dialogue bomb to reference it at some point.

But Mikasa learns. Her mistakes aren’t creating an ever-deeper fault of trauma for every new horrible thing to trigger. She’s taken some extraordinarily hard hits, and it’s left her fragile in places, but when she experiences a mistake, she tries her best to correct it for the future.

The easiest comparison to that is Erwin.

Quotes are fastest, so I’ll go ahead and do that with something I wrote a week ago: My view on his increase in personal goals is that his guilt for being less than what he should be turns into him overplaying his baser qualities. Instead of being a good man and leader who has a weakness to overcome, he tries to frame himself as a bad leader, freeing him up to indulge in the absolute worst of his selfishness.

I believe the phrase is go big or go home. Erwin sees his mistake of putting himself over humanity, and he overcompensates in the wrong direction.

When Mikasa’s mistakes happen, she continually progresses in a direction that offers solutions to her errors.

That might be why she ends up stuck on the sidelines more often than not. Someone who quietly observes and grows at a steady click, without having their world knocked down every other week, can be hard to portray dynamically outside of key moments.

Here’s what makes all of that the fun of the hour: Mikasa’s personal, at times obsessive, loyalty, rooted in trauma, is now clearly facing its losses against her own sense of honor and duty. As much as she loves Eren and Armin, protecting them at all costs has slowly turned to only most costs. There’s enough distance between her and her trauma that there’s room for her independent respect for the world is calling her out when she does something she shouldn’t.

Eren doesn’t have that.

Eren, the first loud voice we heard screaming about the worth of humanity, has found the persons he would give everything for, and he can’t step back. He can be ashamed of his conduct on the roof, but if the same situation were to happen again, the same desperation for his friend would still be there.

Eren’s been beaten down so many times that I think his ability to let go (already one of his weaker points, since he always fights to win) has up and left him.

He can’t lose his family.

He can’t regret that Armin’s the one alive, and he refuses to put Historia in danger.

Back when Jean first joins the Survey Corps, he voices his criticisms plainly, and makes sure everyone around him knows the stakes.

“Look, Mikasa... not everybody is like you... We’re not all volunteering to die for Eren. All of us, Eren included, should know... what our lives are going to be used for.” --Jean, 22

It isn’t about just one person. It’s about the bigger picture. It’s about fighting for the sake of humanity. It’s about humanity.

It’s supposed to be.

But Ymir will give up her life and freedom to save the girl she loves, and then two random schmucks she can’t make herself leave. The pinnacle of Historia’s arc has her placing one life she cares about over plenty of others. Erwin will forget humanity for his dreams until his closest companion corrects him--only to fall into a similar trap because he can’t face sacrificing Erwin.

Grisha gives everything to his cause, but because he doesn’t love his son, he fails.

Reiner, Bertolt, and Annie are never in sync, and they die alone.

So what’s going to end up winning?

No one life is worth more than the rest of humanity, but if you don’t fight, you can’t win. If you sacrifice your interpersonal bonds for a grander purpose, you’ll never make it, because you’ll be fighting on your own.

Right now, the healthiest balance goes to Mikasa and Hange. They love fiercely, and will protect what they value with all of their strength, but their responsibility to the rest of humanity means too much to risk being selfish. Some sacrifices have to be made. Sometimes you have to let go.

But not until the very last second.

Hange understands all of that, and is grown up enough that it all flows.

Mikasa is still wrestling with how deeply that goes against how she’s fought for her family for years.

Eren, meanwhile...

I think it’s fair to say Eren is a fucking mess?

Eren, as he starts out, is idealistic, passionate, and naive enough to believe that you can change the world by running down that road at full speed.

As Eren is right now, I think he holds the memory of that being the way things should be, but he’s so bogged down in everything that’s happened, he’s lost the original spark that keeps that flash of optimism functioning.

When he talks about the ocean, he can bring Armin back, but he can’t bring himself back. His aunt’s mangled corpse is more real to him than the dreams he had as a child.

Mikasa and Armin make it to the beach, and despite all of the pain they’ve gone through getting there, they can smile. They can squeal over the tide over their feet. They’re happy.

But for Eren, the ocean that has always been one of the solid carrots of his struggle has turned into a reminder that they’re still not free. They’re still stuck. They’re still surrounded by monsters. It never ends. Making happy dreams come true is a temporary flight of fancy that can’t save them.

Death, though. That can fix it, right? Just... kill them all.

I don’t think the bleakness of RAB’s perspective has ever been presented so quietly.

Eren has fallen to a place that dreams can’t reach, and his only answer to that sense of desolation is to turn it on their enemies.

When the choice between Armin and Erwin is presented, Eren’s strongest argument for Armin is that he can still dream. He isn’t consumed by revenge. He sees something outside of death and chaos when Eren can’t.

After another year of life, that difference has only expanded, and now Eren really can’t find anything to hope for.

And that’s essentially why there are those few paragraphs of theme up there. Becoming a slave to a cause and abandoning softer things is dangerous. There needs to be that balance that people like Hange have, otherwise you’re just going to fall apart.

Learning to let something go is valuable, but if it’s done because it hurts too much to hold it close, it isn’t growth. It’s destruction. That’s why Mikasa’s struggles, while agonizing, don’t separate her from joy the way Eren’s have.

Mikasa’s learning that there are some things you can’t fight. Eren’s found despair in thinking victory can’t exist.

And look, I’m an optimist with this series. I know that, and I know it’s probably annoying or laughable on occasion.

But that setup is so perfectly arranged to oppose the themes presented in their first meeting that I can’t help but hope they’re going to go through all of this, losing faith in beliefs that have sustained them for years, and then find them again.

They aren’t young children anymore. Idealism is hard, and their lives have only made it harder, but that’s what makes it matter so much. Their values don’t deserve to lose, and if they don’t champion them, no one will. And I’d kill to see them find their way to believing in that again after being through hell.

With that thoroughly rambled about, we turn to things I don’t have complete thoughts on, but will bring up regardless.

Starting with the fact that Marlowe’s name variances would drive me to drink if I drank.

Eren pretty fragrantly calls back to what Levi tells him in the forest when they’re first facing the Female Titan.

“I don’t know the answer. I never have. Whether you trust in your own strength... or trust in the choices made by reliable comrades. No one knows what the outcome will be. So, as much as you can... choose whatever you’ll regret the least.” --Levi, 25

“I don’t know... what the right choice is. How can anyone know the future?”

When Levi says it, it’s a call to action. Who knows what the right choice is, but you’ve got to make one. When Eren says it, it’s an attempt at comfort. A choice has been made, so let’s work with it and not fuss too much over how, yeah?

Besides, Armin is so unbelievably amazing that regrets are even more of a waste than usual. For sure.

And the last thing I can work myself up to care about is that Historia rocks, and I’m gladdened that she instructs her people to not be such lying jackasses without hesitation. Hail to the Queen and etc.

But when Eren has his more complete flashback to the incident between his family and the Reiss family (harking a return to feeling slightly bad for Grisha--whatever his mistakes, Eren, Carla, and Mikasa are his world, and that’s a worthy perspective), what I really want to know is if Historia sees it too. They’ve experienced mutual memory magic before, but that was in the cave of mysteries.

Mikasa and Armin seem to notice that something has happened, but Historia’s the one to get the large panel of her eye (I need a tag for her eyes still), and I’m dying to know if that’s because she’s the one looking at Eren’s expression head-on, or because she sees what he sees.

Because if she’s receiving flashes of his flashbacks when they’re connected, Eren’s attempts to protect her by keeping one of her potential uses a secret is possibly already long dead when they hit the beach.

Also it would make my favorite character maybe relevant for another arc.

I deserve nice things, this should happen.

[electricdazemag]

Bob Fossil: Interview

by Tasha Bielaga

photo by Symone Camargo

Bellingham based rockers Bob Fossil are ready to foss the entire Northwest of the US, and the rest of the world while they’re at it. Making noise in everywhere from people’s homes in northern Washington to bars in San Diego, vocalist Kenny Clarkson, bassist Hank Miller, guitarist Joe Canfield, pianist Corey Teply, and drummer Alan Schellenberger have been together for about 3 years. The quintet’s groovy guitar lines and spunky keyboard features are evocative of the rock’n’roll of the 70′s, a place where the band’s fashion sense may actually fit in. We talk about bouncing around in basements, what’s going on in the studio where their new album is being birthed, and paying the rent.

Electric Daze: Congrats on raising over $2,000 on your live stream for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society! Super cool that it was for such a good cause too. How’d you feel about doing it? Is it something you would like to do again?

Really awesome! The fact that people were actually interested was fun, and we think the cause did a lot of the work itself. We weren’t sure what the amount of money would look like or how attainable it was, but it happened. We’re going to work on making it an annual event. As time goes on we’ll get more of a viewer audience participation, so we’ll get to raise more money and help more people as a band.  We would like to say thank you to all the people that tuned in and supported, it meant a lot to all of us

ED: I saw you guys played some covers in it. What’s your favorite cover to play live? How does the crowd react to it?

Africa by Toto is a crowd pleaser. 3 years ago when we started out, we would play 2 covers a show. Since then, we really don’t do it as much, other than when we wanna play 40sec of a cover here or there to throw people off their feet. We like to jam on a cover between songs to give ourselves a little break or while we’re tuning. We kinda use covers as a fake out. When we play Africa we play the chorus and it’s fun, and then all of a sudden we’ll throw them a curve ball and start one of our own songs. Next I think we’re gonna try a Limp Bizkit cover, that’d suit us. Corey remembers right before Sasquatch in 2014 when Outkast was headlining, we covered “Hey Ya!” and these white boys did a mighty fine job of covering it.  The same can’t be said when we tried to cover “Thriller”, that was a disaster of catastrophic proportions.  Thankfully everyone at the house show we were playing at was drunk beyond what the body should probably be able to withstand, so no one really talks about our attempt of “Thriller” much anymore.

ED: Since you guys are self-proclaimed “Fossil Rock”, what exactly does that mean to you as a genre?

The only reason we did that originally, was because we knew we were rock, and we knew that rocks were fossils. It also kind of symbolizes every influence we put in our music: old, and buried in dirt for hundreds of thousands of years then dug up for your enjoyment. We look at it as an organically-genetically-modified crossbreed of rock, funk, grunge, jazz, and whatever the hell the kids are listening to these days.  Everyone in the band has different influences musically, which is really cool, and we all are able to incorporate the styles we most relate to individually to something that is a mixing pot full of all five of ours. Our goal is to churn the smoothest butter possible so your ears are pleased with every bite. Sometimes the butter is a little chunky, but once we work out the kinks in certain parts of jams we come up with, it turns to something that is probably worthy of spreading on your toast. We definitely hear different band names from different people, especially age groups, about who we sound like. They’ll be like “OH you guys remind me of  _____” and it’ll be something different each time.  “Fossil Rock” is a way to avoid the question of what genre are you, because fuck genres. One Kenny thought of recently was “emo grandpa core”. We have influences from the late 60’s to 70’s to early 80’s, but at the same time if we hadn’t listened to these indie and alt rock of the 90’s and early 2000’s, we wouldn’t be the same, at least vocally and lyrically.

ED: Have you ever as a band or personally, pursued or thought about pursuing a different genre of music?

We as a band have a few songs that are more math rock, which are fun to play, but we don’t spend as much time on those. We love what we’re doing. Alan plays bass in a folk rock band, and it’s nice for him to taste some other flavors. Joe plays sitar is a 60’s Indian cover band. Kenny was in a pop punk band in high school, before he ever listened to anything else. He was at that point where he was like “this is all I like, this is all I know, everything else sucks”, and he was 15. The years leading up to when we formed this band really gave him a growing period to open his mind up to playing more than 3 power chord rock music. Corey’s been told he should think about playing piano at the local Nordstroms, so that’s something to maybe consider in his future- but for now, he’ll stick to this.

ED: Being based in Bellingham and living in a college town, do you find there’s a big difference in demographic or vibes between playing a show in Bellingham vs. a show in Seattle? How does that affect your playing?

Bellingham has a really big underage venue and house show scene. House shows are always more wild and more fun. Under age kids just love to get wasted and bounce around in a sweaty packed room, they feel comfortable dancing crazily. People will go to any show in Bellingham, even if they don’t know the band playing. You don’t need to convince a 19 year old to go to a show, they just go. When we first came to Bellingham, 5 years ago, the scene was considerably smaller. We were freshmen going to house shows and there were certain bands that we would go see multiple times, but it’s definitely the biggest it’s ever been right now, besides maybe in the 90’s. These days, every single house show is packed. It’s really cool though, this scene is something that the people who are a part of it will remember for the rest of their lives. But, a show in Seattle has a much for professional aura to it, maybe that might be due to us looking at is as going to the big city and playing a show that has higher stakes to it.  At the end of the day, a show is a show, and we’re going to have a good time regardless and treat each as important as any other.

ED: With your latest tour in August, did you see a variation in the music scenes between each city?

It really depends on the demographic of the crowd vs. where we are. Older crowds tolerate and appreciate jamming a bit more. 20 year olds may not appreciate that as much. We try to be in a happy middle, and be a rock band that can jam. City to city, it’s more about who we can get out to our shows. Right now, we do a lot of asking our friends in that city to come out, rather than making a post on social media and having fans come out. But whether it’s 1 person (which did happen to us, we played a show in Olympia that ended up being us, the other band playing, and a guy named Cory. We bought him a tequila shot) or 1,000 people, we try to play our best and make an impact.

ED: What was your favorite show out of that tour?

Actually, Alan got us a really sweet gig in Los Angeles at a smoothie shop. It called itself a cafe, and if you look at photos of the live music there, it looks like there’s some sort of stage and/or corner of a reasonable size. That wasn’t true. It was like if you took a Jamba Juice, and cut it in half. So with that situation, we did have to say “Oh, okay, let’s play music in a way we don’t normally, in a way we don’t practice. Use less of your drum kit, turn your amps down, and get drunk (optional).” But our favorite show was probably in San Francisco at the Boom Boom Room. Hank and Alan are both from there, so they got to see a lot of their family and friends. We played top notch that night and ended up jamming past closing for the owner and manager. It was really special to Alan because all these people who took care of him when he was young got to watch him play the drums and scream at them. Although we don’t give Alan a microphone, he quite enjoys screaming his lungs out to the lyrics.

ED: Do you have any crazy fun stories from tour?

One of the funniest stories was when we were in Oregon, we had two shows in Portland with a day off in between. We decided it would be really smart to not book any places to stay in advance for this tour, we’re gonna camp, we’re gonna crash at houses, and it’s going to be totally fine to go to Cannon Beach in August and find camping. Every campsite in a ten mile radius was full, and we had no cell service. So we end up camping east of Cannon Beach, not in a camp site, on a turnout on the side of the road in the middle of the woods. We have the trailer with the gear, the SUV, and the Kia Soul. We created a buffer with our vehicles around where we slept on the gravel, so if a car did come off the road, it would hit one of the cars first, maybe saving us some damage to our bodies. We woke up several times to this unearthly sound, which turned out to be cars going around the corner at 30 miles an hour which was just terrifying. It was a beautiful area though.

On your website, there’s these really awesome band member bios. If you made one for the entire band, what would it say?

Our friend Mitch who made our website wrote those actually! Let’s call him and get his nice Mitch diction, so it’s authentic.

Mitch: If I was going to describe Bob Fossil, the word fucking comes along. The photo of all five of you on the forest floor with the wood string going across is the connection of the life, beauty, and emotion in your music. The face paint on Hank is the inspiration for his peers for the music that they create. How Allen has a slight grin and Corey has a big open smile, but Hank and Kenny are serious, show that some people find joy while others find subdued excitement.

photo by Ryan Rothaus

ED: You’re “Survival Kit” video is pretty tight. Exactly what I would want if I was lost in the woods. What was the inspiration for that?

The idea was to do a video a month, in this day and age people want to look at stuff. It kind of allows us to be relevant not only as a band but also on another spectrum. With that video, our first goal was to advertise merch. But after a few beers at the local tap house, our friend Jake and us got some goofy video game ideas. Conor O’Keefe from Walking Distance Media LLC shoots all our videos. He’s been doing movies and touring with us for a while now. They wouldn’t be what they are without his vision and hard work. So we give Conor our ideas that we aren’t sure are always doable, and he brings them to life! We want these videos to be really funny and stand alone entertaining. Next month we’re releasing a in-studio video with a few interviews about the upcoming album. We’re also working with Conor on a music video for our upcoming single off our next album.

ED: You guys have so many intricate parts, especially keyboard and guitar lines. How do you go about making it all cohesive and not overwhelming?

We’re working with Russ Fish (producer & engineer) right now. Last record we did it in 3 days, and spent all day there working, just trying to get it done because we didn’t have much money. We had Russ for 16 hours last time, and this time we have him for the entire time we’re recording. He’s a big factor in helping us piece things together and cutting down on extra notes. It’s not that we’re going to shift everything we do, but it can always get better and cleaner. We do have a lot of parts going on, but that’s our sound. For our new album, we had 15 songs written by September. We got to Russ and he wanted 10, but we said we were doing 11. We took a vote for what songs to cut so it was a very mutual decision. We’ve been together as a band long enough that we’re comfortable telling each other what we think about everyone’s parts. Being constructive is going to make this record a lot better. We’re able to pick out a specific part and discuss it between the band and Russ, and then we decide if we should keep it or not. That’s something we didn’t do on the first two records.

ED: Who brings the first draft?

Kenny writes the bare bones: rhythm guitar & vocals, sometimes he gets crazy and writes other guitar parts. He also writes the general structure, like how many times we repeat this section and how we transition. Once he’s comfortable with what he’s written he’ll bring it to practice and everyone will start layering their parts and everyone can had their own flavor and take it in their own direction. Everyone’s responsible for their own parts, and now that we’re getting better at communicating, we can mold things together. We’re finally able to democratically talk about how we think a song should go. Democracy may be failing, but not in this band; democracy is alive and well in Bob Fossil.

ED: I’ve noticed you guys have such high quality recordings, compared to a lot of other smaller local bands who have a much more lo-fi sound? Is there a particular reason you went with this direction, and do you think it separates you from the others?

We have such high quality audio because Joe did the first album but we mic’d every instrument individually. Now we’re spending a lot more money. The aesthetic of indie bands like Neutral Milk Hotel or early Pavement, it’s lofi. It’s a certain character, a certain attitude, and we do listen to that. But, a lot of the music that we really draw inspiration from is more high quality sounding.  The DIY lofi works nicely for a lot of bands, gives it a good raw feel. Plus it's cheap and there's an enormous amount of pride that comes out of something you do all yourself. But we do have all those intricate parts, so we have to make sure that you can hear every last thing, lofi would mask and muddle these puppies up. Another big thing is our long term goals. We want to go far in this industry, and in this day and age a lot of music that people listen to like EDM or rap is electronically made. The sound quality on these songs are going to be, for lack of a better word, perfect, because it’s all done on computers. As a rock band, we have to have high quality recordings to excel and compete with other bands.

ED: What are your goals for this year?

We want to become a regional band. Wanting to be recognized across the whole Northwest, and play shows consistently in Seattle is a big one. We also gain traction with this new album we are recording currently. We want to be able to pay the rent with the money we make from the band, so we can save our money from our other jobs, or quit them. But paying the rent is probably a life goal for everyone, unfortunately.

photo by Symone Carmargo

Connect with Bob Fossil on their website bobfossilmusic.com, on Instagram at @bobfossilmusic, and on twitter at @bobfossilmusic. 

Listen to their music on bandcamp here and on Spotify here. 

This is the second installment of features on Washington based bands. Check back here soon to read the rest!

[thotclaws]

ANOTHER RANT! WOO HOOO! Another rant that’s all my opinion and if you have your own then I’m ok with that.

So I’ve been thinking about this for over 5 years now and I think it’s really the best time to do a rant on this that I didn’t think I would do, but my laziness decided to go out for today and left me to ramble on on what I wanted to ramble about. For this, I wanted to talk about TCW and Rebels animation styles, or just art in general.

Now I’m gonna be honest, I don’t think the animation style in Rebels is shitty. In fact, it’s fairly average but getting to the point where it’s getting better with quality. That goes the same for TCW animation style. I was never a fan of it back in season 1 and 2 of the series. Now it’s gotten better with how much development it’s gotten and I love how it’s gotten better. That goes the same for Rebels. The lighting is SO much more better than it was back in season 1. The lighting is perfect with the mood it’s trying to go for. It’s going for a dangerous territory that the team is tackling and I’m glad that their doing so much for our adult audience. That goes the same for TCW. It’s going for a more gritty style and it worked, to some extent. I have my problems with how the style worked years before anyone noticed the show. Now that it has it’s formula down, it now has a large fanbase that no one thought it could get.

For anyone who is new to both series. There was a time when TCW was hated because of it’s animation style. Now that goes the same for Rebels. It’s gotten hate because of the animation style. History repeats itself, I know lol. Back to what I was saying. Animation is NOT a cheap task (it’s basically common knowledge to know how much it costs), and getting the means necessary to make good quality entertainment. You’d have to be VERY willing to give up half your life to dedicate to making any type of animation 2d or 3d. I don’t care. Both styles are expensive as hell and requires you to give it your all. If you don’t, then no one would notice. For the TCW and Rebels. It’s the same. Any other types of media would tell you how long animation works and how long it takes for a team to work on. For me, I didn’t mind the hiatus that happened with Rebels 4 weeks ago. Yes it sucked, but you gotta remember that animation takes a long process and I’m glad that they took that break. Yes I was impatient. Everyone was. Now we had an episode that was a gem to us. 

So for any type of animation to gain it’s own fanbase. You have to take risks and take chances. All of which you have to balance in order to get a show or a series running. For animation, it’s to creating setting and plot. Any other animated shows know that their target audience will start to get older and any young kid would grow out of it. Not Star Wars. It’s remained relevant because of it’s target audience. All of us. No one is a kid and still love the show regardless. Star Wars is HUGE! And it’s not going away soon. It will remain in the spotlight as the largest fandom ever. 

Now let’s talk about the idea of “less is more”. What is that you may ask? The definition is as follows: Used to express the view that a minimalist approach to artistic or aesthetic matters is more effective. It’s the idea of doing something but not going overboard. That goes the same for both TCW and Rebels, and I love that approach. It’s simple, yet effective. 

Going into 2d animation. I think that this era of animation is the best I have ever seen in like...ever. First started off with Daria and how simple animation can be yet convey a message that it was going for. Then to Star vs The Forces of Evil, a show that I highly recommend you watch for those who are interested in about what magic and it’s limitless idea’s come from. Both of these shows have something in common. It’s simple but effective. One has the idea of cynicism and real life and the other is about magic and what it can do outside of what we know and the idea’s that it can place. 

For 80s territory. 80s cartoons were meant to sell toys and have a large market to what the show’s were telling kids. That goes the same for my mom. She bought a Jem doll because she loved the show as a kid, and I can see the same with kids shows as well, but not for every show. Shows like Teen Titans GO is the one reason why CN is still airing the show. Is because if they’re going to get money, then their gonna have to start selling their merchandise. For Jem and the Holograms, I get a lot of flack saying that I think the show is just average and should be remade and I said the same for my mom if she’s willing to see a remade version of the show, and she said “sure as long as it’s 80s” and I agree. Then came the live action movie, and my opinion went straight into the gutter. Both of these shows were meant to sell toys to kids and they did work. The difference being is that Teen Titans GO is cancer and wish it would stop airing and the other was a mediocre 80s glam cartoon that had decent writing and animation style that was meant to sell toys as well.  

Next going into the KISS principle aka “Keep it simple, stupid.” or it’s variants “Keep it simple, silly.” “Keep it short yet simple.” “Keep it simple and straightforward.” and “Keep it small and simple.” Each of these have come it’s way into television and it’s perfect for it. Having this principle is what I love about animation is that you can have something like the KISS principle and you can tell a story in so many ways. I would argue that having this principle in movies and I would argue that it should keep its message rather than ignore it. I think as an example would have to be The Clone Wars 3d movie. This approach really did hurt it’s reputation of becoming a better series and yet so many people think that just because the movie was bad then the rest would be bad. I would argue that if it was the major drawback of being it’s animation style with was of course, the KISS principle. It was meant as more of a TV movie, and if it was like that, then it would have been a BLAST! I think that this movie is more for TV rather than a large big budget movie because of the look and tone to it. I don’t blame the animators. They wanted to do their attempt at making a show that was based around The Clone Wars and they did it. They made a marvel of a show and so as Rebels...speaking of that show...

I don’t mean to sound like Thrawn in this, but dammit I need to say this! I like the idea that ‘worse is better’. Even if it’s applies to software. It also applies to art. The idea of the oxymoron is that people think that if you have something simplistic, it’s lazy when in reality it’s the total opposite. You can have art and still be effective with it. It depends on how the artist does it. Art is something you express, not something that I sound everyday. I did mention that I will sound like Thrawn in this, but let’s talk about him as a character instead of his obsession with art. People think they have to hate the art style of both series because it’s simplistic, but really all their doing is taking the oxymoron and not applying to what the meaning is. The animation style in Rebels is simplistic and it is effective. The animation and the feel to it matures along with the show, and bringing in Thrawn as a character is what makes the show so much better than I thought it would. Cuz Thrawn as a character is lack of a better term a large scale character and bringing him in would mean that they’d have to nerf him or he’s just a useless antagonist, but we were wrong. He’s an amazing character and a perfect opponent to go up against. For Rebels, we can see the animation style become better and better with every time the audience age. With The Clone wars is the same thing. The animation got better and the tone got darker and mature along with the audience and both of these shows show. 

And here’s where I say this. If it’s not your type of style to be KISS, then that’s totally ok. I’m perfectly ok with someone not liking the art style of both of these shows, but don’t put the blame on the animators. That’s what their intentions were is to make it KISS. Not really something I hear everyday but yeah. If it’s not your cup of tea. That’s perfectly ok, I can understand that. I just don’t wanna hear about the art style because it was meant for kids. Well..it’s meant for everyone. Not just for kids. For shows that were their target audience really has changed throughout the years. Animation is just getting better and I can’t wait for it to see where it goes. That kinda goes the same when it was called “just a cash grab by Disney to make more money” and I would say that that’s been blown out of proportion to how the show presents itself. 

If you wanna hear more about the idea of animation and how it’s getting better or worse, then watch nostalgia critics video on this right here cuz this explains why I wanted to make this rant. 

Thank you for listening to me ramble. I really wanted to get this out of the way before I go on a REAL tangent.