#entertainment result 2020

[tangibletechnomancy]

The reason I took interest in AI as an art medium is that I've always been interested in experimenting with novel and unconventional art media - I started incorporating power tools into a lot of my physical processes younger than most people were even allowed to breathe near them, and I took to digital art like a duck to water when it was the big, relatively new, controversial thing too, so really this just seems like the logical next step. More than that, it's exciting - it's not every day that we just invent an entirely new never-before-seen art medium! I have always been one to go fucking wild for that shit.

Which is, ironically, a huge part of why I almost reflexively recoil at how it's used in the corporate world: because the world of business, particularly the entertainment industry, has what often seems like less than zero interest in appreciating it as a novel medium.

And I often wonder how much less that would be the case - and, by extension, how much less vitriolic the discussion around it would be, and how many fewer well-meaning people would be falling for reactionary mythologies about where exactly the problems lie - if it hadn't reached the point of...at least an illusion of commercial viability, at exactly the moment it did.

See, the groundwork was laid in 2020, back during covid lockdowns, when we saw a massive spike in people relying on TV, games, books, movies, etc. to compensate for the lack of outdoor, physical, social entertainment. This was, seemingly, wonderful for the whole industry - but under late-stage capitalism, it was as much of a curse as it was a gift. When industries are run by people whose sole brain process is "line-go-up", tiny factors like "we're not going to be in lockdown forever" don't matter. CEOs got dollar signs in their eyes. Shareholders demanded not only perpetual growth, but perpetual growth at this rate or better. Even though everyone with an ounce of common sense was screaming "this is an aberration, this is not sustainable" - it didn't matter. The business bros refused to believe it. This was their new normal, they were determined to prove -

And they, predictably, failed to prove it.

So now the business bros are in a pickle. They're beholden to the shareholders to do everything within their power to maintain the infinite growth they promised, in a world with finite resources. In fact, by precedent, they're beholden to this by law. Fiduciary duty has been interpreted in court to mean that, given the choice between offering a better product and ensuring maximum returns for shareholders, the latter MUST be a higher priority; reinvesting too much in the business instead of trying to make the share value increase as much as possible, as fast as possible, can result in a lawsuit - that a board member or CEO can lose, and have lost before - because it's not acting in the best interest of shareholders. If that unsustainable explosive growth was promised forever, all the more so.

And now, 2-3-4 years on, that impossibility hangs like a sword of Damocles over the heads of these media company CEOs. The market is fully saturated; the number of new potential customers left to onboard is negligible. Some companies began trying to "solve" this "problem" by violating consumer privacy and charging per household member, which (also predictably) backfired because those of us who live in reality and not statsland were not exactly thrilled about the concept of being told we couldn't watch TV with our own families. Shareholders are getting antsy, because their (however predictably impossible) infinite lockdown-level profits...aren't coming, and someone's gotta make up for that, right? So they had already started enshittifying, making excuses for layoffs, for cutting employee pay, for duty creep, for increasing crunch, for lean-staffing, for tightening turnarounds-

And that was when we got the first iterations of AI image generation that were actually somewhat useful for things like rapid first drafts, moodboards, and conceptualizing.

Lo! A savior! It might as well have been the digital messiah to the business bros, and their eyes turned back into dollar signs. More than that, they were being promised that this...both was, and wasn't art at the same time. It was good enough for their final product, or if not it would be within a year or two, but it required no skill whatsoever to make! Soon, you could fire ALL your creatives and just have Susan from accounting write your scripts and make your concept art with all the effort that it takes to get lunch from a Star Trek replicator!

This is every bit as much bullshit as the promise of infinite lockdown-level growth, of course, but with shareholders clamoring for the money they were recklessly promised, executives are looking for anything, even the slightest glimmer of a new possibility, that just might work as a life raft from this sinking ship.

So where are we now? Well, we're exiting the "fucking around" phase and entering "finding out". According to anecdotes I've read, companies are, allegedly, already hiring prompt engineers (or "prompters" - can't give them a job title that implies there's skill or thought involved, now can we, that just might imply they deserve enough money to survive!)...and most of them not only lack the skill to manually post-process their works, but don't even know how (or perhaps aren't given access) to fully use the software they specialize in, being blissfully unaware of (or perhaps not able/allowed to use) features such as inpainting or img2img. It has been observed many times that LLMs are being used to flood once-reputable information outlets with hallucinated garbage. I can verify - as can nearly everyone who was online in the aftermath of the Glasgow Willy Wonka Dashcon Experience - that the results are often outright comically bad.

To anyone who was paying attention to anything other than please-line-go-up-faster-please-line-go-please (or buying so heavily into reactionary mythologies about why AI can be dangerous in industry that they bought the tech companies' false promises too and just thought it was a bad thing), this was entirely predictable. Unfortunately for everyone in the blast radius, common sense has never been an executive's strong suit when so much money is on the line.

Much like CGI before it, what we have here is a whole new medium that is seldom being treated as a new medium with its own unique strengths, but more often being used as a replacement for more expensive labor, no matter how bad the result may be - nor, for that matter, how unjust it may be that the labor is so much cheaper.

And it's all because of timing. It's all because it came about in the perfect moment to look like a life raft in a moment of late-stage capitalist panic. Any port in a storm, after all - even if that port is a non-Euclidean labyrinth of soggy, rotten botshit garbage.

Any port in a storm, right? ...right?

All images generated using Simple Stable, under the Code of Ethics of Are We Art Yet?

[tomorrowusa]

100 days of Trump. If you've read Project 2025 and listened to his semi-coherent rants, you shouldn't be surprised.

In three months Trump has shoved the world’s oldest continuous democracy towards authoritarianism at a pace that tyrants overseas would envy. He has used executive power to take aim at Congress, the law, the media, culture and public health. Still aggrieved by his 2020 election defeat and 2024 criminal conviction, his regime of retribution has targeted perceived enemies and proved that no grudge is too small. Historically such strongmen have offered the populace a grand bargain: if they will surrender some liberties, he will make the trains run on time. But Trump’s delusions of monarchy have been coupled with a fundamental ineptitude. His trade war injected chaos into the economy, undermining a campaign promise to lower prices and raising the spectre of recession; his ally Elon Musk wreaked havoc on the federal government, threatening health and welfare benefits for millions; his foreign policy turned the world upside down, making friends of adversaries and turning allies into foes. Having promised so much winning, Trump is losing. Just 39% of respondents approve of how he is handling his job as president, according to an opinion poll by ABC News, the Washington Post newspaper and Ipsos, while 55% disapprove. [ ... ] Trump and his allies had four years in political exile to plot and plan a disruptive agenda laid out in Project 2025, a set of proposals by the rightwing Heritage Foundation thinktank in Washington. Yet its execution has been undermined by the president’s mercurial nature, cabinet infighting and leaks, especially at the Pentagon, reportedly now in disarray. [ ... ] Even long-term political observers are aghast at Trump’s acts of self-sabotage. Paul Begala, a former White House adviser and Democratic strategist, said: “I expected him to be stupid. I expected him to be chaotic. I expected his team to be a bunch of sycophants and nincompoops. I expected the tariffs and trade war. “Here’s what I didn’t expect. For me, the defining word of these 100 days has been betrayal. A good politician takes office and tries to expand beyond his base; an average politician tries to reward his base; Trump is the first politician who’s screwing his base, betraying his base. I honestly don’t understand it.”

Not only does Trump screw his base, but they respond: "Thank you sir, may I have another?"

Well, Jon Stewart has a gift for explaining things in an entertaining and occasionally absurdist way. His take on the last 100 days.

My favorite part of the Jon Stewart vid was when he called bullshit on Trump deal making. Trump claimed he made 200 trade deals with countries. Jon pointed out that there aren't that many countries.

[soleminisanction]

Okay this misconception keeps coming across my dash and it drives me nuts because it means people are lumping two very different versions of the DC universe under one disparaging banner. So let me just say this to get it off my chest because I'm this close to shaking somebody:

The New 52 ended seven years ago in 2016.

That started a section of DC's history called "Rebirth" in which they started bringing elements of the pre-Flashpoint continuity back into the timeline. The first changes came in a big burst called Convergence -- which is how Jon Kent effectively manifested fully formed at 10 years old -- while other reintroductions like Kon-El, Bart Allen, Cass Cain, etc. were more gradual.

The original plan, being forced through by King of Bad Decisions Dan Didio, was that after ~4-5 Rebirth would give way to another full reboot known as 5G. I could go into detail about the plans but they're honestly not important to this post because Didio was (thankfully, finally) ousted from his role as publisher early in 2020, along with something like 80% of the higher-level editorial staff. DC had a complete creative turn-over at the start of the pandemic and completely changed directions as a result. The material being developed for 5G was retooled into the hypothetical future event "Future State" to buy the new staff time to pull together their new direction.

That new direction is called INFINITE FRONTIER. It started in 2021 and THAT is the era of DC comics we're in now. Infinite Frontier is an active push to bring back the pre-Flashpoint characters, as well as some pre-Crisis ideas and characters, while also keeping the few elements of the New 52 that people actually liked (like Jason Todd's more heroic characterization) and actively pursuing diversity initiatives both in creative staff and in creations. And outside of the big events, they're making a real effort to keep these comics short and self contained in the hopes that that'll make them more accessible. So it's actually really easy, if you read comics pre-Flashpoint and dropped off, to just pick up a series and go with the flow. Anything confusing is just a Google away.

Please, please don't make the mistake of thinking modern comics are as bad as the New 52 just because some people are butthurt their ship isn't getting canonized. There have been some really good comics made in the last few years that you should totally try! Spirit World, Monkey Prince and the entire We Are Legends line has been genuinely fantastic. The new Birds of Prey is shaping up to be a ton of fun. Dark Knights of Steel is an entertaining Elseworld. Urban Legends and Brave & the Bold have done some really fun things with shorter anthology books. One Minute War was a really fun Flash family event and everything Stargirl's done recently is liable to make you cry.

I'm begging people to give these comics a chance. It's just really sad to see them being dismissed out of hand.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Matt Johnson at The UnPopulist:

Joe Rogan, a UFC commentator and comedian who hosts the most popular podcast in the United States and possibly the world, has developed a reputation as an anti-tribal and fiercely independent voice who is beholden to no political party or faction. In the eyes of his regular guest Jordan Peterson, Rogan is “the most powerful journalist who’s ever lived,” and he has managed to gain such broad appeal because he “just asks questions.” But the notion that Rogan is an honest broker of information who has an overriding commitment to the truth is absurd. In fact, he has only one consistent mission: attempting to debunk mainstream media narratives by entertaining conspiracy theories. He’s more of a populist than a non-partisan—and he’s definitely no truth-seeker. Nothing illustrates this better than his warmly favorable treatment of both Donald Trump and RJK Jr., along with the parade of other cranks he features who peddle outlandish conspiracy theories and constantly congratulate themselves for being “anti-establishment” or “heterodox.” The effect, whether he intends it or not, is to overwhelm our epistemic infrastructure and pave the way for dangerous populist demagogues.

The Most Popular MAGA Pundit in the World

In his much-discussed interview with Trump last week, Rogan’s approach was to first encourage Trump to air his typical barrage of conspiratorial falsehoods—and then to endorse them himself. Take, for example, the segments on elections and voting, which were always shaped by Rogan’s MAGA-friendly framing. When Rogan told Trump that “a lot of weirdness ... was going on during the 2020 elections,” he was basically affirming Trump’s Big Lie and ignoring the fact that the 2020 election was the most scrutinized contest in American history. The rest predictably followed:

Trump claimed that “old-fashioned ballot screwing” had taken place, such as “people ... dropping in phony votes.” Rogan agreed.

Trump claimed “the Russia hoax” swayed the 2020 election. Rogan agreed.

Trump claimed the temporary suppression of the Hunter Biden laptop story also swayed the election. Rogan agreed.

Trump claimed Democrats weaponized the justice system against him. Rogan agreed.

Trump alleged that Democrats are opposed to certain forms of voter ID “because they want to cheat.” Rogan responded: “It doesn’t make sense any other way.” Voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem, given that there is little evidence of widespread voter fraud, but Rogan preferred to attribute to Democrats the most sinister motivation imaginable. Rogan also said “mail-in ballots are a problem” and worried about vote-counting machines getting hacked—a version of a famously discredited conspiracy theory for which Fox News had to pay $787 million in a settlement with a voting systems firm for pushing it on its airwaves.

When the discussion turned to the topic of denying election results, it was the perfect opportunity for Rogan, the interviewer renowned by fans as a tenacious truth-seeker, to press the most high-profile election denialist American politics has ever seen. That’s not what happened. Instead of challenging Trump’s years-long insistence that he actually won the 2020 election, or his enlisting of attorneys like Sidney Powell to claim communist-designed voting machines rigged the contest against him, or his attempts to overthrow the election by sending fake slates of electors to Washington, or his incitement of an insurrectionary mob at the U.S. Capitol to halt the certification of the vote, Rogan brought up ... the Russia investigation. Democrats are especially prone to denying election results, he told the man who believes he beat Hillary Clinton in the popular vote in 2016 and Joe Biden in the Electoral College vote in 2020.

But the segment on elections and voting wasn’t only about 2020. Consider their exchange about Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio. After Trump declared that Democrats had turned Springfield into a “horror show” by “dropping” immigrants into the community, Rogan’s follow-up wasn’t to press Trump for corroboration, given that state Republican officials said this was nonsense and have asked Trump to stop endangering an innocent minority group. Instead, Rogan asked Trump to hypothesize about what must be motivating Democrats to allow a flood of immigrants into the country. As if that was not a loaded enough question, Rogan then proceeded to say this: “One of the things that’s been very clear is that they’ve moved a large percentage of these migrants—they’re coming across the border illegally—[into] swing states.” Never mind that the Haitians in Springfield are legal. In one fell swoop, Rogan managed to seamlessly transition from asking a question about immigration to asserting the Great Replacement conspiracy theory that Democrats are importing illegal voters to steal elections—exactly Trump’s view.

[...] Rogan’s embrace of RFK Jr. isn’t ultimately down to his personal charms—Rogan is dependably supportive of health and wellness conspiracism just generally. During the Covid pandemic, the Joe Rogan Experience was among the most formidable engines of misinformation about the disease, alternative treatments, and vaccine safety, with appearances by conspiracists like Bret Weinstein, Robert Malone, and Pierre Kory. He regularly invites conspiracists onto his show to pump out hours of uninterrupted anti-vaccine propaganda. Alex Jones—one of the most prolific and notorious conspiracy theorists of our time, who accused the grieving families of Sandy Hook victims of being crisis actors who were part of a plot to take Americans’ guns—has been a guest many times. Conspiracy theorists like Weinstein who rant about the horrors of vaccine injuries, the life-saving properties of ivermectin, and the totalitarian machinations of the WHO for long stretches, are honored guests.

[...]

Heterodox Media Has a Right-Wing Conspiracism Problem

Rogan has presented his podcast as a counterweight to the “establishment” media. That means he regularly platforms figures that traditional outlets won’t because they don’t meet basic journalistic standards. He evades accountability by always pointing out that he’s a mere comedian and entertainer, a clever rhetorical shield. This grants him the latitude to speculate as recklessly as he wants, indulge some of the wildest conspiracy theories around, and consistently get basic facts wrong while allowing his guests to do the same. So long as his audience laps it up, he has no reason to approach things any differently. But that’s also why the backlash from Trump’s MAGA base was so threatening to him: that’s an occasion in which he risked losing his audience. Rogan has become wholly captured by his audience even as he maintains the pretense that he’s a fair-minded and inquisitive political observer who is capable of seeing through what he regards as the sinister machinations and distortions of both major political parties. That’s why, when the wave of MAGA resentment came crashing down on him when he endorsed RFK Jr., he caved.

Kamala Harris’ supporters never expected Rogan’s endorsement, and there’s no Democratic equivalent of Catturd to chastise Rogan for supporting a third-party candidate. Nor does Rogan have much of a non-right audience. So all his incentives lean in the direction of becoming a right-wing conspiracy theorist—especially since, right now, there are more conspiracies on the right. Indeed, there are few, if any, MAGA conspiracy theories that Rogan hasn’t amplified. Last year, he suggested that Jan. 6 was a “false flag” operation in which “intelligence agencies were involved in provoking people into the Capitol.” He defended Arizona’s Republican senatorial candidate, Kari Lake’s, debunked claims about voter fraud in her state’s gubernatorial race: “All that Kari Lake stuff in Arizona they tried to dismiss, it doesn’t look like that’s invalid. It looks like there’s real fraud there.”

Rogan, of course, isn’t the only one. There is an entire industry of self-styled “heterodox” thinkers who have gravitated toward the right. Peterson, Rogan’s frequent guest, was once merely critical of campus identity politics and other forms of “wokeness.” He’s now a committed political partisan indistinguishable from a standard-fare Fox News commentator (e.g., characterizing Harris as “a master of chaos and deception” who is full of “envy” and “spite”; or describing Trump’s indictments as a “horrible” form of political “persecution”). Rogan and Peterson are part of an alternative media community providing an intellectual permission structure for people to support MAGA under the guise of “independent thought,” “heterodoxy,” or “classical liberalism.”

But Rogan plays a crucial role in this right-wing alternative media ecosystem. Because he has always presented himself as non-partisan, millions of listeners trust that he doesn’t have an agenda. Heterodox intellectuals and influencers like Peterson constantly decry traditional media as captured by elite interests, and they present shows like the Joe Rogan Experience as the alternative. But when Rogan and his guests shower praise on Trump and relentlessly attack his political opponents, they prove that they aren’t the anti-establishment crusaders they claim to be—they’re just supporting one establishment over another. In many ways, Rogan is the perfect embodiment of the Trump-era podcaster.

Joe Rogan claims to be an independent voice, but is in reality a right-wing conspiracy theorist whose podcast has a largely MAGA audience.

[itsstarseason]

RUDA’S OFFICIAL PROFILE ✰

Ogawa Ruda (Japanese: おがわるだ; born March 16, 2001) is a Japanese singer and dancer under SM Entertainment. She is a member of the South Korean co-ed group NCT and its subunits NCT U and NCT WISH.

✰ NCT MENU ✰ RUDA’S MASTERLIST

╭┈──── ◌ೄ◌ྀ ˊˎ

╰┈➤ ❝ BASIC INFO !

BIRTH NAME. Ogawa Ruda (おがわるだ)

NAME MEANING. The name was chosen by her mother. The meaning of the name is unknown.

KOREAN NAME. Oh Luda (오루다)

NAME MEANING. The name she chose for herself after moving to Korea. It's her birth name written in Hangeul.

ENGLISH NAME. Anna Ogawa

NAME MEANING. The name Yushi chose for her.

NICKNAMES. Aru

DATE OF BIRTH. March 16, 2001

PLACE OF BIRTH. Kochi, Japan

HOMETOWN. Kochi, Japan

ETHNICITY. Japanese

NATIONALITY. Japanese

CITIZENSHIP. Japanese

FAMILY. Ogawa Masahiro (father, 1972), Ogawa Chiyo (mother, 1974), Ogawa Kei (sister, 2006)

LANGUAGES. Japanese (native, Tosa dialect), Korean (fluent, Gyeonggi dialect)

BLOOD TYPE. AB+

WESTERN ZODIAC SIGN. Pisces

CHINESE ZODIAC SIGN. Snake

GENDER. female

PRONOUNS. she/her

ROMANTIC AND SEXUAL INTERESTS. undisclosed

EYE COLOR. dark brown

HAIR COLOR. black

HEIGHT. 171cm (5’7”)

DOMINANT HAND. right

PIERCINGS. 2 in total; left earlobe (1), right earlobe (1)

TATTOOS. 0

MEDICAL CONDITIONS. anxiety disorder, depression

ALLERGIES. peanuts, pollen

VOCAL TONE. Kim Sejeong & IVE’s Liz

RAP STYLE. i-dle’s Shuhua

DANCE STYLE. LE SSERAFIM’s Kazuha

╭┈──── ◌ೄ◌ྀ ˊ��

╰┈➤ ❝ CAREER !

OCCUPATION. K-pop Idol

STAGE NAME. Ruda (루다, ルダ)

NICKNAMES. Dad, mom, Akkaru

COMPANY. SM Entertainment (2016–present)

TRAINING PERIOD. 4 years 4 months (June 2016–October 2020)

DEBUT DATE. 12 October 2020 (NCT, NCT U), 21 February 2024 (NCT WISH)

YEARS ACTIVE. 2020–present

GROUP. NCT (2020–present)

SUBUNITS. NCT U (2020–present), NCT WISH (2023–present)

POSITIONS. Vocalist (NCT), Main Vocalist, Visual, Center, Face of the Group (NCT WISH)

REPRESENTATIVE EMOJI. 🦆

REPRESENTATIVE COLOR. Crusta

SOLO FANDOM NAME. Daluvs

ROLE MODEL. KARA's Nicole, Girls' Generation's Taeyeon, Sooyoung, and Yuri

SIGNATURE.

╭┈──── ◌ೄ◌ྀ ˊˎ

╰┈➤ ❝ RANKING !

10 - outstanding, 9 - excellent, 8 - very good, 7 - good, 6 - above average, 5 - average, 4 - below average, 3 - weak, 2 - very weak, 1 - never learned

STAR QUALITY. 7.5/10

VISUALS (KOREAN BEAUTY STANDARDS). 8.5/10

VISUALS (JAPANESE BEAUTY STANDARDS). 8/10

VOCALS. 2020: 8/10 2024: 9.5/10

RAP. 2020: 4.5/10 2024: 5/10

DANCE. 2020: 6/10 2024: 7.5/10

STAGE PRESENCE. 2020: 7/10 2024: 8/10

VARIETY SHOWS. 2020: 6/10 2024: 7/10

PUBLIC SPEAKING. 2020: 6/10 2024: 8/10

FAN SERVICE. 2020: 8/10 2024: 9/10

MEDIA TRAINING. 2020: 6/10 2024: 7.5/10

SONGWRITING. 2020: 3/10 2024: 3/10

PRODUCING. 2020: 1/10 2024: 1/10

CHOREOGRAPHING. 2020: 3/10 2024: 4.5/10

ACTING. 2020: 4/10 2024: 6/10

MODELING. 2020: 5/10 2024: 7/10

LEADERSHIP. 5.5/10

TEAMWORK. 7.5/10

DISCIPLINE. 9/10

EMOTIONAL RESILIENCE. 6.5/10

TIME MANAGEMENT. 7/10

╭┈──── ◌ೄ◌ྀ ˊˎ

╰┈➤ ❝ PERSONALITY !

MBTI TYPE. ENTP

MORAL ALIGNMENT. neutral good

Ruda's first impression is reserved but friendly. She is an introverted extrovert, and although she is quite shy and less talkative than most extroverts, being around people energizes her and she enjoys meeting new people and likes to initiate conversations in social situations.

Ruda is and has always been very sensitive to her emotions. She has a tendency to worry and overthink in stressful situations, and although she rarely expresses her worries out loud, her emotions are written all over her face. She will only admit her worries to someone she trusts and is close to. She cries easily and is prone to feeling sad/upset, but almost never gets angry.

Ruda’s need for attention developed early in life as a result of not getting enough attention at home. She requires support, validation, and affection, and is a highly affectionate person herself. She expresses affection through physical touch; she often hugs, holds hands, and touches people she is close to. She also shows affection through small actions/gifts, for example, she often buys drinks for the group after a long dance practice, ties their shoelaces, fixes them up, etc. She is very caring, especially towards the people she is close to, however she is more drawn to people who don’t need to rely on others.

Ruda is very curious and imaginative. She first discovered her artistic side in elementary school. She is drawn to art and other creative people; she has the desire to know people's stories and what makes them who they are. She often talks about different ideas (even if it means not realizing them), daydreams, and thinks about the 'what ifs'.

Ruda's biggest flaw is her insecurities. She believes she is never good enough and has a tendency to compare herself to other people. This was the most visible during her training years; she was driven not only by her ambition and determination to debut, but also because she always thinks she isn’t good enough. Even after debut, she often takes extra time to practice and attends extra classes to get better. The same thing applies to her appearance. Because of this, she takes criticism way too seriously and might blame herself when bad things happen, especially at low points in life. However, her insecurities make her extremely hardworking and ambitious.

Her other flaws include indecisiveness and short attention span. She has a difficulty paying attention to a task if something more interesting is present. Because of her indecisiveness, she sometimes makes risky decisions and is willing to take those risks, even if they may change her life or career.

As an idol, Ruda’s personality and appearance present a sweet, warm, and friendly, but also slightly shy girl-next-door image. She gives girlfriend energy and is especially known for her love for fans. She’s always eager to interact with fans in all ways possible and makes sure the fans feel seen by her; it’s common for her to remember fans, accept gifts and letters, and stop by for an autograph if a fan bumps into her on a street. Fans also often mention how hardworking she is. They respect Ruda for always wanting to improve and acknowledge her dedication.

One of Ruda's biggest strengths as an idol is public speaking. Despite her shyness, she is quite charismatic and very well-spoken on camera. She easily handles interviews and speeches and manages to give satisfying responses even in difficult situations. When it comes to variety shows, she is perfect for talk shows.

Her personality blends well with all NCT WISH members (some fans say she is a mix of all members), so she can easily get along with the whole group. Because she is the oldest, many members depend on her during tough times or "first times" and rely on her previous experience in NCT. Also, because of her caring nature, she is often called the mom of the group.

Ruda’s personality also manifests in her performances—Ruda is quite versatile on stage. She fits bright and slightly cute concepts best, but can adjust energy based on the stage. Most of her performances are marked by her signature wide smile that usually appears after she sings her line, a second before a camera moves to someone else. Although she excels in bright concepts, many fans love when she performs dark concepts—she's less skilled in those, but she exudes a tough and sultry-like energy that otherwise can't be seen.

Ruda’s biggest charm is her mix of her genuine ambition and her shy but friendly personality. She is viewed as a sweet, sincere, and even slightly innocent person.

PERSONALITY TRAITS. adaptable, adventurous, affectionate, ambitious, caring, curious, empathetic, hardworking, imaginative, indecisive, insecure, perfectionist, self-critical, sensitive, shy, sociable, supportive

STRENGTHS. makes people feel loved, values meaningful relationships, handles change easily, always works on improving and getting better, sincere about people and her interests

WEAKNESSES. overthinks and worries too much, takes criticism too seriously, struggles with open communication, bottles up her emotions, has people-pleasing tendencies

HABITS. folding hands in her lap, standing with hands placed on her hips, playing with her hands when nervous, listening in on others' conversations, smiling, spacing out, speaking softly, suppressing laughter, clicking pens, not putting things back in place

FEARS. being forgotten, needles

LOVE LANGUAGE (GIVING). quality time > physical touch > acts of service = gift giving > words of affirmation

LOVE LANGUAGE (RECEIVING). quality time > words of affirmation > physical touch > acts of service = gift giving

ATTACHMENT STYLE. anxious-preoccupied

HOBBIES. collecting photocards, shopping, skincare, watching k-dramas

LIKES. cats, conversations, cows, feeling like she belongs, hugs, iced americano, karaokes, meeting people, playing checkers, ramen, sweet flavors, theatres, white clothes

DISLIKES. bugs, cucumbers, drawing, having nothing to do, rain, rivalry, working out

╭┈──── ◌ೄ◌ྀ ˊˎ

╰┈➤ ❝ HISTORY !

Ogawa Ruda (Japanese: おがわるだ) was born in March 16, 2001 in Kochi, Japan. She is the first child of bakery owner Ogawa Chiyo and office worker Ogawa Masahiro. She has a sister named Kei born in 2006.

Ruda's childhood was deeply affected by her sister's illness; Kei was diagnosed with lymphoma cancer at age 2. Ruda's parents suddenly shifted all their attention to Kei without any explanation. They began to treat Ruda more like Kei's babysitter and less like their daughter. Ruda stated she felt abandoned, neglected, and unloved as a child. She felt uncomfortable at home and often refused to come home after school. In 2011, Kei beat cancer, but their parents’ different attitude towards the sisters stayed the same.

In elementary school, Ruda's music teacher recognized her singing talent and recommended her to join a music school club. She learned to sing and play piano there and was a part of the school choir. She did the same in middle school.

Ruda's middle school friends were fans of K-pop and eventually Ruda became interested too. She recalled admiring groups like KARA and Girls' Generation. In the last year of middle school, Ruda and her friends decided to try auditioning for different K-pop companies. In March 2016, their graduation month, they attended the 2016 SM Global Audition in Osaka. Ruda was the only one who passed. Despite the initial fights and disagreements with her parents, Ruda moved to South Korea and joined SM Entertainment in June 2016.

Ruda mentioned she struggled to showcase her vocal skills because she couldn't speak Korean. She trained with NCT members Yuming, Ika, Chei, and Sona, aespa members Karina, Winter, and Ningning, and Hearts2Hearts members Jiwoo and Yuha. She was also considered to debut in aespa, but was replaced by Giselle.

Ruda was introduced as a new NCT member on September 23, 2020, during a VLive broadcast held by NCT. She officially debuted as a member of NCT on October 12, 2020, with the release of “NCT RESONANCE Pt.1”.

On May 24, 2023, SM Entertainment released a statement saying Ruda would debut in NCT’s sixth and final unit by participating in a survival show “NCT Universe : LASTART”. The official lineup was revealed during the final episode and the group, tentatively named NCT New Team, released a pre-debut single "Hands Up" on October 8, 2023.

Ruda officially debuted as a vocalist, visual, center, and face of NCT WISH on February 28, 2024 with the release of the group’s first mini album “WISH” and its title track of the same name. She is the most popular member of NCT WISH.

✰ NCT MENU ✰ RUDA’S MASTERLIST

fill in this form to be added to the taglist !

requests are always open! submit a request or ask me anything !

this took me so long… but i’m happy with the result!

thank you for reading <3

© itsstarseason ✰

[jazmine-here]

Vanilla Girl

Stay vanilla. Stay sweet. There's nothing wrong with being a daisy.

Don’t ever try to “flex” for others by forcing your feet into a pair of glass slippers that aren't made for you. If you are uncomfortable with crafting a piece of work for a fandom, popularity, friends, or your audience, then stay true to yourself. Don’t put on the “cool girl” mask or attempt to maintain it if you have. Popularity may not always be guaranteed, but your relationship with your audience—the right one—will have longevity, purity, and beauty. Be yourself. Trust yourself.

Hello! My name is Jazmine!

I am a reemerging writer who tinkers with art. I was dubbed "Jazzy-B-Real" in my youth and "Otherwise_Uncolonized" in my young(er) adulthood.

Jazzy-B-Real:

Otherwise_Uncolonized:

My experimental YouTube page was "Constellations of Neverland" at one point. I've been offline since 2020. In 2024, I saw people online celebrating my middle school and high school art while wishing me well due to my disappearance. I'm happy to say that I am well after a rough post-Covid era and a lot of growing up. During Covid's reign, I had purged the internet of what I viewed to be carbon footprints, yet people have kept the light alive in some of my purer contributions. I am eternally grateful to you all for retaining such light. As the (late) blooming adult I am now, I've learned to view everything with balance—including the broken person I was—and there are lovely works that I dearly miss as a result.

Those works are the "darlings" from my young life. The less agreeable ones were the products of a lost soul grappling with darkness and negative influences in many forms. When I hopped online, I was too young and suffering from complex, subconsciously locked trauma that poured into so much of my work. Some fan works in my teen years were infested with "edge lord/lady" energy and "spicy content" that partially stemmed from that trauma while the rest came from me trying to wear "the cool girl" mask for an audience (gamer boys and adults) regardless of my secret discomfort, but I suppose much of it would've been called art therapy in another field. Never again will I entertain those things on a public platform.

All in all, I'm in the heat of writing original work.

Writing, Poetry & Artwork

I'll be posting my original stories, prose poetry, and standard poetry on my FictionPress.com with the occasional preview slapped on Tumblr. The account already has a small library. Much of what I write will also grace a website I'm building, so please stay tuned for it and the original novels I have in store. New artwork and fandom tributes will hit Tumblr, Twitter/X, DeviantART, and my personal website. Doing commissions for writing prompts and art pieces will also become a part of my activities with my audience.

My AO3 account for old 2014-2017 fandom storyboards like "My Dearest Cousin," "Indentured (Union of the Crowns)," "Carry Me Anew," and "The King" is back up as well.

༺Please read and review with your pretty thoughts! Thank you so much to those who have saved some of my fandom pieces:

[democracyunderground]

On Jan. 6, 2021, then-President Donald Trump held a rally on the Ellipse, with the White House in the background, telling his supporters to “fight like hell” before a mob of them violently stormed the Capitol where Congress was certifying that he had lost the election.

Tonight, a week before Election Day, Vice President Harris will use the same backdrop to lay out the closing argument of her campaign: that it’s time to turn the page on the divisive and chaotic Trump era.

More than 20,000 people are expected for the event, which is aimed at reaching what campaign operatives call "low propensity" voters who aren't usually all that interested in politics — to try to convince them to cast a ballot.

”This speech is really designed to reach those undecided voters, those folks that are making the decision to break through in a moment when it's sometimes hard to break through, and really to talk about what's at stake in this election,” campaign chair Jen O'Malley Dillon told reporters.

”It's really a reminder of the gravity of the job: how much a president can do for good — and for bad — to shape the country and impact people's lives,” she said.

Rally after rally, Harris has talked about Jan. 6

Harris started off her campaign as a joyful warrior. But as the race wore on and polls showed it tightening, Harris has increasingly leaned on the dangers of electing Trump — a candidate she argues is “unhinged and unstable.”

Harris elevated dire warnings about Trump as she campaigned with former GOP Rep. Liz Cheney, trying to peel off moderate Republicans and independents appalled by what had happened on Jan. 6.

“He refused to accept the will of the people and the results of an election that was free and fair,” Harris has said.

Last week, she agreed that Trump is a “fascist” after the New York Times released interviews with retired Marine Gen. John Kelly making that same charge.

Kelly had been White House chief of staff to Trump and said his former boss, in private, even praised Hitler and his generals. The Trump campaign dismissed Kelly’s stories as fabrications.

For Harris, this was another opportunity to drive home her warning. “This is a window into who Donald Trump really is from the people who know him best,” Harris said.

Echoes of Clinton’s campaign

Hillary Clinton also issued dire warnings in the closing days of her 2016 campaign, reminding voters that in a debate, Trump had refused to say he would accept the results of the election.

“Make no mistake: by doing that, he is threatening our democracy,” Clinton said.

Trump won the 2016 election and gladly accepted the results.

At the time, Clinton’s warnings were seen by many as over the top: a last-minute effort to try to move voters. People were skeptical, said Brian Fallon, who worked on the Clinton campaign and is a senior adviser to Harris now.

“There was a phenomenon of taking Trump seriously but not literally,” Fallon said echoing a line that became a mantra after Trump’s 2016 win.

But now, Fallon argues it’s different — because Trump refused to accept his loss in 2020, and still hasn’t. He has described Jan. 6 as “a day of love” and has pledged to pardon at least some of those who were prosecuted for their actions that day.

“We’re not asking anybody to suspend disbelief in order to entertain these warnings,” said Fallon. “This is something that is the American people’s actual experience over the past several years.”

The argument is persuasive for some groups of voters

The Harris campaign has its attention trained on swing-state suburbs where tens of thousands of Republicans voted for Nikki Haley rather than Trump in the Republican primary — in some cases, even after she had dropped out of the race.

In polls and focus groups, voters say they are worried about violence around this year’s election.

“This isn’t hypothetical anymore,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster. “It’s real lived experience.”

Warnings about Trump are persuasive to women swing voters, and are mobilizing for women and Democratic men, Lake said. These are voters like Susan Shurina, who spoke to NPR’s Asma Khalid after voting early in Alpharetta, Ga.

“I supported the Democratic Party this time although I’m a registered Republican,” Shurina said last week. “I’m just fearful of the rhetoric I hear from Trump. He seems to be very violent in wanting to control, and vengeful.”

But Marc Lotter, who served in the Trump administration and now works at a pro-Trump think-tank, argued Harris’ warnings will ring hollow with a lot of voters, who already lived through one Trump term.

“Well, he didn’t lock her up,” Lotter said of Trump’s threat to Hillary Clinton.

Lotter said he sees Harris’ warnings as a desperation move — a scare tactic — because Harris hasn’t been able to convince undecided voters she would be better for them than Trump.

“I don’t see how that’s going to be the winning factor at the end,” Lotter said.

Harris will present a contrast

Some Democrats have worried Harris’ warnings are not enough to get across the finish line in a very tight race where voters rank economic concerns as their top priority.

Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a group that grew out of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 campaign, said he is worried some on the left will stay home rather than vote, or will consider third parties.

Harris is set to argue that Trump, if elected, will continue to focus on himself and his growing list of personal enemies, citing his own increasingly inflammatory closing arguments.

“He calls these Americans the enemy within and says that he would use the American military to go after American citizens,” said Harris.

She will contrast that with what she has been calling her “to-do list” of policies to try to bring down prices and make life easier for Americans.

“She's obviously going to touch on lowering costs on things like groceries, housing, health care,” Harris' campaign chair O'Malley Dillon said. “You're going to hear her really speak to middle class families, and what they're worried about and what she's going to do about it.”

NPR's Asma Khalid contributed to this story.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Doug Mann

Published: Feb 25, 2025

Sometime around 2013 a new church sprung with, within a few years gaining millions of acolytes in the USA and its tributaries. They called themselves “woke.” Their creed was simple: take the egalitarian movements of the sixties and seventies, and exaggerate them to paranoid proportions.

They divided up the populations of the West by their core biological traits — their skin colour, their gender, and their sexuality — and assigned each group the black hat of oppressor or the white hat of victim. Of course, these traits could intersect: two or more traits could reinforce each other. And it didn’t matter if you personally were free of sin: ancestral guilt was good enough to be thrown into the moral gulag.

They went out into the world armed with this prophecy, quickly conquering academe, the mainstream media and bureaucracies, both public and private. HR officers became holy warriors, journalists party shills, and professors intersectional activists.

All of a sudden, “hate speech” was everywhere. To fight it, the end justified the means — whether it used shaming, censorship, social media mobbing, cancellation of respected leaders, arson or assault, the woke were sure that their struggle would lead to a morally just utopia.

On the less violent side, they made sure that all institutions they controlled had DEI committees and staff inquisitors to stifle dissent and guarantee that the supposed victims got lots of high-paying jobs. Diversity became big business. Race hucksters like Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo became respected scholars. Pronouns and black squares were inscribed on their digital banners as they went into battle.

The political parties of the “left” abandoned working-class politics, turning to the woke creed. They also seized control of the means of mass entertainment, plunging Hollywood into a decade of racial quotas and bad scripts. They destroyed the three major science fiction franchises in America and Britain in the name of equity. Comedy and art either went underground, or kissed the ring of the new regime, becoming bland propaganda. As a result, people tuned out, and started watching heterodox YouTubers and posting caustic memes.

It all came to a head in 2020 with the Covid pandemic and the death of George Floyd. As Antifa and BLM took to the streets to burn, loot and murder, Karens took to parking lots and dollar stores to ensure that everyone was masked and socially distanced. “Safety” was the new shibboleth. Screeching and name-calling became the order of the day.

Academics and bureaucrats teamed up with social media chiefs to make sure that we were safe not only from the virus, but from “bad ideas” like government crime stats and experimental science, with its wacky notion that drugs should be thoroughly tested before being used. As for the origins of the virus, it was probably a few rogue bats or pangolin spreading the biological equivalent of disinformation: best not think about it. Anthony Fauci became one of the revered saints of the new epistemological disorder.

This went on for about a decade.

In 2017 Evergreen State College and Lindsay Shepherd showed us how the woke creed had sabotaged higher education. Saying the wrong thing on Twitter became a career death sentence. Donald Trump was president for four years, yet his reform efforts were constantly blocked by deep state operatives and women in pink hats. It looked for a while like the modern equivalent of the Holy Roman Empire, the inaptly named “progressive” left, would rule forever.

But slowly things changed.

People stopped watching the latest Disney films or CNN reports. Mainstream media produced so many hoaxes that their brands became synonymous with fake news. Joe Rogan, Tim Pool and Matt Walsh became household names in their new media spaces.

Gamers became tired of ugly gender-fluid heroes. Workers realized that their old political allies had abandoned them. At the same time, populist movements arose in North America, Western Europe and even as far south as Argentina. Though castigated as “far right”, they were in fact diverse coalitions of homeless leftists, libertarians, and forward-thinking conservatives.

Then the bell tolled.

Trump was re-elected at the end of 2024. On January 20, he sat behind a desk in the Oval Office piled with stacks of executive orders. One promised a return of freedom of speech, enshrined in the First Amendment. Two others promised the end of DEI and a freeze on gender inflation (it turns out there were only two after all).

Surprisingly, there were no mass marches of pink hats or black squares on Pennsylvania Avenue: Americans had had enough. Canadians had already indicated their love of freedom and nation in the streets of Ottawa in February 2022: the woke prince of Parliament Hill was stripped of his sanctified robes, his electoral defeat certain since the summer of 2023.

In a mythic return of the repressed, the fellowship dropped the ring of power into the volcano of democracy. The orcs of the woke left fell to their knees, tears on their cheeks, as they watched the fiery eye of their dark lord fade to black. Their time was over, and they knew it.

What was all this for?

All those charred buildings, destroyed businesses, suicides, firings, the loss of friends and spouses, the mental illness epidemic in the young? Your guess is as good as mine, though I suspect it had something to do with resentment, money and power.

What a long, strange, sad trip it’s been.

[maxrowave]

a compiled list of my CESDOC (and general cesare & doc) headcanons because i like them a lot and i am incredibly lonely lol, some of these things are reiterated in my fic but i'll mention them again anyways. - Cesare abhors silence. It reminds him of his time being dead and inanimate. It also emphasises just how undead he is—no heartbeat or breath to cure the silence. So he fills the world with his intrusions on nonsense and constant clammering, fiddling, and tapping random objects. He likes the rain the most because of this. He doesn't have to make the noise himself for once; the world does it for him. That's why he also sticks around Allen, he never stops talking lol. - Allen has a no-shoes policy in his apartment, as much as he tries to avoid traditionalism. I think having no shoes in the house as one of the few distinct Asian traits he inhibits is interesting. Cesare, of course, is a menace and tracks dirt and mud into his apartment anyway. It's a work in progress between the two. (I doodled this one some time ago)

I think both of them are very touchy about the past and concepts of the past. With Cesare, obviously, talking about his life before being dead is distasteful and his life before Allen had been mostly dull. Allen (being what I presume to be a Korean-American), likely lived in a strict household, and everything he does is a rebellious reaction to his past (being a theatre major, involved in the arts, isolated from his family, etc). As a result, both of them are future-oriented, although I think it can pose a threat to Cesare as well because he has to dwell on his immortality and Allen's mortality. Cesare is always running from the future and the past.

This is a classic, but Cesare is constantly cold, and Allen is a literal heater. In some sort of natural instinct way, Cesare is always allured by warm things; he hovers by the engine of the truck, sits in the rays of the sun, trying to imitate what it would feel like if the warmth of blood was still circulating in his system. I think holding Allen is ideal for him; he pretends Allen's heartbeat is his own, mimics the way his chest rises and falls through artificial breaths. Obviously, he's very reclusive about actually indulging in this, being very touch-adverse in a fear of being vulnerable. It's an opportunity for another backstab. If their relationship does get to a trustworthy point, though, I think this is what it would look like. They just talk and hold each other.

A key part of Cesare's hesitance to engage with Allen is his fear of being attached and his immortality. He knows that Allen is ultimately a blip in his thousands of years of being alive, and how it hurts. He learnt that lesson in the first century of being undead. But like a moth to a light, he keeps coming back, and he doesn't know why.

Allen's strange fascination with Cesare is mildly rooted in his being a chronically online kid in the 2000s. I'm going off the assumption he's in his early 20s because he's a theatre major graduate, and the show takes place in the 2020s. He was a creepypasta kid, probably thought of Jeff the Killer and Slenderman as cool. I have a mini-comic of this in another post lolll

Cesare has perpetually calloused fingers, remnants of his duration of being alive as a carpenter... marionette maker... In contrast to Allen's hands, which have not seen the struggle of labour.

Conversations circulate around a lot of bickering, and Allen asks about old worlds and the universe through Cesare's eyes. Cesare always intentionally disappoints him with flat descriptions (occasionally entertaining him, though). I characterise Allen as mostly pretentious until he gets closer to Cesare, when he realises his big performances of intelligence do not fool Cesare whatsoever. Their form of humour manifests in sarcasm and irony.

Cesare's love language is physical touch; Allen's is quality time. It shows in really weird ways where Cesare lingers on every touch, chasing after it instinctually before forcing himself to pull back. Allen just likes being in Cesare's presence. I think Cesare is among the few people who can tolerate Allen's antics.

At the start of establishing Zomburger, Allen would usually show up already in costume and makeup for the day. One day, he neglects to do so, instead opting to do his makeup inside the truck before his shift starts. Cesare doesn't recognise him initially and tries to chase him out with a fly swatter out of the truck, before realising it's just Allen.

In a similar vein, Cesare sometimes gets too used to his employees looking undead. He gets comfortable and lets his guard down momentarily until the illusion drops; a blotchy patch of makeup ruined by water.

Why Cesare likes Allen. I think it comes down to Cesare being so hardened and dulled by the centuries, like a meal he's eaten too many times, and he's sick of it now. Then he sees Allen, still struggling to figure out who he is with his manufactured spontaneity and finding his place in the world, it reminds him of when he was alive. Allen is also an unstoppable force; he is stubborn in his presence, although he asks lots of questions, he doesn't necessarily press on them. Cesare appreciates his patience, having been so used to being isolated because he'd always been difficult to be around. Also, I think it's the fact that Allen is so intimate with having to be forcefully spontaneous and constructing personas, that he sees right through Cesare with his tough act. Everyone calls him boss, Allen calls him Cesare, like he knows the man behind the performative nature of Zomburger. Maybe he does.

Why Allen likes Cesare. If I haven't already made it abundantly clear, Allen struggles a lot with finding his identity. Seeing Cesare with his recklessness and unapologetic strangeness is admirable; that unfiltered existence of being himself is something Allen strives for. Does Allen like Cesare for his mystery? Yes, but it doesn't mean he'll run tail the moment he uncovers Cesare for everything that he is. He still finds his traits endearing and appreciates the qualities that have been shaped by time. Allen is attracted to the ache that Cesare tries to hide underneath everything, the softness between the cracks, as evidence that humanity prevails even in the face of time.

[andhaveapleasanttomorrow]

could you possibly explain the cultural nostalgia fascism post? i wish to understand your view a bit more clearly

if we can agree firstly that the zeitgeist worldview is overwhelmingly one of nostalgia (see: all fashion/music/aesthetic trends being regurgitative in nature, even moreso than is normally expected from the 20-year rule; see also: mass entertainment tending towards remakes/sequels/multiverses/what-have-you, even moreso than is normally expected from the hollywood spinoff machines; see also: "this looks/sounds exactly like it could have been from [year]" being generally seen as high praise on any given form of art), and that this engine runs exponentially faster (as in, we are trying to escape the future so hard that even 2020 seems better than now),

&secondly that this attitude arises from a sense of helplessness &/or hopelessness about the concept of "future," that this help/hopelessness is a result of a lack of faith in the present ("this is the worst timeline," etc), and is an attempt to find anything better by reaching back into the past,

&thirdly that this reaching back is often misguided and inaccurate, on a factual basis, (see: "things were more affordable back then," in reference to like, the great recession) as a result of wishful thinking and also the fact that most of the people saying stuff like that were not yet adults at the time, or maybe not even born, and that these inaccurate understandings generally result in much nicer, simpler, purer ideas of the past than reality -- that because "things" in general are so bad now, they must have, at some nebulous past point, been generally "better,"

&fourthly on the idea that the "mythic past" as termed by jason stanley is a core tenet of fascism ("Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. […] The function of the mythic past, in fascist politics, is to harness the emotion of nostalgia to the central tenets of fascist ideology—authoritarianism, hierarchy, purity, and struggle."),

then I think it makes sense to come to the conclusion that the two are connected. obviously I'm not saying "nostalgia is fascist" and I'm as much of a slave to it as anyone (moreso, probably) but it's not a very far leap from "stuff was just better back then" to fascist-adjacent (and subsequently fascist) thinking, especially given the amount of oxygen "trad"-type thought takes up these days. like this isn't so much a "warning" about nostalgia as a concept/affinity as it is an observation that the two things being so common at the same time (especially among young people, for whom the future is much more bleak) isn't a coincidence

[bearsbeetstextposts]

𝙹𝚁𝙴𝙶!! 𝚃𝙷𝙾𝚄𝙶𝙷𝚃𝚂 𝙾𝙽 𝙹𝚁𝙴𝙶

ok SO. I was sooo obsessed with Jreg in, like, early 2020 when Centricide was in its heyday. His videos felt so edgy and forbidden, but also like he captured the classic Gen Z vibe of absurdist humor! I came for the insane political takes and stayed for the homoerotic tension between Commie and Ancom. I think the Sanders Sides format done with personified edges of the political compass was a creative idea that worked really well for him. I do think his later stuff, like the whole mental illness series, felt a little bit tired and less fun to watch (even if that was his meta intent—like the videos where he starts to do a bit and then looks straight into the camera and goes “I can’t do this anymore”).

I don’t wait with bated breath for his next video anymore like I used to, but it’s still fun to check in sometimes to get the Jregian take on whatever recent political event has been in the news. I think a lot of the deeper themes Jreg covers in his art, like mental distress caused by isolation, or the disillusion of the youth with the modern political state resulting in either hopelessness or a push toward extremism, are still very relevant and will be for a long time.

I also really vibe with the Jreg fanbase. His fans just seem like people I’d get along with irl—or, at the very least, the kind of people whose antics are entertaining to witness from afar.

What are…your thoughts on Jreg?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Object permanence

Picks and Shovels is a new, standalone technothriller starring Marty Hench, my two-fisted, hard-fighting, tech-scam-busting forensic accountant. You can pre-order it on my latest Kickstarter, which features a brilliant audiobook read by Wil Wheaton.

#20yrsago 1970s Homebrew Computer Club newsletter scans https://www.digibarn.com/collections/newsletters/homebrew/

#15yrsago Corporate developers abandon “underwater” property — why not individuals? https://memex.craphound.com/2010/01/25/corporate-developers-abandon-underwater-property-why-not-individuals/

#10yrsago San Francisco ponders letting luxury property developers take away symbolic “public spaces” https://socketsite.com/archives/2015/01/little-known-public-open-spaces-soon-history.html

#5yrsago Cheating term-paper-for-pay businesses recruited customers through subsidized on-campus parties https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-01-23-how-the-contract-cheating-industry-has-gotten-more-aggressive-in-recruiting-students

#5yrsago The cum-ex scam stole $60b from European tax authorities: it’s monumentally boring, complicated, and very, very important https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/business/cum-ex.html

#5yrsago Chicago PD’s predictive policing tool has been shut down after 8 years of catastrophically bad results https://twitter.com/sh4keer/status/1220470166355468288

#5yrsago The answer to the Clearview AI scandal is better privacy laws, not anti-scraping laws https://memex.craphound.com/2020/01/25/the-answer-to-the-clearview-ai-scandal-is-better-privacy-laws-not-anti-scraping-laws/

#5yrsago I reviewed William Gibson’s novel “Agency” for today’s LA Times https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2020-01-24/agency-william-gibson

#5yrsago Warner claims ownership over the numbers 36 and 50, and demonetizes Youtube videos that incorporate them https://www.dexerto.com/entertainment/annemunition-bizarre-copyright-strike-youtube-random-numbers-1317750/

#1yrago Tabs give me superpowers https://pluralistic.net/2024/01/25/today-in-tabs/#unfucked-rota

Check out my Kickstarter to pre-order copies of my next novel, Picks and Shovels!

[jnghnfnz]

tw: rant, opinions, etc

hi guys ok it's fully been like 8 thousand years... how's everybody doing ??

i actually came on here to talk about something i don't usually talk about: youtube.

specifically coryxkenshin.

famously, cory came back a month ago, after his year and some change break. i've been a fan of his since 2020, and i entered the samurai community just around the same time he was preparing to come back from his 9 month break.

i'll make this short because i doubt there's a huge samurai community on tumblr, but i was wondering if anybody has noticed a shift in cory's energy lately?

i'm re-watching old videos from 2 or 3 years ago, and i notice that he genuinely seems excited about them. however, in the last couple of videos he's posted, he's been... less excited than he usually is. getting bored with games faster, maybe not reacting to the quality of games as much as he used to.

i've only noticed this with CERTAIN games, and i'll list the ones i've noticed a significant shift with.

amenti

poppy playtime chapter 3 (toward the end)

the first tntl he posted

sss #067

in hindsight, it's not nearly ... as many videos as it felt like in my head when i began this post. but still, i saw someone make a good point about it on tiktok.

they were talking about how he's playing games that only other people want to see him play, and as a result he may be less enthusiastic about it. this makes sense, considering the quality of SOME of the games has been... cheap or just not as exciting as some of the games that were out before he left.

for example, amenti was literally just the player wandering around and getting jumpscared with lackluster plot and good graphics. 90% of poppy playtime chapter 3 was a bunch of puzzles and it was almost painful to see how he was progressively getting more and more bored. (i agree with him that the chase scenes/scenes from catnap, like how they did with mommy long legs in chapter 2, it would've been INFINITELY more engaging. and, on a side note, the voice acting from ollie was pissing me off the ENTIRE time.)

not only have the games been a bit lackluster, but the VIDEOS he's been reacting to (which he addressed in his latest video) have been... nothing short of awful.

for example, the fact that the title of his second SSS back is "hawk tuah horror" is so embarrassing. and before somebody says "why don't you submit a video if the other videos are so bad" i don't fuck with X, i don't fuck with trump's girlfriend (mr musk), and hence i will not be using the website for any which reason whatsoever.

i actually found myself as a fan relieved that he had addressed the quality of the submitted videos, and i will admit that i was shocked that nobody submitted llama arts, true horror stories pov, or meatcanyon. it seems that people were so excited about his return (which is REASONABLE) and as a result have been pretty much just submitting bs as a result just so that he can have something to react to.

not all of this is going to be me complaining, though. he has uploaded some HIGHLY enjoyable videos that i find myself even now re-watching as i await his next uploads.

bad parenting, parasocial and schoolboy runaway were all AMAZING uploads that genuinely were entertaining and in which he seemed like his old self.

in saying this, i understand that it's a WHOLE NEW YEAR and as a result i absolutely don't expect cory to be exactly the same as 2023 or 2021 cory. he's a grown man, and not only that, but he's entering a new chapter in his life after starting MoM and just coming back to youtube after a whole year.) from the bottom of my heart, i'm filled with an inexplicable joy in terms of cory's return, especially with the political climate of america at this time.

while we're on the topic, i also want to add something else i've noticed: while cory's energy has definitely shifted, i also feel that he's truly trying his best to provide entertaining content for his fans. what do i mean?

the little scene he acted out as a preface for schoolboy runaway (the jump was insane??), the voice acting for parasocial ("HEY! YOU'RE ALREADY FAT! I CAN'T STAND YO-"), and things along those lines.

i find it immensely entertaining, but also a little sad. in one of cory's first videos he posted upon his return was essentially an apology to the people who were upset with him for posting only about MoM and not addressing his fans.

i personally am at a crossroads.

on one hand, i CAN understand why some fans would be a bit disappointed that BOTH of his return videos are solely about promoting his comic. i can understand that people would want him to come back and first address his fans (subscriber count, questions on where he's been, etc), and hence i can agree with that sentiment.

however, something that deeply saddened me was the fact that he felt the need to apologize. i will say that the new wave of samurai are definitely a bit harsher than those that joined the community a few years prior. they expect different content from cory, i feel, and the fact that so many people were wasting their time complaining about his return instead of simply being HAPPY about the fact that he's back was so upsetting to me.

when cory posted his return video one month ago, it instantly became one of the best days of my life. call me corny if you want, but cory as a person and content creator means so much to me.

he carried me through the confusion of the pandemic by always keeping a smile on his face and making his content enjoyable, while also being genuine and a really unique youtuber.

to see people ridicule him for being EXCITED about something that he's doing- something that isn't youtube, is so sad to me. i, like many others, saw the genuine excitement in his eyes when he was talking about MoM, and i felt a surge of happiness at the fact that he was able to be excited about something else other than youtube. to ME, it meant that he wouldn't become bored with youtube. i don't know why, but that's just the feeling it gave me.

all-in-all, i didn't mean for this to be NEARLY this long... tumblr needs to implement a word limit (NO THEY DONT) and i'm so happy that cory is back. nobody has to read this all the way through... it's at least

Post

[myimaginarywonderland]

I am going to say it as someone who doesn't like Max:

The penalties are confusing. Not the fact that he got them. But the way they were 10 seconds for things that are classified the same way other incidents have been classified which got 5 second penalties or sometimes even none.

Even in this race, drivers like Perez or Lawson despite driving others of track did not get any penalties.

While I understand that what Max did was clearly more obvious and deliberate, as a fan I still have to ask why did he get that penalty when others haven't? Because the intent was the same behind all of the moves.

I absolutely think he deserved to get a penalty do not get me wrong and I am not defending him. But there is still no consistency when you had other drivers doing the same thing yet not even being penalised and then had Max get 10 seconds for both.

This championship should not end like 2021 but with the inconsistencies it could and that is what is terrifying and what all of us have been screaming about even before 2020.

The FIA does not punish everyone the same, there is no consistency when it comes to when a penalty is given and when not and when it directly affects race and championship results, that can not happen.

This lack of clarity and this wild way of punishing seemingly almost after what the public says or in an interest for entertainment is not okay regardless of which drivers are involved in the incidents because it creates unfair treatment.

[not7wu]

Title: Tonight (Our Fingers Touch the Sky)

Status: Ongoing

Total Word Count: 57.3k in progress

Pairing: SeokjinxReader, Friends to Lovers, The Gang is Here (Platonic)

Rating/Genre: Mature; Idol AU, Canon Divergence, Thriller, Amnesia

Summary: You find yourself in Seoul, Korea with no memory of how you got there.  All you know is that you woke up naked–in Jin’s bed!  And you’re friends with BTS.  You’re told the life you knew is a dream, but you can’t shake the feeling that BTS are hiding something from you.  Whatever it is, you’re determined to get to the bottom of it. 

Preview: He knows your name? Kim motherfucking Seokjin knows your name. “And you’re Kim Seokjin, Worldwide Handsome, also known as Jin of BTS.”

Your word vomit has you wanting to die on the spot. Jin huffs a laugh. “Are you gonna start reciting my birthday, astrological sign, and MBTI results next?”

December 4, 1992. Sagittarius. INTP. You think it, but self preservation has you blessedly silent. His eyes twinkle like he knows what you’re thinking anyway.

Chapter List:

Ch. 1 - Where are you? - f/a/c; 6k

Ch. 2 - The Rules - f/a/c; 5.2k

Ch. 3 - Best Friends - f/a/c; 4.7k

Ch. 4 - A Crappy Day - f/a/c; 5.8k

Ch. 5 - Family - f/a/c/s; 6.5k

Ch. 6 - A Symbiotic Relationship - f/a/c; 6.5k

Ch. 7 - House of Cards - f/a; 6.8k

Ch. 8 - A Trusted Friend - f/a; 5.7k

Ch. 9 - Building Bridges - f/a/c; 4.7k

Ch. 10 - Branded - f/a/c; 5.4k

Ch. 11 -

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Warnings: Amnesia, Anxiety, Swearing, Depictions of and Implied Violence, Abandonment Issues, Stalking, Gun Violence, Coma, PTSD, Trauma, Set in 2020 during the Pandemic

A/N: Yallz have no idea how excited I am to finally be sharing the fruits of my labor. This fic is something I wrote during the pandemic in my Baby Army days when the few fanfics I read didn't satisfy me. It took me a while to learn how to navigate to find the good stuff. The ones I stumbled upon were too insta-love/smutty with NO plot; of course this was back when my love for BTS was at the stage of innocent adoration in contrast to where I am now in my delulu derangement. :D

Holed up with my roommate/cousin, "S", and our friends Garrett and Marlena in 2020, I wrote this to pass the time and to entertain them. S is a Jin-bias, so some of the scenes are catered to her.

This is a completed fic that I am rewriting, so don't worry that I'll fall off the face of the earth. The end will come and I hope it will satisfy your Jin loving, plot driven heart! A new chapter will be posted every Monday. I hope you enjoy the fic!

Here's the Youtube / Spotify playlist I listen to on shuffle as I write this.

Also, last but not least, thank you to my betas, @justamomnamedamie and @miksancheese ! I seriously could not do this without you!

Click here if you prefer to read on AO3!

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[ultraericthered]

Slept on the final season of TDP 2 (Mystery of Aaravos) after having watched it yesterday. The season's overall quality was thankfully closer to the previous one than Books 4 and 5, even though there were some serious, serious issues, particularly in the home stretch.

I watch the show mainly to be entertained and even engaged by what it offers, but what really struck me with this season is how I really do love the ideas behind what it's giving me even when I do not so much like the actual writing and execution at all. The whole outcome with Everkind was the perfect example: the idea of the old world having crumbled and burned utterly so that then rather than rebuild, you build something new and greater in its place? In the mid-2020s, that REALLY speaks to me in a way it might not have in the 2010s. It's a great direction for the narrative to take and, for now, close out on. Shame the journey to reaching that point didn't really do it justice.

Some other stray thoughts:

- Aside from ending up surprisingly less of a physical, magically powerful threat than he was hyped up to be for all this time, Aaravos could do no wrong for me from start to finish. He's always been the best creation to come out of this series and that's only been proven more true with each season of his saga. He is not only a fantastic and effective main antagonist, he's such a fascinating and layered character on top of that. In a way, he didn't even totally lose in the end - all of the archdragons save for Zym are now gone and the world is left in shambles and changed forever as a result, which could make his later work easier. Really hope we can see him again, even if in seven years.

- I love Claudia's character, but her story has just been one massive letdown after another ever since TDP Book 3. With that said, I think I slightly prefer where this saga left her off compared to the previous one. The infuriating butchery of Terry and breaking him up with her notwithstanding, her self-acceptance of who she is, what she wants to be and what she decides she needs to do with her life even if it doesn't hinge upon her bio family has at least left her with more sanity and clairity than the Azula copycat she'd been turning into. Plus, she's finally rid of her shitty father and we know for a fact that Aaravos loves her, which is why she's now his faithful disciple. Whatever she's getting up to out there, I am 100% rooting for her.

- In general, I think TDP 1 had a stronger conclusion despite the story having to get rushed in order to reach it, as it wasn't left on a note where so many threads were still loose and unresolved. But on the flip side, the hooks for a continuation being written in as an organic part of this saga is kind of preferrable to seeming to end it very conclusively only to throw at us a last minute stinger that turns out to be how the next saga opens up anyway. So it's like one lesson was learned here: let's not see a cut to years later until we get there.

- I am very confused by how the archdragons' deaths were handled. Two of them were straight up murdered in very agonizing ways, while the other three (one who was kind of already dead) sacrificed their lives. And as we skip the immediate aftermath of the latter, we are given ZERO time for grieving. Zym had to lose both of his parents all over again and it is followed up with NOTHING out of Zym except a humorous scene where he starts speaking words for the first time in Dante Basco's voice. This combined with the earlier death of an elf (Karim), which is comically brief and moved on from quickly after a small display of grief from his sister, suggests that non-human characters dying just don't get to hold the weight that even the death of fucking Viren was allowed. Suddenly, humans are not considered inferior by the narrative and it's Xadian lives that don't matter! Huh? Wasn't it the other way around before? So much mixed messaging!

- Lastly, I don't know how to feel about the sheer AUDACITY to wait until this seventh, potentially final Book to drop the confirmation that King Harrow's soul got switched with his bird's, at a point where said bird has flown the coop. It's like Aaron Ehasz was trying to leave us with a "Where. is. my mother?" moment, forgetting that doing so does not give any guarantee that there will ever be a follow-up.