#featuring a rainbow of some of the pride animals I did this month!

[comfortcritter]

As June comes to an end, don’t forget to keep loving and being proud of who you are every day following ♡

[serendertothesquad]

Seren's Studies: Wordsville's Official Release -- Is It Really an Odd Squad Clone? (Part 1)

You can bet your fine ass I am, because, to put it nicely, the fuck is this?

All right. Anyway. So part of what I used to weaponize my YouTube channel for was doing Seren Reacts videos on new PBS Kids shows. Basically, I'd take the first episode they'd upload and react to it. Since I don't have the capacity to actually do that for this show, and since I did tell you all I'd do a Seren's Study on Wordsville when it came out and I had a chance to see it...here ya go. I watched the first episodes of this thing so you don't have to!

...Uh...well...if you don't want to, anyway.

In this essay, I'm going to put the final nail in the coffin as to the issue of whether Wordsville is truly an Odd Squad ripoff or not. I'll also be picking apart the first episode screencap by screencap, just like I used to do in the good old days of Odd News.

(At the very least, the America's Funniest Home Videos animation I'm not a fan of. At least with Tom Bergeron it was funny.)

Below the break we go!

(Just as a side note: this will be split into multiple parts because Tumblr apparently has a photo limit now. That's...gonna make these followup Seren's Studies just a bit trickier.)

Ohhhh they're really trying, bless their little hearts.

Look at that, they even threw in a goddamn university degree like these kids up and went to Harvard. Because Odd Squad agents didn't go to university and aw God man you gotta be shitting me.

Man, the theme even follows the same schtick of Odd Squad agents explaining who they are and what they do! I guess that's one for the Half-Ass list...

(And on a related note, because I don't think I brought this up: Gabby's actress sounds like she was on Odd Squad at one point, but hell if I know where. Guess I'll know when the credits come up.)

Hm. Hah. Just like, y'know, Olive and Otto, Orla and Omar at one point in ti- really, do I have to keep going?

You could tell me this was an Odd Squad sequel spinoff in disguise and I'd 100% believe you.

(Also is that...is that a rainbow bead design in the upper right there? Does Sly is gay or am I just going nuts because this episode was uploaded in Pride Month and Sinking Ship already has some LGBTQ+ rep under their belt?)

I will say that, unlike with Odd Squad, I appreciate them not making this out to be some stupidly thinly-veiled Zoom or Skype parody. It looks like a new fresh platform that isn't supposed to reference anything. I like that!

...Nah, not even I'm desperate enough to pry an Odd Squad jab out of this title.

I am, however, getting flashbacks to Wonderful Precure and people speculating about the colors in the title. If this were one of those seasons we'd have a group of five with a blue-green Cure as the leader, which would melt the Internet. Definitely. Maybe.

Also, unless they're working on Odd Squad UK and we don't know it yet, Christin Simms is not an Odd Squad name I recognize. Seems they've worked on pretty much every modern Sinking Ship series but Odd Squad, which I choose to take as intentional just due to the similarities between the two series alone. I mean let's be honest...if it were an Odd Squad writer, it would really only reinforce a few of my points.

So I've chosen to watch "The Case of the Disappearing Donuts", mainly because I believe that's the episode that was featured in the sample script I talked about in the previous Seren's Study. Just...y'know, as a heads-up. I tried to go for the first episode.

And needless to say...I'm not sure if this is it (TVO released five episodes in a bundle and your guess is as good as mine as to which one is the series premiere) but I can already see a striking difference with Odd Squad, in that yes, Wordsville does indeed launch us clear into the plot without any warning. Yeah yeah they explained it in the intro but I do not care. Let me get to know your characters first!

Once again, I will reiterate for you all: this show being purely digital instead of live-action completely hinders it. It is 2024. The pandemic is not an excuse anymore. I'd get more enjoyment out of this if it weren't two people communicating through mock Apple laptops.

And if you aren't getting what I'm picking at, imagine if, for the nearly ten years it's been on, Odd Squad was a purely-digital show. Would we get the worldbuilding? The lore? The character development? The funny interactions? No, no, no, and no. It's like the difference between talking to someone in video chat and talking to someone in real life. One boosts your health. The other one, not so much.

Clearly they didn't really try for this bit in the audio department, because this cookie is all about that bass with absolutely no fuckin' treble.

(To be fair, though, Odd Squad has soundbytes like this from time to time too. So I can't really complain all that much.)

Something I was shocked to find out about Wordsville: each episode is all of 8 minutes long. Which...doesn't really help the series' case because the pacing is utterly atrocious. For Odd Squad, which has mostly 11-minute episodes, the pacing is smoother for a lot of them. I can take my time, understand what's going on, and enjoy what I'm seeing. Hell, even Tiny Time Travel's pacing isn't awful for the short time it has, and I wasn't gonna even touch that show for this Seren's Study because it's not made by the same people outside of Tim...until people brought up similarities, and I felt at least obligated to mention it once.

This falls squarely into the category of "if I go on an acid trip, can I drag out this episode three times longer than it actually is?"

We.

Are 55 seconds in.

And we are already getting to the conflict.

...Hand me the bong. The BIG bong. If you see dogs in my front yard, just tell 'em to get inside and glow upstairs because I'm goin' hard.

BIG BONG.

...I'm not touching the timing of this call because convenience is in literally every piece of media with video chatting ever. It's not just a Wordsville thing.

The Town Baker walked so Baker Graham could work his hand at a whip.

No but seriously, I can't look at this character and not think of Chef O from Odd Squad UK. The brainrot set in once I viewed the trailer. It hasn't left.

Hey, it's a good marketing tactic.

And it makes a great gift for your SO if they happen to have a name that starts with any of the letters. Hell, get the U, the T and the I and you'd have a winner!

...

Waaaaaaait a second-

In this era of super-powerful processors and AI seeping into anything and everything, there is no scientifically possible way Gabby can pull up a computer dictionary within milliseconds.

And when Odd Squad, the show that has ironic low-tech stuff, is more realistic than your high-tech show, you got a problem.

Minute and a half into this thing and this is the only bit that got me close to smiling thus far.

But something I wanna point out is that I've gotten cookies from bakeries that look a lot better than that. Hell, the cookies at my local supermarket look better than that! Just as big, and far yummier!

I see they switched around the personalities for Sly and Gabby, and I can see why.

Gabby emotes the most.

So does Olive.

Gabby is Olive with a braid and a fedora.

Gabby is the serious o- guys, really, must I go on?

Something something substituting bagels like in "Soundcheck" for donuts instead.

This is what happens when you let your co-CEO binge-watch all the Shrek movies, Sly.

Careful, Gabby...please don't drop the title.

Odd Squad doesn't drop the title all that much, but the fact that the episodes are referred to as cases in-universe sells the comparison. Wordsville's cases are just...different. Copyright infringement and all that. When Oprah sues, she sues hard.

Thank you. I hate it. Off you will fuck from my lawn.

...Look, I know what the "Sly-mation" is and y'all are not being slick. You don't get to wave a fucking stylus in my face and say what you're doing is animation but with a fancy name. Animation is hard. Animating stuff halfway and slapping your client's head on their animated body instead of drawing a face resembling your client is a disservice and I will abso-fucking-lutely take that personally as a fan of animation.

I mean, hey, if I were an animator, I'd fully commit. You people remember that the studio who made this worked on a Spongebob movie. Lemme repeat: a Spongebob movie. And yet this is what they decide to do for animation.

When Odd Squad does animation, it's good in most instances. (I choose to forget "Olive and Otto in Shmumberland", TYVM.) Not anything stellar, but it certainly is passable. Here? Lol. Lmao, even. God no. This feels like a way to insert animation into the show but without employing the CGI that other shows, Odd Squad included, have. Like a "lol I'm so quirky" thing.

Get out.

This is like if Disney had Disneymation. Dreamworksation. Laikation. Netflixation. Huluation. So on and so forth.

Point being, it's dumb. Just say it's animation and stop plopping flowers onto it. When you get more of a time limit, then you can be quirky all you want.

We are now 2 minutes into an 8-minute episode. I know what's happening. Kids know what's happening. Unless you're banking on the research that kids' attention spans are the size of a pea, we do not need a recap.

...Is this really the same person who wrote for Endlings? Because apparently they can't handle something in an 8-minute timeframe.

You either get the Chad Blender/Flash/ToonBoom, or you get the Virgin Mock Scratch.

I just feel cheated. Disappointed. Like when your mom and dad drove by McDonald's when you were a kid after they promised you they would get you some. I've seen good animation. They had the chance to do better, and didn't. That's what pisses me off the most. It's that complete utter wasted potential.

I know Vet Wilder is a reference to some celebrity (the name is at least somewhat familiar), but I'm at a complete loss as to if they did the same thing for Athlete Glory or if they just confined a girl named Glory to one destiny in life.

So she'll become...a Faded Glory.

(I'm sorry, I had to.)

Okay, they're reiterating this for the young children, and I- guys, this hurts. It's like they're trying to differentiate themselves from Odd Squad but tripping over their own feet in the process.

Ten cookies Gene Vet Wilder gave it to an animal named Yummy and that this series will go down another Odd Squad route and defy biology.

Either that, or "Yummy" is his pet name for Not-So-Faded Glory, which I am banking absolutely nothing on because romance.

...No, not Baker Graham's cookies. I'm sure dude's good at what he does, but I know of a better bakery, thank you very much.

*aggressively takes out the ibuprofen for the headache this shit is giving me*

This reads like TVOkids font, and I'm not even mad.

I'm only sad I didn't get the "I know so much about fonts" autism.

(Also, this is really just called The Bakery? They have one bakery? That's it? Even Toronto has more than one!)

-----------------------------

Onward to Part 2!

[linkispink1995]

Alison (1)

A/N: This is the backstory for Alison Martin as featured in my series "Better as Friends" and "Crashing waves of beating hearts" , let me know if you'd like to be added to the tag list , please do not plagiarize my work. Stay safe and feedback is apricated , Thanks - Meg

Chapter Warnings : Language , mentions of being left behind , Angst , sadness and some fluff

December 24th 1972 It was a cold and icy Christmas eve in Indianapolis one of the coldest winters the city had ever seen , the streets were beautifully decorated and the children all asleep as the awaited the highly anticipated jolly old St. Nick. Except one , in the Martin home there were two daughters Beatrice the oldest who had a long day including a nutcracker performance and making cookies with her mother and younger sister Alison. Alison was the youngest daughter unlike her sister Beatrice she the more creative and artistic one who preferred to be inside and color which was something she was very goo at especially for being five. Alison quietly creeped down the stairs before peeking into the formal living room where the beautiful decorated Christmas tree was. Since Mrs. Martin takes pride in how her home looks , seeing that there were no gifts and the stockings were still empty Alison tiptoed into the kitchen for a small glass of water only to find her mother sitting at the kitchen island. The same kitchen island they would eat blueberry pancakes and decorate ginger bread , but her mother didn’t look like the same woman who was cheering and applauding her first born at the ballet earlier or the one that would read the night before Christmas by the fire place as her daughters fell asleep on the father’s lap. Instead she had mascara running down her cheeks and a glass of wine in her hand and wasn’t even acknowledging the dog that the girls had woken up to last Christmas with a bright red bow on him. What made it worst was she was practically devouring Santa’s cookies , Alison frowned before saying “mommy”. Kathrine didn’t even turn around she just stayed quiet in the dark kitchen before saying “what Alison” Alison spoke again saying “where’s daddy” her mother responded “he left to get food for the dog, but that was hours ago”. Alison frowned saying “oh well is he gonna be home before Santa comes” Katharine placed her wineglass on the counter before laughing , laughing so hard almost falling out of her seat. The kinda laughter you would only hear from her when her daughters came inside covered in mud including the dog or when one of the girls pick socks got in the washer while washing her husband’s dress shirts. She then turned in his seat before walking towards the stairs saying “oh Alison don’t you know there is no Santa , it was your father and judging by the fact he’s not here there will be no Christmas”. Alison frowned before watching her mother walk up the stairs leading to the master suite leaving Alison all alone on the last Christmas eve they’d spend as a family.

January 25th 1973 It had been one month , one month since Alison's father left on Christmas eve's. Everything had changed when George left , Alison's mother Kathrine was crumbling the house was a mess , dishes filled the sink , a homecooked meal hadn't been made since Christmas eve dinner. Alison was currently snuggled to her favorite stuffed animal , an owl which was a gift from her father from her  birthday the previous year. She was crying , crying into the owl wishing somehow it would bring her father back that's all she wanted was her father to our come back , to hold her , to sing to her and read her charlotte's web which was her favorite story. "Alison Josephine Martin what do you think your doing" Alison sniffled before saying "I was just-" she was cut over by her mother walking over to her and grabbing the animal out of her hand saying "this" she said gesturing towards the animal before adding "you think this will bring him back" Alison nodded before Kathrine added "you foolish little girl , he left let that sink in he's gone and won't ever come back , so get it out of your head do you understand". Alison nodded before her mother tucked the owl under her arm before walking out of the bedroom only to be stopped by a voice saying "mommy" it was Alison. Kathrine turned before she added "are you going to read me a story" Kathrine sighed before saying "no Alison and do you know why" Alison shook her head before her mother added. "because those stupid fairytales won't ever come true , no prince is going to rescue you , your stuck with me and you'll always be alone always , no one will ever love you so deal with it". Alison felt more tears streak down her cheeks before Kathrine threw the animal into the waste basket by Alison's door before her mother spoke again saying "good night Alison" she closed her bedroom door before walking back down to her bedroom.

A moment or so later the door to Alison room creaked open , she looked up from her tear stained pillow to see her sister Beatrice who was three years older then Alison standing their. Beatrice leaned over and plucked the owl out of the waste basket before walking over to  Alison and handing it back to her , Alison spoke saying "thank you Bea" she nodded before Alison snuggled the animal. Beatrice spoke again saying "are you going be okay" Alison shrugged before saying "Bea can I ask you something" Beatrice nodded before Alison added "is daddy ever going to come back" Beatrice sighed before saying "I don't know Al but you know what if doesn't that's okay because you know why" Alison shrugged before Bea added "because we have each other okay" Alison nodded before saying. "Bea why is mommy so mean" Beatrice sighed again before saying "I think she's just sad Al"  Alison nodded again before her sister placed a kiss into her forehead before saying "do you want me to stay here with you tonight"  Alison nodded before curling up to sister , Bea wiped Alison tears before saying "did mom read to you" Alison shook her head before Bea got up and walked over to the small shelf and pulled a book off of it before walking back over to her sister. Alison snuggled to be as well as her owl before falling asleep to her sister reading.

May 17th 1973 It was Alison's sixth birthday , she was up early and dressed because her mothers always made blueberry pancakes for her , her favorite. She quickly rushed down the stairs to find her mother pouring pancakes onto a griddle , they were plan causing Alison to be confused. Alison shrugged it away before taking the seat at the kitchen table next to Beatrice before her mother spoke saying "what do you want for breakfast Alison". Alison responded saying "blueberry pancakes please" Kathrine shook her head before Alison added "please mommy" again Kathrine shook her head before saying "no Alison we don't have any blueberries" Alison frowned before saying "but it's my birthday , we always have blueberry pancakes on my birthday". Kathrine rolled her eyes before saying "do I look like I give a damn Alison , go get ready for school" Alison frowned before saying "I'm already dressed" her mother huffed before adding "what have I told you your father won't come back no matter how hard you wish , so if you think wearing that dress will help it won't" Alison felt tears form in her eyes before Kathrine added "and enough with the tears those won't help either".

October 31st 1973 It was Halloween , most children were going house to house trick or treating but Alison was sitting in the bay window of the informal living room. Gazing at the decorations , seeing all the smiles , the laughs and the costumes reminiscing about how Halloween was last year. Halloween was both Alison and her fathers favorite holiday , they decorated the house together and he took her trick or treating but this year was different , very different. No decorations , no costume and no going out of the house , however Alison had something , one thing that made her happy . Art , art was Alison's favorite thing , it took her mind off of her dad and helped her feel better , and it wasn't the usually scribble scrabble most children drew but more creative sometimes fields with flowers , sometimes Animals or rainbows in the clouds. The picture she was drawing this time was different , it was a family portrait  she had finished coloring the family dog Snowflake when a Bea took a seat next to her before saying. "your really good Al , you could be an artist when your grown up" Alison imidnetally perked up before saying "really you think so" Beatrice nodded before a voice spoke. "Beatrice Elizabeth your going to be late were going to be late for dance , lets go" it was the girls mother "Beatrice got up before their mother added "Alison shoes on now" Alison hopped up from her seat before saying "mommy" her mother somewhat shrugged signaling she was somewhat listening before Alison spoke again saying "can I take dance lessons like Bea does" he mother rolled her eyes before saying "no" Alison frowned before saying "why not" her mother huffed saying "because I can hardly afford to send you girls to a private school , keep this house and pay for Bea's dance lessons , so would you either like to be a ballerina or live in a nice house and go to school with your friends". Alison frowned before saying "never mind mom".

November 19th 1973 It had been a couple weeks since Kathrine went against her own words and started having dance classes for Alison , she practically scrimped and saved for the money which is something she had never done before. Although her lessons had just started Alison was already excelling and shockingly was dancing circles (literally and figurately) around Beatrice , the girls had just finished their class when Alison spoke saying. "you did really good leaps Bea" Beatrice didn't respond she ignored her sisters words before she added "Bea when we get home do you play princesses you can be Cinderella" again Bea didn't respond again. After the girls were fastened into the car Kathrine began driving home she spoke saying "Bea I know your upset but this is going to be great for Alison" Beatrice ignored her mother before Alison spoke saying. "What is mom" Kathrine responded saying "well your sister is going to stop taking classes and your going to start take more classes" Alison nodded before her mother added. "you have potential Alison if you practice and keep it up your could do this professionally" Alison nodded again before hearing the sounds of sniffles from Bea. The girls had dinner and played in the snow before coming into warming up with hot cocoa however Bea stayed quiet and distant from her sister , Alison ventured to Bea's bedroom door before knocking on it. She spoke saying "Bea , Bea do you wanna-" she was cut off by hearing a voice say "go away" Alison frowned before she spoke again saying "Bea come out we can color or-" she was cut off again before Beatrice opened the door saying. "shouldn't you be practicing" Alison shook her head before Bea added "It's not fair , you don't even like dance you just started because I did" Alison nodded saying "so we can be together" Bea shook her head before saying. "I don't want to be together , you get everything" Alison frowned before Bea closed the door in her younger sisters face.

December 25th 1973 A year , it had been one year since George left and the house wasn't decorated. No green , no red just plain ordinary decorations , Alison and Beatrice had finished dinner with their mother and Kathrine walked back to the kitchen to get dessert before Alison spoke saying. "are we going to open a present" Bea rolled her eyes before Kathrine reappeared with a cheery cobbler before saying "no Alison". Alison frowned as her mother put a piece onto her plate as Alison added "are we going to make cookies for Santa" her mother shook her head while putting a piece on Beatrice's plate. Alison spoke again saying "but what about night before Christmas , are you gonna read it mommy" Kathrine shook her head saying "no Alison , don't ask me again". Alison frowned before she looked over to see Bea who had stuck her tongue out at her , "Beatrice you are a young lady act like one" her mother said Beatrice rolled her eyes before she added "Alison after this you need to go practice your turns" Alison nodded before Beatrice asked "mom can I start taking lessons again". Kathrine shook her head before Bea added "why not" her mother chuckled in response saying "cause you can't tell your right from your left foot" Bea nodded before starting to eat her dessert.

It was after dinner and practice when Alison walked into Beatrice's room with a book tucked under her arm. Bea who was reading on the bench in front of her bed while snowflake snuggled to her. Alison took the seat next to her before saying "Bea can you read this" she then showed her the book which happened to be the night before Christmas" Beatrice shook her head before Alison saying "are you mad at me Bea". Beatrice nodded before Alison frowned saying "why" Bea didn't respond and instead shook her head and spoke saying "go away Alison" Alison frowned again before walking back to her bedroom. Alison sat in the window cell in her bedroom staring down at the snow in the driveway , watching and waiting to see if her father would return. Alison cried and cried into her floral printed pillow which matched her bedroom perfectly before feeling weight in the cushion next to her , she looked up to see Bea with a small package in her hands. Beatrice spoke  saying "I'm sorry" Alison whipped her tears before Bea handed her the messily wrapped package before she spoke saying "merry Christmas Alison". Alison took the box before opening in to see it was a coloring book , Alison gasped before she spoke saying "thanks Bea" Bea nodded before Alison ran over to her toy chest and began searching through it , she pulled the doll out before walking over to Bea saying. "I know she's your favorite so you can have it" Bea nodded saying "thank Al" , Alison began looing through the pages before Bea added "I'm sorry if it's babyish I know you could probabaly draw much better". Alison shook her head before saying "I love it" Bea nodded before Alison spoke again saying "Bea can you read this" she handed her the book before Bea placed her doll next to her before saying "you know I could show you had to read" Alison again gasped before saying "really" Bea nodded before reading to her younger sister. Even though the girls didn't have their traditional Christmas they were used to they had each other , Alison yawned before leaning onto her pillow before muttering "Bea do you think daddy still loves us" Bea nodded before saying "I think so" Alison nodded before adding "do you think he'll come back" Beatrice shrugged before saying. "I don't know Al but if he doesn't it's okay cause we have each other" Alison nodded before falling asleep to her sister reading.

Taglist @charmed-asylum

[star-villager]

Ezra: Month 1 of Animal Crossing New Horizons!

Hello all! I’m here to tell my journey of the first month of New Horizons on Cillia Island!

There’ll be lots of pictures! I hope you enjoy! Future updates will probably be daily because this is... long at first... but I promise it slows down!

This post covers 32 days (skipping a few). It is indented to be a fun, long, read! I’ll say it’s a 10-15 minute read just to be on the longer side!

-Ezra; Island Resident Representative; Local Island Decorator; Mayor of Cillia (if it had a mayor hehe!)

Thursday, March 19th, 4pm -7GMT. The virus is present, but just starting. I have been home for not even 24 hours of my job that was supposed to keep me out of town all March. I make a phone call to a local Gamestop, asking if they’re still open, and how the midnight release of Animal Crossing is going to work. The worker tells me I can go pick it up right then, because they’re going to be closing early and had JUST gotten a phone call from corporate that they could give it out early - you can assume what I did /immediately/ after lol.

~~~

Starting was incredibly easy! I’ve had my dead name as my New Leaf Mayor forever, and I loved that city name so Ezra and Cillia it was! And we began! My starting villagers were Cherry and Roald with Cherry Trees (fitting!), and I said I wasn’t gonna restart no matter what... so here we go!

I picked a town that had a West Beach River Mouth as well as a South River Mouth - which matched my town in New Leaf! (The south exit, and the flow of the river - but the west exit would be where my original upper waterfall was so the shape was the same). Picked northern hemisphere (where I am). And placed my house right in a river bend (with the initial plan to section me off into my own island within an island!). Cherry and Roald’s homes were placed along the west-running river right at the top, with not much effort or forethought. Not that it was a bad thing! I knew they wouldn’t be permanent villagers, but wanted to give them some beautiful scenery while they were here.

I can definitely tell that I’m still acting and thinking like a mayor even thought I’m only an island rep. ... this doesn’t change bwahaha!

Day 1 March 19th, was all setup and prep for our REAL day 1! Blathers already was about to have a decent encyclopedia, and I was getting nook miles left and right - already expecting a house instead of a tent the next day. I wasn’t too surprised, I’ve done this song and dance before, and I’m just here to have a great time in my island paradise! Getting Blathers was definitely my highest priority!

Day 2 March 20th, was... difficult... giving 15 things to Blathers one at a time and finding 30 iron for the Nooklings was excruciating lol - but getting fossils and a pole vault to absolutely DECIMATE the weed ecosystem filled me with a glee that I’m sure you can understand. I managed to upgrade my house, get Blathers and Nooks Cranny all in one day *whew*. Now, time to have some fun!

I build my first QR code which was a cool outfit I called PRIDE Coat! It is a black coat with drawstrings and pockets on the front - a lil’ trans flag on the left arm, a bi flag on the right arm, and my (pretty decent!) attempt at a rainbow of paint (in the gay flag colors) falling down my back! And I made an Iwatobi Swim Club Beanie to match the one I wear every day!!

I then played with my Passport a bit to have my title be “Future Fish” which is Free! Eternal Summer (the second season’s) Ending Song!!!! Which I thought was SUPER cute and VERY me. (It’s my second fave anime. I plan on making a Reigisa outfit in the future!!).

Already by the end of Day 2 I had my hair customization options, the tool wheel, and the DIY that I needed to buy. Everything Nook was offering I managed to get my grubby little day 2 hands on! So you KNOW my hair went to pink pigtails IMMEDIATELY. And took /many/ photos. But since my outfits are all the same just imagine the ones you just saw but with pink instead of blonde!

With that it was time to get my 3 villagers that would accompany Cherry and Roald (This correlates to getting the iron for Nooklings!) I wanted to grab the first 3 villagers that I saw just to try some new friends this go around - as I had already planned on making my New Leaf family my permies! So my first three were Ketchup (nice!), Hornsby (Aww!!), and... GALA!?!?

Well how convenient! That was one permie immediately out of the way!! Welcome back, Gala!!! So excited to have you on the island!

Then I caught an Oarfish and saw *GASP* WISP!!!! To which, I immediately ran up to him and demanded he bring my girlfriend, Cece the Squirrel, to the island. He, instead, got spooked, had me collect his spirit, and offered me items. *sigh* Ok - can’t get Cece that way - so I decided to sleep!

How naive I was...

Day 3 March 21st, was both good and bad! I had access to Nooklings, but that was about it. Blathers was getting a crowded amount of critters outside his roped off building, but it would be all worth it, tomorrow. But!! I found my first spider island! Which I sold off to Nooklings and happily went to sleep!

Day 4 March 22nd, had SO MUCH to offer! Blathers, Daisy Mae, Harvy, WHEW. Pretty sure I had a visit from Gulliver either today or yesterday, too! Nothing could POSSIBLY ruin this day!!

Oh how wrong.

How so terribly wrong I was.

Animal Crossing New Horizons is an incredible game that lets you invite so many villagers to your island!

All of them. But 14.  

14 Villagers from New Leaf are not available. The Sanrio Characters. And the Amiibo Characters.

No Felyne. No Ganon, Epona, Medli, or W. Link. No Viche or Inkwell. No Rilla, Chai, Morty, or Etoille.

No Toby.

No Chelsea.

...

No Cece.

...

To say that I was devastated would be an understatement. I was absolutely crushed. Not only were 3 of my permies out, but the one villager I couldn’t live without, wasn’t allowed in the game. She didn’t even get a poster.

So I did what any crushed lover would do, and made a memoir to her.

And it started raining. Poetic. (I was only cheered up slightly when I got to catch a Coelacanth!) I didn’t do this until much later (April 4th) but for the sake of not talking about her too much, I would open New Leaf and wrote her a goodbye love letter, which, honestly, makes me tear up whenever I read it.

And I went to sleep.

I have nothing for Day 5 other than scanning all my amiibo cards for the POSTERS which are UNDOUBTEDLY my FAVORITE new feature in the game!!

Day 6, March 24th, GALA MOVED IN! I was so excited, and it was definitely needed. My best friend also came over and we goofed off and we met each other’s villagers! Then I went to an island tour and got A PANSY HYBRID ISLAND!!!! OOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! I went crazy. Absolutely destroyed that ecosystem. I went full feral. MINE. ALL MINE!!!

And I caught my first Sturgeon!! Which was awesome because I only had the rare fish left in my March collection! Trying to get a Golden Trout, I made many many fish bait, and got the 200 clam achievement! Which was exciting because that unlocked “Mermaid” for titles!! I doubt I’ll change from Future Fish, but Mermaid would be a second pick!

For Day 7 I went to a good friend’s village and desperately tried to make Chiyuki Fujito’s blue dress from Runway de Waratte... it didn’t work... but I like the attempt! (Will send pics in messenger if you’re curious!).

Day 8, March 26th, was the day ISABELLE WAS HERE!!! Welcome to your island paradise, QUEEN. I definitely dressed for the part ;)

This, of course, opened up tunes and flag options! Flag was incredibly easy. It’s going to stay my picture of Cece until she’s added back into the game (which will probably be never, so...)

The tunes was much harder for me. But since I couldn’t think of anything else I made it “SO. NO. CHI. NO. SA. DA. ME.” from the first Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure Opening (which is, ironically, what is playing as I type this... SO NO CHI NO SA DA ME <- was written in time with the music playing. Incredible.) It’s definitely not going to be that forever, but for now it makes me giggle!

Nothing for Day 9 except for a SICK tarantula island :) love those furry babes! I also built my campsite! Tomorrow was going to be big!! Who on Earth was going to move in!?

Day 10, March 28th, now, I have what I like to call “chaotic luck”. I’ll catch the bus, but my gosh did I almost miss it. I was absolutely positive I failed that test, and I did, but the question I messed up doesn’t count and I passed! Cece isn’t in the game but do you know who’s at my campsite??

OFFICE

HETEROCHROMIA

TSUNDERE

TRANS

CAT

EXTRAORDINAIRE

RAAAAAAAAAAAYMOND!!!!

Can you even imagine my face??? Can you IMAGINE the jaw drop??  I moved him next to me IMMEDIATELY.

Day 12, March 30th, I saw kicks for the first time!!! Love that funky newsie skunk!

Day 13, March 31st, I saw Flick for the first time!!! Went on a mad tarantula hunt and made BANK. Fun story, I thought both Flick and C.J. were girls, so when I learned Flick was a boy I was really upset because I thought a canon gay ship was now straight, but WHOOPS they’re BOTH boys! 😎 Nice.

I also saw Celeste for the first time!!! Gosh how I missed her!! I actually sat and got all 200 stars in one night, just because of how much I like wishing on falling stars!!!

Day 14, April 1st, The Nightmare Begins. Love him or Hate him, Zipper was here. I won’t go on about the eggs. Everyone talks about the eggs. They sucked, fishing was a nightmare, not a big fan. I would end up not getting all the sakura DIYs which was very upsetting (but I’ll just get them next year). In INCREDIBLE news I got a golden trout!!! Which was the last thing I needed in my March encyclopedia - and it was on to April hunting! Every night thing I could get, I did! So I decided to set up my last 4 houses, and focus on getting K.K. Slider finally to my island!

The first house sold naturally to Pecan! NICE! I love squirrels so much! She was very welcome!

Day 15, April 2nd, in the interest in getting new villagers, I went on a tour and there she was: MERENGUE! She’s, truthfully, not a favorite of mine. She’s SO cute, but not someone I wanted permanently. However, she’s my other best friend’s FAVORITE and she doesn’t have a switch. So, there was NO WAY I wasn’t taking Merengue onto my island. I haven’t sent my friend pics, yet, but I hope I can soon!! She’s gonna be so happy!

Today was the first day I met C.J. which... stunning. Absolutely jaw dropping. I’m SMITTEN with a TAKEN BEAVER. He calls me fashionista. Asks about my anglersona. Takes selfies of/with me. He’s truly the ideal. I’d invite him back any day!

Over the next 3 days, Freya and Bruce move in as my last 2 villagers giving us a grand starting total of: Cherry, Roald, Ketchup, Hornsby, Gala, Raymond, Pecan, Merengue, Freya, and Bruce! Not bad not bad!

Day 19, April 6th, THE BEST GIRL IS HEEERE. LABEL CAME TO MY TOWN FOR THE FIRST TIME. I might have cried, honestly. I cannot believe someone that incredible would want to come to my island. She asked for me to give her an official look. Are you kidding me? Easy breezy. For my perfect outfit she rewarded me a Label Hat. Oh? DESIGNER? I was awestruck. The design was IMPECCABLE. The flavor was IMMACULATE.

One of my villagers also happened to gift me a Pink SPRITE COSTUME??? I, honestly, have never been more in love with an outfit in my entire life??? A pink Peter Pan outfit??? LEGENDARY.

Day 20, April 7th, I don’t quite remember what day K.K. Slider visited the island when I hit my 3 star rating - so we’ll say it was today lol. That meant ISLAND EDITING, but I didn’t know what to do, yet, so I didn’t worry too much about it!

Label’s hat came in MORE COLORS in the store today. YOU BET I bought all of them. The talent. But this meant that I had a pink hat to match my pink sprite costume and you bet I was LIVING my best life. I had also finished the Anklyosaurus which is my FAVORITE dinosaur so I was LIVING it up.

Later, Ketchup would approach me and ask to move. I was happy for her to explore new lands and bid her farewell, and gave her a sweet goodbye. With that, it was hunting time, and I found the perfect villager that would set everything in motion.

Day 22, April 9th, Label VISITS AGAIN!!!!!! Unfortunately, she asked for a sporty look, which I couldn’t pull off perfectly :/ So no new item from her... but my OUTFIT WAS FIRE AND WE WERE MAD CUTE TOGETHER.

Day 23, April 10th, the villager has moved in, the cryptid gyroid herself, COCO!!!

And her moving in gave me a BRILLIANT idea. I’d like to keep it under wraps for now, but I’m so, so, SO happy she’s here!

Day 24, April 11th, The Fishing Tourney. The Summer tourney will be significantly easier for me, now that I know you can double your points by fishing with someone else, but it took me HOURS to collect all the clams and get to 300 points. It wasn’t really worth it, but I love fish so much so I wasn’t going to miss a SINGLE thing. I got that gold trophy and I’m SO proud of myself.

Also my fishing outfit could slay for MILES

Straight Fire.

Day 25, April 12th, With a golden trophy in hand and the last day of eggies, I was feeling really confident. I had the means and the idea to change cliffs + water for a couple days and just... made what my brain came up with! I’ll keep this vague for now, because I’m really excited about the final results! Just know that everyday I edit a little bit more and come up with more ideas!

Day 26, April 13th, Happy Homestuck, Neil Bangs out the Tunes, and Thomas Sanders goes to the Wedding Day!! And it did NOT disappoint. Label for A 3RD TIME!!! She must like me as much as I like her >w<!! Today she gave out her cap!!! It’s, honestly, not my thing, I’d rather stick with the brim hats, but I do think they’re cute!! So I would buy them all the next day! The Able Sister’s haul on Day 27 was oh my gosh amazing!!! They had the cap, of course, but they also had THE OTHER SPRITE COSTUMES!! Which I bought all of them. And now I wear, near exclusively, this outfit in 5 different colors bwahaha!

Day 30, April 17th, I got my first golden item!!! The slingshot! Nice! Over the past few days, I’ve just been designing, moving houses, and building ramps! Learning new myth debunks, stuff like that!

I was also blessed with 3 encounters :OOOO I didn’t know this was even POSSIBLE!?

Day 31, April 18th, Disaster Strikes. I’ve been moving so many homes that I didn’t consider that a villager couldn’t move in because you were already doing a home thing for the day. So when I went to invite camper Gonzo to my town he declined!? I was devastated. He was SO cute and I thought he could move into Bruce’s house to keep the peace of personalities! I think he’s someone in the future who I’ll ask for a poster of or ask for an amiibo card of! I know I’m going to check the campsite first before moving any buildings from here on out! D’:

And that brings us to today,

Day 32, April 19th, one month from the day I started. I’ve been having the TIME of my life! There’s definitely been some ups and downs, but I have a goal in mind and it’s keeping me so focused! I organized an entire flower field today!! Due to a turnip mishap, I happen to be 2 days ahead of everyone, but I have been good about time traveling other than that. This means that I am fortunate enough to get my Nooklings upgrade 2 days early and they’ll be open tomorrow!!! I’m... I’m so excited!!! I NEED more flower seeds!!!!!!!

The future looks incredibly bright on Cillia island, and I cannot wait to hear about everyone else’s month!!

Thank you for your time. Please enjoy these random favorite photos of mine!

[technoplaguearchive]

Cruel To Be Kind (2/4)

Midoriya just wants to be a hero, Bakugou's hero, but Bakugou isn't having any of it.

Pairing: MidoriyaxBakugou / BakuDeku Rating: Teen & Up Category: M/M Fandom: My Hero Academia | Boku No Hero Academia Originally Published: 2019/04/06 on AO3 Chapter: 2 of 4

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Midoriya Izuku could not be described as particularly imposing or tall. He was a little shorter than other men his age and he looked, for all intents and purposes, like a changeling child; all wide eyes, freckles, and innocence.

Bakugou was starting to believe in the changeling child theory a little more at this instant, seeing the usually cherubic face twisted with disappointment and grim determination. That green energy that sizzled over his body when he fought seemed to be harnessed wholly in Midoriya’s eyes, eyes that were slowly burning a hole in Bakugou’s face. He could feel the disappointment radiating off that small frame.

He didn’t need to deal with this shit. He didn’t need Deku’s holier than thou attitude tonight, especially not after the day he’d had. A day that had just pushed him more to come out when he couldn’t stand being alone in his house with his own thoughts. All day he had heard about how Deku would have handled the situation better and he couldn’t take it anymore. He didn’t need a reminder of the pretty perfect boy’s utterly perfect way of dealing with everything in life. He didn’t need to see that heartbroken look crossing his face when he realized Bakugou wasn’t backing down. And wasn’t that just dumb because all their history together should have taught Midoriya that Bakugou didn’t cave to anyone, let alone a nerd like him.

“Move, nerd.” He shoulders roughly past Midoriya and tries to blend back in with the crowd by the bar. Close to the door, easy to get away after he took this shot. Speaking of... he tosses it back with a throw of his head and leans into the wall behind him. Deku, annoyingly, is still attached to him and watching him with impossibly huge green eyes. What the fuck was with this guy’s eyes? Who could possibly express so much with just their eyes? In all their years together, it had been one of the things that had bothered him; those eyes were fucking unnerving. “The fuck you following me for, Deku,” he growls out when the shorter man doesn’t stop his staring.

At the mention of the hero’s name a few heads swivel in their direction and Midoriya’s cheeks turn a wonderful shade of pink, making the freckles stand out more. Bakugou can’t help staring at those little perfect dots. Everything about the nerd was perfect- and wasn’t that just stupidly fucking infuriating? He watches as the hero’s scarred hands cover his face, trying to hide himself from people now starting to pull out their phones. The girl closest to him has hers out the quickest and already has it pointed at them by the time he snarls in her direction and swipes it from her. “Your mother ever tell you it’s fucking rude to video someone in a private setting?” The girls face pales as he leans across her to drop the device into her purse and he smirks at the reaction. Good, let them be afraid. Midoriya, when he finally looks back to see if the idiot was still cowering, looks aghast at the entire situation and is still standing there like he must babysit Bakugou to make sure he behaves. Gross.

“Ka-Kacchan?”

Ugh, here it comes.

This time Midoriya tugs on his wrist as he says his name. Bakugou rips his hand away, more forcefully than needed truth be told, and stares down into the face that haunts him. “Kacchan, maybe you should calm down. I- I can take you home?” He looks so endearing and honest as he says it, making Bakugou’s stomach twist. “I know I just got here but I really don’t mind if you need a ride home because you seem awfully drunk and this really isn’t like you. Should you really be out right now? Do you have to work tomorrow? Oh! I guess if you did then you wouldn’t-“

Bakugou slaps a hand over his mouth and leans in close to growl, “I wouldn’t fucking be here if I had to work, nerd, so stop your mumbling. It’s annoying and you’re drawing extra attention.”

Midoriya’s eyes skate side to side to see if anyone was paying attention. They were not, meaning Bakugou was just being a bully again to cover his feelings. Gently, Midoriya pries the blonde’s hand from his mouth and holds it between his scarred ones. They weren’t necessarily rivals anymore, not like how they were before at least, but this is still too much for Bakugou to take so he pulls his hand away to stuff it in his pocket.

“Kacchan, please let me take you home. You’re not acting like yourself and I don’t think the public needs to see a top hero acting like this. It might hurt your rating.” Midoriya’s words are full of concern that Bakugou doesn’t want to hear. He didn’t need this stupid talk, he’s given it to himself at least a hundred times over the last six months and he ignores it each time too. The green haired doofus is still talking when Bakugou tunes back into his rant. “I didn’t think you’d ever start drinking like this. How long has this been going on? It doesn’t seem like it’s for fun. Kirishima said that you’ve been doing this a lot more recently but at home. I’m glad that at least you’re staying home for it, no one can get video of you if you’re not out-“

Bakugou tunes him out again. Once Deku got on a rant there was no stopping him until he reached a conclusion or wore himself out. He focuses instead on starting to count the freckles on the green haired man’s face, realizing after the fifth one that he was staring at the same freckle because they were all starting to blur. Fuck, okay, so the alcohol was catching up. The glass in his hand finds its way to the small ledge on the wall- shit that would hurt if someone ran into it, that couldn’t be safe- and he leans forward into Deku’s space to tower over him and maybe intimidate him into shutting the hell up.

The effect, to his dismay, is quite the opposite.

Midoriya’s eyes squint up at him beneath green lashes and he stares up into Bakugou’s face and Bakugou had to wonder what Midoriya was seeing right now that would make him utter the next stupid sentence of, “You drink like a fish dying for water.”

Okay, that was out of left field and possibly the stupidest thing he’d ever heard come from Midoriya's mouth, but the response from the blonde is immediate and just as dumb. “Then I’m a fucking fish,” he gives the other man a smile that’s all teeth & malice, “glub glub, motherfucker.”

Satisfaction.

Midoriya’s face contorts into confusion for several seconds as he processes the ridiculous phrase. However he opens his mouth again and ruins it all once more. “Let’s get you home, Bakugou. You’re obviously not feeling well,” he says as he reaches for Bakugou’s arm.

Drunk or not, years of training has honed Bakugou’s instincts to be razor sharp and he twists away, knocking back into the previously mentioned ledge and sending his glass tumbling. Midoriya is quick with his own reflexes and catches it several inches before it hits the floor, green energy crackling and dissipating as quickly as it came. Bakugou is impressed and can tell Midoriya notices when he looks back up at him. Seeing the small smile tug at the green haired man’s lips is enough to reign Bakugou’s interest in and he schools his features quickly into annoyance. His arm throbs with pain and he knows it’s going to bruise tomorrow, if not tonight. It certainly wouldn't be the worst injury every for him, just the dumbest.

Midoriya turns to leave and Bakugou isn't sure if he's relieved or not at seeing the man’s back to him. The indecision is short lived when he watches him push through the crowd to deposit the glass at the bar and then turn back. By the time that passive face graces his vision once more he's decided he's going to err on the side of relieved that he was leaving but now just annoyed that he came back.

Slowly, like reaching out to a wounded animal, Midoriya places a hand near the sore spot on Bakugou’s arm, testing for a reaction. That scarred hand slides down to cover the sore spot and Bakugou hisses a breath in between clenched teeth. He's torn between ecstasy at being touched and pain at feeling coddled. They stay that way for several long seconds; Midoriya’s hand gently covering his injury and Bakugou staring down at it like he's never seen it before.

In the end, his pride wins out when he sees a flash of pink and red in the corner of his eye. Looks like the rest of the group came to find them... Or more likely to find Deku so they could fawn over him some more.

The thought is like an electric current jolting through his body, a feeling like being hit by one of Kaminari’s stray blasts ricocheting from the place where Midoriya is touching him to his brain and back again. It's enough to bring him to his senses and cause him to pull away from Midoriya’s scorching touch. Just in time, too, as Ashido and Kirishima spot them and make a beeline towards them, their looks equal parts pitying and relieved.

Kirishima claps Bakugou on the shoulder and hauls him into a bone-crushing hug. ”Oh man, I’m so glad we found you guys!” The tall redhead pulls back to look into his friend’s face and asks the loaded question, ”You guys okay?”

Bakugou opens his mouth to snap out ”Of course I am” but is beaten to the chase by Midoriya, who gives the exact opposite answer; ”I think Bakugou drank a little too much, I was offering to take him home. He still lives in the same apartment right?”

Were they really fucking talking like he wasn't standing right there? Did he suddenly become invisible in the last five seconds?! He's about to snap at them when Kirishima nods to Midoriya’s question. ”Yeah, the big flat by that bombass ramen place and with that knock-off coffee chain I can’t remember the name of.”

Ashido pats Kirishima’s shoulder consolingly. “You can’t remember it because you drank a lot of rainbows tonight, honey.”

“Oh, yeah that sounds right,” Kirishima chirps with a bright grin.

How was the idiot so happy that he couldn’t remember the name of the coffee chain? - Actually, Bakugou can’t remember it either right now. Shit.

Midoriya’s hand wraps back around Bakugou’s arm while he’s distracted and he gives him a slight tug, pulling the unsuspecting blonde slightly off balance and into him. Midoriya seems slightly surprised by this, if his face is any indication, while Kirishima and Ashido look positively delighted. Midoriya lets out a little awkward laugh. “I’ll get Kacchan home then. You guys have a good night,” he offers with a wave as he starts trying to tug Bakugou along behind him. Shocked at the brazenness of the green haired shortie, Bakugou lets himself be tugged along for all of five steps before he shakes free and stumbles back into Kirishima, who thankfully catches him under the arms and releases him quickly. Midoriya’s face is sullen when he turns back to see where his ward had disappeared to. Bakugou swears he catches a flash of pain when Midoriya sees Kirishima helping him but it's gone as quick as it came, leaving the blonde sure he was just imagining it.

”I don't need you to take me home, ” he growls. To his own ears, the words are a little loose around the edges; a sure sign he was verging on needing to be done with drinking. When Midoriya reaches back out to him he slaps the hand away with a pop of sparks, feeling only mildly regretful when he sees the shock register on the green haired man’s face. He can’t recall ever rejecting Midoriya so violently after their reconciliation.

“Kacchan, please-”

“Quit with your fucking hero complex, Deku. I don’t need saving. I don’t need your pity.”

“It’s not pity!”

The outburst seems to take even Midoriya by surprise and he claps his hands over his mouth. The sight would have made Bakugou laugh if he wasn’t so aggravated by the idiot’s need to protect him, as it stands he just wants to punch a hole in the nearest wall.

Kirishima, loveable idiot that he is, moves quickly between the pair with a large, yet forced, grin. “Come on guys, let’s just grab another drink and go back upstairs and hang out,” he turns to face the small green haired man beside him and gazes at him imploringly, “What do you say, Midoriya? I know you just got here, I’d hate to see you leave already.” Kirishima turns on the big sad eyes and Bakugou is glad he can only see the side of the idiot’s face. He knew that look well enough to know prolonged exposure almost guaranteed the receiver would do anything Kirishima asked. Deku, being the pushover that he was, would probably cave soon.

So it comes as a surprise to Bakugou when the nerd looks around Kirishima to pin him in place with a squinty-eyed stare. He could see that power in his eyes again, solely focused on him and determined. Bakugou feels a small shudder roll up his spine but swallows it down before it can overtake him. He knew the power that Deku possessed, knew if he wanted it to this would get ugly quick. Something feral in his mind snaps at that and Bakugou smirks, letting it overtake his face. Fine, if the nerd wanted to play then they’d play.

“Yeah Deku, you just got here,” he sing-songs smugly, “go hang out with everyone. I don’t need a babysitter, I’m a big boy.” Somewhere to his left he hears Ashido’s curse of “Oh fucking hell boys” then Kirishima is grabbing Bakugou around the waist to keep him away from Midoriya. He wasn’t even aware he’d moved towards him.

Midoriya nods to Kirishima who releases Bakugou and backs off. Some silent signal of ‘I got this’, which was just aggravating since when were they close enough to read each other? That feral beast in Bakugou’s head rises again, not liking that Kirishima was buddying up- no, no it didn’t like that Midoriya was getting close to Kirishima.

“I’m fucking out of here,” he snarls as he turns to exit their small group. It’s a fucking wonder they hadn’t drawn more of a crowd, as it is the people immediately surrounding their group trip over themselves to move away from him.

He sidles up to the bar again and, spotting a few drinks sitting there, grabs a shot and downs it. Fuck whoever it belonged to, he needed it more. The blue haired boy next to him gapes in disbelief and Bakugou tosses him a sneer for the trouble. A scarred hand wraps around his arm in a vice-grip from behind and starts hauling him back through the crowd, towards the exit of the club that he knew deposited into a shitty grimy alleyway. He didn’t really want to think right now about how he knew that alley was there or how gross it is, he just knew that was the only way out that direction. Which was baffling; wasn’t it making more of a scene to drag him through this crowd?

When the door closes behind them with a small yet ominous click, Midoriya throws Bakugou across the alley so they’re face-to-face. He can still hear the click of the door in his mind, the note of finality in it. So it was gonna be a fight, was it? Good, he could use a fight.

He steps forward towards the other man only to stop when he speaks. “I don’t want to fight you, Kacchan. You’re not even walking straight.” Bakugou scoffs at this and stumbles back into the wall behind him. “See,” Midoriya yells, “you can’t do anything right now without help. Just let me take you home.” He takes a tentative step towards Bakugou and reaches out, only to let his hand drop back down. “Please, Katsuki,” he whispers pleadingly.

That voice is his undoing in this moment. How dare Midoriya think him incapable! Did the nerd think he was better than him? Did he think he couldn’t take care of himself? He didn’t need saving, he wasn’t some helpless fucking idiot. And he was going to prove it.

Bakugou snarls and steps towards the green haired man before him, reaching out and steadying himself on his shoulder. He leans in close so they’re almost face to face and whispers with a growl, “Listen here, you little shit-“

Midoriya rears back and shoves Bakugou off of him. “No! You listen!” There’s desperation on his face, causing Bakugou to be stunned into silence. “You’re not fine! Why won’t you let me take you home? I thought we were past this, Kacchan.” Midoriya looks away now, ashamed, as if he’s said too much. His cheeks are stained a pretty pink that draws Bakugou’s eye. He bet they felt as warm as they looked... Nope, not the issue right now. He had to remember he was mad at Deku.

The nerd is still talking, rambling now about their past and how he thinks Bakugou can do better than this and what’s wrong because this isn’t like him- What the fuck did Deku know anyways? He didn’t know what kind of stress Bakugou was under!

Finally his last tether to staying any semblance of calm in this moment snaps and he lashes out with a poorly aimed explosion towards Midoriya, who sidesteps it easy and grabs Bakugou by the arm to sling him back into a wall. Bakugou is stunned momentarily before he regains his senses and turns to lash out again but Midoriya beats him to the punch, grabbing Bakugou’s fist and pushing him back again. This time he follows him back into the wall and holds the angry blonde in place with a forearm to the chest, faces close together. Bakugou takes the time to study the stern set to the green haired man’s brow, the way the space between his brows crinkled together and folded a freckle in half, the way his eyes looked sad even when they were angry-

“Kacchan you’re not even listening to me.” He presses his arm into his chest a little firmer for emphasis and sighs. “Why won’t you let me help you? We’re friends,” he trails off sadly and looks away aimlessly down the alley, “I thought we were finally friends.”

“Tch.”

Midoriya’s head snaps back at the signature noise.

“I’m not your charity case, Deku. Don’t know how many times I have to tell you that.”

That spark lights back up in the other man’s eyes and Bakugou can feel the deranged grin straining his face. He loved it when the nerd was ready to fight, it was better than that pathetic pitying look he usually wore. Maybe he could just push him over the edge and get this itch out of his system...

“I’m not some fragile little doll you need to protect like all your other friends,” later he’d realize he had confirmed they were friends, but not right now, “I don’t need fucking Deku to swoop in and save me. You’ve been doing this shit all our lives and I don’t fucking need your help. I don’t need anyone’s fucking help.”

He can see that fire snap and crackle in Midoriya’s eyes and the grin threatens to break his face now. Fucking finally.

Midoriya shoves against Bakugou before releasing him and jumping back in a crackle of green lightning, the energy dissipating as soon as he lands. Bakugou, meanwhile, can feel the sparks in his palms. He wanted to blow something up, to show he didn’t need anyone’s help. He didn’t need the pity. Midoriya has other plans though.

”Stop being like this!” The outburst startles Bakugou into letting the explosions building in him to die down and he straightens. Midoriya isn't done yet. ”Stop acting like you're on your own when you're not! You have friends, let us help you. We care about you, you idiot!” Bakugou can see the nerd sniffling now, tears pooling in the corners of his bright eyes. ”I care about you” he whispers, the quiet of the alley letting the words carry and caress Bakugou’s ears.

The look on the blonde’s face is one of shock and confusion which causes a derisive chuckle to slip from Midoriya. “Of course you don’t get it. You don’t think of anyone but yourself.” When Bakugou opens his mouth to refute this statement Midoriya holds a hand up to stop him. “You’re cold and unfeeling and blind, Kacchan. I’ve known this for awhile now and I’ve accepted it. We all have.”

Bakugou can feel the wetness building in his eyes and it agitates him, spiraling him into a frustrated rage. He wasn’t crying! He wouldn’t cry! Fuck this nerd! What did Midoriya know anyways?

“What is that supposed to mean, Deku?”

“Kirishima’s been in love with you since high school and you just let him keep acting like that-“

“Kirishima knows the score. You think it didn’t come up after all this time? You think I’d just let my best friend play the fool? Do you really think that low of me?” He doesn’t want to admit it but if Midoriya really did think so little of him, he didn’t know what he’d do. He’d spent so long trying to prove himself better than everyone only for Midoriya to shrink him right back down to the level of that scared kid who didn’t think he’d ever be good enough. “Well you know what? Fuck you! I’m not as fucking heartless as you make me out to be! You and everyone else think they know me and you don’t!”

Midoriya just looks exhausted now, the fight having seemingly drained out of him at seeing Bakugou so desperate and worked up. “We do know you. I know you, you big idiot. I’ve known you my whole life. Who else would know you better?,” he rubs his hands over his face and throws his arms wide, “You play like you don’t need anyone but you do, Kacchan! You more than anyone, needs someone, so just let me help! Let me just take you home. I don’t know why you’re getting so defensive about this.” His arms drop to his sides as he lets out a long-suffering sigh.

Bakugou’s temper snaps again, a chord pulled too tight and on the verge of breaking altogether. “Because you and every other fucking wannabe treat me with kid gloves!” He stalks towards Midoriya on the opposite side of the alley and pushes into him until the smaller man’s back hits the wall. “In case you haven’t noticed, Deku,” he sneers, “I’m not a little kid. I’m not some fragile little boy that needs a hero.”

Their faces are close now, too close almost, but close enough for Bakugou to feel Midoriya’s panting little breaths hit his chin and see his own reflection in his eyes. When he reaches up to place his hands on either side to cage the smaller man in, he can hear the soft little half-gasp that slips past his lips and he represses a shudder at it. God, this was too good of a look on him…

Midoriya swallows thickly and Bakugou unconsciously tracks the movement with a predatory gaze, red eyes burning with barely controlled anger and something he didn’t like to admit out loud. It’s the unnamed part that is his downfall, however, as Midoriya takes full use of the distraction to punch Bakugou hard in the stomach and send him backwards enough to put distance between them. When Bakugou finally gets control of himself several seconds later Midoriya is staring him down in determination.

“I know you’re not a little kid anymore. I’ve known that for awhile now. You’re strong and confident in ways you didn’t used to be.” He lowers his fist and stands up straight to stare Bakugou in the eyes. “I wouldn’t love you so much if you were that same kid.”

There’s a static hum starting back up in his ears, similar to when he’d seen Midoriya show up on that balcony, except there’s nowhere to fall back into and no Kirishima to hold onto to ground him. So he falls backwards until he hits the wall behind him, fingers gripping into the old brick as if that would be enough to ground him and quiet the insistent fucking buzzing in his head.

No. No no no no. Fucking no.

Midoriya did not just say what he thinks he did, did he? He couldn’t have. This has to be something he’s hearing from all the alcohol. He just imagining this shit and hearing what he wants to hear. His drunk ass brain is conjuring shit up because there is no way Izuku Midoriya just casually tossed out that he loved Bakugou. And if he did, he had to have meant it in some different way-

“Why else do you think I care so much what happens to you, Kacchan? Why else would I deal with your shitty attitude all the time and defend you to the public?”

Oh fuck had he been muttering out loud? Shit, he was around the nerd too much if he had picked up on that habit. Fuck his drunken ass brain he didn’t need this shit right now. Although it might have been only natural, they did grow up together and certain things were bound to rub off on each other. But no, none of that nonsense right now, he needed to address Deku’s completely idiotic ass statement.

“No one asked you to defend me, you stupid nerd. I didn’t ask you to care, either.”

Midoriya barks out a laugh then snaps his mouth closed quickly, as if he hadn’t meant for that to be out loud. When he lowers his hands there’s a sad putting smile on his face that raises Bakugou’s hackles.

“No one had to ask me. That’s not how love works. I just…. love you anyways.” He takes a tentative step towards the blonde then stops when Bakugou backs against the wall with a snarl. “Can you please let me take you home now so you can sleep this off and forget it all happened?”

What kind of shit was that? Who gives a fucked up love confession then tries to act like it didn’t happen? Did Midoriya not want to love him? Well screw that. If Bakugou had to be in love with this nerd for the past five years then he had to suffer too! And this was hands down the worst confession ever. This was not how he ever anticipated any of this going down. He had a plan, dammit! He was going to show up to Midoriya’s house with flowers and that stupid candy he liked and there was a speech he needed to work out and and- NO!

“Fuck your confession, nerd. No you can’t take me home and fuck you for trying to treat me like an invalid.” With one last growl he shoves off the wall and towards the door to go back inside.

“Where are you going,” Midoriya cries out, voice high with desperation.

“Back inside. I need another fucking drink.” He casts a scathing look over his shoulder. “Don’t fucking follow me.”

Bakugou can feel Midoriya’s eyes on him as he drags himself back into the bar, adrenaline drained and leaving him tired and foggy. Another drink would fix this. Or maybe a few more. However many it took to forget this entire fucking night had happened.

[bangdreaming]

Bandori Customer Questionnaire

We have been given another questionnaire to fill in! You can either access it via in the in-game news through this button:

Or click here! Remember to fill it out, as you’ll be able to suggest more cover songs! Also, the questions are slightly different from the last survey, so you might want to check out our translations if you’re unsure about some parts!

Translations for the questions under the cut!

Question 1: What’s your player ID? (If it’s filled automatically, you can leave it as is.)

Question 2: Who’s your favorite band?

Question 3: Who’s your second favorite band?

Question 4: Who are your favorite characters, up to three people?

Kasumi

Tae

Rimi

Saaya

Arisa

Ran

Moca

Himari

Tomoe

Tsugumi

Aya

Hina

Chisato

Maya

Eve

Yukina

Sayo

Lisa

Ako

Rinko

Kokoro

Kaoru

Hagumi

Kanon

Misaki

None in particular.

Question 5: What difficulty is the most enjoyable in the game?

Question 6: What cover songs made you want to play Bandori or which ones you like to play the most?

Sorairo Days

Alchemy

Hikaru Nara

Little Busters!

Seikai wa Hitotsu! Janai!!

Tentai Kansoku

God knows…

only my railgun

Senbonzakura

Kimi Janakya Dame Mitai

Melancholic

GLAMOROUS SKY

DAYS

Karma

Butter-Fly

Don’t say “lazy”

great escape

Asu no Yozora Shoukaihan

READY STEADY GO

Redo

Pride Kakumei

Imagination

secret base ~Kimi ga Kureta Mono~

Dream Parade

Sobakasu

MOON PRIDE

Fuwa Fuwa Time

Hanamaru Pippi wa Yoiko Dake

Sekai wa Koi ni Ochiteiru

Happy Synthesizer

SAKURA Skip

Miku Miku ni Shite Ageru

Kimagure Romantic

Fantastic future

Soul Refrain

Hacking to the Gate

ETERNAL BLAZE

Guren no Yumiya

The Everlasting Guilty Crown

Red fraction

Shin Ai

A Cruel Angel’s Thesis

This game

Believe in my existence

Six Trillion Years and Overnight Story

Sugar Song to Bitter Step

1, 2 Fanclub

Silhouette

Happy Summer Wedding

Himawari no Yakusoku

Romeo

Koi wa Chaos no Shimobe Nari

Dragon Night

fantastic dreamer

Hare Hare Yukai

Taiyou wa Iwaku Moeyo Chaos

None in particular.

Question 7: Please tell us any songs you’d like us to cover in the future. (Multiple suggestions are okay.)

Question 8: Please tell us any artists you’d like us to cover in the future. (Multiple suggestions are okay.)

Question 9: Please tell us any content, animation, or game you want us to collaborate with in the future. (Multiple suggestions are okay.)

Question 10: Please tell us up to 3 event stories that you liked.

Sakura Blooming Party!

Connecting Thoughts, Incomplete Song

Happy Phantom Thief and the Luxury Cruise 

Rimi’s Gift of Song

Searching for Stars

As Evening Clears

Run Away Rabbits!

Past Aspirations & Pastel Futures

The Impromptu Wedding Dress

Don’t leave me, Lisa!!!!

Wish Upon a Tanzaku

Tomoe SOS! Ako’s Grand Nursing Operation

When the Flowers Bloom

Happy Summer Vacation!

Overlapping Beats: The Fireworks Festival

The 6th Member of Afterglow

The Name of the Rose that Blooms in Eden

Hello, My Happy World

Pasupare Expedition: Idol Conquerors of a Deserted Island

In My Heart, It’s Always Halloween!

Umbrella for the Sudden Autumn Rain

The Teary Smile Anchor

Mismatched!? Silly Sweets Classroom 

Welcome to Eve’s Home Party

Someday, My Words Will Reach You ~Lisa’s Lyrics~

HAPPY Poppin’ Xmas

Azure, Sparkle Like a Star

Little Smile Step

New Year, Foreboding Fortune

FUN! FUN! CiRCLING FIVESTAR!

Neo Fantasy Online -The Journey-

Dotabata Happy Valentine

My First Winter Sports!?

What a Wonderful World!

A White Day Musical Basked in a Fleeting Fragrance

Backstage Pass

Dash! A Journey in the Evening Shadows

Freshly Blooming Largo

My Spirit Won’t Yield, Burning Bushido

Fair and Square! Fluffy Character Championship

Double Rainbow

Girls Anthology

Neo-Aspect

Beatin’ in the Rain

The Cursed Well and the School’s Ghost

Once More Luminous

On Sunday, We Got Separated at the Park

None in Particular

Question 11: Please tell us up to 3 costume designs, and event gachas that you liked. (The bolded terms are gacha names for the respective events.)

Sakura Blooming Party! (Hanasakigawa’s Sakura)

Connecting Thoughts, Incomplete Song (A Songstress Awakens)

Happy Phantom Thief and the Luxury Cruise (Detective Kokoro)

Rimi’s Gift of Song (Presents for You)

Searching for Stars (Starlight Journey)

As Evening Clears (Memories of Scarlet Skies)

Run Away Rabbits! (Tea Time in Wonderland)

Past Aspirations & Pastel Futures (White Beginnings)

The Impromptu Wedding Dress (Wedding Day)

Don’t leave me, Lisa!!!! (Elegant Roses)

Wish Upon a Tanzaku (Twinkling Milky Way)

Tomoe SOS! Ako’s Grand Nursing Operation (Rockin’ Nurse)

When the Flowers Bloom (Flowers and Butterflies)

Happy Summer Vacation! (Ocean-blue Summer Skies)

Overlapping Beats: The Fireworks Festival (Kira Kira! Starmine)

The 6th Member of Afterglow (Haunted High Schooooool!!!!!)

The Name of the Rose that Blooms in Eden (Sonata of Blue & Crimson)

Hello, My Happy World (MISAKI in da house!!!)

Pasupare Expedition: Idol Conquerors of a Deserted Island (Doki Doki!? Idol Survivor)

In My Heart, It’s Always Halloween! (One Night Magic)

Umbrella for the Sudden Autumn Rain (Rainy Blue Rose)

The Teary Smile Anchor (Cheerful! Sports Festival)

Mismatched!? Silly Sweets Classroom (Sweet Suite)

Welcome to Eve’s Home Party (Natural Wind)

Someday, My Words Will Reach You ~Lisa’s Lyrics~ (The Sunset’s Smiling Star)

HAPPY Poppin’ Xmas (Bright Chrismas)

Azure, Sparkle Like a Star (Frosty Twinkle Blue)

Little Smile Step (Polar Aurora)

New Year, Foreboding Fortune (Sunrise of Youthfulness)

FUN! FUN! CiRCLING FIVESTAR! (Shining Dream Stage)

Neo Fantasy Online -The Journey- (Our Party’s Journey)

Dotabata Happy Valentine (Heart-rending Chocolate)

My First Winter Sports!? (White Snow Fairy)

What a Wonderful World! (Pastel＊Bloom Girls)

A White Day Musical Basked in a Fleeting Fragrance (The Beauty of a Noble White)

Backstage Pass (GIRLS BAND LIFE!)

Dash! A Journey in the Evening Shadows (Rockin' Western Girl)

Freshly Blooming Largo (~Newly Composed Score~ Melodious)

My Spirit Won’t Yield, Burning Bushido (Samurai Hearts for Troubled Times)

Fair and Square! Fluffy Character Championship (Fuwa Fuwa Gao! Happy Monster)

Double Rainbow (Sparkling Momentary Bridge)

Girls Anthology (Go Go Stoooooria!)

Neo-Aspect (Melodious Gears)

Beatin’ in the Rain (Roaring Rimshot)

The Cursed Well and the School’s Ghost (Hard-Boiled Detective)

Once More Luminous (Colorful Radiant Road)

On Sunday, We Got Separated at the Park (Tanabata Nostalgia)

None in Particular

Question 12: Please tell us any additional features you would like to be added or existing features you would like improved.

Question 13: What is your age?

Question 14: What’s your gender?

Male

Female

Question 15: What is your occupation?

Civil servant

Management / Company Executive

Employee

Self Employed / Freelance

Part-Time Job

Housewife / Husband

Student

Unemployed

Others

Question 16: Please tell us about your business field.

None in particular. (Students, etc.)

Manufacturing (Machinery / Electric)

Manufacturing (Material / Chemical / Food / Other)

General Trading Company / Specialized Trading Company

Medical

Finance

Construction / Real Estate

Consulting / Research / Professional Office

Personnel Service / Call Center

Internet / Advertising / Media

Retail

Food Service

Transportation / Logistics

Communication (Carrier, etc.)

Energy (Electric, gas, etc.)

Travel / Accommodation / Leisure

Security / Cleaning

Barber / Beauty / Esthetics

Education

Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries / Minig

Public Corporations / Government Agencies

Other

Question 17: Please tell us where you live.

Last option is “Overseas / Other.”

Question 18: How did you first hear about GBP?

From friends / acquaintances

SNS (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

TVCM (Iitoyo Marie ver.)

WEBCM (HIKAKIN x Fischers’ ver.)

WEBCM (Iitoyo Marie x Fischers’ ver.)

WEBCM (Iitoyo Marie x Hatsune Miku ver.)

CM (aside from the mentioned ones)

Internet Advertisements

Magazine / Web Articles

Transport Advertisement / Other Advertisement

Bandori! Live

Bandori! Anime

Bandori! Short Anime

App Store / Google Play

Other

Question 19: Please tell us why you started playing Bandori. (Multiple choices are okay.)

Bandori’s Illustrations and Graphics

Because I like rhythm games in general

Was already a fan of the Bandori! anime

I liked the Original songs

I was able to play the cover songs that I knew in the game

The game gives out a vibe that it would be fun even if I didn’t make in-game purchases.

I was attracted by the story

Voice Actors that I like voiced characters in the game

Nothing in particular (I don’t remember)

Other

Question 20: Please tell us the games you usually play.

Question 21: Please tell us the average amount of money you spend on games in a month.

I don’t spend money.

Less than 1,000 yen.

1,000 ~ 5,000 yen.

5,000 ~ 10,000 yen.

10,000 ~ 50,000 yen.

More than 50,000 yen.

Question 22: Please tell us how you like to spend your free time. (Multiple choices are okay.)

Games / Manga / Anime / Internet

Live / Event

Reading / Movies

Music / Musical Instruments / Photography / Creative Activity

Exercise / Sports

Car / Motorcycle

Gambling

Television

Shopping

Cooking / Handicraft / Sewing

Spending Time with Friends, Family, or Partners

Traveling / Going Out

Question 23: Please tell us any media platforms that you regularly use. (Multiple choices are okay.)

TV

YouTube

Twitter

Instagram

Summary Sites

Game Walkthrough Sites

Nico Nico Douga

Facebook

AbemaTV

Pixiv

None in particular

Other

Question 24: Finally, if you have comments or requests for us or a message for the management team, please feel free to write it down.

[teachanarchy]

“I think the computers have complicated lives very greatly. The whole, you know, age of computer, has made it where nobody knows exactly what’s going on.”

—Donald Trump, Dec. 29, 2016

The night of Donald Trump’s electoral victory, as journalists and pollsters sat stunned, alt-right trolls on the online imageboard 4chan were declaring ecstatic victory. The election outcome was, for them, the culmination of a long-orchestrated campaign they had dubbed “The Great Meme Wars.” “Will we ever experience something this great again?” an anonymous poster wrote on the site’s “politically incorrect” imageboard, the post accompanied by a twist on one of the site’s more popular characters, Wojak, the character’s MS Paint-rendered visage outfitted in Nazi SS gear. “The meme wars of 2015/2016 are over and we are the winners.”

Who were these self-declared winners? A bizarre allegiance of online trolls, experts at manufacturing memes—the jokey, absurdist images, often overlaid with text, that are copied and spread endlessly with slight variations by people online. Through memes and the clandestine net spaces they used to share them, these trolls met and formed a Frankenstein political bloc out of adult My Little Pony fans, furries, anime enthusiasts, self-described “masculinists,” disgruntled video gamers, Neo-Nazis, white nationalists, xenophobes, neo-monarchists, reactionaries, old-school racists, and nihilists in search of edgy lols. They were coronated the “alt-right” by white nationalist “leader” Richard Spencer, and referred to Trump as “God Emperor” on Reddit, where they made the r/The_Donald forum into one of the most popular on the hugely popular news and web content aggregation site.

As trivial as it may seem, The Great Meme Wars and the chaos it wrought on social media likely had a very real effect on the 2016 election. By weaponizing their memes, berating their targets with aggressive rhetorical strategies, and generally acting as outrageously as possible, the so-called alt-right gained the acknowledgement of both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, hijacked the mainstream media, and dragged the national Overton Window toward their extremist views in the process—all from the safely removed distance of their crusty keyboards.

They may have won the battle, but according to their opposition—some of which is located in the Northwest—the Great Meme Wars are far from over.

“I try to clean up messes, but I also try to create them,” a woman named Addy says over the phone as she prepares to relocate from her lifelong home in the Midwest to the Northwest, where she says she will be “safer.” The line goes silent for a moment—the sound of distant gulping and a staticky video barking something about counter-terrorist operations in the background. “I’ve got to tell you something real quick as I chug my Mountain Dew, because yes, I’m a memer. I’m not the alt-right, but I still drink Mountain Dew. Anyways, yeah, I actually consider myself more of a ‘social hacker’ than a memer. Every hacker is either addicted to chaos or addicted to order. I myself am addicted to chaos, but I’m chaotic good.”

Before she came out as a trans woman, Addy (who asked Seattle Weekly to withhold her last name) spent a lot of time on 4chan and took part in the same early troll culture that would, many years later, form the alt-right. “I was the embodiment of 4chan,” she says. “I would say anything just to get a rise, do anything just to get a rise. I don’t even feel comfortable talking about the person I used to be.” Then something changed. Addy’s sibling married a black woman; along came two new black nieces; and soon Addy had a biracial child of her own. “I started realizing I was a racist, a sexist, all these things. It wasn’t hard to admit that—it was empowering to admit that, because once I did, I could destroy it. I’ve been on a warpath ever since.”

She left 4chan and began spending more time in another meme-making community she found on Facebook. There she would start her own page to distribute her own memes. She named the page Lettuce Dog and adopted a logo that is, indeed, a head of lettuce fashioned to look like a dog. Just a month after Addy began Lettuce Dog, in the fall of 2015, she had amassed 9,000 followers. Today, roughly a year, four months, and 1,700 memes later, that number has grown to 93,000. On a decent week, Lettuce Dog’s memes will reach 1 to 3 million people using the same troll tactics Addy learned from 4chan and often sparking fierce political debate in the comments.

Take one simple meme she made in November. Featuring a stock photo of two Jet Ski riders carving through ocean waves, a message is written in goofy blue font: “It’s time to get EXTREME about destroying white supremacy.” The nonsensical image was liked by 2,100 people, shared over a thousand times, and resulted in conversations between Addy and upset commenters about white guilt and the definitions of racism and white supremacy.

According to Addy, when she began Lettuce Dog on Facebook, there were only two types of meme pages. “There were really stuffy, obnoxious social-justice-warrior pages—completely humorless, very angry white allies complaining about things,” she says. On the flipside there were “dank” meme pages—pages that “were on so many layers of irony, just totally out there, playing with the human mind.” With Lettuce Dog, Addy had decided to combine the two forms and create what is likely the first “dank social-justice page.” Countless others followed the same path until dank social-justice pages constituted their own subculture, known as “Weird Facebook.” As a collective, these pages reach somewhere in the tens of millions.

While plenty of Weird Facebook pages are largely apolitical, the community overall tends to have a far-left bent—its memes are often anti-capitalist, fiercely pro-LGBTQ, social-justice oriented, and sit on a spectrum that ranges from anarchist, Democratic socialist, socialist, and Marxist to full-on communist. Collectivism is a central tenet of Weird Facebook. “Individualism is terrible and inevitably going to die,” says Addy, who self-identifies as an “anarcho-collectivist,” but isn’t shy about espousing explicitly communist values and ideas in her memes.

Via Lettuce Dog

Weird Facebook content creators typically don’t care to take credit for their work, preferring to remain anonymous while posting to pages with names like “Gangster Popeye,” “G a Y L O R M O O N S a Y S” or “I play KORN to my DMT plants, smoke blunts all day & do sex stuff.”

The community is also structured in a collectivist framework—they don’t compete, but share each other’s content freely, cooperating in an effort to drive fans to each other’s pages and help grow each others’ audiences. They do this because memes live and die by the masses, their strength and potency directly tied to how many people are engaging with them rather than the prestige of any individual creator.

By their very nature, memes represent a violation of traditional notions of “ownership.” Everything from trademarked intellectual properties, pop-culture detritus, watermarked stock photos, random cyber-garbage off Google images, and AP news photos to the very structure of past memes themselves are on the table for endless remixing by the masses who share them and participate in their creation. As a result, “normies,” as meme-culture outsiders are called, might not even be able, at first glance, to decode a meme—the result of a cascading, mutating series of Dadaist in-jokes and symbols whose agreed meanings that, while somewhat fixed, are also incredibly fluid, largely guided by their makers’ intuition rather than any logical plan.

“When you log into the Internet, you’re plugging your brain into millions, billions of other brains,” Addy says. “The Internet is a giant brain, just like a neural network.” She claims her most popular memes have come to her in visions not unlike those of religious mystics. “Sometimes I feel like the Internet wills me to make certain memes, like I’m plugged directly into the zeitgeist.”

Addy isn’t the only meme-maker at Lettuce Dog. Like most of the other Weird Facebook pages, hers has a decentralized structure with a number of administrators, a collaborative practice that results, often intentionally, in a more diverse array of voices.

Although it’s impossible to know the racial or gender makeup of the alt-right or trolls in general due to their anonymity, researcher Whitney Phillips, who spent six years infiltrating, observing, and interacting in troll spaces for her 2015 book This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling Culture and Mainstream Media, notes that “what is empirically verifiable, however, is the observable fact that trolling behaviors are gendered male, are raced as white, and are dependent upon a certain degree of economic privilege.” Alt-right politics, while all over the place, hinge largely on white identity politics—thus the opposition on Weird Facebook often relies on and prides itself on its rainbow coalition of counter-trolls to fight those same tactics.

Via Cory in the Abyss

In addition to Addy, a white trans woman, Lettuce Dog’s three other contributors are a digital artist (a white cis-woman), an Instagram manager (a white cis-man), and a black meme-maker named Cory in the Abyss, who runs his own Weird Facebook page as well.

After admiring each other’s memes and their shared politics, Addy reached out to Cory and asked if he would join the Lettuce Dog team as a writer/content-creator, agreeing to cross-post his page’s memes to hers as payment. “It’s a really intersectional process,” Cory tells me. “I’m not up on trans issues, so Addy kind of makes trans issues more visible for me. On the other hand, I help her see race issues in a way a white person might not see them. So we compliment each other’s shortcomings politically, but it’s all propelled generally in that same far-left direction.”

Via Lettuce Dog

Cory started making memes after growing frustrated with his original arts medium of choice: poetry. “I felt frustrated with its ivory-tower elitism,” he says. “With a poem, you might get published in a journal, and then a few people in academia might read it. When I make a meme, I post it, and almost right away it reaches thousands, sometimes hundreds of thousands of people. It’s immediate, and honestly, probably the most pragmatic way to reach people now.”

Via Cory in the Abyss

Another Weird Facebook page called Eses Be Wilin was born of a similar spirit. “A friend of mine from central California started the page, and I asked to join as an admin when it had maybe 100 likes,” Jorge Bustamante (who asked Seattle Weekly not to use his real name), tells me from his Seattle home. A “Latinx ghetto cultural empowerment” page, it has amassed 27,000 followers in the year it’s been up. “Eses Be Wilin started in the midst of the Trump campaign—I got involved because I feel like Latin American oppression arises every election cycle, and I wanted to show that what many might perceive as the bottom of the barrel of Latin culture is actually a very rich culture. There’s a lot of Chicano pride pages on Facebook, but we were the first to bring meme-ing to that culture and that audience, which is why I think the page took off so quickly.”

Bustamante and his friend began with a central-Californian Chicano cultural focus, but they quickly added a Dominican admin, a Puerto Rican admin, and a Guatemalan admin in an effort to represent the wider Latin American experience. Like Lettuce Dog, Eses Be Wilin peddles primarily absurdist-humor memes, but sprinkles in memes with political, resistance-oriented motifs as well—memes that address Western imperialism, colonialism, police violence, the Zapatista movement, and the United Farm Workers movement.

Though Trump was the main reason Bustamante felt prompted to make memes about Latinx culture, he chose the form as his medium for a separate reason—declining faith in mainstream media’s issues coverage. “One [outlet] I stopped following recently is CNN,” he says. “I used to read them every day, but I haven’t in months because during the election cycle, the front of their website every day was some inconsequential shit regarding e-mail scandals or some mean thing Donald Trump said. That was it, just the same shit back and forth. There was nothing to learn at that point—I started to feel like real news was becoming inaccessible. I think that’s why a lot of people are turning to memes.”

Media analyst Andrew Tyndall released a report on Oct. 26 noting that from the beginning of 2016 to the time of its publication, ABC’s World News Tonight, the CBS Evening News and the NBC Nightly News had devoted a mere 32 minutes total to issues coverage—defined by Tyndall as coverage which “takes a public policy, outlines the societal problem that needs to be addressed, describes the candidates’ platform positions and proposed solutions, and evaluates their efficacy.”

What dominated instead? The endlessly controversial exploits of Donald Trump, who earned 327 minutes of coverage, a third of the year’s total airtime, and “more than the entire Democratic race combined.” Tyndall’s report focused on only three major broadcast news programs, but Donald Trump’s stranglehold on the media’s attention across the board—print journalism, web journalism, blogs, television, radio, mainstream media, independent media, alternative media—and the corresponding lack of substantive issues coverage were observable to anyone who consumed any kind of news this past year.

In her book, Phillips proposes a somewhat radical thesis about the media and trolls. The trolls who lurk on Facebook, Reddit, 4chan, and Twitter spewing vile racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic transgressions—the ones the media consistently deride as societal outsiders—actually fit very neatly into the contemporary cultural landscape. In fact, they simply mirror the methodologies of a mainstream media that thrives on controversy. “Not only do these outlets give trolls precisely what they want—specifically, a national platform—they validate the impulse to troll,” Phillips writes. “As sensationalist media have proven again and again, these behaviors work, and not just for trolls. The behaviors also work for mainstream media companies, since stories about trolling translate into page views, and page views translate into advertising revenue, and advertising revenue is the lifeblood of any successful media organization.”

Trump laid out his understanding of this very phenomenon—albeit in its analog form—three decades ago in his memoir The Art of the Deal: “One thing I’ve learned about the press is that they’re always hungry for a good story, and the more sensational the better. The point is that if you are a little different, or a little outrageous, or if you do things that are bold or controversial, the press is going to write about you.”

In fact, many in the alt-right refer to The Art of the Deal as The Art of the Troll.

Trolls hit the big time—with assistance from the media—on Sept. 12, when hillaryclinton.com published an article with the subhead “That cartoon frog is more sinister than you realize.” The frog in question was Pepe—who began his life in Matt Furie’s Boy’s Club comic series from the mid-2000s, a collection of which was published last year by Seattle publisher Fantagraphics. The comics follow the stoneriffic adventures of four anthropomorphic animal roommates. In one comic from 2008, Pepe is caught peeing with his pants all the way down. When confronted by his roommate about it, he responds, “feels good man.” Pepe’s smiling frog head, with the words “feels good man,” became an innocent icon on the Internet and a fixture of early meme culture, endlessly remixed onto countless bodies expressing a range of emotions (“feels bad man”).

But on 4chan, Twitter, and r/the_donald, an army of “alt-right” trolls began churning out an incredibly high volume of incendiary “smug” Pepes (Pepe smirking with his hand on his chin). Some were simply of green, Pepe-fied Trumps or Pepes wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats, which Donald Trump and Trump Jr. both retweeted. But many more were Nazi Pepes—Pepe as Hitler, Pepe as SS officer, Pepe holding guns to the heads of minorities and women, and Jew Pepes, drawn in the style of anti-Semitic WWII propaganda posters.

With the help of Pepe’s cartoon grin, the alt-right was winning.

“For the past year and a half, they destroyed us in memes,” Bustamante says. “They beat everyone in memes this past election—they made so many, they made more than us, they made so many effective ones. They were better content creators. It doesn’t matter if they’re politically inept or living in their mom’s basement, what matters is they’re outwardly expressing this train of thought, bringing together people with vaguely similar interests to congregate in the same space on the Internet.”

The sheer volume of these memes yielded real results—the unparalleled level of activity most evident in the engagement on r/the_donald. Thanks to Reddit’s algorithm, the questionable content at play on that subreddit was thrust to the front page. The domination was so intense that Reddit decided to change the algorithm on June 15 in an attempt to present its general users with some semblance of variety.

All of this, of course, was “just about having fun,” as alt-right media platform Breitbart wrote in March. Then Clinton declared that Pepe the frog was a white nationalist symbol, akin to a swastika. In one fell swoop, she both legitimized a band of trolls and officially handed it sole ownership of a powerful meme. “Everything has been weird since the day Hillary talked about Pepe,” Bustamante says. “I think that was a very dark time for memes. From that point on, everything the alt-right did was validated.”

Two weeks later, the Anti-Defamation League officially filed Pepe the frog as a hate symbol. The alt-right were thrilled at the “triggered” media. The Hill, Vanity Fair, Talking Points Memo, CNN, The Economist, MSNBC, and countless others took the bait, drawn to the story’s literal cartoonish extremes. Suddenly swastikas were everywhere, and the alt-right, previously a fringe web group, was a household name.

The coup, in turn, further revealed the increasingly low bar of mainstream media coverage. In one instance, Chris Matthews on MSNBC exclaimed that “the green guy there has become a popular symbol of white nationalism—I didn’t know this! I’m learning! […] I know none of this stuff! But I now know it. I just learned it today,” admitting his lack of knowledge and context of the meme in a rush to brand it a hate symbol. The first article that comes up in a Google search of Pepe, a Los Angeles Times article on Pepe as a hate symbol, doesn’t even get the name of Furie’s comic correct, calling it Boy’s Life, similarly exhibiting a lack of real knowledge or insight while simultaneously handing its ownership to the alt-right. Following the newfound legitimization, white nationalist Richard Spencer seized a media spotlight and became a “spokesperson” for the “movement,” which until then had been little more than an online mob.

Soon after the Pepe episode, it was revealed in The Daily Beast that Palmer Luckey, the almost-billionaire creator of the Oculus Rift virtual-reality headset, which is Facebook-owned and has offices in Seattle, was the secret backer of a pro-Trump, anti-Hillary “meme magic” nonprofit campaign called Nimble America which filed for a 501(c)(4) in September. Inspired by the success of the provocative Pepes, Luckey sought to fund a group of meme-making trolls he was in contact with so they could churn similar content out on social media full-time. Posting on r/the_donald as “NimbleRichMan,” Luckey wrote “we’ve proven that shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real. So many of you have asked us, how we can bring this to real life,” promising to match donations to the upstart meme organization dollar for dollar.

“There’s all this ‘fake news’ now,” Cory in the Abyss says, “and in a way we’re also ‘fake.’ The difference is, with our memes, we have an agenda, and there’s no pretense about those agendas. The exciting thing about memes now is that we’ve kind of become like pirate news—we don’t represent an institution or an establishment. The left can troll too.”

While the alt-right may have outpaced the left in the first battle of the Great Meme Wars, Weird Facebook has seemingly become the most formidable, viable challenger to the movement’s nihilistic, irony-drenched tactics. Many collectivist memers revel in the historical precedent the communist Soviet Union set on the Eastern front in WWII when defeating the Nazis’ fascist empire—images from which admins of Weird Facebook often weaponize as memes in their own battles against the alt-right. But as Phillips wonders in her book, if “certain forms of trolling can be justified, is the righteousness of a particular act compromised if it replicates precisely the cultural logics it seeks to dismantle?”

According to Lettuce Dog, the answer is a firm yes. “So, remember, I’m chaotic good,” she says. “Trump and the alt-right are chaotic too—chaotic evil.”

For Addy, a core value separates Weird Facebook’s trolling tactics from that of the alt-right’s. “I’ll intentionally make a meme that I know will stir a lot of controversy and anger a lot of people,” she says, “but with the express purpose of empowering marginalized people.” Early on, when Lettuce Dog was first gaining in popularity, Addy posted a meme that began to get “tons of shares.” Although the meme was well-intentioned, as most of hers are, when a Mexican man reached out and explained to Addy why he thought the meme was offensive, she had to make a fateful decision: “Should I be a white asshole, tell him to shut up, and keep the successful meme rolling? Or should I not be a prick, and make another that’s less offensive?”

The answer wasn’t obvious at first. Her time in the extreme, taboo-breaking culture of 4chan had trained Addy to place edginess above all else. But she decided she was done with that. “I deleted it, apologized to him, and have continued to run my page that way,” she says. “Now with the Internet, we’re all sharing one collective mind, so to hurt any part of that collective is to hurt the whole collective—to harm me. The 13-year-olds typing the n-word on YouTube don’t understand how much they’re hurting themselves.”

The alt-right is seemingly of a different mind when it comes to such empathy. Yet there is another area where Addy and her fellow memers hope to replicate their enemies: how to harness memes to hijack the media, use it against itself, and seize a national platform for their politics. “We don’t want to be edgy in a troll-comment way,” says Lettuce Dog admin Cory, “but edgy in that our memes stand on the edge of many different seams, make you think, and hopefully push you towards a better ideology. I think they’re the cultural foundation—the memes are the pre-body politic.”

And indeed, the loletariat did begin to rise just this past weekend. The Meme Wars took a decidedly sweet turn for Weird Facebook on Inauguration Day, when alt-right “leader” Richard Spencer was caught on camera during an interview getting punched in the face by a masked member of a black bloc. In an act of “meme magic,” the punch landed right as Spencer was beginning to explain the enamel pin on his lapel— “It’s Pepe, he’s become kind of a symbol … ” Smack!

In less than 24 hours, the clip had been remixed hundreds of times and shared by millions. In various iterations of the clip, the audible thud of the punch synched to the snare hits in “Born in the USA,” “Blue Monday,” and others. Still images of the violence were Photoshopped alongside images of Captain America and Indiana Jones punching Nazis, an activity memers presented as “American as apple pie.” “I’m afraid this is going to become the meme to end all memes,” Spencer later said on Periscope. “That I’m going to hate watching this.”

“I think what we’re going to see now is a lot more anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, anti-fascist content creation,” Bustamante says. “While people with those trains of thought have always been underrepresented under the neoliberal U.S. government and the media, I think approaching this far different flipside, being the alt-right and Trump, we’re going to be the new fighters in terms of content creation—primarily through memes at this time.”

Bustamante’s one reservation is Facebook’s own algorithm—which itself caught flack last summer for its seemingly arbitrary censorship of “inappropriate” memes and the pages that host them. The flashpoint for the criticism was a popular meme featuring a photo of a goose whose head appeared to be on fire—in reality, it was simply an illusion, created by a campfire in the background. Regardless, Facebook censored the meme, deeming it “graphic content.” Many follow-up memes highlighted the absurdity that mainstream-media images of bloodied Syrian children and the bodies of drowned refugees were allowed on the site, but this goose with a fake flaming head wasn’t. A 100-page strong “Meme Alliance” emerged to challenge Facebook’s policy and the algorithm.

Yet even without the alliance, it seems foolish to think Facebook could ever truly quash the flow of memes. Thanks to the masses, and Weird Facebook’s leaderless, collectivist structure, the memes will always find a way. But if there comes a need to go further underground, Addy, for one, has an idea.

“We need to start a hacktivist group called Unanimous,” she says, “and all wear Guy Fieri masks.”

ksears@seattleweekly.com

[webbygraphic001]

20 Freshest Web Designs, June 2019

This month’s collection is all about being brave. Brave new ways to employ color, brave new ways to navigate UI, brave new ways to think of web sites. Highlights include cool Jazz, exciting new design agencies, and illustration everywhere. Enjoy!

West Coast Tasmania

This exceptional site for tourism in Western Tasmania gets everything right. The colors and illustrations are tone-perfect, while the enticing photography is alluring to all but the most dedicated of couch potatoes.

Jazz FM Romania

Romania’s Jazz FM does exactly what you’d expect: it hits you right between the eyes with a playful and creative approach. The illustrations are cool, but what really makes this site great is the all-in way they’ve been used.

Sandows

Sandows is one of the market leaders in cold-brew coffee, and its site reflects that with professional UX, and delightful animation. I bet you haven’t seen animated gifs used like this before. It’s a refreshing alternative to fullscreen video.

Stonewall Forever

Stonewall Forever describes itself as a living monument to 50 years of Pride. The generated rainbow features stories from the early days of the LGBTQ rights movement. Tap and drag to move through the rainbow and explore.

Pygar

Pygar is a financial investment company, and its site makes me think they’re braver and more innovative than most. The site’s hamburger menu is an interesting new take, and the next/prev previews in the colored blob create a seamless effect.

Safari Riot

Describing itself as a future-leaning sound and music group belies the fact that Safari Riot’s site is so visually stimulating. Scroll the homepage for a list of recent projects and hover over the bold project titles for a quick video preview.

Frant

The standard — seemingly only — approach to alcohol sales is to take the heritage route. That’s especially true of spirits. Frant takes a radically different direction, with modern, bold, blocks of color that stand out from the rest of the shelf.

Onwards

Onwards is a London-based branding agency. Its site is clean, simple, and easy to use. I would normally deduct points for a hamburger menu on desktop, but as its target market is young startups, they get a pass on that.

Pandora

A creative studio specializing in film and video, Pandora’s site uses split screen scrolling to juxtapose different elements of its portfolio. Scroll up and down to tab through the whole showreel.

Hovercraft

Hovercraft’s site is a delight to behold, with simple animated dots being used to amazing effect to create the illusion of depth and energy. Beyond the first impressions, it’s a well ordered agency site with some excellent case studies.

Precision Run

The indoor bike revolution has taken over the world, and what Peleton did for cycling, Precision Run wants to do for treadmill running. Its site is high-energy, with clever use of low-quality looped video, and bold typography.

Apprvl

Apprvl is a collection of goods, handmade in New York. The site is a typical ecommerce store, with everything exactly where you’d expect it. The difference is the art direction, which transforms simple minimalism into a brand statement.

Tiago Majuelos

These colorful, energetic illustrations are the work of Tiago Majuelos, a Barcelona, Spain-based designer with a client list that includes Pull & Bear, Nike, and New York Times. The site is simple to use, but packed with delight.

threesixzero

threesixzero is a global management company working with some of the biggest names in music and film. Its edgy site starts out enigmatic, but click around a little and the homepage menu will simplify itself.

Strange Light

If you’re a fan of offbeat Canadian literature, then you’ll want to check out Strange Light. The site features some X Files level creepy graphics, all designed to introduce you to the publishing house’s stable of authors.

Home Société

Horizontal scrolling is often distracting, disorientating, and as a result is sometimes frowned on. But not in the case of this interiors site, which combines the lateral movement with an unexpected parallax style effect.

Oban Whisky

Oban Whisky is distilled in the small West Scotland town of Oban. Its site features a combination of superb modern typography, and video-heavy content that focuses on the heritage and traditions of the brand.

FAT FAT FAT Festival

FAT FAT FAT is an Italian music festival taking place in two different venues, from the 2nd to the 4th of August 2019. The site features brutalist animation, low-fi texture, and an addictive diagonal scroll for the artists on the homepage.

The Turner Copperstones

Opening with an intriguing gradient clock, this site for a planned group of townhouses situated in Australia, but inspired by New York, features a subtle grid that juxtaposes artist’s impressions, and the planned materials. I would definitely live here.

The Drive

The Drive is a Brooklyn-based shop and studio with a penchant for brown, which is a color super-difficult to pull off on screen. The caramel type interacting with the photography on the shop pages is brave.

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Dua Lipa DEFENDS Fans Who Were Kicked Out of Show Over Gay Rights Flags

Dua Lipa DEFENDS Fans Who Were Kicked Out of Show Over Gay Rights Flags

Jeremy Brown - Latest News - My Hollywood News

Dua Lipa DEFENDS Fans Who Were Kicked Out of Show Over Gay Rights Flags, Hollywood Second Screen.

Best Celebrity News Of The Decade, Hollywood Celebrities Recut Latest Story, Dua Lipa DEFENDS Fans Who Were Kicked Out of Show Over Gay Rights Flags.

New Hollywood Celebrities Coming Out New Hollywood Celebrity Latest Story by Pixar Animation Studios, is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California that is a subsidiary of The Walt Hollywood Company. Pixar began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Lucasfilm computer division, before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986, with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became the majority shareholder.

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Although Mulan is set in north China, where the dominant language is Mandarin, the Hollywood film uses the Cantonese pronunciation, “Fa”, of her family name. In Mandarin her name is pronounced “Hua”.

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The Walt Hollywood Company started in 1923 in the rear of a small office occupied by Holly-Vermont Realty in Los Angeles. It was there that Walt Hollywood, and his brother Roy, produced a series of short live-action/animated films collectively called the ALICE COMEDIES. The rent was a mere $10 a month.

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Some fans were forcefully REMOVED from Dua Lipa’s Shanghai show and she had a lot to say about it.

Way to stand up for your fans, Dua!

What should’ve been a fun and memorial night for all of Dua Lipa’s fans who were in attendance at her Shanghai concert turned into a pretty rough one. In a number of videos posted to social media, fans were seen being removed left and right during Dua’s performance. While it’s not super clear as to why security started removing some of these fans, but some concertgoers took to Twitter to say that it was because these fans were waving flags and showing support to the LGBTQ+ community. While documenting a moment where a fan was being forcefully taken out of their set, one fan wrote QUOTE, “At Dua Lipa’s Shanghai tour, a few people have been kicked out by the safeguard because they’re waving a rainbow flag.” CLIP TOSS: Dua Fans kicked out (CREDIT on screen: @dr_jolin)

While another tweeted QUOTE, “I just CAN’T believe it. This is the show of Dua Lipa in Shanghai. All the fans are forbidden to stand out and could only sit down to see the show?! If you don’t, the guard would use violence to kick you out. It’s unbelievable.” After noticing the commotion during her set, Dua made this emotional speech on stage.

CLIP TOSS: Dua Lipa Cried In Shanghai China Tonight (CREDIT on screen: @958353005) (:01-:16) A day after the concert, Dua shared this message on her socials with her fans in Shanghai. She wrote QUOTE, “Last night I did it for my fans. A promised show. I stood by them, sang with them and danced with them. I will stand by you all for your love and beliefs and I am proud and grateful that you felt safe enough to show your pride at my show. What you did takes a lot of bravery. I always want my music to bring strength, hope and unity. I was horrified by what happened and I send love to all my fans involved. I would love to come back for my fans when the time is right and hopefully see a room full of rainbows. I love you Shanghai xx.”

How crazy were those videos? Are you happy Dua acknowledged the commotion and stood up for her fans? Let me know all your thoughts on this in the comment section below. When you’re done with that, click right over here to watch another new video and don’t forget to subscribe! Thanks for hanging with me, I’m your girl Renee Ariel and I’ll see ya next time!

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Hollywood Celebrities 2017 & Film News, Dua Lipa DEFENDS Fans Who Were Kicked Out of Show Over Gay Rights Flags.

The Walt Hollywood Company operates through four primary business units, which it calls “business segments”: Studio Entertainment, with the primary business unit The Walt Hollywood Studios, which includes the company’s film, music recording label, and theatrical divisions; Parks and Resorts, featuring the company’s theme parks, cruise line, and other travel-related assets; Media Networks, which includes the company’s television properties; and Hollywood Consumer Products and Interactive Media, which produces toys, clothing, and other merchandising based upon Hollywood-owned properties, as well as including Hollywood’s Internet, mobile, social media, virtual worlds, and computer games operations. List Of 2017 Hollywood Films, Dua Lipa DEFENDS Fans Who Were Kicked Out of Show Over Gay Rights Flags.

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[xxcowardicexx]

Dreams or Nightmares

I’m just not allowed to have dreams anymore I guess. When I dream, on the rare occasions that I do have them, they’ve been kinda messed up. If you know what lucid dreaming is, it’s basically when you can control your dreams. It normally happens in the middle of the dream, like when you’re doing something in the middle of your dream and something alerts your conscious that you’re not actually awake, but dreaming. Many people have had these dreams and agree that most are splendid, mainly because when you learn you’re in the dream you can do whatever you dream of. Well, except for me apperently, a long time ago in my sophomore year of high school I had a 8 month long experience that when I fell asleep in this realm, I awoke in the dream realm. Well in the dream it was pretty much hell, another story for another day, and when I went through the day there and fell asleep in the dream realm I awoke here in “reality”. Let’s just say it felt like I never got sleep and It pretty much drained the life out of me, and I can’t forget what I experienced in that realm even though i wish i could. I don’t have those dreams anymore, mainly because I’m pretty sure I died in a collapsing building, not for sure, but pretty sure.

After that experience I didn’t have many dreams, just falling asleep and waking up rested was enough for me to be greatful, I did have an occasional dream, but it didn’t last long and were semi lucid dreams, basically right before I woke up I realised it was a dream and normally cursed myself because I would get excited and wake myself up before I could actually enjoy the dream

Well last night I had a dream, or a nightmare. I don’t know why, or understand why my dreams are like this, and it makes me question my sanity. Like the fact I remember more of my dreams than I remember where I set my phone or wallet, which bothers me slightly less than the dreams I have to remember… like this one.

*I awoke in a bed of tall grass, laying on my back I could see a thick canopy of autumn leaves above as glimmers of sunlight barely braking through the branches, I could hear the wind rustling through the grass and the whistle of it flowing through the leaves. The air was humid and warm, generally pleasant as I started coming to my senses. I rubbed my eyes naturally, because I had just woken up.*

*After rubbing the sleep from my eyes I can’t help but notice, my hands aren’t hands. They’re paws, which instantly made me realise that I was dreaming, which kinda excited me due to the fact that I should be able to control this dream but made things seem even more off. I gave myself a quick check as I realised that I was covered in a reddish/orangish/golden hued fur.*

(To those that know me, yes I’m a furry. But I also believe everyone has their own spirit animal, and how they act and hold themselves shows what kind of spirit animal you are, but you can’t really determine it by yourself, though you can always have a good idea what you are, it takes others to help you define it yourself)

*I laid there for a “small” amount of time, pondering what this feeling I was feeling inside was. Almost like anxiety, mixed with fear with an underlying amount of panic. I was feeling like I was in the same spot for to long, my heart began to race slightly as I cautiously picked my head up over the top of the tall grass and checked my surroundings*

*The forest around me was full of larger older oak trees and thinner ashes and maple trees. There were birds singing their songs and for a moment I felt like an idiot, seems like I had fallen asleep on a sunny afternoon on a nice and peaceful day. I stood up and looked around and noticed that there wasn’t a path anywhere, literally just a spot in the forest where I had been laying down.*

*I cocked my ear to the side, listening to the wilderness. Nothing out of the ordinary, so I just picked a random direction and went. The going was easy, just some flatland forest, the leaves blew in the wind and swirled the foliage of the beautiful autumn scenery. This went on for a while, like what felt to me to be a few hours. The whole time as I walked I cautiously, watching every step I took and listening to nature as I tried to be as quiet as possible.*

*I noticed the woodland creatures, the chipmunks and squirrels skittering around the trees and piles of leaves, the bees flying around and gathering pollen, I almost stepped on an anthill even. Everything seemed so tranquil. I was completely baffled on this dream, nothing, I mean nothing made sense. I didn’t question it, I didn’t have anything to really question. I was genuinely enjoying the trip through the woods, but deep down inside I couldn’t understand this feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach. It burned and churned my stomach. My only conclusion was that maybe I was hungry?*

*eventually I found a few berries, no idea what kind but they were pretty sweet, but had a tart aftertaste. It calmed my stomach, at least stopped the churning. Not long after words I stubled across a small brook, and knew that a little running water should lead to a larger Body of water. So I followed the brook to a stream that eventually led to the top of a Cliffside waterfall, it wasn’t more than 1 story tall but the view was just amazing, the rainbow mist coming from the falling water, the ripples that reflected the light on the waters surface. And the fact that there was more than likely fish in that pond made me think “why not” and I dove from the top of the cliff into the pond below.*

*I instantly regretted that decision. The water was frigid cold, literally enveloping every one of my senses with its freezing chill. As I looked around I didn’t see any fish, the water hurt my eyes and the need for breath drove me to the surface. It seems that this pond was much deeper than I had originally thought, I swam harder to the surface but it seemed like it was pointless. I was being pulled down by the current the waterfall was making. Panic, fear, self hatred for being stupid. I felt like I was actually going to die there, at the bottom of a pond, I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and as I watched the bubbles leave my mouth and my vision start to fade to black..*

*it was in those remaining seconds when my lungs filled with water and I hung there in a weightless mass, and my eyes started to close, that it happened. Something that made my whole body literally freeze up, more than bone chilling water could ever.*

*in front of me materialized figure of a man, one that was composed of a literal solid black form. He had no features, literally just a silhouette of a man, about the same size as me. At first I was suprised, but my suprise was the replaced with the excruciating pain, my whole body began to be enveloped with a burning sensation, it made me physically want to scream at the top of my lungs, except they were filled with water. The silent screams of agony, the writhing underwater as my past came up to the surface. I saw every atrocity I had committed out of lust, anger, envy, pride, came into my head. The torment it caused me, to others, I couldn’t not cry. The being in front of me smiled a large, razor sharp smile. As if it was laughing almost, mocking me and my horrible life I’ve had to endure, the secrets I haven’t told anyone that haunt me to this day. It seemed to enjoy this.*

*thoughts streamed through my head. How I can’t forgive myself for the things I’ve done, the guilt that forever binds me to the fate that I will have to face, much like this hell I’ve been going through at this exact moment. How horrible I’ve been to everyone I care about. The Pitiful, worthless sack of shit I am and how out of everyone I know I’m the worst. And how I know it is all true. My soul felt every tinge of despair and sadness, hatred and how if I near others all I will bring them is just that.*

*I sat there for what seems like years, contemplating every reason, every fault I’ve made, and how I deserve everything I’ve been given in my life because that’s what I gave out for years. I sat there accepting my fate, and to just endure it the best I can, no matter how unbearable it may seem. And just as I was about to go to sleep, I thought I felt a tug at my tail, I turned my head slightly to have my view drift to a soft light. My body was numb by now, I could barely think, I was apperently moving, but I couldn’t comprehend what was happening. Where was the grinning man? Am I dead? What’s going on? My vision went black for a while? I don’t know how long*

*when my eyes opened I was throwing up all the muddy, mucky water I had inside me, the ground was dirt and rocks. My everything hurt, my bones, my head, my skin. I felt like I was sitting on a block of ice, so cold that it burned. After ridding my body of what felt like gallons of water, I rolled on my back, my breathing was ragged. But God did it feel great to breathe.*

*I was delirious, the least to say, I was shivering intensely, coughing still as I tried to make out where I was. There was a small fire next to me, above It was a stand made of some sticks, which had a few fishes roasting on it, I wasn’t far from that waterfall. Again my mind was racing. How, who, what happened? Why am I alive? I began weeping, of joy? Sadness? I couldn’t tell, I just hated myself and everything I had done, the things I haven’t done, the things I should have done. But I was glad to be alive, to breathe and to appreciate not being at the bottom of that forsaken pond*

*I rolled onto my left side, still coughing up little bits of water. And I tried to push myself up off the ground. My arms were like rubber, and I collapsed audibly as my body hit the ground. I was exhausted, but I heard some footfalls from the right, I looked over to see a tall solid black creature walking this way and my heart felt like it was exploding in chest. Like I needed to run, run as fast as I could and get the fuck out of here before anything else could happen, but as I tried to get up and book it my body was still fighting me. My first step was pretty ok, the second didn’t get anywhere close and I sent myself sprawling across the ground. Knocking my head against something as a sharp pain knocked my senses out again.*

“No, no please oh please no, I’m sorry, I’m sorry so sorry”

*I was petrified, I was broken, and barely alive. And sure as hell didn’t want to go through that hell again. But I knew what I deserved would always come back and serve me my justice. I was holding my hands up pleaing for forgiveness and mercy, from this solid black creature with what looked like the smile on its face looking down at me, on my back accepting my defeat.*

*I couldn’t help but cry when this was happening, the creature grabbed both of my hands and held them together and shook me, In that moment I thought I was going to actually die this time when the shaking stopped. I was holding my precious breath when all I hear is*

“Calm the fuck down and stop being a little bitch, like holy fuck you’re a hand full” the voice was that of a woman’s

*my eyes were closed, but as I slowly opened them I realised that it was a solid black fox with eyes that were whitish gray. I looked at her confused and scared, and almost intranced. I couldn’t tell what was going on. I was completely confused, I stared at her blankly*

“You’re something else you know that, what dumbass jumps head first into a shallow pond?! I’m suprised you didn’t break fucking your neck! Then I’M the one that has to carry your fat ass from the bottom to surface AND drag you all the way over here AND take care of YOU when I can barely do that for MYSELF. AND NOT EVEN ONE THANK YOU!” Her eyes felt like ice, her stare was cold and angry. But behind the icy stare it felt like she was generally concerned for my safety and I hadn’t done anything but be a bother to her and that it was also annoying her.

*I looked her back in the eyes, glanced over to the waterfall in wonder and fear. Then back to her, both of her hands had mine in a vice grip. I swallowed the lumps in my throat that I had gotten from crying and looked at her and sniffled.*

“T-thank you, I-im sorry, I thought you were going to kill me…”

“Why the hell would I do that? If I really wanted you dead I would have left you in the pond”

“Paranoid…”

*she rolls her eyes and looks me directly in the eyes*

“I’m going to let your hands go, and you’re gonna stop freaking out on me alright?”

*I nod*

*she relased her grip from my hands, and took a step back, and looked at me with eyes that shouted “you don’t want to fuck with me” as much as they showed “are you okay?” *

*sat up on my elbows. We just stared at each other at first, but I cast my eyes away.*

“Really, thank you, in all honesty I felt like that’s how I was going to die”

*I picked up my eyes and looked back, her eyes seemed softer as she picked a seat across the fire from me and sat*

“You’re welcome” she said then staring into the fire

*as I tried to sit up my arm gives out and I collapse again into the dirt*

*she sighs heavily, gets up from her seat and comes over to my side as I struggle to sit up, when she pushes me back to the ground.*

“Sit still”

*I look at her slightly confused, but too weak to do much against it.*

*as I try sitting up again she pushes me back down, more aggressively than the last time and shoots me a warning glare. I decided to stop resisting, she picks up a fish on a stick and begins pulling the fish apart. Eventually handing me a few pieces.*

“You didn’t have t-” I began

“Shut up and eat” she stated

*I take my pieces of fish and eat quietly*

*After finishing our pieces of fish she goes and gets a small wooden cup that was made from a branch, and fills it up with water from the pond. I’m laying on my back overcome by fatigue, when she gets next to me sitting on her feet and picking my head up and resting it in her lap. She holds the cup up as I state.*

“You shouldn’t h-” I slowly started saying

“Don’t tell me what to do.” She stated

“Yes mam”

* I hesitantly take a sip of the water, it’s cold, but not as cold as before*

*I finish half of it and she takes the other half of the cup for herself, fatigue and exhaustion start overwhelming me. As I’m about to pass out I look up at her…*

“Thank you so much…”

And drift into my consciousness in the real world I wonder why I’m so weird. Why any of this happened, and what does it mean to me and those around me. I defiantly need to strive to be a better person to those around me and help them by being there in any shape, way, or form. And don’t blame anyone that doesn’t want to be around me. I don’t want to be around me. But if there are those that do want to be in my life I’ll do everything and anything in can to do what I can to help and support them, and try to not just better my life as much as I can but better the lives around me.

[mileynewsau]

Miley Cyrus Breaks Silence on Rootsy New Music, Fiance Liam Hemsworth & America: 'Unity Is What We Need'

Well above California’s Pacific Coast Highway, just off a canyon road, sits a small house with a wooden porch painted in the colors of the Pride flag. The outside is decorated with frog planters, ­butterfly chairs, a hot-pink pig-shaped grill, ­sunflowers and daisies. This is Rainbow Land, the boho recording studio whose owner, Miley Cyrus, is on this sunny April afternoon sitting cross-legged in a swivel chair before a sound board, dressed way down with unruly long hair, cutoffs and a vintage tee that reads “Malibu” on the front.

Cyrus -- who’s about to play me 10 songs off a new album that promises to (yet again) transform one of the most inimitable, unpredictable careers in recent pop ­history -- is somehow animated and serene at the same time. It’s clear from the way her words tumble forth that she’s ­breaking a months long self-imposed “media blackout” and eager to unpack her latest thinking on everything from her alienation from hip-hop to engaging with Donald Trump’s supporters.

“This is crazy,” she says with her ­signature raspy-voiced charm, “but I haven’t smoked weed in three weeks!” Cyrus -- who’s sitting across from a lighted wall plaque that reads “It’s 4:20 Somewhere” -- elaborates on why she decided to quit “for a second”: “I like to surround myself with people that make me want to get better, more evolved, open. And I was noticing, it’s not the people that are stoned. I want to be super clear and sharp, because I know exactly where I want to be.”

Where is that, exactly? It is, among other things, on her leafy Malibu compound that includes Rainbow Land. Cyrus, 24, shares the property with seven dogs, two pigs, two miniature horses and one Australian: fiance Liam Hemsworth, the actor with whom Cyrus reunited last year after a 2013 breakup. Hemsworth bought the property in 2014, but Cyrus moved in and has left her mark on it. (She also keeps a home with her mom, Tish, in Studio City.) In Malibu, when she’s not making music or doing two hours of Ashtanga yoga daily, Cyrus says she likes nothing better than walking her dogs or grocery shopping, where she’s generally unbothered. “I love talking to people, and I approach them in a normal, ‘Don’t treat me different, ’cause I’m not’ way. That’s what started this evolution for me, getting out of my Dead Petz phase,” she says, referring to her 2015 album, the tour for which featured her in a unicorn outfit with a strap-on phallus. “People stare at me anyway, but people stare at me a lot when I’m dressed as a ­fucking cat.”

On May 11, fans and haters alike will get a dose of New Miley with “Malibu,” the first single off an as-yet-untitled album coming later this year. It’s a breezy love song about Hemsworth -- gimmick-free pop-rock unlike anything she has recorded before, whether as Hannah Montana, the punky Disney princess who scored three Billboard 200 No. 1s in the ’00s; or as herself, on 2013’s daring Bangerz (another No. 1); or the straight-to-SoundCloud experiment Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz. When Cyrus sings, “I never would’ve believed you if three years ago you told me I’d be here writing this song,” she could as easily be referring to her music as to her relationship.

While Bangerz and Petz bore the unmistakable stamps of their respective collaborators, Mike Will Made-It and Wayne Coyne of The Flaming Lips, the new album will be Cyrus’ most DIY to date. She wrote the lyrics and melodies ­herself, and producer-writer Oren Yoel (who co-wrote the Bangerz track “Adore You,” which hit No. 21 on the Billboard Hot 100) plays all the ­instruments. Cyrus wrote one song for Hillary Clinton and another for women in the workplace, but overall, the album’s less explicitly political than it is personal. That extends to the music, which adds an unprecedented dose of twang to a mix that includes quiet acoustic turns and epic pop. “This is Miley leaning into her roots more than I’ve ever heard,” says her father, country singer and actor Billy Ray Cyrus, who tells a story of Waylon Jennings teaching a young Miley guitar chords at the kitchen table. “For her, this is honest.” It’s also a showcase for her voice, one of the most expressive in music. “My main concern isn’t radio,” says Cyrus, whose “Wrecking Ball” spent three weeks at No. 1 in 2013. “I truly don’t even listen to it.”

Cyrus was first inspired to reach beyond her circle of “outspoken liberals” and ­cultivate ­country fans and red staters in 2016, when she began as a coach on NBC’s stalwart talent competition The Voice. (She will rejoin for season 13 this fall.) “I like talking to people that don’t agree with me, but I don’t think I can do that in an aggressive way,” says Cyrus. “I don’t think those people are going to listen to me when I’m sitting there in nipple pasties, you know?”

After Trump was elected ­president, Cyrus -- who first ­supported Bernie Sanders and, when she won the Democratic ­nomination, Clinton -- launched #HopefulHippies, an initiative of her Happy Hippie youth-activism nonprofit that encourages people to “turn emotion into action.” “I have to ask myself, ‘How am I going to create real change?’” she says, “and not just ­fucking preach to the choir anymore.” With the new album, Cyrus hopes to reach the other side of the aisle. “This record is a reflection of the fact that yes, I don’t give a fuck, but right now is not a time to not give a fuck about people,” she says. “I’m ­giving the world a hug and saying, ‘Hey, look. We’re good -- I love you.’ And I hope you can say you love me back.”

Where exactly did you write ­“Malibu”?

On the way to The Voice. I drive myself everywhere, but that day I decided to Uber, and I was trying not to sing out loud because someone else was in the car.

People might call it sentimental.

They’re going to talk about me if I come out of a restaurant with Liam. So why not put the power back in my relationship and say, “This is how I feel”?

After you guys broke up, you said something like, “I’m so immersed in work, I can’t even think about it.”

Yeah, but also ’cause I needed to change so much. And changing with someone else not changing like that is too hard. Suddenly you’re like, “I don’t recognize you anymore.” We had to refall for each other.

The new album is pretty singer-­songwriter-y, no?

Yeah. But not granola. I don’t listen to Ed Sheeran and John Mayer and stuff.

Did folk singer Melanie Safka [with whom Cyrus performed in 2015] ­influence you?

She did, and I grew up with her. But I also love that new Kendrick [Lamar] song [“Humble”]: “Show me somethin’ natural like ass with some stretch marks.” I love that because it’s not “Come sit on my dick, suck on my cock.” I can’t listen to that anymore. That’s what pushed me out of the hip-hop scene a little. It was too much “Lamborghini, got my Rolex, got a girl on my cock” -- I am so not that.

I was torn on whether I was going to work with certain producers that I really like. But I feel if we’re not on the same page ­politically ... My record is political, but the sound bite doesn’t stop there. Because you can write something beautiful and you know E! News will ruin our lives and say, “This is a political record.” Because then I’m the Dixie Chicks and I’m getting my album smashed in the streets, and that’s not what I want. I want to talk to people in a compassionate, understanding way -- which people aren’t doing.

What appealed to you about The Voice?

I’m down for hanging with Blake [Shelton]. I actually want to take ­advantage of the fact that he’s there, [because] his fans don’t really take me seriously as a ­country artist. One, I haven’t given them that music. But I’ve got a tattoo of Johnny Cash’s autograph that he gave me when I was a ­little girl that says, “I’m in your corner.” Dolly Parton is my ­fucking ­godmother. The fact that ­country music fans are scared of me, that hurts me. All the ­nipple pastie shit, that’s what I did because I felt it was part of my political movement, and that got me to where I am now. I’m evolving, and I surround myself with smart people that are evolved.

But we’ve seen the way that Madonna and Lady Gaga get asked, “Is this just another costume? Another phase?”

I think [Madonna and Gaga] are ­enlightened. I ­fucking hate it when people can’t adjust. I used to [resist changing]. But I haven’t smoked weed in three weeks, which is the longest I’ve ever [gone without it]. I’m not doing drugs, I’m not drinking, I’m completely clean right now! That was just something that I wanted to do.

Is it hard to not smoke?

It’s easy, dude. When I want something, it’s fucking easy for me. But if anyone told me not to smoke, I would have not done it. It’s because it was on my time. I know exactly where I am right now. I know what I want this record to be. And not in the sense of manipulation -- wanting something from my fans or the audience, like some slimy thing -- “How do I get attention?” I never thought about that. Dude, I was shocked that people gave a fuck about the [MTV Video Music Awards in 2013, when she ­performed with Robin Thicke] -- the ­twerking, the teddy bear. It’s a totally ­different time, and I don’t think that would freak people out anymore.

Our perceptions of a lot of things are changing at lightning speed. Still, there’s an audience that’s maybe a little scared of you, those who might have a tendency to vilify the “other.”

I was talking about this with my sister [Noah], who’s 17, and she’s doing music right now. She basically grew up in L.A. She’s never known anything different. She doesn’t even know she’s open-minded, it’s the only kind of mind she has ever known. It’s mind-boggling to me that there was even a controversy around me having black dancers. That became a thing, where people said I was taking advantage of black culture, and with Mike [WiLL Made-It] -- what the fuck? That wasn’t true. Those were the dancers I liked!

When I met Pharrell [Williams], before “Blurred Lines,” before “Happy,” people wouldn’t take meetings with me because they said, “He hasn’t had a hit in 10 years.” They wanted to put me with the Dr. Lukes of the world, the Max Martins, and put me through the fucking assembly line, and I said, “No. This is someone who actually cares about me. This is someone I feel safe with.” I got completely shut out, and I had to just trust myself. What feels right to me feels right to my fans, because they know some dude in a suit didn’t tell me to do it. And by the way, I brought “Wrecking Ball” to Luke. No one put me in the room with Luke. I had done “Party in the U.S.A.” with him, and that’s just someone I thought could handle that sound. Did you ever get to come to a Bangerz show?

Yeah, I did.

I was crazy about making the tongue slide work. I was so ­embarrassed to be on the red carpet and so many of those fucking disgusting ­photographers would tell me to blow a kiss, and that’s not me! I don’t want to blow you a kiss. I didn’t know what to do with my face, so I stuck my tongue out, and it became a rebellious, punk-rock thing.

The Dead Petz track “BB Talk,” which calls out a man for his “baby ­talking,” seems to reject a similar kind of ­gender standard.

I wish it would’ve gotten some ­attention. No one saw the video! It was a real rant. Dating a musician [like me] is probably the worst thing ever, because you always end up ­having your shit in songs. It’s just ­inevitable. But I’m just that way. I’m a little bit boyish. But I can also be super femme and dress as a bunny rabbit. Who I’m with has nothing to do with sex -- I’m super open, pansexual, that’s just me.

Do you want your dudes to be dudes?

Not even. That really grosses me out. I always get in trouble for ­generalizing straight men, ’cause straight men can be my worst nightmare ­sometimes. And I’m with a straight dude. But he’s always like, “Well, don’t call me that!” I ask him sometimes, “Do you like being a boy?” And he’s like, “I don’t really think about it.” And that’s crazy to me, because I think about being a girl all the time. I’m always like, “It’s weird that I’m a girl, because I just don’t feel like a girl, and I don’t feel like a boy. I just feel like nothing.” So when someone’s too ­masculine, that really grosses me out.

But then, girls really make me sad a lot of the time too, especially right now. I think fashion has taken us a little bit downhill. I can only speak for the years that I’ve been alive, but I don’t know if it has ever been so important to “fit in.” It’s not about standing out right now. Which is so weird, because it seems like for the really unique, smart kids in this generation, it’s all about standing out. I love seeing these kids on Instagram that dress fucking dope. This whole world right now is so divided, in the arts, fashion -- everything.

The country is certainly very divided.

I like the way I think right now. But don’t Trump supporters like the way they think? So I’ve also got to be open with the way I approach people with my opinions. That’s the only way to make real change. And it’s not because I want to sell records! I know now the ways that don’t work. Because I went really hard during the ­election. But at the end of the day, we lost. We won, but because the system is fucked up, we lost. I thought, “OK. I learned my lesson on this one.”

Did you have to go into The Voice right after Election Day?

That next day, dude. I wanted to go to rehearsals. Liam was like, “Just don’t go. You’re not there. And you don’t know how everyone feels on that set.” Everyone’s from all different parts of the country, so he was like, “Don’t go and get into it with ­people right now.” Because clearly ­unity is what we need.

You posted a tearful Instagram video the day after the election, and I tweeted, “Love you, Miley.” And so many alt-right dudes responded, “Are you just trying to fuck her?”

That’s them sexualizing me, because they think that you couldn’t take me seriously. The first thing I got on my Instagram when I posted that was people saying, “You said you were going to move. When are you going to move?” It’s not time for me to leave now, dude. I’ve got to be here. I’ve got to glue this place back together, because I’m from Tennessee -- that state [went to] Donald Trump. I’m such a dreamer, and I know a lot of things that I’ve wanted to do people said weren’t possible. When I started Happy Hippie -- this is before Caitlyn Jenner transitioned, before this became something that is a part of the culture...

Leelah Alcorn -- a 17-year-old ­transgender girl who committed ­suicide in December 2014 -- brought a new awareness to transgender issues.

Yes. I was on a Christmas trip, and I was like, “How am I sitting here about to open presents and someone has taken their own life?” I started Happy Hippie because I never thought we would see this day where you have the Laverne Coxes of the world get not only trans roles, but female roles. And I realized the voice I had. That’s why I brought Jesse [Helt, a homeless man, to the 2014 VMAs], because it felt wrong for me to go and get an award, celebrating me getting naked and riding a fucking wrecking ball around for a day. I mean, what would I have said? “Thanks, uh... thanks to [“Wrecking Ball” video ­director] Terry Richardson”? That would have been so weird.

Do you think you’ve managed to bring your politics into The Voice?

By sitting there after the election in head-to-toe pink, while on the inside being a gender-neutral, ­sexually fluid person, hopefully that was saying ­something. I needed some sparkle in my life, to make me able to deal. Radiating love is ­something that is important to me -- ­hopefully, that is being political.

This article originally appeared in the May 13 issue of Billboard.  

[pgitlin]

Cuba continued - final post

Saturday morning 18 March

From the port, we drove west along the Malecón, the long seafront road between Old Havana and Vadero where our hotel was.

 Our guide for the day was Katia, a beautiful young woman, who had come in place of Roly who was in hospital suffering from kidney stones. She was a deight, a fount of knowledge on Cuba’s colonial and recent history, who freely shared her experience of life both during Fidel Castro’s era and now under Raoul Castro.  She had been well briefed by Roly as to what our interest were and did her utmost to accommodate these.

 Our driver was a young man whose pride in his Chevy Bel Air was obvious.  The car belonged to his uncle, but he took car of it and used it as a taxi.  At each stop he leapt out of his seat to open, but more importantly, to close the door so that no one banged it!  He was also a musician; like most Cubans he has several jobs in order to earn sufficient money to live adequately.

 Katia confirmed what Roly had told us at the beginning of our trip; the average salary of a teacher in Cuba is 25 CUC (Cuban convertible currency equivalent to 1 euro), and senior doctors earn an average of 50 CUC a month.  Granted that every Cuban citizen receives ration coupons for basic foodstuffs (see here http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Dividing-the-Pie-Cubas-Ration-System-after-50-years-20150302-0029.htmlsic), and prices of whatever fresh fruit and vegetables are available in the market are controlled by the government, that is still a very low income on which to live. Consquently almost all Cubans supplement their income in a variety of ways.  One finds teachers, university professors and others working as cleaners, waiters or doormen in the international hotels as not only the wages, but more especially the tips, provide valuable additional income. Families also often live communially so as to ensure that everyone has better access to the things which make life a little more comfortable.  We also learned that many Cubans have family or friends living abroad.  They are permitted to send gifts to their Cuban relatives.  This accounted for the fact that almost all the young people we saw were wearing smart sneakers (trainers), jeans and other clothes which would not disgrace a teenager or young person living in the States or Europe.

 We began our tour with Katia by visiting one of the 4 synagogues in Havana.  It was undergoing renovation so we were unable to see the main sanctuary. However the community hall was being used for the Saturday morning service and was well attended, with people arriving all the time while we were there.  The Jewish population of around 15,000 before the Revolution has diminished to around 1,600 nowadays, but it appears to be an active rainbow-coloured community.

 From there we went to the Parque John Lennon, aka Beatles’ Square in Vedaro where apparently during the 70’s and 80’s young people would flock at night under cover of darkness to listen to Western Pop music. There is now a statue of John Lennon on a bench in the square which is a popular place for families with their children on the weekends.

 We drove from there around the city to the Presidential Palace, currently undergoing renovation.  It is an enormous edifice which was used by Cuba’s presidents until the Revolution.  Fidel Castro did not live there, but apparently in many different places around Cuba, which were kept secret as he feared assassination by the CIA.  Then we went on to the Plaza de Armas, the oldest square in historic Havana founded in the 1520’s by the Spanish.  It was here in the Castle, remains of which can still be visited, that the Spanish kept the treasures plundered from the New World before being shipped to Spain.  It is a lovely square, filled with flowering trees and Royal Palms.  

 Just an aside, the Royal Palm is Cuba’s national tree. Roly told us that there is an anecdote that this is because the Royal Palm is like the Cuban people – it blows almost horizontal during hurricanes, but when the storm is over, it springs back upright, and the Cubans weather adversity in the same way!

 We walked from the square through Old Havana, once again admiring the wealth of architectural styles, colonial mansions, neo-classical buildings, and many Art Deco buidlings.   The streets were filled with people, and being Saturday, many seemed to be locals.  There were street musicians, a troupe of dancers on stilts, dressed in flamboyant costumes, and vendors of fried pastries.

 We visited a beautiful Art Nouveau house with rich stained glass windows and doors, and a cool plant filled interior courtyard.  It is now a perfumery, beautifully restored and owned by the government.  The Hotel Raquel was also a delight, this was a kosher hotel and the Art Nouveau interior reception rooms are an exquisite example of the period, again with beautiful stained glass windows and screens, many featuring the Minorah and other symbols of Jewish culture.

 Our driver met us here and we drove to Neuva Vedado, a suburb of Havana, to La Casa, a restaurant owned and run by a family in their house. The food was delicious, lamb stewed in red wine and served (of course!) with rice and black beans.  There was also steamed cassava and fried banana as well as a side salad.  The restaurant is certainly worth visiting if you are ever in Havana.

 After lunch we enjoyed a drive around Nuevo Vedado which was built by the affluent middle classes during the 40’s and 50’s.  Here many of the large mansions are now ambassadorial residences, and the more modest houses have been restored.  There were good examples of domestic architecture of the 1950’s, reminiscent of the suburbs of Miami.

 Then it was on to a large forested park on the edge of Nuevo Vedado.   Katia told us that this had been a very popular place for families to gather a day out together while she was growing up.  It is very lush and green, with a river running through the middle.  Sadly nowadays it is full of the detritus of animal sacrifices made by adherents of the African-Cuban religions Santeria and Palo Monte., and we passed several sites full of feathers, skeletons of birds covered in flies and maggots, and shredded paper and plastic.

 (Thirty-four percent of Cubans are followers of these religons, as opposed to thirty percent who are Roman Catholics.) There was in fact a sacrificial ritual taking place in the river when we arrived, and I watched fascinated as 3 men and their Babalu (priest) performed their rituals. Fortunately I did not see them actually kill the chickens, but there was much chanting, dipping the dead chickens into the water, and sprinkling their blood into the water and onto the ground. More groups of families arrived while we were there, all going off to various places alongside the river to offer their own sacrifices.

 From here we drove back through Miramar, another favoured and affluent pre-revolutionary residential area.  There are many grand mansions here, mostly embassies, including the enormous Russian compound with its brutal constructivist building, rising up above the flat landscape and lower rise buildings surrounding it.

 I always enjoyed the drive along El Malecón, the broad 8 km esplanade along the sea from Miramar to the mouth of the Havana Harbour.  The side opposite the sea wall is filled with what in their day were beautiful apartment houses and individual mansions. There are many Art Deco gems and several neo-classical buildings, most now crumbling echoes of their former splendor. However there a signs of regeneration with some being restored.  I fear though that if unrestricted development is allowed as Cuba becomes more capitalist, that the glory of this esplanade with be ruined by high rise hotels and apartment buildings, much as has happened in Monaco.

 At the end of the day, as we were saying our farewells to Katia, we heard once again how hitch-hiking is the main way that most people iin Cuba get around because the public transport system is so inadequate. She told us that our taxi drive lived en route to where she lives, about 2 hours from Havana.  From his town she would hitch-hike the remaining distance which was about 15 kilometres.  She also told us that this was a completely safe way to travel, and that she in fact often hitch-hiked with her 4 year old daughter if she needed to get somewhere. We had also learned during the day that Katia had been a primary school teacher and then a regional television reporter and presenter.  She had met her husband at the television station where he had been a script writer and programme developer.  They had both decided to give up those jobs because they had become increasingly unhappy at having to present only approved news.  Katia said they had been very frustrated when they found bad practice or incompetence in local services but were not allowed to report this.  Now she and her husband both worked as independent tourist guides, a role which she fulfills competently and expertly in our opinion.

 Our final day, Sunday 19th March, was spent rather lazily.  We walked across the road from our hotel, the Melia Cohiba, to the Riviera Hotel, the hotel developed by the notorious Meyer Lansky, the money man for the Mob in the 50’s. It is slowly being restored by Caribe Hotels after having been neglected for many years and is an example of late 1950’s interior design.  The lobby/lounge area, dining room and swimming pool are beautifully restored to their original state, and one can imagine the gangsters and their friends partying here and in the Casino (which is not open) during its heyday.

 It was here in the lobby that we met some Canadians who were about to go off with a guide to see the Synagogue which we hadn’t been able to see the day before.  Yasmin took advantage of their offer to join them, but Brian and I went back to our hotel and spent the morning lazing at the pool.  

 All too soon it was time to leave for the airport and our flight home to Nice via Madrid.  It was sad to say goodbye as we had fallen in love with Cuba and its friendly people, its falling down buildings, and its indomitable spirit.  I have no doubt that if at all possible, we will visit again.