#for the record i think no. it's a chat program which is a different thing

[zanreosauce]

been curious about this for a while since i've seen people call it one so:

reblog for spread ect.

[bp-zb1fics]

My heart keeps on

pairing: na kamden x secret s/o reader

pronouns: none used

genre: canonverse  (finale), angst ish, fluff

tw/tags: long distance relationship, very emo in general, a lot of tears LIKE A LOT, you surprise kamden twice, citing ep 12 as my ref for all this, kinda secret relationship, realities of dating a trainee/idol, reunions so more emo, cuddles, cheek kissing, using a pic as a page break, yes the title is fr kam’s rap in switch ty for noticing 💜

wc: 2178

summary: kamden hasn’t seen you in over a year. you surprise him.

a/n this was supposed to be a gift fic for 101 followers but y'all are 200 now 😭😱 omg so thanks so much for supporting my little blog!!! I know this took a little longer than expected so thanks so much for patiently waiting! 💜Special thanks to the anon who sent me an ask about missing kamden and especially to @seok02 for giving me the motivation to finish this fic and kinda just helping me with the overall process 💜💜💜

check my pinned for more fics!

“Star Creator, we always thank you and love you!”

They wrap up the pajama party livestream, thanking the staff and staying to chat as the cameras are switched off. (Or so they think, lol)

“The vibe was pretty good,” Kamden tells Matthew. The other boy agreeing instantly.

“I think we were able to show new sides of ourselves.”

Suddenly the staff play a recording, surprising them all. It’s video messages from Star creators all over the world for them to watch. Kamden grabs a fluffy pillow as he watches everyone slowly get emotional. Seungeon cries. Zhang Hao cries. Yujin cries. Almost everyone is crying. 

Kamden gets a message from a fan in Norway, which is pretty cool. Then, something he never expected happens. He recognises your voice before he even realises it’s you.

“Kamden, annyeong~”

The pillow falls off his lap.

It’s you. It’s really you. You who he hasn’t been able to video call in a few days because of practice and your schedule and the time difference. He almost calls out your name but it sits tight in his throat, unable to reach you. 

You’re on screen, wearing one of the shirts you’ve stolen from him, holding onto the plushie he bought for you at that silly little shop after you insisted it looked like him. God, he hasn’t seen you in over a year.

“Dude, you okay?” Jay asks him softly.

He must look like an idiot, eyes blown wide, mouth slightly open, hanging onto every word that comes out of your mouth.

“I’ve been watching Boy’s Planet since the teasers were released. And you’ve always been my favourite.”

Kamden knows. You’ve been spamming your chat with him with all these little clips from the PR videos to the behind the scenes footage. Screenshots of you voting for him on the Mnet+ app, comments you’ve left on his fancam videos, even the funny memes you found of him on Twitter all greet him when he opens his phone after practice.

Hope my favourite trainee is doing well and staying healthy! Take care of yourself and know I’m always rooting for you! I love and miss you so much! Hoping for your debut!

Your messages are his favourite. And speaking of:

“I’ve made a little compilation of photos right here. I hope you like how I decorated them, I really tried my best~”

All the trainees ooh and ahh over the handmade album you bring up to the screen compiled with photos of him from the program and cute little notes and stickers. Kamden can’t move, can’t talk. 

Because that’s your album, the one you had insisted on starting when he and you began dating. He knows that if you flipped to the other pages, it would be full of photos of both of you, dates, anniversaries, birthdays, holidays, awards that either of you might have won, events that were important to you or him or both of you, everything carefully labelled. It was one of your favourite things to print out all the photos and he’d help you decorate them.

He can’t believe you kept that up after he left for Korea.

“You’ve stood out to me in every performance. You’re so talented and so many people are cheering you on so please remember to have confidence in yourself.” Your voice wavers a little towards the end of the sentence and as slight as it is, he catches that. He knows you.

Kamden only registers the wetness on his cheeks when the tears are already going, fast and furious. He reaches up, trying to dab them away gently with his sleeve. On screen, you blink rapidly and he knows you’re trying your best not to cry either. Even thousands of miles away, on a video you probably recorded weeks ago, you and him are still in sync. Maybe the rest of the trainees don’t see it but he does. Of course he does.

“I hope you take care of yourself always. Make sure to eat enough and get enough rest. I’ll be voting for you everyday so just do your best in practice and performing and us Star Creators will take care of the rest. We’ll support you so you can achieve your dream of debuting~”

To everyone else, you were just a particularly supportive fan. But to Kamden, you were his person, the one he was devoted to and he can’t help it, sobbing a little into his sleeve. Several pats on the back as the other trainees around him try to comfort him. He can’t help but cry even more. Why were you so far away? Why couldn’t you be here where he could hug you and kiss you and just be with you?

“Na Kamden hwaiting! Saranghae~”

That’s it. He turns and buries his face fully into his hands as if doing that would soak up all the tears that won’t stop coming. Matthew and Jay have scooted over, voices overlapping as they rub his shoulders and back and ask what’s wrong. Even Zhang Hao’s hovering a little on the side, equally concerned.

Maybe he’ll say something later, when there are no mics and no cameras. He’s been training for years and you’ve both agreed that in a career like the one he aspires to get into, keeping it quiet would be the best. Idols don’t date. Idols don’t have a significant other in a whole other country that they call when they can find free time. Even when it comes to casual conversation where there isn’t a camera directly trained on them, Kamden just doesn’t say anything.

They do ask him later. And when he says you’re a close friend he hasn’t seen in awhile, their faces light up in recognition. He leaves it at that.

You walk into the arena with a little trepidation. 

It’s all been a blur. Packing your things, flying to Korea, meeting up with Kamden’s mom and brother who have been kind enough to get you a ticket pass for the family section. Of course, he has no idea you’re even here.

You’re quite a bit more nervous about surprising him than you thought. While you’d give anything to see him again, it was a little risky in such a public venue with so many people watching and cameras everywhere filming almost any angle. Maybe you can be discreet enough if you do break down but Kamden’s on stage, the spotlights bright and on him. Fans are probably filming him on their own devices.

At this point, you’ll just have to trust your boyfriend to keep his reactions to a believable level. You don’t stand too close to his family, trying to keep your distance but also staying near enough that you’d be in the same general direction if Kamden glanced your way.

You end up on the side, along with a few other people who seem to be dressed as discreetly as you, masks on too. The looks you exchange seem to come to a general understanding of why you’re all here and who you’re here for.

Kamden doesn’t notice you when the Top 18 first file in. You don’t expect him to but you see him though. There’s a growing knot in your stomach, emotions welling up from actually seeing him not through a screen but so close that you could walk on stage and touch him. You don’t do that, of course. But still, he’s so near that it almost hurts not being able to throw yourself into his arms for a hug.

You’ve wanted this so much, especially after more than a year of not seeing him. But right now, you feel frozen. You only watch as they start getting into positions for the signal song. Fans are cheering, even the family members and friends of the trainees are calling out words of support. Still, your voice sticks to your throat, as much as you want to shout out, something keeps you from doing it.

Good thing Kamden’s brother does it for you. It probably surprises you and his mom more than it should but who can blame you when he almost never does that? Kamden’s surprised too, maybe it’s a twin thing but he immediately stands up straighter looking for where his brother’s voice is coming from.

And then he sees you.

His eyes meet yours and they widen considerably. His mouth even drops open a little. You’re smiling so much and you’re sure it shows from how your eyes crinkle, just a little glossy. But you’re not going to cry just yet. Instead, you wave at him. He can’t do much more than give a little wave back before they seem to be ready to start filming. 

Suddenly, your heart feels just a little lighter. You step back and watch him dance the signal song. You’ve seen him do it a thousand times, every time you stream his video. It feels so surreal, being able to see it like this, right in front of you. When the song ends, you see his eyes flick back in your direction, searching for your face. When he finds it, his expression brightens.

It’s amazing, watching someone you love do what they love. Sure, you’ve seen Kamden dance, you’ve gotten him to sing and even rap for you a little before. But it’s different with the stage and the lights and the crowd and he looks so comfortable there. You laugh when you see the Jelly Pop teaser, maybe you’ll get him to wear that dress again, just so you can get photos. The final song is almost bittersweet and you try your best but a few tears do slip out.

He’s messaged you about barely making it to the finale, you’ve monitored the program, watched his rank. You both know his chances are slim. But they’re possible. Still, he’s told you that he’s prepared for the equal possibility of not debuting. His company should have plans, he assured you. You watch him walk over to every one of his fellow trainees who’ve made it to debut, offering hugs and congratulating them. And as the number of spots dwindle, you keep your hopes up but you begin to accept it as well.

By the time they’ve called third, you watch as he walks over to Matthew, one of the trainees he’s closest with from what he’s told you. Maybe he lingers a little longer. Maybe you catch his eyes as he looks over. Hwaiting! You mouth, shaking your fists a little in encouragement. The emotions are swirling inside you. When the camera pans over to him, he’s teary eyed, covering his face the way he always does when he gets like that. You can’t help it. The emotions are starting to spill over and you breathe between the occasional tears.

After they announce the ninth place, everything suddenly starts moving so fast and so slow. They wrap up filming. The audience begins to file out. The cameras switch off one by one. You go backstage.

When he walks in, mic gone, still in that uniform that you keep teasing about, you don’t hold back. His arms wrap around you and you fall into him, holding him so tightly you wish you didn’t need to let go. And then both of you start crying.

“I missed you so much, Kam.” You’re holding onto the fabric of his jacket, gripping at it so desperately you’re almost afraid it might rip.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were coming?” He manages, his head somehow buried on your shoulder, tears soaking the cloth of your shirt.

“Surprise?” It comes out weak, a little shaky as you both laugh brokenly through your sobs.

“I can’t believe you’re here.” He holds you even tighter, like he’s afraid you might fade into thin air.

“I’ll be here for a while.” You tell him. “I wish I could’ve come sooner but-”

“It’s okay seriously, you’re here now.” If he squeezes you anymore, you feel like your heart might burst. “I’m so happy to see you.”

He goes back with you. There’s few brief introductions to Jay and Matthew and a few other trainees he’s grown close with, nudges and knowing looks and raised eyebrows. But it’s nothing to stress about, you manage to make it back under the radar.

You feel him watching you as you grab a few more things from your suitcase after both of you have showered and you’re wearing another one of his old shirts. Before you know it, your legs are tangled together, your head resting on his shoulder, your hands intertwined. 

“I don’t want to sleep,” he says quietly. “I don’t want to wake up and find out this is a dream and you aren’t here.”

“You aren’t dreaming, Kam.” You reassure him, lifting your head to kiss his cheek. Even in the privacy of this room, he blushes.

“Even if I didn’t make it, at least I have you.”

“You do, Kam. You always do.” And you know he will make it, one day.

[kleyamarki]

I’d love to hear some library stories!

Okay friends here is my support your local public library manifesto:

I have worked in a public library for a little over a year now, and I worked in an academic library for a year and a half. They’re two different beasts, and I love both, but public libraries will always have a special place in my heart.

Lately, as I’m sure you know, public libraries in the US have been under attack by people who really don’t understand public libraries and all that their employees do.

So, here are some of the things that I’ve done in my year of public library work that people outside of it might not think of:

1. I’ve taught several older adults how to text on their iPhone for the first time, and how to use their smart phones generally.

2. I led teens through a library orientation to show them all we have to offer (which is pretty important when we regularly have 50-60 teens hanging out at my branch after school).

3. I’ve helped people over chat reference locate information and obituaries for their relatives. This involved looking through old newspapers and databases — it was really cool and the patrons are always extremely thankful!!

4. I helped a woman locate her many-greats grandfather’s civil war records using our local history collection.

5. I’ve printed countless tax forms for people and made appointments for them to get their taxes done at the library for free.

6. I’ve developed relationships with the local community college and a local university to get more college students to use the public library and to get them out into their community. (Let me brag here: this is in the strategic plan to be completed by fiscal year 2026, and I, a 23 year old library associate, have already been doing this, teehee)

7. I set up 4 all-ages displays and 2 adult displays this year alone, and I have 2 more I’m setting up in September.

8. I’ve helped kids locate materials for homework in books and using our online resources.

9. I’ve helped with our branch’s Lunch at the Library program, which feeds any kid up to age 18 for free every weekday during the summer.

10. I’ve helped people young and old with resumes, job applications, and helped them find career readiness and test prep materials countless times.

Libraries are SO much more than just books!!!! We have online resources, puzzles, board games, cameras, fishing poles, cake pans, and so much more!! We have programming for ALL ages! I specifically program for 20s-30s! Check us out!!!!! And don’t forget: public libraries are some of the last spaces that you can exist in without having to spend money. They need to be protected, appreciated, and most of all VISITED!!!

Go get a library card and check us out!!!!!!

[notsocheezy]

Brain Curd #176

Brain Curds are lightly edited flash fiction - practically first drafts - posted daily (haven't missed one yet!) and sometimes written with the express intention of being terrible… but, you know, in an endearing way. Please like and reblog if you enjoy - the notes keep me going!

He's gonna be Frank with you. Read the rest of The Frank Program here on Tumblr!

Last time on The Frank Program, Frank caught Daryl watching something on his phone during recording, and he didn't like what he saw.

Daryl exploded out the door to the parking lot, anger in his stride, fear in his posture, and tears in his eyes. Chad, leaning on a car, got up immediately when he saw the kid running off.

“Hey!” He called out. Daryl wasn’t stopping for anything.

Cautiously, Chad poked his head back inside. Frank was stoic, silent in his host’s seat, a lit cigarette in his left hand. He took a drag from it and sighed out a puff of smoke.

“Come in, Mr. Graves. We oughtta finish the show.”

“You alright, bud?”

There were bags under Frank’s eyes that Chad didn’t recall seeing before. “I’m plenty content to finish recording.”

Graves sat down in his chair. The corner behind him was conspicuously empty. The chair which had been there before sat askew and on its side at the other end of the room.

“You know, Mr. Graves -”

“You can just call me Chad.”

“Well, Chad…” Frank took another hit. “I ain’t touched a cigarette in ten years. Kept this one in the studio just to prove to myself I didn’t need it.” He chuckled. “Funny how I keep proving myself wrong, huh?”

“How’s that?”

“Oh, the usual. I think o’ someone as a friend, or a wife, or… or a son. And I come to find they never were, really. They stab me in the goddamn back.”

“I take it that your chat didn’t go too well?”

Frank sneered. “You have no idea.”

“I’m sure he’ll come around. You know teenagers, I mean… I remember when I was a teenager, I got in arguments with my parents all the time.”

“We’re no stranger to arguments, Chad. This is somethin’ else. I’m losing my boy.”

“What exactly happened?”

Frank huffed and smothered his cigarette in the ashtray. “We better get back to my prepared questions.”

“Yeah…” Chad nodded slowly. “Alright.”

Frank shuffled through pages, looking for a question he still felt like asking. “Uh… Do you and your friends ever have creative differences when working on the show?”

“I don’t think we’d be as effective at doing our jobs if we did. Really, all four of us try to stay out of the creative side of things most of the time. Our producer decides what the story is for a given episode. He takes our full night of footage, and our analysis of the findings, and he gives that to his editor to make the pieces fit together.”

“Does the show replicate the experience of actually bein’ there, do ya think?”

“To be honest with you, I don’t usually watch it. Kind of a ‘been there, done that’ situation. But I have been channel surfing before and caught a rerun from a few years ago, and it definitely brought back memories.”

“Well that’s nice. Nice to have something to look back on. I guess I’ve got that too, huh? A little piece of the past… to bring back memories.”

“Yeah, I guess so. The nice thing about the show is it cuts out all the boring bits. The parts where we’re just sitting around, whispering to each other like we’re trying not to wake up the parents at a sleepover.”

“Right,” Frank said, a lump in his throat. “Those are the parts you really miss when they’re gone.”

Chad tilted his head to look around his microphone. “It’s gonna be okay, Frank. He’ll -”

“Mr. Graves, I don’t want another grown man to see me cry. So thank you for being here, but I must be signing off. Go ahead and tell the people where to find you.”

“I’m on all the socials as @GravesGhostVisions, so just search that up if you want to see where we’re headed next.”

“Thank you. This has been The Frank Program…” Frank struggled to get the words out without letting tears come with. “So long.”

[tryslora]

Balticon Wrap-Up

This past weekend I attended Balticon and participated in programming and once again, I had a blast.

For anyone who has come to my website/social media from the convention, welcome! If you’re looking to find me on other social media, I recommend Bluesky and Mastodon for random chit-chat and quick commentary, or Pillowfort/Tumblr/Dreamwidth for blogging. You may also get random fandom content on Pillowfort/Tumblr or well, anywhere I can boost someone else’s posts. I may be writing original work now, but I am still a fan at heart.

I am Tryslora everywhere. <3 Hope to meet new folks!

Balticon is one of my childhood conventions (I grew up in SFF fandom starting when I was 12 years old). I went in high school, in college when I could make it there, and it was my husband’s second ever SFF convention back when we were first dating. We continued going as adults until our son’s frustrations with traveling, and the kids activity schedules impinged on our ability to attend conventions. After all, the long drive made it one of the more difficult conventions to attend.

Last year, my son was doing his second co-op in Baltimore, and we realized that hey, if we get to see him (and there’s a chance he might settle in Baltimore for a while eventually) then we can go back to Balticon! And we are so glad we did.

On the fandom side of things, I enjoy spending time in the gaming room (Hal Haag, we miss you, and I think of you every time I game at Balticon). Spent some money in the dealers’ room, and have a list of things I plan to buy after the convention as well. I tried to buy lovely art, but was overbid, then missed the auction because I was on a panel. Sadness!

But, panels! I had a blast, and was so excited to get to see friends I’d made last year, and make new ones. I was on five panels between Saturday and Sunday.

Before I get into the panels I was on, I’d like to compliment the programming group at Balticon, headed by Yakira Heistand. The selection was amazing, and there are some virtual panels I’m hoping to watch recordings of once they are posted. There were so many things I wanted to go see, and nowhere near enough time. Fantastic work!

Book Covers For Indie Authors

My first panel of the convention was Sunday morning. We had a great discussion of what goes into making a cover that will reach out and grab readers (bright colors, easy to see/read in a thumbnail, fonts). We talked about traditional published covers, and the differences between those and indie covers, as well as why do some covers look more traditional than others. I, of course, brought up seeking out fan artists because I’ve had such great luck with the artists for my books. And no cover art discussion can happen without talk about the impact AI has had, particularly on indie covers.

Breaking Up With Your Inner Critic

My inner critic hasn’t been silenced; she has been put in time out in the corner, and I am doing my best not to listen to her.

We all had different ways of stepping away from our inner critic, and we also had a discussion about the book The Artist’s Way, which some of us have had positive experiences with, and some of us not-so-positive (me, that’s me). It was a nicely hopeful session, and I hope we were able to encourage the folks in the audience to be able to push past those moments when the inner critic tries to say “no” and into a world where anything is possible.

Tools to Manage Creativity

Ahhh I wish I’d taken more notes on this panel. We had a great talk about all the tools that are out there, and which ones work best for each of us. Most importantly, we noted that there is no One Perfect Tool that appeals to every creative. Some folks love Scrivener, some draft in Drive, some use Word. That’s okay! What’s most important is finding the tool that works best for you. One of the parts I enjoyed most was that each of us shared not just what tools we use, but why we use them. What does it do for our creativity and productivity.

I met someone from the audience who is an even bigger part of the spreadsheet fandom than I am! Their spreadsheet was a thing of amazement that put my own word tracking sheet to shame.

At the end of the panel, I was happy to let people touch my iPad—the paper-touch screen protector I put on it has been a game changer for me. I love how it feels for both using the iPad instead of a notebook, and for art.

Paranormal Romance

Ohhh there is nothing harder than being on a panel that ends with “and what are your recommendations?” and having your mind go blank. But my mind going blank about details is normal (hello, ADHD), so I warned everyone ahead of time. And I wrote down a ton of queer paranormal romance recommendations offered by someone else.

We also talked about writing romance, and the expectations of romance, which means I have some research and writing material to go through in order to improve my craft. I love being on panels where I learn something, too!

Slash of Our Ancestors: A History of Fanfic

Oh my goodness, this may have been my favorite panel. It was the only evening panel I was on, and we discussed everything from the early days of fic with zines made with mimeograph machines to the advent of the internet and how things changed. I had a blast. It was great getting to sit with folks of all different ages and talk about how we came into fic, and what our experiences were, and how the advent of the internet (and the popularization of fanfic) has modified how the world interacts with fandom. Our mod asked some great questions, and the audience had a lot of interaction (I mean, we were talking about fandom—how could we not include the audience?). It was a perfect way to end the convention.

In the end, I screwed up my sleep schedule, and Monday night before working Tuesday was a bit rough. The drive home was… entertaining… we hit some big storms as we returned to New York and I got to feel my new baby car hydroplaning (ugh, but yes, we are fine, nothing happened) as we went through a lovely purple zone on the radar.

I’m very much looking forward to returning to Balticon again next year!

[changterhune]

FRONTIERS CHAT

On Monday Sept. 4 I did a livechat on Bandcamp during the FRONTIERS listening party. I’ve edited it for coherence. I hope it sheds some light on the music and me the music maker.

I will talk a little bit about what FRONTIERS is about. I'll split it into the meaning, then the music, then the recording unless it's still just me. Okay, so about the music itself. What I wanted to do was gather newer music I've been working on. My last 2 releases were of older - but still balls out awesome! - tracks. Since Jan '23 I've been working on both my recording and composing skills. Both have improved I believe.

I guess FRONTIERS is about 2 things: expanding your horizons and letting yourself groove. By that I mean allow yourself to explore and learn, educate and illuminate yourself. FRONTIERS for me encapsulates one of the few resolutions I've made at New Year's Eve and kept. And that was to get out of my own way. So that I could explore the frontiers.

With SUBTLE DISTINCTIONS I created something a bit lighter and peppier than my usual stuff. I hope. I think that's what the EP is about to be honest. HOPE. It's something I've not had a lot of lately. But over the course of this year things improved immensely and it seems like maybe there's some sunlight up ahead. What the songs on FRONTIERS have in common is they're all pretty upbeat, brighter in sound. I've been working on more space in my recordings and FRONTIERS is the newest and best example of that.

My tracks have always had a lot going on tho I came to realize they were sometimes muddy and unclear. I actually discovered that driving back from my sister-in-law's funeral in February. I was playing tracks for my wife on the drive back and half of them sounded muddy with a lot of the highs lost.

Of course a 2018 Subaru Forester isn't a great listening environment but it still sounded blech. When I got home I listened on my studio monitors and read up online and came to realize that I needed to up my recording game. So I did and I'm happy to say that not only I think they sound better but my beta listeners all agree they do. "Modal Auxiliary" is a great example of a lot of soundscaping and sound bed taking up space while the actual melodic/harmonic/ percussive stuff is up front. It was fun to craft it to mix the more ambient soundscape parts with the melodic ones. I reeeeeaaaaallly love how the last half of the song is pretty much just audio sludge.

SOMETIMES I do wonder if my outros are too long but that's what my beta listeners are for. They'll tell me if it is too long. And you can blame Autechre for that. After decades of their long, deconstructed endings it's one of my favorite things to do. Oh man that ambience at the end always gets me. "So CRT what's up with your titles?" Great question! OUTPATIENT is sort of about my time in an outpatient program. hence the name. Now that was a fun one, too, because the main synth parts are almost all Arturia plugins. The Buchla Music Easel is especially wild. 

This and INSECURITY can best be summed up as inspired by Meat Beat Manifesto. I got sick of A/B comparing my songs to MBM songs. I thought I was doing everything right but they still sounded weak. So I went to the woodshed so to speak (the real one is full of spiders), studied and I think this track and INSECURITY both slap about 60% as much as an MBM track. Okay 50% but still I just want to make big bangers sometimes ya know? Boom bapp beats, dub delays, noisey shit! What's funny to me is how all it takes is a little extra time and a little tweaking and then BOOM the track just opens up! Long ago a friend said it's all about panning & EQing which I came to find is 2 out of 3. I'd say the 3rd part of that is gain staging. It's more technical than I want to get into now but it's made all teh difference in my mind. About 1/2 way through OUTPATIENT there's a big long ambient part that I sometimes wondered was too long. Now I think it works as a break between the two parts. A… frontier if you will.  After 6 minutes in the track is basically a long slow fadeout lol I love how it all combines into this weird, glitchy thing where all the loops go in and out then come together. The noise gets big and brash then slowly washes out. The last 2 minutes are a nice bit of ambience themselves. I even thought about breaking it into 2 tracks but they don't work either alone or as a shorter track. You need to hear the whole damn thing to get the entire idea. Imagine being only shown one square foot of the Sistine Chapel at a time? Okay my work isn't on the par of Michelangelo but you get what I mean.

Now INSECURITY was actually never supposed to be on an album. It's a track I started then used as my guineau pig for teaching myself about recording. And in the end it ended up sounding pretty dope. When I sequenced this ep I was surprised how well it worked with the other tracks. And that beat is straight up MBM. Boom boom bapp! Well kinda.  I have become obsessed with one section of this song at about 4:15. This break came out so smooth. Last for almost a minute. Almost as funky as Funky Drummer! And the buildup after works nice too I think. I will say I'm considering 2 followups to FRONTIERS. One will be a remix and the other will be an ep exploring what separates frontiers... Well I hope I've enjoyed learning a bit more about FRONTIERS and my methods. Or madness. 

- CRT

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Secret Agents

I am attending a joint conference between two normally-rival spy agencies.  Dinner is provided.  A man from one agency and a woman from the other both attempt to take the same seat at the table.  After some back and forth they wind up sitting to either side of the mutually desired chair.

Everyone else here is dressed in impeccable formalwear.  My black suit jacket is crumpled and my tie is undone.  As always.  It’s kind of my thing.  I work at both agencies at once.  I still don’t know how no one’s caught on yet, especially since all I ever seem to do is wander the halls and chat people up.

I walk up and ask if that seat is available.  They both glare daggers at me in unison and I take the seat across from it instead.  The whole dinner I watch as the two of them try to discreetly examine and run hands over the chair, searching for secret compartments and dead-drop messages.  The two of them blush every time their hands brush against one another.  It’s obvious that they’re into one another but trying not to show it.  I’d say it’s adorable but I value my life enough to refrain from commenting aloud.

They find each other's messages with their mutual orders.  The “president’s men” will be arriving later by helicopter.  His mission is to pick them up and discreetly get them to safety.  Her mission is to kill them.

Don’t ask me how I found out.

After the dinner I spend some time with the man before he leaves for the night.  Afterwards I find the woman, who has changed from an evening gown into workout clothes and is drilling similarly-dressed new recruits on a balcony patio.  Her aggressive training instruction has earned her the nickname “Queen Mean” amongst certain (mostly newer and younger) members of her agency.  It’s not an epithet that I would ever apply to her, but I still fail to make the observation on how interesting it is just how differently a person’s voice can sound under different circumstances.

She is not best pleased by my commentary.  The new recruits are best pleased to have a distraction so that they might slip away.

More barbs are exchanged.  Mine laid back and mostly joking; hers not so much.  I have a reputation for being something of an eccentric, which most everyone at the agencies either finds endearing or infuriating.   She’s in the latter category.  It doesn’t help her opinion of me that I might have alluded to how she was around the man.  

Her support staff (they think I’m hilarious most nights) arrive and I point out that as fun as this is, doesn’t she have an assassination to get to?

She is annoyed that both I know about that and that I’m right.

Later, we run into one another once again, this time near the restrooms.  She is surprised at my choice of facilities, saying she didn’t realize I was also a woman.  I ask her what she thought I was and she admits that she’s never actually been sure.  I laugh at that answer and tell her that’s correct.

Later still, the colliding rescue and assassination missions happen.  As it turns out, the “president’s men” was a coded euphemism for the president’s children.  The woman’s done a lot of unsavory things in her career, but she draws the line at killing kids, letting the man take them to safety.

When she gets back she chews her superiors out, saying that they’re supposed to be better than this as an organization.  Due to her spotless record of performance up until now, she’s able to get away with that sort of thing.

Eventually, the next assignments arrive for the man and the woman.  His mission is to rescue a genetically engineered catgirl being held in a flying tower base.  Her mission is to kill the people in charge of the program that made the catgirl.  The two of them run into one another on the job and are pleased to find that for once their missions are compatible.  I’m there too, unbeknownst to both of them or their support staff.  I’m keeping an eye on them while also attending to my own convoluted gambits.

The two of them break the catgirl out of confinement, but as they are running through the tower’s spiraling halls the black cat whose genetic material was spliced to create the catgirl crosses their path.  It is hard to keep a cat such as this one contained.  The collision of the catgirl’s luck-altering powers and the black cat’s causes an improbable warp in reality resulting in a white cat spontaneously popping into existence.  The spies take both cats with them in their rescue.

I then see myself running by carrying a black-and-white kitten.  Realizing that there must be a time loop going on, I approach myself, who passes the kitten off to me and tells me to get it to the spies.  I then run off, leaving myself alone holding a kitten that I presume is the future offspring of the previous two cats.

The spies, the catgirl, and the cats find themselves trapped in a room with a large circular opening showing the ground passing by far below.  I arrive at around the same time as the armed facility guards.  I toss the kitten to the group just in time for it to amplify the catgirl’s powers so that the hail of bullets all miss them.  The group jumps, trusting in the combined cat luck powers to save them from the fall.

I jump after them, muttering “I hate time travel” over and over again the whole way down.

We do, in fact, manage to land unharmed.

[starsthoughtsonthings]

Not quite the same quality as the other clips I uploaded, this one, because I had to find a way to lessen the file size because it was just too big.

So much about "I don't think I'll be uploading long scenes", huh?

I'm pretty sure there must be tons of uploads of this scene already, but I finally got my version of it and this blog is for gushing about him the things I like, so have it anyway.

But, I just had to. I went in and fumbled with my recording program a bit so I could pause the recording along the way and kinda cut together a few different options without having recorded the loading times. So uh, here's how I would like to have done the confession scene.

Basically, there were just some things where I absolutely would have wanted to say multiple of the things. So I made a recording of how I would have liked it to be - not all the dialogues fit perfectly onto each other due to being meant for earlier in the chat now, of course, but just as an idea. I might have clicked away some of the options a little too fast, if so, I apologize.

Random notes:

It bugs me that if you go 'were you even attracted to me', there's like nothing in his dialogue even explaining how he feels about that type of intimacy, and yet you next get options like "you should enjoy doing it again" - like, the way the dialogue went you don't even know he doesn't enjoy it?

I feel like it's just natural that the first question would be alike if things meant something to him at all or not, but I would like to after that still be able to say "I want it to be real, too".

At the last options, I would totally have wanted to pick like all of them. Like please let me assure him in all ways possible - and absolutely hug him. I need that hug. It should be so much longer.

I think I like both confession scenes, but I do agree with what I read, this one feels nicer still. I think. From what I can recall at least. I don't know. I'd have to rewatch the other confession scene (which I don't have recorded because I didn't do recording in my first Playthrough, would need to watch them through other's recordings - or reload a save and talk to Araj before doing Yurgir I guess) to be more detailed about what I like more in one of the other, since it's been a while since I had it.

I just love him. So much.

[henryclark1]

How do I contact Air Canada customer service?

Air Canada is the largest airline of Canada. It is known to be Canada's flag carrier and has also been a founding member of Star Alliance. Air Canada provides absolute service to six continents. Amazingly, throughout North America, Skytrax has ranked Air Canada with a Four – Star ranking. So, people usually look on Google for How do I Talk to Live Person at Air Canada? Interestingly, frequent travellers give Air Canada a remarkable rating of 7.5/10. Furthermore, records show that for the last one year the rating has been moving upwards. 

Depending upon their requirements travellers across the world look for the most appropriate number to contact Air Canada. Either for information or just to resolve an issue Talk to a Live Person at Air Canada for best experience. For any query get directly in touch with Air Canada Customer Service at 1 (888) 247 2262. 

Benefits of - Talk to a Live Person at Air Canada?

Every coin has two facets and the same concept goes with air travelling. Many times in life you need an expert to talk to for utmost satisfaction and peace of mind. Today’s Artificially Programmed Machines can’t serve your purpose so nicely like a person. Air Canada Customer Support Executives are available 24/7 to provide the best and absolute assistance to all its travellers. Therefore, call directly at 1 (888) 247 2262 to get the most personalised answer while thinking about How Do I Talk to a Live Person at Air Canada? After calling on this number you need just to follow some instructions accurately to get in touch with an executive. You have to keep pressing the right option step by step.

Why and When Do I Need to Contact Air Canada Customer Service?

Instead of today’s AI oriented tools people across the world rely more upon live executives for utmost gratification.  Furthermore, the best thing about Air Canada is its 24/7 Customer Service that you can easily opt for in person conversation. Here are some of the relevant reasons for which you need to contact an executive in person through Air Canada Customer Service.

Ø  To get information about Baggage Allowance –

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Whatever the reason you have, it's fair to speak to an executive directly to clear all doubts.  On the other hand you have some other options as well to get in touch with the Air Canada Customer Service department.

Other Methods to contact Air Canada Customer Support 

At this point, apart from Talk to a Live Person at Air Canada there are still three other options to get in touch with the customer support department. You may prefer any of the following options that suits you the best –

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In case you encounter issues in the midst of a phone call you can also choose the chat option. It’s definitely a quick and shot-shot option to contact a representative from Air Canada. In case you are not satisfied with it, the system will help you to Talk to a Live Person at Air Canada.

Ø  Contact through Social Media:

Interestingly, a specialised team for different social media platforms is always ready to help you out from any confusion at any spur of the moment. Air Canada is actively available on Facebook, Twitter, You Tube etc. You can directly send your messages/queries to the airline officials. 

What kind of issues can’t be resolved by a phone call?

Air Canada Customer Support Executives promptly take action and short-out various kinds of issues faced by passengers, such as ticketing, ticket cancellation, tracking luggage, researching credit card charges, etc.

You can also contact live executives requesting for the arrangement for an unaccompanied passenger or to make sure that a disabled person will be assisted appropriately while on boarding. You will be answered mildly and your concern will be taken care of properly when you search for How Do I Talk to a Live Person at Air Canada? You just have to call the Air Canada Customer Service at 1 (888) 247 2262.

Many people send queries pertaining to boarding, necessary documents for smooth travelling experience, in-flight experience, luggage allowances, etc. They provide you with the best information and utmost support in the best possible way. 

Concluding Points:

Speaking to the Air Canada Customer Service definitely is the most perfect option to wipe out all your queries in the right way.  It will also assist you in almost everything related to a smooth, safe, and comfortable air-travelling. So, to enjoy the best air-travelling experience give a call at 1 (888) 247 2262 or +1-845-459-2806 for instant support. Now stop wasting your time in looking for How do I Contact Air Canada Customer Service? Plan your next trip with Air Canada with the best customer support experience.

[scholarlyhub]

English Tutoring can help in your Communication Skills

Your relational abilities extraordinarily impact your work execution, all the more so in the event that you're a non-English local speaker working with individuals who are conversant in English Tutoring Melbourne. It's adequately not to figure out how to talk and write in the language, you need to ensure you can communicate your thoughts and precisely convey your considerations.

You additionally should have the option to comprehend what others are talking about, which can be troublesome assuming they're involving expressions and articulations that have no immediate interpretation in your local language.

Thus, whether you're situated in an English-talking nation or managing worldwide clients, you need to figure out how to convey really in their language so you can take care of your business all the more actually.

In this blog entry, Scholarly Hub is English Tutoring in Melbourne shares a few functional tips on how you can further develop your English relational abilities.

Be immediate

A few associations have a roundabout correspondence style where individuals mellow their language to be more affable and seen as non-fierce. The beneficial thing about this approach is that it forestalls struggle and de-heighten tense circumstances.

In any case, the issue with this style of aberrant correspondence is that the message can be lost in interpretation. It's not difficult to confuse somebody or be misjudged on the off chance that you don't express whatever you might be thinking. You needn't bother with that sort of issue on top of attempting to chat in a language that isn't in your local tongue.

An illustration of circuitous correspondence could be: 'In the event that you have a moment, might you at any point investigate the records I messaged you? At some point this afternoon would be perfect assuming that that is conceivable.' All things being equal, you could simply ask 'Might you at any point if it's not too much trouble, survey the documents I messaged by close of business today?' This subsequent choice is speedier, more straightforward, kills any space for error and furthermore gives a cutoff time and some criticalness for culmination.

Practice public talking

Searching out open talking valuable open doors is one of the best ways of working on your talking abilities. This doesn't mean you need to talk at large functions; improving your abilities can be basically as straightforward as joining a book club or signing up for a class.

Through open talking, you'll figure out how to express your contemplations all the more persuasively and think and react quickly. These are two abilities that will assist you with developing into a more powerful communicator.

Conversing with enormous gatherings likewise assists with diving more deeply into the lilts and regular progression of English and at last foster a decent talking beat. A decent talking pace is agreeable for yourself and the audience. Focusing on the speed of your talking will guarantee that your crowd can hear you plainly in light of the fact that you will zero in on making a point to articulate appropriately and talking without slurring or murmuring. For this reason rehearsing your public talking can work on your elocution.

Talking at an agreeable speed can decrease your utilization of fillers like 'um' and 'ah' too. In the event that you talk too quick, your discourse probably won't stay up with your viewpoints, compelling you to take a filled delay to ponder what you will say straightaway. These fillers can be diverting for your crowd, making them miss portions of your discourse.

English Tutoring Melbourne Services

Scholarly Hub,  English Tutoring Melbourne chief mentoring administration for grown-ups and experts. We offer language learning programs intended for differing levels, from general to corporate English.

Our business and corporate English mentoring programs assemble your trust in your working environment relational abilities, including email and report composing and expert talking.

[theothin]

@lilietsblog continuing from this post in order to not have this conversation buried under the other one before it.

so my position on "AI" art is - video game opponents have a better claim of being an "AI" than the image generating machine, much like the text generating machine. at least they are trying to imitate what a real AI would do, internally. at least they are reacting to circumstances based on a model of the (simplified digital) world;

What do you mean by "what a real AI would do"? Real AIs have existed for decades, with all sorts of levels of complexity. Most of them haven't gotten this kind of pushback about the label.

As for an internal model of the world, current LLMs do have those. They can, for example, form records identifying the United States as a country bordered by Canada to the north, Mexico to the south, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Pacific Ocean to the west, consisting of 50 states, 3.8 million square miles of land area, and a population of 333 million. They can form these records about anything, and draw conclusions about actions to take based on those records - and some of those records are wrong, but that's no different from humans.

- the "art" part is giving the machine the prompt, not what the machine does. any more than photoshop is the one doing art when you add a gradient or a filter to your picture. just because the process is obscured and randomized doesnt make it any less mechanically programmed;

I think this is mostly a philosophical question. Suppose I type out a paragraph outlining an image I want and put that paragraph into an AI art generator, and I also send that exact same paragraph to a human artist as a commission. Am I more or less of an artist of one of the resulting pieces than the other? Does it matter?

Of course, commissions are usually iterative - and the creation of AI art can be, as well. I think a lot of people think of "AI art" as referring specifically to the process of inputting a sentence or paragraph and getting an image, but LLMs are complex enough to support all sorts of more complicated processes.

Personally, a type of AI art generator I'd love to use is one that involves a chat interface that allows you to give feedback based on previous images it has generated and to use them as reference points for future ones. For example, it might generate an image of a character you requested, and you can say, "keep these aspects but change these other ones". Then once you get something you're happy with, you can tell it to classify the image as an example of how that character is defined for the purposes of the project in question, to keep it as a reference point for future images. Ideally with the ability to save local records of your interactions with the AI in question, so you can reopen it later and maintain progress on the project, rather than needing to maintain a consistent session.

I think there's good odds that someone has already made a tool like this, so if anyone reading this knows of one, please let me know!

- like, art is communication. the image generator isn't communicating anything to you, it doens't have an internality to communicate. the prompter does. and they're not communicating with the AI, they're communicating with the viewer. like using text to speech or something like that. a technological intermediary;

Sure it is. It's communicating its understanding of the subject matter, in terms of the parts of the world it has studied and the resulting thought-code it has written into itself. Which is also a thing a human might do, through the exact same process.

- art is NOT in fact universally accessible. "i am disabled and I do art and teach art" is not an argument any more than "well I am disabled and I don't need a wheelchair" is an argument against wheelchairs. there are different disabilities??? i mean like everyone can do SOME form of art but they arent fucking. mutually substitutable. not everyone can draw a picture and i dont mean in a skill way. someone could have been a fantastic artist and then lost the ability bc their hands got fucked up;

Well said.

- speaking of mutual substitution, machine generated art is not the same medium as traditional and digital art any more than those are the same medium as photography. the means of obtaining the result are categorically different, come with categorically different challenges and skill requirements. you wont judge a photo on how photorealistic it is and you wont judge a painting on how difficult it must have been to stage. machine generated art is a third thing and must be clearly labeled in any situation where the difference between a photo and a painting too would be relevant;

No, medium is the material an art piece is made of. Painting, photography, and digital art are distinct mediums. Human-drawn digital art and machine-generated digital art are two techniques within the medium of digital art.

Technique can be relevant, but it's a smaller difference than the difference between a painting and a photograph, and mixing techniques is more straightforward than mixing media. A piece of digital art can be 1% human-drawn and 99% machine-generated, 99% human-drawn and 1% machine-generated, or anywhere in between.

If a human uses an AI to generate an image, then draws their own digital image using the AI-generated image as a reference, should they have to describe their drawing as machine-generated? Does this change if tracing is involved?

This is another situation where I think it's best to not find ourselves in the position of having to ask the question in the first place.

- aaand the means by which it is obtained are sketchy as hell. in a perfect future utopian UBI reality it maybe wouldnt be a problem but in the current now reality it hella is. and regulation based on existing flawed legal frameworks is a better solution than "waiting for the underlying issue to be solved" much like "homeless shelters" are not a better solution to the problem of homelessness than "housing for everyone" programs but are hell of a lot better than nothing;

What means do you take issue with, and what laws do you propose? I most often see people making these arguments in the context of advocating for using copyright laws against AI, but I was under the impression that was not your position. Has that changed?

And I'm not talking about waiting and hoping. I'm talking about taking existing frustrations around the job market and putting that energy towards UBI advocacy now, rather than wasting it on seeking laws that will cause more harm than good.

- also I think it would still be an issue in the perfect future utopian UBI reality because its a deepfake machine. its just a fact of life for photos but people not wanting the machine to read their art style and learn to replicate it are valid regardless of monetary concerns. what the machine does in remixing images is not in fact the same as a human looking at the picture and reverse engineering the technique by which it was done / having thoughts and ideas about how to do a similar thing. it is ethically and practically different so there you go, youre both wrong and im right. praise me :P

Faked images will be an issue regardless of UBI, and they have been an issue long before they were possible with machine image generation. Meaningfully addressing faked images needs to come from building public awareness and skills in fact-checking, it will never be enough to use methods that depend on the expectation of being able to know the technique used to create them.

It is valid for people to feel whatever desires they happen to have. When those desires are unreasonable, others are not obligated to act in accordance with them. The desire to exclude one's art from machine learning is one such unreasonable request.

When a person looks at an image, their brain writes code corresponding to that image, tags aspects of it with known identification, and uses the resulting code as a possible reference for future actions, including art. That is not a metaphor, it is 100% literal: brains run on computer code that forms reference points based on data recorded from billions of observed images, and they act based on a mix of imitation and extrapolation. It is the exact same process as LLMs use.

@lilietsblog continuing from here:

"the ability to formulate open-ended instructions to itself" does not strike me as proof of intelligence, no, when those instructions result in the "how do you know where the nearest mcdonalds is" kind of interaction. its just another layer in the cake of stupid

I didn't say "proof" of intelligence. I'm saying it is literally what thinking is. If you would define "thinking" another way, what definition would you use?

LLMs reason in different ways than humans do, and that reasoning can lead to odd conclusions. But reaching odd and potentially stupid conclusions is, as we both know well, not proof of an absence of intelligence, just of a different perspective. Those are issues to work on, but they're issues of implementation, not indications of a fundamental lacking.

Even if current LLMs might not yet fully meet the expectations for "human-like" intelligence, I think we can pretty definitively say that they can match or surpass the intelligence of some animals, which is still plenty of reason to describe them as AI. Perhaps the best comparison is birds, which can be plenty smart as animals go. Do you think current LLMs are unable to match the intelligence of a bird?

[sineala]

How would you say fandom culture has changed over the years? What are some differences you notice between older and younger fandom folks?

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to answer this, and I’m not sure I have a really good answer, but I’m going to try.

I’ve been in fandom since approximately 1995. Maybe 1994. At that point, the world wide web was a relatively new part of the internet, and the fandoms I was in had most of their activity on privately-hosted mailing lists (predating eGroups/OneList/Yahoo Groups) and on Usenet newsgroups, with fiction beginning to be available on websites as part of either fandom-specific or pairing-specific archives as well as authors’ individual pages. Fanfiction.net did not yet exist. LiveJournal did not exist. AO3 definitely did not exist. If you wanted real-time chat, there was IRC. I was coming in basically at the tail end of zine fandom; zines were no longer the only way of distributing fanfiction, as fandom started to move online. So I have a selection of zines from 90s-era Western media fandoms but even by then zines weren’t where I was doing most of my reading.

I think in terms of generally “what it was like to be in fandom,” the big-picture stuff hasn’t changed. Fandom still produces creative fanwork and likes to, y’know, get together and talk about fandom. Also, almost every fight or complaint that fandom has about something is a thing that has been going on for actual years. People complain that, say, the kudos button is ruining comment culture because back in the LJ days the only way you could comment on a story was, well, by leaving an actual comment, or sending an email on a mailing list, and this might mean that people who would have otherwise commented have left a kudos instead. But back in the LJ and mailing list days, people were complaining that commenting was going downhill since the days of zines, when in order to comment on a story you had to write a real paper letter and mail it and because you had to do that, the quality of feedback was so much better than you got nowadays because people could just dash off a quick email or comment. You get the idea. Top/bottom wars are not new either. Pairing wars are not new. If you’ve been in fandom a while, you will pretty much have seen all the fights already. I think one thing that is new, though, is the fandom awareness of things like privilege and intersectionality and various -isms, as well as things like “providing warnings might be nice” (do you know how much unwarned deathfic I have read? a lot!) and I sure won’t say we’re perfect at any of this now, but I think fandom is trying way way more about all that stuff than it used to.

There are some fights we actually don’t have anymore, as far as I can tell. I feel like it’s been years since I’ve seen the “real person fiction is wrong” battle, but also I don’t hang out in a whole lot of RPF fandoms, so it’s possible that’s still going and I just don’t see it.

There also used to be a recurring debate about whether gay relationships that were canonical were slash or not. When slash started, obviously this wasn’t a question because there weren’t canonical gay relationships in fandoms, period. But as gay characters began to appear in media, people started to wonder “does slash mean all same-sex relationships, or does slash mean only non-canonical same-sex relationships?” Now, you may be reading this and think that sounds like an incredibly weird thing to get hung up on, but that’s because what appears to have happened is that the term “ship” (originally from X-Files Mulder/Scully fandom) has, as far as I can tell, come up and eaten most of the rest of the terminology. Now people will just say, “oh, I ship that.” For any pairing, gay or not, canonical or not. Fandom seems to have decided that for the most part it no longer actually needs a term specific to same-sex relationships as a genre.

Similarly, there are a few genres of fic that we used to have also pretty much don’t exist anymore. There are also plenty of genres that are well-entrenched now that are also extremely recent -- A/B/O comes to mind. But there are some kinds of fic we don’t write a lot of now. Like, I haven’t seen smarm in years! I also haven’t seen We’re Not Gay We Just Love Each Other in a while. There was also a particular style of slash writing where you’d basically have to explain, in detail, what made you think that these particular characters could be anything other than straight. You’d have to motivate this decision. You’d have to look at their canonical heterosexual relationships and come up with a way to explain why all those had happened in order to reconcile how this one guy could have romantic feelings for another guy. When had he figured out he wasn’t straight? Who might he have been with before? How does he interact with people in ways that make you think he’s not straight? That kind of thing. You had to, essentially, show your work. And these days a lot of fanfic is just like, “Okay, Captain America is bisexual, let’s go!” It’s... different.

Fandom also used to skew older, is my sense. A lot older. I don’t know, actually, if it really was older, but I get the sense now that there are some younger people who are surprised that adults are still in fandom. I have seen people saying these days that they think they’re too old for fanfiction because they are not in middle school anymore. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the barriers to access fandom are a lot lower than they used to be. You used to basically have to be an adult with disposable income (or know an adult with disposable income who was willing to help you out; but even then if you were reading explicit fiction you also had to swear you were 18+, usually by sending in an age statement to whoever you were buying the zine from or to the mods of the list you wanted to join, so a lot of fandom was very much age-gated). Internet access was not widely available. Even if you had internet access, you maybe didn’t have your own email address, so you couldn’t sign up for mailing lists; free email providers didn’t exist. If you wanted to buy zines, you had to have money to buy them. If you wanted to go to cons, you had to be able to afford the cost of the con, travel to the con, et cetera. If you wanted to have a website you had to know HTML. Social media did not exist. You want to draw art? Guess what, you’re probably drawing it on paper! You might be able to upload a picture to your website if you have a digital camera or a scanner, but both of those things are expensive, and also a lot of people don’t have the capability or the money to download pictures from the internet (some people have data caps with overage charges, and some people have text-only connections!), so they won’t get to see it. Maybe you can sell your piece at a con! You want to make a fanvid? We called them songvids, but, anyway, you know how you’re doing that? You’re going to hook two VCRs together and smash the play and record buttons very fast! If you want anyone else to watch them, you are either making them a tape personally and mailing it to them or bringing your vids to a convention. Maybe you can digitize them and upload them, but it’s going to take people hours to download them!

(Every three hours my ISP would kick me off the internet and I’d have to dial in again. If it was a busy time of day, it might take me 20 or 30 minutes to get a connection again. And that was assuming no one else in the house needed to use the phone line. Imagine if your modem went out every three hours now.)

And now, for the cost of my internet connection, I can read pretty much whatever fanfiction I want, whenever I want it. I can see all the fanart I want! I can watch vids! Podfic exists now! Fanmixes exist! Gifsets and moodboards exist! If I want to write fic I can write it with programs that are completely free, and as soon as I post it everyone in the entire world can read it. If I want to draw or make vids that may require some additional investment, but I may also be able to do it with things I already have. Do you have any idea how good we all have it?

There are a couple of kinds of fan activity that don’t seem to exist anymore, though, and I miss them. I know that roleplaying still goes on, but I feel like these days most people who do real-time text roleplay have switched to things like Discord. I know that in the LJ days, RP communities were popular. But I really miss MU*s (MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, MUXes..), which were servers for real-time text-based RP with a bunch of... hmm... features to aid RP. There were virtual rooms with text descriptions, and objects in virtual rooms with descriptions, and your character had a description, and they could interact with the objects as well as with other characters, and you could program things to change descriptions or emit various kinds of text or take you to different rooms, and so on. Just to, y’know, enhance the atmosphere. It was fun and it was where I learned to RP and I’m sad they’re pretty much gone now.

I also don’t think I see a lot of fanfiction awards in fandoms. Wonder where they went.

Going back to the previous point, the barriers to actually consuming the canon you are fannish about are way, way, way lower now. You can pretty much take it for granted that if right now someone tells you about a shiny new fandom, there will be a way to read that book or watch that show or movie right now. Possibly for free! Of course you can watch it! Why wouldn’t you be able to?

This was absolutely, absolutely not the case before. I’m currently in Marvel Comics fandom. If there is a comic I want to read, I can read it right now on the internet. I have subscribed to Marvel Unlimited and I can read pretty much every comic that is older than three months old; the newer ones cost extra money. But I can do it all from the comfort of my own home right now. I was also, actually, in Marvel Comics fandom in the nineties. If I wanted to read a comic, I had to go to a comic book store and hope they had it in stock; if they didn’t, I had to try another store. Not a lot of comics were available in trade paperback and they definitely weren’t readable on the internet. I used to read a lot of Gambit h/c fic set after Uncanny X-Men #350. I never found a copy of UXM #350. I still haven’t! But I did eventually read it on Unlimited.

Being in TV show fandoms also had similar challenges. Was the show you were watching still on the air? No? Then you’d better hope you could find it in reruns, or know someone who had tapes of it that they could copy for you, otherwise you weren’t watching that show. It was, I think, pretty common for people to be in fandoms for shows they hadn’t seen, because they had no way to see the show, but they loved all the fanfic. The Sentinel had a whole lot of fans like that, both because I think it took a while for it to end up in reruns and because overseas distribution was probably poor. So you’d get people who read the fic and wrote fic based on the other fic they’d read, which meant that you got massive, massive amounts of fanon appearing that people just assumed was in the show because it was a weirdly specific detail that appeared in someone’s fic once. Like “Jim and Blair’s apartment has a small water heater” (not actually canonical) or “Blair is a vegetarian” (there’s an episode where his mother visits and IIRC cooks him one of his favorite meals, which is beef tongue).

Like, I was in The Professionals fandom for years. I read all the fic. I hadn’t seen the show. As far as I know, it never aired in the US, and it certainly never had any kind of US VHS or DVD release. I’d seen a couple songvids. I eventually saw a couple episodes in maybe 2003, and that was because my dad special-ordered a commercial VHS tape from the UK and paid someone to convert it from PAL to NTSC. I didn’t get to see the whole show until several years later when I got a region-free DVD player someone in fandom sent me burned copies of the UK DVD releases and then I special-ordered the commercial release of the DVDs from the UK myself. But if I were a new fan and wanted to watch Pros right now? It is on YouTube! For free!

I think also one of the things about fandom that’s not immediately evident to new fans is the way in which it is permanent and/or impermanent. There are probably people whose first fannish experience is on Tumblr or who only read fanfic on FFN and who have no idea what they would do if either site, say, just shut down. But if you’ve been in fandom a while, you’ve been through, say, Discord, Tumblr, Twitter, Pillowfort, Imzy, DW, JournalFen, LJ, GeoCities, IRC, mailing lists. And sure, if Tumblr closed, it would be inconvenient. But fandom would pack up and move somewhere else. You would find it again. It would, eventually, be okay. Similarly, if you’ve been in a lot of fandoms, if you’ve made a lot of friends, drifting through fandoms is like that. You’ll make a friend in 1998 because you were in the same fandom, and then you might go your own ways, and ten years later you might be in another fandom with them again! It happens.

But the flip side of that is that I think a lot of older fans have learned not to trust in the permanence of any particular site. If you like a story, you save it as soon as you read it. If you like a piece of art, you save it. If you like a vid, you save it. Because you don’t know when the site it’s on will be gone for good. I have, like, twenty years of lovingly-curated fanfic. And I feel like people who have only been in fandom since AO3 existed might not understand how much AO3 is a game-changer compared to what we had before. It’s a site where you can put your fic up and you don’t have to worry that the webhost is going out of business, or that the site might delete your work because they don’t allow gay fiction or explicit fiction or fiction written in second person or fiction for fandoms where the creator doesn’t like fanfiction, or whatever. Because all of those things have absolutely happened. But, I mean, I still save pretty much everything I like, even on AO3, just in case.

So, basically, yeah, fandom is a whole lot more accessible than it used to be. I think fandom is pretty much still fandom, but it’s a lot easier to get into, and that has made it way more open to people who wouldn’t have been able to be in fandom before. There is so, so much more now than there ever was before, and I think that’s great.

[no-disco]

Sounds, 27th June 1981. Photos by Virginia Turbett

transcription under the cut

photos and article taked from sacreddm.net on the wayback machine

  Five months ago the prospect of doing an interview shut inside an airless, sterile studio would have made Depeche Mode run all the way home to Basildon. But then five months, as Wowington Woy would say, is a long time in the wacky world of wock and woll. One look at Vince Clarke sitting confidently behind the mixing desk and shorts-sporting Martin Gore’s welcoming smile and I knew things would be hunky dory.

  Dan “The Man” Miller quickly ordered Martin back in front of the mike to contribute his part to the now characteristic Mode quasi-barbershop harmonics on a new track which might be the new single, or possibly the start of the (gasp) album.

  “I just can’t get enough, I just can’t get enough,” sung Mart.

  But he had, and stopped for a cuppa and a chat.

  Les Moders, as I’ve hinted, are now 100% more confident, talkative, witty and brighter than all other known brands of washing powder. (Shurely shome mishtake?) Vince set his synth onto random programming to break the icky atmosphere and we commenced. How appropriate! With one record set straight – ie Depeche Mode aren’t shy, incommunicative, fragile young things at all, here’s the official mode of pronunciation: Depech-ay, if you please. “It’s probably grammatically wrong,” said Vince. “But we like it that way.” [1]

  Okay. Depecheeee Mode are laying down lotsa new tracks, having come to a halt after mucho gigging around London following the surprise success of “Dreaming Of Me” and even bigger surprise of “New Life”. Up until now Andy and Martin have had day jobs so the touring principle is only now an ongoing viability. Offers of the calibre of Classix and Toyah had been pouring in, but Vince reckoned it wasn’t the best thing for them to do at the time. Martin considered that the Classix tour may have tied them irrevocably to the futuromanticism tag which they’ve steadfastly been trying (unsuccessfully) to avoid.

  But of the bands who secured deals following the “Some Bizzare” LP, Depeche have fared the best: their simple, uncomplicated synthi-pop tunes are terribly hard to dislike, after all.

  “We had a sad day on Tuesday, though,” said David Gahan, crest suddenly fallen, “we expected “New Life” to go up a bit more. I think we all thought it wasn’t gonna do much at first, but inside… You can’t tell.”

  Funny, ’cos “New Life” is definitely even more instant than the debut… Vince: “It’s really up isn’t it.”

  David: “We learned a lot from “Dreaming”, came in here and just did a better job on the next one.”

  And that riveting little synth riff is still locked in my head, reminding me of God-knows-what. Just an old r&b riff, said Vince. No, it’s a good job they do have insistent hooks – David reckoned people have beaucoup de trouble remembering the name:

  “I bet they get to the shop and forget the name. They go on, hum the tune and say oh, can’t remember the name, I’ll have that Duran Duran one instead!”

  Andy Fletcher suggested Dep Mod as an abbreviation in fine Orch Man tradition. An imaginary lightbulb above Vince’s head suddenly fired him with a cracking good idea.

  “When your photographer comes,” he smirked, “can we have a picture taken in the back of Dan’s Renault? Just like Spandau Ballet? Only there’ll be five of us in the back, and we’ll all be squashed up like this…” (David imitates dead sardine)

  OK, wrench those tongues out of yer cheeks, boys. Mutemobile, indeed? It is true that they did well in the US Disco charts and have great appeal for Europe too… deals are currently being set up with several different majors to get Mode released in France, Germany et al. Many doubted the ability of Mute and Miller to break the Modes, but for an indie they’ve broken the required barriers.

  David: “We would much rather have had points than big advances, and we’ve got that with Daniel – he’s proved he can get us what we want, there’s nothing he can’t do – that we haven’t found out yet!”

  Andy: “Indies are at their height, they never used to get in the charts before.”

  David: “And radio stations are more likely to play indies.”

  Vince: “They have to pay less royalties!”

  David: “Radio One have been very good to us – 3 plays a day on this one. They said they’d stick with it, give it lots of airplay.”

  So from the insecure, nervous and unsure start, things have actually turned out as they’d hoped?

  Vince: “It has really. You learn things very quickly. With Mute we know everything that’s going on, we’re in contact with distributors, pluggers and promotion people every day.”

  Andy: “What we don’t know is what a major is like. We’re quite happy with our set up, but we don’t know if the distribution could be better.”

  Aah, but Rough Trade gets you into those little shops that the hordes of independent buyers frequent, you lucky boys.

  Andy then proceeded to go off at a tangent (this is not unusual), musing about how the band’s audiences had changed, become much younger. No-one else agreed.

  David: “We get a varied audience, you can’t say that at all!”

  Vince: “In clubs an’ that, the audience is already there, they haven’t come to see us.”

  David: “Don’t be silly! You can’t say everywhere we play has a fixed audience!”

  Andy: “You’re getting worse than Martin now… Martin hasn’t said one thing yet!”    Martin woke up. “I’m saving it up, it’s all going to come out in a minute, I’m just waiting for the right question.”

  We launched into a discussion about clubs, people not dressing up as much as they used to and the sight of Midge Ure sending lace-clad young girls into the water and into a frenzy at Crystal Pal last week.

  This caused much amusement.

  Andy: “That’s what Martin does!”

  Martin: “You’re asking for it, Fletch…”

  To avert a full-scale war, I mentioned my liking for the “Rio” mix of “Shout!”, B-Side of their first ever 12”. They love the rhythm, but the song? David loves it, Vince hates it, Martin says so-so. Humph. It’s the first dancefloor oriented thing they’ve done tho’, eh?

  Andy: “Apart from the things we did when we were Light Of The World…” Silence… laughter!

  They all paused to watch Daniel frowning in the control room, doubtless searching for that stray note out of tune. A conspiracy brewed. “What was that thing we wanted in Jaws about Daniel?” they whispered. “Nooooo – don’t put it in, he’d know it was us… if you say it, Andy, you’re the one – we all tried to stop you!” [2]

  Andy turned to me with a probing question. “Who told you about the folk group and church hall thing?” (Referring to a gossip item about their acoustic past). “We practised in a church hall, that’s all.” [3]

  And they’re recording in a deconsecrated church now! [4]

  David: “Yeah, we just love churches.”

  Martin: “You wait till you hear our new single – it’s a gospel song.”

  David: “It’s called “Have You Got The Sunshine Smile”.”

  Andy sung the words, gesticulating his finger at his smiling lips in Sunday School teacher style.

  David: “On the picture bag, there’s Andy’s face, and when you press his nose, a finger comes out and there’s Martin inside showing the actions. Martin doing the Mode!”

  And they chorused: “Have you got the sunshine HA-HA-HA HEE HEE.” I think this is what we in the trade call a joke…

  On entering studiospace, I’d noticed Darryl, Fan Club President and original Silicon Teen, scribbling away replies to D Mode fan mail. Are they getting lots?

  David: “Not really. We were just trying to impress you! We were s’posed to have this Postman come in just after you with a great big sack!”

  Andy: “Yeah, binfuls of used biros, hard skin on our fingers where we’ve been writing so much!”

  Well, I saw at least ten letters.

  David: “A lot of them are really young. This 13 year old boy wrote us a story using words from the singles and sent us some badge designs.”

  Vince: “We’re pop! Ultra pop!”

  Andy: “People write to us from up North but they haven’t seen us. We want to branch out from London, but first we must rehearse new material, we’ve been doing the same set for 4 months. The live show should be better, more danceable.”

  Daniel looked quizzical again. The boys told him to stop listening in.

  Andy: “He’s a great man. Look – the ultimate picture of Daniel Miller, father of electronic music…”

  Vince: “Grandfather, more like.”

  Daniel the scolding father retorted, “I can hear you.”

  A man from ITV arrived to discus Dep Mod’s appearance on a 20th Century Box prog on the Essex music scene, past and present. Depeche are to be filmed live at Croc’s in Rayleigh, and filmed au naturel around Basildon, all to be shown sometime in August.

  “You can film my usual Saturday morning routine,” joked David. “Have a sauna, go to a brothel, then a commando course… Nah, it’ll be Andy waking up at 5am, having ’is toast and going down the newsagents for his paper round. Boys next door!” He concluded, sensibly: “It doesn’t matter if we’re sitting on the loo – a minute on tele is better than a thousand radio plays.”

  Andy came over all pensive again, wondering why so many of their interviews spent more time talking about Daniel than the band.

  “There’s nothing really that people can say about us is there? All other bands go on about political things, we don’t talk about our views.”

  Dave: “We don’t have political views, I don’t think.”

  Andy: “There’s always an extrovert member of a band with strong views.” [5]

  Vince: “We don’t stand for anything united do we?”

  Andy: “We haven’t got a person who’s domineering.”

  David: “That’s good!”

  Andy: “On the other hand, that’s why our interviews are very empty, ’cause usually the loudmouth of a band goes on about what the Labour party are doing or something.”

  Martin: “Sexism always comes up too, especially with HM bands.”

  David: “They always talk about sex.”

  Vince: “It’s all that macho stuff.”

  Macho. Dep Mod certainly aren’t Macho. Now they were in a more reflective mood, I asked what their immediate hopes for the future were.

  Chorus: “Ultimate success!”

  David: “We’re happy as it is, we’d just like some money.”

  Vince: “We want to change our sound, get some new stuff together, get a good live show.”

  Vince: “We don’t want to get like Kraftwerk, we don’t want to use tapes any more. We’ve got a rhythm unit with a TV screen that plays Space Invaders as well!” [6]

  Andy: “We want to give the show more of an aura.”

  David: “Down the Bridgehouse?!”

  Now there’s a thought… anything else?

  David: “Yes, Andy would love to have a cult following, be underground. We have gigs in here when Vince is getting down on the mixer, and Andy sings! Things get on top of you in the studio – you have to do something to let it all go, so we come in here and scream and shout.”

  The lads played me a tape of impromptu raw electro-punk with Crass-style vocals by Andy, featuring a cover version of “Simple Simon Says”, “You’re Gonna Lose That Girl” and a sensitive rendition of a popular school hymn. There’s that religious influence again… But they need this relief valve from the precise orderliness required to produce their brand of neatly-packed pop songs – operating, generating new life for our pop kids.

  A lot of people know the name Depeche Mode now. Now you know who they are, what they are. Like their boss, they’re all heart – boys next door who turn into Ultra Popsters at the flick of a switch. Mode: strictly not avant-garde.

[tennessoui]

if you wrote obikin for #4 with anakin as a single parent and obi-wan as luke and leia's teacher i would simply die happy!!

here it is!!! thank you so much!

4. Teacher/Single Parent AU (modern!AU)(DinLuke shows up as little kids)(2.4k)(whoops)

Anakin stares across the table at Luke, who gnaws on a slice of grilled cheese, carefully leaving the crusts behind. Oh god, he’d forgotten to cut them off of Luke’s sandwich, had cut them off of Leia’s instead, even though she didn’t mind them. And of course they hadn’t told him either. He can’t tell if he’s been forgiven for his error or if it will come back to haunt him later tonight when he tries to put the twins to bed at eight.

“Luke,” he says carefully. “I think I’m just a little confused.”

Leia looks up. She loves when her father is a little confused because it means Luke is probably a bit in trouble and she gets to be the one to set the record straight for him.

Which isn’t to say Leia is a tattle-tale. Anakin’s seen her watch Luke hit another child upside the head with a toy train and then say absolutely nothing when questioned by the daycare instructor.

Daddy’s interrogations are just a special case where she can become a guilt-free turncoat.

“How did you get a Unicorn sticker in art class?” he asks.

The Unicorn stickers, of course, mean unsatisfactory.

He pays extra money for his children to be coddled and kept away from words like Fail and Unsatisfactory, even though that’s what all the parents know the stickers mean. As long as the children don't yet.

“And I don’t understand the rainbow sticker at all,” he continues helplessly, regarding the piece of artwork in front of him, where a handful of dried macaroni noodles are lacklusterly glued to the page.

“The Unicorn sticker means it was bad, but the rainbow sticker means that Mr. Kenobi forgives him,” Leia pipes up, leaning across the table to take the icky crusts from her brother’s plate and dipping them into her tomato soup.

“But it was dry macaroni,” Anakin says incredulously. Luke’s eyes start getting misty as he stares resolutely down at his plate. That’s the last thing Anakin wants. But he just doesn’t understand. Luke’s the most creative of both of his children, has seemed to take after Anakin in that way. Last Christmas, Anakin had given him a model train set that he’d put together inside of a week. If he can do that, he can do a self-portrait in dry macaroni.

“He gave Din all of his noodles,” Leia reports.

“Didn’t Din have any?” Anakin asks, feeling completely out of his element and also sort of like a detective trying to solve a cold case.

“He wanted to save them for his puppy,” Luke mumbles. “They just got him and they can’t figure out what he eats, so Din thought he could try macaroni because I told him I like macaroni and cheese a lot.”

Anakin is on the cliff of despair, but he can’t exactly ask whether or not this Din knows there’s a difference between the dried macaroni from art class and boxed macaroni and cheese from Kraft. He’s not sure he even wants to know the answer.

“And then Luke didn’t have a lot left for his picture,” Leia finishes the story and her soup in one fell swoop.

“Couldn’t you have asked Mr. Kenobi for more?” Anakin asks Luke who shakes his head but doesn’t seem to want to elaborate. Anakin turns only slightly pleading eyes to Leia, who is the expert on anything her brother doesn’t want to say.

“Mr. Kenobi sits at the front, and Luke sat at the back today so it was really far.”

“But you always sit at the front!” Anakin says, appalled. Sure, he hadn’t managed to make it to the most recent round of parent-teacher conferences due to an unfortunately timed shift at the garage, but he knows where his kids sit in a classroom.

Luke mumbles something into his bowl.

“What was that?” Anakin asks.

Leia translates. “Din doesn’t sit at the front,” she says.

Anakin sits back in his chair and runs a hand over his mouth. Luke has a crush. His son, Luke, has his very first crush on a boy and he’s already doing stupid things in order to see the boy. Oh no. Oh god. Of all the things to take after Anakin on, it’s this one.

“Okay,” he says, mostly to himself. “It’s okay. Unicorns aren’t so bad.”

“Way better than giraffes,” Leia tells her brother bracingly, seeming to know instinctively that the gossiping part of this conversation is over. “And you got a rainbow, which means Mr. Kenobi isn’t mad.”

Anakin wonders, with the context, if that’s actually what the rainbow means, or if Mr. Kenobi isn’t just incredibly observant.

“TV time, kids,” he says, only feeling sort of bad about the screentime or whatever, as Luke perks up and runs with Leia into the living room.

After five minutes to make sure they’ve successfully turned on and found a child-appropriate show, Anakin gathers the dishes and loads the washer. Then he sighs as loud as he can without disrupting the kids.

Then he pulls out his phone and the school directory and finds the email for one Mr. Obi-Wan Kenobi, art teacher.

It takes him twenty minutes to figure out an email that doesn’t sound too judgemental, harsh, worried, skeptical, or angry. It takes another five minutes to figure out how to sign off on it. Kind regards? Best? Thanks? Sincerely? What is the etiquette for emailing your son’s art teacher to arrange a meeting because you’re worried your son will fail the class simply because he’s inherited terrible genes from his father?

It takes ten minutes, in the end, for Mr. Kenobi to email back, and he does so with a very straightforward message. He’s available to chat after school hours tomorrow, if it works for Anakin.

Anakin pulls up his work schedule. He’s supposed to work until five in the evening tomorrow, has already booked a slot at the after-care program for the twins. But.

He texts Ahsoka to ask if she could cover the last few hours of his shift. She texts back a string of rather offensive emojis, but settles down when he tells her it’s for his kids. Technically, he isn’t even lying. He’s just being overbearing.

He spends another fifteen minutes trying to compose a response email in between making sure the kids brush their teeth, wash behind their ears, and have their bags packed for the morning. He’s so stressed out by it that he’s not even sure he includes a signature at all before he hits send. God. Meeting Mr. Kenobi had better be worth all of this stress.

---

Finding Mr. Kenobi’s classroom is almost more stress than the correspondence from the night before had been. The only reason Anakin doesn’t sit down and cry against the garishly yellow brick lining the hallways is that he keeps telling himself that if his two seven-year-olds can do this, Anakin surely can.

The art classroom is tucked away in a forgotten corner of the school and it takes three wrong turns and one accidental entrance into a thankfully deserted first grade room for Anakin to find it. He knocks on the open door and then decides he should call as well to announce his presence. “Uh, Mr. Kenobi? I’m Anakin. Skywalker. We talked last night?” He takes a couple of steps into the room, which is lined in children’s art and paint-stained tables.

A man emerges from a backroom, dressed in a very loose and paint-flecked denim shirt over a white tank top and a pair of slacks. He’s wearing a pair of thick glasses that he takes off as soon as he sees Anakin. His beard is neatly trimmed and his hair, a sort of bronzed auburn, neatly combed.

He’s holding a paintbrush in one hand, and still, of course, Anakin’s dumb brain overrides the part of him that’s saying, This is clearly Mr. Kenobi in favor saying, quite politely, “Oh! I’m sorry. Is Mr. Kenobi back there?”

The man who could not possibly be more obviously the art teacher raises an amused eyebrow.

Look. No one told Anakin that elementary school art teachers could be so attractive. He’d not done anything to prepare for this.

“You must be Luke’s father,” Mr. Kenobi says, waving him forward.

“What makes you say that?” Anakin asks, a tad too defensively, thinking of his own self-deprecating thoughts last night about Luke taking after him when it comes to being sort of stupid around people they liked. He’s just being paranoid.

“The...last...name,” now Mr. Kenobi is definitely trying to hide his smile and Anakin wants to die. “Would you like to sit?”

Anakin does so rather graciously, given the circumstances. He even makes sure he keeps their chairs very far apart. Mostly in order to preserve his own dignity, but he thinks he should get credit for his self-control at this spur of the moment single-parent-hot-teacher conference.

“I’m sorry for my appearance,” Mr. Kenobi says, pulling the oversized button up closed over his tank top. “I must admit, I mostly forgot you were coming by. I was working on one of my own projects.”

“You paint?” Anakin asks.

Mr. Kenobi tilts his head slightly and flicks his eyes around the room as if in answer.

Anakin flushes but digs his heels in. “Well, I don’t know,” he mumbles mulishly. “Do math teachers do math in their spare time?”

This startles a laugh out of the teacher, which makes some long forgotten part of Anakin’s psyche sit up and preen. “I’m sure some of them do,” he says. “No, I do art mostly for the town right now. I’m working on a series of pieces for the public library at the moment.”

Anakin tries his hardest not to obviously melt, but Mr. Kenobi has not looked away from his face much so surely he can see it in his eyes.

“That’s quite. Nice,” Anakin says, coughing into his fist.

“And what do you do?” Mr. Kenobi asks in a way that’s just on the other side of polite. Anakin has the strange thought that if they had cups of coffee between them, he’d feel like he was on a very casual first date.

He has to shake his head to rid himself of that idea. “I’m a mechanic,” he says.

Mr. Kenobi looks interested, of all things. Most people don’t. Most people make some sort of assumption about him, about his life, his ability to parent his children, as if they’re not the ones rolling into his shop at 5:54 pm because their car is “making a funny noise”.

But Mr. Kenobi just looks interested.

“Oh?” He says. “That makes sense. Leia is always talking about how her father can fix anything.”

“Well,” Anakin blushes and looks away. “You know kids. Turn it off and turn it back on usually blows their minds.”

Mr. Kenobi smiles indulgently before clearing his throat. “You wanted to talk about Luke?”

“Oh! Yes!” He had come here with the express desire to talk about Luke with Mr. Kenobi. Not secure a date with Mr. Kenobi. “I saw that Luke got a... unicorn...and a rainbow on his last project, and it made me worry.”

It sounds very, very overbearing coming out of his mouth. This is an elementary school art class. Why did he think that he should come in and talk to a teacher over his son’s bad grade? Especially when it was pretty clear Luke deserved it.

Mr. Kenobi tilts his head in confusion. “Well, yes, I suppose I usually give Luke two suns on his work, so I understand if the change was upsetting to you.”

“And we’re saying that two suns are good?” Anakin checks, feeling very out of his element here.

“Oh, yes, very good,” Mr. Kenobi assures him. “But his last project wasn’t. Well.”

“He says he got distracted,” Anakin mutters, rubbing a hand down his face. “Over a boy.”

“Haven’t we all been there,” Mr. Kenobi murmurs, sounding very amused. Anakin peeks over his fingers at this declaration.

“Yeah,” he says roughly. “That’s sort of exactly what I thought.”

Mr. Kenobi clears his throat again. “Well. That’s why I gave him the unicorn then. It was a bit of bad work, but a very rare showing of it. And the rainbow, to signify that I know he’ll be back to normal again next time. You shouldn’t worry about this one project either, Mr. Skywalker. I do give final grades holistically, not weighted by any one assignment. This is, after all, a children’s art class.”

Anakin wants to thunk his head on the table in front of him. “You do know that all the parents think unicorn means unsatisfactory, right?”

“Why?” Mr. Kenobi has the nerve to look shocked.

“They both start with U, I don’t know,” Anakin says, waving an agitated hand through the air.

“Well, sometimes parents can be quite stupid,” Mr. Kenobi says primly and then looks horrified at himself. “Please don’t tell them I said that.”

Anakin laughs and gets to his feet reluctantly. His worries over Luke have been dealt with, but he finds himself very reluctant to leave.

“Well,” he says slowly, eyes firmly looking only at Mr. Kenobi’s face, “Thank you for meeting with me. I guess you don’t get many frantic parent-teacher conferences over a unicorn sticker.” He ducks his head and rubs the back of his neck with his hand in embarrassment. He can admit now that perhaps he had overreacted.

Mr. Kenobi places his hand delicately over the hand Anakin still has on the table, just for a second, squeezing it with enough pressure that Anakin has to look up at him again. “Only the best parents,” he says with a half-smile.

Anakin finds himself grinning back, unwilling to move his hand now that Kenobi’s touching it. “And, um. If you ever take the kids on an art museum tour or something, and you need chaperones….give me a call.”

“Would I have to wait that long?” Kenobi asks innocently.

Anakin’s never shaken his head no so quickly before. “Any time,” he tells the man very seriously, already backing out of the room. “Before you think too much about it and decide not to would probably be preferable.”

Mr. Kenobi laughs. “I’m sure I’ll think about it a lot,” he says as he turns to go back to his art studio. He calls over his shoulder. “In bed, tonight.”

Anakin trips over a child-sized easel with a loud clatter and an even louder curse, and he can’t decide which of the two should be more thankful school is out for the day. Probably Mr. Kenobi. Yeah. Probably definitely Mr. Kenobi.

[natromanxoff]

Mercury Roadrunner's Interview about Freddie Mercury with Peter Freestone – Part I

Thanks very much to Mercury Roadrunner (Pavel Strashnyy) for letting me share his amazing interviews! Originally shared here. Check the tag "MR interview with Phoebe" to see the other parts.

Here are the 5 topics of this interview, beginning of each topic is written in bold:

1. Live Aid

2. The Works tour

3. "Mr. Bad Guy" album and recording period

4. "Heaven For Everyone", Freddie's habits about listening to music, opinions on Madonna, Montserrat

5. Swimming and memories about Los Angeles, Ibiza, Japan

Mercury Roadrunner: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. We welcome you to the unofficial Russian Queen fan club special program. You can find our website at www.vk.com/queenrocks. I am knownn as Mercury Roadrunner. This year marks the 50th anniversary of Queen. And I’m very happy to say that this evening we have a very, very special guest here with us, and it is an opera critic, a book lover, biographer and writer, and close friend, confident and personal assistant of Freddie Mercury, Mr Peter Freestone. Hello, Peter. How are you? Peter Freestone: Hi. I am… okay. I’m good, I’m good. What can I say? I’m good. PS: You are good and you are very happy to join the other Queen fans who would be very happy to hear you finally talking. And the first topic is about your personal memories. It’s a historic date but what are your own personal memories of 13th of July, the Live Aid day, what were your feelings in general on that day? PF: For me, I suppose, it was just another show… [laughs] PS: Really? PF: Because I worked for Freddie and he was going to do a show. I didn’t separate that from all the other performers that were going to be there, that made it such an incredible day. And not only in London, when they were also performing in America as well at the same time. When the satellite was showing something from London, then it showed something from Philadelphia, then back to London again. So to say, for me it was… another day. It wasn’t even as though there were such a big show because we’d played stadiums in South America. So, it wasn’t the size of the audience. I suppose, when it really struck me what was happening was when the band went onto stage. And the roar from the crowd was absolutely amazing. Again, it wasn’t so different from normal shows because they’d actually rehearsed for their twenty minutes. You know, there was four days’ rehearsal. So to say, it was normal, it was normal work, it was a short show. But then, thing is, it was in daylight and Freddie could actually see the audience. And from the back of the stage, we could look through holes in the back, you know, the screen in the back. And we could see what the band could see. And… then it sort of struck me that, actually, this is something very special. And then I was really so very, very proud of them. At the end of their set, when, again, the audience reaction was indescribable. What they had done in those twenty minutes, they had picked up the whole audience, shook it around and put them back down again. PS: Indeed. PF: So, yeah, that was what I felt. PS: And do you remember some of Freddie’s jokes, maybe, during the day, the way he interacted with other superstars, like David Bowie or others? PF: The thing is, he [Freddie] was just one person amongst his peers, you know. All of the bands were names, they were bands. And the thing I have found, and this goes all the way – the real professionals are the most normal, approachable people on earth. It’s the wannabes who have the attitude of “Don’t you know who I am?” and who behave like stars, because stars behave like human beings. Real stars, they can be just like the rest of us. There was a time when Freddie just wanted to be on his own, you know, with just his friends, with his group of people. But I mean, there’s a few photographs of him chatting with various people, like Elton John and David Bowie. I remember seeing them with him, and Adam Ant. And, of course, he had friends along; I think Wayne Sleep was there as well. In his life, he [Freddie] needed people around him that made him laugh. And so, he still had that. David Bowie and he had been friends for so long. Elton [and he] had been friends for even longer. So, it was actually a chance for them to sit and catch up rather than, you know, being in front of the world press. They liked to spend time on their own, you know, talking to each other, really talking, not putting on a show. PS: So, I imagine that backstage on that day Freddie felt pretty much joyful and relaxed, right? PF: Yeah, on the day of the show, I never really saw Freddie nervous…

because, the thing is, it was too late by then [to be nervous]. You know, there was no point in being nervous anymore because the show was going to go on whether you were nervous or not. So, why be nervous? Just, you know, get on and do the show, enjoy yourself. PS: And do you remember, where did the idea of Freddie and Roger joining the Band Aid on stage in the final song, “Do They Know It’s Christmas”, came from? Or was it totally a spontaneous idea for them to join the others? PF: I think the idea at that point was that anybody who was around, who would stay on to the end – because don’t forget the show had started in the afternoon, so not everybody was going to be waiting – but then anybody who was left, who wanted to join, could go and join. There was no strict “You must do this, you have to do this, you have to be there”. It’s “If you want to, by all means come and do it.” PS: And we even have a picture of both of you, Freddie and you, on that day when Freddie wears a white shirt for “Is This The World That We Created”, and you stand right next to him and it’s a beautiful picture. PF: And Queen were the only band that actually kept their dressing room. Because all the other bands had to vacate their dressing room half an hour after they’d performed, so that the next band could come and use it. But because Brian and Freddie were performing “Is This The World That We Created” at the end, they got to keep their dressing room from the time they arrived. [laughs] PS: So they spent the rest of the day after the show in their dressing room? PF: Well, in or around their dressing room, yes. PS: They, like, had their Royal Queen place there. PF: That’s it. Anybody else had to go into the Hard Rock Café. There had to be a tent, you know, hospitality tent there. And most people ended up in there because they were not allowed into their dressing rooms, they didn’t have dressing rooms after that. So… that also helped Freddie relax. [laughs] PS: Like, his little bit of his own, right? PF: Yes. PS: All right. So, the second topic is about you, Peter. And you are credited as a “band party” member on The Works tour. Can you please clarify what a band party meaning is? Because I am assuming it’s like an entourage but it will be nice to hear the expanded definition from you. PF: Yeah, the band party, I think, was about ten or twelve people. It was the band members, their assistants – me, Chris Taylor was there, and Paul Prenter was there. If Jim Beach was on the tour at the time, he would have been part of the band party too. And some of the time Gerry Stickells was there. But often he would be ahead, making sure that everything was ready for when the band arrived. But that was it. There was about ten people. And there were baggage tags for each member of the band party. That’s why I know because I had Number 9, I think. And there were about twelve, I think, altogether, because at one point at the beginning I used to have to collect the band party baggage, so that’s why I always knew which were, even though I wouldn’t know whose bag was what. It would have one of these crew tags on it, so I just picked up and I knew that there were going to be twenty bags, so I just picked the twenty bags. But they were easy to identify because of these tags. PS: I see. And what is your own favourite memory about The Works tour and about this time, like, 1984, 1985? Maybe the Rio shows? PF: Yeah, I mean Rio was… amazing. The feeling from that crowd… you know, something like 350,000 people. Oh, you can’t beat that. And when you’re flying in a helicopter over that crowd, it was stunning. But the thing is, I know this sounds really, really stupid but [laughs]… one thing I will always, always remember from that tour was, remember, in the back of the stage you had these wheels that turned every now and then, not constantly but just every now and then. That was because there was… the guy looking after Roger’s drums and me who actually turned those wheels. And there was no set cue or anything that, “Oh, it has to start on this bar, on this song.” No, it

was when he wasn’t doing anything and I wasn’t doing anything, we’d say “Ok, let’s go and do it.” And we turned the wheels for a couple of minutes and then left them alone. He had then to do something for Roger and I would just sit there like I always did. And then you’d go back and you’d turn the wheels, like a hamster. We were like hamsters… So, that’s my memory of The Works tour. PS: And how technically did you operate those wheels? How was it possible? PF: With your hands. You just grabbed hold, you know, because it was like cogs on a wheel, and you just grabbed hold of them. Because we would be behind, I mean, I was always on John Deacon’s side, so I was hidden behind his bass setup. And you just pulled on the cogs because the whole wheel was on a metal axle and you just held there and you just pulled it down. PS: And the wheels actually were the real wheels, the big ones, right? PF: The very big ones in the back that moved, yeah. And they were made of, I think, polystyrene and plywood. So they weren’t very heavy. PS: So it was, like, actually you taking a part in the show, like, directing this? PF: Yes, I mean, you know, this is how things used to work in the old days before half of you were born. [laughs] You had to use your hands. I don’t think that a Queen tour as it is now is manual anymore. Everything is “push buttons” in it. PS: Yes, so it was indeed like the works, you had to work to make it work, right? PF: Yes, but nobody knew that’s how it works. They just saw these wheels turning every now and then. PS: It’s like a kind of magic indeed… PF: Yes, this was the whole thing with the Queen show – that people saw things happening but didn’t try and think “Oh, how do they do that?” If I see a big show now, I just think “How do they do that?” You’re not listening to the music anymore, you’re thinking “How do they get this to move? How do they get that?” But in the old days, you never did that, you just saw it move and it was part of the show. PS: You were just enjoying it, you didn’t have the time to analyse it. PF: Yeah. PS: I see. That’s a great memory, Peter. So, the third topic is about Freddie’s solo album, “Mr. Bad Guy” Freddie firstly wanted to name his solo album Made In Heaven and he even mentions that title in an interview with David Wigg. Why did he later decide to call it Mr Bad Guy? PF: I think he felt that Mr Bad Guy represented him more than Made In Heaven. And the lyrics to that song, everything. It sort of was very much about him. I think that’s why it changed. I actually love that song because it is real orchestra on it. And I was in the studio. I mean, it’s not a massive studio, so what they had to do, they had to record each section, so the strings section was there and recorded all their parts. And they went out. And woodwind recorded all their parts. Then brass recorded their parts. Then timpani came in and recorded. You know, they could not do everything together, so it was actually really quite complicated. But the end result, I think, is great. It reminds me very, very much of “The Carnival of the Animals”, the old classical piece. That was written by Camille Saint-Saëns. But that is what I’m immediately reminded of when I listen to “Mr Bad Guy”, you know. [starts to hum the song] You know, all the different pieces of the orchestra doing it, repeating it. Now, that for me is my favourite part. PS: I also enjoy it, I adore it. It’s truly a work of art from Freddie. PF: Yes, definitely, definitely. And I agree with him because it does represent him, multifaceted. You know, you never expect… He never gives you something that you expect. He always gives you something that will surprise you. PS: Yes. And why bad guy, why do you think Mr Bad Guy? Why bad? PF: Because… anytime in the press, there was never anything saying what a lovely man he is. So why not live up to his reputation? PS: Yes, it’s like “Yes, I’m everybody’s Mr Bad Guy,” yes. PF: Yes, this is it. This is what people want to believe, so this is what I will be. PS: Yes. And why do you think his first title was exactly not some

other track title but exactly “Made In Heaven”? Why was his first idea about exactly this song, to call the album this way? PF: I don’t know, I really cannot answer that one for you. I don’t know why he thought of that. Maybe he thought that would be the most popular track. A very popular track. PS: Yeah, it’s a hit song, totally remindful, yeah. And what was Freddie mostly like during the recording? What’s your favourite memory of him in this period? PF: That’s a lot more difficult because it was a difficult time. Munich. It took him far too long to create it. In the end, he was more interested in going out and spending time with Barbara Valentin than he was in creating work. I mean, the amount of time… he would turn up in the studio at two o’clock. Because he always turned up at two o’clock. It was pointless staying or coming at ten because he wouldn’t. And the thing is, it’s a singer’s voice, he’s not really ready to use [it] until later on in the afternoon. Once he’s warmed up properly and everything else. But the thing is, by four o’clock the phone would be ringing and Barbara was bored, so Freddie would run over and go out with her. So it was hard. And sometimes it felt like he was forcing himself to enjoy himself. Because he also felt bad, because he knew he should have been working, but he was letting his arm be twisted very, very, very easily. Yeah, I mean, okay, yes, he did enjoy himself when he was with Barbara, but he also had in the back of his mind that he was supposed to be working. PS: But the final result, I think, is totally great, he’s so much presented there. PF: It wasn’t the commercial success that people were expecting, but I think Freddie was happy with it in the end. PS: Yeah, it’s, like, his self-portrait songs. PF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It got that music out of his system so that when he was back with Queen he was thinking more of the band stuff than, you know, things that the band would be happy with and just him happy with. Also, the thing is, Freddie did miss the rest of the band. He would never admit it but if you listen to some of the instrumentals on some of his solo tracks you could imagine Brian playing the guitar, you could imagine John playing the bass. You know, he missed having the band around him. PS: I see, I see. Even though it was his only first experience as his solo work, he already missed the other boys. PF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the thing is, all his recording before Mr. Bad Guy had always been with other people around. You know, even when he was producing the Peter Straker album, he had friends around him doing things. This was him on his own and it was all on his shoulders. PS: Yeah, and he worked on this album perfectly, it’s absolutely a masterpiece, yeah. So, the fourth topic is about Freddie’s and Roger’s connection. There is a story that Freddie heard Roger’s song “Heaven For Everyone” and he liked it so much that he wanted to sing it, and in the end The Cross, Roger Taylor’s band, released a version with Freddie’s vocals on it. And do you remember, had Freddie ever listened to Roger’s solo albums at home? PF: Freddie didn’t really listen to very much of anybody’s music at home. The only thing I remember... well, okay, yes, I remember putting on videos of Prince. But, musically, we would put on, we would buy every one that came out. It was a series of CD’s and albums, of course, before the CD’s, Now That’s What I Call Music. And what it would be, would be the sort of top hits of two months or something. And they would all be on Now That’s What I Call Music 1, then Now That’s What I Call Music 2. I think it’s on to Now That’s What I Call Music 373 at the moment. I don’t know. That was the music that he would put on, it was the music of the time. Because, you know, for his own music, for Queen music, that was work for him. And what concerns Freddie listening to Roger’s albums - probably what it would’ve been he would’ve listened to it when he and Roger met up. But it wouldn’t necessarily be at home they would put on the album. They would meet up and Roger would say,

“Oh, you must hear, listen to this, you have to hear this. This is something I’ve been working on,” you know, that sort of thing. PS: I see. And, you mentioned Freddie enjoying Prince, and it connects me with the fifth topic and it’s about the musician of the same age as Prince and it’s, like, a connection of Freddie Mercury from Queen and the Queen of Pop who is known as Madonna. What was Freddie’s attitude to Madonna? Because it’s almost impossible to imagine that he never ever mentioned her or never talked about her. PF: He admired her as… a woman surviving and winning in basically a man’s world. Yeah, because she was a power. And for that he admired her. Some of the music he quite liked. But there’s also the other side of the coin. Freddie, for all he was, had one security with him whenever he went out or everything. And Freddie felt that Madonna was actually attracting attention to herself rather than protecting herself. When she would go running in Hyde Park with ten security, you know, he said, “If she went with one person, people wouldn’t even notice her, but because she’s got ten people around her, then the whole world is going to notice. And you are best safe not like that but if you have just one person.” So, I mean, for that side he didn’t understand her thinking, but for her musical acumen and for her performance he thought she was fine, she was good. PS: And what is your personal attitude to Madonna? Do you like her? PF: Again, some of the things she’s done I think are very, very good. I don’t know, the more recent stuff I’m not so keen on. But all the first ten years or whatever of her stuff, I loved it. Yeah. Because, again, she never copied, she always did her own thing, and she never repeated herself. And I love originality. PS: And what is your own favourite memory about Freddie and Montserrat, Barcelona story in general? PF: I suppose it would have to be the actual recording of “Barcelona” because that was the first track that was completed. Freddie had sent Montserrat a tape giving her a guide vocal. Mike Moran had written out the music for her and sent it. So when she came in, when she arrived, she was fully, fully prepared for what was going to happen. But I remember being with Freddie after she’d done the first tape of her vocals for Barcelona, and… there were almost, almost, I mean, there were tears down his face. He was saying, “I now have the greatest voice in the world singing my music.” And that will always stay with me, always. PS: I see, so it was, like, very deep for him. And what is your favourite memory of Montserrat as a person? PF: Ah, a lot of memories. I went to pick her up at the airport, took her to the hotel, I would go and meet her at the hotel, go with her to the studio, all of that sort of things. And I was only in the studio when Montserrat was there. And when she was actually putting her vocal tracks down, the track was basically finished. I saw her so many times after the recording as well. You know, I went to see different performances of her. And it was because of her that I was actually at the Palais Garnier in Paris. You know, the opera house in Paris. Because she actually did an AIDS Gala there. And she invited me to go. I think… her laughter. It’s just like Freddie’s. Because whenever people ask me what’s my first memory, what is the memory that first comes to my mind of Freddie, and it’s always him laughing. And it’s the same with her. Whether she’s just finished a performance or actually when she’s doing a recital or a concert. And during her encores, she is always giggling and laughing. Amazing giggle. Because she likes to bring the audience in during the encores. And she’s got this infectious giggle. She invited me to the first night ever of her performing Isolde in “Tristan and Isolde” in Barcelona. And talking with her afterwards, I said, “You must know how wonderful it is for me to be coming here, to be seeing it, to be listening to you.” And she says, “Of course, you’re part of the family.” So, that really has always stuck with me. PS: So, the next topic for

today is Freddie spending time just making any kind of normal activities. And the question is firstly about his swimming skills – could Freddie actually swim, and if yes, did he enjoy it? PF: I never saw him swim. Never. I don’t know if he could swim. I’ve often thought about that and I never saw it. He didn’t… thinking about it, we went on a motor boat when we were at Pike’s hotel in Ibiza one time. And he didn’t look the most comfortable. So, I really don’t know if he could actually swim. I never saw him in a swimming pool or anything like that. Even when there was a swimming pool around, I never saw him in it. PS: But speaking of other activities, for example, you mentioned your staying at Pike’s hotel, he liked to play tennis there, right? PF: Yes. And, of course, when he was younger he was very good at table tennis. So, yeah, he enjoyed tennis. When we were living together with Freddie in Los Angeles, in that house, there was a tennis court as well and he played there a few times. PS: I see. And what are your other memories of Los Angeles? PF: Los Angeles. Also I remember in Los Angeles it was in L’Ermitage hotel when Queen were designing the Hot Space album cover there. They were there, maybe, even rehearsing for a tour or something. That’s the hotel I was staying in at that time. It was just this concrete glass and… stainless steel… and chrome. It was a very, very modern hotel. I remember, there were all band members, I was there, Chris Taylor was there, Paul Prenter was there. And they were throwing ideas around. And that’s where Freddie came up with the colours. “That’s the hot space, the space is the colours, hot colours.” PS: Ah, so it has something to do with image, with colour as you see it… PF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. PS: The hot like the bright one, right? A definitive one. PF: Yeah, yeah. PS: And he drew, like, a draught of the cover, right? Because he is credited as designer. PF: They were talking about which colours and then who would be which colour and then what they would put on each colour. You know, when they started talking about, not necessarily a profile but just picking out the aspects that people recognize from each artist, like Brian and his hair, Freddie and his moustache, you know, that sort of thing. PS: And so, each member chose the colour for himself by his own, right? PF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. PS: And how do you think, why Freddie chose the red colour? PF: Because it’s the colour that sticks out the most, although red was not his favourite colour, his favourite colour was yellow. But red is the one that you first look at. If you look at every sale, you know, big sale signs and everything, it’s always red on white. Because red is the colour you notice more. Apparently, whether it’s true or not, I don’t know, but in the old days police stopped more red cars than any other car. PS: Oh, really? PF: Yeah. Just psychologically red is the colour that stands out. PS: And Freddie being so outstanding wanted to strike everybody. PF: Yeah. PS: I see. And you mentioned Freddie and you spending time at Pike’s hotel. And what is also your personal favourite memory of this time. PF: I suppose the swimming pool was actually something nice. To actually think that we were in the swimming pool where Wham had recorded “Club Tropicana”. I mean, yeah, Pike’s. It was a nice hotel. They treated you well. They treated you personally, you know, they took care of you. And so it was a nice place. You really felt well-treated. PS: And what was, like, the top of the top on Freddie’s 41st birthday? What are your memories? PF: The most ridiculous thing is when guests went off into a corner and started smoking, so they weren’t smoking at the table and set light to the decorations. There were all these paper decorations hanging down the walls and everything. And people were there smoking and not looking at what they were doing, and they set light to them with their cigarettes. And then they started throwing alcohol to try and, you know, because it was wet they thought they would put the flames out. I mean, some people are not

very, very bright. [laughs] PS: I see. And what was your favourite memory of his previous one birthday, in 1986, the hat party? PF: Now, the hat party was a one-off, there was no other party quite like that, in Garden Lodge. Not with two hundred and something guests. Because the thing is, the thing that I loved about the fact was that nothing was put away. None of his vases or, you know, anything was put on tables. All the antiques and everything. Everything was left there. Because, okay, there were two hundred people but he actually knew them. He knew he could trust them. PS: And what was it like for him when he arrived back from his magnificent journey to Japan? PF: The thing is, it extended because he was then back home opening up all the packages that had arrived and the crates that had arrived. Because everything was sent over as soon as he bought it. So, the big room, the small room. Everything, all the rooms were full. And these, he had twelve of them. So, it was like Christmas. You know, a six-week Christmas. Because he was away enjoying himself and then opening up and putting it all around the house. PS: So, he was actually in Japan for six weeks, right? PF: No, no, he was in Japan, I think, for about three weeks. But then when he came back, he had three weeks of opening up and putting them all out. PS: So, he had a chance to enjoy his presents one more time, like, actually having them all. PF: Precisely, precisely. PS: So, it was, like, double joy – first to buy it and then to enjoy it at home. PF: Yes, yeah, yeah. PS: And mostly he bought antiques, right? PF: Yeah, I mean, he did actually buy some modern porcelain and things, but almost everything was antique. Almost everything. PS: I see. It was indeed a magic year for him. The Magic tour and the magic holiday… PF: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely. PS: I see, I see. So, as we are ending our first part by now, I’m saying to you a very, very big thank you, Peter. It’s amazing to hear all these stories about Freddie. PF: It’s been a pleasure, it’s a pleasure. SPECIAL THANKS TO VALUREX FOR CONTRIBUTION AND ASSISTENCE TO BE CONTINUED

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Recommendation engines and "lean-back" media

In William Gibson’s 1992 novel “Idoru,” a media executive describes her company’s core audience:

“Best visualized as a vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organism craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed. Personally I like to imagine something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth…no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote. Or by voting in presidential elections.”

It’s an astonishingly great passage, not just for the image it evokes, but for how it captures the character of the speaker and her contempt for the people who made her fortune.

It’s also a beautiful distillation of the 1990s anxiety about TV’s role in a societal “dumbing down,” that had brewed for a long time, at least since the Nixon-JFK televised debates, whose outcome was widely attributed not to JFK’s ideas, but to Nixon’s terrible TV manner.

Neil Postman’s 1985 “Amusing Ourselves To Death” was a watershed here, comparing the soundbitey Reagan-Dukakis debates with the long, rhetorically complex Lincoln-Douglas debates of the previous century.

(Incidentally, when I finally experienced those debates for myself, courtesy of the 2009 BBC America audiobook, I was more surprised by Lincoln’s unequivocal, forceful repudiations of slavery abolition than by the rhetoric’s nuance)

https://memex.craphound.com/2009/01/20/lincoln-douglas-debate-audiobook-civics-history-and-rhetoric-lesson-in-16-hours/

“Media literacy” scholarship entered the spotlight, and its left flank — epitomized by Chomsky’s 1988 “Manufacturing Consent” — claimed that an increasingly oligarchic media industry was steering society, rather than reflecting it.

Thus, when the internet was demilitarized and the general public started trickling — and then rushing — to use it, there was a widespread hope that we might break free of the tyranny of concentrated, linear programming (in the sense of “what’s on,” and “what it does to you”).

Much of the excitement over Napster wasn’t about getting music for free — it was about the mix-tapification of all music, where your custom playlists would replace the linear album.

Likewise Tivo, whose ad-skipping was ultimately less important than the ability to watch the shows you liked, rather than the shows that were on.

Blogging, too: the promise was that a community of reader-writers could assemble a daily “newsfeed” that reflected their idiosyncratic interests across a variety of sources, surfacing ideas from other places and even other times.

The heady feeling of the time is hard to recall, honestly, but there was a thrill to getting up and reading the news that you chose, listening to a playlist you created, then watching a show you picked.

And while there were those who fretted about the “Daily Me” (what we later came to call the “filter bubble”) the truth was that this kind of active media creation/consumption ranged far more widely than the monopolistic media did.

The real “bubble” wasn’t choosing your own programming — it was everyone turning on their TV on Thursday nights to Friends, Seinfeld and The Simpsons.

The optimism of the era is best summarized in a taxonomy that grouped media into two categories: “lean back” (turn it on and passively consume it) and “lean forward” (steer your media consumption with a series of conscious decisions that explores a vast landscape).

Lean-forward media was intensely sociable: not just because of the distributed conversation that consisted of blog-reblog-reply, but also thanks to user reviews and fannish message-board analysis and recommendations.

I remember the thrill of being in a hotel room years after I’d left my hometown, using Napster to grab rare live recordings of a band I’d grown up seeing in clubs, and striking up a chat with the node’s proprietor that ranged fondly and widely over the shows we’d both seen.

But that sociability was markedly different from the “social” in social media. From the earliest days of Myspace and Facebook, it was clear that this was a sea-change, though it was hard to say exactly what was changing and how.

Around the time Rupert Murdoch bought Myspace, a close friend a blazing argument with a TV executive who insisted that the internet was just a passing fad: that the day would come when all these online kids grew up, got beaten down by work and just wanted to lean back.

To collapse on the sofa and consume media that someone else had programmed for them, anaesthetizing themselves with passive media that didn’t make them think too hard.

This guy was obviously wrong — the internet didn’t disappear — but he was also right about the resurgence of passive, linear media.

But this passive media wasn’t the “must-see TV” of the 80s and 90s.

Rather, it was the passivity of the recommendation algorithm, which created a per-user linear media feed, coupled with mechanisms like “endless scroll” and “autoplay,” that incinerated any trace of an active role for the “consumer” (a very apt term here).

It took me a long time to figure out exactly what I disliked about algorithmic recommendation/autoplay, but I knew I hated it. The reason my 2008 novel LITTLE BROTHER doesn’t have any social media? Wishful thinking. I was hoping it would all die in a fire.

Today, active media is viewed with suspicion, considered synonymous with Qanon-addled boomers who flee Facebook for Parler so they can stan their favorite insurrectionists in peace, freed from the tyranny of the dread shadowban.

But I’m still on team active media. I would rather people actively choose their media diets, in a truly sociable mode of consumption and production, than leaning back and getting fed whatever is served up by the feed.

Today on Wired, Duke public policy scholar Philip M Napoli writes about lean forward and lean back in the context of Trump’s catastrophic failure to launch an independent blog, “From the Desk of Donald J Trump.”

https://www.wired.com/story/opinion-trumps-failed-blog-proves-he-was-just-howling-into-the-void/

In a nutshell, Trump started a blog which he grandiosely characterized as a replacement for the social media monopolists who’d kicked him off their platforms. Within a month, he shut it down.

While Trump claimed the shut-down was all part of the plan, it’s painfully obvious that the real reason was that no one was visiting his website.

Now, there are many possible, non-exclusive explanations for this.

For starters, it was a very bad social media website. It lacked even rudimentary social tools. The Washington Post called it “a primitive one-way loudspeaker,” noting its lack of per-post comments, a decades old commonplace.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/21/trump-online-traffic-plunge/

Trump paid (or more likely, stiffed) a grifter crony to build the site for him, and it shows: the “Like” buttons didn’t do anything, the video-sharing buttons created links to nowhere, etc. From the Desk… was cursed at birth.

But Napoli’s argument is that even if Trump had built a good blog, it would have failed. Trump has a highly motivated cult of tens of millions of people — people who deliberately risked death to follow him, some even ingesting fish-tank cleaner and bleach at his urging.

The fact that these cult-members were willing to risk their lives, but not endure poor web design, says a lot about the nature of the Trump cult, and its relationship to passive media.

The Trump cult is a “push media” cult, simultaneously completely committed to Trump but unwilling to do much to follow him.

That’s the common thread between Fox News (and its successors like OANN) and MAGA Facebook.

And it echoes the despairing testimony of the children of Fox cultists, that their boomer parents consume endless linear TV, turning on Fox from the moment they arise and leaving it on until they fall asleep in front of it (also, reportedly, how Trump spent his presidency).

Napoli says that Trump’s success on monopoly social media platforms and his failure as a blogger reveals the role that algorithmically derived, per-user, endless scroll linear media played in the ascendancy of his views.

It makes me think of that TV exec and his prediction of the internet’s imminent disappearance (which, come to think of it, is not so far off from my own wishful thinking about social media’s disappearance in Little Brother).

He was absolutely right that this century has left so many of us exhausted, wanting nothing more than the numbness of lean-back, linear feeds.

But up against that is another phenomenon: the resurgence of active political movements.

After a 12-month period that saw widescale civil unrest, from last summer’s BLM uprising to the bizarre storming of the capital, you can’t really call this the golden age of passivity.

While Fox and OANN consumption might be the passive daily round of one of Idoru’s “vicious, lazy, profoundly ignorant, perpetually hungry organisms craving the warm god-flesh of the anointed,” that is in no way true of Qanon.

Qanon is an active pastime, a form of collaborative storytelling with all the mechanics of the Alternate Reality Games that the lean-forward media advocates who came out of the blogging era love so fiercely:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/08/06/no-vitiated-air/#other-hon

Meanwhile, the “clicktivism” that progressive cynics decried as useless performance a decade ago has become an active contact sport, welding together global movements from Occupy to BLM that use the digital to organize the highly physical.

That’s the paradox of lean-forward and lean-back: sometimes, the things you learn while leaning back make you lean forward — in fact, they might just get you off the couch altogether.

I think that Napoli is onto something. The fact that Trump’s cultists didn’t follow him to his crummy blog tells us that Trump was an effect, not a cause (something many of us suspected all along, as he’s clearly neither bright nor competent enough to inspire a movement).

But the fact that “cyberspace keeps everting” (to paraphrase “Spook Country,” another William Gibson novel) tells us that passive media consumption isn’t a guarantee of passivity in the rest of your life (and sometimes, it’s a guarantee of the opposite).

And it clarifies the role that social media plays in our discourse — not so much a “radicalizer” as a means to corral likeminded people together without them having to do much. Within those groups are those who are poised for action, or who can be moved to it.

The ease with which these people find one another doesn’t produce a deterministic outcome. Sometimes, the feed satisfies your urge for change (“clicktivism”). Sometimes, it fuels it (“radicalizing”).

Notwithstanding smug media execs, the digital realm equips us to “express our mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire” by doing much more than “changing the channels on a universal remote” — for better and for worse.

Image: Ian Burt (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/oddsock/267206444

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