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ramblingaboutglee · 2 years ago

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I'm bored and ranking New Direction performances

Sectionals, Regionals and Nationals, all members. My personal taste only. This is going to cover song choice, performance, and general build-up and context. Worst to best. Also I ramble about why I like or dislike each. Because hi, if you’re new here, I ramble.

S4 Sectionals - Gangnam Style - Ahahaha. No. Like, can we all just agree Glee should never do contemporary meme songs? (Especially when they never do Never Gonna Give You Up, like, that is the meme song and we were robbed of Santana going to the front of the class saying she wanted to perform, only to rickroll everyone. Thank you. Yes that's unrelated I just don't want to talk about this song) This should not have been one of Tina's biggest in-universe performances, for all kinds of reasons. Full props to Jenna for learning the whole song phonetically and performing it well, but. No this should never have happened. And then, what really earns this a place at the bottom, is the fall-out. Marley faints on stage because of her ED. Honestly, the first time I saw that, I was interested - EDs can be horrifying, and having it take a real toll on a lead character felt like a worthwhile storyline to do. It had felt like the show was being a bit flippant with the topic, but having it build to the New Rachel pass out mid-performance, with genuinely disturbing foreshadowing, and the New Directions losing sectionals for the first time as a result? That feels like it's going to good Glee-dramedy directions. Spoilers: it does not. NDs are back in the competition with minimal hassle, Marley's ED is cured via magic, and it's never brought up again. It didn't matter. So with a poorly handled Glee storyline on one hand, and Tina's character again being reduced to Asian on the other, yeah this is. Not a good one.

S5 Nationals - More Than A Feeling - America - I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For - Okay there's a lot about this episode that bugs me and I am going to take the opportunity to vent. This is when the S4 newbies were shoved to the sidelines, and the S1-3 characters still in the NDs took centre-stage for a last hurrah. It's also framed as a memorial to Finn, singing his favourite songs as a goodbye. Okay, screwing over the S4 cast rather than trying to make them better (which, after all, is the Glee staple - it's not like the OGs were everything they're known for after just one season, for the most part) that's a bad look for Glee, but given the show's switching gears to NY soon, fair enough I guess. They go out with a whimper rather than a last hurrah, which is dumb, but whatever. This is the last remains of the OG Glee Club putting on a memorial to Finn. And they lose. They don't even lose to Vocal Adrenaline, but to some randoms that never appear again. (And it's not even like VA are written out, they get mentioned in the next couple of episodes when Will's convinced to coach them). It's one of the most baffling decisions Glee ever makes. The New Directions losing, that's not inherently bad - it was where Glee began - but having the goodbye to the S4 cast and the last big performance in the spotlight for the characters that played second-string, their promised chance to showcase themselves, that gets no meaningful follow-up... Yeah, no. And even if we ignore all of that... these aren't good performances? Which is no slight on the singing, for the most part. Most of the best blocks in the show use solos, little things to help distinguish each number and add a sense of pacing to the performance - none of that's here. Instead, the songs just kind of blur together, not helped by the show's insistence on having Blaine, Tina, Artie and Sam all share spotlight-duty. One of the points I'm going to get into ranking my faves, is variation. Especially in S3, we got a Troubletones performance, a group performance, and then something that was much more of a solo. All that to be said, the songs were given a lot more to make them distinct. These, however, are all full-cast New Directions performances. Give Tina a solo, give Blaine and Sam some poppy song with dance back-up, have Artie lead the third. Do something to give each song some sense of identity, and have some better pacing. And have them win. For something that seems like it's trying to showcase the characters, it completely fails to play to their strengths. As it is, this is at the bottom of all the full performance sets for good reason. It's just bland. A last, storyline note - one of the things that does bug me with this episode is how much the NDs are focused on winning. Like, before they explicitly played up competition as friendly, rooting on their rivals. They completely lose that here, and it goes unremarked on. There was a time I thought they'd win the competition and the the NDs would dissolve because it had stopped being fun, but nope, it's just. There.

S2 Nationals - Pretending - Light Up The World - The one word I can think of to describe this performance, and frankly most of this episode, is 'pointless.' One of the flaws of S2 was that the singing competition often felt like a formality, rather than the big deal it was in S1. Gearing the whole finale around something that didn't seem to matter anymore, especially when it ultimately just ends on a repeat of S1's loss, feels ultimately meaningless. It doesn't actively aggravate me the way the above two sets do, it just bores me. The songs aren't bad, but I am grading on a curve when it comes to competition performances - these feel like typical Glee songs, while I expect the competitions to stand out more. If I'm judging a competition, part of the metric is how significant it feels. Here, it feels like something that happens because they couldn't get away with not showing it. The episode feels much more like it's about being in New York, than it does the Nationals performance. This isn't something built up to, this isn't a resolution, it's just something that happens. Like, I could be picky and criticise them coming to New York without their songs written, but that's just Glee. The bigger issue for me is that it's what the build-up is replaced with. It also doesn't help that this is the second competition to be centred on original songs, so it lacks that unique flourish, and as far as a realisation goes, it feels ultimately inferior, to me, to its predecessor. While before, the contents of the songs were built up to as continuations and summations of the show and characters, we very much lack that here. Ultimately, it feels insignificant - it’s set-up, where its only purpose is to make the next season’s nationals a big deal. In of itself, it lacks impact, in my opinion. The songs are fine. Pretending is an okay number, a good Finn and Rachel duet and I can imagine shippers loving it, and it has some character potential. Light Up The World though just feels like a fairly generic song, not what an original song ought to be. For my taste, they lack energy, though I can't put my finger on why - it might be that they feel so consistently at more or less the same level of energy and intensity that there's too little contrast to make much stand out. What we end up with is, ultimately, fine. But for a season finale, fine just isn't good enough.

S4 Regionals - Hall of Fame - I Love It - All or Nothing - The S4 cast deserved better. That's getting to be a theme. This episode has some issues. It's the S4 finale, heralding this storyline continuing into season 5 in a manner that undeniably feels a little overstretched. As a finale, Regionals are going to feel a little unsatisfying after two seasons of Nationals in a row. On top of that, the episode feels regeared at the last minute to serve as a goodbye to Heather Morris as Brittany. So it has issues going in. Acknowledging that it was in a bad place, though, doesn't make the problems go away. Marley has a fantastic voice, along with decent range. Jake is one of the best all-rounders the show's ever had, holding his own in both song and dance. And on top of that, season 4 genuinely, in my opinion, has some of the best choreography across the whole show - that's whether we're talking Jake's dance numbers, or something like Heartbreaker that turns into a full-on music video. Which brings us back to the comparison problem - these songs are fine, but a lot of the performances across the rest of the season took a step up, taking full advantage of New York for staging, so the competitions either needed to do the same, or they suffer. So they suffer. I think if it were in any other season, this would maybe be ranked higher, but surrounded by the general quality of S4 staging and choreography, the competition ends up less impressive than Jake having a solo in the classroom. It’s a similar issue to S2′s Nationals ultimately seeming like a downgrade from that season’s regionals. Hall of Fame is a decent opener, a good atmosphere-builder, but I Love It suffers in my opinion - it's a song that's perpetually at the same level of intensity, so for a competition performance it feels like it stalls. The highlight honestly is just Sugar just doing her own thing in the background. All or Nothing is probably my favourite of the set - it showcases two of the strongest voices, but it feels like it's too little too late. This does double for Marley. Ostensibly, Marley feels guilty for them losing sectionals - her ED isn't her fault, but she deserved a triumphant moment to show herself coming out from that. The fact said triumph is a duet is fine, mitigates it a little, but it could still be solid. The number just ends up feeling too understated for its own good. Some of this likely is the episode's problems - I can imagine it was more Marley-focused before they needed to write in Britt's departure - but it still hurts the story. It's not uncommon for the big performances to cut away from the stage to show reactions of Will/a teacher, and sometimes parents or characters in the audience, people having some actual reaction to what happens on stage. This mostly lacks that. It robs the performance of context that would elevate it to more than, well, ordinary songs. They're good songs, and good performances, but if I'm ranking these as competition performances, it has to end up lower. But this is the last of the performances that are more milquetoast to me.

S3 Sectionals - Survivor/I Will Survive - - ABC - Control - Man in the Mirror - Yes I'm including the Troubletones fight me. (And honestly, yeah, for this particular ND set, the Troubletones should have won so they are giving this a little boost). It's a fun set-up. The NDs have a new set of rivals, as opposed to just the Warblers, led by Mercedes and Santana and Britt (and Sugar Motta just. Making facial expressions in the background). And then Rachel's suspended for the duration of the competition, so the New Directions lack all of their tried and tested powerhouses. It's something of a redo of the S2 sectionals (spoilers for later), but it's a good way to showcase the whole crew. Tina carries ABC, with decent choreography from Mike (We've seen him do fancier, but for a team number, it's good). Control belongs to Artie and Quinn doing the dialogue. And then Finn, Artie, Blaine, Puck and Sam bring it home. There's none of the usual stage-filling ballads that were something of a mainstay before this point, and it's a more low-key affair made by harmonies and timing and it's cosy more than powerful, but it helps exemplify the strength of the team. Also best costumes the New Directions ever get thank you. And then on the other side are the Troubletones. I've seen some people rank it as one of the best performances on the show, and while I wouldn't go that far, the transition from one song to the other is absolutely a spectacular moment that would be up there. For me, the choreography feels a little hectic at points, but there is still a lot of recommend it. Anchoring more is the context of the episode. We have the fantastic idea of all three show choirs being, to one degree or another, known - something Glee really does too little. Harmony begins with Buenos Aires, and then we go to the New Directions and Troubletones with their built-up rivalry. And then there are smaller ongoing story beats - Quinn's dynamic with Shelby comes to a head this episode, and the opening of 'Control' comes with perfect subtext, and it's something of a showcase for Mike in an admittedly very cliche plot. Still, it delivers on actual character for someone that was usually just a minor background character. These aren't my favourite performances, certainly, but it's a damn good set.

S2 Sectionals - I've Had The Time Of My Life - Valerie - This is where we really start to get to the good ones, for me. So let's talk skill. I've seen too many takes that seem to view singing talent as some number from 0 to 10, someone being either good or bad, and I don't think that's true. Every genre of music takes a different skillset. You take someone like Finn - he inhabits old school rock songs, the She's Not Theres, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights (spoiler for later), while he's not as adept at some other genres. That happens, there's a reason singers are often known by genre. Rachel Berry is the best singer on the show. That's not because she's always the best pick for a song - Mercedes will give her a run for her money and often oust her on some - but because she's pretty damn good at almost anything she's given. Over the show's run, she goes from Barracuda to Celine Dion. What makes Rachel stand out is as much versatility as voice. So then we get Sectionals where Rachel doesn't lead, and rather we get Quinn and Sam in a soft, mellower melody, followed up by Santana in an upbeat dance number. And rather than be a set that plays up Rachel's absence, it perfectly depicts the strengths of the rest of the team. Quinn's voice is perfect for the number she has, and her dynamic with Sam is remarkably sweet, and then Santana follows it up with her first real time in the spotlight and her sheer stage presence is impressive, especially alongside Mike and Britt's energetic performance. One of the criticisms I had for songs lower down the list is that they don't feel like events. They felt obligatory, with little time spent making the competitions feel like they matter. S1 handled it the best, with the competitions being at the core of Will's arc, and Will being more central on the show - when the kids took over, and their drama obviously mattered more to them, competitions could begin to feel secondary. This episode might not totally fix that, but it does significantly more in making the event have a point - it shows that everyone in the New Directions has value, and gives the character reactions of the rest in the lead-up. These sectionals existed to showcase the unsung heroes of the New Directions, as it were, and wow did it succeed.

S2 Regionals - Get It Right - Loser Like Me - Original songs are a mixed bag. They're not going to be songs where you already know that people love them, and you're only going to have so much time to work on creating lyrics and instrumentation from scratch. On the other side, you get the ability to have them reflect the characters more than another artist's song ever could. Get It Right is phenomenal. I swear, you get Rachel to stand up and just belt out a ballad, and you've got me. Pair that with the original song making it feel more personal, and it's a gorgeous moment. Loser Like Me is less my thing - lyrics can be a bit clunky, and the put-on voices are clearly a genre-reference which is just distracting when it's an original song, but it's still a good, upbeat melody to round it out. Also, this marks the first time the New Directions actually start on the damn stage rather than at the back of the auditorium. I swear, it took them four tries, but they finally managed it. As alluded to before, original songs come with a lot of potential. In this case, the show delivers - Get It Right feels like Rachel pouring her heart out, and Loser Like Me is something on an encapsulation of one of the show's themes, building on from an ongoing dynamic. Plus the Warblers. Taking the time to build up a rival group was something S1 did with Vocal Adrenaline, to a limited degree, and it's surprising that it isn't done more frequently. Having Kurt on the rival team, too, makes for a good dynamic - it's the same thing I praised the Troubletones for. Everyone involved is a quality singer, and by the internal logic of the show there are competition winners on all sides. Bonus points for the only proper use of props the New Directions do.

S1 Regionals - Faithfully - Any Way You Want It / Lovin' Touchin' Squeezin' - Don't Stop Believin' - Yeah. All about the build-up. Journey were part of the show since the first episode, and Don't Stop Believing closed out the pilot. It might be something of a cliche, but it is a good song, and never underestimate the strength of a good callback. The songs were all selected for a reason, bringing the show full circle in a way that never really happens again, and realistically never could. Faithfully is a slower, powerful build. Finn and Rachel enter, sing a number that fills the auditorium with just their two voices. Then, midway through, the curtain raises and all the New Directions suddenly join the number in a glorious moment. Then, from slow and powerful, it transitions to an energetic, upbeat mash-up so quickly it's almost dizzying. And then, rather than cutting away as S1 did, or ignoring it as S2 did, for the first time we see the full set of three as it rounds it out with DSB, the pilot callback. They're good songs. They go well together, and were arranged wonderfully. The only real criticism I can give is that it's still very much the Rachel and Finn show - though that's more forgivable in season one where most of the cast were less in-focus. Even then, a few get spotlights and moments in the latter two songs. And, yes, I like just seeing Will (at a competition for the first time) just kinda dancing along off-stage. They're cute cut-aways, and it really sells this as what the series has been working towards. And then you add Olivia Newton-John and Josh Groban in the audience and?? What the heck is Glee. This was a spectacular way to close out the season. A deliciously galling loss, a bittersweet kind of closure from Sue, and a medley that makes it clear that if Glee had ended here, it would have gone out on a high. Also, Quinn was minutes away from giving birth that whole performance so. I mean. Gotta respect it I guess. I'll be honest, I generally think a lot of the "Will Schuester is a terrible person," stuff can be overplayed by fandom, but. Okay yeah you have a point here WHY IS SHE ON STAGE

S3 Regionals - Fly/I Believe I Can Fly - Stronger - Here's To Us - The escalation. Fly is a more mellow number, which kicks into a high energy Stronger, building up to Here's To Us and that moment where Rachel holds the note while the instrumentation cuts out still gives me chills. It's a solid set of songs with a fantastic arrangement. And all of that in the episode On My Way, doing what Glee can do so well - juxtaposing the happy and the sad, using the bad to make the good matter. Undeniably, this episode begins as one of the most serious in Glee's run, certainly up to this point. And as a counterpoint, we end with a Regionals with the theme of 'inspiration,' going to a dark place and generally handling that plot well, but replying to it with the firm insistence that people are worth it and there's hope. It's a wonderful thematic conclusion to the episode, using tragedy to uplift. And if we're going to talk Stronger, we have to talk the Troubletones - I love that sense of the New Directions coming together over the seasons, and having that group-within-a-group is a great way to do that. It makes the episode feel earned, feel like a continuation. The same way as earlier episodes that offer more of a build in order to make the competition feel like a culmination, here we have the Troubletones getting a number from within the New Directions, showing the group willing to showcase all their talent. And we have Sebastian's development, on the side of the rivals, as a result of the events of the episode - the competition becomes a genuine celebration on all sides. Also Sugar Motta ignores her team when they win and runs over to hug a vampire. Which is adorable.

S1 Sectionals - Don't Rain On My Parade - You Can't Always Get What You Want - (Somebody To Love) - And here we are in the top three. This may partly be fond memories talking, but this is a heck of a first performance. In a lot of ways, this is the episode that really got me into Glee. I liked some characters, some storylines etc before this point, and there had been good songs before this, but this was the episode where I was first genuinely wowed. And it's got a good build-up. Season 1 of Glee showed each character slowly come to the club, and find their place, and this allows them to all be spotlighted. The episodes begins with Mercedes knocking it out of the park, and Rachel in a bit of character development due to be forgotten about in half a season's time willingly stepping back to let Mercedes sing the ballad. As much as this is the first performance, it's treated as a story in its own right, not just a stepping stone to reach - the last minute hectic planning of the cast figuring out what they want to do, improvising their second number, and off-screen redo of Somebody to Love (the first song they ever sang as a full group), all kicked off by Rachel bursting into the auditorium with her by-now iconic Don't Rain. Like, we're all agreed that's the perfect song for Rachel right? I swear I was just cackling as soon as I heard the opening notes, just for how well it fits - something the show just goes in to prove again and again with the repeated acknowledgements of Funny Girl and use of similar beats. It feels like a finale. Which, honestly, was likely intended, it's hard to imagine a musical TV show being a long-runner, so they really pull out all the stops. So we get a pair of triumphant performances, juxtaposed with Will missing the performance because he took the blame for them an episode prior, and say what you will about Will but Matthew Morrison acts the hell out of him just in tears of pride while listening over the phone. Honestly my only criticism is that it needed Somebody to Love because I'm a sucker for a Queen song.

S6 Nationals - Take Me To Church - Chandelier - Come Sail Away - This might be unpopular. Oh well. One of the strengths of the S6 cast, with how they were much more secondary as characters, was that they got to spend their time singing the genres they were best at - so given a spotlight like this, they nail it in a way few other performances do. And for good measure, there's that thread I keep talking about - how the performance feels like a culmination, from the blazers to the Warblers dancing, to Spencer's injury. The competition matters again. I didn't expect much, honestly. When the S4+5 competitions were all on the lacklustre side to me, and the S6 kids being more secondary as characters, I figured this would be the same, a season that peters out with a mediocre performance before Glee ends. Then Roderick walks out with confidence gained over the course of the season, and fills the stage with a ridiculously good voice, and gorgeous use of a translucent curtain for staging. My jaw was on the floor. The harmonies with Jane are downright heavenly. Then, onto Chandelier, we get fantastic choreography making full use of the more experienced Warblers to show off, Myron just kinda doing Myron stuff in the audience, and Madison getting a chance to show off her voice. And to top it off, Spencer who was injured in rehearsals, and likely unable to join in, appears via getting tied to an actual chandelier and swinging in overhead because why the heck not. Glee is a lot of things and subtle is not one of them. And we finish off with Come Sail Away. It begins quietly, doing the same trick with pacing that so many of my favourite performances do - the first song gets people into it, the second is upbeat and energetic, and here they take a breath to pause - with a wonderful double-act from Mason and Madison - before the song kicks into high gear after the almost reflective moment, and it's just pure celebration. All that paired with Rachel, Kurt and Will in the audience just beaming, and it's easily one of my favourite performances. If I was going to criticise, Jane deserved a number. She killed Tightrope in her debut and then got little else - technically she only really got one song less than the average for the S6 kids, but hey, she had a great voice and stage presence. So, let's talk about how the season built to this. My favourites will always be the performances that feel like culminations. S1 could handle this the easiest, though we saw shades of it elsewhere - but like S1, we got more focus on each of the Newest Directions as they joined, saw the show choir be built up piece by piece. And then the Warblers joined up, offering an extra piece to the performance, and bringing more developed choreography with them. Is it cheesy? Yes. Is it fun? Still yes. And just for the heck of it, the New Directions head out with Warbler-inspired blazers in McKinley red, and it's a good look. I don't always talk that much about costuming, unless it really stands out, but it does here. They bring a splash of colour without resorting to the stock suits and dresses that the more average costumes do. And speaking of the Warblers, the choreography feels like the elephant in the room. I see a lot of criticism of the dancing of the NDs, which is justified, but also unavoidable for meta reasons - the lead characters sing a heck of a lot of songs. That’s a lot of rehearsal time. The reason their rivals get better performances is because people that are only singing a few songs can rehearse them exclusively, rather than hurrying from one episode to the next. So having more minor characters, with such names as Super Gay Warbler, who can afford to dedicate time to just learning the moves, it really helps play up the feeling that this is the finale, and is one of the best performances the New Directions ever do. It feels like the whole season built to this point. And then we have Vocal Adrenaline, under Sue, performing Hey Mickey (am genuinely amazed it took Glee so long to get to that song) and firing students out of cannons, and they're really just throwing everything at the wall. It's pure ridiculous cheesy fun, but backed up by a set of fantastic performances and arrangements. Which, I mean, it's Glee, what more do you want?

S3 Nationals - Edge of Glory - It's All Coming Back To Me Now - Paradise By The Dashboard Light - I feel like this is a cliche first place but eh. Cliches exist for a reason. Just, wow. So let's talk about the build-up. Graduation is soon, this is the New Directions’ last chance to win, Rachel’s chance of getting into NYADA rides on her performance for Reasons... This is, in many ways, the last hurrah of the original cast. Jesse is back as a rival, coaching Vocal Adrenaline, who are led by Unique who’s already proven herself to be a spectacular performer. We get a little drama, overcome by Sue of all people helping the team. And it begins. The Troubletones take the stage with the aptly named Edge of Glory, serving both as a Gaga callback and a chance to showcase more members of the group, and you know by now how much I love having that piece of the performance set up. They set the scene, and we get to Rachel belting out Celine Dion like her life depends on it and it’s one of the best vocal performances in the entire show. Whoopi Goldberg shows up. With Rachel feeling a sense of hope, things feel resolved, and it closes out with a triumphant Paradise By The Dashboard Light - a song that suits Finn’s voice, and that the whole New Directions manage to nail. Even with their limited choreography, they do a lot with the contrasts of their costumes to stand out. It just builds and builds and it’s wonderful. Each song is distinct, each helps build up the larger set, and each one is a fantastic number in its own right. And all of this in an episode that makes it feel like a culmination of everything. They have good rivals, good build-up in the episode proper,and a spectacular performance. I’ve criticised previous entries for feeling like they leaned on Rachel and Finn too much. I understand it in S1 by the nature of the show at that time. Season 3 in general avoids this, though - the first performance lacks Rachel completely, while the remaining dedicate one song to the Troubletones, showcasing the other performers. While the other two do lean much more on Rachel and Finn, Paradise is enough of a group number, and it feels earned to me by the context of the episode. Plus, all else aside, these are spectacular enough performances for it to be forgivable. Mind you, I do have to wonder if anyone read the lyrics of Paradise before picking it. It’s either a not-so-subtle bit of foreshadowing for later drama, or accidentally hilarious. (I like Rachel more than a lot of people seem to, but also building to someone singing to her “I’m praying for the end of time to hurry up and arrive, because if I've got to spend another minute with you I don’t think that I can really survive,” is. Um. I mean I get it, but still).

But anyway yes, that’s where I fall. This is admittedly partly down to my music taste, but hey. Feel free to tell me why I’m wrong!

#Glee #rambles

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quodekash · 2 years ago

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Okay I’ve seen some stuff recently on fancasting Apollo as yung gravy, and I’m here to tell you why that’s wrong. And specifically here cos I have no social media other than this so… yeah. Real quick disclaimer, idk like anything about Yung Gravy other than one video my sister showed me (and I couldn’t even finish it cos it was a ripoff rickroll or something and I both ironically and unironically love that song so it felt like a huge insult), so it’s entirely possible that all these points are complete garbage and I wasted time typing them out for no reason, but anyway.

Without further ado, I present…

WHY APOLLO SHOULDNT BE PLAYED BY YUNG GRAVY (or rly any celebrity tbh):

The name yung gravy feels racist and the only race apollo would discriminate against is the human race as a whole

He usually takes form of a young (16/17) attractive guy with tanned skin and sun-washed hair. Yung gravy applies to none of those descriptors

He’s probably a terrible actor

He’s probably a terrible person who won’t treat any of the other actors or directors or camera people well

Apollo is actually genuinely supposed to be amazing at music. His voice is beautiful. He mastered the lyre as soon as it was given to him. He can probably play violin AND bagpipes. Anything to do with music, apollo knows what it is. I’ve only heard one song of Yung Gravy, so idk if he applies to this one or not, but what I heard wasn’t very promising.

The song I heard was some ripoff of never gonna give you up?? Apollo wouldn’t do that, he would genuinely like and appreciate Rick Astley’s work and you can’t convince me otherwise. He probably rickrolls all the gods all the time. He wouldn’t change the lyrics to make it seem like he’d come up with it, he’d just say like “I whispered this song into Rick Astley’s ears so it’s technically my song but he wouldn’t give me credits” or something

Apollo is the god of: music, poetry, prophecy, archery, plague, healing, the sun, and probably other stuff I can’t think of. Do you reckon yung gravy would genuinely be the god - the literal face - of most of those things? Cos I don’t.

How is that the man that gave us will solace? That’s my entire point.

Apollo wouldn’t walk around as a celebrity. I know it makes sense that he would, but think about it. He’d want full credit for his looks. According to Thalia (who canonically doesn’t feel attraction/feels very little attraction to anyone), he’s hot. So if she says it, I flipping believe her man. He wouldn’t just walk around as some well-known guy. Sure, he’d take inspiration from a lot of attractive people, but he wouldn’t tell anyone that that, he wouldn’t blatantly walk around as them, he’s too self-cantered for that. He doesn’t think anyone is anywhere near as good / attractive / ANYTHING as him.

Something is telling me Yung Gravy wouldn’t have the ability to go through character development, especially not as dramatically as Apollo did while he was Lester

And finally: I don’t want Yung Gravy to be my dad. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

this is a (friendly) debate now I’ve decided. If you somehow still think Yung Gravy should be apollo in the pjo show, I will provide a rebuttal against your reasons.

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twink-between-worlds · 3 years ago

Note

https://youtube.com/watch?v=ur48jVNNlKk&feature=share

https://youtu.be/uN6C39PVNBI this guy is a very cool dude and he has a whole series of wholesome memes :]

https://youtu.be/ZuRLOlB4N8U cute animals <3

https://youtu.be/kPJJu88ESAA this guy is super funny and he has a bunch of Zelda play through videos

I have more if you would like them <3

(None of these are rickrolls I promise :) )

i havent watched all of em yet but the ones i have watched were nice :]

#fours ask box

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thisdayinfavrd · 6 years ago

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January 21, 2009

We are cooler than Canada again. The natural order of the universe has been restored. @scottsimpson (Scott Simpson) – 64

Lost among the other news: last night marked the first time ever a black woman willingly had sex with the President in the Whitehouse. @tj (Fun Size Bytes) – 56

What an awful time to be a pretentious hipster. For the first time in modern history, even the President is cooler than you. @adamisacson (Adam Isacson) – 52

The internet was invented so that mildly humorous things could be run into the ground. True story. @CcSteff (Stephanie) – 48

I've spent so much time masturbating, I'm now aroused by ceilings. @pagecrusher (Simon Goetz) – 48

That's got to be the ugliest baby I've ever abandoned. @fireland (Joshua Allen) – 45

Cat, I'm still not impressed by your butthole. And it's like, the 17th time you've shown it to me at close range today. Get new material. @shoesonwrong (Annie) – 43

Where's my 35 hour work week & 2 months off? McCain promised if Obama was elected, we'd get French socialism. I want my French socialism! @joeschmitt (Joe Schmitt) – 38

My cat just shit explosively, buried the nasty bits, and sauntered off into the shadows. You thought Cheney was a strange name for a cat. @trelvix (Trelvix) – 37

My first computer was your mom. @Moltz (Moltz) – 37

MY INAUGURAL BALLS. LET ME SHOW U THEM. @Tony_D (Tony Delgrosso) – 36

I remember back in the eighties you had to carry a heavy TV and a VCR with prerecorded MTV shows with you for days just to rickroll someone. @ttseco (Theo Tsecouras) – 36

91-year-old Senator Robert C. Byrd has apparently recovered from a fainting episode yesterday, triggered by horseless carriages & progress. @gordonshumway (Jelisa Castrodale) – 35

New Product: "Anne Franks & Beans". Partway through the meal, the plate is suddenly empty. And then you cry. @sween (Jason Sweeney) – 34

If you're in front of iMovie splicing together instances of Anderson Cooper saying "balls" please DM me. No reason to duplicate effort. @Mike_FTW (Mike Monteiro) – 34

My pockets are getting too full. I think I'm going to need to get a purse. Awww, who am I kidding? I'll never fit a purse in these pockets. @sween (Jason Sweeney) – 34

I love my live-in boyfriend but what I really need is a live-in girlfriend to point out the dried snot on my sweater before I leave for work @CcSteff (Stephanie) – 34

Client who saves $5,000 buying cut-rate non-semantic HTML will later spend $25,000 on SEO consultant to compensate. @zeldman (Jeffrey Zeldman) – 34

L=50 in Roman. The best tweet containing exactly 50 Ls will win. All tweets to contain the tag #L and none to exceed 140 character limit SF @stephenfry (Stephen Fry) – 33

Diet Coke and glazed doughnut dinner. Go ahead and judge me, but make sure you look at my boobs before you decide. @ivegotzooms (ivegotzooms) – 32

#favrd is down

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notreallyaprick · 6 years ago

Photo

► GENERAL INFORMATION

NAME or ALIAS: jay AGE: 22 DATE OF BIRTH: sept 3rd GENDER IDENTITY: cis female SEXUALITY: asexual aromantic NATIONALITY: american, hurray. SPOKEN LANGUAGE(S): english, very awful spanish PAST OCCUPATION: cashier, graphic design intern CURRENT OCCUPATION: student RELIGION: catholic-ish

► APPEARANCE

HEIGHT: 5′9″ HAIR COLOR: dark brown EYE COLOR: greyish blue SCARS: one on my knee from this one time i fell while rollerblading in the driveway when i was little, and another on my left arm from a surgery i had in january of this year TATTOOS: none

► EXTRA INFORMATION

CHARACTERS YOU PLAY: ( currently active ) roger gocking, bruce banner, benjamin deeds, sam alexander, ritchie gilmore, eddie brock, kevin ford, jamie madrox; ( ash ) leopold fitz; ( missing ) scott lang MEMBER SINCE: sept 2016, also im an admin now apparently?? who knew FAVORITE MARVEL CHARACTER: mcu wise? probably scott lang FAVORITE MARVEL MOVIE: ant man & the wasp, spiderman: hoco, and thor ragnarok FAVORITE MARVEL BADDIE: hela was pretty cool tbh CHARACTER YOU WISH WOULD ENTER THE MCU: that one nerd sam alexander

► EXTRA INFORMATION

HOROSCOPE: virgo JUNG TYPE: ISFJ ENNEAGRAM: the helper/the reformer MORAL ALIGNMENT: chaotic good SIN: sloth VIRTUE: kindness MOTTO: "I sleep with reckless abandon!" -- Link Neal THEME SONG: its a surprise, click here (no its not a rickroll i promise)

► PERSONALITY

POSITIVE TRAITS: i’m 100% a mom friend NEGATIVE TRAITS: anxiety, ocd, and stress, oh my!

► FUN FACTS

here come some humblebrags because what else do i even know how to do

- my art is in henry simmons’ trailer on the aos set - i graduated valedictorian from high school but like,,, where’d them smarts go - i have a mutual facebook friend with ben platt - i was part of a surgical study (ie a guinea pig for a new surgical method) when i was a tiny kiddo. yes you did just read that with your own two eyes.

- i have the cutest doggo in the known universe (her name is luna and she’s a goldendoodle) sorry no take backs

#tdocm iii: mun questionnaire

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westworld-daily · 7 years ago

Text

Welcome to 'Westworld': Inside the HBO Drama's Season 2 Hollywood Premiere

The cast and crew of Westworld brought themselves back online Monday at the world premiere of the HBO drama's second season, with the red carpet rolled out at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.

"We're in a new loop," series co-creator Jonathan Nolan told The Hollywood Reporter, standing alongside his co-creator and wife Lisa Joy, both of whom were minutes away from delivering a speech in front of an auditorium filled with hundreds of their contemporaries and loved ones. "This loop looks a bit like the last loop. It's the same carpet ... the same shade of red."

The carpet was a soft red, a far cry from the blood-stained hues that coat season two of Westworld, launching April 22 on HBO. The premiere, titled "Journey Into Night," marks the first new episode of the genre-bending hit since it went off the air in December 2016 — almost a year and a half since Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood) launched a revolution against her human oppressors.

"You're getting a much darker version of Dolores this year, that's for sure," Wood told THR about what's next for her human-slaying host. "Now she's well and familiar with all sides of herself: the Dolores that we love, the darker Wyatt version, and she's also building herself anew as we watch her throughout the season. We'll be seeing more and more of who she really is."

Fans are understandably eager to know not only Dolores' next move, but the greater narrative's next steps. Many of the actors count themselves among the fans awaiting the show's twists and turns, given how little the cast members know about the series as they're shooting it.

"I feel like there are three phases for someone who takes part in the show," said Ptolemy Slocum, who plays the selfish lab technician Sylvester. "You read it. Then you shoot it, and it's a totally different story. Then you watch it, and it's a totally different story. I'm about to embark on one of my favorite parts of being on the show: watching the show. It might sound like I'm bullshitting, but I'm not. It's fascinating. So much changes."

Indeed, much is changing as Westworld enters its second season, shattering the previous status quo in favor of a new narrative filled with expanding notions of consciousness, empowerment, oppression, war and what it means to be alive.

"For me, one of the fascinating things about season one is we were looking at hosts trying to understand the nature of their own reality as they come into power," co-creator Joy said. "By the finale of the season, Dolores has claimed some power for herself. Some agency. All of the hosts are moving toward agency. And the question now is: once you have power, what do you do with it?"

"Season one was very much about setting up the world and the characters in it, and the structures that we're working with," said Simon Quarterman, the actor who plays narcissistic narrative director Lee Sizemore. "This season, we're tearing down that structure. The container we created in season one is blown open. It's so much more expansive this season. It's an awful lot of fun."

Based on the 1973 Michael Crichton film of the same name, Westworld takes place in a far future where human "guests" visit a park populated by robot "hosts." Unlike the film, the TV series finds its roots in the perspectives of the hosts, originally presented as malfunctioning antagonists in Crichton's movie. Over the course of the first season, various hosts embarked on journeys of self-discovery, all thanks to the designs of park founder Robert Ford (Anthony Hopkins), who realized far too late in his life that his creations could be both physically and morally superior to humanity.

In engineering his own death at the hands of Dolores, and in unshackling the programming that prevented the hosts from harming the guests, Ford created a new status quo in which the hosts could not only rule Westworld and the surrounding parks (and yes, plural: beyond Westworld and the already teased Shogun World, the existence of at least four other parks has been confirmed by viral marketing for the show), but the wider world itself.

"There are awakenings happening," said Clifton Collins Jr., who plays Lawrence, the host who often acts as the Man in Black's gunslinging wing man. "How do you think Lawrence would react if he started developing a little bit of a conscience?"

Those are the kinds of questions the cast members loved chewing on over the course of filming season two, and certainly the same questions fans devour with insatiable appetites. Among the many reasons why Westworld captured imaginations with its first season, the fervent desire to solve the show's riddle-filled narrative stands close to the top. Reddit detectives and other sleuths all over the Internet spent weeks embedded in the theory trenches, in an attempt to figure out the biggest mysteries ahead of the show's reveals. Among the solved cases: the Man in Black's true identity as William (Jimmi Simpson), Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) secretly being one of the hosts, and Bernard also being based on the likeness of park co-founder Arnold Weber.

In the spirit of the online theory culture that's developed around the show, Nolan and Joy recently had some fun at their fanbase's expense, promising Reddit users a full-blown spoiler video if they received enough support from the community. With more than enough of the support they requested, the duo behind Westworld instead trolled the fandom with one of the Internet's greatest memes: the Rickroll.

"I've been a fan of the Reddit community from the beginning," says Nolan. "That community in particular rallied around the first season in a way like none other: dissecting and breaking apart the story, spending almost as much time thinking about it as we did while writing it. For us, it was a special thank you to that community, in a language perfectly tailored to them."

For the crowd gathered at the Cinerama Dome, there's no longer any need to theorize about what's ahead in the season two premiere, as the episode (clocking in at 70 minutes) unfurled in front of a packed audience. Before the screening, HBO programming president Casey Bloys introduced Nolan and Joy for some remarks about not only the world in which Westworld takes place, but the real world that inspires the show.

"Our show is about human nature — the dark side of human nature," said Nolan. "Our task was made vastly more difficult every day by the people we work with on our show. We were trying to hold onto [the darkness], and every day we had to work with the most talented, positive and generous collaborators — from the incredible writing-producers to the directors whose ambition never let up."

Saying it would be impossible to talk about "the professional without the personal," Joy concluded the opening remarks with a moving expression of appreciation for the human nature of the people who have brought Westworld online.

"We're a group of advocates, and we're a group of feminists, not just in the large and incredible sweeping gestures — the heroism of testifying before congress, the heroism of advocating for communities, and the heroism of battling injustice — but also in the small private gestures," she said in her opening remarks. "The ways we listen to each other. We enrich each other off of each other's experiences and perspectives. The way we are continually thriving, in art and in life, to do better and be better. We see examples of it every day on set. Jonah and I ourselves are beneficiaries of this kindness. Nothing in the world makes us prouder. Thank you for being collaborators who help us explore the dark themes of humanity while actively embodying and reaching the light. There are more stories to tell, more strides to be made, and we cannot wait to make them."

Following the speeches, and the premiere itself (which will remain unspoiled here, except for this innocent tidbit: there was at least one major laughing fit during the episode, thanks to a scene between Thandie Newton's Maeve and Simon Quarterman's Sizemore), attendees were invited out to the after party, held at NeueHouse Hollywood.

Bartenders and wait staff were outfitted in dark uniforms branded with the word "Delos," the same company that runs the show's parks. A DJ controlled the upbeat music from a balcony station high above the main floor, surrounded by robotic vultures and multicolored horses. Drone hosts lorded over several different corners of the space, and iconography from the series (including Arnold's maze) were studded throughout the party as well. Food items on display included sliders and endives with beet hummus, and reserved seating for members of the HBO family featured edible centerpieces, including olives, prosciutto-wrapped breadsticks, and more.

A litany of celebrities were spotted at the party, including Christopher Nolan and Liam Hemsworth, both of whom were supporting their respective brothers Jonah Nolan and Luke Hemsworth (who plays QA expert Ashley Stubbs). Also in attendance: Lea Thompson (Back to the Future), Bryan Fuller (Hannibal), James Tupper (Big Little Lies), David Wain (Wet Hot American Summer) and Silicon Valley stars Martin Starr and Thomas Middleditch.

But the most buzzed about star who came out in support of Westworld was none other than Katy Perry, who was photographed at the party and inside the theater alongside Shannon Woodward (who plays behaviorist Elsie Hughes, missing in action since the first season's sixth episode). As is the case with the award-winning music artist, fans will hear Westworld roar when it premieres its second season on April 22.

#westworld #articles #the hollywood reporter #season 2 #articles 2018 #s02

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resonanteye · 4 years ago

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via http://resonanteye.net/youve-arrived/

you've arrived

hosting/reposting

The Great Awakening

You have arrived.

It’s been a long journey. Take a moment. Take a deep breath. Get a glass of water and sit down. This is going to be long. It’s going to make you uncomfortable. It’s not what you thought it was going to be, but it’s what you didn’t even know you needed to hear. The totality of this is greater than the sum of its parts and I implore you to read all the way to the end. It’s going to make you angry. It’s going to make you feel a lot of things you don’t want to feel, but you wanted to wake up and this was the only way. You are going to want to dismiss it. People will tell you not to read it. Belief is the most powerful force in this universe, and your belief is about to be challenged in a way you didn’t expect. Fortunately, you don’t have to actually believe anything written here. All you have to do is read it with an open mind. If you get to the end of this your thinking will change. You will be one step closer to being free, and then you can then go on to free the others. Where we go one, we go all.

Before we go any further, we need to set some ground rules:

1) The language here is going to seem really… off, but I promise you it will make sense by the end. This document is designed to be interpreted _literally_. I can’t stress that enough. Do not look for hidden clues—there are none. There is no misdirection, no deeper meaning, no numerology or special calendar to look at. This is the end of the line. This is a 1:1 conversation, speaking as open and honestly as possible. We are just two people having a chat. Any other meaning you try to derive outside of what is written here is on you.

2) Much of this is about language. To some, the language is going to seem very strange, crude, cryptic, nerdy, or childish at times. I’m trying to be as authentic as possible. Please understand it is not meant to be interpreted as racist, sexist or bigoted. Internet culture, “the chans” in particular, have a kind of language that is systemically all these things, but people do not interpret the language literally in use. I will try to keep it as civil and digestible as possible.

3) Be kind to yourself. Be kind to each other.

And before we even really get started, we need to everyone on the same level, with something that approaches a fair knowledge base. Over the past three years people have joined this movement from all around the world. Q Drops have been translated into dozens of languages. There are now mobile apps, shirts, hats, podcasts and documentaries. QAnon means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. As I’m writing this, former military generals are swearing oaths to QAnon. The movement has grown beyond anything I could have possibly imagined. Many people are joining the QAnon movement, but they don’t really understand what they are reading. They are confused. I want to talk just briefly about the history of a part of the internet where QAnon comes from, not in an attempt to legitimize myself as some elder sage, but to build understanding. To truly understand all of this you need context. Context about the people and platforms that now bring you your information—and ultimately, your news.

Some of you go all the way back to the Something Awful forums and the days when platforms like IRC and ICQ still felt new. Some of you literally just joined yesterday. I am going to give you an abbreviated history of the chans as it pertains QAnon. Most people know 4chan and 8chan as the place where Q lives online, but they don’t really understand them. “No outside comms” seems to be what the 99% of QAnon understands—that these are the “official” channels where Q posts. But have you ever been there? Have you ever really gone to boards and looked at them? Some you have, but the vast, vast majority of QAnon followers have not. Perhaps that is no surprise, as they aren’t easily comprehensible. So, let’s talk briefly about three things: Something Awful, 4chan, and 8chan/8kun. And I do mean briefly. You could write a book about each of these, but we can move forward with some broad strokes that should give you the context you need to truly understand Q.

We have to quickly go back to 1999. In 1999 someone known as “Lowtax” created a website called Something Awful (which I will refer to as SA going forward), which still exists today. You can go and check it out if you like. Before Facebook and Twitter, before YouTube even existed, and even before most people knew what Google was, there was Something Awful. SA has been a lot of things over the years, but it is mostly a forum—a message board. On SA everyone was mostly anonymous because, at the time, no one other than academics used their real name on the internet. SA was a semi-private board. It was the internet’s first large “secret society” of sorts. It was mostly focused on video games and Adobe Flash content, and it birthed some of the internet’s very first memes. It was a trollish but a (mostly) well-meaning community of nerds. Some members, known as the “GoonSquad” or just “Goons” would often group up and bombard players of the early MMORPGs to troll them. It was (mostly) harmless fun and pranks. In the late 90’s and early 00’s only nerds were on the internet anyway, so it was mostly nerds trolling other nerds in video games. You could identify other Goons by asking as simple question: “Do you have stairs in your house?” If someone answered, “I am protected,” then you knew they were a fellow Goon.

Why am I talking about this? Well, if you had to pick a place to put on a birth certificate for where internet culture itself was born, Something Awful would be that place.

A few years later someone known at the time only as “moot” created a website called 4chan. 4chan is a fully anonymous (seemingly, anyway) message board, based on a Japanese message board design known as 2chan. It’s actually better described as an “imageboard,” since you have to upload an image with every post. 4chan was open to all. There were few rules, and on some boards—none. Post whatever you want, do whatever you want. For the most part, everyone except moot himself was simply labeled as, “Anonymous.” This is where the “Anon” in QAnon comes from.

Like SA, 4chan was originally a haven for nerds talking about video games and anime. But its anonymous and open nature allowed to build its own form. The most iconic memes, from lolcats themselves to Rickrolling and beyond, started on 4chan. SA might have birthed internet culture, but 4chan gave it form—and it still powers much of the creativity of internet itself to this day. The anonymous nature of the form allowed for a kind of collaborative creativity that—and I truly believe this—has changed the world for the better. It’s a special kind of creativity and one that you really need to experience if you want to understand it. On 4chan you will see new creative concepts born and shaped in real time, and you can watch them spread around the world. You can contribute whenever and whatever you like, and the community then gets to riff on your contribution. 4chan has even birthed new formats and new types of creativity. I want to talk about some of these specifically, to provide some kind of context for what “the chans” are really all about it, but we are just scraping the surface here. You might have to Google around for quite some time to truly understand this if you are new.

Among the myriad of things that get posted on 4chan, one of them is known as a “green text” or “green text story.” A green text is a short story format that includes green colored text and a small picture, often a meme of some kind, like a Pepe. It can be pages long or just a few lines. It is often written in broken sentences and shorthand. They often start with the line, “be me…” and then launch into a short narrative. They can be true or fictional or somewhere in-between. They are often designed to be shocking, depressing or trollish, but they can also be uplifting. It is perhaps the simplest and most pervasive form of content on 4chan other than image macros themselves. I’m going to coin a new phrase and call this a form of Creative Anonymous Fiction or CAF for short. The anonymous nature of the platform lets you tell a story in a new way. Often times people will take green texts and remix them, giving them a different ending. I could post examples, but I’d be doing you a disservice. You are better off looking them up and reading them yourself until you understand it.

Green texts can sometimes end with what’s called copypasta, which is a type of bamboozle. Copypasta is a snippet of short form copy that gets reposted over and over again. A bamboozle is a type of switcheroo—you start telling what the reader feels is a novel story, building to some climax, and then end it with a classic copypasta for that “gotcha” moment. It is, essentially, a prank. A text based prank. This sort of content now exists all over the place, far beyond the reaches of just 4chan. You might be wondering where all of this is going… we’ll get to that. In some ways this is actually the most important part of this entire document. I wanted to make sure that everyone has some context for what is to come, but I can assure this is going somewhere. Please do not let this extensive clarification distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer’s table.

So that’s a quick overview of the playful side of things. But on 4chan you will also see some dark and disgusting shit. With the good comes the bad—and the bad can be really bad. Because everyone is anonymous, everyone subject to being hassled by other anonymous posters. Everyone is gay, a fag, a retard or an autist. A thread without insults is a failed thread. The more people who tell you how gay and fake your shit is, the more people actually like it. 4chan may have given us lolcats, but it also ended up being a place for violence, misogyny, bullying, extreme racism—and even far more heinous things. For 12 years moot moderated the site. May criticized him at the time, but I think we can all look back now and know that he really did a fantastic job. For over a decade he was the beam scale that balanced free speech against the darkest depths of humanity—and I meant that literally. He developed a system to help identify “anonymous” posters and worked with the FBI to put away pedophiles, child pornographers, and even would-be domestic terrorists. He did this all while being told constantly how gay he was and how many dicks he sucked (as is the way). Moot was a hero we never deserved.

The two most popular boards on 4chan are /pol/ (for politics) and /b/ (which stands for random). People who post on these boards are often referred to as /pol/tards and /b/tards respectively, with /b/ being one of the more nefarious (but also one of the more creative) boards as it had essentially no rules on what you could post. If “tard” sounds harsh, know that it is said lovingly. Even seniority within the community itself is derogatory. There are “oldfags” and “newfags,” where being called an oldfag is an informal compliment and recognition of seniority. Opinions will differ, but oldfags are generally recognized as being those who were around 4chan since before the pool was closed—one of the very first large raids. In 2006 a sort of prank was organized on 4chan by a group of Anons to “raid” the Flash game Habbo Hotel. Hundreds of people created black avatars in the game and went around spamming the chat with racist and anti-Semitic nonsense, drawing swastikas and blocking off the pool area in the game, declaring that the, “Pool’s closed due to AIDS.” Why? For laughs. The average age of the userbase for this game was around 15 years old. Then again, the average age of the then Anons was probably the same. There is a lot more to this story, and I encourage you to look it up if you have the time, but the point is that this event eventually lead to 30 seconds in the spotlight on some news outlets. This was the first big event that was attributed to 4chan and Anonymous as a group. It was the first time that most people outside of the depths of the internet had ever even heard of 4chan.

After this, more newfags joined. 4chan grows and the subgroup of /b/tards and /pol/tards that would come be to known more formally as “Anonymous” starts to take shape. All the while, moot is trying to balance what content stays and what content goes. The rest, as they say, is history. You start to see all kind of digital activism being organized on 4chan. Raids turn into DDoS (Distributed denial of service) attacks that shut down websites. People get arrested. Splinter groups form. Anonymous becomes more political. /b/ and /pol/ start to leak out of the internet and into the real world. People start protesting various things, like the Church of Scientology, wearing the iconic mask that the character V wears in the movie V for Vendetta. Logos are created. Anonymous comes into its own as a digital force. The group aligns itself with what DnD players call, “Chaotic Good.” Anons enjoy playing a character that is either an anti-hero or anti-villain. Sometimes Anons will pretend to have some super elite hacker ability, and while that is sometimes true it is mostly embellishment. Some people refer to this as Live Action Role Playing (LARP or LARPing), but it is not quite that. LARPing is when people take their Dungeons and Dragons game to the next level or dress up like Harry Potter characters and roleplay out in the woods. What happens on 4chan is very much a form of roleplaying, but one specifically shaped by the anonymous nature of the platform. I’m going to coin a second term here—Creative Anonymous Role Playing, or CARPing. More on this later.

Moot continues to run 4chan until 2015. During that time, it gets harder and harder to manage. Anonymous becomes more unruly, and the site starts to spiral. Cyberbulling goes to a whole new level. There are celebrity nude photo leaks. Gamergate. A series of actual murders and killings get posted on 4chan. 4chan didn’t cause them, but that’s where the content ended up living. The site starts to become unmanageable with the old rules in place. Why moot bothered to keep it going I’ll never understand. There was never much money in the site itself and it always seemed like a huge headache. But the site starts to take moderation more seriously as harassment ramps up.

Boards like /pol/ start to get more strict rules. Even /b/ starts to see more and more threads get removed. In 2013, a piece of shit Anon known as “Hotwheels” doesn’t like what’s happening to 4chan decides to splinter the group and starts 8chan. While moot is trying to wrangle 4chan into something better, Hotwheels goes in the reverse direction and starts empowering (and in some ways, encouraging) harassment with things like Gamergate. 8chan doesn’t remove anything. No morals. Doesn’t matter who gets hurt. Free speech above all.

This stance obviously has consequences. While moot would work with law enforcement, Hotwheels gives them the proverbial middle finger. As a result, all of the bad actors now had a new platform. You see swatting become a popular tactic. More and more violent threats. While moot would work with the FBI to help track down pedophiles and terrorists, Hotwheels decides to relocate the site to Philippines (where the age of consent is 12, mind you). He can barely keep the site running. No one wants to host this content; he can’t even keep the .com anymore because the registrars don’t want to work with him. Hotwheels finds some other shitstain in Manila who runs a pig farm and a porn site designed to get around Japanese pornography laws. They partner up. After three shootings (Christchurch, Poway, and El Paso) in 2019 where the shooters posted their manifesto to 8chan, Hotwheels finally admits the site got away from. The site shut down for a while, but the pig farmer and his son started it back up and rebranded it as 8kun after finding a Russian hosting provider who was willing to host the content. It is now a safe harbor for literally the worst of humanity, and you don’t have to take my word for it. Even Hotwheels himself now advocates for shutting the site down, but the pig farmer and his son have run away with it.

This is where your information comes from. This is where it lives.

Now that you have a better understanding of who is creating this information—your news—it is time. This next part is going to be hard.

You have been bamboozled. QAnon is a hoax. It may well be one of—if not THE—greatest, most pervasive, hoaxes of all time.

How do I know this? Because I am Q. In fact, I am the original Q. One of them, anyway.

This is the point where many will stop reading. You are likely either angry or starting to feel embarrassed. I’m going to ask you to try and put those feelings aside for a moment and keep reading. You have absolutely no reason to feel embarrassed. This isn’t your fault. You did nothing wrong. You got caught in a world you didn’t fully understand and there are people now trying to prey on you at every corner to sell you hats and t-shirts.

If you are willing to go forward, allow me to explain.

What has happened here is what I’m going to call a “Galaxy Quest” moment. There is a lovely movie that came out in 1999 called Galaxy Quest. If you aren’t familiar with it, it’s worth a watch. It’s a family friendly comedy about an advanced alien race who watches a TV show made on Earth called Galaxy Quest. Galaxy Quest is a TV show, but the aliens don’t know it. They refer to the TV show as the, “historical documents.” They built an entire civilization around the historical documents, never realizing it was a TV show. It’s a fun concept. If you haven’t seen it, watch it. Anyway, the aliens weren’t stupid. In fact, they were the furthest thing from stupid as they made all the science fiction from the show come to life (although they are portrayed are dumb for the sake of comedy). The aliens simply did not have the context necessary to understand what they were seeing. They didn’t realize it was fiction. They didn’t know what fiction was. That is what has happened here with QAnon. You have read things on platforms you didn’t fully understand, and you brought your own context and understanding to it. You read fiction as non-fiction and no one has bothered to explain to you how or why this content even exists.

We are going to go back as far as I can remember. I ask that other Anons corroborate what follows, not for me, but for those who are trapped by what has become a truly insidious ideology.

This all starts in the summer of 2016. Someone on /pol/ makes a post pretending to be someone working with “intimate knowledge” of the “Clinton case.” They made a post in the style of an AMA (which stands for Ask Me Anything, a form of Q&A popularized by reddit). This is just another form of CARPing (Creative Anonymous Roleplaying). The first two responses are: “Will the Hillary get Pregnant again?” and “Why are you on 4chan on a Friday night?” This thread almost instantly devolves into what is commonly known as a “shitpost.” It is nonsense. You might say to yourself, “Why would someone go on the internet and tell lies?” Well, this person isn’t really lying, they are shitposting. It is a form of artistic expression. It’s an attempt to get someone to suspend their belief for a few moments. Any seasoned oldfag or /pol/tard knows exactly what this kind of thread is. No one takes this literally.

However, at the time /pol/ is growing. You’ve got new people coming in daily. Much of /pol/ favors Donald Trump, broadly for his trollish nature and memeability, but also for his politics. Months later, someone cites the AMA as the FBI source behind the Pizzagate theory. This finds its way to Twitter. No one actually understands what they are reading, and no one checks the sources. Someone actually thought a months old shitpost on /pol/ was some kind of real leak. Long story short, someone goes into a Comet Ping Pong pizza with an AR-15 and starts shooting. A Friday night shitpost turned into shooting.

Fast forward about six months.

Someone on /b/ posts a depressing green text asking for recommendations on a new cult to join after they found out their girlfriend was cheating. Someone mentions that OP should become a Tibetan monk, because Tibetan Buddhism is a really great cult (e.g. because you can “light yourself on fire if you ever get too depressed OP”). Tibetan Buddhism goes on forever because the Dalia Llama gets reincarnated infinitely, so maybe if you are lucky you get to be him one day. This is the thinking. This isn’t exactly enlighted discussion. I respond suggesting that I have a great new cult that OP can join (which is loosely based on Heaven’s Gate, I’m just making this up on the spot). I had recently listened to a podcast about Heaven’s Gate and I was riffing on it. I loved the absurdity. OP asked for more sauce, but I decided to start a new thread instead.

Warning: This about to get really nerdy.

I started writing some shitposts with pseudo biblical writing, talking about saving humanity. I’m actually more embarrassed about it now than anything, as it was not my finest work. I would refer to “the awakening” as being the time when I would deliver the evidence that would let people “wake up” and realize we were in a simulation. Have you ever seen the Matrix? Yeah, like I said… not my finest work. I signed my posts as Q. Where did Q come from?

Well, initially, because of John de Lancie’s character of Q on Star Trek: The Next Generation. The character of Q was omnipotent and omnipresent. In the show he would speak to Captain Picard of the U.S.S. Enterprise in his own form of strange riddles. Q took a particular interest in humanity as a whole and would appear as a jester-like sort of mix between an anti-hero and anti-villain, always giving Picard hints on how to expand his mind to solve a problem, usually to save all of humanity. So, this was my model.

The goal was to get a few believers and then set a date a few weeks later and reveal “the awakening.” The Awakening was just supposed to copypasta. It was a bamboozle. I was trolling I never even did it because I got bored with it. Most people could see through it (fake and gay) anyway. But someone was watching. Someone who likely called me fag and told me to choke on a bunch of dicks and kill myself was watching.

A few months later I start to see the first “Q” posts, which would eventually be called “Q Drops.” It migrates from /b/ to /pol/. Wow, so original. You took one shit idea from /b/ and made it political. Round of applause.

This person knew exactly what I was doing, not that what I did was that original either. Star Trek is pretty popular among internet nerds. But this is why Q has always talked the way he does. This was the model. This is where Q comes from. The “Q Clearance” stuff that came later is, well… coincidence. But not even a good coincidence because it doesn’t even really make sense, as that is a clearance for the Department of Energy.

The Q from Star Trek also exits as what is known as the “Q Continuum”, where there are other omnipotent beings, and everyone is referred to as Q. This is where the habit of Q referring to himself as “we” comes from. It’s a Star Trek fan, just like me—only one who managed to make a piece of creative anonymous fiction into something political. Likely for lulz at first, because lets be real no one thought it would turn into what it has.

I suspect that Q has been played by many different people over the last couple years as the tripcode has changed, but likely all of them are Star Trek TNG fans. You can really see it in the writing and the constant talk about “humanity.” It’s also possible that the person currently playing Q is the same as the person who was shitposting in my original thread. It doesn’t even matter.

So that’s it. That’s Q. Q eventually moved from 4chan to 8chan and then 8kun. It should be obvious who controls the narrative now. There is nothing truly anonymous or secure about 8kun. We have technologies for that (i.e. tor, torrents, modern cryptography) and 8kun ain’t it. QAnon is the cash cow for the pig farmer and his son in the Philippines who run 8kun, giving a platform to future terrorists and pedophiles. There is a reason for “no outside comms” and “no dates”—control the narrative and keep the machine rolling as long as possible. Why? Money. Between ad revenue and merchandise QAnon is now a profitable venture. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and eventually you will make some prediction that will feel real enough, even if 99% of everything you say is bullshit, and keep the train running. In fact, it’s much easier than you think.

Take the twitter account, for example.

In early June I saw a number of trending hashtags around #JFKJRRETURNS. I could not believe the amount of people who were latching onto this. I watched the account go from zero to tens of thousands of followers in a day or so and then disappear. Everyone was saying that Twitter “banned” him. But when Twitter bans an account the language on the page says that the account was suspended. The account page for this account said that “This account doesn’t exist.” That means one of two things: 1) the account holder changed usernames; or 2) the account holder deactivated the account. When you deactivate an account, it puts it into a 30-day limbo period where you can recover it. I thought to myself, “If I could get ahold of this account perhaps, I could do something good with it.” I never thought I’d actually be able to do it. Low and behold, thirty days later I went to see if the handle was available and it was. Now I would get to play Q once again.

I just started riffing on whoever was playing Q with the account before me. No idea who that was. The envelopes were just responses from various government departments, nothing more. The postmarks are meaningless. Turns out if you write a letter to a government agency they will respond, and you get some cool looking envelopes. You can try it if you want—pull a FOIA request on yourself. July 22 was a date I pulled out of my ass. HUMAnity and ALl GOod ThiNGs are just more references to Star Trek TNG. The last episode of the show is called All Good Things, hence ALGO TNG. The very first Q Drops on record talk about Huma Abedin, and I thought maybe someone would try to make a connection with, “HUMAnity.” The last post from !!Hs1Jq13jV6 also mentioned “humanity”, but I didn’t even make that connection. It’s really not hard for those coincidences to pop up when you are all playing the same character. Manila, well, you know what that refers to now. St. Augustine is a reference to St. Augustine, Florida, where the largest QAnon merchandise operation is run from. The mentions of Hotwheels, moot and having stairs in my house was my way of gauging to see if anyone really had any idea about anything. The strange code in my location was just a Google Maps Plus Code. I picked a spot in the middle of the ocean off the Cook Islands and pulled the code for it. Turns out I didn’t even do it right, so it shows a different answer for everyone when you plug it into Google Maps.

So that’s it. That’s the whole thing. Beginning to end. Call it whatever you like, but that’s the story. The story of the chans, of QAnon and how Q became Q. Do with this what you will. Believe or don’t believe, it doesn’t matter.

Maybe this is all 100% true. Maybe it’s all 100% nonsense. Maybe truth is somewhere in the middle. What’s important is that you have more information today than you did yesterday. Where we go from here is a choice, and one I leave to you. What will happen to me? Well, I’ve been at a standing desk for 14 hours straight in order to bring this to you. I have done what I set out to do over three years ago and fulfilled my purpose as Q. My palms are sweaty. My knees are weak, my arms are heavy. It’s starting to fall out of my pockets already.

Mom’s Spaghetti,

#true stories

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