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summer-fun-swim · 5 months ago

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Jack: Jack notices Tim hovering by the edge of the pool, looking a bit lost and self-conscious. He swims over, a gentle smile on his face, his clothes clinging to his body from his recent dive. "Hey, Tim, what's up? You okay?"

Tim: Tim blushes, avoiding eye contact with Jack. "I, uh, forgot my swimming trunks." He whispers, his voice barely carrying over the sound of splashing water.

Jack: Jack's smile widens as he treads water, his eyes sparkling with mischief. "Well, you're not the first to make that mistake. But you know what? It's not a big deal. I've got an idea."

Tim: Tim looks up, hope flickering in his eyes. "Really?"

Jack: Nods confidently. "Yeah, come on, I'll show you." He swims closer to Tim and whispers. "You've seen me swim in my clothes before, right?"

Tim: Tim nods shyly, recalling the few times he's caught Jack in the act. "Yeah, but isn't it, like, weird?"

Jack: Jack laughs, the sound echoing faintly around the pool. "Nah, it's just different, that's all. Besides, it's not like you're going to drown in your own clothes. They're not made of concrete!" He playfully splashes Tim. "Come on, live a little!"

Tim: Tim's eyes widen at the splash, but a small smile tugs at his lips. He glances around nervously, noticing that no one seems to be paying them much attention. "Okay, okay. But just this once."

Jack: With an encouraging pat on Tim's shoulder, Jack swims backward a few strokes. "Atta boy! Just hop in, I'll be right here."

Tim: Tim gathers his courage and takes a deep breath. He watches Jack for a moment, then steps gingerly into the pool. The water is cool and surprisingly refreshing as it seeps into his shorts and T-shirt. He feels the weight of the fabric as he wades in deeper, the water reaching his waist. "Okay, I'm in."

Jack: Jack grins broadly, his eyes sparkling with excitement. "Welcome to the wet-clothes-swimming club!" He says, his voice a mix of encouragement and teasing. "You're doing great. Just keep moving and you'll get used to it."

Tim: Tim blushes harder as he tries to ignore the way his shorts and T-shirt cling to his body. "It's… it's not so bad," he admits, his voice shaky. He takes a tentative stroke, the water resistance surprising him. "But it's definitely different."

Jack: Jack laughs good-naturedly, pushing a lock of wet hair from his eyes. "Different is good! It's like a secret club, just for the brave. Besides, you look pretty cool, if I do say so myself." He winks at Tim, who can't help but feel a little more at ease. "So, are you ready to take the plunge?"

Tim: Tim looks around again, his cheeks still flushed. He nods, the water now up to his chest. "I guess so." He takes a deep breath and dives into the water, feeling the fabric of his shirt billow around him. When he resurfaces, his eyes are wide with astonishment. "Wow, it's… weird, but kind of fun!"

Jack: Jack claps him on the back, his laughter echoing across the pool. "Told you, right? Nothing to be shy about. You're doing fantastic for your first time!"

Tim: Tim emerges from the water, gasping for air with a smile on his face. He runs his hands through his soaked hair, the water dripping down his cheeks. "It's… it's actually pretty liberating!"

Jack: Jack nods in agreement, his own clothes plastered to his body. "See? Nothing to it! You're a natural. And hey, think of it as a new fashion statement. You're starting a trend!"

Tim: Tim laughs, feeling a sense of camaraderie with Jack. "Yeah, I guess I could be the next big influencer for wet-clothes swimming."

Jack: Jack grins, his teeth flashing in the sun. "Exactly! Who needs dry clothes when you've got a pool full of water?"

Tim: Tim laughs, feeling the weight of his soggy clothes. The water makes everything feel heavier, but also oddly comforting. "I never thought of it that way."

Jack: Jack's eyes twinkle with amusement. "Well, now you have! And who knows, maybe we'll start a revolution!" He takes a few more strokes away from Tim, then pauses, watching him. "So, how does it feel?"

Tim: Tim floats on his back for a moment, letting the water support him as his shirt rises slightly. "It's… it's surprisingly comfortable." He admits, looking up at the cloudless sky. "I can see why you like it."

Jack: Jack nods, a knowing smile playing on his lips as he approaches Tim. "It's like a second skin, isn't it? Plus, no pesky tan lines to worry about." He flips onto his back and floats alongside Tim. "So, tell me, Tim. What brought you out here today?"

Tim: Tim's eyes flit to Jack's profile, his mind racing. "I… I just wanted to hang out with my friends. It's been a rough week." He takes a deep breath, feeling the water press against his chest. "But I guess I didn't plan well enough."

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weishenkun · 3 years ago

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Ppl were saying fendi only invited ten and they stuck lc there but what about yy? Iirc he was there too so they put him there on purpose as well or they won’t mention him because he’s not the one in trouble here? I’m not trying to give an attitude but if it sounds of it I’m really sorry. Idk there’s so much back and forth and ngl to that hardcore cbar fan and revealing all that info, if you saying he was such an a-hole throughout his entire career you didn’t bother leaving his fandom earlier and saying nothing? Idk that really irks me that this only came out because of what has been happening. Idk if you agree with me but I want to rant and I have so much to rant about but idk who to turn. Everything is being picked about from the littlest thing he has done or said and ppl are saying those interviews the 3 groups he in esp wayv ones have done were they praise him all must be fake. We don’t know his side of the story and in honest truth we will never know because how these things are handled through the west and Asian entertainment is so different. But I have I guess I have some reservations about what one of the victims said because of apparently who she is and it has made me think about some things. I still believe he was wrong for some of the things he has done because he needs to understand cheating and manipulation isn’t good. Idk idk idk my heart is heavy and people using this as a lololol ahahah moment to his fan community hurts too like going on and on how all along he was a douche and they always knew and we didn’t. And honestly I feel like there has been so much bandwagon hopping on the hate train because before this most ppl apart from the wayv fandom didn’t give a two cent shit about wayv. They never cared when sm mistreated them or that they got scrapings and were not treated like how 127 or dream were treated. But suddenly everyone who has never cared is up and arms about him in the group because when wayv is going to do their next projects I want to see if all these ppl are going to be cheering them on as loud about you cheering on about what’s going on currently. like I can guarantee you won’t watch an interview or stream their music. And there has been this post going around about what was revealed yesterday and it was about that cat and someone said to the girl well he didn’t give you the cat cause you ain’t his fav and she’s like go ask him on bubble cause that wasn’t what he told me yesterday and idk what it even means because everyone is jumping on it and going lololol he’s still in contact after the apology. Idk she had said it sarcastically and Idk if she’s being truthful or not but everyone is adamant he is still doing all this regardless. And honestly IF he did do that and you let him contact you like that i feel like it’s on her esp since everything has been going on for days. He was dumb for all of this and rn his entire career isn’t surviving so I can’t even tell if she is serious or not and given how this is going on I can’t imagine his devices not being taken away from him cause that’s dumb or someone watching him like a fucking hawk cause I would. Cause on top of everything ppl are saying he mistreats the animals/pets and it’s like wtf is going on?! Oh And with the surfing coach confirming they didn’t flirt but were just friendly, you could have said something earlier but did nothing for hours until you were asked directly because everyone was saying she’s number 5 but apparently in reality she wasn’t but you let it go on. Everything is plaguing me rn and I have so much more to talk about but I’m just so frustrated.

okay this is a long ask so let me just go through each point

1. i saw the fendi story and yeah, yangyang was there too but people are more 'forgiving' towards him cause hes not badmouthing other members like allegedly lucas is. also, labelv was basically trying to get more members into the thing than the organizer originally wanted to, so yangyang, since hes less popular, is pretty logical but lucas? really? he had his own shit almost always so what was the point

2. about that hardcore cbar fan, true, they did only come out with the rant after the stories came out but like they said - they were a hardcore fan. probably theres some money involved or even it was just ignoring stuff cause youre a fan. we did know about most of the things they mentioned, it was just over a long period of time so there were big gaps between each of the incidents and people forgot? idk

3. i agree, there's been a lot of analysis of every little thing he did, but like i said earlier - it was happening over a long period of time and people were blaming it on idk, the culture or the lack of knowledge of some language. now, when theres a chance it could be something more, because of the alleged badmouthing, people will bring that stuff up 🤷‍♀️

4. he had a chance to say something in the apology letter. he said literally nothing instead :D

5. there has been a lot of bandwagon hopping on the hate but theres also been a lot of just straight up ignoring everything. i saw a fan acc on twitter share a list of translators so the fans could block those, cause they've been spreading false news 🤡 like, he was trending for days so people will get interested in whats going on and they will have opinions, thats how world works. and yeah no one will give a single fuck about future wayv project for example but i just hope it will be because they wont care and not because there wont be any future wayv projects :DDDD cause wayv was never big lol, lets be realistic, and this scandal isnt helping them at all and also the fact its happening right when there's that social media/fans campaign going on, i think its even worse :D

6. the bubble thing... labelv isnt the brightest so idk if its that unrealistic. and i think theres the other girl who also said he was calling them non stop when they released their story so idk idk lol

7. wheres the cat :/ we all saw the pic of him getting it, i think i reblogged it with something like 'omg omg ot11 soon' lmao and we havent seen it ever since. it is weird, just like in general. i want to know wheres the cat

8. the coach 🤡🤡🤡 idk idk her story was weird but i think it made another person release their story so thanks i guess :DDD even if he didnt flirt with her, wow, omg, hes so brave for this, wow, bare minimum :)

okay i think i went through everything, thanks for letting me write a whole essay back to you, i will call it an english practice in my brain 😍

#ask #i had to copy this ask to notepad and make parts from it to answer it lmao #thank god i love writing my hot opinions here #not beta'd

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purplesurveys · 4 years ago

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1047

What’s the most historic thing that has happened in your lifetime? I can think of a few things. There’s 9/11 though I was barely conscious then, Osama Bin Laden’s death, the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, 2011 Japan earthquake, and the H1N1 and Covid pandemics. In my country, there were typhoons Ondoy and Yolanda, the Manila hostage crisis, and the Hello Garci election corruption scandal. Out of these, though, I’d say the heaviest ones to bear have been 9/11 and Covid.

What happens in your country regularly that people in most countries would find strange or bizarre?

We use a spoon and fork to eat and only really fancy shmancy restaurants give you a knife and a fork. Many eat with their hands as well, though this is way more common in provinces.

Everyone is late to everything and punctuality isn’t a thing, which is a big culture pet peeve of mine and I still like arriving early/on time anywhere.

This applies to Asia in general lmao, but shoes typically aren’t allowed or at least frowned upon if they go beyond the main entrance of houses.

We start Christmas as early as September, and we end it by the last week of January

When families get together, aunts/uncles will usually greet their nieces/nephews by asking if they already have a boy/girlfriend and/or telling them that they got fat. Horror relatives will greet you with both.

People generally like to keep to themselves, so striking a friendly conversation with strangers even if you have the pure, genuine intention to be simply friendly will just lead them to think you’re being a creep lol

What has been blown way out of proportion? The effects of video games and the question of it increasing violence among kids. Sure there’ve been gruesome accounts and no one’s invalidating those, but the overwhelmingly vast amount of people who play video games end up okay. I had so many killing binges on GTA but to this day I can’t even look at a real gun without shuddering, lol. When was a time you acted nonchalant but were going crazy inside? This is me every morning at work. 9 AM-11 AM is always the busiest period and it’s a lot of shit happening at the same time and a lot of morning deadlines to meet, but unlike college I can’t exactly call for a timeout whenever I want and have panic attacks anymore.

What’s about to get much better? I hope my fucking life is next in line. I’m tired of being tired of being tired.

What are some clever examples of misdirection you’ve seen? Probably all the times WWE would mislead viewers on a rumored return or debut of a big name by saying they’re in another city, implying that there’s no way they’d be appearing on a WWE show. This happened with Ronda Rousey and it was so fucking exciting when she finally showed up, haha.

What’s your funniest story involving a car? I don’t know, really...I don’t try to be funny when I’m on the wheel lol. Probably the time I let Angela use my car on campus, and when she needed to make a u-turn she ended up doing an awkward 90º turn and had an SUV nearly crash towards us. She had only driven a handful of times at that point so she was a little clumsy, but neither of us had any idea she’d fuck up a simple u-turn as badly as she ended up doing lmao.

What would be the click-bait titles of some popular movies? I can think of more clickbait posters than titles, but I can’t seem to remember what those films are called right now.

If you built a themed hotel, what would the theme be and what would the rooms look like? Themed hotels generally make me cringe. The most theme-y place we ever stayed at was the lodge in Sagada and it was really just more homey than anything. I’m not into themes when it comes to hotels as I find it a little cheap lol and I’ve always preferred a straightforward experience in the places I stay at for vacations.

What scientific discovery would change the course of humanity overnight if it was discovered? A way to live forever. < This is a good one. Also, maybe a huge asteroid or meteor bound to hit the planet that will make widespread extinction a certainty? I can’t even begin to imagine the panic that will rise from something like that.

Do you think that humans will ever be able to live together in harmony? I doubt it. It sounds difficult especially when you realize we’re 7 billion in total.

What would your perfect bar look like? As long as there aren’t any annoying younger college kids, who are almost always the loudest crowd and not in a good way, I’m okay with any kind of bar.

What’s the scariest non-horror movie? Some shots in 2001: A Space Odyssey are freaky as fuck. There were several scenes that included sudden HAL shots, and I did not enjoy those. How the fuck Kubrick managed to make a computer scary is beyond me. I’ve also always skipped the vortex scene with the creepy face shots after seeing it once.

What’s the most amazing true story you’ve heard? This is a really vague question... a few months ago I watched this video diary of parents who had a child born at like 25 weeks. Just way too early, basically. And they recorded the kid’s weekly progress, how she kept fighting, and her journey of being transported from one machine to another while she still needed them. It was beautiful to see her get bigger and plumper with each week that passed and it was just such a feel-good story to watch. I was so relieved when they showed footage of her as a normal, healthy toddler by the end of the clip.

What’s the grossest food that you just can’t get enough of? I know balut is pretty unpopular in the Western part of the world, but I’ll gladly eat a dozen of them in one sitting. In general Asian street food is usually considered gross - pig intestines, chicken intestines, chicken feet, pig ears, etc., but all are normal in the culture I was raised in.

What brand are you most loyal to? It’s annoying and I can’t help it, but Apple.

What’s the most awkward thing that happens to you on a regular basis? I try not to make it regular, but sometimes a mistake on my end will slip through in an email I’m sending and I have to send another email correcting myself and apologizing for the oversight. One of my least favorite parts about work.

If you had to disappear and start a whole new life, what would you want your new life to look like? I’m not wishing for much. I just wish it was easier to remove any trace of me on social media sites and have it be as if I never existed because I think that would make it easier for me to move on from...well, you know what. I still have trouble verbalizing it and I don’t feel like mentioning it tonight.

But idk, I like staying connected to my family and friends, so idk if I can ever achieve that. And that said, I think I’m bound to always keep seeing her around.

What movie or book do you know the most quotes from? I memorize a pathetic amount of dialogue from Love Actually, Twilight, Titanic, and The Proposal. What was one of the most interesting concerts you’ve been to? I guess Coldplay? They gave assigned lightsticks for each section and the crowd looked amazing when the production crew activated the lights for certain songs. I still have some of the clips because I posted them on Snapchat, so I’m really glad I did that; otherwise I would’ve lost the videos forever.

Where are you not welcome anymore? I’ve felt pretty unwelcome around her. How she could do a 180 and just not be interested in having anything to do with me is really soul-crushing.

What do you think could be done to improve the media? Fact fucking check, please. Also keeping sources balanced, avoiding clickbait headlines, being more objective than neutral, and don’t fucking sensationalize. How timely that this landed on a journalism graduate, hahaha.

What’s the most recent show you’ve binge watched? Start Up but I haven’t continued in the last two weeks :/ I think it’s because I know I’m nearing the finale and I subconsciously just don’t want to run out of Start Up episodes to watch lol but yeah, I still have four episodes left and I have no clue when I’ll watch it again.

What’s a common experience for many people that you’ve never experienced? Being close with their mom and considering them as their rock.

What are some misconceptions about your hobby? I don’t know enough about embroidery to know misconceptions about it.

What did you Google last? 2001: A Space Odyssey because I needed to be sure of the scenes I planned on citing in the question above that made me mention the movie.

What’s the dumbest thing someone has argued with you about? Not being able to find a restaurant to eat at. The backstory is a little complicated but it’s the same fight that led my younger brother to slap me across the face, and what subsequently led me to stop speaking to him.

If money and practicality weren’t a problem, what would be the most interesting way to get around town? Probably a tank.

What’s the longest rabbit hole you’ve been down? It’s always the ones on Wikipedia lol. I find weird and interesting articles on there all the time; there’s always something new to read.

What odd smell do you really enjoy? The rain, though sometimes it can be too overpowering when the humidity has been high. I like it for the most part, though.

What fashion trend makes you cringe or laugh every time you see it? Streetwear is so fucking dull to me. I never saw the appeal.

What’s your best story of you or someone else trying to be sneaky and failing miserably? Hahahaha this happened just a few weeks ago actually. My parents and I were headed out to have some ramen, and I opened the car door to hop onto the backseat. They didn’t prepare beforehand and they left the Christmas gift I asked for - a corkboard - in the backseat, so I was able to see the whole thing, unwrapped and with price tag and all. Their mortified faces knowing that their secret’s been blown were hilarious. They had no choice but to just give it up, and the corkboard has been on my wall since.

If you had a HUD that showed three stats about any person you looked at, what three stats would you want it to show? I guess the stability of our relationship, their general mood for the day, and erm how badly they need a hug because I’m always willing to give some.

What’s the best way you or someone you know has gotten out of a ticket / trouble with the law? My mom fake-cries her way out and it’s always been hilarious to see a grown ass woman do it and pull it off every time.

Tear gas makes people cry and laughing gas makes people giggle, what other kinds of gases do you wish existed? I don’t really want to manipulate people’s action in this way, so pass.

#survey #surveys

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taste-in-music · 5 years ago

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My Favorite Hit Songs of 2019

This year’s crop of popular music was... absolutely bonkers? I mean, this year we had Billie Eilish crash into the mainstream, Lizzo managed to get multiple hits out of songs she released nearly three years ago, the Jonas Brothers made a comeback, and the longest-running #1 hit in Billboard history became a rap/country crossover that got its start on Tik Tok made by a complete nobody and the dad from Hannah Montana. I’m going to admit, this list was pretty hard to put together, as I found it hard to find 10 songs that I genuinely loved that were hits this year. Despite that, the sheer absurdity of this year’s popular music gave me a spark of hope going into the new decade. For this list, I’ll be selecting my favorite songs off of Billboard’s year end Hot 100 songs list. I’m ready to recount this year in music, so...

10) Sucker by Jonas Brothers I never watched the Jonas Brothers show or listened to their music back when they were big on Disney, so I’ve got no nostalgic investment in them. However, this was a fun comeback to watch play out. This song was pretty dang good for a while, with the funky guitars and the instantly catchy lyrics. It reminded me of “Feel It Still” by Portugal. The Man. Then it got the point where three separate radio stations were playing it at the same time, and now I can barely stand it. I think that after the radio releases this song from its clutches it will warm up on me again though, because I do like it overall.

9) Better by Khalid The strongest attribute of this song is its ATMOSPHERE. The beat, melody, and vocal delivery all compliment one another perfectly, combining to create a smooth, almost sexy sound that washes over you with ever listen. I also like the Daft-Punk-y vocoded lines that pop in at the end, they’re so unexpected and yet they fit in perfectly. I've always loved Khalid’s vocal timbre, it’s so chill and yet warm at the same time. The only thing I can’t praise about this is the lyrics, because I have no clue what they are. Khalid, bless his sweet soul, cannot enunciate. It’s the same problem I have with Ariana Grande. I love your voice, I want to know what you’re saying!

8) Trampoline by SHAED Give me the hipster points, because guess who knew about this song before it was cool! I’ve loved SHAED’s music for some time now, so it’s been thrilling to watch this song climb the charts and for them to get the recognition and success that they deserve. While this song isn’t my favorite by them, (that slot would probably be reserved for “Perfume” or “Melt,”) it does showcase the group’s strengths, which are emotive vocals and glossy electronic production. I love the effervescent backing vocals and bubbling keys that pepper this song, it gives the song a floaty feel while still keeping it tense.

7) Old Town Road by Lil Nas X ft. Billy Ray Cyrus I can’t think of a piece of music in recent memory that has captured the public’s attention so swiftly and so completely, and you know what? Sometimes something gets big because it’s good. This song, despite all the memes and jokes and radio play and oversaturation, never ever got old to me. Every time it comes on, it puts a giant, goofy smile on my face, and I sing along to the whole thing. I want Lil Nas X to stick around, but even if he doesn’t, I want what this song represents, genre blending, trend-bucking, and a sense of fuck-it fun, to stay.

6) bury a friend by Billie Eilish Out of all the strange hits we had this year, this was the weirdest one to hear on the radio. It doesn’t have a classic structure! It’s about the monster under your bed! It’s got nothing but a shuffle beat, bass, and the sound of dental drill! It just doesn’t belong on the airwaves next to songs like “ME!” or “I Don’t Care.” Despite that, I’m beyond happy that Billie Eilish is bringing a bit of emo weirdness to the mainstream, because if the success of her music, specifically this song, says anything, it’s that pop is heading in a far scarier and more experimental direction. And I’m on board with that.

5) break up with your girfriend, i’m bored by Ariana Grande The groove on this song is fantastic. The combination of eerie synths, bass, reverbed backing vocals, and rolling snares makes it feel tight and controlled, but also loose and flowing at the same time. There was a lot of pushback against this song due the sentiment of the lyrics, but it’s not like Ariana is unaware that she’s the bad guy in this position. There’s enough indifference and sarcasm in her delivery to show that she’s self aware. This was probably my favorite out of the hit singles from the thank u, next era, (”thank u, next” is great but got a bit old to me, and I don’t care for “7 Rings.”)

4) Circles by Post Malone This is embarrassing to admit, because I rarely, if ever, enjoyed any music Post Malone has put out in the past. But this song just hits different. The instrumental feels more acoustic-driven and has a nice pulse to it, projecting a warmth and comfort that none of his other songs have. This was a perfect hit for Autumn, being chill and relaxing enough for Summer, but the underlying bass groove makes you want to move into the productive patterns of the school year. If Post Malone made more music like this I’d reckon I’d enjoy his music quite a bit.

3) Dancing With A Stranger by Sam Smith ft. Normani Sometimes radio filler turns out to be spectacular. The ambiance this track builds is relaxing but in an otherworldly kind of way, forming a soundscape of echoing drums and whispering synths. I’ve always stood by the opinion that Sam Smith sounds really good with an electronic beat under them, it helps their great voice move in a more free-flowing way. Normani also sounds amazing on this song, her vocals dipping into smokier territory, and when the two sing together they play off one another’s performances with ease.

2) Sweet But Psycho by Ava Max Who predicted this in their last year’s hit song’s list? This bitch! I was so happy to see this hit the U.S. charts, you have no idea. It was such a breath of fresh air in that it was so splashy, sugar-sweet, and unabashedly pop. The lyrics are some of the silliest of the whole year, (”she’s poison but tasty” makes me chuckle every time,) but it doesn’t matter. The addictive melodies and the earnestness in Ava Max’s performance make them sound like Shakespearean poetry, or at least like she believes that they’re Shakespearean poetry.

Should Have Been Hits

Cruel Summer by Taylor Swift This should’ve been a single. I get why Taylor chose the singles she did, but this was primed to be a Summer smash, with the glossy synths and vocoded backing vocals and soaring chorus. We were robbed. Robbed, I tell you!

Graveyard by Halsey While “Without Me” got all the glory, this is my favorite of all the Halsey singles we’ve gotten so far by a wide margin. It’s the only one that I’ve made the conscious choice to listen to on my own time for one. I love the way the production rushes as the chorus hits, and the synths that sparkle throughout the verses, and Halsey’s reserved performance.

3 Nights by Dominic Fike This was a hit in the U.K., and I even heard it on a few alternative stations, so why no cross over? If there was any song that should have been the chill Summer hip hop hit, it should have been this. This song is weirdly addictive, the chorus is so inexplicably catchy that once you hear it one time through you will know all the words to it.

Blame It On Your Love by Charli XCX ft. Lizzo When the mainstream decide that it didn’t need Charli XCX? Because it’s wrong, it needs her very, very badly. The success of “1999″ in the U.K., the name recognition, and the Lizzo feature should’ve been more than enough to boost this onto the charts, but I guess we didn’t want an instantly catchy and fun EDM pop song on the radio. Oh well.

Motivation by Normani Normani and Lauren are my favorite Fifth Harmony members, so I’ve been rooting for their solo careers like nobody’s business. This single in particular had so much potential: a bouncy beat, a stamp of approval from Ariana Grande, and a kick-ass music video filled with impressive choreography. I hope this gets a bigger push into next year, because Normani is a wildly talented performer that deserves success outside of her collaborations.

Guilty Pleasures

bad guy by Billie Eilish This was a good song, just not my favorite off the album, or of the hits, (I prefer ”bury a friend,” obviously, and “when the party’s over,” which made last year’s list.) Still, watching this idiosyncratic little tune become one of the biggest pop smashes of the year was enthralling. Like “bury a friend,” it was so strange to hear this on the radio.

Close To Me by Ellie Goulding ft. Diplo & Swae Lee When a melody gets its claws in me, there’s nothing I can do about it. This is not Ellie Goulding at her best, (I’ll admit that I miss the days of “Lights,”) but the way she delivers the hook on this song is absolutely infectious. I’m not the biggest Swae Lee fan, but he’s fine here too. I never minded when this song came on the radio.

This year was a bit of a roller coaster for me. Needless to say, there were several instances where I felt quite a bit of stress and insecurity, and oftentimes, I would turn to music to make myself feel better. There was one song in particular that a friend of mine, @hasanminajs, introduced me to, that instantly became a beacon of self-appreciation and enjoyment to me throughout the year. And when I tell you that I have never been happier to hear a song on the radio than I have with this one, I'm telling the truth.

1) Truth Hurts by Lizzo I have never rooted for a song’s success like I have for this one, and watching a hip hop track this bouncy, confident, and enigmatic climb the charts was an absolute joy. There are so many great punchlines in this song, from “why men great till they gotta be great?” to “I don’t play tag bitch, I’ve been it,” to the ever-iconic “I just took a DNA test, turns out, I’m 100% that bitch.” This song raised the standards for lyricism in the mainstream. I want Lizzo to be huge, I want her to be influential, I want her to be one of the biggest pop stars of the next decade if not longer. Everything about this song, from its production to its message to its performance makes me smile. And you know what? Sometimes that’s all that pop music needs to do.

Do you agree with this list? What were your favorite hit songs of 2019? Leave a comment and let me know!

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whstletomyheart · 6 years ago

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Why YG TREASURE BOX is a complete mess and YG is playing with us. (A rant?)

First, its important to understand what or YGTB is and how it was promoted for this we should understand the events that happened before.

NOTE: YG will be referred to as a they since there are other people besides YHS Making the Decisions.

All of YG’s boy groups were made through survival shows.

BIGBANG=BIGBANG DOC

WINNER=WIN

IKON=WIN/M&M

So it was pretty obvious that they would reuse this concept for their new bg.

Now its safe to assume that the group was set to be made around Bang Yedam, he’s popular in Korea plus that he was the moat famous trainee .

Now this is the general assumption that the original silver boys lineup ot11 were the lineup set up to debut. This is the reason why they were promoted through Mixnine (GonSukKyu) and Stray Kidz (YG vs JYP). But we all know Mixnine failed and that some trainees left making YG To rethink their concept and lineup.

Now we must remember that prior to the show starting YG teased that Yedam, Hyunsuk and Raesung were basically confirmed members.

Raesung, due to personal reasons decided to not participate in the show (the best decisions honestly).

Currently YG as a company is at a point were every fandom in it has problems with the company. This is all due to the amount of mismanagement towards the majority if not all the groups and artists. YG despite being the house of great and unique artists doesn’t know how to mange them which leads to long hiatus, less music and cbs,etc.

Now lets analyze the problems with the shows format. Moat idol survival shows have the same format. Which is simply individual competition. This means that the contestants will be evaluated and the voting will be individual or 1 pick (produce 101).

YGTB showed the beginning to be more a team survival show in other words a group compete with other groups (Win). But around the second and third episode its revealed that the show will be individual, shifting the format. This is first seen strange since a consistent theme in YGs previous groups is their teamwork but this is because since predebut the trainees are grouped into groups.

In the show we are never truly explained about how the show works and if it is its vague and very contrictdactory. Plus a lot of unfair and frankly weird things are shown ( compared to other survival shows)

Examples of this are:

• Number of final lineup is always changing: from 7 to 9 to 7 to 6 to 5 to 7 it would change depending the mood od the ceo.

• YHS changes rules at whim: YHS changes or adds rules

• Missions: the missions to compete against the treasure team were barely explained. Winpink came to the show mostly just for name Dropping cause they didn’t show why they chose who they chose. The ep were winner 2seung was going to examine their performances was cut to almost nothing more than click Bait.

• The rounds or missions made little sense , at the beginning it 1:1 , then 2:2 (duo), then team genre(?)/concept (in my opinion they weren’t that different in my opinion to be a concept eval but oh well)and putting a position battle at the end ……makes little sense

In Produce and other shows its usually a cover, position, concept and then original song evaluation. Showing the growth.

• Lack of original ygtb songs most survival shows make their own songs fir the concept and final evaluations (example Mixnine). YG is company that prides on self production but not once was this used despite various trainee being able to ( Yedam, Hyunsuk, Byounggon, Asahi, Yoshinori, etc.) . Even if the boys couldn’t yg producers could’ve made songs just like in Mixnine.

• Lack of fan events besides liking a trainees video and channel there weren’t chances for the fans to feel really close to them. With the individual channels they could’ve done random lives but no. Or fanmeetings.

Despite this the show did release a series of interesting content that honestly saved the show.

• Not letting all the trainees participate in the treasure swap and cutting and not airing the performances certain trainees made. Leaving the fans to have to watch fancams.

Now to explain the real mess, throughout the whole show fans were confused on how they could help their faves in terms of voting. YG opens voting till the last 2 episodes and makes it a group voting meaning you have to vote for a group of trainees. According to fans this means that the lineup with most votes will have an advantage to debut. On the last ep its revealed that Isn’t case at all. The trainees only got extra points depending on how many ranks or lineups they were in. In other words again it was individual voting. They didn’t explain this till ep 10 when the voting’s was done. Along with this they added the final nail to the coffin. These online votes were only worth 20% of the final score. With onsite votes at a 30%. But YHS gets 50% of the score, so basically YHS gets to choose at the end od the day so fan votes mean close to nothing. If a trainee did well on votes but isn’t YGs fave they wont pass and vice versa.

On top of all of this YG makes sure fans aren’t in the recording of the ranking to obviously avoid discord and only announces half the lineup for what we can only assume is for drama. Only YG and some staff know the lineup. Instead of releasing it all its adding more anxiety and desperation . Which can be seen in the fighting, the rumors and spamming.

Now that we’ve established that YGTB is a mess of a show that makes Mixnine look good, lets talk about favoritism and screentime. And why I don’t understand YGs intentions and the lineup.

Ok let get this out of the way YG/YHS always plays favorites, this isn’t new at all. We can see in the show that there are trainees YHS likes way more compared to others. In other words he tends to be very biased. On top that he likes to brag. The first ep is basically look at all the visuals I got.

All it takes is to watch the show to know who Yg/YHS like more baaed on screentime and arcs made. Lets Look at the confirmed members most got solid screentime. Yedam is pushed from the get go to being a super star trainee that is basically god where other trainees don’t want to be against him. Junkyu is cute and talented a good future asset, we see how he gets screentime from the start with his confidence arc. Plus its important to note that in Mixnine YHS’s fave was Junkyu . Haruto from the start was the Japanese trainee YG was interested in and he Gets the most screentime from the Japanese trainees. Jeongwoo was promoted through his vocal and how yg likes him, he gets attention. Junghwan On the other hand gets way less screentime then the other member but still way more than other less known trainees.

That being said a lot of the team b, team c and team j trainees get very little to no screentime. Jongseob who won Kpop Star didn’t get much screentime and performance was cut. Mashiho’s screentime is mostly reactions or being a friend.

Silver boys got the most screentime overall they focused a lot on their teamwork and bond giving fans the hope that they would debut. Which is were im frankly confused and would love to understand the why.

Why make silver boys participate in this show and emphasize so much on them for basically nothing?

Why bring Jihoon back?

Why bring Seunghun back?

After hours and hours of thinking and reading opinions. I came to a few theories:

A) YG wants to debut a fresh, young and visual new bg. For whatever reason, so choosing the younger trainees makes sense. Probably modeled around Yedam for a more pop sound in comparison to WinKon Some accounts state that a lot of kfans were pushing yg for a younger and visual group. Basically discarding the older trainees. Also this lineup has YGs faves who were the younger ones. If this is true YG will debut Yoonbin and Masiho or Yoonbin and Jaehyuk (his screentime in the last episodes makes me think so). Basically in this theory YG had an idea from the get go and they only used the silver boys for clout. This is the theory that makes me the saddest tbh. But still it doesn’t explain why yg would care so much about silver boys. Like bringing them back and emphasizing so mucho on how they’re a team. Plus it discards the power Hyunsuk has with one of the most stable fandoms.

B) The theory before the lineup was dropped was that yg Is testing the silver boys for the last time which made sense till the last episode. But SB stans have been very loud and spammed his Instagram, trended a hashtag and are contacting companies. This means they have a strong fandom so this might help.

C) YG will add more members to the lineup I think 9 is more realistic than 11. Based on screentime maybe Hyunsuk + Seunghun.

D) YG will debut all of ot13, doubt this since YG hasn’t have that big of a group and I don’t think YG can handle it. If it was SM yeah but not this. (I like this one tho )

E) YG will debut ot13 but in 2 teams a pop team and hip-hop team. Pop=treasure7 Hip-hop=silver boys +a member (I love this)

F) YG will debut SB but under the black label.

G) YG wont do anything except debuting the og treasure7 . And the sbs will leave the company and split up.

These are all the theories I have.

Tldr: YGTB has a lot of flaws as a survival show being extremely unfair and the situation with the lineup is the most chaotic thing ever. Whatever yg does will make people mad.

The worst part is that it worked as always YG doing the minimal manages to pull us in just to disappoint us. Just that he managed to drag more people this time.

At this point I’m done with the guessing and the rumors, I just really want to know what’s going on and the security that my faves are ok even if they’re in or not in the group. Cause not debuting in the group isn’t the end they can debut with another group or go solo. My point is that it isnt the end for their careers.

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dukeofriven · 6 years ago

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Wither Tinkerbell? Part 1: Only 90s Kids Remember (KH liveblog)

I was doing a liveblog, wasn’t I, before the last week got so crazy I barely had the energy left to smash the reblog button. What was I liveblogging again?

*squints at hand* K... ka... Kangdamn Hats? Sure, I guess. Where did we leave off?

Sora - for those who don’t remember, an idiot - surrenders to Captain Hook because Captain Hook has Tinkerbell in a lamp. That’s Tinkerbell, who Sora has had all of one(?) interaction with, if by interaction you meant ‘bystander’. Tinkerbell, whom Sora has no relationship with or reason to give a damn about. Sora, who has basically just been told where Riku has taken Kairi - his sole motivating factor for hours of this game - decides ‘Oh no not Tinkerbell of course I will surrender, even though there’s a paltry bullshit number of enemies here that I could take instantly.’

FOUR HEARTLESS AND ONE DUDE WHO IS JUST A DUDE WITH A SWORD AND A PROSTHETIC HAND WITH LIMITED FUNCTIONALITY! (”What about Smee you ask? Ha ha - Smee won’t do shit and you know it.) Sora, it must be recalled, has at this point fought an Ursula 1000 times his size, an Oogie Boogie the size of a skyscraper, Jafar imbued with ultimate cosmic power, and... some British dude with a gun riding some kind of praying mantis? (It was not clear.) But here Sora’s like: “Oh, no, these are odds I cannot face. Not with poor sweet innocent... Tanker Ball, was it?” *Deep Breath* So I got a lot of messages over the last week, most of them about my Kingdom Hearts liveblog. Some of them were really complimentary and if I forgot to thank you personally please forgive me for doing so. Some were less complimentary. Some were what I might call, mmmh, ‘ornery’ or perhaps ‘snotty’ (Some messages were critical without being shitty - I’m not talking to you). You see, I had committed the grave sin of voicing an opinion about Kingdom Hearts without having first played everything in the series - indeed, I sometimes got the impression that I had committed some sort of sin by being born not already knowing the entire legendarium of Kingdom Hearts broader mythopoetic chronicle. At the very least, I was certainly not bringing enough nostalgic childlike wonder-reverence to the table to be able to judge the game ‘fairly.’ In this praxis, Kingdom Hearts - i.e. Kingdom Hearts I the first game - is beyond linear criticism: because any possibly flaw is explained or massaged away in subsequent works, any perceived flaws in the original are something on the order of temporal hiccups, mere quirks of chronological progression and best ignored. Like the Tralfamadorians, I should absorb Kingdom Hearts only as a holistic whole: as it is ‘complete’ in the future it is complete now, for all times are one time and past and future are only the observances of lesser mortals unenlightened enough to step without time. Let me offer a counter-proposal: THIS GAME BAD THIS IS A BAD GAME THE WRITING IS BAD, UNGOOD, AND BAD THE QUALITY I WOULD ASIGN TO THE WRITING OF THIS GAME IS ‘POOR.’ ON THE BADNESS SCALE OF NOT-GOOD, IT RANKS ‘BAD.’ IF ASKED TO OFFER A EXAMPLE OF A WELL-WRITTEN GAME, THIS WOULD NOT BE THE CHOICE THAT I WOULD MAKE

This is the scene that comes next:

Sora is made to walk the plank, Hook shits himself about the presence of the crocodile and buggers off, leaving Tink with Smee the Useless One. Peter then snatches Tink from his hand. It takes all of 10 seconds, and makes the entire point of the previous ‘surrender or Tink gets it’ moment as ephemeral as it is inconsequential. This game has a problem that I am starting to call ‘tension cul-de-sac’ - it’s when a scene introduces a problem or crisis that is resolved within the same scene, sometimes within the same cutscene. Tension is not allowed to grow or develop or have any impact beyond the moment - and frequently it’s undermined further by the game’s long and awkward pauses, it’s bad eyelines, or the intractable problem of lugging Goofy’s dumb ass across an entire game and trying to pretend anything can be given dramatic weight with that fucking clown. You know what, no, that’s unfair - let’s talk about A Very Goofy Movie for a moment. I wasn’t much of a Disney kid - to be a Disney kid generally required money, which we Did Not Have. The Disney channel sure didn’t air with any of the basic packages we could only sometimes afford, and you sure as shit didn’t get it as ‘the only channel we sort of got’ when we couldn’t afford it and had to rely on the aerial (look it up, children.) So I didn’t grow up watching the Disney channel. I am pretty certain that those times we did have the basic cable package it didn’t come with it - the Disney channel only came with the super fancy package with the 200 channels for middle class people with La-Z-Boy chairs. (Guys, you should know that I am old enough to remember the day when cable came to this country and the TV went past channel 29 for the first time - it was a literal event. The whole country had free cable for the first month or so, and for a least a month before cable went live the channels aired non-stop trailers of their future content, and it was so wild that you could could scroll for channel after channel and see something other than static. I feel so old.) Anyways, I wasn’t a Disney kid. As noted earlier I had a couple Disney movies, but I was taught pretty early on what a gross and shitty company Disney is - my mother was a poor progressive who did what she could to keep me woke, and I think it also helped her blunt any enthusiasm or ill-will I might have for never being able to go to Disneyworld. If I didn’t give a damn about Disney as a brand then that was a whole lot of merch we couldn’t afford that I didn’t want. (One day I will right a big old essay about how capitalism hurts poor kids with materialism, and why Pokémon, Disney, POGs™, Crazy Bones, and a whole lot of other 90s franchises predicated on mass purchases did so much to harm my self-esteem as a kid. But that’s not today.) No, I was a Looney Tunes kid, because they were A) Actually funny and had bite without being saccharine dribble B) aired on cheap channels, and C) outside of a weird trend of Looney Tunes in Hip-Hop clothing and that brief blip that was Space Jam, not highly marketed. But I did see A Very Goofy Movie. More than once - the library probably had it. I remember having righteous indignation about that movie. Goofy, who just wanted to have fun with his son, was treated like garbage, because Max was the worst kind of eye-rolling 90s teen who did not want to give a shit about anything that wasn’t ruthlessly contemporary. This scene?

MAN FUCK YOU, MAX! His dad was trying so hard and all Max could do was be a shit. I mean sure, I got what was getting under his collar: Roxanne was sweet and cute and who wouldn’t want to take her to a dance, and Pete had the world greatest god-damn RV, and Goofy’s verbal ticks can be somewhat grating - but for fuck’s sake, Max. As someone who often felt mortified by his father (my dad was the guy who would go tell older kids off if they were being BAD and kull wahad was that squirmingly mortifying) you’d think I’d have empathized with Max more but no - even as a kid I saw Max’s in-the-moment coolness desperation for the sad peacock display it was. (CONTINUED IN PART 2)

#tinkerbell #peter pan #captain hook #smee #max goof #a very goofy movie #roxanne #kingdom hearts #sora #donald duck #goofy #dukeofriven liveblogs kingdom hearts #disney

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gascon-en-exil · 6 years ago

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I Liked Fates Before It Was Cool!: The Opening

Prologue

Here begins my run of Fates, in which I react to things that I believe merit either praise or criticism and that hopefully haven’t been thoroughly picked over yet hundreds of times by everyone else in the fandom. I’ll be doing each route in the sequence I used last time, with gameplay details to follow as they come up. To answer @damoselcastel, I’ll be doing an all-male run, and it does indeed suck that the game screws this over a bit at the very beginning by forcing me to take Felicia over Jakob first. Breeding will come when I feel like it, more to have extra chapters to play through than anything.

Prologue

In what I assume will continue to be a series trend going forward, all of the 3DS FEs open somewhat in the abstract, including a flash forward to a future event. Fates’s particular take is both the most surreal and the least dependent on shock value, as the events it depicts are only several chapters away rather than near endgame. Azura picks up her Lady of the Lake associations right from the start, there’s a very early glimpse at what will be eventually revealed to be Valla, and Ryoma and Xander and Xander’s ludicrously acrobatic horse square off to set up this setting’s central conflict. The chapter proper is (fittingly) dreamlike, with surreal music and a high-energy scenario that begins in medias res and doesn’t entirely follow the normal rhythms of FE combat. I have absolutely no idea how this would come across to a newcomer to the series - I got my hand held through Lyn Normal Mode, cut me some slack - but I imagine it would be disorienting.

Chapter 1

That’s apparently official concept art of Nohr. Reasonable worldbuilding, what’s that?

The in-game presentation starts off rather less absurd. Hell, if it weren’t for the ominous castle rooftop setting of Xander’s training session one could almost find Corrin’s slice-of-life interactions with their servants and their Nohrian family quaint. Xander is just a drama queen like that. This fight calls back to Path of Radiance and New Mystery, which also start off with training sessions against significantly more powerful named characters. For Birthright it also forms a narrative bookend, but I’ll get to that in due time. I have Feelings about the presentation of Xander...and not just because he’s my husbando either.

I like that Corrin’s retainers are domestics first and combatants second unlike those of the other royals, because it stresses that they’ve been isolated in a non-combat role during their upbringing, their exposure to Nohr’s allegedly spartan military culture limited to sparring with Gunter and Xander. I have no idea how that would be enough for them to survive when they evidently live in Mordor, but then Nohr is the source of the most consistently sloppy worldbuilding in Fates so at least we get that established right away.

Oh, and Lilith is here. There’s never a point anywhere in this game where Lilith’s character is competently handled, so I have a tendency to forget she exists unless she’s on-screen. Here she’s just an unassuming stable girl with an unusual design, and Elise makes an incestuous insinuation in her direction that’s only funny if you played the appropriate DLC.

Chapter 2

Structural contrast with the towering Hoshidan royal palace aside, I don’t entirely get how Krakenberg works. A dragon did it?

Anyway, Corrin gets an under-explained and clearly evil magical sword from his shamelessly homicidal father only to balk at the thought of killing anyone with it. Leo salvaging this faux pas isn’t the silliest example of Corrin not understanding the basic concept of lying - it’s presumably easier to fake someone’s death with magic than with a giant sword - but it’s definitely up there. The Nohrian royals on the other hand have no trouble with such things based on their traumatic but mostly implied experiences at court. Important to note that everyone here up to and including the prisoners of war calls out Corrin for their sheltered worldview; their development from here on out really is dependent on the player’s choice of route. I vastly prefer this approach to Awakening’s for explaining why the Avatar is such a relatively blank slate - almost no amnesia necessary this time.

And while they appear in most chapters, I want to praise Dragon Veins here for being a really cool concept that doesn’t get as much love as it should. Draconic or otherwise superhuman bloodlines in FE are usually expressed in gameplay with the ability to wield certain legendary weapons, and while that also makes an appearance in Fates Dragon Veins represent more dramatically visible utility. They really make a difference in some chapters, and I’d like to see them reuse the concept in future games where it would be a logical addition (which would be most of them since humans with dragon blood pop up all over this series).

Chapter 3

I chose this image because I want everyone to appreciate as I do that Hans dresses like the world’s most tasteless leatherman. A harness and straps that show off all the wrong bits, and it’s in purple. Not even the overall weirdly fetishistic look of this game’s berserkers can excuse that.

But aside from that, Hans sucks. Iago also sucks. Less characters than plot devices that pop up whenever there’s a need for someone to act completely despicable to move the conflict along, there’s no way to spin them in a way that sounds like they contribute anything positive to the narrative. Case in point: in this chapter Hans single-handedly reignites hostilities between Nohr and Hoshido by Leeroy Jenkins-ing his way through the chapter and later (possibly) killing Gunter, with the only interesting caveat that he claims to have done so at Garon’s behest. And sure, Garon is also flat over-the-top villainy incarnate, but he at least has gravitas and a master playing a long game that arguably succeeds in two of the routes. Hans and Iago are just two more in the line of FE villains with flat motivations and personalities who lack even the good grace to be attractive, but unlike Desaix and Darin and Chagall and others like them they stick around in the story long after they’ve worn out their welcome. Did Nohr really need not one but three flat antagonists in its ranks around for most of the game?

I haven’t even gotten into the first appearance of Camilla’s...issues surrounding Corrin or whatever the dimension-hopping hell Lilith pulls with her invocations to presumably deceased dragon “gods” now that she reveals her true form. This is really the first chapter to offer a hint of how disjointed and frequently contrived Fates’s stories are going to end up, saved only by the very end when Rinkah puts this game’s new blunt weapon category to its logical use. Not like the game wants us to feel bad for Corrin....

Chapter 4

...because Hoshido is paradise. And also Takumi.

Everyone knows the story, both as it’s explicitly told and as can be read through the lines. The writers weren’t afraid to let their biases show, the localizers and the Western fandom did a fair amount to mitigate that with some bias of our own, and the final product is one big mess that fails to make logical sense in-universe and teeters on the edge of real-world two-way racism. Here we’re introduced to Castle Shirasagi, glimmering and verdant and awash in cherry blossoms, as well as Azura, Corrin’s foil in Stockholm Syndrome. But it’s all good, because Mikoto is tranquil and peace-loving and enforces her tranquility through a plot contrivance magical barrier that is just one of many examples in Fates of magic not working the way it does in the rest of the series (or at least I can’t think of anything else like this, correct me if I’m wrong). We don’t learn just why Nohr is so hellbent on invading Hoshido that they’d resort to summoning soulless monsters to do so until much later (and only in Birthright of all routes!). For now they just sound like unprovoked aggressors, and the Hoshidan royals Corrin’s true and loving family.

However, what I really wanted to bring up for this chapter is how oddly it’s structured, such that it never fails to throw me off a bit. It opens in an unnamed Fire Tribe village in a snowy area of Hoshido, which might I mention is the only point in the game we see anything of the Fire Tribe other than Rinkah herself. Considering all the time we spend in multiple routes with the Wind and Ice Tribes, that lack of detail strikes me as peculiar. Kaze then brings Corrin to the Hoshidan palace where Ryoma and Mikoto reveal the truth, then it’s immediately back to the snowy north to rescue Hinoka and Sakura from Faceless before returning to the palace to meet Azura. Was there any reason the Faceless fight couldn’t have happened before Corrin left the village, and the reveal and trip to Shirasagi left for after the chapter map and partially in response to Hinoka’s OOC crying fit?

I also hate maps where high-powered NPCs go around stealing kills. Kaze barely got to see any action this chapter, poor guy.

Chapter 5

Props to this manakete design, which is unlike anything else in the series and manages to work in elements of Anankos and Corrin’s weird outfit. No props to the scripting of the thing, as after this chapter Corrin may as well not even be a mankete except for gameplay purposes (which are minimal anyway unless you need them to tank something). You’d think learning that you can turn into a dragon would leave more of an impact on...anyone really, but nope. I guess it technically becomes relevant again in Kana’s paralogue, but that’s as tangential and ultimately irrelevant as everything else involving the kids.

There’s a lot else going on in this chapter, but I’m sorry to say that neither Mikoto’s death nor the obliteration of a large chunk of Hoshido’s capital lands as powerfully as they were meant to considering Corrin and the audience have spent all of 1.5 chapters with these people. This isn’t anything like Elbert or Greil’s death scene or even remake!Rudolf’s for that matter - at least that one came with a shocking twist that was responded to appropriately. It’s hard to even appreciate these events from the perspectives of the Hoshidan royals because they’re still pretty new characters in the player’s mind, though with the hindsight of Conquest I can maybe sympathize with Takumi here at the beginning of his downward spiral.

Corrin also picks up their legendary sword in a way that feels extremely random. I guess the Yato was inside the statue that got blown up? Weird place to keep a divine peace-bringing relic, that’s all I’m saying.

Branch of Fate

Despite some early warning signs and a few slight missteps, I’m happy to say that this story moment works. It’s a good thing that it does too, as this is the defining moment of FE14 in everything from its marketing to its game design to its core themes. The setup is rushed and tense and allows only Corrin, i.e. the intended player self-insert, full knowledge of the weight of the choice put before them, as none of the other royals are aware that they are all in a way family to the person they’re now abruptly forcing to pick a side. Familial connections (biological or otherwise) may not be a narrative hook that grabs me personally, but nonetheless this scene sticks with you. There is no easy choice, and the consequences of any of them immediately define the direction of the story.

This is not to say that all three of the iterations of Chapter 6 that follow succeed equally well, but that’s for other posts...including the next one, which will kick off Birthright.

Next time: Birthright Chapter 6 - 11

#Fire Emblem #Fire Emblem Fates #FE14

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deadcactuswalking · 4 years ago

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REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 27/02/2021 (Ariana Grande, Digga D, Ella Henderson & Tom Grennan)

I like how on the UK Singles Chart, even if it’s kind of a slow week, we still have nine new arrivals to get through. Joy, let’s just start with the rundown. Welcome back to REVIEWING THE CHARTS.

Rundown

As you’d expect, a lot of the debuts from last week were pretty flimsy on the UK Top 75, the range I cover on the singles chart, and hence a lot of it’s gone, including all of the slowthai songs, even “CANCELLED” with Skepta which reached the top 40. Another big top 40 debut that’s disappeared is, again as you’d expect, “UK Hun?” by the United Kingdolls. We do have three pretty big drop-outs though: “No Time for Tears” by Nathan Dawe and Little Mix, ”Really Love” by KSI featuring Craig David and the Digital Farm Animals and finally, “See Nobody” by Wes Nelson and Hardy Caprio. It seems that finally we’re making some room for the Spring hits to come tunnelling in by next month. That also shows in our notable fallers, as we have “Levitating” by Dua Lipa and remixed by DaBaby at #37, “Whoopty” by CJ at #39, Taylor Swift’s re-recorded “Love Story” plummeting off of the debut to #41, Fredo’s album bomb continuing to linger as “Ready” with Summer Walker and “Burner on Deck” with the late Pop Smoke and Young Adz are down to #44 and #64 respectively, “you broke me first” by Tate McRae at #47, “Someone You Loved” by Lewis Capaldi at #50, “Siberia” by Headie One featuring Burna Boy off of the debut to #58, “willow” by Taylor Swift at #59 (Not a good week for Taylor), “Perfect” by Ed Sheeran at #69 (The bigger question should be why it’s here at all), “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper at #71 and “Apricots” by Bicep at #73. For our gains, well, it’s pretty weird trying to find our replacements for all of this, as we have “Mr. Brightside” by the Killers back to #68 as it takes advantage of a slower week, “Roses” by SAINt JHN and remixed by Imanbek having a weird second wind at #60 – and the same goes with “Watermelon Sugar” by Harry Styles gaining big for some reason up to #46. Otherwise, we do have some genuine rising hits in the top half of the chart, like “Mixed Emotions” by Abra Cadabra at #45 off of the debut, “Regardless” by RAYE and Rudimental at #43, “Astronaut in the Ocean” by Masked Wolf at #35 (Because I guess since Logic’s retired, people are looking to Australia for a half-baked replacement), “Believe Me” by Navos at #33, “Little Bit of Love” by Tom Grennan at #32... Okay, if we’re going to give rising artists their first top 40 hit, why is it these guys and not Kali Uchis? Though I have a feeling we’ll talk about her next week. Anyway, our other notable gains are “Love Not War (The Tampa Beat)” by Jason Derulo and Nuka at #31, “Arcade” by Duncan Laurence and FLETCHER at #29, “My Head & My Heart” by Ava Max at #25, funnily right next to Joel Corry’s “Head & Heart”, “Commitment Issues” by Central Cee at #18, “Up” by Cardi B at #17, “Your Love (9PM)” by ATB, Topic and A7S at #15 and “Latest Trends” by A1 x J1 at #12, with no real movement in the top 10. With all that out of the way, let’s stay cautiously optimistic for our new arrivals.

NEW ARRIVALS

#75 – “All You Ever Wanted” – Rag’n’Bone Man

Produced by Mike Elizondo and Ben Jackson-Cook

You probably know Rag’n’Bone Man for “Human”, one of the biggest hits in the UK of the 2010s that never really crossed over stateside. I was never a fan of the guy’s music in its over-produced blues-pop crawl, so I didn’t really expect his next album to do anything for me... but I feel like it does matter to a lot of people. His first album was big – and not just moderately – with several hit singles, and he would later hop on Calvin Harris’ “Giant” to more success. With that said, I don’t know why this lead single from his upcoming sophomore effort Life by Misadventure took a month to get to the lower reaches of the chart, even with a video. Has his hype fizzled out? Is there something more behind this or do people genuinely not care enough to check out the guy’s music past his debut record that had a bigger push? I don’t know but I do know that I actually quite like this... I mean, a lot. Finally, Rag’n’Bone Man found some faster-paced production that works very well with his signature baritone voice, as this almost post-punk-esque groove may be stiff but it chugs along nicely, especially with the layered guitar loops and those inspired distorted synth bloops, with some real dynamic mixing. What I feel is missing from this is stakes, at least in the content – it seems more observatory than telling any real narrative or drama that warrants such a rocketing song, especially that screeching guitar solo. I don’t think that really matters, though, as the subject matter is interesting enough in how he discusses places he’d spent his childhood in like Brighton and London and how they’ve changed since, with a pretty understandable level of both nostalgia and anger levelled at whoever made those changes... knowing he supports Corbyn, there could be some political undertones here, but I digress. The song caught me by surprise, I hope it sticks around further than a couple weeks.

#70 – “Lifestyle” – Jason Derulo featuring Adam Levine

Produced by Rice N’ Peas

So, Jason Derulo struck gold with the TikTok fame and his return to the #1 spot as he stole some Pacific Islander’s beat on “Savage Love (Laxed – Siren Beat)” with Jawsh 685, and in 2020, everything seemed to go right for Derulo at a good time, even netting a BTS remix in the process. Now ever since then he’s been alternating between original tracks and more “borrowed” Pacific Islander beats, and this is one of those original tracks, which sounds nothing like the siren or Tampa beats so I’m pretty sure we know what the aim really is for those tracks. Whilst he’s had some success in the European markets, he hasn’t had much in the US so a catchy pop single with Adam Levine, detached of the Maroon 5 brand as that continues to fade away post-“Memories”, seems like an apt but desperate attempt at latching onto said market. God damn it, I’m embarrassed to say that it worked because this should not be a good song. It’s got a pretty funky synth riff and bassline that makes this otherwise pretty embarrassing track a lot more listenable, as Derulo’s delivery is pretty insufferable (but still pretty sonically appealing; the guy sounds great with a lot of Auto-Tune). There’s a lot of nonsense lyrics, both literally in the post-chorus and more ridiculously in the first verse, full of lyrics about how an unnamed woman is “shining bright just like Rihanna-na”, one lyric out of the whole song that is generally pretty weak lyrically, as you’d expect. The chorus is really damn catchy though, and propelled by horn lines and pianos that sound pretty triumphant, even if the clipping falsettos sound like garbage, and Derulo’s ad-libs in Levine’s verse are just hilarious. Honestly, Levine sounds better with this hook than Derulo does, mostly because Levine is aptly and actively not trying, which is much more fitting for a messy dance-pop track. With just two verse-chorus structures, as well as two post-choruses, this is basic and practically unfinished; there isn’t a bridge. With that said, I can’t hate this at all, for whatever reason. Maybe it’s the fact that Levine’s reverb-drowned “Lifestyle!” backing vocals are cut off in the mix during the chorus... that did genuinely get a laugh out of me, don’t ask why.

#65 – “HEAT” – Paul Woodford and Amber Mark

Produced by Paul Woodford

From just a glimpse of her work, Amber Mark seems a lot more unique and soulful than most of the replaceable dance-pop singers, but for the purposes of this song and hence this show, that’s all she is, and Paul Woodford is just the boring DJ. This is a dance-pop song with 90s MIDI-sounding pianos, odd vocal processing, generic string patches, a house groove accentuated by a lot of fake hand-claps and a weak, barely-there drop. The time house-pop does something interesting for the first time in years in the mainstream beyond this garbage that’s been living in German night clubs in the 90s for decades after the fact, is the day I am a much happier woman. Skip this.

#61 – “Didn’t Know” – Tom Zanetti

Produced by Sjay

If you want proof of how slow a week this is, there aren’t even lyrics for this on Genius. Anyway, I don’t know or care who Tom Zanetti or Sjay are because guess what this is? Another house-pop track. To be fair, this one has more of a bass-heavy deep house groove and bassline, and a pretty cringeworthy rap verse from who I assume is Tom Zanetti, going for what seems like a Chicago house vibe but missing any of the soul or big diva samples, relying instead on a checked-out delivery from someone no-one knows the name of. Really, what do you expect me to say about this? It’s a sex jam, but it’s so basic and minimal that those keys in the chorus end up sounding as eerie as they do seductive, and overall, there’s genuinely nothing to grab from this other than that Tom Zanetti shouldn’t be rapping... whoever that even is. I did look up the guy and it makes perfect sense that this guy was making bassline music decades after that was big, because this screams “failed attempt” to me, and hopefully if the British public have any sense, it’ll be a failed attempt on the charts. We’ll have to wait and see on that front, I guess.

#57 – “Time” – JLS

Produced by Oswald Hamilton (or Biggz the Engineer)

So, legendary(?) boy band JLS are probably one of the bigger names from the craze of R&B and pop bands and vocalists that got big from The X Factor but JLS had actual staying power for at least a little while, mostly because, well, there was always a place for them in the late 2000s and early 2010s, where it wasn’t uncommon to see these dance-pop tracks flooding the chart. They weren’t that great, obviously, but they didn’t need to be as what mattered to the audience and label was that the four boys kept their charm and style by the time they released a new record every November and that a couple singles off of it went to the top 10. That comment about longevity must not have lasted, however, as whilst most members were able to find some kind of success solo, usually in broadcasting like Marvin Humes, people weren’t really demanding a comeback, I suppose, as whilst this is their first charting song since their 2013 farewell “Billion Lights”, this new reunion track hasn’t made much noise at all and is probably here off of sales. I mean, the lyrics aren’t even on Genius yet... oh, wait, it’s some other guy that happens to be called JLS. Huh. Well, that makes sense, but, like, you’d want to change your name if it was that closely related to a big name, especially if you weren’t a family-friendly boy band and were instead a pretty awful rapper relying on a weak UK drill beat with absolutely no energy at all. Okay, so this sounds like several rappers here, so I assume it’s a rap group or collective. Either way, not many of these people have much charisma to talk about, like at all, and this beat can’t carry them on that lone piano melody alone, even if it is kind of menacing. The song feels twice its length, and something screams industry-made to me. I don’t know, maybe it’s because it’s a debut single, but they’re not signed to any major label so that’s just speculation. With some research, I found that it’s by two guys called Switch and J9 and a lot of fans were confused why it was uploaded under JLS, when the original song, on YouTube, isn’t even called “Time”. It’s called “Look”. I can only see this as kind of a scummy marketing ploy by a label, as I don’t think an independent distributor would be willing to change the name, artwork and artist name to believably look like JLS. I don’t know about any of this but really the song isn’t bad or really worth caring about, just a game of finding the impostor. To be honest, I’d love for JLS’ actual comeback single to be a drill banger in response, but again, we’ll have to wait and see. For now... who even gets the royalties for this?

#56 – “CLOUDS” – NF

Produced by Tommee Profitt and NF

You know what’s decidedly less fun than UK drill rappers masquerading as late 2000s boy bands? Christian rap. To be fair to NF, he’s less outwardly Christian as he is just family-friendly pop-rap with a lot of technical skill and that’s fine, although it does mean his fanbase consists pretty much exclusively white kids who think they listen to “real rap with a message” and dismiss anyone with a darker skin tone as mumble-rap. Though I don’t think NF purposefully lets into that demographic, at least from the little I’ve heard, I don’t doubt that he knows that’s his base as he continues on this lead single from his upcoming mixtape CLOUDS to criticise rappers who “go Hollywood” whilst also acknowledging how violent some of his lyrics may seem, which kind of seems like an odd thing to say in this context. I mean, NF here is only being clean rather than Christian, but not in a Lecrae way where he’s genuinely a versatile and soulful rapper outside of the religious stuff that tends to work its way into a lot of his work. Instead, NF just kind of meanders over a condescendingly bad piano-based trap beat, with pretty pathetic flows that really undermine how much technical skill this guy supposedly has. I mean, if he’s going to imitate Eminem with even more filler bars and unfunny mid-verse skits. To be fair, I can’t complain about the dude’s energy, and the beat does get better as it gathers a lot more energy in its choral grandiosity, but I feel like this one starting verse just lasts for days because of how little is actually said in three minutes, and that second verse is shorter but says even little. That’s before getting into some of these lyrics as it really is just nonsense half of the time. He claims to be “not artistic” – I don’t know why Nate meant by that but it just comes off as how it is on paper: hilarious – and also flooding the first verse with a series of ridiculous metaphors you’d be hard-pressed to wrap your head around, including questionable name-drops for... Bill Gates, of all people. I do find it ironic how despite his fanbase wanting to make you think you’re not smart enough to get NF’s really “clever” bars, the Genius annotations for one of the few kind of cool lines here show that it completely goes over their heads. NF says, “Got something in my cup, ain’t codeine”, which you can stretch – pretty reasonably – to be a Biblical reference. The song’s about fame and success, so referencing “my cup runneth over” makes a lot of sense. The annotations says that it’s unclear what’s in NF’s cup, and a comment corrects him, saying that it shows in the music video that Nate’s cup has water in it. Nice one, guys. At least Eminem murders women and Hopsin’s a racist piece of trash, what does this guy have?

#38 – “test drive” – Ariana Grande

Produced by Foster, Mr. Franks, TBHits and Murda Beatz

Ariana Grande released the few bonus deluxe tracks from her Positions album last week, and of course, at least one charted – not many others could as you can’t have more than three hits at a time on the UK Singles Chart. I know, it’s silly. Honestly, I think the deluxe tracks were in most cases better than the standard edition, and I think if we cut out the annoyingly large amount of filler in that total package, we could have a pretty damn great record from Ari, but as is, it’s really just fine and suffering from all of the issues her past few years of music have. With that said, “test drive” might be my favourite ever song of hers, with its gorgeous 90s R&B keys that lead us in to a bouncy house beat from Murda Beatz of all people (in a similar vein to “motive” from the standard edition but with actual sound design). There isn’t that much of a bass in the groove here, but it makes up for that with its twinkling synths and Ari’s delivery which sounds convincing and infectious through the whole track, which may be short at just barely more than two minutes but does not waste that time with its incredible chorus and whilst I would have preferred some more complexity or meat to this production, particularly the percussion, this dreamy blend of 90s pop styles is really fun as is, especially in that final chorus with those subtle strings and bleep-bloops coming in, to the point where you don’t really care how abruptly it ends... which actually might be a pretty fitting end for a track about a youthful, very sexually active relationship. Yeah, this is pretty great – check it out.

#36 – “Toxic” – Digga D

Produced by Trinz

Speaking of bonus tracks, here’s a bonus track from Digga D’s most recent mixtape, Made in the Pyrex, and any goodwill I had for this guy is gone because this song is deplorable. You can say it’s satirical all you want – and to an extent it probably is – but I really can’t sit here and listen to a rich guy talk about how awfully he treats women for three minutes. Basically, the song is about influencers that want to “suck his bone”, and honestly that would be fine if he kept it about the sex, rather than how much he seemingly hates these women, calling them good for nothing sex objects with the subtlety of a dusty red brick. Misogyny is common in rap music and popular music as a whole, and it’s forgivable because, really, objectification is so commonplace that there’s no point in fighting it off, and really there’s nothing wrong in a rapper saying “my girlfriend is attractive” because... well, yeah, she probably is. There’s also nothing wrong with a rapper describing or depicting sex, because sex happens, and there’s also nothing wrong with rappers describing their conflicts with women because, again, they happen, and music is never supposed to represent a perfect life or perfect human. You can express your flaws and irrational emotions, even if they are “toxic”, in your music because it’s a form of human expression that knows few bounds, and as long as there’s some kind of tact or thematic approach, I really do not mind and will often try and justify it. However, when you’ve got a guy with no charisma or personality describing how he uses his fame on Twitter to his advantage for cheap sex, what really is the point in listening to this guy? Do you enjoy hearing about how he constantly condescends and insults the women providing him with cheap sexual desires? Sure, they never sent you letters while you were in jail, but they were never supposed to. These are Instagram models and social media influencers you use to get your rocks off by sliding in DMs, not long-time relationships, and you know that, so why are you complaining when your emotional desires are not met beyond intercourse... especially when you clearly don’t care about hers? I guess Digga D is being “toxic” on purpose as the title and chorus ensues, but this is too overly-specific and based in what seem to be real-life situations for me to stick with this and justify any of it, especially him referencing the models’ substance abuse, how he refuses to drink fancy wine she bought her instead of his cheap Magnum tonic wine – a sexual stimulant from Jamaica. All that would be fine if it weren’t for how he takes this back to real life by mentioning his ex-girlfriend, breaking all illusions of satire and fantasy. In the second verse, he continues to slut-shame and condemn women for... travelling abroad? Profiting from OnlyFans? Wearing Rolexes? If you want to talk about how many designer accessories you wear, how many places you’ve been, how many women you’ve had sex with and how many women you use for your own benefit and no one else’s, as you do in all of your songs, then where’s your excuse for criticising women for doing the same thing? Oh, right, there is none! I heard a few weeks ago and talked about on this show how the government has to see Digga D’s lyrics and censor them in the case that they’re too violent. It’s pretty telling how this misogynist piece of shit slipped through those cracks, huh?

#28 – “Let’s Go Home Together” – Ella Henderson and Tom Grennan

Produced by TMS

Okay, so this is our highest debut this week, and it’s from singer Ella Henderson, who you probably know from “Ghost”. She was another X Factor singer and this song actually dates back to 2016, where it was leaked online as a duet with James Arthur. More than four years later, it sees an official release with the slightly-less-trendy Arthur replaced with Tom Grennan, similarly non-present pop singer. I’m surprised the label’s even letting her release this pretty generic pop ballad with an acoustic pick-up and lyrics about going home together while drunk, as well as trap-esque percussion because of course. I mean, her second album has been shelved for half a decade, and Tom Grennan himself has kind of been in limbo until recently, and it’s not like he’s doing anything interesting or different here with his insufferable mumbling delivery. There’s an unfunny bait-and-switch in his verse at some point that I think even James Arthur would have pulled off better, and Grennan’s last line in the bridge is genuinely just one of the worst moments in music this year, Jesus Christ – you’ve just got to listen to that part, I guess. The song’s really not worth speaking more about and I want to wrap this up.

Conclusion

A slower, less chaotic week yet still a mixed bag and mostly bad. I’ll give Best of the Week for Rag’n’Bone Man for “All You Ever Wanted”, with a really close Honourable Mention for Ariana Grande’s “test drive”. Worst of the Week should be pretty damn obvious given that Digga D’s “Toxic” even exists, but Dishonourable Mention really is a toss-up. I guess Tom Zanetti’s “Didn’t Know” might be the most embarrassing song here... apart from “Lifestyle” of course but that song really is just okay. For next week... who cares? Here’s this week’s top 10:

Follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank if you’re interested – really, I just talk about Weezer more often than I should – and I’ll see you next week.

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cto10121 · 8 years ago

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mulling over my recent rewatch of the hungarian retj (rómeó és júlia) some more and while it’s still one of the best versions of the show, some things just stuck out like a sore thumb, such as

the choreography. now, i’m not in any way an expert or even amateur on dance, but 90% of this duda éva mess featured the dancers hopping around like bunnies and doing weird YMCA-style hand movements like some nineties nightmare. lehetsz király is especially an offender, but verona had some questionable choreography too. i’ve never liked the choreography in this version much, but in this rerun it was somehow more glaring. i guess since then i’ve gone back to the french choreography and since redha was directly inspired by jerome robbins’ work in west side story...well, yeah...

the part where one of the capulet servants gets kissed by a hyper rómeó after le balcon and the servant recognizes rómeó as a montague becomes unintentionally amusing when you consider that in this version, the differences between the montagues and capulets in terms of clothing and physical appearance are subtle and minimal at best, nonexistent at worst. how the hell did she recognize rómeó as a montague???? by his blue blouse? they’re not color coded, so blue wouldn’t automatically mean montague in this world. so what gives?

speaking of which - ditching the color-coded dress, while it arguably adds more ‘‘realism” (not really, imho), muddles the action a lot. in the original french, you always knew who was what, and not only that, but there were strong characteristics in their dance that differentiated them more. the montagues were wild cards, the capulets more restrained and scheming. it affirmed the divisive reality of the feud. in the hungarian, most of the feud is fought by the head of the families, which is a reversal both of the french and shakespeare. during la vengeance, if it weren’t for benvolio’s presence on one of the sides, i wouldn’t have known which side wanted to protect romeo and which side didn’t. they were all dressed in the same sleek dark leather costumes. i guess that was the subtle ‘‘point” of the production, but unless you show a difference other than clothing, all you’ll have is just people of the same ethnicity, same gestures, same choreography doing shit to each other and little understanding of why. so though the hungarian actually brings out the feud more and its violence, the french is actually more convincing

that orchestra. this may be due to the poor sound engineering of the dvd that privileged the singers than the instruments, but it still sounds awfully tinny and weak. the strings were so thin they were threadbare; the tempos were all over the place. songs that are definitely not meant to be played fast were played fast and other parts were slowed down to an excruciating degree. the arranger cut out the solos in the latter part of the choruses, so the hungarian versions feel more repetitious than even the french, even when they add new lyrics. they obviously got more of their budget toward the FIRE ACROBATICS and neat stage effects

the acting. better than the french, obviously, since these are theater-theater people trained to do everything all at once. the script gives more of a plot and story to the musical-operetta than the french, which was more concert-based. but because of the dramatic needs of the story, the singing on stage suffered A LOT. imagine almost 3 hours of shouting and belting and everyone running around like kids high on candy. my ears were ringing at the end something awful. the french had pacing problems too, but that was because the addition of extraneous songs that could have been cut (le pouvoir, le poète, however much i like the latter) and some lazy directing. the hungarian has more ear fatigue; the energy that they establish is not maintainable for long. as a result, damien sargue sang much better, with better expression, than attila dolhai, who sounds like an operatically trained singer. hommonay zsolt as párisz was also operatically trained, it sounds like, but even at times didn’t sound good at all, especially during la folie, which should have been a picnic for him. at least the chorus was consistently good.

everyone’s an asshole except résj. this production went back to the original shakespeare characterizations for some of the characters, particularly for the capulets and the nurse, so yeah. but where shakespeare was more nuanced and realistic in his portrayal of the capulets, here they’re mostly unlikable dysfunctional assholes. paris was a sleazeball (though the show tried to say he cared about juliet enough to want to die in her tomb hahahaha no), capulet a doddering fool, lady capulet chronically unfaithful to the extreme, the nurse bawdy and particularly tactless, and tybalt a walking talking disaster on two legs, an epileptic severus snape if there wasn’t one (even my dad thought he'd make a great snape, so it’s not just my hp-addled brain) plus incest issues with his aunt and cousin. lady montague is fierce as fuck, but of course her role is lesser, benvolio acts almost exactly like mercutio except he has a more puppy-ish air and mercutio is more eloquent and cynical. mercutio was closer to the original shakespeare, which means he could be a douchecanoe at times. all in all, the only truly sympathetic characters are rómeó and júlia, which would be terrific (kill the trend of making them into stupid horny teenagers DEAD, i mean it) if it didn’t feel so cheap and vaguely manipulative. of course you’d sympathize with them - they’re the only ones who aren’t crazy, high, mentally troubled, or into the stupid feud in the first place. of course, they’re entertaining to watch, much like you would a trainwreck, but the melodrama does reach a point of incredulity.

speaking of résj, while they’re cute and all, (if way too old) they tend to feel almost extraneous to this production, so focused on the feud and violence as it is. this should have been called egy orült villág or something like that because that’s really what it was.

the song order. the show does make it work, barely, but it’s still jarring and strange, even after all these years. i can’t get over c’est le jour and c’est pas ma faute switched around, and tu dois te marier following verona must have been one of the strangest decisions they’ve ever made. i would have liked to have been there in the room where they decided on this order. it isn’t really intuitive, just the opposite. it did solve some of the pacing problems of the french, but musically i think it suffered a lot. gyulölet and szívbol szeretni being close together was weird as well, although the former made for a good number. how strange

the ho yay is incredible in this version. like, purposely fanfiction-y. i never paid much credence to the tycutio and bencutio shippers of the shakespeare fandom, but someone in this production obviously did. mercutio is out-and-out bi, but you can probably read anyone in this production as such. tybalt is an atomic bomb of repression so of course he gets read as such. it adds nothing to the production except, of course, the pleasure of seeing attractive people being all over each other. those wily fangirls are at it again

OH I HAD NEARLY FORGOTTEN - in párisz halála, paris’ death scene, he says that he believes rómeó was here to desecrate júlia’s grave, as in the original shakespeare. rómeó actually had to tell him straight-up that júlia was his wife. but in la folie, the people were all crying that júlia’s death was rómeó’s fault, so obviously paris would have known that they had been together. so what gives? why wouldn’t hungarian paris make that connection and tried to turn him in on the basis that he was responsible for júlia’s death, officially ruled as a suicide? this is verona, after all, where everyone knows everything about everyone, and especially in the hungarian version they found out awfully quickly about résj. in the french, you sense that the capulets are in denial about the rumors (though french!capulet seems to hint that he knows based on his bitter ‘‘et je maudis tous ces amants’’ line) but the hungarian family seemed to have believed it quickly. so yeah, that’s a strange plot hole. i’m guessing galambos attila had to write this le duel reprise quickly and just fell back on shakespeare since there is no french equivalent.

#i'll just tag this #romeo et juliette #romeo es julia #rómeó és júlia #why not #this version had some good points though #the backstory on tybalt and his father was pretty on point #i liked it so much i used it for my version although i added a twist

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yourtoradorasextendedwarranty · 6 years ago

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The Problem with MSM

So I honestly don't have many followers. I'm also prone to going on tangents. And most of my posts are rooted in politics. Not by choice mind you. I was not the one that decided literally everything in existence is political. I'm also not the one that created the view points that want everything to be political. TL;DR At the bottom.

To start off however, I need you to understand the process of radicalization.

Find someone who feels discontent with how a situation is, or how their life is

Tell this person that what's happening to them is not their fault

Place the blame for this person's problems on a certain group (political group, racial group, religious group, etc.)

Talk to the person like you know how they feel, "drop your guard" and tell them "problems you've had that were not your fault" blaming that same group

Show them that they are either a victim or oppressed in some way, shape, or form.

Slowly start swaying their views further to the extreme, by showing them other instances of "others who are being attacked or are victims" of said group.

Promptly but softly oppose any "differing views" with warped information or flat out lies

Get them to start going to events and taking to others that have already been radicalized

Have you and another radicalized individual, keep track of this person and say you support them and their issues

Sit back and watch

Now this is a rough lost but more or less the bare bones basics of radicalizing other people. Though in some cases it takes more steps and in some others it takes less. So what does this have to do with MSM (Mainstream Media)? Quite a few things in modern day actually.

The job of MSM is to get you information, as fast as humanly possible. This however was not the first goal priority in the past. In the past, the first priority was to cover a story as factually as the could, and look for more information keeping people constantly updated. Here we get to our first real problem for Media today. Technology. The Advent of modern technology has been both a blessing and a curse in this regard. And of course I'm talking about the internet in its current form. The internet being the very center of information distribution in 2019. And it has been for almost 12 years now.

So what did this change? Basically everything we know today. "Old wives tales" are now a Google search away. Feeling sick? WebMD says you have Cancer. Looking for the next hour story? Check CNN's Twitter account. The Internet brought us a great, many things. But it has taken away just as many. MSM has had to slowly move operations into social media in order to try and stay relevant. This because many people have unplugged, and have gone full digital. The only real exceptions being places of business. And with the world at your finger tips at the clock of a button, being factual has lost its relevance. Not to mention that as far back as 2013-2014 activists started working for MSM companies. Most notably progressive activists. This causes many problems we currently see today. Below is an example of what a headline used to look like, and what most headlines look like now:

Normal headline: Shooting in Birmingham leaves 3 dead and several injured during city wide festival.

Headline now: White, Trump supporter, Nazi, KKK, skin head, punches 2 people in hate crime.

See the difference? The first headline shows the basic facts and dives into known details during the article. Often they'd avoid opinions all together. The second one one the other hand, blatantly discloses anything that could generate clicks. Why? Because true or not, outrage sells. So over the past several years, MSM has been slowly radicalizing us. But they do this on a bipartisan level.

Are you black? The cops will kill you, and the white man is evil. Can't find a job? Racism. Are you a woman? Then you're unhappy because "rape culture". Do you regret having sex with that guy? Well guess what? He actually raped you without you realizing. Are you white? You're evil. Are you strait? You're a monster and should give all your money to gay people. Are you a man? You are responsible for every rape ever committed. You're also a pedophile and violent. Are you a strait white man? Oh boy you won the jackpot because you're basically Hitler.

See my point here? MSM spends most of it's time trying to rage bait you into clicking their articles. And in doing so we've gotten so lazy as a country that half the time, we don't even read past the headlines. And MSM knows this. They don't care if you read what they write. They are just radicalizing you so they can keep feeding you outrage. Because the more often they do it, the more often you will click it, skim all of 3 lines and then hop on Twitter and talk about how outraged you are. Sure, we are just as to blame for letting it happen to us, but most of us used to have at least some trust in the media. But after SEVERAL severely awfully false hit pieces that were headline news for almost months, many of us have started staying away from MSM.

What incidents might I be talking about?

Covington Catholic controversy (Almost every media outlet took a 7 second clip and ran with it. Turns out, there was a full 2hr video out there, and the Native American man, whom CNN interviewed, lied his ass off. Most media also chose to ignore the VERY beginning of the video which showcased a group called The Black Hebrew Israelites. These individuals, called Trump a homosexual, called the Native Americans there "Uncle Tomahawk", and said Gay people should not have rights. THESE CATHOLIC STUDENTS, were appalled by this statement. But what did we see in the media? "Racist Maga hat kid threatens and blocks the path of a Poor innocent Native American man."

Duke Lacrosse. Years after these kids were crucified by the Media and many others, the girl actually came out saying it never happened. You know who reported on this? Next to no one.

Ferguson. Now as controversial as this one is, the media took and RAN with it. What followed after the skewed coverage was a cult like gathering that led to phrases like, "hands up don't shoot" and "oink oink, bang bang". But Obama had the issue federally investigated. Both witnesses and the coroner report said basically the same thing. That he was aggressively wrestling with the cop trying to take his gun. But, it's too late. Now all cops are evil, and Democrat politicians are quoting it like it happened yesterday, and claiming the cop guilty. Why? Because MSM already got what they needed. They radicalized the individuals they wanted, people who will come back to them for, "facts".

And what does all of this boil down to? A video that made me write this out.

2 things need to be said here. 1. The "manifesto" as it were, was actually debunked to have been uploaded by the shooter, by the site admin himself. As well as several other sources. 2. If, by some chance the manifesto was real, and he had someone upload it for him, he mentions several liberal talking points, like universal basic income, saving the environment, among other left policies.

But this brings me back to both the beginning and to this story. Assuming for a moment, the manifesto was his. How did this happen? Most of you might just jump and say, "RACIST NAZIS", or something slightly more colorful. But here is the thing. MSM is partly responsible for all of this. Assuming the conspiracy that the CIA or FBI is responsible is false, I agree with the YouTuber in the picture. I believe that if you belittle and berate someone enough over time, you can cause them to do extreme things. I mean look at this site. Look at Twitter. Look at MSM. "White people bad", "white people are evil" "K*LL all whites" "white privilege", "fuck men", "male tears", "man spreading", "mansplaining", "Yes all men". All of this. This is popular. This is a trend. And it's unacceptable. Because frankly, it's basically bullying someone into a corner. Personally? I've been told by a few companies that are scared of social justice warriors and the online hate mob, that their company is actively not hiring white individuals. And I wish, REALLY WISH, I was making that up.

Is it any wonder, that people who go to the internet as an escape end up in a low point in their lives and then decide to do something awful? And it's the same with school shootings too. The news puts out, the name, ethnicity, how tall they are, and their entire life story, for weeks at a time. And now for much longer, because they support the desire to ban guns. So they need these things to happen more often. So the glorify the shooter, and keep talking about him/them for months. But here is where the story gets fun.

Columbine's shooting, was actually supposed to be a bombing. The kids who did it? Not the "school losers" the media talked about. The trench coat club? They were not even apart of it. More info on that here. As well as other places on Google.

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More or less This video covers what the media got wrong in their rush to cover everything. What they did not intend on, was making these two boys heros to those bullied in school. Mostly boys, who are torn down and told they aren't enough, that they don't matter, they are isolated, bullied, harassed. So they look for someone who stood up to their bullies. What they were given, was a sociopath who manipulated a suicidal boy into helping him commit mass murder. Almost all of MSM were quick to say they were bullied into it. What's worse however, is Parkland. The Parkland 5, (the students whom MSM propped up for months) one of them came out admitting, that she bullied the guy who shot up the school. Said he was weird and that she needed to do it. This is one of the teens the media has PROPPED UP, saying we should listen to their infinite wisdom. A girl who is probably half responsible for the shooting.

Start paying attention. Start doing research. And for the love of all that is holy, STOP BULLYING PEOPLE! I don't care what your narrative is, or what it means. IE:

White people are human

Black people are human

Hispanic people are human

Gay people are human

Strait people are human

Women are human

Men are human

Stop normalizing anything to the contrary. Because when you do, you become part of the problem.

TL;DR The media only cares about themselves and clicks. They don't care who they radicalize, so long as you keep giving them traffic. Which for them is money. Do your research, look into things, and don't bully people. I'm looking at you progressives.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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I’m standing in a piteous rain, in front of an auto garage on Flushing Avenue, staring across the street at a line of people that stretches back at least two full avenues. The mechanics standing behind me are idly curious: “What the hell is going on over there?”

I kind of think that if I started to try to explain it, I’d grow old and die on this street corner.

Hypefest, which takes place the same weekend as the New Yorker Festival and New York Comic Con, is a two-day streetwear celebration featuring art, music, food, and, of course, shopping. Hosted throughout several large, vaguely fish-scented buildings in the currently hip Brooklyn Navy Yard, it’s the first large-scale festival organized by the Hong Kong-based media and e-commerce giant Hypebeast, founded by Kevin Ma in 2005. And it’s an answer to ComplexCon, the glorified mall and music festival hosted by the “youth culture” media monolith Complex in Long Beach, California, every November.

Both celebrate the ever-growing online “hype” culture around anything exciting — Elon Musk and the modern commercial space race; basketball sneakers and a handful of famous men in hip-hop; startup streetwear brands and the legendary fashion houses that embrace them. Surprise and unlikeliness are key, which is why this crew loves loose-cannon tech CEOs as much as they love Kanye West, and also as much as they love bizarre collaborations like Balenciaga and Crocs or Louis Vuitton and Supreme.

Note a tiny hypebeast in an Adidas tracksuit. And, in the distance, a yacht Hypefest attendees can sign up to stand on. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

Hypefest was barely announced, save for some Instagram posts last month and an 800-word New York Times preview titled “If you hype it, will they come?” Tickets weren’t made available until three weeks in advance, at which time Ma wrote on his Instagram, “Culture and learning shouldn’t have a price attached to it. I will personally cover the cost of tickets to make Hypefest a free experience for all.”

He gave out 10,000 free tickets in a matter of minutes.

The location of the festival was kept a secret until two days before, at which time it was announced only to ticket holders. The requisite Hypefest app, also usable only to ticket holders, hosted an elaborate digital store, which was the only way to buy anything you saw at the event. There was no cash allowed — even food trucks and the several enormous Ciroc stations weren’t permitted to take anything but credit cards or Apple Pay.

All these measures seem dramatic but were presumably necessary, given that the culture we’re talking about is one literally named for its excess energy and known for ambitious, flagrantly ridiculous resale scams. Also its high percentage of young male fans.

The location of Hypefest was kept a secret until two days before

Of the many things available for sale at Hypefest, a $1,700 suitcase is the most coveted. It’s making an exclusive debut at the festival, and it’s the reason many of these people got out of bed this morning.

For example: Axel, 15, and Chris, 14, a pair of incredibly polite friends who drove up from Washington, DC, with their parents. They are wearing Comme des Garçons Nikes and 2011 Jordan 1s, respectively; they tell me they came to Hypefest for the experience, and to buy two of the suitcases.

Other stuff sells out — notably, freeze-dried flowers preserved in glass blocks by Japanese artist Azuma Makoto (ranging from $260 to $600), and tactical vests from Pharrell Williams’s Billionaire Boys Club, which go for $1,100 each. But it’s the suitcase, a collaboration between Off-White (the Italian brand founded by Kanye West creative director Virgil Abloh) and Rimowa (a fancy German luggage company, majority-owned by LVMH), that’s the talk of the party.

The suitcase sells out immediately, but no worries — every couple of hours, it gets restocked, which festivalgoers are alerted to by a push notification. Each time, it sells out again about two minutes later. This happens at least five times.

The setting for Hypebeast’s first festival was a smattering of fish-scented buildings owned by the Brooklyn Fish Transfer. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

Before I asked if I could go to Hypefest, I told my editor, “I think I love the hypebeasts. At least they’re getting excited. At least someone’s having an adrenaline rush.” If that’s true, it must be a behind-the-computer state of play. Everyone in line for the first round of shuttle buses to the navy yard on Saturday looks like they’d rather chew gravel than smile. (The buses are also effectively crowd control, serving no real crucial transportation purpose, as each group travels about 800 feet in them and there are no return buses.)

My first order of business upon disembarking the “shuttle bus” is not buying a $1,700 suitcase, but waiting in a small corral in order to meet the extremely famous young person Jaden Smith, who is announcing a denim line made in collaboration with the Dutch brand G-Star. Standing in the corral for 40 minutes, I am not permitted to leave to go to the bathroom, but I am permitted to look around my immediate vicinity.

Everybody is tall and wearing all black, except a baby wearing a camouflage Bape hoodie. Lots of people are pausing to take a picture of the back of a bald guy’s neck as he peruses Lacoste polos — probably because he has a tattoo there, of a pair of eyes, that looks suspiciously similar to Zayn Malik’s tattoo of Gigi Hadid’s eyes. All clothes are designer, unless they’re Scarface T-shirts or hoodies from the famed Atlanta strip club Magic City. It doesn’t immediately seem like anyone’s that cool, but I can concede they’re all cooler than me.

A fashion reporter, also stationed in the corral, looks down at my chunky white sneakers — relatively new but already slightly scuffed, modeled extremely vaguely after the current trend of designing shoes to look like swollen lips — and asks, “So what are those?”

“They’re from Target!” I say, throwing my arms wide like I’m Betty Draper about to show off a serving tray of Heineken. I hope it will be funnier than it is.

Ten minutes later, Jaden Smith — son of Will Smith, star of Netflix’s Neo Yokio, general presence in hip-hop — arrives to introduce his denim collection wearing what I can only guess is about 50 pounds of (mostly denim) clothing. Denim jacket, denim pants. He has both a fanny pack and a tactical vest, and though I can’t really get close enough to see, it seems like he’s not using all this storage space for anything in particular.

Outside our admittedly not-very-private corral, dozens of teens and 20-somethings press in and reach for his hand. Smith gives it. He smiles a glittery famous person smile. “We got floating mannequins inside; it’s gonna be awesome,” he tells the general air, seeming genuinely friendly and enthused, bouncing either because he is happy or because that is how you have to move if you are a tiny boy-wire inside enough fabric to cover a grizzly bear.

Jaden Smith poses with a fan at Hypefest, inside the G-Star booth. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

He leads us into a conical structure I am hoping is not actually supposed to be a teepee and points up at three headless mannequins, suspended by invisible cords. They are wearing denim. The denim, it is explained, is sustainable. Some of it is undyed; some of it is dyed with indigo that doesn’t use salt; all of it uses less water than other denim.

“We have floating mannequins that are flying, because we want them to fly,” Smith explains. “G-Star clothes give you superpowers.” He turns to someone from G-Star and says, “The floating’s great. The floating’s great.” He explains that sustainability is important to him, and I believe him. I look at him for a few minutes longer than I feel I want to, because it just seems like what you should do if there’s a celebrity a few feet away and he’s thanked you for coming.

After I’ve touched raw denim, I wander outside, past the main stage where about two dozen boys are attempting to mosh to a DJ playing the Killers’ “Mr. Brightside,” and talk to a man waiting in line for empanadas. He points suddenly to my chest and says, “What is that?” That is a 3-inch-tall teddy bear holding an orange leaf. I remember that I bought it for 50 cents at the flea market in Avon, New York, last weekend, and that I pinned to the lapel of my stained Topshop jacket more or less as a joke.

“So you’d be making a 10,000 percent profit if you sold it to me right now for $5?” the man says. I think he’s joking, so I laugh, and then he says he’ll also buy me an empanada. I say something weird about how I’m “just getting acquainted” with my bear, I’ve only had him for one week, I don’t know if I need $5 that badly. “I mean, I know I’m a journalist, but it’s not that dire today,” I tell him, and he says the empanadas are really good. His friend, who is wearing an Endxiety hat reading “Our Lord & Savior Elon Musk,” tells him to please give up, I’m not parting with it.

It will take me close to 48 hours to realize that I wrote the man’s name down wrong and he’s Rhuigi Villaseñor, the 26-year-old owner of Rhude, an (extremely expensive!) LA streetwear label best known for the fact that Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, and LeBron James wear it.

Anyway, he is really nice. He’s here to help launch a new sneaker with Puma. He tells me, “It’s great for the culture to be social, because it’s an Instagram world. It’s good for kids to be socializing who are, in one way or another, a little awkward.” I say, “Do you think they’re socializing?”

He says, “No.”

Rhude designer Rhuigi Villaseñor drinking a Sprite at Hypefest. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox Adidas’s booth at Hypfest, where attendees could sign up to create their own “never built” shoe. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

It’s sort of a rhetorical question, as I can already see that they mostly aren’t. The thing about an event designed to educate you about expensive goods, I reason, is that the expensive goods are the education in and of themselves. You don’t need to hear explanations of them. You don’t need to hear outside opinions. A pair of sneakers being sold for $350 is worth $350, and probably more once there aren’t any left. I’m happy enough with this explanation — who doesn’t want a hobby that’s as simple as arithmetic and supply and demand?

Hypefest is a beautiful mall, essentially two dozen Instagram-ready stations for brands that don’t often appear outside of Instagram. Everybody is a walking price tag, and doing the math is as easy as a Google search on the free, ubiquitous wifi. The air is thick with humidity and money: Women wear ground-length Opening Ceremony raincoats, Prada fanny packs, Helmut Lang sweatshirts, Balenciaga sneakers, and vintage Apple employee jackets that go for around $400 on eBay. Men are in Off-White Nikes with the tags still on, Supreme hoodies, Anti-Social Social Club windbreakers, and Advisory Board Crystals beanies that are about $200 each on the popular resale app Grailed.

Jake Woloshin, 23, is wearing Ava Nirui’s Marc Jacobs hoodie (advertised as an “official bootleg,” which … okay), which means he is currently wearing $125 on his torso. But he tells me he couldn’t resist the new Heron Preston hoodies he saw today, so he picked one up; tomorrow, his torso will be worth $475.

As for his feet, they’re in relatively modest Timberlands, and he tells me he’s glad he’s not wearing the same Travis Scott Air Jordan 4s everyone else is wearing. This is a point reiterated by nearly everyone I speak to. They are mortified by the amount of Travis Scott merch. “You’d think he was performing,” says a New Jersey podcast host, smiling kind of, but mostly rolling his eyes.

Marc Jacobs set up a photo booth where Hypefest attendees could pose in Marc Jacobs-branded surgical masks. Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

I have a lot of time to wander around, as I can’t get drunk and I can’t buy anything and I can’t even really merit anyone’s attention because good lord, look at my outfit.

I wander past a car completely covered in packets of $100 bills, which is apparently an ad for a hotel in Los Angeles. I pass the Marc Jacobs booth, which is advertising a collaboration with Instagram artist @Hey_Reilly by giving out surgical masks with teeth printed on the front, with “Marc Jacobs” printed on the teeth. They’re really scary, and I don’t like them. I stop into a booth stylized to look like a convenience store (T-shirts sold in soda bottles, hoodies sold in chip bags); it belongs to the Japanese brand Conveni, which has never been to New York before. I like that one; they’re selling bandanas in triangular sandwich packaging, and the owner is kind enough to offer me a snack.

Back outside, Charlie Mejia, a 19-year-old New Yorker who came to Hypefest by himself, tells me he came specifically to buy a Pikachu sweatshirt designed by a brand called Fragment, which typically stylizes its name as “.” It sold out, so he bought a limited-edition calendar designed by manga artist Katsuhiro Otomo, and is mostly looking forward to a talk called “The Female Is Present,” hosted by Sporty and Rich founder Emily Oberg and Kendrick Lamar stylist Aleali May.

“I really want to hear women’s thoughts,” he tells me. “We don’t hear their perspectives as much.”

“I really want to hear women’s thoughts. We don’t hear their perspectives as much.”

I run into a kid named Aidan Parker, who is wearing a black denim jacket designed by Nick Holiday, the creator of the hip-hop collective Brockhampton’s early merch. I’m happy to recognize something, and ask Parker to tell me about his day and his thoughts on the Brockhampton sexual misconduct scandal, which he calls simply “uh, crazy.” He’s there with his friend A.J. Nurse, who is on the phone trying to coordinate with the rest of their friends. They run a group chat called The Stoop, sourced from the subreddit r/streetwear, made up of more than 50 people ages 16 to 34, who first met up in Union Square in June 2016. They hang out in SoHo; they are here to buy $1,700 suitcases.

There are so many boys like them — expected, and at the same time hyperreal because of how expected they are. It’s nice, I guess, that they are friends who met online.

There are also VIPs hanging out in a secluded plastic garden, and a yacht you can sign up to stand on. There’s a huge Adidas station where you can design your own shirts and sneakers or watch someone named Jack the Ripper put together shoes inside a glass box for hours on end. There is an adorable 4-year-old in a high-visibility-workwear yellow baseball cap, sucking his thumb. There is a slightly younger child waddling around all day in a full Adidas tracksuit, and I am obligated to write down that even the toddlers at Hypefest are rich and beautiful.

Axel and Chris, polite teenage friends at Hypefest Kaitlyn Tiffany/Vox

There is a teenager in Balenciaga’s Triple S sneakers and a UPenn baseball cap who drops, with zero warning, to his knees, in front of an unexplained covered wagon. He holds Drake’s favored squat pose for about 20 seconds, while his mom, wearing a navy cardigan and green Adidas Stan Smiths, waits for him without a change in expression. I don’t think anyone took his picture.

What I love about Hypefest is that even an untrained eye like mine can pick out a logo and look up how much something cost. The barrier to access for this event was just proximity to it, and the barrier to access for a community in which shopping becomes an art form in itself is just money — a lot of it.

When I sit down and force myself to find something redeeming about it all, it is the same thing that redeems anything noxious: The people are nice when addressed directly. The attendees imagined that the culture they love on the internet might represent community in real life, and for a handful of them, maybe it does — if you put your face in front of someone, they will mostly respond with warmth.

These are just people, like me, here to buy something that will make them feel better, or, barring that, to look at things they can’t afford, which will make them feel like they have a reason to try harder. All we can really dream of in America is a chance to buy something that will change our lives.

Also, for no obvious reason and with no explanation: Travis Scott did show up at Hypefest on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes faith is rewarded.

Original Source -> At Hypebeast’s new streetwear festival, even the toddlers are cool and rich

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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news-mashable-yahoopartner-blog · 7 years ago

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All the cool phones I wanted from 2000s rap videos

This post is part of Mashable's You're Old Week. Break through the haze of nostalgia with us and see what holds up, what disappoints, and what got better with time.

It feels like ages ago, but there was a time when some phones carried a certain cachet.

Now with the plethora of barely indistinguishable iPhones and Android devices, there isn't much novelty in phones anymore — aside from the recent spate of Nokia throwbacks and that weird curved screen phase.

SEE ALSO: Your Phone Might Be Changing Your Brain

But during the 2000's, phones like the Sidekick were essentially a fashion accessory, akin to rocking a nice pair of sneakers or a swish new bag, and sneakily embedded into popular hip-hop videos of that era.

These phones were the closest thing to luxury — and being a massive hip hop star — for a kid like me who grew up in the suburbs. And I knew it'd be way easier to convince my parents to buy me one as opposed to a Mercedes. Below are some of the most drool-worthy (at the time anyway) mobile phones immortalized in rap videos.

J-Kwon's Hiptop/Sidekick (0:11)

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Sure, J-Kwon's career never really hit the same heights as again following 2004's "Tipsy."

But I'm still fantasising about sliding the monochrome LCD screen of the Sidekick (a.k.a. the Hiptop) so I can message all of my friends (on a QWERTY keyboard!) to tell them about my "crazy" house party where we will all get mildly drunk.

Missy Elliott's Nokia 7710 Communicator (0:57)

youtube

Back in the day, it was *kinda* uncool to use a phone that had a stylus. And look, who wants to use a stylus?

But Missy Elliott, being the pioneer she is, used one on the Nokia 7710 Communicator in her video for "Lose Control," while recording a dance-off on its now-crappy one megapixel camera.

Kelly Rowland's Nokia 9290 Communicator (3:15)

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Yes, Kelly Rowland's heart was broken with an excel spreadsheet masquerading as a text message from Nelly, but that shouldn't detract from how cool it would've been to do COMPUTER THINGS ON A PHONE.

P. Diddy's Nokia Sirocco 8800 (0:40)

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"this gadget is a big boy toy.got it,cost me a fortune and i guess dats why p.diddy used it in his latest video.if u cant afford it then dont review.stop player hatin!" reads a post by Gbolly on GSM Arena's forum.

I wholeheartedly agree. The all-metal Nokia Sirocco 8800 was proof you were a baller... back in 2006.

Jay-Z's Motorola Timeport P935 (2:18)

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Boy, you bet I wanted to feel important talking to people with a Timeport pager.

Jay-Z set off something of a trend when he included a Motorola mention in the lyrics for 2000's "I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)": "I'm too cold, Motorola, two-way pager me."

Every rap star had a Timeport, and kids like me wished we had one. "Sales went through the roof," wrote Steve Stoute, a former Interscope executive who asked Jay-Z to include the mention as a favour for a friend at Motorola.

Sean Paul's Nokia N91 (2:38)

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The Nokia N91, which had a 4GB hard drive inside for music storage, was as ugly as they came when it was released in 2005.

Who cares though, when you can set off a frenzied dance party in your garage with a couple of MP3's on your phone, unlike your other friends who had regular Nokia phones.

Oh, and it had a headphone jack, too.

WATCH: You know you're getting old when you remember using these phones

#_author:Johnny Lieu #_uuid:eff8f364-9757-37de-94e9-b471093a2840 #_lmsid:a0Vd000000DTrEpEAL #_revsp:news.mashable

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swimintothesound · 8 years ago

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Artistic Integrity and Commercial Success | Part 4

This is the fourth, final, and most speculative in a series of four posts on the combative relationship between artistic pursuits and commercial achievements. View the first post here, the second one here, and the third here.

Features Aplenty, Featuring Apathy

Unlike Drake, Travis Scott has yet to release an album in 2017. As a result, the final entry in this four-part series will now shift from a post-mortem into (admittedly) premature evaluation. While Drake isn’t quite out of the woods yet, he’s it at least trending upwards artistically. Meanwhile, Travis Scott has been trending upwards in terms of sales and popularity, but I feel like I’ve seen the inverse in his music. And because he hasn’t released a full project yet, all we can do at this point is look at some of the features and individual songs that Travis has worked on since the release of Birds.

Most recently, Trav dropped a trio of loosies on his SoundCloud: “Butterfly Effect,” “A Man,” and “Green & Purple.” Truth be told, none of these songs did anything for me, and for the most part, they feel just as devoid of life as Birds. Reading shitty comments online is what originally prompted me to think about this intersection between artistic purity and commercial success, but this recent drop of songs really inspired me to start getting my thoughts out on paper. If these songs are indicative of what Trav has in store for us on his 2017 album, I’m genuinely concerned.

But the bigger topic here is “what comes first: art or success?” I think most people would say the first one, and then those creations go on to achieve success (however you define that). However, once you reach a certain point, I think you can start creating from the other end of the spectrum and just let the money be your guiding light for creation. That’s the battle.

But maybe this is all just Travis Scott Fatigue at this point, so let’s look beyond the man’s own tracks at some of his 2017 features. If there’s anything that sparks inspiration, it’s working with other artists and jumping into some more varied sounds, right?

Even without an album drop, 2017 has been a banner year for Trav. With guest appearances on everything from Major Lazer to SZA and everything in between, it seems you can’t officially be a part of the music scene in 2017 without a feature from Travis Scott. One of the weirder tracks is the collaborative effort “Go Off” from the Fate of the Furious Soundtrack. Sure, it’s generic as fuck, but it’s hard to judge anything based off a watered-down lowest-common-denominator platform like Fast and Furious.

Even still, the most offensive Travis Scott feature (and quite frankly my tipping point) was his appearance on Migo’s CULTURE at the beginning of the year… but before breaking that down, I’d like to give some additional context on ad libs.

Get Hyped or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Ad Lib

For those unfamiliar, ad libs in hip-hop are distinct phrases that rappers interject within individual lines of their own lyrics. I’ll be the first to admit that I’m an ad lib-loving hypebeast (you have to be to start a Desiigner subreddit.) It’s nearly a facet of my personality at this point. Ad libs just get me fired up, and I love how much rappers have been utilizing them lately.

Adlibs are typically used to emphasize a point, excite the audience, or flex after a particularly impressive rhyme. Some artists like Migos use adlibs after nearly every line just to add context and extra texture to their bars. Meanwhile, other people like Chance The Rapper have developed their own repertoire of noises that act as a calling card.

As explained by Pigeons and Planes, ad libs at worst represent “a space-filler, a moment that allows for a word to be repeated, emphasized, or followed by an "uh-huh" or some other bland affirmation.” and at best act as “an opportunity for unique self-expression, a brief moment outside of the lyrics themselves to show character, expand the meaning of the song.”

One of my favorite examples of ad-libbing is Young Thug’s “Halftime” in which he drops a lung-collapsing 12-second “SKRR” forty-four seconds into the track. The prolonged cry lies relatively quietly beneath Thug’s yelped rhymes and just above Kip Hilson’s booming bass-drenched beat. After that, Thug goes on to discuss his eccentric fashion choices and throws off his own rhyming couplet by dragging out the syllables of “recycles” to which he laughs. He’s keeping the listener on their toes. Immediately after that subversion, Thug “winds up” into an increasingly-speedier set of overtly-sexual bars, each of which is punctuated by a series of escalating ad-libbed interjections which Thug himself then interrupts with a reserved “no” right at the rhyme’s climax. The fact that this is all happening in between rapped lines makes the track a treat to listen to and rewards repeated listens. Thug is literally his own backing track. On top of that, this barrage of ad-libs is surrounded by hilariously over-the-top lyrics like “suck my dick like Beavis no, Butthead” and “I just want that neck like a giraffe.” It’s an intoxicating display and one that all happens within the space of a minute on a single verse. Blink and you’ll miss it, but “Halftime” is an absolutely flawless example of ad libs flirting with (and improving) a song as a whole.

I’ve always been a fan of Travis Scott’s adlibs. From the hype-building Straight Up! and It’s Lit! to his trademarked La Flame! He’s made a career (and a name for himself) out of expertly-deployed soundbites. So imagine my surprise when I found myself listening to Migo’s world-conquering CULTURE at the beginning of the year and made it all the way to the album’s penultimate track “Kelly Price” which featured Travis Scott.

I entered hesitantly, given how fresh in my mind Birds was, but I remained optimistic since Travis and Quavo have had a near-impeccable track record up until that point. The song starts with a haunting beat and a hook that finds Quavo running down the typical Migos list of favorite things: Cars. Money. Drugs. Women. Pretty standard stuff so far. Then Travis Scott comes in.

He lazily floats the track by sputtering two words: Flash. Dash. and then drops a “straight-up” adlib. I couldn’t believe it. Maybe I shouldn’t be as offended at this as I am, but I was amazed that this dude just hopped on a track, said two words that barely rhymed and then dropped an ad lib as if he’d just spit some world-shattering bars. It called to mind “Biebs in the Trap” off of Birds in the Trap where Trav opened a verse in an almost identical, but even lazier way. The verse in question reads more like an unrelated grocery list of things that kind of rhyme but just sound cool when thrown together over a particular beat.

As mentioned before, I don’t go to Travis Scott for lyrical bars. So it feels weird to criticize him for verses like the two above… but at the same time, they’re just so far below his already-low bar for lyricism. I’m mainly surprised that he seems to be regressing towards such a simplistic style. One in which he relies almost entirely on production and v i b e s to carry him and his lack of personality or technical skill.

It’s also disappointing because I loved Days Before Rodeo and Rodeo so indescribably, yet I haven’t fully enjoyed anything that he’s put out since 2015. This all ties back to the first post in the series, because right now I’m just bitching that I don’t like the direction an artist is taking.

I Guess That’s It

I guess if there's any theme to this series, it's been about expectations, disappointments, and hope. I was expecting a lot from both Drake and Trav in 2016, and they both let me down in different ways. Since then Drake has really bounced back in my eyes, but Travis seems to be continuing down a different path. I know I started this series complaining about people online wanting to dictate artists art… so I won't do that. All I can do is hope. Hope that he has something grander and more experimental in stock for us.

I believe that Travis has it in him to create more albums on par (and better than) Rodeo, but he could also continue down the “easier” path that’s already laid before him. And I realize it’s a shitty thing for a fan to just say “their old stuff was better.” You can’t expect an artist to just keep remaking an album forever. To do so is to wish stasis and artistic malaise on someone that you’re supposedly a fan of. It's also hard when Rodeo and DBR are tied to such positive memories in my past, and Birds has no comparable equivalent, but it’s unfair of me to judge an album based on something external to itself.

Earlier this year I actually saw Travis Scott live at Portland’s Moda Center. It was a pretty great show (even if I wasn’t able to snag floor tickets) and oddly relevant to this topic since Drake made a surprise appearance at that show. It was a wild show, but the difference between Travis’ old and new material was night and day. It’s odd because he wanted Birds to get “straight to the meat.” The album was created with stadium tours in mind. According to Scott he quickly learned what songs from Rodeo did and didn’t work live, and that influenced his creative process while making Birds. Maybe I just like the more “intimate” feeling of Rodeo as opposed to the “broad” nature of Birds in the Trap.

Never Taking a Break

Even more recently, Travis Scott did an interview with SHOWstudio. HotNewHipHop had an interesting take on the interview, positing that he would “take a break” from music after the release of his upcoming third album. Travis Scott personally replied to the speculation on Twitter claiming “Nigga I'm never taking a break.”

Reading this exchange filled me with different emotions. First, honestly, a pang of sadness. Despite the recent perceived decline in quality, I would have been extraordinarily sad to see Travis take a break from touring or new material. At the same time, the more I thought about it, maybe a break is just what he needs. I mean, he’s released an album every year since 2013 with one (technically) scheduled for 2017 as well. On top of persistent touring and features, that output has to take a toll on even the most prolific of artists.

Working so tirelessly can be draining. I’ll be a fan of Travis till the end. The man can put on a hell of a show, and he’s released two albums that are absolute classics in my eyes. A true fan is along for the ride no matter what. The albums may vary in wildly in quality, but sometimes you have to take the good with the bad. Even Weezer still has fans, and in 2016 they released their best album since Pinkerton. I’m not saying Travis is scheduled for a 20-year stretch of disappointment, but I’m just hoping he carves out a niche that inspires.

And when I say “inspires” I’m talking about both himself and fans.

I could just be “aging out” of his music, but I hope not because even through the darkness and malaise of Birds he still dropped “Pick up the Phone” and “Goosebumps” which were some of my favorite tracks of the past year and ones I still spin on a near-daily basis.

I’m a fan. I want the best for Travis. Both commercially and artistically. The hard part is maintaining both without losing yourself.

#Travis scott #hip-hop #music #young thug #ad libs #migos #culture #commercial #mixtapes #drake #more life #birds in the trap sing mcknight

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sosico · 8 years ago

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Favorite Flicks of 2016

Looking back on 2016 through the camera lens (what a year), here are 12 of my favorite photos that I shot last year - my best of each month - and the stories behind them. Enjoy...

New Year. New Gear. - January 5

The infamous "New Year, New Gear" photo that I posted on my Instagram at the top of the year in 2016 that racked up over 2,100 likes and almost 80 comments. This really started out the year right I guess... It was the day that my 2nd camera body, a Canon 6D came in the mail. (Also my first full frame DSLR.) Ricky came over to check it out and we ended up going outside in the back of my house where HE shot this photo of me dual wielding the 6D with Canon's 135mm f/2 L, along with my 70D with the little 50mm f/1.8. Shouts to Ricky on that photo cred for this. Ironically, my camera bag shed some weight for the new year as I sold my 70D last week, I'm down to just the 6D for now with plans of getting another full frame body towards the end of the year.

Aside from the rest, this is one of the most important photos that defined 2016 for me. I feel like it was a big breakout year for photography for me, and finally having the right gear at this point helped a lot with that. Set a plan, then execute.

Happiness is expensive. Anguish is free - February 21

First, big thanks to Michelle for proposing the idea to shoot at this location in the first place, and for killing this shoot as well. This was towards the beginning of really trying to push portrait work and get more comfortable working with people. Flowers and trees and shit like that don't move, so taking photos of inanimate objects and still subjects is not as challenging as working with people. On the opposite side of that, portraits can convey so much more emotion or a story, so the reward is greater.

Sao Miguel ABANDONED Hotel - March 23

On a trip to Sao Miguel, Azores we came across an abandoned hotel that overlooked the Lagoa das Sete Cidades, a twin lake situated in the crater of a dormant volcano. These "hanging" shots are so played out at this point, but this was a prime location for one so I got over it and just shot it. The vegetation on the Island is lush and rainforest like, unlike New England, but the architecture is just as different which was strangely more appealing to me. From painted cement walls to bright orange terra-cotta style roofs, and big spiral staircases, this all seemed to stick out more than the beauty in the green hills that sunk into the sea. Character says a lot about a place, and character was in great abundance here.

We Might Die For This Shit - April 11

Model is disclosed. Location is disclosed. What I can tell you is that this photo was used for the graphic in our Uncle Sam Tee that we dropped with our Summer 2016 American Greed Collection. I rotated the image counter-clockwise 90 degrees, cropped it in super tight, and cleaned it up a little bit more in photoshop. From there I added the "We want you" text under it along with the red SOSICO. box logo, and threw it on a tee. Bang.

No stock photos here my guy... Deadass B.

NYC - May 16

I couldn't pick one photo for this month, it just was not possible. We were somewhere in Queens when we took a weird side road off of the highway to turnaround. As we were stopped to configure the GPS, I looked over and saw this beat-to-shit car. Immediately I grab my camera, hopped out into traffic and snapped this photo of it. That's how some of the best photography works I think. It's sporadic, it lives in the moment, is reactionary and displays character (again).

As for the Shade45 mic, this just needed to be documented for obvious reasons. I'll just leave that there... If ya know, ya know.

Tsu Surf at The Red Door, CT - June 16

June was one of the best months of 2016 for photography for me. June was a great month in general. I shot a few different parties, concerts, my first wedding, and then we went to Agenda in Cali and shot some crazy photos there too. This was another super tough month, but this photo stands out most. Tsu Surf at the Red Door in CT - I'm not the biggest fan of this dude, he's very very dope, but just not my favorite artist. This is one of my favorite show photos that I've ever shot though. Something with the lighting, composition, and colors makes it stand out, like everything fell together perfectly for this shot. Idek to be honest.

Walkways to venice beach - July 1

There are so many crazy flicks that I caught in Cali that it's insane, but this one stands out the most. How does this beat out the shots from Griffith Observatory overlooking downtown LA at sunset, or how does it beat out the photo of Ace throwing his hands up to make the "LA" sign with palm trees in the background softly out of focus? It has a better sense of perspective, leading lines, warmer colors, it tells a story, and it makes me remember. But aside from that I feel like it can make anyone "remember" the feeling of vacationing somewhere warm and the little moments when you take a stroll around an unfamiliar area to take in the new sights.

I'll describe this setting for you: Brodie dropped us off by Venice Beach and we had to walk a little ways to get to the actual beach by cutting through shady alleyways like such. Ricky & Alex walked ahead as I stopped to snap some photos like this one, while Ace trailed behind. It was a warm, sunny, stereotypical California day. The sun was just about to peak in the sky around 11:30 AM as the afternoon just begun to roll around. The air was warm, but dry and comfortable as the scent of the red flowers climbing over the fence intoxicated the surrounding area. Palm trees reached over the walls and fences of the condos and modern homes to shade the alleyway in random spots. The simplicity and innocence of a potential forgotten moment in time creates the purity and bliss depicted in the photo. It was so thoughtless, but so memorable, and "happy".

What Is SOSICO? - August 7

SOSICO. is... Starving for the love of art. Going broke for your dreams. Doing what the fuck YOU want to do, and not what the "safe" option is in life. Not conforming to the "norms" of society. Risking everything for everything.

Nothing - September 30

Without a doubt, September was a busy month and I didn't get around to using my camera too much. I was behind the scenes with things more and I didn't generate too much content myself, but I did get a chance to snap this.

Taken in one of my favorite go-to spots, it was a rainy day and we needed to get some product shots done of the new camo crewneck sweatshirts. Matt brought his zippo, and this happened. I think I'm noticing a "Black and White" trend too, clearly I'm a sucker for classic monochromatic shit.

Mt. Monadnock - October 2

A slightly spontaneous trip to the Summit of Mt. Monadnock - Ricky, Matt, Joe & I hopped into the car on an overcast Sunday morning in October and drove up to New Hampshire. What was meant to be a full group of SOSICO. as a team building retreat turned into something less structured, but just as great. It had rained the day before and was misting on the 2-3 hour drive up to the base of the mountain. Once we got there, the park attendants advised against hiking to the summit due to weather; challenge accepted.

We set foot up the mountain at a fairly reasonable pace, passing other groups as we broke from the tree line. The sky was filled with a cold white haze of fog that obstructed any views. We continued up the rocky slopes to a continuous banter of "diarrhea of the mouth" from Joe coining sayings like, "I don't know about Lewis & Clark, but I'm no Sacagawea." Due to the lack of oxygen that comes with the elevation, being incredibly out of shape in the first place, and hearing shit like that, we were all split over holding our stomaches and gasping for air from laughing so hard. Thanks for that, Joe.

Once we finally reached the summit, we took a break, had some snacks, snapped some photos, and we were on our way back down. This is were things started to come undone. During the climb up, Joe had been leaving a trail of Goldfish partially from the tear in the bottom of his synch bag, and partially from actually dropping Goldfish in the path to leave a trail like some Hansel & Gretel shit... We couldn't find the trail, and in our eagerness to climb back down we disregarded the signs. Ricky took charge and lead us down a very steep decline to where it was impossible to embark without ropes and harnesses, causing us to turn back, but not before I could slip out on the wet terrain and slice my hand open. Great. We ended up following another trail, getting completely lost, put back an hour, and taking a "detour" (for lack of a better word). In the midst, Ricky shit somewhere on the mountain, more photos were shot, my Instagram story via SOSICO.'s account barely posted, and we were all wet, tired, and covered in dirt and mud. It was a great experience over all. Seriously.

touch the sky - November 5

I love concert venues that have good lighting. This venue had amazing lighting + a commercial grade fog machine, so they were good in my book already. We stepped out onto the stage in Maine at one of the largest shows I've shot besides Jadakiss at Lupo's in Providence, RI. Brodie Fresh was opening for Young M.A. (who never showed up because of a discrepancy with the venue not paying her) in front of a large crowd of impatient and eager millennials. The show went decent while we were there, he did his thing while backed by his cousin who DJ'd his set, Jason Mizell Jr. (son of the late Jam Master Jay of Run DMC who was killed in 2002).

At one point while shooting on the actual stage behind Brodie, I ran and jumped off of the side and went into the photo pit. In the narrow walking path between the front of the stage and the chest high fence that holds the crowd back, I pointed my camera almost straight up towards the lights and snapped this.

Love Your Roots- December 4

On the early end of December, Rhode Island was graced with a visit from our good friend Nello Luchi of Bed-Stuy Brooklyn, NY. I picked her up in Providence off of the bus and spent most of the day driving around the more scenic areas of the state to show her some of the cooler spots RI has to offer. We ended up on Jamestown and had to check out the lighthouse area at Beavertail around sunset.

People who grow up living in a big city their whole lives appreciate things like this, just as kids from the suburbs and rural areas of New England appreciate a trip to the major cities to gaze up at the sky scrapers. This is something that I've come to appreciate over the years of traveling around a little bit. It's made me realize that I could never live in a city, and that I'm always happy to come home to RI. It's made me appreciate my home state more in certain ways after you experience it from another persons perspective.

As 2016 came to an end, I was both excited and nervous for the impending new year. As much as everyone looks at it as a blank slate, or a new start - and it is - it also possesses the ability to allow for a lot of negative things as well. You cannot look past that. Shit hit the fan in 2016, but at the end of 2015 everyone was hyped off of the "new year, new me" saying - something that encourages a very optimistic view. People don't want to account for the fact that there most definitely will be negative points, but that's life, it's inevitable. I know it may seem like I'm veering off topic in saying this, because this is a "photography post", but I like to be a realist and acknowledge how things really are. Sometimes we need to take a step back, slow it down, and realize this.

Although I'm not feeling excited or nervous so much anymore, now that the new year has kicked off. I'm more content with things, and I've established a new mindset for the year which is one of the most important things anyone can do. While staying positive, but not ignoring the other, I think that my new best way to describe the feeling for 2017 is hopeful.

Peace + Happiness

- Zack

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