#i’m just being dumb and silly on the internet as per usual

[da-saturn-system]

YOU may not be a violent dog, and not know why you bite,,,but i am. pussy. i am god’s most violent dog and i’m having the greatest time biting. and for the record, i bite because it’s fun. dumbass. *bites you too*

[biglisbonnews]

Terri Joe Isn't Iconic, She's Psyiconic In 2022, TikTok found its unlikely host: a “devout Christian, Caucasian, heterosexual woman” by the name of Terri Joe. Even though Terri Joe found fame and notoriety on the platform, she was not too pleased with what she saw there. TikTok, after all, is overwhelmed by a constant flow of foolishness: Fleeting trends, trauma dumps, the whole world in synchronous and embarrassing choreo. Terri Joe was there to wake the TikTok community up from its sinful, silly slumber. Sitting coolly in front of her shabby floral wallpaper, adorned with not much more than a wig and a glare, Terri Joe goes on TikTok Live roughly between 10 PM and 2 AM CET, usually four days per week. Don’t worry if you miss it live, though. A dedicated community of stans watches every stream and posts all the best moments for posterity — highlights that largely consist of Terri Joe decrying the many “hommasexyuhs” (see: gays) who torment her. Clips from Terri Joe's Lives with Madonna, Doja Cat, Hunter Schafer and other celebrities have helped turn Terri Joe into a perennial meme and catch the eyes of everyone from Ziwe to Lizzo. But even as her brushes with the rich and famous have supercharged her ascent, it’s Terri Joe herself who’s the main attraction. Whether she’s talking to Bob The Drag Queen or a giddy normie, all who enter a Terri Joe Live receive the same treatment: a southern belle’s righteous flogging, interrupted only momentarily by the slight quiver of her lip before she finally breaks character. Keeling over to the corner of the screen, Terri Joe lets out one cathartic laugh before she returns to form. Related | Met Gal Behavior With Hal BaddieTerri Joe is no true preacher’s daughter. She spawns from the mind of Kelon, a shy, bubbly 27-year-old hailing from Houston. Kelon worked in tech before going viral on TikTok, but now he’s a full-time internet personality with more than a million followers on his main account @_psyiconic. And while Terri Joe is his most famous character, you can also find him on Live as Terri Joe's cousin Jeorgia Peach, an LA party girl perpetually blessed with a neon pink glow, or as her doppelganger Amethyst Jade, a goth girl vampire currently haunting Salem, Massachusetts.PAPER talked to Kelon about life before TikTok superstardom, the mechanics of the improv and the method behind the madness — one that appears to be refreshingly unmethodical. The “Terri-verse,” as fans have dubbed Terri Joe’s cinematic realm, is sprawling and complex, but it truly is created “on the fly.” In fact, Kelon doesn’t even think about the Lives during the day. When he goes on Live, he “blacks out” and lets the story flow. Nothing, not even the most absurd interaction, seems to faze him, let alone his interfacing with superstars.Which is probably why the whole thing proves so consistently thrilling. In an era overrun by hyper-strategic influencers and “content creators,” maybe the most genuine thing you can be is a person in a wig with a haphazard knowledge of the Gospel and an unflinching commitment to the bit.Welcome to the Terri-verse. Like our own, it’s ever-expanding.Describe the first time you went on TikTok Live. Were you in character?I have no clue. I started going Live while I was working for this little tech startup job and it was annoying as hell. So it came from me needing an outlet. It was something fun to do after I got out of work. And I'm not even that kind of person. It’s not in my personality to be happy on camera and be doing dumb stuff. Well, I guess it is now. But even right now, like [this Zoom interview] is awkward for me. Not because of you or anything. I just feel awkward because being on camera is weird. But when it's Terri, it’s different, because it's not me. So I really don't remember how I started going on Live. I just decided to do it and then it all snowballed from there. So did the Lives start with Terri? Did you already have the character developed? It wasn't really Terri per se. It was just me in a wig and clothes that I perceived as more feminine. And it was just me talking to people. I was talking in a normal voice and everything. But I never gave the person I was portraying a name until a little bit later. Did you know starting out that this character you were portraying would be a conservative Christian and homophobic?[Laughs] It actually didn’t start off with Terri, but with Jeorgia Peach. It started with that background and with me talking to random people and saying the most random things. And then one day I decided it would be funny to just throw on a grandma costume that I had and a raggedy wig and just go on Live. I think I was loosely basing it off of a character from my favorite TV show True Blood. So I was like, “Yeah, I'm a Christian.” And I think I just was randomly blurting out stuff like I usually do. And it just stuck.Did you ever know anyone in your real life who had those beliefs? No, literally no one in my life is like that. My parents and family members are religious and believe in God, but none of them are devout Christians. They don't go to church every day. I've never met a person like that actually, so I don’t even know where that came from. ​When you started going on Live, did you immediately know that this was something special and would take over your life? I don't even think I’ve even processed that to this day. I didn't expect anything. I never expect anything in life. But I didn’t think this would go as far as it did. I was just turning on the camera and being dumb and people loved it. And then they wanted more. And then they started supporting me financially to be able to do this full-time. That I would say is the biggest impact that this has had on my life. I don’t have to work a “real job,” which I hated. I hated working. So that was the most impactful thing that came from this. When you realized that this could be your professional work, did that change how you acted on live or thought about it? Did it make you more strategic?No. [Laughs] When I do interviews, I feel like people expect me to be more calculated with what I'm doing, but it's not like that. Everything happens on the fly. Everything is spontaneous. Nothing I ever did was thought out at all. It just happens. I think of it as like improv. And I think that's why people enjoy it. They like the unexpected.Terri Joe and all your characters have had some pretty dramatic storylines develop. Are those also spontaneous?Yeah, nothing is planned. I don’t even think about it at all during the day, because I usually go Live late at night. Even the kidnapping things or the stuff about Terri’s dad dying. Everything happens either on the spot or right before. Right before the Live I’m like, “What can I say when I start this live?"What about with some of the people who you go on live with often and have storylines with, like Tyler who Terri “dated” for some time, or Patty Puffs? Do you ever reach out to them offline?I do talk with the people I go on Live regularly with. They’re my friends. We have each other's numbers. We talk through DMs on Instagram, but we never talk about the Lives and say what we're gonna do. It just happens on the spot.Did you spend a lot of time online? Online wasn't even a thing when I was a kid. I spent most of my time watching TV like Disney Channel. I’m 27 years old, so I didn't get my first phone ‘til I was in the 12th grade. I was not really ever on the internet like that. I was really just sitting in front of the TV and watching Disney Channel most of the time, mostly That's So Raven, which I attribute to the things that I'm doing — like character work. [Raven Symoné] would do that all the time: play random characters and do the most random things.What was your life like before going viral?It was almost the same, to be honest. I don't really do extravagant things. Just like hanging with friends on days that I wasn't working. Getting drunk. Basically just doing the normal things that people do.The only difference is that I was actually working a normal job, which was excruciatingly painful for me. I mean it was fine, because the job was not even that hard. It was just driving around in a car, but it got very boring and tedious because you could only drive like 15 miles per hour. You couldn't look in any direction but forward. I was still going Live while having a job, but I noticed that I started getting [TikTok] “gifts” from people and the gifts could be transferred to cash. The money was like the same amount or more than I was making at my eight-hour job. So I was like, Why would I be working? I just quit the same day, no two-weeks notice. I was just like, “Okay, bye.” I took that leap of faith. And the gift money is very fickle. But I just trusted that it would work out. And it did. Were your friends and family surprised by this life pivot? I wouldn’t say they were surprised, because they've always been urging me and encouraging me to do social media things. I would always be like, “That would be so easy for me to do because I’m so likable and people love me.” [Laughs] I’m just kidding. I just felt like it would be like a fun thing to do. I would always be telling everybody growing up that I was gonna be famous one day. And then it happened. And I've said it so much that they were not shocked at all. They were more like, “Okay, you said you're gonna do it and you did it. And that's that.” They ask about it sometimes, but it's just like another job to them honestly. So you weren't an influencer before? Not really. No. I don't remember the last time I posted on Instagram. Like it was in 2016. And I rarely used any other apps. I watched people, but I never really posted, which is why I'm saying this, now, is so out of the ordinary for me. It’s interesting that you always knew you could be big on social media, even though you weren't really on social media yourself.It was more so famous. I wasn't saying I was gonna be a social media influencer at all. It was just that I was gonna be someone.Did you have a vision of who that person would be?No, actually. I just knew it would happen. Once, when I was in middle school, I had a substitute teacher. She was doing roll call and she stopped at my name. She paused and looked at me and she was like, “You're gonna be famous one day.” And I was like, “Okay?” Sometimes I think about that and I’m like, Was she psychic or something?I've always felt like that. I think most kids think, I want to be like an actor. I want to be on the Disney Channel. I want to be like all these other celebrities. I just had that in the back of my head. And I kind of manifested it.TikTok is where your work happens. But the clips are all over Twitter and the internet. Do you remember when you started realizing that your characters were having a life outside of TikTok? Yeah, I started getting texts from my cousins and other friends who were like, “Is this you?” They were sending me videos of me on Twitter. And I was like, “Wait, what?” I literally didn't even have a Twitter. I have Twitter now, but I don't ever use it because I really don't know how to use it.People would send me videos that were posted or reposted on there. And then people in the comments were like, “Who is this? Where can I find this person? This person is so funny.” And then I saw my Reddit, and all kinds of crazy things. I still don’t understand it, to be honest.Have you spent any time on your Reddit board?No, I'm scared. I don't even know what Reddit is. I didn't even have an account. One of my friends tells me what he sees on it. But I never looked at it for myself. I just made a Discord because my fans made a Discord [server] for me. And I was not in it for the longest time, but then I went in there and was just seeing what they were talking about, which actually is kind of a secret because I don't want them to know that I'm in it, but I am. You periodically get banned from TikTok. Do you understand why?I know exactly why. [Laughs] I mean, it makes sense. I'm never upset about it. I say the most outlandish things. I say very crude things and very sexual things all the time. So it makes a lot of sense that they ban me every time I go live. It comes with the territory. That's why I have like eight accounts. When I get banned, I just hop to the other accounts.You're such a staple of TikTok, though. You would think that TikTok would want to keep you happy. Has anyone from TikTok reached out? Yeah, I have a TikTok Live manager or point person. She works [at TikTok] and she talks to me about the Lives sometimes. But we never talked about me being exempt from being banned because it wouldn’t be fair. I do violate the community guidelines, and if they do it for me, they have to do it for other people, too. So I don't really mind.Your interviews with celebrities helped to bring your work to the wider world. What was the first one? And how did you start going on Live with more celebrities? I think Doja Cat was the first celebrity I went Live with. I was just on Live one night and that’s when I was literally having like 2,000 people on my Live. People were commenting, “Doja Cat is here!” And I was like, “Yeah, sure. And I'm Beyoncé.”I thought they were lying, but then I saw her commenting, and I was like, “Wait, what?” So then I just added her to the Live and when I added her, her following came to the Live and they were watching us interact with each other. And then she joined again a few more times. That's where it snowballed, because her following came to me and they enjoyed our interactions together. And then they posted it everywhere, and then others slowly saw it and were like, This person is funny. I want to go Live with him as well. Or that’s what I assume, because I don't really have any contact with any of them beforehand. They just show up and I add them.Were you nervous when you first got on camera with Doja Cat?Yeah, the first time I was, because I was like, Wait, this is literally Doja Cat and she's here. But I wanted her to have the experience that she was looking for, which was just going back and forth, the banter. I didn’t want to be like, “‘Oh my God Doja Cat!” the whole entire time and be annoying. And I honestly don't even see celebrities like that. I'm not a fanboy type of person. They're just people. I may like their music. I may like their work, but I'm not going to attack them. And I think they enjoy that aspect as well.Was there a celebrity who you had an especially good time with and you felt like really got it?Doja Cat. She just likes to talk. She says crazy things, too. The back-and-forth just works. I don't ever feel like there's a moment where I'm trying to force the conversation with her and force it to work, you know? It doesn't feel like work. It just flows. I was so gagged when Madonna did poppers on camera with you.Yeah. I thought that was so funny because I was like, “Wait, what?” I saw her while she was doing it and I was like, “Wait, are you literally doing poppers on Live like, what is this?” And the fact that she didn't get banned for that was hilarious. Yeah, that was amazing.One of my favorite things about the Terri character especially is it seems like she knows every lyric of every song ever. Is music really important to you?I wouldn't say that it's that important, but I do like music. If you notice, there's a running theme with what I say. I do enjoy things, but I don't really delve that far into it. I do enjoy music, but I think what people are intrigued by is the music that I'm singing. I'm interested in all kinds of music, almost every genre. So I feel like that's where people are like, “Wait, how do you know these random songs? It doesn't make sense.” But I've always been like that. I've always listened to the weirdest music. Or not weird, but eclectic.​You’re always singing Lana. It’s my favorite part of your Lives because it’s such a dramatic and funny juxtaposition with Terri, who’s usually more uptight. Are you not a real-life Lana stan then? Oh, yeah, for sure. With Lana, I know every single one of her songs and I know them all by heart. I was just playing a game with my friend where I guess the song they're playing when they’re shuffling through all of her discography. It was like two seconds of them playing a Lana song and I could guess which song it was. Yeah, I’m a really big fan of hers. But I'm not like a “stan” person. I don't even know when her new album will come out. But I know that she is coming out with another album, and I will be listening to it. But I'm not looking for it and searching for it.Do you dream of interviewing her? No. [Laughs] I want to, sure, but I'm not like, “I need that to happen.” Actually one of my followers is friends with her and she showed [Lana] my videos. And she was filming her. I don't remember what she said. I don't think she said anything. She was just laughing. But yeah, I would love to go Live with her one day if that was possible. But if it doesn't, that's fine as well. So you don't have a dream interview? You don't think about that? No.Most people you go Live with are just random people, and most of the interactions are pretty surreal. I was on one a few weeks ago where some guy kept asking to marry Jeorgia. Lately, I don't even remember. I just black out whenever I go Live. So people will tell me, “Oh, this one was so funny.” And I'm like, “That happened?” So nothing pops up in your mind from one of your Lives that is particularly crazy or memorable? Well, I do have one I just thought of right now, but it's not safe for work at all. But there was one time I went Live with this guy and he was wearing gym shorts and nothing under. And he was jumping around. I'm sure you can deduce what was happening while that was happening.Yeah, people can get pretty wild on your Lives. I guess they have an expectation of what the experience is going to be like, and they come in with a certain energy? Yeah, I think it's just that most of the people have never seen me before, but when I click to add their Lives, they can see how many people are in my Live. I think that's where that energy comes from. They’re like, “I have to be crazy. I have to get these people to like me. I have to have this be a funny or shocking thing.” I think that's where it comes from.Do you have an internal sense of how to keep things entertaining? Is there a signal that’s like, “Okay, it's time to move on or this isn't working?”It's only when I get bored. When I get bored from talking to a person, I'm just like, “Okay, bye,” and just go on to the next one. You can see it in the comments as well. People are like, “Next!” So I’ll be like, “Let's do a battle.” I'm like, “Want to do a battle?” and I just end the Live, because they think I'm going to press the button to do a battle, but I'm actually ending it with that. I feel like that's the least awkward way to end the Live. So now that's been a signal from the comments to me. They're like, “Battle! Battle!” But I don’t really listen to them most of the time. If I still want to talk to the person, I'm going to. But yeah, usually it’s when I get bored or when I see the comments and people are like, “Okay, we’re done. Let’s go to the next person.” Which actually pisses me off.Talk more about how you react to your viewers' comments during your Lives. It sounds like you follow their directives, but you also feel complicated about it?Sometimes it upsets me, because I’m just like, “Shut up and enjoy the show!” But most times when they’re like “This person is boring,” I’m like, “Yeah.” Usually, when they’re feeling it, I’m feeling it, too.Is there a certain trait in people you look for when you go on Live and know, “Okay this is going to be good?”It’s usually — and this is horrible to say — like older people. Like people in their 30s and above. They just really don’t understand what’s happening. They’re a little confused and I just play off them being confused and say the most outlandish things to them and try to get their reaction. The people I enjoy going on Live with the most are the people who have no clue what’s going on. They’re just going with it as if I’m a real Christian person who’s saying these things to them. I like their reaction to that.Okay, so you’ve built this whole Terri Joe Cinematic Universe — I don’t even think I built that. The people built that. I just gave them the material and they did the Terri-verse thing. I went along with it. I give them credit for that.But do you have active plans about where it’s going to go? Is your work going to expand off of TikTok? Are there any plans you can share? I would like to see it stay on TikTok but also expand, because something that is stagnant for a long time gets boring. I would like to see it travel further than that. I know some people have concerns about that. Like if you go to a network or a different platform, they’re going to try to dull everything down and ruin everything. But I personally wouldn’t work with anybody where I couldn’t have almost full creative control. That would be dumb. I’m already doing what I’m doing now, so I wouldn’t relinquish the reigns of what I’m doing to someone just for them to fuck it up. I would like to see it go somewhere else and I’ve been talking to some people about that, but there’s nothing definite. Is there a dream form for the characters? A TV show? Movie? Podcast? No. I feel like all of it! Why not all of it? I feel like I could transfer it to a lot of things, it’s just how. We haven’t figured that out yet.I want to put in my two cents for a club night somewhere hosted by Jeorgia. I mean, it would be fun. I’m just terrified to be Jeorgia anywhere because she’s like, “I have a BBL,” and I show up and I’m like [hunches his shoulders] built like Zoidberg. [Laughs] I guess that would be funny as well: for her to have all this surgery and then I show up looking crazy. I think that would be funny, but I don’t think people enjoy her as much as Terri. I know there are people who do, because people are always like, “Are you going to do Jeorgia tonight?” But I feel like there are more people who like Terri than the other characters. But I would do that because that does sound fun.Stand-up?I don’t think I could ever do stand-up. I think I would cry actually, because you have to set up jokes and nothing I ever do is set up. I don’t think I could even do that. Everything I do is on the fly. I never tried though, either. I think I have stage fright. I haven’t been on a stage in forever, but I’m pretty sure I have stage fright.​Are people recognizing you now on the street? Does that also make you nervous? It makes me a little nervous, especially if I feel like I don’t look how I should look in the moment. If somebody asks for a picture, I’m like, “Yeah, sure,” but in my head, I’m like, No! But people do recognize me and I always say, “Yes,” and I always try to give them the best experience or the experience they want from me. I think there are some people who are a little scared to come up and talk to me. They think I am how I am on the internet and will be rude to them, but I’m literally the complete opposite. I’m a very sweet and nice person if you meet me in person.Going off of that: Are there any big misconceptions you’d like to clear up about how you are as a person outside of these characters? That would be the main one. I think people know that now, but the biggest one is that they think I’m a horrible person or a rude person or a mean person or that I’d judge them if they came up to me, but I’m literally not like that at all.Terri Joe doesn’t exist in your mind?No. Not at all. I was literally like — wait I can’t say that. Wait I can! [Laughs] This interview is literally for PAPER and I was like, “I can’t talk about PAPER!” But [the PAPER team] was asking me to do these little videos here and there of me being Terri or saying something Terri would say, and I was like, “I don’t even know.” It’s just whenever this camera or this little setup is on and I have that wig on and I see myself in the camera, she takes over and I’m not even there anymore. I don’t even know what I talk about, to be honest. I think that’s the biggest misconception. The characters are not me and I am not them. They may be a piece of me, but I’m my own person.I feel like what you’ve done is really inspiring. You’ve made this whole thing happen and had so much fun doing it. Do you have any words for someone who wants to put themselves out there and perform and make art or comedy, but may be nervous to do so? I would say, “Just do it!” Me being Nike. [Laughs] Because most people want to do things. I’ve been saying I want to do stuff on social media for years, and the day I started doing it was the day it took off. People get in their heads about how it’s going to be perceived, but you need to not worry about that and just have fun with it. And the people who like it will come and the people who don’t like it can die. I’m just kidding! But just start and when you start, keep doing what you want to do. Don’t try to change what you’re doing to appease other people, because that will take the fun out of it away from you.Photography: Oscar OukStyling: Abby BencieHair: John NovotnyMakeup: Christyna KaySet design: Seamus SlatteryPhoto assistance: Alex KalbStylist assistance: Kelsey LoganProduction assistance: Em Marie Canon, Noelle Heriveaux, Gabrielle NarcisseEditor-in-chef: Justin MoranEditorial producer: Alyson Cox https://www.papermag.com/terri-joe-2659305290.html

[she-adores-you-only-you]

Listen to the sounds of my lame Heart!

It's hard explaining with words

I usually use a song for such a thing! As you know by now. I always always have a song ready for these events. Because music is my everything in the same way you are to me. 

So a playlist for my feelings to you! Properly

https://youtu.be/2qc1JWNN7v8- All night! 

All night is pretty self explanatory in my opinion >_> but please dont misinterpreted the only one in the world like this is more of a song in regards to our time during your shift. Really I should put it in chronological order...yeah I'll do that.) I won't lie I feel embarrassed doing this and making the post but I wanna push myself. I want to myself to be great for you. I want to be good for you. I want to be make you proud endlessly. 

Songs of my heart .🖤

You don’t have to click the link unless you want to have the ability to go one by one.

https://youtu.be/hVa16y2Uoxg 

(yes yes Friend like me~ Because wahaha there is only one great okamiko! Friend or Foe I'm unforgettable! And I wanted to be such a cool friend to you.) This isn’t included in the play but pft my cockiness from you being so much older and wanting to be my friend was unbelievable. I felt so cool that you wanted to continue to talk with me. I was like wahaha I must be cool after all to pull old men into my hands again after all this time. 

https://youtu.be/D6TcKLwcQvM - Plastic Love

We both maybe saw it coming but this is a timeline of my heart. 🤔 anyway. TO EXPLAIN. I was super duper prepare to live like this for a few years. Maybe forever? I was a lonely weeb what can I say? :c no but honestly I used to think love and affection were something that would and could only hurt me so I was like heck yeah material things as you know! Material things were often a cover and thus the only love I believe in was the one for clothes and shoes. Clothes and shoes can never leave you, they can never disappoint you too much as you can fix it if you really need to. Who needs love where you can get hurt So I really related to this song hard hard but then something changed....so Then!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, lets be petty and do stuff to plastic love one day just because for some reason when I listen to it, I imagine lots of stuff occurring lately 

https://youtu.be/Dd_gDFsZd-4 - Rum pum pum! 

Yeah this oof..... Very relatable to me.....

you still make my head hurt very very much btw. 🤨 Maybe I need to see what exactly you're up to as I still feel little teeth aches, you really are growing into your spot aren’t you. Please continue to grow well in my heart and Ill do my best to always always always care for you, I will do my best I promise. I’ll bear any kind of pain for you as you really make my heart something else. Because of you I couldn’t sleep as you filled my head entirely too much with your sweet words one second then your completely perverted statements that really exhaust me yknow. +_+

https://youtu.be/AG780VHd_Ww - Electric Shock

So this song ties for 2nd as oof you provoked me tsk tsk. You're waaaay too electrifying for your own good. Once again self explanatory but this was the point where I think I was still in much denial about all my feelings towards you, it was such a shock to come to terms with my feelings for you. HoNeStY let’s be honest, we both know if I could, I would deny that you made me feel so weak and gushy, but I actually love how warm you make me Kuya. 

https://youtu.be/EyROOT3Pk2g - OHO Catching Villians 

I feel as if I don’t have to write anything here, but at this point of time, this is definitely where it all began to line up and I could feel it in my bones. I wasn’t very happy  with the fact that I definitely at this point caught feelings for you. This makes me cringe as I have to really sit and reflect on my emotional states with you and it isn’t the most fun thing to do especially when I remember how confused I was over it all, plus there was the fear of falling in the first place. But ehhhh sometimes you gotta a just let yourself be okay with making mistakes or you miss on things right? Thats what happen to em in the end I would say. 

https://youtu.be/cfTQ9hFZlPQ - cheesy song....>_< embarrassed. 

Yeah yeah this song, this silly song. Gah So yeah okay moving on this song makes me super duper shy but I really love it and it’s message because yeah I’m pretty sure I’m young and dumb, and I do stupid things when it comes to love, so this song was the song that make say why not. Lets go for it and try it out what’s the worst that can happen, especially as everything seemed so nice. So nice and perfect at times. Everything fell into placee so naturally and automatically, that I am still very surprised. 

https://youtu.be/RVUv6Hw3WsE -Automatic 

Honeeymoon phase, seriously oof. When I look back to this era, I just go haha yikesssss, you have feelings, ewww. But yes the song really works for this time frame beautifully. Personally, I think the honeymoon phase was especially cute, and when I think of it, I really the warmth of it all, but eww for all the goodness that was all gooey. Even when we started doing stuff it felt okay, I wasn’t as afraid of these things anymore and I truly think that cause of you. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzkDSNN1Gr4 - Miracle love Translation

too shy to go into detail this information will be unlocked after maybe December I dunno >_< but I think its reflects how I really maybe feel about our relationship I dunno

https://youtu.be/QeUFmGLhI_s - MINE

THESE

https://youtu.be/nihtBqJ2lNU - Dark Red

ARE SELF

https://youtu.be/e2Qu7P6Ecfo - Galaxy

I debated on this song, but I think it works to reflect my spatial issues I have with our relationship but this is also definitely the song I go to for when I want to explain my desire for reassurance even if the method is a bit weird. I think it stems from my desire to be in small spaces but instead its a desire to have my focus on solely one person who I trust and I know is going to make me feel safe and sound. 

https://youtu.be/ETZoSP-9do8 - Internet Luv

EXPLAINTORY AKA I ALREADY TRY TO EXPLAIN TO YOU HOW THESE SONGS MAKE ME FEEL. SO >__<

https://youtu.be/7Is5BKvaLL4

 - Let’s Make History. Self explanatory per usual, but I think I want the words to truly come through. I want to make history with you, I’m not sure how I iwll do that just yet but i’M GOING TO DO IT ONE WAY OR ANOTHERS, BUT >_< MU CAPS ARE STUCK...

anyway yes lets make history and do something amazing together. I think I’m scared but happily excited where we’ll end up as everything with you is a safe mystery, I still feel unsure about higher risk but for you I am willing to work towards it, especially as I adore you very much. 

[adriennescomingbacktolife]

(II)

Gasping for air, Adrienne stared up at the lights. Her jaw was sore. She had a splitting headache. She’d been elbowed, kicked, and dropped on her face. Her shoulders were pinned to the mat for that all important three seconds. However, Adrienne couldn’t help smiling as the official, she hadn’t caught his name, checked in on her. Supermassive Black Hole echoed throughout the empty arena as Starburst celebrated in her peripheral vision.

Adrienne Levi had lost. But she certainly didn’t feel like a loser that night. And she wanted to tell Danny all about it. But he was so busy, and she didn’t want to be a bother. And besides, Magnificent Danny Levi didn’t believe in moral victories. So that evening as the show continued in the background, she opted not to. When he found out, Danny would surely bring it up and she’d cross that road then.  

Her mother was another person that didn’t get it. Angie Straussler found the sport of professional wrestling to be barbaric. It was hard to argue with her when her first exposure to the industry was seeing her son-in-law take her daughter’s purse, covertly stuffed with a brick, and smash it into another man’s skull. And so, when she had picked up Adrienne from the St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport, she was less than enthusiastic after she found out why.

“And this isn’t a one-time thing? You’re going back? Ade, are you serious?”

Adrienne was.

She stared at her own reflection in the side mirror of her mother’s stuffy 1999 Oldsmobile Cutlass. There was a bruise coloring her right cheek, but she didn’t mind. Unlike previous ones, she’d wear this one proudly.

“Yes, mom…”

Adrienne’s mother had given birth to her daughter when she was real young. It was a sin to be so prideful but Straussler always enjoyed the compliment that Adrienne and her looked like sisters, sincere or not. Expectantly, that caused Angie to try to rectify her own shortcomings through her daughter’s life. And expectantly, Adrienne rebelled. In Angie’s opinion, Daniel Levi is and will always be the most perplexing decision that her usually smart daughter ever made.

“What about Kaplan? You’ve been there for a long time. Three months ago, you said you were going to be promoted to lead.”

Adrienne slumped in her seat.

“Katy got it.”

“Katy?” Angie scoffed, “Of course. I’m not one to spread gossip but she seems the type.”

Stopped at a red light, Adrienne watched as her mom checked her lipstick in the rearview mirror. She spoke next in a very hushed tone.

“Heard she went to Tampa for an abortion.”

“Mom.”

“I’m just saying.”

“Anyway, I quit.”

Angie did one of those exaggerated double takes with her mouth ajar. She was animated enough for the both of them. Her outcry was incredulous.

“Why!?”

“Wouldn’t let me take time off.”

“Who would? What you’re doing is silly.”

Adrienne shook her head slightly.

“I know you don’t like it but it's different. It's me now. Just me. I can’t explain the rush I felt.”

“No, and I don’t care to hear.”

“That’s fine but this company is going to pay me a thousand dollars per appearance. They pay for my airfare…”

“I saw it on the Youtube. You looked like you had two left feet. Not only that, these sorts of outfits always break promises. The one here would forget to pay you.”

No, they did, Adrienne answered internally. But Danny controlled the finances. He’s real smart like that.

“Like I said, it's different. I had my first ever match and now I have a spot on the next supershow. That’s more money. I think … I could be good at this.”

“There you go, sounding like Danny again, when are you going to—”

“I don’t want to talk about Danny.”

Quickly, she used her sleeve to wipe away at her eyes.

 “Because … because it's not about him. I’m not there because of him. I’m there because … it’s something I’ve always had to watch and now I’m doing it. And up in Baltimore…”

From bell to bell, she felt human again.

“…it felt right. I don’t know what is going to come of it. There are some super serious people there. Lived lives I could never fathom. And I’m a nobody from here … but Carnage Wrestling put me against three people who have done something in this business and that must mean something.”

“It means you’ve drawn the short straw, Ade.”

Adrienne considered that. No one expected her to overcome Regina Dal Gato. She was faster, more experienced, and just wanted it more. But something unexpected happened. Adrienne walked backstage, head upright, and there was this feeling. Danny always said that being one of the boys was like a brotherhood. Adrienne couldn’t relate for the longest time. She always felt that she was on the outside looking in and maybe Danny wasn’t as influential as he claimed to be. But, possibly she could join up in due time.

“Probably, mom. But this is unchartered territory for the Levis. I intend to see this through.”

After that, Adrienne just tuned out the noise. Her mother always had an opinion and that opinion was always right. She loved her. She was a good mom but in this one instance, Angie didn’t understand the motives of her only child. Adrienne was that bird that just realized that the cage door was ajar. Flittering over to the edge, her head poked through. Outside, though, the world is so vast and dangerous that why would she leave? It was safe after all.

Borrowing from her limited knowledge of sports sayings, well, safe is death. 

In the safety of her apartment, she mused over her next encounter. Three daunting, larger than life individuals she couldn’t even begin to surmise. But she had to try. At least make the effort. Danny never prepared. He’d take one look at whoever it was and he’d dress them down in vicious fashion. 

Sitting on the couch, she concluded that wasn’t her style. 

Adrienne had watched her previous effort a few times back. Her match, too. In both appearances, she seemed lost at the key moments. How does one defy who they are? Her goal wasn’t to go out there and lose. That’d be pointless. She felt accomplished but eventually, Danny’s sentiment that moral victories are worthless would hit home.

After consuming what info she could about Matt Knox, Jonathan Willis, and this enigma of a woman with half a dozen names to call her - well, One of These Things is Not Like the Other.

Well, that’s okay. She didn’t want to be like them. 

But just who was Adrienne Levi? 

On some internet forum, there was a thread discussing the biggest losers on the independent scene, Danny Levi was joked about heavily. However, it was agreed that Adrienne was a mildly attractive piece of ass and looked dumb as hell so that’s a plus. Comments like this were often accompanied by ringside pictures that should have hit the cutting room floor. One where she was bent over over the middle ring rope. She had a blue minidress that she’d wear only for Danny during his matches and the photographer thought it opportune to shoot up that dress. The image was captioned: Imagine the Smell. 

In Adrienne's most recent review at Kaplan, it stated that she exhibited poor customer service skills and required coaching. Whatever the hell that meant because she still received a whole quarter raise.

On the broadcast, Johnny Vegas had quipped that Adrienne was Carnage Wrestling’s newest loser. Well, Johnny Vegas looked like a hairy orange scrotum. She stifled a giggle. That's too much. But whatever, that’s what happens when she drinks one ...one or two wine coolers. 

She didn’t want to be a piece of ass, or a forgettable employee, or a loser.

Not being a loser wasn’t always about just winning. Broken clock’s right twice a day. She suspected that Regina would learn that the hard way. No, Adrienne had to make a shift. She had to be more than what was expected of her. 

So she opted out of a third strawberry wine cooler. Hastily, she cleared out Danny’s corner. Adrienne would have to set it back to normal before he came back but this … this was about her. So she chose to display who she wanted to be now. 

She printed out a picture of Carnage Wrestling’s logo. She grabbed a 8x10 that she took with the intention to autograph to paying fans. Unfortunately, there was a lack of those these days. It was the sort of ridiculous pose where she had fists raised up like she was ready to fight. Her ring gear was a pair of simple black tights, white boots, and a t-shirt, ironically the Doritos one. She also printed out a color photo of her dive from the top rope. It happened to be the only action shot that was taken that featured Adrienne on the offensive. 

She found her newly acquired Carnage Wrestling shirt she may have pilfered from an open box backstage. She put on her cleanest pair of jeans and sneakers. Her eyes popped a little with a modest amount of blue eyeliner. 

Moments later, she dusted off a selfie stick that had been collecting dust in the kitchen junk drawer.  Resulting in a totally more professional presentation.

“Take two.”

Carefully, she framed herself into the picture. This time, she did her best to look directly at her future audience. 

“Hello everyone, Adrienne here. I guess I want to start out by making a distinction. I’ve got one match under my belt and I didn’t get the winner’s purse. But I know this business. A lot more than some would give credit. And I know that my upcoming match at Underground is an absolute honor. Two former world champions. An internationally known multi-talented superstar. And then there’s me.” 

Adrienne paused, she knew that she had to make the following statement emphatically.

“I’m not…”

She cleared her throat.

“I’m not just a piece of arm candy, Johnny Vegas. And I’m not just singling out that guy because I know what it looks like on the surface. I’m not here to redeem myself like Mr. Knox. He’s one of those former world champions and I bet he beats himself up because lots of folks only talk about the bad. But he did it and that’s what matters. And I may not be relentless like Mr. Willis. My trials and tribulations aren’t worth mentioning. I smoked a little weed during community college before I dropped out. I was a terrible student, too. My life wouldn’t fill out a pamphlet. I am … unremarkable. And so I could never be as outrageous and spectacular as Melificent Lasciel. I don’t have a lick of musical talent and I’m not very photogenic as you can see.” 

She gave a little wry smile.

“But what I am is a professional wrestler. I know, duh, so are all of you. All of you have such lofty goals and aspirations. Jonathan has his eyes set on championship gold. I have a feeling that he may be there sooner than later. Matt looks to settle the score with that grumpy old guy. Mel? I don’t know what she wants but I bet it's something glamorous. There’s this mentality in this business that if you don’t want to be on top, then you don’t belong here. Despite all of that, only a few ever actually reach that pinnacle.”

Confidence floundering, she fought with making such a declaration.

“Maybe…”

Another pause.

“Maybe one day that could be me. Delusions of grandeur, I know. But one loss, or two losses, or losing every single time I step into that ring won’t detract me. And I’m sure you’ve all heard those words before. Recently, too.”

But this was the stark truth. 

“Maybe reality will stop me cold in my tracks. However, this match won’t be my Last Ride, my Downfall, or my End of Days. There will be no Redemption off of my name. You’re all going to have to earn that some other time because win or lose, Underground is going to be the night where I show you just who I am.”

In a bit of post cut editing, the piece ended on that shot of Adrienne Levi jumping off the top turnbuckle. Her expression was different than any she had ever displayed. On the surface, it was just gritted teeth and eyes afire with concentration. But it was also pure determination, intensity, and a sense of belonging all rolled into a tidy package. 

Was that lightning in a bottle, or could that become Adrienne Levi after all?

[hannahswanviscom]

A facebook account of infertility

https://www.herfamily.ie/pregnancy/couples-heartbreaking-infertility-story-made-us-cry-243738

“Do you have a minute? I’ve got kind of a long story.

Leah and I have been trying to get pregnant for over 3 years. I’m not sure when, exactly, we stopped the birth control. Like all our plans, we didn’t start with a plan, but instead decided that if we got pregnant, that would be great.

And then we didn’t get pregnant.

I mean, look, when you’re in your twenties, it feels like you can’t look at someone else without getting pregnant. We’ve all heard about someone who got pregnant through 2 condoms, spermicidal lubricant, and an IUD. Right? But we didn’t get pregnant. No big deal.

We’re in our 30s. Things are probably a little bit dusty, and a little bit rusty. So, three years ago, we started using apps and calendars to track this and that. Ovulation test sticks. Old wives’ tales of positions and timing. We got some late periods. And some periods that never came!

But we didn’t get pregnant.”

So, off to the doctor we went. His and hers appointments for collections of blood and semen and measuring parts and such. Medical science being what it is, we got the answer to all our problems: ‘You’re fine, and there shouldn’t be a problem.’

Do doctors ever tell anybody, ‘This is what is wrong, and this is how to fix it,’ and then give them pills, and they’re fine? This is not my experience.

We didn’t get pregnant.

So then came the hormones for Leah. Along with those hormones came the realization that little-to-none of this would be covered by insurance, and that the coverage rate would go down as we went deeper into the process. See, insurance companies look at getting pregnant a lot like getting sick. Why, they can’t imagine, would you try to get sick? Well, f**k you, insurance companies. That’s why.

But we didn’t get pregnant.

So maybe we’re bad at timing, or something, or god knows. Usually that’s fine, but we are in our late 30s, and clocks are ticking. The doctor told us that certain hormone levels were low, lower than they should have been, and that meant our egg supply was dwindling.”

Let me tell you something. There is nothing you can tell a woman that will make her feel more young, beautiful and vibrant than, ‘You have a dwindling egg supply, and it is time to pick up the pace.’  You should try it. Maybe at a bar.

And that was when we began IUI, intrauterine insemination. IUI is – colloquially – the turkey baster method. When they told us about it, I tried to really hear what the doctor was saying, but all I could hear echoing around the room, off of the oyster-y pearlescent floors and the alien-vagina wallpaper, was ‘dwindling.’

For Leah, we eventually figured out, this meant a regimen of hormone boosters to facilitate egg production. Are you aware of what happens to people when their hormones go out of the norm? They are not happy. Unless they are happy, in which case, they are very happy. There is no mild. There is no average day. Her job was to feel like her brain and soul were on fire.

My job was to try and not say anything dumb, because she also needed to be calm. I tried to avoid triggering phrases like ‘Hey,’ or ‘Good morning,’ or ‘I love you,’ but I kept f**king up, and opening my mouth, or allowing Leah to see TV programs, or commercials, to read books, and interact with the world in any way.”

“The best was when someone would ask her when we were going to have kids. That was just the best.

Then, after one or two ultrasounds to make sure eggs were there, and in their right places on their little follicles, I would give my needle-phobic wife a shot in her thigh to set ovulation in process. She says she’s not so much afraid of needles as she is afraid of being stuck by me with a needle, but same difference, right?

Over time, I developed a method where she would look away, close her eyes and cry, while crushing all the bones in my left hand, and I would count to three, and inject her with my right. I wouldn’t inject her on three. I tried to pick a random time. She usually didn’t even feel it.

After all that romance, you would think that abstaining from sex for a few days would be hard, but you would be wrong. You might also think we should be having massive amounts of sex, but it turns out that you have to let your seminal stash build up for a few days before collection.”

“Over the last couple years, I became pretty professional about my sperm deposits. My first one was a few paragraphs up, for testing. Man, is it ever weird. You can do it at home if you want, but then you are under a clock to get your sample to the lab on time. I don’t need that kind of stress.

I don’t talk about it much, but I like to think I’m pretty good at taking care of business in the art of sperm production, but I had never entered a room designed specifically for masturbation, while people waited outside, hoping my masturbation went okay. Perhaps that is what Eddie Murphy’s life was like in Coming to America, but I was less familiar with it.

The room was like a combination of a hotel room and an office. It had a big picture of The Ohio State University football stadium, filled with fans, on the wall over a small vinyl sofa. There was a neatly folded sheet, fresh and crisp, hanging on the far armrest. A clock radio on the side table, tuned to local political talk radio, sputtering away beneath a low-lit lamp, was paired with a little wooden cube that had one tiny drawer, specifically made for storing your collection cup.

Under the table were four or five magazines that I didn’t really want to touch. Usually two Playboys, a Penthouse, and a Swimsuit Issue. Across from the couch was a TV/DVD combo with a DVD preloaded. I didn’t want to touch the remote either, really. It sat on a wicker chest.

Wicker struck me as the worst possible material for a room designed for male masturbation. Everybody’s aiming for the cup, I know, but I also know there have been enough accidents in that office that it required a laminated sign about what to do in case of an accident.”

“The first step, in case of an accident, is to not try to hide it by scraping your mess into the cup. Big no-no. This makes your sample corrupt, which may mean that your partner could end up being impregnated by carpet fibers if I understand correctly, but it is also unsanitary.

The second step is to tell the front desk staff that you had an accident, which seems horrific. The people who work at the lab are people who, by my calculations, deal with upwards of 80 men per day who have just masturbated, or are about to, and their sperm. Sure. They are professional.

But, still, everyone is a little bit tittery, a little bit anxious. We all know that this is all very silly, and that I just touched my penis, and you are someone’s grandmother, and that even though you have a pin in the shape of a little sperm fella to help break the tension, we all – if we really had the choice – would probably prefer to burst into flames than discuss any part of this, let alone the fact that someone missed. Whoops!

The DVD would change over time, but still be of the same variety. Usually some kind of early 90s Eurotrash boat fantasies, or oily faux-lesbian scissorhands scenes, starring fingernails that made me very nervous. I would check every time I went in, and it was always awful. Everybody’s got their thing, I guess. My thing is that I am thankful for the Internet.

Oh. And you are supposed to go in dry if you can help it. Lubrication, as it turns out, can mess with the quality of the semen, which seems like a pretty big jerk move on the part of lubrication.

But, yeah, I’ve got my routine down.

When your sample has been washed and spun, or whatever it is they do with it, they put it in a paper bag that you carry over to the doctor’s office for the procedure. We long-timers can always tell the new couples. Their discomfort and optimism is cute. They smile and look around on their walk, hoping no one notices the bag they have pinched in their fingertips.

Me, I carry my paper bag like a sack lunch. The same turkey sandwich I’ve had every day for years. With hope, yes, but the skepticism of routine. The IUI itself is pretty quick, and from what I understand, painless, if not the normal amount of demeaning of going to an OB/GYN. You get one more ultrasound to make sure everything is in place, and then they pour the gravy all over the giblets.

Sorry. I know. I’m hung up on turkey metaphors.

And then we wait.”

“You’re warned against taking pregnancy tests because they measure hormone levels, and after taking all sorts of weird shit all month, you can trigger a false positive. So you wait. And there will be spotting. Is it spotting, or is her period starting? You don’t know. So you wait. And you wait. And you wait.

And sometimes her period comes, and you start over. Step one. And sometimes it doesn’t come. But the second line doesn’t appear, or the plus, or the whatever these tests do. So you wait. And it’s negative, but you hope, and you see your friends getting pregnant, and you get a little sad. But you get mad at yourself because you want to feel happy for other people, and that’s not fair to them. And then the 17-year-old across the street gets pregnant, and you get a little sadder. And your cousins get pregnant, and you get a little sadder.

And you see people scream at their kids, and beat them in Kroger, and you just want to die because you would give anything to have a child throwing a tantrum in the cereal aisle.

You don’t want to hate people. You don’t. I think babies are beautiful. I think kids are awesome, but you can’t help the jealousy. The envy. The resentment. It really creeps up on you. And you search for positive things. And you talk on end about your capital-O Options.”

“And then you see people on the internet post screeds about how dare anyone assume that they would want to have kids because not having kids is the best – which is fine, have at it or don’t have at it, I really don’t care – but we want to be procreating, and we want what you could have, but are choosing not to use.

And we want to tell you, but people don’t talk about it. Because you don’t want to talk about it.

Because you spend all day thinking about it, managing it. Trying not to cry. Trying to not turn into HI and Ed from Raising Arizona, stealing babies in the night.

And the doctors start talking about Next Steps, and the Next Steps are very expensive, so you try it one more time. And then, while you’re in Kansas on a road trip with a friend, your wife does the IUI with a frozen deposit you left behind.

And you get pregnant.”

“You go in for a blood test, two weeks later, and they tell you that you’re pregnant. And you cry. Big fat tears of relief. And then you freak out because, to be honest, you talked yourself out of real hope months and months ago, but now you have to get ready for a baby.

Some weeks later, you go in for an ultrasound, and there it is. I mean, yeah, it’s a tadpole with a giant head. There’s its brain, and there’s its heart fluttering away, and it’s so real.

And you relax.”

“We’re in our late thirties, which means that the chances are higher than average that a pregnancy won’t be viable, or there will be a chromosomal abnormality, or something along those lines. We spent a lot of time tiptoeing around that idea, but we talked about it. And about not getting too excited. You know, the higher you let your hopes up, the further they have to fall. But they told us to relax. Everything looked great and we were on track, so when we went in for one final scan before being released to our obstetrician a couple weeks later, we were all smiles and jokes.

‘I’m so sorry. I can’t find the heartbeat.’ …

And then you’re not pregnant.”

“I’ve felt time stop before. Car accidents, falling off a fence, a mountain bike jump gone wrong. I have not felt the vertigo of infinity like when we were told our baby was dead. I’m logical. I understand science and biology. I know it was a fetus, not a baby. But it was my baby. In my head, in my heart, I could already imagine being old as it grew into an adult and had its own children, and – woosh – it was all gone.

As I write this, the due date is a little over a week away, like a car accident on the road ahead that you’re trying not to look at, that you have to drive by. The world isn’t going to stop. We all get up and go to work. Because it happens. People lose babies all the time.

Miscarriage.

But no one talks about it. No one gets on Facebook and tells their friends. It’s specifically why you wait to tell anyone.

But then you have no one to tell. When a family member dies, you can share your grief. With a miscarriage, you would have to tell people that someone who will never be born, who they had never heard of and will never meet, but who meant the world to you, is gone. And you don’t have the strength to get into it. You tell your parents, maybe a close friend, maybe your boss. I was so stunned when it happened that I texted my boss that I wouldn’t be back that day, but that I’d be back the next, which really cracks me up now. I didn’t even get how I was about to be affected.

Leah was scheduled for a D&C, dilation and curettage, under general anesthesia at Christ Hospital right away, so she wouldn’t have to go through the trauma of slowly passing the fetal tissue over the course of a week. It wasn’t until they took her back that I let myself break down. Alone with my worst thoughts and the sour coffee of the waiting room for several hours. God, I have no idea how long. One more forever.

The people at the hospital were excellent. We got a lot of information about support groups that we never went to, but we should have. We just wanted to hide. I’m thankful for our families and our friends, who came to sit with us. Who brought Lea the things she needed, and let me get out of the house to walk around the neighborhood. I must have looked like a zombie.”

“It’s very difficult to think about, even now. I don’t think I’m doing a good job of describing it. I don’t want to dwell on it. I don’t want to think about it. I don’t think it was until around the New Year that I went a day without crying about it.

But, you know, you pass the car accident and it’s in the rear view, getting further away, and sometimes you don’t even see it anymore. Maybe you’ve told yourself enough times that “at least we know we can get pregnant” and “this just means that something was wrong and it’s a good thing.” Maybe you even believe it.

Just to let you know how strong Leah is, she still made the Dean’s List that semester, and she was carrying 18 credit hours. I dropped out of college for the dumbest reasons in my time – once because I got mugged – but she persevered. Like Britney, bitch.

We started back at the fertility process too soon, in a dumb burst of optimism and courage, and the desire to move forward. The hormone treatments were too much for Leah. And the lack of success was too much for the both of us. So we stopped. Our doctor told me, privately, that we need to take care of ourselves, but that, if we want to have a baby, we either need to move forward now, or start discussing Next Steps.

Remember: Dwindling.”

“We tried a couple more times, one of which felt good – we thought we had it – and were told that if this one doesn’t take, that we would need to increase hormone treatments substantially and begin planning for options outside of IUI. In Vitro, surrogacy, or something else.

The doctor also told us, during one IUI, that while Donald Trump scares him, his wife loves Trump because of the Mexican wall thing. They are both immigrants. His problem with the wall was that it would be impossible to pay for it. I don’t know. Doctors tell you some crazy shit while they’re inseminating your wife.

Through this process, and through both of our lives, neither of us have ever had a home pregnancy test come out positive. Even when we were pregnant before, it was the doctor who did a test. This last one, Leah couldn’t bear to look at it herself, so I looked at it while she was in the shower, and told her no, that it was negative.

While she stood there, crying, I googled ‘pregnancy test faint line.’ As it turns out, even the faintest f**king line in the whole f**king world means you’re pregnant. So we’re pregnant.

We’re pregnant.”

“Not that we believed it at first, but we are. Three scans later, I’ve even heard the heartbeat, like a hummingbird, and it’s beautiful.

As I write this, tomorrow is our first obstetrician appointment, and we’re so nervous. So, so nervous. I wouldn’t dare to post this until we’re in the clear enough, and ready to tell people. Almost no one knows right now. We’re worried to jinx it, us, we, who don’t believe in jinxes. Mostly, we’re afraid of going back through the pain. To have to retract it, publicly, is too much to think about.

I know plenty of people have gone through more than us. We are comparatively very lucky. Some people have never gotten pregnant. Some people could not go as far as us. Some people have taken many Next Steps beyond where we were. Some have been successful, but many haven’t. I hesitate to share this because I don’t want anyone to read this and feel what we felt, watching others’ dreams come true. Some people have found out, or have guessed, and have been very kind to share their own stories with us, and it has helped tremendously to not feel alone. Many thanks to all of them. I hope that maybe this helps someone else feel less alone.

And I hope that everything goes well, and I can inundate you with pictures, starting in November. …

Everything went well. Arms and legs and moving around. We’re very excited, but I’ll be holding my breath for 26ish weeks. And it’s a girl. Not that gender matters! But we’re going to have a little girl! And I am stoked. We are stoked.

We are pregnant.”

[henry-atkins-the-3rd-place]

Favourite Artists

This is also part of my Summer homework.

Um... Do YouTube Animators count as Artists? Actually, the fact they’re on YouTube makes no difference to if their work was in a cinema.

As a lover of cartoons, the crazy and the weird, I found my favourite place on the Internet!

NewGrounds!

...

Oh... and, YouTube too, I guess...

Lots of animators don’t get enough credit from YouTube because of their algorithim which basically rewards any one channel that uploads content like a never ending money printer.

It’s a shame because there are amazing animators on the internet who only the fans seem to be supporting. Animators like:

SexuaLobster

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUawWaOXZtk

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_hBoDz_Qp8

This animator has... questionable taste but that’s what i love about him. His absurd ideas on screen is alot better to me than someone who holds back to make only safe videos. Sometimes his videos do come across as inventive like one of his earlier and my favourite animation of his, ‘Central Bwankers’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DdfLtOrBPU

This is a nutshell video about how bankers seem to be working for themselves rather than being fair. Watching it will fill you in.

A similar video is on the channel ‘FlashGitz’ which I will also be showing in this post further down below.

Weebl’s Stuff

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMqIWmFkXvU

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBoLA_BQ4tU

In his first first animation on the channel he described his content as not being random but absurd.

Yes.

Cartoons and songs galore with sketches on the side. This British animator doesn’t stop surprising me with the crazy and dumb stuff they come up with. I can’t give you a theme since it rarely becomes consistent other than the general weirdness that follows his videos wherever he goes.

Vrahno

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NvnHykvjoQ

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDRn0vEJko0&t=37s

I agree. That’s a big jump between a childs attempt at stopanimation with action figures to a multi-layered 3D animation of Godzilla monsters fighting.

This is only part of a much larger scene he’s working on with more monsters in the works which I’m very much looking forward to.

I much prefer 2D animation but 3D animation has a place in my heart when people use it to an effective extent. I even enjoy his twist on the characters from the Godzilla franchise making them have more personality. In fact I can’t remember which Godzilla movie it was but the monsters had voices and spoke to eachother through speechbubbles. I don’t think it carried over into the dub but the communication between the monsters was still there and it passed the occassional nod to each other. Vrahno, however expands on this concept in an amazing way that turns these classic monsters into actual characters!

He does some Bionicle stuff too which isn’t too bad but by nerdiness for Godzilla makes me biased.

Slamacow

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx2pCu5WWL4

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsk7uZI4_NI

Yes. He Is a Minecraft animation channel. But i think his animations stand out.

It’s well above the level of the cheap minecraft animation I see in Minecraft Music videos and at the beginning of multiple channels. Believe it or not but Slamacow’s Minecraft animations have Effort!

As an example of why I like Slamacows animation so much I want to do a comparison test. I’m not going to put an image of one of his animations next to a minecraft music video clip or a minecraft intro clip. I’m putting it next to an image from the official Minecraft Story Mode game! tell me which one looks better. Be honest.

Slamacow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGiSgPP-8mc

Minecraft Story Mode:

The point I’m trying to get at is are the mouths. My god, the mouths!

I get that much like in the lego movie, they wanted all the characters to look like exactly how it would work in real life. McSM’s logic is everything must be squares though. It’s not the skins moving but the entire heads of the characters grow extra squares when they exclaim and every mouth movement makes Mr.Game and Watch have smoother frames per second.

Slamacow may have bendier and curved animation but unlike other LEGO digital animation where it did the same thing, Minecraft is a computer game so since it’s clearly seperate from reality, bending seams more natural. LEGO doesn’t bend at all because its rel and more tangeable version is plastic and everybody knows this so bendy LEGO animations look unnatural.

The LEGO movie made sense making sure that everything animated realistically in a way that even the fans will think it makes sense. Minecraft Story Mode animated all of its characters similar to the actual game but took some liberties which is fine. The face is where I draw the line. The LEGO made the 2D printed faces animated which makes sense. The Minecraft Story Mode could have done the same thing but with pixels which is also fine but instead they made cubic caves they call mouths which looks disgusting to me.

I... think I should probably stop ranting and move on.

ThunderHumor

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bqNAcRlQ6o

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBg4Km4r5Xk

To be fair, alot of this guys stuff doesn’t have a massive amount of substance except for a special few which lead me to this channel in the first place.

i.e. Minecraft Misadventures:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ugwz1nEm_Q

This is a short series currently consisting of 4 episodes. Again, not much substance but of course it’s a strange take on the blocky series none the less.

I’m... starting to see a pattern with the stuff i watch. Hopefully that changes soon.

Robert Benfer

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyyS14eyrn4

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GANql36pBSQ

Only one long running series on Roberts channel is the reason I always visit his channel. And it’s ended.

Klay World is a grim, stupid yet somehow loveable show about clay people. And that’s all you need to know.

Have a look. It’s comedy is just slapstick and silly noises with smoothly animated and simple designed clay characters. I’ve seen plenty of videos explaining how a silent or simple designed main character in a videogame makes it easy to identify with. the clay people in Klay World are almost identicle other than the occassional prop or a different coloured clay. This is also similar to how Nostalgia Critic (also YouTube) described Goofy in his video ‘Is Goofy secretly a Badass?’: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__b8p02SYPo

The last episode he looks at is a classic episode of a whole stadium of classic Goofy characters yelling, beating each other up and being rowdy adults like how classic Goofy was portrayed as. He described the Goofy clones appearing in the episode as ‘not Goofy’ since each character was designed differently but was of the same species and age as Goofy. This meant they could be as violent as they wanted and couldn’t tarnish the official Goofy character since every person throwing a punch, biting and kicking another was similar but not the same. The same goes with the Klay World characters. Some characters have names but everyone else is violent cannonfodder. There to explode, get sliced or shot by another.

Sr Pelo

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AD-VbCWzWto

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igfJIZayiy8

Disclaimer: If you watch any of Sr Pelo’s videos, be prepared since alot of his videos include Ear Rape Screeches, Screams and Manic Laughter! You have been warned.

Sr Pelo... is an odd one. He’s the one friend you might have who might not say much or have much to contribute to a conversation without making stupid/silly noises. This is not a jab at him. I think he’s funny.

He’s over the top to every degree. He does some impressions too (discluding his screaming).

I think his designs are a tad like mine. Cartoony but just underdesigned and simple enough to classify and practically an animated doodle.

Zeurel

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TR35EkkB_p4

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp5Q9hqH9lI

Her videos are short and I really mean short. As in they range from 0.03-7:23 to my knowledge. Believe me, they’re usually just over a minute or under a minute long.

Each short is expressive but to be honest, I like her work but the length of each upload restricts it. Some of her videos are longer and really show that her longer videos can leave a larger impact than... this...

SUDDENLY...: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwc8W2NTHwI

For example, these are some of my favourites that are much longer.

Drawn Together~: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cX0APeh8e1Q

Robo Western HD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ln9XobU6oc

Yes, it’s not a long list but then again there aren’t alot of long animations she’s done or alot of animations on this channel at all.

RageNineteen

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cszgvxuJkM

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4W7mx9mvXfg

British and hilarious. he rarely animates over Game Grumps or other audio like his latest animation. The rest of his videos are shorts or full-length cartoons and occasionally live sketches of either random or comedic sketches like Monty Python.

There is a particular series of videos he’s done that I can’t help but rewatch. A documentary on different subjects called L.I.A.R.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dmIgYEjGh8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiDzG2WmrmY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWLOmVLPEJ0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xhcn8Wn95mA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4PAleIlYbs

Not to mention the Action Bunnies Series which is a bunny version of the ASDF Movies in Tomska’s channel. I have purposefully discluded Tomska from this list because apparently he doesn’t animate his own stuff as mentioned in one of his Blogs when he didn’t pay the original animators of the first ASDF Movie. He still makes great sketches though.

RubberNinja

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BgoSRjWWVho

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSpZgKBjwmg

RubberNinja, better known nowadays as “Goddammit Ross” on the super-popular gaming channel family known as Game Grumps used to animate before playing video games, being a sadist to his friends and drawing on the Game Grumps show, Doodle Doods.

Ironically one of my cartoon characters I drew for fun years ago was also called Doodle Dude. not likely I’ll be bringing that back anytime soon.

There’s not alot of animations on his channel. Neither do many of them have a story to tell. It’s mainly just random humour which I like but I prefer the other stuff he’s helped with on Game Grumps and in the music done by the band one of the Game Grumps members is part of ‘Ninja Sex Party’ and the short series of video game songs, ‘StarBomb’.

Piemations

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_04xi7ddh8

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX3CY4XQZ5g

Piemations is funny and can clearly write funny sketches with clear punchlines and setups as well as being good at random humor as well.

Alot of his stuff is based off video games and in some cases, movies, so alot of his humor will also be in-jokes about the game and characters which might catch others offguard.

Apart from that he’s a great comedian whose got a clear animating style and a very clear progression in how his animation with virtualy no changes in his designs have gotten better.

As an example he re-animated his first animation that was a half minute joke about the Spy from the popular Valve Steam game, ‘Team Fortress 2′, AKA ‘TF2′.

Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX3CY4XQZ5g

Re-animated: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xaeFLz0Eu6E

PikaPetey Animations

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-WFmq9hE9c

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y8DQa9H3Cw

Pika has a short library of animations which are either Pikachu themed or My Little Pony. Some of the videos are for conventions, some are for fun.

Unfortunatley only five videos on this channel are finished and has a any substance or jokes rather:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esbthhiFglQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YHA3EwXhFY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmvwOYw4oz0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9btOIfDrKn8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVnJq4QXgFA

I really like Pika’s sense of humour but it’s sad to see it spread to thinly like this.

TwistedGrimTV

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfzbCg3sdco

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rrK0xPzpvo

TwistedGrim is Grim. Well, not really all the time. It’s more or less themed grim. Like how years ago there weren’t horror games like we know them that are almost just like the movies. There were Halloween themed games. Normal games with scary aesthetics but not scary gameplay like Alien Isolation does.

It’s funny, still, and reminds me of Zeurels work from earlier. It has a similar artstyle and comedy but devels only a pinky toe into the Grim theme the channels named after.

Actually, not many of the videos on the channel are Grim or even Grim themed at all! The latest videos are Overwatch animations while probably 35-40% of the videos are remotley Grim related.

Pixlpit

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7pGdKTw0mU

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8PI6FWc-1Q

Yet another 3D animator with an original style.

I like to make the correlation between Funko Pop figures and PixlPit’s models that he uses for his animations since they all have almost exactly the same style if it wasn’t for the defining features they are given.

I described the horrendous mouths of the characters in Minecraft Story Mode as “every mouth movement makes Mr.Game and Watch have smoother frames per second.”. Some of the movements in PixlPit’s animation is similar except alot of the movements are smooth at times too. An interesting blend.

I mentioned earlier that PixlPit’s characters are almost all clones of each other other than their defining features and I compared them to Funko Pop figures but I noticed while browsing YouTube that there is an animator who has character designs that look practically identical to Funko Pops figures.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3B4fMC_71A&t=29s

Seanzoz

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7LZGy5QlvI

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajMzpiyZ4GA

If I recall, the method used in Seanzoz’s animations is basically like stick figures with detailed limbs. Not drawn characters but files containing limb and hand sprites to be moved but connected to other sprites. Like a puppet. This method is albeit, a bit lazy since a prime example I remember it being used in main stream media is Johnny Test on Cartoon Network (and was awful), but the difference here is Seanzoz makes highly detailed sprites for each characters as well as design backgrounds and foregrounds that are also highly detailed.

It’s as if someone got the Mona Lisa (or some other painting that has time and effort put into it) and did the same thing by moving her arms, hands and head on pivots.

The comedy is very much there as well but all the videos he makes is a parody off a TV show or video game.

What’s nice is he makes long videos with well-written comedy in them and a consistent rate of quality. What’s annoying is he isn’t the only one who does this making him not as unique as I’d hoped he would.

The channel ‘How it should have ended’ Makes animations in the exact same fashion as well as the exact same style of comedy as well. as in everything is they do is what Seanzoz does too.

Vivziepop

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sGW7aE14m7o

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLqtHTXyPZs

To be frank, I love her drawing style. It looks amazing. No doubt. Annoyingly she doesn’t animate often anymore. She mostly just does speed art now. For others who draw only it might be nice but I prefer seeing someone whose talented enough to take art and make it move naturally without a loss in quality. That takes skill. Vivziepop has animated alot before. As proof she made a music video of Kesha’s ‘Die Young’ and it’s fantastic.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PKNuZovuSw

But that’s nothing less to her credit. Her art style is sharp and unique as well as eye catching. The same goes for her animating skills. As unfortunate as it is that she doesn’t animate often, she still knows her stuff.

Screwits

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1stb_ILUa0

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItOPzuIRLVI

9 videos in total. All animations... What a track record...

Screwits art style is very similar to the artstyle you’ll find on NewGrounds.com. The outlines are thick, black lines, they rarely have shading and the comedy varies from random/stupid humour to more teenage humour with swearing and sex jokes.

You know, after describing his animation and NewGrounds animation like this I now realise how much of a lie Screwits’ YouTube logo is. It’s shaded, it has a variation of other colours that pop out and look alike to Vivziepop’s colour pallete. Nothing about it reflects his animation style at all.

I mean. I do like his comedy and animation but it somehow seems... under-developed. Another YouTuber and Animator on NewGrounds is EgoRaptor (who will also appear later on this list) who has developed his skills amazingly to the point that you can see that even his art style changes between cartoons. but I’ll be talking more about that later.

Tithinian

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXDzmhl-7bM

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOzJWZNI97U

Tithinian has an odd method of animating that... there is no animating sometimes. Well... what I mean is that sometimes there are fluent moments where things move and of course mouths move smoothly as well but sometimes for those slower moments he has an image of what the character would look like and not change from that until the character emotes again. The transition between those frames would be instant but the character would always bounce a little by being stretched before looking normal again. I’ve seen alot on animators on YouTube do this. Especially for the Game Grumps animated videos which Tithinian also falls into the catergory of for the most part.

Don’t see what I mean? Here’s an example.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIEkjsCZ7jU

Pay very close attention to all the characters and keep in mind how I described them. You’ll see what I mean. It’s only Semi-Animated.

But despite that, I think it’s always interesting to watch all of his videos just for the designs he gives all the characters. Especially when the characters yell, scream or get angry. It’s like just letting me or him do what they will with a notepad and pen which usually leads to these expressive, exaggerated and mostly crude drawings of the characters. It’s a whole gallery!

Pegbarians

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4P88lLxYxQ

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMEn1OfEGo4

Pegbarians is... an odd channel to describe. They make animations but they seem... boringish... Let me explain.

When I think of main stream animations, I think of Pixar, Disney and DreamWorks and their sensible and believable worlds. I use ‘sensible’ in the most broadest of terms. Despite how they’ve made worlds of talking cars, singing cats and adventures of ogres and donkeys, they have a consistent and realistic atmosphere. Nothing is just random and nothing happens to take away from a current moment of drama.

When I think about the Internets animation from animators outside of the main stream, I list all the different animators that also appear on this list. They’re crazy, insane, creative and literally anything could happen!

However, there is a third place to look. Advertising.

I’m talking about 3D models of low rendering,

High quality 3D animation

and 2D animation commonly found on the internet as well.

This kind of animation is too similar to what Pegbarians do which makes them feel more... manufactured than creative.

I enjoy their content but the plan style with a lack of outlines or expressive imagery just makes it look like what’s actually meant to be an animation that advertisers would want their brand represented by rather than another animator or another comedy sketch writer who can freely speak their mind even if it includes swears. Like they designed themselves to be semi-enjoyable for the public and just safe enough for ad revenue to be at its best.

Moleman

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdupAtbg6Es

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqU7qktIruc

It’s odd why there was such a change in art style and medium in a span of only 10 videos but they’re all good videos.

There’s the 3D model videos that either look like digital muppets or have mouths like sock puppets, and there’s simple 2D animation.

I have no complaints. Although the majority of her videos are just game grumps animations, they still prove to be funny, intresting in design and even gets across her unique style that I look at and immediatley know as, Moleman’s.

MattyBurrito MB

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8amyRgcL80

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Q3QtKShCQI

This is a yes and no kind of channel. His comedy is great, his animation and art style are great as well but somehow I can’t shake the feeling that he could be doing better... wait... I know what it is now!

Most of the time there’s a lack in movement other than the odd moment. Oh My God. He’s Tithinian! Just less expressive and absurd with his drawings.

Yup. That pretty much sums him up. He needs to add more animation than he already is or make his art style more interesting. I... feel like I’m making unessecary demands.

NotePaddle

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uIPDlJRZwEY

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9UPwSrYVlY

Now this is what I’m talking about! Cartoony visuals with expressive designs, bright colours and proper comedy to boot even though it’s mostly slapstick and silent other than the odd speech bubble!

it’s what I love about cartoons to begin with. The ability to take anything in existance and give it a remarkable twist to shift anything about it like its character and design as well as invent something entirely new! Animation and drawing as well as all mediums of art is meant as an escapism from reality. That fact alone is why I hate soap operas on TV or in animation. Real life can be sad and depressing which is the entire reason we turn to the screen or pages of a book. Having that new world reflect that sadness and depression back at us is redundent unless it offers us something more to think about or look at.

NotePaddle hits the nail right on the head for me.

Joe

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDijRDj_8BY

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2APuxubWSmE

Ukino Joe (or Joe as he calls himself now) is exactly what I described as what I think animation on the internet is like by nature. Random, weird and creative as well as expressive.

Joe has a show right now in collaboration with Danielle Kogan called ’Great the show’.

There’s no pattern or rhyme or reason to his content. It’s meant to be random and strange but strangley tame at the same time. It usually shifts from art style to art style every so often while still adhering to the customary ‘Joe’ style.

Im not even a Panda

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH3VJ25waJM

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8ezJzVl4V4

Another Game Grumps animation channel. As much as I enjoy the Game Grumps and their comedy, I think YouTube may be a little oversaturated with the GGAnimators. I’m fine with alot of them because they sometimes take the audio and change the entire situation of it from its original recording. Like this one. The audio came from their gameplay of Resident Evil but they changed the context in the animation to take place in ‘The Legend of Zelda: WindWaker’:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3B4fMC_71A&t=64s

Surprisingly this is the same animation I described as having the near law suit design to Funko Pop’s figures.

There are other GGAnimators who just put a fun spin on their animation that makes it even more fun to look at than just animating 2 people in a living room in front of a TV with a games controller in their hands.

InEaP’s animations are a little underwhelming but still get a somewhat good animation across. So they’re neither creative or expressive unfortunatley. It’s sort of an iconic design since the majority of their animations use a thin brush tool on the outline but then again that’s not very defining in the grand scheme of things.

Martina McKenzie

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=561zkbseprY

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rjjlFzrCME

The early stuff she’s done isn’t very interesting but the later stuff (more specifically the Undertale animations) are greatly animated, written and pop out like a cartoon you’d expect would be designed. With bright colours and thick black lines. I’ve already gone over this diatribe so I’ll be moving on.

Forrestfire101

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbOYPQ1So_c&t=64s

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JbauUAjuSA

This was the first animation channel I watched and enjoyed about... 12 years ago probably. He has been doing LEGO animation for a long time now and I say he’s practically innovative. While other channel have simple LEGO animation with barely any natural movements, FF101 was green screening bricks to make minifigures jump and fly instead of hanging them from string or using translucent LEGO stick pieces. That and he draws mouths moving on each frame using... probably MS paint. Primetive but effective. In fact I think there was an entire video dedicated to it on his second channel, ForrestFire1001.

...

Okay. Apparently it doesn’t exist anymore or I just can’t find it. I specifically remember he showed off his bendy tripod thing in it. However I did find this short SFX breakdown video he made which is just as useful in this context.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqztgE50sz8

Hot Diggedy Demon

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9w2cFhiobko

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSagkXsX8YA

Max’s videos have a clear theme. Crude humour with hints of self-actualisation and realisation of the depressing and inevitable end of our lives as well as not turning its head from the existance of the blemishes on the face of humanity. And it’s hilarious.

He knows how to be satirical. He knows how to create a scenario that would seem cruel or sad but he knows most of all how to make fun of it. He’s wacky and cartoony with the edge that will take you off guard. Sometimes even impulsive but definitely reminds you that the world and our lives can or will be shit awful but it enlightens everyone to enjoy it anyway despite that grueling fact.

He’s surprisingly good at translating his designs from 2D to 3D as well.

As I’m also a drawing coneseiur who prefers drawing by hand, I’ve tried myself to translate my drawing style to 3D. It’s, NOT, easy. But somehow Max pulled it off in his recent series, Brain Dump. A surprisingly intelligent but equally as immature as you’d expect from his humour as he analysis movies, TV and other... stuff.

Eddsworld

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxtRL1tclds

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdNRqOMaH68

Starting on NewGrounds and even made a short for the BBC Comedy channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eahA3dB-eqQ

This is all I think of when I think about British cartoons now because of how much it reflects Britain throgh its classic slapstick, writing and cultural references.

God rest his soul when the original animator, Edd Gould, died of Cancer. He was even half way animating part 1 of a 2 parter animation before he died. So I suppose he died how he lived. Doing what he loved. Animating.

In his name, his friends continued his legacy by finishing his work and ending the series before handing the rights back over to Edds family. It couldn’t have been done without the help from the fans who supported them.

This is pretty much the most interesting animator on the internet to me because of its story. In Edds life and in Edds wacky world he put so much effort into.

aMAX Animations

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIasEKIH2XI

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11jy0LfIpiI

I could swear that all of his animations are made in MS Paint.

Alot of his stuff is either Game Grumps or Vinesauce animated content. What’s different is that even though his drawings are realistic and relate to the story at hand, it still has a charm to it. He adds the necessary details and adds unecessary details that really brings together the scene brilliantly! Some great examples was the reflection of Joels childhood friend gone sociopath in his eyes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9kDJyk5H_I

The snow storm foreground at a bus stop in Sweden:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8wYdg7mKtc&t=553s

And the flashing of red and white from the computer screen lighting up the diml classroom:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7lBwWayhVE

It’s fantastic and somehow he did it in probably MS Paint. By far the best animator in terms of setting the scene.

Don’t hug me .I’m scared

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbL-NSkXnl8

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hIKKYv_3Ic

Okay. This channel isn’t exclusivley animation. Instead it’s... actually, I’m not sure.

It has some animation in both stopmotion and 3D but it’s mostly puppets and disturbing imagery. Not really something to go into though without preparation.

It’s a twist on the Muppets and Sesame Street and gives a brilliant commentary on TV productions capatilising off childrens programs and what-not. Definitley something to look into but personally I prefer the Film Theory channels take on it.

Harry Partridge

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krRFlzwnw3U

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E0cZY7ef_mk

Who here remembers the old Disney movies.

Aristocats

Cinderella

Beauty and the Beast

The Fox and the Hound

Lady and the Tramp

The cartoony yet realistic hand drawn movies. The main stream classic stuff.

Harry Partridge is the Internet version. How amazing is that?! His animation is the most amazing quality I’ve ever seen on YouTube since it looks just like something Disney could do but in Flash. It’s ridiculous!

Egoraptor

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yAioZzuhOQg

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77_4n7CeiHA

Egoraptor is one of those defining animators on YouTube who started on NewGrounds. Over the years he’s evolved over time and along with it his comedy and art style. But especially his art style. A good way to illustrate this is this short fan animation that presents some of his art styles in one shot by morphing Dan on screen between them:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8ycDu-mMXg

It’s not long but it makes some sense.

Alan Becker

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhikdD6Hf2M

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxM1cnphLpw

To me this is one of the most impressive channel in terms of technicality. His most famous series ‘Animator Vs.’ features a stick figure gone rogue and the computers user has to combat this combatant collection of lines from destroying his computer using the computer itself and even other stick figures. There are other episodes that don’t feature the user and instead the stick figures finding other programs and websites to play with that still leads to even more trouble. Overall it’s animated amazingly and creativley since it uses everything about the PC that you can think of to the animations advantage.

FlashGitz

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFnFKu9QqoA

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zSxQnZ3TM8

FlashGitz is expressive in more than one way. Through their animation they have expressive visuals (of course). But they’re more expressive through their writing. The first video they uploaded was of their view on what GameWorkshop (The company responsible for the Warhammer franchise) are thinking at the board meetings. This video is to ‘express’ how the community felt from their perspective about the excessivly high price of their plastic models which were often given game breaking statistics in the game.

Another video they made expressed what they thought feminists and social rights activists were to them stereotypically thanks to the bad apples ruining the bunch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XARMbTEGVDk

The same for being Politically Correct:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sg0D1PpgCXs

Aaand the unreliability of online information and the boredom of using conventional means of information:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqqQT-CcTsU

Not to mention the console wars:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqucCVzP-Og

And many more... Not to mention some random stuff and sketches.

OneyNG

Latest: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1RpLoLyi6c

First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Qutm9kaCV8

Much like his first video, this is indeed a random channel. The epitome of silly. He makes structured videos in many cases but somehow still manages to let it slide down the slippery slope of silly without end. It’s odd. It’s perculier. But most of all it’s him.

I agree that him in real life would probably be like watching one of his cartoons. Stupid but funny to the better people of the internet... probably.

I... like him. Don’t judge my standards please.

I feel like in the beginning I wasn’t clear about what my standards are to begin with but I’ve slowly revealed it bit by bit within this post. Let me give you a clear picture then.

What I love about animation, drawing and art in general is the ability to... well, I think Seto Kaiba from the recent Yu*Gi*Oh! movie does it justice.

It’s true. It upsets me when people use it not to create but to make something boring. Usually to point at a real world problem that you just know will depress you. This medium should be used to express yourself, represent something amazing. Indulge in the escapism it allows you and make sure to spend that time wisely to make an imprint that’s unforgettable. However you can do both at the same time. Be creative and depressing.

Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

This is a perfect example of an art medium changing the world amazingly through a creative and imaginative story but still sends out a message and a point on how the working class suffer the most as well as the children that connected to the lords and ladies and changed society as they knew it.

However a skeleton in a pile of rubbish and a cardboard box marked ‘Home’ will not... It’s just depressing...

I should also point out what’s most important to me in art. An art style. I didn’t take GCSE Art for a reason. They’d force me to do realistic images and glue stuff to paper and the like. Not my idea of fun in my opinion. I enjoy all these animators because of their unique styles. They bring so much to their viewers through the eyes and minds of their fantastic worlds and how they perseve reality through them in their own wacky ways. And that’s what I love.

P.S. NewGrounds isn’t really my favourite place. It was just a joke. It’s still good but YouTube is easier to use since having flash isn’t a must.