#ignore that this looks like a basic meme from 2014

[morallygay]

Me fighting for my life trying to have a good grade in normal conversation with someone who messaged me on whatsapp by accident with the wrong number and is very nice but is now trying to do small talk and get to know me

[furbyfubar]

I feel like this graph of the rate of left-handedness was also (somewhat) relevant here as it’s the go to example to show why the panic over kids “turning” more LGBTQ is ridiculous. When the data for people born in 1942 came in someone could have looked at the data from the (then) past 30 years and concluded that [*pause while I spend way too much time to plot an extended trend line in photoshop*] in 2327 everyone would be left-handed!

It’s possible that I might have gotten a little bit sidetracked by finding the graph from an actual research paper on left-handedness instead of the meme version typically shared. I was about to say that it’s impressive that since left-handedness would only reach 100% by the year 2327 and the LGBTQ gets there by 2047, this implies that the acceptance of LGBTQ people is rising much faster than the acceptance for being left-handed did. But this is of course a nonsense conclusion, even if we’re ignoring the bullshit extrapolation that’s going on in both cases. Because it’s looking at the rise in percentage points, and what we should care about here is the percentage of people in those groups that are (no longer) suppressed from being counted as belonging to those groups. Because both these graphs are really showing both the social acceptance of these groups as well as the real percentage of the population that identify as belonging to these groups. Since left-handedness flattened out and held steady at ~11.5% of the population, this only means that the “real” rate of left-handedness is likely at least 11.5%. (After all, there is somehow still some suppression of letting kids being left-handed going on in the world.) But while the social shift in acceptance of LGBTQ people in the USA has been impressive for the past 10 years, if the “real” rate of LGBTQ folks is higher than 11.5%, then that graph would reach 100% quicker even if the increase in acceptance was (hypothetically) the same as that seen for left-handedness in the middle of the century.

But yeah, this is assuming linear growth of percentage points. Or, wait, that’s at least what I assumed for the left-handedness graph. I just realize I didn’t double-check the calculations of the twitter account “Universal Life Church”. That should clearly be done. OK, so their tweet made the 19th of February of 2022. I’m going to round that down to “2022″. Per their tweet 7.1% of Americans identify as LGBTQ by then. So to reach 100% there would need to be an increase of 92.9 percentage points. 2047 was 25 years in the future from 2022, so again, assuming a linear growth rate of percentage points, we’d need a growth of 92.9/25 =  3.716 percentage points per year. Hang on, 2 * 3.716 > 7.1, so they can’t even have been looking at the data from the past two years for this to make sense, otherwise less than 0% would have identified as LGBTQ two years before? What gives? I’ve googled a bit and I’m pretty sure I’ve found the data reported. The chart below was found here: https://dataviz.nbcnews.com/projects/20220216-out-chart/ so the date in the URL matches the date of the tweet, and the source is listed as Gallup.

The linked graph lets you hover to also see the numbers, and they are: 2012: 3.5% 2013: 3.6% 2014:  3.7% 2015: 3.9% 2016: 4.1% 2017: 4.5% [there seems to be a gap in data for 2018 and 2019?] 2020: 5.6% 2021: 7.1% OK, so are they just extrapolating for the growth from 2020 to 2021?? That would be a +1.5 points in a year, so by 2047 we’d get: 2047-2021 = 26 years. With a 1.5 point increase per year would give us 7.1 + (1.5 * 26) = 46.1% of Americans identifying as LGBTQ by 2047. So, unless something has gone very wrong 46.1% is not 100%. So I think we can safely assume that this isn’t a linear growth rate being assumed in the tweet. Or they just can’t do basic calculations. But it of course doesn’t have to be a linear growth, in fact the graph of that decade doesn’t look linear at all. So what other clues to their methodology can we find in the tweet? They say the percentage has doubled over the past 10 years. From 3.5% to 7.1% is indeed roughly a doubling. But from 2012 to 2021 is 9 years, not 10, so this is rounding in favor of the straights surviving longer in both cases. But lets start out by ignoring that rounding and see if the numbers now work out. How many time do we have to double 7.1 to get to 100? I’ve studied enough calculus to know that this is a situation where I’d need calculus to get the exact answer. But it’s also been long enough since I studied calculus that I don’t remember how to do it. But this is napkin math at best anyways, so we can just try plugging in values and see what fits the equation of 7.1 * (2^x) = 100. That is, “x is the number of times we have to double 7.1 to get 100″. Just plugging in some values for x gives us that: 7.1 * (2^3) = 56.8 7.1 * (2^4) = 113.6 So x must be between 3 and 4. A further binary search shows that x = 7.1 * (2^3.81604) = 100.000196497, so x ≈ 3.81604. So we need 3.81604 decades of doubling after 2021 to reach full queer saturation.  (3.81604 * 10) + 2021 = 2059.1604 ≈ 2059. OK, so that still missed their result of 2047, but at least it’s closer. So perhaps they didn’t round in their calculations. If we don’t round 9 years to 10 year that’s (3.81604 * 9) + 2021 =  2055.34436  ≈ 2055, so still not a quick enough growth. So am I going to have to go back and look at that rounding of 3.5 to 7.1 being “about a doubling” as well? Well crap, I guess I will, because now I really want to know if someone at that church church really did calculus to calculate a conclusion that’s still so obviously wrong! OK, so this time let’s look at what yearly (exponential) growth rate gets 3.5 to 7.1 in 9 years. Ie, 3.5 * x^9 = 7.1 Duh, I just remembered that I can of course just plug this equation into Wolfram Alpha. That’s what I should have done above as well! It gives me that x ≈  1.08176, meaning that the USA was getting 8.176% more LGBTQ per year from 2012 to 2021. So, if the current trend holds, and we add in the 26 years of queerification from 2021 until 2047 and get the gayness predicted for 2047 by this bullshit model and we get: 7.1 * 1.08176^26 ≈ 54.785%

So something’s gone wrong here as well. Because 7.1*1.08176^x=100 gives x= 33.6569. With the LGBTQ growth rate 1.08176 that the graph from the Gallup poll shows, and again, if the current trend holds, we wouldn’t reach the 100% LGBTQ utopia until the middle of 2054.

So yeah, not only is the extrapolation in that tweet insane to start with, it also hasn’t done the math correctly when it extrapolated. Or if it has, they have either cherry-picked what years they’ve looked at or somehow assumed some growth rate that’s neither linear nor exponential.  So yeah if you’ve read this far, here’s another xkcd strip relevant to what just happened to me:

That's not how demographics work.

[al-mayriti]

I was (kinda) tagged by @glittertrail, mil gracias jo 🥰🥰🥰

1. Why did you choose your url?: When i was a kid and on my first social media sites (basically Deviantart and mail accounts) i always used "jackdragon" as my username because of Jack Redfield from Memorias de Idhún, I wanted to keep that theme on Tumblr and I came up with this one I quite like :)

2. Any side blogs?: Yes, both are dead but I don't really know how / want to delete them lol, they're @skamesptranslations for, well, Skam España clip translations; and @gleespana again, pretty self explanatory, I had a project of rebooting Glee but set in Spain and with Spanish songs and stuff.

3. How long have you been on tumblr?:

I created the account on 2014, but from 2015-2016 I was absent. I came back in 2017 and I've been here since.

4. Do you have a queue tag?:

Nope

5. Why did you start your blog in the first place?:

I honestly don't remember? I think it had to do a bit with the crush I had at the moment, she had a Tumblr and maybe I wanted to have something in common with her? I don't remember us talking about Tumblr tho 6. Why did you choose your icon/pfp?: I wanted an Amira icon cause she's my favourite character from the Skamverse and someone made that really funny edit with the Hackerman meme after the clip in season 2 where Amira dug up all info on Joana and whatnot; so I just took it lol (looking back I should've asked for permission, sorry to whoever it was).

7. Why did you choose your header?:

Kieutou is probably my favourite ship ever so yeah. But after Druck ends my Skamverse era will probably be over and tho I want to keep the pfp I want to change the header; I don't really know what to choose as a replacement tho (I'm all ears if you have any suggestions!!!) 8. What’s your post with the most notes?:

A "put in the tags" post I made a while ago about what would your name be if you were named after the river closest to your hometown. It blew up way more than I could've predicted, last time I saw it I think it had over 5k notes. 9. How many mutuals do you have?:

I haven't counted but I would say around 200? Maybe??? 10. How many followers do you have?:

1062 which I think is just insane 11. How many people do you follow?:

601 12. Have you ever made a shitpost?:

Yeah, I've made some lol 13. How often do you use tumblr each day?:

Too much... No but really, I would say, in total, it must be like 2-3 hours? Maybe? 14. Did you ever have a fight/argument with another blog once?:

I don't really remember any, no! I've had some hate anons (and non-anons) but there was never any beef I think 15. How do you feel about “you need to reblog this” posts?:

I don't really like them tbh, sometimes I will reblog it nevertheless (if the cause is important enough to me), but most of the time I'll just ignore it 16. Do you like tag games?:

I love them!!! 17. Do you like ask games?: Everybody knows I love them, yeah, they're my favourite part of this site!

18. Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous?:

There certainly are mutuals that are big in the skam fandom but I don't know if they would classify as "tumblr famous", they are for me at least I guess. I would say @jon-astronaut, @j-purplesunsets-rainydays @fatoudixon (I screamed when I saw you were a mutual hello 😳) @aahelvede and @gotskamstuff are the most well-known mutuals I have. And apart from them, I have an irl famous mutual, miss Hajar Brown herself which honestly makes me loose my mind everytime I remember it lol. 19. Do you have a crush on a mutual?: Not really! I do have a lot of friendship crushes like @ la ganga, @skamesp @claimedbytheearth @minglana @im-too-tired-to-think @espanhois @what-islife15 (my beloved❤) and many more I'm probably forgetting but yeah, none romantic I think (and if I had I wouldn't say it lmaooo)

And I tag basically everyone I have already mentioned (la ganga: @naguaraquerandom @alicechesire @eskamtrash @sarcasmisalifechoice) @looselysealedkrypton @afolksongs @sonechkaandthedynamos (i just realized i should've include you in famous people as well, you're one of the balkan tumblrinas!!!) @gwendolynlerman

[fighterraven]

My Story with Fossil Fighters Frontier.

Ah March 20th 2015. I remember that day like it was yesterday. In case you forgot what was so special about that day, it was the release date of Fossil Fighters Frontier or at least the American release date. It had been in Japan for a year under the name Infinite Gear. Now in order to fully tell this story we need to rewind back to 2014 so Insert some timy wimmy transecsion here.

The year is 2014 and I'm starting to wonder "where the heck is Fossil Fighters 3?" Of course that's what I called it. I'm on a site called "Nintendo everything." And I see this "Fossil Fighters Infinite Gear." Naturally,  I freaked out "OMG THEY MADE A NEW FOSSIL FIGHTERS AND IT'S ONLY IN JAPAN!" I even had Facebook and Miiverse posts from back in the year freaked out about Infinite Gear. Now, I'm not a betting man, but if I was, I would bet 10,000 dollars that I knew about Infinite Gear before everyone outside of Japan did. I even knew about the final boss before the rest of the world too due to a Japanese video. Now once I saw this news, I immediately went to my friends and said "now you owe me because Fossil Fighters 3 exists now." I guess I was a dumb 15 year old who wanted Fossil Fighters by someone who wasn't me. I mean the original game was still one of my favorite games of all time after all, I just wanted a sequel after Champions disappointed me. (Champions was a letdown for me compared to the original.) 

Let's fast forward to e3 2014 and Let's skip everything that was announced on day 1 and go straight to a video I uploaded that very same day where I had a hissy fit over Ruby and Sapphire getting a remake but Fossil Fighters Infinite Gear isn't coming to the west. Now you have to understand that I was 15 at the time and I was very edgy, angsty and angry. (Who knew my 15 year old self would be how Nintendo fans would react to the Mini directs in 2020 and the direct in 2021?) I mean I had known about Infinite Gear for months at that point, I felt like my anger had been justified at that point (although I'm glad my YT channel never gained any fame because I would have been roasted by everyone. I probably would have deleted the video if I had in order to avoid complete embarrassment.) Anyways 2 days later and Infinite Gear was announced as Fossil Fighters Frontier. Before I get into the next section, can I just point out how much cooler a name Infinite Gear is over Frontier? They should have kept the Infinite Gear name outside of Japan.

Naturally I lost a bit of control over the announcement and posted my excitement over every social media I had at the time and Frontier was basically the only thing on my mind at the time. Heck, I even went crazy over the Fossil Fighters trophy that was in the 3DS version of Smash 4. Now did I go way crazier over then I ultimately should have? Absolutely and you're probably thinking: "is the trophy in 3DS Smash 4 really that important to this story?" And I'll say "Absolutely." To me, it felt like Nintendo was celebrating my hype with me, it felt like Nintendo read all of my Facebook and Miiverse posts and were hyping the game up with me. I even did only type runs and a no Sonar chip challenge runs in the original and Champions in the time Frontier was announced for E3 up until it's release, meaning I beat the original and Champions 5 times in one year.

So now let's fast-forward to the 2015 February direct. Where they announced Fossil Fighters Frontier's release date. March 20th 2015. MARCH 20th 2015 BABY LET'S GO FOSSIL FIGHTERS FRONTIER! FOOOOOOOOOOSSSSSSSSIIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLLL FIIIIIIIIGHHHHHHHHTERRRRRRRRRRS! FRONTIER. I then make a bunch of posts on every social media I had at the time reminding myself and everything else about the date. Now keep in mind that they didn't show anything in the release date. Heck we didn't even know about Paleo Pals in the direct so before you say "didn't Paleo Pals ruin it for you?" We didn't even know that stuff back in the day.

March 20th 2015. I went to my local gamestop to pick up my Pre order and I absolutely loved Frontier and it was my favorite game of all time. Now you're probably wondering, how can I love this game when the Paleo Pals make the combat 3/4s automated? The simple answer was that I was sort of in a high when I first played this game. The gorgeous graphics, the animations and the environment all looked pretty damn good and heck I still think Frontier is the best looking 3ds title even to this day. That's entirely subjective, I realize but you can't ignore this game's presentation is top notch. Heck if you gave the game a few touch ups, it could look like a Switch game. Of course I also enjoyed the game's Miiverse community and seeing everyone's reactions to various things and getting to interact with people playing the game was a major factor for me. Although it never really occurred to me that people playing Frontier were playing it because they played other games in the series not because it was their first Fossil Fighters game. The best part of the story is easily when Nate gets his but bit. I actually saw this part in Japanese too but getting to see it in America was also very good. Seeing the twist that Nibbles was the Dreadasarus was also pretty damn good too. Of course I beat the game in 2 days and I did all the post game stuff in one sitting and I felt empty. Now I thought, "this can't be it. There has to be a reward for Ranking up every Vivisaur, Paleo Pal Vivisaur and every Super Paleo Pal Vivisaur. Maybe I'll get to use the Earth Dragon and Dreadraven." Now you're probably thinking to yourself "You're an idiot for assuming maxing out everything would unlock anything." And my answer is that the game wasn't even a week old when I set out to do this herculean task. I had basically an infinite amount of justification as to why I did this. I wasn't going to be all of the time I spent hyping this game up for nothing. I didn't just want to do to this, I HAD TO DO IT. 

So I began my long, tedious grind and I posted my struggles on Miiverse and Facebook (Really wished I knew about reddit back then.) And even some person on Miiverse even called me insane and they had every right to. Nonetheless, I soldiered on with the grind and kept Miiverse informed and after 2 months of grinding, I had done it. I had grinded every Vivisaur, Paleo Pal and Super Paleo Pal Vivisaur. So you're probably wondering what the reward is. Nothing, absolutely nothing, not even Stryker becoming your Paleo Pal (although Stryker does go unused as a Paleo Pal in the game's files.) So you're probably wondering did I regret it? Absolutely not. I enjoyed every second of that grind. It led to a lot of Miiverse posts and probably a lot of memes from said posts. Sometimes it's about the journey, not the destination or goal. Sometimes it's about the friends we make along the way. 

And for this reason alone, I can't legally hate Frontier and heck I still like Frontier over Champions simply because of this story. I mean I love Frontier even after my high wore off. What can I say? I just can't hate this game, I would be absolutely heartless if I did, even if Frontier did completely butcher Spinax, I still don't hate this game. This story is by far my favorite story in a video game. 

And that was my story with Fossil Fighters Frontier. 

[cpw-nyc]

The Lost Art of Having a Chat: What Happened When I Stopped Texting and Started Talking

We are more connected than ever, but we rarely seem to really speak to each other. So, I decided to try.

The Guardian  Rebecca Nicholson

‘People are almost always nicer on the phone than on text.’

Like most people I know, my Weekly Screen Report is obscene. Every Sunday, when the notification pops up to tell me the hours I have wasted, mostly texting, I think about all the things I could have done. Finished Middlemarch. Started Middlemarch. But as I have my phone in my hand, I scroll through Instagram instead. I send an article or a joke to a friend, a picture of the dog to the family WhatsApp, catch up on someone else’s night out. Recently, I clocked up – and I’m ashamed as I write this – six hours and 29 minutes of phone usage in a single day. I have had days where I’ve barely been awake that long. Messages is my most used app. I am talking all the time.

Like most people I know, my Weekly Screen Report is obscene. Every Sunday, when the notification pops up to tell me the hours I have wasted, mostly texting, I think about all the things I could have done. Finished Middlemarch. Started Middlemarch. But as I have my phone in my hand, I scroll through Instagram instead. I send an article or a joke to a friend, a picture of the dog to the family WhatsApp, catch up on someone else’s night out. Recently, I clocked up – and I’m ashamed as I write this – six hours and 29 minutes of phone usage in a single day. I have had days where I’ve barely been awake that long. Messages is my most used app. I am talking all the time.

 But I am rarely talking. For the chatterboxes among us, this is a time of upheaval. The long, spontaneous chat on the phone is going the way of the fax. The percentage of households with a landline that’s used to make calls is declining every year, from 83 percent in 2016 to 73 percent in 2019; the number of calls made on house phones plummeted by 17 percent in 2018 alone. We still use our mobiles to talk – in 2018, Ofcom surveyed mobile users for three months and found only 6 percent of them never made a single call – but we are not talking in any great depth. The same study found that over 80 percent of calls were shorter than five minutes, and the majority were under 90 seconds. I looked at my own recent call list: three minutes, two minutes, five minutes at a push. What can you say in that time? You can only make the point you’ve called to make. 

  I know many will welcome this as a kind of freedom. The very idea of talking on the phone invokes horror among those who claim to loathe it. There are thousands of memes explaining the many ways that talking, not texting, is rude, basically criminal. Calling is not time-efficient, ill-suited to the attention economy, where all eyes must be on several screens at once. You can send messages when you’re doing something else – watching The Irishman, or having a bath, or even talking to another person in real life. My dad recently marvelled at me being able to text with two thumbs; I marvel at teenagers being able to text while talking to you and not looking at the screen. Once technology gave us the ability to easily screen calls, we ran with it. We can ignore the relative who phones with a list of recent hometown tragedies, the work call we don’t feel like taking, our chattiest of friends who might not let us go for an hour. But what happens if you are that chatty friend?

Smart phones are smart enough to tell you that you’re using them too much. The dumb phone is making a comeback. I wondered if it was possible to ride this wave of the digital detox and make a deliberate effort to call instead of text. I wanted to see if it would change my relationships, particularly the ones I had grown lazy about maintaining. The plan was to stay off text and DMs for a solid month. I was fed up of paddling in the shallows. I wanted to swim. If I needed to speak to someone, I’d have to call them. 

 When the writer Elizabeth Wurtzel died in January, a piece she wrote in 2013, about her “one-night stand of a life”, began to circulate again, and it contained one paragraph that hit me particularly hard. “Look at how we live,” she wrote. “We communicate in text messages and emails; even those of us old enough to have lived in a world where landline was not a word because it’s all there was have fallen into this lazy substitute for human contact. I have.” 

 Who hasn’t? It should be easier than ever to talk. There are limitless outlets for publishing our thoughts, endless ways to begin a kind of conversation. Voice memos are popular, particularly among young people, but they’re a halfway house, still one-sided. We talk with one eye on efficiency, and it strangles what is so good about it – the spontaneity, the lack of ability to control what happens when two people are rambling on to each other. 

The psychologist Sherry Turkle has been studying the impact of computers on human psychology since the early 1980s, and in 2015 she published Reclaiming Conversation, in which she referred to “the edited life” that we live now. She spoke to teachers who observed that their students seemed to develop empathetic skills at a slower rate than they would be expected to. “Face-to-face conversation is the most human – and humanising – thing we do,” she wrote. “Fully present to one another, we learn to listen. It’s where we develop the capacity for empathy. It’s where we experience the joy of being heard, of being understood.”  

Are we losing that joy of being heard? Most offices are quieter places than they have ever been. The open-plan rooms I have worked in over the last decade or so are filled with people wearing headphones, silently tapping away on Gchat or Slack. Even workplaces that should invite conversation are making it easier to avoid talking at all. If you stay in a budget hotel, you can check yourself in and out. If you scan your onions on the supermarket’s self- service checkout, you don’t need to chat about what you’re planning to do with them. When it was common enough to be considered a problem, making a phone call on public transport used to be frowned upon. In the early 00s, Dom Joly built a TV career out of shouting “Hello!” into an oversized mobile in public places. Train carriages are now full of heads bowed, illuminated by blue light. A few years ago the Daily Mash ran a much-shared satirical news story: “A northern man has left a trail of terror across London by attempting to interact socially with everyone he meets.” And even in the north, screens have begun to dominate. Quiet carriages are becoming redundant. We are making ourselves quiet.

 In 2014, someone set up a family WhatsApp group. Before then, I spoke to my family on the phone all the time. Now, we spend more time in touch with each other than ever before, yet I miss them. It’s a noticeboard, more than a conversation. The person I still speak to most often, and for longest, is my nan, who is 83. She has a mobile, but doesn’t text. The other day I phoned to see how she was, and she told me a long story about how she was never supposed to have the name that she has, but there were 23 pubs in the village she was born in, and her father stopped in at most of them on the way to register her birth. By the time he got to the clerk, he’d forgotten what he’d been told to call her, so he named her after the clerk instead.

Verbal conversations are unpredictable and unwieldy in a way that those written down are not, because when we type or tap, we are in control, of our side, at least. This ruthless chat efficiency has excised the flab but, I realise, I love the flab. It’s where the excitement happens. I wanted to revive those conversations with everyone. So in my month of no texts, the WhatsApp group would be the first thing to go. I went to delete the app, pressed my finger on the screen, let it wobble – and then I stopped. There was a video of my niece dancing in front of the TV that I wanted to show my partner and I thought, I can just look at the photos and videos, every now and then. Can’t I?                    

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-lost-art-of-having-a-chat-what-happened-when-i-stopped-texting-and-started-talking?utm_source=pocket-newtab

[simptasia]

lost characters based solely on how i portray them in my text post memes

jack: constantly crying and/or screaming. no emotional stability. no social skills. terrible bedside manner. endearingly bland. into powerful women. loves the red sox... a lot. daddy issues. doesn’t believe in himself. has shitty tattoos. being crushed under the weight of everybody’s expectations. more or less hot. he is not cool at all. repressed attraction to guys. chronic hero syndrome. adorably embarrassing as a dad. passionately and violently overreacts to the mere concept of people believing in things. mansplains but in a non malicious way because he is literally that oblivious. gets into fights a lot. dissociates in mirrors. gets injured a lot but doesn’t wanna make a fuss. thinking about caves

kate: desperate need to protect women. bi. is frustrated by jack and sawyer’s personalities but wants to fuck them oh so much. rowdy. feminist. biceps. will call you out. is love with claire and jack and sun and- she has a lot of love to give. she can be ur angel or ur devil. exasperated. doesn’t understand astrology but she’s trying. she’s the slytherin friend every hufflepuff needs. uses guns. doesn’t know how to cook. go to relationship advice is “dump him” or “suck his dick”.  just because you put things in her vagina doesn’t mean you know her. gemini

hurley: sad clown. haha laughter! hiding real pain! has debilitating mental illness. he’s doing his best to stay positive. virgin. genuinely kind soul. overwhelmed by food. awkward around girls he likes. much smarter and wiser than anybody thinks, including himself. a special boy who we all love. says dude a lot. the only valid rich person ever. doesn’t like himself. sees dead people. kinda silly. also he’s fat (but i don’t joke about it in a cruel way)

sawyer: compulsive need to nickname people. from the south. bewildered by charlie’s english slang. covering up vulnerability with jokes and being mean. loves juliet. is an asshole but a loveable asshole (this varies, mostly he’s an asshole). conventionally attractive to the point of boring. got a Thing going on with miles. can’t stand daniel being smart around him. babies freak him out. treats animals poorly

locke: very supportive and new agey type. i’ve made two jokes about him encouraging people to jack off, that wasn’t on purpose but Okay. he doesn’t know what its like to have friends. he says Deep Sounding but odd things. he’s super duper into nature. he suffers. he’s very forgiving of ben to the point of absurdity and he desperately wants ben to love and fuck him. or maybe they are fucking. Who Knows. he loves knifes

sayid: sexy, suffering shannon fucker. he doesn’t respect boone. his life is an endless parade of misery culminating in going on autopilot. respects women

jin: he has no idea what’s going on and his life revolves around sun

sun: beautiful. perfect. very passionate about gardening

claire: bi. frequently ignored. cutesy and sweet. super into astrology and new age stuff. her cheery demeanour can only hold on so long before she loses it. kinda dumb. has baby. vanilla, at least for now. loves charlie but is kinda frustrated by him. goes feral and “kitten thinks of murder all day” sums it up

charlie: that he needs attention and validation to survive would be a gross understatement. bi. trans. punk. stupid. english. really horny and slutty. adores music more than anything. drug addict (again, i refuse to be cruel). severe jealousy issues. inferiority superiority complex. hates himself but will get offended if you hate him. can’t take any form of criticism. is bewildered by sawyer’s american-isms. bit of a madonna whore complex. smol but will go the fuck off like a terrier nipping at ya heels. catholic and riddled with catholic guilt. goofy and obnoxious and he knows it. passive aggressive. terrified of bees. nice ass. mood swings. did i mention he’s short? anyway here’s wonderwall

ben: ugly. just plain terrible. beaten and bruised. seething with rage and pain on the inside. virgin. liar. just causes problems on purpose. resembles a lemur or rat, rodents in general. loves bunnies. doesn’t think sex is real. just a really bad idea for him to be around juliet. has no friends. doesn’t care about other people. says creepy shit just because. he knows he’s a terrible person. killed people. the friend nobody likes and a general nuisance to the other characters

(also my literal first text post meme about ben was a joke about him eating his parents??? 2014 sapphire, i wanna talk...)

juliet: mom friend. seems very calm but she’s screaming on the inside. basically she’s the This Is Fine meme. depressed. has big tits. low-key kinky. feminist in a very gentle way. has no ill will towards kate and will only fight her for fun. concerned for daniel’s well being. has no chemistry with jack. loves sawyer. flat measured calm way of speaking. she’s breaking apart at the seams but will offer you a nice glass of water :)))

michael: has a son..... uh...... enjoys minecraft?

(i’m sorry)

desmond: scottish. drinks. easily and constantly confused. magic psychic time powers, like visions and electromagnetic dimensional stuff. easily angered. fucked off by the concept of time and destiny in general. hhhhhhhot

smokey: Hello Fellow Humans I Promise This Is My Own Skin Haha

miles: bi. aro. loves money (trying to fill the hole in his heart with money and things). emo/punk. pretends not to care but he really does care. thinks emotions and romance are dumb but of course is emotional... and kinda wants love. but not that he LIKES you or anything. exasperated. thinks everybody else is weird. kinda slutty or at least trying to be. masochist and into BDSM. mean to daniel for no reason. daddy issues. resting bitch face. jaded, bitter and salty. responds to romantic things dan or char say with vulgar or mocking comments. grew up poor. can hear dead people. trying too hard to be edgy. deadpan snarker. Fuck Off I’m Not Sad Don’t Look At Me [cries only around the audience and his mom]

walt: becoming older than 10 was when things went downhill for him

shannon: seems vapid but is more than that. deeply insecure. feels she can’t do anything right. constantly put down as worthless by other people. yeah she’s sad but she Looks Great. wants sayid to pound her (mood)

(gee, that was dark)

richard: very old and ageless. sees ben as a son figure. really not holding it together. seems smart but he has no fucking idea whats going on. cult mindset. quips curtly back at miles’ vulgar jokes. in love with miles based on very little interaction. misses his dead wife. has a cute giggle. is also hot. overwhelmed and just wants to go into the jungle and scream

frank: doesn’t understand what anybody is talking about. the only normal person here. doesn’t understand these kids today with their weird kinks. just wants to sleep. pilot. bit of a conspiracy theorist

boone: bi. stupid. soaked in blood a lot.  (L I T E R A L L Y all of my boone jokes are about him being dumb and bi and horribly injured and combos of those. i haven’t even made any incest jokes! what the actual fuck)

ana lucia: “[with tears in her eyes] DO U WANNA FIGHT??”. highly volatile. lesbian. bros with jack but will roast him. angery, sad and underloved

daniel: bi, agender, neurodivergent, just, just especially brain weird. The Scientist trope but kind of a shitty scientist. smart. in love with charlotte. in love with desmond. likes rats a lot. talks weird and soft spoken. withdrawn and polite but with bursts of bitterness. his mom won’t let him live the live he wants to live. time travel weirdness. loves music. gifted kid burn out. has a mental and emotional collapse. thinks a hydrogen bomb will solve all his problems. skinny. touches people a lot. he’s not okay. romantic. overwhelmed. memory problems. his lack of life experience and softness is used to contrast miles. takes some statements literally. pretty vanilla (for now) and doesn’t know what certain kinks are. likes that charlotte is Tough & Rowdy. doesn’t swear much. bad hair. was unhinged in college. has radiation poisoning

libby: neurodivergent and in love with hurley

eko: yeah... i’ve legit only used him for jokes where charlie says something EXTREMELY vulgar and eko says “go to church”

charlotte: bi, loud, passionate, beautiful, angery, knows All The Languages, huge nerd, loves daniel and thinks he’s a Snack, outspoken feminist, archaeologist/anthropologist and wants to explore some fucking ruins, The Lost Lenore trope, loves chocolate, exasperated, great smile, subtly insecure, doesn’t get that she could just tell daniel how she feels, has had many indiana jones like adventures (off screen, of course), for example: crashing her dirtbike into all 7 wonders of the world

danielle: french and unhinged, has seen some shit

alex: just a young lady with no chill

jacob: suffers from terminal apathy. has little understand of human behaviour. doesn’t care about people. he just plain sucks. has no endearing qualities. causes many problems. beats the shit outta richard. doesn’t like technology. so removed from humanity that he’s a touch uncanny valley

christian, eloise, charles and anthony jokes each have their own kind of flavours but fuck it, i’ll sum them all up as: contemptuous cunts who deserve to die

aaron: just a baby boy. does baby things. has like 5 parents

vincent: a dog. a good boy. does he know more than he lets on? is he mysterious? no, he is just a dog

[starjota]

Cloak Criticism. Don’t like? Don’t read. (As they said in the good ol’ 2010’s.)

I don’t like Cloak. There’s a lot of things about that “brand” that irks me. I’ll just bullet point them out here. And also, I watch Mark’s content heavily but not Jacksepticeye’s, so I’ll mostly be mentioning Mark here.

• First and foremost, it’s rediculously expensive for designs that just aren’t imo very successful. Will elaborate later.

• My biggest problem with Cloak is that Mark stated that this was not merch, yet he consistantly wears his own brand in most videos he makes now, which would kinda actually make Cloak indirect(?) Markiplier merch, since... y’know.. “hey look! It’s that shirt Mark keeps wearing in his videos! If I wear that, people will know I’m a Markiplier fan!” This irks me the most out of everything, cause it’s blatantly merch despite claims that it isn’t. Popular Youtubers usually wear their own merch in their videos to promote it. This is the same thing, just with a “C” instead of an “M” for Markiplier.

• Back on the designs. They aren’t anything new or innovative, just the same thinly lined “C” (for the most part) and some minimalist designs that don’t personally strike me as well.... creative. I will admit that maybe one or two designs made me go “oh! Nice.” but mostly.... I mean I just look at the minimal designs and go “eh. not worth $50-80+”. It really isn’t worth that much. I’ve seen videos of people finding the same material online that the clothes are made out of for cheaper prices. A “C” is not worth that much. (Also... not to mention that those two REALLY don’t need the money. Idk why popular youtubers make merch redicuously expensive.)

• The logo also just isn’t something recognizable enough. If I’m paying $80 for a hoodie, then I want it to be more than just a little “C.” But that’s just me.

• Pandering. As mentioned above, it really irks me that they try to act like it isn’t merch, because they’re clearly pandering to both Mark and Jack’s fanbases. This is heavily supported by the fact that the newest collection seems to be FNAF (which isn’t even popular anymore) inspired, which is a series that Mark got really popular from. This also just kinda shows how out of touch whoever was in charge of that is... as most people don’t care/meme FNAF now-a-days for how bland and repetitive the series has gotten. Aka, Cloak trying to make a collection(?) out of FNAF is like when tv commercials have a “Like a boss” meme in them. Like... how are you doing, fellow teens?

> (Side rant, but I also disapprove of how Mark keeps hyping up FNAF games. Again, it’s really not a popular thing anymore. From what I’ve seen, most people just meme it like Undertale, and criticize the story.)

Anyway, the point is that this whole brand comes off as pandering to me. Even ignoring all the themes they’ve done, the basic purpose of the brand is supposedly meant to clothe “gamers”. Which... tbh... I also think is just talk, since again, most of the themes have just been kinda aimed toward the youtubers’ fanbases rather than “gamers” (I hate that word) in general.

Tl:dr I think the brand is Markiplier/Jacksepticeye merch thats “hidden in plain sight” aka disguised as a supposed brand that has nothing to do with them YET does anyway.

EDIT: A good summary of my argument: /All I can see are the creators behind the clothes being the appeal of the brand, rather than the clothes being the appeal of the brand./

One last thing, any empty arguments/namecalling will not be responded to. Mark and Sean are people just like you and me, and I am allowed to have opinions that don’t lean in their favor even if they have millions of subs. I’ve been watching Mark since 2014, and while I like the guy, I do have issues with him, this being one of them.

[shirlleycoyle]

The Man Who Helped Turn 4chan Into the Internet’s Racist Engine

In two decades, 4chan has evolved from a message board where people talked about anime to a casually racist but influential creation engine of internet culture, and now into a generator of far-right propaganda, a place where dangerous conspiracy theories originate, and an amplifier of online bigotry. This evolution, according to 4chan moderators who spoke to Motherboard and leaked chat logs, is in large part because of an anonymous administrator who used moderation enforcement, or lack thereof, to allow the influential website to become a crucial arm of the far-right.

4chan attracted hordes of disaffected young men who trolled various other websites, creating popular memes (many of them racist or sexist) and originating a great deal of internet culture. In recent years, however, 4chan has evolved into something actively sinister: a hive of bigotry, threats of violence, and far right ideology. This rapid and severe descent wasn’t driven solely by the mass action of disgruntled young men. 

One current and three former 4chan moderators believe the process was aided along by the de facto administrator of the site, a far right supporter with the handle “RapeApe” who helped turn the site into a meme factory for extreme politics. Motherboard agreed to let the janitors speak anonymously because they said they signed non-disclosure agreements with 4chan.

Because of 4chan’s often wildly offensive content, many assume that the site is completely unmoderated. But 4chan has a corps of volunteers, called “janitors,” “mods,” or “jannies,” whose job it is—theoretically—to make sure that content on the site abides by the rules. (4chan draws a distinction between more senior “moderators,” who are responsible for all boards, and “janitors,” who patrol one or two; we refer to them interchangeably because janitors also moderate discussion.) The janitors we spoke to and a major trove of leaked chat logs from the janitors’ private communications channel tell the story of RapeApe’s rise from junior janny to someone who could decide what kind of content was allowed on the site and where, shaping 4chan into the hateful, radicalizing online community it's known for today.

Started in 2003 by Christopher Poole, 4chan was initially a place for people to discuss anime. Since its founding, the site has expanded to include discussion boards on everything from travel to fitness to video games to origami. It now claims around 22 million visitors a month. Some parts of it are also recruiting grounds for Neo-Nazi groups.

4chan’s more recent extremist element can be traced back to an infamous board: “politically incorrect,” which is listed as "/pol/" on the site. Ostensibly devoted to discussing politics, /pol/ threads often involve users calling each other racist terms, arguing for the genocide of whole nations or ethnicities, or debating about whether different concepts are “degenerate”—a Nazi term of art for material (or people) that ought to be purged. Posters there celebrate and lionize some of the most notorious mass murderers of the last decade, from Anders Breivik to Dylann Roof.

The forum has popularized iconography like Pepe the Frog, a cartoon character reappropriated by some as a racist symbol of the far right that President Trump’s son has tweeted images of. According to academic researchers, 4chan's /pol/ has become one of the most prodigious factories for content on the internet. And the boundaries of its influence spread far beyond the borders of 4chan itself, affecting everything from YouTube to Twitter to mainstream Republican politics.

The politically incorrect board wasn’t always this bad. In fact, former 4chan moderators told Motherboard that /pol/ wasn’t added to the site until 2011, eight years after the site started. For the first few years of its existence, according to two former janitors, Poole intended the /pol/ board to siphon off the racism from other areas of the site so that other users could enjoy their own, board-specific pursuits. 

“It was started as a containment board,” one former moderator told me about /pol/. According to chat logs and former moderators, in its early days, moderators at 4chan removed racist posts and users from other boards while ignoring them within one board, “random” (/b/, which was supposed to be a kind of “no rules, anything goes” space. /b/ is where many early memes were born, and is where the hacktivist group Anonymous came from). Such posts also sometimes slipped by on the /pol/ board as well, even though they technically violated the rules there. “Enforcement was more active in the past,” a former moderator said. In contrast to its current far right political climate, “4chan skewed extremely progressive when it first started,” according to the mod, although the use of bigoted and misogynistic language was widespread even then.

But 4chan has changed in recent years. Several studies of the site have shown that 4chan has become more racist, bigoted, and toxic in recent years—especially the /pol/ board. Ideologies propagated on /pol/ have become linked with violence and domestic terrorism. 4chan janitors' main job is to clean up and remove child pornography, lest 4chan draw the wrath of federal authorities, but they also shape the discourse there by setting the limits of acceptable discussion. If a thread goes off-topic or starts to get too racist, the janitors have the responsibility for asking mods to delete it and potentially issue bans against specific users.

According to leaked logs and the 4chan janitors who spoke with Motherboard, the manager of 4chan’s janitors is RapeApe. Relatively little is known about him, even by the janitors who spoke with us and worked for him, although he has been supervising 4chan’s day-to-day operations for around a decade. 

In 2015, Poole announced that he had decided to sell 4chan to a Japanese businessman named Hiroyuki Nishimura. Nishimura previously owned 2chan, a Japanese website which inspired 4chan. Janitors who spoke with Motherboard described Nishimura as being almost completely hands off, leaving moderation of the site primarily to RapeApe. 

“[RapeApe] basically fulfills the role of an administrator considering Hiroyuki [Nishimura], the actual admin, doesn't touch the site,” a current janitor told me. Poole and Nishimura did not respond to repeated requests for comment. RapeApe responded by sending an email that contained only a single link to a video of naked muscular men dancing.

Even prior to the site’s change in ownership, RapeApe functioned as the primary judge of what constituted acceptable content on the site, as well as the person who educated the staff on what did and didn’t cross the line. As Gamergate became a subject on the site in 2014, 4chan users began harassing women in the video game industry due to what they perceived as progressive bias in reporting on games. Eventually, RapeApe tried to stop 4chan’s campaign of intimidation. “[Gamergate] is no longer allowed on the video game boards. So said [RapeApe],” one janitor informed another in the leaked chats. When other jannies protested, RapeApe rapidly shut them down: “This isn’t a democracy,” RapeApe wrote. “Gamergate has overstayed its welcome. It is starting to cause a massive burden for moderation.” 

WASHINGTON, DC – AUGUST 12: Counterprotestors to the Unite the Right 2 rally burn a Kekistan flag, a white nationalist symbol, in the middle of 15th St. NW near the White House on August 12, 2018 in Washington, DC. Image: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images

In 2015, an anonymous former moderator leaked an extensive chat history of the janitors from 2012-2015 to a file-sharing service. One of the former janitors included in the chats confirmed their authenticity. According to a brief message posted with the logs, the leaker was unhappy with “the direction of the site.” From those leaked logs and the current and former janitors who spoke with Motherboard, RapeApe claims to be a military veteran who served in Afghanistan as well as a voracious reader, interested in video games, guns, and Warhammer: 40,000. He often complained about his family impeding his work and was afraid they would walk in on him looking at questionable or pornographic posts as he was moderating.

According to the janitor and chat logs (as well as a deleted Twitter account two staff members confirmed was his), RapeApe is also politically conservative and racist. One former janitor described him as “a typical right winger and /pol/ dude.” His Twitter account featured him responding approvingly to Tucker Carlson clips, urging another user to buy an AR-15 rifle for self-defense, wondering whether the state would force people to be homosexual and suggesting that Twitter was “staffed by leftists” who were deleting conservative users’ accounts. In conversations with other janitors in the leaked chats, he found humor in horrifying news about riots, shootings, and the Ebola epidemic—especially when that news involved Black people dying.

But RapeApe isn’t just a typical /pol/ user who happens to run the site. According to three current and former staff members, RapeApe shaped 4chan into a reflection of his own political beliefs. “RapeApe has an agenda: he wants /pol/ to have influence on the rest of the site and [its] politics,” a current janitor said.

Alone, RapeApe couldn’t steer 4chan to the far right. But he supervises a staff of dozens of volunteers who control discourse on the boards. According to the leaked chats and janitors who spoke with Motherboard, he instructed janitors on how to handle the more bigoted content on 4chan—and dismissed them if they deleted content he likes. He took a special interest in the /pol/ board, telling a novice janitor in the chat logs to “treat /pol/ with kid gloves. So long as they obey the rules, they are allowed to support whatever abominable political positions they want.”

4chan has an extensive list of rules posted on the site and each board has its own smaller set of edicts. A little-known and rarely enforced 4chan regulation, Global Rule #3, prohibits racist content on the site. But the leaked chat logs show many incidents of moderators and janitors discussing when racism got severe enough that it ought to be banned. Indeed, RapeApe himself deleted at least one thread for violating Rule #3 early on in his 4chan career, before he became a manager.

Once he became head moderator, RapeApe began to post reminders that moderators ought to be as hands-off as possible. In the leaked logs and according to current and former janitors, RapeApe pushed his staff into a position where almost no content could run afoul of the rule against racism. Instructing the janitors, RapeApe wrote, “And remember that with racism we're targeting the intent of the poster and not the words themselves.” One current janitor told me that in practice, within 4chan’s warped, irony-poisoned culture, this meant there was no way to ban a user for even the most flagrant, bigoted language or images. They could always claim that the intent wasn’t racist, even if the content unquestionably was. 

"The plausible deniability excuse for racism—I was just joking, I was just trolling—is bullshit," Whitney Phillips, an Assistant Professor of Communication and Rhetorical Studies at Syracuse University and author of This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things: Mapping the Relationship Between Online Trolling and Mainstream Culture, told Motherboard. "Intent can matter when thinking about the things people say, but it matters very little when considering consequences. Whether or not someone says a racist thing with hate in their heart, they're still saying a racist thing and that still contributes to dehumanization and the normalization of harm. Anyway, the very criterion is absurd, as you can't assess what's in someone's heart just by looking at the things they post, especially to a place like 4chan. The only reasonable conclusion is that, whatever might have been written in the site rules, this moderator ensured that there was no policy against racism. Instead it became a pro-racism policy."

The leaked chat logs show that RapeApe didn't want /pol/ to be totally unmoderated, despite allowing racist content. He was concerned with making sure 4chan wasn’t hosting illegal material. “Mostly I just want to keep the site legal,” he wrote to the staff in one message in the leaked chats. He posted frequent reminders to the channel to “take it easy” and ignore, rather than ban, racist content. In the leaked chats, RapeApe quotes judicial decisions on whether photos depicting animal abuse are illegal, concluding that they only rise to that level if the abuse is sexual in nature. In another case, he reluctantly told a janitor to delete some revenge porn, though not without belittling laws against it.

Nishimura’s purchase of the site in 2016 and RapeApe’s ascension to de facto administrator of 4chan coincides with an incredible 40 percent spike in the volume of racist and violent language on /pol/. Other, comparable sites and communication channels also pushed towards extreme conservatism independently of 4chan, so RapeApe and /pol/ certainly aren’t the only reasons why 4chan slid towards the far right. Some experts credited 4chan’s evolution to Donald Trump’s overtly-racist political campaign, others to an influx of new users, and still others to active interference and recruiting of 4channers by Neo-Nazi elements.

While other websites also host increasing amounts of violent and bigoted language, 4chan is an outlier even compared to other internet gathering places filled with similar ideologies. A VICE News analysis found that there was more hate speech on /pol/ than in the comments on one overtly Neo-Nazi site, the Daily Stormer. Mass murderers have posted manifestos on 4chan. White nationalists have used the site to coordinate protests. 

When one Neo-Nazi group polled their supporters to discover how they came to the movement, /pol/ was tied for the most common gateway. Gab, another far right hotbed, contains about half the rate of hate speech as /pol/, and 4chan has 20 times more users. The only popular websites more toxic than 4chan are its much smaller offspring sites, like 8chan, now 8kun.

According to one current and three former janitors, RapeApe’s push for a hands-off approach combined with his preference for janitors who shared his political beliefs has shifted the website further into the extremes of bigotry and threats of violence in which it now operates. “He wants 4chan to be more like /pol/,” said one former janitor.

Over time, /pol/ has come to dominate the public perception of 4chan, overshadowing the quieter, less vile topic areas which make up much of the activity on the site. /pol/ is regularly the most active board on the site, but even so, it makes up a small portion of the total posts. Under RapeApe’s management, however, /pol/’s bigotry has metastasized. 

“[W]hen RapeApe took over fully after [Poole] left, he put in a ‘laissez-faire’ policy of moderation, knowing exactly what would happen, that right wing ideas would dominate the site thanks to /pol/ spilling over onto other boards,” said a current janitor.

The /pol/ forum often hosts threads in which users talk about flooding other, unrelated boards with racial slurs and bigoted imagery. These “raids” expose users who were on 4chan to discuss other subjects to its unconventional, far-right politics. Posters who logged on to the site to chat about sports or browse pornography could find themselves learning about Neo-Nazi ideology instead. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University and expert on far-right extremism, describes this phenomenon as “gateway content.” Simply by exposing people to hate speech, psychologists have found that it’s possible to desensitize them to further hate speech and dehumanize outgroups. By raiding other boards and giving users a taste of their ideology, /pol/ diehards hoped to bring them into their fold.

In one incident from the chat logs, when a moderator tried to clean up such an “invasion” of the science board, RapeApe wasn’t having it. Rather than delete the thread a janitor described as planning a raid, RapeApe argued that they weren’t doing anything against the rules. “Are they actually vandalising or defacing anything, or harassing people?” RapeApe added: “Because if they're just posting things, that's not really a raid.” 

Current and former janitors say that one moderator named Modcat was fired for disagreeing withRapeApe's laissez-faire moderation policy. 

“Some jannies got in trouble for overusing [global rule 3, against racism],” said one former janitor. 

An analysis of the archives of the anime board (/a/) Modcat used to patrol, derived by scraping its past threads, shows that Modcat’s departure and replacement with another janitor had consequences on the language used there. Motherboard used a 4chan archive and wrote a program to scrape data from the board over the last five years, counting the number of instances of common hate speech terms against Black, Latino, Jewish, and LGBTQ people each day, as well as Neo-Nazi slogans. This program scraped text only and so did not include instances of speech within images, a common medium of communication on 4chan. Immediately after his departure, according to former moderators, /pol/ users raided the board, spamming Neo-Nazi slogans like “sieg heil” and “heil Hitler” in about one in every 50 posts. (Use of these terms had been negligible before Modcat left.) Even after the initial raid on /a/ subsided, there were long-term effects on the forum. During Modcat's brief tenure, the anime board had hate speech in only about one in every 50 posts overall. Since his departure, that has risen to about one in every 30 posts.

Leaked chat logs demonstrate other instances of seemingly politically-motivated firings. Not long after a janitor named yetsturdy argued that the use of terms like the n-word and stereotyped depictions of Jews violated 4chan’s rules, they were fired. (Leaked chat logs show janitors suggesting that his firing was due to arguing with another janitor). A janitor who described himself as a “lefty” in leaked logs was let go ostensibly for losing his anonymity, although another 4chan staff member with far right politics is open about his identity on Twitter and publishes newspaper editorials under his real name.

Others in the leaked janitor chats noticed the firings of their colleagues. One even alluded to RapeApe’s apparent agenda, asking him directly: “with all these janitors quitting/getting fired, is… is /pol/ winning?” (In the chat, RapeApe quickly denied that it had anything to do with /pol/’s political agenda, saying that the fired janitors had violated clear rules.)

Five years later, the politically incorrect board’s conflict with the rest of 4chan has been settled: /pol/ won. After years of declining volume both there and on the site in general, /pol/’s activity (in terms of the number of users and posts) is on the rise once again, according to a site that tracks 4chan. Jumping upwards in May 2020, /pol/ boasted the highest number of posts per day since election day in 2016, when ecstatic users celebrated Trump’s victory by calling for a second Holocaust and harassing journalists.

/pol/’s surging popularity coincides with a boost for the rest of the site as well. According to SimilarWeb, a company that tracks web traffic, 4chan has risen to become one of the top 400 sites in the United States in terms of engagement and visits. The domain now rivals or exceeds major news sites in terms of the number of visitors: it gets more traffic than abcnews.com, for example.

And the /pol/ channel continues to create massive amounts of right-wing content. RapeApe’s “meme factory,” as he described /pol/ in one leaked chat log, is chugging along smoothly. “[RapeApe has] basically fulfilled his intentions,” a current janitor told me. “[4chan] exists as a fully developed political tool used for propagating memes and propaganda.” 4chan’s content sometimes spreads beyond its esoteric corner of the internet into the mainstream discourse, using a well-established pipeline running through Reddit and Twitter into more popular channels.

Journalists have chronicled the outsized influence 4chan has had on our culture and created many theories to explain its slide into racist extremism, connections to the rise of Donald Trump, and a surge in white nationalist movements around the world. Disaffected young men across the globe have participated in creating a hateful melting pot of conspiracy theories, bigotry, and hate speech with a massive, global audience.

We can’t know exactly how much impact the rhetoric on the site had on the world or the full extent of its influence on the broader political landscape. But we can dispel some of the mystery about how 4chan became filled with hate. Like every other platform, 4chan’s evolution stems in part from the choices made by its administrators about what speech is acceptable and what is not. Facebook allowed Holocaust denial content until Mark Zuckerberg decided not to; Reddit allowed its Donald Trump-focused subreddit to popularize 4chan’s content until it shut it down. 4chan became the dangerous cesspool we know today because of the choices of a site administrator who wanted to amplify far right content and an owner who doesn’t care.

The internet is one of the most powerful technologies the world has ever known, but why that power so often results in dehumanizing and hurting people is not as mysterious as we sometimes assume. It is the direct result of the choices people with control over internet platforms make.

The Man Who Helped Turn 4chan Into the Internet’s Racist Engine syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[arlingtonpark]

2020 Election Night Survival Guide

Hey, everyone!

It’s Halloween night, but the scariest night of the year is going to be in a few days on Election Day.

Since everyone’s wetting themselves over this, here’s a quick survival guide for Election Night.

Part I. The State of Play

In the United States, political authority is shared between three institutions: the President, the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Elections for all three will be occurring on Election Night 2020.

The President is elected by the Electoral College. Each state is given seats in the College based on the size of their Congressional delegation.

Candidates for President put forth a slate of candidates to represent their state in the College, which voters choose by popular vote.

This system was chosen because a national popular vote was not possible at the time. 

As of now, Joe Biden is almost certainly going to win the election. He is polling ahead in every state Barack Obama won in 2012 except Ohio and Iowa, and is liable to win Arizona and maybe even Georgia. This will give him a comfortable victory. 

The Senate is composed of two Senators for every state. One third of the body elected every two years for a total term of 6 years for any one Senator. 

The current crop of Senators was last elected in 2014, a very good year for Republicans. 

It was not expected, though, that Democrats could undo those gains since they were made by Republicans wiping out Democrats in Louisiana and Arkansas, and other similar states.

Democrats used to have a strong presence in those states, but that presence was wiped out in the Obama years.

Republicans didn’t make those gains in swing states, but instead in state’s whose voters switched allegiances. It was hard to see Dems making a comeback.

A lot has changed though.

States like Arizona, Texas, Georgia, South Carolina, and even Kansas are competitive now. This was unthinkable in 2014.

Dems have made gains of their own in these states among suburban voters. These people are generally white collar workers who are better educated than average. And they are repulsed by Trump’s basic indecency.

The Dems are now widely expected to win a majority of the Senate -- possibly even a comfortable majority.

The House is composed of 435 Representatives who’re elected every two years. 

The dynamics are the same as the Senate: Dems are gaining in the suburbs, and Republicans are gaining among blue collar workers. 

The Dems took over the House in 2018 and they’re expected to increase that majority by 10 seats or so. 

Part II How to Handle Election Night

Assuming you want to watch the election returns come in live, here’s how to best do it.

Firstly, do not watch the TV news coverage before the actual vote counting starts. 

It’s all drivel and you’ll annihilate your brain watching it.

It’ll mostly be padding to fill up time and make it seem like a lot is happening when not much is.

As well as pundits trying to divine the meaning of this election before it’s actually happened.

And lots of bemoaning of how we can’t all just get along. With no one even trying to think of solutions. 

Don’t waste your time.

You should use the time before the polls close to get up to speed on what the candidates stand for, and how various scenarios might affect you.

To the extent you can stomach such speculation.

Vox is a great news source with a great series of articles on Biden’s platform.

Here.

President Trump...he has no platform.

Literally.

It’s just a copy-paste of the 2016 one. 

Of course, a lot depends on the congressional elections, and I’m not going to get into the nitty-gritty of that here.

There are elections for various governorships up, but you can ignore them, unless it’s your governor up for election. 

The governor of any state that isn’t yours only matter if they’re likely to run for President in a few years. 

There are also some high profile local elections going on.

To varying extents, Dems are hoping to expand their power in Arizona, Michigan, Texas, and North Carolina.

Republicans are hoping to do the same in Wisconsin.

Arizona, South Dakota, New Jersey, and Montana are holding referenda to legalize marijuana.

Oregon will be voting on legalizing mushrooms and decriminalizing all other drugs. 

California has a number of referenda on the ballot regarding rent control, criminal justice, and labor laws.

Florida will be voting to raise the minimum wage to $15, potentially the ninth state to do so.

In any event, feel free to make a party of it.

Order a pizza, have snacks out, beer. Whatever you want. I’d urge you to invite friends over, but, you know...

You can turn the TV news on at 6pm if you like, but I recommend you leave it on in the background and not pay close attention until 8pm. 

I also recommend choosing which network to watch based solely on which one has the most gimmicky, over the top presentation. 

TV news has zero value to you aside from providing real time, unprocessed information. 

Leave the game play analysis to the internet.

Have a laptop open if you have one. Otherwise have a computer handy.

I recommend having three tabs open.

One for the New York Times’ live election night interactive. You know those touch screen displays the networks have their election nerds using to show the state of the race as votes are counted?

The NYT’s interactive is that, but all to yourself.

I also recommend reading the accompanying article explaining how the interactive works. It’s pretty cool what programmers can do these days. 

Lots of news sites will have online interactives, though. Choose whatever you like, but the NYT’s is generally the best. 

The second tab is for Twitter. Twitter is the best place to be for real time analysis. I’ll have a twitter list available for you to use if you like.

The people on this list fall into one of three categories.

The first are the election nerds. These people are adeptly familiar with the United States’ political geography and can tell which side is winning before all the votes are counted.

The second are the pundits. 

Smart ones, mind you.

Political scientists and commentators. I made sure to get a mix of liberal, conservative, and moderate voices. Obviously they provide the commentary on the nerds’ analysis. 

The third and final are a couple of joke accounts for laughs. PixelatedBoat, originator of the milkshake duck meme and the Gorilla Channel hoax, is in there, as is President Nixon’s Twitter impersonator. 

The final tab is for a good quality liveblog. I recommend 538′s, but again, most news sites will have liveblogs going, it’s just that 538 usually has the best one. 

Lastly, as races get called, don’t be afraid to cheer or boo. Election day is pretty sterile, which is a shame because it used to be very rowdy and frenetic. By all means, be emotional.

You’re free to call it a night whenever you want, but there’s no point in carrying on past 1am, so I’d recommend stopping there.

There aren’t any exciting races on the west coast, and California is notoriously bad at vote counting, as they are at ALL things involving government, so the outcome of those races won’t be known for a while. 

Part III The Known Unknowns

Now comes the stuff everyone is panicking over.

Is this the end of democracy?

Eh, probably not.

In theory, Trump could successfully steal the election, but only if it’s a close race.

It’s not a close race.

There is no way for Trump to steal the election. Not through excluding mail ballots, not through the courts. There just isn’t one. 

The Supreme Court won’t help Trump unless they think they can get away with it, but the recent confirmation of Barrett to the Court has put them on notice, and that will restrict what they can do. 

Trump could contest the results by asking Congress to certify his slate of electors as legitimate over the electors the voters chose, but that’s not an issue if Dems control the House. 

That’s really it.

There’s no other way for Trump to win even if he loses the Electoral College.

Even recent buzz about late arriving mail votes not counting probably won’t amount to much.

Most of the people mailing their ballots in late are actually Republicans lol ^^.

Here are some issues to actually look out for:

Trump thugs policing polling places. Voter intimidation is illegal. If someone is intimidating you, report them. 

Hoax ballot stuffing. Don’t be surprised if people fake fraudulent voting to juice Trump’s claims of a rigged election. Treat such allegations with caution.

Violent unrest is unlikely to happen even a little bit, but I won’t be surprised if there are at least some isolated incidents.

While there is some risk, I actually think the danger is overhyped.

The likeliest outcome of this election has always, always been that Biden cakewalks to Inauguration Day. 

Even the talk about not knowing the winner on election night might have been all hype.

Florida, despite its reputation, is actually very good at counting ballots, and the winner of the state should be known on election night. 

A lot can be extrapolated from this, and some news sites might call the race just off of that. 

If who won Florida isn’t known on election night, then you can start panicking. 

Trump will definitely fume about if he loses, but if the outcome is clearly in Biden’s favor, it’ll just be hot air.

It shouldn’t surprise you to know that if Trump loses, he will make no effort to shepherd a economic bailout bill into law in the time between the election and his formal exit from office.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.

Also Trump. 

Trump himself has openly floated the idea of fleeing the country if he loses.

He’s over $200 million in debt and will have to sell most of his assets to pay it off. He also faces prosecution for various crimes he committed before and during his presidency.

If he does, he’ll probably try to brand himself a fallen hero in exile, and live off of his supporter’s Patreon donations or whatever. 

Oh, yeah, and the rallies. Trump is planning to keep holding his rallies even after the election, even if he loses, even as the plague is ravaging and the economy is in the toilet.

Don’t be surprised if his supporters are completely blind to the utter failure of leadership in that.

Let’s see, what else to cover...

I guess that just about covers it.

Have fun, kids!

[lovinmullen]

rules : 10 fandoms, 10 characters, 10 tags. start a new post and list 10 characters from 10 different fandoms!”

thank you so so much for the tag @3milesup :D 🥺

1.) band of brothers - donald malarkey (would happily simp over him any day, like.... look at him he’s gorgeous, lil golden boy who is hot AND cute (how’s that fair btw? spare looks sir. not now tom. not now) i also want to protect him at all costs because he’s a sweetheart (not that he needs it though he’s so strong but everyone can use some lovin once in a while) basically he’s peak best boy🥺💞💗💝💘💖

1.5.) the pacific - andrew “ack ack” haldand (i’m doing him as a 0.5 because they both fall under hbo war so i feel like some people may see it as a cop out but he’s my baby and he is too good for this world he deserves the mention. literally i am so proud of him and so tremendously grateful for him MY GOD)

2.) 9-1-1 - evan “buck” buckley (‘wHaTs a bAssOoN’. enough said. he’s baby your honour)

3.) it’s always sunny in philadelphia - ronald “mac” mcdonald aka my emotional support character along with don (i’m giving you this screencap because even without the context it SENDS ME. i don’t have a lot to say about him other than stan the dumbass character)

4.) dead poets society - todd anderson (HE IS THE DEFINITION OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT OKAY I AM SO PROUD OF HIM HE IS SO STRONG AND SO LOVELY AND I JUST *wraps him in the tightest hug*)

5.) pride (2014) - joe “bromley” cooper (IF YOU TAKE ANYTHING AWAY FROM THIS LET IT BE PRIDE IT IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE FILMS ON EARTH AND IT IS SO PHENOMENAL. also this was a hard call between joe and gethin but i went with joe purely because of ‘you know what jason? YOU’RE A DICK’ and the fact it’s spat with his posho accent? chefs kiss)

6.) handsome devil - conor masters (my liking of him is just pure projection to be honest. his conversation with dan sherry lives in my mind rent free and it isn’t even a good tenant, making mess for days !!!!)

7.) beautiful boy - david sheff (you guys are probably reading this and are like what?? but i thought seeing steve carell portray such an intensely sensitive character. a parent. a struggling parent. inching to understand but not knowing where to start. to see vulnerability in someone who i’ve only really seen portrayed as a meme was so refreshing and i thought he did a phenomenal job.)

8.) peaky blinders - ada shelby / thorne (god is a women who stood in the middle of a shoot out and told you to shut up. also pretty sure she was eva smith in an inscpector calls GCSE ENGLISH LIT STUDENTS RISE. also also “oi i’m a shelby too y’know, put my fucking film back on” THAT SHIT WAS HOT)

9.) boy meets world - shawn hunter (pure projection also he’s pretty and a dumbass #justmytype😍🤪🥵have this BTS because it gives me life)

10.) jojo rabbit - captain klenzendorf (OKAY LOOK I LOVE ROSIE SHE IS BABY AND I LOVE JOJO OUR CEO OF KICKING FASCISTS OUT OF WINDOWS but i’ve never gotten over the ending okay. how easily he gave up himself because he knows how much potential and life jojo has ahead of him, and how little he has because from where he’s standing the russians taking over isn’t much of an improvement)

gif credit: petercapaldi !!!

i tag (i hope it’s okay that i’m tagging you i just think you’re neat !!! feel free to ignore this) : @malarkeys-beanie @shiftydpowers and @speirtons along with anyone else who wants to do it !!! (bold of you to assume i’m ballsey enough to tag 10 people)

[translationandbetrayals]

Japan´s weird relationship with childhood.

(no pictures in this post because ew)

Ever since I started watching anime I have been seeing a common trend, in almost every anime or manga there was a scene at least in which underage characters were put in awkwardly suggestive situations, for the sake of a comedy segment or just for the sake of it being there. When I was younger, I didn’t think much of those types of scenes, but now that I’m older they make me kind of uncomfortable.

And the truth is that this type of content is really common, and even more explicit content that plainly falls into the child porn category, and it looks like no one has a problem with it. Japanese media, or Asian media in general, then to be much relaxed about topics like pedophilia, my real question is why is that type of content so blatantly put in display like that.

And before continuing I like to make clear that this is not about characters that look and behave like adults but are actually teenagers, nor is it about characters that are teenagers but use clothes “too mature for their age”, it isn’t even about fans ageing up characters, this is about the characters that in the canon are or look like children and that are placed in lewd situations by the authors.

It has become so common that it has been normalize, as it seems anime fans tend to not be faced as much when shown this kind of content, and even tend to defend it.

I have seen the same justifications repeated over and over for the sexualization of children in the media, that it’s okay because of cultural differences and freedom of expression, that it’s okay because the age of consent in japan is lower than in our country, that it’s okay because the characters being sexualized are not actually children and just look young, that is to say they are lolis or shotas, or that it doesn’t even matter because they are fictional characters and they don’t hurt anyone.

I would like to start by saying that something being culturally different does not makes it instantly okay.

Last year, for summer vacation I was lucky enough to be able to go in a trip to Japan with my best friend, there where two thing that were quite startling to see at first, first of it was a common thing to see children alone in the street, even toddlers. The second thing was the popular fashion trend, especially for woman, to dress in a very princess-like style, and in general how people tried really hard to keep a younger child like appearance, this apart from the fact that Asian people tend to look younger (and apart from Lolita or decora fashion, that are commonly referred as “childish” in the west), these two things have nothing inherently wrong, but while thinking of topics to write an essay about I keep thinking about a particular interaction I had with some Japanese guys back there, it was a really fun conversation until the topic of age came out.

We were talking about the differences between Japanese and Latin culture. The conversation carry on when one of them tried to guess our age, he guessed my friend’s age right, but when he came to me he took some more time and guessed eighteen, I’m twenty so I told him that, and that people tended to think that I am a younger than what I am based on how I look. But he just said, “Oh that’s okay, everyone in Japan is a pedophile anyway”. It was a joke, but it definitely ruined the conversation.

By that at least by the view of a foreign it seems that, more or less, kids in Japan are treated more like tinny adults than actual kids. Which would bring some sense into why it is so common to find media depicting children in sexual situations.

Japanese culture can be really interesting for a foreign, and of course it has to be respected, but respecting something does not mean you can´t criticize it. Just like every culture it can be beautiful and fascinating, but not because of that I’m going idealize it and ignore all of the aspects that I think are problematic or simply harmful.

The low age of consent in Japan has become more like a meme than something to be discussed. As far as I know the age limit of consent being thirteen is no more than a myth, but it´s still low. What is no myth is the fact that the Japanese government only started the discussion to made the possession of child pornography illegal in 2008, and wasn’t actually illegal around 2014, and that the people that happen to be in possession of that content can only face 5 years in jail and/or a fine. This not including lolicon or shotacon in 2d or 3d media because of them being consider under the protection of free speech, but the question is why does this free speech includes r-rated scenes with children, and why does that have to be protected.

An example of this sexualization is the manga of Made in Abyss, when talking about the plot and the art Made in Abyss has been praised, but almost no one talks about how in the manga these two characters tend to be sexualize despite being children, thankfully this aspect of the story was scaled down in the anime, but that doesn’t take away the fact that the author was comfortable enough with placing underage characters in sexual situations as part of his story just for the sake of it.

But at least with Made in Abyss there is an actual story, it’s even worst seeing that there are complete mangas that are basically just child pornography, usually with added themes of assault. They may be legal, but them being legal does not make them morally right.

And it’s true, these characters are not real, the media is purely fictional, but that’s not really what it’s about, the problem lays in the fact that content like this exist in the first place. Putting a shield on it by saying that the characters are not actual children and are some kind of mythological creature that just looks young or are just plain adults that look like children does not makes it suddenly better, it looks more like an excuse than an actual justification.

All of this is not to say that anime and manga are going to inspire pedophiles to act in real life, saying that is simply wrong and a villainization of the whole media, and is simply an incorrect assumption. It’s just saying that it’s still weird, even if they are fictional.

  - Catalina Vásquez Maldonado.

[iamjjmmma]

have i ever introduced you guys to imgflip?

imgflip is...interesting, to say the least. prior to late 2015-early 2016, it was pretty much my only source of memes. 

it was also populated mostly by boomers. this is the stage in the internet to where minion memes were at their peak and most memes had all-caps, impact font instead of lowercase, generic sans-serif font.

 i signed up in 2014 at the age of 11. i’d just moved and said goodbye to my entire friend group. this was a time before texting is as widespread as it is now, a time to where the only things you could do in order to contact your friends besides get together with them face-to-face were to either send them a letter (or an email, although i think 7-10 is too young to comprehend how to use your own email account) or call them. wow, i sound boomer. but it’s true. but not completely. skype counts too.

guess i’m a zoomer lmao. 

so anyway, i had no friends. i was an introvert, and i made my friends during a period of our lives to where all we had to do to make friendships was to ask somebody if they wanted to be your friend. 

during this lonely period of my life in a completely new environment, this website was one of my main forms of social interaction. (if you haven’t noticed, middle school kids are cruel.) me being 11 and my parents being conservative Christians who are wary of social media in general, this was pretty much the most rebellious thing i did. i lied about my age because of them being significantly older than i was (i wasn’t too young to know about pedophilia and all of that), posing that i was around 20-22 years old in order to avoid any sexual attention. luckily, i was intelligent enough to have the vocabulary of a 20-22 year old, and i kept up this lie just fine without anyone noticing.

however, because most of the people on imgflip were boomers (and a significant amount still are), a lot of their memes were on the anti-SJW, more conservative side. and so i became a whole lot more conservative. i became a whole lot more isolated. i became a whole lot more...judgemental.

look. their influence hasn’t been lost on me, even with me being almost a legal adult now. even now, they introduced me to conservative ideas that even now are a good idea to me. however, some of their memes can really be cruel. and ignorant. here’s a sample as to what i was exposed to.

note that these are GROWN ADULTS making these memes. i was still a CHILD.

(this is supposed to depict a feminist)

note that i’m not going to slam on them for “corrupting my mind” or anything like that. and neither will i name names. they had no idea how young i was at the time, and to be honest, it’s better that way.

but again, i was a CHILD that they were showing this information to and that i was agreeing with. to me, none of this was ignorance. it made SENSE.

but they were fully-grown ADULTS.

from what i gathered from them, here are the main sources of ignorance:

-the culture/those they socialize with. most of the boomers i knew on imgflip lived in the south, especially in more rural areas. i did not know one single person who explicitly stated they were from the north, even to toute something like, “hey, i’m from the north and i’m still conservative! what does that say about liberals?!” or something like that.

-their own parents. a lot of boomers were born in an era to where jim crow was still prevalent and being homosexual meant a life of secrecy, conversion therapy, hormone treatment, bullying, and being ostracized/told they were going to hell even if they’d been physically and verbally beaten into suppressing the urge to act on their tendencies, but still had them. their parents were born around 1910-the late 1930′s, and were absolutely steeped in this culture, growing up with every mental gymnastic move made to justify their beliefs and to pass these gymnastics moves onto their children.

-low education levels. nobody i knew said that they ever had a degree in anything, even if it was just out of a matter of pride or in casual conversation. those who disclosed their education level at all said that they were proud to be involved in a trade/a job that only requires a high school diploma, and the only mention they made of college was the “special snowflake liberal California college students” they so loved making fun of.

-mental anguish. especially by war vets. i met a lot of war vets on here, most of them in relatively recent wars such as vietnam and korea. i connected with these in particular a lot because of my taste in music that they grew up with. and i respected them. but, in a move that may have been one of the first waves of disclosing mental health on the internet, a lot of them confessed to having PTSD. and one of these symptoms of PTSD? paranoia. and their memes SCREAMED this paranoia. everyone who wasn’t them was out to attack them. it was a terrifying life. i’d be terrified if my brain had basically been warped by war into thinking that every minority was out to get me. 

therefore, how do we solve ignorance?

-by changing the culture. we’re doing this already. great job! now it’s time to impact the rural areas that we’ve been ignoring for decades. 

-by raising your children to not have these ignorant beliefs. tell your children the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. hint: the truth is usually what requires the least amount of mental gymnastics to get to. 

-by promoting education. this has actually gotten worse and worse. the ratio of those who are going to college has increased, yes, but the costs of obtaining post-secondary education has increased dramatically. had i grown up in the same period of history as those whom i socialized with on imgflip, i would’ve only had to work a summer job once in order to pay for college. however, there are 2 main ways in order to obtain education without attending formal schooling, and that’s the two factors above: culture and child-rearing.

-raising awareness for mental health, especially with mental illnesses that may lead to paranoia. ptsd and schizophrenia are one of them.

in order to help in the search for better ptsd treatment methods (the one i found was for vets, but i’m aware there’s a lot of civilians suffering from it, including me), donate to military one source at https://www.militaryonesource.mil/. 

for schizophrenia, there’s https://sardaa.org/.

and if you want to see the not-so-bizarre imgflip (with lots more young people on it), check it out now.

https://imgflip.com/

i am so weirdly happy to get this off of my chest.

[recentanimenews]

The Best Anime of the 2010s

Here it is, the third and final installment in our Best of the 2010s series! We’ve gotten manga and video games out of the way, so it’s time for anime.

If you’re just tuning in, here’s how it works: our three contributors (Evan Minto, Ink, and David Estrella) each ranked their top anime series and movies released between 2010 and 2019. We scored them all based on their positions in the three lists, and came up with a single combined list of 10, which you’ll find below. We haven’t seen every anime out there, so there may be some conspicuous omissions, but of all of our lists, this is the one we’re most confident in. That’s mainly because the contributors covered over 120 titles between the three of them! The full lists for anime, manga, and games, including our individual rankings, are now available on the Ani-Gamers Patreon.

Below you’ll find everything from lo-fi comedies to tragic war stories. And befitting the many ways anime is produced and distributed, our list contains TV series, net animations, short films, big-budget feature films, rotoscope animation, and more. It’s been a great decade for anime, and we hope you find something new (er, more like old) to add to your watch list. Enjoy, and feel free to chime in with your own picks in the comments!

10. Tantei Opera Milky Holmes: Act 2 (2012)

David Estrella: No one believes me when I say that Milky Holmes II is an essential anime and frankly, I don’t have the wherewithal to argue with close-minded idiots that have had the bulk of the 2010s to listen to me for once. If you have to ask, it’s already too late for you but in case you’re 14 and your first anime was a post-Bleach shonen thing, Milky Holmes is a comedy that begins as a mildly amusing goofy slapstick magical girl detective cartoon and soon spirals out into an insane spectacle that completely incinerates all the other half-way passable, middle-of-the-road multimedia schlock that used to made before it all became indistinguishable idol gacha crap. Someone went highly off-script on this production and every Milky Holmes afterwards is not even worth mentioning next to these first two seasons. Between this, gdgd Fairies, and Teekyu, the last breaths of creative expression in TV anime were all concentrated in 2012, and before we knew it, it was gone.

9. Flowers of Evil (2013)

Ink: As far as manga adaptations go, hell, as far as film goes, Flowers of Evil is nothing short of a masterwork. Layering animation atop live action (rotoscoping) to emulate the basic premise behind the poetic movement so treasured by the “tortured” protagonist … not to mention actually including relevant, inspirational poems, Director Hiroshi Nagahama takes great risks – from pacing to form and even content – and sticks the landing with technical and emotional force to improve upon the source material (even though the anime only adapts half the manga). It’s an anime that reveals how beautiful ugliness can be and vice-versa.

8. Kill la Kill (2013–2014)

Evan Minto: There’s nothing quite as enjoyable as watching Hiroyuki Imaishi and Kazuki Nakashima go to town on an anime TV series. Kill la Kill is a bonkers ride from start to finish. It’s got superpowered talking school uniforms, nudist secret societies, fanservice so obnoxious it somehow becomes cool, and a never-ending parade of shocking heel-turns. There’s something in there about fascism and the fashion industry and maybe if you squint hard enough you can argue it’s feminist, but the most important F word when it comes to Kill la Kill is “fun.”

7. Kizumonogatari (2016–2017)

David Estrella: I don’t think I’ll ever fly to Japan for the sake of seeing an anime film on opening day again, and fortunately Kizumonogatari was such a peak for cinema that I’m perfectly fine with that. Kizumonogatari left me fulfilled in a way that people with weaker immune systems would pass on to the hereafter upon leaving the theater. It’s not a coincidence that my interest in anime tanked severely once the Kizu trilogy wrapped up since, with a few rare exceptions, very little anime possesses the same ambitious spirit as I found in Kizumonogatari. While Makoto Shinkai is busy making extended Apple commercials under the guise of magical realist teen romance films, I’m really finding it easier and easier to call the anime medium completely and totally solved as early as 2017.

6. From the New World (2012–2013)

David Estrella: Due to circumstances outside of my control, From the New World appears higher on the list over the definitive best anime of the decade and I’m stuck writing about it. I’ll play along if only because From the New World is a great show that deserves another look to appreciate how much it was doing within the boundaries of weekly 24-minute episodes. Adapted from a science-fiction novel that will never be translated and published into English, it’s the rare sort of anime TV show that gets its hooks in early and continues sinking them in until the thought of taking a break before reaching the resolution is unbearable.

5. JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (2012–present)

David Estrella: The loudest JoJo people say that Stardust Crusaders is the best JoJo, then two camps split between Diamond is Unbreakable and Golden Wind say their JoJo is the best JoJo, and then I’m the obnoxious voice in the back that hoots and hollers anytime someone says the phrase “Battle Tendency”. All the other JoJo’s are technically more sophisticated than the first couple of parts, but none of them really match the sheer power of that initial hit, those two amazing openings, and the actual best JoJo, Joseph Joestar, voiced by Tomokazu Sugita giving the performance of a lifetime. At the very least, we will all be haunted by Roundabout memes for as long as JoJo remains relevant.

4. Endless Night (2015)

Ink: Storytelling that relies solely on visuals is seemingly rare in anime these days, and even though Sayo Yamamoto’s Animator Expo figure skating short (which led to the more verbose Yuri!!! on Ice) is backed by a perfectly expressive song by Hiroshi Nakamura, the latter is made superfluous thanks to emotionally soaked movements and settings, laudably implemented surreality, seamless flow, minimalist color palette, and evocative texturing. Seven minutes (if that) lays out, engrossingly, a complete story of inspiration, infatuation, and (ultimately) realization. Ignore the East German judge; the passion and implementation is a 10/10.

3. Inferno Cop (2012–2013)

Evan Minto: “Best of” lists like this one have a tendency toward “high” art, toward stories about Big Ideas and Important Subjects. Inferno Cop is the lowest art of all: a series of nonsensical, lo-fi cutout animated shorts written with the reckless abandon of children playing with action figures. It’s also one of the funniest anime series in a very long time, and certainly one of the best comedies of the decade. It’s only fitting that it served as the world’s introduction to Studio Trigger, who closed out the 2010s with their smash-hit feature film Promare.

2. The Tale of Princess Kaguya (2013)

Ink: The recently late and perpetually bereaved Isao Takahata was, ironically, given the work about which this blurb is written, a realist compared to Ghibli co-founder’s (Miyazaki) escapist tendencies. Why, then, is this retelling of a very familiar folktale in The Tale of Princess Kaguya so powerful? Because the characterizations are as palpable as the animation is expressive; there are few scenes in the all of anime that draw breath like those of the MC’s dashing sequences. The art itself is simultaneously emulative of both a child’s picture book and a depiction of time as age sets in. Fairy tales are forever. RIP and thank you, Takahata.

1. In This Corner of the World (2016)

Evan Minto: This movie handily snagged the #1 spot in our ranking, and it’s not hard to see why. It’s a story about the hardships of World War II told not through combat, but through the grueling travails of civilian life. In This Corner of the World’s gut-wrenching tragedy is tempered and amplified by the currents of love and big-hearted, true-to-life comedy that run through it. The film is a beautiful tribute to the innocent souls trampled by war, comparable and even — dare I say — superior to the classic Grave of the Fireflies.

Check out our list of the Best Manga and the Best Video Games of the 2010s!

The Best Anime of the 2010s originally appeared on Ani-Gamers on February 21, 2020 at 8:43 PM.

By: David Estrella

[austenmimetics-blog]

Austen, Mimetics, and Fanfiction (introduction to the blog)

Lately, I have been struck by the recurring thought that Jane Austen is treated unlike any other author. The many views of Janeites seem largely paradoxical at times. Jane Austen has been appropriated to communicate both alt right (https://www.chronicle.com/article/Alt-Right-Jane-Austen/239435) and liberal feminist (https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-jane-austen-can-teach-us-about-sexual-harassment-1514822957) ideals. She is heralded as mother of “chick lit” (Harmon, 201) and game theorist (https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/books/michael-chwe-author-sees-jane-austen-as-game-theorist.html).  

The purpose of this blog is to examine Jane Austen’s own work, as well as her continued fandom, in relation to meme theory and fanfiction. If I can gain a better understanding of why and how ideas survive, than perhaps I can gain a better understanding of the cloud of truths which surround Austen. In this introductory post I will give a brief definition of meme theory and fanfiction, relate them to each other, and finally relate them back to Jane Austen, specifically her novels Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice. Northanger Abbey because of its meta engagement with meme/fanfiction, and its general engagement with all things Austen (social class, marriage plot, sarcasm). Pride and Prejudice because it is arguably peak Austen fandom (who doesn’t swoon over Colin Firth’s Mr. Darcy?).

I’ll start with meme theory. Meme theory was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his popular science book The Selfish Gene and it has continued to gain traction since. Dawkins presented meme theory to discuss culture in terms of genetics/Darwinism, and in doing so, he framed the possibility of a fit idea. Think back to whatever you’ve learned about Darwin in the past. Survival of the fittest. Dawkins explained meme “as a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation” (Dawkins, 192). He even named memes to rhyme with genes. Dawkins explained that the part of an idea which make up a meme, is the thing about it which many individuals hold in common, as opposed to all of the disparate parts. When we think about the act of reading, we might think about reading different books in different languages, but generally, we all imagine the act of internally spelling out letters and words on a page which string together to create some larger meaning. 

It must be noted, that considering culture in terms of Darwinism is a bit terrifying (Darwinism was used to justify racism, and colonialism generally, for a long time), and that shouldn’t be ignored (Dawkins does seem to ignore that fact, however). Thinking about the ways in which ideas are alive/act similarly to living organisms, however, doesn’t feel inherently harmful. So let us remember the ways in which dominant cultures can aid in the survival or death of particular memes as we go forward.    

This brings me to fanfiction. Fanfiction are “stories produced by fans based on plot lines and characters from either a single source text or else a “canon” of works” (Thomas, 1). Fanfiction allow narrative worlds to be expanded upon (outside of the original text). When fanfiction meet internet platforms this expansion becomes basically limitless.

Fanfiction, in my opinion, are interesting to think about in relation to meme theory. They represent an expansion of ideas which are so obviously shaped by those who consume those same ideas. Fanfictions expand on the original meme, or multiple memes, which a book represents. In doing so fanfiction aids in the survival of the original meme(s). The more forms these memes are willing to take, the more people who interact with them, the more likely they are to be passed on. Simultaneously, fanfiction allow fans to play a role in potentially mutating the original meme. It makes sense that a meme (like genes!) would mutate over time to become better suited for their current environment. With fanfiction, these meme mutations can happen almost instantaneously. In What is Fanfiction and Why are People Saying Such Nice Things about it, Bronwen Thomas points out that “fan communities proudly boast about the influence they have on people’s engagements with the storyworlds about which they write”(10). Fanfiction, especially that which is written online, is not always created by the dominant culture, or even by the dominant fandom. Many platforms allow for different voices to contribute more equally. The interesting thing about Austen fandoms and fanfics, however, is that they “tend to be quite conservative and fiercely protective of the Austen legacy” (Thomas, 6).

So what is the central meme we can draw from or around Jane Austen? What is it that fans set out so fiercely to protect, even within their own fanfic? Let’s take a closer look at a couple of Austen’s novels to gain a better understanding of the stakes. Every Austen novel contains a marriage plot. Every Austen novel simultaneously contains a lot of wit and irony. It is not always certain how these two things interact, but their combination leave a lot of room for interpretation. 

Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey functions through sarcasm and the marriage plot (as most of her novels do). Northanger Abbey, a kind of gothic fanfiction in its own right, ends with the marriage of Catherine and Mr. Tilney. Much of the novel’s tension resides in the uncertainty of romantic feelings between the two. A tension which moves the plot equally, however, is the central irony. Northanger Abbey begins, “no one who had ever seen Catherine Morland in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be an heroine”(Austen, 5). This beginning shows irony through a meta-awareness of format which continues throughout. Not long after this intro, the narrator openly defends novels, “I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding”(Austen, 22). In this, the narrator defends Catharine’s enjoyment of novels, while once again showing self-awareness of form. 

Peak engagement with gothic fiction as a genre comes through at the points in which Catherine interacts with the Tilney’s own abbey. Catherine asks Henry Tilney if the abbey is “a fine old place, just like what one reads about” (Austen, 107), and Henry responds by explaining it as gothic, with “sliding panels and tapestry” (Austen, 107), “gloomy passages” (Austen, 108), and beds with “a funeral appearance” (Austen, 108). Although the abbey does not end up fitting these gothic descriptions, Catherine leans into every gothic mood which strikes her, eventually convincing herself that the General Tilney has murdered his late wife. By engaging with stereotypically gothic images and tone, Austen expands the world of gothic fiction in her own right. Northanger Abbey can thus be taken as a fanfiction, while the meme of gothic fiction is passed on.

Although similarly framed through irony, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice is a more classic  example of Austen as marriage plot meme. In Pride and Prejudice there are multiple proposal scenes, and the proposals themselves make up the major plot developments within the novel. The novel begins with the line, “it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife” (Austen, 3). This line might be ridiculous, and obviously untrue, but it nevertheless alerts readers to the tensions to come. Elizabeth Bennet is proposed to three times, once by her cousin Mr. Collins, and twice by Mr. Darcy. Each proposal represents a peak in her character development. The first by Mr. Collin’s allows for her to the assert the separation of her own needs from her parents desires for her, the second proposal (first of Mr. Darcey’s) provides space for Elizabeth to begin questioning her own view and judgements of the world, while the third proposal finally ends with an engagement to Darcy. Without the proposals, Pride and Prejudice would be plotless. The irony of the first line does not negate this fact. 

The role of irony and marriage plot together ultimately serve to complicate the larger meme of Jane Austen. In a way, irony allows for people to take the marriage plot as seriously as they want to. You can imagine Austen as lover of the institution, lover of marriage, or as institutional cynic; both are supported within the original texts. This makes the meme of Austen, although difficult to pin down, perhaps especially mimetically fit. Austen can continue to mean a lot of different things to different people, and the two major conflicting memes which exist within her novels, allow for these external conflicting views to align with her as a larger cultural symbol. Perhaps the extreme adaptability of Austen as a meme is why Austenites feel such a need to defend her. Memes are adaptable when they serve people or cultures as a whole. Austen’s ironic marriage plots give the people stories which help situate themselves to the paradox’s which surround them everyday. 

Works Cited

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. New York: Norton & Company, 2004.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. New York: Norton & Company, 2001.

Cohen, Paula. What Jane Austen Can Teach Us About Sexual Harassment. The Wall Street Journal, 1 Jan. 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-jane-austen-can-teach-us-about-sexual-harassment-1514822957.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, 1976.

Harmon, Claire. Jane’s Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World. New York: Picador, 2009.

Mirmohamadi, Kylie. The Digital Afterlives of Jane Austen: Janeites at the Keyboard. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Wright, Nicole. Alt Right Jane Austen. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 Mar. 2017, https://www.chronicle.com/article/Alt-Right-Jane-Austen/239435.

Schuessler, Jennifer. Game Theory: Jane Austen Had it First. The New York Times, 22 Apr. 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/books/michael-chwe-author-sees-jane-austen-as-game-theorist.html.

Thomas, Bromwen. “What is Fanfiction and Why Are People Saying Such Nice Things About it.” Storyworlds: A Journal of Narrative Studies, vol. 3, 2011, pp. 1-24.

[fyodorsuggestions]

Tagged by @fy-soukoku

1. How did you come up with your username and what does it mean?

My A03 username, and main blog and twitter and facebook and freaking discord and literally every single thing is Darke_Eco_Freak either with hyphens, spaces or underscores and basically I was an edgy 11 year old who loved Jak II and the concept of the evil version of the protag Jak. Only I wanted to be extra Edge™ so I added an extra E to dark.

2. Which fanfic of yours has the most feedback? (bookmarks/subscriptions/hits/kudos)

Hits: Sex Pollen isn’t a real Thing (it was one of the first smuts I wrote and it’s kinda bad now whoops)

Kudos: Sex Pollen again

Comments: T(w)o Me, Fo(u)r Us, or as I call it 2/4

Subs: 2/4

3. What is your AO3 profile icon, and why did you choose it?

It’s been Virus from this piece of art for some months now. Why? Because Kat made it and I love it a lot so you know

4. Do you have any regular/favourite commenters?

Um damn, I haven’t gotten regular comments in a few months except from my friends whom I spam with my many many fics. I’m actually in another fandom I made another archive account for because reasons but yeah. My friends are my fave

5. Is there a fanfic that you keep going back to read again and again?

I haven’t actually read fic in a while, there’s one or two Daredevil ones I think about but I don’t go back and re-read, my attention span’s been pretty shit for a while.

6. How many stories are you subscribed to? How many do you have bookmarked?

I’m not subbed to anyone but I have bookmarked 6 fics

7. Which AU do you find yourself writing the most?

None really. My latest fandom isn’t really open for AU’s, well written Au’s at least and yes I’m forever salty over that. Hmm, if there’s one I like to toy with though it’s Evil AU’s, you know the villain turns bad AU? Love em

8. How many people are subscribed and bookmarked to you in total? (you can view this on the stats page)

Subs: 465

Bookmarked: 2133

I don’t really care though because A) I’ve been in a lot of fandoms since 2014 and I know most ppl are here for the porn as per comments on said porn.

9. Is there something you’d like to write about but are afraid of people judging you for it? (Feeling brave? If so, share it!)

Idgaf. I’ve written necro, cannibalism, torture porn, self-insert stuff. Honestly I dump most of what my other fandom wouldn’t accept on this one. Plus Fyodor is a very easy character to manipulate for me so it’s always fun.

10. Is there anything you would like to be better at? Writing certain scenes or genres, replying to comments, updating better, etc.

I’d like to be better about my chaptered fics, not abandoning them and things like that. Also, action scenes, I want to get better at those.  

11. Do you write rarepairs or popular ships more often?

I multiship myself to hell. For this fandom I write whatever catches my eye because I don’t know the characters all that well? The running meme of me not watching the show is still a thing. In my other fandom, I’m one of the few writers around and I write every single ship I can think of cause I can.

12. How many stories have you posted on AO3 to this day (finished and unfinished)?

One my darke account: 73, on my other account; 10 but I post a lot to tumblr and don’t really cross post all that much.

13. How many stories do you have saved in/with your writing program?

I can’t tell you that because I just keep huge word docs around but for the year I’ve written about 600 k so that’s cool.

14. Do you write down story ideas, or just keep them in your head?

I just write off the top of my head most of the time, I’ll talk out a plot with a friend sometimes but otherwise it’s just whatever I feel as the day goes.

15. Have you ever co-authored a story?

I have, two, soon to be three.

16. How did you discover AO3?

I think I saw someone on ff.net mention it and I started looking at the site.

17. Do you consider yourself to be a popular or famous author in your fandom(s) on AO3?

Fuck no lol. I’m here writing the rarest of pairs and writing oc/characters, not to mention in first person sometimes and those tags alone mean ppl won’t read. Eh, I’m just posting to archive to bolster the number of fics a character has tbh. (this is for BSD fandom but I’ve never been a popular/famous author in any fandom)

18. Do you have a nickname or fandom name for your readers?

Umm, half the time I’m not sure I have ppl beyond friends who read my fics so yeah.

19. Was there an author who inspired or encouraged you to write?

I’d say Lakshmi Persad, a local author. Mostly because I hated having to do that book in lit class and wanted to do better than her.

20. What writing advice would you give to a beginning author?

If you want it, make it. I’m serious, don’t count on anyone to make the content you want to see, do it yourself and people might follow suit, if not, at least you made it. Hella.

21. Do you plot out your stories, or do you just figure it out as you go?

I finish stories and still have no idea if I figured them out or not.

22. Have you ever gotten a bad comment on a story? If so, what did you do?

I’ve gotten a few, mostly I ignore them. But there was this one fic, it wasn’t for anyone but me and I shouldn’t have posted it at all but I did and someone told me that the characterization was completely wrong for the character I was writing and I ended up leaving the fic alone for months and months. I got back to it eventually but I’m not sure if I’ll ever finish that fic tbh.

23. Is there a certain type of scene that you have a hard time writing? (action, smut, etc..)

Action gives me joint pain. I just how do you make it flow?

24. What story(s) are you working on now?

I want it All

Deathless Sleep

Missing Pages

Five times he fell

Divine(d) Visions

2/4

Many lil drabbles and sexy times.

25. Do you plan your next project(s) before you finish your current ongoing story(s)?

I can’t plan to save my life

26. Do you have a daily writing goal set for yourself?

It used to be 300 a day now it’s 2k because apparently I hate myself. Most of the time I meet it, between the two fandoms I write for daily so yay.

27. Do you think you’ve improved as a writer since you first started?

Absolutely.

28. What is your favorite story that you’ve written?

Step back Through Time and Remember my Touch, definitely those two. One’s the original fic and the other is the sequel. Best things I wrote all year

29. What is your least favorite story that you’ve written?

Maybe Gone, that’s a really old one but god the cringe.

30. Where do you see yourself (as a writer) in 5 years?

Hopefully I figured out those damn action scenes.

31. What is the easiest thing about writing?

I think bringing the characters to life in my own head is the easiest thing.

32. What is the hardest thing about writing?

Not letting lack of feedback get to me cause I’m not writing popular shit, I don’t expect it but god damn it gets discouraging as fuck to see something I worked hard on just kinda flop and drown.

33. Why do you write?

I can’t do anything else and crave validation like the attention whore I am.

I’m tagging @chuuyasuggestions @kyusakusuggestions um idk who has archive shit. If you follow me and you see it, you have to do it okay? 

[ramblesandmumblesofanerd]

Rambling Review: EQG - Rainbow Rocks

When we last discussed Equestria Girls, I came to the conclusion that, in spite of the numerous moments of sheer blandness and ridiculousness, the film itself was essentially harmless. The “villain”, if you could even call her that, did not impress me, the plot was uninspired in spite of the addition of MLP elements, and the structure was a complete mess from my personal perspective. So, imagine my surprise when a sequel was announced in 2014.  And by surprise, I mean revived agitation. Don’t get me wrong, while I now see that a sequel was inevitable, I was less open minded to the concept at the time. But, casual fans and critics alike all say that Rainbow Rocks is a vast improvement over it’s predecessor to this day. Are these claims true, or is the sequel just as nonsensical as the original film? Well, let’s jump through the mirror again and take a look.

We begin in the human world this time, as we see three obviously evil magical girls are feeding off a green fog surrounding a bunch of arguing teenagers. They talk about how the “food” has been quite insubstantial in recent years until the climax from the last movie explodes in the distance. The leader with a hairstyle fluffier than the fluffiest of unicorn plushies marvels at the light-show, and tells her sisters that their time has come. Equestrian magic has appeared in the human world, and they shall us it to make it’s denizens adore them. Cut to about maybe a month or so after the Fall Formal, where everyone is giving Sunset Shimmer the stink-eye after what she did. This is actually important for two reasons:

1. Consequences. I commented in the last film that leaving Sunset in the human world rather than have Princess Celestia punish her was not the right thing to do because it gave Sunset a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. In this film, that point is rendered moot because nobody trusts Sunset, not believing for a moment that her days as a tyrant are over. And why should they? They were all used and abused by Sunset in various ways prior to the end of Equestria Girls, indirectly or otherwise. Which gives way to…

2. Regret. Sunset actually feels bad for what she did, and this time it feels more believable. There’s nothing like an entire school turned against you to make you feel cast out. Every time the subject of the Fall Formal and Sunset’s transformation is brought up, she becomes depressed or agitated about it. She wants to put the incident behind her and prove that she is better.

Which is why she has agreed to show some new transfer students around the school before someone tells them about her past. But, surprise, surprise, the transfer students are three familiar girls in tacky clothing. Sunny shows them around and mentions a school-wide musical fundraiser, which certainly gets the attention of the girls who start to act noticeably weird when Sunset asks about their matching necklaces.

Huh, obvious baddies who don’t want people to touch their bling. Are we sure Evil Sunset didn’t somehow multiply?

In all seriousness, the Dazzlings are a breath of fresh air to me, as they actually are given a little bit of character in comparison to Sunset’s one note “gimmie the crown” shtick. I especially love the Megatron/Starscream-esque relationship from Adagio Dazzle and Aria Blaze with a little bit of Sonata Dusk making memes in the background. And then things get even better after they sing their first song, “Battle of the Bands”. The three sisters saunter into the cafeteria and pretty much undo what Twilight did in the previous film and begin to divide the students. The Dazzlings manipulate everyone but Sunset and the HuMain 5 into fighting one another and turning the musical fundraiser into...well, a Battle of the Bands. And as the students argue, the girls feed off that familiar green fog again as our heroines watch in confusion.

Sunset, showing some more brains than in the previous film, comes to the immediate conclusion that the three girls obviously have dark magic on their side, and the gang goes to tell Principal Celestia in order to kick them out. But, unfortunately, Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna are weaker than their Alicorn alternatives, and are already under the thrall of the Dazzlings, leaving the girls at a lost until Sunset remembers about a journal she had brought from Equestria years ago. The journal apparently acts as a primitive form of text messaging, allowing Sunset to send a message across the dimensions by writing a message in her book which will appear in another back in Equestria. By sheer luck, Twilight is already in possession of the magical, glowing, vibrating second journal which receives Sunset’s message, and she not only determines that the Dazzlings are Sirens banished from Equestria by the Dumbledore/Gandalf/Merlin of Pony Lore, Starswirl the Bearded, but she also Macgyvers a way to open the portal between the two worlds early using the journal’s magic.

So, Twilight and Spike return to the human world, leaving the others behind to avoid the confusion that would come from having two of everyone running around. Everyone back in the human world is excited to see Twilight come back, even Sunset, who offers to help Twilight up after a rocky entry. This brief moment is important. The way Twilight initially hesitates shows that even she rightfully doesn’t trust Sunset yet. It, again, shows that all is not forgiven like we thought back in the previous film’s finale.

So, by now you're probably asking “why is Twilight even here?”. Well, since Principal Celestia is basically a puppet, the HuMain 5 believe the only way to deal with the Dazzlings now is to blast them back to the stone age with the same Deus Ex Machina attack from the Fall Formal. But, since this film isn’t supposed to be thirty minutes long, this plan backfires, not only making Twilight and the HuMain 5 look like fools, but also expose their resistance to the Dazzlings’ mind-control. While Adagio theorizes that these girls could be the source of the Equestrian magic she had witnessed long ago, the girls retreat to make a new plan at Pinkie’s house during a slumber party.

So Plan C goes something like this: have Twilight write a “counter-spell song”, play it during the Battle of the Bands and defeat the Dazzlings. Why would this work? Well, because the HuMain 5’s magical powers seem to pop up whenever they play their instruments for a band Rainbow Dash and her friends started for the fundraiser. What a coincidence. Actually, while we’re here, can we discuss how the human version of Rainbow Dash acts throughout this film? While the pony version has been known to be quite egotistical and self-absorbed at times, this version multiplies these attributes to the point of being abrasive. Constantly calling the band “hers”, cheating at video games, not wanting to back down as lead vocalist when the others volunteer Twilight in order to pull off the counter-spell, even ignoring Fluttershy when she wants the band to try playing a song she wrote herself. I know technically the human one is not the same character as the pony one, but Rainbow Dash is just so unlikable in this film.

After a brief moment to both address how Sunset and Twilight are not so different after all and to have a shout-out to all the Maud Pie fans, the gang return to the Battle of the Bands after a less than successful rehearsal which mostly consisted of bickering more than music. The Rainbooms flub their first outing through the obvious sabotage from Snips and Snails, but they somehow get to move along with the other competitors who won Round One. That doesn’t mean everyone is happy about the competition however, as even Flash Sentry starts spewing insults at the girl he once crushed on thanks to the Dazzling’s magic. Speaking of, Sunset tries to talk her Equestrian foes down, but the Sirens know of her past endeavors and turn the tables before they take the stage.

After another great, if not more blunt song, called Under Our Spell, we see that the Rainbooms are actually making progress in spite of the constant internal drama and the sabotage from their premiere. More on that in a bit, as another great song pops up...only to end right away. This song sung by Trixie, Tricks Up My Sleeve, is actually quite a good song, and I wish we could have heard the whole thing in the film if only just for one lyric. So, just for you guys, allow me to play this one lyric. LadyTenkage, this one’s for you~

And this is what happens when online friends subscribe to me on YouTube: inside jokes with a dash of schadenfreude. Oh...I’m so gonna get murdered for that when we next meet face to face.

Anyways, after more of Rainbow Dash feeding her ego by singing a song about how awesome she is (which I cannot stand), the girls start to show their pony powers, but Sunset intervenes before the Dazzling can feed off them. She and the Rainbooms are booed for this, but the Dazzlings use their ever-growing power to manipulate Principal Celestia and Vice-Principal Luna into allowing the girls to advance to the final round, much to Trixie’s rage. But, again, the Dazzlings stroke Trixie’s ego and plant the idea to trap the Rainbooms as an act of revenge, which she does. This prompts the HuMain 5 to, once again, bicker and unintentionally feed the Dazzlings their magic as the Sirens perform on stage above them.

This is where Sunset finally shows some backbone and tells her new friends to stop arguing and instead focus on actually solving what is causing the conflicts, otherwise the counter-spell Twilight has been trying to make this whole time will never work and the Dazzlings will win. So, of course the Rainbooms reconcile, of course Spike rescues them with the one background character who isn’t under the Dazzlings’ control, and of course they go to face their enemies in eye-gouging-ly colorful outfits.

And now, for the best climax in Equestria Girls history...until the next one.

Okay, first the Dazzlings go through their own pony transformation complete with ears, fin-wings red eyes, and astral-projections of themselves in their pure Equestrian forms. Then, the Rainbooms show up with Vinyl Scratch who somehow owns a transforming car.

Transformers! Hasbro doesn’t care.

Next comes an all out rock battle, with guitars blaring, vocalists giving it their all, Sirens screaming red versions of Danny Phantom’s ghostly wail, and the Rainbooms needing Sunset to help win the fight. And, with a toss of her jacket, she does. She starts to sing alongside the people who have stood alongside her through thick and thin throughout this movie, and she goes under the standard pony-fication, leading up to the most awesome thing I have seen in all of Equestria Girls. Period.

Through the power of friendship and music, the Rainbooms summon a giant, rainbow maned alicorn who blasts the Dazzlings and shatters their gems, which reduces them to being ordinary humans, all while epic music plays in the background.

Where was this in movie one!? This epic finale which shows how much power these characters have when they actually have a sense of unity is so much better than “lol, you can’t hurt us because friendship”. And the fact that it took the help of Sunset to summon what I shall now call the Alicorn God of Rock not only shows how much power these girls truly have, but it also begins a new chapter for Sunset’s redemption. Moments like this actually grab my attention, more so than the obligatory easter eggs and using even more stale high school movie plots.

Back to the film, the Dazzlings run off the presumably starve in an alley while the Rainbooms send Twilight on her way home. Twilight makes an obligatory speech about how this is “goodbye ‘til next time”, but a little cliffhanger begs to differ, as we’re finally shown that Twilight and Spike indeed have counterparts in the human world, and the human Twilight has set her eyes on Canterlot High’s magical mischief.

And with that, Rainbow Rocks ends with a nice credits montage of Canterlot High’s students starting to truly accept Sunset Shimmer as one of them. So, what did I think of Rainbow Rocks in comparison to it’s predecessor? Well, on the whole, I have to say that Rainbow Rocks obviously excels where Equestria Girls fails. It actually dedicates time to establishing characters and their traits rather than copy and paste typical high school stereotypes for the sake of filling in the blanks. For example, Sunset Shimmer, a character I despised for being a bland villain, actually makes an attempt to be a better person in spite of the insurmountable odds placed against her. And good Lord, the Sirens! Compared to Sunset Shimmer, these ladies were fantastic villains. Unlike the she-demon, they actually had presence and were a constant threat both on and off screen, making it feel like there was more at stake than just popularity. And the music! Unlike most of the songs from the original film, Rainbow Rocks succeeded in...well, rocking! The Dazzling’s songs, Tricks Up My Sleeves, even The Rainbooms’ songs (so long as we ignore the ego-stroking “Awesome As I Want To Be”) were all incredible, and I would listen to them all again if given the chance.

However, like the original film, there are also some notable faults in Rainbow Rocks. The HuMain 5 were easily the weakest part of the film, their constant arguing became a tad grating in spite of it’s necessity to the plot. Which reminds me, the award for most annoying character of this film goes to Rainbow Dash, whose entire routine in this film consists of her stroking her ego to the point of climaxing. While I’m not expecting her to be as restrained as her pony counterpart, I expect at least some form of control from her even if she is a teenager.  Also, some of the plot elements, such as how the magic that has suddenly appeared in the human world works, is not explained as much as an intellectual audience would like.

“Who cares” RD? Well, I care. The audience cares. Everyone cares! Which is why one of the shorts made before the next film focuses on Sunset actually trying to explain the magic in a logical, scientific way...with less than satisfying results.

And, yes, much like I stated in in previous review, this film uses more high school movie tropes: The Battle of the Bands. But, unlike Equestria Girls, there’s something that actually allows the film to stand on it’s own. Maybe it’s the Dazzlings manipulating the students and staff like puppets, maybe it’s the Equestrian magic, maybe because it was an actual Battle of the Bands, or maybe it was that incredible ending that I love so much. All in all, Rainbow Rocks was actually fun to watch in comparison to Equestria Girls. I’m glad I watched it, and I think I would actually watch it again should the urge take me over. Is it perfect? No. But I can forgive Rainbow Rocks for it’s flaws because I feel like it actually made an effort to have a higher quality than Equestria Girls. It actually feels like a competent story that I can enjoy over and over again. 

All I can really say is Rainbow Rocks rocks.

In the meantime, never stop rambling. TM