#it still took me a couple years afterwards to start posting my art on twitter though

[samipekoe]

omf i used to follow you (on twitter...? maybe) like 3yrs ago. glad youre still out there drawing women

we meet again so you can see how my woman drawing has flourished in the last 3 years

[boldcompanynews]

Two Gay “Business Partners” Who Appeared on a ’90s Game Show Lit Up the Internet. Their Real-Life Story Is Wild. - Journal Important Web - BLOGGER https://www.merchant-business.com/two-gay-business-partners-who-appeared-on-a-90s-game-show-lit-up-the-internet-their-real-life-story-is-wild/?feed_id=151596&_unique_id=66abfe5e14f6c In 1991, Hermosa Beach, California, set painters Tim Leach and Mark Dammann landed a spot as contestants on the ’90s version of the syndicated game show Supermarket Sweep. When host David Ruprecht asked how the two knew each other, Mark answered, “We’re business partners.” Thirty-three years later, a Twitter user watching old episodes affectionately posted: “I’m like oh I’m sure.”As many people on the internet have discovered the past few days, those two contestants were business partners—but they were also very much a couple. In fact, they are still together, they live in Chicago, and things are going great. I called Tim and Mark on the phone to talk about their 1991 game-show experience, about coming out to their parents, and about the incredible path their families took afterward. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.Dan Kois: Did you audition for game shows a lot in those days?Tim Leach: Game shows were advertised in the Los Angeles Times classifieds. Every Sunday we would look at them and say, “Well, we should try out and see if we could make a few bucks.” We auditioned for Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! but didn’t get on. Then we tried out for Supermarket Sweep.That’s a show like The Price Is Right where you get plucked out of the audience.Mark Dammann: Well, you know you’re a contestant.Tim: They tell you in advance that you’re going to be chosen, but they tape a bunch of episodes at once in this big studio in Studio City, and you don’t know which one you’ll be on.Have you watched your episode recently?Tim: We just watched it because of all this happening!Had you planned in advance for what you would say when the host asked you how you know each other?Tim: Well, there were some family members, grandparents and things, who still didn’t know.Mark: And my parents still didn’t know.Tim: I can’t honestly say what they would have done if we’d said we were together. Would they have asked us to rephrase it? Anyway, we just said we were business partners. Which has become a meme now, but in this case, it was true!Mark: We had just started our set-painting business, mostly for commercials and cruise ships.When you said that, was everyone on set like, “Oh, I’m sure”?Tim: Everyone knew! We were pretty open about it with the other contestants and the producers. We were out in our everyday lives. It was just on the air we kept it quiet.When the host asked you what the weirdest backdrop you’d ever painted was, you had a moment.Tim: We were both like, “Uhhh … This is a family, G-rated show—what can we say?”You answered, “Something for a rock group.” What’s the real answer?Mark: Probably it would be the same. We painted some backdrops for rock bands that were really something.Tim: We painted this one very buxom, bikini-clad woman. That’s what flashed through our minds at the time. This huge woman, and these two guys are painting her. The art director came in and said, “Her face looks kind of mannish.”Mark: We joked about that a lot. She was 20 feet tall.Mark, you really cleaned up in the opening word game. The idea that any of those other couples would know what tarragon was …Mark: Yes, maybe that was a giveaway.Tim: I can’t believe you knew what tarragon was!Mark: The biggest laugh I got from people who actually knew me was the clue for Sugar Daddies. Everyone was like, “Of course you knew that one.”Tim: When I buzzed in and the host said, “Tim, with his fast hands …” our friends laughed.Did you give the producers side-eye when they dressed you in those pink sweatshirts?Tim: They were red on the set! On camera they looked Pepto-Bismol pink. When I saw us on TV, I said, “Oh my God.”The whole thing really is kind of perfect camp.

The show was always so hetero-coded, with the wives who know groceries and the clueless husbands.Mark: Exactly!How did you prepare for the big sweep at the end?Tim: Once we knew we were going to audition for the show, we spent two weeks recording every episode on our old VCR. We drew out a map of the store. We were so sure we were gonna win.Tim, you did the running for the sweep. What do you remember about those 2 minutes and 30 seconds?Tim: The frozen meat cases where you grab the meat—it turns out that meat is frozen every night and then thrown back under those hot lights all day to thaw. It’s all sort of grayish-green. It’s frozen inside, but the surface was really gross.You ended up with a score total much lower than the other two couples. What happened?Tim: I was really surprised how low it was! I think it was just nerves. The cart was very difficult to control. One mistake was that I got the turkeys early on and they’re really heavy, and then the cart was really heavy. And you have a cameraman chasing you around the whole time, so you can’t turn around quickly.Mark: One of the other couples, the one who got second place, hit an aisle endcap and knocked all the stuff over. They had to stop us and set it all back up. They got a deduction—that’s why they didn’t win.Well, losing didn’t poison your relationship, because you’re still together. What happened when it aired?Tim: My side of the family all knew about us. My parents knew. But Mark’s parents didn’t know. His family lived in Houston, and my family lived in Galveston. Every Christmas we would come home and I would say hi to his parents at the airport and then we would go to separate houses for the holidays.Surely watching you on Supermarket Sweep must have been enough for your parents to figure it out, Mark.Mark: Nope!Tim: Nope!Mark: When we’d been dating 11 years, I still hadn’t told them, and my mom died. Tim’s dad died the same year.Tim: Mark came home and said, “I feel so much regret about never having that conversation with my mom. There’s a part of me she never knew.” I said, “Well, maybe you can bring yourself to tell your dad soon.”Mark: There was this radio show we listened to while were painting in the studio, these two psychologists, a married couple. I called in and really asked them, “How do I come out to my dad?” They said, “You’ve been together 11 years? He must know in his heart. You just have to say it.” So I just said it.And he knew, right?Mark: No, it was a total surprise.Really!Tim: Eleven years we’d been living together. He just thought, Well, they’re young, and L.A.’s expensive, and I guess you just have to have a roommate.Mark: Long story short, my dad ended up marrying Tim’s mom.What?!Tim: We introduced them to each other so they’d have somebody to go to the movies with. The next I know, I’m getting phone calls from my mom saying, “Guess who I ran into in Houston? Don!” I’d say, “You ran into him?” “Well, he said if I was up there I should give him a call.” Then we’re getting a call from my sister saying, “How well do you know this guy? Because Mom’s putting on lipstick.” I said, “He’s been basically my father-in-law for years!”Mark: We ended up becoming a conjoined family. They were married in 1994. Our parents became our biggest support system.That’s an incredible story.Tim: For a while, Lloyd Schwartz, a producer, the son of Sherwood Schwartz who created The Brady Bunch, was trying to sell it as a TV movie. It never panned out. Tim and Mark now. Courtesy of Tim Leach and Mark DammannI would’ve watched that.Tim: I guess now it would be a Hallmark movie.And you’re married now, too.Tim: We were married in 2008, the first day you could get married, June 17. Now we both work as flight attendants for Southwest.Mark: We were the first married same-sex couple to work there.Tim: Mark joined Southwest after me, and I went down to Dallas to see them pin on his wings, and everyone stood up and applauded for us. It’s always been a good place to work, but I still thought, That is not what would have happened 30 years ago.

When you rewatch your episode and you look back on those two guys, how do you feel? What would you tell your younger self?Tim: I’d just want to say that everything’s gonna be OK, and you can be yourself. Embrace who you are, whatever that means. Life has been pretty great.Mark: There’ll be some rough patches, but you’ll get through them. And as long as we have each other, you’ll make it. And it’s been 41 years, and we’ve made it. http://109.70.148.72/~merchant29/6network/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/pexels-photo-3810792.jpeg #GLOBAL - BLOGGER In 1991, Hermosa Be... BLOGGER - #GLOBAL

[transthaumaturge]

Squirrel Girl is Super Gay for her Roommate and I Want Everyone to Know

A gay infodump of sensible length by Rachel Tikvah

ALRIGHT, SO The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl was the very first comic that I ever read regularly, back when I was looking for more stories with strong female protagonists but didn't really know why. Back then I just thought I really liked strong female characters and not that I was being gay on main, but now I know the truth. The comic had a 5-year run, and it was the first time that Squirrel Girl, AKA Doreen Green, had had her own series. She had a brief run in the mid-2000's where she was established as someone who could beat up Thanos with her bare hands well, more like squirrel hands but was mostly a joke character that happened to be incredibly buff and had indestructible plot armor. USG decided that Doreen's next major life goal would be to enroll in college to become a computer scientist, because her writer, Ryan North, is really into computer science and they basically gave him free rein over Squirrel Girl canon for five whole years. Like, a solid third of the plots are solved with some kind of computer science smarts. It’s really cool. Anyway this is Doreen in one of the gayest solo pictures I could find of her on short notice, which is also one of the variant covers from the actual series:

And this is her college roommate, Nancy Whitehead:

I'm like, 99% certain that Ryan North intended for them to end up as a couple and Disney!Marvel told him no. So he decided to make them AS GAY FOR EACH OTHER AS POSSIBLE without explicitly saying that they were a couple, and it ended up going under the radar. What follows is evidence for that claim. I’m going to put a "read more” after this so it doesn’t clutter everyone’s dashboards, but please read on if you’re interested. There’s a lot of cute gayness after this point. I’m also going to put all of the image descriptions at the end, since they take up a lot of space and I don’t want to break up the flow of the post. Finally, a quick spoiler alert for one arc in the middle of the series and a couple major plot points from the final few issues.

AND THEY WERE ROOMMATES

So for a while it was just kind of hinted at that they’re in a relationship, mostly because they were basically domestic life partners for like, two whole years in-universe before the comic run ended. But it really came to a head with an arc that was ran about 2/3 of the way through the series. Some pictures of them being, like, so cute together in general and/or talking about how much they care about each other before I get to that arc, though: 

Also Doreen describes her and Nancy's cat as "co-parented" in one of the last issues:

ANYWAY, THE ARC. THE HYPERTIME ARC. So one of the villains created for the Squirrel Girl run (I think they liked making weird shit canon just because they could) was a dude who went by the name "EpicCrimez". He’s a crime streamer. He livestreams his crimes to an online audience. I don't know. *Throws up hands*

He had some kind of laser gun that he built out of scavenged alien tech but didn't really know what it did, so he shot it at Doreen and Nancy for kicks. It shot them into hypertime, so suddenly the rest of the world was moving at a fraction of the pace that they were. They were moving so quickly that they were slated to live out their entire lives over the span of a single weekend if they didn't figure out how to reverse the effects. And...they did. Live out their entire lives together. For the two of them, they were the only two people in the world. There were other people, but they looked like statues unless you spent a very long time observing them. Doreen and Nancy grew old together in a world where they only had each other. This is an incredibly cute domestic scene from a little while after they found themselves in hypertime:

Gosh, I wish I could find more official art from that arc of them just living together, it was so good. But the point is, they were both old by the time that Nancy figured out how to get them out of hypertime. And it wasn't ideal. Their bio signatures were stored in the gun that EpicCrimez shot, and they could essentially "reboot" their bodies from when they were first shot and send themselves back into the regular timestream. But they wouldn't remember anything about the life that they had shared together. Nancy almost didn't want to do it. She raised the possibility of them just living out the rest of their lives together, because she didn't want to forget their life together. This is the conversation they had:

"I don't regret any of it. I don't want to lose it, and I don't want to lose us." "You're not getting rid of me that easily." Every time I look at that last picture, which took up an entire page of the comic, I start to cry. We’re seeing the final moments of two people who love each other more than anything, who were each other's entire lives, savoring their last moments together and wondering what the future holds. Sacrificing the life that they built together so that their younger selves could live a better, fuller one. Dying in each other’s arms, scared but comforted by the fact that they had each other. And then the arc ends, and they can't remember anything, so the status quo is restored. They have some paintings they made of each other while they were living together in hypertime, but they move on pretty quickly without ever knowing the significance of those lived decades. Still, it's clear in the arcs that follow and the adventures they embarked on afterward that they would die for each other. All of that continues until the end of the last arc. Their shared apartment's been blown up at this point by a supervillain who wanted to ruin Doreen’s life before eventually killing her. And in the aftermath of the fight, they're sifting through the wreckage for anything that survived (don't worry, the cat got out in time) when they find the picture that they painted of themselves during the hypertime arc:

They have a really cute conversation about how this chapter of their life is over, but they're going to be okay and they're going to build a new life together. And then Nancy basically tells Doreen that she can't live without her:

And then Doreen says something super queer-coded about how she likes the idea of the world knowing her secret identity now:

On the very last page of the comic, after all of the action is over and the series is about to end, they're talking to each other in what's supposed to be a twitter thread and Doreen asks Nancy a very thinly veiled question about whether she still wants to spend time with her now that her identity's out. She pretends it's about a class project, but it's really not about the class project. Here's how that conversation goes:

With no knowledge of what happened during the weekend when they shared their entire lives together, without ever having heard Doreen say it to her before, Nancy’s heart still knows which words to choose. "...you're not getting rid of me that easily. <3" I believe that the author of the series, Ryan North, did as much as he possibly could to portray them as a couple without saying it outright. And as the last piece of evidence to support that claim, I want to share a response he wrote in one of the series' last-ever letter columns:

"as for more Doreen and Nancy, I hope so too. A Squirrel Girl book without Nancy would feel like--like--like some sort of hypothetical "Super" "Man" book without an equally hypothetical "Lois" "Lane"!" It's easy to write off this analysis as wishful thinking, or as a misreading of the subtext. But when the author of the series says that these two characters are meant to always be together and compares them to one of the most famous couples in any comic series ever, it's clear that there's more to it than that. 

Some Additional Thoughts: 1) Doreen and Nancy are both probably bisexual or pansexual, since they both expressed romantic interest in men throughout the series but they’re both clearly interested in each other too. There might be an element of demiromanticism there as well if part of the reason that they’re into each other romantically is because of how emotionally close they’ve become over the years. I want to make sure that that facet of their romantic orientations doesn’t get erased, because bi and pan folks get erased enough as it is. Neither Doreen nor Nancy are lesbians, just super-cool WLWs.

2) HERE’S WHAT THE ISSUE 50 VARIANT COVER LOOKED LIKE

That’s NOT a fun, totally straight way to pose with your platonic gal pal. They’re so incredibly cute together! I have no words! In Closing If you got this far, thank you so much for letting me talk to you about a comic that’s very important to me, and a couple in that comic that I care about very much. I spent way too long making this (six hours and counting), mostly in writing the image descriptions, and I’m very proud of my work but very tired now. Hyperfixation is a hell of a drug. If this resonated with you, please consider reblogging it so that more folks can see it. If not, even a like is nice. I’d also love to engage with people who have their own thoughts, so feel free to leave some comments in the notes if you’ve got an idea/a reaction/any additional cute Doreen/Nancy scenes that you’d like to share with me. At any rate, this post has gone on long enough and I don’t want to ask y’all to read any more than you have to. So have a great day, good morning / afternoon / night, and stay safe. Thanks again for reading! ~Rachel Tikvah, AKA @transthaumaturge Image Descriptions: Image 1: [ID: Squirrel Girl, a young woman with light skin, is posing in front of a brick wall that she seems to have crashed through, leaving a perfect outline of her body. She’s facing away but looking backwards over her shoulder at us and smiling. She’s flexing upward with her right arm and has her left fist resting on her left hip. Her sidekick, a squirrel named Tippy-Toe, is standing in the cutout she left in the wall and is making the same exact pose while wearing a light pink bow around her neck. Squirrel Girl is wearing brown lace-up boots, fur-lined hot pants over grey tights, and a brown fur-lined jacket with sleeves that come up to her forearms and a symbol of an acorn embroidered into the back. She’s also wearing a hairband with fake squirrel ears on it over short reddish-brown hair. She has a large squirrel tail coming out of her hot pants that sweeps down in a curve behind her lower legs. The illustration is drawn so that everything is bathed in the light of a sunset, and Doreen is casting shadows on the wall in front of her.] Image 2: [ID: Two frames depicting a scene between Doreen and Nancy in their college dorm room, with many cardboard boxes still not unpacked and sitting on a bare bed mattress. Nancy Whitehead is a young woman with dark brown skin and short, curly black hair. She's wearing black tights, a white dress-top, and a yellow cardigan over that. Her arms are crossed as she holds her white cat, Mew, against her chest. Doreen is wearing grey tights and a black long-sleeve shirt with a wide collar and white stripes across the chest. She's holding Tippy-Toe up to Nancy with both hands so she can see her better. The following dialogue ensues: Nancy: "A squirrel? But weren't you the one who was all about pets not being allowed in--" Doreen: "Yeah, I know. But this really interesting person I met today told me that obeying an unjust law is itself unjust." Nancy: "...You know, I was worried I'd get a weird roommate, but you're all right, Doreen Green."] Image 3: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are both sitting on a lavender-pink couch in nightclothes. Doreen has short, orange hair. She is wearing a loose-fitting grey long-sleeve shirt and steel-blue cutoff shorts; Nancy has cropped black hair. She is wearing a dark purple top with sleeves that come down to her upper arms, and loose-fitting navy-blue shorts that come down to her lower thighs. Doreen is side-hugging Nancy as she says, with an ecstatically happy smile, “Nancy, you’re the greatest. You know that, right?” Nancy gives Doreen a full smile as she responds, “I’d always suspected it, but it is nice to have it confirmed.”] Image 4: [ID: Nancy is shown from the shoulders up. She has short, curly black hair. She’s wearing large, disc-shaped gold dangle earrings, and a red jacket with prominent shoulders and a yellow collar. She’s fixing the observer with an angry, determined stare as she says, “She knows this man wouldn’t dream about betraying her, or he’d have to answer to me.”] Image 5: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are eating breakfast at the brown, circular kitchen table in their apartment. Doreen’s wearing a skin-tight athletic crop top that’s striped in black, red, white, and blue. Her arm muscles are well-defined and clearly visible as she puts a spoon in her mouth, closing her eyes as she does so. She has a bowl of cereal in front of her, and half a banana in front of that. Nancy is sitting to her left in a pink camisole top that’s also exposing her muscles, scrolling through something on her smartphone. Her hair is in a yellow fabric wrap that’s knotted on one side of her head. A cup of coffee sits in front of her. The clear blue sky is visible through the window centered on the wall behind them.] Image 6: [ID: Nancy and Doreen are facing away from the vantage point, walking towards an Empire State University campus building and holding hands with their fingers intertwined. Nancy is wearing a long knee-length grey coat and black knee-high boots, with a baby-blue side bag hanging from her left shoulder. Doreen is wearing a magenta sweatshirt with the periwinkle-lined hood down, light brown form-fitting denim pants, and black ankle-high boots, with a dark brown side bag hanging from her right shoulder. Trees and bushes hem the walkway in on either side. The building in front of them is dark red, with glass doors and a row of floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor. Doreen is saying “...we’re just going to have to take the long way around.”] Image 7: [ID: Doreen is facing towards the vantage point and is visible from the legs up, standing in front of a pile of rubble in the background. She’s wearing high-waisted light blue shorts over black tights, and a red windbreaker with sleeves ending at her upper arms that’s opened to reveal a white t-shirt underneath. Tippy-Toe is sitting on her shoulder. There are two people facing Doreen, each slightly in frame and silhouetted in black against the light of the setting sun. Doreen is fixing them with an angry, determined expression, resting her right fist at her hip while she gesticulates with her left hand and says, “So! I don’t know about you all, but Melissa kidnapping my friend and blowing up my life and my house and almost blowing up my co-parented cat makes me feel like giving her a piece of my mind. Friends...”] Image 8: [ID: A full comic page. EpicCrimez is looking like a dork in a green and black skin-tight jumpsuit, bright red ski goggles, and a green wig cap with his brown hair sticking out the back in a mullet. He’s standing inside a jewelry store and holding up a fist of expensive gems and pearls-on-strings as holds up his smartphone and speaks into it. He’s facing off against Squirrel Girl, with her allies Koi Boi and Chipmunk Hunk on her right, and Nancy and Brain Drain on the left. The following scene ensues: EpicCrimez: “And for those of you just tuning in, welcome to another successful heist by your boy EpicCrimez, streaming live! Now with 10% more live crime action than any other streamer! Don’t forget to like and subscribe!! I know some of you in EpicCrimez Nation have been forgetting to do that lately. Not acceptable.” Squirrel Girl: “You picked the wrong small business to rob, crime-initiator! Because this mall is protected by super heroes.” Brain Drain: “HELLO” SG: “And also an unrelated civilian friend I brought along too!” Nancy: (Not looking up from her phone) “ ‘Sup.” EC: “Check it out--Squirrel Girl and her miscellaneous friends are here! It’s action you won’t find on any other channel!” SG: “Are you...streaming your robberies?” (Nancy pockets her phone) EC: “Yeah I am! For money reasons! And with you “heroes” in it, I’ll make even more!” SG: (Whispering to Nancy:) “Question: a fight scene just gets him more traffic, which lets him profit from this crime even more--so does this mean we don’t fight him?” N: (Whispering back:) “I feel like letting him go causes more harm, but I look forward to us teasing apart the moral implications of this later.” SG: “Nice.” SG: (No longer whispering:) “I’ll like and subscribe, EpicCrimez! I’ll like fighting crime, and subscribe... to a worldview wherein the strong protect the weak!” EC: “Oh my gosh, are you like wholesome Spider-Man or something??” At the bottom of the page, small text says: “Wholesome Spider-Man, Wholesome Spider-Man/Does whatever a wholesome spider can/Is he tough?/Listen bud/He’s here to hear you talk about your day and tell you it’ll all be fine while taking you out for your favorite meal for dinner because he knows you deserve it.”] Image 9: [ID: Another full comic page. Doreen and Nancy are in their apartment together, and their friends Tomas and Brian (AKA Chipmunk Hunk and Brain Drain respectively) are frozen as they look down at the machine that Nancy is on her knees in front of, working on. Nancy, barefoot, is wearing cerulean-blue athletic pants, a black long-sleeve spandex shirt without shoulders, and narrow-framed glasses. Her hair is partially covered by a yellow cloth head wrap tied on the left side, with black dreadlocks spilling out the side and back. The machine in front of her is made of dull grey metal, about a meter tall and roughly circular. Wires dangle out of a hatch that Nancy is fiddling with. Doreen is wearing a flowing, dark-purple pantsuit with wide, ankle-length legs and a halter top with the sleeves tied off at her shoulders. Her shoes are light-brown ankle boots with a horizontal gap on the bridge of each foot. Her wavy orange hair is parted in the middle and down past her shoulders. She looks incredibly cute. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “What do you think?” Nancy: “I think--come on you stupid screw--I think we’re still years away from this thing working, if it ever does. Who knew time machine construction is really hard, except of course for everyone who has attempted it?” (She wipes her forehead with the back of her hand) D: “Hah! No, I mean my new outfit.” N: (Looking up and checking her gf out:) “Doreen! You look amazing!!” D: “Liberated it from a very expensive department store uptown!” N: (Now standing) “Tony paid for it?” D: Tony will eventually discover he was kind enough to leave some expensive jewelry in trade, yes. I pinned a note to him so he knows.” N: “There really are advantages to being friends with billionaire playboy genius philanthropists.” D: “Right?!” N: (Taking Doreen’s hands in hers:) “It’s a shame we can’t take a picture of you all dolled up.” D: “Not without standing still for a few months, yeah. But I was thinking about that. I picked up something else at another store downtown. Thought maybe it could help us with that.” (Holding up a shopping bag with one hand while still holding onto Nancy’s hand with the other:) “Nancy Whitehead, I thought you and I might take up painting sometime.” At the bottom of the page, small text says: “Tony Stark moves from meeting to meeting, his body accumulating dozens of notes every second. He sighs. Stuff like this didn’t happen before he knew Doreen. But then he smiles, because after all...stuff like this didn’t happen before he knew Doreen.”] Images 10-16: [ID: Several pages worth of comic frames, posted together to depict one scene. Doreen and Nancy are now old women, likely in their seventies or eighties. Doreen has short, grey hair. She’s wearing a tan button-up waistcoat and an orange ascot, brown flats with an olive-green skirt, knee-length and softly pleated. Her tail is sticking out the back of her skirt over the top, bushy and brown but with stiffer, less-dense hair. Nancy has her grey-black hair done up in a ponytail, a mass of tight curls behind her head. She’s wearing thin oval glasses, black dress pants, black flats, and a lavender cardigan with a flower motif along the edges, open to show the yellow-orange top underneath. They’re standing in front of a completed time machine. On either side are tall pieces of machinery, and in the middle is a round, flat metal dais hooked up to everything else with snaking cables. The following scene ensues: Nancy: “So...this is it, babe. The new machine.” Doreen: “Your secret project! Nancy, it looks like you started from scratch!” N: That’s because I did. I finally realized our old machine was never going to work. Maybe if we had a few more decades, but...there’s no time. And given that our backs are to the wall, I took a risk. I disassembled the gun right down to the metal, and examined all the parts. And I did find something: a data chip. Doreen, the gun stored our bio signatures when it us.” D: “What are you saying?” N: “I’m saying my new machine won’t send us back in time, and we’ll still have lost a weekend of real time. But it will restore our bodies to normal time.” D: (Hugging Nancy tight:) “Nancy! You saved us!!” N: (Resting her hands on Doreen’s shoulders:) “Not--quite. There’s a catch, Doreen. Our bodies will make it...but we won’t. Look, Doreen...I’m an old woman. I’ve spent most of my life in hypertime. This wasn’t how I saw my life going, but...I don’t regret any of it. I don’t want to lose it, and I don’t want to lose us.” D: “I don’t understand.” N: “It’s like restoring from backup. Our bodies will be restored to how they were the moment we were first hit. But--that necessarily includes our brains, too. Everything we’ve done since we entered hypertime--our entire lives spent together...we’ll forget.” (She looks at Doreen in distress) D: “I don’t either, Nancy. You’ve been the most important person in my life. But if we do go back--we can do it again. All of it. It might not happen again quite the same way, but--well, like you say...we’ll have all the time in the world.” N: (Their faces inches apart, they both tilt their heads down and smile sadly:) “Twist my arm, why don’t you.” (They both step onto the dais holding hands, and blue energy starts to ripple around them:) “You filled up Spidey’s web-shooters before we go?” D: “Yep. Again.” N: “You and me, saving the world.” D: “Well,” (holding Nancy’s hand in both of her own) "No reason we can’t do it twice.” N: “You know, there’s a chance things could turn out differently, now that we’ll have video games to distract us. In 40 years we might decide we don’t like hanging out after all.” D: (Hugging Nancy even tighter than before as the energy from the time machine starts to envelop them, resting her face in the nape of Nancy’s neck:) “Nah. You’re not getting rid of me that easily.”] Image 17: [ID: Doreen and Nancy are sifting through the charred rubble of their apartment as night starts to fall around them. Doreen is wearing faded blue jeans and a navy blue t-shirt with a Captain America star in the middle. Over top of the shirt, she’s wearing a dark reddish-brown leather vest with four metal studs at the four points of the folded-out collar. Nancy is wearing black tights and a light green long-sleeve shirt with olive-green sleeves. The front of the shirt has a picture of Cat-Thor, Cat God of Cat Thunder’s head on it. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “So I know we’re only a few hours into it, Nancy, but I think my identity being public isn’t gonna be as bad as I thought.” Nancy: “Oh?” D: “Yeah, Tony’s given me lots of tips, and it does honestly help to know that my parents are protected by a robot tree with laser eyes and my friends live in a city with the most super heroes per square mile.” N: “Most super villains too, but--Hold on. I think I found it.” (Nancy lifts a picture frame out of the wreckage, charred around the edges but otherwise no worse for wear. It has a painting inside of it of Doreen and Nancy, arm-in-arm, from hypertime. Doreen is wearing the lavender pantsuit from before, and Nancy is wearing a tight-fitting lilac dress.) “...And it looks like you and I made it through just fine.”] Images 18-19: [ID: Two later comic panels from the same scene. They’re wearing the same outfits, but Nancy’s now cradling her white cat, Mew, in the crook of her left arm while she holds onto the picture frame with her right hand. The following scene ensues: Doreen: “Come on, let’s talk about it! If we’re starting a new chapter in our lives, and we can decide what’s in it, what do you want it to contain?” Nancy: “Doreen...” D: “What are the three things you can’t live without, Nancy Whitehead?” N: (Holding up the picture so that Doreen can see it:) “Fine. If you must know, all this girl needs to be happy are cats and squirrels and knitting and computers and friends and secret tattoos and super heroes and lots and lots of love. Also food and shelter. And water. And internet.” D: “That’s more than three things.”] Image 20: [ID: Same scene as before, a single frame with a close-up on Doreen from her chest upwards. Doreen cups her chin with one of her hands and says, “Honestly--I thought about it. I really did. But I realized that where I am now, I’m safe and I’m loved and I kinda like the idea of not having to lie to people anymore, you know? Even if it is just a lie of omission. I want to share my whole self with the world. I don’t want to have to hide who I am anymore.”] Image 21: [ID: Something resembling a twitter thread, with dialogue between Nancy and Doreen stacked chronologically as horizontal boxes. Their respective names and handles are at the top of each of their comments. Nancy is Nancy W. and @sewwiththeflo, Doreen is Squirrel Girl and @unbeatablesg. The following conversation ensues: Nancy: “You think I’d leave you high and dry??” Doreen: “I think I don’t want our lateness harming your grades and therefore harming your post-secondary education or career choices and therefore harming your ENTIRE LIFE?!” “So yeah I think you should switch to someone else, real talk. I honestly don’t mind, I promise.” Nancy: “Please. If there’s one thing I know about you, about me, and about how we spend our future together, it’s this. Doreen Green...” “...you’re not getting rid of me that easily. <3″] Image 22: [ID: A paragraph of text, black text on a yellow background. “As for more Doreen and Nancy, I hope so too. A Squirrel Girl book without Nancy would feel like--like--like some sort of hypothetical “Super” “Man” book without an equally hypothetical “Lois” “Lane”!”] Image 23: [ID: A group picture of Squirrel Girl and friends sitting down on a grassy hill and watching the sunset together. Kraven the Hunter is in the foreground for some reason, looking almost directly at the camera. In the background we see Koi Boi, Mary Mahajan, Chipmunk Hunk, Brain Drain, and Mew the Cat. In the middle of the shot, Doreen and Nancy sit together. Doreen is in her superhero outfit with Tippy-Toe on her right shoulder, and Nancy is in a yellow cardigan and jeans on Doreen’s left. They’re holding hands, fingers intertwined, as Nancy leans against Doreen with her whole body. Their heads are tilted inward towards each other, the side of Doreen’s head touching the side of Nancy’s, as they look off into the distance together.]

[alteredphoenix]

In Defense of Calia: On the Topic of Misogyny and the Criticism of the Forsaken Double Standard

So I like to browse Twitter a lot, mainly for the art but mostly just to kill time. But I also follow people and websites, and one of those happens to be Wowhead. A couple days ago there was an article documenting Calia’s appearance within the Horde Council in the Shadowlands pre-patch, to which she would voice her opinion on the state of the Horde as well as the uncertain future that Azeroth now faces with the breaking of the Helm of Domination and return of the Scourge.

The WoW community can be...very passionate, or inflammatory, depending on your point of view. The same can be said for any big fandom, in all honesty. But I’m not in a lot of fandoms, and, at least where WoW is concerned, there’s a kind of laser-guided hyperfixation in regards to the introduction and development of its characters. Old or new, the fandom watches them like a hawk, but perhaps none more vigilantly than ones that have been mentioned in-game but have not made an actual appearance itself beyond the tie-in novels.

Three of these characters are Turalyon, Alleria, and Calia. However, Turalyon and Alleria are not given this much scrutiny outside of snide quips that “Turalyon is flat and boring/he’s a zealot/he’s the embodiment of the white savior among the draenei” and “Alleria is a fucking psycho for using the Void and wanting the blood elves to return to the Alliance, she’s just like her sisters, it must run in the blood/she’s arm candy to another, rugged Alliance man” whenever the plot calls for their convenience. I would daresay these parts of the fandom would go as far to say that with their developments given within the story, it would be in Blizzard’s best interests to have never brought them so as to “preserve their memory from before the Activision merger”. On the other hand, I would like to note that this sentiment is echoed ad nauseam for practically every character in WoW...but we’ll touch on that a little bit. This piece isn’t about Turalyon and Alleria or the others.

Rather, this is about Calia, and I wanted to give voice to my opinions on the backlash - or perhaps reception would be a better word - she has been receiving. She was a character I came across reading Arthas: Rise of the Lich King and didn’t think much of afterwards; for all I knew, she had died when Lordaeron and that was the end of the Menethil bloodline. However, with her debut in Legion and unique circumstances that followed culminating from the ending of Before the Storm, as well as being tangentially tied with the Light/Void conflict that’ll come to the forefront in the future, I wanted to keep an eye on her character arc.

Needless to say, when I read the Wowhead post, the comments could basically be described like this:

The WoW Community: Gawd, Blizzard is pushing Calia so hard into the narrative.  She’s just another pathetic dev’s self-insert like Nathanos is, even though we only base this off some harmless, tongue-in-cheek posts on Twitter and we need to vent our anger toward another character who clearly has too much development! She’s everywhere!

Be me, off to the side, remembering she was only present in the Priest Class Hall campaign in Legion; takes part in Before the Storm before getting axed in the Arathi Gathering and being subsequently raised into Lightly undeath by a king, her Archbishop, and a naaru that may have influenced her into going to the Gathering; only shows up very late in BfA right after Sylvanas Blasts Off Again at the end of the War Campaign to reconnect with the Proudmoores and help the kaldorei undead as well as the Forsaken Sylvanas ditches; shadows Lilian and the Horde Council in Shadows Rising, and shows up in Icecrown when the sky cracks open and Bolvar is no longer the Lich King that took up the role her brother was in.

I don’t know what popular fanfiction you folks are reading (or whatever tea you’re drinking; I’ve been looking around since the last Calia post I made and I can’t find it!), but that is not what I would call everywhere.

Look, you’re more than welcome to despise Calia as much as Nathanos over baseless claims and double standards, but let’s not pretend there are other Forsaken that’d fill the hole Sylvanas left behind. Because they can’t. They won’t be able to, because for years Sylvanas made up the core of Forsaken identity. Prior to WotLK they were a race that was reviled and ostracized by the world and looked upon with distrust by everyone including the Horde, even as Hamuul vouched for them and convinced Thrall to give them a chance despite knowing full well how cruel and selfish they could be. Their sole purpose was to exact revenge on the man who took everything away from them, destroyed their lives, and raised them into his service against their will.

And even when Arthas was defeated, they had no other purpose but to conquer Lordaeron, find a way to reproduce their numbers, and reaffirm their loyalty to the Horde - because where the hell else are they going to go? Because even if some Forsaken disagree with Sylvanas’s strict institutions regarding the acceptance of their undeath and the complete rejection of their former, mortal lives, not everyone in the Alliance is going to welcome them with open arms; not everyone is an Anduin or a Jaina. You see this with Genn, who despite accepting that not every Forsaken is bad still holds them in contempt, and with Alleria, who, after spending a thousand years in the Twisting Nether fighting the Burning Legion and thus being removed from the changes that occurred on Azeroth, is justifiably concerned that they are no longer the same person in undeath as they were in life. You see this in the way that some families spurn their loved ones when the Gathering takes place.

So while it’s true that you can say Calia doesn’t have what it takes to be the person the Forsaken need in a post-Sylvanas Azeroth, you must also remember that of all the named Forsaken we know of only Lilian has been given due development. You can’t say the same for Belmont (a loyalist who disregarded Cromush’s warnings about using the plague in Silverpine, as well as fought a losing battle against Tyrande in Darkshore in BfA), Helcular (a presumably former Cult of the Damned affiliate who notably defended Tarren Mill during the Legion’s third incursion), Faranell (another loyalist who created the New Plague and believes Putress is behind Wrathgate, but perhaps unaware of Sylvanas’s possible involvement), and Velonara (who did not want to be want to raised but followed Sylvanas anyway until the Fourth War, eventually siding with the Horde Council). They are merely foot soldiers; outside of maybe Velonara they don’t have the luxury of experiencing the emotional turmoil a newly risen undead goes through the way Lilian Voss does when Thomas Zelling, dying from illness, makes a deal to be raised into undeath and help the Horde in their war if it meant protecting his family. They don’t have the luxury of watching him get executed by the Warchief’s right hand man in front of their eyes the way Lilian and every other Horde leader present did. You would not get the same weight by switching her out with any of them. You could say Lilian would make a decent successor to Sylvanas, and I would not disagree with you. However, Lilian does not have the familial connection that Calia does to Lordaeron, and while Gey’arah poses the question of leadership to her at the Horde War Campaign’s epilogue, it should be noted that Lilian believes there is “another more suited to the task”, preferring to be the hand that would comfort the Forsaken of the trauma of being raised into undeath and, as of Shadows Rising, act as their interim leader.

Then again, neither does Calia. We don’t know where she and Faol were after Lordaeron’s fall (which is one key detail I have seen people not take into account upon their criticisms of her character), but we do know that upon being asked she had refused to reassert her claim to Lordaeron. However, she has common sense enough to know that Faol was not like the other Scourge in the beginning, and later when she met with Elsie, Parqual Fintallas, and the Felstone family.

Whatever happened during that time period prior to Legion, she identifies with the Forsaken. They are, in a way, still her people, regardless of that. This is why I think she would suit the Forsaken best as their leader, not as Queen of Lordaeron that the fandom - or rather, most of the Sylvanas stans - has been so prone to parroting since her intentions to help guide the kaldorei undead and the Lordaeronian Forsaken were first revealed.

And look, I’m a Sylvanas stan, too. But it is very much apparent that Sylvanas only started the Fourth War for her own purposes, has clearly been in an alliance with the Jailer since Cataclysm (yet is hinted to not be entirely subservient to him), and even if she was doing everything up until Shadowlands as an extreme mixture of For the Greater Good and The End Justifies The Means she was still a toxic influence to the more honorable members of the Horde and to the Desolate Council. Even if her behavior were an act to conceal her true intentions, it would still not absolve her completely for all the atrocities she committed and the suffering she caused. Not even Nathanos, whom people have an obsessive, misandrist fixation of being based on someone who’s not despite being in the game for fifteen years prior to that dev joining Blizzard, would not be the best replacement for Sylvanas. Nathanos - the same man who loves Sylvanas so much he would do anything for her even as he pushes aside the brief moments where he hesitates following her orders and expresses shock at her actions - would not have either the Horde’s or the Forsaken’s best interests at heart, for his belongs only to her. After all, you can’t “redeem” a character if the character himself does not regret what they have done and does not want to change for the better.

Which is another thing I have noticed, in the years I have been in the WoW fandom: the concept of “redemption” in the wake of “character assassination” in the wake of events that caused by said characters that are often deemed questionable, which is what I believe makes people conclude the causation to be a source of “bad writing”. This also ties to what I also believe to be the misogynistic undertones the fandom expresses, simply because the events caused by questionable if dubious methods are done by a woman and not a man, which therefore leads to the notion that Blizzard “hates women”. This gives me the impression that these voices would prefer to have Blizzard write their women as someone who are pure and strong and multi-faceted but the minute she performs an action that not everyone is on board with then she is either considered “ruined” or a “dreadlord”, which is merely a cop-out excuse that you only see applied to the female characters (e.g. Jaina) but not the male characters; those men are simply called “evil” or “genocidal”, whether or not they are rightfully so. Then again, men are also considered “ruined” if they are so much as given the spotlight (e.g. Lor’themar in Nazjatar, Baine throughout BfA), but they are nowhere near under as much scrutiny than the women are (unless it’s Garrosh, then you’re going to have to put up with the “Garrosh Did Nothing Wrong” memes). Which leads us back to the hypocrisy the fandom shows towards Calia, a character to whom people call a “Mary Sue” but at the same time an “abomination” who is going to be “Queen of the Forsaken” that is being pushed by Blizzard to make the playerbase hate Sylvanas even more.

And from what we know about Calia, she is neither seeking to become “Queen of the Forsaken” for the foreseeable future nor a “Mary Sue” (if she were, she would’ve succeeded in making all the Forsaken defect to the Alliance and, you know, not die). Perhaps she is made to question if she is capable of providing for the Forsaken (for some, that is, for it was confirmed by Blizzard that not all Forsaken are willing to be lead by another Menethil, and one who had been missing and presumed dead for years at that). Perhaps she is an anomaly, but she is by no means perfection incarnate the fanbase paints her to be.

TLDR Calia Menethil is a character that deserves a chance at getting her character arc and development, and should be judged accordingly instead of jumping the gun.

[bluesfm]

(  park  chaeyoung  ,  twenty two  ,  &  cisfemale  )  who  ?  these  days  ,  it’s  all  about    blue hyong,  who  comes  from    los  angeles  &  ca    and  is  making  headlines  as  a    singer    .    she   currently  has  a  fan  count  of  42k    ,  no  thanks  to  the  rumors  of  them  being  inflexible  !  but  ,  on  the  other  hand  ,  their  most  devout  fans  say  they’re  actually    imaginative    .  last  i  heard  ,  they  caused  quite  a  buzz  when    she   publicly   dissed    her  new   record    label  and   the   misogynistic  treatment   she  was   receiving   from   their  reps  !  it’s  no  wonder  they  remind  me  of    long   rants   in  the  notes  app   being  posted   to  her   twitter  account  ,  empty  bottles   of  wine  laying  at   recording   studios’   floors   &  notebooks   upon  notebooks   filled  with   lyrics   she  might   never  use   but   refuses   to   let   go  of   .  

well hello human friends !! n also hello to the non human friends too , wassup . i’m angie a  dumb  noodle  from  the  middle  of  the  south  american  jungle  , and i’m here to introduce yall to this mess i call blue  who’s  a muse i have had  for yrs now n carry w/ me wherever i go , with some minimal changes but she’s still the  same  messy  bitch  on the  inside  don’t  worry  folks !  so   i  will   provide  u w/  some  background  info  on   her  n  some   possible connections  under   the  cut . issa  lil messy  but  we’ve   been  away  for  a while   pls  bear  w me

blue  is  the  only  daughter  to  a  couple   of  south  korean  immigrants  that  came  to   america  when  they  were  in  their  very  early  20s  n  already  expecting  blue  in  order  to  chase  the  american  dream  n  create  a  better  life  for  themselves  n  their  family  .  their  life  was  pretty  hard  for  a  big  part  of  blue’s  childhood  ,  while  they  were  both  studying  n  working  odd  jobs  to  pay  for  their  education  all  the while  taking  care  of  a child .  so  blue  didnt  have  the  best  childhood  ,  not  that  her parents  were  bad  or  anything  they  just  didnt  have  time  for  her  . nowadays  ,  they  are  a  lot  more  comfortable  in  life  ,  since  her  dad  became  a  lawyer  n  her  mom  is  a  nurse  ,  but  they  definitely  didnt  have  an  easy  beginning  .

ok  so  maybe  bc  they  werent  present  durant  most  of  her  childhood  they  didnt  notice  a  lol  of  signs  that  might  have  made  things  a  lot  easier  for  them  ,  bc  by  the  time  they  were  available  to  emotionally  be  there  , during  her  early  teenage  years ,  blue  was  already  kinda  a  mess . she  had  grown  up  w  very  lil  structure  n  refused  the  rules  they  tried  to  instill  on  her  n  was  already  used  to  doing  things  her  own  way  .  that  lead  to  a  lot  of  conflict  between  them  ,  since  they  expected  her  to  study  hard  n  do  well  for  herself  in  a  nine to fiver  when  she  was  already  sure  art  was  the  only  way  to  go  n  while  she  did  ok  ,  she  definitely  wasn’t  as  good  as  her parents  expected  her  to  be .

so  ...  u  know   her  teenage  yrs  were  basic  girl  angsty  she  fought  a  lot  w  her  parents  n  rebelled  frequently  n  ran  away  from  home  like  ...  weekly  ,  but  she  never  rly  had  any  real  hardships  .  life  was  reasonably  good  but  she  always  had  something  to  complain  abt  ...  just  as  she  liked

[  MENTAL  ILLNESS  TW  ]

but  then  she  reached  her  late  teens    they  all  realized  there  was  something  going  on  other   than  the  usual  teenage  angst  she  displayed  all the time  when  she  had  her  first  manic  episode  .   her  parents  thought  it was  a  “  blue  thing  “  at  first  bc  she  was  usually  a  very  impulsive  person  n  she  rly  didn’t  have  a  habit  of  thinking  before  acting  on  her  impulses  ,   but  her  mom  quickly  noticed  the  signs  of  a  manic  episode  when  she  realized  how  aggitated  n   restless  she  was  , specially  when  blue  described  an   hallucination  she  seemed  to  be  having  .   they  took  her  to  a  psychiatrist  ,  she  was  admitted  to  a  hospital  n  diagnosed  w  type 1  bipolar  disorder  n  very  quickly  medicated .  while  the  medication  brought  her  out  of  her  episode  ,  n  she  was  allowed  to  go  home  after  her  mood  seemed  to stabilize  ,   blue  also  noticed  it  stunted  her  severely  emotionally  n  decided  (  against  medical  n  parental  advice  [  pls  dont  do  it  fam  !!  take  ur  meds  ]  )  to  quit  her  medication  ,  falling  into  her  first  major  depressive  episode  a  few  weeks  afterwards  . n  for  abt  four  years  she’s  been  living  w  her  disorder  ,  n  she  doesn’t  medicate  at  all  .  she’s  super  open  abt  her struggles  n  she  has  a  Lot  of  them  ,  specially  w  how  much  drugs  n  alcohol  she  consumes  .   i  never  said  she  was  smart  yall  .

[  END  OF  TW  ]

ok  so  as  u  probably  assume  ,   blue  is  an  emotional  mess  .  she  has  a   very  chaotic  personality  ,  n  most  of it  isnt  even  from  her  illness or  anything  she  just  is  a  very  chaotic  person  in  general  ?  she  is   one  of  those  artsy  ppl  who  forgets  to  wash  her  own  clothes  so  she  ends  up  wearing  the  same  dress for  like  ,  3 days .  she’s  super  outspoken  n  outgoing  n  rly easy  at  making  friends  if  u  can  get  past  the  dumbass energy  she  exudes 24/7  ?  but  yes  just  a  very  outgoing  person  n  a  outright  mess  most  of  the  time  .  she  is  also  soooo stubborn  u  will  never  get  her  to  change  her  mind  abt  smth  she  believes  to  be  right  about  in  any  way  .  u  just  cant  .  she  loves  a  good  time  n  loves  partying  n  is  the  lack  of  impulse  Queen  soo if  u  got  any  bad  ideas  she  is  the  one   u  should  go  for  if  u  need  any  company  .  also .... so dramatic  .  she  makes  a  big  deal  of  everything  n  has  0  apologies  abt  that  .  just  catch  her  crying  over  high  school  musical  3  or  smth  like  that  .

but  yea  on  the  bad  side  tho  ,  blue  takes  up  n  gives  up  on  projects  so  easily  n  she  can  be  super  fickle  abt  things  in  general  .  like  ,  she  will  defend  an  idea  for  7  hours  but  2  days  later  she’s  already  onto  smth  else  n  doesnt  even  remember  being  so  obsessive  abt  that  other  thing  ?  a  mess .  is  also  Quite  abrasive  ?  if  she  thinks  ur  acting  dumb  shes  not  gonna  be  scared  to  call u  out  on  it  .  can  also  have a  Reaally  explosive  temper  .  not  usually  but  specially  during  manic  episodes  she  can  be  quite  easy  to  annoy  ngl  .  is  very  unreliable  ,  especially  if ur not  too  close  ..  tbh  that  is  something  connected  to  her  disorder  .  when  she’s  on  a  manic  episode  ,  she  will be  too busy  planning  things  she  will  never  get  around  to  doing  or  painting  her  entire  house  or  spending  3  days  awake  n  drunk  writing  17  songs  by  herself  .  n  during  her  depression  is  very  hard  to  get  her  to  do  anything  n  even  if  she  feels  terrible  , she  rly  cant be  an  available  friend  .

in  regards  to  her  sexuality  ,  she’s  an  open  bisexual  and   also  is  a  crazy  romantic  n  falls  so  hard  for  literally  no  reason .  but  like  ...  doesnt  have  the  healthiest  mentality  for  relationships  ?  not  like  in  a  toxic  way  but  she  will usually  give  145%  of  herself  at  all times  n  honestly  believes  all  of  the  ppl  she  falls  for  are  the one (1)  just  wants  to  make  things  work  no  matter  what  .  she’s  v  impulsive  w/  meeting  n  falling  for  ppl  tho  so  things  dont  rly  end  up  working  n  she  always  ends  up  heartbroken  over it  .  Well  .  At least she’s  trying  right  ?

in regards  to  her  career  n  art  , she’s  posted  youtube  covers  n  original  songs  for  a  couple  years  and  gathered a  decent  following  ?  she  wasnt  huge  or  anything  but  she  did  get  a  record  deal  w  an  actual  big  label  out  of  it  a  few  months  ago  .  blue  was  pretty  happy  abt  it  but  then  when  the  recording  process  started  she  realized  they  werent  treating  her  as she  thought  she  deserved  at  all  ?  which  resulted  on her  taking  her  thoughts  to  some  reps  of  the  label  n  when  she  didn’t  feel  any  difference  in  the  way  she  was  being  treated  she  took  it  to  the public  ?  which  definitely  caused  quite a  sitr  bc  she  wasn’t  a  huge  name  but  she  was  big  enough  ?  so  now  she’s  in  some  considerable  trouble  w  her  label  but  Also  more  famous  than  ever  so  they  are  choosing  not  to  bury  her  for  now  ?  she’s  in  some  definite  trouble  though  so  it’ll  be  fun  to  see  what  happens  next  n  what  her  moves  will be  ?  spoiler  alert :  it’ll prob  be  smth  dumb.

i  still have  so  much  to  say  but  i’m  so lazy  wow .  dont  start  ur  intros  so  close  to opening  time  folks  thats  my  tip  as  an  old  internet  auntie  .  OK SO  ONTO  SOME  CONNECTIONS  NOW  

some label  mates  who  she  may  or  may  not  get  along  with  ?

hookups !!  she  prob  has  a  few  she  regrets  too   bc  who  doesnt  am i  right

best  friends !!  ppl  who  actually  support  her  n  she  loves  w  no restrictions  just  love  all  around  friends

exes </3  not  gonna  lie  i  have  some  sad  ideas  abt  this  one

good  influence  bc  blue  is  a  mess she  needs  one  of  those  pls  someone  slap  her  head  n  make  her  drink  some  water

a  fling  she  has  feelings  for  but  may  not  be  requited  ...  i  like  my  romantic  connections  to  be  angsty  did yall  notice

artistic  soulmate  !!  someone  her  artistic  bitch  side  just  vibes  with  ?  could  be  a  songwriter  or  singer or  anything  tbh

some   indecisive  romantic   shit where blue rly  knows  sh’s  too messy  n  this  person  is too amazing ?  but  they still  have  feels  so   ... now  what ?

this is  p  mcuh  it ??  it  has  taken so long  to  finish  this  i  hate  myself  but  HEY  if  u  like  blue  or  dislike  her  u  should  hit  me  up  so  we  can  come  up  w  some  plot  ideas  ?  i wish  i  had  a  quirky  goodbye  idea  but  my  brain  has  just  quit  working  guys  so  u  get  nothing  from  me  other than  a  good  old  fashioned goodbye  thanks  for ur  attention  i  love u

[itsstickball]

Can you please write more of the rivalry thing? It’s soooo good. I would love to see Neil’s teams reaction

I didn’t forget you, I promise!! Here is Rivalry pt. 3: All Star Week 

(pt.1 pt. 2)

Three days before the start of All Star week, Neil makes the mistake of posting the kitten video he meant to send as a private message directly to his twitter feed. In the clip, a kitten bats away a ball a few times before missing three in a row. The final attempt, the ball goes directly over its head and the kitten topples backwards trying to stop it. By the time he figured out that it hadn’t gone directly to Andrew, there were several hundred likes already. Rather than try to find the tutorial again on how to delete a twitter post, he tags Andrew in a comment instead and adds #shootout.

He doesn’t realize the magnitude of his mistake until he’s sitting in front of a camera, geared up for the shoot-out event, with a microphone two inches from his face and an excited looking reporter.

They’ve made it through the general questions. How does it feel to be called an All Star after only three years in the professional league? (Satisfying, but not as good as being signed to Court last spring). Which event is he looking forward to the most? (The final game, obviously) Does he have any tricks up his sleeve for the shootout? (We’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we?) The sudden gleam in the reporter’s eyes should have tipped Neil off that things were about to go a bit sideways, but he was running on an Exy high and so dismissed it as fervor for the sport he loved.

Looking back, he can practically hear Andrew’s voice in his head: “Junkie.”

“Speaking of the shootout, we can’t help but wonder; most guys -”

“- And girls.”

“Right, most guys and gals treat this week as a celebration of talent, putting aside rivalries and bad blood to just enjoy the sport, but it fans seem to think from your recent social media postings that this might not be the case for you.”

Neil tried to think about which post, in particular, the reporter is referring to. The only person he can remember roasting recently is Nicky, and he’s in Germany doing – well, Neil doesn’t actually know what he’s doing (Erik aside). Thankfully, the reporter had taken his blank look in stride and then exposed more on the situation. Truthfully though, Neil didn’t hear much more than “Minyard” and “kitten.” His expression flattened further as the lightbulb in his head went off. He still didn’t get the merit of his so called rivalry with Andrew, but apparently it made for good media coverage and the blonde hadn’t mentioned anything about stopping it or setting the record straight, so Neil didn’t fight it either.

He shrugged at the reporter.

“Someone told me once that life imitated art. So I guess we’ll just have to see if that’s true or not. With no plays to analyze, Andrew will have to actually put some effort in to protect his goal today.”

Unfortunately – or fortunately, really, for the media. Andrew did not imitate the cat video and stopped roughly 80% of the shots. Of Neil’s, he missed one and blocked the other.

After that, the goalie sat and watched as the rest of the players took part in passing, aim, trick shots, speed, and one-on-one competitions – most of which kept Neil busy.

When it came time for the one-on-one, Neil grinned when he saw who his first opposing backliner would be. Jean seemed less than enthused, but Neil was more than used to that by now. Just because Jean wasn’t smiling didn’t mean he wasn’t enjoying himself. If anything, his resting bitch face was just as famous as Andrew’s – maybe more.

The backliner turned his head when Neil called out his name and a greeting in French, his expression flattening when he realized who was talking to him. Annoyance was easily Jean’s most common reaction to Neil’s presence, but he put up with him nonetheless.

“Ah, so you’ve come to antagonize someone other than the midget for once.”

He answered in French. Neil faked shock with a hand to his chest as he jogged over to where Jean stood, but let out a laugh.

“I’m wounded that you think so little of me, Jean, really.”

“Yes, little.” Jean replied, icily looking down at Neil. Their height difference was supremely pronounced now that they stood next to each other. Neil gave him a wry look for that one, but Jean had a point. Instead he tugged on the corner of Jean’s sleeve.

“How about instead of insulting my mother’s genes, we talk about your new team. Please tell me you switched for the captain, not for the color scheme.”

The Sacramento Sentinels were a relatively new team, with only one full season under their belt. They also chose the colors gold and black to represent them – both of which Jean wore at some point during his college career. Neil was far more interested in Jean’s reunion with exy’s golden boy Jeremy Knox than any homage to the backliner’s former teams. He watched with a grin as Jean’s eyes involuntarily sought Jeremy out among the players. He scowled when he looked back down and saw Neil’s amused expression.

“Just for that, I’m not letting you get twenty feet from the goal, ma puce!”

Neil laughed as Jean pushed him to the bench with a large hand on his face and then stalked away. His grin only grew when he saw that Jean was, in fact, heading over to where Jeremy was talking with their coach for the game at the end of the week.

True to his word, Jean kept Neil well away from any easy close shots on goal, forcing the striker to resort to a strange trick-shot hail-mary that made it in more on luck than skill. Jean snorted and shook his head when Neil cheered at the goal, but he accepted Neil’s handshake-turned-hug nonetheless.

The rest of the week was a blur of exy and stolen moments with Andrew in the locker room or hotel. Andrew’s transfer to Denver at the end of last season put him in the same division as Neil, meaning they’d have to play and practice on the same team for the All Star game. The increased proximity brought great joy to the striker, even if Andrew continued to glare as he batted Neil’s shots away or look bored as they sailed past him.

Neil could feel the measured looks and camera focus whenever the team practiced for the game at the end of the week.

On Wednesday, after the sixth shot that Andrew had rebounded with just enough force that the strikers had to sprint to rebound it, their All Star coach called for a break. Neil removed his helmet and turned to face Andrew from half court.

“Are you going to shut Kevin out like that on Saturday?” He called out in Russian, not bothering to keep his voice down. From what he knew, none of the others on their team spoke the language. Andrew followed suit, taking his gear off and letting everything but his helmet and stick fall carelessly to the floor.

“What will you give me in return?”

Andrew tossed back. He sounded bored, but just the fact that he was replying at all told Neil he was interested in the deal.

“What, the sheer satisfaction of denying Kevin doesn’t do it for you anymore?”

He shot back, earning one of Andrew’s arm guards thrown at his face. Aware of the eyes watching them from the outer court and the open door, Neil grinned and put as many expletives in his answer as possible.

Andrew rolled his eyes, finally coming up to where Neil stood waiting. He grabbed his glove from the red-head’s grip and pointed it menacingly at him. In English, he said.

“Someone ought to wash that mouth of yours out before it gets you in trouble.”

Only when Andrew stomped past them did Neil take note of the reporters who had paused in their interview of a Dallas backliner to watch their little interaction. His smile turned a little less genuine and slightly sharper until they went back to what they were doing. He didn’t bother to collect any of Andrew’s gear, but hummed to himself as he fetched his water-bottle and then sat down to chat with his fellow strikers.

Andrew hadn’t said no.

He did, however, put fuck all effort into guarding his goal in the preliminary game against the Pacific division on Friday though. Neil flicked him off when he realized what Andrew was doing, grateful that he would only be playing one half. Because the goalie was putting zero effort in, it meant that Neil and the other strikers who played first half had to double theirs in order to keep the goal differential down.

“I fucking hate you.”

Neil wheezed, gasping for breath as they headed back to the locker room afterward. He’d never cared much for the shows that supposedly big stars put on during the halftime breaks at professional games, and he especially didn’t care about whatever spectacle they had planned between the preliminary games and the final All-Star match. No, after clinching a 10-9 win, all he wanted to do was rest until he had to get up and do it all again against the Eastern teams.

Andrew, lumbering ahead of him and quite unaffected by it all, didn’t even have the good graces to wait for him.

“No, Junkie, that’s my line. Or did all that running finally scramble your brain?”

“Ugh. Always.”

Neil groaned and though the look Andrew shot him for it was lethal, he was willing to bit it tugged into a smile as he shouldered through the doorway into the locker rooms. A few of his teammates tried to talk to him about the game, how it went well, all things considered and such things, but he mostly tuned them out as he grabbed his water bottle and joined the string of people disbanding into the locker room.

They played first, so the Central team had over an hour to sit and mingle. Neil smiled when he saw a couple of his teammates and members of the Pacific team walking around with their jersey and a marker. When the first one got to him, he asked what it was for. Laila Dermott grinned down at him, making sure that he took the items and started signing as she spoke.

“Some of the players just keep them as souvenirs – a cool way to remember all of the people they played with that year. A couple of us auction them off for charity. This year the proceeds are going to Stand Up For Kids. It’s an organization working to help homeless kids and those out on the streets.”

“Oh, cool.”

Neil said, a bit stunned by the generosity. He knew from Nicky’s ranting how much a normal jersey worn by a professional athlete could go for, let alone one signed by this many of them.

“Ah yes, gotta keep them off the streets,” Andrew piped up. Somehow, Neil had missed him coming up beside them. “Wouldn’t want them to get into anything dangerous.”

Laila frowned, but Neil didn’t think trying to engage Andrew on some social justice issue was worth the risk. He cut her off by handing her the jersey and marker back and replying himself.

“Don’t be a dick, Andrew.”

The blonde made a show of plucking the Jersey out of his fellow goalie’s hands and signing his name in the largest space available. He flicked his gaze back up to Neil even as he held the shirt and marker back out to Dermott.

“Who said I was?”

Neil let out a huff and stood, grateful that he’d brought slides to wear between games rather than his usual running shoes.

“I’m not doing this here.”

He said. He gave Laila a brief smile and then headed for the hallway. Hopefully most of the reporters would have returned to the outer court to watch the Eastern and Southern division teams play. At the very least, he could find an open office somewhere. Behind him, he heard the noise from the locker room crescendo as someone opened the door behind him. As it swung shut, he faintly heard someone asking if they should stop Minyard from following him. Neil sincerely hoped they didn’t – for everyone’s sake.

When Andrew closed the office door behind them, effectively cutting them off from the rest of the world, Neil felt something settle. Of course, just because he was more comfortable this way didn’t mean he wasn’t cross with Andrew still. The blonde seemed unimpressed as he turned to see how Neil was leaning up against the desk, his arms crossed in front of his chest.

“Are you going to spit it out, or waste my time staring?”

“I’m not mad about the comments to Dermott.” He clarified, mostly because he knew Andrew would be entirely uninterested if he thought that was what had Neil bothered. Then again, he probably wouldn’t like the actual topic of his ire either. Neil sighed and ran a hand through his hair, a habit of frustration he’d picked up from Matt.

“You couldn’t have blocked…I don’t know, half of the shots?”

He asked exasperatedly. True to form, Andrew’s expression flattened.

“That,” He enunciated with great boredom and disdain. “Wasn’t our deal.”

Four words. All it took was four words for Neil to be simultaneously filled with petty ire and a huge sense of relief and satisfaction. Because when Andrew implied that something wasn’t a part of a deal, it meant that there was something else that was.

“Oh.”

Neil breathed, letting all of his anxiety wash out with it.

Andrew looked like he wanted to roll his eyes. He stepped into Neil’s space.

“Yes, or no?”

Neil’s eyes were drawn to the curve of Andrew’s neck, the golden sheen of his eyes in the dimly lit room, the way his lips were slightly damp from licking them. Compulsively, he licked his own lips, but his eyes strayed to the clock on the far wall.

“We don’t have a lot of time before we have to get back, someone’s bound to notice us missing for too long.”

The dead look Andrew gave him said he’d wait for an actual answer. Neil heeded his own observation, however, and didn’t waste time talking. Instead, he leaned forward the last few inches and aligned his lips with Andrew’s.

Later, the final buzzer sounded and Neil whirled to face the scoreboard with a grin. He always had the goals running in his head, but it was indescribably satisfying to have the numbers glowing down at him from the jumbotron. Central 6, Eastern 5. They’d won. Even if it was only by the one point, Neil felt the victory singing in his veins. His teammates yelled and jumped off of each other like they hadn’t just run their legs out for the past twenty minutes. Neil joined them briefly before turning his attention to the goal.

Andrew never joined his teams in celebrations - not once he was sober, and no one ever tried to include him. It was a bit of a shock then to see him leaning casually on his stick talking to another player. The surprise mitigated significantly, however, when he realized that the other player was Kevin. Judging by his stance, he didn’t seem to be picking a fight, but with Kevin and Andrew that was always just a breath away from changing.

Neil excused himself with a slap on the back from the huddle of players to jog over to them. As he joined them, he caught the tail end of Kevin’s sentence.

“…tell me it wasn’t worth it.”

“Mmm,” Andrew mused, taking a moment like he actually had to think about his answer. Neil almost felt bad for how Kevin fell for it every damn time.

“Not quite.” He said, to Kevin’s vocal dismay. Then his eyes slid over to where Neil stood just behind Kevin’s shoulder. “Not yet.”

Kevin made another half-squawk as he turned around to follow Andrew’s gaze, but his expression narrowed when he saw it was just Neil.

“Of course.” He muttered, running a gloved hand down his face. He gave Neil a disapproving look.

“If I were to take his neck guard off, how many hickies would I see?”

Neil grinned wolfishly, but it was Andrew who replied.

“Why don’t you come try to find out for yourself, Kev?”

The taller striker shot a fearful glance behind him and then physically shook it off.

“God you two were meant for each other. How anybody thinks you’re rivals is blind to the most blatant sexual tension I’ve ever seen.”

He grumbled, removing his gloves and clearly getting ready to leave the court. Neil didn’t mind dragging their conversation out, but Kevin seemed to have a sixth sense for how long a private conversation could be before it drew unwanted media attention.

“It was a good game!” Neil called out after him, earning a sharp grin and a wave from Kevin, even if he didn’t stop walking away.

Andrew caught his attention again my poking him in the chest with his racquet. Neil lifted his eyebrows in question.

“Go shower before the exy stench sinks even further into you.” He said in Russian. Neil mirrored the grin he’d given Kevin.

“And here I thought it was too late for that.”

Andrew didn’t respond to that, just pushed Neil towards the locker room again with the giant head of his racquet.

When he was ten steps away, Andrew called out again from behind him.

“And don’t antagonize any fucking reporters. You have a deal to uphold!”

At this, Neil just laughed and flicked Andrew off behind his back.

Unsurprisingly, someone got a great picture of it to plaster across exy news and fan sites alike in the morning. Neil saved it to his phone and then rolled back over into the warm spot Andrew left when he got up to pee.

[voldiebuns]

HalLUDOween!!

So last weekend I went to HalLUDOween, aka Ludo's one night only, first time in six years concert! They're my favorite band and since I didn't think I'd ever get to hear them again in concert, of course I had to go. Even if it was in St. Louis, an approximately 11 hour drive from home lol But @biffelderberry and I figured it would be worth it, and it so was :D

We started out early Friday morning since it was going to be a long drive and we had to pick up a rental car since neither of our cars was up to such a drive. Of course we found out like an hour into the drive that the model we got had had a recall put out that very morning, but thankfully we didn't have any problems with it. The drive was actually not too bad, despite being so long and being mostly a drive through boring wilderness. We'd put together an approximately 13 hour playlist, so we had plenty of music to sing along with. And we made lots of stops at Taco Bell so I could get their potato tacos bc I'm apparently obsessed lol I ended up eating Taco Bell for every meal Friday, which was probably not a good idea, but it tasted fucking awesome.

(Me, left, and Biff at the beginning of the drive.)

Made it to the hotel around 8 maybe. There were two guys from Chicago in the check in line in front of us who we think may have been there for the concert as well, but the cool part was when we went down to breakfast in the morning, we met two other ppl who were there for the concert! They were from Wisconsin and California, so it was cool to talk to them for a bit about how much we all love Ludo and were so happy we were getting to see them again. We'd planned to use most of Saturday to explore St. Louis, since we'd come so far anyway. We'd wanted to do a ghost tour, but that didn't end up working out, but we did do a few other cool things. We went to an antiques store where we couldn't afford anything, but it still had some really interesting stuff. Then we went over to Grand Street, which I gather is kind of the popular downtown street. We ate at Lulu's Local Eatery, which is a small, hippster-y vegan place. I got the mac n cheese and Biff got the sliders, both of which were fucking delicious. Also very filling, which was a little disappointing bc we'd hoped to share the carnitas loaded tots after lol After that we went to a nearby comic book store. The owner was super nice and we talked to him about Ludo a bit (I was wearing my Ludo shirt) bc apparently everyone in town knew about this concert lol He'd had some other ppl in earlier who were going, I think from New York? Or maybe Arizona. We basically spent the whole weekend hearing from ppl in town about ppl coming in from out of state for the concert. Anyway, after that we did a little more walking around, mostly bc we wanted to look at all the pretty trees, and then went to Walmart to pick up some food (they have a So Delicious cashew milk chocolate cookies and cream ice cream that is to die for!). And crosstitching stuff bc Biff wanted to do an AO3 inspired bookmark design, and I thought it sounded fun as well. Also got some face masks bc why not. Which actually turned out not to be the best idea... When we got back to the hotel, I tried out my clay mask and it didn't go well. I did put a little too much water in it, but I don't think that accounts for how I apparently had an allergic reaction to it. Seriously, when I took it off, I looked like I had a rash all over my face. Thankfully my makeup skills were enough to cover it up, but I did end up sitting with a cool cloth on my face for awhile just to be sure the only reaction was the rash. Here's a picture of me post concert with half my makeup wiped off (the red side was waaaay better than when I first took off the mask):

So got ready, blah blah blah. And then it was time for the concert!! Costumes were encouraged, but since we didn't actually bring any, we just dressed up. My outfit of the night, which I loved bc I'd been waiting for an excuse to wear that crop top:

We took a Lyft to and from the venue since we didn't want to deal with parking or driving back at who knew what time. Which was probably a good thing bc the whole area around there was packed. More so for the second show, where the lines were literally down the block, but even for the first show. Bc of my trying to deal with a sudden allergic reaction rash, we were running a little late, so we got there like halfway through the opener. He was pretty good from what we heard, so I'll probably look up his music at some point. We had assigned seats in the balcony, which I was really glad of even if they cost more than GA down below. We would have had to get there hours early to get a good place there and would have had to stand, which I really am not up to for long amounts of time. But our seats were actually really good and we had a fantastic view of the stage. Except for the railing being right at eye level lol Since the concert was Halloween themed, they of course had some Halloween elements for the stage and their costumes. There were a couple of big, glowing blow up ghosts on either side of the stage. When the show started, about a dozen ppl came out in sheet ghost costumes and ran away around for awhile until it was just the band and they took off the sheets to show they were wearing skeleton onesies. Which I really really want one of now tbh.

Here's the vid I took of the intro. It was honestly so so awesome to see them in concert again. The first and only time I saw them before was in 2011, which was right before they basically broke up (ie they all just drifted away to other things and the band was no more). They did pretty much the song set that I'd been expecting, though there were a couple of things they sang that I hadn't expected. (They'd done a poll on twitter with Topek, Girls on Trampolines, and a couple of others, so since Topeka won I wasn't expecting them to play Girls on Trampolines.) And they did my top three favorite songs of theirs! Including Andrew going solo on my absolute favorite, Horror of Our Love! I took a vid of that too of course, which you can prob hear both Biff and I singing along to. They ended the concert with a cover of the Ghostbusters theme song and having a bunch of kids come out to throw candy to the crowd, which was a fun way to end it. There was no new music, aside from the two covers they did, which I think all of us had been hoping for. Even though we knew it was unlikely since the week before was the first time they'd all been in a room together in years. Still, the music and the experience of being part of the crowd was just as fantastic as last time. So yeah, the concert was amazing all around and totally worth the ridiculous drive :D After, we went down the block to the merch store, bc there was definitely no way I was leaving without something. We stood out in the cold for an hour waiting in line, which was fine except for the couple behind us was being really critical of the show and really annoying. We found out the reason it was taking so long was that the band was in the merch store talking to fans and signing stuff and taking pictures, which I hadn't expected. Of course their handler started telling them they needed to leave basically as soon as we got up to the front of the line. But! They were being pretty slow about it bc they wanted to keep talking to the fans, so Matt, the drummer, ended up at the door at the same time we were and he gave us hugs! He also said thanks for coming again, which made it sound like he recognized us? But idk. Anyway, as awesome as that was, the best part was apparently the girl behind us really wanted a hug from him and we were the last ones he hugged before leaving. Vengeance is sweet :D Anyway, I ended up with a t-shirt and a poster for the concert, plus a couple smaller ones from previous tours that they were giving away for free. There was a really cool tree print that I wish I would have gotten, so I hope they put that up online. There was a vinyl of the last CD as well that I wanted, but I really didn't feel like I could justify that as well. Maybe they'll put it up online too.

We took a Lyft back, which was a bit of an experience bc we had to cross the street to get to our ride and some asshole apparently was tired of waiting in traffic and tried to speed around while we were in the crosswalk. He stopped in time, but Biff really thought he was going to hit me :/ But we made it back to the hotel safely and met the lady from breakfast again. We ended up talking to her for awhile, which was fun bc she's been following the band for a long time and is apparently knows them personally bc of that. Sunday morning we slept in a bit bc we'd been out so late. We were both very glad we had decided not to drive home that day lol We went back out to Grand Street and had lunch at Lemongrass, a Vietnamese place there. I got the tofu summer roll and sesame tofu, and the sesame tofu was seriously good omg. After that we did some more walking and went to a bookstore we'd seen on Saturday. It was really cool and had a pretty fantastic variety of stuff spread out over three levels. We met a local Ludo fan there (we were both wearing the shirts we bought) who hadn't gotten to go to the concert and talked to her a little. Afterward we went over to the St. Louis Art Museum since they were supposed to have a textiles exhibit that sounded really interesting. We didn't end up finding it, and we only got to stay about half an hour before they closed, but it was still really fun. Plus they had some gorgeous views out front, some beautiful fall maples, and a statue of, apparently, Saint Louis.

We thought about going to the zoo after that, since it was literally across the street, but they were having some Halloween event and there were hundreds of small children everywhere. We decided that wasn't something we wanted to deal with lol So we went and picked up lunch from Fred and Ricky's Plant Delicious Foods, a lttle vegan grab and go place, instead and took it to eat at the hotel. The food was pretty good, though probably the best part is that I found out they ship nationwide, so I can order from there sometime if I want. Which is nice bc we really don't have many vegan places here. Monday it was time to leave. Because the drive home was long and we had to get back before the rental place closed at six, we got up at 5 am to head out. It wasn't too terrible, but we were definitely still tired. And I fell coming down the stairs with my suitcase and bruised my ass. It still hurts :/ Drive home seemed longer than the one there, probably bc I didn't really want to be going home lol It's so interesting how every time I go away for a fun weekend, it hits me when I get back how much I hate living at my house and in my city and in Texas in general. So I guess good motivation to try to find a way to move out sooner rather than later. So the weekend was fantastic! There were a few other places we would have liked to go, like the City Museum and some more vegan restaurants, but overall we hit some good places and had a lot of fun. Plus just the landscapes up there were so so pretty. We don't have trees like that in Texas lol But we're definitely thinking of going back to St. Louis sometime to see some more stuff. And maybe see Ludo again, if this concert was a sign of things to come! But of course it coudn't be all good. My throat was feeling a bit scratchy on the way home Monday, and by Tuesday I was pretty sick. Thankfully I had the whole week off plus Monday and Tuesday this week (I'd been hoping to go to a Star Trek meet up this weekend, but I couldn't afford it after all). I'm hoping I'm well by the time I go back to work, but it's been kind of a sucky way to spend my time off! But still worth it for Ludo lbr :D

(If you want to see the food pics I took, they’ll go up on my food blog: @foodandmind)

[xtremedespair3d]

My Lukewarm History with Pixelbuster/Nitomatta

Yesterday, independent gaming journalist Pixelbuster, or Nitomatta, has been under controversy for taking advantage of small gaming news site Final Weapon for getting review copies of games and don’t review them all, basically getting the games he’s supposed to review for free. He’s been fired from Final Weapon and put his journalist career to an end.

This post is copied and pasted from a thread I made yesterday, so think of it as a complete and more accessible guide to my rant about Pixelbuster/Nitomatta with a few changes from the thread. This post isn't about what happened to Pixel and owning games for free, since people talked about him, I decided to take an opportunity to rant with my own perspective about why do I dislike the guy.

I never liked Pixel the moment we started talking a little bit more and even brought me to his server in 2018. There are times that he contradicted me on certain things and seeing his tweets really drove me insane a lot in 2019 to the point that I had to mute him. 

I also never understood why did Pixel make me a mod on his server. I mean, I appreciate it but at the same time I need to understand what am I worth to him. But then I kind of abuse the power of being a mod by deleting people's negative comments I don't like. Not to mention I seriously rant and vent A LOT in his server which almost nobody didn't really care about comforting me at all, but at the same time I always thought I might be getting everyone on their nerves. And speaking of his server (which is now deleted lol), that's one of the worst servers I've ever been, the people in there are so bland, talk shit on a couple of things a lot, and they share all kinds of porn I wasn't a huge fan of the Western art style of. To top it all off with sharing NSFW content on his server, he's absolutely okay with having people share furry porn but not loli/shota porn because it would make some people uncomfortable. Like, really? Come on. Sure, you don't really have to like loli/shota porn, but still, learn to have more balls on bearing that shit, especially if whether or not you're those "Fiction = Reality" purists (Which I hate these kinds of people). 

Lastly, at one time, I left his server because I was getting tired of it, then I came back for a little bit to take a quick peek to see what has changed after announcing I was leaving, and then I left again.

Then Pixelbuster DM'd me on Discord saying to please come back to the server, I was getting bored anyways so I decided to return (along to the RPG Site Discord server where we first met and the one server I despise to death). Now I regret returning to his bland ass server. After returning to his server, Pixel told me "Thank you, I promise you we will help you" probably about my problems I constantly talk about. Then I constantly rant and vent on his server a lot and he and his friends continued to do NOTHING to help me. I also felt sorry for talking ill of him and a bit of his server, but afterwards, I took back my apology as I still loathe him and his server.

The only thing I'll admire Pixel for is that some of his viral clips get retweeted by Japanese people, particularly artists and most recently, I saw a tweet of a RE3 mod video where he was retweeted by bkub, the creator of Pop Team Epic.

For a while I’ve always wanted to randomly tweet that Pixelbuster is a clown, he’s a total piece of shit, and with all this scandal, I finally took the opportunity to say it, but not because of what he did with Final Weapon, because I never liked him. I never liked Pixel at all, part of me feels like he deserves the hate he's getting, and I wish to completely disassociate with me for good. Also, he hates Yumi. He likes all Senran Kagura girls except Yumi. Like, seriously? Fuck Pixel.

The most baffling things he's ever said is that he would get better from his mental health issues and negativity. I'm really sorry but I seriously can't help but laugh so hard at it because he seriously can't help himself on the way he is. His behavior and his opinions are the major reasons why do I despise Pixel to death, he's just absolutely destructive on a lot of things media related. Sure, you could say that most of his opinions attacking large corporates like Disney and such are valid, but it's just the way he expresses them and everything are something I seriously couldn't take him seriously for. That's why I muted him on Twitter this year, I couldn't stand a word he said and it drove me insane a lot last year. I know I already said that but I must stress that out.

What are the things that he contradicted me? Well...

On the RPG Site Discord, the time we were watching the Sega panel from Tokyo Game Show and there was a segment that featured the mobile game called Kotodaman, which they were talking about a Kemono Friends collab. I randomly said that I recognized the game from watching VTuber Noja Loli Ojisan Nekomasu, and he said "I don't care." In retrospect, that sounded very forced. (The thing about the Kotodaman and the Kemono Friends collab was around the same time Tatsuki got fired by Kadokawa when Kemono Friends turned out so successful.)

The time he shared a later Captain Marvel trailer and said that he's finally sold on it, I told him most trailer are fine and he told me "No."

The time when the One Punch Man fighter game was announced, I simply said that it probably was to capitalize on season 2 and he said "No one gives a shit about season 2." I mean, sure but you didn't need to tell me that. Hell, you didn't even HAVE to force your opinions saying that you don't care, can't you just simply learn to ignore, you fucking idiot?

Let's not even get started on the time Pixel banned BlindedOtaku (Who I really despise because he's annoying) from his after some internal drama on his server on December 30th 2018. I wouldn't like to get into details because I can't remember what exactly happened nor I care. The last thing I remember about the drama is that I brought BlindedOtaku to the server after being kicked because he told me so and elaborate on his account on what happened. Then Pixel banned him for good and told me "You tried."

What's the point of this post? The point of this thread is just pretty much ranting about my history with Pixel as "friends," even though I've always had a distance with him and to show off that I wholeheartedly don't recommend you talking to him for the faint of heart, especially after this whole drama happened.

I would say that he can be a very difficult person to talk with, but he's not, the last time I had a relatively normal conversation with him is that if he gets the laggy cutscenes in the PC port of Persona 4 Golden, which he told me it only affects laptop users (Well shit).

Now, here comes the ultimate question: Should Pixelbuster be cancelled?

Well, I'm an edgy person so I would say yes, but at the same time, I don't condone cancel culture and he should own up to his mistakes, so absolutely not. I don't like Pixel for what he is regardless of the drama, I probably won't redeem myself on liking him more, but for the faint of heart, I don't want him to be cancelled. I heard that he's admitted his mistakes so it's something. Even if he were to own up to his mistakes and apologize, he’s now been fired from Final Weapon, if shit goes a little too far outside of Final Weapon, then his career as a journalist has indeed been ruined. To reiterate, no, Pixelbuster should not be cancelled. (At this point he’s probably indeed cancelled.)

I was feeling tempted to talk about Pixelbuster since he's still present on Discord, I would probably talk to him about the situation, but because I need to keep my word about why do I dislike him, I decided to block him on Discord once and for all. I doubt I'd want to talk to him ever again. I was genuinely feeling soft on wanting to comfort the guy and I feel absolutely disgusted and I want to drill my head to suck all the blood from my brain for thinking that.

My biggest gripe with Pixel is that once I become a successful creator, when I make some despicable stories or say some dumb shit, he'd put me on the vein of MatPat and Disney, that’s how despicable he is. I’m sorry if I may sound egotistical and biased because I hate people’s opinions and stuff, but he’s one of the many things that turned me into the kind of person I am right now, an egotistical dude who has a deep hatred for literally anyone’s opinions, criticims, everything else, even small complaints, because I’m easy to get my thoughts dictated and I always disagree and refuse to believe anyone by (occasionally) insult and fight back directly at them.

A few hours ago, he had returned to Twitter only to make a TwitLonger about his statement, I probably wouldn’t care to read the whole thing, but the most important parts is that he’s gone off the face of the internet for good and he’s getting a proper job now. I wish I could have tell him some final words for him, but I can’t even bother.

And there you go, that’s the end of my experience with Pixelbuster. Totally unrelated to the review copy drama, but I wanted to tell everyone how unlikeable he’s always been. And with that said, I’m finally free! I’m finally free from being associated with this scumbag (even though we probably hadn’t interacted much but I’ve always seen his activities that seriously drove me insane), he, his Discord server and the people on it, everything can go to hell with him.

P.S. What’s with the Nitocris thumbnail? Well, Nitocris was his waifu, he’s always had Nitocris images as his profile pictures, but recently he had a new icon of a commission of his OC. That makes me think his love for Nitocris has ceased.

Check out my Carrd.

[finn-nelson-for-the-win]

I bet you didn’t think that by “incredibly soon” I meant about a day later, huh? Truth be told I felt kinda bad about the previous chapter because it was mostly just a filler chapter to speed the plot along and show some time passing, but this one and the next couple chapters deliver some seriously flirty vibes and drama (at least in my opinion) and the words just kept coming so I decided to seize the opportunity and post this ASAP.

I also found this chapter rather cathartic to write because I am still incorporating a lot of myself and my experiences into Rae and the story overall, so I really hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it! This chapter is at about 2,994 words, which is right on track with my goal of making each mini-fic 3,000 words or less!

Wanna get caught up on the updates leading up to this one? Look no further!

Feel free to let me know if you would like to be added/removed from the tagged list and I’ll be happy to oblige! As always: each and every one of you that read my writing, like, reply, reblog, etc. are amazing people and inspire me to keep writing! :)

Just a Touch of Sweetness

Friday and Saturday sort of just blurred together, as Rae slowly began falling into the routine of Finn sitting with her and Izzie whenever they all worked together, but by Sunday afternoon when Rae walked into her apartment after a long day at work, she felt completely and utterly exhausted—both mentally and physically.

It was mid-November, which meant that the holidays were approaching and things at work were quickly becoming more hectic. To make matters worse, that also meant that there was less than a month left in this semester of Uni, which was making Rae feel relieved but incredibly overwhelmed simultaneously. It seemed as though all of her classes had suddenly announced the final projects and assignments that were swiftly approaching and the stress of everything was becoming too much for Rae to handle.

As much as Rae wanted to just turn on some music and relax in a desperate attempt to ease her worries about school, she knew that procrastination would only exacerbate the stress she was currently feeling with knowing that she had assignments due that evening in both of her online classes, as well as an upcoming exam in her Economics class that has been the bane of her existence this entire semester.

Groaning and sighing dramatically as she turned on her laptop and opened up Spotify, preparing herself to work on her assignments without stopping until she had finished everything that was due at midnight, Rae pressed play on her go-to playlist that she had made to match her mood this time of year, aptly titled “Falling…”, and began trudging her way through the list of assignments she needed to get done.

Hours had passed when Rae finally submitted the last assignment she needed to complete prior to midnight.

Thank fuck that is finally over with!

Rae was still feeling overwhelmed by everything she had coming up in her classes as she attempted to prioritize her upcoming assignments and she could feel her breath catch as the panic and feelings of self-doubt and fear of failing out of Uni this semester crept in. To an extent, Rae knew that she was taking on too much responsibility going to Uni full-time, working part-time, and becoming financially independent after moving away from her family to attend Uni. She had incredibly high expectations for herself and she could not even fathom letting herself down by falling behind in her classes or losing the academic scholarship that was the only reason why attending University was even a possibility for Rae.

Knowing that she had to calm down before she had a proper panic attack, Rae gripped the edge of the desk in her bedroom she was sitting at tightly and began counting quietly under her breath, attempting to regulate her breathing.

Just breathe, Rae…In 2-3-4-5-6-7-8, Out 2-3-4-5-6-7-8, In 2-3-4…Out 2-3-4….In…Out…

When her breathing was almost back to normal, her grip on the edge of her desk loosened and she flexed her fingers that had begun to cramp from how tightly they were clenched.

Despite calming down slightly, Rae knew that listening to music could only do so much to help her relax, so Rae turned to the next biggest comfort and sense of enjoyment in her life: food.

Rae has had a strange relationship with food for as long as she could remember. She had a tendency to overeat to the point of being sick to cope with stress and sadness as a child; however, as she grew older and her self-esteem plummeted as bullying “the fat girl” was a more common occurrence at college, Rae began to not eat in front of strangers. This continued until she also refused to eat in front of people that were not her family, until eventually she skipped meals entirely on a regular basis.

For years she struggled to find some semblance of balance because she knew the dangers she faced from both binging and skipping meals, that is until she found a way that she could love food without the temptation and regret she had previously associated it with.

When Rae was 16 years old she discovered that her casual interest in cooking was a true passion and she had quite a knack for it. As she continued cooking for her family and friends and experimenting with new foods and new recipes, Rae gained a new appreciation for food as a form of art and expression that did not lead to her hating herself afterwards. And so even now, nearly 4 years later, Rae would go on “stress baking” and “stress cooking” sprees to help clear her mind and get relieve stress.

Hmm…what shall I bake today…?

Rae walked into the small kitchen in her apartment and perused her cabinets trying to determine what she had the ingredients to make before grabbing her phone off of the counter to get a second opinion.

Rae: Hiya Izz, random question: Do you like cupcakes?

Rae set her phone back down on her kitchen counter and it buzzed almost immediately indicating that Izzie had already replied.

Izzie: OF COURSE I DO, RAE. All sweet things beckon to me! <3 <3 <3

Rae: Lol…In that case, I just might have a sweet surprise for you tomorrow before work! ;)

Rae returned her phone to its place on the kitchen counter, making a mental note to read Izzie’s response as soon as she had a spare moment after getting the cupcakes started.

Two hours later Rae was putting the finishing touches on the three dozen cupcakes she had made and examining them to determine if there was anything else she should add to them.

Hmm…chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate-hazelnut filling and a cream cheese buttercream…Well, you can never go wrong with a little more chocolate!

Rae proceeded to drizzle the top of each cupcake with the remainder of the chocolate she had incorporated into the filling she had made. She quickly cleaned up the last traces of her late night baking, licking the spoons used to mix the batter and taking pride in the perfect balance of sweetness and rich chocolate flavor she had achieved on this particular batch of cupcakes.

By the time she finished tidying up the kitchen a bit, it was just past 2am and Rae decided it best to get some sleep, fully aware that she had to go to work early the next morning.

***

Rae walked into work well over 15 minutes earlier than she typically arrived, especially on a Monday morning, and took a seat at one of the tables in the break room before retrieving her cellphone from the bottom of her purse to browse her social media accounts.

Uninterested in what she saw while scrolling through Instagram and Twitter, Rae set her phone to the side and began examining the small white box containing the cupcakes she had brought to work for a few of her coworkers until she head the door to the break room open.

“Whoa…Finn, you’re here really early today, aren’t ya?” Rae asked raising an eye brow as Finn walked toward the table she was sitting at with a massive grin.

“Good morning to you too, Mae,” Finn replied, feigning that he took offense to what she had said to him.

“Oh, don’t be that way Finn! It’s good to see you, I just didn’t anticipate you being here so early.”

Rae noticed that Finn stood in front of the table she was sitting at and was shifting awkwardly from one foot to another, biting the skin on his thumb subconsciously.

Why does Finn seem nervous? It’s just me after all, he’s got nothing to be nervous about.

“Finn, you know you can take a seat at the table with me is you want to, right?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry…” Finn pulled the chair nearest to Rae out from under the table before sitting down and giving her a small close-lipped smile to help hide some of the embarrassment he was feeling.

“I just didn’t know if you’d be okay with me sitting down at the table with ya or not…” He trailed off until he was barely mumbling and went right back to biting the skin around his thumb.

Rae and Finn sat in a comfortable silence for a few minutes until he lightly tapped the top of the square box she had sitting in the center of the table.

“What’s in the box, Rae?” he asked, clearly curious but resisting the urge to open the box and take a look for himself.

“This box, my dear Finnley,” she began but stopped to smirk at her use of the nickname she knew he secretly hated, opening the box to let both of them see its contents, “contains some of the Chocolate Hazelnut cupcakes that I baked last night and brought for some people here at work.”

“Ah, alright…wait, did you say you MADE these? They look like they’re professional quality! How’s that possible!?” Finn exclaimed, making no attempts to hide his surprise and how impressed he was that these cupcakes were homemade.

“Yeah, I like to cook and bake when I’m upset or stressed, and I’ve been pretty overwhelmed with Uni lately, so last night I did some stress baking. I still have a lot to learn about baking and decorating cakes, but thank you, I tried to make them look halfway decent at least.”

“‘Halfway decent’? Are you shitting me, Mae? These cupcakes are perfect looking! Why in the hell would you want to share these with other people? If I were you I’d just keep them all for myself…”

Rae tensed slightly, trying to determine the best way to respond to Finn without making him think that she was weird.

Careful what you say, Rae...one wrong thing and Finn will always see me as some crazy, fat blob.

“Uh, well I love to cook, but I don’t have much of an appetite for sweets. So whenever I bake a lot, like I did last night, I give most of what I make to people here at work.”

Finn nodded and continued examining the cupcakes that still sat in the white cardboard box while Rae tried to read Finn’s face and figure out what he thought of the explanation she had given.

“Hiya Rae! Morning Finn…you two are here quite early today!” Izzie mused excitedly as she pulled out the chair at the table across from Rae and Finn and sat down, nearly bouncing with her usual level of energy that seemed impossible this early on a Monday.

Both simply shrugged in response, which made Izzie laugh because she could almost swear they were the same person at times with how similar they are.

“Izzie! I have a surprise for you, love, as promised…” Rae opened the box containing the cupcakes, showing Izzie the sweet surprise she had brought for her today.

“Oh my god, Rae! These look amazing! And you made and decorated these yourself!?” Izzie removed a cupcake from the box to examine it further.

“I was just telling Rae the same thing when she showed me the cupcakes! It’s not just me that thinks you’re insanely talented, girl,” Finn replied, playfully poking Rae’s arm to further prove his point to her.

Rae stood up from the table, cheeks blushing a deep red color, and pushed the now vacant chair back under the table, thoroughly embarrassed by Izzie and Finn’s praise and acknowledgment of her baking skills.

“Well, I’m gonna head inside and get to work now. Are you planning to stay out here to eat a cupcake, Izz?”

“Yeah, as long as you don’t mind saving my seat for me, Rae…These look too good and I can’t wait much longer to give them a taste!”

Rae giggled and informed Izzie that she would save her a seat but Rae expected to get Izzie’s feedback on the cupcake as soon as she finished.

“Hey, wait up, girl!” Finn walked hurriedly towards where Rae stood holding open the break room door, allowing him to catch up to her.

Finn gave Rae a huge smile, making her chuckle, and walked beside her toward the seat to the right of Izzie and Rae that has become his regular spot to sit for almost a week. As they passed the radio in the corner of the room, Finn stopped to turn it to Rae’s favorite Alternative music station, which earned him an appreciative nod and genuine smile from Rae.

Just as Rae and Finn got logged into their computers and began getting settled in to answer customer questions, Izzie came bounding through the door, scanning her badge in the process, before rushing to take her seat on Rae’s left.

“Rae, holy shit that cupcake was amazing!”

“Izzie!” Rae exclaimed, laughing at the sound of Izzie cursing, which was a very rare phenomenon.

“I’m serious, Rae! I don’t know how you did it, but that cupcake from the filling to the decorations, to the cake itself were fantastic!”

“Well thank you Izz, I’m really happy to hear you enjoyed it!”

The three of them continued working, only occasionally stopping when Rae and Finn bickered about their opinions of the song currently playing on the radio or when Izzie brought up how delicious the cupcake had been and how tempted she was to take another one during her break that was coming up shortly.

Rae was quickly becoming accustomed to the new dynamic between her and Finn, especially considering that she had been prepared for the worst following the mixed messages she received from Finn last Monday. Sitting next to Finn this week and talking to him more at work than she has heard him speak in the month she had been working here has allowed Rae and Izzie to get to know Finn a little bit better and Rae could almost say she considered him one of her mates.

When Izzie sat back down at her desk after coming in from her break, she turned towards Rae hesitantly, avoiding eye contact.

“Rae…I hope you aren’t too mad at me, but after giving Rebecca the cupcake you saved for her, I ate another one of the cupcakes you brought while I was on break.”

“Don’t worry about it, Izz! I brought them specifically for my friends here at work and I have plenty more at my apartment if you want more. Just let me know!”

“Aw, thanks Rae, I’d really appreciate that!”

Izzie returned to responding to customers and Rae turned in her desk chair when she noticed that Finn was locking his computer.

“Are you about to go on break, Finn?”

“Yeah, why?”

“I just wanted to let you know that if you want a cupcake before Izz eats them all herself, you are more than welcome to take one. I felt like a real dickhead about teasing you with them and not even offering you one,” Rae replied, apologizing for her inadvertent rudeness and lack of manners by not offering Finn a cupcake as well this morning.

“Are you sure I can take one, Rae? You don’t have to give me one if ya don’t want to…”

“Of course I’m sure,” Rae interrupted, “I want to know if it lives up to your expectations or not!” Rae winked at Finn, causing him to gulp audibly and clear his throat before stuttering out his reply.

“Uh, wow…thanks, Rae! You just made my day! I know it’s gonna be amazing because that cupcake looked fucking amazing, but I’m going to give you really detailed feedback, okay? Because I really love critiquing stuff like this like they do in those cooking show competitions.”

“Hell yeah, I love those shows! Don’t spare my feelings either, I want to know what you really think of them.” Rae added, laughing at the childlike excitement Finn was emanating at the mere mention of the cupcakes.

“In that case, Mae, I will be sure to be EXTRA hard on you…err…your cupcakes, I mean…uhhh…I’m just gonna go now!” Finn hurried away, avoiding eye contact with Rae as he walked out the door in the direction of the break room.

Well…that certainly was an interesting choice of words, Finnley…

When Finn returned fifteen minutes later and sat back down in his seat, Rae was already turned in her desk chair facing Finn with her arm propped up beside his computer screen and her chin resting on her hand.

“So Finnley…what did you think?” She asked, biting her lower lip slightly as she braced herself for his feedback.

“Well Mae,” he began placing emphasis on his nickname for her that he knew got on her nerves, “I thought it was pretty fucking fantastic!  I noticed that the cupcake itself was hardly sweet at all, it was mostly just the filling and frosting on top that added sweetness.”

“Thanks, Finn. I’ve always hated things that are too sweet so I always try to focus the sweetness on certain aspects of what I’m making. That way there is just a touch of sweetness and it isn’t overwhelmingly sweet…Was there anything else you would have wanted different about them?”

“Well, don’t get me wrong Rae, I really liked the cupcake,” he prefaced, trying to soften the blow of his critique to follow, “but I really would have like there to be more filling on the inside.”

“Oh, and why is that Finn? Was it not sweet enough for you as it was?” Rae asked quirking her eyebrow in anticipation for his answer.

“It was plenty sweet, but knowing that there was a filling in it, I was kind of hoping to get it all over my mouth and face while I was eating it…I like it a little dirty, you know?” Finn smirked and gave her a quick wink when he noticed Rae’s eyes widen at the double entendre in his statement.

Are you shitting me right now? Finn Nelson, you will be the death of me, I just know it...

@eveerez @tinakegg @hey1tskat1e @bitchesbecrazy89 @kneekeyta @milllott @protectfinnnelson @arathewallflower​ @jackiewalsh2013​ @pink-royaute

[jenniferlovesthebeatles]

Tom Chaplin Concert

I saw Tom Chaplin in concert last night, and it was an incredible experience! More details under the cut:

Okay, so I’ve been a Keane fan since freshman year of high school, when I was listening to Jango Radio (I used it because I couldn’t remember my Pandora Radio password, LOL) during my graphic design class and first heard “Everybody’s Changing.” I liked it, but I admit that it didn’t really get me interested in their other music. Then when I heard “Somewhere Only We Know” and “Is It Any Wonder,” I began to get more into them. I heard that people compared them to Coldplay, but I felt like they were both two very different and unique groups (I personally adore both bands, though Coldplay is just a bit more nostalgic for me). 

However, it wasn’t until I listened to their 2012 album Strangeland that Keane was cemented as one of my favorite modern bands. After that, I had to have the rest of their albums, and I fell absolutely in love. Keane is such a special band, having such heartfelt song lyrics and a massively talented singer like Tom Chaplin. I had such a crush on Tom Chaplin (and not just because I loved his perfect nose and his cute boyish face in general), and I personally think he’s one of the greatest vocalists out there. I still think about this one video where he sang “It’s a Hard Life” with Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen, it was freaking amazing!

Some of my photos’ titles are even inspired by Keane songs/lyrics, like this one (which is literally just a picture of water in a fountain at the mall but is based off the song “Silenced by the Night”) and this one photo I took (here) that actually went to a statewide art competition! The title is technically the name of an album and not a song, but you get what I mean.

So yeah, I love Keane a freaking lot. And they actually came to my city in 2013, but the concert sold out, and I was unable to go. :( I was so upset, I listened to Keane songs all night and just felt bad about it. 

Currently Keane is kind of…I’m not sure if they consider themselves officially broken up, but they’re on hiatus. But Tom Chaplin has released his own solo album, and it is absolutely wonderful. <3 It still has that sound that drew me into Keane, and it’s definitely going on my list of favorite albums this year. So when Tom announced on Twitter that he was touring, I checked the dates and noticed that he was going to be in Dallas! I was heartbroken about missing him before, so I just had to see him this year. 

If you know my mom, you’ll know that when it comes to going to things like concerts, particularly at night (which is pretty much every concert ever), she is very hesitant. Plus the venue is in our city, but it’s in the downtown area, so it’s still about an hour or so of a drive, which she considers too far away. But one of her friends is very familiar with downtown Dallas and was so kind that she offered to drive us there.

Honestly, I would have liked to go with friends, but…I don’t really have any friends who are into Keane. And my main best friend tends to be busy with work, so I was afraid to ask her. So yeah, I went with my mom. It was at this venue called the Kessler Theater, which I’ve never been to before, but it’s a really nice place! It’s pretty small and intimate, and the staff there are friendly. We had general seating, so basically you just pick whichever seat you want. We got there a couple of hours early, and we were actually able to get seats in the second row! I was really happy about that. 

I mean, technically (I’m trying to put it in words as best as I can since I know you guys can’t see a picture of it) there is a VIP seating section in front of the general seating (which was more expensive and got sold out super fast anyway). So being in the second row of the general seating row area, I was probably still about ten or fifteen feet away from the stage, but it was still a really good spot. Actually, this is probably one of the closest seats I’ve had at a concert before.

I knew I shouldn’t have gotten my hopes up, but I brought my autograph book just in case I was able to meet Tom Chaplin. I was absolutely dying to have a picture with him and tell him what a huge impact his music has had on me. But I knew that there would be plenty of people who wanted to meet him. It was a sold out show, and the audience was very enthusiastic (which is a good thing, but you know). They also were selling some autographed posters and T-shirts, but they were $30, and my mom said no. :\

The show started at around 8:00 and lasted until around 10:30, and it was absolutely incredible! Seeing Tom up on stage, I couldn’t believe I was watching him with my very own eyes. He was handsome and bright and energetic, and I was amazed that his live singing sounded EXACTLY like on the studio albums. I was really impressed. Plus he was so warm and friendly and sweet. In between songs, he would talk to us and told us what a great audience we were. And he talked about how he liked Dallas and went to a farmers market earlier and got a picture sitting on one of the tractors, LOL. :’) I thought it was especially cute when one of the people in the crowd asked him if he had any Texas barbecue for lunch, and he said, “No, we had Vietnamese!” :P And I was really touched when he talked about some of the personal aspects of some of his new songs, like about the ones that he wrote for his wife, and the one about how he got out of an awful drug addiction.

I admit that I didn’t know much about the rest of his band (since I was more familiar with Keane), but he introduced them to us, and they were also really cool and talented! They played many songs off Tom’s solo album (like “Still Waiting,” “Hardened Heart,” “Quicksand,” “I Remember You," "The River,” and “Solid Gold”) plus a bunch of Keane songs, like “Bend and Break,” “Bedshaped,” “Sovereign Light Cafe,” “Silenced by the Night,” and (my favorite Keane song) “Crystal Ball”! I was surprised that he didn’t sing anything from Perfect Symmetry. It’s probably my second favorite Keane album (after Under the Iron Sea). But nevertheless, it was still pretty awesome! And Tom was so close, it felt almost like he was singing directly to me. :’0 I was smiling, like, the entire time, LOL. 

Around the end of the concert, I could see my mom texting her friend about picking us up, but I wanted to try to stay afterward to meet Tom…I asked some of the staff if he would be available for autographs, and they said no. But when I walked outside, I could see a whole line of people waiting near his tour bus asking him to come out. I wanted to wait with them. It was cold outside, but I would have had no problem standing out and waiting.

My mom asked one of the people working there how long the wait would possibly be, and he said at least 45 minutes. And my mom said there was no way we could wait that long when her friend was picking us up in about 10 minutes. I wish that I could be stern about what I want. This is a rare opportunity that I don’t know if I’ll ever get again. But I can’t disrespect my mother, so I just stood there in defeat. 

Later my mom’s friend picked us up, and she even offered to stay around longer so that we could wait for Tom to come out, and my mom freaking said NO! I could not believe it! I kind of looked at my mom with a sort of pleading face, but she said she “didn’t want to impose ourselves on her friend.” I was annoyed. It’s not imposing if she offered. >.> 

So yeah, I had to leave, and later I saw people post pictures on Twitter of themselves with Tom. I’m such a loser. Maybe if I had friends that I could go with, maybe if I were more assertive, maybe if I had more self-esteem I could go after the things that I want. But I don’t. 

I’m already starting to feel that post-concert depression hitting me hard. I mean, of course I’m so very glad that I got to go at all! Tom put on a great performance, and I had second row seats! I’m hoping that being so close, he maybe saw me in the crowd, grinning from ear to ear the whole time. I hope he knows how happy he’s made me, and…how much I love him and would love to give him a big, big hug.

[activebodi-blog]

How I got over 2.1 Million visitors to my website

It’s been 5 years.

5 Years, over 2 million visitors and a hell of a lot of fun (and traffic!).

No, I’m not talking about this website, but another one I own which talks about Martial Arts movies. It’s had it’s up and downs and experienced a lot of publicity in it’s time.

Over the years this website has range from 1000-2000 visits per day, mostly from SEO, and despite me putting far less effort into it these days it seems to keep following that trend.

It’s reached a fairly passive level of work and is a cool asset to have up my sleeve.

But how did I grow this website to 1000-2000 visits per day?

It was a lot of work, but more importantly a lot of learning.

There is a pretty basic formula I was able to discover through trial and error, playing around with content ideas, keeping active and always pushing forward.

So I thought I’d share with you here exactly what I did so you can grow your traffic and hopefully get even better results than I did. Some tips may apply to you and some may not.

So here we go!

Below I have a video discussing this, but also the written tips underneath.

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Now, onto the written post!

I aimed for low competition

As I mentioned much earlier, this website is about Martial Arts movies.

When I first got interested in watching martial art movies I went online and did a search. Whilst there were plenty of movie reviews around, there were hardly websites specifically any dedicated Martial Arts films.

So I considered throwing my hat into the ring to start watching movies and writing reviews – but I wanted to make sure I could compete so I did some solid research and still it seemed to be a low competition topic.

Beyond that, I also searched for certain things to see if anyone had written about them, both in the beginning and whilst growing the website.

So I started the website about a topic in a space that had hardly any other websites and I also wrote posts that had little or low competition in Google Search Results.

These days more of these sites are up, but getting in early definitely helped secure my spot :)

I started a blog

It may seem obvious but yeah, I started a blog.

Blogging is an easy platform for really pumping out articles and reviews without having to find a home somewhere on your website for them, since they all end up in your blog feed.

But there’s more to it than that.

The blog has a theme and a mission. The first post I wrote introduced the website and a concept behind the whole blog. I found a list of the top Martial Arts Movies (250 movies) and my mission was to review them all.

So now people weren’t just reading movie reviews, they followed me on a personal challenge and then connected with me as I went.

People don’t just want an anonymous voice, they want a person to connect to and get information from. But that leads me to my next point.

The focus was on offering value

I know, I watched a tonne of TV – but I built my reviews based around informing people of the style of action they would find and if I would recommend the film.

The website was about suggesting good movies to watch.

So people had a resource of finding recommendations for martial arts movies as I slowly ranked all of these films on my own list they could refer back to. I offered a central and easy spot to see which movies I recommended, linking off to each review.

I further expanded on this by writing about the actors themselves and useful blog posts full of recommendations based on a theme. I offered valuable information for anyone who was looking to see some quality martial arts films.

I sought out people willing to promote me – and many did

Now getting onto the fun stuff!

Sure, I created a Facebook page and Twitter Profile and posted there, but being new I had no fans whatsoever. So I needed to leverage someone else’s audience. I looked up a number of people in the space, such as actors and fan pages,leaving comments and sending messages.

I didn’t straight up ask for a share, I instead focused on talking to them first and creating a connection. With one person in particular (an actor named Scott Adkins) sharing my page. More on that here.

This lead to about 500 page likes that day and kick starting the blog at about 200 visits per day. Which gave me a solid start instead of trying to reach a single person at a time and building that way.

I then listened to my audience and tailored a lot of the social media content to their liking, which gave my page a very high engagement rate and lead to a lot of traffic. But the real growth came from search engines afterward as Google’s algorithm recognized the social signals and gave me a good boost.

I hit a wall, analyzed and made adjustments

The initial boost took me so far, but things began to plateau.

As the initial novelty of my reviews started to wear off, a small group of people kept reading but a lot of people dropped off. I still had decent traffic but growth had stopped since I wasn’t getting the social signals.

This was a sign that the content I producing wasn’t something people really wanted that badly.

So I experimented with a bunch of different ideas and also checked my analytics to see what was performing best. I then moved my focus to a couple of areas, including top lists (more on that down the page).

I started a small YouTube channel

I noticed that videos I posted on social media, made by other people, were getting the most interaction and engagement – especially short music videos with a mixture of fight clips.

So I made my own!

These videos did relatively well with one of the videos getting millions of views (currently just under 5 million views).

The medium worked well since video was the same medium as the martial arts movies themselves. I linked off to the website and it still drives traffic to this day. The key for me here was to share and reshare videos and prompt other people to share also.

However, I did stop at one stage because the next tip really took me to the next level.

I limited writing reviews and focused on lists

I phased out the movie reviews almost entirely.

I accomplished my goal of reviewing the films on the list as my analytics clearly said one thing – film reviews get hardly any traffic while a few ‘Top List ‘ posts I wrote brought in most of the traffic.

So I wrote a series of list posts and took the traffic of the size well over 2000 visitors per day.

This works because people on search engines quite often want quick answers – like which “Donnie Yen movie to watch next?” and lists give people a number of quick and easy answers whilst being SEO friendly.

These same list posts went completely viral on social media despite, at this stage, having a bit of competition to work against (this was no longer low hanging fruit). I learned a few things about blog posts and SEO, leading to the next tip…

I made a point to write 3000 – 5000 word posts more frequently

I noticed my longer posts often performed better, but they were also top list posts.

So I investigated and found a number of articles talking about how blog posts with over 2000 words often performed the best. Backlinko touches on this here, although the word count has dropped a little in recent years.

So I aimed to make my blog posts comprehensive.

A good tip for this is to turn each item in a top list into a short 300 word article, or make each subheading a short 300 – 500 word article. So instead of writing a 3000 word article, you write 10 short 300 word articles.

I started an email list

“The money is in the list”

Creating an email list is one of the best things you can do for you existing traffic. Once people sign up you drastically increase their chances or returning (assuming you actually email them).

Email gives you the option to touch base with your audience far more effectively than using Social Media as it doesn’t come down to algorithms and likes as much.

People who have signed up to an email list that offers value will continue to read those emails, so you can strengthen your connection with them.

I created an autoresponder series

I created an automated funnel that sends out a series of emails over six months, starting frequently (every 2 or 3 days initially, and slowly dialing it back to once every 10 – 14 days, in order avoid being too aggressive and prompting people to unsubscribe.

Email can easily turn 1 visit into 10 or 20 repeat visits. That’s a powerful factor in increasing traffic.

This auto-responder series has a number of emails within it designed to sell affiliate products and means that for every visitor that signs up, they are likely to return a number of times over 6 months (the current length of the series of emails).

I send out occasional updates between this to keep things fresh, but it’s only about once per month at this stage.

While this still isn’t the highest source of traffic for me, it is definitely making me the most money as my audience is used to me, trusts me and follows through with purchases via my affiliate links.

I constantly promoted old posts

You may note that I mentioned the sharing of older content on my email list once people signed up.

This is a great way to get people onto those old posts but I also promoted old posts on Social Media using tool like Buffer and Revive Old Post.

You can also make a point of linking back to older posts within your new posts so that when people land, they continue to explore your website and consume your old content. This will decrease your bounce rate and improve the quality of your traffic.

This is something a lot of people don’t do but it has really helped me rank a lot of the articles on my site.

I have more information here about promoting old posts if you’re interested.

I worked on my website speed

A slow website sucks and people don’t hang around waiting just to read from it.

I took a lot of steps to drop the load time of my site right down so that less people would bounce and I’d get more traffic from search engines.

I wrote a post on this exact process right here called How I Managed to Speed up WordPress – from 20 to 2 Seconds Load Time.

Basically, I removed all of the useless BS from my design.

I redesigned, moved all content above the fold.

I started off with a really tall header/navigation and elements above each blog post.

After getting my hands on the Divi Theme, I simplified the blog layout and put more effort into the other pages. I brought the post content up as high as possible, and simplified it.

When I discovered over half of my users were using phones, I made the design dead simple and put effort into the logo to sharpen up the appearance without having too many crazy design elements distracting on the page.

This meant people could land and see what they wanted straight away. This helped to keep people on the website.

I decreased posting frequency, but continued to update old posts

Since the website has hundreds of decent posts already, there was no need to update so frequently.

As most people finding the site now are new visitors, it’s more efficient to funnel them through the email list and show them existing content as the value remains the same as I keep the posts relatively up to date.

I started with 3 or 4 posts per week and was pouring everything into this website. I now batch a number of posts with the aim of posting one per month since I covered so much ground with the site and have reached a point of diminishing returns when it comes trying to think up with new topics.

There’s always more that can be done, but not making this my whole life was important as it wasn’t intended to be a business that replaces my fulltime income (despite the fact I do make a nice little chunk of passive income from it).

To grow and move onto other things to make online business more manageable, I have been slowly converting this site into more of a niche site that is less hands on but updated enough to keep delivering value to my audience.

I built an asset, both for myself and martial arts movie fans and now I do my best to maintain that asset.

Now it ticks over seamlessly…

The only reason it worked was value and, for a while, consistency.

I found the most searched for topics and personalities in my niche and wrote resourceful articles about them, giving people an easy place to stop and learn more.

I do my best to keep up engagement, but overall it’s a very passive website now and I believe sometimes it’s best to move onto other things. Every so often there might be a little surge of interest and work to breathe a little more life into it, but otherwise keeping a consistent monthly update seems to be working for now.

You can do that same!

The above property wasn’t only a good project, but it was a fantastic learning curve that allowed me grow as an online blogger and content creator.

Experience speaks volumes so all I can say to you is give it a go!

If you already have a website, hopefully this has helped you to learn how to grow it. If you haven’t got a website yet, check out my free email course to get started.

Otherwise I’d love to hear any questions or thought you may have below! Thanks for reading and let’s keep the conversation going :)

The post How I got over 2.1 Million visitors to my website first appeared on Creator Impact.

source https://creatorimpact.com/2million-visitors-to-my-website/

[dancewithmeplano]

Groove Terminator talks 30 Decades of Australian dance music

This season sees Simon Lewicki celebrating three decades of mischief since Groove Terminator.

Starting out as a hip-hop DJ in his hometown of Adelaide from 1987, Lewicki made his way to the climbing club scene of Sydney in the mid-’90s. From there he swerved into building a couple of artist records with Virgin/EMI — 2000’s Road Kill along with 2002’s Electrifying Mojo— who cemented the GT title and made him a local festival circuit.

The two Groove Terminator LPs came in a formative time. Even though Road Twist nodded to Fatboy Slim with a sample-driven big beat sound, its own follow up featured digital maestro Andy Page as an studio collaborator. The mid-2000s watched up Lewicki team with Sam Littlemore for the project Tonite however there was room for standalone GT about the bar circuit.

Read More

30 years on from Lewicki, that awakening and his alter ego are specialists of the arena. In his life, the DJ-producer repetitions house music on the weekends and performs his 9-5 as A&R Manager for Publishing and Recordings for TMRW Music Group (previously Ministry of Sound Australia.)

Lewicki can also be on board as the Director of Orchestrated after seeing the MOS Reunion Tour’s sold-out success. The displays in Melbourne and Sydney will reimagine dancing classics with a live symphony orchestra, together with GT also joined by Daniel Merriweather and Owl Eyes. The toughest part is determining which particular anthems make the trimoff.

“We’ve got a working set-list that’s true to what Australian classics have been,” Lewicki informs inthemix. “You whittle it down out there to what is likely to sound great with an orchestra behind it. I could’ve easily done a four-hour show with this much stuff.”

Sinking into the spirit of celebrating the past of Orchestrated, inthemix requested us to walk .

What’s life like as a DJ before you made your very first album, Road Kill?

It’ll seem weird to people however I did that the very first. It was completely illegal but I sold thousands and thousands of duplicates. I get people hitting me up on it. It was a time in a community of a couple thousand people. Everyone was really in it and super-critical of their standard of mixing.

I transferred to Sydney so I grabbed the tail-end of the expat celebrations. Subsequently with guys like Phil [Smart] and [Sugar] Ray doing Tweekin’ to a Friday night , there was an extraordinary party vibe. I really don’t know when the medication had something to do with this, however, the music in Adelaide was a ton quicker than Sydney, so it took me some time to slow down it! That’s when I started getting more into that very first wave of filter house, which occurred together with the arrival of Daft Punk.

I signed about two years. I was the first DJ and they had no clue what to do with me personally.

Can it be a surprise for you as well that you were suddenly an artist with a record deal?

Josh Abrahams Paul Mac and I got picked up around exactly the exact same moment. And a wave of executives came in and everybody got dropped together with me. Obviously Josh then proceeded to make ‘Addicted To Bass’ and Paul had the biggest listing of his career [3000 Feet High] two decades after that.

Kathy McCabe, who’s currently in the Tele, was A&Ring afterward, and I believed it was eyesight on their own behalf. I can not even begin to imagine the type of discussions she had been having with EMI in the moment, who had activated their having anything that is not done for most of the ’90s. They proceeded to get an wonderful run.

Was there a specific release out there in the time that turned EMI onto you?

I had a record out on Dance Pool [‘It’s On’] and I had done a remix for [UK dance-pop group] Dead or Alive that had gone gold. I had been given an advance, so I did everything you’d usually do if you’re granted a whack of money get onto a plane and go to Europe. I ended up with most of an album thank god, but it still took me a year and a half.

“I really don’t know if the medication had something to do with this, however, the audio in Adelaide was much quicker than Sydney”

It was to make a record back then —   I delivered it fairly cheaply but to get a sampler was 8000 back. I started off as a hip-hop DJ and that I approached things with this particular magpie sensibility. I was fortunate they coughed up.

Were the advances then unlike anything that an artist would see now?

Well, here’s a good example. I had been signed to Virgin to make a listing. Most folks would have gone off and purchased a house and still exercised a way. I chose to utilize it all to make the record. You get to a point where you’re running out of money.

“I really don’t think people have an opportunity on documents as much nowadays.”

Fortunately my buddy Tim [McGee] worked in Central [Station Records]. Also he went and I told him I had so I flicked that off to him and sold it in the united kingdom to Ministry. We got roughly a $50,000 advance for this. This was the kind of money that floated about back then. I thought, ‘Oh, this is fairly easy, I could definitely keep doing so!’

And those sorts of numbers dried up. I really don’t think nowadays people have an opportunity on documents as much. If you’ve got every label on the planet is going to be knocking down your door to throw money at you. However, no one’s going to take a chance.

Can Road Kill take its cues from what was occurring internationally with digital music at the moment?

You can certainly hear the effect of ol’ Norman Cook on that record. I was a fan. To me it was really important to take everything I had been into — punk, hip-hop, breakbeats, house audio, and also the pop up I climbed up on — and then mash it all together.

‘Here Comes Another One’ was based on an MC5 riff. Subsequently [The Fifth Dimension’s] ‘Let The Sunshine In’ [sampled on GT’s ‘One More Time (The Sunshine Song)’] is such a ’60s anthem of the moment. I had been hanging out with Fatboy Slim a little, and I truly wished to make a record that he would play in his collection. This was my intention for that one. After it was heard by the label, they were like, ‘No, ‘ that’s your only.’

I had been looking back at some older Big Day Out line-ups, and I first saw your title in 1996.

I did in a row like ten Big Day Outs, and now I feel the previous four or five I had been in the touring party. It had been me and Paul and Bexta Mac — it was a community with the people about the line-ups everywhere. I’m still friends with all those people now.

I recall playing [the ‘ Chemical Brothers’] ‘Block Rockin’ Beats’ at the Boiler Room when that record was huge, and the reaction was just over the top. In 1997, The Prodigy was the very first digital action to perform the main stage, and I remember thinking ‘Oh yeah, we have arrived, we are taking over today.’ It was a great moment.

“The 2006 era needed The Presets, Cut Copy, Sneaky Sound System; I believe time stood up any place on the planet and always will.”

The line-ups was crazy, since you’d have then and Aphex Twin OMC [of ‘How Bizarre’ celebrity]. It would not be merely techno all day. I believe that the diversity was super-important and informative. There was a lot of tribalism happening with genres ‘I like techno’ or ‘I just like happy hardcore’. You’d see it with all the tribes dressed in their way in Central Station Records. But everybody comes together in the Boiler Room.

From the early 2000s, when Road Kill came out, there is a groundswell of other Australian digital groups: you’d Pnau, Sonic Animation, Resin Dogs, The Avalanches…

Yeah, you noticed it when it was time to collect a tour to get a record. I toured with Sonic Animation and I toured with Grinspoon, you understand? It was like, ‘They both play Big Day Out, they could go!’

I know that the songs the Pnau boys had been making before they found nightclubs was full-on psytrance. And they had this moment, found Derrick Carter and DJ Sneak, and went stateside. Then the Avalanches album is just one of the best to ever come from this country stop. I recall that being the soundtrack of summer hanging out with…oh, I’m not even going to name-drop, however a few touring DJs! That album was being played with nonstop.

In that 2005-2008 period once you started Tonite Just, the audio coming from Australia felt very connected to an worldwide phenomenon.

From the early 2000s everybody was in their own lane setting out their records. Then I think that the advent of having the ability to record in-the-box and not go into studios attracted the cost of production right down.

This 2006 era had Cut Copy, The Presets, Sneaky [Sound System]; I think will and always that moment stood up any place in the world. Those documents had a large influence. I recall seeing DJ AM do an open format hip-hop/rock/party set and going to LA, playing [the Just remix of Sneaky Sound System’s] ‘Pictures’ in its middle. That wave of electro — with a clean sawtooth wave, a snare and a kick — only sounds great loud. You can not beat it.

As a young DJ, you’re Australian runner-up from the DMC DJ competition. The tools of the trade have changed quite a great deal since then…

When I started DJing, I did not even see [Technics] 1200s for two decades. It was this idea that there! It had been like, what? These were the types of discussions.

You are able to learn to DJ in about 90 minutes so the bar has lowered. The thing that’s not likely to change is that the art of DJing is understanding what tune to play next. That is any time period, any genre, ever. That’s how you rock a celebration: understand what tune to play following the one that’s playing.

Orchestrated together with the Ministry Of Sound Orchestra strikes Melbourne’s Hamer Hall on Friday August 11 and Sydney’s State Theatre on Friday August 18. Tickets are now on sale.

Jack Tregoning is an independent writer based in New York. He’s about Twitter.

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[dkehoe]

I was trolling through Twitter and noticed a post by my favorite book store Parnassus Books, stating that Greg Iles, author of the best selling Natchez Burning Trilogy and multiple other novels, would be signing his book Mississippi Blood at Salon@615 at the Nashville Public Library downtown. I looked over at my husband who was sipping his morning coffee and asked him if he’d like to go. He’s a big fan, having read a few of Greg Iles books, including Natchez Burning. We looked up the time and purchased our tickets. We have lived in Nashville for a total of 7 years (combined over two moves) and have never been to the Library downtown. I do have my much used Library card though and use it through the Overdrive app to check out ebooks and audio books all the time I’ve just never been in the physical location.

I was kind of excited!  An outing downtown is always kind of fun, and I know Greg Iles writes a great novel and I was interested to hear what he had to say. Before the book signing, Greg Iles spoke in a mini auditorium to a crowd of about 100 fans. He was charming and told some great personal stories, as well as answered questions from the crowd. I took notes, and will try to recreate as much as possible. Please note that I did not record his conversations, so these are recreations from my notes and memory, not exact quotes.

Greg Iles speaking at Salon@615 at the Nashville Public Library on 3/25/17

Mr. Iles started off by telling us about when he was writing Natchez Burning in 2011. He said initially he was writing it to be a stand alone novel. One day, he took a break from writing and went on an errand. On the way home, his car was broadsided by another car going 70 miles an hour. He was in a coma for eight days and lost his leg. When he woke from the coma, he realized his vision for the book had changed. He realized that he couldn’t tell the story he wanted to tell in one book, it was going to take three. It was Natchez Burning that took him to a new level of writing, and that level brought him recognition. He could remember one reviewer’s comment in particular about that book. That reviewer stated that Greg Iles was the William Faulkner for the Breaking Bad generation. Kind of a cool  review, right?

Questions from the audience-

When you played in Frankly Scarlet where did the road fork, and you knew you would become a writer?  We learned that Greg Iles started off in a rock band, and in fact, is still in a band with Stephen King. Wild!  Anyway, that rock band was named Frankly Scarlet.He said that it was one night when he’d gotten in a fight with a band member, he called his wife afterwards. He was tired of traveling for 50 out of 52 weeks and told her he was quitting. He said his wife sighed and asked what he would do and he said that he’d write that book that he’d always wanted to write. He wrote for 18 hours a day on a book about Rudolph Hess in WWII called Spandau Phoenix.

He went off topic for a bit after that question, talking about how he got that first book published. It was actually a pretty funny story and I’ll try to remember some of it for you guys. He said it was a much easier process back when he first got published, not that getting published was easy, but that the system was simpler. He had an agent and that agent held an auction for his novel. She said 30 publishers were interested at the start of that auction. In fact, he got his first bid pretty quickly. His agent called him and said his bid was for $10k. He thought that was great! In fact, that was how much he and his wife were living off of, while he wrote that book, so he wanted to take that bid. His agent advised him against it, even though everyone in his family thought he was crazy not to accept that money. He didn’t get another bid for two weeks and he was so nervous! But at two weeks, his second bid came in for $30k. He was ecstatic! His family again told him to take the bid. His agent advised him against it. On the final day of the auction the entire day passed without hearing from his agent. At 5:02pm he got the call from his agent that he had a bid for a two book deal for over $100k. Whew! He said that the publisher got John Grisham, who’d written The Firm, write the blurb for the cover and it meant so much to him that he’d done that. They’ve actually gone on to become good friends.

He told a story about writing another novel that revolved around religion. (I didn’t catch the title, maybe one of you guys know?) When he sent this book to his agent, he was shocked to learn that the publishing house didn’t want to pick it up because they thought it wouldn’t sell. That year, Dan Brown released The Da Vinci Code which was a huge hit. He was so angry that the publishers wouldn’t pick up his book that he was determined to show them they were wrong. He tracked down an editor at Dan Brown’s publishing house and made him promise to send Dan his manuscript. Dan was notorious for not giving blurbs on any book covers, so Greg knew if he could get one from Dan Brown, it would make all the difference. Two weeks went by and he got a call from that editor. He said, wait by your fax machine. He got a one page letter from Dan Brown saying that he’d been moving houses and his life was in boxes, when one day he got this package in the mail. He was curious and opened the box. He picked up the first page and didn’t stop reading for three days! Needless to say, Dan Brown wrote a blurb for that novel, actually a whole paragraph. Greg, called his agent and said “Wait by your fax.” That book was published and became the lead title that year.

2) How do you get all that information in your head and then put it down on paper? Greg (I can call you Greg, right?) said that he’s done the grass roots research approach, but he said that sometimes he also just meets people who help him out. He said he’s found interesting people at book signings before too. He gave a word of advice about doing research for a novel. He said ‘Don’t use but 1% of your research- it’s the kiss of death.’ You just need to write non stop.

3) What is the hardest scene you’ve had to write? Greg said that it’s some of the deaths he’s had to write. He doesn’t really think that hard about killing someone off, but then will get caught by surprise over how attached to these characters some of his fans will get, and they’ll send tons of letters. He did say writing deaths of children is disturbing.

4) How did Mississippi and Ole MIss influence your writing? Greg travels the country constantly. He said most places look the same and feel the same. When you get to Mississippi, it doesn’t feel like anywhere else. He joked about it ranking 50th for everything, including fattest state, but said that Mississippi has great art, Faulkner was from Mississippi, they had Elvis and the Blues was born in Mississippi. There is a lot of suffering in Mississippi. It’s a place of contradiction. The last three years have shown that racism is not just in the south, it’s everywhere in America. Double standards run very deep in this country, with people caring more about white kids missing than black.  One on one, white people and black people get along well. It’s when they’re in groups that things get ugly.(referring to multiple police/race brutality issues in the last couple of years, in the north.)

5) How do you separate the difficult things you write about from your own life? How do you handle it? He chose to write about these things. His books at their core look at the nature of evil and why people do good and bad things.

6) How do you push through when your deadlines loom? He said that writing isn’t sitting there banging out sentences. It’s about telling a story. You’re born with it. You just got to have a gut feeling about it. It’s not postcards on a wall. It’s getting that character to the next thing, and then the next thing.

The last part of Greg Iles conversation really struck a note with me. He said readers are waiting for that epiphany. That moment where you feel it. Everyone learns by suffering and some people only have a limited amount of suffering that they can handle. He said that personal experiences are like gold nuggets. When you are writing you dole those nuggets out one at a time. He referenced one book where he got emails from people all over the world. All of those emails referenced the same moment and page number in the book.  The same page resonated with all of them.

Suffering makes art. Are you willing to do that?

Signed copy of Mississippi Blood and brochure from Salon@615

My husband Derry and Greg Iles.

After he was done speaking, he went out to his table and signed books for everyone interested, my husband and I included. That’s my husband, Derry, with Greg Iles above.  This event was definitely worth my time and I’m looking forward to reading this book.

Until next week!

Deb

Buy Mississippi Blood on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Kobo!

This Chicks Sunday Commentary: Salon@615- Mississippi Blood book signing with Greg Iles #Sundayblogshare I was trolling through Twitter and noticed a post by my favorite book store Parnassus Books, stating that Greg Iles, author of the best selling Natchez Burning Trilogy and multiple other novels, would be signing his book Mississippi Blood at Salon@615 at the Nashville Public Library downtown.