#just do stuff why do you need tumblr to tel you to do it man??

[dsm--v]

102733636k notes and i’ll stop tying people to railroad tracks while i twirl my mustache

[aurorawest]

The Scottish Boy by Alex de Campi - 5/5 stars

This book managed to rip my heart out at least 3 times. I loved it. Medieval enemies-to-lovers slow burn; very romantic. Kinda read like fanfiction at times but in a good way. 10/10 would read a follow-up love story about Arundel and Captain Wekena. If you like Captive Prince, give this one a try.

Reforged by Seth Haddon - 4/5 stars

Pretty good bodyguard romantasy. Ironically CS Pacat blurbed this one (another am-I-in-the-matrix moment). The world was interesting and I enjoyed the politics, though they're definitely not as complicated as other SFF politics I've gone feral over (see: Captive Prince, Winter's Orbit, A Memory Called Empire). I ordered the sequel after I finished this.

The Doctor's Date by Heidi Cullinan - 4/5 stars

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske - 5/5 stars

Where do I start? I love, love, LOVE A Marvellous Light. It's one of my favorite books ever. None of the rest of the books in the trilogy could live up to it, really, because it's so good. You'll notice I rated this one 5 stars though, because quite honestly I fell prey to a bit of The Academy Paying The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Its Due syndrome. I did love this book and thought it was better than A Restless Truth (which I still loved!) but part of that is, quite frankly, just due to the fact that I prefer m/m romance to f/f romance.

Anyway. This was such a good finale to the trilogy. I loved that the romance was a giant middle finger to purity cultists. I loved that one of the mains was Italian. I loved finally getting the story of what happened to the Alston twins. One thing I thought was really cool was how, viewed from the outside, you totally get why Edwin is such a loner. I really admire from a writing perspective how Marske pulled that off.

I feel like there's a lot to be said about what Marske was trying to SAY with this book, but I definitely need to reread it first before I can articulate any of it. The purity culture stuff is obvious, but the magic system too. I feel like Jack when he's almost able to connect everything in his mind into a bigger idea, but he can't quite get there.

I've got a special edition from Illumicrate coming, so I'll be rereading it when I have that.

Oh also, this book was the embodiment of all that one tumblr post -

The Guncle by Steven Rowley - 5/5 stars

I saw this in bookstores for years before I finally gave in and bought it. The blurb makes it sound insufferable and twee. Ignore the blurb. This was such a good book about grief and learning how to live again after terrible loss.

I Like Me Better by Robby Weber - 4/5 stars

At last I can stop getting the Lauv song stuck in my head whenever I set eyes on this book (it's stuck in my head as I type this). Pretty standard-issue YA, but it was cute and had a good message.

The Stagsblood King by Gideon E Wood - 4/5 stars

Another book about moving on from grief! This is the second book in a trilogy. When I was trying to determine if I wanted to read on beyond book 1, I scoured the internet for information about what happens in books 2 and 3. Eventually I decided, hell, I enjoyed book 1 well enough, even if what I want to happen in the rest of the trilogy doesn't happen, they're worth reading. SO, to that end, I will tell anyone looking for info that Tel gets romantically involved with a new man in this one, which, eh. I still want him to somehow end up with Vared. It was still quite good though.

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune - DNF at pg 82

So funnily, we were at the bookstore the day I was about to start reading this, and my wife pointed out Ravensong (also by Klune) to me and said, "Do you have this one?" I made a face and said, "That's an older one of his books and I'm wary of his early work after that horrible Verania series. I don't think I've ever read an author as hit or miss as TJ Klune."

I wrote the above when I was 60 pages in and now I have officially DNFed this. Listen. You know how in Thor: Love and Thunder, Taika Waititi was clearly given free rein to do whatever he wanted, so all of his worst impulses made it to the final cut unchecked? Yeah. That's what this book is like.

Here's my Storygraph review: I see Klune is officially Too Big To Edit now. This book has exactly the same problem that his awful Verania series had—a joke that's funny at first but quickly grows tiresome when it's repeated five times per page. The emphasis on Victor's asexuality was also weird and read like Klune was just super proud of himself for writing an ace character.

Lion's Legacy by LC Rosen - 4.25/5 stars

Queer, YA Indiana Jones, but less #problematic. This book had some eerie similarities to my own archaeology adventure novel(s), which made me wonder half-seriously if I somehow know Lev Rosen? Anyway, I feared this would be very heavy-handed and not nuanced on archaeology's ethical dilemmas, since it's YA and also the current culture is to view said dilemmas as completely black and white with no nuance, but I was pleasantly surprised. It manages to examine that, queerness, and daddy issues, plus has time to be a genuinely fun and exciting adventure story. Highly recommend.

Too White to be Coloured, Too Coloured to be Black by Ismail Lagardien - 4/5 stars

I picked up this memoir in a bookstore at OR Tambo airport in Johannesburg as research for Six Places to Fall in Love, since Percy is coloured. A pretty brutal read, but good, and definitely good research. The author was a photographer and journalist through the most violent years of apartheid.

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson - 5/5 stars

Two nonfiction books in a row?? This is the second book by Erik Larson I've read, the first being the excellent The Devil in the White City. I'm not, in general, all that interested in WWII when it comes to military history, but this book is about the day to day lives of Churchill and the people surrounding him (with brief stops to visit FDR and high-ranking Nazis sprinkled throughout). This is a very, very good book, and I recommend reading it if only as a reminder of the resilience and bravery of ordinary people under terrifying circumstances.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh - 5/5 stars

Holy shit. Holy shit is this book good. Imagine the love child of Lost, Person of Interest, and Battlestar Galactica, but queer and with multiverse shenanigans thrown in.

I need everyone to read this book. Now. Yesterday. Get to it.

[stringyworm]

Just got diagnosed as autistic coded by a teenager on uquiz. I feel like this is telling me something but im not entirely sure what it is

[elindae-writes]

Alpha Trion is hot garbage and lemme tel u why

“use Tumblr responsibly, Elindae”

“don’t use it as a platform to rant, Elindae”

welll mHMMMMMMMMM how the turn tables have TURNED

They’ve rotated around so much they gained escape velocity and are now halfway to the heliosphere at the outer edges of the solar system

I am having a Bad Day and so I am in the mood to rant about Alpha Trion because I straight up do not like that old coot, he’s like that one annoying old man we all know who uses a cane not because he actually needs it to walk but just so that he can wave it at you and point it at your freakin kneecaps

I am only aware of his Prime incarnation and I know diddly squat about the other versions of him, perhaps he is a fantastic, lovable, and quality grandpa robot in the other incarnations

But the Prime version?? Hot mess. Such a hot mess.

First of all, he took an Omega Key and just shoved it into poor Smokescreen’s chest like an absolute jerk. This chucklefuck knew Smokey would go into the escape pod and that it would crash into Earth and that Optimus would find it. So he took one look at the pod and was like “ah, yes, the perfect receptacle to store the highly important Omega Key in!!”

But was Alpha Trion normal about it?

no

He could’ve just taken Smokey aside and been like “hey there take this key and give it to Prime, it’s important”

Or if he was worried about the ‘Cons finding the pod and stealing the key he still could have stored it in Smokescreen’s chest and been like “hey store this inside of you and be very careful and cautious around the Decepticons because you have precious cargo, it’s for my boy Prime” and Smokey would have obviously been on board with becoming a living FedEx package if it meant he’d meet his idol Optimus

But Trion was just like “mhHMMMM I’ll knock this young lad unconscious and put stuff in his body without his consent or knowledge, hopefully he realizes he has the fate of Cybertron inside of him! it sure would be a shame if he never realized that and went driving off and getting into fights very recklessly in a way that could get him and the key destroyed!!”

Couldn’t this absolute cheesebag have left a message behind or something? Like maybe leave behind a pink heart-shaped sticky note on Smokescreen’s forehead that says:

Hi, Optimus, it’s me, your dead father figure ;) I left an object behind in this young lad’s chest cavity, better get it out cause it can save our entire planet, anyway bye I’m dead

That way when Optimus found it and read it he’d instantly be able to extract the key, find out about the existence of the others, and begin searching for them ahead of time

Is there something here I’m not understanding?

Second of all, he has a beard. All of the poor souls seeing this are probably thinking to themselves: “Elindae, why would robotic facial hair anger you so much?” but I think you should all be asking “why WOULDN’T the robotic facial hair be an angering subject?”

Was he forged with a beard?? Just fresh out of the oven did bb sparkling Trion come laden with full facial hair??? The worldbuilding implications of this have me shaken. Did somebody ever look at that sparkling and think to themselves “why does this eight year old look like an eighty year old?”

In the episode where Optimus was straight up dying I was on the edge of my seat and then freakin robotic Dumbledore’s ominous floating torso appeared on my screen and the first thing I noticed was that dang beard. I wasn’t even like “oh no, Optimus is dying,” no, my first reaction was “oh no, why does that robot have a beard?” When he transforms, where does it even go? Does he have a compartment in his undercarriage for it? Does he COMB it or oil it?

Did he have his faceplate resculpted to have a beardlike appearance as he got older? Like a fashion statement?? Did they get the concept of beards from other aliens in the galaxy? Did Alpha Trion just wake up one day all like “I want to be a subpar version of Gandalf”?? I need ANSWERS Hasbro

Do Cybertronians gain beards as they age? If so why don’t more of them have beards?? They’re robots why do they need facial hair WHY--

anyway.

I hope I didn’t offend the Alpha Trion fandom too much (does he even have a fan following??) and I’m sorry if he’s like your favorite character or something and you stan him and you are shakin in rage at the sheer audacity of my Trion-focused rant. “this bitch, this bitch, this bitch is criticiZNG ALPHA TRION--” hmmm yes I am That Bitch

Unless it turns out he actually has good and valid reasons for all of his moral and facial transgressions, in which case ignore this post

(I don’t hate him as much as I hate Jack tho)

I will accept whatever rage will come my way, I just needed to get this out of my chest and eject it as if it was an Omega Key placed there by some old sap

Next chapter is still WIP. Love you. Pls let me know if I am alone or not in my hatred of this ominous bearded grandpa bot

[sole-cuore-amore-e-droga]

Tel Aviv 2019: Straight outta France to Eurovision with king of controversy

T’was a good decision for the French televisions to make Destination Eurovision a thing for yet another year. Sure, I only end up having heard of only 1 name per year beforehand (Nassi from 2018 and Florina from 2019, additionally hearing music from one other act from each year but forgetting their names soon after!), but that doesn’t stop everyone else for me from showcasing their best. Heck, I have listened to quite a lot out of some of my Destination 2018 favourites and I have never had any idea who they were! (They were Masoe and Max Cinnamon, je suis absolutely NOT désolée.)

And honestly I found this year extremely much more better to care about. For the previous edition I ended up not caring for like 5 or more songs, because I spent more of my investment in the finalists. This year I pretty much cared about way many more songs, even those that I didn’t wound up liking THAT much. Seemone for example, AKA “the only best possible choice for France from those that don’t need to have big followship numbers to have fans for the song, unlike Bilal tsk tsk”. I can’t say I was 100% mesmerized with her song, but I do remember her more than June the Girl, which was quite a fan fave but also a disaster from 2018. Oh sorry, I mean, June the Who?

And of course Destination 2019 paved the way for some more exciting plot twists and turns, for example, two of the bigger fan favourites fizzling out in the semis (and I already lowkey discussed them on my other segment, Fanwank Assimilation), and another two lowkey favourites crashing and burning live (one of them sounding like she was drunk and scared, another one being less energetic than her song requires). What did that give out at the end? Why, nothing but a homosexual French-Morrocan social media starlet Bilal Hassani of course. Let’s go ahead and review his entry.

My first impression of this song turned me off a little because of how... poppy bland it sounded. Nothing against Madame Monsieur’s co-crafting (they did make a song I liked for last year’s Eurovision), it’s just that I think that I’m a person that’s looking more into pop songs with expectations full of excitement, but then getting something average at the end. The English lines in this are ‘reasonatable’(?) with though - it’s a self-empowerement against haters, telling to oneself that they’re the “king” (yes Bilal may be wearing wigs a lot but for the last time - HE DOES NOT IDENTIFY AS A SHE) and that they “can see [their] kingdom”.

Though it grew on me overtime, to the very point I couldn’t see anyone taking his way, not even Seemone, not even any other darkhorse of the comp. No. My organism was fully adapted to the fact Bilal will win, so I ended up there lowkey supporting his win, even if I wanted someone else deep inside. (Same for A Dal 2019 but my inner systems refused to bring myself to Joci possibly winning an A Dal again, though they saw it being a likely endgame... just in a different light of events, but more on the Hungarian writeup, buckle up for that one because there’ll be buckets of everything for that one! >:) ) That and Bilal was kind of a runaway choice considering France is huge and the jury in there can’t do shit if the televoting is valuated in stronger numbers than in Melodifestivalen (I mean, look at how many points did he get??? His telescore beat the televote’s runner-up’s one by 87 points!), so if he has that many fans in a big enough country then of course they were gonna flock to him massively, and ain’t no Eurofan can’t object against the French televote numbers like these. Though they might seem too big because last year Madame Monsieur won with 118 as opposed to the artist’s of a song’s they have co-written with him for this DESC 150. And the televote gap between the 1st and the 2nd was much more humble - 29.

Maybe it has had to do it with the fact that it has a pretty damn alright pop melody that doesn’t sound specifically written for an ESC NF (unlike most of stuff that’s been done by Ylva & Linda and the like)? Maybe it has got to do with the golden hands of both Madame Monsieur members (pretty sure it might have just been Jean-Karl) touching upon this track (and some randomer whose name I don’t remember rn and I don’t want to? idk)? Maybe it’s the state of Bilal’s studio voice capabilities that carry this across for me nicely enough? Maybe it’s the persona? Somehow I don’t think I know but I’ll probably choose the first option. This is listenable, yes. Flows through like a normal pop song would. Maybe would have needed some polishing in some places (for that exists an up-and-coming revamp that will only be revealed on rehearsals (youhou Moldova 2014), but actually I only think that it will impact the song in a way that it will now be in F minor rather than F sharp minor?? So that Bilal could avoid being one of those kind of people that did sth like this:

RETWEET IF YOU CAN HEAR THIS PICTURE

Anyways. For all that it is, I savour it, it’s pretty decent, it stands out with its message if you know what it is (a kiss-off of the haters that once doubted this “roi”), I kind of like the way it’s being sung (and that vocal variation at 1:21) and some of the lyrics are not that bad actually, and for the matter of fact, I’d DIE for a possibility to create a song like this at best; I don’t quite know if it can do as well as his fanbase imagines, but I really hope it at least doesn’t do France dirty for choosing its up-and-coming-ish social media icon over the NF acts that I’ll be going off about a little later and brings a savourable result! I cannot remove my like for this song now that the deed is done, period. And I really hope that someday all this outrageousness over Bilal in a bad way will be stopped because poor 19 year old, let him be whatever sexuality he wants to be as of now, let him have his fans, let him wear those wigs, and keep those upcoming TV series about a terrorist man with an intent to blow up Eurovision in Israel (or something like that) at bay. Not to mention, these nasty caricatures. I definitely did not like seeing them. I legit feel like we’re almost talking about Lithuanian situation and what do my country’s citizens think about gay rights and all that (spoiler alert: they’re not friendly towards them). Stop it, get some help.

Oh and I know this is essentially 2,5-ish months late now but can I adress something real quick before finishing off this review and moving down to my chance-o-meters and all? Pretty please?

To all the Nightcore lyric videos of “Roi” that did this and would still do this:

Please consider looking back at the official lyric video for “Roi”, where it says:

and thank me in advance.

Not can’t, can. No wonder he’s a “roi”, ffs. What would be a king who cannot see his kingdom now? I’m sorry but this is just lowkey absurd, ngl.

Anyway:

Approval factor: As of the time I’m finishing this, I sort of approve it for now. The big dilemma though is to where do I rank this big boy - do I think it deserves to go higher than UK or lower? Do I drown it in the bottom 3 just because I had a rather negative first impression for it? God knows. For now though I’ll aprove it and carry on, dreading for the revamp obliterating some of the song’s charm that I had for it, just like maybe for Spain.

Follow-up factor: I think it is quite of a stepdown, considering last year a lot of guys publicly ADORED “Mercy”, and Madame Monsieur didn’t even need to have a huge social media following just to get that far as to win Destination! Bilal, however, did, and most people didn’t even fancy his self-empowerement ‘anthem’. And so did I at first, and eventhough I kind of like it as of now, I still prefer “Mercy” big time. France for the kings of controversial song topics and controversial entrants!

Big 5 factor: at the end of the day, you cannot change the fact that most of the Bilal fans are definitely centered in France (and maybe in some outskirts in Belgium as well) and not around Europe, especially the first time viewers, boo. So Bilal’s memorability levels in there from a Big 5 country will be questionable, unless his massive-ass French fandom decides to mass-emigrate for a week, get some foreign Simcards and start spamming votes for their idol - that’s a guaranteed televote for a guaranteed low jury vote, and if high any-votes are any indicators for where things are heading (like for Poland 2016 for instance), then Bilal will finish decently, but without any high-votes, he’ll be stuck in a low-low, maybe somewhere in the bottom 10. Sorry if you’re reading this, any remaining Bilal fans on Tumblr... you better get ready for your mass emigration for a week then?

NATIONAL FINAL BONUS

Destination’s memes are still glorious to look at, even if it feels like it’s been years since them, considering my social media timeline does not have all that many of them remaining, BUT we still got some highlights from them saved and I can’t wait to freshen up the minds of the mutuals that seemed to have forgotten them. As well as some note-worthy NF songs that the others won’t get the chance to see because only one can represent France and Bilal can’t stand in for any other ones but himself, cuz he is he, and you know he’ll always be. Let’s go:

• Silvàn Areg, probably the biggest underdog-turned-overdog-overnight act of them all out there. Back when his song was still “Le petit Nicolas” (it was changed to “Allez leur dire” thanks to copyright turmoil with some book’s publisher - no it wasn’t about Le petit prince, there ARE Le petit Nicolas stories in there), I don’t think anyone really saw THAT much potential in this song to stand out, maybe except a few select others? I mean who’d even DARE to support this upbeat guitar French-like tune that... has cartooney visuals on stage and that way wows the viewing audience??? NO WAY!!! Yeah these visuals made me truly forget this was one of the songs that didn’t come out in full release yet (as of DESC 2019, only 3 songs weren’t released in full yet, along with The Divaz and Doutson (the latter dragged his kid on stage for his performance BTW, maybe that kid liked Silvàn’s stage illustrations despite maybe not seeing them the way they were supposed to be viewed?) and enjoy the king of popup-book visuals taking it away. So much so I ended up rooting for both visuals AND the song during the final as well (and the final had the colouring book painted!). Don’t you love it when your fave has an impeccable staging AND can nail their performance as well? I sure do... Click to find out his performance serve. I stan men who can sometimes rap out of nowhere when necessary and unexpected.

• Looking for typical French chansons/ballads that make you think of how longsome and melancholic (with a hint of happiness) can things be? Look no further than aforementioned Seemone and her alive-father-ballad, “Tous les deux”. If you’re not here for all this French zany, you can sit back and relax with hearing this piano delight with Adele-ish vocals on top and the paternal gratitude intertwined in the lyrics... well duh, if the constant repetition of “PAPAAAAAA” in the bridge doesn’t give it away for you, an unassumer, then idk what does. Noir, compelling, heart-wrenching, stunning, solid and all that it is. For all the ballad lovers out there. Hope her father’s proud of her achievements (for what did she do is to take the Eurofans by storm against this inevitable Bilal-ness with her feelings-over-fireworks and her strenght to carry out this beauty without crying... in the NF final at least, making International juries side with her more than Bilal, for whom we firstly thought it was over until 150 televotes, even getting the Bjorkdaddy on her side in the semis... only to never win the televoting as hoped to (Bilal was in a different semi so another man won over the girl, while in the final Seemone was 3rd and voted just under another experienced artists and Bilal obviously) and just remain the jury darling) and will hold this song up to himself dearly. We love supportive and thankful children <3

• This 25 year old chanteuse/violinist Gabriella Laberge, hailing all the way from Canada but with a passionate love to France probably ever since performing in La voix (je t'aime nuit et jour), I mean, The Voice France 2016, dived head-first into the social interraction game, with being all-round positive with her supporters, retweeting their stuff, liking their posts, being in groupchats... she did all she could. And the international jury still let her flop big time. Probably they were too underwhelmed at how engaging her entry, “On cherche encore (Never Get Enough)”, was on the big stage, with Gabriella out there, rocking her yellow pantsuit and dancing on top of a rectangle with other cello-or-contra-bass player madames inside of it and stairs to get on top of that rectangle besides the rectangle. Oh and playing the piano at the beginning. Were they afraid she was gonna fall off the rectangle with her musical ‘gun’ the next time? Was it the show opening that startled her chances (as people are afraid that the same will happen to Srbuk in Eurovision 2019)? I don’t know, but for one that I know is the fact that the poor woman was robbed to the core for all the friendliness she radiated. And the violin lady realness she delivered. Here’s now hoping her strong friendship ties with Olivier Dion will persuade him to fly to France from Canada next for a Destination Eurovision adventure, then? (tbh he’s pretty decent!)

• UH-OH! GIVE A LITTLE RESPECT for The Divaz! Seen by me as a little bit of those girlies that will definitely be drowned in the results because of their... aura and decision of paying a tribute to the late Aretha Franklin, I was shooketh to the core when I saw them NAIL “La voix d’Aretha”... the passion, the drive, the energy, the sass, the style, the dresses, THEM VOCALS! Needless to say I got incredibly sold and even more so happy I was interested in hearing that song all along beforehand, so much I think I tried skipping our own NF over just to see these gurls S-L-A-Y! Hopefully this ain’t the last of them together, they’re a true cool bunch. Happy to see that the international juries saw something in them!

• Emmanuel Moire... now, his song “La promesse” is even more so boring sounding imo and would do less of an impression if people didn’t know the message of it, but the message (and his status in the French music skies), boy does it shine. He sings about making a promise to stay true to himself and not be afraid to admit that his heart beats... FOR A MAN! And where is the Eurofan community that denounces a ballad unless it’s gay?? Some happen to still denounce gay ballads too, but only if it comes to NFs apparently :F I applaud for this song existing tbh as I find it nice myself. Such a shame the man couldn’t really sell his song THAT strong enough though, as I couldn’t help but crack a smile at hearing his falsettos go terribly off, but still feeling sorry for the guy. His staging (that has two men playing around, further going for his song’s memo) and the fact that he beat Seemone in televoting due to his bigger status than the rest of the most other DESC participants this year (save for Chimène Badi which has a status as big as his?). And this one moment that made me feel like I’m looking at Malena Ernman’s true form:

• So how about these few other bedazzling NF flops in a little bit of blitz summary, seemingly as the paragraphs here are already going out of hand? Sure! Allow me to introduce y’all to the shy French Mélovin named Ugo who was tryna get to the spotlight all by himself with a song about... crushing I think (he’s fantasizing of meeting a gal in some interesting interesting ways), but tanked majorly live due to being nervous and letting the pre-recorded backings overwhelm him majorly. Then comes the other up-and-coming chanteuse Florina which I also talked about in the fanwank flops section (though I published it right after Spain’s NF because I had enough of THAT rattling around my drafts... and same goes for the rest of my 2019 reviews!) but I’ll put up a mention for her because I undercooked my thoughts for her. “In the Shadow” - studio god-tier that sadly reeked of “Chandelier” heavily and another NF underperformance that grew condescencing during the rehearsal-snippets period that maybe made people keep their hopes up during it just like for Rykka’s, Jana Burčeska’s and Sennek’s odd pre-party performances. Who knows if Michela would have followed them suit if she was allowed to attend all the pre-parties despite “rehearsals”! In the end we still got a lackluster performance and a total 0 point score from the international juries. Wow. I hope that didn’t scar her for life. Also worth a mention are Battista Acquaviva, the Basque-singing goddess that had some sort of a potential but heavily crushed it by sounding weak and a bit drunk even (or even similar to this) on her own performance + adding some Roman-esque shirtless hunks for no reason (sweetie if they didn’t work for Anggun then what’s the point saving your live with them? Unless you can mask it up like Demy, just leave), and the other studio fave that tanked that was Tracy de Sá who served a French-Spanish (!! that’s where the title came from, you really thought the song was gonna b called “Par ici” noooo) summer bop with her rapping skills on fleek and her desire for “whiskey cocktails rum rum rum” as a cherry on this delightful cocktail has also got really grinded down by her live performance where she was barely even enthusiastic to live up to her own song and maybe have needed some of those liquors she offered on the song to make it sound better. But hey, at least from Tracy we got 1) studio version leak drama that obviously affected the poor sis so hard she raged about it on Instagram a bit; 2) slapping track about parties n stuff for our own summer 2019; 3) her own little version of that notorious song which wouldn’t probably be remembered so fondly in the memedom if not for some mother’s pasta dish; 4) the light tunnel she emerged from at the beginning of the song during her performance, which in reality is just the NF arena exit tunnel; 5) this meme:

Yeah well, good luck at your hairbuns and your hoop-de-hoop ‘rings trying to save you this time

• I was also gonna add this interesting phenomena of “hot violinist guy” because of course I remember this hype being set up for some dudes (especially for THAT violinist. I remember almost everyone suddenly crushing on him but I couldn’t care enough to buy it because lol!) even without their song coming out to public - yes I’m talking of Lautner who obviously also tanked during their live performance of this song but the international juries loved the shit out of it (same for aforementioned Ugo... and mind you I wrote them down as sure NQs after seeing their carcrash performances live! To think they would have almost MADE it thanks to them and SHATTER my predictions???) and their bromance probably lived on... for another 15 minutes

And the ‘drunken auntie’ of someone’s that sang a rather underrated catchy spring-esque sunflowery song but completely ruined it by her awkward jumping around in red suit on stage, PhilipElise, but that’d require me to brief my thoughts upon like nearly all of the damn roster of the irrelevants, so it’s best if I forget all the rest and move on!

• Not to mention, Bilal himself is a highlight. On an occasion he’s such a mood, as demonstrated on this first biggest ESC 2019 NF season meme down here:

And keep in mind, that wasn’t the final. But for the final this happened, which is still as amusing as the first:

Epic hairspin! Laura Rizzotto wishes she remembered this technique just in time to engage some more audience so that they could at least pull her out of the NQ zone.

• Who cannot forget the occasional thought of Garou, the NF’s host, singing. This year he was one of the final’s interval acts, and his choice to sing was because of honouring a Frenchman who passed away not so long before the DESC broadcast. Truly the dedication <3

• One of those NF cases that had people rallying up against Eurovision being in Tel Aviv and withdrawing the broadcasters from it by their own force because “well fuck you, our feelings and sentiments towards Palestine are more important than this schlager-ridden shitshow musicfest!!” lolno. Some protesters came on stage sometime after Netta’s guest performance during Semifinal 2, and both Garou and the security guards did their best and hardest to chase them away, but some still got on shot because reasons. This is ridiculous (as much as it was when it was found out that some people in Spain were waiting outside RTVE’s headquarters before the OT 2019 ESC Gala just to make THEIR move) and thankfully it didn’t follow on many more NFs to come.

• oh and also the neon cube argh

Feels like a way larger post than I intended to, and this review is waaaaay long overdue, so at least I tried reminding you of the memes, didn’t I? Anyway, I wish Bilal for all the best in Tel Aviv! xx

[dukeofriven]

Hussie, Hitler, And Boy I’m Tired

I said earlier that I didn’t want to put on my hip waders and muck about in the Homestuck tags. *pulls off hip waders* I went anyways. I went even though I was feeling pretty good because I had a nice dinner and got to watch the New Years Bake-Off special. I went anyways, and I did it for you, my eight followers who aren’t pornbots. It turns out the Homestuck fandom of Tumblr is as scary and hyperbolic as ever, and has taken one lousy bit of badly written crap and extrapolated that backwards into ‘Homestuck has always been a racist anti-semetic pile of garbage and everything about it is terrible and Andrew Hussie needs to die.” I’m not paraphrasing, by the way. Someone out there is chanting ‘die Andrew Hussie die,’ because he had the gall to... clumsily dunk on Hitler like a fifteen year old trying to impress his English teacher with edgy comedy? This new stuff is too dumb to be offensive, especially in an era with, y’know, Hitler-praising alt-right Neo Nazis actually being mainstream media figures.  Hey Tumblr fandom? Can you... mm not chill, chill’s not the word I’m looking for what is it... oh yes. Can y’all fuck off for once?

Tumblr doesn’t deserve to enjoy things because it doesn’t know how to enjoy things responsibly. It lurches from adoration to hatred without pause, and as a writer it gives me nothing but an anxiety. I cannot produce anything imperfect, I cannot ever write crap because if I do then all my work will be tainted by it forever. On Tumblr you are always judged by your worst effort, which is a fucking god-awful standard for large media franchises of any kind. You know who one of the greatest, most thoughtful, socially-driven authors of the twentieth century was? Terry Pratchett. You know what’s kind of sexist and lazy and awful? The Colour of Magic. You know what’s weirdly colonialist and smug and all-around shit? Snuff! Neither of those shitty books invalidate the forty other Discworld novels. The existence of Anchorman’s bloviating nothingness doesn’t erase Will Ferrel’s warm and desperately human performance in Stranger Than Fiction. The Forced Kiss Equal Romance kiss in Blade Runner doesn’t erase the rest of the movie piercing question on the nature of what it means to be human. And on and on and on. Andrew Hussie’s sneeze-shart dogshit history rewrite that was so embarrassingly bad it got pulled from the internet didn’t erase Rose/Kanaya, or gay Dave, or Joey Claire tap-dancing her little heart out to try and defeat a monster. And even if Andrew Hussie does a JK Rowling and produces nothing but ill-thought-out crap from here until the day we all die in the great Disney Final Merger of 2023, it still won’t invalidate the good moments that made you happy. I mean if Andrew Hussie toddles out of retirement onto a talk show in a bathrobe to discuss his new revelations on the Puppetgrandmasters of Scion who all have worryingly Semetic names, I’m not going to be so naive as to pretend that his earlier media can be consumed in some kind of vacuum, that the future cannot affect the past. but I am saying that the good that happened in it - the things that affected you in positive ways - are not ethereal. It mattered to you then, and that’s okay. Tumblr’s hyperbolic responses seem to be rooted in embarrassment and self-flagellation. People seem so terrified by the thought that anyone might associate them as a fan of something - gasp - linked to controversy that they... well, they say shit like “die andrew hussie die.” Hey dude. Hey. You need to redirect that anger, my friend. There’s actual Neo-Nazis in the streets. On the TV. In the US government. I guess what I’m trying to say is... Woof. Okay. You know, to give Andrew Hussie partial credit here, its nice to see someone actually write Adolf Hitler the way he really was - a pant-shitting constantly whiny toddler of a human being who endlessly threw tantrums and got to where he was largely on the strength of other people’s bad decisions. Remember kids: the biggest myth Neo-Nazis have ever perpetrated is that Germany under Hitler was well-run, well-organized, and anything other than a collection of squabbling dysfunctional fiefdoms run by party hacks propped up by a bureaucracy and military too bound by inertia, ego, and cultural racism to do anything to stop a lunatic from ripping their country to shreds. That whole ‘trains running on time’ thing? It’s nonsense. Go study the conduct of the war once Germany had exhausted all its pre-war stockpiled resources and ran out of useful shit to loot, once it had to start relying on its leadership for the things that make wars winnable - supplies, reinforcements, fuel, winter clothing. Watch the way from 1942 onwards Germany stumbled from one disaster to the next, as Hitler fired more and more generals and drew more and more authority to himself and his fellow party cronies. Hitler should not be feared as a man of competence or skill - he was a buffoon, a clown of a human being fuelled entirely by petty, vindictive spite and an unlimited capacity for cruelty. And before anyone goes ‘well if he was so objectively pathetic how the fuck did he take over Germany’ I direct you to google the last two years of American politics and the words ‘Donald Fucking Trump.’ [I recommend, on these war subjects particularly, Sir Antony Beevor’s bleak and sobering works, particularly Stalingrad, Berlin: The Downfall 1945, and Ardennes 1944: Hitler's Last Gamble.]  Sorry this... kind of got away from me somewhat, but I really hate it when people get mad that someone didn’t take Hitler seriously (and, to be strictly fair, this is not what everyone is mad about in regards to Andrew Hussie, either). You should never take Hitler seriously. Take hate seriously - take violent words, and calls for purity, take his ideas of superiority and racial preeminence and anti-semitism seriously as the evils, the horrors as they are. But the man himself? He literally stank - a combination of his halitosis, chronic flatulence, and was constant diarrhea. [I am not exaggerating] He was a sad pathetic clown, and Andrew Hussie chose to write him as such. He just... went too far. It happens. It’s not good writing. It’s fucking shit, to be honest. Boring shit. The Minions movie decided to have the Minions sit out the entirety of WWII by having them get stuck in a cave or some such. Honestly that’s a better option than what Andrew Hussie went with - and ‘be more like the Minions movie’ isn’t advice I give that often. You want to be disgruntled that an author wrote something this bafflingly tone deaf and tedious? Sure. I know I am. But to chant for his death? Are you fucking kidding me? Look! Look out your window at those marching Neo-Nazis trying to establish a white supremacist state? What the ever-loving fuck are you people doing in here getting ready to string-up a man whose crime was making Adolf Friggen Hitler too petty???????? Tumblr. Tumblr, for the love of god this has to stop. This ‘Ceasar’s wife must be above reproach’ shit has to stop - it’s killing fandom, it’s killing good media critique, it’s burying proportional fan response, and its just exhausting. Why can’t you ever just let something be lousy without it being literal death warrant? There’s real demons out there - I can see them out the window, and every time I turn on the TV. Maybe - just bloody maybe - not every single crime deserves the exact same level of disapprobation and punishment? Maybe we could read some content and say “boy that sure had some lousy implications and also was just really poorly written” and then... stop there? Wouldn’t that be nice, for a change? We could dislike something without feeling like it required activism on our part. We could say ‘this piece of media was shit, but it didn’t advocate for a white ethno-state, so I will continue to think of it only until the end of this sentence.’ I am not advocating for an end to media criticism for anything that isn’t openly hate speech (but if you think that I am I am going to assume you’re already so needlessly enraged about this whole matter that I’m a bit puzzled why you’ve bothered to read this far since its obvious we don’t agree on many fundamental issues.) What I am calling for is the end to death threats against people who don’t mean you harm. Because that’s lunacy. That’s beyond the pale, actually, that’s really disturbing and sickening and you should seriously reconsider your relationship with media. Because there are people out there who do want to hurt you. Their lives are fuelled by hate, their philosophies are driven by it, as are their politics. I assure you that when a time traveller steps through a portal trying to prevent the rise of ‘the great Trump War of 2020′ the inciting incident will not be ‘Andrew Hussie trivialized the holocaust by citing its origins as a grudge Adolf Hitler bore Albert Einstein over a rivalry in secret clown ninja school before being taken on as an agent of a baking-obsessed alien space witch and bumped into power by the Peters principle.’ Because just by writing that sentence I have already reaffirmed a very simple truth: this is way, way too stupid to give the slightest shit about. So let’s tell Andrew Hussie that his new work is... mmm.... kind of like a shit if a shit had a shit that was itself shat out by a shit and then vomited on by another shit who had eaten nothing but shit since Sunday. Let’s tel lhim “hey dude, your clownish work summoned the spectre of anti-semetism, and you can do better.” Frankly, I think that message was already sent, since in the two hours between me going to make and eat dinner and then coming back to my computer, the new material was discovered, read, disseminated, and removed. Two hours. Sure, maybe a bit of lag due to what does and does not hit my feed but come on - this all took place in an afternoon. It’s already down. Our voices were heard - we didn’t think this was very good, and apparently Whatpumpkin agrees enough that they didn’t mount a defence of it. Rather than take the next logical step, though - which seems to be calling for the death of Andrew Hussie and removing all of Homestuck from the internet and maybe nuking Toby Fox from orbit just to be extra-sure? - we could do... something else. Talk about the release date for Stranger Things, maybe. Track down some local Neo-Nazis and punch them. Read some Antony Beevor books and really educate ourselves on what a smelly fuck-up Hitler was so we can chant that at Neo Nazis at their next rally. Or you could watch the New Years Bake-Off special. It was pretty good.