#she had her biggest hit in 2003...

[watermelinoe]

are you really truly outraged that a pop star who peaked in the late 90s lost a poll like dawg Britney is one of my favorites and I've never heard of whoever the fuck in my life but do you think maybe it could be a miracle anyone still talks about Britney literally at all

outraged is not the word i'd use but it is irksome to me every time this website reminds me that mediocre men are celebrated over iconic women yeah?

and like... she was releasing charting singles into the 2010s and people were talking about her conservatorship up until 2021. marina referenced how the public treated her in a song that came out in 2020. she's a usamerican pop culture icon both because of her career and her publicity. i'm not even a huge fan but i don't really get this, i made one post annoyed about the poll and then answered someone else's ask about it, did i seem disproportionately mad?

[russo-woso]

Wicked || Leah Williamson x actress!reader

Masterlist | Prompt list

Summary You spent hours practicing songs, Leah having to deal with it all but as soon as she saw it all come to life on the big screen, all she felt was pride

A/N I saw wicked today and immediately thought of this idea

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

It's time to try defying gravity

I think I'll try defying gravity

And you can't pull me down

You sang the words with emotion, practicing the scene and lyrics like you were filming then and there.

But instead of in a studio practicing, you were at home, scrubbing a frying pan because you’d burnt it.

You were playing the role of Elphaba in the new and upcoming movie ‘wicked’.

It was a breakthrough role for you, due to being a relatively new actress so you had to be perfect. Hence why you were practicing with every free minute you had.

There was one song though that you’d been dreading, defying gravity.

It was slightly out of your vocal range but you were determined to nail it.

So because of your determination, you were singing it fifty times a day

Which was admittedly, helping you, but it was also driving your girlfriend up the wall.

Leah had always been your biggest supporter, helping you practice lines or lyrics but this time, the non stop singing was driving her crazy.

She understood though, and each time you sang it, a small smile would appear on her face.

“How was that, baby? Did I hit the note?” You asked Leah, who walked into the kitchen.

“You were perfect, darling. You always were with the song and even more so now. So can you please stop singing it?” Leah said, walking behind you’d wrapping her arms round your waist and resting her head on your shoulder.

“I have to sing it, Le. I have to get it perfect. Now, sing it with me.” You said, a grin appearing on Leah’s face as you belted out the song.

I'd sooner buy defying gravity

Kiss me goodbye, I'm defying gravity

And you can't pull me down

Leah just watched you in amazement, your voice sounding angelic.

“Darling, that’s the thirty seventh time you’ve sung it today. Don’t you think that’s enough?” Leah asked

“Fine. Anyway, my throats hurting a bit now.” You said, Leah laughing in response.

“I’m not surprised.”

—

It had been three days since then and you had flown out to America to film the final few scenes of the film, including the song defying gravity.

You and Ariana finished the final notes, the whole set silent, every single crew member speechless and mesmerised at the song.

It was incredible, even you could admit it.

The movie was officially over, it was all done and wrapped.

You flew back to England the following day, Leah welcoming you with open arms, whispering how proud she was.

Now, it was time for waiting.

—

It wad finally happening. The premiere.

Your leg bounce up and down on the taxi floor.

“Darling, it’s gonna be fine. You’re gonna do perfect, I know it. Everyone’s gonna love the film.” Leah said before pressing her lips to your temple. “I’m gonna be with you the whole time too.”

“I love you, Le.”

“I love you more, pretty girl. Now come, the crowds waiting.” Leah grinned, opening the car door and holding it for you to get out.

You stepped on the red green carpet, the press calling your name, telling you to look at them.

You gripped Leah’s hand, Leah squeezing yours in return, the two of you doing simple poses for the cameras.

You made your way inside, calming down a bit.

You had a few conversations with cast and crew members before finally taking your seats, the lights dimmed and the screen lit up.

Leah was already so proud even before defying gravity but my god, she was overwhelmed with pride.

You sang the words effortlessly, hitting the notes you’d spent weeks working on perfectly.

Tears shelled in Leah’s eyes as she watched you on the screen, her emotions getting to her.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” You whispered quietly, wiping her tears.

“I’m just so proud of you.” Leah sobbed

You just pressed your lips to her cheek in response.

The credits started rolling, cheers filling the room.

The director of the film quickly said a few words before calling you and Ariana up to say a few too.

Ariana went first, before handing the mic to you.

“Firstly, I just want to say thank you to the crew members, without you the magic wouldn’t be able to come alive. Ariana, a big thank you to you. You made the god awful night scenes speed by. However The biggest thank you goes to someone who’s been with me for my when career. Leah, you have had to endure the torture of hearing me belt song after song for weeks. Thank you, Le. Anyway, enough of the tears now. Let’s get the after party started!”

“I know you said no more tears, but I can’t help it. I’m just so so proud of you.” Leah said, wrapping you in her arms.

“Thank you, baby. Thank you for everything over the past few months.”

“Don’t say thank you. Now, do you feel like going to the after party?” Leah asked, a smirk on her face.

“Why? Have something else in mind?”

“Maybe…”

[hyperlexichypatia]

I was thinking about how the social consequences of J.K. Rowling's own ideology would absolutely prevent her literary success from happening today -- and I don't mean "Now that people know she's transphobic, they don't like her books anymore" or even "She built her story on broad themes of liberalism and diversity, but has now aligned with the fascist far-right."

I mean that a big part of the success of Harry Potter came from its adult audience and cross-age appeal. Adults and kids and teens were openly reading and talking about and socializing over a book series marketed as middle-grade, and it was okay. Sure, there were some articles about adults being embarrassed to read a kids' book, and some stuffed-shirt opinion pieces about how Adults Should Read Serious Adult Books. But for the most part, it was okay.

This led to a boom in juvenile and young adult books with broad cross-age appeal, Twilight and Percy Jackson and Hunger Games and Throne of Glass. There was a real glimmer of hope of breaking down strict age categories in media in general and books in particular.

We could've made progress with that. It could've been beautiful.

Instead, we got hit with a massive wave of transphobia, queerphobia, "Think of the children" sex panic. Book bans, Qanon, "saving our girls," Moms for Liberty, conspiracy theories. The biggest Stranger Danger Pedo Panic since satanic ritual abuse. Infiltrating culture so much that queer progressives unironically believe in this pedo panic narrative completely oblivious to its right-wing origins.

Meaning that, to "protect children," many public libraries now ban childless adults from browsing the children's and young adult sections. Sure, they often have "exceptions" for things like people doing research, but that's not the point. It's not about rule enforcement or exceptions. It's about setting a cultural tone that adults sharing physical or cultural space with children are to be viewed with suspicion.

The queerphobia-to-pedo-panic pipeline, which Rowling has gleefully ridden, has ruined the cross-age-fandom phenomenon she helped build. You couldn't have a Harry-Potter-type cultural phenomenon today, because adults and kids aren't even allowed to browse bookshelves together, let alone build the kind of cross-age online fandom communities we had. 2024 culture would have a heart attack and call the police if they saw my 2003 browser history. Adults and kids, talking about the same books, together? Sharing fanfic? Unthinkable!

[bisnes-socks]

The Big Finnish Music Project for International Kääryleet, part 2.

Go to part 1 for context. We continue where part one left off, and we're in the 1980's right now, as the list is (more or less) in chronological order.

Hanoi Rocks

One of the most successful Finnish acts internationally, especially in the 1980's, and they were a significant influence on the entire genre of glam rock. The likes of Foo Fighters, Manic Street Preachers and Pearl Jam have all mentioned Hanoi Rocks as a favourite or an influence, and Axl Rose has said there would be no Guns N' Roses if it wasn't for Hanoi Rocks. This is one of their earliest hits, Tragedy.

Dingo

Hysteria is the only word to describe the popularity of Dingo in the 1980's. They had a couple of huge hits but they broke up quite soon after reaching their peak. They've made comebacks since, but never reached the same popularity as what they had for a couple of Dingo hysteria years in the mid 80's. This is one of their big hits, Autiotalo. 

Popeda

Considered to be the fathers of "äijärock". I don't know how to translate äijä, but if you look at them and their vibe, you'll get the idea. They're also part of the Manserock scene of Tampere. They are hands down one of the oldest still active rock bands in Finland, a band that just simply everyone knows. This is their song Pitkä kuuma kesä, originally from 1985. This live performance is from 2002.

Leevi and the Leavings

Iconic. The moment. The voice of the nation. A poprock band that never performed live (only one exception) but were insanely popular, especially in the 1980's. The frontman of the band, Gösta Sundqvist (passed away in 2003), is considered one of the best songwriters in Finland, and is definitely one of the most beloved. Leevi and the Leavings had their own recognisable sound while also being quite experimental. Their lyrics are often exactly the sort of thing that i've mentioned in multiple Käärijä analysis posts as being incredibly Finnish: songs about difficult and hard subjects with actually kind of hilarious lyrics at times. I could have chosen soooo many different songs from them, but decided to go with Teuvo, maanteiden kuningas, simply because I felt like it and because it slaps.

Kaija Koo

Kääryleet might know Kaija Koo as the artist who was the main act of the Helsinki Olympic Stadium gig. She rose to fame in the 90's and has had quite a steady career ever since, slowly growing to her iconic status. This is one of her huge hits, Tinakenkätyttö.

Aikakone

As 90's as it gets. Aikakone basically defines the 90's dance vibe in Finland, and this song is etched into every millennials brain. Very much just a Finnish version of the same style of music, that was globally massive in the 90's. The song is Odota, from 1995.

Apulanta

One of the biggest names in Finnish rock. They started in the 90's and have been a significant influence in the scene ever since. This is one of their early cult classics, Anna mulle piiskaa, from 1996, which i chose because i figured kääryleet appriciate whipping references.

Ultra Bra

Icons of the 90's, the favourite of all liberal millennial hipsters. Known for their distinctive sound produced by four (originally five) lead singers, and having quite a large band set up where brass and horns play a big part. And also for their yellow raincoats. Their song lyrics are often very poetic and kind of.. odd, thematically speaking, like they have a whole song about pike, the fish. Most of the song lyrics are written by Anni Sinnemäki, who has since become a politician. Their composer and pianist is Kerkko Koskinen, a very influential and highly regarded musician and composer. Ultra Bra is doing a comeback at the moment.

This is one of their biggest hits, Sinä lähdit pois, from 1997.

End of part 2. We've reached the 90's, and the next part is reaching the turn of the century, so exciting times ahead musically speaking.

[velvetvexations]

i refuse to watch the clone high revival.

IT AIN'T GOOD

This is my full review I posted in a server back when it aired:

The cast changes are one of the biggest issues. It completely throws the whole dynamic off because they lost Ghandi, who, admittedly, was inconsequential in terms of long term character relationships even if he was like half the show, but they add THREE new people who are all supposed to be way more relevant to the serialized story. Two fall very flat and one is okay but still misplaced. Let's talk about that. Confucius, at first, seems like the obvious 1:1 replacement for Gandhi because he's a cheery dude who partakes in silly antics. He's not a full Gandhi clone [copy] because unlike Gandhi, who had a habit of just assuming he was cool and proceeded to act like it, Confucious is, like, trying to get popular on Tikstagram, I guess? That honestly didn't really come up a lot, he just sort of drifts around being there whenever they need a guy who's not JFK or Abe. Then near the end he ends up in a relationship with Harriet Tubman, which is like, okay, because she's the only character even more generic than he is. Seriously, there is NOTHING about Harriet, absolutely nothing, I can say about her personality beyond "once was briefly concerned about turning into a wine mom". Her design being completely unrecognizable as a historical figure really plagues her whole character, like I truly in my heart of hearts believe that if you read the scripts they would all say "TBD Woman of Color".

Which brings us to the sidelining of Cleo. In the first season, Cleo was a major character and focus of several episodes. She was the person JFK was dating, that Abe wanted to date, and that Joan was rivals with. The entire show revolved around that relationship chain. So it's super fucking weird that Cleo goes several episodes into the second season before she gets more than a handful of lines. Here's why I think that is: Obviously, the second season had to be finished or very nearly finished by the time the Cleopatra [Queen Cleopatra (2023)] stuff blew up recently, but I think even before that we've hit a point where people are a lot more aware that Cleopatra was not Egyptian Egyptian and that her portrayal as such in the first season would get a little more side-eyed. This is even more true considering the mandated loss of Gandhi, as she and him were the only non-white leads. Adding two or three more PoC characters made sense! But being so awkward with the handling of Cleo, who did at least manage to wiggle back into the main plot a little, was still weird, and it sucks that two of the three added PoC characters were so badly handled. So which one worked? Frida Kahlo was pretty cool. I don't know nearly enough about the IRL person, but I can at least define her character on the show as the hyper-chill laid back girl and she had several funny jokes, and based on the little I do know of who she is, they referenced her being an artist several times as well as her distinctive physical appearance. Also, apparently her bisexuality, because Frida ends up with Cleo. And, you know, that's fine, but fucking Cleo? Can I please get an episode or three or six or an entire season just about Cleo realizing she's gay, because fucking what? It comes out (ha) that Frida likes Cleo and from there it's like, cool, she just has to have the courage to tell her, but that makes no sense. Even in this season Cleo has multiple jokes about being The Girl Who Is Hyper-Competitive And Puts Down Other Girls, like from top to bottom the stereotypical cheerleader of 2003, because, hey, the whole premise is that the clones were frozen in 2003 and were just unfrozen! can I get anything dealing with that beyond Abe almost saying the r-word in the first episode? *The old clones are from 2003, the new characters were raised since then and that generation gap is actually interesting when properly explored which it barely fucking is.

Okay. Moving on. There's another new character, Christopher Columbus's clone who goes by Topher Bus because he doesn't want to be attacked for it, and that's the first of several funny jokes we get from him that make him way more likable than the show wants him to be. He's given the early flaw that he's a dick online, but not even in a racist way or anything like that? In fact, he's generally shown to be pretty woke, and the main cast casually shove him out of the way when he tries to get involved with things! If they wanted to depict someone who like, pretends to be woke but really is an asshole or something, they do a terrible job of it and have him come off more like someone who's trying but keeps getting kicked for literally zero reasons. "Oh, but he's mean online!" Yeah, to JFK, who was an asshole like literally last week from the perspectives of the older clones. I don't mind JFK getting hit with the likability stick, but like with Cleo being into women it comes out of nowhere aside from the Abe Says a Slur joke where that contrasts JFK being told he's so sex positive for a lame cringe reference to wanting to fuck and you're clearly meant to think "ah, the roles have been reversed, now JFK is just a confidant bro while Abe is in danger of being an angry loser incel", but it just! Needs! More! Development than that! One interesting part of that dynamic flip is that now instead of Joan secretly pining for Abe while Abe openly pines for Cleo, Abe is secretly pining for Joan while she continues to date JFK as in the first season's finale. It gets kind of lost in the politics of the gender swap, though. Like, Abe is now in that incel space, and he tries to manipulate Joan and then feels real bad about it and stops, but taking the way that's framed with other things that happen this season it's like, oh, it's bad for a guy to manipulate a girl like this, even though Joan did that exact kinna thing back in season one and it was more just "lol wacky hi-jinx!". I'm not trying to be all Misandry Double Standard here, but it's one more reason why it would always be really hard to modernize this show in the first place. Another thing about Abe along similar lines is the musical episode, where a big deal is made of Abe having White Guy Confidence, and that is fucking astounding to me. Like, what? Abe is a constantly anxious loser who is fully aware of that fact, I get that White Guy Confidence is a thing but why the hell is Abe getting tagged with it and not JFK, who absolutely has always suffered White Guy Confidence? Beyond the fact that JFK is now a cinnamon roll out of thin air and Abe's new arc is about avoiding the MRA trap?

In that same subplot you had Sacagawea, George Washington Carver, and Kublai Khan fighting to be exceptional enough to shine despite Abe's white mediocracy, and again like with the primary additions nothing is ever done with either who they were or who they are now. They are literally just there because Non-White, which I want to stress I'm not railing against as a concept, but their lines could be given to literally anyone. GWC was actually in the first season, I'm not sure about the others, and there were some Goddamn peanut jokes! Maybe boiling him down to peanuts is an unconsciously racist meme, as is boiling down all of Black science to "the peanut guy", but if the new series is above that then maybe use fucking someone else you are comfortable reflecting in a humorous cartoon fashion that people will understand? It's not necessarily a race thing, like "oh they were overly cautious with the PoC characters". I can think of one joke offhand - not that it was the only one, just the only one I can think of - where the minor characters had a reference to their historical selves, and that was technically delivered by JFK. Between that and how generic Confucius and Harriet are, I feel like the whole idea, the first word in the title, just completely went out the window. In the first season, beyond spear-carrying "some bit character in this large crowd needs to provide a reaction to something", you'd never have an extended scene where a minor character wasn't making a historical reference. It might seem logical to allow them to be more than that, but think about it: these are, after all, minor characters. With the main cast, not every line has to be Nothing Bad Ever Happens to the Kennedys, but it's like when The Flintstones has everyone go to New Rock City to see The Rockles play a 60s pop song. It's like, what in God's name is the point then?

A few days later:

Okay. I think I've mediated on it enough. I can now give my opinion on a reworked season two. Here's what I would have done, assuming only that the mandate Gandhi be absent is absolute: The group dynamic more or less starts the same, with Joan dating JFK and Abe pining for her, it's a great reversed setup. Abe starts to drift in an incel direction, but Topher is there to provide the "don't get this bad" warning that keeps him on the straight and narrow. Joan and JFK quickly realize they aren't working out, and Joan figures maybe she wants to try lesbianism, because she just seems so much like she would be a WLW. She starts to go out with Frida while JFK teams up with Abe and basically acts as the new Gandhi in terms of silly comic relief who's often hanging out with the protagonist. They support each other in Abe getting with Joan and JFK getting back with Cleo, who's started going out with Topher partly because she's desperate for a boyfriend she actually enjoys being with and partly because she really hates having lost both Abe and JFK to Joan, but Topher is actually also in love with Joan, which puts him at odds with both Abe and JFK. Eventually Joan realizes she isn't gay but Cleo realizes she is and Cleo and Frida get together, which is extra emotionally satisfying because Joan lost someone to her this time. The wacky misadventures of Principle Scudworth and Butlertron are basically the same as they are in season two as it exists, the addition of Candide Sampson wasn't bad at all and overall those b-plots were pretty good with the exception of the really terrible Butlertron origin episode, but the end result in the season finale is all the clones being frozen again just as Joan is about to pick between JFK and Abe. Confucious and Harriet Tubman are not present.

At the time I did not propose further characters of color to replace either Confucious and Harriet and would have to think on it a lot to figure something out. Probably people other than me would be better at selecting good fits that are recognizable to an American audience. I also didn't solve the issue of Cleopatra not being Egyptian, but maybe they find out she's actually the clone of a less well-known Egyptian woman who started claiming to be Cleopatra for the clout? That's certainly something Cleo would do.

[mthguy]

The great Bonnie Tyler performs “Holding Out for A Hero”

Tyler came to prominence with the release of her 1977 album The World Starts Tonight and its singles "Lost in France" and "More Than a Lover". Her 1977 single "It's a Heartache" reached number four on the UK Singles Chart, and number three on the US Billboard Hot 100.

In the 1980s, Tyler ventured into rock music with songwriter and producer Jim Steinman. He wrote Tyler's biggest hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart", the lead single from her 1983 UK chart-topping album Faster Than the Speed of Night. Steinman also wrote Tyler's other major 1980s hit "Holding Out for a Hero". She had success in mainland Europe during the 1990s with Dieter Bohlen, who wrote and produced her hit "Bitterblue". In 2003, Tyler re-recorded "Total Eclipse of the Heart" with singer Kareen Antonn. Their bilingual duet, titled "Si demain... (Turn Around)", topped the French charts.

[misscammiedawn]

Penlight Spoiler Reviews (Sayori Part 2)

Download Penlight (Pay what you like) from Itch.io here

Past reviews: Quick Review - Nozomi Routes - Sayori (Part 1)

Turq's reviews: Hiroko Robot - Hiroko Tickling - Nozomi Zombie

-

So... last time we met with Sayori and turned her into a Doll.

This time we're going to discuss the impact of Personality Play on a person and outright give Sayori dissociative identity disorder. As a person diagnosed with DID and a victim of personality play abuse I have a lot to talk about on this topic. I hope you don't mind me being a little over-indulgent.

CW: The Alter route will discuss topics of IRL hypnotic abuse and the long-term effects of personality play on a person's psyche as well as perspectives of how DID presents in my personal experience. I put the reality segments in italics to help people skip over them.

ALTER ROUTE:

Note that the name I refer to the Alter by in this review is the name I gave her. It is not even remotely canon. Aiko, Megumi and Yuri are the default names given by the game. Please do not take the naming convention I used to reflect DeMille's authorial intent. I use it mostly to match the screenshots and give some more pump to a narrative twist.

The first half of the review contains some seeds of discussion topics that I want to grow out so I highly recommend reading that one.

This route is my biggest hypnotic trauma being played out in visual novel format. I'll sprinkle my thoughts on the reality within the fiction. I'll put the reality pieces in italics if you want to skip them.

So if the Doll Route is based on the concept of boundaries and respecting someone's comfort then the Alter route answers the age old question of "What if your hypnotist were hit by a bus" that is to say, what are the impacts of going about your life with dangerous and permanent programming still in your head?

I suppose another theme would be one I vibe with intently. "Be careful who you entrust your mind with"

Sayori asked "what's the worst that could happen?" at the start of his hypnosis scene. Sayori, always so careful to think about things before committing takes her time with the doll suggestion. What if she didn't advocate for herself and set up firm barriers?

"What's the worst that could happen?"

Alter Route is a winding map of many paths and much of it is still yet to be written. The route begins with Sayori being asked to adopt a carefree persona who hates to study (and has a crush on Kyou). He also specifies that this persona will have no idea that Sayori even exists.

You, the player, are given a prompt to provide her a name.

I called her Sapphire. First playthrough and so shall again for this review. I picked that name with intent. I'm still not 100% sure it was a good idea, but I did.

Is it because of the alliteration? The blue hair? My referring to my hypnotic eyes as having a "sapphire flame"?

I said that this route was my biggest hypnotic trauma being played out on the screen?

In 2003 a dumb 19 year old met a man online named AW. AW saw that teenager's mind was fertile ground for character play. He planted a couple of alters in that kids head but none were as beloved nor as important as his little recruitment doll. His "slave" (oh how I have grown to hate that word) who he trained to bring him pretty girls...

The name I feel comfortable with in this current era of my life is Dawn. I prefer people call me Dawn when I am in this headspace, though I don't mind being called Camden and can tolerate being called Cammie when it is said by someone affectionate of us as an individual. But I am fractured. Diagnosed with DID in 2023. I type about it every now and again.

He called me Sapphire.

It was the name of a roleplay character... I even have Sue-Chan art commissioned of her. I have another piece at my bedside desk and have had it much of my adult life.

I have done a lot of thinking on if my DID is a result of this extensive play or if my DID simply made my mind more susceptible to it. The question is moot for the most part but I have found comfort in believing that there were elements of our heart which we were unaware of at a young age...

And AW reached in and found those elements within us. He found the part of us that was unburdened by sexual or gender repression and was able to personify our hypnosis obsession in a way we simply could not otherwise. He saw it. He identified it. Named it... Then dared to claim ownership of it.

In the game, Sayori takes to the suggestion swimmingly. She embodies the traits of this alter personality. She becames [Sapphire]. Giggling and acting shy around her beloved Kyou, she demands a tour of the house and Kyou becomes increasingly concerned that this act is going a little too far and you are given your first option.

For simplicity's sake I'll divide the path into 3 distinct branches (I made up the names for clarity as they do not have names on the official route tree):

Golden Ending - In which Sayori is woken up in Kyou's room and is so freaked out by the lack of memories between going into trance and waking up that much like Doll Route she refuses to let Kyou hypnotize her until she feels confident of the safety. In this route [Sapphire] does not come out ever again.

Day Lost - In which Kyou does not wake Sayori up and lets [Sapphire] go home and spend a night at home and isn't woken up until the next day at school. In this route Sayori's trust is broken enough that she seeks Nozomi's help, not Kyou's in saving her from this situation.

Week Lost - In which Kyou does not wake Sayori up and instead he decides outright to program [Sapphire] to be the dominant persona and avoid detection from the outside world.

For the Golden Ending there are a number of prompts during Sapphire's (let's drop the bracket gimmick and just call her that, it's better than saying Alter Sayori over and over) brief stint where you are given the option of bringing Sayori back and after she is justifiably upset about waking up mid-conversation in a different room you are given an option to summon Sapphire again.

I like that the chaotic nature of the initial encounter allows a number of options to go between what essentially are the options of "let Sayori exit Kyou's room" or "let Sapphire exit Kyou's room", especially as Kyou himself is making a decent number of assumptions about Sayori and her willingness to go along with the suggestion.

Kyou is a very big believer in the idea that a person's willingness to obey a suggestion is equivalent to a person's consent to the suggestion. This is because Kyou is a dumb kid and he is playing with fire.

If he does not try to force Sayori to calm down by imposing the carefree persona upon her she will accuse Kyou of projecting his infatuation of Nozomi onto her and become frustrated that he would dare override her core traits with such dangerous programming.

She notes that hypnosis shouldn't make her act the way she clearly was acting and admits this requires further study after cram school. She insists Kyou dedicate himself to further study on the topic too.

His study, which to his credit he does commit to, comes up empty. He believes Sayori is in denial that part of her yearns to be carefree and act as Sapphire had.

Sayori does her own research and...

Sayori is best girl.

She admits herself foolish for going along with it but is committed to the science of understanding what is happening to her. As a test she tries to resist Kyou's sleep suggestion but when she put her head on the pillow she was compelled to sleep deeply. She could not stop it. No matter how hard she tried.

She recognizes that the best hypnotists in the world could not do as Kyou has done.

Kyou gets defensive and starts a fight which escalates. At present you only have the option to apologize but there is a greyed out option for future in which you can bring Sapphire back.

I'm interested in seeing that path in the future.

After the pair talk it through Sayori thinks to involve Nozomi as a third party consultant. She wants to see if Kyou's hypnosis is as powerful on anyone or if it is just her and she knows Nozomi will instantly agree to this.

Sayori is a bad friend. In Doll route she refused to allow Nozomi to interfere with the hypnosis but in this route she weaponizes her knowledge of Nozomi's hypnosis fetish in order to have someone to test on. Even the safest penlight hypnosis has the potential for danger and it's hard to reconcile her involving Nozomi, even in a route where Kyou has proven himself not a shithead.

After school they test the penlight on Nozomi.

and it confirms in Sayori's mind the hypothesis that the penlight is odd and makes hypnosis act in ways it shouldn't. She even notes that the CIA have been trying to do what Kyou has managed for decades and a random high school kid accidentally stumbles on it.

Sayori really hates how Kyou just bumbles into success when she has to fight so hard to scrape by.

Now in the Nozomi route I mentioned that the timelines are pretty rigid for Sayori and to a lesser extent Hiroko. Sayori has cram school every day except for Sunday (which is a day taken by Hiroko's tennis tournament) and much of the Doll route requires maneuvering around study club, an optional obligation, and cram school which is necessary or she will be contacted by her father.

The other Alter routes will involve consequences for Sayori's grip on her responsibilities relaxing a little. Here she is still trying to be everything she should be while dealing with this extra stress.

That all said, she rushes out of the scene when Kyou finished the simple down and up with Nozomi. She has to go to cram school. She vanishes so fast that Nozomi is left sitting at the table running her fingers along the table and processing the fact that a fantasy from her mind control stories just came true and it's all suddenly over.

So Nozomi, with an opportunity to make her fantasies come true, tries to convince Kyou that it would help Sayori out to do more tests. She insists that it is in Kyou's best interest and she promises that if Sayori is upset then she will take full responsibility. She gives Kyou as many outs as possible to tempt him.

You have to deny her twice.

If you accept then there's a rough draft of an unfinished path but it also provides the most Sleepyhead moment in the game.

I swear to heaven Sleepyhead is going to cosplay Nozomi Akemi at a hypnosis convention one of these days...

Turning her down is one of the most mature moments Kyou has in any route.

His crush has just begged him to do the thing this entire affair was for and he turns her down.

I'm proud of you Kyou. You're a good boy. Also Nozo truly cannot be trusted around hypnosis.

You're a lovely girl, Nozomi, but you're insatisable. We all love you for it. But you cannot be trusted.

Look back to the Doll Route and the thing with the culture festival application. Sayori ruins her relationship with Nozomi because he couldn't trust her around the promise of hypnosis or Kyou with the temptation of working with Nozomi.

It's interesting when we get to see these dramatic irony stings.

The next day Sayori turns up and tells him to destroy the penlight. If you refuse then Kyou will force Sapphire out again use her willingness to go along with Kyou to entrance her again and both deprogram Sayori and erase Sayori's memory and then the next day utilizes Nozomi's offer to test more to do the same with her. Alone again but he still have his penlight.

In the good ending. He uses the penlight to deprogram Sayori and destroys the penlight. The story cuts a few months later and Kyou has become a regular at Study Club and is picking himself up. He is treating Sayori's insomnia via therapeutic hypnosis and is truly thinking about becoming a real life hypnotherapist.

He also pulled off the culture festival and though Sayori was not involved, Nozomi kept him on his toes.

The pair have grown close and know a lot about one another's lives to the point of which Kyou asks Sayori on a date to an arcade and she is surprised that he would ask her to such a location and Kyou mentions her talking about how much she enjoyed arcades before high school.

Sayori notes that they may be having a date but she still is still moving if she gets into med school and they won't last long. Kyou acknowledges that it's worth enjoying the moment even if it doesn't pan out.

I love her.

Now this route involves erasing Sapphire in both good and bad ending. She barely got to exist. Less than 5 minutes into the world.

Shall we go back in time to that initial encounter and meet her now?

An interesting part of the Alter routes where Sayori and Sapphire are bouncing back and forth (intentionally or unintentionally) is that this is the only route that has "rules" to keep a track of.

Any time Sayori is turned into Sapphire or Sapphire is turned into Sayori there is a complete void between times that the Become... trigger was used.

Sapphire recognizes that she was given a trigger to have a "carefree and fun" persona installed and assumes that "Sayori" is the name of this. Any time someone calls her it she becomes more and more aware of the situation.

Another rule is that Sayori and Sapphire have a common history and this is a really interesting thing that instantly caught my attention and proved that DeMille understood the assignment and either studied dissociative identities or is quite capable of understanding how they are expressed.

There is nothing about Sapphire that isn't part of Sayori. She is not how Sayori would imagine someone without inhibitions or a caricature of a carefree person. Sayori simply remembered a younger point of her life when she used to visit the arcade with her father and how her life felt before she became weighed down by expectations and the stress of not being able to keep up with her studies.

Look up at those last two pictures. That's Sayori at the end of the Golden Ending and Sapphire at the start of the Alter path. That smile isn't unique to Sapphire. Sayori can smile like that too. She can visit the arcade and have fun. That is a huge part of the story that is being told here. There truly is nothing within Sapphire that doesn't already exist within Sayori. They share a beautiful blushing smile.

It's not fully developed as a story where this was the core of the tale would be but I think that is something that makes it all the more effective. It's succinct. A concept I am completely blind to but I do like it when others pull it off. I am not saying that Sapphire is 12 year old Sayori (well. My thoughts are more nuanced than that at least. We'll see what I mean a little later). I am saying Sayori was asked to conceptualize a carefree version of herself and Sapphire was constructed from the emotions that she was once familiar with.

Which makes for not just an effective story, but a reflection of reality.

AW met us from a roleplaying group. Sapphire was not the only character we played in those days. But she was the only hypnotist character. When we were a teenager we were deep into reading hypnotic theory. We burned through so many books between ages 16-25. But there's a difference between reading how to do a thing and doing it.

But Sapphire was a character and so in posts she would think about different types of inductions by their name and talk about things like convincers and depth signals. She spoke in a grandiose pattern. She was confident. In charge. Dominant.

I don't know how many people AW had us hypnotize but he recognized that we did not have the confidence to do so when we were lucid. But in Sapphire's headspace there was no filter, no cogs turning... it was fluid. A person who knew their stuff, believing they knew their stuff... no delay, no bravado. Was I what I imagined a hypnotist to be or was I just a version of myself unburdened by a shame of kink, a fear of eroticism, any notion that this was not who we were and what we were built for.

I recall in the 2010s when my friend group met "me" in my iteration at the time... there was no hypnosis that time. Just a call from the heart to fill a void in a tabletop scene. Our playable character was transformed into the personality of a femme fatale and we needed to act as her with no time to prepare. We closed our eyes and reached inward. Sapphire is not the shape we sought but it was the shape that reached up and took control in that moment.

We think about that moment a lot. I took the name "Honoria" that day. The shape of "me" had changed. I wonder what shape I was before AW got a hold of me. Sapphire existed before AW... but he poisoned her. Changed her into something else. It makes me wonder what experiences, emotions and memories forged me. I wasn't always here. But now I am...

And I don't just disappear in silent moments or the years between activty.

I'm also a sucker for rules in storytelling and so when things like which name is spoken out loud or the trigger is used I am keeping these things in mind. I wanted to mention that early as it plays in as we go.

So Kyou does not bring back Sayori and Sapphire laughs about how Kyou's hypnosis must have failed when he calls her "Sayori" and she does not recognize the name.

And with Kyou's negligence on full display, Sapphire heads out of the house, not even recognizing her own name. He assumes she'll just snap out of it when the situation calls for it. He doesn't realize the level of distress that can be caused by leaving someone in a literally "altered" state interact with the world and their life.

We used to call it "channeling". Evidence had shown that hypnosis could let our younger self do things that they couldn't do in an unaltered state. Eventually they started to lean into it. At work. In intimate situations. When they needed to perform. When they needed to play a character, to push through barriers of fear and doubt. Close your eyes. Let yourself enter a flow state. Become the person you need to be...

We were already a transgender woman pretending to be a man. This just made us a transgender woman pretending to be a man needing to pretend to be other people just to function in basic life tasks. It felt pathetic. It felt so alienating from my sense of self. I didn't identify with my body or my mind. In seeking ego death we hypnotically abused ourselves to the point of which we were just an idea of a person who had a legal name that didn't feel like our own...

I did this to myself, I would think.

The next day Sapphire ambushes Kyou at the gate. He notes it's odd but he's just happy there's someone happy to see him.

Kyou doesn't realize this is the alter personality and calls her Sayori, convincing her that Kyou is still trying to make the hypnotic compulsion from the previous day work.

Kyou's reply is not to tell her to Become Sayori again. It is to panic about what Sapphire will do when she hears the wrong name being spoken by the teacher and her friends...

In his defense, Sapphire did scold him in trying to trigger her in a public place.

But he still prioritizes a comfortable landing for Sayori over the danger of allowing Sapphire to run rampant.

This priority is the source of much of the drama in the One Day situation.

During class people do infact call Sapphire "Sayori" and she is horrified and confused by it.

We are given two options.

"It's a prank" - Change her back

We'll focus on change her back for now and come back later for "It's a prank". After all. Kyou may be able to tell himself that he is prioritizing Sayori's safety and doesn't want to wake her up to a public setting but the longer he puts this off the more distress both Sayori and Sapphire will be in.

It would be irresponsible to actively encourage this situation to continue by gaslighting or worse programming a woman in distress to lean into her altered headspace to avoid confronting the reality of the other persona being upset when they wake up.

...so let's have Kyou bring Sayori back.

Penlight hypnosis causes the hypnotee to blank out entirely. We saw this directly in the "Reversal" route. This counts for altered states too. We had seen it when Sayori woke up suddenly in Kyou's room and we saw her reaction to it in the Golden Ending path.

Imagine how terrified she would be waking up a day later with no memories of her night. Knowing that some other version of herself had lived a day in her life. Spoken to her parents. Attended school. Acted as if it were here.

The sentiment makes her sick to her stomach.

Sometimes in our emails and chatlogs we find little bits of evidence of our actions and behaviors, areas of the internet we had posted in with no recollection, even after system discovery.

AW had Sapphire make her own Yahoo account to send messages from, I have the sign-up email in my inbox. When I saw it my blood froze cold. I still do not know the password and it has been locked from my attempts to get in. It terrifies me to think of all the things I would see if I managed to get in.

I don't think I can describe the powerlessness and vulnerability that comes when you realize that the continuity of your own experience has been disrupted and even in the face of evidence you're unable to reconcile it. You know that it was you. You cannot deny that. But it still remains alien. You have no memory at all of the situation or scenario. It makes you feel so hopeless and untethered.

She takes it fairly well, given the circumstances.

Sayori retreats to the rooftop club ordering Kyou to stay the hell away from her. She is beyond terrified.

Kyou, being Kyou, instantly starts internally pouting about how he is not at fault for how people take his hypnotic suggestions and that it is unreasonable to blame him when hypnosis cannot force someone to do something they didn't want to do.

Typical Kyou stuff.

He does note he should have been better about safety and beats himself up a little about his mistake, though.

From here the school week continues on with Sayori avoiding Kyou. She instantly speaks to Nozomi, someone she knows can help her with matters of hypnosis. Nozomi even gives Kyou a firm talking to and tells him in no uncertain terms "you hurt my friend. You have to atone. On her terms, not yours."

Nozomi is wonderful. She really gets to shine in this route as she is the voice of ethics in hypnokink. Ironic, given how quickly she throws that all away when she has an opportunity to go under for herself but she knows her stuff, she knows her ethics.

It speaks to how much a person can let their own safety disappear when they are given opportunities to play. I'm certain all the older members of the hypnosis community had some brushes with dangerous individuals due to their own level of self-neglect.

But Nozomi does know what ethics are and she wants to protect her friend. She does a fantastic job of it.

She acts as a mediator and invites Kyou to her house the following day so that Sayori has a safe space to work out what the heck is going to happen next.

At Nozomi's house they gather together and Nozomi lets Kyou have it, she all but screams at him.

(Nozomi and I share a soapbox)

The rant Nozomi gives on ethics at this point is one of the highlights of the game for me and not just because of my connection to the reason she's yelling. She speaks passionately about how ethical hypnosis is performed, she uses the word "hypnotee" several times (proof that DeMille is read up as the fictional space and public consciousness tend to favor "subject") and notes how Satoshi, the senior from last year's show, had performed correctly.

Nozomi's anger at Kyou is something that reminds me of a number of my close friends in the best possible ways.

Sayori even notes that she is certain Kyou meant no harm and that she forgives him. Nozomi's reply is "Not until he gets on his hands and knees"

Better be careful, Sayori. Nozo is coming for your "best girl" crown.

Sayori is Sayori though and she is not going to submit herself to deprogramming hypnosis without understanding the situation in full and having control over how the matter is handled. This may not be the consent/rapport version of Sayori's story but she is still the same woman. Well, Sayori is anyway.

Sayori notes that the level of control that Kyou has demonstrated matches years of conditioning with a hypnotist and shouldn't be replicated with 2 sessions worth of trance.

AW and I met in 2003. I broke it off with him in 2010...

Sayori wants to understand the rules and pontificates that if they are as she thinks then if Sapphire came out she would not recall anything between the last time the trigger was used and the present moment. Sayori is also certain if she heard the trigger phrase she would be incapable of resisting it.

To prove this she asks Kyou to use it.

And it works. Sapphire returns, giggling at the magic trick of Kyou teleporting her from school to Nozomi's house. She's just delighted to be out of class. She is hypnotically compelled to hate studying after all...

Sapphire takes it all in stride and seems to have no qualms with Nozomi's presence, outright saying that she assumes Nozomi invited them over because of her "hypnosis-loving giddiness". Sapphire knocks Nozomi off her balance by outright identifying her fetish and laughing at how Kyou clearly picked up on it too.

All Kyou needed to do was say "Become Sayori" again and the scene would be over, hypothesis confirmed. Alas, what can go wrong must go wrong and Nozomi's mother enters the scene and Kyou prioritizes the comfort of Sayori waking up in an awkward position over her safety.

He convinces Nozomi to let the conversation play out and just trigger Sayori when the mother has gone. Right? Sorted.

A small chat turns into lunch.

Lunch stretches on and Sapphire starts talking it up. We learn a little more about Nozomi's board game hobby and the fact she has a secondary friend group she plays games with on some evenings.

Sayori's phone goes and Sapphire excuses herself to answer it... and then goes missing.

The next sequence is a lovely wild goose chase of Nozomi and Kyou unable to find Sapphire (her phone is turned off!) and worrying that Sayori's father referred to her as "Sayori" and Sapphire worked out she's the installed personality and ran off to prevent anything happening to her.

Remember how I said the timelines of the game are rigid. Saturday is a good day for this to happen. Sunday is Hiroko's tournament after all...

...and Saturday is cram school for Sayori...

Her dad was upset she wasn't there and Sapphire, hypnotically induced to hate studying, hung up on him and turned off her phone and ran off to have fun.

The goose chase has some wonderful characterization of Kyou and Nozomi bickering, a brief Hiroko cameo and some character history for Sayori.

They find Sapphire at the arcade. In every route, as noted by the ending of the Golden Ending, Sayori has fond memories of going to the arcade with her father prior to high school and she was actually remarkably good at video games and found them relaxing fun.

Sapphire is just built from that feeling after all.

I do not know how much research DeMille did in this route. Turq told me in reading blog entries (this specific route was written this year) that DeMille was not happy with how this route was written and I was surprised to hear that. As a person with DID and former victim of personality play abuse I felt the nuances were handled remarkably well.

One of the theories of DID (which is a dramatically contested topic in psychology. I should do a post on the 3 major theories that are kicked about someday) is based on Attachment Theory. In child's psychology they are developing aspects of identity, self and personality which are typically reinforced by their relationship to caregivers and the stability of their environment.

Attachment Theory posits that while the child is developing they come to have subconscious expectations of their environment based on how they are treated that cause a level of anxiety and avoidance with Secure Attachment being low anxiety/avoidance and Disorganized Attachment being high levels of anxiety/avoidance. Disorganized Attachment is more than just anxiety/avoidance, though. It comes from unstable environments where the child cannot reliably act in a certain way to get their needs met. Caregivers and authority figures do not respond well either via abuse or neglect (for instance an alcoholic mother may be violently and angry towards a child at night and then loving and apologetic in the morning) leaving the child feeling confused and afraid and unable to rely on stable protection and affection. Thus the personality and stable sense of self does not develop as the child is not modeled a correct way to behave, leaving them without a stable core.

Add in some cPTSD to the mix and you get some fun stuff happening in the brain.

Incidentally Disorganized Attachment is something that comes up in the development of BPD (which includes Identity Confusion as a diagnostic criteria) as well, which is why some psychologists believe that DID is just BPD with extra steps. As I said it's a contested field.

That all is to say that Sayori's relationship with her parents is strained. They are always working, something she and Kyou bond over, and she herself is busy to the point of breaking trying to live up to their expectations. Maybe I'm just headcanoning it but Sayori and her father clash a lot when Sapphire goes against his wishes.

So it is truly remarkable to me that Sapphire regressed to the point in her life when she used to visit the arcade and play games with her father. Sayori always refers to him as "father" and (in this route) Sapphire always refers to him as "daddy". I chose to put weight on that, even if it's not intended by the author.

Every one of her routes this love of video games exists but you'd never see it if she didn't have a reason to let it shine. It's not that she's ashamed of it. She just cannot be the person she was before and it's part of the reason she resents Kyou. Kyou can just take it easy and coast without even trying. She's sacrificing SO MUCH and cannot even feel confident about her ability to succeed.

Sapphire just takes the weight of that responsibility off of her.

Oh it's been a while since I used a photo. I got caught up talking about psychology stuff. I do that sometimes. Here. Have a Sayori kicking Kyou's butt at Street Fighter!

Sayori decides that this proves her theories about the penlight hypnosis without a shadow of a doubt and requests Kyou allow her to hypnotize him with it.

She does so at Nozomi's home and much like the Nozo-Reversal route we have a quick blank out from the induction to 20 minutes later. Nozomi and Sayori worked hard to be safe about their suggestion and we witness one of the most interesting scenes in the game from an ethics standpoint.

Kyou remains in trance and during this 20 minute window is forced to deprogram Sayori and remove Sapphire and sleep triggers from Sayori's mind.

We'll get more into the ethics of just erasing Sapphire in the final segment of this route...

Kyou argues that the penlight isn't a mind control device and Nozomi, clearly done with Kyou's denial and is about to get into an argument when Sayori steps in and notes how Kyou believes that the penlight is just a hypnosis tool and not a mind control device and if such were true then he would not obey any programming that he did not want to.

She orders him to break the penlight.

Kyou obeys.

But he fights the compulsion.

He fights it with all his might.

Seeing just how much he struggled in this scene reminds me of the ending of Nozo-Trance where Kyou commanded her to be his girlfriend. The penlight can overrule agency and in this moment Kyou cannot resist. He screams, begs the girls to stop, swears at them and cries out at the top of his lungs.

But he obeys.

Kyou is livid. Yelling at both girls that they had no right to subvert his will and destroy his hard work. He even threatens to build another one... and it is in this moment when...

Sayori hugs him and shares a moment of perspective. They had both been violated by the penlight and left to feel confused and afraid at the complete lack of control they each had in their own mind.

The ending to this route is actually rather positive. Sayori's father relents enough to let Sayori ease from her studies a little as it is clear that she had a burnout that erupted in her behavior during Sapphire's reign and that she was working better with full rest anyway.

Any Sayori route tends to include a note that moderation helps her more than obsessive study. Burnout will actually kill her but she needs to make the change from inside. She's a proud woman with a firm sense of control on her experience. She does not want to be told what to do, but she benefits a lack of pressure.

Kyou, Sayori, Hiroko and Nozomi start a D&D campaign together and Sayori finds an affinity for acting out characters in the setting.

Trust me, I can relate.

So this is what happens if Kyou wakes Sayori up on the school day after creating Sapphire.

...what happens if he didn't?

What happens if Kyou is arrogant enough to think Sayori is better as a carefree lady who hates to study?

What if Kyou decided he wanted to keep Sapphire?

"It's a prank" Route:

Every now and again I pull up my chatlogs with AW and one question plays in my head over and over again.

"How could I trust someone like this with my mind"

I pulled up chatlog and did a word search for "memory" to see if he ever did amnesia shenanigans with me. I found this exert:

AW: so she's pretty much wholly brainwashed at this point AW: her memory, personality, beliefs etc… are all customizable AW: she's got a second, deeper moral compass now. 'right' is what pleases master, and 'wrong' is what displeases master

As I read this all I could think was how did I let someone talk to me like that. How did any part of me accept that he could be allowed to mold us... it was such a violation.

If there is one thing I am grateful for it is that hypnosis in reality is not hypnosis in Penlight. The things AW commanded us to do were unconscionable. But we simply did not obey. But we did not run from him. It took him trying to make moves on people in our vanilla real life to make us break it.

If Kyou decides to trick Sapphire into thinking everyone is calling her Sayori as a prank, she instantly starts to threaten Sayori's entire career by complaining about study club and how much she hates school. Kyou doubles down.

Kyou doubles down in the worst way possible.

He hypnotizes Sapphire to always hear the name "Sayori" as Sapphire and to always unconsciously refer to herself in speech and writing as Sayori. By the absolute grace of DeMille Kyou remembers enough to make this suggestion in a way that saying "Become Sayori" will not be heard as "Become Sapphire". Though in my opinion the fact he even thought to close that loophole speaks to how unethical he is being right now. He knows what he is doing and is doing it anyway.

When Kyou is a little fuck he really makes me hate him...

During this hypnosis session Kyou starts thinking of Sayori as "Sapphire's other personality" before internally correcting himself to say "real personality".

That's one of the biggest themes of this route. "Real".

In the first two routes, Sapphire was a suggestion gone awry. Her autonomy (as well as a good use of "compartmentalized memories" in dialogue) is noted in the "Bring Sayori Back" (Day Lost) route but it is in this route that Sapphire and Sayori are treated as full dissociative identities.

Having just committed an atrocity on Sayori and helped smooth out any wrinkles in the personality he installed in Sayori's mind (that is commanded to have a crush on him), Kyou wakes her and she confesses her love. Kyou reciprocates.

Kyou's denial is legendary enough that if DeMille revealed he had a hypnotic compulsion to have the worst possible take in any scenario where the player isn't controlling the situation, I'd believe her.

Sapphire is all about the public displays of affection and starts being intimate and close to Kyou at school, pulling him to the rooftop club. There she mentions that she is dating Kyou and they are practicing hypnosis for the cultural festival.

Nozomi's hypnosis radar is pinged.

After Hiroko incredulously calls her bullshit, Sapphire doubles down and states that she is going to have a proper date with Kyou during the coming weekend. When reminded that mock exams are coming up and she should be studying, Sapphire happily says she will blow it off in order to spend time with her love <3

Nozomi's bullshit detector is pinged.

However, Nozomi is Nozomi. So she simply chimes in that as Class Rep it is her duty to help with the cultural festival and she must be involved in this hypnosis show. There is no options in this. They will attend Kyou's house tomorrow and there is no ifs or buts.

Sapphire also proves she cares about her friends and notes she is prioritizing Hiroko's tennis match for Sunday. Sayori is a good friend, even when her moral limitations and over-controlled behaviors are turned off.

Why, yes. I do know what I typed in the last review.

Have you considered Sayori is best girl, though?

Nozomi spends the day scripting out what will happen with the hypnosis session (no shenanigans, just scripting) and is enjoying herself but then Sapphire gets the phone call. Same time as it happened in the previous route. Sayori's father is livid that she is not at cram school. This time however we get to hear the argument and it is fairly pointed.

Sayori cannot avoid going in this route. It's interesting to note the differences between Sapphire without Kyou's reinforcing her presence in Sayori's mind and how she is here. The other Sapphire just hung up the phone. This one ended up going.

Nozomi excuses herself before noting "Sayori has never missed school. Not once. Not regular school of cram school."

She notes the discussion about second personalities and knows damned well what is going on here.

My beloved audience, behold! It is the thesis statement of this entire route. Also I will remind people of what Nozomi's first action is when she gets a hold of the penlight in Nozo-Reversal route.

There are so many times in this game where characters make overt ironic references to other routes. This is most certainly one of those moments.

After cram school Sapphire and Kyou meet up for their date and Sapphire talks about how she had intended on getting in a higher level high school but had not been able to be accepted elsewhere. She was happy to have Nozomi and Hiroko still in her life but it marks the moment that Sayori had become obsessed with study.

She visits the arcade and notes how she used to visit with her dad. Once again I note the fact that this Sapphire is less childish than the previous one. I feel the "Bring Sayori Back" Sayori was regressed to who she was before high school, referring to her father as "daddy" where here she calls him "dad" every time. Sayori always says "father".

Kyou's hypnosis has integrated Sapphire and Sayori and more importantly associated the memories, just not the behaviors. This Sapphire is an adult and she has full ownership over her actions during high school and has decided that she does not want to be that person anymore. She is happier like this.

Sapphire plays an arcade game and thanks Kyou for letting her "relive a happier time in her life" before dragging him down for dinner.

The two bond over their estrangement from their parents. Kyou is from a broken home with a father he barely sees and Sayori/Sapphire have a paramedic mother they barely see and a father who doesn't do anything to help anyone and Sayori/Sapphire disagrees with what he does and they argue about it.

She had wanted to become a doctor to make them proud even when they did not have economic advantage but Sapphire is not as sold on the idea. A doctor needs to keep up on study for their entire career. She has no interest in such a life.

Kyou starts to realize he is making a huge mistake and that programming Sayori to go against everything she stood for.

Finally realizing what Nozomi was trying to tell him before he realizes that he's done a horrible thing and tells her that they have to break up. He confesses everything. That he used hypnosis to change her personality, that he expected she would snap out of it, that he is going to throw her entire future down the drain and it's not right and they have to stop.

Then Sapphire pulls the rug out from under him.

We have just lost cabin pressure...

So you may have noticed that I was calling her by the alter's name this entire time.

The game text is still calling her Sayori and has been since we reprogrammed Sapphire to unconsciously hear the name Sayori as her own. Kyou has been calling her Sayori. The entire game up until now has been treating this character as if she is Sayori but with her personality adjusted.

This scene has the game switch the name card back to Sapphire.

She's known the whole time that she is the installed personality. She worked it out on the first day when people were calling her Sayori. The installed personality was supposed to be "carefree and fun-loving" and she sees those traits in herself. Therefore it stands to reason if she behaves in the way Kyou's hypnosis was supposed to make her act and people called her the wrong name then she is the one who Kyou created.

And she's okay with it.

Moreover she knows Kyou can just say "Become Sayori" and be done with it.

And she is NOT okay with that.

"What is this "real" business? I am as real as can be, Kyou. Do you mean to say I am not the original? That I am a creation that must be destroyed now that I have inconvenienced you?"

"Kyou, I am no parlour trick for you to put away once it has been used. I am real. I have lived a life."

"Do you... do you really think you have the right to take that away from me, Kyou?"

Sapphire explains she has existed as a feeling within Sayori for some time and that her experiences these past few days are her own and belong to no one but herself.

Flooding with tears she says that what Kyou calls "fixing" her is actually Killing her.

One thing I see argued back and forth in support groups is the concept of a core/original/real personality. Many therapists, especially those approaching from the perspective of the IFS model and expect there to be a "Genuine Self" waiting to emerge. I do not share this viewpoint and even if I did , how ethical would it be to assume the birth identity is the only valid one when we've been living as a woman for 3 years.

Even still... would "birth identity" and "the original" even be synonymous. I consider "birth identity" to be the boy from London, not the person in the stories we were told of our childhood.

I may not have full memory of my childhood but I am fully aware of the things the "little monster" did. I wasn't allowed to grow past it. Suspended from school 3 times, expelled once, hospitalized a kid by cracking his head on a concrete pillar, stole, broke into places, got brought home by the police a couple times. All before hitting 10 years old.

I do not know who that child my father would tell me stories about was. I don't identify with him. I do not feel him inside me. I am aware it was me who flooded the toilets, punched a teacher and broke into abandoned buildings.

I also remember the refrain in my head in those young years "don't be like them." I remember moments of oblivious bliss and moments of being consumed by an all powerful righteous fury in my heart. Simultaneously a happy child and an angry adult. Seeds that would grow into Cammie and Camden. Yet neither of those were my name... they wouldn't be for another 20 years.

When we transitioned. We didn't know we had DID. Camden had been running the system for a few years at that point and was finally able to express openly and outwardly... and so on days when we couldn't present femme our self-loathing and emotional volatility increased. We began to hate with a burning passion any expression of masculinity and our English heritage.

We began to hate our birth identity existing within us. We tried to erase him. End him.

It's actually a common practice for people going through gender transition. Here's a comic that makes the point more clearly than I ever could. See my tags for it? This comic convinced me exactly what the game is saying firmly. The Boy has a right to exist within our heart. We don't get to put him away just because he's not convenient to our gender expression anymore.

Kyou is told firmly that to erase Sapphire from Sayori would be murder and that Sapphire believes Kyou is a better man than that. She acknowledges this is a heavy topic and gives Kyou time to think. Our little idiot hypnotist is left completely out of his depth, forced to accept that he has given life to this alternate personality and such gifts cannot be revoked lightly.

What follows is a sequence at school where the rooftop gang gather and Hiroko stresses about her performance in the tennis tournament may impact her scholarship giving Sapphire the opportunity to show how carefree she is about scholarships. Nozomi confronts Sapphire with the knowledge that she is an installed persona and is horrified to find out that Sapphire not only knows this but does not care to be "fixed".

The conversation also bounces back and forth between using the names "Sayori" and "Sapphire" enough that Hiroko and Nozomi notice traces of Kyou's meddling. He confesses that he has programmed her to hear the name she is comfortable with whenever someone is clearly addressing her.

Nozomi is LIVID at hearing Kyou tried to mitigate harm by disguising it. She knows just how monstrous and unethical that is.

This is something that I fear isn't delved into enough within the ethical routes of the game. There are shadows of it here but I really feel like there needs to be a route that is specifically about owning mistakes.

As Turquoise pointed out in his NozoZombie review, a good hypnotist can still make no errors and still hurt a person. Kyou is entirely the type of person to utilize amnesia suggestions to bury mistakes and put things "right" but typically this only happens in the bad endings of routes.

I know too many people who played in the 2000s with dangerous hypnotists who crossed boundaries or made abreactions and tried to make the hypnotee forget rather than owning their mistake. I truly feel this is a topic that DeMille would knock out of the park if it were the sole focus for a storyline.

I also want to know that Sapphire's speech patterns at this point of the story are unique to her. Sayori has a grandiose way of speaking and the way that Sapphire talks is in character for Sayori but where Sayori's expanded vocabulary and wordy ways of speech is treated as her being a little loquacious, Sapphire embraces the concept of "eccentric", utilizing some phrases that she uses as a point of comfort such as "as you like".

Oh and as a British expat, I do love when I can feel DeMille's nationality bleed into this Japanese setting. It just makes me happy in the same way playing a 90s era RPG with American pop-culture references or seeing Brock eat a "jelly donut" would.

On the rooftop Nozomi caves in to despair, realizing that her friend is the one being killed. Sapphire insists that Sayori still exists within her mind but she has no reason to yield her existence to her. Nozomi's crying starts attracting attention and so Sapphire concedes that Sayori needs to be part of this conversation but it has to happen later in a safer place.

"Wait! Not here. And certainly not now [...] do you have any idea how Sayori will react were she to wake right now? In this place?"

Sapphire says that they need to perform the hypnosis in the privacy of the study club, where Kyou first hypnotized Sayori.

If you've not played this route yet, I want you to cast your mind back. Kyou did indeed hypnotize Sayori for the first time in the study club. This is a true statement.

But there's something odd about it, don't you think?

Kyou notices too but cannot quite identify what it is until Sapphire says that in order to make a safe landing spot for Sayori the conditions need to be perfectly replicated. Including Kyou and Sayori being alone in the room.

What is she scheming, I wonder?

After school Sapphire enacts her role as head of the study club and Kyou waits until afterwards to meet with her. Nozomi makes a final plea to bring Sayori back and tries to explain that Sapphire is not a real person and that the fact he can erase the hypnotic trigger is a proof of this fact. Kyou, who has spent time with Sapphire and recognizes her as a unique entity, disagrees.

Kyou's denial is legendary, though. Nozomi is making sense. She feels this "Sapphire" is simply Sayori following hypnotic programming, acting in the ways that Kyou told her to act and there is no separate individual. There is just programming that needs to be removed.

I like that this argument is left as a firm disagreement between Kyou and Nozomi. The ethics are dirty as can be in this situation. Kyou literally created a personality that is hypnotically compelled to love him. Earlier in the route Nozomi says that Sayori is "under duress" when Kyou says they are in love and that is right.

The situation has spun out of control and now the morality of it has become ungovernable. It is wrong for Kyou to permanently change Sayori into his girlfriend, it's the same situation as the endings where Kyou forces Nozomi to become his girlfriend. It is wrong to deprive Sayori of her autonomy, her life, her years of hard work.

Erasing Sapphire should be a cut and dry case.

But Sapphire is advocating for herself and does not consent to being erased. The whole situation boils down to whether or not you believe Sayori is following hypnotic conditioning or if Sayori and Sapphire are separate individuals with autonomy.

To add in further moral murkiness, Sapphire has come up with a scheme.

She will finish out her high school career pretending to be Sayori. Acting as a stuffy and studious woman, friend to Nozomi and Hiroko and stay away from her beloved Kyou. Earn their freedom by going through the motions and then after school is over she can return to Kyou and not have to worry about her parents or friends or society nagging about her behavior ever again.

Obviously that is an unacceptable circumstance.

Makes it easier to just ignore Sapphire's consent. She's not "real" after all...

But Sapphire is smart enough to know this may be the case and has selected the Study Club as the location of their hypnosis instead of Kyou's home.

That's the thing that was odd about the location. Kyou hypnotized Sayori in the study club for the sleep suggestion. Sapphire was created at Kyou's home.

She knows that if Kyou tries to bring Sayori back then he will be forced to manage the fact that she has lost 5 days of her life. Sapphire is so intent on living that she has put Kyou in a position where refusing her is disadvantageous. Sapphire is an evil mastermind when her back is to the wall.

In her mind to "include Sayori in this conversation" would be to destroy herself. Once she loses her ability to advocate for herself then Kyou would be the only one who could speak to Sapphire's autonomy and Sayori, Nozomi and Hiroko would never treat her as "real".

We know this. Nozomi said as much just before this meeting.

Sapphire admits, she has no right to demand this of Kyou (though she did think to put him in a position where refusing would end poorly) and that if he simply remembers her and keeps her in his memories then it could be enough.

You are then given the option to bring Sayori back or not.

Bring Sayori Back - Go Along with Sapphire's Plan

Should you go along with Sapphire's plan then she will have Kyou use a fake trigger to "bring back Sayori" and invite Nozomi to come into the room and begin acting out as if she were Sayori.

As soon as Nozomi comes in she keeps asking Sayori if she's okay. Telling Sayori that it's been 5 days. That Kyou hypnotized her.

Sapphire sells her role and is as livid and rigid as one would expect Sayori to be. Nozomi starts peppers every sentence with Sayori's name. Truly concerned about her friend.

Then Nozomi proves she is smarter than Kyou and knows her shit with hypnosis.

"Sayori" does not even react. She is hypnotically compelled to hear either name and internalize it as the name she should hear. Nozomi said Sayori every sentence in order to slip in a "Sapphire" and see how she reacts.

Sapphire fails to notice and Nozomi knows that the pair of them had lied to her...

In despair she once again cries for her friend to come back and Sapphire springs into action.

We get a timeskip to the final day of school. "Sayori" hangs out with her friends and Kyou remains a social parriah. Everything has gone "back to normal".

As they pile out of school Hiroko notes that Nozomi looks jumpy and just doesn't want to be there. Sapphire looks at Nozomi and assures her that she is amongst friends and she shouldn't be so tense. That if she had anything that was concerning her she could speak up and she would be happy to help her see things in a new light.

We flash back to the study club room.

Sapphire didn't use the penlight. She threatened to use the penlight.

She kept Nozomi in line via threats because she enjoyed watching the discomfort in her face whenever Nozomi was caught in the moral quandry of doing something or not fighting against this injustice. Sapphire gets off on having power over people and making them stew in discomfort.

Full credit to @spiralturquoise for pointing out that in the doll route there is a moment where Kyou has a thought box where he is convinced Sayori is enjoying his discomfort.

I am convinced that Sayori in every route enjoys watching people in moments of discomfort. It certainly explains her reactions to NozoZombie's stage show and why she makes the best audience member to be watching the events.

There are actually a number of little bits of foreshadowing in other routes. In one route Hiroko even jokes about how "we don't need two Sayori's around here". I look forward to replaying the game and catching the little asides.

DeMille has a very firm idea of who these characters are and is so gifted at maintaining their internal consistency. More impressive given how each character is dramatically altered when they interact with the penlight.

The bad ending concludes with Sapphire reuniting with Kyou andf starting their new life together with her performing a little bit of jabbing at him to see his own discomforted face contort as he struggles against the morality of his actions.

This ending has Kyou and Sapphire break off from the world and alienate themselves from family and friends to dive into a life consumed by one another. I find that this is one of the more intriguing fail conditions of the routes. Isolation is a big theme of all the bad endings. Whether Kyou ends up ostricized due to his misdeeds, sacrifices connections with the girls for what he feels is the safest option or is consumed by a hollow life where kink has consumed everything.

The doll bad ending is of a similar calibur where Sayori has no cares or interests outside of how wonderful hypnosis feels and so Kyou finds a full time job in maintaining a hypnojunkie and his life entirely becomes about catering to those needs.

Intimacy and connection is the good end. Isolation, even when alone together, is a bad end.

But that's a bad end. Let's bring Sayori back instead.

Kyou's lip trembles and he mumbles out his apologies. Sapphire just smiles back and closes her eyes in acceptance.

"You... You need to Become Sayori again."

Sayori wakes up and is stunned, scared and confused. Nozomi rushes in to hug her friend and they go to Kyou's home in order to sort things out. It was where the suggestion began and thus it seemed prudent to handle it there.

Nozomi and Kyou explain everything and Sayori listens and absorbs. She is numb by the end and tells them what it felt like for her. There are no memories at all of her time as Sapphire and she could not impact anything from within their mind, she was simply trapped in a void.

Kyou takes this as confirmation that Sapphire is a being unto herself.

Sayori agrees, noting that her hubris enabled this and that she should have been careful to entrust her mind to an idiot clod. She now has a dissociative identity to show for her arrogance. Sayori fully accepts that Sapphire is a separate entity born from her thoughts, emotions and memories and does have a right to exist.

Sayori is the best girl and I love her.

She gives Kyou two options. Erase all the programming and lock Sapphire away inside her mind forever, unable to come out and interact with the world. This option is as good as killing Sapphire but will allow Sayori full control over her life.

The other option is to integrate their consciousness to function together. Nozomi is horrified to consider this option, noting that it would be the end of Sayori's aspirations for med school.

She gives her signature Sayori smirk and boils it down to a simple statement.

"Ruin my life or destroy hers."

You bring Sayori under penlight hypnosis once again and are given the final option of the story.

Sapphire... I won't leave you behind - Sapphire... I have to let you go.

First off I note that Kyou frames this choice as being about Sapphire and not Sayori. I say that with no judgment or commentary. It's simply a fact of the route.

To erase Sapphire ends the game with an abrupt timeskip. The rooftop club want nothing to do with Kyou and he lives out the rest of his school career in solitude. Sayori manages to recover her lost week and feels confident about her chances for med school.

When Kyou speaks to her on her last day of school she is blunt and angry with him. She says every time she sees him she remembers how close she came to losing everything.

She says trusting him was her mistake and she takes ownership of it...

But Sapphire's life was placed in her hands and he sealed her away forever. Sayori wants Kyou to live with that. She wants him to miss her for the rest of his life.

She says goodbye and Kyou never sees them again.

I can think of few things in life more painful than being revoked access to speak to someone you love. To see them in front of you. To interact with them and to know that you are no longer on the "inside" of their trust. That you know the true names and shapes of the person... the people behind those eyes and know that you no longer have permission to see that. You are no longer allowed to hear their individual voice. It is a pain I would never wish on anyone.

And oh the level of self-loathing in internalizing that you have no right to be upset about it. That you are not owed access or trust. That you have to just live with the knowledge that they would take it all back if they could.

I know what it's like to miss someone for the rest of your life.

...so...

What if we integrate the pair into a single consciousness?

This time Kyou programs the two to have a line of internal communication and the ability to trade the body when they need to.

The timeskip happens again and Kyou has once again gone the final months of school alone. He is not soon to be forgiven for his actions. But as exams end the rooftop club have a date to go to karaoke to celebrate. Sayori is pessimistic about her propositions but did promise to celebrate. She also promised to talk to Kyou.

The rooftop club approach him and invite him to the celebration. As Sayori speaks with him, cold and upset, she is caught in moments of aside where she is caught in an internal argument.

The scene at the karaoke club is so beautiful and shows that not only has Sayori adapted to include her alter self into her life but Nozomi and Hiroko fully accept Sapphire as the 4th member of their group. Hiroko and Sapphire even seem to get along greatly.

Sapphire comes out to Kyou's comfort and delight and explains that Sayori pulled out of her emd school plans and they have to live a completely different life to accomodate their ideology clashes.

Kyou himself being one of them.

Sapphire and Sayori have internal conversations that Nozomi and Hiroko ask to be filled in on and for all it is worth this is handled just as it tends to be in my lived experience. DeMille did a good job of showing what "healthy multiplicity" looks like in a social dynamic and I cannot begin to thank her enough for that.

The whole "split personality" thing in fiction is always used as a source of drama. Internally as the turmoil between two (or more) individuals fighting over the solitary life. Externally as people not always knowing which alter they are speaking with.

I always appreciate when it's shown as just a part of who a person is. That people struggle to keep up with the shifts but are capable of following the changes and being aware that the person they are speaking to contains multitudes and the statement "they are the same person" and "they are different people" are both true at the same time.

In support groups I tend to see a common refrain that "DID is actually boring. It's just traumatized people trying to live their lives." and I agree with it. There's so much less mythology and intrigue in reality. This scene does a good job of showing the mundane reality of a person who has attained dynamic system communication and has people who they trust and share their truth with. The clumsiness and uncertainty of how any of it works and just trying to not stumble or apologize too much.

I often think I don't deserve the way people see me. See us. I've never been able to be what I am lucky enough to receive for others. In support groups and in life I have met other people who have these experiences and I fuck up. A lot. I try to not worry about it because I know I'd forgive the people around me if they messed up. But it takes earnest care and trust to be open with another person and for them to accept you and adapt their behavior to invite you in. It heals my heart to see Nozomi and Hiroko roll with it, even if they don't fully comprehend it.

During the karaoke party Kyou asks Sapphire where they stand, if they have a future or if tonight is a goodbye.

Sapphire takes him outside and admits that she still loves him and as Kyou reaches out to make a connection Sayori steps in and scolds her alter for breaking their agreement.

The pair get into an outloud argument over the situation and the impact Kyou's hypnosis has had on their shared life.

Sayori had to talk to her parents and tell them that her stress had caused a breakdown and she needs to adjust her life goals in order to accomodate her abilities. Sapphire jabs that Sayori would have had a miserable life treading water if intervention had not happened. Sayori notes that being forced to surrender her dreams is not a favor.

The sequence ends with Sapphire saying that she forced Sayori to give up her dreams. Giving up her love of Kyou is a suitable price.

Kyou will always be the one who ruined Sayori's life and saved Sapphire's. Sayori cannot bring herself to hate him but she cannot allow him to be in her life.

In a bittersweet ending, Kyou allows Sayori/Sapphire to return to the karaoke bar and he walks home.

The end.

The route is interesting in that there is real basis for it and yet the dynamics of the route lean more heavily into hyperbole than most need to. Adjusting a person's identity and risking them gaining a dissociative disorder is a very real issue within the hypnosis community.

I recently made a post about the topic which was inspired by my playing this route. I have no desire to out any of the people I have spoken to in the weeks since I posted it but a number of people have approached me to thank me for the post and share their experiences which mirror much of what AW did to me.

Then there's those Disney Deer files that are so imfamous at altering people's personalities and compartmentalizing their thought process that there are major online publications doing exposes on the topic.

DeMille handles the situation both in the present of noting what happens when a person's behavior is shifted by hypnotic conditioning and just how dangerous it is to give birth to alter egos via hypnosis. I feel there is full respect in her depictions and spare for Kyou's behavior being on a spectrum of irredeemable and fucking stupid; the characters treat the scenario with the gravity it deserves. I never felt like anyone betrayed their character's core while arguing on the agency and legitimacy of the alter personality.

I don't know if this is going to be the best storyline for anyone or be relatable to anyone outside of a very narrow window of individual... but as a member of that pinpoint Venn diagram... I appreciate that this story exists.

I think DeMille knocked it out of the park and I cannot wait to see what happens in the grayed out paths when they are written. Even if it hurts to read.

Next time we'll visit Hiroko. Though Turq has already handled the Tickling route if you want to read that now.

Going to take some time to focus on Not Penlight for now though. This took an age to write and edit.

[oh-honeyyes-youcan]

BlitZ DR Intro

BlitZ is a four-woman girl group under BHivee, one of the biggest up-and coming K-Pop companies in all of South Korea. BHivee’s first group debut was Stray Kids in March 2018, followed by Itzy in February 2019. After these great successes, Enhypen debuted in November 2020, with BlitZ following three weeks later in December 2020. Both groups’ debut albums hit top charts globally, making them some of the most successful debuts of any K-Pop groups ever.

The fans are called BlitZees, and they bring us flowers and stuffies everywhere we go. They take the time to learn each of our favorite flowers and foods and animals and bring them to us when they see us. They’ve even taken to wearing their bias’ favorite color when they meet them. We had to clear out our office in our house to house all the stuffies and now we just go running into the pile of stuffies on the floor.

BlitZ Members

Park Seo-Yun, our leader.

Born June 9, 1998, she is not only the oldest member, but the longest trained of us. She’s kind and compassionate, but she’s also very strict sometimes because she wants us all to do well and give our all to our careers.

Seo-Yun’s love language is quality time and acts of service. She loves helping people but can sometimes forget to take care of herself, too, so sometimes we have to remind her.

Ja Isuel, our main dancer

Born March 4, 2000, Isuel’s stage name is Bora, because the fans say she has a regal presence. Soon after our debut, however, they realize she is absolutely insane and they love her all the more for it. She is always smiling and joking, and she’s always there if you need her.

Isuel comes from a family of bakers, so her love language is acts of service and words of affirmation. She’s always down for a good hug, though.

Dae Eun Ae, our main rapper

Born September 28, 2002, Eun Ae is tiny yet crazy. She’s the smallest member but she’s also the loudest, both physically and metaphorically. She’s the life of any party she walks into, and no one ever seems to get angry at her volume or excitement. She puts passion into every word, hug, and performance that adds to the experience and love of the fans.

Eun Ae’s love language is definitely physical touch, but gift giving is a very close second. She will see a hug as the greatest offer anyone has ever made and will almost always be touching one of us. She will also squeal if she sees a gift bag.

Me, Jin Eun-Kyung, our main vocalist

Born October 24, 2003, I am the maknae and the most seemingly demure of us. Sometimes, new fans or outsiders assume I’m mean because my resting face can be a bit scary, but I’m quite literally a marshmallow in human clothes. Somehow, I ended up being the backup mom friend. If Seo-Yun is busy or sick, I immediately pick up and start taking care of people or keeping things in line. People always joke that Eun Ae would be more fit for maknae, but soon realize that under my composed exterior, I’m actually an immature and needy crackhead.

My love language is physical touch and acts of service. I will make you food all day long and I will also cuddle after dinner while we rewatch Business Proposal.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask! <3 Happy Shifting!

[pxl8ed]

Obsessed with the though of 2003 turtles having a friend who can pick them up pretty easily

Mikey suggest doing something stupid and/or dangerous, but before he can run off Y/N just picks him up and holds him

I wanna thank you for the funny image this put into my head XD

It got me thinking while I was at work today and this little Drabble is the product of this ask. Thank you so much for the opportunity to write this! I hope you like it! :D

Hold Up

Fandom: 2003 TMNT

Warnings: not edited, (y/n) uses she/her pronouns, Mikey being Mikey

Rating: PG

~

When the turtles met (Y/N), they didn’t think much of it other than the fact they had a new human friend closer to their age. They met much like how they met April but instead of in the sewers, it was in Central Park and instead of mouser robots, it was a couple of Purple Dragon thugs. Yes, she was a bit freaked out by the mutant turtle aspect, but after the TCRI building disappearing, the Triceraton invasion, and a literal war with a demon, she honestly wasn’t that surprised. The four brothers and the human became fast friends shortly after. Albeit she felt more like a mother hen half the time trying to wrangle Mikey and his shenanigans.

Today was no different. (Y/N) had come down to the lair to practice mediation with Splinter, a past time he had gotten her into after a particularly rough week. The orange clad ninja, however, had other plans.

“Yo (Y/N)! Check this out,” She heard him call out from somewhere behind her. She did her best to ignore him. This was the time for inner peace and a clear mind, not for indulging in whatever Mikey was doing. There was a brief moment of quiet bliss and then she felt his presence behind her.

“Oh (Y/N)~”

“Yes, Micheal,” she sighed. She was irritated to say the least. “What do you want?”

The sound of snickering echoed in the silence. She knew what was coming. He hated it when she ignored him. So much so that he would pick her up and carry her off to do whatever bad idea he had in mind. Sometimes she felt more like a pet or a plaything rather than a friend. She knew better, though. He was just happy to have a friend closer to his own age, whom he wasn’t related to, to be around.

Sure enough, a moment later, she felt two three fingered hands pull her up to her feet and spin her around. The orange clad terrapin had the biggest smile plastered on his face. He looked as if he could barely contain his excitement.

“Dudette, c’mon!” He tried to drag her away from where she had been sitting.

“Micheal, what are you going on about?” She dug her heels into the metal flooring as best she could, however the worn rubber soles of her shoes gave little friction.

“Don finally finished that hoverboard I’ve been asking about-“

“More like bugging him about,” she interjected.

“Yeah yeah whatever. The point is,” he kept pulling. “He finished it and I wanna test it out!”

“And why do you need me if you’re just testing it out?” He was halfway to the lair entrance.

“Because I wanna test it with my best buddy!”

As much as she was touched that he considered her his best buddy, she knew that this wasn’t going to end well. Mikey rarely thought through his plans if it didn’t involve his brothers (and even those plans were given little thought). The sudden sense of impending doom hit (Y/N) like a truck.

“And where, exactly, are we going?”

“We’re gonna go to the top of the Brooklyn Bridge,” the casual matter-of-fact statement caused (Y/N) to pull back out of his grip.

“We are absolutely not going to the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Mikey stopped and looked at her. If there was one thing Mikey didn’t like more than being ignored, it was being told no. The mischievous look in his eye was all (Y/N) needed to realize what he was about to do. When Mikey went to grab her, she blocked his outstretched hand with her left arm and grabbed his own wrist with her right hand. She, then, pulled him diagonally across her body as she stepped out of the way. The force of the movement sent him opposite the lair entrance. He skipped to a stop and looked back at (Y/N) who was now between him and the door to outside.

“Where did that come from?” Mikey’s jaw dropped.

“What else do you think I’ve been doin’ with Raph and Leo?” She smirked.

In the blink of an eye Mikey lunged at (Y/N). He attempted to grab her, but what he didn’t expect was the sudden feeling of an arm wrap around his shell and the tug at his belt. Weightlessness soon followed as he realized he was suspended off of the ground. (Y/N) laughed at the look of shock and awe on her friend’s face.

“I‘ll repeat myself one time, Mikey. Not off the Brooklyn Bridge.”

Tags: @acro111

[cherrylng]

Muse Disc Guide - Absolution [STYLE Series #004 - Muse (August 2010)]

IN MUSIC Having established the basic structure of the ‘Muse style’ in the ‘guitar rock’ format (with piano) with their previous album, the band entered the phase of developing it with this album. In order to try something new, they entered the studio with Paul Reeve, who had been involved with Muse from the beginning, while looking for a replacement for John Leckie, who had been the main producer of the previous two albums. They recorded four songs that they described as ‘Queen-esque’, with a 32-piece orchestra and 98 layers of chorus work. The band recorded two more pieces, the lush (9/ Blackout), with a graceful mandolin sound, and (10/ Butterflies & Hurricanes), inspired by Rachmaninoff's piano concerto.

However, in the process of finishing those two songs, and with Rich Costey as producer, the band reconsidered a return to an over-the-top, yet hard-hitting sound, keeping in mind that they were a three-piece live band. In addition, the sense of crisis in the world situation at the time began to cast a shadow over both lyrics and sound, and the overall direction shifted towards a darker one. The result is a heavier, more solid, more three-dimensional album with strong contrasts between each song, and an increased scale in all aspects.

The most striking thing on first listen is the change in the drum sound, which has become tighter, heavier and more crisp. Interestingly, the guitar sound itself is more layered and complex. Based on his live experience, Matthew emphasises the expression of a single guitar playing with gusto and power, rather than layering parts to create a thicker sound on this album. Even the piano sometimes evokes the roar of a thunderclap, and in (4/ Sing for Absolution) he places metal objects on the piano strings to create that sound. With multiple climaxes, including their quintessential ‘aesthetics of excess’ (2/ Apocalypse Please), (6/ Falling Away With You) and the emotionally-charged development of Muse's verse (3/ Time Is Running Out), (8/ Hysteria), (14/ Thoughts Of A Dying Atheist), they finally achieved their first UK No.1. —Sumi Imai

-

2003 Hit Albums

The year 2003 was a year of unrest, partly due to the start of the war in Iraq. Many musicians expressed their opposition to the Bush administration in the USA. However, when Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks said during a London show that she was ‘ashamed of George W. Bush’, she was met with a general slap in the face from the Republican-leaning country community, which led to a furor that lasted for several years. Madonna sent an anti-war message in the video for her single of the same name from (A/ American Life), but the video was eventually taken off the air. Meanwhile, in the UK, Blur's Damon Albarn and Massive Attack's 3D [aka Robert Del Naja] launched an anti-war campaign.

In the US charts, the hip-hop/R&B groups were as strong as ever, but Outkast's (B/ Speakerboxxx/The Love Below) was the most distinctive and was highly praised even by non-hip-hop listeners. Among rock bands, (C/ Fallen) by Evanescence, a gothic metal band fronted by the red-hot Amy Lee, and (D/ Meteora) by Linkin Park, one of the biggest heavy rock hit-makers, were big hits. The latter in particular became a monster album, selling 10 million copies to date.

The male version of the UK's leading artists of 2003 was The Darkness. Their catchy hard rock sound, influenced by Queen and Aerosmith, and the friendly character of Justin Hawkins made them explode in popularity. The female version is Dido, whose album (F/ Life For Rent) stayed at number one for a total of eight weeks after taking the number one spot from Muse.

-

IN LYRICS Novelist/Poet Jorge Luis Borges has said many times that he could see traces of his writing slowly appearing in the real world, and as Matthew says in an interview at the time of release, the synchronisation of imagination and the real world also occurs in this album. (2/ Apocalypse Please), originally about religious fanaticism, was written before the Iraq War, but when Matthew witnessed the anti-war movement in London, which coincided with the recording, he couldn't help but juxtapose the Iraq War with the lyrical content of the song.

The coincidence of what he wrote invaded the real world in unexpected ways - which is interesting because it can also be explained by the themes depicted in (10/ Butterflies & Hurricanes). (10/ Butterflies & Hurricanes) refers to the ‘butterfly effect’, where the flapping of one butterfly's wings causes a storm in a completely different place, and it is not unnatural to replace this with the coincidence of words written in London coinciding with the Iraq War, which is a world apart in time and place. It is not unnatural. What is more, there are coincidences in which the worldview in (10/ Butterflies & Hurricanes) is not unrelated to the war. In this eerie connection, one cannot help but see the chaos dynamics on which the ‘butterfly effect’ is based.

In terms of chaotic connections, one cannot help but be reminded of Matthew's statement about the making of the album: ‘The process of giving an easy-to-understand narrative to what I feel’. The neurologist Oliver Sacks, whose work Matthew has acknowledged as an influence, said that ‘every person with a coherent identity tells himself a story about his life every moment’, which Matthew puts into practice in the tangible form of music. The chaos of love is no different, and "Falling Away With You" transposes the pain and frustration of an unresolved love affair into the vessel of a story, making us - and Matthew himself - understand the pain and frustration of it. —Kaoru Abe

-

YEAR 2003 January - Yokozuna Takanohana retired and Ozeki Asashoryu became the first Mongolian to be promoted to the 68th Yokozuna. February - Space shuttle Columbia broke up in mid-air over Texas on its return and crashed. March - The US military launched an attack on Iraq, starting the Iraq War. - Spirited Away won the 75th Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film. April - A new pneumonia outbreak, SARS, in China kills 774 people by the time the new pneumonia is declared under control in July. - Grand opening of Roppongi Hills. May - US President George W. Bush declared an end to the war in Iraq. June - The first ‘Candle Night for a Million People’ was held. July - Record-breaking heat waves hit France, with more than 11,000 deaths announced. (T/N: Wikipedia states that the death toll in France was more along the lines of 14,802-19,000.) - Vancouver, Canada, was chosen to host the 2010 Winter Olympics. - Noto Airport opens. August - Major power outages in the USA and Canada. - The first six-party meeting with the US, Russia, North Korea, Japan and other countries is held in Beijing, China, to discuss issues such as North Korea's nuclear programme. September - Third album "Absolution" is released. It tops the UK charts. October - European tour begins. - Shinagawa Station opens on the Tokaido Shinkansen Line. - Actor Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected Governor of California, USA. November - ICOCA use begins in JR West Japan. - Michael Jackson arrested on charges including sexual abuse of a minor. December - Digital terrestrial television broadcasting started in Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya.

Translator's Notes: I will admit, I'm about halfway through the STYLE Series magazine, and I feel as though I keep getting this feeling that the Japanese really, really loves Muse's Absolution album a lot. Of course, given that this special magazine was released back in 2010, I'm not sure how strong this bias is held until I translate Crossbeat's special book for Muse that was released in 2015.

[asktheghosthost]

Some scattered thoughts on the 2023 HM movie

Maybe I'll do something more in depth later after the wide release and when I'm not so exhausted

But for now, here's some notes. There are a couple of minor spoilers, so I'll still put this under a read more. Be warned.

I really enjoyed the Easter eggs. I'm looking forward to getting the blu ray and pausing it every five seconds to see what I spy in the background.

Our mortal crew is very likable. Ben is definitely the stand out character for me. His arc is lovely and sympathetic and he almost made me cry.

I liked how the film approaches grief and loss and love. It felt sincere. And it was handled in a way that I think most kids would get, too. If anything, it may help open up conversations for some of the younger audience.

Lots of character cameos, and multiple new ghosts created just for the film. Really appreciated the new spirits. They fit right in. The extras and supporting cast playing these quirky ghosts were great. ... Pay them. Pay them what they're worth. You couldn't have this massive menagerie of the macabre without them

I've seen a lot of reviews say the jokes can fall flat. Most of them hit for me. "It'll cost you... three dollars," still made me giggle.

Hatty... I'm so glad Disney finally made a proper outright villain again. Not a twist villain. Just a straight up murderous, power hungry, manipulative, absolute asshole. It's been way too long. Pay your writers, and pay them well so we can get more of this.

The way the Mansion would change and rearrange itself was great. I love that the house is a character all on its own. It has a backstory. It's its own entity in a way. Love that. Properly pay your animators and special effects team, because their work is the only way that kind of thing is accomplished so well.

William Gracey is a total sweetheart and I love him. His backstory is actually super similar to Edward's, so that might bug some people. But he's different enough in his demeanor, I think, that maybe it won't be really obvious if you're not thinking that hard about it. But, yeah, there are a couple of things that feel repeated from the 2003 movie. I don't know how much of that to chalk up to tropes, or if it was some intentional reworking. This isn't a remake, it's still its own thing, but it's easy to see some inspiration from the previous film.

Loved Connie. No thoughts in that head except "WHACKITY-WHACK!" She's chaotically vicious for the sake of it, and that's fun. My perfect Constance is Debbie from Adam's Family Values. Or a slightly sympathetic schemer, for a more grounded route. But I'll take maniacal seriel killer Connie, too. One moment with her actually got the biggest laugh from me.

Thinking about it, it also borrowed plot elements from the 2003 video game, too. But did those elements better. For the most part.

That's all that's coming to mind right now. Might talk more about it later. I had a good time. I do recommend it. Are there things I'd do differently? Well, yeah. I still want something where the ghosts are the focus. But I guess I'll just provide that myself. And the IDW and SLG comics also give us that.

I look forward to discussing it more with the fandom once the film has been out a while longer. I think there'll be a lot of different opinions on it.

[justforbooks]

Ioanna "Nana" Mouskouri OQ (Greek: Ιωάννα "Νάνα" Μούσχουρη born 13 October 1934) is a Greek singer and politician. Over the span of her career, she has released over 200 albums in at least thirteen languages, including Greek, French, English, German, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Hebrew, Welsh, Mandarin Chinese and Corsican.

Mouskouri became well known throughout Europe for the song "The White Rose of Athens", recorded first in German as "Weiße Rosen aus Athen" as an adaptation of her Greek song "Σαν σφυρίξεις τρείς φορές" (San sfyríxeis tris forés, "When you whistle three times"). It became her first record to sell over one million copies.

Later in 1963, she represented Luxembourg at the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "À force de prier". Her friendship with the composer Michel Legrand led to the recording by Mouskouri of the theme song of the Oscar-nominated film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. From 1968 to 1976, she hosted her own TV show produced by BBC, Presenting Nana Mouskouri. Her popularity as a multilingual television personality and distinctive image, owing to the then unusual signature black-rimmed glasses, turned Mouskouri into an international star.

"Je chante avec toi Liberté", recorded in 1981, is perhaps her biggest hit to date, performed in at least five languages – French, English as "Song for Liberty", German as "Lied der Freiheit", Spanish as "Libertad" and Portuguese as "Liberdade". "Only Love", a song recorded in 1985 as the theme song of TV series Mistral's Daughter, gained worldwide popularity along with its other versions in French (as "L'Amour en Héritage"), Italian (as "Come un'eredità"), Spanish (as "La dicha del amor"), and German (as "Aber die Liebe bleibt"). It became her only UK hit single when it reached number two in February 1986.

Mouskouri became a spokesperson for UNICEF in 1993 and was elected to the European Parliament as a Greek deputy from 1994 to 1999.

In 2006 she was a special guest on Eurovision Song Contest 2006's final, presented as the best selling artist of all time.

In 2015, she was awarded the Echo Music Prize for Outstanding achievements by the German music association Deutsche Phono-Akademie.

Mouskouri has been married twice: first at age 25, to Yorgos (George) Petsilas, a guitarist in her backing band (the trio "The Athenians") They had two children (Nicolas Petsilas in 1968 and Hélène (Lénou) Petsilas in 1970) but divorced when Mouskouri was 39. Not long after that, she started a relationship with her record producer André Chapelle, but they did not marry then because she "didn't want to bring another man into the family" and divorce was against her conservative upbringing. They eventually married on January 13, 2003, and live primarily in Switzerland.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?

[cking398]

Chapter 6: Revelation

So in 2003 when the stress became too much I developed a plan, I figured I could hire my ex-mentor. I was smoking too many joints and it was a shit plan. I respected Karim’s broking skills immensely. Although Karim had never really taken me aside and explained broking to me. I had worked it out by listening to him. People forget we have 2 ears and one mouth. There is a reason for that, you are meant to listen more than you talk. I figured I could just hire Karim and another apprentice. I would be able to extricate myself from the day-to-day running of the business. Extricate me from the horrible nightmare my life had become because of this one twat trader Vahe and my pregnant girlfriend Sophie. Attacked on two sides. On one side, I was being hit psychologically by my pregnant girlfriend and her bitter complaining, on the other I was being abused at work by one of the biggest players in the market. A man who wanted to control all option prices before him. I could have simply cut his line permanently. Once I really did. Resulting in a farcical situation where he would call Nick on his mobile to trade. I didn't really want to cut this bank's line, he was one of the biggest traders. Never losing a client had become a point of honour for me. Also, if I could no longer have access to his prices it would have meant losing that little bit of competitiveness compared to other brokers who still spoke to him. I felt attacked at work and attacked at home. Something had to give.

By 2003, I was living in Repulse Bay, Hong Kong island. On Belleview Drive. I had the penthouse in this block of flats overlooking the beach. It was 20 minutes from the center of Hong Kong. I had a jacuzzi on the balcony, and a small swimming pool on the roof. Table tennis. A plasma TV screen. A pool table in the living room. Beautiful fiancée with a baby on the way. Materially I had it all. By this point, I knew money did not make me a happy camper necessarily. I was smoking too much hash.

I set my plan into motion. My old mentor, Karim, was arriving from Tokyo for a weekend break, or so he thought, I had other plans to discuss with him. Business plans. Karim was due to appear around 10 pm. It was 7 pm. I was sitting with 'The Apprentice' in my apartment: Charles-Henri Rossignol. He asked Charles about his family background. He was a Christian. I had always relied on his instinctive sense to gauge the goodness in a man. I picked my friends carefully and I thought he could become a good one. Although Charles was handsome in the extreme, he had none of the personality baggage normally associated with the 'beautiful' people. I sat on my massive couch. Rolled up another dubie and started questioning Charles on his family background and then bam. It hit him. 

I never normally got scared. I had learned to control my fear. My life had been kind of scary. Indeed hardly plausible. But in that moment everything made sense. My upbringing, my name, my birthday, everything made sense. It was literally like an atom bomb but confined to my brain. The world around him remained unchanged. I thought a million different things, could I be Jesus reborn, but really, I had no idea. I asked Charles to check the computer. My hands were shaking so much, I could not type. I thought it would be as easy as walking over to the computer next to the TV and typing my name into Google. It was the 23rd of November 2003, 6 days before my 30th birthday.

The story of my Awakening

When I was around 7, my atheist mother asked me what I thought about religion. I have a vague recollection of this. Hers was better, she passed away in 2020 which is appropriate since she was born on the 21st of December 1943, the winter solstice reflecting the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. She told me that I turned, looked at her very seriously, and said “I don’t have time to think about that now, I will think about that later.” Little did I know that 23 years later it would consume a large part of my thoughts.

On a side note, my favorite book is “Reminiscences of a stock operator” by Edwin Lefevre, it is a book that details the experiences of the best financial market trader that ever lived, Jesse Livermore (interesting family name). There is a very interesting chapter in the book that details his trading experiences relating to the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake. Note: I had no idea that Sophie, my first wife, who had a new boyfriend but was technically cheating on me with her new boyfriend, would be one of the closest people to the epicenter of the Asian tsunami. Back in 1906, the time the ticker symbol of the stock that would be most affected by this tragedy would be Union Pacific. UP would go down. He had no knowledge that the earthquake would occur. But his being knew. He was in Atlantic City strolling along the boardwalk with his buddy. He was young and that day had no particular position in the market. They decided to go into his broker's (Harding Brothers) to look at the board where the quotation prices were. He looks at it, everything is pointing up. He focuses on the price action involving Union Pacific. Very strong. For a reason his friend does not understand he has the urge to sell it, in the hope of buying it back later, after it falls, and taking the difference as profit. He does not even understand why. He keeps selling until his position becomes so big he decides to return to New York. The Earthquake hits, the market does nothing, in fact, it goes down on the news but quickly rallies back to previous levels. His friend is amused. He tells him that was a hell of a premonition but that the market is always right. Jesse rebutts that the market does not always process information in the right way when the unexpected happens (the same thing happened with the emergence of the COVID virus, the market did nothing for a long time and then plunged). He keeps his position. When the full details of the disaster unfold over the coming days the market starts to sell off. A major American city has just been flattened. It finally plunges and like the good trader he is, he takes his profit. A major coup for him. How did he know that UP would go down? Same way I know I am the one the world has been waiting for. I just know. This chapter details what happened the day of my revelation and some of the moments, where I acquired knowledge, that I believe tilted me into knowing it was me.

“The Secret Book of Birthdays” is another book that led to my awakening. Great coffee table book. It's online now. Used to be free up until recently, but now they are cashing in. It’s written by Gary Goldschneider and Joost Elffers. I believe what they did is, they analyzed famous people throughout history and then compiled personality traits of those individuals.

I was 27 and was invited to a dinner party. Can’t remember the girl's name who hosted. I fancied her friend Lisa. Anyway, when invited to people’s homes I tend to head straight for their bookshelf. You can tell a lot about a person by what they read. There was this serious-looking big book talking about birthdays. I thought this would be good for a laugh. So I grabbed the “The Secret Book of Birthdays”. Each page is A4 size and 2 pages are used for each day of the year to describe the person. I read the first line that described me; “has the ability to provoke conflict or thought”, anyone who truly knows me knows this is true. I change the status quo. Always have. I will not go into everything it revealed about me but needless to say, it is remarkably accurate. Even down to my main health issues, a weak stomach. I thought, right, total fluke. I checked my mother’s, my father’s, my brother’s, my best friend's. Basically all the people whose birthday I knew off by heart. All true. This really was a revelation to me. How could the alignment of the planets influence people's personality? It made no sense to me at the time. However, I knew it to be true. What I would come to believe is that the connections that exist in our Universe are of a complexity I had never imagined. Atheism was no longer the appropriate belief, but I could not see a reasonable alternative. My mind had truly been opened. I live in Lasne, Belgium. The owner of my local bar is Patrick, he has a couple of restaurants also. His personality perfectly reflects the description in the book. I have since checked many people. Really incredible. They also have a book dealing with “Destiny”; The Secret Language of Destiny. This gets specific about my goal: “To fully and in detail express their experience of the numinous”. I had to look up Numinous; divine will. Need I say more? I know who I am. I am a product of this Universe and I am here to tell you. Once you die, your soul lives on. So be good.

Back to the main story. Stress, it was 22/11/2003. 7 pm. Repulse Bay. It was 7 days before my 30th birthday, and I was interviewing Charles-Henri from Lyon, France who had just finished a work placement with a good friend of mine Eric Noyel (winner of Young French Entrepreneur 1997 and number 1 toilet brush supplier to the world). Charles was 24 and soon to be my new apprentice, I had 4 people working for me at the time. It was the 22nd of November, yes the same day as JFK got shot. Many would say the most infamous day of the 20th Century. On that day my awakening happened. A strange coincidence. God does not play dice with the U.

Charles was 25 years old. Sweet guy. I was in my big-ass apartment and asking him my regular interview questions for the time. The three questions I would ask as a general rule were: How many siblings do you have? Why did America invade Iraq? The last question I would generally ask is 17x19 in your head. 

People with many siblings are generally better communicators and I needed communicators, the job demanded it. They know how to get along with other people. The ‘only’ children I knew from school tended to be somewhat strange. I would ask about the difference in age and what their siblings were doing now to see if they maintained a strong bond. Family is important, so if they take an avid interest, the better the person tends to be. If they did not answer Oil to the second question. Forget it. Failure to list this as the principal reason would generally cause me to laugh in the candidates' face or get into an argument with them. Just logically, no dictator would allow terrorist cells to operate in his country. Made no sense. All the candidates I asked answered Oil. Later it would come out, no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs), no link to al-Qaeda, just a continuation of the ‘Bush’ fire. The last question 17x19 in your head was to measure their mental dexterity. I would tell them that the speed of the answer was not important, although it was, the logic was more important. The quickest way for most people is 20x17 minus 17. A surprising amount of people answer 321.

He must have answered appropriately. I went deeper. I asked him about his religion. Never normally asked this question in interviews and I do not know why I did it then, but I did because I was genuinely interested. He was catholic. I started shaking, not because he was catholic but because I suddenly felt this immense responsibility that I felt I had been given. This shook me to my core. Charles was there and is still among the living. He is a witness. I won’t lie. Not on important stuff. Little lies are important for humans to function in society but I abhor big lies. The default position on the important shit, it’s to tell the motherfucking truth. Why Lie? For whom? Anyway, I don't. I asked him. He said Catholic and then I knew. Not that, that is the right religion. I just felt the pull of God.I just knew it was fucking me. My whole body convulsed. My hands started trembling. I was the man. And I was like fuck no. I knew in my being. I had no choice and I hated the position. My body, dominated as it is by my brain said no, no, no fucKING NO. Not me, please not me. I had everything already. NOT fucKING ME. That split second changed everything. One moment I was an agnostic, the next I believed in the Numen; God to most of you. 

In less than a split second I knew. I knew I had this important destiny. I just did not know precisely what if anything to do about it. Even now I cannot describe the feeling accurately.  It was like a nuclear reaction inside my brain. One atom hit another atom, but instead of the atom breaking, all atoms simply shook together knocking me to my very core. From agnostic to knowing for sure there is a god in one split second and on top of that knowing I was the one with a message to deliver. The messenger. It was all too much. In that instant, I changed irrevocably forever. That moment would define me and would lead me inexorably to the writing of this book 21 years later after the accumulation of a lot of knowledge.

Destiny, you can’t fuck it, you cannot fight it. It just happens. Why me? Ricky Gervais will say I am hallucinating, I am a dick, but I come from pure atheists and I lived the atheist creed better than him. Reason, Logic, my being was in open rebellion against itself. When your heart's intelligence does not work in accordance with your brain's intelligence, problems arise. David Servin Schreiber describes this problem perfectly in his book: “The instinct to Heal, Curing Depression, anxiety and Stress without drugs and without talk therapy”. He died at 50, I hope to have the same luck. Just kidding, although some nutter will probably kill me one day (I would advise against this course of action if you care about your soul in the afterlife). I am allowed to say whatever the fuck I want BTW; First Amendment US constitution and also in the UDHR. It’s a fundamental right. I read a scientific study recently that proves that a belief in God generally makes humans happier and feel better about their lives. It makes sense, we are all programmed to believe.

How to explain that moment on the 22nd of November 2003. The touch. It was like the film “Contact” with Jodi Foster. There was no proof. Just waffle, blah, blah, blah coming from me. The best broker I knew;, that was me. The one who was always able to choose his words carefully. The one who was normally lightning fast and spot on in his responses, even after a few beers at lunch. It’s not as if I heard voices or had been contacted. I just realized something all at once. It was as if every fiber, bone, tissue, and neuron in my body suddenly knew something that had always been within me and that I was meant to do something with my life besides making loads of money and that God existed. I was meant to be a messenger. I knew it. The problem was, for me, not the fact that I now realized that God existed and that I had been sent to deliver a message. The problem was I did not want the job. It was absurd. I was a club-footed, cannabis-smoking, binge-drinking twat who had never really grown up. People saw me differently. As a golden boy, a God of finance, someone to be looked up to. I knew differently. I had been stuck in my teenage years, with a teenage mindset and teenage dreams. 

That day, on the 22nd of November, the tables turned, how do you keep your emotions under control in the face of God? And if you are his messenger are you not supposed to have a message? I knew the war was wrong and Iraq was a travesty but how could I possibly influence world events? 

No, No fucking no was all I thought. I wanted the atheist position. I lived my life, grew rich, and had a good time, it was my playground, and then suddenly, everything, it, him, her, Yahweh, all at once. No, fucking no, fucking NO. I was happy with the thought that I turned to dust and that was it. Okay, I wanted children, but to provide me with happiness, not because God said I should or I was going to complete some mission or actually I was not on this planet to live for me but for IT or Yahweh/Jehovah, or whatever created me. And, fuck, it meant that my soul would go on… it meant I lived forever, a complete revolution. You think you die and it’s all over. No. Not correct. I knew it. What we did now actually mattered. Fuck, fuck, fuck and I understood that all at once. It’s not big brother, it’s not humans watching other humans, it’s fucking real what we do actually matters and it’s not about being judged by our fellow man cause there is a greater power that judges. It was an explosion. It actually is real. God is fucking real. It pissed me off, I remembered the ghost of Mary, I remembered the bloody plastic tractor, the Secret Book of Birthdays. I remembered laughing at the idiots who believed in God. I remembered planning my rise. I remembered everything but I never saw God coming just like the financial industry never saw me coming. I knew. Everything changed. Not only for me, but for all those around me, and not in a good way. My mind jumbled everything. I did not have enough knowledge at the time. All my body seemed to fathom was the enormity of the task but no clear way of achieving the goals. Not that I even knew what those goals were. I had a basic idea, bring peace to the world, how? I had no idea. 

[shefanispeculator]

10 Children of Famous Musicians Who Became Famous Musicians (americansongwriter.com)

10 Children of Famous Musicians Who Became Famous Musicians

By

Cillea Houghton

Updated: May 16, 2023 1:00 pm

Though not scientifically proven, it’s possible that music is passed down through generations, as evidenced by these famous musicians whose children also became artists.

For decades, icons like Elvis Presley, Lenny Kravitz and Eddie Van Halen have had children who followed in their footsteps to make a name for themselves in music. You’ll see two descendants of the Beatles on this list, along with a duo related to Motown Records’ Berry Gordy. Check out 10 children of famous musicians.

1. Miley Cyrus – Daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus

It’s all in the family when it comes to the Cyruses. Billy Ray Cyrus was a country superstar throughout the 1990s with hits like “Achy Breaky Heart” and “Could’ve Been Me.” This paved the way for his eldest daughter, Miley Cyrus, to become one of the biggest names in pop music. The father and daughter co-starred together in the hit Disney show, Hannah Montana before the younger Cyrus became a pop megastar who’s known to blend genres. Her hits range from “Party in the U.S.A.” and “The Climb” to “Wrecking Ball” and her most recent smash, “Flowers.”

2. Lisa Marie Presley – Daughter of Elvis Presley

As the only child of Elvis Presley, Lisa Marie Presley was born into stardom. She took her time going into the music industry though. Presley released her debut album, To Whom It May Concern, in 2003 at the age of 35. It debuted at No. 5 on the all-genre Billboard 200 and produced the single “Lights Out,” which made mention of her family, including her famous father. Presley released three studio albums before her untimely death in 2023 at the age of 54 from a heart attack.

3. Zoe Kravitz – Daughter of Lenny Kravitz

Zoe Kravitz is a descendant of Hollywood royalty as the daughter of rock star Lenny Kravitz and The Cosby Show star Lisa Bonet. The young Kravitz adopted both of her parents’ talents and blended them into a successful career as both a musician and actress. On the music side, Kravitz has released two studio albums and two EPs. She’s also been a guest vocalist on Drake’s song “Passionfruit” and co-writer and background singer on Taylor Swift’s hit, “Lavender Haze,” off Midnights.

4. Julian Lennon – Son of John Lennon

You know you come from music royalty when Paul McCartney writes you a song. This is true for John Lennon’s son, Julian Lennon, who was the subject of a comfort song called “Hey Jules” that McCartney wrote for him when his parents were going through a divorce. The song evolved into one of the Beatles’ biggest hits, “Hey Jude.”

Lennon later followed in the musical footsteps of his famous father, beginning with his debut studio album, Valotte, in 1984, four years after his father’s tragic murder. He’s since released seven total studio albums, the most recent being Jude in 2022. Over the years, he’s had a string of hits on the Billboard Mainstream Rock chart including “Valoette,” “Stick Around” and “Now You’re in Heaven.”

5. Natalie Cole – Daughter of Nat King Cole

When you’re the daughter of one of the most poignant vocalists of all time, it’s nearly impossible not to carry on the tradition. With a voice as crisp as her father’s, Natalie Cole carved a career path of her own with hits including “This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)” and “Inseparable.” She made Grammy Award history by being the first Black artist to win Best New Artist in 1976 and the first Black woman to win Album of the Year for her tribute album to her father, Unforgettable… with Love, in 1992.

6. Lukas & Micah Nelson – Sons of Willie Nelson

Music is in the bloodline of the Nelson family. Country giant Willie Nelson passed his songwriting prowess on to his sons Lukas and Micah Nelson, both of whom are musicians. Lukas is the frontman of Lukas Nelson & Promise of the Real that’s released eight studio albums. The band also stars as the backing band for Bradley Cooper’s character in the 2018 edition of A Star is Born, with Lukas also co-writing and co-producing songs for the film. Meanwhile, brother Micah goes by the stage name Particle Kid with the goal of presenting “music, visual art and curious quantum creations.”

7. Ziggy Marley – Son of Bob Marley

Bob Marley introduced reggae music to mainstream audiences, a tradition his son Ziggy Marley is carrying on. Marley’s son spent more than a decade as frontman of Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers, which included the Grammy-winning album, Conscious Party, one of three times the band won a Grammy. Marley departed the Melody Makers in 2002 and launched a solo career in 2003 with his debut solo album, Dragonfly. Marley has been a mainstay in the Best Reggae Album category at the Grammys, having won it a total of five times thus far.

8. LMFAO – Son and Grandson of Motown Records’ Founder Berry Gordy

Though Berry Gordy wasn’t a musician, he was a rock star in his own right. As founder of Motown Records, Gordy is responsible for introducing Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Gladys Knight and more to mass audiences. He passed this musical gene onto his youngest son, Stefan Kendal Gordy. Operating under the stage name Redfoo, he’s one half of the duo LMFAO alongside his nephew and Gordy’s grandson, Skyler Austen Gordy (aka Sky Blu). The duo rose to the top of the charts in the mid-2000s with hits like “Party Rock Anthem” and “Shots.” LMFAO went on an indefinite hiatus in 2012.

9. Wolfgang Van Halen – Son of Eddie Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen’s son Wolfgang Van Halen got his start in the way any aspiring rock star would dream: by being a guitarist for Van Halen. He spent four years as bassist for the legendary band before his father’s passing in 2020, which led to the band’s demise. Over the years, Wolfgang has played guitar for other artists including Tremonti and Clint Lowery. He released his solo debut album, Mammoth WVH, in 2021.

10. Zak Starkey – Son of Ringo Starr

Since the day he was born, Zak Starkey has been surrounded by rock and roll royalty. As the son of the Beatles’ drummer Ringo Starr, Starkey followed in his dad’s footsteps and became a drummer himself. He’s performed with The Who, Oasis and spent part of the 1990s touring in his father’s band. He’s also played on albums by The Who, Oasis, The Semantics, Broken English and many others.

Photo by Jaime Nogales/Medios y Media/Getty Images

[theuniversitychallengereview]

I wrote a blog called No Spoiler last year, about how easy it had been for me to avoid spoilers for the previous day's episode of The Challenge, and how that was an oddity in our information-dense, social-media flooded lives. Well, on Tuesday I innocently logged onto Twitter, having missed this week's episode due to my Book Club, and had the result spoiled for me. It was my own fault - as I said in the other post, when you log on to a Twitter account which is specifically for University Challenge then that is the kind of fire you are playing with. 

For the past few weeks, I've been watching the Netflix Tour de France documentary with my girlfriend. With no prior interest in the sport of cycling she really got into it (and really loved Wout van Aert, which did make me a bit jealous, but who doesn't?). Despite the fact that it was about last year's Tour, the result of which has been known for nearly a full twelve months, and despite the fact that we watched several stages of this year's race together, she made it to the final episode with no knowledge (besides her correct inclination that there was no way redacted would be coming back from such a large deficit going into the final few days) of the overall victor. 

What's the moral of this story? Nothing particularly profound, just that its interesting how siloed our consumption of things is. If I had to estimate, I'd say that I read/heard the fact that cyclist A beat cyclist B in the 2022 Tour de France more than a hundred times in the past month, but if you're not looking out for something, or if your personal Internet isn't pre-programmed to show you it then this sort of thing is far easier to avoid. 

It would be pretty funny, I think, if I did go ahead and not review this week's episode, but I've already spent a while looking up cool stats and I don't want to waste them, so with that in mind; here's your first Starter for Ten.

You can watch the episode here before reading my review...

Birkbeck were regulars in the early years of the Paxman era, appearing six times in the first nine series, culminating with victory in 2003, after which they weren't seen for seventeen years. Oxford Brookes, meanwhile, have only been on five times in total, making the quarter-finals twice.

Brookes skipper Manton buzzes early on the first starter, but he's wrong, and McMillan swoops in for Birkbeck to steal the points. An easy bonus set on films nets them a full house, before Manton makes up for his earlier mistake with epiphany. They grab a hat-trick on the Biafran war, but remain behind thanks to the incorrect interruption.

Another from McMillan stretched the Londoner's lead, but Gardner hit back for Brookes to keep things tight. McMillan is then able to give one of the coldest possible UC answers of all time when asked to complete the phrase written on Woody Guthrie's guitar, 'This machine... kills fascists". Rajan shows off his cricket credentials, scolding Birkbeck for mistaking a doosra for a googly, and demonstrating the bowling action at his desk. 

The first picture starter continues the ping-pong nature of the game so far, with Broadbent, eyebrows plastered in a kindly frown, quickest to recognise the Togo flag. He blitzes the bonuses too to tie the game. Two more consecutive starters for Brookes open up the biggest lead of the game, but Birkbeck fought back through Huntley and McMillan. 

It looks like no one knows the musical on the music starter, but Chadha guesses Funny Girl after hearing the lyric 'good for a laugh', which is excellent quizzing. After the bonuses we're back level, at 110 each. 

The scoring has been going at quite the clip and doesn't let up in the second half. Brookes get a couple to go ahead again, but three in a row from Birkbeck nudge them back in front. No one is allowed to build up too much momentum though, and Broadbent buzzes rapidly with games console to regain the advantage for Brookes. Its an absolute basketball match of a quiz, but who is going to be the one to score the dagger?

McMillan puts Birkbeck five points clear, and skipper Chadha gives Taylor Swift (an answer for the second time this series) to put the game beyond Brookes.

Birkbeck 220 - 205 Oxford Brookes

Phew! You can definitely see the effect of Rajan's quicker questioning here. 

This was the first match with a combined score of 400 or more since Durham thrashed Strathclyde 360-55 in 2018. You've got to go back to 2014 for the last match where both teams scored more than 200, when Trinity beat Manchester 285-205 in the quarters.

So despite the fact I think the average score is going to be a bit higher this series than in recent history, Oxford Brookes can count themselves supremely unlucky, and will definitely be returning as high-scoring losers. 

See you tomorrow for Southampton vs Christchurch

[reasoningdaily]

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (WMC) - Memphis was made on music, and since 1979 each June, the country celebrates our city’s contributions during Black Music Month.

Many of the most well-known Black musicians, singers, songwriters, and composers got their start in Soulsville with Stax Records. And in this 5 Star Story, we celebrate the past, present, and future of a sound as unique as the neighborhood that created it.

Since 2003, it has sat in the heart of Soulsville USA, at the corner of McLemore and College — the Stax Museum of American Soul Music.

And according to executive director Jeff Kollath, “The Stax Records story, the way we describe it, it could only happen in Memphis.”

The foundation for that story was laid in the Mississippi Delta, in churches built by former slaves and sharecroppers.

”Soul music, and frankly, American pop music as we know it, is rooted in the Black Church, and in the Black experience in the United States,” explained Kollath.

There’s the story of how white banker and fiddle player Jim Stewart and his sister Estelle Axton turned an old movie theater into Stax Recording Studio and Satellite Records in a then-segregated Black neighborhood in the South.

Stax Records became an integral part of the neighborhood and the city, providing opportunities where they were rare.

“And to have people like Rufus Thomas, who was such a well-known Dee Jay and, you know, had had some hit records before Stax. You know, being the first person through the door with his daughter, Carla Thomas, because he heard about it from his mailman,” said Kollath.

“You know, David Porter worked in the grocery store across the street, James Alexandar was born in the hospital here on McLemore Avenue, the Bar-Kays grew up in the neighborhood, Booker T. Jones grew up in this neighborhood, you could walk here, come in the front door, see Ms. Axton in the record store, you know, listen to music, talk to her, she finds out maybe you can sing a little bit, maybe you can play a little bit, you had a chance to do that here,” recounted Kollath.

Many of those artists went on to greatness, like Isaac Hayes, the first Black man to win an Academy Award for Best Original Song with “Theme From Shaft,” whose 1972 custom Cadillac El Dorado is one of the museum’s biggest draws.

There’s also the story of Al Bell, who came to Memphis, became the majority owner of Stax, and turned it into one of the most successful Black-owned businesses in the country.

“It’s a story about, you know we talk about “grit and grind,” we talk about hustle here in Memphis, but there’s also serendipity and there’s luck, too,” Kollath said. “And I think it’s one of the things that makes this such a unique story, is that, at nearly every instance, Stax was able to capitalize on who came through the front door.”

The museum recounts how Bell enticed the Staple Singers to come to Memphis to record music that later became a soundtrack for the civil rights movement.

“They had captured people’s hearts and minds with their great gospel work that they’d done in Chicago, but to come to Stax, to take that gospel impulse, to add some secular messages to it, and to create their greatest work ever here, and how it sustained a community and sustained a message in a movement, you know, throughout the late ‘60s and early ‘70s,” Kollath regaled.

The museum’s Hall of Records showcases Stax’s prolific recording catalog, from Blues to R&B, folk & country, jazz, and rock ‘n’ roll.

“We’ve got about 920 or so of the 930-940 singles that Stax released, produced or distributed between 1957 and 1975,” explained Kollath.

And there’s the tale of those behind the music.

“... On down through the engineers in the control room, the songwriters, but also, you know, the studio musicians and the session musicians, too. And so many of those men and women are still in Memphis... I think it’s always very important to highlight the folks that are still with us, that are still in the community, that are still making music,” Kollath explained.

On Saturday, June 10, Stax Museum celebrates Family Day with free admission from 1 to 4 in the afternoon.

Legendary radio personalities Stan Bell and Bev Johnson from WDIA will broadcast LIVE, alongside food trucks, bouncy houses, balloon artists, and more!