#shiny showcase would be very long i have like 15 of them

[brutal-nemesis]

making you look at her she sleepin!!

hunted for shiny lucario instead of writing, got shiny lucario, decided to write, and then finished the next E&T chapter huge gainz

[path-of-my-childhood]

CABIN FEVER - Aaron Dessner: Producing folklore and evermore

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Tom Doyle

The pandemic gave Taylor Swift a chance to explore new musical paths, with two lockdown albums co-written and produced by the National's Aaron Dessner.

Few artists during the pandemic have been as prolific as Taylor Swift. In July 2020, she surprise-released folklore, a double-length album recorded entirely remotely and in isolation. It went on to become the biggest global seller of the year, with four million sales and counting. Then, in December, she repeated the trick with the 15-song evermore, which quickly became Swift's eighth consecutive US number one.

In contrast to her country-music roots and the shiny synth-pop that made her a superstar, both folklore and evermore showcased a very different Taylor Swift sound: one veering more towards atmospheric indie and folk. The former album was part-produced by Swift and her regular co-producer Jack Antonoff (St Vincent, Lana Del Rey), while the other half of the tracks were overseen by a new studio collaborator, Aaron Dessner of the National. For evermore, aside from one Antonoff-assisted song, Dessner took full control of production.

Good Timing

Although his band are hugely popular and even won a Grammy for their 2017 album Sleep Well Beast, Aaron Dessner admits that it initially felt strange for an indie-rock guitarist and keyboard player to be pulled into such a mainstream project. Swift had already declared herself a fan of the National, and first met the band back in 2014. Nonetheless, Dessner was still surprised when the singer sent him a text "out of the blue" last spring. "I mean, I didn't think it was a hoax," he laughs. "But it was very exciting and a moment where you think it's like serendipity or something, especially in the middle of the pandemic. When she asked if I would ever consider writing with her, I just happened to have a lot of music that I had worked really hard on. So, the timing was sort of lucky. It opened up this crazy period of collaboration. It was a pretty wild ride."

Since 2016, Aaron Dessner has been based at his self-built rural facility, Long Pond Studio, in the Hudson Valley, upstate New York. The only major change to the studio since SOS last spoke to Dessner in October 2017 has been the addition of a vintage WSW Siemens console built in 1965. "It had been refurbished by someone," he says, "and I think there's only three of them in the United States. I heard it was for sale from our friend [and the National producer/mixer] Peter Katis. That's a huge improvement here."

Although the National made Sleep Well Beast and its 2019 successor I Am Easy To Find at Long Pond, the band members are scattered around the US and Europe, meaning Dessner is no stranger to remote working and file sharing. This proved to be invaluable for his work with Swift. Dessner spent the first six weeks of lockdown writing music that he believed to be for Big Red Machine, his project with Bon Iver's Justin Vernon. Instead, many of these work-in-progress tracks would end up on folklore. Their first collaboration (and the album's first single), 'cardigan', for instance, emerged from an idea Dessner had been working on backstage during the National's European arena tour of Winter 2019.

"I sent her a folder and in the middle of the night she sent me that song," Dessner explains. "So, the next morning I was just listening to it, like, `Woah, OK, this is crazy."

On The Move

As work progressed, it quickly became apparent that Swift and Dessner were very much in tune as a songwriting and producing unit. There was very little Dessner had to do, he says, in terms of chopping vocals around to shape the top lines. "I think it's because I'm so used to structuring things like a song, with verses and choruses and bridges," he reckons. "In most cases, she sort of kept the form. If she had a different idea, she would tell me when she was writing and I would chop it up for her and send it to her. But, mostly, things kind of stayed in the form that we had."

Dessner and Swift were working intensively and at high speed throughout 2020, so much so that on one occasion the producer sent the singer a track and went out for a run in the countryside around Long Pond. By the time he got back, Swift had already written 'the last great american dynasty' and it was waiting for him in his inbox. "That was a crazy moment," he laughs. "One of the astonishing things about Taylor is what a brilliant songwriter she is and the clarity of her ideas and, when she has a story to tell, the way she can tell it. I think she's just been doing it for so long, she has a facility that makes you feel like you could never do what she's capable of. But we were a good pair because I think the music was inspiring to her in such a way that the stories were coming."

Swift's contributions to folklore were recorded in a makeshift studio in her Los Angeles home. Laura Sisk engineered the sessions as the singer recorded her vocals, using a Neumann U47, in a neighbouring bedroom. Live contact between Swift, Sisk, Dessner and Long Pond engineer Jonathan Low was done through real-time online collaboration platform Audiomovers.

"We would listen in remotely and kind of go back and forth," says Dessner. "We used Audiomovers and then we would have Zoom as a backup. But mainly we were just using Audiomovers, so we could actually be in her headphones. It's powerful, it's great. I've used it a lot with people during this time. Then, later on, when we recorded evermore, a lot of the vocals were done here at the studio actually when Taylor was visiting when we did the [Disney+ documentary] Long Pond Sessions. But Taylor's vocals for folklore were all done remotely."

Keeping Secrets

Given the huge international interest in Swift, the team had to work with an elaborate file-sharing arrangement to ensure that the tracks didn't leak online. Understandably, Dessner won't be drawn on the specifics. "Yeah, I mean we had to be very careful, so everything was very secretive," he says. "There were passwords on both ends and we communicated in a specific way when sharing mixes and everything. There was a high level of confidentiality and data encryption. It was sort of a learning curve.

"I'm not used to that," he adds, "'cause usually we're just letting files kind of fly all over the Internet [laughs]. But I think with someone like her, there's just so many people that are paying attention to every move that she makes, which can be a little, I think, oppressive for her. We tried to make it as comfortable as possible and we got used to how to get things to her and back to us. It worked pretty well."

Drums & Guitars

For the generally minimalist beat programming on the records, Dessner would sometimes turn to his more expensive new analogue drum generators - Vermona's DRM1 and Dave Smith's Tempest - but more often used the Synthetic Bits iOS app FunkBox. "There's just a lot of great vintage drum machine sounds in there, and they sound pretty cool, especially if you overdrive it," he says. "Often I send that through an amplifier, or through effects into an amplifier. Then I have a [Roland) TR-8 and a TR-8S that I use a lot. I also use the drum machine in the [Teenage Engineering] OP-1. So, a song like 'willow', that's just me tapping the OP-1."

Elsewhere, Dessner's guitar work appears on the tracks, with the intricate melodic layering on 'the last great american dynasty' from folklore having been inspired by Radiohead's In Rainbows. "Almost all of the electric guitar on Taylor's records is played direct through a REDDI DI into the Siemens board," he says. "It's usually just my 1971 Telecaster played direct and it just sounds great. Oftentimes I just put a little spring reverb on it and sometimes I'll overdrive the board like it's an amplifier, 'cause it breaks up really beautifully.

"I have a 1965 [Gibson] Firebird that I play usually through this 1965 Fender Deluxe Reverb. So, if I am playing into an amp, that's what it is. But on 'the last great american dynasty', those little pointillistic guitars, that's just played direct with the Telecaster through the board."

Elsewhere, Aaron Dessner took Taylor Swift even further out of her sonic comfort zone. A key track on folklore, the Cocteau Twins-styled 'epiphany', features her voice amid a wash of ambient textures, created by Dessner slowing down and reversing various instrumental parts in Pro Tools. "I created a drone using the Mellotron [MD4000D] and the Prophet and the OP-1 and all kinds of synth pads," he says. "Then I duplicated all the tracks, and some of them I reversed and some of them I dropped an octave. All manner of using varispeed and Polyphonic Elastic Audio and changing where they were sitting. Just to create like this Icelandic glacier of sounds was my idea. Then I wrote the chord progression against that.

"The [Pro Tools] session was not happy," he adds with a chuckle. "It kept crashing. Eventually I had to print the drone but I printed it by myself and there was some crackle in it. It was distorting. And then I couldn't recreate it so Jon Low, who was helping me, was kind of mad at me 'cause he was like, 'You can't do that.' And I was like, 'Well, I was working quickly. I didn't know it'd become a song."

Orchestra Of Nowhere

Meanwhile, the orchestrations that appear on several of the tracks were scored by Aaron's twin brother and National bandmate, Bryce Dessner, who is located in France. "I would just make him chord charts of the songs and send them to him in France," Aaron says. "Then he would orchestrate things in Sibelius and send the parts to me. I would send the parts and the instrumental tracks to different players remotely and they would record them literally in their bedrooms or in their attics. None of it was done as a group, it was all done separately. But that's how we've always worked in the National so it's quite natural."

On folklore standout track 'exile', Justin Vernon of Bon Iver delivered his stirring vocal for the duet remotely from his home in Eaux Claires, Wisconsin. "He's renovating his studio, so he has a little home studio in his garage," says Dessner. "It was Taylor's idea to approach him. I sent him Taylor's voice memo of her singing both parts, and he got really excited and loved the song and then he wrote the extra part in the bridge.

"I do a lot of work remotely with Justin also, so it was easy to send him tracks and he would track to it and send back his vocals. I was sending him stems, so usually it's just a vocal stem of Taylor and an instrumental stem and then if he wants something deeper, I'll give him more stems. But generally, he's just working with the vocal layers and an instrumental."

Vernon also provided the grainy beat that kicks off 'closure', one of two tracks on evermore that started life as a sketch for the second Big Red Machine album. "It was this little loop that Justin had given me in this folder of 'Starters', he calls them. I had heard that and been playing the piano to it. But I was hearing it in 5/4, although it's not in 5/4. 'Closure' really opened everything up further. There were no real limits to where we were gonna try to write songs."

Given the number of remote players, Dessner says there were surprisingly few problems with the file swapping and that it was a fairly painless technical process. "It was pretty smooth, but there were issues," he admits. "Sometimes sample-rate issues, or if I happened to give someone an instrumental that was an MP3, that sometimes lines up differently than if you send them an actual WAV that's bounced on the grid. So, sometimes I'd have to kinda eyeball things.

"If there was trouble it started to be because of track counts. I probably only used 20 percent of what was actually recorded, 'cause we would try a lot of things, y'know. So, eventually the sessions got kinda crazy and you'd have to deactivate a lot of things and print things. But we got used to that."

Soft Piano

Aaron Dessner's characteristic dampened upright piano sound, familiar from the National's albums, is much in evidence throughout both folklore and evermore. "The upright is a Yamaha U1 that I've had for more than a decade. Usually, I play it with the soft pedal down and that's the sound of 'hoax' or 'seven' or 'cardigan', y'know, that felted sound. It kind of almost sounds like an electric piano.

"I always mic it the same way, just with two [AKG] 414s, and they're always the same distance off the wall. I had a studio in Brooklyn for 10 years and then when I moved here, I copied the same [wooden] pattern on the wall. And the reason I did that is 'cause of how much I love how this piano sounds bouncing off that wall. It just does something really special for the harmonics."

When on other folklore songs, such as 'exile' or 'the 1', where the piano was the main sonic feature of the track, Dessner played his Steinway grand. "A lot of times we use a pair of Coles [4038s] on the Steinway, just cause it's darker. But sometimes we'll have the 414s there as well and choose."

Keeping Warm

On both folklore and evermore, Taylor Swift's voice is very much front and center and high in the mix, and generally sounds fairly dry. "I think the main thing was I wanted her vocals to have a more full range than maybe you typically hear," Dessner explains. "'Cause I think a lot of the more pop-oriented records are mixed a certain way and they take some of the warmth out of the vocal, so that it's very bright and it kinda cuts really well on the radio. But she has this wonderful lower warmth frequency in her voice which is particularly important on a song like `seven'. If you carved out that mud, y'know, it wouldn't hit you the same way. Or, like, `cardigan', I think it needs that warmth, the kind of fuller feeling to it. It makes it darker, but to me that's where a lot of emotion is."

Effects-wise, almost all of the treatments were done in the box. "There's no outboard reverbs printed," says Dessner. "The only things that we did print would be like an [Eventide] H3000 or sometimes the [WEM] CopiCat tape delay for just a really subtle slap. But generally, it's just different reverbs in the box that Jon was using. He uses the Valhalla stuff quite a bit and some other UAD reverbs, like the [Capitol] Chambers. I often just use Valhalla VintageVerb and the [Avid] Black Spring and simple things."

In some instances, the final mix ended up being the never-bettered rough mix, while other songs took far more work. "'cardigan' is basically the rough, as is `seven'. So, like the early, early mixes, when we didn't even know we were mixing, we never were able to make it better. Like if you make it sound 'good', it might not be as good 'cause it loses some of its weird magic, y'know. But songs like `the last great american dynasty' or 'mad woman', those songs were a little harder to create the dynamics the way you want them, and the pay-off without going too far, and with also just keeping in the kind of aesthetic that we were in. Those were harder, I would say.

"On evermore, I would say 'willow' was probably the hardest one to finish just because there were so many ways it could've gone. Eventually we settled back almost to the point where it began. So, there's a lot of stuff that was left out of 'willow', just because the simplicity of the idea I think was in a way the strongest."

The subject of this month's Inside Track article, 'willow' was the first song written for evermore, immediately following the release of folklore. "It almost felt like a dare or something," Dessner laughs. "We were writing, recording and mixing all in one kind of work stream and we went from one record to the other almost immediately. We were just sort off to the races. We didn't really ever stop since April."

Rubber & Vinyl

Sometimes, Dessner and Swift drew inspiration from unlikely sources; `no body, no crime', for instance, started when he gave her a 'rubber bridge' guitar made by Reuben Cox of the Old Style Guitar Shop in LA. "He's my very old friend," says Dessner of Cox. "He buys undervalued vintage guitars. Stuff that was made in the '50s and '60s as sort of learner guitars, like old Silvertones and Kays and Harmonys. These kinds of guitars which now are quite special, but they're still not valued the same way that vintage Fenders or Gibsons are valued. Then, he customizes them.

"Recently he started retrofitting these guitars with a rubber bridge and flatwound strings. He'll take, like, an acoustic Silvertone from 1958 and put a bridge on it that's covered in this kind of rubber that deadens the strings, so it really has this kind of dead thrum to it. And he puts two pickups in there, one that's more distorted and one that's cleaner. They're just incredible guitars. I thought Taylor would enjoy having one 'cause she loves the sound. So, I had Reuben make one for her and she used it to write `no body, no crime'."

Another friend of Dessner's, Ryan Olsen, has developed a piece of software called the Allovers Hi-Hat Generator which helped create the unusual harmonic loops that feature on `marjorie'. "It's not available on the market," Dessner says of the software. "It's just something that he uses personally, but I think hopefully eventually it'll come out. I wouldn't say it's artificial intelligence software but there's something very intelligent about it [laughs]. It basically analyses audio information and is able to separate audio into identifiable samples and then put them into a database. You then can design parameters for it to spit out sequences that are incredibly musical.

"When Ryan comes here, he'll just take all kinds of things that I give him and run it through there and then it'll spit out, like, three hours of stuff. Then I go through it and find the layers that I love, then I loop them. You can hear it also on the song 'happiness', the drumming in the background. It's not actually played. That's drums that have been sampled and then re-analyzed and re-sequenced out of this Allovers Hi-Hat Generator."

The song `marjorie' is named after Swift's opera-singer grandmother and so, fittingly, her voice can be heard flitting in and out of the mix at the end of the track. "Taylor's family gave us a bunch of recordings of her grandmother," Dessner explains. "But they were from old, very scratchy, noisy vinyl. So, we had to denoise it all using [iZotope's] RX and then I went in and I found some parts that I thought might work. I pitch-shifted them into the key and then placed them. It took a while to find the right ones, but it's really beautiful to be able to hear her. It's just an incredibly special thing, I think."

Meet At The Pond

Taylor Swift finally managed to get together with Aaron Dessner and Jack Antonoff in September 2020 for the filming of folklore: the long pond studio sessions, featuring the trio live-performing the album. It also provided an opportunity for Swift to add her vocals to some of the evermore tracks.

"It did allow us to have more fun, I think," says Dessner. "Y'know, drink more wine and just kinda be in the same place and have the feeling of blasting the music here and dancing around and just enjoying ourselves. She's really a lovely person to hang out with, so in that sense I'm glad that we had that chance to work together in person.

"We were using a [Telefunken] U47 to record Taylor here," he adds. "Either we were using one of the Siemens preamps on the board, which are amazing. Or I have Neve 1064s [preamps/EQs] and we use a Lisson Grove [AR-i] tube compressor generally."

One entirely new song, `tis the damn season', came out of this face-to-face approach, which Swift wrote in the middle of the night after the team had stayed up late drinking. "We had a bunch of wine actually," Dessner laughs, "and then everybody went to sleep, I thought. But I think she must have had this idea swimming around in her head, 'cause the next morning when she arrived, she sang 'Us the damn season' for me in my kitchen. It's maybe my favourite song we've written together. Then she sang it at dinner for me and my wife Stine and we were all crying. It’s just that kind of a song, so it was quite special.”

National Unity

One key track on evermore, 'coney island', features all of the members of the National and sees Swift duetting with their singer Matt Berninger. "My brother [Bryce] actually originated that song," says Aaron Dessner. "I sent him a reference at one point - I can't remember what it was - and then he was sort of inspired to write that chord progression. Then we worked together to sort of develop it and I wrote a bunch of parts and we structured it.

"Taylor and William Bowery [the songwriting pseudonym of Swift's boyfriend, actor Joe Alwyn] wrote 'coney island' and she sang a beautiful version. It felt kind of done, actually. But then I think we all collectively thought, Taylor and myself and Bryce, like this was the closest to a National song."

Dessner then asked the brothers who make up the National's rhythm section, drummer Bryan and bassist Scott Devendorf, to play on 'coney island'. Matt Berninger, as he often does with the band's own tracks, recorded his vocal at home in Los Angeles. "It was never in the same place, it was done remotely," says Dessner, "except Bryan was here at Long Pond when he played. It was great to collaborate as a band with Taylor."

No Compromise

folklore and evermore have been both enormous critical and commercial successes for Taylor Swift. Aaron Dessner reckons that making these anti-pop records has freed the singer up for the future. "I think it was very liberating for her," he says. "I think that's the thing that's been probably the biggest change for her has just been being able to make songs without compromise and then release them without the promotional requirements that she's used to from the past. Obviously, it comes at this time when we're all in lockdown and nobody can tour or go on talk shows or anything. But I think for her probably it will impact what she does in the future.

"But I also think she can shapeshift again," he concludes. "Who knows where she'll go? She's had many celebrated albums from the past, but to release two albums of this quality in such a short time, it really did shine a light on her songwriting talent and her storytelling ability and also just her willingness to experiment and collaborate. Somehow, I ended up in the middle of all that and I'm very grateful."

INSIDE TRACK - Jonathan Low: Secrets of the Mix Engineers

Sound On Sound Magazine // March 2021 issue // By Paul Tingen

From sketches to final mixes, engineer Jonathan Low spent 2020 overseeing Taylor Swift’s hit lockdown albums folklore and evermore.

“I think the theme of a lot of my work nowadays, and especially with these two records, is that everything is getting mixed all the time. I always try to get the songs to sound as finalised as they can be. Obviously that’s hard when you’re not sure yet what all the elements will be. Tracks morph all the time, and yet everything is always moving forwards towards completion in some way. Everything should sound fun and inspiring to listen to all the time.”

Speaking is Jonathan Low, and the two records he refers to are, of course, Taylor Swift’s 2020 albums folklore and evermore, both of which reached number one in the UK and the US. Swift’s main producer and co‑writer on the two albums was the National’s Aaron Dessner, also interviewed in this issue. Low is the engineer, mixer and general right‑hand man at Long Pond Studios in upstate New York, where he and Dessner spent most of 2020 working on folklore and evermore, with Swift in Los Angeles for much of the time.

“In the beginning it did not feel real,” recalls Low. “There was this brand‑new collaboration, and it was amazing how quickly Aaron made these instrumental sketches and Taylor wrote lyrics and melodies to them, which she initially sent to us as iPhone voice memos. During our nightly family dinners in lockdown, Aaron would regularly pull up his phone and say, ‘Listen to this!’ and there would be another voice memo from Taylor with this beautiful song that she had written over a sketch of Aaron’s in a matter of hours. The rate at which it was happening was mind‑blowing. There was constant elevation, inspiration and just wanting to continue the momentum.

“We put her voice memos straight into Pro Tools. They had tons of character, because of the weird phone compression and cutting midrange quality you just would not get when you put someone in front of a pristine recording chain. Plus there was all this bleed. It’s interesting how that dictates the attitude of the vocal and of the song. Even though none of the original voice memos ended up on the albums, they often gave us unexpected hints. These voice memos were such on‑a‑whim things, they were really telling. Taylor had certain phrasings and inflections that we often returned to later on. They became our reference points.”

Pond Life

The making of the National’s 2017 album Sleep Well Beast and the setup at Long Pond were covered in SOS October 2017; today the studio remains pretty much the same, with the exception of a new desk. “The main space is really big, and the console sits in the middle,” says Low. “In 2019, I installed a 1965 WSW/Siemens, which has 24 line‑in and microphone channels and another 24 line channels. WSW is the Austrian branch of Siemens usually built for broadcast. It’s loaded with 811510B channels. The build quality is insane, the switches and pots feel like they were made yesterday. To me it hints at the warm haze of a Class‑A Neve channel but sits further forward in the speakers. The midrange band on the passive EQ is a huge part of its charm, it really does feel like you’re changing the tone of the actual source rather than the recording. Most microphones go through the desk on their way into Pro Tools, though we sometimes use outboard Neve 1064 mic pres. Occasionally I use the Siemens to sum a mix.

“We have a pair of ATC SCM45 monitors, which sound very clear in the large room. The ceiling is very high, and the front wall is about 25 feet behind the monitors. There are diffusers on the sidewalls and the back walls are absorbing, so there are very few reflections. Aaron and I will be listening in tons of different ways. I’ll listen in my home studio with similar ATC SCM20 monitors or on my ‘70s Marantz hi‑fi setup. Aaron is always checking things in his car, and if there’s something that is bugging him, I’ll join him in his car to find out what he hears.”

Low works at Long Pond and with Dessner most of the time, though he does find time to do other projects, among hem this last year the War On Drugs, Waxahatchee and Nap Eyes. When lockdown started in Spring 2020, Low tacked up on supplies and "had a bunch f mixes lined up". Meanwhile, on the Eest Coast, Swift had seen her Lover Fest our cancelled. With help from engineer aura Sisk, she set up a makeshift studio which she dubbed Kitty Committee in bedroom in her Los Angeles home, and began working with long-term producer nd co-writer Jack Antonoff. At the end of April, however, Swift also started working with Dessner, which took the project in different direction. The impressionistic, atmospheric, electro-folk instrumentals Dessner sent her were mostly composed nd recorded by him at Long Pond, assisted by Low.

Sketching Sessions

The instrumental sketches Aaron makes come into being in different ways," elaborates Low. "Sometimes they are more fleshed-out ideas, sometimes they are less formed. But normally Aaron will set himself up in the studio, surrounded by instruments and synths, and he'll construct a track. Once he feels it makes some kind of sense I'll come in and take a listen and then we together develop what's there.

"I don't call his sketches demos, because while many instruments are added and replaced later on, most of the original parts end up in the final version of the song. We end up in the final version of the song. We try to get the sketches to a place where they are already very engaging as instrumental are already very engaging as instrumental tracks. Aaron and I are always obsessively listening, because we constantly want to hear things that feel inspiring and musical, not just a bed of music in the background. It takes longer to create, but in this case also gave Taylor more to latch onto, both emotionally and in terms of musical inspiration. Hearing melodies woven in the music triggered new melodies."

Not long after Dessner and Low sent each sketch to Swift, they would receive her voice memos in return, and they'd load them into the Pro Tools session of the sketch in question. Dessner and Low then continued to develop the songs, in close collaboration with Swift. "Taylor's voice memos often came with suggestions for how to edit the sketches: maybe throw in a bridge somewhere, shorten a section, change the chords or arrangement somewhere, and so on. Aaron would have similar ideas, and he then developed the arrangements, often with his brother Bryce, adding or replacing instruments. This happened fast, and became very interactive between us and Taylor, even though we were working remotely. When we added instruments, we were reacting to the way my rough mixes felt at the very beginning. Of course, it was also dictated by how Taylor wrote and sang to the tracks."

Dessner supplied sketches for nine and produced 10 of folklore's 16 songs, playing many different types of guitars, keyboards and synths as well as percussion and programmed drums. Instruments that were added later include live strings, drums, trombone, accordion, clarinet, harpsichord and more, with his brother Bryce doing many of the orchestrations. Most overdubs by other musicians were done remotely as well. Throughout, Low was keeping an overview of everything that was going on and mixing the material, so it was as presentable and inspiring as possible.

Mixing folklore

Although Dessner has called folklore an "anti-pop album", the world's number-one pop mixer Serban Ghenea was drafted in to mix seven tracks, while Low did the remainder.

"It was exciting to have Serban involved," explains Low, "because he did things I'd never do or be able to do. The way the vocal sits always at the forefront, along with the clarity he gets in his mixes, is remarkable. A great example of this is on the song 'epiphany'. There is so much beautiful space and the vocal feels effortlessly placed. It was really interesting to hear where he took things, because we were so close to the entire process in every way. Hearing a totally new perspective was eye-opening and refreshing.

"Throughout the entire process we were trying to maintain the original feel. Sometimes this was hard, because that initial rawness would get lost in large arrangements and additional layering. With revisions of folklore in particular we sometimes were losing the emotional weight from earlier more casual mixes. Because I was always mixing, there was also always the danger of over-mixing.

"We were trying to get the best of each mix version, and sometimes that meant stepping backwards, and grabbing a piano chain from an earlier mix, or going three versions back to before we added orchestration. There were definitely moments of thinking, 'Is this going to compete sonically? Is this loud enough?' We knew we loved the way the songs sounded as we were building them, so we stuck with what we knew. There were times where I tried to keep pushing a mix forward but it didn't improve the song — 'cardigan' is an example of a song where we ended up choosing a very early mix."

The Low Down

"I'm originally from Philadelphia," says Jonathan Low, "and played piano, alto saxophone and guitar when growing up. My dad is an electrical engineer and audiophile hobbyist, and I learned a lot about circuit design and how to repair things. I then started building guitar pedals and guitar amps, and recorded bands at my high school using a minidisc player and some binaural microphones. After that I did a music industry programme at Drexel University, and spent a lot of time working at the recording facilities there.

"This led to me meeting Brian McTear, a producer and owner of Miner Street Studios, which became my home base from 2009 to 2014. I learned a lot from him, from developing an interest in creating sounds in untraditional ways, to how to see a record through to completion. The studio has a two-inch 16-track Ampex MM1200 tape machine and a beautiful MCI 400 console which very quickly shaped the way I think about routing and signal flow. I'm lucky to have learned this way, because a computer environment is like the Wild West: there are no rules in terms of how to get from point A to point B. This flexibility is incredible, but sometimes there are simply too many options.

"l met Aaron [Dessned] because singer-songwriter Sharon van Etten recorded her second album, Epic [2010] at Miner Street, with Brian producing. Her third album, Tramp [2012] was produced by Aaron. They came to Philly to record drums and I ended up mixing a bunch of that record. After that I would occasionally go to work in Aaron's garage studio in Brooklyn, and this became more and more a regular collaboration. I then moved from Philly up to the Hudson Valley to help Aaron build Long Pond. We first used the studio in the spring of 2016, when beginning to record the National's album Sleep Well Beast."

Onward & Upward

folklore was finished and released in July 2020. In a normal world everyone might have gone on to do other things, but without the option of touring, they simply continued writing songs, with Low holding the fort. In September, many of the musicians who played on the album gathered at Long Pond for the shooting of a making-of documentary, folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which is streamed on Disney+.

The temporary presence of Swift at Long Pond changed the working methods somewhat, as she could work with Dessner in the room, and Low was able record her vocals. After Swift left again, sessions continued until December, when evermore was released, with Dessner producing or co-producing all tracks, apart from 'gold rush' which was co-written and co-produced by Swift and Antonoff. Low recorded many of Swift's vocals for evermore, and mixed the entire album. The lead single 'willow' became the biggest hit from the album, reaching number one in the US and number three in the UK.

"Before Taylor came to Long Pond," remembers Low, "she had always recorded her vocals for folklore remotely in Los Angeles or Nashville. When I recorded, I used a modern Telefunken U47, which is our go-to vocal mic — we record all the National stuff with that — going straight into the Siemens desk, and then into a Lisson Grove AR-1 tube compressor, and via a Burl A-D converter into Pro Tools. Taylor creates and lays down her vocal arrangements very quickly, and it sounds like a finished record in very few takes."

Devils In The Detail

In his mixes, Low wanted listeners to share his own initial response to these vocal performances. "The element that draws me in is always Taylor's vocals. The first time I received files with her properly recorded but premixed vocals I was just floored. They sounded great, even with minimal EQ and compression. They were not the way I'm used to hearing her voice in her pop songs, with the vocal soaring and sitting at the very front edge of the soundscape. In these raw performances, I heard so much more intimacy and interaction with the music. It was wonderful to hear her voice with tons of detail and nuances in place: her phrasing, her tonality, her pitch, all very deliberate. We wanted to maintain that. It's more emotional, and it sounds so much more personal to me. Then there was the music..."

The arrangements on evermore are even more 'chamber pop' than on folklore, with instruments like glockenspiel, crotales, flute, French horn, celeste and harmonium in evidence. "As listeners of the National may know, Aaron's and Bryce's arrangements can be quite dense. They love lush orchestration, all sorts of percussion, synths and other electronic sounds. The challenge was trying to get them to speak, without getting in the way of the vocals. I want a casual listener to be drawn in by the vocal, but sense that something special is happening in the music as well. At the same time, someone who really is digging in can fully immerse themselves and take in all the beauty deeper in the details of the sound and arrangement. Finding the balance between presenting all the musical elements that were happening in the arrangement and this really beautiful, upfront, real-sounding vocal was the ticket."

A particular challenge is that a lot of the detail that Aaron gravitates towards happens in the low mids, which is a very warm part of our hearing spectrum that can quickly become too muddy or too woolly. A lot of the tonal and musical information lives in the low mids, and then the vocal sits more in the midrange and high mids. There's not too much in the higher frequency range, except the top of the guitars, and some elements like a shaker and the higher buzzy parts of the synths. Maintaining clarity and separation in those often complex arrangements was a major challenge."

In & Out The Box

According to Low, the final mix stage for evermore was "very short. There was a moment in the final week or so leading up to the release where the songs were developed far enough for me to sit down and try to make something very cohesive and final, finalising vocal volume, overall volume, and the vibe. There's a point in every mix where the moves get really small. When a volume ride of 0.1dB makes a difference, you're really close to being done. Earlier on, those little adjustments don't really matter.

"I often try to mix at the console, with some outboard on the two-bus, but folklore was mixed all in the box, because we were working so fast, plus initially the plan was for the mixes to be done elsewhere. I ran a couple of mixes for evermore through the console, and `closure' was the only one that stuck. It was summed through the Siemens, with an API 2500 compressor and a Thermionic Culture Phoenix and then back into Pro Tools via the Burl A-D. I will use hardware when mixing in the box, though mainly just two units: the Eventide H3000, because I have not found any plug-ins that do the same thing, and the [Thermionic] Culture Vulture, for its very broad tone shaping and distortion properties.

"The writing and the production happened closely in conjunction with the engineering and mixing, and the arrangements were dense, making many of the sessions super hefty and actually quite messy. Sounds would constantly change roles in the arrangement and sometimes plug-ins would just stack up. So final mixing involved cleaning up the sessions and stemming large groups down."

Across The Rubber Bridge

The Pro Tools mix session of 'willow' has close to 100 tracks, though there's none of the elaborate bussing that's the hallmark of some modern sessions. At the top are six drum machine tracks in green from the Teenage Engineering OP-1, an instrument that was used extensively on the album. Below that are five live percussion tracks (blue), three bass tracks (pink), and an `AUX Drums' programming track. There's a 'rubber bridge' guitar folder and aux, OP-1 synth tracks, piano tracks, 'Dream Machine' (Josh Kaufman's guitar) and E-bow tracks, Yamaha, Sequential Prophet X, Moog and Roland Juno synth tracks, and Strings and Horns aux stem tracks.

"Most of the drum tracks were performed on the OP-1 by Aaron. These are not programmed tracks. Bryan Devendorf, drummer of the National, programmed some beats on a Roland TR-8S. I ran those though the Fender Rumble bass amp, which adds some woofiness, like an acoustic kit room mic. There's an acoustic shaker, and there's an OP-1 backbeat that's subtle in the beginning, and then gets stronger towards the end of the song. I grouped all the drum elements and the bass, and sent those out to a hardware insert with the Culture Vulture, for saturation, so it got louder and more and more harmonically rich. There is this subtle growing and crescendo of intensity of the rhythm section by the end.

"The 'rubber bridge' guitars were the main anchor in the instruments. These guitars have a wooden bridge wrapped in rubber, and sound a bit like a nylon-string guitar, or a light palm mute. They're very percussive and sound best when recorded on our Neumann U47 and a DI. On many of those DI tracks I have a [SPL] Transient Designer to lower the sustain and keep them punchy, especially in the low end. There's a folder with five takes of 'rubber bridge' guitar in this session, creating this wall of unique guitar sound.

"I treated the 'rubber bridge' guitars quite extensively. There's a FabFilter Pro-Q3 cutting some midrange frequencies and some air around 10kHz. These guitars can splash out in the high end and have a boominess that's in the same range as the low end of Taylor's vocal, so I had to keep these things under control. Then I used a SoundToys Tremolator, with a quarter-note tremolo that makes the accents in the playing a bit more apparent. I like to get the acoustic guitars a little bit out of the way for the less important beats, so I have the Massey CT5 compressor side-chained to the kick drum. I also used the UAD Precision K-Stereo to make the guitars a bit wider. The iZotope Ozone Exciter adds some high mids and high-end harmonic saturation sparkly stuff, and the SoundToys EchoBoy delay is automated, with it only coming on in the bridge, where I wanted more ambience."

Growing Pains

"Once we had figured out how to sit the 'rubber bridge' guitars in the mix, the next challenge was to work out the end of the song, after the bridge. Taylor actually goes down an octave with her voice in the last chorus, and at the same time the music continues to push and grow. That meant using a lot of automation and Clip Gain adjustment to make sure the vocal always stayed on top. There also are ambient pianos playing counter-melodies, and balancing the vocals, guitars and pianos was the main focus on this song. We spent a lot of time balancing this, particularly as the track grows towards the end.

"The vocal tracks share many of the same plug-ins and settings. On the main lead vocal track I added the UAD Pultec EQP-1A, with a little bit of a cut in the low end at 30Hz, and a boost at 8kHz, which adds some modern air. The second plug-in is the Oeksound Soothe, which is just touching the vocal, and it helps with any harsh resonance stuff in the high mids, and a little in the lower mids. Next is the UAD 1176AE, and then the FabFilter Pro-Q3, doing some notches at 200Hz, 1kHz, 4kHz and close to 10kHz. I tend to do subtractive EQ on the Q3, and use more analogue-sounding plug-ins, like the Pultec or the Maag, to boost. After that is the FabFilter Pro-DS [de-esser], taking off a couple of decibels, followed by the FabFilter Saturn 2 [saturation processor], on a warm tape setting.

"Below the vocal tracks are three aux effects tracks, for the vocals. 'Long Delay' has a stereo EchoBoy going into an Altiverb with a spring reverb, for effect throws in the choruses. 'Chamber' is the UAD Capitol Chamber, which gives the vocal a nice density and size, without it being a long reverb. The 'Plate' aux is the UAD EMT140, for the longer tail. These two reverbs work in conjunction, with the chamber for the upfront space, determining where the vocal sits in the mix, and the plate more for the depth behind that.

"At the bottom of the session is a two-bus aux, which mimics the way I do the two-bus on the desk. The plug-ins are the UAD Massive Passive EQ, UAD API 2500 compressor, and the UAD Ampex ATR102. Depending on the song, I will choose 15ips or 30ips. In this case it was set to 15ips, half-inch GP9. That has a nice, aggressive, midrange push, and the GP9 bottom end goes that little bit lower. There's also a PSP Vintage Warmer, a Sonnox Oxford Inflator, plus a FabFilter Pro-L2 [limiter]. None of these things are doing very much on their own, but in conjunction give me the interaction I expect from an analogue mix chain."

[the-kings-of-games]

i’m not popular enough to get tons of asks, but I pushing off zine work and secret santa so fanfic writer asks! (YGO only)

1. What’s your favorite character(s) to write for? 

Answered here

2. What character(s) do you find the most difficult to write for? Why? 

Characters that don’t get much of a reaction from me from the beginning or at any point, and characters I have never considered writing before (like Bruno). Never feel like I’d write them so I never put thought in their character and stories. 

3. Do you have a favorite scene you’ve written from [Fanfic Name] story/chapter? 

Yeah, from Two Fingers Crossed Over Your Lips, Chapter 8: Domestics (Orinthoptershipping). It’s when Crow is laying on top of Bruno on the couch, and they share a kiss. Crow is flirty, and Bruno is cute. I think this is the best example of my portrayal of Crow, lol. 

4. Did you have any ideas that didn’t make the final cut of [Fanfic Name]? 

No, for the most part, I end up using pretty much everything I write out. I’m the kind of person to go back and cut out entire scenes because I tend to write out scenes I like/want to do and find ways to connect them together. It can be kind of counterproductive because some scenes might actually pull you away from the plot you wanted, but I never never plot before I write, lol. 

It doesn’t mean, however, that that I have never ended up writing something bigger than I expected. Currently, it’s The Supreme King’s Husband (Prologue) because I just wanted to add in Yūsei and Kizuna, omgs. QWQ

5. Do you listen to music when writing? 

Yes, I do. It both keeps me focused and distracted at the same time. 

6. If you listen to music when writing, what [do] you listening to when writing [Fanfic Name]? 

A lot of Joji, Jack Strauder, Oliver Tree, CUCO, and the like. Pretty much this mix. 

7. What story/headcanons do you feel the proudest of? 

I really love my headcanon of Crow being masculine leaning genderfluid afab (assigned female at birth). It’s really fun exploring this headcanon, and I always write Crow with this in mind. However, it’s only 5D’s Crow, not Arc-V Crow. They are both Crow but, in a lot of ways, are essentially two different characters, and I’m very attached to the former. Crow didn’t start doing he/him stuff until he was, like, nine, and Yūsei and Jack have been super supportive about it since the beginning. Crow was she one day, and he the next day. Still Crow. ^^ This is from one of my many Crow WIPs:

"It doesn’t matter how I look or what I call myself, I’d always be their friend, and they’d always be my brothers. The bond we share is irreplaceable, and I’m thankful to have met them in the first place. They’ve always supported me, and they know it’s my right to tell people about me, when and how. If I wanted it to be different, they’d be the first one to know. As it is right now, though, I’m happy with the way I am."

Crow has two feminine outfits he wears occasionally: a yellow dress with red flats (a gift from his girls), and a yellow blouse with a green plaid skirt and black knee highs. To go with these looks, he wears his hair down with his headband around his neck and shiny lip loss Trudge bought for him. 

8. Do you prefer writing one-shots or multi chaptered stories? 

One-shots by a long shot, lmao. That being said, I sometimes don’t finish one-shots either. 

9. If you had to assign a theme song to [Fanfic Name], which would you assign?

I don’t think in music. I do that thing where you pick a song and write a fic with it but not the other way around.   

10. What is the line you’re proudest of from [Fanfic Name]? 

One of my favorites, from the aforementioned Chapter 8: Domestics (Ornitoptershipping):

Closing his eyes, Bruno was taken back to the beach, the one he woke up at with no memories, but this time, he didn't feel the confusion, nor the faint touch of grief at the bottom of his heart. Instead, he only felt the quiet crash of the waves on his skin, the sun shining brightly over his head. This was now a memory he remembered twice.

(I really like this one-shot a lot, lol.)

11. How would you describe your style? (Character/emotion/action-driven, etc) 

A lot of dialogue, stream of conscious narrative. I think. I never really thought about it. 

12. Who is your favorite author? 

I don’t really have one at the moment. I don’t read a lot, lol. 

13. When did you start writing fanfic? 

I got more serious about it in high school, but I think I started during middle school? KHR was a thing then, lol.

14. How do you feel about your older work? 

Answered here

15. What is the fanfic you’ve written that you’re most proud of? 

From YGO, probably The Distance of Time which features Orinthoptershipping. It’s very dialogue heavy, but it was a lot of fun. I’m very thankful of the people who took the time to read it, and even more those who commented and gave feedback. 

16. What fanfic tropes do you avoid writing for? 

I don’t do gore, violence, or torture. I don’t dislike them, I just don’t write them (so I don’t have any practice either). 

17. What fanfic tropes do you gravitate to writing for? 

I love ones that explore the idea of soulmates. I’m a big fan of the soulmates AU, but I love the different ways that people just complete each other that borders on more realism than trope. I mostly write fluff though, and attempts at humor because I think I’m funny. 

18. Do you prefer editing as you write, or waiting until it’s finished? 

I edit as a I write, which is bad because I don’t edit afterwards and miss typos (lol) and sometimes makes writing take longer to finish. 

19. What words do you think you tend to use the most? 

Epithets probably; otherwise, I don’t know. 

20. What feedback makes you the happiest to hear? 

I love comments that think my pacing is good and my character interpretations are great. If someone tells me that they can imagine this happening in canon, I’m over the moon. 

21. Is there an idea you’ve always wanted to write, but haven’t yet? 

Yes, and they’re all WIPs. 

22. Do you enjoy making OCs for your fanfics, or prefer sticking to canon characters? 

I mostly stick to canon characters and don’t like doing OCs (unless they’re extras or side characters). Writing OCs makes me a little uncomfortable actually because I fear veering into self-inserts which I cannot write because that’s even worse than doing OCs. The only OCs I like do are OC babies of my favorite ships. 

For YGO, I currently have two: Sky Hogan, the daughter of Crow (Papa), Jack (Father), and Yūsei (Dad); and Mira Princeton, the daughter of Chazz (Mama) and Jaden (Dad).

23. How much do you stick to canon? 

I try to write characters based off of canon as much as possible. If I don’t see a character doing something, then I don’t write them doing that thing. I’m more about filling in blank spaces than trying to rewrite inked ones. 

24. Do you prefer AUs with the characters, or sticking to the original universe? 

I do original universe most of the time. 

25. What scene in [Fanfic Name] took the longest to write? What was difficult about it? 

Smut scenes because they are pretty much one continuous scene, lololol. There’s no scene changes for the most part, so keeping up momentum is a must and a difficulty. 

26. Are titles for your stories easy to come up with? 

I suck at making titles. I can have whole fics done but back petal so hard because I forgot to give it title. 

27. What time of day do you prefer to write? 

Past bedtime. 

28. Is there a part of [Fanfic Name] you’re surprised no one has picked up on yet? 

I’m not sure what this is asking, lol. 

29. What part of the writing process do you enjoy the most? (Brainstorming, outlining, writing, editing, etc) 

Writing it. I don’t brainstorm or outline, I just write what comes to mind. I brainstorm only if I need to connect things together. Finishing it is a close second. 

30. Do you write down all your ideas? What makes you decide to write one versus the other? 

I never write down my ideas; it’s either I start on a WIP or I don’t. What I decide to write depends on my mood. 

31. What was the development process of [Fanfic Name] like? 

I write for three hours and produce only a thousand words, smh. Agony. 

32. What story do you think showcases your signature style the most? 

Fluff with subtle angst, I guess. 

33. Have you ever stopped yourself from writing something? Why? 

Yes, because I already have so many WIPs, I shouldn’t start on another one. (Does this stop me? No.)

34. Have you felt emotional while writing a scene before? What scene was it? 

I might have, but I have terrible memory. U_U

35. Where’s your favorite place to write? 

In my bed in the dark, on my phone. (Computers tire me out after a while.)

36. What fanfic of yours has the symbolism you’re proudest of?

I’m not sure what symbolism is. 

37. Would you ever collaborate with another writer for a story? 

Yes, but it will be a really big learning experience because I’m using to have most, if not all, control over my writing. I try to be open, but getting used to new things is hard, you know?

38. What story of yours are you surprised that people liked as much as they did? 

Honestly, for YGO, any of them. The feedback for YGO isn’t a lot, lol, or it’s because I write characters/ships/tropes a lot of people don’t go for? I’m just glad I now know the people who like my stuff. I know my writing is good, but I won’t force people to read it. 

39. What area of writing do you feel strongest in? 

Characterization, if I’m not being too big-headed, lol. 

40. What area of writing do you want to improve in?

I need to stop feeling the urge to rush ending and give the settings more details. 

[1358456]

Review Response, Dec 22 - 28, 2019

“28″, but I’ll be including the reviews that came in this morning. Because hey.

And... there are a lot. The most this year.

Legacy Prologue - Kalos

1) That first part DEFINITELY reminded me of the XY chapter, except Y is being the Hikikomori (shut-in) and X is trying to drag her out... It’s a good role-reversal!

I also wanted it to be like the time in XY where Y found out what happened to her mother and she got super depressed. Except this time, X tries to do something about it. Finally.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Legacy #008

1) LOVED IT!

Thank you!

2) Poor moon. I loved this chapter

Hey, it’s you! <3 Thank you kindly.

3) WoW cool chapter. So blue confessionele next chapter hopefully? Lol have been waiting on that for the entire story so Lets hope its the case

Haven’t we all. ... Except for those that don’t like this pairing...

4) It’s nice to see platinum trying to help blue move things was a good chapter with nice interactions with the juniors and seniors all under the same roof

It’s like a big Dex Holder family! ... But not too big, since there are far too many of them nowadays! And despite Platinum not really wanting to get involved, she helps out anyways, as “foretold” by the Headcanon Chronology!

5) While Moon really should rest, the idea of her getting that Spirit of Vengeance team you posted about on your Tumblr sounds way too awesome. ...Also Umbreon bias since it's my first (and only) shiny, but yeah.

Poor Blue - it really is probably only going to hurt her the longer she keeps it in. Wonder how that is going to play out, since I guess Platinum's now put things in motion. I think the first scene in this chapter is the one I enjoyed the most.

Damn, for Moon's Pokemon to die like that...that's gotta be traumatizing. I have to admire that determination though, even though she's shaping up to be a revenge-obsessed character from what I see.

Awesome chapter as always and can't wait for the next one!

Hehe. Spirit of Vengeance. The amount of curse in that team would be quite terrifying. Hehehe... ... Only shiny, you say? Aww...

Platinum has gotten the ball rolling despite not really wanting to. MVP of the confession? Hehe... Sisterly bonds, indeed. Now, will it work out in favor for Blue??

Moon can’t be filled with a lust for vengeance if none of her friends and Pokemon have perished. And so now she rises from her agony with ice cold determination for blood to be spilled for the blood that had been shed. ... Or does that saying go the other way around? Heh. Regardless. She’s pissed, has a bow, lethal poison, and soon to be a team packed with ghosts (and Dark types).

Thank you as always! And you won’t have to wait long~!

6) Eh lucky really isnt my cup of tea but the way you write stories is pretty awesome keep up the good work!

I could tell by the anon ID you picked. To each their own. And thank you!

7) Awww blue being so shy hahahaha. Its like the roles have reversed since the first time they met thats so cute! Anyway Great story as usual

Hehe. Timid Blue~! It’s new and very cute, isn’t it? And thank you.

8) Hey man Great story looking forward to the next chapter

Thank you. It’s coming very soon.

9) Wow this is A really underrated story I really like how you keep most characters so in character!

Still underrated... in comparison to my previous stuff. But that’s to be expected, I guess. And thank you.

10) Well Colour me surprised ! A Pokemon story thats not forcing crack pairings! Anyway Where is green in this story?

Heh. Crack pairings... Only once in a solar eclipse. And... who? Heh. He’s in Kalos and thus off screen.

11) Wtf did moons Pokemon just die? Great story but damn thats fucking dark

Yes they perished in the fire. “Die, insect” and all. ... And one of them was an insect! Heh. Ahem. ... Dark? That’s not dark. Have you seen the stuff I did in SA and Destiny? Heh...

12) I mean I kinda like the story but isnt specialshipping canon? Also this is really really dark

No, it’s not canon. What is canon is that Yellow has a crush on Red. What’s also canon is that Red is uncomfortable with the idea. And of course he is. He thought she was a guy the whole time and then suddenly found out all at once that she was a girl and had a crush on him. His response is not going to be positive. And again, this is not dark. ... Though I guess that depends on your sensitivity.

13) hey sorry for not leaving A review for so long but I still really like the story lol!

Hey, you’re back. ... Then... who’s the anon with the v2 of your ID?

14) I love your writing style!

Thank you!

15) I somehow found Pearl smacking Black across the face to wake him up funnier than it should’ve been. Haha

I wonder if Blue really will confess to Red today. If so, I wonder how the opportunity would present itself.

Its quite sad that Hau, Lillie, and two of Moon’s Pokemon died. I guess this is where Moon’s overhaul comes in. I cant wait to see Moon’s viciousness unleashed when she inevitably meets the guys responsible for all that.

I look forward to more!

Hehe. Black always getting smacked around in my stories, literally and figuratively.

Will Blue truly confess on that day (which is a day before the stuff in Alola happens), or will she fail again due to anxiety? And will it end well for her??

Moon’s overhaul is happening now, yes. For that, she’ll have to go to Galar too. And I don’t know sh*t about that region, so... that’ll be difficult. Hehe. And much later in the story when she meets her foe... oho, Rage Unleashed Moon!

16) Moon and Lillie sure get burned really bad. Also, what about the kid with the malasadas? Hopefully, Blue will confessed to Red soon...

The local boy with the malasada had the same fate as Lillie. Two stretchers with a body on top, with the white blankets pulled all the way up.

17) I figured that now would be the best time to give a review for one of your works. therefore, I should review my personal favourite.

I been a consistent and long-time reader for numerous years now without ever leaving a review. I simply didn't have an account until recently just so I can give my thoughts on some of the series that you make.

Regarding Legacy as a whole, it truely showcases your ability to take the wide variety of dexholders and thiee different personalities and place them in situations that would absolutely never occur in the actual story. I have always loved the way you portray each individual character, improving thier teama and strategies and having genuine character growth. Although Sun and Moon are my uncontested favourite characters so far, I adore the way you use Platinum B in your stories, giving her a genuine personality and character traits.

You also generate a wide range of different and creative settings for each of the characters to go through. Legacy is the perfect example of this in terms of one truely coherent story setting. by using the opportunity of the highest stakes that these dexholders may ever face, you use the opportunity to explore all of the aspects of each character amazingly and how they would face this danger.

Since Sun and Moon are my favourite characters, the wait for this chapter absolutely killed me. Although it sucks that due to the lack of reviews for these characters I will get few opportunties to read your way of presenting the characters What I am trying to say is that the way you write your characters makes them feel REAL. I genuinely believe that these are the actual characters as they personalties are replicated and refined to perfection The way both Sun and Moon react in this chapter is exactly the way I would have expected them to. Being a Deliveryshipping day 1, seeing even the slightest interactions in any media, especially in your stories always brings joy to me. I have regulary reread most of your works such as Special Chronicals and Distinct Events becuase each story is chapter is amazing in its own right.

Your amazing work has inspired me to possibly start my own project one day. I am sorry for the stress that you have gone through this year and the issues with the Discord. It will get better this year. Seeing as you use reviews to indicate the popularity of a particular series, I had to write this review so that this series can get the update it deserves so that we can all see how this fantastic story ends. Thank your for all of the amazing work you have done.

Whoa, hello. Haven’t gotten a review this long since a certain someone stopped with Destiny reviews back in July.

Accounts aren’t necessary for the reviews. Guest reviews exist! And if you use the same anon ID, I’d know it’s you. But thank you for going through the effort! It’s much appreciated!

Aww, thank you very much! <3 And while I don’t know about Sun, but Moon is going to be in the spotlight quite a lot, so enjoy it! Since Platinum is my uncontested favorite, she gets plenty of development in my stories, with new character bonds, teams, battling style, etc. And unlike in DPPt, she actually gets to do things against the enemy.

Of the three major stories I’ve written (SA, Destiny, Legacy), Legacy has the lowest stakes. But I think it’s also the most personal, which I guess means it’s much more important for individual Dex Holders. Well, we’ll see as time passes. And yes, these are kind of things that would never happen in the actual arcs, so the Dex Holders get to be stress-tested. How would they react given their personalities, tics, relationships, etc, in a realistic situation?

Oh. ... Ahem. Sorry for making you wait 7 months. Ehehe... And while it’s true that Sun and Moon currently have the lowest “viewership”, that changes as time passes. Like Black and White in SA and X and Y in Destiny. As the “meh” torch is passed down to Sword and Shield, Sun and Moon might rise in popularity, thus increasing the chances of them appearing in my stories.

I don’t really know if this was how Sun would react though. But I also don’t know how he would’ve actually reacted, so this might not be outside the possibility range. I kind of had him act like Black, really, but without being as sweet... or loud. Well, there will be more Sun & Moon interactions for you to enjoy in the upcoming chapters, so... there you go!

You should start your own project! Go for it! And eh, Discord. Sh*t happens. I wouldn’t call that stress. Anyways. Yes, I use the review count as an indicator of how many people have finished the chapter. Of course, there are plenty of people who read the chapter to the end without reviewing, and the number of people who review after reading tends to fluctuate. But if there is a trend, that indicates a trend in viewership as well. And that is what I look at. Hence the charts. And yes. We’d all like to see how the story ends. Me included. Keep up with the reviews and we’ll all see it by 2021.

And thank you so much for the review and the... sweet talking. Hehe <3

18) Just found this story and am enjoying it thoroughly. Big fan of your Blue characterization as well, I used to enjoy shipping Red with Yellow, but recently, I've come to enjoy Blue with Red.

A small nitpick - Did none of the juniors comment on Red and Blue sleeping in the same room/bed while they stayed in Red's house in the last two chapters? I would assume the female juniors already know Blue likes Red and so won't say anything unnecessary, but I guess the guys are a little more tactful than we give them credit for?

Looking forward to me. Cheers.

Red with Blue works very well. And it’s cute! Hehe... ... biased.

Heh. The girls... already know, since the girls who are in the house were Platinum, White, and Y, and they already know of Blue’s crush and all that. So White and Y would just snicker at the fact that Red and Blue are sleeping on the same bed, while Platinum would just smile. As for the boys... Diamond might notice something if he spent more time talking to Red and Blue before and after. But I doubt Pearl or Black would notice anything odd. They’d probably just assume that Red and Blue are sharing the bed because a ton of guests were sleeping in the living room, so there were no other options.

Of course, all that’s assuming that the juniors know that Red and Blue are sleeping on the same bed. I don’t recall having Red and Blue give them a tour of the house, so as far as the juniors know, there might be another bed upstairs. ... Though a house tour is generally the first thing you do, but... heh. Ambiguity. No one knows for sure.

And I look forward to seeing more reviews from you!

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Well well. Would you look at THAT. Way above the average now. So... looks like I’ll have to keep my word and update Legacy again before this year ends in 3 days. Heh. Of course, I did notice a few things but... well... whatever.

18. That’s the most reviews I’ve gotten in a chapter in all of 2019. Or 2018. ... And vast majority of 2017 (Legacy Prologue - Kanto was in January 2017). If this kind of thing happened much more frequently, I would be updating Legacy like once every two weeks, instead of 3~4 times in a year.

But, there you have it! New record in almost 3 years. As a result... Legacy update in 3 days.

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DE #031

1) Sun and moon are so cute. I love them

Support the new...ish pairing!

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And with that, DE #031 is no longer in the top 4 least reviewed. Yay!

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SC #017

1) Awesome story.

Thank you.

2) Well that was...brutal alright. Thugs deserved it though. I'm mildly surprised no one died, but I think that's more because I'm used to seeing that from your old "doom hammer" chapters.

I admit the Santa part was an amusing touch, and I guess that explains why you needed to release this by the end of the year. Heh, Blue's gadgets are useful as always and very effective - that's a nice disguise. That action scene was awesome and easily the best scene in this chapter. The situation aside...it was nice to see Red be a hero even without his Pokemon.

You were right - this is an enjoyable chapter and I like this "brutal Red" experiment. Can't wait for the next chapter!

Heh. The doom hammer is for serious stories. Not comical ones. So no one dies in the hands of Santa Claus. This time.

Ahem. Well, there’s the inspiration for the chapter, and the reason behind the line of “Or Santa will go jolly on your naughty asses with a candy cane axe”. Hehe. Cheers, everyone, Santa has come to town!

And the duo of Red and Blue becomes much stronger. Mercenary Red with technological support!

Hehe. Much more serious brutal Red (instead of comical) to come up later as the experimentation continues. Ohoho!

3) holy crud, santa beating up a gang is greatest thing ever

Yep. Santa going to town on their naughty asses with a candy cane bat. What’s not to love?

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And with that, the latest SC chapter is now in the top 4 least reviewed. For now?

... Looks like the “A Day at Work” chapters are failing miserably, since they’re at 1 and 3 reviews respectively. So... I guess I won’t be doing that again.

And with this, the longest review response post of 2019 has come to an end.

[ivi-gw2]

Recycling old content and why must some easy things stay easy

(long post)

In the last post I explained why I think that Guild Wars 2 is in desperate need of “medium” difficulty content. In this post I’ll talk about some ideas that come to my mind.

What would I say is needed? More hard and much, much more medium content to balance things out with large amounts of easy content? More updates? Sure! But let’s go green: I would like to see older content that once was medium or that wilted, revisited and refreshed. There is already enough variety of stuff to do in GW2 - we don’t need so much new stuff, it will just make older stuff more abandoned and maybe the player base too fragmented. Also, not touching old and boring content will make it “bad” and more and more abandoned by players” - the game would benefit a lot if they’d find a way to make it new and interesting.

Also - the best solution would be to make the most change with the least possible work done - to make it economically rational. While - importantly - focusing on making what already exists in the game better. With Colin Johanson as a new (old) leader and more focus shifted at GW2, I once again have hopes that ArenaNet will stop abandoning good content shortly after shipping it. Yes, Colin means experimentation - but the focus part will, I believe, make them think about it for a bit.

So first of all - what change would make a lot of now trivial and too-easy content better and a bit harder? Buffing all mobs and encounters and nerfing all player abilities? Yes, but… it wouldn’t make the game better. Let’s say we have a low-skill player - one that is new to the game or simply hasn’t yet learned some of the game mechanics. And a high-skill player. For the high-skill player most of the game (as it is in the easy category) is braindead. But for the low skill one it is not braindead. It is a probem even ArenaNet is trying to fix; in an interview when Icebrood Saga was coming, Mike Zadorojny said that “The challenge is that the skill disparity between average players and hardcore players is extreme. We’re talking about ten times damage output. You can’t necessarily put a DPS check that the average player is going to be able to overcome without making the fight entirely trivialized for the hardcore.” Just buffing everything and nerfing all player abilities wouldn’t do much because many new players and lower skill players suddenly won’t be able to play content that was intended for everyone. Some guy who just created their first character in Queensdale, running around, would come up to the bandit who would kill him in 3 hits. For many people that would be a good learning lesson, but GW2 is a fundamentally different game (and differently marketed) from MMOs that focus mostly on hard endgame content (FFXIV or WoW, for example) and so it attracts everyone, not just people that want to be super skillful players. Just making the absolute whole of the game much harder because that would make average players’ skill closer to the raids or quality PvP experience would succeed in what it wants. But it would also deter a lot of people and, more importantly, lose a lot of players who found friends and communities, peace or happiness in simple things GW2 offered. Harder content is needed, many of the existing stuff in GW2 has to be notched up just a bit, but a lot of it has to stay in “easy” difficulty. 

Most of core’s open world mobs and events are definitely one of those things - most of them being in lower level maps. Leaving them in the easy difficulty category won’t take anything from raids - yes, ArenaNet hasn’t focused on the raids because a small number of players play them and it would be cool to have more players that play them so we could then have more raids… but harsh up in difficulty for this kind of content isn’t the solution. Making low-skill players better and bringing them closer to playing raids is best done with small step ups in difficulty - something having enough content in all difficulties does - making easy and medium important. Only thing I would add to the open world core mobs is better telegraphs for attacks - red aoe dots on ground, arrows for charges, etc. As for LS, PoF and HoT open world mobs and events - those can stay the same, they are an appropriate level of challenge for many players.

Next up is content I believe was and still is the most played content in the game: world bosses. Huge dragon coming from the sky and hundred brave warriors rush to defeat him, epic music playing… And the dragon is dead in 2 minutes. I’ll say this right away: I love world bosses, even them being this easy. I still play them. Because I love MMO experience and I love to see a lot of other players. World bosses are Guild Wars’ 2 trademark and the defining game characteristic, and something they did the best way possible out of all the other MMOs. And while they are in no way falling in popularity, I believe they should be a bit refreshed so they move into the “medium content”. In my opinion, focus for their rework should be: small changes to make them a bit harder (most of them just a bit, few of them a lot) and teaching players some of the more difficult game mechanics. Making them harder is needed so players would organise more and make the bosses feel as an actual threat. New and low skill players aren't the issue here because most other players can carry them. A good example of teaching some difficult mechanics with a harder boss was adding the Vale Guardian event in Bloodstone Fen.

But no changes to the world bosses means no engaging (or “better”) content for experienced players. Well, then some changes that would affect only the experienced players are needed:

Much harsher dynamic level adjusting for high-level characters in lower level maps.. I already wrote in one of my previous posts: “Make me, while in top gear, have just 15% better stats than a noob in some low-level map, but let me be stronger and more able to help them with my skill creep.” I would say that it would require less work for ArenaNet, than revisiting every mob, event and skill. But I can only guess.

Harsher event scaling for larger amounts of players - currently events are scaled well mostly for single players and small groups, but big metas get too easy. Boss doing more damage and having much more HP than how it scales now could help a bit.

Keeping power-creep in check - constant skill balance changes to keep every top damage number under a certain threshold.

More work needed to get participation, scaled by players level. Low level characters could do less and have more participation while lvl 80 characters should do more to get the same. This would work even for expansion/living story/lvl 80 maps - in those cases, everyone should do just a bit more. And in my opinion that is okay because a lvl 80 player will by default do much, much more than a low-level one. Unless… they are not doing their part.

Add timers to big meta events - as they work in strikes - with more work done, you get a better reward. And make gold really hard to get. Not all world bosses should be absolutely lethal and only killable for players with super skills, but all of them should be a kind of a challenge.

Another thing that should be revisited is the personal story - the story of how we killed Zhaithan. It is the content that can’t be just pushed under a rug like dungeons were. Everybody plays it and all the new players will play it - it will define their first hours of GW2 experience. The focus of its rework should be to make it a big tutorial for many game mechanics and something that should slowly, step by step, up the player’s skill. The pacing, events in it and boss encounters are something I don’t need to say anything about because of how old and easy they feel today. New story stuff is great and shiny and made in a way that’ll take much more time to lose it’s shine. While we’re at the shiny new story - while all of GW2's story should be little by little harder, it should never get too hard. It should stay pretty low in difficulty - maybe just lower-medium difficulty tier. Because it is a showcase for new players what new stuff ArenaNet just added to the game. They shouldn’t need to play hundreds of hours of all the rest of the story before they can try out and be happy playing the new toys that they just got. Adding special achievements, making memorable encounters, special fractals or strikes with CMs is a very good solution ArenaNet made. It makes the story a bit more of a challenge for more experienced players. I would also like to see some core story’s memorable moments be turned into fractals or strikes - killing the Eye and The Claw Island come to my mind. Even HoT, PoF and LS story events could be made repeatable somehow - Mordremoth, Balthazar and Joko fights are some of my favourite ones.

Then there are dungeons, somehow tied with the personal story. With them, a lot of rework is needed. I believe they are the type of old content that can be redone from bottom up and people won’t be mad about it. Some of the stuff I don’t miss is running down iced scaffolding to light a fire or luring skelks away from orbs to get to Mossman. FotM update was a very good decision - boring or needlessly irritating parts were removed and replaced with more meaningful encounters. An art of the deal. If it gets removed and replaced with something better in the same vein - some of the stuff I won’t miss that comes to mind: underwater boss in HotW, many simply irritating mobs in Arah or the fiery tunnel in CoF. Dungeons have an immense potential to span difficulty steps from easy (story path), over medium, up to hard difficulty.

But why should we, the veteran players, go back to this, already played content - even after “the refresh” relatively easy content? More about that in upcoming posts!

Source: Balancing Guild Wars 2 difficulty is tough when top players do “ten times” more damage | PCGamesN https://www.pcgamesn.com/guild-wars-2/difficulty

[crystalelemental]

Did you know there are 48 megas, and 2 primal forms?  I could've sworn there were fewer.  This is such a weird revelation.  Anyway, because there is a flat 0 chance of me shutting up enough to just rank them all, we're keeping the format. Based on my personal preference, top 15 and bottom 10 mega evolutions.

TOP 15: 15) Camerupt - I was never that big a fan of Camerupt, though I certainly didn't dislike it by any means.  So the mega was a welcome addition, and I think it's a pretty interesting one!  If there's any real flaw, it's that Fire/Ground still is not a good typing for something that is so slow and requires setup to run effectively.

14) Steelix - Mega Steelix looks awesome, but wow is it bad.  The excess defense does it few favors since it didn't need it, attack and special defense still are not impressive enough, and they gave it a weather-dependent ability.  There were so many different ways to take this mega that could've made it better, but I guess this is what we live with.  A really cool design with a poor competitive presence.

13) Pinsir - Not one of my favorite megas, but one I greatly appreciate because it became so relevant.  Pinsir is a beast to fight, and especially when Megas were first introduced, it was never a top tier enough threat to be well-prepared for, which...hysterically worked in its favor.  Pinsir's movepool is crazy good, and it got a lot of tools it wanted with the mega and its ability.  The only unfortunate part is, as always, Stealth Rock, and the requirement to boost.  Swords Dance is what really lets it blast through things, and with it, you lose a lot of coverage.

12) Absol - Similar to Steelix, Absol is a Pokemon I really like, and I was thrilled about its mega.   Its design is gorgeous, and Magic Bounce can always be fun.   Unfortunately...it suffers from being a mixed attacker, which hasn't worked since gen 3.  It lacks and form of bulk, 115 speed is good but not good enough when you have no hold item, and even with its special attack getting a massive boost, it's just not high enough to make it really work, while physical sets need to run Swords Dance if it's going to do anything other than late-game cleaning.  You're pretty locked in to a lot of move choices, and it's unfortunately now in a position of too awful for UU, but too good for RU.  Maybe some day that'll change...

11) Groudon - By now, I think people have a clear understanding that my preference between two Pokemon tends to favor the weaker.  When it comes to Kyogre and Groudon's conflict, Kyogre is the decisive winner.  So, of course, Groudon was my favorite of the two.  When the remakes were coming, things suddenly got turned around entirely.  Groudon now had a far stronger ability, a stronger typing, and enough raw power to blast through just about anything.  I love the turnaround.  Its also a pretty great design, seeming to be literally filled with the magma it embodies.  I know it's a nightmare who has ruined competitive forever, but I'm just so happy for it.

10) Beedrill - Similar to Pinsir, I adore Mega Beedrill for largely competitive reasons.  Its design is intimidating, but really, it's a situation where a mega went to the best possible option, and actually salvaged what some claimed was the worst Pokemon in competitive.  Much like Absol, it has almost no defenses to speak of.  Unlike Mega Absol, however, Beedrill went for the most min-maxed spread of stats I have ever seen, virtually eliminating its special attack stat in favor of a blistering 145 base speed, and even more ridiculous attack stat that got Adaptability of all things.  Combined with some great tools in Drill Run and Knock Off, Beedrill was set to be a real monster.  But then, even Gen 7 gave it gifts, allowing it to hit that 145 speed on the turn it mega evolves, allowing it to reject use of Protect and pack all its delicious coverage into one set.  This is exactly what mega evolution should be like, for a Pokemon that could not have deserved it more.

9) Venusaur - Venusaur is my favorite starter from Gen 1, and to my joy, I feel like it got exactly what it always wanted: the best possible tanking ability for a Grass type.  Eliminating half of its weaknesses outright, Mega Venusaur then got 120+ in both defensive stats to boot, creating an optimized tank that could be incredibly offensive with some recovery support, or an unbreakable wall.  Plus it just looks awesome.   This is exactly the kind of treatment that Venusaur deserved, and I'm so happy for it.

8) Lopunny - And you thought Beedrill's improvement was massive.  Just like Beedrill, Lopunny had no attempt to be a balanced improvement, and just invested everything into speed and attack.  It really does showcase the difference in mega philosophy between XY and ORAS.  The ability is what really makes it stand out, allowing it to cover everything in the game with just two moves.  The design is pretty good, but really, I'm just glad that Lopunny, of all things, got a serious power-up.

7) Altaria - Did I mention how much I love Altaria?  Because it got a mega, and go figure, it's one of my favorites.  It's a giant cloud with a bird-dragon inside. The design is so captivating, and the typing is divine.  I'm not a big fan of Pixellate as the ability, and stats are spread a bit too evenly for it to really be that fantastic, but it's done really well for itself.

6) Ampharos - And now we get into massive competition going forward. Ampharos just barely misses top 5, largely due to performance.  Its design is great, and a bit comical.  The power-up it got is massive, and it works wonderfully on Trick Room teams.  But...well...  Dragon typing was a mixed blessing, giving it a lot of resistances, but also giving it three new weaknesses to worry about, including the ever-critical Fairy typing.  Dragon Pulse being added is good, but without Draco Meteor there's far less of a potent hit-and-run tactic with Volt Switch, making it rely more on bulk.  It's an unfortunate case of having a lot of improvement, but also having some added changes that really hindered it as well.  But it does look great, and is a great choice on Trick Room.

5) Aggron - I've mentioned before that I love defensive play.  Not necessarily outright stall tactics, but bulky offense and nasty tricks. Mega Aggron embodies both, being a physical behemoth of a Pokemon, with an ability that cuts super-effective damage by 25%, as well as Thunder Wave + Iron Head to really just mess with things.  The mega form certainly has flaws.  Its special defense is certainly lacking, and its speed is just a bit too low now that paralysis got nerfed, not to mention the inaccuracy issue.  But its a great design and a great battle role for this wonderful evolutionary line.

4) Banette - Banette is...odd.  I really like the design of its mega form, as if the spirit is bursting out, and Prankster is an excellent ability, but it just feels...haphazard?  There's too much attack for it to play entirely like a defensive Pokemon, not to mention the lack of recovery is an issue.  Prankster allows for a lot of status play, but the options it really needs kinda force it into very few options.  Priority Destiny Bond is always fantastic, but by now everyone is familiar with what Banette does, so it's pretty easy to predict and play around.  I think a bit of extra speed would've helped it to really be a threatening physical attacker.  Still, I absolutely adore this thing.  There are so many threats I've taken out that would otherwise steamroll a team, thanks to priority Destiny Bond. Gen 7 speed mechanics also allows it to run Substitute, which I think is an even better option than most.   It's an obnoxious stall game you play with Phantom Force, but an effective one.

3) Gardevoir - A large part of me is disappointed this isn't #1, but I'm sure you'll understand why when we get there.  Gardevoir was the single biggest point of hype for me in the days before XY was released.  The reveal of Fairy type and what it did.  The reveal that Gardevoir got the typing.  The reveal that it was getting a Mega!  And look at that Mega design!  That's supremely classy, and the shiny form has a black dress just for added cool points.  Everything in this generation was so kind to Gardevoir.   Everything except its stats, anyway. Gardevoir would be another of my "embodiment of what a mega should be" options, if it weren't for the +20 to attack.  There is no variant of Gardevoir in the entire world that's going to use that.  +20 to defense would've been far more effective, allowing her to tank Scizor's Bullet Punch.  +10 speed and +10 anywhere else would've allowed her to keep pace with all the other megas that arrived with that speed tier in ORAS.  Gardevoir has since fallen to Borderline, and just...isn't as strong competitively as she should be.   100 is an awkward speed tier now, being just a bit too slow even among megas, and definitely too slow for something that can't hold an item.   It has massive firepower, but physical bulk is depressingly low, which, combined with the speed problem, means its not surviving long without team support like Sticky Web or Tailwind.  I swear, if they'd just re-allocate those 20 points in attack, Mega Gardevoir could be perfect.

2) Diancie - Diancie was a surprise to no one when it was officially revealed. Datamining is a thing, and the demos are notoriously bad about hiding that information, so we knew about Diancie almost as soon as the games came out. What we did not know, however, was that it got a mega.  And damn, what a reveal.  The mega form is gorgeous, among the prettiest designs in the entire game.  The stat spread also changed dramatically, emphasizing speed and power over defenses (although 110 defenses is still stupid good).  Magic Bounce was icing at that point, allowing it to avoid status entirely.  Diancie got everything it could want, but more importantly, it got something I think should be more common: a mega that functions different from the base form.  We'll talk about this a lot in the bottom 10, but I feel like megas, for Pokemon already doing well, should aim to be unique compared to the base form.   Diancie's mega is about the most different from its base form of any mega, and I adore that.  But, there's still one mega that's even better in my eyes.

1) Mawile - Behold, the ultimate lifeform.  Mega Mawile is, without question, the best mega.  It's a tiny little creature that's creepy yet adorable, the perfect mix of traits. Its power is beyond compare, in a fairly literal sense.  In fact, if it weren't for Psychic Terrain, I'd say it would still be Ubers right now.  Which is hysterical, because everyone expected UU when it was revealed.  Huge Power is a monstrous ability, and with the increased power from mega evolution, Mawile is now the strongest Pokemon in the game by raw numbers.  Access to Swords Dance also means it's power can skyrocket even further, or negate a Will-o-Wisp outright.  Some people even ran SubPunch, just to get around its most common answers like Heatran.  Sucker Punch got around its low speed, and made a mess of everything for standard attackers.  Even with the meta changing this generation, it sounds like the most that's happened is that many Mawile now run Iron Head instead of Swords Dance, just to destroy the fairies that are running around the tier.  Mawile is everything a mega should be.  Stats were perfectly allocated.  Ability was perfectly determined. At the end of the day, a small nothing at the bottom of competitive play became one of the biggest threats around, and that is exactly what a mega evolution ought to be doing.

BOTTOM 10: 10) Alakazam - I like Alakazam, and I like its mega, but you know what's dumb? Getting only +90 instead of +100 for your mega form.  That's dumb.  That's really dumb.  It also doesn't help that, without Lele around, I can't imagine Mega Alakazam is all that good, since its defenses are still frail as shit and you'd knock it out by sneezing in its general direction.  The mega form just also doesn't appeal to me all that much visually.  It's not bad, but it's definitely lower end for me.

9) Glalie - Talk about a Pokemon that could've used a mega but just missed its mark entirely.  Is Glalie still NU?  I imagine it is, since it has so very little going for it.  Ice type is Bad, no matter what, and Refrigerate did little for it, basically just allowing it to explode more easily.  When your mega's main draw is entry hazards and exploding, you know there's a big problem.  Its design is also...not good.  It's the same angry face on a block of ice, but now the mouth part is bigger.  It's underwhelming in every sense, but hey, I guess they at least tried?

8) Abomasnow - This is as good a place to being as any: many of the megas from XY are on the list, entirely because they do nothing different from their base forms.  Their ability is the same, and their stats are basically the same with a few increases across the board to make them identical, but with better stats and no hold item.  Abomasnow, I feel, got the worst of it.  Hail is already bad, Ice/Grass is a terrible typing with too many weaknesses, and its stats were not sufficiently improved to really make it threatening.  You require trick room for it to function at all.  It's at least a nice new tool, since most Ice types need Trick Room to function, but this is a Doubles-only benefit.  In Singles, it's just another Pokemon that requires too much setup to really function.  It definitely needed a mega, but one that did something different than what it got.

7) Latios/Latias - Listen, I love the Latis.  They're a fantastic duo.  In fact if they weren't, there's no way they'd only be #7 on this list.  I love their typing, their designs, and their hold item.  Which is where things start to go wrong.  Any mega would have to contend with Soul Dew, and almost hysterically, the obvious answer of "give the megas more speed" is the one thing they didn't do.  Instead, it's a 20 or 30 point in every other stat, turning Mega Latias into a supreme tank with no hold item, and Latios into a mixed attacker with no hold item.  The result?  Latias had a brief stint as a fantastic boosting wall with Stored Power, then immediately fell off, and Latios is stuck in its own eternal hell, as the base form is an excellent OU contender but the mega form is terrible and can't even fall to the tier below due to the base form's success.  Worse, their designs are bad.  I didn't think you could mess up with the color purple, but here we are.  It just looks off, and having the two share the exact same design feels lazy, even if they are meant to be "siblings" in a sense.  They deserved better than what they got.  Although, I do find it hilarious that the solution they had was to nerf Soul Dew.  Yeah, that'll make the megas relevant...  At least they were cool to ride around on, and served as a good introduction to Alola’s decision to remove HMs.  Which was the correct one.

6) Salamence - Pettiness.  That's all this is.  Mega Salamence is a mega that's almost too good, at least in Singles.  Intimidate in the base form means that massive defense stat is even harder to take on.  Without Ice coverage, you're done.  Base 120 speed, on top of access to Dragon Dance, means it's faster than pretty much everything.  Hell, it warped the meta so hard that Scarf Greninja became a thing.  And somehow never died off, despite being stupid. Salamence is a monster, and while the design is cool, the base form...really didn't need this kind of attention.  Salamence was already pretty good, and making it this ridiculous was honestly a bit of a problem.  It's one of the few times I agreed with Smogon's quick-ban decisions.

5) Charizard-X - In a similarly petty vein, I don't care for Zard-X.  I don't care for it, for the pettiest reason.  Why did Charizard get two mega forms?  There's no reason.  It's gen 1 favoritism pandering, that's all.  Sure, Charizard, you can get two megas while the other, more interesting starters only get 1.  We'll even make Blastoise' mega shitty, just for you.  It doesn't help that I like Zard-Y a lot better, so I have to see this as the one that should've been cut out.  It's just such a drain on resources.  This mega could've gone to anything else in the game.  Hell, if you really wanted to keep this one, then make Ninetales the mega with Drought. At least then she'd still have a use!

4) Mewtwo-X - Speak of the devil.  Mewtwo didn't need megas at all.  In fact, I'm a little pissed it got them at all.  Isn't the theory that megas in XY came from what Pokemon powered the cannon?  How would Mewtwo get a stone that resonates with it?  Regardless, the main issue is just that, like Charizard, it got two megas for no reason.  Again, just like Charizard, I see Mewtwo-Y as the correct mega form, so this one should not exist.  The end.

3) Scizor - The bottom 3 all have the same issue: being the same exact thing as their base form, and definitely not needing a mega.  Scizor was still a top dog at this point in the series.  It didn't need more power.  And what did they do? Gave it a mega that had minor stat increases across the board and took away a hold item, leading many at the time to insist that it was actually worse off than the base form.  With the rise of many powerful Fairy types that can still beat base Scizor, Mega Scizor has at least carved out a separate niche and maintained OU while Scizor dropped, but this does little to change my frustrations.  Mega Scizor has virtually identical abilities to base Scizor, and megas should function differently, or at least be a significant enough improvement that it feels distinct. Mega Scizor is neither of those things, and it bothers me tremendously.

2) Tyranitar - I think most people consider Mega Tyranitar worse than its base form.  This one really got hit by the lack of a hold item.  Assault Vest Tyranitar, in Sand, gets way more bulk than its mega form.  Choice Band Tyranitar has a lot more immediate damage behind it, and is a more effective Pursuit-trapper. Mega Tyranitar really just utilizes Dragon Dance more effectively due to a slightly higher speed, but with boosting being a requirement for most Pokemon, I don't feel like this is a solid enough niche.  It also retains exactly the same ability as base Tyranitar, giving it nothing to truly distinguish itself.  And all this, for a Pokemon that was already top dog.  Again, this could've gone to something that needed a mega.

1) Garchomp - What would you say is one of the most consistent top-tier threats in the game?  Honestly, probably Lando-T for me, but Garchomp isn't far behind, often picking up any popularity that Lando-T loses in minor meta shifts.  Garchomp is the toppest of dogs.  It did not need a mega at all, and should not have received one.  But it got one anyway.  It got one that, like Latios, is worse than its base form in pretty much every way.  Its ability is weather-dependent, so good luck with that, though at least it tried to do something different.  Its attack skyrocketed, but somehow isn't even as high as Mega Heracross.  But the loss of 10 points in speed really ruined what made Garchomp such a threat.   Boosting may be all-important nowadays, but Choice items have value for a reason.  Immediate power and speed has serious value, and Garchomp had a speed tier just above most common threats, including most XY megas.   Taking that away means now it has to worry about how many things will be guaranteed to outspeed it.  There may be a different story if Garchomp ever gets Dragon Dance, but if that happens it's probably going to Ubers anyway.  But the real takeaway is the question "Why would I use my mega slot on something that already OHKOs most threats it needs to KO, just for it to be slower and more prone to being KO'd itself?"  There are other options to consider, and Garchomp doesn't have any real utility as a mega.  There's no reason to use it over any other option, barring maybe Mega Latios, who might be even less useful.  Even Tyranitar can be argued to have some utility over this.  It is the embodiment of the problems with how megas were implemented, going to far too many threats that were already top-tier, offering insubstantial changes that did little to nothing or even hurting viability, and taking up resources from things that could've used it instead.

[sailor-freak]

Ranking Girls in the Park (GWSN) ‘BAZOOKA!’ Stage Outfits

So I’m like a year late but I’m new to GWSN and I’m obsessed with everything about Bazooka era (the song, THE STAGE OUTFITS) so I had to 😂. So hey any GWSN fans out there enjoy this 😂. There’s also 50 odd separate ones so this might be LONG so have fun in there 😂. I’m also procrastinating doing (G)I-DLE HWAA stage outfit ranking cos I tried to do it but the post fucked up and it was long so now I can’t be bothered to do it again 😭.

57. Lena - 200429 (MBC Show Champion) / 200515 (KBS Music Bank)

This is blasphemous I’m sorry she looks like a homeless drama teacher 😂.

56. Miya - 200502 (MBC Show! Music Core)

I feel so bad cos Miya is my bias but A LOT of hers are going to be near the bottom... we just don’t have the same taste in clothes I’m sorry I appreciate people dressing androgynous but I wouldn’t wear it myself 😂. And even if I was more androgynous idk what’s going on with that top I’m sorry 😂.

55. Miya - 200429 (MBC Show Champion) / 200515 (KBS Music Bank)

Oh my poor Miya what have they done to you 😭. K baggy t-shirt I’ll accept but what’s with the bloody tufty jacket forced on the side nah ah not for me hun 😂.

54. Miya - 200505 (SBS The Show) / 200523 (MBC Show! Music Core)

She looks like a binman 😂. SHE BLENDS IN WITH THE WALL 😂. I stg they gave up trying to think of something that fits her style that actually looked good 😂.

53. Miya - 200510 (SBS Inkigayo) / 200522 (KBS Music Bank)

Yeah it still looks shit but black is a step up 😂.

52. Lena - 200501 (KBS Music Bank) / 200506 (MBC Show! Music Core)

A lot of Lena’s are also lower down, idk what it is but they just gave her clothes that didn’t fit 😂. This ones looks a little Shakespearean (why have I referenced Shakespeare twice today) but caught in a tornado 😂.

51. Lena - 200509 (MBC Show! Music Core) / 200524 (SBS Inkigayo)

She looks like a Barbie doll but like when you put the dress on a different doll and it doesn’t look right 😂. Light pink is NOT a colour I like as well 😂.

50. Miya - 200509 (MBC Show! Music Core) / 200524 (SBS Inkigayo)

NO PINK THANK YOU it looks like a big pink shirt on top of jim jams 😂. But she gets a bonus point for looking so damn adorable 😂.

49. Miya - 200501 (KBS Music Bank) / 200506 (MBC Show! Music Core)

LOL I’M SO SORRY I KEEP PUTTING YOU AT THE BOTTOM MIYA but this looks so chavvy I am not here for it 😂. Miya’s too sweet to be a chav if you keep dressing her like this she’s gonna get hoop earrings and a cockney accent 😂.

48. Lena - 200428 (Showcase) / 200503 (SBS Inkigayo) / 200513 (MBC Show Champion)

It just looks a bit like an unironed pillowcase with a belt on 😂.

47. Seoryoung - 200428 (Showcase) / 200503 (SBS Inkigayo) / 200513 (MBC Show Champion)

OMG FINALLY SOMEONE ELSE honestly Seoryoung has a lot of my favourite outfits but this is not one of them WHAT IS IT 😂.

46. Anne - 200503 (SBS Inkigayo)

Another thing that is not my style at all is sportswear but when you’re not doing sports like what is the point 😂.

45. Lena - 200508 (KBS Music Bank) / 200512 (SBS The Show) / 200521 (Mnet M Countdown)

I think I like what this could be more than what it actually is 😂. It’s just so ill fitting it doesn’t look right 😂.

44. Anne - 200501 (KBS Music Bank) / 200506 (MBC Show! Music Core)

SPORTSWEAR.

43. Seokyoung - 200501 (KBS Music Bank) / 200506 (MBC Show! Music Core)

At first looks it’s quite nice, but then you notice the crap that’s all over her top 😂. I get it would be boring without it but I’d rather it be dull than a mess 😂. Luckily it’s all white so it can be missed 😂.

42. Anne - 200509 (MBC Show! Music Core) / 200524 (SBS Inkigayo)

I guess the overall concept isn’t too bad? The trousers are nice but NOT the colour 😂. And the top I would forgive if it had matching sleeves, like why is one side sleeveless and one side has a slight sleeve like just pick one or go all the way with the mismatch 😂.

41. Lena - 200510 (SBS Inkigayo) / 200522 (KBS Music Bank)

Like Lena’s last one I like the idea of it more than what it actually is, a shirt and tie with a skirt IS a nice idea, but why is the shirt that big? 😂.

40. Seoryoung - 200501 (KBS Music Bank) / 200506 (MBC Show! Music Core)

It’s actually quite nice... but she has a little more than a chip on her shoulder 😂. Okay that was bad I’m sorry let’s leave that there and forget it ever happened 😂.

39. Seokyoung - 200509 (MBC Show! Music Core) / 200524 (SBS Inkigayo)

I can forgive the colour since it’s not as bright but a crop top jumper just doesn’t look right 😂. Oo that rhymed 😂.

38. Seoryoung - 200509 (MBC Show! Music Core) / 200524 (SBS Inkigayo)

I mean it’s not bad at all, just pink and white are a little too wholesome colours for me 😂. OMG THEY LOOK LIKE MARSHMALLOWS 😂.

37. Lena - 200505 (SBS The Show) / 200523 (MBC Show! Music Core)

I like the two belts (I’m wearing two beltssss 😂) but idk I think it could be better idk how but it could 😂.

36. Miya - 200430 (Mnet M Countdown) / 200517 (SBS Inkigayo)

Not completely my style but I don’t think there’s anything glaringly wrong with it 😂.

35. Miya - 200428 (Showcase) / 200503 (SBS Inkigayo) / 200513 (MBC Show Champion)

Idk why I prefer this to the other one cos the trousers are HORRIFIC but I think the white looks slightly better than the blue 😂.

34. Anne - 200428 (Showcase) / 200513 (MBC Show Champion)

This is kind of linked with number 46 but I like the top more here 😂.

33. Seokyoung - 200505 (SBS The Show) / 200523 (MBC Show! Music Core)

I think this is really cute conceptually but the skirt’s a little too high and too big for me 😂.

32. Minju - 200430 (Mnet M Countdown) / 200517 (SBS Inkigayo)

OH HEY MINJU YOU FINALLY SHOWED UP Minju had some very good outfits this era, this one’s just kinda dull and a little too summery and bright for me 😂.

31. Anne - 200505 (SBS The Show) / 200523 (MBC Show! Music Core)

Idk why I kinda like this one, the cropped jumper is just WHY but the rest kinda looks cool 😂.

30. Minju - 200509 (MBC Show! Music Core) / 200524 (SBS Inkigayo)

Apart from the colour this is pretty nice! Like the jacket and the skirt 😂.

29. Lena - 200430 (Mnet M Countdown) / 200517 (SBS Inkigayo)

I feel like I should love this cos I love jumpers and skirts combos but something holds it back for me 😂. Maybe it’s the giant shoelace 😂.

28. Lena - 200502 (MBC Show! Music Core)

Don’t ask me why I like this I just think it looks cool? 😂.

27. Minju - 200501 (KBS Music Bank) / 200506 (MBC Show! Music Core)

I do kinda like this, maybe material wise it could be better but it’s cute 😂.

26. Seokyoung - 200430 (Mnet M Countdown) / 200517 (SBS Inkigayo)

Another one of those ones where I think it’s cute and idk why 😂.

25. Anne - 200502 (MBC Show! Music Core)

It’s kinda bland and the shorts material is odd but I actually kinda like it 😂. It is simple, maybe if it had a little more it’d be better 😂.

24. Seoryoung - 200430 (Mnet M Countdown) / 200517 (SBS Inkigayo)

K the sleeves have NO business being that big, I really don’t like that, but I actually really like this? The skirt is amazing and if the sleeves were different the top would be really nice 😂.

23. Anne - 200510 (SBS Inkigayo) / 200522 (KBS Music Bank)

Simple but nice 😂. Maybe just a little too simple 😂.

22. Seoryoung - 200505 (SBS The Show) / 200523 (MBC Show! Music Core)

The skirt’s a little weird but I do really like this, maybe without the red sticking out the bottom of the skirt I’d like it more 😂.

21. Minju - 200502 (MBC Show! Music Core)

Some things I can’t explain it just looks cool 😂.

20. Seoryoung - 200508 (KBS Music Bank) / 200512 (SBS The Show) / 200521 (Mnet M Countdown)

It’s pretty much just a cooler version of the last one 😂. I also really like the white detail on the sleeve it’s like a tattoo 😂.

19. Seokyoung - 200428 (Showcase) / 200503 (SBS Inkigayo) / 200513 (MBC Show Champion)

It kinda looks like a disco outfit I love it 😂.

18. Seokyoung - 200429 (MBC Show Champion) / 200515 (KBS Music Bank)

Idk why I love it it’s cute and dark why not 😂.

17. Anne - 200430 (Mnet M Countdown) / 200517 (SBS Inkigayo)

Am I the only person still in love with graffiti print 😂. The top could be a better colour but I like the combo of neon and punkier graffiti print 😂.

16. Seokyoung - 200502 (MBC Show! Music Core)

Idk why??? I just think it’s super cute 😂.

15. Minju - 200503 (SBS Inkigayo)

I really like the skirt, but this is just kind of a variant of the next one 😂.

14. Minju - 200428 (Showcase) / 200513 (MBC Show Champion)

The top just has a cooler design here 😂. But always love a skull print 😂.

13. Minju - 200429 (MBC Show Champion) / 200515 (KBS Music Bank)

It’s kinda simple but it has that edgy look I love 😂.

12. Seokyoung - 200508 (KBS Music Bank) / 200512 (SBS The Show) / 200521 (Mnet M Countdown)

I just really love the skirt, leather, zips and green plaid? 😍😂.

11. Anne - 200429 (MBC Show Champion)

It’s a little bit dance teacher but I really love it 😂. I love the tall boots especially 😂.

10. Anne - 200515 (KBS Music Bank)

I just think it looks better with shorts 😂.

09 - Miya - 200508 (KBS Music Bank) / 200512 (SBS The Show) / 200521 (Mnet M Countdown)

Moment for how cute she looks 😂. But I actually really like this! I’ll forgive the t-shirt print cos I just love the black top with the shiny leathery trousers which aren’t Ross Geller style 😂. I think it might actually look cool with a couple of zips on the front of the trousers on the legs? But that’s just me 😂. I love how Miya shows up and I’m talking for ages 😂.

08. Seokyoung - 200510 (SBS Inkigayo) / 200522 (KBS Music Bank)

Something about the skirt and the jewelly top looks SO cool 😍.

07. Anne - 200508 (KBS Music Bank) / 200512 (SBS The Show) / 200521 (Mnet M Countdown)

I just love the trousers with the green plaid and the chain, the top is simple but it doesn’t need to be crazy 😂.

06. Minju - 200505 (SBS The Show) / 200523 (MBC Show! Music Core)

It’s the skirt man it’s the skirt 😍. I do like the vest, I prefer it done up but this photo showed the whole thing more clearly 😂.

05. Minju - 200510 (SBS Inkigayo) / 200522 (KBS Music Bank)

I feel like the jacket would put me off but I oddly love it? 😂.

04. Minju - 200508 (KBS Music Bank) / 200512 (SBS The Show) / 200521 (Mnet M Countdown)

The shorts are just so cool 😍. I also love the shirt, but the shorts are what really stand to me here 😂.

03. Seoryoung - 200510 (SBS Inkigayo) / 200522 (KBS Music Bank)

Ohh the top, the skirt, the little additions, I love it ALL 😍.

02. Seoryoung - 200502 (MBC Show! Music Core)

I honestly love this so much, idk what it is about the colour and shape of the dress, and then the white top underneath it makes it look even cooler?? That almost never happens 😂. I feel like this could be number 1, if it wasn’t for...

01. Seoryoung - 200429 (MBC Show Champion) / 200515 (KBS Music Bank)

DRACULA DRESS. Let me say it again. DRACULA. DRESS. It’s actually less my style shape wise, but... DRACULA DRESS. Cradle of Filth actually started playing as I was typing this and fitting I guess? 😂.

And that’s it 😂. May I repeat DRACULA DRESS iconic but if you made it all the way to the end hi thank you! 😂. Bazooka era had some absolute hits and absolute misses but I really love this era 😍. HOPEFULLY GWSN will have a comeback at some point before I die like come on 😭. Then again I got into them a few days ago and their last comeback was less than a year ago, I got into LABOUM last summer and their last comeback is still back in 2019 😭.

[shorthaircutsmodels]

Emma Willis's Short Haircuts and Hairstyles - 15+ - https://shorthaircutsmodels.com/emma-williss-short-haircuts-and-hairstyles/ - Emma Willis's Short Haircuts and Hairstyles, is low maintenance and you have a chíc hairstyle to yourself without too much fuss. So whether you prefer world oysters to sleek shiny style with textured tresses or Matt Willis's wife's hair. Only some of us are lucky enough to try this jazzy hairstyle, so if you have a face, here's how to get Emma Willis's 2020 - 2021 haircut. Both the cut and colour of Emma Willis's trendy children's cut hairstyle play out the rare and unexpected grey blue colour of her almond-shaped eyes. Emma Willis's Short Haircuts and Hairstyles Emma Willis's Short Haircuts and Hairstyles, The darkness of the jet black strands throws back flashes of the cameras and contrasts with the steel grey of their gaze. She is free to exhibit the metal stud that pierced the cartilage of her upper ear by parting her hair to the side and leaving her ears bare. Not everyone is brave enough to wear a children's cut or pierce their ears for that matter. But then not everyone is fearless beauty Emma Willis. Presenter Emma Willis impressed fans on social media with an entirely new hairstyle for tonight's episode of the Voice. Emma Willis's Haircuts and Hairstyles Emma Willis's Short Haircuts and Hairstyles, Taking to Instagram Saturday 2020, the star shared a series of behind-the-scenes shots, including two photos showing the Natural Silver of her short hair glowing. Regis creative director Guy Cammarano and Katy Banks are a member of the Regis artistic team, guiding you on how to create Emma's famous pixie crop. Emma Willis has had a few hairstyles in recent years. Emma Willis Emma Willis's Short Haircuts and Hairstyles, He gained a reputation as a distinguished television presenter. But the British television presenter and model is privately known for her unique appearance and charming character. Rumours and rumours about the 44-year-old's haircut are constantly attracting the attention of celebrity magazines and tabloids. Look at Emma Willis ' old hair in the picture gallery. Likes suits and hair. another said. The star hairdresser, who regularly works with Vicky McClure, has previously said Hello. Emma Willis's Short Haircuts Emma Louise Willis's Short Haircuts and Hairstyles, Emma's decision to go blonde was not a whim. He said it's something we've been working on for a long time. I developed a hair technique called Spotlight color, which is really about personalizing the hair color you have. We are doing a kind of gradual process from dark to light, he added. We performed on stage last year. Emma Willis's Short Hairstyles Emma Louise Willis's Short Haircuts and Hairstyles, Sometimes pulling dark hair into a blonde can be quite damaging, so the spotlight protects the technique against it. Emma's signature style is so in demand now Louis is often asked how to recreate it. I said If you're going to go for it you really have to make the decision that you really want to do it. The delivery babies presenter is currently wearing her short hair in a gorgeous platinum blonde shade, though of course she also loves experimenting with her colour. Emma Willis's Haircuts Emma Louise Willis's Short Haircuts and Hairstyles, She's been slowly getting blonde and blonde over the past year, and Emma Willis has revealed an entirely new look in the opening episode of Circle 2022. Emma Willis new hairstyle Emma, who was known for her brief dark fairy crop when she stepped out sporting a swishy blonde ponytail, eagerly wowed waiting viewers on series two of the Channel Four reality show filmed in Salford. Emma Willis's Hairstyles Emma Louise Willis's Short Haircuts and Hairstyles, The presenter's ice blonde locks were pulled back into a pony for the return of the apartment as she rocked a stunning ' Kill Bill-style yellow suit. Emma Willis hair style Emma shared several snaps of herself on Instagram and her followers loved the new colour and style. Celebrity Big Brother is on. And we're all excited. Here's the Hair Boutique we're not just loving celeb drama we're loving hair. Emma Willis's Short Hair Not only does she have great character, but she also has great hair. Most people are afraid of chops and Pixie is afraid of the brave. Others saw it as limiting and boring. But more people want Willis. His cut is versatile and he pulls off numerous looks. Emma Willis haircuts From rock chicks to sophisticated chic to glam. This short hair is great fun and proof. The rankings of coaches at The Voice UK suffered a shake-up after it was announced that Meghan Trainor had replaced Jennifer Hudson. Emma Willis's Hair And returning star Olly Murs, 35, showed things are changing on the coiffure front on Monday night as she stepped out with a new bleach blonde hairdo as she attended the show's first blind audition at Manchester's MediaCityUK. Emma Willis hair blonde The Troublemaker singer known for having dark locks since rising to fame bore a resemblance to the show's host Emma Willis whose hair has been worn in a cropped platinum style since late last year. Emma Willis short hair back view Olly stepped out in stylish style for the big event wearing a black tuxedo which he teamed with a white shirt with an embellished collar. He struck a series of playful poses as he greeted throngs of fans. Emma Willis bob haircut Lined up outside the venue encouraging them to cheer loudly as he frustrated them. Also flaunting her blonde hairdo host Emma Willis was typically eye-catching in a mixed-texture velvet dress that featured a 43 patent corset. Emma Willis new hair Emma Willis isn't shy about getting a cool girl haircut, which is for sure, and her latest appearance is more expressive than ever. The star's go hairdresser Louis Byrne posted a new snap of Emma on Thursday evening and we love her new updo. Emma Willis haircut Showing off the presenter's shaven bottom cut, Louis pulled Emma's hair back into a tiny ponytail with plenty of texture, of course. Pony and undercut @ emmawillisofficial captioned the. How do I style my short hair like Emma Willis? Photo which appears to have been taken behind the scenes in her latest shoot with fashion brand next. We're not sure if we'll see the style in Emma's next clothing campaign, but we think she looks gorgeous in the same way. Emma Willis haircut 2020 - 2021 Many fans agreed with one post. I want this. Very cool and another addition. Omg I love it. Louis ' next Instagram shot showed him wearing a more typical style, complete with Emma's signature. Emma Willis hair colour It showcases how women can wriggle out of a short nap that is slowly returning to fashion. Look at Emma, let's go over some of the things we think she's going to do to get to her. Emma Willis short haircut Just oblivious told me one stunned follower about the look this hair did not drop the look. Appearance is related to volume and texture. Emma Willis hair how to style To start, we use Volume Shampoo and conditioner to create this structure. We would then go with some wax and texture spray to help hold but finish with some firm hold hairspray to handle the hair and keep. What products does Emma Willis use on her hair? It looking crispy throughout the day. We all know that celebrities can have a huge impact on their styles. Whether we see the latest videos of our favorite singer or a picture of someone we admire papped coming out of. Emma Willis new haircut A restaurant, we'll pull out our scissors and cut out the photo and bring it to the lounge. We've seen a lot of coverage recently for the face of Regis Emma Willis, who was accompanied by Phillip Schofield on this morning. Emma Willis long hair A large number of customers came to our salons asking for an Emma Willis pixie cut, and in the video below you can see how our team at Regis created the emma willis style with short bob hairstyles. She said that. Emma Willis hairdresser There's no point going between half or half of the measures you have to wear with confidence and pride. Go to someone who knows what they're doing and make sure it suits your hair texture. How does Emma Willis style her hair? Tuesday September 24 Tuesday when Season Two debuted on Tuesday Emma Willis stunned hoop viewers as she stepped out to host the show in a vibrant blonde long ponytail. After rocking the short dark ' make for years Emma's new look divided some viewers but her sleek long hair looked incredible. Emma Willis hairstyles 2020 - 2021 Since the launch show Emma has continued to rock her blonde hair in a range of styles, often opting for a chic messy bun or low pony. The Channel 4 presenter has pulled out a number of hair colours over the. Emma Willis hair products Years but it is by far the most drastic change of her recent shade. We took a look at Emma's iconic hairstyles. Emma's latest style is an ice blonde tied up in a neat long ponytail for the spin of the circle. How do you style a pixie haircut? Before returning to the Reality show Emma shared several snaps of herself on Instagram revealing her new look and loved the new colour to her followers. If there's one style can be recognised for, it's her edgy cropped hair. How to get Emma Willis hair Another full-length photo showed off her outfit for the latest installment of the hit ITV singing competition. He is known for his short crop as well as presenting all sorts of reality shows over the years such as the voice and Big Brother. So fans were distracted by long blonde locks on the first episode of the second series of the Circle last night. How can a girl get a quiff? The contestants lived in the same building but were only sporting shock to see that blonde hair into high ponytail extensions Willis adapted to social media-based game show viewers to communicate via an online platform. Serves hair blonde ambition Madonna told Twitter user Darren Haywood was soon back. Emma Willis hair 2020 - 2021 The Big Brother presenter, 40, had been growing out of her pixie crop for the past few months but it seems she has decided life with long hair isn't just for her. She took to Instagram last night to reveal she was visiting the hairdresser for a good ol’ chop. And ah mazing looks. How long is Emma Willis hair? Made another strong look on tonight's episode of Channel 4's The Circle Live. The presenter, 43, wore a chic black trouser suit on the show, with a silky trim on the collar. She paired it with gold jewelry and minimal make-up with her hair scraped back into a messy bun.

[strangecollectorcloudus-blog]

Vinyl Lettering for Walls - Decorative Tiles

We are selling quality Vinyl stickers for decorate car,bumper,windows,wall,motorcycle,outdoor or indoor & more.Our stickers and decals are printed in high quality vinyl using original Roland ECO-SOL MAX eco-solvent link,used throughout for long life.ECO-SOL MAX offers fast drying time,high density wide color gamut,scratch resistance.In addition, ECO-SOL MAX graphics are water,scratch and UV resistance up to 2 years outdoors.

Vinyl lettering for walls provides extensive different ways to use you creative souls available. Apart from just decorating your walls and vehicle home windows, you are able to do as instructed in the following paragraphs to learn to create a ceramic ceramic tile decoration which makes an excellent gift.

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To get this done project you have to visit a home improvement store, we've got ours in your own home Depot, and buy a ceramic ceramic tile. You'll need a tile that's relatively smooth and it has one that contrasts nicely together with your vinyl sticker. They often have a very good number of tiles that you can buy. I love to make use of a 12" by 12" or perhaps an 18" by 18" one.

Your vinyl sticker must be a minimum of 2 " smaller sized than your tile both horizontally and vertically. You will need to make certain your tile is neat and totally dry. Use a window cleaner like Windex to wash your tile. It will a fantastic job for cleaning off junk and dries fast.

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Select a vinyl lettering design that's pre-made or create your own. Use a free graphics editor or perhaps a word processing program. Place your tile flat on the surface just like a table (if you do not would like it to provide simple facts you set it on place a towel under it). Carefully remove the shiny backing in your vinyl sticker. Be certain to fall into line the sticker in your tile so it's straight. If you have the sticker arranged gradually use it the tile and completely run it lower to make certain there aren't any trapped air bubbles. Remove the opaque vinyl application tape and you're done. It's very fast and quite simple.

Vinyl is rapidly becoming probably the most popular ways that people decorate their houses. There are plenty of different ways to use these awesome little vinyl stickers the uses are nearly endless. Take a look at a couple of ideas of cooking techniques effectively.

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To begin with, vehicle decals have become extremely popular. If you're searching for the way to exhibit family pride but don't wish to turn to bumper stickers and writing on dirty home windows, then vinyl ought to be your go-to option. These stickers are wonderful simply because they can simply go directly on your home windows without departing any nasty residue or becoming impossible to consider off and clean. There are plenty of various stuff you can showcase in your vehicle home windows including stick figure images of everybody inside your family, or simply a little stating that you reside your existence by. If your little one plays sports you may place a picture of the number and also the team they play for.

An execllent idea for implementing vinyl is on t-shirts. These impressions will traverses many other sorts of cheap t-shirts that might be available and they'll look much classier. You may produce a t-shirt for any family reunion or possibly for any dance your children are likely to.

Kids love stickers and thus do adults! It's fun to select stickers that you're drawn to or that promote some cause or event which has meaning. Stick them almost anywhere and you've got fun-filled graphic art decor. Removing them ought to be always easy, if preferred, and with respect to the surface and also the materials for making the stickers themselves, they might be also multiple-use on another surface.

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Just how can stickers be utilized year-round and also have meaning for a wide variety of occasions? They're just a universal little item which has true meaning for a lot of.

Probably the most discussed among all vinyl stickers is a that depicts the U.S. flag in certain form. Whether flat and rectangular fit, oblong, round, or square, the flag is proven either fully unfurled or perhaps in some type of "flight". Flying the flag is really a loyal factor to complete within this country in addition to many more so when a sizable flag isn't feasible stickers makes it happen!

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Refrigerators really are a popular receptacle for flag sticker magnets, small or large. And it's wise to determine the area you want to use your vinyl stickers to before choosing unless of course you want to pay for your whole fridge having a single sticker!

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All that you should do is appraise the height and width you want your sticker to pay for and multiply one through the other (say for example a 3" by 5" sticker would occupy 15 square inches of area). These measurements works for a lot of applications for example banners, decals, signs, and individuals little stickers we all like.

Owner Name: anime sticker shop

Owner Email: animestickershop@gmail.com

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Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle

Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle https://ift.tt/2R5RxuL

Nature

At the age of 12, Coss Marte began dealing drugs in New York City. At 15, he was sent to prison for a year. That’s when he began to learn how things worked behind bars. “This guy next to me was serving 12 years,” says Coss. “We started cooking together.” That was the first of three stints in prison – including New York’s famously brutal Rikers Island prison. Each time, Coss existed on “prison burritos”, a regular makeshift snack for US inmates. “Instant noodles, potato chips, Cheezits. If you get lucky, you steal an onion from the mess hall,” he says. “You shuffle it up, you throw in a little bit of ketchup, mayonnaise maybe. I’ve had people tell me it tastes like Taco Bell.”

Basic instant noodles are the cheapest thing on sale in most prison stores, where three packs cost about a dollar. They’ve replaced cigarettes as the most traded item inside American prisons. They’re so important, inmates use them as money. As Coss was learning the ropes in prison, another young man living on the other side of the globe was also figuring out how to rely on instant noodles. Back in 2004, Kieran “Danger” Dooley was 20 years old and training to be a teacher in Dunedin, in southern New Zealand. But he was harbouring a dream to be a movie director. And one night he saw a film that gave him an idea. “It was Supersize Me,” he says. “I latched on to it and I thought, ‘Well, you know, old Morgan Spurlock, he’s a bit of a legend as far as I’m concerned.’ And I thought I’ll make the sacrifice. I can give this a shot too.” In his documentary, Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald’s for a month, recording the drastic physical and psychological impact. Danger Dooley chose the obvious student equivalent with his student film, Noodle Me. “I couldn’t really afford McDonald’s every day or Kentucky Fried Chicken or Burger King or whatever,” he says. Instant noodles were an inevitable choice. Sixty years after their invention, they have become the default food for anyone short on money, or time, or a kitchen. They even pop up in disaster zones and on long-haul flights. Last year, across the globe, more than 100 billion servings of instant noodles were eaten. That’s more than 13 servings for every person on the planet.

In the birthplace of instant noodles, Japan, they’ve been voted – repeatedly – Japan’s most successful invention, ahead of high-speed trains, laptops and karaoke. Instant noodle sales have certainly fallen in Japan since the invention’s heydey in the 1970s and 80s, and now occupy around 5% of all global sales. But don’t let that number fool you, Japan is still the world’s third-biggest consumer of instant noodles, after China and Indonesia, with more than 5.5 billion servings being eaten a year. But perhaps the story behind instant ramen is more important to Japan than actually buying and eating the product. It’s believed that the dried noodles sitting in many university dorms can trace their culinary ancestry back to an early form of ramen noodles brought over to Japan by Chinese chefs in the 1880s. Traditional ramen noodles are, in their most basic form, wheat noodles served in a soupy broth with some slices of meat or tofu on top. Over the decades, that simple recipe has been adapted and expanded over and over again, giving imaginative chefs the ability to show off their skills by making complex broths, perfectly textured noodles and an ever-expanding variety of toppings. The original ramen was eaten by Japanese labourers by the bowlful. World War Two changed everything. Large tracts of Japan were decimated by bombing. When the war came to a close in 1945, the surviving population was starving. Enter our unlikely hero – a failed businessman named Momofuku Ando. Ando, as he’s affectionately known, had earned and lost fortunes, first in his native Taiwan and then in Japan. He made millions in industrial parts during the war, then lost it. At one point, he went to prison for fraud. He then headed a bank, which collapsed. But Ando was persistent. He wanted to rebuild his reputation and his fortune. A decade after the war had ended, contacts in Japan’s ministry of agriculture told him they were eager to figure out how to push Japanese people to eat more American wheat flour – the key component of US aid at the time. That’s when, so the story goes, Ando remembered something he’d seen at the end of the war – queues of exhausted people waiting patiently in long lines for bowls of steaming ramen noodle soup. What was needed, Ando thought, was a modern, speedy version of that working-class comfort food. A food that, conveniently, used lots of American wheat flour. And so, at the age of 48, Ando transformed himself into a food inventor. He disappeared into a wooden shed in his back garden every day for a year. When he emerged, he’d invented a product that looks almost identical to rectangular bricks of instant noodles that are stacked on supermarket shelves around the world. You can see faithful recreations of that shed if you visit Japan’s three – yes, three – instant noodle museums. The one we visited, in the coastal city of Yokohama, is the biggest and newest. It is owned by the food company Nissin, which was founded by Ando. The red, square block of a building is all clean, straight lines. Inside there are shiny floorboards and pristine white walls – it looks like a modern art museum. Apparently, it’s a hot place for first dates. Visitors are quickly led into the “instant noodle history cube”, a brightly lit room lined with thousands of instant noodle products, starting with Ando’s original block of Chikin Ramen. At the end, there are even luxury instant noodles – in convenience stores in Japan, you can buy noodles from famous Michelin-starred ramen shops. In between the two extremes sit some of the thousands of instant noodles on sale across the globe. The cube is a mind-boggling showcase of what food inventors can do. Instant noodles were born in Japan, but marketers go to pains to make them seem local, wherever they’re eaten. Some countries like the basil and olive flavour. Others prefer cheesy curry or creamy seafood. In Mexico, noodles are eaten with salsa and slices of lime. Nissin’s Kasura Suzuki beams as we examine the packaging. “We launch over 300 products yearly,” she says, “just in Japan, for our company. But only 1% remain in the market. The products have a really short life cycle because consumers are always looking for something new. So we have to be very inventive.” Most of the museum’s visitors are Japanese, but then Raquel Scott, a teacher from San Francisco, appears bubbling with enthusiasm. “I grew up on cup noodles,” she says. “Especially in college, needing a cheap meal. So I thought it would be fun to come here. What other better food to have a museum for than the cup noodle?” There is no obvious mention of environmental concerns – such as the styrofoam cup used for cup noodles – in the Yokohama museum.

To embrace the mindset of this museum, you’ll need to swallow any lingering doubts about the wonders of instant noodles and their contribution to human civilisation. Kasura guides me to the last room in the museum. “Here we have Space Ramen, which is the final invention that our founder Momofuku Ando created,” she explains. “This product was developed especially for astronauts to eat during space travel.” I hesitate, but she doesn’t blink. You’re saying that at the age of 95, Momofuku Ando was responsible for this invention? “Yes,” comes her immediate response. “He wanted to go beyond the atmosphere and take his invention to outer space.” The museum staff and its visitors ooze a sense of national pride. Ando was actually born in Taiwan, but it was in Japan that his invention came to life. Instant noodles came along at a turning point in Japan’s history, accompanying its rise from a struggling nation to a modern economic powerhouse. They came of age when Japanese households were filling up with new home appliances, such as kettles. Television commercials from that age showed the effervescent commercials promoting convenient new foods. Today, a whole culture of appreciation has grown around instant noodles in Japan. At the heart of the movement sits a shy, unassuming man named Toshio Yamamoto. He’s better known to his fans as Ton Tan Tin – a name he gave himself because he liked the sound of it. He’s the world��s most prolific instant (ramen) noodle reviewer. “Oh I love instant ramen very much,” he smiles. “I’ve been eating ramen since I was 10 years old. I’m pretty much made of ramen.” Yamamoto once worked as an engineer, but his noodle reviews became so popular that he was able to quit and devote himself to testing instant ramen. Companies send him their newest offerings for testing and followers send him boxes of instant noodles from overseas. He’s reviewed more than 6,200 kinds of instant noodles. You can check out Ton Tan Tin online. Each video is almost identical – you see the package of the product he’s going to review, you watch it being prepared, and then you watch the noodles’ score out of five. The entire process is oddly mesmerising. But you’ll never actually see Ton Tan Tin on screen – just his hands. In person, he’s a slightly awkward man. He shuffles around his suburban house in Japanese slippers. “I haven’t found ramen that’s five stars yet. I’m still on the journey to find that,” he explains. “The noodles will need to be perfect. The soup will need to have great quality and the condiments perfectly balanced, with a nice harmony.” On a large computer screen, he begins to click through all of his reviews. Most scores hover around three out of five. Suddenly, a shockingly low score pops up – a 0.1 out of five stars. “Those noodles were really thick and ‘guagua’,” he says. “It was a really bad texture in my mouth. And the soup is really thick. It’s a very kind of artificial flavour. And the condiments you chew but they just keep staying in your mouth. They were very difficult to swallow.” The product in question? One of the UK’s top sellers – Cup Noodle Chicken and Mushroom flavour. Millions of British university students survive on this, I tell him. I also tell him I would like to be here on the day that he eats that perfect five. I’d love to see the look on his face. He smiles and closes his eyes a little bit, as if imagining what those noodles would taste like. “I would share my happiness with everybody,” he sighs.

If Japan is the county that gave birth to the instant noodle, China’s the country where it came of age. Out of the 100 billion servings of instant noodles consumed last year, 38 billion were eaten in mainland China. But in China, there’s none of the romance that’s associated with instant noodles in Japan – there are no museums dedicated to them here. Ton Tan Tin would be shocked. Inside a bustling railway station in central Beijing, travellers are preparing for long journeys ahead. In a cavernous waiting room, weary-looking people are clutching thin plastic bags, mostly holding a few containers of instant noodles. “It’s garbage food,” complains one young woman. She’s eating a pot as she waits to board her train. “Everybody knows it’s bad for your health. I don’t like eating it, it’s simply for convenience.” In the centre of the train, tucked into a cosy compartment, we meet Huan Zhuo Ming and Wang Li, a friendly couple in their 50s. It’ll be three in the morning when they reach their hometown. They are visiting their elderly parents for China’s tomb- sweeping public holiday. The train has just left the station and Huan Zhuo Ming is already tucking into his supper. “There’s nothing else to eat. Of course, its instant noodles,” Wang Li patiently explains as her husband enjoys the spicy beef flavour – a favourite in China. A convenient hot water tap sits at the end of every train carriage, and a queue of like-minded folk are filling up their cup noodles as we chat. Huan Zhuo Ming is a security guard in Beijing and Wang Li works as a cleaner. They’ve been married for decades but they don’t live together anymore. Instead, they each stay in dormitories provided by their employers. Their daughter, who’s a nurse, lives in a third dormitory. Three family members, all scattered across the city. But, when asked about their living conditions, they shrug. They don’t question their scattered existence. It’s passengers like these who’ve helped make China richer. They’re migrant workers who left their homes in the countryside to work in the country’s factories and major cities. China’s astonishing economic growth clocked 9.5% a year for three decades, the World Bank says. It’s the fastest growth in economic history – but it’s also growth that hinged on the makeshift lifestyle of migrant workers and the sacrifices they’ve endured. Imagine you’re a bottom-of-the-ladder worker in China, sleeping in a dormitory bunk bed every night and eating canteen food every day. What do you eat if you want a filling snack? Instant noodles filled that gap. But the instant noodle lifestyle is becoming a thing of the past. Sales peaked at more than 50 billion servings a year in 2010 – just after the Chinese economy clocked record gains. But instant noodle sales have been dropping every year since – down 16% last year, alone. “Every food is a product of its own time,” says Professor Meng Suhe. She’s the grande dame of the noodle industry. Behind a pair of thick glasses, she’s witnessed the arc in noodle consumption and how it followed China’s own path over the past 40 years. “Each rise and drop in instant noodle sales has reflected distinct times in China’s modern history,” she says. The government’s numbers show that half of workers lived in dormitories in 2011. Five years later, only 13% of factory workers did so. Sixty percent had moved into rented housing – places with kitchens allowing them to cook what they want, so there’s less need for instant noodles. Now, China’s workers are starting to reject noodles as they crave their mum’s cooking, Professor Meng says. “Also, Chinese people are starting to crave less processed food.” But noodle makers shouldn’t pack up yet. Lots of millennials haven’t learned how to cook, sighs Professor Meng, and they’re dependent on convenience foods and deliveries.

Coss Marte strides through the streets of New York’s Lower East Side with total confidence. “I used to sell drugs on this corner,” he says breezily as we walk across the street to a grocery store. He grabs items off the shelves. Doritos, instant noodles – the processed food favourites he used to rely on in prison. He pauses, staring at the packs of noodles. “This really is survival food in prison.” Michael Gibson-Light has heard this many times before. He stumbled across the importance of instant noodles when he was researching prison jobs. His resulting research on instant noodles made headlines when it emerged last year. He’s the one who declared something that US prisoners have known for ages – in the past few years, instant noodles have come to replace cigarettes as the most traded item in US prisons. “It was totally taken for granted by the prisoner population,” he says. “I was surprised since all you ever really see on TV and movies, or read about in research about prisons is that cigarettes are the de facto currency.” That’s notable because it’s such a huge population. The US has more known prisoners than any other country in the world 2.2 million at the last count. And the change – from cigarettes to instant noodles – boils down to money. Prison budgets have been slashed and most prisons feed inmates the minimum number of calories per day. Many offer just two meals a day on weekends. Prison food has been the subject of recent state Supreme Court lawsuits, with prisoners arguing that prison food is inedible. “So, the food is even worse and there’s less of it,” Gibson-Light explains. “If you’re in prison and you want or need more food than you can get from the chow line, then you have to buy it yourself. The costs of nutrition have shifted to the prisoners themselves. Instant noodles are a go-to because they’re cheap.” But it goes further. Noodles function as currency. Over time, they became so valuable that people started using them to trade with. It didn’t take long for them to essentially replace tobacco products as the new black market currency, explains former prisoner Chandra Bozelko. “They’re easily stored and they’re non-perishable, so they can be kept for a very long time,” she says. Chandra served six years in prison in Connecticut for identity theft. The press called her the “Connecticut Princess” – an Ivy League graduate who was caught stealing credit card information and forging signatures to buy thousands of dollars worth of goods online. Now she’s out, she writes about prison life, including why instant noodles are so valuable on the inside. “You might have a certain book from the outside that I want to read. You might say, ‘I’ll give you 10 soups – 10 packages of ramen noodles – in exchange for that book,’ or to even borrow that book. I’m sure it’s been used for payment for sexual acts.” Noodles can ease social interactions inside a prison, Chandra says. “It can be used as a gratuity. So a lot of times there’s a laundry worker who washes people’s clothes, and even though you’re not required to do that, they might hand over a package of noodles when the laundry worker gives an inmate back her clothes, when they’re folded and dried.” It’s the same story for the men. Coss Marte says things can get violent when instant noodle debts aren’t repaid. “There are all types of hustling inside the system. People juggle. Juggle means you get, like, a 200% mark-up. If you give someone two ramen noodle soups, you get four [more] ramen noodle soups back within a week. “I’ve seen people get cut and stabbed for ramen noodle. And it’s not about the 30 cents it’s worth. It’s about the principle. It’s currency in the system.” Edible currency, that is. Chandra says she’ll never eat instant noodles again, but for Coss Marte, it’s a different story. He serves up his prison burrito and I give it a try. Warm and starchy, it’s full of flavour. Synthetic flavour – fake cheese and ketchup, mostly – but it’s easy to see why this would pass as comfort food inside a prison. In fact, prisoners turn noodles into all sorts of things, from tortillas to pizza bases. “I’ll make this once a year,” he explains, after eating a forkful of the burrito. “Maybe I’m watching a prison show or something and it’s like, ugh, memories.” Burritos are mostly off the menu because Coss is in shape now. He’s come a long way from prison, and runs his own gym. “I was eating all this junk food every day,” he says, gesturing towards the instant noodles. “The doctors told me my cholesterol levels were so bad I could die of a heart attack in five years. I was sentenced to seven years. That motivated me.” On his self-assigned exercise regime, he lost 70lb in just a few months. He didn’t want to die in prison, he explains. “The [prison] cemetery doesn’t say your name, just a number. I didn’t want to die in the system. I’ve seen people die in there. It’s pretty sad. Most of the time family don’t show up.” There’s now a big push to make the food served in prisons healthier. And globally, the trend’s the same. Noodle makers in China and Japan told us that they’re under pressure from consumers to overhaul their products, to subtract salt and add nutrients. But what happens if you eat only instant noodles? What would it do to your body? Kieran “Danger” Dooley can tell us – he’s the person who forced himself to exist only on noodles for a month as part of a student film project. After 30 days, Danger lost 11kg. Normally an easy-going guy, he experienced unusual mood swings. “I would go up and down, up and down. I wouldn’t say depression. It was more of a meh! I just couldn’t be bothered,” he explains. “I couldn’t be bothered making the noodles. I’d just stare at them for 10 minutes and think, ‘Why the hell did I do this?’” Danger made it through the month, with one sneaky trip to a pub to drink three pints of beer. The silver lining was that he won the top prize in his university documentary competition. And what did a month of eating square packets of noodles teach him? “Man can’t live on noodles alone. Well, they probably could but it wouldn’t be an existence worth living.” Tell that to those who still revere Momofuku Ando. In the instant noodle museum in Yokohama, there’s a cardboard cut-out of him. He is surrounded by, and equated with, famous historical figures – Marie Curie, Beethoven, Galileo, Einstein. But does the creator of instant noodles deserve a place of honour among the world’s greatest figures? Here’s one thing we can say – instant noodles are the world’s true convenience food, the hot food that’s always waiting there, in the background, for those who are short on money or time. As long as there are people living in dormitories, or shopping in convenience stores, or concocting meals in prisons – the instant noodle will live on.

Read More | BBC News

Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle, in 2018-09-28 02:55:13

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Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle

Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle http://www.nature-business.com/nature-the-eternal-life-of-the-instant-noodle/

Nature

At the age of 12, Coss Marte began dealing drugs in New York City. At 15, he was sent to prison for a year. That’s when he began to learn how things worked behind bars. “This guy next to me was serving 12 years,” says Coss. “We started cooking together.” That was the first of three stints in prison – including New York’s famously brutal Rikers Island prison. Each time, Coss existed on “prison burritos”, a regular makeshift snack for US inmates. “Instant noodles, potato chips, Cheezits. If you get lucky, you steal an onion from the mess hall,” he says. “You shuffle it up, you throw in a little bit of ketchup, mayonnaise maybe. I’ve had people tell me it tastes like Taco Bell.”

Basic instant noodles are the cheapest thing on sale in most prison stores, where three packs cost about a dollar. They’ve replaced cigarettes as the most traded item inside American prisons. They’re so important, inmates use them as money. As Coss was learning the ropes in prison, another young man living on the other side of the globe was also figuring out how to rely on instant noodles. Back in 2004, Kieran “Danger” Dooley was 20 years old and training to be a teacher in Dunedin, in southern New Zealand. But he was harbouring a dream to be a movie director. And one night he saw a film that gave him an idea. “It was Supersize Me,” he says. “I latched on to it and I thought, ‘Well, you know, old Morgan Spurlock, he’s a bit of a legend as far as I’m concerned.’ And I thought I’ll make the sacrifice. I can give this a shot too.” In his documentary, Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald’s for a month, recording the drastic physical and psychological impact. Danger Dooley chose the obvious student equivalent with his student film, Noodle Me. “I couldn’t really afford McDonald’s every day or Kentucky Fried Chicken or Burger King or whatever,” he says. Instant noodles were an inevitable choice. Sixty years after their invention, they have become the default food for anyone short on money, or time, or a kitchen. They even pop up in disaster zones and on long-haul flights. Last year, across the globe, more than 100 billion servings of instant noodles were eaten. That’s more than 13 servings for every person on the planet.

In the birthplace of instant noodles, Japan, they’ve been voted – repeatedly – Japan’s most successful invention, ahead of high-speed trains, laptops and karaoke. Instant noodle sales have certainly fallen in Japan since the invention’s heydey in the 1970s and 80s, and now occupy around 5% of all global sales. But don’t let that number fool you, Japan is still the world’s third-biggest consumer of instant noodles, after China and Indonesia, with more than 5.5 billion servings being eaten a year. But perhaps the story behind instant ramen is more important to Japan than actually buying and eating the product. It’s believed that the dried noodles sitting in many university dorms can trace their culinary ancestry back to an early form of ramen noodles brought over to Japan by Chinese chefs in the 1880s. Traditional ramen noodles are, in their most basic form, wheat noodles served in a soupy broth with some slices of meat or tofu on top. Over the decades, that simple recipe has been adapted and expanded over and over again, giving imaginative chefs the ability to show off their skills by making complex broths, perfectly textured noodles and an ever-expanding variety of toppings. The original ramen was eaten by Japanese labourers by the bowlful. World War Two changed everything. Large tracts of Japan were decimated by bombing. When the war came to a close in 1945, the surviving population was starving. Enter our unlikely hero – a failed businessman named Momofuku Ando. Ando, as he’s affectionately known, had earned and lost fortunes, first in his native Taiwan and then in Japan. He made millions in industrial parts during the war, then lost it. At one point, he went to prison for fraud. He then headed a bank, which collapsed. But Ando was persistent. He wanted to rebuild his reputation and his fortune. A decade after the war had ended, contacts in Japan’s ministry of agriculture told him they were eager to figure out how to push Japanese people to eat more American wheat flour – the key component of US aid at the time. That’s when, so the story goes, Ando remembered something he’d seen at the end of the war – queues of exhausted people waiting patiently in long lines for bowls of steaming ramen noodle soup. What was needed, Ando thought, was a modern, speedy version of that working-class comfort food. A food that, conveniently, used lots of American wheat flour. And so, at the age of 48, Ando transformed himself into a food inventor. He disappeared into a wooden shed in his back garden every day for a year. When he emerged, he’d invented a product that looks almost identical to rectangular bricks of instant noodles that are stacked on supermarket shelves around the world. You can see faithful recreations of that shed if you visit Japan’s three – yes, three – instant noodle museums. The one we visited, in the coastal city of Yokohama, is the biggest and newest. It is owned by the food company Nissin, which was founded by Ando. The red, square block of a building is all clean, straight lines. Inside there are shiny floorboards and pristine white walls – it looks like a modern art museum. Apparently, it’s a hot place for first dates. Visitors are quickly led into the “instant noodle history cube”, a brightly lit room lined with thousands of instant noodle products, starting with Ando’s original block of Chikin Ramen. At the end, there are even luxury instant noodles – in convenience stores in Japan, you can buy noodles from famous Michelin-starred ramen shops. In between the two extremes sit some of the thousands of instant noodles on sale across the globe. The cube is a mind-boggling showcase of what food inventors can do. Instant noodles were born in Japan, but marketers go to pains to make them seem local, wherever they’re eaten. Some countries like the basil and olive flavour. Others prefer cheesy curry or creamy seafood. In Mexico, noodles are eaten with salsa and slices of lime. Nissin’s Kasura Suzuki beams as we examine the packaging. “We launch over 300 products yearly,” she says, “just in Japan, for our company. But only 1% remain in the market. The products have a really short life cycle because consumers are always looking for something new. So we have to be very inventive.” Most of the museum’s visitors are Japanese, but then Raquel Scott, a teacher from San Francisco, appears bubbling with enthusiasm. “I grew up on cup noodles,” she says. “Especially in college, needing a cheap meal. So I thought it would be fun to come here. What other better food to have a museum for than the cup noodle?” There is no obvious mention of environmental concerns – such as the styrofoam cup used for cup noodles – in the Yokohama museum.

To embrace the mindset of this museum, you’ll need to swallow any lingering doubts about the wonders of instant noodles and their contribution to human civilisation. Kasura guides me to the last room in the museum. “Here we have Space Ramen, which is the final invention that our founder Momofuku Ando created,” she explains. “This product was developed especially for astronauts to eat during space travel.” I hesitate, but she doesn’t blink. You’re saying that at the age of 95, Momofuku Ando was responsible for this invention? “Yes,” comes her immediate response. “He wanted to go beyond the atmosphere and take his invention to outer space.” The museum staff and its visitors ooze a sense of national pride. Ando was actually born in Taiwan, but it was in Japan that his invention came to life. Instant noodles came along at a turning point in Japan’s history, accompanying its rise from a struggling nation to a modern economic powerhouse. They came of age when Japanese households were filling up with new home appliances, such as kettles. Television commercials from that age showed the effervescent commercials promoting convenient new foods. Today, a whole culture of appreciation has grown around instant noodles in Japan. At the heart of the movement sits a shy, unassuming man named Toshio Yamamoto. He’s better known to his fans as Ton Tan Tin – a name he gave himself because he liked the sound of it. He’s the world’s most prolific instant (ramen) noodle reviewer. “Oh I love instant ramen very much,” he smiles. “I’ve been eating ramen since I was 10 years old. I’m pretty much made of ramen.” Yamamoto once worked as an engineer, but his noodle reviews became so popular that he was able to quit and devote himself to testing instant ramen. Companies send him their newest offerings for testing and followers send him boxes of instant noodles from overseas. He’s reviewed more than 6,200 kinds of instant noodles. You can check out Ton Tan Tin online. Each video is almost identical – you see the package of the product he’s going to review, you watch it being prepared, and then you watch the noodles’ score out of five. The entire process is oddly mesmerising. But you’ll never actually see Ton Tan Tin on screen – just his hands. In person, he’s a slightly awkward man. He shuffles around his suburban house in Japanese slippers. “I haven’t found ramen that’s five stars yet. I’m still on the journey to find that,” he explains. “The noodles will need to be perfect. The soup will need to have great quality and the condiments perfectly balanced, with a nice harmony.” On a large computer screen, he begins to click through all of his reviews. Most scores hover around three out of five. Suddenly, a shockingly low score pops up – a 0.1 out of five stars. “Those noodles were really thick and ‘guagua’,” he says. “It was a really bad texture in my mouth. And the soup is really thick. It’s a very kind of artificial flavour. And the condiments you chew but they just keep staying in your mouth. They were very difficult to swallow.” The product in question? One of the UK’s top sellers – Cup Noodle Chicken and Mushroom flavour. Millions of British university students survive on this, I tell him. I also tell him I would like to be here on the day that he eats that perfect five. I’d love to see the look on his face. He smiles and closes his eyes a little bit, as if imagining what those noodles would taste like. “I would share my happiness with everybody,” he sighs.

If Japan is the county that gave birth to the instant noodle, China’s the country where it came of age. Out of the 100 billion servings of instant noodles consumed last year, 38 billion were eaten in mainland China. But in China, there’s none of the romance that’s associated with instant noodles in Japan – there are no museums dedicated to them here. Ton Tan Tin would be shocked. Inside a bustling railway station in central Beijing, travellers are preparing for long journeys ahead. In a cavernous waiting room, weary-looking people are clutching thin plastic bags, mostly holding a few containers of instant noodles. “It’s garbage food,” complains one young woman. She’s eating a pot as she waits to board her train. “Everybody knows it’s bad for your health. I don’t like eating it, it’s simply for convenience.” In the centre of the train, tucked into a cosy compartment, we meet Huan Zhuo Ming and Wang Li, a friendly couple in their 50s. It’ll be three in the morning when they reach their hometown. They are visiting their elderly parents for China’s tomb- sweeping public holiday. The train has just left the station and Huan Zhuo Ming is already tucking into his supper. “There’s nothing else to eat. Of course, its instant noodles,” Wang Li patiently explains as her husband enjoys the spicy beef flavour – a favourite in China. A convenient hot water tap sits at the end of every train carriage, and a queue of like-minded folk are filling up their cup noodles as we chat. Huan Zhuo Ming is a security guard in Beijing and Wang Li works as a cleaner. They’ve been married for decades but they don’t live together anymore. Instead, they each stay in dormitories provided by their employers. Their daughter, who’s a nurse, lives in a third dormitory. Three family members, all scattered across the city. But, when asked about their living conditions, they shrug. They don’t question their scattered existence. It’s passengers like these who’ve helped make China richer. They’re migrant workers who left their homes in the countryside to work in the country’s factories and major cities. China’s astonishing economic growth clocked 9.5% a year for three decades, the World Bank says. It’s the fastest growth in economic history – but it’s also growth that hinged on the makeshift lifestyle of migrant workers and the sacrifices they’ve endured. Imagine you’re a bottom-of-the-ladder worker in China, sleeping in a dormitory bunk bed every night and eating canteen food every day. What do you eat if you want a filling snack? Instant noodles filled that gap. But the instant noodle lifestyle is becoming a thing of the past. Sales peaked at more than 50 billion servings a year in 2010 – just after the Chinese economy clocked record gains. But instant noodle sales have been dropping every year since – down 16% last year, alone. “Every food is a product of its own time,” says Professor Meng Suhe. She’s the grande dame of the noodle industry. Behind a pair of thick glasses, she’s witnessed the arc in noodle consumption and how it followed China’s own path over the past 40 years. “Each rise and drop in instant noodle sales has reflected distinct times in China’s modern history,” she says. The government’s numbers show that half of workers lived in dormitories in 2011. Five years later, only 13% of factory workers did so. Sixty percent had moved into rented housing – places with kitchens allowing them to cook what they want, so there’s less need for instant noodles. Now, China’s workers are starting to reject noodles as they crave their mum’s cooking, Professor Meng says. “Also, Chinese people are starting to crave less processed food.” But noodle makers shouldn’t pack up yet. Lots of millennials haven’t learned how to cook, sighs Professor Meng, and they’re dependent on convenience foods and deliveries.

Coss Marte strides through the streets of New York’s Lower East Side with total confidence. “I used to sell drugs on this corner,” he says breezily as we walk across the street to a grocery store. He grabs items off the shelves. Doritos, instant noodles – the processed food favourites he used to rely on in prison. He pauses, staring at the packs of noodles. “This really is survival food in prison.” Michael Gibson-Light has heard this many times before. He stumbled across the importance of instant noodles when he was researching prison jobs. His resulting research on instant noodles made headlines when it emerged last year. He’s the one who declared something that US prisoners have known for ages – in the past few years, instant noodles have come to replace cigarettes as the most traded item in US prisons. “It was totally taken for granted by the prisoner population,” he says. “I was surprised since all you ever really see on TV and movies, or read about in research about prisons is that cigarettes are the de facto currency.” That’s notable because it’s such a huge population. The US has more known prisoners than any other country in the world 2.2 million at the last count. And the change – from cigarettes to instant noodles – boils down to money. Prison budgets have been slashed and most prisons feed inmates the minimum number of calories per day. Many offer just two meals a day on weekends. Prison food has been the subject of recent state Supreme Court lawsuits, with prisoners arguing that prison food is inedible. “So, the food is even worse and there’s less of it,” Gibson-Light explains. “If you’re in prison and you want or need more food than you can get from the chow line, then you have to buy it yourself. The costs of nutrition have shifted to the prisoners themselves. Instant noodles are a go-to because they’re cheap.” But it goes further. Noodles function as currency. Over time, they became so valuable that people started using them to trade with. It didn’t take long for them to essentially replace tobacco products as the new black market currency, explains former prisoner Chandra Bozelko. “They’re easily stored and they’re non-perishable, so they can be kept for a very long time,” she says. Chandra served six years in prison in Connecticut for identity theft. The press called her the “Connecticut Princess” – an Ivy League graduate who was caught stealing credit card information and forging signatures to buy thousands of dollars worth of goods online. Now she’s out, she writes about prison life, including why instant noodles are so valuable on the inside. “You might have a certain book from the outside that I want to read. You might say, ‘I’ll give you 10 soups – 10 packages of ramen noodles – in exchange for that book,’ or to even borrow that book. I’m sure it’s been used for payment for sexual acts.” Noodles can ease social interactions inside a prison, Chandra says. “It can be used as a gratuity. So a lot of times there’s a laundry worker who washes people’s clothes, and even though you’re not required to do that, they might hand over a package of noodles when the laundry worker gives an inmate back her clothes, when they’re folded and dried.” It’s the same story for the men. Coss Marte says things can get violent when instant noodle debts aren’t repaid. “There are all types of hustling inside the system. People juggle. Juggle means you get, like, a 200% mark-up. If you give someone two ramen noodle soups, you get four [more] ramen noodle soups back within a week. “I’ve seen people get cut and stabbed for ramen noodle. And it’s not about the 30 cents it’s worth. It’s about the principle. It’s currency in the system.” Edible currency, that is. Chandra says she’ll never eat instant noodles again, but for Coss Marte, it’s a different story. He serves up his prison burrito and I give it a try. Warm and starchy, it’s full of flavour. Synthetic flavour – fake cheese and ketchup, mostly – but it’s easy to see why this would pass as comfort food inside a prison. In fact, prisoners turn noodles into all sorts of things, from tortillas to pizza bases. “I’ll make this once a year,” he explains, after eating a forkful of the burrito. “Maybe I’m watching a prison show or something and it’s like, ugh, memories.” Burritos are mostly off the menu because Coss is in shape now. He’s come a long way from prison, and runs his own gym. “I was eating all this junk food every day,” he says, gesturing towards the instant noodles. “The doctors told me my cholesterol levels were so bad I could die of a heart attack in five years. I was sentenced to seven years. That motivated me.” On his self-assigned exercise regime, he lost 70lb in just a few months. He didn’t want to die in prison, he explains. “The [prison] cemetery doesn’t say your name, just a number. I didn’t want to die in the system. I’ve seen people die in there. It’s pretty sad. Most of the time family don’t show up.” There’s now a big push to make the food served in prisons healthier. And globally, the trend’s the same. Noodle makers in China and Japan told us that they’re under pressure from consumers to overhaul their products, to subtract salt and add nutrients. But what happens if you eat only instant noodles? What would it do to your body? Kieran “Danger” Dooley can tell us – he’s the person who forced himself to exist only on noodles for a month as part of a student film project. After 30 days, Danger lost 11kg. Normally an easy-going guy, he experienced unusual mood swings. “I would go up and down, up and down. I wouldn’t say depression. It was more of a meh! I just couldn’t be bothered,” he explains. “I couldn’t be bothered making the noodles. I’d just stare at them for 10 minutes and think, ‘Why the hell did I do this?’” Danger made it through the month, with one sneaky trip to a pub to drink three pints of beer. The silver lining was that he won the top prize in his university documentary competition. And what did a month of eating square packets of noodles teach him? “Man can’t live on noodles alone. Well, they probably could but it wouldn’t be an existence worth living.” Tell that to those who still revere Momofuku Ando. In the instant noodle museum in Yokohama, there’s a cardboard cut-out of him. He is surrounded by, and equated with, famous historical figures – Marie Curie, Beethoven, Galileo, Einstein. But does the creator of instant noodles deserve a place of honour among the world’s greatest figures? Here’s one thing we can say – instant noodles are the world’s true convenience food, the hot food that’s always waiting there, in the background, for those who are short on money or time. As long as there are people living in dormitories, or shopping in convenience stores, or concocting meals in prisons – the instant noodle will live on.

Read More | BBC News

Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle, in 2018-09-28 02:55:13

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Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle

Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle http://www.nature-business.com/nature-the-eternal-life-of-the-instant-noodle/

Nature

At the age of 12, Coss Marte began dealing drugs in New York City. At 15, he was sent to prison for a year. That’s when he began to learn how things worked behind bars. “This guy next to me was serving 12 years,” says Coss. “We started cooking together.” That was the first of three stints in prison – including New York’s famously brutal Rikers Island prison. Each time, Coss existed on “prison burritos”, a regular makeshift snack for US inmates. “Instant noodles, potato chips, Cheezits. If you get lucky, you steal an onion from the mess hall,” he says. “You shuffle it up, you throw in a little bit of ketchup, mayonnaise maybe. I’ve had people tell me it tastes like Taco Bell.”

Basic instant noodles are the cheapest thing on sale in most prison stores, where three packs cost about a dollar. They’ve replaced cigarettes as the most traded item inside American prisons. They’re so important, inmates use them as money. As Coss was learning the ropes in prison, another young man living on the other side of the globe was also figuring out how to rely on instant noodles. Back in 2004, Kieran “Danger” Dooley was 20 years old and training to be a teacher in Dunedin, in southern New Zealand. But he was harbouring a dream to be a movie director. And one night he saw a film that gave him an idea. “It was Supersize Me,” he says. “I latched on to it and I thought, ‘Well, you know, old Morgan Spurlock, he’s a bit of a legend as far as I’m concerned.’ And I thought I’ll make the sacrifice. I can give this a shot too.” In his documentary, Morgan Spurlock eats nothing but McDonald’s for a month, recording the drastic physical and psychological impact. Danger Dooley chose the obvious student equivalent with his student film, Noodle Me. “I couldn’t really afford McDonald’s every day or Kentucky Fried Chicken or Burger King or whatever,” he says. Instant noodles were an inevitable choice. Sixty years after their invention, they have become the default food for anyone short on money, or time, or a kitchen. They even pop up in disaster zones and on long-haul flights. Last year, across the globe, more than 100 billion servings of instant noodles were eaten. That’s more than 13 servings for every person on the planet.

In the birthplace of instant noodles, Japan, they’ve been voted – repeatedly – Japan’s most successful invention, ahead of high-speed trains, laptops and karaoke. Instant noodle sales have certainly fallen in Japan since the invention’s heydey in the 1970s and 80s, and now occupy around 5% of all global sales. But don’t let that number fool you, Japan is still the world’s third-biggest consumer of instant noodles, after China and Indonesia, with more than 5.5 billion servings being eaten a year. But perhaps the story behind instant ramen is more important to Japan than actually buying and eating the product. It’s believed that the dried noodles sitting in many university dorms can trace their culinary ancestry back to an early form of ramen noodles brought over to Japan by Chinese chefs in the 1880s. Traditional ramen noodles are, in their most basic form, wheat noodles served in a soupy broth with some slices of meat or tofu on top. Over the decades, that simple recipe has been adapted and expanded over and over again, giving imaginative chefs the ability to show off their skills by making complex broths, perfectly textured noodles and an ever-expanding variety of toppings. The original ramen was eaten by Japanese labourers by the bowlful. World War Two changed everything. Large tracts of Japan were decimated by bombing. When the war came to a close in 1945, the surviving population was starving. Enter our unlikely hero – a failed businessman named Momofuku Ando. Ando, as he’s affectionately known, had earned and lost fortunes, first in his native Taiwan and then in Japan. He made millions in industrial parts during the war, then lost it. At one point, he went to prison for fraud. He then headed a bank, which collapsed. But Ando was persistent. He wanted to rebuild his reputation and his fortune. A decade after the war had ended, contacts in Japan’s ministry of agriculture told him they were eager to figure out how to push Japanese people to eat more American wheat flour – the key component of US aid at the time. That’s when, so the story goes, Ando remembered something he’d seen at the end of the war – queues of exhausted people waiting patiently in long lines for bowls of steaming ramen noodle soup. What was needed, Ando thought, was a modern, speedy version of that working-class comfort food. A food that, conveniently, used lots of American wheat flour. And so, at the age of 48, Ando transformed himself into a food inventor. He disappeared into a wooden shed in his back garden every day for a year. When he emerged, he’d invented a product that looks almost identical to rectangular bricks of instant noodles that are stacked on supermarket shelves around the world. You can see faithful recreations of that shed if you visit Japan’s three – yes, three – instant noodle museums. The one we visited, in the coastal city of Yokohama, is the biggest and newest. It is owned by the food company Nissin, which was founded by Ando. The red, square block of a building is all clean, straight lines. Inside there are shiny floorboards and pristine white walls – it looks like a modern art museum. Apparently, it’s a hot place for first dates. Visitors are quickly led into the “instant noodle history cube”, a brightly lit room lined with thousands of instant noodle products, starting with Ando’s original block of Chikin Ramen. At the end, there are even luxury instant noodles – in convenience stores in Japan, you can buy noodles from famous Michelin-starred ramen shops. In between the two extremes sit some of the thousands of instant noodles on sale across the globe. The cube is a mind-boggling showcase of what food inventors can do. Instant noodles were born in Japan, but marketers go to pains to make them seem local, wherever they’re eaten. Some countries like the basil and olive flavour. Others prefer cheesy curry or creamy seafood. In Mexico, noodles are eaten with salsa and slices of lime. Nissin’s Kasura Suzuki beams as we examine the packaging. “We launch over 300 products yearly,” she says, “just in Japan, for our company. But only 1% remain in the market. The products have a really short life cycle because consumers are always looking for something new. So we have to be very inventive.” Most of the museum’s visitors are Japanese, but then Raquel Scott, a teacher from San Francisco, appears bubbling with enthusiasm. “I grew up on cup noodles,” she says. “Especially in college, needing a cheap meal. So I thought it would be fun to come here. What other better food to have a museum for than the cup noodle?” There is no obvious mention of environmental concerns – such as the styrofoam cup used for cup noodles – in the Yokohama museum.

To embrace the mindset of this museum, you’ll need to swallow any lingering doubts about the wonders of instant noodles and their contribution to human civilisation. Kasura guides me to the last room in the museum. “Here we have Space Ramen, which is the final invention that our founder Momofuku Ando created,” she explains. “This product was developed especially for astronauts to eat during space travel.” I hesitate, but she doesn’t blink. You’re saying that at the age of 95, Momofuku Ando was responsible for this invention? “Yes,” comes her immediate response. “He wanted to go beyond the atmosphere and take his invention to outer space.” The museum staff and its visitors ooze a sense of national pride. Ando was actually born in Taiwan, but it was in Japan that his invention came to life. Instant noodles came along at a turning point in Japan’s history, accompanying its rise from a struggling nation to a modern economic powerhouse. They came of age when Japanese households were filling up with new home appliances, such as kettles. Television commercials from that age showed the effervescent commercials promoting convenient new foods. Today, a whole culture of appreciation has grown around instant noodles in Japan. At the heart of the movement sits a shy, unassuming man named Toshio Yamamoto. He’s better known to his fans as Ton Tan Tin – a name he gave himself because he liked the sound of it. He’s the world’s most prolific instant (ramen) noodle reviewer. “Oh I love instant ramen very much,” he smiles. “I’ve been eating ramen since I was 10 years old. I’m pretty much made of ramen.” Yamamoto once worked as an engineer, but his noodle reviews became so popular that he was able to quit and devote himself to testing instant ramen. Companies send him their newest offerings for testing and followers send him boxes of instant noodles from overseas. He’s reviewed more than 6,200 kinds of instant noodles. You can check out Ton Tan Tin online. Each video is almost identical – you see the package of the product he’s going to review, you watch it being prepared, and then you watch the noodles’ score out of five. The entire process is oddly mesmerising. But you’ll never actually see Ton Tan Tin on screen – just his hands. In person, he’s a slightly awkward man. He shuffles around his suburban house in Japanese slippers. “I haven’t found ramen that’s five stars yet. I’m still on the journey to find that,” he explains. “The noodles will need to be perfect. The soup will need to have great quality and the condiments perfectly balanced, with a nice harmony.” On a large computer screen, he begins to click through all of his reviews. Most scores hover around three out of five. Suddenly, a shockingly low score pops up – a 0.1 out of five stars. “Those noodles were really thick and ‘guagua’,” he says. “It was a really bad texture in my mouth. And the soup is really thick. It’s a very kind of artificial flavour. And the condiments you chew but they just keep staying in your mouth. They were very difficult to swallow.” The product in question? One of the UK’s top sellers – Cup Noodle Chicken and Mushroom flavour. Millions of British university students survive on this, I tell him. I also tell him I would like to be here on the day that he eats that perfect five. I’d love to see the look on his face. He smiles and closes his eyes a little bit, as if imagining what those noodles would taste like. “I would share my happiness with everybody,” he sighs.

If Japan is the county that gave birth to the instant noodle, China’s the country where it came of age. Out of the 100 billion servings of instant noodles consumed last year, 38 billion were eaten in mainland China. But in China, there’s none of the romance that’s associated with instant noodles in Japan – there are no museums dedicated to them here. Ton Tan Tin would be shocked. Inside a bustling railway station in central Beijing, travellers are preparing for long journeys ahead. In a cavernous waiting room, weary-looking people are clutching thin plastic bags, mostly holding a few containers of instant noodles. “It’s garbage food,” complains one young woman. She’s eating a pot as she waits to board her train. “Everybody knows it’s bad for your health. I don’t like eating it, it’s simply for convenience.” In the centre of the train, tucked into a cosy compartment, we meet Huan Zhuo Ming and Wang Li, a friendly couple in their 50s. It’ll be three in the morning when they reach their hometown. They are visiting their elderly parents for China’s tomb- sweeping public holiday. The train has just left the station and Huan Zhuo Ming is already tucking into his supper. “There’s nothing else to eat. Of course, its instant noodles,” Wang Li patiently explains as her husband enjoys the spicy beef flavour – a favourite in China. A convenient hot water tap sits at the end of every train carriage, and a queue of like-minded folk are filling up their cup noodles as we chat. Huan Zhuo Ming is a security guard in Beijing and Wang Li works as a cleaner. They’ve been married for decades but they don’t live together anymore. Instead, they each stay in dormitories provided by their employers. Their daughter, who’s a nurse, lives in a third dormitory. Three family members, all scattered across the city. But, when asked about their living conditions, they shrug. They don’t question their scattered existence. It’s passengers like these who’ve helped make China richer. They’re migrant workers who left their homes in the countryside to work in the country’s factories and major cities. China’s astonishing economic growth clocked 9.5% a year for three decades, the World Bank says. It’s the fastest growth in economic history – but it’s also growth that hinged on the makeshift lifestyle of migrant workers and the sacrifices they’ve endured. Imagine you’re a bottom-of-the-ladder worker in China, sleeping in a dormitory bunk bed every night and eating canteen food every day. What do you eat if you want a filling snack? Instant noodles filled that gap. But the instant noodle lifestyle is becoming a thing of the past. Sales peaked at more than 50 billion servings a year in 2010 – just after the Chinese economy clocked record gains. But instant noodle sales have been dropping every year since – down 16% last year, alone. “Every food is a product of its own time,” says Professor Meng Suhe. She’s the grande dame of the noodle industry. Behind a pair of thick glasses, she’s witnessed the arc in noodle consumption and how it followed China’s own path over the past 40 years. “Each rise and drop in instant noodle sales has reflected distinct times in China’s modern history,” she says. The government’s numbers show that half of workers lived in dormitories in 2011. Five years later, only 13% of factory workers did so. Sixty percent had moved into rented housing – places with kitchens allowing them to cook what they want, so there’s less need for instant noodles. Now, China’s workers are starting to reject noodles as they crave their mum’s cooking, Professor Meng says. “Also, Chinese people are starting to crave less processed food.” But noodle makers shouldn’t pack up yet. Lots of millennials haven’t learned how to cook, sighs Professor Meng, and they’re dependent on convenience foods and deliveries.

Coss Marte strides through the streets of New York’s Lower East Side with total confidence. “I used to sell drugs on this corner,” he says breezily as we walk across the street to a grocery store. He grabs items off the shelves. Doritos, instant noodles – the processed food favourites he used to rely on in prison. He pauses, staring at the packs of noodles. “This really is survival food in prison.” Michael Gibson-Light has heard this many times before. He stumbled across the importance of instant noodles when he was researching prison jobs. His resulting research on instant noodles made headlines when it emerged last year. He’s the one who declared something that US prisoners have known for ages – in the past few years, instant noodles have come to replace cigarettes as the most traded item in US prisons. “It was totally taken for granted by the prisoner population,” he says. “I was surprised since all you ever really see on TV and movies, or read about in research about prisons is that cigarettes are the de facto currency.” That’s notable because it’s such a huge population. The US has more known prisoners than any other country in the world 2.2 million at the last count. And the change – from cigarettes to instant noodles – boils down to money. Prison budgets have been slashed and most prisons feed inmates the minimum number of calories per day. Many offer just two meals a day on weekends. Prison food has been the subject of recent state Supreme Court lawsuits, with prisoners arguing that prison food is inedible. “So, the food is even worse and there’s less of it,” Gibson-Light explains. “If you’re in prison and you want or need more food than you can get from the chow line, then you have to buy it yourself. The costs of nutrition have shifted to the prisoners themselves. Instant noodles are a go-to because they’re cheap.” But it goes further. Noodles function as currency. Over time, they became so valuable that people started using them to trade with. It didn’t take long for them to essentially replace tobacco products as the new black market currency, explains former prisoner Chandra Bozelko. “They’re easily stored and they’re non-perishable, so they can be kept for a very long time,” she says. Chandra served six years in prison in Connecticut for identity theft. The press called her the “Connecticut Princess” – an Ivy League graduate who was caught stealing credit card information and forging signatures to buy thousands of dollars worth of goods online. Now she’s out, she writes about prison life, including why instant noodles are so valuable on the inside. “You might have a certain book from the outside that I want to read. You might say, ‘I’ll give you 10 soups – 10 packages of ramen noodles – in exchange for that book,’ or to even borrow that book. I’m sure it’s been used for payment for sexual acts.” Noodles can ease social interactions inside a prison, Chandra says. “It can be used as a gratuity. So a lot of times there’s a laundry worker who washes people’s clothes, and even though you’re not required to do that, they might hand over a package of noodles when the laundry worker gives an inmate back her clothes, when they’re folded and dried.” It’s the same story for the men. Coss Marte says things can get violent when instant noodle debts aren’t repaid. “There are all types of hustling inside the system. People juggle. Juggle means you get, like, a 200% mark-up. If you give someone two ramen noodle soups, you get four [more] ramen noodle soups back within a week. “I’ve seen people get cut and stabbed for ramen noodle. And it’s not about the 30 cents it’s worth. It’s about the principle. It’s currency in the system.” Edible currency, that is. Chandra says she’ll never eat instant noodles again, but for Coss Marte, it’s a different story. He serves up his prison burrito and I give it a try. Warm and starchy, it’s full of flavour. Synthetic flavour – fake cheese and ketchup, mostly – but it’s easy to see why this would pass as comfort food inside a prison. In fact, prisoners turn noodles into all sorts of things, from tortillas to pizza bases. “I’ll make this once a year,” he explains, after eating a forkful of the burrito. “Maybe I’m watching a prison show or something and it’s like, ugh, memories.” Burritos are mostly off the menu because Coss is in shape now. He’s come a long way from prison, and runs his own gym. “I was eating all this junk food every day,” he says, gesturing towards the instant noodles. “The doctors told me my cholesterol levels were so bad I could die of a heart attack in five years. I was sentenced to seven years. That motivated me.” On his self-assigned exercise regime, he lost 70lb in just a few months. He didn’t want to die in prison, he explains. “The [prison] cemetery doesn’t say your name, just a number. I didn’t want to die in the system. I’ve seen people die in there. It’s pretty sad. Most of the time family don’t show up.” There’s now a big push to make the food served in prisons healthier. And globally, the trend’s the same. Noodle makers in China and Japan told us that they’re under pressure from consumers to overhaul their products, to subtract salt and add nutrients. But what happens if you eat only instant noodles? What would it do to your body? Kieran “Danger” Dooley can tell us – he’s the person who forced himself to exist only on noodles for a month as part of a student film project. After 30 days, Danger lost 11kg. Normally an easy-going guy, he experienced unusual mood swings. “I would go up and down, up and down. I wouldn’t say depression. It was more of a meh! I just couldn’t be bothered,” he explains. “I couldn’t be bothered making the noodles. I’d just stare at them for 10 minutes and think, ‘Why the hell did I do this?’” Danger made it through the month, with one sneaky trip to a pub to drink three pints of beer. The silver lining was that he won the top prize in his university documentary competition. And what did a month of eating square packets of noodles teach him? “Man can’t live on noodles alone. Well, they probably could but it wouldn’t be an existence worth living.” Tell that to those who still revere Momofuku Ando. In the instant noodle museum in Yokohama, there’s a cardboard cut-out of him. He is surrounded by, and equated with, famous historical figures – Marie Curie, Beethoven, Galileo, Einstein. But does the creator of instant noodles deserve a place of honour among the world’s greatest figures? Here’s one thing we can say – instant noodles are the world’s true convenience food, the hot food that’s always waiting there, in the background, for those who are short on money or time. As long as there are people living in dormitories, or shopping in convenience stores, or concocting meals in prisons – the instant noodle will live on.

Read More | BBC News

Nature The Eternal Life of the Instant Noodle, in 2018-09-28 02:55:13

[gossipnetwork-blog]

How Women, Tech Took Over Porn: Inside the 2018 AVN Awards

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/how-women-tech-took-over-porn-inside-the-2018-avn-awards/

How Women, Tech Took Over Porn: Inside the 2018 AVN Awards

From #MeToo to cam stars, this year’s Oscars of the obscene showcased the future of porn

Here’s a Black Mirror pitch: You pay several hundred dollars to attend the world’s biggest porn convention and awards ceremony. You travel to Las Vegas, where the air has transformed into mentholated nicotine vapor and no one will validate your parking. You do this in order to meet porn stars in the flesh, to see them onstage celebrating the Oscars of the obscene, because – even though, according to Scientific American, half of us are now creating our own sexual content on our personal devices – there’s something superhuman about sexual celebrities.

Death of a Porn Star

When August Ames killed herself following controversy on Twitter, it revealed a schism between the gay and straight communities in the porn industry

But when you arrive at the convention, in place of your 1990s dream of impossibly proportioned stars in bedazzled Lycra posing for Polaroids, what you see is a 15,000-square-foot hall teeming with hundreds of beautiful, semi-clothed models of all shapes and styles, grinning into their laptops. You try to talk to a young woman in heart-shaped pasties and booty shorts, but she’ll only give you a few seconds of attention before she’s back to clicking her shiny gold nails across her keyboard.

Here’s the twist: This ain’t no dystopian nightmare. Attendees of the 35th Annual Adult Entertainment Expo and Adult Video News Awards were treated to precisely this display of tech-mediated intimacy. Plenty of big names were in attendance – stars who had led more traditional adult-film careers – but they were outnumbered by scores of up-and-coming models who primarily built their own businesses using cam shows, original clip stores and monetized social-media platforms. The mass availability of easily pirated streaming video may have decimated the porn economy, but it seems that women are the ones adapting, finding fresh ways to connect directly with consumers. As these models gain more economic influence, they are also raising the bar for consent conversations throughout the industry.

The last time I was at the AVNs was in 2012, when I was nominated for producing and directing a niche site called QueerPorn.TV. My Bay-Area scene was proud to think of ourselves as the forward-thinking weirdos, exemplifying the characteristics of the queer porn genre: body-positive and diverse, with a riot-grrrl aesthetic. We were nominated in the somewhat self-contradicting category Best Professional Amateur Site, and were miffed when we lost to Clips4Sale, a platform which had been around since 2003 for creators to upload and sell short original videos. Here we were, indie smut with a vision, and we lost to a tech host?

Now, it seems as clear as a Bellagio fountain that clips stores were the future of “professional amateurs.” While much of the male-dominated porn studio system is fighting against stolen content, independent female artists have been able to establish a sustainable business, producing their own content and marketing it to a small but loyal fan base.

One such artist is Bratty Nikki, a leggy, half-Mexican, half-Irish woman with a frosty reality-TV aesthetic: blonde extensions, impossible nails, skin-tight miniskirts and designer spiked heels. She sat on a gleaming white couch in an enormous booth on the expo floor, calling attention to her shirt, which read; “Never underestimate the power of a girl who knows what she wants.”

“Never underestimate the power of a girl who knows what she wants,” says Bratty Nikki. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

Nikki is the executive vice president of IWantEmpire.com, an umbrella company that includes IWantClips, IWantPhone, IWantFanClub and IWantCustomClips, with more in the works. Hers is one of many companies vying for dominance in a sort of clips market arms race. Nikki got her start seven years ago working as an online financial dominatrix, offering phone and cam sessions to clients in which she expressed a personality she tells me isn’t really a character. “I am a greedy brat,” she says. “I believe that I deserve the best out of life. My fans love that I’m confident enough to say, ‘This is what I want and you’re gonna give it to me.'”

She started IWantEmpire with her husband, entrepreneur Jay Phillips, because she felt other host sites were underestimating her as an artist. Like other platforms, they take a cut of the profits, but the artist sets their own price and decides what and how much they want to upload. Their brand expanded to offer a store for consumers to order custom clips, and a fan club where artists can monetize social media-like “lifestyle” content. As it turns out, kinky consumers are willing to pay for content created by people who understand precisely what they’re looking for.

Like many fetish clips, Nikki’s videos don’t include sex or even nudity, just specialty monologues in which she teases, chastises and degrades her devotees. In the larger-than life video projected over us in the booth, she wore skinny jeans and a tank top, standing in an apartment entryway holding shopping bags. “Yes, I’m leaving you,” she spits at the camera with an exaggerated eye roll. “I’ve already maxed out your credit cards. Taken a bunch of vacations with my girlfriends that you paid for. You’re going to be sitting home alone tonight crying into your pillow as you hate-jerk your little cock.”

The audacity of financial domination is a perfect fit for naturally bossy women. Haven, a Haitian-American dominatrix from Orlando, says that when she was go-go dancing and camming she didn’t take direction from clients very well. When she discovered that she could make fetish clips online, it was a way for her to make a career off her genuine demeanor. “I really don’t want to talk to you; I really just want your money,” she deadpans. “That’s me, wholeheartedly.” Now she films around 15 short clips every Sunday, improvising on topics like small-penis humiliation or jack-off instruction. She spends the rest of the week editing footage, scheduling uploads, writing marketing copy and promoting her brand on social media.

Fans mill about the floor of the AEE. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

“It takes a lot of work to make this look so easy,” she says.

I tagged along to an afternoon of clip shoots at a local film studio run by porn director/performers Madeline Marlowe and Will Havoc. Havoc was pulling a red and black leather harness over his tattooed chest, preparing to shoot sex scenes with two porn stars named Riley Nixon and Arabelle Raphael.

Riley, who was nominated for Best New Starlet at the AVNs, wiggled into a canary-yellow latex two-piece and platform heels. As she filled out her legal paperwork, she kept squatting and yanking on the rubbery crotch of her outfit. Even though she was following a conventional route to adult film fame, signing at the Penthouse booth and shooting for notorious gonzo studio Elegant Angel, she also sold Skype shows, custom clips and signed Polaroids on her personal website. She would post today’s footage on her own ManyVids and OnlyFans pages, where fans can pay a monthly membership for access to exclusive content.

One advantage to making her own content is that she has more leeway to maintain her preferred androgynous style and buzzed head ­– some mainstream studios still won’t cast models with short hair or tattoos. “I’ll wear a wig to play a character, but I don’t want to have to wear a wig to play the role of a woman,” she complains.

Arabelle has had to deal with her own hair troubles in the industry. She’s a French-Persian Jew, and long ago grew tired of being expected to straighten her hair and use skin-lightening makeup to work with certain directors.

“I was being cast in really racist roles,” she says, “and basically told I was not good enough.” She took time off to build her own membership site, a Clips4Sale store, and an OnlyFans following, discovering unprecedented financial and emotional success. “I had no idea I was a good performer and that people wanted more content of me,” she says. “I left my hair curly, got as many tattoos as I wanted, shot with who I wanted.”

Riley, Arabelle and Will showed one another the results of their standard STI tests on the secure Performer Availability Scheduling Services database. They negotiated sexual boundaries and preferences while doing their own costuming and makeup. With low production cost and the creative advantage of working with friends, they’re each an individual porn studio unto themselves.

Will Havoc, Riley Nixon and Arabelle Raphael film a scene after hours. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

Porn stars work hard and party hard, and sometimes they work while they’re playing. Late that night, I was invited to a private sex party with a hard-to-obtain address. A Lyft took me away from the light pollution of the strip to an edge of town tract housing development. Through the unfurnished living room, past an ominously neon-lit pool, was a warehouse filled with porn stars smoking blunts and offering one another bumps in their rhinestone-encrusted nails.

Hired stars ascended to a sort of wrestling platform in the center of the room, performing exaggerated lubed-up sex for onlookers to the rhythm of deafening drone metal. My friends, a polyamorous “family,” decided to find a quieter room in which to play. As I enjoyed a beer and watched sex-worker activist Siouxsie Q fuck her curly-haired boyfriend Michael Vegas, an AVN nominee for Best Supporting Actor – as her Barbie-blonde pro-domme girlfriend Bella Bathory was eaten out in a nearby chair – it occurred to me that we were doing exactly what porn fans assumed we must be doing. I felt like I had ringside seats to watch NBA superstars play a pick-up game.

As the four-day convention wore on, the all-night partying didn’t threaten to slow anyone down. The AEE still makes the classic circuit demands of conventional porn stars, each scheduled to appear for three- to five-hour shifts, where they were to sign and sell eight-by-10 glossies, allow hands around their waists and shoulders, smile, twerk, tell fans how their favorite position is still reverse cowgirl, princess wave, talk to men like they’re babies, talk to men like they’re dogs. But it was the cam models who had the boundless energy, who behaved like Vine stars or friends at a slumber party that just happens to be surveilled. They hovered over their screens, promising to spank one another in exchange for tips; the ding of virtual tokens being earned echoed the slots at the nearby casino.

The models had each brought their own laptops, colorfully branded with their stage names. Most of them had elaborate production rigs including flattering ring lights, bulky webcams and phallic microphones. Cam models perform all kinds of explicit shows when they broadcast from their homes; but, due to city-wide nudity laws, they couldn’t wear less than pasties and a thong at AEE. That meant no dildo shows or live sex. Yet their chirpy conversation still had value for the members watching from home, some of whom had actually financed the travel for their favorite model.

Performers at the FreeCams booth. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

At the booth for the webcam company Chaturbate, both men and women were making cameos on one another’s screens. This seemed to be in defiance of the porn convention that objects of desire should be separated, lest a consumer’s taste be offended or boner deflated by something they weren’t expecting to see.

A male model named Leon with One-Direction hair and powder-blue briefs explained to me that one of his online fans had just told him he was enjoying watching all the broadcasts because, “It’s like seeing all of the characters from my favorite TV shows in a crossover episode!”

I approached a group of giggling young camgirls in pastel-colored wigs. They were teasing a group of bystanders, telling them to tune in to their group cam show later that night “to see some real action.”

I asked them if they were hoping that in future years they’d be as famous as the porn stars in the Wicked or Evil Angel booths? Did they want everyone to know their names?

One of the models shook her head vigorously, making her unicorn-horn headband wobble. “The more famous you get,” she pointed out, “the more people will pirate your content.”

Her friend, who was wearing a mesh leotard with skeleton hands covering her nipples, agreed: “We make more money when only our fans know who we are.”

MyFreeCams performer Lil Miss Angel at the 2018 AEE. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

With the national conversation surrounding #MeToo, it was no surprise that the sex workers at AEE were ready to address the topics of harassment and bodily autonomy. Members of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC) handed out colorful “What Is Consent?” flyers, which illustrated how consent is “informed” and “freely given,” and that it “can be revoked at any time.”

For the second year in a row, every single convention attendee – fans and exhibitors alike – was required to sign a Code of Conduct form that outlined, for example, the difference between a consensual public picture and a violation such as an upskirt.

The Code of Conduct described a zero-tolerance policy towards “stalking, unwelcome physical contact” and ��offensive verbal assaults,” emphasizing that guests were “welcome to use the restroom that match their gender presentation or identity.” This last stipulation was especially welcome from the trans community attending the awards, as two years ago several performers accused Hard Rock security guards of disrespecting a gender non-conforming attendee.

Some participants were aware of ways they could make their models more comfortable. Best director nominee Greg Lansky, a delightfully flashy French pornographer in a red Givenchy tracksuit, says that he literally elevates his studio so that fans can see women “on a pedestal.” His security teams knows which performers are ok hugging and touching their fans and which aren’t.

“I’m trying to make these girls feel good about what they do,” he says. “They all worked really hard to get here.”

With security at all corners of his booth, with its Instagrammable gold couch and open bar, Lansky believes fans get the message that women deserve respect.

“It’s hard for me to go anywhere [in the hotel],” says Jessica Drake, a Best Actress nominee, from the relative privacy of her pristine media suite. “Guys congregate in groups of 30 and just stand there. They circle you. I’ve become a master of taking a selfie and restraining them at the same time.”

Director and performer Joanna Angel, owner of the alt genre site Burning Angel, says she’s never had a bad experience with a fan at AEE. “The fans are traveling to be here,” she says. “They’re really looking forward to this. People wait in really long lines to come see you.” The only time she’s seen nonconsensual groping is from men at the bar after the convention, whom casino security quickly ejected. “I wouldn’t even call guys like that fans,” she says, just entitled jerks.

Ron Jeremy, who has been considered more of a walking novelty than active performer for many years, was banned from the convention and awards show following his claim that groping is a part of the job of his pubic appearances.

In a statement to Rolling Stone, AVN CEO Tony Rios commented, “Ron Jeremy admitted guilt to specific aspects of our code of conduct policy. We discussed this with Ron, and he was not allowed to attend the convention and awards show.”

However, performer/director James Deen, who was accused of on-set misconduct as well as intimate partner violence back in 2015, was nominated at and attended the awards.

Rios clarified, “We did not prohibit people from attending based on accusations.”

Siouxsie Q, who was recently elected secretary of APAC, is upset about what she sees as double standards, where the young, powerful Deen is still welcomed while aging Jeremy is put out to pasture.

“I think we see similar trends in Hollywood. These accounts of Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior aren’t coming out during the height of the Kill Bill franchise, but rather in the soggy aftermath of Paddington Bear 2,” she says. “As someone’s star dwindles, people are more willing to watch them fall.”

Deen’s attorney Michael Fattorosi characterized comparisons to Jeremy as “inaccurate and unfair.” In a statement, he said, “James was never investigated criminally, nor were there ever any lawsuits filed against him by any of the accusers. Nor did James ever admit to any misconduct on his part.”

And unlike other industries where powerful men continue to be reckoned, those in porn face powerful taboos. “It’s challenging for adult performers to speak out regarding any abuse that occurs; it is because it perpetuates stigma and allows for society to tell us we asked for it,” says Tasha Reign, an APAC chairperson.

Siouxsie Q agrees that stigma plays a huge role in consent controversies within the sex industry. “As long as sex workers have as much difficulty as they do when reporting and prosecuting sexual assault,” she says, “there will continue to be a culture of silence, victim scrutiny, and inconsistencies in how the industry responds.”

Janice Griffith was nominated for the Best Actress award at the AVNs. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

“What do you think of this dress? It’s very ‘Times Up,’ but is it whorey enough?”

Janice Griffith, a Best Actress nominee, is in her hotel room preparing for the awards. It’s true that her black cocktail dress is not as provocative as some of her colleagues’ revealing red-carpet looks. The teal undertone in her ombre hair is fading. She’s Indo-Caribbean, Angelina Jolie-skinny, and speaks with a husky authority. She barks at her date not to interrupt her, impulsively dumping out a jar of candy because there’s nowhere else for him to pour her a fresh vodka cocktail.

None of Janice’s friends in attendance know how to roll a joint. I’m happy to oblige, so she gratefully hands me a packet of rolling papers the size of a hot dog and a sack of sativa the size of my laptop.

“Our biggest issue is that we treat an industry of freelancers as if we’re an industry of employees,” Janice says. Despite the efforts of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee and Free Speech Coalition, in her view, porn is currently too under-regulated for meaningful accountability.

“When men make women uncomfortable, we brush it off,” she says, “because we know people will write us off as being over-reactive or emotional.”

I visited many porn star rooms and saw both their self care safeguards and true psychological states – Sephora explosions and Cosco-sized boxes of Tangerine Emergen-cee, elaborate dabbing rigs and electric kettles. Janice had brought Complete Works of Kierkegaard.

Harli Lotts, co-host of the AVNs, dons a suicide awareness and prevention ribbon on the red carpet. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

As the red carpet wound its way through the Hard Rock, gamblers and bar patrons scrambled for a glimpse of the stars. While many pornographers opted for prom-worthy gowns and suits, their outfits nodded to their profession with bare midriffs, waist-high slits and undulating décolletage. Some wore little more than fringed bikinis. Lance Hart, founder of the PervOUT network, stood out in a stripper-style policeman’s shirt and fishnet stockings; he was handcuffed to his date Charlotte Sartre, who revealed on Twitter that she was not wearing anything underneath her slinky black dress. Abella Danger, last year’s Best New Starlet, shimmered in a transparent bodysuit adorned with strategically placed green and pink crystals.

The AVN awards show was predictably raunchy but surprisingly sincere. Co-hosted by comedian Aries Spears, Australian performer/director Angela White and camgirl Harli Lotts, the event’s biggest draw was hip-hop star Lil Wayne, who performed two high-energy sets with a drummer and DJ. The teleprompter dialog meshed well with the talents of porn star presenters, who were well-practiced in the art of the arched eyebrow and exaggerated wink.

White set a record by winning fourteen awards, the most AVN wins in one night. Clutching her Female Performer of the Year trophy to her remarkable cleavage, she emotionally thanked her co-stars for “allowing me to be vulnerable.”

Tommy Pistol, the Best Actor winner for a film called Ingenue, praised the industry for being a “fucked up family.”

Yet Spears, a MADtv alum, did not seem to pick up on the changing attitudes in the room. “Your personal space should not be invaded,” he declared, before utterly failing to read the room. “However, you bitches look delicious tonight. If I should come up to you and beg you for a blowjob, can you blame me? I am a hot blooded heterosexual male in a room full of professional cocksuckers.”

Eventually, the celebration came to an end. The false eyelashes were peeled off, the hangovers medicated with Ibuprofen and brunch. Pornographers’ minds return to their business, and to the social challenges they continue to face.

“We demand so much from porn stars,” says Bree Mills, a lesbian writer and director. “Performers who have made successful careers could be mentors. Give them infrastructure. Get them an appointment with an accountant, get them health care. They get the stigma stamp on them harder than anybody. We have to take care of them.”

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Greg Davis – Affiliate Millionaires 2017 ( Super Affiliate Rockstar Live + Bonus )

Greg Davis – Affiliate Millionaires 2017 ( Super Affiliate Rockstar Live + Bonus )

Oct 13th – Oct 15th, 2017 – You’re invited to the most shocking and profitable, private Affiliate Marketing event ever arranged..

“How To Make $50,000 PER DAY WITHOUT a Website, Sales Copy or List & Finally Gain 100% Clarity on How a Multi-Million Dollar Online Business REALLY Works”

The Affiliate Marketing No One Talks About

My industry is affiliate marketing, but not your traditional affiliate marketing. This isn’t Amazon; we don’t just get paid a small percentage of a sale.

While the so-called gurus are barely making a million dollars selling crappy information products, the REAL internet marketers in my industry are netting tens of millions of dollars per year, working part time.

There’s a secret world of much more successful online marketers out there, that are cashing in on an industry that has stayed under the radar for many years.

They are extremely tight-lipped. They rarely talk about how they make these huge sums of money outside of their very small circle.

And they all have one thing in common. More on that later.

My name is Greg Davis, aka Mr. $50K A Day and I’ve been blessed to be an insider in this world for many years. I’ve been a $1M/month super affiliate, an affiliate network owner, and a merchant.

The type of affiliate marketing I do is WAY bigger than Internet Marketing products.

In fact, if you take every product launch, every sales webinar, over the past 3 years and add up the revenue, it would still be dwarfed by my industry.

What is it?

It’s called CPA, which stands for cost per action or cost per acquisition.

You may have heard of CPA before, and there have even been a few lame courses and ebooks that have tried to teach it. But there has never been and actual insider, someone that routinely generates $50,000 – $100,000 per day, that is willing to reveal the TRUE secrets of the industry, for 3 whole days.

Until now.

What Make CPA So Much More Lucrative Than Traditional Affiliate Marketing?

Traditionally, affiliates get paid a percentage of an online sale. With CPA, the affiliate gets paid when the consumer performs a specific action.

The action can be as simple as having the person enter their email or even zip code (called email submits and zip submits).

I’ve been paid up to $5 when a consumer just enters their email. $5 might not sound like much, but when you can drive 10,000 leads/day it adds up quickly.

The Reason it’s so lucrative for affiliates is because you can get paid without the customer pulling out a credit card.

They don’t have to buy anything in order for you to get paid a commission, which makes it pretty easy to generate big profits.

100% commission programs used to be all the rage. In the CPA world, we get 1000% commissions. How?

When someone takes advantage of a free trial offer, they normally pay around $3 or $4 shipping to get a trial of the product. When they do that, I get paid a commission between $30 – $40, and sometimes more.

That’s because the advertiser (merchant) knows that they will make much more than that in the lifetime of that customer so they have no problem paying for them up front.

So don’t get me wrong, I know a lot of people that have made some cash in these programs, in some cases over $100,000 per month. But in CPA, many affiliates routinely make over $100k/day.

This is why they can drop $30k for a flight on a private Leer jet, while your favorite “successful” internet marketer is thrilled to be in first class.

Listen, I know $100k is nothing to sneeze at. I remember back in 2007 I was ecstatic about making 6 figures monthly in traditional affiliate marketing. But when you look at the staggering amount of money in the CPA industry, you can see why $100k is just another day’s work.

Why is there so much money in CPA?

Huge multi-billion dollar companies need customers. They have tons of offers, but they need traffic. They need huge amounts of traffic. Companies like Apple, Sears, Walmart and Netflix need a steady flow of leads, and they have no problems spending millions every single month to affiliates that bring them the traffic they need.

Now don’t get me wrong – if you work your ass off and do traditional affiliate marketing, mlm, or internet marketing, you can make some ok money.

But if you can learn CPA and get good at buying traffic, you can make staggering amounts of money in a very short period of time.

Up until now, there has never been a real insider that is willing to break the code of silence and teach the real secrets to making $xx,xxx per day with CPA, in a live 3-day event. That will change on Oct. 13.

For the first time ever, you will have the opportunity to learn how to bank 5-figures per day with affiliate marketing – directly from someone that has been doing it day in day out for the past 5 years.

In Washington DC, from Oct. 13 – 15 you will have the rare opportunity to learn the underground techniques we use to make over $50,000 per day. I’m hosting a private, closed door event where I’m spilling my guts.

Most marketers like to talk about THEIR earnings. I like to showcase my clients’ earnings, because that’s the true measure of someone’s ability to teach others. Just like I’ll be teaching at my event in October.

Get other products by Greg Davis right now!

Greg Davis – Affiliate Millionaires 3.0

So now you can see why my coaching students happily paid $50k for my secrets. Why would I share them now for a fraction of that price?

There are many in my industry that wish I would shut up and not tell anyone for any price, but I don’t believe in hoarding information. That is a scarcity mentality, and I believe in abundance. There is enough out here for all of us.

Your success doesn’t take anything away from mine.

But I have an ulterior motive as well. I have my own affiliate network (Rockstar Revenue), as well as my own offers so if I can train a small army of affiliates to duplicate my success and drive massive amounts of traffic, it’s a win-win.

You get the opportunity of a lifetime to learn how to make a mind-boggling amount of money, and assuming you promote my offers, the more money you make the more money I make.

Beautiful, right?

Therefore, I have every reason to tell you everything I know about making money with affiliate marketing. And that’s exactly what I’ll be doing October 13 through the 15th.

I have been doing affiliate marketing since 2000. For the first seven years of my career, I struggled. Like most people online I chased every shiny new object – you name it I tried it.

But no matter how hard I worked, no matter how close I came, I could never get to the point of consistent profits. It wasn’t until 2006, when I sought out a mentor, that I was finally able to get over the hump. One piece of advice from my mentor turned my affiliate business that was losing $100 per day into one that made over $100,000 per month. All in the space of three months.

That one piece of advice turned my life around. I was able to quit my job and do affiliate marketing full-time. This was a dream come true for me. I was able to work on my schedule, and we were able to pay all of our debts.

This was the year 2007. This was my first year full-time online, and was also the first time I attended a live event. This was not a coincidence. Up to that point I resisted going to seminars thinking that I really didn’t need that. But once I went to my first event and saw the extraordinary progress I made after the event, I was hooked.

So I piddled along making about $100k/month. On my best days I did $4k – $5k per day. Life was good, but I knew I could do better.

I went to a live event in 2008, and one of the speakers said something that gave me a crazy idea. That crazy idea I had worked for me, and it led to a major breakthrough in my business. Now, my days were $50K – $60K.

This is when I became known as the Super Affiliate Rockstar, Mr. $50k A Day. A couple years later I would cross the $100k/day mark.

So there is huge value in being at live events. Marketers that go to events make more money. Plain and simple.

By the way, I’ll be sharing the piece of advice my mentor gave me, and the huge breakthrough that multiplied my income by a factor of 10 at Affiliate Millionaires.

The benefit of live events is not just the content that you get there. Even more important than that is being surrounded by like-minded people. You see, being an online marketer can be a lonely business. Your friends and your family do not understand what you do. Live events are an opportunity for you to be around people that understand what you do, and to network with them.

One of the big keys to success in affiliate marketing in particular CPA, is relationships. Relationships are started and strengthened at live events. If you’re not attending live events, you’re missing out on one of the most powerful weapons in your marketing arsenal.

If you only go to one live event this year, you need to make it the Affiliate Millionaires event I’m holding October 13-15 in Washington DC.

Why?

Because this is the only place where you will be able to learn firsthand how to generate $50,000-$100,000 per day from someone that actually does it. I know that may seem like a lot of money to you right now, to make in such a short period of time – but this is a drop in the bucket compared to the vast amounts of money in the CPA industry.

So let’s get down to it – at Affiliate Millionaires, I’m going to teach you the exact formula for generating massive cash like my friends and I in the CPA industry do.

The foundation is quite simple. One of my mentors and friends, Lloyd Irvin told me this a long time ago:

Traffic + Conversion = Cash

As simple as it looks, there are a lot of moving parts to traffic and conversion, and in our 3 days together I’ll be teaching all the parts you need to generate 7 figures per year online. Starting with traffic:

The “Massive Traffic Trio“ is Where You Need To Focus for Maximum Scalability

Affiliate Millionaires like myself don’t focus on obscure traffic sources with puny amounts of traffic. We focus on the big boy traffic sources, the traffic sources capable of producing millions of dollars.

This is where the massive traffic is:

Traffic Source 1: Google (Search & Display)

Google is the undisputed heavyweight champion of traffic. According to Alexa.com, Google is the #1 most trafficked website in the world, followed by Youtube (owned by Google) and Facebook.

Google reaches a staggering 98% of the internet. Google Display Network (GDN) is the largest media buy network in the world by a wide margin. Text ads, video ads, mobile ads, banner ads – all can be created on Google in a matter of minutes.

My clients and I spend upwards of $75k/day on Google to promote CPA offers. It’s a huge source of traffic and at my event in October you’ll learn:

How to quickly ramp PPC campaigns from 3 figures to 5 figures per day The secret to finding keywords with huge amounts of traffic that convert like crazy How to triple the traffic of any profitable campaign instantly. No one is teaching this method! How to easily get new Google accounts even if you’ve been banned 331 times like me. How to write PPC ads that get high CTR and high conversion rates. How to get dirt cheap traffic on the Google search (not display) network Secrets to testing and tracking like a pro Bidding strategies – how to get the best possible ad placements for the cheapest possible cost per click What it really takes to build a $100k/day Google search campaign (hint: it’s not what you think) Traffic Source 2: Social Media

Since overtaking porn in 2012, social media is the #1 online activity. No matter how you feel about it, you can’t deny that it has become a big part of our culture. Most people check at least one social media platform at least once a day.

Many people spend hours a day on it. All these eyeballs on phones present an unprecedented advertising opportunity. Not only is there massive amounts of traffic available, it can be targeted down to the smallest of demographics.

The 800 lb gorilla of social media advertising is Facebook. Facebook is an absolute gold mine for affiliates and advertisers. At the event you will be around entrepreneurs like myself and some of the speakers that spend $50k – $100k+ on Facebook.

There are a lot of so-called Facebook ad “experts” out there, but show me some that are doing that kind of volume. Your favorite Facebook expert’s favorite Facebook experts will be at Affiliate Millionaires.

Facebook definitely leads the pack with its 2 billion+ users, but at Affiliate Millionaires you’ll learn about other social media platforms that we have been crushing with.

The social media platform that converts better than Facebook that no one is talking about. A new way to laser target your Facebook audience to explode your ROI. No one is teaching this. How to get unlimited $.05 – $.10 clicks on Facebook to skyrocket your ROI The New Facebook ad option that is absolutely crushing it that no one is talking about. How to promote affiliate offers without getting banned. The secret to scaling your Facebook campaigns the gurus are afraid to teach. How to get optins on Facebook for less than $.15! How to get so much engagement with your ads that they go viral and get tons of free traffic. Secrets to creating mobile social ads that convert better than desktop ads And much more Traffic Source 3: Email

Email is the #1 volume traffic source for CPA offers today, by a wide margin. Mastering email marketing is a big key to long term affiliate marketing profits.

How to get into mass email marketing the easy way. How to start mailing immediately without worrying about warming up IP’s and everything that goes into traditional email. The right way to buy data How to build massive lists – FAST – that you can monetize for years How to setup your pathways to sky-rocket opt-ins and increase conversions Unique methods to monetize your list that you never knew existed Conversion – Products and Offers

The next part of our Traffic + Conversion= Cash is CONVERSION. In our world conversion means having something to sell or promote that “converts” the traffic into money. This means offers. Products. Stuff to sell.

With CPA networks, you literally have thousands of offers at your fingertips. However, many smart affiliates realize that they can make a lot more money if they became the advertiser, or product owner. And one of the smartest will be teaching you at Affiliate Millionaires 3.0.

Special Session – Becoming The Advertiser (Product Owner)

The CPA industry consists of the affiliates, advertisers (the merchants or offer owner), and the CPA Networks that connect the two. Of those 3 entities, the one that makes the most money by far is the advertiser.

Over the past year especially, more and more affiliates are becoming the advertiser, and driving traffic to their own offers. At Affiliate Millionaires we will be having a special session on becoming the advertiser.

How to get, and keep your MIDS (merchant accounts) Credit card processing – the easy way How to find the best suppliers, and what to avoid. How to handle fulfillment without having a warehouse full of product How to build an internal traffic team so you don’t need to rely on CPA networks and affiliates When you leave you will have the knowledge you need to create and run your own offer.

Special Session – Ecommerce on Steroids

Ecommerce is all the rage now, and for good reason. There are lots of cute little $50k – 100k/mo stores out there, but when you combine in demand products with massive traffic you get $1M+/mo results like Affiliate Millionaires 3.0 speaker Jose Rivera.

Jose was making trips to China and doing ecommerce long before it was popular. If you want to learn how to profit with ecommerce in a huge way, come and here Jose speak at Affiliate Millionaires 3.0.

Get other products by Greg Davis right now!

Special Friday Session – Black Hat Night

I have a reputation for dabbling in Black Hat strategies from time to time. Now when I say Black Hat I don’t mean fraud, or anything illegal. I mean breaking the internet rules a little bit, the rules set by companies like Google and Facebook not the government.

I can’t say a lot about it in this public letter, but let’s just say we have some brand new Black Hat techniques that are making us a fortune. We’ll be sharing these and other Black Hat strategies in a special Friday night session.

In addition to all the excellent content, we are going to have fun. If you know anything about me you know I like to party, so you’re going to have a blast.

In addition to the excellent content we are going to have fun. If you know anything about me you know I like to party, so you’re gonna have a blast.

Why You Need to Come To Affiliate Millionaires:

1. You need fast, reliable and scalable traffic or you’ll be broke

If you want to make any real money in affiliate marketing, you must master paid traffic, and the absolute masters of paid traffic will be teaching at this event. Multi-billion dollar companies pay for advertising, they don’t rely on SEO or social media buzz.

You don’t do $50k – $100k days online with free traffic. If you want to make a few thousand bucks a month, and can wait a couple months to start getting paid, by all means try SEO.

But if you want scalable traffic that can bring in 5 and 6 figures PER DAY, you must master paid traffic.

2. If you’re not doing mobile right, you are already getting left behind.

Mobile is the fastest growing sector of online traffic BY FAR. More and more consumer dollars and advertising dollars are transitioning from desktop web to mobile web. In fact, 95% of the traffic I buy is mobile.

Go anywhere in public where people are hanging out and look around. Everyone’s face is buried in their phone.

As a seasoned web marketer that has been running campaigns for 17 years, I can tell you that it is A LOT easier to make money in mobile than it is in desktop web.

At the Affiliate Millionaires event, the some of the top mobile affiliate marketers in the world will be teaching you how to optimize your mobile campaigns for maximum profits. By the time you leave the event, you will know exactly how to make huge profits with your mobile campaigns.

3. It will help you make more money, bottom line.

Whether you are a newbie or are already banking $1M+ per month, I guarantee there is something you’ll learn at this event that will make you more money. A LOT more money. Between myself and the other excellent speakers, you will walk away with a blueprint to making huge profits in affiliate marketing.

4. There is no where else to get this information.

Most internet marketers can’t teach you how to make $50K/day because they’re not making near that themselves. And the people that are making that much are not talking. This is the only place where you’ll get the real deal, down and dirty information on how the BIG BOYS are making money online.

5. You will have the time of your life.

Making money is fun, and when you get together with like minded people who are making a lot of money or on the path to, it’s a real good time. I believe in work hard play hard, so we’ll definitely carve out some time to hang out and enjoy ourselves.

6. Networking

Some of the most successful internet marketers and industry movers and shakers in the world will be at this event, so it’s a perfect time for you to network and make deals. Like I mentioned earlier relationships are a big key to success in this business and there’s no better way to develop them than face to face.

7. Find out the one thing all CPA millionaires have in common

Success leaves clues, and a shortcut to success is to model those who are already where you want to be. This one secret will blow you away and is well worth the price of admission by itself.

Affiliate Millionaires is not intended for newbies. However, if you are new to affiliate marketing and CPA don’t worry this bonus will bring you up to speed. Fundamentals of Affiliate Marketing/CPA Live Weekly Trainings Will be recorded Run paid traffic campaigns BEFORE the event Open to Affiliate Millionaires Attendees ONLY. Bonus # 2 How To Promote VSL’s on Facebook VSL + Facebook = Cash Easy and Lucrative Complete Guide Landing pages Ads Tracking & Testing And much, much more Bonus # 3 Facebook Accounts Guide Been Banned? Never start a new ad account How to acquire all the accounts you need How we are currently acquiring accounts Reliable, reputable suppliers if you choose to buy Bonus # 4 Payment Methods Guide Multiple accounts help you scale fast. Each FB & Google account needs a unique form of payment. Get up to 70 new payment methods Even if you have bad credit Get Greg Davis – Affiliate Millionaires 2017 right now! Greg Davis – Affiliate Millionaires 2017 Free Download, Affiliate Millionaires 2017 Download, Affiliate Millionaires 2017 Groupbuy, Affiliate Millionaires 2017 Free, Affiliate Millionaires 2017 Torrent, Affiliate Millionaires 2017 Course Free, Affiliate Millionaires 2017 Course Download

Greg Davis – Affiliate Millionaires 2017 ( Super Affiliate Rockstar Live + Bonus ) published first on http://ift.tt/2qxBbOD

[abmcj3a-blog]

By Jesusa Javar

In my three years of studying mass communication, I have gone to conclude that maybe Niklas Luhmann made a good point in saying, “Whatever we know about our society, or indeed about the world which we live, we know through the mass media”—this is to give you all, my point of view about how I have concluded that today’s reality is indeed influenced greatly by our dear mass media. Many of you would likely be enlightened (a little), and maybe to some this would just be a joke, no big deal, just a rant. But whatever you put your opinion in my context, I just want you all to know that this is built with a little help of how I understood different studies and perspectives of several sociologists and also a little bit effort of observation. To give you more specific introduction to my paper, I will be a little sad to inform you that I would only be setting limit in concluding mass media’s reality to the society. I chose to tackle a specific topic, which is the ideological imposition of how mass media gave society idea of stereotyping, specifically in looks. About how I think the media had created into our minds a picture of how “ugly” looks like and what “beauty” is how we understand “weird” and “normal”. How the media let us unconsciously be conscious of our everyday looks. In advance, I am gravely asking for everyone’s consideration, if ever I’ll be stepping a little on someone’s dignity.

                             In present situation, everybody seems to be a little obsessed with everything about Korea, especially to the Filipinos. I have known almost all of my friends being already eaten by the system. Good thing, it’s not something illegal to be addicted about. And even though, it takes me a little harder to admit, I guess, I am also becoming one of them. Now, I have watched several recent Korean t.v series, but so far what has caught my attention the most was “She was pretty. You might be wondering, why. In connection with my topic, this seems to be so intriguing. The theme of the story is romance and as usual, it revolves around a story of love. We Filipinos are very much enchanted on stories about rags to riches. Stories about transformation. About change, and that change, that transformation is something fruitful. Strong and avenging, that transformation that would definitely give you the sense of “wow”. And this is very much alike to our choice of plot. The main character here, went from several transformations. On her teenage years maybe around 12-15 years old, the character was portrayed by someone good looking. She was tall, skin(specifically in the face) was smooth, emphasizing the absence of acne and pinkish cheeks, intelligent, has a silky-shiny-long hair, is always neat and appears to be so feminine. All the innocence and decency plus her family is all wealthy. And during this stage of her life, everything was so smooth, so perfect and very much appreciated. Very different from her adolescent life, of which where her family experienced feeling so downtrodden, everything in her smooth life turned into a downward spiral. The lost of their wealth, was also the cause of her change. She shifted from what the society preferably call, ugly. How was she called ugly? The presence of acne’s on her skin was emphasized, she grew a kinky hair, all dry and dull, and they made her wear untrendy clothes, all too plain and loose. Too 80’s and 90’s. People around her would always give her a judgmental look. In fact, she even tried finding a job, but several times she was rejected because of her physical appearance. By now you should notice, the media has the power to construct an image on your mind. It doesn’t need to forcefully attack you with certain more explanations and imagery of ugliness, right then and there, you are unconsciously imposed into an idea of a certain image they are creating on your mind. Going back to the story, after a couple of tries, she then eventually gets a job. On her first day of work she doesn’t want to be late on her first day so she decided on taking the elevator, a crowded elevator, she managed to get in first until this last person, but the elevator was too overloaded, some obliged her out of the elevator instead of the maiden who came last, take note the maiden was more feminine and prettier. Even though it is out of her will, she gave way. Although one good thing happened on this scene, two manly characters right what was wrong. Of course let us not forget that this is still a love story. But still her struggle doesn’t stop there. She was assigned into a more challenging and life changing job. A writer/worker in a magazine company, take note, this is not just simply a magazine company but a fashion magazine company. Where she experienced to be judged by her looks more harshly. And where another transformation took place, because it is a “necessity”. After her boss saw how she dress and how she looks, she called her for a conversation in her office and demand her worker to change into something “most-like”, a term that their boss frequently used to mean, “fabulous”, “trendy”, “in style”. She added her reason for wanting the main character to change is for “her”-the main character to not be “left behind”. Korea as we all know is now home to fashion and trend. And we Filipinos follow whatever trend there is. This is the kind of ideology I was trying to articulate. We want to change, we are dragged into an idea of “trend” and “fashion”.  And what dragged her even more to change is because she was afraid that her romance will eventually fall. That she might be unappreciated by the guy that he likes.

                            Another material I had for critiquing is, a Korean movie entitled “200 pounds beauty”. Just in case you are wondering, I am not a hater of any Korean beliefs and practices, in fact my philosophy in life is no hate, just appreciation. And I appreciate Korea from top to bottom, I definitely respect their culture and everything about them, it just so happen that their films are very much suited for my paper. Now going back, the story is about, again transformation. But this one, the main character was obliged to transform herself just so she can keep up with her job and because she was triggered by the ideologies of the society, because the entire world become so harsh about her. She experienced depression and self-down but, the main character wants fame. She’s got the talent, a very charming and ear refreshing voice. Very much appreciated by the people, but she can only showcase this talent behind a beautiful face of another actress. To those who haven’t yet watched the film, you might be guessing why she needs to hide. Well, simply because she is a 200 pound fat lady. And for the institution that she works for, her physical appearance doesn’t qualify her to be showcased onstage, and in front of all people. So, she decided to undergo plastic surgery from head to toe. In show business industry, we all know the number one qualification, if you want fame, you’ll need the looks. And this is what triggered her to change herself. You see how the media is giving you the thought, when you are obese, overweight, fat, or whatever you call it, you are underappreciated in the society. This is how despising the content of this film contain, or even other films that shows the same example. In George Gerbner’s cultivation perspective, with the media showing this kind of content can impose an idea to young minds that fat people are therefore underrated and degraded in the society. Do you realize how this can be viewed where bullying comes from? Being bullied because of my size, I have been there. And I know how hard it is to feel all the insult, because they made me feel so insulting. They made me look at my size so insulting. You see what kind of mindset we are all imposed into? The media is obviously creating its own reality, and it wants us to internalize what they have been continuing to externalize. The hegemonic power of media. You’ll never question about it. You are unconsciously just following and internalizing things that have been told to you. What’s is even confounding is the idea that after she did transformation, she gain more appreciation and the fame that she wants. But after people found out her real story, only few remained to appreciate. What I love about the film was its perplexity. People ask you to be real, but once they saw your authenticity, your real person, they care less. Will they ever appreciate her if she’s fat? Some may and some may not, but she will never know fame the same as she had known how it felt when she was skinnier. When the ideologies of the society changed her. It is therefore the kind of idea that was imposed into her, that there will always be standards and stereotypes.

                            Now before you all lose your grip of my critique, to those who never get to relate on Korean-stuff, here’s a change of atmosphere. Have you ever heard or tried reading, Jerry Spinelli’s novel entitled, “Stargirl”? I’ll be honest to you, there is not much to critique about this, and I only have few standpoints on this novel, because honestly I admit this is a one good writing, and it also has that perplexity and paradoxical enlightenment standpoints. But what was surely intriguing in this novel in connection with my topic is its creation of “weird” “atypical” “different” all words paradoxical to “normal”. So how does the story go? This is a story of a new girl in town, probably a little bit similar to the novel “the schwa was here” if you’ve ever read that, or heard of that. So this girl named “Stargirl” is creating the image of “weird” in her new school. She became the talk-of-town in her school because she is showing different attitude compared to most students of their school. In what way? She wears clothes that are too loose, too big, too 80’s and 90’s that as if it’s a hand-me-down cloth from her grandma to her. She always brings with her a ukulele that she strum most of the time, she smiles a lot, that made everyone think that she is a project of the school. Most people think she doesn’t belong to the “average” or normal but rather too “atypical” and weirdo type. Not did this novel just created an imagery of weird but also the idea of how normal looks like. If you are one with the domain, you are normal. If you are not socially awkward, is capable of socializing and handling the imperatives of the society and institution you belong, no question, you are normal. Not just that, but also this novel depicted the ideological superiority of campus heartrobs and campus royalties. The ruling of femininity. That you are an “it” girl if you belong to the cheerleading squad, you are hairy, pretty and you’re girly. There’s a creation of ideological role. To young minds, this is surely unquestionable and real especially if you are a product of Disney movies, you’ll never be new to this kind of idea. Although, what I really admire about this story was the fact that the author did not attempted to change the character, and at the last part, there is that appreciation and understanding.

                            Being physically conscious, we are already there. Every single time of the day, believe me. And the reason why the mass media never fail to make us regret this realities, is that because we keep on accepting these realities. In today’s world, what you look and how you look will always be a big deal. It is a burden and also your power. Also a commodification for others.

[ama-accountability]

"A Beginner’s Guide To Aquafaba November 25th, 2015 • Living With Less Waste, Sustainable Food You know when you cook chickpeas (or other beans and pulses) from scratch? You boil them on the stove top for an hour or two, and then you drain off the cooking liquid? You gotta stop throwing that golden cooking liquid down the drain! I’m serious. Yes, I’m talking about that stinky, kinda slimy, smells-a-bit-like-old-trainers liquid that disappears down the plughole when you strain your freshly cooked chickpeas. Because it is a magical ingredient. I kid you not. It turns out that chickpea water (chickpea brine), which alternatively and rather more glamorously is also referred to as aquafaba, is a miracle ingredient… something that isn’t waste at all, but is actually very useful! You can whisk it up like egg whites and use it in baking to make cakes, icing, macaroons and meringues. It’s taking the vegan world by storm because it’s making the impossible possible, but even if you’re not vegan and you eat eggs, the chance to use a waste product to make something edible and delicious can’t be scoffed at! I first heard about aquafaba when I posted a picture on Instagram of a big batch of chickpeas I’d cooked, and somebody asked if I was saving the liquid to make meringues. It sounded crazy (and unfortunately I’d just tipped 2 litres of it down the drain) but after seeing some pictures suggesting it could actually be done, and in spectacular style, I was sold. There might be a lot of beautiful images out there showcasing the miraculous things that can be done with aquafaba, but as a beginner, I had absolutely no idea where to start. Lots of the recipes refer to using the aquafaba from tinned chickpeas, but I cook my own chickpeas, so I wanted to know how to use this kind of aquafaba. Not being able to find this information on the internet, I spent an entire weekend whisking and testing this chickpea water (and eating far more meringues than I care to remember) and as a result, I think I’ve mastered the basics. First Up – Cooking Your Chickpeas If you’re still buying chickpeas (or other pulses) in tins, you are seriously missing a trick. Pulses are super cheap to buy, you can find them in bulk (so packaging free), they take up hardly any space in the pantry and they last forever. You can cook them up in bulk and they freeze really well. Cans are bulky, BPA-lined (meaning chemicals leaching from the plastic into your food), the brine often contain added salt and sugar, plus they are pretty resource-heavy being made from metal, and use a lot more fuel to transport than their dried counterparts. Make your own – it’s easy! Ingredients: dry chickpeas, water Soak your chickpeas in water, ensuring they are in a big bowl with enough water covering them as they will expand (depending on the variety, up to three times the original size). Soak for a minimum of 8 hours (overnight). I tend to soak mine for 24 hours or more (changing the water every 8 hours or so) until white bubbles appear in the water. Be sure to throw this water away – it is not the aquafaba! To cook, place in a large pan and cover with fresh water. Bring to the boil and cook for 1.5 hours. You want to ensure the chickpeas remain covered (you can top up with a little extra water, and keeping a lid on the pan will stop as much evaporation) but try to ensure there isn’t too much extra water. As you cook, white scum will come to the surface. Scoop this off and discard. After 1.5 hours, drain the chickpeas ensuring you keep the cooking liquid – this is the aquafaba! I usually cook dry chickpeas 1.5 kg at a time, meaning I end up with about 4 kg cooked chickpeas, and this makes around 2 litres of aquafaba. Chickpeas freeze really well. Decant into glass jars and once completely cool pop into the freezer. Wait until completely frozen until sealing with lids. I use regular glass jars and I have never had one crack. Aquafaba will keep in the fridge for up to a week so don’t feel like you have to use it straightaway. If you don’t want to use all the aquafaba at once, this freezes really well too. Pour into an ice cube tray and once completely frozen decant into a glass storage container and keep in the freezer. Aquafaba: How to Turn the Yellow Liquid into White Fluffy Stuff What you’ll need: a good whisk, and a big bowl…plus a little patience ; ) Pour the yellow chickpea liquid into a big bowl, and start whisking. The bowl needs to be big because as it fluffs up, it will expand to more than 5 times its original volume – so be prepared! You will also need a good whisk. A hand whisk isn’t going to cut it. Neither is a food processor or blender, even a high powered one (I tried). I have a stick blender with a 700W motor, 5 speeds and an additional turbo button, and this just about managed, although the motor did get uncomfortably hot. I would recommend a hand held whisk with two beaters, or a mixmaster or something with a little more power. This is my aquafaba before adding cream of tartar. Because I don’t have a super powerful whisk, I found cream of tartar helped form the stiff peaks you need for meringues. Chickpea water needs to be whisked for a long time. (Long being relative of course, but in the age of electric gadgets we expect instant results, so be warned!) You will need 10 – 15 minutes of constant whisking to get the aquafaba to full fluffiness and stiff peaks. On the plus side, you don’t seem to be able to overwhisk aquafaba like you can egg whites, and if you need a break from holding the hand whisk (or like me, are worried about burning out a stick blender), it seems fairly forgiving to stop-starting. Lastly, don’t be too worried about how concentrated your chickpea water is. Remember, egg whites are fairly runny before you whisk them, and aquafaba is the same. If you think your liquid is really watery you can reduce it a little in a pan, but don’t be too worried about this. I reduced 2 cups of aquafaba to 1 cup in a saucepan by simmering, and then whisked, and actually found it fluffed ever so slightly less than the original non-reduced aquafaba. The main thing will be a good whisk, and enough time. How to Make Aquafaba Meringues I based my experiments on this basic aqaufaba meringue recipe. Far more meringues than I actually wanted to eat later, I think I’ve mastered the basics. My next challenge is to improve the shape – something I think I will achieve with a slightly better whisk, and probably a little more patience! Ingredients: 1 cup aquafaba; 1.5 cups granulated sugar, ground into powdered sugar; 1 tsp vanilla essence and 1/2 tsp cream of tartar. Whisk the aquafaba into stiff peaks. Ideally you want a mixture so stiff that if you turn the bowl upside down, the aquafaba won’t fall out, but my hand whisk isn’t up to beating quite that well. (If yours is, you may not need to cream of tartar.) Once the peaks are as stiff as you can get them, add the cream of tartar, still whisking. This will help firm up the peaks. Next, add the sugar slowly. This is important… you don’t want to deflate the bubbles you’ve created. Add 1 tbsp powdered sugar at a time, whisking continuously to incorporate. Yes, it takes ages, but rush and you’ll flatten your meringues. The bowl on the right is the aquafaba once the cream of tartar and sugar have been added. The sugar gives a shiny gloss to the aquafaba. When all the sugar is incorporated, add the vanilla essence. Turn your oven on to the lowest temp. Recipes state the temperature needs to be between 80 – 110°C. My gas oven actually doesn’t go below 120°C but as it never seems to get to temperature anyway, it didn’t matter. Line baking trays with baking paper, and blob the meringue mix onto the paper (I used a soup spoon, and the blobs were about 4cm diameter). Aquafaba meringues about to go in the oven. I still haven’t mastered how to keep the shape once they go in the oven…that’s the next challenge! Pop the meringues into the oven, and leave for 1.5 hours minimum. You aren’t actually trying to cook the meringues but dry them out. If they go brown, your oven is probably on too high. To test if they are ready, see if you can remove one from the baking paper (ideally without taking the tray out of the oven). If it still sticks, leave in the oven. Keep testing until the meringues can be removed cleanly from the paper. When they are ready, turn the oven off, open the door slightly and leave to cool completely before removing. You’re better off leaving to cool in the oven overnight rather than putting them in a container whilst still slightly warm. Store in an airtight container if not eating immediately. What’s Next – Aquafaba in Baking If you’re interested in seeing more amazing creations with aquafaba, there is a great Facebook group called Vegan Meringue – Hits and Misses with lots of recipes to try when you’ve mastered the basics. It’s also a great community and a brilliant source of inspiration! I’m hoping to spend plenty more time in the kitchen experimenting with this stuff! I’ve already attempted making chocolate brownies using aquafaba and was really pleased with the result (especially as it was a first attempt), and with a few more tweaks I’m hoping to perfect this (and share the recipe with you of course). I’m also keen to try macaroons. Playing with aquafaba is so much fun!"