#shout out to op i literally don’t remember when i screenshot this

[181kmh]

logan sargeant:

[markcampbells]

I gotta say, I’ve been seeing entitlement in fandom spaces more and more lately. It’s always been there, but for some reason I’ve been seeing it way more than usual the past couple weeks.

I tried joining a Hamilton memes group on Facebook that looked like fun, though like most Facebook groups of this nature it’s a lot of screenshots of posts from Tumblr. About three days after I joined, someone asked whether or not it was considered appropriate to watch a bootleg. Anyone who objected to the practice or who said hey, Lin is really against bootlegs, got shouted down. Accessibility concerns were brought up, but the arguments coming up more frequently were just... really something. “If you’ve bought the book/CDs/merch, you’ve done your part!” “I really wanted to see the OBC!” “The revolution was also illegal!” (Yes, that was an actual thing someone said.) Someone brought up a professional Broadway actress (whose name I don’t remember) saying that actors know when a person in the audience is filming and that it throws off the entire performance. “Revolution was also illegal” girl, and a couple others, rebutted by saying they’re actresses; you can’t see anything beyond the first five rows so how would they know someone was filming. When I and a couple others pointed out that Lin was regularly calling out specific audience members for texting, she got rude and said “that’s how light works,” that of course you can notice texting, but who’d notice recording? Needless to say I ended up leaving the group; that was not the first unnecessarily pissy thread I saw in the literally three or four days I was part of it. (There was also a lot of “Lin grew up being unable to afford theatre so he should support bootlegs!” / “The show makes enough money that a bootleg isn’t going to hurt them!” I really do feel accessibility is a problem--I have disabled friends who’ve had issues with NYC theatres when we’ve gone to see shows--but bootlegs aren’t exactly the answer.)

The Night Vale discussion group I’m part of is... ehhh. It’s not so much about the actual show as it is about people sharing stupid memes they think are Night Vale-esque, and since that’s not what I’m looking for I’ve debated leaving, but I’ve stayed so far, although I don’t really love some of the way it’s run. (Just today I said I thought it was a little ridiculous to ask for a spoiler warning to be added to a post about a three-year-old episode; even though I understand the backlog is huge and not everyone is caught up, at this point it’s a Late Arrival Spoiler and this week I’ve been seeing people asking posts about the four-year-old Strexcorp arc be tagged as spoilers. More people agreed with me than the mod, but the mod’s opinion rules.) The one thing I run into in this group is people who are against Joseph and Jeffrey’s policy that no one sell their own Night Vale merch. When I see someone who’s clearly not aware of the policy and is asking for something made for personal use to be sold, or who’s bought a piece of merchandise not from the store, I bring up the policy, because Joseph and Jeffrey have gotten really upset by people selling nonofficial merchandise, and it’s literally part of the FAQ. Last time it happened, it was someone posting about a Night Vale tie, and the person bitched at me saying it was okay they bought it because there’s no official Night Vale tie. (And then Night Vale ties and scarves got introduced to the store a few months later.) Today, someone asked that a pattern for a Night Vale kniting project someone did be posted on Ravelry for money. Fortunately, the OP said it’s just a heavily modified version of an existing pattern, so she seemed to either understand the merch policy or just didn’t want to share the pattern. When I brought up the merch policy for the person who asked the pattern be sold, I get: “That's cool. So they're going to provide knitting patterns to buy? I'd certainly be glad to pay them directly just as soon as they are available.” ... and this person is suddenly no longer part of the group, so either she flounced out or got removed by a mod.

I just can’t believe the air of entitlement I keep seeing, with the same justifications, every single time. It’s okay to steal if it’s something you really want, right, or if you’ve done some invisible tally of things to prove you’re a Real Fan before you steal or do something the creators of the show have specifically asked you not to do.

[nf-pia]

#TurbulenceinMIA fanaccount

So to anyone who cares to read about my experience please continue on reading. This will be a showcase of my roller coaster emotions so I apologize in advance if my thoughts are all over the place.

Anyways, I got to the venue around 12pm to get my p2/hitouch wristband. I think this fanmeet is more organized than it was for FlyinATL. Most probably because I went to the venue a day before and saw the signs on the doors on where to get the wristbands. Tbh the line was sorta organized, but towards the opening of the doors people that just arrived cut in front of the people who were there since morning. That kinda angered me a bit, but I wasn’t gonna let it ruin my day since I’ll be seeing my boys again for the 2nd time.

So I stood in the GA standing section on the right side and because I’m short (5′2), I can’t barely see shit HAHA. I had to tiptoe and jump just to see the stage. There was chairs on the stage before Got7 came in, so I immediately knew the first song would be Let Me… and your girl was right. But I wasn’t prepared for the next song which was Prove It. LORDT I WAS GONE. In my fancam, I said “oh my god, Prove It YAAAS” so loud the girl behind me laughed at me XD I don’t blame her though. She could tell I was JB trash. 

So they did their introductions and i was cheering for every member then when it was JB’s turn my screams went from volume 10 to 50 right quick LMAO .I will post the fancam of it soon. During the Parkson and Young & Rich game Jackbum kept hugging each other and 2jae had a moment where jb held youngjae’s head against his… i was gone… my 2jae and Jackbum feels were alive.

Then came the fan x got7 game… I legit was about to get called by JB, but i was a number away from the raffle ticket he said. I was about to have a heart attack lmao. I hated his partner so much, but we ain’t gonna talk about how rude she was to JB because it just angers me so much cause jb deserves better treatment. If I was his partner instead, I would’ve treated him like a king and made him feel loved. Also, during one of the opening songs Yugyeom looked in my direction then I smiled at him then he had the audacity to wink + smile at me. Like ok boo, I know you fine as hell, but I ain’t tryna ruin my bias list, i still love u though. Then during the same song JB went to my side then the light shone on the fans where I was then I sent JB a finger heart then our eyes met then he smiled at me. OK I WAS SHOOK.. RIGHT AFTER I SHOOK MY MOM BY HER SHOULDERS CAUSE I COULDNT BELIEVE PIABUM WAS REAL FOR ONE SECOND. 

Skipping to Home Run encore. There was a line barrier letting us know we can’t stand outside of that line, but your girl was like YOLO I didn’t run towards the stage during encore last time so I’m gonna do it now IDGAF. So i went there and Youngjae was literally two handspans a way from me. I was screaming YOUNGJAE!!!! like bloody murder so he looked my way for a second and we made eye contact. I didn’t know he stared at me until I was trying to screenshot every second of my fancam. Then Jackson came out of no where then started hugging Youngjae! In my head I was like ME TOO JACKSON ME TOO. Then he walked towards me. I started screaming “JACKSEN JACKSEN” then JACKSON LOOKS AT ME AND SMILES… LIKE LEGIT SMILES AT ME /DED/ RIP PIA THEN I WAS REACHING MY HAND OUT TO HIM AND HE HELD IT DBGWYEUEISAJDBSAYDUAHNIJDM GSTYEUHIJDSADASDBUINSDSDTRWYDUSN I AM SO BLESSED??? THEN TO THINK I WAS JUST TRYING TO RECOVER FROM THAT INTERACTION I HAD WITH JACKSON.. BAMBAM COMES AND STANDS IN FRONT OF US HE TOOK THE PHONE OF THE GIRL NEXT TO ME THEN I SAW THE PHONE WENT BLANK SO HE HAD TO RETURN THE PHONE TO THE FAN. SO HE HAD TO GO BACK TO THE CENTER OF THE STAGE THEN HE SENDS US A KISS!!!!! AGAIN RIP PIA!!! then i went back to my original spot cause the security finally saw me outside the line barrier. So I made a run for it LOL i wasn’t tryna get kicked out before hi touch happens. 

So for the highlight of my night. The Hi-touch. After the fanmeet, they asked p2 ticket holders to sit on the seats behind the GA area. So photo op came first and the boys came back out to take pictures with the fans. I was literally singing “that should be me holding your hand” whenever a fan holds jb’s hand for the photo. I was jealous af. In our seats my mom and I were devising a plan on how were are gonna record our experience without getting caught. We ended up not recording anything cause we’re afraid my phone would be confiscated. Anyways so it was time for hi touch. As i was in line, I kept practicing what I was going to say to each one of them… so Jinyoung was first, I just said Hi, Jinyoung then he smiled at me, Yugyeom was next so I said HIT THE STAGE then he smiled at me. THEN IT WAS JB’S TURN. I WAS TRYING NOT TO CREEP HIM OUT BY GIVING HIM A DEATH STARE LIKE I DID FOR ATLANTA SO I POINTED AT MY DEFSOUL HAT AND SAID “JB LOOK!” SO HE LOOKED AT MY HAT THEN HE WAS SHOCKED LIKE THIS GIF

THEN HE SAID “OHHHHH!!!!” THEN HE SUDDENLY SMILES LIKE THIS

LIKE YOU KNOW JB IS HAPPY WHEN HIS EYES DISAPPEAR AND HIS EYES DISAPPEARED WHEN I SHOWED HIM MY HAT!!!!! THEN I WAS PROBABLY CHEESING HELLA BRIGHTLY BECAUSE WTF IM JAE FUCKING BUM SMILED AT ME????? WHAT THE FUCK???? THE LOVE OF MY LIFE NOTICED MY FUCKING EXISTENCE??? I WANNA CRY???? LIKE ASDFGHJKUDVFYEWFDQUWBHKWHVGYQWDWQBDW ;_; AS I WAS POINTING AT MY HAT JB’S HAND STILL LINGERS AGAINST MINE AND BRUH I WANTED TO COMBUST THEN AND THERE BUT I HAVE TO GET MYSELF TOGETHER BECAUSE THERE WERE STILL 4 MEMBERS AFTER HIM… BUT ANYWAYS PIABUM IS REAL JB CONFIRMED IT HIMSELF. I HAVE MY MOM AS A WITNESS OF OUR LOVE… OK LET ME STOP:))))  Markeu was next i just said hi, then I said hi youngjae but then i got myself together (sorta but not really) then before i passed by yj i said “you’re so handsome” :) idk if he heard me because I already passed by him when i said it, but atleast i wouldn’t have to regret not telling him how handsome he truly is. Then Bambam was next, then i just heard him shout and point at me and said, “DEFSOUL!!!!” then i made a weird “you know it boo” gesture to Bambam then he just kept smiling and so did I. I felt like I was Kenny or JRE because Bambam made me feel like I was a star/famous person for the amount of time i was on stage. Then last was Jackson, I said Hi Jackson then he shook my hand. I wanted to tell him to go to Brazil like i originally planned on saying, but I was really just way too shook that Piabum rose on January 21st 2017 to remember to say anything. As I was going off stage I literally held my hand to my face in shock because I couldn’t believe it was real. Im Jaebum noticed my existence. He knows i’m his fan. He knows that I love him. I AM SO FUCKING HAPPY YALL DONT EVEN KNOW. I HAVEN’T STOPPED SMILING SINCE IT HAPPENED LIKE THE SMILE ON MY FACE NEVER FADED. I LOVE GOT7 I LOVE IM JAEBUM I LOVE LIFE I LOVE EVERYTHING I’M STILL ON CLOUD NINE.

[utopia-game]

END OF AGE: Our Winners from Age 86: Global Viction

This is our end age article covering our winners in the following categories: Networth / Land / Honour / War Win Crown. For the age, fairly cut and dry as we have two kingdoms that covered all categories: Emeriti won the networth and land crowns Barcoloco won the honour and war win crowns I caught up with both kingdoms to ask them about their age and to dig into some of the events that were important and played their part in coming out on top for their respective areas. EMERITI Dorje made himself available to talk to me about Emeriti's age: Mad_Scottish: Hi Dorje, age 86 Global Viction is over and Emeriti have come out on top for the land and networth crowns. Was growth and having a run for #1 the goal set for the age? Dorje: Sure. We wanted to war some, then grow. Mad_Scottish: Normally you would think that warring first would stunt growth while those focused purely on growth could get ahead. Was that a concern that you had at all? Dorje: Growth is always a crap-shoot, because you start with a lot of pool and so long as you are in war you will grow in pool without bound. Normally whoever gets wars is going to be able to double size in postwar and always end up bigger than the province that is OOW. The downside of warring is you cannot get large and strong TMs or cows, which you can do with pool aiding OOW. Mad_Scottish: That's a really good point that I totally missed with the mechanics! I believe you had 3 wars in total, were these back to back or did they end up a bit spread out? Dorge: Essentially back to back, yes. In protection we had a war arranged with what later turned out to be ascension, but as they were all undead war heroes we decided that was a suicide move. expected them to wave us but they instead kept relations open so they could put up cows. Then we lucked into a first war by waving a war-tier kingdom, and arranged a second and third war before dumping pool. The way the game works, if you have complete protection in postwar you can almost always simply dump to like 15% bigger than the next biggest kingdom, and then bully them to ensure a win. Mad_Scottish: Was the success of growth linked purely to the work during the end of war CFs? What was the plan out of war, planned waves/randoms? Dorje: Planned waves. Randoms don't exist. Mad_Scottish: Were there any points in the age that were turning points/really helped out with growth beyond the wars and end of war CFs? Dorje: We waved down on several kingdoms after our last war, so that helped with growth. however two kingdoms began giving us 3 meter a day of plunders/robs, so we could never really stock money as you would normally do in a position when ahead waiting for others to catch up. at one point Ronin did a plunder wave and we accidentally gave them ops so they FG'd 700M GC. having our small provinces always broke certainly made growth hard for most of the age. Mad_Scottish: Things were getting really hairy towards the end with #2 for nw/land and then the war with Barcoloco happened. What was going on there? What was going on at the top politically? Dorje: After they waved us, we EoA cease-fired Ronin. But SWEA would not stop robbing, or ceasefire us so that we could fight Barco and of course Barco did the same play of exploring to 15% bigger, so all the gold would be needed for a fair fight. The assumption that Barco and SWEA are friendly made this look even dumber, and SWEA had also out of nowhere told us earlier in the age they might wave into our war prep later. So we did not give Barco the full 97 hours of free pump, and waved into their postwar. After that things went down as one might expect: SWEA did wave into our war prep, we had 7 broke provinces for the fight with Barco, but we pulled out land and networth in what turned out to be a pretty even fight. Mad_Scottish: If i remember correctly, there looked to be almost a 20k jump in acres. Is that accurate? I want to say I think I remember you being around 156k before the war with Barco Dorje: My numbers may be imprecise. I think we were around 160k with 10k pool, and Barco explored 105->180k in postwar or something. So we dumped pool, waved, they ended up re-dumping even more pool with the 5 day ceasefire so were around 160k. Then SWEA waved us for 15k or something so we were within ~500 acres when the 5-day ceasefire ended. Mad_Scottish: Did the war with Barco end or did it just run through the end of the age? Dorje: Ran through EoA. I believe it was around 40 hours Mad_Scottish: Any other highlights from the age that made things interesting or just come to mind? Dorje: From a utopia perspective, it was a uniquely boring age. Nobody was competing except for Ascension, who went inactive halfway through the age, and Barco who was staying tiny to ghetto farm. The highlight I suppose would be the Black Lives Matter movement, which a lot of kingdoms renamed to support. Mad_Scottish: Any shout outs for the age? effort from the kingdom/particular players? and any closing comments from you? Dorje: Shout out to everyone in the kingdom: grant, nimtar, arpi, juicebox, unos, universe, hengz, binar, chad, allanon, sjippe, dumnorix, peetah, carber, retard, jalgir, jcdb4, kax0, chris_keeling, tox, octobrev, megafusion, lagski, jorosar, and Nuck. And a shout out to everyone who believes black lives matter. BARCOLOCO Maugrim made himself available to talk about Barco's age: Mad_Scottish: Age 86, Global Viction has wrapped up. Barco has come out on top for war wins and honor. What was your final war number and number of war wins? Maugrim: Oh jeez, I can't even remember the war score anyway. We ended with 5 war wins out of 6 wars, and we were in a war with Emeriti when the age ended, but that obviously doesn't count towards anything, I think. Mad_Scottish: How did the wars work out over the age? Were you able to plan all wars or did we have some good old waves and declarations? Maugrim: I'm probably the worst person to ask these things. I know the last three wars were arranged for sure and we had start dates and stuff. I think the first OOP war we lost was too, but maybe the 2nd was from waving, I can't recall exactly. We sat OOW a little longer than we would like to on some occasions. But that can be timing and a bunch of different things. Overall, I think it was pretty smooth Mad_Scottish: You pipped Hipmunks to the honour crown. Do you think the setup helped hold on to honor? Maugrim: For sure, we had a few extended wars too which let us float more upwards. Mad_Scottish: I should have taken a screenshot of the kingdom page before the age resets. Were the T/Ms able to stay out of range and hold onto the honour or was there more of an even spread across the kingdom? Maugrim: Most of the honour was definitely on the TM provs, we had a few big avians who managed to hold some, but that honour is always fairly fluid. The TM did most of the honour carrying and it's a lot more protected there Mad_Scottish: Was there a particular war where you grabbed most of the honor or fairly spread out across each of the wars? Maugrim: Our war vs the hitch hikers guide kingdom, 7:11??? I want to say, it lasted maybe 4 days and that one really let us pack on some big honour stacks. They had quite a bit of honour themselves, and just the extended nature of the war let us take a lot more than one might be normally able to. Mad_Scottish: Between wars, were you waving or was it a case of sit and pump to get ready for the next war? Maugrim: No, we waved a few times. That garbage 5:11 kingdom Fluffy? We waved them. We're often forced to wave, and it's fun that way. Excited for this age and waving all the time! Mad_Scottish: Any real stands outs for the age that come to mind for you? Anyone that you want to give a shout out to? Maugrim: It was a fun age with some good ol' fashioned drama. Looking forward to this age though! Shout out to everyone in Barco Mad_Scottish: End of age got very interesting with the moving pieces related to the war with Emeriti. We received the version from them, what is your version? Maugrim: After we beat Hipmunks, we were faced with a choice many have faced in the past while sitting in the shadow of Emeriti at second place: be content with second best, or try to win it all? The odds were decidedly NOT in our favor: we were less than 50% of Emeriti’s size, Emeriti had *billions* of gc, and they had sat on the throne of the number one spot for *weeks*, with nothing to do other than to pump GC, WPA, sci, whatever the heck they wanted. They even tagged up after their second war win, confident they had secured the age. Keeping with our fighting tradition, we went for it all. For 48 ticks into our EOWCF, we did nothing but send aid and hit explore on our provs. Each prov was absolutely dry- no GC, no soldiers, no WPA, nothing. And Emeriti could see this, because they intell'd us each tick. Nothing but empty acres. How could Emeriti possibly be scared? So what did Emeriti do? Trad and raze into our EOWCF like a bunch of cowards. The only explanation was their PTSD from the last time they literally handed us their crowns after we dumped our entire pool, Emeriti accused us of cheating, DavidC confirmed we hadn’t, and then proceeded to farm out to us to the tune of 22,000 acres. Emeriti’s pathetic excuse for their cowardly actions? They couldn’t get a CF with wee little SWEA to protect their 2.5 billion GC. Odd—seeing how Emeriti still had 1.15 billion GC after training at the start of our war (10x more than us) . . . After being completely stunned by Emeriti’s actions, we fortunately found out that we could force CF because we were decidedly *well* out of NW war range. What we *didn’t* know was there was a known bug that had prevented Hipmunks from crowning just the age before, that sat unfixed for an *entire* age. Until now. When it was Emeriti—and not Hipmunks—running with its tail between its legs to DavidC, he immediately fixed the bug within half an hour. The cherry on top was DavidC’s audacity to send a snarky, patronizing in mail to each of our LS, “thanking” him for helping find this bug. As if he hadn’t known about it for an entire age, but couldn’t care less until now that it was affecting his golden child. Everyone thought we had given up by that point, having been beat down by both Emeriti and DavidC. But we made the impossible choice to kill 4 provinces—Adi, Bry, Powwow, Rageman (they deserve shout outs)--that had worked hard the entire age in order to get our kingdom out of land war range—our last hope at fighting Emeriti. Dorje claims it was a fair fight. Frankly, that’s the only way Emeriti can sleep at night. But the fact of the matter was that it was a 25 v 21 province fight, Emeriti still had a +1 billion GC lead, and they had literally 3/4 of the age to pump sci/wpa against a kingdom that Emeriti could not even stand to let grow peacefully from 70k to 150k acres in 2-3 days. Emeriti’s decision to hit into another KD’s EOWCF was an act of cowardice. They knew it and everyone knew it. Dorje even had an explanatory speech ready at his fingertips to post in Discord within *minutes* in an attempt to justify his actions. They’ve established a precedent that, if ignored, will ultimately result in the demise of this game: (1) there is no code of honour or conduct in this game, i.e. anything goes; (2) developers, particularly DavidC, are biased towards certain players and kingdoms that will result in age-changing bug fixes for some and not others. **End of Article** Journalist note: Congratulation to your crown winners. Best of luck in the new age! HERE WE GO!