#some concert videos from 2018....... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

dayoldtea · 2 years ago

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INSTAGRAM BLURB

pairing: harry styles x brazilian!famous!reader

fc: bruna marquezine

a/n: this is long

2012

2016

liked by harrystyles, selenagomez and 12,517,882 others

yourinstagram Wow! I can't believe it's been a year of @ipanema 🇧🇷 My favorite childhood memories are connected to the summer, the sun and the sea, and with every new design designed, be it bikinis or accessories, I feel a little more connected to that little girl who counted the days until the weekend, because it meant my feet would touch the warm sand of Ipanema Beach again. So much has happened in one year and I can't wait to see what the future holds for us! Thanks for all the support so far, it means the world and I can't wait for you to see our new designs!! 💚💛 Head over to @ipanema to get 30% OFF the entire store! Limited birthday discount! ☀️

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user81 she's so pretty 😭

user61 harry liked the post just a few seconds after yn posted it 😃

⤷ user42 this man has her notifications turned on, i swear to god

user21 okay harry, we get it

user34 i'm so proud of you

user12 this is what i think i look like

user55 all right yn, here's my whole paycheck

harrystyles congratulations ❤️

liked by yourinstagram and 3,018,164 others

⤷ user96 WHAT

⤷ user48 HARRRRYYYYY

⤷ user82 QHWIOWHWEIWOWJAKAKALAKA

⤷ user10 i bet he sent this comment and then threw the phone out the window

⤷ user02 the poor man has been waiting for an answer for almost five years 😭 #prayforharry

liked by user7, user55 and 717,011 others

harry_update HARRY AND Y/N/Y/L/N TONIGHT IN LA!!! I REPEAT: HARRY AND Y/N/Y/L/N TONIGHT IN LA!!!!!!!!!

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user44 FINALLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

user06 i love how the whole fandom was just rooting for harry to finally take her on a date

user71 i feel like a proud mother

user92 THE WAY HE'S HOLDING HER

user66 omg twitter must be collapsing

user04 y/n/y/l/n is the only woman who can keep harry styles waiting five years for a date

user12 when a latina wins, all latinas win along with her 🥳

user29 THIS IS SO ADORABLE 😭😭

user73 am i the only one who doesn't want them to be together?

⤷ user40 yes

⤷ user33 yes

⤷ user81 yes

liked by taylorswift, niallhoran and 31,981,277 others

harrystyles I finally got that call

harrystyles has disabled comments

2017

liked by user10, user20 and 471,839 others

ynandharryupdates the puppy appearing on harry's lap in the kiwi music video was a gift from him to yn. welcome, oat!

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user63 CRYING

user99 so lovely 😭😭

user03 i'm sure it was yn's idea to have puppies in the video lol

⤷ user62 that's exactly what i thought 😂

user55 harry is so whipped, and i am so happy for him

user30 this is the most adorable puppy ever

user44 he's smiling for the camera

user52 just a few days ago yn said on a live stream that she missed having a pet at home, but that she didn't know how she would manage since she had upcoming projects that required long trips. it seems that harry decided that they should share custody 🥺

2018

liked by user93, user07 and 327,016 others

enews Harry met with his girlfriend's parents, the brazilian actress and businesswoman Y/N/Y/L/N, this morning at a hotel in Rio de Janeiro. Some sources say that Y/L/N's absence in her homeland is associated with projects she is working on.

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user53 something about harry taking advantage of his concert schedule in brazil to see yn's parents even if she is not present makes me weak in the knees

user88 i'm so looking forward to yn's next works! hope to see her acting again soon ❤️

user94 yn taught him to speak portuguese? yn's parents speak english? i'm so curious now lol

⤷ user51 yn's parents speak english! they had to live in the usa for a while to accompany her to the auditions when she was still a minor (nowadays her mother teaches english at a school in brazil, btw).

⤷ user53 yn's parents speak english, but harry said in an interview with nick grimshaw for bbc music that yn was teaching him portuguese so he could communicate with her parents via facetime

⤷ user94 pls this is so cute! thanks for the explanation

user06 knowing how much yn loves going to rio and being close to her family, i'm sure she felt bad for not being able to accompany harry to his shows in brazil, so seeing him close to her parents must make her very happy ❤️

2019

liked by harrystyles, zendaya and 32,967,501 others

yourinstagram Euphoria coming soon to HBO.

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arianagrande YAAAAAA I CANT WAIT

user25 MAIN CHARACTER

user52 soooooo gooood

annetwist gorgeous

user18 i am so excited for this

harrystyles I couldn't be prouder! te amo, H x

⤷ yourinstagram love u too, H ❤️

⤷ user44 literal parents

⤷ user83 i'm so single 😃

⤷ user90 crying as i question my existence

user02 FREAKING OUT

liked by yourinstagram, harris_reed and 28,853,481 others

harrystyles FINE LINE . THE ALBUM . DEC 13

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gucci ❤️

user43 thank you @yourinstagram

user88 IM FUCKING READY OH MY GOSH

user06 what about medicine, sir??????????

user14 can't wait to listen and then look for theories about which songs are about yn

user62 i'm so proud

yourinstagram i know i've said this about a million times now, but you make me more and more proud every day. te amo! ❤️

�� harrystyles love you more my sunflower muse, H x

⤷ user91 SOBBING

⤷ user54 SUNFLOWER IS ALREADY THE BEST SONG

⤷ user09 imagine being harry styles' muse 😃

user91 WTF IS ERODA

2020

liked by user86, user31 and 581,740 others

harryflorals All accessories and swimwear used by the models in the watermelon sugar video are part of the new collection of yn's swimwear brand, @ipanema. According to the brand's website, the pre-sale will be available tomorrow.

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user60 SHE IS THE MOMENT

user23 talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique, completely not ever been done before

user51 I KNEW

user45 I LOVE IT

user78 this song, this video… everything screams yn 😃

user64 the way she always uses harry to promote herself

⤷ user13 what? yn's brand was extremely popular even before she started dating harry. shut up.

user05 IT COUPLE

liked by user53, user03 and 359,721 others

ynshine just leaving this here

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user12 the cutest

user44 my parents

user25 i just love them

yourinstagram @harrystyles

⤷ harrystyles darling, i can explain…

⤷ user62 SCREAMING

⤷ ynshine the user of this account is dead

2021

liked by lizzobeeating, gemmastyles and 14,368,001 others

harrystyles late night talking

harrystyles has disabled comments

liked by harrystyles, mitchrowland and 20,014,613 others

yourinstagram loving on tour

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user61 SUPPORTIVE GF

user18 i'm obsessed with her

user11 hi, yn! idk if you remember me or if you will see this comment, but i was at the harry concert last night and ended up having a serious anxiety crisis due to the crowd. i was unaccompanied, and as much as the other girls next to me tried to help me, there wasn't much they could do. idk how, but you saw me from somewhere near the stage, offered me water and a safe place to stay until the show was over. i had saved up for many months for this show, and if it wasn't for you, my anxiety would have completely ruined my whole experience. thank you for helping me and being the sweetest person ever ❤️

⤷ yourinstagram of course I remember you, dear! hope you are feeling better, take care! ❤️

⤷ user69 literal angel

⤷ user16 harry is so lucky

user82 i love this relationship so much

user36 i was already crying when I read the caption

2022

liked by zendaya, annetwist, and 37,8941,241 others

harrystyles Harry's House. May 20th.

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user21 i cant

mtv i will never recover emotionally from this

billieeilish having a breakdown

user87 the message behind the name of the album and the photo he chose to promote it

user52 twitter crashed

user11 mom and dad

gemmastyles the all time favorite couple breaking the internet once again

liked by user03, user93 and 921,729 others

harryflorals The exact moment Harry and Y/N see each other on the red carpet at the Venice Film Festival.

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user12 sobbing, crying, vomiting, screaming, blushing, banging my head on the wall, running in circles, pulling my hair out, sliding down the wall

user32 THEY'RE LITERALLY GLOWING

user76 after 10 years harry styles finally gets to live his fanfiction

user57 he's so in love with her

florencepugh SHE GOT THAT CINEMA

user97 GET MARRIED NOW

user50 thanks for the new wallpaper

user44 the real reason why i have high relationship patterns

user36 why didn't they go together?

⤷ user07 harry went earlier to accompany the cast of DWD

user09 the fact that harry is obsessed with her since forever just makes it even better

user80 SOULMATES

#harry styles x reader #harry styles #harry styles social media #harry styles x y/n #famous reader #harry styles x you #harry styles fake ig #harry styles fake social media #boyfriend harry #harry styles x actress!reader #actress reader

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svt-kiki · 4 months ago

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( 🖇️ ) PROFILE ⌅ .

───　୨ৎ 　›　𝐁𝐀𝐒𝐈𝐂　𝐈𝐍𝐅𝐎　.　

BIRTH NAME.　kitamura kyoka ( 北村響香 )

STAGE NAME.　kiki ( 기키 )

BIRTHDATE.　july 20, 1995

ETHNICITY.　japanese

BIRTHPLACE.　kyoto, japan ( hometown )

HEIGHT.　170 cm ( 5′ 7″ )

───　୨ৎ 　›　𝐋𝐀𝐍𝐆𝐔𝐀𝐆𝐄　.　

FLUENT.　japanese ⋆ korean

IMPROVING.　chinese ⋆ english ⋆ sign languages

───　୨ৎ 　›　𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐄𝐑　.　

GROUP.　seventeen ( 세븐틴 )

COMPANY.　pledis entertainment

TRAINEE.　since march, 2011 ( 4 years )

DEBUT.　may 29, 2015

POSITION.　main dancer ⋆ lead vocalist ⋆ rapper

SUB UNIT.　performance team ( co-leader ) ⋆ svt leaders

NOTABLE SKILLS.　acting ⋆ video directioning ⋆ editing ⋆ stage directioning

EMOJI.　sunflower ( 🌻 ) lion ( �� )

NICKNAMES.　sunflower fairy ⋆ nation’s noona / eonni ⋆ kit kat ⋆ stage queen ⋆ seventeen’s ( movie ) star

───　୨ৎ 　›　𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐈𝐓𝐘　.　

MBTI.　infj ( 2019 ) esfj ( 2022 )

CHARACTER.　calm ⋆ bright ⋆ smart ⋆ kind ⋆ affectionate ⋆ sweet but willing to burn the world to protect the members and loved ones

LIKE.　cooking ⋆ reading ⋆ old movies ⋆ traveling ⋆ organized place ⋆ calming environment ⋆ morning ⋆ sunshine

DISLIKE.　weird smells ⋆ crowd of people ⋆ big noises ⋆ get angry at someone ⋆ physical pain ⋆ suffering of loved ones

───　୨ৎ 　›　𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐈𝐀　.　

she lost her parents when she was still a baby, and be raised by her grand parents: the parents of kiki’s father. her mother’s family lives in hokkaido and she visiting there time to time.

her grand parents running the small restaurant in town, and that’s why she is good at cooking.

she belonged to the japanese biggest theater company as a child actor, played young nara in the lion king musical ( that's why she got lion as her icon ) and that made her possible to experience the actual stage performance from such a young age.

she is in charge of stage directioning in both performaces and concerts beside the job as a performance team leader with hoshi

directed some of svt’s music video, such as “thanks”, “fear”, “fallin’ flower”, etc.

lyrics of seventeen’s jp songs were written by her. she also writing korean songs' jp ver lyrics as well.

known as a talented choreographer across the kpop. she made choreo for other groups such as loona, the boyz, iz*one and xg.

she got casted when she was 14 in tokyo while the school trip. after passed the audition, she decided to go to seoul after graduating the junior high school.

she can play basic instruments such as guitar and piano. always wanted to be able to play drums though ⸺ and with woozi’s help, she’s now improving slowly.

her appearance is known as cool and charismatic that sometimes being misunderstood as a cold, scary figure ( can be said as “resting cold face” or smth like that ). in fact kiki has bright personality and smiles a lot enough to be recognized that expression as her trademark.

also known as the most ‘handsome’ female idol. her feature is something that makes people imagine that she would’ve been very handsome if she’d been a man. she’s very sweet and gentle to other female idols: helps in the stairs, lends jackets and cushions if they looks like uncomfortable, etc.

she has quite talented acting skills, and recieved several awards. she’s now working in japan, korea and hollywood in future, maybe...

she appeared in tv programs: hit the stage ( 2016, mnet ) and produce 48 ( 2018, mnet ) as a dance trainer

she has an high physical ability, especially talented at basket ball, archery and running event. even she got banned from the female sprint of isac bc always won the 1st and other idols had no chance to touch the trophy ( lol ). instead she joined the male relay race along with the members as an exception ( then grab the 1st place, AGAIN ). she’s also good at winter sports too. ⛷️

( 📁 ) : NAVI : MASTER LIST

#༝　( 🖇 )　⸺　kiki　› .　data #seventeen 14th member #seventeen addition #seventeen female addition #seventeen oc #seventeen x oc #seventeen x fem oc #kpop addition #kpop added member #kpop female addition #kpop oc #kpop female oc #kpop imagines #idol!reader #idol!au #idol!oc

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jokeroutsubs · 27 days ago

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[ENG SUB/translation] JokerOutSubs x Radio Celje collab: Joker Out on Radio Celje (24.10.2024)

Big thanks to Radio Celje who collaborated with us on this one!

Bojan, Jan, Kris, Jure and Nace were on Radio Celje to talk about the new single ‘Bluza’ and the new album.

Get a taste of the interview in our trailer:

youtube

and watch the full video with English subtitles on their Youtube channel:

youtube

Transcript and translation by drumbeat and @chaosofsmarty, review and subtitles by @kurooscoffee, proofread by X klámstrákur.

Accompanying article translated by IG 10_anja, reviewed by @weolucbasu, proof read by @flowerlotus8.

You can read the accompanying article and find the ENG SUB video, as well as the whole conversation in transcript form, under the cut.

What do JOKER OUT, bras and ikebanas have in common?

(Article posted on radiocelje.si website on the 24th of October 2024).

Joker out are announcing the release of their third studio album 'Souvenier Pop'!

At Jutranji ritem (Morning Rhythm) on Radio Celje we were visited by the members of the Slovenian band Joker Out - Bojan, Kris, Jan, Nace and Jure. The boys, who won the hearts of Slovenian and foreign fans with their unique style and energy, shared with us their interesting stories and moments from European stages, where they have enthralled at festivals, such as the legendary Sziget.

We talked about the impact that Eurovision had on their further creation, and how their dreams about big stages became a reality. They unveiled to us some fun adventures from abroad including an unusual moment in Finland that made one of their hits go viral.

You can hear what do they have in common with bras and ikebanas in the video.

youtube

On the 15th of November we are expecting their new album 'Souvenir Pop', which will offer musical hits in Slovene, Serbo-Croatian and English alike. In the capital city there are also two concerts scheduled with the release of the new album. You can also hear their new song 'Bluza' on Radio Celje.

-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~

📝Video Transcript:

Host: With us today are Bojan, Kris, Nace, Jure, and Jan, the most popular Slovenian band, Joker Out. Welcome to Radio Celje.

Joker Out: Hi! Hello! Hey, hey, hey!

Bojan: Thank you very much!

I knew it, I said it wrong. You’re not the most popular Slovenian band…

Bojan: Absolutely, yes.

…but European band. A band known world-wide.

Joker Out: Wooow.

Now tell me, did Eurovision leave an impression?

Jure: No.

Bojan: Eh, no, nothing much, really, I think. Eurovision really made the 180 degree turn for us. Before it, we didn’t have any concerts abroad, or we played a concert in Croatia but for a Slovenian audience. Eurovision has brought us the opportunity to suddenly be performing all across Europe and we’re performing for foreign audiences, which is crazy.

Because you’re made for the big stages. At a festival in the middle of Budapest you really caused a stir, right? But you’ve always been dreaming about this stage.

Kris: That’s true. You are talking about the Main stage at Sziget. It’s a stage, for which we always said that if there was one thing we would never be able to achieve in our lives, it was Sziget main stage. I was there for the first time as a listener in 2018, watching all of my favourite artists up there and it was… I tried to imagine what it was like to look at the crowd from the other side, but I just couldn’t. Now I know what it’s like. And it’s quite a weird feeling. Still.

Weird?

Kris: Good, but weird. It’s never the way you imagine it.

Cool, we’re really happy that we caught you in our area, too, because you, you don’t stop. You’re a Band with a capital B. You travel…

Bojan: Just superlatives.

Yeah, just superlatives. You weren’t just in Budapest. You were also in Romania, in Slovakia. Where have you been and where else are you going?

Bojan: We’ve been to Finland, Poland, Great Britain, and Spain the most.

Kris: The Netherlands.

Bojan: In the Netherlands. We were in Lithuania twice, once in Latvia, once in Estonia.

Kris: Six times in Germany.

Bojan: Six times in Germany, three times in Sweden.

Jan: Have you said Great Britain and Ireland? Belgium, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia.

Bojan: Croatia absolutely.

Nace: Italy.

Bojan: Macedonia.

Kris: We’ll name all the countries in the EU now.

Jure: Yes.

Kris: Every single country.

Bojan: Austria.

Jan: You’ve said Norway and Sweden?

Alright, alright.

Bojan: No, I didn’t, Norway, well, I’ve mentioned Sweden.

And you also mentioned Finland.

Bojan: Finland, I did.

We heard something unexpected happened in Finland, which affected your recognisability. Actually, how viral one of your hits went.

Bojan: Yes! Okay, that was quite the genius moment. Namely, I finished ‘Šta bih ja’ before the Stockholm concert. No, what am I saying, sorry, in Helsinki and I wasn’t 1000% sure I’d sing the chorus correctly, so I wrote it on a piece of paper, in a big font, and gave it to our technician Kiki, and asked if he could please stick it onto the front monitor speaker so that I could look at it. And I asked him 35 times. “Did you stick it on?” “I stuck it on.” “Okay, great.” I get on stage, darn, I can’t see the paper anywhere. I look at the monitor on the left, the one on the right, nothing. I’m checking, if he might’ve mixed it up and hung it on a speaker somewhere, the sheet is nowhere to be found. And two songs before 'Šta bih ja’, I step to the very front part of the stageand I look down, and I see that when the champ hung it up, he did it on the other side of the monitor, so the audience was reading the lyrics, not so I could see it. And then what happened? People thought it was on purpose, a 'sing along’ moment, karaoke. Everyone took pictures, filmed it, posted it online, the lyrics of a new song that was yet to come out. Anyway, we finished the concert. I remember we ran to the van from backstage, I opened my phone, and the lyrics were already on Genius. So, all the lyrics were already written out: the original, in Serbian, translated into English, and it was an hour after the concert ended. And from that concert on, already the very next day, because we performed in Helsinki again the next day, the whole crowd was already singing the song. It was crazy. It went viral on TikTok, totally, so Kiki, hats off to you. Of course, because I looked at that and told Kiki, “Give me my lyrics back.” and it was so much worse, because Kiki then took off the lyrics in front of everyone and put it on the correct side of the monitor, so I was able to read it.

Kris: You know, the craziest part about it to me is that the Finns, because the crowd was majority Finnish, they realised the lyrics were in Serbian, that it was something they hadn’t heard from us yet. To me that’s, you know…

Bojan: Yeah, of course.

Kris: Imagine you read something in Finnish, how will you know it’s something you haven’t read yet, or heard?

Bojan: Well, if it’s not… ♪ Rankka viikko ja paljon pitkii päiviä takan ♪

Kris: Yeah, yeah. That’s just, that’s so crazy to me.

Jan: It’s actually funny, that some fan probably knew the lyrics to the song before you did. No.

Bojan: It’s definitely possible.

Jan: It wouldn’t be impossible.

Kris: It’s not impossible.

You have tons of fans, what is the most unbelievable, or most awesome thing that a fan did for you?

Bojan: There’s a lot of things like that.

Jure: I think about those hoodies we got.

Jure: Those were nice. Everyone got their own hoodie.

Kris: In their own color.

Jure: Their own color, I just know I had Captain Maček written in the front here and SSF airlines in the back.

Bojan: Everyone got an embroidered, hand embroidered, signature, what’s the word…

Kris: Personalised.

Bojan: A personalised shirt.

Nace: Although, among all of these fan gifts, the most beautiful was the one in Stožice, where the fans had planned amongst themselves, and before the concert, they handed out these colorful triangles with instructions to to put it over the phone flashlight during 'Novi val’. And suddenly, the whole arena was in colorful lights.

Jure: And we didn’t know that.

Bojan: It was, it was… Amazing. Because we, I remember, that when 'Novi val’ started, the whole arena lit up in colorful lights and then we got off stage and started asking everyone in the crew who did it, because it’s a massive project, to hand 12,000 people colorful lights, which we thought they did. And really, it was the fans, walking around before the concert, and handing out these papers actually, and the instructions to put these ligh… I mean, there’s been a lot of these beautiful fan projects. With 'Metulji’ they made paper butterflies and handed them out, so everyone lifted their butterflies up. And that was also abroad.

Jan: In Warsaw.

Bojan: It happened in Warsaw. I mean, we have awesome fan projects, we have this group, Joker Out Subs, which is a group of fans that actually, in already a very organised way, translate all the Slovenian content into, Idon’t know, dozens of languages, worldwide. And they actually go online, find the interviews, conversations, guest appearances in shows, whatever, and they spring into action. And in a couple of days it's… I’m also sure that… It’s not impossible that this interview, for example, will be translated into 10 or 15 languages with subtitles.

What was an unusual, wild thing, that you got on stage during a concert? And let’s not say just bras, now.

Bojan: A bottle of blueberry liquor… To the knee.

Jure: …to the knee.

Bojan: That was still… That was…

Jure: But years ago.

Bojan: …in Žiri. It happened in Žiri.

Bojan: Our bassist was hit by a bottle of blueberry liquor which is a lot better than the hammer that hit the previous band. I’ll never forget that.

Jure: Or was it an axe?

Bojan: Axe, hammer, something, I mean, bizarre. I got an ikebana. And that was awesome. I think I’ve already told this story. But that happened because a guy, from the middle of the tent, in Koper, if I’m not mistaken, held up that ikebana and pushed through the crowd and everyone was getting out of his way and he got to the front rows and gave me that ikebana.

Now, I won’t ask about which performance was most memorable because there’s probably so many that you wouldn’t know or be able to pick one out. So I picked one. And I’m interested in how it came to be that Ringo Starr’s grandson joined you on stage?

Bojan: Yeah, we met him in a pub, like how I’d assume, in London, you meet many people casually. And he’s really an awesome guy. We clicked immediately, his name is Louis. A great drummer, he also has his own band. Anyway, when we were talking about what to do at Shepherd’s Bush, which is a truly eminent venue in London, we kind of said, darn, it would be nice if someone could join us on stage, and that it’s casual, natural. So we asked Louis if he’d jump on stage. He said: “Yeah, let me get on with a tambourine.” So he happily hopped on stage, tambourine-d his part and went on his way.

Kris: They even had a drum battle.

Bojan: Even a drum battle, dude.

Kris: Percussion, percussion drum battle I’d say.

Bojan: On the congas.

Today, we’ll hear your new song, 'Bluza’. I got asked by a fan of yours, a friend of mine, to ask you if it’s conjugated correctly, this word, 'bluza’. Because in the song, Bojan says: “Noćas ti si moja muza, ja u ritmu tvoga BLUZA ću da plešem bez prestanka.” How’d you land on that?

Bojan: Yes. So the word “bluza” isn’t even connected to a blouse, like a shirt, a piece of clothing. “Bluz” (blues) is just blues as a musical genre.

Okay. Honestly, I don’t know, this whole time we’ve been… Was the name of the song a somehow natural progression from “bluza, bluza”, or what?

Kris: Yeah, it was muza bluza (blues muse).

Jure: I think it was “muza” (muse).

Bojan: It was “muza”, it was “muza”. Then we settled on “bluza”, so yeah, kind of a silly name if you think about it, but…

Kris: It doesn’t make sense, but somehow it makes sense.

But it’s cool, because you ask, right, what’s the point, really?

Bojan: Who or what is “bluza”?

Who among you is the laziest?

Bojan: Nobody in the band is lazy, definitely, as a personality trait, nobody’s lazy. But I feel like we all have these particular moments when everyone, how should I say… You know, when you have a phase, when it hits you, and then you’re the most… Personally, when everything gets too hard, I’d… I’m the laziest then. But like, I choose to be the laziest, because I just don’t want to, I refuse to move.

Jure: I could say just the opposite. I know Kris is the least lazy, or even when he should be lazy, he can’t be lazy, I believe.

Bojan: That’s for sure. Kris is a walking Excel timetable.

If you had to pick someone, and send him to a quiz show, I don’t know, “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” Who would you pick, who’s the smartest?

Kris: It’s not about smarts, it’s more like who has the most knowledge, in my opinion.

Knowledgeable. Yeah, exactly.

Kris: I wouldn’t pick myself, for sure.

Jure: The Millionaire?

Kris: I bet Jan would know the answers.

Nace: Yeah, I’m leaning towards Jan as well.

Jure: I think I’d rely on luck.

Kris: I think I’d ask the audience for help. Jan would take his time to answer the question, but the answer would be correct, I think.

Jan: Why wouldn’t you pick yourself? I can totally see you.

Who’s the best cook?

Bojan: Jan.

Kris: Yes.

Jan: Or Jure.

Kris: Jure too, especially if it’s a barbecue, Jure. If it’s more like kitchen stuff, some risotto or pasta, I’d trust Jan.

Nace: But we’re all pretty decent cooks, to be fair. None of us…

Bojan: None of us would leave anyone hungry, let’s put it that way.

Jure: We love to cook and eat our own food.

November 15th?

Jure: A new cooking show.

Nace: Cooking with Jokers!

Bojan: On November 15th, our third studio album comes out, called 'Souvenir Pop’. It’s our third studio album, and fourth album overall, because last year we released the Live album from Stožice. This album will have ten songs, four of which you’ve already heard, which are 'Carpe Diem’, 'Everybody’s Waiting’, 'Šta bih ja’, and Bluza.’ So the remaining six are a mystery, for now. It’s an interesting album, we see it as a collection of memories from the last year and a half that we’ve gathered. And just like places and people are different, and everything else we’ve seen is different, the songs are different as well, so it’s a really diverse album, without, I’d say, a prominent common thread. There are three languages on it, Slovenian, Serbian, and English, so it’s really colourful.

This will be a perfect Christmas gift or for the New Year.

Bojan: Yeah, exactly, exactly. For Christmas, you should all be singing this instead of ‘Last Christmas.’

A music video tomorrow? On Friday?

Joker Out: Yes.

Kris: Yes, it’s true, the video is coming out for the single ‘Bluza,’ which has been released three weeks ago already, but we decided it deserves a music video as well, and we took a little more time, but I think we really put in the effort, and made a really unique video, something you haven’t seen from us yet, you haven’t seen anything remotely similar from us, and I doubt you’ll see anything like it again. And we have some cool hidden guests, in the video, well, for now they’re still hidden.

It will also be pinned on radiocelje.si. Bojan, Kris, Nace, Jure, Jan - Joker Out, thank you for visiting Radio Celje.

Bojan: Yes, first of all, on behalf of all of us, thank you for the invitation. We hope to be back soon, or as soon as possible. Take care, and stay safe!

#joker out #jokeroutsubs #bojan cvjetićanin #bojan cvjeticanin #kris guštin #kris gustin #jure maček #jure macek #nacejordan #jan peteh #jos: announcement #jos: collaboration #source: radio celje #year: 2024 #jo: all members #og language: slovenian #type: video #type: transcript #type: article

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pandorasword · 2 years ago

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Chaeri as the 8th and youngest member of BTS

CHAERI'S MASTERLIST

CHAERI'S LOVE LIFE IN A TIMELINE

Love interests - 2015 to present

A summary of dating, rejections and any romantic interaction between Chaeri and others

The night market - april 2013

In which Chaeri and Jungkook sneak out of the dorms during the trainee period

Chaeri and Jungkook as babysitters - march 2017

In which a little girl is asked to keep Chaeri and Jungkook's biggest secret

Isn't it wrong so good? - April 2017

In which Chaeri and Jungkook need some time alone

How the members reacted to Chaeri and Jungkook's relationship

A love letter - summer 2017

In which Chaeri and Jungkook have a sneaky little date

Clingy Jungkook [a private Instagram post] - april 2018

Red gardenias - october 2018

In which a bouquet of flowers can be worth more than a thousand words

Chaeri's Bodyguard Betrayal - early 2019

In which we learn why Chaeri's bodyguard betrayed her

Silver lips 1/2 | Silver lips 2/2 - november 22, 2021, American Music Awards

In which Chaeri has an incredible urge to be the first to kiss her ex-boyfriend, Jungkook, who has just had his lip pierced

2 a.m. decisions - december 2021

In which a kiss leads Chaeri to a forced hiatus and, when she returns to Korea for New Year's Eve, Jungkook decides to visit her

A look through Chaeri and Hoongjoong's relationship - 2022 to present

BTS and ATEEZ's reaction to Chaeri and Hongjoong - 2022

Chaeri and Hongjoong first times - january/february 2022 to june 2022

Hongjoong and Chaeri caught in intimate moments - june 2022

In which Chaeri and Hongjoong end up on the front pages of local gossip papers

Fire mouth - june 2022

In which Hongjoong finds himself addicted to something he dislikes, only because he tastes it from Chaeri's lips (+ a video about them parenting Ateez)

The Price of Love in the Public Eye - july 2022

In which Hongjoong experiences being in a public relationship as a kpop idol

How Hongjoong and Chaeri's relationship broke all the logics of the KPOP industry - second half of 2022

In which Hongjoong and Chaeri break all the logic of KPOP by being overly public with their relationship

When night comes - July/August 2022

In which Chaeri stays overnight at Hongjoong's for the first time

If by Chance - august 2022

Snippets of Jungkook's perspective on the relationship between Hongjoong and Chaeri

Checkered Flag for Love - september/october, 2022

In which Chaeri takes Hongjoong to a GP

Trip Vlog - Stockholm - october 2022

In which Chaeri and Hongjoong go to Stockholm for a vacation

Romantic Hongjoong [an instagram post] - november 2022

Jungkook's 03.03.2023 live - live moments recalling January/February 2023

In which fans, during the live, notice obvious references of Chaeri and Jungkook during January and February 2023

Jungkook's 14.03.2023 live - live moments recalling January/February 2023

In which Jk's live on 14.03.23 is nothing more than a summary of his time with Chaeri at the beginning of the year

Eden's wedding - late january, 2023

In which Hongjoong cannot help but notice the way Jungkook looks at Chaeri

Calvin Klein 1/3 | Calvin Klein 2/3 | Calvin Klein 3/3 - march 2023

In which posing for Calvin Klein turns out to be a more challenging job than she'd ever thought it would be

Seoul Love On tour 1/2 | Seoul Love On Tour 2/2 (Two Ghosts) - march 20, 2023

In which Harry Styles' post-concert doesn't go as planned for Chaeri, as Jungkook has something to tell her

Calvin Klein Event - may 10, 2023

In which fans receive informations about Chaeri and Jungkook's argument

A Break-up? Speculation and theories - june, 2023

In which medias speculate about a possible breakup between Chaeri and Hongjoong

Chaekook to LA - june, 2023

K-talk: More speculations about a possible Break-up - july, 2023

In which a podcast talks about a possible breakup between Chaeri and Hongjoong

Seven - july, 2023

In which Chaeri is the guest star in Jungkook's new MV

Why do you love? - august, 2023

In which Hongjoong releases a song about a love that has ended, and the fans turn against Chaeri

You came - december 11, 2023

The night before Jungkook's enlistment

#bts 8th member #bts x reader #jungkook x reader #hongjoong x reader #jungkook #hongjoong

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caw4brandon · 8 months ago

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Zutomayo: Mystery of Cool

Foreign Music has always been a strange thing both for the world and for myself personally. While everyone can appreciate a good Taylor Swift or some English indie. The world has a strange obsession with exotic musicians of a different language.

In retrospect, the K-pop boom: Super Junior, Girls Generation and Blackpink showed that music, doesn't matter in terms of the language. (not really)

It values the cool factor and the massive influence it causes to the internet. Just look at how [K-Pop artist; PSY] managed to unite the world. For me. My "Blackpink" is this faceless group?

- 「私もそうだよ」 -

Translation: [Everything is fine with me]

Debuted in 2018, Zutomayo (full name: Zutto Mayonaka De Iinoni) is a Japanese rock group. Translates as: I wish it was midnight all the time.

On June 4, 2018. Zutomayo released their first song on YouTube, [Byōshin o Kamu/ 秒針を噛む] becoming an immediate hit. Having 200,000 views within the first week. Assisted with an animated music video with a cast of peculiar characters.

Over the last seven years, the group has progressed from using just traditional instruments to adding non-traditional instruments.

Based on their live concerts. The group is seen using something called; [Electronicos Fantasticos/ Nicos] which is a collection of used electronic equipment turned into a pseudo instrument.

ZTMY's group members is uncertain since a lot of their talents alternate song by song. Their only consistent member is vocalist and songwriter; ACA-Ne/ ACAね an unidentified singer whose range is described as; energetic, expressive, and delicate.

- 今日どうしよ？-

Translation: [What should I do today?]

If we were to describe Zutomayo's type of music. It would be difficult to narrow down as to what ZTMY's genre fall under. The general belief is that they are rock based but is riddled with techno on the side.

Whatever the case, the group's music has its own unique identity. Upon listening to their songs (for multiple times) the group prioritizes on the bass guitar, the chaotic slams of the keyboard and the Nicos. Lyric wise, its rather difficult to paint a discernable picture since its of a different language. According to some Japanese listeners, ZTMY's songs to have a lot of wordplay and double meaning in its phrasing.

In the song, [お勉強しといてよ/ STUDY ME] the song spews a jumble of nonsense. However, the music video tells a unique story. STUDY ME follows a girl who is stuck in a perpetual cycle where she is somewhat complacent with her being a background character. Until she realizes that she can make a difference in defiance of her program.

Another song, [勘ぐれい/ Hunch Gray] its lyrics share the sentiment of chasing one's dreams but is uncertain about the venture. Trapped in a distorting world where the answers are unclear.

Still, the author wants to continue. Confronting problems one at a time. The video however, is about two childhood friends who got separated by dark entities of authority and is in the midst of a rescue mission.

- 3,2,1...Mirror Tune! -

Its worth mentioning the iconography found in ZTMY's music videos. For the most part, the main characters are mostly human. Nira-chan is the girl seen in both [STUDY ME] and in another song; [暗く黒く/Darken] although she is more cyborg than human in the latter.

The videos are animated by several independent artists such as; [tvchany] for their stylish and sharp style on [ミラーチューン/Mirror Tune] and [残機/Time Left] Another artist, [sakiyama] uses a rather messy and incredibly expressive style seen in [勘冴えて悔しいわ/ Kansaete Kuyashiiwa] which played this meta joke of its main character attempting to save the characters from the other videos.

I could honestly go on about the various art styles found in Zutomayo's MVs. There is also an official [Card Game] for them all. On the topic of consistency, The one creature seen in all of its videos is the adorable Hedgehog; Uniguri-kun.

With that said, Zutomayo is a mysterious group of talents shrouded in shadow. Both the musicians to ACA-Ne herself. It adds excitement to the identity of the alluring talent but it also enhances the variety of genres found in their music. Allowing its audience to explore and experience a type of music they rarely listen to.

ZTMY takes away the popularity because, unlike other bands. They don't exactly have a "face" to refer to. Rather, they let their songs and the MVs speak to the fans both in Japan and overseas.

Zutomayo is not just music but also an exploration of style. As seen with their clothing line. It's an inbred of Easter eggs with its upbeat songs filled with messages of melancholy. That is what makes ZTMY mysteriously cool~

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antialiasis · 1 year ago

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Chess (2018 Kennedy Center revival)

So I was just going to briefly mention all the other different versions of Chess I have consumed in the big essay post I’ve been writing on and off, but there was just too much to say about this one which made it really awkward to fit it in, so fine, here is another individual chesspost. Nearly 7500 words of rambling under the cut, oh my god.

This production represents the latest official full overhaul of Chess. It sports an all-new book written by Danny Strong, also known as the actor who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is some whiplash (Sarah Michelle Gellar is apparently a big Chess fan, too). It was later staged again as a concert with some further modifications in 2021, but I listened to an audio bootleg of the 2018 version. (There exist some videos of it online, but only scattered bits.)

The Story Changes

This version has London’s basic plot structure with the distinctive two chess tournaments (this time four years apart, which is neither the original number nor the actual number of years between world chess championships), but rearranges Act I, adds a lot more quippy dialogue and swearing, reinterprets the characters, and recenters real-world politics in the whole thing — sort of the exact inverse of what Chess på svenska did with the material. It opens with “Difficult and Dangerous Times” to set the scene in the Cold War and features the Arbiter narrating with sardonic omniscient commentary between songs/scenes throughout, which does feel a bit more consistent than the Arbiter suddenly having a narrator role for the duration of one song in Act II.

All the main characters in this version are reinterpreted with significant new background context, which is a very interesting way to rewrite it that I definitely dig in principle. For example, Florence’s first scene here involves Walter threatening her with deportation from the US unless she can make Freddie behave for the duration of the tournament. Most versions of Chess make the political scheming very symbolic and vague — exchanges of mostly unnamed political prisoners or handwaved concessions — but this version is noticeably specific, with specific nuclear arms treaty negotiations that the CIA believes would be negatively affected if Freddie keeps openly antagonizing the Soviets. She tells Walter to go fuck himself (told you it adds more swearing) and that nobody can control Freddie Trumper, but ultimately she doesn’t have much of a choice but to reluctantly play along. This addition recontextualizes her character and her interactions with Freddie in Act I a fair bit — it’s pretty significant, after all, that she is under threat and may lose her home if she doesn’t somehow control what she really can’t.

Meanwhile, Freddie himself here suffers from a full-on mental illness which he takes medication for. Walter asserts on a phone call early that they’re dealing with a “genuine paranoid schizophrenic”, but then later calls him a “bipolar bitch”; I take the blatant inconsistency combined with the obviously insulting nature of these remarks to mean probably we’re not meant to take either of them at face value, but these two lines from Walter are the only ones suggesting any specific diagnosis. (I unfortunately suspect Danny Strong didn’t have a specific condition in mind and research it so much as just slap him with a Generic Ambiguous Mental Illness for which he takes Pills.) One way or another, Freddie’s ambiguous mental illness gives him bouts of intense paranoia, driving him to do things like trashing his and Florence’s hotel room to look for listening devices at one point. Florence keeps insistently, frustratedly telling him to just take his goddamn pills even as he’s in genuine distress; it’s pretty uncomfortable, and also definitely one of those things that are at least more human when his episodes could cost her the only home she has: she’s desperate and in distress too.

(I do kind of feel as if this whole bit would make more sense if Florence and Freddie had a strictly business relationship here to start with, instead of being explicitly portrayed as a couple — when they have a committed intimate partnership going on, one would think Florence getting deported would also be pretty obviously significant for Freddie, and Florence quietly playing along with the CIA and crossing her fingers that she can indirectly coax him into behaving with seemingly no serious thought given to whether it’d be better to just tell him why he needs to stop feels stranger. The scene with Walter sounds like Walter/the CIA are not aware of their romantic relationship and Florence wants to keep it that way — they both refer to Freddie strictly by his full/last name and as “her player” — so I guess Walter would have assumed she wouldn’t tell him, but surely the calculus would at least look a bit different to Florence herself. Even if it just prompts her to realize Freddie would still be liable to react by becoming even more erratic and vocal about his paranoias, that feels like it’d be significant enough, at least for her feelings on this relationship going forward, that it never actually coming up or being suggested within the story starts to feel marginally odd. Not a major complaint, though, just a bit of overthinking.)

Freddie in general is noticeably portrayed much more sympathetically here than usual throughout. Where other versions of Chess tend to present Freddie as an attention-seeking drama queen who plays up ludicrous arbitrary demands for money and press, here things like his walkout from the first chess game are made to come from a much more genuine place: he has major sensory issues and is intolerably thrown off balance by distracting noise and lights (which really are deliberately arranged to sabotage him). “Florence Quits”, the song with the misogyny verse, usually reads as being triggered by his jealousy and inability to accept that Anatoly’s just playing better than him, but this version makes it feel more about how he feels persistently gaslit about the ways he’s being sabotaged than anything else: he accuses the Soviets of having a hypnotist in the front row to throw him off (which they do, and Freddie literally saw him and recognized him) and Florence of working for the CIA (which she has been, if not by choice) while they deny it and brush it off, and the tense opening notes of the song play under him desperately yelling “You’re lying to me! You’re all lying to me!” (Which doesn’t make the misogyny okay, obviously, but it does make it feel more like a desperate, paranoia-fueled lashout where you don’t know how much he really means all that.)

When he subsequently forfeits the match against Anatoly, he makes a speech that sounds absolutely despairing where he says chess has been taking a toll on his health since he first became champion at eleven years old, and he doesn’t feel he can trust anyone, even himself. In Act II, before “The Interview”, he even actually apologizes to Florence for how he treated her; heck, his motivation for going so hard after Anatoly in “The Interview” itself is portrayed as being that he is genuinely disgusted by Anatoly leaving his family so callously (which is a lot of fun given Freddie’s own issues about his father leaving him and his mother behind) and wants Florence to hear the truth about what a despicable man he is, which is still unpleasant to her but clearly comes from a much more sympathetic place than either simple spite or reluctantly complying with Walter’s orders.

As for Anatoly… he was taken from his parents when he was a small child to be groomed by Molokov and the KGB into becoming a chess champion, and he’s well aware from his very first scene that the state had killed the previous Soviet champion after Freddie unseated him. (Freddie excoriates the press early on for not covering why the former champion disappeared off the face of the Earth because they’re too busy bashing Freddie, which sounds like paranoia, but the narrative has actually told us Freddie is right and they really did execute him but no one but Freddie seems to notice or care — another way in which Freddie is jarringly sympathetic here. In general, Freddie is portrayed as paranoid, and the other characters treat him like he’s just paranoid, but the narrative keeps proving Freddie’s paranoia right.)

Anatoly, though, isn’t afraid of the same fate, because “The state cannot execute a man… that is already dead.” (This general sentiment could press my buttons, but it just feels super corny and melodramatic the way it’s presented and performed, especially with that dramatic pause in there.) He is deeply depressed, thinks his marriage to Svetlana is fake and his kids hate him, and says repeatedly in Act I that he hates chess and just wants to be free of it, though he also describes a particular championship match he watched as the only time he’s felt love. At the end of Act I, he defects to the UK along with Florence as usual (his defection fully blows up the treaty Walter was worrying about despite Anatoly’s victory, so Florence’s refugee visa is indeed revoked, and that’s why they end up in the UK). Theoretically he should be free of chess now, but it bothers him intensely that he only won by forfeit (here they never finished playing a single match), resulting in him returning to defend his world champion title, and win it ‘properly’, four years later in Bangkok against Viigand.

Unknown to Anatoly, by Act II, after the election of Ronald Reagan, the Soviets are extra on edge and believe a planned NATO military exercise is actually the US mobilizing for a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union. Walter tries to convince Molokov it’s just an exercise; Molokov insists unfortunately the generals are going to believe it’s an invasion and be ready to retaliate unless Viigand wins the championship (if Viigand wins they will take it as a ‘sign of goodwill’ from the US, which will change their minds on the apparent invasion because, uhh, unclear). Throughout Act II, the larger stakes in this version are set up to be that if Anatoly should win the match, the Soviets are liable to start a nuclear war.

Does Walter go to Anatoly to frankly tell him that apparently the Soviets have lost their minds and are basically threatening nuclear war over a chess match and try to convince him to throw on that basis? Does Molokov realize that if he’s telling Walter to go rig the chess match so the generals will call it off, he clearly doesn’t actually believe that the US is about to invade, so probably he should be trying to convince the generals not to go for the nuclear option himself? No, of course not; this is Chess, so we have to have the songs that are in Chess. So instead, Walter and Molokov just go through the same indirect schemes as usual to unbalance Anatoly and convince him to throw the game, with some minor twists. Molokov actually actively threatens Svetlana with being sent to a gulag to die if she doesn’t convince her husband to return — and Svetlana does straight-up tell Anatoly this, only for Anatoly to brush her off and tell her they won’t do that. Florence learns the same from Walter and initially dismisses him, and fully doesn’t believe him about her father being alive, but does ultimately sympathize with Svetlana and worry for her, which I like. But Anatoly is obsessed with winning this championship above all else and fully convinced Molokov is bluffing.

In the end, he plays the game to win, oblivious to the nuclear threat; as he checkmates, Walter makes a desperate phone call to his superiors to call off the training exercise. (Why he didn’t just do that immediately when Molokov told him the Soviets were taking it as an attack, instead of spending all this time playing along with this elaborate chess mind game, is a mystery.) Only… they don’t, and the Soviets watch with their fingers on the nuclear button, but ultimately they don’t fire. The Arbiter’s narration informs us this was the closest the world ever came to destruction, even closer than the Cuban missile crisis, and that this then served as the wake-up call that prompted negotiations about nuclear deescalation.

Anatoly, meanwhile, returns to the Soviet Union as usual, this time successfully exchanging himself for Florence’s imprisoned father, and Walter gives Florence and her father visas so that they can return to the US together.

Broad thoughts

I feel profoundly weird about the mixing of real-life history and completely fictitious alternate history here — you can’t just assert in narration that the fictional events in your musical were what taught the US and Soviet Union that maybe they should just talk to each other, while making a specific comparison to an actual thing that really happened, after spending the musical asserting that the Soviets murdered chess players for losing the world championship. I think mixing history and fiction can work fine if we can imagine that for all we know this is what really happened, or alternatively that this is what might have happened in some alternate universe similar to but distinct from ours. But here, we’re creating highly significant and publicized events that are obviously fictional, making it absurd to pretend this is what really happened, while also presenting these fictional alternate-universe events in objective hindsight narration alongside real events that happened in the real world and as a supposed cause of them. This ending narration just feels like it’s weirdly trying to have its cake and eat it too.

All in all, though, I think this is definitely one of the most interesting efforts to rewrite Chess. It definitely has something it’s going for, there are several neat ideas in it, and in particular I appreciate that it tries to give extra attention to the characters, more context to their actions, and more messy, humanized depth, inner conflict, and complicated motivators and stressors behind what they do. I genuinely enjoy what it’s doing with Freddie in Act I, in particular, even though it feels somehow both jarringly like it’s woobifying him (I genuinely think he ends up coming across as the most sympathetic of the three mains here, with so much of his erratic, childish and unpleasant behaviour being recontextualized to be more understandable and the way his hatred of the Soviets keeps being validated by the narrative) and like the narrative is weirdly harsh on him (this much more sympathetic Freddie who suffers from an actual mental illness is treated like absolute irredeemable scum by every other character including the fourth-wall-leaning narrator, even more than usual).

I also think the restructuring of Act I was pretty solid for the most part, though there’s definitely some awkwardness, like how Freddie’s expanded encounters with the press sort of clumsily repeat the same beats a bit. On the one hand, I can get what Danny Strong was going for in choosing to introduce everyone first and then go into “Merano” instead of doing several minutes of narrative meaninglessness before the main characters are even introduced; on the other hand, that kind of just half-defeats the sole original purpose of “Merano”, which is to provide a very jaunty more stereotypical musical theater song so that Freddie can be introduced via barging in and interrupting it with his very different vibe, and if I were Danny Strong I would definitely have just removed “Merano” at that point. But the “Difficult and Dangerous Times” opening works great, and it nicely avoids the “almost nothing of note happens for nearly forty minutes” and “several meaningless fluff songs in a row” problems of the London script, introducing conflict and stakes early and keeping the narrative going.

Ultimately, though, a lot of what it’s trying to do doesn’t quite come together to me, and some of it is variously misguided or just strange.

The Politics

To start with, I can definitely get wanting to emphasize the role of Cold War politics in the narrative, and I basically enjoyed the increased political focus and higher stakes in Act I — but I don’t think making Anatoly unwittingly almost start a nuclear war works here, or fits properly into this narrative at all. The Soviet generals have to be holding idiot balls; Molokov has to be holding an idiot ball; Walter has to be holding the biggest idiot ball of all; and most importantly, the ludicrously massive stakes being pasted on top of the match despite none of the main characters even knowing about it means we zoom thoroughly out of the character drama of the situation: “Endgame” just becomes grotesquely trivial with that hanging over it without Anatoly’s knowledge, rendering the actual drama of the climactic song completely irrelevant to what’s really at stake.

I also dislike, in a version that emphasizes the politics, how distinctly slanted it is. One of the things that I like in the London strain of Chess is that Walter and Molokov are both slimy, manipulative bastards in different ways, both sides’ political actors cruelly toying with the lives of the players for their own impersonal ends; the righteousness of each state as a whole doesn’t really matter to this story, only the impact that the whole conflict and the mutual scheming has on the main characters’ lives. But in this version, the Soviets and Molokov are cartoon villains who literally abduct children to force them into chess camp and then murder them if they don’t win the world championship, while Walter may be a condescending asshole who’s willing to threaten Florence but is distinctly the ‘good guy’ in his interactions with Molokov, which comprise most of his screentime, especially in Act II. Walter even gets a humanizing moment where he explains he has a nine-year-old son and has nightmares about him suffering a nuclear winter (Molokov, meanwhile, tells Walter in Act I that Anatoly is like a son to him but could not more obviously not care about Anatoly at all when he proudly presents his new champion material Viigand in Act II). I just find it really detrimental to Chess’s narrative to make it about Soviets Bad, US Good, and more so the more you focus on that — to whatever extent you highlight the politics in this story, it should be done in a way that’s about how the political machinations of the Cold War impact the character drama at the center of it, and it’s distracting when instead you make it into a loosely related B-plot about Walter’s desperate diplomatic efforts to stop the evil Soviets from destroying the world with their shortsightedness.

I think a successful more politically-focused Chess could definitely exist, but I think it’s always going to function best if Walter and Molokov feel at least narratively like just about equal scumbags. It’s not even impossible to imagine nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction coming up in the course of it — but it needs to be using that to make us enraged at all of this on behalf of Anatoly/Florence/Svetlana/Freddie, not enraged at Molokov on behalf of Walter.

The Character Work

Meanwhile, I do basically like the setup and recontextualization done for all of the main characters in Act I, but unfortunately none of them quite delivered as well as I hoped in the end.

Let’s start with Florence. I actually quite liked the deportation threat, putting Florence herself under personal pressure in a way she usually isn’t. I dig characters being put through the wringer and making decisions under stress. But the story doesn’t quite do anything with that other than using it as silent context behind her early interactions with Freddie and technically as the reason she and Anatoly move to the UK offscreen. We don’t, for instance, ever see Freddie learn that that’s why she moved or that he was unwittingly indirectly responsible for that, or otherwise address that in any way, and as far as Florence in the rest of the story is concerned, it might as well never have happened — we never see her having any kinds of feelings on it, or even confronting Walter about that nasty little part he played in her life when she meets him again (she doesn’t even comment on it when he offers her the chance to go back to the US at the end!). To an extent this is, of course, because Florence being deported was never originally part of the story of Chess, so of course it doesn’t come up in any song or have any significant specific impact on the core series of events — but if you’re going to add it in at all, you really ought to be taking that somewhere in the rest of your additions that isn’t just briefly handwaving that she gets to go back at the end.

Like Long Beach, this version brings Florence’s father back at the end — but unfortunately, it feels really unearned here. Compared to other London variants, it actually ditches the bit of “The Deal” where Florence is tangibly emotional and riled up by Walter’s offer of her father — she fully dismisses the idea of her father being alive as bullshit, and instead it’s Svetlana who moves her to have doubts when she sees her begging Anatoly to return on video and realizes Svetlana still loves him. I do really like that, by itself, and it’s probably my favorite thing about this version’s portrayal of Florence; her empathizing with Svetlana to the point of feeling genuinely guilty for having taken her husband from her, and believing maybe the right thing to do would be if he went back to Svetlana for her sake, is actually very good, serves as a great lead-in to “I Know Him So Well”, and makes Florence’s character feel far more sympathetic in a production where she’s otherwise pretty lacking in that department. But it leaves us with no emotional connection whatsoever to Florence’s father — we’ve only heard her mention him twice before Walter’s offer, very briefly, in Act I, and not really with any sense that she misses or is all that invested in him. Seeing her reunite with him means nothing for her or her arc; it just comes out of left field, and winds up being another thing slanting this version towards Good Guy Walter, Bad Guy Molokov, what with Walter offering her visas back to the US for both of them seemingly out of the goodness of his heart.

It would have been possible to actually build up to this in a way that would make it satisfying. Florence and Anatoly have several conversations; we could have used some of those to have Florence actually talk about her father and how she feels about him being gone, and that could have been part of building up her relationship with Anatoly, made it meaningful that Anatoly’s parting gift to her is to ensure her father’s return. I suppose Danny Strong’s thought process may have been that if he built up Florence’s father too much, that should become her main concern once Walter brings that into it, and he wanted her concern to be about Svetlana instead, which I guess is fair; it also means Anatoly only really has to dismiss the potential harm to one other person in his obsession with winning the game. But if you do make the decision to not build up her father, then bringing her father back is not an ending that makes any sense, and there was no need to do this — they could have easily cut out all suggestion of her father being alive entirely and it would only have made things smoother. I think the only reason she gets her father back in this one is in some hasty effort to make Florence’s ending less bleak, but because it doesn’t have any emotional resonance, it’s just not the right way to do that here.

Speaking of Florence and Anatoly, the romance here… once again has some neat, interesting things it’s going for but doesn’t quite come together as a whole. The two of them do have some actual conversations where they bond a bit, which is already a marked improvement over the default London script — but their very first conversation features Anatoly asserting out of nowhere that Florence has “a way of brightening his spirit”, despite not even knowing her, which isn’t super convincing and just comes off kind of creepy-awkward. Florence asserts a few times that he’s sweet and kind, but we don’t really see much of him actually coming across as sweet or kind — his lines tend to be either melodramatic or sardonic moping interspersed kind of jarringly with awkward jokes. He’s less charming or sweet and more like a lonely, kicked dog, which is fine if Florence is into that but doesn’t quite make her descriptions of why she likes him ring true.

This production actually goes back to the concept album a bit when it comes to Florence and Anatoly — namely, more than political manipulation and external pressures forcibly tearing them apart from the outside, there’s a more substantial internal tension between them as Anatoly genuinely simply prioritizes winning the chess match over her and dismisses her as she tries to question him about Svetlana. The two approaches can both work but do different things for the narrative; this internal approach puts more focus on the personal conflict and character drama and makes the relationship more interesting, which is definitely good, and in principle I think this is built up to in a pretty solid way here — Anatoly, raised to become a chess champion to the exclusion of all else, being maddened by the notion of not actually beating Freddie in Act I and needing to prove he deserves the championship to himself in Act II before he can feel “free from chess” works as a coherent reason for him to be so strikingly, unhealthily obsessive about it.

But I think the biggest problem is that Florence and Anatoly individually don’t hit well enough as characters to create investment in them. Florence is ultimately not developed enough and mostly just acts kind of unpleasant, especially to Freddie, all the way up until that Svetlana bit in Act II. More importantly, I just can’t like or understand or sympathize with Anatoly at all, beyond recognizing that core of what his arc is going for. Part of it is probably down to the writing of his lines, which I’m just not a fan of in general. I already named one example from his first scene. Here’s how Anatoly and Florence’s very first conversation starts:

ANATOLY: It’s not his fault. This game drives us all crazy. FLORENCE: I’m fine. Aren’t you even a little bit scared? ANATOLY: Of Trumper? FLORENCE: No, that they’ll kill you if you lose. ANATOLY: Oh. To quote the great Leo Tolstoy, “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.” FLORENCE: What does that mean? ANATOLY: I don’t know exactly, but it is very Russian.

I just don’t find this dialogue very convincing. Why is he reciting a dramatic irrelevant quote if he doesn’t know what it means and just thinks it’s “very Russian”? It feels like a generic quippy exchange off a snarky TV show. Does Anatoly use humour to cope with his situation? Not really; this is pretty much the only time he says anything that might be taken as that. This feels like a joke that’s there only to get a laugh out of the audience, not because Anatoly would actually tell it — and consequently, it doesn’t tell us anything real about Anatoly. Meanwhile, Florence responds to this with “Oh, you’re funny,” as if that’s one of the reasons she falls for him when I would decidedly not name that as a character trait he has. I feel like most of his dialogue just doesn’t have a great sense of character — in stark contrast to Freddie, who oozes character. I can’t get a good sense of who he is and how he thinks. He’s just there. And this also makes it harder to see what Florence sees in him and believe in the relationship.

Moreover, this Anatoly just comes across as kind of a terrible person, not in the fun coherent intentional way Freddie is a terrible person but in a flat, confusing and kind of unintentional-seeming way. Svetlana here is actually really sympathetic, with lovely little additional bits of dialogue that make her feelings hit harder (her voice as she tells Anatoly that “You left us!” breaks my heart), and this is possibly my favorite version of Svetlana in any Chess. But Anatoly is really, really terrible to her, by which I don’t even mean the cheating on her but the bit where he keeps angrily insisting to her face that she never loved him and she brainwashed their children to hate him and of course they’re not going to kill her (hey, Anatoly, guess who’s already well aware that the Soviet government in this universe is not above executing people over chess?).

And even that could be made understandable, given his situation — he could just be in hard denial about it because the thought of them having been suffering with him gone and being punished for his actions is so horrific he just shuts it down — but there’s never any sense that that’s what’s really going on. We don’t see him privately upset about the possibility later, for instance — he just keeps insisting the same and dismissing Svetlana to Florence, too. We know it’s not that it’s true — we see Svetlana admit to Molokov that even though he ruined her life and she never wants to see him again she still loves him, and we hear her sing “Someone Else’s Story” and “I Know Him So Well”. Nor do we ever get any hint at exactly what Svetlana or his kids did to make him think this of them, if anything (his own kids!). Anatoly just seems to sort of bitterly, adamantly believe this for no reason at all. And that makes it impossible to empathize with. Okay, sure, Anatoly, you were taken from your family as a child, but that really doesn’t even start to explain any of this. There could have been ways of making it feel at least believable, tragic in a deeply fucked-up way, but the story here just doesn’t do the work. And once again, Anatoly being so unpleasant for no reason just makes it harder to feel at all invested in his relationship with Florence or sad when they part.

The best fix here isn’t quite obvious, and I can’t say I envy Danny Strong trying to put all his neat little ideas together and make them work. If Anatoly were to appear substantially conflicted about Svetlana and put any real stock in Molokov’s threat, that would render “Endgame”, where he doubles down anyway, kind of jarring and inexcusable as he’d be not just refusing to return to her but refusing to care if she is killed. So in order for this to properly work with “Endgame”, he probably does need to be very deep in denial about whether they’d really kill her. I think what I would do, if I were writing this plot where groomed-as-a-chess-champion Anatoly knows the Soviets killed Boris Ivanovich and they’ve threatened to kill Svetlana too, is to emphasize better how irrational Anatoly is being and try to show it more as a consequence of growing up among the constantly plotting KGB.

Let him go off on a proper paranoid rant to Florence about the reasons why he thinks Svetlana is just plotting against him, and some innocuous things he saw his kids do once that mean she brainwashed them. When Florence tries to challenge him on how batshit he sounds, he just storms out, saying she’s being taken in by their lies and just wants to sabotage him, and disappears — and she doesn’t see him again until he appears at the final game and plays this manic, desperate match while insisting to himself that Svetlana and Florence both just never understood him and hated his success. Afterwards, we can perhaps see him finally, quietly asking Molokov if they’re really going to kill her, showing that on some level he already knew the threat might be real and had just firmly blocked it out (in the actual ending as it is Molokov simply tells him unprompted that she really will be punished unless he comes back, and he just asks why with no addressing of his previous adamant insistence that that wouldn’t happen). His and Florence’s final conversation could then involve a bit more of a reckoning with that and with what his relationship with Svetlana was really like, through a more honest lens.

I’m actually pretty tickled by this scenario because that would really drive home a pretty fun parallel between Anatoly and Freddie — which in hindsight I think this version must in fact have been trying for, but didn’t quite do in a focused enough way for it to really hit. Anatoly and Freddie are both chess players with deeply abnormal childhoods and bouts of paranoia that cause them to behave in toxic ways, which ultimately drives Florence away from both of them.

This production shows the first chess game as the “Chess Game” instrumental playing under Freddie and Anatoly having alternating inner monologues about the game and their issues, deliberately drawing a comparison between the two of them; they both say they hate chess, that they don’t feel like real human beings. It’s not exactly subtle, but I liked the way this was used to build up their respective brain gremlins and was intrigued by the parallel being set up. I didn’t feel they ultimately did much with the parallel, though, because the story then didn’t really continue leaning into it much from there. By emphasizing this Anatoly’s paranoia as paranoia and not just as him legitimately thinking the marriage was never real and the KGB wouldn’t kill her, we could properly build the story around that parallel, and I would genuinely dig that.

The one place after the chess match where the actual thing does sort of try to get at the Anatoly/Freddie parallel again is in the dialogue scene that precedes “Endgame”. This scene is not sung (though it has the “Chess Game” instrumental in the background, which connects it neatly to that previous bit comparing the two of them), but it’s clearly based on “Talking Chess”: Freddie approaches Anatoly to tell him Viigand’s weakness lies in his King’s Indian Defense, and:

ANATOLY: Why are you helping me? FREDDIE: Jesus Christ! Am I the only one who cares about this game? ANATOLY: It’s more than a game now. There is so much more at stake than who wins or loses. FREDDIE: No! No, winning is everything. Fuck politics! Fuck the KGB, fuck the CIA, fuck them all! We are the ones who have dedicated our lives to chess. We are the ones who have given up everything for greatness — our childhoods, our sanity, our loves. Anatoly, we’ve sacrificed everything. They’ve sacrificed nothing. What’s the number one rule of a chess champion? ANATOLY: Play to win. FREDDIE: As long as you do that you can never lose, even if you do.

Much as I love “Talking Chess”, though, this on the surface similar scene just didn’t feel right in this context when I listened to it. In Anatoly’s last scene here, he told Florence firmly that he just wanted to win and that his marriage with Svetlana was never real and it’s all KGB mind games. Him going “It’s more than a game now, there’s so much more at stake” suddenly now comes out of nowhere — if he believes that now, it could only be if he actively reconsidered something offscreen, but he doesn’t say anything elaborating on what he’s thinking now or what he might have reconsidered or why, just that vague, generic line that contradicts everything he’s expressed up until this point. It’s another example of Anatoly’s dialogue just feeling really flat and meaningless to me — his lines here don’t say anything, just serve as vague filler to prompt Freddie onward. And because unlike London proper the setup leading up to this is all about him already being absolutely determined to win the game at all costs, this just feels redundant, unnecessary, going through the motions of something that’s in London without realizing that with the changed context it doesn’t quite make sense anymore.

I think that’s unfortunately the case with Freddie a bit here too. I enjoyed Act I’s quite different take on Freddie, and his establishing narration for Act II petulantly stating Anatoly won the championship last year “by forfeit, I might add”, and “The Interview” is recontextualized in a very fun way as I mentioned before — but after that it feels like Danny Strong doesn’t quite know what to do with Freddie anymore and just has him sort of arbitrarily go through the motions of London in a way that doesn’t necessarily hang together with everything he’s established of Freddie so far. It made sense that this Freddie, despite being decidedly hostile towards Walter and the CIA, conducted the interview to show Florence what a bastard Anatoly is — he’s not doing it for Walter, he’s got his own reasons to want to do it once Walter’s shown him the Svetlana video. But I find it a lot harder to swallow that this Freddie — whose usual problem seems to be that he’s compulsively blunt about how he really feels — would then be easily persuaded to play his part in “The Deal”, which involves exaggeratedly trying to be all buddy-buddy with Anatoly. Maybe if there was better setup around it, like with “The Interview” — but “The Deal” only has seconds of kind of half-assed leadup here, and from there it moves directly into “Pity the Child” (after a segue featuring the recording of Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita, because nuclear war).

Freddie’s next appearance after that, then, is this “Talking Chess”-esque dialogue where he’s realized the parallel between the two of them, how they’ve both sacrificed everything for chess and the political schemers have sacrificed nothing and that’s why he should play to win. I can appreciate how the low point of “Pity the Child” would trigger that particular realization, contemplating how much he lost and sacrificed to achieve his status in the game and perhaps afterward realizing Anatoly is the only other person here who might understand that. That feels like it basically tracks and is interesting.

But… it also means that fun very specific contempt for Anatoly in particular based on him having left his family like Freddie’s own father did is just kind of… gone, I guess, or at least Freddie doesn’t consider it relevant enough for it to stop him from going out of his way to pep Anatoly up for the game with no mention or hint of it. (At least Freddie probably isn’t aware of the threats made against Svetlana in particular, so he doesn’t know Anatoly winning would shatter his family even further.) And we’ve lost the bit in “Talking Chess” where the notion of the political scheming actually leading to Viigand winning the match just personally offends Freddie because Viigand is not even that good; instead Freddie is just putting forward “Play to win” as some kind of general inviolable chess principle, which is kind of generic and not nearly as characterful, in my opinion. I’m not saying we ought to have had the “Viigand is mediocre” bit here — I don’t think it would quite fit in for this Freddie, whose feelings about chess itself are very conflicted and who is more concerned with showing up these political hacks who have sacrificed nothing while they sacrificed everything — but as a Freddie moment I would really have wanted to end on something stronger there than this vague assertion that “The number one rule of a chess champion is to play to win.”

Like in London, this is Freddie’s last substantial scene, but he does have a part in “Endgame”, and it’s also an interesting one: he gets Sixty-four squares / they’re the reason you know you exist (but not the preceding How straightforward the game…), but also a couple of other verses usually sung by the chorus, and the lines he gets are clearly very purposefully chosen to reinforce that final resolve regarding the sacrifices they’ve made for greatness, which I really appreciate: Listen to them shout / They saw you do it / In their minds no doubt / That you’ve been through it / Suffered for your art and in the end a winner and They’re completely enchanted / But they don’t take your qualities for granted / It isn’t very often / That the critics soften / Nonetheless, you’ve won their hearts / How can we begin to / Appreciate the work that you’ve put into / Your calling through the years / The blood, the sweat, the tears / The late, late, nights, the early starts?

All in all, Freddie is still definitely my favorite part of this Chess, but while the parallel itself is neat it’s too muddled and I find the second half of Act II pretty uneven for him. What would I do if I were writing this bit?

I’m not totally sure how I’d want to tackle “The Deal”, but as for the “Talking Chess”-but-not scene: I would ditch the bit where Freddie is trying to advise Anatoly on strategy and the bit where Anatoly is apparently suddenly not determined to play to win just so Freddie can then tell him he should be again. None of that is contributing anything in what this version has been building up. Instead, they just sort of bump into each other, Anatoly fresh off his paranoid rant to Florence about Svetlana, Freddie fresh off “Pity the Child” and the strange realization Anatoly might be the only person who’d understand him a little bit. At first they just sort of stop and look at each other. Freddie starts, guarded, with some kind of oblique accusatory prod about the leaving his family thing, which he still deeply resents.

Anatoly has calmed down now, but he tells him what he told Florence: that it was always a fake marriage, a fake family, that the video was just a lie set up for him by the KGB, that Svetlana had brainwashed their children to despise him.

This incidentally plays into Freddie’s existing preconceptions pretty well. He’s probably not instantly convinced but it checks out enough he’s willing to reluctantly leave it alone for now. Probably mutters something like, “Fucking Soviets.”

Anatoly says something like, aren’t you going to try to make me a deal to get me to throw the match and go back? Freddie says no, fuck that. Says the whole bit about how we are the ones who have dedicated ourselves to chess, who have sacrificed everything, childhood, sanity, love, and they’ve sacrificed nothing. Why should we listen to those CIA and KGB assholes? Draws out that parallel. The two of them are probably standing in symmetrical positions on the stage.

Anatoly just nods slowly, agreeing. “I would have beaten you.”

Freddie scoffs and says, “Dream on,” but not quite with the spiteful arrogance he would’ve said it in Act I.

Then they part, and we move on to “Endgame”. The scene isn’t about Freddie helping Anatoly, or about Freddie convincing Anatoly to go for the win; it’s about the Freddie/Anatoly parallel, about Freddie realizing it and in his profound loneliness finding a smidge of connection with this guy he hated because he’s the only one who sort of Gets It, and about showing how Anatoly’s conviction has developed since the first chess match where part of his inner monologue went, “I can’t beat him, he’s too good.” Anatoly is so ready to prove that he really is the world’s best chess player.

Conclusion

Man, this version is so interesting. It’s a mess, but it’s a fascinating mess with a bunch of tasty potential and a real sense that Danny Strong had some genuine thoughts on what the show was missing and how to rework it to fix that, even where his attempts were ultimately confused and don’t succeed. In some ways it’s the most me-core version of Chess and in other ways it’s deeply antithetical to me and in most all ways it’s trying to do something neat but does it in a flawed way. Special shoutout to this Freddie, who honestly deserves better than this Florence.

#musicals #chess musical #chess the musical #ramble #review

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accio-victuuri · 1 year ago

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YIZHAN’S 06.29 HK Event ( A Summary ) ✨

As the title says, this will be a timeline of sorts around the show. It’s always a treat to see them in one place so the next step is really to archive the story behind it. A mix of events, cpns & fandom reflections.

The last part of this is more on my words on why ( i think ) they didn’t interact or even see each other at the event, if you’re interested in that, you can scroll down and skip the others.

This is gonna be a long post, Enjoy! ^^

What is the event all about?

The name of the show is The Greater Bay Area Film Concert 2023 and the venue is in Hongkong. It is described as :

More than a hundred filmmakers, musicians, cultural and sports technology representatives from both sides of the Taiwan Strait as well as Hong Kong and Macao will gather on the banks of the Xiangjiang River to work together Write a new picture of Chinese-style modernization belonging to the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.

It is also a big event because it is broadcasted in multiple platforms:

CCTV 6 Movie Channel, Phoenix Satellite TV Chinese Channel, Phoenix Satellite TV Hong Kong Channel, Guangdong Satellite TV, Shenzhen Satellite TV, Radio Television Hong Kong, and Macao Radio and Television , Australia and Asia Satellite TV and other TV platforms live broadcast, China Central People's Broadcasting Corporation, Hong Kong TVB recorded and broadcast, movie channel Rong Media, 1905 Movie Network, Phoenix.com, Phoenix Show and other major media platforms of the whole network broadcast simultaneously.

I personally haven’t experienced an event they both attended — or actually even as individuals as endorsed as this. It is considered a “government” event and it would make sense that they will be present. Even if they are still considered “traffic” stars, this time, it works in their favor because they need the audience that these two will bring.

It is labeled as a “concert” but it’s truly a “party” for the 26th anniversary of Hong Kong’s return to China. The actual date is 7/1, but this is a primer to that, and why it’s taking place in HK. This is a touchy subject so I won’t go into detail and i feel like a good number of us are happy to see them perform but at the same time knowing what this party is about makes us feel off. It’s always been a popular theory among turtles that our best bet for a same event and interaction is for a government approved celebration. This way, their fans will ( hopefully ) be in their best behavior.

The same sentiment was actually passed on to turtles the day before the event. Reminding that it’s not like the other shows where you can say whatever.

Before the 629 Party:

By the last week of June, there were already some buzz surrounding the show and who will be attending. The most talked about being XZ & WYB. Melons were already releasing news about it but there were still talk about them not being in the same place.

It could be the same show but they will be in completely different places. It got cpfs excited, knowing how rough the past days were with all the YBO business, this is exactly what a lot of fans needed. some really positive news. Though there were some minor signs that all is well, a loud sign like this was so much better.

6.26, fans were talking about a potential double airport which turned out to not be true. However, this added fuel to the fire that they will both attend.

6.27 for cpfs was of course all about celebrating CQL’s 4th anniversary and well it was truly a special day. The weekend before, cpfs were already sharing face-to-face events and online materials on the actual day was a lot. It is the answer to the question of whether the cp fandom was already broken. The answer is a very loud No. Same day, Yubin also shared a video that showed a split second glimpse of them back in 2018 and eating hotpot. At this point, it was only a matter of time for them to be in the same event.

6.28, around 8:30 AM there were videos and then photos of XZ leaving and flying to HK. This lined up with melons that he will leave on this day. Even if there are no official announcements yet, it was the answer we were looking for. He was looking so good and his hair was tied up — which of course made us think of all the times they both had this style. the best. and also how they look so similar. twins!!!!

and well, how it is sort of similar to how lei yu’s hair was tied too in BTF.

There is a speculation that he was really supposed to fly 629 but that information was leaked so they decided against it. Or they booked multiple flights. The reason is @ the airport, there was a video of ZZ looking through his bag when he was about to go to the gate and it seemed like he forgot important things. So his staff had to leave and get it. It leads us to believe that he may not be prepared to go on that flight in particular.

They were also on HS as attending. This goes to show how no one is over BJYX. lol. It still brings the heat, because of who they are as individuals and moreso as a pair. There are so many guests, a lot of them really well-know names to the general public but the entertainment blogs know who to talk about.

10:00 & 10:15 AM Movie Channel weibo account announced the attendees and two very familiar faces are on it. The news we have all been waiting to hear has been confirmed.

It’s cute that the photos they used were from the recent Weibo Night. GG’s is what he used for the event poster.

11:25 AM Yibo-official shared that WYB is attending.

Next up, the program list was revealed and ZZ & WYB are confirmed to be performing. WYB = Wuming OST and ZZ will sing Run Without Care.

An event like this takes careful planning and while i do believe that them attending is not about “pleasing cpfs” — it doesn’t take away the fact that it feels like a gift to us. the drama from the past days. cql 4th anniversary. The universe is on our side on this one.

2:00 PM - ZZ landed in Hongkong. 🛬

3:00 PM - XZS posts about ZZ attending

In the evening, Movie Channel weibo account had a pre-show livestream related to the event and ZZ & WYB were talked about and evaluated.

6.29, at approximately 8:00 AM, Bobo is seen at the airport and is on his way to Shenzhen then to HK. Wearing a really cute Pokemon shirt!!!! People are saying he took this route cause he doesn’t want to be photographed by the public.

The HS bringing them together is also trending so early, #7 on general HS and #11 on entertainment. Everyone is so excited! HK based media accounts on weibo are also joining in and posting about the event with the boys as the main photo.

( these screenshots taken at the time of posting, however hours later, they were edited to include other acts in p2 especially. )

Some videos about them were also circling around, i don’t really think these are necessary cause it’s different when a cpf makes them and meant for the fandom audience compared to the “media”putting their own spin to it. Stuff like these are definitely a hit or miss and may be antis in disguise.

Around 12nn, WYB is in Shenzhen and on the way to HK. His itinerary really caused the confusion before. cause people really thought there was another event in SZ cause why would he go that route.

BJYX was also on HS before the event. In the regular one, that high up, not even entertainment.

6PM , WYB is seen attending the rehearsal for the show. There were also talks of how far they might be seated from each other.

The program started 30 minutes earlier than the broadcast of 8:00 PM. That’s why the fancams were released way earlier. Yibo left right after his performance and didn’t spend that much time with the other guests/audience.

XZ was seen around 9PM, he spent time in the audience then performed as well. He also left right after.

Both of them were all over HS. moreso GG.

Media Compilation 📸

• XZ Studio

pre show photoshoot fire one | two

live photos

XZ’s performance of 潇洒走一回

• Yibo-Official

pre-show photoshoot b&w

live photos

WYB’s performance of Wuming

CPN clues here and there

1. The joint event is on a Thursday, and as we all know, Thursday is a good day to see you.

2. The song chosen for XZ was part of a record released back in 10-28-1991. It’s the same birth month & year as him, but the date is such a good coincidence. 28. Ai Bo ( Love Bo ) 🫶🏼

3. Emphasis on Yibo’s moles in one of the YBO photos. Bobo is known for other things physically but not really his moles, so it’s interesting how it was highlighted. A mole is really more of XZ’s thing so i can’t help but feel like there is something there 👀 ; a connection being made.

4. I know some people were bummed that ZZ was not in the audience, or hasn’t even showed up at the tables when Bobo performed. Well, he missed alot too. It’s not like it was only Yibo’s.

Same thing with WYB leaving the event right after his performance. We know this is his usual MO but we had hopes anyway.

I know it’s heartbreaking but we have to focus on the positive that they are in the same event ! ✨we will get there, we just have to be patient and remember that their safety is the most important.

5. ZZ’s table mates are Yoshi ( WYB’s BTF co star and friend ) as well as Huang Bo ( WYB’s One and Only co star ). What a coincidence. 🫢🫢

6. This photo from XZS. 📸 what a great shot considering WYB performed Wuming.

7. Here we go again with their usual strategy of not posting at the same time when they are at an event. You can say that this was somehow coordinated by the people from the show. We noticed WYB was scheduled at the start to get traffic early, and then ZZ close to the last to get people to stay till the final hours.

However, XZS really posted and showed XZ after WYB’s performance of Wuming was broadcasted. The screenshot i’m posting shows Movie Channel posted at :52, but that’s a bit late cause minutes before that other accounts have already shared. Even me. I was uploading the Wuming performance here on tumblr when XZS popped up on my Weibo notification.

Interpret it how you want, but the two are not here to “compete”.

A fan was able to see them shooting these materials 628, so they could have posted it anytime before the actual broadcast but didn’t.

8. Let’s go back to ZZ’s photos lol. It’s 18 photos uploaded but the actual number of shots is 33. What a good combination! Also his posting time is 20:50, or that can also be 8:50. 8/5. Yibo’s birthday 😭

9. The Movie Channel weibo accounted posted a video cut of their performance. Just them. And put a caption like “ it’s like the same stage” cause they did perform on the same stage, just at different times 😂 but then it was later edited out / deleted. Lol. Here is the video someone saved of the cut.

10. The IP address in ZZ’s video post is in Guangdong. Again, i’m not sure how these IPs work or if a staff is posting for him but the thing is this place is close to Shenzhen. WYB is rumored to be going from HK to Shenzhen again so who knows. It’s all CPN anyway ☺️

11. ZZ’s pants, it has a heart that is outlined with a color green.

There are probably more out there, but these are the interesting ones i’m including as of now. If some “big” ones show itself then i will just make a separate post on it. I find that the sweetest candies from events happen weeks or months later. When we get more “clues.” In the meantime i hope enjoyed these ones.

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Personal thoughts on “not interacting” and the reality of being a BXG.

I’m using this post/photos from one of my favorite BJYX fansite to start and give a general theme of what my stand is with this whole thing. “no need to prove it.”

I think most of us dare hoped, but the reality is, when it comes to same events with them, we should always manage our expectations. do not expect anything. There are some who are frustrated because of what they think ZZ/WYB should do or act around each other — as if we really have a say on that. As someone who has been on here for quite some time, it is a fact that being a BXG is hard. You don’t have to believe in BJYXSZD, but if you’re here to see cute interactions like how “CPs” do then this is not the fandom for you. It takes a whole lot of understanding of their status as celebrities and the toxicity between their solo fans as well as C-ent in general. Then add the whole 2*7 incident. Some may say it’s so easy to just interact and shut people up. No it’s not. Xiao Zhan is not just Xiao Zhan ; Wang Yibo is not just Wang Yibo. The reality is, at events like this, they are products. Both of them have millions or billions riding on them. So there you go. It’s not as easy as everyone thinks. I understand if people feel bummed — it’s okay to leave the CPF side of the fandom if that will be better for you. There is no shame in letting go if it only upsets you because fandom should make you happy. As I said, it takes a certain kind of person to stay and continue believing in them.

As CPFs, we should be kinder to them both. more understanding. not too demanding. We are the ones who are supposed to be on their side and know why they do certain things. It is tiring to be this selfless but it is what it is.

Now on to the more serious reason…

As I’ve mentioned above, this event is really not the “party” for entertainment everyone is making it out to be. It’s not an NYE program. It’s to celebrate the anniversary of HK’s return to China and you all know how that paints this as political. The same goes for celebrities who attended this event.

Both of them were already on HS leading up to it. HK media are focusing on them. Even during the event, the HS about them was so high up.

This is why I think they decided to not give any chance for the public to see them in the same space. If ZZ was there, the camera will surely pan to him when WYB was performing. If not, there will be fancams and people will scrutinize every micro expressions. Their solo fans will be at war. and well basically, the event will be about them. It’s not the greater bay area film concert anymore. It’s the BOJUNYIXIAO REUNION SHOW. Which is something they don’t want. The “celebration” shouldn’t be about them at all. Tho the media used them to hype it up. At the end of the day, they don’t want and need that kind of attention. It’s okay when it’s about their performance but not anything else.

They want to be known as individuals and not as a “pairing” even tho a lot of people and not just cpfs are interested in what will happen if they go on the same stage and interact 😂😂😂😂 These two really act like a real celebrity couple in c-ent who don’t interact in events!

Right now, I’m really happy to see them onstage and get all the content. I’m comforted that they are in the same city and were basically MIA days before they popped up at the airport to leave so hopefully they get to spend more time together!

To my fellow bxgs who believe, stay strong! ♥️💛💚.

#yizhan #bjyx #there is no science here i’m just clowning like i always do

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psychics4unet · 4 months ago

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20 Simpsons Psychic Predictions That Came True 🚀

Hey there, fellow Simpsons fans! 🎉 If you’ve been following The Simpsons, you know that this iconic show isn’t just about laughs and donuts (though we love those too). It’s also about some eerily accurate predictions that have left us all scratching our heads. 🤔 How did this cartoon get so many things right about the future? Grab a seat, grab a donut 🍩, and let’s dive into some of the wildest psychic predictions from The Simpsons that actually came true! 🚀

🌟🔮✨ Curious about what the future holds for you? Just like The Simpsons predicted some mind-blowing events, you too can uncover what’s in store for your life. Click the link below for your own personal psychic reading and get insights that might just amaze you:

1. Donald Trump’s Presidency 🇺🇸

Season 11, Episode 17 (“Bart to the Future”)

In this episode from the year 2000, Lisa becomes the president and mentions that they inherited quite a budget crunch from President Trump. Fast forward to 2016, and Donald Trump becomes the 45th president of the United States. What the what?! 😲

2. Smartwatches ⌚

Season 6, Episode 19 (“Lisa’s Wedding”)

During a future vision of Lisa’s wedding, her fiancé uses a watch to make a phone call. This was in 1995, way before smartwatches became a thing in the 2010s. Talk about being ahead of the curve! 📱

3. Disney Buys 20th Century Fox 🏰🦊

Season 10, Episode 5 (“When You Dish Upon a Star”)

In 1998, there’s a scene showing the 20th Century Fox sign with a subtitle “A Division of Walt Disney Co.” In 2019, Disney actually bought 21st Century Fox. Coincidence? I think not! 🎬

4. Video Chatting 💻

Season 6, Episode 19 (“Lisa’s Wedding”)

Again in Lisa’s Wedding, we see video calls being made. This was years before Skype, FaceTime, or Zoom became part of our daily lives. The Simpsons were definitely on to something here! 🖥️

5. The Shard in London 🏙️

Season 6, Episode 19 (“Lisa’s Wedding”)

In the same episode (wow, it’s like a crystal ball!), we see a skyline that includes a skyscraper eerily similar to The Shard, which wasn’t built until 2012. 👀

6. Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl Performance 🎤

Season 23, Episode 22 (“Lisa Goes Gaga”)

In 2012, The Simpsons showed Lady Gaga performing at a concert, suspended in the air. Fast forward to 2017, and Gaga did exactly that at the Super Bowl halftime show. Fly, Gaga, fly! 🎇

7. Nobel Prize Winner 🏅

Season 22, Episode 1 (“Elementary School Musical”)

Milhouse predicted that Bengt Holmström would win the Nobel Prize in Economics. And guess what? Holmström did win it in 2016. Way to go, Milhouse! 📊

8. Ebola Outbreak 🌍

Season 9, Episode 3 (“Lisa’s Sax”)

In this 1997 episode, Marge suggests that Bart read a book titled “Curious George and the Ebola Virus.” Years later, in 2014, there was a significant Ebola outbreak. Chills! 😬

9. Siegfried and Roy Tiger Attack 🐅

Season 5, Episode 10 (“$pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)”)

The show depicted a white tiger attacking entertainers similar to Siegfried and Roy. Tragically, in 2003, Roy was indeed attacked by one of their white tigers during a performance. 😥

10. U.S. Wins Olympic Gold in Curling 🥌

Season 21, Episode 12 (“Boy Meets Curl”)

Homer and Marge compete in curling and win a gold medal. In real life, the U.S. men’s team won the gold medal in curling at the 2018 Winter Olympics. Sweep that, skeptics! 🥇

But wait, there’s more! Let’s keep this prediction train rolling with some honorable mentions that didn’t make the top 10 but are still pretty mind-blowing. 🚂💨

11. Horse Meat Scandal 🐴

Season 5, Episode 19 (“Sweet Seymour Skinner’s Baadasssss Song”)

Lunchlady Doris used “assorted horse parts” in the cafeteria food. In 2013, a scandal erupted in Europe when horse meat was found in various beef products.

12. FIFA Corruption Scandal ⚽

Season 25, Episode 16 (“You Don’t Have to Live Like a Referee”)

The episode features a storyline involving corruption in the World Football Federation. In 2015, several FIFA officials were arrested amid a corruption investigation.

13. Farmville 🚜

Season 9, Episode 12 (“Bart Carny”)

In this 1998 episode, kids are seen excitedly playing a yard work simulator game. Fast forward to the 2000s, and Farmville became a massive hit on Facebook.

14. Faulty Voting Machines 🗳️

Season 20, Episode 4 (“Treehouse of Horror XIX”)

Homer tries to vote for Obama in the 2008 election, but the machine keeps changing his vote to McCain. In 2012, there were real reports of voting machines changing votes.

15. Beats by Dre 🎧

Season 8, Episode 14 (“The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show”)

In a scene from 1997, we see a character wearing what looks like modern-day Beats by Dre headphones, years before they existed.

16. Mutant Tomatoes 🍅

Season 11, Episode 5 (“E-I-E-I-(Annoyed Grunt)”)

Homer grows mutant tomatoes after using nuclear power on his crops. In real life, scientists created genetically modified tomatoes that glow in the dark.

17. NSA Surveillance 🕵️

The Simpsons Movie (2007)

The movie depicted the NSA spying on citizens. In 2013, Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA was indeed conducting mass surveillance on American citizens.

18. Shard Building in London 🏙️

Season 6, Episode 19 (“Lisa’s Wedding”)

We see a tall building in the London skyline that resembles The Shard, which was completed in 2012.

19. Michelangelo’s David Censorship 🗿

Season 2, Episode 9 (“Itchy & Scratchy & Marge”)

The episode shows Springfieldians protesting against Michelangelo’s David being exhibited. In 2016, Russian campaigners did try to cover the statue.

20. Autocorrect Fail 📱

Season 6, Episode 8 (“Lisa on Ice”)

Dolph writes a memo that says “Beat up Martin” which gets autocorrected to “Eat up Martha.” Apple’s iPhone autocorrect has had many such hilarious fails.

It’s wild, right? How does a cartoon get so many things right? Well, it’s probably a mix of clever writing, sharp observation, and maybe a bit of that Springfield magic. ✨

And it's not just us hardcore fans who are intrigued. Thanks to the internet, more and more people are discovering the spooky accuracy of The Simpsons' predictions. Social media platforms are buzzing with theories and speculations. Reddit threads are filled with fans dissecting episodes, and YouTube is packed with videos analyzing every prediction. It's like a virtual treasure hunt where every frame might hold a secret clue to our future! 🔮

Some folks even believe that the writers have a time machine or some sort of psychic ability. While that’s probably a stretch, it’s fun to think about! One thing’s for sure – The Simpsons will keep surprising us with their uncanny knack for predicting the future.

Whether you’re a longtime fan or just curious about the show’s “psychic” tendencies, it’s clear that The Simpsons is more than just a TV show. It’s a pop culture phenomenon that continues to influence and amuse us, while also making us think twice about what might come next. So, next time you’re watching, pay close attention – you might just be getting a sneak peek into the future! 🕵️‍♂️✨

Stay curious, my friends! And remember, the truth is out there… or maybe just in the next episode of The Simpsons. 🌟🚀

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thepersonnamedsam · 1 year ago

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characterisation

pairing: genz!driver

summary: a short characterisation of the genz!driver

warnings: none :)

note: ahh, i love, love, love the genz!driver (wish to be her, actually) and i hope you love her as much as i do!

masterlist / taglist

personal data

born a female on a sunny day, she graced the world with her presence. as a first and last born she is her parents pride.

her parents, father, hardworking and loving, mother just as loving and hardworking.

born with no siblings, she grew up as an only child, happy to have her parents attention all the time. as she grew up, it was a bit annoying, but now that she’s away 2/3 of the time, she enjoys all the attention she gets from her mother and father.

racing career

she started karting at a young age, younger than most of the others. young and female she had a rough start, but always found her way back.

at 15 she started to race in f4, driving for CDR or chris dittman racing. coming second that season.

she soon was signed by prema in f3 where she won her first championship. she raced together with mick schumacher and she celebrated his championship in 2018.

they both signed with prema in f2 at the end of the '18 season and started racing in 2019. mick placed 12th that season as she placed third overall.

mick stayed another season with prema, winning his f2 championship, as you started your f1 career with alpha tauri.

when mick got signed with haas, she was happy to have her best friend back on the grid. she left alpha tauri.

languages

she speaks english of course, knows a little french from school and her mother tongue.

she tries to speak as many languages as possible, fascinated by them.

she asks charles, pierre and esteban to speak french with them, but she gets confused and overwhelmed pretty fast. she asks them to stop after like 6 sentences.

she also learned a bit of german, having spent so much time with the german driver. seb was surprised when she heard her speak german for the first time.

carlos repeatedly tried to teach her some spanish, but it never worked. the language just not sticking, just like french to be honest.

hobbies

her hobbies are drawing and singing. she also does some youtube videos around her life.

if she has some alone time, she usually has concerts for her stuffed animals (yes, she still has some, besides already living for herself. actually, that’s why she still has some stuffed animals).

or she draws, she likes to post her art under a fake persona, well her fake name isn’t as creative and some fans have connected the art to her, but she doesn’t care.

she spends loads of her free time with other f1 drivers, feeling lonely sometimes. they are happy to spend time with her, knowing the struggles to live alone at such a young age.

°°°

taglist: @ironmaiden1313 , @topguncultleader , @missskid , @gulabjamooon , @lovelyy-moonlight , @peachyplumsss , @mistrose23

#f1 x reader #formula 1 #f1 #gen z mood #gen z life #gen z driver #genz driver #female driver

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dojae-huh · 2 months ago

Note

Cjdist is discussing this, can you explain?

https://weibo.com/6382358033/5081479275348867

https://weibo.com/6382358033/5081878897887378

It looks like cjdist really loves jaedo, they even explained the perfume that jaedo uses

https://weibo.com/5663738348/5067023531639396

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

Link, Link2, Link3

Fans of all countries do it, actually, dig up info on perfumes and clothes. There are accs even that find out brands for all looks.

The two posts are from the same shipper who wrote down how Jae and Do show their love, the differences.

Jaehyun memorises events from Doyoung's past. Oh, I didn't know about the green light. It's probably from EnNaNa. Doyoung shared that he used to leave for school 10 minutes before the start of school, and the traffic lights always showed him the green light. Jaehyun responded with "It's a new bit of knowledge for me" (to add to his Doyoung enciclopedia).

The shipper speculates that Jaehyun learnt to cook to make meals for Do who used to starve to quickly lose weigth after he was accepted to the trainee programme. (The shipper made this conclusion because Do said he would marry Jae (out of the members) because he is a good cook (I think this reply was from pre-debut times or 2017). Plus, Jaehyun really used to bring that case with Do eating only nuts pretty often). And that the homemade meals Doyoung uploads to his bubble in 2024 when Jaehyun is on a business trip abroad, are meant for Jae, to secure him Do is eating well in his absence. (I didn't undestant if the shipper thinks Jae cooks those meals before leaving or not).

Jaehyun is keeping an eye on Doyoung in other ways, like calming down Do's shaking leg (an old 127 interview), bringing him fishcakes (that show with 127 on an island, Jae was handling the food station), giving Do his own gloves after Do burnt his (another 127 show, I remember shippers pointing out that Do and Jae wore the same pair of gloves at different moments. Ah, maybe the NCT2020 show?), buying Do chocolate milk for his BD (it used to be a tradition, Jae ordered online when he couldn't find in the store), etc.

It's hard for many people to see Do's love, however, the shipper argues that he shows it aplenty. It's "subtle ans silent". His way of loving is to understand Jae's habits, the way he thinks, his weirdness, to copy hobbies (like perfumes, LPs). OP notes that Doyoung used to be uptight, rigorous, earnest (a workaholic who can't relax), but now he enjoys his life more (after learning how to from Jae). He is making sure to be with Jaehyun during all his important days (like BDs, I think the OP referenced the visit to EnNaNa in 2018).

OP used an old nickname of Doyoung (he came up with himself) - Woodong (our Dong=noodles). But I can't understand the Chinese saying about noodles.

Looks like OP decided to write the post because some shippers feel like abandoning the ship? The shipper's friend wanted to give up, thinking its a waste of time. OP says that maybe the reason is because the old JaeDo and the new JaeDo are too different. (pre-debut JaeDo were obvious in their affection, now they are hiding).

OP compared JaeDo to some other couple (official?). One partner said that the love occupies only 10% of life, but those 10% are made of 100% of his/her(?) partner. Right now JaeDo are too busy and have responsibilities, they grew up. However, whenever there is a content with both of them, you can see JaeDo interacting.

Do didn't have a birthday party in 2024, but Jae played New Love on his (did he?? or was it used as a background music in the BD party bts video?). The necklace with round beads Jae wore the whole year appeared on Do's neck for his Dear youth poster. Jae watched Do's concert with big attention. Plus Jae was very busy back then, but still found time to attend Do's concert. OP listed some other moments, which I can't figure out. The couple content from Walk (like Walking together reel and a tiktok for LA kcon?).

Although Jae and Do had different schedules and weren't seen much together this summer, when they were together, they showed "don't worry, we are very happy" mood.

OP said that the younger version of JaeDo waw about two people loving each other without reservation. They were crazy and desperate. And the older version is about two people becoming better versions of themselves (working on careers, maturing in character) while loving each other. And now both are shining in their respective careers. Both JaeDo want the other to become a better version of himself and support each other on the journey.

#ask me away #i'll be your morning star #cogito ergo ship #anatomy of jaedo

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simsim54 · 1 month ago

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2017: You are 13 and your friend introduces you to a song, and makes you learn it’s lyrics and then asks you to hear it in real life and then you, go to a cousin’s home just to listen that one song on youtube, and the moment you ears fill with those voices calling singing what makes you beautiful and the moment your eyes land on those 5 boys you are gone for life, but in that moment you don’t know that, you are just experiencing your first crush or first five crushes.

2018: You are 14 and your life has changed, you are obsessed with a band called one direction and listening to their music is your entire personality, you know everything about them, you know every song, you know their birthdays, their blood groups, the time and place and even weight of their births, you know what they like and what they don’t, you’ve watched every video there exists of those 5 boys and you are in love, you are also heartbroken because you know that the band is on a 18 month hiatus and you came to know of them only after they had broken up, you weren’t there when one of the boys left, but your heart still aches at that very thought.

2019: You are 15 and you know that 18 months was a lie, but you don’t let that deter you, you are still as obsessed, you’ve now started following all the boys solo career and spend your days making playlists for all your moods, you sing strip that down out loud every time you take a bath, you are hooked on back to you, flicker and sign of the times make you cry so much and i don’t wanna live forever makes you feel like you are part of dark romance story, you have a fan account now on both instagram and twitter and there you’ve meet the most amazing people who match your level of crazy, you celebrate 10 years of one direction and wish you had known them longer.

2020: You are 16 and the world has gone to shit, you are stuck inside your house and people all around you are dying and it sucks because you don’t know if you would be next, but there is still hope for there is one british boy from the band you love so much, who is doing virtual concerts and while you know you can not really afford the tickets of real concerts these you can, so you beg your mother, give up all you savings, and then you buy a ticket, you are so excited and the day comes and it is the best day ever, you have not known happiness like that before, you make your little brother sit with you and watch the whole show and make him fall in love with the man on the stage just like i did 4 years back, once it ends you cry but you are also left with hope knowing that somehow you will make through the pandemic.

2021: You are 17 and life has been tough, you’re still stuck inside your house, but it is easier now, you’ve learnt how to live like this, and you know that even when things get tough there are some people out there whose voices make everything better, school is kicking your ass but you still find time watch the video diaries and find your laughter in theirs, you make a bucket list for yourself and write all the things you want to do before you die and the first thing on the list is that you want to see the boys perform live, just once, you want to meet the people who taught you to live.

2022: You are 18 and are now in college, it is tough and there are days that you are so tired that you don't even have the energy to charge your phone, studies are so hard and the only way you can concentrate is if made in the am is blasting in the background on full volume, you don't really post on your fan account anymore, but you open it from time to time just to check on the family you made there, you listen to there new music and makes you so proud and excited for all the success they are gaining for they deserve it so much, you are an adult now and it's been 12 years of one direction and you are sill hoping for a reunion, even if it seems unlikely now.

2023: You are 19 and you've started to feel a bit old, you meet someone who does not know who one direction is and you are shook at the fact that you along with your boys are so old now, but you also know that is just life, you've started writing stories a lot in your free time, most of which are based on lyrics for 1d song, you even manage to get an award for a story you wrote based on live forever, if only you knew back then how much listening to that song will hurt the future you, you are still a directioner but you are more of a harrie, louie, lover, payno and zsquad, and even if it hurts you are also happy because this is what makes your boys happy and that's what matters the most doesn't it?

2024: Your are 20 and you’ve heard the most devastating news of ever, you’ve spent the entire night finishing your assignment and you are finally winding up and you get an email and the headline stares at you while you stare at it right back, you are not ready to accept it, you just saw his story an hour back, but your brain knows that it’s the truth, so you are crying, silent sobs for you don’t want anyone to wake up and get worried, you are checking all the social media sites and it’s everywhere and now there’s a hole in your heart that nothing will ever fill, you text your friend, the very friend who introduced you to them 7 years back, the very friend with whom you have planned to attend every single 1d members concert, but she is asleep and you don’t call her because you want her to get the sleep you know you won’t, so you just lie there on your bed staring up at your ceilings with your tears gathering on the pillow under your head, you watch the sun come up and you hear you mom call you to wake up and you do and then you check your phone again because you still hope it was a lie, it is not, and you see and read things you wish you hadn’t, you turn off your phone after that, you tell your mom what happened when she asks what happened on seeing your red eyes, she tells you she is sorry and that hurts more because you’ve lost something you never really had and even your mom knows how much this is affecting you, you put on a brave face and try to get through the day but you end up crying alone in your college's washroom because you just can't stop thinking about, by the time the day ends you are so exhausted from crying, from thinking, from everything, you were happy to be in a world where liam payne existed even if he did not know about you, but now you have to live in a world where he doesn't exist at all, and it's all gone, all your plans for the future of meeting him, of watching him perform in front of your eyes, of getting to hug him and maybe take a picture, but he is gone, and one direction is gone, for one direction can not ever exist without him, and nothing else matters anymore.

rest in peace, liam payne, you were loved, so much

#liam payne #one direction #1d #rip #to an end of an era

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turtleations · 6 months ago

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Interview with Mayuko's mother, Kishi Kazuko - Translation

This one comes with a big "Thank you!" to magnetklaue, who proofread it for me and helped me get rid of typos and some awkward phrases.

The Interview was posted on 1 May 2018, the interviewer was Fukui Shiho. The original post is here.

On we go:

20 Years after the death of X JAPAN’s hide: His secret history with a girl with an incurable disease, “The Promised Cheesecake”

The bond between them, inherited by YOSHIKI

On the 2nd of May, it has been 20 yeas since the sudden passing of X JAPAN’s guitarist hide. He has fascinated the world with his bright red hair and his yellowhearts-guitar. When tracing hide’s steps, one girl stands out: Kishi Mayuko, who was battling GM1 gangliosidosis, an incurable disease. She was the 23rd person worldwide to be diagnosed with this disease, and the doctors had told her that she was unlikely to live to be twenty. In 1995, while fighting her illness, Mayuko got to fulfil her dream to “meet hide, the person she admired”, with the help of “Make a Wish Japan”, an organisation that fulfils the wishes of children with incurable diseases.

Their interaction continued after this, and even after hide passed away, his friends and associates kept spending time with her. Eleven years after hide’s death, Mayuko also left this world. There is a place in Wakayama-prefecture where you can still feel the two of them breathing: “Lemoned Café”, run by Mayuko’s parents. The first floor houses the café, and the second floor a live house, with posters and goods related to hide displayed everywhere. We interviewed Kazuko-san, Mayuko’s mother.

When did Mayuko-san start liking hide-san?

She came to like him when she was hospitalized in the fifth year of primary school and listened to a CD of our older daughter while in hospital. She listened to CDs all the time, and when she got to come home for the weekend, she also watched videos in her room. She especially liked X JAPAN and hide-san, and aside from that, she also listened to the CDs of artists hide-san had said were good.

How did you meet hide-san?

There is a volunteer organisation called “Make a Wish Japan”, which is “fulfilling the dreams of incurably ill children aged three to eighteen”. I had been told that her illness would be difficult to treat with current western medicine, and so I thought, “I want to make at least one of her wishes come true” and called them up. Things got moving from there and it turned out we’d be able to meet him. I called around September 1995 and informed them that I was getting tickets for the concert on 31 December at Tokyo Dome, and they suggested, “Let’s have the meeting there.”

What did you talk about with hide-san?

When Mayuko told him “I’m going to be hospitalized in February, so please write to me”, he said, “I will, because we’re friends.” After it was clear that she would get to meet him, Mayuko spend two months knitting a scarf for him with her hands that could barely move. She gave it to hide-san and he wrapped it around himself right there and then.

The person she was dreaming of was right there!

During that time, the press was around for about fifteen minutes, and once they were gone, hide-san said, “Let’s go to the afterparty together.” That’s where the interaction with hide-san started, and he also introduced her to his band members as “My friend Mayuko”.

It’s hard to believe that he introduced her as a friend! He could just have ended it after those first fifteen minutes with a “See you later!”

Yes, he could. At first, I thought, “This is all there is to it.” But our interactions continued ever since.

That must have made you happy.

It did. He even continued to use the scarf she gave him that day. Hide-san’s mother told us, “Since he’s always wearing the same kind of outfit, that scarf is very useful to him.” Even when he went to the US, he always put it in his suitcase, she said. I heard that one time, when there was a lot of luggage, his manager took the scarf out, but hide-san said, “Not this one!” and insisted on taking it with him. After his death, the scarf was returned to us as a memento, and we still have it.

How long did that relationship last?

Two and a half years, from our first meeting until hide-san died. However, I think we made very meaningful memories in that time. Even after Mayuko passed away, some of hide-san’s friends continued to give live shows on the second floor and write “Mayuko, I’m here!” onto coloured paper. But I think that was because they thought, “I respected hide, and Mayuko was someone he adored”. I feel like Mayuko herself appealed to them as well, but for the most part, it was hide-san’s greatness that drove them.

It’s because they were both wonderful. Do you have any memories with hide-san you want to share?

We first met on 31 December and received a letter from him in January. It read, “I’m going to Los Angeles, but I’m grateful that I got to meet Mayuko at the Dome, because thanks to this meeting, I was reminded of things that I had forgotten." Her birthday was on the fourth of March, but she spent it in the hospital. Hide-san was overseas at that time, but he came to visit her at the hospital one day ahead of his scheduled return.

What kind of person was hide-san?

A caring one. When we first met, we were gathered in the waiting room until we went to the afterparty, and he asked, “Mayuko, aren’t you thirsty?” There was a cooler box in the corner of the room, and for an artist as big as hide-san, it wouldn’t be at all unusual to ask someone from the staff to get it. But he did everything himself. He got out some Oolong tea, opened the tap, put in the straw, said, “There, Mayuko.” When it came to his own guests, he did everything on his own. His stance was that the staff came for the purpose of making music, so he wouldn’t have them do anything else.

He was a kind person, wasn’t he?

There’s more; in order to avoid causing a commotion, his visits were kept a secret from anyone but the attending physicians and the nurses. But one day, there was a boy who was very depressed because he had been readmitted to the hospital immediately after being discharged. Upon seeing this, a nurse tried to cheer him up by telling him, “hide-san will come to see Mayu-chan tomorrow, maybe you can get his autograph.” And so, word got around. Everyone was lining up in front of the visitation room, holding coloured paper. There were 12 or 13 people in line, but when the situation was explained to him, hide-san had everyone come in one by one, took two pictures with each one, gave them his autograph. He did that for about four hours.

Even though he was insanely busy at that time.

He was. But he also made the children that were there very happy. On the morning of the day Mayuko’s condition got critical, I said to hide-san on the phone, “She might not make it.” When I told him, “If she could just hear your voice, even on the phone, one more time,” he rushed over immediately.

He was in Tokyo at that time?

Getting there took him about two hours. When I went to escort hide-san to the entrance of the sterile room, I found that his parents had also come. I couldn’t help but burst into tears.

So it wasn’t just a relationship between hide-san and Mayuko-san, but also between their families.

Yes, we are still in contact with each other.

What is the story behind your store’s signature dish, the “Promised Cheesecake”?

There was a notebook in which we wrote about our feelings as parents, about Mayuko’s condition and all, and on the first page of it, hide-san wrote a message. It seems he learned from someone that Mayuko loved cheesecake, so he left the message “Let’s have a cheesecake together that’s so amazing it turns into cheese.” However, he passed away before Mayuko was well enough to eat cheesecake again, so they never got to eat it together. When we started our shop, we served cheesecake because she liked it. Later, when Mayuko passed away, I put a lot of cheesecake in her coffin, saying, “You can finally eat cheesecake with hide-chan.” When someone heard that story, they said, “You should turn that story into a decent name,” and so I came up with “The promised cheesecake”.

That’s a wonderful episode.

The fact that he wrapped that scarf around himself, and came rushing when she was in critical condition… There’s so much more. The last time we saw hide-san was after X JAPAN’s Last Live, when he invited us to the afterparty at his office. At that time, Mayuko just had a transplant and couldn’t eat raw food. Hide-san said, “Mayuko can only have food that has been cooked, right?” and handed us cooked food, saying, “Here, this is for Mayuko.” After that, he got food for me, my husband, and my older daughter, saying, “Anything is fine.” I think he was worried that we might be too restrained to eat much. It seems that he liked making people happy, and he did everything by himself. We were the first to leave, but he came to see us off to the car.

When his fans come to the café, I tell them a lot of stories like this. I want to convey to them, “Your beloved hide-chan was such a wonderful person.”

Hide-san really was wonderful, wasn’t he?

However, the people around X JAPAN and hide-san are all like that. The seventh anniversary of Mayuko’s death came up in 2015, and we were discussing doing something for it at the store, when GEORGE (Abiko Shinonkai, LADIESROOM), who often performs on the second floor, said, “If we put word out, everyone will come. We might not be able to schedule it for Wakayama, so let’s do it at a live house in Chiba”, and we did a two-days event. PATA-san came on both days. YOSHIKI-san had something else scheduled, so he sent a video message. TAKURO of GLAY also send a video message. J-san, SUGIZO-san, and RYUICHI-san of LUNA SEA also performed on stage. There were so many others who participated.

At the time of her funeral, PATA-san and INA-san were among those that came for it. When we told the people of hide-san’s office that she had passed away, they closed the office in Tokyo and everyone came as well. They also send a fax to the music industry, because “Mayuko-chan was one of us, so we will let everyone know.” Then, we received flowers from all over the country, around 80 bouquets or so. I was surprised. That they would go that far for us.

Were there people who acted ungraciously towards Mayuko-san out of jealousy?

When the story of her meeting hide-san through Make a Wish was aired on TV, they checked the contents of the letters meant for us at the TV station, because “there might be some nasty ones”. But there were no such letters at all, so the people from the station said, “It’s probably okay to send them directly” and passed them on to us unopened. Even then, there was not a single on that I didn’t like.

That’s amazing! Even though he had so many fans.

Yes. There even was one person who wrote, “I used to refuse to go to school, but I started again when I saw Mayuko working so hard.”

Mayuko-san was an inspiration.

I got this kind of comment several times. Also, Mayuko never said it was hard. A nurse once asked her, “Why do you never talk about how exhausting and painful it is?” She replied, “If I say it’s hard, hearing that would make it even harder for my mother.”…

Both hide-san and Mayoko-san were caring people.

That’s probably where they were on the same wavelength.

Even though she was still in her teens and it was difficult for her.

About a year after her transplant, her condition became critical. At that time, the boy in the next room was also in a bad state, and it was a situation where people would wonder, “Which of them is going to die first?” When Mayuko heard that the boy was celebrating his ninth birthday those days, she asked me, “Please buy ten flowers, one for each year, with money from my wallet, and give them to him.” When I told her, “He’s nine years old,” I got the reply, “He worked hard to make it to nine years, so it matters if he gets even one day closer to being ten.” It’s the weight of a single day that only a child battling illness can understand.

In that sense, when hide-can gave us hope, he didn’t speak of things far in advance. When he says, “I’ll call you the day after tomorrow,” doesn’t it make you think that you will do your best until the day after tomorrow? It’s not, “We’ll do this after you get better.” Instead of speaking of vague big things, he would talk about simple goals that were within reachable distance. He was someone who encouraged people that way. I guess that was the way hide-san was thinking.

They were both really amazing. Hide-san also registered as a bone marrow donor.

That’s right. There was a press conference when he did, but hide-san hadn’t intended for it to become such a big deal. When they heard, “Hide-san says he’s going to register as a donor, how should we go about that?” from someone at the office, people started to talk about it. Someone who happened to know about this matter set the conference up, and afterwards, hide-san was angry, saying, “I didn’t want for it to be this way, I was going to do it just like anyone else.” That said, eight people from his staff at that time and from those who came for the news coverage ended up registering as donors as well.

What did Mayuko-san think when she heard about hide-san’s donor registration?

I told her about it, thinking it would make her happy. But when I did so, she bust into tears. As a matter of fact, because she was herself a recipient of a transplant, she couldn’t register as a donor for the rest of her life. That’s why she said, “I can’t have a donor card with hide-chan.”

I guess those were feelings only she could have.

She said, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get that card. I was taken aback.

When did Mayuko-san learn about hide-san’s death?

On the day he passed away, she had an examination at the hospital. She had turned her mobile phone off for the examination, and when she turned it back on afterwards, she immediately heard from a friend that he had died. She called his manager right away and was told, “Yes, it’s true. We wanted to let you know before you heard it from anyone else, but we couldn’t get through.” She had actually been planning to go to the pub run by hide-san’s parents in Yokosuka that evening after her hospital visit, and she had heard that “if circumstances allowed it, hide-san might be there too.” (After hearing about this death) Mayuko was so depressed she didn’t speak, didn’t eat. The morning of the next day, I received a phone call from hide-san’s mother, who asked, “Will it have an impact on Mayu-chan’s health, what happened to hide?”

Even though her own son had just passed away, she was so concerned about Mayuko-san.

Both parent and child were so kind. So, when Mayuko went to Tsukiji-Honganji (where hide’s body was laid to rest), a lot of people talked to her there. One musician told her, “I used to go drinking with hide, and before we got drunk, he would say, ‘Now that Mayuko’s condition has improved, I am a little more at ease’, and then he’d drink.” Others also told her this, and even a work friend from L.A. let her know that hide-san told them, “If Mayuko’s health gets a little better, I want to show her around Los Angeles.”

It’s sad to hear stories like that.

But, you see, everyone was like that. When the time came for the final parting at Honganji, YOSHIKI-san took Mayuko’s hand next to the coffin and said, “Mayu-chan, until now hide has taken care of you. From now on, all of us are going to do that.”

YOSHIKI-san took good care of Mayuko-san as well, even though that time was painful for him, too.

When we returned to the waiting room from the venue of the afterparty that first time we met, YOSHIKI-san was there. When hide-san asked him, “What’s up?”, he said, “I was waiting for the two of you,” and the three of them walked on holding hands. He also came to our house after hide-san had passed away.

You are all connected by your feelings for hide-san, aren’t you?

It’s amazing how that relationship continues even now, isn’t it? When hide-san died, I thought that would be the end of it, but it has kept going past that point. Even now that Mayuko has passed away, it’s still going on. I am grateful for that.

Back then, Mayuko was exchanging mails with hide-san. Really short ones, like Mayuko telling him, “I started to keep goldfish” and hide-san sending, “Lately, it’s been raining all the time.” It was all trivial. But, in the period between X JAPAN’s breakup being decided and the announcement being made, hide-san told her, “Mayuko, your mails really comforted me.”

They were connected to each other in their hearts, weren’t they? A lot of people come to Lemoned Café, but what kind of place do you want it to be?

For some reason, even people who come here for the first time end up calling us “Mom and Dad”. There are even people who come from far away, so we want to keep it open as much as we can. Everyone is coming, so I want to continue doing this event for an entire year.

The day of the interview was the monthly anniversary of Mayuko's passing. The customers at the café ranged from people who had met Mayuko in person to high school students who had come to the café for the first time in April, and it was impressive to watch them chat cheerfully with each other. When asked about Mayuko, they all said, “She was a really kind girl, like an angel” and “She was a mysterious person who makes me feel like the bad side of me is being cleansed when I talk about her.” One woman said, “There are a lot of sacred places, but this one feels like home.” Even now, the memory of hide and Mayuko-san lives on inside many people’s hearts.

#hide #translation #interview #kishi mayuko #kishi kazuko #x japan #lemoned cafe #which has since relocated and is now called the promised cheesecake cafe #the title is somewhat misleading considering this has barely anything to do with yoshiki #I don't feel like posting much these days but this one is lovely and I wanted to share #also magnetklaue put in her time and effort so I can't sit on it #for anyone stumbling over this without ANY previous knowlege of their story: content warnings for #terminal illness #death #death of a child #as in she wasn't as child anymore when she died but she was someone's child

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