#the only imperium video i listen to is the imperium vincent ba

[swanconcerto]

not enough money in the world to convince me to watch the imperium vincent and adam audio

[teddybasmanov]

A two-part post prompted by the last video.

Part one: what are you doing to me, Joanne?!

Let's establish something real quick: I am not simping for Blake. The guy has literally just walked out of a torture cellar - he has (of I recall quite literally as well) blood on his hands. I don't know what do you have to do to make me sympathize with such a person. (I do know, but it's so specific, that Mr Redacted isn't pulling that one on me any time soon.)

My first thought of course was: so, the simple way of getting them into your cult didn't quite work out so you decided to go the long route? Well, newsflash Machiavelli, it's not working either. "I want to be closer to you." And I want you as far from me as possible and preferably behind bars.

And while this can be very true and he can very well only want the listener for their unknown powers. And while the sentiment stays anyway. That might also not be the case. He might actually just want to be their friend (or something more) and help them (how he sees it) be it with their sleep or their life. (Yes, I also like the idea that he was the one causing them sleeping problems.) The fact that he had just "interrogated" a defenceless unempowered person doesn't mean he's incapable of human emotions and impulses and vice versa - genuinely wanting to reunite with your college friend doesn't make him any less of a bigoted douchebag.

That's what I meant by "demonizing the bigot makes you stop recognizing bigotry in yourself and your close ones" - because a bigot is not necessarily someone who wants to destroy love and friendship. It's someone thinking (afraid even if you will) that their love and friendship are in danger because of d(a)emons, or humanborns (or queer people, or people of colour, or jews etc.)

Part two: I̵̢̙̙̔̔ s̴͙͍̓͌͜͝e̴͓͖͔̓͝e̵͓̞̠͐̚͝ y̸͚͚̙̓͘o̸̞̙̘͐͐͠u̴̪͋͒͜ t̴̢͍̙̐̔̚o̸͔͓͊͊̕o̵̼͕͙̽͝.

We all know I'm a pessimistic paranoic that's just a fact so take this with a grain of salt. After that "slap on the face" video and the recent promise of comebacks for some stories which were put on the back burner for a while made me think...

Did our beloved content creator get tired of writing sweet sappy things (and of us asking for it)? Maybe it was a hard year, I don't know, but the content is getting darker and the pauses between dark content are becoming shorter and shorter.

In the beginning, everything was more or less fine - sure Brachium is in the first dozen of videos and Adam happened but these were single videos (or one and three-fourths videos) and around them was what? Yeah, David and Caelum and early-on Ivan (which is not exactly my cup of tea, but that's not the point). Then on Halloween, we dipped our toes into some truly darker things - Echo, Vega happened, Invisiboi (hi, baby), but what did we get on Halloween itself? Asher and David!

Then The Deal happened and as much as I love complaining about how several miles of rope was made from the nerves pulled from me before The Cost, it wasn't actually that stressful and it ended amazingly. Of course, we had an incredibly daunting Vincent video just before Valentine's day, but it was in between two very very sweet audios. And after that, we had an absolutely wonderful summer with all the BAs and Hot Boi Summer. It wasn't definitely all rainbows and sunshine - even during the summer we had the solstice and James appeared (which is kind of a good thing, but whatever) but there was always something else.

This is when things began to deteriorate. Imperium happened. But it wasn't real right? It was a parallel universe it couldn't harm us? Well, the end of the world still seems very real (I'm still hung up on it yes). (And also it was a whole month non-stop.) We had Afterfluff and Friendsgiving and Hot Boi Winter after that, so that must have fixed the situation. Well, not really, because after a month of hell, we had two months to breathe (more or less, I'm looking at you, the last Avior's video) and boom.

Another one. But this time it's so real - come a bit too close to the screen and you can touch it. And breaks are for losers, by the way, because after the Inversion itself we had two office boyfriends videos and that seems to be it for the foreseeable future because after the goddamn Aftershock the bone isn't even thrown to us on Valentine's day - we're getting bloody Blake. If that's not a sick joke I don't know what is.

And don't get me wrong - I'm not saying the content got worse (if anything, the quality has gone significantly up) or that the author isn't in the right to do whatever he wants with his own creation. I'm just saying that the pacing has changed a lot and I'm not sure my brain can exactly handle it.