#there’s been so many irl social things happening lately it’s insane

[alister312]

btw the anons in my inbox. i see u. i love u. i am trying my best to respond to u as soon as i can 😭

[wejustvibing]

Here to vent. Everything you said was perfectly said and I agree. The issue is and has always been (imo) is that no one stands up for lewis appropriately. Just a lot of empty words. And I don’t even mean just his team and teammate I mean in general. I don’t trust a single person around him in that sport. It’s tiring sad and exhausting because every week i anticipate abuse or bias against him with little to no support or backlash for certain actions against him. Even other drivers that are nice to him I don’t believe it. Maybe I’m being far too cautious but no one around him has given appropriate levels of support in all situations that require it. Irrespective of who Lewis is and how he wishes to deal with things, his team have a duty of care to support him, treat him equally and protect him and I feel like because he can articulate himself rather well most of the time, has a mindset of rising above and a good work ethic / strong will - they assume he doesn’t need the support. Everyone needs it. And the difference between how they treat George Vs him is like day and night, very different and very gross. It may be unconscious or deliberate, but regardless of which it is it’s worrying. The team in a general sense hasn’t been the same since 2021. The dynamic has shifted, the strengths that made them a force have disappeared, social media has been a mess etc i could make an entire list. What’s happening here isn’t something a fast car is going to fix. That being said i don’t think Lewis needs to leave the team per se but I do think there needs to be some changes and fast. You don’t necessarily need to quit a job straight away, sometimes what’s obvious to us isn’t obvious to everyone and can potentially be solved. He clearly gets along with many of the people there and feels comfortable there, and amongst thousands of employees there are only some that need to be better in regards to the problems I am discussing so I won’t dictate to him about whether he should go elsewhere or leave. He’s grown he can make those choices himself (not saying you are trying to talk for him btw i hope that doesn’t sound rude to you) but I do think he may need an eye opener as does the team that they are just not working well lately. For a while. Things need to change. I think these issues are fixable though with the correct support and people. Honestly as a black person myself this is tiring seeing things play out like this as all too often I have experienced these things too. Merc has some gems in their team for sure but that’s being overshadowed by a colossal pile of problems. I want Lewis to have support. It’s not about babying him. It’s about the fact that he rarely gets support sufficiently (and it’s still lacking) until he’s being called slurs. This sport is rotten and I wish I could tune it out. Every race week I’m anxious.

thank you and i agree

you're not being too cautious, i feel you there. this perfectly describes the conditioning we've had through microaggressions and racism irl. you just can't let your guard down. it's instinctive and it's stressful especially when you know there's nothing you can do about it.

the number of times this team has failed to show up for him is concerning. and really, we (i) don't expect a special treatment or babying, in fact, there's no need for a pedestal they keep putting him on when it suits the brand. just let him be a fucking human? back him up when you know everything he does invites insane levels of hatred and abuse.

and you're so right! if anything, a fast car is going to make things worse for them given the team dynamic they're cultivating, quite evidently through social media at least and often with strategy. i get that the car is shit but they can easily put effort into sorting these issues out. they're just too casual with the way they leave him to fend for himself just because he can. but are quick to exploit his success, emotions and words.

and many are failing to see why we are unhappy. george is a selfish asshole which well all the drivers are. but he is not a threat to lewis in terms of race craft or talent. it's what this team is actively trying to portray that's damaging and pissing us off. i get it, it's not a portrayal of the entire team but then they need to stop taking advantage of lewis' character and show him the support he deserves.

[loonfromq]

The Founder Effect

So I Have Been Learning More About Biology Lately,

and one of the things i learned about was the founder effect. genloss has their whole founder thing, so i was thinking of that simultaneously and this post was born.

the founder effect is when some organisms from a select population go off and start their own colony. this, understandably, greatly decreases the genetic diversity and variation in the population.

similar phenomena occur with information, as seen with

not all information comes along. some is lost along the way. whether you're talking about genes or history.

this is reminiscent of the irl phenomenon of generation loss, where a picture or audio is copied enough times it loses it's meaning.

similar themes!! im not totally insane!! poggies!!

so this is what i think happened in gl.

like showfall is trying to make a tv show, and if im going be honest they're doing a shit job of it.

they don't know how to acutally employ actors, so they kidnap and brainwash random people.

they have employees, who are half-machine, wear creepy masks, and stand around when they're not doing anything important. tats not noraml or healthy behavior.

they repurpose abandoned malls to use for filming and office space.

the plots of their shows are reminiscent of artificially generated content (i refuse to call it ai) and frankly don't make any sense.

it's like the majority of the humans are gone, or at least somehow oblivious to the actions of showfall. in the gl universe, the streams are still happening, and presumably real people are seeing them. but we know of no actual attempts to help ranboo from the outseide. showfall si trying to recreate elements of human society artificially, with no real intelligence aside from possibly hetch.

showfall is a social experiment.

they're a flimsy and downright disturbing similitude of life. honestly i think our artificial generators could churn out better. they don't have all the information they need, some was left behind.

and god forbid they find it.

[kaeyasaki]

❝ BITES YOU! ❞

✿ cute lil messages for my besties before i get too busy with exams and forget, because who knows how long everyone’s tumblr phase will last,, dramatic gasp — apologies for typos i’ve been anti beta reading these days as you can tell

✧･ﾟ:* myra *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @luvcre

my pretty kitten, myra chan, i love you even though you like,, l*orio !! we’ve been friends for almost 6 months now, wow so cool !! no but actually i’m very grateful for meeting you. i know we already knew each other beforehand, but i think it’s rad the way we were always destined to meet !! quite literally the tumblr!romeo and juliet experience i say, but im super glad we got the chance to befriend one another and then grow so close !! i love you a unexplainable amount and you’re really special to me !! i’m extremely grateful for everything you’ve done for me, you’re a very genuine and loyal friend and i’m really proud i get to call you someone so close to me. thank you for always being you and taking such good care of me and mina whenever we’ve needed it, i think you’re the coolest and not only are you admittedly funny, but you’re someone who i’ve found so easy to be myself around even when regarding irl situations, thank you for being you and thank you for loving me being me, i love you

✧･ﾟ:* mina *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @jhxyne

i’d love you more if you’d let me date your brother but i suppose i can’t have it all </3 no seriously though, i love you stupidly too and i’m insanely happy and grateful we met almost 6 months ago. you’re on the same wavelength constantly and you’re someone i’ve found so easy to confide in and open up to so quickly. i’ll forever be grateful to you for showing me what a real friendships supposed to be like and helping me feel comfortable no matter what. you’re really cool mina and you’re also really hot >:) you’re undeniably you and don’t let anyone put you in your place which i love. i’m super proud of you for everything you do too, you’re a big deal to me and i care about you a lot. while i’ll always drop whatever i’m doing to rip a bitches throat out for you, i know you’d do the same. you’re extremely important and someone i hold very close to me, i love you

✧･ﾟ:* chloe *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @sunasbabie

man you’re really one of my longest friends on here and i appreciate you endlessly. you’ve been with me since before i was ‘mila’ and we clicked so quickly! you became a really good friend of mine in such a short amount of time too which is rare for me because i tend to hold myself back when it comes to really clicking with people but honestly i can and would talk to you about absolutely anything! you were honestly separated from me at birth i’m certain, we’re very alike and different in the same sense and you’re definitely someone i’d cling to irl <3 you’re funny and you’re genuine and i love you a ridiculous amount! thank you for putting up with me for as long as you did and i’m manifesting we one day meet, we’ll definitely end up in some sort of trouble but that’d be expected of us >:), i love you

✧･ﾟ:* val *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @atsuangel

smirks, valicità my beloved, you’re quite literally the epitome of cool. you’re easily someone i look up to and admire whether that’s from up close and after, you’re very real and you’re very easy to talk to. i adore you in every sense and you’re perfect in every sense other than your taste of men (i can fix you :,( pete davidson,, he’s not right for you!). we’ve been friends for a long time now too and i’m very grateful we met, you’re someone very special to me and someone who i’d also sell a kidney to meet >:) not only is your online presence just overall hot, you quite literally are the sexiest too wow oh look! i’m on my knees :) you’re just %+>$# hhh you’re just really cool and i’m really glad i get to call you my favourite worstie! i love you

✧･ﾟ:* venus *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @amourdite

i’m not sure when you’ll see this but venus my gf, i’d lick you right now if i could :) you’re another person i’d lose a limb for if it meant we could meet, you’re so funny and i think you were the first person to see all sides to me. you’ve put up with me annoying you for a very long time now and you’re easily one of my longest and closest friends on here. you’re super easily to talk to and even though you’re sometimes a bit weird >:) you’re overall very well grounded and level headed and i know i can always come to you for anything without feeling like i’m going to be judged. i love you immensely and i’m very thankful for you because we met during my anti social phase when i didn’t really want to make friends or anything so the fact you were able to make me unknowingly change my mind about that is a pretty big accomplishment >:) i’m always here if you need me and i love you

✧･ﾟ:* lexy *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @babymattsun

miss hot girl lexy i love you very very much !! you’ve always been really cool and you’re never afraid to speak your truth and i admire that completely. you don’t hesitate to put a bitch back in their place and you do all that while being hot and funny which is a hard accomplishment. you’re very honest and someone i’d feel so comfortable going to if i ever needed an opinion, like a straight up no bullshit type of opinion because i know you’d be able to give me what you really think without giving me an answer from the perception of someone wearing rose tinted glasses. you’re so real and you’re so you, i love you and everything about you so much and i’m always happy to see you on my dash heather you’re posting content or just shitposting, seeing your url makes me very happy :,) i love you

✧･ﾟ:* hanna *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @s9turn

screams, bye we were destined to be friends i don’t care. you are literally meant to be close to me and i’m so excited knowing that you’ll be coming to the city for uni because all my unis are either in the city or super close by train so i won’t be far from you. you’re insanely intelligent and everything you do is just,, wow. you’re extremely funny too, i love talking to you so much and even when it’s us discussing an actual topic/issue, you’ll still be making me laugh when we talk. we hate the same people and have very common interests, you’re so cool hanna and i’m super glad we met >:) not only are you my literal twin in the sense of us both getting the privilege to attend white tory schools while being poc girls :,) but you also get where the humour etc comes from making it so easy to talk to you about anything. your writing too is so well thought out and whether you’re writing long fics or crack content, you execute everything you do so perfectly i’m quite literally on my knees for you, i love you

✧･ﾟ:* chuu *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @nakizumie

ahh chuu !! i don’t even know where to start with you, you’re literally my comfort person and i love you endlessly !! i still think it’s funny we were both fans of each other and too shy to approach but i’m so grateful you did approach me because you so quickly became one of you favourite people. you’re literally an angel and deserve the entire world given to you, you’re so kind to everyone and just seeing you on my dash makes me happy !! your messages make my entire day and you work so hard too !! you’re literally perfect and i envy those who get to see yo pretty face everyday irl, they’re so lucky to have someone like you because you’re the type of person whose hard to come by often. you’re talented and easily one of the friendliest people on tumblr, we’re all very lucky to have you and i love you

✧･ﾟ:* vale *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @iwasumi

vale my love, you’ve kept me so sane on so many occasions and for that i’m eternally grateful. you’ve taken it upon yourself so many times to go out of your way to make sure i’m good and make me smile, you’re someone i treasure and i’m so lucky we met. you’re another mutual who i find comfort in and seeing your posts make me so happy because you too are undeniably true to yourself and you’re always more than happy to speak your truth. i have so much respect for you as a writer and a person, you’re a literal star and we’re all to lucky we have you here. seeing you talk about your selfships makes me intensely happy too, i love the way you talk about them, you’re always so cute about it and mention specific details which i find super special because i can tell you really do care and love for these characters and i envy they have someone like you loving them as much as you do. i appreciate you endlessly and i love you

✧･ﾟ:* sophia *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @sophiashortcake

your taste in men is always something i have to bring up because not once but twice have you shocked me with the men you end up falling for. it doesn’t matter though, your pretty face makes up for it !! i’m super glad we met even if it was on that stupid discourse night. you know, i was still in awe when i found your initial post about it because not only did you serve such logic, but you also made your post somehow look pretty in the process. again you met me while i was in my anti social phase and had no intentions on making actual friends on tumblr. obviously i had my old mutuals like clara and yelie, but it was nice to have someone a lot closer to my age and we clicked very quickly which is something that doesn’t happen with me a lot. you’re very special to me and i hope you know that. you’re very very kind and while i know tumblr is sometimes heavy and stressful, you do such a good job at keeping on top of things and handing yourself, i envy that a lot. you’re very mature and i think everyone should be more like you including myself >:) i love you

✧･ﾟ:* jae *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @ats4mu

jae, i know you’ve been busy with exams lately and i’m super proud of you for everything you’ve done. i also know you plan to come back to tumblr soon to come catch up so i’ll leave this here for you to find when you come back hottie. miss jae, i love you very very much and i’m very glad we got to meet. you’re very funny and you’re super considerate of everyone around you. you always take the time out of your day to answer everyone and interact with full intention, we’re so lucky to have someone like you on here. i also appreciate you immensely, there’s been countless occasions where you’ve taken time out of your day to make me happy and while it’s undeserving, you always made sure i was good anyway and for that i’m extremely grateful. you’re beautiful through and through and not only are you such a big personality on here, you’re also very talented in the way you word things. i have so much respect for you and am constantly looking up to you, i’m very proud of you and i love you

✧･ﾟ:* jake *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @deardaichi

HISSING I LOVE YOU SM </3 no honestly, i’m so happy we met, you have made me so much happier and the fact you knew me even before i became ‘mila’ means you’ve watched me grow as a person and watched my life and dilemmas play out and yet you still stuck around and willingly interact with me. you’re so cool and funny and i’m so mad we didn’t meet before. you’re someone i trust so so much and i’d give anything up to meet you, i’m honestly obsessed with you and everything about you. you’re so kind and welcoming to everyone yet you’re also assertive and don’t take anyone’s shit. you’re literally my twin flame and i’m ridiculously happy we got to meet, i love you

✧･ﾟ:* tina *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @ilyrinjo

ahh miss tina hi !! i love you very much and i’m so glad you’re back !! you were missed for that period of time you left so these past few weeks of you returning have been so nice !! i still can’t get over you were one of my anons before but when you did come off anon i remember us getting along perfectly upon first interaction !! you’re super fun to talk to and your opinions are always very interesting but extremely valid too. you’re someone i could happily go to if i wanted an honest opinion or mature conversation with. you make talking to you so easy and not only that but you’re insanely pretty !! the boy you’re talking to is very lucky and i hope he knows it, he won’t get better than you and i highly doubt any of us will. you’ve got such perfect looks and personality i envy your balance in that have so much respect for you in everything you do. i hope you know how special you are to me and i hope everyone else knows how much you should be treasured because you really are a rarity to this world. i love you

✧･ﾟ:* em *:･ﾟ✧ — @osamuscupid

em !! pretty girl, i’m so glad you reached out to me a while ago !! i love you so so much and your messages make me so happy !! i love hearing all about your day and i love that you feel comfortable with ranting and just talking, i feel as though i’m sometimes a bit too much, but you still reached out to me and talk to me on a daily basis, you’re very special to me and i love hearing about how you’re doing. i care about you a lot and you already know how proud of you i am, you’re always working hard to achieve the things you want and you’re always putting in so much effort too. i look up to you for that as even in things you struggle with you persist with and that’s a mindset that’s hard to find someone with. you’re very special and i hope those around you know how lucky they are to have you, i care about you a ridiculous amount and i’m so glad we met !! i love you

✧･ﾟ:* sage *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @miyumiya

omg gf i love u !! you’re so much fun to talk to and your blog is always one of the prettiest !! you’re on pretty much the same wavelength as me and i love you so much !! once day we’ll save megan from pardi and force her to open her eyes, he’s not right for her and she should’ve been our gf from the start >:( okay but asides from that, you’re very easy to talk to and i love interacting with you !! i have so much love and time for you and you’re very easy to get along with !! you’re very talented in the way you write too, so i hold a lot of respect for you as a writer and friend, i can’t wait to keep getting to know you and i’m very thankful we met angel, i love you

✧･ﾟ:* max *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @maadorii

max hi hey hello i’m in love with you but you already knew that. you’re so easy to talk to and you’re so much fun too !! i love seeing you both on my dash and in my notifs, seeing your posts make me so happy and i love seeing whatever it is you have to say. i’d say your writing is poetic and i find that very beautiful, i love reading your stuff and i think you’re great in everything you do !! you’re easily someone i’d call a friend and you became one so quickly too considering i’m not the easiest to approach. everything about you i’m obsessed with and i’m super glad we met, it’s people like you that make me happy i stuck around on tumblr, i love you

✧･ﾟ:* sushi *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @velvetfireworks

ahhhh i adore you !! everything about you is just !!! you’re so wonderful and you definitely are someone i’d approach irl if i ever needed directions or something, you’re one of the friendliest people i’ve met and i’m so glad we did !! you’re super special not just to me, but to so many around you and you’re such a rare type of person to find, i’m truly lucky i got the chance to meet you because i’m enthralled with you completely. i look up to you as a writer and a person and i’m in awe of everything you do, you’re an all round great and well grounded person and you’re someone i know i could rely on if i ever needed it. you’re super likeable and i’m so happy we became friends, i love seeing you on my dash etc and wow don’t even get me started on your content. your way with words is perfect and even though i only tend to read for tetsu, reading your other works is a guilty pleasure because while i am loyal to him, your works always have me feeling some type of way, you leave me speechless everytime. you’re wonderful and i love you

✧･ﾟ:* vi *:･ﾟ✧ — @milfvi

i still cannot get over that one, you forgot we were mutuals, and two you didn’t know you were on my carrd,, VI WTF IVE LOVED YOU SINCE MY KUROOSKULT DAYS !! you’re so so funny and i have your post notifs on for that. everything you say is funny and you’re so easy to talk to because you’re so open and i love that !! you’re very special to me and someone i care about a lot, i love you and i’m proud of you for everything you do. your blog is so much fun to look at and seeing you on my dash makes me so happy !! you’re so fun to be around and you’re for sure someone i’d click with well irl which is rare for me to admit when talking about online friends. i’m so glad we met and i love you

✧･ﾟ:* xi *:･ﾟ✧

i don’t want to tag you for obv reasons >:) but i do want to tell you that i love you and while we only became friends in february, i’m glad we did because you’ve quickly become someone i can go to when i need to vent or rant because i know you won’t judge me. i’m really happy you feel like you can open up to me too because that’s something a lot of people struggle with when it comes to me. you’re so easy to talk to and i can say anything judgement free to you and vice versa. i’m literally in love with you and don’t even get me started on your selfship. i’d honestly pay a fat sum of money for it to be officially canon because the way you talk about him leaves me giddy for the two of you, i’m very much in awe of you and i love you

✧･ﾟ:* ellie *:･ﾟ✧ — @tetsulatte

pretty gf ellie, i adore you in so many ways. you’re so kind and caring to those around you and i adore your positive outlook. you have such a talent for making such pretty blogs too !! i’m glad we met even if it was just recently, but i appreciate you and everything you do and not even just for me. i know you bring comfort to a handful of people and i see you as the big sister type of figure for sure. i think you’re so cool and i’m super glad you reached out to me because me being the lowkey pussy i am when approaching new people, i would’ve been too shy and would’ve had to settle for admiring you from afar. you’re very much appreciated and i love you

✧･ﾟ:* nayru *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @luvoratomi

nayru !! you make my day pretty much everyday and i’m so thankful someone like you came across me !! you’re so kind and fun to talk to and i think everyone’s super lucky to be able to befriend someone like you !! you’re someone i look forward to interacting with and i promise after my exams are over i’ll be practically living in your inbox, you’re someone i hold close to me and i appreciate you a stuuupid amount. i’m love hearing from you and love hearing about your day and what you’ve been up to, it makes me happy to see you happy so thank you for always making that happen !! i love you

✧･ﾟ:* misa *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @rintaromilktea

misa my pretty girl i hope you’re doing well !! i too, appreciate you an insane amount and i’m glad we became friends !! i’ve loved watching you grow more sure in yourself and confident on your blog, it makes me so happy to see you have good people around you too !! you’re someone i treasure a lot and i’m so glad we became friends !! you’re so kind and you’re always thinking of others. that’s a genuine rare trait to find in someone so i hold you very close to my heart and i’m so thankful we had the opportunity to meet, i hope you’re taking care of yourself angel, i love you

✧･ﾟ:* fyfa *:･ﾟ✧ — ✿ @sweetbakugou

hey fyfa i think you’re so rad >:) you’re literally the coolest and you’re always on the same shit as me, i literally adore you and everything about you. you always get me and i know you’re someone i could always rely on. you’re also really very funny and definitely one of my funniest mutuals, your shitposts have got me in trouble a few times in class from when i’ve read them and genuinely laughed, you’re so much fun and you’re so open and friendly, i’m so lucky we met and i’m so glad we befriended one another. i’m so happy i got to come across you on shitty tumblr and if i ever did leave, i’d definitely be running to you as one of the first people i’d be begging for other social handles to keep in contact with because where else am i going to find humour from </3 you’re so important to me and i love you

✧･ﾟ:* rose *:･ﾟ✧— ✿ @makeusfreefromthisfandom

rose !! i’m so happy you reached out to me because i love talking to you you’re so much fun !! i love that you get to be apart of me finally watching hxh (chrollo is all yours i really can’t with him </3) but not only that, you’ve been someone i’ve always looked up to as a person. you’re so real and you’re so kind and i know everyone around you would say the same. you’re like an older sibling type of figure on here and i love you for that. you’re so open and welcoming and i know you have others best interest at heart, you’re one of the best people i’ve met and i love you

hhh i think that’s everyone, but there’s a lot of people i hold close to me and appreciate even if i haven’t mentioned them on here,, you’re all so important to me and whether you’ve interacted with me once or twice on or off anon, you’ve all been super important to me growing as a person because while i was thinking about it yesterday, who i was when i first started tumblr and who i am now are two completely different people and i’m finally happy with myself :) thank you all so much i love you !!

[ourcorny]

charactersssss (a constant wip)

annie morris … twenty-five. currently haunted by her paintings and doodles. how embarrassing! waitress, artist, medicated for an illness she doesn’t has. is actually just from a bloodline of cursed female creative types. more info can be found @tghluck. (fc: mary elizabeth winstead)

edward ainsley … sixteen years old, is actually fifty-seven, vegan vampire. utterly disliked by his vampiric peers due to his being turned into a vampire in his youth, rendered sixteen years old for life. has a tendency towards alcoholism in order to silence his cravings for blood since he deems vampirism altogether unethical. more info found @pastytwat (fc: craig roberts)

robbie moore … fifty. always one of those too big for his own boots kinda guys – one of the ‘i’m jumping ship as soon as hit eighteen’ types. that’s what he did, and that’s when he absolutely fucked it. ran his mouth too loud for too long and ruined any chances he had anywhere he went. robbie is a writer but his unwillingness to compromise with his work leaves him unable to find any real place in the industry. an absolute self publishing expert. to pay the bills he’s an english teacher but there’s no real passion for it. he came back to his hometown after struggling his way around the country and settled down in a marriage with his high school sweetheart that turned sour quickly. the pair never had children and were heading to a painful divorce when his wife passed away suddenly. years down the line and he’s still trying to wrap his head around it. jesus fuck this guy. (fc: marc maron)

tara shaw … thirty-four. owner of SHAWSPB, an independent publishing company ran (run? past tense…? it’s confusing) by one tara shaw, someone who needs to work on her social skills. as it seems, you can actually only reject so many people so many times before it bites you in the ass. more specifically (and more accurately), you can only reject so many people so meanly after you fire the companies’ reader because they’ve let one too many trashy reads out of the slush pile and you have to start wading through the heaving thing yourself. opening manuscripts seemed well and good and safe enough because all you’d be facing is words that were crappy in a worst case scenario, until late one night, you stumble upon something that a sour faced rejectee (yes, one that landed themselves with a personalised handwritten and very specific rejection from the woman herself) gets their pages in the pile. tara opens it and finds that it’s no story at all. it’s a string of nonsense – words that don’t exist, script she’s not sure she’s ever seen before, but transfixed on the page, tara shaw reads the thing front to back and the second she puts the papers down is hurtled into the space time continuum, left to float around in there til something grounds her back into the real world, when or wherever that is. it’s an act of karma, or something, and whenever she lands she pukes her guts out because that’s what that kind of thing does to the human body apparently. (fc: natasha lyonne)

genevieve walsh … seventeen. was made fun of in year six for choosing to go to an all girl’s catholic secondary school, her classmates saying that she would end up a lesbian. she did, though it was unrelated to her formal teaching. very unrelated. she has too much going on and is too moody for her own good. extra info can be found @genegrieve. 

morrigan kenny … age unknown. bringer of the apocalypse. wanders earth with her way too long hair (it collects twigs and mud) looking for someone to spend the rest of the end with.

alex … thirty-odd (undisclosed actual age) years old. she is yet to learn to do her taxes, and is for all intents and purposes: a con-woman. arguably not an ethical profession, charging the old and the gullible for exorcisms and that of a supernatural variety while having no knowledge of the subject. but a girl’s gotta make a living — volunteering yourself for stand up gigs at the same place night in night out with little to no compensation doesn’t provide much. she’s a kind person, if you ignore the conning, and is decent to talk to. will give away any information. whoops. (fc: jenny slate)

lou webster … seventeen. modern prophet. refuses touch with good reason (skin on skin means she see the other person’s skin melting off, right to the bone). regularly sees the end of the world and it gives her stomach aches. (fc: natalia dyer)

liv o'dell … twenty-nine. screaming messy would probably win the lottery (the luck of her) if she ever tried it, multiple time accidental murderer. makes no sense. is rude. is annoying. has a surprisingly sweet daughter (kitty). more info @heavyroads 

betty cloverfield … a twenty one year old motormouth who can’t hold down a single thing she’s meant to. she happens to have recently induced some type of magenta sensitive dissonance in her sensory processing that she can’t shake. it’s speculated by many that she’s taken one too many poppers and it’s taken its toll. (fc: kat dennings)

aiden ryder … seventeen years old. the angstiest, quietest idiot with four fully charged portable chargers to hand at any moment you will ever know. heavily associated with @optimistsclub​ (fc: jack kilmer)

mert james ... 21. a children’s author, the writer and illustrator of the BEWARE GIANT CREATRUES series. he has many reasons to not want to leave his house and most surround the obvious images conjured in the phrase hatemyself1999 — hate myself (explanatory) and 1999 (dexter ‘mert’ james’ birth year. also self explanatory once you know this fact). all that said, he does in fact leave his house. teaches drums to kids. none of them practise and it makes him insane. in a running circuit of bands where none of the members are committed. that, or he’s misjudging their commitment and giving them nothing when they do in fact care and then he is the dick. music snob, deadpan snarker, karma houdini, middle child syndrome, world of cardboard, can’t get away with nuthin, i coulda been a contender!

lazyguts / victoria ... suicide/eating disorder mention. i’m writing her through ages 17-19 and here’s the brief overview/context: lazyguts lost all of her friends the year before she went off to university as a result of her total withdrawal [causes being a) her brother attempting to kill himself (he survived but it’s very confusing to grieve a hypothetical especially when you’re not supposed to talk about it) and then b) her already struggling with food issues getting worse worse worse. these two things alone are not the reasons as no one else explicitly knows about them, but the adverse effects of these things combined make her difficult to be around/hard to maintain a friendship with her. all very tragic, but still happens. uno].going to a uni where she doesn’t know anyone seems like the best move. she does. she makes friends with a girl called olivia and they become mad close very quickly. this lasts maybe two months until lazyguts starts locking herself away in uni room and doesn’t see much of anyone at all. she has to drop out on mental health reasons just before the end of her first year. she moves back home and lives miserably and very solitary. she and olivia have long lost touch by this point. a few months later she sees an in memoriam post up on olivia’s social media from some of olivia’s friends saying how tragic the loss is, etc/ olivia had killed herself. the post had said something about a project for the close friends of olivia and she tentatively sends a message despite having never really known the girl. anyway, after quite a few ‘exaggerations’ and then a few straight up lies, she ends up super into the friend group of olivia’s based on the lie of being a long-time friend of hers. she’s not sure why the lie comes out nor why she keeps it going. it’s something to cling onto so she does. best way to put it is she’s very dear evan hansen about it, lying lying lying lllyyyinng. eventually she’s caught out but we’re not there yet (fc: odessa a’zion)

dale knox ... 30ish. painter/decorator. info literally not ever written out before. he’s lovely and in a constant state of stress! affiliated with @fullyfungi (fc: aidan turner)

lenny gata ... 26. lonely funeral poet. followed by a select few of the unknown dead #irl after an accidental latin spell read out at a graveside (not her fault, literally not her fault - she read this out in good faith). caught ignoring them/walking them to their homes depending on the day. (fc: aubrey plaza)

millie matthews ... 17. half part antichrist. the other half is her twin sister (#MISSING). currently, unfortunately, sadly, disappointgly, worryingly, being tracked down.

more tbaaaaaaaa thank you thank you

[amphtaminedreams]

Film Tier Ranking 2019: A Bad Year for Bird Films

Hi to anyone reading,

I’ve finally put it together: my 2019 film tier ranking! I know tier rankings are a bit 6 months ago but seeing British crisps sorted into god, good, mid and shit tier all over Twitter, the format really resonated with me and I was like I MUST USE THIS AT SOME POINT! And I guess since there probably isn’t much of an audience for crisp tier rankings on Tumblr, it makes more sense for me to do it with films instead, especially as doing a 2019 year in film review was something I previously claimed I would do; here’s to 2020 and following through on my proposals.

I think 2019 in general was an okay year for film, with the end of the year definitely outselling the beginning. One thing to bear in mind is that a lot of films that I would’ve been able to see in 2019, I.E Little Women and Parasite, didn’t come out until 2020 in the UK so they won’t make it onto this year’s list. It’s not a snub by any means. I more fall in line with the Elsie Fisher Film Awards school of thought than the Oscars, which have yet again disregarded several incredible performances this year: Florence Pugh in Midsommar, Taron Egerton in Rocketman, Lupita Nyongo in Us, and of course, Greta Gerwig’s direction of Little Women. I’m sure there are many more but those are the first few that come to mind. Oh to be in 2017 when nominations made fractionally more sense.

This list also includes films that weren’t necessarily released this year, but that I just got around to watching; there were a couple of disappointments but also a lot of films I can’t believe it took me this long to finally watch and have definitely made their way into my favourites. My goal for this year is to get through even more of the films on my verrrry long Letterboxd watchlist, and more specifically, watch said films without going on my phone, which is a really bad habit of mine. I find it hard to sit still! Let me live! 

I also want to try and put aside my prejudices about visual quality and watch more pre-2000s movies this year; it’s really bad but I never managed to get more than half an hour into Psycho, of all films, solely because I couldn’t deal with the black and white. In 2020, I am going to stop being a whiney Gen Z/cusp millenial-er and give older films the chance they deserve.

So, without further ado, here is my film tier ranking of everything I watched in 2019! If you make it til the end and have any thoughts or disagreements, let me know. I love to hear other’s opinions and get new perspectives on things and am totally open to any criticism. Happy reading:-)

God Tier

Knives Out (Rian Johnson, 2019)

Knives Out. What a film.

I feel like I waited forever to see this at the cinema. They must have started showing trailers for it in, like, August, and I had to wait til mid-November to see it. How are you gonna just dangle a film with Toni Colette and Lakeith Stanfield in my face and then make me wait 3 months? Totally unethical.

But that being said, when it finally came around and I did see it, as much as I love Toni and Lakeith, there was one stand out and it wasn’t either of them: ANA DE ARMAS. I have to admit I’d never heard of her before but she acted the shit out of a role I feel I’d ordinarily find irritating and gimmicky. Daniel Craig, whose character seemed annoying as fuck in the trailer, was actually surprisingly funny.

Stylistically, it was a very cool film and I liked the subtle commentary on class that was running throughout. Also, I thought the ending was very clever. My issue with a lot of whodunnits is that they just pick someone who doesn’t make sense for shock factor *cough, Bobby Beale in Eastenders, cough* but the shocks here were more in the details. 

Hustlers (Lorene Scafaria, 2019)

There wasn’t one single moment of Hustlers I didn’t enjoy and it’s quite amazing that there wasn’t one single point in this film about strippers that I felt gratuitously sexualised women. THAT is why you fund female directors. It made the whole thing look like a calculated art form, which I think the unsexy amongst us can all agree that it is. Constance Wu was a fantastic lead, J-Lo was kind of robbed for a supporting actress nom, and Keke Palmer and Lili Reinhart were hilarious too. 

Midsommar (Ari Aster, 2019)

Midsommar was such an experience that it took me a good few days afterwards to decide whether I actually liked it. I saw it the day it came out because I loved Hereditary so much and I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I kind of had an idea of the way it was going to go, we could all kind of guess evil cult was the route that was being taken from the trailer, but I just didn’t realise quite how weird it’d get. 

The gore was great, the visuals were stunning and the character arcs were surprising and for that reason, I think this is another game changer for horror from Ari Aster. I didn’t love it like I loved Hereditary but it continues to play on my mind and 7 months later I still can’t resist a good “Things you Missed in Hereditary” or “Hereditary Themes Explained” Youtube video essay. That’s how you know a film fucked with you and that’s the ultimate goal of going into a horror for me. Put that on my headstone after I inevitably get myself into some mortally dangerous conflict because I want to “get fucked with” a little bit.

Booksmart (Olivia Wilde, 2019)

So here’s the thing with Booksmart: I was getting progressively more and more drunk throughout it so I might be a little biased when I say I loved it. That being said, worth revere seems to be a commonly held opinion so I’ll stick to my guns. Plus, movies like this, which just focus on girls living their lives, are few and far between. Why have we had to wait THIS long for the female Superbad?

IDK. But Kaitlyn Dever, Beanie Feldstein and Billie Lourd proved it’s definitely a genre worth investing in so hopefully we see more lighthearted female-led coming of age comedies. One Ladybird per year isn’t enough for me.

The Favourite (Yorgos Lanthimos, 2018)

I included The Favourite in my 50 Films You’ve Got to Watch that I made earlier this year so I don’t have all that much to say about it that I haven’t said already. To summarise, it’s an instant classic: the cinematography, the cast, the lines, it’s all perfection. 

Suspiria (Luca Guadagnino, 2018)

I also included Suspiria in my 50 Films You’ve Got to Watch list so sorry if I’m repeating myself, but I adored everything about it. If I had to sum it up in one sentence I’d say divine feminine energy, but inverted. Plus ballet. That dancing scene in the mirrored room will probably never leave my mind (if you’ve watched it, trust me, you’ll know the one I'm talking about), and if there were awards given out for creepy montages in horror, this would win all of them. It still blows my mind that Tilda Swinton played 3 characters in this film; 2 of them are so distinctly different, if anyone put two and two together without prior knowledge of this fact then I’ll blow my own head up too. This is why I got so mad when there was all that discussion around her being the new female Doctor Who and there were people asking who she was. How can you not know who Tilda fucking Swinton is!? She’s a legend! 

Sorry, is the wannabe film snob in me showing?

Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018)

Though I initially watched it because it’s branded as a horror, Annihilation ended up being a surprisingly introspective take on human nature and our self-destructive tendencies. Nothing really went the way I expected it to, even though I was constantly trying to guess that trajectory from beginning to end. 

Visually, Annihilation is magnificent. Like, it’s tense, and where exactly the plot is going is shrouded in mystery, but most importantly, it’s super fucking pretty. Sure, the only thing that was mildly horrifying was the *SPOILER* end result of that bear scene but I didn’t mind too much because there was always that edge-of-your-seat possibility something like that would happen again. 

Also I realised that Gina Roduriguez is really hot in this! I would just say in general but that video of her saying the n-word kind of took away shot at real world magnetism. WHY SUCH A SHITTY APOLOGY VIDEO!? WHY?!

Assassination Nation (Sam Levinson, 2018)

So I didn’t clock until I was looking up directors that Sam Levinson, Euphoria director, also directed this, and suddenly everything makes sense in the world. They both have that dreamlike, exaggerated feel that perfectly captures the emotional rollercoaster that is being a teenager, only in Assassination Nation obviously the threats are a bit more...tangible. As in its actually other people trying to kill our protagonists this time round, not just angst. 

Not gonna lie, it’s not a patch on Euphoria because that show is probably the best thing I watched all year, but I did thoroughly enjoy it, even if I did feel the social commentary, despite how in your face it was, got a bit lost in translation at times. I think it’s the kind of film that, once again, would’ve felt more genuine coming from a female director, however that’s not to take away from how witty, modern, and completely relevant it still is as we move into 2020.

Sorry To Bother You (Boots Riley, 2018)

Right. WHAT THE FUCK!?

Why don’t more people talk about this film? Like it has Tessa Thompson and the world’s best earrings! Lakeith Stanfield getting more than 10 cumulative minutes of screen time! Armie Hammer being that bitch we all knew he was irl (probably)! Scathing critiques of late stage capitalism! It’s insane, in the absolute best way.

SPOILERS AHEAD: I had a mini paragraph written about the last hour of the film and the descent into pure unadulterated chaos, and how it’s like, the internet’s best kept secret, because ordinarily you lot can’t keep your mouths shut about a film or TV’s shows most crucial reveals for more than 5 minutes and THEN...My FBI agent must be feeling real cheeky because THIS tweet pops up on my Twitter timeline. 

Fuck this shit, I’m out. Onto the next film. MI5 stop peeping my drafts. 

Eighth Grade (Bo Burnham, 2018)

I don’t want to repeat what I said about Eighth Grade in my 50 Films you Should Watch list but Elsie Fisher’s performance in this is why I wish the Oscars also had some kind of rising star award category à la the BAFTAs. Honestly, every 13/14 year old should watch this; it’s a reminder that although feeling like an outsider is by its nature quite isolating, it’s prolific enough that a 29 year old man, 10 years out of “high school”, gets it.

American Animals (Bart Layton, 2018)

My sister and I absolutely loved this film so you can image our disappointment when we turned round to our parents at the end and our enthusiasm wasn’t matched...as in, I’m pretty sure they were both asleep for a lot of it. WHICH I DON’T GET. Because to me, there wasn’t a dull moment. American Animals is what happens when a group of university age boys with the finesse of the American Vandal Turd Burglar try and apply that to an Evil Genius stye heist, part Netflix, talking head abundant documentary, part live-action film. Splicing a stylistic reenactment with interview footage of the men who really attempted to commit the crime elevated what I probably would have put in the Good Tier™ to the God Tier™; seeing the guy Evan Peters is playing alongside Evan Peters playing him, now only the remnants of the arrogance we see in the reenactment left behind, sharply reminds you of the fall from grace these boys deservedly went through. Plus Barry Keoghan from The Killing of a Sacred Deer is in it, proving that unsettlingly stiff is NOT in fact his natural state. 

Gerald’s Game (Mike Flanagan, 2017)

I wish there was a shorthand way to say I wrote about this in my 50 Films You Should Watch list so I’m gonna keep it short but here we are! This was great! If The Haunting of Hill House isn’t proof enough, Gerald’s Game (not to take away any credit from Stephen King) is a reminder that Mike Flanagan is the king of subtle, niggling sensation in your stomach that something is about to go very wrong horror. I hear he and Ari Aster have a timeshare situation going on with the crown.

The Ritual (David Bruckner, 2017)

Okay, so this is the film that made me realise we should all be very scared of forests. Nope, all the documentaries into the Aokigahara Forest weren’t enough, apparently. I subjected myself to this too, as if my unfit, cold-blooded, bug-fearing, scared of the dark ass doesn’t already have enough concerns about my survival odds in the great outdoors. 

Really though, setting aside, this film maintains the sense of dread throughout and keeps you guessing what’s going on until the very end. Much like The Descent, the group dynamic and characters are realistic enough that it adds to the believability of a scenario I, in principle, know would never happen to the extent that I might keep away from vast, wooded spaces for a while just in case.

Dumbo (Tim Burton, 2019)

If film Twitter came across this post and saw I’d placed Dumbo in a higher tier than If Beale Street Could Talk I can only imagine the outrage. And sure, the latter is probably a much higher quality film. But sometimes a movie, for reasons you can’t quite put your finger on, gets you right in the sweet spot, and Dumbo did that for me. Maybe it was that the CGI elephant reminded me of my cat (I know, leave me alone), maybe I was emotional that day, I don’t know, all I know is that I cried like 5 times and was smiling for the rest of it-to be fair, the exploitation of animals for our entertainment is something that is still very much going on and that was something that was playing on my mind a lot whilst I was watching it. IRL Dumbos should be free too. Dumbo rights.

The VVitch (Robert Eggers, 2016)

This film taught me that there’s nothing wrong with joining a coven of young witches and getting naked and levitating around a fire. And that’s an important life lesson. Plus it gave us the quote “wouldst thou like to live deliciously?”, which is not only so perfectly creepy and simultaneously empowering that I had to get it tattooed but also, created ASMR. I just made that last bit up obviously but Black Philip getting his own ASMR Youtube channel?

The Descent (Neil Marshall, 2006)

For me, much like The Ritual, The Descent is a perfect horror film: it’s got the ghouls but the situation the characters find themselves in is also terrifying by its own merit. The reason The Descent made it onto my 50 Films list and the Ritual didn’t is because, let’s be honest, it’s 2020 and you can get mobile signal in most places. You could probably at least make a 999 call if you got lost in a forest. If you DID get stuck in an underground cave and it collapsed in on itself, you’d be pretty fucked; the idea of it makes me shudder and I will never set foot in an underground tunnel at any point in my life for any amount of money EVER after seeing this. Also, the women in this are great and the creatures in this are genuinely quite terrifying, especially the first time you see them. 

Chicago (Rob Marshall, 2003)

Ah, Chicago, the last film on the God Tier™, proving that this list is in no particular order. Because WHAT A FIM. WHY DON’T PEOPLE TALK ABOUT THIS MORE?! Like don’t get me wrong, I know it deservedly won Best Picture in 2003 but I’m talking about right now! I mean, fucking Titanic is still out here getting referenced left, right and centre and yet Chicago gets paid dust! Can you tell I’m mad and that I think Titanic is hugely overrated?! Is that maybe coming across?!

ALL the songs are bops, Catherine Zeta-Jones is hot (I saw someone on Letterboxd say that Catherine Zeta-Jones in this film was their bisexual awakening and honestly, if I hadn’t already known I was a raging bisexual, same, because I FELT things in that All That Jazz opening) and Cell Block Tango is the revenge fantasy anthem I never knew I needed. Smart, tongue in cheek, beautifully shot and makes men look like little bitches which is probably why my dad hated it but what did I expect.

Good Tier

Zombieland: Double Tap (Ruben Fleischer, 2019)

Onto the first film of the good tier, Zombieland: Double Tap definitely exceeded my expectations. I was super worried about the prospect of a sequel as I love the first one so much and assumed it would be crap. Obviously, it doesn’t match up to the original because the original WAS so original, but it was still a fun, easy, witty ride. And I was SO glad they didn’t *SPOILERS AHEAD* kill off Tallahassee at the end because I really thought that was coming and it seemed so predictable and unnecessary. Highlight was the introduction of the lookalikes at Graceland.

Judy (Rupert Goold, 2019)

So, this is the first of two consecutive rants I’m about to go on about Oscar nominations and people’s reactions online. Prepare yourself.

I’ll start with the underlying message: just because you think something else deserves the praise more, doesn’t mean the film/album/*insert whatever artistic medium you wish here* that IS getting the praise is shit. 

Like people are angry that Lupita Nyongo wasn’t nominated for best actress for her performance in Us which is COMPLETELY valid as she carried that film on her back. In the same vein, people are also angry that more women of colour haven’t been nominated for best actress. Also valid; I’ve yet to see The Farewell but I’ve heard great things about Akwafina’s performance and I love her so even though I haven’t seen it, I’m gonna take the general consensus that she should’ve been nominated too. The Oscars definitely has a problem with recognising the work of POC. BUT, because of this, people are angry that Renee Zellweger has been nominated for her performance in Judy, saying that it’s typical “Oscar bait”. I agree, it is typical Oscar bait. However, a lot of the people saying this will in the same breath say (or tweet rather) that they haven’t actually SEEN Judy. 

How can you possibly say that Renee Zellweger doesn’t deserve any of the praise she’s getting when you haven’t even seen the film? Don’t get me wrong, the film itself is good but not outstanding (hence its place in this tier), but you can see Renee genuinely put her heart and soul into this film; it was powerful, and it was sympathetic but it was also nuanced and subtle where they could’ve just capitalised on all the sensationalised stories of the actions of a woman clearly deeply suffering in her final years and had it be full of shouting and screaming. The Wizard of Oz has always kind of felt like home to me because of the childhood nostalgia factor and so I’ve always been interested in Judy and I think Renee captured her heart and her spirit in a way she would be deeply honoured by. Maybe the film itself doesn’t deserve the acclaim it’s getting but I think Zellweger definitely deserves the nom and I think most people who’ve actually seen it wouldn’t contest that. 

Joker (Todd Philipps, 2019)

Okay so second rant. I’m sorry. I have a lot of feelings. Most of them aimed at the annoying tendency of internet users, Film Twitter™ and Letterboxd users I’m looking at you in particular, to be wildly exaggerative. 

There just seems to be no nuance online. It’s not just yeah, I didn’t like the film personally and the message could be perceived in a certain way by certain individuals, it’s I HATE THIS FILM AND IT’S DANGEROUS AND THE DIRECTOR FUCKING SUCKS. I noticed this trend when La La Land came out (which if I had watched last year would certainly be in God tier for me). It’s like, if a film initially receives a lot of praise and buzz, there’s almost this wave of compensatory vehement criticism in response that’s usually disproportionate to how controversial the film actually is. People didn’t like that Joker was popular because they didn’t like Joker so suddenly it’s the worst film ever and the possibility of it getting any critical acclaim is wrong. I even saw people berating Todd Philipps for channelling Martin Scorsese as he’s the only person to ever be influenced and take direction from one of the most dominant figures in film of the 20th and 21st century. I mean, what’s wrong with that?! If it was any other director, it’d be called homage. But because everything has to be seen through this malicious lens, its copying. 

I think one of the few very valid criticisms about Joker was that it further perpetuates the idea that psychotic people are dangerous, and I can totally see where they’re coming from. At the same time, we have to accept that whilst the majority of people who are psychotic aren’t a danger to anyone apart from themselves, most “dangerous” people don’t just become dangerous because they thought, fuck it, why not? A lot of people in the prison system ARE suffering with some kind of mental illness. The character’s psychosis doesn’t make him dangerous, it’s his underlying resentment and sense of entitlement that grows throughout the film that makes him dangerous, and I think a lot of people seem to miss this point. They say that the way the film ends implies Philipps is justifying the actions of the films protagonist. However, we KNOW the Joker is an unreliable narrator, he’s one of pop culture’s most infamous villains and that being said, both in film and in the real world, few villains see themselves as the villain. Joker is about why HE thinks he’s justified in doing what he does, not why he IS justified in doing what he does because he’s not, and that’s pretty clear from the moment he shoots someone in the head on live TV. Honestly, I think there’s a bit of wilful misinterpretation going on because people don’t like that film

I liked Joker. It was gritty, it was interesting, and sufficiently dark. I didn’t think it was the best film of the year but I understand why it got the praise it did. Obviously, it’s okay that people disagree and DON’T like it. But can we please get a bit more well-acquainted with the middle ground?

It: Chapter Two (Andres Muschietti, 2019)

Okay, essays over. Back to regular scheduled programming of less impassioned reviews. Though I will say I deserved better than my Letterboxd comment of “so you can just fucking roast Pennwyise to death?” getting absolutely 0 traction. One day my grand total of 5 followers, one of which is my sister, will recognise my brilliance (lol).

It’s hard to say how much I really liked this as I think my perspective of how much I did enjoy it is warped by how much I disliked the first one. Child actors really aren’t my thing and the only cast members I warmed to in the first one were Finn Wolfhard and Jack Dylan Grazer whereas the cast here were a lot more likeable, imo. Bill Hader, Jessica Chastain and James Ransone were all great, with the only let down being James Mcavoy; I love him, don’t get me wrong, but I just think he was really miscast in this role. 

Another thing I enjoyed a lot more about this instalment was that due to the more episodic/anthology-like/Creepshow-esque structure with each character conquering different monsters from their past individually, the narrative felt like it had a lot more direction, and it didn’t drag as much despite it having a significantly longer runtime. I haven’t read the Stephen King novels and I don’t know much of the pacing issues are down to them so this is me coming at it from a screenwriting angle but it felt as if the climax of the first film just kept going on and on. Every time I thought it had finished there’d be another confrontation between the kids and Pennywise whereas Chapter 2 seemed to have a more definitive third act and I appreciated that.

Rocketman (Dexter Fletcher, 2019)

So, here’s one where I WILL agree with the general online consensus: if Rami Malek got nominated for playing Freddie Mercury last year and Renee got nominated for playing Judy Garland, why the fuck didn’t Taron Egerton get one for playing Elton John? Why didn’t Rocketman itself get a nomination when Judy did? Though I personally preferred Judy because I’m more interested in her story, technically and narratively Rocketman is the better film in my opinion.  This was so cleverly edited and sequenced and told with such a brutal honesty on Elton John’s part (it was co-produced by his husband David Furnish and he was heavily involved in everything from the set to the script), that I can only come to the conclusion that the obligatory biopic nomination only comes when the focus of said biopic is no longer with us as a kind of honorary thing. Whilst something like Bohemian Rhapsody was much more of an easy watch (which just goes to show how glossed over Freddie Mercury’s life was in the film), the way the story was told, by the time we got to I’m Still Standing that happy ending felt so earned.

Aladdin (Guy Ritchie, 2019)

You can hate all you want, Prince Ali and Never Had a Friend Like Me are fucking bops and somehow they were even better in this incarnation of the film. I was initially hesitant about Will Smith being cast but rather than trying to impersonate Robin Williams he went his own route and it really worked. He was the highlight of the film. It was undeniably visually stunning too. Madonna’s ex did good.

Us (Jordan Peele, 2019)

Ah, I feel so conflicted when it comes to Us. Like, there were some really strong points and it’s definitely a good standalone horror movie. It’s just you can’t help but compare it to Get Out, and with that unsatisfactory exposition dump ending, I left feeling so disappointed. It seemed to me that Jordan Peele got in a bit over his head here with trying to tie such a vague social metaphor and the actual in-universe plot together, and so ended up leaving both a bit half-baked. He tried to OutPeele himself and for me, it didn’t work. 

The doppelgängers were so scary as this ambiguous, vaguely threatening presence that if you are gonna give us a full blown, sit down explanation of why they exist it needs to be really bloody good. And this explanation didn’t make much sense. For example, *SPOILERS AHEAD* I imagine that the tethered just not being able to walk up the escalator into the “real world” was supposed to be some kind of metaphor for social mobility but it’s not fleshed out enough to work. In our world, there are REASONS why the idea of social mobility is flawed. In the film, it’s just like gee, if they chose to just walk up the escalator and go on this murderous rampage now, why couldn't they have decided to do it years ago back before they all lost their fucking minds? Why were they just copying the originals for all those years? HOW did they know what they were doing? See, the metaphor as I understand it is supposed to be that we depend on the oppression of others like us in order to maintain our social status, but not only is this kind of too general a statement to try and use a feature length film to make, I don’t really understand how this dynamic works within the narrative of the film. Technically, there's nothing to stop the tethered and the originals co-existing apart from the tethered deciding not to walk up the fucking escalator. We’re not talking a bourgeoisie-proletariat relationship here. The explanation of it all just being a “government project gone wrong” was too vague seeing as the plot working seemed prior to this to hinge onto something vaguely supernatural and the eventual plan of the doppelgängers seemingly had no purpose or application to the real world like the climax of Get Out did. It just left me feeling kind of like...why? Why did this all happen? When the ending and the twist was that predictable (the old Pretty Little Liars finale style twin switcheroo was blatantly obvious from the mother’s “it’s like she’s a different person” line near the beginning, let’s be real), I was expecting some final revelation that flipped my expectation on its head or at least felt helped things click into place. Instead, it seemed a bit hamfisted and like I was supposed to feel things were deeper and more significant than they actually were.

All that being said, I appreciate that if anyone other than the writer of Get Out had come out with this movie, I probably wouldn’t have these issues. Us was funny, it was fresh, and the concept of doppelgängers is something I’m so glad to see brought back into our modern pop culture database. The people are right, Lupita was incredible in this and it is a travesty that she didn’t get nominated. My sister, who was so creeped out by her vocal performance that she had her fingers in her ears every time Red spoke, still won’t let me attempt an impression of it. And that Fuck the Police sequence? Iconic. 

On the Basis of Sex (Mimi Leder, 2019)

I apologise in advance for the shittiest “review” I’ll ever write, but honestly I can’t remember all too much about this film other than it being good. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I’m sorry. You’re a cool lady.

If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2019)

EURGH, THIS WAS SUCH A BEAUTIFUL FIM. The score, the shots, the rawness. I imagine it’s devastatingly real. Like, *SPOILERS AHEAD* you think there’s going to be a happy ending but there’s not. It should be disappointing but it’s an honest choice. And side note: fuck those annoying middle aged white ladies in the seats behind me and my friend who lost their shit and started giggling every time the N-word was used, JFC. I hate living in a Tory stronghold. 

Cam (Daniel Goldhaber, 2018)

So, as I said, I’m a fan of the whole doppelgänger thing. It freaks me out. The point in this film where the protagonist is approaching her bedroom door whilst she watches HERSELF livestreaming from inside that same bedroom had my heart in my mouth wondering what she was going to encounter on the other side. And you see, the ending of this was a lot more ambiguous than the ending of Us, so I should’ve had less questions. Whilst I’ve seen other people saying it WAS unsatisfactory and that they felt like we were owed more of an explanation, I liked the simplicity of the answer we got and the wiggle room it leaves for our own interpretation. The way I see it, given that we were told by the fan the protagonist meets with in the motel room that *SPOILERS AHEAD* it was a case of some kind of software copying these women’s likenesses to steal their viewers and thus their profits, is that Cam is a kind of a commentary on the capitalist exploitation of women’s bodies and the demand for (and desensitisation towards) sexually violent content; we don't necessarily need to know who is behind the virtual cloning, which is terrifyingly believable given how realistic some of the deepfakes I’ve seen are, because it doesn’t matter. We're basically told money is the motive and we know the kind of lengths some people will go, and someone DID go to in Cam, to in order to make a shitload of money and that’s as true in real life as it is scary. On the other hand, if you want to believe there’s a more supernatural presence behind the events of the film, there’s enough left to the imagination that you can go down that route too. Some films are better left un-exposition dumped and this is the proof. My one criticism, is that, like many films, it would be even better if directed by a woman; I’ve seen people say that its portrayal of online sex work isn’t entirely accurate and though I can’t say with certainty that women working in this industry weren’t consulted in the first place, I imagine a female director would not only be more likely to listen to their concerns but could translate the confusion and fear that comes with being expected to makes oneself sexually desirable to get ahead in the world but then shamed and used for doing so even more viscerally. A few tweaks and it’d be God Tier.

Colette (Wash Westmoreland, 2019)

The costumes, sets, and Keira were so, so stunning. Also it was just an inspiring, beautiful story. The navigation of womanhood, so called “deviant” sexuality and self-expression against the backdrop of early 20th century Paris with a load of Edwardian era tailoring thrown in, it’s everything I could possibly want and more; 10/10 moodboard content. 

The Boy (William Brent Bell, 2016)

I can’t believe this film was made in 2016, and it almost makes me move it down to mid tier based on the fact that a lot of the allowances I made for cheese factor I made on the assumption it came out earlier in the decade. BUT, that being said, I was creeped out for a good portion of this film. Most horrors I watch and I’m probably a bit too chilled (a head comes off or some witchy ass ghost screams into the camera and my only thought is some kind of judgement of the SFX), and yet I felt like watching this behind my hands. I don’t know what it is about dolls and puppets, Chucky was my childhood fear even though I never actually watched the film, but something about the uncanny valley of it all makes me just spend the whole time they’re on screen silently praying they don’t start moving or talking. So in a way, given the resolution of the film *SPOILERS AHEAD*, the premise of The Boy was actually a lot scarier to me than the reveal of what was really going on. Someone hiding in my walls? NBD. That demons are real and that they live inside creepy old dolls? Terrifying. Why does everybody I debate this with disagree!? You can't call the police on a demon! At least with a human being you can stick them with the pointy ending of something! Regardless, I enjoyed the journey and trying to work out how things would end and if there IS anybody secretly living inside my house right now, even if you are a supposedly dead murderous family member (last time I checked I didn’t have any of those so I should be all good), kindly vacate. Thanks.

Oprhan (Jaume Collet-Serra, 2009)

So the fact that this film is based on a real life case makes this all the more terrifying. It was a bit campy and tacky at times but the shot of *SPOILERS AHEAD* Esther taking off her makeup in the mirror and revealing her true age will always be iconic. Plus I love Vera Farmiga, even though I did struggle to see her as anyone other than Norma Bates. 

First Reformed (Paul Schrader, 2018)

A hauntingly beautiful film with a lot of room for interpretation. There were so many gorgeous shots and so much subtext, this is proper 10/10 media studies essay material.

The Invitation (Karyn Kusama, 2015)

I would say the concept and implications of this film, which don’t fully hit you til the final shots, are a lot better than the film itself. It feels very realistic though and is definitely tense.

As Above, So Below (John Erick Dowdle, 2014)

I was so stoned when I watched this that a lot of the allegory and Dante’s inferno references went straight over my head, and it just seemed absolutely balls to the wall wild. I couldn’t buy that the characters would just KEEP GOING either when things began to get terrifying, like people in horror films really out here making the most nonsensical decisions and it drives me mad. But anyway, it was definitely entertaining and there’s a lot more to it in terms of plot and mythology than most similar quality horrors and I appreciate that 

Climax (Gaspar Noe, 2018)

Climax is an interesting one that I think I’ll have to watch again to judge how much I truly like it. As with Us, I know it’s a good film, but I think my expectations of what it was going to be left me slightly disappointed. See, when I read about the premise I assumed that the horror was going to come from seeing the perspective of the characters on said acid trip and that leaves so much room for any kind of terrifying visuals you want whether that be something based in realism or fucked up creatures of the imagination. Buuuuut, it wasn’t that at all; at no point does Climax take place from the first person perspective of any of the characters. Similar to Darren Aronofsky’s Mother, the horror comes from not being able to do anything but watch as everyone starts losing their minds and the situation gets increasingly more dire. It’s pure stress; the acting is so unnervingly good that you really do feel like you’re watching some unintentionally horrific incident take place. That’s not a bad thing-I like it when films make me feel something intense, whether that emotion be positive or negative. It was just a different viewing experience to the one I had precipitated. 

Mid Tier

Nativity (Debbie Isitt, 2009)

I find Mr.Poppy hilarious. Does that make me a child? Probably. I’m not really one for Christmas movies but this one’s alright.

Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark (André Øvredal, 2019)

I get that it’s based off a book so it’s not exactly like the “monsters” were a secret in the first place, but for those of us who didn’t read the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books as a kid, my main beef with this film was that they basically revealed all of said monsters in the trailer. Like how It: Chapter 2 spoiled the scene with Beverly in the old lady’s apartment but with EVERY. SINGLE. CREATURE. The only one that wasn’t was the “jangly man” and the only takeaway I have from him is the “jangly in the streets, but is he jangly in the sheets?” Letterboxd comment I read afterwards. Like the creature designs are the selling point of this film and by showing us them all before we’ve even seen it, any anticipation that would’ve built up from their reveal was kind of gone. Plus, it definitely felt like the writers were trying to ride on the hype train of “It” when they wrote this-only they made it even more childish. I mean, I know it was classed as PG-13 in the US which is maybe part of the reason it was so tame but the Woman in Black was a 12 when it was released here and it could be the bias of my 13 year old brain but I remember that being terrifying to watch in the cinema.

Also, I found it weird how *SPOILERS AHEAD* a couple of the main characters died and there didn’t really seem to be any consequences? Idk, maybe that’s because I found them all a bit one dimensional but I’ve seen others make the same criticism so I don’t think so. 

Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a BAD film. It just wasn’t super good.

Charlie’s Angels (Elizabeth Banks, 2019)

I’ve never seen the 2000s Charlie’s Angels so I really don’t have anything to compare to, but I don’t think this was THAT bad. I was fairly entertained throughout and I enjoyed Naomi Scott and Kristen Stewart’s characters. My main issue was the unnecessary inclusion of Noah Centineo, and that weird ass montage at the beginning of stock video shots of girls just...doing miscellaneous things. Why, Elizabeth Banks, why!?

Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019)

In some ways, I see why Toy Story 4 was narratively necessary: co-dependency had been a running theme throughout and we needed to see Woody (I feel stupid saying this considering he’s a fucking toy but allow it) realise that he can exist independently of Andy, and that there’s more to life than pleasing somebody else. The way Toy Story 4 ended felt like a satisfying conclusion to his character arc, and as well as the animation being top tier, Forky was a hilarious addition to the cast. However, I don’t think it carried the emotional weight of the 3rd Toy Story, which I think people had accepted as the last instalment and had used to say goodbye to the franchise, and therefore the sceptic in me thinks that the obvious purpose of this addition was a cash grab. I don’t doubt that a lot of people worked incredibly hard on it-I’m just saying that the propelling force behind the film probably wasn’t “the people need to see Woody’s character growth” and that was quite apparent throughout.

Doctor Sleep (Mike Flanagan, 2019)

There were some really beautiful scenes in Doctor Sleep; the astral projection sequences in particular were magnificent and I loved Rebecca Ferguson as the villain. Stylistically, though I didn’t find out he was the director until I was writing this up, you can definitely tell it’s Mike Flanagan, and like I’ve said, he does horror very tastefully. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t all that interested in the premise and I wasn’t hugely invested in grown up Danny Torrance either. The execution was great and the return to the Overlook was brilliant, of course, but the story just wasn’t for me and nothing much sticks out as being a particularly intriguing plot point.

Mary Queen of Scots (Josie Rourke, 2019)

What to say about Mary Queen of Scots other than...yeah, it was alright. I mean, I really should’ve liked it more than I did, because these specific events were part of the Edexcel A-Level history curriculum (Can I get some Rebellion and Disorder Under the Tudors students representation up in here!?) and I usually love seeing history translated onto screen, plus it centred around Margot Robbie and Saoirse Ronan. It was just very...meh. I feel like there’s so much more complex a story here than was told. Both women were undoubtedly a lot more complicated than this film made them out to be and I think to reduce Mary Queen of Scots to a Mary Sue-ish heroine was a disappointing choice. Plus, if we’re gonna talk historical accuracy (which all the racists came out of their caves to discuss at the time), Mary and Elizabeth never actually met; I’m sure there was a more creative way to explore their dynamic than by forcing an interaction that never actually happened.

Apostle (Gareth Evans, 2018)

There were elements of this film I really liked; the mythology behind the cult, I.E what the townsfolk actually worshipped when you stripped away all the secrecy was pretty interesting. However, I felt it depended too much on atmosphere and not enough on plot, and I didn’t warm to any of the characters.

Searching (Aneesh Chaganty, 2018)

It’s difficult because technically, Searching is obviously an ingenious film. My issue is the way it ended, which was imo, super anti-climatic, and honestly pretty predictable in that it seemed like the writers just went out of their way *SPOILERS AHEAD* to make the culprit the person viewers would’ve ruled out by default for shock value, and then work out WHY that person was the culprit from there. I was expecting something a lot darker to be behind the protagonist’s daughter’s disappearance-irl, these situations usually are-and so maybe it’s just me being a bit of a sadist but I was disappointed by how things resolved themselves.

Deliver Us from Evil (Scott Derrickson, 2014)

So, this isn’t boring. It’s interesting to have a horror navigated through the lens of something as procedural as a police investigation. But ultimately, the acting isn’t great, there’s very few scary moments, and it’s a little cheesy. As horrors go, it’s pretty shallow-it is what it says on the tin.

Dumplin’ (Anne Fletcher, 2018)

I watched this right at the beginning of the year and I can’t remember all too much about it, but I remember not hating it? See, looking at the cast, Odeya Rush and Dove Cameron are both in it which would suggest I’d come away hating MYSELF instead but yeah...I got nothing. 

Lights Out (David F.Sandberg, 2016)

The concept is very scary, the execution not so much, and the actual storyline is a little cheesy. I found myself just being like OH MY GOD, IT’S BELLA’S DAD FROM TWILIGHT! And then *SPOILERS AHEAD* getting mad that they did Charlie Swan dirty like that by killing him off in the first 10/15 minutes.

The Goldfinch (John Crowley, 2019)

So I LOVED the book of The Goldfinch. I read it after the Secret History and even though most people seem to prefer the latter, the former hit me right in the sweet spot. The length was almost one of my favourite things about it; I felt by the end that I came to know the character so well he felt like someone I knew in real life. When I heard Ansel Elgort was cast as Theo, I was really happy; I’m not necessarily a huge fan of him as an actor, I've only ever seen him in shitty teen-y dramas which I forced myself to like at the time E.G. The Fault in Our Stars and Divergent, but he looks kind of exactly how I pictured Theo looking. Almost like an Evanna Lynch as Luna Lovegood situation. And then honestly, the actual film came around, and I found myself much preferring the young Theo sections. I get that Theo is quite a muted character and I hate to properly slate anyone’s performance, but Ansel as him felt a bit flat. The casting in general was pretty whack; I love Nicole Kidman but she didn’t feel right as Mrs.Barbour and it seemed that they added a lot to her character to the detriment of Hobie’s character who was a much bigger part of Theo’s life in the book. Also, can we talk about Finn Wolfhard as Boris? I’m sorry, but that accent was godawful. Really bad. Boris’ accent was always supposed to be kind of ambiguous but this was just butchered Russian. Another gripe that my friend and I, who also read the book, had with the Vegas section of the film (which was otherwise probably the best part) was that they never properly explored the complexity of Boris and Theo’s relationship. Obviously I’m not saying that I want 2 minors to shoot a sex scene but it could have been referenced when they reunite as adults because the kiss on the head when they part in Vegas seemed misleadingly platonic. It was heavily implied in the book that there was some kind of love that went beyond friendship between the two and I didn’t get that in the film at all. 

Ultimately, when you try and adapt a book as long as the Goldfinch, you’re always going to have some pacing issues and people complaining that things were left out or that X or Y character didn’t have enough screen time. But in ways, I think the fault here was trying to stay TOO faithful in the limited time available. They definitely could have focussed less on certain relationships and more on others, and when it comes down to it, I think we lost a lot of the grittiness of the original book for the sake of pretty visuals. 

Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (Quentin Tarantino, 2019)

Don’t get me wrong, this would 100% be in shit tier if it wasn’t for the last hour or so of the film and all the Manson lore which is so disappointing because I love Tarantino films and I love that era. As for the first couple of hours, I loved the vibe and I love Margot Robbie, and I think it was very respectful towards the Tate family (if anything radiated through the screen more than anything else it was Sharon Tate’s sweetness), but I just wasn’t that invested in Leo or Brad’s characters-it all just felt a bit pointless. I really like Brad Pitt and even that couldn’t really save it for me. Maybe if you took away the remaining 2 hours and 20 minutes of Leo DiCaprio making vague allusions to his own career to a girl only slightly younger than the combined age of all girlfriends past I’d enjoy it more but then I don’t think there’d be much footage left. I guess we should just be grateful that Tarantino managed to refrain from unnecessarily sprinkling the N-word into every other line of his script this time, right?

Also.

SO. MANY. FEET.

But then again, this did result in Brad publicly mocking Tarantino’s foot fetish during his speech at the SAG awards so...I’ll allow it. Sometimes kink shaming is okay. Especially when it’s this guy:

Isn’t it Romantic (Todd Strauss-Schulson, 2019)

I guess as romantic comedies go it wasn’t AWFUL because it was self-aware but still just not my cup of tea and it didn’t really make me laugh. Plus, I feel like it did just follow the plot of a conventional rom-com in the end so...what was it all for, you know?

Green Room (Jeremy Saulnier, 2016)

I think my disappointment with this film was a case of too high expectations. It wasn’t as gory as I hoped, in fact, there was very little on screen gore at all. I was just expecting something very messed up and I didn’t get that. But then again we did get Maeby from Arrested Development singing a fuck Nazis song so I guess that was a nice surprise?

Shit Tier

Birdbox (Susanne Bier, 2018)

First the disappointment of the Goldfinch, and now Birdbox (although they were chronologically the other way round but for the sake of this review, let’s just ignore that). It really is a bad year for bird films. 

It’s weird because when this first came out I remember everyone hyping it up and making memes about it and stuff and then I actually watched it and dear god, it was boring. Honestly, who paid you lot to pretend you cared enough about it enough to make content? And where can I get in on this action?

I mean it didn’t start off terribly but then they killed off SARAH FUCKING PAULSON and somehow managed to make SANDRA FUCKING BULLOCK unlikeable. How does one do that? The mind baffles.

Pet Sematary (Kevin Kolsch & Dennis Widmyer, 2019)

The kid acting was bad, the leads were meh and there wasn’t one creepy moment. This should be SO MUCH MORE hard hitting than it actually was given the subject matter and it just fell completely flat. I will say, though, *SPOILERS AHEAD* that the ending was appropriately doom and gloom and even though I’ve seen lots of others say they hate it it was probably the only thing I actually liked.

The Lion King (Jon Favreau, 2019)

Seth Rogen and Billie Eichner were the only good things about this which is sad because I fucking love Donald Glover and I was so excited when he was cast as Simba. Like, it was pretty but empty and unnecessary and I’m not one of these people who think CGI remakes always have to be this way-I loved Dumbo and I liked the live-action Jungle Book too! I just think the people who made this cared too much about good CGI and realism and less about heart. There was no personality whatsoever and it’s such a waste when you think about the fact that they had Donald and Beyonce on board. 

Red Sparrow (Francis Lawrence, 2018)

Eurgh, I hated this. I think Jennifer Lawrence is stunning and I usually love her films but every shot of her in this felt so male-gaze oriented, even the ones which were sexually violent, which I found to be completely unnecessary in the first place. At times it felt almost torture-porn-y which was not what I expected at all seeing as the marketing made it seem like some kind of female empowerment movie.

It Comes at Night (Trey Edward Shults, 2017)

I literally can’t remember fucking anything from this film. Clearly there is a very, very fine line between atmospheric and boring.

Warm Bodies (Jonathan Levine, 2013)

Maybe it’s because I watched this about 6 years too late and the whole human-girl-falls-in-love-with-supernatural-creature hype train has long since left the station but I couldn’t even finish it. Cutesy necrophilia ain’t for me, sorry Nicholas Hoult. Still love ya. You’ll always be Tony Stonem to me xoxo

Million Dollar Baby (Clint Eastwood, 2005)

I’m pretty sure this movie won a lot of awards so I’m sure this is a very unpopular opinion but the way this film ended was so...depressing. SO depressing. Did it have to be THAT depressing? The Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode outsold.

This is the range Oscar winning actress Hilary Swank wishes she had.

Would You Rather (David Guy Levy, 2013)

Started off well but became cheesy and predictable as it went on. The acting wasn’t great either plus there was another unnecessary attempted rape scene here too. 

Christmas with the Kranks (Joe Roth, 2004)

So I watched this movie in the run up to Christmas because my best friend and her mum were referencing it like it was this cult classic (which I guess for some reason it is?) and I’m sorry to her and her mum but what the hell is this shit?! It’s not even so bad it’s good. It’s just bad.

The plot, the characters, EVERYTHING, it’s ridiculous on every level. I wasn’t into it enough to suspend my disbelief that anyone’s neighbours would actually care THAT much that they weren’t celebrating Christmas. Go on your damn cruise, take me with you whilst you're at it, ease my seasonal depression! I wouldn’t mind so much if it was funny or if the protagonists were likeable but it wasn’t and they’re not. Nobody’s actions made any sense. It didn’t put me in the Christmas spirit at all it just made me angry that Jamie Lee Curtis’ agent made her do this shit. She’s a scream queen goddess and she deserves better.

ANYWAY.

I’m now realising that I should have started on shit tier and worked my way up to god tier because now this post has ended on the rather sour note of me getting worked up over Christmas with the Kranks, lol. As always, these are just my opinions and I love to hear other people’s; when it comes to something like this, it’s all a matter of preference and there really isn’t a right or wrong answer, so I’m open to discussion!

With the Oscars less than a week away now I rushed a little to get this out on time, so apologies in advance if anything doesn’t make any sense or there’s any typos, I will look back over it at some point over the next couple of days to check. 

But if you read to the end thank you! And stay tuned for my overview of Paris Haute Couture Week S/S 2020 if that’s something you’re interested in as that will most likely be next post!

Lauren x

[purplesurveys]

492

How's your day going? Super chill, which is a nice change after the hectic last couple of days. Went to the mall with my family this morning to have lunch, discovered the gift that is spicy tuna salad, bought myself iced coffe and a container of pink slime, and spent the whole afternoon just playing my new favorite app, Bitlife. What shape is your face? It’s square-ish, which I hated so much when I was younger because I thought it made my face look abnormal (cause no one else in school had a square face) and that it gave me such a wide jaw. Nowadays I embrace it precisely for the reason that it’s not a common Filipino feature, and because it gives me a really good jawline. What sort of computer are you on right now? I’m on a Macbook Air. What's your favorite restaurant? I have a lot of favorites depending on the cuisine, but in general Yabu easily takes the cake. Torch is a favorite if I wanna spend on really good sushi. Mama Lou’s is my favorite Italian place; Marugame Udon is my favorite if I wanna have a budget-friendly meal; Mesa is my go-to for Filipino food. What does your umbrella look like? I used to have a pink umbrella with a faint print on it, but as with all things I own, I eventually lost it.

Do you share a room with anyone? My dog. Are you superstitious? Only when it comes to Oble, my university’s symbol. I’ve explained the supersition on an old survey but it’s an easy Google search if anyone’s curious. Do you believe in astrology? NO. Take the vowels out of your name. What does it spell? Rbyn. Do you eat breakfast every day? No. That’s the meal I easily miss out on; I usually just have a big lunch to make up for it. You can go back in time and slap one historical figure in the face. Who? Ferdinand Marcos, former President and dictator and forever a thief and liar. Do you have socks on? Describe them. Nope. I go barefoot in the house. Pick up your cell phone for a second. Who's your first text from? The first text I got *today was from my girlfriend, letting me know she had just woken up. Fourth missed call? My mom. Are you one of those people who has like a hundred apps on their phone? Noooooo. I never let my phone rack up too many apps. Have you ever been to the ballet? I’ve seen ballet recitals before, but I’ve never been a legit production. It’s one of the things on my bucket list. Do you have good reflexes? Yes, all thanks to all my years of table tennis. Do you have many internet friends? I used to have a lot when I was still an active fangirl on Twitter/Tumblr haha. The most fun I had was with the AJPunk fandom; I had a reeeeeally big and close circle of friends from the States and all over Europe. My sleeping schedule was insane at the time because I’d stay up to talk to them and bond over fanfic updates, new AJPunk scenes, and IRL spottings of the two. While we’ve grown apart in the last few years it’ll always remain a really fond memory for me. Do you think those friendships are on level with your real life ones? It used to be. They’d be the first people I’d talk to before the school bus picked me up and the last before I’d turn in for bed. Do you keep a journal? This Tumblr, pretty much. Describe for me your ideal sandwich. Banh mi in general. I don’t really have an ideal recipe. What are some names that you like? Olivia, Mia, Ines, Elizabeth, Scarlett, Isabella, Emma to name a few. Is there something you're putting off doing in favor of this survey? Not really. I kinda did my main task this afternoon, so I’m good for tonight. Are your friends generally like you or different from you? We’re all different in our own ways. Jo and Laurice are very chatty, JM is super closed off, Aya is a great artist, Kate's social skills are top-notch, Luisa is into sports. I’m none of those. Link me to a picture you think is cute. Egh. Do you like blowing bubbles? I loved it as a kid and I’m pretty sure I’ll still like it now.

What's the band that you love even though you know they're awful? That’s not what I think about the bands I listen to. Ever had a pillow fight? Maybe when I was younger. What do you usually pick in truth or dare? Truth. I have no problem being honest about anything. Are you better at posing good questions or coming up with outrageous dares? I’m a journalism student, so the questions. Vinyl, cassette, CD or MP3? I’d pick vinyl, even if I don’t own any or have a record player. But the reason I picked it is that Gab and I drop by Satchmi sometimes and test the record players and they sound amazing. Do you coo over other people's babies? I always would at the first chance. What is something that makes you very squeamish? Blood. Gab has nosebleeds semi-regularly and as much as I love her, that’s the one thing I can barely help her with. Like I’d get her tissues, but I literally would not look at her while it’s happening, because I will absolutely feel like vomiting. Do you try those as-seen-on-TV things? I wouldn’t buy them but if I saw them in real life and was offered the chance to test them, I would. Has there been a celebrity death that really affected you? Chyna. She died on my birthday and I cried for a while when I read the news. Do you get the dressing on the salad or on the side? All over the salad. Do you make lists, or are you more of an unplanned person? I make lists for almost everything. If you're out of high school, have you stayed in touch with your high school friends? If you're still in school, do you think you will? Yes. I follow most of them on social media. We’re a close batch, and we’re not letting go of each other that easily. Is there something you like to eat that most people think is gross? SEAFOOD!!! As someone who’s from an archipelago and whose entire culture is defined by seafood, I almost get hurt whenever I see people viewing fish or shrimp or oysters or mussels as ‘disgusting’ looooool cause it’s like why tho :// I respect tastes but don’t call it disgusting??? Do you have a lot of photographs of your friends? I have quite a bit, yes. Do you dye your hair regularly? I’ve never dyed my hair. Do you think, if it came down to it, that you'd be able to kill someone? If they did anything to a loved one and if I would be able to get away with it, yes. Are you good at rating things? I’m not sure, I’ve never had to rate a lot of things. What's a movie that you want to see? Midsommar. What was the name of your third grade teacher? Ms. Adette. She was also our math teacher. She was very motherly but the year she taught us was her last year in the school too since her family was moving to Oman. Are you a competitive person? Yeah. I can’t help it. Do you get into a lot of arguments? I try not to because I hate losing thanks to the aforementioned competitiveness. Do you like to go shopping? When my dad is around to buy the stuff, yes. HAHA Can you knit? Nope. I didn’t give a shit in sixth grade home econ. Do you use the same username everywhere online or do you have a lot? Yeah I used to use robyncanrana for everything, but lately I’ve been going with simply my first and last name. What's something that you really like about yourself? I’m a good worker and I never leave anything undone. Can you pass for older than you are? Not at all, I look like I’m 15. Have you ever been in a situation where that was necessary? Yeah, for when I need to get out of driving violation tickets. Do you talk a lot? If I’m comfortable with someone, I can. I’m still a listener at heart though. Are you a Facebook creeper? No, I hate Facebook. What is a smell that you hate? Spoiled rice. If you don't set your alarm clock or anything, when will you wake up? I’d still wake up pretty early. Do you even use an alarm clock, or do you just use your phone? I use the Alarm feature on my phone. Do you watch Maury or Steve Wilkos or anything like that? No. What did you get your best friend for their last birthday? I wasn’t with Gab during her most recent birthday. What did they get you for yours? She wasn’t with me for mine. Are you capable of finishing a game of Monopoly? I’ve never played Monopoly and never really plan to; it looks so boring and complicated. What is a word or phrase that you overuse? “Literally,” “like,” and “at the end of the day.” The last one I got because my internship boss used it for eeeeeevery fuuuucking senteeeeence it was insane. I caught it eventually. What's your favorite painting? Anything Monet. Have you ever written to your congressman? I haven’t. Did you get sent those free AOL discs a lot? Nope. Are you allergic to anything? I am not. What are you going to do now that you're finished with this survey? Check my Twitter timeline.

[tidefated]

What’s been going on with Sky?

Hello folks, first and foremost I want to apologize for my recent absence / inactivity, however I do promise it’s been for very good- if very personal- reasons. The short version is that I have been Not Great™ lately, and it’s taken all of my effort to begin combating that and also improving my state of living. Further details are below, but if you’re not interested in all that or if you are uncomfortable with the topics mentioned ( I will not go into detail, but there is talk of trauma, past abuse, educational & financial stress, and depression/anxiety ), please feel free to stop here, or skip to the bolded line- that is where I will move from discussing past/present to future plans! This is being cross-posted in a couple of places as an FYI, so I’m sorry to those who follow me multiple places and see it more than once.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

In short, the last semester/last 6 months has been really hellish. I’ve been fairly up front about the strain that my courses put on me, and I’ve spoken briefly now and again about the Particular Professor Who Made Everything Awful- basically because she didn’t like the influences on my style because the comics I read growing up are very different from what she & most folks read/make/teach here in the states. I don’t really need to go over it, but I do like having everything in one place for my own processing & reference.

Moving on from that, though- I also encountered what one might refer to as a breakthrough with some emotional/mental gunk that was clogging me up with regards to some past trauma- unfortunately the person in question is still a part of my life in ways I have 0 control over, and finally coming to terms with the fact that there even is lasting trauma makes that― really hard to deal with. I’m trying in the best ways I know how, but ultimately the situation is so insanely complicated it’s been leading to a lot of me just shutting down, which has been making everything else worse.

I also had all kinds of problems with therapists ( once again the one I was seeing through the school took another job somewhere else- meaning I have to start over AGAIN ), getting medical insurance ( still fighting that one actually ), starting testosterone therapy ( for which I need to finish the insurance battle ), family ( they’re starting to come around to the whole trans thing a little I think? ), and a gigantic financial scare- the short version is my mum took $5,000 from me over time and I finally found out about it, and she ended up paying it back by taking out a loan from my grandfather. A mess, amiright? But I can pay rent again without terror so we’re good for now- ish. She still claims to not know how all those transfers to her account happened, but this is sadly not the first time she’s taken money from me ( my relationship with her is a VERY complicated and convoluted one that I need to work on ).

In short, these past months have been perhaps the most trying times in my life- though I’ve had experiences that were objectively worse and more traumatizing, I didn’t really- know they were wrong or anything until later, and the full effects of those experiences was something that didn’t hit me until much later- at the time it was just ‘wow this is unpleasant!’, and only now am I really I’ve thought I was really coming along in my mental health journey, and that things were coming together, but there are always going to be stumbling blocks. Right now, I’m trying to be positive and look forward, but I know there will be dips in the road that will make me doubt and fear after this. I may drop activity again because my response to this sort of thing seems to be shutting down and performing the bare minimum to conserve energy, so I also want to apologize in advance for that, and also thank everyone who has read this and chosen to stick with me anyway.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Going Forward

I want to try and reach out more- I’d like to have real conversations and form connections, because for me that is what being on the internet is supposed to be about. I don’t have many friends- online or IRL- and I really want to change that. As a result I want to try participating in more low-pressure type community events, and I want to push myself to comment and interact more often.Please never be afraid to speak with me! Even if sometimes I blunder and don’t know what to say, I always appreciate it, and want to at least try and talk with folks!

Tumblr RP has been something I’ve love deeply since I started, but I think I do need to stop pressuring myself to enjoy it the way I use to. The site itself has become… a very different place, and that’s impacted my writing negatively. I’m so worried about what’s safe to write and what isn’t that half of the content and interactions I love literally aren’t allowed on tumblr at all- as much for the comfort of my partner as myself, but the point still stands that it’s this site that’s caused such issues and cultivated an environment where people feel entitled not only to boss others around regarding interactions and shipping, but also to push things on them that they don’t want.

In short, it’s made me very cynical, so while I will not be leaving at all, I will be reminding myself often that this is not a job, and taking every measure to make sure every single thing I do here is something I love. If that means deleting asks and dropping threads to start new ones in their place, then so be it. I’ve let myself cave to pressure far too much, and that needs to stop happening so I can stay here and enjoy what I still have. I want to work on setting my blogs up before starting too many new interactions, and that may take a really long time, which I’m sorry for, but it will make me happier in the end to be properly nested, rather than laying in the middle of a constant work in progress.

This won’t impact my activity very much, though, to be totally honest. I’m already not here more often than not, so the main difference will hopefully be that I am happier and less stressed when I am around.

Otherwise, I want to start focusing on my art a lot, and creating content, rather than simply augmenting it. This hopefully means I’ll be posting to my art blog more often, and may even be creating some original stories. Ultimately there may be a major social media withdrawal in the future because I want to get back to the magic of discovery and creation, and I can’t tell what part of my life is causing it to stagnate, but we’ll see.

Regardless, I want to thank every single person who’s read this- including those who skipped down to the bolded bit because heaven knows the middle was emotional mush- and everyone who’s supported or stuck by me all this time.

[sheminecrafts]

IRL pivots into virtual event calendar In Remote Life

What do you do if you’re an event discovery startup and suddenly it’s illegal to attend events? You lean into the cultural shift and pivot. Today, $11 million-funded calendar app IRL is morphing from In Real Life to In Remote Life. It will now focus on helping people find, RSVP for, plan, share and chat about virtual events, from live-streamed concerts to esports tournaments to Zoom cocktail parties.

Coronavirus could make IRL relevant to a wider audience because before an event “only mattered if it was around you. But now with In Remote Life, content has no geographical limitations,” says IRL co-founder and CEO Abe Shafi. “The need is exponentially greater because everyone’s routines have been shattered.” IRL ranked No. 138 in the U.S. App Store today, making it the top calendar app, even above Google’s (No. 168).

Robinhood’s Josh Elman joins IRL

IRL has some fresh product development talent to lead it through the transition. The startup has hired stock trading app Robinhood’s VP of Product Josh Elman . The former Greylock investor is well known for his product chops from jobs at Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Elman joined Robinhood in early 2018 but left late last year, notably before its rash of recent outages that enraged users.

“I just realized more than anything that the company needed people who had 110% to give, and it wasn’t clear that was going to be me,” Elman said of Robinhood, now valued at $7.6 billion and struggling to scale. “My first passions and all the things I’ve talked about over the years have been social and media.”

For now, IRL is a part-time gig, where he’ll be heading up a Secret Projects division. While most apps “try to suck more of our time,” he sees IRL as a chance to give this precious resource back to people. Though he insists “Robinhood’s great, I’m a very happy shareholder.”

Events without borders

“We were on a tear, hitting a stride with usaging and growth related to real life events,” says Shafi. “Then this happened,” motioning on our Zoom call to the COVID-19 reality we’re now stuck in. “We realized we had to pull all of our content because it wasn’t happening.”

Today IRL’s iOS app launches a redesign of its Discover home screen content to center on virtual events people can attend from home. There’s now tabs for gaming, podcasts, TV and EDU, as well as music, food, lifestyle and a catch-all “fun” section. Each event can be added to your calendar that syncs with Google Cal, or Liked to add it to your profile that friends and fans can follow. You also can instantly launch a group chat about the event in IRL, or share it to Instagram Stories or another messaging app.

If you can’t find something public to do, you can make plans with friends using the composer with suggestions like “Let’s video chat,” “Zoom workout,” “gaming sesh” or “Netflix party.” That instantly sets up a calendar event you can invite people to. And if you’re not sure when you want to host, IRL’s “Soon” option lets you keep the schedule vague so you and friends can figure out when everyone’s available. Indeed, 50% of IRL plans start out as “Soon,” Shafi reveals, identifying a gap in rigid time/date calendars.

Beyond individual events, IRL also wants to make it easier to develop habits by letting you subscribe to workout, meditation and other schedules. With sports seasons suspended, IRL lets people sync with calendars of hip-hop album releases and more instead. Or you can subscribe to an influencer’s life and digitally accompany them to events. The goal is that IRL will be able to merge offline events back into its content recommendations as social distancing subsides.

The biggest challenge for IRL will be tuning its event recommendation algorithm. It has lost a lot of the traditional relevance signals about events, like how close they are to your home, how much they cost or if they’re even in your city. Transitioning to In Remote Life means a global range of happenings is now available to everyone, and because they’re often free to host, many lonely low-quality events have sprung up. That makes it much tougher for IRL to determine what to show.

For now, it’s basing recommendations on what you engage with most on its home screen, but I found that can make the initial experience very hit-or-miss. The top events in each category were rarely exciting. But IRL is planning to beef up its onboarding process to ask about your interests, and integrate with Spotify so it knows which musicians’ online concerts you’d want to attend.

Still, Shafi thinks IRL is already better than asocial alternatives. “Our main age range is 13 to 25, college and post-college metropolitan areas and across college campuses. Our average user has never used a calendar before, or they’ve just used a default calendar like Gcal or iCal.

A cure for loneliness

Hopefully, IRL will take a more serious swing at helping friends realize they’re free at the same time and can hang out. While Down To Lunch failed in this space, now Facebook Messenger and Instagram are exploring it with their auto-status feature, and location apps like Snap Map and Zenly could adapt to share not just where you are, but if you have the intention to hang out.

“How can we use just a little bit of nudging, transparency or suggestion to get people to just do one more thing per month?,” Shafi asks. IRL is trying to figure out how to let you passively share that “I have 2 hours free” in a way that “never makes you feel rejected if they don’t respond.”

Facebook did launch a standalone Events calendar app back in 2016, but later paired down the calendaring features, folded it in with restaurant recommendations and renamed it Local. “As big as Facebook is, it can only do so many things insanely well,” Elman says of his old employer. “They could do more [on Events], but it’s never been the juggernaut like photos.”

Shafi is happy to have the opportunity in such a foundational space. He describes the concept of the calendar as one he’s sure will outlive him, so it’s worth the effort to make it social no matter how long it takes — though I’m sure his investors like Goodwater Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins and Floodgate hope it’ll find a way to monetize eventually.

Revenue could come in the form of selling access to events through the app, or letting promoters and local businesses pay for enhanced discovery. For now, though, IRL is building a deeper connection with event and content publishers with the upcoming launch of its free Add To Calendar button they can build into their sites and emails. Elman says several services charge for these buttons that integrate with Apple and Google’s calendars, but IRL hopes giving them away will help fill its app with things to do, whatever that might be.

“Our tagline is ‘live your best life.’ It’s not judgmental. If your best life is playing video games on your couch with your homies, we don’t judge you for that.”

from iraidajzsmmwtv https://ift.tt/2R9AZE6 via IFTTT

[magzoso-tech]

IRL pivots into virtual event calendar In Remote Life

New Post has been published on https://magzoso.com/tech/irl-pivots-into-virtual-event-calendar-in-remote-life/

IRL pivots into virtual event calendar In Remote Life

What do you do if you’re an event discovery startup and suddenly it’s illegal to attend events? You lean into the cultural shift and pivot. Today, $11 million-funded calendar app IRL is morphing from In Real Life to In Remote Life. It will now focus on helping people find, RSVP for, plan, share and chat about virtual events, from live-streamed concerts to esports tournaments to Zoom cocktail parties.

Coronavirus could make IRL relevant to a wider audience because before an event “only mattered if it was around you. But now with In Remote Life, content has no geographical limitations,” says IRL co-founder and CEO Abe Shafi. “The need is exponentially greater because everyone’s routines have been shattered.” IRL ranked No. 138 in the U.S. App Store today, making it the top calendar app, even above Google’s (No. 168).

Robinhood’s Josh Elman joins IRL

IRL has some fresh product development talent to lead it through the transition. The startup has hired stock trading app Robinhood’s VP of Product Josh Elman. The former Greylock investor is well known for his product chops from jobs at Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Elman joined Robinhood in early 2018 but left late last year, notably before its rash of recent outages that enraged users.

“I just realized more than anything that the company needed people who had 110% to give, and it wasn’t clear that was going to be me,” Elman said of Robinhood, now valued at $7.6 billion and struggling to scale. “My first passions and all the things I’ve talked about over the years have been social and media.”

For now, IRL is a part-time gig, where he’ll be heading up a Secret Projects division. While most apps “try to suck more of our time,” he sees IRL as a chance to give this precious resource back to people. Though he insists “Robinhood’s great, I’m a very happy shareholder.”

Events without borders

“We were on a tear, hitting a stride with usaging and growth related to real life events,” says Shafi. “Then this happened,” motioning on our Zoom call to the COVID-19 reality we’re now stuck in. “We realized we had to pull all of our content because it wasn’t happening.”

Today IRL’s iOS app launches a redesign of its Discover home screen content to center on virtual events people can attend from home. There’s now tabs for gaming, podcasts, TV and EDU, as well as music, food, lifestyle and a catch-all “fun” section. Each event can be added to your calendar that syncs with Google Cal, or Liked to add it to your profile that friends and fans can follow. You also can instantly launch a group chat about the event in IRL, or share it to Instagram Stories or another messaging app.

If you can’t find something public to do, you can make plans with friends using the composer with suggestions like “Let’s video chat,” “Zoom workout,” “gaming sesh” or “Netflix party.” That instantly sets up a calendar event you can invite people to. And if you’re not sure when you want to host, IRL’s “Soon” option lets you keep the schedule vague so you and friends can figure out when everyone’s available. Indeed, 50% of IRL plans start out as “Soon,” Shafi reveals, identifying a gap in rigid time/date calendars.

Beyond individual events, IRL also wants to make it easier to develop habits by letting you subscribe to workout, meditation and other schedules. With sports seasons suspended, IRL lets people sync with calendars of hip-hop album releases and more instead. Or you can subscribe to an influencer’s life and digitally accompany them to events. The goal is that IRL will be able to merge offline events back into its content recommendations as social distancing subsides.

The biggest challenge for IRL will be tuning its event recommendation algorithm. It has lost a lot of the traditional relevance signals about events, like how close they are to your home, how much they cost or if they’re even in your city. Transitioning to In Remote Life means a global range of happenings is now available to everyone, and because they’re often free to host, many lonely low-quality events have sprung up. That makes it much tougher for IRL to determine what to show.

For now, it’s basing recommendations on what you engage with most on its home screen, but I found that can make the initial experience very hit-or-miss. The top events in each category were rarely exciting. But IRL is planning to beef up its onboarding process to ask about your interests, and integrate with Spotify so it knows which musicians’ online concerts you’d want to attend.

Still, Shafi thinks IRL is already better than asocial alternatives. “Our main age range is 13 to 25, college and post-college metropolitan areas and across college campuses. Our average user has never used a calendar before, or they’ve just used a default calendar like Gcal or iCal.

A cure for loneliness

Hopefully, IRL will take a more serious swing at helping friends realize they’re free at the same time and can hang out. While Down To Lunch failed in this space, now Facebook Messenger and Instagram are exploring it with their auto-status feature, and location apps like Snap Map and Zenly could adapt to share not just where you are, but if you have the intention to hang out.

“How can we use just a little bit of nudging, transparency or suggestion to get people to just do one more thing per month?,” Shafi asks. IRL is trying to figure out how to let you passively share that “I have 2 hours free” in a way that “never makes you feel rejected if they don’t respond.”

Facebook did launch a standalone Events calendar app back in 2016, but later paired down the calendaring features, folded it in with restaurant recommendations and renamed it Local. “As big as Facebook is, it can only do so many things insanely well,” Elman says of his old employer. “They could do more [on Events], but it’s never been the juggernaut like photos.”

Shafi is happy to have the opportunity in such a foundational space. He describes the concept of the calendar as one he’s sure will outlive him, so it’s worth the effort to make it social no matter how long it takes — though I’m sure his investors like Goodwater Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins and Floodgate hope it’ll find a way to monetize eventually.

Revenue could come in the form of selling access to events through the app, or letting promoters and local businesses pay for enhanced discovery. For now, though, IRL is building a deeper connection with event and content publishers with the upcoming launch of its free Add To Calendar button they can build into their sites and emails. Elman says several services charge for these buttons that integrate with Apple and Google’s calendars, but IRL hopes giving them away will help fill its app with things to do, whatever that might be.

“Our tagline is ‘live your best life.’ It’s not judgmental. If your best life is playing video games on your couch with your homies, we don’t judge you for that.”

[resmarted]

here i am again, smashing the crystal vases and good china, ravaging the beautiful dining room and chucking antiques across the room. i want to be done here, i want to be done here! i want to move on, but to what? i can’t remember how to even be a person, i can’t find the light and this tunnel is so dark and endless, we don’t even have headlights to guide us. i came here to bring you on a date in the stylings of nineties classic it takes two starring kirstie alley and the olsens, except instead of mka we are switching them out for young taylor swifts, that’s right two of them, which is all i could think about the entire time i rewatched it again. so here goes nothing, we open on a street corner in philly because this is our version and the ahhccents are gonna be mewr sewth philly than ahhhnything. taylor swift number one, let’s call her taytay the scrappy orphan that has self-professed lousy english like aintcha gonna wanna git ewta here before they catcha? nobody even blinks and in pigtails and a worn out backwards baseball cap on her head, this ten year old who is probably played by an eight year old swift bc coming from a fellow tall person we just sprout from the crib it’s nuts, i’ve always looked older than i was from being tall. so eight year old swift is playing ten year old scrappy orphan taytay who is always chewing gum and has a baseball bat as kirstie alley (YOU.) look out the window and yell at her like, cmahhn tay! you got an appt with the butkis’ and i told u not to get that dress dirty! and tiny taylor chewing gum is like awww cuhmuhhhhhn doi-anne! just lemme knahck this one outta the pawrk first! that’s not the line it’s something else referencing the fact that they’re playing in the middle of the street of their inner city neighborhood. she is the pretty white girl of the orphanage so it makes no sense she hasn’t been adopted but is of course the star athlete of the kids and favorite of the social worker you-kirstie alley. she is accosted by kids and called a reject and lil taytay’s all why i awwwghta! she’s making her best >:| face, and pop goes the weasel she hits the ball and probably breaks a window or something and as she runs to the cab the kids are like, the butkis ppl are creeps that collect kids! and taytay is tayrrified before threatening the other kids with her fists in the air as the cab drives away. cut to a close up of a nineties cellphone and private plane landing, and taylor number two is wearing a practical pantsuit in beige and just won another piano competition, and she overpronounces all of her t’s at the end of her words. let’s call her fancita. yes i’m serious, i’m already so tired and bored of this story, it was way more exciting after rewatching the other night. whatever this story is just a remix of the parent trap anyway and that’s why we have two baby swifts and don’t ask me why, don’t ask me why i’ve taken you this far down the rabbithole but let’s just keep going until we find each other. so fancita is an aristocratic princess that plays tennis and i don’t know, i’m just trying to get to the part where they are like omg let’s get this social worker and rich man who has a cell phone company before that’s even a thing, and while orphan taytay is in danger of becoming the next adopted butkis - which in this version is just straight up trafficking ring i mean come on, they were pedos and it was heavily insinuated in the movie, but basically she’s in danger of being adopted into an abusive hellhole and fancitay is like hey girl hey! when her butler arrives to pick her up from her private jet. the nineties always portrayed wealth with these long ridiculous limos and british butler limo drivers, which as we now all know rich people are just driven in cars w tinted windows and the only people riding in limos are seniors in high school, but i digress. she meets her new soon-to-be stepmother, also played by taylor swift, present day style. she’s all, when i was your age i had already been through three stepmothers, you’ll be in a tibetan boarding school as soon as the wedding is over tomorrow! for this she is in her satanic red high priestess dress from lwymmd, golden snake rings at all. actually let’s just say at some point she’s bathing in diamonds as well, i mean there are many versions of her current snake-embraced image that we can use for this but that’s not the point, it is that im not even in love with grown taylor swift! i am just trying to fill the void of my dead wife who loved children and built a camp conveniently across from the literal castle we live in. i haven’t been there since, pushes back hair like sigh, since she died ten years ago right after fancitay was born. i’m all, cell phones, i hate the damn things. back when i invested in them everyone thought it was just something out of star trek and now i’m a lonely billionaire marrying snake taylor in a haze of confusion and thinking that’s what i should do, fancita needs a mother after all. you’re a tough talking protective mama bear that wants to adopt orphan taytay but you’re just a social worker and what? the butkis’ already had the paperwork go through to adopt her?? i come to find you after a failed horse meetup planted by the taylor twins to apologize for leaving you to get yelled at by steptaylor, and you’re like look keep your fancy cell phone company lifestyle and keep it moving, bucko! in the movie they get into a food fight but i’m not trying to go that deep, but basically we fight until you, an enraged four foot two version of kirstie alley okay you’re actually just a tiny goth and i’m a clumsy ogre, that part never changes. you push me with all your might, not necessary trying to push me into the river but it happens and i’m all, oh my god i feel like a kid again! this must be love! okay but seriously, that part’s the realest. i do feel like a kid again, and this must be love, mustn’t it? what will our tiny taylors tell us? we don’t know what it is or why, but it makes sense because we feel it, i can feel you. even when you say to your fellow social worker friend (played by your bandmate and beloved drummer) guys like that only date girls with food names like candy or muffin or cookie, and princess taylor disguised as orphan taylor turns around from her archery practice, greatly offended and snapping back, his dead wife was a teacher that loved kids and built this camp and she wasn’t a food her name was kathy with a k played by kourtney in a brief shot of her glamorously in a casket but dripping in jewels and hands delicately crossed over her chest. whatever, goth kourtney fantasies are not the point ok i know that. you look at princess taylor disguised as pauper taylor and are like well excuse me jeez, you don’t gotta bully me over it. sigh so then the state comes for her and accidentally send my daughter to some terrifying child sex ring that nightmares are made of and turned into dateline episodes, and this one is no less horrifying. orphan taylor shows the butler various scars and marks and bruises to show that she’s a fraudulent child that happens to just be another cute blonde that adults didn’t look closely enough at and notice bc they aren’t actually twins in this story, they’re just strangers that look alike. which honestly is prob when they first really started making the olsens insane irl like, pitting them against each other by pointing out fraternal differences and how one was the cute one the other was just the sister oh, don’t even get me started, dear. steptaylor comes home with ultra long extensions like repunzel after sneaky orphan taylor put gum in her hair. the original she gets it all cut off and suddenly her loss of beauty is signified by a short haircut which is so dumb and we just can’t agree with something so stupid, so in this she comes back with thousands of dollars worth of hair that isn’t hers just to prove her worth and appeal, which honestly is much sadder than a short sassy do any day. we get to the home of the butkis’ but no one answers and a neighbor who in the actual movie looks exactly like mike, like no shit just put a bass on him and it’s like every dude in a band probably but him specifically - unless i hallucinated it, the point is! he originally says oh that guy works those kids into the ground at the factory all day, or something like that, but in this version maybe he just shudders bc everyone just gets the pervy vibe from this butkis guy. the door gets kicked in as they are just about to initiate her into the butkis cult of abuse, and i don’t know i think it just ends with like, kirstie alley and the dad kissing? like they don’t get married or anything i don’t think. which leaves so many questions open like, if they do end up getting married, will the taylors become friends? will fancita resent taytay for taking up space and attention away? or will she be so grateful for good mother that everything will be fine and normal and fall into place? it seems like they’re all destined to end up on doctor phil. i mean, what happens when this bonehead (me) doesn’t continue to invest properly and his dumb luck cell phone business inevitably plummets because by the late nineties they’re a dime a dozen and each one is a sinking ship. what happens when they go bankrupt and all have to be poor, will they stay together? will princess taylor be like this is all your fault you’re bad luck with your poor people vibes! bc she can’t understand the crashing economy and how this is just what happens to people, one day you can be rich and the next totally broke, and it’s not really anyone’s fault. are you going to still love me even though i am horrible at saving money is what i’m asking? like, can you just quietly move money around in my accounts for me and put stuff in my savings when i’m not looking? because if i see literally any extra change i’m going to be like time to go eat giant cheeseburgers and drink ourselves into a coma! i got a groupon for a hotel stay in florida, let’s road trip! i know what your biggest concern is besides money and it’s because i know you like the back of my head (not at all), but the answer is no, steptaylor drowns in a sea of snakes at some point because i don’t have time for a decent end for her. i feel like it should be more feminist, like maybe she gets a job slinging mary kay and in the process realizes not only is she a boss at making her own income but that she doesn’t even need the amount of makeup she had been using before. she has like her own spiritual journey in the background somewhere far, far away from us and our super exclusive love, as well as our twin daughters taylor one and taylor two. i have completely forgotten their names by now but i’m just here to see if you even still love me. well? do you??? i’m just trying to prepare you for when i’m like, starting every other sentence with “you know when my wife died…” at really inappropriate times like, to a cashier in the checkout line or just in bed when we are having a romantic evening that i was bound to spoil in one way or another, so it may as well be with dead wife talk. you will probably just laugh and attempt to smother me with a pillow for being so, so embarrassing. i miss you i love you i hate you i don’t know you. i want you. do i ever even say anything else anymore? i mean it is halloween season so technically i don’t have to be original, right? you are the only ghost i could ever truly love, and that’s saying a lot seeing as how i arrived to this world haunted. pls tho, don’t ever stop being my best boo.

[indiscretus]

What’s been going on with Sky?

Hello folks, first and foremost I want to apologize for my recent absence / inactivity, however I do promise it’s been for very good- if very personal- reasons. The short version is that I have been Not Great™ lately, and it’s taken all of my effort to begin combating that and also improving my state of living. Further details are below, but if you’re not interested in all that or if you are uncomfortable with the topics mentioned ( I will not go into detail, but there is talk of trauma, past abuse, educational & financial stress, and depression/anxiety ), please feel free to stop here, or skip to the bolded line- that is where I will move from discussing past/present to future plans! This is being cross-posted in a couple of places as an FYI, so I’m sorry to those who follow me multiple places and see it more than once.

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In short, the last semester/last 6 months has been really hellish. I’ve been fairly up front about the strain that my courses put on me, and I’ve spoken briefly now and again about the Particular Professor Who Made Everything Awful- basically because she didn’t like the influences on my style because the comics I read growing up are very different from what she & most folks read/make/teach here in the states. I don’t really need to go over it, but I do like having everything in one place for my own processing & reference.

Moving on from that, though- I also encountered what one might refer to as a breakthrough with some emotional/mental gunk that was clogging me up with regards to some past trauma- unfortunately the person in question is still a part of my life in ways I have 0 control over, and finally coming to terms with the fact that there even is lasting trauma makes that― really hard to deal with. I’m trying in the best ways I know how, but ultimately the situation is so insanely complicated it’s been leading to a lot of me just shutting down, which has been making everything else worse.

I also had all kinds of problems with therapists ( once again the one I was seeing through the school took another job somewhere else- meaning I have to start over AGAIN ), getting medical insurance ( still fighting that one actually ), starting testosterone therapy ( for which I need to finish the insurance battle ), family ( they’re starting to come around to the whole trans thing a little I think? ), and a gigantic financial scare- the short version is my mum took $5,000 from me over time and I finally found out about it, and she ended up paying it back by taking out a loan from my grandfather. A mess, amiright? But I can pay rent again without terror so we’re good for now- ish. She still claims to not know how all those transfers to her account happened, but this is sadly not the first time she’s taken money from me ( my relationship with her is a VERY complicated and convoluted one that I need to work on ).

In short, these past months have been perhaps the most trying times in my life- though I’ve had experiences that were objectively worse and more traumatizing, I didn’t really- know they were wrong or anything until later, and the full effects of those experiences was something that didn’t hit me until much later- at the time it was just ‘wow this is unpleasant!’, and only now am I really I’ve thought I was really coming along in my mental health journey, and that things were coming together, but there are always going to be stumbling blocks. Right now, I’m trying to be positive and look forward, but I know there will be dips in the road that will make me doubt and fear after this. I may drop activity again because my response to this sort of thing seems to be shutting down and performing the bare minimum to conserve energy, so I also want to apologize in advance for that, and also thank everyone who has read this and chosen to stick with me anyway.

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Going Forward

I want to try and reach out more- I’d like to have real conversations and form connections, because for me that is what being on the internet is supposed to be about. I don’t have many friends- online or IRL- and I really want to change that. As a result I want to try participating in more low-pressure type community events, and I want to push myself to comment and interact more often.Please never be afraid to speak with me! Even if sometimes I blunder and don’t know what to say, I always appreciate it, and want to at least try and talk with folks!

Tumblr RP has been something I’ve love deeply since I started, but I think I do need to stop pressuring myself to enjoy it the way I use to. The site itself has become… a very different place, and that’s impacted my writing negatively. I’m so worried about what’s safe to write and what isn’t that half of the content and interactions I love literally aren’t allowed on tumblr at all- as much for the comfort of my partner as myself, but the point still stands that it’s this site that’s caused such issues and cultivated an environment where people feel entitled not only to boss others around regarding interactions and shipping, but also to push things on them that they don’t want.

In short, it’s made me very cynical, so while I will not be leaving at all, I will be reminding myself often that this is not a job, and taking every measure to make sure every single thing I do here is something I love. If that means deleting asks and dropping threads to start new ones in their place, then so be it. I’ve let myself cave to pressure far too much, and that needs to stop happening so I can stay here and enjoy what I still have. I want to work on setting my blogs up before starting too many new interactions, and that may take a really long time, which I’m sorry for, but it will make me happier in the end to be properly nested, rather than laying in the middle of a constant work in progress.

This won’t impact my activity very much, though, to be totally honest. I’m already not here more often than not, so the main difference will hopefully be that I am happier and less stressed when I am around.

Otherwise, I want to start focusing on my art a lot, and creating content, rather than simply augmenting it. This hopefully means I’ll be posting to my art blog more often, and may even be creating some original stories. Ultimately there may be a major social media withdrawal in the future because I want to get back to the magic of discovery and creation, and I can’t tell what part of my life is causing it to stagnate, but we’ll see.

Regardless, I want to thank every single person who’s read this- including those who skipped down to the bolded bit because heaven knows the middle was emotional mush- and everyone who’s supported or stuck by me all this time.

[amynchan]

Tag numero uno!

Actually got double tagged by @kwamimusings  XD

FIRST ONE

Rules: Answer the 20 questions and tag 20 amazing followers you’d like to get to know better!

Name: I’ll stick with Amy.  *^_^*

Nicknames: Ames, Yames, Sancouer

Zodiac Sign: Libra

Height: 5′10-11″

Orientation: Pretty sure I’m ace

Ethnicity: White.  XD

Favorite Fruit: Strawberries!

Favorite Season: I’m liking Spring.  I don’t have allergies and it’s when I start coming out of hibernation.  XD

Favorite Book: Do I have to pick one?

Favorite Flower: Used to be roses, but now I’m fond of sunflowers?

Favorite Scent: Freshly cut grass

Favorite animals: I’ve become fond of cats.

Coffee, Tea, or Hot Cocoa: Hot hot!  Hot chocolate!

Cat or Dog Person: Cats, because they’re more likely to be calmer than dogs

Favorite Fictional Character: Ummmmm

Dream Trip: An all around the world tour, stopping specifically to say hi to all my internet friends.  *^_^*

Blog Created: I think it was 2014 or something like that?

Number of Followers: 883 people who are all probably about as insane as I am  X’D

What I Post About: I reblog stuff I’m interested in, but also post fanarts, fanfictions, and poetry

Do I get asks on a regular basis: lolno

Aesthetic: Like...  visuals we like?  Countryside, with earthy colors and something that’s calm, but has the tinge of possible adventure on the horizon.  Just a tinge, though.  *^_^*

Hogwarts House: I’m a Huffle.  X’D

SECOND ONE!!

Rules: Write 92 rules about yourself, then tag 25 people. 

LAST ___:

Drink: Water Phone Call: My aunt Text message: Got one of those Facebook personality tests from my sister (it says I’m ruled by both emotion and logic.  XD) Song you listened to: Fields of Glory by High Kings Time you cried: This morning.  Dad said some things that I didn’t know I needed to hear, so yes, I cried.

HAVE YOU EVER ____: Dated someone twice: Yeah. Been cheated on: I don’t think so. Kissed someone and then regretted it: Yeah Lost someone special: Yes. Been depressed: Felt down?  Yeah.  I’m not sure if I ever got clinical depression, though. Gotten drunk and thrown up: Nope

LIST THREE FAVORITE COLORS: Purple, green, silver

IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU _____: Made new friends: I make new friends online, but irl, I tend to latch onto my bro’s friends.  X’D  I have no social skills Fallen out of love: I don’t think so, because I don’t think I’ve ever felt honest to goodness love.  I’ve felt obligation and I’ve felt intense fondness, but I’m not sure if either of those were romantic love. Laughed until you cried: Oh heck to the yes.  I have a story about this. X’D Found out someone was talking about you: Yes.  It wasn’t pleasant Met someone who changed you: Yeah.  Both for the good and for the bad. Found out who your true friends are: Yes.  I have a story about my best friend where she literally dropped everything and she and her boyfriend came out to kidnap me and treat me to ice cream because I was sobbing my eyes out.  Best.  Friend.  Ever. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: Yes?  We were kind of dating at the time of said kissing, but we’re not anymore.  But we’re still friends, so it’s all good.

GENERAL: How many Facebook friends do you know in real life: Ummmm...  Most of them, actually.  Whenever I start to get too freaked out, I go through my FB list and take off people I don’t talk to anymore. Do you have any pets: Nope Do you want to change your name: I wanted to be named Crystal when I was younger.  And, of course, I did want to legally change my name to Amy.  I don’t anymore, though.  XD What did you do for your last birthday: A family get together with my family and my best friend, crowded around a freaking amazing cake.  Also, a karaoke competition! *^_^* What time did you wake up: Nine in the morning What were you doing at midnight last night: I think I was on this gosh darned site.  X’D

Name something you cannot wait for: Getting out of this school.  I swear it’s a ghost town in comparison to my last.  *shudders* When was the last time you saw your mother: A few hours ago. What is something you wish you could change about your life: I wish I had either a real job or was able to do serious commissions What are you listening to right now: The Black Velvet Band by High Kings Have you ever talked to a person named tom: Yup.  He’s my great uncle, actually.  *^_^* Something that is getting on your nerves:  Currently?  Ummmm....  my seemingly inability to go to sleep at a decent hour despite the fact that I’ve got choir tomorrow?  X’D Most visited website: Tumblr and ArchiveOfOurOwn.  ^^; Elementary: Secret High school: Secret College: Secret Hair color: Blonde Long or short hair: I keep it nice and short.  XD Do you have a crush on someone: Sorta?  But I think it’s going away now. What do you like about yourself:  I do my best to make people smile when I can? Piercings: None Blood type:  O Positive, I think Nickname: Didn’t we already do this one? Relationship status: All the single ladies, all the single ladies!  X’D Zodiac sign: Libra Pronouns: She/her Favorite TV show: I’ve gotten into the Great British Bake Off lately, which is really fun.  *^_^* Tattoos: None.  I’m terrified of needles.  X’D Right or left hand: Right

FIRST ____: Surgery: Does being knocked out for wisdom teeth removal count? Piercing: None Best friend: Someone I’d rather not talk about. Sport: I was never on any team Vacation: My little baby feet knew of the beach’s soft sand before I was a year old.  *^_^* Pair of trainers: Huh?

RIGHT NOW ___: Eating: Nothing Drinking: Nothing About to: Contemplate sleeping Listening to: The Auld Triangle by High King (though this is the third time you’ve asked now.  0.o) Waiting for: An email that’s probably never gonna come. XD Want: My papers to be done, but iLazy.  X’D Get married: Eventually, but as stated, I am a single lady, so it’s not happening anytime soon. X’D Career: Don’t have one yet, but I’m hoping to be a college English professor in the future.

WHICH IS BETTER ____: Hugs or kisses: Hugs just feel nicer.  *^_^* Lips or eyes: Eyes are the window to the soul Shorter or taller: Taller Older or younger: Um...  not sure, honestly Nice arms or nice stomach: Arms.  The better to hug you with, my dear. Sensitive or loud: A mix of both?  I’m not terribly loud, but I do enjoy the company of one who isn’t afraid to be happy or gushing. Hook up or relationship: Relationship Troublemaker or hesitant: Ummmm...

HAVE YOU EVER ____: Kissed a stranger: Pfft, no way!  A stranger can’t even pat me on the back without me jumping a mile high.  X’D Drank hard liquor: I don’t think so? Lost glasses/contact lenses: Ahahahahaha....  yeah. X’D Turned someone down: Ummm, sorta?  But he didn’t even mean it in the first place, so when I tried to stutter my way through the fact that I was flattered but didn’t even know him, he and his pal just kinda laughed at me, hooting about how I’d even believed it in the first place.  That’s the only time I remember, so..  *shrugs* Sex on first date: Ew, no! Broken someone’s heart: I’m afraid so. Had your own heart broken: Only by myself. Been arrested: Nah, but I’ve been in the back of a police car. Cried when someone died: Yes. Fallen for a friend: I thought I did?  But I was misidentifying my fondness for him.  Like, I want him to grow and be happy and live a happy life, but it ain’t gonna be with me.  X’D

DO YOU BELIEVE IN ____: Yourself: *shrugs*  I mean, I should, but....  meh. Miracles: I believe they happen. Love at first sight: I don’t think so. Santa Claus: Sadly no.  X’D Kiss on the first date: I don’t even know how to kiss properly, so I’d say nah.  X’D Angels: I’m not 100% sure, but I think they’re there.

OTHER ____: Current best friend’s name: Can’t spill a secret that isn’t mine to tell. ;) Eye color: They change from green to blue then to green again Movie: Anastasia is always a good one.

[technicalsolutions88]

What do you do if you’re an event discovery startup and suddenly it’s illegal to attend events? You lean into the cultural shift and pivot. Today, $11 million-funded calendar app IRL is morphing from In Real Life to In Remote Life. It will now focus on helping people find, RSVP for, plan, share, and chat about virtual events from livestreamed concerts to esports tournaments to Zoom cocktail parties.

Coronavirus could make IRL relevant to a wider audience because before an event “only mattered if it was around you. But now with In Remote Life, content has no geographical limitations” says IRL co-founder and CEO Abe Shafi. “The need is exponentially greater because everyone’s routines have been shattered.” IRL ranked #138 in US App Store today, making it the top calendar app, even above Google’s (#168).

Robinhood’s Josh Elman joins IRL

IRL has some fresh product development talent to lead it through the transition. The startup has hired stock trading app Robinhood’s VP of Product Josh Elman. The former Greylock investor is well known for his product chops from jobs at Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Elman joined Robinhood in early 2018 but left late last year, notably before its rash of recent outages that enraged users.

“I just realized more than anything that the company needed people who had 110% to give, and it wasn’t clear that was going to be me” Elman said of Robinhood, now valued at $7.6 billion and struggling to scale. “My first passions and all the things I’ve talked about over the years have been social and media.”

For now, IRL is a part time gig where he’ll be heading up a Secret Projects division. While most apps “try to suck more of our time”, he sees IRL as a chance to give this precious resource back to people. Though he insists “Robinhood’s great I’m a very happy shareholder.

Events without borders

“We were on a tear, hitting a stride with usaging and growth related to real life events” says Shafi. “Then this happened”, motioning on our Zoom call to the COVID-19 reality we’re now stuck in. “We realized we had to pull all of our content because it wasn’t happening.”

Today IRL’s iOS app launches a redesign of its Discover homescreen content to center on virtual events people can attend from home. There’s now tabs for gaming, podcasts, TV, and EDU, as well as music, food, lifestyle, and a catch-all ‘fun’ section. Each event can be added to your calendar that syncs with Google Cal, or Liked to add it to your profile that friends and fans can follow. You can also instantly launch a group chat about the event in IRL, or share it to Instagram Stories or another messaging app.

If you can’t find something public to do, you can make plans with friends using the composer with suggestions like “Let’s video chat”, “Zoom workout”, “gaming sesh”, or “Netflix party”. That instantly sets up a calendar event you can invite people to. And if you’re not sure when you want to host, IRL’s “soon” option lets you keep the schedule vague so you and friends can figure out when everyone’s available. 50% of IRL plans start out as “Soon” Shafi reveals, identifying a gap in rigid time/date calendars.

Beyond individual events, IRL also wants to make it easier to develop habits by letting you subscribe to workout, meditation, and other schedules. With sports seasons suspended, IRL lets people sync with calendars of hip-hop album releases and more instead. Or you can subscribe to an influencer’s life and digitally accompany them to events. The goal is that IRL will be able to merge offline events back into its content recommendations as social distancing subsides.

The biggest challenge for IRL will be tuning its event recommendation algorithm. It’s lost a lot of the traditional relevance signals about events like how close they are to your home, how much they cost, or if they’re even in your city. Transitioning to In Remote Life means a global range of happenings is now available to everyone, and since they’re often free to host, many lonely low-quality events have sprung up. That makes it much tougher for IRL to determine what to show.

For now, it’s basing recommendations on what you engage with most on its homescreen, but I found that can make the initial experience very hit-or-miss. The top events in each category were rarely exciting. But IRL is planning to beef up its onboarding process to ask about your interests, and integrate with Spotify so it knows which musicians’ online concerts you’d want to attend.

Still, Shafi thinks IRL is already better than asocial alternatives. “Our main age range is 13 to 25, college and post-college metropolitan areas and across college campuses. Our average user has never used a calendar before, or they’re just used a default calendar like Gcal or iCal.

A cure for loneliness

Hopefully, IRL will take a more serious swing at helping friends realize they’re free at the same time and can hang out. While Down To Lunch failed in this space, now Facebook Messenger and Instagram are exploring it with their auto-status feature, and location apps like Snap Map and Zenly could adapt to share not just where you are, but if you have the intention to hang out.

“How can we use just a little bit of nudging, transparency or suggestion to get people to just do one more thing per month?” Shafi asks. IRL is trying to figure out how to let you passively share that “I have 2 hours free” in a way that “never makes you feel rejected if they don’t respond.”

Facebook did launch a standalone Events calendar app back in 2016, but later paired down the calendaring features, folded it in with restaurant recommendations and renamed it Local. “As big as Facebook is, it can only do so many things insanely well” Elman says of his old employer. “They could do more [on Events], but it’s never been the juggernaut like photos.”

Shafi is happy to have the opportunity in such a foundational space. He describes the concept of the calendar as one he’s sure will outlive him, so it’s worth the effort to make it social no matter how long it takes — though I’m sure his investors like Goodwater Capital, Founders Fund, Kleiner Perkins, and Floodgate hope it’ll find a way to monetize eventually.

Revenue could come in the form of selling access to events through the app, or letting promoters and local businesses pay for enhanced discovery. For now, though, IRL is building a deeper connection with event and content publishers with the upcoming launch of its free Add To Calendar button they can build into their sites and emails. Elman says several services charge for these buttons that integrate with Apple and Google’s calendars, but IRL hopes giving them away will help fill its app with things to do, whatever that might be.

“Our tagline is ‘live your best life’. It’s not judgmental. If your best life is playing video games on your couch with your homies, we don’t judge you for that.”

from Social – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/2JxO71p Original Content From: https://techcrunch.com

[survivorwakea]

Episode #1: “To make a long mother fucking story short, i’m fucked.” - Zack

This game starts in four minutes.....

I have to pee, I want an idol and I'm about to have a mental breakdown

I feel attacked, Mark the Chicken wasn't the player represented for me in reveal 

-_-

This game has more crackheads in it than a Seattle alleyway.

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As the straightest male in this cast I feel like I need to share this beauty❤️ https://youtu.be/wyJdCFbqor4

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Randy and Bodhi haven’t done SHIT. It looks like me Jared and Anabel are gonna carry this tribe huh.

Chloe is one my tribe! <3! I'm finally in a game with Anabel again which is cool! Johnny is Alyssa bf so I recognized him immediately. I played with Cullan in tumblr Survivor: Kuwait (as it comes to mind Johnny hosted that), Elmo a legend I get to play with :) (I hope I interact with him). Ian I just met he's cool. God Dammit Peter Griffin (Adam) is in this game (I am not looking forward to when he learns I call him that).

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As I previously mentioned playing with Chloe again is lit! I'm talking to Asya right now and she seems cool. Dean is Australian I love me some Australians (insert heart eyes emoji). Who's Julia?

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What the fuck we already have a challenge! Shit's insane! We only just got here!

Night 1: Alright so I had a really late start to the party but that’s okay because I made sure that I spoke with everybody on my tribe, I honestly like my tribe.... for the most part and I say that because this cast is JUST so ICONIC and that makes me scared or more so intimidated. I’m hoping somehow that I can continue to bond with everybody on my tribe and be able to be in the in when tribal comes around or IF Tribal comes around.  So who is on my tribe?

Elmo!! He is somebody that I have seen around the Facebook community and more importantly I often see him being loved and people speaking highly about him and honestly I can’t blame them he is such a nice dude in the short little time that we were able to chat. I hope that at the last I will be able to speak with him more and maybe...? Try and figure out a way to work together but I don’t want to rush into things with him as idk how he plays just yet.

Zack! A very very familiar face someone that I have actually played with before! We were tribe mates in 703 MDaro and it’s fair to say that at one point we were actually working together but one event turned to another and next thing you know I’m on the jury 😂😂. I always enjoyed talking with Zack back then and I hope that we can pick up where we somewhat left off at least with the getting along part!

Ian! I’m just unsure as to what to say about him and say that because I have seen him around but I have also not heard much about him, I’m unsure if he is new to orgs or even just not that good placement wise?? But besides all that I want to get to know him so I will spend my time getting to know him just like Big Ben

Ben!! Who’s Ben?? No clue!!! I love that I don’t know who this is and I love meeting somebody without any pre-thoughts just based on seeing someone around. Will see what he’s about... This cast also has Anabel she’s a sweetie I played with her when I was first out in UK Bb but she was a friend

hiii!!!!!! omg im so glad that miss anna jane asked me to play this! she's been asking me every season but i just kept pushing it off because i have no idea how to use discord! but fuck it, i guess i'll learn! since the game just started, i guess i'll just do like a cast assessment? i don't know everyone in this game so it'll be only the people i actually know and my past experiences with them before i can actually talk to everyone else and make new experiences with everyone!

justin. i LOVE justin! i've never played a game with him, but i've seen him play. and i know he's an absolute crackhead but i also know how serious he takes the games he plays, since he doesn't play that many! we use to HATE each other but i actually consider justin one of my good online friends. we've known eachother for YEARS. this is gonna either be really good or a total fucking shit show for me.. i'll be looking out for him if we ever wind up on the same tribe/ merge together, ONLY if he will be doing the same. don't get it twisted... i'll snap his skinny ass breadstick legs in half if it's what has to be done. but i don't want that to happen so.....

asya. i personally don't even know asya. i just know we got into an argument a few weeks ago in a vl. but hopefully this doesn't effect her view on me and hopefully she doesn't even remember kJSFKGJSG....

julia. jesus CHRISSSSST.. i'm part of old school tumblr and i dipped from that bitch like 2 years ago so i'm hoping these 'tumblr' people don't remember me. all i remember about julia is that she's an actual WITCH and we've gotten into fights before. she's such a odd personality and we just don't mesh well together from what i remember. i have no interest in even talking to her honestly.

chloe. i LOVE chloe omggggggg. she's deff someone i know from other games and just from talking too. i have all the hope in the world that we'll wind up together soon and be able to work together. no bad words for her <3

randy. i gasped when i saw randy KLJDSGKLJSG... he's an absolute fucking mess but i live for it.. he's so funny and we have a past together. we've known each other for years, but never really been close, you know? hopefully this game can bring us closer together and we can wind up running shit, if it comes to that. fun fact: i met randy irl once so there's that...

bodhi. ugh i know i played a tumblr survivor season with him and i don't remember if we got along or not LKJHDSGKLJHG. i remember he is a complete mess tho... i actually just checked the tumblr wiki and the tumblr survivor game we played together was called "cutthroat" so.. this should be fun. also on his vote out, he voted for me. so i'm assuming we didn't get along. but if he wants to play cutthroat, we can surely do that! i winded up staying and he winded up leaving when he tried to vote me out so we can surely do a round 2 of that bitch.

jared. u g h! not 1 good experience i have with jared. he's dating nicole g and me and her have NEVER seen eye to eye. we would constantly fight and it would get so ugly. i've fought with jared and... it was just a mess.. i know this is gonna cause a problem for me and he's probably the one person i was least happy to see.... pray for me.

adam. played a facebook org with him and fought him in it and then contunued to fight with him in the reunion chat... ugh.

elmo. so happy i finally get to play with him! i've never even talked to him before but he's ALREADY my favorite person here!!!! i really hope we can run shit together thru this whole entire game... i have high hopes for us.

so there it is! to make a long mother fucking story short, i'm fucked.

currently looking back at the idol systems of other seasons and they've all gone up pretty fast, and i don't see much of a pattern. I might have to assume there's no idol system just yet.

Bonding with my tribe and trying to figure out what videos I’m doing. So far I like Elmo and Zach but the other 2 boys seem cool as well

there are no idols yet and im convulsing i NEED one

i have a 70% success rate in finding idols in survivor games and i need one i also have a 78% win percentage for tribal immunity challenges in main seasons of tumblr survivor, so cullan is high key about to tank my tribal winning DOMINANCE but i'll wait

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okay so yea like honestly,,,,,,,,, game starting wooo cool

i know a shit ton of people on other tribes which kinda scares me because there are two people on THIS tribe that i dont know a whole lot, but one of them definitely knows about a good amount of my prior connections as well.

justin watched me just play big brother pokemon and hopefully i can keep playing off that i played a very loyal game or somethin like that... what i DO know is that basically taylor, justin and i are the most active on my tribe, which is pretty darn cool considering the two other people on my tribe (cullan and lily) are people i know and have prior relationships with

im just getting nervous because going into a game with 4 tribes of 5, we're prob going to swap at 18, and if we lose one of those challenges, it just shoves us at a disadvantage because like...... the entire point of the premerge is to build relationships with enough people to get to the merge, and everyone has four other active people to get to know, and I really really REALLY wanted to win the first two immunities so we would be able to have a stronger game standpoint for ourselves going into a swap or whatnot, and just having more relationships overall, but with cullan not being around for the first 24 hours of the game really hurts him, and our entire tribe.... like if we lose, and he does nothing, he 100% has to get voted for, we have no choice in that matter, even thoguh i probably would've loved to work with him, i know he knows what he's doing, and he would probably be a scarier player down the road who would be utr, and my motto in survivor is always to just keep bigger louder personalities around, so if i consistently keep the social people, i can hopefully get to merge and ATTEMPT to hold that utr role, but i've gotta get to a swap first LMFAO

also like okay so here's the people i know

lily - darling love her never played with her but hosted once or twice, and she knows me and i know her. i love working with women so bring it on

asya - probably one of my five closest friends across all of orgs and we talk almost everyday and i know people are going to know about this because we don't really HIDE IT, and this is now our fourth game together in a year, two of which we worked very closely together, and i know justin knows im close to asya so ugh

jared - met irl three times.. very very very good friends, im also super duper close with nicole and jared and i have a lot in common, but weve played two orgs together and they've been literal disasters for us. while i think this one will be different, you never know

anabel - shes my fucking ANGEL i love her to death and she has a profile on the bbpokemon wiki saying that im her f2 and best friend, so love that?

joey2121 - lol i think him and i are pretty close. i know he values me as a friend and we talk pretty often, and he's never had the opportunity to play with me. i know he can be a little irrationally cutthroat, so im going to have to get a good read on him when we jump in and see how it goes, but i think he adores me and i casted him for his first game ever and cohosted with him his only time he's ever cohosted, so i'd like to think he would want to work with me, i just gotta pray

randy - host chat guested for me, good friend over the years, but we've never been able to REALLY talk, so i hope this does it for us

bodhi - never played with him either hardcore, but weve also been friends over the years so oop him and randy can be big wild cards on how they feel about me tbh

thomas, chloe, cullan - literally just hosted them ALL in an org, but i was kind of a loose host and i hope that makes them want to kinda work with me, but also have their options open when it comes to me idk? cullan is inact tho so he's gotta get his shit together

julia - this witch fucking scares me and i will do no harm to her and i hope that she doesnt hex me and we can be great friends for a long time :)

so YEA

I really want to try to have fun this season. I don't want to take it super seriously to the point where my nerves start getting to the best of me. I just played big brother pokemon, and honestly, i played without the fear of losing, and just went for the juggular to keep myself in the game, and i was never on edge at any point in that game, which i really love for my mental sanity. i know survivor just GETS TO YOU more than big brother does, but i wanna play a bit more care free and just go for some longevity, and play a strong, solid game and make some strong moves.

this is my first real confessional of the season. im very excited to be here and hopefully these long confessionals dont make me look foolish when im the fourth or fifth boot LMAO

if we win the challenge i wouldnt really EXPECT to hear more from me.

i do love my entire tribe, even though THEY dont know Cullan yet, I know that i do, and that's going to be a benefit to me. i've just gotta keep my social relationships up and really really hope that people don't wanna get rid of me until we swap, and then i can start being a little more aggressive with game talk and getting leverage that way?

P.S. Gosh i hope cullan logs on so we dont go to the first tribal bc that would fucking suck

Just made an alliance with Elmo and Zack bc we all think that we are losing and we are the only ones (so far) who have put any effort into the challenge. I'm ready to ride these fat cats as far as their train will take me. Adam did just say in the tribe chat that he's posting all of his at once so maybe he's gonna drop a bomb on us? who knows but I'm preparing myself for all the options.

things are going okay for me i think! I made a F2 deal with Zack yday and I'm rly happy I did bc I need a person I can be completely honest with. I am not sure if he trusts me as much as I do trust him but I hope that he would!!!

I also have the first alliance of the game with him and ben so thats good! I like them both a lot and they seem to put effort in challenges which is rly important right now! I think they are both trustworthy and at least would be here for short term game.

As for Adam and Ian, I like them both but I havent developed any game relationship with them yet, and thats ok. I dont think I should be overplaying right now because I could just be caught and that would be a whole new mess. I really don't want to sound cocky but I genuinely think that I'm in a fairly strong position on our tribe. Of course this is survivor and anything could change but so far so good. I am excited and hopefully I wont flop

Let the games begin, bitches!

So, the immunity challenge is almost over. Good time to start on this. I can honestly say that this has been the craziest first cycle of a season that I’ve ever been a part of. I started the weekend on Cape Cod, having to throw in the beginning of this, and now that the weekend is done and I’m back home, I feel things are righting a bit for me. As for my tribe, I like all four of them so far. I hope we don’t lose this challenge, because I’m getting along with them pretty well. Whew. What a life.

i miss johnny

Omg yesss!!!!!!! We won the first challenge, well technically we came in second but the point is WERE NOT GOING to tribal council, and tbh I would be pooping my pants if we did as I had the fewest amount of points for my tribe so I fear that I would have been perceived as that weakest link and would have been voted off. That might not be true but that was my thoughts. I feel like I have connected really well with Elmo and I kind of get the vibe that he is connected with everyone on the tribe and that is why I think it’s crucial for me to connect with Ian and Zack which I feel like with Ian it’s hard because I don’t know how much he really wants to talk to people but with Zack it just clicks but I feel like on a game level the first Tribal is what will connect us further. Ben is someone that I like but I feel is being hesistant to connect? Ugh oh well goodbye for now I gotta get ready to go hunting for an idol

Such an unexpected surprise to get 1st place in the challenge. In the past I’ve gone all our for selfie challenges, but I don’t really want to be perceived as a threat early on. I was happy I found a star fish last minute! I’m so happy that Johnny is on my tribe. I’m thinking I can count on him until at least merge/jury but he has hosted me before and I know it could quickly go bad. So I’ll have to be cautious. I also really like Taylor and Justin. I can tell they really care about the game and we could be really good allies. Cullen getting a strike and literally never messaging any of us def makes me nervous but hoping he signs on in the next two days so we can count on him to participate in the next challenge. So far I’m having a lot of fun getting to know my tribe mates and hoping for a successful season #positiveoutlook #mistake

So we lost immunity! I couldn't give my 100% in the challenge and I explained to my team why. They seemed understanding. Julia, however, didn't submit anything so I am lucky, because everyone wants to vote her out. I will do the same, since I have not spoken to her yet.

Here we go! New ORG...new me? So this is my 2nd Survivor ORG following EMV 8, and I want to take a different approach this time around. A more social, less strategic game. First impression on this game was OMG! 4 tribes of 5, vote me off now! As I mentioned above I want to emphasize my social game, because I think it may be my weakest area in my gameplay, so the small tribe terrifies me because there may not be much time to build genuine bonds, and there's definitely no room for error. So we're only a couple days into this game and I think I've made good efforts so far. I've made conversation and mutual connections with Johnny, Justin and Lily. It's unfortunate Cullan has been unable to join us because it limits my possibilities with who I choose to move forward with. It's hard to tell who I think I can work with moving forward. I connected with Johnny first, but I think Lily would be a great partner. I'm so glad that we ended up not only avoiding elimination but also winning the challenge. I was deathly afraid we'd be headed to tribal council. Since our tribe is immune, there's no need to talk strategy just yet, though it's obvious the elephant in the room is Cullan and would be an easy vote off for our tribe if we ended up losing a challenge. I'm going to continue to build relationships with every tribe mate in hopes they will each see me as their strongest ally. I'm not going to make final 2's, I'm not going to suggest alliances, I want to allow my tribe mates the time to approach me first. It's time to step out of the driver seat and move to the back; allowing myself to be vulnerable. Think of it this way, if Haumea is representative of fertility, this is my rebirth.

HI. okay honesty, i don’t even know where to start so just bare with me bc this is gonna be a hot ass mess.

okay so. me and elmo have really been clicking it off. as soon as we saw each other we just instantly connected. we’ve never had a conversation prior to this game, but idk.. something just really connected us! he’s very honest with me and tells me how he is feeling about the other people so i feel like he really trust me because he gets straight to the point and tells me how he’s feeling game wise. we made a final 2 and i plan on sticking to that, for now at least. i really do see us dominating this game and i would surely not be upset if that happens!

now. i’m in a three person alliance. me elmo and ben. for this challenge us 3 seemed to be doing all the work so we all have a mutual respect to stick together while we’re on this tribe at least. i don’t really have any reaaaal loyalty with ben, this alliance is to just keep me and elmo safe on this tribe just incase we go to tribal. ben won’t be knowing any tea from me tho.

we won immunity and thank GOD because even though i feel safe, you just never know! and it’s very stressful and i’m glad i’m not gonna be the first boot.

the idol system got revealed and me and elmo instantly pmd each other saying that we’re gonna share our spots and shit with each other and try to get everyone else’s spots too just so we can kinda guarantee we or we know who would wind up with the idol.

so... idol search starts at 10pm and by 10:05 i.. found.. the.. IDOL! I FOUND THE FUCKING IDOL IN 5 MINUTES. MY FIRST GUESS AND I GUESSED THE IDOL! i was GAGGED!

now. since me and elmo where gonna share spots, i felt like i needed to tell him only because this was my first guess and i didn’t know what to make up to act like i didn’t find it... like i didn’t know how to word it because it’s so odd and i didn’t wanna be like “my guess said ‘oops wrong hole try again’” so i figured it be best for my game to just tell him so i don’t get caught in a lie. i honestly didn’t wanna tell him but i just felt like i needed to because, again, it was my first guess and idk what y’all would have said if i didn’t find the idol, so i didn’t wanna get caught in a lie.

i told elmo this isn’t just my idol, it’s our idol. is that true? no... it’s mine. and i’m stingy. BUT i hope this really shows him that he can trust me and i hope this doesn’t backfire and bite me in the ass. i just wish i could have kept it a secret, but i didn’t wanna get caught in a lie on my first guess and then him find out and think i’m a snake or some shit.

but who knows, if he really is gonna be a loyal ass ally, and it comes to the point where i might have to use it in him, i will surely think about it. but it’s still to early to even THINK about using it, because i want this idol for merge. i don’t wanna rely on this idol and i don’t want it to go to my bead and make me power hungry. i need to be very strategic about it and kinda just forget that i even have it until further notice. im here to play a game that i can say i’m proud of at the end of all this. win or lose, i wanna be proud of the game i played. i’m gonna fight so hard this season and be a fucking raging gamer.

xoxo, zack.

i’m hungover and sad. like i knew we were gonna lose but like. what a mess. julia, my good sis, i love you but i’m gonna have enough challenges in this game without you getting strikes round 1.

positives are as follows: -easy first vote

that’s all folks !

but really i think my goal for this game is just to find an idol bc i haven’t before. i’m pretty much always at the mercy of other people and i just. really am not in the mood for that shit here so hosts rig me an idol pls <3

WHO THE FUCK GETS A STRIKE ON THE FIRST CHALLENGE WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS BITCH JULIA PLAYIN AT? AT LEAST SHOW U WANNA PLAY THE GODDAMN GAME

Well, I’d call the challenge a success for us. We came in 2nd place in the challenge, so we’re all spared. Things are kinda quiet right now, which I like. Probably might not be the case for Kanaloa, but hey, what do I know?

i need to slap myself on the wrists and learn how to play dead more often LMAO

hi so wooooooo we're back at it, and I guess I'm going to just rank my tribe mates to see postgame how much this changed and how stupid i was for ranking people the way i did

1. Justin - so he already acknowledged to me that he talked to me the most and that we were the two most active tribemates, and im hoping that i can lock something official down with him in the middle of next round that is more game relationship oriented opposed to just just spitting nonsense into each other's PMs currently lol

2. Lily - I really really think she's going to want to work with me in this game, and we have a prior relationship which is cool, and I want to use that to my advantage a SMIDGE, but I know she's pretty honest and loyal, and I just don't see her doing anything to me until merge???

3. Cullan - this bottom two is tough, and cullan is probably at the bottom for everyone on the tribe except for me. now that he's active, I need to keep that little nugget around for my own sake. I just hosted him and got to know him decently well, and I know he's loyal to his people, and if I know that for 99.99% certainty compared to some of these people i barely know at all, im going to try to use that. While I'd expect Cullan to be the first boot on our tribe if we lose, I fully expect him and I to work REALLY well together if we make it out of this tribe AND he was forward about sharing idol information with me immediately, so that's good

4. Taylor - I really really really want to work with him, but i haven't gotten much from him so far, and it's not even that i want him out, he's just at the bottom of three really strong relationships I already have. He was also on vacation and I've yet to find out more about his day to day life, so I hope that I can work more about that so i can develop reasons in my own head as to why he's not around as much, but i also know this is his third org, and i can tell he knows how to talk to people, i just want to talk to him MORE and i hope this next challenge brings us together as a team somehow?

so yea. we safe. i honestly do think this tribe is kickass in challenges, and i think that we can make it to a swap without losing any, so here's to hoping? LMFAO

johnny go bye bye now until next round heehee

praying for asya to stay and dean to go for tonight's tribal? yea. sounds like a plan

im also still really paranoid and nervous about people analyzing my past relationships (i.e. JUSTIN) but we'll see. i can tell he knows what he's doing in games and literally all i have to hope is that im already in his plans, because if not, i can foresee myself being in trouble?

hello so

i joined the game and im happy im on a tribe of 5 because its easier to manage people.

i am good with everybody except for joey. i have an alliance with jared and bodhi which is amazing!

anabel is who i love the most! so fucking funny JFJSJSJ. so yeah if we ever go to tribal itll be joey going if i have a say 🙈

Hi. So I’ve started the game later than everyone else as I’ve had a rough couple of days but I am sure kicking harder than anyone else. As soon as I woke up in this beach I started searching for the idol. I couldn’t get it because I’m to poor to afford a private jet so I have to wait until tomorrow to climb the mountain. I had a very deep conversation with I believe his name is Justin. I’m gonna call him Jus. We talked about my life ambitions and endeavors and we shared some of our most deepest and darkest secrets. He told me that his Zorua is diagnosed with Pokerus. I honestly home it gets the help it needs. I’m sure the doctors on Hawaii are good doctors. Hopefully they aren’t fucking witch doctors. In return I told him about how I raised a manaphy ever since it was an egg. I’ve had a pretty good day on the beach. My slow start isn’t gonna make me lose this race. All I gotta do is find my blue shell and I’ll get back in first. Cullan signing out

HI I MADE  A NEW SOUND CLOUD TO SHOW YOU MY THOUGHTS IN AUDIO SOUND FORM https://soundcloud.com/bodhi-small/week1/s-4k3oW

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Julia is voted out 5-0.

[plotbunnie]

What’s been going on with Sky?

Hello folks, first and foremost I want to apologize for my recent absence / inactivity, however I do promise it’s been for very good- if very personal- reasons. The short version is that I have been Not Great™ lately, and it’s taken all of my effort to begin combating that and also improving my state of living. Further details are below, but if you’re not interested in all that or if you are uncomfortable with the topics mentioned ( I will not go into detail, but there is talk of trauma, past abuse, educational & financial stress, and depression/anxiety ), please feel free to stop here, or skip to the bolded line- that is where I will move from discussing past/present to future plans! This is being cross-posted in a couple of places as an FYI, so I’m sorry to those who follow me multiple places and see it more than once.

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In short, the last semester/last 6 months has been really hellish. I’ve been fairly up front about the strain that my courses put on me, and I’ve spoken briefly now and again about the Particular Professor Who Made Everything Awful- basically because she didn’t like the influences on my style because the comics I read growing up are very different from what she & most folks read/make/teach here in the states. I don’t really need to go over it, but I do like having everything in one place for my own processing & reference.

Moving on from that, though- I also encountered what one might refer to as a breakthrough with some emotional/mental gunk that was clogging me up with regards to some past trauma- unfortunately the person in question is still a part of my life in ways I have 0 control over, and finally coming to terms with the fact that there even is lasting trauma makes that― really hard to deal with. I’m trying in the best ways I know how, but ultimately the situation is so insanely complicated it’s been leading to a lot of me just shutting down, which has been making everything else worse.

I also had all kinds of problems with therapists ( once again the one I was seeing through the school took another job somewhere else- meaning I have to start over AGAIN ), getting medical insurance ( still fighting that one actually ), starting testosterone therapy ( for which I need to finish the insurance battle ), family ( they’re starting to come around to the whole trans thing a little I think? ), and a gigantic financial scare- the short version is my mum took $5,000 from me over time and I finally found out about it, and she ended up paying it back by taking out a loan from my grandfather. A mess, amiright? But I can pay rent again without terror so we’re good for now- ish. She still claims to not know how all those transfers to her account happened, but this is sadly not the first time she’s taken money from me ( my relationship with her is a VERY complicated and convoluted one that I need to work on ).

In short, these past months have been perhaps the most trying times in my life- though I’ve had experiences that were objectively worse and more traumatizing, I didn’t really- know they were wrong or anything until later, and the full effects of those experiences was something that didn’t hit me until much later- at the time it was just ‘wow this is unpleasant!’, and only now am I really I’ve thought I was really coming along in my mental health journey, and that things were coming together, but there are always going to be stumbling blocks. Right now, I’m trying to be positive and look forward, but I know there will be dips in the road that will make me doubt and fear after this. I may drop activity again because my response to this sort of thing seems to be shutting down and performing the bare minimum to conserve energy, so I also want to apologize in advance for that, and also thank everyone who has read this and chosen to stick with me anyway.

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Going Forward

I want to try and reach out more- I’d like to have real conversations and form connections, because for me that is what being on the internet is supposed to be about. I don’t have many friends- online or IRL- and I really want to change that. As a result I want to try participating in more low-pressure type community events, and I want to push myself to comment and interact more often.Please never be afraid to speak with me! Even if sometimes I blunder and don’t know what to say, I always appreciate it, and want to at least try and talk with folks!

Tumblr RP has been something I’ve love deeply since I started, but I think I do need to stop pressuring myself to enjoy it the way I use to. The site itself has become… a very different place, and that’s impacted my writing negatively. I’m so worried about what’s safe to write and what isn’t that half of the content and interactions I love literally aren’t allowed on tumblr at all- as much for the comfort of my partner as myself, but the point still stands that it’s this site that’s caused such issues and cultivated an environment where people feel entitled not only to boss others around regarding interactions and shipping, but also to push things on them that they don’t want.

In short, it’s made me very cynical, so while I will not be leaving at all, I will be reminding myself often that this is not a job, and taking every measure to make sure every single thing I do here is something I love. If that means deleting asks and dropping threads to start new ones in their place, then so be it. I’ve let myself cave to pressure far too much, and that needs to stop happening so I can stay here and enjoy what I still have. I want to work on setting my blogs up before starting too many new interactions, and that may take a really long time, which I’m sorry for, but it will make me happier in the end to be properly nested, rather than laying in the middle of a constant work in progress.

This won’t impact my activity very much, though, to be totally honest. I’m already not here more often than not, so the main difference will hopefully be that I am happier and less stressed when I am around.

Otherwise, I want to start focusing on my art a lot, and creating content, rather than simply augmenting it. This hopefully means I’ll be posting to my art blog more often, and may even be creating some original stories. Ultimately there may be a major social media withdrawal in the future because I want to get back to the magic of discovery and creation, and I can’t tell what part of my life is causing it to stagnate, but we’ll see.

Regardless, I want to thank every single person who’s read this- including those who skipped down to the bolded bit because heaven knows the middle was emotional mush- and everyone who’s supported or stuck by me all this time.