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shinyzango · 5 days ago

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may i ask you an Italian-language question? there's a name im trying to blend together with Italian, and i could use some guidance if youre willing

i wanted to explore the idea (not married to it, i may end up not even doing anything with it, and im sure im not the first to think of this anyway— but i find it a fun thought-experiment and id love your help if youd be willing to offer it?) of merging Pinocchio and the Nutcracker as both a character and their plots. for funsies✨️

and i just would like some help with how to blend the name idea i had. and to get said help from someone who is, not only fluent in Italian, but is also a fellow Nutcracker nerd (i love your work btw!!) would be so lovely. and also you can tell me tell me if i accidentally am doing a dirty word/bad word/worse or any similar "don't, just stop" thing since im tragically monolingual. i just wanted to see if it's possible for this name to not be clunky or in poor form, would love your help if you're up to it. (if you or anyone reading ever want to use any name/s here, assuming they turn out to perhaps NOT be awful blendings of Pinocchio×Nutcracker?? then, yeah, feel free use as far as i care. i dont own jack shit)

also no worries if you dont want to help for any reason at all, you dont need to explain it to me, i can take a simple "I'd rather not help with this" and be respectful about the rejection. truly, no worries. just wanted your help IF youre willing to offer it

also apologies this is so long. i blame my ADHD mostly (tho i doubt my autism helps, i think its mostly the ADHD) with me going "eVERYTHING IS IMPORTANT" and my lifelong inability at being succinct

now, Pinocchio as a name, according to various sources such as but not limited to Wikipedia (who i will be quoting, bc copy and paste is easier since a lot of this Ask will be me transcribing from books 😭) and my copy of Pinocchio's own Foreward: is "possibly derived from the rare Tuscan form pinocchio ('pine nut') or constructed from pino ('pine tree, pine wood') and occhio ('eye')"

i don't know Tuscan forms of Italian for the rest of this, i only know what my dad's two Italian-English dictionaries told me for the rest of this ("Oh, your dad speaks Italian?" no, he does not. he tried to learn! he gave up. but he still has the books. mostly bc he's a hoarder, our home is VERY cluttered with his many things. but he used to go to Italy a lot, for a specific multi-year project that has long-since ended. we are not culturally/ethnically of Italian heritage, as far as i am aware. but still cool to look through these books!). and you're going to call me either stupid or smart, but at first, let's be clear: i was definitely stupid. i did not follow up my learning about Pinocchio's name-meaning with "What's a nutcracker/The Nutcracker in Italian? Surely the title of the book has been translated into Italian. What is the title in its Tuscan form?". i went straight to my dad's dictionaries to look up "crack" and its branches, said branches including the word "cracker". i wanted to see if i could take "Pino-" and add the Italian form of "Cracker, Cracking, Cracked, or similar" at the end. because, again, i was stupid, and i was taking the long and hard way for an easy answer

since, my dad's dictionaries didn't have "Pino" for ne to verify the alleged Wikipedia meaning with (fair enough, how often does "pine" come into conversation? idk), i had to google this because i wanted to make sure i knew if "Pino" was/wasn't the equivalent of "nuts" in English (as in a "Dude! You kicked me in my nuts!" slang or "Deez nuts" meme type of way) or was a slur or something else that i Do Not Want (with the margin of error that i am still monolingual and inexperienced in Italian and Italy's culture, and most websites for translating ive heard refer only to formal meanings and not so much slang. unless its multi-generational slang, like "cool" on English as a slang term would be likely in a Other Language-To-English website guide, since its a prime example of multi-generational slang. but "Skibidi rizz"? not so much). you never know nuances when youre monolingual, doing your best to navigate a foreign language (even if it's "just" for a name), i just wanted to check

i tried to see if i could see anything specific about the Tuscan variation of Italian's definition of "Pino" was, but all i got was stuff about pine in Tuscany and an artist by the name of Pino Daeni's painting titled "Tuscan Stroll". youd think that'd tell me "well, as least you know Pino can't be bad if it's this guy's name", to which i will remind you, up until recent decades, the name "Gay" was as common as the name "Joy", and English-users stopped using it as a name once the meaning became more synonymous with "queer" than "happy" (i say this as a queer person btw, dont mistake me saying "this name isnt common for obvious reasons" as me being queerphobic please, im just stating the fact thats its declined and we all know why). so Pino Daeni, born in either the 1930s or 1950s (sources differed on the same painting when he was born?), COULD have a name that is akin to "Gay" in the sense that it is NOW out of the possible-names-that-wont-get-your-kid-bullied category. oooorrr it could also be the equivalent timelessness as "Richard" (a name i chose specifically bc one of its nickname is "Dick" in English, and i still dont know if "Pino" or how any other word i discuss here is used in Italian slang. again, shinyzango, if youre willing, please help lol) i far as google and a few sites would tell me about "Pino" in Italian-Spanish sense specifically (and idk if that means it is the same in Italian AND Spanish or if Italian-Spanish is specific fusion/variant of the languages/s, im so sorry), "Pino" could be used in Italian to reference "Pine nuts" (YAY, I THINK WE MAYBE GOT AN IMPLIED "NUTS" FOR THIS NUTCRACKER-FUSION'S NAME EVERYBODY), "Pine wood" (as in the logs, the branches, specifically. though idk if that includes the tree's bark but i assume yes?), "Pine leaves", "the Pine tree itself", and, finally, the all-encompassing elusiveness of "Pine" in general. im really boping the "Pino" = "Pine (Nuts)" is accurate to what im trying to accomplish here, but what can you do, i dont have Tuscan forms of Italian stuff and google isnt coughing it up either

which i did TRY to look up Tuscan-forms of Italian words. and i was told it was a dialect, a still-living one at that (as opposed to the term: archiac dialect). but nothing is telling me its dictionary of how its vocabulary branches off and/or overlaps with the standard Italian language. the closest i could find on my own was Wikipedia's "Dialectal Features" section under its Tuscan Dialect article. and that is too above my pay-grade, it went into phoemes and graphemes and all that, i got Fs in those classes despite my best efforts and it's been at least 3+ years since my last class in that. nope. i am just accepting the Tuscan dialect of Italian is inaccessible to me rn (unless shinyzango (a) knows it for whatever reason and (b) wants to help with that. but this isnt me trying to pressure you. this is me acknowledging that idk your life, maybe you know the Tuscan form. and if you do know it and yet dont wanna help for whatever reason, all good, no bad blood). so, no matter how much research and thought i am trying to put in here, im still very lost and just doing my best. so, shinyzango, please be forgiving if i am making any faux-pas throughout this. i know "Pinocchio" is theorized to be a blend of two Tuscan-specific Italian words, but i just got "Pino-" and whatever i find that can come next for the Nutcracker half of this (hopefully successful? idk. im paranoid im fucking up somehow lol 💀) name-blending of these two wooden boys

anyway. so i continued to be stupid by thoughtlessly NOT choosing the easy and obvious method of looking up "a nutcracker/the Nutcracker" in Italian for this name-blend's second half. and yet?? somehow, my dad's two English-Italian dictionaries were nice to me and i got super lucky i wasnt told an alternative word. i was essentially given the one the Easy Method wouldve brought me. albeit the easy method wouldve brought me to it faster.. anyway, i got lucky. because within "crack"'s long list of Italian-specifities, i came across "(nut:) to crack — schiacciàre", which that shorthand meant "within the term 'to crack', for reference wanting to crack nuts specifically, you would use the word schiacciàre and its branches in Italian". i then went to schiacciàre's page in my dad's other Italian dictionary and saw the different forms of "schiacciàre"

the second dictionary confirmed most of the first dictionary. i was a little bit concerned that maybe schiacciàre was inaccurate? (obviously, this feeling went away when i did eventually do The Obvious and look up what "a nutcracker/The Nutcracker" was in Italian, but i didnt know that at the time when i was looking at this entry). because this dictionary said "Schiacciàre (Transitive) - (1.) To crush, to crack, to mash. Used in cooking. Per schiacciàre lo zenzero si può usare un coltello piatto. To crush the ginger, you can use a knife flat." which you can see in this first definition block, "to crack" being the second meaning and not in the example sentence made me a little bit worried on if this was the best word or not. again, i know now i didnt need to be worried, i now know the Italian word for "nutcracker/Nutcracker". but i was sticking by the path i was on for a bit longer, thought i might as well read the branches

which included its inflection term, the word everyone was waiting for— schiacchia! meaning "(a) cracker"! to which i did, after i was done reading the entire word's list of different forms, think "oh, i should look up a nutcracker, in general/The Nutcracker & The Mouse King's specific title in Italian". to which i got both the relief (bc i didnt choose the wrong word!) and the frustration (bc i maDE THIS SO MUCH HARDER ON MYSELF FOR NO REASON!) of seeing "a nutcracker" in Italian is lo schiaccianoci and "The Nutcracker & The Mouse King" is (Lo) Schiaccianoci e il Re dei topi (which i find the nuance of the grammar of fascinating! to translate it back to English, and with the matching capitalization included, the title would be "(The) Nutcracker and the King of mice". bc "The King of Mice" gives off a slightly different vibe as opposed to "The Mouse King". like, The Mouse King feels like epithet anyone with influence over mice could gain whereas the other (The King of Mice) feels both mundane and more legitimately royal, like this is definitely a political position, like "The Queen of England". at least thats the vibes diffentiating between the two in English. idk if my impression for "the vibes" of the Italian title is accurate in Italian. god, i wish i wasnt monolingual). anyway. so you think that'd be it, huh! i found the Italian form of "(a) cracker"! that's gotta be the other half of this proposed fusion name!

...but no, i do have a second option im kinda into. bc, again, i looked up "a nutcracker/The Nutcracker" AFTER looking through the WHOLE list. and what grabbed my attention reading the branches of the word "schiacciàre" was also the first-person singular present term that is schiàccio, which in English would assumedly be the equivalent means "(I) crack". as first-person singular present terms in English are as follows: "Am I?", "I am", "I go", "I write", "I weep". so, like, it's a present-tense verb + "I". that's all that "first-person singular present"-specific terms mean as far as i am aware. hence, my assumption that "schiàccio"'s English equivalent would be "(I) crack". and the Italian form of "I" isn't present, but i think it's implied??? (im so unsure, im so sorry lol) some stuff i read said the "I" doesn't have to be literally present to be explicit in Italian? so it's not in English, where something like "Wasn't thinking" has the missing-"I" that can be assumed to be present p easily despite its lack of literal presence— BUT in English, the lack of "I" makes that an improper sentence. it can said colloquially. but it isnt correct grammatically. and im saying i was lead to believe that the Italian-equivalent-of-"Wasn't thinking" would be considered a proper sentence and gramatically correct? so itd be more like "(I) Wasn't thinking", in a sense? and furthermore, i was lead to believe the specific conjagation of schiàccio in Italian would not need the "I" unless you were adding an "I" for emphasis? like "No, I cracked the nuts, not him" kind of emphasis? i feel like im making less sense the more i try to explain it. but that was my reasoning to structure "(I)" like that within "(I) crack"?? again, im doing my best amidst my Italian ignorance 😭

and, shinyzango, under the assumption youve decided to help me, if i have totally misunderstood Italian grammar, you can just say "you were lead astray about the (I)-thing you wrote up, that's not accurate" or "it's more complicated than that" and leave it at that. you dont have to give me an Italian grammar lesson. mostly bc i assume you dO NOT want to give me one lol i p much just wanna know if im right, wrong, or got mixed results. asking you to be an Italian grammar teacher is not something you advertise, i just was fascinated with how much presence does the "I"/"(I)" have in schiàccio because of the POTENTIAL(? BC I COULDVE BEEN WRONG ABOUT ALL THE "I"/(I)" STUFF, IM SO SORRY) thematic analysis potentially then within the name, as i discuss in the following paragraph

but i think, not only would the implied gramatical aspect of the Pinocchio-Nutcracker fusion having verb-form of "cracking" apart even in its very name would be neat as well as it being neat— but also the potential of applying personhood to themself in that said very name with the potentially-"invisible yet explicit" "(I)" i aforementioned (with great confusion and lack or sureness, but yeah, as i aforementioned) would possibly be a very important thematic element for a fusion of a puppet-boy who wants to be "a real boy" × a man who had his personhood stripped away from him through transforming into a nutcracker??? and to have it perist anyway? have his personhood remain silently within his name? to have it, invisible yet hold weight in his very identity-moniker itself?? that could be very powerful of such a little word like schiàccio to do, assuming it even can do that "(I)" thing it may/may not be able to do (and, again, all of this assuming i am not missing any nuance in Italian here and i doubt that. i doubt that very much. i definitely a missing something, i just know it)

OH but ALSO, with schiàccio, we get this implication of being overwhelmed of "cracking" under the pressure (idk if my understanding of that potential translation is at all correct in Italian. i apologize if my dad's dictionary is leading me astray in any of these definitions). because there was another entry in my dad's dictionary, "Schiacciàre (Transitive) - (2.) To crush, to overwhelm, to crack, to snap, to flatten. A figuritive form of speech. Lui lo rifiuto schiacciato. The rejection crushed him". so it could(?) refer to a type of ego-death, maybe? thats usually an incidental yet pivotal pillar of a theme in transformation-stories. y'know, the ship of Theseus thought-experiment personification of it all. but when we now apply schiàccio's "(I) crack" outside of the kitchen-definition of literal cracks, and instead into that second definition's figuritive form, we now get this type of mental-breakdown implication? this Italian-specific warning for angst up ahead, literally tied to the guy's name? i think thats neat, assuming im understanding it correctly. foreshadows to the tragedy and hardships lol

plus, we also get the "-o" at the end of "schiàccio", assuming it's workable with "Pino-" without any problems. and that ending "-o", i think, links a bit more of the paralleism to Pinocchio's original name, at least visually? idk. maybe thats just me. that's a nit-pick of a bonus anyway

so this was a very long ask, all to beg the question/s, under the assumption youre willing to help me here (no worries if not, shinyzango, you do not have to help me at all if you dont wish to) is there something in your Italian fluency that sees a "anon, no, you dont want that" nonsense nuance-meaning in either of these Pinocchio-Nutcracker blended names im missing? a hidden dirty joke im fully unaware of?? is there one that flows better than the other? is the format weird? are they both shitty? lol idk what to ask specifically for what could be wrong here, but?? please? and thank you??

Pinoschiaccio

Pinoschiaccia

but yeah, any help you can offer would be much appreciated. dont worry if you dont have any help, if you dont want to give me any, eithet way, we're all good. i just hope i didnt commit any faux-pas in asking you all this. thank you so much for your time

Don't worry, thank you for asking me.

I just have to warn you that while I am native Italian, my grammar is also very bad LOL But I'll still try to give my input at the best of my capabilites.

Also while I'm not going to go through each single point of your ask to save up some time, do tell me if I missed something important to answer, as sadly big wall of texts tend to fry my brain and I end up missing on some parts as I read through (NOT YOUT FAULT! It's just my brain being dumb ksjdgn)

Anyways, onto your ask:

first of all, welcome to the world of learning a different language that do not share the same lingual roots LOL

Sadly I can't help much with the Tuscan language as I'm not from Tuscany and I'm not a linguist, but I can tell you that Pinocchio, while including the common Italian male name "Pino", to me it feels like it's may also be because the doll was sculpted with pine wood, which has the charateristic of having many knots (eyes, so "occhi") in its pattern. Buuuuut apparently in the original book by Collodi, he was named Pinocchio after a rich family of the same name, as a way to grant him good luck. So at this point I don't know LOL

And yeah nutcracker in italian is "schiaccianoci", which literally translates to "crack walnuts" althought it's meant for nuts in general. (fun fact: as a generic name for nuts we use "frutta secca", which translates to "dry fruits", which is not to be confused with "frutta essicata", which is "dried fruits".)

As for the other grammar notions:

yeah we almost never put adjectives before the subjects. In such case as the Mouse King, the correct way is "Re dei Topi", aka "King of the Mice". We could also use "Topo Re", but it's usually as a title/name said to make more of an effect.

For the whole "I" debate, yes in Italian we can easily drop the subject in our sentences because the verbs have all the variants that are specific to the person (I, you, them) and the quantity referred to (singular, plural). I do have to admit that I still tend to drop the subject when I speak in english out of habit because of this pffff.

And one last notion just to add more madness to this mess of a language, accents on vowels can drastically change words' meaning. For example, "schiaccio" and "schiacciò", while still having the same meaning of "crack", it's actually different tenses and subject. "schiaccio" is "I crack" (present). "schiacciò" is "They (singular) cracked" (past).

(btw I'm not writing "schiàccio" because it's not normally written with the à, in case you were wondering. the more common accents are not written unless you specifically need it to differentiate which one you're intending)

So yeah, I don't blame anyone who get incredibly confused when trying to understand Italian dkgnsdkj

Also yeah the verb "schiacciare" can have a bunch of different meanings depending on the context, both literally and figuratively, although I can't really tell any at the top of my head;;

Anyways, putting this whole Italian notion aside, let's get to the real point of the ask:

I can see why you came to the conclusion of going with Pinoschiaccio/a, which is completely fair. But if I were you, I would switch them around as it would sound more natural.

So personally, I would go with Schiacciapino.

And if it can help with anything, I can also add this extra italian notion: while we have a bunch of words that end in "-ino" such as Pino, it is one of the suffixes we use to change the "adjective" of the word. In this case, "-ino" is used to indicate something small (ie. "Gatto - Gattino" = "Cat - Small Cat/Kitten", or "Topo - Topino" = "Mouse - Small Mouse". And also yes another fun fact, "Topolino" is another way to say small mouse, althought in a cuter way. And it's what we call Mickey Mouse here in Italy. Same with Donald Duck, which we call "Paperino", aka "Small Duck". The more you know :V) Anyways yeah, just a small extra information in case it could be of any use for your story.

BIT OF A DISCLAIMER: sadly I can't tell you if this does in fact lead into ambiguity territory as sadly if there is any, I am not aware of it. I would have to ask other fellow Italians to give their own opinion about it.

Anyways I'm ending this rambling of mine. I'm not that better after all SDLGKNB

I hope I was able to clear up your doubts and questions! And again, if I ended up missing some points, do let me know!

#long ask is long #also @ my italian followers: if you can try to give this a read if only the end of my answer #if only to make sure I didn't missed out on anything djkgfn

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eagna-eilis · 2 years ago

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Ach-To and Irish Archaeology

The sequels were my entry into Star Wars and I never would have gone to see The Force Awakens if I wasn't an archaeology nerd.

During the production of Episode VII, a decent number of people with an interest in our archaeological heritage here in Ireland were quite worried about the impact of filming on one of our only two UNESCO World Heritage Sites, the island known as Skellig Michael down off the coast of Kerry.

I went to the film to see if any potential damage was worth it, or if they'd do something unspeakably stupid with it in-universe. I wanted to see if it was respected.

And holy hell I was NOT disappointed. I think I walked out of TFA sniffling to myself about how beautiful the Skellig looked and how it seemed like its use as a location was not just respectful but heavily inspired by its real history.

See, Skellig Michael was a monastic hermitage established at a point when Christianity was so new that the man who ordered its founding sometime in the first century CE was himself ordained by the Apostle Paul. The fellah from the Bible who harassed all and sundry with his letters, THAT Apostle Paul. This is how old a Christian site the Skellig is. It predates St. Patrick by at the very least two hundred years.

The steps we watch Rey climb were originally cut NEARLY TWO THOUSAND YEARS AGO. They have been reworked and repaired many many times since, of course. Still, the path the camera follows Daisy Ridley up is as much an ancient path built by the founders of a faith in real life as it is in the movies.

A hermitage was a place where monks went to live lives of solitude and asceticism so as better to achieve wisdom. The practice is common to many of the major world religions, including the myriad East Asian faiths which inspired the fictional Jedi.

It is said that the hermitage and monastery were originally built with the purpose of housing mystical texts belonging to the Essanes, one of the sects of Second Temple Judaism which influenced some of the doctrines of Christianity. They also, according to what I have read, characterised good and evil as 'light' and 'darkness' and were celibate.

As such, the use of the island in TFA and TLJ does not merely respect Skellig Michael's history, it honours it. It is framed as somewhere ancient and sacred, which it is. It is framed as a place where a mystic goes to live on his own surrounded by nature that is at once punishing and sublime, which of course it was. It shown to be a place established to protect texts written at the establishment of a faith, which it may well have been.

This level of genuine respect for my cultural heritage by Rian Johnson in particular is astonishing. I don't think anyone from outside the US ever really trusts Americans not to treat our built history like it's Disneyland. Much of the incorporation of the Skellig's real past into a fictional galactic history occurs in TLJ, which is why I'm giving Rian so much credit.

It's Luke's death scene which makes the honouring of Irish archaeological history most apparent though.

Johnson takes the archaeological iconography back a further three thousand years for his final tribute to my culture's beautiful historical temples. This time, he incorporates neolithic passage tomb imagery, specifically that of Newgrange, which is up the country from the Skellig.

I think if you understand what the image represents then it makes a deeply emotional scene even more resonant.

The scene I'm referring to is Luke's death.

As he looks to the horizon, to the suns, we view him from the interior of the First Jedi Temple. The sunset aligns with the passageway into the ancient sanctuary, illuminating it as he becomes one with the Force.

As for Newgrange, every year during the Winter Solstice it aligns with the sunrise. The coldest, darkest, wettest, most miserable time of the year on a North Atlantic island where it is often cold, wet, and miserable even in the summer. And the sun comes up even then, and on a cloudless morning a beam of sunlight travels down the corridor and illuminates the chamber inside the mound.

You guys can see this, right? The similarity of the images? The line of light on the floor?

Luke's death scene is beautiful but I think it's a thousand times more moving with this visual context. Luke's sequel arc isn't merely populated by a lore and iconography that honour the place where the end of his story was filmed, I think that incorporation of that history and mythology honours Luke.

We don't know for sure what the Neolithic people believed, religion-wise. We know next to nothing about their rituals. We know that there were ashes laid to rest at Newgrange. There is some speculation that the idea was that the sun coming into the place that kept those ashes brought the spirits of those deceased people over to the other side.

It's also almost impossible not to interpret the sunlight coming into Newgrange as an extraordinary expression of hope. If you know this climate, at this latitude, you know how horrible the winter is. We don't even have the benefit of crispy-snowwy sunlit days. It's grey and it's dark and it's often wet. And every single year the earth tilts back and the days get long again.

The cycle ends and begins again. Death and rebirth. And hope, like the sun, which though unseen will always return. And so we make it through the winter, and through the night.

As it transpired the worries about the impact of the Star Wars Sequels upon Skellig Michael were unfounded. There was no damage caused that visitors wouldn't have also caused. There also wasn't a large uptick in people wanting to visit because of its status as a SW location, in part I think because the sequels just aren't that beloved.

But they're beloved to me, in no small part because of the way they treated a built heritage very dear to my heart. I think they deserve respect for that at the least.

#star wars meta #ach-to #irish history #Irish Archaeology #first jedi temple #skellig michael #newgrange #luke skywalker #the last jedi #early christianity #neolithic #historical parallels in star wars #star wars and history #star wars and mythology #star wars and archaeology

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nanjokei · 2 years ago

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same anon here, incredibly interested in the history from someone who lived through it

ok!

here's my own rundown on why the vocaloid bubble burst in the mid 2010s!

almost irreversibly! (don't worry— this story has a happy ending)

if anyone is wondering, yes, you can reblog this! i only say this because this took a lot of work to write so if anyone feels compelled, yes, stroke my ego a bit, i allow such a thing. now, i might get snippy here and there, but i'm not serious at all. my sense of humor is pretty tsukkomi-ish and it shows up in how i describe things. <-disclaimer for if this post breaks containment because i know fandom types don't like my sense of humor if they're not given the context that i LOVE what i'm talking about and rib on it out of utmost adoration

as a disclaimer, i do lightly look things up to check on stuff timeline wise and its validity, but this is from my own point of view and memory and a personal retelling, so if you have a different take on it then i'm sure our viewpoints can co-exist. also, i speak about utaite from the point of view of someone who respects their existence but does not participate. so if a few facts are off... i am speaking only from the aspect of what relates to what i'm talking about. also if there are any typos i stopped being thorough with my checking and editing like 4k words in since i am not being paid to write this, it is just for fun. anyways~

so where we wanna start here is before the big bubble era. i think most people would agree that it was in full swing around mid 2012, but i'll set the date at september 23, 2011. the posting of the song kagerou daze (by the way, as a testament to how much of a boomer i am, despite being an kagepro fan from the start i find myself still using the "kagerou days" romanization by accident every time). by the way, senbonzakura, one of the biggest vocaloid songs ever for the longest time, was posted only a few days earlier. just to paint a picture. but that's not the only thing... i think what we want to look at especially is the end of the vocaloid2 era and what was going on during and before. the final vocaloid2 product, vy2, was released on april 25th, 2011. in this timeline, there are a few angles i wanna focus on. the state of the culture, its spread, utaite and producers. by the way, if i had to date when i met vocaloid, it was around 2008. right before gakupo came out, maybe.

around this time, the culture of vocaloid-ke (vocaloid family) type secondary works were falling out of fashion. 2010 and before, i feel that vocaloid had a strong image of nico nico douga especially— not that it didn't during the bubble era. but i mean the people participating. when miku came out, people viewed her as a novelty while still thinking to themselves they had stumbled across something special. there was no subculture like that before, and the closest counterpart to this was idolmaster. now, many know this is the origin of the -P suffix came from. it's a tossed around factoid now but people should know that it was certainly a phenomena back then. and a LOT of early miku adopters (like 80% were either already in the doujin music scene, the DTM (desktop music) scene, trained musicians or even some industry pros. and a lot of these people were nerdy and geeky and loved anime and games and manga so of course their first point of reference for building vocaloid's identity was idolmaster. touhou, idolmaster's next door neighbor, also had a lot of influence given many of the music people in its scene dabbled in vocaloid early on. so naturally the fans that were attracted to vocaloid were also nerds. at first there were only cryptonloids, but gakupo quickly followed (and continuing in the trend of heavy nnd association— kentaro miura (RIP), a big fan of nnd and especially idolmaster— designed and drew his art 100% pro bono out of love for the site and its culture). luka came out... i think gumi was the first shift. gumi just felt, different. i personally owe it to her being modeled after ranka lee, the iconic role of her voice provider, megumi nakajima— ranka lee was the underdog character in her source macross frontier's love triangle. so i feel like that image somewhat imprinted itself on gumi. gumi was not popular at first at all. her release came and went with not much fanfare. ironically the aspect of rivalry would come back under stuff like the miku vs gumi debate. this is probably the first real demonstration of "it doesn't matter how good the voice is, it matters who uses it and how that propagates the voice".

and so i arrive at the producers of the time, maybe late 2008 early to mid 2009, the newcomers. the ones that weren't necessarily otaku through and through, but more on the "teenagers who like vocaloid and/or don't have a singer to sing for them, and want to make music". i will be specific and say it is people like wowaka (RIP), deco*27 and hachi/kenshi yonezu specifically. wowaka for example had a very fresh take— his pvs deemphasized the vocaloid, but it also inspired many fan pvs because of it. i will not go into how it became ironic that he quit due to the attribution to the voice. but his moody lyrics captured a lot of hearts and his style carried a youth to it. hachi did a lot of his own artsy pvs. deco*27 was very unpolished and amateur but his music was VERY of the times. the synths, the guitar, very youthful. aside from wowaka, whose comeup immediately led to him getting signed quickly (and the guy himself just walked and i don't blame him) i think what made these guys (deco and hachi) stand out from the rest in the end is one thing: they picked up gumi. and this set them apart from the old and dusted otaku who didn't pick gumi up, or those who picked her up thinking of her only as ranka lee. mozaik role (still deco's most viewed song on nnd btw, with no sign of stopping. and he is clearly PISSED about it). matryoshka. all that kibs of noise. by the way, matryoshka's stint in the vocaloid rankings went unchallenged until it was finally killed by senbonzakura. that's a good two years of dominance!! a lot of the breakout stars or people who got more popular during 2010 used gumi, i'm talking your 40mPs, your sasakure.UKs, your buzzGs. incidentally, a lot of these people got signed... most for their vocaloid stuff. 40mP, sasakure, deco, kous and others were signed under label split-offs like U/M/A/A. wowaka and hachi... were signed for themselves. specifically, wowaka and his band hitorie, and hachi as himself kenshi yonezu.

but producers were not the only ones being signed. utaite, who had been a thing before even vocaloid was a thing, found themselves growing rapidly due to them increasingly participating in the culture as both fans and beneficiaries. personally, i split off utaites eras as "before piko and akiakane" and "after piko and akiakane". the before era included people who either started very early on when vocaloid became a thing on nnd, or started before it (participating in chorus medleys or posting utattemita videos of anison for example, like gero). it was all amateur and everyone was doing it for fun... but the record companies doth lurk around the vocaloid scene at this rate. akiakane and piko i pick specifically because they were the first utaite who were very publically signed. piko was signed under sony's ki/oon records! akiakane had two or three big albums under the subsidary of VAP, toy's factory (if you wanna have fun take a look at the list of talent they rep). piko is especially important— as he had a vocaloid made of him. this marked first big interest of corporations and large record companies to actually enter the vocaloid space— in the most direct way possible. btw, the reason piko the vocaloid is dead is because piko the person is no longer signed under sony. it's not outright confirmed, but piko the guy stopped tweeting about utatane piko the second he transferred labels. he is stuck in a weird catch 22 he probably will never be free of, though yamaha is doing some insane moves lately, i wonder if they'd ever try to buy the character out and revive him as a stunt. (they are doing many funny stunts lately. but a subject for another time.)

finally, my last point in this preamble is the interest in telling stories through vocaloid had only continued to grow. i think the two biggest early examples were the prisoner series by shujinP and the ever so infamous evillious chronicles by mothy. their explosive popularity is wholeheartedly owed to rin and len— ok this is a tangent but this is the genius of the rin and len package, that to this day was never replicated, they come together as you know and since they are male and female with no set setting, they are an easy buy and you can make a story because you can do two points of view across several songs... like literally. its paperplane vs prisoner. daughter of evil vs servant of evil. and their fans were and continue to be super passionate. it's great, we would be missing a huge chunk of what makes vocaloid subculture what it is without them. of course, shujinP's series (plural because they had several) is less known these days but it was probably the first series to get plays and novels and all that. quickly followed by EC. later came series like sasakure's doomsday series, stuck in a limbo between old and new era (most of the songs released in the old era but the novelization and such came out during the new), and a few "outsider" series like numtack05/putinP's series (the reasons this never got popular is because it was absurdist and shitpost-y and involved too much political imagery, not only that but also because putinP used a lot of copyright samples (most famously ronald mcdonald and sazae-san clips)— the freely distributed album vers omit these samples entirely and i can confirm the songs are worse for it)

so to give a summary of the above section

the tastes of fans were maturing

there was a shift in how vocaloid was perceived

the growing influence of utaite

the growing interest of big corpos in the scene

the growing interest in storytelling using vocaloid as a medium

anyway, here comes the real deal. and... it's gonna be a mess. just like the era itself was. i hope you're ready, at least.

even the very first echo of vocaloid3 felt kinda corpo-y. it wasn't, but.. looking back. it kind of felt like it. the first time we ever found out about v3 was through a leak of seeU's demo— but it was a work in progress leak, so it had the voice of her provider dahee kim singing along. people had no idea so they assumed this was the capability of the software. it was exciting! kpop was just starting to get popular, and we were getting a new vocaloid software, with korean capability!!!

anyway. we're not talking about the can of worms that was seeU.

not just because of dahee kim. but because it's not related beyond this. also the fact that korean fans were heavily and horribly mistreated by the majority japanese fandom for obvious reasons. i do not have the depths to speak on that stuff, but it says a lot that the software's first big swing ended up like that.

but i wanted to illustrate the mood of the fans going into this era. it was full of hopes and dreams. now, i don't want any wannabe know-it-alls wagging their fingers at me and checking the wikia going "b-but cullen, mew also came out!! at the same time!!" the seeU leak came out first. i remember there were fights over whether or not that demo was real. it was a cultural shift like no other. who the fuck cares about mew? literally her only legacy is one really amazing ezfg song. i will not debate anyone on this btw. i try to be objective but i'm allowed to inject a bit of my own opinion here too. you know who were also full of hopes and dreams? the companies. not your internetcos and your ahsofts, no, i'm talking publicly traded shits and record companies. look... i'm coming off harsh. i actually don't hold that much animosity, but you're gonna see why this was the first huge misstep of the era.

nice picture, right? this was the kind of optimism we started off this era on. but, i'll break down the picture for you in a way that helps illustrate a point somewhat:

your girlies from V2 like gumi (who was this era's it girl), lily, galaco (even if her shitty V2 version is contest only)

your earnest newcomers mew (look, even yamaha girlies count), cul, aoki lapis, seeU (one could argue.), IA (one could argue...)

tone rion of dear stage (who represented dempagumi inc., the group her voice provider came from, though this was a myth for years until it was proven... also it was clear they wanted to make the rest of dempagumi into vocaloids but rion flopped at the time. there was even a picture of her friends floating around. astoundingly embarrassing confidence. one billion dead vocaloids.)

akikoloid-chan of lawsons (yes, the convenience store! she is a vocaloidification of their mascot and i would argue the poster child of the modern brand private vocaloid. she was retired in uh.. 2019 i wanna say? though she was dormant for a long time anyway)

ring suzune, the aborted failure of minna no vocalo keikaku (everyone's vocalo-project)... this one involves a lot of otona no jijou AKA adult circumstances (japanese corpo's favorite excuse. you will now notice this phrase every time you hear it oooo). just unfortunate all around

yuzuki yukari of vocalomakets, i put her in a separate category because she really is a girlie of her own. a vocal born from producers being dissatisfied that their wants weren't being answered and no company was taking them up, they just went "fuck it" and produced yukari on their own. a huge outlier in this era of vanity projects and companies using the scene for their own crap.

not pictured, but i have to mention her due to her complicated position in this era, but mayu of exit tunes. exit tunes is a record label that heavily supported vocaloid and utaite during this era, signing both producers and utaite, and making compilation cds of popular vocaloid hits. and probably saw to it that due to their dominance in the area of compilation cds (and they still dominate, even if their releases are sparse these days their cds still top oricon without effort), them sneaking mayu into the tracklists would work... my thoughts on this? my position has softened a lot over the years. and i've always thought "they gave up right before she organically caught on, they should have kept pushing. so what a shame".

now you may notice i bolded a few of these and made special mention of the companies behind them. you probably already figured it out, but this era had heavy investment from parties who had only to gain from a rapidly growing niche subculture. see, unlike the other two of nnd's big three idolmaster and touhou, who are IPs where you need some kind of cooperation to officially get in on, vocaloid... is incredibly free, so laissez faire in comparison. you buy a 9,000 dollar dev kit and get to work making your mascot. it was... so easy. so free. so sweet. but real life is not so easy, or free, or sweet. you actually had to be accepted by the fans, and like i said before... the voice does not matter. what matters is who uses it, and how that propagate the voice. this is true time and time again. it is the ultimate "how many times do i have to teach you this lesson, old man?!" of the scene from a commercial standpoint. no matter how many years pass. ergo, one billion dead vocaloids. corpo vocaloids were releasing and they flopped immediately. earnest products from newcomers were dropping and struggling, though def doing better than the corpo ones (like lapis, lapis did ok). existing "in crowd" companies were vomiting out new vocals and not even promoting them. it was a disgusting era of excess and death and bile and plague and war and and and. it's astounding that it is hard carried by the art that came out of it. because if you only look at the commercial side of things, it is fucking disgusting.

now, onto the fan aspect. remember when i said this era truly kicked off when kagerou daze came out? yup. here it comes. so, anyone lived through this era remembers the cambrian explosion of original projects that did not make use of vocaloid mascots— arguably the final death knell of vocaloid-ke secondary works being the mainstream.

now, i'm planting my flag in the ground here very firmly— i do not ride the bandwagon of the people who erroneously attribute the near death of the scene to kagepro. it's just not true. personally i have a very complicated (bordering on near sort of but not quite negative, depending on how nostalgic i feel that day) relationship with the series, but to blame it is incredibly narrowminded and ignorant of the actual reasons the bubble burst, and not to mention unfair. if you find it annoying, fine. but just say you don't like the series and move on. and really, for better or for worse, mekakucity days and mekakucity records are unironically god tier vocaloid albums that will be remembered for years to come. i just have to say this because i see a lot of people blame jin for very flimsy reasons... SHUT UP!!! anyway.

i think one of the issues with the whole project culture that flourished during this era was simply the fact that since they were multimedia projects (whether by accident like kagepro or intentionally from the get), fans were coming from all angles, and even those who got into it through vocaloid eventually became super mega invested in them as separate IPs. which is... unfortunately an issue. so when these properties eventually spun off into manga, light novels, covers with real seiyuu, merch and ultimately some even netting anime projects... once those projects either abruptly ended (lol, lmao, this will come back later) or reached their natural conclusion, inevitably a lot of those fans either leave with it or found themselves burned out on vocaloid itself, or perhaps even think they've outgrown it.

next, utaite. now i mentioned a bit earlier about how the first batch of utaite were amateurs who didn't expect anything out of it and did it just cause, and how exit tunes signed a lot of them in this era. now, comes the time i speak about utaite "after piko and akiakane". i believe due to a generational gap and subconsciously perhaps due to the signing of a few utaite from the old guard at this point, the nu utaite of the 2010s had a sort of individuality to them... this isn't an insult, and a large part of their popularity actually came from them always collaborating and a lot of them ending up befriending each other. again, i'm an outsider, but i understand this much. but this era for utaite was the beginning of the idea that an utaite can become a superstar. in the end, very few of them did become superstars.

a lot of them naturally returned to a normal level of popularity after the bubble. there aren't a lot of your AtRs or your amatsukis and such. the smart ones became vtubers before being a vtuber was cool. to give an example: un:c and hashiyan who are arguably oldheads more than nu era became anjo and kosaka of monsterz mate. this isn't a doxx btw, this is publically available information, and un:c often credits himself as a mixer under projects he does as anjo. also, a certain duo of female utaite whose names i will not mention went on to form the super popular vtuber duo himehima. there are other early adopters like kano and god knows who else that i don't feel like mentioning. anyway, if your utaite did it after 2018 and under their own identity it is a desperate plea for attention. sorry but it's just the objective truth. tangent over... did you think i wasn't gonna shoehorn vtubers into this somehow?! anyway.

even sutopuri who got mega popular, only really formed after the vocaloid bubble burst, perhaps even as a result of it. utaite had a positive effect on the vocaloid scene and still do. but at the time, i think it was at its strongest. utaite NEEDED vocaloid, and vocaloid benefitted greatly from their continued patronage and love for it. i for one will not be caught slandering utaite and their relationship with vocaloid even if i will always prefer the vocaloid versions. the issue here comes from the fact that way too many were signed without much star factor (i'm not disparaging them, i'm just saying they did not hold their audience across the mediums), and even at that their fans splintered off into many tribes and many weren't really into vocaloid in the first place and were more into the livestreams and twitter banter. that's just how things shook out. you even have your reols and such, as reol was the face but in a sense her, gigaP and okiku were a set and gigaP left the scene to focus on commercial work with those two. too many of them got signed and splintered off into their own little fandoms before THOSE fandoms kind of died out. so this is another part where fans disappear and lose interest. you're starting to see the pattern here, right?

there's so much stuff i thought i would touch on, like how gumi was the undisputed it girl of the scene at this time, and how kagepro rose IA to prominence (all because jin wanted to buy gumi but didn't find her in the store) and how IA's people 1st place locked certain producers in their basement (like jin, yasuhiro, ishifuro etc) and... now this is a conspiracy on my part but prevented them from working on anything else, so that drew more talent away from the scene... but i realized it's tangential and belongs to other parts in this conversation. i want to reiterate here though before we go on to the biggest elephant in the room of all which would be the point of no return... there is more to the vocaloid bubble era of 2012-2015 than projects, than corpo and record company bullshit, than utaite fans. and there is more to the era before that than the top brass producers i mentioned earlier. i really... really lament how so much of early vocaloid reuploads are gone from youtube. there's a whole world just gone. so, anyway, are you ready?

the final block in this weird jenga of a story.

the producer, suzumu, and his unfortunate associates.

i will cut to the chase because it's easier to explain who was involved once i say what happened. to put it shortly... suzumu "stole" his songs. this is weird and vague and i always hated the way people used polite euphemisms to explain it because it made the situation way more confusing than it had to be— he used his producer friends as ghostwriters to compose songs for him, basically. and was very not nice about it according to one of the people involved. now i will probably adopt a somewhat sympathetic angle that people who have previously heard of this case may have not encountered before. not because i feel bad for that fuck, but because it seems like at least one of the people impacted has forgiven him, and others have moved on in less obvious ways. he's also professionally making music in the industry now. as much as i want to keep up the act of disliking him, i don't care anymore. i still dislike what he did immensely because it impacts producers i love to this day. but the man came forth about it himself and those involved forgave him. it's been almost a decade now... man!

suzumu, before getting into posting songs (who knows how many were actually his and which were ghostwritten), was a prolific lyric writer who worked with some of the trendiest vocaloid producers around. i'll cross gigaP out, since he was not involved in the incident, but almost every single person involved in this had worked with him in a lyric or story writing capacity (for 150P and komine specifically). here are the involved parties as i recall, bolded are people who he "stole" from

mafumafu, the person who spoke the most about it post suzumu's confession and the most vocal, and likely the person who was used as a ghostwriter the most (i don't recall if he actually alludes to this or not but people commonly think this). mafumafu had a series of vocaloid songs that told a story, but stopped using vocaloid after the incident for a while and songs that were going to get pvs from his first vocaloid album were not posted. he contributed a song called machigai sagashi for the vocaloid flavored moba #compass in 2015, but it seems like that song was probably in the works since before the incident for reasons i will highlight in a moment. suzumu wrote the lyrics for only one of the songs. iirc, mafumafu's song berserk is about suzumu. don't remember if this is confirmed or not. btw, the album of those songs, meikyou shisui, is really underrated and you should check it out. im not a mafu guy but that album is great

kemu, the person who is arguably closest to suzumu and the one who most publicly supported suzumu (albeit wordlessly) in later years by working with him professionally. when i mention someone forgiving suzumu, i mean him. suzumu wrote the lyrics for most of his kemu voxx songs, a famous multimedia project kemu was on the helm of along with hatsuko as the main illustrator. since kemu no longer had a lyricist, the project stalled for years until he posted a song suddenly in 2017 (with self written lyrics). it seems like the series is continuing still, but with a different direction

150P, who worked with suzumu heavily for his shuuen no shiori (bookmark of demise) project, a project that was conceived from the start to be a story. this part makes me really mad, guys!! i'll try to keep calm about it. 150P wrote over 50 songs (idk if this is an actual number but he wrote a lot. at least 40.) for the series, with suzumu writing the story and lyrics. the character designs were done by saine (who dodged a bullet all things considered.) and the art was done by komine. 150P was already doing crazy things before shuuenpro, his most popular song is still his insane 12-len classical metal chorus song lost destination. now shuuenpro caught on slower than its peers and was an underdog. i LOVE shuuenpro to this day. you know what? right when it was finally getting its first W, when the album that had seiyuu covers at come out on oricon in third place, suzumu dropped his confession. what a slap to the fucking face!! the manga of the series hastily wrapped up after that. 150P and komine disappeared and no longer did stuff ever. 150P recently appeared for a mafumafu anniversary thing so i'm glad he's still alive. but, komine...

komine, the only non-producer, an artist with the worst luck. she was slowly rising to prominence doing pv art for a lot of popular producers, and was the main artist of shuuenpro most prominently. during the initial release of the first few shuuenpro songs, she was accused of tracing, and the art of the pv of sarumane isutori game had to be done by someone else. komine stopped using social media at that point, but continued to make art for the project quietly and quite prolifically. so she was already on some kind of fraught standing even though the tracing allegations were disproven. fast forward to the suzumu blowup, komine packed up her bags and disappeared forever. if she had become disillusioned, i do not blame her. her final public contribution was the design of jeanne d'arc from #compass, the character who was paired with the mafumafu song. all subsequent artworks of jeanne were done by different artists. i suspect the reason the vocaloid version of machigai sagashi did not have a proper pv was due to komine quitting. i can only imagine what that pv looked like! if you're wondering why i mention a pv, it's cuz compass fans got mad at mafu for having a fancy pv for his self cover but not for the original. but otona no jijou, you know? and where is that energy for eve who still hasn't released a pv for mistletoe publicly and only put it on his kuso app and with 0 compass association? who let that wishy washy fuck do an anniversary song? ...im not gonna go on a compass tangent. anyway.

so... why does this matter?

it matters because people became disillusioned due to this drama. it matters because suzumu took out some very popular and prolific people from the scene during what one could argue was a transitional phase. the fans of all those people, including suzumu's... gone. if you weren't there, you may not understand the cult of personality suzumu had. he had his name on everything and was friends with all the right people. when i heard about this incident... i just closed my eyes and sighed lol. it hurt and it hit when the scene was at its weakest. and was the final blow, almost. and it impacted the way people saw and talked about vocaloid for years. miku became "owakon" for a time. people thought kizuna ai was gonna replace her as a cultural touchstone (lol, lmao, it is proven time and time again that the big three cannot die). kenshi yonezu, in all his detached glory, came down from his jeweled encrusted throne to compose a song for miku's 10th birthday that he smugly thought was the death knell of nico nico douga.... which even at the time of its release was contested by even people who were on the same miku anniversary project and, whether you wanna acknowledge it or not, is still mocked to this day by several producers. magical mirai's theme this year even does it. there is no respect for sand planet or anything kenshi yonezu stood for in that song. what an asshole move no matter how you see it. argue with the wall if you don't agree, i don't want to hear it. the scene survived because there were producers and artists and fans who still loved it. not because of some sardonic fuckoff song by a guy so detached he'd write a funeral march for a birthday.

these days, i feel like the community is incredibly conscious of what happened. there are wanton community led events that encourage not only the creation of songs, covers, art and secondary creations but also the discovery of new producers— the biggest of which being vocaloid collection, which happens three times a year and has many categories, but most importantly the top ranking (producers active for 3+ years) and the rookie ranking. i once read a japanese article that said proseka brought new fans hungry for something beyond the music presented in the game, and vocacolle and other community led events and song posting festivals supplied the works. the average age of the new vocaloid producer is— and this is my own estimate based on how many heart attacks i've been given the past 3 or 4 years— 17~19 years old. they say things like "i know of kagepro but i wasn't there"!! should i get my cane out!! who's driving me to the retirement home?!

even companies involved in the product end are more savvy these days.... (holding my tongue about a certain company of a popular synth software and its ceo because i have nothing nice to say). i think they realized that you can't clap with one hand and that appealing to the end user and fans is a necessity. honestly, i can only be excited for what comes next. we're never going back to that dark age, i can say this with utmost confidence. do i miss the past of the times before the bubble, back when vocaloid was a smidge more geeky? sure. but we can only really move forward, so why not enjoy it

#ask #anonymous #it came up to over 5k after all #idk how i clocked that.#im so scared to post this but i cant even read words anymore so if it still has typos then so be it

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daughter-of-sapph0 · 2 years ago

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quick question, what's an era 2 tumblr user? we have eras??

it's sorta something I made up myself. tumblr has gone through various shifts in presentation and tone that dramatically affected how people use the website. honestly idk if anyone besides me actually uses this system, but I'm gonna use it anyway because it's funny

so Era 1 is from the start of tumblr until dashcon. this is where the dashboard had those weird lines on the side of reblogs, was the hight of superwholock, allows editing other people's posts, and was filled the overwhelming prevalence of fandom. back then, tumblr wasn't very mainstream and most people who used it were big nerds (affectionate). so there was a strong sense of community between people who had shared interests.

Era 2 starts after dashcon in summer of 2014. this was a disaster of an event that sorta boosted tumblr's popularity for better or for worse. this is also when I first joined in late 2015 as an undertale blogger originally (my first blog has since been deleted though). this is what I'd call the meme era of tumblr. it's when most of the most popular jokes are from. it's when massive inside jokes and tumblr references started. and it's the time where the most people were active. and it lasted until about late 2018 with the porn ban

Era 3 was kicked off with many users deciding to leave tumblr near the end of 2018 beginning of 2019. tumblr's policy on porn up until then had been "go nuts. show nuts" until it was bought by virison who tried their best to make it "family friendly". the whole thing was handled very poorly ("female presenting nipples") and didn't even get rid of all porn, just porn from sex workers and artists who sold nsfw content to make a living. most of those people left for sites like twitter, and many other sfw artists (and also people who just used tumblr for free porn) left with them. for a while, tumblr was pretty empty. but not entirely. there were still very close knit communities, arguably even closer than Era 1 even. and honestly, this is when tumblr was at its most usable. it was quiet. the only thing that you had to worry about was the occasional porn bot (and staff's growing authoritarianism, but we'll get to that). it's hard to argue when exactly Era 3 ends. I like to say it's when elon musk bought twitter, but I also think it might have started a bit before then. it's more of a slow transition that happened sometime between early and late 2022

Era 4 is the return era. when everyone who went to twitter came crawling back. this was sorta kicked off with staff starting to be more lax with their porn restrictions. but don't think that staff was having a change of heart and suddenly nice. for the longest time, they had been overstepping boundaries and abusing their authority, such as banning mainly Black and leftist users calling them "Russian psyops". it was also around this time that people discovered that there were several terfs on the development team, and that was likely the reason they didn't ban nazis and terfs despite both being in clear violation of the tos. tumblr staff tried to distract from this controversy by adding a bunch of gimmicks. the crabs for April fools, blazing posts, checkmarks, tumblr live. this for some reason actually worked, and a lot of people just forgot or didn't care about staff any more, and it actually brought in a lot of new users. I have no idea how long Era 4 will last. all the Eras have been kicked off with a massive change in how social media operates that becomes more dramic and impactful each time. so short of the us government completely banning tiktok for good, I doubt Era 4 will end any time soon.

sorry this turned mostly into a rant against staff near the end. as you can obviously tell, I'm sorta biased towards Era 2 and 3, as that's when I had the best experiences with tumblr. and a lot of the problems I have with the site today can be traced back to staffs stupid decisions and abuse of power and authority.

but yeah. I hope that makes sense.

#dostxt #asks #tumblr eras #tumblr era

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systemadministratorclu · 2 months ago

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Milo, how many five-year-olds would it take to tackle Rourke?

".....I'm not sure i understand the joke, but there's a few variables to consider here. First, is Lyle aware the tackle is coming? Is he playing with them, or is this an actual surprise attack, because the number would be much less if he knows it's coming. He lets them get him a lot. Though of course, it'll be a controlled fall. He doesn't want them to get hurt. Even if it's a surprise, he'll try to control his fall so he doesn't hurt them."

"Next variable: what species are these hypothetical five-year-olds? Because a human kid is very different in weight and strength than, say, a Rovarian five-year-old....a Rovarian TWO-year-old took me down on accident once..., or an Equus five-year-old, or a Kaisai five-year-old.......I'm not gonna go into Gorgorons because you just don't with them unless you want them to kill you. And with the species, you still have the variable of 'does he know it's coming' to worry about."

"Then of course, where is this tackle occurring? Jadis Two has different gravity from Earth, which has different gravity from Phoenix One. Is it even in the same dimension? Physics work a little differently in places like The Sanctuary or the Otherverse-I do NOT want to go back there, that evil Rourke* is scary as shit!-so there's that to consider, along with the species and whether or not Lyle knows it's coming. And that's just the variables I can think of off the top of my head. I'm sure there's others, like wind speed/direction, whether or not they're running at him or just piling on from a standstill, their experience with doing this, whether they're his kids/kids he knows or strangers and I'm sure still others.......I guess what I'm saying is I don't have enough data to make an accurate calculation. Not even a ballpark figure." Milo seems......a little out of breath after that as he leans against what looks like a giant metal wheel.

"You are SUCH a nerd." Remarks Eris, the owner of said giant wheel.

*"Evil Rourke" is referring to the canon version from the movie, as this Milo would consider my AU to be "Primeverse", his home universe. There was an incident, much like the Mirrorverse episode in the original Star Trek, where the two Rourkes (Canon and my AU) got switched. It was.....very bad for Primeverse Milo.

//i am so sorry for how long this took me to answer!!//

#muse: milo thatch #thanks for the ask!

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duck-in-a-thrift-store · 1 year ago

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Room/character closeup #2 (going in order from most to least popular based on the poll)

~Eddie & Steve's room~

Edit bc I accidentally posted this before I meant to: spoilers ahead for my full house au, as can be expected

Did you notice the pattern on the rug bc it's important to me that you notice the pattern on the rug I spent a good bit of time searching for this one specific rug guys I'm serious about this. Is it incredibly dark humor? Yes. But it is humor nonetheless

Anyway

One of my first priorities/things I took into consideration when working on this room was that I didn't want it to be too bright or have any sort of potentially eyestrain-y patterns. Steve has suffered repeated head trauma and I wanted his room to be a safe space where he doesn't have to worry about triggering a migraine or fucking with his vision or getting dizzy just from his surroundings. Hence why they have a darker, more subdued palette than most of the other rooms (which I guess you don't know yet since this is only the second one I've shown you but just trust me on this)

Beyond that, I admittedly had a pretty difficult time trying to figure out what I could do that I felt like both Steve and Eddie would vibe with decor-wise while still being a cohesive theme

Didn't want it to lean too far either way into metalhead freak or preppy golden boy territory, and besides I do think Steve's whole aesthetic isn't entirely his own and is at least partly influenced by the expectations placed on him, so I tried to go for a fairly neutral sort of vibe here

For some reason I settled on some blue jean lookin ass wallpaper, a rug patterned with the our-dimension-version of the critters that very nearly took their lives, and a few choice items to put on the walls

First off, the ship painting

This was sort of an unexpected last minute addition, partially bc I thought it looked nice with the rest of the room and partially as a character reflection

I wholeheartedly believe that Eddie Munson would fucking love anything pirate related, he probably was a pirate for Halloween at least once growing up, and he just thinks sailing ships are super cool. Plus the painting just felt like it would appeal to a fantasy nerd lol (it reminded me of the chronicles of Narnia actually but that's not really important)

And as for Steve, at least in this au but I know I'm not the only one who thinks so, he really likes water. Being in it, on it, around it- he likes swimming (refer back to his noted complicated feelings about the pool from my basement post), he likes the beach, he likes the ocean, and he likes sailing. He hasn't been many times but I'd totally buy the Harringtons having been on a yacht or some shit at one point or another. This character note may or may not be related to both his job at scoops ahoy* and him being on the swim team in high school, which is one of those things that at this point I honestly don't know if it was at all canon or if it's just one of those headcanons that become so popular in fandom that it feels that way, and at this point I can't be bothered to fact check it

*I think either he had a prior interest in sailing-related stuff and that was part of what initially drew him to that job specifically, or that working there sparked an interest which only grew with time, like maybe some of the silly slogans and terms used in ice cream flavors and maybe even the uniform stirred his curiosity/memories of going out on the water with his folks during the summers before they decided he was old enough to be left home alone for weeks at a time, and he started looking into actual sailing and found out he really liked it. (He can't stand the uniforms now though bc they trigger traumatic flashbacks, for both him and Robin)

Next, the bass/electric guitar on the wall, which I feel is pretty self explanatory honestly. It's Eddie's (although he does offer to teach Steve how to play- haven't decided yet whether Steve takes him up on that)

And then there's the horses (photo? painting?)

This is where the whole "horse girl eddie munson" thing came from; the whole idea was initially born of me trying to decide what I could put on their wall, liking this poster and asking myself if Steve and Eddie struck me as people who were into horses. As it turns out the answer was "hell yeah" and it spiraled into an entire fic idea of its own, which can be found here. As for this au, the background of them both having a "horse girl" phase/being into the idea of cowboys is still a thing, but obviously it doesn't progress the same way as that did (steddie cowboys my beloved but these particular multiverse variants are stuck playing house with their traumatized found family and slowly realizing that they actually enjoy co-parenting >:3 and this way everyone gets to stay together)

Also, speaking of the steddie cowboys thing this inspired, Eddie is trans in the full house au but Steve is a cis man (unlike in the other au). However Steve does have some gender moments here and there, like the kids "jokingly" calling him mom and him lowkey vibing with it (oh no I'm already doubting my ability to stick to the Steve being cis plan- bigender Steve agenda where did you come from??)

But yeah basically both of them are secretly horse nerds lol and that's something they discover while they're arguing over how to decorate (aka when they agree on this poster) and end up bonding over

And now for a note about their placement in the house (specifically who they share a floor with)

I've already explained that/why I wanted them on the same floor as Dustin Lucas & Erica, although I don't think I mentioned that Lucas and Steve are really close in this au* and it goes without saying that Dustin is super close with both of them

*it just feels right to me; also Steve was the only one of his friends to come watch his basketball game and Steve did chew Eddie out about that whole situation at some point but by now everyone is pretty much on good terms

Sometimes when any of the kids- but especially any of those three- have bad nightmares or can't sleep, they bunker down in Eddie & Steve's room,* the door of which is always open (metaphorically that is, but once they start dating... well let's just say the kids better knock or they're going to have yet another reason to be scarred for life lmao)

*some may think they're too old for stuff like this but I say- fuck that. A major theme of this au is acknowledgement of how these guys have had a large portion of their childhood stolen from them and the people around them are working to help them get it back, to let them just be kids and to make them feel safer than they have in a long time, so they're allowed to be "childish" and that's going to play a part in many of the events and details of this au. The same goes for the older guys too btw; like with this example specifically if Robin or Steve is the one waking up from a nightmare they find the other and both crash on the couch together for the night. You're never too old to seek comfort from your loved ones

#full house au #stranger things fanfic #stranger things headcanons #current wip #steve harrington #eddie munson #and they were roommates #steddie #trans eddie munson #also mentioned:#robin buckley #dustin henderson #lucas sinclair #erica sinclair #horse girl eddie munson au #<-the origin story to this idea has now been revealed

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daturadiary · 2 years ago

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✩First week✩

⋆This post is longer than what i will be posting later on, because i will include everything that happened on the first week :)

✧My first week of uni had started this Monday. Although I had some anxiety over the fact that it was a whole new environment, with new people, I was still very excited! I was looking forward to pretty notes, new lessons, going to the library, and finally studying something that i am actually interested in! Plus my friend (who I will be referring to as red) was there with me the whole time, and we ended up in the same group (the English department is separated into 3 groups in my uni because there´s so many people in it) .

✧But as always things don't go as you expect. On the first day I was supposed to have 3 classes, that went on from 12:30to 18:30. But in the end, none of my 3 professors showed up. Me and red waited for all 3 of them, when the first one didn't come, we went out to get ourselves a snack and sat under one of the trees of the uni to eat (which was very fun honestly), then went back in, hoping the others would. The second didn't show u too, so I took red on a little walk to show her a short path from the uni to the beach, then we went back. We distracted ourselves until the last hour, and so when the third didn't show up too, we just picked up our bags and went back home. Discouraged, because a first day like that, after being so excited, is not really the best.

✧The next day, I had class in the morning, but honestly i expected the same thing to happen. I meet up with red and we go to our class, sitting in the second row. We we´re using our phones talking about how unlikely it is for the professor to come, as we we´re told that most don't show on the first week, because most students don't, and that is true, not even half the classroom was full (they are much bigger than usual classrooms, but I expected more people to attend, at least the first weeks). To our surprise, comes in our professor, who later on throughout my classes with her, I will learn is the sweetest person, and for once I feel like a professor wants to help her students. We go trough how the classes will go, how she will be grading us, and other things, and we also do some exercises to freshen up our memory and vocabulary. That is how my first paragraph writing class went. The second professor doesn't show up, but me and red hang out with some of the girls in our group, we all sat on the grass under one of the trees, talking about our first class we just had other things.

✧My next two classes we´re on Thursday, I had grammar first, with the same professor as paragraph writing, which I was happy about. We started our first lesson, I took notes, the class was peaceful and enjoyable; maybe because, again, more than half wasn't present, not that I'm complaining. For my second class, guided reading, red´s favorite subject for now (nerd), the teacher showed! (not me getting excited cuz my professor was there ;-;) This professor was a bit different, but he was still very nice, also passionate (I think he really likes Hemingway). We went over what we will be studying, the short stories, plays and poems we will be studying and the we had a little discussion, he would ask us questions related to the course and we answer.

✧Side note; our professor for grammar and paragraph writing told us she will be the one to help us with clubs and anything else. Me and red talked with her at the end of the class, and we told her about our interest in clubs, she said that she had noticed the two of us smiling when she brought up clubs, which apparently made her happy. So now me and red will try to make a book club and visual arts club with the help of our professors. We we´re really worried that there would be no clubs in our uni as we found no announcement anywhere, but I'm really grateful for this professor ♡.

♡Thanks for reading till the end, I will be leaving you all with some pictures i took this week :)

.・。.・゜✭・.・✭・゜・。..・。.・゜✭・.・✭・゜・。.

#studyblr #academics #dark academia #literature #english literature #lit #study blog #study aesthetic #student life #studying #study motivation #studyspo #university #september #productive #daily routine

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thegeminisage · 1 year ago

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it IS tng update time. saturday we watched "relics" and "schisms" and last night* we did "true q" and "rascals."

*times altered bc as usual im typing this up late at night

relics:

oh boy. ohhh my god

so like, i'd like to preface this with: i am not a scotty stan or anything. don't get me wrong i love the guy and i'm fascinated by the way he tricked me into thinking he had all ten fingers. like he's v fun and all. but im not like Extremely Emotionally Invested In Scotty. all right. that said

I CRIED. LIKE A BABY. no one was more shocked than i was. actually i'm sure catherine was not shocked at all

i didn't cry when he first showed up which is what i suaully do when i see spock. no, no, no, no. it was when he went to the holodeck and created the fucking BRIDGE OF THE ENTERPRISE. and they played the main theme!!! the sound effects were even the same!!!!!!! and like all his friends are dead now except spock and bones and bones frankly has one foot in the grave and another on a banana peel!!!!!!!! I'VE NEVER BEEN SO UPSET IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.

chronologically, this is also the last time we'll ever see a tos cast member coming back to reprise their role except for aos spock and um. an appearance which i do not wish to discuss now or ever. anyway it's definitely the last time in tng proper. and like yeah we have aos and snw and everything but those guys arent the OGs. AUGH.

also wah him saying the doctors are prettier on this enterprise. thats SO MEAN TO BONES………………….i miss him so bad and he's WAY prettier than beverly sorry beverly

i definitely wanted to kill geordi for yelling at scotty when he tried to tell his old man stories. im glad they hung out for the rest of the episode and that geordi treated him really niceys but it still felt a teensy bit patronizing of him at first like he was just doing it because picard told him to make scotty feel useful

THAT SAID. for once, i am pro picard, because picard is a giant nerd and he wanted to listen to scotty's old man stories as much as i did. not that i got to enjoy them while being blinded by tears. i'm actually genuinely tearing up right now while typing this just thinking about it. i think it was genuinely compassionate for picard to want to give scotty something he could genuinely help with in a way that WASN'T patronizing. like old people are just regular people you know. we all get old one day if we're lucky

spotted scotty's missing finger twice, which is two more times than i spotted it in my original watch of tos.

he remembered how to hide the missing finger (mostly) but forgot how to do his fake scottish accent. in his defense it's been ages and he was old but it was still funny

synthehol is wack. it's just another way in which there's no work-life boundary in tng. you're always on call, so you can never get drunk. you will NEVER have personal time aboard this ship. they can call you in your son's parent-teacher meeting. they can call you during birthday parties. you cannot raise your children here. but they do. anyway.

IT'S GREEN!!! i remember seeing a gifset of data floating around saying that to somebody, and then later i saw a gifset of scotty saying it in tos, but i didn't realize data was talking TO SOCTTY i thought it was just a reference!!!!!!! there were actually sooo many tos references in this episode, i was so pleased to hav caught them all <3

looooooved the dyson sphere. that was genuinely so fucking fascinating and it was the b plot!!!!! why can't it be the a plot!!!! it was so cool looking

i thot for a sec they were gonna kill scotty at the end and got REALLY worried but they didn't and he decided not to retire after all and good for him <3

anyway. that cry felt like a full-body workout. horrific.

schisms:

OFF GOES RIKER TO THE COFFEE SHOP

i waited so long to see the episode that gifset is from and it did NOT disappoint

my one sour note re: this ep was the beginning with data's poetry. can we please be nice to him and not loudly fall asleep in the front row. i know the circumstances are highly extenuating. i of all people understand sleep deprivation, which i am currently experiencing even as i type. but that was just rude!!! could he not have simply explained he was unwell and unable to attend!!!!!!! the crowd being restless was terrible. if you simply tell him that he has to have a limit on his poems he would understand. i'm glad geordi was an honest critic when data asked later but i would have liked to see data's results after incorporating his feedback. ok anyway

firstly, i loved when a little guy is sleep deprived. it was great when sam winchester did it and also great when riker does it

SECONDLY, that whole sequence with the table was fucking insane. everything getting darker and darker both literally and metaphorically and deanna starting to look uneasy near the end and riker's eyes being ABSOLUTELY HAUNTED and that table was basically like a chair, anyway

when they were like "yeah the aliens cut off your arm and reattached it" READER I HOLLERED. you can't just put a guy on a chair and tear his arm off and then make him forget stuff. please. it's been nearly 10 years.

when he's like theyre gonna take me again whether i want them to or not. yeah man they sure are. this isn't quite riker roulette but it is definitely adjacent

i think the best cure for insomnia is to be absolutely terrified of going to bed because you're still in uniform and have a tracking device on you because you are about to get abducted by fucking aliens. who could resist sleep after that.

i did wonder why he laid on the table so long before attempting his escape when time was precious but i doubt i could have done any better in his shoes. i sure did love the way that knife thing hung right above his neck though. i'm pretty sure we spent that entire scene hollering DISMEMBER HIM. TRAUMATIZE HIM!! and then they didn't <3 but i'm not even mad about it

anyway. 10/10 episode they need more space horror in star trek bc it's always fun. i remember reading that tos was originally meant to be space horror-y, but i found the pacing of those earliest episodes waaaay too slow. i want a star trek show with more dismemberment though.

true q:

mistakenly thot this episode was named qpid (got it mixed up) and was hoping for more of q wanting to fuck picard to so bad it makes him look stupid but all we got was one little arm around his shoulder. which was REALLLY funny because picard instantly made a face like he'd eaten sour lemon but we deserved more. to reiterate i do NOT want them to fuck i think the dynamic of q wanting to fuck and picard preferring to die first is the funniest possible set of circumstances

instead, q constantly displays predatory body language towards this EIGHTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL. he leans really close to her and whispers in her ear and all that stuff and i did Not like it

i kept waiting for this girl to secretly be his child, or for her parents to have once been friends with him, but they literally were just randos to each other. disappointing, especially after he vanished while she was having her emotional moment on seeing their faces

where do the puppies go when she vanishes them? do they cease to exist?? did she just kill 12 puppies on screen???? too horrible to contemplate. i wish i could make kittens out of thin air though. actually that would be a terrible power the world is overpopulated with kittens as it is but STILL.

i want to know more about the weather altering net. we could have an entire episode about that alone. you just...got rid of tornadoes? and forest fires? did you fix climate change??

riker almost being killed by an empty barrel sent me into fits. they didn't strap them down after what happened to worf? this spaceship gets jostled horrifically EVERY EPISODE. what are they thinking!!!!!!!!!

RIKER ROULETTE STRIKES AGAIN. her bringing him to the alternate dimension and trying to lay on the moves was bad enough but using her powers to MAKE HIM START KISSING HER? HELLO???? i'm still mad they wrote an episode about rape and just used it for deanna fetish fuel instead of actually discussing what this poor guy goes through. why is it somehow ok/not noteworthy when it's men. come on now

it was kind of silly to have this girl go "no way im a human forever" and then immediately solve climate change on this other planet because her lil crush (/VICTIM???) was down there. like that was so rushed and weird

ultimately not a very good episode. i only like one thing about q and they did NOT deliver. he was also a misogynist to beverly once...like, die

rascals:

this got a 1 on letswatchstartrek.com and i simply disagree. i would have given it a 2 or mmmaybe 3. well no probably a 2 but STILL. first of all, tng's children are ALWAYS charming, and these guys were no exception, save possibly the kid who was playing picard, who was fine until the tantrum scene/riker's son bit, at which point i wanted to die

i never want to hear riker say daddy again.

i HAAAATE the ferengi theyre racist theyre misogynist i HATE THEM.

i felt like there was a missed opportunity with obrien and keiko to have him be cool about it, instead of awkward like everyone else. like i obviously dont think they should be canoodling or anything, gross, but there's nothing wrong with a little platonic compassion. he got there in the end ig but idk it would've made a nice contrast

how old is their fucking baby??? i just looked it up and she was born at the beginning of season 5...her ass is NOT old enough to be talking yet let alone full complete clear sentences??????

anyway speaking of compassion............GUINAN AND RO

i actually unironically loved ro's little arc here. anyone who had a shitty childhood will tell you they'd cut off their arm before going back, but she had to go back anyway, and guinan neither pitied her nor minimized anything she'd gone through. instead she got to occupy that space in a totally harmless way and receive a little closure. while the rest of this episode was okay-ish to maybe less than okayish (i NEVER want to hear riker say daddy EVER again) ro's little bit was so so so good.

re: ro...i love that we don't constantly bring her past and situation up as if it's the only thing about her but nor do we shy away from it and how it's shaped her and the narrative has never once suggested she's too harsh or too angry or whatever. of course with a season and a half left there's still time to ruin it but so far her whole thing has been one of the very few instances where tng is doing everything wonderfully.

NEXT TIME: "a fistful of datas" (noooo it's a holodeck episode) and "the quality of life."

#personal #star trek blogging #tng lb #i hope im not at work when this posts but u never know.

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sable-skies · 9 months ago

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QUICK -while that Anon is incapacitated from being hit with TWO Voltron mentions- TALK EVEN MORE ABOUT VOLTRON!

Your biggest issues with the show! Wasted potential! And of course the biggest piece of Drama; SHIPS?!?!??

We will never get proper closure. We all share Voltron trauma ✌️😔

the people yearn for a five hour video essay talking about why voltron sucks. (I've literally wanted to make one for Years about it but alas, life happens)

i cant do that yet because of my schedule, but I will give you a snippet on some of my thoughts

Forgive me, for I am about to yap like I'm a fucking professor in the subject, got my master's years ago and all it did was give me fandom trauma (/lh, but there's a reason why I don't join fandom discords anymore or anything like that!) so strap in my brother (gender neutral)

I WILL ADDRESS THIS FIRST: Ships. I actually never shipped anything in VLD! No offense to Klance, but I never really got the appeal? And obviously there's that Other Super Popular one that I'm not gonna name because it's fans are gonna kill me, but I didn't like that one either.

For Klance; I think I never got it because I just. never considered them love interests? Like I would see people losing their minds over it and my (at the time, unknown) aroace ass would just slow blink at them like "yeah man i guess. what?". Could it have been good? Maybe, but it was never the horse I backed personally. I will say, some of the content that came from that ship was absolutely phenomenal though, never doubt what yaoi-obsessed teenagers can do.

I won't say much more on the fandom tbh, but trust me I saw some shit. This blog wasn't around back then but I witnessed some things. Remember the socks? I do.

Moving onto the actual show itself, I actually rewatched at least the first season (and half of the second) because a few friends and I were talking about it again and I wanted to try and get some notes for that video essay I'm totally going to do, and I realized that from the get-go the show was absolutely fucked worldbuilding wise.

I'm a big worldbuilding nerd, I never share my various insane projects but I literally make a new google document every week with ideas for various stories I would love to tell. Worldbuilding is such an essential part to telling a good story and having a believable world, and upon rewatching at least season 1, there's some loose foundation set but then completely butchered by season 3.

I will be honest, people always say that season 4 was the worst, and I will agree it did suck, but in my opinion season 3 was the worst for me. I absolutely hated that they started to switch lions, which I understand is a reference to the original 80s show, but it completely disregarded one of the lines in the FIRST EPISODE about how a bond between a lion and it's pilot is scared, cannot be forced, and is a rare thing. only for that to get thrown out the window. AUGH.

I'm a firm black paladin allura believer personally, I think that would have been so much fun seeing her step into the leadership role she pretty much had from the start alongside Shiro! (Never shipped them for anyone worried, they're just really good friends)

Speaking of friends; I don't think the show really established the team's overall bond well enough. Looking back, there's nothing in the show that promises found family friendships and all that, but the showrunners said that would be the case, and I think they were the biggest reason the show failed. (more on that later)

Sin Squad once said in one of their videos that everyone on the team felt more like co-workers and honestly? I still agree on that sentiment. I can believe that Pidge and Hunk are friends, I can believe that Keith and Shiro have a familial bond, I can believe that Hunk and Lance are friends. But Keith and Pidge? Hunk and Shiro? Hunk and Allura? There are so many potential really good friendships that are completely ignored in favor of other established bonds, and I think it makes the whole "we gotta work as a team!" message a lot weaker because of it. They're all co-workers at best, "strangers forced to be friends under the worst circumstances" at worst (shout out to keith for that line, he was actually spitting)

Additionally, and this is just because I'm still a big Keith head at heart (when I was 15 I wanted to go by that name because I was so attached to him. its funny looking back), I really dislike how they treated his character? In season 1 he didn't get much development, but we got the hints of him being half-galra, and I loved that! Season 2 really built on him and S2 E8 "Blades of Mamora" is still my favorite episode. I love that one with my whole fucking heart. Oh my god.

But then season 3 hit, forced him into a leader positions I don't think he ever grew into, and then his. mom. came back. Don't get me wrong, I love Krolia (big fan of women), but all of Keith's angst being cured by spending a few space whale years with his mom continues to completely disregard the bonds he made with his team. And Keith isn't the only one who suffers from this, everyone does.

I understand family is an important bond (despite the fact that I keep many of my personal family members at arms length, for reasons) but every character only got a "complete" arc or ending when they were reunited with their blood family, not the "found family" that the showrunners promised. Pidge's only arc was finding her family, sure there was the stuff about nature and coding being similar but that was for a single episode. Hunk only got development again post season 1 when it was about his family being enslaved. Lance only ever wanted to see his family again, and then he never got an arc past that except for his dead space girlfriend. Shiro never even got an explanation for his family past his totally-boyfriend Adam.

SPEAKING OF ADAM

I will say that I disagree with the fandom's opinion that the entire show queerbaited with Klance. I think you had to have Klance-sized glasses on to see that. The show truly did queerbait with Adam though, with promoting and hyping him up for season 7, only for him to barely get a minute of screen time. Actually such a waste of time, and such a waste of an interesting character. Voltron writers and showrunners when i GET YOU.

A final note I'll make because I'll never stop writing otherwise: there was some discussion about whether or not the show's failure was the writers, showrunners, or executives fault. I personally think it was the showrunners who were at fault here. She-Ra came out the same year VLD ended, and it soared in terms of worldbuilding, storytelling, and queer representation.

For She-Ra to come out around 2018, I imagine these shows started development around the same time (Did you ever realize VLD only had a 2 year run time? 75 episodes in 2 years? I did and it made me upset.) They were probably working with same executives, under the same people, same deadlines, etc. She-Ra succeeded (i think), and VLD fell apart and crashed at the end. Hell, in the final year it was airing they were STILL in the storyboard process. I think the showrunner's either majorly mishandled the production of this show, or they were given shit terms and didn't do anything to make something of it. Either way, Lauren Montgomery and Joaqium Dos Santos I will remember your names forever because of it

(On a serious note, I don't actually dislike or hate them. I'm just disappointed in what happened is all)

Anyways that barely like. scratches the surface of many more issues I have with the show, but those are some of the major problems I saw in it!

And for some more positive notes: I love the ost of the episode where Allura's AI-father dies, it still sticks with me even now. (i ugly sobbed at that episode I'm sensitive to parental death), and Keith is still my beloved meow meow, I love him so much I miss him. Steven Yuen the GOAT. I also loved the concept of these bio-mechanical lions, they could've gone a bit more cosmic horror eldritch with them, but it's still good regardless.

shoutout btw to my friends who sat in call with me as I typed this like a madman.

#.txt #vld #vld crit

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gensokyogarden · 1 year ago

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Okay, in that case I shall first put on my nerd glasses and briefly explain patronage for the uninitiated.

Patronage is a political structure that has existed in a few societies throughout history, primarily republics. The Roman Republic is probably the most well known example but it also existed in Tammany Hall era America. The basics are that those with power (generally the upper class and/or established political figures) provide aid to those lower than them. Examples: a wealthy patron hosting banquets for the disenfranchised or a politician with sway helping someone starting in politics to get the county seat. Those who receive patronage become the patron's clients (patron is a funny word because it can refer to the one giving patronage or the one receiving it but I'm using client for the one who receives to make it more understandable). In turn the client's patrons repay their patronage in some way, often in the form of votes. In this way clients directly correlate to political power, so those patrons with the most capability to provide patronage have the most power.

Ask for the application in regards to Megumu? I'll start by stating that I think Megs rejects meritocracy outright. Her goals are to leave as much power within Gensokyo in the hands of the tengu but also, in particular, her own hands. Those who become powerful enough on their own through their merit is just another threat to her power, hence why she betrayed Chimata as soon as Chimi didn't need her. Ability doesn't get you any advancement. If anything, the opposite. She doesn't want useless underlings, your merit is what allows you to work for her in the first place and you should be honored it got you that far.

Instead Megumu values loyalty first and foremost. Her way of seeking loyalty is through a system of patronage. If you're a tengu and you need information on the next news scoop, training, wealth, connections, or a higher rank then Megumu is happy to give it to you, but you must repay her kindness in some way and service to her is the most common. The majority of Megumu's underlings are her patrons and in the back of their mind each is aware that she can strip everything she gave away at any time.

Loyalty is a must but it is not enough to satisfy her. To be her client you have to provide her with something. You may not always have what she wants but she'll shape you to give it to her. Does a wolf tengu want a promotion but thinks they have nothing to give her? Don't worry, she's always wanted the commander of the south outpost under her thumb. You want another Daitengu to notice you? She'd love someone to report on their business.

Megumu does genuinely want the best for all tengu but she is a creature driven by greed and ambition. Regardless of how many clients she gains she would never challenge Lord Tenma but the other daitengu? ... Well she just happens to think they'd function best with herself as the tengu's shogun and Tenma as their emperor.

As for those associated with her? In Tsukasa's case she is a client but a bit more than that. Megumu sees a lot of herself in Tsukasa's ability to manipulate and use others. For that reason I think she favors Tsukasa almost like an apprentice or a pseudo-niece. Given pipefox are also typically wizard familiars and Megumu partially takes her name from a god of them I also personally see Tsukasa as her familiar but I think you could argue Touhou 19 disagrees with that.

In Momoyo case, she's definitely not Megmeg's client in fact Momoyo exists entirely outside of the Tengu's structure ... and that's kind of nice. Megumu legitimately sees her as a friend and an equal in strength. That's a relationship that she can't have with most tengu as she needs to be above it all to act as their patron. Plus she's aware that if she became their friends ... it might hurt to have to use them as tools. So having Momoyo? It's just really nice to have a friend.

#mountainofhistory #beyond the border ~ ooc #garden almanac ~ headcanons #tengu rose ~ megumu #pipe foxglove ~ tsukasa

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meezer · 1 year ago

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hi accy i love you so much. i just wanted to say i am a fellow gale lover and i love how he is a complete nerd but also a failure and i relate to it so much. what is your favorite thing about him i must know

SOSHIIIIII I LOVE YOU!!! AND I AM SOOO HAPPY THAT YOU'RE A FELLOW GALE LOVER. shaking with excitement. this was such a wonderful ask to wake up to. thank you so so much for asking. I ALSO LOVE HOW NERDY AND PATHETIC HE IS. every time there's an in-game acknowledgement of how... pathetic he is. that makes me swoon so much.

I love everything about him tbh so it's very hard to choose... when I was just starting to play the game I was Really taken in by how kind and altruistic he is. there's ofc the approval whenever you make a 'good' choice + how he's SO impressed when tav does something heroic! and when he talks about it, you definitely get this sense that he wants to make the world better and holds a ton of admiration for the people who do these grand gestures towards its betterment. when he first opens up to you about his folly he has this self-deprecating tone of "ahhh I'm such a piece of shit I'm the worst man alive... I understand if you don't want me around" it's like. man. it is so clearly obvious from everything you say and do that you care a whole lot about others. you're good. in every way that matters to me you are good. even the thing he did for mystra that resulted in him being stuck with the orb was, in part, because he wanted to do something nice for her, someone he loved. it's hard to fault him for that.

I also looove the way he speaks. besides the fact that he has a pleasant voice, it's the fact that he is SO eloquent and artistic and witty. I'm also thinking about how, if you imagine kissing or going on a walk with him hand-in-hand while you're channeling the weave together, and then you ask him how he felt about what you imagined, he's like "oh, I was surprised. but pleasantly so!!" 😭 and that just meant so much to me as someone who... needs reassurance from the people I love that they aren't mad at me. it's just so considerate of him to say it like that and. yeah it made me really happy. I made a post a while ago like "I'm bothered that when he first introduces himself he says he tries his hand at poetry when the mood strikes him but he never actually speaks any poetry in-game." I was referring to him actually reciting some poetry but like. in many ways I was so wrong because EVERYTHING he says is poetry. ugh don't get me started on the way he talks to a romanced tav because that's ESPECIALLY so. INSANITY. insane how perfect this man is. erm.

OH haha another thing is. when he tells you that the night you spent together was wonderful and that now he wants to live etc and he's expecting a response back you can tell him something like "I'm flattered, but you're putting too much pressure on me, I can't be your crutch" and if you say that he's like "OH NO NO NO you're not my crutch! I'm perfectly okay! perfectly stable! haha!! don't worry about me!!" and I always interpreted that as him... quite obviously lying but just not wanting to lose tav so making himself seem a lot more detached and cooler than he is. I love you so much water sign man... also the fact that if you tell him after your night together "funny you should say that, I recall you doing all the work" he specifically talks about giving tav oral sex. much ink has been spilled on this subject, I'm sure, but uh. yeah. it's such a cute moment. he's the best. he's the cutest and sweetest ever I think, and I would do anything for him. which I guess is lucky, because I'm told the feeling is mutual 😁

AND ALSO I LOOOOOOVE that he is kind of a homebody and a malewife... I'm specifically thinking about that one dialogue where he tells you about how he was planning to introduce you to tara over dinner and how he has a magnificent wine cellar and he makes his own homemade hundur sauce with a family recipe it is just. UGH 😩 it's very effective on me what can I say. also this is a very small thing but lately I've been thinking about how adorable it is that gale has a good relationship with his presumably large extended family ("the dekarios clan is scattered far and wide," he says when talking about sending invites for his and tav's wedding). it's very important and endearing to me especially as a guy who... has never had that kind of familial relationship but does kind of crave it.

the thing that especially strikes me rn is just how much he loves tav if you romance him. like he really falls deeply in love with them and he loves them more than he loves even the most important things in his life: mystra and himself. "With you, I forget my goddess. I love you." 🤪💔 GALEEE. I'M CRAZY. and he loves tav enough to listen when they ask him to abandon his dreams of godhood. can you imagine that? can you imagine listening to someone asking that of you just because you love them SO much that it's not worth losing them for anything in the world? yeah I really love that kind of DEEP DEEP devotion and self-sacrificial love that he has because well, I relate, a lot. and it's so beautiful to me that this experience of love that I've personally felt (though not ever reciprocated) was rendered into a digital format through gale's character. I just know we would be sooo uncannily obsessed and in love with each other. he's legit kind of perfect for me so I am glad we found each other 💗

*scrolls back up* *looks at the length of my response* OH MY! 😳 sorry about the long long response! I have also had some wine so hopefully I am coherent... thank you so much for the ask, I love talking about gale. he makes me happier than most other things in my life rn. love you soshi!!!!

#soshinee #bg3 spoilers #thank you so much soshi mwah!!!#pookie

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kylesvariouslistsandstuff · 2 years ago

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WISH Worrying

I'm seeing some folks wondering where the "marketing" is for WISH, the new Walt Disney Animation Studios film...

A movie that opens Thanksgiving week, quite a few months out from now...

I predict the trailer for this picture, a Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn-directed animated film that celebrates Disney's 100th anniversary, will debut in June. If we're lucky, we hear a little something during Disney's presentation at CinemaCon tomorrow.

Anyways, June... But that's so late, you may say?

Let's go back to 2010... TANGLED.

The teaser for that movie debuted in mid-June of 2010, in time for the release of Pixar's hotly-anticipated TOY STORY 3. Then it got a proper trailer in the early autumn. TANGLED opened pretty well and had excellent legs, and was quite popular at the worldwide box office. Hey, $590m+ is nothing to scoff at!

The same strategy was applied to 2012's WRECK-IT RALPH. That movie made over $470m worldwide.

2013. Did it again. With FROZEN... Do I even need to say more?

They also did the same for BIG HERO 6 in 2014, and MOANA in 2016.

They made an exception for both RALPH BREAKS THE INTERNET and FROZEN II, though. Both November releases in their respective years, the teasers for those popped up around February.

Then WDAS circled back to that strategy for ENCANTO. They probably would've done it for RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON, if it had remained a Thanksgiving 2020 release as originally planned. Before COVID-19 and other complications with Disney's schedule resulted in it being pushed back to March of 2021. STRANGE WORLD did the same thing, first look in June, movie released in November.

Difference is... TANGLED, WRECK-IT RALPH, FROZEN, BIG HERO 6, and MOANA, by various metrics, performed well at the box office.

ENCANTO dealt with the Delta and - later - Omicron variants of COVID-19, while families - tight on money - saved their dollars for something like SPIDER-MAN: NO WAY HOME or even something like GHOSTBUSTERS: AFTERLIFE. ENCANTO hit its stride after it came to Disney+, after making a so-so $96m at the domestic box office and little more than $200m worldwide (not great against a $120m+ budget).

STRANGE WORLD altogether failed, right out of the gate and couldn't really leg it up. Went quickly to Disney+ within weeks of release. Far past the Omicron variant and with many families back in the theaters, as evidenced by how amazingly MINIONS Deux did and how PUSS IN BOOTS Dos *really* legged it up, what happened with STRANGE WORLD?

People often say "it had no marketing!"

But it did... Two trailers, quite a few ads, TV spots, some merch, the usual. The problem was, none of that stuff got audiences interested in seeing it. Thus it opened badly, and audiences didn't like it much either, hence the poor CinemaScore grade and subsequently bad legs. (It had to be the homophobia, because the movie - while rushed in my opinion - is really no different from most other animated movies out there. It's not like it was some weirdo niche esoteric movie that was audience-unfriendly. Plus, for whatever reason, most sci-fi animation like this has a hard time connecting.)

WISH looks to be what the public usually associates with a Disney animated feature: A princess, cute animals, songs, apparently a traditional villain who is evil and scary, magical stuff all around. It's about where wishing stars come from, for chrissakes. Apparently it's going to be loaded to the brim with Easter eggs and references to classic Disney animated movies, too. I don't know, I hear conflicting reports from within the trenches on this one. Disney's positioning it as some major origin story for several of the iconic Disney animated movies (when the "wishing star" only really appeared in PINOCCHIO and THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG some 69 years apart from another, and I guess you could count 'Faith is a Bluebird' from THE RESCUERS), but other things tell me that this is not at all the case, and that it's just going to have some fun stuff for us nerds to keep our eyes peeled for.

Anyways, WISH seems like an easy-enough sell. That Disney can easily marathon run from June to November, like they did with TANGLED and FROZEN and MOANA and such.

The real hurdle is always the challenge of... Making audiences like what they see. That's actually easier said than done, and if I have to pull that William Goldman quote out again, I shall!

Whatever was in those trailers for STRANGE WORLD just didn't do it. And with families and audiences choosier than ever before, given how goddamn expensive movie trips are, and other stuff vying for their attention... WISH's teaser, trailer, TV spots, et al. will have to work hard to get their eyeballs. Getting the marketing started earlier doesn't mean anything. If it did, THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG would've been a bona fide blockbuster and there'd be at least one sequel to it and several new hand-drawn Disney animated movies. The teaser for that movie debuted in summer 2008, about a year and a half before its December 2009 release... But the movie opened with a meager $24m, and had to rely on strong word-of-mouth to eke it past $100m domestically... With AVATAR and the ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS sequel playing next door, no less.

Again, if WISH "looks good" to audiences, then it'll open fine and leg itself up over the holidays quite nicely. I can see it opening with at least $40m over the 3-day, should audiences not determine that all their hard-earned money goes to something like THE MARVELS, or WONKA, or that HUNGER GAMES prequel, or TROLLS BAND TOGETHER even.

We gotta see how Pixar's ELEMENTAL, their first full-blown theatrical release original movie since COCO... Yes, COCO, way back in 2017... ONWARD doesn't count, it literally opened the week before everything shut down. It only lasted two weeks in theaters, and then went straight to On Demand and Disney+ right after. We gotta see how ELEMENTAL does, first. That's the one to look out for.

Disney arguably baked a lot of folks' brains, sort of training them to say "I'll just wait till it comes to Disney+." I think we're even starting to see that with the once-foolproof Marvel movies, too. Again, trips to the theaters - especially for a family - are expensive, and it's a gamble each time our. Your experience could totally suck, and it might not even be worth the hassle. But ooooh, in a few months, there it is! In our living room, on our pretty high quality HDTV! $100+ saved!

It's gotta have a real hook now, a real "you gotta see this in a THEATER" hook. Like TOP GUN: MAVERICK had last year, like AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER had. I hear-tell that returning CEO Bob Iger is trying to restore that to Disney after the previous CEO's aggressive pivot to streaming. I don't doubt that WISH is a priority now, given that WDAS movies used to make bank before COVID-19. Sometimes more so than even the Marvel and Star Wars movies. Ditto the Pixar films. COCO was Pixar's last original box office biggie, and that made over $810m worldwide. A couple of their latest sequels, like INCREDIBLES 2 and TOY STORY 4, easily crossed the big billion worldwide. WDAS' last original blockbuster was MOANA, which made over $680m, while sequel FROZEN II is the second highest-grossing animated movie for the time being.

So, it would be silly of the rearranged structure of Disney's entertainment division to disregard ELEMENTAL (which is screening at Cannes, that's a *big* deal!) and WISH. They both look very "just as you like 'em" kinda movies, in that ELEMENTAL is yet another exercise in the "what if [insert x thing here] was a big city/factory/world with feelings?" template that is often associated with Pixar, and in that WISH is all the stuff general audiences tend to associate with Disney Animation. Maybe not the most exciting things to some of us, but if they have win back paying moviegoers with these old chestnuts, so be it.

Anyways, I hope both do very, very well. If ELEMENTAL does pretty good, we might have an idea of what kind of numbers Disney-released animated movies are capable of scoring in a post-Disney+, post-outbreak world.

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