#we made a music video as children to Rock Me

[sallysetoncore]

thinking a lot about the dynamics and mechanics of one direction. simon cowell throws together these five dudes who, at the beginning, are like, just some guys. i've seen harry's first audition. it was fucking bad. and they just look like normal guys. fast forward they are now five of the like. idk. all five are attractive and have massive groups of fans and a handful of gay allegations (obviously. OBVIOUSLY. two more than the other three.)

like "i'd do niall" is so insane because like. you have three other hot friends. why niall? why did you say that? like i get it. niall's MY favorite. but i'm not publicly stating (fairly unprompted) which of my four best friends/coworkers i would bang.

and then zayn leaves and the world collapses for a bit and then the whole band breaks up and like. one of y'all is . pretty obviously. way more successful than the other ones.

but also like, seeing harry (much like seeing taylor, and olivia, etc etc etc) is a status marker. you don't even have to like him that much, but you go if you can for the outfits and the bracelets and the instagram posts.

idk i got thinking a lot about this bc i saw niall last night (so good btw) and he kept talking about how lovely and large the crowd was (sold out, but a small ampitheater— maybe 6-7k?) and i just was thinking like. you've played to much bigger audiences than this. sold out stadiums. bigger than stadiums. but he genuinely seemed so happy to be playing for us. i wonder how different it feels to play for like 15k but they're there for five of you versus 6k who are they Just For You.

anyway i too am a 5'8 irish bottle blonde who is growing out the brunette hair and if i wrote music, most of them would probably be "godddd this woman is so cool.... too cool for little ole me" too.

[paulmccart]

We're Not Gonna Take It! And the Story of How We Almost Did

Protesters outside of the PMRC senate hearings.

Are you a victim of rock? Well maybe you aren't, but all the way back in 1985 a group of prominent D.C wives felt that they were.

These women, with the help of Beach Boys member Mike Love and Joseph Coors, the owner of Coors Beers, formed the PMRC (Parents Music Resource Center).

Their reasoning for forming as co-founder Susan Baker put it:

"It started because one day my 7-year-old came in and started quoting some of Madonna's lyrics to me, wanting to know what they meant. And I was shocked. I knew that you had to be concerned about movies and TV, but I didn't have a clue that my 7-year-old would be exposed to inappropriate songs."

The goal of the PMRC was to give parents more control over what their children could listen to. As well as implementing a rating system for music with bad language, sexual themes, and anti-Christian messages just to name a few. Eventually the group made a list of the fifteen worst songs, in their opinion and labeled them "The Filthy Fifteen".

(And it also happens to make a killer playlist)

Besides a rating system and lyrics printed on album covers the PMRC had several other goals including:

"...records with explicit covers be wrapped or kept under the counter; that record companies reassess contracts with performers who engage in sexual or violent acts on stage; that broadcasters be pressured to exhibit "voluntary restraint" by not airing offending music videos, which would also be rated."

All that noise coming from the PMRC culminated on September 19th, 1985. When a hearing in the senate occurred. Two musicians were called in on behalf of the music industry, Frank Zappa and Dee Snider of Twisted Sister. Two of musics most studious and serious creatives.

Zappa and Snider both gave eloquent defenses of what they deemed to be free speech.

But the PMRC had a trick up their sleeves... or so they thought.

They'd also invited John Denver to speak that day, assuming that he would stand with the side of "family values" but they were mistaken.

John Denver's testimony was the most scathing that day. He cited his own experience with having some of his music banned from radio. Even going as far as comparing the PMRC and groups like it to Nazi book burnings.

So what did the PMRC end up accomplishing? You know those tiny explicit labels in the corner of some albums? You can thank the PMRC for those. When they were originally introduced they were called "Tipper Stickers" after one of more outspoken PMRC members Tipper Gore (wife of Al Gore).

So while we didn't exactly take it, for a time we almost did. And thanks to testimony from Frank Zappa, John Denver, and Dee Snider, we can regularly enjoy any kind of music we want to- even the songs that promote the occult.

Both photographs come from Mark Weiss who photographed the event for Rock Scene Magazine.

[stargazer-sims]

Takashi Abbottsford for @jonquilyst Total Drama Sims 2!

Name: Takashi Abbottsford Pronouns: he/him Gender Identity: cis male Sexuality: bisexual Aspiration: Extreme Sports Enthusiast Traits: Nosy, Dance Machine

__________

Takashi: Hey, world! How's it going? My name is Takashi Abbottsford, and I'm from Willow Creek. I'm sixteen years old, my birthday is August 13th, I'm a student at Willow Creek High, and I like pizza and energy drinks. Actually, my dads always say I probably don't need energy drinks, but hey... we can always use an extra boost, right?

Let's see... Other stuff about me... I love sports! I like snowboarding, rock climbing, soccer and swimming the best, and every time we visit my Papa's family in Mt. Komorebi, I always spend as much time as I can on the mountain. Shredding is life! Yeah!

Um, okay... My favourite colours are green and blue, and my favourite season is winter. I like video games and I like to cook. I also like dancing, like a lot, and I like rocking out to my favourite bands. I can play the piano too, although not as well as my brother Forest, which is a bummer because he won a medal at the youth music festival last year and I kinda messed up during a trio performance with two of my sisters, and of course Forest made fun of me about it. Siblings... ugh!

Yeah, so while we're on the subject of siblings, I should probably tell you about mine, and my two dads as well. My family falls squarely into the category of 'wild facts you could never make up', no joke.

We're a stupidly large family, just so you know. I'm the youngest of six siblings, and all six of us are science babies. My oldest siblings are Camellia and Forest, and they're twins. Next is Matsu, and then there's the triplets; Midori, Willow and me. Oh, and if you're wondering about why some of us have English-sounding names and some of us have Japanese names, it's because our Dad, Fox Abbottsford, is a Canadian and our Papa, Takahiro Suzuki, is Japanese. They met in Japan when Dad was there on a working holiday visa, and they have this absolutely crazy love story, but that's a tale for another time. The reason for our mixed bag of names is because they wanted us to have names that reflected both their cultures, so here we are.

Oh, and fun fact. Me, Matsu and Midori don't have middle names, which is part of Japanese naming tradition. Forest, Camellia and Willow do have middle names, and I don't know if I should be envious of that or grateful that I only had to learn how to spell two names instead of three when I was in first grade and we were all practising how to write them.

Right. Why did I sign up to be on Total Drama?

Hooo man... where do I even start with that? When you're one of six, 'total drama' is a way of life! I figured I'd be pretty good at it, because I'm used to chaos. I mean, 'chaos' should be our family motto or something.

Actually, let me tell you the real reason I signed up, besides the ongoing total drama in our household.

When you're one of six, there's this never-ending competition for attention, and this constant need to distinguish yourself from your brothers and sisters. Don't get me wrong. I love all my brothers and sisters, especially my older brother Matsu, but it's hard to be the youngest and the most unremarkable. I don't just have one shadow to live in. I have five.

For example, my absolute nerd of a brother Forest is like, this insanely gifted artist, just like Dad. Forest already has his illustrations in a children's book and he's only 18. Also, despite being Nerd Number One, he somehow managed to land the most popular girl at school as his girlfriend. Also, Forest's girlfriend Caroline is hot and she's a star athlete. Everybody's always talking about how great they are together. Like, how's a guy supposed to level up to that?

My other siblings all have their thing, too. My sister Camellia is good at acting, and Matsu is amazing at sports and the captain of the cheer squad. Midori and Willow are identical, which always gets them noticed just because, but also Midori is already planning her career as an aesthetician, and Willow is super-smart like Forest and wants to become an engineer.

As for me, I'm not sure what I want to do yet. I'm okay at most things, but not awesome like my siblings, and I don't have my future figured out like some of them do. I'm thinking maybe I'd like to be a police officer and work in something science-y like forensics, 'cause I really love science. Or I might like to be a journalist, 'cause I'm good at finding out stuff that people don't necessarily want me to know.

My dads keep telling me that being nosy isn't really a good thing, but I prefer to think of it as inquisitiveness. Anyway, I'd use my powers for good, so I think it's okay.

Everyone says I talk too much, so I should probably wrap this up so I don't annoy people too much. Kinda insecure about that, to be honest, but like... I can't help myself. Sometimes I feel awkward 'cause I don't know if I'm talking too much or not and I'm worried about what people might think. Like, 'Oh no, not that guy again. He can never shut up', or whatever.

Okay, that's it, I promise! I'm super pumped about this show, and I can't wait to meet everyone! Bring on the adventure and bring on the drama! Your boy Takashi is READY FOR IT! Woo!

[eldar-of-zemlya]

A few days ago, I realized that I’ve spent my last three birthdays in three different countries—each one a temporary home, but never quite the real home. And since today is my birthday, it feels like the right moment to share my story—a story about growing up queer in Russia, navigating an absurd system, escaping it, and constantly being on the run. It’s a long journey, but one that I hope will offer some insight as I reflect on where life has taken me so far.

Illustrated by yours truly.

I was born in Russia, in a small countryside town that sits right on the border between Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. Like many families in this region, mine is a chaotic blend of Slavic identities, plus a bit of Tatar heritage on my father’s side.

We come from a long line of Orthodox priests who were repressed and executed by the KGB during Stalin’s regime. The only branch of our family that survived had to be constantly on the run, changing towns and professions to avoid persecution as the children of “enemies of the nation.” I guess that’s the family curse I’ve never been able to escape—always searching for a homeland and always running away from it.

My father was an artist and my mother a university professor. My father was so absent from my life that when my parents separated when I was five, it took me two weeks to notice he was gone. My first question wasn’t even about him—it was about our dog. “Mom, where is Julie?… And where is Dad?” After that, my mother had to return to work to provide for me, so I spent most of my early years at my grandmother’s house, left to my own devices.

In pre-school, I was obsessed with Michael Jackson, rewinding the same VHS of his music videos until it barely played anymore. In primary school, I had a bunch of Tokio Hotel’s songs burned onto a floppy disk by my mother’s colleague, who had access to the new wonder of the time—the World Wide Web. I’d wait eagerly for their music video to play on some random music channel, glued to the screen in our cramped, Soviet-era Khrushchyovka apartment. That’s when I stumbled upon something that started a chain reaction that, in hindsight, brought me to where I am now.

The lower third of the screen briefly flashed a title: “LM.C — Ghost†Heart (Japan).” At first, there was nothing particularly strange about the music video, except maybe that it was from Japan. But when the two “girls” began singing with a voice that was unmistakably male, I realized they weren’t girls at all. There was something captivating about how they embodied both masculinity and femininity so beautifully at the same time. I didn’t even know the word “androgynous” back then, but I instinctively recognized that the same thing that had drawn me to my previous interests was now pulling me toward them.

As soon as we finally got our first slow dial-up connection, I searched for LM.C. That’s when an entirely new world opened up to me—J-rock, Visual Kei, a genre of Japanese music that focused on extravagant stage costumes where musicians often wore dresses and makeup. I was immediately hooked.

And I wasn’t alone. There was a small but growing community of J-rock fans across Russia, even a few in my small town. Some were teens, others pre-teens like me, and even a few adults. We would gather on Lenin Square—the heart of our little town—dreaming and talking about Japan, anime, and J-rock. My mom often came with me to our local meet-ups—not just to show support, but for safety. We were what others called “non-formals”—subculture kids. Our high platform boots, chains, band shirts, and unconventional looks made us stand out in our post-Soviet town, often attracting unwanted attention. People would make snide comments, and the police would sometimes chase us off. Once, one of the guys in our group got ambushed by gopniks, and they ripped chunks of his long hair out of his scalp. Being different was dangerous in the Russian countryside.

I was always open about the bands I listened to, which earned me the label “the weird kid who listens to Japanese transvestites and watches cartoons for kids.” (Honestly, I was ahead of my time. Nowadays, kids get bullied if they don’t watch anime.) Through all of this, my mom was incredibly supportive. I would sew Visual Kei-inspired outfits from fabric scraps and even dyed my hair red once. That might seem normal now, but back then it made me the laughingstock of the whole school. Even the teachers thought I was strange and probably wished they could get me in trouble. But there was nothing they could do aside from making the occasional snarky comment about my looks. Our country didn’t enforce a school dress code, and I was at the top of my class, so they had no grounds to discipline me.

Naturally, discovering anime led me to yaoi and slash fanfiction. At the time, our country was still relatively free, and LGBT stories weren’t illegal yet—considered strange, disgusting, and perverted by some, but not illegal. Somehow, I could relate to the characters, even though I was a straight teenage girl, which was incredibly confusing. I wanted to be a man, have a male body, and yet I was also attracted to men. My confusion with gender and sexuality was overwhelming, and I was stuck in a linguistic bubble, trying to make sense of myself with whatever scraps of information I could find in Russian. I read about “tomboy,” “butch,” “femboy,” and even “fag hag,” but none of it quite fit. Then, one night, I stumbled across the Wikipedia entry for “trans man.” I’d heard of trans women from scandalous Russian talk shows and the occasional foreign film, but trans men? At that time, the Russian Wikipedia article on “trans man” was just a single, pathetic paragraph. I could hardly believe it was a real thing, but deep down, I knew this was the answer I’d been searching for.

People often ask trans individuals, “When did you realize?” But for me, there was no single moment. It was a process of piecing together feelings I’d never had the words for—kind of like that scene in The Man From Earth when John Oldman, a man who’s lived for 45,000 years, is asked by a therapist, “When did you realize you were a caveman?” and he responds, “When I heard the word ‘caveman.’”

As always, I turned to movies to understand myself better. I found a clunky Russian website called KinoPoisk (Film Search), typed “LGBT” into the search bar, and watched every movie that came up. That’s how I discovered Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Breakfast on Pluto, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, and many more. Seeing LGBT characters on screen—characters who felt what I felt—was everything to a lost, confused teenager in the Russian countryside.

Over time, my obsession shifted to TV series fandoms like Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Star Trek. And when Sherlock BBC came out, my mom joined me, and we both dove headfirst into fandom life. She also started reading fanfiction, and before long, she was writing it herself. After all, who better to write fanfiction than a middle-aged Russian literature professor who knew everything about storytelling?

Gradually, my fixation shifted from Japan to Great Britain, and my mom was right there with me. Despite not knowing a word of English, we watched everything we could find featuring our favorite British actors. It became our shared dream to visit England someday, but we didn’t have the money. My mom’s salary was $250 a month, and she was supporting me and our elderly grandmother, who had a pension of $80. But that didn’t stop us. I remember surviving on instant noodles and cheap yogurt for an entire year just to save up enough to travel to the West and see it for the first time.

In 2012, we finally made it happen. We signed up for a cheap bus tour that went through Europe—Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, Belgium, France, and the UK. It was life-changing. We saw a completely different world, cozy old towns that Russian cities had lost in WWII bombings, and we saw freedom. The first time we flew to London on our own, we bought tickets to a theater play featuring Mark Gatiss. Who would’ve guessed that on that very day, David Tennant, Steven Moffat, and his wife, Sue Vertue, would also be there! I awkwardly approached David Tennant and, in broken English, told him, “You are my lovely Doctor” (I meant to say “favorite” but didn’t know the word back then).

We ended up returning to London every year, going to theater plays with Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Hiddleston, Andrew Scott, Rupert Grint, and others. We stayed in cheap hostels and survived on McDonald’s, but we were living the dream.

As time went on, LGBT rights in Russia only got worse. Books, movies, and TV shows that even mentioned LGBT topics started getting blocked under the guise of protecting children from “LGBT propaganda.” But what these government suits failed to understand was that if I hadn’t discovered all those things as a confused teenager, I might have ended my life. When the repression began affecting fanfiction writers, we had to be cautious. One girl in our town was sentenced under the new law simply for having a photo of two guys kissing in her VK (Russian Facebook) photo album. My mom was a university professor and the sole provider for me, an underage kid. If it was discovered that she wrote slash, she could’ve lost her job, gone to prison, and I could’ve been taken away. It was terrifying. I watched our vibrant community being slowly choked out, and I knew it was now or never. I had to transition while it was still legally possible, and I could only do that if I moved to Moscow, where the only trans center in the country was located.

After graduating, I deliberately skipped one of the mandatory exams, which made it essentially impossible for me to get into any university in Russia. My mom, always understanding, accepted my decision, but the rest of the family was devastated. I was one of the best students in class, scoring 100/100 on my Russian and English final exams—something that seemed like science fiction (well, I learned my English from science fiction, so…). And here I was, with these grades, choosing not to apply to any university but instead to work in a shop.

Transitioning was expensive—around $1,500 for all the tests and evaluations—but I knew that if I stayed in the countryside, I’d be tempted to give up, settle down, and try to “fix” myself. As Dr. Frank-N-Furter taught me, “Don’t dream it, be it.”

As soon as I turned 18, I moved from the countryside to Moscow. To receive the official F64.0 diagnosis—“transsexualism”—I had to endure a grueling year-long process of psychiatric evaluations and tests, just so I could change my documents and flee the country. By then, I was already passing as a guy, which made job hunting infinitely more difficult. I tried toy stores, cosmetic stores, hotel cleaning… but no one wanted to risk being prosecuted for “LGBT propaganda” by hiring someone as gender-ambiguous as me. After endless rejections, I finally found a place that didn’t care whether you were gay, straight, or trans. That’s how I ended up working at a sex shop.

I could write a whole TV show based on that year of my life—armed robberies, kidnapping attempts, constant workplace drama, and a psychotic manager who was stealing from our salaries. None of us were even officially registered as employees. I’d work 24-hour shifts back-to-back, sometimes spending more than 48 hours at the shop, sleeping on the floor during the three-hour break we got at night. There were zero regulations, but despite everything, I made good money, and most importantly, I finally felt like I belonged.

Our team was a ragtag group of rebels—kids fresh out of high school or from poverty, who had come from all over Russia to the Capital, searching for a better life. What united us was a shared desire for freedom in a country that was becoming more and more totalitarian.

While working, I was constantly attending the “Center of Personalized Psychiatry,” where I felt like a guinea pig for doctors who knew nothing about gender identity issues. It seemed they had simply found a vacant spot to make money off devastated and depressed trans people. At the time, there wasn’t even an official document format that could be submitted to the government to allow a legal sex change. So, I had to jump through every hoop they put in front of me—filling out ridiculous questionnaires that asked whether I preferred pink or blue as a kid or if I played with dolls or cars. They explicitly told me to answer “how I thought they wanted me to answer” if I wanted to get approved for hormone therapy. So, for them, I liked blue, played with cars, and watched football and boxing.

When I finally got approved for hormone therapy, I ran into another obstacle: the financial burden of getting a prescription from the center for every testosterone shot. The prescription itself cost almost as much as the medication. Desperate, I turned to sketchy websites from “pharmacies” that constantly changed their URLs. That’s how I started getting testosterone through drop-offs, which we called “bookmarks.” I’d pay for someone to leave it under a bench or behind a tree. It was risky but much cheaper.

After enduring the year of evaluations, I finally received the long-awaited free-form paper from the center stating my diagnosis and the basis for changing my documents. But just as I was preparing to submit it, the government decided to overhaul the process. They introduced an official format for the document—good in theory but disastrous for my timing. Worse still, they added a new requirement: you had to have had top surgery before you could legally change your gender.

I was devastated. Top surgery had always been a dream of mine, but I was sure it would take years to save enough money—it cost $1,200. That’s when my mom stepped in and offered to cover it with her savings. I cried so much. I wanted the surgery, but I knew we didn’t have the money to spare.

At that time, my mom said something that has stuck with me ever since: “We never have money, but at least we have the life we want.”

So, I did it. But my happiness was overshadowed by guilt. I felt guilty for spending so much money, for leaving my job, and for being incapacitated during my recovery—unable to even help my mother around the house. By then, my mother had already started working at a university in Moscow, and after being able to provide for myself at 18, I suddenly felt like a burden. My mother, however, never saw me that way; she was incredibly happy for me. We agreed not to tell the rest of the family about my transition just yet.

Returning to my hometown in the countryside to change my documents was an experience in itself. I fully expected to be treated with hostility, but to my surprise, the civil workers made no comments. I later learned that I was the second person to transition in my town—the first female-to-male—but they acted professionally. The only comment came when I visited the citizen registry center, where old women, who had probably worked there since Soviet times, were running the show. My mother went with me for support. When I silently handed the new-format document to the elderly woman at the desk, she studied it carefully, then looked up at my mother and, smiling, said, “You have a boy now? Congratulations!”

This all happened during the summer. I was jobless, with new documents, and the next step in my plan was to flee to the West. Around that time, a friend sent me a random ad for a filmmaking program at Tallinn University in Estonia. I had never even heard of this tiny Baltic country before, but it was part of the EU, and the tuition was surprisingly affordable. I never pictured myself making films, but I knew I wanted to do something creative, so I applied the day before the deadline, not expecting much. To my shock, I soon received an invitation letter.

But there was still one more step—changing my foreign passport. In Russia, we have a national passport (in Cyrillic) and an international passport (in English), which allows travel abroad. To change the international passport, I needed a paper from the military conscription office, stating that I, as a newly-registered male, didn’t have to serve in the army and was free to leave for studies. Of course, I didn’t have such a paper, since I had never been registered for conscription in the first place.

This led me to our local conscription office. As soon as I explained the situation to the lady at the desk, she told me to stay quiet and led me to her boss. The military commander, sitting in his shabby countryside office under a portrait of Putin hung on a wall with peeling paint, was utterly confused.

“But I can’t issue him this paper because he was never registered as a conscript, which should’ve happened when he turned 15!”

“But he was a she when he was 15, sir…” his young secretary chimed in, causing the commander to spit in frustration and slam his fist on the table.

They were in a real bind. If I had transitioned from male to female, it would’ve been easy—they’d just throw my case out of the archive. But there were no regulations for how to handle female-to-male trans people.

“Okay, I think I have an idea of what we can do. When can you come back to my office?” asked the commander.

“Um, maybe tomorrow…” I hesitated.

“No ‘maybe’!” the commander shot me a stern look. “You’re a man now, so be specific.”

Suddenly feeling like James Bond, the commander deemed my case his secret mission. The next day, I returned to his office and was briefed on his plan: he was going to falsify my conscription record, making it look as if I had been a biological male my entire life, complete with medical exams and military training. He assigned one of his lackeys to follow me through the necessary medical evaluations, ensuring no one asked me to undress. The doctors, who were in on the plan, discreetly noted what they were supposed to.

Eventually, I was invited back to the commander’s office for the final round of evaluations. With the blinds pulled down and the door locked, I stood in the center of the room, surrounded by a circle of white-coated doctors—urologists, proctologists, allergists, you name it.

“Take off all your clothes,” the commander ordered.

“Well, I’ve seen a film or two that started like this…” I thought to myself.

“Now, spin around—slowly,” he continued.

And there I was, with my ass naked, turning in a circle like some Frankenstein’s monster as the doctors scribbled notes in their notebooks.

“Did everybody see everything?” the commander asked, and the doctors nodded quickly. “Okay, dismissed.”

In the end, I was issued a military ticket marking me as category “B”—not suitable for mandatory military service (probably due to having a cunt, according to their reports), but eligible for drafting in case of war or a military operation.

With that, I received my new international passport and was off to Estonia.

I was incredibly happy. Every day, I would go to the old town square just to sit there, gazing at the medieval towers and thinking, “I made it… I finally made it!” It was everything I had dreamed of and more. No one cared how anyone looked, LGBT people had no restrictions, and I saw same-sex couples walking hand in hand on the streets. This was the “Western dream” I had been chasing my whole life. Yet, something seemed off…

Over time, I started to notice a certain level of hostility from the locals when they found out I was Russian. That surprised me, especially given that Estonia had been part of the Soviet Union and still had a population that was about 30% Russian. Slowly, I came to realize the harsh reality—in the history books I studied at school, there was only one mention of Estonia: “1940—Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia join the USSR.” One sentence in a history book, which meant nothing to me at the time, encapsulated this entire country’s national tragedy. They tolerated the remaining Russian population, but the deep-seated resentment was clear. However, they failed to understand one important thing—most of those Russians were also victims of the regime, just like the Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Tatars, and countless others.

I vividly remember a moment when I was having a meeting with my new coworkers. After learning I was from Russia, one Estonian girl said, “My grandfather was repressed by Russians during Soviet times.”

“Mine too,” I replied, dumbfounded. She seemed confused. As I later found out, while our governments had their own agendas, their government had theirs. She was never taught that millions of ethnic Russians were also arrested alongside millions of national minorities.

This was something I had never anticipated. For the first time in my life, I wasn’t discriminated against because of my LGBT status, but because of my nationality.

I learned to live with it. I tried to adapt, not speaking Russian in public. Fortunately, my studies were in English, and my course was international, filled with people from all over the world—the U.S., Egypt, Germany, Nigeria, Latvia, Turkey… Honestly, the three years I spent studying film there were the best years of my life. Our professors were amazing, outgoing, incredibly creative, and they became our friends.

Yet, no one in my course, not even my closest friends, with whom I spent every day, knew that I was trans or the real reason I left Russia. They simply thought I was a biological male. After what I had been through in my own country, I still hesitated to share this part of myself, unsure of how they would react. It took a toll on my mental health, constantly coming up with stories to fill gaps in my history. Eventually, it became too much, and three years into our studies, I told everything to my four closest friends. They were surprised, to say the least, but endlessly supportive. I can’t even begin to describe how much I love them for that.

For my graduation film, I made a documentary—something I never imagined I would be interested in. Initially, I had ambitions to become a fiction director, but once I discovered that documentaries weren’t all just talking heads and British-accented voiceovers, I became captivated by them.

My graduation documentary was about my family—specifically, about my grandmother. My family, aside from my mother, still didn’t know I had transitioned. It had been four years at that point. I had a beard, a deep voice, and yet they still didn’t know. Every time I called them, I would try to make my voice sound more feminine (the story was that I got sick, lost my voice, and it permanently damaged my vocal cords). I love my family, and it’s precisely because I love them that I do this. I don’t want them to be ashamed or ostracized from their community. They live simple, rural lives. When my grandmother was born, Stalin was still alive. She had survived famine, unemployment, and disease, so she would never be able to understand this whole “transgender thing.”

The documentary did really good, with this idea, I got to attend pitching with BBC, Al Jazeera, CBC, Vice and many more industry giants. There were so many promises from big film festivals, so many opportunities. By the time I had graduated and was working a well-paid job, I was hoping to settle down in Estonia after four years of living there. Despite the country’s mixed reception towards me, I loved the place. It finally felt like home. A small, cozy home where I knew everything and everyone, with both personal and professional connections. I was learning Estonian, aiming to get citizenship, and dreaming of the future—the entire European Union would be open to me.

And then, on the 24th of February 2022, the war started. I can’t begin to describe what I felt—fear, grief, confusion. It’s too dark of a topic to delve into.

While I was scared and cried every day for my friends in Ukraine and my family on the Russian border, the war began to affect me directly, as a Russian living in the West. Deals I had with film festivals fell through because they didn’t want to seem like "Russia sympathizers" by screening a documentary directed by a Russian. The fact that my film was about the struggles of LGBT people in Russia, and clearly anti-regime, didn’t matter.

One of my friends was spat on while on the tram for speaking Russian to her mother on the phone. Another was refused entry to a thrift store because she was Russian. A close friend of mine, a well-known Russian-Estonian actor, was assaulted in a café while speaking Russian with his girlfriend. A man approached him, demanding that he kneel and beg for forgiveness for “starting the war in Ukraine.” When my friend, in perfect Estonian (he came from a mixed family with an Estonian father and Russian mother), reminded him of the Estonian constitution and its protection of freedoms, the man scoffed and said, “All Russians should have been deported from the very beginning.”

And it seemed like the government shared his beliefs. First, my residence permit was terminated due to my Russian citizenship. When I applied for a worker visa instead, I was handed a notice saying, “You are denied an Estonian visa for the reason of posing a danger to international relations, inner security, and the health of the Estonian population.” It felt like they thought I was carrying some sort of “Putin virus.” And this happened right after my documentary had been featured in the national competition at a local film festival, where I was representing Estonia...

It was the 27th of December 2022. I was given three days to leave the country—to sort out everything from the past four years, my entire life there.

It was then that I fully realized how fragile safety and belonging can be when they rest on the whims of politics and nationality. The dream I had spent years building crumbled in days. I was lost. I had no idea what to do. I couldn’t return to Russia—especially not after making such a personal documentary. The new laws there equated "LGBT movement" with extremist organizations. It wasn’t even safe for me to visit a doctor as a trans person. If they supported the regime, they could easily report me to the police, and I’d be arrested simply for having the body I have. Worse, I could be sent to the war—ironically, I was still marked as a biological male in Russian military records.

With no options left, I packed a tiny suitcase with essential items, left the rest of my belongings with friends, and bought a one-way ticket to Serbia—one of the few countries that still had visa-free entry for Russians. After the war began and the regime tightened its grip, Serbia had become a haven for hundreds of thousands of young Russians fleeing.

I met the new year of 2023 alone, in a strange country, watching fireworks from the balcony of a tractor driver named Stefan, who had rented me his Airbnb in the Belgrade suburbs.

Serbia turned out to be a completely different world compared to my experience in Estonia. I was still hesitant to reveal that I was Russian, but to my surprise, when I did, people mostly hugged me and invited me for a glass of rakija. Serbia has a long history with Russia—we were “brother nations,” and the Russian Empire had helped Serbia a lot in the past. That sentiment carried into how the locals saw Russians. Now, with so many of us in trouble and seeking refuge, they welcomed us with open arms.

The country itself wasn’t prosperous; it reminded me of the Russia of my childhood—shabby, torn apart, politically charged. I loved the people, and they seemed to love me back, but I knew I couldn’t stay. There were still many conservatives, and when I asked a bartender at a local underground gay bar about the situation for LGBT people, he laughed and said in broken English, “Like Russia, but small better.”

My plan was to apply for a German freelancer visa—I was making some money from video editing and color grading on the side, and I had a solid portfolio. I knew political asylum wasn’t an option. When the war began, I had tried to apply for asylum in Estonia, only to be told, “Have you been stabbed for being trans in Russia? No? Then call us back when you are.”

In Serbia, Russians were allowed a 30-day visa-free entry, so I joined what fellow expats called a “visa-run.” Every 30 days, someone would drive a packed minivan to the Bosnian border. We’d cross, stay in Bosnia for 15 minutes, smoke, and listen to stories of fellow Russians who had escaped. Then we’d return to Serbia, and our stay would reset. The local police knew about it and didn’t care—nothing illegal about it. I remember one time when we arrived during the border patrol’s lunch break. A young lady leaned out of the control booth, sandwich in hand, and asked, “Visa run?” When we nodded, she smiled and said she’d finish her tea before stamping our passports.

I lived like this for a year and a half in Serbia. It was nearly impossible to find a job without knowing Serbian, so I picked up small freelance editing gigs. Meanwhile, I was on a long waiting list for a German visa. Serbia had become a temporary stop for many Russians, especially LGBT people, trying to find a way into the EU.

However, after what I experienced in Estonia, my rose-colored glasses were off. I no longer viewed the West as a utopia. Every country has its problems, and there’s no true freedom anywhere in the world. Sadly, I had to learn this the hard way.

Throughout that year in Serbia, not much happened. I was extremely depressed and isolated, unsure of where my life was headed. So, I turned to what comforted me most—movies. I fell back into Star Trek. There’s something about its retro-futurism that helped me cope—I could lose myself either in the future or the past and forget about the present. I also started drawing again. I used to draw when I was a teenager and active in fandoms, but it had never really worked out for me. I still remember the first time I posted my art online—the first comment I got was a bunch of crying-laughing emojis.

Drawing helped me escape. Even while I was posting K/S smut, there were times when I had no money for food and was late on rent, all while my hometown was being bombed almost daily by Ukrainian forces. Immersing myself in the fandom helped me cope with the harshness of reality.

I had almost resigned myself to the idea that I would never be able to enter the West again. But then, one fateful day, I received the email I’d been waiting for—I was asked to pick up my visa. I cried and laughed; I couldn’t believe it.

The move to Germany was difficult. It’s a huge bureaucratic country, but I made it. My story isn’t finished yet—I’m still waiting for my residence permit, and God, I hope I get it. I know a bit of German, and I feel safe here, so I hope to settle down for good. For now, I work on my small business and draw K/S fan art on the side, finding solace in the creative space I’ve carved for myself. I’ve spent years running, surviving, and rebuilding. Where fate will take me next—I can’t be sure. But I know that whatever comes, I’ll face it as I always have—one step ahead, always moving forward.

[louisupdates]

[Translated from Spanish]

With the most loyal audience in the world: This was the return of Louis Tomlinson to Chile

Check out the best of the Brit's concert in Santiago this Friday.

By Milan Vrsalovic

The British pop-rock craze continues to have its fans throughout Chile. Not only for the young people who vibe with new groups in the world or artists who lead the genre, but also those who have been fans for more than a decade thanks to One Direction.

And this Friday, May 24, both groups were able to get together for Louis Tomlinson's return to Chile. After a triple night at the Movistar Arena a couple of years ago that was crazy, the Briton returned to Santiago to perform at the La Florida Bicentennial in front of nearly 20 thousand people.

Adults and children united in an audience that must be one of the most faithful in the world, due to their passion for Tomlinson and above all because of the tremendous fan projects that his followers did and gave an epic sense to the concert.

How was Louis Tomlinson's concert in Chile?

After 9:00 p.m., Louis Tomlinson arrived with his band-backup singer to the Florida Bicentennial stage. Fireworks and their hits The Greatest, Kill My Mind and Bigger Than Me were among the early hits.

In fact, perhaps the best Fan Action was experienced with Kill My Mind; where the fans raised and lowered their cell phones to the rhythm of the chorus in an incredible image that was experienced throughout the stadium.

Lucky Again, Holding on to Heartache and Face the Music continued in the presentation with Louis who sometimes made it seem like he had sound problems, while the screens had great moments with a very attractive graphic proposal with a camera recording nineties-style videos.

Then he played One Direction's first cover, Night Changes, which made the audience raise their white and blue cell phones for another memorable postcard. Tomlinson then sang Chicago and several fans changed the lyrics to Santiago, of course, and the artist followed.

The next one was a great Post Malone song that Louis covers, Chemical. That was perhaps the one that the public knew least about; and then he continue with All This Time and She is Beauty We Are World Class.

Between songs, Louis asked people to throw balls at him, knowing the singer's fanaticism for soccer. A large ball that he stopped on his chest and kicked was the former One Direction's great soccer moment so that later they threw a plastic ball at him to repeat the play.

Copy of a Copy of a Copy had another great fan action similar to Kill My Mind. Without a doubt, the audience came along and greatly accompanied Louis' singing, which at times was heard somewhat softly.

The setlist continued with more hits while between songs there were several interactions with the audience, where the British man interacted personally by pointing at various people in the audience and making gestures to them, in addition to all the time thanking the great turnout and all the participation of “Santiago” in the show. In addition to appreciating the beauty of the concert despite the cold that Louis himself noticed.

After Angels Fly, Louis and his team took a photo with the Chilean audience and then closed with Out of My Sistem before the encore that lasted several minutes, but did not fool any fans.

Saturdays, Where Do Broken Hearts Go by One Direction and Silver Tongues were the last three songs of the show before Tomlinson quickly said goodbye to an audience that was very happy with a night that was hardly cold thanks to all the emotion that the performance gave to the people who came to the Bicentennial of Florida.

PHOTOS: [x] [x] [x]

[icedbatik]

get to know me game (I was tagged by @rimouskis and @sportsthoughts ... thank you both!)

do you make your bed?

Yep! In part because I like having a nicely made bed, in part because I use my bed as my design board/work space when I'm quilting. And, in part, because it's an easy way to have some small bit of tidy space in a house that has too much stuff. (My core being is "neat freak" but my reality is "please pull a truck up so I can toss stuff out the window".)

what's your job?

I am a newspaper copy editor/writer.

if you could go back to school, would you?

It depends. Would I need to keep working? Would it put me in debt? I like learning, but I already don't have enough time in my day to do everything I want to do. If I had to write term papers and study for tests while working a full-time job and still taking care of my household (groceries, laundry, meals, yardwork, running errands, all the other odds and ends involved), I think I might crack.

can you parallel park?

Yes, though I rarely have the need. (If you follow the instructions carefully, it's amazing how well it works.)

do you think aliens are real?

IDK. I accept the reasoning that it's unlikely we're alone in the vastness of the universe, and that it's a bit arrogant to think we're the only ones. But I also think it's unrealistic to assume others take a form we'd immediately recognize. And, if there is intelligent life out there, why, exactly, would it mess with us?! Have you seen us lately?!

can you drive a manual car?

Yes. My brother loaned me his pickup truck to drive after I graduated from college. (He didn't need it at the time because of his job.) The idea of not having to make a car payment was great incentive to learn.

guilty pleasure?

I'm not sure I feel guilty about any of my pleasures. But they include Tumblr/fandom, writing fic, Pens hockey, quilting and a daily mug of good-quality hot chocolate.

tattoos?

I have a permanent spot on my skin from when I accidentally stabbed myself with a pencil as a kid. I'm pretty sure that's as close as I'm going to get. (Mine is big enough and dark enough that doctors routinely panic when they see it, thinking it's skin cancer, until I remind them we've had that conversation before.)

favorite color?

black with all the bright colors, particularly the off colors (fuchsia, turquoise, teal); and all the blues that make up the ocean (There's a reason why batik is my favorite type of fabric. Solid colors aren't nearly as interesting as lots of colors playing together.)

favorite type of music?

The most straight-forward answer is rock, particularly classic rock, though I like a lot of different types of music on a song-by-song (or artist) basis. Most country music doesn't do much for me. My last two musical purchases were Disturbed's cover of "The Sound of Silence" and Sufjan Stevens' "Illinois" album, which is the basis of "Illinoise" the Broadway musical.

do you like puzzles?

I guess you could say that, since I quilt and "Tetris" is my favorite video game.

any phobias?

I'm not into snakes. I'm trying to do better about not panicking over them, but I still have absolutely no desire to see them, whether in my yard or in a photograph.

favorite childhood sport?

Riding my bike.

do you talk to yourself?

Of course. (At least, that way, I know someone is listening to me!)

tea or coffee?

Nope. I prefer drinking clean water to dirty water. (The idea of having a cup of tea is appealing, but the reality has never done anything for me.)

first thing you wanted to be be when growing up?

A photographer.

what movies do you adore?

"Dave" and "The American President" are both older movies but they have lead characters (Kevin Kline and Martin Sheen Michael Douglas, respectively) who are kind of my fantasy president. Can't find funding for this program that helps children? No worries. We'll just stop paying $500 for a screwdriver we can get at the hardware store for $5 and use the leftover $495 (per screwdriver) on food programs and after-school programs and utility-assistance programs. It's not that hard.

I'll tag @pr-scatterbrain and @maljic and @ehghtyseven and anyone else who wants to play. (Maybe I want to know you and just don't realize it yet! )))

[bisnes-socks]

The Big Finnish Music Project for International Kääryleet, part 4.

Go to part 1 for all the context. We pick up where we left off in part 3, as the list is (more or less) in chronological order.

2000's here we come.

Anssi Kela

Within Finland, in the domestic market, one of the most successful artists of all time. His debut album was the most sold music album of the 2000's, only dethroned in 2012. A singer/songwriter popular among people of all ages, all over the country. Less of a massive star today, but still a well respected artist. Käärijä references and quotes his song 1972 in Menestynyt yksilö, but I wanted to link possibly his biggest hit, Puistossa, from 2001. A massive, massive hit and most people who were alive in 2001 can still sing this chorus, if nothing else.

Lordi

You might have seen Mr. Lordi in the DNA Christmas Kääryle ads last year, and if you're european and were alive in 2006, you probably know Lordi. But they became popular in Finland a few years prior to their Eurovision victory, with this song, Would You Love a Monsterman.

Pikku G

Okay but why did Nace mention Pikku G as a favourite finnish artist in their discord album party. Pikku G was a massively popular teen rapper in the early 2000's and made some sort of a comeback in 2017, i think. This song, Me ollaan nuoriso, was impossible to escape in 2003. He was 15 at the time.

PMMP

Iconic pop-rock duo, who made a comeback tour this year. This was their first single, Rusketusraidat, in 2003. It was a bit of a shock to a lot of people, two girls being so unruly and wild, and as such of course Paula and Mira of PMMP were quite the idols to especially a lot of young girls. They went on to have a really strong, popular and critically acclaimed career, and have since also done solo work. Paula Vesala in particular has been very successful solo as well.

Zen Café

Listen, Jere is a millennial. Which means chances are, he was traumatised by this video just like the rest of us, at the tender age of 10. Zen Café were a very significant band in the Finnish rock scene in the 2000's. They broke up in 2007. This song, Piha ilman sadettajaa, is from 2003, when they were at the height of their career.

METAL CORNER

I meantioned Lordi earlier as well, but Lordi could also count as hard rock, rather than metal. The early 2000's were a massively important time for Finnish metal, and it was when metal became almost mainstream in Finland. In the early 2000's, metal was everywhere, and as metal is very clearly an important influence in Käärijä's music, let's take a look at the metal scene in Finland back then. Again, not a complete list, but the two most internationally massive bands out of Finland, and the holy trinity of metal in the Finnish language.

--

Nightwish

Hands down the most internationally successful Finnish band of all time, Nightwish has sold well over 10 million albums globally. The linked song was their global breakthrough Nemo, in 2004. Nemo features their first singer, Tarja Turunen, who was very publicly fired in 2005 in a feud that resulted in a media scandal unlike anything before or since in the world of Finnish music. I'm not kidding, the literal prime minister was asked to comment on the situation. Still active, Nightwish is still to this day one of the biggest names in Finnish music and their influence in the world of symphonic metal globally is undeniable. They hold the record for most Emma Awards (Finnish Grammy) with 16 awards.

Children of Bodom

A metal band that is hard to pin down to a single genre, but melodic death metal gets mentioned the most. Named after a lake known by all Finnish people as the scene of a still unsolved triple murder, Children of Bodom is one of the most internationally successful Finnish bands of all time. The frontman Alexi Laiho, was voted to be the best metal guitarist in the world multiple times in international metal media. Alexi Laiho passed away in 2020. This song is one of their bigger hits, In Your Face.

Kotiteollisuus

They are like the suomirock band of the metal scene. They started in the 90’s, but had their breakthrough with their 2003 album Helvetistä itään. The linked song is Minä olen, the biggest hit off that album, and probably their biggest hit ever. If you watch the video, notice the logo in the upper right corner? Yeah, that’s the logo of a tv channel, because this was back in the day when they actually showed music videos on television, and in Finland that meant a lot of metal videos too.

Mokoma

Mokoma rose to fame in the early 2003 and they also started their own record company Sakara Records then. Sakara has become a significant company in the metal scene in Finland, so Mokoma and its members are quite influential and important players in the field. Mokoma itself is known for having quite a raw sound with very poetic and beautiful lyrics. I’m linking their song Takatalvi from 2003, mostly because the comment section is a hilarious living shared journal of Finnish people recordning the takatalvi phenomenon through the years (takatalvi = lit. “back winter”, meaning when winter conditions suddenly return in the middle of spring and everyone wants to collectively find a way to actually murder snow somehow)

Stam1na

There’s a photo of them with Käärijä crew somewhere, and if i remember correctly, Jukka likes them a lot. One of the Sakara Record bands, Stam1na (pronounced stamina) also rose to fame in the early 2000’s, and have become one of the most critically acclaimed metal bands in Finland. Their style is quite experimental yet distinctive, with quite clever and sort of intellectual lyrics. 

Now, the link is to their video for Likainen parketti but WARNING this video has graphic violence and blood. The reason why i’m linking this video from them is to further highlight what the music scene was like in the early 2000’s. You can see the graphics of the tv show Musiikki-TV in the linked video, which was a music show that ran on Yle TV2 from 2006 to 2009. They showed music videos on television, on the national broadcasting company’s channel, five days a week, and this sort of video was actually shown. So this is the sort of thing a 13 year old Jere might have come across on television in 2006.

Again, the video is graphic (four men get beaten up badly, one graphic shot of a bad wound, lots of blood), proceed only if you are okay with that.

End of part 4. Next part is back into the world of poprock and the rise of rap and humour music in the 2000's.

[this-thing-saved-me]

Recently I showed my nephews a few of the classic Silly Songs with Larry videos and I just have an ample amount of gratitude to the creators. These videos are somewhat unhinged and take the best parts of SNL and Python-esque skits to make three-ish minutes of musical gold.

Tucked safely between two episodes of children's television that are equally entertaining Bible stories.

My mom loved that we loved Veggie Tales. I still have the whole whack of DVDs somewhere in storage.

The songs are embedded in my cerebellum and I'm not at all embarrassed about performing a dramatic reenactment of "The Hairbrush Song" for the tots was met with many giggles. (I know how to appeal to my audience.)

Despite the fact that it's been well over 20 years since I regularly attended church (first because I became the Sunday person at work with Very Important Responsibilities that included reorganizing the entire New Release wall. It remains my favourite job task I've ever had and should probably just become a merchandiser when all is said and done, but I digress. And kid since I've also been paid to attend concerts, rock. on. Second because my mom stopped going too so there was no longer... an excuse? a reason?) sometimes I miss it.

Engaging services anyway. Good music. Good messages. Just generally an hour of spreading something positive. That's what I liked about Veggie Tales. Non-denominational messaging. No "we're the better Christian's because of X-Y-Z..."

Whatever your precise definition of God looks like, I always appreciated the message in every video that included the words: "God made you special, and he loves you very much."

The consistency of that message I believe is a true value. That there is someone outside of you that sees your inherent worth just because you are here and you are loved for that.

That message certainly stayed with me, long after I stopped watching, or listening. (Don't look at my YouTube history for this morning, there was not a Cebu-related rabbit hole that I regret taking from an earworm perspective.)

I haven't been to a non-wedding/funeral related religious service in at least... no wait I also once got paid to attend a church service for work. Still likely a good ten years. It could be interesting to try a few on for size.

[kaitandcole]

I was standing outside my high school waiting to get picked up when I opened Instagram and saw the news, I thought it was a joke. Genuinely. Cut to me looking at @harryflorals on Instagram and all of my other fan accounts I follow to see if it was true. It was. My heart immediately felt heavier than it had in years. I am still filled with grief and shock. I feel for his son, Bear, who woke up without a father. I feel for his entire family, who is feeling one of the most complex, nuanced, and heavy feelings someone can experience: grief. I can’t imagine how the other boys are feeling. Grieving someone you have lost contact with or have bad memories with is so, so so hard and I know that feeling personally. Grief is devastating, it is confusing, it is paralyzing, it is all-consuming. When you’re a kid, in your mind the people you admire or look up to are immortal. They’re on a pedestal and therefore they cannot die. Especially if they are someone who, from a young age, was commodified and molded to be an object you could sell. It is shocking to be so abruptly brought out of that fantasy. I imagined being 50, having my children or my wife say “Did you hear (insert member here) died?”. I never expected to have to deal with this kind of grief until very later in life. I never thought I would be 17, scrolling through Tumblr and Instagram, trying to make sense of one of them dying so, so, so devastatingly young.

My second-grade teacher got me into One Direction, and over that year, I became a massive fan. I brought the boys up in every conversation—anyone who knew me back then can attest to that—and made them my whole personality. Sometime during the end of the second grade, they announced that they would be going on hiatus. I remember feeling numb and in shock, I had just gotten into them. When their History music video came out, my second-grade teacher, whom I still talk to, promised to premiere it on her projector at the end of class. I remember sobbing, my best friend at the time and I were holding each other. I was mourning, and grieving, and processing. That was a big thing for an 8-year-old to go through. What other loss does she know?

While having a family member be sick at home and eventually passing in the sixth grade, I regressed to my 8 year old self. I made One Direction my entire personality again. I lost friends because they “just didn’t understand it” (aka: they were sick of hearing me only talk about them). I would listen to One Direction all day at school, and read fanfiction on the school bus and before I fell asleep. I would watch any media I could get my hands on that involved them. They were my support, and my rock to fall back on during that hardship. After this family member passed away in March of 2020, just a week before lockdown happened, One Direction became even more of a support. I felt isolated and lonely but the online community and the fandom helped me feel like I had a place, and I know I’ll always be thankful for that of course. As I healed and found other coping mechanisms, I still kept them incredibly dear to my heart, leaning on them whenever I needed to.

Once the news broke about Liam's passing and everything that followed, it felt like everyone was coming together to mourn. People who have been active consistently for years, people who have been a bit more inactive (like me), and even people who got a platform from this community (Sarah Baska, Brittany Broski, etc). The community is the strongest it has been in awhile right now. We are all going through something so linear, and so complicated. We didn’t know him, but he was a part of all of our childhoods. I still have all of my old merch I’ve collected over the years. I look to my right and I see the throw pillow and body pillow that are tucked underneath my bed. I see my One Direction stuffed bear and my poster and the old, untouched electric toothbrush I thrifted when I was 12. I may not as big of a fan actively as I once was, but this grief still runs deep. He was infinitely too young and it hurts to think that he felt that way to do something like that.

To everyone who is also feeling this grief, I see you. You are not being dramatic. Your grief and mourning are completely valid.

[girlfriendsofthegalaxy]

tuesday again 7/18/2023

idk man i just work here

listening

not another rockstar, maisie peters. spotify

this is a little poppier than i generally prefer-- the first knee-jerk comparison i can make for the vocals is taylor swift, esp in the first verse? luckily for everyone, i was white-knuckling it down the katy freeway (26 lanes. never again) and did not have the extra concentration necessary to skip it on whatever autogenerated dance playlist spotify spat out for me. as a fellow woman with a Type, i must tip my hat to ms peters.

Hmm, funny I could pick 'em in a line up, line up Pretty certain I could do it with my eyes shut, eyes shut A little self-obsessive and I sign up, sign up Where's the pen? Where's the line?

@pasta-pardner has made a gorgeously lush electronic/indie pop cowboy playlist. my very favorite song (so far, still have it on loop) is Horsie by Twilight Circus Dub Sound System. it sounds like the opening theme to Samurai Champloo. it ripples and grooves. it lives somewhere between rock and reggae. the whole album is incredible music to hang out to.

-

reading

retractionwatch (my beloved) linked out to datacolada.org in a recent article and my ears perked up. data colada gets REAL deep into the investigative reporting of specific papers, including some fascinating excel sleuthing. they use CalcChain!!! i thought i was the only one who used CalcChain!!!

CalcChain tells Excel in which order to carry out the calculations in the spreadsheet. It tells Excel something like "First solve the formula in cell A1, then the one in A2, then B1, etc." CalcChain is short for 'calculation chain'.

one of my worst traits as a person is that i looooooooove an academic trainwreck. i love watching academia eat itself. i love watching people get caught for sloppy shit like "excel file sorted REAL weird, pointing to tampering with individual data points"

-

watching

new jennings motor sport!!! the oil change is. hough. impressively disgusting. oil does some funky shit when it's been sitting for ??? decades

-

playing

ive been playing genshi/n impact like it's my job. having a lot of thoughts about crunch, and content, and player expectations vs shareholder expectations and Line Go Up and if AAA free-to-play video games are at all ethical to play for anyone ever, but hey! look at this snarky catgirl!

also lol. lmao. this is a game for children. we are all aware of the restrictions and limitations placed upon games for children in the chinese and american markets so yeah the answer is going to be yes, every time

-

making

lately i have been going to my best friend's house after work (what an unimaginable sentence a month ago) and hanging out and watching whatever toddler shows are on tv while we shoot the shit and i knit. there's another half-repeat on the baby blanket for the baby who has just turned four months old, but it's in the car and the night is dark and full of mosquitoes.

i literally cannot do any life shit, even most doctor's appointments, until i have a real physical stable address so all i am really doing is knitting and playing genshi/n and opening and closing my email like the fridge. i have one security deposit back from the old mass apt plus one more paycheck (but, crucially, not the nearly $2k from the roach apt and we are rapidly approaching lawsuit time) so the cat and i are a little bit more stable/able to put down a security deposit on something else the minute it comes along. this would not have been possible without the incredible generosity of readers like you during that very bad first week here. thank you. i want to do some sort of thank you...stream? liveblog? series of posts about something? but i'm not sure what yet. stay tuned. tell me your thoughts. what would you like to see?

[nemir]

We love a Welcome Home/Wally AU in this house. I’d like to introduce everyone to Concept Wally! He’s the product of a single brainstorming session by a failing studio, who needed to come up with an idea for a children’s programme. Unfortunately, the studio closed and everything was scrapped. The only thing that remained was a single concept sketch - that would be him, Concept Wally.

I’m just gonna copy/paste my notes from here because I’m lazy BUT please enjoy him and I hope you all love him as much as I do!! ;; He’s just a lil guy who doesn’t want to be forgotten!! Be nice to him.

welcome home in the early 70s; wally was going to be a fresh university graduate who just had a passion and desire to teach kids more than what school ever did, and he was going to do it with song! (specifically rock & roll genre, for a mass audience appeal)

 it never progressed the conception phase. somehow, he gained sentience - perhaps because of the sheer belief in the show his concept artist had

unfortunately, the studio closed only 2 weeks after wally was designed, and so the entire idea was scrapped.

wally was just a picture on paper. he hated that the idea was scrapped, didn't want to "die", so to speak.

somehow found a way to get in people's dreams, to "inspire" them to draw this character they dreamt of. and as they draw him he gains more power until he was able to tear himself from the page.

he's still able to go back into paper, and uses that to travel or get around quickly, and watch people (some 'take on me' music video type shit)

as above and so below: "as above" is being in the outside world, "so below" is being restricted to the paper. in order to stay out of below, he needs people to draw him. if they stop, he'll lose power and lose the ability to tear himself off the page

this mfer absolutely has gradient inky arms because I SAID SO. it is peak character design. (it wasn’t part of his original design, it just happened because of bleeding ink as paper ages, etc)

he cries ink. bleeds it. vomits it. it's his spit. it's literally what he's made of so no surprises there

the original concept was a life-sized puppet, or rather, someone in a thin felt-covered body suit, with a puppet head (think doodlebops but not painted). this wally is about 5'9".

his designed was loosely based on early 70s David Bowie.

the more people draw him in one type of way, that's how he'll appear when he's in the world. so if a bunch of people are drawing him like a lil Muppet man, then lmfao that's how he'll look until people start drawing him differently (which means people would have to be drawing him in a similar way for him to appear that way), otherwise he'll just take his initial concept sketch form on paper.

voice claim; g-man. half life. (he was never given a voice so finds speech odd. his words are stilted, and sound like something trying to mimic human speech. lots of weird emphasis, run on sentences. odd breaths here and there)

his main outfit is just a pair of trousers with a white button up that usually has the sleeves rolled 3/4, and a few buttons undone with a bright orange undershirt and heart patterned suspenders.

when his face goes dark and you can only see his eyes, there's ink dripping from his chin/cheeks (as if the ink is covering his whole face)

personality wise, he's a little odd. doesn't quite know how to "people", since he isn't one; they never got past concept art after all! but he isn't completely devoid of emotion or empathy. he holds strong affinity for the people who draw him (even if all you draw is a little stick figure of him!! he appreciates it so much ... and it still gives him power), calling them friends. he does get a bit jealous when he catches you drawing other things though! otherwise, he's completely harmless and just doesn't want to be forgotten

[lilac-udon]

long alien stage thought will be a rough summery of all videos spoilers

I'm very new to this, so information might be missed, very messy english i wrote it for myself blehhhhh

round 1

mizi and sua, an entry with the mystery of what alien stage is. I like the stage is much smaller compared to the Round 5,6. They did a great chorus to tie their score. How Sua was supposed to be shorter but on the stage, they stand at equal height( high heels?), fitting the plan that they want so sync together and letting the audience hard to pick one winner.

In additional comics, they did explain Sua's plan to let Mizi win, I was so confused about how Sua made it work, but I found it might be how Sua placed her mic very far away in some scenes. Sua and Ivan are the logical and top students, Sua should have won easily but also have the ability make it seem like she was so close to Mizi points but still lost like naturally. I always feel like as the poster child of the alien stage, they have big plans for Sua. However, in the actual videos, sadly we have so little about her, adding how it crushed Mizi , there isn't any additional song from mizi that talks more about Sua. Different from till, we see his perspective of mizi, and Ivan gives many contexts of the place they grew up, himself, and Till from their songs.

all in all, for sua, I felt that to balance the story they will let Sua use some shape or form, whether memory or other ways to fulfill her lack of involvement.

mizisua

I will talk about this video first out of order to continue Mizi and Sua's story. Mizi is treated like a favorite cat, whereas sua is treated like an actual pet and badly. I always like this storytelling of picking Mizi as the MC, she is the most like us, humans that are not under the abuse of alien. From an owner who took good care of her, she is innocent, which is not normal in alien stage environments, she is rare. From the official, we see Sua owner has many "children" pets, and I like how Ivan and Mizi who are treated more decently have their names on their arms, and Till and Sua on their necks, which is more degrading, and convenience Mizi has her hair dyed blue for alien stage, she was looking forward to it. and I like the symbolism of how it was cut in ALL IN

side note of the children Ivan and Sua are top and popular students, Mizi is good at sports, Till likes to compose and is talent with instruments(they added they want him to skip grad which I often think if he the youngest in his class), hyuna can mimic voice(?)and natural leader, luka is a genius at singing but has health problems.

round 2

I want till to sing rock pop inspire style music again… his song is just a huge "I like you mizi, please cheer up! " the song to me is till very hot headly shut his opponent and get what he wants, attention from mizi, to wake mizi up from misery. In till eyes, mizi is pure and beautiful, I saw someone stated it like this" till sees mizi as his god, a coping mechanism considering how much he's been abused. He knows mizi is out of reach but her existence is enough for him to keep going." I have a lot to say here, first, they grow up together around 10 years and it's weird to me how sided and feel like a fresh crush. Till really kept his distance, might be the face he subconsciously knows mizi is with sua so he always put himself as an admire position. His point of view is solely on mizi but not the entire mizi, like he don't know much as a whole. But I guess this is an abusive situation because Till is very focused on what he wants to see. From the new annverisy art we also see till is on a device that makes him focuses on playing instruments. I was thinking he might be train to do that due to pain, and that's why he is composing all the time. This behavior also greatly affects him to be very focused on the things that bring him joy, mizi, and music.(guess Back to the video, He was impatient and disregarded his opponent(another person he knew from 10+yr), maybe changed the song too? , at least it became a solo after mizi felt miserable. When his opponent finally sang , he smashed his guitar to catch mizi's attention but leads to himself getting beat off the stage. And it's important that he was unconscious until the very end of round 3

round 3

black sorrow is so moving, and I can feel the weight and despair Ivan is definitely my favorite character, but that might be also a flaw in the story because he is the only character who feels like is giving a complete story, everyone is still halfway but Ivan has a started to finish. And besides that there is so much details and mystery on him which confuse me are they going to do more with this character that already feels like have more story them the mc .Even though both songs are screaming "I love you till" it also is super throughout of why he is that way, how he met till and why he likes till, etc in the song. I don't blame his action for being weird because I feel like this should be the norm in alien stage setting, those children all live under trauma and like mizi to Till, till is Ivan's purpose in life. And is also sad Ivan has so maybe symbolism of seeking freedom but he still stay by till. noted, ivan is the creepy kid, much like Luka, but when he got more mature, he was made to be a perfect model. From the round 3 video, the quality goes up, and we can see Ivan never has a collar if so, it's green(You can compare it with the other two kids on the left, at least one of them are obviously showing red, but he is green

So my question is, why does he not have a collar? What I can think of, the collar does not working on him, it's always green. second, his owner give him the privilege of not wearing one. the late one is a theory I saw, saying the alien implanted the device into his neck. second mystery, why is this boy so good at opening keys or collar??? I saw that the theory is from the first shot of getting throwing off the building, he might have try to escape with all the kids etc but still get caught, this boy is built to escape

this part I think the creator confirmed (i might be wrong) that it was Ivan's doing to lead mizi till to the cave. I think it might have this scene of till chasing the flower crown may be Ivan POV , i was thinking till might be chasing mizi or mizi is call for help, (like maybe the flower crown can fly in this universe but? we already know it camera so maybe it real they can also fly lol) Why I say this is because till collar is red, so some people has speculated it might be a heart rate for changing color but I still like to think is more of emotion detecting. So till’s face might be in panic but it looks claim in ivan pov right now, and then after the spark in the eyes, Ivan falls in love bleh bleh bleh. My interpretation is he was still testing till at this point so he set up the dog alien. and he likes the spirit of Tills giving. And the second seance he broke till out and the rest is history.

Also till is asleep most of the song so I was guessing in the garden Ivan probably already openly and straightforwardly confessed to till before but till brushes it off. I am not sure about this one, because rather till awake or not it won't change much anyway, I just think it’s ironic, that this is probably a love song for till, but till missed most of it

can I also say I think Ivan rigged the game to at least let till not face Luka or mizi first, or else I think his luck is pretty good. Also Ivan’s stage is super fancy, which I also think because he got more sponsor

round 5

soooooooooooooo, I was always confused about this part, why is part 4 an opponent in a bathtub thing on the stage? then I have a theory that this is not on the stage but Luka has the authority to see the fallen opponent. So in theory even though they are pets, my hopeful thinking is aliens still won't randomly waste their body, and how the official said Luka's owners are making the perfect contestant, can I believe they are storing the bodies? Luka is a test baby, a clone or other test is a possibility, and Luka might know more due to his ower and being a previous winner. also, this is a far fetch one, but the hair looks short and black, not like his round 4 opponent of long and brown hair sooo

I really like this, Luka is spinning around Miz like he's the moon and she's the planet

the problem is this is Luka from are point first time on screen competing, but we know this round 5 is made for him, and many symbolisms of the moon. How Luka was the previous winner and how I speculated that mizi was the most normal of the group, she was at the lowest winning level he is mocking mizi in every way, how alike he sings like sua, how the lyric, this part of he showing how much his fans love him when he is singing giving mizi the whole world

next one, I think many have already pointed out, those guards are weirdly all human in size and shape, are they robots or…?

I do need to point out , the style greatly changed in this where, round 5,6 we all feel like there is a huge time skip. It might be just the art style change or really time passes a lot, and that not impossible to see ing how till get gig in between rounds 5 to 6, it might also be years due to alien years might be translated differently to human years. to sum up, the timeline is confusing, however, round 1,2,3,4 happen at a similar time due to seeing them all in pods with the same clothing, and till faint between round 2 and woke up at round 3

back to Mizisua video, like how I said Luka resembles moon, and hyuna often associated with the earth, this is probably a human-resistant train? and on the left corner, there's an earth sticker, it might be represent humans as a whole but also hyuna

top 3

this got me confused, ok so the setting is humans are too fragile, short-living , and maybe not as intelligent as aliens so are seen as pets. Even though alien has similar fashions and make idol culture of human. Alien stage is an occurring thing and quite a big thing in this universe? so I see it like horse betting? with a lot of gambling including that can events rise an alien wealth a lot ?

I have no idea about this image but some mention something about religion, alien stage has a lot about believe in god and such but I don't have much to say currently, have no further useful thoughts about this

All In

repeat again, how the owner looks all huger but the guards look stupidly human shape and small like a human??? Aren't there big efficient robots or aliens???

farfetched because this also might be a fashion thing but the military dog tag thing is extremely human culture? it has been 50 alien stage, consider luka age of 30, mizi age of 22 , for example, if will be around 5 years each alien stage apart it should be going on for 200+ years? of human adoption, this should be rare. but whatever, I also have a theory this guy is an old solder guard thing but hasn't been brainwashed that hard but this is very silly. But why are you so buff ok? you guys should be suffering with limited resources idk. Secret military for humans only because if aliens handle humans they will squish to death easily that's my stupid theory

So the thing about luka and hyuna, good toxic straight. Luka is obsessed with hyuna and conflict with her bother and her bother dies. I did wrote a theory of hyuna and her bother anniversary art of they might be testing which on is superior or something and luka knowing that get rid of her bother etc. the blue hand showing Luka’s bad health

I always question why hyuna let mizi join the mission( obviously for plot reason and she the mc), bc Mizi should be like cage canary, super unhelpful in this situation saving till and Ivan, she is emotionally and physically not very suitable for rescue missions. My thoughts,she beg to help Ivan till because they are her only friends left, or second reason , time might pass a lot in-between , she is now able to join , third, she knows the alien stage interior design which is helpful for them. I go with the time skip then plus everything above. I also feel like because the human resistance success once they got a bit cocky, I think might be a art design thing but just how little people accompany concern me

All in is the only song not a love song but more a self love song, saw someone point out the color in the song represents emotion which is a nice touch

round 6

Till leading first I always see is the opponent let you take a bit of advantage, also how the songs go, Ivan's part is mostly the following one, not the main. That's how I felt, I'm not good with music so forget what I wort

till looks miserable, I almost don't recognize him, maybe it's the style or the time jump, he looks mature. The stage design is beautiful don't get me wrong but with the rain and lighting, I'm just going to assume it's fake and muted, bc for a singing contest, this is really a natural disaster, we won't be hearing anything from the rain, and lighting, but it's dramatic though!

I'm honestly confused about this part, it a may or may not happen, but just pointing out that they tried to collar him but possibly drugged him in the end. There may be patron information that I didn't know because I'm very confused as to what the collar is for. Let owners know how their pets are feeling and determine their level of danger. or devices to soothe them? besides the white collar till is usually seen with choker-like things, is it the same as the collar or?

the part he sees young mizi is sad, this leads more of Mizi is a coping mechanism, crush too but in time thinking of her , and the positive part of her is the only way he can cop his pain

and there already dozens of theory and thoughts about the last part so I'm goanna end it here

sum up I was thinking so hard about how they will continue because everyone automatically see till isn't able to win Luka(it's true though) and I have no idea how it should continue because it will definitely not be a traditional round 7 due to till’s state. Also wonder how the aliens will do for having two incidents of contestant violence toward one another, and Ivan being the fan favorite probably will have more delay for the last round with the organizer needing to give a response at least to the aliens. (Was thinking they make a glass to block luka and till for stage 7, would be fun, also if you really want you can jump down the stage)Mizi and hyuna are in trouble. How the overall story is very Ivan-heavy, due to him having the fullest arc. Are we getting a hyuna and Luka duit ? I really don't know how, if till sings again, it will be SUA- 2 Mizi-2 Ivan-2 Luka1 hyuna-1 song , till is going to sing a third song in this order , which is more then mc , Mizi. Will the series end? at round 7 or it will go scifi and much more to balance the song? (probably not bc all the players are dead, my hopeful thinking though )

in conclusion, I want till to sing rock again

[ask-a-bot]

DP: sorry we took so long to come back, the ‘summer holidays’ have ended and we live near several schools. We were woefully unprepared for school traffic.

T: yeah there are human children everywhere. I’m terrified to walk anywhere right now.

MS: ve are doing fine for ze moment, ve don’t need anything in particular.. although very do need to find Waspinator a therapist.

W: for last time, Waspinator is fine

MS: no jou aren’t. Anyway, as for ze Vehicons… I suspect zey are reluctant to leave until Megatron haz fully recovered. Zey fret over his health in every video call.

🪣: I also think they like spending time with the Terrans. The kids have grown on them.

T: wait who are the Terrans…?

DP: oh. New Cybertronian species, native to earth. They’re younglings.

T: …WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME THERE WERE LITTLE ONES?!

They are my nieces and nephews. And I have one who is neither. Come and say hello, young ones.

Hi!

This is my nephew, Jawbreaker. He likes to be called "JB", as in Mrs. Fletcher of Murder She Wrote, but I am not one for nicknames.

You like murder things? Aw! No fair! Mom won't let us watch stuff like that.

I find Murder She Wrote quite sad. The stories are always about the people and there are always lives left damaged and innocent people hurt. They are good – always good – but somewhat painful. I can understand why your mother does not permit you to watch them.

Is there anything you would like to say about yourself?

OK! I'm the only dinobot in the family. I'm big and strong and sometimes I break stuff. Like I broke the kitchen wall when I wanted to show Mom something cool. I'm learning to be more careful though.

It is a part of growing for many of us. I, too, sometimes break things.

You do?

Yes, well... Cybertronian buildings are made of metal. I am still a little... heavy handed... sometimes. Brick, stone, concrete, wood... Earth materials are easily broken. Especially when you were built to break through Cybertronian rock. I, too, must learn to be careful and gentle. It takes time.

Moving on, then. We have my niece, Twitch:

Hello! I like birds and nature, dancing and training!

I like Earth's wildlife too. Snf. And training is always fun.

Uh-huh! 😊

My nephew, Thrash:

Yeah, I'm the coolest Terran! I'm really musical and I'm a better dancer than Twitch. I'm also a lot faster!

Life does not have to be a contest, young one. You will be happier if you accept that everyone has their own skills and we are all the best at something. Twitch included.

Brrrrrrrrpt!

Thrash! That is not the way to behave.

Sorry. Not sorry.

I heard that. Do not give me reason to talk to your mother.

Ahem. We have my niece, Hashtag:

Hi! That's me. I like skating! I think I'm pretty good at it. I'm also real good at all things Internet, but I kinda get distracted by it.

And I am Nightshade! I am the non binary nibbling.

Nibbling?

Niece, nephew or other.

Ah. So, that is the word for "sister's offspring". Thank you.

I like science and I am quite good at it. Getting better at it. I have an owl alt mode and I have always liked the way they look. I like fiction books as much as I like non fiction.

Books are good.

They are!

I also have two human... nibblings. But I am not sure where they are.

Getting car sick with Hot Rod and Bumblebee.

Oh. How nice. Bumblebee's idea, I take it?

He kept saying he's faster than Hot Rod, so now they're racing.

They wanted humans with them to... uh...

Hmbph! To act as referees, probably. Human younglings are hardly likely to stay impartial, however.

That's probably what Bumblebee's counting on.

Probably.

[blazehedgehog]

Which of the Rareware games after the Microsoft buyout did you play and what were your thoughts on them?

Let's see... if we can count GBA games, it's:

Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge: Played and finished. The first Banjo game that really hooked me, weirdly enough. I usually hate isometric perspective stuff, especially platformers, so the fact this hooked me so well is pretty special.

SabreWulfe: Charming, I guess, but I never put more than a few hours into this. Strictly fine.

The DKC GBA Ports: Almost all universally bad. They're ugly, washed out, with nasty music and sounds. I still think the SNES versions look great, but this amplifies all the worst parts of their aesthetics. All of the new content (more dialog, new bosses) are awful. It feels like the worst parts of DK64's presentation retroactively applied to games that don't need it. DKC1 GBA is by far the worst because when they scaled the game to the GBA screen they weren't super careful about preserving controls or item placement, so it's like walking through your house after everyone's shifted your furniture around by a couple inches. DKC3 GBA is probably the best, and I may have enjoyed it more than the SNES version.

Viva Pinata: I didn't put tons of time into this. Once it got to the point where getting new pinatas to join your farm (or mate) involved super complex, circumstantial things, I got bored of it because it felt more difficult and luck-based than it needed to be.

It's Mr. Pants!: A strange distraction but I never played it more than one or two times because I barely understood it and it felt overly simple.

Banjo-Pilot: I think I beat it once and it vanished from memory.

Diddy Kong Racing DS: Could have been a really good game but just like with the DKC GBA games, it had this vibe of like... being cheaper and more cutesy than the original. They changed a lot of the vibe and really amplified the "we think this is a game for very young children" tone that was originally a little more ambiguous in the N64 game. And in the case of Diddy Kong Racing, it really didn't need that. They messed with a very good game and made it worse in most aspects. Also the touch and mic stuff feels so dated and awkward now. They took a timeless game and made it very... uh, timeful?

Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts: I am a defender of this game, but only to a point. I'm not in love with the aesthetic but building vehicles and completing missions with them is incredible fun and I love the game's meta sense of humor. Unfortunately I think as you get close to the end of the game it kinda falls apart. The Colosseum and Terrarium of Terror are just too big and boring to navigate. I never finished the game because Terrarium of Terror was such a pain in the ass to get through.

Sea of Thieves: I played this a little when I had a free Game Pass sub a few years ago. I think this was right after the update where Sea of Thieves started getting proper questlines and a real narrative. I tried to solo what I could but it's a very difficult game to solo when you run into other players that are out to kill you. Quests are designed to be slightly random too, so I'd fail a quest, try again, and have completely different stuff to do. About the time friends heard I was struggling and were telling me they'd hop on and help me out, I actually started to develop sea sickness. I never got nauseous, but I did get dizzy, and even when I closed my eyes I could "feel" the motion of my boat rocking back and forth. Which is a shame, because as a terminal sufferer of video game wanderlust, I love the idea of sailing around and exploring islands.

Shoutouts to the Banjo-Kazooie and Perfect Dark remasters on XBLA. I finished those games happily. I even did the 101% clear on Banjo, something I hadn't done in a Rareware game since DKC2.

[likeabxrdinflight]

get 2 know me meme

tagged by: @crithir said if you see it, you're tagged. And I saw it, so...

tagging: In the spirit of the boops, boop! you're tagged now.

Do you make your bed?

Only if someone's coming over.

What’s your favorite number?

7 because it was usually my assigned number in elementary school. There was a whole system where we all had numbers after our names that we had to put on the top of our assignments, and because it went in alphabetical order, and because my school was small and the class configuration rarely changed, I was writing "Cora - 7"* at the top of my assignments for years. So a fondness for the number 7 kinda stuck.

*Cora is not my real name but wouldn't you like to know.

What is your job?

Technically the things I am currently employed to do and receive financial compensation for are administering neuropsych assessments to children and then a second part time job as a care aid for a disabled woman.

Arguably my dissertation is my real full time job, except no one pays me to do that. Actually, I pay them so that I can do that. So...

If you could go back to school, would you?

Absolutely not, I'm still trying to get out of school! (one more year one more year one more year...).

Can you parallel park?

Technically, yes. Skillfully? Eh...

A job you had that would surprise people?

None of my past jobs have been all that surprising, I think...human services and customer service, haven't we all been there? Maybe the day camp for disabled kids was a little bit unique.

Do you think aliens are real?

I think it's incredibly arrogant to assume we're the only planet in an ever-expanding universe to have developed life, so yes. What that life looks like, however, is up for debate.

Can you drive a manual car?

I cannot, but more than one person has threatened to teach me.

What’s your guilty pleasure?

British period dramas. And recently, Taylor Swift. I got caught up in the cultural moment of the Eras tour and it turns out when you're not just listening to the pop radio hits, she's a helluva writer. "Would've, Could've, Should've" did unfortunately alter my brain chemistry. I refuse to call myself a swiftie though, I will not be associated with...any of that.

Tattoos?

None yet, but I have a couple ideas- I want "she rules her life like a bird in flight" with some little birds next to it, possibly on my shoulder? Then I want a monarch butterfly on one of my forearms, probably the left, and finally a latin phrase that's connected to my family, I'm thinking on the underside of one my upper arms, again probably the left arm. Undecided on that though, because if I do the butterfly on the left arm maybe I should do the lettering on the right? Or vice versa?

...this is why I haven't committed to anything yet on top of them being expensive.

Favorite color?

Historically, yellow, but more recently blues and purples.

Favorite type of music?

Usually I go for a rock/pop punk sound. But also showtunes. And sometimes just regular pop. I'm kinda basic idk.

Do you like puzzles?

...in video games, sure. Actual table top puzzles? Eh.

Any phobias?

Wasps. Heights. The general concept of death.

Favorite childhood sport?

Ballet and tae kwon do (I almost made it to black belt but then college happened).

Do you talk to yourself?

Constantly. Often as if I'm talking to other people. Sometimes to my snake, Sammy.

What movies do you adore?

Kiki's Delivery Service, Mary Poppins, Anastasia, The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, and I have a soft spot for 2000s teen movies (think Mean Girls, Freaky Friday, Bring It On). Also, unfortunately, the Harry Potter movies are permanently imprinted on my brain and I cannot disentangle them from some of the most special parts of my childhood. Azkaban in particular is strongly linked to my relationship with my best friend/sister in spirit.

Coffee or tea?

Tea but coffee is growing on me.

First thing you wanted to be growing up?

I think it was veterinarian? That's the first thing I remember anyway.

[r-anela]

Way of Eternity

Hello everybody, after a while I have something to share with you again. A little story about Rockstar Eddie Munson, inspired by all the stories I read at @enam3l, because even though I don't write much at the moment, I do read a lot.

It's a little story about Eddie and his wife.

GIF is not Mine

It is 1995 and Eddie Munson has been invited to a talk show after winning the MTV Video Music Award - Best Rock Video with his band Corroded Coffin for their latest ballad "Way of Eternity".

It featured Eddie marrying a beautiful yet mostly in black covered woman, not with a priest of course they were married by the rest of the band members.

When he was asked to appear on the talk show, he knew that the questions would be about his relationship status. The world knew he had a girlfriend, but who exactly she was and what she looked like was only known to his closest friends. Because Eddie wanted to keep his girlfriend out of the spotlight, he wanted her life to be as normal as it could be. She should decide how far she wants to go in public.

Honey we have to leave soon, you know what the traffic is like at this time, you can't be late for the studio, you called into the living room where your husband, you still hadn't got used to it, Eddie Munson was sitting on the sofa plucking on his guitar. He raised his gaze briefly and his eyes lit up when he saw you. He didn't say anything, just stood up and walked towards you, took you by the hand and spun you around so he could look at your outfit from all sides.

You were wearing your new Vivien Westwood black velvet corset and skirt set, fishnet tights and pumps. It was nothing new that you dressed up, but Eddie hadn't seen you in a skirt or dress since the wedding as you always wore a pantsuit to work every day.

Tonight you would sit in the auditorium and support him, he didn't like talk shows that much as they mostly dealt with shallow topics.

A few hours later you were sitting in the auditorium and Eddie was still backstage, in a few moments he would be called on stage. And that's when the host announced "and our next guest is Edward Eddie Munson, lead singer and guitarist of the band Corroded Coffin". Your heart beat faster when you saw him on the stage, his curly hair cascading down his shoulders to the middle of his back and his black suit fitting perfectly over his crimson shirt which was unbuttoned to expose his chest tattoo.

Good evening Mr Munson, or may I call you Eddie? How are you this evening? The moderator's voice rang out.

After the first usual questions about how the band was doing, whether he knew and appreciated the other nominees for the award and whether he expected to win the prize, came the question Eddie had been waiting for all night.

Tell Eddie, in your new music video you marry a very mysterious lady, how is your personal life? How is your girlfriend?

My wife is fine, thank you for asking. At this statement a murmur went through the audience, the moderator pursed his lips and nodded expressively.

Oh, so we have a Mrs Munson now? How come the public didn't hear about this?

Eddie sat up straighter in his chair, his gaze sweeping over the crowd until he found you and smiled. But to everyone else it looked like he was just smiling into the cameras, with his love-struck gaze.

Our wedding was very small, a few weeks ago. Just with our closest friends in a cottage of our friends close to Yosemite National Park. And no she is not Mrs Munson she kept her name! With this statement a loud "Oh" went through the crowd and the moderator was about to ask a counter question when Eddie continued. You see, my wife is a successful lawyer and it wasn't me who graduated and studied all those hours, it was her, so we made the decision to just stick to her name.

Uh, I see, and what about children? Now that you are married, it shouldn't be too far off.

At this statement Eddie's ears turned slightly red and he felt warm with wrath, because he had already said that he liked children but probably didn't want any himself. Not to mention that these kinds of questions went absolutely against his nature. He made a sour face and replied.

As I said before, I personally don't want to have any children in the near future, my marriage hasn't changed that and if it does, it should also be my wife's decision, because she has to carry the child. We are already a family as we are and our close friends will complete it wonderfully. Besides, we are both on the road a lot because of our jobs, a child doesn't fit in with that.

Thank you Eddie for your honest answer said the moderator, you could tell he was uneasy about the situation. I have one more question for you Eddie, will we ever meet your wife?

Eddie started to grin again and just said

Maybe you already have, I'll just say that she's sitting in the audience today and always supports me in everything.

-------

Please also read the story's from @enam3l all of her work is just so good 🖤