#we’ve lived through so many different eras but

[blossoms-phan]

in their natural habitat. if you even care

[nhlclover]

𝐆𝐎𝐎𝐃 𝐋𝐔𝐂𝐊, 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 | 𝐖𝐈𝐋𝐋 𝐒𝐌𝐈𝐓𝐇

summary: after radio silence from you, will worries that you've forgotten your pregame tradition before his nhl debut.

warnings: little tiny bit of angst in the beginning, kissing, gross fluff

word count: 1.04k

notes: this almost went a totally different (and heartwrenching) way. also i know this is unrealistic but i don’t care!

The air crackled with anticipation as the Sharks’ first game of the season loomed closer, the arena filling with a sea of excited fans eager to witness the dawn of a new era in Bay Area hockey. The buzzing energy seeped through the concrete walls, even reaching the locker room where Will sat, shoulders hunched, elbows resting on his knees. His gaze stayed glued to the scuffed floor beneath him, though his mind was somewhere else entirely. He was thirty minutes away from making his NHL debut, the dream he’d worked toward his whole life. But instead of feeling exhilarated, his stomach was twisted into a million knots, and it was all because of you.

He ran a shaky hand through his unruly hair before picking up his phone for what felt like the hundredth time, staring at the screen with an expression that bordered on desperation. Still no messages. His thumb hovered over your contact, but he stopped himself from calling. You’d always been the first to text him before every game, sending a sweet “good luck” that never failed to make him smile, no matter how many times he read it. It was your thing, something he’d come to rely on, especially on game days. Today, of all days, you hadn’t said a word.

Will swallowed hard, trying to drown out the unsettling thud of disappointment. He clenched his jaw, tossing his phone into the compartment above his head with a bit more force than necessary.

“Yo, Will, what’s with the long face?” Macklin asked, dropping into the spot beside him, his voice cutting through the low hum of pregame chatter. “You’re about to live the dream, man. Smile a little.”

Will exhaled heavily, rubbing a hand over his tired eyes. “It’s nothing. Just… personal stuff.”

Macklin leaned in, his expression both amused and concerned. “Personal stuff? Come on, dude, you’re acting like you lost your puppy or something. Spill.”

“It’s just…” Will hesitated, debating whether he should even say it out loud. Finally, he gave in. “My girlfriend, she’s always texted me before every game. It’s kind of our thing. But today—nothing. And it’s driving me insane, man.”

“Dude, you’re trippin’ over a text?” Macklin shook his head with a grin. “She’s probably just busy or caught up with something. Doesn’t mean she forgot about you.”

Will nodded, though Macklin’s words did little to ease the uneasy feeling lodged in his chest. He wanted to believe that was all it was, but the silence from you felt heavier today, almost like a warning sign he couldn’t ignore.

The minutes ticked by, each one dragging slower than the last, and soon enough, Coach Warsofsky’s booming voice echoed through the room, calling everyone to attention. “Alright, listen up! First game of the season, boys. This is where we show everyone what Sharks hockey is all about. But before we hit the ice, we’ve got a special guest who is going to announce our starting lineup for tonight.”

Will barely registered the words, his mind still tangled up in thoughts of you, until he heard a voice that made him freeze.

“Hey, everyone. I’m super excited to be here tonight.”

His head snapped up so fast it was a miracle he didn’t get whiplash. There you were, standing just inside the doorway, looking slightly nervous but glowing under the fluorescent lights. It took him a second to realize he wasn’t dreaming, and when your eyes met his, all the tension drained out of his body. For the first time all day, he felt like he could finally breathe.

You cleared your throat, glancing down at the paper in your hands as you began to read out the names of Will’s teammates. With each name, the excitement in your voice grew, until you reached the last one. “And finally, starting at center, number 2…Will Smith!”

The room erupted into cheers, but Will didn’t hear any of it. He was already halfway across the room, ignoring the playful jeers from his teammates. He reached you in three long strides, scooping you up in his arms and lifting you off the ground. “You’re here,” he breathed, burying his face in your neck as if he needed to make sure you were real. “You actually came.”

You laughed, the sound like music to his ears. “Of course, I did. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”

Before he could think twice, he kissed you, right there in front of his entire team, not caring one bit about the whistles and hoots echoing around the room. He pulled back just enough to look into your eyes, his thumb brushing over your cheek. “You had me worried, you know that?” he murmured. Will took your hand in his, leading you out into the hall where you could talk in private, away from his teasing teammates.

“Had to keep you on your toes,” you teased, giving him a playful nudge. “Besides, I wanted it to be a surprise.”

“Well, mission accomplished,” he chuckled, taking you back in his arms, keeping them wrapped around you as if afraid you might disappear. “I thought you forgot about me.”

“Never,” you said softly, fingers threading through his curls. “Good luck, Will. You’re going to be amazing.”

His heart swelled at your words, the weight that had been pressing down on him all day finally lifting. “Thank you,” he whispered. “You have no idea how much this means.”

He kissed you again, this time slower, savouring the warmth of your lips and the way you melted against him. His hands moved to your face, cupping your cheeks, feeling the way your lips curved into a smile against his. When he finally pulled back, his forehead resting against yours, he whispered, “I’ll make you proud out there.”

“You already have,” you replied, giving him one last peck on the lips. “You should probably go back now or else you’re gonna miss your first game.”

Will nodded, a confident smile spreading across his face. With one final squeeze of your hand, he turned and jogged back into the locker room, feeling lighter than he had all day. The game hadn’t even started yet, but he already knew this was going to be a night he’d never forget.

[grifonecoronato]

The Olega Padawan

I love this guy and I wanna talk about him.

In The Acolyte, in Episode 2 "Revenge/Justice", we briefly meet this Jedi Padawan (played by Ed Kear).

He’s a big guy, and he seems eager to prove himself useful; he manhandles a kid, and explains how there was a break-in at the local Jedi Temple where he’s stationed.

He has one or two lines of dialogue, and the story quickly moves on from him. He mainly exists for two (2) reasons in the story:

To give a lived-in feel to the setting: that during the High Republic, Jedi are plentiful and ubiquitous, in direct contrast to every other Star Wars time period we’ve seen in film and TV (and yes, I’m including the Prequels era, which explicitly stated that while there were lots of Jedi, they were stretched very thin, which carries a different tone than the era of The Acolyte)

To contrast against Osha, who flunked out of the Jedi Order (more on that below).

I mean he doesn’t even have a name; he's just credited as the "Olega Padawan", his role is so small!

And the fandom menace H A T E S him. They lament that the Jedi are supposed to be physically and mentally disciplined, and being fat is antithetical to that.

I call horseshit. The Olega Padawan makes complete sense, and his inclusion is a perfect addition to Star Wars.

Visual Storytelling of The Acolyte

For now, let's leave aside the undisputed fact that there are many, many biological factors that contribute to a person's weight beyond how much food they eat. And let's be clear that a person's fitness or fatness is not an indication of their moral character or their value to the world.

So let's just say, for the sake of argument, that the Olega Padawan really is just out-of-shape.

In an era where the Jedi are plentiful, have the confidence of the people, recruit new members easily, and have known peace for generations, is it really so inconceivable that a Jedi who’s not at peak physical condition could exist?

In The Acolyte, we see that Jedi take on a peacekeeping / police roles, sure…

...but we also see them doing scientific research…

…and other non-combat, non-adventurous duties.

The temple on Olega is so tiny, so peaceful, so sleepy that its master -- Master Torbin -- took a vow of solitude, penitence, and disengagement, and the Temple was able to continue on, business as usual.

These are the conditions that the Olega Padawan finds himself in. And we're surprised that he would have other things motivating him besides commitment to physical perfection?

Headcanon: the Daily Life of the Olega Padawan

As of September 2024, nothing has been written about the Olega Padawan's story, but I can see his whole life through the context clues that were presented on screen.

The Olega Padawan was probably not a great physical student at the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Unlike Jecki, his lightsaber forms are sloppy and half-hearted, but he was good enough to eek by a passing grade for his trials.

He then was sent to learn under the tutelage of the Olega Knight, where his master taught him to manage the affairs of the local temple.

He probably spent his days worrying about building repairs, negotiating with mechanics when the droids malfunctioned, arguing with incense and candle wholesalers to keep the temple well-stocked, and taking point on charity or community outreach programs. Occasionally, his master would show him how to make requisitions for additional funds from the Coruscant Temple, or how to phrase their weekly reports in such a way that they go largely ignored.

If his master asked him to do anything physical, like move something into storage, the Olega Padawan would have a choice to make: physically lift it, or just move it with the Force... and I'm pretty sure he'd just opt to do it with the Force once his master left the room.

Occasionally the neighbourhood kids would hassle him, because there's nothing funnier than watching a Jedi lose his temper, so the Olega Padawan probably developed a sharp tongue. He'd likely have zero tolerance for bullies.

If he ever finished his work early, he'd find a way to entertain himself rather than go seek more work. After all, what's really so important that it can't wait when you live in a quiet temple in a sleepy town? Adventure. Excitement. A Jedi craves not these things!

What This Means for Osha

There's one more role in the story that the Olega Padawan plays, and that's as a contrast to Osha.

Osha flunked out of the Jedi Order. Get it?

She flunked out.

She flunked out.

And we saw risk her life to selflessly save the life of a prisoner aboard a ship that was about to crash!

She flunked out of the Jedi Order!

The Olega Padawan, who lives a sleepy life in a quiet temple, did not.

So at this stage in the story, the presence of the Olega Padawan conjures questions like "if he could make it as a Jedi... what the hell did Osha do to fail?"

How much "worse" of a student must she have been?

By the end of the series this is made clear, but by episode 2, the Olega Padawan's mere presence invites us to ask these questions.

[blakbonnet]

AUTHOR OF THE WEEK: @clairegregoryau 💕

Everytime the topic of fandom kindness and community comes up, of helping each other out and fostering a quiet corner where people can be themselves, most people in our little fandom think of Claire. She's written over a million words of OFMD fic and read even more, and you can always see so so many recs over on her twitter. Incredible good vibes, and an author who truly lives to lift other authors up. She also does SO SO much for fic authors over on the OFMD Fic Club server <3 And she was incredibly kind and shared her entire writing process with me:

What's your writing process like? Do you start with the beginning or the end? Do you write in order or as the scenes come to you?

I’m a huge advance planner, which is a process that has developed for me over more than 25 years of writing original fiction. I’ll get whacked with a story idea, then I’ll sit down and set out the central kernel of that idea, and where it needs to start, where it needs to end, and what the turning points need to be to get there.

A lot of the time I use a three-act structure, largely because Jenkins has talked about OFMD using that structure (one example here). So that makes it easy for me to hold to the canon beats when I’m writing AU stories, or to mirror them in canon-era stories, which is also something I try to do most of the time. With long experience (and now 1.7 million words of OFMD fic written (!)), I find this part of the process really easy. I’ll usually do that plotting by hand-writing out my notes, because it really fires up a different part of your brain.

Because I am such an advance planner, I do tend to write in a completely linear way from start to finish (I also pretty commonly post my long-fics as I write- each chapter goes up as soon as it’s finished and has a final editing pass). Punching through it in a linear way, knowing the ending that I’m working towards and being enthusiastic to get there, really keeps me motivated.

I do all of my writing in 30-minute sprints at the OFMD Fic Club Discord, where we’ve built a lovely and LOUDLY enthusiastic writing community that anyone is welcome to hop into 24/7. For those who find the constant chat a bit overwhelming, we also have a Quiet Focus Sprints channel. Again via long practice, I’m a very fast writer, but that’s accelerated a lot more over the last couple of years, paradoxically because I couldn’t write the way I used to anymore.

I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that includes some fun brain impacts at times, and it’s really hit my working memory especially. I used to be able to hold all the strands of a complicated story together in my head as I wrote, but now I can’t do that as easily. So that’s why the outline is important for me, so I never lose track of the idea- I’ll also do a quick outline at the start of each chapter I’m writing that notes what needs to happen, and then I’ll write in what I call layers, getting down whatever I can first, and then doing sweeps back through it to add internals, narrative detail, sensory details and so on. I make a LOT of notes and square brackets as I go to remind myself of things to look at later.

I also use a plot matrix [Twitter thread, Example Matrix] that you may have seen floating around- I mostly use it to keep track of plot details that have already happened within a story, so that I can check it out at a glance, but I will sometimes plan certain elements in advance (as in the case of Tree Change, which covered 87 of the 93 Kinktober prompts last year across 12 carefully planned chapters). There’s always space when I’m writing for the characters to surprise me within that plot framework- as a final plotting thing, once I’m at the halfway mark I’ll often plot backwards from the planned end to make sure that I’m on course, and to see what I need to adjust.

Favourite trope or headcanon you like to explore while writing?

I really like to dig into the friends-to-lovers trope that sits at the heart of the show. The Ed and Stede relationship reminds me immensely of my own- like Rhys and Taika as friends, we’ve been yes-anding each other for over 25 years (all of my least hinged fic ideas come from bouncing thoughts back and forth with my husband), and it’s been a steady mix of constant silliness, curiosity, and care. We’re best friends first and that’s one of my favourite things about Ed and Stede, that they are, too.

What I really love about it is the vulnerability of these two people who’ve been hurt so much by others in the past, who’ve never been fully appreciated for all the things that they are, and in each other they find the one absolutely perfect person who just gets them, and it makes all the difference. It’s always fun to play with that and variations on it in fics, and it’s usually the beating heart of my stories.

Whose voice is easier to write - Ed or Stede? Why?

I want to say that I find them both equally easy depending on the story. Ed as a character speaks very much the way I think- he has that ADHD buzz, the high swear level, and a very AoNZ turn of phrase that’s also very familiar to Australians (like me). Writing Ed is like turning the inside of my head out and it always flows easily.

But I have always said that I see myself in both characters in equal parts, so I find Stede pretty easy to write as well. I feel like I pretty solidly understand him as a person, with his history of rejection and his commitment to trying anyway, and trying to be kind, and letting himself be fascinated by things, from piracy to books to moths to Ed (that one’s not hard).

Your personal favourite thing you've written that you'd like more people to read

This is a near-impossible question with 69 OFMD fics up on AO3 😅 I really do love them all, and I have a lot of smaller one-shots that haven’t been read as much, but overall I’m incredibly lucky with readership and so so grateful for everyone who enjoys my work.

But my recent Reverse Bang fic The Broken Lines is hugely important to me and I think it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever written anywhere. It’s set in the aftermath of the First World War (my professional zone of expertise), and features a Stede who’s lost his voice, his memory, and as far as he knows, his Ed. He gradually remembers what happened with the help of the crew and another Ed, who appears in his mirror from 1719, searching for his own Stede. It was a beautiful collaboration with artist Gerlinde to begin with, but I also got to work with one of my longest-term writing friends Jill @followedmystar as my beta, and then with Boy, who made a truly transcendent podfic that I can’t yell about enough.

What is the one word that you think you use a lot?

I think the word I have to zap more than any other is “actually”, and there are still a million of them in there when I’m done. The main reason is that to stick close to canon voice, I try to incorporate a lot of the less iconic/ more ordinary turns of phrase that the characters use a lot in their speech (I’ve watched every episode of the show… way too many times), and both Ed and Stede actually use “actually” a surprising amount. I just use it an even more surprising amount 😂

(This just sent me on a QUEST to find a specific number because I am that kind of nerd- Stede says it 15 times in S1 and 12 in S2, and Ed says it 8 times in each, for totals of 27 and 16, many of them in distinctive moments; it just gives that little buzz of recognition for me. I started out screenwriting before I moved to prose, so my writing tends to lean pretty strongly on having a recognisable, almost audible voice to the dialogue, as well as a cinematic visual style for the big adventures especially).

Do you have a beta reader? Have they made you a better writer?

I quite deliberately don’t use a beta reader for most of my OFMD fics, because being in this space is an exercise in recovering from lifelong paralysing perfectionism around writing especially. I’ve spent so many years not finishing original work because it never feels like it passes the invisible bar for perfection that exists in my own head. So when I started writing OFMD fic, I set out to accept good enough as good enough, and to get back to enjoying writing as fully as I can.

Obviously this means that my work could be better, but I’m actively working on letting that thought go and loving everything I’ve made just as it is. When I have worked with beta readers on projects that require them, like the Reverse Bang, it’s been with friends who I trust and adore, who I know will listen to what I need (cheerleading, mostly), and will do their best to work with me on improving the story without letting me spiral into hating it all because it wakes the perfectionist beast back up.

That doesn’t mean I’m without regular support, or that I’m not trying to improve my writing! I read an absolutely insane amount of fic, and I’m always in awe of the talent we have on this ship, and always learning from what other people do well. In lieu of beta readers, we share snippets of work all the time in our sprints team, so I get feedback there; I also get it from readers in progress, who often give me a sense of what’s hitting the way I hoped and what needs a bit of tweaking. I also have lovely group chats and individual friends like Kerry @communionnimrod and Lis @ghostalservice and Jill who I can run to if I need an opinion on whether an idea feels right or not, which I will often ask.

I’m very very careful with my writing, but in a couple of rare instances readers have also DMd me to note spots where I’ve inadvertently included something that doesn’t reach the sensitivity standard I’m aiming for. I’m always grateful for that gentleness and bravery in reaching out and I’m always happy to change something or to add tags or notes as needed.

Why OFMD 🥹

I watched the whole show in one hit a week after the final episode aired, and I loved it immediately, but I thought I was going to be normal about it. The unravelling into complete, unrelenting obsession happened gradually as I rewatched it with my husband and teen, then again, and again, then started to read fics and hunt up art, then started joining fan spaces, and then dived into writing my first fic in two and a half decades (all original writing between The X-Files and here), thinking it would also be my last.

I’m still here, still writing constantly, and a major portion of it is the show and how distinctly it reflected all the many parts of me, some of which I’d never seen so clearly before. I had a tough childhood in a few different family respects. I didn’t understand that I was neurodivergent until I turned 40 and my own kids were heading for diagnosis, and I’d been rejected constantly throughout my life for being too much. I was a high achiever who was in the process of crumpling under pressure right when I watched it, and while I’d been figuring out my sense of my own queerness for a few years, I’d never had a community that helped me feel at home with that.

And in the end it’s the community that’s been the reason I’ve been fully sucked into fandom for the first time since my teens- the writing in this space is top-tier wonderful, and the community is such a found family, just like the Revenge. Being able to write and have people actually want to read that writing, being able to cheer others on and hype their work, being able to help set up the OFMD Fic Club Discord and make it a safe spaceship for so many people, has been incredibly fulfilling and lovely. 

Please head over to @ofmdlovelyletters (who also made the header) and send your love to all your favourite authors (and authors of the week 😈 watch that blog for some special letters coming your way)

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

The nightmare before christmast event is twst's first 3D disney film major implementation(or smth) right? Even if it isnt the staple CGI 3D of modern disney, I wonder if we would ever get events of something like frozen or tangled?? Since they still retain the classic disney vibes thats right up twst alley, especially the latter. Tho hope they went through the old stuffs that isnt as popular as classics but still good first 🙏, maybe even the thief and the cobbler film if u know, although its probs more unlikely than say frozen/tangled cuz it might have legal right issues 😔(cmiiw). Anyway, whats your thoughts n how do u think it will go?

I believe so, yes? I mean, it’s 3D in the sense that it’s stop motion animation, not that it’s actually 3D animated, but I get what you were trying to communicate. If Twst is able to twist films that are not traditionally animated, then it’s for sure possible for them to eventually twist later CGI animated films.

Sitch and even the other films that appeared in previous Halloween events were all 2D animated works. There have been references to live action projects before (like how the original Snow White movie is being remade all these years later in-universe), but I think Lost in the Book with Nightmare Before Christmas is Twst’s first interpretation of a “3D” (three dimensional, not 3D or CGI animated) Disney work.

I do think it’s possible for Twst to integrate more of the 3D era films down the line, but I feel like the focus will still be primarily on older animated ones. (It would be interesting if they transitioned into characters twisted from the 3D era to show the evolution of Disney’s animation from their 2D classics/roots!) They’ve still got so many untapped source materials to pull from!! I don’t believe the implementation of those would be that different from what we’ve already seen in worldbuilding details and maybe introducing 1-2 twisted versions of the movie’s characters. They might do more Lost in the Books too, but 💦 I personally don’t like the concept of them 😂 and found the translation of 3D designs to live 2D very uncanny valley.

… Isn’t The Thief and the Cobbler Warner Bros and not Disney? 😭 I don’t think Twst intends to do collabs in the game with anything Disney doesn’t personally own.

[mariacallous]

Lithuania’s Jews and Yiddishists around the world are mourning the passing of Fania Brantsovsky, the last surviving member of the Jewish underground in the Vilna ghetto and a keeper of the flame of the city’s once glorious Yiddish past, who died at the age of 102 on Sunday in Vilnius.

Brantsovsky escaped the ghetto in 1942 and fought against the Nazis and their local collaborators in the Rudninkai forest with a group of Jewish partisans under the command of Abba Kovner. 

In the years after the war, she became a lifelong advocate for the memory of Lithuanian Jewry and their Yiddish language, serving as the librarian and beloved teacher at the Vilnius Yiddish Institute and an ambassador to visitors she brought to view the landmarks, many vanished, of a city that had once been known as the “Jerusalem of Europe” for its rich Jewish culture. 

It was a role that brought her world-wide acclaim and eventually local hostility, when Lithuanian nationalists began to equate her Soviet liberators with the Nazis, and tried to discredit partisans like her who had once considered the Russians their allies.

For all these roles, Brantsovsky was hailed by Yiddishists around the world who consider her death the end of an era.

“She lived so long that she came from a completely different universe than ours, like out of a history book,” Alec “Leyzer” Burko, a Warsaw-based Yiddish teacher, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

“We’ve lost the last exemplar of interwar Yiddish Vilna, someone who could impart the spirit of the Yiddishist movement of interwar Vilna and its secular circles. We lost our last active veteran of the Vilna ghetto and the Jewish partisans,” said Dovid Katz, an American-born Yiddishist and co-founder of the Vilnius Yiddish Institute.

“And on a personal level,” he added, “we’ve lost a dear friend whose warmth, enthusiasm, encouragement, and desire to help, show and teach was a huge inspiration.”

Brantsovsky was born Feige Jocheles in 1922, in the then-Lithuanian capital of Kaunas but her family moved to Vilnius, then a part of Poland, when she was just five years old. 

As a young girl, she was active in the rich Jewish life of Vilnius. At the time, Vilnius was home to more than 60,000 Jews and boasted over 100 synagogues, the largest of which had seating for more than 2,000. With a Jewish community that had been flourishing when Napoleon passed through the city in the 18th century, Vilnius was more than just a religious center. It was home to a rich cultural and political scene, all in the Yiddish language. 

While she hailed from a secular family, which Brantsovsky noted kept neither kosher nor Shabbat, she completed her entire traditional education in Yiddish-speaking schools, and as a teenager was active in Jewish political youth movements

That world was shattered in 1941, when Vilnius fell under the control of the Germans and Brantsovsky, along with Vilnius’s tens of thousands of other Jews, were herded into the cramped conditions of the Vilna ghetto. 

From the first days of the Nazi occupation of Lithuania, they began taking Jews from Vilnius to be killed in the nearby Ponar forest. Over 100,000 people would be killed there, including 70,000 Lithuanian Jews and 8,000 Roma, making it the second-largest mass grave in Europe after Babyn Yar in Ukraine.  

“Our life was more of existence, really,” Brantsovsky once described the ghetto in an interview with Centropa, a European Holocaust memorial organization. Every day was a struggle for survival, and one slip-up or turn of fate could mean starvation, or deportation to Ponar.

Brantsovsky recalled hearing of a resistance movement forming in the ghetto and quickly requested to join. 

“The underground organization of the ghetto united all parties and trends such as communists, revisionists, Bund etc. Their common goal was to fight against fascists,” she told Centropa. 

That group would be remembered as the United Partizan Organization, or by its Yiddish initials, FPO. 

The FPO had considered instigating an uprising in the ghetto, as would later take place in Warsaw. After the capture and execution of it’s leader Yitzhak Wittenberg by the Gestapo, the movement’s leadership decided instead to take its fighters out of the ghetto and into the nearby forests where Soviet-backed partisans were harrying the rear and supply lines of the German army. 

Brantsovsky bid farewell to her family and was smuggled out of the ghetto on Sept. 23, 1943. She would later learn that on the same night, the Germans began their final liquidation of the ghetto, killing most of its inhabitants. None of her family would survive the Holocaust.

In the Rudninkai forest, which has been immortalized in partisan literature under its Yiddish name, Der Rudnitzker Vald, she joined up with a partisan unit composed of Jews under the command of Abba Kovner, known as the Nokmim or Avengers.  

In the forest she trained with weapons and explosives and took part in military operations against the Nazi occupation. 

“We blasted trains and placed explosives in the enemy’s equipment. We shot and killed them,” she told Centropa. “Yes, I did, I killed them and did so with ease. I knew that my dear ones were dead and I took my revenge for them and thousands of others with each and every shot.”

In the forest, she also met her future husband Mikhail Brantsovsky. Nearly a year after fleeing the ghetto, Fania returned, rifle in hand, as the Soviet Red Army captured the city. 

Less than a month after returning she and Mikhail married. 

“We were intoxicated by the victory, our youth and love,” she recalled. 

After the war, her commander Abba Kovner would gain fame as one of Israel’s poet laureates, and infamy for an aborted plot to kill 6 million Germans in vengeance for the Holocaust. 

Brantsovsky took part in none of that: She stayed in Vilnius where she and Mikhail built a life together and had two children. 

In the years after the war, it quickly became clear to Brantsovsky that the world of her youth had been lost. 

“There were hardly any Jews left in Vilnius. When I saw older Jews, or they looked old to me considering how young I was, I felt like kneeling before them to kiss their hands.” she once recalled. 

Fania quickly went to work, helping to document what had been lost, and assisted Soviet Jewish writers Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman in the “Black Book of Soviet Jewry,” a 500-page document that recorded the Nazis’ crimes in the occupied regions of the Soviet Union. 

While it was first published in the USSR by Der Emes, the Yiddish-language arm of Pravda, the book would later be suppressed as the Soviet policy towards the Holocaust shifted to present the genocide as solely an atrocity against Soviet citizens, not one that specifically targeted Jews.  

Though Mikhail and Fania had been present and honored in Moscow’s Red Square during the victory parades of 1945, their enthusiasm towards the Soviet regime dulled after experiencing the antisemitism of Stalin’s later years. 

Mikhail passed away in 1985, and Fania retired from her job as a teacher in 1990 just before Lithuania gained its independence. 

In retirement, Fania found a new purpose: In an independent Lithuania, there was renewed interest in recording Vilnius’s Jewish past and studying the Yiddish language of its Jews. 

In the early 1990s, Fania and a group of other survivors, including another former partisan, Rachel Margolis, worked to establish a Holocaust museum in Vilnius known as the Green House. 

In 2001, Katz, a professor of Yiddish who had previously worked at Oxford, relocated to Vilnius and established a Yiddish institute at Vilnius University. 

“When I founded the Vilnius Yiddish Institute in 2001 my first executive act was to hire Fania as librarian and that choice was a success from day one,” Katz told JTA.

Fania, who worked as a teacher much of her adult life, originally trained to do so in Yiddish for students in the city’s Jewish school system. The Nazis shattered that future, but decades later, the Vilnius Yiddish Institute represented a return to her roots. 

“She understood that she was the carrier of so much of the living Yiddish culture of the interwar period, especially its secular Yiddishist incarnation,” Katz explained.  

The Institute lasted for 17 years, until it ultimately closed down in 2018. Every year it ran a summer program attended by students from around the world, and Fania became a fixture of the experience, telling students about the city of her youth, the experience of the ghetto and bringing them out to the remains of her partisan camp in the Rudninkai forest well into her nineties. 

She is remembered fondly by nearly everyone who passed through.

“I feel really blessed to have had an opportunity to work with her,” Indre Joffyte, who helped run the program, told JTA. “Fania’s energy, determination and passion in everything she did was an inspiration to everyone around her. I will always remember her caring nature, our girly conversations, her preparedness to help, and her inner youth despite her age and tragic life experiences.”

In independent Lithuania, Fania became a prominent figure in its Jewish community as well as in diplomatic circles, guiding visiting leaders on tours of the former ghetto and Ponar where so many of her relatives were killed.

But the increased attention also invited trouble. 

In the years since the fall of the Soviet Union, a nationalist narrative arose in the Baltic states that equated the actions of the Soviets with the Nazis.  

Known as the “double genocide” theory, it has been largely rejected by Jewish and western Holocaust institutions, but has become the standard presented in Lithuania and the other Baltic states. 

It resulted in a smear campaign directed against Brantsovsky and other surviving Jewish partisans, such as Margolis and Yitzhak Arad who was the director of Yad Vashem from 1972 to 1993. 

For fighting in units allied with the Soviets, they were accused of being war criminals on the same level as Lithuanians who collaborated with the Nazis. 

“I agree completely with all the anti-Communist pronouncements. What I disagree with is, of course, the equalization of the people who committed the genocide at Auschwitz and the people who liberated Auschwitz. They’re simply not the same.” said Katz.  “As much as one should hate the Stalinist Soviet Union between 1941 and 1945, we were in the American-Anglo-Soviet alliance, and the Soviet Union was the only force fighting Hitler in Eastern Europe. So of course, Fania’s partisan union was aligned with the Soviet partisans in the forest who were fighting.”

For Brantsovsky, the issue came to head in 2008, when Lithuania’s chief prosecutor publicly demanded that she be questioned over her alleged connections to a massacre of Lithuanian civilians during the war. 

Katz believes that the demand was in retaliation for increased pressure from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and other Jewish institutions for Lithuania to investigate its own wartime collaborators.

The charges were dropped that same year, but the incident had a notable effect on Brantsovsky, resulting in her receding somewhat from public life in Lithuania. 

She didn’t stop teaching Yiddish, however, and was active in working with students and guiding tours until her 99th year, when she had a fall on the eve of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

With her passing, another thread connecting Eastern Europe’s Jewish past and rich Yiddish culture has been severed. 

“She was one of the last witnesses of prewar Jewish life in Vilna, a proud graduate of its Yiddish school system where everything from chemistry to Latin and Shakespeare was studied in the Jewish community’s native language,” Jordan Kutzik, a former deputy Yiddish editor at The Forward, said in a memorial post on Facebook.

“After nearly her entire family and cultural milieu were murdered and then her native language suppressed for 50 years, she wasn’t wasting any time in helping to document her city’s history and encouraging others to explore it.”

[aois-amaterasu-painting]

Gekirock interview (July 2017)

Through "Dainippon Itan Geisha" and into the summer outdoor live, "BURST INTO A BLAZE 3": Featuring a fan-voted setlist showcasing "The Best of the Best" of the current GazettE!

After completing the additional performance of their 15th-anniversary commemorative show Dainippon Itan Geisha ‘Bou Dou Ku Gudon no Sakura’ and wrapping up the HERESY LIMITED TOUR17, the GazettE is set to host their first large-scale outdoor concert in nine years, "BURST INTO A BLAZE 3" on August 19. They’ve also announced their participation in ROCK IN JAPAN FESTIVAL 2017.

In this interview, we explore the plans for "BURST INTO A BLAZE 3," dive into the much-talked-about RAD MARKET merchandise—praised for its outstanding style amid increasingly fashion-forward band merch—and hear advice from the members, who continue to command tremendous support 15 years into their career. We also discuss their thoughts on the media and advice for the next generation.

Interviewer: You’ve just wrapped up the live house tour, HERESY LIMITED TOUR17. How was it? Do you feel like your performances have become more refined?

RUKI: Hmm… Honestly, it was a while ago, so I don’t remember much (laughs).

Uruha: It’s only been two months (laughs).

Interviewer: When I watched your performance at the Yoyogi National Gymnasium First Arena (March 10), I noticed some attendees seemed a bit unsure of how to vibe with the show. Did you feel like the fans got more used to it over time?

RUKI: By the time they were getting used to it, the tour was already over.

Interviewer: The songs from your early "Itan" era have a different approach compared to your louder, more rock-driven tracks. When performing those older songs, what do you consciously focus on? I imagine the challenges are on a different vector as well. With louder tracks, I feel like the vertical axis (the beat and rhythm) is dynamically emphasized. In contrast, the songs from the "Itan" era have a sharper, more edgy atmosphere and seem to require more meticulous expression. What are your thoughts on this, Kai?

Kai: For us, it doesn’t feel like the two are polar opposites, but the older tracks have their own charm. I focused on how to interpret and express those older songs in a way that fits who we are now. I’ve never really thought of it as "this is how we are now, and that’s how we were then."

Interviewer: So, would you say you were able to play them naturally?

Kai: Yes, I think so. Surprisingly, it came together quite smoothly.

Interviewer: What about you, Aoi?

Aoi: With our recent loud songs, there’s often a balance to maintain with sequences, and they’re primarily built around riffs and power chords. But with the older tracks, the phrases had a much wider range. That’s completely different from what we do now, so it felt nostalgic in a way—like, "Oh, it’s been a while since I’ve played these kinds of phrases." Still, since those phrases came from me originally, it felt like I was able to enjoy them together with the audience.

Interviewer: The anguished guitar on "Sugar Pain" (from the 2005 mini-album Gama) left a strong impression. It was amazing.

Aoi: Thank you very much.

Interviewer: What about you, Uruha?

Uruha: The loud tracks we’ve been playing up until recently involved a playing style that focused on locking in with the rhythm. The guitar parts were largely written with an emphasis on how to make the rhythm sound powerful. But with the older songs, there were more floating, cutting-style riffs. Personally, I found the groove much harder to grasp with those.

Interviewer: The rhythms are quite unique and unconventional, aren’t they?

Uruha: Yes, that’s true. The guitar parts often feel detached from the drums, with many floating, upper-layer melodies. In our recent songs, we tend to focus on syncing with the drums, which makes the live performance experience feel significantly different.

Interviewer: It really highlighted the unique pleasure of a visual kei-style twin guitar setup, something distinct from the typical loud rock twin guitar arrangement.

Uruha & Aoi: Thank you very much.

Interviewer: What about you, REITA?

REITA: During the DOGMA era (from their 8th album released in 2015), we were mostly tuning to A or B. We hadn’t played in standard tuning or even a whole step down for a long time, so it was quite challenging to adjust. When you’re in A or B tuning, the looseness of the strings creates this specific low-end resonance. But with standard tuning, you lose that effect. Since the bass drum’s tuning and tone remain the same, I had to figure out how to compensate for that low-end depth, which was tricky. Plus, these older songs aren’t as focused on tight, vertical synchronization as the louder tracks, so while playing them, it sometimes felt like the performances weren’t locking in perfectly (laughs). That kind of frustration lingered a bit.

Interviewer: I see. Unlike loud tracks where the synchronized vertical rhythm stands out, it might have been a bit harder for the audience to catch the rhythm and fully vibe with it.

REITA: Yeah, that could be it. We even adjusted a few songs to make them easier to follow.

Interviewer: Personally, I found that elusive quality fresh and very cool. What about you, RUKI?

RUKI: Comparing now to back then, it’s like two completely different things. The way we perceive and create sound is completely different. Nowadays, we make music by changing the key to suit the situation. Back then, we had songs where the lyrics would be like this, but the music would be like that... Performing them now, I felt it highlighted what we do well today. It also brought flashbacks of our old selves, so I'm glad we went for it.

Interviewer: Let’s talk about the upcoming outdoor live show, LIVE IN SUMMER 17 "BURST INTO A BLAZE 3", scheduled for August 19 at Fuji-Q Highland’s Conifer Forest. It’s your first large-scale outdoor concert in nine years and the third one overall. The trailer mentions the theme of "liberation from darkness." Does that symbolize a desire to simply enjoy being outdoors?

Aoi: Yes, we want to enjoy the outdoor setting. That said, I’m a bit worried about the weather because last time, it rained.

Interviewer: Was it a heavy downpour?

Aoi: No, just light rain...

RUKI, Uruha, REITA, & Kai: (laughs)

Aoi: If it’s going to rain, it should just pour already. A light drizzle doesn’t even make for a good story (laughs).

Interviewer: I see. Light rain isn’t quite legendary material (laughs).

Aoi: If it had been a torrential downpour, we could’ve said, "That day was insane!" or something (laughs). I hope we can make it a memorable live this time.

Interviewer: I’ve never been to Conifer Forest before. What’s the atmosphere like?

Aoi: It’s really in the mountains. It’s located beside or behind Fuji-Q Highland, and from the stage, I remember there was nothing but mountains beyond the embankment.

Kai: It’s basically a forest.

Interviewer: A forest—does that mean it has an outdoorsy atmosphere?

RUKI: Not really. It’s closer to feeling like a sea of trees (laughs). There’s no outdoorsy or lighthearted feel to it.

REITA: Yeah, it’s not exactly "pop" in atmosphere (laughs).

Interviewer: Oh, I see. Since it’s a venue where many artists perform, I thought it might have a more cheerful ambiance.

RUKI: I think when the crowd is there, it might feel that way.

Interviewer: In the second-floor clubhouse, there will be an archive gallery titled "EXUVIA", displaying past costumes, ESP guitars and basses, YAMAHA drums, and more. It sounds like an impressive and extensive exhibit.

Aoi: Yeah, since the space is limited, we’re aiming to show as much as we possibly can.

Interviewer: How big is the space?

RUKI: It’s reasonably large. It’s comparable to a venue where you might hold a big wedding reception.

Interviewer: I recently attended David Bowie’s major retrospective, and even just seeing the costumes was captivating. Given the GazettE’s dedication to costumes, this exhibit feels like something special and invaluable for fans.

RUKI: Putting together this archive exhibit made me realize we need to take better care of the items that represent our history as a band. We should preserve them properly (laughs).

Interviewer: I imagine it will get very crowded. Are there plans in place to manage that?

Aoi: Yes, visitors will have a set time to view the exhibit. I think the staff will handle that part efficiently.

Interviewer: Like your Yoyogi National Gymnasium performance Dainippon Itan Geisha, the setlist for this concert will also be decided by fan voting. The initial rankings had "INSIDE BEAST" at number one, followed by "Filth in the beauty," "TOMORROW NEVER DIES," "Cassis," and "Hyena." Have there been any changes in the rankings since then?

REITA: There have been some slight changes. One or two songs shifted, and I think "VORTEX" climbed higher. Ultimately, singles and more well-known tracks—if I can put it that way—tend to rise to the top.

Interviewer: Did you vote this time as well?

RUKI: Yes, I did. But the song I voted for ranked pretty low. It’s a bit pathetic, isn’t it? (laughs)

Interviewer: Aoi, did you vote?

Aoi: What?! No! Why would I vote? (laughs)

RUKI, Uruha, REITA, Kai: (burst into laughter)

REITA: Because you want to (laughs).

Aoi: But it’s us who decide the setlist! That’s like tipping the scales, isn’t it? (laughs)

REITA: I know, but still... I just kind of wanted to see what would happen if I voted (laughs).

Aoi: Ah, I see. In that case, I might try voting next time (laughs).

Interviewer: How did you feel when you saw the rankings?

Kai: Lately, the songs we’ve been performing in live shows before Dainippon Itan Geisha tend to rank higher, and that makes me happy. Having tracks like "INSIDE BEAST" and "TOMORROW NEVER DIES" near the top is a good sign since they’ve become live staples.

RUKI: Yeah, it’s definitely a good trend.

Interviewer: The details for the merchandise to be sold at the concert haven’t been announced yet, but RUKI, the designs you create for RAD MARKET’s goods are always incredibly cool. I was blown away by the T-shirts from the Dainippon Itan Geisha concert, especially the use of the word "ANTITHESIS."

RUKI: ANTITHESIS means "the opposite". The new designs are going for a more sporty vibe.

Interviewer: One standout feature of your designs is that they aren’t just for live shows—you’d want to wear them casually, too. They don’t just scream the band logo across the front. Is there anything in particular you focus on when designing?

RUKI: I try to incorporate whatever trends are popular at that time. It’s something we won't be able to do next year.

Interviewer: Honestly, they look cooler than T-shirts from some high-end brands that cost ¥30,000.

RUKI: (laughs) Well, men’s clothing can get really expensive.

Interviewer: If you were to wear your own band’s merchandise, like a T-shirt, what kind of design would you want?

RUKI: It depends. The challenge is how to make a typically “uncool” band T-shirt look stylish (laughs). Even with foreign bands’ merchandise, there are some shirts that are hard to wear out, you know?

Interviewer: Like what, for example?

RUKI: Like those of recent bands. I can wear Sex Pistols, but… (laughs).

Interviewer: I think I kind of understand what you mean (laughs).

RUKI: It’s the kind of thing that becomes cool again over time. Stuff like vintage 1980s L.A. metal shirts—METALLICA or MÖTLEY CRÜE—those are wearable. It’s about wearing something that’s a bit ironically uncool.

Interviewer: Ah, that makes sense!

RUKI: Like IRON MAIDEN shirts. Those are kind of unfashionable, aren't they (laughs).

Interviewer: Yeah, they’ve got that subtle pop charm. I’ve even seen black rappers like Tyler, The Creator rocking MAIDEN shirts, and it looks surprisingly fresh. It’s become a thing for rappers to wear metal T-shirts, hasn’t it?

RUKI: Yeah, it’s definitely a trend. Apparently, there’s this whole market where vintage band T-shirts sell really well because American rappers and celebrities wear them. Some people are making a fortune selling super vintage stuff to them—it’s become this huge trend (laughs).

Interviewer: The shirt you’re wearing today is a Kendrick Lamar T-shirt, right? It’s super cool. I don’t think you can find that in Japan yet. Where did you get it?

RUKI: Yep, it is. But where I got it is a secret (laughs).

REITA: "DAMN."!

Aoi: What’s that? A band?

RUKI: He’s a rapper.

Aoi: I don’t have that kind of taste like RUKI does, so I don’t really wear band shirts much, except maybe the GazettE ones. But when I wear them to work, I end up matching with the other members (laughs). So I stopped wearing them, but now they’re the ones matching, and I’m like, “Come on!” (laughs). Privately, though, I still wear them. Oh, that reminds me—ages ago, I went to see EXTREME live and bought a T-shirt as a souvenir for RUKI. But I’ve never seen him wear it (laughs).

RUKI: It’s safely tucked away in my collection (laughs).

Aoi: In the unfashionable section (laughs).

RUKI: No, no, it’s great (laughs).

Kai: I’ve never bought a band T-shirt myself, so I wouldn’t know. But if I did, I’d probably focus more on the design than the logo.

REITA: A while ago, I was looking for a MÖTLEY CRÜE shirt. But the ones I wanted were crazy expensive—like *¥30,000 because they’re vintage. And the ¥3,000 ones just didn’t appeal to me.

*¥30,000 ≈ €184

Interviewer: I kind of get what you mean.

REITA: Still, spending ¥30,000 on a T-shirt feels ridiculous, so I didn’t buy it in the end.

Interviewer: Do you think 30,000 yen is too much for a T-shirt?

REITA: Of course! It’s expensive, isn’t it? (laughs)

Aoi: Wait, we’re talking secondhand, right? It's called vintage (laughs).

REITA: Ah, yeah, I guess so.

Aoi: Still, ¥30,000 is too much.

REITA: Right? I’d even hesitate if it were brand new.

Interviewer: I’m looking forward to the new RAD MARKET merchandise announcements. Are the member-produced food items still in development?

RUKI: Yeah, we’re planning to do a taste-testing session soon.

Interviewer: The Fuji-Q live sounds like it’s packed with festival vibes and exciting ideas—I’m really looking forward to it. Also, you recently announced your appearance at ROCK IN JAPAN FESTIVAL. That was a surprise, considering that visual kei bands have only recently started performing at these kinds of events. (the GazettE will perform on August 11th.)

Uruha: Yeah, it’s a completely unknown experience for us. I imagine it’ll have a very different vibe from something like "LOUD PARK" or "KNOTFEST," which makes it exciting. I’m picturing it being somewhat similar to Hokkaido’s RISING SUN ROCK FESTIVAL.

Interviewer: I feel like the so-called “Japanese rock kids” will probably enjoy it pretty openly. Plus, the atmosphere is great—peaceful and relaxed.

Aoi: That makes me feel a little less nervous (laughs).

Interviewer: Going back a bit, how did you feel about your performance at last year’s "KNOTFEST"?

RUKI: Well, we did our best (laughs).

Uruha: I think the audience reaction was better than how I personally felt about it.

Interviewer: In your previous interview (from the March 2017 issue), RUKI mentioned that modern visual kei, with its core in loud rock, seems to have "hit a ceiling." I found that insight to be very sharp. I interviewed a band that has openly expressed their admiration for the GazettE, and they incorporate elements like 7-string guitars, Djent, and progressive styles, with a high level of skill. It made me wonder if that’s the natural direction loud rock evolves toward. I've also spoken with other visual kei bands and even some fans, and I often sense a feeling of insecurity or complex about being associated with visual kei. After celebrating your 15th anniversary, as a leading figure in visual kei and someone who guides future bands, could you offer any advice to those who might feel unable to proudly say they love visual kei or don't feel confident about it?

Aoi: Hmm, honestly, we don’t really care about what others think, so I don’t have any words to offer (laughs). But I think it's good for each person to do their own thing in this scene. In the loud scene, for example, when a certain style becomes popular, like Djent, it just becomes saturated, right? That "follow-the-leader" mentality isn’t necessary, you should just do things your own way and let them fade or evolve however they will.

Interviewer: Loud rock is also starting to settle into certain formulas, but it still manages to endure over time, doesn’t it?

Aoi: But that's not so easy for visual kei. There are people doing their own thing in their own way, and if those people can survive, I think that’s all that really matters.

Interviewer: How about you, Kai?

Kai: Well, I’m not really in a position to say much... but what I think is that there’s something cool about sticking to one style. That’s why I like bands that stick to their style.

Interviewer: Do you mean in terms of their musical style?

Kai: Both, actually. Including their attitude. I don’t really get deeply involved with other bands, so I can only comment from a superficial perspective (laughs).

Interviewer: How about you, REITA?

REITA: If we're talking about the kids who can't feel proud of being part of visual kei, I don’t understand why they can't say it with pride, but I guess that’s just how they feel. That can be a good thing, though. "Visual kei" is a name everyone knows, but not many people are fully immersed in it, and maybe that’s what's good about it. Also, when people say things like, "Visual kei shouldn't be at this kind of festival," that actually makes me more motivated. I think it becomes a driving force.

Interviewer: So, you’re saying that complex feelings can be turned into motivation.

REITA: Exactly.

Interviewer: What do you think, Uruha?

Uruha: I can’t really offer advice, but I think if someone can't proudly say they’re part of visual kei, it's actually proof that they're self-aware, and I think that's pretty smart. We’re doing the core of visual kei, but when we were younger, we were very edgy. In that sense, I think the younger generation is a lot smarter. It doesn't matter what others think—this is a world where no one will guarantee anything for you, so it’s best to just do things the way you like.

Interviewer: What about you, RUKI?

RUKI: Not being able to take pride in visual kei… Well, I guess I don’t really care about anyone else outside of us.

Interviewer: During the live performance at the National Yoyogi venue, you made a declaration to "proudly continue in visual kei," which sounded like a statement of commitment to the visual kei scene.

RUKI: I’m not really interested in visual kei as a "scene." To me, "visual kei" is more like being an inventor—something that encompasses makeup, costumes, packaging, and everything related to visual presentation. So, it really depends on what you mean when you say "visual kei."

Interviewer: I think it’s also about the fact that your background is rooted in the visual kei scene.

RUKI: Visual kei itself has become so subdivided, so we’re just us, and others are just others. That's why I don’t have any advice to offer. Of course, we’re grateful when people say they like our music.

Interviewer: I don't know if it's just coincidence, but almost all the bands I interview or meet in venues say that they've been influenced by the GazettE.

RUKI: What do they say they like about the GazettE? Like the era?

Interviewer: It varies by era, but a lot of them talk about the spirit of the band, and they speak passionately about it. For example, many people thought that visual kei was synonymous with bad musicianship and lack of technical skill. But after attending a live performance, like the "Shikkoku", they realized how good you actually are! They were surprised by not only the skill but also the high level of sound and production. If you actually saw the live show, you wouldn't have any bad feelings, right?

RUKI: I’m grinning, actually (laughs). It really depends on what part of us they like. When people become fans of a band, some of them fall in love after reading an interview, and some after watching a documentary.

Interviewer: You mentioned that some people become fans of a band by reading an interview, but I feel like lately, there are fewer people who develop a liking for a band from reading an interview. Over time, media has changed, and now there are more outlets, especially with the rise of the internet, but the content often feels the same, like the same types of questions being asked. I say this with some self-reflection, and I realize this question might sound strange, but since you’ve given many interviews, do you have any thoughts about the types of questions that get asked?

RUKI: It feels like media has shifted from magazines to the internet, but the questions haven’t really changed since the magazine era. I hate to say it, but the questions I hear from the inner circle, the ones that are specialized in visual kei, aren't very interesting to read. In the past, I was often asked about personal things. But then again, not all fans necessarily want to hear about the music side of things. What people are most interested in is the mindset or the emotional side—what we’re thinking or feeling. Personally, I pay attention to those aspects. For example, interviews with bands that are disbanding are often very awkward, and I find the way that tension comes through quite interesting (laughs). Things like that—a glimpse into the true nature of a band—is what I find interesting.

Interviewer: Do you all read media interviews? What kind of articles are you interested in?

Aoi: When I read band interviews, it's rare for me to get a bad impression of someone.

Interviewer: So, it's usually non-offensive, right?

Aoi: Oh, I see what you're saying (laughs). Well, I don’t really end up disliking anyone after reading their interview, but I’m not particularly drawn to them either. But I think non-offensive, neutral responses are the best.

Interviewer: What about you, Kai?

Kai: Hmm, if it feels like they're just saying ordinary things, I’ll just pass it by (laughs). It’s more common with people who are older, but there are some who say very nasty things, right?

Interviewer: That's certainly true (laughs).

Kai: Whether it's for better or worse, I tend to pay attention to people like that. I end up getting more and more immersed, thinking, "Why did they say that?" "What’s the reason behind that statement?" I find that interesting.

Interviewer: So, you want to know why they said it. How about you, REITA?

REITA: I’m going to say something that might not be the best... but I don’t really read interviews in print. I do like video interviews, though. I enjoy paying attention to how they say things, their tone of voice, the pauses, their phrasing—those are the things I find cool. But when it’s in writing, I find it hard to know how seriously to take it. It’s a bit difficult for me to tell how much of it is genuine.

Interviewer: Hmm... That hits a bit close to home...

Aoi: But sometimes, when (the interviewer) transcribes it, they make the artist sound like they're using a really formal tone, right? (laughs). It makes it sound like they are being really condescending. I'm a bit taken aback by that. Like, "Whoa! I'm not saying that at all!" (laughs).

Interviewer: I see (laughs). How about you, Uruha?

Uruha: Personally, I don’t really read band interviews in magazines. Instead, I read interviews that come with scores. I’m more interested in comments about their performance, the playing itself. I’ve never been that interested in the mental or emotional side of artists.

Interviewer: So, you were originally more interested in the craftsmanship side of things. How about you, RUKI?

RUKI: I don’t really read other people's interviews, but sometimes I do read interviews that show up on my Twitter timeline. They’re often from different genres, and when I read those, I think, "Wow, that's impressive." There are statements where people say things like, "I’ve got nothing left to lose." The lack of responsibility in their statements is so clear, and I really like that.

Interviewer: Yeah, interviews with idols can sometimes be really surprising.

RUKI: That feels like it’s closer to their true nature. Also, I find articles about foreign artists interesting.

Interviewer: For example, Corey Taylor of SLIPKNOT criticizing Donald Trump, although not many media outlets report on that.

RUKI: I really like stuff like that. Trent Reznor from NINE INCH NAILS is really critical of the music industry. He’s a huge name, and even though he’s making his own music with a lot of passion, he says things like the music industry is dead, it’s rotten, and there are no inventors left in the industry. I think it would be amazing if people in Japan were as bold as that. Like, "Sorry, but it’s over!" (laughs). It’s hard to find that kind of honesty in Japan... When it comes to artists, it's about whether they’re going commercial or staying true to their art. Watching how that unfolds is really interesting.

Interviewer: I’ll take that to heart. I've always felt that things that are inoffensive are less likely to catch on to people other than fans.

RUKI: Yeah, album interviews are usually the least interesting (laughs). Part of it is the times we’re in. Back in our day, there was a certain thrill in digging deeper into things like spirituality—or the deeper mindset behind what they were saying—or not saying.

Interviewer: These days, you can usually look everything up online right away. I also feel that the GazettE is really good at using social media, but at the same time, it must be difficult. Are there things you’re careful about when it comes to social media?

RUKI: I try not to say things as if I’m always right, though it’s not like I actively remind myself to do that. I just try to avoid saying unnecessary things, since there are so many different people out there.

Interviewer: It’s a tough situation, right? Especially for famous people, who are under so much pressure regarding compliance these days. I’ve noticed, although this doesn’t involve the GazettE specifically, that on social media, there’s a never-ending debate among live kids about live manners. I often think it's pointless.

RUKI: I used to be the type to speak up about live manners. I don’t do it much anymore, though. Back in the day, if something came up, I would write long posts about it.

Interviewer: Do you have any thoughts when you see debates about live manners?

RUKI: Since I’ve been the one to bring it up in the past, I kind of feel like, "Can’t people just enjoy things normally?" I do think people should be more mindful. Sometimes, you have to say things strongly for them to be understood.

Interviewer: I sometimes think that maybe these things can only be solved by not engaging in debates at all.

RUKI: Hm... I wonder if it’s because of the way society has shifted that things have turned out this way.

Interviewer: From a fan’s perspective, what the members say is absolute, right? So, maybe instead of vague statements about manners, it would be better if the band clearly set some rules.

RUKI: That's right, it’s the same for every band. If you don’t want to cause trouble, then don’t say anything. But if you’re okay with causing trouble, then go ahead and say it. I think it’s tough for bands playing in live houses, though. The places where we always have trouble are live houses, too.

REITA: I think it’s because we also play in halls.

RUKI: Right. So this problem will probably continue forever.

Interviewer: But it’s a bit contradictory, isn’t it? Going to a live show is a positive experience, and you’re basking in the afterglow, but then you open social media, you might see something like, "There were people with bad manners!"

REITA: That's really unpleasant, isn't it? I don’t understand the idea of trying to make everyone know about someone. If it’s about a specific person, just tell them directly.

RUKI: REITA has spoken (laughs)!

[aeoki]

Number Eight - Tripping: Chapter 7

Characters: Rinne, HiMERU, Kohaku & Niki Location: Los Angeles Townscape

TL Note:

A pure culture of an organism is a culture which is obtained from a single strain having no contamination of other strains of organisms. Basically, Niki is trying to say that Rinne was raised in a pure environment, free from other influences/culture.

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ< After some time. >

HiMERU: Three hours left. It seems “Number Eight” is finally coming to an end.

Niki: Let’s hurry and find the goal while Rinne-kun’s resting in the car.

Kohaku: Where are the clues for the goal hidin’, anyway? I wish we had somethin’ more specific.

Rinne: Sorry to make ya wait, guys!

HiMERU: That voice–

Niki: Rinne-kun! You’re finally awake. Are you feeling okay?

Rinne: You betcha. Rinne-kun slept like a baby, so he’s in tip-top condition ☆

Kohaku: Thank goodness… Still, it’s rare to see you sleep for that long.

Did you feel like a fish out of water?

Rinne: Probably. The water and air was just so different here, so I guess I must’ve used up more energy than I’d thought.

But who knew we had this sorta weakness~? Man, I’ve never been more envious of Niki’s sturdy stomach.

Niki: There’s a lot of nature back in your hometown, right, Rinne-kun~? It’s kinda like pure culture[⁎].

Rinne: I don’t wanna hear that from you. There aren’t that many things that can rival your purity, Niki. Or in terms of cooking, anyway.

Well, I’m sure the only reason I got used to living in the big city was all thanks to your cooking. But now that I’m overseas…

I ended up passing out due to starvation and lack of sleep. Haven’t done that in a while.

Dunno if someone cast a spell on me or something, but I found myself at our destination when I woke up.

You guys can’t drive, right? If you guys committed a crime, then even I can’t help you then, ya know?

HiMERU: Don’t worry. We came up with a plan for that.

You should be able to understand what happened if we told you we borrowed a staff member’s phone and used all our money to call a towing car over.

In any case, we need to find the goal.

But we don’t have any clues. There hasn’t been any new information from the tablet, either.

Kohaku: “Go back the path you came and find the goal”... the mission itself sounds simple, but we’re stumped because we don’t have any clues.

Niki: We should have more luck if we had some clues~

Rinne: Oh? You guys really have no idea?

There was a huge clue on the way here.

Niki: Wha? You sound like you know where the goal is, Rinne-kun.

Rinne: You betcha. Don’t underestimate Rinne Amagi-kun the genius…☆

I know exactly what the mean “Number Eight” staff are thinking!

HiMERU: You mean on the way here? Don’t tell me, you’re talking about that?

That banner that was at the place we landed on with the parachutes…?

It had “COME HERE” on it, didn’t it? You’re saying that wasn’t a landing point, but a clue hinting towards our goal?

Rinne: Perfect answer ☆ I’d expect no less from you, Merumeru!

I can be a bit mean, ya know~? I had a lightbulb moment when I saw the tablet saying “go back the path you came”.

It’s pretty convenient for a variety TV show to have both the starting point and the finishing point at the same place, right?

Kohaku: That’s true. It makes sense when you think about all the ridiculous things we’ve been through. They were plannin’ on confusin’ us even further by givin’ us that hint.

Niki: And they wouldn’t be villains if they just gave us a hint from the very beginning. You could even say it’d be our fault if we failed to notice it.

Rinne: If we couldn’t reach the goal, then they could laugh in our faces too.

Gyahaha. That sounds pretty funny in itself, though.

“The problem children of the idol industry fail to notice the clue at the starting point and wander around in circles on the West Coast!”

But we ain’t gonna fall for their trap.

We’re currently in a clean era, where anyone can say whatever they want on social media. They want to be a villain who wants to feel satisfied after arguing with those with differing opinions.

They only care about themselves. We’re in an era where everyone wants to win – they want to argue and eliminate the foreign matter…

If a villain doesn’t exist, then they’ll find another to use for their own satisfaction.

It makes you wonder where the real evil is, huh? Let’s hit back and do a proper job of saying NO to those opinions.

We’ll reach “Number Eight’s” goal, and we’ll sing our hearts out with love and peace. And the ones who are allowed to do that are us, “Crazy:B”, right?

HiMERU: Hehe. You’ve got quite the silver tongue. You said it loud enough for the staff behind the cameras to hear as well.

If you’ve had a good rest, then all that’s left to do is to head towards the goal.

Once again, we’ll be counting on you to drive. You’ll do it, won’t you, Amagi?

Rinne: ‘Course, I will. Right now, the word “impossible” doesn’t exist in my dictionary!

If they’re tellin’ us to “COME HERE”, then we’ll have to do just that…☆

ㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤㅤ← Previous Chapter ᠂ ⚘ ˚⊹˚ ⚘ ᠂  Next Chapter →

[phanfictioncatalogue]

Post-Dan and Phil World Tour 2018: II Masterlist

a new kind of blue (ao3) - writingwannabe

Summary: After almost ten years of bottling up his romantic feelings for his best friend, Dan decides he can go on no longer, and after confessing all, he decides that in order to move on with his life, he must move away from Phil and attempt to start life as an individual rather than one half of a double act.

In which Dan is a hopeless romantic and Phil doesn't know what to say.

animal (ao3) - danhoweiis

Summary: after a 82 show sell out world tour, dan is just glad to be home and to have phil all to himself

Back home. (ao3) - KujiraHanma

Summary: It's the first morning back at their London apartment after the tour.

black hole sun (ao3) - bloodyscarab

Summary: addressing the passage of time while headlining a world tour.

do you remember the time (ao3) - selinawrites

Summary: it's florida, 2015. the amazing tour is not on fire is about to open to american audiences, and dan sees a photobooth. it's london, 2019. dan is just about to upload for the first time in over a year, and phil recognizes a photo.

Escape the Night (ao3) - FandomsAreLifex_x

Summary: After

Every Day is Christmas (When I'm With You) (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Dan and Phil finally spend a joint Christmas with their families in their home.

ii: ty ly bb (ao3) - manchestereyes

Summary: 28/04/2018 - 28/11/2018: An era that will live on in countless hearts and memories, including dnp's. An era of new friendships made, old friends meeting for the first time, and an abundance of laughter and tears. Most of all, though, it's been an era of growth and discovery.

Or, Dan and Phil (but mostly Dan) reflect on Interactive Introverts.

In Dreams (ao3) - JudeAraya

Summary: They're exhausted post-tour, and the work never seems to end, but neither do all the little ways in which they take care and surprise each other.

it gets better (ao3) - orphan_account

Summary: Phil will happily take any amount of PDA from Dan. Granted, it’s not usually a lot when they’re out and about, but sometimes there’s a sneaky peck on the lips when there’s absolutely no one about, or the casual hand hold if they’re in a more remote place. More intimate things are reserved for the privacy of their own home. But when they’re stuck on a stupidly crowded tube carriage, standing in at least three different stranger’s personal bubbles at the same time, Phil’s holding onto the closest pole for his life, with Dan desperately clutching onto his arm like a newborn koala.

It gives him a warm fuzzy feeling. But it fades when he remembers how much Dan must be struggling in that moment.

Dan has obsessive compulsive disorder.

Last Christmas Alone (ao3) - echoedvoices

Summary: Dan and Phil try to enjoy life after tour and rekindling their relationship after being apart. Their loved ones are concerned.

Love you through it all (ao3) - Lesbianphan

Summary: A glimpse into Dan and Phil’s journey over the years, through dates/holidays and all the adventures they’ve embarked on together. Just some introspective fluff, featuring the many different stages of their relationship we’ve witnessed over the years

moment of epiphany, in gold light (ao3) - softiejace

Summary: The door to the balcony opens, revealing Phil with his duvet still wrapped around his shoulders like a cape, the garish yellow of his emoji pyjamas poking out underneath.

Dan grins in relief, scooting over on the bench. "Did you find it?"

But Phil doesn't move to sit beside him. And when he unfolds his arms in front of his body, no bottle comes into view in his hands.

Only a small, velvet box.

Noise (ao3) - intoapuddle

Summary: Their first morning together in the privacy of their own bed after tour allows for some filthy fun

Based on tumblr prompt from anon: "This is mine. So is this. And this. And this. Especially this.”

slow burn (ao3) - AnnaSepulchre

Summary: They're home, and they have time.

The Story of Dan & Phil (ao3) - manchestereyes

Summary: It's 2018. Interactive Introverts is over, and Dan has an idea. The ultimate culmination of "give the people what they want", if you will. Throughout the rest of 2018 (and some of 2019), he and Phil will embark on their biggest journey yet: telling the story of their lives, from the moment they started talking until the present day, to set the record straight before they settle down for real.

But as Dan and Phil move into this next chapter of their life, will they be able to fully confront their pasts and move on, once and for all? Or will the race against time to get the book out on October 19th prove too difficult?

Truth (ao3) - Mysticallykai

Summary: Dan realizes that he needs to live his truth after the Interactive Introverts tour ends.

We have Each Other (and that's all we need) (ao3) - evanegg

Summary: Dan and Phil have finished their 2018 tour and are visiting Phil's family on the Isle of Man before they go home. This is supposed to be a nice calm vacation for the two after the stress of the tour, however Phil can't find it in himself to calm down. Dan decides to help him out a little bit...

[therumpus]

The Strangeness of Fiction: A Conversation with Scott Guild

By Elizabeth McCracken

When I first spoke to Scott Guild on the phone, it was in the wake of a terrorist attack: I was calling to offer him a spot at the New Writers Project, and it happened to be the day that the whole of Greater Boston—where he then lived—was shut down while police looked for the Tsarnaev Brothers after the Boston Marathon Bombing. I was delivering good news at this strange time; we joked a little but also talked about the utter strangeness of the moment. That conversation now seems from the world of Scott’s fiction: surreal, terrifying, full of suspense, thousands of people in their homes holding their breath. 

As a person, Guild is modest and self-deprecating—knowingly, comically self-deprecating—but as an artist he’s astonishingly ambitious, a virtuoso. Plastic (Pantheon Books, 2024) is a book, an album, a project like no other. How can a book be about plastic figures, sentient waffles, and a miniature Jesus who comes off His crucifix to be a song-and-dance man be so deeply human and humane? 

Scott Guild is a musician, writer, and teacher whose first novel and first album—both called Plastic—were released this year. He’s a professor at Marian University in Indianapolis, and for many years has been an advocate for prison reform. Though Scott and I have had many conversations over the years in person and on the phone, including in front of audiences and over guacamole salad, we conducted this interview over email.

***

The Rumpus: Plastic is both a high-concept novel, and profound, so intricate and strange that I find it hard to describe. I just want to insist that people read it. It's full of strange concepts and yet it's not about them. I guess I mean that largely the characters are plastic, but the novel doesn't stay with that initial question, “What if plastic figurines were sentient?” (Let's call it The Toy Story level.) It's interested in much more complicated questions. How do you describe the book to people? And what do you think it's about?

Scott Guild: You make an excellent point here, which is that the characters never discuss the fact that they’re plastic figurines—this is just their normal reality, walking around with their hinges and hollow bodies. Unlike Toy Story, there’s not a world of flesh-and-blood humans in contrast to them. I think this gets at a part of the book’s meaning: We all live such strange lives now, immersed in our technologies while the natural world crumbles around us, but more and more this just feels normal, the state of existence we’ve all accepted. 

I wouldn’t want to define what it “means” that the characters are plastic figurines: I’d love for readers to interpret that for themselves, and it’s meant different things even to me in the years of writing the book. But when I look at the way we live now, and then think about how we would appear to people from a century or two ago, we probably would seem as alien to them as plastic figurines, at least in some ways—living so far from nature, completely surrounded by our inventions and the narratives they give us. 

In writing the book, a main goal was to capture something of what it feels like to be alive right now, and—at least for this novel—I couldn’t seem to do that with more traditional narrative forms, which seemed rooted in a different era and type of cognition. The form of my book had to take on the story’s themes; it had to inflect how the story itself was told. I tried writing Erin’s story with a limited third person voice, then with a first-person voice, but this always fell short of what I hoped to evoke. The novel only started to work when it was written as a TV show, when we saw Erin’s life through the filter of the media to which she’s addicted. Similarly, it was only when I gave the characters plastic bodies that their world felt right to me.

All that being said, this isn’t how I describe the novel when someone first asks! I mention that it’s set in a world of plastic figurines, but then also that it’s a love story, and a story of a person trying to reclaim her humanity in a violent, chaotic world. Erin exists inside many layers of alienation, but her personhood and spiritual growth always feel like the heart of the book to me (even if her chest is technically hollow). 

Rumpus: I feel like you and I have talked over the years a lot about the uses of strangeness in fiction. You talk about it a little here from the point of view of a writer—by making the world stranger, you can also write about our own world, a kind of pinhole camera—and I wonder if you can talk about what strangeness means to you.

Guild: This is such a fascinating question, and it gets me thinking about what strangeness is in art. When something is "strange," this means it has swerved from our expectations, that it has somehow defied a normal or typical pattern in its genre. It's funny, because there are whole genres—like surrealist fiction, which I write—where strangeness itself is the expected pattern, and therefore not "strange" at all! 

To be truly strange in surrealist fiction, with all its genre expectations, I think you need to zag at times in the opposite direction, to go for realism when the reader expects the bizarre. This was part of my hope with Plastic: to write a surrealist novel that also has the intimate, personal stakes of traditional literary fiction, so that the two different genre patterns would keep subverting each other, creating a tension that matches the tensions in Erin's world. Just when you think you're in this zany, wacky metafiction novel where the characters get "Brad Pitt's Disease," here comes the section where Erin cares for her father as he dies of BPD—far more Alice Munro than Thomas Pynchon. 

This connects to what I was saying in the last question: my desire to capture something of what life feels like right now. Seeing Trump high in the polls, seeing our eco-crisis ignored, seeing a global rise of fascism, many of us feel like we're trapped inside a satirical metafiction novel (and not a particularly well-written one!). But this doesn't change the depth of our connections to each other, or the inner depth of our emotional and spiritual lives.

 And this leads to another thought: what is the point of strangeness in fiction? Why seek it at all, as a writer or reader? To my mind, when something is truly strange—and strange in a way that's satisfying—it's because it finds a new way to render experience, a shift in form that gives a new window onto our personal or collective existence. In the 1740s, when Samuel Richardson pioneered detailed character interiority in Pamela, this gave readers a very strange and new literary experience, but one deeply rooted in their own personhood. Three centuries later, nothing could be more expected in a literary fiction novel—detailed inner lives are the definition of normal. Though a little less common, the same point can be made about Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness or Kafka's dream logic narratives: innovations become widely-used craft techniques, and these techniques no longer startle us. But these formal innovations were effective at the time, and continue to be effective now, because they train their gaze on something crucial about the human experience and can still speak to us centuries after their strangeness has worn off. 

Rumpus: I love this answer so much, from Pamela to notes of Alice Munro in Plastic. I wanted to ask you about the visual in the book. One of the things that struck me is how clearly I saw some of the things in the book (things that don't exist in our world, like sentient anthropomorphic waffles), while at other times I didn't need to see things in great detail because I was so busy listening: to monologues, song and dance numbers, et cetera. Even though I read the book on the page, it's somehow a real multimedia experience. Maybe my question is just, “How'd you do that? And what do you see when you write?”

Guild: This is all so wonderful to hear. In many ways, the true setting of the novel is Erin's mind, and it's a mind immersed in visual media—particularly television, which she uses to escape her traumas. When Erin looks out on the world, she sees it as close-ups and wide shots, as scenes in front of an imaginary audience; her own thoughts feel to her like a confessional to a camera in Reality TV. Like so many of us today, she's deeply disassociated from reality—all of life feels like a screen—and I wanted this type of cognition to come through in the form of the book, to immerse the reader in this space as well.

In the early drafts of Plastic, when I was writing in limited third person, I always felt like I was telling the reader about Erin's mental state, from the safe remove of a more traditional narrative form. When I began to write the book as a TV show, suddenly I could see the plastic world through her eyes and the distance between us vanished. It's incredible how evocative language is: When I'd write, "the camera zooms in on Jacob's face," or, "the camera pans across the room," it felt like this whole other visual part of my brain switched on, and I could write (and see!) the setting in much more detail. And I had to admit how steeped I am in this media myself, that a few phrases about a camera could do this!  

I didn't realize it until later, but I think I cribbed some of my formal approach from Joyce's Ulysses—I should give credit where it's due! So much of Ulysses is told through the lens of his era's dominant media—as a play, as a series of newspaper stories, as an academic text, depending on the section—and Joyce wants us to remember that we receive our whole sense of the world through these rhetorical structures, that there's really no such thing as "objective" perception. But the experience of Ulysses is one of continuous fragmentation—a major Modernist theme—and I wanted the form of Plastic to feel fluid and seamless, in the fluid way that visual media tries to present the world. 

Rumpus: You are also a musician, and have released Plastic, the album. Is it a companion piece? An essential part of the experience? 

Guild: Thanks for asking about the music! I do think of it as essential to the experience because it takes you directly to one of Erin's most important mental spaces: a space of song. Erin slips into surreal musical numbers throughout the novel—usually at her times of peak emotion—and the album is a way to experience these moments in full, with melody and arrangements for her lyrics in the book. The songs on the album are also chronological, so you can experience the whole story in about 40 minutes of music. 

The album didn't feel like an "adaptation" of Plastic—the way a movie or a musical would—but an expansion of a space already in the book. It lets Erin step from the pages and continue her story in a different narrative structure, with the amazing singer, Stranger Cat, giving her voice. I love the music videos we made as well, and what these add to the storytelling experience.

Rumpus: I know that you worked on this book over years—I saw some early iterations and was always surprised by how much changed from draft to draft. You ended up with a book that was both different in nearly all its particulars and yet at its heart, the same book, undeniably. The same in its soul, and its ambitions, and life force. How did you keep the book from seizing up as you worked on it? I suppose this is another way of saying, “How did you keep it alive, and yourself interested? How does it feels to have it out in the world and done?” 

Guild: I suppose the easy answer to this is Erin herself—staying close to her as a person through the years. (It’s been a long time since I thought of her as “fictional,” though I suppose she’s technically not alive!). With each new draft, I felt like I was coming to know Erin better, slipping more fully into her world. 

Everyone writes and develops their fiction differently—there’s no one correct way—but I usually need a feeling of discovery as I work, a sense that I’m arriving at the truth of the characters and the world, rather than “making things up.” Learning that Erin is plastic, that she breaks into musical numbers, that she gave her father hospice care, that her sister is a terrorist—all these were discoveries while I was deep in the drafting process, and then I’d get excited and start reshaping the book around them. It would take months, or in some cases, years, and I was lucky enough to have brilliant readers like you giving me feedback and guidance along the way. But it was always grounded in Erin, and in becoming more in touch with her mind and heart and world. That often changed the book formally as well, which was a fun surprise of its own—as I mentioned before, her story only made sense to me when it was written as a TV show.

I made the album for many reasons, and I can see now that a major one was spending more time with her! We’d been together for so many years, and I wasn’t ready to say goodbye yet: I started to work full-time on the songs once the book was completed. Now that the book and album are out in the world, and people are reading her story and hearing her songs—it’s a feeling beyond words, letting go of the person who meant so much to me all those years, seeing her leave and have a life with others. In some ways it’s very fulfilling, but I also miss her! Luckily, we still get to bring her alive at all the book-and-music events around the country. 

[beautifulpersonpeach]

It's cold and dreary and the tannies are gone,,, *cries in the corner* But the re-debuting (?) efforts for 2 cool 4 skool (I definitely didn't know how to spell this lol) is so heartwarming!! I just feel warm and fuzzy inside, you know?? Do you know if these fandom efforts are typical for kpop groups? I don't know what to expect for this ms era. I keep seeing articles and discussions that talk about who'll fill in the gap that's left by bts. It's not that I'm super worried (I know exactly where I stand), but I just don't know what will happen next as a whole. I quite enjoy the current army atmosphere. It makes me think that armys are the best when they are working towards a goal. Would you be able to share what are the things that ppl (who's never been through something like this) should keep in mind moving forward for the next 6month-1.5year? Thank you so much!

***

Yeah, re-charting old songs is something more than a few fandoms do from time to time, but ARMYs’ aim of re-charting several old songs, sometimes whole albums, at once and methodically - that’s something I don’t think has been done before. And yes it warms my heart to see the fandom give BTS this. Even though it’s more of symbolic gesture than ‘huge achievement’, it’s a tangible way the fandom can express that we intend to stick by BTS this entire time. Life might happen, we might explore other groups and hobbies or take some time to ourselves, but we’ll never really abandon BTS or forget them while they’re in service. It also allows the fandom the opportunity to re-experience BTS’s old music. It’s reminding me of why I fell in love with them in the beginning.

And you’re right. The fandom does need a goal to work towards. One of the first things I said on this blog that I remember people got mad at me for (lol), was that I think many ARMYs are just Type A k-pop stans who prioritize BTS. A lot of us do well with targets and performance measures, using information and ingenuity to achieve desired goals for someone we love genuinely gets us going. When the fandom is aimless people go crazy. So yeah, keep ARMYs busy and peace will be reasonably attainable.

It seems HYBE intends to keep milking the fandom too - more documentaries are coming, at least four members will release new music over the next 1.5 years, we might get a Jin tour/showcase or Hobi live performances, etc. So I guess we’ve got nothing to worry about on that front.

I’m not too sure myself what to expect between now and 2025. Last week I talked about what usually happens when a group enlists based on what I’ve observed:

1. Some people take a break away from k-pop fully.

2. Some explore other groups, whether or not they end up stanning as well.

3. Some people stay in k-pop and remain only committed to BTS

All three options are valid and sometimes there’s no real difference between how people approach options 2 and 3.

But really, while the guys are in the military I don’t expect the infighting within the fandom to reduce. At best it’s going to remain this annoying for the next 18 months. I know people are hopeful we get more spaced out releases but I’m actually expecting some stacked line-ups in releases next year. I’m also not expecting Seven/Golden-style promotions for any member that doesn’t release under HYBE America. The usual suspects (akgaes, shooters, antis, shippers) will be whining in any case so it’s going to be a pain.

And outside the fandom, I know the race is going to be mad. Right now ATEEZ, Stray Kids, NewJeans, RIIZE, Aespa, VCHA, Katseye, IVE, SHINee, Blackpink and few more… are revving up to take over in 2024. I’m so curious to see all the ways these groups/their companies will try to fill the BTS vacuum. How they will try to court ARMYs and pitch themselves as the rightful successors to BTS.

I’m not really sure what to expect but I know it’s going to be a fun time that’s for sure.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Brooke Allen

Published: Mar 5, 2023

Many of us who care deeply about education in the humanities can only feel despair at the state of our institutions of “higher” learning. Enrollment in these subjects is plummeting, and students who take literature and history classes often come in with rudimentary ideas about the disciplines. Interviewed in a recent New Yorker article, Prof. James Shapiro of Columbia said teaching “Middlemarch” to today’s college students is like landing a 747 on a rural airstrip. Technology such as messaging apps, digital crib sheets and ChatGPT, which will write essays on demand, has created a culture of casual cheating.

Never have I been more grateful to teach where I do: at a men’s maximum-security prison. My students there, enrolled in a for-credit college program, provide a sharp contrast with contemporary undergraduates. These men are highly motivated and hard-working. They tend to read each assignment two or three times before coming to class and take notes as well. Some of them have been incarcerated for 20 or 30 years and have been reading books all that time. They would hold their own in any graduate seminar. That they have had rough experiences out in the real world means they are less liable to fall prey to facile ideologies. A large proportion of them are black and Latino, and while they may not like David Hume’s or Thomas Jefferson’s ideas on race, they want to read those authors anyway. They want, in short, to be a part of the centuries-long conversation that makes up our civilization. The classes are often the most interesting part of these men’s prison lives. In some cases, they are the only interesting part.

Best of all from my selfish point of view as an educator, these students have no access to cellphones or the internet. Cyber-cheating, even assuming they wanted to indulge in it, is impossible. But more important, they have retained their attention spans, while those of modern college students have been destroyed by their dependence on smartphones. My friends who teach at Harvard tell me administrators have advised them to change topics or activities several times in each class meeting because the students simply can’t focus for that long.

My students at the prison sit through a 2½-hour class without any loss of focus. They don’t yawn or take bathroom breaks. I have taught classes on the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, Romanticism, George Orwell, South Asian fiction. We’ve done seminars on Adam Smith and Alexis de Tocqueville. Together we have read Montaigne, Rousseau, Keats, Erasmus, Locke, Montesquieu, Wollstonecraft, Byron, Goethe, Petrarch, Rabelais, Saadat Hasan Manto, Rohinton Mistry. The students write essays in longhand; during the pandemic I taught a correspondence class via snail mail. Some of them do read “Middlemarch,” and their teacher finds the experience far more gratifying than trying to land a 747 on a rural airstrip. We encourage them to treat different societies in history as experiments in time travel, where they try to understand the mores of particular eras as though from the inside. They are very open to that approach, unlike university students, who tend see the past only as one long undifferentiated era of grievous unenlightenment: not just one damn thing after another, but one damn oppressive thing after another.

Like students at elite institutions, most of my incarcerated scholars are politically liberal. Unlike them, many are religious, and that proves surprisingly enriching in studying these authors, who would have been amazed to know they would one day be read by classrooms full of atheists. One of my more devout students, a Protestant who converted to Islam, was so distressed by Voltaire’s disrespect for established creeds that he had to be comforted by other class members. They informed him that he was exactly the sort of person Voltaire was aiming his polemic at, and therefore he could understand the force of it in a way his irreligious peers couldn’t.

My hours at the prison are rich in such moments. In many ways, it is the Platonic ideal of teaching, what teaching once was. No faculty meetings, no soul-deadening committee work, no bloated and overbearing administration. No electronics, no students whining about grades. Quite a few of our students are serving life sentences and will never be able to make use of their hard-won college credits. No student debt, no ideological intolerance, no religious tests—whoops, I mean mandatory “diversity” statements. And in our courteous, laughter-filled classroom there is none of the “toxic environment” that my friends in the academy complain about, and that I experienced during my own college teaching career.

If prison inmates, many of whom have committed violent crimes, can pay close attention for a couple of hours, put aside their political and personal differences, support one another’s academic efforts, write eloquent essays without the aid of technology and get through a school year without cheating, is it too much to ask university students to do the same? Or ask professors to try to create an atmosphere where these habits can prevail? Perhaps prison education can serve as a model of how to return to true learning and intellectual exchange.

[ Via: https://archive.ph/5YRih ]

==

The state of things.

[bleachbleachbleach]

[Bleach e312]

Snake Wines and Beer Steins*: An Anthropology of West Rukongai

* I learned this morning that is not a stein, but I’m keeping it for the assonance!

Really down the rabbithole with this episode and cannot put it down, but this cap is such a completely fascinating glimpse at potential Rukongai cultures and trade routes! 

The first thing that caught my eye, naturally, was the snake, which when this scene first came up I thought was just a completely undressed snake on a plate. But when I went to take the cap, no! It’s a snake in liquid! Which led me to believe it was a pickled snake. 

But then my co-blogger brought up snake wine, which it definitely is. According to Wikipedia, the liquid part of habushu, snake sake from the Ryukyu Islands (Okinawa), is mixed with herbs and honey, which is why it has a yellow tint. The Habu snake is a pit viper viewed as both a menace (it can launch itself and bite you from pretty far away) and as a god, bestowing health and virility. (Contemporary Ryukyuan/Okinawan literature sometimes includes habu snakes as an anti-colonial metaphor, such as Medoruma Shun’s 1999 short story, “Hope.”)

1. Increased Importance of Medicinal Food vs. Sustenance Food in Rukongai

Makes all the sense in the world to me that Rukongai would have virility wine. If you don’t need to eat to survive, I imagine the value of virility wine is quite high. ...I mean, what else is there to do out there?

2. Climate Profiles Suggest Far-Reaching Trade Networks

Because the Gate Guardian who shows up in this episode is Jidanbou, this means the village Oomaeda encounters is in West Rukongai somewhere—probably close to the gates, since Soi Fon expected him back after a day trip. (But per the Bount arc, Renji can apparently run to the ass-end of Rukongai to the Seireitei and back in a few hours, so there’s some wiggle room here.) 

Nothing we’ve seen from West Rukongai suggests it’s climatologically similar to the Ryukyu Islands (or to southeast Asia, where similar pit vipers live), which are subtropical. Soul Society always gives the impression of being fairly temperate. At least, it snows in the Seireitei without mountain elevations being involved (Winter Fireworks chapter). West Rukongai is where Hokutan is, the mountains where Kaien and Rukia trained, which gave the impression of being pretty temperate. West Rukongai is also where Junrinan is—where Hitsugaya and Hinamori are from. Judging by Hitsugaya’s behavior in the Beach Episode, if Junrinan was anything like the Ryukyu Islands, he’d have perished long ago.

So… DID THEY TRADE FOR IT. DID THEY GET THE SNAKE WINE FROM ELSEWHERE. How far away is that elsewhere? How many different owners’ hands did it pass through to make it to this village, to this feast? Snake wine is intended to age fairly substantially, which in Rukongai could mean quite a bit of time. How old is this snake wine? What is its provenance?? Potential evidence of complex and far-reaching patterns of trade and shared ascriptions of value, is what I’m saying. snake wine snake wine snake wine

In my mind, I’ve mostly transposed Japan over Soul Society and imagine  North Rukongai as northern Japan, West Rukongai as western Japan, etc. Except in my mind sometimes south is southern Japan and sometimes it’s northern New Mexico lol. East Rukongai in my mind is "idk, New Jersey?" Maybe the snake wine is from the version of southern Rukongai where Pirate AU Soi Fon lives, dominating the high seas…

3. Evidence of Glassworking and Alcohol Production Characteristic of the late 19th/early 20th Centuries

[For reference, Soul Society is typically described as being similar to the Edo Period of Japanese history, which spanned the 17th-19th centuries.]

The second standout beverage here is the beer stein, which I called a stein and then learned that the original beer steins came from the Bubonic Plague era and had tops, for plague reasons, and were made out of wood and leather and then pewter. What do I know, I don’t drink, LOL.

That is more technically a ten-sided handled glass pint, which became popular in the early half of the 20th century in England, though some sources place it in Austria a few decades earlier. Drinking beer out of various forms of glass predates that, and there was a whole period of ceramic drinkware and trade with China and Japan thrown in the centuries between, blah blah. But two things are probably true if there’s a glass beer mug: 

 1. Glassworking has developed enough to make this workable/not a holy pain, production-wise. But again, this is Rukongai—maybe this is the one mug in all existence in West Rukongai and not something intended for mass production. They’re toasting the once-in-a-lifetime event of a Gotei captain slumming it with them, after all. Heck, maybe they got it from the Seireitei, which definitely has more than one of these, though after a cursory look at two places I thought they’d appear, neither does. LOL. Welp. 

2. Beer production has developed enough that it’s filtered and there’s not unseemly gunk floating around in it (made obvious by the fact that you’re drinking it out of a clear glass mug). This could mean Rukongai is pretty with the times with is alcohol production.

Not that that begins to touch why ten-sided handled glass pints from late 19th/early 20th century England and/or Austria are in West Rukongai, a place less likely to have them than the Seireitei, where weird anachronistic stuff seems like it would come into circulation with more regularity.

I love the idea that even if souls don’t remember their previous lives, there’s still imprints and rogue dreams and strange images floating around in their heads, their muscle memories. But like, specifically the version where sometimes the rogue dream is just a gigantic, bomb-ass cup that Some Guy then proceeds to spend his entire afterlife re-developing. He is a VISIONARY. A GENIUS. A rare mind inventing something the likes of which have never been seen is this world but that exist in his mind so clearly it is as though he has seen it in his hands before!!

[antigonewinchester]

@setyourfireonme

retcon of mary's deal? wait can you expand because i don't remember seeing anything about it lol. disappointed but not surprised...

so it’s not a literal retcon, i.e. Mary still makes her deal, but to my view, it’s a framing / thematic retcon.

4x03 is a double gut punch: first, the audience gets the reveal that Mary, contrary to how we’ve seen her as the sweet housewife, was born into a hunting family. we got a hint of this in 2x21 (why did Mary know Azazel?) but fully seeing Mary’s backstory re-contextualizes her as a character; no longer only the fridged wife, she was someone who knew and grew up with the supernatural. second, Azazel was only in Sam’s nursery to dose him with blood because he got ‘permission’ from Mary: he made a deal with her. Dean, and we the audience, have assumed Mary’s death as the starting point for the Winchester family tragedy, but in this ep we learn that isn’t true: it wasn’t Mary’s death, but her deal, that opened the door for Azazel and so many other horrors to later enter not just her, but John, Sam & Dean’s lives. Mary’s deal is tragic & disturbing - she had to kiss her dead possessed dad! - while also horribly understandable. Azazel killed her mom & dad, killed John, Mary just wants a husband & kids & normal life and Azazel says he can give it to her, even if she knows there will be unintended consequences down the line for her family. at the least it’s an ambiguous choice, and at most it’s the wrong one; Mary could have let John go, married another man, and still had a normal life, even if we know (and can sympathize with) why she didn’t.

then, way down the line at the end of S12, we get a glimpse at the Apocalypse World: a world where Sam & Dean were never born and so they never stopped the Apocalypse like they did in S5, leading to Lucifer and Michael fighting and destroying the world. already, I think, this framing is different from how Kripke’s era handled it. you can’t really separate Sam & Dean from the Apocalypse; it’s a family drama played out on a planet-wide scale. so no Sam & Dean = no Apocalypse. if S5 was about how Sam & Dean were fated to bring about the Apocalypse and subverted it because of their love for each other, then Apocalypse World implicitly suggests that it was the reverse: Sam & Dean were fated to stop the Apocalypse, and so their non-existence meant they weren’t there to do so.

later on in 13x14, we get this exchange between Mary & AW-Bobby:

BOBBY Mary Campbell was a… complicated woman. Brave, but sad. Full of regret. MARY Let me guess. She made a bad demon deal? BOBBY Opposite. She didn’t make one. Lost the love of her life. Never moved on. MARY And Dean and Sam were never born. Bobby, I made that deal. And it—I brought my boys a lot of pain. But what happened here, in your world? Sam and Dean stopped that war in mine. BOBBY Then I’d say you made the right choice.

the subtext of this conversation is that while Mary’s deal might have been the spark for the fires that burned through Sam & Dean’s lives, her deal with ultimately a good choice - it led to Sam and Dean being heroes and saving the world. the ambiguity that was there in Kripke’s era is dropped for something emotionally simpler and less tragic.

in Kripke’s era, Sam and Dean were chosen, and being chosen meant being cursed. they won by fighting as hard as they could against their fates, and true to Kripke’s humanism, it was Sam & Dean’s love for each other that saved the world. in Dabb’s era, while being chosen may mean suffering and hardship, it also means being a hero. arguably I’d say being chosen is a gift, even if it’s a painful one, if one looks at how powers / helping the world is talked about with Jack, Patience, etc.

neither of these two framings is “right,” per se, but imo they are two very different framings of Mary’s deal.

[twistedtummies2]

Year of the Bat - Number 15

Welcome to Year of the Bat! In honor of Kevin Conroy, Arleen Sorkin, and Richard Moll, I’m counting down my Top 31 Favorite Episodes of “Batman: The Animated Series” throughout this January. We’ve officially entered the Top 15! TODAY’S EPISODE QUOTE: “Kids these days. No respect.” Number 15 is…Legends of the Dark Knight.

One of the great things about many famous comic book characters is their adaptability. Some of these characters were created nearly a century ago; Batman, for example, first appeared in the late 1930s. (He actually turns 85 Years Old this very year!) Some characters that old who were popular then have, for one reason or another, not stood the test of time. Batman has, and part of this is because his creators found him easy to adapt and reconfigure as times changed. Bruce Wayne and his universe have been portrayed more seriously or more goofily over the decades, and have been made to appeal to adults and children alike time and time again. “Batman: The Animated Series” is widely considered the most definitive take on the Caped Crusader and his world specifically because the writers who worked on this show understood this, and had a deep love for ALL sides of Batman’s world. The show, therefore, hits a near-perfect balance, overall, between silly superhero shenanigans, and dark, complex, sometimes downright brutal storytelling.

“Legends of the Dark Knight” is an episode that exemplifies not only the skillful balance of tone the Animated Series managed for the majority of its run, but acts as a tribute to the long and storied history of Batman, and the adaptability of the character. The plot focuses on a group of random children, living in Gotham, all of whom are gossiping about the mysterious Dark Knight. Through their banter, they start to share stories and theories about what Batman is really like, all of which pay homage to different past incarnations of Batman. Some of these references are relatively brief; for example, a passing friend of theirs named “Joel,” and his bizarre, strangely effeminate fixations on Batman, are meant to be a joking reference to Joel Schumacher’s much maligned film versions of the character. Another case is one young man who makes insinuations of Batman being some monstrous vampire, a reference to the Elseworlds “Batman & Dracula Trilogy” written by Doug Moench.

The most notable of these homages, however, are two long sequences of the show, acting essentially as stories within a story. The first is a tribute the late Golden Age and the Silver Age of comics, as well as to the Adam West 1960s TV series. It features an original adventure, with Batman and Robin battling the Joker, when the Clown Prince of Crime tries to steal the original score of the opera “Pagliacci.” The second sequence is taken directly from the pages of Frank Miller’s somewhat controversial (but highly influential) masterwork, “The Dark Knight Returns.” This one adapts and combines two scenes from the graphic novel, where Batman faces the despicable Mutant Leader. I love both these sequences; it’s neat to see the way the animation style changes for each to match the decade and story style (I especially love how the first sequence so accurately captures the look of Dick Sprang’s famous aesthetics). Interestingly, they also bring in new voice actors to play the characters in each one; instead of Mark Hamill, for example, Michael McKean plays the 60s-era Joker. Meanwhile, Michael Ironside – who would later play the devilish Darkseid for the DCAU – voices Frank Miller’s Batman. Both are perfect casting.

The episode ends with the kids bearing witness to the real Batman – Conroy’s vocals and all – duking it out with the villainous Firefly. I used to love this episode a lot more, but upon revisiting it, I felt I had lost some love for it, and I think part of it is this final sequence. While I love the idea of the kids encountering the real Batman after all that, and I suppose such a thing was inevitable with a plot like this…something about it feels underwhelming after the spectacular sequences we saw earlier in the episode. It’s hard for me to say what the issue is, but I don’t think that was the intention, based on the way things are set up and described in-story. Still, it’s not necessarily a bad ending, for various and probably obvious reasons. It’s a great episode that showcases a different perspective (several different perspectives, in fact) on Batman and the City as a whole, and if you’re as much of a fan of the history of this character – and the duality of the Animated Series itself – as I am, you owe it to yourself to give this one a quick peek. That is, of course, presuming you haven’t already.

Tomorrow we move on to Number 14! Hint: “This used to be a beautiful street. Good people lived here once.”

[varietales]

Talk about your favorite ship! | Favorite character to rp?

mun meme // accepting

This turned into a massive ramble oops...

Favourite ship (i'm letting myself do 3 RP ones from across my blogs)!

Lisanna x Sting with @aitheros. It lives in my head and heart rent free, I’m so soft for them. We have had so many good and precious interactions with them and plotted much more too! They are such a lovely pair and bring out the best in each other, I adore their softness and the way they can relax around each other so beautifully and understand each other. They’ve both been through a lot, and the plot we’ve done for them has added to that and I’m forever excited about the things we can do within the plot and outside of it too. They’re also AU gold honestly. And I can’t even think about Lisanna without Sting coming to mind now. I can’t express how much I adore them, and Mandy is an incredible writer (im forever in awe of the description and imagery and use of metaphors, absolutely stunning every time, not to mention the dialogue and everything else too) so I’m always feeling super lucky to get to write with her! Her Sting is just CHEFS KISS (its also his bday today and I remember this bc I love him so much, he is the sunshine in my life). So yes 10/10 I adore them.

Rogue x Mary with @killrate. We started writing these babes together way back in like 2016, so it has been A Long Journey and it’s been so good. Beautiful example of awkward friends to secret lovers. With Mary being an ex-cultist and criminal and all, and Rogue being a famous mage, we get this Delicious plot of them keeping their relationship secret. The Yearning and Drama and all that goodness. And we also have an angsty breakup era planned which is gonna kill me but I also love it. In their happy era, they are so beautiful, so cute and adoring and flirty and fun but deep too and the feelings are so real and get me every time. He just adores her so much and is the absolute softness for her. I’m weak, send help. Plus as well as being one of the coolest people ever, Fae has such wonderful writing, its always so fun, so well done and full of personality, and a delight to read!!!

Gray x Evergreen with @lucentaire. At first glance, one might think Huh that’s a weird pair, but the more you think about it, the more it makes sense. They have a lot in common in terms of hobbies/interests, the way they think and even act sometimes, and a lot more. I love these two (and Jana’s specific portrayal) for the way they have this beautiful…idk exactly, like understanding or acceptance of each other, that’s growing with each interaction. They’re really starting to Get each other and it brings a certain peace and its lovely. I love seeing them begin to open up to each other, and I love the hints of feelings creeping in, and I love the teasing that happens from time to time between them as well as from their friends, its just all So Good. When I think about them, I just get this really warm sense of peace and I love it. I also have to say Jana is an amazing writer, her words always flow so well, and she has this gift of sneaking in little references to other characters/muses or little anecdotes from a muse’s past or family that just really Add a little something and make her muses feel so real and rounded. An absolute inspiration every time. And anytime i'm writing anything about Evergreen in general, I have to actively stop myself from writing 'Rena' instead, she's just so deep in my brain.

Favourite character to RP!

I have so many muses and have written so many more in the past, so it’s tricky to pin down a favourite! They all have their differences, and my fave can change based on mood as well. That being said, the first one that came to mind was Lisia (Pokemon)! She was my most active (basically Only) muse for about 8 or 9 months (which is sadly impressive for me) back in 2018. I’m not sure if its nostalgia that I’m holding onto, but I had a lot of fun with her. The RPC was fun and active and I had some really cool things going (and then things went Bad). I put in a Lot of work with Lisia, writing heeeaps of hcs and so she’s a muse that I really adore. She’s just a gorgeous gal with a gorgeous heart. I haven’t been able to get her going again since then but I’ve been thinking about her lately and might give her blog a clean up. I say that every so often tho and never do it, plus I can never manage to get her active again. But anyway, outside of her, I think I would say Lisanna is one of my faves to write! Coincidentally (or not), Lisanna and Lisia are very similar personalities. I enjoy their bubbly, cute personalities, and the way they can become teasing menaces when they want to be, particularly when they get close to someone. They also have this great potential for depth and deep and meaningful convos and angst. They’ve been through a lot and are still So Kind and I think I just find that sort of character comforting. On the complete other hand, I also really get a kick out of writing Macbeth, and my other old fave that’s just come to mind is an og muse of mine, Siegrain, which again, was once upon a time a Most Active muse of mine that I somehow can never get going again. But I did love that sassy blue haired bastard...

I suppose I could have said which muse on This blog is a fave to rp, but i haven't really gotten things going for each muse yet so we'll have to wait and see!