#you also get to see the nico that was still getting used to american culture & expressions which i think is very endearing

[reynoldswrld]

Hoi Zäme, New Jersey

back in 2017, nico wrote an article for the players' tribune detailing his experience in the draft. i recommend reading the whole article, it's very short and sweet

[silverstonesainz-archive]

it’s still the 15 in la so forgive me for the late submission i’m adoring these least-to-most-likely scenarios and would love to hear your thoughts on the 2023 grid + danny, mick, and seb in terms of who’d successfully one day randomly pop up with a secret wife of ten years and three kids as if it were a casual thing

from least-to-most-likely... im sorry this is so long and a lil late

lando -> idk i think its a generational thing where soft launches & validation through social media is all the rave. so i think lando wouldnt or even couldn't hide it even if we wanted to. and i think lando likes showing off his girl, hes very comfortable in his relationships (ie talking about luisa in dts).

pierre -> absolutely not. he loves showing off what– rather who, he loves. i mean yall.... his photos with katerina are still up on his instagram he loves that shit. SO NO he will not being keeping a wife and family a secret. if he had it his way he would livestream his wife giving birth. tell me i'm wrong, i dare you.

logan -> he is a young, white man. and i mean white. american white. and if there is anything i know about caucasian men in all my years of dealing with them, there is no hiding a girl even if their life depended on it. same deal as lando too, where soft launches and the need for validation through posting is very much ingrained in the current dating culture sooooo yea.

fernando -> this man is so unserious, and also a boomer-wanna-be-gen-z when it comes to social media so its all about sharing his love and his corazon. though i will say he will be pretty selective with what he shares. and i think he'd pull a rosberg, in that he will post family photos but with emojis over his baby's faces.

nico -> something about this man just tells me that he enjoys the validation and the sharing a lot. we'd hear about the engagement, the pregnancy, all through instagram. but i think he'd do it in cringey cute way. my man is on pinterest with "cute pregnancy announcement inspo" in the search bar.

checo -> he is a proud papa & husband (minus that time in monaco). he loves having his family around him so there isn't a reason why he would ever keep it a secret. though i will say, much like he already does, he would try to keep his family/personal life very much seperate from his work. i think all we'd see of his family is when they show up to races or milestones/birthdays via social media.

charles -> i think he just loves sharing pieces of his life with us that keeping his family a secret would be impossible. charles would 100% walk onto the paddock with his daughter on his hip. they would be wearing matching sunglasses (raybans bc forza ferrari. and not her own pair, one of daddy's). but not outfits bc mama dressed her baby, not charles.

valterri -> he tries to keep what goes on in his personal life as on the down low as possible. i think that he would definitely try to keep his kids out of pap photos & try to hide their faces but other than that i think we would all be aware of his ever-growing family. i think he'd do smth cheesy like post a photo from the back of him and his son with matchin mullets. or maybe a photo of lewis carrying his daughter bc 'uncle lew had to get a matching outfit with his god daughter.'

oscar -> i could've lumped him higher on the list with lando/logan but smth about oscar tells me otherwise. like idk what it is about him but i think he'd try to keep it on the hush hush for as long as he can before eventually sharing with the world. we'd be surviving off soft launches for a WHILE methinks. (but i could be so wrong bc idk oscar this is just based off his face).

kevin -> we'd know (i mean we know now). but similar to fernando in a sense where he chooses what pieces of his time with his wife and kids he wants to share with the world. i think he is very protective of his family and the peace he's worked on building around them.

esteban -> you know... with the way his & elena's relationship is going i can definitely see this man randomly dropping that he's married one day. but the thing is, is that we would all already have an idea of who his wife is, if that makes sense. we'd get little bouts of content from him. a very 'private, not secret' type beat.

nyck -> just like esteban in a sense where we'd know who the wife would be. i think the marriage would come as a shock, but as their family grows i think he'd drop hints and stuff. nyck will definitely bring his kid(s) to at least one race a year and i just have an inkling that his child would be a menace.

alex -> he's happy to share the small moments with the world, but oh it would be very sparse. just little crumbs here and there. he protects what he loves so much, but he's much too proud and excited not to share. think of all the baby photos with all the animals. the matching hair-dos. the baby hating photos as much as dad hates media so when the paps come around baby has the same frown.

daniel -> we would know, but i think he would take his time introducing that part of his life to us. we'd always know he's married & has kids, but we would also have to live off of soft launches for a bit. daniel is a proud man, proud of the life he builds and who he chose to build it with. and daniel would 100% walk onto the paddock with his kids hanging off of him. his daughter on his back, son upside down in his arms.... do you see the vision???

lewis -> this man could go either way. on the one hand i can see lewis showing off the love of his life and his family bc thats what lewis does. he shows off the people he loves. but then i can also see him keeping it quiet, keeping just a piece of his life a secret because in the position he's in, he doesn't have too many secrets to himself left. so yeah... but tell me what yall think.

carlos -> carlos would've been lower on the list with all that 'i protect love' crap but me personally, i just don't see it. i think that we'd all somehow find out about his engagement + growing family somehow. like carlos is always being followed by the paps for literally WHAT. so yeah, i don't think it would be best kept secret. also he's such a family man, i think he'd jump at the opportunity to share his family with the world.

lance -> i know lance has posted his s.o. before, but there is something about this man that tells me when it's a love that he really really values and wants to protect, he will keep it a secret. he will keep them away from the limelight, from the unnecessary attention for as long as possible. idk about 10yrs and then pop out with a whole wife & kids, but i definitely think he'd be the type randomly drop on wednesday that he's engaged.

george -> i think this man could pull it off if he wanted to. i think he'd go ghost on social media in terms of what he does in his personal time. like itll be all race content until one day he just drops a photo of him & his wife welcoming their new baby. i can see it. but i think it all depends on him.

yuki -> idk i think in a relationship he'd be very reserved about it. i think that he'd hate the attention he would end up receiving about dating, so much so he'd prefer if no one knew right away. i think that we'd always know he's with someone bc of like soft launch-esque photos of hands/back of their head. but yeah we'd never truly know who until much much later.

guanyu -> guanyu truly gives me vibes of wanting to protect his family and try to keep them separate from his work. and not even in a malicious way, but in a sense where he doesn't want the people he loves most to be put under undeserving scrutiny. he'd find ways to bring them to races & events but truly, the public would never know.

max -> if were being completely honest here, we know so much about max's love life because of who he's involved with. but if he had it his way, i think we he would pull it off. like i think he would randomly drop the "my wife & kids" line out of no where and it would take the world by storm. and max would say it so nonchalantly too.

mick -> i think that he could pull it off. even in his last relationship, i dont recall ever seeing him post about/with her so... he is definitely a very very private guy. and he has a very tight group of friends at that, so i doubt any information would ever get out to the public unless mick makes a move first.

seb -> he's a very private guy, who didn't even have instagram until last year... and it was to announce his RETIREMENT. and though we know about hannah, we don't know much about his kids. i think i remember kym telling a story about how sebastian asked him & other photographers not to photograph his kids when they came on the paddock so.... seb will go through hoops and the extra mile to be sure a secret is kept.

[punkeropercyjackson]

My Rachel Elizabeth Dare headcanons

Natural redheaded and greeneyed yoruba nigerian second gen inmigrant.She's darkskin with 4d hair

Autistic with schizophrenia

No masking game and that's her and Percy's special connection origin

Dresses like Miss Frizzle but with punk accents.Example:Gaudy dress with colorful tights,demonias,a spike collar and pink tears eyeliner

Aroaceflux,lesbian and a trans woman.Her and Percy define their dynamic as either queerplatonic sapphic girlfriends or exes to even closer best friends depending on the Percyverse(I have two-Persephone Jackson,which is regular tgirl Percy,and Perseo Jackson,which is transfem bigender Percy and some more canon compliant)

She grows up to disenmantle her father's company to replace it with a solarpunk international bussiness and Percy and her go to protests and do activism together and she rubs off her gender presentation on her a bit or rather helps her realize they kinda have similar ones

Her full initials being RED was on purpose because she likes to think she's funny(and she right)

Her special interests are art,weirdcore,green,enviormentalism and anarchy,her safe foods are mac and cheese joll of rice and slurpies,her stims are yelling flappy hands and physically crashing(no,really)and her blue hairbrush became a safe item post Botl

Perfectly nigerian-american in the sense that she's happily at peace with both her cultures(AFRICAN-american tyvm)

A complete bombshell.She's pretty,cute,hot,beautiful-If there's a word for attractive,it fits Rachel.Much like Percy,it flies way over her head thanks to the lifelong bullied outcast status until high school starts and she gets to Camp Half-Blood and has every other girl throwing themselves at her and unlike,she actually wanted all of them so she had tons of lesbian adventures and came out with hot girl mentality.Her endgame is undecided by me because she's too good with literally every girl her age

Her and Jason are pretty good pals that became through Percy and same for Nico and Hazel.If Jercy,she's Percy's best woman at their wedding and i can see Daregrace as a thing either poly or on it's own,it's an excellent ship that would 100% happen(lesbian Rachel isn't something i'm too firm on,i also love bi Rachel).She bonds with Percy's kids(meaning Nico and Hazel)pretty well since she's such a sweet and fun person and they share interests

She went on her own Kane Chronicles Adventure with Zia,Walt and Anubis and got powered up for a hot minute thanks to her african roots(I'm black myself but if this is offensive lmk!!).They still talk on the regular and even metup irl again once and she was the first to meet norse demigods because she housed Alex in secret for a few weeks before Mr Dare found out and kicked her out and they had a heartwarming reunion years later

"C'mon,you can't be a REAL redhead,you're black!Just say you wanted attention!" "I'm not gonna suck you off bro,can you let me play with my Tamagotchi in peace?It's gonna kill itself just to get away from you and then you'll owe me money.At least use your free time to take a shower or something else productive like apologizing to your Mama." ".....O-Okay,sorry for bothering you."

Her favorite holiday is Valentine's Day purely for the aesthetics,she's a Final Girls Fangirl,she knows how to draw in artstyles that don't exist and she has an instagram that she only made so she could use it with her best friends but eventually she also came up with the idea to use it for education and activism so now it's got two sides to it

[ladylooch]

(When you start writing again)

Is there a time where Emma sticks up for Lexi since she’s more of the sweet kindhearted out of the two

The way we all know Emma is the fierce one 🤭

“Be right back.” Timo smooches Emma and Lio quickly before he disappears into Carl F. Bucherer watch company. Nico and him are working on a sponsorship deal, so they are picking up their custom watches before heading back to Jersey for another hockey season.

Emma and Lexi know sparkling, glass enclosures and little fingers don’t mesh well. So they are opting to stay outside in the mountain sun with the littles.

Currently, Lio and Lucie have their noses pressed to different glass belonging to the next storefront. Inside is colorful displays of candy.

“Mama, can we go in?” Lucie asks.

“We have candy at home from grandma and grandpa. You don’t need more.”

“But I want it.” Lucie says matter of factly.

“We don’t always get what we want.” Lexi says gently, smoothing Lucie’s fly aways coming out of her pony tail. Little eyebrows fold together over inherited brown eyes.

“You’re mean! Daddy would let me!” Lexi pauses, pursing her lips. She glances into the store where Nico is laughing at the counter with Timo and the store clerk. They have been out most of the morning and afternoon. Lucie had begun showing signs of overstimulation a little bit ago, but Nico wanted to stop to avoid another trip into town.

“Luc.” Lexi murmurs, getting down to her daughters level.

“Hmph.” Lucie grunts, crossing her arms dramatically over her chest. A big fat, pouty lip pulls her jaw out.

“I need you to use kind words to express your feelings.”

“I can’t! You’re too mean to me!”

“I am not being mean. I am allowed to set a boundary and say no. You have some at home. You can have a few pieces after dinner.”

“THAT IS SO FAR AWAY!” Lucie yells.

Emma Meier watches the exchange silently, knowing not to interfere with another parent.

“Lee.” Emma calls her son away from the window. Lio hasn’t asked for any candy, but Emma wants to do what she can to diffuse the situation. “You want to help mama with dinner tonight? I need someone to rip the basil.”

“Yeah.” He grins, then wraps his arms around her neck. Emma lifts him up. Lio wraps his whole little body around his mama. She sways them from foot to foot, scratching his back with her freshly manicured nails.

Across the sidewalk sit two, observing old women with looks of disgust.

“See this is why Nico should have married a Swiss girl. Americans raise their children to be brats.”

Emma’s ears perk. She glances at the two women on the bench then back to her sister in law.

“Luc. I understand you’re upset-“

“No! I want it! I want it! I want it!” Lucie screams. Lexi’s cheeks begin to flare red as others on the sidewalk stare while they walk by.

“We don’t…” Lucie begins to slap at Lexi to make her stop talking. “No.” Lexi grabs Lucie’s hands, to cease the slapping.

“Owie!! Lucie screams

“Child abuse happening right in front of our eyes.” One of them tisks.

“What is wrong with you?” Emma snaps. Both women’s eyes widen in shock. They clearly thought their muttering wasn’t loud enough to hear. “You should be ashamed of yourself. We are Swiss. We are supposed to be welcoming of other cultures and women should support other women. Her daughter is have a difficult day. She is not a bad parent. She is also not hurting her. She is trying to keep them both safe.”

Lexi looks up at the tone of Emma’s voice. Lucie huffs exasperatedly as Lexi releases her now still arms.

“Take deep breaths for me.” Lexi focuses her attention back to her daughter. Frustrated tears fall down Lucie’s cheeks. But she pulls in a shuddering breath in conjunction with her mom.

“A Swiss mother wouldn’t let it get to that level.” The other one scolds.

“My brother is lucky to have her as his wife and the mother of his child. Swiss women have treated him worse than that American.”

“Those lose women from his younger years would have been better parents than this. This type of parenting is despicable. Look at how well behaved your boy is. That is true Swiss breeding at it’s best.” Emma wants to vomit at the breeding comment. Her eyes narrow further as she steps closer to the bench the two old bats are sitting on. Her parents raised her right, but she knows when to throw down for her family.

“Keep talking and you’ll find out how impolite this Swiss girl can be. Better yet, why don’t you find a different bench to park your fat asses on? That one is starting to sag in the middle like your foreheads.”

“Emma?” Timo calls behind her, surprised. She whips around.

“Hold Lio. I need to kick some ass here.” Timo takes Lio, looking at Lexi.

“I don’t know. It’s all been in German.” Lexi shrugs. Nico is kneeling down with her by Lucie. “We are having a tough time with the word no.” Nico cringes.

“Yeah, we heard her screaming in the store.”

“Great.” Lexi looks down, feeling her throat closing in. She may not understand Swiss German but she clearly heard American enough times to know they were shameful towards her.

“It’s okay,” Nico pulls her into his body to give her a kiss. “Hey, I think we are going to head home.” He turns to Timo, catching Emma stalking toward the women across the way. Emma hikes up her jeans and pushes her sleeves forward, expensive, Cartier bangles clinging together. If she had earrings, they all think she would be taking them off right now. “Emma.” The tone of Nico’s voice is stern. “Let it go.” Emma glares.

“You’re too pretty for jail, baby.” Timo reminds her, a smirk on his face. He is so hot for his wife right now. He wants to head home too, put Lio down, and let her ride out that explosive energy on him.

“Learn a lesson in decency before you step outside next.” Emma finishes. She turns on her heel and comes back to the group. Lexi meets her gaze.

“Thank you.” Lexi has no idea what they said and she doesn’t care. But watching Emma stand up for her makes her bubble with affection.

“Nobody talks about my sister like that.”

[verybisexualcoffeebean]

A queer Mexican girl’s take on Rick Riordan *if you don’t want to read the entire thing, the important bits are in bold*

I’m not in the habit of engaging with with disrespectful people. If you want to yell/name-call/whatever, do so to your heart’s content. I won’t reply. Otherwise, I’d really love to have a discussion with you!

Edit: the point of this post is not to speak over Muslims/Native Americans, only to point out some things I think we all tend to forget.

I try not to deviate from the main focus of my blog too much, because I want this to be a space for sharing a love of learning, books, etc.

However, there are times when I feel it is necessary to speak up, and this is one of those times, because Rick and his books were, and still are, one of the most important parts of my life. So.

First of all, pjo and hoo have had an enormous impact in my life, in two ways. One was Nico Di Angelo. His coming out scene was the first thing that sat my 10-year-old self down and told me that it was okay to be gay, that it wasn’t abnormal, and perhaps most all, that it was also okay to wrestle with it.

The second was Leo Valdez. The amount of times I had seen a Mexican character portrayed in media, let alone children’s media, were very little. I was young when I read the books, so a lot of the things that people are pointing out right now flew over my head. I was too busy being happy finally seeing myself and my culture in my favorite book series. This brings me to my main point:

The representation Rick gave us was not perfect, but it was still really ahead of its time, and it was still well-intentioned. I don’t even think it was bad! Sure, there are many opportunities for improvement, but the characters are still well-rounded and developed. Keep in mind: this is a straight cis white man, living in a society that, at least when pjo and hoo were written, did not encourage that demographic to venture outside their comfort zone and care for minorities (in fact, you could argue it even discouraged it). He was one of the first white cis straight male authors to have that kind of inclusion in their books. The care that he has for his audience is palpable in the stories, starting with the fact that he wrote for his son w/ ADHD. He has always listened to and engaged with readers, on a level that not many authors do. He is not perfect, but he tries and he cares, which at the end of the day, is what being human is all about. I think people tend to forget this-that we’re all human. The world, people, is much more complex than good and evil. We are all in such a rush to spot other people’s mistakes to signal our own virtue that we are holding people-and ourselves-to impossible standards. Whenever an author writes outside of their own voice, there will undoubtedly be flaws. It will never be perfect (which is why Rick actively encourages us to read own-voices authors!!!!!). By pointing fingers and acting “woker than thou” all the goddamn time, all we’re doing is discouraging authors from having diversity in their books by alienating them! Anyone is going to get exhausted and defensive when people are insulting and yelling at them about how what they do is WRONG and how they’re RACIST and whatnot. Rick is human, Rick cares, and Rick wants to learn and be better-so let’s help him do that, let’s cultivate a culture of compassion and learning. He is not a racist. His mistakes don’t invalidate all the good his work has done.

Finally, on a broader point: if we’re constantly attacking and invalidating anyone who makes mistakes, there will be no one left, including yourself. Point that finger at yourself before pointing it at anyone else.

[rickriordanfandam]

opinions on riordanverse ; my edition

a lot of people have been doing this so i decided why not right. probably gna lose some followers or smth but anyways. pls respect my opinions! if u disagree, thats fine, but please be polite. unless any of my opinions strikes u as morally wrong then pls point it out to me respectfully. thanks!

- i actually liked drew. im so sorry to everyone who hates her but full offence, why. think about it this way ok, first of all drew became hc because silena died. silena was the traitor, the one who betrayed chb, yet after she died campers celebrated her as a hero? and then drew suddenly has to replace her and live up to idk that legacy she left behind,, when all of a sudden this girl named piper swoops in and takes her place. idk abt u but i wld be salty abt that too. not only that, but as an asian, the chances of drew having faced racism/bullying as a child is pretty high (she studies at brooklyn academy). which means that when she finds out shes a demigod, and arrives at chb where most of the campers are white (this is an assumption btw), she’d obviously be scared of being bullied for her skin color right?? so the first thing she wld do before the campers get to bully her is to bully them before they can do so. (sentence structure here is wack i apologize) ofc this might not even have happened, drew could have had a perfect childhood && was a b1tch for no reason, BUT EVEN THEN HER ROLE AS A BULLY WAS PRETTY VITAL BECAUSE THAT FURTHER SHOWED THE CONTRAST BETWEEN HER AND PIPER,, HIGHLIGHTING PIPER AS A HERO//GOOD CHARACTER,, AND THEREFORE MAKING READERS LIKE PIPER MORE. anyway stop hating on drew please. ALSO WHY IS THIS SO LONGA SDFJHG

- jason isnt bland, the fandom just kinda erased his backstory (thanks to @pjohoo-memes for the phrasing lol)

- reynabeth wouldnt have lasted/would have broken up several times. idk i just see them as two extremely powerful characters who have firm opinions and will definitely clash at some point. in a platonic relationship,, i can see them as really good friends but as lovers? idk i just think theyll break up

- PIPABETH

- i dont really like jercy,, i see them as better friends than lovers. also idt jason and percy were that close..?

- the dam and not my type jokes are srsly cringey and were never funny. ik that seems hypocritical since my username literally makes use of the dam joke but honestly i dont actually like the joke. its not funny to me and has never been funny

- the seven were not best friends. they definitely argued,, and honestly probably werent as close as the fandom makes them seem. like ure dumped with 6 other people, out of which u only know a few. my introverted ass would have jumped off the argo 2 quicker than leo valdez could bomb camp jupiter up. also leo was a dick to frank. so what if frank is bigger sized?? thats not a valid reason to tease him

- the fandom needs to stop hating on octavian while worshipping luke. if u hate luke and u say u hate octavian too, then okay. but if u tell me ure a luke stan but u despise octavian?? imma disagree w u. luke was worse than octavian im sorry. first of all, octavian being a dick was kinda justified. hes been after the praetor position for so long, and everyone keeps saying to “wait for jason” when suddenly this dude, whos a son of NEPTUNE (neptune wasnt liked much by romans), and the camp decides to make him praetor?? dude i would be pissed off big time. and then afterwards, he finds out that greek demigods are real and the dude they made praetor is greek. AND THEN GREEK DEMIGODS COME TO CJ AND ONE OF THEM BOMB IT UP?? octavian has been told all his life that greeks are scum and this dude called leo valdez attacks cj. sure it was an accident, but did octavian know that? no. so it was honestly justified that he was such a salty prick im just saying. also some of yall be hating on octavian for cutting a teddy bear open and thats the funniest shit ive ever heard i swear 

- luke didnt go to elysium

- travis and connor stoll r way too underrated. the two have been head counselors of the hermes cabin since luke was revealed as a traitor, can u imagine the stress? luke, the person they probably looked up to as a brother, betrayed them. and they didnt even have time to process this when they were  thrown the roles of being hcs. that would have been so stressful and i would probably have broken down if i were them. the stoll brothers taking turns to wake up at ungodly hours because a new camper is crying and homesick and terrified, the stoll brothers having to comfort and take care of new campers, having to deal with the amount of people in that cramped space because not enough campers are being claimed fast enough. having to resolve issues between campers in the hermes cabin all the time. the stolls arent just comedic relief, and we need to stop treating them as such

- tratie shldve been canon idc idc

- demigods of the demeter cabin arent talked about enough and i love the fact that meg was demeters kid. like she isnt the child of one of the big three yet shes so powerful.

- we need to hype clarisse up more her character arc was phucking amazing 

- rachel is overhated. sis found out greek gods exist and regularly come down to earth to fuck around and went “ok cool”. queen shit behavior methinks

- the floor 19 crew of mcga is srsly underrated. like do u even remember halfborn gunderson, mallory keen, tj, etc??? bc i feel like we only remember samirah, magnus, alex, and sometimes blitz and hearthstone

- sadie (tkc) was kinda annoying at first. i like her more now tho but i rmb not liking her for a phat while

- tkc and mcga need more love

- carter kane and jason grace arent boring. theyre just really sweet boys who are too good for this world and yes yes yes 

- hazel and frank (especially frank) need to be hyped up more. i hardly ever see anything about them. also yall seem to forget that frank was literally made praetor and that even hecate admired hazel and was willing to fight beside her because of how powerful she was

- frazels age gap is kinda sketch but i still think theyre really cute

- nico definitely had trauma from going to tartarus on his own

- GROVER IS PERCYS BEST FRIEND

- annabeth isnt smarter than leo but neither is leo smarter than annabeth. ive seen a lot of discussions about who is smarter and heres my hot take on it: neither. theyre equally smart, just in different ways. leos a genius mathematically speaking. he has no issues solving math problems meant for people much, much older than him. annabeth on the otherhand, is great at strategies etc. she can make an army of 1000 more powerful than the enemy, even if theyre outnumbered. so in my opinion, both are equally as smart//u cant compare their intelligence, because their talents lie in two different areas.

- while i do agree rick riordan isnt a god and that hes bound to make mistakes,, AND that hes given us a lot of representation,, if the representation offends the people its sposed to represent, then theres a problem. im talking about piper as a poc and wearing feathers in her hair. im not a poc, so i cant speak for them on whether or not its wrong, because i dont know either. HOWEVER, i have seen multiple posts BY pocs talking about how they didnt really like rick’s representation of piper, and thats an issue. pocs have been and are still oppressed and discriminated against by many. as a white cis man, we cant really blame him for not knowing (tho he could have done a research,, asked some pocs,, idk), but by representing pocs in that manner, hes influencing impressionable kids/teens into thinking “oh pocs wear feathers in their hair all the time” etc, which isnt true. the pjo/hoo series is extremely successful, and kids who read the books will probably start forming inaccurate opinions on pocs. the amount of fan art that depicts piper with feathers in her hair dont help either. “but rick said so in the books, so its canon” yeah well rick isnt a god and he can get some things wrong at times. im not saying we should cancel him, im saying we should start educating ourselves and not spread false info like pocs wearing feathers in their hair all the time. also that snake song shit where she sang Summertime was just- yeah. bc heres the thing you can be racist, and still include minorities, but portray them in a racist way. And even then, ignorance isn't a thing to admire. Getting those facts wrong still has a major impact. It continues to perpetuate racist stereotypes.

“ With the feather thing, I looked it up myself; it takes less than five minutes to figure out that Cherokees don't braid feathers into their hair. I didn't grow up in the country where my parents are from. I have many other first/second generation American friends who have also been through that, with a bit of a disconnect from their culture. But something that most of us have in common is that when we didn't know something, and when our parents weren't that big of a help, we looked it up. We sought out resources online and through other people from our culture to be able to connect more with where we came from. Some of that took a Google search. So I find it hard to believe that Piper, a girl who Rick's trying to portray as someone who is attempting to connect with her culture and is totally against racist stereotypes, wouldn't know that eagle feathers aren't supposed to be braided into your hair casually. She may be disconnected from her culture, but she's also shown to want to connect back to it. Piper wouldn't be casually braiding feathers into her hair while also telling off people for being racist. It makes no sense.” - reddit thread (down below) 

for those of yall who wanna know more please please read this, it has a lot of things i wanna add in here : https://www.reddit.com/r/camphalfblood/comments/gy3gl2/piper_mcleans_portrayal_is_innacurate/ 

as well as https://finding-my-culture.tumblr.com/post/189422373260/maxie-ratties-and-cattie-finding-my-culture 

i will be posting screenshots of these in future posts so if ure viewing this on ig and u dont have tumblr,, dont worry 

- the fact that most of the strong female characters in the series refuse to be “girly”, and ngl i dont really like that. just because ure girly doesnt mean u cant be strong. 

- piper would have been a great way for him to start making the strong characters act girlier, but instead he went with the “I’m not like other girls” trope which is quite obnoxious to hear constantly, and I don’t think it’s necessarily great for younger girls to read that idea growing up.  the closest we've ever had to a strong female character who was also into "girly" things was Silena. when I was younger I admired Piper's "I'm not like other girls" thing, but then I got older and realized that the whole mentality of "not like other girls" is super obnoxious, and a little bit toxic

i have a heck load more that i cant rmb rn but yeah feel free to add more 

[ask-will-and-nico]

“She’s sooo cool,” Leo says. “She’s Native American so she’s teaching me all these cool stories and stuff about cultural appropriation. And she wants to educate everyone else. She literally lectured this creepy grandpa the other day when he asked if she could speak Spanish. And she didn’t lecture me when I made her tv remote explode.” Will doesn’t look impressed. “She didn’t because that’s the fifth thing you’ve worked on that’s caught fire this year.” Leo shrugs. “I was so close.”

-

“We met in high school,” Leo says. “So I think we got pretty lucky. Can’t say there’s much out here. No offense, Will.” Nico’s not sure why Will would take offense. “He used to like Kayla. Or was it Austin?” Leo shrugs, already moving on. “But Piper and I met on the bus. After she put out this small fire I might have started. So we also both ended up in detention. Which was great. Except we’re still in Texas.” Nico rolls his eyes. “Oh! You could talk to Pipes about NY.”

-/-/-

“Is she from there?” Nico asked. Leo nodded. “Yeah, her dad is kind of a movie star and came out here to get away from it all like you did,” he said. Nico nodded and finished off his sandwich. “But she’s an activist that does a lot of real cool work out here with some other Native Americans,” Leo added. Nico thinks maybe he would like to meet Piper. She seemed cool, and maybe he could help bring to light some of the issues she fought for, although she was probably famous in her own right. “She and Will are thick as thieves,” he added with a wicked grin. “You think I’m bad? You should see those two together.”

[kazarinn]

Roundup of all the things I’ve translated within the last month

Those who have been following me for a while might know that the last month saw me be very unusually prolific with translation (especially Digimon-related ones), to unprecedented extents. I'll be very honest about the fact that it's because of the current quarantine, which has left me with not a lot to do and a sense of boredom that translation somehow happens to satiate a bit ^^;; That said, the very large number of translations I'd been posting has caused things to get a bit buried, and has made things easily missable, so I've decided to make a bit of a roundup post summarizing everything I've done in the last month.

Of course, there's probably still more to come in the near future -- I have two books (the Digimon Official Super Encyclopedia and the Gakken Digimon Adventure tri. Memorial Book) hopefully coming in the mail soon, and I still have some stuff lying around I might take up if my mood warms up to it, but since I've finally cleared up a ton of the backlog I felt I should take a breather to summarize stuff. (Although, every time I say I've cleared the backlog, suddenly more interesting things pop up...^^;;)

Digimon Adventure, Adventure 02, Tamers, Frontier

Digimon Adventure 02 Drama CD "Armor Evolution to the Unknown" I will be honest in that this is actually my favorite thing to have translated in this past month. Actually, fiction translation has a higher level of difficulty for me than things like interviews -- because I want to be careful with what real people have said, I tend to be less stringent about rewording things, whereas with fiction I hold myself to a higher standard to make things flow well. But that's actually what makes it so much fun, because I can challenge myself to play with wording and broaden my horizons, and moreover Adventure 02 has a ton of characters, and it's really fun to try and make unique "voices" for all of them. That said, translating this was a bit of a wake-up call, because the sheer amount of pop culture references (to things made before I was even born, at that) and wordplay everywhere led me to the very harsh realization of why so few people have attempted to translate this drama CD into so few languages over the past two decades ^^;; I give my thanks to the anonymous Japanese commenters on Nico Nico Douga who pointed out many of the really old and obscure pop culture references, and I ended up spending several hours on Japanese Wikipedia looking up things like said old anime and British punk rock artists. I might not have gotten everything, and I'm sure there are people out there who probably would have been able to pull it off better than I did, but it ultimately became a test of my abilities as a translator, and if it's fun and entertaining and enjoyable, then that alone makes me satisfied. But I think this will be the last time (at least for a while) that I try translating something audio-only with no transcript -- my hearing is not that great, not even in English ^^;;

The Mystery of the American Box Bug A story from Adventure and Adventure 02 director Hiroyuki Kakudou that has some very tangential (at best) relation to Digimon, but is amusing nevertheless.

Digimon Adventure Character Complete File -- Future Encyclopedia Little "dialogue" snippets from an Adventure/Adventure 02-related book, checking in on the kids-turned-adults during the time of Adventure 02's epilogue. I actually translated this a long time ago, but I lost the transcript for it and I'm pretty sure (given how long ago it was) it was probably pretty embarrassing by my current standards, so I went ahead and did this over again. There are some other things in this book that are interesting and/or amusing, like further background info on the kids' family lives and room layouts, so if I have some spare time I might do some of those in the future, although naturally doing the entire book would probably be practically impossible.

Digimon Series Memorial Book: Digimon Animation Chronicle — Special interview with Hiromi Seki, Hiroyuki Kakudou, and Yukio Kaizawa An interview with some perennial Digimon staff members about Adventure through Frontier (and a bit of X-Evolution). We've had no shortage of these kinds of interviews over the years, but this one happens to summarize a lot of things that used to be considered "obscure" in the Digimon fanbase outside Japan, even though this book (and thus this interview) is one of the most prominent resources for diehard Digimon fans out there. Also, Frontier-related development info tends to be somewhat rare, so it's nice to hear about it. The Digimon Official Super Encyclopedia that I'm hoping to get my hands on soon allegedly has a similar interview with the same three people. I don't know specifics about it yet, but I'm informed that it mostly covers similar territory to this one, but also allegedly has some very fascinating details that weren't in this, so I'm looking forward to that as well.

Message from Digimon Adventure producer Hiromi Seki, to Toshiko Fujita Posted by Adventure producer Hiromi Seki to the LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna Twitter on February 8, 2019, right before the 49th day (last day of mourning, in Japanese tradition) after Taichi Yagami voice actress Toshiko Fujita's passing.

Mimi Tachikawa and Lilimon Posted by Adventure director Hiroyuki Kakudou on his blog, talking about the intent behind Mimi Tachikawa's character and her corresponding track in the drama CD Digimon Adventure: Two-and-a-Half Year Break.

Digimon Adventure tri.

On Creation and Production for “Super Evolution Stage: Digimon Adventure tri.” A post by Director Kenichi Tani about his work on the Adventure tri. stage play. Despite technically being under Adventure tri. branding, the stage play actually has surprisingly little in common with the Adventure tri. anime in terms of both content and production background, and moreover Digimon hasn't had a lot of contact with the stage medium all that much, so I thought it'd be interesting to translate something about its production, especially since this tends to be a lesser talked-about part of the franchise.

October/November 2018 Gashapon Blog interviews with Kenji Watanabe This is actually two interviews, one where Digimon franchise creator and character designer Kenji Watanabe talks about design for a Digimon gachapon set, and one where he talks about Adventure tri.'s Omegamon Merciful Mode, but I'm categorizing it under the Adventure tri. section because I figure the vast majority of readers will be reading the interview for the latter.

Digimon Adventure tri. voice actor comments (Part 1: Reunion | Part 2: Determination | Part 3: Confession | Part 4: Loss | Part 5: Coexistence | Part 6: Our Future) A series of voice actor comments that were posted to the official website prior to each Adventure tri. movie being released. I'd actually had it on the brain to try my hand at these when they were first posted, but various circumstances happened and I never got around to it, until now. In retrospect, though, I think it turned out for the better that I didn't attempt them on the spot. Adventure tri.-related interviews tend to be much more difficult to translate than most Digimon-related ones, and although there are a few reasons why, the biggest one is that, during its run, it had a very tight spoiler embargo, resulting in a lot of vague language being used, and so when you translate from a language like Japanese -- where having proper context can be life or death -- not knowing the original context behind what was being said can throw the end result into completely incorrect and misleading interpretations. While I was working on these, I did actually end up having to pull up the movies again and reference what scenes were being referred to multiple times just so I could phrase the sentence correctly, so yeah, I think it did ultimately work out. Incidentally, this is also the first direct Adventure tri. production-related thing I've translated since 2016 (mainly due to the expenses incurred by importing magazines and my difficulty with translating print media at the time). Looking back at it, I'm honestly kind of ashamed at my own inexperience from back then, but sadly, I don't have the original magazines anymore, so I can't do much to fix it, and so I'm kind of glad to have these as my sort of attempt at "redeeming myself".

Digimon Adventure tri. — Yoshimasa Hosoya interview on “To Me” Also from the official website, discussing voice actor Yoshimasa Hosoya's involvement with the ending theme song from part 3 (Confession), "To Me".

Digimon Adventure LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna

Anime! Anime! interview series (Director Tomohisa Taguchi interview | Natsuki Hanae and Chika Sakamoto interview | 02 human cast voice actor interview | 02 Digimon cast voice actor interview | Producer Yousuke Kinoshita and supervisor Hiromi Seki interview) I didn't actually know this was a series until very recently, so you'll have to forgive me for translating these out of order. Technically, all of these were posted in February to March 2020, after the movie was released in Japan, but it's pretty much spoiler-free. It's got a huge amount of development and background info behind LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna, so I recommend them as reading for anyone interested in seeing the movie.

"In regards to the new Digimon project" Otherwise known as "what happened when Hiroyuki Kakudou accidentally revealed that they were making another Digimon Adventure-related movie". Since the news that original Adventure director was recusing from LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna due to some kind of creative difference over lore ended up naturally being a hot topic, I felt like having a proper translation of his statement on the matter would be a useful thing to have. Despite technically being LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna-related, it also has a transcription of his tweets regarding Adventure/Adventure 02 background lore along with some surprising production details, so it may interest fans of the original series as well.

Digimon Continues to be Loved Thanks to its Creator’s Commitment — With Digimon Character Designer Kenji Watanabe An Asahi &M article (sort of a half-interview) with Kenji Watanabe over his involvement in LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna, which, unusually for a Digimon anime work, actually had him directly involved in production from beginning to end. I put this on the post already, but this article gets a lot dangerously closer to outright spoilers than you'd expect for this kind of material, so if you're particularly keen on going into the movie "completely clean", best to maybe avoid this one until you've seen the movie.

Digimon Adventure LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna — Website messages from Hiromi Seki and Yousuke Kinoshita It's just a short greeting message on the official website. I wanted to translate it mainly because it's not on the official English site.

Animage Plus interviews with Yousuke Kinoshita Also something I'd wanted to translate for a while but never got around to (until now). A triple set of interviews with LAST EVOLUTION Kizuna producer Yousuke Kinoshita, who also talks about Adventure's 20th anniversary and the "Memorial Story" short story collection crowdfund.

Digimon Adventure:

Interviews with Yabuno Tenya and Atsuhiro Tomioka (Part 1: V-Jump Web | Part 2: Digimon Web) A two-part interview (each part on different websites) with Digimon Adventure V-Tamer 01 artist Yabuno Tenya and Digimon Adventure: lead writer Atsuhiro Tomioka, discussing their respective works and Adventure:'s surprising relation to V-Tamer.

Digimon Adventure director Hiroyuki Kakudou’s initial comments on the Digimon Adventure: reboot A triple set of blog posts from original Digimon Adventure director Hiroyuki Kakudou about the Adventure: reboot and what relation it has to him and the original Adventure (along with some fun trivia about the latter). I figured some people out there might be curious about what the original Adventure director thought about Toei rebooting his series.

Digimon games

Explore the Secrets of Digimon World Re:Digitize Decode’s Evolution! Interview with Habu and Tomono Decode is rather inaccessible to the West right now (being unlocalized, and on the region-locked 3DS at that), so the idea of translating too many things relevant to it is pretty low-priority to me at the moment, but it's still a game of significant interest to the Digimon fanbase outside Japan, and is also notable as one of the first major titles spearheaded by Digimon game producer Kazumasa Habu, so I felt that there'd be quite a few people interested in this one.

Interview with Producer Habu of Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory: Highlights and Future Prospects A 4Gamer interview that I'd wanted to translate since I'd first read it, but never got around to. Incidentally, I decided to go back and make some revisions to the wording for the Famitsu interviews I translated for the original game. They were some of the first things I ever translated, and it...kind of shows. ^^;; Normally I don't like to lock myself into a habit of constantly going back and revising old work, as doing so tends to be a bit of a black hole, but since the original Cyber Sleuth is still quite the hot topic among the fanbase right now (and especially with Complete Edition being recently released), I thought it might be worth it this time.

Famitsu.com interview with Kazumasa Habu on Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth: Hacker’s Memory Another Hacker's Memory interview, a bit less detailed than the above but still fairly informative.

Other

Iwata Asks #14: Hatsune Miku and Future Stars: Project mirai Somehow this ended up the only non-Digimon thing on the list ^^;; The version of this game that eventually did make it to the West (Project Mirai DX) is so different from the original game that it meant this Iwata Asks was never officially translated, so I thought it'd be worth taking a shot at this one. I don't have any plans to translate any other Iwata Asks at the moment, mainly because it requires me to have more than a passing knowledge of how each game works for proper context, but I hope you can at least enjoy this one.

[elizapbrooke]

A discovery of pancakes

This is my newsletter from Friday, May 22. You can sign up here.

I am disappointed to announce that the bird call I thought belonged to an owl comes, in fact, from a mourning dove. “One of the most abundant and widespread of all North American birds,” Wikipedia says. It’s an embarrassing but maybe understandable mistake. I figured this owl was out during the day because it was a creature of New York like the rest of us, its circadian rhythm all fucked up by early morning garbage trucks and the blue glow of the Chase Bank across the street. The mourning dove’s coo is low and melancholy, a distinctive series of five notes. I’d certainly forgive you for thinking it’s a hoot. As I was listening to mourning dove calls on my computer and having this horrible realization, one landed on the fire escape and startled me with the loudest, most intimate rendition of their song I’d ever heard. It may as well have pressed its beak up against the glass. (I assume it thought there was a dove in the apartment.) I crept over to the window to confirm with my eyeballs what AllAboutBirds.org had already told me, and, yep, there it was. It felt so special to have a mystery owl in the neighborhood, but I guess doves are lovely birds too, with their plushy throats and elegantly tapered tail feathers. Anyway, my friend Sid tells me he’s heard owls in Gowanus, so I’m keeping my hopes up. This week I published a story for Curbed detailing the history and recent evolution of the home office. As I was fact checking it, I realized I’d accidentally talked to ten hundred sources, so please do enjoy the fruits of my labor. I’m not here to talk about home offices, though. A few weeks ago, I woke up in the middle of the night and discovered I’d been brainstorming pitches in my sleep. I was thrilled. On account of pandemic depression and seeing very little of the outside world, I’ve really been struggling to come up with story concepts, which is problematic because that’s my job. Most of my dream pitches evaporated upon waking, but I managed to hold onto one, and in my sleepy haze I thought it was possibly the greatest idea I’d ever had. It was: PANCAKES ARE HAVING A MOMENT IN QUARANTINE. I decided I’d email the New York Times first thing in the morning. In the light of day, I realized that there wasn’t really a story there. When you’re writing a trend piece, you want to be able to point to, I don’t know, at least four really solid examples from the public sphere. My evidence was:

Alex and I had made pancakes recently

We were planning to make them again

I’d recently discussed pancakes with Molly and Vivian

I’d heard you can make pancakes from sourdough starter discard (which actually does speak to the zeitgeist)

But here’s the thing. Pancakes are a great topic for a newsletter. So here is my pancake article.

***

I’ve always liked the look of a big stack of pancakes, but I never really got why people were so into eating them. I like a breakfast that is hyper-functional and maximally filling. Because I’m an aging hippie, my preferred breakfast is a double-sized bowl of Ezekiel cereal, which tastes like delicious cardboard and fulfills 42% of your daily fiber needs. Pancakes, like pastries, always struck me as glamorous but pointless. I was even somewhat distrustful of my mom’s pancakes, which are dense and nutty, not sweet at all. Her recipe came from a “chiropractor/health nut in San Diego about 31 years ago” and involves grinding your own flour from winter wheat berries, groats, rye, brown rice, and millet. I love them, but a family pancake breakfast still makes me feel very out of control. This all changed a few weeks ago when Alex and I decided to make pancakes for dinner. All I can say is that quarantine has a way of melting away the rigid little fucks you used to give. For once, the chaos I associate with pancakes sounded fun and freeing. Also we’ve been watching a ton of Parks & Rec, and I was feeling inspired by Leslie’s diet of waffles and whipped cream. We made buttermilk pancakes, extra fluffy ones that require you to whip the egg whites on their own for several minutes before folding them into the batter. Two with banana chunks, two with bits of frozen peaches, two blueberry, one bonus plain for me. I had mine without anything on top, enjoying the choking feeling of eating so much cakey carb. It felt like a hug. When I saw my friend Todd post a gorgeous stack of pancakes on Instagram, I asked him if he had any theories about why they’re such a good quarantine food. At first he thought I was trolling him, but when I told him I was dead serious, here’s what he said: “What I love about pancakes right now is that they feel both ordinary and radical at the same time. Ordinary because they are nostalgic, all-American, homey, comfortable, and approachable. Anyone can make them. But there’s also something really subversive about a stack of pancakes right now—the gluten, the non-plant-based butter and eggs, eating breakfast when Goop tells us we should be intermittent fasting, so forth. Eating pancakes in the time of coronavirus brings into focus how overwhelming wellness culture has become in recent years—celery juice and collagen smoothies will never, ever, ever beat a big, buttery, syrupy stack of flapjacks.” I would agree. Given my dedication to breakfast foods that involve sprouted beans—which predates our wellness moment but was certainly bolstered by it—I definitely find pancakes subversive. They make me feel nostalgic, too, but not for anything I’ve personally experienced. For weekends in high school that I spent ensconced in the television world of Gilmore Girls, maybe, where breakfast at Luke’s Diner is a comfortable routine. As I continued my journey into pancake reportage, I sought out the perspective of Sarah Jampel, an editor at Bon Appetit. While pancakes made from sourdough discard have their fans, Sarah is not particularly one of them. She’s also team waffle. I don’t really have a horse in the pancake/waffle debate, but Sarah makes a compelling case. “I have thought a lot about pancakes,” she emailed back when I asked if she had anything to say about the topic. “And yes, I have made them since isolation started—mostly because I'm ‘every woman’ and my fridge is overflowing with sourdough discard. ‘Put it in pancakes,’ I thought. The issue is that I need to add more flour (as well as butter or oil and leaveners) to sourdough discard to turn it into pancakes, so I ultimately end up using more ingredients for the sole purpose of not throwing some stuff into the trash or compost (but really, the trash). And even though pancakes sound nice in theory—why not start the day with a hot breakfast instead of the usual routine, eating a Clif bar with one hand while the other clings bare to the subway pole (huge sigh of nostalgia)?—in actuality they're inferior waffles. Unless you take care with your pancakes—loading them with lots of butter and separating the egg yolks and whites (this recipe's my fave)—they're too mono-textured.” Never fear: Alex and I loaded ours with an alarming amount of butter. I suppose it is to be expected that when you go out hunting for pancake insights, you come back with waffle testimonials. When I asked Alex’s high school friends to weigh in on the appeal of pancakes during a global shutdown, Nico said, “Waffles are the superior carb. They provide greater textural variety and are a better delivery vessel for condiments.” (Dylan has been eating toast all quarantine, and Dan “didn’t understand the question” because the only god he acknowledges is the Joy of Cooking’s pancake recipe.) My friend Molly has been eating a lot of savory pancakes under quarantine, for breakfast or lunch. She sautées a bunch of garlic and kale in olive oil, adding scallions at the last minute, and then sets the vegetables aside in a bowl. In goes the Bisquick, and she adds the kale mix on top of the pancakes as they cook; after a minute, she tops the pancake with shredded white cheddar so that when she flips it, the cheese turns crispy. She’ll eat that with a runny egg or garlic yogurt. I can’t wait to see her again so she can make one for me. Pancakes are one of the few foods that Molly has consistently been able to stomach during this period of immense anxiety. They have a strong positive association for her: in pre-corona times, she would make savory pancakes after playing soccer on Saturday mornings. Those games are one of the things she misses most right now. We talked on the phone while she made her daily trip outside to juggle a soccer ball. Molly likes to chat with friends during these breaks because bouncing a ball on your feet benefits from loose attention. “Cooking a pancake is similar,” she said. “It requires some focus but it’s not that hard. You don’t really need to cut anything. You just watch it.” Alex always says that cooking is meditative for him. I would respectfully disagree—to me, it feels more like hurtling down a mogul course—but I can see it with pancakes. You’re just systematically waiting and flipping, waiting and flipping. After making buttermilk pancakes, we progressed to Sqirl’s buckwheat pancakes for lunch on a Sunday. I can’t find the recipe online, but here’s a photo. For those who are lucky enough to have dodged my Sqirl talk thus far, it’s a phenomenal, semi-healthy breakfast and lunch spot in Silver Lake. Every time I’m in LA, I badger my companions into going right when it opens at 8 a.m. so we’re sure to get a table. When I was there to write about Dax Shepard in November, I high-tailed it to Sqirl right after our interview and embarrassed myself in front of the staff by inhaling bits of a particularly seedy cookie and having a loud coughing fit, after which I went around the corner to die in private. Alex and I thought we had all the requisite ingredients for Sqirl’s buckwheat pancakes, other than cactus flour, but the recipe calls for corn flour and it turns out cornmeal isn’t the same thing. We subbed in whole wheat, so they weren’t really Sqirlcakes, but they were still tasty in a restrained, earthy way. Alex convinced me to try one with raspberry jam, which I reluctantly admit was a great pairing. A week or two later, we made them again. I wasn’t really hungry because it was 2 p.m. and I’d already eaten lunch—Alex had just gotten up—but I pledged to eat my portion cold out of the fridge. Alex thought this was insane, but he sometimes forgets that I like my food a little squidgy. We went grocery shopping the next morning, which was as much of a bitch as it always is right now. Even though we’ve gotten the process down to a science, it still takes three hours from start to finish, with significant angst on my part about the cleanliness of the inbound goods. Finally everything was put away, and Alex headed off to take a shower. I was agitated and crazy hungry. I scrubbed my hands one more time, pulled the pancakes out of the fridge, and promptly dropped one on the floor while trying to get it into my mouth. I ate the rest in big, angry bites, one after another, standing in the middle of the kitchen. I didn’t want to sit down in my outdoor clothes. The pancakes were perfect, though. A shot of sweet, comforting carb straight to the heart.

[ryqoshay]

Mmh, if you want something with caffeine you could use black coffee. Particulary strong and with no sugar or anything else. Because cappuccino (having milk) remains sweet, and people like it because it's not bitter. While for measure of coffee it's simpler than what you think. There's either espresso (the small one), which can be small (ristretto), normal or large (lungo), and the american size (starbucks). Which us italian referred to as murky water. It's basically more water than coffee.

The amount of caffeine really depends on the brew; darker roasts tend to have more than those lighter. Other factors include, but are not limited to, brewing method, steep time and water temp. This is why when Googling caffeine content, ranges are often given. The same goes for espresso. And though espresso does beat out regular coffee in milligrams per ounce, it is obviously diluted out in various drinks like cappuccinos.

At least that’s what my research and own experience have taught me.

That said, here in the States, the jargon you listed is generally only used at Starbucks. Pretty much every other shop I’ve been in that isn’t Starbucks is more casual in their allowed coffee lexicon. And personally, that’s part of why I typically avoid Starbucks. The other primary reason is I was raised to prefer smaller businesses when possible. I now live in Clear Lake, Iowa, home of the first Cabin Coffee, a small franchise to which I have become incredibly loyal.

That said, having never been to Japan personally, I know little about the coffee culture over there. As such, I just used some artistic liberties to treat it as if it were the culture with which I am familiar here.

As for Maki’s order, I figure a quad shot of espresso, even diluted with steamed soy milk, would still give her a nice kick to get through a few hours of cram school. But even sweetened with said soy, that amount of espresso would be considered too bitter for a sweet lover like Nico, whom I headcanon as preferring drinks laced with more grams of sugar than milligrams of caffeine. I also see Nico preferring tea, particularly cheap barley tea, over coffee, but that’s a different story.

Also, though I’ve never personally had soy milk in my coffee, my Google-fu revealed that it apparently produces a smoother finished product than normal milk. And some sites claimed baristas prefer working with it. So I figured that was good enough and went with it.

[thebluesideofmyworld]

How Nico Learned to Love from Five Days that Used to be Meaningless For Him (+ One Special Day) - Chapter 3

DAY #3: THANKSGIVING DAY

Summary: There were days in a year that Nico could not care less about, even though people seemed to make quite a big deal of those days. But along the way of his relationship with Will, those days start to have special meaning for him.

(Day #1: Valentine’s Day || Day #2: April Fools’ Day ) Read on AO3

Chapter Summary: Thanksgiving Day had never been a special day for Nico. But this year, he visited Will’s house in Tennessee to celebrate Thanksgiving. Which meant it would be the first time for him to see Naomi Solace.

***

Thanksgiving Day had never been a big deal for Nico before. For him it was just one of American culture that he felt indifferent about. But this Thanksgiving, it was different.

This Thanksgiving, somehow Will successfully made him come to his house in Tennessee.

Even now, when he was standing in front of the door of Will’s house, Nico tried to remember how blissfully happy Will had been when he agreed to come here. Will was so happy, he didn’t even argue when Nico told him that the only way he would go there was by shadow traveling.

Nico stared at the wooden door, internally telling himself that this would mean a lot for Will.

Okay, maybe not just for Will. For their relationship.

Also, Nico missed Will.

It was Will’s first semester of his premed program in the University of New Rome. Which meant that it was also the first time for them to be apart. Wil still insisted to limit Nico in using shadow travel. So despite Nico’s protest, he could only visit Will every two weeks. However, it was Thanksgiving Break now and Will decided to stick with his tradition to celebrate it with his Mother. And this year, somehow he managed to make Nico agree to come and visit them.

Nico took a deep breath to calm himself down, and let it out in a huff.  He pressed the doorbell, then waited.

It didn’t take long before he heard footsteps coming closer, muffled by the door. The sound of the footsteps quickly followed with the rattling sound of a key unlocking the door. The next second, the door swung opened, revealing a middle-aged woman who was slightly shorter than Nico. It took no time to see how Will and his mother shared the same blond hair and blue eyes. More than that, the warm smile that Ms. Solace had on her lips now was also the same kind of smile that Will had.

“Oh, you must be Nico!”

“Good morning Ms. Solace,” Nico said. Despite his nervousness, he tried to smile as he stretched out his hand. “Thank you for having me.”

“Oh, darling.” Instead of taking Nico’s hand that he was offering, Ms. Solace put her arms around him and pulled him into a warm embrace. Nico could not stop himself from letting out a small gasp of surprise. He got tense for a second as Ms. Solace hugged him. But something about the warm hug felt so comfortable and safe easily made the tension that he felt disappear. He relaxed into the hug and although rather awkwardly, put his left arm around her to hug her back.

Ms. Solace pulled away but still held Nico’s shoulders with both hands. Her smile still lingered on her lips as she looked at Nico more carefully.

“Oh, look at you. Such a fine and lovely young man. No wonder Will always talked about you so fondly,” she said as she gently patted his cheek.

Nico blushed furiously as he rubbed the back of his neck.

“Uhm…. Thank you?” He said awkwardly, not really sure how to respond to that. “But Will can exaggerate things sometimes.” He ended it with a small nervous laugh.

“Also, I bring some…dessert, Panna Cotta,” Nico said, lifting up the paper bag that he had been carrying. He handed out the bag to Ms. Solace. “For…uh… maybe after the lunch?”

Ms. Solace’s eyes got widened.

“Oh, Nico, you don’t have to!” She said as she took the bag. She gave Nico another quick hug. “That is so sweet of you, darl.”

“It was nothing,” Nico said, smiling at her. “Thank you for inviting me, Ms. Solace.”

Ms. Solace waved her hand dismissively. “Oh, just call me Naomi, Nico,” she said. She stepped aside to make space for Nico.

“Please, do come in! Will is still taking a shower.”

Nico mumbled another thank you as he stepped in through the door.

Naomi Solace led him to the living room. It was not too big, but the large window that let the daylight coming in made it look bright. A thin white vitrage hung over the window, the yellow and white curtains were held in place on each sides of the window with white ribbons.

Naomi sat on the couch and put the paper bag that Nico gave her on the coffee table. Nico took a sit on one of the armchairs.

“Your house is really nice,” Nico said as he gazed around. The couch and the armchairs looked quite old, but the throw pillows with bright colors make them look comfortable.

“Thank you,” Naomi said with a smile. “It’s not big but well, it kept a lot of memories.”

Nico’s eyes fell on the end table next to the armchair that he was sitting on. There were a few picture frames there, but one of those pictures there made him gasp a little.

“You have our picture?” He asked, turning his head to Naomi with raised eyebrows. Naomi’s smile got softer as she shifted closer.

“Yeah, I do,” she said as she reached out for the said frame. “I hope you don’t mind?” She asked carefully as she turned her head to look at Nico,

Nico blinked, but then quickly shook his head. “No… No.. I don’t mind.” His hand flew to rub the back of his awkwardly as he looked back at her, feeling how his cheeks were heating up again.

“I’m just… You know… I mean, I’m just surprised…” he said, cringing a little and let out a nervous chuckle.

Naomi laughed lightly then looked at the picture again as she slowly ran her fingers over the picture.

“How… How did you get it?”

“Will sent it to me,” she said, flashing a smile as she glanced at Nico. She looked back at the picture and smiled fondly at it. “He was so happy, you know, when you two started dating. Whenever he calls me, he always talks about you.”

“Oh,” Nico said. He could feel that he was still blushing, but there was also a warm nice feeling seeping in his vein. “Really?”

“Uh huh,” Naomi hummed as she nodded. “And when he sent me this picture, I could see how happy he is with you.” She turned to Nico, and her blue eyes were also smiling as softly as her lips as she handed out the framed picture to Nico.

Nico took the picture and stared at it. He remembered that it was a picture taken last summer, just a few months ago. Calypso and Leo came for a visit, where Calypso proudly a camera that she said was a gift from Leo. Calypso basically took pictures of everyone in the camp, including Will and Nico. In the picture, Will had his bright smile as he has an arm rested comfortably around Nico’s shoulder. Nico had his arms crossed over his chest and his black Ramones shirt was a contrast to Will’s orange camp shirt. Those shirts were not the only contrast about them. But still, there was something that they looked to have in common. They looked happy. Even if Nico only had a faint smile on his lips, Nico himself could see a soft glow of happiness on him.

His heart fluttered a bit.

It was not like it was the first time he saw the picture. But Naomi’s way of looking at the picture and talking about it made something sweet melted in his chest.

(Nobody had to know that he had the same picture in his wallet. The only one knew about it was Leo when Nico asked him to print another copy of the picture. But even Leo did not know where Nico kept the picture)

(He knew that Will kept the picture, framed, placed on the nightstand next to Will’s bed in his dorm in New Rome)

(But there was no way he would let Will know where he kept that picture. He had a reputation to hold)

“It’s a very nice picture,” Nico said, this time allowing himself to smile as he gave back the frame to Naomi.

“It is,” Naomi said. “You have no idea how grateful I am to know that he finally found someone who can make him so happy now,” Naomi said, smiling again as she stared at the picture.

For a while, none of them say anything. Until Naomi cleared her throat.

“But, Nico, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

Nico lifted his eyebrows and tilted his head. “No, go ahead.”

Naomi took a deep breath and exhaled it out as she put back the frame on the end table. She shifted a little on the couch to face Nico. “Nico, I know that you make Will happy. But does he make you happy, though?”

Nico froze for a second. He probably looked so confused or something, because Naomi leaned forward a bit and gently placed her hand on Nico’s knee.

“Nico, I know you’re a good person. You deserve to be happy. But most importantly, what you have between you two can only work if both of you are happy.”

Something constricted in Nico’s chest. It just felt so nice to know that someone cared about him and how he felt. Nico smiled and carefully placed his hand over Naomi’s.

“Don’t worry, Naomi,” he said. “I am happy with him. And even if I am not, Will always knows how to make me happy again,” he said earnestly.

The smile on Naomi’s face got wider as her eyes twinkled. “Good to hear that,” she said. “If he ever does anything that hurt you or anything, you tell me, okay? And I will talk to him.”

Nico laughed, half-amused. “Naomi, believe me. I don’t think Will was capable to hurt anyone’s feeling.”

He smiled softly then continued. “Will was a very good, amazing person, Naomi. And now I know from whom he got the traits.”

Naomi laughed as she pulled her hand away from Nico.  “Oh, also, I need to ask you another question.”

Nico arched an eyebrow. “Sure. What is it?”

“There had been a few people who…saw that picture and asked who’s the young man next to Will,” Naomi said, this time looking at Nico with a serious expression. “So far, I only told them that you are Will’s best friend in the summer camp.”

Nico nodded as he brushed off some of his hair from covering his eyes.

“So, are you okay with it, or you want me to change how I answer the question?”

Nico stayed quiet for a moment, chewing his lower lip as he contemplated about the question. Had she asked that question two years ago when he and Will were just dating for a few months, he would probably be freaking out. He remembered that in the first few months of them dating, he would still cringe at how Will referred to him as his boyfriend. But now Nico was at the point where he started to be comfortable about himself. Including about being in a relationship with someone that he loved. He looked at Naomi.

“Are you okay with people knowing about me dating your son?”

Naomi smiled as she waved her hand dismissively, like Nico didn’t even have to ask.

“Oh, darling. I am more than okay. I’ve told you, I am so glad to see how happy you are together.”

Nico curled his lips up into a smile. “Then yeah. You can tell them whatever you want to tell them,” he said. “As long as Will doesn’t mind about it.”

Naomi laughed lightly. “Oh, I am pretty sure that he has no problem at all. But just to make sure, I will ask him. You can also ask him if you want to,” Naomi said.

She stood up and straightened her dress. “Well, I think it’s time for me to start preparing the meal. Do you want to help me?”

Nico stood up and grinned. “I’d love to,” he said, and followed her to the kitchen.

***

When Will came down to the kitchen, he smiled when he saw Nico and his mother were standing next to each other by the kitchen island, cutting some vegetables. He leaned against the doorway, watching Nico and Naomi worked together as Nico telling Naomi about his childhood in Italy.

It was Naomi who saw him first when she looked up.

“There you are,” Naomi said and put the knife on the chopping board. “Now help this fine young man over here while I prepare something else.”

“Sure, Ma,” Will said, grinning as he walked to the kitchen island. His mother walked away from the kitchen table as Will took over her place next to Nico.

“Hello, boyfriend,” Will said and placed a quick peck on Nico’s cheek. He chuckled at how Nico’s cheeks turned into red. Will took the knife and started cutting more tomatoes.

“Thank you for coming, by the way,” Will said, glancing at Nico as he worked with the knife.

Nico had a small smile when he turned to look at Will. “Well, thank you for inviting me,” Nico said, smiling shyly and quickly looked back to the bell pepper that he was cutting.

“Hey,” Will said, nudging Nico’s arm with his elbow. “From now on, it’s your home too, okay?”

Nico didn’t say anything as he kept his eyes on the chopping board. But Will didn’t fail to notice the smile that stayed on his lips.

***

Naomi Solace was not Maria di Angelo. She would never be. But ever since that Thanksgiving Day, Nico knew that in one way or another, Naomi was also his mother now.

And Thanksgiving meal in her house started to become a part of his life too.

***

Author’s Notes:

If I have to be honest, I feel like this chapter is probably the hardest one to write than the other chapters. I do apologize if there is any part in this chapter that you might find offensive in any way, because I did not mean to offend anyone, in any way. 

Thank you for reading! Comments and feedbacks are always welcome. I love to hear what you guys think about this fic :)

Next update is on January 22 :)

[agermanbetweenscots]

Summer 2019 Part II

The summer post-interview and pre-acceptance was spent in three countries, and in a constant state of sweat.

I went to the fair with my oldest friend Michaela and her parents. Her dad kept asking me why I would wanna study medicine in Vilnius, her mum kept offering me drinks and Michaela and me kept riding the Kraken. My stomach told me off afterwards and reminded me that I got too old – because after riding the Kraken twice, I was so nauseous. But this is tradition. The fair, the Michaela and the Kraken.

After a couple days in Goslar and buying new summer dresses, I travelled to Sacramento for the first time. This was the time where Chris had decided to grow out his beard (terrible decision, if you ask me). So, most of our Sacramento pictures are me in my wonderful, newly bought dresses and him in a questionable long beard. I am clearly the more fashionable in this relationship haha.

Sacramento is a wonderful city, very green, very hipster, very capital.

Unfortunately, it is also very American in the sense that walking around is hardly do-able. What it is with America and highways in the middle of the city. (They are probably not highways, and it is probably also not the middle of the city – but still. How am I supposed to discover a city if you cannot walk around?) Sometimes thinking back on this (it has also already annoyed me in OK) I wonder how Chris sticks around – the European girlfriend makes him park so much out his way just so she can walk around at 35°C, along pavements in little shade to get to the capitol building. By the way – did you know that a capitol building gets to have a golden roof if it produced a president? Inside the capitol there were different windows, showing what the different counties of California are famous for. I loved seeing that from Hollywood to farming, to wood production. I also tried to learn about the politics (we were in the capitol after all and once again I was reminded at the fact that Chris is very unpolitical. I quizzed him on his current senators. And he did not know. Tsk, tsk, tsk.

In case I told you (and you remember) I had signed up for my first half marathon while writing my bachelor thesis (and roped Jon into it). So, on a random evening, we drove to Davis to attempt a 13.2 mile run. And even though it was an evening run (I think it started around 6PM) it was so HOT. But we made it and I succeeded. Succeeded in running faster than Jon (goal #1) and succeeded in finishing (goal #2).

Downton Sacramento is so cute – they refurbished it to look like the old settler town, so you are constantly looking over your shoulder to not get shot by rogue cowboys or in a standoff between sheriff and thieves. It made me wanna see more of these Western Towns.

The highlight of my trip, however was and is still our trip to San Francisco. I managed to get Chris to see his first Musical: Hamilton! And it was great. Even though I must have spent so much money – first I bought the tickets on some weird reseller website (and paid 150$ each) and then I wanted to treat Chris to a beer and some M&S and paid another 40$. But the music, the vibe, the stage. I love theatre. And that play is just awesome. If you get a chance and have not seen it yet – go! The Disney+ version does not even come close.

The highlight of my life however also seemed to happen on that trip: I got an email from Adam. Who is Adam, I hear you asking? Adam, my lovelies is the guy telling me that I freaking got accepted to Kassel! I remember it being the early morning, Chris more or less gently snoring next to me, when I saw the email on my home screen of my phone. I opened it. Read it. Opened it again and then tried to call my parents. I forgot about the time difference however, so no one answered my call. I tried to wake up Chris. He woke up, squinted at me, mumbled something along the lines of congratulations and turned back around. Those were my celebrations.

(He did wake up a tiny bit later, gave me a kiss and was very happy for me. Plus this was very much reminiscing of the time when I got accepted to Vilnius)

After 12 days my time came to a close (for now) as I had to jet set to another country – me and my parents where planning on hiking through the Tatra for a week. My sister did not come with us for some reason that probably was very plausible when she told me, but I do not remember what it was. But it did mean one on one time with my parents. I am not complaining. The week in the Tatra was great, lots of wonderful hikes, nice hotels, good food. The Tatra was very green, difficult to hike up (one hike was literally 70° up, I was almost worried for mum and dad climbing up) but the closer we were to the polish site, the busier it got. The people hiking up the hills confused us a lot, few people looked prepared, most wore sandals, and all ages were present (babies, grandmas and people who looked like they never hiked before.

28th August Chris came to visit me (I did not have to go long without him this summer) and we should him the Harz and went swimming in the Kuttelbacher Teich. Chris was moaning about not having an AC and we had to make do with open windows and an old fashion fan, gently moving the hot air back and forth in the room. I introduced Chris to most of my family when my cousin celebrated his birthday and put on a garden party. He was even asked to put a colourful handprint on a blank canvas ‘like leaves on a tree’, so he is now put on there forever and cannot leave anymore. Most of my cousins spoke to him (thankfully most speak really good English) and even my oldest Uncle got out his school English and managed to get Chris involved in a monologue about his choir concert coming up. (We actually went as Chris promised him *rolls eyes*)

On the first of September, I had another half marathon in Eichstätt in Bavaria while visiting Biggy. It was less hot but instead it was two 11k loops and of course that is way harder on the mind. I would always run one loop of 20 k then running 20K in multiple smaller loops.

Chris absolutely loved Bavaria, he loved the beer, the meat, the people. We went to visit Thea in Munich and Chris loved the Beer Garden Culture.

One the way back from the deep, deep Bavaria in the sturdy Volvo, the front wheel of the car just exploded near Fulda. I drove to the side of the motor way and the conversation went something like this:

C: Don’t you worry. I am a man and from Oklahoma so I can change a wheel for you, my lady in distress.

H: *doubts but in German* but opens the boot anyways. There is no wheel.

C: Why is there no wheel? What backwards country is this? What is Europe? How do Europeans survive?

I called ADAC, called Volvo on Call (should have only covered the latter – but dad told me to call both) and we were picked up from a lovely chap that tried to sell me an ADAC membership but also tried to make smalltalk with Chris. In German.

So I had to multitask speaking about cars (I have no clue), trying to not get sold a membership with lots of fine print (and I cannot say No) while simultaneously trying to make Chris feel like I still translate for him (something I can actually do).

After a couple of hours we were back on the road – but I continued sneaking along the motorway terrified of the new wheel exploding on me to.

For the 9th of September, I had to back in Kassel for an induction day – where I got to see who made it through. Guess who made it. Guess…

PAULINE! (and Suveni and Nora)

While I was getting a tour through the hospital and got to know people on my course – I remember speaking to Thalia on the hallway, speaking to Nico on the lunch break (he had no hobbies and was wearing a suit – strange dude. Over time he got less strange and way cooler.) and chatting to Martha in the tram, Chris was at home. Mum and Dad wanted to do things with him – or at least they had offered, instead they both said they hardly seen him. He must have just hidden in my room. Awkward boy. But then I guess I would have done the same. As part of our induction day, we had to line up based on the towns we are from, based on our birthdays and last names. Basem was always in the front – last name starts with A, from Hamburg and born in early January. The older years came and said hi, told us to get bikes to get around (and an helmet for Dale Road) and told us how to best study. Which I do not remember. They also told us not to get a British phone number or bank account – I had both already. (Which would come back to bite me in the behind, more to that later)

Back in Goslar we climbed up the Broken in the morning to see the sunrise, Hanna joined us. It was cold and early in the morning and Chris never hated me more.

On the 18th of September, Chris was leaving Europe from Berlin, so me and him spent a night in Berlin and I invited him for a dinner in the Film Tower with the rotating restaurant. And it made me dizzy. Also, fancy restaurants just feel weird. They feel weird for students. And I am too much of a picky eater. And broke. I am grateful for the experience but let’s wait another 10 years for that, shall we?

After a tearful goodbye Chris got into the plane towards Sweden, while I remained behind.

I always wonder how the heart can actually feel like its breaking and the more I learn about the human body – the more I want to know: Is it anxiety? What physiological mechanism underlies the heartbreak – that does feel like that.

On 19th September, me and my parents flew to Southampton. We flew from Düsseldorf to Southampton directly with an airline that quickly stopped this connection and then went broke (probably missing out on all these students flying back and forth).

We stayed in the Jury’s Inn, walked around and mostly were surprised at how much it is a shithole if compared to Edinburgh and constantly tried to find a place to drink a coffee at. Sometimes we got lucky, sometimes we did not. Mum and I went to see the Downton Abbey Film in the cinema and were positively surprised by the reclining seats – both of us used to the Cineplex back home had never really seen something like this before. Dad stayed in the pub. He stayed in the pub when we went to see the castle of Southampton (It is a ruin. Not an actual castle). But he left the pub to go to Argos to pick up a clothes drying rack that I ordered. And then he promptly returned to my bed in Romero Halls and had a nap. Weekend well spent.

[rhythmofafrica-com]

Interview: STA7CK on African House, Brooklyn's Techno Scene

RISING STAR

On staying true to his roots and bringing African house to the masses.

by E.R. Pulgar for POPDUST // 11.18.2016

Deep house aficionado STA7CK (pronounced "stark") grew up in a multi-cultural household. Surrounded by French music and old soul tunes, he remains deeply entrenched in his West African roots, which have become a part of his life in the form of Rhythm of Afrika, a monthly dance party that brings African sounds to Brooklyn and Queen's nightlife. His parties have gained momentum and recognition in recent months despite still being relatively new, and he has found himself at the forefront of increasing awareness of African culture in electronic music.

We sat down with him to talk about the unique lens of an African techno musician in Bushwick, and what exactly he wants to leave behind in New York City's music scene.

How did you get your start?

I started out as a dubstep DJ. I played dubstep, drum and bass, and grime music, which is part of African diaspora music. Then, I stopped and started focusing on managing. So what happened is that one day my artist's just stopped working with me; they got poached by another agency. I got depressed for a while and decided to shut down the agency and work on myself instead of other people.

Tell me about that.

The music we push is African house music, kuduro music, Afrobeat, African music... anything that's hot coming out of the continent or the diaspora. Grime, french pop, reggae. We just take all these elements and put them into one thing. I was born in a French-speaking country in West Africa. I went to school in Paris, and came to New York at a very young age because my mother lived here. When I was a kid, my parents divorced and my mother moved to America. I was living with my father, and then at 12 or 13 I moved to America. I was a kid who was passionate about our culture, and I wanted to put all these elements into one thing. I grew up around popular African diaspora music and American pop music, so i wanted to put all that together.

And growing up in that multi cultural environment, do you remember any song you first fell in love with?

It was hip-hop. R&B. You know, soul music.

Any artist in specific?

I like oldies.

Otis Redding?

[Teddy] Pendergrass, James Brown, Earth, Wind and Fire, Musiq Soulchild, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Carl Thomas, Luther Vandross, Kanye, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Kid Cudi, N.E.R.D, Pharrell, Future, Nas, Snoop Dogg, Tupac, Biggie, Bob Marley, Lenny Kravitz, Raphael Saadiq, Linking Park, Coldplay, Phil Collins, 2 Chainz, some Drake, 12th Planet, Diplo, Skrillex, Major Lazer, Sintra, Serge Gainsbourg I really love their music. As far as African music, I like African reggae artists: Tiken Jah Fakoly, WizKid, Davido, Tekno, Fuse ODG, Disiz, La Fouine, Stromae, Corneile, Skepta, Stormzy, JME, Wiley, Section Boyz, Sexion D'Assaut, Kaysha, Magic System, Boddhi Satva, Djeff Afrozilla, Fela Kuti, Salif Keita, Lucky Dube, Prince Nico Mbarga

E.R. Pulgar© 2016

How does a Rhythm of Afrika party usually go? What can people expect?

A lot of dope music that you've probably never heard of before. Afrobeat, deep house, soulful house.... This is the music I grew up around. Afro deep house. Could be anything; traditional West African music, Mende folk music. I DJ that, we DJ urban American music: hip hop, R&B, electro. It all has to be African, deep in the diaspora.

Any contemporaries you are influenced by or listening to now?

I'm listening to a lot of African stuff: Djeff Afrozila. I hung out with him the other day, actually. I like Black Coffee. He was here last week for Halloween at Brooklyn Hangar. I dig that the industry is still building, so i think around this time next year we'll have a steady flow. We still have all the pioneers, all the dope DJs on the rise. I feel like by this time next year, we'll have something big going.

Did you do anything for the Brooklyn Electronic Music Festival?

I tried to get booked. I guess when people hear African music… we're still not sexy yet (laughs). That's the whole reason I created this thing; growing up as an African in New York, I've noticed Africans aren't branded properly. We don't have a "cool" brand, we're not telling our own stories. We have a lot of outsiders going to Africa to tell our stories for us, so we're not really putting our own images out there. I did this to tell my own story, because every time I go out into the world as an African man, it's a stupid conversation. People who don't really understand the culture or people of Africa say "oh, you live in a teepee." And I'm like "come on bro, we got cities." We got a comedy culture, a dance culture, we have festivals, we have fashion shows.

When people focus on the tragedies that happen, which happen everywhere––England, Paris, Sandy Hook, Belgium, all these places––this paints a negative image of Africa, and doesn't even stay in the headlines for a long time. But when it happens in Africa, the world writes about it and it just stays there. When u google an african country like Soweto in South Africa, you see pics from the 70s or 60s, Google doesn't refresh the content.

It's very Euro-centric.

And they don't focus on the culture that's there; they only focus on the bad things. Bad things happen everywhere, in Munich, in France, in Belgium. But when you come to Africa, that's the only thing the media focuses on, so my collective wants to fight that stereotype. We're not what the media has been portraying for decades.

E.R. Pulgar© 2016

And by pushing your collective through the unique the lens of the unapologetically African man living and making music in Bushwick––a rapidly gentrifying area where indie rock thrives more than electronic–– what mark do you hope to leave on NYC's music scene?

Dope parties, man! Dope parties, and changing the viewpoint of how black people are viewed in the media. It's not just about the music, but it's about the social issues behind that. It's about the fashion, the changes in the world. I want to leave cool parties and create opportunities for other young black people. What we see in the media does not represent a lot of us. The reason I created this is because when you go on, say, World Star Hip Hop, it's a whole other vibe. People posing with guns and shit, and it's like…. That's not just blackness. There's a whole wide variety of back people; there's only, like 10% that are into that.

We have people who love soul, people who love R&B, people who love Britney Spears, people who love rap music. I created this collective to show the other black experience while highlighting African culture. I hope to create a space and a platform for young black artists and anyone influenced by black music and culture, so we can go and create something. I also look to build connections with a lot of venues, release new records on my label, and again, just dope parties, man.

Keep up with Rhythm of Afrika on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

[gloriousfatpoc]

So somethings has been bothering me about that whole cultural appropriation of braids and locks discussion. I feel like black folks wanna be the victim when hair braiding is a big part of Latin American culture too. Black people look for a reason to get mad and hate other minorities for no reason.

TBH, braids are a part of many cultures and black people have never claimed a supremacy over braids themselves, so let’s dead that lie right there. What black people like myself take issue with specifically is certain braid styles/hairstyles. It’s when we get into box braids, cornrows, dreadlocks, twists, you name it. Styles that we literally still get shit about today.

And it’s not always the wearing of these styles that throw us off; it’s the lack of responsibility/accountability. Realize that EVERY TIME you don one of these styles, there are literally black folks being called ghetto, who aren’t being hired, who are being fired or incarcerated or literally murdered for these styles. And when you don these styles to fit your dangerous “aesthetic” or your street cred, “hood mami” neither hispanohablante nor Latinx dream, you perpetuate the stereotypes that keep us from enjoying our culture without institutional reprimands.

Also, let’s stop these conversations that ignore Afro-Latinxs and the other Afro-mixed cultures that certainly lend to their own cultures that often mirror or derive from the same African origin.

Lastly, Black people don’t want to be mad. Did you see what we did with Vine? Black people literally want to be left the fuck alone. We are not checking for anyone but our own. We want to wear our hair how we want, and dance, and sing, and party, and grieve, and be treated like human beings and be lit…by our damn selves…and what’s so crazy is: black people are some of the most welcoming folks. I know y’all have seen those videos of black folks hyping up Billy in the dance battle, or old girl rapping (until they found out she was fraud), or BIG LEXY? Like, if you fuck with us, fuck with us, but don’t use our culture to get you somewhere we’ll never be allowed. That shit is foul.

- Mod Nico

[liu-anhuaming]

Do you have any tips for studying a large amount in a short period of time? Because I have been learning chinese for 2 1/2 years, but i really haven't gotten far and this August 29 (50 days!!) I'm leaving for a 10 month exchange to ZhengZhou!

i’m gonna start out by saying there’s really no fun way to cram a bunch of knowledge into your brain in a short amount of time (i know this really well bc i was a shit student in high school and i still a shit student now, even though i have improved slightly)

but here are my suggestions:

make some kind of schedule. if you do this you don’t need to have a super regimented study plan but just have an idea of what you need to study and make a basic timeline. you leave in 50 days, so that’s about 7 weeks. while you don’t necessarily need to know what you’re going to study every single day, maybe have a general idea about what you want to cover each week so that you can have a general idea of what your goal is

if scheduling isn’t your thing (cuz it sure as hell isn’t mine), form a list of what you want to accomplish in these 50 days. gather up the resources you’re gonna use (i’ll put some suggestions for that below) and figure out what you want to accomplish with them. this list can be as general or specific as you think it needs to be.

whether you make a schedule or a list is really up to you and how you prefer to study and stay motivated, but it’s important to remember to take a few days off (at least once a week). 50 days of straight studying is not an easy thing and if you don’t rest in between you’ll eventually burn out. so yeah, take some days off. but if you still want to get some mandarin practice in, listen to music in the background. here’s some links to music master posts, as well as my mandarin music tag (my personal suggestions for music are, naturally, 苏运莹， 张震岳 （AKA A－Yue，Waa Wei, Hello Nico, Haya 乐团, Frandé/法蘭黛, and 宇宙人). also take a look at the blogs @chinese-lyrics and @fyeahcindie. they have a bunch of great music that you can look through 

so now that you know what you’re gonna be doing, here are some suggestions for how to drill vocab and grammar:

the first is memrise. there are a bunch of memrise courses for mandarin that cover useful vocab from every level of the HSK among other things. since it uses spaced repetition it’s a great resource to help beat vocab into your brain. it is, however, not the best for grammar (imo)

if you need to, take sticky notes and label everything in your house. and make it really visible. when i did this, i didn’t write the pinyin on the sticky notes, just the tone marks but if you feel that you need to write the pinyin, then go ahead and do it. when you do this, you are forced to see the vocab every day and will learn it after having seen it so many times

it is my opinion that the best way to learn vocab (and their corresponding characters) is to write. when i study mandarin i always try to write out my vocab lists and then use this method to practice the characters. depending on how long your vocab list is, this can be an incredibly time consuming method (i’ve had lists that have taken me an hour and a half to finish drilling using this method) but it really pays off

for grammar i’d use websites like this one or this one bc they give examples of the grammar in use. also, the first one (allset learning) has their grammar organized up to B2 (HSK 4) so it’s easy to find grammar by HSK levels. the second one is also organized by level, but they don’t have as many articles yet. if you want to practice by making your own sentences but are afraid of messing up, just hop on over to HiNative. you can ask native speakers of mandarin if something you wrote in mandarin sounds natural or correct, as well as ask for help with translating difficult words or sentences and more.

more than anything, i recommend you find some resources created by native speakers to help you learn

slow chinese 慢速中文 is a podcast series written by native speakers for people learning mandarin. they are a few minutes long each and are spoken at a slightly slower speed than normal, and they cover a variety of topics including chinese culture and food. you can download the podcasts on iTunes, but you can also find them online along with the transcripts. it’s an amazing resource

快乐汉语 (this playlist only goes to episode 75): this is a video series created by CCTV for mandarin learners. it’s basically about an american girl who runs away from home to stay with her family friends in beijing. the acting is super cheesy and the plots are downright weird at times, but it’s an excellent resource because the videos are subbed in both mandarin and english. since susan (the main character) is american, there are a bunch of episodes where the family explains chinese culture to her so it’s pretty cool. warning: a lot of the characters have thick beijing accents, so just watch out for that. they also have a couple of short breaks in each episode to explain certain grammar or vocab that was used in the episode

what i’d do with these and any other native resources you find (song lyrics, blog posts, books, etc.) is break them down sentence by sentence and study the vocab and grammar. once you get that vocab, drill it like you do with all of the other vocab. what my teacher would have us do with 快乐汉语 was listen once nonstop, then go scene by scene and write down what the characters were saying using what we could hear and the chinese subtitles. we’d then go over the scene and find any vocab and grammar patterns that were new to us and make notes on them. once we’d finish with that, we’d listen to the scene once more.

after we’d done that for every scene, we’d watch the whole video again and again to get the hang not only of the new vocab but also of the way the characters said each sentence. when learning a new language, a lot of what makes someone sound unnatural is not only accent, but also rhythm. so my teacher would have us listen to the video over and over and then make us perform certain scenes. she did this so we could practice listening not only for pronunciation but also for the rhythm of each sentence. so i highly recommend you try this (sans the performing). you can just pick a scene or two and listen a bunch and eventually try to repeat after each character until you feel you’ve got the rhythm down.

so that’s really all i can say for now. cramming requires a lot of work so what you’ve got to do is find a way to apply the methods that work best for you and keep plugging away at them until the very end. i hope this helps you in some way, and i hope you enjoy your time in china! 加油!!!

[midnightuglystepsister]

(/ω＼)ﾟ.+(〃ﾉωﾉ)ﾟ.+°50 More Interesting Questions

Rules: fill this out and tag at least one person you’d like to know more about! Or just fill it out! Or don’t! Answer only some of them! Make up your own questions! “What kind of requirement is that”, you ask? A reasonable one! Who am I to tell you what to do? Anything goes!

tagged! by @kakihoden Thanks so much :D

1. What kind of food can’t you stand?: Really spicy food. I can’t do it bruh I cannnnn’t

2. If you could choose one minor inconvenience to never have to deal with again, what would you pick?: minor...inconvenience, hmmm...I guess to have a longer battery life on my phone, like....i can heavily use it for more than a day and still be good lol. 

3. Have you got any useless talents?: I uh, acting? It’s useless because I have stage fright now so I only use it for evil. Like, pranking someone. 

4. If you could be really really good at one thing, what would it be?: being proactive

5. Name a few people you think are extremely good-looking: there are a lot but I will list the /obvious/

Matsumoto Jun:

all of Arashi actually

GD

TOP

CL

ok i should stop but there’s a long list of these hahaha

6. What was your favorite way to pass the time as a kid?: watch TV, play video games, write stories, make comics

7. What is something you’re proud of?:  I’m proud of Arashi bc they’re a bunch of good guys that went through so much and now they’re successful and still humble and i have a lot of feelings im a proud arashian

8. What’s one character flaw in people that you just can’t tolerate?: Entitlement. Seriously, cut it out. esp amerikkka, and then there’s my older bro

9. Do you consider yourself to be more of a leader or a follower?: Both. At first, I let people lead, but if they can’t lead properly, or that no one is stepping up, I will take over.

10. What kind of student are/were you?: Pretty average I think. In the Philippines, I was average af, but I was outgoing and had a lot of friends. Then I moved to the US, and the education was much....uh lower? I was suddenly the smartest in class, and teachers favored me, and people hated me, but I just did my work. Then, I got older, I wasn’t as outgoing anymore and I just stuck to my group of friends and stayed quiet in class. Went back to being an average student also.

11. Butterfly effect question! Has there ever been a seemingly minor decision you’ve made (at the time) that ended up having a profound influence on your life?: Idk? I guess when I first started drawing? I didn’t think I was going to take art as my career at first.

12. Name your most irrational fear/aversion: People/Socializing? I stay at home to avoid socializing with people lol. I mean, I have social anxiety, so yeah

13. Are there any fictional characters you find especially relatable?: yes~ There’s always going to be relatable characters.

14. If you drink, what kind of drunk are you? Alternatively, what sort of person are you at parties?: I don’t drink alcohol. I hate the taste of it. At a party where I don’t know people? I find a nice corner and stay hidden. Probably on my phone at all times. At a party where I am friends with everyone? I speak to whomever is beside me. At a party with people I know and don’t know? I desperately stick to the people I know and only talk to them.

15. Do you fall in love easily? Or does it usually take a long time for you to trust someone?: I don’t think I have fallen in love. I’ve had crushes ofc. I have trust issues, I don’t trust anyone 100%.

16. Would you rather have one close friend or 100 casual friends?: one close friend

17. Do you consider yourself to be more of a slob or a neat-freak?: Man...in the middle? I can be a slob in my room, but I can’t stand messiness anywhere else? And at one point, I do clean and organize my room, so idk.

18. Describe a place (imaginary or real) that you would find incredibly cozy: a quiet area around nature. Like greens, or beachy, or just blue skies. Basically a Ghibli setting.

19. Do you have kids? If not, do you want them someday?: I don’t have kids and don’t want kids. I grew up caring for lots of kids, and I’m actually pretty good with them. I just don’t want one of my own.

20. What was your favorite book as a child?: I had a lot. I would seriously go to the library often, and borrow a giant stack of books. And the librarians knew me and never question me about being able to read all of them by the due date. They even had a limit of books you can borrow at a time, but they made me an exception hahaha. But I guess my first real obsession was Harry Potter...and then A Series of Unfortunate Events.

21. Name one thing you just don’t get what all the hype is about: lol yes despacito, fidget spinners, bottle flipping, and jake paul hahahaha

22. Name one thing that you think is tragically underrated: artists. Yes, I know there are many successful artists, but even now I hear stories of these successful artist getting ripped off, or getting low offers.

23. If you had to be glued to a person for a month, real or fictional (who you have never met), who would you choose?:  Real: Ninomiya Kazunari from Arashi. Because we both like to play video games and are very indoors-y lol. Fictional: Nico Meier from MidCin. Just think he would be really fun to hang out with, and his cheeriness will be contagious.

24. What’s something you’d like the chance to do someday?: Have my own art exhibit? And to also travel.

25. Do you typically speak your mind when you have a controversial opinion? Or do generally prefer to not rock the boat?: I’m straightforward, and will speak my mind on things I feel strongly about.

26. What’s the dumbest fad you’ve been caught up in?: I don’t think I’ve ever got caught up in a dumb fad.

27. What’s something you thought was cool as a kid/adolescent, but now cringe at yourself for?: I used to RP in real life with friends when I was a kid hahahahahaha hahbshasahahah ahaah

28. What’s a trait you consider to be very admirable?: Confidence. I admire confident people so much, and I wish to be confident and not this hot mess of self-hate.

29. Is there a particular kind of item people always tend to give you as gifts? (For instance, people always get you things with ducks on them because you like ducks, etc.): It varies on what these people know about me. For instance, I have one friend that gives me things from animes I like, another would give me art supplies, another would give me skincare products/makeup, my bro and his gf would give me shoes/handbags. It honestly varies on which of my side I show to each person.

30. Do you speak multiple languages? Which ones?: I speak Tagalog, English, I’ve taken classes on Japanese, American Sign Language, and trying to learn Korean and Mandarin.

31. Would you rather live in the big city or the countryside?: Can it be somewhere in the middle? ^-^; Like suburbs? lol. But if not, then big city.

32. Has there ever been something you were certain you’d hate, but ended up loving?: hmmm....I used to hate sushi when I was a kid. Now I eat it like 3x a week.

33. Do you mind being the center of attention, or do you prefer the spotlight to be on someone else?: It depends. In a big place with lots of strangers, I prefer the spotlight on someone else. In a group of people I know, then I want to be the center of attention. Ijustwannafeellovedlol

34. Favorite holiday?: Christmas.

35. Are you a more go-with-the-flow type of person, or do you need to have things planned meticulously?: I go-with-the-flow, but I’ve had instances where the flow was super messy and I got irritated and planned out the thing.

36. Is there something you loved so much you wish you could forget it and experience it all over again? (A tv show, book, series–anything.): Going to Hawaii to go to an Arashi concert lol

37. What hobbies do you have?: Drawing, playing video games, watching videos, listening to music, singing, playing with the dogs, writing, eating, traveling

38. If you could have a superpower, but it was only mildly useful, what ability would you want to have?: mildly useful...like it doesn’t work fully? Or it has some kinda flaw? I guess....teleporting? Like, my ideal teleporting kind of superpower is teleport anywhere in the world, but I guess if this is only mildly useful, then I can only teleport within a mile radius or something lol.

39. Something people are always surprised to learn about you: My age. Like, legit, every. single. time I say how old I am, everyone gets a shock. People think I’m waaaaay younger than I am lmaaaao.

40. Something that took you way too long to figure out: Not to have high expectations.

41. Worst injury you’ve had?: I don’t get injuries bc I avoid them lmao.

42. Any morbid fascinations?: uh i dont think so

43. Describe your sense of humor: self-deprecating humor, dark, sarcasm, and perverted humor.

44. If you had to be born in another era/place, which would you choose? I wouldn’t change my birthplace or year, bc every year or place has it’s shittiness. But if I /HAD/ to...I guess Japan? I have always liked their culture, aside from a few negative things from it. 

45. Something you are irredeemably bad at: sleeping, having motivation

46. Something that sucked but you’re glad you went through: Losing a few friends/my fam getting scammed, because I’ve learned something about people from it

47. Would you rather have a really godawful ugly tattoo in a place that is only slightly inconvenient to conceal with clothing (upper arm, thigh, etc.), or the coolest, most beautiful tattoo ever in the middle of your face? (Neither tattoo can be removed or concealed with makeup, and the ugly tattoo will deeply offend anyone who sees it.): Ugly tat, bc I can conceal with clothing.

48. Are you more of an optimist or a pessimist?: Realist, but borderline pessimistic

49. What would be the most flattering compliment someone could give you?: when people say I’m funny and witty. I was also strangely happy when someone said that I would have made a really handsome guy lmao. 

50. Something you feel people often misunderstand about you: Sometimes people find me scary, though sometimes I can be--when provoked, usually it’s just my face and my silence

Tagging: I want to know more about all of u, so if you do it, please @me!