#I’ll still watch it but I watch all my tv though pirateing sites | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs | Tumgik (2025)

How did you start reading comics?

do you read using readcomicsonline.com or you buy physical copies?

ooh my comic journey makes me really nostalgic! I was super into x-men and marvel and I joined my school’s comic book club, so our grown ass sponsor taught us freshmen how to pirate comics 😭😭 by the time I was 15 I was reading voraciously- I read a TON of Claremont’s x men (which my tiny 15 yr old brain could not comprehend), Saga, and misc marvel shit I’ve seen forgotten about.

then my interests pivoted the next summer so by the time I was 16 I was into DC. I really only read cursory nightwing stuff and a lot of Batman and Robin (the 2011 run is still v nostalgic for me). basically I was an insufferable batfam weirdo

so by the time I was 19 I had taken a break from comics for awhile- I got rlly into game of thrones tv for awhile. lol. but I happened to miss comics so I thought I’d dive back into Batman- but instead I watched JLD 2017, and well, the rest is history lol???

and I both buy and pirate comics. Pirating comics is rlly vital bc those sites have scans of comics that never got reprinted, like Zatanna: Come Together. but I also, imo, have a pretty neat collection. I have a Hellblazer #1, #27, and #51, Swamp Thing #49, Sandman #3, #8 all of A Game of You in singles, and both of Death’s miniseries collected as singles. Plus all of Come Together, hehe! My most prized possession is my signed sandman, though. Maybe one day I’ll do a collection roundup?

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Sorting Hat Chats: Oxventures

Hey look, I finally actually got a sorting post written! .... and it's one that I'm pretty sure interests absolutely nobody else, because I don't think anyone else in the Sorting Hat Chats community is into Oxventures, and also the reverse. But the brainwanderings will go where they wish and they don't ask me for permission, and I've been marathoning (and sleeping to) a lot of Oxventures lately, so let's go.

Just in case anyone does choose to take a look, I'll do a brief sum up of both system and canon, so that no one's lost. System first, because I have some other thoughts about canon I want to mention. The full rundown of the basics is here, but just so we're all on the same page:

A VERY BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE @sortinghatchats​SYSTEM

Your Primary house is your motivations, values, and why you do what you do.

Lion Primaries do it this way because their gut tells them it's right.

Bird Primaries do it this way because the system they've put together to guide them tells them this is what's right.

Badger Primaries do it this way because it's the best thing for the community as a whole, or for the most people.

Snake Primaries do it this way because it's the best thing for the people they prioritize.

Your Secondary house is how you approach the world, the methods that come most easily and naturally to you.

Lion Secondaries charge. They attack problems head-on and directly, and they're in their comfort zone when they are their authentic selves.

Bird Secondaries plan. They collect tools, skills, and information, and they're in their comfort zone when they're prepared for the situation.

Badger Secondaries toil. They put their nose to the grindstone or they build connections to get things done, and they're in their comfort zone when things call for steady, consistent work.

Snake Secondaries improvise. They're adaptive and quick on their feet, and they're in their comfort zone when they have the wiggle room to go with what comes to them.

Other terminology may come up as well. I will try and link to posts that explain it better if I end up using anything.

A VERY BRIEF EXPLANATION OF OXVENTURES

Oxventures is the D&D Actual Play show done by the youtube gaming channels Outside Xbox and Outside Xtra, DMed by Johnny Chiodini from the tabletop game channel Dicebreaker. They've been going since fall 2017, first in-person and now streamed.It is an extremely fun show with a group of very entertaining players that have been basically learning to play as it goes. If you're into D&D shows and not too bothered by a very hand-wavey approach to rules, I greatly recommend it.

There are, however, some things that make it difficult to sort. It's a comedy show, and while I don't think this is true for every comedy, in general, it's very easy for characterization to occasionally get passed over for a laugh. It's sometimes hard to tell what jokes are being thrown around OOC versus IC. And the D&D format means there is no going back and editing anything; characterization is developed on the fly, and there's already been discussion that talked about how some of the characters changed as they were being played. Also, it's action-driven -- you don't always get a lot of information on what's going through people's head, so motivation can be hard to pin down.

So it's a little difficult and I've gotten wobbly on a lot of them. Which makes it a great choice for my first sorting!

(...To be fair, it's my first sorting post. I've been watching this system and sorting things to myself for -- *checks when I first mentioned it* wait hold on five years? Really? Okay, cool. Excuse me while I sit and have a mental montage to How Far We've Come as I remember all the fine-tuning it's been through in that time.

Anyway, I've been sorting things to myself for five years, so I'm not new to this, I'm just new to trying to explain my whys, so I hope this comes out understandable. I'm sorry for the rambling, because we're already 750 words in and I haven't even started.)

ANYWAY LET'S GET TO THE SORTING.

Corazón de Ballena, human pirate rogue Corazón, oh Corazón, what... do I even do with you. He's clearly not a Badger -- fairness and other people's needs are not his priority. Between the obvious Jack Sparrow riff and the "pirate seeking glory" thing, my instinct is to say a Lion Primary, probably a Gloryhound Lion in specific. I could see a Bird Primary, just because there is something extremely constructed-feeling about Corazón -- I think his truth would look very Snake-like, prioritizing himself and the people he chooses, but I could see it.

But I'm going to lean into a full Snake Primary, I think. While he doesn't care about most people, he does care very much about the people who do matter to him -- see his whole complicated relationship with his father, even after his father tried to kill him; see his burning down a guy's house because he's mean to Prudence; to some extent, see his attempt to help end his old crew's curse. He puts people above anything else, but only the people he chooses to (or where can't help it, in his father's case) I think he'd almost like people to believe that he's Burned and doesn't care about anyone else, but he very much is not, though he doesn't seem to let new people into the circle often or easily, either. I could still very much see a Gloryhound Lion, but in the end I think if asked to put the party first or fame and fortune first -- he would complain, he would never let them hear the end of it, but he would also choose the party every single time.

For Secondary: Corazón would really want people to think he's a Snake. If he could read the descriptions and pick his own, I'm pretty sure he'd say he was a Snake. Adaptable, cunning, deceitful -- and it's not that he's not these things, but the way it manifests itself feels much more like a rapid-fire Bird Secondary. He's analytical, he learned magic entirely from books, and I haven't actually counted, but I would bet you that he makes more investigation rolls than anyone else. While his quickly thought up plans do work, they often tend to rely on things he already knows -- disguise self and minor illusion come up often, hiding and evading, etc. He seems to be one of the party that gets the most non-combat use out of his various magical abilities. It's a very quick and jack-of-many-trades style of Bird, but it's still very Bird.

Dob, half-orc bard Dob is quite possibly the loudest loyalist primary... just, that I have ever seen, ever. To start with, I'm just going to drop this quote here: "I know there's good in you, jailor I just met!"

How about the way that he's first introduced as a bard who goes from town to town playing the lullaby his lost sister used to sing to him, searching for her. Or his habit of, to quote TV Tropes, "engaging in random acts of adoption". Or the time he tried to learn spells to apologize to the dead orphans. Or how he still managed to forgive the skeletons that killed the orphans. Or the time he forgave the cult that almost got them all killed. Or giving the cultists (from a different cult) relationship advice. Or the time he ended up listening to the jailor's marriage woes. Or....

Look, I could keep going but I think we've got enough examples. So: Badger or Snake? On the one hand he definitely seems to worry about saving his particular people first when there's danger... but, there's a level of guilt about innocent people who have died on his watch, and that habit of taking in random people on multiple adventures, that really makes me lean towards aBadger Primary. Dob seems to genuinely care about everyone they cross as a default, and of all of them, he's the first I can see coming to the aid of an enemy who he has no prior positive experiences with.

As for a Secondary, Dob is the master of quick plans, quicker lies, and steamrolling NPCs into going along with things. The entire party ends up thinking on their feet more often than not, but he seems to do his best work that way, as a Snake Secondary often does. Sometimes he goes so fast that he forgets something and makes a mistake -- which is how "don't be a Dob" has become a thing -- but his impulsive ideas actually work out more often than it doesn't, and he's also very good at connecting with a wide variety of people. On the page for Snake/Slytherin Secondaries, the SHC site says,

"Slytherins will adapt to their own best advantage without thinking about it. They’ll walk into a situation and things will work out to their benefit without them quite knowing what happened or what they did to influence it."

-- and doesn't that just fit with Dob's ridiculous amounts of luck?

He does seem to spend a fair amount of time in his neutral state, or at least adapting in a non-conscious kind of way. There is something generally blunt about Dob a lot of the time, enough that I considered Lion pretty heavily -- but in the end, he works best when he's running on the fly and making shit up, in a way that feels extremely Snake to me. And he's not only so good at lying, but so quick to default to it, that Lion doesn't feel accurate.

Egbert the Careless, dragonborn paladin Poor Egbert, the worst paladin. While his original order really seems to prioritize a very classic Paragon Lion Primary, Egbert barely seems to have a model of one -- it's more of a performance, which is being chipped steadily away by the rest of the party. He tries, but I can't see a genuine Lion Primary from his background killing people so casually. Or hitting an old man with a cursed mace over and over until he turns into a seal. And then keeping the seal as a pet. Or just... saying "maybe crime is good!" because he likes the food at the crime den. He's trying, but he's really not good at it. So the question remains: what is he?

I think it's hard to place him because, one, he really want to be that Lion. And second, whatever he is, I think the values that motivation is set on are... kind of in flux? I don't think he's super burned; I think he might be lightly charred at best. But: if he's a Bird, he's in the process of losing the truth of "whatever the Order of the Dragon Door says is right" to something that comes more from the party and probably more genuinely. If he's a Badger, he's in the process of changing communities. If he's a Snake, the Order is getting pushed more and more out of his inner circle, replaced by the party.

I was leaning Badger, but the more I think about it, I think that's the remnants of the attempt to play Lion. I think Egbert's a Snake Primary who is starting to shed his old skin. (There's like three layers of bad joke in that, and I'm sorry.) The Lion priorities made that Snake look a little more Badger-y, but he does so, so many things that just don't strike me as caring deep down about need. Like the thing where he turned an old man into a seal. I just keep looking at that incident and I either need to completely ignore that incident -- which is hard, when Seal Gaiman is still hanging around -- or go with something else. His reaction to Dana's bigotry in Snow Mercy does feel a little more Badger-y to me... but that could still be that Lion Performance flavoring, and/or a symptom of how the party as a whole gets pissed about anti-tiefling sentiment coming out in sympathy of another maligned race. I also feel like a Badger would be working a little more actively on atonement and stop getting distracted.

He is, however, a very loud Lion Secondary. While the party as a whole does a lot of ploys that involve deceit or talking their way into things, Egbert is rarely the one doing that part. He doesn't bother with subtlety, or with doing any of the many things he can as a paladin, which is how we got the whole glorious "you've been able to teleport for how long?" moment. He does sometimes manage to make connections that move the story along, and he always does it by being himself.

But most of all, I can't think of a better word to describe how Egbert attacks a situation than charging. I'm just going to quote again from the site:

"their problems are met head on rather than subverted, negotiated, or cajoled. They have an efficiency so direct it’s almost combative."

And that seems like Egbert to a T.

Merilwen, wood elf druid Merilwen is a Badger Primary whose version of "people" is "animals, my community, and also I guess these four now". She doesn't really seem to care about what would traditionally be considered "people", and Ellen (who plays her) has spoken about how Merilwen's morals towards non-animals is pretty much entirely influenced by the party -- but with the things she cares about she strikes me as extremely Badger. She's absolutely ready to throw down everything for the party, but when they're not in danger from it, she will also absolutely fight the rest of them for an animal -- see that incident where she talked everyone out of fighting the Owlbear. "Animals are hurt" or "you hurt my friends" is the fastest way to bring out her viscous side.

She could also maybe be a Snake who includes all animals in her circle, but: one, I very much feel like she'd choose whether to prioritize her friends or an animal over who needs her more. Two, the way she interacts with her family and her community in Elf Hazard seems very Badger to me. Her worry about not being able to see her family again, her unwillingness to disappoint them and decision to take a new name to make them happy, even after the danger is past. Things like Merilwen's Meat-Grinder also strike me this way -- specifically, her willingness to do massive damage to save the party and subsequent discomfort with having done it, even though she doesn't care that much about the people who were hurt even after having done it. "Fair and loyal" seems like a good way to sum up her morality in general. Her being so close to Dob and understanding each other so well also adds to this (even if a lot of that likely has to do with Ellen and Luke (who plays Dob) being so close as much as anything, but if I try to separate out things that are OOC-influence I will be here forever).

I'm torn between the foundational Secondaries for her: Bird, or Badger. There is something about her likelihood to fall back on "I turn into a [cat/bear/octopus]" as a plan that feels a little Bird-like to me -- that fallback on the favored, most well-used, best-understood tools, even in situations where it takes a little forcing to make them fit. On the other hand, she seems to be the one most likely to see a job that's not being done as part of the plan, and go fill that role. She's certainly steady, trustworthy, quiet, and consistent. I don't think she has a problem with shortcuts on many things, but could see her raising objections about things she actively cares about. She also often solves things by connecting with animals, which fits when you consider her people/community largely being animal-based. I'm still a little back and forth on this, but in the end, I'm going to lean towards a Badger Secondary.

Prudence, tiefling warlock I'm having a hard time putting my finger on Prudence. I think this is partly Jane's play style -- I feel like she's the least likely to go into what's going on in Prudence's head or why she's doing things, and she doesn't really have a driving goal we're aware of except "do things to make Cthulhu pleased", but that's mostly along the way. She's not a Badger. I would lean towards not a Lion; I guess it's possibly she's a Lion whose gut morality is about hedonism, "I should have what I want", or something like that, but I really don't get the impression that she has much of an internal morality overall. "Some things are just wrong and you can't talk your way out of it" (to quote the Lion/Gryffindor Primary page) absolutely does not sound like something Prudence would ever thing.

So again we're between the decided Primaries: Bird or Snake? I could see her being a Bird, but I have no idea what her truth is at this point. Still, I want to lean towards Snake Primary, specifically one that was burnt. We're going into how-IC-was-this-anyway territory here again, but there's a moment early on, in Brawl of the Wild, where Jane is narrating Prudence hurling herself in front of two of the others and stops mid-narration to ask "wait, why am I doing that" -- it feels incredibly like a Snake who's found themselves unburning while they weren't paying attention and now is trying to figure out how this happened. She's also pretty open with how fond she is of the party, pleased as punch when Corazón burns down the house of a guy who's an asshole to her, even more pleased when Egbert seems corruptible, seems genuinely happy that the group has gotten more lax about killing, and of course there's "You'll never leave me, Corazón, I'll kill you first" and hugging the Egbert-statue after he's been kidnapped when no one can see her.

But more than the party, what makes me lean towards Snake is her relationship with her warlock patron. There's nothing cold, nothing business-like, it's not even worshipful: Cthulhu-dad is kind of a joke, but... it's also not? Even if the actual fatherly-ness of it can be read as joking, she still genuinely seems to have warm, loving feelings for him, and that particular set-up really strikes me a loyalist thing.

(That gives us an all-loyalist party, but honestly, considering they're not the most moral people around and how quickly they all bond... that kind of works?)

Bird Secondary -- her plans tend to be the most practical, she has her favored methods for handling things, and her interest in all things magic strikes me as very Bird-with-a-favorite-thing. Her Bird seems pretty good at reading people, too, particularly knowing the party's strengths -- which is often chaos and making things up. She's not quite a rapid-fire as Corazón, but she's pretty good on her feet if need be... it's just that her lack of interest in what's morally right means the plan she usually pulls out is "eldritch blast". To be fair, it usually works.

IN SUMMATION:

Corazón:Snake Primary/Bird Secondary (possible Snake performance)

Dob: Badger Primary/Snake Secondary (possible Badger model)

Egbert: Snake Primary (attempting to model the Order and possibly Shattershield's Lion Primary, which comes off weirdly Badger-ish in the end)/Lion Secondary

Merilwen: Badger Primary (whose "people" are animals, the elf community she grew up in, and now the Oxventurers)/Badger Secondary

Prudence: Unburning Snake Primary/Bird Secondary

OXVENTURE IN THE DARK BONUS ROUND:

Very recently they've begun an Oxventure spin-off series, playing Blades in the Dark instead. We're only two episodes in, and since part of the plan is to rotate who's in each episode, most of them are only in one -- and since we've gotten so little of the new group, and so much can change as the players learn their characters and find their feet, I can't confidently sort them right now. But I think it'd be interesting to share some initial impressions and see how they hold up down the line. Spoilers for both episodes if anyone's behind, I'll put Lillith and Barnaby last just to be sure.

Edvard: If Edvard the inventor is not a Bird Secondary, I will eat my hat. I could see him going the way of the traditional SHC impulsive scientists who do things For Science, and ending up in Lion/Bird territory, or going towards Bird/Bird; at the moment I don't think he'll be a loyalist, but we'll see!

Zillah: I think we know less about Zillah than anyone else at this point, but we do know that, one, she's doing crime to get money for her family, and two, she seems pretty level-headed. I'm thinking maybe a Lion Secondary, leaning away from Bird Primary but at this point could see anything else.

Kasamir: Between his class/playbook being about having his fingers in a lot of crime pies, Johnny saying he's not really good at anything besides crime, and his slight mentor-y vibe in episode one, I'm getting Badger Secondary or Bird Secondary vibes -- leaning Badger right now, but we'll see. (I'm also getting Mozzie-from-White-Collar-but-more-physical vibes, but I cannot find the sorting that Moz used to be under, unfortunately. I want to say either Badger/Bird or Bird/Badger.) He doesn't strike me as a Lion Primary at this point, but we'll see.

Lillith: I was going to say Bird Secondary because she's leaning so hard into the intellectual, but so far she has tried to solve problems by befriending a ghost girl and convincing the workers to start a union so.... I'm feeling some Badger/Lion or Lion/Badger vibes coming off her at this point. She might slide into a more Bird-y role in the future, or it might end up looking more like a model.

Barnaby: Despite having gotten through two episodes now basically saving the day by being himself, I don't get Lion Secondary vibes from him -- actually, I'm thinking he could end up a Badger Secondary, just extremely far on the Courtier Badger side of the scale, and one that’s very full of himself. Not sure on that yet, though. Primary: no idea, but probably not Badger.

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An Interview with Matt Hingley, Ehliem Miniatures Founder

(This article is credited to Jason Weiser. Jason is a long-time wargamer with published works in the Journal of the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers; Miniature Wargames Magazine; and Wargames, Strategy, and Soldier.)

Author’s Note: Mr. Hingley is a very private person and has asked us not to include a personal bio with this interview as is customary. However, with his permission, I will give you all a short history of Ehliem Miniatures. He’s been the victim of a few online scams, and thus, is reluctant to give personal information out.

All pictures are from the Ehliem Miniatures website and have been used with gracious permission.

Ehliem Miniatures was founded in 2005 and is based in the United Kingdom. The company was founded and is run by Matt Hingley. Ehliem has gone on to set a standard for excellence in the 20mm wargaming miniatures market, having a fruitful partnership with Ambush Alley Games. Matt has expanded the business to sell a range of 3-D printed terrain and vehicles, and I can personally attest to the quality of his miniature ranges. He has always been a solid, kind professional and is “one of the good guys in the hobby.” You can order these wonderful figures for yourself at: https://www.elhiem.co.uk/

Without further ado, here’s the interview.

Jason Weiser: So, how did you get started sculpting historical miniatures? Was there an “aha” moment, or did you fall into it?

Matt: I started out as a historical gamer and painter. As a painter, I got to know quite a few guys involved in the design business and asked them to produce a few figures that I wanted that would not really sell. They told me no, so that was that. I managed to get the contact details of a couple of sculptors and convinced them to make my figures. Over time, they were too busy to make anymore so I decided to teach myself how to sculpt, mold, and cast. My first efforts were pretty poor but not without hope so I carried on and read up on techniques and tools. Over time I improved. So, not so much an ‘AHA’ moment, more a long slow learning curve.

JW: How did Ehliem Figures come to be?

Matt: When I started out, I only had a handful of miniatures. No one had the time to manufacture them for me, so I ended up using commercial casting companies. The costs soon increased, and I started selling to recover the costs. Also, you had to buy hundreds of the same miniature at a time using casting companies so it seemed sensible.

JW: What are your future plans for the historical lines?

Matt: Expand the WW2 lines, the modern lines, the Sci-Fi and the Pulp ranges. There is a whole lot of historical conflicts out there to keep me busy for a long time.

JW: What’s your favorite historical sculpt of your line?

Matt: That is a difficult one to answer. I try to make every figure interesting and fun to paint as that’s what I enjoy painting. It’s also why I struggle to make seated figures and vehicle crews, to me they are dull to look at and make, so they tend to get made last. My favorite sculpt at the moment is one of the Fantasy figures I just made, the evil Wizard figure. Historical miniature is probably one of the new SAS in NVG, [See picture below] I took a lot of time getting the details right on those.

JW: Is there a period of history you want to sculpt, but haven’t?

Matt: [The] Wild West. I fancy making a spaghetti Western range, a few Civil war guys, and maybe a few Native Americans. I grew up watching westerns so have a soft spot for them…

JW: Can you tell our readers what goes into figure design and sculpting?

Matt: Planning and lots of research. I spend as much time researching the equipment and the way weapons were carried as I do anything else. I sometimes sketch out ideas, most of the time the basics are the same for all figures though (so many rifles, so many NCOs, so many support [weapons] etc.) I tend to use a system of dollies in poses and build upon them using previously made parts such as heads, weapons, webbing equipment, etc. It has changed a lot over the past 12 months though due to new design and tech.

JW: Has 3D Printing changed this any? And, do you think it will change the hobby as a whole?

Matt: Yes, I have invested in computer design software for hard and soft design work. I have invested in very high-quality printers and it has opened up a new world of possibilities to me. I can now design and 3D sculpt all my weapons and even vehicles which I was never the best at making in plastic but seem pretty decent at in CAD. I also use my knowledge of the scale I manufacture and make designs workable (something that is just not possible if you just shrink a model to scale).

It has already changed the hobby. Lots of design work is available free for you to print at home. People are designing their own models, Companies like my own are using it to create even more detailed models. I myself have recently switched over to pure digital sculpting. I use the same methods as I did when sculpting (often using the same models in the original CAD files for weapons etc). I see it as HD sculpting in comparison to my old handmade sculpts.

I can also see it potentially hurting the hobby long term as people will be able to produce their own models at home and no longer must buy from people like me. Files will be pirated and sold on eBay, pirates will print out files and cast them and sell them on as their own work (this already happens to my old figures on eBay). It won’t kill the hobby industry, but I feel it will add challenges going forward. I like a challenge though and I think it will encourage us all to try harder.

JW: What are your favorite historical periods and why?

Matt: WW2, Romans, Vietnam, Cold War and the 2001+ modern conflicts. I grew up watching films and TV about them. The modern conflict was an important part of all of our lives, and it is fascinating to see the development of gear and weapons. And Romans are just cool.

JW: How did you settle on 20mm when so many manufacturers are producing 15mm or 28mm these days?

Matt: I grew up with 20mm plastics and metals. I think it’s the perfect scale for skirmish and mass combat. It can be painted as good as a 28mm figure or as fast as a 15mm. I honestly think as a model scale 20mm or 1/72 is the better option for storage and gaming. There are thousands of models available as well as all the model railway terrain. You will never get a full range of oddball stuff in 28mm as it's just too expensive to produce and smaller scale work has never interested me as I’m a painter at heart and while you can paint small tiny scale stuff up to fantastic quality, I have to always ask ‘what’s the point?’ no one can see it once it’s on the table. That is my personal opinion of course, I am sure there are lots of guys out there who disagree, and good for them.

JW: What other hobbies do you pursue to unwind?

Matt: I [play] computer game[s], I [also play] airsoft, [and] I go for lots of walks.

JW: What do you see for the future of historical miniature wargaming?

Matt: I think it will carry on as it is. Scales come and go, types of games become fashionable. All that is constant is players like to get new collections and play new games. It keeps things fresh yet still very stable. Young players tend to start with sci-fi and fantasy, they grow older, go to college, get jobs and stop gaming for a few years and then tend to come back later to historical gaming, their children start off in the same way and it continues. In the late 90s, a lot of guys I know were worried that the gamers were drying up. Well, 25 years on I see more than ever. The internet has helped bring people together and gamers can collect figures and models even with no locals to game with.

JW: You’re well known for your commissions and requests, is this something you just kind of decided on, or was this something you saw lacking in the marketplace?

Matt: Well, it’s sort of why I started making figures so I like to listen to what people want made. Sometimes I say no, most of the time I just have too much on. I also have to balance if people really want what they ask for or just would like to see it made (big difference). So, I run the commissions and the vote/fund as my way of crowdfunding. I also like a structure to work too, people give me lists of what’s needed and I’ll just work to it rather than sit there and think up a new range. I suggested the idea years ago to another company and have just carried the idea on.

--

At SJR Research, we specialize in creating compelling narratives and provide research to give your game the kind of details that engage your players and create a resonant world they want to spend time in. If you are interested in learning more about our gaming research services, you can browse SJR Research’s service on our site at SJR Research.

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On the Industry, Fans, and Piracy - My Feelings on Manga Today

This year has been quite an interesting one for anyone who’s involved in manga industry happenings with regards to piracy.

As most of you may know, an infamous manga app known as Mangarock was finally shut down this year after years of proliferating as a“legit” manga-reading app on the Apple and Google Play Stores. They finally got shut down when a Western comic artist found their work being distributed on the platform. While this was good news, there has been criticism about whether there were signs of subtle prejudice towards manga (since it’s a foreign medium) as it took a Western comic to bring things to attention.

There was also the news of Mangamura, a well-known Japanese raw scan site, and how the head honcho of the site got arrested in the Philippinesthis year and will face consequences for his actions. (Update: 12/21/2019 - Now Mangastream and Jaimini’s Box are out of the game with regards to scanlating popular titles)

While this is good news for people who love to support the manga industries in both Japan and overseas, things are still the same. The pirates will keep coming over and over again. I wonder when enough is enough or maybe I’m just tired of hearing the same old debate on legal vs. illegal manga.

I see multiple Twitter threads from pro-industry folks on why everyone should support buying manga. I also see threads on why manga publishers suck. They’re both right if you ask me.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about how this industry vs scanlators fight is similar to what I’ve been reading about in the mental health field recently - psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry.

Psychiatry advocates believe that taking medicine is the best way to solve mental health problems and mental illness. They realize that things can happen in the human brain that lead to something worse. However, they think a lot of issues warrant medication when it may not be the best solution.

Anti-psychiatry advocates believes that medicine isn’t the best way to solve mental health problems and mental illness. They dislike how the mental health care system treats people with mental health problems. Yet they believe that“mental illness” doesn’t exist.

So throwing it back to manga -

The manga industry believes that supporting the industry involves purchasing their books at any costs. You buy the books, you support the mangaka drawing them. Yet the system that drives the industry is terrible. As we all know from Bakumanand tales from manga professionals, the system to become a successful mangaka involves often-poor working conditions in the form of long hours, strict deadlines, and a good amount of isolation.

Scanlators believe they are doing the manga industry a favor in providing free exposure to titles that would go undiscovered by fans. More often than not, scanlators do what they do without any care for profit. However, they tend to go a bit extreme with regards to translating certain text. Some scanlators also become a bit too egotistical for their own good and end up causing ridiculous drama among other scanlation groups over material they are technically stealing.

Tying this back all together with all regards to comparing psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry and industry vs scanlators, there’s a third party being affected that’s ignored in both debates.

For the 1st war (psychiatry vs. anti-psychiatry), there’s not enough focus on the seriously mentally ill. The seriously mentally ill are the community suffering the most right now and present a great deal of harm to themselves and others. A 3rd party group that addresses them would utilize certain views and rejects certain views from the psychiatry and anti-psychiatry movements to help the seriously mentally ill. They are often forgotten as a lot of money goes to those whose mental health issues aren’t as bad on both sides.

For the 2nd war (scanlations vs. legal manga), you can argue that there’s a huge crowd of fans that are willing to pay for manga as long as you give them almost everything on one platform a la Steam/Netflix at a very low price. That platform also needs to be easily accessible with little-to-no regional restrictions. There are so many fans in certain parts of the world that can’t purchase manga due to lack of access to bookstores/libraries or availability of them. I’ll put this in caps in case people don’t get it - THE WHOLE WORLD IS NOT THE UNITED STATES OR ANY OTHER NOTABLE AND PROLIFIC COUNTRY. I sometimes think certain fans that are able to buy manga forget how lucky they are.

A side note: While a huge step forward for legit digital manga, Viz’s Shonen Jump isn’t enough because not everyone likes shonen. All the other subscription services are fine, but everything’s kind of fragmented a bit compared to how Crunchyroll has almost everything anime-related (though they are going through a big streaming war that’s causing fragmentation as well). Though to be honest, I think the scanlation community and the manga industry have to band together on one thing I think both sides can all agree on - it’s the relative value of manga compared to other forms of media in general.

To explain, I watched a video feature on the mangaka Shinichi Sakamoto, creator of Innocent and Innocent Rouge. Sakamoto goes into a discussion about manga’s value that really got me thinking. He talks about how manga is treated as“disposable” and how he tries to make his works worth keeping and remembering.

In the end of the video, Sakamoto says: “I feel manga is something that is read, then thrown away. For example, people would read a manga during their work commute and throw it away once they finish reading it. Or they would read a manga at a restaurant during lunch break. Then they would close it once the food is served and forget about it. I thought at first, manga was something that was read then thrown away. However recently, since I started to adopt my current style, I now want to make something that stays close to readers. Something that remains. It’s what currently motivates me to draw manga.

I ask myself what to do in order to make something that stays for a long time, using themes or opinions that they stay engraved in the minds of readers without being forgotten. I keep this in mind in order to leave something behind. It is what motivates me.”

The quality of manga made in Japan isn’t the best. The paper is comparable to toilet paper. If you ever browsed through a manga magazine in person, it feels like going through a super-thick newspaper. Compare that to overseas volumes of manga and it’s a world of difference. I’ll admit that publishers like Viz Media, Kodansha Comics, and Yen Press do a great job in making their printed manga high-quality albeit at a higher cost to fans.

Yet I realized that there’s a larger number of manga fans who don’t care about quality as long as what they want is accessible and cheap. That’s a big reason why scanlations have exploded and will continue to do so. Convenience is something that a lot of outside forces now push onto everyone. I frankly love print books, but I wonder what if the price of printed manga volumes reaches a certain point that makes me go“Yeah, I don’t think I can buy printed manga anymore.”

In the end of the day, even if you make it look pretty as hell and close to a luxury product, manga is still a “throw-away” item with little relative value to a lot of fans thanks to how it’s originally conceived in Japan combined with how internet culture takes advantage of what the meaning of “free stuff” is. Not everyone will find a sense of belonging with manga the same way that fans do.

There are certain folks that support purchasing manga that say things like “Wages need to be raised because they’ve stagnated” and when it comes to fans reading manga on an illegal site, their views sound like “You should buy no matter what” and/or “Just don’t buy.” I know there are those who will point to manga sales and they still aren’t exactly affordable to some fans. 20%-33% off titles with a high price point to begin with may not feel like a significant discount to someone who may not be a hardcore manga collector. Maybe it’s better to say, “You know what? Let’s just smash capitalism for ruining everyone’s lives” or better yet, “Let’s promote wage growth so that manga fans can actually purchase manga and manga artists can survive.”

For now, let’s all be like Sakamoto and promote how valuable manga can be because appreciating the arts makes people better human beings than learning how to make a “efficient” website/software program look good for someone whose end goal is usually profit. The arts is what keeps people from turning into robots. Yes, this sounds like I’m saying“Let’s have the manga pirates keep doing what they’re doing then.” What I’m suggesting is that everyone from the top down (government, etc.) has to take charge in promotion of anything related to the arts (which manga and comics in general are a part of), not just the regular folks, as they appear to be all on-board the "let’s mindlessly consume/produce everything with ruthless efficiency” train.

I feel sympathetic towards anyone who works with on the American side of manga publishing (or anything that’s based in Japan) because Japan’s mentality on promoting their works overseas is awful. The Japanese want a level of control in how they want to be perceived outside of their own country. Compare that to a country like Korea (where K-Pop is now featured on major American TV networks), you can see how bad Japan is promoting their own brand of pop culture to the world. If you want an example, just look up Nintendo’s history of taking down anything overseas that looks to violate their principles of promoting their games.

I realize that I’m sounding like this Japanese manga creator who criticized publishers for how they handle piracy. Well, I dislike how manga publishers or professionals involved with the manga industry will shame fans for reading scanlations/raws. Almost everyone that reads scans/raws tends to be a fan of manga in general. A lot of them may not be unaware of the nature of scans (especially fans who meet mangaka in person and tell them they read them online). And even if they were aware, have you noticed how wages have stagnated for a lot of people across the world versus inflation?

Plus, how often do shame tactics work on people? They’re just as effective as most diversity training workshops hoping to change people’s bias on visible differences (spoiler alert: not very well). They never change anyone’s minds at all due to being short-term solutions that ignore the shamer’s role in perpetuating the problem. I realize changing minds takes a long time and requires a LOT of nuance (AKA not good for making immediate money), so it’s easy to focus on quick and fast.\

I also don’t like how scanlators disrespect localization efforts at times. I don’t like seeing multiple instances of swear words when most Japanese (or people in general) don’t talk like that in real life. Yes, some localization efforts are full of cringe. Appealing to a bigger array of new readers is important to having an industry thrive. Having just loyal customers isn’t enough.

Loyalty can only go so far. So many people don’t care about brands and/or will switch whenever it’s convenient to do so. There’s always a psychological disconnect between community and profit. That’s why you try to get as many new consumers as possible so they can become great word-of-mouth spokespeople for your stuff. Given how a good number of anime/manga fans stop consuming either medium after a certain age, replenishment of fans is an absolute necessity. I wish scanlators who frown at legit translators who bust their asses off to make manga accessible to a wider audience realize this.

There’s a final thing I want to address regarding the whole debate about scans and it was something I noticed at Anime NYC this year. So this year, Artists’ Alley and the Exhibit Hall were put right near each other on the same floor. In years past, they were separated via different floors or on different sections far away from one another in the same floor. I had a troubling thought and reading one convention recap reinforced it.

It’s the fact that Artists’ Alley is almost always fan works and the close proximity this time clashes with the Exhibit Hall vendors’ sale of official merchandise. There are anime industry members who dislike an arrangement like this with good reason. Bootlegs are a problem in an industry largely associated with piracy. Yet fans LOVE Artists’ Alley. Anime cons can’t just gut them to please industry folks. Supporting the fan artists at Artists’ Alley is a win-win for fans and con organizers.

Also, some of the artists at Artists’ Alley I spoke to all read scanlations in some way, shape or form when discussing certain series.I have no damn desire to play moral police with those artists because I know they are lovable and messy people. Just enforce the golden rule - don’t be a dick in a public setting even if you have a good reason to because you will never change anyone’s views that way.

I know some issues have to be made public, but go through proper channels first since I don’t want to see someone being labeled a mood killer without proper context in places that are supposed to be safe for fans.

Another thing - I have friends (both ‘20s and ‘30s) who work full-time jobs that read manga in not-so-legal sites. Some of them I’m very close with. I’m not ending friendships with them over the fact they may consume media differently. The one thing I can say is that even the best of the best will have questionable beliefs/do questionable things and all you can do is figure out what’s really important to you - their actions or the consequences of their actions. Don’t expect the people you idolize will think the same way you do in every thought you have. Everyone has their own closet of behaviors and thoughts that will always irk others.

So for anyone who’s confused on whose side I’m on, I’m on neither. I know the truth is a lot more complicated than what most people will tell me. I do want manga to thrive more overseas. It’s just that outside of Japan, regardless if you pay for or pirate a manga, there’s no appreciation for lifelong reading. Reading is treated as a pain than pleasure in the Western part of the world. Many anime fans are only tempted to read a manga because of how cool an anime adaptation of a certain series is or just from buzz.

More than anything, I feel like there should be a bigger effort in promoting a sense of lifelong reading. I sometimes get jokes from corporate folks that I like to read and it’s depressing since libraries are always threatened by budget cuts. Reading books (fiction & non-fiction) has helped me processed a lot of things for my mental health. We got to do a better job in emphasizing that reading can be for fun and not just for achievement. Still, buy whatever manga you can for the artist’s sake if you really like the works (not for the publisher’s due to how I feel about capitalism sometimes). If you still want to read or prefer scans, then that’s your thing. You know, I’m glad I’m not really a pro-industry person and a pro-fan. I live in both worlds and feel like I have a balanced understanding of how people act in certain situations versus how they behave normally. I make a joke now that if anyone who works in marketing wants to really understand what their customers are like, they should go to a DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) and see the misery there.

I guess you can say I blame Japan more than anything as I do buy what I can from the American side of things. I know the hard-working folks in the U.S. manga publishing business probably get frustrated with Japanese bureaucracy to a certain degree at times.

Next year will be the start of a new decade after a decade of slow then fast growth in all things anime and manga. Things are going to get better and worse for anime and manga. Maybe once Luffy finally gets the One Piece treasure will manga piracy be severely hampered by then. I have some doubts because this is all reliant on what Japan will do as manga is here to stay in overseas markets. I know more Japanese manga editors have been traveling overseas to understand what’s going on outside of Japan. That’s a good start. So I just hope that the final chapter over here involves cultivating a joyful love of reading because I feel technology has to really pick up on that.

When reading really matters to everyone and takes some precedence over video in the minds of people, maybe we can see some meaningful progress in a battle where we might be fighting the wrong side(s) and/or missing a bigger part of the picture.

Regardless, it’s a fascinating and fun time to be a manga fan. I’m glad to have met many people who love and read manga regardless of how they consume it. Those experiences have provided so much value for me.

Manga may be considered “trash” in many ways, but to loosely quote a certain popular Naruto ninja, it’s at least better than giving up on the true joys of life.

Addendum (12/21/2019) - Two days after this post was made, two of the biggest manga scanlation groups on the net, Mangastream and Jaimini’s Box, decided to stop translating all Weekly Shonen Jump titles. I’m indifferent about either platform going away (or completely gone as Jaimini’s Box is still doing titles from other manga magazines). The one thing I will say is that Mangastream took advantage of the growing push for convenience in the minds of people over the last decade. I think about how much tech companies have abused“convenience” to generate unintended division and in some ways, Mangastream was like a tech company when they saw their ego being stroked by the large fanbase they were getting.

Photo Source: The Japan Times For one of my favorite takes on scanlations, read“Why Do Scanlations Persist?” from What Is Manga? There’s also this podcast from GeekNights about manga distribution in the United States which added some fuel to this post.

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Piety Knob || Chapter 2

Parts: Chapter 1 | Chapter 3 I Chapter 4 coming soon

Even though I fell asleep rather quickly thanks to being awfully tired after the car ride, I wake up and the odd feeling of a new place hits me in the head.

No traffic sounds, no loud neighbours from upstairs or the sound of a construction site. Just plain silence, the brief sound of wind between the leaves and birds chirping around.

"God damn it!" I hear Perry shout from downstairs and I smile to myself, not everything changed at least.

I get up and ready for the day, not making much effort on the clothing part and I go downstairs to check up on my aunt.

"Everything good?" I ask with a teasing smile and Perry turns around.

I should ask what happened, but the look on Perry's face, the cat food all over the floor and Church eating up the mess peacefully makes everything clear.

"Yeah, yeah... Just Church acting like an asshole, as usual."

I chuckle then I open up the cereal and pour it in a bowl. Before I can even get to the fridge Perry says.

"There's no milk, I slept in, thanks to the jet leg so I didn't have time to buy anything yet."

I make a pout, but sit down to eat.

"Shame..."

Perry rolls her eyes at me.

"Don't start! I'm stressed as it is already. We have to go to the store, then go to the animal hospital, then we have to visit your school..."

She starts to list everything and I say with a full mouth of cereal.

"We have a whole month before school! And we just arrived!"

She waves me off.

"Yeah, but I have to make a good impression, June." she sighs and only now I notice how tired she is, she looks a lot more than her real age.

"It's a new town, we have to try and make the best out of it. If we make the wrong impression, it can mark our life here..."

"You're being dramatic." I try to tease, and she cracks a smile after another sigh.

"You're one to talk, Miss Drama Queen."

I grin and shrug.

"I don't know what you mean..."

Now she puts her hands on her waist, readying the "mama pose".

"Oh reaaally?"

I nod and try not to laugh.

"Yeah, really."

She acts like she is thinking very hard.

"Then who might have been that made an hour rant about her favourite pirate dying and how it was not supposed to happen."

"Hey, he was a real gem and it was horrible to watch!"

She lets out a long laugh and honestly I'm glad to not see her too worried about things.

"Honey it was a tv show."

"Blackbeard deserved better." I add grumpily, then look towards Church, who is cleaning himself after his breakfast.

"Defend me, Church!" I say dramatically, and I see Perry's point now.

The tabby just stops his cleaning process, with wide eyes and tongue out he leaves the scene.

"You coward!!!" I shout after him and me and Perry burst out in a laugh.

In the morning the city looks a lot different, but not much more lively. It's weird to see so few people on the streets. I guess for them it's normal or even a crowd, but compared to Chicago for me it's a lot different.

One thing I can see clearly though. Higher in the city, near the forest are the more expensive looking houses, I can even see some backyards with pools. But further down towards the lake it's reminds me more of the hoods back in Chicago. It has a certain charm to it, and I can clearly see the two sides of the tracks in town. Most of the people that I see outside can be chategorized as well.

The north siders are more suburbian looking, everyone smiling and greeting each other. It feels like an episode from black mirror. Perry doesn't seem to mind them, she even stops a lot to introduce us to the random families. Housewives with 60s dresses, limonade in hand, meanwhile husband and son mowing the grass. As I said, creepy.

Down in the 'hood' feels more like my world. No one's smiling randomly at each other, just people minding their own business.

We get to the part of town where most of the stores and small family businesses are. It doesn't take that long to get their, it is a small town after all.

As Perry leads the way I stay behind a bit looking at the store signs. No world-wide known franchise names, like Subway or McDonalds, more like Brenda's Flower shop or Granny's diner. Even the only cinema in town promotes a movie that came out about 20 years ago.

I almost bump into Perry as I'm lost in my thoughts when she suddenly stops.

"We're here, I'm already late, shit." She says looking at her clock.

She turns to me, then points to across the street to a 24/7 store, as she gives me a piece of paper and her credit card.

"Would you please buy these while I make arrangements at work?"

I see no point in arguing, I didn't really want to join her to the animal hospital anyway.

"Sure."

She goes in the door and I look at the small store and head there. I cross the street without looking around, there are almost no cars anyway.

The door rings as I set foot into the local store and the cashier, who is around the same age as I am looks at me up and down and continues until I disappear in the isles.

I pick up the stuff that Perry wrote down, not making a rush of it, because I know she will take forever with small talk with her new boss anyway.

After I look at every shelf and almost every product I get bored so I stand in front of the cashier. She slowly checks in every item, meanwhile looking at me.

"You're new here?" she asks and I nod.

"Yupp."

I don't really like small talk so I don't try to encourage him into a conversation, he does it anyway.

"Cool... I'm Polly! Polly Ambers, I live down at the docks. You're one of the Blackwoods right?"

Okay how does everyone know that, did auntie Primprose put out a sing or what?

"Yeah, how did you-?"

She cuts me off with a smirk.

"This is Detroit, babe, everyone knows everything here. The only action that ever happens in this town is when someone leaves or someone new comes here. People talk a lot."

"Great." I huff, and she laughs.

"Yeah, so pretty much brace yourself for being stared at for at least a month."

She finishes with the products:

"That will be 34.29!"

I reach out with the credit card and she shakes her head pointing at the sign behind the counter.

"Cash only? Seriously?"

I ask dumbstruck and she nods.

"I know. This town is lame."

"Tell me about it..." I say then search in my pockets for any cash.

"Where are you from?" Polly asks as I lay down the money I scraped from my pockets along with some pocket dirt.

"Here, actually. We moved to Chicago when I was 4."

"Chicago." Polly says as she looks into the distance. "I bet it's a big city."

"I mean yeah, but if you've seen one before you've seen all already."

Polly shakes her head.

"Not me, I was born here and I never went anywhere before. I want to, once I get my degree, I will go and travel the world."

She gives me my bag full of food with a smile.

"I can show you around after work if you'd like." she offers.

"Really?" I ask, again dumbstruck.

"Don't act all surprised." She chuckles, her dark hair falling into her face. "Everyone's so fuckin' boring in this town, except for me, obviously. You won't get a better offer and anyway. Aaaand I can show you all the cool places. There aren't a lot, but still."

My smile is genuine as I nod.

"Alright, when do you finish?"

She steps out from behind the counter and rushes me towards the door.

"Now, let's get out of here."

"Wait, what? You're not gonna get in trouble?" I ask as she hurries me out.

"I don't work here." she answers and I laugh as I think it's a joke but we hear a toilet flush from behind a door and then the actual cashier, wearing a name tag of 'Rick'. As he sees Polly he points an accusing finger.

"AMBERS I SWEAR TO FUCK, IF YOU COME HERE AGAIN I'LL CALL THE COPS, I'M SERIOUS. YOU ARE BANNED!"

Polly takes my arm and pushes me out the door as she shouts.

"Whatever, Dick!"

We laugh as we run out the store and take a few blocks. As no danger comes our way we stop to catch our breath.

"Do you usually pretend to work at places?" I ask with a chuckle and she shrugs.

"I mean, yes, don't you?" She asks teasingly then turns to walk towards the docks. "Come on, I'm gonna introduce to some of my gang."

"Gang? Like a street gang?" I ask with doubt and she rolls her eyes.

"No, big city, not like a street gang. It's just a phrase."

"Okay, small town!" I tease back and she smiles at me.

"I think you're gonna like the docks. It's the least suburbian looking place in town. Have you seen some of the northside? They are aliens, I'm telling you. Or a cult. Definitely a sex cult."

I chuckle nervously.

"We moved there actually."

She stops in her tracks and turns to look at me.

"Why must you fail me so often?" she asks in the most serious voice. "But really, until you go and dress like people in Mad Men and talk like a woman from the victorian ages, you're fine."

She leads me to the lake and I have to admit it's a pretty sight. Polly asks me about Chicago and about the places I've been before until we reach a boat called 'Harker'. She climbs aboard and looks at me.

"You coming?"

I look at her suspiciously.

"Is a guy going to come out of the bathroom asking why you're on his boat?"

She folds her hands.

"Do you not trust me?"

I laugh and I shake my head.

"Nope, we just met."

"Wise choice, but no, I own this boat. Well, actually my dads are, but still."

I look surprised for a second then join her aboard.

"Yeah, I am adopted with two gay dads before you ask."

"I wasn't going to. I kind of figured after you said 'dads'." I smile at her, then I put down my bag on the boardfloor.

I pull out my phone and text Perry a short message. 'Met a girl in town, she's showing me around. Bought everything, I'll go home later.'

"Are you texting your boyfriend?" Polly asks as she picks up a jacket and puts it on.

"My aunt, so she doesn't freak out where I am."

"Cute, let's go." she says and turns back to walk to town.

"Did we seriously get here just to pick up your jacket?" I ask with a laugh, but still follow her.

"Yeah, I was cold, now come on."

We walk about ten minutes when we reach a gas station/mechanic shop.

"Why are we here?" I ask and tease Polly. "I'm starting to doubt you, oh knower of cool places."

"Have faith, my young apprentice."

She walks toward the garage part of the shop and she greets the people in there. There's a guy about our age, lot taller with brown hair, who meets Polly with a fist bump.

"Whattup Toby?" Polly greets him and nods towards me. "This is the new girl everyone talked about."

"Hey, I'm Juniper" I say awkwardly, I really am socially awkward, huh?

"Hi, Toby Jameson." He says and holds out his hand so I shake it.

"Toby is gay." Polly says and we both look at her suprised. "What?"

"Nice icebreaker, Polls." Toby says with a laugh. "But yeah, it's true."

"Look I was only saying that because Juniper doesn't have a boyfriend and it's better before she falls in love with you, after you act like a straight dude then have her heart broken."

"This isn't a romcom Polly." Toby says then looks at me apologetically.

"Who says I don't have a boyfriend anyway? " I ask with a nervous laugh.

"I asked you and you said you were texting your aunt."

I would start to argue with her logic, but a voice interrupts.

"That doesn't count out anything."

I didn't notice the guy working under the car right until now as he rolls out from under there, all oily and sweaty. He tries to clean his hands as much with a rag, but it's already dirty as it is. He doesn't seem to mind, as he gets up from the floor.

"Well she didn't say anything about having one either." Polly answers to the mechanic.

He looks at me and I try hard to act normal and not stare at his sweaty once white tank top. Cause damn he is hot. Not like yesterday night. He seems to recognise me as well as he says.

"Nice to see you in pants for a change. For a second there I thought you didn't own any."

Polly and Toby looks between the two of us confused and then the girl looks at Mr. Asshole.

"Marcus tell me you didn't fuck the new girl."

"What?!" I look at her offended, and Marcus waves Polly off.

"No, and I wasn't planning to don't worry."

"Well good." Polly says and then looks at me. "Why did he saw you without your pants then?"

I roll my eyes very annoyed by the subject.

"I answered the door in my pajamas, it was after 10. And he was there with nutjob mayor, I can't remember his name."

Polly and Toby looks at Marcus accusingly.

"Why the fuck were you with Forrester?"

Marcus sighs as he gets some tools to continue his work.

"I fixed up his car and he told me he would pay me if I drove him there."

"Why?" Polly asks and Marcus sighs again.

"I don't know Polly! I don't care now can you leave me to work, I'm not gonna babysit you all, and if you're not working you are wasting my time."

Polly shrugs and takes my arm to go back to town.

"You are being rude, Marcus."

"And you are annoying, bye now!"

When I get home it' already after dark. I hanged out with Polly and Toby for the rest of the day. Turns out they are really fun to talk to and as I return home I feel a lot better about living in Oregon. Polly promised me to take out on the lake before summer is over and Toby said he would drive us to Salem to go and watch a movie.

But my mood is killed as I step into the house and I hear Perry slamming the fridge door.

"Juniper Billie Blackwood!" she says angrily as she comes out, her hands on her hips and her face all angry.

Oh oh. I think as I smile at her apologetically.

"I'm sorry I'm late."

She disregards my apology.

"You skipped the meeting with the principal, you are lucky that I talked your way out and that Eli was nice enough to understand your behaviour."

Eli? I think. Since when is she on first name terms with my principal.

"Shit. I forgot."

"You for..." She breaths heavily. "You forgot? After I told you a million times over an over again how important it was?" She raises her voice and I look at my shoes nervously.

"I'm sorry we lost track of time and..."

She doesn't let me finish as she continues.

"Are you trying to sabotage us?" I look up at her at that.

"No!" I say offended at her accusation.

"Don't lie to me! You were not happy to come here in the first place, you were not happy with the house and my job. And that you have to attend school. You didn't even tell the mayor came to visit yesterday night. Juniper you were so rude you have no excuse for your behaviour other than sabotaging our stay here on purpose!"

"Well excuse me I don't like being dragged away from my home and friends to a place in nowhere. And I was having fun with two possible new friends and yeah, I forgot about the stupid mayor but that doesn't mean I am doing this because I wanted to sabotage you! "

Perry shakes her head and looks at my hand.

"Where are the grocieres?"

Shit. I facepalm, already exhausted from this fight.

"I left it on the boat I think. I'm sorry."

"Well go down and bring them here."

I look at her serious face and roll my eyes.

"Whatever."

I leave the house and slam the door behind me. I can still hear her arguing but I'm already on my way to the docks. I'm grumpy to walk in the cold breeze, I should have at least put on a jacket, but I still don't plan on hurrying until Perry calms down a bit.

I admit I should have been a bit more catious with the time and joined her at the school but I honestly forgot about that when Polly and Toby was making me feel somewhat at home.

I look for the boat on the docks, but in the dim light I can barely make out the names. As I search between the boats I don't really notice the footsteps behind me. In Chicago I was used to walking in a crowd so I don't think much of it now as well. That's why I don't notice in time the stranger in the hood, until I get hit in the head.

I don't lose concious at first I just kind of stumble down on the ground with the sudden pain in my head. I look up but my view is blurry so I can't see a clear picture of the person standing over me. I can only embrace another hit in the head as I now lose conciousness and everything turns to black.

tags: @onl-you

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Since no-one else is saying it... War of The Worlds 2019

!SPOILERS!

If you haven't seen this, or any other version of War of the Worlds, this contains spoilers

The 2019 War of the Worlds TV series produced by the BBC had high standards. Real high. But it had a good cast, design seemed good, and it was set to be the most faithful of all adaptations. It wasn't. Apart from being set in Edwardian England, having tripods, (very) loosely following the main plot, and having the black smoke, it wasn't accurate.

Also it was a real bitch to find and watch. Dispite being done by the BBC, it never played on TV or the BBCi Player for whatever reason, so I had to pirate it :/ Even then, I had to go through a good 20 sites to find it. Why the hell is it so difficult to find 😫 So I'll have a whinge, here's some of the stuff they really fell short on.

Characters

Some key characters like the Artilleryman, the Vicar (or Priest, whatever, the church guy) and his wife were scrapped for characters you don't really get invested in. The Artilleryman was still there, but he didn't make his appearance at the end. The vicar and his wife either wasn't included at all, or just left 0 impression. The small group you're accompanying, I could not care about.

I don't care about Amy (even as well as she was acted) because you wasn't supposed to care about any characters. It was supposed to be one man's determination to survive to reunite with his wife. When that element of determination is gone and they're together, it doesn't really work. You're not supposed to care about the characters individually. You're supposed to be caring about humanity as a whole. The focus is not on the people, but the disaster they're living in.

I do love Ogilvy and the Artilleryman, though they still could have been developed more. (Artilleryman especially, they done him dirty 🙁)

Martians

Oh my dear Martians, what happened to you 😭 Rather than being the huge, crawling squid-like creatures they were in the book, now they're just big metal spiders (?) Who are able of climbing and jumping around just fine on earth, when they should not physically be able to lift themselves up (???) If they can jump around, why would they need their machines?

And also now they eat people despite not having a stomach (?) When I believe in the source material it was just their blood they were after.

But now talking about their machines, the pod that first arrived are... Strange. They're not hollow as they should be, but just a clump of flammable material. The Martians are underneath or something. The tripods are okay. Nothing special. As much as I hated the Tom Cruise version, they had much better tripods. The heat ray doesn't exist in this, they just throw flammable mud. WHY DOES NO-ONE EVER USE THE CRAB MACHINES hhhhh please!! Someone, give us Martian machines besides the tripods! Give us Crab Machines, give us the flying machines!!!

Also the Martians didn't make any noise really so that sucked ass. The "Uulah!" From the Musical and the Siren from the 2006 version were so well done and effective. You didn't have anything here and it was super disappointing :(

Story

Key scenes and moments were cut. The ThunderChild wasn't there at all :( The fight over the Themes didn't happen :(( No tripod over Big Ben :((( The Red Weed either wasn't mentioned or was barely covered, it crystal now for some reason :(((( Artilleryman didn't come back :(((((

They included the smoke though (which I don't think any of the others have yet) so :)

But like, the image of a Tripod looming over Big Ben after the sinking of England's last defence is such an iconic scene and it wasn't included. They really really missed their chance.

Also when they did start dying, the Martians were just on the ground. It didn't have half the impact it would of being on Deaths door, having a tripod looming over you, accepting your death only to find that it's dead. And the few behind it, they all are. It sucked tbh.

I was not a fan of the disjointed approach to the story. I don't get the point of the time jumps. It interrupted the flow of the story and apart from a few scenes that blended well, it just didn't work.

Music

It was okay. I didn't really pick up too much on it to be honest, but I was expecting more. Especially with the more known and recognised version of the story being a musical. Obviously I don't expect them to burst into song, but homage to this would have been nice. They did make a reference though with "like bows and arrows against the lightening" so something close. But that was the only reference I caught. Not even a reference to "the chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one" which was a bummer considering how many good quotes the source has.

I ran out of things to talk about so I'll finish up. Overall it was, okay. I can't say more than that. Maybe I set my hopes too high, or maybe it really did fall so low, who knows. The actors were great, the effects were great, costume and set were great. But the Martians, direction and story were bad. They only barely stuck to the original plot, and moved completely away after where the ThunderChild scene should have been.

The Jeff Wayne version is still by far the superior and more accurate version of the story. Which is disappointing considering how hyped this version was but I guess it just highlights the qualities of the musical. It was one of the best sellers for a reason.

Overall it was good. Worth a check out if you like your Sci-Fi, Fiction, Drama, Period Drama or even Romance. But if you're a big fan of the franchise, it's nothing to get too excited over. I really wish it was though. It deserves a 7/10, although it could have been a 10/10 so easily if they just followed the formula properly

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My Ducktales History

And now what nobody’s been asking for: My long and sort-of unusual history with Ducktales/Uncle Scrooge comics!

I was born in ‘91, so Ducktales was pretty much done airing new episodes by the time I came around, but Disney and ABC continued to air reruns for a few years, and I watched those as a very lil’ youngn’. So young, in fact, that I really don’t remember it. But my mom does, because she told me when she saw I’d bought the first set of DVDs. But, I didn’t continue watching it for long because my parents are cheap and once we left the college housing where cable was an included utility, they never paid for cable or satellite again! (Except for that one time but it’s not part of this story)

Flash forward a few years later to when I’m about 7 or 8 years old. My grandma bought me and my siblings a few VHS copies of various Disney afternoon shows: 2 Chip & Dale Rescue Rangers, 1 Darkwing Duck, and 1 Ducktales. They weren’t our absolute favorites or anything, but we watched them every once in a while, but it was enough to get the Ducktales themesong stuck in my head for the rest of eternity. This is also about the first time I see “A Mickey Mouse Christmas Carol” and I think at that age I didn’t realize it wasn’t in the same continuity as Ducktales and really confused me.

Flash forward again to when I’m about 15. I’m in High School and in my English class, of all places, we read “Uncle Scrooge and the 7 Cities of Cibola”, the classic Carl Barks comic. It was supposed to be an example of… something. I don’t remember. What I do remember is being confused because ‘This is not the Ducktales I remember!’ but I still really enjoyed it. It was my first exposure to the classic Uncle Scrooge comics. I wouldn’t read any more for a few more years.

Flash forward to college. I was in the dorms and my roommate moved out half-way through the semester, leaving me with a private room and making me even more of a shut-in internet binger than I already was. Somehow all the tvTropes bingeing lead me to start watching ALL of Ducktales, from Episode 1 to Episode 100, on YouTube (We’ve all done things we’re not proud of) It may have been partly due to nostalgia, but I fell in love with the show all over again, and also for the first time, since I’d only grown up watching a handful of episodes. The majority of episodes I’d never seen before, and I loved them. Although it doesn’t have the same ‘slip it in for the parents’ humor many shows today have, it still had a very ageless feel to it. I think that’s partly because it was Disney TVA’s first show, and Disney’s movies have always usually been pretty good at hitting that sweet spot of appealing to all ages. I loved it.

As you’d expect to happen, while I was learning more about the show’s history on tvTropes and wikipedia, I learned about the true origins of Uncle Scrooge in Carl Barks’ comics. I found a link on tvTropes that led me to an obscure European website that had scans of EVERY COMIC BARKS HAD EVER WRITTEN! It took me almost a year to get through all of them, and it’s a good thing I finished when I did because not long afterwards I’m pretty sure Disney’s lawyers discovered the site and had it taken down. But never mind my pirating activities, THESE COMICS WERE AMAZING! It was so cool to see the way Barks developed Donald and the triplets way beyond what they’d ever been in the cartoons, and created a TON of other fun characters. Not just Uncle Scrooge, but Gyro Gearloose, Grandma Duck, Glittering Goldie, Gladstone Gander, and a host of memorable villains like the Beagle Boys, Magica DeSpell, and Flintheart Glomgold. It was cool to see what they changed in comics they adapted to Ducktales, and what stayed the same.

By that point I was pretty much addicted to the Disney Ducks and their entire ‘verse. I watched all of Darkwing Duck and it became my new favorite show of all time. I continued researching the ‘verse on the internet and learned pretty quickly I needed to check out this Don Rosa guy. Luckily for me, the Provo City Library had the entirety of “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck” along with several of Rosa’s other comics, AND a few English re-printings of some of the better Italian comics. Eventually I exhausted every resource I had, and I wasn’t in a position to buy myself any more. Eventually other things came along and took the ‘obsession’ spot in my life, but my love of Uncle Scrooge and the rest didn’t go away. I bought the DVDs when I saw them on sale at Walmart. I wrote a few one-shot fanfics and slipped in references when I had the chance. I watched reviews, played the videogame (Both classic and remastered), and found some good fan-art.

Flash forward to 2016. We get the announcement that they’re rebooting Ducktales. I was cautiously optimistic, because that’s how I usually am, but I also had some doubts. Most reboots are… not very good. But the promo art I saw at the beginning looked promising, and it had Donald in the cast, just like in the comics! I didn’t get much of a chance to build up excitement though, because just a couple of months later, I left on a year-and-a-half mission. I kinda forgot about the Ducktales reboot on my mission, until one day I got an email from my sister Bethany, who’s an illustrator and aspiring animator. She told me she’d just watched the first episode of the Ducktales reboot, and she liked it! David Tennant was the new voice of Scrooge! I was instantly sold! Terry McGovern was no longer the voice of Launchpad! I was instantly unsold!

Finally, in January of 2018, I came home. I decided I’d better at least watch the show and give it a fighting chance. I watched the first episode. I’ll go more into my thoughts on it some other time, but suffice to say, it was epic, it kept everything I loved about all the characters and improved the things I didn’t. The animation was very evocative of the original comics, and I caught several references not only to Barks’ work, but also Rosa and the other Disney Afternoon shows as well! I was pleasantly happy with it. Then we got to the last scene… The one where Dewey finds the picture of Della.

“WHAT!?” I screamed at the TV

“WHAT!?” I screamed at my sister.

“WHAT!?” I screamed at the TV again.

“WHAT!?” I continued to alternate between screaming at my sister and the TV for about 30 seconds before I calmed down.

You gotta understand, in the comics, Della Duck is barely mentioned. I think she appears as a child twice in The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck and that’s ALL. And yeah-yeah-yeah, I know there’s those Dutch comics that told her story, but I certainly haven’t read it, and I don’t think it’s been translated into English even (If I’m wrong, feel free to let me know) And that’s a relatively obscure, European story. The idea that they’d address Della’s… basic NON-EXISTANCE in the cartoon, totally sold me. It was crazy. And every episode following I thoroughly enjoyed.

So, some time one of these days I’ll get around to writing a review of the whole show. Because while I love the show, it’s far from perfect. And I could have a lot of fun going through the pros and cons.

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Anime in America Podcast: Full Episode 8 Transcript

It's time to bid farewell to Crunchyroll'sAnime in Americapodcast, but not before it goes out with a banger of a final episode. Join host Yedoye Travis and special guest Kun Gao as they tackle the streaming wars, and read on for the fullepisode 8 transcript.

TheAnime in Americaseries is available on crunchyroll.com,animeinamerica.com, and wherever you listen to podcasts.

EPISODE 8: THE STREAMING WARS

Guest: Kun Gao

Disclaimer: The following program contains language not suitable for all ages. Discretion advised.

[Lofi music]

Last we checked in, the anime industry was struggling. Rising competition matched with the economic crisis of ‘07 and ’08 caused half the industry to shutter its doors within the next five years. And even without economic obstacles, the physical media and broadcast focused industry was still facing the looming threat of piracy.

I’m Yedoye Travis and this is the final episode of Anime in America.

[Lofi music]

By this point anime was already available to stream legally, and had been as early as 2002 with Valkyrie Media Partner’s video on demand service Anime Network. It had been a mainstay on Netflix since back when the company was still mailing out DVDs, which it technically still is, but if you already knew that, chances are your internet connection isn’t strong enough to listen to this podcast. Funimation and VIZ had already made the jump to digital with major streaming services Hulu and...uh… Joost?

Do you remember Joost? Cause I do not. What the fuck is “Joost?”

Both inked deals along with the now defunct U.K. anime distributor Gong in 2008 to stream select anime series from their catalogs. More on that in Anime in the U.K.! Ha ha, just kidding… unless… maybe?

Video hosting websites were presenting a major problem to anime distributors, however. The internet had entered the age of YouTube and new sites and services where literally anyone could upload a video without any kind of quality control were rising and falling daily and with them fell the final remaining barrier between consumers and pirates, technological literacy [Pirate “Arr!”]. The online ecology was primed for pirates to step out of IRC and torrenting sites and start putting their work on streaming video pages that literally anyone could use.

Unburdened by approvals and quality assurance, piracy had been beating official releases in terms of speed for decades and now suddenly was standing shoulder to shoulder with official services in availability.

But already the seed of a new era had been planted. And among the thousands of video hosting sites was an anime-focused page run by a group of young Bay Area techies.

Gao: We started to just tinker around on nights and weekends. We were watching Starcraft replays, we were watching anime content, and every week it was like “well, let’s load up this torrent and let’s wait for the Naruto to come out, and now we have to seed to a bunch of people before we can watch and let’s hope we don’t get a virus, or whatever.” And it was like, you know it was like a lot of work. And then we’re like “well, why don’t we just make a website that people can just click, just like YouTube, and just start watching?” And coincidentally, YouTube took off in… I’ll say ‘05-’06, when it was really starting to hockey stick, so we kinda said “well, that’s kinda the model.” YouTube, there was many other sites, at the time, now it’s just YouTube, but Veoh, MetaCafe, like Stage6, like all these sites we were like, what if we just did one where people would upload content they normally just can’t watch? And anime just made a lot of sense to us because we couldn’t find how to watch it… anywhere. Except for torrent sites. That’s kinda the chronology up until we founded the company in the middle of ‘06.

That is Kun Gao, founder and former CEO of Crunchyroll. It wasn’t always the biggest catalog of anime in the world, back then it was a small website he and his friend designed to host anime and Starcraft videos which quickly turned from a passion project into an ever-increasing logistical and financial struggle as site traffic began to balloon.

Gao: We ran out of bandwidth [dialup sounds] though pretty quickly, because bandwidth was really expensive. Especially back then [dialup sounds end] it was like 20 times more expensive than it is now. And I remember we were just maxing all our credit cards, because we didn’t, we weren’t really making money, there wasn’t a way to monetize with video ads, there wasn’t video ads to begin with. So yeah, that was the situation in early ‘07. So we, first it was raising with some angels. We said, we approached some angels, they were angels for our first company, my first company, and they had gotten a return from that investment. And I asked them if they wanted to invest into the new company, and they were very supportive and they were right behind us. And then within about a month or two after the angels invested, the site just continued to grow. And it was showing up on Alexa, which was not the Amazon speaking thingamajig, it was a website where you could look at other peoples’ traffic, and how they were trending over time. And I think that’s when VCs started knocking on our doors, they saw that the website was just hockey sticking and blowing up and they approached us and said they wanted to invest. And so from about… August-September through December of 2017, we started talking to a lot of VCs and then we found the right VC to invest into our business, and then we raised about $4 million bucks into the company, and that was when we started paying off all our credit card bills, and then we started to you know, get more servers, starting to hire full time employees, because we weren’t paying anyone or ourselves at that time, so that everyone could work on this full time.

That’s Angel Investors, of course, not actual… angels, which, uh… in some circles, you might believe are fake. Depends. We’ll leave that up to God. Who is real! [angelic choir].

Gao: In 2008, after we raised VC funding, we said “well, we need to figure out how to, like, license this content. We need to figure out how to compensate creators, and then we need to figure out how to make money for this content.” And so at that time, I think the company was like six, maybe seven, people? And everyone was an engineer, and so I drew the lucky or unlucky straw of having to figure out how to like, figure out Japan. The first thing I had to do was, you know, was like figure out “who do I talk to?” And I didn’t know who to talk to. And so fortunately, one of our advisors was a guy who was, at the time, the CEO of a company called BitTorrent, and he, along with Bram, who created the BitTorrent protocol, had setup a office in Tokyo where BitTorrent was a thing you can license to put on to like, a NAS drive, or a router, where you could do BitTorrenting on your NAS or your router so you don’t have to turn on your computer to do that. And so they had a business out there, and so I talked to him about who to talk to. And he said “well, you should talk to this guy called Vince Totino, he works for the BitTorrent in Japan.” And so in March of 2008, I went to Japan, met up with Vince, and then the more we talked, the more it was like “well, this guy’s awesome. Like, he knows everything about Japan, because he’s been there for 20 years. He speaks fluent Japanese. Maybe he can help us to navigate Japan.” And so he joined full time, and then we then set about going to all the major Japanese anime companies. And he didn’t have all the connections, either, so it was just we found someone who knew someone who knew someone, and then we contacted him and just kept going down the chain until we were able to get to, we were able to get to the key folks at all the major companies. And then, as relates to subtitling, outputting content, once we figured out the business side and we were able to get a deal with TV Tokyo, we had to figure out how to legitimately subtitle the content. Because we were getting the files before TV broadcast, we can’t just put it out there for fansub groups to fansub, because we wouldn’t know or be able to trust that. And so we started to hire people to help us to subtitle. And it ended up being that a lot of the people who used to participate in the fansub community were the best people to subtitle. And so they were able to receive some compensation and credit for their work doing it officially, legitimately, through the Crunchyroll business.

So, Kun just went to Tokyo, linked up with Vince and got all the major anime publishers on board. Pretty simple, right? Wrong! Absolutely wrong. You’re stupid for thinking otherwise. Turns out it was pretty difficult not only to sell them the whole idea of streaming media, but also to convince those publishers to license out their valuable IP to a pirate site.

Gao: Interesting side story is, if you remember when we previously talked about VHS that was pirated and distributed by fans, for fans, very analogous to what we were doing, that started a company called AD Vision, by John Ledford, who I would say is probably the pioneer of anime home video distribution. And today the company’s called Sentai. But he helped us to introduce us to TV Tokyo, in like the Fall of 2008. And then, when we got to TV Tokyo, they were, you know, they were very pragmatic about the situation. I would say not everyone was pragmatic. We would have conversations, a lot of conversations, were something to the tune of “Hey! We’ve got a website, there’s a lot of fansubbed content on there, we know it’s not legal, we want to get the license to legally do it.” And then they would just… not try to make eye contact, they would like act visibly angry, they would be shaking and they would say “you’re stealing from us, you’re pirating our content.” And we said “well, we want to make it legitimate. And if you want us to take all of your content down, today, we will. But that’s going to send all the fans to dark corners, to get access to your content, because they really want to watch it. And we want to make a bright lit place for you and your content to be distributed worldwide.” And so I think TV Tokyo really got that, and so we were able to work with them to figure out how to license Naruto legitimately. And at the end of ‘08, we announced together with TV Tokyo that they would be, we would be simulcasting Naruto, for the first time [Naruto opening 2 “Haruka Kanata” plays], within like an hour of TV broadcast starting Jan…. uh, Jan 7th, or something, 2009. So that’s kinda how that arc started.

[Lofi music]

On New Year’s Eve 2008, Crunchyroll deleted all of its illegal videos and fan contributed content, converting to an official streaming service that began simulcasting Naruto Shippuden in January 2009. On the Japan side it would remain an uphill battle over the years as Crunchyroll continued to shop itself out and prove itself to other publishers, but in America it was a deal that shook the entire industry. Streaming anime was just beginning to creep onto platforms like Netflix and Hulu in 2008 but NO ONE was simulcasting. At the time, Naruto was the single most popular anime in the world and suddenly it was on a brand new service that was putting it up to stream within an hour of its Japanese broadcast.

For anyone who doesn’t know, simulcasting is a portmanteau of the words “simultaneous” and “broadcasting,” and I think based on those two words you can guess that it means “simultaneous broadcasting.”

This was a foundational shift both for the established industry and for pirates. Where before pirates had speed on their side, they couldn’t hope to turn around episodes of Naruto within an hour. Crunchyroll’s agreement with TV Tokyo got them all the materials in advance of the broadcast to allow them to do the legwork pre-release, which would eventually shrink down the window to be near simultaneous with the Japanese TV broadcast. Suddenly the fastest and easiest way to watch new anime was once again an official source.

Along with their new offering, Crunchyroll also established a new framework for the streaming business. Although Crunchyroll’s original catalogue was small, many fans considered it a win-win.Crunchyroll had a large pre-existing community that trusted the brand and now it was beating the pirates in speed and had a clear financial throughline from your wallet to the people making the product.

So Crunchyroll started to grow. And it started to grow FAST.

Suddenly industry titans like Funimation, VIZ, and the recently established Aniplex of America found themselves having to play catch-up. This started the Simulcast Wars, a nearly 10 year long race for each of these companies to launch its own branded streaming services and get their products out alongside the official Japanese broadcast, and of course, everyone tried to get in.

And I mean everyone. Every single person.

But quick aside before I get into that… This pivot to simulcasting is a huge moment for anime itself, but that moment had another lasting effect on licensing that’s definitely worth mentioning. Anime itself got more opportunities. Licensing companies always have to be strategic to make money, but the shift toward streaming as the primary vehicle changed the economics of anime. You might say it… disrupted… the industry.

Gao: I think when you start off as… when you start off and become so successful like Funimation in home video, sometimes it’s tough to switch gears and disrupt your own business. And so we were disruptors. We were definitely way smaller, but we had to be nimble. And there were a lot of content that Funimation just doesn’t license, because for them it doesn’t make sense to go get Haikyu!! [Haikyu!! opening “Imagination” plays]. It wouldn’t ever sell on home video, and that was the only way they made money. So that wasn’t interesting for them. But it was interesting for us. Through the internet, there’s a lot of sports anime fans who love that genre, who love the fact that sports is just a vehicle for telling stories, and they’re willing to subscribe, they’re willing to watch online. And so we had an advantage in that regard.

Before our modern era where there’s just about 100 percent licensing rate every season, tons of titles would get skipped over because anime distributors in the U.S. had to judge new titles through the lens of a physical release and decide if a production looked like it would sell enough units to make up for their investment. A streaming model meant it was not only easier for each anime to find its audience online, but a lower price tag since you didn’t necessarily have to add the costs of designing, manufacturing, and distributing DVDs and a title’s performance online could act as a testing ground to inform your later decisions regarding a physical release.

You could make the argument that this also hurts anime’s longevity since physical releases are often all that is left of a title if the license enters limbo and that’s certainly legitimate but, as a counterpoint... We might notta gotten Haikyu!!... so there’s that. That’s enough of an argument, right?

Okay! Back to the thing that I was talking about.

EVERYBODY. In all caps.

Funimation was the quickest to follow, streaming a near simulcast of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood the very next season, four days behind the Japanese broadcast, which was fast by industry standards, but still gave pirates plenty of wiggle room for one of the biggest shonen releases of the 2010s [Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood opening “Again” plays].

VIZ followed next with Inuyasha: The Final Act in the Fall season which they simulcast on Hulu.

This was the pattern for about two years as other companies experimented with simulcasts of top priority titles and Crunchyroll continued to grow not only in subscribers but their number of their simulcast titles each season.

Then Anime News Network tried to get in on the action.

Y’know, the news site. The one with “News” in its name? One of the most trafficked anime sites in the world at the time, Anime News Network wanted in on the game, and after picking up some catalog titles from the likes of Aniplex, Bandai, and Sentai, they made their simulcasting debut starting with Oreimo in Fall 2010 [Oreimo opening plays]. Oreimo is… uh… I will say the definitive title in a genre of anime known as “Siscon,” upon which I refuse to elaborate but you can google at your own risk.

Unfortunately ANN pulled a Funimation, and someone took advantage of an exploit in their system and managed to get ahold of the second episode of Oreimo pre-release, and ANN was also forced to suspend its simulcasts because siscon dudes mean business. At this point though they were probably already on their way out of the streaming business. Despite the large amount of traffic ANN commanded on its editorial side, it was unable to leverage that into streaming views and it quietly wound down its catalog over the years to once again focus exclusively on news. Because they’re a news site. They do news.

The Fall 2010 season also saw the launch of Toonzaki, a creation of none other than the now-failing 4Kids’. It started with a catalogue of 72 mostly non-exclusive titles, and honestly the streaming site may have been one of the best things 4Kids’ ever created, a community focused platform that attracted even longtime critics of the anime licensor. Unfortunately the site couldn’t survive 4Kids’s financial woes and it was ultimately killed, likely as a result of the 2012 lawsuit we mentioned in the previous episode. In 2012 Toonzaki suffered the 1-2 punch of losing its entire Yu-Gi-Oh! catalog and having its site mysteriously going down for three whole months. I dunno about you but I would cancel my subscription after uh, probably a couple of hours, actually. Ultimately the site’s ownership was passed to Konami and it was later shut down in 2013.

In 2012 VIZ announced its own online streaming channel called Neon Alley which was kinda like a TV channel but VIZ anime and on the internet. That uh, ya know the whole concept of streaming? That’s what we’re talking about this episode. Unfortunately it didn’t fly and by early 2014, VIZ cut a deal with Hulu that added Neon Alley as a content channel to the larger streaming service’s menu. Within just a few months the Neon Alley name was dropped altogether as VIZ’s content was fully incorporated into Hulu’s service.

2013 saw the introduction of a brand new face in American anime streaming which, if I were a company like Crunchyroll or Funimation at the time, I probably would have greeted with hostility. Daisuki was founded by a Japanese consortium led by Asatsu-DK whose investors included major studios like Toei Animation, Aniplex, Sunrise, and TMS with the intention of streaming their anime globally. If that wasn’t scary enough, they were later joined by another $3 million in investments from a who’s who of Japanese publishers like Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Kadokawa.

Included in their starting catalog were Aniplex hits like Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Sword Art Online as well as a large number of Sunrise mecha anime. And I can not emphasize enough the vibe at the time was that this was the apocalypse for international licensing. Japan’s gonna hold onto all their titles, choke everybody else out, and run their own one-stop shop for anime.

But obviously that didn’t happen, so… what went wrong?

Well nobody’s entirely sure but probably a number of things. By 2013 America’s short romance with mecha anime like Gundam Wing, Escaflowne, and Evangelion had long since come to an end and it was Gundam titles courtesy of Sunrise that made up most of Daisuki’s initial offering of exclusives. Look, Gundam fans, I see you. I’m one of you. I don’t know why kids these days can’t appreciate giant robots, either, but that’s just how it is. The rest of Daiksuki’s starting catalog was pretty sparse since they’d already shopped out the licenses to many of their major titles in the largest international markets. By now, I’m sure this episode feels like a thinly veiled Crunchyroll ad, but the fact is, Crunchyroll had the good fortune of launching with Naruto the single most popular anime of its era, while Daisuki had two major Aniplex hits that were already showing their age. That, along with some endemic technical issues on their platform, seem to have made an environment not even One Punch Man and Dragon Ball Super could save. Also, it seems, splitting up anime streaming rights by region and selling them piecemeal to major streaming services may have been more profitable for some of Daisuki’s investors.

In March of 2017 Bandai Namco purchased Daisuki’s owner Anime Consortium in Japan and by October of the same year the service shut down completely.

Anime was already a popular subsection of Netflix’s sprawling catalog in 2014, but that year the company started to make public moves to invest in the medium and secure their own exclusives, teaming up with Polygon Pictures to secure many of their future seinen releases such as Knights of Sidonia and Ajin: Demi-human [Ajin trailer clip], likely establishing the relationship that would later lead to a number of 3D anime produced by Netflix itself like the upcoming Pacific Rim and recently released Altered Carbon and Ghost in the Shell.

Early 2016 saw Funimation launch their own streaming platform dubbed FunimationNow. But that wasn’t the only major announcement they planned that year. 2016 was also the beginning of what was probably the biggest news for Anime in America since the start of simulcasting: the big Crunchyroll/Funimation alliance.

Under the tagline “better together” Crunchyroll and Funimation, now two of the biggest names in anime not only in the U.S., but worldwide, announced a strategic partnership in which they’d be sharing their libraries with one another.

[Lofi music]

As it turned out, 2017 was the year that two media juggernauts would turn their eyes on anime and I just gotta discuss the most unfortunate one first. I’m talking, of course, about Amazon’s Anime Strike. And I say “of course,” but you might not’ve known about it until I just said it, so... Amazon announced its entry into the anime industry January 17th with a great deal of fanfare.

[IGN News: Amazon has just launched its own anime focused streaming channel, called Anime Strike]

Anime Strike was the first of what would be several branded add-on channels for Amazon Prime Video, which were essentially ways of compartmentalizing content that they could charge extra money for. So, in addition to your Prime subscription, you’d have to shell out an additional $4.99 to watch the exclusive anime Amazon was planning to load on the service.

Amazon wasn’t fuckin’ around, either. Among their first exclusives was the seinen sex drama Scum’s Wish, which would be the first of Amazon’s new exclusive streaming deal with the lauded Noitamina animation block on Fuji TV which, down the line, would land them Inuyashiki, After the Rain, and Banana Fish. They also entered a strategic deal with Sentai Filmworks that would give Anime Strike an exclusivity window for certain new Sentai titles. After about four months they even rolled out the ability to download episodes for offline viewing. So even up against Netflix and the new alliance between Crunchyroll and Funimation, Anime Strike was shaping up to be the next major competitor in anime streaming.

Or… it seemed that way.

Let’s just say anime fans didn’t like Anime Strike very much. You could forgive them for charging another $60 a year for a very limited library of anime ($160 if you didn’t already have Prime). But also, Anime Strike just didn’t seem to “get” anime fans and didn’t seem very intent on trying to figure us out.

And despite Amazon’s massive and sophisticated streaming video infrastructure, they just couldn’t seem to get anime episodes up on time. They would show up days late, often without subtitles. And discoverability was a problem, with many complaining they were unable to find Anime Strike anime on Amazon even after searching for its exact title. Amazon publicly blamed late deliverables from Sentai for the frequent episode delays which Sentai very publicly stated was an outright lie.

It was a bad look that just got worse with their PR. Anime Strike “no commented” several journalists looking for interviews and the ones they did get like ANN’s interview with VP of Digital Video Michael Paul were… uh, awkward? Forbes and IGN each released articles panning Anime Strike, citing its prohibitive cost and that it just didn’t seem to understand anime fans. Despite acquiring many major titles in 2017 including the Anime Award Winning Made in Abyss, Anime Strike was circling the drain.

Just seven days shy of its first year, the channel was finished. Amazon announced they were canning Anime Strike and putting their content back in general population on the rest of Prime Video. Their deal with Sentai ended with Sentai slowly retrieving their titles off Amazon and eventually losing their exclusive deal with Noitamina as of 2019, which you can probably thank for The Promised Neverland, Given, and Sarazanmai showing up on Crunchyroll. But Amazon hasn’t gotten out of the anime game entirely. Their acquisitions have been more low key and selective but they’ve kept things going with dark fantasy and science fiction anime over the past year such as Dororo, Blade of the Immortal, Psycho-Pass 3, and PET. So some good shows to check out if you still have your mom’s login or your college forgot to delete your .edu email. Otherwise, you know, I don’t know what to tell you.

Later in July, Sentai would announce its own streaming service HIDIVE to stream Sentai and Section23 anime which at first looked like any of the services I’ve already talked about that had good catalogs but not much new anime because of Anime Strike’s exclusivity window, but in hindsight this may have been some next level maneuvering from Sentai to prepare for Anime Strike’s fallout. However you look at it, Strike is dead and HIDIVE lives, having picked up many of Strike’s most acclaimed titles like Made in Abyss and Land of the Lustrous since their exclusivity window ended on Amazon. So thanks for the signal boost, Bezos. And congrats on your… unnecessary amount of money.

[Bezos clip: Thanks, it’s great to be here.]

In October of still 2017, a year that felt never-ending until 2020 came along, Netflix announced a big $8 billion dollar spend on original content, a considerable portion of which was earmarked to produce 30 anime titles in the coming years. On the heels of the Neo Yokio announcement some fans with zero taste thought this was pretty terrible news, considering Netflix had also rubbed those same fans the wrong way earlier in the year by purchasing TRIGGER’s much-anticipated Little Witch Academia set to premiere in January then just not releasing it. So, until its eventual release six months later, no one knew why it wasn’t already out or when they could expect it to be released.

It turns out this would become Netflix’s strategy in the coming years, eschewing simulcast schedules for batch releases often months after their conclusion to compete with international dubs… unless you’re in Japan where they broadcast on time. This supports the binge culture that has only become more important as we all stew in our own smells at home. It’s hard to tell if that system is working out for them or not because Netflix only recently hinted at maybe releasing viewership numbers and because they’re so big they could honestly just buy all that anime and set it on fire and still not hurt their bottom line.

Anyway, Little Witch Academia was the first of a sudden Netflix shopping spree. In addition to streaming titles from other anime distributors, Netflix has been pretty reliably picking up exclusive rights to about two to three anime per season, even securing a big (although temporary you’ll soon discover) exclusive streaming deal for the Fate franchise with Aniplex, and slapping a “Netflix Original” sticker on it, driving anime aggregator websites crazy every quarter when they try to build seasonal launch lists.

Regardless, Netflix’s interest in anime is undeniable. They would follow up their 2017 announcement with another in early 2018 claiming they had partnered with Production IG and Bones to produce new anime and ANOTHER announcement including Anima, Sublimation, and David Production in 2019. And context should tell you those are VERY BIG anime studios. But If it doesn’t, I will tell you. They are VERY BIG anime studios.

Meanwhile their list of air quotes “original” exclusive seasonal anime is growing and Netflix has begun announcing a number of new original anime now based on successful live action Netflix series such as Altered Carbon, and also licensing all the live action anime from Japan that nobody has ever seen, unless you live in Japan. Basically what I’m trying to say here is Netflix is very into anime.

Another smaller announcement in 2017 was that Funimation had been acquired by Sony, which was notable but not unusual, since the company had changed hands multiple times.

And that’s where I’m ending my history. That’s it.

[Lofi music]

Now, in case you’ve been trapped under a rock for the past 10 years, you should know that media companies in the U.S. have been slowly consolidating, with Disney leading the charge on their mission to own all 100 of the Top 100 blockbuster Hollywood movies every year. And if you didn’t know before, I’m sure you’ve learned in quarantine, that Disney has started its own streaming service.

2020 was the starting line for what’s already been a free for all between Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, Disney+, and HBO Max for the eyeballs of every human being on planet Earth and, of course, anime is a big part of that. If Amazon and Netflix suddenly investing in the medium doesn’t convince you then here are some numbers.

A report estimated the total revenue generated by the anime industry at about $19 billion USD in 2017. Another report estimated the total revenue generated by the U.S. film industry as a whole at about $43 billion USD, with anime on average being considerably cheaper than inflated Hollywood and premiere TV budgets like Avengers Endgame’s $356 million purse or Game of Thrones’s $90 million final season budget, which covered a mere 6 episodes.

It’s also worth noting that under quarantine a lot of anime is on hold, but overall animation is the easiest television production to produce, with Netflix going back into production on shows like Big Mouth and things of that sort.

Ironically, despite technical advances we’ve just about come full circle with the largest media conglomerates in the U.S. once again being in charge of anime localization. We’ve also seen the reappearance of anime as a relatively cheap addition to content portfolios, the major differences being the dramatically shrinking distance between Japan and America, an almost 100 percent rate of title acquisition by Western companies, and anime having transformed from something to fill time or disguise as American cartoons into its own mainstream force in the media alongside the MCU and whatever HBO is doing since Game of Thrones ended.

There are definite concerns with the way the industry is headed but the benefits are undeniable. Save for maybe China, Americans are the most privileged group of anime fans, even more so than those in Japan itself. A perfect storm of being one of the largest anime markets in the world paired with this decades long consolidation of media is that all the anime gets licensed but spread across less platforms than even in Japan. So, even if it seems like you’re forking over subscription fees to an unreasonable number of services to catch all the big shows, realize you’ve got it better than international fans whose countries don’t even get every seasonal title.

When you think about it, anime is even easier to keep up with than American TV. Amazon Prime, Netflix, Crunchyroll, Funimation, and HIDIVE gets you well over 99 percent of everything out there. Meanwhile in the sprawling American media landscape you’ll also need a subscription to Disney+, HBOMax, Peacock, and not only Hulu but make sure to grab Starz, Cinemax, and Entertainment add-ons… maybe even Hallmark if you, if you’re into stuff your grandma watches. And this is to say nothing of specialty and classic services like Shudder and Criterion. And of course Quibi. How could we possibly forget Quibi? Point is, each of these services probably has a few titles that were formative to your childhood and has some upcoming release that you’re interested in. And compared to that, anime has been cordoned off into what appears to be a reasonably small number of subscriptions.

Now the face of competition has changed entirely. Co-productions are nothing new in anime, dating back to the beginnings of anime in America in the 60s and definitely providing a deep enough topic to warrant its own episode if Crunchyroll greenlights a season two…?

But co-productions had previously been a way to get a particular project created, one of the most famous examples being the 1995 Ghost in the Shell film, a joint production between Kodansha, Bandai Visual, and the U.K.-based Manga Entertainment. Once again, Anime in the U.K.?

Maybe?

As previously discussed in our manga episode, up until that film Ghost in the Shell, along with many Masamune Shirow works, had a considerable following in the West, greater even than in Japan. Investing in the film made sense and the deal gave Manga Entertainment exclusive rights to a cult classic that’s still being both emulated and outright ripped off by American directors to this day. At the time it was what you’d call a smart investment in a specific title with crossover appeal to Western audiences.

And… yeah that’s still what co-productions are, but also they’re a way of getting your foot in the door early on titles you wanna license by investing in them years in advance rather than bidding on rights in the lead-up to the release. It also goes a long way in developing good relationships with studios and production committees.

And Netflix has been loudest on the co-production front, proudly announcing their strategic partnerships since as early as 2014, licensing content from studios directly to dodge the committee system, and just slapping “Netflix Original” on titles after they purchase exclusive rights whether they were actually involved in production or not, partly because that’s just how TV works in America.

Looking back you can find at least one example of a co-production from most of the major American anime companies that rose and fell in the 90s and 2000s. Crunchyroll itself has been quietly producing anime since early in its existence, counting over 60 co-pros before announcing their Originals Slate in 2020. Funimation first dipped their toes in back in 2016 with Dimension W and have slowly started to accrue their own roster of co-productions since late last year. If you’re a proper anime fan that never skips the OP, you may have noticed a growing number of American names and companies in the production credits since 2010.

[Lofi music]

Which brings me to my final point. What even is anime anymore?

Japan has been outsourcing work to Korea for about 20 years now even as foreign animators have been traveling to Japan to work in Japanese studios. International entities are becoming increasingly involved in production and now foreign creators and source material are more prominently featured in new titles. As the number of foreign names increases in anime credits that inevitably means the number of Japanese names proportionally decreases.

Korean webcomics are getting anime, Daft Punk and Porter Robinson had music videos made by anime studios, Studio 4C produced an anime film adaptation of the manga Tekkonkinkreet directed by an American animator. A manga by a french Canadian has been adapted into an anime. Marvel comics have gotten anime. Batman is a ninja now. Well, he has been for a while but this time animated by the studio that does the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure openings.

At what point does a production lose the essential Japanese-ness that the term anime implies?

Scratch that, what does “anime” even mean?

The very definition of anime is now being tested, used as a marketing term to evoke a popular conceit about the medium rather than an identifier of its point of origin. Nowadays if you ask Netflix what an anime is, they’ll tell you it’s a cartoon written by the lyricist of Vampire Weekend starring Jaden Smith or an animated series made by a studio in Texas based on a 1983 American kids show, and written by the director of MallRats.

So where are we headed with all this? Can anime survive its exposure to the American media ecosystem keeping its identity intact, or will anime soon just mean “cartoons but with blood in them?”

I can’t answer these questions, I don’t know. Gonna have to get back to you in a sequel podcast in 2030. Anime in Space. Or in The Parallel Dimension That Apparently Exists. All I can do for now is provide you with the wise words of the individual who has provided me with the answers to most of life’s questions up until now. My mom…

Grace: I don’t- I tried to do research, and I have no clue what this thing is.

Yedoye: Yeah? Like, nothing at all? You didn’t find anything?

Grace: They’re just cartoons! That’s all I know, you trying to test me?

Yedoye: [laugh] A little bit, yeah.

Grace: Why?

Yedoye: Because-

Grace: I never watched cartoons.

Yedoye: But WE watched cartoons!

Grace: It was never my thing.

Yedoye: It was our thing, though.

Grace: Pinky and the Brain, that’s it.

Yedoye: I mean, yeah, but that’s what we did on Sundays. But there was other stuff, after that.

Grace: [skeptical] Okay. I have no clue. I wish I did the research, I was too busy.

Yedoye: You didn’t listen to any of the podcast?

Grace: I listened to one, it’s all about Japanese something, right?

Yedoye: Yeah,

Grace: I know ??? used to draw them. He loved Japanese cartoons.

Yedoye: Yeah.

Grace: But I can not make out- I may have been sitting there, but I never paid attention.

Yedoye: No? There’s, I mean, there’s like… Pokemon is anime. That counts.

Grace: Oh, really? Pokemon is anime?

Yedoye: Yeah!

Grace: Oh my God! I thought the name of the cartoon is “anime.”

Yedoye: Oh, no, no.

Grace: [realization] Ahhh, Pokemon is anime, which means... There’s several versions, right?

Yedoye: Yeah, there’s a lot. There’s like, there’s Pokemon, there’s Dragon Ball Z, umm-

Grace: Dragon Ball Z! I just recently [Notification sound] heard that.

Yedoye: Yeah. And there’s um… did you ever watch Speed Racer?

Grace: In the car?

Yedoye: Yeah.

Grace: They like to drive?

Yedoye: Yeah.

Grace: Yeah, I’ve seen that.

Yedoye: Yeah. That’s anime, too.

Grace: I watched you guys ?? , but I just- you know, all that stuff was for you guys, babysitting activities.

[Both laugh]

Yedoye: There’s shows-

Grace: It was for babysitting, it was all for babysitting.

Yedoye: They're not even-

Grace: Did you know that?

Yedoye: They’re not even for kids, though!

Grace: Eh?

Yedoye: Those shows are not for kids though!

Grace: Yeah, that’s why I’m trying to tell ??. Yeah, so the general name is “anime.”

Yedoye: Yeah.

Grace: Then under anime is like, you have all these different versions of cartoons.

Yedoye: Yeah, yeah.

Grace: Okay.

Yedoye: You thought it was one show?

Grace: I thought it was just one.

Yedoye: Oh G- Okay.

Grace: And I just heard of them.

Yedoye: I definitely could’ve uh…

Grace: And the name is anime.

Yedoye: I definitely could’ve clarified that a few weeks ago.

Grace: Yep, I didn’t even know.

Yedoye: Okay, maybe that’s my fault.

Grace: So Pinky and the Brain, Pinky wasn’t one of them?

Yedoye: Uh, no, no, he was not.

Grace: Oh, okay. You guys confuse me. What else you wanna know?

Yedoye: Umm, I think maybe that’s it? I don’t know-

Grace: What do you mean “that’s it?!”

Yedoye: There’s not that much, I just wanted to know if you knew what anime was.

Grace: I wasted all this time just to tell you in five seconds that anime, something is under anime is just a broad name for all the cartoons.

Yedoye: Yeah!

Grace: Jeeze.

Yedoye: [laugh]

Grace: And I be here, all excited, thinking that something else is coming up.

Yedoye: Oh, no, no, I just was gonna- I just wanted to ask if you knew...

[Lofi music]

Thanks for listening to Anime in America presented by Crunchyroll. If you enjoyed this, please go to Crunchyroll.com/AnimeInAmerica to see the site I’ve talked non-stop about for most of this episode.

Special Thanks to Kun Gao.

This episode is hosted by me, Yedoye Travis and you can find me on Instagram at ProfessorDoye, or Twitter @YedoyeOT. This episode is researched and written by Peter Fobian, edited by Chris Lightbody, and produced by me, Braith Miller, Peter Fobian, and Jesse Gouldsbury.

[Lofi music]

[Beep]

Yedoye: But you can just- you can like, you can start watching them now, if you want.

Grace: [skeptical] Seriously?

Yedoye: Yeah, anime’s not just for kids, you know. There’s like, there’s adult stuff.

Grace: [continued skepticism] Really? Like, one example.

Yedoye: There’s… Cowboy Bebop is a good one, it’s like a… it’s like a drama sort of like...

Grace: Okay, tell me what do they do?

Yedoye: They’re uh… so the main characters are like they’re bounty hunters, and so they fly through space just like, tracking down criminals. It’s kinda like a, it’s like a crime thing.

Grace: You know I don’t like Star Wars.

Yedoye: [sigh] I know you don’t like Star Wars. [Chuckle] But I know you like crime stuff.

Grace: So now you think I’ll gonna like-

Yedoye: But I know you like crime stuff, though!

Grace: Ah-ha! Now you’re talking!

Yedoye: Yeah! It’s like a crime show.

Grace: Which one? I have to watch it! Which one?

Yedoye: It’s called “Cowboy Bebop,” they like, track down criminals and they take them in for a bounty.

Grace: They like, all those stick people do, right? It’s all cartoon folks, it’s not real? It’s not realistic?

Yedoye: I mean, it’s not real, it IS realistic, it’s drawn really well.

Grace: Yeah… see that’s still fake to me, I like more realistic stuff.

Yedoye: I think you would like it.

Grace: Name it again?

Yedoye: Cowboy Bebop.

Grace: Cowboy what?

Yedoye: Bebop.

Grace: Bebop? Cowboy Bebop, okay.

Yedoye: Yeah.

Grace: Cowboy Bebop.

Yedoye: I’ll send you a link.

[Lofi music]

Thanks! Bye.

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All 200 of the asks

200: My crush’s name is: [get fucked]199: I was born in: a hospital in Canada somewhere198: I am really: messed up197: My cellphone company is: Rogers196: My eye color is: Mud brown195: My shoe size is: 10 1/2194: My ring size is: Excuse me?193: My height is: 6 ft192: I am allergic to: my own satisfaction191: My 1st car was: probably crashed in a past life 190: My 1st job was: probably ruined in a past life189: Last book you read: A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To Heaven by Corey Taylor188: My bed is: really nice at this time of day187: My pet: is not here yet, ask me in a few years186: My best friend: is a bit of a cunt, but aren't we all?185: My favorite shampoo is: no real preference184: Xbox or ps3: Xbox183: Piggy banks are: for losers, get an old fashioned jar182: In my pockets: nothing181: On my calendar: also nothing180: Marriage is: a waste of time and resources179: Spongebob can: see question 200178: My mom: does her best177: The last three songs I bought were? what are the last 3 songs on Hybrid Theory?176: Last YouTube video watched: video about how Louis CK writes jokes175: How many cousins do you have? too many to count here174: Do you have any siblings? 2 stepsisters and 1 brother173: Are your parents divorced? Nope172: Are you taller than your mom? Yup171: Do you play an instrument? Multiple170: What did you do yesterday? Probably what I did today but slightly happier

[ I Believe In ]169: Love at first sight: HA HA HA see question 200168: Luck: Yup167: Fate: To an extent, yes166: Yourself: On good days...who am I kidding, in vey few areas165: Aliens: Why not?164: Heaven: Nopenopenope163: Hell: If this isn't it, nopenopenope162: God: see question 200, also I'm agnostic161: Horoscopes: to an extent, fun reads though160: Soul mates: Jury is out on this one159: Ghosts: Sorta158: Gay Marriage: Hell yea (the best kinda ally is only an ally)157: War: Nopenopenope156: Orbs: ...huh?155: Magic: ...eh

[ This or That ]154: Hugs or Kisses: Both153: Drunk or High: Neither152: Phone or Online: Online151: Red heads or Black haired: both150: Blondes or Brunettes: both149: Hot or cold: neither, warm148: Summer or winter: Summer147: Autumn or Spring: Spring146: Chocolate or vanilla: Vanilla actually145: Night or Day: Night144: Oranges or Apples: Oranges143: Curly or Straight hair: Always been envious of straight hair142: McDonalds or Burger King: Burger King141: White Chocolate or Milk Chocolate: Milk chocolate140: Mac or PC: PC139: Flip flops or high heals: Flip flops138: Ugly and rich OR sweet and poor: Ugly and rich just to try it out137: Coke or Pepsi: Pepsi136: Hillary or Obama: Obama135: Burried or cremated: Pass134: Singing or Dancing: Dancing if I must pick133: Coach or Chanel: ...huh?132: Kat McPhee or Taylor Hicks: ...heh?131: Small town or Big city: Biiiiiig city130: Wal-Mart or Target: Walmart129: Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler: Adam Sandler128: Manicure or Pedicure: Both127: East Coast or West Coast: Both?126: Your Birthday or Christmas: Birthday125: Chocolate or Flowers: Both, I'm greedy, probably chocolate124: Disney or Six Flags: Disney123: Yankees or Red Sox: Neither

[ Here’s What I Think About ]122: War: Don't have it, don't support it, conversation works better.121: George Bush: Couple bands wrote some hate songs about him.120: Gay Marriage: IF YOU DON'T SUPPORT IT WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING FOLLOWING ME? see question 200 and piss off.119: The presidential election: AHAHAHAHAHAHA next118: Abortion: AHAHAHAHAHAHallow it, their kid, their prerogative117: MySpace: 10/10 great ironic joke to make116: Reality TV: Big Brother was fun till 2017115: Parents: They were fun till 2006114: Back stabbers: see question 200113: Ebay: ....eh112: Facebook: kinda dead now111: Work: ...huh?110: My Neighbors: cool people, rowdy dog109: Gas Prices: Overcharged like everyone says108: Designer Clothes: Overcharged like everyone says107: College: Not as bad as the perception is106: Sports: ...eh105: My family: ...eh104: The future: It depresses me in all honesty, but so does everything

[ Last time I ]103: Hugged someone: ...shit...102: Last time you ate: 3 hours ago101: Saw someone I haven’t seen in awhile: today100: Cried in front of someone: maybe last week...maybe99: Went to a movie theater: 6 months at the least ago98: Took a vacation: 3 weeks ago..sigh97: Swam in a pool: A long ass time96: Changed a diaper: Maybe a few years95: Got my nails done: Maybe a few years94: Went to a wedding: 2 years93: Broke a bone: never, lucky I know92: Got a piercing: never91: Broke the law: 4th grade90: Texted: 1 minute ago

[ MISC ]89: Who makes you laugh the most: My friend Sayem because he is consistently a dumbass and I love him for it88: Something I will really miss when I leave home is: banana bread87: The last movie I saw: Amelie 86: The thing that I’m looking forward to the most: when my new album comes in the fucking mail85: The thing im not looking forward to: tomorrow84: People call me: Donatello actually (y'all are not allowed to) (I'll block you, don't think I won't block you)83: The most difficult thing to do is: be happy82: I have gotten a speeding ticket: nope81: My zodiac sign is: Taurus80: The first person i talked to today was: Might've been @lovelyformylove but I dunno79: First time you had a crush: age 9, it didn't ruin me till 1178: The one person who i can’t hide things from: myself, duh (hide shit from people all the time)77: Last time someone said something you were thinking: maybe today76: Right now I am talking to: nobody (COME HERE)75: What are you going to do when you grow up: make a thing for people to consume or pirate as entertainment...or die first74: I have/will get a job: see question 7373: Tomorrow: but far away is tomorrow?72: Today: I will suffer for who I chose to care about71: Next Summer: I will be in another country [see question 72]70: Next Weekend: I will sleep in69: I have these pets: not yet68: The worst sound in the world: Forks on plates67: The person that makes me cry the most is: easily myself, duh66: People that make you happy: too exhausting a list65: Last time I cried: last week64: My friends are: really great for tolerating me63: My computer is: finally decent62: My School: a waste of a perfectly good Indian burial ground61: My Car: sitting in a dealership, still waiting60: I lose all respect for people who: fuck with people's emotions (I break my own rule because I am a hypocrite)59: The movie I cried at was: ....can't remember58: Your hair color is: Black/really dark brown57: TV shows you watch: Elementary, The Blacklist, Archer...can't remember the rest 56: Favorite web site: this dumb piece of shit, I mean Tumblr55: Your dream vacation: probably a recording studio to be honest54: The worst pain I was ever in was: something stupid and emotional53: How do you like your steak cooked: medium well52: My room is: pretty dark51: My favorite celebrity is: Corey Taylor?50: Where would you like to be: see question 5549: Do you want children: sure48: Ever been in love: tragically47: Who’s your best friend: Jeremy/Sayem46: More guy friends or girl friends: Real life: guys, here: girls45: One thing that makes you feel great is: a really good riff44: One person that you wish you could see right now: myself in 10 years (most answers witm "myself" are cop outs for real people)43: Do you have a 5 year plan: fuck no42: Have you made a list of things to do before you die: not yet, but I procrastinate on most important things41: Have you pre-named your children: Michael/Micayla so far, very small shortlist40: Last person I got mad at: myself (that one is authentic)39: I would like to move to: Denmark (escapism capital of my mind)38: I wish I was a professional: composer

[ My Favorites ]37: Candy: Hershey's Cookies n Cream36: Vehicle: pass35: President: Obama I guess34: State visited: nowhere33: Cellphone provider: Rogers?32: Athlete: pass31: Actor: pass30: Actress: pass (I've gone numb)29: Singer: see question 5128: Band: changes, currently Foo Fighters27: Clothing store: pass26: Grocery store: FreshCO?25: TV show: Elementary maybe24: Movie: Ameline currently23: Website: this dumb waste of time, I mean Tumblr22: Animal: TURTLE21: Theme park: Wonderland?20: Holiday: New Year's Day19: Sport to watch: Wrestling probably18: Sport to play: Not wrestling xD17: Magazine: Probably some guitar magazine16: Book: Maybe 198415: Day of the week: Saturday easily14: Beach: haven't been to many memorable ones13: Concert attended: see question 1412: Thing to cook: egg, ham, and cheese bagels11: Food: see question 1210: Restaurant: August 8, no joke9: Radio station: the one with the nice classical music8: Yankee candle scent: pass7: Perfume: Chanel something6: Flower: Magnolia5: Color: Green or red, never at the same time4: Talk show host: John Oliver3: Comedian: Bill Burr or Jim Jefferies2: Dog breed: Beagle1: Did you answer all these truthfully? Yes

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Rome - Tues., May 28, 2019

Rome - Tuesday, May 28, 2019

It was another early morning with a 5:47am alarm for our 7:15am PA call time. By now we had a routine of getting ready, eating our room service, taking seasick pills, and packing our backpacks. The forecast was only 64, but no rain. I donned a plaid dress & navy sweater, but stashed my Lauren hoodie & footies (for the bus) in my bag! Luckily, neither were used.

As a reminder of our chosen Port Adventure:

Vatican Behind the Scenes and Panoramic Drive (CV105)

10 Hours to 10.5 Hours

It was about an hour drive into the city and we were dropped off just outside the Vatican City wall. We were led down a Groups path (FastPass), went through security scanners, and then awaited our tickets. (The regular line wrapped all the way down one of the walls and around the corner. Again, unless you arrive prior to opening or have a tour like ours booked, the wait to just get in would be excessive!)

Then it was upstairs for our radio guides, but it was to hear our personal guide, not the Vatican Museums audio guide. Our group was led out to the Gardens, a blissful escape from the crowds. (As uttered on the Disney Cruise Line Blog Podcast, when at the Vatican be prepared to “pack your patience and give up your personal space!”)

The Gardens (requiring a special ticket or with a tour) are quite hilly with all sorts of cement, cobblestone, and rock pathways. (I was happy my new Chacos conquered it all!) One in our group had mobility issues and opted out of a significant portion of the tour. We were told about the history and meaning behind many of these sites, refurbishment of a considerable monument, and the building to which retired Pope Benedict has retired. This area also provided beautiful natural, quiet, and unobtrusive views of the back of both the St. Peter's Basilica Dome and Sistine Chapel. The numerous gardeners were out and about to the point it felt a bit Disney-esque. We regularly got out of the way of the golf carts and 4-wheelers (that I wanted to commandeer)!

This is Kara - I’ll just add that the Gardens were very pretty - made even more enjoyable by the fact the weather was absolutely perfect. I especially enjoyed Pope Pius IV’s building from 1550 and its sunbathing turtles.

Too soon we returned to the outside public area of Vatican City. We stopped in front of a set of six signs, each explaining different part of the Sistine Chapel. I had not seen this on my previous visit. It gave much needed context to the famous painting we were about to view, so this is highly recommended.

Kara here: I agree completely that without the explanations of these signs or some real preparation for the Sistine Chapel, you’re not going to really get all that much from the experience.

Next we were back inside to another “skip the line” point, but still had to traverse through the expansive galleries. (One in our party lost contact with one or two of their four girls, which caused a delay. FYI - tour guides are not your babysitters!)

We were informed the ceiling art is simply lat painting, but they appear 3D! Talk about masterful historic art techniques! Note what looks like “tape” across the giant crack!

This brought us to yet another “skip the line” into the Sistine Chapel. We were there for only about 10 minutes and it was lighter in there than I recalled.

Kara: The three galleries we passed through were candelabra, maps, and tapestry. The tapestry where Jesus’s eyes follow you - FREAKY! While I tend to enjoy museums like this a little more than Gayle, the Disney Cruise Line Blog should go one step further and say that if you’re an introvert or you actually expect to be able to look at something and enjoy doing so while in the Vatican, you’ve come with the wrong expectations. The next picture truly captures why while I’m glad to have visited the Vatican, unless I’m enjoying a private audience with the Pope, I have no need to return.

From the Sistine Chapel we exited almost directly into St. Peter’s Basilica, where our guide pointed out the key highlights. (I was personally relieved at this. Last time I did the audio guide, and like Westminster, tried to do the whole thing. Yet, the monuments here are great in number and I easily lost track if I was looking at the right thing!) We finished around 1pm and were directed to meet back in front of St. Peter’s by 2:45pm.

Kara: I tend to love visiting churches. I’d go back in a heartbeat to nearly every other church I’ve ever visited. There was absolutely nothing reverent or inspiring for me about the shear audacity and grandiosity of St. Peters.

Knowing of this free time, I’d prepared for us to grab a bite to eat. Employing my offline map we sought out the nearby “Alice” for pizza. I’d searched for “good pizza near the Vatican” since we didn’t have a ton of time and thought Kara needed to experience “street food”. While waiting for Kara to get the pizza from this walk-up restaurant, a pigeon “poo-ed” on my backpack! Luckily I had supplies to clean it, but these birds were really aggressive in trying to snatch our food. On top of this the pizza was bad. Really bad. (I have no idea how this “restaurant” was highly rated.) So I felt guilt for leading us here.

Kara: The staff was also not pleasant at all. I didn’t think the pizza was really bad, but it definitely was just food - nothing special.

Next we ventured a few more blocks to “Old Bridge Gelateria” for yes - gelato! (After our Alice experience, I was scared!) It was another traditional walk-up establishment directly across from a Vatican wall. Kara ordered mixed berry, strawberry, & lemon; I ordered dark chocolate and strawberry. When I tossed a tip in their jar, the guys Dabbed! LOL! This gelato was YUMMY (if slightly overpriced - but location, you know) & more than made up for the terrible pizza!

Kara: Back when we decided to do this trip, I tried valiantly for about six months to pick up enough Italian to at least understand the basics. I wasn’t confident but I was really pleased at how kind everyone was as I tried out the language and how gentle they were in corrections of pronunciations. Both Luigi the day before and the guys at the gelato place were really nice to patiently let me try Italian. Nothing like my experience in Paris a few years back. Also, a note for a future trip should one ever occur to Rome - there is currently a great little sandwich and pasta shop right next to the this gelato place.

We returned to our meeting point (one of the official gift shops) where Kara picked up a number of items and I purchased needed postcards.

(A bracelet Kara bought me - to match my nails, of course!)

Due to the high tourist area, the streets surrounding the Vatican were full of pickpockets and street vendors pushing everything everywhere. We felt like a full picnic basket (especially with my checkered dress print) sitting on top of an anthill! Our guide finally led us to the Vatican’s “bus parking garage” and even here we endured musicians asking for money.

Sidenote: We invested in our first pairs of Chacos for this trip - wanting a sandal that would support a lot of walking. Since I customized mine in all silver metallic, and “when in Rome”, I took to calling mine...

At 3pm we began our panoramic drive through Rome, some sites I had seen, but not others. We were back on the ship by 5pm. (This port is HUGE and crazy! It must have taken us nearly 10 minutes to get to the ship after entering the port!)

Kara: As this was my first visit to Rome, I was looking forward to the tour part - even though it was just a bus tour. G and I are both watching the CBS show “Blood and Treasure” this summer and the pyramid was featured in it. Gayle is right about how enormous the port was - the last two photos are ones I grabbed as we were driving back into the port.

Back in our stateroom we found some delectable “VIP” cupcakes from our new bestie Zoe.

Tonight’s dinner was back in Lumiere’s with a new international menu (World of Flavor) we’d never experienced. I made no notes about this and only remember not being impressed. I believe my main course was disappointing salmon; the buffet salmon from embarkation day was better.

Tonight Kara ordered some hard cider, which they brought in a bottle. Not a beer bottle, but rather more of a full wine-size bottle. Okkkkk. The process worked the same that they would re-cork it and bring it back for the next night’s dinner.

The Beef Empanada was actually quite tasty!

The ship’s Cheddar Cheese Soup will never compare to Le Cellier’s, but pretzel bread is always appreciated!

The Sundae was also quite good. (I would have gotten the Sacre Torte, but don’t care for apricot.)

Kara’s normal dessert selection.

We completed our post-dinner tendency of getting ice, shower/hair, and ordering Room Service for cookies (& tonight “chocolate cake”, which was actually mousse, so Kara was NOT happy. Are we confusing this with a previous night???) For some reason the ship left 45 minutes late.

The evening show was “Junnk” (similar to “Stomp”). We’d seen it before and due to our busy schedule decided to watch it on the stateroom TV since they show the nighttime stage shows on the in-room TVs. Lesson learned: They apparently only show the Disney original stage shows (pre-taped) on the TVs, so no show for us!

Tonight was Pirate Night. As much as we wanted to embrace this cruise-specific offering and as the only cruise line having fireworks at sea, Pirate Night is a BIG DEAL! Yet with dropping temps, a wet/rainy environment, and notable winds, Mother Nature was prompting us to stay inside. When we saw the party didn’t start until 10:30pm (& knowing the fireworks wouldn’t go off until almost 11pm), we didn’t even try to pretend we were going. Instead we were barely able to stay awake for the fireworks, which we watched from our balcony (something Disney Cruise Line tells you NOT to do for safety). Yes, I broke a Disney rule. EEK! It’s the only one I break (& do so consistently. SHHHH!!!) We also know which side of the ship to reserve our stateroom just for this reason!

Disclaimer: I (Gayle) am a travel agent with Authorized Disney Travel Planner agency - Off to Neverland Travel. Contact me today for a no-obligation quote!

Next up: Florence, Italy!

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Omg with TokyoPop 😂 Please share the early 2000's anime days this is new to me and sounds hilarious.

they were dark-ass times, my friend

TERRIBLE AMERICAN PUBLISHING (idk how it was in other countries; I went to Paris many years later and was impressed with their...everything when it came to different kinds of comics but) Tokyopop which was basically run by people who only half knew what they were doing, Viz which mirrored manga for a long time bc they assumed Americans were too stupid to learn how to read the other way (which was particularly annoying in comics where like a right arm or something was important), ADV which probably couldn’t actually release an entire series if their goddamn lives depended on it (yes, I’m still mad about MaLoki), and various other publishers that would publish like one title ever

No legal streaming!! Which meant you either had to buy super expensive DVDs or pirate them online. (BACK IN THESE DAYS, CRUNCHYROLL WAS A PIRATING WEBSITE. NEVER FORGET.) This was right at the end of VHS days, though, so it could be worse!! If you got a VHS, it would be subbed ordubbed. When I watched Evangelion it was on bargain bin VHS tapes so it was like 70% subbed and 30% dubbed and it was a painful time.

Fansubs online were a hugething. Legit companies had pretty slow turn around (you were lucky if something like the Anime...Network? I can’t remember. or Toonami or Funimation picked it up, bc they had tv channels -- though you’d usually have to put up with a shitty-ass dub) and you’d usually have to wait for a large-chunk release. If you wanted to watch something as it aired, you had to watch it raw or depend on fansubs. These were uh. Of varying quality. They’d usually have a 2-24 hour turnaround depending on the size of the group, with Shounen Jump titles having the fastest turnaround. Those were anime that were already published in manga form in the US via Viz, so they were already mostly familiar with how they’d go, plus...lbr, a lot of those shows were....easier to translate. If you catch my drift. (They tended to be dumb and repetitive. That is what I’m saying.) Also a larger fandom, so greater pool to get workers from and a greater reward re: downloaders. (And people usually torrented new fansub releases bc there were fewer online streaming sites, so popular shows downloaded faster.)

So like, picture if you will, a group of tween-teen nerds sitting around a computer watching fansubs of suspicious quality and shrieking the theme songs in unison because a fansub wasn’t a fansub without bouncing karaoke at the top. We got a DVD player that could play avisat one point and that was kind of mind blowing. Otherwise, you could use an AV cable or buy a DVD.

You bought things legit if you wanted to really support the industry or you really loved a show, not because they were always better quality. I’ll leave it at that.

There were also a lot of scanlation communities, which were basically fansubs but for manga. These were also of extremely variant quality, and there were a lot of rules for a very weird online translation subculture. I always kind of got the impression that most of them hated each other. A lot of these groups required IRC use, which was confusing af, and I honestly believe that’s the biggest reason why most of these ended up getting put on online manga reader sites. There were fewer of those back then.

Most animefandom was very strongly demarcated. Most of the fandom I engaged with was on livejournal, which meant it was like...maybe 95% female. You’d get more men on forums, which is why we all fled the forums and went to LJ. lol. Trash spaces. Trash.

The whole yaoi/shounen-ai/BL situation was very different. LGBT stuff was considered more niche and still something you needed to“warn” for in most environments. For a long time, the only legit published stuff was like. FAKE and Gravitation and CLAMP and maybe Eerie Queerie or Loveless or something. So basically, it was shit. lol. (As a young teen, I was particularly attached to CLAMP/Kaori Yuki stuff. Thank god my parents never caught on.) Anyway, to get to scanlated BL works, you usually had to go to special communities/sharing circles online or figure out the prominent scanlators and follow them. Very, very little doujinshi was scanlated. Very few (English-speaking) people ventured onto pixiv. There were a lot of arguments about the differences between yaoi, shounen-ai, and BL. Don’t let anyone nowadays fool you. When I was a teen, 90% of all“yaoi fangirls” were queer, and half of that annoying sex-focused excitement was because it was the first gay sex we’d seen in any publication anywhere. It was a different time in the media landscape. BL has a lot of shitty-ass tropes, but we were basically starving in a desert. We took our Gravitation and we liked it. F/F manga was very rarely translated, and I guess that’s still the case today. There’s less of it, and I think we’ve all been trained to prioritize male sexuality. (Plus most of the shoujo-ai that got posted online was like uber-innocent schoolgirl stuff.) People make fun of“yaoi fangirls” and“fujoshi” and all that now, but I can honestly say I would have never understood my own sexuality without that subculture. Like the anime clubs were full of obnoxious little weebs, but let’s be straight about something, no pun intended. They were full of obnoxious little gay weebs. People are all about gay (western) cartoons nowadays, but when I was a teen, they were all about that anime.

Because almost all published anime/manga was in hard copy, you’d get mini congregations of fans in stores. See: hordes of manga fans sitting in the manga aisle of the book store, fans chatting with each other in...suncoast, or wherever they could find DVDs/VHS. The level of social skills in these areas was...not high. Also, a lotof fuckin creepy predatory dudes going after girls. Hooooly shit. I was so glad when they started releasing anime/manga online. Y’all livestreamers on Crunchyroll don’t know how good you have it. You used to have to deal with the fedora bros who were a good 10-20 years older than you but still following you around in stores, conventions, etc. any time you wanted to get new stuff. Like it was a legit problem.

LIKE I’M TRYING TO CONVEY HERE THAT JUST GETTING ANIME/MANGA WAS A PAIN IN THE REAR END. not as bad as the dark days when people had to physically mail each other shit, but it was still definitely a subculture and you’d definitely be thrown in with a lot of people you wouldn’t want to be around. (Similar to how things are in modern western comics fandom...)

Fandom itself was basically a tire fire. In every possible way. Like I’m nostalgic for it in some ways, because in some ways I really miss how text-based it was. There was a lot more meta and conversation, and fanfic was muchbetter supported. Comment culture was a lot stronger and you’d become friends with people who read your work and/or people who wrote stuff you liked. But on the other side of that, there was a lot of weird fanfic gatekeeping. Sporking communities and flaming and fic rating communities were much more of a problem back then. You release stuff to crickets nowadays, which is demoralizing, but back then there was a solid chance you’d wake up to an inbox full of hate mail, especially if you wrote slash. It definitely happened to me a few times as a kid. I think they really targeted teens, too. So writing fic could be shitty. There was less fanart in American spaces, too.

I do agree that to some degree things have gone too far with the whole virtue-signaling/issuefic thing, with a lot of people yelling very loudly about things they may not always understand very well, but you gotta understand. Fandom was a hateful place in many ways back then. Sexist, racist, homophobic, you name it. Female characters are still ignored now, but they’re typically treated less horribly than they were back then. People try to be more educated about other ethnicities and sexualities and such now. You’re less likely to get bullied because you were gay. I think the big problem is that sometimes people hijack important movements to be giant dicks, and a lot of people, especially younger people, get swept up in that.

There was a very specific kind of anime badfic back then. I could write literally an entire post on that. Like god. Where do I even begin??? The bluenettes? The super kawaii fangirl nihongo? Script fic?“Tell me what to write next!” fic? lolololcrack fic? I mean, there were a lot of varieties of suck back then.

Weird subcultures. Like...really weird ones. Things got kind of cult-y relatively often. Just say no to cults.

if you want more details on anything, I’m having particularly painful flashbacks right now. ugh, the free hugs signs.

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i have homework i need to do

plso here’s a list of questions that are supposed to be sent as asks but i felt like answering them myself rip productivity and sleep leggo

200: My crush’s name is: lol people I know irl follow me they don’t need to know this 199: I was born in: Galle, Sri Lanka 198: I am really: sleep-deprived 197: My cellphone company is: AT&T 196: My eye color is: Daaaaaaaark brown 195: My shoe size is: 6 194: My ring size is: I don’t actually, but I guess one of the smallest sizes 193: My height is: 5′1 192: I am allergic to: pet dander 😢 191: My 1st car was: still don’t have my license rip 190: My 1st job was: working in a lab! 189: Last book you read: Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (I’ve been working on like five other books for the last year why am i like this) 188: My bed is: a lofted long twin, gotta love dorm beds 187: My pet: don’t have one 186: My best friend: got three, love them all 185: My favorite shampoo is: SheaMoisture’s Coconut and Hibiscus Curl and Shine has been great 184: Xbox or ps3: PS3 183: Piggy banks are: wonderful 182: In my pockets: my headphones 181: On my calendar: so many projects and presentations and finals rip 180: Marriage is: what you make of it 179: Spongebob can: ...do whatever he wants? i don’t care 178: My mom: is one of the best people in the world 177: The last three songs I bought were? Dead Girl Walking, La La Latch, and the 21 Chump St soundtrack 176: Last YouTube video watched: What If? feat. Daniel Radcliffe, by Anna Akana 175: How many cousins do you have? 7 174: Do you have any siblings? nope 173: Are your parents divorced? nope 172: Are you taller than your mom? we’re the same height 171: Do you play an instrument? Piano (badly), and I used to play clarinet 170: What did you do yesterday? classes, lab work, IRO meeting, then stayed up Way Too Late finishing an assignment [ I Believe In ] 169: Love at first sight: nah, I believe in attraction at first sight tho 168: Luck: Yeah 167: Fate: Yeah 166: Yourself: Working on it 165: Aliens: Yeah 164: Heaven: um 163: Hell: uh 162: God: haven’t thought about it as much as I probably should’ve 161: Horoscopes: not usually, but they’re fun 160: Soul mates: I kinda do, but I wish I didn’t, because it’s such a stressful concept to me 159: Ghosts: not really, but I’ll still get spooked at haunted places 158: Gay Marriage: YES???? 157: War: no 156: Orbs: don’t really know anything about that 155: Magic: no, but I wish I did [ This or That ] 154: Hugs or Kisses: Hugs 153: Drunk or High: never been high 152: Phone or Online: online 151: Red heads or Black haired: black haired 150: Blondes or Brunettes: brunettes (all my crushes have been brunettes, idk how or why) 149: Hot or cold: Hot 148: Summer or winter: summer 147: Autumn or Spring: spring 146: Chocolate or vanilla: vanilla 145: Night or Day: both 144: Oranges or Apples: Oranges 143: Curly or Straight hair: Curly 142: McDonalds or Burger King: McDonalds 141: White Chocolate or Milk Chocolate: Milk 140: Mac or PC: PC 139: Flip flops or high heals: flip flops 138: Ugly and rich OR sweet and poor: Sweet and poor 137: Coke or Pepsi: Coke 136: Hillary or Obama: hoo boy, Obama 135: Burried or cremated: Cremated 134: Singing or Dancing: Dancing 133: Coach or Chanel: Coach 132: Kat McPhee or Taylor Hicks: lmao Taylor Hicks what a throwback tho 131: Small town or Big city: Big city 130: Wal-Mart or Target: Target 129: Ben Stiller or Adam Sandler: Ben Stiller (unfollow me if you pick Sandler omg) 128: Manicure or Pedicure: Manicure 127: East Coast or West Coast: East Coast 126: Your Birthday or Christmas: Christmas 125: Chocolate or Flowers: Flowers 124: Disney or Six Flags: Disney 123: Yankees or Red Sox: Red Sox [ Here’s What I Think About ] 122: War: unnecessary 121: George Bush: really don’t like this weird“kind grandpa” tour he’s going on. appreciate him acknowledging his mistakes though 120: Gay Marriage: Should be accessible to anyone and everyone, and the continued persecution of gay people (and people of every non-hetero sexuality) is disgusting 119: The presidential election: Hell On Earth 118: Abortion: Should be accessible to anyone and everyone 117: MySpace: Let it die 116: Reality TV: Let it die 115: Parents: I’ve been blessed with amazing ones, but not everyone is, and everyone should be able to define their relationship to them without society trying to enforce judgement on them 114: Back stabbers: been on both ends of that 113: Ebay: where I go for kpop things rip my wallet 112: Facebook: I’m embarrassed by how much I still use it 111: Work: nice. people at Wharton can be so stuck-up though, why are theatre kids like this 110: My Neighbors: Love them! 109: Gas Prices: pls 108: Designer Clothes: I think they’re super pretty, but they’re just not something I could personally invest that kind of money into 107: College: Should be accessible to anyone and everyone 106: Sports: wow I really don’t give a fuck outside of the Olympics. wish I did. 105: My family: Love my parents, love my maternal grandmother, wish I had a better relationship with the rest. 104: The future: Wow! Fuck! Terrifying! [ Last time I ] 103: Hugged someone: Saturday night 102: Last time you ate: Eating chocolate rn lol 101: Saw someone I haven’t seen in awhile: yesterday when I saw one of my asshole high school classmates twice in one day what kind of fuckery 100: Cried in front of someone: oh wow...it might have been the day after the elections? or my first therapy session? I don’t remember which came first oops 99: Went to a movie theater: March 24th, to see the Beauty and the Beast remake lmao 98: Took a vacation: Spring break, went to NYC with one of my close friends 97: Swam in a pool: Jamaica, the first week of January 96: Changed a diaper: over the summer, while babysitting 95: Got my nails done: never gotten them done professionally! 94: Went to a wedding: uhhhhhhh I must’ve still been in pre-school I think 93: Broke a bone: never happened to me g bless 92: Got a peircing: when I was a baby lmao 91: Broke the law: I guess underage drinking counts, so this past weekend lol 90: Texted: an hour? ago? I think? [ MISC ] 89: Who makes you laugh the most: Leslie 88: Something I will really miss when I leave home is: my parents, my mom’s cooking, the kids on my street 87: The last movie I saw: Split (unless the last ep of Black Mirror counts because that was a 2 hour doozy) 86: The thing that I’m looking forward to the most: Going to Mexico this summer 85: The thing im not looking forward to: finding out how my crush feels about me 84: People call me: smol, cute, sweet, angry 83: The most difficult thing to do is: confrontation 82: I have gotten a speeding ticket: nope 81: My zodiac sign is: Bull 80: The first person i talked to today was: my linguistics prof 79: First time you had a crush: elementary school 78: The one person who i can’t hide things from: my mom and Jaylen 77: Last time someone said something you were thinking: Lizy, last week 76: Right now I am talking to: no one 75: What are you going to do when you grow up: be a doctor? hopefully? and travel? ahhhhhhhhh 74: I have/will get a job: yee 73: Tomorrow: I have a test in Spanish and have to work on a group presentation rip 72: Today: NEED TO GET THIS DAMN PROPOSAL DONE 71: Next Summer: this coming summer? going to Mexico, still don’t know what I’m doing for the second half why does this keep happening 70: Next Weekend: Working Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time! so excited, I’ve been looking forward to this show for the past year 69: I have these pets: none :’( 68: The worst sound in the world: screams of pain 67: The person that makes me cry the most is: my mooooooooom (because I love her so much) 66: People that make you happy: my parents, my friends, I’ve been blessed with the people in my life 65: Last time I cried: probably two weeks ago, my mind wouldn’t shut up before bed 64: My friends are: the most patient people in the world 63: My computer is: doing its best, wish it had more memory 62: My School: is great! 61: My Car: nonexistent 60: I lose all respect for people who: voted for Trump 59: The movie I cried at was: the last one was Lion 58: Your hair color is: black 57: TV shows you watch: Too Many 56: Favorite web site: Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube 55: Your dream vacation: living in Paris for 1+ month 54: The worst pain I was ever in was: all of junior year of high school 53: How do you like your steak cooked: I’m pescatarian lmao 52: My room is: small, but lovely 51: My favorite celebrity is: uhhhh Viola Davis 50: Where would you like to be: Paris, NYC, Disney World 49: Do you want children: still not sure honestly 48: Ever been in love: unrequited, but yeah 47: Who’s your best friend: my mom, Jaylen, Riley, Leslie 46: More guy friends or girl friends: woah so many more girl friends 45: One thing that makes you feel great is: getting enough sleep 44: One person that you wish you could see right now: my parents, my crush, Jaylen 43: Do you have a 5 year plan: kind..of...it depends on a lot of variable tho 42: Have you made a list of things to do before you die: tentative, but yeah 41: Have you pre-named your children: nah 40: Last person I got mad at: does sean spicer count 39: I would like to move to: NYC, Madrid, Paris (why am i so bougie why am i like this) 38: I wish I was a professional: actress [ My Favorites ] 37: Candy: sour patch kids, airheads xtremes, cotton candy 36: Vehicle: Volkswagon Beetle, the last generation when it was still round rip 35: President: Obama? 34: State visited: California 33: Cellphone provider: AT&T i guess 32: Athlete: Simone Biles 31: Actor: at the moment, Dev Patel 30: Actress: at the moment, Phillipa Soo and Viola Davis 29: Singer: at the moment, Bruno Mars 28: Band: at the moment, EXO and Royal Pirates 27: Clothing store: Rue 21 26: Grocery store: Meijer and Kroger 25: TV show: at the moment...shit, I don’t really know 24: Movie: at the moment, Amelie 23: Website: tumblr, facebook, youtube 22: Animal: elephants 21: Theme park: Disney World 20: Holiday: Christmas 19: Sport to watch: Figure skating 18: Sport to play: uh badminton I guess 17: Magazine: Entertainment Weekly 16: Book: The Night Circus 15: Day of the week: Friday 14: Beach: Galle 13: Concert attended: Bruno Mars’ Moonshine Jungle with Jaylen 12: Thing to cook: omelettes 11: Food: my mom’s food, spicy ramyun, macarons 10: Restaurant: Boiling Pots 9: Radio station: 98.7 in Detroit 8: Yankee candle scent: don’t really know 7: Perfume: Marc Jacobs Daisy 6: Flower: plumerias, cherry blossoms, roses, daffodils 5: Color: piiiiiiiiiink 4: Talk show host: I still miss Oprah tbh 3: Comedian: John Oliver, John Mulaney, Mike Birbiglia (I know, I need to diversify my choices) 2: Dog breed: corgis, samoyeds, labradors, goldens, poodles 1: Did you answer all these truthfully? I tried?

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Five of the Best: Scares • Eurogamer.net

Five of the Best is a weekly series about the small details we rush past when we’re playing but which shape a game in our memory for years to come. Details like the way a character jumps or the title screen you load into, or the potions you use and maps you refer back to. We’ve talked about so many in our Five of the Best series so far. But there are always more.

Five of the Best works like this. Various Eurogamer writers will share their memories in the article and then you – probably outraged we didn’t include the thing you’re thinking of – can share the thing you’re thinking of in the comments below. Your collective memory has never failed to amaze us – don’t let that stop now!

Today’s Five of the Best is…

Scares! Boo! It’s beyond me why people play scary games. I look at someone like Ian Higton, playing Resident Evil 7 in VR, or Alien: Isolation in VR, and I wonder what’s wrong with him. Why willingly put yourself in that position? He’s the person in a horror film who walks into a dark basement on their own. I, on the other hand, am the person on the sofa screaming “don’t do that you wally!” while hiding behind the pillow. Look, I’d love to be as brave as Ian but I’m not. I nearly threw the PlayStation VR headset across the room when the shark started attacking my diving cage. Heck, I nearly threw the Vive headset across the room when I was standing on a sunken pirate ship and a whale swam up next to me. Ian, I am not like you. And sadly Ian is too busy to contribute to today’s piece, but he suggested the above games as well as Dead Space so I thought I’d at least mention them here.

Scares don’t have to come from scary games, though. Any game which ramps up the tension can make you jump out of your seat. So here’s to being scared and here are five of the best scares. Let’s hear yours below. Happy Friday!

Half-Life: Alyx

Oh man. So you’re going to meet Jeff. How bad can Jeff be? Here’s a guy who’s surviving the Combine. He warns you that if you go any further you’re going to be in Jeff’s domain. But really – How Bad Can Jeff Be?

Jeff is, um, quite bad actually. I think he was once a person. But now his head has sort of opened out like a kind of meat flower. He wanders around spreading toxic spores out of a little meat factory he has in his back. He’s very angry.

Jeff can’t see but Jeff can hear you. So for a while you have to inch through Half-Life: Alyx with your hand over your mouth and nose to stop those spores from making you cough. And you have to distract Jeff while you collect things from the maze where he lives. And you have to try and make it to an elevator. Which is very loud.

You don’t have to be a classicist – I’m not! – to understand the myth that Valve is tapping into here. But annoyingly there is no Ariadne in this version, no red thread to follow. Instead, you have to inch forward, one risk at a time. Surely I’m not meant to do that? Surely I’m not meant to try this?! The moment when you finally fire the lift up… and Jeff…

Okay it’s too horrible. But the weird thing is as much as you fear Jeff, you sort of feel for him too. Poor Jeff!

-Christian Donlan

Eternal Darkness

Eternal Darkness is a horror game, which means scares are all over the place. I remember evil monks, cursed Legionnaires, spooky rooms and all sorts of creepy stuff. But the biggest scares cross through the screen and are frightening in a more practical way.

This is one of those fourth-wall breakers. Sometimes while playing Eternal Darkness a fly will land on the TV screen, or the volume will start to turn up or down. But the biggest scare by far – I feel bad spoiling it – comes when you try to save your game at a particularly tense moment. DELETING FILE reads the on-screen text. For a minute, first time I encountered this, I totally forgot all the fourth-wall malarkey that had come before it. Some things in games are sort of sacrosanct – so of course that’s where Eternal Darkness chooses to get to you.

-Christian Donlan

Dead by Daylight

There’s nothing scarier than another human being. This is something I’ve learned not only from watching horror films and reading my Twitter replies, but also from gaming – with Dead by Daylight remaining one of the most stressful experiences so far.

That’s because it tackles a problem I’ve encountered with many horror games, in that after a certain point, you just stop getting scared. Once you’ve been caught for the first time, you remember it’s a game, you can’t actually die, and the monster is beatable. Then it’s merely a matter of figuring out the system to win.

Not so in Dead by Daylight, where as part of the asymmetrical multiplayer, the monster chasing you is a fellow human. Out goes the rulebook of a single-player game, and suddenly you’re playing mind games with a real person. One who may well bait you into a trap, try to outsmart you during a chase, or relentlessly track you down. There’s something distinctly menacing about knowing another human is sitting behind a screen somewhere, planning to impale you on a meat hook. And although with enough playtime you’ll become more familiar with the strategies, that element of unpredictability will always be there – and that’s what gets me scared.

-Emma Kent

Counter-Strike

Scary games are good fun, especially if you’re playing them in a group. You rush through the dank water, a monster close behind, screams of terror from the player and screams of laughter from those watching. But for me, the scariest moments I’ve ever experienced in a game have been in Counter-Strike.

In Counter-Strike, you’re always thinking about where your opponents might be. There are two teams of five, necessarily spread out across a wide map, so if you’re defending a bombsite you might not see another player, friend or foe, for the whole round – you’re just sitting in a corner, holding an angle, biding your time, listening to your teammates. Occasionally you do see someone, or hear the click of a grenade’s pin being pulled, and you get that kick of adrenaline as you anticipate the onslaught to come. They could come from anywhere! You could be challenging a whole team by yourself! This is exciting – but not scary. You’ve prepared for this.

Scary happens when that mental model – that understanding you carry of what is happening on the map right now – is disrupted. When you’re holding down B and someone calls “Five on A! They’re planting!” You relax. You think, ah, brilliant. I’ll just wander over to A now and help out. Shall I go via spawn, or through the middle? Do I still have grenades left? Let’s look at the kill feed and see how the defense is going – am I going to have to clutch this one, or are we doing alright? Just then, someone walks out into the B site and shoots you in the face. And you shit yourself, because you are not prepared for this.

-Will Judd

F.E.A.R.

I mean, it’s in the title – how can it not be scary?! What was so special about First Assault Encounter Recon though, a name no one ever used – besides the slow-mo and besides the level-shattering action and besides the aggressive, flanking AI – was the brand of horror it opted for. FEAR went for psychological Japanese-style horror at a time everyone else was going in-your-face jump scares, and the result was something insidious, something which got under your skin. A girl called Alma who had supernatural powers. A girl with lank dark hair who might as well have been pulled straight out of The Ring and The Grudge horror films, which I still rank among the scariest I’ve seen (and if you know any better, please suggest them below). She was always there but never quite there, haunting your every move. Menacing, malicious and absolutely pant-wettingly creepy.

-Bertie

OK it’s not F.E.A.R. 1 but it’s close enough!

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/05/five-of-the-best-scares-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=five-of-the-best-scares-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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Elise’s Pitch Wars Welcome!

Hello!My name is Elise Longden, and I’m writing this little introduction because I have written a manuscript and I’m planning to submit it to Pitch Wars, the mentoring programme!

Whilst this little blog is where I record my thoughts about my writing, I’ve never really introduced myself - mostly because I believed I would never let anyone see it. However, the Pitch Wars form has room for a website, and I would rather link this blog as opposed to my Twitter (which is inactive) or my Instagram (which is just full of cosplay and dog photos).

To clarify, I have written a book called“The Hollow World”.

Okay so, here’s some stuff about me:

Submission related stuff that potential mentors may be interested in:

In 2017 I won the UK National Flash Fiction Competition run by the University of Chester and was published in an anthology that had also once featured Margaret Atwood (SQUEE!). My piece entitled“Flotsam” can be found here:

http://www.chester.ac.uk/sites/files/chester/Longden%20Elise%20-%20Flotsam%20FINAL.pdf

I got an A* A-Level grade (It’s not to big myself up...just in case anyone not British doesn’t know what that means!!!!) in Creative Writing, and my coursework, which was 70% of my grade, was the first 30,000 words of my Pitch Wars manuscript.

The idea for“The Hollow World” came to me in a Film Studies class at college. After trying /(and failing) to come up for an idea to base a project around, my teacher gave me an exercise to generate some ideas. She took a few traits typical of Hollywood films, and told me to flip them on their head. Thus,“The Hollow World”, or at least a basis for it, was born, and three (ish) years later, I still can’t get it out of my head.

Basically the idea of Ashe came from my bizarre urge to see a tiny little girl violently killing things in a film. I thought I was being super original, but the film Logan beat me to it. I can’t even be mad, because Dafne Keen is so incredible?!

The reason why I’m submitting to Pitch Wars, is because I need help. That’s the bottom line. I have edited my manucript the best I can, but I need someone who can take what I’ve written and look at it from a fresh, and new perspective. I am new to the idea of getting my manucript published (though I have always dreamed I would), and navigating the crazy world of publishing and agents and general make-your-writing-an-actual-book stuff....is scary. And I really, really, need your help. I need someone who is honest who can tell me what needs to be done. I’ve done the best I can, and now I need someone who is better than me.

I draw, so here’s some pictures of the characters from the“The Hollow World”, that may hopefully pique your interest:

ASHE

MAGPIE

NADIA

CASSIDY

SOME FACES

SOME MORE FACES

Whilst these were drawn about a year ago and aren’t my best work, I’m hoping they entice potential mentors, just a‘lil bit more! :)

Some general stuff about me:

I am a pretty happy and positive person, who loves to work hard. If I have a task or idea inside my head, I will hyperfixate on it until it’s done. For example...this manuscript was unfinished (by about 20,000 words) on the 1st of August. It was my first draft that I hadn’t read through, it was unformatted, it was riddled with errors and inconsistancies, but after meeting the lovely Tomi Adeyemi and talking to her about Pitch Wars, I decided to enter. So I took my jumbled mess, I put my butt into gear, and I spent day after day writing, writing, writing, until I felt happy enought to submit it. I also had to learn what I query letter was, because I am a publishing term noob. My point is, I am willing to push myself, and go all out at 110% percent, if that somehow helps me achieve what I want to achieve.

I am 19 and I live in the UK (specifically near Liverpool).

I cosplay as well! I’ve been Rey, Leia, and a generic Jedi from Star Wars, Margaery Tyrell and Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones, Pirate King Elizabeth Swann from Pirates of the Caribbean, and I spend 70% of my time in my 13th Doctor costume.

I love Hamilton, and can rap all of it. I love musicals in general tbh.

I have an unhealthy obsession with Moriarty from Sherlock Holmes.

Have I mentioned that the 13th Doctor is the best thing ever to happen to me?

I have a dinosaur hat that I wear whenever I’m sad, because it’s pretty impossible to be sad with a giant T-Rex on your head. And by“hat” I mean this thing:

Pretty majestic, right?

ANYWAY

I’m ace/aro, which is why my book features no romance.

I love my dog Rocky more than anything. He looks like this:

As well as a mentor who can teach me writer-y things, I’m also looking for a friend, so here’s some stuff I like:

TV Shows:

Merlin (the love of my life, tbh, and it broke my heart), DOCTOR WHO (especially the 13th Doctor, even though she hasn’t aired yet), Hannibal, Orphan Black, Sense 8, iZombie, TOP GEAR (Yes, the car show. I’m obsessed), Game of Thrones, Parks and Recreation, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Jessica Jones/any Netflix Marvel show, the 100 (early seasons because Lexa), RuPauls Drag Race, Queer Eye, Brooklyn 99, Stranger Things, Sherlock, Agent Carter...I’ve watched a lot okay?

Movies:

My ultimate favourite movie of all time is What We Do in the Shadows. Even if you’re not going to choose me as a mentee, then please what this dumb film. I love it. I LOVE IT. It’s dark comedy genius, and a real gem.

Other favourite films are: Wonder Woman, Ghostbusters (2017 version), Ocean’s 8 (will Cate Blanchett adopt me as her ace/aro child?), Marvel Films (particulary Thor: Ragnarok), Star Wars Films, Kingsman Films, John Wick Films, Pirates of the Carribbean Films, Harry Potter Films,Mad Max: Fury Road, Peter Pan Goes Wrong (if you pick me I’ll force you to watch it at some point, sorry), Disney Films (Mulan, Up!, and Hercules are my faves).

Books:

Some that don’t need an explanation: Harry Potter, A Song of Ice and Fire, His Dark Materials, Lord of the Rings. Anything by Neil Gaiman, Margaret Atwood, or Stephen King.

My favourite series, and arguably my“Harry Potter” is the Skulduggery Pleasant series by Derek Landy. I’ve met Derek multiple times, and his books are just hilarious, soul-destorying, and MAGIC. I love them.

A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers - Seriously, this Sci-Fi book is one of the most striking books I’ve ever read, mostly because it surprised me with it’s tender story, honest representations of real people, and general WOW-ness. I love it, and its flashbacks heavily influenced my own manuscript. You know when you love a book so much that you wish you could eat it? This is that book for me.

Moriarty by Antony Horowitz. My favourite villain of all time in a book that blew my mind? Yes please.

The Girl in 6E by A.R.Torre. I picked up this book for a quid in the supermarket, and it utterly suprised me. It’s about a sex-worker murder-obsessed cam girl who is asked to act out something on camera that’s a little too disturbing, so she tracks down the man who asked her in order to save a little girl from a vile act. Think Maestra meets The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. It’s not the most sophisticated reading with all of the bizarre sexual stuff, but the wit and exasperation of the main character makes up for it. I love anything that surprises me, and this book was something I'd never seen before.

Anything (memoir or fiction) by Carrie Fisher. As a Star Wars nerd I knew I would love her work, but when I read them I was blown away by how poignant, poetic, and wonderous Carrie Fisher’s writing is. She seems to find the perfect balance between humour and emotion, and reading them was a genuine joy. Each funny sentence makes me laugh out loud, but each serious sentence is heavy, poised, and so amazingly crafted and emotional.

Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi. I was lucky enough to meet Tomi on her UK tour, and I gave her my very long letter and a portfolio of art. I love the book, and I love even more what it stands for, and there’s not much else I can really say.

Other books I loved in no order: The Power by Naomi Alderman, The Cursed Prince by Holly Black, The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins, the Chaos Walking series by Patrick Ness, the Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan, Throne of Glass by Sarah J Maas, The Time Traveller’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger, the Gone series by Michael Grant, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, The Martian and Artemis by Andy Weir, Lost Stars by Claudia Gray, Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Room by Emma Donoghue, Wicked by Gregory Maguire....and a helluva lot more....

And just so you know, here’s what I look like:

(I’m the human dressed as the 13th Doctor)

Hopefully this gives you an idea about me and my personality! I’m sorry this is so long, I just wanted to make sure I came across in an okay way! If any potential mentors are reading this, thank you for taking the time to!

If you want to read the notes/journal entries I kept on this blog when I was writing and editing my manucript, just search the tag #update!

My Twitter is:https://twitter.com/EliseLongden

My Instagram is: instagram.com/elise.longden/(here you will find a lot of cosplay and dog pictures, and I’m not sorry)

If you have any questions or anything else you want to know, please feel free to shoot me an ask! Or just say hi!

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How Women, Tech Took Over Porn: Inside the 2018 AVN Awards

New Post has been published on http://gossip.network/how-women-tech-took-over-porn-inside-the-2018-avn-awards/

How Women, Tech Took Over Porn: Inside the 2018 AVN Awards

From #MeToo to cam stars, this year’s Oscars of the obscene showcased the future of porn

Here’s a Black Mirror pitch: You pay several hundred dollars to attend the world’s biggest porn convention and awards ceremony. You travel to Las Vegas, where the air has transformed into mentholated nicotine vapor and no one will validate your parking. You do this in order to meet porn stars in the flesh, to see them onstage celebrating the Oscars of the obscene, because – even though, according to Scientific American, half of us are now creating our own sexual content on our personal devices – there’s something superhuman about sexual celebrities.

Death of a Porn Star

When August Ames killed herself following controversy on Twitter, it revealed a schism between the gay and straight communities in the porn industry

But when you arrive at the convention, in place of your 1990s dream of impossibly proportioned stars in bedazzled Lycra posing for Polaroids, what you see is a 15,000-square-foot hall teeming with hundreds of beautiful, semi-clothed models of all shapes and styles, grinning into their laptops. You try to talk to a young woman in heart-shaped pasties and booty shorts, but she’ll only give you a few seconds of attention before she’s back to clicking her shiny gold nails across her keyboard.

Here’s the twist: This ain’t no dystopian nightmare. Attendees of the 35th Annual Adult Entertainment Expo and Adult Video News Awards were treated to precisely this display of tech-mediated intimacy. Plenty of big names were in attendance – stars who had led more traditional adult-film careers – but they were outnumbered by scores of up-and-coming models who primarily built their own businesses using cam shows, original clip stores and monetized social-media platforms. The mass availability of easily pirated streaming video may have decimated the porn economy, but it seems that women are the ones adapting, finding fresh ways to connect directly with consumers. As these models gain more economic influence, they are also raising the bar for consent conversations throughout the industry.

The last time I was at the AVNs was in 2012, when I was nominated for producing and directing a niche site called QueerPorn.TV. My Bay-Area scene was proud to think of ourselves as the forward-thinking weirdos, exemplifying the characteristics of the queer porn genre: body-positive and diverse, with a riot-grrrl aesthetic. We were nominated in the somewhat self-contradicting category Best Professional Amateur Site, and were miffed when we lost to Clips4Sale, a platform which had been around since 2003 for creators to upload and sell short original videos. Here we were, indie smut with a vision, and we lost to a tech host?

Now, it seems as clear as a Bellagio fountain that clips stores were the future of “professional amateurs.” While much of the male-dominated porn studio system is fighting against stolen content, independent female artists have been able to establish a sustainable business, producing their own content and marketing it to a small but loyal fan base.

One such artist is Bratty Nikki, a leggy, half-Mexican, half-Irish woman with a frosty reality-TV aesthetic: blonde extensions, impossible nails, skin-tight miniskirts and designer spiked heels. She sat on a gleaming white couch in an enormous booth on the expo floor, calling attention to her shirt, which read; “Never underestimate the power of a girl who knows what she wants.”

“Never underestimate the power of a girl who knows what she wants,” says Bratty Nikki. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

Nikki is the executive vice president of IWantEmpire.com, an umbrella company that includes IWantClips, IWantPhone, IWantFanClub and IWantCustomClips, with more in the works. Hers is one of many companies vying for dominance in a sort of clips market arms race. Nikki got her start seven years ago working as an online financial dominatrix, offering phone and cam sessions to clients in which she expressed a personality she tells me isn’t really a character. “I am a greedy brat,” she says. “I believe that I deserve the best out of life. My fans love that I’m confident enough to say, ‘This is what I want and you’re gonna give it to me.'”

She started IWantEmpire with her husband, entrepreneur Jay Phillips, because she felt other host sites were underestimating her as an artist. Like other platforms, they take a cut of the profits, but the artist sets their own price and decides what and how much they want to upload. Their brand expanded to offer a store for consumers to order custom clips, and a fan club where artists can monetize social media-like “lifestyle” content. As it turns out, kinky consumers are willing to pay for content created by people who understand precisely what they’re looking for.

Like many fetish clips, Nikki’s videos don’t include sex or even nudity, just specialty monologues in which she teases, chastises and degrades her devotees. In the larger-than life video projected over us in the booth, she wore skinny jeans and a tank top, standing in an apartment entryway holding shopping bags. “Yes, I’m leaving you,” she spits at the camera with an exaggerated eye roll. “I’ve already maxed out your credit cards. Taken a bunch of vacations with my girlfriends that you paid for. You’re going to be sitting home alone tonight crying into your pillow as you hate-jerk your little cock.”

The audacity of financial domination is a perfect fit for naturally bossy women. Haven, a Haitian-American dominatrix from Orlando, says that when she was go-go dancing and camming she didn’t take direction from clients very well. When she discovered that she could make fetish clips online, it was a way for her to make a career off her genuine demeanor. “I really don’t want to talk to you; I really just want your money,” she deadpans. “That’s me, wholeheartedly.” Now she films around 15 short clips every Sunday, improvising on topics like small-penis humiliation or jack-off instruction. She spends the rest of the week editing footage, scheduling uploads, writing marketing copy and promoting her brand on social media.

Fans mill about the floor of the AEE. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

“It takes a lot of work to make this look so easy,” she says.

I tagged along to an afternoon of clip shoots at a local film studio run by porn director/performers Madeline Marlowe and Will Havoc. Havoc was pulling a red and black leather harness over his tattooed chest, preparing to shoot sex scenes with two porn stars named Riley Nixon and Arabelle Raphael.

Riley, who was nominated for Best New Starlet at the AVNs, wiggled into a canary-yellow latex two-piece and platform heels. As she filled out her legal paperwork, she kept squatting and yanking on the rubbery crotch of her outfit. Even though she was following a conventional route to adult film fame, signing at the Penthouse booth and shooting for notorious gonzo studio Elegant Angel, she also sold Skype shows, custom clips and signed Polaroids on her personal website. She would post today’s footage on her own ManyVids and OnlyFans pages, where fans can pay a monthly membership for access to exclusive content.

One advantage to making her own content is that she has more leeway to maintain her preferred androgynous style and buzzed head ­– some mainstream studios still won’t cast models with short hair or tattoos. “I’ll wear a wig to play a character, but I don’t want to have to wear a wig to play the role of a woman,” she complains.

Arabelle has had to deal with her own hair troubles in the industry. She’s a French-Persian Jew, and long ago grew tired of being expected to straighten her hair and use skin-lightening makeup to work with certain directors.

“I was being cast in really racist roles,” she says, “and basically told I was not good enough.” She took time off to build her own membership site, a Clips4Sale store, and an OnlyFans following, discovering unprecedented financial and emotional success. “I had no idea I was a good performer and that people wanted more content of me,” she says. “I left my hair curly, got as many tattoos as I wanted, shot with who I wanted.”

Riley, Arabelle and Will showed one another the results of their standard STI tests on the secure Performer Availability Scheduling Services database. They negotiated sexual boundaries and preferences while doing their own costuming and makeup. With low production cost and the creative advantage of working with friends, they’re each an individual porn studio unto themselves.

Will Havoc, Riley Nixon and Arabelle Raphael film a scene after hours. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

Porn stars work hard and party hard, and sometimes they work while they’re playing. Late that night, I was invited to a private sex party with a hard-to-obtain address. A Lyft took me away from the light pollution of the strip to an edge of town tract housing development. Through the unfurnished living room, past an ominously neon-lit pool, was a warehouse filled with porn stars smoking blunts and offering one another bumps in their rhinestone-encrusted nails.

Hired stars ascended to a sort of wrestling platform in the center of the room, performing exaggerated lubed-up sex for onlookers to the rhythm of deafening drone metal. My friends, a polyamorous “family,” decided to find a quieter room in which to play. As I enjoyed a beer and watched sex-worker activist Siouxsie Q fuck her curly-haired boyfriend Michael Vegas, an AVN nominee for Best Supporting Actor – as her Barbie-blonde pro-domme girlfriend Bella Bathory was eaten out in a nearby chair – it occurred to me that we were doing exactly what porn fans assumed we must be doing. I felt like I had ringside seats to watch NBA superstars play a pick-up game.

As the four-day convention wore on, the all-night partying didn’t threaten to slow anyone down. The AEE still makes the classic circuit demands of conventional porn stars, each scheduled to appear for three- to five-hour shifts, where they were to sign and sell eight-by-10 glossies, allow hands around their waists and shoulders, smile, twerk, tell fans how their favorite position is still reverse cowgirl, princess wave, talk to men like they’re babies, talk to men like they’re dogs. But it was the cam models who had the boundless energy, who behaved like Vine stars or friends at a slumber party that just happens to be surveilled. They hovered over their screens, promising to spank one another in exchange for tips; the ding of virtual tokens being earned echoed the slots at the nearby casino.

The models had each brought their own laptops, colorfully branded with their stage names. Most of them had elaborate production rigs including flattering ring lights, bulky webcams and phallic microphones. Cam models perform all kinds of explicit shows when they broadcast from their homes; but, due to city-wide nudity laws, they couldn’t wear less than pasties and a thong at AEE. That meant no dildo shows or live sex. Yet their chirpy conversation still had value for the members watching from home, some of whom had actually financed the travel for their favorite model.

Performers at the FreeCams booth. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

At the booth for the webcam company Chaturbate, both men and women were making cameos on one another’s screens. This seemed to be in defiance of the porn convention that objects of desire should be separated, lest a consumer’s taste be offended or boner deflated by something they weren’t expecting to see.

A male model named Leon with One-Direction hair and powder-blue briefs explained to me that one of his online fans had just told him he was enjoying watching all the broadcasts because, “It’s like seeing all of the characters from my favorite TV shows in a crossover episode!”

I approached a group of giggling young camgirls in pastel-colored wigs. They were teasing a group of bystanders, telling them to tune in to their group cam show later that night “to see some real action.”

I asked them if they were hoping that in future years they’d be as famous as the porn stars in the Wicked or Evil Angel booths? Did they want everyone to know their names?

One of the models shook her head vigorously, making her unicorn-horn headband wobble. “The more famous you get,” she pointed out, “the more people will pirate your content.”

Her friend, who was wearing a mesh leotard with skeleton hands covering her nipples, agreed: “We make more money when only our fans know who we are.”

MyFreeCams performer Lil Miss Angel at the 2018 AEE. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

With the national conversation surrounding #MeToo, it was no surprise that the sex workers at AEE were ready to address the topics of harassment and bodily autonomy. Members of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee (APAC) handed out colorful “What Is Consent?” flyers, which illustrated how consent is “informed” and “freely given,” and that it “can be revoked at any time.”

For the second year in a row, every single convention attendee – fans and exhibitors alike – was required to sign a Code of Conduct form that outlined, for example, the difference between a consensual public picture and a violation such as an upskirt.

The Code of Conduct described a zero-tolerance policy towards “stalking, unwelcome physical contact” and “offensive verbal assaults,” emphasizing that guests were “welcome to use the restroom that match their gender presentation or identity.” This last stipulation was especially welcome from the trans community attending the awards, as two years ago several performers accused Hard Rock security guards of disrespecting a gender non-conforming attendee.

Some participants were aware of ways they could make their models more comfortable. Best director nominee Greg Lansky, a delightfully flashy French pornographer in a red Givenchy tracksuit, says that he literally elevates his studio so that fans can see women “on a pedestal.” His security teams knows which performers are ok hugging and touching their fans and which aren’t.

“I’m trying to make these girls feel good about what they do,” he says. “They all worked really hard to get here.”

With security at all corners of his booth, with its Instagrammable gold couch and open bar, Lansky believes fans get the message that women deserve respect.

“It’s hard for me to go anywhere [in the hotel],” says Jessica Drake, a Best Actress nominee, from the relative privacy of her pristine media suite. “Guys congregate in groups of 30 and just stand there. They circle you. I’ve become a master of taking a selfie and restraining them at the same time.”

Director and performer Joanna Angel, owner of the alt genre site Burning Angel, says she’s never had a bad experience with a fan at AEE. “The fans are traveling to be here,” she says. “They’re really looking forward to this. People wait in really long lines to come see you.” The only time she’s seen nonconsensual groping is from men at the bar after the convention, whom casino security quickly ejected. “I wouldn’t even call guys like that fans,” she says, just entitled jerks.

Ron Jeremy, who has been considered more of a walking novelty than active performer for many years, was banned from the convention and awards show following his claim that groping is a part of the job of his pubic appearances.

In a statement to Rolling Stone, AVN CEO Tony Rios commented, “Ron Jeremy admitted guilt to specific aspects of our code of conduct policy. We discussed this with Ron, and he was not allowed to attend the convention and awards show.”

However, performer/director James Deen, who was accused of on-set misconduct as well as intimate partner violence back in 2015, was nominated at and attended the awards.

Rios clarified, “We did not prohibit people from attending based on accusations.”

Siouxsie Q, who was recently elected secretary of APAC, is upset about what she sees as double standards, where the young, powerful Deen is still welcomed while aging Jeremy is put out to pasture.

“I think we see similar trends in Hollywood. These accounts of Harvey Weinstein’s predatory behavior aren’t coming out during the height of the Kill Bill franchise, but rather in the soggy aftermath of Paddington Bear 2,” she says. “As someone’s star dwindles, people are more willing to watch them fall.”

Deen’s attorney Michael Fattorosi characterized comparisons to Jeremy as “inaccurate and unfair.” In a statement, he said, “James was never investigated criminally, nor were there ever any lawsuits filed against him by any of the accusers. Nor did James ever admit to any misconduct on his part.”

And unlike other industries where powerful men continue to be reckoned, those in porn face powerful taboos. “It’s challenging for adult performers to speak out regarding any abuse that occurs; it is because it perpetuates stigma and allows for society to tell us we asked for it,” says Tasha Reign, an APAC chairperson.

Siouxsie Q agrees that stigma plays a huge role in consent controversies within the sex industry. “As long as sex workers have as much difficulty as they do when reporting and prosecuting sexual assault,” she says, “there will continue to be a culture of silence, victim scrutiny, and inconsistencies in how the industry responds.”

Janice Griffith was nominated for the Best Actress award at the AVNs. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

“What do you think of this dress? It’s very ‘Times Up,’ but is it whorey enough?”

Janice Griffith, a Best Actress nominee, is in her hotel room preparing for the awards. It’s true that her black cocktail dress is not as provocative as some of her colleagues’ revealing red-carpet looks. The teal undertone in her ombre hair is fading. She’s Indo-Caribbean, Angelina Jolie-skinny, and speaks with a husky authority. She barks at her date not to interrupt her, impulsively dumping out a jar of candy because there’s nowhere else for him to pour her a fresh vodka cocktail.

None of Janice’s friends in attendance know how to roll a joint. I’m happy to oblige, so she gratefully hands me a packet of rolling papers the size of a hot dog and a sack of sativa the size of my laptop.

“Our biggest issue is that we treat an industry of freelancers as if we’re an industry of employees,” Janice says. Despite the efforts of the Adult Performer Advocacy Committee and Free Speech Coalition, in her view, porn is currently too under-regulated for meaningful accountability.

“When men make women uncomfortable, we brush it off,” she says, “because we know people will write us off as being over-reactive or emotional.”

I visited many porn star rooms and saw both their self care safeguards and true psychological states – Sephora explosions and Cosco-sized boxes of Tangerine Emergen-cee, elaborate dabbing rigs and electric kettles. Janice had brought Complete Works of Kierkegaard.

Harli Lotts, co-host of the AVNs, dons a suicide awareness and prevention ribbon on the red carpet. Roger Kisby for Rolling Stone

As the red carpet wound its way through the Hard Rock, gamblers and bar patrons scrambled for a glimpse of the stars. While many pornographers opted for prom-worthy gowns and suits, their outfits nodded to their profession with bare midriffs, waist-high slits and undulating décolletage. Some wore little more than fringed bikinis. Lance Hart, founder of the PervOUT network, stood out in a stripper-style policeman’s shirt and fishnet stockings; he was handcuffed to his date Charlotte Sartre, who revealed on Twitter that she was not wearing anything underneath her slinky black dress. Abella Danger, last year’s Best New Starlet, shimmered in a transparent bodysuit adorned with strategically placed green and pink crystals.

The AVN awards show was predictably raunchy but surprisingly sincere. Co-hosted by comedian Aries Spears, Australian performer/director Angela White and camgirl Harli Lotts, the event’s biggest draw was hip-hop star Lil Wayne, who performed two high-energy sets with a drummer and DJ. The teleprompter dialog meshed well with the talents of porn star presenters, who were well-practiced in the art of the arched eyebrow and exaggerated wink.

White set a record by winning fourteen awards, the most AVN wins in one night. Clutching her Female Performer of the Year trophy to her remarkable cleavage, she emotionally thanked her co-stars for “allowing me to be vulnerable.”

Tommy Pistol, the Best Actor winner for a film called Ingenue, praised the industry for being a “fucked up family.”

Yet Spears, a MADtv alum, did not seem to pick up on the changing attitudes in the room. “Your personal space should not be invaded,” he declared, before utterly failing to read the room. “However, you bitches look delicious tonight. If I should come up to you and beg you for a blowjob, can you blame me? I am a hot blooded heterosexual male in a room full of professional cocksuckers.”

Eventually, the celebration came to an end. The false eyelashes were peeled off, the hangovers medicated with Ibuprofen and brunch. Pornographers’ minds return to their business, and to the social challenges they continue to face.

“We demand so much from porn stars,” says Bree Mills, a lesbian writer and director. “Performers who have made successful careers could be mentors. Give them infrastructure. Get them an appointment with an accountant, get them health care. They get the stigma stamp on them harder than anybody. We have to take care of them.”

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dear yuletide author (2017)

hello and welcome to my letter!

i am so happy to have you reading this letter and going to be writing a fic for me! why? because you dear writer are an amazing and wonderful person, deserving of all the kudos in the world!

please remember as you look at these prompts, that if something in my likes inspires you more than any of my specific prompts, totally feel free and run with that, and know that i will enjoy any fic that is gifted to me!!

ao3/lj handle: plinys

now lets get down to business:

the fandoms i’ve requested this year are:Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator, Galavant (TV), Legion (TV), Powerless (TV 2017), Star Trek: Discovery, Young & Hungry

but before that, my likes/kinks/dislikes/triggers:

likes: alternate universes, characters that are in character, lady-centric fics, angst, fandom cliches, dysfunctional relationships, friendships, friends/enemies to lovers, soul mates, road trips, hanukkah fics, jewish characters, bisexual characters, poly relationships, character studies, origin stories, ambiguous endings, meta fic, slow build, fics that incorporate social media, crack treated seriously, drunk confessions, miscommunication,

kinks: threesomes, competence kink, phone sex, masturbation, crying during sex, hate sex, shower sex, praise kink, guys going down on girls, rough sex, first time, spanking, daddy kink, sex in front of mirrors, voyeurism, make up sex

dislikes: pwp, main character death (unless it really makes sense/happens in canon), character bashing, non-con, mpreg, a/b/o, 1st person.

my triggers (please no matter what do not include these): school shootings, cancer, terminal illness, riots, child abuse.

and now to the fun stuff -

Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator

requested characters: mary christiansen, joseph christiansen, crish christiansen

where to find: it’s a video game on steam, you can purchase for about $15, otherwise there’s plenty of walkthroughs of people playing it on youtube. recommended routes: joseph, robert, and damien to get the full christiansen story family backstory.

anyways first play through i did josephs route and he broke my heart, and i was like wow mary deserves better and then after playing robert and damien i was like no wow mary deserves the world, so as long as your gift doesn’t include mary bashing im happy

would love any backstory on this family (featuring robert in any way is totally welcome), whether its weird family stuff, crack fic, the cult stuff. like im pretty open on this one

specific prompts:

cult backstory, give me that hidden cult ending. give me them joining the cult together when they were young. give me them scheming together or scheming separately. or give me mary realizing she’s married a gay demon only after the fact and its too late to get out. like honestly give me anything cult

the mystery of crish? i can’t believe he’s in the character list and now i want someone to explain why we’ve never met him? does he really exist? this can (and probably should be total crack)

remember how i mentioned robert was an option, feel free to mix in his connections with the family, the affair that clearly happened. being part of their cult. mary just bonding with her best friend and being drunk together? joseph fucking robert while mary is aware of what is going on. how they even became friends with all that happened?

honestly, there’s just so much not explained about the christiansen family, so anything about them is 100% up my alley.

Galavant (TV)

requested characters: madalena (galavant), gareth (galavant)

where to find: both season are on netflix!

so im biased because i was convinced to watch this show because of my mallory jansen, so madalena is of course my favorite character. and then this ship hit me out of nowhere, so now here i am

im either looking for madalena centric fic, or shippy fic with the both of them

specific prompts:

the end of s2 left so many openings that weren’t explored because we never got a s3 but give me madalena learning to do the d’dew, and getting to finally be the evil queen that she deserves wow

also feel free to give me that shippy stuff with gareth going to save her, and then realizing how much they love each other (as they should have wow)

alternatively a fix-it for the finale where madalena chooses gareth over the d’dew and they figure out where they can go from there. rebuild that trust, just be happy together though still sorting things out because now they do’t have a kingdom

smut? this ship is built for smut? madalena literally has a body built for sin, give me that sin

alternatively, give me fluffy, them finally getting to be“happy” together, madalena learning to have emotions and to love

also for non shippy plot any future fic for madalena or character study set during season 2/post season 2 would be the dream

Legion (TV)

requested characters: cary loudermilk, kerry loudermilk

where to find: honestly i have no clue? fx? pirating sites? i watched this one live when it was airing.

this show hit me with so much backstory and explanation not given and like that’s the aesthetic of the show, but i was specifically drawn to these two and their unique set of powers and i just ?? need more??

while i’m mostly into gen for these two, if you want to do weird stuff, like, i’m curious and not opposed (does it count as incest if they’re technically the same person?)

specific prompts:

BACKSTORY, any thing with their backstory, build on what canon told us and give me more, like what is it like for cary to keep aging on while kerry stays younger, what are the limits of their powers, how much can they feel

that hurt comfort after the stuff that happened towards the end of the season, like these two need to bond and recover after all the trauma

5 times they were overly protective of each other

just man their dynamic is so weird and i need that to be explored, feel free to ship them with any of the other characters or ?? with each other if youre into that?? just like give me more of these two

actually, does it count as incest if their the same person is now a prompt, like maybe someone asks that? idk man just discuss

Powerless (TV 2017)

requested characters: beatriz da costa | green fury (powerless), emily locke

where to find: this is another i have no clue situation im sorry

this show got canceled because it was like bad dc sitcom airing the same night as arrow but before it did it gave me this hint of femslash potential and tbh this is why im most offended that it was canceled

specific prompts:

so if the show had lasted longer i am convinced that beatriz and emily would have been gay together, so give these ladies the show they deserved and tell the story of them falling in love

the news already thinks their dating so what about super villains, how many times does emily get kidnapped for being the green fury’s girlfriend before they actually art (or before she realizes she actually is)

how does dating a superhero effect her work life

also just emily loves superheroes, so she’s probably so pumped to be dating one like“wow babe can you believe im dating a superhero” and beatriz like“we were just making out obviously youre dating a superhero”

give me cute gay girls honestly

Star Trek: Discovery

requested characters: michael burnham (star trek: discovery), saru (star trek: discovery)

where to find: cbs all access! its ongoing, as i write this letter on its second episode!

okay since this show is ongoing these prompts might get joss’d but it’s too late to go back because two episodes in got me interested in the dynamic between these two

this can be gen (and feature other ships if you want) or can be shippy for these two. im pretty open since this show is so new.

specific prompts:

so they were together on the shenzhou for 7 years according to canon so lets get some back story between these two, how did they get to where they were. was there rivalry between the two of them from the very beginning? how does saru feel about someone who has never been to the academy out ranking him? bridge disagreement shenanigans? their captain locking them in a room until their sort out their issues

like, do you want to write alien sex? because a part of me wants to receive alien sex so like? this is an option?

what about them now both on the discovery together, that distrust because of what happen on the shenzhou? building up into something new? better than before? building into feeling that may have been hidden all along?

on the discovery, forced to work together to save the team and putting their issues asside for the good of everyone else

honestly i just feel like they were supposed to be the spock/bones dynamic of the shenzhou before things went bad and like ??? i want that ??

Young & Hungry

requested characters: caroline huntington

where to find: it’s all on netflix (though caroline only appears in season one)

yet another show i watched because of mallory jansen, and her character is only in the first season and really all i cared about on this show so guess who i want backstory for

specificprompts:

caroline character study? i mean, she’s written as the rich bitch girlfriend rival in the show but let’s just say she deserves better, flush her out and give her life for me

she definitely deserves better than josh, and i like femslash so pair her with one of the girls in the tag set if you want

just more on her and the horse from young & pregnant this is mostly crack but like also

consider for a second that instead of the plot being gabi sleeps with josh on the first day and starts all of the show drama. what if instead she sleeps with caroline, and we get the aftermath of“oh hey i slept with my new boss’s finace, this isnt awkward at all” rewrite of season 1 with 95% more femslash

just give me more caroline

ANYWAYS, I HOPE YOU ENJOYED MY LETTER AND I’LL LOVE WHATEVER YOU DECIDE TO WRITE ME!

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