enforcer's slimyboy thoughts

I do think that as far as crowd response goes, my song choices were excellent, but vocal range is definitely a concern. (Plus, the more something is in my range, the more confident I can be in it and that's probably a substantial factor.)

Hence my attachment to scenemo canon. I could probably theoretically do more classic / standard metal with a female lead, but the fact that I can't name any offhand suggests that probably eliminates the benefit of less scene choices of crowd appeal and recognizability, which is why I went for Paranoid today in the first place. Good news is that System Of A Down is both recognizable and in a viable range.

I've found that for throat stuff, heating up a cup of water in the microwave and loading it into the hydroflask is pretty effective. I think I'm going to pare down to once a week given the semester starting, both because Saturday is a more viable day than Thursday especially if I want to substitute teach on Fridays (especially if i'm staying for fan interactions or contest voting until 2 am) and because I don't think I was quite fully recovered from both doing two pretty intense songs and talking to everyone for a long while afterwards on Thursday.

Notes to self:

(A) show up early for next month's contest. Because I registered in advance, there was confusion about where my form was.

(B) Black Sabbath is not quite in my comfortable vocal range, so I had to do some awkward head to chest switching.

Two people have separately done this. One of them was a very pretty, very white guy who kind of reminded me of Max That One. The other was an if anything even whiter woman.

I respect their commitment to the bit, and their willingness to try. Not sure if it's a good bit to commit to, but I respect the effort. They both didn't do that bad of jobs either.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/afroman/crazyrap-2000.html

[this was originally sent in texts on August 27th. I thought I posted it here, but I apparently didn't.]

So, I was thinking out loud about Pick Up The Phone (and how, since we don't know the timeframe for either its production or that whole mess, we can't confirm if its terrifying resemblance to Sally's testimonies and court documents is a coincidence or not), and had an epiphany about yet another consistency hole in Ronnie Lore.

These two things are canon:

1. Ronnie got out of prison on his birthday in 2010. (Most recently attested by the UK tour "announcement". We know he was in prison for 2 years starting in 08, and was not in prison the first half of 08, so the year can be inferred.)

2. The Drug In Me Is You was recorded in December 2010. (I Can Explain)

...one of those is probably wrong. While we know that Jacky and Derek picked Ronnie up from prison and set him up in the FIR Frat House, so Ronnie's job and housing were set, I still think he'd have more important things to do. Also, even if Ronnie doesn't celebrate Christmas, the other FIR guys may have. And even if nobody celebrated, the Epitaph production guy in Florida probably took a Christmas break from work. So, given when Ronnie's birthday is, if he did get out of prison on his birthday, there wasn't much December 2010 left. In order for those both to be true with the producer taking a Christmas break, he would need to go from "just out of jail" to "TDIMIY fully recorded" in a week. That just isn't plausible. (Even without Christmas, going from fresh out of prison to TDIMIY fully recorded in 16 days seems unlikely.)

Especially since I Can Explain also attests something too specific to not be true: the boys had to drive from Vegas to Florida to get to the studio because Ronnie lost his ID, which kept them from flying. So that takes up at least a full day by itself. Also, all of the songs would need to be written down. Even if Ronnie came up with most of them in prison, they would still need to have their lyrics written down and approved in a form outside of his brain, and I don't think you get writing utensils in solitary. And I suspect they also needed to be musically composed and approved before recording, unless the others just ad-libbed to Ronnie's nonsense. (This is canon for The Departure [demo].) Also, if we believe I Can Explain, TDIMIY was supposed to be two albums, so that's a whole another set of tracks that would need to be established.

Long story short, the logistics just don't line up. So someone is probably wrong.

(Yes, I am aware that when Ronnie got out of prison is probably public record. While I keep the BGC court case documents up in order to address the blatant misinformation about it common in the FIR fanbase, any other legal stuff isn't FIR related and feels a bridge too far to seek out. There's a line between research and stalking and seeking out Ronnie's legal documents feels like it crosses it.)

I know that some of the artists I've assessed, when they've done 20th anniversary re-recordings, have fully rewritten given lines to remove slurs. Most notably, Senses Fail has updated things on re-recording to remove misogynistic slurs with which the lead is no longer comfortable. But I can understand a band who has a very popular song that uses a slur being hesitant to do that, because fans are attached to the original and will notice, and HU being predominantly rap gives them less room to fudge rhymes.

Note that there is also the possible reason that Hollywood Undead does not care, which may be more likely than "don't want to disrupt the rhyme scheme, and being predominantly rap means they'd have to rewrite a lot of lines in order to effectively replace the offending word". Seeing as they tour with FIR quite regularly, and even though they might have claimed their early output was satirical and intended to make fun of asshole fratbro scene kids, they then proceeded to act like that in real life so who knows.

In most HU songs that use "faggot" generically, it's generally at the end of a line and sets up several rhyming lines, which makes it much harder to effectively replace than words in the middle of lines, and rap-like structure, you can't fudge pronunciation nearly as well as you can melodically without it notably sounding off.

For an example of how you have more options to replace in the middle of lines, Green Day's Jesus Of Suburbia contains the line "am I retarded or am I just overjoyed". While I'm confident that they're using it for a valid artistic reason in alignment with the themes of the album and their standpoints in real life, that's not a word I'm comfortable using because it hasn't been used on me, but does get used against my demographic. So I substitute the line for "am I the one to blame or simply overjoyed", which works thematically and even hits on the same concept via the pun on "simple". But I can do that because the slur is in the middle of the line, so I only have to worry about syllable stress. Hollywood Undead can't do that for the most part. (Although Undead [song], their most popular using it, has no excuse, since it's not at the end of the line and seems to be mostly being used for its phonemes + hard vowel plus it being from 2008, so there are other options.)

However, Nobody Likes Me (the main song using "faggot" I might actually WANT to reclaim) does use it at the end of lines, and the notion of replacing it with "Mabbitt" is mostly a joke. That kind of wouldn't work with the vibe, especially since even most FIR fans agree that Craig is quite a nice guy.

I think the other HU songs that use it do so at the end of lines, though, so they also have that problem. I haven't really assessed them much since Rockzilla, though, since I got to see them live and prove my cred, but I can't really...take them seriously anymore? Plus, you know, friends with Ronnie and remained friends with him post-June 2024, which combined with their continued use of Generic Faggot, is Yikes, Batman.

FYI, there are no canonical FIR songs that use "faggot". The only one that does is unreleased So What, which uses it in the context of Ronnie quoting a mythical hater, to which he responds with "there's nothing wrong with being gay". It's nice to know that at least as of 2015-ish (?) he recognized that using that word was bad at least if it was on him.

However, it is used very enthusiastically throughout the solo album, and on the otherwise actually kind of good Nobody Likes Me. Which Deuce, despite his roots in also-enthusiastic Hollywood Undead, does not do on said song.

I don't think that either he nor Hollywood Undead are really using it in a homophobic context, though, as opposed to it being acceptable in their genre to use as a generic swear word at the time and that it's much easier to rhyme than the alternatives. Still makes me uncomfortable, though, since unlike Green Day specifically using it as a statement of defiance in a protest song (while backing it up with being legitimately supportive otherwise), they don't have a good reason. There's no point in it except shock value and being a generic swear word that's easy to rhyme.

Hollywood Undead still plays their flagship songs that use the word generically uncensored, at least as of 2023, but I don't really think they have a choice. They can't NOT play Undead since it's their image song. There's nothing good to substitute it for without disrupting the rhyme scheme, and their fanbase would probably object if they censored it in a way that interfered with the rhyme scheme, which, say, replacing it with "fucker" would do.

Someone needs to invent a two-syllable swear word that ends in the same phoneme specifically for artistic purposes. I know that when Eminem covers lyrics using the N-word, which he has overtly stated that he is not okay with using, he uses "cracker" in order to make it self-deprecating, and that rhymes, but there's no substitute for "faggot".

Honestly, further into the question of "who the fuck is doing Bad Girls Club at karaoke?":

1. I have never met a male Falling In Reverse fan namedrop BGC as one of their favorites. Its fans seem to mostly be women, who like the idea of the "bad girls club" as a name for the female FIR fanbase, or being part of Ronnie's harem as presented in the video.

2. The song is very clearly written from a male perspective. Like, the worst possible male perspective.

3. It's the only FIR song to use the cunt word (albeit spelled, but that's more than most songs typically do), which it is clearly using in relation to a woman. In my understanding, in Commonwealth countries (at least Britain and Australia), it's acceptable to use "cunt" as a generic swear word when referring to your male buddies or to groups. However, using it for an individual woman falls under the slur category. In US English, it's basically unacceptable no matter what, and one of the words that may be deemed legal grounds for physical violence if used on a woman.

It's a song that contains a word that would only be appropriate to use in public if you're a woman (and even then, that's debatable), but is using it from a blatantly male and misogynistic perspective. And that only seems to have female fans. So, in order to do it at karaoke, you'd either need to be okay with using the cunt word in public as a man, which I think even FIR fans would be hesitant to on grounds of not wanting to get kicked out or punched in the face (without the shield of other FIR fans around them), or if you're a woman, you need to either be attracted to women or willing to be a terrible guy for 3 minutes. So, not a song that would work well at karaoke. So who the fuck requested it?

I don't know if generic cunt is acceptable in Canadian English or not. Still, though, it's a word that I only use if I'm quoting someone or in relation to completely awful men, because it's been used on me so I think I have the right to use it for Ronnie or political fuckwads if warranted. However, there is no winning condition if I use it, or any other of the misogynistic slurs that have been used on me, for a woman. If I'm allowed to, then they perceive me as a woman. If I'm not, then I just called someone a slur.

My policy for slurs is that I can use them in artistically justified contexts if they've been used on me. Artistically justified is decided on a case by case basis. In stories, I'll write them out if they're being used in a reclaimed context, but not insultingly. So, Arlo can call himself a faggot if he wants, but if OTL calls him that it'll get censored. This only applies to words that have been used on me. If, say, OTL uses any ableist slurs that haven't been used on me, they will get censored no matter what.

Artistically justified means if they really deserve it, if I'm speaking literally (e.g. "you made out with my boyfriend for money. You ARE some kind of man-hoe"), in writing if it's important for the emotional tone of the story, or case by case in song lyrics depending on the intent of the artist. So, I'd be okay with doing American Idiot uncensored at karaoke because it has a good artistic reason to be using the word "faggot", and that's been used on me. I wouldn't be okay with covering any of the Hollywood Undead songs that use it generically, because it isn't serving any purpose there that a non-slur swear word couldn't. Save being easier to rhyme.

(for Ronnie's solo output, there's the option of replacing it with "Mabbitt", which is probably who it's about anyway. However, why would you ever want to touch any of Ronnie's solo output?)

I'm also willing to use any slur uncensored if I'm quoting someone for journalistic purposes or to critique them, because censoring direct quotes is just confusing. This is only relevant in relation to Ronnie.

I have no idea why Pick Up The Phone is on the KaraFun database. I'm Not A Vampire and TDIMIY, yeah. They're the flagships. Fashionably Late (song) makes sense. Bad Girls Club shouldn't exist and I can't imagine anyone being willing to do it at karaoke, but it's unfortunately among the top 10 most popular FIR songs, at least before PM2024. The singles make sense. Good Girls Bad Guys is generally well-liked, and at least according to Ronnie, might have gotten a TikTok boost around 2020.

But Pick Up The Phone, even most FIR fans don't seem to like or talk about much. Most of the Yewchube comments are either "Ronnie is so cute" or "uh, this song is fucked up so you really shouldn't be saying it'd be cute if your boyfriend did this", which tells you that especially by TDIMIY standards, it's not very well-liked. It's deeply fucked thematically without the "humor" of Bad Girls Club, and hasn't been played live since The Drug In Me Is Gold in 2020.

I have no idea why it's present when more, well, fun, and better known among FIR canon songs e.g. Fuck You And All Your Friends, Just Like You (song), and Raised By Wolves are absent. Or who the hell wanted to do it and/or Bad Girls Club at karaoke.

I'm thinking that for my contest two songs tonight, I'll do Paranoid (Black Sabbath, one of my Amazon Music era faves) and BYOB (System Of A Down), on grounds that even though I'm Not A Vampire is thematically cohesive, no one in the building except me is likely to know Falling In Reverse. It seems that (a) the edgier folks there are more metal than core, and FIR isn't much of either and (b) save that TCPIM used to live in Toronto, the furthest I've heard anyone reference going for a concert is Alberta. FIR has never been anywhere in Canada further east than Toronto.

Black Sabbath will DEFINITELY go over well, and those two provide contrast in vibes and style while both being from recognizable and popular artists among the cohort of people who go to karaoke at Dooly's. System Of A Down went over very well when I did Chop Suey, and I think was what convinced the participants that I was legit. BYOB also contains screaming, but a lower amount of it (Tears Don't Fall was pushing it both in terms of being on the lower end of my range and quantity of screaming + length), which will be better for preserving HP and MP and having the screaming being built up to by melodic vocals. I used a lot on Thursday, hence spending most of Friday curled into a little ball. Screaming gets me a VERY enthusiastic response, on grounds of uniqueness, folks being impressed that I have the balls to try it at karaoke, and that based on reviews, I'm decently good at it. (Plus it helps that I'm freaking adorable, and can therefore play on contrast of expectations. Even though most of the regulars know me by now.)

Plus, System has a higher range than most nu metal so is more viable for me to do. As much as I love Slipknot, Korn, and Disturbed, they're really lower than my comfortable range. So I have some of their more melodic songs on my karaoke playlist, but I don't think their screaming-led stuff I could do without embarrassing myself. The guy with the thick Indian accent pointed out that I should try to go more from my chest vs. my throat which I absolutely agree with and I'll try to change my stance today, but I've had a harder time accessing the deeper screaming-compatible chest voice since getting on T just because my larynx has moved and there's a definite feeling of tightness in my throat just at baseline, which I've been told is normal. (plus I'm just barely out of the squeaking stage.)

Scenemo canon mostly avoids range issues by being predominantly guys with tenor ranges to start with, even among the ones that scream. However, it has VERY limited karaoke selections, recognizability aside. The songs that are viable and contain notable screaming on the KaraFun database, I've kinda already done.

I need to log in on desktop and try to request the rest of my faves. As it stands, the only FIR songs with screaming in them on the KaraFun database are Pick Up The Phone (if it predates Sally, harsher in hindsight. if it postdates her, Bad Girls Club level vile. the required data about the timeframe of TDIMIY's production and that relationship in relation to each other does not exist, and Ronnie is the only person who would know and isn't a helpful source), Popular Monster (2019), and Watch The World Burn. There's nothing WRONG with PM2019 and WTWB (well, if you ignore WTWB's video), but I just don't like the company that they keep. They're also predominantly rap-based slash very limited range, so I don't think they'd work too well in a karaoke environment.

While Rookidee is pretty clearly supposed to be a raven given its name, evolutions, and knight motif, I just realized that it also looks a lot like Daisy.

There's definitely something Hitchcockian about the spawn density, which combined with Corviknight being Flanderized!Saraya's favorite and ace Pokemon, conjures the image of Ronnie going outside unaware that community day was happening and being pretty freaked out.

"...they found me. They found me and they know and they're mad at me. She sent them."

So cut to him fleeing to Instinct HQ and hiding in the basement under a blanket from all those terrifying Route 1 bird chicks. Spark thinks it's hilarious. Arlo, of course, seizes the chance to be the bigger man and save OTL from all those terrifying tiny birds.

"They're gonna eat me!"

"Mr. Ronnie, they're scavengers. They don't eat mammals alive. They would totally eat your eyes and organs if you died, though."

"...so why are they circling?"

falling in reverse's bassist who left / got kicked out in June has found a new job with a different band with a fun and funky debut song. FIR fans think this was his band before Tyler was with FIR, but their Facebook page calls this their "debut single" and there are no online records I could find (although there are a lot of bands with the same name which makes it difficult) of previous published output.

American Monster - Welcome Home (Yewchube)

Plus it lets me get in some screaming etcetera practice somewhere I'm confident I won't get the cops called on me or disturb neighbors.

(The thing in the back of my head that speaks in Ronnie's voice has also been very well behaved lately, probably because he has an outlet for the Urges. Just wish that KaraFun had...literally any EtF song other than Situations?)

Just need to figure out how to interact with fans? I'm never quite sure what to do about compliments, and as soon as I'm not on stage, I go back to Awkward Twink mode. Which I think works in my favor re: the bikers being quite fond of me, but it would be nice to have a more eloquent response than "uh, thank you?"

Well, I'm counting this as a resounding success, since I got a longer conversation with The Coolest Person In Redactedville's wife, who revealed the lore that I have earned the respect of TCPIR's biker friends, who laughed at me at first before he intervened because I'm fucking good at what I do. TCPIR's wife also used the phrase "I know heavy metal, and you embody it."

Also got approached post-performance by a guy with a thick Indian accent who wanted to tell me about the band he used to be in, recommendations, and suggestions for screaming technique. I ended up giving him my email for said recommendations. For another extremely gender affirming reference, he referred to me as "a master of my art" and praised my taste.

Got to show two people the music scene spreadsheet, and I think the Tuesday DJ is trying to set me up with their genderfluid kid in Postbac School's (which isn't predominantly postbacs like me) graphic design department? DJ Alli is apparently also genderfluid, which I assume they mentioned to me because they clocked me.

And I think my Three Days Grace enjoyer housemate was pretty impressed, which was mostly the point. I have proven my Scene Cred.

(song choices: AFI - Miss Murder and Bullet For My Valentine - Tears Don't Fall)

The Coolest Person In Redactedville being an elderly biker I've seen around who's always in full badass gear, and also directly complimented my performance, and that's an opinion I definitely deem valid re: my metal cred. I don't recall if I have been told or know his name or not.

But long story short, it seems that I have picked up a following among the bar regulars, which is neat. Plus I think my presence has made others more willing to pick edgier choices since I have opened the floodgates.

me, describing karaoke and why I like doing it with FIR songs despite listening to them kinda making me sad: "it's Falling In Reverse, with 100% less Ronnie! [Remembers what my gender presentation is] ...okay, maybe more like 90% less Ronnie."

monologue: "really? your percentage is that low?"

OK, I guess if it was the first part of 08, Ronnie wouldn't have been in prison, but it still stands that there is unlikely to have been any stylistic influence, especially since DIYLF doesn't do that. This style is what Ronnie does left to his own devices or when he's producing / composing for another band. Which he really isn't qualified to do for FIR, let alone anyone else? He's a horrible mixture of the kid who does the entire group project by himself and being too arrogant to recognize other people have skills, and that he isn't good at everything. (Really, save singing, looking pretty, and being mean, he's bad at most things and the quality of all of those is rapidly deteriorating.)

I suppose it's possible that there's an overlap in staff, but I don't think that's likely since Ronnie never learned to share and ATL even as of 08 would be much bigger than the other two. So I think it's a coincidence re: this song's resemblance to Get Scared and FIR's lighter tracks, but an interesting one.

Now, this one almost gives Get Scared vibes. Both the lyrical sensibilities and that bouncier structure are pretty trademark of Get Scared's lighter tracks, and also a lot of stuff Ronnie produces. This is definitely a coincidence, though, since Ronnie was still in prison and I'm not totally sure if Get Scared existed in any meaningful sense as of when this song came out. Still, it's interesting that with some comparatively minor changes, the difference in edge and vibes between All Time Low and their contemporaries in "emo pop" is drastic.

All Time Low - Stella (Yewchube)

Current assessment: All Time Low

A lot of popular "emo pop" comes off to me as more pop than emo. E.g. Simple Plan, All-American Rejects, Yellowcard, The Wonder Years, Boys Like Girls, and Anberlin. Without notably edgier lyrics than standard pop and without notable punk / metal elements, they lack the Special Emo Sauce. Even if they do carry inspiration from 90s DC emotional hardcore (which they do, hence their vital role in bringing emo-influenced work to a wider audience and relevance to my mission), they don't feel vibes congruent or any different from a contemporary standard pop breakup song.

All Time Low is different. Even though they lack screaming, they remind me more of something like Silverstein or Hawthorne Heights. Something about their vocal delivery and production carries the Special Emo Sauce for me, and I can't place what, since they're still poppier than most I like. If I had to guess, it's that they have the more for lack of a better word "whiny" elongated-vowels vocal style and more densely packed, faster, and more compressed instrumentation, which gives them more of a post-hardcore vibe? They also do more image oriented lyrics, which helps with the Special Emo Sauce. Without poetry about it you're just whining, you know?

Taking Back Sunday also had the Special Emo Sauce in terms of their vocal delivery and production feeling emo / post-hardcore to me in a way that many standard "emo pop" bands don't. I just didn't like their vocal production and delivery; their having two vocalists and not layering, and their having close but not quite identical ranges, made every song feel slightly "off" and disjointed.

If you want a comparison and to help me elucidate where the Special Emo Sauce that AAR and their peers lack and ATL has:

All Time Low - Lullabies (Yewchube)

All American Rejects - Stab My Back (Yewchube)

Lore tidbits from upcoming Go Fest 2025 story:

Timeline of backstory for Arlo's dad / why he left when and where he did, and why he didn't take the family with him, and important points of their conversation:

1: Had less to lose. Had been long distance with Arlo's mom for 10+ years prior to moving to Kanto and Arlo's birth, and by virtue of being an immigrant who didn't natively speak the language, and mostly keeping to himself and his technology (in case you wondered where Arlo gets it from), had way less of an established life and social contacts in Kanto and was more equipped to work remotely. Arlo's mom had an established career he didn't want to interfere with, and Silph definitely needed her during the fallout from their biggest PR crisis to date.

2: Concern for financial future, as already discussed -- Kanto's tech industry was in crisis; with even Silph and other companies of comparable size struggling, the indie open source software company Victor was working for didn't stand a chance. Plus Arlo's mom's job security at Silph wasn't assured, so someone had to do something to ensure a financial future for the family.

3: Arlo had clearly expressed ambitions of Pokemon training from the moment he could verbalize, hence why the last thing his dad did with him before leaving was taking him to a 2000 Pokemon League exhibition match to go see Red. Alola did not have a Pokemon League until 2016, so there were a lot more opportunities available in Kanto.

4: He honestly didn't intend to be gone as long as he was, and the company he worked for in Alola was open to letting him work remotely from Kanto or take vacation. However, other canon historical events got in the way. It took Victor several years to get established in Alola and to get into a position where working remotely or taking vacation was viable (and for his residency to be established), and then starting in 2005 after the XD001 incident, travel overseas to Kanto became very difficult. Especially since Alola didn't have a Pokemon League, and therefore he couldn't get Pokemon League authorization for what he was doing, getting flights or boats between Alola and Kanto from 2005 until 2010 or so was extremely difficult and expensive if possible at all, especially if you worked with Pokemon and/or tech. And as a backwater region with no League presence at the time, Alola and its people didn't have many mechanisms to help remedy that. So for the first several years of his presence in Alola, Victor was just getting established and couldn't necessarily go back to Kanto for any meaningful period if he wanted to maintain his job and residency. Then the travel restrictions kicked in, and once those passed, Arlo was already on his Pokemon journey.

5: Was not informed of Arlo's mom kicking him out and abandoning him in 2015, and pretty appalled at both her actions and that she didn't inform him, especially since he could have helped: even if Arlo's mom didn't want Arlo living in her basement anymore, if she'd TOLD HIM what she intended to do, then Victor could have gotten him set up in Alola, rather than Arlo being left to his own devices to run off somewhere as far away as possible and nearly dying in the desert or getting kidnapped by Cipher in Orre. There'd been tension and resentment for a while over Victor's decision to leave, and this was what finally did it. Much like Arlo, Victor has been divorced from and no contact with Arlo's mom since 2015.6: Given everything, he's just glad that Arlo's alive, seeing as he's been unable to contact him for 10 years. He's very glad that Arlo is married, happy, and has an established job, even if it is with Team Rocket. Which he's fine with, since evidently given the Emo Scouts, Arlo's found a way to do good and outreach despite working for an "evil" organization, and, well, Silph was kind of also pretty shady. The "takeover" wasn't nearly as sudden and against Silph's will as they want you to believe; what he gathered from his wife having worked there up until and then during the takeover was that the collusion was quite willing on upper management's account and they mostly escaped scot-free, leaving the lower level employees to clean up the damage and take the blame.

Re: Arlo's being trans, well, he kind of knew already. He might not have been physically present for most of his childhood, but even from the little he saw of a mostly pre-sentient Arlo between 1998 and 2000, and what he got from his wife's letters, he was able to infer. Seeing as the kid was very insistent on wanting to grow up to be Red and on being a boy for as long as he could verbalize and express preferences, and started going by "boku" (gender-neutral trending masculine Japanese first-person pronoun; at least in anime, girls going by this to communicate masculinity or produce gender ambiguity is a common phenomenon) and a masculine reading of his given name (again, at least in anime, names with multiple kanji readings, including ones with both masculine and feminine readings, are an extant phenomenon, and Kanto is much more like a standard anime setting than it is like anything approaching IRL Japan, because that's what it feels like canonically) as soon as he could read. And then in the tradition of Pokemon League competitors using pseudonyms, started going solely by Carmine as soon as he got the idea. So he sort of expected the kid to transition at some point, or that at minimum he was gay. (He also decided to break things off with Arlo's mom because she was even more homophobic slash racist about Candela to him than she was to Arlo over the phone.)

So, he's satisfied with how Arlo turned out, is mostly just glad that he's alive, and gives him the "well done, son" he's always craved, so they leave on good terms. And he's also quite interested in the idea of grandkids, since, well, he was there for the reveal that Team Rocket grew Mewtwo in that tube back in the day so...

Arlo's mom needs a name. I can't decide whether to give her a blatantly Japanese name or not. On one hand, it'd serve a characterization purpose, since Arlo's dad meeting and falling in love with this girl at his host school as an exchange student is their backstory and the long-distance relationship is a central theme. On the other, I'm not quite sure if it'd be tonally appropriate, since all Kanto characters from canon use their English dub names. There's also the issue of finding an assuredly authentic and not offensive Japanese name on English-language sources, for which I'm thinking it'd work to steal one from an anime character or historical figure if I go that route.

Current CD: Absolute Dance (Compilation, Universal Music Canada, 2010)

Library listing (only online listing for this specific disc I could find)

Like many intoxicating substances, nostalgia is poisonous unless carefully dosed and regulated. I think that a fixation on nostalgia as though it's a character trait is broadly harmful, since it prevents you from realizing either bad elements of the era you're "nostalgic" for or what good elements exist about the present, or if the thing you're nostalgic for still exists. Which it probably does, if it's within a human lifetime, especially given the Internet. See my miscellaneous rant about why I hate the term "revival" for more.

Given this, I detest the Neocities / Indie Web fixation on "nostalgia", especially if it's nostalgia for things the nostalgite never experienced, or are practically speaking not over yet. (all 2010s nostalgia falls under this category. Most 2010s cultural icons are still alive and active. Most to all 2010s cultural trends still exist. Wars started in the 2010s are still being fought, as are cultural dilemmas and movements established. You are not nostalgic for the 2010s, because practically speaking, they aren't over yet. You're nostalgic for being a child and not being aware in the same sense that things could be bad) I also detest the Neocities / Indie web trend of using 90s / early 00s web trends simply because they are trends without any deeper artistic meaning or reason (even if it's just the webmaster liking them aesthetically in their own right) behind them, because that's just as algorithmic as blindly following modern trends. And also, some trends are legitimately bad and went out of style for a reason: autoplay music / video and marquees or flashing text don't make for enjoyable website experiences. Part of responsibly partaking in nostalgia is recognizing that some things were left in the past for a reason, and not just blindly deciding anything from the era you care about is good and anything after a certain date is bad.

With all of that aside, I do enjoy the kind of late 2000s / early 2010s club-pop that made up my earliest remembered musical experiences. I find that style to be legitimately fun to listen to, in that it tends to be more musically interesting and aggressive than a lot of pop, and also do experience some manner of nostalgia for it. While practically speaking, the progression of my life is non-sentient -> depression and dysphoria -> actually pretty okay, and the "actually pretty okay" part has only been since 2022, my journey in developing my modern music taste is something I do look back on fondly. It's satisfying to look back at where I started and see how much I've grown, and since I legitimately enjoy the style, it's neat to see remixes or songs I wasn't previously familiar with. I also find electronic / dance music, especially of the club and rave variety, to be enjoyable even though it isn't by any means a cultural scene I'm part of or study, so will pick up dance-type compilations if I can get them for cheap. This was not an assessment CD; this was a "45 minutes of some loosely nostalgic fun" CD.

That being said, I do also appreciate the songs I find "nostalgic" on their own merits in terms of what structural and production elements of that style I continue to like and find good in their own right, so it isn't solely "I like this because I did when I was a child". I'm also well aware of issues with that genre -- for example, a lot of late 00s / early 2010s club pop is pretty bad about misogyny and sexual conduct, with being at a club / dancing / wearing certain clothing being treated as synonymous with a sexual invitation and consent not really being a concern. This also goes for songs by female artists, where frequently either sexual aggression or being "not like other girls" is treated as the only valid form of womanhood. This had palpable real life consequences in terms of producing unwelcoming environments and encouraging sexual misconduct among artists and fans alike, and contributed to that even outside of the pop space -- for example, crunkcore and the contemporary space of "scene canon" took influence from pop and vice versa, which fused with metal and hardcore's established misogyny to provide a uniquely toxic combination. As much as I may like the style and some songs in it because of their musical elements and my fond childhood memories of them, I am under no delusions that they're flawless. While I wouldn't mind seeing more songs in that style, the "club culture" they came out of has a lot of flaws which validly contributed to why the style went out of fashion.

See what I mean? I do enjoy stuff like this for its nostalgia factor, but I also like it on its own merits as a style, and understand its flaws and how that relates to the time and place at which it was produced. If you want to do nostalgia, make sure you're not just attaching yourself to something because it existed at a time in your life you liked. There's something about it that drew child-you to it, and that's more important than just when it happened to be. You don't like "2000s culture" or whatever; you like a specific art style or structural element or theme which was popular in the culture previous incarnations of you liked, or for which those works were the first place you encountered it.

Once you separate what you like from "existed at the same time as me", that's the first step to owning your nostalgia and your tastes on their own merits and separating yourself from forced generational cohorting and algorithmic marketing. Plus, once you know what you really liked about your childhood favorites, you can start looking into other works that weren't available to you or didn't exist yet that have those same elements.

Nostalgia is fine in moderation. The trouble with it is when it blocks you off from forming new experiences and expanding your tastes.

Also, 2007ish to 2012 is the best era for pop. That is all.

Like, it's my same issue with "maker" or "doer". Everyone makes or does SOMETHING. Likewise, being an agent of change just means you are producing change. By the very nature of causality, everyone does that. If it suggests an active effort to produce change, uh, that doesn't necessarily mean the change you're producing is good. So as a term for advocacy, it just doesn't hold up.

I hate the word "change agent". It's like "problematic" or "doer". It's horrifically nonspecific and sounds like you're dodging copyright. Plus, "agent" makes me think of a corporate relationship, or like you're software.

I'm aware that they might be wanting to avoid connotations, but it just feels horrifically non-specific in the same way a lot of progressive-speak terms no one uses in real life do. Like, "change agent" could be anything. Doesn't necessarily mean the change you're introducing is good? I feel like "advocate", "ally", "co-conspirator", or anything in that vein would be better for what they're trying to do. This is also why I detest my bachelor's school's definition of "leadership", since they seemed to use it to mean "any good quality", which is not what the rest of the world thinks it means.

Also, I associate progressive-speak nonspecific terms no one uses in real life with being performative (another word I hate, since while it has a valid use in describing folks who claim to help but don't actually do anything, especially if they're part of the problem e.g. large corporations, most of the time it feels like "if you can't do this perfectly, don't bother to try!" which is no way to get people into a movement) and trying to change your wording without actually addressing the underlying issue, e.g. etymologically unfounded misspellings of "women" or using the indigenous term for the landmass you're on but not actually having any Indigenous people on your team.

re: "anti-psych" and why as someone who's autistic, mentally ill (but broadly recovered), and has actual training in psych, I hate it and think it gets closer to being "anti-science" or "anti-recovery"...you'd never hear people saying that a given physical therapy exercise is useless because it only works for a third of patients with broken legs, because which of those you use is going to depend on where, specifically, you broke your leg and what you're trying to regain functionality for. why can't the same be true for cognitive stuff? some cases benefit from medication, others don't. some cases benefit from CBT / DBT, others don't. that doesn't make any one method useless; it just means that clinicians need to get better at recognizing what's going to help in a given case.

so apparently the go fest 2025 outline that I wrote in 4thewords completely vanished for no apparent reason

I really hope that by "rebalance" and making leveling up faster, they mean that what's essentially happening in terms of XP requirements is the equivalent of 5 or so new levels, and for your existing XP they've just inflated the numbers. (E.g., the 20,000,000 total XP you need to get to Level 40 will just be called a higher number now.)

Because I really don't want to do this again. Especially since even if I can get to the hotspot park by scooter once a month, my capacity to XP grind and do level 5 raids is much lower than ever before.

Now, to be fair, it probably wouldn't have taken me the greater part of 4 years to get from 40 to 50 had I not been on hiatus or predominantly using alts for a good part of 2020-21 because being on the wrong team made me dysphoric. But still, I don't think the response they wanted is "oh no, not again".

https://pokemongohub.net/post/news/pokemon-go-level-80/

An alternative new mechanic would be a battle system revamp, perhaps incorporating the "styles" for moves in L:A, but breeding and Manaphy / Phione seems more plausible just in terms of vibes? This is all coming out of my ass.

Total speculation: I think we might be getting Arceus for the 10th anniversary / Pokemon's 30th next year. Its absence from EX/Elite Raids, past Go Fests, the event for its game's release, and most egregiously Sinnoh Tour suggests they're saving it for something else. And there's little better for what is considered in story the best possible Pokemon than the big milestone anniversary. The latest Eternatus event also established a framework for Big Deal Pokemon, with the Go Pass system, non-catchable raids, absurd power up requirements, and battles with larger than ever before numbers of trainers, which would go well with Arceus. Manaphy and Phione are also notably absent, being the only 3 missing Sinnoh species, and they would make for a near full ultra bonus themed around Arceus and Sinnoh.

Go Fest = Manaphy

New mechanic = breeding, to get Phione (or it's a different stage go fest thing)

Go Fest raids = global lake guardians (have never been all obtainable in one location)

New other species = the Hisuian forms and evolutions we're missing, all Pokemon with Hisui evolutions can evolve into them

Ultra bonus = Arceus, probably Go Pass + uncatchable raids like Eternatus

Alternatively, Diamond and Pearl have their 20th anniversary in 2027, but I think that the 10th anniversary of Go is more likely.

And since everyone thinks Arceus exists except professional researchers who keep their mouths shut, no one except the team leaders and their funders will ever know it's artificial. (And, of course, this is carried out safely and ethically for the Pokemon, because neither the League nor TGR are total assholes. They're perhaps lightly shady and the League is way overpowered, but this is still tonally the bright, shiny, idealistic Pokemon world and I want the main cast to be sympathetic.)

Addendum re: Arceus not being real in the Dudesverse (https://draggianuniverse.neocities.org/pokemongo_blog)

When Arceus is inevitably released in Pokemon Go, I'll either ignore it or handle it like I did Dialga and Palkia-O, as Spark mentions in the Untitled Rayquaza Story -- the team leaders were forced to artificially create something like it by popular demand, which Blanche HATES.

Note that the actual Arceus religion would consider that just about the most blasphemous thing you could do, since they object to any kind of animum manipulation, but because of the religious lobby, Arceus and its religious doctrine make it into dexes even though everyone who studies Pokemon knows it isn't a real species. (Folks in Sinnoh, though, are unlikely to publicly say that they know that for obvious reasons.)

Therefore, your average Joe Trainer who's been given some degree of forced Abrahamic Imperialist Arceus-ism by osmosis but doesn't practice, expects it to exist, so giving them what they want is good for the League and Niantic's bottom line. It's another way, along with the power boosts for raid bosses and leaders' Pokemon, that I illustrate that the Pokemon League isn't really any better than Team Rocket. They just have better PR and don't admit they care about money and power.

Since Type:Null and the Aether Foundation exist, and it doesn't really require Arceus to, just the ability to make artificial Pokemon and understanding of how type altering form changes work, in-universe, a theoretical Pokemon Go Arceus would actually be something like a stronger and prettier Type:Null.

...the cool hat may have been as much or more of a factor in my being willing to pay for the go pass as the candies to get Eternatus to level 48 and testing if the web store worked.

The only thing Pokemon Go has done since 2019 that I like is the avatar update, and them realizing what the people want in wearables, that being wings and Cool Dragon Hats. We have a lovely series, with the Go Fest 2023 Creepy Rayquaza Hat, Sinnoh and Unova Tour's Giratina and Kyurem hats + wings, and now the Eternatus Hat. Necrozma did not get a cool hat, but did get the best set of edgy wearables in the game. (I have the visor and pants from its set on now and would wear the super edgy spiky hoodie if it didn't prevent me from the dragon hats.)

I also appreciate the embracing of Edge via the Gladion, Necrozma, and Team Yell sets whereas previously your best options were the Verizon sponsor wearables and Team Skull. (I went with the perfect sync of the Team Instinct turtleneck and black liquid leggings.)

And as always with my special research critters that you can only get one of, it's just about the worst it could possibly be stats-wise.

(Powered up as much as I could with the go pass candy. I did actually spend money on the premium pass because I wanted to check if the web store worked. Apparently Google Play is regional, so if you have credit, spend it before you leave the US! The web store does work, though.)

Good news: there exists a raid group and a Pokemon Go park (officially marked as such!), got Eternatus + all main go pass rewards, dexed Toxtricity (both forms and Gmax) and Gmax Machamp. Had a generally lovely time and learned about some interesting events and resources.

Bad news: raid group is only on Facebook, said park is on the wrong side of the river and there is no good way to get back from there if you don't own a vehicle after 4:00 on weekends. The buses stop at 4 on weekends or 6:30 on weekdays and there are two taxi services that clearly exist. One only has one weekend driver who left town after dropping me off, and the other had shitty reviews on Google mostly because they don't arrive on time. Uber / Lyft / etc don't operate in New Brunswick. I did eventually get back, after calling the shit reviews taxi service twice. The first time they missed me because they didn't call to tell me they were there.

Conclusions: the next time I do an event on the other side of the river on a weekend, I need to either leave at 4 and take the last bus back, figure out how to get my e-scooter across the bridge, or acquire and bribe a friend with a car. Although maybe the one driver at the good taxi service being out of town this weekend and having left in the afternoon was a one time thing. I'm hoping that I can take the scooter across, park it (and maybe plug it in), do my thing on foot, and then go and get it back, since the 5 mile up a pedestrian inaccessible bridge either way should be well within their charge range.

This is in tangential relation to my Pokemon Go fanfic. No one is going to be fucking a dragon onscreen, but it's a thought experiment which I plan to bring up in-universe.

tldr, Arlo is 1/32nd Draconid (an ethnoreligious group of dragon tamers from OmegaRuby / AlphaSapphire), which may or may not mean he contains some homeopathic amount of dragon, since Draconids' folkloric origins involve dragon-fucking and there's specifically a family legend about his great x5 grandma being saved from execution by turning into a dragon and subsequently his great x4 grandma being half dragon. He also gets exposed to a lot of Shadow Pokemon aura, which has done...weird things over time, see the Reverse Mode saga and his canonically having bright red eyes and being the only character with a non-human eye color in Pokemon Go.

long story short, fanfic!arlo discovers around march / april 2025 that he's started growing scales, since evidently the shadow pokemon formula had a weird interaction with his ambiguous dragon ancestry

My policy is that no one can transform in a way that would render them unable to pass as human, or that would be visible in their canon sprite, because that wouldn't align with the tone of the Pokemon universe. However, I've established (and it seems solidly implied in canon given the environments a lot of gym leaders work in) that trainers who pal around a lot with powerful Pokemon have that...rub off on them and end up with some anomalous properties, e.g. the number of Fighting-type trainer martial artists in canon who are stronger than a human of their size and build should be, and Psychic trainers who are psychics themselves. So, under the right circumstances, someone who gets exposed to a LOT of powerful Pokemon + animum enhancement (essentially, Shadow Pokemon formula artificially induces a similar structure to mega evolution) could have some alterations to their biology that are actually externally visible. Just not too much so, because anthro furries / kenomos are not compatible with the tone of the Pokemon universe.

However, scales growing on one's arms when their canon sprite always has them in long sleeves is not in that category. And re: the biology question, nor is the crotch area. Hence the hemipenes question. My sweet little trans guy protagonist, based on all evidence he can find, is turning into a dragon / dragon hybrid, with corresponding body alterations e.g. growing scales. There's no reason this couldn't, or eventually wouldn't, affect his reproductive parts. Whether it's based on his soul or his hormones (the two things that affect Pokemon growth and evolution, which is basically what this is because it's a result of the increase in circulating animum from all his shadow experimentation), the result given his gender identity and being on HRT would be a male dragon. So it's reasonable to conclude that he might, eventually, find himself forming a reptilian dick. Question is, do you think that a generic Pokemon dragon of ambiguous species would have one or two of those?

In completely unrelated news, do you think dragons have hemipenes? I guess the question is whether you think they're more like snakes / lizards or archosaurs. If they're more like snakes, they'd have hemipenes. If they're more like crocodiles, they wouldn't. Historically speaking, whether folkloric dragons are more snake or more crocodile depends on who you ask. If I had to distinguish, I'd say that at least in terms of their "evolutionary" origin (as in, the earliest art and folklore we have), Western dragons are more snakes and Eastern dragons are more crocodiles, but it's tight.

And if you can't act in ways that should align with your ideals / the writings on your website in your day-to-day communications, how can you expect me to trust you about anyone else? I've gotten turned off by the present Internet Leftist movement and I agree with them! So how the hell is this supposed to be a "movement" that works for anyone but an echo chamber? As I've said before, it's a fandom. It's a fantasy and a game of using the right buzzwords to show how cool you are. At least media fandoms admit it.

I don't see why implementation is so difficult. If your core ideal is about community care and support and respect for all cultures and stuff, is it that hard to maintain philosophical integrity and not be an asshole? It feels like it should be self-explanatory and a required prerequisite for what they claim to want to achieve.

Is every leftist website fundamentally flawed in execution, or am I just too picky? Or both? Like, none of the sites I've discussed slash complained about, I disagree with. I think their ideals are fundamentally good and generally agree with their statements, but being condescending and antagonistic to people who aren't 100% outwardly openly aligned with you / encouraging despair / fearmongering and making statements without citations / using culturally specific terms that don't apply to you out of context / saying "voting and legislation are useless so don't bother; you can worry about civil rights after the revolution" / telling people that if they can't move overseas, they're better off staying in the US at great personal risk to themselves / using "autistic" as an insult and otherwise blatant ableism is both unhelpful and fundamentally against the ideals they claim to hold.

Honestly, it's another version of "you can't eat ideals" and "please stop saying voting or peaceful action are pointless, because 'worry about your civil rights after the revolution' is not a viable strategy". Risk management is valid and vital, because your comrades can't do shit if they're fucking dead! We are not in a situation where we can wait for the optimal outcome and leave people who can't get to it behind! And most people who can move in the first place can't reasonably get somewhere that they can't get to by car or public transport, so anything on the other side of the ocean or beyond a certain radius is not viable for the majority of people (because sometimes, people don't want to move with nothing but a backpack). And fleeing is honestly a better option than sticking it out if you are at serious risk, because the only difference between martyrdom and suicide is the press coverage (to quote Fall Out Boy) and you're always going to be more useful alive than dead. Plus if you get out, you provide a path for others to do so, and can still use informational and financial means to help people in the US from a safer position. So telling people "don't bother trying unless you can get to these 3 places" is just inviting despair and making people less effective.

I'm here so I can focus on myself. What I'm good at, and what I contribute to the cause (TM) [although I think it's more of a fandom than a movement as currently executed, since even major organizations fall victim to infighting] is teaching and science. I am somewhere that I can focus on doing that, and on being openly trans in public without having to worry about being fucking murdered for it. And I don't appreciate being told that I would be better off in the US either getting murdered, ending up in prison, or being a completely unemployable "DEI hire" living in my mom's basement with a bachelor's in bio I can't use because I couldn't get overseas and didn't want to never see anyone I cared about ever again.

Being miserable, and not taking the options you have in favor of whining about them not being optimal, are not virtues. Doing what you can to improve your situation is not "cowardice" or "settling". I have a lot more capacity to get out if things go badly here than I would in the US, and I have a lot more capacity to help people. If the optimal option is not an option, which if we're talking about moving overseas it isn't, then the best available option is the best fucking choice, especially if the other option is essentially certain death.

Honestly, it comes off as envy and/or fear. Crabs in a bucket, sour grapes, etcetera. "I can't get out of the US, therefore I'm going to tell everybody else in hopes of convincing myself that there's no point in it either, so they can be miserable with me."

Which is the exact opposite of uplifting your community, but I guess that all that matters is lofty ideals and manifestos no one reads, even if you're a hypocrite in how you actually treat people, because being a whiny piece of shit and refusing to do anything that isn't 100% ideologically optimal is being a Good Leftist and definitely how political change happens.

I wish Neocities had the capacity to block by tags, or there was a browser plugin smart enough to block sites by vibe that wasn't based in an evil LLM model. If I could just not see things in my feed from any site labeled "politics", or the ideal would be a browser extension that just blocked me from sites that would piss me off, that'd be great. But I don't think that exists.

I don't know why I've been running into sites saying versions of "Canada is a failed state" or "fleeing to Canada / Mexico / Europe won't help you", but it isn't helping with my state of mind. Guess what, most people don't want to completely abandon everything and everyone they've ever known, and moving overseas is Really Fucking Difficult. so maybe don't tell people to not go for the viable option, even if it isn't "optimal"?

These aren't people who know me, so it isn't directed at me, but it feels a little sour-grapesy. The issue is that anything in the genre of "don't do this better option that could literally save your life because it isn't optimal; the US has threatened to invade Canada" is actively fucking harmful.

The risk of invasion is much lower than the risk of getting pulled off the street and sent to a concentration camp, or shot in the head in a public restroom or at a protest. Is it optimal? No. But for folks who are at risk in the US, Canada or Mexico are substantially safer, and much easier to get to for most people (because shipping people and stuff overseas or over long distances is really expensive) who are at risk.

Ideals are useful as a foundation and experiments, but ultimately, pragmatism and self-preservation need to take priority. If you're telling people "if you can't move to one of these 3 countries, don't bother because it won't save you; there's also fascism in Europe" then that is actively harmful, since the risks of staying in the US if you are anything but a cishet white fuckwad are MUCH HIGHER

I am under no delusions of Canada being the optimal place for me to be or an ideal or anything like that. Far from it. I am aware of their similarly awful track record with their Indigenous population. I am also aware that anything sharing a physical border with the US is at some degree of risk. However, I think (a) the risk of invasion is very low given all the difficulties involved and (b) it was the best available option. There are absolutely places that would be safer for me to be trans in. However, it wasn't logistically or financially possible for me to get to those in any reasonable timeframe, so this was the best option that I could get to as soon as possible, and, well, physically get to on account of being on the same landmass.

I don't know if I want to stay here long-term, but having citizenship or permanent residency in Canada, while not optimal, is a fuck of a lot safer than remaining in the US would have been, and at least gives me a base to go somewhere else. "Moving to Canada, Europe, or Mexico won't save you" may be true, but any increase in your chance of survival is an improvement. You can't do shit to help anybody or any kind of Leftist Work (TM) if you're dead. Do whatever you can to improve your own situation. Ideal option are for ideal scenarios, which by their very nature don't exist in real life. Waiting for an ideal option is both pointless and actively dangerous -- nowhere is truly "safe", but of the places I could get to, this was the safest one available. So I don't appreciate the number of Neocities Leftist sites telling me my choice was pointless and implicitly telling other people who are at as much or more risk than I was to "unless you can get to Brazil or Ireland, stay in the US and fucking die!"

To folks with touchscreen laptops: how do you hold them to effectively use the touchscreen in laptop mode without wrist strain? My new work computer has a touchscreen but isn't the all in 1 folding type, so I'm not quite sure where to put my hands for the touchscreen. It isn't quite like either a tablet or my non-touch notebook. Adorable, though. No one's called something a "netbook" in 10+ years, but it feels like the best word for it. Also impressive battery life.

realized when contemplating the toenails growing to the side thing that they really started doing it after my top surgery, and I have been wearing sandals all summer so it's not poorly fitting shoes. So I did a mini lit review to see if those things were correlated, and they...might be?

While most regular search results were AI-generated slop from cosmetics websites, there's one case study paper about changes in nail thickness and width in a middle-aged guy on HRT, and r/ftm mentions changes in nail growth. Generally speaking, men have wider nails, in terms of overall stats based on designation at birth.

Foot size is also sex-linked, and not something HRT can do anything about. I know that I've heard about trans women getting surgery to reduce foot size, although it's very risky and not a good idea.

So if my nails are trying to grow thicker and wider, but my feet / nail beds haven't changed, of course it feels like they're growing too much to the side. And I know it's pretty well documented that top surgery improves testosterone metabolism.

There's also another case study about a postmenopausal woman with a hormone-affecting tumor that mentioned changes in nail growth, and the presence of androgen receptors in nail beds. Other than that, results are pretty slim. On Google Scholar, most of them are about using nail clippings to detect testosterone levels, or about male pattern baldness with nothing about nail growth.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1186/s13048-014-0083-5.pdf

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9626338/

These are the only two papers I could find and have access to that specifically discuss testosterone and nail growth. I've noticed the ends of my fingernails getting wider too, but they aren't digging into the sides.

What I'm getting a lot of is book chapters about the integumentary system or skin disorders, which mention testosterone's effect on hair growth and also nails, but those aren't connected ideas.

So, my theory is that this is a post-top surgery change in testosterone metabolism resulting in wider nails, which are going to the sides through skin because there's nowhere else for them to go on my toes. That would explain why it's happening regardless of what shoes I wear, and why it started after I got rid of a major estrogen regulator.

Either that, or I'm turning into a werewolf. Or trying to grow scales.

Now, I'm not sure what I DO about this, especially if there aren't any podiatrists closer than Moncton. Which there don't seem to be.

There's an attitude I've seen among mainstream metal circles, at least the ones who aren't openly contemptuous towards them, that metalcore / nu metal / etcetera are only good as gateway drugs to quote unquote "real metal", which I find quite annoying. Because (a) genre gatekeeping helps no one and in regards to metalcore and nu metal, is directly traceable to discrimination (namely, metalcore having pretty guys and a more female fanbase, and nu metal having hip-hop elements and black fans) and (b) I did get my origins simultaneously from "real metal" and Nightcore, and found that nu metal and metalcore did things I liked better, structurally speaking, which has only strengthened with time. While it can be fun, a lot of pure thrash metal is just kind of...boring if it's focusing on "heaviness" over all else and doesn't have much in the way of transitions, so you get songs that are basically 6 minutes of the same breakdown with little else. This is also my issue with a lot of pure fight-in-the-pit hardcore: there isn't enough there there. The inherent genre fusion qualities of metalcore and nu metal mean that songs tend to have more variety and there's more room for bands to experiment.

I don't think my journey, or thoroughness, are at all typical, though, in any direction, nor would I paint myself as the ideal because that's just another form of gatekeeping.

so I've been broadly tired and dismotivated on grounds of trying to get my sleep back on kilter, but I promise go fest 2025 is coming by the end of the year. I made that damned priorities list specifically so I held myself accountable to this sort of thing and want to try to keep up a streak of daily updates at least until classes start. my first day is september 2nd so I'm hoping to get the CD pages done by then

keep forgetting to feed the pokemon lunch, probably because I've been waking up at around 11 to noon despite my best efforts and I don't necessarily feed the pokemon when I do unless I'm on a regular schedule

I need to get back onto something like a diurnal schedule before classes start; as it stands I've been having to caffeinate just so I don't succumb to the urge to take mid-day naps (which kept creeping later in the day) and then not getting to bed until 2 am

got friend request on mochia

got excited because they had neocities in their bio

pretentious blog about finding meaning and digital legacy and all that bs neocities manifesto writers like with the whole "everyone else is less enlightened than me" vibe about it...

...and also AI "art"

unfriended them. if mochia had a block feature I'd use it

protip: fuck vaporwave, fuck nostalgia, and fuck "aesthetics" in general, but if you claim to be into the ideals of the retro / indie web while doing AI bullshit you are missing the point and have no right to call yourself a webmaster

McKay's Discs from August 3rd -- Assessment #4 - Feueursturm (Compilation, Century Media, 1997)

Discogs

Rating: 5/5 with neo-Nazis and murderers removed.

A 2-disc compilation of mostly European (with some bands from elsewhere) black / Viking / extreme metal. My area of focus, as you know, is in post-hardcore / metalcore / nu metal / emo / etcetera, but I'll pick up cheap CDs or compilations of other forms of punk and metal when I see them because I find them interesting as comparisons and every bit of genre knowledge helps in understanding my main mission since they all feed into each other. So, with some hesitation on account of the title and the disconcertingly high (even higher than other flavors) rates of bad behavior in black metal, I picked it up.

I don't typically do preliminary research on album assessments save to see what contemporal sources described a band as being, how much other output they have, and where they're from, but given my limited knowledge of black metal and the concerning title, I looked up every band on this compilation to see how many of them were neo-Nazis and/or murderers. Unsurprisingly for a 90s black metal comp, some of them were, so the tracks by those artists didn't get ripped to my library or listened to. They were as follows if you're curious:

• disc 1, track 7

• disc 1, track 8

• disc 2, track 3

• disc 2, track 8

• disc 2, track 10

These artists were omitted because if even a surface level Wikipedia browse has credible citations for murder and/or neo-Nazi affiliations, their behavior is definitely even worse in other sources (Wikipedia tends to be very conservative about reporting bad behavior on grounds of them not wanting to get sued, most articles about bands being written by fans thereof, and most of that sort of thing not being reported on by credible sources), and crosses a line of something I'm not willing to engage with even artistically. Now, given the very nature of the genre, some other forms of criminal activity and questionable behaviors were pretty ubiquitous. If I omitted every band who was involved in, or supported, the wave of church burnings in Europe from black metal-affiliated folks in the 90s, I'd basically take out the majority of the CD. So if that's a band's only Wikipedia-cited crime, they stay.

I'm not pro-church burnings, especially not since the ones targeted by black metal-affiliated European folks in the early 90s were generally centuries-old historic buildings with artistic and cultural value. (Also, while I'm in favor of artistic blasphemy and Christianity has hurt a lot of people, destroying historic buildings doesn't help remedy that pain or do anything except get people who like history and art mad at you.) The megachurch down the street from my parents' house...that, I wouldn't mind burning, but that's not what they did. So, a lot of the bands on this comp are affiliated with, or supported, that sort of thing, just as a disclaimer.

I'm not in favor of that, but unlike murder, affiliation with neo-Nazis, etcetera, it doesn't make me feel not okay listening to and on some level recommending someone's work. I am not a journalist. I am not obligated to listen to everyone affiliated with a genre I like if it makes me uncomfortable, and if someone's crimes are sufficiently egregious, I can't and don't really feel comfortable trying to engage with their work artistically distinct from them. Especially not if their work is specifically ABOUT war / murder / abuse / etcetera, so there's a pretty established correlation and "separating the art from the artist" becomes harder. Can you really treat songs about murder, or with World War II imagery, as "haha fun edgy lyrics", knowing that people involved have actually committed murder or carry Nazi sympathies? There's a thin line between a song and a manifesto if you've actually done its topic in real life, and plenty of artists find it possible to tell stories about evil without actually committing it.

Don't take me assessing or listening to a CD as a recommendation, but I'm aware that just in giving someone a platform and discussing them, you run the risk of doing that. Falling In Reverse and other such scenemo nonsense, I feel like I have enough experience with and canon knowledge to be able to fairly talk about them in a way that adequately condemns their members' actions. Black metal is decidedly not my scene, so in this case, I don't. So I'm just not going to be listening to songs on this CD coming from known murderers / Nazi sympathizers / etcetera.

I ended up enjoying this comp more than I thought I would. The previous black / otherwise more extreme metal I've engaged with has just been too slow / long in songs for my taste, much like some pure thrash metal. Plus the heavily compressed loudness-war production of a lot of more modern harder metal produces the result that even if the instrumentation and layering of it with the vocals is doing something interesting, everything is so stacked up and clipped that it just becomes a wall and you can't tell. This comp doesn't have that issue, letting the variety of vocal stylings and melodic structures on its songs shine, and I don't know if that's being a physical CD, being from the 90s, or being from before black / other similar metal flavors really started focusing on loudness over all else. They also have faster and thrashier production than I'm accustomed to from the black metal I've listened to.

It still isn't my specific style, and the longer song lengths mean it wouldn't go too well with my shuffles, but it's a quite well-executed and enjoyable compilation with some excellently dark and epic vibes. At least if you remove the neo-Nazis and murderers. I can't recommend you buy this CD in good conscience given the presence of those things on it, but if you like metal, check out some of the less evil artists. Here are a couple tracks (3 from each disc) that I thought were especially fun.

• Borknagar - Grimland Domain (Yewchube)

• Sacramentum - Burning Lust (Yewchube)

• Abigor - A Breath From Worlds Beyond (Yewchube)

• Einherjer - Far Far North (Yewchube)

• Dimmu Borgir - Mourning Palace (Yewchube)

• Ulver - Soelen Gaaer Bag Aase Need (Yewchube)

thinking about the time i walked into the venue when i saw blessthefall in 2023 and the pre-show random vague genre canon playlist was playing sexy drug, which dealt psychic damage

considering becoming a beer can collection guy but with horrible energy drinks

woo it's been a while since I spent too many gems on a dragon from a project / fodder pair, but one of my project pairs hatched a natural primal whose colors I really liked so I made a thread for inspiration and holy shit I love him

https://www1.flightrising.com/dragon/104695579