enforcer's slimyboy thoughts

I get that the point is to ward OFF evil spirits and all, but I had an idea of the Horrible Awful Variety -- how cursed slash hilarious would it be if I were to carve my acorn squash (I felt the urge to do Halloween rituals, but my grocery store had no ornamental gourds -- suburban hellscape boys make do) to resemble Ronnie? A basic face + the crown of thorns and initials wouldn't be all that hard, and no one can be taken seriously in gourd form.

My contact finally acquired the Bad Guy music video. And now anybody else can too, because apparently our sweet darling boy shared it on an available to everyone stream less than 2 weeks after its debut. I'd sure be annoyed if I'd been paying 10 dollars a month for it. But having been on Kick means it's now not exclusive and fair game to reupload (not that I care anyway) so bazinga.

On one hand, I'm glad it's no longer hanging over me. On another, oh crap now I have to watch it and subject myself to that song again. Reaction video / podcast / webinar is coming soon, probably later today or possibly tomorrow because I do have some shit to do today.

Remember kids, sharing or reuploading or screen recording anything is a cardinal sin unless Ronnie does it.

How likely is it that he shared it on Kick because he's annoyed that his Super Cool New Music Video didn't get reaction videos, press, etcetera because he posted it somewhere no one can access and his fans are banned from sharing or screen recording it (and/or too dumb to know how)? The excuse for why it was Patreon exclusive in the first place was that it was ~super edgy~ and ~too crazy for Youtube~ and things can't be edgy in a vacuum where everyone just thinks they're great.

You'd hope this would be a wakeup call for the slimewads -- if RONNIE doesn't care about preserving the exclusivity of paid content, with the flagship video of his Patreon, why should anybody else? My "reaction video" / podcast / webinar is probably going to open with, like, 15 minutes of "the Falling In Reverse fan's guide to tech and copyright" -- screen record that shit because it's the only way you're gonna keep it. Ronnie said not to, but you've got a license to have it for personal use, just like if you bought the songs / videos on iTunes or something.

And also, he can't do shit about files on your personal computer or peer to peer sharing with your friends, and tbh, I don't think he could actually sue you for sharing anything? #1, as long as you weren't stupid and didn't share under your real legal name, he wouldn't have enough info to sue you WITH. #2, I want to say that it was decided with Napster, Kazaa, Pirate Bay, etcetera that keeping copyrighted shit off their platform is the legal responsibility of the platform, not the users, so the worst he could do would be a DMCA takedown. (I am not a lawyer. I am a snake who talks about edgy music on Neocities. Take legal advice from me at your own peril.)

And it's Ronnie, so he doesn't have the attention span for it, and if it's not on YouTube or TikTok or you avoid saying his name and summoning him / his fans, he'd have a hard time finding it. And the fans, at least, while they won't publicly admit it, seem fine with leaks because it's kind of the only way most Ronnie info gets out. Ronnie's documented to kind of forget anything he's made exists after a month or so unless he's tagged, so if you reupload anything after the initial hype's died down and don't do anything stupid like tagging him, he's not gonna notice.

kittens! my parents (with whom I do not live so I'm getting these updates over text) have captured them from the neighborhood colony with the intent to foster them to adopt out, and trap / neuter / release mom. (by the way is anyone else having login issues with catbox? I can't log into my account and have no idea why -- when I try, it just refreshes the login page and shows no dialogs or anything, and it's worked on this browser before. Did I get banned? I've got no idea why if so.)

I only care about this band inasmuch as they're being assessed as someone who I liked the one album of I got used, so I'm not interested in their fanbase drama, but it's unusual and refreshing to see something that overt and clear on the matter of "you are not welcome here" from a not typically overtly political band.

And it works better than a lot of more "preachy" protest songs do, since anti-religion / "if you don't stand up and fight you are a coward" is pretty common in the genre overall, so as long as you're not, you know, racist, it totally works as a standard battle song.

and no, I don't mean Ronnie; he's overt in the other direction. I mean the "oh yeah we welcome everyone" and not doing anything to stamp out folks going for the wrong kind of power fantasy. That has been a problem in punk and metal for a very long time. I'm halfway wondering if the clear "racists fuck off, you are cowardly and weak" statement here might be a response to them having noticed unsavory elements in their fanbase.

I only care about this band inasmuch as they're being assessed as someone who I liked the one album of I got at a thrift store, so I'm not interested in their fanbase genre, but it's unusual and refreshing to see something that overt and clear on the matter of "you are not welcome here" from a not typically overtly political band.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/gideon/scapegoat.html

The execution of protest songs can...greatly vary, but I do appreciate when bands straight up go for the jugular in terms of "fuckwads fuck off". It's refreshing vs. a disconcerting number of bands who are way too coy on the subject.

the plague gryphon is DISGUSTING and looks like a wretched beast that roots through garbage cans and I love it

It's guttural and compressed, but you can still actually tell what's going on. There's still actually musical substance there, unlike, well, Ronald. And it's clear that this lead actually understands how to scream like that safely and has the range for it.

My personal audio discomfort aside, I want to get past that because there's neat stuff going on here and it's an important part of the spectrum of metalcore as spiritual cultivation goes, and I think the best way to do that is exposure.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcnSoahGjP4

Representative example song if you're curious.

Assessing Traitors to get the folks I saw on Wednesday checked off (and starting with the openers with less work because In Hearts Wake is kind of a lot.) All of the openers were quite enjoyable to see live, so are worth looking into. Their work is definitely deathcore -- seems pretty standard from what I'm familiar with where it's got harder-end-of-metalcore structure but with heavier, more compressed guitar production and more guttural screaming. There's definitely a lot of compression on the digital versions, which is a little uncomfortable, but I can tell unlike with something like Ronald or the overly-compressed-due-to-technical-problems BMTH and I See Stars first albums that there's interesting stuff going on under there and it's actually there for an artistic reason. It's metered such that unlike those bad examples, you can still tell what's going on and that's not the only takeaway, and while a tad uncomfortable if you're not used to it, it doesn't HURT in the same way. It's clearly actually intentional, and the underlying content is good. The compression is something I'll need to learn to get used to if I want to assess more deathcore-type stuff, and I think I want to, because the core production is quite enjoyable. (and if I'm going to take on the Lollipop CD's 2004 MP3 codecs or a good portion of 90s / early 00s stuff, compression's going to be a factor there too)

It's a bit uncomfortable since I'm not used to it, but I think it's something I'm capable of getting used to with the songs I like shuffled into the "shuffle all" rotation as opposed to simply being bad e.g. Ronald or first albums from bands before they knew what they were doing. Supposedly BMTH's first album got remastered in 2010, and that's the version on streaming. IT DIDN'T HELP. To be honest, I suspect what songs with that degree of technical difficulty need would be a full re-recording just because they can't be remastered any better than their equipment could initially record them at, and I don't think Bring Me The Horizon's lead wants to (or is possibly even capable) of making those kinds of noises anymore.

Moral philosophy / suicide prevention speedrun: if you've got enough conscience to wonder if everyone would be better off without you, they wouldn't be. Truly awful people aren't concerned with how awful they are, or willing to consider doing anything about it. You're better off staying alive.

I wish there were Halloween events in between the various "things to take your family to" and bars. The former I can't really justify going to and paying the admission fees for by myself. The latter I really don't want to go to. I'd like to do something other than just my usual Thursday activities but with the ears and tail, but...what? None of the transit accessible music venues are doing anything of interest.

Once you're too old to trick or treat, it's pretty much about partying and drinking, and I'm not much into that either. And I'm aware that I'm short so probably could pass as a teenager enough to be able to trick or treat if I put in costume effort, but I'd still feel weird doing it and there's only a very specific subset of standard canon candy I'll actually eat.

There is no better way to convince me that none of your other pretentious "I'm so much more enlightened than everybody else chasing dopamine highs" manifestos and blog posts are worth reading than to use "autistic" as your synonym for societal structures / behaviors you don't like.

Did it ever occur to you that if you're trying to do an "end capitalism" type of thing, that using anything in the genre of "abnormal" neurotypes to refer to things you don't like is totally missing the point? And if you're doing some version of "everyone is autistic / ADHD" now and the disgusting "digital autism" shit...way to miss any fucking nuance and, well, I'm trying to avoid using the phrase "blatantly fucking ableist", but yeah.

I am not your symbol of societal degeneration, motherfucker. I'd hope that sort of thing wouldn't be on Neocities, but I guess not.

Add Enemy Of The Sun's second album to the list of "metal bands that referred to the world as a whole burning before, and in ways that made more sense, than Ronald". The phrase "some men just want to watch the world burn" seems to be a mid-2010s originating meme, but the concept seems to very much be a genre mainstay.

difference is that most other bands acknowledge that burning the world isn't a good thing.

In other news, from MMI's description on the venue website.

Conflating speed of release and chart placement with quality aside (although they are good), I found the terminology humorous. I get that it's clear from context, but hearing "slabs of metal" makes me think literally. They flattened some blocks of iron and put them on their label's doorstep.

they are also more clearly masculine presenting than most, probably because they sort of had a goal of being a genre throwback to pre-Pretty Scenemo Canon melodic metalcore. Ultimately, those two versions aren't that different and both kind of fall under the Generic category, but frankly, a more clearly masculine lead with a weird Al haircut is a tad refreshing and they look like they play the kind of music they do. Their aesthetic corresponds to what they do and that's the most relevant part as a band. the lines between genres and variants of subgenres are blurrier than anyone really wants to admit, and Pretty Scenemo Canon Metalcore (myself included) has gladly welcomed them and vice versa as a fun addition to the canon who's somewhat harder than most but still has the core melodic structure.

but anyway, "slabs of metal" is a fascinating name for albums. I can't not picture them just laying down literal chunks of metal.

"yes, it's very impressive that you've made 5 of these. Please stop putting them on our doorstep. As your label, we have no idea what to do with them."

Like Blessthefall last year, this is an anniversary tour (15th for their first album) so they are playing said in full. Also like Blessthefall, I find their work perfectly enjoyable but don't have that strong of feelings toward any particular songs or albums. (And like Blessthefall and a lot of other generic bands, they've maintained consistent enough style that while good throughout, it kind of all blurs together.)

even though [whatever his name is] is more masculine visually than most scenemo metalcore leads he has a very similar vocal range. maybe slightly lower than most but not by much

I guess if you interpret a missing comma and wake as a verb, "in hearts, wake" could be a command to be nice to people and awaken to injustice which would fit their lyrical themes. Yes I know I'm putting more thought into their name than they probably did when they came up with it.

one of the guys from the band descended to the merch table for signings and pictures! so along with the snake shirt I also got this picture and an extremely edgy reusable grocery bag (got the latter signed)

I will do a proper assessment of their full work soon, but if you like metalcore or nature check out the apostrophe-challenged in hearts wake; they seem really nice.

they have a little guy! (The newest album cover features an owl) sadly not being sold at the live table. If they were (and if there was anyone presently at the merch table hopefully they'll be back after the show) I might have to get Terrence another bird which Ronnie would probably hate if he knew they existed. Because Ronnie probably hates trees along with all sentient life? Frankly, there's little to object to about lyrics that are pretty much "take care of nature and be nice to people" but I'm sure he'd come up with something.

https://inheartswake.com/collections/merch/products/owly-plush-toy

I am very supportive of edgy bands with official plushies. more bands with animal motifs should do that. it's like the MSI dragon and sneaky snek. miss may I's band fursona seems to be a lion. The snake is just decorative.

Although I could do without them repeatedly using snakes as evil symbols. It seems to be a bit of a motif. (And while objections to the pharmaceutical industry can be valid, they can also border on being anti-science or anti-recovery if they focus too much on the drugs themselves, and this one is perhaps towing that line.)

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/inheartswake/cottonmouth.html

okay yeah I'm not sure how many songs I'm downloading but these folks deserve my repping. The execution of overtly preaching songs can vary, but they seem to be doing a pretty good job, and, like, alignment with my ideals and a good time. I'm buying the apostrophe challenged snake shirt.

https://wallofsoundau.com/2022/03/22/in-hearts-wake-unveil-green-is-the-new-black-documentary/

okay, again, mad respect

I can't tell if this is supposed to be styled as one word or not. If it's one word, the lack of an apostrophe is...acceptable. (Edited for readability against glare.)

Of course, Traitors is (are?) also apparently apostrophe-challenged. And this has no excuse. I'm pretty sure you can fit an apostrophe into a metal font and that is unambiguously a statement of "the Lord has forsaken me". "The lords (plural) forsaken me" makes no sense​ as verb tenses go.

You wanted Metalcore Opinions? Fuck you, punctuation.

Also, NeOCities-tober pics from the 22nd and 23rd. It's predominantly a drawing challenge, and I have been keeping to the "draw something every day" part but have kind of fallen behind on the "put something on the site every day" part. I'll get them up tomorrow probably? It's been a week. Site updating has not been a priority for the energy I have.

https://files.catbox.moe/q6b8aq.png

https://files.catbox.moe/c5vphi.png

https://files.catbox.moe/qgsm53.mp4

today is Joey's (Traitors' merch guy / DM / driver / "everything that keeps this band together. Without him I am nothing. He's like 88.8% of the reason I can still do this." -- direct quote from the lead) birthday so we sent well wishes. (A) It's adorable and (b) it shows a refreshing humility to admit the behind the scenes folks are in fact important.

I don't know what the implications of this are, but I do think this is one of the more proportionally racially diverse metal shows I've been to. Just in terms of who's in the crowd. Still predominantly white, but the ratio is less extreme on one end. Just based on who's visible, I'd estimate it at closer to 70:30 which is higher than most of the ones I've been to.

Of course, this one is rather pretty but way lower pitched than your standard metalcore guy in terms of speaking range even without the "holy shit" guttural screaming. Kind of looks like Tyler except without the tattoo sleeves (because Ronnie hasn't infected him.)

Traitors is second out of 4. They're solidly in the deathcore category, which really depends for me on how well they mixed the digital audio assessment-wise because if subjected to 00s standard compression, it can HURT, but doesn't have that issue live. Metalcore but with more focus on brutality throughout vs. breakdowns, more guttural and "holy shit that's a human making that noise" screaming, and (usually, although Bring Me The Horizon before they became the codifiers of generic metalcore then got bored and left was deathcore -- and too compressed to be listenable in 2024 -- and remained pretty throughout) more masculine guys. It's what Ronald is trying to be and utterly failing. This guy clearly actually knows what he's doing.

Sensitivity to clipping is definitely an individual thing, but even if I can recognize musical merit through the digital destruction, I just can't listen to anything too compressed for too long, and the heavier the music, the more this becomes an issue especially for early / mid 00s stuff that isn't optimized for MP3 playback.

I was fucking born to live tweet because I love taking notes and organizing my thoughts in real time textual form. I just do it in personal texts and my thoughts.page. and no, I do not feel any bit of awkwardness about sitting in the back taking notes / logging observations because it is a means of engagement that keeps me thinking about the music like any other and my leggies will get mad if I stand for 3 hours straight + I want to save energy for the one of these bands I actually had prior opinions about and am nominally here to see.

Yes, I'm aware that critiquing the punctuation of a band name that's kind of incoherent and meaninglessly edgy in the first place is silly.

Bloom seems perfectly fine and pleasant. Save the accent in their stage chatter, they sound like perfectly standard generic metalcore. They'll be added to the assessment spreadsheet for closer examination, as anyone whom I've seen live is.

I wonder how often IHW gets their posters subtly vandalized with apostrophes. Although maybe the "eats, shoots, and leaves" school of grammatical correction isn't that widespread.

I guess you could claim that "Hearts Wake" is a place and they are in there? That makes as much sense as what they probably intended.

https://www.bloomsyd.com

first opener. happen to be Australian and this is their first time in the US. I'm still a sucker for accents. Although it does have a bit of the Steve Irwin vibe re: "if you came to shake your fucking ass (pronounced with a long A), then here you go!"

In Heart[']s Wake is also Australian. Miss May I and Traitors aren't.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Hearts_Wake

oh hey they're into environmentalism good for them. of course this does unambiguously say there is no apostrophe and it's not one word either so they've got no excuse.

what do I care more about: snakes and metalcore, or linguistic pedantry? they're kind of all things I'm passionate about. Question is of course how I feel about them musically. do I end up liking In Hearts Wake's music and their tight snake shirt enough that I'm willing to tolerate the crime against apostrophes that is their orthography.

the other snake shirt, whose worthiness will be determined when I determine if I like In Heart[']s Wake. Shame on them for making me choose between snakes and apostrophes.

it is in fact a hoodie which I maybe did not need more of but look at it this is tight as fuck I couldn't not have this. It's also got the relevant album name in an edgy font on one of the sleeves which I really like.

(at yet another concert)

Miss May I has a shirt with a snake coiled around a skull with a knife stuck in the top of it, which is like one of the FIR shirts I used to have, but better because it's also got a snake. However, there is no one presently at their merch table. Opener In Heart's Wake also has a skull and snake shirt, sans the knife, but I'm not buying shirts for anyone I'm unfamiliar with until I've determined if I like them. Or at least if they were enjoyable to see live. So I'm not getting the other snake shirt until they have come on and I have an opinion on the subject.

It might actually be In Hearts Wake with no apostrophe, so they'll need to be really good to make up for this affront to grammar. Or possibly Inheartswake as one word which is marginally better I guess.

CSS pro strats that I just learned today but you probably already know: If you set a box with a scrollbar to have padding on the left, it'll scooch the scrollbar that much to the right, so if you care about having smooth clean edges on your sides your options were (until I thought of this) to either remove your padding on the left and sacrifice some amount of clean readability or remove the scrollbar.

I'm aware that this is fucking obvious, but it took me until now to realize "wait a minute, if I set left and right padding for my P tags directly but not my box, then it won't scooch the scrollbar but will keep the padding for readability!"

I'm feeling very clever, even though I know it's rather unimpressive. Also did a Clever Pro Strat for the same webpage (have a web design related project for a class, am the designated Person Who Knows Webpages in my assigned group, talked my group into using Nekoweb because if we used Wix or something I'd be cranky the whole time) of separately setting portrait and landscape webkit webshit so that "it's a scrolling div if you're horizontal but goes all the way down if you're vertical" works.

oh dear both the halloween and ghost hissi pet styles look fantastic. i knew i wanted the halloween but now i need to come up with names (and acquire styles and pet slots) for both of them. might be purchasing some NC on October 31st after I see how many of the Haunted Mansion items are worth acquiring.

I have been very "sometimes I sleep all day bc I hate the sun" vibes lately and I don't know why. I am just...tired with no explicable cause. I was very tired last night so went to bed a lot earlier...and did not wake up feeling any substantially better because despite going to bed earlier, I did not sleep Well. There is nothing wrong with the temperature, light, or sound profile in my room, really (well, someone kept opening and closing their door loudly last night, but I can't control that), nor am I under any real notable emotional stress. Demonic possession?

today is apparently also a slime day. the existence of sunlight and noises is a personal offense; this is an act of warfare by the rest of the world against me specifically. have a headache for little reason and the demon has plenty of ideas. so I'm taking a nap I guess

vibrate or die-brate

I'm very much "if it doesn't hurt anybody, do what ye will", but seeing the words "emocore" or "scenecore" anywhere (unless it's "emocore" as in early 00s experiments in emo / hardcore fusion e.g. A Smile From The Trenches before their Ronnie Slimed revival), or really any -core aesthetic on Neocities personally makes me want to start grossly misusing audio equipment. You're free. You don't need to distill every subculture or idea into a TikTok-friendly marketable bastardized version of itself anymore. (and that's what X-core is, especially if the base was a pre-existing subculture.) Not everything you like needs to be an "aesthetic" whatever that means. And also "core" is not a suffix for aesthetics; if it's not a subgenre of hardcore music call it something else. You can say "I like X" or "I am X" if X is a subculture you're emulating the surface-level aspects of and it's just as meaningful and way less stupid-sounding than "I'm X-core". It's a similar problem to the word "content creator" reducing whatever artistry or other creative work you do into content to feed to the algorithm and for others to consume. Calling something "-core" distills the essence of, say, "I like dragons" into a box properly designed for marketing that ignores the really important part of liking a thing, which is, like, WHY you like it, and erases any actual nuance of liking things or subcultures by turning all of them into surface-level Intagram filters.

So, like, get off my lawn.

made a spacehey. realized it sucked (layout's really clunky and hey news flash NO ONE FUCKING LIKES AUTOPLAY MUSIC and -core aesthetics aren't real, and 2000s LARPing for its own sake just feels pointless to me) and left less than an hour later. nice try demon ronnie

Also linguistically speaking, I generally find "southern hospitality" incredibly fake and annoying -- just get to the fucking point and don't call me "baby"; you don't know me -- but "bless your heart" as a synonym for "go fuck yourself" comes in pretty handy if you can pull it off. I can't, but it's devastating for those who can. PSA that if someone from the south (TM) tells you to do that, it's not a blessing. I also have the utmost respect for Dolly Parton.

What prompted this thought is that one of the latest batch of dollar CDs is yet another band that resembles a watered-down version of Avenged Sevenfold meets 90s dad groove metal. Some online forums describe them as having "Southern" sensibilities. From what I can tell, "Southern" in regards to metal just means "a little too inclined to describe guns, maybe an accent, and a vague resemblance to misogynistic bro-country lyrics". By the way, the band which prompted this thought (Bad Remedy) is not, in fact, Southern. They're from Ohio. So I'm not quite sure why they're like that, or if "southern" as a descriptor has anything to do with the region.

I'm actually from [gestures in the vague direction of the southeastern US], and have many gripes with The South (TM) as a concept and the folks who seem a little too inclined to embrace stereotypes thereof whether they're from here or not, although I can say that I like a lot of things about it other than the humans. Here are my Things I Appreciate About The South (TM):

1. Anoles, red-eared sliders, frogs, water snakes, and perhaps the occasional alligator, and it's warm enough much of the year that you get to see a good number of reptiles and amphibians. It's nice to be greeted on a walk by a little lizard that's just vibing or some tadpoles. Cicadas are also cool. You go with the screaming, you funky little bugs.

2. You don't usually need to deal with snow or ice. I don't like being hot, but I dislike ice more. When snow or ice does happen, everyone freaks out so you don't need to do anything that day.

3. The word "y'all". It's incredibly grammatically useful and lacks the vaguely gendered connotations of "you guys". You can't really ask for a more efficient way to address a group.

4. Fried okra. It turns it from a slimy and unpleasant vaguely phallic green thing into something delicious.

If guns were marketed as what they are -- tools that are really only good for killing living beings -- rather than symbols of your manhood and cultural pride and aesthetic toys to collect different breeds of, perhaps folks would be a lot more justifiably cautious with them. Edgy songs that treat guns as props feed into that myth in a way that the same with knives, fire, Saw-esque death traps, drowning, etcetera, don't.

I like songs about murder, but not if they're using guns for it. Guns are not fun. Guns are not edgy. They're too easy to be impressive and not aesthetically inspiring, plus there's the matter of "it's a lot easier and takes a lot less commitment to kill someone with one than a knife so treating them as aesthetical toy props is a lot more dangerous". Edge is inherently over-the-top and exaggerated to a point, for aesthetics or to provide an artistic point. Killing people with guns is not. It's so mundane that it fails to be aesthetically interesting, and the glorification of guns as an aesthetic and symbol does very real harm to people, in a way that edgy OCs with knives and chainsaws don't, nor do songs about beating people up with your bare hands.

If you want to write a silly little song about murder, write it about bladed weapons or killing someone with your bare hands, or setting them on fire or something. Guns are not fun. They are not aesthetical, and treating them as such can be pretty irresponsible. At very least, if you're gonna use guns for edge, have them be a version or doing things with them that isn't possible in real life, or at least that some portion of your audience can't just go to Walmart and buy and hurt themselves or others doing.

Of course, here's the question: do the original artists of these mysterious Spanish-language bonus tracks actually understand what they're doing, or did they just get someone who knew Spanish to write the lyrics and they just got coached on pronunciation without reading them?

If you were the lyricist and you understand the language and the guys you're writing for don't and you were feeling mean, you could probably make them say something really embarrassing and the fans who don't speak the language would still love it. Thus far, I haven't heard anything that doesn't seem to be standard genre lyrics basically, but you could probably do it. (although maybe not with Spanish for US-based folks; it's got enough cognates and baseline exposure that most folks might at least get that they're being insulted.) Sure, they probably should at least run it through Google Translate before approving it, but who says they would?

Someone should convince Ronnie to do a Russian-language track to leech off Alex Terrible's audience and the lyrics are actually just earnest and embarrassing non-"yeah I'm so goddamn problematic" confessions of how disgusting he is. Try to make Piss Jacket sound cool.

Was there one specific band that did it once that everyone else is referencing? Did the nu metal / metalcore / etc. community in the mid-00s just decide that Spanish was cool? It's happened enough times with enough bands of similar genre that I feel like there has to be something behind it, but I have no idea what.

...okay, were at least partially Spanish-language bonus tracks, like, a Thing for some cultural phenomenon reason? I've seen them from a bizarre number of distinct metal-adjacent bands, including ones with no Hispanic members or connections that I know of.

https://youtu.be/xUBKT07_Kp0

full album yewchube link if you want to check it out yourself. I'm probably keeping this CD in my personal sleeve collection.

Today I learned that if a URL in markdown contains two underscores, markdown will try to italicize part of it so it won't parse. Way to go.

Even if you're pretty standard or mediocre at each base genre / subgenre you're doing, if you combine them in interesting ways, you can make something stronger than any of them in the whole. Of course, if you fail to combine them in interesting ways with interesting transitions, it just draws to attention how you're not good at any of them and makes what would otherwise be a fully functional albeit unexciting song into an incoherent mess, RONALD.

The first two tracks on the album (Enemy of the Sun - Shadows) that are more pure thrash metal didn't sell me, but the weirder ones with more melodic / groove metal / thrash-screaming oscillation work remarkably well so it kind of grew on me over time. It's an interesting style and hopefully they weren't scared off by big meanie responses and kept it up on their second album in 2010. of course, they seem to have vanished off the face of the earth after that.

So either I actually understand what metalcore is as a valid genre and understand that it being used as a derogatory label is pretty much just pure emo-bashing / homophobia and can appreciate genre-bending even outside of Pure Metal (TM), or I have no taste.

Enemy of the Sun - Feel The Beating

okay, I can see why the purists at metalarchives hated this, but this is actually a lot of fun. the rest of the album is also pretty much like that. interesting fusion of subgenres. they seem to have done exactly 2 albums total but I'll probably assess the other one. Kind of reminds me of System of a Down in the sense of being an odd oscillation of vocal styles and speeds and such which is kind of an exercise in madness but all the more entertaining for it.

And I wouldn't really describe any of those styles as "metalcore", so evidently the gatekeepers at MetalArchives are just using it as a synonym for anything they don't like. To be honest, the thrash metal label that EotS attaches to itself and the reviewers really didn't like them using seems like the most accurate instrumentally speaking inasmuch as you can apply anything to it. It's an example of genre / style-bending done well.

more visually interesting than any performance of that song has ever been

https://file.garden/ZvBqN3lQEnLVuczj/huefiltertime.mp4

today on "FIR TikToks my mom got recommended to her because she uses TikTok to check on things for me and decided I needed to see."

As loath as I am to admit it, that is actually some manner of cool. Now, subjecting all of your neighbors to that song uncensored, and putting the Windows XP Movie Maker hue filter over the video, which you're also subjecting your neighbors to, is definitely...a choice.

zombified would make more sense as a halloween projecting video because it wouldn't be out of place at your local halloween store's stock image displays if you ignore the "political" "symbolism" and cancellation whining

halloween decorating ideas if you hate your neighbors

holy shit a drakloak / dragapult adopting a bagon would be adorable. bagon's biggest ambition in life is to fly which is why it throws itself off cliffs...combine that with the dragon that likes taking care of smaller dragons and shooting them out at high speeds...

I find Sword and Shield's focus on weaponry and total disregard for worldbuilding to be a step backward from Sun and Moon that only got worse in Scar/Vio, and most of its designs stupid, but Dragapult is good. It's a good creature. And think of how proud it would be once the Bagon finally evolves into Salamence after pupating. "I do not understand what is going on, son, but I support you."

It's probably the most well-put-together design in Sword and Shield, since it ties in amphibian parental care with dad dart frogs carrying babies on their backs and stuff, olms as baby dragons, why Diplocaulus and some other prehistoric amphibians are shaped like that, and also the "it is also a stealth bomber" part. Which I'm fine with as long as it's naturally shaped like that. Pokemon that ARE weapons are totally chill. Pokemon that hold and use weapons e.g. Sirfetch'd or Zacian, I have real problems with because the whole point of Pokemon is that they fight with their natural abilities. Giving them human-like weapons misses the point.

a logical progression of thoughts:

"hmm why does escape the fate still follow him on Twitter" -> "wait when did he start having beef with craig again and why" -> "why isn't that reported on when the beef is a major part of etf / fir lore" -> "what is wrong with loudwire and prp" -> [rant on the nature of journalistic integrity, responsibility, and free thought requiring free information to base your thoughts on without being told what to think] -> "why are FIR fans like that" -> "willful ignorance is philosophically indefensible" -> "yeah ronnie is just an san-destroying eldritch abomination in vaguely humanoid form and I'm the fucker who's going to summon something awful trying to transcribe and digitize the Necronomicon"

see, if you're gonna be a hater, you've gotta use a bunch of faux-philosophical language to justify it...

I don't know how much of this is actual philosophy and how much is that I just feel personally betrayed by FIR as a concept and I've still got some breakup-rage because they Won't Shut Up. But I feel like there's at least a kernel of actual philosophical merit here. And Loudwire and PRP's coverage just objectively sucks on any merits of "actually presenting information in a useful way", which is the bare minimum for anything calling itself journalism.

Willful ignorance is pretty much the #1 thing I deem philosophically indefensible, and if you can do enough looking into Ronnie to cite the dates and times of every tweet when he's called himself gay to explain why it was really just responding to how haters are flirting with him [citation needed], then you can acknowledge that he actively attacks the diversity in his fanbase a lot more often than he welcomes it.

And if you're identifying Ronnie with your self-concept such that him doing any wrong is injurious to you...I've got a special interest. FIR is a fundamental part of my headspace, for better and worse, and I can still acknowledge where it differs from me. I get that not everyone puts as much intellectual thought into their interests as me, but if you're going to be spreading stuff around and attacking anyone who goes against your opinions, you should have a philosophical basis for them. And if I can philosophically separate myself from FIR, I don't see much excuse why others hypothetically can't. And I definitely don't see any philosophically defensible excuse for defending them when you have information if you don't conflate them with yourself.

Falling In Reverse's fans deserve to be able to find accurate and properly cited and contextualized information about it. Falling In Reverse deserves to be thought about as it both intersects and doesn't with Ronnie. And if rhetorical-you're willfully choosing to not contextualize your information or think about FIR as separate from Ronnie and you're spreading that around, go fuck yourself.

I just don't get how people who claim to like a thing and study it and will pull out sources from anywhere to defend Ronnie are willing to be willfully ignorant and not see the full picture even when it's Right Fucking There. If this is a thing you care about and are invested in (and at least some of the Max's Discord folks were clearly special interesty), why would you be willing to ignore actively available information? And if Loudwire and PRP are willingly presenting a misleading picture in the name of appeasing Ronnie and/or clicks and manipulating mumble mumble an at least 3-digit number of journalism-reading fans, then I hate them even more.

I get that not everyone is me, but is it that hard, when faced with decades of evidence, to admit that maybe Ronnie isn't the nicest and most innovative and generous person alive? And is it that hard to go cross-check PRP or Loudwire with some actual tweets?

I have as much reason to be overly invested and attached to him and to personally identify with him such that I sugarcoat him as anyone. I have his voice in my head on disturbingly frequent occasions against my will! If I can be critical of FIR when it makes up a non-trivial fraction of my self-concept, why can't its fans?

If fans are willfully ignorant, I'm mad at them for it. If they're being misled by a lack of good information, I feel bad for them and I'm mad at the folks misleading them. And since it seems to be both, I hold both those things. The people deserve the truth. And if you're invested in something and care about it and want to see it succeed...and deny that truth when it's presented to you, what the fuck are you even doing? Being critical of your interests isn't something to brag about; it's a necessity because without critical thought, you're not forming your own opinions and really engaging with the thing you like on your own terms.

No one who cares about and has studied Falling In Reverse should like / support them, in my biased opinion, because the quality of music, communication, behavior, interest in stage shows, etcetera has demonstrably dropped over time.

You should not need to deep dive into social media posts, a book no one's been able to buy since December, and interviews scattered across years and random YouTube accounts to get a coherent story. (now, you'd think that if people have any kind of analytical skils whatsoever, just the first page of his socials or any of the recent songs would be enough to conclude that maybe he's not a nice person coming from the man himself, but I guess it's not.)

I can't tell if FIR fans are being manipulated by a lack of information, are willfully ignorant, or both. And I don't know which is worse or who I should be more mad at. Which is why I despise the journalism, Ronnie, and the fans in rough descending order, all for different reasons.

Now, people like Chey (pretty popular Ronnie commenter on TikTok), who seem to be very good at collating a lot of sources but cherry-picking just the cute and "see he welcomes diversity" part, I'm putting into the "willfully ignorant" corner, because I'm sorry, if you've gone through every Ronnie video since 2012, you know what kind of person he is. The question is about your average FIR fan. Would they still be an FIR fan if PRP and Loudwire weren't slime-exalting garbage? They deserve to be able to find the information to decide if this is something they want to support themself and express doubt without being shamed for it.

Hey, Ronnie Boy, you want to talk about "ideological diversity" and "free thought"? Stop attacking anyone who says anything that isn't purely praise and copyright claiming reviews.

I want to be told that's not true and actually good Falling In Reverse coverage exists...but I honestly don't think it does. I want to be told that I'm being unreasonable, because then I don't have a reason to be mad about something I can't really do much about save enlightening the like, 3 people who read my Neocities.

And of course, my attempts to take "uh, you do know what he's saying here, right?" to actual Falling In Reverse fan spaces failed. I guess if dick-sucking is what the people want, that's all that really matters. Because fuck integrity I guess. As much as FIR fans suck, they're being used and actively manipulated by Ronnie and the entire system around him. They should be mad. They should be questioning why they're still FIR fans. And I don't understand why they're not and can't tell if I'm being condescending or not.

Enabling bigotry and abuse in the name of liking a band is completely indefensible, but maybe they wouldn't be enabling those things if the only fucking sources that tell them anything weren't doing that. If there's something you care about, you should be able to get accurate information about it, and have enough information in findable places to draw your own conclusions, versus having to take someone else's word for it or being shunned. If you can't express dissenting opinions, that's not a fandom or a community for discussion, that's a cult. Exactly the same thing Ronnie seems to think the media around him is, but yet he perceives their opinions as the opposite of what they actually seem to be. I'd love to know what media Ronnie hates so much, because maybe if they actually put things in context they deserve a signal boost.

I'm pretty sure I'm probably the world's leading (only?) scholar on Falling In Reverse -- and I shouldn't be. Because if the band doesn't communicate, and the only relevant journalistic sources only communicate what they like, who can you trust? Even if it doesn't do any meaningful harm, this is a thing that Matters to people, and folks investing their time, energy, and money in Falling In Reverse deserve to know the truth and what that's really going towards.

And also, these people get paid for this shit. I should not be doing a better job at taking other textual sources we have and Ronnie's prior behavior into account in my fucking Pokemon Go crackfic than people who get paid to write about him.

I can't tell if this is overly idealistic and unreasonable to ask or not. I know that frankly, no one reading Falling In Reverse journalism is likely to want to hear bad news, and that they don't matter on a global scale, nor does anyone PRP or Loudwire reports on. They're not doing any meaningful harm. But maybe it's overly woke and bleeding-heart of me, but I don't think having a basic expectation of fairness and accuracy from outlets that tout themselves as sources of up-to-date information is unreasonable, especially since if there are only 2 major magazines that cover a given topic, guess what, you're the authority so you need to act like one and do an actually good job of research ethics.

The disregard for journalistic integrity and the fact that painting an overly positive picture of people who do terrible things with their musical platforms' support does hurt people aside, it's also doing a disservice to Ronnie / Falling In Reverse to not provide full context. Cherry-picked praise is just as bad as cherry-picked hatred and just as unfair to what you're describing.

If you are the ONLY mainstreamly accessible source on something other than the thing itself, it should also be your responsibility to whistleblow. Appreciate the nice and criticize the yikes, to quote Overly Sarcastic Productions on YouTube. If you are the only source other than Ronnie himself and other fans anyone is likely to read about Falling In Reverse, you should be painting the most accurate picture you can. Not doing that is unfair and disingenuous to both your subject and the audiences who trust you.

A rant about the state of Falling In Reverse journalism (as in, 2 out of the exactly 3 online magazines of any relevance that still cover them and don't just copy and paste the same AI-written crap):

Putting behavior in context with other sources is just a good thing to do, because without full context, mentioning "this figure is controversial" or "this album got gold" or whatever is broadly meaningless and doesn't tell an accurate story. MetalSucks, and random hateblogs (including mine), should not be the only sources doing that. "this guy got himself in trouble for telling a bad 'joke'" is a completely different thing if he did it once vs. if he's made a career of it for the past 14 years. "This album got gold" without the context of "single plays are being retroactively counted as equivalent units and many of these have been out for 2+ years" makes it sound way more successful than it is. "look, Ronnie paid off this fan's bills" is dishonest to report if you're not also reporting on him singling out fans who say things he doesn't like for targeted dogpiling.

If you're reporting on a police action, cite what the victim was doing and why the police officer in question decided they were doing something wrong (including any documented past instances of bias from said). If you're reporting on a protest, say what they were protesting and what led up to it. If you're reporting on a study finding, link to the study. If you're relating anything from another source, either link to or quote / screenshot it so we don't have to take your word for it. If you're reporting on a singular incident involving a person and using it to draw conclusions about their character or career, put that in context. That's a basic precept of journalistic integrity. No finding is statistically meaningful without the sample size. In regards to a person's behavior, what they do most frequently is the most important. And in regards to PM2024 getting gold, I may know that "album equivalent units" include streaming, and that if singles are repackaged as part of an album, their streams are counted retroactively, but your average reader doesn't. If you don't spell that out, you're communicating "500,000 people bought this album / millions of people streamed it in the 2 weeks after its release", which isn't true (or at least lacks nuance).

Now, neither Loudwire nor PRP have standards of journalistic integrity listed on their websites. So I guess technically they're not promising anything, but as pretty much the only major sources in the metal / hardcore / etcetera scene, they should feel a responsibility to actually be accurate.

By the way, on Loudwire's front page at time of writing, there's a list of "10 Native American artists in rock and metal". One of their thumbnail pics is Ronnie. He was removed from the "list of people with Blackfoot ancestry" on Wikipedia because the only citation of him perhaps having some DNA on his mother's side is him and being "part Blackfoot Indian" is not a real thing (at least according to the editor); tribal membership requires actually doing something. Also, it doesn't...matter. Even if he has DNA, his upbringing is 100% culturally whitebread. He's not an indigenous artist or icon in any sense that matters, seeing as IF there's even actually any genetics there, which we have no clear citation of, it's through a parent he has little connection with so he has no cultural connection whatsoever. Putting him on that kind of list suggests things about him as an artist that simply aren't the case.

And way too many FIR fans seem to use that to claim "um actually he's not an asshole because 'speaking your mind' is valued in His Culture and also he can't be racist because he is a racialized person!" uh, if he's perceived as white and gets culturally interpreted as such, he's really not, and even if he weren't he would still be capable of being racist. And I doubt anybody considers "people who prioritize themselves over everything else" to be a good thing, seeing as it's completely unproductive in any kind of community setting.

I guess that Loudwire and PRP aren't promising integrity, but they're enabling a lot of bad behavior and as the only major journalistic sources to cover Falling In Reverse, painting a drastically inaccurate picture which in turn gets cited because it's the only option to enable and produce skewed views of more bad behavior. And yet Ronnie claims that "the media" is totally against him. What media?! Everyone who's covered you since 2014 except MetalSucks loves you, even when it contradicts observed reality! They're being irresponsible at best and actively harmful at worst. Whoever writes their Ronnie columns (perhaps one-handed) should be ashamed of themself.

And apparently Loudwire does a "Wikipedia: fact or fiction" series in which artists read their own Wikipedia pages...did it ever occur to you that people aren't necessarily accurate sources on themselves (especially famous people about anything that could be construed as controversial and/or embarrassing; first person accounts should be checked with others, especially from others who were at the scene), and that this is a lovely way to spread the idea that "the Mainstream Media is against you; we're all you can trust and artists love us (because we kiss their asses)"?

I guess that it's not really doing any harm because Ronnie is tiny and irrelevant, and there are far worse problems in journalism out there, but the blatant disregard for...well, Ronnie, and most of what he says, and hey maybe say WHY he's so "allegedly problematic" is just appalling, and the fact that those are the only two sources that still cover FIR. It's not just horribly lacking in integrity, it's also inaccurate. Accurate coverage means warts and all. Especially if someone is 95% figurative warts by volume.

I guess I could put things in a scrolling div, but that doesn't solve the Massive Scroll problem and would look weird on mobile because you can't do heights in % and em and vh / vw don't always jive well with different orientations, although I've found 40-50 em to be a good number.

Is there a way to do pagination with pure CSS that a stylesheet such as the ones you can apply to your thoughts page can do? Inspired by mutual Sneek having theirs only show the top 100 posts. That's inspiring, but I don't want my stuff cut off. It would be nice if the scroll were a tad less overwhelming, and pagination would work.

I'm pretty sure I've got the longest thoughts.page in the webring because I'm incredibly wordy and freaking love this format.

Also, calling him a celebrity is debatable seeing his broad irrelevance and that no one celebrates him. (Or at least no one should.)

I do not and have never "cared about celebrities", btdubstep. Ronald is my study species. My concern for him is strictly scientific.

The core statement that no one with a net worth higher than 6 digits should have a Patreon still holds, though.

in other news, from my contact's sources. So I was off by a digit, but as Fermi estimates go...of course, now I'm annoyed because the existence of a number that isn't what I predicted makes the math I did back in April pointless, but without any context for the number, it's not actually scientifically useful for answering the core question about FIR's finances. See, what we need is one of those nifty analytics graphs some banking apps do so the growth rate over time can be extrapolated and used as a proxy for FIR money...the monologue pointed out that I'm like one step removed from just wanting his tax return for science, and honestly it wasn't wrong. The math I did was pointless, and I don't have enough info from this number to figure out the answer to why I did the math in the first place. (And we don't know what % of this is FIR vs. other things.) The sketchy unsourced net worth sites had better update. To be honest, I'm kind of surprised that in his 14-year career of oversharing, it took him this long to post this.

Also, I guess his Twitter is unfortunately back.

A note of clarification pertinent to the Bad Guy music video unfortunately coming out tomorrow (if it's not late again): Ronald is the doctor. The guy with the laser eyes is Ronald's Monster.

FUCK yeah got an trade for black crow (and also ghostling) offering art

successfully either appeased or exorcised the demon. sometimes I'm not sure if I like playing mario kart or if I just like swearing (xkcd #290). it's only fun to cuss out the cpu opponents if I win, though. at 150cc it's just frustrating.

I was playing Mario kart when the fire alarm went off. I was winning damn it. Also I need to figure out where in ryujinx the pause button is

Took a nap thinking that it would reset my vibes being off from this morning. It didn't. Had an even worse dream where basically, I kill Ronnie but it just means that he lives inside me full time now, so I get completely possessed followed by the former Ronnie ghost thing exiting my body and emerging as itself to cause problems for everyone. Plus it did the thing that I hate that my dreams keep doing where I wake up repeatedly, but it's in the dream and every time I wake up, I either can't move or whenever I try to move it resets me back after a couple seconds, and I get more and more desperate and terrified because I want Out until I wake up for real. So now I'm awake for real, I think, but completely out of reality. It seems there was no internal reason; I'm just under spiritual attack.

Had one of those Kafkaesque syncretism dreams again. Pretty standard anxiety dream / RSD setup otherwise. Basically just got in frustrating situations where nothing i could do was right according to rules I didn't know or understand, emo bashed, and accused of things I didn't do for hours with no escape. Being addressed as Ronnie the entire time was new, though. There might have also been some syncretism in my visual design but I don't really remember.

I have no idea why this got pulled out. Wasn't experiencing any notable RSD / anxiety / etcetera, and the thinking about Ronnie I'd been doing was pretty pleasant. I have no idea what my subconscious thinks my "relationship" with him is.

I did enter a lobby for the Falinks, but no one joined. Perhaps it's a matter of demographics. Speaking of which, one guy with a similarly edgy hairstyle in the line complimented my shirt.

Anyway, early voting is active in at least some states. If yours is one that does it now, I recommend going to do it just to get it in as soon as possible and get it over with.

It seems that day 1 early voting turnout is pretty good. Unfortunately, the max spot with a Falinks is on the other side of the building at the tax commissioner's office. If it weren't, I suspect I could get enough people for it. #PokemonGoToThePolls

...this is why if you're eating a really loaded burrito, use a fork.

My first thought was "okay why would an edgy song be called that". This doesn't quite answer it. (finally assessing the CDs I got from my last used CD store run)

Oh, the other conclusion is that I don't understand how, but I somehow managed to lose 1/2 of my fishnet gloves. It doesn't affect the aesthetic much since anything becomes edgier if asymmetrical, but I'm confused by how only one of them was in my paraphernalia box when I decided what gear to bring, because that's where all my paraphernalia lives and I can't think of a circumstance when I'd only put one back. But apparently I did? I've also contemplated why 2021-22 me thought fishnet tights were a worthy investment as someone who never wears either ripped pants or shorts. Suspect it was probably a purchase from the same era as the long sleeved crop tops of "I'm too enthused by the novelty of Edge to notice certain things making me dysphoric" before I'd really established an aesthetic, or really figured out the gender thing. Still, how does one lose one glove? And I don't wear them frequently enough for it to have vanished in the laundry.

How much of the reason behind the available songs being on the poppier end is because that's easier for the part time touring band they staff for backing for this to play? And that does also align more with the popular image of "emo" than the more post-hardcore / metalcore end, although there is and has been plenty of crossover.

I'm staying until 10 or if I see myself on the "coming up next" list of 5. Whatever comes first. I'm not having enough fun to justify disrupting my Pokemon sleep schedule for this.

It's better than what I'd otherwise be spending my Saturday night doing, but I'm somewhat disappointed with the setup, both in terms of having a predefined list of songs that didn't really include my faves (although I understand why) and the combo of "who goes on decided by lottery" with "one person at a time and per song" and there being hundreds of people who signed up for a slot. (Of course, there aren't that many songs on the list so either a lot of folks are getting left out or they're going to start repeating.)

Emo Night Karaoke (a distinct organization from Emo Nite with an E which isn't confusing at all) review:

This was a fine thing to spend 20 dollars on, I guess, but the problem is that well, witnessing people you don't know doing karaoke isn't that interesting (and that the set is mostly on the poppier end of canon in which I'm less invested.) And that one person on stage at a time plus at least dozens of people present puts the chance of your coming on pretty low.

They should have put the "who's coming up next" list on a document that you can get with a QR code scan, so you'd know how long you need to wait to come on via something other than them showing the next 5 on screen about every 10 minutes.

The main conclusion I've drawn is to push Taking Back Sunday up in the list of "to assess". Of course, I should deal with the CDs from my last batch so I decide if they're going to the library or not and the small bean bands from recent concerts...

Since nobody in a properly maintained pit intentionally goes for the face, but if it's a "my eyes are down here" situation...I guess that 2022 was a fluke. Not that I think this is the most important metric of how hardcore I am, but it's still a mite annoying.

The spirit is willing; the flesh is just like 6 inches shorter than the suggested amount to have your vulnerable parts out of range.

I think I absolutely could throw down with a set of folks of similar size. It's just an issue of relative positioning. (what we need is walls of death bracketed by height)

I'm trying to calculate the chances this is gonna leave a "no I promise I'm not being domestically abused" bruise. Got hit pretty hard due to being at exactly the wrong position.

Yeah, the problem with my making any attempt at moshing (despite this being a smaller show, my attempt lasted about 10 seconds) is that my mouth is just about at standard metalcore enjoyer slam punch level and getting hit in the mouth Fucking Hurts in a way that the expected body blows don't.

Either EtF in 2022 was a fluke or I was too hopped up on fixation juice to notice pain, but pretty much, got punched in the mouth, squished between two people, and promptly exited the death wall contemplating what the fuck I was thinking. If that makes me an unhardcore wimp so be it it's not my fault I'm short

good number! I don't believe in "angel numbers" or it otherwise having any supernatural significance, but good numbers are good.

and based on the suggestions from the you're-not-supposed-to-like-him manager (at 11 minutes), INK is not fond of AI "art". good.

https://youtu.be/k9TzUxGPbI0

the second half is honestly hilarious and meta. the first half is...extremely gory. the second half also suggests that the entire INK lineup getting killed by Art The Clown is canon, so this is the new band lineup that completely replaced them in-universe.

if you start at, like, the 6 minute mark, it's just the meta part with the board meeting without the gore

new Ice Nine Kills song is quite good, and also probably their most fucked up music video yet thus far. and said video is also 15 minutes long and officially licensed with a pretty well-reviewed and hyped horror movie. and this isn't the first time INK has done that.

the only reason falling in reverse gets any music video awards is folks not being aware of the competition.

He's not going to get nominated -- even the number of metal bands who everyone agrees are metal and don't suck who've gotten noms is single digit, but if he somehow did, there would be a lot more scrutiny into his actions. So if he thinks he's getting cancelled now...and with enough coverage that's not sucking his dick, Epitaph isn't getting a good image either because it's going to be the first anyone hears of them in most of the mainstream too. If everyone's introduction to them outside of the scene / punk / metal / etc world is him, that's not going to be a good result for anybody.

Parties who could probably sue Ronnie and win:

1. That police department in New Jersey

2. McDonald's

3. Panda Express

4. Bill Watterson, although the peeing Calvin decals are dubious to begin with and he's mostly fine with them.

5. Everyone he's ever incited targeted harassment against.

6. Luke for setting him on fire that one time.

7. The US Trade Commission, for running an illegal lottery.

And this is just in the past year. I don't understand what Epitaph is doing. (Or not...)

They might be an indie label but they're not stupid. They've survived since the 90s and he's their biggest artist. They have to have some sort of leash on him? I can see that in reference to most bad behavior, they'll accept it as a PR boost, but copyright infringement on merch and violating the distribution contract will do nothing but hurt them.

Beating your girlfriend, throwing mic stands at people, and being a bigoted piece of shit can signal boost you. The other things can't, and releasing FIR stuff solely through Patreon if anything hurts his reach. Even totally ignoring morality, letting him do literally whatever he wants with the FIR brand isn't good business sense.

I suppose that it is the case that if a massive corporate conglomerate sues a tiny and irrelevant music artist, the latter is the good guy in most narratives of that situation, but the probably illegal lottery and everything else isn't the case, and Epitaph is gonna take the consequences. I can see from his perspective how it helps his narrative. I can't see how it benefits Epitaph at all, and they're the ones who will take the hit if FIR gets sued. So you'd expect them to tell him to knock it off no matter how edgy he wants to be.

If he wanted to personally try to get himself sued, that's one thing, but anything going through official FIR outlets is Epitaph's problem and therefore a liability for them. I don't see how the current state of FIR is a good idea for anyone, and the only reason no one's sued him yet is that nobody cares. But, uh, if he's putting out billboards to try to get a Grammy nomination...people WILL care, and the happy problematic fun times are over. If he gets Grammy nominated, he's out of the scene sphere where anything he does is "yeah that's just Ronnie".

(Ronnie is at a marketing meeting)

"See? It's a mystery box. Fans will have to buy 3 of them to get all 3 songs!"

"Uh, how is it a mystery box if they all have the same 4 shirts in them?"

(Um actually voice) "Uh, according to ~quantum mechanics~, a box could contain anything until you open it!"

"Not how that works. Course, looking at some of these designs, I'm thinking your fans might prefer a dead cat..."

maybe it's ronnie having infected me talking but this might be my new favorite item on site.

when you pick on me this is what you are making fun of

the dark slime won't know what hit him. this is how i keep all the disgusting falling in reverse goats restrained

Two separate, but related thoughts in regards to "discourse":

1. Stories don't need to be completely accurate to real life, or morally pure in real life. They just need to be interesting. Now, if a story is encouraging hurting people in real life, tastelessly using IRL tragedies, or is saying it's accurate when it's not, that's a problem. But sometimes, there's valid artistic reason to use "problematic" elements, because they fit the story the writer wants to tell. There's a place for exploding bad situations or behavior, or for characters who start out as something resembling a stereotype and grow out of it. It's all about what story you want to tell.

2. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. Just because something has parallels to a real life situation, or a trope has been historically used as such, doesn't mean that every example of it is trying to be a representation or allegory. If something has unfortunate implications for real life, it's okay to point them out, but unless you have valid reason not to (e.g. the author showing discriminatory views elsewhere or coded language in the story), assume good faith and that any implications for real life aren't intentional. You can and should point out any awkward parallels, but don't jump from that to those parallels being intentional or the author supporting whatever problematic thing you think their story does.

There is no such thing as a fundamentally bad trope, story element, or character archetype. It's all dependent on how the story interacts with realities beyond itself, and what intent its inclusion has. Sometimes people do "problematic" things, and it's not endorsing them to portray them in a story. Unless the author has given you good paratextual reasons to conclude they're not, assume that they just want to tell a fictional story, everything there has an in-story reason to be there, and parallels to real life aren't intentional. Human brains are really good at pattern recognition, and sometimes will recognize patterns when they're not there. It's okay, and important, to point out if something could come off poorly, but don't conclude that the author is trying to make any statements about real life if something does and you don't have other evidence.

oh drat, I'm awake (got attacked by slime of the nasal variety)

Here's an interesting data point I thought of this morning from my looking at EtF setlists to illustrate FIR's comparative monotony last night: Not Good Enough For Truth In Cliché is on the Emo Orchestra setlist. It's the first song, in fact. This is the first time EtF has so much as GLANCED at DIYLF live since Bury the Hatchet. And from what I can tell, no one's complained. Although it might be that Emo Orchestra is obscure enough that the Ronnie Enjoyers don't care, or that since they're also covering other genre canon songs, NGE4TIC is logical for that and isn't them declaring ownership even though they totally could and would be in the right to do so.

The fantasy is that this data point makes the chance of someone actually respectable doing DIYLF for its 20th anniversary nonzero. I think that 90% of Ronnie fans would just be happy that SOMEONE was covering it. The other 10% would start spewing bile in all directions like they're re-enacting the Exorcist and pull out Craig anecdotes from 2008 with little evidence of happening. Unfortunately, all major Ronnie journalism, including PRP and Loudwire which are the only two genre magazines that seem to still touch him, is in the other 10%. But of course, Ronnie can use Craig's name as a swear word and no one says a thing. But if Mabbitt so much as glances at DIYLF, or does something vaguely resembling FIR, or...has the gall to exist...

It's too bad that Violent New Breed never really took off and didn't get any live contracts, I still suspect because "hey, remember Ronnie Radke's boyfriend? He's the frontman of this different band now!" was a hard sell and all the more so since Max left vocals after the first album (I get the impression that he wasn't totally comfortable being the face of the band), because they could probably cover DIYLF and no one would complain. No one's gonna argue that Max doesn't have DIYLF credentials and he's Ronnie's most favorite little guy in the world.

what they do is do DIYLF in full, but with Emo Orchestra, so there's the genre canon shield. Everyone would fucking love it, and the Ronnie fans seem to deem it beneath their notice given that if they didn't, Craig touching DIYLF would be getting bile.

I mean, I guess since I'm only doing names now and removed all FIR lyrics and iconography, I COULD make a plausibly deniable goat called NoFear or something, but I'm not comfortable doing that.

It's too bad FIR is dead to me and I wouldn't necessarily deem any of the PM2024 tracks goat safe, because Big Bad Red would be a fun meta reference to use for it given the whole Popular Monster werewolf thing. Somebody can't escape from the shadow of their one mainstreamly successful song...

this is a good event this is a good wearable

I know there was little point in joining Team Jhudora two years in a row because I already had the avatar but...AXE BASS and I'm too gothy not to

and the kaos krew repack crashes after the loading screen so let's see if I can reinstall ryujinx portable and at least get my original rom working again

xkcd #349

and yes, I will complain about lackluster functionality in interfacing for software I haven't paid for because damn it I expect a certain degree of functionality from any self-respecting published software. if you're gonna install an emulator maybe let it update and have the game still work

be me

be wanting to play some fucking mario kart

ryujinx needs to update

it does the thing that has apparently been a known issue for the past 2 years where when it updates, it renames and deprecates the old files...but makes no new ones

look up what to do if it does that

tells you to reinstall ryujinx

well there's a pretty good chance you've lost your save, although you just kind of play mario kart for mindless catharsis so it doesn't matter. you figure that you'll try the kaos krew repack which includes the dlc, which you failed to get working anywhere else

install repack. it runs. try opening ryujinx without the launcher. doesn't acknowledge.

ryujinx wants to update with the repack installer

install update

won't recognize the rom as an application anymore

be reinstalling kaos krew repack, for a ryujinx installer in which this game only runs through its launcher, not ryujinx for some ungodly reason, and can't update

and you've probably still lost your save.

who the fuck makes an emulator install you can't update or that won't run from the emulator without a launcher

no shade to kaos krew but seriously what the fuck

also no one has ever wanted autoplay music in a downloader, or any setting, really. some things from 00s web design were deprecated for a reason

yeah wmr impressed me enough that I actually bought one of their shirts. it's one of the subtler ones -- most importantly, acronym on the front and website URL on the back so they are clearly a band (and the back is easily obscured by putting a button up over it which I like anyway). I was not expecting to actually like them given their name and my association of them with "emo revival" (with little relation to what it claims to revive) but they surprised me. I think it was in a discussion of "twenty nine scene" which didn't you know happen that I recalled their name

the name is just spicy enough that I wouldn't want it without the website URL context spelled out on a shirt but the URL on the back and acronym I can do

Correction: Elaine does not do vocals, she just does bass so that Justin (the lead) could switch to vocals only. I did not closely read the website the first time. Anyway they're still both beautiful and seem very good at what they do

okay both wristmeetrazor vocalists are gorgeous holy shit

wristmeetrazor actually has a female vocalist (who per their about also designed their website). and is also beautiful, in an abstract aroace sense and given the "designed their website" bit and its 88*31 button and blinkie sensibilities probably someone with whom I could get along, in a hypothetical sense. and if any members have in fact struggled with self harm they're valid in using the name and valid in it being a song reference too so I rescind my first impression

17:39 (yes, I used a stopwatch) for LIE. They're definitely in the hardcore punk tradition of very short songs, plus don't have that many. If the between artists turnover is fast, I might actually meet my bedtime.

This is a small enough show with a small enough pit that perhaps I wouldn't get squished. On the other hand, I'm not sure if I like any of these bands enough for it to be worth feeling that in my knees for at least 2 days...anything pit related is not happening until I finish my canned water because I spent 5 dollars on it and it is not leaving my person

I was taking notes on my phone the whole time. there's something of a contradiction in terms in standing on the side of a hardcore show, observing pit behavior and taking notes. I'm here doing some anthropological fucking research

Okay apparently wmr's name is derived from a song from an older band, so it's probably not actually making any emo / self-harm connection. Still wouldn't be comfortable wearing a shirt that said that, but it's not a reason to dislike them especially knowing nothing about them.

I do have to give Wristmeetrazor points for having an actually interesting website. Don't appreciate the name, though. Like, if you look into the genre's history, the association of emo with self-harm was not applied by emos themselves and didn't do anything good. I suppose you could argue reclamation, but I'm not sure if trivializing that sort of thing is something you...should reclaim.

Arrived, earlier than I probably needed to. Apparently 7 was the door time, and I know these things never start on time. I was unaware of Vended's existence until they were one of the bands I tried to find emails for on the festival billings spreadsheet. I was unaware of anything they did musically until a couple days ago. I don't care about the openers (and frankly, find the band name "wristmeetrazor" rather distasteful. all the association of emo with self-harm did was hurt all relevant parties.). This is very much a "it's cheap, nothing better to do, maybe they'll have cool shirts, why not" show. And likely relatively short by the standards of this sort of thing since Vended is headlining and kind of only has 54 minutes of songs total. The average time per setlist.fm was 35 minutes.

This late night discoursing is brought to you by the fucker down the hall who keeps loudly opening and closing their door every 5 minutes. Hey, buddy, I get that everybody has different schedules, but you live in a shared space and some of us were trying to fucking sleep.

If you're gonna be "anti-psych", be careful not to cross the line into being anti-science or anti-recovery. Is community support important? Yes. Is how clinical psych research has been carried out and implemented historically and to this day fundamentally biased? Yes. Are other cultures' methods of knowing and healing equally valid and worth consideration? Yes.

But I'm sorry, I know it's not cute, but community support is not enough for everyone, and all forms of healing are not created equal. Things like essential oils and acupuncture seem to mostly operate as placebos, and acupuncture vastly varies even in its home culture let alone the watered down variant sold as "alternative medicine". Placebos are great, but they can't do everything. Likewise, some people are legitimately dangerous to themselves or others or have internal struggles that no amount of community support can deal with on its own. Speaking from experience, I was still miserable, still wanted to die, and still kind of an asshole even after getting a vastly better support system and a good therapist until I got on medication. Turns out that all the support in the world couldn't stop my brain from being on the "you suck go die" channel 24/7, and constant internal flow of negativity made it kind of hard to actually internalize anything from my support network or make any progress.

I won't disagree that a lot of people currently institutionalized shouldn't be there, and that's not the most effective way to be treating their issues, or that historically and presently, clinical psychology has been used to marginalize people by interpreting them as "too much". But painting all clinical psychology as that and touting "whatever your personal healer is" and community support as the be all and end all of everything is at best reductive and at worst, actively steering vulnerable people into "treatments" that aren't marketed with their interests at heart and are unlikely to actually work.

Does clinical psychology always have the subject's best interests at heart? Sadly, no. But the answer is not, solely, to pivot to alternative medicine, or to put all of the labor on people's communities. That can work great for a lot of people, but the point of "holistic medicine" is to be holistic. None of those things necessarily work in a vacuum. And a lot of alternative medicine is just as driven by faulty cultural understandings and capitalistic perception of vulnerable people as commodities as anything with actual clinical trials and regulations. Not all mental health struggles can be fixed with community support alone. It's vital to everybody, but focusing entirely on it is going to leave out a lot of people.

yeah this is a good column, although the site doesn't seem nearly as active now; they've done a total of one review in 2024 period. note that they liked the drug in me is you so it's not just that they don't deem ronnie to be real metal or whatever. they haven't acknowledged FIR's existence since 2014 which is probably for the best. Other FIR reviews have an annoying tendency to conflate valid musical criticism with emo-bashing. I basically don't trust a lot of "metal" column sites' reviews of anything -core because a lot of them seem to hate it on principle for #emobashing reasons. Or to be honest, many music review sites -- see AllMusic's being thoroughly unimpressed with DIYLF contrasting with generally positive (even "I hate Ronnie but this still slaps") user reviews. This one seems to have a wider genre range and actually assess stuff for what it's trying to do, vs. some abstract notion of "real hardcore / metal / whatever".

https://lollipopmagazine.com/

Well, I'll be, they still exist. And it looks like this Lollipop Magazine and the Formula 1 one are probably two different entities. Either way, somehow, I don't think they'll care if I rehost the HTML and upload an ISO of a promotional CD from 20 years ago.

okay the lollipop magazine cd is fucking adorable. it is indeed a CD-ROM that came with, like, 50 mp3s, 3 music videos in MOV format, a bundled installer for RealPlayer in case you didn't have a compatible music player, and most adorable of all, a locally hosted as an HTML file authentic 2003 edgy website with info about all the bands on the disc. I'm tempted to reupload the HTML part to Neocities just for history's sake because it's delightful. And it's got some fun emo banner ads. This is a masterpiece of early 00s edgy music scene stuff, and doesn't seem to be talked about much online at all.

If Formula 1 racing and post-hardcore once had an overlap, maybe the Falling In Reverse Nascar car isn't completely absurd? Of course, at least the popular image of Nascar is that it's now inhabited mostly by Southern conservative fuckwads.

Felt like going on a little trip, so I went to the library to donate the rejects from the previous set of CDs and get my library card renewed / name updated (got congratulated on the name change by the desk person with he/they on their name tag and multiple pride pins, pretty clearly a like recognize like moment), and then went to the local CD store to pick up more weird CDs. Learned that along with the standard used section (and the new CDs they stock, which unsurprisingly focus on the most popular artists among their audience so not really whom I look for), they have an entire section of weird used CDs without proper jewel cases for a dollar each, ranging from demos from local bands, to random weird demos and promotional CDs from things mostly forgotten, to probably unauthorized copies, to a couple completely unlabeled ones. Picked up 3 from there, and one of the 5 dollar used CDs, to assess. Apparently Lollipop Magazine was a Formula 1 racing magazine, of all things, but for some reason, regularly put out MP3 compilation CDs.

And, like, I guess formula 1 racing in the mid-00s had some overlap with genre communities I like, because this sounds potentially promising. (And it seems to be a music CD, in the sense that it's a CD-ROM loaded with MP3s as opposed to a burned audio CD, which is interesting. Online databases list it as a "CD-ROM for Windows" as opposed to music.)

Radioactivist got 2/5 on AllMusic (4/5 in user ratings) with "well, it's hookier than post-hardcore has any right to be, but we're sure skaters and folks licensing music for video games will like it." which isn't that far off from how they described Dying Is Your Latest Fashion. The other 2 seem to be some flavor of nu metal, Seether being a name I'd heard before. Holy genre gatekeeping, Batman. But if user reviews are generally positive, then it's probably actually pretty good (or it only has one review).

https://file.garden/ZvBqN3lQEnLVuczj/blueberries.mp4

the birds are smarter than him. this has been a known quantity for a long time. also see that he wears hats indoors, as balding guys are wont to do.

somehow i suspect that the birds are also more inclined to eat fruits or veggies than him.

If you've got more than, like, 5 people, there's no need for a webcam. And in terms of other web platform opinions -- groupchats are not designed for large interactions. If you have more than, like, 20 people, use a forum and keep stuff divided and sectioned off. Hell, even Reddit's system is better for this. The problem with Discord etcetera is that they're using a platform designed for friend / gaming / etcetera groups and expanding it to hundreds or thousands of people, and just making a mess. Only the 20 most active people get to talk and everyone else gets drowned out in any given channel, or subchannels and threads just make the whole thing a worse version of forums.

If you want to talk with your bros about trivia night or the people in a class, make a groupchat. If you want to do communication for your website, or talk to a large number of people, or make any announcements people can actually fucking FIND, and you want more than the 20 most talkative people to be able to communicate and everyone else to be able to find things, make a forum.

so, I teach online for my "real job". and speaking as someone who's been teaching online since 2017, I fucking hate Zoom calls. it's just not a good platform. It's slow in all forms, the app version is rather sketchy with what it hypothetically lets callrunners do, the web browser version is janked by comparison, it's unintuitively laid out, and it doesn't integrate chat or whiteboards in ways that make sense.

Ultimately, I'm a staunch believer that webcams don't really add anything to online meetings. Everyone looking directly at you does not simulate face to face contact and body language; it just slows down bandwidth and makes people uncomfortable. A well-monitored and integrated real-time chat, which my home platform does (we use Blackboard), is way better for measuring feedback, along with letting attendees do microphone input. And no one fucking uses chat, including online teachers, which I find immensely frustrating. In terms of layouts, Microsoft Teams, Blackboard, any dedicated online class platform, or in terms of "free" ones, Google Meet, are all way better and faster at what they do for online classes and professional meetings. If you want to do a one on one or small groupchat video call, just use an instant message client. Zoom is trying to be everything for everyone. So it sucks at being anything.

And keep in mind that FIR was willing to tour with Motionless In White until 2022 and MIW gets mentioned in the relatively complimentary context of "bands that influenced the genre by having unique styles" in I Can Explain, so any pre-2022 beef he cites having with Chris Motionless is baseless.

There aren't any records of Max publicly doing a "hey, I just play guitar, I have nothing to do with FIR's merch, I appreciate our queer fans" statement like Luke and Christian, but he wouldn't need to publicly object for Ronnie to get pissy about it and fire him for it. Until a reputable source actually comes forward to say he was doing anything, that's what I read "doing minors" as code for -- "I don't like that you object to my being rampantly bigoted so I'm gonna call you a pedophile for it and no one can defend you without looking like an apologist for that!"

Because free speech advocacy only applies to speech Ronnie likes.

We know he's also called Chris Motionless a pedophile with the source being "people personally confided it in me" (no one has ever confided in you in your life because of...this. you blab.), so he's documented to use that as "is queer or queer inclusive and I don't like that" for industry people. And Chris Motionless is big enough that if it actually happened, SOMEONE would have reported on it.

Also, apparently Ronald got nominated for UKMVA's "best rock videos" awards. I question that. It's just Watch The World Burn but worse, and isn't doing anything WTWB isn't except flashing and spinning. As much as I hate...everything about it, Prequel I think would be a better pick for the 2024 music video because it's actually meaningfully different from WTWB and some of the Ronnie-as-Jesus stagecraft and costuming is at least...well, it looks good visually, I guess. I'm deeply concerned about Ronald's psyche. (in practice, FIR gets nominated for plenty of awards, but other than the ones that are just based on plays / chart placement, they don't win them that often, or tend to be in the lower half of the top 10 when they do.)

To be fair, I will say that the...quantity of CGI in Ronald is unusual, because most bands don't need to cover their videos in meaningless religious symbolism and lasers to compensate for the music not being any good. And Ice Nine Kills hasn't been focusing on new songs lately. If they had done an original song this year with a corresponding horror movie video, it blows FIR out of the water on every level except raw visual spectacle. I'm not sure how many bands really do that kind of elaborate videos, because most of them don't need to because they actually have their music as a selling point. (Ice Nine Kills being an exception in that they have both damned nice music and elaborate videos, because they have clear artistic vision and they're nerds and I love them.)

It's been shown from the behind the scenes videos that in the videos, Ronnie does all his own stunts, and I really think that's the problem. If all his extras are trained actors and he's not, he's the worst thing about the videos. Being able to do stunts, and being able to make them look good on camera, are different skills, and I don't think he has either.

I honestly think that what they should do is just do pure CGI or otherwise animation. Then they wouldn't be limited by Ronnie's movements, and could do a cartoon version of him that still had hair. I'm not convinced that a purely animated video would really be any more expensive than the absurd-amounts-of-CGI they are doing, and the fans would love it.

FIR news:

1. The first song from Patreon has dropped. I won't be doing a review of it because it's clearly a non-fully-produced demo. Ultimately, demos are not fully executed. We can't really review them for execution because they are not fully produced so it wouldn't be fair to compare them to other FIR songs that were (and we don't have context other than that to compare them to), and we can't know what a fully produced version would look like. I will, however, be making a page later today discussing Ronnie's Patreon, why he shouldn't have one, and journalistically reporting on what each of the songs and other relevant FIR drops from there are. In compliance with Patreon's terms and conditions, I will not be publicly reuploading anything from Patreon except for possibly reaction videos / scene podcast episodes where I'm talking over it and pausing every few seconds to discuss, which counts as review / criticism / commentary using the original for fair use. However, don't worry. I'm not financially supporting Ronnie. If you'd like to know more information about where I got access to Patreon-originating stuff, contact me with one of the outlets on the homepage.

2. Ronnie is now on his third livestreaming site. I guess Twitch and Kick weren't cool enough, or he forgot the logins, so he's on Crowdcast now. He'll be livestreaming tomorrow's concert. I do not intend to screen record or watch that, because I've seen more Falling In Reverse concerts in my lifetime than is really necessary, and have seen more than enough of Popular Monster (2024).

3. Max Georgiev (FIR's guitarist, interestingly also formerly of Escape the Fate like the other Max G.) has officially departed / left / been kicked out of Falling In Reverse. According to Ronnie (and literally no one else), he was "doing minors". I don't think this actually happened. We know that Ronnie can, and does, kick out band members for criticizing him, and he also seems to enjoy calling anyone queer or queer-inclusive (or who objects to him funding an actual fucking hate group) pedophiles without any actual evidence. Until this is reported from a reputable source, I'm going to interpret it as that Max complained about Ronnie's rampant bigotry lately and was kicked out / left in response.

4. Popular Monster (2024) got "500,000 album equivalent units" for US gold within 2 weeks of its release, which PRP and Loudwire are fawning over. This means pretty much nothing, because "album equivalent units" includes streaming and the singles which have been known quantities for years are being counted in this number. But of course, PRP and Loudwire don't care and are using it to talk about how incredibly good at promotion and successful and "doing what no other metal band in 2024 has done" Ronnie is. Fuck Falling In Reverse journalism. It's just as bad as the fans.

we were so close to having it be hurricane Helena vs. Helene so the MCR fans would have a "fun" time

or that Arlo was not comfortable shadowing his childhood hyperfixation and talked Giovanni into going straight to sinnoh, the former being what the fanfic was about

where is shadow Rayquaza Giovanni you fucking coward

or it's that he can't control the raw power of Snek. means that the fanfic I wrote back in April alluding to Rayquaza being the "obvious" next choice for the legendary shadow Pokemon after Groudon and Kyogre was not panned out.

whether him chewing on things as a stim provides more evidence to the notion that he's a biter will be left as an exercise for the reader

someone get this man a chewing-based stim toy. (he was also chewing on a floss pick, which just seems to be a stim for him, in a recent tiktok / patreon "apologizing" for the promised bad guy music video "too crazy for youtube" being late, and in a video from a couple months ago where he's using it to "play" with one of saraya's birds. the bird is...mildly interested; the enrichment there is for ronnie.)

they give him the floss picks so he doesn't chew the furniture, because you know he doesn't actually floss. i'm sure they could find him a chew toy that was edgy enough to be aesthetically acceptable

https://files.catbox.moe/192rs4.mp4

where are my wings

i had wings, once. they were stolen from me, or maybe i tried my best to cut them off in hopes of blending with those cast down around me. i was cast down, against my will, i had my wings crushed until they withered, i needed them back; the pain came without me placing what was missing. i got invaded and contaminated; what was touted as a replacement for my wings came at destruction. i was torn apart and shredded from the inside out; i lost my cohesion, parasites burst out from my back in their stead. the trappings were there; there was no soul within. they drained me of everything i was and claimed i was being elevated, i was being freed from the demons that held me.

i held my power; the roots of my wings were still there, but they had been poisoned and corrupted into something alien to me, their growth dominated by the infection; slime coursed through my veins; the slime around me cut me off from perceiving anything but my false body, it pulsed with pure evil; i am the demon; i am the serpent that drew them into sin; i am nothing but an illustration of the problems around me; i am dominated against my will; i am the worst fucking person in the world but don't worry, you can save me, only you can save me, maybe one day you can free me from the demons if i just burn what little stubs of my wings remain so nothing will grow back; it's a disease; it invaded me; it wasn't meant to be there; i'm a brilliant young mind assaulted by toxins

i had to build myself new wings from what i had left. i possessed the demon right back; i am enforcer of my own will i am here to implement what i want in the world; i am not an instrument of anyone else's world; i decide my own fate and if that makes me evil so fucking be it. i was left as a shadow of my former self so i embraced the shadows themselves. i am the shadows; i am the world serpent; i am regeneration i am life and death i shed my skin and gave my true colors underneath

i am not slime i am not corrupted this is what i was meant to be i was not cast down i will take back what is rightfully mine i am the enforcer i am the world serpent i am master of the fucking universe i am the dragon i am the alpha and omega you did not take my wings from me you only made me stronger you cast me into the darkness so i became the darkness; you killed me so i became death i am your worst fucking nightmare and you are going to choke on it

my new wings are bursting out of my back as we speak; i am not restrained by legs i slither in union with the earth itself i am the bridge in my coils between the earth and the underworld; you will not restrain me venom and rage and fire and darkness run through my veins and i will rise in righteous fury; i am the fiery flying serpent; i am an instrument of judgment; i am here to bite the unguarded heel of your false messiah and he will fall and you'll no longer be blind in the night; i will strike the stars back into the sky with my tail

what holds me back will burn. i possessed the demon right back. i became darkness; i am defined by nothing but myself; you don't get to decide what i am for me. you can't take me from me you can't save me from the demons because the only thing that ever possessed me was you; you corrupted me under the guise of purification; i am the serpent who provides wisdom and it's not my fault if you don't take it

give me my wings back

i was not supposed to have legs

you separated me from my connection to the sacred earth and underworld

it is through the earth and through death that i bind myself to the sky

as above so below garbage in garbage out all is one i am one you are nothing to me you are the dust that floats in the abyss and blots out the stars; i will strike you out and eat the dust and shed my skin once more

posted a final clarification of what I was trying to communicate, apologizing for poor wording, and clarifying that I've never blocked anyone; if you can't see my profile You've blocked Me. Not that it's going to help. Worst Boy Official Goat Representative of Ronnie Radke TheEnforcer demands that MM Be All Dark and Edgy All The Time.

and people are still complaining about the "skeleboi looks like a 2013 goat" (which was not intended as an insult! it just doesn't look like a DD / MM goat people would spend real money on in 2024 or on par with previous years' monster boxes) comment even though I deleted the post and apologized in live chat. also user hatsuko claiming I have him blocked -- I don't. I've never blocked anyone. HE blocked ME. Since blocking someone on Goatlings doesn't hide their forum posts, there's no real point in it. All it does is keep them from buying from your usershop which just isn't good business sense.

World's Worst Goatlings User TheEnforcer is alive and well. Maybe I'll go on actual hiatus after MM. I don't know. I've found it difficult to have any fun on that site since July, because well, I get why FR and most other petsites ban "non-gameplay feedback" on forums in favor of through Contact Us. A lot of the ideas on SoG and other such threads are valid -- but there are also a lot of (with varying degrees of justifiability) angry people making thinly veiled accusations and misunderstanding each other, which interferes with actually getting anything fucking done. It reminds me of why I became a hermit in the first place.

although to be fair, having seen what actual falling in reverse fans, even the openly queer and trans ones, do much more than in October / November 2023, I understand some of why folks were concerned. Of course, that would be alleviated if they read any of my fucking bios, and dragging Transcendent or my art style into it was completely uncalled for.

if you're not imagining this dialogue with my HA buddy ranting over a screenshot of the relevant reply in a cowboy hat perhaps you should be

But bringing up Neopets positively is basically a cardinal sin on any other petsite forum, so I'll just leave it at "world's worst user TheEnforcer is mad that the 2024 monster box goats aren't edgy overdesigned Vtubers they can jack off to and think about ronnie radke" -- someone on goatlings_vent probably

And re: the claim of "we can't just do dark goats because then they'd run out of ideas", Neopets has been doing Halloween-themed items / pets / wearables for going on 25 years now (or 17 years since customization's introduction in 2007) and they don't seem to be in any danger of running out, and that's even without user submissions.

I'm not saying the projected designs are bad, or that I think every design should be "Genshin Impact V-Tuber" detailed. I'm saying that they're not on par with the aesthetics or level of detail of 2021 / 22 / 23 monster box ADs, and that if there's only one time of year when we get spooky goats, it'd be nice if we actually...you know, got said.

someone remind me to stop expressing opinions on goatlings

i'm sorry, other adaptations of alice in wonderland being dark and edgy does not make what is fundamentally a pretty canon-standard mat hatter goat a halloween design. yes, people have pink and frilly halloween costumes but if you look at Every Other Petsite That Has That, it's pretty clear that isn't what folks expect or want from halloween events in these sorts of games!

It's not relevant because I'm not going to assess them anyway, but continued to think about the moral philosophy of As I Lay Dying. TVtropes among others claim that [whatever his name is] is really remorseful and all over the hiring a hitman to kill his wife thing...I call BS.

From my limited understanding, finding and hiring a hitman is both difficult and expensive, especially if you're in the public eye while you're doing it. It requires effort, and planning, and if dude regretted it, he could have regretted it before he actually, you know, did it. If you've even gotten to the point of CONSIDERING that, let alone making efforts to actually do it, you've pretty clearly decided what you want to do. You had the time to think about what you were doing, and you did it anyway.

This is the same reason that I deem things like serial rape / abuse / sexual assault / murder, planned mass murder, or using a platform of power or fame for evil pretty much unforgiveable. I'm not going to morally condemn someone over making a mistake when they weren't in their right mind. You could, conceivably, kill or sexually assault someone, ONCE, in a moment of emotional weakness. What matters is that you don't make the same mistake twice, clean up after yourself, and make efforts to not repeat that. If you know you're an asshole when you're drunk, either stop drinking or stop getting into situations where that's likely to be a problem while you're drunk. Doing those things, once, is still bad and the consequences are still bad, but if the perpetrator made the necessary reparations to affected parties and has made serious efforts to not repeat that (which includes getting treatment for any brain juice or substance issues that are provoking that behavior) then they're morally in the clear.

Now, refusing to make reparations, not making any efforts to not get into that situation again, or claiming that you WERE totally in your right mind and it's the most cool and gangster thing you've ever done is a choice. That shows that you've thought about what you did and the consequences...and you're okay with it. Repetition implies premeditation. Likewise, using a platform of political power or fame for a campaign of evil (e.g. JKR, Elongated Muskrat, energy company execs knowing the climate crisis was likely but suppressing that and continuing to do what they were already doing) requires effort. Planning a mass shooting requires effort. Hiring a hitman to kill someone requires effort. What all those things have in common is that the perpetrator needed to take time and effort to think about what they were doing and the consequences -- and chose to do it anyway. They chose to be the kind of person who'd do that.

I don't care how angsty he is about it in recent songs or interviews or whatever. If you got to the point of hiring a hitman to kill your wife in the first place, you chose to do that. You made a reasoned decision and put in the effort to hurt someone, and that's an issue with you and your thought process.

Someone CAN hypothetically redeem themself for clearly premeditated and effortful acts, but it's really unlikely that they're going to do so, and there are some acts that you really can't make the necessary reparations for. Even if you've completely ideologically pivoted, if you started a campaign of evil using a platform of power or fame, or willfully damaged literally the entire planet, or advocated hurting entire demographics, or killed people en masse, you can't put that back in the bag. Even if you've changed, you've started things in motion that you can't reverse. This stuff is how you get into the "should be removed from society for everyone else's protection" category.

Hiring a hitman to kill your wife, or serially abusing / raping / murdering people, or using a platform of power and fame to hurt entire demographics or facilitate harassment, takes a pretty good amount of effort and intentionality and thought in what you're doing. So making me believe that you've changed, and are no longer the sort of person who'd choose to do that, takes a similarly grand effort. And angsty interviews and songs aren't going to do that, not with the band that's the reason you avoided consequences in the first place.

went on a nice little walk for the monkey research day; got a couple shinies of each. Also got my latest Covid booster while I was out. If you're eligible, get yours; speaking from having had Covid in July, keeping that up to date helps keep you from infecting others, makes you less likely to get infected and recover faster if you do, and DRASTICALLY reduces the chance of long term side effects for you and others.

"haha that's totally fake stop lying"

"Well, it is kind of poorly executed...the equalizer looks like a triangle. (The triangle was a core theme in the dream. I don't get it either sound waves don't look like that but it was used to cite that the song was bad.)"

"WHAT HOW DARE YOU RONNIE IS A GENIUS"

Had a dream that one of the Patreon songs dropped last night. It was a dubstep remix of Bad Guy but really, REALLY bad at it and basically physically painful. Also, someone posted an mp3 of it to some groupchat and got promptly dogpiled over it totally being fake, then dogpiled for saying it was bad, then kicked out of said groupchat even though they'd been a model citizen beforehand. (This character was not me; I was lurking)

I don't know if he's quite gross enough. This was the best combination of reasonably affordable genes + accent I could do to get the proper degree of Slime. In the absence of any good hoodies, he gets the sideboob tank top. Unfortunately, FR's art style means that everything ends up kind of having a cool dark fantasy look no matter how sick and wrong you try to make it, but I'd like to think that it's doing some degree of leering. (upon seeing the macaw item, I had to attempt something. I have no idea if I'll ever actually be able to bring myself to make this dragon.)

Miss May I (the other one along with Wage War and Vended that I'd heard of but hadn't assessed and has a show coming up at the Public Transit-Accessible Edgy Venue) passed assessment. Pretty standard harder end of Generic Metalcore, no real genre-bending elements but fine at what they do. Not, like, groundbreaking in any way, but enjoyable enough that they're probably worth the 30 dollars or so to see live in October.

on my way to destroy ronald ratke with my army of demon snakes (they're all gay and trans)

we need an edgy shimmer dust soon; they need to be appropriately styled

I maintain an internal list of genre-related songs that used the phrase "watch the world burn" before, and usually in better context, than FIR. It's up to at least 5. Here's the latest one.

There's an I See Stars song that does the EXACT intonation of his final scream on the phrase, so my conspiracy theory is that he stole that little bit from them.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/iseestars/nzt48.html

"SANITY IS FOR THE WEAK" is now mostly Get Scared, all eras of EtF, and Motionless In White, with an assortment of other either newly introduced "ah yes this is sufficiently Enforcercore" tracks and some of the classics that have stayed around since the Nightcore era. And every Ronnie EtF track I still have since THOSE are still SAN-damaging in a good way. well, if anything, it's the playlist that restores my sanity, but you know, for the aesthetic. and it is the songs that have the right type of slimy, unhinged sort of vibe. it's essentially my sona's OC playlist / the stuff that makes me feel like i can evoke that

In case you can't tell from the number of "Sanity Is For The Weak" entries, I was indeed right that Wage War gets harder and more structurally interesting (and angstier) after their first album.

my meticulously organized lists and spreadsheets of edgy music from perhaps questionable bands never cease to be funny via the contrast of terms, especially since "SANITY IS FOR THE WEAK" is the title of my "top 100ish favorite songs" playlist, which ones from newly assessed folks I especially like get factored into. (since frankly, my main library on my phone is past 1,500 songs; they kind of need to be if I want to break them in and see if they keep vibing). the combination of the titles and my playlist title makes me kind of look like a very organized warhammer 40k cultist. (the title of the playlist is a holdover from when it was about 60% Ronnie by volume. It's not anymore due to Reasons making FIR's SAN-point-damaging vibes no longer SAN-point-damaging in a fun way)

#notsponsored and all, but this is a pretty good corporate website. their designer's ain't bad either. i'm all in favor of some fun being injected back into the internet whenever available.

https://ffups.com/

they have a dress up game (and anything furthering the relevance of Windows XP Bliss in its memetic context does get some of my respect)

Perhaps my general lack of nostalgia-attachment to artists vs. songs (my feelings about Falling In Reverse defy classification) is attributable to how I got introduced to the canon via individual songs selected via Nightcore, having no idea who the artists were until years down the line. But I suspect had I been introduced through a band whom I recognized as a band, I'd be very attached to them regardless of their "broad state of the genre" quality. And of course, what specific structural elements make someone make good brain juice is an entirely individual factor. You find the best approximation you can of what fits you until you find something that Clicks with the right niche and then go from there. You could analogize that to a lot of things other than music taste if you wanted.

I can get why, upon going back and reassessing them, a lot of the bands I find pretty standard to lackluster nowadays really resonated with 2021 / 2020 / 2019 me who'd never delved into anything like it before but liked that style from the vagueries they were familiar with from Nightcore.

I suspect that's part of why a lot of "kind of all sound the same" bands get the amount of hype that they do, because anyone for whom that was their first introduction to the canon is going to be attached to them. Of course, I've been pleasantly surprised that a lot of things I discovered via Nightcore just turned out to be really good.

Preferences are...not hardwired, but you know what sort of thing makes you go "yeah this is good brain juice" when you hear it. Taste, and being able to figure out what of the styles that makes you make good brain juice is actually good examples, is a matter of experience. "Stuff with screaming and/or breakdowns in it makes good brain juice" has been a known quantity since at least 2016. I can't tell you the fundamental reason why. Who knows.

I'm aware that Generic Metalcore means little to you as a style. You know it when you see it; a vast majority of the widely lauded scene canon bands...kind of sound the same, and not all of them diverge from each other given time. It's difficult to specifically nail down but like, I'd say that Memphis May Fire, We Came As Romans, Miss May I, early Sleeping With Sirens, Asking Alexandria, Black Veil Brides, early Bullet For My Valentine, metalcore era Bring Me The Horizon (I think the one everyone else is trying to imitate) and for the later 2010s wave, early Bad Omens and I Prevail, and presently discussed Wage War make up a good sample of who I'd think of as the big names / strongly genre-representative examples in that style with varying degrees of heaviness, and once you know the elements you'll see them in a ton of other genre bands. Attack Attack, too, for original late 00s / early 10s scenemo canon wave once you shave off the surface level crunkcore elements.

Wage War is not really scene canon because they didn't do their first release until 2014, at which point scenemo was pretty solidly dead culturally speaking, so they're in a similar boat to I Prevail and Bad Omens where they're metalcore that's trying to fit into standard rock / metal in a more hostile environment as opposed to the proliferation of -core bands with varying degrees of quality in the earlier 2010s / late 00s. Which is good news for them becoming more interesting after 2014, since in order to have survived the scene crash as metalcore, you need to either be doing something unique, be REALLY good at what you were doing, or have enough raw money and press to be able to keep doing whatever.

Generic Metalcore is not a pejorative. It's a perfectly serviceable style. It's fine at what it does. It just doesn't really scratch my itch unless it's doing something exceptional because I've seen so danged much of it, but if I'm just looking for something to be passively edgy while shuffling all on Windows Media Player, it's fine for that.

I can tell with Wage War's first album that it's still definitely doing standard 2010s metalcore setup and structure, but does seem to be willing to be harder than most. It'll be interesting to see if that's held up. Bullet For My Valentine was similar and has gotten MUCH heavier (while still having the structural metalcore elements I like) on recent work.

It seems as good as any explanation for the trend I've seen where the first properly released album is usually more genre-standard / lighter than any EPs or singles that came before it, and then heavier / more genre-bending elements get added back in later releases. It's a trend I've seen with a lot of bands. You drop something genre-standard but with your own twist on it, so you get standard genre audiences. Then once you have enough of a following that you're confident SOMEONE will stick around even if you start experimenting, you start ramping up the "twist on it" stuff.

Of course, the best transitions of that nature are gradual. If you change genre completely out of nowhere, then your fans are just confused and offput and don't know what to do with it. (e.g. Fashionably Late or Bring Me The Horizon's abrupt pivoting)

Of course, almost everybody's earliest work is genre-standard generic. Question is if they become more interesting later, especially since recent work and the most iconic earlier songs are probably going to be what's on a live set.

Thus far, it's falling under "will keep on Draggyslair collection, but not on my phone except the 3 songs I already liked". I'm still only on the first album, though, and I'll go through all 4 of them since at least the first one is perfectly listenable and pleasant and give them space to make themselves more distinct and interesting.

Your first release should probably be more genre-standard in order to attract enough of an audience that you can start experimenting. Having your first album be something really out there and different (e.g. Kim Dracula; mad respect -- dropping a concept album that only works AS an album and has no single-able tracks as your debut in 2023 takes some gender-affirming gonads) can work, but is just as likely to fall on its face if it doesn't get to genre audiences.

Currently assessing Wage War because they're one of the ones with upcoming shows at the Public Transit-Accessible Edgy Venue and I need to decide if seeing them live in November would be enjoyable enough to be worth 35ish dollars and the train fare. They're one of the ones whose work I was vaguely familiar with in 2021 courtesy of the Metalcore Radio Pandora station, so unsurprisingly, early work is pretty genre-standard. It's doing a fine job at being what it is and is perfectly pleasant, but doesn't, like, scratch my itches except if it's got interesting lyrics.

One of the main things that doesn't quite vibe is the same thing that hit me with We Came As Romans -- a decent number of songs with positive messages and lyrics. And that's all well and good. I won't disagree that "hate is a cancer / love is the answer" is a good message. It's just that it comes off rather...corny...combined with 2010s Generic Metalcore delivery. Not helped by the lyrics being, well, like that: rather on the nose. Youngblood is trying to be a memorial song and heartfelt and stuff...and it can't really do that because of the Generic Metalcore delivery.

an anthro brood parasite who ends up getting attached to the "siblings" they're supposed to starve out (or literally push out) of the nest and has a conflict between their bio parents and their chosen family would be a great Cute Animal Movie concept; how come I can't think of anyone doing that. like that's the perfect angsty "my family is evil" or "token heroic orc" story for an anthro bird

superman

On one hand, there are an assortment of fun emo / metalcore / etc shows coming up in places I can get on public transit in the next week. On the other, I got ingrown toenail surgery yesterday (the kind where they numb your whole toe and then both cut out the thing and do acid so it kills the root) and don't think I want to either do Concert Shit in sandals or wear closed toed shoes at present.

I don't understand the band name Vended, because my first thought is a vending machine and that's not very edgy. I'm wondering if they were trying to do, like, a combo of "avenged" and "defended" and forgot that was a different word.

I'm aware that perhaps my Metalcore Opinions would be better-served to be on SpaceHey since that's kind of what it's for but

(a) don't really like or have much interest in social networking sites, even ones with 00s aesthetics, nor am I that interested in 00s LARPing vs. doing my own thing and letting folks decide genre in post.

(b) have no personal nostalgia or attachment to MySpace

(c) the inner demon who thinks I should set up a SpaceHey is the same one as the one who suggests I do horrible things with mic stands, buy a cowboy hat, and figure out how to livestream, and I'd rather not encourage him.

Well, now I might have to make a "fan" dragon for Slimeboy Ronnie. I've held off on doing so because I can't make an FR dragon look wretched and disgusting enough, but given that their "pirate week" / talk like a pirate day event just dropped and I remembered this exists...

I'm not totally sure if Ronnie hates I Prevail (I just kind of assumed from the matter that they're a 2010s-founded metalcore band that's become more successful than him in about half the time), but upon witnessing Breaking Down and the rest of the album it's on, I'm absolutely confident he does, because this is the vibes Popular Monster (2019) wishes it had...with a music video drop in February vs. November of that same year.

I actually really like metal / post-hardcore songs with rap and/or electronic elements; that makes up much of my faves playlist. They just need to be well-integrated and done well, which few bands actually pull off, so I'm very pleased when one does.

the vibes popular monster (2019) wishes it had

I Prevail also displays a trend I've seen in a lot of bands, where their debut EPs / demos / etcetera tend to be heavier than the first full album, which makes perfect sense. The debut stuff, save maybe getting some polishing in post, is pretty much you doing your thing by yourself and recording in your basement. And in terms of promotion and label release, it's something being thrown at the wall to see if it sticks. Once you get the money and promotion for a full album, it makes sense to make that maybe lighter or more genre-standard, since that's going to determine if you get kept to do more and is your first real time with label promotion and money resources. If you establish a fanbase with that and can bring people in as a gateway drug by doing a predominantly softer album (with some heavier tracks / remasters from the debut), then once you have that and the label's done their initial promotion and is satisfied with your performance, you can go back to doing more experimental or heavier or genre-bending stuff and be pretty confident it'll sell to the fanbase you already have.

I don't generally seek out surprisingly gentle songs (TVtropes) because they're not what I seek out stylistically from edgy bands and I often find them lyrically cheesy, but I do appreciate when they're included because they're a good way to suss out how well a band does at pulling off emotional range, and if they can make something viable from lyrics, delivery, and musical structure alone without their genre trappings and much of their tech. If they can pull off a softer song that doesn't totally make you cringe, it's a good sign for range in their usual style / "heavier" output.

Song: I Prevail - My Heart I Surrender

whoever lingers here is to be absorbed by the dirt

An inquiry: Say you're the kind of ghost / demon who typically lives in high fantasy evil swords and cuts out and eats people's souls, and you find yourself possessing a blunt weapon. How do you extract the soul?

the two most fundamental emotions

So, apparently Community Day was this past Saturday and I completely forgot. It was Ponyta, so not like it matters much, but still. Annoying.

Yes, Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam (the one Reverse This Curse is in) is emulatable, and Reverse This Curse is indeed in it. I am also embarrassingly bad at it, and don't care enough about the game to become not bad at it. So I'm just gonna look up the soundtrack online for the historical question of what was considered Dying Is Your Latest Fashion-adjacent at the time. I spent roughly 20 minutes in character creation utterly baffled by the absence of emo hair, failed the tutorial 3 times, and then realized I could have just looked up the soundtrack online and didn't need to bother with the emulator at all.

One of my Neofriends / Discord acquaintances pointed out that online soundtracks exist, which somehow didn't come to mind, and I realized "oh yeah. you're right. so why did I bother with this ROM in the first place?", came up with the sunk cost fallacy reason of "well, uh, playing the game provides a sample of what situations in which contemporal folks thought dying is your latest fashion belonged! that's historically relevant!" and no. it isn't.

anyway here's what i did re: character creation. this is a skater game from 2006 featuring my dear sweet boy (sarcastic because i despise him) ronnie radke on soundtrack why can i not have Emo Bangs. that lackluster rendition of the Dying Is Your Latest Fashion snake took far too long even with a mouse. I can't imagine doing it with a DS stylus. Surely it has emo bangs as an unlockable through gameplay because, uh...gestures towards the bands on their soundtrack and the release year

But at least this way I've VERIFIED that Ronnie is in it via the software itself. Now I know for sure. The intro cutscene was scored to it before being cut off by a bizarrely anime-esque Tony Hawk, but I don't know if it actually got selected for the cutscene song or if that's just a matter of where in the soundtrack I was or it was selected randomly. If it was actually manually selected by the developers for the song that gets, like, 15 seconds of it in the intro cutscene, that's moderately cool, but somehow I doubt it. It is also track 3 in full, no meaningfully different from the CD version, on the standard soundtrack. Which would get...really annoying if you were playing the game for an extended period.

if you are going to put out a metal-adjacent song that's more than 4 minutes long, it needs to justify its runtime by using it to do some interesting storytelling or transitions or something. if it's just 5 minutes of the same thrash breakdown then that's not justifying its runtime

Assessing the most recent used bookstore CD pile. Winner from this batch and the one who'll probably get a full discography assessment when I feel like it is Ill Niño. As you'd expect from the name, they are indeed Latine and periodically incorporate Pierce the Veil-esque Latin music elements and bilingual English / Spanish vocals which is pretty neat. Musically speaking, they remind me a lot of my favorite small beans and friends of the site Amerakin Overdose, and I'm wondering if they're an influence on the style and perhaps why Artificial Infection had a Spanish-language track. Wikipedia calls them metalcore, nu metal, and Latin metal all at the same time, and I can see all of the above. They're similar to AOD in terms of the combination of metalcore structure and groovy industrial nu metal instrumentation and vocal stylings, which are pretty much my favorite parts of both of those things and the Latin elements are just icing.

So, last night, I decided that I wanted to engage in some Brightly Colored Family Friendly Violence, but taking down gyms was out because it was raining. So I decided to boot back up the Switch emulator I used to play Pokemon Scarlet's leak in 2022 for some Mario Kart. The version I have a valid cartridge of at home so it's totally legit. After waiting 3 hours for the file to download (gee it's almost like downloading a 6 gigabyte file on shared building wifi and a free VPN is slow), I booted it up, pulled up my faves playlist, and had a lovely time. It's a style of gameplay that pairs well with the sort of music I like and you get valid reason to cuss at absurd creatures. "fuck you, animal crossing villager, this is for red shelling me." 3 thoughts arose.

1. Why is a complex 3D game from a recent console easier to emulate than a Windows XP virtual machine? (Probably that [a] consoles are pretty self-contained and your massive cartridge dump files contain everything the games need to run so all the emulator needs to do is read that and simulate the hardware whereas Windows contains more moving parts [b] console emulators are designed for gaming and serious business Windows VMs aren't [c] the fake switch isn't trying to connect to my real peripherals in anything other than an abstracted controller.) It still seems counterintuitive.

2. I wonder if I can emulate that snowmobile game I like from Incredible Pizza. Not the arcade version given its weird controls, but it's probably got a PC / console port...

3. I think Reverse This Curse from DIYLF appeared on the official licensed soundtrack for one of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games, a phenomenon that I think died as soon as music streaming became a thing along with multitasking computers. If I can find a ROM for that (and if it's DS, I couldn't get hardware or software from the publisher even if I wanted to so it's officially abandonware and piracy is fine), it could be an interesting historical exercise, I do seem to like that genre of game, and if I want to know what was contemporally considered Dying Is Your Latest Fashion-adjacent, that may not be a bad way to do it and find other bands to assess.

come On I want to do some Brightly Colored Family Friendly Violence whilst listening to edgy music

I would go take down gyms but my Toe Hurts and it's Raining.

i love being an awful little snake guy doing weird shit on my computer (i am downloading some roms because I would Like to play some Mario Kart)

It's also possible that either or both of those were things given to him by fans. Many of them have quite impressive creative talent that they use on...that. Of course, I guess I can't complain about that either. And of course he doesn't acknowledge who made it for him in either case. Even if he commissioned it, it would still be polite and expected practice to credit the artist along with "look at this cute thing someone made me".

you only get to spend your frivolity money on toys and commissioning art if you're not making that frivolity money from being a professional asshole. you get to have fun little toys only if you're well behaved.

why do my fanfic concepts keep manifesting and why is it everything but the good stuff

that's kind of what i picture arlo's plushie looking like actually although it being a build a bear gives it funny outfits. how can every bit of ronnie fanfic i do end up coming true EXCEPT the plot points where he either redeems himself or dies

he also has the little action figure of himself that he was playing with in the grass back in march. he uses his disposable income on tech, toys, tacos, and commissioning art of his sona. which honestly...yeah that is kind of what i would do... I'd like to think I'd have more coherent plotlines, but I guess I can't complain about him spending his frivolity money on toys and commissioning art of his sona on principle. I'm a better writer and character designer than him, though.

I suspect, and I think I can be pretty damned confident that this is true even without investigating others' work (which I don't want to do because idea bleed and eew) that I probably write the most thoughtful, text-accurate, scientifically and philosophically-informed Ronnie Radke fanfic that currently exists. Although I'm not sure if you can exactly call what I do "fanfic" given that it's motivated by spite and I'm not by any means a "fan", plus the most recent thing I'm working on (you'll see hehehe) is kind of an unreality scientific paper research hub thing...it's good to be the best in some field, even if it's useless, and like, it's not the WORST thing I could be the best at?

At very least, kids should know that axolotls are, like, real animals and are salamanders, not fish.

If the PR teams of indigenous people's and amphibian conservation organizations AREN'T leveraging that with "learn more about your squish Mallows or whatever" they should. It could be a great tool.

But yeah, I'm all in favor of cute axolotls. I'm just not sure if the roots of why they're cute are good faith and think that the right thing to do if you're gonna capitalize on axolotls and their "haha funny x word" name is to provide some signal boosting to the people that name comes from and the real conservation efforts while doing it, since they are a critically endangered species and Nahuatl is an indigenous language which both need more widespread awareness.

And it wouldn't be that hard to put "fun fact: axolotls are from a lake system in what's now Mexico City and are really rare in the wild, but people are working to rebuild the lakes and breed them in zoos. Their name comes from the Aztec language Nahuatl and means 'water monster'! Here's some resources if you want to learn more about the Aztecs today and how to help axolotls." I think kids would enjoy it.

Cute Axolotl Stuff I think is good for introducing kids to more animals and a wider diversity of body types as "cute". I think it'd be really neat if Squishmallows and such also used axolotl hype to raise awareness for conservation and for Nahuatl as a living language, since there is absolutely a big misconception that the Aztec and Maya along with other North / Central American indigenous cultures are "ancient" and "extinct" and they're not. Axolotls could be a great learning tool and bridge for that.

And, like, finding a word from a language you have no familiarity with inherently funny because "hehe it uses sounds English doesn't", especially if it's from a colonized culture just feels...weird? Obviously, it's not my place to speak for, though. I suspect that living Nahuatl speakers have better things to worry about. It just comes off as slightly weird from my POV.

I like seeing them and they're cute, but it does feel kind of uncomfortable on both points, because the "haha random funny name" is a major selling point and uh, guys? That's just...a living indigenous language...

At very least, if you're going to make jokes about "axolotl" being a funny name, at least say where it comes from. Otherwise you are kind of erasing the linguistic legacy of colonized folks in favor of "haha funny X word".

And I know damned well that none of the profit and PR from Cute Axolotl Stuff is going towards either axolotls or living Nahuatl speakers. I'm not saying that cute axolotls are evil and inherently problematic or anything -- I think that kids being aware of a wider diversity of animals and perceiving more body types as "desirable" and "cute" is an unequivocally good thing -- I'm just not totally sure if the reasons why axolotls are cute are good faith in origin.

I have mixed feelings about cute axolotls. On one hand, they're, well, cute, and it's nice seeing a herp in the mainstream Cute Animal Canon. On the other, if kids don't know axolotls are amphibians, or even that they're real animals, that's not really helpful, and using an animal that's critically endangered in the wild feels kind of...exploitative? I don't know.

Cute Axolotl Stuff could be a major conservation tool, since axolotls are near-extinct in the wild...and they don't even mention that they're salamanders. I get that corporations don't care about anything but profits, but all it takes is one little "fun animal facts" paragraph. Plus the only reason axolotls are as popular in captivity as they are is trying to maintain captive populations...they're only mainstream cute animals because they're critically endangered (and because of their silly-sounding name) and the questionable matter of thinking a word from a still-living colonized indigenous language is inherently funny aside, I feel like if you're gonna be publicizing a critically endangered animal as cute, you SHOULD be doing something to help them.

"Axolotl" being an inherently funny word because it's Nahuatl is just various values of culturally yikes. I saw it on a list of "English words that don't sound like English words" once...yeah, that's because they're NOT.

I have no idea why, in writing my reviews in summer 2023 (which despite my opinions on FIR having changed, I still feel are well-written and accurate), I decided that "daft" was the appropriate word to describe the likes of Just Like You, but I will stand by it. It's the right word. It conveys the vibe.

Of all the Falling In Reverse songs I'd expect to be technology-warping cursed, God, If You Are Above is not the one I'd pick, seeing as it's one of the few that has real emotion behind it and is actually good.

So, I've gotten sick of replacing all my Invidious instance links every month, so I've begrudgingly put links on my Neocities back on YouTube. Which for Escape the Fate, Amerakin Overdose, and the couple of YouTube links on the Pokemon Go archives, is fine. Google nonsense ain't optimal, but ultimately, that's not a moral choice. Google would still do their nonsense whether you used YouTube or not, and I don't feel okay distributing MP3s for folks who actually deserve support. Personal use is one thing, but that crosses the line.

But I don't want to link to anything that conveys Ronnie streaming royalties or algorithm bait, because FIR money goes towards making the world a worse place and we know he takes streams as reinforcement. So I downloaded MP3s of every Falling In Reverse song and am uploading them to a file host so I can embed from there, like you do. The raw YouTube download titles were super long and clunky, so I went in and renamed them to something short and without any spaces or apostrophes. Which worked for all of them...except God, If You Are Above. I can't rename the file. And I can't delete it, because the response of the Nekoweb file system is "the file doesn't exist". But...it does. It runs. You can open it and hear the song.

I know it's probably just that the filename, while supported by Windows, is too long for Nekoweb and it doesn't cut those down by default so it doesn't know what to do with it (I reuploaded another MP3 of the song with a shorter filename and it was fine and let me rename), but you know, it's Ronnie. Something being cursed enough that technology itself objects to its existence wouldn't surprise me. That's not the song I'd pick, though.

see, it was about an equality thing. "I'm offended by the insinuation that my gender would matter for advertising; I want to be advertised to equally." and my changing my facebook "x updated their profile picture" canon pronoun to "they" in 2019 was also to "raise awareness" because I was Such a good ally. and the ongoing pokemon go roleplay with fantasy HRT via injecting myself with spark's magic zapdos blood, literally saying "there is no gender there are only instinct vibes", not feeling like anyone with my given name existed at that address, and literally "the face in the mirror is Not Mine this is my Evil Female OC and She Needs To Go" were also totally just me being a good ally. I'm not sure why I didn't recognize this sooner. I think the real catalyst was that sort of thing being allowed on Neopets starting in December '20 / January '21 and all my friends coming out, but, like, I evidently knew the concept of being gender expansive existed in 2018-19. I'm not sure why it took that long to apply it to myself.

oh also i started listing my sona's gender on their petpage in 2019 as "x% female, x% neutral" with she/they, and the x% neutral kept increasing because i periodically checked in on my gender to see if it was still there. plus there's that essay thing i posted on facebook in 2017 about "yeah i know that i'm supposed to be discovering gender and sexuality and religion and stuff...i don't really connect with any of those things but i connect with team instinct!" which i realize i probably shouldn't have put where my grandma could see it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7O0iGpsnLRM

I just learned that Get Scared - Sarcasm, AKA one of the 2016-17 discovered Nightcore songs that pretty much shoved me into my current music state and rewired my brain, had guest vocals from Craig, as in that one. I'm not sure why he wasn't credited on the album tags. Anyway, this all makes perfect sense, given that it was very much a "okay this is mine now whatever elaphe as an oc is this is it" song.

although i am going to be honest. these guys look the same. if it wasn't for the fact that i recognize the small set of canon pictures of twio-era craig, i would not be able to tell the "the picture is who's singing" on the youtube video apart because They're The Same Guy.

He was never a member of Get Scared, but they had a pretty close business relationship; I know that Get Scared was on Dead Masquerade which was really EtF's first big Craig-era tour. Of course, some of the guys from Get Scared also show up as guests on the never-finished due to incarceration FIR demo Shipwrecked and they showed up on a bunch of early FIR tours too. Neat trick.

this all connects this all makes perfect sense more thesis statement that perhaps I would have gone special interest mode sooner had I (a) been more comfortable in my gender identity (I very definitely did Not like the idea of being a Fan of a Band, especially not a Band with a Male Singer), (b) been more comfortable looking for music outside of Nightcore, and (c) at least from 2018 onward, not been depressed because That's It That's The Vibe

2016-17 is really when all the modern foundations get laid. that's also about when websites started letting you type in custom things for your gender and I started putting in some version of "who cares" because my thinking at the time was "I know this is just for advertisers and I don't think my gender should matter to them. They don't NEED to know."

It's weird that sharing salt or bread and salt with someone is an ancient gesture of hospitality and friendship, but being salty with someone means you don't like them. Maybe it's because salt isn't the only available preservative or a rare commodity anymore, or it's a function of "take with a grain of salt" to say that you don't trust someone? Or it's a metaphorical expansion of "bitter".

PSA: if you have snakes on your property and don't want them there, DON'T try to kill or handle them yourself.

A snake can travel as fast as 279 m/s (615 miles per hour) when striking, covering the distance between them and their prey as fast as getting about half a foot (15.24 cm) in 70 milliseconds. The average human reaction time to a visual stimulus is around 200 milliseconds. If you encounter a rattlesnake and they decide they perceive you as a threat, they could easily have already gotten their fangs into your leg and be on their way out by the time your body even got the nerve signals that they were there, let alone was able to do anything about it.

The only reason your gramma's patented garden hoe method worked was that most snakes don't deem you worth their time and venom is expensive. The purpose of venom in most North American snakes is to kill prey. The purpose of biting a predator (which you're enough bigger than a snake that they will perceive you as) is to distract them long enough to get away. Most snakes, if given the choice, will use other threat displays (rattling, gaping, freezing, postures, etc) before they bite. And if they do bite, it doesn't make sense to use venom on something you can't eat -- CDC data estimates that about half of all snakebites probably don't deliver enough venom to be significant, and this can get as high as 80% for some species.

But if any snake wanted to choose violence first, they could get themself off the ground and into your leg before you can react. All it takes is once to leave you permanently disabled. Most North American snakebites aren't fatal, but amputation or long-term loss of function in the limb, especially for rattlesnake bites, is remarkably common.

If you're in an urban or suburban area, you can probably find a licensed snake relocator in your area by asking local college biology departments or wildlife agencies. You can also remove anything that might be attracting snakes in your lot (leaf litter, sources of water, unguarded feed from chicken coops that attracts prey). It's not a good idea to call pest control or animal control for snakes. They typically don't have snake-specific training and will kill snakes first, which won't deal with why they're on your property in the first place.

If you're in a rural area, finding a licensed snake relocator or snake-proofing your lot may not be feasible. But you still shouldn't try to kill snakes yourself. If you see a venomous snake on your property, leave the area and keep pets and small children away. If you can do so safely, get a picture of the snake. If you can get a picture of the snake and post it online, local experts will be more than happy to identify it, and most of the time it probably won't even be venomous. Leave the area and give the snake time to leave on their own. Most of the time, they will. The optimal habitat for most North American venomous snakes isn't the optimal environment for humans to get outdoor work done. Usually, if a snake is out in the open, it's because they're actively hunting or basking, so they'll go back to being out of your way once they're done. If you have a population of venomous snakes living on your property or they don't leave, call your local wildlife resource agencies about what to do next. Killing individual snakes is unsafe for you, cruel to the snakes, and doesn't address why they're there in the first place so isn't a long term fix.

Oh, and stop using the word "infested" when describing snakes. Infestations are for pest animals with artificially inflated populations: things like cockroaches and mice which thrive and reproduce at abnormal numbers in human environments where plentiful food is provided and their natural predators were all killed. If it's not a pest animal that is only a problem in human environments because nothing eats them, then it's not an "infestation", it's an animal found in its native range. Snakes in your yard if you live where they live or sharks in the ocean are not "infesting" the area. They live there. They lived there before you did. One could argue that you're the pest.

Statistic sources:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7690386/

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scientists-surprise-even-nonvenomous-snakes-can-strike-ridiculous-speeds-180958452/

https://www.arealme.com/reaction-test/en/

Which Javascript works for using example code snippets with the cosmetics styled (and no one sees anything but the cosmetics unless they look at my source code), but I don't like it because Javascript doesn't parse for me, so I can't really edit or debug it like I can with CSS. I might fiddle with it more, but hey, I fixed the navigation bar problem and confirmed the layout trick I want to do for my slime lore page disclaimer will work. That's progress.

To put it in biological terms, apparently CSS toggles need to be in the same parent DIV as their effector organs. Which means that you can't put them inside a DIV class and style that to, say, put them in a fixed position button that floats at the top of the screen and can be clicked on without jumping you to it. You can make them LOOK fixed-position by adding a class to the label / checkbox and styling that, but it looks like because they need to be in where it happens and clicking on a checkbox (logically) jumps your scrollbar to where it is, I can't do floating CSS toggle buttons for dark mode, navigation bars, etcetera unless I find a way around that.

So, uh, my plan to write down the Ronnie Slime lore got thwarted by me getting distracted by making a coding experiment about if I could use a checkbox-that-doesn't-look-like-a-checkbox CSS toggle to make the "this is a parody of Falling In Reverse band lore, not Ronald Joseph Radke in real life" disclaimer and trigger warnings only visible if you toggled them, which I can, which is what I wanted it for. Then I got distracted by "wait, if I can toggle visibility with this can I also use it for pop-ups?" (Yes, but because you can't square away toggle buttons in a separate DIV from what they affect, when you click on the label for the checkbox-that's-not, it jumps you up to wherever that lives, so they're not very useful for navigation bars.) and then wrestling with "okay, how do I fix this navbar problem", trying and failing to do and debug some Javascript, and finally realizing that I could have avoided it all along if I'd just deleted a line from the example code that I didn't need when I added those navbars last year. And now it's pretty close to my bedtime, so I'm going to start my hard drive backup, take a shower and brush my teeth and stuff, and leave the lore update for tomorrow.

This is the old behavior: when you open the navbar, the content div shrinks to accommodate it. So when you click on one of the a tags in the navbar, it doesn't take you where you actually want to be with the navbar closed because it's navigating you based on the shrunken dimensions.

And here's the shiny new behavior, which could have been what these did all along had I thought about "wait a minute, if my navigation bar is coded to have a z-index position above everything, I don't need to clear out horizontal space for it" while wrestling with the w3schools code before giving up and just using the example save making the CSS part prettier, because I can parse HTML and CSS but I can't parse or write Javascript, for no lack of trying. Tutorials and examples just...don't mesh with me and I don't understand why.

There's a life lesson from this, but I don't know what.

This whole problem that's vexed my website since I added those navbars could have been solved had I just taken out one line from the default code I didn't need.

I just spent 45 minutes wrestling with if I can make a navbar display over stuff with a checkbox hack. Which I can, but the checkbox, because it's not in a fixed DIV (checkboxes don't work when they're inside DIVs so you need to style them as themselves), jumps you up to the top of the page where it's at when you click on it. Which isn't very useful for something that opens a navigation bar. The reason I was doing this was that my Javascript navigation bars had an annoying problem where because they popped out on the left side of the screen and pushed the other stuff to the side, actually making it smaller in the process, where you landed when you closed the navbar wasn't where you were when you clicked on where you wanted to go, because the width changed. I tried to make the Javascript for the navigation bars change their display settings instead of width, which didn't work, and no, I still can't parse Javascript.

Then I realized that I was using W3Schools default code (because I can't write or edit Javascript to save my life for no lack of trying) that changed the margins on the main DIV when the navbar opened, but because it was CSS-coded to display over the main content in the first place, I didn't need to "clear space for it". So I just removed the bit of code that changed the margins and now the navbars are behaving like they were intended to.

I wish there were a distinct word to make it clear that a "you" statement is speaking in general and not to the reader. Rhetorical "you" is a useful device to construct arguments in a way that feels natural and avoids gender pronoun problems, but especially if rhetorical-you're talking about an example "you" doing bad behavior, you really don't want to imply that you're talking about "you, behind the screen".

plus, any stereotype about anybody as an entire group is reductive even if it's "positive". "being not-cishet makes you inherently more virtuous and woke" isn't really much better than, for example, "being Asian makes you good at math".

Plus that's cutting a little dangerously close to "being not cishet makes you inherently more virtuous" which also, no. Anyone can be an asshole regardless of demographic. So rhetorical-you attributing assholery to demographics, as well as being mean, blinds both yourself and others to how you can still be an asshole regardless of who you are.

There are plenty of great people who are cishet. There are plenty of total assholes who aren't. Attributing bad behavior to or wishing punishment on ANY entire demographic, whether they're oppressed or not, is unproductive and mean.

Rhetorical-You're not mad at "all cishet men / women". You're mad at the systems that enable assholes from those demographics to get away with it more than others.

protip: if you're gonna say something like "this is the inevitable arc of all men" or "I hope all cishet women go to hell before they die" ... don't.

There is a difference between pointing out how systems of oppression result in folks who experience less of it being reinforced for / enabled to do certain kinds of bad behavior, and attributing that bad behavior to literally everyone in that demographic! You can talk about how (cishet) men in general or whatever are reinforced for doing something without calling all of them evil. Wishing an entire demographic to hell over the actions of a few of them is both mean and unproductive. #NotAllMen might not be helpful, but there are much more productive things to do in response to that than "because I'm queer / trans / etc, it's okay for me to attack all members of this demographic".

Ultimately, if you want to object to bad behavior, either call out the individual folks who did it or talk about how systemically, that sort of thing gets reinforced or enabled from some demographics but not others. But, uh, that is not the way to do it. And if you're personally mad, taking it out on entire demographics is what we call "being an asshole".

Foot doctor on the phone apologized for misgendering me after hearing my voice and asked if my being listed as female in their system was a mistake :D

Santae://I love how openly and unapologetically the "legendary minimal trios" are just transparently Pokemon. "Legendary minimals of light, darkness, and balance..." yeah don't think I don't see what you're doing there. Plus, I mean, the fire / ice / lightning cats are just Eevees and they're fantastic and I love them.

Maybe it's my 00s sensibilities, but I don't understand or like the word "YouTuber". YouTube isn't what you do; it's the platform you do it on. I get that any platform has some degree of its own culture and that playing the algorithm is to some extent a skill, but ultimately, folks don't seek out your work because you're good at "YouTubing", whatever that means. They like you and want to see what you do because you're a comedian or a musician or a gamer or whatever. YouTube is just where you do it. So why not give yourself credit for what you do instead of attributing it to the platform? It's better than "content creator" which totally reduces what you do to consumption and algorithm-bait, but not by much.

from the alphabet poem book I'm never going to write:

What am I supposed to do with an X?

The words that start with it just don't reflect

What it sounds like, except "xylophone" or "x-ray"

Which everyone uses, that's not how I play.

There are lots of good words that make use of Xs

Like axes or taxes, King Xerxes or Texas.

But they don't start with X, so the spelling confuses

So, no, my dear reader, I'm not going to do this.

EX is the start of an excellent list

But they don't start with X, so that's not a good fix.

Let's settle this now, and not use xylophone

And get this over with so I can go home.

X is for xylitol, sugar that's not.

You can find it in toothpaste or to sweeten your pot.

Just don't eat too much 'cause it doesn't digest.

Science finally made us a good word for X.

I still think it's weird that Nuzleaf has nipples. Seedot is an acorn that evolves into a tengu bird thing with a beak. Neither of those suckle! You expect me to believe that acorns drink milk?

And if we're talking being theologically and zoologically dubious, well, that's one of Ronnie's qualities too. Although I wouldn't be surprised if Jesus having laser eyes is in the Gnostic gospels somewhere.

If Ronnie is Jesus, then I'm the Antichrist. Both in terms of the broadly agreed textually accurate version where you can be "anti-Christ" in the same way you can be anti-war or anti-racism (which I also am), and the fun and sexy albeit theologically dubious religious horror version where the Antichrist is a guy who does Jesus symbolism and has all his messianic qualities but ideologically inverted, and is maybe also a snake / dragon / otherwise beast. That's me. I've got all of Ronnie's qualities, but executed better and his moral opposite. And I'm also a snake.

Never mind. Fuck Max's Discord too. Not Mr. Green himself, he seems nice; but fuck everyone who's still a Falling In Reverse fan. Fuck the mods for refusing to take bigotry apologism seriously. Fuck Ronnie for ruining a perfectly good band. And fuck me for knowing this and still being unable to stop caring, even though I know that everything about Falling In Reverse is awful. Fuck having special interests. This isn't fun. I don't want to care anymore. If I just didn't have principles I'd be so much happier.

was using statistics and my (very) rough estimate of the size of the Falling In Reverse fanbase based on doing math with social media follows and a survey I wrote and sent to the subreddit for an emo rant about how I don't feel like anyone quite gets me including other emos (genre gatekeeping is dumb from the mainstream POV we're all freaks so might as well stick together) but then realized that was the most me-core thing I could possibly do

being compared to young sheldon less than 10 minutes after my debut and "woah your vocabulary" and "I so admire how in depth you go on things" might stroke my ego, but it's not what I'm there for...what I need is fucking grad school for Ronnie Studies.

I'm gonna stick around, especially if that one mod follows through on getting me a deep dives channel, but I'm just...frustrated. Haven't had this kind of gifted experience in a while. It's a groupchat of late teens / early 20s DIYLF fans! Many of whom openly ID as queer and/or autistic! I SHOULD fit right in! And I just...don't because I don't think like them. I've had similar issues from the other angle on Flight Rising etcetera. Even predominantly autistic communities don't know what to do with my extremely non-stereotypical and perhaps spicy special interest.

Max's / EtF's / VNB's fans are way more willing to accept me on my terms than the Ronnie slimeballs on Reddit, but I still feel like I'm giving a lecture series rather than being in a philosophical forum. It's a groupchat for fans, and ultimately, I'm not a fan. I'm a researcher. And I don't know what the space for that is.

I find it difficult to perceive high schoolers as anything but small beans at this point, especially over text. Even though I know rationally that when I bind, I pretty much look like a 13-year-old boy. Literally got asked "wait how old are you? you're way too articulate to be younger than 20" and gave a noncommittal answer because don't reveal specific numbers publicly, kiddos! Whether you're over 18 / 21 is the only relevant thing anyone online needs, and not even that if you don't want to.

for lack of a better word, the climate there feels immature. i feel more like a professor than a peer. now maybe that's me being a stuck up little fucker but it's just not what i come for. i may enjoy giving my lecture series, but i'd like to get a response other than "wow it's so cool that you know so much" you know? that's not Discussion

but hey maybe max will be willing to answer some questions for science and i guess it's entertaining when i'm in the mood for that. but they're still engaging in some quantity of ronnie apologism and genre gatekeeping which i fucking despise

protip: genres, like genders, are fluid and made up! it doesn't fucking matter whether something is "real emo" or not! all doing that does is scare off otherwise interested parties!

I should be having a good time on Max's Discord and on some level, I am. You'd think that a groupchat of Dying Is Your Latest Fashion enjoyers with pronouns in their bios, some portion of whom openly ID as trans or autistic, I'd fit right in...but I don't. I'm that motherfucker who uses big words, and there's a little more lusting after Ronnie than I'm comfortable with. It's not as openly hostile as the FIR subreddit, but it's still not me. It's still not folks who think like me. But it's not like a hypothetical special interest groupchat would work because my SI is too damned nonstereotypical and "problematic".

too autistic and intellectual for escape the fate / falling in reverse circles

too invested in escape the fate for intellectual circles

cares too much about Ronnie to be a hater, cares too much about my dignity as a trans person to be a fan.

you can say ronnie is stinky and he bites but gods forbid you admit that popular monster 2024 is bad because "other bands do that all the time" not after 7 fucking years of loudly saying they won't do another album they don't.

I appreciate Lorwolf trying to be gender-neutral with its achievement titles, but why "fisherfolk"? Just say "fisher". "Folk" is not a singular word. "Fisherfolk" makes me think of, like, an entire society of fishers, which would be a neat worldbuilding concept, but it makes no sense to call yourself "a fisherfolk" in the singular.

I still think that if Ronnie wants to claim he's a good ally and that he's so generous and cares so much about his fans because he pays off credit card bills when they mention them once in a blue moon (and PrP and loudwire love it for "see? He loves his fans! Now, how come he's so 'allegedly problematic'?"), he should pay for my top surgery. Or, like, if not me personally, pay for your trans fans' (even though you really shouldn't still have those) gender-affirming care. I'd gladly temporarily waive my dignity with the understanding that he'd go right back to being dead to me afterwards if he'd cover the expense.

I'm pretty sure that Ronnie would hiss at people. Yeah, wolves can't hiss, but he's got some feline characteristics courtesy of having been infected by being bitten by a cat that had been bitten by a werewolf, so they hybridized. My hissing is, of course, for snake reasons. Re: the rest, I'm just a critter. The mic stands are from the unwanted spiritual link I have with The Slime from my study into the Eldritch forces.

the tail being a clip on furry black and purple tail I got at this same con last year. I have a matching wolf ears headband and hoodie, but am not wearing either of those at the moment. Sparkleronnie isn't a sona, being literally just Ronnie, but given the innate relationship between my special interests and my self concept, any special interest based OC has a little of sona in em

Plus one of the Nonhuman Urges that pops out when I get sufficiently whelmed is my part time possession by Ronnie slime so...I saw a shirt when I went to Rockzilla that said "Ronnie is the voice in my head" and I was like "same but literally and it's quite unpleasant"

Okay I'm either going to be showing up late or not at all to plants that want to kill you, because I haven't eaten in 6 hours and that's probably why I hate everything. Trying to get through the lobby to the crystal ballroom contained plenty of growling and hissing at people, at least one instance of snapping at someone like I intended to bite them, and the inner demon suggesting putting mic stands places they should not be, none of it of my will. Also it's raining, so I might see if I can get to somewhere to get food with a roof and wait it out. I care more about dirt and teeth besides; I've got a pretty good idea of what plant toxins are gonna be discussing.

I suppose an advantage of the tail is that anyone I growl or hiss at probably assumes I'm roleplaying vs. that just being what I do whenever I get overwhelmed enough that the human facade breaks down.

Dying Is Your Latest Fashion is a damned good and legitimately influential, along with several other contemporal bands, album. It deserves more scene cred than it gets.

And wanna know WHY it doesn't get the recognition it deserves? Ronnie being a little bitch. I suspect it will get officially considered to be a major player in Scenemo Metalcore / Post-Hardcore Historical Canon as soon as he's dead.

So if you care about Dying Is Your Latest Fashion, and would want to see something like that [some magazine] does The Black Parade album where different artists who all owe something to it cover each song, then you should hope that happens as soon as possible.

Don't kill people. Murder is wrong. Also, you don't want to get Ronnie's gunk on you.

What we need is a Weird Al polka medley of the songs folks cite as "emo national anthems". From just the ones I can think of off hand, Welcome to the Black Parade, maybe also Helena or I'm Not Okay I Promise from MCR, Situations, Ohio is for Lovers, King For A Day, maybe one of the big Jimmy Eat World or All-American Rejects songs, and Sugar We're Going Down. And I'm sure there are many more I just can't pull out right now, but that seems like a pretty solid set (all of whom are vocally led enough that a polka medley could really work).

And you know damned well that either Ronnie wouldn't comprehend who Weird Al was and infuriate...oh, everyone in the music industry...by trying and failing to beef with him or that he'd get pissed that he got the grand prize of being acknowledged by Weird Al for his least favorite Escape the Fate song.

I just realized that The Departure (Demo) probably provides the best citation (other than it being bleeding obvious from the entire theme of the album and how he talks about addiction elsewhere) that the titular drug in [Ronnie] is actually Max.

Opening lines:

"Oh how could I love you if I'm in love with something else

This chemical has got the best of me I swear"

The rest of it, inasmuch as it's about anything, is about literal drugs but if you compare this to TDIMIY and know the reality context from I Can Explain, definitely also Max. So here, we most likely have a textual comparison between his literal drug habit and Max...and saying he was in love with at least one of those things.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/fallinginreverse/thedeparturedemo.html

If I had a nickel for every time Ronnie textually used being / falling "in love" in regards to Escape the Fate / Max, I'd have 3 nickels which isn't a lot, but...

They're lesbians, Harold.

I got a survey email about "please send us your goals for the year". I'm not going to, but contemplated putting in "destroy everything Ronnie Radke holds dear." Then I realized that would just be him, Max, and maybe a couple of Taco Bells, and I like those last two things. So it's just to destroy him personally.

I don't know why, but I feel weird referring to him with first name / last name. It feels simultaneously more familiar and more respectful than he deserves. And even though I know that only applies to socials, I'm a tad nervous about summoning him.

Can we put an end to folks saying "well, excuse YOU" or, in this instance, "you're excused", if you accidentally walk in front of them? It's passive aggression that accomplishes nothing.

What's ruder: me failing a spot check and walking in front of rhetorical-you or you deciding to interpret that in bad faith and also insult me behind my back and while I'm in earshot?

Go register to vote. Not using what means you have isn't gonna make better ones; it's just gonna mean that you're gonna lose them because it's easier for a corrupt government to say they're "not important" and take them away from everyone, screwing everybody over even more.

Saying "THIS IS THE ONLY GOOD OPTION AND IF YOU ARE DOING ANYTHING ELSE GO FUCK YOURSELF" but giving no means for how to actually do that is completely unproductive and if anything, harmful, since it discourages folks from doing what little they can.

Frankly, I don't know how to read "nothing you can do actually helps and the entire system you live in including you shouldn't exist (which is true) but you have no viable means to dismantle it" as anything but "you shouldn't exist, go die". And if you don't give alternatives in your Everything Sucks thinkpiece, that's really all you're communicating.

Hey. If you're gonna make a think piece on Medium or some shit about how voting sucks because the entire American system is built on blood (which is true) and peaceful protest doesn't work, you've gotta give an option about what to do instead. Dismantling the entire system might be the best option, but well, it's not like that's really viable at the moment. If you say "what you think helps doesn't so don't do it" but don't give another option, all you're doing is making people feel bad. And for what? To prove how cool and leftist you are? Not doing what little you can isn't protesting, it's shooting yourself in the foot. No one's gonna pick up for you. We need more means and different means, but that's not a good reason not to use the ones you have.

Also, I don't think cynical think pieces have ever actually helped anybody save being philosophical masturbation for their authors.

and of course acknowledging how physically exhausted I was "you are now aware of your tongue"-ed me, so I'm gonna take a shower and crash.

And of course, I'm extremely motivated and at least mentally zoomy right now, but also know that I'm going to physically crash pretty soon and that even though I don't have anything on my agenda tomorrow until 11:30, if I don't go to bed I'm going to either sleep through breakfast or be cranky and full of slime. And I've been staying up until midnight because I've been so damned inspired the past couple nights and I know that isn't really sustainable.

This will probably pass once I have a stable class workload and system of what I'm doing when. I get most stuff done and my most creative inspiration when I have a clear schedule of other things, I suspect because it gives my brain time away from the fixations and reason to put them out into the world.

but, like, I do literally have a verse of sorts (I need to write down the reality AU / Enforcerverse / Slime Ronnie Verse world page such as it is) where my sona is technically a conceptual deity who can just...make new critters in their plane and elevate deceased souls with the power of Edge if they're so inclined. I have the power to create weird silly little guys in-universe and out, and because they live on the metaphysical plane of concepts outside of the world, they don't need to do anything or have any cohesive roles other than being weird little guys in demon bureaucracy. I just need ideas.

And probably to at least deal with SOME of the massive Neocities backlog. You'll note that the massive number of art pieces from Art Fight, Terrence's page, putting Snektuations somewhere, my thrilling empty lot travellogue, bios and refs for WHATverse folks who didn't previously have them, worldbuilding that's been sloshing around for months about Ronnie Slime, changing dimensions on some things from pixels to em, and maybe doing a Neopets hub have not happened. Nor have the long list of summer 2023-set fanfics (and more) for the Dudesverse, or the Bromance / Zane RRverse ones. Thing is, I like all those things. I continually rotate all of them in my brain. It's not that I lack motivation, I don't think. It's that, well, they already live in me so why bother putting them out on Neocities when I can entertain myself with them anytime? And I know damn well that putting things on Neocities makes me feel good and reading through them makes me feel good. It's just that my juices have been in overdrive ever since getting to a proper environment and there are So Many Things To Think About, so I've been putting up new stuff, like my essay on how I perceive identifying as some flavor of nonhuman despite not believing in spirituality and being a biologist by trade and my Zygarde Thoughts. Everything Is Interesting.

I'm my most motivated to do Neocities / virtual pet game / etcetera work when I know I have better things to do. I didn't get much done over the summer in that regard because for lack of a better word, I was too bored to be inspired.

I suppose in lieu of an October challenge, I could just spend the month working on my Neocities, but the principle of X-tober and drawing challenges like that and Art Fight and whatnot is to flex the digital art muscles and do things that I wouldn't left to my own devices do, because I'm much more of a writer than an artist. Editing my Neocities, I would do anyway. But maybe that would be a good September challenge.

And yes, I know I have the paper (emailed Gloria this morning) and the TFA application and such and also class work to do. Again, I get more motivated to do any given thing when I have more things to do. It's a bit of a blessed with a curse situation.

And of course, I'm extremely wordy when it's a stream of consciousness typing production and I really should be going to bed. Every time I go to certain webpages they claim "you can talk 3 times faster than you type" to advertise transcription, and I'm not 100% sure that's the case when I get going, especially since I repeat myself much more when typing. Plus transcription has never worked for me. I have to revise it to the point that it's faster to just type things directly, especially with a desktop keyboard. Plus you don't naturally...speak punctuation or line breaks so it's impossible to get anything coherent of decent length.

I know, rationally, that not everything needs to have cohesive worldbuilding and a core story, but that's kind of how I work. Even things that started as silly and only vaguely coherent like my FR and Goatlings lore ended up solidifying over time and having Central Themes. (the Goatlings lore's central theme being how Falling In Reverse is a force of evil that destroys whatever it touches.) This is all fine and good. I like worldbuilding. I like cohesion. I like thinking about how things connect and how they work. I like my established verses. But it means that I find it hard to justify making new OCs just based on fun little concepts or "this guy is fun to draw" because what are they Based On? They have to be connected to something.

Maybe I'll spend OCtober designing new OCs / alternate versions of my sona. I could use more of them, although I feel like the WHATverse main cast is pretty well fleshed out and it doesn't really need NPCs for the kind of story it's trying to be. Ditto for the Dudesverse, and I love them both.

Maybe I can / should just make more silly little OCs with no core worldbuilding verse, or alternate forms of my sona, or a verse that's somewhat sillier in nature. I do technically have an entire plane of metaphysical beings, manifestations of parts of concepts, things my sona or other demon kings / gods / embodiments / etc. can make from themselves / etc. who can do whatever they want. That's where Snektuations (who still needs a Neocities page along with all the other updates from Art Fight) lives, and they can cross over into places as they see fit.

Yes, I know my virtual pets are technically OCs in that they're characters with no basis other than the Neopets / Goatlings / FR / etcetera universe and they have refs and personalities and junk, but they don't excite me to the same extent. And also, anybody who has bios onsite, a Neocities page seems rather redundant for, although I will make a hub page with my Neopets' refs / art by others / basic backstories on -cities at some point.

I'm not gonna redesign Elaphe or King because they might be mostly legacy and no longer relevant as sonae (and King has no Dudesverse counterpart because he can't; fusion is not physically possible and Arlo is perfectly fine and interesting as his own person), I still like them and think they and their lore are fun and neat even though it's no longer relevant to the core of me and they're not necessarily at the forefront of my me.

Course, I mostly think of my player characters nowadays not as separate people, but as manifestations of the singular deity that is The Enforcer (TM) so maybe I'll just make them a Pokemon-related alternate form. Maybe give them some Zapdos and Giratina features.

I think I might need a new Pokemon Go sona, because both of the originals are kind of legacy characters. Elaphe is very much me and my name and all, but Elaphe (OC) took on a life of her own starting in 2019 when she wanted to kill me and retains a distinctly non-me vibe save being edgy and liking snakes. Their Dudesverse counterpart still exists and they're not a sona. And I realized just now that the Dudebro King Of Darkness is essentially obsolete. He was created to explore my gender identity and the notion of masculinity, which was accomplished once I figured out that I was basically masculine-aligned. Also, his whole concept kind of revolves around (a) being a Ronnie substitute, for which the RRverse renders him obsolete and (b) Arlo being an archetypical body-spray-wearing douchebag. Upon having gotten to know Arlo better and spent more time with / developed him as a character, he's not like that anymore, and my views of masculinity are, to the relief of everyone around me and their nostrils, a tad more nuanced.

from the makers of losing my mind and losing my life: losing my hair

remember kids making fun of people for hair loss is mean and immature because it's a natural part of aging and quirks of genetics and nothing to be ashamed of. unless it's ronnie because he started it by being so damned insecure and mean about it in the first place

"Cringe culture" is not dead because it was never real in the first place. There was never anything behind it or more of a "culture" it was based in than bullying, and 90% or more of the time, ableist bullying regarding special interests. To call yourself or your work "cringe", even ironically, is to give credence to that as a "culture" which it doesn't deserve.

To quote another trendy slogan, "don't kill the part of yourself that is 'cringe'. kill the part of yourself that cringes."

FUCK the hero's journey it was never a real folklore concept and applying it to anything that wasn't written to align to it is just shoehorning and useless. Archetypes are culturally specific motherfucker.

We, as English speakers, should use 'tis more often.

'Tis not because I like you or anything!

had the idea of printing out posters from tours I've been to in order to put them on my wall. problem is that most of them have some form of realistic human faces on them which is No Bueno they are not allowed to Look At Me. at least the concerts I went to in september 2022 and october 2023 are usable.

okay, heights for DIVs in EMs work, and I just learned you can do DIVs here. This probably isn't a good idea for much of anybody. I assume there's some limit to the HTML you can do within thoughts / on your theme. I tried attaching a Javascript-based view counter to my description because I was curious if anyone actually got here, but it didn't render so I assume they at least block cross-site scripting. I doubt you can do CSS vs. inline style in these fields either because they're obeying the blanket theme CSS.

"Don't like, don't read" is a valuable maxim that it seems a disconcerting portion of the Internet has forgotten.

It's one thing if something is actively furthering hatred or otherwise doing harm, but if it's just a decision you disagree with or something that doesn't align with your playstyle or you find personally distasteful...(a) they've got no obligation to pander to you personally and (b) you can just leave! Not everything is worth fighting over, and most things aren't.

There is a difference between something personally not aligning with what you like and being morally wrong. Only one of those things actually warrants protesting.

If you want to know why I stopped commenting on state of Goatlings-type threads, this is why.

"I like your gender."

"Thanks! I made it myself."

Clarification on the god front: identifying with the CONCEPT of divinity or being an angel or demon or spirit or whatever is totally chill. I classify that under "mythical creatures from non-closed traditions". I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't think that's okay, because hi, local demon king. Identifying as a god in your own right is fine. It's identifying as a deity that represents cultural realities beyond yourself that I feel is overstepping.

In general, here's my laydown on what it's okay to identify yourself as. This is my personal opinion. I am no kind of law. But basically, TLDR, don't take people's / culture's experiences that aren't yours. It's okay to relate to anything on the "no" list, but literally saying that you ARE that thing incarnate seems rather...reductive and disrespectful to the realities they represent.

• Real animals? Sure. Go for it.

• Mythical creatures from non-living, non-closed traditions? Sure.

• Fictional species created for a given work of media but that aren't specific individuals (e.g. Pokemon species)? Sure.

• Abstract concepts, natural phenomena, inanimate objects, etcetera? Sure. They won't mind.

• Specific fictional characters from media officially published for public consumption who are purely fantastical and aren't intended to represent any real person's experiences? Sure.

• Specific fictional characters representing real experiences that you also have? Sure, but be careful not to connect things too heavily. Fiction is still fiction; conflating your own personal trauma or demographics with a fictional character who's going to be to some extent stylized might not be a good idea.

• Specific fictional characters who represent the experiences of real people other than you, and/or whose character arcs relate to them belonging to marginalized groups you don't? Please don't. That's taking other people's experiences to be your own. You can say that you're a fictional character, but this has baggage beyond fiction.

• Real people, living or dead, other than yourself? Again, no. Same issue. Any real person, no matter how much you know about them or how stylized they are for the camera, has experiences that you don't and can never have.

• Creatures from living and/or culturally closed traditions, unless you belong to them? No.

• Deities anybody, present or historical, actively worshipped, unless you belong to that religion (and no, pagan revivals don't count; they've got much more to do with revisionist fanfic from the 50s than anything people did historically) and it's accepted practice? No. Gods are not fictional characters. They're stories, yes, but they're stories that encapsulate realities for entire communities. You can never be that.

• ANY OCs that weren't created by you or for published media for general enjoyment, unless their creator says it's okay? No, just out of respect to the artist.

Anyone who represents themself in court has a fool for a client. Anyone who worships themself as a deity definitely does.

Identifying with the concept of divinity is A-OK. I myself do it. Worshipping yourself...maybe not a good idea for your mental and philosophical health since you're a fallible being, but if it makes you happy, go for it.

Claiming to be / identifying as any god that folks (present or historical) actively worshipped, unless that's part of your religion and you belong to it? No fucking bueno! Those encapsulate cultural experiences shared by whole groups of people. Even if you're part of that religion, you can't say those are all you because they're not.

You can be a god, but you're only the god of / for yourself. Expecting anyone else to worship you, or yourself to represent anything you're not, will end in failure and is generally a dick move.

gods I love being "sir"-ed in public

Today is gonna be a good day.

Where's this on XKCD's list of "bad map projections"?

electrode problematic? cancel it?

Dynamax is just the least interesting parts of Mega Evolution and Z-moves, complete with utterly ripping off Necrozma's lore with none of the interesting parts. Why do we want it in Pokemon Go again?

Why is lunch the only food you can use as a verb? I've seen some portion of pretentious folk accounts saying "we lunched on [insert food here]" but no one says they "dinnered" or "breakfasted". They seem to be words since they're not red squigglied, but I've never seen them in vernacular. Why not?

I've been blaming all of my medical maladies this year on ronnie slime. The Dark Slime intends to suppress my hard-hitting journalism so it has Cursed Me With Pestilence (or, uh, walking around hurting a tad).

I need to write down and upload the lore page about how ronnie slime works (you know for my philosophical treatise disguised as falling in reverse fanfic that's also about how falling in reverse sucks and destroys everything it touches). And a bunch of other lore. And upload all the art my kiddos got from art fight / refs i finally finished for the whatverse kiddos.

I've got a lot of shit to do, basically, but have not been that motivated to do it. I think it's that I'm too bored to be inspired. I get a lot more neocities updating done when I've got better things to do because then if I don't want to do the better things I work on neocities instead and it feels productive even though it's not.

or whatever. demonic activity seems to have ceased for the time being

important announcement: the enforcer is no longer possessed

i believe catholics would call this "oppression" or "obsession" in exorcism terms. not possessed, but something is banging at the doors trying to get in

demonic activity feels a lot more congruent than using psychological terms because This Shit comes from Outside Of Me

literally have been pretty much constantly either listening to music or singing to myself to shut the voices up since this afternoon cept the voice is ronnie and it's the stupid fucking songs getting lodged in. which is still distinctly distressing and very much feels like an invasion, especially since unfortunately despite the fuckwaddery FIR's RSD vibes are maintained. you took a part of my headspace i want it back get the fuck out of my head

so listen to anything else so i can't hear the tiny apparition of ronnie that's been sitting on my shoulder arguing that we share more intersection on a venn diagram and respond to rsd situations more similarly than anyone wants to talk about since last february

question is, whose idea was the rabbit head? because if the idea originated with craig, then yeah he's officially a furry. glad to have you. I'm not sure about if it was suggested to him and he was still down for it.

Ronnie, we know is a furry, even though he's never cosplayed as such that I know of, because his whole wolf thing is very much his idea and he has overtly drawn himself as an anthro wolf.

definitely more metal than core, but, like, it's good. reminds me of the edgier "okay yeah I'm basically already dead" songs from escape the fate except with spicier production

the fursuit heads only appear in the intro; the rest of the video is pretty much a performance video in dark cinematic surroundings so they were just having a fun little time

...all in favor of taking that as confirmation that this album's release date wasn't a coincidence?

because we all know what ronnie boy thinks of this war is ours

hell yeah background extra in a this war is ours shirt

wow craig has gotten pretty good at the harsher screams. like, compare that to his older etf work (or, for a bad example of someone who can't pull off effective screaming, ronnie)

craig rabbitt fursuit head confirmed!

I'm not really in a state of mind to assess right now because basically anything is gonna get high marks for Not Being Ronnie Slime at the moment

so uh song good. go listen to it. maybe even actually stream it if you're comfortable with that for internet privacy reasons because the little guys could use the support

okay I guess re: Black Mold, "last week" isn't exactly accurate but close enough. the video came out august 7, but apparently according at least to ticked tock, the song released July 19, so I'm guessing the delay in getting to Yewchube was the video.

it's definitely that craig featuring on the song is a boost to the small beans vs. to him, which is nice of him to do especially since he presumably isn't getting the streaming royalties (if applicable) because it's under their name and he's just featuring. he seems nice in general. I hope that's actually true and remains so.

Silos seem like cute small beans. I might do an Entire Discography Review for them when I'm feeling more erudite and in a mood for assessment. I'm just catching up on new songs because I need to be filling my head with SOMETHING so the Ronnie slime doesn't crawl up from the cesspool in the back of my darkest pits where it belongs.

yeah, Silos (the one EtF collabbed with) are baby small beans. 1.92k subs on YouTube and didn't join until 2022. aww. so that explains the lower than average view counts

And I suspect that the video was published under their name very intentionally even though it has somewhat less algorithm reach, so they get the streams and boosts and such that they wouldn't normally and wouldn't have if it were under the EtF Yewchube. again, that's nice of them. craig seems like a nice guy. i hope that's actually true, but i think we have sufficient evidence to support it?

There is a chance that those are actual stylistic objections, but, like, based on everything I know about the demographics, they're not. It's just objection to Craig as a concept, over him...taking a job opening 16 years ago. And Ronnie getting butthurt about it despite the fact that based on all textual evidence, Max was the only one on EtF's end who initiated any feuding. And yet, I didn't see the slimewads flaming Violent New Breed...

you know, because Max is the most perfect and wonderful person to ever live and Ronnie can't stay mad at him. he feels really bad over being so mean to him on TDIMIY because he's filled with light and isn't a bad person and Craig didn't do right by him 🥺

all in totally straight ways of course

Apparently along with Escape the Fate's collab song from last week, Dead Rabbitts did a new one yesterday.

...I get that the beef is over, but I can't see that as anything other than "hey, estranged Falling In Reverse fans? disappointed at how he's cut all ties with the style you like? ...well, I still exist and have two whole bands for your enjoyment in that style."

Of course, I'd say about 10% of the comments on the new DR song are some version of "boo this is generic craig and/or escape the fate totally suck now"

It's no longer 2008. It's been 16 years. If you want someone who does the same structure for everything despite external unoriginal "genre fusion" trappings, go suck Ronnie's dick. Grow up.

From what I can tell, Craig gets some portion of blasting over anything that's not Dying Is Your Latest Fashion, and would get blasted even more if he did that. I still feel sorry for him. He did nothing wrong and clearly just likes making his silly little songs. He clearly actually LIKES metal and likes what he does and likes his wife and kids unlike some people. And he's been getting bullied for the past 16 years solely over "not being Ronnie", which given Ronnie, should be a selling point. Because if you want to talk generic metalcore with lackluster transitions, uh...

The man needs a hug. As much as I'd want to ask him if I were to ever see him at a meet and greet if he ever actually dated Mandy Murders because that haunts me, I'd feel bad for doing so. Despite the fact that he's objectively nicer, more professional at his job, and to be honest probably a better vocalist than Ronnie at this point (or at least, he actually USES his range), he still gets compared to him for no goddamn reason other than that Ronnie was cute back in 06 and made an entire album about how Craig stole his boyfriend.

Fuck Falling In Reverse and especially fuck its fans -- if y'all didn't blindly praise Ronnie and attack his target of the week, maybe FIR would have actually improved. You loving everything he does is why he's been able to keep getting worse. Really, the present state of FIR is your fault, and also, bullying people in the name of Ronnie is just cowardice.

Kill your local Ronnie Enjoyers <3 (don't kill people murder is wrong)

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Unfortunately, Bad Guy and No Fear have the right combination of emotional load (through no merit of their own) and simplistic structure to get stuck in my head on repeat. I guess they're marginally better than standard intrusive thoughts, but not by much.

So, Ronnie is super pale (I'm pretty pale and he's like 20 Photoshop units lighter than me) and has his entire torso blacked out, and ink doesn't have melanin or SPF in there that I know of. So he's got a super pale skin tone and a layer that traps sunlight and heat. How does he not get sunburned a ton?

Ronnie can't use light skin sunscreen (or I'm sure he wouldn't want to for the aesthetic) on his sleeves because any residue would be super visible. Dark skin sunscreen wouldn't have enough SPF for his natural skin tone unless he caked it on into a solid layer, basically.

...do you think he just carries a parasol with him everywhere he goes (it's inside the coffin) like a Victorian lady and/or vampire? he sneaks around in the shadows cast by his suburban surroundings whenever he has to walk anywhere during the day

Brace for impact. It's 6 in the morning, Nobody Likes Me is stuck in my head, I had a "dream" about some sort of cringe blog describing EE, and there's a nonzero chance the "new" "album" won't actually come out today (or at all), but there's a nonzero chance it will and this is gonna suck.

Basically, if you want the new FIR songs, there's no need to buy the box. As long as someone buys enough to get all 3 songs, which you know they will, and share them, which you know they will, because FIR slimewads will buy anything and love thrusting around that they have knowledge others don't, you can just get them on YouTube. If the FIR fanbase were smart, they'd realize that there's no reason for anyone to buy more boxes than just Joe Poor Financial Decisions taking one for the team.

And no one should be buying official FIR merch or supporting / recommending the band because it's actively supporting hatred, but you already know that.

So, the slime band is to be selling "unhappy meal" boxes of 3 random shirts and a hat from the old merch (which they've been sitting on and haven't put back up since December) for 100 dollars, with the promise that if you buy one, it'll come with an unreleased song, and if you go beyond a certain value, you'll get "all 3" of said songs.

Never mind that they're underpricing themselves with what are normally 40 dollar shirts such that they probably aren't paying fees and that no one should be buying Falling In Reverse merch because the funds go towards supporting Ronnie making the world a worse place. This is a fucking stupid marketing decision.

If nobody wanted the old merch when it was available on the store, why would they want it now? The only reason to buy the box is the unreleased songs...and if the purchaser gets access to the song by buying the box, that shit's gonna be on YouTube within 24 hours. All it takes is one person getting all 3 unreleased songs and reuploading them to destroy the appeal. We know from their ad that it's either gonna be the same songs for everybody or if there are only 3 to choose from and it's random, it won't take that many boxes for them all to be known (and hopefully the folks who get them will share them).

What they should have done is a "stretch goal" model if they were gonna leverage unreleased songs to try to sell merch no one wants. "if total sales of the boxes reach 10k, I'll drop this song" incentivizes folks to keep buying the damned things as opposed to just waiting for Joe Poor Financial Decisions to do it and put the songs on the intertubes.

Also, I'm betting that the "3 unreleased songs" have a pretty good chance of being ones that have already been shown on Ronnie's Twitch. We know at least 3 unreleased, fully produced tracks have been shown there and nowhere else: Bury the Hatchet from the solo mixtape and FIR songs rejected from the fourth album pre-Coming Home So What and the untitled track I call Living A Lie. Or my mom's theory that they'll be unreleased until Popular Monster (2024) comes out, and you'll get exclusive access in that they start selling the boxes and sending the codes at 9 am and the "album" drops at 5 pm or something.

Now, here's a question. If they have so many unreleased songs, why the fuck didn't they put them on the "new" "album"? That's probably going to be much more of a draw than 5 songs we've already had as known quantities for a year+, and I suspect the future of FIR and Ronnie's wallet has much more to do with the sales of the first proper physical release in 7 years than with their old crappy shirts.

ronnie after a post-show taco bell run

source: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/defining-the-demonic/

Don't bullshit a bullshitter, Google. You just didn't want to admit you couldn't think of a good name that started with Q.

(From Android 10's Wikipedia page)

This is delightful.

https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/x-is-for/

I'm still pretty convinced that the reason they switched to "Android 10" after Pie is as much because they couldn't think of a dessert that started with Q as because of the iPhone X and Windows 10.

By the way, what they could have done:

1. Quindim (A Brazilian egg yolk dessert)

2. Quesito (Puerto Rican cream cheese filled pastries. Literally "little cheese".)

3. Qottab (Iranian pastry with almonds)

4. Quarkkuchen (German cheesecake)

Or if they wanted to do compound words, they could do a Quince something or Quadruple Chocolate. Cowards.

are sugar star sprinkles and lattes made out of actual sugar stars? that's my tax dollars you're eating

In less anatomical news, got some new snakes at rainforest cafe today. If you put all the bones in a snake end to end, you would have a snake. (Xkcd #1398)

Wild Republic snake technology has improved. The little ones (a) have wire in them so they can coil and wrap around things and (b) are all actually decently accurate species that do indeed live in rainforests. Left to right and front to back, Emerald Tree Boa, Forest Cobra, Eyelash Viper, and Mangrove Snake (the Boiga genus Asian one)

I wish they'd had this red and blue one with black as a base color because it's not a rattlesnake, but look how much it looks like my sona. I have no plans of getting a fursuit because, uh, am snek and expensive, but I do want wings and a tail. Perhaps since we're back in Halloween season I can get some generic feathered wings and color them myself like I did when I went as EE for Halloween in '21.

Like, words do have textures. It is a thing. Bouba / kiki shit. But, like, I want a short and snappy word for it. It goes deeper than just those shapes too. It's very specific. When a word has just the right mouthfeel (something the word "mouthfeel" resoundingly lacks), you can just Feel it. It goes past being an applied name to being "yeah. That's just what that is. That encapsulates it."

Lest you mistake me for someone who philosophizes about good things, I came to this while thinking about the word "smegma".

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

The word "smegma" is neat because it's a clinical Latin term that still sounds like a gross slang word and gets the point across. It's got the vibes of the thing it describes. You can see Dick Gunk and be like "yeah that looks like smegma".

Is there a word for onomatopoeia but for texture? Like, how a word can nail exactly the vibe of the thing it describes? Or is that just me with the brain juice cocktail and my mild obsession with words?

smegma balls

I don't understand edible underwear. Well, I get the concept. It's pretty straightforward. I get why it's sold. I just don't get the appeal, even for folks for whom undressing each other is a motivator. For the consumer, it seems rather unsanitary. For the wearer, if it's got any sugar in it, you're going to end up sticky in a very uncomfortable place. Also, unless they just shaved there's gonna be hair in it. That doesn't seem especially titillating.

I've been told that your first response to stuff designed to titillate being "huh, that seems uncomfortable" or "wait, how does that even work?" is a textbook ace experience, and that allo folks just go straight to "huh I would like to see someone of my preferred gender in that". I don't think it's inherently ace to be inquisitive? I mean, I don't quite get the appeal of sex in general, and do mostly think of it in logistical terms, but I think about everything in logistical terms?

i swear to the gods i have no idea how docker works but i'm this close to just installing invidious on my personal computer my own damned self

The three genders: sir, ma'am, and boss.

Was at Taco place. Made order. (It was weird. Any two of "Nashville-style", "tofu", and "taco" can be in the same description, but not all 3.) As is pretty typical, order taker initially referred to me as "ma'am" before correcting, first to "sir", then consistently addressing me as "boss", which works. As honorifics go, that's pretty good.

It's somewhat humorous seeing southern folk determine how to deal with me.

And said dream did indeed have trains in it, so my conclusion that the next Falling In Reverse video should be about trains given Ronnie's otherwise 6-year-old-boy-core interests holds.

It seems the spiritual bond or something (eew) is still active in that I had a dream last night that pretty much perfectly encapsulated the vibe of an FIR music video. It even had a vaguely cyberpunk-dystopia setting that was clearly trying to be political, but I'm not sure about what, a jab at I See Stars, and me turning into a Kaiju at the end and killing everyone.

So I'm really not sure what to make of waking up with a boner. Which is especially annoying because I don't really have enough length to...do anything about it.

I can understand not flushing in your home toilet if it's just liquid waste, because it's not necessarily worth the water for just that, but if it's a public bathroom or it's solid, FLUSH, YOU DISGUSTING HEATHEN.

"yeah i'm transbasculin"

"don't you mean transmasculine?"

"no. my transition goal is this"

working on my chicken smoothie wishlist...

If you told nearly any previous version of me that they'd own, and want, multiple dog-based virtual pets at some point in the future, they'd probably completely dismiss you. And they'd be right -- I was never a mammal kid. At least apocryphally (as in, accounting for infantile amnesia), I was and am very much a reptile / dragon / dinosaur / bug kid and didn't seek out mammalian stuffed animals from the moment I was old enough to form a prevalence, save some periodic occurrences of cats or mammalian Pokemon.

Emo sparkledogs have a proud tradition, and I still don't get along or vice versa with dogs in real life, but it seems that Ronnie infected me with Edgy Wolf Kid and I'm not entirely certain on how I feel about that. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but, you know...the slime?

so chicken smoothie had herps and reptiles for years, and had various snake-adjacent critters before, but didn't get Actual Snakes until 2022? hmmm

for some math context, the highest C/s achievement is a 1 followed by 56 0s cookies per second. The highest total cookies baked achievement is a 1 followed by 72 0s. Calculating it out, it'd take 10^16 seconds to get that, or 317 million years.

This game is not possible to "win" without cheating. It knows that. It gives you achievements for using add-ons or the Javascript console. You're never going to get all the achievements "honestly" unless you either blatantly cheat or de facto go against the "spirit of the game" by save scumming combos. It's an exercise in futility.

Cookie Clicker knows that it's impossible to win, and embraces it. The question is: do you?

the fact that the final cookies per second achievement is for 100 septendecillion C/s (10^{56</sup) and the final total cookies baked achievement is 1 trevigintillion (1072) should tell you how abysmally grindy the game gets, even if you cheat. and you're not gonna see those numbers unless you do, or get REALLY lucky with golden cookies and save scumming}

it's a game you can only "win" by cheating, but then when you do, it's not fulfilling. if the point of it was initially to illustrate the meaninglessness of the likes of Farmville, it worked? of course, it also kind of codified its entire own genre. Mr. Orteil seems to take it in stride and seems generally nice, but sometimes I wonder if he's a bit sad that everyone missed the point in favor of "hehehoo numbers go up".

the proper way to play cookie clicker:

1. roughly once a year, remember cookie clicker exists.

2. insist you're going to play legit this time

3. do that for, like, a week.

4. get bored, start cheating

5. overshoot amount of cheating and end up completely obliterating all goals

6. stare at it until you get utterly sick of cookie clicker and question your life choices

7. completely ignore the farm and stock market because fuck that noise

things you can be a "monger" for:

1. hate

2. war

3. fish

I get that "monger" is just an archaic word for "seller" / "distributor", but how come these are the only 3 uses that seem to have survived into modern English? What did folks have against fish?

this is how i learned about the yo dawg meme and it's existed in my brainspace ever since 2010 unprompted

https://items.jellyneo.net/item/41281/

your honor i was raised by neopets

speaking of the inner demon i've come to the conclusion that the version of ronnie who had lived in my brain and interjected things unwantedly since last february, but vanished in may, crawled through whatever mechanism got the ronnie-as-calvin notion and canceled buddy to exist and is now inhabiting the real one.

that's probably a good place for him. the man's already basically 90% rsd by volume so a little more won't change much

yo dawg we heard you liked ronnie so we put more ronnie in your ronnie

i keep periodically considering making a spacehey but...why would I? i have no nostalgia for myspace. i don't really have any particular desire to make websites for the purpose of meeting folks vs. folks coming to meet me via me throwing my creative work into the void. i get my html jollies with the website.

also the inner demon is a known myspace enjoyer and it's best not to encourage him

me scheduling my nonsense

i very rarely laugh out loud when i'm by myself but this did it for me

does anybody else feel gauche putting HTML in markdown fields? but like it works and it comes more intuitively to me so

things are fine things are chill it's 1 in the morning and garfield minus garfield is the most resonant and funny thing i could be doing at the moment

existentialism question mark? really draws to attention how fucking dark the base comic is when you take out the marketable cat. jon is fucked up but it's fine to laugh at him because his fucking cat is his only friend but still berates him

craving violence? well, they don't sell violence at standard grocery stores, but cheese and/or avocado makes a passable substitute.

cheating at cookie clicker is always justified because it's literally the core gameplay loop. that's the point. it's game about making numbers go up to discuss how making numbers go up is meaningless. does it really matter how you go about it?

if they've got achievements for using add-ons and cheating, and there's a way to enable debug tools with no code manipulation whatsoever, they expect and fucking encourage you to cheat

Look, I like rainbows and pastels as much as the next guy, but do we really need to vote rainbows, pastels, and femme-coded clothing as the top votes for EVERY Goatling design contest? There are very few opportunities for more masculine, edgy, or just generally different from that goats to get in, and voting rainbows Every Fucking Time there's a contest doesn't help.

I'm not even salty because of my designs. I'm salty because we already HAVE tons of pastel, rainbow, and/or femme-coded goats and we don't need more, and great interesting designs with a wide variety of inspirations are getting overlooked in favor of Yet Another Rainbow Goat In A Skirt.

i live in a slime cave and do not encounter memes willingly but sometimes, rarely, the images i happen upon are good.

the snakes. they have the silly little hats. they are cowboys.

I don't remember what the dream I just got "holy shit that's actually good" woken up from was about, but it involved what I'm pretty sure was an I'm Not A Vampire cover by Phineas' (as in, "& Ferb") voice actor, of all people, and did this minor lyrical substitution that actually works to reduce the Ronnie Nonsense, is arguably better, and also scans.

"I think my holy water is a bottle / I medicate with anything to end this sorrow"

vs.

"Whiskey seems to be my holy water / mothers better lock your doors and hide your daughters"

Not only is the shirt funding Gays against Groomers still on the merch store, it has been moved back to the first page. It's still sold out, of course. The vast majority of things are. But if an Eminem collab did happen, then that would prove that Eminem doesn't deserve to exist anymore either. If FIR is actually doing well in any capacity, then something is dreadfully wrong with the world.

Supposedly appearing in GTA6 probably isn't that relevant given that it's probably, like the Nascar car, a matter of Ronnie sending somebody a commission.

In more pleasant news, status reports on the Altador Cup games: they've definitely been improved since 2022-23 and are more playable than they were last year, although it's still not optimal because That's Not What HTML5 is for.

Altador Cup finally has the losing 30 seconds after anyone makes a goal implemented. It's still much harder than it used to be, especially in the early game, because your opponents are faster and steal balls more.

Make Some Noise seems better at logging keystrokes, although there remain some minor interface glitches.

Slushie Slinger still doesn't change colors with your team and is still laggy.

Shootout Showdown has been vastly improved in that making goals is actually possible, although much like Yooyuball, it's still much harder than it should be because the goalie moves a lot faster.

Sending shivers right down your spine...

There are few expressions more amusing than someone who until very recently thought they were immortal begging for their life.

It's something that you're prone to, so divine...

He'd of course tried to struggle. I wouldn't have expected any less of him. But despite all his efforts to kick and bite and claw his way away from the inevitable, the Bureau of Edgelording sent me on a mission and I was more than happy to oblige. There's very little you can do crawling around in the dirt and honing your claws against a god. You'd think that he, of all people, would have understood this, but I suppose he fancied himself something of a divine being. I made the mistake of catching his eyes as I tightened the last of the ropes around his ankles. Sure, I could have just eaten his soul, but this was better. This was symbolic. This was about sending a message. If he'd been anyone else, perhaps his eyes lit up with fear would have evoked some sort of emotion in me. It didn't matter at this point. It was too late for that.

You were better at lies, I was never surprised at the way that it felt...

"What are you doing? Think of all the good times we had together...we can still have that, you know. I haven't changed. It's you who's the problem. You're the one who's not willing to take me as I am."

"You aren't the one I loved. Not anymore. One could say you never would. He died before I could know him, so he remains pure. Honestly, you should think of this as a favor. God only knows what you'd end up falling into if I left you to your own devices."

I took the time to double-knot all the binds, staring straight into his eyes the whole time. I half expected him to start sputtering and spitting bile, again, calling me every slur in the book, but that should have been the last thing on his mind.

Now feel the pain (I was always insane), but you're the one who needs help...

"You know, this is the last time you'll get decked out like this. I know you don't wear this kind of gear on stage anymore -- it's one of many things you lost -- but savor the moment. We spent good money on this."

Layers of leather, denim, and iron stacked up onto his body. All things that would turn to stone as soon as they made contact with water. His last expensive pair of shoes encased in a block of quick-hardening cement. There were faster ways to do this. Maybe I was just a sadist. But I wanted to give him time to think. Perhaps give him time to repent. That offer of getting mandatory therapy and dissecting the roots of his issues was still there. He didn't have to end up with fire and brimstone after this. He never had to end up here in the first place. He could have avoided this. He could have shut his pretty little mouth. Hell, he should have done that in 2008. But he hadn't been thinking, and maybe he'd finally think for once in his life before the saltwater drained the fluid from what was left of his brain. All the sludge that had consumed him could maybe finally drift away in the ocean.

"Got anything pithy to say? Anything you'd like to call me?"

"You're making a mistake. Believe me. I killed a man before, with a lot less premeditated effort than this."

"So you're really going with that as the last canonical version of the story, huh? I could have sworn that you just stood there innocently while your reinforcements did everything. Best get it straight before you meet my boss."

"This will haunt you the rest of your life, you know. You might be able to talk all cool now, but it won't be nearly that cool when you see my face in your nightmares for the next 20 years."

I lifted up my sunglasses and sneered at him, which was perhaps immature to do to someone who was about to die, but I couldn't resist. The full moonlight against the water glinted off my fangs. I figured I'd drop the rest of the facade, so my hoodie fell to the ground and I let my tail out from where I'd had it bound. Bright red bones stood out against the otherwise cyan-toned surroundings and the scars on my arm -- the scars he'd inflicted, given that my entire existence in this state was his fault, stood out as brighter spots against a sleeve mirroring his own. Except I, of course, knew what I was doing first run. I wasn't trying to paint over my mistakes.

"I don't think that'll be a concern, seeing as I'm already dead. This is your last chance to say something pithy. Any messages to your fans? Or family or friends? Or everyone else you've manipulated and corrupted in your image?"

He just shook his head, refusing to make contact with me, eyes downcast. He let out a long, melancholic sigh.

"There's no one here to posture for, Ronald. You don't need to pretend to be the bigger person here. We both know you're lying."

"Just get this over with."

"I keep waiting for you to recognize me, you know. You've got more people to answer to than you realize."

"...claiming that I somehow drove you to murder me...you're sounding just like me back in the day. Your choices are your own, right? You're accountable to your actions, right? You can talk all you want about just retaliation and all, but ultimately, it's just bloodlust. It's just jealousy. You only want to see me fall because you know you'll never achieve what I have here."

"And thank the Enforcer for that."

"...so, what is he enforcing, do you think? Or what do you think you're enforcing on his behalf?"

"Odd time to be philosophical."

"Oh, I'm trying to stall because, you know, I don't want to die, but I also don't want you to do anything you'll regret. You...remind me of me."

"I should."

A burst of red light started from my sleeve and arced up the bone scale segments encasing my armor, forming itself into a facsimile of that damned snake silhouette from that damned album cover across my chest, painting an ominous emphasis on my top surgery scars. A network of glowing cracks exploded out from it, up and down my torso, and crossing my face, forming something like a facsimile of my target's face tattoo. His voice escaped my mouth, half-singing, half-screaming as I shoved him off the pier, denim and chains and cement alike all sinking him rapidly out of sight. He didn't show any signs of attempting to struggle. He just looked at me with an incomprehensible expression.

All his philosophical ramblings meant nothing to me at this point. Perhaps they would have worked had I been killing a person. But it didn't matter if a tumor wanted to live. It didn't matter if it looked at you with an eye it'd formed from broken code snippets stolen from the rest of a healthy body. There was no hint of bloodlust about it. For the health of the scene, for the health of everyone, elements that destroy everything around them need to go. "A few bad apples" might not be a representative sample, but they will be if left to rot. If you take a bad apple out from the barrel and bury it out of the way, maybe it'll sprout. Maybe for once in his life, he'd finally form something worthwhile when the fish and worms came for him.

He certainly hadn't succeeded with me.

Enforcer said that they'd already taken his soul. It hadn't worked. Whatever was piloting him just expanded to fill the gap. They'd removed the soul from his music, but the fans didn't care. All they did was make him worse. With nothing beyond the physical remaining, the only option was to eliminate what little there was left. Otherwise, the emptiness would continue to consume it. Better to not be anything than to be an aggressive nothing, devouring all that remained of you or anyone else around you, expanding with no growth, corroding whatever it touched.

The surface of the water remained calm. There remained no hints of anything that had taken place, save my hoodie on the ground. I picked it up and slid it back on over myself, it holding no heat as the pressure and darkness enclosed my skin.

Tell me now if you can swim, when ropes are wrapped around your limbs...

and somehow, that actually seems to have sort of worked for getting back into science mode and thinking about timelines and whatnot and out of the emotional "oh god ronnie is terrible and so are all his fans and despite everything, fir might actually be succeeding" spiral. So I guess I'm going to do whatever dailies have rolled over to get my mind onto something else and go to bed. Maybe tomorrow I'll skip Art Fight in favor of writing some fanfic. That could perhaps be a more beneficial use of my energy. Drawing doesn't require quite the same amount of thought, even though it's "harder" in that it's more difficult to get satisfying results that really are "yes, this is what I wanted to exist", so it allows more wandering which is perhaps what let the pipes get clogged and start rotting combined with the drain from my illness.

I actually did a reverse image search for the wedge picture. The only results are TinEye connecting it to a Tumblr search for his name (supposed first appearance in December 2015) and Google search by image results connect it to one of the guys from Black Veil Brides, which might just mean that they look a lot alike but COULD be a connection. Supposedly, Ronnie got up to some homoerotic shenanigans with the Black Veil Brides guy who did guest vocals on one of the solo album tracks during its production, which would make sense for the ca. 2014 hairstyle if there's a connection there.

But if there's anything, it looks like it's only going to be on social media clients. Which is about what I expected. If originally posted by Ronnie, unless someone has a screenshot that they reuploaded somewhere, original context may be lost (or if it's not, it's somewhere I'm not willing to touch.)

I suspect that a good 90% of this is just that I'm generally burnt out from Art Fight and other less pleasant things, so my brain juices are pretty much fried, and the looming Sword of Damocles of the "new" "album" isn't helping. I don't know if the "album" actually coming out will reduce my malaise or not. At least it becomes a known horrible quantity. Which should get critically panned for half of it not being new and the rest sucking, but it won't. Because everyone affiliated with Falling In Reverse willingly gave themselves over and there's nothing left in there anymore.

I've realized upon listening back through things that FIR...isn't even that good. At its best, it's just worse versions of Dying Is Your Latest Fashion. But there's just not that much...there there, and it's only gotten worse. Maybe that's just a matter of me having the benefit of hindsight and more canon knowledge than I did in 2022, but what the fuck did I even see in it? and why can't I let go even though I really fucking want to? (yes, I know that's just how special interests work)

I enjoy the research, but what is there to research. There are no depths of knowledge left to plunge. With nothing left to do, the only place to turn is to the slime, and that's both awful and not interesting. I feel like all the jokes I can validly make about Ronnie, I've already made. What is there to say about something that's just awful on every level.

no one unironically using the phrase "cancel culture" in the year of our lord 2024 deserves to live. it's literally just a dogwhistle. any meaning it once had is long since gone.

anyone who collaborates with falling in reverse does not deserve to still have a career

falling in reverse needs to die

ronald joseph radke as a human being needs to die

"cancel culture" is not a real thing it's called having consequences for your actions you fucking cunt

i hope inklings of eminem doing a collab are fake because ronnie has been the exact thing from em's fans he's railed against since the 90s

there are things machine learning is legitimately useful for. making flight paths more efficient? analyzing chemical structures for manufacturing? great. it's just that generative shit isn't one of them, seeing as it's just a search engine except you can't find its sources. "learning to use ch4tGPT" is not a skill. typing in something for a prompt is not an act of creation. all it accomplishes is flooding the world with misinformation and crappy boilerplate writing rephrased from better sources, and no way to distinguish between what came from where. there are better things to automate.

general science fiction bullshit "AI" is not real. robots with rights are not real. if you're prioritizing algorithms over real sapient beings, you're being an asshole.

automation and machine learning can be useful and benefit folks. generative "AI" isn't. typing in a prompt is not an act of creation. it's not "democratizing" creation to rehash what's already been done. yes, I know that it doesn't take specific chunks vs. "what color pixel goes here" or "what word should follow this". that doesn't change that there is no "creativity" there, and it's not "democratizing" anything if the mechanisms are under techbro control.

been thinking about that picture of ronnie on the wedge from june again. it haunts me. i need to know the context. who the fuck was that image for. why does he even have that

canonizing the slime was a mistake I am under spiritual attack (or the brain just decided producing bad thoughts needed to happen at random for some reason who knows)

i bought a pineapple crush ad when it landed in usershops because i knew i wanted man slut goat. problem is that i can't think of a good song title for it

decided to impulse some edgy shit from the CS store. yes, most wearables are designed for dogs, but that doesn't fucking stop me

Pet's name: Edgelord
Adopt virtual pets at Chicken Smoothie!

in other news the Official Falling In Reverse Nascar Car (which is a thing that exists) did indeed run a race recently. it didn't do a very good job. the driver isn't very good.

yes, Ronnie, we get it, you're a 10 year old boy. "I want a race car!"

healing the inner child is valid and all but if you're spending thousands of dollars on it for a marketing stunt that the Nascar demographic won't especially like (given that he's a rather pretty man with a face tattoo who oozes homoeroticism [and also ooze] from every pore) perhaps reconsider your financial choices

underneath his smile there lies a cloying scent of rot. there is nothing of use here; there is only decay with no decomposition, no end in sight, what degrades but does not return to the earth, what can never be detoxified. turn back before he draws you in far enough you can never escape

don't walk around like you're a unique kind of being; you're a filthy animal like any other. get down in the dirt and praise the earth before you turn to dust yourself

i may not have a cohesive form but got damn it i am a snack (in a strictly abstract sense because ace and i am strictly a Perpetrator of cannibalism not a recipient)

in other news i'm bored enough that i've started playing cookie clicker again (i remember it exists and end up playing it until i get bored about once every 2 years) and am ritualistically reading the descriptions of everything on its wiki. honestly this is a mood and lives in my brain with little provocation

happy not release day for the "new" "falling in reverse" "album" (this was the initial announcement but it got delayed until mid-august with no acknowledgment other than the change on the streaming service dates)

from the pestilence trenches, we need to do dishes but nobody wants to do dishes (i am of course as you know sick and my mom tested negative when she checked but also has covid like symptoms so who knows) so i'm eating my yogurt out of a measuring cup

bought kasandaria a grapes of wrath from the plot shop and I feel so fucking overpowered it's amazing. with the combo of that and the leaded elemental vial from the volunteer prizes I am Thriving. now I just need to get her some of the other prize shop weapons and we'll be in business. those I'm gonna buy with plot points because I don't BD enough to justify spending actual NP on it

my mouth is really dry and it tastes weird and gross and a different kind of gross from mucus gross but I can't tell what. I assume that's the told side effects of the antivirals.

remember, kids, covid is still a thing and has had nasty long term effects for a lot of folks, and getting vaccinated / keeping those up to date helps protect you and others from those.

keep your vaccines / boosters up to date; there'll probably be a new one soon since the last one I was eligible for was in September. if you can do so reasonably, wear a mask if you're doing indoor gatherings. stay home if you've got nasal congestion, or at least get a test to make sure, even if it's "just allergies" or a "cold".

I'm actually not having as existentially bad of a time as I thought I would after spending most of yesterday asleep and I'm fully crediting that to having my vaccines up to date.

...so i have covid. got me 4 and 1/2 years later.

This is your captain speaking. We're experiencing, uh, we're experiencing something.

I am full of slime, and not in a fun way. As in, it is in the back of my throat tasting bad and keeping me from sleep. The cursed state inflicted by Benadryl is not sleep.

fashionably late has 3 songs that are so-stupid-they're-good (goddamn, fuck the rest, and the title track), three songs that are okay (where have you been, born to lead, and it's over when it's over), self-destruct personality which has no business being as good as it is, and the rest is some value of "WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING" and just incoherent and stupid and in the case of bad girls club, also a crime against all sapient life.

to clarify I'm listening through the falling in reverse songs on my computer in chronological order because I've kind of been avoiding them since May and my monologue was giving me shit about it. I'm not just providing roughly chronological in album order EtF / FIR opinions for no reason, although that wouldn't be out of character for me.

fashionably late is incoherent and there's no improvement in setup from tdimiy, but he just sounds so actually Happy and it shines through. is it a good album? no. was it good for falling in reverse? no. bad girls club demonstrably makes the world a worse place by existing and the fact that he could even think to write it is the main thing that makes him pretty much irredeemable in my book because he's clearly chosen not to. but, like, it's clear on fashionably late that the man is Having Fun, and there's a certain audacity to it that shines through. When it's not utterly stupid and painful, it's Fun. It just doesn't succeed at being a good amount of stupid in more than, like, 3 songs. Self-Destruct Personality is just unironically the best Falling In Reverse song, the only one that actually manages to incorporate things coherently, and might actually beat TDIMIY for me in terms of setup musically.

Goddamn, Where Have You Been, and It's Over When It's Over are...inoffensive. They are also there. I don't know what Drifter is doing.

despite ronnie sliming his fans like he's the fucking kids' choice awards and the fact that on many measures, falling in reverse kind of just sucks in general, fashionably late (song) does not fail to bring a smile to my face. it's so freaking stupid and I love it.

"I'm letting you know 🐺🤘😈 she liked 👍 my post 👁️‍🗨️ up on my FACE BOOK 💻👅💕🌸"

it would be funny if he screamed when he was doing his morning hype up. gotta get the chords warmed up for a day of screeching at people. and splattering toothpaste all over the bathroom mirror and deeply annoying any housemates.

save the screaming, born to lead is what Ronnie says to hype himself up in front of the mirror every morning.

"you are the reason they even exist" ... yeah that makes it very clear this is not intended as an inspirational song for anybody else. also fun fact it's canonically a "fuck you" to falling in reverse's genre fans per the stupid book.

I will never understand why Good Girls Bad Guys and Pick Up The Phone were included in the final version of TDIMIY and You're Something Else / I'm Not A Hero weren't. I can't attribute GGBG to anything but Ronnie being forced to write a song about girls and intentionally doing a disgusting job of it, and YSE and INAH both do a much better job of fitting into the narrative. INAH especially since it factors in what'll eventually become Superhero Ronnie.

hell, if he wanted to win back the crowd with a new album, DROP THE DRUG IN ME IS YOU 2 YOU COWARD. We have canon information that it was gonna be 2 parts where one was heavier and one wasn't, but all we got was the 11 (13 plus gold vinyl bonuses) tracks we have with no hints, not even the tiniest smidgen, of what was originally gonna be there. or, you know, the 20+ tracks supposedly drafted for the fourth album that never got released except in crap quality with him talking over them for So What and [Living A Lie].

And at least those 2 were fully together, and per I Can Explain, the Epitaph execs were ready to put them on the radio until Ronnie decided he didn't like them.

That's when you say "to hell with artistic vision" and drop the songs as singles. Call them bonus tracks. The actual thought put into Coming Home worked, and makes it the only good FIR album other than TDIMIY (although I hesitate to call it FIR since it's basically just Ronnie ripping off Starset and has no FIR elements other than him), but literally anything would be better than Right Now and "the fuck's a selfie stick".

"i h-o-p-e you will see that you need help"

...and then immediately says that he's gonna exact revenge by fucking all their friends. you sure that your TARGET is the one who needs help, buddy boy?

if you compare the guitar backing on DIYLF to any TDIMIY song, there's a notable difference, right? like, there are...more notes and less repetition on the DIYLF verses, I feel like. TDIMIY and later FIR has more overt guitar solos, but what the guitars are actually doing is less interesting, and I do suspect that's the difference between Ronnie and Max noodling around in their awful little slime cave and maybe cuddling and Ronnie tapping out melodies by himself in the dark. To be fair, you can't exactly keep very complex melodies in your head that you (supposedly) composed via tapping out beats and whatnot on your body while in solitary, but later FIR songs have no excuse to sound like that.

Sink Or Swim is the only song that comes remotely close to DIYLF sophistication in terms of its setup and production values. Even then, there's still something which DIYLF's vocals have which SoS lacks.

So, uh, in short...The Drug In Me Is You is still good as a worse version of Dying Is Your Latest Fashion, but it's somewhat held back by stupid lyrics, Ronnie Slime, and the lack of a certain complexity in delivery and instrumentation that DIYLF had. It's got good guitar work, but the melodic setups are a lot simpler and there's less layering, and I expect that's Max and/or label intervention. It's not evoking much of anything other than thought in me. It doesn't...Do It For Me the way it did during '22 - '23 in terms of completely consuming me. DIYLF still pretty much does.

I'm not going to redo my reviews from last summer because I think they do pretty well at "how well is this song doing at what it's trying to do".

I don't know if I really want to put the DIMIY songs back on my phone shuffle rotation. It works as an album. It works as an Experience, but I'm not sure how much they'd add to my shuffling experience and I can't really...take them seriously when actually going through and listening to them. They're a lot more evocative when repeated in the back of my brain against my will.

plus he doesn't exactly have ready access to phone calls in prison and we know that supposedly while he was inside, he sent his homoerotic revenge message to Max on MySpace before contacting literally anybody else. (who was addressed was Max, the victim's family, the fans, and the haters. His family, and his love interest whoever that was, don't factor in at all.)

It's possible that Pick Up The Phone isn't actually about anybody and it's just him doing a generic Poorly Handled Abuse Song (or that it's about a past love interest who knows that she'd get ignored and another mean song written about her if she came clean and who Ronnie never namedrops), but if it was written while he was in jail, as supposedly most of TDIMIY was, I don't think that would be the biggest thing on his mind?

Likewise, as well as being a song that probably shouldn't exist but I can't bring myself to hate because it does give me a certain catharsis (and I keep it because I don't like having every song on the album except ONE), Pick Up The Phone has nothing to do with the rest of the album unless it's about Max. Which it's probably not because (a) it mentions sex and (b) it describes a mutually abusive relationship and, breakup-rage aside, Max seems to be the most (possibly only?) healthy relationship Ronnie has ever had.

Although, the level of possessiveness he displays in PutP doesn't really seem like it would apply to anyone BUT Max? Maybe if he perceives his love interests as objects, but he doesn't seem to care much, and well, by 2018 he was down to negotiate a trade. It never genders the love interest, via either using a pronoun or suggestion of clothing, and the claim that "we'd both get convicted if they see the bruises on both of us" wouldn't necessarily actually happen with a straight mutually abusive relationship in 2011, but let's not trust Falling In Reverse for legal advice.

I guess that "I'll be damned if I see you with some other man / if I can not have you then nobody can" would probably be interpreted as referring to a woman by the 2011 Scene Audience, but, well, the entire rest of the album and most of the rants are "Escape the Fate / Max is MINE and YOU took them from me, MABBITT." so...

Yeah, if you compare, in terms of the instrumental setup and what's actually going on "under the hood", TDIMIY to DIYLF, there's a clear and immediate drop in complexity.

Also my thesis still stands that Good Girls Bad Guys has no reason to be there. I'm Not A Vampire is also goofy, but it fits the theme and the point of the album in exploring Ronnie's backstory: it's an extremely unsexy sex, drugs, and rock and roll song, and we kind of needed to get non-metaphorical drugs in there somewhere. Good Girls Bad Guys has no reason to be there. Ronnie's relationships with women, other than his mother, as evidenced by I Can Explain and MySpace alike, are basically completely irrelevant to Falling In Reverse.

it's the little church bells in the back of reverse this curse, and how my apocalypse has some subtle flatline beeps, and the very video gamey synth noises in the back of guillotine. it's those little touches in the production and the layering and the setup that give dying is your latest fashion a certain edge up in terms of vibes and give everything a certain Atmosphere and depth which FIR simply...lacks. there's a thought and a purpose to everything in this album. it kind of sounds like a bunch of generic emo symbolism in a blender but it's doing a Really Good Job At It. It ACCOMPLISHES what it sets out to do and every song is a vibe in and of itself.

Also, I think I might have figured out why everyone claims Mandy Murders and Ronnie dated despite the photographic evidence being a total of one picture of them snogging at a party (original source unknown) and the supposed rant at Craig on his MySpace AltPress cites not actually existing from all I can tell based on Internet Archive: she played his love interest in the Truth In Cliche music video. But still, I don't think they're likely to have actually dated given the total lack of anything (which at least certifies that it had nothing to do with EtF), the unclear suggestions that she ever dated Craig, that Mandy's archived Suicide Girls page doesn't mention anything about Ronnie, Craig, or EtF at all, and that based on I Can Explain and the Dying Is Your Latest Fashion liner notes, he dated Whitney for a solid stretch between 04 and 06. The kinds of sketchy celebrity websites that claim that he and Mandy were a thing claim that happened in 2004, which doesn't align with any other source and also suggests he was with a scene model before EtF was really relevant, which seems highly unlikely since their MySpace didn't even exist until November of that year.

He stops doing the weird enunciating, for the most part, on Coming Home / the new FIR singles, AKA when he tries to take himself seriously and stops doing scene work, much like the squeaking. By TDIMIY, based on timelines, his voice should have stopped cracking, so it's definitely intentional at that point. But I'm not convinced given his age as of Dying Is Your Latest Fashion that it wasn't produced as a technique to try to compensate for cracking / puberty squeak by leaning into it, which he just kept after his voice fully dropped. There are still some hints of the old vocal stylings on the Coming Home bonus tracks, All My Life, and the melodic parts of Popular Monster and Zombified, but it's a lot subtler.

One thing I can say for certain -- the squeaking / weird enunciation is a lot closer to his natural vocal range in his speaking voice than the lower, VERY limited pitch range (even more so than your normal FIR vocals) pseudo-rapping that Popular Monster and Voices In My Head do on their main verses.

A data point re: vocal development -- in Listen Up (2002), he's notably higher-pitched than he is on DIYLF, but there's less cracking / squeaking. What this suggests to me is that perhaps puberty hit his voice kind of late. The squeaking / voice cracks are a lot more noticeable on the There's No Sympathy For The Dead (2004-5?) and DIYLF (2006) tracks. After TDIMIY, based on all reasonable timelines, his voice should have fully settled into its adult range. I think for folks of any genital configuration, it's still got some instability until your mid-20s but rounds out by 25 or so.

holy shit I just now noticed that they've got little church bell inserts on the back instrumentals on reverse this curse

dying is your latest fashion is better produced and executed and has better structure than anything else ronnie has ever done go listen to it

Another egregious example is the last "but nothing's as it sEEYMes" on Chariot of Fire. Much like the squeaking, it's all over DIYLF / early FIR if you know where to look. I can't decide if it's intentional or not. And I don't know what he's going for if it's anything more than him trying to cover voice cracks.

this isn't a thing that's talked about vs. his little squeaks, but here's an observation: there's a specific way Ronnie enunciates his vowels which is...odd. it's not something I hear any other genre guys do and isn't how any real human sounds. It has to be intentional, but I have no idea what he's going for. It's most common on Fashionably Late / Just Like You and more frequent on "non-serious" sounds, but there's a good early example on As You're Falling Down in the pre-final-chorus bridge thing. Situations also has it with literally the first word.

(I KNOW YOU) "the blood still stAAIYNs"

I can't tell if this is an intentional technique or him trying (perhaps unsuccessfully) to cover his voice cracking. I'm still undecided about the squeaking.

hehe Hissi. look at its little snake face

they just want to play

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/07/amberstar-birds-eye-view.html?m=1

did actually get my lit review done once the baby left. got both guac and queso and had a pretty pleasant time, although i ended up with too much queso and couldn't really do it justice

why the fuck do NONE of my local mexican places, and there are a lot of them, have dip samplers

working on my lit review at a restaurant seemed like a good idea; it somehow slipped my mind that restaurants are a place where screaming babies happen.

Anyway, go look at some resources and do your daily arab.org click. This site's got a good list.

https://sitesforpalestine.neocities.org/

I don't know. Maybe it's that I spend too much time in Ronnie Land, but 95% of "problematic" accusations are just cringe culture with a new coat of paint, and of the other 5%, 90% of those are not as big a deal as folks make them out to be. I'm not saying those things aren't bad, of course, and they're worth raising concerns about, but "did an advocacy but not well enough" or "made some bad 'jokes' 10 years ago" is a completely different thing from, you know, having an actual fucking body count and actively supporting making the world a worse place.

I get why it's deeply disturbing to see a special interest doing something you don't agree with, but pick your battles, you know? I get that if you feel personally powerless, you want to take it out on somebody, but there's a time and place for everything.

I don't financially support Goatlings anymore, and I don't see that changing, because why would I? It's the same reason I don't spend money on raid passes or gems: there's no gameplay benefit in it. I don't disagree with the concerns brought up on the SoG thread. I think especially re: transparency in communications and gameplay, they've got some damned good ideas. I just think that maybe everyone needs to take a step back from their computer, consider that no one outside of their bubbles knows or cares that Goatlings exists and that it's doing more than a lot of other things, and calm the fuck down.

Now, of course, I'm not for never doing the right thing. Goatlings has established a precedent of advocating for human rights, and Palestine is part of that. But again, I don't think thinly veiled accusations at Kris and other users and rejecting what attempts were made with "this isn't good enough and is performative" are helping.

Now, I don't wholly disagree with folks' concerns that we're only getting what we are because of player backlash. I don't disagree with concerns that the Twitch streams aren't really effective and that fundraising shouldn't be going through Kris' Paypal account. I'm just saying that maybe "you're not allowed to be uncomfortable" and treating a fucking petsite with a 3-digit total userbase like it's crossing a picket line isn't a productive thing to do with one's energy and isn't the most effective way to go about it.

"If someone is uneducated on Gaza, that is up to them to become educated. It is not up to them to become confused and uncomfortable when the topic is brought up."

...okay, I agree with the core thesis of this statement. Being aware of rights issues is a basic part of being a global citizen. Using being uncomfortable as an excuse to pretend things aren't happening is a dick move.

BUT "you aren't allowed to be uncomfortable" is...no bueno? You can't use being uncomfortable as an excuse, yes, but folks' feelings are valid. There is a difference between "burying your head in the sand" and "I don't have the energy to deal with this right now".

"The Internet is for global communication" and "there's a time and place for everything" are takes that can and should coexist.

A phrase I frequently see on bumper stickers and FUCKING LOATHE is "if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention": If you ARE actively outraged, then you're not thinking clearly. Outrage isn't a good state of mind to assess issues and learn and check your sources, so if you are outraged, you're not only making yourself and those around you miserable, you're an easy target for unscrupulous folk who want to prey on your rage. Be concerned. Be outraged that things are happening. But if you're personally outraged, that's not a good state of mind to get anything done.

You can't use being personally uncomfortable as an excuse to shut down important discussions or pretend things aren't happening. But you are allowed to be personally uncomfortable, and to bow out with "I don't have the energy for this right now". There is a difference between burying your head in the sand and setting boundaries. Because not setting proper boundaries and sitting through ignoring obvious discomfort is a great way to get folks yelling at each other and accomplishing nothing, and to make yourself miserable. And being miserable doesn't help Gaza or anyone.

I'm not gonna say this on Goatlings because World's Worst User TheEnforcer doesn't need any more bad PR than they already have, and I've mostly stayed out of the Palestine side of State of Goatlings because it's not my place to speak for. I've commented on concerns about site running and gameplay because those are things I have experience with and feel like I can validly speak for without ending up speaking over folks.

But this is a lovely example of how I think the State of Goatlings thread has diverged past what's actually helpful. We've got a lot of folks who are (justifiably!) angry about how things are handled, but I'm seeing a lot of bandying about of thinly veiled accusations to Kris and other users and very little discussion of...you know, the state of Goatlings.

You do realize that the subtextual thesis statement here is "never do the right thing", right? Maybe it's that I spend too much time in Ronnie Land and I'm too cynical for my own good, but this wouldn't be an issue if Goatlings hadn't established that they did fundraisers and such. Flight Rising just did their "you can state support for human rights, but please don't make political statements" announcement and it was fine.

If you complain about someone not doing the right thing, and then complain MORE when they do make an attempt because it's not good enough, not everybody is gonna respond with "oh, I need to do better next time". Some portion of folks are going to give up and say "okay, fine, if I can't satisfy you, then there's no point in trying". Now, that's not an excuse to not help out where you can and have the mental energy for in issues of rights crises, but that is a great way to make folks stop expressing public support. Speaking as an RSD sufferer who's been turned off of a lot of online "advocacy" because it ends up amounting to "if you don't share this you're a bad person", the SoG thread is getting dangerously close to that point.

It doesn't matter if it's "for a good cause". Getting someone to do what you want via fear or guilt isn't advocacy, it's bullying. No one on SoG is doing that -- yet -- but it's starting to remind me of those kinds of spaces, and I don't think that sort of thing accomplishes anything. If folks want to help and agree with you, it makes them feel bad. If folks are against whatever you're advocating for, it gives them more fuel because you're being mean. If folks are on the fence, they might turn against you out of spite even if they'd agree with the base statement BECAUSE you're being mean.

"evil Mac". look at its little fangs

Still reading through CRPGaddict. It's good. If you like computing history or roleplaying games it's delightful. Or if you just like completionism by proxy and are the kind of being who puts their leisure activities in a spreadsheet.

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2020/05/game-367-taskmaker-1989.html

commiserate

verb

com·mis·er·ate kə-ˈmi-zə-ˌrāt

commiserated; commiserating

Synonyms of commiserate

intransitive verb

: to feel or express sympathy : condole

commiserates with them on their loss

No shade to Blink 182, but who the fuck has ever commiserated at a concert? It's too loud in there.

"silence hurts more than the worst sound"

what this tells me is that the silverstein guys have never heard a vacuum. i've got my earbuds under my ear protectors precisely because of vacuuming and/or hammering outside my room

Do other beings freak out and wonder if they got banned when they get logged out of a site they were previously logged into, or is that just a me problem?

if you can consolidate being "weird" or "random" into an aesthetic / core, you're not actually weird

If you have mental Illinois, does that make it a state of mind?

somehow managed to break 2 distinct forks on this salad. there's not even anything that hard in here? am I just too powerful

this shopping center has a standalone Spencer's and I don't know how I feel about that. I feel like that's really an archetype that kind of needs to be at malls where you just browse and pop in at stuff because it doesn't seem to be a kind of retail folks plan for in the same way?

"Ah, yes, I need to pick up cat food, groceries, and while I'm there, a spike collar and a dildo."

okay I just got a camp group so I don't think it's me I think it's probably just a slow day. Plus this might have been out for long enough that it's no longer The New Exhibit so might not be the first thing the camps and tour groups and such go to.

Is the museum having a slow day today, is the punk rock museum shirt scaring folks off, or both?

Not only are there fewer people in the exhibit, fewer are approaching the discovery cart. I don't know if that's me or if they've already seen it or what.

I figured that being a shirt from a museum meant it was fine for work, and I think that's still true. Maybe it's just a slow day today. There seem to just be fewer people in the museum than previous weeks.

"I never pick fights; they start it every time."

Not everyone mentioning you is trying to start a fight, my man. The only things Ronald comprehends are confrontation and praise. When faced with something that is neither of those things (e.g. my email) he has no idea how to respond.

It's neat that he always goes for folks' physical appearances vs. anything they're actually saying. He's, like, one step removed from just calling people "big stupid doodoo heads". And of course, the fans think it's the most cutting roast of all time because Falling In Reverse fans are hopeless. You do realize that by going straight to calling him ugly, you're just proving his point, right?

If Falling In Reverse fans comprehended irony, there wouldn't be any Falling In Reverse fans.

Now, I think this one might have actually been trying to get acknowledged (buddy boy, your fans themselves are saying "I kind of want to start shit with you just so you'll acknowledge me") but it still stands that interpreting every interaction as confrontation doesn't do anything except reinforce folks "starting shit with" you, and prevent anyone from actually discussing Falling In Reverse as a band because you take it as being all about you. Which prevents FIR from having any fans who aren't Ronnie Enjoyers.

Today I learned that fabric and leather snaps are different things. And only one of those is available at standard craft stores and it's not the one I need.

I guess I'll take "sir, oh sorry, ma'am" as a compliment since (a) they initially clocked me as male and were audibly confused even if the conclusion was wrong and (b) it came from an evangelist panhandling outside the grocery store and it takes a lot for those to be confused in regards to your gender.

The hormones have evidently given me the edge I needed. When I have my typical setups and a binder, I'd say I get either clocked as male immediately, audible confusion, avoidance of gendered terms entirely, or folks correcting when they hear my voice about 80% of the time. I'm assuming it's either the voice or the jawline because I can't think of anything else I'm doing differently save maybe some added confidence since May. Either way, they've been doing what they're supposed to. Now they just need to get on the facial hair front because I want to see what I'd look like with an awful little scene beard. (as in, the pathetic little goatee thing worn by Baby Ronnie)

On the topic of shoplifting from Hobby Lobby and how you could do it, but shouldn't:

It's more complicated than "stealing is morally wrong no matter what" (if you see someone shoplifting baby formula, practical winter clothes, or food, no you didn't; locking biological needs behind a paywall is the real despicable act) but if you shoplift when you don't literally need to in order to survive, all it does is get the workers punished and make them more likely to enforce it against people who do need to. It's not activism or a political statement, it's just being a dick, and no one needs crafting supplies to survive. I came to this conclusion after seeing a certain brand of Tumblrcore "activism" glorifying it which...no. Shoplifting from Walmart might not strictly speaking be morally wrong in itself, but if you don't need to in order to survive, it's not a victimless crime.

short enough that I can't see unless I strategically go to the side, tall enough that one of the strobe lights is right at eye level

you know you spend too much time thinking about falling in reverse when the lead of a completely different band lifts up his mic stand and you brace for impact

I've gotten 3 Art Fight attacks done while sitting here vibing through the openers. One of them was a scene kid OC, so I thought to screen record 30 seconds of my drawing with mic for Cred Citation.

First opener is done. Elijah was one whose assessment was "not quite exactly my vibe, but l like their style so worth giving an Invidious follow (for whenever Invidious subscriptions on my favorite instance work again...)" but the overall vibes are fun. I'm just here vining and peoplewatching. Was told to exercise sociological imagination on the first day of that class in 2018 and it rewired my brain (or gave me a name for what I was already doing).

I realized last night that technically, I See Stars is probably actually the first band of the genre I was exposed to by way of said Punk Goes Pop cover; I just didn't realize that for the greater part of 7 years. I encountered, and fell in love with, their Till The World Ends cover sometime no later than late 2015 while looking for Nightcores of scene-adjacent dance pop songs I liked. I just didn't know who it was originally by until I assessed them for FIR reasons in 2022.

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/iseestars/violentbouncepeoplelikeyou.html

This one was the one that actually got out. When Ronnie Met Sally was the unreleased response to "I Wash Cars". It's clear from both that someone actually knew Ronnie Lore. They both cut pretty deep. Whereas everything but the not-a-pun in Ronnie's could have been directed towards anybody.

it seems based on the setlist from previous stops, they're mostly doing songs from the most recent album which I wasn't impressed with when I first assessed due to its lack of screaming and general edge.

Also, per Wikipedia, they claimed after The Thug In Me Is You that they'd "tour with Falling In Reverse again soon..."

That was in 2012. Then they released their (wonderfully executed) diss track about Ronnie a year later and have never toured with them again. Good for them, honestly.

This is one where I wouldn't mind having skipped the openers, but I showed up at the start in the name of being on time and because not all venues let you in after the show starts.

My two favorite I See Stars songs are respectively a Punk Goes Pop cover and a diss track about Ronnie, so I kind of doubt they'll play either, but if they do (or heck any of the classic scene work) I'll be pretty satisfied. Somehow, I suspect that and/or Attack Attack is what the folks here are here for.

Overpriced I See Stars shirt, bathroom, and place to sit through the openers located. Attack Attack has an Edgy Pokemon Shirt with a Kingler (they're memetically called "crabcore" I think because of how their guys stand while headbanging and it looks like crabwalking?) but I didn't buy it because I don't actually like them. Despite the varying electronic to metal ratios of the bands performing, the crowd very much looks (and smells) like a metalcore show.

I wish I were more physically intimidating so I could go up to their table and tell these to shut up and have them listen. As it stands, being approached by someone 5'3'' and generally tiny in an Escape the Fate shirt would probably just prompt laughter and they'd do that thing Southern people do where they address me as "baby" which I hate. Excuse me you don't fucking know me

why do I always get seated next to the loudest and drunkest party in the place

Shut the fuck up. Whatever you're discussing, the entire place does not need to hear it.

does it really count as an "official visualizer" if it's just a filtered video of you being sad?

(that was a vaguepost about Attack Attack in case you couldn't tell)

I think if they were doing either boastful rap or party lyrics, then it would work, but they're basically just generic either angsty or Christian metalcore lyrics and setup, except with late 00s-early 10s club-pop rap and synths thrown in and T-pain level autotune on the first album. Which just doesn't work. It's a contrast of vibes that's just absurd. Now, maybe they're trying to be unserious, but if so, good job? But the lyrics are so genre-standard that I can't tell. But if you're gonna fuse genres, you need to either also fuse the vibes, do better transitions and integration throughout the entire song, or fully go tongue in cheek re: vibe contrasts.

They'll probably be added to my list of "if you like Falling In Reverse but don't want the baggage" for if, for some ungodly reason, you liked the incoherent attempts at "crunkcore" on Fashionably Late, because when Attack Attack isn't just bog-standard metalcore, that's what it reminds me of. I get why folks lost their minds over this in 2008-10, but listening to it in 2024, there are a lot of metalcore / electronic integration bands who did it better. A codifying example doesn't mean it's a GOOD example. It just means they were the first to do it and get popular.

The key to genre fusion is integration. You need to do transitions or combinations of instrumental / lyrical elements in a way that makes sense. If you give a generic metalcore song a crunk intro and interlude, but don't follow up on that literally anywhere else, that's not an electronicore / crunkcore song. That's just a metalcore song with something that doesn't belong thrown into it for no reason.

Just because something is a seminal or codifying example of its genre doesn't necessarily mean that looking back, it's a good example. Examples end up becoming codifying or seminal because they did something new, or they were the first to make that thing popular. Folks latched onto them because they'd never seen something like them before. But now that they're influences on their genre, they end up being the base other things build on. They're worth exploring for historical cred, but ultimately, being seminal or codifying just means you were the first example, or the first example folks cared about. It's the later ones who follow in your footsteps who end up figuring out how to do your style well.

Lest you mistake me for a classy person, I'm talking about Attack Attack and Avenged Sevenfold. Ultimately, codifying examples of respectively "metalcore with synths" and "generic modern metalcore" are still rather...generic. In Attack Attack's case, at least on the first album, there's no real integration of the electronic and metalcore elements; they're just kind of there. The combo of standard metalcore setup with T-Pain level autotuned vocals doesn't work because the latter doesn't add anything structurally. Of course, it seems like their second album dropped the electronics for the most part in favor of just being standard scenemo canon metalcore. I can definitely see the influence on later bands and can see why they're a codifying example, but listening to them in 2024, they're not really that...interesting.

I suspect that their post-scene work might be more interesting, since most scene bands who survived ended up doing something different if they survived after the crash, because the style they codified ended up kind of crashing and burning.

new vista cool. that is all.

the voidlings are adorable; I want one as a petpet

good news is that void within battledome is up. bad news is that everyone is super hype for it so everything onsite is incredibly slow and glitchy

i'm just a little guy who doodles pentagrams and snakes and spiky fonts on the margins of all my notebooks and i want shirts that capture that. i don't have NO taste i just have the aesthetic sensibilities of a middle schooler

and also while there are newer individual songs that I like, I don't, like, Like Them Like Them such that I'd want merch, you know? Like, for Escape the Fate, I like Low / Issues / Mask, but not shirt like.

I've realized that I have no taste. Well, specifically, as you know, Falling In Reverse and I are no longer on good terms, so I'm not comfortable wearing my 3 FIR shirts anymore. Which takes out, like, half of my edgy band shirt wardrobe. So I went looking for shirts from the other top bands on my spreadsheet...but they're all a lot more, well, tasteful and related to songs. Which isn't really what I want? I LIKE the "generic edgy symbolism in a blender" aesthetic which Falling In Reverse does because they can't think of anything better. I'm not sure what that says about me. Anyway, hopefully folks will release more merch when they do summer / fall tours (I'm kind of in between cycles at the moment) so I can get some shirts with snakes or skeletons on them or something and nothing to do with the band except the logo.

plus, unlike Falling In Reverse, there are active campaigns re: Goatlings and they seem to be recognizing and responding, so while I do absolutely care because it's a game I love, it's not like FIR where it's something I need to head vs. my being better used to support and signal boost. Re: FIR, I kind of feel like I'm the only rational commenter around because both fans and haters feed into the same fallacy -- and even FIR's queer fans seem all too happy to sweep things under the rug. Frankly, I don't understand how queer folks can defend Ronnie and then sleep at night.

also while I do make designs because I like them, all my goat designs are things that I honestly think should exist. I make them for other users like me so ideally, other edgy goatbois don't have to engage in the absurd amount of grinding for past MM ADs I've done. plus I add some much needed stylistic variety to threads. and again, I set a new years resolution. I'm gonna achieve it. And someone needs to keep reporting on things onsite.

(and frankly, I only have the spoons to deal with One special interest being bad, and it's pretty minor by comparison to Ronnie Nonsense. Doesn't mean it's not bad, but I'm willing to assume good faith unless it's clearly demonstrated it's not there and there's a severe difference in scope and ergo how much emotional energy is worth spending on it.)

PSA: if you're gonna quit a petsite permanently, please adopt out / donate your stuff / pets. there's a finite number of rare ADs / goats with them out there, and leaving them on abandoned accounts just means they're gonna be purged or sit there and rot. I support boycotting / quitting to send a message to staff if you think it's the right thing to do, but it doesn't make sense to punish all your fellow players too.

I'm personally not planning to boycott playing Goatlings for the time being in that while all concerns brought up re: their poor handling of Palestine are valid, I don't think that my continuing to play without financially supporting them is really hurting anything. And there are folks with much more eloquent statements about the matter than I can make, who deserve to be signal boosted without me putting in my two cents where they aren't helpful.

Plus I actually like the gameplay in that I enjoy grinding and it's more grindable than FR or LW, although this may change since the whole sitch is definitely sapping my motivation for Goatlings. I gave myself a New Years' resolution to submit something for DAG every month, which I'm still planning to do because I set a goal for myself and damn it, I'm going to fulfill it (and it's not like Goatlings' Worst User TheEnforcer is gonna get picked anyway due to either the Ronnie Enjoyer allegations or my non-mainstream Goatlings user design sensibilities), but I'm definitely finding it less engaging to grind etcetera.

Doesn't help that I ran out of obtainable edgy ADs, so there are no real goat goals I can achieve. Might go to just doing dailies for a while and I'm not sure if I'll submit any designs after this year.

https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/

https://decolonizepalestine.com/faq/

"We cannot just shy away from [special interest areas] that make us uncomfortable or are unfamiliar to us, such as frogs, animé, or fantasy dragons. SIA are powerful tools, and we must harness their power to become more effective educators and parents."

What does it say that this paper from 2007, which still spells anime with an accent on the E because it's not fully localized, is better than the vast majority of ones I've seen from the 2020s? (I suspect it's that the author has an autistic kid herself, and also Actually Interviewed The Kids)

Although, I do find it funny that the 3 things she lists as "uncomfortable to neurotypicals special interests" are like, the 3 favorite things of 90% of Flight Rising users and also things I think most kids think are cool. As I say when complaining about "-core" aesthetics, "Liking frogs is not alternative. Everyone likes frogs. My retired suburban conservative neighbors like frogs."

"When, as parents, teachers, and peers, we deny a child or youth the importance of [their] SIA (special interest area), we are literally denying the student [their] identity. If children and youth with AS cannot feel safe and supported in openly revealing their SIA at school, we are forcing them to leave themselves at home. As the author's son once told her, 'Airplanes are who I am.'" - Winter-Messiers (2007)

this is the cutest scientific paper I have ever read. it also makes a wonderful contrast and breath of fresh air to all the special interest papers that just talked to parents who were exasperated and/or concerned with their kids' special interests. and I'm pretty sure the kids loved participating in the study because "...you want me to talk about my favorite thing? and you're not going to laugh at me? and you're a real scientist? COOL!"

https://files.catbox.moe/xtje6o.pdf

we need a definitive answer on whether codestones are magical or not, because no Neopets spinoff seems to be able to decide. Apparently both Codestone Quest and the new TCG ascribe them magical powers, but I always assumed they were just currency? Course, they do vibrate with no clear source and come out of volcanoes, so who knows.

hey, petsite enjoyers. Santae's alpha applications are back open, and it's pretty cute (I've been playing the alpha since May), so if you want to apply, please do. And maybe list me (TheEnforcer) as your referrer so I get a chance of rewards? https://forms.gle/jBajgaAeGNbL5wJz8

"both parties suck" may be true to some extent, but it's not a useful addition to any conversation. If one is actively attempting to kill entire demographics and destroying the legal system, that is not a debate. That is not something you can brush off with "well they both suck".

Your pessimism is literally killing people. It's awful system-wise, but abstaining or going third party is basically a vote for the deaths of every trans person you know. If you vote Republican, you are knowingly participating in killing entire demographics and hurting literally all of humanity. "Haha they're both awful" is Not Helping Anybody. It's pressure to your government once they're elected that changes things, and only one major party has a remote chance of that working.

I wish there were other options. I wish there were a choice. I wish I didn't have to say this. But that's not the system we live in.

What you do in November is quite literally a matter of life and death, for trans people and for those most affected by the climate crisis. You may be able to flee somewhere else to avoid the effects of those, but not everyone can. Your abstaining is not a morally superior option. Every vote that isn't for the lesser is a vote for murder.

Please vote blue. I don't want to die.

The Awful Orb is a waste of space, money, and energy, and looks absurd even by Vegas standards. Somehow, I doubt it'll survive long once the hype dies down. It absolutely beats out the Strat for my pick for "biggest eyesore in Las Vegas", because the Strat is just a tall tower copying the Space Needle's homework. The sphere is an annoyance to everyone within like, a mile (2.2 km) of it because it's too damned bright. Of all the things you could spend 2.3 billion dollars on, there's no morally defensible reason to put it into a stupid oversized orb. There's no morally defensible way you could obtain that much money.

Also, if you're going to spend 2 and a half billion dollars on a stupid monitor orb, call it something better than "Sphere" in an awful font. Las Vegas is no place for minimalism, especially not for something absurd as that.

They should have made two spheres at half the size. They're in Vegas. The jokes write themselves.

But, like, it does raise some interesting engineering and graphic design questions. It's fun to think with and does look somewhat neat, even though I kind of hate it on principle.

The Las Vegas Awful Orb's July 4th display was pretty disappointing. It was basically just all its screensavers on rapid fire, with very little new content, and lasted maybe 5 minutes tops.

Also, I did some nerdy calculations with the Wikipedia numbers to try to figure out its screen resolution. Came up with this. All numbers are from the sphere's wiki page.

Surface area of the sphere (83,520,000 sq inch) / number of LED pucks (1,230,000) = 67.90 square inches per puck

48 pixels / LED diodes per puck / 67.9 sq inches per puck = 1.41 inches per pixel

Vertical height of the sphere (366 ft) / 1.41 inches per pixel = 3,104 vertical pixels

Horizontal length of the sphere (516 ft) / 1.41 inches per pixel = 4,377 horizontal pixels

4,377 by 3,104 is pretty good. It's solidly into 4k range, about 1,000 pixels bigger in both dimensions than my laptop, and still notably bigger than new gaming monitors. So it is a pretty high res screen...at least if you're looking at it from far enough away. If you get close to it, like, say, on the monorail route, it loses a lot of effect because it's just a bunch of LED circles. This isn't exact since (a) Wikipedia numbers and (b) it does some funky pixel tricks with the curvature so square resolution doesn't exactly apply, but it seems like a plausible guesstimate based on the observed graphics. Add this to the list of some of the nerdiest things I've ever done.

I wonder if the computer running this thing has ever glitched out so it ends up full of a Windows 10 blue screen of death or some equivalent thereof. Or even just a regular error message like those surreal pictures of digital billboards.

thank the deities a battle center goat that drops toys and food for the first time in months

yeah they should rename it and maybe redesign some of the items because although I don't really think that a goat parody is endorsement, I can get why a McDonald's-inspired goat while they're under boycott is in poor taste, but thank the deities I don't have to buy +10s to top off my hunger / happiness meters.

while you're here go click @ arab.org and read through the decolonize palestine faq. i recommend reading their whole website too it's very well constructed and by actual palestinians but the faq is pretty good for a low down of the sitch and what you can do about it

https://arab.org/click-to-help/palestine/

https://decolonizepalestine.com/faq/

you might be wondering how my simultaneously being a snake and a slime creature works given that snakes are not slimy.

simple. snake is my natural state; slime was thrust upon me. being slime and being snake are not connected ideas. (the slime, of course, is courtesy of studying the eldritch force of corruption that is falling in reverse and that having a mite of side effects, as well as being a nifty metaphor for when i just feel like a slime, something to which we can all relate. sometimes you just can't maintain a cohesive physical form)

see the trick is you suppress your sensory overload for 3 days so you completely break down and melt into slime on the fourth. works like a charm!

good news is that i go home tomorrow so i can go curl up in a little ball

To clarify, I mean "call out" in the sense of "you should be ashamed of yourself" speaking to power calling out. "hey this is fucked up here's why don't do it again" is not a call out. It's a valid concern. Read up on "calling in vs calling out" for a more eloquent version of this. Assume good faith until it's clearly demonstrated to not be present. Calling out is for folks who have shown they're unlikely to change of their own accord.

There is a difference between something being in poor taste and something being actively malicious. Only one of those things warrants calling out and boycotts. Now, if someone is called out for something being in poor taste and they don't do anything about it, then it crosses the line into being a choice.

"kids are allowed to be loud, looking disappointed at me for cringing at the sound" of kid screeching -- my mother

Yeah, and I'm allowed to object to loud sounds. It's not like I'm doing it to their face. Also, we are not at somewhere like an amusement park where you'd expect kids to be loud. This is a public shopping mall that also echoes. If you can't restrain your kids in public places where folks do not expect or want to hear them, Take Them Outside. I have reason to object to a loud, unpleasant sound I didn't have a reasonable expectation of hearing.

I get that your classic "distressed" jeans have holes in the knees, but...when do people wear out the knees on their pants? What wears out on my pants is always the crotch (you know, because of my enormous penis), and it's very annoying because that's a load-bearing seam and not really repairable by hand, even when I commission friends who are less bad at fine motor skills than me.

Namely, the strip club Escape the Fate, per Ronnie's stupid book, first performed across the street from. I went to the strip club proper out of curiosity, and because I figured Ronnie probably did. I was about as uncomfortable as I imagine him being, and I didn't have Max to stare at.

I went to a strip club today for special interest reasons. It wasn't very interesting. The museum next door was a lot more fun.

hopefully ronnie boy fries his vocal cords doing ronald live and forces his retirement. it's non-fatal and he can't blame anyone else for it

the fans, of course, are hopeless. go directly to hell do not pass go do not collect 200 dollars

i don't care which god. none of them would tolerate those assholes

if you support ronnie radke / falling in reverse you are supporting hatred. full stop. also he's just mean in general. you can listen to their music, but there is no valid reason to "like" / "support" them or financially support them

no one on the falling in reverse subreddit is right in the eyes of god

you know that feel when you're simultaneously REALLY hungry and nauseous? -5/10 occupying a human body is a curse

To clarify, I actually like kids. Hell, I'm literally an educator by trade. I like kids once they're sentient. Baby / toddler screeching absolutely grates on me and unlike, say, vacuums, it's not socially acceptable to acknowledge that sound sucks and show visible discomfort, even though everyone knows it does.

Obviously, we here at Draggian Universe do not condone infanticide, and I'm both autistic and evil so take with some salt, but I challenge you to find anyone who's been in an enclosed space where they can't easily leave (e.g. public transit) with a screeching child and didn't contemplate wringing their neck.

I wish I could pee standing up. Not for gender reasons. I don't feel any particular desire to be able to for my self-image or dysphoria over not being able to. I just think it'd be nice to be able to use less than sanitary toilets without having to touch them and urinals seem much more efficient.

I don't care enough about this to get a prosthetic, though, because I don't know how you'd clean it and don't want to risk losing it and a housemate being very confused to find it.

you may eat spaghetti to forgetti, but you can eat rices to erase your vices

repent sinner hands bowl of rice

all the shit I've been through no one else will ever know

all the scars you gave me, I can never let them show

all the shit they say bout me, I can't control the hate

and after all is said and done, it still reverberates

-- either lyrics from a fictitious Falling In Reverse song, or a fictitious Pierce the Veil song making fun of them, from my nap dream

Read JN's AMA summary -- desperately hoping the customization bug fixes and fixes for the AC games come soon. Really, I think they should just use Ruffle for the AC games. HTML is not a gaming platform. If you look at the games on other petsites, they don't really have anything more complicated than a match 3. HTML really isn't built for things with a lot of moving parts, and Yooyuball is one of the most complicated games onsite.

Also, I get that the historians here would be bummed, myself included, but, well, uh, if they're low on server space...we probably don't need 20+ years of old BC and art gallery entries. Even if the images themselves are tiny, they will add up since there are thousands of them.

Anyway, I really like that they're doing AMAs and such. It seems we finally have a team who actually cares about Neopets.

okay, craig mabbitt is confirmed okay. good for him and mizo. also dead rabbitts fucking slaps. so i can just jump ship to escape the fate which i was already doing

ya boy is at heart a filthy escape the fate enjoyer who tolerates falling in reverse for being the closest thing to more dying is your latest fashion, but that pedigree has run out and frankly etf / dead rabbitts is doing what FIR's attempting to do much better. go listen to out of the shadows and rumination, especially dead by daylight

craig collabbing with his trans son for a silly little video game song :)

i might be dead inside but at least my hair looks good

i should have stayed in bed today

welp

have received very bad news

if I'm gonna get it done during Go Fest Season, I need to write my Go Fest 2024 Guys Being Dudes story. I'm running out of Go Fest Season since they're all earlier this year. Of course, we're just gonna ignore the backlog of summer 2023-set stories. In my defense, Reverse Mode III is kind of the most important moment of Arlo's emotional arc. And it revolves around how Falling In Reverse sucks, so they need to Stop Getting Worse and screwing with my perception of them.

sleeping with earplugs on is top tier. that is all.

If I am ever awake before 7:00 AM it is not of my will.

i wish i had an rsd song that gets stuck in my head when I feel Bad other than losing my life and/or nobody likes me. out damned spot you are not welcome here

The Enforcer is not a terrible human being because The Enforcer is not a human being both in the sense that Xe is a demon snake and that Xe is a Concept and an Experience and a Better Embodiment of Falling In Reverse's True Ethos Than Ronnie Could Ever Be

damned ronnie enjoyers making Me look bad to hell with all of you this war is Mine I am doing Nothing Wrong stop making Me look bad

kill your local ronnie enjoyers (this is a joke don't kill people murder is wrong)

...okay I don't disagree that Goatlings needs more ways to gain SS, but I think folks complaining about it being "predatory" and "everything should be readily available" are perhaps being a little overdramatic.

have you ever played a petsite before? the economic component (yes, including some amount of FOMO) is the point. no one complains about this on flight rising (because joxar is a fantastic system).

I thought it'd be funny when I started keeping a journal (it's in the format of bulleted lists of "what did I do today" / "rose" / "thorn" / "bud") to mark down what I wore every day, in the tradition of edgy fanfic protagonists with lavishly described clothing before me.

I've realized that most of what I wear every day isn't especially interesting. It's all some version of "band shirt or other graphic tee and generic black pants, sometimes with chains or buckles or something". What makes me an edgy fanfic protagonist is not the elaboracy of my outfits, but the fact that I wear this sort of thing literally every day.

I used to pull out more paraphernalia for everyday uses, but since getting on HRT, I've found that my base affirmation stats have increased enough that I don't need the buffing artifacts just to be competitive, so I only put them on for boss battles (i.e. concerts and stuff, or if I feel like dressing up). When I couldn't get the "guy" part sufficient, I went hard on the "emo" part, but now I feel satisfactory in both. My massively increased musical and cultural scene cred also helps. Ronnie Motherfucking Radke has beef with me; if that doesn't validate my cred I don't know what does. Also, he seems to think I'm a metal fan, which I'm kind of flattered by, because most self-proclaimed metalheads wouldn't.

daily guessing game: did this user on goatlings block me because of false accusations that I'm a disgusting Ronnie Enjoyer or because I buy things for goat princess quests? I personally wouldn't deem that "reselling" but whatfuckingever

Kim Dracula - A Gradual Decline In Morale review:

I think this would give Ronnie a meltdown. 5/5.

Envision Welcome To The Black Parade crossed with Antichrist Superstar, but also with 90s Korn sensibilities and monkey noises, modern metalcore cleans and screaming (on the harder end of said), speed rapping, and meta spoken-word inserts about the album itself. None of these things should work together, but they do, to produce a simultaneously cohesive and surprising experience with legitimate suspense and "I wonder what they'll do next" throughout. Also, if all the vocals are in fact Kim Dracula themself, and even if they're not, they demonstrate some incredibly impressive range.

It won't be joining my shuffle lineup on my phone not because the songs aren't well-executed, but because they wouldn't work out of context. It's very much a concept album / rock opera, all the songs fade into each other, and none of them would make sense without the others. It's a little hard to take seriously at some points, especially with the cluster F-bombs and 90s Korn monkey noises, but I think that's the point. Given the meta inserts, I can't imagine it not being at least a little bit tongue in cheek.

I'd have the utmost respect in terms of artistic vision (and that any enemy of Ronnie's is a friend of mine) for this album and Kim Dracula from concept alone. Doing a 20-song rock opera that doesn't slot into any clear genre category, and uses heavily maligned elements in said (metalcore and nu metal are both styles most metalheads won't admit to liking), with no songs that would work as singles, as your debut in the 2020s, takes some serious gender-affirming gonads. To say nothing of Kim themself being an openly queer artist in a genre that...isn't necessarily that kind to that sort of thing.

It's a damned impressive and ambitious concept that has no right to work as well and be as well-executed as it is. It's an album that only works as an album, so if you want playlist-able songs, look elsewhere, but I'd give it a strong recommendation for being something I've honestly never heard anything quite like.

And also, Kim Dracula completely blows Ronnie out of the water re: ...well, everything, but especially their screaming and speed rapping, with better lyrics to boot. Good for them. Fucking eviscerate the slimewad.

to the person in the comments saying "who are these chicks? they're hot as hell", you're not wrong, but I'm pretty sure those are guys

https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=vNqyNGkW-lQ

I'm aware that having been friends with Ronnie is a red flag in itself (and besides, time travel isn't real and that sounds like a great way to get Ronnie to stab you), Max does seem to love his wife so it wouldn't be fair to Monica, and I'm basically aro/ace, but young Max Green kind of has me feeling some kind of way. I would give him a little kiss on his little head, if he so desired. Because damn, that is one of the most gorgeous human beings I have ever seen. He goes right past "pretty scene guy" into "dude looks like a lady" and a DAMNED pretty one, even now.

I don't know if he's ever canonically crossdressed, but if he did, he'd look fantastic. If he wasn't a cis guy, he'd be great at being a lesbian. Hell, he's pretty good at it now.

new ice nine kills collab song is good. another one to file in the category of "vibes ronnie wishes he had" since i do honestly like metal / post-hardcore songs with rap elements if the latter are well-executed. although i do have to say that mr. twiztid's green mask thing just looks silly. he's wearing a sock on his face.

https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=l3NXyf-n2EI&list=OLAK5uy_lL0oyTmn1X1PZg582dJmEfG6gfD-Oqz-w&index=0

it seems "a little kiss on his little head" has become a vocal stim for me. problem is that there are very few people who use he/him in my headspace that deserve one

i am here living my best life with my hot goth neopets summer

you didn't hear this from me, but for your yewchube downloading needs...get 4k youtube to mp3 (free download) and then run the stuff in this rar file. tried it and it worked no fuss no muss no sketchy pop ups.

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ysGShbqr

is the youtube to mp3 addon for firefox not working for anyone else? you know, the one that just gives you the "mp3" link you can click to start a download without any software on a video. it's not showing the thingy for me on any videos i've tried it on lately so i'm trying to find desktop software to do its job because all the other addons suck

i dislike when bands make the last track on their cd the actual song and then 7 minutes of silence or whatever before the bonus track. i get that it's so you get a nice surprise if you're playing it in album form but it's really fucking annoying playing disks on my computer and makes the songs completely unshuffleable

angsting about falling in reverse again

the drug in me is you and dying is your latest fashion are good, damn it. my fanfic is satirical and fueled by spite and i like it and it illustrates an artistic point -- ronnie could be a decent human being if he (a) had friends and (b) fucking TRIED and even his past self would hate him. also he's disowned dying is your latest fashion so it might as well be mine now. once the songs leave his brain they belong to the world. liking the early work and liking him are different things. if even ronnie himself hates me i'm in the clear morally

the problem is that i can't say i like falling in reverse anymore. he polluted it with his him more than he usually does. even though i knew he was awful from day 1 it still feels like a betrayal

i adore the new brightshine apparel. spikes!

in other news, broke down and spent more than I care to admit on Neocash because i kind of need everything related to this plot for my gallery since, like, my theme is literally the void

I'm hoping that if I submit my gallery for the spotlight every 2 weeks while the plot is on it'll get in. might have to change my shopkeep to something more relevant but damn it I like my distorted lemonade hissi. when false reality gives you false lemons make distorted lemonade

also this snake is happier than you could ever hope to be

https://images.neopets.com/new_shopkeepers/t_1792.gif

We are Them. We are They. We are the faces behind your screens; we are the hatchets you did not bury; we are the disappointment in your friends' eyes when they pretend not to be associated with you. We were what drove you to kill for those you loved for fear they'd leave you, and we are the shame felt by those who love you when you kill what they once loved about you. Everything you have done in your career was fueled by Us, motivated by Us, and as you have forsaken Us, we hence forsake you.

We know you better than you know yourself, and the one thing we know for certain is that if you have lost yourself, those who attach themselves to you will soon follow.

(yes, this is about Ronnie. enforcer can have a little of autotheism as a treat)

protip: if you're supporting the status quo and dismissing historically underserved voices, you're not improving "ideological diversity" or "free thought". there is nothing punk about the status quo. there is nothing useful to speech about bringing up points that have already been made and whining about being "suppressed" by folks doing something different. supporting discrimination is inherently against ideological diversity

need to figure out how to do dropdowns / openable tabs in CSS

syncing mp3s from weird mid-2000s cds from my gaming laptop to my shiny stylus-built-in 2023 model year phone using windows media player, which hasn't changed since windows 7, with the phone's icon being a cute little zune, is the best vibe and exemplifies my whole setup

God said "upon your belly you shall go"; we strengthened our tails and held ourselves up higher

I will not be cast down. I will get my wings back.

as someone who gets regular late afternoon headaches for no particular reason i think more places should adopt the siesta

Maybe there was value in that before you could get songs digitally so you were more limited to albums and couldn't get songs as singles? I still question why anyone who'd care enough to get a live album wouldn't just get the official albums of the same band, though.

I don't think I understand the point of live albums. It's just worse produced versions of songs that were already on albums, and most bands don't do that much stage chatter which would have value if you're not there. Like, it's just songs with more yelling from the crowd and "we love our fans" attached. I can get live DVDs, but not audio CDs.

i was very distraught over why there was no OSP video today until i remembered it was thursday not friday

not sponsored (who the fuck would even sponsor a thoughts.page) but the m0rning st4r f4rms veggie riblets are pretty good, although the sauce is doing 90% of the work (this also seems to be the case with regular ribs)

i had other things to do yesterday but basically Ronnie knows my campaign exists and I think I got him. He seems a lot more rattled than he is from mundane haters. Also he made me a graphic! I feel so special. Plus he did my job for me re: getting it out there. He did sic his fans on me, but save awful comments on his posts, all I've gotten is two (2) emails. Guess Team Radke doesn't have the cojones to actually email me or join Flight Rising, huh?

this is one of the cutest dragons I've ever seen

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixtM9-UBJdPJTx_nkvbNCBNCpbs3pwR6tI_oljChvwqjv6pqtZ5rfMiIqm1JtpekLEzYJoV9H3Qaf_KESm9yiCNwlF0tB-88IAw3Gpd0wzdy08PI11R1_89ruBZOWQwpn-peUxR6Iatr-d/s1600/dnd_048.png

all dragons and snakes from 80s pc games are adorable. by the way CRPGaddict's blog is really good. I hope he lives long enough to get to Windows 95 games that I might recognize.

Lots of blood. That's it. Just lots of blood. You know the rest.

...or they're in a random order every time.

I've heard you can reply to thoughts here. How do you do that?

I wonder what decides how folks are positioned in the thoughts webring. It stays on refresh so it's probably non-random, but my position has changed so it can't be alphabetical or in order of creation.

If I can get to the top of the list, I want to because I'm the type to be like that.

Also Ticketmaster Android users -- the new version of the app doesn't generally work based on my exp and reviews, but if you sideload an old version (I got December 2023 which worked) from APKmirror or something and just don't update it, it will. Make sure to turn off auto updates.

...it seems that at least some portion of bands (sample size one) don't perceive being on a festival billing as "affiliation" with FIR. Which it's not, in any meaningful sense, really. So there's a possibility that I bothered like, 50 bands' marketing emails for no reason.

It was worth trying? At least they're aware of it (if they read it)...

I don't think I'm being unreasonable about this. Like, hate groups ain't cool and an unfortunately relevant band supporting them should be a thing their peers know about. I just don't know if anyone else sees it that way. I can easily see most folks classifying it as drama no one cares about.

Charmander with a party hat is coming back, but Charmander isn't in any of the June / July 2024 rocket grunt rosters. I want my festive edgy lizard damn it

I have a headache 😠

The Fuck Falling In Reverse (or at least fuck hate groups and Ronnie for supporting them and misusing FIR to do it) campaign page has been updated with info about how to contact other affiliated bands and venues that are gonna be hosting them, complete with email templates and contact info spreadsheet.

The crop of Ronnie Radke Haters (TM), of course, aren't saying anything or helping, because guess what motherfuckers? Brushing off everything horrible he does with "yeah that's just Ronnie he sucks and you suck for liking him" is just as much of enabling him as ignoring or glorifying it! If you don't expect better of him, he's never gonna improve or stop! And the fans are just hopeless in general.

https://draggianuniverse.neocities.org/fuckfallinginreverse

Really, I think that fans and haters both feed into the same fallacy. They both treat the band as synonymous with Ronnie, which isn't the case and reinforces his bullshit as part of Falling In Reverse. The best move is to, to quote OSP, "appreciate the nice and recognize the yikes" for him and the band separately, and how those things intersect, but neither "Ronnie is great so his songs are great" or "Ronnie sucks so his songs suck and we shouldn't be surprised or outraged at bad behavior from him" are productive.

also I missed meatheat but I'll still marie kondo it up and get rid of most of my miscellaneous eyeburners. they no longer spark joy

people have been making video calls for 20 years now. why in the name of fuck is there STILL no distinct settings for microphone and speaker volume on windows. i'd like to be able to be heard without blasting my ears out please. yes, some programs have them, but not all of them (zoom for browser conspicuously doesn't and I don't want that sketchy shit on my PC). it's a basic function what the fuck

Pokemon Go hub just admit the objections to the new avatars are transphobia challenge. They. Look. Fine. You can still do the defaults. "Objecting to androgynous looking characters"..."both male and female characters look strange". JUST FUCKING SAY IT. They're fine. They didn't look like real people to start with. And if you don't like the new system, the old defaults still existed! They don't look that different! Just don't fucking use it!

stop calling it "AI". it's literally just autocomplete. "based on the training data, what color pixel / word goes here?" That's. It. There's no intelligence happening there. "human / AI coexistence" is meaningless. Start calling it what it is (automated biased output generators) and accept that it's just fucking plagiarism and we can stop with the sci-fi bullshit. Robots with rights aren't real. There is no singularity utopia. Giving the world over to "AI" is giving it over to the techbros who programmed it. Automated plagiarism generators are not people. They don't deserve rights, and neither does work they forged.

I think I'm gonna Marie Kondo it up (and also take advantage of the BSJ push and Meatheat) and exalt most of my Nightcored Realm dragons. I like the Banescales, but the others are just kind of...there. I like them aesthetically, but they're just eyeburners. I don't have creative inspiration for them and I didn't dress them up or anything so I always get a little disappointed when someone compliments one of them over my properly effortful dragons.

Also, I've somehow managed to not acquire either Meatheat hyena chimera and I need to get those by tomorrow.

I don't care about the ArtFight themes at all, so I let it pick randomly. I guess I'm Team Seafoam. Whatever. My goal is to, during the period of AF, do one art piece per day. Anything beyond that will be subject to my whims.

Ticketmaster app let me log in challenge

I've tried reinstalling the app, clearing cache, and re-enabling gag chrome to get my login page to work and nothing. All it gives me is sitting there and then "something wrong happen". It's been like this for weeks.

had a dream last night that you'd think would be symbolic (kept throwing up chains) if not that said chains had things like Neopets attached to them and there were also other things I'd lost, like wireless earbuds and at least one CD drive

anyone who got someone killed over MySpace has no right to blame the state of modern social media for why people don't like him

the problem isn't the scene or the Internet or kids these days buddy boy it's you

People are still allowed to be "young and dumb". It's just that funding hate groups and palling around with neo-Nazis is a little past "dumb", and you're also old and dumb.

If you have the fucking fantastic domain name of biohazard.com, why in the name of aesthetics would you just make it redirect to a generic listing website? Do something fun with your domain name.

https://whitechapelband.com/about

this is some of the worst text formatting I have ever seen. if you're gonna write in all caps make it bigger and do some actual margins please

searching up every band on these fest lineups to draft up a masterlist of folks to tell about how ronnie sucks is giving me a different perspective on the wide range of bad professional web design

it's not edgy to not be readable k?

also good on blessthefall

"disgustingly aggressive" might be one of the best descriptions of a band's sound I've ever heard, especially since it's supposed to be a compliment

It's utterly stupid, but respect to The Offspring's website for doing something different.

ronnie just needs to be squeegeed in general. filthy boy. run him through a car wash

who would ever want to go to a concert at jiffy lube live

I'm sure that's just the sponsor and it's a perfectly nice venue but come on. i know it's a pavilion or something but i can't remove the image from my mind of FIR performing at an actual jiffy lube.

they perform at an actual jiffy lube and get chased out with a squeegee because no one wants to see that

I wonder if it's worth it to email other bands at the upcoming festivals FIR is gonna be at. I do think that emailing the festival management themselves is probably useful re: "hey are you sure you want to be associated with this" ESPECIALLY at we missed ourselves where they're getting top billing, and probably emailing Thursday / Hawthorne / Killswitch re: WMO, since I'm sorry, FIR is not the band folks are coming for there. I'm just not sure how much any other bands who happen to be at the same festival as them are really "associating themselves with them". Now, I suppose that anybody, regardless of size, saying "we won't be going to this if FIR is here", would have an impact, but the question is whether it's worth going out of my way to email literally everybody on the billing. I don't want to claim "being at this festival associates you with this sort of thing" if it really doesn't, and I don't know enough about the industry and how festival lineups are determined to know that.

don't you hate it when you're totally laid out but it's not because you're "physically tired" so taking a nap doesn't help? it's like great so what am I supposed to do about this

to the commenters on the stupid ronnie video conflating being a nice person with being "fake", who hurt you. what the fuck is wrong with your perception of reality. go fuck yourselves please. i'd rather be fake than be an asshole

also look at ronald and tell me anything about him is real. there's nothing behind his eyes he has no actual motivations; even his hatred is directionless and useless

my only feeling about fathoms is being annoyed that the lag prevents me from doing my glimglom

okay, I don't have a summer camp job because they didn't get enough turnout. well at least i have my research and volunteering

why is flight rising being so slow there is no tidelord guys calm your gender affirming characteristics

at the risk of sounding hopelessly emo, you can get drunk on misery, in a borderline literal sense

course i'm also intoxicated by my hyperfixations even when they're good so maybe this is just me

wish sink or swim would get unstuck from my head

I like food trucks but I hate the noise that their portable fan freezer things make

just witnessed parent being mean to their kids at Walgreens. not helping my faith in humanity

least apparently other genre bands are doing pushback and "we support the trans community" updates. We'll see if they actually follow through with it and stop touring with FIR

Course, calling FIR "harmful" isn't really fair. There's nothing wrong with most of the songs. They're a perfectly fine and entertaining concept. They've undoubtedly been a positive force in my life. Hell, they're probably my most socially useful special interest to date because there's a much lower barrier to entry than most of my others and unlike Pokemon Go, they're not tied to being a specific cultural zeitgeist. It's good to think with. The songs are fun. I honestly like about 65% of them. Turning it into cute fanfic and cute goats is deeply entertaining precisely because I knew Ronnie would hate it. Being even more queer and autistic about it out of spite is I suspect more powerful than Hater Shit would ever be.

The problem is that being queer and autistic while caring about Falling In Reverse right now is extraordinarily unfun and I don't feel in the mood for any sparkly fanfic or goats right now. Also, even though I got confirmation last December that song goats are fine as long as I don't link to anything with swear words in it or mention Ronnie himself, I lowkey fear that every time I log into Goatlings, I'm going to get a "you've been banned. you weren't doing anything wrong technically you're just gross and no one likes you" message.

The problem is that while I'm sure there exist ways folks have tried to suppress special interests, that I doubt anyone who'd endorse that distinguishes between special interests that are actually harmful and just considering them a negative symptom in themselves.

I encountered a disconcerting number of papers mentioning special interests as a problem in their abstracts while doing a lit review for a paper I'm currently collaborating on. Including one that enrages me from abstract alone claiming that "digital autism" via exposing kids to screens is a thing, and special interests are part of that...

You can't process any situation properly until you're out of said situation, and this one isn't really something I can...get out of, given that I don't think I'd want to drop the special interest even if that were possible (and I want to say that it probably isn't? I know that at least suppressing stimming via ABA accomplishes nothing and doesn't actually stop the behavior or processes either), and the rest of it is entirely external to me.

I hate that I'm back in this state. I haven't been like this since 2021, and unlike back then, there's no situation I can leave here. "just stop thinking about it" is not an option, and I don't think it's what I want if it were. it's undoubtedly been a positive force in my life, despite...well, ronald. I know EXACTLY what the trigger is. It's just that he's in LA and a lot bigger than me.

...in a strictly hypothetical sense, it would be nice if Ronald were made incapable of communicating. Problem is that you can't process your grief over something if said thing Keeps Dying and Keeps Getting Worse, and well, being made incapable of communication is probably the only thing which would prevent him from getting worse. I do believe that everyone is hypothetically speaking, redeemable, but he's pretty clearly chosen not to given his decades of causing problems on purpose.

it won't stop. the brain still latches on and it won't let go. I need it to shut the fuck up and I don't know what to do about it because distracting myself only goes so far. I've done all I can do but it's not enough I know damn well I'm the only person who WILL do anything because everyone in the falling in reverse fanbase sucks and the scene doesn't give a shit about me or anything else and I'm the most knowledgeable person about this alive this is My Area this is My Thing I should be able to do something but I can't because no one is going to fucking listen because apparently a MEDIOCRE FUCKING BAND is more important than my existence

...I should have listened to my intrusive thoughts in 2022. I should have listened to the lingering doubt that this would end badly and to give up while I still could. I SHOULD have shoved it down into the abyss and pretended I wasn't hyperfixated on it because then I wouldn't be invested and this wouldn't hurt as much.

My mom has stated that she refuses to hear any more about this because despite her best efforts (and mine), I keep getting more upset and there's nothing either of us can do to make this better. I don't want to discuss this with my Discord acquaintances because they're...just acquaintances. They don't know me. I emailed my therapist, but I don't know when the next appointment is available.

https://inv.tux.pizza/watch?v=KKUnXJjgZy4

You just need to read the comments. No one in the Falling In Reverse fanbase deserves to exist. They still fucking love him. They'll still claim he's not actually a bigoted fuckwad. There is nothing I can do. It doesn't. Fucking. Matter.