"Black Out See Saw" is the Climax Alkaloid Deserved

Top Songs from Enstars 2023 Number 1

I was blown away when the album art for Alkaloid was released a few months ago...

This art is such a sharp contrast from their first album art, that shows how they have grown. The basic military style unit outfits have been replaced with regal commander-style ones. The basic emotions that are shown in the original are now much more refined- in particular, Aira has evolved from someone simply happy to be on a stage to someone who is confident in his place on it, Mayoi is putting himself more in center, and Hiiro's confident smirk has become more stoic, as he now has the experience to go with his skills.

All of this went away, however, when we actually got the Alkaloid Climax song...

Sigh...it was the seasonal Halloween event for the year. Yes, the idea of incorporating hospital/illness and Tatsumi's relationship with it is an interesting story to tell...but Alkaloid deserved so much more, especially as the "Protagonists" for the !! era of Enstars. I was frustrated that the end of this era of Enstars for Alkaloid was wasted on a seasonal event, but was at least able to take solice in that Alkaloid gets 200 chapters of the main story dedicated to them, and we still had solo songs for each character to come from the album. December rolls around, and the album releases. After jumping through hoops to buy it, I throw my headphones on to give the album a listen. The first track, "DiZZineSS" is a weird 30 second preamble with no singing, not something I was expecting. However, it rolls directly into the first new song on the album

Bam

Black Out Sea Saw is a violent wall of sound, unlike anything else that has been done for Enstars before, and I can understand fans not liking it. The reason it sounds so different is because it was produced by TK of Ling Tosite Sigure, a 20+ year going Prog Rock group. I listened to the song 3 times before moving on, and waited for the MV release to come, as is usual with the "B" side track from Albums. And what we got was one of the most well constructed videos for Alkaloid fans, and the climax that I was looking for that wasn't provided by the Halloween song.

The video opens...strangly, especially if you haven't heard the song before. The opening is intentionally choppy and rough, almost like it was an unfinished song that still needed production. There is a weird reverb effect happening- which you can especially hear when Mayoi hits the high note, that led to a friend saying "it sounds like they recorded this in a bathroom or something". The other thing that really jumps out is how robotic and synchronized the movements of all 4 members are. This is a BIG deal. In just about every Alkaloid video, you can find little inconsistencies at various points- Aira is sometimes a bit slow to do something, Hiiro is sometimes a bit too fast, Tatsumi's movements are less athletic, etc. The robotic movements are all in perfect unison, especially at points where characters do things together, like make hand bridges. It's a sign of Alkaloid's growth as a unit- they started as a collection of rejects, and now they haver come together and become a great unit together.

As we go to the first chorus, the intensity of the song ramps up- it becomes FAST, yet every member is in perfect harmony. The dancing becomes more intense- and everyone stays perfect. And then we get to the final line "It's Error-Error", and things start to change- we start to see more finger movement, the motions become more flowing and less robotic (the robots are malfunctioning! error! error!), and more personality is shown by each member.

We then get a wonderful effect of feathers raining from the sky, before, and then we get to see everyone smile, including Hiiro with this soft and expressive look. (that I wish I was able to time slightly better when I took my screenshot!)

Why is this important? Lets take a look at the first Introduction of Hiiro, in his first close-up in Kiss of Life

It's a look of focus, of determination, and NOT one of joy. Hiiro NEVER smiles at any point in Kiss of Life except during the SPP- he maintains a focused look the entire time. Additionally, you can look at just about any Alkaloid video, and Hiiro rarely smiles- if anything, he just physically assaults the camera in every one of them! The final chapter of the main story is titled "Smile", which is a discussion between Hiiro and Rinne on what it means to be an idol, and Rinne telling Hiiro "Whenever I see you smile, it makes me smile too", with Hiiro responding that he will do whatever it takes to make people smile

Hiiro wasn't able to smile in Kiss of Life, as his focus was on putting smiles on the faces of others. It's weird, because when he isn't preforming, a smile is basically plastered on his face permanently. He has a very loud and infectious laugh, and he's just happy to be doing anything at any time. On stage, for him, its different. And Black Out Sea Saw is the first time that Hiiro is able to not just smile, but show kindness in it, as opposed to simple joy or excitement. It's a MASSIVE step forward for him- the kind of thing that, you know, you might build a Climax story around?

And then, we come to the end, where the intensity of the song does not let up, before it all crashes to an end as the lights go dark and Alkaloid go still

To me, this is the Alkaloid Climax, the song that I will remember. They have gone from a group thrown together to a cohesive unit with a sound unlike anyone else in the franchise, and all of whom have had character growth. It's the one that they deserve going into the new era that is upcoming, and even has a level of finality to it, seeing as how it was released right at the end of the year.

Alkaloid deserved better than Undying Holy Love, and boy, did they get it...

wdym an average platonic bond cant be deep and meaningful do none of you remember the power of friendship

i have trust in the people.

Reposting these tags with consent from the person that wrote them. The post about the Sex Offenders Registry is locked, but these tags are too important to go unnoticed.

Younger queer people need to realize that the SOR being used against queer people simply for being queer isn’t some ancient history thing. It still impacts queer people today. And it can quite easily be used that way again.

Listen!

When you hear people throwing around the talking point of “well there’s a high rate of sex offenders in the trans/queer community”, this has to do with why.

Being on the sex offender registry isn’t inherently equivalent to whatever horrific sex crime you’re meant to think of when it’s mentioned. It evokes imagery of pedophilia and rape, but there is a lot that can get you put on it and not a lot you can do to be taken off of it.

Public crossdressing used to be able to get you put on the sex offender registry (and by used to I mean as recently as 2011).

Public urination (you know, the literal only option for someone who’s homeless and doesn’t have access to public bathrooms, a venn diagram where trans people are more likely to rest in the meeting zone) can get you put on the sex offender registry.

Sex work is pretty much an automatic way to end up on the sex offender registry if you’re caught. (This is especially weaponized against black trans women who do sex work)

“Deviant Sexual Intercourse” (aka literally any sexual activity aside from penis-in-vagina penetration) could get you on the sex offender registry as recently as the early 2000s. That effectively impacts the entire queer community in one way or another.

The sex offender registry is, first and foremost, useless. It tells you nothing about what someone did. It’s mentioned to quickly associate a person or a group of people with the worst possible crimes imaginable.

It has been used against us time after time and it will continue to be used for that.

And this is where the push of purity discourse in fandom shows its fetid, fascist underbelly.

This is why they are making being trans in public a felony in some states.

When you decide that people who commit a certain crime or category of crime should legally lose their humanity, you create incentive for more people to be charged with that crime.

Just so you know, this isn’t rendered or computer animated at all, except perhaps to speed it up a bit.

What you’re seeing here is someone glazing a piece of ceramic. The thick pink liquid is mostly water, and suspended in it are particles of silica and pigments that cling to a ceramic piece when dipped in. Fired clay will soak up water like a sponge, and the pigments stick to the surface.

Just because a glaze is pink doesn’t mean the piece will turn out that way- my ceramics lab had a glaze about this color that darkened to a deep Royal blue when fired properly. Ceramics glazes often acquire their color from chemical reactions that occur in the high-heat, Low-oxygen environment of the kiln. Due to this, glaze making in ceramics is less about chromatography and more about chemistry.

It’s fascinating stuff; you weigh out pigments to the gram before mixing them, while wearing a respirator. Silica dust in your lungs is no joke, and some pigments used in glazes are poisonous. For example, to this day, the brightest colored glazes often contain uranium. You can’t eat off of pieces glazed with it, though.

The white lines that are revealed during the video were painted on beforehand with wax, specifically for the purpose of keeping certain areas free of the glaze. Wax is hydrophobic and very smooth, so there’s no way for the silica and pigments to stick.

If you’re able, I’d highly recommend taking ceramics courses at your local community college!

more substantive thing about Glass Onion and then i think this is all my thoughts: i really liked something i feel was clearly shown in the flashbacks but not outright stated, which was that andi knew damn well miles bron was a dumb huckster.

that's what she wanted him for. she needed that ability to throw himself into his latest shill with total commitment, because of his need to believe in his own hype. the 'reality distortion' of his hard sell.

she knew that to get what she wanted out of life, she needed to harness that confidence of a mediocre white man we all talk about.

that it would open doors that would stay unmoved in the face of all her brilliance, and polish, and perfected rich bitch voice.

there's a lot of these guys out there, and she picked a dumb one because she planned for him to be the front man to her mastermind. (apologies to paul mccartney lol i don't mean to impugn your intelligence.) a smarter man would have had his own plans, would be harder to use as a mouthpiece for her better ones. she would have needed to find an actual partner and not a tool, and she didn't trust like that.

duke wasn't actually wrong to say they were all playing the same shitty game and andi lost. i mean, he was morally wrong but he wasn't incorrect.

like blanc says, she thought that because she was better than bron, because she was the genius and he was the cheap con artist, he wasn't dangerous. and in the end that was where it all fell apart.

okay i guess i lied i wasn't out of thoughts.

so like i said in the tags i really like that it's duke who said it, because duke and andi make a mirrored pair within the Shitheads.

duke--I've been through the tag and noticed a lot of people missed this entirely--duke isn't real.

duke is a man born in probably the late 70s with superhero knuckle tattoos. he's a gaming nerd whose natural genetic predisposition toward being built let him surf the gamergate wave into its current toxic cultural aftermath.

and sure, the persona has become most of his personality, but he pivots away from it easily enough, when it's not useful or fun.

he's genuinely sexist, but in a casual, unexamined way--his misogyny isn't actually emotionally important to him. he doesn't actually have any ideals about society, toxic or not, that he values beyond the advantage espousing them will get him.

he'll apologize to his abusive mother for backtalking and plead with his girlfriend to bounce on the casting couch on his behalf without experiencing any cognitive dissonance, because the MRA thing is just a grift.

and he still knows that about himself.

andi's persona, in contrast, was premeditated and designed with clear eyed intent, with a genuine desire to become what she portrayed, but she wore it very much the same way.

andi was also a shithead, who voluntarily sought out other shitheads. andi didn't stop bron from shilling NFTs to children; she tried to stop him when he was imperiling the company and thus her.

she and helen very much stayed in contact after parting ways, judging by the amount helen knew about the glass onion crew from back in the day despite never having met them, but she found out about Rich Bitch voice by seeing it on TV. andi code-switched with her, the same way Duke drops character with his mom.

they match, opposite examples of sewing yourself into an aspirational skin in order to conform to the unreasonable demands of the world and its hierarchies, and achieve success on its terms.

just like lionel and claire, who aren't trying to pass themselves off as anything but 'competent,' but they know themselves and one another as liars. the politician and the walking talking case of impostor syndrome.

(if they're opposites it's in how the whole world knows lionel is miles bron's creature, while for claire it's a guilty secret.)

whiskey and peg are both the hangers-on of hangers-on, contorting into the shapes required to retain patronage, but whiskey's bland comfort with the mutual exploitation of her relationship and intention to separate herself from duke as soon as he's not useful is in stark contrast to peg's hopeless enmeshment with birdie.

and birdie and bron, of course, are so much alike in the privilege to mostly believe their own exact-opposite yet effectively identical lies, of being too stupid to be culpable and too smart to be wrong.

both of them genuinely expect to always have yet another second chance, another round to try to win, and no true consequences for losing. the parallel drawn out between the 'wait out the media cycle before tweeting another slur' approach to scandal and the throwing-spaghetti-at-the-wall-until-you-strike-gold startup bro treadmill is great. like it's right there, but i hadn't thought about it quite like that before.

anyway i like the way these pairs fall together. it gives us multiple angles on each way to live dishonestly, to wear a lie as the self, so no one character becomes the single archetype of any of them. and at the same time the answer to blanc's little salvo early on about how they're all so different is--nah. they're really not different at all.

#i'm glad someone else noticed how much duke's speech about the game informs his character #and how he arguably makes the exact same mistake as andy did

#he knew he was playing miles #and he was so confident in his role as manipulator #that he let his guard down #he literally looked at the birdie

#and i think it's partly also him becoming the mask #he spends so much of his time espousing this ideology of going after what you want #and shaming fear #the kind of ideology that would make you put a loaded gun in your underwear #or shoot it in the air just to make some noise #that when he saw a way to get what he wanted #he was smart about getting it - smart about cloaking his words #to blackmail miles bron in front of everyone without anyone noticing

#but the very simple leap of logic to #this guy murdered andi when she tried to blackmail him #he might try to do the same to me #just doesn't seem to occur to him #because that would be fear and fear equals weakness equals losing #he's just playing that game and he WON #he won and so he stopped playing #stopped paying attention

oh damn good point they do die the same way!

i wouldn't call what andi was doing blackmail exactly, but the parallel is so close. 👌

I get that Sophie’s whole “I’ve had a lot of marriages but only one husband” line is about honesty and a real relationship rather than a grift, etc. But Harry ABSOLUTELY thinks that was Sophie telling him she’s bi.

#Taras going to show up and Harry’s gonna be like. oh is that your ex wife Sophie? and Sophie can’t even say no because they DID date and #they probably got married for a con at some point but she’s completely confused about why Harry immediately jumped to ex wife #Maggie’s going to show up after that and Harry’s like oh another ex wife? and Sophie is like. ok I don’t know why you think I’ve married so #many people but this is NATES ex wife Maggie she’s wonderful #Harry thinks Sophie has left a trail of heartbroken women in her wake and tbf he’s not WRONG

this video sends me every time. the lip syncing. the source material. iconic

I reblogged this one time and someone else who reblogged it from me tagged it with #violence

IMPORTANT!!!!

I’m gonna throw up he’s perfect

whenever i have those brutal searing being-dissolved-from-inside period cramps during school or work i pretend i am a viking warlord who has been stabbed in the abdomen but i killed the assailant so i’m the only one who knows im injured and i have to carry on normally til the end of the battle to keep up my mens morale

this is good

Gonna adopt this method of dealing

This is a very valid approach, but as someone who dealt with those exact cramps for many years:

THAT IS NOT NORMAL OR HEALTHY

It turns out your period should actually make you feel just vaguely sick and sore, with mild cramping when you pass a clot. MILD. As in “easily beaten by 2 ibuprofen and a large coffee.”

You should feel tired or gross, sure, but not in agony. If the cramps are worse significantly worse than a headache, you have a problem

The agonies are NOT HEALTHY.

Please contact a doctor, ideally a gyno you trust, and tell them about this cramping. Be clear that you are dealing with a level of pain you normally associate with grievous injury. 8+ on the pain scale.

“Oh it’s not that bad” YOU ARE ROLEPLAYING A DYING MAN TO COPE YES IT IS THAT BAD

And I’m willing to bet that you’re passing more than a typical amount of blood, too. Did you know that you shouldn’t EVER fill a menstrual cup to capacity in the course of a normal 8 hour work day? That if you have tampon or pad leakage in under 4 hours, you’re “flooding” (passing blood too quickly to be absorbed).

These, too, are not healthy. But most people don’t know what a “normal” period even is. Especially since these symptoms often start around age 12, when adults are busy obsessively telling you to grow up and that it’s “not that bad” so that most of us with problems internalize that we are weak, not that we need help.

There is help.

There are treatments.

In my case, it was a simple matter of changing a single medication. It turns out, menstruation is supposed to suck because you’re vaguely lightheaded and your hormones are wacked out.

It’s NOT supposed to make you enter psychotic episodes or torture you like an open wound.

If you at all can, contact a doctor about this issue.

For all the people out there who are dealing with insane amounts of pain on a regular and frequent basis.

One of my friends fixed her endometriosis by changing her diet according to a Tibetan Healer’s recommendation.

Another fixed her debilitating monthly pain by cutting one ingredient out of her diet on an acupuncturist’s offhand advice.

And another finally went to her normal usual western doc and got some hormonal medication that makes it so she doesn’t pass out from pain anymore.

There is a solution! Find your cure!

There’s like. A ton of personifications. Including but not limited to the above:

Quarantine Man

The Taiwan CDC with a Disinfectant Gun

Hepatitis but a Boy Band

Syphilis with Gender (女) and other Bio Information

Varicella (chicken pox) and Herpes Zoster (shingles) as Children

The Plague, but Hot Lady (also with bio information)

Fuckboy Influenza

Measles, but Hot Guy

Lyme Disease with a Mech????

And, of course, COVID-19 in all their gender neutral glory.

There’s more but I hit the image limit. I’ve got a couple articles about them, too:

Let’s make this post even longer because I have even more images saved. Next up, we got:

Tsutsumagushi Disease

Chikungunya Fever!

MERS

Pertussis (whooping cough) with a horrifying (almost body horror) headpiece and flute

Dengue Fever, the image of which literally made me stop breathing for a moment when I first saw it

Japanese Encephalitis (as... idols, maybe?)

And Zika Virus (so pretty! and for what???)

And some higher res images of the ones from the video (Legionnaires’ Disease, Viral Gastroenteritis, and Rubella). Unfortunately, I could not fit Rabies because of the image limit.

The lime disease mech is definitely supposed to be a tick

Also Rabies

@bogleech this seems like something up your alley

Dengue and Zika are both dressed in the colors of the mosquito that typically spreads them!

this is so fucking sick i need prints of these immediately

Lyme disease also has an outfit that when viewed from above would be a bullseye shape, which is a characteristic first symptom of the disease visible on the skin around the site of the bite.

OK, so I've seen this image set before, and it is AMAZING! But it's only the recent discussion that made me realize that people may not be understanding many of the visual references in these images. So... with no further ado...

An epidemiologist's guide to the Disease Idol covers...

Always reblog, these are all absolutely brilliant.

I am fucking dying

UNMUTE IT  P L E A S E

Genuinely one of the best impressions I’ve ever heard, lmao. Fucking class.

DO NOT DO THIS!!!

If a website has a paywall, like New York Times, DO NOT use the ctrl+A shortcut then the ctrl+c shortcut as fast as you can because then you may accidentally copy the entire article before the paywall comes up. And definitely don't do ctrl+v into the next google doc or whatever you open because then you will accidentally paste the entire article into a google doc or something!!!! I repeat DO NOT do this because it is piracy which is absolutely totally wrong!!!

Also do NOT append "12ft.io/" before a URL ! Typing an URL like this https://12ft.io/<URL> will redirect to a site that would break the display of the page by removing the paywall !

Honestly it's kind of prohibited to mash CTRL+P before some paywall windows can load in to get a PDF of the article. Really shouldn't be done tbh very dangerous🤷🏿‍♂️ ❌️

HACK! ;)

These two are amazing!

@x-heesy 💃🏻🕺🏻 Friday vibes!

I want whatever it is that these two have

Context! This is called a Jack and Jill! It's a contest in a style called West Coast Swing.

Here's the thing... it's ALL improv. The whole thing. And those two? Randomly matched.

Dance is a sport where strangers fall madly in love for a few minutes. And I need more all the time.

damn, what sorcery that she's doing that in BOOTS?

I’m sorry, wait stop. That was IMPROV???

Dance like this is a magic I just can’t fathom.

the things people can do as improv absolutely astound me

YOU GET THE FUCK BACK HERE AND EXPLAIN THAT RIGHT NOW

well damn

"Biden is funding a literal genocide!"

Yeah - and so will Trump. Like, if you don't vote for Biden, Trump will win, and he will continue to send aid to Israel - in fact, he will likely send MORE aid to Israel. That's the reality of the world we live in.

And, to be honest, any US president will support Israel. Because the USA is Israel's ally. That's how foreign policy works.

So who do you prefer?

Biden, who has helped lgbtq rights, reproductive rights, infrastructure, the environment, lowered medication costs, supported unions, and done MANY good, progressive things,

Or Trump, who we already know is awful. Who we already know will destroy any human rights Biden managed to gain. Who will not help the environment. Who will not help trans people, or immigrants, or women.

Because those are your two choices. And if you think they're the same, you are dangerous to all marginalized people.

It's 11 goddamn months before the election, it's not even the primaries yet and literally the only method you have (within the system at least) of influencing the policy of politicians seeking election, weak and ineffective as it is, is to threaten to withhold your vote. You don't even have to do it, you just have to make a credible threat.

If, at this stage of the game, you're demanding "Blue No Matter Who" loyalty oaths from leftists, or swearing them yourself, it's not because you're the pragmatic grownup in the room. You might be able to make that claim in September or October. I'd still have a lot of issues with it, but it wouldn't be ridiculous on its face.

If you're doing that shit in January, though, it's because the genocide just doesn't bother you that much.

Hi I don't know if you're new to the USA, but our election cycles absolutely do begin a full year (and sometimes more) before the actual election.

Threatening to withhold your vote is not just "weak", it is completely 100% ineffective. It is not going to scare Biden. It simply isn't - especially as you are openly admitting it's an empty fucking threat. Biden does not care if you threaten to withhold your vote.

You might damage the perceptions of other voters though. You might discourage people from voting for Biden, or discourage them from voting at all - and that helps Trump.

I've actually been demanding "blue no matter who" the whole time Biden has been in office, and I will continue to do so until we adopt nation-wide ranked-choice voting because I'm not a fucking moron and I know how the electoral college fucking works.

You don't have a real choice, and I get that this sucks, but the efforts to change the system happen in the 4 fucking years you had between 2020 and 2024. They don't happen now. You don't do damage right now.

Because right now, literally our only concern is making sure Trump doesn't get reelected. You're annoyed we're talking about this 11 months before the election? Trump has been actively campaigning for reelection for months. He's already on the campaign trail. He's already rousing his supporters and the people who might be on the fence about him.

Useful Idiot Leftist: "I'm going to withhold my vote from the Left-leaning party! That'll show them!"

Republican Strategists who have spent literally decades, millions of dollars, multiple court cases, and the efforts of literal generations of dirty-trick squads, and passed hundreds of laws trying to suppress the votes of Leftists: "Yes, please! We promise that this'll show the Democrats and isn't our deepest, darkest desire and dream, and that you aren't doing our work for us! Please, please, please, withhold your vote and don't vote at all! It's not like suppressing voter turnout is the only path to victory we have!"

Friends, the method that you have of influencing policy within the system is voting in the primaries, not withholding your vote. Joe Biden’s presidency has been a lot farther left than his long career in the senate and initial platform would have predicted. Why? Because besides him, Sanders and to a lesser extent Warren were his top competitors in the primary – he knew he needed to move left to capture the people who voted for them, so he did.

And there are other means as well. You could call your senators and let them know what you think of the laws their passing. Call your state senators too! My state has done some great stuff in the last year or so, and a state implementing a change well can lead to it being picked up on a federal level eventually. Or you could get involved with their campaign – a politician is more likely to listen to the ideas of someone they know than the ideas of some rando on the internet. Or you could run for office yourself. After all, there’s no better person to implement the policies you want than yourself.

But it’s easier to yell about how you’re just not going to vote.

Absolutely vote blue no matter who in the general. Even if you think both sides are shitty, blue team is going to hurt fewer people than red team, and that’s an important difference. But don’t tell yourself that having to do that means you can’t influence policy.

Okay I reblogged this before but I gotta add commentary.

If you really want to make a change? If you're genuinely going insane over Genocide Joe &etc?

CONGRESS. CONGRESS. CONGRESS.

Voting for President is a binary choice because USA 3rd parties do not front viable presidential candidates* and the parties pour all their resources into creating a binary matchup.

But your congresscritters? That is often a whole other story, and Congress has a LOT of power. Like, a lot a lot. The reason Obama's second term accomplished jack shit? Because a Republican-controlled Congress decided that their number one mission was to oppose literally everything Obama tried to do.

A candidate for president has to appeal to every wing of their party, from the extremists to the centrists to the apathetics who mostly just need to be persuaded to lift a finger to vote at all. A candidate for Congress? They're far more local. Fewer people (and many of those older and more conservative) vote in congressional elections in any informed way, and congressional candidates are therefore a lot more responsive to your opinion as a voter in their district, because you're a much larger slice of their vote base. And in Congressional primaries you can do a TON to raise newer, younger voices into government and drag that Overton window back to the left.

*Separate post on that coming when I gather all the words for it, but don't come at me with some sniffy "well if people VOTED for them..." Cause no, that's not viability.

jobs for girls who can't focus and are tired all the time and aren't rlly that good looking and get startled easily