#anika's rambles

[bronzetomatoes]

Wish I could be a photographer bc do you ever see something from the highway so beautiful that it makes you a little sick and as you're passing by you wait for the exact moment where your point of view puts the scene perfectly in frame and angled in a way that in itself could make you believe that the earth is a collection of landscapes painted by God Himself but you don't have the time or the equipment to capture the moment the way your eyes do in that perfect split second so you need to get by with a couple of phone camera photos from the backseat of a moving minivan. Or is it just me

[bronzetomatoes]

i do think oh so frequently about the dsmp fandom's response to c!Tommy's trauma, but it just works so well as an exaggerated example of what happens in other fandoms. like. the idea was that he was villianised by fans for turning angry and mean after being abused, which was seen as an inherent flaw rather than a trauma response, right? because it didn't fit into the way fictional abuse victims are treated like objects of pity in fandoms.

and a lot of ppl thought this was happening bc people who turn bitter and angry and lash out due to trauma are never represented in media, but... they are. lol. i can name like 3 off the top of my head, one of them being from a show made in the 70s-80s. it's just that they either got the same treatment on a smaller scale (because the DSMP fan culture was essentially a 10-year fandom compressed into a year or 2), or they just. ignore it. they pretend that they were the "perfect victim" all along, mischaracterise them in the popular fanon, turn their anger issues into a palettable sort of anxiety disorder, morph their PTSD symptoms into something sympathetic rather than what they find to be too mean or scary.

they'll insist that they're misunderstood, but what they mean is that their actions "weren't that bad" or "were perfectly justified". there's no middle ground lmao bc they can't accept that the sympathetic traumatised character could have done bad things due to said trauma without their victim deserving it. c!Tubbo didn't deserve to be told that he was worth less than the discs, but c!Tommy is not an irredeemable monster, nor was he justified in saying that. Zuko was a 16-year-old boy living in the shame caused by his abuse, and he was absolutely horrible to his crew, burned down suki's village, and constantly turned on people who were only kind to him. like this feels like such a stupid thing to type, that people can do awful things that you don't need to justify but you also don't have to hate them forever. like.

ik this felt like a DSMP-centric issue bc it was a lot of ppl's babys-first-fandom (both the ppl defending and condemning ctommy, though more of the latter), but isn't it obvious how people were filled with sympathy for Hawkeye and disdain for BJ? how this has always been a problem?

[bronzetomatoes]

opinio s on . Folie à Deux (2008) by Fall Out Boy? 🎤

So sorry I am incapable of giving a joke answer rn. 😭

Uhmmmm to keep it short (hah) it's an excellent theme to build their album off of given their place in the industry and in pop culture at the time, and you can tell they meant what they were saying by the amount of emotion put into all aspects of the album. It's mean enough to read as a commentary, and personal enough that you can tell they were self-aware.

Composition-wise it's so interesting; the songs are very textured but not overly busy, and the orchestral and choral elements build the sound without seeming over-the-top. Or at least, they're over-the-top in the right way. The individual tracks are diverse enough to stay interesting yet similar enough to feel cohesive.

Lyrically, you can tell that the songs are written as poems first, that are then set to music. I don't need to tell anyone about pw's writing. First album to really abandon the super long titles (w the exception of Headfirst Slide), but they're still named like poems would be (to fit the theme of the piece, rather than just the most iconic lyrics). In fact, only 3 songs out of 13 are titled with lyrics in the song! (I Don't Care, America's Suitehearts, and What a Catch, Donnie)

There are a number of recurring musical traits throughout the album, which is like. A good thing for albums to have. The ones I noticed the most were a LOT of kick bass, a lot of overlapping vocals, a lot of guest singers, and a lot of really sudden changes in dynamic. And I could yap on about how these things play into the central theme but not tonight not this post we've gone on long enough 💀💀

[bronzetomatoes]

I have, for whatever reason, thoughts and opinions on the Muppets' individual cooking habits

Kermit does the best he can with the groceries he can afford, but at one point he spent an entire month eating nothing but cup noodles. He tries his best to eat relatively but he's realistic about it, so he's always got some low-effort junk in the freezer. He gets takeout every couple weeks + for emergencies (bad news, long day, mentally incapable of cooking)

Gonzo makes the shittiest depression meals you've seen in all your life. On a good day he'll microwave a frozen hotdog and eat it with a flour tortilla. He'd live off of junk if it wasn't more expensive than the box of plain saltines he had for dinner

Idk the muppet lore too well but Miss Piggy gives "came from money, does the show for passion" in a way that the rest of them don't. She has normal meals but better because she has nicer ingredients + isn't as worn down from the stress of making a living in the arts so she'll do things like having her morning toast with avocado and a fried egg and making her own garlic confit. She hosts most of the group dinners/holidays

Scooter is young enough to get away with living off KD and Eggos. He still has time to pull himself together

Wayne and Wanda make exclusively casseroles and bland chicken. Wanda is one hell of a baker though

Fozzie has a tendency to burn things, and has caused more grease fires than the rest of them put together. He rarely tries to make anything complicated anymore, and sticks mainly to sandwiches. He makes really good sandwiches

Rowlf is actually a really good cook but in a casual sorta way. He makes a lot of stir fry and soup and even bakes his own bread, just things that aren’t that difficult but are still really good

Sam the Eagle would follow a meal plan like a very mature and responsible adult. I have no idea what would be on that meal plan because I am not a mature and responsible adult, but he gets his food groups in there

The Swedish Chef is a chef

[bronzetomatoes]

Posting this mainly because I've witnessed the ridiculous bullshit Oscar has put up with for his periodic table blanket for the past few months but also just because I'm a Little bewildered by the notes I get on some fashion posts I rb but like

You guys do know that textile and fibre arts are still... fine arts, right? And when someone posts their artwork that they spent hours upon hours designing and creating, it's weird to fill their notes with how much you want to buy and own it? Like... this isn't really even a fair comparison because the average crocheted blanket is worth hundreds of dollars in labour, but that's like reblogging someone's original artwork and talking about how much you NEED to have some of their art for yourself, when you would never consider commissioning them.

And I also find it a little odd seeing that same sentiment under haute couture fashion, the main reason being it becomes very obvious who does and doesn't have any idea or respect for how much work is put into this. That beautiful beaded dress was done by hand by a team of people. EVERYTHING was done by hand, because that's what haute couture is. I get that it's clothing and it's on a model, so it feels like it would be awesome to wear, but would you look at a 6'x8' oil painting and say "oh I NEED this"? It's artwork.

[bronzetomatoes]

since joining this fandom I've thought an awful lot about "real names" and what makes them real. Like, when a lot of people think of someone's Real Name, that means the name they've chosen to identify with, yknow? If you say something's your name, then that's your name. To other people, your Real Name is what your family or close friends would call you, apart from any nicknames, because that's what it'd be, yeah?

Meanwhile I've noticed that most people, in regards to content creators, think of their Real Names as their Legal Birth Certificate and Drivers License Names. And that makes sense, right? They go by one name for streaming, that's their name that they share with the world, and then they have their Real Name that they keep to themselves.

But then where do the lines blur? Ph1LzA is Phil, it obviously comes from his Real Name and so thats what every calls him. Tommy is Tommy and also Tom, those are both his Real Name, even if one of them is more often used by his family and the other for the rest if the world. But they're both his name, yeah? And Wilbur's been clear that Wilbur Soot is just a stage name, but it roots in a nickname his mom had for him, so how would you categorize that?

Then there are people like Skeppy and Puffy, where you know their Real Names but no one really calls them that, yeah? That's what makes it their Real Names, they're for friends only. Same with Dream and Sapnap, I s'pose.

But what about BadBoyHalo and Technoblade? You could argue that they have their Real Names, but if thats not what they like to be called, then what makes it Real? We saw people claiming (about a year ago now) that if Techno was such an awful person then they shouldn't have to use his dumb streamer nickname, yeah? But if he doesn't use his legal name and he gets his friends to call him Techno, then why is that not his name? If Bad has said before that he's uncomfortable with his legal name, that no one calls him that, that he's just Bad, then what makes the other one any more Real?

I don't know exactly what this is, just something that's been on my mind now. And I've seen some topics come up lately about how it can be important to have some level of information on the people we watch, but like. There's still the difference between Real Names and Legal Names that I've been thinking about a lot. If Bad says his name is Bad, then that's his name. If Techno says his name is Techno, it's that simple. Anyways.

[bronzetomatoes]

Little details I'm obsessed with (will add on)

The part at the end of Helena where the vocals, like, cut through? At the end of the last note when you listen with earbuds and the sound becomes fuller for the last beat

In the pre-chorus of Foundations of Decay where Gerard starts shouting before the instrumentals pick up. The drums get a little harder, but the guitar and bass stay consistently soft til the down beat of the chorus

Halfway through the intro to Welcome to the Black Parade where the rest of the band comes in, and in stereo it sounds like the tom drums are rolling back and forth over the snare

Outro to Sleep where Ray and Frank are playing the same motif ever so slightly out of sync with each other, and one cuts out just before the other

[bronzetomatoes]

i have no idea how to articulate this in a way that does it justice, and that's something i very likely will want to do someday, but its been almost three years and i need to say it in some capacity. and i wish i could explain and explain and extrapolate and analyse but all i have is feelings and the facts that caused them, yknow?

on february 6th, 2021, i got a message in a server that a close irl friend of mine had killed herself. we were 14. we had met 5 months before. we had never seen each other outside of school, despite our tentative plans for movie nights or sleepovers and what-have-you. some people thought we were dating, and i assumed i'd have more time to think about that. the night i got the news, after i finished sobbing my eyes out, of course, my mom made me earl grey and poured it into my favourite mug. i asked if we could put on avatar.

i use that mug a lot. most of the time it doesn't mean anything. that night we watched the end of season 1, the Siege of the North episodes. i rewatch that show once a year. this year, i saw Yue fade away and i cried. sometimes i don't feel i have the right to mourn someone i knew for a semester, who's been gone 5 times longer than i knew her. other times i look at the moon, i think of fictional spirits, and in turn i think of Anna