I launched my firm as a solo outfit on April 15, 2024 and I've been at it for one month. Here's a status update for everyone.

How I'm Doing

Overall it feels like it's going well for only being a month in. I was lucky enough to get a few people/cases to follow me from my last job and I think my job was largely grateful that I took most of the cases I did (a lot were difficult, low dollar, and non-paying clients too close to trial to get another attorney up to speed). Overall, these have kept me pretty busy. Though I feel like I've barely stopped working and I've tracked more (billable and non-billable) time than I ever have before, I don't feel as overwhelmed as I did in a firm. Not sure if that's because my motivation has changed or what but it's felt good to feel better.

How I'm Doing It

I was able to hit the ground running thanks to the cases I took and the advice of the Law Firm Incubator (firmincubator.com). Now that most of those cases are either done or at a stopping point, it feels like things have slowed down and I've focused more on marketing and scalability. I've been fighting with Google for at least a month to get my business verified so I can start running local services ads. While I wait, I signed up for a few local bar associations and referral programs. I am not using things like LegalMatch or Lawyer dot com for referrals--they're a bit too expensive for my budget and it seems local services ads will be a better use of my limited money (more on that below).

Revenue

My planned initial investment was $10,000.
So far I've generated revenue of about $2,100, of which Clio pay has taken their 2.0%. In terms of billable work, so far I've tracked billable time of $25,000.
So far I've spent about $12,000 prepaying rent in a cheap space, getting equipment, signing up for zoom that allows meetings longer than 45 minutes, paying for Clio, office supplies, tech, etc. Renting a space is easily my biggest cost (at $4,200/year, you read that right) but it's worth it to me to have a one-room office where I can meet with clients instead of having to either meet with clients at my house or over lunch. Privacy is nice! I'm keeping expenses down as much as possible but I always feel like I could be doing better.

Best Part

Freedom. An opposing counsel (who's been solo since 2010) called me after filing my first notice of appearance and said "Congratulations, there's nothing like it." I still work 8-5:30 or later but I get to wear PJs if I feel like it. And though I've worked harder than ever, it feels more one-to-one than it ever has in my career.

Worst Part

Revenue has so far not come in. That's a bummer. Fighting with Google and all the admin shit (and it is shit) that eats into billable time have been a pain. Having no fallbacks (admin staff, supervisors) is tough but I was actually kind of used to that from my old firm. If anything this is actually an improvement. There have been a couple of days where I bill maybe 1 hour of actual billable time and the rest is marketing and admin stuff. I also did not generate any potential client leads at all until Tuesday of this week (for future reference it's Thursday when I'm writing this).

Marketing

I'm handling all of my own marketing right now. Writing blog posts, posting on LinkedIn, and reconnecting with all of my friends and study buddies from law school. As I mentioned, I'm also doing bar association referrals and networking events. I'm still fighting with Google to get my business verified so I can run local services ads. ("All you need is a phone number!" my ass.) So far I've generated three "organic" potential client leads in my first month, and all came in since Tuesday of this week: one is a friend, one is from a law school classmate referral, and one is from a local bar association.

Other Considerations

I've got 4 and 1/2 years experience in a medium cost of living area, practicing civil litigation (generalist: contracts, contested probate, boundary lines, etc.) and business transactional law. I was able to snag a bunch of clients to keep my lights on and I saved up. I had three scheduled trials right off the bat. I don't think my results are typical so far based on that but I think they're definitely achievable and, if you're lucky enough to snag paying clients right off the bat you can do even better than I am.
Feel free to ask any questions below.

Hello Apes,
Here's another review of Roaring Kitty tweets, if you wanna check out previous days then links are below:
13th May
14th May
To reiterate, the description of each tweet is to the best of my knowledge the references made to allow you to make your own view in context and the speculation is pure speculation on my part, this is just for fun and shouldn't be taken as any financial advice, make your own decisions, I just like the stock. If you have anything to add feel free to in the comments and I'll do my best to update the post but given the amount of tweets now i don't have lots of time.
8:00am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790713748866371690
Description: This is taken from the film Easy-A and shows Emma Stone walking through school catching a lot of attention looking fine and what was an A sticker in the original clip has been replaced with the Gamestop play logo. The song is Sexy Silk by Jessie J
Speculation: The stock is sexy, particularly among the younger people. What was Easy-A is now Easy-Gamestop. Looking really great in the black.
8.15am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790717515523658119
Description: First we have a scene from the movie Prestige, with a Michael Caine voiceover about a magicians magic trick of making something disappear. The quote is "The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back." Meanwhile a person with a gamestop logo is being electrocuted to life a little frankenstein like and then a Gamestop logo bursts through an explosion. We then go to a fight scene with the song "back in the saddle again" by Aerosmith playing.
Speculation: The quote from the Prestige in full talks about the different parts of making something disappear. In full " Every great magic trick consists of three parts or acts. The first part is called "The Pledge". The magician shows you something ordinary: a deck of cards, a bird or a man. He shows you this object. Perhaps he asks you to inspect it to see if it is indeed real, unaltered, normal. But of course... it probably isn't. The second act is called "The Turn". The magician takes the ordinary something and makes it do something extraordinary. Now you're looking for the secret... but you won't find it, because of course you're not really looking. You don't really want to know. You want to be fooled. But you wouldn't clap yet. Because making something disappear isn't enough; you have to bring it back. That's why every magic trick has a third act, the hardest part, the part we call "The Prestige"." The Aerosmith song also has some interesting lyrics, "Ridin' into town alone by the light of the moon" "I'm ridin', I'm loadin' up my pistol, I'm ridin', I really got a fistful, I'm ridin', I'm shinin' up my saddle, I'm ridin', this snake is gonna rattle"
8.30am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790721293089964126
Description: Not sure what film this is from but essentially we have a group of people looking for someone who is messing with them, they come across the infamous meme of death looking for Gamestop and then they track down Roaring Kitty alongside 893489 CHIMP located in Boston. We then get a message of Prep mode and arm ready for transport, hold pattern until further notice and a message again on a watch saying the same with a Gamestop logo
Speculation: WS looking for DFV and just coming across more memes, not really understanding it. As pointed out by many, 893489 is the hexcode for purple https://www.colorhexa.com/893489 which could be a direct reference to people DRSing. Final message suggests it's a hold until further notice, potentially a gamestop announcement who knows?
8.45am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790725065585439065
Description: We have a scene from Ozark where the wife of the money laundering family is alone in her bedroom reflecting to the sound of The Daily Mail by Radiohead. Some Gamestop logos on the wall which i think replace a picture of her family in the original clip. More reflection.
Speculation: Not sure about this one other than the family in Ozark were right on the line of legality when it came to what they were doing, essentially they were money laundering and in the end it cost them their family. SHFs messing with Gamestop to the point of legality could be what costs them their family of investors?
9.00am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790728848226521547
Description: This is a famous scene from Star Wars where Han Solo takes them through the asteroid field despite C3-PO's cry that the odds are so greatly stacked against them, approximately 3720-1 to be exact! "Never tell me the odds" says Hans Solo. The Song Come Along by Cosmo Sheldrake comes on as the ship navigates it's way through.
Speculation: This play is a high risk play as we all know but DFV doesn't care about the odds, so many people have told him how crazy he is but that doesn't stop him absolutely nailing it. The song has some interesting lyrics to pick a few, "Don't let moments pass along, And waste before your eyes", "We'll be here when the world slows down, And the sunbeams fade away, Keeping time by a pendulum, As the fabric starts to fray" Full lyrics here
9.15am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790732615022195139
Description: This is taken from The Chappelle Show "when keeping it real goes wrong". In this sketch Kitty replaces a lot of the words to relate to him and the scene ends with Wu-Tang being brought up.
Speculation: Really i think this is just DFV having some fun with this sketch, replacing the woofs for meows, it brings up Wu-Tang as well which was a talking point way back in the NFT marketplace chat.
9.30am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790736391124774975
Description: We have a clip of Moon Knight from Fortnite alongside the song Day and Night by Kid Cudi. This is the official fortnite music video.
Speculation: The Moon Knight in fortnite is considered a rare character. In fact the last time the Moon Knight was in the fortnite shop was Nov29, 2023. With that, it's a very valuable and sort after skin. Also worth noting about the Moon Knight, "For a quick run-down: Moon Knight is actually a former mercenary named Marc Spector. One day, when he's left for dead in the desert, the ancient Egyptian moon god Khonsu revives him. Along with a new lease on life, Khonsu gifts Marc with god-like powers to fight evil". Take from that what you will.
9.45am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790740164848861227
Description: Not 100% sure on the cartoon being shown but the rap is Mr. Niceguy by Will Smith.
Speculation: I don't think DFV is liking the public dissing he is getting from various media outlets but really he doesn't care that much as he can just nail some memes he has lined up like this. If you want the full lyrics to the song, you can find it here
10am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790743946764644659
Description: This is the epic reveal in fight club and DFV has replaced a lot of the words. In the original scene, if you haven't watched fight club, the main protagonist has put the pieces together to realise that he himself is actually the same person as the other protagonist in the film and it was him alone that accidentally setup a sort of movement against the financial elite. In this clip DFV plays off the two characters between DFV and Roaring Kitty.
Speculation: Roaring Kitty was the twitter handle and Youtube profile for Keith Gill where he would speculate on the stock because he just loved doing it. DFV was the reddit handle where he is associated to that other sub i can't mention here but you know where i mean. I think that DFV is saying that what started as a fun speculation of the stock became something bigger than himself with his other channel in DFV on reddit. Now the wheels have moved and in the film it ends with the financial institutions being blown up, perhaps something similar metaphorically is already in place right now. It's actually a great analogy from DFV about his situation.
10.15am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790747714440892825
Description: This is the scene in Breaking Bad where Walter comes clean to his wife Skylar about all the money he has made selling meth. Skylar sees him for who he really is in this scene and really it's the beginning of when Walter begins to really lose himself. There is a funny insert of Methamphetameme and a mention of Caroline who i believe is his wife in real life.
Speculation: I think this is just DFV having some fun and giving an idea of how nuts it probably was for him to talk to his wife about everything that has happened/is happening. I know to us DFV seems like some sort of oracle but to many people he would just seem like some of stock bro who is nuts, even his wife.
10.30am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790751492451754012
Description: This is from the oceans 11 film again where the gang are discussing about what they are and how they have come to be. DFV inserts "the Cohen crunch" as what everything could be called and also says "One could make the argument that because it was in fact Cohen joining the board that seemed to kick things off maybe it should be...". DFV then has a big reveal of the reddit user u/ avocado-in-my-anus.
Speculation: Is this all about Ryan Cohen? Is it about DFV? Is it about the Squeeze? Or is it about Avocado in my anus!? - If you follow to that reddit user you will see 3 posts, all on October 29th of each of the last 3 years, all saying Happy Cat Day posted to 3 different subreddits, "never tell me the odds", "next fucking level" and "woah dude". Why is october 29th so significant? See for yourself here
10.45am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790755264733626879
Description: First we have a clip taken from CNBC where they say "is Roaring Kitty the one running this company?". It then cuts to a classic superbad scene of lots of dicks being drawn.
Speculation: I would imagine CNBC's angle here is that in their opinion Roaring Kitty is the one helping the stock so much with his influence that he might as well be running the company. Judging by the fact we go to a load of dicks after that I don't think DFV agrees with that opinion...
11am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790759048985612468
Description: This is taken from The Avengers Endgame and it's where Peter Quill and Thor are told they should fight one another for the honour of the leadership of the Guardians of the Galaxy. They reply they don't want to go against each other and then there is a little humored ambigurity over who is in charge.
Speculation: This could be about DFV and RC. Not 100% which one is which but DFV is saying they are on the same side and respect each other in their view on what is best for Gamestop. DFV conceding he isn't in charge here and sort of plays into the last meme.
11.15am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790762813868175516
Description: This is a scene taken from Love Actually and you will most likely recognize Rick from The Walking Dead. In the original clip he is filming his best friend (and it turns out he actually is in love with his best friends wife in this film). It then cuts to some memes of Ryan Cohen and a clip from his stream about updating thesis regularly.
Speculation: I think this is summed up pretty well by u/ starhammer4billion. "In 2021, DFV was mad, that R.C. did not push the button/do the buyback and told us clearly that he did not like R.C. anymore with this meme. Now in 2024, he rewinds that meme and tells us, that he thought that at the time in 2021, but that the investment thesis evolved over time and he now sees R.C. as a supermodel. So basically he saw what R.C. was doing in 2024, which he did not in 2021 and he likes R.C. again now. Probably because R.C. pushed the button and also did some plan with loopholes and stuff that DFV may not have thought about."
11.30am - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790766591526735887
Description: Here we have a clip from the music video Gossip Folks by Missy Elliot. Some of the lyrics have been replaced by Roaring Kitty. It tells the story of DFV and then there is a ton of emojis that read 😳💩😿🥜🐸🍦🤢👍👊💀🥸👀🤩⚡️🎮🚀🍄💥🍏🤨😵‍💫💜🫂👌🤝⛺️😼🎯👀🐶🇺🇸🎤👀🔥💥🍻
Speculation: DFV is saying this is going to go down again 3 years later after it all went down last time. The emojis i think tell the story so far too and maybe what's to come. I'll try my best to elaborate - it's really tinfoil but why not.

• DFV a bit embarrassed by how much it all took off originally, he was the focus of the world in Jan21 (embarrassed)
• All went to poo as GME dumped with the cheating tactics of the elite (poo)
• Sad kitty had to go to court and defend himself just because he was right and liked the stock. (sad kitty)
• Showed he had absolute nuts by doubling down on the stock again. (nuts)
• Papa RC posted frog and ice cream just around the time he was announced as chairman, the turnaround well and truly underway (frog and ice cream)
• Not sure about the sick emoji
• GME looking good again and making gains later into 21 (thumbs up and fist pump)
• DFV gets killed off from communicating and stock tanks, bear thesis in full swing about GME (skull)
• DD research is in full swing over what's happening to the stock and DFV is looking at it like oi oi (invetigating and eyes)
• DD gets everyone focused again and loving the stock, GME, power to the players and convinced it's going to do great again (star eyes, lightning, game, rocket)
• GME grows in the dark without revealing it's plan for transformation (mushroom)
• GME runs big end of 2022, all anticipation about NFT marketplace etc etc (boom)
• RC buying into apple and people wondering about some sort of partnership (apple)
• Turns out nothing like that happening as people wait for announcements (straight face)
• NFT marketplace is a disaster and not what people were hoping for (dizzy face)
• People start DRSing (purple heart)
• Love in the community is in full flow again as post after post about DRSing shares (hug)
• Everything is ok and all agreed on the DD and DRSing, happy to wait it out (ok and handshake)
• Not sure about tent.
• DFV comes back (kitty)
• Sees an opportunity to target the shorts again (target)
• Looks to Ryan Cohen, former owner of chewy to make a move (eye emoji in original looks to the right, dog emoji)
• Big announcement (microphone)
• US market sees this and burns to the ground (US flag and fire)
• Squeeze happens (boom)
• Cheers everybody (beers)

Edit\* As pointed out by u/ mmilad https://www.reddit.com/Superstonk/comments/1ctc9g2/dfvs_tweet_yesterday_with_emojis_are_all_rcs/ - they emojis do run in a sort of chronological order to a lot of RC's tweets, if you go to his twitter page and scroll through from his first tweet you can begin to tick off the emojis one by one.
11.45am - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790770363627921776
Description: We have a pizza being cut in too more and more slices and dubbed onto the pizza are reddit awards along with DFV's last position update post.
Speculation: The amount of awards that were constantly being given to this post got so out of hand i can't even think how many notifications and reddit coins DFV must have got back in the day. Definitely a joke on DFV's part and just a reminder to how funny it was the amount of awards he was getting.
12pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790774146994966570
Description: This clip is taken from Spiderman i think the one where Spiderman goes dark but i can't remember exactly. The music is The Black Swan taken from Swan lake and it cuts to the movie of Swan Lake with Natalie Portman as the Black Swan and Kitty being dubbed on her face as she transforms.
Speculation: Black swan events are defined as "A black swan is an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected from a situation and that has potentially severe consequences". When GME does squeeze, it's going to have severe and brutal consequences for the market.
12:15pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790777913245421806
Description: First we have Snoop Dogg in his music video for Gin and Juice talking about drama in the GME then we cut to Scarlet Envy saying "is it me, am i the drama", "am i the villain?"
Speculation: Just DFV having fun with all the drama that is being caused through GME, through his memes and everything in a fun light hearted DFV meme of way.
12:30pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790781688848450012
Description: The first clip is taken from Oceans 12 where Ryan is bring the gang back together for an even bigger heist of casinos. Then we have part of the heist where he is stuck waiting in the dining cabinet and cannot escape until they let him out, then we cut to 2 people talking, "waiting", "for what?", "for this". Finally we cut to Batman, i think in the Dark Knight where the Joker is in the hospital and plans to blow it up.
Speculation: Bigger squeeze than last time, band back together, GME holders for the last 3 years could be like the guy in the box just let out in time by DFV, we say "where the fck you been?", he has been waiting, waiting for this.
12.45pm - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790785463118348420
Description: This is taken from The Dark Knight rises where Bane states "it doesn't matter who we are, what matters is our plan", "no one cared who i was until I put on the mask", "was getting caught part of your plan?" "of course"
Speculation: This is taken online about Bane in this movie, "Everything that Bane did was never for himself, not really, we find out his real loyalty later and I think that is a big reason why he said who he is wasn’t important. He wasn’t there to impress the masses, he was there to execute a plan, to be the playmaker for a person he cared for. He wasn’t one who liked distractions and the concern over who he was, I took it as he saw as unimportant to what the plan was itself" DFV doesn't matter, the whole thing is bigger than him now, similar to the fight club tweet reference.
1pm - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790789242513433071
Description: This clip is the big reveal in The Usual Suspects. BIG SPOILER HERE TO THE FILM - The police chief realizes in the film that he has just been completely done by the person who actually committed the crime and he was right there all along in the station . In this clip the drawn sketch of the suspect is replaced with the 'ill do it again' meme.
Speculation: The mug has roaring kitty on it so I wonder if this really is DFV noticing a similar pattern to what is happening with the stock as to what happened before and has made that realization that it's time to come back and this is all on again. HF's digging the same hole for themselves.
1.15pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790793012936851665
Description: This is a clip showing Keith Gill and a narrator saying that investors were looking for someone to blame for losing big on Gamestop. Then it cuts to "shut up bitch" from The Rock in WWF.
Speculation: This is a lol meme and basically DFV saying people invest themselves it's not his problem. People did try to sue him if i remember so it's a bit of a fuck you to them.
1:30pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790796790360363016
Description: This is taken from Seinfeld and is about how George goes so far just to zing a guy. DFV replaces some words and makes this about the previous tweet, some more fun on his part.
Speculation: The episode i believe this takes place is called "The Money" and the episode in which George actually flies out is called "The Comeback", jokes aside that's some interesting references...
1:45pm - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790800562654691686
Description: This is taken from the Saturday Night Live sketch 'old friend'. It's about two old friends reconnecting, DFV expertly chooses this and only has to change the last name of the Keith in the sketch.
Speculation: Everyone thinks DFV is nuts, i mean the guy is posting a lot of memes and taking away my work mornings trying to understand them. Maybe he just loves memes, who knows?
2pm - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790804340673789978
Description: This is a video of beat saber to the song freaks by timmy trumpet and savage. "The bass and the tweeters make the speakers go to war", "the mighty trumpet brings the freaks out to the floor", "where the freaks at?". Big tune and then the vibing cat makes an appearance.
Speculation: Hard to say much about this other than it's a fun song and makes you vibe just like the cat. People are coming to twitter to see his memes and we are all vibing out off of it.
2.15pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790808112741630320
Description: Shows a man being followed around by a man in a suit with a red right hand. I'm not sure what this is taken from but the song is definitely Red Right Hand by Nick Cave and the Bad seeds. For me personally this song is most associated with The Peeky Blinders.
Speculation: The man could be anyone short on GME and the man following him making him scared could be DFV or whatever else is going to pound on those shorts. If you want the lyrics to the song then you can find them here
2.31pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790812277530034448
Description: Shows a bear on a pink recliner with a kitty sneaking in the background.
Speculation: This was a direct response to a Jim Cramer tweet who was essentially poking fun at DFV by saying he should make more memes as it's not working on helping GME. Worth noting that this doesn't look like a scheduled tweet and was probably not planned.
2:45pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790815662203617755
Description: Shows Jim Carrey not 100% which movie it is though i recognize it with a red graph overlayed showing the stock price going down. His smile deteriorates but he seems to have some sort of demented plan in a weird way.
Speculation: Stock might be going down and that might initially take the smile off but the creepy smile at the end shows that it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, they are going to get it by the end.
3:00pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790819440617033914
Description: This is taken from the Truman show where Jim Carrey plays a character who's whole life is a television show for everyone else to watch. He is unaware of this but starts to become more aware as the film goes on. This particular clip is where he is trying to get to the edge of the world to see behind the curtain and the director is trying to stop him with lightning strikes and storms and whatever else he can throw.
Speculation: They are doing everything they can to keep a lid on GME. Firing as many shots as they can but it's not working. Is this the best they have?
3.15pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790823211745063394
Description: This is a clip from Dunkey's best games of 2017 and here we see a game where it's just boss fight after boss fight and is really fun.
Speculation: This is a game for us, they can hammer down the stock and do what they want but GME holders just keep buying more and moving to the next level
3.30pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790826988019528035
Description: This is taken from Tenet and is about inverted bullets. It talks about being able to drop bullets and bring bullets back up and move bullets without touching them.
Speculation: I certainly don't understand even a little of what is going on with the stock, but you can still have a feel for what is happening with the stock and it feels good right now even with the dip. Could be something to do with inverse hedging but don't know enough about that to speculate.
3.45pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790830761542664192
Description: Firstly we have the Matrix where Neo is about to fight Morpheus and then we have Alice in Wonderland with Alice going down into the rabbit hole. (The rabbit hole is mentioned in the Matrix too when Neo is given the pill option).
Speculation: The scene where Neo fights Morpheus is really the first time we start to see Neo believe in his ability to be the chosen one but also understand the power being able to beat the matrix. With the Alice in Wonderland it's about seeing how far the rabbit hole goes, things will get more crazy for sure and we are going to find out just how deep this goes.
4:00pm - https://x.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790834536403574936
Description: Here we have the music video for Karma police by Radiohead. A man is running from a car at a hobble speed and then stops turns around and there is a trail of fuel heading towards the car that has stopped. He pulls out a box of matches from his back pocket and is just before to set the car alight by dropping a lit match on the fuel.
Speculation: Another Radiohead song, you can find the full lyrics here but to pick a line out "this is what you get when you mess with us". Whilst being slowly chased down, there is going to be a flip reverse based on the trail left by the shorts only to blow it all up.
8:00pm - https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790894938277695671
Description: This is taken from the Shawshank redemption where the main protagonist has escaped from the prison after being wrongly imprisoned for many years. DFV has changed some of the narrators (Red) words in showcase his story of being wrongly accused in 2021 and having the flee out of the spotlight. He talks about pressure and time, he presents a lot of memes he has created over the years and then shows a particular screenshot of one of his streams.
Speculation: This tells DFVs story but also has some juicy parts. I think Red in this is a bit like the reddit crew (us) keeping tabs on his story but DFV is saying to escape like him it takes pressure and time (could be gamma squeeze, could be LEAPS, could be DRS, could be holding and buying, could be ALL of it) but all it takes is time and pressure. The memes he posted i wonder if some of those have found their way into various subs over the last 3 years without any of us knowing it came from DFV. The steam he screenshot has been spoken about a lot this morning but it seems to come from one of his youtube streams when GME last broke $30.
Hope you enjoyed these takes.
Love ya DFV

🌐 Socials:

(NEW) ⌨️ Interact with the latest BabyDogeCoin post on X/Twitter (like, repost):
https://x.com/BabyDogeCoin/status/1790798947843280935
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https://x.com/BabyDogeNFTs/status/1790698713905524788
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Hey guys! Another two days have passed, so you know what that means! Here are your nominees for Most Charismatic Performer:
Most Charismatic

• 🇳🇴 Fairytale by Alexander Rybak - Norway 2009 🇳🇴
• 🇫🇮 Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä - Finland 2023 🇫🇮
• 🇦🇲 Jako by Ladaniva - Armenia 2024 🇦🇲
• 🇭🇷 Rim Tim Tagi Dim by Baby Lasagna - Croatia 2024 🇭🇷

Great! Now, it's time for the category I saved until the very end of this Eurovision season: Best NQ'd (Non-Qualified) Song! I'm sure everybody will have plenty of fun with this. The rules are below:
You can comment a Eurovision song from 1957 - 2024 you think fits the category of the day best (for example, Albania 2012). If a song is already nominated for another category, you can put it up for consideration in another category also. If somebody has already posted a song you wanted to post, DO NOT post that song. If you are going to comment, do it in this format: Song Name + Artist - Country + Year. It should look like this: Suus by Rona Nishliu - Albania 2012. You can also upvote the posts that you think should be part of this category. At the end of two days, the four songs with the most upvotes will be nominees for the categories we have, which we will eventually vote on. Have fun!You can comment a Eurovision song from 1957 - 2024 you think fits the category of the day best (for example, Albania 2012). If a song is already nominated for another category, you can put it up for consideration in another category also. If somebody has already posted a song you wanted to post, DO NOT post that song. If you are going to comment, do it in this format: Song Name + Artist - Country + Year. It should look like this: Suus by Rona Nishliu - Albania 2012. You can also upvote the posts that you think should be part of this category. At the end of two days, the four songs with the most upvotes will be nominees for the categories we have, which we will eventually vote on. Have fun!
And Also, just a quick little note, I will not be accepting Europapa by Joost Klein - Netherlands 2024 as a possibility, as it did technically qualify.
Categories So Far:
Best Vocals

• 🇪🇪 La Forza by Elina Necheyeva - Estonia 2018 🇪🇪
• 🇨🇭 Tout L'univers by Gjon's Tears - Switzerland 2021 🇨🇭
• 🇪🇪 Bridges by Alika - Estonia 2023 🇪🇪
• 🇳🇴 Ulveham by Gåte - Norway 2024 🇳🇴

Best Staging

• 🇲🇩 My Lucky Day by DoReDoS - Moldova 2018 🇲🇩
• 🇦🇺 Zero Gravity by Kate Miller-Heidke - Australia 2019 🇦🇺
• 🇷🇸 In Corpore Sano by Konstrata - Serbia 2022 🇷🇸
• 🇫🇮 Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä - Finland 2023 🇫🇮

Best Choreography

• 🇧🇪 Rhythm Inside by Loïc Nottet - Belgium 2015 🇧🇪
• 🇨🇾 Fuego by Eleni Foureira - Cyprus 2018 🇨🇾
• 🇪🇸 SloMo by Chanel - Spain 2022 🇪🇸
• 🇲🇩 Soarele şi Luna by Pasha Parfeni - Moldova 2023 🇲🇩

Best Costume

• 🇫🇮 Hard Rock Hallelujah by Lordi - Finland 2006 🇫🇮
• 🇺🇦 Dancing Lasha Tumbai by Verka Serduchka - Ukraine 2007 🇺🇦
• 🇮🇸 Hatrið mun sigra by Hatari - Iceland 2019 🇮🇸
• 🇫🇮 Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä - Finland 2023 🇫🇮

Best Hair

• 🇲🇪 Space by Slavko Kalezić - Montenegro 2017 🇲🇪
• 🇬🇧 Space Man by Sam Ryder - United Kingdom 2022 🇬🇧
• 🇨🇿 My Sister's Crown by Vesna - Czechia 2023 🇨🇿
• 🇱🇻 Hollow by Dons - Latvia 2024 🇱🇻

Best Prop

• 🇷🇺 Party for Everybody by Buranovskiye Babushki - Russia 2012 - Oven 🇷🇺
• 🇷🇺 RUSSIAN WOMAN by Manizha - Russia 2021 - Moving Dress 🇷🇺
• 🇦🇺 Promise by Voyager - Australia 2023 - Car 🇦🇺
• 🇫🇮 No Rules! by Windows95man - Finland 2024 - Jegg and Jorts 🇫🇮

Best High/Long Note

• 🇪🇸 Do It For Your Lover by Manuel Navarro - Spain 2017 🇪🇸
• 🇮🇱 Set Me Free by Eden Alene - Israel 2021 🇮🇱
• 🇨🇭 Tout L'univers by Gjon's Tears - Switzerland 2021🇨🇭
• 🇵🇹 Ai Coração by Mimicat - Portugal 2023 🇵🇹

Catchiest Song

• 🇺🇦 Dancing Lasha Tumbai by Verka Serduchka - Ukraine 2007 🇺🇦
• 🇷🇺 Uno by Little Big - Russia 2020 🇷🇺
• 🇲🇩 Trenulețul by Advahov Brothers and Zdob și Zdub - Moldova 2022 🇲🇩
• 🇳🇱 Europapa by Joost Klein - Netherlands 2024 🇳🇱

Best Lyrics

• 🇲🇪 Euro Neuro by Rambo Amadeus - Montenegro 2012 🇲🇪
• 🇷🇸 In Corpore Sano by Konstrakta - Serbia 2022 🇷🇸
• 🇸🇪 Hold Me Closer by Cornelia Jakobs - Sweden 2022 🇸🇪
• 🇪🇸 ZORRA by Nebulossa - Spain 2024 🇪🇸

Best Rapping

• 🇷🇺 RUSSIAN WOMAN by Manizha - Russia 2021 🇷🇺
• 🇺🇦 Stefania by Kalush Orchestra - Ukraine 2022 🇺🇦
• 🇫🇮 Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä - Finland 2023 🇫🇮
• 🇺🇦 Maria & Teresa by alyona alyona and Jerry Heil - Ukraine 2024 🇺🇦

Best Party Song

• 🇺🇦 Dancing Lasha Tumbai by Verka Serduchka - Ukraine 2007 🇺🇦
• 🇺🇦 SHUM by Go_A - Ukraine 2021 🇺🇦
• 🇲🇩 Trenulețul by Advahov Brothers and Zdob și Zdub - Moldova 2022 🇲🇩
• 🇪🇪 (nendest) narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi by 5miinust and Puuluup - Estonia 2024 🇪🇪

Best Use of Instruments

• 🇧🇬 Water by Elitsa Todorova and Stoyan Yankulov - Drums - Bulgaria 2007 🇧🇬
• 🇲🇩 Runaway by Sunstroke Project and Olia Tira - Saxophone - Moldova 2010 🇲🇩
• 🇮🇸 10 years by Daði og Gagnamagnið - Keytar - Iceland 2021 🇮🇸
• 🇪🇪 (nendest) narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi by 5miinust and Puuluup - Talharpa - Estonia 2024🇪🇪

Most Charismatic

• 🇳🇴 Fairytale by Alexander Rybak - Norway 2009 🇳🇴
• 🇫🇮 Cha Cha Cha by Käärijä - Finland 2023 🇫🇮
• 🇦🇲 Jako by Ladaniva - Armenia 2024 🇦🇲
• 🇭🇷 Rim Tim Tagi Dim by Baby Lasagna - Croatia 2024 🇭🇷

For context, I work with adult offenders. Some have commuted heinous offences, CSA included in that group. When finding out we were expecting last year, my husband and I made it clear from the get go to all our family that we did not want any photos shared on social media of our little one. I know too much and just want my little one (LO) to have privacy and not be exposed to the world. I posted one photo of them when they were born as an announcement. Since then, photos are freely shared in a private chat with family so they all have regular updates as well as us spending lots of time between all the grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins etc. Everyone is close and LO sees both sides of the family equally and regularly.
Everyone respects my boundaries and is aware of my job. Everyone respects our wishes except my MIL. She constantly has LO as her profile photo, facebook banner thing, posts her face clearly visible in status updates etc. I could cope with a candid shot, I wouldn't be as upset. But she keeps blatantly posting our LO despite us asking her not to. In every other area she is a great MIL and Grandmother. It's just this shit that's getting to me.

I was shared this while on a thankfully civilized talk. Here's the link, but I'll clean up the original text to be more digestible, maybe alter a few of it.
https://www.reddit.com/AcademicBiblical/comments/1c5ucxj/response_to_sikers_analysis_of_homosexuality_in
Here goes

1. Siker seems to be offering a scholarly version of Matthew Vines' argument
It being "Paul can't be condemning what we think of as committed loving homosexual relationships, because he was thinking of bad things like prostitution or uncontrolled-lust homosexuality."
So, the idea is to claim that Paul's letters can't be enlisted to authorize contemporary homophobia since he wouldn't have known about the kinds of relationships gay Christians want to have now.
I appreciate the contemporary ethics of Siker's approach since homophobia is dehumanizing and harmful, but the idea that this approach inherently reflects "liberal leanings" (Siker's claim) ignores how plenty of liberals reject homophobia without trying to enlist and sanitize the Bible as support.
2. I disagree with the Innocent Paul claim as Vines postulated
It is true that Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources do not often feature something resembling "a committed loving queer sexual relationship," but this is where confusion often sets in; there must be a distinction between

• Whether such queer relationships were really nonexistent in Mediterranean antiquity and if writers were aware and
• Whether what's going on is that the dominant Greco-Roman sexual ideologies that shape our texts have no room for such relationships

According to dominant ideals, powerful men were supposed to actively penetrate those below themselves on the social and gender hierarchy; a man who delighted in being penetrated by another man was by relative definition effeminate, and thus not to be celebrated. Women loving and sexually engaging with other women meant they weren't being used by (the right) men, and thus Greek and Roman writers tended to disparage, ridicule, and reframe female homoeroticism.
But our texts aren't direct sociological data, they reflect and think with dominant sexual ideologies, which by definition erased/reframed divergent sexual and gender expressions. This is why the likes of Amy Richlin,[1] Bernadette Brooten,[2] Deborah Kamen and Sarah Levin-Richardson,[3] and Jimmy Hoke**[4]** have argued that even though our sources erase, reframe, and distort people who liked any non-normative sex and relationships in Mediterranean antiquity, they still existed.
Bottom line: Writers like Paul could certainly have been aware of queer sexualities and relationships that were not enslaved prostitution or pederasty. Folks like Vines and Siker unintentionally reinscribe the association between homoeroticism and pedophilia/sexual violence.
For what it's worth, everyone should read Richlin's article from 30 years ago. Doesn't matter whether you agree with all of her arguments, it's brilliant scholarship.
3. Corpus point of view
There's a related debate about whether our texts even have a category for something like sexual orientation or simply imagine sex via other grids like active vs. passive/penetrator vs. penetrated (e.g., see Craig Williams' excellent sketch of these paradigms in Roman literature**[5]**).
The most common scholarly opinion in terms of Greco-Roman antiquity gender-sex studies is that our sources don't reflect ideas like sexual orientation, so orientational categories aren't historically helpful for reading our texts.
Other scholars like Richlin and Brooten have critiqued these positions, though they still forcefully argue that our sources thought with overtly hierarchical patriarchal ideologies about sex, like penetrator and penetrated. This final point is something on which Richlin is often misrepresented, which is bizarre since she wrote one of the classic books for understanding such dominant sexual ideologies.[6]
4. Paul Romana
Romans 1:18-32's basic point is that Paul discussed the total moral failure of Gentiles by sketching their (feminizing) descent into being dominated by their passions, one of the resultant illustrations of the Gentiles being their domination by their passions through transgressing the gendered order, exemplified by Gentile men losing sexual control of "their women" (i.e., these men are failed men from this angle) and each other in 1:26-27 - an inversion of the normative sexual order.
Paul treated male-male anal penetration as a straight illustration of Gentile corruption and domination by their passions. It's part of his grander point that Gentiles became (effeminately) enslaved by their passions (see Stanley Stowers' classic articulation of this decline-of-civilization reading of Rom 1:18-32**[7]**).
The key issue here is that there's no literary reason to think he only had in mind enslaved prostitution or pederasty, ANY male-male anal penetration upended the normative gender order. If anything, he might have indicated elsewhere that free men penetrating (raping) their slaves (gender irrelevant) was okay since that use of slaves was acceptable within many moral schemes; Paul never objected to it, and some passages potentially align with treating enslaved humans as legitimate non-marriage sexual outlets (e.g., as argued by Jennifer Glancy**[8]** regarding 1 Thess 4:4's εἰδέναι ἕκαστον ὑμῶν τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι("that each of you know his own vessel to possess in sanctification and honor")).
5. Linguistic flexibility
There's no reason to limit οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται of 1 Cor 6:9 to prostitution; "malakos" means "soft"/"effeminate." In Greek texts, it often does refer to men who are penetrated sexually - obviously effeminizing - but a man who was unrestrained or excessive in his penetrating of women is likewise an example of "effeminate" in Greek sources.
ἀρσενοκοίτης's meaning remains debated, but the etymological game of making it "man-bedders" is problematic; rather than get bogged down in this lexical discussion, the larger point regarding Siker is, again, that the issue of whether "committed same-sex relationships" are in view is irrelevant.
Paul listed effeminate Gentiles as those who will not inherit the kingdom of God; a male prostitute is by definition effeminate for these discourses, but so would a man in a "committed same-sex relationship" who is anally penetrated.
6. Futility
I don't get why "liberal-leaning" scholars think they can salvage a moral Bible by handwaving Paul's (what we can redescribe as) homophobia, even if all of Siker's claims were true, Paul's logic is entirely premised on reprehensibly misogynist gender ideologies that animate his other arguments, so even trying to save the dude from Those Two Bad Verses leaves you with the steaming animal manure that is said premise.
Hope this helps!
Sources
[1] "Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men," JHS 3 [1993]: 523-73
[2] Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996]
[3] "Lusty Ladies in the Roman Literary Imaginary," in Ancient Sex: New Essays, ed R. Blondell and K. Ormand [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015], 231-51
[4] Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God? [Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021], 27-37
[5] Roman Homosexuality, 2d Ed [New York: Oxford University Press, 2010] [6] The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, Rev. Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
[7] A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994]
[8] Slavery in Early Christianity [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002]

Maybe take apart some/all points or even tell me how to cope.
I thought Paul was that based guy for giving credit to those two women (Phoebe and Priscilla) and stated that people regardless of origin or gender or status were one in the big IM

I was shared this while on a thankfully civilized talk. Here's the link, but I'll clean up the original text to be more digestible, maybe alter a few of it.
https://www.reddit.com/AcademicBiblical/comments/1c5ucxj/response_to_sikers_analysis_of_homosexuality_in
Here goes

1. Siker seems to be offering a scholarly version of Matthew Vines' argument
It being "Paul can't be condemning what we think of as committed loving homosexual relationships, because he was thinking of bad things like prostitution or uncontrolled-lust homosexuality."
So, the idea is to claim that Paul's letters can't be enlisted to authorize contemporary homophobia since he wouldn't have known about the kinds of relationships gay Christians want to have now.
I appreciate the contemporary ethics of Siker's approach since homophobia is dehumanizing and harmful, but the idea that this approach inherently reflects "liberal leanings" (Siker's claim) ignores how plenty of liberals reject homophobia without trying to enlist and sanitize the Bible as support.
2. I disagree with the Innocent Paul claim as Vines postulated
It is true that Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources do not often feature something resembling "a committed loving queer sexual relationship," but this is where confusion often sets in; there must be a distinction between

• Whether such queer relationships were really nonexistent in Mediterranean antiquity and if writers were aware and
• Whether what's going on is that the dominant Greco-Roman sexual ideologies that shape our texts have no room for such relationships

According to dominant ideals, powerful men were supposed to actively penetrate those below themselves on the social and gender hierarchy; a man who delighted in being penetrated by another man was by relative definition effeminate, and thus not to be celebrated. Women loving and sexually engaging with other women meant they weren't being used by (the right) men, and thus Greek and Roman writers tended to disparage, ridicule, and reframe female homoeroticism.
But our texts aren't direct sociological data, they reflect and think with dominant sexual ideologies, which by definition erased/reframed divergent sexual and gender expressions. This is why the likes of Amy Richlin,[1] Bernadette Brooten,[2] Deborah Kamen and Sarah Levin-Richardson,[3] and Jimmy Hoke**[4]** have argued that even though our sources erase, reframe, and distort people who liked any non-normative sex and relationships in Mediterranean antiquity, they still existed.
Bottom line: Writers like Paul could certainly have been aware of queer sexualities and relationships that were not enslaved prostitution or pederasty. Folks like Vines and Siker unintentionally reinscribe the association between homoeroticism and pedophilia/sexual violence.
For what it's worth, everyone should read Richlin's article from 30 years ago. Doesn't matter whether you agree with all of her arguments, it's brilliant scholarship.
3. Corpus point of view
There's a related debate about whether our texts even have a category for something like sexual orientation or simply imagine sex via other grids like active vs. passive/penetrator vs. penetrated (e.g., see Craig Williams' excellent sketch of these paradigms in Roman literature**[5]**).
The most common scholarly opinion in terms of Greco-Roman antiquity gender-sex studies is that our sources don't reflect ideas like sexual orientation, so orientational categories aren't historically helpful for reading our texts.
Other scholars like Richlin and Brooten have critiqued these positions, though they still forcefully argue that our sources thought with overtly hierarchical patriarchal ideologies about sex, like penetrator and penetrated. This final point is something on which Richlin is often misrepresented, which is bizarre since she wrote one of the classic books for understanding such dominant sexual ideologies.[6]
4. Paul Romana
Romans 1:18-32's basic point is that Paul discussed the total moral failure of Gentiles by sketching their (feminizing) descent into being dominated by their passions, one of the resultant illustrations of the Gentiles being their domination by their passions through transgressing the gendered order, exemplified by Gentile men losing sexual control of "their women" (i.e., these men are failed men from this angle) and each other in 1:26-27 - an inversion of the normative sexual order.
Paul treated male-male anal penetration as a straight illustration of Gentile corruption and domination by their passions. It's part of his grander point that Gentiles became (effeminately) enslaved by their passions (see Stanley Stowers' classic articulation of this decline-of-civilization reading of Rom 1:18-32**[7]**).
The key issue here is that there's no literary reason to think he only had in mind enslaved prostitution or pederasty, ANY male-male anal penetration upended the normative gender order. If anything, he might have indicated elsewhere that free men penetrating (raping) their slaves (gender irrelevant) was okay since that use of slaves was acceptable within many moral schemes; Paul never objected to it, and some passages potentially align with treating enslaved humans as legitimate non-marriage sexual outlets (e.g., as argued by Jennifer Glancy**[8]** regarding 1 Thess 4:4's εἰδέναι ἕκαστον ὑμῶν τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι("that each of you know his own vessel to possess in sanctification and honor")).
5. Linguistic flexibility
There's no reason to limit οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται of 1 Cor 6:9 to prostitution; "malakos" means "soft"/"effeminate." In Greek texts, it often does refer to men who are penetrated sexually - obviously effeminizing - but a man who was unrestrained or excessive in his penetrating of women is likewise an example of "effeminate" in Greek sources.
ἀρσενοκοίτης's meaning remains debated, but the etymological game of making it "man-bedders" is problematic; rather than get bogged down in this lexical discussion, the larger point regarding Siker is, again, that the issue of whether "committed same-sex relationships" are in view is irrelevant.
Paul listed effeminate Gentiles as those who will not inherit the kingdom of God; a male prostitute is by definition effeminate for these discourses, but so would a man in a "committed same-sex relationship" who is anally penetrated.
6. Futility
I don't get why "liberal-leaning" scholars think they can salvage a moral Bible by handwaving Paul's (what we can redescribe as) homophobia, even if all of Siker's claims were true, Paul's logic is entirely premised on reprehensibly misogynist gender ideologies that animate his other arguments, so even trying to save the dude from Those Two Bad Verses leaves you with the steaming animal manure that is said premise.
Hope this helps!
Sources
[1] "Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men," JHS 3 [1993]: 523-73
[2] Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996]
[3] "Lusty Ladies in the Roman Literary Imaginary," in Ancient Sex: New Essays, ed R. Blondell and K. Ormand [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015], 231-51
[4] Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God? [Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021], 27-37
[5] Roman Homosexuality, 2d Ed [New York: Oxford University Press, 2010] [6] The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, Rev. Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
[7] A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994]
[8] Slavery in Early Christianity [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002]

Maybe take apart some/all points or even tell me how to cope.
I thought Paul was that based guy for giving credit to those two women (Phoebe and Priscilla) and stated that people regardless of origin or gender or status were one in the big IM

I was shared this while on a thankfully civilized talk. Here's the link, but I'll clean up the original text to be more digestible, maybe alter a few of it.
https://www.reddit.com/AcademicBiblical/comments/1c5ucxj/response_to_sikers_analysis_of_homosexuality_in
Here goes

1. Siker seems to be offering a scholarly version of Matthew Vines' argument
It being "Paul can't be condemning what we think of as committed loving homosexual relationships, because he was thinking of bad things like prostitution or uncontrolled-lust homosexuality."
So, the idea is to claim that Paul's letters can't be enlisted to authorize contemporary homophobia since he wouldn't have known about the kinds of relationships gay Christians want to have now.
I appreciate the contemporary ethics of Siker's approach since homophobia is dehumanizing and harmful, but the idea that this approach inherently reflects "liberal leanings" (Siker's claim) ignores how plenty of liberals reject homophobia without trying to enlist and sanitize the Bible as support.
2. I disagree with the Innocent Paul claim as Vines postulated
It is true that Greek, Roman, and Jewish sources do not often feature something resembling "a committed loving queer sexual relationship," but this is where confusion often sets in; there must be a distinction between

• Whether such queer relationships were really nonexistent in Mediterranean antiquity and if writers were aware and
• Whether what's going on is that the dominant Greco-Roman sexual ideologies that shape our texts have no room for such relationships

According to dominant ideals, powerful men were supposed to actively penetrate those below themselves on the social and gender hierarchy; a man who delighted in being penetrated by another man was by relative definition effeminate, and thus not to be celebrated. Women loving and sexually engaging with other women meant they weren't being used by (the right) men, and thus Greek and Roman writers tended to disparage, ridicule, and reframe female homoeroticism.
But our texts aren't direct sociological data, they reflect and think with dominant sexual ideologies, which by definition erased/reframed divergent sexual and gender expressions. This is why the likes of Amy Richlin,[1] Bernadette Brooten,[2] Deborah Kamen and Sarah Levin-Richardson,[3] and Jimmy Hoke**[4]** have argued that even though our sources erase, reframe, and distort people who liked any non-normative sex and relationships in Mediterranean antiquity, they still existed.
Bottom line: Writers like Paul could certainly have been aware of queer sexualities and relationships that were not enslaved prostitution or pederasty. Folks like Vines and Siker unintentionally reinscribe the association between homoeroticism and pedophilia/sexual violence.
For what it's worth, everyone should read Richlin's article from 30 years ago. Doesn't matter whether you agree with all of her arguments, it's brilliant scholarship.
3. Corpus point of view
There's a related debate about whether our texts even have a category for something like sexual orientation or simply imagine sex via other grids like active vs. passive/penetrator vs. penetrated (e.g., see Craig Williams' excellent sketch of these paradigms in Roman literature**[5]**).
The most common scholarly opinion in terms of Greco-Roman antiquity gender-sex studies is that our sources don't reflect ideas like sexual orientation, so orientational categories aren't historically helpful for reading our texts.
Other scholars like Richlin and Brooten have critiqued these positions, though they still forcefully argue that our sources thought with overtly hierarchical patriarchal ideologies about sex, like penetrator and penetrated. This final point is something on which Richlin is often misrepresented, which is bizarre since she wrote one of the classic books for understanding such dominant sexual ideologies.[6]
4. Paul Romana
Romans 1:18-32's basic point is that Paul discussed the total moral failure of Gentiles by sketching their (feminizing) descent into being dominated by their passions, one of the resultant illustrations of the Gentiles being their domination by their passions through transgressing the gendered order, exemplified by Gentile men losing sexual control of "their women" (i.e., these men are failed men from this angle) and each other in 1:26-27 - an inversion of the normative sexual order.
Paul treated male-male anal penetration as a straight illustration of Gentile corruption and domination by their passions. It's part of his grander point that Gentiles became (effeminately) enslaved by their passions (see Stanley Stowers' classic articulation of this decline-of-civilization reading of Rom 1:18-32**[7]**).
The key issue here is that there's no literary reason to think he only had in mind enslaved prostitution or pederasty, ANY male-male anal penetration upended the normative gender order. If anything, he might have indicated elsewhere that free men penetrating (raping) their slaves (gender irrelevant) was okay since that use of slaves was acceptable within many moral schemes; Paul never objected to it, and some passages potentially align with treating enslaved humans as legitimate non-marriage sexual outlets (e.g., as argued by Jennifer Glancy**[8]** regarding 1 Thess 4:4's εἰδέναι ἕκαστον ὑμῶν τὸ ἑαυτοῦ σκεῦος κτᾶσθαι("that each of you know his own vessel to possess in sanctification and honor")).
5. Linguistic flexibility
There's no reason to limit οὔτε μαλακοὶ οὔτε ἀρσενοκοῖται of 1 Cor 6:9 to prostitution; "malakos" means "soft"/"effeminate." In Greek texts, it often does refer to men who are penetrated sexually - obviously effeminizing - but a man who was unrestrained or excessive in his penetrating of women is likewise an example of "effeminate" in Greek sources.
ἀρσενοκοίτης's meaning remains debated, but the etymological game of making it "man-bedders" is problematic; rather than get bogged down in this lexical discussion, the larger point regarding Siker is, again, that the issue of whether "committed same-sex relationships" are in view is irrelevant.
Paul listed effeminate Gentiles as those who will not inherit the kingdom of God; a male prostitute is by definition effeminate for these discourses, but so would a man in a "committed same-sex relationship" who is anally penetrated.
6. Futility
I don't get why "liberal-leaning" scholars think they can salvage a moral Bible by handwaving Paul's (what we can redescribe as) homophobia, even if all of Siker's claims were true, Paul's logic is entirely premised on reprehensibly misogynist gender ideologies that animate his other arguments, so even trying to save the dude from Those Two Bad Verses leaves you with the steaming animal manure that is said premise.
Hope this helps!
Sources
[1] "Not Before Homosexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against Love between Men," JHS 3 [1993]: 523-73
[2] Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996]
[3] "Lusty Ladies in the Roman Literary Imaginary," in Ancient Sex: New Essays, ed R. Blondell and K. Ormand [Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015], 231-51
[4] Feminism, Queerness, Affect, and Romans: Under God? [Atlanta: SBL Press, 2021], 27-37
[5] Roman Homosexuality, 2d Ed [New York: Oxford University Press, 2010] [6] The Garden of Priapus: Sexuality and Aggression in Roman Humor, Rev. Ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992)
[7] A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994]
[8] Slavery in Early Christianity [New York: Oxford University Press, 2002]

Maybe take apart some/all points or even tell me how to cope.
I thought Paul was that based guy for giving credit to those two women (Phoebe and Priscilla) and stated that people regardless of origin or gender or status were one in the big IM
I hope I chose the right tag

Friends, talking to someone very important in my life today, I was told to write today about my life on facebook, the real story.
And hardly anyone knows the whole story, and that's true. So then I'm going to arm myself with courage and tell everything: And to take whatever comes back my way. When I was born, in Puerto Rico, I was a sickly person. I had among other things, a heart disease. At three years old I began to experience something that I had no idea it was at that time: I did not feel like a boy but like a girl instead. I told my parents but as neither they nor I understood what this was, they told me that I was male etc. By five years old I began to be attracted to girls: I liked my neighbor Noemi.
At that time, I was already attending church, because my family has always been Christian. At 7, I sang at the children's choir of the Disciples of Christ church in Bayamon.At that time my family lived well, my parents had businesses and we had a large house with a lady who I will not call a servant because to me she was like my aunt, Titi Sandra. We had some luxuries, not many but enough.
We traveled to other countries for vacation during weekends, etc. , In short, we lived well. At the age of nine, I was diagnosed with type one diabetes, and then my family lost the business for things that happen in life and we moved first to Humacao and then to Caguas, where at 11 years old I was in a coma, which decades later, I found out that as a result of that coma, my brain had been affected in such a way that in essence the doctors told my parents that emotionally (not intellectually) I was going to stay at the age I was when that took place for the rest of my life maybe. But they didn't tell me that at that time. The thing is that also at the same time I wanted with all my soul at that same time to get into boxing as a competitor. I saw in Wilfredo Gomez, Wilfred Benitez and Muhammad Ali my heroes. I wanted to be like them and started going to the gym,
I had a couple of fights as an amateur. For those who do not know, particularly my great friends from Caguas, at that time when we moved to Cayey, two extremely important things happened in my life: I met the love of my life, a girl named Thylvenetssie, who is an American girl of Puerto Rican parents, as she had arrived in Cayey from Boston, Massachusetts.
She liked music and she and her friends Hilda, Ana and Carmen formed a band which sometimes they took the stage of the middle school we all attenced and started singing at lunch, nothing seriously but for them it was serious enough. For my part, I was still in boxing and all that but, Thylvenetssiee and I fell in love, we went out to eat a few times together and then she asked me to join her band and I, in order to keep being next to her all the time, joined them. What followed was unimaginable: suddenly I gained popularity and everyone at school knew us. I enjoyed it because as she had come from the United States, she knew the lyrics of many songs, and me, living with my secret, I not only loved the songs of Van Halen, The Beatles, Menudo and Duran Duran (what a mix haha!) but also those of Madonna, Cyndi Lauper and Bananarama too. And not only that but when we became known at school, I had my "fans" also, one in particular was named Maritza and I always remember her because she was always next to me when Thilvenetssiee was not with me.
Through all that, I still went to the gym and trained because I was known as the boxer who sang. In essence I was the only male in a "girl band." But my parents saw that the hospital in Cayey was not very good and decided without telling me that we had to return to Caguas. And one weekend we returned. I wanted, cause of what I just told you about the girl and our band, to go back to school in Cayey, but I couldn't because the government wasn't going to allow me anyway because I now lived in another city. There I rejoined again with my friends and soul mates from Caguas ,and I also liked a girl named Leila.
Then I got into the Ebenezer United Methodist Church, where I was in the adult choir at 14 years old, I also continued with boxing but one day, the night before the fight between Marvelous Marvin Hagler and Sugar Ray Leonard, I had a dream where I died in a boxing match and took it as an omen and decided not to continue with that idea of becoming a boxer. I met a girl named Loyda, and other friends, I started to hang out with a clique of teen friends, I had a great time but something else very important also took place: I fell in love with a girl named Angie. At that time I wasn't used to girls telling me they didn't love me, but when I asked her out, she told me she didn't want to be my girlfriend. that happened on May 20, 1989. My friend Victor must remember because he knew how in love I was and that night I remember Victor phoned me at my home from his, to console me. Then I began to experience depression, I wanted to kill myself, I wanted to commit suicide. On top of that, when my pastor found out that I had begun to visit Angie's church, he told me to continue going to her church and I felt that he had basically told me to stop going to mine (his). I was so desperate that I went and sought medical help from my school psychologist, and the psychologist invited me to his home for a "private session."
Luckily, I did not go because it felt weird, and I knew more or less what he meant, and a month later I found out through the janitor of the school, that the doctor was fired because he had said similar things to other young people at school. Imagine that! But also, during that era, my friends and I were planning to form another band and we even used to go to town to take theater, singing, and dance classes, and because of that and also because of the conversations I had with my parents, with my friends and with my aunt Lourdes who one day grabbed me by my arm and told me "do not do what I would not do" and also because God was with me, I still had hopes and so I survived depression. But nevertheless, there was still that doubt that I had, that unresolved issue: inside myself I had this female voice. I saw myself and felt like Madonna or Molly Ringwald and I did not understand why.
Playing basketball, I saw myself as a girl. Kissing girls, it was the same. Boxing, it was the same. In church praying, hanging with my buddies, singing, it was always the same. In April 1990, we boarded a plane and moved to the United States. I wanted to become an entertainer at that time. When I arrived in the United States, I realized that I also liked boys. I still didn't know that in Puerto Rico, so I was shocked for quite some time. Here I tried to enter the Marines and I went to be sent but when they realized that I have Diabetes when they did my medical, they disqualified me, But I tried at least, and worked as an ice cream salesperson, in the hope of being able to pay my entrance to some talent agency which I achieved after many years.
I was about to marry a girl I met one day when, leaving her house, she ran to me and kissed me and there we met; two weeks later we were in court for the court wedding, but we decided not to do it and we ran out of there. She was a witch, she liked black magic and that and I got into that lifestyle even though I was still a Christian and I was never fully involved in it like her. She was Gothic and I got into the Gothic style too. From then on came the parties, the clubs, the "crazy life". I also found another church here where I started to go but I got into trouble with the pastor because of one spefific rule I disagreed with in that church. The thing is that I was in a group of more or less 20 or 30 different characters: we always went everywhere together and, besides that, I was already in a well-known talent agency working as a model.
But that agency passed into the hands of a group people which some of the other models told me were not reliable and all the models I knew, including me, said goodbye to them and that was that. At that time I had a girlfriend a very beautiful black girl by the way but I wanted to continue in my wild ways and living the crazy life.
A lifetime of meeting famous people such as several ex-Menudo, Wilfredo Gomez, Michael Jordan, Sunset Thomas, Pamela Anderson, Sylvester Stallone, Ringo Starr, two former presidents of the United States and even Princess Anne of England. Of fist fights wherever they found me, of casinos, hotels, of addiction. And another thing: not only did I know I was bisexual but also something else: transgender. I told my sister Nilda a week at the end of 1996, while still dating my fiancée. On a cold December night. (I remember they were showing a soap opera with the beautiful Mexican actress Lucero and when I told her at that time I felt very much like "Lucero" hahaha) By 1999, I asked my doctor to do an operation to change sex, but he denied it based on my Diabetes condition. I continued to play basketball every week, organizing another musical group that I had for a short time here, and leading my crazy life. Until one day I was about to do something crazy against a private property and, after that, the group I hung out with gave me an ultimatum: either I would change or my hanging out with them would end.
I went through rehabilitation, I began to behave better, but little by little that era came to an end. I returned to church but because things that happen in life, I had to move to a house where the church where I live at now is somewhat far away and then, covid also came, and I do not like to go out where there are a lot of people so much. I am still transgender, but recently one of my other aunts (Aunt Raquel and her husband Joe Gomez) spoke to me and now every day I ask God to forgive me for everything I did, for who I am and have been.And the reason why I am writing this here today is not to brag, I am neither proud nor ashamed of my life but there are many people who do not know a quarter of it and someone told me today to talk about it and encouraged me to tell you about it so that everyone knows, but they also said to speak with the truth and talk openly.
Those from Caguas do not know what happened in Cayey, many my family did not know about my time with depression, and neither those of Caguas nor most of my family and friends knew about my transgenderism and that I even own a couple of dressees. Nor about my love history or anything like that. It's time to get courageous and tell the whole truth. Whoever told me to write this, told me to tell the whole truth. And here it is.
I have bounced from one wall to the other, I had love affairs with men and women, (although now I am heterosexual again- I like only girls) I have been popular and I have been ignored, brave and cowardly, and yes I have also been both a man and a woman in spirit, I have been an angel and a demon, healthy and sick I have lived well off and kind of poor too, sung and acted, the latter in film (Eight Legged Freaks) and theater (mostly badly). That is my life, my truth.And every night I pray to God for Him to forgive me. I hope that when it is my turn to speak with Him in eternity, my heavenly Father will forgive me. For at the end of the day I never ceased to be a Christian, to believe in Him and to love Him.
My aunt Raquel still says if I dont stop being transgender I will go to Hell. She does not understand how much this hurts to hear.

I (27F) and my LDR man (27M) met in a facebook group and have known each other for over 4 years. I am in the process of planning a trip to his country - Morocco since I’ve held back for the past couple of years due to timing and personal reasons.
As someone who is Canadian and from an East Asian background, it was a given fact my parents are quite strict. When they discovered that we were were FaceTiming and texting, they were not happy about it and demanded that we cut ties immediately due to different backgrounds and statuses.
How did you folks in an LDR relationship deal with your parents reaction when they found out?

Title is pretty self explanatory, so here we go!
Cave
I didn’t really get hooked on Showbiz tracks until somewhat recently, so when I re-listened, I was surprised at how incredible this song was! Absolutely love the driving verse, melodic chorus with the stunning high notes, and the piano interlude. It would be so cool if they bring it back live even if it’s in an alternate key, since it sounded excellent a half step down in 2009/2010!
Futurism
Damn does this song get me hyped up for literally anything. The eargasmic bassline and powerful high notes make this B-side truly remarkable, despite that being an appropriate description for about half of Muse’s songs. I can’t believe it didn’t make the cut on OOS because it elevates that masterpiece even more in my opinion.
Sing for Absolution
I wasn’t huge on Absolution for quite some time since the dystopian and dark vibe didn’t really grab me. A recent re-listen got me really digging this song though. The haunting feel that the piano provides and the desperation in Matt’s vocals make this one of their most noteworthy slower songs in my eyes. The ending is definitely a contender for some of Matt’s most sustained A4 phrases as well! He never seemed to fully go for it live which totally makes sense but is kind of a bummer at the same time.
Take a Bow
I’ve never heard a song use modulations like this one does, but it works so damn well! The gradual buildup keeps me on the edge of my seat and the synth arpeggios followed by that huge beat drop never fails to give me goosebumps. Side note: if you haven’t listened to Ian Cologne’s orchestral interpretation of this track then I highly recommend checking it out on YouTube!
Animals
Most of The 2nd Law has grown on me at this point, but I wanted to give a special shoutout to this track for being one of the most sublime in their entire discography. I love how calming the instrumentation is until the heavy bridge kicks in. Even if the lyrics evoke anger, I think it’s such a soothing song overall. I hope they experiment with odd time signatures more often in future songs too!
Defector
This Drones song doesn’t seem to get much love. I get that it follows the titans that are Reapers and The Handler, but I think it totally continues the momentum! The chorus is pretty fun and the instrumental section with the backing synths is beautiful. I’ve lately found that listening to this album from start to finish is one of my favourite journeys in their repertoire due to there being nothing that interrupts the concept and theme.
The Void
The lyrics are so damn repetitive and uninspired, but the instrumentation is gorgeous so it more than makes up for it. I think it concludes the ST theme so well with the futuristic/retro feel that about half the songs provide, and I especially admire how the melody comes full circle when the closing piano part mirrors the synth in the beginning. Those bass thuds at the end can blow up a subwoofer for sure.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far, and let me know what Muse songs have grown on you!

Cigarettes and rebellion have always gone hand-in-hand, and in an age of cigarette packet-sized health warnings, now more than ever, smoking a fag says: 'I do not give a fuck.' But if Brandon Flowers is hoping to strike a seditious pose by sparking up at the start of the interview, it's not going according to plan. The Killers' frontman is on all fours rooting through the junk that carpets the anteroom at the band's rehearsal space. "Has anyone seen my lighter?" he asks, rocking back on his heels. The question hangs in the air while Brandon cocks his head, waiting for an answer like a meerkat listening for a predator. Twenty-five years old and with a delicate bone structure, there's something almost dainty about him. Receiving no response, he returns to his search. "Oh, Jeez," he sighs. "I had it just a minute ago."
It's a scene that emphatically does not suggest a rebel without a cause. The mess isn't helping. The Killers' HQ - an industrial unit sandwiched between a construction supplier and the offices of a housing development just off Dean Martin Drive in West Las Vegas - is ankle-deep in designer clothing. A Dior Homme suit lies crumpled by the door; there's a pile of shoes topped like a sundae by a pair of Marc Jacobs trainers; and anyone wishing to enter the shoebox room the band use as an office must negotiate a mountain of discarded jeans. Many items are identifiable as coming from the wardrobe of Hot Fuss, The Killers' hugely successful 2004 debut album - triple platinum in the UK with two weeks at Number One and five million sold worldwide. Look! There are the shirts, ties and suit jackets they wore when they thrilled Glastonbury 2005 with indie rock anthems Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me. That was the crowning moment of a two-and-a-half year tour that finally concluded in October of last year. It seems that after playing that final date in Miami, they returned to Vegas and shrugged off their image onto the floor of this bland white box.
Now a fine layer of dust covers the dead clothes. The Killers have no further use for white tuxedos on their second album, Sam's Town. Today, Brandon wears a black polo shirt, black pin-stripe waistcoat, black jeans and black boots. Where there used to be a layer of foundation, there is now a beard - an untrimmed beard at that. Dave Keuning (30, guitar), Mark Stoermer (29, bass) and Ronnie Vannucci (29, drums) all echo Brandon's black ensemble. Ronnie has added Aviator shades and a handlebar moustache for a dash of motorcycle cop, Dave's frizzy bubble of hair gives him a Marc Bolan-ish air, and there's something very teenage about Mark's scuffed Vans.
Short of walking around wearing sandwich boards saying, "Our new record is a bit heavier than the last one," The Killers couldn't hope to communicate that message more effectively. And they have gained some musical girth on Sam's Town. The pop hooks that made Hot Fuss so irresistible survive intact - see the ringing guitar riffs on first single When You Were Young - but there's a newfound punchiness, coupled with an epic sweep. The minor-to-major uplifts on Bones are fabulously dramatic, the coda to Why Do I Keep Counting? thrillingly intense. Comparisons to Bruce Springsteen have been made. If they overstate the case a little, they are at leaset qualitatively accurate. The Killers are back and this time it's serious - they've got the bootlace ties to prove it.
"Hey, it says here that Springsteen's headlining Glastonbury next year," shouts Ronnie, who's flicking through the NME. He nods sagely at the page without looking up.
"Really?" asks Dave, nicknamed Crazy Dave on account of his alledgedly volatile nature.
"The Boss is headlining one night, we're playing second on the bill the next night and Kylie's headlining the Sunday," says Brandon, charging like a bull through Michael Eavis' as-yet-unannounced line-up with what subsequently proves to be a characteristic gaucheness.
But that lighter is proving elusive. This being America, none of the people hurrying to-and-fro prepping the world for the release of Sam's Town smokes. Manager Robert Reynolds - Bobby Rey to the band - barks into his mobile, booking his band onto eye-wateringly demanding tours. "We're going to make a lot of money," he cackles to himself before switching calls to make a series of stern pronouncements on legal matters. Dave, Mark and Ronnie disappear for a jam session. Artwork is approved, B-sides are decided on and schedules are hammered out.
"I can't find it," Brandon says, finally. But he's not going to be denied the opportunity to underline The Killers reinvention with a puff of smoke. "Let's go to the gas station. I'll have to buy one. It's too busy to talk here anyway."
+
Brandon's black (of course) Volkswagen Touraeg four-wheel drive is barrelling down West Flamingo Road into town. "I was a bell boy there," he says, pointing out of the driver's window at the stucco facade of the Gold Coast casino. "I was working there when we were signed."
Coming from Las Vegas, it is perhaps inevitable that casinos play a big part in The Killers' story; not only is Sam's Town named after one, it was recorded in one, too.
The band began writing songs while on the road with Hot Fuss, turning up early for soundchecks to run through new ideas. On a trip home to Vegas, George Maloof, a hotelier known for cultivating famous friends, invited them to record the album in the new studio he'd built at The Palms, his flagship hotel-cum-gambling den. When the tour finished in October 2005, they returned to Vegas and spent five month finessing the songs they'd sketched out on the road. Then, in February, they decampled to the third floor studio at The Palms and recorded Sam's Town over 11 weeks.
Producer Flood (U2, Depeche Mode) encouraged them to experiment. They overdubbed, fiddled with synthesizers and played with new equipment. It took them five weeks to get the backing vocals right. The band sang the harmonies, then double-tracked them four times. The end result recalls Queen wondering, "Is this is the real life? Is this just fantasy?" When Ronnie, a trained classical percussionist, brought some kettledrums down, eyebrows were raised; but the fabulously bombastic coda on Why Do I Keep Counting? vindicates his indulgence.
"That's kind of the Ben Hur of the album," he says. He's not wrong. Sam's Town is a record on an epic scale. "Yeah, it has drama," he continues. "But, at the same time, I think it's a little more exposed than Hot Fuss. It's a little more naked. Last time it was about a lot of fictional things." By "fictional", Ronnie means that Hot Fuss wore its predominantly British influences for all to see. Brandon's taste in music is rabidly Anglophile - he constantly references The Smiths, The Cure and Joy Division - and it showed. By contrast, Sam's Town is an unequivocally American record. The lyrical imagery is pure American dream - cars, girls, wide-open spaces and escaping to a better life. "We're burning down the highway skyline/On the back of a hurricane that started turning/When you were young," sings Brandon on When You Were Young. That's the basis of the Springsteen comparisons then, though the lack of pathos more closely recalls another blue-collar rocker from New Jersey - Jon Bon Jovi.
The phrase "this town" recurs throughout the album, and it's always receding into the distance as The Killers escape to a new life. "This town was made for passing through/I never did get along with everybody else," sings Brandon on This River Is Wild. On Read My Mind he "never really gave up on breaking out of this two-star town", while on the title track he offers something of an explanation: "Nobody ever had a dream round here."
"With the first record, there was this feeling that there was this world out there that we didn't know," says Mark later in the day. Before The Killers, he studied philosophy: now he's their quiet one. "We wanted to get out and away from this and be somewhere else. We hadn't had a lot of experience - hadn't travelled much - then we were gone for three years. We didn't sit down and say that we wanted to make a record about how we're glad to be home, but that's what happened naturally."
It's not an angsty record. The Killers have already escaped with Hot Fuss, and, having done so, they view the experience fondly now they're back. There's a mistiness to Brandon's eyes as he explains how the album got it's name.
"Sam's Town is a casino on the edge of Vegas," he says. "I grew up in Henderson, which is out on the way to the Hoover Dam. My mom and dad lived in a trailer park, and my dad used to hitchhike up and down Boulder Highway, which is the only way you could get to Vegas. Sam's Town was the first thing you saw on your way in to town. So, when you're driving down Boulder Highway from Henderson, I always thought you finally knew you were getting somewhere when you saw Sam's Town. It was kind of like a beacon."
"It's not a completely American album," contines Brandon. "We still have our English influence, but we're also from the Wild West. Somehow we've managed to unify all that on this album. it's just such a perfect resemblence of what we are."
At the petrol station, Brandon rummages through the glove box looking for change to buy a lighter. "This is a great album," he says, pointing at Highway Companion, the latest from iconic American rocker Tom Petty. "I've always been a big fan of his. He's such a great American artist."
Yes, Brandon: we get the point.
+
When Brandon finally lights his cigarette, he smokes it awkwardly, like a child mimicking something he's seen the grown-ups doing. However, when he cheerfully admits that, "I feel the same mentally as I did when I was 12," it's not a knowing nod to the fact that he sometimes behaves like a loveably precocious child, but a reference to an unusually comprehensive grounding in pop music at an early age.
When Brandon sings about "this town", he doesn't mean Las Vegas. He means Nephi, Utah or Henderson, Nevada, where he spent his childhood. His parents are Mormon and he is the youngest of six children. "I was a surprise," he says. "I've got a 42-year-old sister." If he was issues about his "surprise" status, he chooses to gloss over them. "It turned out perfect because my brother was a teenager when I was a kid," he says. "He would bring home things like Rattle And Hum by U2 and I would watch it. I remember he bought Live In Dallas by Morrissey. It was always him watching these things, or his door was shut and you'd hear The Head On The Door by The Cure blasting through the house and rattling the walls."
The Killers were formed when Brandon answered an advert Dave had placed in a local paper in late 2002. Dave cited Oasis as a big influence; Brandon had seen them play recently and responded; and, as Dave has said in previous interviews: "He was the only person to reply to my ad who wasn't a complete freak." However, the band was born in Brandon's brothers bedroom.
"His room was like a shrine," enthuses Brandon. "It was a holy place. I wish I could show you a picture of it. It was covered in posters. There'd be a big picture of Elvis wearing a bow tie that just said 'The Smiths' [the artwork for The Smiths 1987 single Shoplifters Of The World Unite]. You had The Cure wearing face paint [the artwork to The Cure's 1985 single In Between Days] - all that kind of stuff. I remember Morrissey being on the cover of the NME, with the halo [from 1985] - stuff like that. You just wanted to know about these people 'cause they were so cool. My brother seemed like such a cool person. But he was a teenager, so he wasn't going to be that nice to me, a kid."
Brandon was fascinated by his brother's collection of music, magazines and posters, but he was denied access to them - officially, at least. "I would sneak in," he says. "I knew he'd be angry if he found out, but I would go in as soon as he left the house." For a long time Brandon was too scared to actually play anything. "That didn't come 'til later. I just used to go in there because I liked it. Then I got to the point where I'd actually take a tape out and put it in. It took more guts to do that."
It was a life-changing moment. "I was ten and the first song I played was Sing Your Life by Morrissey. I remember dancing about to it."
The lyrics to Sing Your Life include the lines, "Sing your life/Just walk right up to the microphone/And name all the things that you love/All the things that you loathe." It's intriguing to wonder what Morrissey makes of the neophyte he inspired with these lines.
Eventually, Brandon inherited his brother's tape collection. "It was around the same time CDs started coming out in a big way. He started buying CDs and gave me his tapes. And that was it: it took off from there. I got a hundred of the best albums - all the New Order, all the Morrissey, all The Smiths, The Beatles. I started buying posters. I went to see The Cure in concert. It was just kind of a continuation of my brother. And it was nice because, though my parents were strict, they were already used to it from him. There was no, 'My dad doesn't understand me,' or any of that kind of stuff. My mum likes The Smiths."
Brandon was 13 and his favourite band was late-'70s/early-'80s American new wavers The Cars, and particularly their jaw-droppingly catchy 1979 single Just What I Needed.
"I wouldn't exist without that song," he says. "That was the one. I remember driving around with my mum when I was 13, and we're living in Nephi - a really small town - and I felt so cool when I put that song on. Like: 'I have something that none of these kids I'm going to middle school with tomorrow have.' That excitement is what music's about, isn't it? That's why I understand the mentality of people that don't like us because we've sold so many records. I used to like it when no one else knew about a band. So I get that - I do."
+
Brandon's first band was called Blush Response. It was never going to work out. Not because he refused to move to Los Angeles with them, but because he is utterly - comically - shameless. He's given to making outrageously boastful statements like: "It's not like the '60s, '70s and '80s now. There are only a few bands around that are really good, that just do it. I mean, there's what, five or six of us?"
For the record, in Brandon's estimation, those bands are Franz Ferdinand, Razorlight, The Strokes, The White Stripes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and, of course, The Killers.
"I don't want people to think I'm lumping myself with other people just to make us sound cool," he says. Really? It sort of sounds like you are. But he just steamrolls through it. "Yeah, but you know what I mean," he says, grinning at his own cheekiness. He's so disgracefully forward you can't help but laugh along with him - Oh you are awful, Brandon! But joking aside, The Killers are the most commercially successful of all the bands he mentions.
Later, back at the rehearsal space, the band run through Sam's Town at deafening volume in preparation for the forthcoming tour - first the US, then the world. The infectious, almost contagious, chorus of When You Were Young sounds fabulous, as do the U2-like guitars and Twin Peaks synths of Read My Mind. Meanwhile, Smile Like You Mean It and Somebody Told Me benefit from the newfound harder edge.
They somewhat heavy-handedly underline the new direction by playing Paranoid by Black Sabbath and Get It On by T Rex. That's the thing: The Killers are not a subtle band. Their songs are like a wet kiss from a girl who's a bit too drunk. They are big and brash, and not everyone loves them for it. Mr Brightside and Somebody Told Me might go down as well at hip nightclubs as they do on the festival circuit, but the DJs play them with the same guilty look they wear when playing a pop record.
"I hate that," says Brandon. "Like writing a song you can hum somehow cheapens it? It makes me think of this quote by Morrissey. Everybody knows how he read Oscar Wilde, Keats and Yates when he was growing up and that he wanted to be a writer. He was talking to this journalist who asked why he hadn't become a writer, and Morrissey said: 'What I do is more powerful than what you do because I can write down these words and you get it to a melody. How can you beat that?' I'm of the same opinion. I don't understand why a good melody that's memorable is a bad thing."
Being dismissed as pop particular aggrieves Ronnie. "When we first came out we got compared to Duran Duran all the time. Jesus Christ! We got a keyboard player now all of a sudden he's Nick Rhodes! Come on!"
"The people who criticise us for being too poppy don't get it," agrees Mark. "I think that's the problem with a lot of rock music. People are afraid to write a song any more. Either that or they can't. And that attitude hurts music in general. The best bands ever have all written great songs. You can still do it and do it intelligently and it can be original. This isn't a studio creation with a producer writing these songs for us. We're not Avril Lavigne, or something like that. We're a real band writing real songs, just like a punk band would do, except that we write pop songs."
You get the impression that The Killers knack for showboating pop hooks that border on vulgar is inextricably tied up with the brazen side of Brandon's personality. But while his ebullient charisma, not to mention the songs themselves, mitigates his outrageousness, there is a less attractive side to his ego. He has a combative streak. He can't resist taking pot shots at emo bands, notably Fall Out Boy, whith whom The Killers share an A&R man.
Has he heard how many emo kids it takes to change a light bulb? "No." None. They just sit in the dark and cry. It's a full 30 seconds before he stops laughing. When he does he admits: "Yeah, we've had problems with other bands. You know, when you walk in the room it's like..." He whistles the theme to The Good, The Bad And The Ugly. "We're like gangs."
And while the other members of the band are diplomatic on the subject of Brandon, you don't have to read too deeply between the lines to conclude that there have been internal issues, too.
"Some people will think Brandon's the big genius," says Dave, visibly bridling. "There are songs, such as Why Do I Keep Counting?, where he's written every note. But there are others, like When You Were Young, that were more of a collaboration - like Mr Brightside, where I had some of the music and Brandon came up with the lyrics. We always have arguments about who wrote what. The truth is that we all help in that process."
When asked how success affected them, Ronnie says: "There were certain things that needed adjusting. When you're on tour for two years, people can get a little needy. It doesn't help that you're surrounded by yes men and everybody's working for you. At times we've had to say, 'Who do you think you are?' to people. No one wears the trousers, but some people would like to. I think if it wasn't for the people in the band kicking each other in the ass... Let's just say there was some ass-kickin'."
It doesn't take a genius to work out whose ass needed kicking most often.
+
It's the following day and The Killers are back at their rehearsal space. The topic of discussion is what to wear in the video for Bones, the second single. It's a big deal: the director is Tim Burton. "I feel like Frank Sinatra when I sing it," announces Brandon. "With maybe a little bit of Morrissey and a little bit of Elvis, too."
Of course he does. But if securing the services of Tim Burton tells you one thing, it's that The Killers are about to get even bigger, perhaps even make the leap to the same level as Coldplay et al. Already stars, they are about to become superstars. Brandon can hardly wait.
"Do you know that Rolling Stone didn't want to put us on the cover last time," he says indignantly. "They didn't think we were stars. We sold five million albums! What more do they want from a band?"
Whatever was required, Brandon would be happy to do most things. "I'll do stuff that some people don't want to do, 'cause I want people to hear the music," he says. However, even he has limits. "The Rolling Stone thing made the record label think: 'What can we do to make them stars?' If I go on vacation with my wife, do they have to send somebody to be there to take pictures of me? Is that how you become a star? I don't want that. I walked down the red carpet one time and I realised I don't like it. But you don't have to walk down the red carpet for people to hear your music. We do still have some of that indie blood running through our veins."
He heads off at a tangent: "When you walk around Liverpool, you think of The Beatles, or you go to Manchester and you think of The Smiths or Oasis. I want you to come to Las Vegas and think of Sam's Town. And I think we've started to capture that, which is a truer version of The Killers, 'cause that's where we're from."
He pauses.
"I used to live across the street from Sam's Town. Maybe it'll be like our Abbey Road where people go to take pictures."
Is that what he'd like?
"I wouldn't mind it," he says, desperately hoping it will come true.
He puts a cigarette between his lips, looks down at his trouser pockets and pats them in search of the lighter he bought yesterday.
"Hey, I don't suppose you've got one?"

I was a homeschooled only child, raised in a QAnon/conspiracy theorist household. It was just a recipe for disaster, and I’ve slowly been trying to put the pieces together to figure things out.
I kind of thought things were going okay, but covid is what really made my world crumble. Out of everything, I think watching my parents turn into doomsday anti-vaxxers was the most devastating thing I’ve ever endured. I had to hide my covid vaccinations from them because my mom threatened to disown me if I “took the mark of the beast.” My dad thinks it’ll turn people into government controlled zombies. I have no other family, and honestly no strong friendships because I was isolated my entire childhood.
I grew up a huge fan of contemporary Christian music, and having so many of my favorite artists spiral into similar ideologies as my parents made me feel so alone. I won’t name anyone directly, but several have said or posted hurtful things regarding LGBTQ rights, and people like me who still mask up out of caution for covid. One artist I especially loved changed the lyrics and made a mockery of Amazing Grace when I saw him in concert in 2022. He said “since we were in good old Florida, he knew he could get away with it.”
(Trigger warning honestly if you don’t want the song ruined for you)
He sang “My mask is gone, I’ve been set free” and a bunch of other altered verses making fun of anyone who still cared about the pandemic. I felt excruciatingly uncomfortable sitting there in the first couple of rows, the only person in the crowd wearing a mask. The same artist has also posted stuff endorsing toxic purity culture and also anti-trans things.
He’s not the only one. I’ve really started having a tough time separating the artists from the music. I know of a couple who’ve posted some more inclusive things which is nice, but overall the CCM industry has really been giving me the ick lately. Not only that, but my old church as well.
I stopped attending church shortly before 2020. I’m honestly thankful for that because several of my old “Bible study” friends have become versions of themselves I hardly recognize. Maybe I was just oblivious to it at the less politically charged time, but gosh. I moved away so I haven’t seen them in about 5 years, but we’re still Facebook friends and it’s insane how many seem to have become QAnon/conspiracy theorists like my parents. They were normal in high school, at least I thought they were, so what happened?
I’ve thought about looking for a new church, but I’m not sure if I’m ready yet. I used to pray and worship and read scripture all the time, but now I’m ashamed to say it all feels like a chore. I’m terrified of losing my relationship with God, but I don’t feel authentic in my faith like I used to. Because I’ve been hurt by the people who used to encourage me in my faith, that pain has radiated its way into who I am today: someone who doesn’t know how to feel like myself, because I don’t even know who she is anymore.
I cringe listening to my old favorite worship songs. I want to feel that love for my faith again, but I can’t stop associating it with the insanity I’ve been subjected to.
As a teenager I pledged to “save my first kiss for my wedding day,” and that was something I was honestly happy with, until last year when I realized how absolutely deranged that concept was. Sure, don’t even kiss a man until you’ve signed a lifetime contract promising to never leave him for any reason whatsoever. Oh yeah, and while you’re at it make sure you’re submissive to him in everything because he’s “the head of the household.”
I’m now 27 and still have never had a boyfriend, still haven’t kissed anyone. I’ve been on dates with 5 men, and didn’t make it past a second date with any of them. The first one, I was 21 years old. He was from my Bible study, the one I mentioned earlier. He asked me for nudes after our one and only date and wouldn’t stop pressuring me to send them, even after I told him about my then-delusion of no kissing til marriage. I never gave him any thankfully.
I also didn’t go on another date with anyone until I was 25. I had ONE date to my name at the age of 25, because the one time I trusted a “nice boy from church,” he pulled that stunt and I was revolted.
The second guy I went out with, he was really nice but I just didn’t have feelings for him, which made me guilty for some reason. I don’t think I was ever taught growing up that it’s important to feel a connection with a guy, you’re just expected to take what you can get. We only had that one date. The third guy just wanted a hook up, and I was still hooked on purity culture so it went nowhere.
I didn’t have feelings for the fourth and fifth guys either. I only went out with them because they asked me, and out of loneliness and being too guilty to say no, I talked to them for longer than I should have, wasting everyone’s time.
I don’t know if this is from trauma, but I don’t feel attraction to most guys in real life. I know I’m straight because I definitely have a type in my head. Kind hearted, athletic and muscular but not overly so, fluffy hair and just cuddly and sweet gentle and wholesome. I feel shallow that I’m mostly only attracted to that, but I can’t help it.
I just don’t feel safe with meeting new people, fearing that I’ll accidentally bring someone damaging into my life that I can’t get rid of. Someone who doesn’t have the best intentions, and I struggle to hurt feelings by turning people down. What if we do get into a relationship, and I find out he has a belief that’s a deal breaker for me? I’m afraid I’ll temporarily tolerate something that will inevitably lead to us separating, but I’m too spineless to end things when I should. It’s mostly because I don’t know how to say no, but also because I’d fear landing back at square one, single and alone.
Now I’m in a weird place where I feel like I need to figure myself out more before I try inviting someone in. But I’m 27, and feel “over the hill,” especially as someone with virtually zero real romantic experience. I definitely don’t want my first kiss to be at the alter, but at the same time I’m conflicted on how the heck to feel comfortable with the idea of gasp having sex outside of marriage. I don’t even know when it would feel “okay.” Is six months into a relationship decently enough? Is that too long to find out if we’re incompatible? I was taught nothing so I’m feeling lost. And it’s hard to keep suppressing my forced tendency of “even holding a man’s hand is cheating on your future husband!”
Most of my prayers now are an endless cycle of “please forgive me, I’m sorry, I don’t know why I don’t feel like praying but I promise I still love You.” I feel awful saying this because I know it’s not true but I do feel unloved sometimes. Like I feel like I’m annoying Jesus somehow when I babble on about whatever thing I’m distraught about. But if I go through the default prayer order of Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and THEN finally Supplication, it feels insincere. I don’t want to speed through worshipful prayers just to get to the part I really feel like doing, begging for some sort of help. But I feel almost obligated to essentially suck up to God first before saying what I really mean. That doesn’t feel like a real honest relationship to me and it’s a rut I’ve been desperate to get out of.
Every January 1st and every birthday, for probably the past good 5 or 6 years, I’ve started a “One Year Bible” plan that I always end up abandoning after like 10 days. I just can’t stick to it. It’s not even strictly Genesis-Revelation order. It sprinkles in some chapters from the Old Testament, New Testament, Psalms, and Proverbs every day, and each day takes maybe 15 minutes max to do. But somehow I always miss a day, then never catch up, saying I’ll try again the next “landmark day,” January 1st or my birthday, whichever comes next. I don’t know why I can’t love reading scripture. I want to so badly, but I don’t crave it unless I’ve had a nightmare and I need something to calm me down. It’s not a daily desire for me and I wish it was.
This post was a little all over the place, but I guess what I’m trying to ask is how do I cope with the loss of who I thought I was? How do I get comfortable with who I am now? I’m horrified at how long I subscribed to my parents’ beliefs without questioning anything. I just adopted any and everything I was told, and it created a clueless, confused adult.

Hey, yall. This is fganniversaries and apologies for missing last week; I genuinely thought that I posted for the week but turns out that I didn't upon looking. As per usual, I will be recapping anniversaries relating to fighting game announcements/releases this week. Like always, if I missed one, do please let me know in the comments. Here would be the following anniversaries:
May 13

• 2023: SF6 20 Days Left & 19 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2022: KOFXV Team South Town Press Release
• 2022: Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl - Official Jenny, Hugh Neutron & Rocko Reveal Trailer/Jenny DLC Release + Moveset & Gameplay Showcase
• 2021: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles Kyojuro Rengoku Reveal
• 2021: KOFXV Leona Heidern Tomohiro Nakata Sketch
• 2020: Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath - Official Gameplay Trailer
• 2020: Samurai Shodown (2019) - Iroha DLC Release
• 2020: TFH Post-Launch Development Update #1 + Story Mode Chapter 1 Dev Commentary
• 2016: UNIB 5-13-16 Information Division Corner
• 2014: BBCP Version 1.1 Patch Notes
• 2014: JJBA:ASB Lisa Lisa & Ikuro Hashizawa DLC Release
• 2014: Skullgirls Encore 1.02: Are You Ready For? Edition Patch Notes
• 2014: SSB3DS/Wii U 5/13/14 Director’s Room Post - Charizard’s Flare Blitz Special Move Reveal
• 2013: Divekick - New Character Reveal: Markman + #eSports Hour #5
• 2010: Battle Fantasia Xbox Live Distribution
• 2010: BlazBlue PC Release Postpone Announcement
• 2005: SvC Chaos releasing on Xbox at AU.

May 14

• 2023: KOFXV Sylvie Paula Paula Character Breakdown Trailer
• 2023: SF6 18 Days Left Countdown Illustration/Dan Tails
• 2020: GGST 1st Delay Announcement
• 2020: KOFx WWE + Cinematic Trailer/Razer Giveaway
• 2019: Samurai Shodown (2019) - Return of a Legend Trailer/Character Trailer #6 - Genjuro & Character Trailer #7 - Haohmaru
• 2019: SCVI Update Ver. 1.40 Patch Notes
• 2018: ARCommunity Sol Badguy of Guilty Gear - Digital Painting by Nainsoo
• 2018: Blade Strangers - Kawase Gameplay Trailer
• 2018: Guilty Gear NS, PS4, and PC Digital Port Announcement
• 2015: MKX Patch Notes 5/14/15 + Reptile Skin
• 2014: BBCP Version 1.1 Release
• 2014: SSB4 5/14/14 Director’s Room Post - Brittany Trophy Reveal
• 2013: Injustice "The Killing Joke" Skin Pack Announcement
• 2013: Skullgirls Color DLC Today, New Characters Coming
• 2009: Bleach: Heat the Soul 6 originally releasing on PSP at JP.
• 1998: Guilty Gear: The Missing Link originally releasing on PS1 at JP.

May 15

• 2023: Street Fighter 6 - Open Beta Video 1: Characters & Battle System/17 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2022: KOFXV Team South Town Team Story
• 2021: PS5 releasing at CHN.
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.52.2 - 0.52.3 Change Log
• 2020: KOFAS x WWE Blogpost
• 2019: GBVS Trailers: Gran, Katalina, Charlotta, Lancelot, Ferry
• 2019: GGXXACR NS Promotional Video
• 2019: Guilty Gear releaisng on PC via Steam WW.
• 2019: MK11 Combo Breaker Tournament Stage Variant Reveal + Gameplay Footage
• 2018: Blade Strangers - Noko GameplayTrailer/Blade Strangers Joined by Indie All-Stars
• 2018: FEXL 01-2018/05/15 Battle Video
• 2017: Injustice 2 - Official Gameplay Launch Trailer
• 2015: Killer Instinct (2013) Textual Stream Part 2: The One About Hisako, Cinder, and Q&A/ Retro Hisako & Cinder
• 2015: Tekken 7 - Jack-7 Reveal Trailer
• 2015: Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] Announcement + Phonon Reveal & Location Test Announcement
• 2014: Arcana Heart 3: Love Max!!!!! PS3/Vita Promotion Movie
• 2014: P4AU Labrys Trailer
• 2014: SSB4 5/15/14 Director’s Room Post - Color TV-Game 15 Assist Trophy Details
• 2014: UNIEL System Page
• 2014: USFIV Pre-Order Costumes Trailer/Balance Changes Videos for Ryu, Gouken, Evil Ryu, & Cammy.
• 2013: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle Kars & Kishibe Rohan Reveal
• 2013: Skullgirls - Early Work-in-Progress River King Casino Music - Piano Melody
• 2012: Asura Wrath's Lost Episode 2 releasing on PS3 and Xbox 360.
• 2008: Bleach: Heat the Soul 5 originally releasing as a PSP exclusive only at JP.
• 2007: Art of Fighting Anthology releasing on PS2 at US.
• 1998: Clay Fighter: Sculptor's Cut originally releasing as Blockbuster rental exclusive on the Nintendo 64 at NA.
• 1994: ClayFighter Tournament Edition originally released as a SNES exclusive only in NA as a Blockbuster rental exclusive.

May 16

• 2023: KOFXV Sylvie Paula Paula DLC Release + Character Profile, Story + Smartphone Wallpaper
• 2023: Street Fighter 6 - Open Beta Video 2: Battle Hub/16 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2022: MultiVersus – Official Cinematic Trailer - "You're with Me!"
• 2021: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles Character Intro Trailer #10: Kyojuro Rengoku
• 2021: Guilty Gear -Strive- Story Trailer Livestream
• 2021: Samurai Shodown (2019) Shiro Tokisada Amakusa Reveal + Steam Port Announcement
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.53.0 - 0.53.2 Change Log
• 2019: Flappy Fighter - Battle 2
• 2019: GG1 + GGXXACR releasing on Nintendo Switch via eShop WW + Guilty Gear 20th Anniversary Collection releasing at JP
• 2018: Blade Strangers - Helen Gameplay Trailer
• 2018: BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle - RWBY Highlight Trailer
• 2018: FEXL 01-2018/05/16 Battle Video
• 2017: Injustice 2 originally releasing on PS4 and XB1 at NA.
• 2017: UNIST Experience Event Announcement
• 2014: P4AU Ver.1.11 Update Notice
• 2014: SSB4 5/16/14 Director’s Room Post - Villager Alternate Costumes Reveal
• 2014: UNIB 2014 Summer Illustration Contest Announcement
• 2008: GGXXAC+R Hidden Element Annonncement
• 2001: Project Justice releasing on Dreamcast at NA.
• 2001: Super Smash Bros. Melee Official Reveal + Trailers #1 & #2/ Reactions

May 17

• 2023: GGST Season Pass 2 Playable Character #4 [Asuka R♯] Trailer/Gamespot Exclusive Gameplay
• 2023: SF6 15 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2021: Mortal Kombat 1 - Tomorrow Is A New Dawn Teaser
• 2023: KOFXV Sylvie Paula Paula Concept Art
• 2023: Street Fighter 6 - Open Beta Video 3: Competitive Features & Events
• 2022: DNF Duel｜Story Mode
• 2022: KOFXV Team South Town DLC Release/Geese Howard Tomohiro Nakata Sketch
• 2021: ExplaMaytions with May! Episode 1 - What is Magic?
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.53.3 - 0.53.4 Change Log
• 2020: DBFZ Goku (Ultra Instinct) Launch Trailer
• 2019: GBVS Closed Beta Exhibition Match
• 2019: Guilty Gear 20th Anniversary Collection releasing at EU + Launch Trailer
• 2019: Kill la Kill If Story Mode Chapter 1 Movie Preview
• 2018: Blade Strangers - Liongate Gameplay Trailer
• 2018: BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle - Persona 4 Arena Highlight + Yang Gameplay - Distortions, Combos & Assists
• 2018: SCVI Yoshimitsu Reveal + Screenshots
• 2017: Injustice 2 releasing on PS4 & XB1 at AU.
• 2017: Tekken 7 - Character Trailer #2
• 2013: BlazBlue Anime Adaptation Announcement
• 2013: Skullgirls Beowulf Announcement
• 2013: UNIB 2013 May Q&A Corner
• 2012: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Hades Brawl & Colorful Battle Videos
• 2010: BBCS 2nd PV Trailer
• 2008: SCVI Ashlotte Reveal
• 2005: Nintendo Wii Official Reveal at E3 2005
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl Announcement
• 2005: Spectral VS Generation originally releasing at arcades at JP
• 2001: Super Smash Bros. Melee Official Website Launch/IGN E3 Hands-On Impression & Gameplay #1, #2, #3

May 18

• 2023: Guilty Gear -Strive- Starter Guide - Asuka R♯
• 2023: Mortal Kombat 1 - Official Announcement Trailer
• 2023: KOFXV Sylvie Paula Paula Theme BGM Composer Statement
• 2023: Street Fighter 6: Days of the Eclipse #3: Manipulation Issue Release/14 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2021: ExplaMaytions with May! Episode 2 - Worldwide Development and Gears
• 2021: Fighting Game Glossary by Infilament originally launching
• 2021: KOFXV Ralf Jones & Clark Still Silhouette
• 2021: Skullgirls 2nd Encore 2021-05-18 Beta Mode Update
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.53.5 Change Log
• 2020: Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath - Official Friendships Trailer
• 2019: TFH Early Access Patch #19
• 2018: Blade Strangers - Curly Brace
• 2016: KOFXIV Team Gameplay Trailer #2 - Yagami
• 2012: Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion XL releasing on the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 at EU.
• 2012: UNIB Waldstein SD Wallpaper
• 2011: BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II releasing at arcades at NA.

May 19

• 2023: Mortal Kombat 1 Kollector’s Edition Liu Kang Statue Preview
• 2023: SF6 13 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2022: DNF Duel｜Practice Mode
• 2022: KOFXV Team South Town Kou:G Illustration
• 2021: ExplaMaytions with May! Episode 3 - The Crusades
• 2021: KOFXV - Character Trailer #19-20 - Ralf Jones & Clark Still + Screenshots/Team Ikari Reveal
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.53.6 - 0.53.7 Change Log
• 2021: Umbrella Animation Stream with Persona! (May 19, 2021)
• 2017: Injustice 2 releasing on PS4 & XB1 at EU.
• 2017: Tekken 7 “No Glory For Heroes” English Story Trailer
• 2017: UNIST Home Information
• 2016: Killer Instinct (2013) Gargos Release Date Reveal/Gargos Ultra Combo & Montage, Gameplay Footage vs. Mira, Thunder & Tusk
• 2015: Street Fighter V - M. Bison Reveal Trailer
• 2015: Tekken 7 Jack-7 Release
• 2014: BB x BB Collaboration Beginning
• 2014: SSB4 5/19/14 Director’s Room Post
• 2013: Guilty Gear Xrd -Sign- Announcement Trailer + Screenshots
• 2011: Dead or Alive: Dimensions originally releasing on the Nintendo 3DS at JP.
• 2010: BBCS Tager & Litchi Information
• 2005: IGN E3 2005: Shigeru Miyamoto Interview
• 2005: Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection originally releasing as a PS2 exclusive only in JP.
• 1998: Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. originally releasing on the Nintendo 64 at NA.

May 20

• 2023: SF6 12 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2021: Blazing Strike Publisher “Aksys Games” Reveal + Press Release
• 2021: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles Tanjiro Kamado (Hinokami Kagura) Reveal
• 2021: ExplaMaytions with May! Episode 4 - The Second Holy Order Selection Tournament
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.53.8 - 0.53.9 Change Log
• 2021: Virtua Fighter x eSports Official Announcement Live Stream Reveal
• 2020: Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath – RoboCop vs. Terminator Round 1 & Round 2 Gameplay Footage
• 2020: TFH Version 1.0.3 Patch Notes
• 2016: One Piece: Great Pirate Colosseum Announcement
• 2016: UNIB 5-20-16 Licht Kreis Information Division Corner
• 2015: M.Bison Makes His Return in SFV
• 2014: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle Vannila Ice, Pannacotta Fugo & Narciso Anasui DLC Release
• 2014: P4AU Ken Armada & Koromaru Reveal
• 2014: SSB4 5/20/14 Director’s Room Post - Assist Trophy Item Capsule Showcase
• 2014: USFIV PS4 Pre-Orders Beginning
• 2013: ASW 25th Anniversary Book Release Window Reveal + Festival Conclusion Message
• 2013: Injustice Gods Among Us v1.03 Patch Notes
• 2011: BBCS 3rd Patch Distribution
• 2011: Dead or Alive: Dimensions releasing on the Nintendo 3DS at EU.
• 2011: Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus releasing on Wii at EU.

Hey, yall. This is fganniversaries and apologies for missing last week; I genuinely thought that I posted for the week but turns out that I didn't upon looking. As per usual, I will be recapping anniversaries relating to fighting game announcements/releases this week. Like always, if I missed one, do please let me know in the comments. Here would be the following anniversaries:
May 13

• 2023: SF6 20 Days Left & 19 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2022: KOFXV Team South Town Press Release
• 2022: Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl - Official Jenny, Hugh Neutron & Rocko Reveal Trailer/Jenny DLC Release + Moveset & Gameplay Showcase
• 2021: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles Kyojuro Rengoku Reveal
• 2021: KOFXV Leona Heidern Tomohiro Nakata Sketch
• 2020: Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath - Official Gameplay Trailer
• 2020: Samurai Shodown (2019) - Iroha DLC Release
• 2020: TFH Post-Launch Development Update #1 + Story Mode Chapter 1 Dev Commentary
• 2016: UNIB 5-13-16 Information Division Corner
• 2014: BBCP Version 1.1 Patch Notes
• 2014: JJBA:ASB Lisa Lisa & Ikuro Hashizawa DLC Release
• 2014: Skullgirls Encore 1.02: Are You Ready For? Edition Patch Notes
• 2014: SSB3DS/Wii U 5/13/14 Director’s Room Post - Charizard’s Flare Blitz Special Move Reveal
• 2013: Divekick - New Character Reveal: Markman + #eSports Hour #5
• 2010: Battle Fantasia Xbox Live Distribution
• 2010: BlazBlue PC Release Postpone Announcement
• 2005: SvC Chaos releasing on Xbox at AU.

May 14

• 2023: KOFXV Sylvie Paula Paula Character Breakdown Trailer
• 2023: SF6 18 Days Left Countdown Illustration/Dan Tails
• 2020: GGST 1st Delay Announcement
• 2020: KOFx WWE + Cinematic Trailer/Razer Giveaway
• 2019: Samurai Shodown (2019) - Return of a Legend Trailer/Character Trailer #6 - Genjuro & Character Trailer #7 - Haohmaru
• 2019: SCVI Update Ver. 1.40 Patch Notes
• 2018: ARCommunity Sol Badguy of Guilty Gear - Digital Painting by Nainsoo
• 2018: Blade Strangers - Kawase Gameplay Trailer
• 2018: Guilty Gear NS, PS4, and PC Digital Port Announcement
• 2015: MKX Patch Notes 5/14/15 + Reptile Skin
• 2014: BBCP Version 1.1 Release
• 2014: SSB4 5/14/14 Director’s Room Post - Brittany Trophy Reveal
• 2013: Injustice "The Killing Joke" Skin Pack Announcement
• 2013: Skullgirls Color DLC Today, New Characters Coming
• 2009: Bleach: Heat the Soul 6 originally releasing on PSP at JP.
• 1998: Guilty Gear: The Missing Link originally releasing on PS1 at JP.

May 15

• 2023: Street Fighter 6 - Open Beta Video 1: Characters & Battle System/17 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2022: KOFXV Team South Town Team Story
• 2021: PS5 releasing at CHN.
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.52.2 - 0.52.3 Change Log
• 2020: KOFAS x WWE Blogpost
• 2019: GBVS Trailers: Gran, Katalina, Charlotta, Lancelot, Ferry
• 2019: GGXXACR NS Promotional Video
• 2019: Guilty Gear releaisng on PC via Steam WW.
• 2019: MK11 Combo Breaker Tournament Stage Variant Reveal + Gameplay Footage
• 2018: Blade Strangers - Noko GameplayTrailer/Blade Strangers Joined by Indie All-Stars
• 2018: FEXL 01-2018/05/15 Battle Video
• 2017: Injustice 2 - Official Gameplay Launch Trailer
• 2015: Killer Instinct (2013) Textual Stream Part 2: The One About Hisako, Cinder, and Q&A/ Retro Hisako & Cinder
• 2015: Tekken 7 - Jack-7 Reveal Trailer
• 2015: Under Night In-Birth Exe:Late[st] Announcement + Phonon Reveal & Location Test Announcement
• 2014: Arcana Heart 3: Love Max!!!!! PS3/Vita Promotion Movie
• 2014: P4AU Labrys Trailer
• 2014: SSB4 5/15/14 Director’s Room Post - Color TV-Game 15 Assist Trophy Details
• 2014: UNIEL System Page
• 2014: USFIV Pre-Order Costumes Trailer/Balance Changes Videos for Ryu, Gouken, Evil Ryu, & Cammy.
• 2013: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle Kars & Kishibe Rohan Reveal
• 2013: Skullgirls - Early Work-in-Progress River King Casino Music - Piano Melody
• 2012: Asura Wrath's Lost Episode 2 releasing on PS3 and Xbox 360.
• 2008: Bleach: Heat the Soul 5 originally releasing as a PSP exclusive only at JP.
• 2007: Art of Fighting Anthology releasing on PS2 at US.
• 1998: Clay Fighter: Sculptor's Cut originally releasing as Blockbuster rental exclusive on the Nintendo 64 at NA.
• 1994: ClayFighter Tournament Edition originally released as a SNES exclusive only in NA as a Blockbuster rental exclusive.

May 16

• 2023: KOFXV Sylvie Paula Paula DLC Release + Character Profile, Story + Smartphone Wallpaper
• 2023: Street Fighter 6 - Open Beta Video 2: Battle Hub/16 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2022: MultiVersus – Official Cinematic Trailer - "You're with Me!"
• 2021: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles Character Intro Trailer #10: Kyojuro Rengoku
• 2021: Guilty Gear -Strive- Story Trailer Livestream
• 2021: Samurai Shodown (2019) Shiro Tokisada Amakusa Reveal + Steam Port Announcement
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.53.0 - 0.53.2 Change Log
• 2019: Flappy Fighter - Battle 2
• 2019: GG1 + GGXXACR releasing on Nintendo Switch via eShop WW + Guilty Gear 20th Anniversary Collection releasing at JP
• 2018: Blade Strangers - Helen Gameplay Trailer
• 2018: BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle - RWBY Highlight Trailer
• 2018: FEXL 01-2018/05/16 Battle Video
• 2017: Injustice 2 originally releasing on PS4 and XB1 at NA.
• 2017: UNIST Experience Event Announcement
• 2014: P4AU Ver.1.11 Update Notice
• 2014: SSB4 5/16/14 Director’s Room Post - Villager Alternate Costumes Reveal
• 2014: UNIB 2014 Summer Illustration Contest Announcement
• 2008: GGXXAC+R Hidden Element Annonncement
• 2001: Project Justice releasing on Dreamcast at NA.
• 2001: Super Smash Bros. Melee Official Reveal + Trailers #1 & #2/ Reactions

May 17

• 2023: GGST Season Pass 2 Playable Character #4 [Asuka R♯] Trailer/Gamespot Exclusive Gameplay
• 2023: SF6 15 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2021: Mortal Kombat 1 - Tomorrow Is A New Dawn Teaser
• 2023: KOFXV Sylvie Paula Paula Concept Art
• 2023: Street Fighter 6 - Open Beta Video 3: Competitive Features & Events
• 2022: DNF Duel｜Story Mode
• 2022: KOFXV Team South Town DLC Release/Geese Howard Tomohiro Nakata Sketch
• 2021: ExplaMaytions with May! Episode 1 - What is Magic?
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.53.3 - 0.53.4 Change Log
• 2020: DBFZ Goku (Ultra Instinct) Launch Trailer
• 2019: GBVS Closed Beta Exhibition Match
• 2019: Guilty Gear 20th Anniversary Collection releasing at EU + Launch Trailer
• 2019: Kill la Kill If Story Mode Chapter 1 Movie Preview
• 2018: Blade Strangers - Liongate Gameplay Trailer
• 2018: BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle - Persona 4 Arena Highlight + Yang Gameplay - Distortions, Combos & Assists
• 2018: SCVI Yoshimitsu Reveal + Screenshots
• 2017: Injustice 2 releasing on PS4 & XB1 at AU.
• 2017: Tekken 7 - Character Trailer #2
• 2013: BlazBlue Anime Adaptation Announcement
• 2013: Skullgirls Beowulf Announcement
• 2013: UNIB 2013 May Q&A Corner
• 2012: PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale Hades Brawl & Colorful Battle Videos
• 2010: BBCS 2nd PV Trailer
• 2008: SCVI Ashlotte Reveal
• 2005: Nintendo Wii Official Reveal at E3 2005
• Super Smash Bros. Brawl Announcement
• 2005: Spectral VS Generation originally releasing at arcades at JP
• 2001: Super Smash Bros. Melee Official Website Launch/IGN E3 Hands-On Impression & Gameplay #1, #2, #3

May 18

• 2023: Guilty Gear -Strive- Starter Guide - Asuka R♯
• 2023: Mortal Kombat 1 - Official Announcement Trailer
• 2023: KOFXV Sylvie Paula Paula Theme BGM Composer Statement
• 2023: Street Fighter 6: Days of the Eclipse #3: Manipulation Issue Release/14 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2021: ExplaMaytions with May! Episode 2 - Worldwide Development and Gears
• 2021: Fighting Game Glossary by Infilament originally launching
• 2021: KOFXV Ralf Jones & Clark Still Silhouette
• 2021: Skullgirls 2nd Encore 2021-05-18 Beta Mode Update
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.53.5 Change Log
• 2020: Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath - Official Friendships Trailer
• 2019: TFH Early Access Patch #19
• 2018: Blade Strangers - Curly Brace
• 2016: KOFXIV Team Gameplay Trailer #2 - Yagami
• 2012: Cartoon Network Punch Time Explosion XL releasing on the Wii, PS3, and Xbox 360 at EU.
• 2012: UNIB Waldstein SD Wallpaper
• 2011: BlazBlue: Continuum Shift II releasing at arcades at NA.

May 19

• 2023: Mortal Kombat 1 Kollector’s Edition Liu Kang Statue Preview
• 2023: SF6 13 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2022: DNF Duel｜Practice Mode
• 2022: KOFXV Team South Town Kou:G Illustration
• 2021: ExplaMaytions with May! Episode 3 - The Crusades
• 2021: KOFXV - Character Trailer #19-20 - Ralf Jones & Clark Still + Screenshots/Team Ikari Reveal
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.53.6 - 0.53.7 Change Log
• 2021: Umbrella Animation Stream with Persona! (May 19, 2021)
• 2017: Injustice 2 releasing on PS4 & XB1 at EU.
• 2017: Tekken 7 “No Glory For Heroes” English Story Trailer
• 2017: UNIST Home Information
• 2016: Killer Instinct (2013) Gargos Release Date Reveal/Gargos Ultra Combo & Montage, Gameplay Footage vs. Mira, Thunder & Tusk
• 2015: Street Fighter V - M. Bison Reveal Trailer
• 2015: Tekken 7 Jack-7 Release
• 2014: BB x BB Collaboration Beginning
• 2014: SSB4 5/19/14 Director’s Room Post
• 2013: Guilty Gear Xrd -Sign- Announcement Trailer + Screenshots
• 2011: Dead or Alive: Dimensions originally releasing on the Nintendo 3DS at JP.
• 2010: BBCS Tager & Litchi Information
• 2005: IGN E3 2005: Shigeru Miyamoto Interview
• 2005: Vampire: Darkstalkers Collection originally releasing as a PS2 exclusive only in JP.
• 1998: Bio F.R.E.A.K.S. originally releasing on the Nintendo 64 at NA.

May 20

• 2023: SF6 12 Days Left Countdown Illustration
• 2021: Blazing Strike Publisher “Aksys Games” Reveal + Press Release
• 2021: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Hinokami Chronicles Tanjiro Kamado (Hinokami Kagura) Reveal
• 2021: ExplaMaytions with May! Episode 4 - The Second Holy Order Selection Tournament
• 2021: Tough Love Arena 0.53.8 - 0.53.9 Change Log
• 2021: Virtua Fighter x eSports Official Announcement Live Stream Reveal
• 2020: Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath – RoboCop vs. Terminator Round 1 & Round 2 Gameplay Footage
• 2020: TFH Version 1.0.3 Patch Notes
• 2016: One Piece: Great Pirate Colosseum Announcement
• 2016: UNIB 5-20-16 Licht Kreis Information Division Corner
• 2015: M.Bison Makes His Return in SFV
• 2014: JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: All-Star Battle Vannila Ice, Pannacotta Fugo & Narciso Anasui DLC Release
• 2014: P4AU Ken Armada & Koromaru Reveal
• 2014: SSB4 5/20/14 Director’s Room Post - Assist Trophy Item Capsule Showcase
• 2014: USFIV PS4 Pre-Orders Beginning
• 2013: ASW 25th Anniversary Book Release Window Reveal + Festival Conclusion Message
• 2013: Injustice Gods Among Us v1.03 Patch Notes
• 2011: BBCS 3rd Patch Distribution
• 2011: Dead or Alive: Dimensions releasing on the Nintendo 3DS at EU.
• 2011: Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus releasing on Wii at EU.

So yeah... this is a post where I review all 5 Cage The Elephant albums. Pretty simple. These are all reviews that I originally wrote on an app/website called "Musicboard" over the past couple weeks, but I've copy-pasted them here for your reading convenience. Hope you enjoy & I hope to to talk about these albums with you!
____________________________________________

Self Titled

Probably their weakest album to date, but still a pretty solid debut overall.
I hate to be so predictable, but the best song here is still “Ain’t No Rest for The Wicked”, and it ain’t even close. It’s extremely fun & catchy, it’s the album’s most sonically distinct piece BY FAR, and it’s storytelling/pacing are both absolutely flawless. A track that absolutely deserves it’s iconic status.
Even though the record’s best isn’t up for debate, there are some other pretty good highlights as well. “In One Ear” is a very solid opener for the project, “Judas” gives us consistently excellent lyricism, and “Tiny Little Robots” has an uncharacteristically super atmospheric bridge which makes it stand out quite a bit. It also transitions super smoothly into the following “Lotus” who’s engaging pacing, beautiful chorus, & satisfying climax make it another easy favourite for me.
But then beyond the lovably visceral energy of it’s closer, “Free Love”, Cage The Elephant’s self-titled debut really doesn’t give me a whole lot more to talk about. It’s got consistently great musicianship, a decent number of highlights, and some bizarrely excellent song transitions, but the album has a really bad case of being FAR too samey. Everything outside of the tracks I’ve already mentioned blend together in my mind almost completely. None of them are bad, but none of them are particularly memorable either.
This album is still pretty good at the end of the day, some solid garage rock fun, but Cage’s later projects would all feel a whole lot more distinct & purposeful.
Best Songs: Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked, Lotus, & Free Love.
Weakest Songs: Drones in the Valley, Soil to the Sun, & Back Stabbin' Betty.
This album gets a strong 7/10 from me.
____________________________________________

Thank You, Happy Birthday

It may be a little all over the place, but it’s still a pretty big improvement over their debut.
For one, the sound of this album is FAR more lush & vibrant than that of their debut. The guitars here are especially brimming with so much more life & colour than they were on their self-titled record. Another big improvement is that record is how much more variety this album has. It’s an incredibly stylistically varied project, and while that does lead to it feeling a little messy every so often, it’s all still held together very well by excellent & super aesthetically consistent production.
The album starts out quite strong with “Always Something”. The ominous guitars, raw vocals, & slight electronic elements all combine to make for a rather gripping opener. Other highlights include “Shake Me Down” which I love for it’s percussive acoustic guitars & personal childhood nostalgia, “Aberdeen” which I love for it’s super catchy melodies & powerfully mixed guitars, as well as “Right Before My Eyes” which has a similarly excellent sound & a surprisingly moving chorus.
This record also contains a lot of the most loudly abrasive material that Cage have ever released... to very mixed results. You have tracks like “Sell Yourself” & “Doctor Help Me” which are just sorta forgettable, a song like “Indy Kidz” which has a fantastic instrumental alongside an unfortunately & obnoxiously tryhard vocal performance, but then you have “Sabertooth Tiger” which is actually one of my TOP favourites here. The chaotic viscerality of this one feels so much more natural than those other tracks, as well as SO MUCH more invigorating. I really wasn't expecting to love it so much upon revisiting it today, but it very much surprised me.
On the other side of the coin, we also have a couple distinctly lowkey moments that I’d like to talk about. “Rubber Ball” is a very pleasant track with a slightly jaunty charm to it, but even more pleasant than that is “Flow”. My favourite song on the whole album. It’s not a particularly sad song, nor is it like STUNNINGLY beautiful, and yet… I often find myself close to tears when listening to it. If I had to put the feeling into words, I’d say that the atmosphere of this song is so perfectly tender & existentially content that it’s… genuinely overwhelming. I yearn to forever exist within the powerful sense of peace that this song provides, but I can only do so for 3 minutes at a time & that makes me wanna cry.
Overall, “Thank You Happy Birthday” is just a WAY more consistently enjoyable project than their debut. It has cleaner production, a far more memorable aesthetic, a greater sense of sonic exploration, better vocals for the most part, MUCH higher highs, and far fewer lows as well. Other than those “forgettably abrasive” songs which I talked about 2 paragraphs ago, the only significant lowlight for me would be the underwhelming closer that is “Carry Me In”. The record honestly should’ve just ended with “Flow” cuz these final 2 tracks which come right after just aren’t very interesting.
But yeah, other than having a significantly weaker closer, this album is an improvement over their first in every single way.
Best Songs: Flow, Sabertooth Tiger, & Aberdeen.
Weakest Songs: Doctor Help Me, Carry Me In, & Sell Yourself.
This album gets a light to decent 8/10 from me.
____________________________________________

Melophobia

Don’t you love it when an overall “pretty good” discography randomly contains one genuine masterpiece?
I absolutely ADORE this record, and I don’t even consider Cage The Elephant to be one of my all time favourite bands. They probably wouldn’t make my Top 25, but “Melophobia” specifically is easily one of the best albums I’ve ever heard, and (now that I no longer listen to Arcade Fire) my personal favourite release of 2013. At the very least, it’s a stiff competition between this & Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories”. I’ve gotta go track by track with this one in order to effectively convey my love for it so buckle in!
“Spiderhead” is a genuinely perfect opener for the record. It conveys to us ALL of the project’s best qualities while never feeling like it’s spoiled the album for you. The best is still very much yet to come. We’ve got scuzzy guitars that feel both authentically raw & immaculately produced, super catchy melodies delivered through a very precise yet slightly wild vocal performance, and also this really cool “glitched tempo change” at the end which gives this specific song a very unique flare.
“Come A Little Closer” is probably the most popular song here, and while it’s not my personal #1, it is still absolutely deserving of that status. The verses ease us in with a super slick bassline, some incredibly atmospheric guitars/synths, as well as a grippingly moody vocal performance. All of which come to a head on the track's spectacularly explosive choruses which still manage to fit the song’s moody tone flawlessly. The bridge here is also excellent with an extremely effective build to the song’s final & most explosive chorus. LOVE this track. Iconic shit.
“Telescope” is even more iconic though. It’s the best thing that Matt Schultz has ever written & it’s not even a contest honestly. We open with some tenderly playful synths which eventually give way to an equally playful yet distinctly melancholic vocal performance & lyrical story. This leads to the song’s incredible chorus which only becomes more emotionally powerful each & every time it’s repeated, but it’s the bridge here that really elevates the track into something truly spectacular. It’s so instrumentally frantic & vocally raw while still miraculously fitting into the song’s overall tenderly melancholic atmosphere. Such an evocative masterpiece. Unquestionably one of my favourite songs of all time.
“It’s Just Forever” is frequently maligned as the album’s one & only dud, but other than some admittedly awkward tonal whiplash between it & the last song, I still think it’s a fantastic addition to the record. We’ve got some wonderfully visceral guitars, a delightfully wild guest vocal performance courtesy of Alison Mosshart, and an outro that predicted the “Untitled Goose Game” OST six years in advance. What’s not to love?
“Take It Or Leave It” has a super chillaxed atmosphere all throughout, but never in a way that becomes boring. The chorus is super catchy, I enjoy the slight country-isms of the track, and the guitars sound amazing… but that’s definitely starting to become a moot point in this review. SUCH a vibe of a song.
“Halo” is probably the least uniquely remarkable song here. I don’t really have anything specific to say about it, but don’t think for a second that I mean to imply it’s even remotely weak. It’s still a banger.
“Black Widow” is an absolute BLAST of a song. The gritty rock’n’roll instrumentation along with those seductive vocals are obviously fantastic, but the star of the show here is undoubtedly the brass elements. The blaring horns on this track, whichever ones they are exactly, are sheer musical euphoria. That brief moment during the bridge where they completely overpower the rest of the mix is especially stunning. This is another one of those songs that I often hear people proclaiming as one of the album’s worst, but I think those people are weak. This song is nothing short of SPECTACULAR. Such a wonderful rush of visceral energy.
“Hypocrite” serves as a very nice change of pace for the record. The incredibly unique drum rhythms & overall slow pacing really make it stand out here. We’ve got a decently moving chorus, some nice brass elements yet again, and while said brass elements aren’t nearly as impressive as last time, these horns still fill out the mix very nicely & aid the song in having an even more unique energy than the aforementioned odd drumming was already giving it.
“Teeth” is the most perfectly unhinged thing that Cage The Elephant has ever released. In my review for their previous album, I talked about how certain tracks there often struggled to nail the balance of “controlled chaos”. Songs from that record which attempted this mostly just felt messy instead of compellingly scatterbrained. “Teeth”, on the other hand, achieves that balance effortlessly. Everything about this track is marvelous madness. The frantically abrasive guitars, evocatively strange lyrics, rivetingly unrefined vocals, and OH MY WORD that outro. After being a badass rock song for about 3 minutes, this shit randomly decides to basically become spoken word jazz at the end, and it works miraculously well. The lethargic bassline, the dour brass elements, the lyrics rich with meaning that’s hard to fully grasp. The whole thing is genuinely quite unnerving, but in a way that’s always still very enjoyable to listen to.
“Cigarette Daydreams” is a very interesting closer for this album. The acoustics & pianos are both incredibly pretty, the vocals & melodies are both really moving, and the whole experience is extremely immersive with it’s atmosphere. It’s a truly beautiful song on it’s own as well as an extremely anticlimactic ending for the record. But to explain why I actually mean that as a positive, I need to talk about “Teeth” again. Keep in mind that everything I’m about to say here has absolutely NOTHING to do with the lyrics of these songs. It’s simply my mind creating a story by interpreting the emotional atmospheres of both tracks.
“Teeth” is like witnessing or being involved in some sort of traumatic event. It’s a chaotic mess that leaves you deeply unsettled. Horrified even. Like being the bystander to a uniquely bad car crash. The kind where gorey death is very clearly visible. “Cigarette Daydreams” contrasts “Teeth” by being easily the most tender & simplistic song on the album. It’s very comforting with it’s musicality, but what I love here is that it’s not quite “cathartic”. It’s not a release of tension or an eradication of negative emotion. It’s like being frozen with shock after witnessing this crash before someone else eventually arrives to comfort you. This comfort feels nice & brings you back to your senses, but you’re still not ok. You still witnessed something horrible & a quick bit of comfort isn’t going to immediately fix that.
That’s the story I read from the tonal dichotomy between these 2 songs. A story of horror followed by incomplete comfort. It’s not a satisfying ending for me, but it’s such a specific & evocative kind of dissatisfaction that I can’t help but be fascinated by it. A super cathartic track full of positive emotion & grandiose beauty wouldn’t have worked here at all. Something quietly comforting that’s lacking in huge catharsis is the only way this could have gone. It’s the only ending that makes sense directly after a track as wild a “Teeth”. Again, NONE of this has anything to do with the lyrics. Just sheer emotion.
In conclusion though, I really fucking love “Melophobia”. It’s got perfect pacing, perfect production, tons of variety, so many excellent highlights, and one of the most memorable album endings I’ve ever experienced. The band’s whole discography is undoubtedly quite good, but this record is still LEAGUES above anything else that came before it, and so far, anything that has come after.
Best Songs: Telescope, Black Widow, & Come A Little Closer.
Weakest Songs: haha no.
10/10. Masterpiece.
____________________________________________

Tell Me I'm Pretty

It’s a HUGE downgrade from the last album, but still a decent enough listen.
It’s a stiff competition between this & their self-titled when we’re deciding which Cage The Elephant album is the weakest. They both exist on pretty much equal levels of “unremarkably decent”, but I think I’d probably give “Tell Me I’m Pretty” an ever so slight edge over their debut. Even though I’m ultimately gonna give them the same rating, I think this record has a few more significantly notable qualities.
“Cry Baby” is a very solid opener & “Mess Around” is a delightfully nostalgic single in spite of literally just being a Black Keys song, but it’s only on tracks 4-7 where this album really hits it’s stride. “Too Late To Say Goodbye” is very methodically emotive, “Cold Cold Cold” has some super fun percussion & an engagingly dazed sense of atmosphere, and “How Are You True” is one of the prettiest songs in the band’s whole catalog. The choppy vocal effects are extremely immersive, and the lowkey energy of it all is wonderfully hypnotic.
It also transitions very naturally out of the song right before it. That song being “Trouble”. The strongest piece of this album by a pretty wide margin. The backing vocals are beautiful, the chorus is really impactful, the acoustic elements are particularly well utilized, and the whole thing truly feels “Melophobia quality” while still being sonically distinct from that project. After this 4-7 stretch however, the album’s final 3 tracks don’t give me a whole lot to talk about.
I enjoy the spaghetti western vibes of “That’s Right” decently enough, but “Punchin’s Bag” is one of the most forgettable songs that CTE have ever made, and even though it’s a decently fun track on it’s own, “Portuguese Knife Fight” has almost no real impact as a CLOSER. Which is particularly disappointing coming right off the heels of a record with one of the most impactful endings I’ve ever heard.
So yeah… “Tell Me I’m Pretty” definitely isn’t bad, but it definitely ain’t special either. It’s unenergetic in a way that mostly feels ill fitting of the band, Dan Auerbach’s production is solid but also extremely homogeneous, and lots of Matt’s vocals here feel way more “performative” than they do natural and/or “from the heart”. I do still enjoy this record for it’s excellent musicianship, generally solid song writing, and handful of wonderful highlights, but something definitely feels a little off about it all.
They just weren’t in peak form here. Which, again, is not a very pretty look right up against one of the most PEAK albums of the 2010’s.
Best Songs: Trouble, Cold Cold Cold, & How Are You True.
Weakest Songs: Punchin’ Bag, Sweetie Little Jean, & Portuguese Knife Fight.
This album gets a strong 7/10 to me.
____________________________________________

Social Cues

Not without it’s problems, but undoubtedly some of their strongest material to date.
This is pretty easily their 2nd best album if you ask me. It’s nowhere NEAR as good as 2013’s “Melophobia”, but it’s not like I ever expected them to reach those heights again. Cage The Elephant are an overall “pretty good” band with one exceptional masterpiece that came out of nowhere. But in terms of the rest of their “pretty good” discography, this is a very enjoyable album… even if it is VERY front loaded. Tracks 1-7 are all fantastic with only one exception, but then tracks 8-13 are all super forgettable outside of a couple key exceptions.
Let’s talk about that excellent first half though. “Broken Boy” is an immediately gripping BANGER of an opener with viscerally crisp production, The Title Track has a wonderfully psychedelic soundscape to it & one of the band’s catchiest choruses ever, and “Night Running” is a song that’s always gotten way too much hate in my opinion. I can KINDA understand the aversion to how sheerly radio friendly it is, but the vibes are again delightfully psychedelic, the Beck feature suits the track flawlessly, and there’s this extremely appealing sense of… idk “fuzziness” to the production on the chorus. Super sonically satisfying stuff.
Other great moments from this first half include “Ready to Let Go’ which was a perfect lead single for the record, as well as “Skin And Bones” which has a really moving chorus & some beautifully implemented strings, but easily the HARDEST banger of the whole project comes to us in the direct middle. “House of Glass”. This is one of the spectacularly wild things they’ve ever put out & it’s an absolute BLAST to listen to. The sly vocals, viciously vigorous guitars, and perfectly chaotic production all come together to create one of their best songs to date. LOVE IT.
Now for that relatively lackluster 2nd half. “The War Is Over” actually grew on me quite a bit this time around which I wasn’t expecting, but we still have songs like “Dance Dance” which feel distinctly lacking in creativity, “Tokyo Smoke” which frankly just feels kinda aimless to me, as well as “What I’m Becoming” which, in an attempt to sound soft & lowkey, just comes across as rather drab. These songs are all still “decent” at the end of the day, but they absolutely do not live up to the consistently high quality of that first half. Where this 2nd half DOES shine however are in it’s softer moment’s that aren’t “What I’m Becoming”.
“Love’s the Only Way” is SUCH a lovely track. The light guitars, the ethereal string sections, the tender vocal performance, the vividly “late night” atmosphere of it all! It’s easily one of the most beautiful glimpses into their softer side that the band have ever given us, but even more beautiful than that is the album’s closer & best song BY FAR, “Goodbye”. The lyrics are absolutely heartbreaking, the pianos are extremely moving in spite of being so very simple, and the bridge here is beyond fascinating to me.
There’s this part of it’s instrumental that’s either a muted piano or the pitched down plucks of an orchestral stringed instrument. Whatever the hell it is, it gives me chills damn near every time I hear it. There aren’t even lyrics during this part, but it still manages to be one of the most evocative depictions of sadness that I’ve ever borne witness to. Undeniable proof that sound alone can often speak SO MUCH louder than words. This has been my go to “depression song” for YEARS now & I don’t see that changing any time soon.
So that’s “Social Cues”! It’s definitely got some issues, but I still like it quite a bit. It’s got a really fun new sound for the band, a decent amount of variety, consistently excellent lyrics that are largely about Matt’s, at the time, recent divorce, and some of the highest highs in their entire discography. It’s undoubtedly frontloaded, but still a very satisfying album experience overall. I mean it’s kind of impossible NOT to be satisfied with a closer this stellar.
Best Songs: Goodbye, House of Glass, & Social Cues.
Weakest Songs: What I’m Becoming, Black Madonna, & Tokyo Smoke.
This album gets a decent 8/10 from me.
____________________________________________
Well that's the post! Hope you enjoyed reading it & I'd love to discuss any & all of my takes in the comments!

Things to consider before reading , the red logo stands for Gamestop and he showed the name of every song on purpose so you can go and read the lyrics.Everything he did is calculated.
First video : https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790532552828289526 he informs us red clothes and bleeding = the stock will bleed today
2 video : https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790713748866371690 the red logo on her dress is the Gamestop logo = red day incoming , SONG lyrics : Right now, down, down, down
3 video : https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790717515523658119 Again u can see the red Gamestop logo on his shirt while he is getting electrocuted, "you want to be fooled"=They will try to fool you to sell ,the words " IM BACK" in red = the stock will bleed but also "IN THE SADDLE AGAIN" is green = with burden (buying while stock is red) you will get $ because green =money
4 video: https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790721293089964126 at the end you can see the Gamestop logo again and it says under "HOLD PATTERN UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE" this one is self explanatory lol
5 video : https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790725065585439065 look at some of the lyrics of this song : "Singing we're here to keep your prices down" , "You made a pig's ear, you made a mistake", "You got away with it but we lie in wait" , "you're fast to lose, you will lose" ,
6 video : https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790728848226521547 "Youre not actually going IN to an asteroid field?" = go IN , thats why he used CAPS , again look at the lyrics of the song : "Run along now don't be glum" , "Don't be long for the end is nigh" = nigh means almost/at or to a short distance away , "Don't let moments pass along And waste before your eyes" = dont miss the moment to buy , "Come with me and the slithy toves".The asteroids that hit the spaceship on the way are the burdens before you hit the goal.
7 video : https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790732615022195139 "bitch" captions u can see red and green flag , i guess he means dont be a bitch, stocks go red and green ,they are not always green and he used RED captions for "think its a game" which probably means that the stock going red today is just a game.
8 video : https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790736391124774975 some of the lyrics : " What I need for keeps this silly game we play, play." , "I think I'm first but surely finish last, last."
9 video : https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790740164848861227 lyrics " I wanna send a message to them,Teach em a lesson quickly,Publicly addressing me, disrespecting me heavily They better be lucky the way my blessings effected me"
10 video : https://twitter.com/TheRoaringKitty/status/1790743946764644659 start of video you can see the gamestop logo in his hand and after MR DFV says " please return your seatbacks to their full upright and locked position" = return to the game and lock in.The conversation between them , The narrator represents : The real Roaring Kitty who holds his position and does not sell and Tyler represent the person who people yesterday thought he was and in this case a person who sold his stocks.The narrator ( Roaring Kitty) asks why do people think i am you (the person who sold his stocks) and you can see for a second a guy with red shirt besides The Narrator ( Roaring Kitty ) which represent the bleeding stock.Basically ppl think he is the person who sold because its a red day.Tyler says "why would ppl confuse you with me " and then it comes scene where the guy burns his hand and on his hand you can see the Gamestop logo.After this scene he says " because we are the same person" in pink captions which probably means that he is burning like everyone right now." I invest " with green because he is invested but also "deep fuck" with red because he gets fucked aswell."I am free" in orange i guess he could mean u could be financially free if you play it right."Kittys not here , kitty went away , kittys gone" he used red captions because ppl thought he left because the stock dropped hard but the captions after are " THIS IS IMPOSSIBLE" . "IF THIS IS YOUR FIRST NIGHT AT GME FIGHT CLUB" with red captions because its not the first time GME is that red , "you have to defend the bear thesis" defend = dont sell / buy to defend against the bears you can also see the cat against them. LOOK AT THOSE CAPTIONS BTW " you ARE INsane" he used CAPS for "ARE IN" and left the rest without caps.He is basically telling ppl to go in.You can see the Gamestop logo again before the end and the captions say " the movie goes on ".
I will continue tomorrow.

Enravel (Seattle)
Date of Incorporation: 9/14/2009
Governing Persons: Rony Abovitz (Governor); Scott Henry (Governor); Anastasia Lang; Richard Taylor; Jennifer Fitzpatrick; Joseph Tsai https://www.sos.wa.gov/corps/business.aspx?ubi=602954597
Enravel, which presented at the April Innovation Showcase, followed up the presentations with an update and product demo. The company, led by UW mechanical engineer Brian Schowengerdt [former UW & Microvision employee], has developed a laser-based “pico projector” that could be built into mobile electronics like cell phones, digital cameras, and even eye glasses. The 1 mm x 9 mm projector —about the size of a grain of rice—uses “scanning fiber” technology to then scan an image from the device, and project an enlarged image back onto a larger surface, like a wall. The company, which has put most of its resources into developing the projection technology so far, plans to now turn its focus to streamlining the light source modulator to improve image quality.
https://xconomy.com/seattle/2010/07/15/technology-alliance-showcases-four-new-companies-in-biotech-and-cleantech-and-revisits-one-past-presente2/
Linden Rhoads [at the time Vice Provost-IP, Commercialization, Innovation at the University of Washington] introduced this startup by pulling out her iPhone and iPad (yes, one of those) and talking about the devices’ display capabilities. “These are great, these are fun, but they’re going to be so much more fun when there are projectors available for them,” she said. “That day is very, very close at hand.”
Enravel is led by UW mechanical engineer Brian Schowengerdt, an expert in alternative displays, user interfaces, and human visual perception. He co-founded the company in 2009 to commercialize a laser-based “pico projector.” The idea, he says, is to “take a display of iPad size and compress it into the size of an iPhone.” More specifically, to shrink a projector to “the size of a grain of rice” and use it to project on-screen images, video, games, websites, e-mail—you name it—onto any larger surface.
The core technology is a “scanning fiber” projector that uses fiber optics and a vibrating element to scan an image and blow it up, for example, to a size of 17 inches across from just five inches away. A matchbook-size assembly of laser diodes (off the shelf) provides the light source to project the image. You could imagine such a projector might be crammed into a smartphone and used anytime you want a bigger display to interact with, for reading text or watching a video, say.
Enravel has five employees, and its technology was built over the past few years using $8 million in funding for a related endoscopic imaging project (led by Eric Seibel) and $100,000 in grants. The company expects to finish its portable prototype by next month, and to have a standalone product by the end of next year.
https://xconomy.com/seattle/2010/04/22/technology-alliance-showcases-five-companies-in-sensors-mobile-displays-and-drug-therapies-investors-take-notice/?single_page=true
Thanks to for mentioning Enravel
Jump to Q3 2019
UW Researcher Spotlight: Eric Seibel, Mechanical Engineering Written by CoMotion Staff / September 27, 2019
Eric Seibel: "Scanning Fiber Endoscope: This is an ultrathin and flexible scanning fiber endoscope (SFE) for the early detection and treatment of cancers within the body. The goal is to advance minimally invasive medical imaging by using ultrathin flexible endoscopes that allow access to regions of the body that were previously inaccessible to permit less invasive treatment of cancers before they have spread from their place of origin. It was licensed to startup VerAvanti for medical endoscopes and Magic Leap for AR displays as well as a few other related licenses."
https://comotion.uw.edu/comotion-spotlight-on-a-uw-researcher-eric-seibel/
August 26, 2019 - Veravanti announces a new subsidiary and the opening of a nanofabrication facility
"The opening of the Avanti Nanofabrication facility enables VerAvanti to manufacture its patented Scanning Fiber Endoscope (SFE), a new, extremely small imaging modality designed to access small arteries to illuminate stroke and cardiovascular risks."
https://veravanti.com/news/2019/8/26/veravanti-announces-a-new-subsidiary-and-the-opening-of-a-nanofabrication-facility
Some information on Veravanti in relation to Enravel:
Research: Large field-of-view short-wave infrared metalens for scanning fiber endoscopy Mirror 1 Mirror 2
Near-Infrared Imaging of Artificial Enamel Caries Lesions with a Scanning Fiber Endoscope
Other Scanning Fiber Endoscope Projects
Endoscope Surveilence
SFE For Dental Care
SFE For Bladder Surveillance
The scanning fiber endoscope is an ultrathin and flexible endoscope for the early detection and treatment of cancers within the body. The SFE can be used as a surveillance device with the goal of improving our chances of survival from cancer.
A scanning fiber endoscope is a technology that uses a flexible, small (< 6Fr) peripheral or coronary catheter to provide wide-field, high-quality, full-color, laser-based video imaging. These differences distinguish SFE applications from current imaging approaches such as IVUS and Intracoronary OCT. Applications for the device (which was pending FDA review and approval as of 2017[needs update]), are expected to include medical diagnosis and support in determining interventional treatments such as surgery or biopsy. Providing both full-color images and a wide-field, real-time surgical view into the inner depths of arteries, enables physicians to circumnavigate hard to reach internal tissues to assess for potential disease.
REDMOND, WA (August 26, 2019) – VerAvanti, a developer of a new class of scientifically-advanced solutions to help physicians find answers to treat strokes and heart attacks that often strike without warning, today announced that its new subsidiary, Avanti, has opened a Nanofabrication facility in Bothell, Washington. The facility includes a 9,300 S.F. ISO 9001 cleanroom, the second largest in Washington State.
The first-of-its-kind facility on the Eastside will support high-volume component production of wafers and chips with nanoscale features. Because of the inconceivably tiny parts made from unconventional materials, these components aren’t practical, economical or even possible to fabricate at commercial foundries. The lab capabilities include photolithography, wet and dry etch, atomic layer deposition, Sputtering, Deep Reactive Ion Etching, scanning electron microscopy, Multiphysics simulation, design, and proprietary piezoelectric fabrication. The Avanti Nanofabrication will provide services to VerAvanti and the other businesses seeking these specialized services.
VerAvanti Founder and CEO, Gerald McMorrow explained why VerAvanti launched its new nanofabrication subsidiary. McMorrow stated, “The opening of the Avanti Nanofabrication facility enables VerAvanti to manufacture its patented Scanning Fiber Endoscope (SFE), a new, extremely small imaging modality designed to access small arteries to illuminate stroke and cardiovascular risks.” With the price point advantages this subsidiary enables, VerAvanti is positioning for a highly competitive market launch of its innovative SFE device.
About VerAvanti
Founded in 2013, privately-held VerAvanti is using advanced science and automation to commercialize the world’s first Scanning Fiber Endoscope (SFE)), to help physicians close treatment gaps and proactively identify interventions for the 200,000 individuals (U.S.) who suffer ischemic strokes due to an unknown cause1. Protected by more than 30 patents licensed by VerAvanti, the SFE is a micro-imaging catheter equipped with an extreme depth of focus camera that provides physicians a previously unseen surgical view into hidden intravascular anatomy, enabling more proactive diagnosis and treatment of individuals at-risk for stroke and cardiovascular events. Visit VerAvanti to learn more and review scientific papers and SFE images.
About Avanti Nanofabrication
Avanti Nanofabrication, a subsidiary of VerAvanti, is a nanofabrication facility located in Bothell, WA. The facility includes a 9,300 S.F. ISO 9001 cleanroom, the second largest in Washington State. Lab capabilities include photolithography, wet and dry etch, atomic layer deposition, Sputtering, Deep Reactive Ion Etching, scanning electron microscopy, Multiphysics simulation, design, and proprietary piezoelectric fabrication.
DEVELOPMENTAL STATUS (VerAvanti)
2019:

• August - VerAvanti Announces a New Subsidiary and the Opening of a Nanofabrication Facility

2017:

• June - Awarded $286K NIH Research, Phase 1 Grant. entitled “Optical visualization to efficiently guide coronary intervention of chronic total occlusion”
• May - Awarded $300k NIH Research, Phase 1 Grant entitled “4-Channel Multimodal Ultrathin-Flexible SFE for cancer diagnosis and therapy”
• April – Established in-house MEMS production facility.

2016:

• SFE console design complete.
• Quality system certified to ISO 13485 by Notified Body (DEKRA).
• David Auth, PhD joined VerAvanti board of directors.
• Patent Issued: "Closed Loop Optical Feedback Synchronization System for Imaging Application" (9,258,108)

2015:

• Scale-ready infrastructure, implemented including quality systems, NetSuite ERP, CRM, an accounting system and other automated business processes
• Established Clinical Advisory Board.
• Began development of automated catheter production.
• Identified and retained sales executives for USA and Europe with known track records.

2014:

• Design Concept – Coronary / Peripheral Scanning Fiber Endoscope
• Established manufacturing clean-room environment that operates at Class ISO 8 levels.
• Established corporate offices and R&D center of excellence.

2013:

• VerAvanti Inc. founded.
• Acquired exclusive worldwide rights to license SFE technology, consisting of more than 20 patents.
• Hired core development and engineering staff.
• Established automated document control system.

EDIT Wanted to just add a few edits to clarify some things that have been brought up in the replies because I think it may add some context for everyone calling me the devil and a negative influence on her healing
-I do not hate my SIL. I love her. She is a good person. This post is me getting off 15 years of feelings for the first time. My brother and family as far as I know do not share any of the feelings below. I have not expressed them to anyone but here. This is simply me getting something "OFF MY CHEST" This was my own therapeutic way of wrestling with my feelings. God forbid any of you have had breaking points from festering frustrations.
-My niece is currently receiving help. My brother has put his life on hold to move to a hotel next to the treatment center where he will drop her off and pick her up and be with her every day. He also continues to drive home several hours out of state to be back home to help care for his wife.
-My words below were not well thought out regarding my neice. I do not judge her. Everythign she is going through is very serious and we as a family are doing everything we can to help her. I used the word attention seeking simply to describe her personality. She is a bubbly, loud :), lovely girl. She seeks attention as much as any other kid, maybe a bit more extreme than the average.
-For everyone sharing their stories with EDS/POTS - I truly appreciate your comments and know that I have read what you've said and will take it to heart. I think it will make me a more undersadning person and help me wrestle with this. I am not convinced of ANYTHING below. I simply don't know how much, if anything, she is faking. It's simply how I feel, I don't feel good about it, and I have serious doubts.
-I put "diagnosed" in quotes because it took many years of searching for help before any doctor applied it to her. She self-diagnosed after years of not know what was going on, and then found some sort of specialist who deals with POTS and EDS who confirmed what she believed. Many have said "several doctors confirmed" which I don't believe is true. The skeptic in me, right or wrong, put less weight on this diagnosis because of how difficult it was to get. I undertand this is not a well understood syndrome so that would make sense.
-This is not the only case where she was "diagnosed" with something that did not turn out to be true. She was celiac for about 18 months before they realized that wasn't an issue. Now it's one thing to hypothesize that this could be an issue and try it, but her status as celiac took over her life and they operated as though it were a fact, including completely consuming her facebook activity. Eventually they determined through a genetic test that it wasn't an issue.
LONG ONE but this is 15 years in the making.
So my brother and his wife have been married for about 15 years. Ever since the beginning, I've always felt a little skeptical of her. She's a southern gal that likes to romanticize everything. Think a Facebook junky that loves posting inspiring messages that are totally over the top. "From the depths of my soul, I wish you all to find happiness in your life. I truly do. Never give up! #MiraclesAreReal #HeHasAPlan" Etc. That sort of shit.
She's a sweetheart though and doesn't have a malicious bone in her body, but she's the type of person who wishes she lived in a hallmark movie. And she LOVES attention.
Over the last 15 years, she's had one thing happen to her after another. About 10 years ago she also started "feeling chronic pain" and was more and more reclusive, opting to spend most of the time we visited them in bed. Now she wasn't ignoring us, because we always made it a point to come up and even would spend time in their room watching movies and just talking, but for the most part, she stayed in bed.
Eventually it was determined that she had something called POTS, and then later Ehlers Danlos. These were both pretty much self-diagnosed, and then "confirmed" by doctors. But since then both of these afflictions have completely taken over her life. She started using a wheelchair, her body has deteriorated, she basically has zero leg muscles, with a much larger upper body from eating terribly. She's had highly invasive procedures like spinal fusions, ports, and all sorts of other shit over the years.
Everything is a "miracle cure" on Facebook and she talks about how she's a girl boss. "Guys!! I DID SOMETHING TODAY! I walked down the stairs to get a drink without my caregiver!" is a typical post on Facebook. Of course next week when I ask my brother how she's doing, she's had setbacks and is feeling worse than she was before. It's always one step forward and three steps back.
What gets me is that these posts are OBVIOUSLY pity parties, but of course she would never ask people to cry for her and talk about how terrible things are. No. that's not what the protagonist does in a hallmark movie. They have stiff upper lips, they are courageous! They never complain and live life to the fullest, despite how terrible things are.
So she makes a post with her sitting in her wheelchair or wearing a neck brace, and will say things like "Guys, I just had the best day EVER. I sat up! Normally when I sit up I get lightheaded and pass out, but today, thanks to my 3 Physical therapists, i've been able to sit up! These are the little things people sometimes take for granted, but I just had to share :) #EDScantStopMe! #GurlBoss #NotToday".
So she gets a million likes and comments saying how "Proud they are" of her and how she's an inspiration. We're all supposed to be so thrilled and excited, but all it really is is a reminder that she's basically bedridden and should be pitied and lavished with attention. Thankfully, she hasn't tried to move into influencer status, and I honestly don't feel like she has financial incentives at heart. She simply craves the attention, the pity, and the "status" as being an inspiring role model for other people a and being the main character of her own hallmark movie.
And I fucking can't stand it. I think this is all bullshit. I'm sure she's in pain, but that's what happens when you're body deteriorates from not doing shit for 10 years. She tries to solve all her issues with pills and procedures, but doesn't do fuck all when it comes to actually working hard at rehabilitating her body.
I know EDS is a real thing, but I've also read how commonly it's faked. Certain types can be genetically tested for. Of course hers hasn't.
Throughout all of this shit, my brother has been a fucking saint. He's never complained. Luckily he owns a business that does well enough that nothing has led to financial issues, but it easily could have since nothing is covered by insurance. He's a very active and outgoing guy, so it kills me seeing him spend his entire young adult life basically being her caregiver.
In the past year however, he has reached a breaking point. He had a short-lived affair, realized life was slipping by, and immediately told her about it. She's forgiven him, and basically will say things like "you can win me back. Lets renew vows, get me another ring" (All the bullshit you would see in a movie of course). He knows deep down that he doesn't WANT to win her back, and has essentially been letting the relationship die over the past 9 months. He wants to take care of her financially, but wants out. He needs a life.
Well, this past weekend, she finally sends a text saying that they are done, and the separation is moving forward. Oh and what do you know? She has started making posts on Facebook about how she hasn't used her wheelchair in days! She can now walk a mile in a day when she couldn't walk 20 steps. Where the FUCK was this 4 years ago when you maybe could have rehabilitated and lived an actual life? Where the fuck was this when my brother was wasting away his life, not traveling, not creating memories for his girls, having memories that he had growing up as a kid going on hikes and going to the beach.
On top of all of this, they have two daughters. The older one is 12 and is having all sorts of other issues, including anorexia and self-harm. I love her, but I see this as a response to the bullshit that her mom has put her through her entire life. She has always been an attention seeking kid. She is also very sweet, but unfortunately I believe that all of these cries for help wouldn't be happening if her own mother wasn't the way she is. I know this last part makes me an asshole, and I honestly have no ill will towards the daughter. I think what she is doing to herself is very serious and I don't want to take it lightly. But she is also a very sheltered girl and it's hard not to believe that the mother isn't the root cause.
I'm so happy that my brother is finally going to be rid of this soon. Obviously he plans to take care of her financially in perpetuity, and isn't planning to have any toxic fights over money or custody. He will do what's right. The only thing now is that I'm terrified that one of her stupid "followers' is going to share what happened and he somehow becomes some viral villain that gets crucified by assholes who have no idea what the actual situation is.

Hurtigruten Cruise Line – Special Offers (Northern Lights Promise, No Single Supplement)

Posted on May 15, 2024 by Andrew Larder

Hurtigruten Cruise Line

Two Evergreen Offers:
Northern Lights Promise For those who have their heart set on witnessing the swirling glow of the aurora borealis, we make a promise no one can match:
Sail the Norwegian coast with us during the auroral season between September 20 and March 31 on a voyage of 11 days or more. If the Northern Lights do not occur within sight of your ship during your voyage, we will give your clients a 6 or 7-day Original Coastal Express Classic Voyage FREE OF CHARGE*.
Find your voyage NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT SELECT DEPARTURES UP TO 30% OFF The Coastal Express 12 DAYS • 34 PLACES The Coastal Express Route
Bergen – Kirkenes – Bergen (Roundtrip)
Departure Dates
Regular departures
Price from $1,853
$1,575
Ships
Multiple
NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT SELECT DEPARTURES UP TO 10% OFF The Coastal Express – To the Viking Capital 11 DAYS • 27 PLACES The Coastal Express – To the Viking Capital Route
Bergen – Kirkenes – Trondheim (Roundtrip)
Departure Dates
Regular departures
Price from
$3,848
Ships
Multiple
UP TO 25% OFF The North Cape Line 14 DAYS • 14 PLACES The North Cape Line Full voyage from Bergen to Oslo
Route
Bergen – Honningsvåg – Oslo (Roundtrip)
Departure Dates
December 2024 – April 2025
Price from $3,283
$2,976
Ship
MS Trollfjord
UP TO 25% OFF The North Cape Line 14 DAYS • 14 PLACES The North Cape Line Full voyage from Oslo to Bergen
Route
Oslo – Honningsvåg – Bergen (Roundtrip)
Departure Dates
December 2024 – May 2025
Price from $3,389
$3,071
Ship
MS Trollfjord
UP TO 10% OFF The North Cape Line 15 DAYS • 13 PLACES The North Cape Line Full voyage from Oslo
Route
Oslo – Honningsvåg – Oslo (Roundtrip)
Departure Dates
September 2025 – April 2026
Price from $3,707
$3,336
Ship
MS Trollfjord
Why we can make this promise Where we sail on the Norwegian coast is directly beneath the Auroral Zone, an area of consistent and heightened Northern Lights activity.
Our ships act as floating, mobile observatories that move between areas where there is a lot of cloud cover to places where it’s clear skies and perfect conditions to see the aurora when it appears.
How we help you to see the aurora All the cabins and suites on our ships have an ‘Northern Lights alert’ which will tell you whenever we spot sightings of the aurora, so you can rush to your window or outside to catch them.
Our crew will announce occurrences of the aurora to your cabin or suite at any time of the day or night. You can switch these announcements on and off as you prefer.
Northern Lights Promise Terms & Conditions Subject to the following ‘Terms and Conditions’ in 2023/24 This offer applies to all new bookings of voyages of 11 days or more along the Norwegian coast aboard The Coastal Express and The North Cape Line (previously known as The North Cape Express) voyages. It applies to North Cape Line voyages departing between September 26, 2023 and March 31, 2024 and The Coastal Express voyages departing between October 1, 2023 and March 31, 2024.
A Northern Lights occurrence is defined as a sighting from the ship that is recorded by the ship’s deck officers and that is announced to passengers on board. Announcements are made to your cabin or via another channel decided by the deck officers. An occurrence can last anything from a few minutes to a matter of hours, and the ships decision as to whether the Northern Lights occurred is final.
We announce occurrences of the Northern Lights on board the ship and you have the option of announcements direct to your cabin or suite. We hope that you will experience seeing the Northern Lights whilst on your voyage with us of 11 days or more, but we cannot be held responsible if you don’t.
We promise that in the event of there being no Northern Lights occurrence as defined above, you will receive a 6-day or 7-day Coastal Express – South or Coastal Express – North voyage, departing between October 1, 2024 and March 31, 2025 in an unspecified inside twin cabin on a full-board basis free of charge. You may upgrade to another grade of cabin subject to additional costs and availability.
We reserve the right to withdraw or amend the offer at any time. Please check at the time of booking as to the current status of the offer. The offer must be claimed and booked within 28 days from your return date. A choice of departure dates will be given.
The offer excludes flights, transfers, all onboard expenses, excursions, and luggage handling. The offer does not apply to re-scheduled or cancelled cruises. Bookings are non-transferable, non-changeable, and have no cash value.
Subject to the following ‘Terms and Conditions’ in 2024/25 This offer applies to all new bookings of voyages of 11 days or more along the Norwegian coast aboard The Coastal Express and The North Cape Line (previously The North Cape Express). It applies to voyages departing between September 20, 2024 and March 31, 2025.
A Northern Lights occurrence is defined as a sighting from the ship that is recorded by the ship’s deck officers and that is announced to passengers on board. Announcements are made to your cabin or via another channel decided by the deck officers. An occurrence can last anything from a few minutes to a matter of hours, and the ships decision as to whether the Northern Lights occurred is final.
We announce occurrences of the Northern Lights on board the ship and you have the option of announcements direct to your cabin or suite. We hope that you will experience seeing the Northern Lights whilst on your voyage with us of 11 days or more, but we cannot be held responsible if you don’t.
We promise that in the event of there being no Northern Lights occurrence as defined above, you will receive a 6-day southbound or 7-day northbound Coastal Express voyage, departing between September 20, 2025 and March 31, 2026 in an unspecified inside twin cabin on a full-board basis free of charge. You may upgrade to another grade of cabin subject to additional costs and availability. Please note that upgrading to suites with this offer may not be available.
We reserve the right to withdraw or amend the offer at any time. Please check at the time of booking as to the current status of the offer. The offer must be claimed and booked within 28 days from your return date. A choice of departure dates will be given.
The offer excludes flights, transfers, all onboard expenses, excursions, and luggage handling. The offer does not apply to re-scheduled or cancelled cruises. Bookings are non-transferable, non-changeable, and have no cash value. This offer is not combinable with claims for compensation, refunds or price reductions. __________________

Solo Traveler Offer

Hurtigruten makes Norway more affordable for solo travelers by reducing the single supplement to zero* on select Norway voyages. Offers available on select departures only.
Check prices and availability to see applicable departures.
Enjoy Unique Experiences & Connections when Traveling Solo
Embark on a journey along the captivating Norwegian coast, where you can immerse yourself in the rich culture and warm coastal hospitality of this breathtaking region. Savor the dishes, art, architecture, and sights of Norway’s heritage, all while having the opportunity to connect with locals. Augment your experience by hearing charming stories and intriguing insights from our expert team about Norwegian culture, history, nature, and geography. In addition to onboard edutainment, connect with fellow travelers over shared experiences thanks to our small cruise ships that help to inspire more intimate conversations.
Relish the Freedom & Solitude of Being a Solo Traveler
As we travel up and down Norway’s magnificent coastline, you’ll be able to soak in the majestic views of the Norwegian fjords. On our cruises, you can also increase your chances of experiencing the Northern Lights in winter or the Midnight Sun in summer. When not taking in the views, you can retreat to your own private room. Be sure to stop by our spa and sauna for maximum relaxation. We also offer delicious meal options. Why wait to unwind?
Try a Coastal Cruise for Your Next Solo Adventure Travel
Enhance your journey as our Coastal Experience Team guides you in optional seasonal excursions, such as dogsledding, cycling, hiking, and birdwatching. Additionally, our chefs can take you on a culinary adventure with our curated menus that infuse locally sourced and seasonal seafood and produce. Enjoy dishes that include succulent fjord-farmed salmon and Nordic specialties.
Find your voyage NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT SELECT DEPARTURES UP TO 30% OFF The Coastal Express 12 DAYS • 34 PLACES The Coastal Express Route
Bergen – Kirkenes – Bergen (Roundtrip)
Departure Dates
Regular departures
Price from $1,853
$1,575
Ships
Multiple
NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT SELECT DEPARTURES UP TO 10% OFF The Coastal Express – To the Viking Capital 11 DAYS • 27 PLACES The Coastal Express – To the Viking Capital Route
Bergen – Kirkenes – Trondheim (Roundtrip)
Departure Dates
Regular departures
Price from
$3,848
Ships
Multiple
NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT SELECT DEPARTURES UP TO 30% OFF The Coastal Express – North 7 DAYS • 34 PLACES The Coastal Express – North Route
Bergen – Kirkenes (Northbound)
Departure Dates
Regular departures
Price from $1,260
$1,071
Ships
Multiple
NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT SELECT DEPARTURES UP TO 30% OFF The Coastal Express – South 6 DAYS • 33 PLACES The Coastal Express – South Route
Kirkenes – Bergen (Southbound)
Departure Dates
Regular departures
Price from $1,075
$914
Ships
Multiple
NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT SELECT DEPARTURES UP TO 25% OFF The Svalbard Line – South 10 DAYS • 9 PLACES The Svalbard Line – South Route
Longyearbyen – Bergen (Southbound)
Departure Dates
May 2024 – September 2024
Price from $4,448
$3,336
Ship
MS Trollfjord
NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT SELECT DEPARTURES UP TO 25% OFF The Svalbard Line – North 11 DAYS • 7 PLACES The Svalbard Line – North Route
Bergen – Longyearbyen (Northbound)
Departure Dates
May 2024 – September 2024
Price from $4,448
$3,336
Ship
MS Trollfjord
NO SINGLE SUPPLEMENT SELECT DEPARTURES UP TO 25% OFF The Svalbard Line 16 DAYS • 14 PLACES The Svalbard Line Route
Bergen – Svalbard – Bergen (Roundtrip)
Departure Dates
May 2024 – September 2024
Price from $5,001
$4,286
Ship
MS Trollfjord
The list of available voyages changes from month to month based on occupancy. Make sure you get your desired departure date by booking as soon as possible.

Hurtigruten Cruise Line Reservations

Contact me to book a stay with Hurtigruten Cruise Line:
Andrew Larder, FORA Travel Advisor

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