The other side of the Disney adults

When it comes to Disney adults and consumerism, what’s less commonly talked about is social class. Whilst working class Disney adults do exist, given how pricey both Disney parks and a good number of Disney merchandise are, that the average Disney adult is far likelier to have this much disposable income to spend on these things to begin with. A good number of Disney adults might be upper-middle class themselves, with a minority being truly working class in any way. There are Disney adults who’re content with buying cheaper merchandise like stationery, pirating media and the like, though they do exist and possibly in greater numbers than one realises, but with other Disney adults being pressured into collecting rarer or more valuable merchandise, that it’s going to lock out working class people from these activities.

Even if not all Disney adults are this rich either, but some of these activities would definitely alienate working class people from being in such fan communities like these, especially if such merchandise some of them pursue is really rare or expensive. Then we get to realising that if one were to subscribe to Disney Plus for long, they’d have to pay for something that could get expensive on certain days. This would further alienate working class people from participating in Disney fandom, even if Disney films can be streamed for free online (which would help things in their case). If being a Disney fan means having to buy this much merchandise, I don’t think it’s something even most Disney adults may be able to keep up with consistently. Especially if they have other things to do, other priorities to attend to and so on, that it’s inconvenient.

It’s likely that Sanrio adults could be just as materialistic as their Disney counterparts get, but they’re less commonly talked about in the media. There’s no doubt that Sanrio media emerged more recently and there seems to be less quality Sanrio films and series getting put out, but even if some Sanrio adults might exceed Disney adults in consumerism, this is somewhat less common (or less commonly reported) as Sanrio’s not as deeply familiar as Disney is. So the average Sanrio adult, if they do exist, would be content with some Sanrio media and merchandise. They could be of any social class but it seems consumerism isn’t that deeply embedded in Sanrio fandom the way it is for Disney fandom, even if Sanrio characters were created to be mercantile from the get-go.

I said before that working class Disney adults do exist, but the fandom they’re part of aggressively pursues consumerism, especially towards more expensive merchandise that it’s not a lifestyle they can consistently keep up with. I even think most middle class Disney adults can’t keep up with this either, so it’s clearly a lifestyle meant for a certain Disney adult really. This might not be unique to Disney fandom as a good number of geek fandoms are very consumerist, even if some participants content themselves with piracy. If there’s ever a fandom that I can think of that rivals Disney adults in materialism, it would be Star Wars adults in some way. Much like Disney films, Star Wars films were also heavily merchandised. Though film merchandising did exist before, Disney either pioneered or more likely popularised this.

If it weren’t for Disney blazing a trail for this, Star Wars wouldn’t have taken off as it did in the late 1970s. Even if Star Wars as a brand isn’t hugely successful anymore, it’s clearly past its peak and is currently a well-established brand at this point. It’s got years of enduring unpopularity and then repopularisation, it can certainly endure these periods well. Similar things can be said of its current owner Disney and both of them are no strangers to extensive merchandising of their films for years, so they pretty much complement each other real well. Not unlike its current owner, Star Wars merchandise encompasses both the cheap and the expensive, the rare and the common, the low end and the high end. Much like Disney Star Wars is no stranger to print adaptations of its filmed world.

If the earliest Disney characters like Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse both get to appear in comics/print cartoons, so do Star Wars starting with its current co-brand and sibling in arms Marvel. Marvel’s no stranger to merchandising but it’s clearly rooted in publishing, so it would have years of adjusting to changing trends in the wider publishing industry. Disney with its roots in filming, would need another brand that’s rooted in publishing from the get-go as well as having a rooster of characters viable for further merchandising and future animated aaptations, so it bought Marvel in the late 2000s. Though Marvel adults could be comparable to both Disney and Star Wars adults in consumerism, Star Wars adults are more comparable to Disney adults when it comes to both Disney and Star Wars being rooted in film.

Even if Marvel merchandise did exist before and was fairly extensive before it got bought by Marvel, but Star Wars is more comparable because its trajectory closely resembles that of Disney than Marvel did and still does. If you think Disney merchandising is ridiculous, Star Wars is no different at other times really. There were things like Ewoks soft toys, Star Wars annuals, Star Wars branded refridgerators, Star Wars themed musical instruments, Star Wars fishing rods, Star Wars rugs and waffle makers, so if Mickey Mouse themed caps aren’t annoying enough Star Wars could’ve done something similar before it got bought by Disney. Not to mention you have a substantial contigent of the Star Wars fandom that’s dedicated to collecting merchandise that makes them even more comparable to Disney adults in a way it’s not with Marvel adults really.

In this way working class Star Wars adults are also a painful rarity when consumerism’s baked into both Star Wars fandom and Star Wars itself, it’s possible to be a Star Wars fan and be content with not much else. But when other Star Wars fans feel compelled to get more Star Wars merchandise and even making a show of it online, then it does parallel Disney adults in some ways that it’s not with sports fans. Well sports events do get streamed for free online, they also get broadcasted on radio for free just the same. You could easily be a sports fan and be content with not much official sports team themed merchandise and also watching sports clips for free anywhere one goes (like TikTok for instance), but with both Star Wars and Disney you have to provide hard evidence to prove your fandom.

Maybe that’s my experience with something like football, but even then Star Wars fandom is a proper parallel to Disney in a way it’s not with sports fandom. Star Wars fandom is also majority male but it parallels Disney fandom when it comes to similarly high levels of consumerism that might as well be redundant with other fan communities, again this is speaking from my experience regarding my other interests. One could easily be an Ace of Base fan and be merely content with reading scanned, translated or transcribed magazine articles and streaming their music, or Massive Attack just the same whereas in Disney and Star Wars fandoms some fans feel the need to show their fandom through buying merchandise to prove this.

Even if one can buy Disney or Star Wars merchandise without being too strongly attached to either one or both of them. Or at least being a Disney/Star Wars adult who’s content both with some merchandise and having consumed some Star Wars/Disney media for free, though given how consumerism’s baked into these brands that it’s terrifying to realise how rare working class Disney and Star Wars fans are. Which means most Star Wars and Disney fans are more likely to have a lot of disposable income to spend money on such merchandise, and a good number of them are going to be richer than average even. Materialistic Ace of Base and Massive Attack fans do exist, but others are merely content with transcribed magazine articles and streaming each band’s music.

So it would be odd to think that it’s easier being a working class Ace of Base fan, especially in the age of online streaming and piracy at this point, than it is being a working class Disney adult. Not helped by that if you were to find a way to legally consume Disney media, you’d have to buy or subscribe Disney media which involves paying for it either way. Maybe not all Disney media, especially if it’s on YouTube, free websites like National Geographic or online radio when it comes to Radio Disney. But when Disney Plus is a thing, chances are you’d have to pay the House of Mouse to officially watch things like Twisted Wonderland or Andor. And you’d have to pay for it regularly if you were to continue using it in any way you like or wish, which will shut out working class people from Disney (or Star Wars) fandom even more.

So it can get hard being a Disney fan on the cheap, so the best case scenario without (or with minimal) piracy is to buy cheap merchandise, buy fewer merchandise and merely watch free official Disney short clips. From my personal experience being into Ace of Base at various points, especially in an age of free official streaming that it’s going to be this easy being an Ace of Base fan on the cheap. All you have to do is to stream Ace of Base music and filmed appearances on YouTube, Spotify and the like, if you’re going to go the extra mile you can either read free articles about Ace of Base or mirror articles about them (I’ve done this before earlier this year) and even pirate books mentioning them in any capacity. Or other bands like Massive Attack and the Prodigy for another matter just the same.

It’s not wrong to like Disney but it seems when consumerism/materialism is built onto it and also the fandom to an extent, that it’s going to be hard being a Disney fan on the cheap that if all else fails, then piracy would do. And even then it’s going to be hard trying to measure up to other Disney adults when you don’t earn this much, that your Disney fandom’s going to be restricted to whatever you can readily afford within your limits and also whatever that’s for free. Or any other fandom where materialism’s built into it just the same like with both Marvel and Star Wars, if you can’t afford it then it’s going to hinder your participation in the fandom at times, despite your best wishes to do so. Because of this that working class Disney adults are going to be a rarity, which would be the same for working class Star Wars fans really.

It would be horrifying to think that upper class Disney fans might be far better represented numerically and economically than working class Disney fans, that it’s going to influence the direction of things and something Disney chooses to consider. It makes sense that upper class Disney adults are the ones who can afford more expensive pieces of merchandising, whereas working class Disney adults would have to content themselves with what they can find for free and afford. Upper class Disney adults are the ones who can afford to hang out at Disney ships, constantly attend Disney parks and afford pricier Disney merchandise, so Disney will pay more mind to them than it would with their working class counterparts within the same fandom. They’re the ones who can afford a lot more official Disney merchandise, the more one thinks about it that’s going to alienate working class Disney adults by design and function.

This may not be unique to Disney fans either but it’s kind of telling that in any fandom that’s saturated with rampant consumerism that working class fans will be alienated by this in many cases, preventing them being fans of these things for long and so on. It’s even weirder to think the fandoms that needn’t much consumerism, especially at present, are more likely to be musically orientated (i.e. something like Massive Attack, Ace of Base and The Prodigy, speaking as a fan of all three bands) and therefore it’s easier to be a fan of these bands or musicians on the cheap. This may not always be the case for all bands and musicians, but when you can officially stream their music for free, even when you can’t be bothered to attend their concerts that it’s pretty economically satisfying in the long run. You may not pay much, but at least you can listen to their music for free legally.

Whereas with fandoms that are heavily orientated towards consumerism that it’s something only people of a certain socioeconomic class can get away with being this committed to these things, which is the majority of geek fandoms because they’re oftentimes fans of media brands like Dragon Ball and One Piece. Admittedly this may not always be the case with them either, but it can be hard being a Disney fan on the cheap when you’re tempted to buy more than what you need or really want…on a budget. Buying Disney themed fabric and turning them into clothing, whilst saving the rest of it for more important things, is a nice way of showing one’s interest in Disney without breaking the bank this badly. But when others can’t afford Disney Plus subscriptions and still want to legally consume Disney media, that they’re going to be left with merely watching officially free Disney clips instead.

Listening to Radio Disney online could count, but it’s got nothing on watching Disney series at times. There was a time when one can be a Disney fan or a Disney adult for free, but largely when cable television was widely used by people. It’s increasingly no longer the case due to online streaming that Disney and the like would have no other choice but to join the club instead, but when it comes to legally watching Disney films that they’re left with curated clips and select uploads instead. It’s a kind of tradeoff that in the days where cable television reigned supreme, that for awhile one’s chance of listening to a band or musician legally for free is to either play somebody else’s album copy or listen to them on the radio. Now it’s more likely to be the reverse where you can legally listen to the likes of Ace of Base and the Prodigy for free on Spotify, but you have to pay for a Disney Plus subscription to legally watch Pinocchio.

This may not always be the case where online ministries do stream their sermons for free (on good days, from my experience), but it seems when it comes to the likes of Disney they really want money so badly they’ll find ways of making people pay for it if they legally watch something like The Little Mermaid. Even then it speaks to a kind of consumerism that makes it harder for working class people to attain or acquire it in any way they like, without finding ways of climbing the ladder. And even then considering how consumerist a good number of geek fandoms are (including Disney fandom) that working class fans will often be alienated by this.

Lose-Lose Situations

There’s a prophecy by two people, one of them being an ex-Satanist, where he said that the UN is considering a one-world religion and this one really is Islam. This is very politically incorrect to say this out loud, especially in an increasingly pluralistic west where people are socialised to treat diverse beliefs, cultures, needs and lifestyles as equally legitimate to one another. And a good number of Muslims are very sensitive to Islamophobia, but especially western Muslims at that. I feel that unless if we’re talking about countries that have long-standing Muslim majority populations like Turkey, Albania, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, this is a very touchy subject in places like the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, Spain, Norway and the Netherlands.

These are all countries with long-standing Christian majority populations, though they’re increasingly secularised and feel compelled to accomodate the needs of diverse communities, individuals, lives and stances on things, one of them being Islam and a good number of immigrants going there come from Muslim-majority countries like Turkey as well as former European possessions like Morocco, Lebanon, Libya and Algeria. In less politically correct countries like China and Russia, they could easily be seen as undermining their own cultural heritages and the like this way. When it comes to the twin realities of both the acculturation gap and third culture kids, it’s going to be a lose-lose in a way because you have immigrants and their children wanting to retain their cultures, but also feel pressured to fit into the host culture.

Not to mention the children will readily assimilate into the host cultures because this is happening in their formative years, a lot to readily acclimatise themselves to the host cultures’ particularities and sensibilities. It’s like if you come from Malaysia and you and your family move to Britain for good, but your child readily catches up with their peers (or deliberately does this because they don’t want to get bullied themselves). Even if they manage to retain the ancestral culture as much as they can to the best of their abilities, the usual result is more in-between the migrant land and the ancestral homeland. They are not necessarily criminals, but they are often caught between a rock and a hard place. In between striving to remain connected to their ancestral homelands and adjusting to a place with different sensibilities and mindsets.

It’s not a stretch to even consider the likes of Daddy G, 3D, Skin, Maxim Reality and Mel B as third culture kids all grown up, because their own parents (or one of her own parents in Mel B’s case) were from the Caribbean who moved to the UK in search of a better life and higher payrate. Not to mention Britain colonised the likes of modern day Barbados, St Kitts and Jamaica, bringing over enslaved Africans there and forming their own cultures independent of the African kingdoms and empires they came from over time. Somebody else had a prophecy about this matter, though it was definitely already a thing in some countries like Britain, it was also a forthcoming phenomenon at the time when she prophesised this to Emmanuel Minos, who pretty much transcribed everything that she said.

Both Norway and Iceland are rather remarkable cases as both of them were kind of backwater countries before, then getting rich (Norway in the 1970s, Iceland in the 1990s) and eventually witnessing a surge in immigrants themselves. Both of them were colonies of other countries, but most especially Denmark for quite a stretch in time. And then there’s the prophesised xenophobia, which came to pass in the years hence. Or for another matter, Ireland just the same. (Also the thing she said about infidelity and cohabitation has been fulfilled, but in the case with the former it manifests as ethical nonmonogamy, even if such forms existed for as long as people marry divorcees whose ex-spouses are still alive.) This situation has already happened before in Albania, Turkey and even Spain for a while, though if Islamisation were to succeed, then the most likely scenario is that the rest of Europe will look like these two instead.

Not that Christianity will entirely disappear there, as God will kept a remnant for as long as he wills to, but I feel we might see a kind of growth in underground or crypto-Christianity instead. This has been the case in both Albania and Turkey for years, to the point where it’s speculated that some Muslim communities are crypto-Christian in practise. This could befall in Europe as well as in Nigeria to some extent, even when Christianity doesn’t entirely disappear there, it will take on an underground character of sorts. Not entirely gone but more like what Christianity’s like in China, Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia in the sense of being both visible and kind of very much outsiders to the prevailing beliefs, even if one could argue that it’s already the case as Europe’s apparently very secular. Christianity might still be around in some form, though more underground than it was before, especially with Islamisation growing throughout Europe.

Especially in the years to come as well as in Nigeria.

Locking out others

When it comes to K-Pop and consumerism, I feel the way K-Pop agencies target fans is really predatory. In the sense of offering really redundant collectibles like one photocard per copy of a certain album that offering photobooks would be a more cost-effective alternative instead, maybe these already do exist and some K-Pop companies aren’t in the habit of offering one photocard per album copy. But I feel this kind of consumerism would have the effect of locking out other K-Pop fans from actually enjoying their favourite bands and musicians in any way they wish to (support), where giving up on K-Pop altogether would be far less draining on their wallets and perhaps time, if they have to worship God, do homework or help out others they actually know themselves.

There is a way to show one’s love for musicians without breaking the bank real badly, even if this means resorting to pirated copies when official copies aren’t readily available elsewhere. Even if this means being content with finding transcribed and scanned articles pertaining to them, merely streaming concert broadcasts and songs, being in online social groups about them, and watching archived performances on social media. I’ve done this before to bands like The Prodigy, Ace of Base and Massive Attack, I’ve been unemployed and now underemployed, so I feel the ways K-Pop agencies make their fans get more of something makes it harder for other K-Pop fans to truly dedicate themselves to such a lifestyle that perhaps certain alternatives would have to take their place instead, especially if their budget’s at the mercy of somebody else’s as it is with me.

No doubt idolatry is bad and it’s kind of telling with K-Pop, but the problem will be the same if somebody replaced both BTS and Stray Kids with INXS and Stray Cats, which is already the case with other people before. I’ve fallen into this trap before, sometimes even if my intentions were well-meaning at the time, so it kind of hurts falling into this a couple of times before myself. But I feel the way K-Pop agencies force their fans to find financially insensible ways of supporting their favourite musicians isn’t good, not just because it would eat up the time needed to worship God and spend more time in the real world, but also because it’s not good if it starts eating up the budget needed for necessitites like food that sometimes K-Pop fans would have to chose one or the other as it is with me before but with other things as I found out later on (to the point of missing something I truly want, it hurts).

One could love a K-Pop musician and not be too materialistic, but K-Pop agencies’ habit of having to plaster their employees’ likenesses onto merchandise, even those other K-Pop fans can’t easily afford is too much. To be fair if witnessing the likenesses of the Stray Kids on foodstuffs like Pepero is weird, I had a schoolmate who collected lollipops featuring Spice Girls (her other favourite is Nickelback), so similar merchandising existed before for western pop bands and musicians. There were books about these groups before, especially for fans who want to learn more about them. And it’s still a thing to this day, so in a sense it’s not unique to K-Pop. But even then predatory music labels, musicians, bands and agencies will always be a thing, especially when it comes to exploiting fan admiration in really unethical and questionable ways. Mind you, the Backstreet Boys were part of a Ponzi scheme before.

And then they’d offer cruises for fans to join them, with somebody alleging that one Backstreet Boy would have affairs with his fans, so it’s really exploitative made worse by that another one’s a Christian. It’s weird why he never held him accountable for this, since the Bible also instructs people to kindly rebuke others of their wrongdoing. Or Nick Carter’s for another matter, since he also flirts with fans and has been the target of rape allegations. Even then there’s something wrong about people in the music industry doing a lot to exploit fannish affections for them to the point of taking advantage of them sexually, which is the real reason why we have groupies to begin with. Musicians will do anything to exploit fangirl affection for them, going so far to turn them into their playthings and worse if they have wives themselves (David Bowie, AJ McLean, possibly all the other four if they too turn out have made mistresses out of their fans), that a power imbalance is going to be painfully inevitable.

So this is likely why K-Pop agencies are so predatory towards financially strapped K-Pop fans, it’s a power imbalance that they enjoy where they get a lot of money, but the fans are left with little else to spend on what’s truly necessary for themselves and their families and friends. They are greedy and love money to the point of being evil, though this isn’t unique to K-Pop itself as those in the western music industry do similar things themselves. It would be wiser to pull a Zac Hanson this time around, in the sense of committing social suicide by accidentally to be closer to God, than to pull a Brian Littrell and commit spiritual suicide by deliberately exploiting fans a lot. If sin keeps people away from God, then the way these musicians enable idolatry make it harder to overcome for long and often as it is with me before.

Even if it were possible to pray for musicians as I’ve done before, there are those who cynically exploit fans to satisfy their egos and greed with, to the point where they never truly loved their fans enough to be concerned for their budgets upon knowing others can’t afford to visit them in concerts and cruises and so on. Other cynically exploit fans for sexual gratification, if some members of the Backstreet Boys are any indication, though it would be horrifying if all members did this. But it still proves the point how some people in the music industry are so predatory to fans, whether if they’re into K-Pop or another, as to cynically exploit them left or right, just ask how this Kiss fan feels about Kiss. Even then it still goes to show you that this isn’t unique to K-Pop bands themselves, since their western counterparts are similarly guilty of this.

Dreaming of the Prodigy

Dreamt that the Prodigy

Were swimming in water

Somewhere in a building.

Once More on Jean-Louis

The person who inspired his fashion sense and character design is none other than the late David Bowie himself, especially in his Ziggy Stardust days, that to the extent he even shares a few of his hobbies (owning dogs, reading books, liking clothing/fashion) and some of his sartorial choices (the red Ziggy Stardust mullet, anybody?). But Jean-Louis isn’t really a facsimile of him given he actually enjoys hunting and fishing, something David Robert Jones never did. Not even close, also he doesn’t cook. Jean-Louis facially doesn’t look like him either, despite being also a natural blond himself. Inspired by David Bowie, yes but not a facsimile of him either. Similar enough where you can see the influence more clearly, but dissimilar enough to not be interchangeable with the man who fell down to earth.

Not to mention that Jean-Louis Lumiere is a detective, albeit one who manipulates light in multiple ways. In the same way that Colin Sallow bears an uncanny resemblance to a younger Liam Howlett (from the band The Prodigy), but is also in most regards his own man because he enjoys birdwatching a lot, throws knives, has a way around knives in general, is a budding politician himself, is something of an escapologist, box his way around his enemies, being into falconry and keeping birds (namely chickens, ducks, pigeons and geese) for pets. He’s also been educated in Sweden, more specifically Gothenborg where another favourite of mine, Ace of Base, come from so he was something of a foreign exchange student himself.

Or for another matter, Jean-Louis’s colleague Fabrice Tientcheu being based on a younger Maxim Reality and though he has some similarities with him like an apparent sympathy for cats, being into high culture and stuff, but also does things Maxim wouldn’t do like work as a forensic scientist, play football, read up on the likes of Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, show an interest in existentialism in general and is somewhat of a cultural Catholic (he’s Cameroonian). Actually a few of them come from Queen’s Freddie Mercury, like actually owning cats himself and having a sister, though Maxim could have one himself. Even if they’re based on actual musicians, they’re still their own people. Jean-Louis is based on David Bowie but does a number of unBowie like things like hunting in his spare time, he’s also very much into biology and conservation.

Jean-Louis was at some point more like David Bowie…when it comes to certain things to put it politely, but to service the limited scope of a mobile game, he’s going to be a cuckold like his mentor and father figure Richard Sorm. Both their wives went on cheating on them with men other than themselves, both of them ended up becoming left to their own devices as a result (Richard getting drunk a lot, Jean-Louis both raising his son and hunting a lot more often), until Jean-Louis divorced his wife and inspired Richard to do the same with Emma Havisham. I actually wrote a story where PD James’s characters Adam Dalgliesh and Emma Lavenham (whom she’s named after) live apart, not that they’re divorced, but that Adam’s habit of leaving his wife for a long time just so he can drink and avoid getting drugged by her led to her cheating on him many times.

This story’s known as ‘Finding Adam‘ where they have a son together but neither of them do a good job at parenting, to the point where their son would rather hang out at his friends’ houses whenever Emma carried out her extramarital affairs but afterwards she’ll take him back much to his chagrin. Richard’s son Ian has done the same thing, but to keep problems from escalating he had Jean-Louis raise him instead. Predictably like her namesake, Emma Havisham would take him away from people whom she doesn’t want him to hang out with, despite her own tendency towards infidelity every now and then. Ian’s been recovering from being abused by his mum a lot that even when he could’ve lived with his now divorced father, he prefers to hang out with Jean-Louis more.

Unsurprisingly, he even got into hunting because of him, though this hobby puts him at loggerheads with some of his classmates. Jean-Louis is practically his father in a way his own biological father isn’t, because he’s the one who raised him even if it may’ve been intermittent at times if it weren’t for his mother demanding that he return to her, even if she often brings him people he dislikes (the very same people she dates). Upon realising that Ian has serious mental health problems that he has Iasonas Michaelides counsel him, especially whenever he himself cannot always be there for him or whatever. Now as for Jean-Louis’s shade of red hair, despite not being a natural redhead, it’s a deeper red.

The sort of dyed red hair that Chappell Roan has (or maybe had, as she could’ve changed it into some other colour by now), kind of close to how and why some cartoonists use bright reds to denote red hair, but without being bright red itself. Comes to think of it this way, this is the shade of red that characters like Jean Grey, Barbara Gordon and Rahne Sinclair could plausibly have, as they’ve been depicted with really bright red hair before. In the sense of being a dark but still naturalistic red hair shade, almost brown even that I feel this is what cartoonists may’ve been aiming for. But it didn’t turn out as expected, given what they used didn’t give them the results they expected, though the advent of computer colouring has made it easier to get that shade of red hair right.

This could’ve shown up in comics a couple of times before, it’s a pretty interesting shade of red as it’s kind of really red without being too bright red itself. Well there’s another cartoon character in the Marvel canon who dyed her blonde hair red is Elsa Bloodstone, because as initially introduced she really has natural blonde hair. But white women dyeing their hair red is a fairly common occurrence in the real world, whether as a fashion statement or following the trends in hair colour. Before Chappell Roan arrived, there was France’s Mylene Farmer. She’s a French singer who dyed her natural brown hair red for years, though it could’ve greyed by then which gives her an even more convenient excuse to dye it red agan. Moreso that it’s become part of her public image and she sang songs like ‘Libertine’.

Though in reality I feel Chappell Roan’s more of a modern Katy Perry as both of them came from Christian households, before getting exposed to secular music a lot and becoming really flamboyant secular musicians. Katy Perry even started out as a Christian musician and it’s unknown if she’ll return to both God and her roots in a way, assuming if her own relatives and the like have been praying for her to return to Him this time. Maybe she will in due time if God operates under His own timing, so you might as well wait and see her do it in earnest. I even prayed for her to be saved and maybe she will return to God, though in His own timing and maybe in an unexpected fashion. Her own husband Russell Brand’s saved and he’s likely praying for her to go back to God this time around.

Maybe she really will but the right time will show up when God wills it to, so there’s a chance that Katy Perry at present might be returning to Him. But the process is going to be hard and it’s like this with me before, so eventually she might return one day. Okay, I’m getting off-topic but it’s kind of telling that Chappell Roan’s more of a modern Katy Perry than she’s an American Mylene Farmer, given the former two come from Christian households and presumably went to Christian schools just the same. So going to the secular world means they get to act out in ways they wouldn’t if they remained closer to their Christian roots, though not in a good way if this involves bringing God’s judgements on them. Not to mention both of them have mental health issues, Katy Perry with her struggles with depression and Chappell Roan’s own issue with bipolar disorder.

But even then I feel Katy Perry could find her way back eventually, especially with people’s intercessions, that ultimately she’ll return to God in earnest. Maybe this is also true for Chappell Roan, presumably if other people who personally knew her (related or not), have done the same thing as well. Jean-Louis Lumiere is kind of similar because he did go to the same Catholic school as Jemima Szara did, she actively prays for him and may even want to marry him one day. He has a bad experience with his previous wife, Margaret, who cheated on him multiple times with other men. He initially let it slide but that’s because they weren’t particularly that close when they were married, mostly due to their generally incompatible stances and personalities. Jean-Louis likes hunting animals and reading nature books, his ex-wife wants to be an actress and be a celebrity.

It kind of turns things on its head because in the DC and Marvel canons, it seems superheroes are like the celebrities of their respective worlds. But it’s weirder still to have superheroes who technically have jobs but spend much more time literally fighting bad guys instead, it’s like saying that Supergirl is an actress but spends more time beating up bad guys. The superhero school is peculiar in that characters who’re supposed to have jobs often wound up brawling with bad guys more often than they should, especially if they have salaried jobs at that. The Wasp is technically a fashion designer, but she doesn’t appear to have much time on designing clothes and sewing them herself. True, people can handle multiple jobs at once. But superheroes spend a lot of their time fighting people as vigilantes.

Making Jean-Louis and his cohorts detectives and officers of sorts seems to be a doable compromise, since this has a precedent in Top Ten, though given Alan Moore’s then stronger sympathy for superheroes, it didn’t feel like a crime story at all. It might not even be the first superhero noir story either, but that having a proper superpowered detective in the form of Jean-Louis Lumiere would be interesting. If because he manipulates light in multiple ways that assist him in criminal investigation, like he could literally light a way to find criminals with, render something invisible to uncover clues, set up lasers to retrieve offending items with (or even destroying them himself). Superpowered detectives have existed before, though one that manipulates light is an interesting choice.

If because it’s something that would easily lend itself to private investigation, especially when it comes to looking out for clues in the dark. It’s also an ability that easily lends itself to hunting at night and in the wee hours in the morning, again it’s something not many consider even if this is what the anglerfish does. I’m not saying many superhero writers are against hunting as much as it’s something they barely thought of much, even if the application makes perfect sense when it comes to tracking down game animals in poorly lit areas. Again they’re not against hunting but they were likely never into hunting to begin with, nor do they have any secondhand knowledge of hunting themselves. Anyhow, Jean-Louis likes hunting rats and deer with his dogs and friend Akosamesew, despite his friend not having any powers himself.

But even then it’s something not a lot of writers have considered when it comes to light manipulation being used in both private investigation and hunting, or even reading books just the same and that’s something Jean-Louis would easily make use of. When it comes to light-manipulating characters, I feel any one of them could use such an ability to hunt and/or detect, maybe they already did but not so often. It’s not that authors behind their stories are against hunting but they were never into hunting this much either, so this explains why there are a lot of stories where we get yet another glorified fistfight. But not stories where a photokinetic would use such an ability in their hunting trips, even if it’s actually plausible they would easily do just that if they’re into hunting themselves.

On the controversial subject of fur farming, given how some fur farmers get fur from foxes by electrocuting them to death, perhaps an electrokinetic would gravitate to fur farming. It’s quite vexing but it’s also something they’d gravitate to if they’re this starved for money, though I suppose even if superhero writers don’t necessarily condemn fur farming themselves it’s something they don’t know more about. It’s doubtful somebody like Stan Lee would even have a character like Electro actually be a fur farmer himself, assuming if he doesn’t know anything about fur farming to begin with. Even if this is likely how he makes money this way, even going so far to electrocute foxes for a living just to supply fox coats to certain clients. I don’t read Spider-Man comics much but this is how he’d funnel his abilities into something useful, however disturbing it may be to some.

But I know fur farming better than I know Spider-Man lore, so I feel this is what Electro would gravitate to if he’s desperate for a consistent salary. It does speak volumes about how and why there are practically no stories about a photokinetic hunter, even if this is something they’d gravitate to if they’re in the mood for hunting themselves, even if this is an ability that’s useful for detecting both vermin and game animals in the dark. It’s not that superhero writers necessarily condone fur farming and hunting either, but these are subject matters that they’re barely aware of if possible. Maybe not at all and this explains why they don’t write stories about these kinds of things to begin with, they were never interested in those from the start. Even when it would make sense for a photokinetic like Jean-Louis to do both hunting and detecting really.

Growing up

I remember this quote somewhere online by Liam Howlett from the Prodigy that if they continue doing at least some of the things they did before, it risks feeling embarassing like becoming that embarassing uncle at a certain occasion. Not just because it’s weird to continue playing a song like Smack My B Up now that they’re happily married men (which risks reflecting poorly on whatever good relationships they have with their wives), but also because they also have children that a life of partying isn’t particularly conducive for raising a family. But the first half of the sentence also make sense that it’s really embarassing for happily married men to continue playing SMBU in its original form, maybe save for that one occasion out of spite or anger, lest it reflects poorly on their actual relationships with both their wives and whatever female relative they have now.

I even said before that SMBU is really a second Charly in the sense of being songs that don’t endear the band to certain people, arousing a lot of controversy thus reflecting poorly on the band. Early on in the band’s career, it caught flack for sampling something from a series of public service announcements aimed at children, to the point of the band never sampling from these media again. SMBU is like a late 1990s Charly but one that didn’t endear it to the feminists and belatedly it had to make amendments, since it’s really stupid of a married man to continue playing it as it originally was lest it says something about his views on women and particularly the woman he’s in a relationship with for long. Extra if he’s even got a daughter by now, which makes it look much worse in hindsight.

Same goes if he has any female platonic friends around, that SMBU (especially in its original form) will always reflect badly on them in light of these facts. No surprise why Liam and Maxim had to make amendments to this song from time to time, since it’s really stupid of them to continue playing it in its original form since they have good relations with female friends and in-laws, as well as their own wives, nieces and daughters by now. It would be far more radical if they stopped playing this song altogether for good, but even then such a song will always risk reflectingly badly on them if they have good relations with their female in-laws, friends, colleagues, wives, nieces and daughters that changes have to be made.

On Fabrice Tientcheu

When it comes to who he’s patterned after, his likeness is based on the musician Maxim Reality. He’s from the band The Prodigy but he’s not a direct facsimile of him at times since Fabrice is a scientist and typical for a respectable African man, he often has short hair (and literally for the job). There’s a bit of David J in him as well, David J being a member of the band Bauhaus. That’s one of the bands I was into before I got into the Prodigy growing up, much like David J Fabrice is a bibliophile whose favourite authors are JG Ballard, Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre. Much like David J, Fabrice wanted to be a footballer but an injury had him reconsider science as a career instead (in J’s case, it’s music). And as for black people owning and loving cats themselves, it’s actually not that strange if you’re either into this or knowing black people being into this as well.

Maxim Reality himself has made statues of cats, though it’s not certain if he owns cats himself, but is generally kind of sympathetic to them on some level. Considering that Fabrice Tientcheu is Cameroonian, I’ve read academic literature where Cameroonians do own cats themselves. Within Anglophone Cameroon, there are Cameroonians who do raise both cats and dogs together. And then there’s Mink’s, a Cameroonian rapper who’s deathly afraid of dogs. I patterned Fabrice’s father after him in that he’s also afraid of dogs and passed down that mistrust onto his son, with his daughter Yvette being really clueless around them. So Fabrice never grew up with dogs in his house, if it weren’t for that cynophobic father of his. Instead he often had cats as pets and companions, good for keeping him happy and for getting rid of snakes that come to his house.

There’s a blog post about a Ghanaian farmer who has (or perhaps had) a cat that hunted a snake, so that’s what Fabrice’s dad did with his cats. And then there are academic studies about Kenyan farmers having cats too, so Fabrice Tientcheu’s really in good company here. Let’s not forget that Fabrice himself is based on a female character named Trish Una, her own power Spice Girl is actually based on a cat even if it’s not obvious at first. But it did leave claw marks, so this is one instance of it making itself obvious. So one of his cats is named after one of the Spice Girls, most especially Victoria Beckham. He shares Trish’s snobbishness and Spice Girl’s dual traits of politeness and cruelty towards enemies, since he even tried to gauge out Colin Sallow’s eyes after finding out that he murdered Jemima Szara’s boyfriend.

I said before that Colin Sallow’s based on Maxim’s bandmate Liam Howlett and he likes birds a lot, so Colin could be seen as a kind of inversion of Fabrice in some regards (black-white, short hair-long hair, science-politics, etc). To go further with this if Colin owns domesticated fowl and shows an interest in wild birds, then Fabrice owns and cares for cats and shows an interest in wild felids. Jean-Louis Lumiere could also be seen as an inversion of Fabrice Tientcheu in some regards, having dogs instead of cats and longer hair than he does, even if it’s a David Bowie mullet. Jean-Louis prefers to hunt mice with dogs, but Fabrice does the same with cats. Believe or not, cats can be trained and some Cameroonians do have a way of making cats hunt mice, though this involves starving them to get them to do it, even if not all Cameroonians are like this to theirs.

If Maxim Reality has dreadlocks but Fabrice Tientcheu doesn’t, it’s obvious that Fabrice isn’t exactly like him in other regards. But it should also be noted that Fabrice is an African first and foremost. It’s not that there aren’t any dreadlocked African men at all, but they’re not common due to dreadlocks being stigmatised among men there. It’s a hairstyle that’s usually associated with criminals, musicians, occultists and more often than not, women and whilst there are dreadlocked African men who don’t fit into the former three stereotypes, it’s much more common to encounter short-haired African men instead. Similar reason why you don’t find many African men getting their hair straightened, as this would be kind of emasculating because it’s usually African women who go through this. So Fabrice being born and raised in Africa would have typically African mannerisms through and through.

If Maxim Reality had been born and raised in say Nigeria or Ghana, though he could still have dreadlocks he’d also have very African mannerisms and an African mindset as well by then. It should be noted that Maxim is a British man born to Barbadian immigrants, so he’d have very British mannerisms and a British mindset. Skin from the band Skunk Anansie thought that she’s very Jamaican but in comparison to her mother who left Jamaica in adulthood, she’s actually very British which goes to show you how the acculturation gap occurs in real life. In the sense that the scions of immigrants readily adapt to the host culture than their parents do, because they get exposed to it at a rather formative age. What Skin admitted she had gone through could easily be applied to Maxim just the same.

By contrast Fabrice Tientcheu came to Canada as an adult so he’d still have very Cameroonian mannerisms, because he spent much of his life in Cameroon. That’s not to say Jamaica and Barbados are entirely devoid of African influences, since many of the people forcibly brought there come from Africa themselves, but being so faraway from the African empires and kingdoms that they ended up creating their own cultures instead. But since these two aren’t just in close proximity to the rest of the Caribbean, but also continental Latin America so they’re bound to not only influence each other, but also share certain things together like the love of Carnival before Lent. So this is why Nottingham Carnival exists for African Caribbeans in the UK, although a Carnival tradition likely exists for some Africans, but then again African Caribbeans aren’t like Africans in other regards.

Not necessarily any less black but it’s like how a Chinese Canadian would be substantially more westernised than a Chinese person who barely left China for this long, or how a Briton of Barbadian descent like Maxim would be noticeably very British compared to his relatives who never left Barbados for long. Although Fabrice does bear some similarities to Maxim Reality, he also has some similarities to Freddie Mercury who also owned cats himself. Like Fabrice with Yvette, he has one sister though I forgot her name. Maxim Reality could have sisters, but they’re not known to the public. Fabrice even dresses like Freddie Mercury, even his lab coat is a homage to Freddie’s yellow jacket in design.

When it comes to African characters in fiction, outside of African fictions, they often fall under certain stereotypes and memes. More often than not there’s a kind of Orientalism aimed at black Africans in the sense of them being seen as the opposite of white people, one is uncivilised and the other is civilised. In the case with superhero stories, a Kenyan superheroine like Storm seems to subscribe to a particular heathenism. But it’s something that not only has little in common with actual Kenyan folk beliefs, but also how and why Kenya’s a deeply Christian country at this point. Kenya even has a number of Christian radio stations like Hope FM and Radio Maria Kenya by now, meanwhile a country like Britain has become quite secular.

Since I have a habit of listening to livestreamed church sermons from Catholic ministries in Ghana, it figures that both Yvette and Fabrice are Catholic though one of them’s a practising Catholic. At this point in time, it’s Africans who’re wont to start online ministries anywhere and everywhere. This becomes obvious if you’re exposed to this sort of media a lot, but this is also a side to African countries that a number of westerners don’t seem particularly aware of. Even if not all Africans are practising Christians either, it’s still an interesting makeover compared to the start of the previous century. But at other times some people are still hung up on their perceptions of African cultures, a sort of Orientalism aimed at them where they’re still tethered to what they no longer are or what they ought to be.

Not helped by that they’re not particularly constantly exposed to African media in any way that this explains why even in the present day characters like Storm are still written the way they are, and if you’re still very highly exposed to western media that it still shapes your perception of them even if it’s a nonfiction piece, but one written by westerners instead of Africans themselves. So the sort of media one uses and is exposed to informs their perspective of something or someone, like if you’re constantly exposed to say Ghanaian media, then it’s bound to influence how you see things and especially Ghana as. Like you wouldn’t know that Mexicans are into comics until you use Spanish keywords pertaining to this subject matter, albeit deliberately, to know this eventually.

Logically you wouldn’t know that Africans do care for and own cats themselves until you stumble upon not only anecdotes and news reports about this, but also academia as well that it becomes less surprising once you encounter them in real life. It’s telling that if your exposure to a foreign country or culture is very limited, whether if it’s a brief stay or barely frequenting its media a lot, then your view and understanding of such a country or culture is going to be really limited too. So it’s no surprise that Chris Claremont never stayed in Kenya for long, never displayed a habit of frequenting Kenyan media a lot in the Internet age and finds black people so unrelatable as to have rather skewered portrayals of them, which explains why Storm’s written the way she is.

It’s possible to learn from his mistakes but as it stands with America being a reigning superpower towards its allies, it would take awhile to break away from its grip to actually substantially expose themselves to nonwestern media a lot (let alone outside of Japan and South Korea) en masse. Then we can get a sense of how Africans actually know and see themselves as whenever we frequently consume African media a lot, let alone something particular to Cameroonians since Fabrice’s one himself. If Africans are already pretty underrepresented and misrepresented in most media outside of Africa itself, it would be even more depressing for specific African nationalities like Ghana, Cameroon and Nigeria. It’s getting better at this point but as it stands, Storm is a massive outlier in the entire US comics canon to be both fairly famous and come from a real life African country.

Similarly in video games though this is improving at this point, it’s one thing to have a well-known Nigerian video game character like Overwatch’s Doomfist, one would have to look in vain for any well-known Cameroonian video game character. I guess for now we have to wait for one to happen, let alone outside of Cameroon, since there is a Cameroonian video game publisher doing something in the lines of this one. But when it comes to Fabrice Tientchieu, supposing if making such a game featuring him comes to pass, then he could become the best known Cameroonian character in non-Cameroonian video games. Even then I kind of feel other African nationalities are pretty underrepresented outside of their respective countries’ media, despite the Internet making it easier and more convenient to find those at all.

Even then it’s kind of telling that representation really does matter, though what Cameroonians face is underrepresentation outside of their own media. Whatever representation that does exist outside of their shores is going to be paltry or limited, most likely usually confined to Francophone media as much of Cameroon was a French protectorate or colony (I think). So Cameroonians are going to be really underrepresented outside of not only their own media but also in Anglophone media outside of some nonfiction pieces and the like, I really can’t name any fictional Cameroonian occuring in the Marvel or DC Comics canon. Fictional Nigerians like Temper maybe, but not a single Cameroonian.

Fictional Cameroonians do exist in the media but this is confined to either Cameroonian media itself or Francophone media in general, though the latter’s highly speculative at best given Cameroon’s colonial relationship with France. So having more Cameroonians outside of these media would be nice, but even then actual Africans are already pretty underrepresented in western fiction in general. Storm stands alone as the best known fictional Kenyan in the world, with Doomfist being the best known fictional Nigerian in video games. It would take a while for the world to witness the first internationally reknowned fictional Cameroonian, but it’s something one could actually do if they’re willing to create one and then see it get famous by chance.

Not a paragon

Nakita said that JY Park is a false prophet and his company will go down in flames for what he preaches, that company will end by the end of this year and his attempts at rebuilding it results in losing two of his children. Nakita also said that celebrities will also die due to their involvement in witchcraft and the like, but she talked about the way members of the band Stray Kids turned into. She said that early on they weren’t this muscular, but eventually they did bulk up. I also had this nagging feeling that JY Park must probably be gay, in that he actually molests those members in his care. I think she talked about it before in another video, but even before knowing this I felt that K-Pop boy bands are sexualised in a way their western counterparts aren’t to the same extent and frequency.

Like you don’t see western boy bands wearing crop tops and mesh shirts in concerts and onstage, you don’t see western boy bands constantly bearing their chests a lot either, though I’m probably wrong about this with others like Backstreet Boys. But even then I don’t think you’ll ever see Nick Carter wearing a crop top or mesh shirt, not even in his prime, the way his Korean counterparts do. Nor do many of the Backstreet Boys constantly dye their hair in unusual colours the way their Korean counterparts do, which was something those outside of the boy band world are wont to do (i.e. the late Keith Flint from the Prodigy). Neither member of the Backstreet Boys frequently wear makeup the way their Korean counterparts do, which is again something those outside of boy bands are willing to do (Daniel Ash from Bauhaus, Keith Flint again, Nick Rhodes from Duran Duran, Boy George from Culture Club).

I guess for western boy bands, the sort of image they’re made to cultivate is something to dissuade young lasses’ parents from distrusting them, even though many boy bands as we know it are made by executives to appeal to a certain audience. So they can’t look too shocking, lest parents be horrified by what they do. Whereas it doesn’t seem to be the case with their Korean counterparts, who seem to be more openly sexualised and glammed up. I don’t think I’ve ever seen any member of a western boy band wear bondage harnesses the way their Korean counterparts do, but that goes to show you how sexualised Korean boy bands and singers really are. Even odder still is how and why JY Park proclaims himself to be a Christian, yet turns a blind eye to Stray Kids putting out songs like Hellivision and God’s Diner.

Why on earth would a Christian condone these things, without even disciplining them at all? If the blind leading the blind both fall into a ditch together, then it’s on JY Park why Stray Kids will face many more scandals to come. Stray Kids might not remain together for long and so will other boy bands in the future, even the Backstreet Boys will meet an untimely end for their pride and affairs with fans that will be discovered and revealed in public. I remember somebody on Livejournal saying that AJ McLean would have affairs with his fans in nearly every Backstreet Boys cruise and another stating that they know somebody who has an affair with Nick Carter, but with the latter being the subject of rape accusations, one would wonder if he’s actually grooming her to be his mistress or something.

To the point where there’s practically nothing feminist about the Backstreet Boys when they see women as sex objects in some way or another, not just with Brian Littrell taking a photograph of his wife’s buttocks and then showing it in public, but also AJ McLean and Nick Carter having affairs with their fans that these will be leaked to the public for what they really are. And they get judged for enabling these things, to the point of warranting death as God doesn’t tolerate such characters to live. I remember a YouTube video insinuating that people like Brian Littrell are arrogant, whereas a radio preacher insinuated that people like him are wicked. If both JY Park and Brian Littrell have anything in common, despite being self-proclaimed Christians, they love the world more than they love God.

They love being of the world rather than simply being in it, to the point where whatever faith they profess is performative as to be lukewarm. It would be shocking if other Backstreet Boys like Howie, Kevin and Brian also have affairs with their fans, but this goes to show you that not only are they worldly and crave the attention their fans give to them, but also see women as potential sex objects in some way or another as to groom them into being their mistresses if Nick Carter’s any indication. It would be horrifying if the Backstreet Boys showed up onstage as demons, whereas Stray Kids have already released such songs like ‘Hellevator’ and ‘God’s Menu’. It would be baffling why would Christians like Brian Littrell and JY Park be okay with singing blasphemous songs like ‘Everybody’ and ‘God’s Menu’, or other members fornicating without rebuking them.

It’s pretty strange why Brian Littrell never really confronted AJ McLean for cheating on his ex-wife by sleeping with his fans (or Nick Carter flirting with women other than his wife), but it’s possible he never confronted them because he enables them on some level. It’s possible that JY Park was at one some point a truly practising Christian, but over time came to enable his musicians’ vices and turning a blind eye to whatever they’re doing. Even then it’s pretty strange why would self-proclaimed Christians like JY Park and Brian Littrell turn a blind eye to their colleagues’ and employees’ sins, but it goes to show you that bad company corrupts character. Brian Littrell truly lived a Christian life at some point, but the more he hung out with other secular musicians, the worldlier he got.

It’s like if you hang out with bullies, you begin to bully somebody too as it is with me at some point or one of my cousins for another matter. So it shouldn’t be surprising how and why both JY Park and Brian Littrell turned out this way together, they hang out a lot more with worldly people than they should be doing. So it’s on them why scandals happen and in Park’s case, his company will be no more by the end of this year. And if he does try to rebuild it, he’s going to lose his relatives one by one. Nakita also said that many K-Pop singers will die, if God doesn’t want any competition he’ll take away any idol (as he did to me before but with other things). It’s possible for the Korean music industry to still thrive and survive, but the loss of K-Pop idols would result in a substantially different version of it by then.

The Korean music industry didn’t actively cultivate idol type musicians before, even if people still made idols out of Trot and ballad singers every now and then. But between these two and K-Pop, it’s K-Pop that South Korea actively chooses to promote and popularise. Idolatry would still be a problem if people did this to ballad singers and not to K-Pop idols, but I feel prioritising K-Pop a lot more resulted in problems that should’ve never occurred like saesang stalkers. Nakita even said that this is the cause of low birth rates in South Korea, or at least one of the many causes that not many are willing to admit in polite company. One might wonder if the 4B movement occurred because some women’s standards for what men ought to be were set too high by their consumption of K-Pop media, though this would be too offensive to admit in public.

Even if this is fairly plausible as a lot of K-Pop male singers are highly calculated to appeal to women and young girls, in the same way reading pornographic books can contribute to ridiculously high expectations for what boyfriends and husbands should be. Very politically incorrect to point this out but this is plausible for some people really, so this is possibly why South Koreans aren’t having babies because deep down inside some Korean women prefer idealised lovers to putting up with a flawed but loving partner. Even if K-Pop fangirling doesn’t necessarily cause low birthrates, but with the menfolk being so idealised that it does interfere with one’s chances of actually landing a man, let alone an Asian man.

It’s good to see that Asian men are far from sexless and desexualised, but it also leads to the opposite problem because of how idealised K-Pop celebrities are and tend to be. That’s not to say Asian men are necessarily effeminate nor are they macho, but that they’re like every other guy at times. Normal blokes in other words when it comes to things like a love of sports and video games, but even when ethnicity’s not always taken into consideration, such media portrays ridiculously idealised men that even K-Pop singers themselves may not always fulfill in private and offline. Bang Chan might be somebody who wouldn’t share your interests in fashion and cooking, might possibly be a big fan of boxing and enjoys a cool glass of beer to soy milk. In the same way that Harry Styles, despite his crossdressing, might be rather vanilla in person.

Even celebrities themselves may not live up to the images they cultivate, if somebody like Neil Gaiman’s any indication regarding his abuse of women in real life. So it’s possible that Wonho might be really fatphobic in person, being the sort of guy who highly prioritises fitness and health a lot. Brian Littrell might not be that pious, and Nick Carter would easily be that annoying gamer dudebro one encounters online on a bad day. I was into a celebrity before and it hurt me that they didn’t share some of my interests, so it’s possible that others would’ve felt the same way around their own favourites. Even if they do a good job at trying to live up to the image they cultivated themselves, they may not always consistently live up to it and may sometimes espouse contrary values.

For instance, Nick Carter might try to make himself to a friendly nerdy guy. But on a bad day he’d easily turn into one of those Gamergate adherents, since there are people who say that he objectifies and abuses women. One would wonder if he was born in 1990 and instead of joining Backstreet Boys, he’d be more openly misogynistic and would even join the Gamergate movement by then. Even if not all gamer guys born in the 1990s turned out this way, given his own attitude to women that he would’ve easily joined Gamergate had he turned of age in the 2000s and 2010s. Gamergate being this misogynistic gamer dude movement that’s against anything feminist in video games and video game criticism, with Anita Sarkeesian being a big target.

Perhaps Burk Parsons’s father was in the right to keep his son from joining the Backstreet Boys, lest Burk himself be the subject of many pornographic fanfictions on somewhere like AO3, even if the younger Parsons may’ve flirted with becoming a singer at some point. But if it’s best to follow the superiors’ advice, then Burk Parsons is better off for it and at some point, I did have a habit of listening to multiple sermons at once. But since it caused problems so eventually I had to go easy with those and now it’s one sermon at a time, so I can see the benefit in following people’s advice in not doing certain things. Maybe a life in showbiz isn’t cut out as it appears to be, especially if it’s something that risks violating one’s privacy as it is with Ace of Base and now Chappell Roan.

As if living in near obscurity’s better for their mental health, than it is to be surrounded by demanding fans who may not always have your best interests. So it seems being rich and famous creates more problems than it solves, like how and why people are out to expose your dirty secrets. But if people are out to distrust any celebrity in any magazine and newspaper, then there’s no point in holding them up as paragons to begin with. If people find them suspicious on some level, then celebrity culture is bound to be bad because there’s no point in holding up people you don’t trust as paragons and role models. Especially if others are out to tear them down at any point, then it’s never going to do people any good really.

This may not even be unique to KPop really but regardless if it’s America or South Korea, celebrity culture is bound to set people up for something bad. Other countries like Russia may not have a strong tradition of showbiz, with others saying that showbiz is really the spiritual successor to the freak show. In the sense that it involves being made into a spectacle in some way or another, with the circus geek getting noticed for biting off a chicken’s head. Or for another matter, pop stars getting noticed for their scandals and dressing outrageously. The late Ozzy Ozbourne would be the modern version of the circus geek, only this time he bit off a bat’s head instead. Even then, showbiz is going to be suspicious anyways.

Especially if it involves making a spectacle of oneself, which would explain why some musicians dress the way they do. So linking showbiz to freak shows makes some weird sense, but also why it also readily invites pride (making oneself higher than they really are) and why Satan got banished for this. So celebrity culture does almost no good in hindsight, spiritually speaking.

These Dreams

There have been occasions where I prayed in my dreams, the earliest instance I can think of is when I prayed to God to help one of my cousins when she becomes a single mum for life. Then there’s another dream where I sdid the same thing but in her house this time, I often have recurring dreams of going to her house. Then comes the next one where I was in some sort of art gallery that also involved comics and a painting of a couple in some kind of early modern or medieval clothing, whilst praying to him to cope with PD James having had an affair with a man like Adam. This couple could in fact be PD James and her lover, which means James did base Adam Dalgliesh after her boyfriend all along. This could become news much sooner than expected, since praying in one’s dreams can also count as a prophetic dream.

The galleries obviously represent a person’s body of work with this voice in that dream (possibly God’s) saying that Adam Dalgliesh is like both PD James’s and her lover’s child, thus confirming that she really did base this character after the latter. Then I have recurring dreams of the Philippines coming under China in some way, one had the battle take place on Philippine soil and the other had the Philippines really come under Chinese power or influence in some manner after dreaming of a Youtube uploading their video (this is one that I follow among many others). If praying in one’s dream counts as a prophetic dream, this does explain why I have recurring dreams of going to my cousin’s house with the intent of helping her and her family around. Since the time I prayed to God to help pastors help her stop reading porn, this devotional said that God will really bring justice.

And another said that life takes detours so at that point where I prayed to God to help her husband quit one of her bad habits, this too took a detour where if her husband’s no longer around to help her quit these things as a consequence of her own sins, perhaps somebody else will fill in and God is using this to get me and others to actually help her as I have similar struggles before. I keep on having these dreams of some sort, thus confirming what I’ve been praying for, what I have to do in someone else’s life and what else. I actually had recurring dreams of one of Antonia Fraser’s characters before where some of these dreams mentioned her name and some of her traits alone (listening to sermons on some radio stations also mention this name as well, confirming what God was going to do at the time) and her appearing in another book.

That actually and eventually came to pass once I was reading something and it said that I may have ignored the blessings, so it really did come to fruition since it was something I have been praying for more than a few months last year. I think I kind of prayed for her in one dream. But the PD James thing is something I’ve been praying for close to more than 10 months, ever since this began sometime in either September or October (I think). The PD James thing could come closer to fruition by the end of this month or close to it, with this confirmation in my dream involving a couple in medieval clothing whilst praying this prayer saying that PD James not only used her boyfriend as inspiration for her stories (hence the art gallery) but also how and why she sees it as akin to courtly love, which is a literary convention of the time that had writers writing a lot about their muses, who were married women.

So it did confirm that PD James did use her boyfriend as the inspiration for many of her stories and particularly the character of Adam Dalgliesh, considering that those writing courtly love stories were often men writing poems about their would-be mistresses so her boyfriend would’ve also been married at some point. Because that couple wore medieval clothing whilst I praying about coping with PD James having had an affair with a man like her creation, so in this sense she not only had an affair with another woman’s husband but also that he inspired much of her stories since this also took place in an art gallery. The couple in that painting really does represent PD James and her lover, but this is also telling because since I often compare her to Dante Alighieri (a medieval historical figure by the way), so this is also God’s way of confirming that she did have an affair at some point.

Said affair inspired much of her stories, with Adam Dalgliesh being based on her boyfriend even after the divorce she caused. I also had recurring dreams of at least members from the band the Prodigy, but as superheroes for some reason. Since I had also prayed for this band’s salvation, there was this one dream where they’re there in a church. And then from going to the website 444ProphecyNews I stumbled upon an author named Shannan Howlett (recall how one of the Prodigy members is named Liam Howlett), one of her entries has the word ‘danger‘ possibly alluding to how I also prayed for everybody in Ace of Base to be saved, so this is a sign (an omen if you will) that these two will be saved. Recall how Ace of Base has two songs called ‘The Sign’ and ‘Living in Danger’ just as the Prodigy has a song called ‘Omen’. The fact that the word prodigy historically meant ‘portent’ and even ‘monster’ is God’s way of answering this prayer.

Albeit not in a way I would’ve expected since God does give something surprising, that if you’re bad God will still give you something good or even better. So it’s not hard to see how and why dreams can also be God’s way of confirming what I’ve been praying for, since some of them actually have myself dreaming whilst doing something. In the case with PD James, I was praying for God to help me cope with her having had an affair with a man like one of her character whilst going to some kind of art gallery. Then this painting of a medieval couple came, which means PD James’s own affair with another man is what led to the character of Adam Dalgliesh considering that courty love involves writers writing about their mistresses in some manner. One thing leads to another, in this case what courty love has to do with PD James, which gets less surprising that Dante based one of his own after somebody he had a crush on.

If God does answer prayers in an unexpected manner, then this dream could be one of those and why it also counts as a prophetic dream, along with the recurring dreams I have of going to one of my cousins’ house.

The sign of the prodigy

I wrote somewhere that around the time I encountered somebody named Shannan Howlett on the website 444ProphecyNews, it rang a bell because she has the same surname as a certain member of the band The Prodigy (i.e. Liam Howlett). I had been praying to God to save both members of the Prodigy and Ace of Base, another band that I’m into, that a prophetess with the surname Howlett means something. Or rather what the words prodigy, sign, wonder and omen meant, especially in earlier times, wherein they had a lot of semantic overlap. Also the word prodigy had a lot of semantic overlap with the word monster and at some point, miracle in their original Latin forms, as they all denoted things out of the blue that are sent by the gods. Whilst the association of Ace of Base with prophecy might not be immediately obvious, especially in the band’s name, unlike that of the Prodigy, but the connection’s there in some of their songs.

The most obvious one is the song ‘The Sign’ which contains lyrics like ‘under the pale moon’ and ‘where I see a lot of stars’, which becomes more obvious that keywords relating to both bands’ bodies of work may relate to not only God answering this prayer, but also how they show up in Livy’s list of prodigies. By prodigy, Livy meant both extraordinary and ominous events, anomalies and deformities alike, which include things like sun and moon eclipses, plurality of suns and moons (the sun is a star by the way), frequent mentions of light appearing inappropriately, a burning sky, a sky getting torn, rainy earth (Liam Howlett had a studio called Earthbound and the song Thunder has the word ‘rain’ in it), appearance of wolves, repeat references to fire, an inflamed palm (Maxim’s real name is Keith Palmer), the sun struggling with the moon and the moon falling in rain.

The songs relevant to Prodigy fans with the same keywords (as well as their extracanonical synonyms) found in Livy’s list of prodigies are ‘Light Up The Sky’, ‘Run With The Wolves’, ‘Fire’, ‘Firestarter’, ‘Baby’s Got A Temper’, ‘Weather Experience’, ‘Out Of Space’, ‘Omen’ and ‘Thunder’, the songs relevant to Ace of Base fans with the same keywords and synonyms found in Livy’s list of prodigies are ‘Doctor Sun’, ‘Everytime It Rains’, ‘Wonderful Life’, ‘The Sign’, ‘Dancer In A Daydream’, ‘Lucky Love’, ‘All That She Wants’, ‘Into The Night Of Blue’ and ‘Living In Danger’. This becomes more telling if you look into the lyrics of these songs. Interestingly, some of these keywords also show up in Shannan Howlett’s prophecies*, which kind of proves that God really did answer my prayer and in a way that made me realise what these words meant. This semantic overlap also shows up in some Biblical passages.

Most notably Hebrews 2:4 (God also testified to it by signs, wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will), Acts 6:8 (Now Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people), Exodus 7:3 (But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt), Daniel 4:3 (How great are his signs, how mighty his wonders! His kingdom is an eternal kingdom; his dominion endures from generation to generation), Acts 14:3 (So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to perform signs and wonders),Romans 15:19 (by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ) and Acts 4:30 (Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus).

It should be noted that just as the Prodigy released an album called ‘Music For The Jilted Generation’, as parts of the Bible are written in an earlier version of the Greek language, the word for wonder is teras, which is also the word for monster and deformity. The word sign speaks for itself, but it was also the synonym for omen. The word miracle is derived from the word miraculum, which is the synonym for the words prodigium (prodigy) and monstrum (monster). To relay what I said before, I had a dream of the Prodigy in church, Jenny Berggren is a practising Christian herself and Liam Howlett’s something of a monster movie fan himself. Because I prayed for these two bands together, so there’s really a semantic link between otherwise somewhat unrelated things. But it’s also God’s way of answering this prayer, albeit in a way that kind of shocked and fascinates me. This becomes even more obvious what these words meant centuries ago, where the words prodigy and monster were as much as synonymous with wonder, sign and omen as they are to anomaly, miracle and deformity.

So it’s appropriate that a woman named Shannan Howlett gets these prophecies from God, as prodigies were thought to be portents sent by the gods. Last year when I prayed for this writer Antonia Fraser to have one of her characters stop cheating and get married, I often received a series of dreams featuring her in another book, solving cases and getting a new surname, as well as her having strawberry blonde hair. There’s also the time I prayed and then read a devotional that mentioned the word ‘shore’, which is part of that character’s name (Jemima Shore), so this is one way he answered this prayer along with recurring dreams of her. God does answer prayers, though not always in a way one expects. In the case with both the Prodigy and Ace of Base, it had more to do with both semantics, etymology and Shannon Howlett having the same surname as a certain Prodigy member.

Biblical writers know that words have power and in some cases, they may be connected in a way that reveals something. One prophecy by somebody else said that God told her to look up on the word genius in an old dictionary where it meant a spirit presiding over a person’s fate, guarding them and directing their actions, when it referred to the Genius Act meant to do something with cryptocurrency. So in this same dictionary, the word prodigy also meant monster and omen. Recall how the Prodigy released a song called ‘Omen’, so when coupled with Liam’s love of monster movies, that this is actually very appropriate. It’s just as appropriate for somebody like Shannan Howlett that God used to portend something, as prodigies were just as associated with prophecy as signs and wonders are (recall Ace of Base’s ‘The Sign’ and ‘Wonderful Life’).

The latter two words are often mentioned together in the Bible, with another mentioning a generation witnessing signs and wonders. Recall how the Prodigy released an album called ‘Music For The Jilted Generation’, it’s kind of there in a way if God answers prayers in a surprising fashion. Liam Howlett’s wife is named Natalie Appleton, the name Natalie means ‘birthday’ and by extension ‘the Lord’s birthday’, her daughter’s named Rachel (Ewe) whilst the apple is the fruit commonly thought to be eaten by Eve (Adam’s wife). Paul is also the name of a certain apostle, Jonas is the Portuguese form of Jonah (a prophet in the Old Testament), the name Ulf is obviously based on an archaic Swedish word for wolf, Andrew is another New Testament apostle as is Peter (the Swedish form is Petter), the name Sofia comes from the word for wisdom.

Liam Howlett’s full name is Liam Paul Paris Howlett, Maxim’s real name is Keith Andrew Palmer, Linn Berggren’s real name is Malin Sofia Katarina Berggren, Joker’s real name is Jonas Petter Berggren and Ulf Ekberg’s own name is an archaic Swedish word that means wolf (the current version is varg), wolves are frequently mentioned in the Bible just as Livy’s list of prodigies also includes a pack of wolves and the Prodigy has a song called ‘Run With The Wolves’, so it’s really God answering this prayer mostly through names and words. So the connection’s there in the Bible, in this case this has a lot to do with names. So God kind of confirmed this, not through dreams as it is with Antonia Fraser and her creation, but through words and names that are found in a variety of written sources.

Well most of the time but it does make one realise that God does answer prayers, whether in dreams as it is with the heroine Jemima Shore or in keywords like this one. It took a prophetess named Shannan Howlett on 444ProphecyNews to make me realise that God did answer this prayer, though in a way that was initially really surprising. So it’s really surprising to realise that God answered this prayer not through dreams, but mostly through words and names, that the connections are always there but one that made me realise this. There’s another prophetess on 444ProphecyNews known as Cassandra and like her mythological counterpart, she has the gift of prophecy from God. So God can make connections and answers through words and names, so the answer to my prayer to get both the Prodigy and Ace of Base members saved is present in not just extrabiblical texts like those of Livy but also in the Bible itself. Actually Jemima is also the name of one of Job’s daughters, this was mentioned in one sermon I listened to before, so it’s really another way of God answering that previous prayer.

Another radio station that I listen to for the sermons has the preachers mention somebody named Jemima from time to time. If God can answer prayers, he’ll answer them in an unexpected way. Because the dreams involving Jemima Shore were so recurrent that sermons and devotionals mentioning her name in some way is also God confirming things, a prophetess with the surname Howlett is also God’s way of confirming this. But one that made me deeply realise what the word prodigy historically meant and why it was synonymous with wonder, sign, omen, prophecy, monster and portent, to the extent that after praying for both members of the Prodigy and Ace of Base to get saved that this is kind of connected in not just etymology, polysemy and semantics, but also in the Bible itself regarding their Biblical namesakes and certain keywords in their songs.

The Bible also calls God a consuming fire, the light and the rock (Peter’s name means rock and the French name Pierre also doubles as the word for rock), so this is how my prayer for these two bands to get saved is answered mostly through words. Let’s not also forget that Queen, one of the bands the Prodigy sampled from, had an album or song called ‘The Miracle’, miracle being a word that also appears in the Bible and the root word miraculum being the synonym for both monstrum and prodigium. In the Vulgate, the word used in some passages is prodigium, which means wonder or portent in this case. Since Ace of Base put out a song called ‘Wonderful Life’, being the other band I prayed for its salvation alongside the Prodigy, so that’s pretty much killing two birds with one stone.

Considering that Eve is Adam’s wife and her name either means ‘to breathe‘ or ‘to live‘, there’s a Prodigy song called ‘Breathe‘ and Ace of Base has three life-related songs called “Living in Danger’, ‘Beautiful Life‘ and ‘Wonderful Life‘ as well as the song ‘Lucky Love’ containing the phrase ‘life is a paradise’ (heaven?). Since I also prayed for another band called Tokio Hotel to get saved, it should be noted that Thomas means twin, so appropriately Tom Kaulitz is the twin brother of Bill Kaulitz. This is a way that God answered this prayer, but through names and this epiphany about them. So God did answer this prayer, not so much with recurring dreams, but rather through semantics and etymology. So it took the prophecies written by somebody bearing Liam Howlett’s namesake to realise this really.

*The word hound is related to the German word for dog, that is ‘hund’, Shannan Howlett has a Rottweiler dog and the Prodigy released a track called Rok-Weiler.