Lurker > Bane_Of_Despair

ok I also looked at the bracket but I'm not going to sign up for a bracketmaker account to predict it, so... just eyeballing things (ooh Cissnei actually has a shot at winning a round maybe) I've got the quarterfinals as

Ramza/Tidus
Vivi/Rikku
Squall/Zidane
Auron/Balthier

Vivi > Ramza
Auron > Squall

Vivi

And in other news Frog on the Floor is still stuck in my head.

It always bugged me how this has stained Brand New's legacy and went basically unreported on so

There's a whole rabbit hole to dive into regarding these allegations if you so choose, but I'll try and keep it brief (note from future self: I failed). Also I'll preface this with fuck rape apologists and the whole rape apologia culture. It seems to have reared its ugly head again with the clearly credible Russell Brand allegations. This is literally the only case I can think of, period, where the accuser was caught outright lying.

Basically the main accusations that were reported on were incredibly misleading. The woman who claimed she was 15 when she and Jesse Lacey were sleeping together didn't meet Lacey until she was 19. This was corroborated by her own friends later, but more importantly, it was corroborated by herself in her own words. She had one of those LiveJournal websites (remember those?) which she posted to regularly at that time, and she very clearly talks about meeting Lacey for the first time when she would have been 19. There's some worrying stuff on there though to say the least - she was a groupie who regularly slept with bands in that scene when she was underage. There's some emo band I can't remember the name of, and she talks about sleeping with their 30 year old lead singer when she was 16. There's your actual predator.

The poor girl likely has/had mental health problems, so I'm not even certain to what extent she knew she was lying. Right when the accusations first came out, she was regularly posting Brand New lyrics on her social media...pretty bizarre considering what she just accused the singer of. This was what prompted some fans to do some investigative journalism that led to these revelations. And I kind of think it speaks incredibly highly of Brand New fans that this woman wasn't vehemently attacked and doxxed and lobbed death threats against when this was found out. I feel like any other band with that level of fame...the fans would have gotten very, very toxic. Glad it never came to that, though it also shouldn't have gone entirely unreported on.

The only other, much less egregious accusations that were made were by this woman's friend. And that's unfortunately all we know about those accusations, so I won't comment any farther.

With this context, Lacey's statement post-allegations also made so much more sense for me. He basically apologized to those he hurt because of his sex addiction in the past, but never acknowledged the allegations specifically or apologized specifically for them. It made a lot of people even more furious. In hindsight, it totally makes sense. It also totally makes sense that Lacey would be self-deprecating enough to not really stand up for himself at all.

I don't think Lacey was a saint or anything with a totally clear record on this stuff. The guy was a rockstar in his early 20s who admitted to his own sleaziness. But finding out this information was still very reassuring to me as someone who was fucking devastated when the news came out. Like...no news story had ever broken my heart more.

Forgive me for my wall of text and don't let me derail this topic, I just thought this might reassure some Brand New fans the way it did for me.

Jesse Laceys singing actually reminds me of Marilyn Mansons at parts

If there was any justice in the world, Vivi would be winning his 25th straight contest and we'd all be celebrating it