Iz様 🌟

I have made references to it as a joke, but a lot of how the traitors have, so far, had a relatively easy time has been down to so much tunnel vision on the part of the Faithfuls this series. Principally with Amanda, and to a lesser extent Adam and Ellie, focusing on Jade, but also wild sidequests like Roxy against James and even Jessie, as much as we like her for being right on Stephen, her suspicions of him were also to a large part informed by tunnel vision. This group have an aversion to admitting they may be wrong and principally, against considering more people than just the one or two who are currently sticking in their mind. Which means that when someone comes along to disrupt that, they might go away from their preconceived thought for a moment, to banish the one standing out, and Harriet and Fiona both fell to this, but they don't actually listen to anyone elses' theory for the long term. There's little winning people round based on actions, words or body language, just a few hunches, largely from near the start of the show, that persist round after round. ironically it might be a severe overreaction to the first banishment of Judy where everyone exhibited the opposite, equally undesirable trait of herd mentality.

Myuk - Yukiuta world's worst at hiding it YOASOBI fan finds someone doing their shiz with acoustic instruments Yukiuta means 'Snow Song', which means it's perfect for this time of year, and young J-Pop singer Myuk has released a really well structured and beautiful song. According to the youtube comments, she was teasing it for a very long time, which makes sense as it's very good.

VIOLENT VIRA - Saccharine My last entry of last year, a fantastic rock song with shades of 00s emo to it, Violent Vira carrying the scene scene in some corners of music fandom.

Yuko Suzuhana - Samurai Diva Our entry to 179, the lead singer of WagakkiBand with a lovely dramatic pop song.

catching up with posts here: Hagali - For Those Who Remain Our entry to 178, a fantasy epic sung in a constructed language.

I feel I've heard that Maruja song before at some point, they seem good so looking forward to getting reacquainted. That's about it for songs but of course many names are familiar. quite pleased with that semi for me, but we'll see as I'm sure everyone else has put in some amazing songs too. Interesting no one ever sent 'Idol' as that was a barnstormer of an anime OP (easily the best of what I know from the 2020s), though I wouldn't often call any of those cheap, that might be one just too popular to appear here - if you picked up on YOASOBI at all after they first entered here you'd know it.

I used to have encylopaedic knowledge of this contest. I'd know when a song was entered, the general records of nations beyond their current Q streaks, how each non qualifier sounded months after the initial contest. Now I regularly forget about the existence of artists that got a top 10 hit 3 contests ago, which normally becomes apparent at listenthroughs when their future winner is playing.

Tariffs on European countries including the UK and Denmark over the Greenland situation. the regularly scheduled nonsense to try and prove 'might makes right, fuck my allies' then

It's a decent idea, and the strength of this show is its flexibility in switching the format up, but every decision like this has a lot of knock-on effects that may or may not be desirable. For instance, here, you instantly create a bloc of votes large enough to sway the round table as well as murder - perfect information players have so much power in these games and you want to be careful with giving them more, that's partly why I think they've been so generous with shields this series and had the Secret Traitor to dial back the Traitors' power in the early game. Even something as simple as upping the prize pot for each Traitor banished, which I've seen suggested at times, may create, through its incentives, more backstabbing drama than the producers want to deal with to keep a coherent television show story going. They've kind of landed on 3 as a number too because it works really well for a television show production. The turret is set up to film for 3 players, maybe 4 at a push, more would be crowded. Any more than 3 or 4 really also runs the risk of too many Traitor plotlines going on at once for the viewer. It's fine if we don't always remember who Jack the random faithful is until episode 7, but you want your audience to be aware of all the Traitors - they're the protagonists, they're the ones driving a large amount of the events going on and too many Traitors at once may well make structuring episodes too chaotic. Recruitment also works as a nice occasional concept to contrast against murder for every decision, and does its job to keep the show at its desired length no matter how many Traitors are caught. It's seemingly rarely taken now contestants know it often doesn't work that well, but it has potential with the right contestant - Charlotte was a fantastic choice last year and kept that series going towards the end.

confirmed a piano/acoustic-led winter song

Jenrick with Reform now, though the shock of his defection somewhat taken out by Badenoch outplaying him. She wins for now, and tbh I don't see what Jenrick adds to Reform as an unlikeable busybody who's also incredibly untrustworthy. He's loud, I suppose, so another gadfly to add to Reform's lineup of dislikeable arseholes.

Just to start off the year with how YouGov is looking on my favourite, the PM question: Starmer/Badenoch drawing on PM. Davey beating nearly everyone, Starmer no longer having the clear advantage he once had, Farage and Polanski currently below though, so somewhat victory for the sensibles. This is also the lowest Reform have been for about a year.

Interestingly, I thought over the last month or two that Badenoch was doing a bit better and the amount of ex-Tories joining Reform is starting to worsen their image.

Harriet's intensity in the church was absolutely fantastic, I was hoping she'd bring that sort of considered energy to the rest of the episode, intense when it needs to be but evidential and considered elsewise, unfortunately she stayed in that mode and started accusing random people like Roxy, going off target from Rachel, while her evidence didn't have the bite I wanted it to have (Fiona vs Rachel was a Traitor-on-traitor, she said that before in a confessional, but didn't in this Round Table). She very nearly cemented herself as a GOAT Faithful there but unfortunately by about halfway through the episode it felt more like she'd had enough and wanted to go. The game is such that players can really focus on the loudest people in there, often illogically. Would have worked better if she'd gotten a core vote of people she was more sure of (enough of, from her perspective, Sam, Jack, Jade, Faraaz, Jessie, Stephen, Ellie to ensure she wins a vote) to absolutely go for Rachel. Whose survival and lack of heat at this point is quite amazing btw, she must have a really good social game because that is two people now who've gone 'I think Rachel is a Traitor' with intensity, one of whom was a confirmed Traitor, the other someone who'd clearly been watching her for a while, and yet the average one among the rest of them is more likely to go 'idk I think Jade seems more suspicious 🤷‍♂️' based off of seemingly nothing. Matthew looks in such a precarious position too now, not revealing his questions looks so suspicious (I can't believe that neither he nor Rachel seemed to think of plausible fake questions to talk about prior to the breakfast).

Absolute genius record, 'Grace Kelly', I heard it loads at the time, played it semi-regularly ever since, and it's never gotten boring. Such a good progression and as you note, all its drama and satire built into the vocals, I think that plays really well with what he was aiming for. I am a fan, I've kept up with him at times as he became a bit more niche, and there were a few songs that came close to this, but it really is such a perfect combination of factors, a radio dominating track, that's well-performed, and has some interesting and open to interpretation lyrical content. Fantastic #1. Slight shame he stopped FOB getting a #1 but Grace Kelly is so good I've never really considered it an option.