Here’s our final tally! This is absolutely amazing, I’m still stunned by how many votes this got! Thank you all for your participation! You guys went hard, and I so deeply, deeply appreciate it.
We have a winner!
Suddenly, there’s a rumble of machinery as a certain person graces the stage, one that hasn’t come up in their activities for a long time. Up from the floor beneath the stage, cloaked in fog, dressed up like just the cutest little Santa you’ve ever seen, ascends Mr. Flag himself, a scroll tucked under one arm.
“Merry Christmas!” He’s waving with both hands, flapping the slowly unscrolling list as the boys elbow each other to get a peek. Just as someone gets a good view, Hatabou scrolls it back up, walking down the little path into the audience. “I’m here to deliver their biggest gift this year– finding out who won! By getting this far, they won’t see before I tell them.” He turns to wave, “Are you ready to find out who wo–”
There’s a clamor of shouts as the six emphatically scream their approval. Osomatsu actually needs to be held back so he doesn’t run to snatch the list.
Hatabou is loving this. With his precious little mittens on proud display, he unfurls enough to read the last name on the list. “In sixth place by a super slim margin is…
“Ichimatsu!”
Ichimatsu yowls and falls to the floor. Just before Jyuushimatsu can ask what’s wrong, he’s babbling. “Everyone remembers who comes first and who comes last! If I’m in the middle no one cares! I like the middle! END ME.”
Jyuushimatsu gets his attention, and… boops his nose. “Pshoo, you’re dead now.”
As Ichimatsu goes along with the gag, head flopping to one side, tongue lolling out, Hatabou reads on.
“In fifth place, by just a handful of votes… is Todomatsu!”
Totty is already jumping for joy. “After all the magazine popularity polls and all the people calling me bratty and dry, I’m just happy to not be in last! I’m sorry, Ichimatsu-niisan, but I’m not last!” Pardon him, he’s too excited.
“In fourth,” Hatabou reads, “is Jyuushimatsu!”
“Totty, Ichimatsu, we all traded places!” He messes up his hair, slouching a tad. “Cats should give out presents instead of people. Santa Paws.”
“In third place… Osomatsu!”
Osomatsu shouts. “Wasn’t I in first for most of this? There were people sending in Christmas songs with my name in them, I demand quadruple points for those!” He’s in full pout mode. “I still had 69 at one point, so. I guess I’m ok with being stuck in third,” he said like a mature adult, accompanying it with a pthbbt noise like an immature dweeb.
At this point, Karamatsu and Choromatsu are staring at Hatabou with wide eyes, clinging like they’re facing down the scariest parts of a haunted house. They realize what they’re doing, look at each other with a fair degree of disgust, and back away, fixing their color coded Santa suits and staring in anticipation.
“Now, Karamatsu, Choromatsu, you two were so close in the polls. Your fans were jockeying for the position until the last second! The winner only won by four votes!”
There’s some screaming in response to that, none of which was an actual word.
“Our winner for best Matsu for 2017 is…”
The response came from the set before Hatabou. The lights, the screen behind the stage, and a party popper in Hatabou’s hands all burst in the same color:
Green.
“Choromatsu, congratulations!”
As his brothers shout and cheer (Karamatsu, surprisingly, just as excited that Choromatsu won as the green bean himself is), Choromatsu walks to center stage on wobbly legs, staring as the penlights in the audience all switch to green and white. He’s visibly struggling not to cry as he bows, shouting loud enough to be heard a few rows back without his microphone.
“Thank you all so much!“
The votes will be announced later today!!
Audience patter time.
The boys take just a brief moment to catch their breath, getting a quick drink and already celebrating a job well done.
“Everyone! Merry Christmatsu!” The audience shouts back, and they’re as delighted as always.
”The miracle sextuplets Akatsuka Fujio created, we are…”
“”F6! Thanks for coming out!” Totoko has good ideas, usually, but abandoning the cool guy schtick let them show just how enthused they are at moments like this. They much prefer being themselves.
Osomatsu waves to the crowd, and many of those colorful little lights (many of them special candy cane shaped ones) wave right back. “Check out how many people came to see us!”
Choromatsu, as always, is here with the facts about fan turnout. “Of course– we managed to completely sell out a venue!” After the audience cheers, he adds on another fact. “And this vote had five times as many votes as the last event did! Our fanbase is getting massive!”
Jyuushimatsu runs to the front, and where’d he get that white confetti from? “We’re a big pine forest!” He’s excitedly waving at the crowd, bouncing so he makes sure he can see everyone. “We’re happy to see you guys! Look at all the yellow, I’m super excited!”
“Even the balcony is packed!” Karamatsu says, arms outstretched. “How is the Juliet section feeling tonight?” There’s a slightly distant clamor. Never one to deny anyone but Osomatsu attention, he kneels and gestures to the rest of the crowd, “And our earth angels, how are you?” The screaming is more loud and immediate from down here.
Ichimatsu, eager for an excuse to congratulate his friends and distract from himself. “I know this usually waits until the end of the show, but our band did good. How about a hand for them?” Applause! “And an apology for nearly catching them on fire a few years ago.” Some nods are exchanged, this apology has happened before.
Todomatsu, after making sure his hat is on firmly, scuttles to center stage. “I know that, around this time of year, things are hectic. With presents and travel and how cold it gets, you could have just stayed home, but you came to see us! That’s amazing, honestly!”
As the cheers die down, Osomatsu gets himself to the forefront again, grinning like a cat that got the cream. “It’s like I’m on one big date with all my cute fans, isn’t it?” Wow, listen to those shouts.
Choromatsu punches Osomatsu in the arm. Twice, for good measure.
Osomatsu whines, “What?! I can dream, can’t I? I tried getting them to make a big mistletoe thing to bring down on ropes from up above the stage, but they said no.” He kicks at something invisible, “I’ve got no choice but to behave.”
After a few more moments of whining, the boys go through their introductions, adding on what they want this year.
Todomatsu hums, a hand pressed to his cheek. “I want… to get sweeter next year. I’ve been sweet already, yeah! But this year has still been kind of bitter. I want to be a less bitter person, and help other people be less bitter too! Let’s all be sweet together this year!
Jyuushimatsu is already excited for his. “I wanna do more appearances this year! We could do more TV shows, go more places, have more fun with more people! I wanna have more fun this year.”
Ichimatsu is frozen for a moment before he figures things out. “I want,” was that a gulp, “to… to be more helpful. Some people say I’ve helped them out of bad feelings, I’ve helped a lot, but I want to make a bigger mark.” He shrugs, “Other than that, I don’t know.”
Choromatsu has his statement already prepared, of course. “This upcoming year, I want to make our influence bigger. We’ve gotten on Oricon and Billboard, so I think that aiming even higher would be,” he shrugs, “reasonable at this point! I want to make our forest get bigger this year, so please support us!”
Karamatsu takes some thought, and snap! “I want to show more free and open thanks for everyone this year. I want to meet more people and raise their spirits, and I want to do so as often as possible! I want to let all of you know just how much you mean to me. That is my greatest wish!”
Osomatsu keeps it short and sweet. “Niichan wants twice as many kisses as I got this year! Please, everyone, show me as much love as you can, thank you in advaaaaance.”
Let the holiday chaos begin!
All is bright and colorful… and then? The lights go dark.
An announcer speaks up. “Of course, a few years ago, they wouldn’t have been so cheery. With no fun things to do, and no one outside of their family for company, the boys found themselves looking at the happy couples around them, and growing more bitter and rotten by the minute. Christmas was hell for them, and they made sure to raise it for everyone else too.”
Another speaks up, and it’s about then that a spotlight shines on the band in the back, showing the duo known as The Christmas Couple standing side by side, smiling. “It was a few years ago, I’d say, when one of them came up with an idea. A terrible, awful idea!” She grins. “It was simple, really: dress up as Santa and deliver some pain.” She reaches over, gently holding her now husband’s hand. “Surprisingly enough, if you passed his test to see if you were more than a fling, you’d get his blessing instead of a world of hurt.”
“Of course, he caught on fire and terrified that poor couple.”
“Poor things.”
“Thanks to that Black Santa routine, we– they, sorry, they realized they were more of a solid certainty than they’d thought,” he said, “but that gave the boys another idea–”
“This is where it transitions from actual things that happened to the story, dim the lights back down.”
The lights dimmed, and floodlights swept the stage like they were searching for a target. “They wouldn’t just zombify, only preserving themselves with the thought of revenge. And cake.”
“They were going to make sure all of Akatsuka was either truly on their way to love, already in love, or…”
An explosion rings out, smoke rising from the front of the stage as the six spring out from their trapdoors, in their Black Santa best.
The lyrics stick around a simple premise: hey, young lovers! Is this date for love? Or is it a fling? Choose wisely, because Santa isn’t here for people who are only really good one day a year. Be Good or be Naughty, just don’t pretend to be what you aren’t!
The Christmas Couple has a soft spot for the Santa wannabe who inspired them to stick together, it seems; the song they wrote has a lot of special little moments for Ichimatsu to shine; though the song is determined and tough, he can’t help but peek back at them, smiling just enough to be seen.
They’re much more polished than the Matsunos of 2015 and earlier would have been, but they’re doing a marvelous job at bringing back their old bitterness. For just a few minutes, they’re back to the scorned, hopeless losers they formerly were, and they’re armed and angry as hell.
The audience is hyped up nonetheless, as bags of Christmas-y party favors and noisemakers are pitched into the audience (clear into the upper balcony! What even distribution, Jyuushimatsu.) and cheers and jumps are prompted by angry shouts and somewhat aggressive bouncing of their own.
And then, as soon as the audience has gleefully made the adjustment to aggressive, angry boys determined to find true love, whatever the cost, pyrotechnics overtaking the front of the stage because, damn it, Ichimatsu, if you burst into flame in song one it’ll take an intermission worth of time to put you out…
The stage goes dark again as the song seems to somehow warp through time.
“As the six grew in popularity–”
“As people grew to adore them despite their flaws, even because of their flaws–”
“These six dateless, hopeless virgins began to feel something kind of like, I don’t know, hope?”
“This year, they’ve changed their tune to one that goes a little something like this.”
The lights go up, and the boys have made their first costume change of the night with unnerving speed, calling back to their yearly visits to Totoko with new, personalized, color-coded Santa outfits bedecked with bows and bells.
This song was all cheesy glitz, trumpets blasting cheerily as the boys mention how their view of the holiday has changed since they had the potential to have a date.
They still haven’t, of course– what do you think they are, smooth? No way– but the idea that they could is enough to make them bouncy and excited. They might be more successful, they say, but that doesn’t mean they’re any less touch-starved!
Their Christmas list seems to consist entirely of the most chaste and cliche of date ideas: sharing a nice dinner, cuddling by a fire, walking through the snow before getting warm by sharing one mug of hot chocolate. Obviously, these boys are the edgy sort. Obviously.
Still, their classic trashy selves twinkle through these tailored, choreographed veneers, the lyrics and impromptu shouts just as sweet and hopelessly romantic as they are painfully thirsty, and every word is absolutely true. The relentless thirst and just as relentless self-mockery are one of the group’s main charm points. As other groups get cooler and smoother, these boys stay just rough and awkward around the edges to keep the public wanting more. They’re not as pretty, but they’re comfortable, somehow.
The chance to get kissed under mistletoe is enough for them to spend a year not terrifying Akatsuka. They’re finally happy it’s here! It’s about time!
The FCC decided to go ahead with the vote to remove the Net Neutrality rules that the Obama administration set up.
As you can see, this is what the major ISPs wants to do if they have their way. This can do a few things:
Stiff new innovations, making it harder for smaller companies to compete.
Silence independent voices.
Potentially putting up a “walled garden” on a wide scale.
Make distribution of information harder for low-income people.
Imagine this website, if you will, only working on Verizon networks while AT&T customers are charged a little extra, or have slower access to the same information.
Remember, your ISP owns content providers and may give top-shelf, VIP treatment to their own things while stiffing everyone else. We need to address this.
Now, some of you may recall earlier this year that John Oliver and a lot of other people, companies (and yours truly) did a rallying cry to tell the FCC to back off the Net Neutrality rules, which resulted in millions of comments on their proposal.
However, there’s been a few problems… in short, it seems that the FCC chose to not listen due to “inconsistancies”.
Sidenote: Tumblr isn’t the best place to talk “long-form” so if you’re interested in looking at these notes, here are some places to go to.
https://medium.com/@AGSchneiderman/an-open-letter-to-the-fcc-b867a763850a – “ Specifically, for six months my office has been investigating who perpetrated a massive scheme to corrupt the FCC’s notice and comment process through the misuse of enormous numbers of real New Yorkers’ and other Americans’ identities. Such conduct likely violates state law — yet the FCC has refused multiple requests for crucial evidence in its sole possession that is vital to permit that law enforcement investigation to proceed.”
4) Write a letter to your representative. Not an email, an actual, snail mail letter.
Let’s all band together and do something about this. Our future of sharing information, building innovation, nurturing voices and creativity depends on your actions now!
I know it may sound hopeless. Look at when they announced this (you probably didn’t know they announced this on Monday when you’re busy getting ready to for the holiday!). But if we say it with one voice to BACK OFF THE NET, we maybe able to make a difference.
Hi.
I’m the Original Poster and I did my best to keep this brief with sources you can see for yourself.
However, with misinformation being a thing, I decided to amend to this to give you some extra pointers as to why I was specific about these steps and not recommend things like strictly writing to the FCC.
1) Calling your reps and writing them is more effective than doing it via email. It’s been stated over, and over, and over again. Sadly, letters and phone calls are more effective.
2) Signing a petition can help, but without a way to verify you, it can be just as useful as shouting on Twitter (and will they look at Twitter? Nope.) It’s not totally useless, but it will not totally do the job.
See, if the FCC can use “bots” as an excuse (look at the sources in the original post), what makes you think a senator and representatives won’t? This is why “calling your rep” is the first action step and “writing your reps” is the last.
3) Regardless, the non-profit organizations’ job (the one I posted about) is to spread awareness BEYOND YOUR NETWORK. Think of them as a private army you’re recruiting for this one mission. You can only tell so many people and some of you don’t live in the United States, which makes it even harder!
4) BTW, you’re not just talking about this on Tumblr, are you? You have to talk to people on your other social networks as well. They are affected by things as well. Don’t want to talk? Post a link to here and let me do the talking for you.
5) While I have done the research for you, please do your own in conjunction with this. That way, you can be better informed, especially when talking about this to other people.
6) Oh and one more thing since I did neglect this in my last post. I forgot to post the “deadline” – the actual day they will vote. Well…
We have until December 14, 2017!
So, let’s mobilize! Organize! Transform and roll out!
Okay, maybe not the last one…
But make the calls to your reps! Scroll up and do your part, no matter which side you’re on!
The boys managed to sell out a fairly large venue this time! For their first Christmas concert, not bad. Well, not quite Christmas; Totoko and Nyaa had dueling Christmas Eve concerts, and GELATO! had the 23rd, but the odd timing didn’t seem to damper their fans’ enthusiasm one bit!
The halls were less easy to play with than their last fairground venue, but the staff dressed it up as much as possible. The vendors were decked out with cardboard cutouts of different seasonal treats, the eggshell walls sprinkled with peppermint swirls and candy cane patterns, and the air smelled like hot chocolate, warm pastries and… oden.
Chibita swapped out his hibiscus and Hawaii decor for tiny snowmen that look just a little like him! He’s quick to say that he didn’t make the little squishy guys, and even quicker to offer his wares. “You gotta stay warm! It’s December, stay bundled up.” He’s eager to joke around at the Matsunos’ expense, including unpaid expenses of theirs in what he seems to deem the distant past. Chibita is still lively, still full of laughter, still loud enough to be heard from the entrance. Even after becoming a show host, even after showing the world what he can do, he still insists on running his cart whenever possible. “Something cheap to keep you warm– who could pass up a chance to get that kinda comfort whenever they can? People I don’t wanna hang around, that’s for damn sure.”
As people head into the concert hall and settle into their places, the lights slowly, gradually dim.
Then, a reel of footage recorded in a cheesily decorated wintry set, full of fake snow and oversized props.
Osomatsu is the first to pop up onscreen, swaddled in a red jacket, giving the poor cameraperson no personal space. “I’m mostly in it for the fans nowadays!” A voiceover plays while he tries to put a star on top of a tree, ladder wobbling precariously. “Like, sure, the pay is good, the music is fun, but… I make people happy and excited, and that’s just what I was put here to do! So, yeah… still having fans is a pretty good gift, I say.” He topples off of the ladder, voiceover still playing. “Also money. Not being broke is cool.”
Karamatsu, for no logical reason, has shorts on in the cold. He shivers, and shoots the camera what he wholeheartedly believes is a winning smile. “There’s a certain romance to winter, wouldn’t you say?” A massive box wrapped in iridescent blue paper gets a black ribbon lovingly tied on top. “The twinkling lights shining over pure white snow under dark skies– although few flowers grow in this weather, it’s truly a time for love to blossom forward!” Right on time, the camera pans back to show Karamatsu burst out of the box full of tissue paper, inelegantly catching his breath. “Your love is the dearest thing in the world to me!”
Choromatsu is, adorably enough, bundled up, mittens and everything, blowing gently into his hands to stay warm. “I’ve been watching for long enough, and every show has been a gift. I want to pay all of those performers back, somehow. Everyone, as long as you’re paying attention and cheering me on, I’ll make sure to give you my all!” Someone sprints past and shoves him face first into the snow. He yells, scrambles to his feet, and runs after them. “I’ll do my best!”
Ichimatsu is buried deep in presents, one arm waving from the top of the heap. “I’ve raised a bunch for shelters. People even donate in my name, sometimes. We’re comfortable, we’ve got food and shelter.” He ducks down, pushing one box out to make a window. “Really, I shouldn’t ask for anything else. It’d just be greedy.” He stands back up, and there’s a little gift ribbon on his head. “Keep up the good work. Thanks for…” Ichimatsu goes red, sinking back down. “For everything, I guess.”
Jyuushimatsu is grappling with an immovable snowman. “I did a good job this year, right? I worked really hard to make people happy, and that kinda makes me feel nice! Who woulda thought?” He makes a snowball, hurling it at the snowman. Didn’t work. Then… his eyes slowly move toward the camera. “As long as I can keep making people laugh and smile,” he makes another snowball. The voiceover continues, “I’m really happy! I want to keep being happy for as long as I can.” He raises his arm to fling one at the camera. The operator runs, camera still in tow, showing the crew adjusting lights and checking their computers. A snowball soars by.
Todomatsu is in all the knitwear, pink rabbit eared beanie and all, two cups in his hands. “I feel more me than before this all started,” says the voiceover. He offers you a mug of something nice and warm. He keeps the other for himself; hot chocolate, based on the heart marshmallows. “I feel less like things will go wrong because I’m around people. No one’s going to spoil my fun, not like before. My fans help me feel more sure of things, and I’m so lucky to have you.” After some adorable little cooldown blows, he takes a sip, and comes back with a frothy moustache. He looks surprised, then a little displeased. “Thank you for being so sweet!”
The six are lined up: (not indicative of rank, this was filmed way in advance) Choromatsu, Todomatsu, Osomatsu, Karamatsu, Jyuushimatsu, Ichimatsu, watching the camera as it pans up over the snowy hillside.
askidolmatsus archive 