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amoralto · 5 years

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I've been reading your posts from the past year, and I have to ask: Why do you even do this blog? Why put so much time and energy into writing about Paul's relationship with somebody you don't like? I'm serious here. Every snippet you post about John, every comment you write about him, is critical. If you truly believe John deserves all the blame in the relationship, while Paul is the sainted victim, you have a right to your opinion. But I think the truth is much more complex.

My spontaneous and simplistic response to this ask is that I am very surprised, and that I honestly find it difficult to see how one could glean a clear and obvious (even glaring, as you imply) bias against John or in the dynamic of his particular relationship with Paul. Not in the last year’s posts - which appear predominantly to consist of scattered anecdotes and accounts from varied sources, and clips of John’s own measured and matured introspections - and certainly not in the several previous years’ - which host a cornucopia of John’s best and bad sides, often concurrently.

I am still rather shy about how far I raise my head above the parapet in this place, but I’ll try to be clear as I can on this apparent bias that you suggest, and the closest I have to a stance: I stand myself definitively and decidedly apart from any factioning that may occur in this fandom/community. Not above, just apart. I am not in the “Anti-John” camp. I am not in the “Saint-Paul” camp. I am not in the “Witch-Yoko” camp. I am not in the “Ungrateful-George” camp. I do not weigh anybody in the Beatles or around them in currencies of blame and what they do or don’t deserve. I do not reduce them down solely to their so-called worst tendencies, nor do I ignorantly glorify them by their so-called best.

And I would like to argue that I have not, in this blog, if I felt I could muster a better argument than just pointing out old posts to you, like the ones personally (pathologically) written (waffled) by myself, which have gone into kaleidoscopic (deathless) account about John and Paul alone and together, and how it’s less about victims and villains and easy delineations and more about the entanglement of preoccupations and issues and enabling/disabling behaviours of both parties, pushing and pulling, for both positive and detriment, from both sides. Because that may just come across as passive-aggressive, and I don’t wish to be, especially when I’m unsure where exactly anon is coming from.

You seem to be expressing a frustration with how people in this story are painted within parts of the fandom and without it, how John/Paul can tend to be deified and vaulted where another can tend to be John/Paul demonised and disregarded, which is one I am entirely in commiseration with. I’m frustrated with it too, immensely. But I have to express my surprise at being the brunt of this (and even anxious dismay, if only because I’m an emotional basketcase and wracked with imposter syndrome and doubt over my own competency of credibility).

I agree, truth is complex, as it is also often unwhole. The contents of this blog have, foremost, been about multiplicative perspective and dimension. It has been about complexity, and deconstruction, and reflexivity. Account and empathy. Critical and not condemnatory judgment. Just as human beings are multi-facted, the examination of them (and reexamination) has to be as well. Now, as the curator of materials and very occasional writer of “meta” or “discourse”, my own latent thoughts and interpretations and even speculation will seep into any lofty ideals of neutrality inevitably. I am aware of and understand this, viscerally, which is why I make (or like to think I have made) appreciable efforts into maintaining a balance while also expanding scope.

I source and archive and then have myself and others who browse the blog to try to derive corroboration and context and further speculation from there, but sourcing and archiving first also entails documenting any manner of opinions and accounts that I may not necessarily agree with or believe by people whom I may not necessarily find reliable in one or another particular context, but which I nonetheless determine is intriguing or important as a point of view, as a point in time, as a facet of the vast frame. Intrigue does not equate to endorsement. I provide contextual description on such posts, off and on, sure, which can at times be conjectural, but for the most part I refrain from opinion and if anything try to stress not jumping to conclusions.

And this is what still makes up the vast majority of the posts on this blog: quotes, anecdotes, interviews. Scattered, inconsistent, varied. And for all that I try to maintain an overall balance of perspective in the content, I can’t deny that my actual logistical posting habits are imbalanced, which is another thing which may have impressed negatively/wrongly upon anon - crucially, that I don’t unfortunately space the posts out evenly by “content perspective”, where a negative anecdote about somebody will be followed up immediately by a positive one. I just post things as and when I’ve looked them up, or finished working on them, or such. I may read a book and post a few quotes from it, successively, and then perhaps a clip I’ve just transcribed, and then a video a friend of mine requested that I found I had in my possession. I’m not operating on any ingrained biases, Amoralto’s Active Agenda For The Day, I’m just operating on what I have in my possession and capacity to post at a given time.

And perhaps this is a real fault on my part that I can take into hand, that I should try to be more evenhanded in my dissemination, but – basically, if a few consecutive posts that seem to be critical/negative of John or any other particular person at one given point in time is what has convinced you of some untoward bias of opinion I may hold, then I can only say that this is not the case at all.

You talk of the time and energy I put in - if I didn’t love John, and any of the Beatles for that matter, I would not be spending all this time into finding more facets for the frame, acquiring more vantage points, searching for nuance. I’ve even discussed in this blog before, more than once, about affinity and relatability, and about how I can relate to John’s emotional hedgings and compulsions (and the other Beatles for that matter, in other ways, for other reasons). I don’t like myself very much for all kinds of reasons, but it doesn’t make me project upon John for reflecting some of my more shameful tendencies back at myself, or further embolden his; if anything the relation only fosters better understanding of them because I can see more clearly how things can spiral and have repercussions that were not entirely meant at all, well or ill, and I can see why it would be entirely valid for John to feel this way in that circumstance, or do this with what little he’d perceived to receive, and on. And this applies for Paul and the others as well.

I’m not sure how to conclude this, so – this is my general case, anon. I think the least we can agree on is that I am a little more familiar with what I post than you are, and can thus speak with more about authority about them. I have tried going over my own posts with your eyes and have failed to see the same criticisms you do, and I can’t hope that you will see things from my perspective when you read this either. However, I do hope it will at least have broadened your perspective in some way, if it hasn’t changed your mind about me or the opinions I appear to prescribe.

(… And you know the phrase “paranoid troll logic” is meant in the most exasperatedly fond and not at all sneering way, right? I’ve tagged Paul as an “emotional disaster ocean” before too, I do not consider emotional disaster oceans remotely saintly. I allow myself to be glib and cavalier every once in a while, because the Beatles story can be so existentially absurd at times; I would hate for it to be interpreted as a deride.)

#ask

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eldunea · 5 years

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THE LONG-AWAITED REASON WHY THE NAME “ELDUNEA” MEANS SO MUCH TO LOTOR.

you’ve seen it used once before on @ofalsehoods and now i’ve made “eldunea” my blog url. tbh tho? this post has been overdue since @ofalsehoods-archive so now here i go.

i definitely have mentioned before that thousands of years ago, the alteans had a war. a huge, ugly war known as the war of the stones. tl;dr of it: everybody was fighting each other to gain the entrance to oriande and to claim any territory with a white hole in it, billions of alteans died over a bloodbath period of 10,000 years. however. it only took one person’s efforts to bring the entire war to a close.

that person’s name was ELDUNEA UNVELAM.

eldunea was a moon elf who was born toward the end of the war of the stones, but he didn’t know that it was going to end soon due to him because the war continued on like there was no end in sight. people were killing each other everywhere and it was generally a really bad time. eldunea wanted so badly to become a scholar and to escape reality by diving into academia, but given that 1) planets everywhere were turned into warzones and 2) he was drafted into the moon elvish army, that wasn’t going to happen. so, after a few hundred years of fighting needless battles, he deserted and set out to end the war of the stones--simply because he was so sick of his dreams being stalled by his circumstances.

yep. really. eldunea wasn’t doing this shit because he actually cared about everybody dying. he pulled out all the stops to make the war end because god damnit, he just wanted to sit at home and read in peace. literally when people asked him what motivated him to do what he did, he said “with the war all around me, how can i study?” normally, this sort of selfishness screws people over. but in eldunea’s case, it paid off.

his method for ending the war was just as controversial as his motivation. since everybody was fighting over the keys to oriande, he decided that he would find and destroy all the keys to oriande that had been scattered across the known universe. he saw the locations of the keys in visions that he was certain the white lion had granted him, which made him feel as though he was chosen for this task. he did this also literally to flip off every living altean--he felt that none of these bitches were worthy of the knowledge that oriande contained, so by barring them all from the alteans’ most holy site, he was spiting all of them for being such corrupt violent assholes (and for causing him to lose his dream). but just as importantly, by doing this he was preventing a war like this from happening again.

he finally found all the keys except for one, which was the one that lotor and allura later used to get into oriande (but he thought he’d found them all, which is why that one remained). he then destroyed the keys to oriande in the ballsiest way possible: he sent letters to every altean ruler and every altean news outlet telling them that he had found a key to oriande and that they were to teleconference with him on a certain date. then, on that date, with all of them tuned in, he took out all the keys to oriande, put them on a table one at a time while monologuing about how shitty the war was. and then, in front of every single altean in the universe, he casually took a hammer to the keys one by one--all while telling them he was literally doing this as “payment” for the hundreds of lost years that he couldn’t be a fucking scholar.

think he was done there? think again. all this time, he had secretly kept one of the keys--a key that he had planned on keeping for himself and himself alone. with this key, he entered oriande and gained the alchemic secret to eternal life. it was no great sense of selflessness that allowed him to pass the trial of the white lion; he actually failed the first time because he was thinking only of himself and self-defense. instead, he used logic and the alchemic principle of equivalent exchange--if the white lion held the secret of life, he would of course have to give his up. and there he stays, perfectly happy and content in his little scholarly bubble, finally able to live out his childhood dreams away from the asshole alteans that he blamed for not being able to fulfill them.

his legacy was to live on. while he was looking for the keys, he also fucked his way across the universe, much like a certain purple bastard we all know and love who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants (coughLOTORcoughcoughcough). he never intended for any of these one-night stands to result in kids, and so he used contraception spells to ensure that pregnancies would never occur. but he forgot to use the contraception spell just once--just once--and impregnated a moon elvish woman. that woman went on to have his kid. then that kid went on to have another kid. then that kid went on to have another kid. and so on and so forth until, in the long chain of kids, a little girl was born who, much like her ancestor, would change the universe forever--for better and for worse.

that little girl’s name was honerva sincline.

yes, you read that right--lotor is eldunea’s direct descendant. he used to hate eldunea for what he did and when he found out that eldunea was his ancestor, he was devastated. but the more he lived and existed in the universe, the more he began to identify with eldunea’s selfishness, and the more he realized that he and eldunea have a lot in common. like eldunea, lotor puts himself first. like eldunea, lotor hates politics and just wants to be a scholar. like eldunea, lotor sleeps around. like eldunea, lotor failed his first attempt at the trial of the white lion. and like eldunea, lotor is bitter about the faults of the alteans (though unlike eldunea, lotor’s bitterness is highly repressed). in fact, he wishes he could be more like eldunea. he thinks that wanting to stop a war purely because it interrupts one’s studying is the biggest fucking mood, and he wishes that he could just give into his selfish impulses and still be able to help billions of people.

it is for these reasons that eldunea unvelam is lotor’s favorite historical figure. usually when he has to fake his identity he gives his ancestor’s name; the vast majority of the universe doesn’t know his ancestry, so they are none the wiser.

#alma te anul; the history of self. || HEADCANON #mea altea; the meaning of home. || ALTEANS

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kindabraveandlittlestupid · 5 years

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Why Tumblr Chooses Censorship

It’s a strange day to jump online and suddenly hear about a major policy change on Tumblr from a few people I talk too. Words like “Total Bullshit”, “End of Tumblr”, “Burning Garbage Heap” and so on tossed among them to describe the policy change. Curious enough I logged on began reading over all the purposed changes and I admit I am a bit disheartened. Usually when a digital institution like AOL, Yahoo, Napster, or MySpace falls it because they didn't evolve and became stagnant in what they were providing the internet. I can’t think of a time where a site willfully regressed its own freedom of speech on a broad scale and basically swallowed a poison capsule that destroys their user base (perhaps deservingly so) but here we are.

That point aside, I am trying to have insight and hindsight to understand how/why they were pushed to this reckless conclusion (I will be leaving foresight out because I think Tumblr lacks foresight, the exodus from Tumblr will dramatically change the culture of this site likely for the worse). Tumblr like any social media medium is struggling in the current age of the internet; Bots, Far Right Extremists, Fake News, Illegal Porn, Data Theft, and so on. Many companies are walking this fine line between trying to combat these problems while preserving freedom of speech.

I struggle to find my own footing on this topic because I believe that society with LESS censorship historically does better. You look to countries in the past that repressed sexuality, individual thought, and so on; those countries were often the ones to invite the rise of repressive groups doing atrocious acts in history. While on the other hand because of this open and free social media platform we all see the echoing of those same repressive groups (who are also on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Youtube) and to simply say/do nothing about their posts will inevitably allow them to rise still. This is where I struggle as I believe in that concept of a free society but I do feel that removing fake new stories is essential for the health of democracy.

I imagine the reason why sexual images are the target is that Tumblr makes things so easy to post. It's not hard to imagine pictures of minors getting liked or reposted from one blog or another happening. The problem is many of those pictures will circulate for a long period of time not being flagged as underage and there is good chance that every user has knowingly or unknowingly looked at an image like this on the web. I explore the porn side of Tumblr and have once or twice encountered a Tumblr full of these images at which point I couldn't close that tab fast enough and get the hell out of dodge. So Tumblrs solution of handling this problem instead of playing whack a mole with these underage accounts? Ban all adult content.

I can understand this motivation being a foolproof way of making sure there is no underage porn because there will be no porn. I imagine the result will be very effective, so effective that the various members of the community be they straight, bi, or gay who had their own private collection of legal adult material on Tumblr will stop visiting the site. A slow-moving exodus of users from Tumblr this site to perhaps a new blogging alternative that isn't so restrictive. I don’t suspect Tumblr will be closing its doors the week after the policy kick in (though they will see a HUGE decline in traffic) but even the PG accounts will likely move on because a sizeable user base shifted away and people want to be where the party is at. And much as I love Tumblr, it will not be here (sadly).

PC Culture VS Censorship Culture

One thing I noticed on the various posts is some people attempting to blame this policy change on the PC Culture. I am not sure I believe that as a valid argument. While I don't get along with PC Culture all the time (part of my free society is believing that humor is apart of it and PC Culture doesn't always like humor), I do think PC Culture has a broad/accepting view of orientation and sexuality. Just important is people having the right to explore those thoughts and feelings of their own free will. Tumblr has been one of those sites allowing emerging gay men and women to find others like them but also explore their sexuality with images/gifs/videos. What Tumblr might have not noticed is that the site itself is kind of a cultivation of the best images from the web, sure you can find some pretty hard porn on occasion but of all the adult sites on the web, Tumblr provides an almost artistic lense to the images that come thru the site.

Censorship can come from various political/social/religious groups but this sort of censorship against the human body, sex, and sexuality, in general, comes from a very conservative mindset. People who don’t wish to see nudity in any form on any medium; people who think a woman's nipple is lewd, that breastfeeding publically is disgusting, and that anything remotely sexual is a sin. And by the nature of Tumblrs policy change their beliefs align themselves alarmingly close to these individuals.

There is a thin veneer of progressive views on the site that remains where they say they are ok with this and that like gender orientation surgery but its just that a veneer. Once a person has transitioned anything that is shared of their new body (nudity or sex wise) beyond the initial transition falls into the realm of ‘smut’ by Tumblrs policies. I imagine the perception they are trying to sell us is “Hey we are still the same progressive safe haven for LGTBQ community! Stay with us!” but secretly thinking “Everything you enjoy in the bedroom is horrible and we fucking hate you.”

Perhaps I am being hyperbolic in that statement but damn if it doesn't feel like a vast policy of censorship on the human body. And whenever this happens (historically) it always comes from hyper-conservatives.

A General Attack On Expression and Orientation

I touched on this topic a little bit above but I feel it's worth stating again that Tumblr might be losing its safe-haven status for gender expression and sexual orientation. When scrolling through Tumblr you will likely see those new expressions of genders that is beyond that of ‘traditional’ male and female definitions. And while I don’t have any attraction to some of these new expressions, I understood why they are there and don’t get upset if/when the cross my feed. Like two men having sex my mind thinks “Not for me but I am sure that will make someones day”. I view sex (in all its forms) as natural, I don’t have to be into it for me to be ok with it (if that makes sense). It’s visual participation if that image you see isn't a turn on for you and does nothing for you, simply move on.

Tumblr’s policy doesn't seem to care about this concept of visual participation and while it is taking away my straight/lesbian porn I enjoy. It is also sweeping up all these new forms of expression and orientation in the process.

I am not sure what else to say... I am a straight male and I try to have a deep empathy for other people when I can. I feel this argument can be better structured but I also come from a position where I don’t know all the details. I add this to the post because Tumblr seemed to go out of their way to suggest that they would protect this community but from a long view that doesn't seem to be the case.

A Lessons To Be Learned

I am not going to say fuck Tumblr. I don’t want to see them fail. I liked what this space was about and what it provided. I prefer they reconsider changing the guidelines and consider a different course of action but I also understand why they want to do this. It’s “The Easy Way” to do things. If they ban all porn then it simplifies managing underage nudity and allows the site to have less criticism drawn to it.

I do, however, think this broad censorship approach will ultimately hurt the site and the community though. People will leave, alternative websites will arise and Tumblr will eventually become no more. I am not going to tell anyone to boycott or delete their accounts. I plan to collect my writing and images, backup my favorite adult gifs (might need to buy a hard drive) and settle into this new reality. I know I will personally be visiting the site less as I used to look at porn here at some of the better cultivated Tumblr archives. That lack of traffic by me and all the other users will hurt the company. I hope they understand eventually I won't show up at all and over time, eventually, no one else will either. Maybe the site will survive and change into something else but right now under these conservative policies of censorship, Tumblr won't last.

Sad Regards, Michael California

Update: Posted this originally with a woman in a shower with large censorship bars over the naughty bits. Flagged despite the fact she was more covered than most Sports Illustrated models. I know I just wrote above I am not advocating leaving the site... but after all this and the fact that Tumblr Support finally responded to a far-right Tumblr blogger photoshopping/doctoring a PM conversation we had before posting it to his blog. I feel as though Tumblr A) hates sex and sexuality B) not only enables but protects racism and harassment on this website. I think it’s time to move on.

#Tumblr #Tumblr Suppor #Staff #Policy Change #Tumblr Policy #RIP Tumblr #Censorship #Tumblr Ban #Tumblr Purge #Community Guidlines #Tumblr Community Guidlines

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lostcauses-noregrets · 5 years

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Hey I'm am new to the fandom and thought you could help me out here. How did the fandom react to the serumbowl? What did the majority want? What was the general reaction to Erwin's death? How did the fandom cope with this loss?

Ooft. Okay, let’s take these questions one at a time….

How did the fandom react to the serumbowl? Badly. The thing to remember is that the serumbowl played out over several months; Erwin lead the final Survey Corps charge in chapter 80 and didn’t die until chapter 84. That’s four months that the fandom spent desperately speculating and wondering anxiously whether Erwin or Armin would die. The way that the chapter 84 spoilers were leaked was also horribly painful and really exacerbated the grief and disbelief that many of us felt.

What did the majority want?Well that depends on who you ask of course. I think it’s fair to say that the vast majority of Erwin fans wanted him to receive the serum, while the majority of EMA fans wanted Armin to get it. One of the worst things about the serum bowl was just how divisive the whole thing was. Everyone was very raw and emotional and a lot of harsh words were spoken in anger and grief. To be honest I’m not sure the rift caused by the serumbowl has ever truly healed, and these divisions still flare up from time to time. Most of Erwin’s fans have (more or less) come to terms with his death now, but many are still salty about the unnecessary drama of the serumbowl. And more than a few are pissed the we were denied the magnificence that would have been Titan!Erwin.

What was the general reaction to Erwin’s death?Though it pains me to say it, some sections of the fandom were glad to see the back of Erwin and weren’t shy about making their voices heard. Needless to say, the reaction from Erwin and Eruri fans was utter horror, grief and disbelief. Some fans left the fandom immediately and never came back (RIP @youken), others slowly drifted away over subsequent months (miss you @birbwin). Levi came in for particular opprobrium from all sides of the fandom because very few readers really understood why he let Erwin die. It was several chapters down the line, after screeds of meta and the publication of the Character Guide that it became clear that Levi saved Erwin by allowing him to die a man, saving him from the hell of the world and the curse of becoming a monster. There’s still some misunderstanding about this, even now I still see occasional posts about why Levi “chose to save Armin” and I know there are some Eruri shippers who have never really quite come to terms with Levi’s decision. Hind sight is a wonderful thing though and having seen how the story has developed, I’m glad that Levi chose to let Erwin rest when he did.

How did the fandom cope with this loss?With an outpouring of creativity the like of which I have never seen before or since. The fic, the art, the meta, the shit posting, it was all incredible. Also the salt. There was a lot of salt. It you look at my blog archive for August 2016 you’ll see just a small portion of that creativity. The Eruri fandom was magnificent and I think it’s fair to say that the only way many of us got through the whole tragedy was by supporting each other with empathy and humour through a time of very real grief.

If you want to find out more, here’s the meta posts I wrote at the time:

The Meta Post

The Salty Post

The Personal Post

The Eruri Post

I also have 8 pages of posts tagged snk 84, @momtaku has 2 pages tagged serum bowl, and once you’ve read all that, here’s a rec list of fics to sooth your soul.

#asks #levi ackerman #erwin smith #snk 84 #serum bowl #snk

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lunaschild2016 · 6 years

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Belief: Part 6

A/N: Sorry for the wait between chapters! Hope you enjoy!

Disclaimer: ‘Mother is the name for God on the lips and hearts of all children.’ (James O'Barr, The Crow) V Roth is still Mother to this world and I am just one of the children singing my own tune into the night.

Rating M ( Language, Violence, There will be smut, Angst, Tragedy, Romance, Fluff)

@kenzieam @pathybo @jaihardy @every-jai @ericdauntless @beautifulramblingbrains @bookgirlthings @jojuarez26 @oddsnendsfanfics @offroadinjandals @singingpeople @iammarylastar @irasancti @captstefanbrandt @clublulu333 @fuckthatfeeling @tigpooh67 @ex-bookjunky @jughead-wuz-here @badassbaker @beanzjellly @beltz2016 @meganbee15 @affabletimelady @scorpio2009 @gylisaa @geekybeyondallreason @violetsonthelam @kyloswarstars @emmysrandomthoughts @kgurew @beltzboys2015-blog @slytherin-princess-25273 @whatwouldbuffydo666 @jaiboomer11 @holamor @wealwayskeepfighting

**I promise I have put the read more option in but it has been glitching.**

Part 6

From the start, I knew I was going to be seeing another side to Eric while at Erudite.

For one, they sent cars to the Dauntless leaders and other members that were going to be visiting. The drivers were all deferential to the Dauntless leaders, but Eric more than the others. There was a Dauntless truck that followed with guards and I could tell it made them nervous but it was expected. It had been just under two years since everything settled after the shake-up but things were still tense.

Granted, I had never seen for myself this rumored tension between any of the factions personally. The only times I had left Dauntless was at the beginning of my time in the clinic when I had to go out to assist a few patrols as a medic. Once I did my training and assumed the Head Nurse position and duties, I was compound bound.

I know enough to know that Erudite had always acted superior to all factions, even Dauntless, who was supposed to be their greatest ally. In the past, cars being sent to pick up other faction leaders would never have happened.

Eric and I didn’t talk much during the ride to Erudite. He barely acknowledged me other than making sure to pull me to the same car as he was riding in. Eric is normally stiff and scowling but today he is taking it to a new level.

The car ride is silent with only a slight and almost imperceptible rustle of fabric when Eric shifts beside me. I don’t turn to fully look at him as I try to distract myself with my tablet, preparing myself for the day. I am pouting and I know it even if I don’t like it. I am not that kind of girl that will get upset if someone doesn’t notice a new hairdo or even to care how I look normally. I realize that with Eric, he is bringing out all kinds of things in me. I wanted to know he saw me and more importantly that he liked what he saw. The driver had certainly noticed how I looked and even appreciated it until Eric stepped in front of me to usher me into the backseat of the car.

We pull up to Erudite sooner than I had been expecting considering all I have to go by is how long the train usually takes to get anywhere. I had been able to do what I intended and forget about the unwelcome feelings at the start of the drive by going over everything Elijah and I had spoken about and some points I had thought of in the days since.

Eric is the one to help me out of the car after the driver was given a glare. It is the first and only indication so far that I am anything to him than just another faction member. The second is his hand at the small of my back, ghosting close enough that I can feel the heat from his hand that never actually makes contact.

I glance up to see the set of his jaw firm and his eyes narrowed as he glances ahead of him at the welcoming party to greet us.

Cara, the newly elected main leader of Erudite, and Elijah were the only ones that didn’t look their faces were frozen and in danger of cracking should they show any kind of emotion. Elijah sent a smile my way from the back of the group and I felt Eric move closer to me. It was a slight shift that would be barely noticeable.

Tori was the one returning the greetings, her irritation for the entire deal was clear to me. I was parts amused, impatient and fascinated by the entire thing. Dauntless don’t really have formalities with visitors. There are few times when the expected procedures are held to within the compound but I have heard from others that outside of it, the rigid structure and military preciseness is expected and adhered too. Which might explain the bearing and demeanor of all the Dauntless around me.

The lower floor of the Erudite tower seems to be made completely of a slight blue-tinged glass. Walls of the colored glass separate the different areas. Apparently, when the Erudite responsible for planning the coup of the government had discovered that they were going to be ousted and brought in for justice, they had barricaded themselves inside the tower along with the Dauntless traitors that followed the leaders. It had taken an assault to end it. The tower had gotten damaged but luckily there weren’t many losses in Erudite besides those that fought back or were executed for their crimes. Because of this, the tower and from what I understand Erudite itself, has undergone major renovation and rebuilding.

We are given a tour of this new Erudite.

In an effort to at least seem more open, the entire first floor is constructed of rooms done mainly in that glass. The library, or at least a good portion of Erudite’s library, is now open for display and use to all factions. A vast room with shelf after shelf of paper books can be browsed through. As we walk through it seems more people wearing blue occupy the room that is part library and part museum. There are quite a few Candor and the odd Abnegation. The same is found in the newest addition to the faction, a room dedicated to providing technological access to all factions. Computer terminals set up on sleek tables that are open for the public to come in and use for various things. Research, contacting others in the city, and school-aged kids to complete projects that require devices they might not have access to at home; these are just some of the things that can now be done freely. In this room, there are more of the last and all wearing the colors to signify a variety of different factions.

A few Dauntless are seen there. I couldn’t help but to notice and say my observation out loud that they were all most likely there watching movies or accessing old archived sites instead of doing anything school related. The smirks and quiet chuckles of the other Dauntless around me let their agreement be known.

Maybe it is my Amity upbringing that I don’t even bother to try and mask my emotions as we arrive in each new area. I am sure my face shows it plainly as I smile or my eyes widen. I make comments here or there and don’t hold back when I have something snarky or sarcastic to say. I am mindful of how loud and obnoxious I can be though, so my volume has been greatly tamed. I also keep to the back of the group and Elijah keeps me company. At least he seems to be enjoying my breaking from the stuffiness that has infected everyone else.

Eric is at the front of the group but he glances our way often. Constantly shooting glares and annoyed squints at the two of us. At this point, I am not sure if it is because I fell back and away from him, that Elijah is with me, my behavior, or all of the above. I know that I am not trying to make him jealous or anything, though the thought of him feeling jealous does make a bit happy, I am just truly enjoying myself at the moment.

It wasn’t something I thought would happen for my day in Erudite. I didn’t think it was possible to use the word ‘fun’ at all in conjunction with Erudite. I think that if I were with anyone besides Elijah then I wouldn’t be having the experience I am now. I am struck by how handsome Elijah is, especially when he smiles. There is a level of comfort with him, almost a familiarity as well. There are things about him that both draw me in and make me feel comfortable with him but also has me curious.

For instance, he is really built for someone in Erudite. It might just be natural but I think it is part genetics and part maintenance. He is by no means as built as someone in Dauntless, but for a doctor in Erudite he stands out. Then there is his personality. It is clear that he is intelligent, highly intelligent at that, but for all of that he doesn’t lord it over me like any Erudite I have met before. He is free with his smiles and laughter. When I make what would be considered a crude joke considering where I am, he doesn’t cringe or look offended, instead, he gives a deep chuckle.

We progressed from the main floor up to the third where offices and research stations were. No longer were the walls made of glass as they had been upon first entering. Cara gave explanations of why this was and I could understand the need for it to be able to provide the proper environment for the research being done. To aid in the spirit of being open there was a vid screen built into the wall that serviced as a security panel and to display a live feed of whatever is going on in those rooms.

This was where I realized that this tour was really something else.

Erudite was being inspected.

With each room we came too Cara would look to Eric with some unspoken question. He would either give a small nod or make no moves at all. It was random and you never knew which one he would pick. When he gave the signal, the security panel would be accessed and the image would be displayed of whatever was going on inside. The higher we got, the more top priority or important the things inside were. This was where it hit home to me how much sway Eric has at Erudite right now. Considering he was the one to put his hand on the Erudite security screen to access what has to be highly guarded projects.

I had never found out what exactly had Eric turn against the leaders and Erudite. I had always assumed it was because of the things that had occurred with divergents and what they wanted to do to the city. Seeing this and how another faction was treating him as if he was their leader or with as much respect as their leader, had me wondering if that had been the reason at all.

“There is a place that would be perfect to grab some lunch before we have to take the tram to where the medical offices are,” Elijah said with a smile when I had grumbled under my breath after the inspection seemed bound to be going right through lunch.

We had been going for what seemed like hours already and I knew I was headed towards a category five ‘bitchicanne’ if I didn’t get food in me soon. His suggestion was music to my ears. I was about to agree wholeheartedly before I felt a hand on my arm and knew instantly who it was even before he spoke.

“Elijah, you will not mind that I’m stepping away with Devi,” Eric said even as he was already guiding me away.

I caught Elijah’s raised eyebrow that had to match my own. The words Eric said were usually put in the form of a question but, of course, not with Eric. That was all order or warning. Maybe both. Either way, it doesn’t sit right with me at all especially since I really just want to sit somewhere and eat.

What was I thinking wearing these damn heels! I guess I didn’t really think about all the walking I would be doing in them.

“Eric. I really am not in the mood for this.” I hiss to him as he leads me into a room and then flicks on the light after he lets go of my arm.

I turn to face him, my arms crossed over my chest and am trying to glare at him. He locks the door without ever taking his off of me and a smile slithers across his face while he walks towards me. I drop my arms and take try to take a step back when he reaches out for me. My legs are no match for the reach of his arms and his finger grip my hips then jerk me towards him. My hands go to his chest as I look at him. The smile is gone and is replaced with that look I am coming to think is one he doesn’t get often. Frustrated and on the verge of losing it.

“Do you have any idea…” he starts out speaking slowly, drawing out every word as if he is trying to reign himself in, “...how…” one of his hands moves to allow the backs of his fingers to drag along the side of neck, “..distracting you are to me?”

Eric stopped after he had moved his fingers to just under my chin, his eyes boring into mine. His forehead scrunched up in his obvious frustration along with his strained admission. I would be laughing at my apparent ability to unsettle the man that almost all of Dauntless fears; I would laugh if I didn’t feel exactly the same.

I do feel some smug pleasure at the fact that a little of what I had hoped for actually panned out today. I try not to let that show as I arch an eyebrow and get out a breathless question while Eric decided to use his lips on the skin of my neck he had just been teasing with his hand.

“How exactly am I being a distraction, Eric?”

His chest rumbles and I feel a huff of hot air on my neck but he doesn't move away. In fact, he begins to suck and nip at my neck while he pulls me tight against his body. I cry out and dig my nails into his shoulders when he nips and sucks just a little too hard, then glare at him when he pulls back with a satisfied grin on his face.

“You know exactly how you are distracting me, Devi. That was why you dressed how you did.”

Heat from my temper felt like it might explode out of me, I could only hope it would knock the conceited asshole on his ass.

“I dress for me, Eric Coulter. What is it with you men thinking the world revolves around you? That anything and everything a woman might do has to be about you? Get over yourself because that is just not who I am.”

I cringe a little because that is usually the case, but damn if he didn’t hit the nail on the head about what happened today.

He lifts a disbelieving eyebrow at me and hips lips tilt in amusement. “So you dressing like this and getting all buddy buddy with Elijah wasn’t to make me jealous?”

Screw waiting for the ability to knock him back with some imaginary power, my foot comes down on his hard.

“Pendejo!” I scream as he grunts and releases me a little, enough for me to shove him away from me. I take the opportunity and start towards the door. “I don’t play with people like that, Eric. But I am not going to apologize for actually getting along with someone and enjoying myself. You don’t own me. If that is how things are going to be you can just forget it.”

Eric catches me around the waist and pulls me against his chest, locking me in and I can barely hear the words he is saying against my hair.

“Fucked up past relationships, Devi. I...I am glad the two of you are getting along. No matter how I may seem right now...that is important to me.”

The tension leaves me a little as I realize that is about as close to an apology I am going to get. “Do you two...I mean are you friends or something?”

Eric chuckles and squeezes me briefly before he moves us towards the door. “Something like that.”

He lets go of me to open the door and looks back at me. “Something like that? No other explanation?”

He shrugs with a smirk. “Oh, I am sure he will get to it during your time together.” Then he gets serious and cups the side of my face briefly. “If he doesn’t, or actually even if he does, I promise I will talk more about it later. We need to get back out there now.”

With a sigh of frustration, I nod and follow him out. Elijah isn’t far away and is on his tablet, leaning against the wall. He looks up when we come out and his eyes flicker between the two of us.

Eric stops in front of him briefly and leans in to whisper something to him. Elijah just looks at me and nods with a smile. Before he moves off, Eric looks back at me and winks. Elijah pushes away from the wall and I watch with a little smile as Eric is slightly limping.

I can’t help the small chuckle at that. I look over to Elijah who is looking at me oddly. His eyes are on my neck and for a second I am confused as to why he would be focused there. Then I remember and it makes me want to run after Eric and do him more damage. I grit my teeth though and countdown trying to reign my temper in.

“You mentioned food?” I try to ask brightly after I open my eyes again. He is looking down at me, his blue eyes showing amusement and nods.

“Yes. I was thinking of a place that would be perfect for you.” He has that smirk again that just seems so familiar but I just can’t place it. It is making me feel like when I do I will feel like an idiot for not seeing it before.

“Really?” I groan when I catch the name of the establishment stamped in silver on the fancy blue menus. I look at Elijah and see him fighting laughter.

“I believe they thought rather hilarious.” He says with a shrug.

I shake my head and open the menu. “Well, it failed. Completely. Utterly. Just fail. I thought Erudite aren’t even supposed to know what a joke is?”

Elijah pretends to be offended. “Hey, some of us have excellent senses of humor. And I believe it wasn’t so much a joke as extreme sarcasm.”

I chuckle along with him and eye the menu.

The name of the modern and sleek restaurant is called The Meating Place. And despite the spelling, it is actually entirely vegetarian.

As bad as the name is I cannot fault the items on the menu and my mouth is already watering as I try to narrow down my choice.

“Now my only issue is what do I not want to try,” I mutter but still loud enough for Elijah to hear.

He gives a nod of agreement from behind his menu. “Well, we could order a few items and share. They also do a few family-style platters.”

I smile and shut the menu. “That sounds good. I’ll let you pick then.”

A server materializes just seconds after I say this and Elijah smoothly gives our order. I take the opportunity to take in everything around me while sipping from the water that is in a fairly large wine glass. It is all so fancy for somewhere to eat in my opinion. A little cold feeling but I guess that is just Erudite.

I look back to Elijah and see he is watching me take everything in. He lifts his own water to take a drink, looking completely at ease, lounging back into his chair even. Polished masculinity with the carefree smile of an amity. It hits me so hard that I just blurt it out.

“You look like you would fit right in at Amity.” I almost slap my hand over my mouth. It takes us both by surprise but he just chuckles at my horrified expression.

He nods as he sets his water glass down. “That might be because my test indicated Amity was where I should go.”

“Oh,” I say dumbly, not sure how else to respond then give in to curiosity. “Why did you stay?”

Here the smile fades and he looks intently at his water glass, his long fingers turning the glass by the short glass stem. “Has Eric told you anything of his life before he transferred?”

The question startles me and I am relieved when the server comes back with the first course Elijah ordered for us. He nodded to the young man as he placed before each of us a bowl of a gazpacho soup using what was advertised on the menu as a ‘bright summer vegetable medley’.

I waited for the server to step away before answering.

“Eric is not exactly forthcoming in anything regarding himself. He is a master at bullying my entire life history out of me though.” I grumble and pick up my spoon, dipping it into the bowl.

Despite where the conversation is going I can’t resist giving in to my stomachs loud request to fill it.

I look up and see Elijah has a small smile playing around his lips. “That isn’t anything new with my brother.”

The declaration, so sudden but also so fucking obvious given all the hints and similarities, knocks the breath from me, causing me to swallow the soup incorrectly. I cough and tap my hand to my chest a few times, drawing a few eyes to us before I finally get my breath back again.

“Your….” I clear my throat, grab the water and take a big gulp. Swallowing I look back to him, his eyes are full of apology and understanding as he looks at me. Looks at me with those same piercing damn blue eyes that Eric has. “Your brother. Well, that certainly explains why you looked vaguely familiar.”

“I apologize. I thought he had told you that much at least.”

I shook my head with my lips pursed. “Nope. Sure didn’t.” I say shortly. Then I take a breath and get a grip. I remember his words about how my getting along with Elijah was important to him. “He did say it was important we got along though.”

Elijah nods and smiles sadly before he takes a breath. “Eric and I were raised to be very private. I am older by four years and with our parents absent much of our lives, I also became more than a brother. Sometimes this rubbed him the wrong way, me being both a brother and parent, but overall we have always been close. There were a few times that relationship was strained, to the point that I wasn’t sure we would ever be able to return to it again.”

I stayed quiet as he spoke softly. I could sense he was wanting to get it out and if I interrupted him with questions, I ruin this chance to know Eric better.

“It isn’t hard to see that Erudite have completely different ideals about most everything, including family. Maybe it was always the Amity in me but I did not and could not hold to that. When we were younger, we were often left with other children of our age whose parents had a close connection to our own. Very few of those children became close to us, but there was one.”

Here he paused and there was something about the pause that had my stomach churning. He was collecting himself. So I let him as we finished our soup in silence. The bowls were taken away and he cleared his throat.

He smiled at me, genuine but with grief and regret in those blue eyes. “Her name was Julietta and she was just a year younger than Eric. We were together so often, she became family to us. As we all got older and entered school, our activities always seemed to be intertwined. More often than not she was at our apartment, her parents were just as absent as ours but she didn’t have an older brother to look after her.”

The next hour was spent in spurts of Elijah telling me the story in between eating. I could tell this was hard for Elijah and felt horrible for letting him continue but I couldn’t help myself. I needed to know even though before he finished I had long ago guessed the ending.

Or at least I thought I had guessed at everything.

I was staring at Elijah with tears burning behind my eyes but trying not to break down. Trying to register the words that he had just said. Julietta, Jules as he lovingly called her, hadn’t left Eric broken hearted like I had assumed she had. It wasn’t the love triangle that ended with the girl choosing one brother and riding off into the sunset with him while leaving the other in tatters.

Yes, she had chosen Elijah. They had always loved each other but it grew deeper than either could have imagined. Enough for Elijah to know he couldn’t possibly leave Jules and stayed in Erudite, knowing she was meant for the faction and that he would never ask her to sacrifice that herself.

Yes, the choice of one brother over the other had greatly strained the two, to the point where it had gotten physical at one point. But Eric, Elijah said, had come to realize that he loved Jules; they just weren’t meant to be together. Eric admitted himself when he came to Elijah one night to give his blessing to the two of them, that he wouldn’t have stayed for her. Eric recognized that if he had truly felt so deeply about her, then he would have at least considered it, but he never did.

Before Eric even left Erudite, the three had been able to heal and reconnect. Elijah and Jules planned to wait to move beyond being more than good friends and get married until things were more settled. She still had to choose herself, and Erudite frowned heavily on any kind of relationships between members and dependents. Elijah had also wanted Jules to have time to explore and grow if that is what she wanted. He talked of the plans Jules had, brushing off his insistence that she needed to spread her own wings.

She never got to see those plans carried out. Shortly after Eric had chosen Dauntless, she passed away to an illness she had been secretly fighting for almost two years.

There had been experimental treatments, of course. Elijah made a veiled reference to an offer from the old leadership to get her into those treatments but Jules had told him she wasn’t going to accept.

The second time the brothers almost came to blows, and the time Elijah thought Eric would never forgive him, was the day Julietta passed away. It was during Eric’s initiation. He had gone to Dauntless with the assurance from both that she would be taking the treatments offered.

Neither wanted Eric to worry and to do his best to reach his goal of becoming a leader. Julietta passed away the day Eric finished training. Elijah had gotten word from contacts in leadership there that he had also been offered leadership. He said that it was almost as if she waited, just for that, to know he made it and was happy.

Our lunch had long been cleared away. I am sure that the wild mushroom with extra virgin olive oil drizzle flatbread and eggplant parmigiana were amazing, but I couldn’t say for sure. It had all tasted like cardboard to me.

I am trying hard not to break down and make a scene when I feel Elijah cover my hand with is own. His eyes showing his own tears threatening. He smiles at me and pats my hand.

“How did you get past it all?” I ask finally in a faint whisper.

“It is amazing how children can bring families back together.” He replies and the smile becomes genuine but the answer just confuses the hell out of me. “He won’t tell you this, Devi. Maybe because he doesn’t like the thought of what he thinks was him failing Jules, but before he transferred he was approached by leadership to recruit him. Their first attempt was a promise of power in the new regime.”

He gratefully let me catch my breath and bearings with this new twist and I nodded to him when I felt like he could go on. He truly was Amity, to be comforting me in all this.

“That was actually pretty laughable, to both Eric and anyone that knew him. Eric saw through all the bullshit and knew that whatever promises they made could be taken with a grain of salt. The whole divergent thing, in Eric’s words, was bullshit. We never believed in any of that.”

I nodded in understanding as he continued. “The second attempt, now that...that wasn’t so easily turned down. Jules had hidden it at first but we both knew something was off. We just didn’t know what. Jeanine knew just where to hit Eric. That was how we found out she was sick, was through Jeanine and she was anything but tactful in her estimation that Jules would survive. Jeanine offered every resource and treatment available to Julietta. Nothing else could have gotten him on board.”

“Why then? Why did she refuse it?” I gasped out in agony.

“The chances of any of that actually working were so very small, Devi. Jeanine was desperate to offer it but Eric was just as desperate to grasp at it. The thing about experimental treatments is that they are just that, experiments. As a doctor, I recognize the need for these trials. But as the person who loved that girl with every breath, no matter that there was a small chance it would work, I couldn’t watch her go through that. She didn’t want to go through that. Jules…..” He stopped and looked wistfully at me. “You know you actually remind me of her in some ways.”

He stopped and blushed and then went on. “Not physically.” He hurried to reassure me. “You might have both been what one would call, a latina, you are both very different from each other. There is the same vibrancy though. The same strength and independence. I can admit I don’t know you well yet, just what Eric has told me, but you seem comfortable in who you are. Jules was a quiet kind of strong. She was kind and loved to laugh but she wouldn’t back down from what she felt was right. Jules could not and would not be the thing that was held over Eric’s head. She would not be leverage for the horrible things we all knew were being planned. We both knew that the chances of those treatments curing her were so small as to be non-existent. The side effects would have left her in a worse state than the actual disease she was dying from. She made the decision and I supported her. We kept it from Eric and I knew there would be fallout from that. Her last request was to find a way to make things right, but to make sure I told Eric to never let himself be controlled again.”

“You said that…” I trailed off in confusion.

“After informing Eric of her death and her message to him, I didn’t hear from Eric for several months. I heard reports around the faction that he was seen often with Jeanine. There were whispers that something was brewing. I had thought that instead of freeing him like we had hoped, it had wounded him and made him so angry, that he went all in with the plans. It shocked me when I received a message from Eric asking to meet. It shocked me, even more, to know that he not only found a way to bring them down and had been working towards that; but he had a way to give us...me...back a part of Julietta.”

“It seems that when she first got sick, she had gone through all the options of treatment and determined that almost all of those would leave her unable to have children. It would either leave her sterile or her body too weak to carry. So one of the first things she did was to have some of her eggs harvested. I can only guess that it was done when she was still trying to come to terms with things, that she forgot to tell anyone in the hard months that followed. Eric found out and once again, it was from Jeanine. She realized she lost her hold on Eric the minute Julietta passed away and had been scrambling for something to bring him back. The old promises of power in Dauntless and Erudite weren’t doing it. She combed through the records and found that Julietta had preserved several viable eggs, then she held them for ransom, as they would say.”

I couldn’t help the low growl that escaped me and Elijah chuckled darkly. “For being supposedly the smartest person in the city, the bitch was stupid.” I snarled out.

“Indeed. She couldn’t have made a worse move. He played along for a little while, got the ball rolling for me. The instant we knew the surrogate had moved past the danger zone and Eric had gotten her to a secure location, he unleashed hell on Jeanine and Erudite. After that, our relationship was still strained. He made it clear it was only for Jules. That he still hadn’t forgiven me and I understood. I was grateful. When Karen, the surrogate, went into labor, he rushed to be with me at the birth. He was there when Olivia was born and when he held her for the first time, I think it was the first step in us being able to move past things, or at least forward..”

“How old is she now?” I ask with a small smile at his beaming one.

“She is twenty months old going on sixteen.” He laughs and shakes his head. “Not even two and already running the house.”

Elijah’s phone goes off and he stops to take it out then look at it. He smirks and shakes his head.

“It’s good to see that he found someone, Devi.” Then he slips his phone back into the inner lining of his suit jacket and looks at me. I am blushing, at his last comment. “You are going to have to be patient with him I am afraid. He never was the best at being social or having social graces and I am sure he has already made a million mistakes by now. I can say without a doubt that he wouldn’t even make an effort if he didn’t truly want to be with you. He especially wouldn’t be inviting just anyone to have dinner with Olivia and I.”

That last bombshell is dropped on me as he stands and offers me his hand. I take it but I can still feel the shockwave hovering on me.

#divergent #divergent au #divergent fanfiction #eric coulter fanfiction #romance #fluff #smut #tragedy #eric coulter x oc #eric coulter #oc #jai courtney #diane guerrero

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linguisten · 6 years

Link

Leaving aside the functionality of the site (I admit I did not get it to work with my files), I want to reiterate my frustration with websites that call themselves archives (ok, so in this case the title ‘pop up’ should have been a giveaway), only to disappear at the end of a funding cycle or the retirement of the researcher.

In part this frustration is also motivated by a recent project in which I compared languages that have little representation in the OLAC listing (see the earlier discussion of this here) of holdings in the world’s language archives but have had a grammar written recently. If a linguist has worked on a language in the past thirty or so years then it would be reasonable to expect that some primary records were produced, and that they should be in an archive. They may be in a repository that is not part of OLAC, in which case we can create a record to point to that collection. If they are not in any archive, the task is to ask the linguist if they need help to get the records into an archive. At PARADISEC we have been doing this, partly through our ‘Lost and Found’ survey, which has resulted in a number of collections of analog tapes being digitised and made available.

When I sent out a message to each of the authors of these grammars asking about the location of primary records, the responses were split between those who have made provision for their records in an archive that may or may not be in OLAC, those who have put some examples into an online website (and apparently consider that to be an archive), and those who do not think they need to do anything at all. The vast majority did not respond at all. The problem seems to be that most people involved in documenting languages do not prioritise archiving of their primary records.

The following is a useful guide to archives, produced by Susan Kung at the Digital Endangered Languages and Musics Archives Network (DELAMAN): Finding an Archive for your (Endangered) Language Research Data

The PARADISEC Deposit page also discusses archival formats for files.

A WEBSITE IS NOT AN ARCHIVE!!!!!!

Archives curate files by: – applying standards for data formats both to ensure longevity and to migrate files to new formats over time – using community-agreed metadata standards that export to the Open Language Archives Community (to increase findability) – providing backups in several locations – providing access conditions for the contents of the collection as specified by the depositor in a deposit agreement – providing persistent identification of the parts of the collection – making items available in formats suitable for web-delivery (downsampled versions) – providing a catalog that uses language identifiers and other terms for finding participant names, their roles, the place associated with the records, when it was produced, and may also allow for parts of the catalog to be written in the language in question.

#linguistics #language documentation #language preservation #documentary linguistics #endangered languages #language death #language maintenance

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samersmusicalendeavours · 3 years

Text

Sampling

Sampling is a widely used technique in modern music production and the means in which it can be achieved are much easier, faster and more accessible than that of the past. In this post I will be discussing the historical development of sampling technology and current methods of incorporating sampling as a music producer.

So what do we mean by sampling? Sampling involves capturing a section of pre-recorded material(music or other sounds) and creatively incorporating the material into your own music. Various forms of processing can be implemented in order to manipulate the sample.

The first known instances of sampling, without the use of sampling technology, appeared in the early 20th Century, with Jazz musicians integrating sections of music originally created by their peers into their live performances.

Moving on to sampling using technology, and we have a French composer known as Pierre Schaeffer experimenting with sounds using a tape recorder in the 1940′s. He was the founder of Musique Concrette - a technique of composition which relied on recording natural sounds on tape and manipulating the samples with effects to form a unified composition of sonic art.

Not too long after, between 1949 and 1956, The Chamberlin was developed. It was an electro-mechanical keyboard, using magnetic tape, with pre recorded sounds on them, which could be triggered by the keys of the keyboard. Samples of instruments and sound effects could be played on The Chamberlin, but it is rather different to what we think of as sampling nowadays.

Similarly, the Mellotron was a device based on The Chamberlin. Still using magnetic tapes, each tape corresponded to the pitch of the key that it is placed under. This feature, in addition to its unique desirable sounds made it popular with Rock musicians such as The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and The Moody Blues.

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Although the Mellotron was a predecessor to the digital sampler, it was an expensive and fragile piece of equipment, meaning its use after the 60′s died out as the first digital samplers were produced.

Some of the earliest digital samplers, which could be used in the studio, include the Computer Music Melodian and the Fairlight CMI. Both being developed in the late 1970′s, with the CMM being a monophonic digital sampler, and the FCMI a polyphonic computer based instrument. The latter offered more features which seemed ahead of its time. Both were very expensive and only the largely successful musicians of the time purchased them, with Stevie Wonder being the first to buy the Fairlight CMI. Not only was it a sampler, but it acted as a digital synthesiser with an in built DAW. To make things even more exciting, a touch screen was fit into the machine and waveforms could be edited using a light pen. Although an impressive piece of music technology, the Fairlight CMI was too expensive for the average musician. computer Music from MusicRadar states “ it cost around $25,000 when it went on sale in 1979, the equivalent of about $77,000 in today’s money.”

During the 80′s, it became possible for the average musician to have access to portable and compact samplers. A classic digital sampler to mention here is the E-MU SP - 1200. It was an important sampler as it was widely used by hip hop producers and enabled the majority of a song to be produced without needing a studio or heavy machinery. Jason O’Bryan from Abbey Road states “the SP 1200 is an extremely iconic and desirable sampler because this was pretty much the key bit of kit used by many original Hip Hop producers. It’s like the holy grail of samplers in a way” (Hannah, 2020).

After the advancements in hardware samplers were achieved, a newer form of sampling was made possible in the 90′s and early 2000′s: software sampling. This method of sampling music is one which most producers today will be most familiar with, although hardware samplers are still utilised. One of the earliest software samplers to be released include the Nemysys Gigastudio, EXS24 and Kontakt. Software samplers offer the advantage of having a clearer and more convenient interface which can be incorporated into a more efficient workflow, in comparison to the older hardware samplers with tiny screens. ‘Having a larger screen workspace can make a huge difference when creating sampled instruments with hundreds of individual samples’ (Mcguire, 2013)

Another key advantage of software samplers is the vast range of editing tools available and the ease of use within the modern DAW, with many DAW’s updating their samplers with extra features as time goes by. One tool which I have recently come across is Logics sampler, which has replaced the previously mentioned EXS24. Using a simple drag and drop tool, audio files containing samples of music or any other form of audio can be placed in the sampler, making it an efficient method of loading up samples. The zone panel is where the sample can be controlled by chopping it up and a clear visual representation of the sample can be seen. Manual editing of MIDI mapping of individual sample sections is enabled with the Mapping parameter. In addition, the synth engines purpose is to enable customisation of the sample by using pitch control, filters and other performance settings can also be adjusted here. The modulation matrix enables one to route modulation sources and targets, such as LFO’s and velocity. Intensity of these factors can also be set. Lastly, with the modulators panel, up to five individual envelopes can be added, as well as four LFO’s.

Whilst there are many software samplers available these days with editing and processing tools found within them, there are other methods of affecting the sample by using plugins and the editing tools of DAW’s. In this example I have used a mix of both, Logics sampler and plugins to affect the sample:

The sample I have used is taken from the intro to ‘Loner’ by Black Sabbath. Firstly, I dragged the audio file into the sampler and cropped it to the section I wanted to use.Then I altered the speed by clicking on the follow tempo button and setting the speed to 2(twice the original tempo).

By using the mapping function, I could choose the pitch range, in this case any combination of notes ranging from C1 to C4. This enabled me to play part of the sample at different octaves.

To alter the sound of the sample the synth tool could be used and I used it in this instance to slightly change the pitch and increase the volume from the amp. Theoretically one could use the sampler to add many different effects, but this example uses a more simple approach as I wanted the sound to not be too different from the original.

To conclude, sampling has been around for a while and the technology has improved to make it more accessible and easier to use now more than ever. Although hardware samplers might be the less commonly used samplers today, they still have a place alongside modern software samplers. I am looking forward to future developments within this area.

References:

nord.(N/A) Chamberlin. [Online] Available at - https://www.nordkeyboards.com/sound-libraries/nord-sample-library-archive/chamberlin. Accessed: [29/11/20]

MotorMouthMusic (n.d). Home [MotorMouthMusic]. Available at - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTKPW92ndUA. Accessed: [30/11/20]

Matrixsynth. (2014). FAIRLIGHT CMI Series I Sampler Synthesizer. [Online]. Available at - https://www.matrixsynth.com/2014/12/fairlight-cmi-series-i-sampler.html?spref=pi. Accessed: [30/11/20]

Hannah. (2020) SAMPLING: IT’S ROLE IN HIP HOP AND ITS LEGACY IN MUSIC PRODUCTION TODAY. [Online] 19/10/20. Available from - https://abbeyroadinstitute.co.uk/blog/sampling-role-in-hip-hop-and-its-legacy-in-music-production/. Accessed: [1/12/20]

Mcguire, SM. (2013) Audio Sampling: A Practical Guide. [Online]. Taylor and Francis Group. Available from - https://tandfbis.s3.amazonaws.com/fp-usermedia/uploadedFiles/Books/Book_Media/Audio/9780240520735_cs.pdf. Accessed: [2/12/20]

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jafreitag · 4 years

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31 Days of Dead 2020 | Introduction, Day #1: “Technical Difficulties” – SF, CA 4/15/70 // “Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower” – Jersey City, NJ 8/4/76

Introduction

Hey now and welcome back. Let me start by making a confession. I was going to take this year off. One of the reasons was burnout from last year’s massive project paying tribute to the late Robert Hunter. Similar to the all-night, marathon set of music that Phish played at Big Cypress on 12/31/99, my Hunter tribute was a big exclamation point that left me unsure how to continue…or whether to continue.

Of course, the other reason I contemplated a hiatus is because of how difficult 2020 has been for all of us – me included. Who would have predicted just how bad things could get in a single year? It calls to mind a quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “When sorrows come, they come not in single spies, but in battalions!” In 2020, a battalion consisting of a global pandemic, an economic crisis, a tumultuous presidential election, and far too many losses has created feelings of isolation, fear, sorrow and hopelessness. We are all carrying the grief of the lives we thought we would be living right now.We are continually mourning our missed events, our changed plans, our what-might-have-been years.The accumulated sadness is more than any of us can calculate.

The most troubling part has been the divisiveness. We have been isolated in more ways than one. Instead, we should have spent more time being kind and loving one another. That’s when it occurred to me that amid divisiveness, music has always been a universal and unifying language of mankind. If my project can do some good by helping us come together, then I should do it.

Drawing inspiration from the Grateful Dead’s archival video series, Shakedown Stream, which was a beacon of light for so many of us during the darkness of 2020, the concept and title of this year’s project easily came to me: “Help on the Way.” It is based on the simple idea that little acts of kindness can create an abundance of happiness.

Every day during the month of December I will select and share live Grateful Dead songs with you. As in past years, I will highlight anniversaries of album releases, important concerts and special people who we have lost. In addition, I will also acknowledge the big elephant in the room – the disaster known as 2020. It was very unusual and very strange year to say the least: A once-in-lifetime global pandemic, an economic crisis, the third-ever presidential impeachment, a record number of natural disasters, major sporting events taking place in different seasons, etc. I thought it would be fun to embrace the strange and tailor my playlist accordingly. As such, there will be rarely played songs, unique performances, unusual musical combinations and weirdly placed jams. Every selection I made was carefully selected with intention and meaning. I’m going to keep my write-ups short and let the music and lyrics do most of the talking for me this year. I have some fun surprises in store for you and am excited to bring you this year’s project.

Just one thing I ask of you…just one thing for me… If this project brings you joy, then my hope is that you will pay it forward and bring happiness to somebody else in your own way. Think of it as a “miracle ticket.” Together, we will miracle the world.

Through this world of trouble We gotta love one another

Background

The idea for the 31 Days of Dead was hatched in 2010 when dead.net started providing free mp3 tracks for download from the band’s vast archives each day during the month of November. I thought it would be fun to keep the music flowing for another month by selecting my own daily picks in December. Having been a tape trader back in the 1980s, the idea of sharing the music I love and turning people on to versions they never heard was very appealing to me.

I provide download links for all of my projects unless I select an official release which happens occasionally. I also try to achieve a broad, cross-representation of years, styles and eras.

Finally, unlike the “Official 30 Days of Dead,” there is no contest here. Instead, the prize is the music and the winner is the listener.

Special thanks to Brian Levine for always creating the perfect artwork for these projects. He outdid himself this year with the skull and mask. Thank you to Jason Freitag for hosting my projects on his amazing music blog, Liner Notes Music Blog.

Here is a link for this year’s artwork: https://imgur.com/a/m0Wl7Al

I hope you enjoy listening to this compilation as much as I had creating it.

Any questions, comments, recommendations, etc., please shoot me an email at [email protected].

Peace,

Link to “Official 30 Days of Dead” with track listing 2010 – present: https://www.whitegum.com/livedate/30days.htm

____________________________________________________________________

December 1 Technical Difficulties (4/15/70 – Winterland • San Francisco, CA)

Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower

8/4/76 – Roosevelt Stadium • Jersey City, NJ

We kick things off with some technical difficulties because, like, wasn’t that pretty much the entire year of 2020? Unfortunately, the technical difficulties of 2020 were not just an isolated incident. As Jerry notes, “everything went weird all at once.” Never fear, Phil Lesh is here! Lesh’s throbbing bass lead us into “Help on the Way” which is the theme of this year’s project. It certainly was a unique year to say the least and the band’s performance of this three-song sequence is perhaps one of the most unique the band has ever played due to the slower tempo and Phil’s dominance throughout. In the face of trouble, Robert Hunter’s lyrics remind us that love is the greatest strength that we have to overcome setbacks.

Without love in the dream it will never come true

#helpontheway #slipknot #franklinstower #withoutloveinthedreamitwillnevercometrue #ifyougetconfusedlistentothemusicplay #08041976 #gratefuldead #roberthunter #jerrygarcia #bobweir #phillesh #billkreutzmann #mickeyhart #pigpen #tomconstanten #keithgodchaux #donnagodchaux #brentmydland #brucehornsby #vincewelnick #31daysofdead #linernotesmusicblog

MediaFire Link:

Technical Difficulties – http://www.mediafire.com/file/lkh4pui2dpzl77b/01_Technical_Difficulties_%25284.15.70_-_Winterland_Arena_%25E2%2580%25A2_San_Francisco%252C_CA%2529.mp3/file

Help > Slip > Frank: http://www.mediafire.com/file/14u68c4b45fhnh4/02_Help_on_the_Way_Slipknot%2521_Franklin%2527s_Tower_%25288.4.76_-_Roosevelt_Stadium_%25E2%2580%25A2_Jersey_City%252C_NJ%2529.mp3/file

Re-Listen:

Technical Difficulties – https://relisten.net/grateful-dead/1970/04/15/mama-tried?source=88717

Help on the Way – https://relisten.net/grateful-dead/1976/08/04/help-on-the-way?source=90675

Slipknot! – https://relisten.net/grateful-dead/1976/08/04/slipknot?source=90675

Franklin’s Tower – https://relisten.net/grateful-dead/1976/08/04/franklins-tower?source=90675

from WordPress https://ift.tt/3loJ6sI via IFTTT

#IFTTT #WordPress

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hotelconcierge · 7 years

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THE GENDER NULLARY

Trigger warning for everything that follows: the coddled, over-sensitive, “triggered” millennial crybaby does not exist. Hold your applause—the COSTMC is an oxymoron because coddling does not sensitize, it scleroses. Have you met these people? They can’t feel an emotion without an audience and a week to rehearse. The performative offense of this group results from high emotional tolerance, not low; sad-rage is heroin to everything else’s Motrin, and no matter how vast the safe space, some kids are gonna hang at the outskirts hoping to score.

Of course, even the phoniest opportunist has a few real triggers—the type that precludes rage because you’re numb in the fetal position. And of course, there are many uncoddled e.g. traumatized people who are genuinely vulnerable to the many, many instances of genuine cruelty and callousness.

Every community with a code of conduct is a safe space to some extent. My lawyer advises no comment on whether safe spaces are good or bad in principle, because it depends: who is being included, who is being excluded, where will they go, and who is enforcing the rules.

My concern is the way these debates are settled. And when the excluded protest against political correctness—that human resources plot to merge all safe spaces under one state capitalist thumb—they ditch culture war bushido and strike at whomever can be hurt the most.

What you have to understand is that the PC debate is a farce. When the public demands a witch for the stake, the NYTimes selects David Brooks,

perhaps the most balding, white, sanctimonious chump at a newspaper full of balding, white, sanctimonious chumps. Here are four critiques; don’t read any of them unless you still find it exciting to watch a strawman burn.

What’s more interesting is that while Brooks criticizes upper-middle-class culture for being “laced with cultural signifiers that are completely illegible unless you happen to have grown up in this class,” his article is nothing but illegible cultural signifiers. Which, duh, he’s writing for the Times. Brooks thus renders himself irrelevant (which was the point): his critics focus on his blunder of political correctness (the high school grad intimidated by a chicken pomodoro) and dismiss him as classist accordingly.

Lesson: Anyone who opposes political correctness from within will lose and be humiliated. Even without the unforced error, Brooks could have been dismissed as rich and white. His archives could have been mined for hypocrisy. Even a charged non sequitur would have crushed his argument: “So it’s no big deal that it’s legal to murder transpeople in all fifty states? No, I’m David Brooks, better focus on political correctness!” Of course, plenty of non-bourgeois oppose PC, but you’ll never hear that point of view in the Times because, yikes—internalized racism.

The result is that the anti-PC viewpoint is only taken seriously when it refuses the framework of PC. I don’t mean “taken seriously” like there is a meaningful debate. But when an internet troll calls you, say, “a fucking spic faggot,” you can’t reply “hah, well that just shows your heteronormative, colonialist assumptions!” without looking like a wimp. You have to reply with equal bile, which smells of hatred, maybe fear. And it’s no fun to be on the receiving end of hatred, but it’s better than being treated—like Mr. Brooks—with contempt.

Trolls, like catcallers, flashers, and school shooters, are men who ran the numbers and found: being hated > being invisible > being humiliated in the official channels. The first two go back to chimps, the third variable is society-dependent, and wowza does ours fuck it up. Men want to become masculine, citation needed, and when society shit-talks the honest path to manhood then it is inevitable that those foolish enough to listen will turn to the black market. And once that’s your game...

This blog is far from politically correct, but I try to mock only the deserving— bureaucrats, demagogues, cowards, and conformists—and for behavior, for the things people can change rather than those they can’t. But people tend to be insecure about the things they can’t change, and it just so happens that in America insecurity is always wound up in sex. Every debate about safe spaces thus devolves into a debate about gender: a catalog of body dysmorphisms, a who’s who of racial castrations, cuckold, bitch, cunt, whore, freak. You’d think everyone would be against this level of discourse, but gun control means one thing on Park Avenue and another thing entirely in Wichita. The law, in its majestic equality, forbids both the popular and unpopular from being unpopular. Calls for PC go nowhere because cruelty is the best weapon some people have.

Idiot [unemployed, probably no friends]: “So you’re sympathizing with racist, misogynist trolls. Wow. Just—I can’t even.” I didn’t say anything about sympathy. I said that a society gets what it pays for. IMHO, most shock-value trolling is both ineffective—it strengthens the case for Big Brother—and morally disgusting. But it’s a symptom, not the disease. Like oxycodone, trolling is recourse for people with nothing better to do, and like The Opioid Epidemic, the hand-wringing has less to do with fixing the problem than with making it so consumers don’t have to look at something ugly.

The content of trolling is thus extremely not the issue, but even so, I’ll take the bait. To accuse someone of failing at gender is the worst sort of punching-down. It’s not just hateful, it’s lazy, it’s bullying the foreign kid to make up for getting your ass beat at home. And it’s dumb. Forget about the moral argument—my critique is that the gender police are not even wrong.

Judith Butler (Gender Trouble), who coined the term “performative gender,” the antecedent to “sexuality is a spectrum,” has reached Antichrist status in some circles and in fact received a personal diss from Pope Benedict XVI. She’s good, and if you wanna throw down you gotta throw down with the best. So: Does Butler write like a pedant getting paid by the syllable? Does she open each topic with a chain of passive-aggressive rhetorical questions? Does she have the worst fanbase this side of Harris and Klebold? Does she have a point?

Hemlock time. How do you define gender? “Gender is a set of behaviors and attributes that correlate with sex.” Okay—what’s sex? “Aren’t you a doctor or something? XY and XX.” I’m flattered by the appeal to authority, but weren’t you the guy complaining when the CDC lowered the normal testosterone range? How do you feel about androgen insensitivity syndrome?

You can deny your eyes and insist that having an SRY gene makes Eden Atwood male, but from a medical perspective Eden is estrogenized, at risk for osteoporosis, and going down in the chart as an F.

“Look, fella, I know a dime-piece when I see one.” So modify your definition: hormone levels, fertility, waist-hip ratio, empathizing over systematizing, long bathroom lines, 10 Things I Hate About You...The first problem is that all of these traits exist on, sorry, a spectrum, from menopausal women to full-figured men. The choice of which traits to include—and where to draw the cut-offs—and if the division is binary or quaternary or nullary—is just like, your opinion, man (woman/they/them). The bigger problem is that now you’re defining sex as gender.

This reduces your original statement to, “Gender is a set of behaviors and attributes that correlate.” Which is true. And as far as stereotypes go, gendered ones ain’t bad, maybe even necessary to function, the guy wearing a V-neck probably does like shaving his pubes. But they are still stereotypes, man-made, imperfect, and punishing to those who do not conform. I’m no cultural relativist, some people suck and deserve cold and swift judgment, but is the presence or absence of armpit hair really the hill you want to die on?

There’s a practical argument to be made against fractalized gender: it’s confusing. With 3^^^3 possible sex-gender-orientation combos, how are kids supposed to know how to grow up? Aren’t imperfect gender roles better than 24-year-old otherkin? I hear you, guy wearing a Harley-Davidson jacket and listening to Mötley Crüe, but Tumblr semantics are a consequence of twenty-teen spirit, not the cause. If we weren’t arguing about the gender binary (and before we were) we’d be arguing about the range of femininity or masculinity; the crusade would be for pixie cuts and stick-and-poke tattoos to be considered as feminine as Brazilian butt lifts. Don’t be fooled by words—do you really want society to have one idealized template per gender? How would that ideal be decided? Majority rule?

There’s a hilarious overlap between the people who get mad about preferred pronouns and those who call for a return to “traditional masculinity.” The idealization of some Hollywood-ified tradition isn’t the problem; if you want to roleplay a fursona, go ahead. No, what’s pathetic is the begging. Rather than be a man, in spite of the system, you demand validation from the system for aspiring to be a man. Being against identity politics is the new identity politics. That’s why right-wing culture warriors are so into the idea of crybaby millennials—it’s comforting to believe that you’re actually strong (since you don’t drink from plastic water bottles) and that anyone getting laid is actually xeno-estrogenized. Even if this was true, obsessing over it, masturbating to it, using it as an excuse for self-pity and inaction—that makes you a _ _ _ _. Four-letters. Multiple choice. Maybe hangman will teach you something.

The foundationalist reasoning of identity politics tends to assume that an identity must first be in place in order for political interests to be elaborated and, subsequently, political action to be taken. (Gender Trouble)

My beliefs are no doubt way south of Ms. Butler’s on the political compass, but we agree about one thing: that ain’t a nice way to go out.

But this is precisely the way in which the laundry-is-a-social-construct movement has failed. I have held off on criticizing them because it’s too easy, when you mock Rachel Dolezal for being “transracial” you get to pretend your own self-image is meaningful, but no, all identities are power poses in front of the bedroom mirror, meaningful only insofar as they help you with the rest of the day. “Well, SCIENCE says that—” You sure you want to play that game? Again, I respect anyone who has the courage to defy their assigned caste. I have no purity objections to a transhumanist society where the tap water runs ecstasy and you can get augmented genitals at Starbucks. I don’t even mind Bushwick. The problem with the mad libs youth isn’t the slew of labels—intersectional, nonbinary, pansexual, curious kinkster, ethically polyamorous, empath, casual baby witch (mostly crystals, auras/energy)—the problem is, what are you going to do with them? And there’s a patriarchy-approved answer: buy shit and beg for validation.

If gender is performative, if identity is not necessary for political action to be taken, if the possibilities are infinite once freed from the bounds of phallogocentrism, then why is it that so many cultural subversives sound exactly the same? You know the stereotype. Bondage. Anxiety. Smoking when drunk. Circlejerks of praise for completing the most basic of tasks. Very, very bad poetry. Expensive fashion draped across waif-like models. Guilty pleasures: junk food, liquor, and problematic TV. Hated roommates. Emoji marxism. Twitter. “today i feel cute enough for a selfie, might delete it later.” “didn’t get out of bed until 2 i’m trash lol” “wow, some casual racism at work today. i’ll just laugh and someday burst because i hate confrontation. but whatever.” I’m not saying these traits describe anyone real, although they might. I’m saying: why is this the stereotype?

Discussion questions: When people type in lower case, what emotion do they hope to convey to the reader? The alt-right often asks if “liking feminine traps” is “gay”—is there anything more heterosexual than wishing you had a weaker male friend to validate your penis? Would trans rights even be an issue if the majority were FtM? How many modern protests can be summarized as “consumers demand product”? Who would win, every chafed masculinist and joyless academic or one flamboyant 19th century playwright? As Oscar Wilde put it: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”

Choose:

HYPOCRISY’S BAD, BUT YOU’RE WORSE

THE FALSE NEGATIVES

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