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softyoongiionly · 5 years

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Fear and Dumplings: Chapter Six

Confronting your fears for a final grade sounds unappealing but, with Yoongi as your partner, things might not be so bad.

Summary: You’re in your final semester at University when your Abnormal Psychology professor assigns you a partnered project surrounding your greatest fears. Lucky for you, your partner just so happens to be a cute boy named Min Yoongi.

Pairing: Min Yoongi x Reader

Genre: College Au, Underground Rapper! Yoongi, Soft!!! Yoongi, Fluff!!!, some moderate angst (later), smut (later later), slow-ish? burn

Word Count: 5.1K

A/N: I’m literally on fire after writing this chapter lol. I hope you like it!😊

Warnings for this Chapter: mentions of fear, anxiety, sadness, some angst aka Jimin is an insecure boy who is unaware that he is literaly heaven on earth, swearing, suggestive situations/concepts, if you squint really hard you can see the beginnings of smut.

Warnings for the Fic: mentions characters confronting their fears, characters in uncomfortable situations, emotional moments between characters, mentions of bad parenting, explicit language throughout the fic, moderate angst, and very explicit smut later in the story.

Chapter 6: Doubt and Shadow Demons

You’re lying on your bed in one of your many baggy t-shirts, smiling like an idiot at your phone. Jimin had sent you screenshots of what he believed to be Yoongi’s twitter. If Jimin wasn’t aiming to be a dancer, you would have suggested a career as a private investigator because, he could literally find anyone. You hadn’t asked Jimin to go looking for more information on Yoongi but, you’d be lying if you said you weren’t interested. His Twitter was mostly black, no bio and, no location but, the avatar was a picture of Yoongi wearing headphones, his newly blonde hair disheveled as he smiled at the camera. He really had no business being that cute. ‘@agustd93’ was his handle and you furrowed your brows in confusion as you tried to decipher what it could mean. Yoongi didn’t seem to tweet much, he just retweeted a lot of music equipment accounts however, there were a few scattered tweets here and there that made you laugh.

“Roommates are drunk, again. They can’t hold their alcohol for shit.”

“Update: Drunk Hobi is obsessed with my cheeks and, I swear if he pinches them one more time, I’m going to cut his hands off.”

“Another Update: Joon just started crying after explaining to me that, “we are all just little flowers in the garden of life, trying to find our bees.” What the fuck does that even mean?”

You giggle, shaking your head, your thumb scrolling down to search for more tweets. There were more scattered between retweets of what you assumed to be the latest music equipment as Yoongi quoted some of the them with captions like ‘Dream Studio’ and ‘if only I wasn’t broke.’ You kept scrolling before coming across a tweet that made your stomach flutter.

‘Where? Everywhere.’

Fuck. He tweeted that last night. After you and Yoongi got off the Ferris Wheel, you actually ended up having a pretty decent time. The two of you got dinner at the park and wrote your experiences down in your research journals. Yoongi acted like the conversation on the Ferris Wheel never happened but, he seemed to warm up to you more and more as the night progressed. But still, nothing flirty occurred between the two of you and, Yoongi was very careful not to get too close to you. The whole thing was very confusing, one minute, Yoongi’s admitting that he would kiss you ‘everywhere, if you let him’ and, the next minute he’s treating you like he normally did. This tweet was sent at 11:30 which would have been around the time he got back to his place. Maybe it wasn’t about you, Yoongi seemed to have a habit of being vague and, he easily could have been talking about something else but, none the less, it made your heart skip a beat.

Did you like Yoongi? More importantly, did it matter? You shook your head, trying to rid yourself of your complicated thoughts as you rolled out of bed. Marzipan throws a complaint your way as you walk past her lounging at the end of the mattress. Normally, you would be out at your favorite crepe café gossiping with Jimin over some iced coffee but, Jimin had texted you the night before saying that his showcase rehearsal was running late and he didn’t think he’d get any sleep if he met up with you. You had of course met this with an abundance of understanding as you knew better than anyone how hard Jimin had been working at his showcase routine. So, instead of meeting up with your best friend, you planned on working on your final paper for your International Relations course. You had been working on it all semester and, felt accomplished that for once, you didn’t procrastinate. Green tea was essential for today’s writing session so; you brewed a decent sized pot before, continuing your paper. Marzipan eventually made her way out into your living room, opting to sprawl out on the couch, claiming her space as usual.

After writing for some time, you glance at the clock at the bottom of your laptop and your eyes widen. Shit. You had been writing for 4 hours. How was it possible that much time had passed? You had gotten a lot done, adding an additional 6-7 pages to the giant that was your final paper. Just after leaning back in your chair and stretching your limbs, your phone lights up with a text message.

BROS 4 LYFE (Jungkook): I miss the squad tho.

You giggle at the message, your heart warming as you reply.

BROS 4 LYFE: me too tho :/

BROS 4 LYFE (Taehyung): me 3 tho :/ :/

BROS 4 LYFE (Jimin): MY BABIES :( i miss u guys.

A hint of sadness plucks at your chest as you read the messages being sent in by your friends. You had made new friends in school and, college had been an overall fun time but, you had to admit that you never stopped missing having all three of your bestfriends in one place. The past four years hadn’t been the same without them and you couldn’t wait til the four of you graduated so, that you could finally have your group back together again. Jungkook had been drafted to play pro ball on a minor league team in your current city and, Taehyung had made the decision earlier in the semester to pursue his masters in art history at the school you and Jimin were currently attending. This meant that in a few short weeks, everything would back to normal for a little while.

BROS 4 LYFE: only a few more weeks my dudes, we got this.

BROS 4 LYFE (Jungkook) stay on that grind squad, college grad hours are about to be open.

BROS 4 LYFE (Jimin): kookie and tae, will you be here for my showcase? It’s two weeks before graduation.

BROS 4 LYFE (Taehyung): duh. We wouldn’t miss it for the world Jiminie.

BROS 4 LYFE (Jungkook): yea we would never miss a chance to see the world’s shortest ballerina.

Your eyes widen as you laugh, already imagining Jimin igniting in fury when he reads the message. His reply comes before you are able to chime in.

BROS 4 LYFE (Jimin): YAH! IM NOT A BALLERINA!

BROS 4 LYFE (Jimin): I AM A CONTEMPORARY DANCER.

BROS 4 LYFE (Jimin): THE CHAMPION CONTEMPORARY DANCER

BROS 4 LYFE (Jimin): THREE YEARS RUNNING THANKYOUVERYMUCH

At this point you’re in a full blown laughing fit, shaking your head as your fiery best friend pops off in the chat.

BROS 4 LYFE: go best friend, that’s my best friend.

BROS 4 LYFE (Taehyung): let the record show that Kookie bought 12 of the limited edition Jimin shirts that your school sold after he won the championships.

BROS 4 LYFE (Jungkook): YOU PROMISED ME YOU WOULDN’T TELL

BROS 4 LYFE (Jimin): >:)

BROS 4 LYFE (Jimin): love u kookie

BROS 4 LYFE (Jungkook): …love u too…

The responses eventually dwindle down and, you decide to hop in the shower to tend to the mop of hair that was growing slightly greasy on your head. Afterwards, you throw on a cozy sweatshirt and your favorite pair of fuzzy pajama shorts and, settle on the couch to watch some Netflix. You hadn’t had a night in to yourself in a long time and, it felt amazing to be able to sit around and, do nothing. Marzipan made her way up your body before, snuggling up in the free space between you and the edge of the couch. As your fingers absentmindedly stroke her fur, you feel your lids becoming heavier and heavier and, finally, you drift off into a much needed nap.

Needless to say, the nap turned into you passing out around 7:30 and, sleeping through the night until, finally, you awake to the ethereal sound of the never-ending city construction. You grumble as you pull the covers over your head to drown out the noise causing Marzipan, who clearly hadn’t left her spot all night, to flee from the couch. Checking your phone, you noticed a few messages from your group-chat and a snapchat or two from some of your other friends. After responding to the majority of your missed messages, you drag yourself off of the couch and into the kitchen to make some coffee. The microwave displayed the current time: 7:45am; an unholy time to be awake on a Saturday morning. The coffee was finishing up before a loud knock at your door caused you to jump out of your skin. Who the hell was at your house at 7:45 in the morning? You gingerly made your way to the door, hoping that it was just someone from maintenance. Opening the door, you nearly scream as a tuft of pink hair practically collapses into your arms. It was Jimin and, he was crying.

“Jimin, babe, what’s wrong?” You hold him to you, your eyes wide with concern as you usher him into your apartment.

“I can’t do it y/n, I can’t do anything right.” He cries into your t-shirt, his hands clutching you as if you’re about to slip away.

You rub his back, maneuvering you both onto your couch, Jimin clinging to you all the while.

“Hey, hey, that’s not true at all.” You murmur soothingly. “Jimin, what brought this on? Did something happen?”

Jimin, still crying, nods, as the tears stream down his puffy cheeks.

“I’ve been rehearsing for…for 36 hours…and I ca…can’t….do it…I can’t get it right. I ke…keep messing up. I’m n…not getting it…they’re…they’re going to drop me from the showcase if I can’t do it….they…they will…” At this point, your heart is broken, your usually smiley best friend is completely shattered, sobbing, into your arms. You hadn’t seen him like this since he had his first serious breakup sophomore year and, even that couldn’t compare to what you saw before you.

“Shh…minnie…it’s ok, it’s ok, I got you.” You gingerly tilt his swollen face towards yours, your eyes holding an immense amount of emotion as you gaze into his. “Listen to me ok? You can’t rehearse like that, you’re going to burn out and, get hurt. You have to rest. You’ve been practicing non-stop for the entire semester. You could do that routine in your sleep babe. The only reason you probably messed up is because you are exhausting yourself.”

Before you can even finish, Jimin’s eyes well up with tears once again as he shakes his head.

“No…no…you don’t understand…y/n…the coaches came to watch me last night and, I fell…I fell and they…they said that they were disappointed with my progress…and that I need to do better…so…I had to stay to re…rehearse…cause I failed. I failed y/n, I failed.” Jimin bursts into another fit of sobs as he clutches you tighter and, you actually have to hold back the tears that are pricking the corners of your own eyes.

“Dancers fall all the time Jiminie, it’s ok, you had been rehearsing all day. Every free moment you have, you spend in the studio practicing. I know it must have been so hard to fall in front of your coaches but, hey,” You tilt his face to you once more before he can hide away in your arm again. “You are Park fucking Jimin. You are the youngest collegiate dancer to win the national showcase and, the ONLY dancer to win it three years in a row. Dancing is like breathing to you. Audiences are mesmerized as soon as you step on the stage. You did not fail. You are exhausted. You can’t work yourself like this or, there won’t be a Park Jimin to win the showcase four years in a row.” As your words tumble out of your mouth, Jimin begins to calm down, still sniffling lightly, he hugs you again, his normally sparkling eyes, heavy with exhaustion.

“I’m so scared…y/n…there’s so much pressure and, I don’t think I’ll be able to bear it if I disappoint anyone.” You place a chaste kiss to the top of his bubblegum hair as you nod.

“It’s ok to be afraid, this is something you really want and, when we really want something, the thought of failing can be crippling but, you have worked so unbelievably hard. No one deserves this more than you do. Try and have a little faith in yourself ok? There is nothing you can’t achieve. You have something so magical within you. Working hard is good but, everyone has their limit and, if you keep pushing yourself like this, you won’t be healthy enough to achieve all of the amazing things I know you are capable of.” Your voice has dropped to an even lower volume as you continue rubbing Jimin’s back. He is looking up at you with intense focus but, you can tell he is on the verge of crashing.

“You promise? You promise you believe I can do this?” He whispers and, your heart shatters in pieces that someone whom you care so deeply for, is in so much pain.

“I don’t just believe Jimin, I know.” You whisper back before jerking your head to the other end of the couch. “Can you please try and sleep for me? When you wake up, we can go somewhere, or we can stay in,its up to you. Just try and rest of a while.” At your request, Jimin lets out a yawn, his lips pressing to your shoulder once more before he flops back onto the couch, still sniffling lightly.

You help him out of his shoes and his coat before grabbing a blanket and, literally tucking him in.

“Thank you y/n.” Jimin whispers, practically half asleep, his hand holding yours lightly.

“You don’t have to thank me, that’s what best friends are for. I’ve cried on your couch a few times too, remember.” You smile fondly as Jimin lets out a twinkling giggle, happy to see that he’s feeling somewhat better.

“I love you.” He whispers, his eyes beginning to shut.

You squeeze his hand lightly before replying.

“I love you too Jimin.”

Jimin drifts off a few moments later, his light snores filling your living room. Your heart feels achy as you reply the last few moments over in your head. You knew your words wouldn’t be enough to completely take away Jimin’s uncertainty but, you were so grateful that he came to you instead of suffering in silence. Jimin had a history of feeling this way right before a showcase. He had done something similar to this your freshman year before, winning and subsequently making history. It absolutely devastated you to see him hurting but, you meant everything you said. There wasn’t a doubt in your mind that Jimin was going to go far in life; you just hoped one day, he could see it for himself.

—————————————————————————————————-

“The dark and the ocean….I think maybe it’s time that we start tackling our fears one by one, what do you think?” You look over at Yoongi, who nods from behind his phone.

“Yeah, I think so too. I don’t know how we’d combine the dark and the ocean anyway.” His voice was slightly scratchier than normal but, when you had asked if he was sick, he told you that he had lost his voice at a concert he went to the night prior. For whatever reason, you didn’t believe him but, rather than prying, you opted to enjoy the sound of Yoongi’s raspy voice becoming even raspier.

“If we did, it would be terrifying and, I would probably die.” You state bluntly, causing Yoongi to scoff in disbelief, shaking his head at you.

“You’re so dramatic.” He chastises, smirking lightly, tapping away at his phone. You shrug, not bothering to disagree with him as you doodle on the corner of your paper. “Are you comfortable confronting this fear directly? I don’t know how you would imagine it, unless, you just imagine yourself in a dark room.”

The shudder that passes through your body was completely involuntary and, Yoongi notices it.

“You don’t have to, we can think of something else.” He assures, his almond shaped eyes, wrinkled slightly in concern. You shook your head insistently, putting on a brave face.

“No, its ok…I can do it. I won’t be alone so, it will be a little easier.” You force smile onto your mouth but, Yoongi isn’t buying it. Thankfully, he decides to accept your statement anyway.

“Does tonight work for you? I have a free Tuesday for once so, I figured we could do yours today and mine on Thursday.” Yoongi’s suggests, his demeanor returning to normal. You nod, leaning back in your chair, attempting to look casual but, your heart jumped slightly in your chest.

“Yeah, that’s fine, what time?” You needed to know how much time you had to straighten up because, you definitely left dirty dishes in the sink and, you were quite certain that you dropped a pair or two of clean underwear whilst running late this morning.

“Well, it doesn’t get dark until 7:30-8 so, maybe around then?” Yoongi cocks his head slightly, his eyes sleepy as usual. You had never had such a strong urge to tuck someone into bed and, kiss their forehead until you met Min Yoongi. That boy needs more sleep.

“I’m good with that yeah. Are we eating together or do you want to eat before you come?”

“I’ll bring something, I have a lot to make up for since somebody, decided to buy our tickets last week.” He gives you a pointed look, disapproval gracing his features. You laugh, shrugging shamelessly, looking up at him.

“I guess you better bring something good then.” You insist, smiling, nudging his desk with your foot.

————————————————————————————————–

It was that very conversation that led you to where you were now: belly full of That’s Amore’s pasta, apartment tidied up, and Yoongi glancing over at you curiously.

“What?” You giggle lightly, confused at his intense gaze before, he nods over to you.

“Why are you afraid of the dark?” He murmurs, his tone cautious but curious.

You bite your lip, as you feel your body grow slightly uncomfortable. Meeting Yoongi’s gaze, you attempt to sound as brave as possible before, answering his question.

“I…used to have really bad nightmares as a kid. I had them every night for almost two years.” You admit, your eyes moving to stare at the couch instead of continuing to look at Yoongi. “My parents finally took me to a doctor and they told them that I would eventually just grow out of it. They gave me something to help me sleep through the night and, over time, the dreams finally stopped but, I slept with my light on until I was like 14.” You giggle, trying to lighten the mood, not really enjoying the serious tone of the conversation.

Yoongi nods, regarding you earnestly from the other end of the couch.

“I’m sorry.” He says softly and, you can tell that he means it. You smile over at him, brushing it off.

“No, its ok, it happened a long time ago. I’m just still not a huge fan of the dark.” You explain, finally meeting his gaze again.

“You don’t have to do this, you can just keep talking about it…I don’t want you to feel afraid.” He insists, his tone firm and certain.

You nod, your smile growing more genuine.

“I can do it. I think it will be good for me and, like I said, I won’t be alone so, I don’t think it will be too bad.” You’re lying. The dark terrified you but, logically, you understood that there was nothing dangerous about it. You know you can do this.

Yoongi nods but, you can tell that he’s uneasy, his movements cautious and hesitant as he looks around your apartment.

“Ok, do you want to start slow? We could just turn off the lights first; the streetlights shouldn’t make it too dark.” He assures you, nodding toward the window but, you shake your head at his suggestion.

“No, I think it’s better if we just do everything now. I think prolonging it will just make me more nervous.” Your voice is growing smaller and, once you catch that, you sit up straighter. As if, sitting up straighter would lessen the fear you felt. “Let’s do this.”

Yoongi nods and the two of you move to start closing the curtains and turning off the few lamps that you have on in your apartment. You both stand on opposite ends of your living room as Yoongi’s hand hovers over the main light.

“Are you ready?” He calls softly, his face littered with concern.

You nod, smiling tightly, bracing yourself for the darkness.

“You have to protect me if a shadow demon tries to eat me!” You insist, giggling, trying to lessen the tension as Yoongi rolls his eyes.

“There’s no such thing as shadow demons.” He counters, smirking before, he nods anyway. “But, yeah, I guess I’ll protect you if that happens.”

Your heart is picking up its pace in your chest as you attempt to pull a deep breath from your nose.

Yoongi looks at you pointedly and, before another question can pass his lips, you nod to the light.

“Go ahead. I’m good.” You assure him, putting on the bravest voice you can find.

There’s a click and then, darkness envelops your apartment. You could never have imagined that your apartment could get to this level of darkness. The room was pitch black, you held your hand out in front of your face and you saw nothing but a faint blob.

“Are you ok?” Yoongi calls softly from the other end of the room.

Another shaky breath passes your lips as you attempt to calm yourself.

“Yeah, I’m good. I’m ok.” You assure him but, even you could tell that your tone wasn’t convincing. There’s a shuffling on the other end of the room that causes you to jump out of your skin. “What was that?”

“It’s just me; I’m trying to find my way to the couch.” Yoongi’s voice calms you and, you curse yourself for being so obviously afraid.

“Yeah, I should probably do that too. I don’t want to just stand here…vulnerable…where literally anything can attack me if it wanted to.” You muse casually and, this causes Yoongi to finally break out in his rickety laughter.

“Nothing is going to attack you, just come here and, be careful not to trip over anything. That’s the only real danger you need to worry about.” Yoongi’s voice is practically a whisper and, you use it to guide yourself to your sofa. You finally feel the familiar fabric and make your way around the arm of the couch before, tucking your body into one of the cushions. The heartbeat in your chest hasn’t lessened its pounding but, you feel slightly better that you’re not doing this alone.

“I made it.” You whisper but, Yoongi could already feel you sit down at the opposite end of the couch.

“How are you feeling?” Yoongi whispers back to you and, you feel yourself relaxing slightly at the sound of his voice. He really should be doing ASMR in his free time. Your mouth opens to lie again but, you end up sighing in defeat.

“I’m scared.” It’s the first time either of you have uttered this phrase since beginning your project and, you grow uneasy as you wait for his response.

“That’s ok.” He assures and then he falls silent for a moment. “I know it’s difficult for you. We can stop whenever you want.”

“I’m ok right now; my eyes are starting to adjust.”

Another moment of silence passes between the two of you and, you feel a familiar thickness in the air that seems to occur a lot when you and Yoongi are alone. You close your eyes for a moment, stifling your desire to mention it to him. He had made it very clear on the Ferris Wheel that he wasn’t interested in being with you that way… ‘right now.’

“You can…move closer to me, if you need to. I’m not sure if that will help but, you can try. I don’t mind.” Yoongi whispers and, his offer catches you completely off guard. Should you move closer to him?

Silently, you scoot your body down the length of the couch until you feel your shins meet Yoongi’s feet. He must have been sitting cross-legged on the couch and, now that you’re closer to him, you can make out his posture. He’s sitting with his legs crossed, his body turned to face the direction you were sitting, while his hands rested in his lap.

“Thank you.” You whisper, and you can sort of make out the faint smile ( :] ) on his lips.

“Is it any better?”

“Yeah, it is, actually, thanks.” You repeat your gratitude and you finally start to feel the anxiety subsiding from your chest. Yoongi was warm and, he smelt like berries and the ocean? An odd yet tantalizing combination that, in all honesty, made your stomach tighten. His hands are adorned with a few rings and your eyes squint in curiosity as you try to make out what they look like; regretting that you hadn’t checked them out when the lights were on.

“What are you trying to look at?” Yoongi’s whisper causes you to smile as you realize that his eyes were also adjusted to the darkness and, he was probably wondering why you were staring intently at his lap.

“Your rings.” You giggle, your head jerking their direction. At your answer, Yoongi’s fingers flutter lightly in response, his head turning down to look at them.

“Oh, yeah, I don’t wear these a lot but, my roommate Namjoon got them for me and, started giving me shit for not liking them. So, I made a point to wear them more.” He explains his tone one of fondness and annoyance. Another laugh passes your lips as you nod in understanding.

“They look nice. Namjoon has good taste.” You compliment, feeling far more comfortable.

“Yeah, he’s alright, I guess.” Yoongi jests but, you know he doesn’t mean what he says, always hiding behind a snarky comment. Before you can speak again, Yoongi holds one of his hands out to you. “You can look at them if you want.”

Your heart stalls a moment as you look at Yoongi’s out stretched hand. The hand that had been on your own lap comes up to bring Yoongi’s closer to your view. The rings were actually beautiful and, you were thankful that the tiniest amount of light had escaped through the curtains so you could properly see them. There were four of them each covered in silver, the engravings depicting the four elements: Earth, fire, water, and air. You smile as your fingers gently examine Yoongi’s rings (hand). His hands were one of your favorite things about him. They were nearly double the size of your own, blue and green veins pushed slightly against the surface, fingernails bitten out of what you could assume as nervousness. There is a light increase in your heart rate as you continue to examine Yoongi’s hand and, if he had noticed that you stopped looking at his rings, he wasn’t showing it. You tilt his hand up so, its perpendicular to your own, your fingertips only reaching the middle of his fingers, as you place your palm against his hand.

“Your hand is small.” Yoongi whispers but, this time, you detect a different tone from him that you can’t say you’ve ever heard before.

A small smile graces your mouth as you nod.

“Against yours it is.” The whisper that leaves your lips is almost in audible, your eyes find Yoongi’s and, you find him staring back at you, the faint streetlight illuminating his face. The two of you stare at each other as you feel Yoongi’s fingers lace with your own. Your heart beats wildly in your chest as you lick your lips in attempt to compensate for the dryness in your mouth. Without warning, the two of you are leaning towards each other, your shaky breathing intertwining momentarily before, your lips press together. Yoongi audibly lets out a sigh of what literally sounds like relief as he mold his lips against yours. You rise up on your knees lightly, in an attempt to get closer to him, your free hand coming up to gently touch his face. The butterflies that had been taunting you for the past month erupt in your stomach, your heart racketing against your sternum. Yoongi’s hand that was interlaced with yours slips out of your grip and, settles on your waist instead, pulling you into his body. Your lips are beginning to move against one another and, you actually feel Yoongi’s heartbeat rattling against your hand. The thought of you having that effect on him, makes you clench between your thighs. Your body moves to make its way into his lap but, before you make it there, Yoongi is slowly pulling away. He seems reluctant to stop, his swollen lips still pecking against yours as he presses his forehead to your own.

“I don’t want to stop but, I think…”His breathing is too ragged for him to speak properly, and you press your lips to his cheek in an attempt to sooth him, even though, your breathing is just as bad. “We….should slow down….”

You nod in agreement but, relish in the fact that Yoongi is still holding you close to him, your body leaning into his chest.

“You’re right.” You whisper in return, your breath just as shaky as Yoongi maneuvers you so, that you’re tucked into the side of his body. Your hand rests on his chest and you smile as you feel his heart pummeling against the palm of your hand. The two of you lay there for a moment in complete silence, Yoongi’s fingers play with your own as you wait for the other to say something.

Surprisingly enough, it’s Yoongi who breaks the silence, his raspy whisper penetrating the darkness around you.

“Are you still scared?” He whispers softly, his eyes finding yours.

You look up towards him, a soft smile on your lips.

“No.”

Yoongi smiles back at you and, you can’t help but notice how shy he’s being, his eyes softer than you have ever seen before.

“Good.”

Maybe, the dark wasn’t so bad after all.

453 notes · View notes

velvyy · 5 years

Note

Hey, Rad... Alex... Alexlememe? I know that's the name you used to go by and I know you've kinda disconnected yourself from Viv's fanbase after ZP ended, and I remember your memes and such but I kinda just wanted to get your take on the Hazbin drama since you reblogged the headcanon blog's post on the subject. More or less regarding the issue of her being uncharitable to fans and non-fans alike, plus that one callout post on twitter?

So this is weird. I wasn’t expecting to get asks on the subject since like you said, I’ve generally been disconnected from the fanbase aside from the few reblogs here and there retaining to Hazbin and its more recent developments. But yeah I guess I could give my take on this since I mean.. old fans still follow me. Idk why, but they do!So, really. In regards to that callout post (which is now deleted) I really, really don’t care that much. For one thing, Initially I did because I really hated to see someone be slandered so viciously with inaccurate and uncharitable attacks, but I kinda just stopped because even when I linked the addresses from both Viv, and the Ken dude regarding all the drama mentioned, it was either ignored and resulting in me being called a “pedo sympathizer” or “It wasn’t even an apologyyyyy weh” and like, whatever. I stopped giving a shit.

Terms of the traced animation thing... Lol, ok. I mean homages do exist, and her animation thingy was based on a meme so whatevs.

Anyways,I knew from the very start that the whole “tracing” and “stealing designs” stuff was nonsense since there was an entire like, tumblr drama arc on the issue, and albeit Viv’s post is gone, there’s evidence of legal contracts regarding Jiji and that whole nonsense that was years ago. In regards to her drawing pictures of Blaire White and Shoe… Eh. I mean, yeah, fuck em, but she’s made it clear that she doesn’t support those views anymore, and she wasn’t even really aware of the other things they’d done at that point, and I see no real reason not to believe her because what does lying about that gain her? Yeah her comment on the “blackface” thing if you wanna call it that was dumb as shit, but considering 2016 was a rough year for her in terms of trying to find where she fell in the political sphere, I can relate because I was in the same boat. A lot of sjw cringe comps, shaming feminists, and purposely misgendering transpeople… Not a good time for me either! Course I’ve changed. I went from being a reactionary alt-centrist to an anarchist so. Whether that’s an improvement is up to you.

As for the whole pedo/zoo shit, I really don’t see it. I mean like, look, obviously porn art portraying people fucking feral animals is disgusting right. Not saying it isn’t problematic or anything, but to be fair, she did draw this shit like 8 years ago. I’ve seen worse from even more well-established artists and I don’t see people trying to cancel them? Also, the art was suggestive for one thing and not necessarily 100% porn. I mean it’s still creepy and gross, and I’d understand scolding them if they continued to do so but a lot worse, but I haven’t seen anything like that from Viv past those 2 drawings. As for the pedo shit… The relationship between a 17 year old and a 19 year old is… hardly creepy and reminiscent of pedo shit. So yeah no fuck that. Now with the drawing of Mirage and Kestrel and the tag that said something jokingly like “Mirage and her pedo tendencies” or whatever… Yeah idk, I can’t defend that lmfao. Again, Viv said she disapproves of those drawings and doesn’t care to think about them, but that one piece of artwork definitely had some baggage to it that made me feel uncomfortable after reading the tags.Only issue I took in terms of her addressing that, is that she was very adamant about it being an inside joke… Which if that’s true, you must’ve had some fucked up friends like damn.

I would also like to state that cub art is legitimately disgusting and I am of the belief that it can cause harm depending on the context since I assume the consumption of cub art can reinforce the urge for pedophiles to act on their desires instead of finding healthy coping mechanisms for it through therapy. There have been stories from younger users on the internet that older people have tried to groom them and have the notion of pedos preying on them be normalized by sending them art depicting kids in sexual acts with adults. Of course in isolation cub art isn’t as harmful as the actual act of raping a child, and I would argue that people have their priorities kind of messed up since the illustration being acknowledged should be part of combating pedophiles preying on children. However, people, typically twitter wokescolds tend to focus on the art solely and I don’t know why. There’s a lot of MAPS trying to find their way into LGBT spaces and it’s fucking gross.

Now with Hazbin itself… It’s meh. Initially I watched it with rose-tinted glasses and loved it. After watching it for like… the 3rd, 4th, 5th time? It’s alright. I don’t hate it, but it’s far from perfect. Now ofc I know it’s a pilot but a very lengthy pilot I’ll say. My biggest gripe with the pilot is that the editing is really fucking weird. Like the editing where Angel tells Alastor “I can suck yah dick!” and the scene that followed was really off. It seemed like too many cuts were made in that instance and seemed very cluttered. It also feels that way during Charlie singing “Inside Every Demon is a Rainbow” and how many little animated bits were like almost wiped off the screen by how fast it came by, and ntm there was just so much happening all at once on screen as well. I had to pause at points just to process everything that was happening. The palette is also very, very, verrrry red. There’s so much red going on and like… I get it, it’s in hell. But lemme rest my eyes on something else besides red, please. The palette they use needs to be better diversified, and the same goes for the characters too. Every character seems to have red on them. Whenever Baxter shows up later he’s gonna look really out of place. Some of the jokes were ok, and others seemed non-clever. I didn’t think Angel’s joke about sucking Al’s dick was funny. I did like the joke with Pentious and Angel though. “SON??” Some of it could’ve been written better too.

Regarding the drama with the show itself… Personally I don’t get it. Like, I don’t feel as if Angel is homophobic as a character since his queerness isn’t at the face of the jokes he makes? He just happens to be sex worker which… sex workers are fine? Support sex workers y’all, seriously. There’s also nothing intrinsically wrong with being sexually active either? As long as it’s within reason and you’re being trustworthy.The issue lies in the fact that people viewed the things I just mentioned as negative, and associate it with gay people as said negatively portrayed thing to push the sentiment of “Gay man do sex a lot therefore the gays bad” or that sort of thing. Also there’s a bit where it shows there’s more emotional depth to him and I’m hoping they’ll expand on that later. Honestly though, the criticisms in regards to that have been pretty uncharitable. Same with the criticisms for Vaggie. Apparently Vaggie is racist because… she’s loud and angry? Again, this is a case where people assume those traits are negative, and because it’s assumed to be negative, the negatively portrayed thing pushes the sentiment of “Being a loud fiery woman made, and latina women are that, therefore latina women bad” or some shit. There are stereotypes that are bad no matter what the context is like sambo-esque caricatures of black people. Then there are tropes that are applied to certain demographics that have the capability to be written well into characters without it being offensive or disrespectful. Vaggie is literally angry because she’s protective of her gf. Like. C’mon.

So, I think that settles what I think about that? It honestly seems like superficial shit to me tbh, and I’m saying this as an sjw-y beta cuck anarchist.

The only REAL gripe I have, is with what the mod from @zpheadcanons posted. Because I know this is probably true as much as it hurts me to say it. Faust def has a history of being pretty petty and bully-like to people she deems undesirable, and Viv harbors it by not criticizing it, and if anyone else within their friend group does it then you’re scolded vehemently and treated like garbage. Her attitude also stretches to harboring an audience full of white knights that I personally don’t approve of.

There’s also this

Faust has hurt distant people I personally know and… yeah. Maybe I’m biased but I can’t vibe with that. Sorry. If you don’t make an effort to criticize abusive behavior within your own friend circles then that makes you just as bad, because then you’re just a bystander to things you could have prevented.

This isn’t to say Viv herself hasn’t dealt with bad faith actors, or people who had the intention to hurt her, or very uncharitable criticism. Particularly from the badwebcomics forums which is honestly 4chan like in how they operate. It’s vicious as hell, and a lot of their criticisms boil down to insults and personal attacks, which serve to be nonconstructive. That’s not to say Viv has been kind to even the more charitable criticism though. I know because when I happened to send an ask to the zoophobia criticism blog (where did it go???) regarding something relatively minor and superficial, she blocked me from her blog. I’m still blocked lmfao. I’m not blocked on twitter though! (not yet anyways). Faust has me blocked there though, and I have no idea why. She’s had me blocked for years even though I haven’t spoken out against her till recently. So, there’s that.

As for her apology itself, I feel like it was fine. I think it could’ve been worded better? The take I disagree with in terms of that is like… If I made a mistake in the past, and I make it clear that I don’t care for what I did, I don’t feel as if me explaining why I felt compelled to do certain things negate me from still not caring for my past actions? That’s just me providing context. That’s a really weird take, but I guess that could be viewed as an excuse idk. Personally I think people are holding the bar super high to a state of irrationality.

*sigh* So yeah there’s that. I miss the old days where honestly I could be ignorant about this, but at the same time I look at my old obsessive posts and I kinda just… cringe. I was such an irrational stan I almost hate myself for it. Fuck XD

Edit: I’d also like to point out that I’m not saying Viv or Faust are totally awful or totally good people, and I know they’re capable of being better. It’s a matter of whether or not they wanna be better.

#vivziepop #hazbin hotel

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beesmygod · 5 years

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this is what riverdale is about (part 5)

part 1

part 2

part 3

part 4

hey guys. im back to upset you with more information about the first season of riverdale. the next post will wrap up season one. this post will cover eps 7-9. iirc the previous episodes, even when watching it, felt like filler. i was worried i was never going to get the fire of the first three episodes back. we do. don’t worry.

images are from the riverdale wiki

SEASON 1 (PART 3):

in a lonely place: jughead is now living in the high school, living every weirdo teenager’s worst nightmare. even better, literally everyone finds out about his relationship with betty “harriet the spy” cooper, making things a little awkward in the group. while discussing polly’s bold escape, cheryl’s goon squad of mean teen girls let her know the hot goss, which she takes to her mother and the sheriff to implicate polly in the murder of jason blossom. she then, and i mean this 100% literally and honestly, goes on twitter and tries to get the following hashtags trending: #PollyCooperKilledMyBrother, #NowhereToHide, and #SharpenYourPitchforks.

jughead then tries to convince his alcoholic, gang leader dad to shape up and get his job back at andrews construction but his dad is a stupid dick. later the gang goes on a hunt for polly in the woods. when this is unsuccessful, betty’s mom reveals ALL about polly’s pregnancy on camera during her plea for her to come home. it turns out polly is just hiding in the attic of the house, where betty finds her. polly begs betty not to tell anyone where she is and that she wants to have the baby and continue with her plan to go to the farm upstate where she will raise it herself. keep that in mind.

with the knowledge about the baby out in the open, cheryl offers an olive branch to betty by offering to let polly secretly stay at their house. cheryl is truly a capricious trickster spirit who pivots from one extreme to another at the drop of a hat.

then literally the most crazy and inexplicable thing int his episode happens: veronica, kevin and josie go to a fucking club on a school night. these teenage kids go to a club in a town that primarily runs on maple syrup and they are let in for some unexplained reason and this is just portrayed as a normal thing you can do in riverdale. they are minors and end up drinking for free when hermoines mom cancels her card and they threaten the owner by exposing him for serving minors. this scene is BONKERS

jugheads dad goes back to work with fred andrews but there’s tension between him and archies dad. literally none of it ends up mattering. don’t worry about it. jughead tells his dad that his mom is getting her GED, working in a call center to support jellybean (his little sister, not like a dog or something). this is a huge spoiler from the future but i dont know if the riverdale writers forgot about this scene or don’t care but none of this turns out to be true to their situation at all. not even close.

jughead is arrested and unarrested for jason’s murder when archie’s dad inexplicably forges a time card to cut him loose. the only proof was fingerprints on the torched car, which are still there for some reason. cheryl intercepts betty yet again to warn her and polly that the blossoms also are insane weirdos who just want her for the baby so polly is shipped off to the stay with the lodge family in the 5 star hotel.

the final shot reveals jason’s varsity jacket is in jughead’s dad’s trailer...for some reason.....

the outsiders: this ep starts with polly explaining literally everything we already know except with the added information that jason was selling drugs FOR the southside serpents for money for the baby. betty worries about how escalating situation between the coopers and the blossoms and who gets control of what when it comes to polly and the baby, and veronica bizarrely suggests they hold a baby shower to unite the feuding families. if you just want to have a party just say so.

clifford blossom, professional bastard man, has purchased archie’s dad’s construction crew out from under him which leaves the project in limbo. he confesses to archie about how fucked the company is now and how everything is fucked. clifford is also making a play for the land veronica’s dad secretly bought from prison using his wife as a proxy, which makes the whole “let’s host a baby shower thing at our apartment and invite the blossoms” thing seem like a hugely bad idea now. BUT DONT WORRY TEAM!!! 4 high school boys are here to do construction for no pay to save the company. no one verbalizes what an insane plan this is. they carry on until moose, the big closeted gay lad, get his ass flipped like a pancake by two anonymous goons who bust up some equipment and moose’s face. archie the brain genius decides he’s going to solve this mystery himself, taking moose and jughead to a bar called “the whyte wyrm” (literally the worst name for anything ever in human history) to find out who did the slapping. as archie is about to get his head caved in by a gangster, jugheads dad shows up in his cool leather jacket, revealing himself to be the head of the gang.

the baby shower is a miserable affair. alice cooper shows up, penelope blossom shows up, for some reason they bring the senile grandmother. the tension is so thick you can cut it with a knife. then archie BUSTS in flipping his ass about jughead’s dad being a gangster. the just immediately throw him out which kind of rules because no one has time for him right now. the baby shower ends horrible when the blossoms make the lightest suggestion that polly might visit them and betty’s mom loses her fucking mind. everyone shuffles out except for polly, betty and alice. POLLY NOW DECIDES TO REVEAL THAT HER DAD HAD SCHEDULED AN APPOINTMENT FOR AN ABORTION APROPOS OF NOTHING. COME ONNN. anyway alice focuses her insane rage on hal who she boots out of the fucking house for his insane choice.

jughead and betty ask jugheads dad if he killed jason, he denies it and then they share a smooch outside the trailer. “they” being jughead and betty, not his dad. that would be a little too weird. well, not as weird as the reveal that jugheads dad has been instructing kevin’s serpent boyfriend to date him and pretend to like him for information.that’s pretty fucking weird. jughead’s dad refers to jason’s jacket as “insurance”.

jughead’s dad then shows up with his gang to take over the construction from the 4 high school boys, but hermoine reveals that the goons that were sent were sent by her husband, who might have caught wind of her affair with fred.

polly wisely decides to take her change with a different insane family instead of the one that tried to force an abortion on her and heads to thornhill manor with cheryl and the rest of the blossoms.

la grande illusion: i really need to thank whoever transcribed this entire narrative buttnugget from jughead because it truly is a spectacular example of the level of writing quality you get from the fine people at the cw. please enjoy this screencap of the opening monologue from the riverdale wiki:

today in riverdale is the annual meeting of the board of trustees, where the blossom family meets to discuss the state of the business and slurp syrup in redheaded harmony. the wigs on this show are outstanding and never more noticeable than when they’re all lined up in a row for you to appraise. cheryl invites archie to the tree-tapping ceremony and he, for reasons i cannot understand given everything we know and love about cheryl, accepts, albeit after some prodding on her mom’s behalf. she knows people at a very prestigious music academy you know, nudge nudge. betty thinks its also a good idea for him to go so he can check up on polly, who is ignoring betty’s calls now.

ethel, who you probably remember from the “sticky maple” episode, reads a fucked up poem to the class and veronica reaches out to ask her what the FUCK that was all about. things at home aren’t good for ethel: her family is fighting over money and they’re going to have to sell the house. so veronica invites her over for a play date with kevin so they can do whatever rich people do.

archie attends the tree tapping with cheryl where he holds a bucket and cheryl taps the tree. everyone claps. great job cheryl. archie comes to her defense when her family shit talks her ability to hit a tree or lead a company, but i guess they somehow don’t know that she is the most wild bitch on the planet and can not be dissuaded from doing anything. in fact, she insists that archie join her for a banquet later and he CANNOT say no.

betty is told polly is fine, and passes on this and the news from the blossom shareholder meeting to her mother who plans to use this information to destroy the blossoms using her newspaper. betty’s mother is truly a needlessly perpetually horrible woman for literally no reason almost 100% of the time. if its not to betty its to her sister and if not to her then to any random stranger she can sink her fangs into. however, her husband is still fucking pissed about the whole “getting thrown out” thing and is enacting a one man coupe on the newspaper. alice trashes her own office in retaliation. these people are the worst.

meanwhile veronica realizes that ethel’s dad used to work for her father, until hiram lodge’s incredibly illegal deeds financially ruined them all. ethel’s father tries to commit suicide and veronica shows up with flowers explaining how her family is the one responsible for all this. as you can expect ethel is not really pumped about this turn of events and tells her to tell the truth at her dad’s trial.

at the banquet, archie is HIGHLY encouraged by the blossoms to keep seeing cheryl. perhaps...in a romantic way? i wonder what reason this family of redheads could have for trying to indoctrinate yet another ginger into their fold. they share a weird kiss and archie flees, but not before securing two bits of information: polly warns him that the blossoms are involved in jason’s death and the blossoms themselves are close to securing the drive-in plot and part of their plan was to send veronica’s father to jail to eliminate the competition.

betty FOR SOME REASON invites her mother to write her expose at the school newspaper. why? i don’t know. her mom accepts. why? i don’t know. archie’s girlfriend, valerie, dumps him because he’s been spending so much time for cheryl, which i don’t know what he was expecting. in the final scene, cheryl, spurned by archie, scratches out his and polly’s face from a photo of the tree tapping. like a normal person would

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if you like my posts and write ups on various things you can see more of it on my patreon, which is primarily for my webcomic, but sometimes other things too. consider tossing me a buck for more freebies. ok bye see you next time for the end of season 1

#riverdale

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officialarcee · 6 years

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Stop supporting Yandere Simulator.

CW Pedophilia, R*pe mention, l*licon shit, you name it!

Alright so this is a lot to unpack and get into, so I’ll start from the beginning with what I have evidence of.

Yandev/Evapheon/Alex Mahan gains about over 4k a month from his patreon To develop a game using stolen assets that will never get out of development due to the fact that he spends 4+ hours streaming on twitch, as well as really never making actual progress.

This was something that we all sort of saw coming, considering his lack of impressive updates but finally more came out about who he really was.

A long time ago he was very interested in a game called r*pelay and asked advice about it (WARNING This is a link to the archived page of the discussion forum. It has discussing of what you’d expect, as well as some nsfw pictures off to the side. I don’t suggest clicking the link if this would upset you, it’s included in this specifically as evidence) He made posts on forums about his ideals in women in 2006 (Second to last quote at the bottom of his page is from him, the one above where he asks “Want to share why” As well as having nudes on hand from a minor and then denying it. Heres his fanfiction.net where he wrote r*pe fics

Heres a bunch of posts about him bashing “Brainwashed sjws” and even on his twitter and saying he wasnt a sellout to “sjws”

Okay so why bring up shit from 2006? (In which he was 20 at the time.) He literally has not changed. Let’s take a look at his current ideas for the game.

An inventory system in which you have to look at a high schoolers underwear to receive your items, with optional filtering

Including a sister character as a rival to the game. Which, in of itself isn’t terrible but considering his fascination with lol*con, you can only imagine where this is going to go. He had a blog post about how he thought it would be an interesting plot for the sister to be in love with her brother. Unfortunately, I cannot find the blog post for this as he had later updated it, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Sexual depictions of minors. The panty shots being used as currency, the inventory system, nude models existing (like in the Attack on Titan easter egg), and Im sure more that I cant remember.

He still claims that they’re 18+! Even though theyre high schoolers!

Which brings us to this post by a volunteer dropping out on the project (one of many) for all these reasons, in which Yandere dev explains he has a “whole team of perverts” Working for him. As well as how he discusses a money system used in game in which you trade schoolboys into organ harvesting and schoolgirls into sex trafficking for favors from a delinquent student.

Heres a masterpost of more allegations.

A lot of this information isn’t out there, and a lot of fans who are really interested in the game are very unaware of all this. The fanbase for Yandere Simulator is very young and it’s really important that they understand how dangerous of a person Yandere Dev is.

Here is where I got all my information.

#yandere simulator #yansim #yandere dev #yandev #evaxephon #alex mahan #bambi blabs

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metalandmagi · 5 years

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December End of the Year Media Madness!

It’s a new month and a new year! And what a crazy month it was what with Tumblr imploding and all. But I’ll still throw this on here just because I’ll be on this site until it literally boots me out. But I do have a twitter now…@metalandmagi where I’m also barely active at all.

Anyway, why make top 10 lists for the entire year when I can just ramble about all the media I consumed this month? There’s only a marginal amount of holiday things on here by my standards!

November media

Movies!

Give me some credit there’s only four Christmas movies on here.

Won’t You Be My Neighbor?: A documentary about Mr. Rogers starting with the birth of the television show to his death. This is the fluffiest most heartwarming thing I could have possibly picked to watch on Christmas, and I encourage everyone, even people who hate documentaries and/or never grew up with Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, to watch it. There’s a lot of important messages about acceptance, dealing with tragedy, and mental health that people can learn from and feel good about. Not to mention how he completely revolutionized children’s television. So yeah, he was awesome.10/10

Spider-man Into the Spider-verse: When a rip between dimensions is opened, a bunch of different spider themed superheroes from every comic fan’s wet dreams all get together to close it. Guys I’m not that big of a Spider-man fan, but dang this movie was a ton of fun. I came for the amazing visual effects and stayed for the amazing...everything else. The music, the performances, and the story were all top notch. Also I now have a new favorite Nick Cage role. If you thought the trailer made the animation look interesting, it was just the tip of the iceberg because it is the most visually interesting movie I’ve seen in the last three years. I strongly suggest any fan of animation...or even any fan of great stories and movies in general go see it even if you’re not that big on Spider-Man. Now I’m demanding a Spider-verse Aunt May movie because I have so many questions! And the post credits scene was the best out of any Marvel movie. Period. 10,000/10

The Wiz (2015 musical): I should start making a section for musicals or plays instead of just lumping it in with the movies. It’s the Wizard of Oz...but cool. I’ve never seen any iteration of The Wiz and it seems like I’m constantly hearing about it. So I watched the 2015 version of the 1975 Broadway musical that NBC aired. And yeah it’s good. There were some great performances. But I wasn’t very impressed with the songs themselves, and it’s not really the same without a dog along for the ride, but whatever. 7.5/10

Jumanji Welcome to the Jungle: The surprisingly fun reboot/sequel thing of Jumanji where four teenagers get stuck in a video game that follows every “stuck in a video game” trope you can imagine but actually does it well. It’s a sweet, funny romp through the jungle with some great comedic performances. I really don’t have much to say about it except that this movie is better than it has any right to be. 8/10

The Christmas Chronicles: Two children stow away on Kurt Russell’s, I mean Santa’s sleigh and go on a dangerous, balls to the wall adventure throughout Chicago trying to save Christmas or something. After everyone started talking about how crazy this Netflix movie is I had to watch it to verify if it is indeed as wild as they said. And yes...yes it is. It is so laughably ridiculous and questionable that it’s impossible to actually hate. The elves are some unholy mixture of minions and gremlins, one of the children is a literal felon that no one is concerned about, and Kurt Russell is super into the role but has some sort of thing about fat-shaming Santa. I just...have so many questions! But it was certainly a trip, so I’d have to recommend it just so you too can witness the insanity. -10 “savvy, straight-talking St. Nicks”/10

Arthur Christmas: No, it’s not a Christmas special related to the aardvark cartoon! This is the 2011 animated movie that no one remembers exists. Santa’s clumsy but enthusiastic son Arthur must deliver a forgotten present in less than two hours while the rest of his family deals with some Arrested Development style family drama. This is by far the most underrated Christmas movie of all time; even I didn’t realize it was actually good until I watched it for the first time in 2016! The fun road-trip style plot and the entertaining characters were victims of bad marketing. Arthur is hilariously endearing, and there was so much heart and effort put into it that I can find new things to notice every time I watch it. Not to mention the amazingly animated opening spy sequence! And also Mrs. Claus is secretly a total badass and Bryony the elf is the coolest female character in a Christmas movie ever. The movie’s message of old vs new is nothing we haven’t seen before, but I really don’t care because at the heart of it all, it’s about making people happy on Christmas. If you’re like me and just assumed this movie would suck...or didn’t know it exists, please give it a chance. It’s not perfect, but it’s worth seeing. 9/10

Neo Yokio Pink Christmas: Yes, it’s the Christmas special for Neo Yokio. No I cannot accurately describe it with mere words. There’s a rich bachelor gift exchange, demon possession, and pompous French aunts slinging insults at each other. It is unironically my favorite holiday episode of a show ever, and to me it’s the best Christmas special ever made. I thought I was prepared for the absolute bat-shit ride I would go on, but no...I wasn’t even close. At this point I don’t know if it’s written like this on purpose or if some divine twist of fate made the executives believe this is truly brilliant television. Either way, it is a masterpiece in its own right. There’s even a somewhat intriguing plot and a message about gift giving and capitalism under all the crazy! If you haven’t jumped down the rabbit hole yet, I implore you to watch the insanity that is Neo Yokio and follow it up with Pink Christmas because it will truly make your holiday season. 100,000 demon DNA drugs out of 100,000!

Die Hard: Nothing says Christmas like terrorists taking over a skyscraper and Bruce Willis having to take them all down by himself. Yeah...so I’ve never seen Die Hard before, but this is one of those movies that is so famous that I felt like I’d already absorbed everything important through cultural osmosis. And even though it’s pretty good, I would have liked it better if I didn’t know what was going to happen. My only real complaint is that I think it goes on way too long. More than anything it just made me sad to remember that Alan Rickman is gone. And it bothers me so much that John McClane goes through this building that’s under construction WITHOUT SHOES! 8/10

Books!

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis: The 4th/6th book in the Chronicles of Narnia, in which Eustace Scrubb and his classmate Jill Pole go to the underworld to find King Caspian’s long lost son. Even though my children- the Pevensies aren’t in it, I actually think this book is my favorite of the series so far. Jill and Eustace are both sassy enough to play off each other, Puddleglum absolutely hilarious, and the book actually has a clear cut plot! It reads much more like a Greek myth than a children’s fairy tale since there aren’t nearly as many of Lewis’s trademark author interjections, and you know...it’s a literal journey to the underworld. And can I just say that it’s super refreshing to have an author write two main characters WITH ZERO ROMANTIC INTENTIONS! Especially since they’re freaking children! Now I just wish Disney had continued the movies even more! 9/10

Queen of Air and Darkness by Cassandra Clare: I’m going to do this with only minor spoilers. It’s the final book in The Dark Artifices trilogy. Will Emma and Julian break the parabatai bond? Will the reflection of the modern day American government- I mean the Cohort/ the Clave fuck up the relationships between Shadowhunters and Downworlders forever? You’ll have to suffer like the rest of us to find out! In my opinion, 99% of this book is amazing, but in the last 50 pages there are some...bullshit ways of solving problems. Like everything that went down with the Cohort in Idris. Not to mention we’ve been so invested in the parabatai curse and how Julian and Emma’s bond would go down and...let’s just say the resolution was way too easy. And if you thought Clare’s other finales were jam packed, you ain't seen nothin’ yet. My copy is 880 pages and there was still more stuff that I wanted to happen...like any sort of scene between Dru and Ash...or an ending between Kit and Ty that doesn’t make me want to cry (the Wicked Powers is going to be brutal). But the rest of that 99% is mind-blowing! There’s so much good I can say that it mostly outranks anything I didn’t like...I mean we finally got a Malec wedding and a proper polyamorous relationship for the Angel’s sake! It may be my least favorite of her finales by default but it was still a fun ride! 9/10

TV shows!

She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018): An elite soldier finds a sword that can transform her into a super buff magical girl who helps princesses take down the forces of evil. It’s a reboot of the 1980s cartoon, and holy crap it’s AMAZING! I have a whole new group of children to adopt, each episode is entertaining in its own way, and there’s so...many...good...ships! And it gives Steven Universe a run for its money with the care that went into making every character a different kind of warrior, which I love because the cast is 99% female. My only real complaint is that I never warmed up to Catra because she wasn’t particularly sympathetic to me from the beginning. But I understand why some people love her. If you love well crafted adventurous character driven cartoons and haven’t watched it yet WHAT ARE YOU DOING!? 10/10

Nailed It Holiday: Yes, my favorite baking show (and by that I mean the only baking show I watch) has a holiday season out on Netflix, in which newbie bakers are tasked with making incredibly professional desserts with a very short time limit. And whoever makes the best treat gets 10,000 dollars. I’ve talked about this show before in my June media madness, and I don’t know what it is but I’m so addicted to it. 10/10

Brooklyn nine-nine (season 5): Come on we all know the cop sitcom. It’s the best sitcom. Just in general it’s the best. Great characters that subvert expectations, great humor, and a lot of heart. I’ve known that this show is supposed to be amazing for years, but I only started watching it a few months ago. And since I couldn’t find season 5 anywhere...I got a Hulu subscription just to watch it before season 6 comes out. That’s how good this show is. 10/10

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (season 2): Our favorite underdog comedian is back, and she’s slowly gaining popularity and doing...stuff. Like going on tour. And hanging out with Zachary Levi. Yes, this season is great, but my problem with this series is that every character aside from Midge and Susie are the fucking worst, especially the parents. Midge’s parents suck, Joel’s parents suck, Midge and Joel are appropriately neglectful parents for the time period...I could go on. And it’s not even in a funny way; like it’s just disgusting to watch these power dynamics. Not to mention how old the comedic bits for the parents get (how many times can we hear about Joel needing to date or Midge needing to get married?!) Yes, I realize that we’re supposed to be annoyed AND YES I realize that this is a product of culture and how society was, but none of the parents have any redeeming qualities. In episode one, we’re led to believe that Midge’s parents will grow and change through the season and they never do! At least there are moments where Joel can kind of be redeeming and expand on his actual character before he reverts back to being an asshole. Anyway, my thoughts are pretty much the same as the first season. It’s funny and interesting to watch, but it can be ridiculously frustrating when you hate almost all the characters! 8/10

Fuller House (season 4): Yes I do watch the ridiculous Netflix reboot of Full House. And yes, it is absolutely terrible! I really really hate it! But will I stop watching it? Let’s just say you can pry this pile of garbage from my cold dead hands. I don’t know if I’d call this a guilty pleasure or a hate watch type of show... it’s certainly not so bad it’s good territory like Neo Yokio...but Full House was pretty much my entire childhood. And yes, the original show is also not great. I loved it as a kid, and it was my first real exposure to a non-traditional family in live action, but yeah it doesn’t age well. What I’m trying to say is...I have no good reason for watching this.

I don’t mean to say that there’s nothing good about it, especially this season. They really back off on the more cringe-worthy catch phrases, Stephanie being aware of how stupid the writing is and constantly pointing it out is actually funny, their Christmas episode was surprisingly genuine, and they impressed me by actually make two female characters try and work through their difficulties instead of pitting them against each other for laughs. It has its moments, just like the original but definitely not enough to make up for the worst of it. Maybe this generation of children will like it the way lots of my generation used to like Full House...but yeah it’s awful, I hate it so much. -1 missing Tanner child out of 3

Voltron Legendary Defender (season 8) SPOILERS: It’s the final season of Netflix’s Voltron, and boy it was...something. I didn’t want to make this a big rant/defense of the show...but I feel like I have to highlight some things because this fandom is a shithole that refuses to see the good in anything.

There is so much good and so much...not good I can say about it, so here’s a couple things. I know this show didn’t go the direction anyone wanted, but that doesn’t make it bad. In addition to the stunning fight scenes and music, the performances this season were just amazing! I literally wanted to cry every other episode even though sometimes I didn’t know why the fuck something was happening. I don’t know how I feel about Honerva’s plan. I understand her motivation, but I was constantly questioning how we got from point A to point B... so yeah the plot and writing could be...weird at times. Also everyone seemed to have super pointy chins this season...

Spoiler alert: Not many of us wanted Lance and Allura to happen, but I truly believe it wasn’t done in a half assed way. At the very least, I appreciate that they had a genuine bond that developed over so many seasons. BECAUSE YES IT DID! Anyone who says they had no development or that it felt forced never paid attention. I wanted it to stay platonic; I wanted Klance to happen, but...I can’t be too mad at the writers because they at least tried. I still believe that Klance was endgame and the creators were forced to change the outcome of the show later on. AND YES LANCE DID GET A CHARACTER ARC! It may not have been the one we wanted to see, but I’m baffled that people think Lance living with his family, surrounded by people he loves-which is what he wanted all along- is not a happy ending. I just wish his relationship with Keith wasn’t pretty much ignored all season. But I believe Allura is his past that taught him to genuinely love and Keith is his future who will make Lance his “first choice”. And I’m not even gonna try to explain how I feel about Shiro and Allura’s endings because everything I feel is so complicated and layered. There is good and there is bad.

TLDR: This show teaches us that we’re stronger together, and I think the “fandom” completely missed the point because they do nothing but tear others down and refuse to look at things from other perspectives. YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO NOT LIKE IT, BUT YOU DON’T HAVE THE RIGHT TO TAKE AWAY OTHER PEOPLE’S ENJOYMENT AND BE A DICK ABOUT IT. It may not have been everything I wanted, but I’m glad I went on this ride. Besides, there are canonically infinite realities so there’s got to be a reality where all your dreams for the show come true. As a season, I’d say it’s a 7.5/10.

Honorable Mentions

I watched Avengers: Infinity War again. And yes it’s still great.

I’m watching Superstore because when another sitcom comes on before The Good Place, why not? Also since I finished season 5 of Brooklyn 99 I had to use my Hulu subscription for something.

Camp Camp has a holiday episode...so naturally I watched it...several times. Please watch Camp Camp.

Hellsing Ultimate Abridged finally ended, and I feel obligated to shout this out because, hey when you put out one episode a year it’s a big accomplishment to finish it!

Super Smash Bros Ultimate is finally here!!!!!!!!!!!

ALL THE WINTER ANIME IS ENDING!!! They were all so amazing! So shout out to Iroduku-The world in colors, Bloom into You, Hinomaru Sumo, Dakaichi, Banana Fish, Jingai no Yomen, Golden Kamuy, Skull-faced Bookseller Honda-san, Tsurune, AND RUN WITH THE WIND even though they’re not finished yet.

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sketchesofsam · 6 years

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The Illustration Master Class - A First Timer's Journal

This is a long blog post. It's mostly for my own purposes, but also for those who want an in-depth look at what being at the IMC is like. I have some pointers for first timers, things you might not think of and things to consider in advance. They'll be at the end of the article. I want to thank Dave Palumbo for allowing me to use a couple of his amazing photos too, he's a talented SOB.

probably won't forget the moment my Facebook messages suddenly started pinging off. 'Congrats Sam!' 'Hey Sam, you won!' I distinctly remember thinking, hmm, what did I win? Did I enter another twitter giveaway or something? Then someone followed up with 'you won the scholarship!' It took me a moment. Then the chat I was in the middle of with my other half suddenly filled with lots of expletives and capitals on my end. Holy shit. I'd won the Muddy Colors scholarship to the IMC, something that had been a long-term wish of mine since I'd found out about it 5 or 6 years prior but hadn't ever had the funds to attend. So to find out that my entry to their scholarship program - through the generous donations of the Muddy Colors Patreon - submitted on a 'what have I got to lose' mentality that was still shadowed by the fuzzy sting of not getting into Spectrum, had scored me the full cost of the course. I'd honestly forgotten I'd applied. Let that be a lesson to those of you who hold back on submitting to things, especially the things that are free. It's always worth a punt.

So what's it like to go to the IMC? I can tell you that winning the scholarship made the pre-IMC thumbnail assignment a lot more stressful than if I'd paid for it. The weight of imagining disappointing the people who had seen my work and voted for it - artistic heroes of mine - was pretty heavy. It made me feel like I couldn't just go and do the same thing I'd always done, even if it had won me the scholarship. Before I started drawing, I reconsidered my influences. I'd started a secret pinterest board a few months back simply called 'Ho Fuck That's Good.' Stuff that gave me a gut punch when I looked at it. I spent a lot of time looking at those images and a lot of the others I had pinned. I stopped paying attention to work that I simply found technically impressive, that had awesome composition or great values. I looked for what moved me. Why it moved me. I started making notes about themes I found compelling or that cropped up a lot in my own work. I decided I wasn't going to do just a straight up realistic narrative Whaler Girl piece, I was going to try and make my own work be more like that which moved me. A risky, and perhaps somewhat dumb move, given those same realistic, narrative images had won me the scholarship.

We were asked to provide 4 or 5 thumbnails, either of our own choosing, or from an assignment provided, such as an illustration to accompany a short story, the likes of which are often published on Tor.com. With themes like duality, death, grief and love in relationships crowding my brain, I created a lot of thumbnails. I wasn't going to take the first 3 or 4 that came out. I did about 20 in total and narrowed it down to the 6 I felt most attached to. Some of them even had hints back to The Whaler Girl in a very asbtract way. They'd come out better than I'd hoped for and I could see a tiny glimpse of the sort of painting I might get out of it. It made me excited to put them in front of my chosen faculty member.

We were asked to pick a top 5 from the vertiable smorgasbord of faculty. That was hard. It turned out that most people got grouped with their top pick and that dictated who the other faculty were that would give you feedback. I suspect my pick would have surprised a few people. Kent Williams was actually the instructor I was least familiar with, but researching his work, especially his most recent work, it hit the same kind of buttons that my inspiration board had. His work felt emotionally personal and while I knew I didn't want to necessarily paint like he did, I felt he might be able to give good feedback on how to tap into that sense of the personal. Perhaps someone who could help keep me on track with the first wibbly steps I was taking with my own work. I count myself lucky to have landed in the group with Rebecca, Kent and Tara (McPherson).

I wanted to make a good first impression, but there were so many approaches to the dreaded 'crit day'. Some folks brought only one or two finished colour thumbs, some folks just had small, traditionally drawn thumbnails, occasionally done on arrival the night before. Some brought photo mockups of the exact piece they wanted to work on. All approaches got good feedback. I'd been forewarned that crit day could be rough, but I think the Studio 201 guys were pretty chill. I did peek my head in on the other two rooms briefly. Donato, Greg Ruth and Scott Fischer were all highly animated and I've been told often argued with each other's feedback. Dan Dos Santos, Irene Gallo and Greg Manchess were part of the group that, from chatting to folks, seemed to get the most direct feedback.

I was a little surprised when there was no tracing paper used during my crit. All three faculty members responded favourably to what had been my favourite thumbnail, despite its weirdness. No direct suggestions other than resolving the shapes in my minimal, non-figurative space (that minor bit of feedback would come to haunt me by The Thursday of DOOM, but I'll get to that later). Inspirations like Inka Essenhigh, Hope Gangloff and Dorothea Tanning were thrown my way, I loved all three for very different reasons. It was safe to say inspiration was running high and I had a tonne of positive energy to run with.

I felt like I was well prepped going into the IMC, but I wasn't. Choosing to go full traditional when having to fly internationally was a pain. I didn't have a lot of the stuff I needed and had to rely on the infinite kindness of my fellow students and faculty to see me through. Stephen, Annie, Chris, Julia, you were all lovely, I can't thank you enough.

My Tuesday started with James Gurney sat at my breakfast table. That was surreal but awesome. He and his wife Jeanette are as lovely two people as you could hope to meet, full of insight and always taking notes. The previous day's lecture on photo reference was flowing through my mind and I dreaded having to ask fellow students. My figures were both nudes and that wasn't something I was comfortable with, though I thought perhaps I could take individual legs and arms and use a little online ref to fill in the rest. I wish I'd drummed up the courage to ask my fellow students, but that particular social step eluded me the whole week. I spent the day instead with many sheets of tracing paper, figuring out What marks were what. I had discussions with Greg Ruth and Donato Giancola about how to find those shapes and make them fit in my piece. You have to figure out who to listen to, and whose advice to stash for a later date. You get bombarded with advice if you go in as open-minded as I did. I'd thrown myself into a pool I should have been paddling in first, pretty much at the very public deep end. I'll admit I found ways to put off getting to painting, as it was only the 2nd oil painting I'd done in the last 20 years and the company I had in the room was stellar and a little overwhelming. Eventually, I chose to redraw via a grid so I could edit as I went along and I used some reference I shot of my own limbs to help flesh the drawing out. I left Tuesday feeling reasonably positive about the work.

Wednesday was a full day with faculty feedback, up to the first 5 pm lecture. Dan Dos Santos, who is perfectly lovely, but also very honest with feedback, stopped by my easel. Overall, very complimentary, he pulled me on a bit of weird anatomy, that after using a lot more photo ref with the rest of the piece, had begun to stand out. He suggested I grab Rebecca after our discussion. I'd responded best to her feedback, as she seemed to understand what I was trying to do, so I grabbed her after lunch. She immediately told me the leg and anatomy I'd had in the thumbnail had been working, and that if I liked the weirdness (which I did) to go weird with the rest of the piece to make the leg fit. Literally the opposite of Dan's feedback. Feedback is such a personal thing, every instructor has their own view of art and own journey. I'd probably tried to take a little bit of everyone who'd stopped by and given feedback and every little bit had nudged me slightly off the course I'd intended to take. Dan's feedback was spot on, if I'd been after something with a solid grounding in realism, but I wasn't. I was after an emotional feeling rather than muscles that looked like they fit where they were supposed to go. Rebecca suggested I just print the thumbnail out, mount it to masonite and paint on that. But resolve my shapes first.

That led me to ask Tara for advice and after some back and forth, I thought I knew where I was going, and decided rather than be tied to the values I'd got in the thumbnail to start with, I'd trace down the printed thumbnail and resolve my shapes. All went well, I got the drawing on the board, and aware of the ever-ticking clock and my ability to get feedback on my painting process, I was keen to get started the following day.

I nick-named Thursday 'Thursday of DOOOOOOOM' in my sketchbook notes. With that many 'O's'. It started well, with my sketch on my illustration board, I figured I'd use acrylic underpainting to speed up the process, then seal with matte medium and start on top in oils. I'd brought a lovely lime green and violet with me, my underpainting was done in warm purple-reds as a counterpoint, and I was winging it. It felt good. I stepped away for a bit before lunch and came back after to the horror of a C-shaped warped board. A brand I'd not used before, I hadn't been heavy with it at all. I threw some matte medium on the back in the hopes it would pull itself out of the curve, but it only stiffened. I think panic set in at this point, I knew there was no point in doing more on the board, but I'd been stubborn over mounting the printouts I'd done. Old dog, new tricks and all that.

Distraught, I knew I had no choice. I slunk off to the back of the studio and tried not to blub my eyes out as I tried a totally new method of mounting with less than perfect tools. Flustered, my hair constantly got stuck in the medium, making me even more panicked that the whole thing would be a disaster and that I'd missed the last supply run and would have to face the very public shame of asking someone for actual help. If there's one thing I hate, it's not being self-sufficient. My fellow students would have happily helped out, but shame is a pretty powerful emotion, it tends to rule what you do. I prayed the mounted paper wouldn't need a 2nd sheet mounting on the back to counter the drawing mounted on the front. At best, in the blazing sun, this stuff would take a couple of hours to dry to the point I could paint on it. The wind did its best to prevent me from stacking the board outside and in my hours of deepest bleakness, I figured that maybe if it blew over into the dirt and insects, I'd say fuck it and make them part of the fucking thing too. It was also at this point I realised the printouts had cropped the two thumbnails I'd chosen to work with, altering their composition drastically. My own dumb fault for not setting the page size up properly in the printer. One more shame I'd suck up and live with. I wish I'd asked for help. I think knowing the pieces weren't what I'd initially intended broke my ability to give them my full attention and killed my mojo for the next couple of days. My anxiety rats, as Rebecca delightfully referred to them, were in full swing.

While I waited for it to dry, I headed back into the studio and mentioned to Rebecca I'd given in with the curved board and mounted the thumbnail and would she have a look over what I'd chosen to do with the background. Rebecca is gracious and lovely and patiently listens to me explain what I've done. Then she points to some of the graphic elements I'd put in and gently says that they still feel too literal and forced, that the motifs I choose should be something I relate to closely and that it doesn't quite live up to the right hand, figurative side of the painting. I suggest a couple of other ideas, feeling a scrabbling panic bulding in me, only to hear her tell me everything still feels too literal. My logic brain knows she's right, but after a distraught morning, I'm clasping at any straw I have to salvage the situation. I don't know if it showed, and she saw that I was struggling with it or if it was just honest feedback for the moment, but at that point, she looked at me and said 'maybe this piece is a step too far for you right now, maybe you should do the other piece, if that's something that's more comfortable for you.' I think I agreed with her, nodded and extolled the virtues of taking a step back into my comfort zone, getting a painting I knew how to do done was a good thing, yes? But damn if that wasn't a kick to the gut at that very moment.

She was absolutely right, though. I'd throw myself into a deep pool, with people who were olympic athletes at diving its depths, and in the course of a week expected to be able to at least dive a good distance with them. I'd been able to get my head underwater with my well-planned thumbnails, but in this overwhelming, information packed, inspiring, public test of artistic mettle, I'd punched above my depth, so to speak. Trying to shift gears artistically when you have your own space and the time to find your journey is one thing, I don't know if it can be done in a week, no matter how much amazing input you get from your artistic heroes. Chris, Erin, Annie, I'm sorry if my energy those next 48 hours was a bummer, it wasn't a place I was familiar with being.

Kent Williams came to the rescue of my very bruised ego that evening with a talk about his personal journey through art. Indirectly, seeing the bredth and depth of his work over such a long time span, I confess to feeling a little idiotic that I'd expected to be able to make that leap in a week. Every faculty member who gave a talk like that had shown me that their journeys were long, and often fraught with failed ventures or periods of doing artistic things they didn't want to. I left the lecture with my tail between my legs, but a renewed sense that I would do my best with the hand I'd given myself. I did a couple of colour studies that evening, traditionally, inspired by seeing James Gurney's master studies in his lecture. I loved doing them, and wish I'd had more time to do more. But I found a piece online that had a palette I liked and did a couple of explorations of a similar theme. I finally, finally, 4 days into the escapade, managed to put down some oil paint.

Friday and Saturday I painted as much as I could, but tentatively, I was making marks I'd never made before. I listened to the feedback being given around me and let anyone who wanted to stop and give me feedback, do so. I'm not sure I actively asked for it. I struggled as the ladies around me with their amazinly characterful pieces drew the attention of everyone who went past. I wondered if I was so far off the mark and weird that no one knew what to say about my piece. Maybe it was so bland that they couldn't praise or crit it. In retrospect, I recognise that my mood and lack of decent sleep was tinting my mood heavily, and I suspect I was giving off the same vibe, which is enough to make folks give you a bit of a wide berth.

The theme of finding your niche and doing what you love came up in more than one lecture over those days. I went to bed at 2 am both nights, in an attempt to get as much done as I could. I socialised a little more, realising that was as much a part of the experience as the painting. If not more. I'm hugely thankful for the bonds I forged during that week, something I couldn't have done at home, no matter how much I painted. Those bonds were worth much more to me than the painting I half finished. I think I came to accept that what I wanted to do was going to be a journey that needed a little longer than a week to take. I wish there had been more 'round table' lectures with all the faculty, seeing them interact together on the business lecture was amazing.

Sunday was chill. I'd had the intention of painting more, but clearing up took a while, and I felt good being relaxed. So I socialised more instead. Our final lecture with Donato was the perfect note to end the experience on and the open house was a chance to take in everyone's work, the standard of which was amazing. After a super tasty mexican dinner and strawberry margherita, the bar beckoned. After drawing I don't know how much hentai in people's sketchbooks and getting a badass Bill Nighy sketch from the awesome Bud Cook in my own sketchbook, alongside the weirdest pseudonyms and animal drawings ever, I crashed and burned as being under the influence after a week of mental stress and lack of sleep took its toll on me. Conan, thank you for making sure I got back safely that night, I really appreciate it, I suspect I'd have passed out in a dark corner of the bar otherwise. Sad I missed out on the late night partying that ensued, but damn, did I need that night's sleep.

So there's one woman's view of what it's like to go to the IMC, to throw yourself at the mercy of the faculty and your own desires. To fail and not deal with it well, to realise that the painting was never the important thing. IMC was amazing. I can only hope this gives those of you who haven't been a teensy insight. I'm not going to cover what the lectures were or what faculty shared with us, that's a very specific IMC experience, that you really have to go to appreciate. I will say I am hugely thankful to Dan, Rebecca and all of those on Muddy Colors who made that experience real for me. It has enriched me in ways I suspect I'll only realise as my journey continues. Thank you to everyone who gave me kind words and praise and to those who tried to guide me on my way. If ever the opportunity arises for you to attend, I would say grab it with both hands and run with it. Even if your experience doesn't run as profound as mine, and it simply lets you have some time to paint whatever the hell you want, being in a huge room full of people going through the same thing is well worth the price, not to mention watching faculty paint in real time is invaluable.

So, what if you've taken that leap, some months from now and you're going to the IMC? Here's a few pointers from someone who thought they were prepared and was woefully not.

1 - THE DORMS Are basic AF. I was somewhat prepared, but when the FAQ says the beds are firm, they mean it. Think springs wrapped in a bit of plastic tarp. The sheets are functional, but the blanket looked like someone had put used dog bedding through a shredder and mushed it out into a rectangle. I bought a spare blanket at the CVS store, cause no way was that thing touching my skin. I may be a little sensitive though. I affectionately referred to the whole set up as my prison bed, cause honestly, that's all I could think of. If you can bring your own bedding, I'd recommend it.

The dorm bathrooms are gender neutral, which means anyone can use them. I was fine with it, but it's odd the first time you wander into the bathroom and find the opposite sex brushing their teeth. I never had any problems taking a shower, though, they were pretty quiet.

Morris Pratt Dorm was definitely the more social, I was very thankful to be on the 3rd floor, as a light sleeper, the partying into the wee hours would have kept me awake had I been on the lower floors. The box fans helped with white noise, but the doors are all pretty heavy, so unless folks are very delicate with how they close them, expect some noise. I found the box fan enough without the AC, even when it got pretty warm on the last couple of days.

2 - FOOD. Having never been to a large educational establishment in the US, I wasn't sure what to expect with the food. Would I have to venture into Amherst to find healthy stuff, would there be much choice? The food was surprisingly decent. It's still a large facility, so it's never going to be amazing restaurant quality, but there were a few choices every day and a well-stocked salad bar. They even had a soft serve ice cream machine, that I managed to avoid until Sunday. I'm not a coffee drinker, but I had it on good authority that the coffee in the dining hall wasn't great. It might be an idea to bring a drinks container with you, as mealtimes are the only time you can get drinks on campus, outside of water fountains. Amherst is only a 10-minute walk down the road, though.

3 - ART SUPPLIES AND STUDIO SAFETY. I brought paints, brushes and surfaces with me, with the knowledge I'd ordered a couple extra things for while I was there and that there was a supply run. If you work on specific surfaces, it's best to bring those with, Michael's wasn't super well stocked, and more speciality things like large clayboard weren't available. A lot of people bring extras and are happy to share, thankfully. I would have brought more old rags or kitchen towels and some tape. People often used walls to tape up thumbnails or other pieces of art.

The university runs a very strict number of safety policies surrounding paints, water and mediums. Bring some lidded jars with you for mediums and water. Everything has to be labelled clearly and remained closed when not in use. Even water used for rinsing acrylic and watercolours. All have to be disposed of carefully too. Same with anything you wipe paint or mediums on, so using something a bit more disposable like kitchen towel might do you better. They ask you to cover your oil paints when not in use, though that can be with a simple piece of palette paper.

If you choose an easel, if you have space for a little extra table, you'll likely make good use of it. The chairs they supply are also very basic and not comfortable for long periods, so bringing a cushion is definitely a good idea. Oh, and they say the studio opens at 8 am on Monday but I got there at 8 am and a lot of the spaces had already been taken, so if you want prime real estate, get there early!

4 - SELF PROMOTION This sounds like a no-brainer. I brought business cards for the faculty and my portfolio review with Irene Gallo. I thought I'd sorted my work out reasonably well, but actually, my website would have been a better place to show off my work. I also wish I'd brought a physical portfolio to leave out for students and faculty to flick through, perhaps an example of finished work that was either nicely printed if I was doing digital, or one of my traditional pieces. The latter is tricky when flying. My business cards were on the pricey side so I wish I'd had some decent postcards or stickers, printed for the open studio, where folks were picking stuff up. You never know who's going to pick one up! The internet can be spotty in the building, so unless you have some 4G going on, it can be tricky to show off folios digitally.

You might also be lucky enough to score a second portfolio review if the guests have enough time, I am so glad I could put my work in front of WotC's Jeremy Jarvis. It cheered my Saturday up no end! Make sure you check the lists when they go up and bag your second spot early. And don't puss out.

5 - DON'T BE AFRAID TO ASK FOR HELP I'm stubborn and British, so asking for help is the worst, but everyone there will gladly help you out if they can. Especially the assistant team, Daneen, Julia and Stephen and the 'honored easels' who've been in your situation. Take advantage of them, they are all lovely people.

And that sums it up! An amazing, tiring, exhausting, mentally demanding, inspiring, overwhelming experience that I wouldn't change for the world. I hope to repeat it in the next year or two. I count myself lucky to be part of the alumni and perhaps if you're reading this, I might see you there too.

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4reverendgreen-blog · 7 years

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(I’m sorry this is long and I’m sorry I number and list everything, it’s the only way I can really organise my thoughts on this bc I have a fair amount I’d like to get across. This is probably overkill but I do this kind of thing privately all the time bc it helps me personally learn too. Yh.)

A preface to fen, addressing her reaction to the last redline submitted and some of the arguments she had/retweeted on twitter regarding it:

Critique is only a bad thing if you choose it to be. You can take this (and future and past pieces of criticism) as a personal attack or a free lesson. It’s entirely up to you. I’ve done this to draw attention to mistakes you’re making that you probably don’t realise you’re making and I’ve tried my best to give you some tips to give a boost in correcting those mistakes.

Nothing is above criticism. It doesn’t matter how long it took you, how proud you are of it, etc. I understand being attached to your work and defensive of it especially if it’s something you’re really proud of. But if you aren’t going to take critique then you aren’t trying to get better and that’s not something I do understand at all. You’re lucky to be in a position where people are freely giving you advice on how to improve.

That retweet of the tweety pie pic really rubbed me the wrong way. This is essentially the “its my style!!!” excuse and if you seriously believe that a redline pointing out the anatomical flaws of your work is equal to this then you have little understanding of how styling art works. Tweety pie works because he is consistently highly stylised and makes sense within the parameters that have been set out for him. The styling of your work is clear and it doesn’t allow for the twisted posing, disproportion, and anatomical flaws that are seen – if it did, then those things wouldn’t look out of place and wrong. I touch more on this in one of my redlines. I’ve also tried to draw in my own more realistic style (in blue) while redlining in a style similar to yours to show how these things translate between styles.

You argued on twitter that the previous redline submitted just didn’t understand that in one of the pictures the character was lifting one of their legs. If that isn’t clearly communicated in the picture then you haven’t done it correctly. A viewer only has what’s in front of them, they don’t know what your intentions with the pic are. If something like the position of a character’s legs is confusing to the viewer, chances are it’s not their fault. Hopefully this will dispel any arguments that I just didn’t understand what you were going for in these pictures. Again, I’m only going off what I’ve been given – if it doesn’t make sense you haven’t provided the visual info to make it make sense.

Obviously, art is subjective. Art is whatever you want. At the end of the day if you want to continue doing what you’re doing then that’s great and I’ll stand by that decision with you. All of this critique is assuming these are mistakes (i.e not intentional choices that you understand are going against things like anatomy).

All of these redlines are addressing issues with posing and anatomy that I’ve seen are consistent over fen’s work. If any of it’s old work then sorry. It’s difficult to tell with twitter.

The issue with anatomy and posing that fen consistently seems to have is that she doesn’t think of the character as a whole and this leads to essentially several poses in one if that makes sense e.g. the legs will be posed/facing in a way that isn’t coherent with the body which = impossible and broken looking anatomy.

REDLINES

1. There are two fairly minor anatomical issues with this piece: the head looks as if it’s off kilter and sliding down the chest almost (I had difficulties trying to pinpoint this in the pic), and the upper arms are two different lengths. There’s the possibility that the shoulders I drew in on the left picture there aren’t what fen originally drew and there’s the possibility that the arm closest to the viewer is meant to be foreshortened. However, there isn’t any visual information to suggest these are the case.

The posing in this picture is its biggest issue. It’s not wildly incorrect or anything but it’s one of those cases where it’s just off enough to throw the whole picture off balance. Essentially, it looks odd because the back isn’t curved and the shoulders are held high. While it is possible to sit in that position with a straightened back, its really unnatural, doesn’t go with the emotion of this character, and just isn’t possible with highly held shoulders. I’ve tried to illustrate with the blue drawings how when in that position, in order for your shoulders to be held high, you need to lean forward/arch your back even more. My advice to fen from this pic alone is to consider what the spine is doing in a pose bc it’s literally the backbone (WOWEE ZOWEE) of a pose. I personally start with the spine, ribecage, and pelvis when drawing a pic. If that’s not something you do, then try it. Remember to keep in mind the overall pose and its flow – if you isolated the spine from the pose in your drawing, you would assume it was someone more alert, with their arms at their side or on their lap or resting on a table in front of them.

2. I had a lot of trouble understanding this picture. The legs in particular made it unclear to me whether this is an anthro or feral (sorry if those aren’t the right terms lol) character so I did both to cover all bases. Leg 1 is drawn as a feral dog leg while leg 2 is drawn as a more humanoid leg. I don’t really understand why this is but I assume fen had trouble drawing a feral leg in the position that leg 2 is in. The shorter foot and the way the legs looks like it widens from a humanoid ankle to a calf before being obscured by the character’s tail all make leg 2 appear as a humanoid leg. Another glaring anatomical problem is the spine (the red dotted line), which jerks from one position to the other as the body twists, rather than being one flowing line.

Fen’s biggest and most consistent posing issue is apparent in this character’s legs and lower half. The lower half of the body is facing the left. The upper thighs of this character follow the lower half and are also facing left. But then the lower half of the legs and feet twist so that leg 1 is facing towards the viewer while leg 2 is facing almost completely away. These components aren’t coherent with one another…

3. I’m going to use this redline to go into details of the twisted leg poses fen draws. The thighs of both legs are spread open and apart, but the lower legs attached to them aren’t coherent with this posing. The lower leg of leg 1 should be completely side-on to the viewer as the thigh is, however it’s twisted so that the back of the calf is facing the viewer and the foot is the same. Leg 2 is similar, the patterning on the belly and the lack of foreshortening suggests the thigh is also practically side on to the viewer, but then the lower leg and foot is shown facing the viewer. Fen seems to do this a lot so that the back of one of the feet is in view, but she doesn’t pose the character in a way where this is possible. Instead, she will just twist the lower leg in order to force the underside of one of the feet into view. My drawing I’ve labelled b. is to show how the legs should look in the position fen has drawn this character, while a. is an overall more natural posing of the legs as the original has the thighs spread uncomfortably open and wide.

OK so the green picture I’ve drawn is where I’m going to talk about the styling stuff I mentioned in the preface. This is a very uncomfortable and unnatural pose that, like fens original drawing, is breaking anatomy by having the furthest leg twist in such a way so that the back of the foot is facing the viewer. This drawing works however, because it is consistently unnatural and anatomically broken. The foot may still register as not possible in real life, but it makes sense within the rules that the rest of the drawing has set out and therefore doesn’t stand out as ‘wrong’. Fen’s original drawing is not stylised enough for its leg posing to make sense. Everything else about the character’s proportions and pose make it look as if its legs should not twist that way.

My advice for this is: again, think about the entire pose as a whole to avoid things like lower legs not fitting with upper legs. If you want to show the back of a foot in your drawing, then the rest of the pose should accommodate for that. If you want to successfully break anatomy, then your poses are going to need to be more dynamic and less life-like. You need to understand the rule book before you can effectively throw it out, though.

4. This one is probably pretty self-explanatory. The leg furthest away is longer than the closest leg. This is because the hips are straight – in order to bend one leg and put weight on the other, the hip of the bent leg needs to lower. Again, every other aspect of this drawing suggests this character is standing normally. The posing of the rest of the body doesn’t accommodate for the leg posing. The anatomy ends up wrong (two different length legs) as a result.

Again again, try to think of the pose as a whole. A good tip for posing that has helped me a lot is that the hips and shoulders shouldn’t be parallel to one another and neither of them should be parallel to the ‘floor’ your character is on. Try starting off a drawing with a hip line (like the one I’ve drawn in the pic) and one for the shoulders too. The less parallel they are the better. Draw the spine between the two and then build off of that frame.

I hope this is helpful to someone at all and I’m sorry if I sound like a complete prick. Obviously, I’m not any authority on any of these things but who is? This is all stuff that works for me so it might not work for anyone else. Just throw shit at the wall basically and see what works for you. Find a PDF of Loomis’ Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth.

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katblaque · 7 years

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Chris Ray Gun, White Hysteria and Dishonesty

For the past few weeks, we've seen a bit of a shift in white youtubers- especially on the gaming side of the platform. White gamers who generally only offer their (supposedly) funny hot takes on the latest games and the hottest gaming trends have taken the dive into political commentary. They’re inspired by this new presidency and conversations surrounding him and the so-called “SJWs” and “Main Stream Media”. While some are critical of Trump, plenty of them have come out to boldly state that they hold ideologies that are consistent with the leader of the free world. Bravely, they've taken to Twitch broadcasts and Google Hangouts to express their true feelings and one such gamer was JonTron, of the Game Grumps.

Jon Jafari, a man who self identifies as white despite being Iranian (more on that later), has taken to several broadcasts to express his sympathy with White Nationalism and White Supremacy. This has shocked a lot of his fans, who have now transformed his Reddit page into a mostly anti-JonTron roast fest. While they remain shocked by his out of touch comments like “Rich black commit more crime than poor whites” and “What about the crime rate in Africa?”- I’m actually not very surprised by this at all. Now, confession, I have a bit of a prejudice against the gaming community- if you haven’t been able to tell already. While I know and understand that not all gamers are racists and not all gamers cosign things like sexism and misogyny, I’ve been hardpressed to find a group of people who have the same visibility and influence as someone like PewDiPi or Game Grumps, call these things out. In fact, it seems like often times they side with and sympathize with the times when racism or sexism materialize in their circles. So, I have- what I’ll admit, is a pretty unfair bias against gamers and I’m not surprised when prominent gamers turn out to be racist and I’m even less surprised when they’re defending by other prominent gamers.

Because I’m a black woman who blogs about anti-racism and does so pretty openly, I get a lot of harassment and trolling. Now, I’ve been a blogger since I was 15- so honestly these things don’t really phase me, but I’ll be honest and say that sometimes I get trollish myself and at times it’s not always the best recourse. One thing I’ve learned (especially on this fucking website- still hate tumblr) is that often times when you’re in situations like this, it’s best to not respond.. .but hey-probably because I’m a child of the internet, it’s hard for me not to sometimes.

Racist trolls always dominate my mentions. Any time I make any point about racism, you’ll be sure to find some white troll in my comment section refuting what I’m saying. The other day, I was ranting about JonTron because, TBH, I really find the whole thing quite fascinating. White people have largely convinced themselves that being called out for racism can ruin someone’s career. And you know what- as someone who’s fans have tracked down racists who’ve attacked me and gotten them fired... I get it. That’s not totally untrue- but it definitely is on Youtube.

JonTron regurgitates white supremacist talking points almost perfectly and one of said talking points is “White Genocide”. If you've never heard of this term before, it sounds like it’s a discussion about the mass murder of white people. I completely understand why people would think that, but that isn't what it means. Here’s a definition from one of the leading White Genocide information websites:

White Genocide is:

Moving millions of non-White immigrants into traditionally White countries over a period of years

Legally chasing down and forcing White areas to accept “diversity“. This is known as “Forced Assimilation“.

White Genocide is being carried out by massive immigration of non-White people and forced assimilation. As a result we are turning into the minority in America, Australia, Canada, and Europe.

Now, if White Genocide were the mass killing of white people on the basis of them being white, I would obvious oppose that. Why? Because I don’t believe in any sort of genocide or violence on the basis of race. hell, I’m the same person who defended Trump supporters and Tumblr’s STILL mad about it.

White Genocide is a concept that’s been around forever. With the hysteria around immigration today, I think a lot of people can connect the dots and see why people like JonTron (The son of an Iranian Immigrant) would easily latch onto these ideologies. This is part of why it doesn’t shock me. Because if you know anything about American History, you know this conversation has come up decade after decade whenever a large group of non-white immigrants come into the country. A central aspect of this concept is a demonization of miscegenation. Miscegenation, if you don’t know is just an old-timey word used to describe interracial relationships. As a black woman with a white boyfriend (who BTW is Japanese and Italian- so pretty much already unpure), I personally find the hysteria to be quite funny. It’s honestly hard for me not to. I guess it’s because I’ve been a minority my entire life and I’ve had to listen to white people- even in this conversation, pretend as though things are completely fine when it comes to how the majority relates to the minority. Hearing all of these white people fear being breed out is funny to me on several levels, but the biggest one being that there’s something so disgustingly hypocritical about it all. White people literally colonized a land that wasn’t theirs, attempted to actually violently genocide an entire race (failed), raped them, forced them to assimilate and then over centuries imported non-white workers and slaves to build their country and now this particular group of white people are upset that.... in 2017, white women have the choice to sleep with men of color. And that’s really what this is all about, but I don’t want to get too deep into describing to you what white genocide is. In summary, many black men were lynched in post slavery America because they were accused of lusting for white women. This was seen as self defense of the white race and black men were often genitally mutilated after they were hung. So there’s a very long and extensive history there, but I digress.

In talking about White Genocide, I obviously made a lot of jokes about it because, at least to me, it’s a laughable concept. A very very laughable concept. After a full day of trolls in my mentions, did what I kinda tend to do after hours of trying to have reasonable conversations with these people- I flip their logic onto them. So when i got a tweet about how black people a “slave race” because they have “bad genes” this is what I said:

Now, to me, this is a joke and a very funny one. Why? Because the idea that genes are either “good” or “bad” or “dominant” is fucking laughable Scientific Racist bullshit. Bullshit utilized by white supremacists to argue that white people are just naturally more superior to all other races. There’s a longer conversation there, but if you care, here’s my video about Scientific Racism.

If you’ve ever followed me on twitter for an extended period of time, this side of me wouldn’t shock you. If you only follow me on Youtube, it might. I’m positive people on this fucking reactionary website are going to be hella pissed off (lol), but this is me. I sit through tons of fucked up shit that I find it HILARIOUS. I find it funny. It’s hard for me to not laugh a white supremacist tweets because, to me, it shows how insecure they are. I’m someone who speaks about race and racism- it’s my job. These people devote their entire days to sitting on twitter and regurgitating racist bullshit....as a hobby.

ChrisRGun, a Youtuber with almost 300k subscribers decided to share my tweet with this caption:

Chris deliberately removed the tweet I was responding to and presented this a declarative statement I made out of nowhere. Suggesting that it was somehow unprompted. Now, you can make the argument that I shouldn’t have stooped to their level and maybe there’s a part of me in the back of my mind where I agree with you. But do I regret that tweet? Absolutely not. It’s hard for me to feel bad about shitposting when people like Chris regularly defend shit posts all the time.

Chris was one of these gamers who bucked up to defend PewDiPie when he made his “Kill All The Jews”... “joke”. Now, i’m not Jewish and my understanding of antisemitism is still expanding- but it’s my understanding that jokes like “Kill All The Jews” being seen as normal or inoffensive somehow, is an aspect of antisemitism. But to people like Chris, these comments were taken “out of context”. It’s unfair for the Pewds lose his relationship with Maker and other gigs because “he was taken out of context”. Yet here Chris actually goes out of his way to remove the context from my post- which was that I was throwing back the flawed logic of a racist at him because, at least to me, it’s fucking funny.

But what I find funnier, actually, is that people like Chris Ray Gun are also the same people who whinge all day long about how “SJWs” are reactionaries who get offended by absolutely everything. Here you have a very clear joke tweet that he looked at in full, decided that the context didn’t matter and cropped it in a way to omit the context fully. He is, quite literally, no different than the strawman SJWs he’s always complaining about. The beginning and end of these’s people’s criticisms of “SJWs” is ‘hypocrisy” But he’s a massive, shameless hypocrite. How do you defend Pewdiepie with the whole “it’s been taken out of context” shit and then deliberately omit context from my post. You could make the argument that BOTH of our comments were wrong, jokes or not. However, if you believe Pewdipie’s comments are a joke, then you absolutely need to make space for the fact that mine was as well and equally deserves you defense.

But what’s the difference between JonTron and Pewdipie and myself? Well they’re two white men and I’m a black woman. Defending those two and harshly criticizing me doesn’t conceal racial bias. The truth is both Pewdiepie and JonTron are white men and we live in a society that grants white men the full and total access to their emotions. We see them as emotionally complex and nuances. They have multiple sides and have the ability to change and be well-rounded. JonTron’s just a silly fool parroting white nationalist talking points to millions of people. PewdiePie is just a Swedish sweetheart who’s sick of the establishment so he makes funny jokes about killing Jewish people because, you know, it’s funny. But me? I’m a black woman, so I’m angry and spiteful. I have an agenda against white people and this one tweet, sarcastic or not, is the complete and total sum of my work. I am not granted the right to redeeming qualities. I do not get to say or do even an inch of what white racists do to me and still get the benefit of the doubt. What Chris’ bias reveals here is that is isn’t quite the champion of free speech that he presents himself to be. The difference between JonTron and myself is that JonTron actually feels that way, I’m making a joke pointing out the flawed logic of racists.

He made a few more tweets:

What a lot of white people seem to constantly underestimate is the persistent racism that black people and people of color deal with their entire lives. When you’re used to being called a nigger and you’re used to white supremacists saying to you that you’re inferior, these things don’t actually phase you. What we’re seeing right now with white people like Chris is that they are reacting to something that most people of color in white dominant spaces reacted to when they were children- Othering. These are people who are not used to being see as white. They are not accustomed to people saying negative things about whiteness or white people. When I was a child, my otherness was very clear to me. I was a black kid in (at the time) a mostly white preschool. I had to learn fairly easy that not only was I different from the other kids, but that people saw these differences as inherently negative. So what did I do through my formative years? I learned to be comfortable, proud and content with myself. That my blackness isn’t a negative and my skin, hair texture and body are all beautiful as they are. When you’re accustomed to being seen as the default, being othered is scary. Interestingly enough, this ties directly into White Genocide, which is largely the fear that immigrants and miscegenation will displace white people and make them a minority. That idea requires one very real and central emotion: Fear. These groups have to prove to white people that they are at risk, that they are being attacked, that people are trying to suppress them. To use anti-sjw jargon, they need to sell them a victimhood narrative. They have to convince them of something so devastating and so hurtful that they have to mobilize. They have to stand up. They have to fight. And people like Chris Ray Gun serve it up to you on a platter. They willingly feed misinformation to their, generally young and impressionable audience and convince them that their ideas are not only unpopular, but being repressed. But this isn’t true.

Chris Ray Gun has 296,473 subscribers

JonTron has 3,117,693

Pewdiepie has 54,299,958

I have 118,125

My channel, my content and my platforms are all smaller than theirs, but they sell you the idea that my content is so successful and influential that it needs to be stopped. That my ideas are so damaging that they should be suppressed. Think about that for a moment. The fact that these people have platforms that cast a very very large shadow over mine and they have to sell you the idea that somehow someway, people like me are the real problem. That people like me are influencing culture in a way that’s damaging and divisive. We aren’t. We are small voices that are often drowned out by the status quo- but every good story needs an antagonist. Every good story has a challenge. And to rally their base, the need to frame me as that villain. And guess what, it’s successful because their ideas are the status quo. Most people agree with and cosign them. Because their ideas, in truth, aren’t actually unpopular or edgy or unique. They’re common. And this is why you’re seeing so many more of these gaming channels pander to this ideology. Because in a world where everyone wants to be the Next Pewdiepie, they have to get a new shtick and right now, this works.

Chris Ray Gun commented on a Kevin Logan video about him and claimed that his friend was the one who sent him that tweet (classic Machiavellian tactic) not him.

I don’t believe him,but mostly because I perhaps give him too much credit. I would like to believe that people like him who make such bold statements and decided to redirect their fanbase to my page to explicitly attack me would do a bit of research and find the actual tweet to see if it were real. Imagine if someone photoshoped a tweet and put my name on it (something that’s happened) and sent it to him and he posted it. That would not only be dishonest, it would be unethical and he’d be a massive hypocrite. That aside though, if true, what this means, at its base is that he didn’t do his legwork and sheepishly posted something because he didn’t agree with me. I know, and I’m sure plenty of you know that i was making a joke and that these are not my beliefs, but he believed it. He fell for it. He wasn’t critical and didn’t try to see the full picture of what was said. That should still bother you. And to his point about “if a person of the opposite persuasion made the same tweet”- well they did. The one I was responding to. And all Chris’ posts did was invite more white supremacists to my page to talk to me about the natural inferiority of black people. But we know that both him and his buddy JonTron do carry that belief. They spend time defending that idea on their pages constantly. In conclusion, what this ultimately is, is them not quite holding white supremacists to the same standard. I went through Chris’ page. He isn’t making posts fighting against white supremacy. He isn’t countering it, he isn’t trying to. He’s coddling and pacifying it. And that, to me, says a lot.

#Chris Ray Gun #SJWs #Anti-SJWs

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discoursedumpster · 7 years

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tw: child sexual abuse, rape, emotional abuse, suicide-baiting, transmisogyny

I never do call-outs ‘cause they take forever, but this has to stop.

@sleepdontvisit claims they’re on a campaign to root out “inclusionist pedophiles and pedophile apologists.”

Instead, they almost exclusively target bi trans sexual abuse survivors, frequently flat-out lying about what those survivors have said.

(In their whole call-out list, there’s only two people who aren’t trans. And the cis people only get called out for supporting “pedophile apologists,” they aren’t calling the cis people pedophiles.)

They consistently link to receipts that don’t support their statements, knowing that people won’t click through and read all that.

Many of their call-outs have hundreds of notes, and have goaded exclusionists and even some inclusionists into sending anon hate, suicide-baiting, and death threats to inclusionists who are bi trans sexual abuse survivors.

It’s not a coincidence that bi and trans people (especially trans women) are the ones that are most frequently stereotyped as sexual predators, in both the gay and straight communities.

(DID U KNOW: Part of the reason that the acronym wasn’t “LGB” till the early 90s was that radical lesbians said bi men shouldn’t be allowed at Pride because they were rapists.)

It might be relevant that sleepdontvisit seems to be very biphobic, saying things like, “Why are literally all of the big bisexual bloggers literally the most cringeworthy people I have ever encountered?”

there are two lesbians on their list, out of all the bi people.

they’re both trans women.

And now they’ve begun going around harassing trans inclusionist survivors who haven’t heard of their campaign, by implying that they’re “pedophile apologists” too if they haven’t called out these people yet. Or if they say that it’s not okay to call CSA survivors “pedophile apologists.”

They guilt-trip and threaten anyone who won’t help them in their smear campaign, even discoursers who are calling out individual people already. They are goading exclusionists to harass these people. One of their victims has already deleted, that I know of.

When one survivor called them out for things like posting content about pedophilia in the ace positivity tag, their response was to go through that person’s blog and list everyone they’d reblogged from who themselves had ever reblogged from one of the people on the list. Which may have been well-intended but comes off as intensely harassing.

And then they falsely claimed that "ace/aro minors… are being told by adults that it’s ‘normal’ for children to be sexual, so it’s important for them to identify as asexual.”

(That person even said “If you’d like, I can give you a list of exclusionists that none of you are no-platforming (and one of which went hand-in-hand with discourseprincesa and doing just as much harm but is still being defended)” and instead of taking the information, they ignored it, and instead tagged another post to boast that inclusionists ignore callouts but exclusionists call out all their TERFs. I know for sure that one isn’t true, @allosexisterfs is mine and it contains a list of about 250 exclusionist TERFs, that sleepdontvisit hasn’t said a word about that I know of. BUT ANYWAY)

If you care about survivors, please spread the word to no-platform sleepdontvisit, and to stop spreading their lies.

This is loooooooooong because they have been targeting so many people.

I will try to make it easy to read.

I’m going to list each person separately, link to the receipt(s), and show why the person isn’t a “pedophile apologist”. In no particular order:

memestealingasexual:

They are targeting biromantic, bi/demisexual, agender memestealingasexual/@thegenderlessbisexual/@justqueerthoughts/ @thekidsalreadyknow for supposedly associating with pedophile apologists.

(This is one of only a couple people on the list where I don’t know if they’re a survivor. It’s none of anyone’s business obviously, it’s just that everyone else involved blogs very openly about being a survivor. And that’s important because they’re trying to sell the entire thing as being pro-survivor, when it actually involves attacking survivors.)

Their only receipt for this is that memestealingasexual talked to someone on Twitter who had also, in a separate conversation, told sleepdontvisit that some survivors look at loli stuff because they identify with it, instead of looking at it in a sexual way.

Then they call this “a nice web of every big inclusive blog supporting and promoting pedophiles who consume child porn lmao!”

robotbisexual (formerly theangrybi):

They are targeting bi trans and intersex CSA survivor @robotbisexual as a pedophile apologist. Their only receipt for it: an old call-out post where robotbisexual/theangrybi said “@leavesurvivorsalone is so fucking violent that without a single fucking example other than the fact that I think they’re violent, they come to me (a CSA survivor) and scream that I’m a pedophilia advocate… Also as a warning: they are apparently mobbing and viciously abusing and wishing harm on anyone who reblogs this post. Especially if you’re a CSA survivor. Please be careful.“

If you’re re-reading that, trying to figure out how robotbisexual became a “pedophile apologist” for saying that this person had "started a campaign to call everyone who disagrees with you (including multiple CSA survivors) ‘pedophilia supporters’”?/???????????????… don’t worry, so am I.

wetwareproblem:

They are targeting bi trans woman CSA survivor @wetwareproblem because she responded to the claim of “pedophile apologist” by musing, “Hey, remember that time you faced off against half a dozen guys larger than you, while they were surrounding you and threatening to beat the shit out of you, because you were protesting in an attempt to have child rapists and pornographers charged and convicted? Good times.”

They called this a “frankly irrelevant sob story” and said, “We get it, you’re the greatest martyr to ever martyr because you posted an unverifiable story on the internet where you’re completely anonymous.”

Then they called her a pedophile apologist just for (allegedly) saying that pedophilia, which is in the DSM, was a mental illness. And followed it up with a list of demands, implying that if she doesn’t meet their demands to help them in their campaign, they will continue to target her for harassment too.

rainfelt:

She’s cis, but she’s still a bi non-CSA abuse survivor. They explicitly target @rainfelt solely because she defended one other person on this list. Their only receipt on her is her saying, “[People who believe sleepdontvisit] are losing a fantastic resource, and they’re losing it because they made the mistake of trusting [sleepdontvisit]. Which, one can’t help feeling, was exactly the plan.”

socialjusticeichigo:

A multiromantic, ace, genderfluid blogger. The only receipt on them: they reblogged a post rebutting one of sleepdontvisit’s callouts.

The rebuttal said things like “As a sexual abuse survivor who has worked in the mental health field, I have a really big problem with people pointing at sexual abuse survivors who explicitly state (as in the luchagcaileag link above!) that they have zero attraction to children and feel physically nauseous at the idea of exposing children to anything sexual, and that they have kinks that are obvious responses to their sexual abuse that they are using to try to heal from their sexual abuse, and saying ‘THIS PERSON WANTS TO RAPE KIDS AND ANYONE DEFENDING THEM IS JUST AS BAD.’”

They even pointed out that “everyone you are calling a pedophile apologist, or a pedophile, is a fucking sexual abuse survivor who is fighting pedophilia and child sexual abuse.”

This is not an example of @socialjusticeichigo being a “pedophile apologist.”

But it does have an example of sleepdontvisit lying about what people are saying, in the rebuttal. (the lie: ”they’re literally saying ‘enjoy[ing] art of adults fucking children is just content people ASSOCIATE with pedophiles, they’re not actually pedophiles!! :)’”)

evilguacamole:

Same exact thing actually, for @evilguacamole, except this blogger appears to be a cis bi guy. The sole receipt: that he reblogged that same rebuttal.

This is starting to look like a personal vendetta.

periegesisvoid/golbatgender:

Bi/trans/aro survivor and one of the people being targeted the most often by exclusionists.

This one is especially messed up. The first receipt is @periegesisvoid noting that they’re being harassed by @bipeoplearentyourpawns, who then reblogs it to make fun of them. (And to implicitly acknowledge the other thing in the post, which is that bipeoplearentyourpawns suicide-baited @luchagcaileag.)

But of course that’s not what the receipt is for; I haven’t seen any exclusionists call out bipeoplearentyourpawns for consistent harassment and suicide-baiting. No, it’s somehow trying to claim that the problem here is… that this somehow implies that periegesisvoid is a pedophile apologist??

The second receipt is periegesisvoid suggesting to luchagcaileag that she should turn off anon, because of that same suicide-baiting.

(The suicide-baiting isn’t just bipeoplearentyourpawns. It also comes from sleepdontvisit’s call-out efforts.)

The third receipt is from periegesisvoid’s discourse sideblog, @golbatgender. It’s a reblog of a list of variations on radfem rhetoric, such as SWERFs vs TWERFs, and the different positions each group holds.

It points out that radfems like to say that all sex work is rape, that porn is rape, that prostitutes should be shot, that all kink is rape and abuse and pedophilia, that doms should be shot, and that all “Bad Ships” (ships that portray abuse) are rape and abuse and incest and pedophilia, and that “Bad Shippers” should kill themselves.

This is still not pedophilia apologism. Saying that people make huge negative generalizations about sex work, porn, and “Bad Ships” is not saying that pedophilia, or even sexual abuse, are okay.

vergess/intersex-ionality:

Another of their trans bi and intersex sexual abuse survivor targets, @vergess/@intersex-ionality, has already left tumblr after months of continuous targeted emotional abuse, from exclusionists trying to claim they were a “pedophile apologist.” Including suicide-baiting and death threats.

sleepdontvisit clearly hasn’t noticed they’re gone, and continues to direct harassment their way. The receipts they link to explicitly call vergess a “pedophile apologist” for saying that it’s important to include not just pedophilia (technically just attraction to children), but ephebophilia (attraction to teens) in the definition of a "minor attracted person”.

And for saying things like “if you can’t stop looking at [fictional and/or consensual sexual content], you are trapped in a cycle of self harm, and need to get outside help from parents, partners or doctors.”

They also specifically target them for statements like “Not all kink is sexual. Claiming that is a form of hypersexualization. Stop doing it.” How that is “pedophile apologism” is beyond me.

The same receipts also try to call them a “pedophile apologist” for saying that it’s possible to be a non-offending pedophile and to deserve to live, and for talking about how their abusers were not pedophiles, but were abusers who were looking for easy prey in the form of children.

I understand why a lot of people don’t think anyone with pedophilic disorder deserves to live.

What is unacceptable is that people who don’t believe non-offending pedophiles deserve to live are instead attacking survivors who say they do, and trying to get those survivors to kill themselves.

If you do this, you can’t claim you are supporting survivors. Telling people to kill themselves, and even just sending anon hate, is emotional abuse. It is not okay to abuse survivors and pretend you’re defending them.

courteousmingler:

According to their receipts, trans lesbian survivor @courteousmingler is a pedophile apologist for saying “as a victim of CSA myself, it makes me deeply uncomfortable that you see a cartoon depiction of a young girl and choose to immediately interpret it sexually. those images are of young girls singing, dancing, and having fun with one another in large poofy dresses- you projecting sexual themes onto those images is your decision, and it’s a disgusting one.”

They also try to get her for, in their words, just “interacting” with someone who they happen to know has a shota/loli porn sideblog. The interaction is that person complimenting @courteousmingler on a long post, and her saying thank you.

I guess if she didn’t want to be called a “pedophile apologist,” when someone complimented her she should have stopped and done some serious digging to see if she should even acknowledge them. Trans survivors, take note!

(Interestingly, they also attack her for allegedly “target[ing] survivors to discredit them”. Which seems like total projection because that’s exactly what their entire campaign is.)

feminismandmedia:

Almost all of their mods are out sexual abuse survivors and about half of them are trans. sleepdontvisit is targeting all of them as a group, but especially singling out Bethany, (@bigballofwibblywobbly), one of the other two cis bi survivor on this list. Because when they told her she was still reblogging from “a lot of blogs associated with pedophiles,” and gave her receipts, she didn’t stop. As you can see from this post their receipts don’t demonstrate that people are associated with pedophiles???????

justonepurpose:

Their only receipt for this aspec trans blogger is that an anon said @justonepurpose “told Mod Des to just ignore being called a pedo apologist bc ‘im called that for being an inclusionist’”. No link to that, and no evidence for them actually being a pedophile apologist.

rey-is-ace-rey-is-aro:

A, I think, quoiromantic or biromantic trans ace survivor. The only thing related to pedophilia in their receipt is that they reblogged something where @antiantis-saltmine said that “Drawing or writing anything involving minors and relatives, no matter how sexual, is completely legal as long as the characters are fictional.“

That sounds really bad, right? Unless you keep reading and see that they’re specifically talking about people attacking minors/survivors. And that that’s the entire point of @antiantis-saltmine: that CSA survivors get harassed and called pedophiles for reading about their own experiences.

And, if you look at what else @rey-is-ace-rey-is-aro has to say about it, you might see their post about "antis” sending “actual live child-porn of real people to artists/CSA Survivors.”

That’s what they’re responding to.

luchagcaileag:

This is the one person that they manage to call out as actually reblogging child porn.

Their call-outs of @luchagcaileag are still problematic: they assume that several tags that don’t have child porn in them do, without checking. They list the statistics for sexual assault in the LGBT community and blame trans abuse survivors for those sexual assault rates, and then call them “freaks”.

But the main problem is that even if you don’t understand that a trans lesbian CSA survivor can reblog child porn to vent and have “No interest to speak of in actual children, though, which is something I’m glad for”… even if you think that she’s just a pedophile in denial…

the result of sleepdontvisit’s callouts is NOT that people are reporting or blocking this person, it’s that they’re sending messages like “trans girl who likes lolicon = naw your just a greasy man pretended to be a woman so people will excuse your pedophilia,” “I hope someone rapes you to death,” and “🔪Slit ya wrists ho🔪”.

This is the kind of thing the survivors on this list are getting from people buying into sleepdontvisit’s campaign. En masse.

tirediscourse:

@tirediscourse is a cis bi grey-ace non-csa abuse survivor. The only receipt for her shows that she’s on the “pedophile apologist” list because… she believes it’s possible for non-offending pedophiles to exist, and she doesn’t want to follow someone who doesn’t believe that and who says that it’s not okay for survivors to read fic about their experiences.

antiantis-saltmine:

This entire blog is run by 5 sexual abuse survivors, three of whom are out as both trans and bi/pan I believe. The receipt on them has them supporting a sexual abuse survivor, who doesn’t experience sexual attraction to anyone, who reads stories about rape and child sexual abuse because it resonates with their experiences, and is upset that they get pressured to repeatedly come out as a survivor if they don’t want to be harassed about it.

It also seems as usual to be targeting them for saying that non-offending pedophiles can exist, and that pedophilia is a mental illness. And for saying that if a character is a pedophile in canon it’s okay to say that character is a pedophile, which is hardly a ringing endorsement.

Again, do not attack sexual abuse survivors who think pedophilia is a mental illness. Attacking survivors for thinking pedophilia is a mental illness only hurts SURVIVORS.

tenitchyfingers:

A possibly-cis aroace trauma survivor. The receipt says they “think pedo jokes are funny.” It links to a single “pedobear joke” post, where in the notes @tenitchyfingers says, “Pedobear was not a joke at the expense of CSA victims, it was at the expense of pedophiles and the concept of pedophilia itself.”

Then it says they support “shipping minors with adults,” but the only receipt it gives for that is a reblog of a survivor shipping a character who’s minor in canon solely as an adult.

vaspider:

Another bi trans abuse survivor. This one was mentioned in a separate post, and didn’t make it to the new call-out list. Maybe because their only receipt was that @vaspider liked a post where @autismserenity said “It’s okay to unfollow me”.

This is purely an attempt to create an atmosphere of fear among inclusionists, and especially among survivors: “watch out whose posts you like, or you’ll end up on my list getting suicide-baited!”

repstar3:

A self-identified pedophile who is not involved in ace discourse and has been consistently attacked by both sides.

autismserenity:

The reason that repstar3 is on the list. This bi trans abuse survivor first made the list of “pedophile apologists” for pointing out the months-long trend of exclusionists calling trans CSA survivor inclusionists “pedophile apologists,” which sleepdontvisit has now intentionally brought to a boiling point.

Next it was for explaining the difference between how an abuse survivor engages with child porn, and how a pedophile does.

Then they really screwed up: repstar3 told them that child porn had been how he’d kept himself from abusing anyone in person before he got into treatment, and they believed him. It emerged that of course, he was sending nudes to minors who asked for them, as young as 14. On the other hand, autismserenity wrote several thorough posts about why this was not okay, deleted repstar3′s posts, and apologized to a survivor who felt they were being spoken over.

Most recently, it was for reblogging a post that debunked a callout post for @roachpatrol (who as far as I know isn’t involved in the discourse). I’m not sure how this is supposed to be pedophilia apologism, since the callout was debunked.

in conclusion:

sleepdontvisit’s call-out campaign is incredibly harmful to CSA survivors, and is blatantly targeting the bi and trans communities, people who are already smeared as predators.

It’s blatantly trying to play on people’s underlying belief that these groups are predatory. It’s deliberately encouraging people to harass and abuse survivors, in the hopes of silencing bi and trans discoursers and discrediting inclusionists. And it’s full of lies.

#ace discourse

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