Welcome to Doki Doki Literature Club!
DDLC AU 💖✨💌📝
Normal version!
Chaotic version! ⛓🔪📕👁️
I FINALLY finished it! It took a freaking month to make both. Hopefully the wait was worth it, was planning to make this as a game first since it might be easier to create but I don't think so. Depends if this thing even last long, don't worry about the "It Takes Two" AU. I'm still working on concept art for each character, I just had to put that on hold for a while. Which reminds me, if you have any interest helping me in any way by either voice acting, creating background characters or with the storyboard for the AU then ask me! Sadly, I'm broke so I can't pay you. Right now I'm looking for people to help me with the script and storyboard, one so far said yes! Anyways, I hope you like it! Have best day! <3
I made a new server, If you want to voice act any of these guys then click the link on here! <3
. . . .
. . .
. . .
. .
. .
.
.
.
.
. . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . .
. . . . .
. . . . . . .
.
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
. . .
. . .
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
232 notes
·
View notes
literally nobody asked for it, but here's my list of saltburn essays that i've slowly been drafting over the course of the last week which WILL be required reading for anybody trying to engage with me about this movie. my very personal saltburn 101 syllabus just dropped
A Wolf in Deer's Clothing: Saltburn's Attempt at Innocence
an examination of party costumes and our character's last attempts to masquerade as something they're not: felix—an angel, all-forgiving and all-knowing, something to be worshiped; and oliver—a prey animal, prey to class-divide, prey to saltburn, prey to felix.
thoughts about oliver specifically are loosely organized in my #bambi tag
A Midsummer Night's Mare: Farleigh Start as the Ultimate Victim of Saltburn
a farleigh character study, about the ways he was mistreated and manipulated at saltburn, about fighting to stay alive and the scars left behind by knowing when to give in
alternatively titled "QuickStart", may be adapted into a conclusive essay specifically focusing on oliver and farleigh's relationship
The Eye of the Beholder: On Saltburn's Voyeurism & Violence [working title]
how wealth and class pushes the catton's toward the volatile reality of being able to look, but not touch. on desire and the lack thereof, and portraying yourself as an object to be desired
may end up as two separate essays on wealth and aestheticism but i'm pushing toward a conclusive essay about the intersection of the two, which i feel is at the heart of saltburn
alternatively titled "Poor Man's Pudding: A Melvillian Approach to Saltburn's Class", again, may be adapted into it's own essay
Gender-Fluid: A Study in Sexuality and Saltburn's Desire to be Dry
a deep dive into the bodily fluids of saltburn and how oliver upsets the standard of men who are just so lovely and dry. on the creative choice to lean into the messy wetness of sex and desire and the audience's instinct toward repulsion
a celebration of the grotesque and an examination of why we would label it as such
least developed of the four, heavily inspired by @charnelpit's lovely post about the fluids in saltburn
if anybody is actually interested in any of these, i can work toward something closer to a finished piece instead of just bullet points and quotes in a google doc, but mostly this is so i can share my very brief takes on a multitude of themes in saltburn that have been haunting me
edit for people seeing this in the future: all posts about my essays are being organized into my #saltburn 101 tag if you’re interested in following these through to development!
339 notes
·
View notes
I have a lot of complicated feelings when it comes to what Neflix has done with the Witcher, but my probably least favourite is the line of argumentation that originated during shitstorms related to the first and second season that I was unlucky to witness.
It boils down to "Netflix's reinterpretation and vision is valid, because the Witcher books are not written to be slavic. The overwhelming Slavic aestetic is CDPR's interpretation, and the setting in the original books is universally European, as there are references to Arthurian mythos and celtic languages"
And I'm not sure where this argument originated and whether it's parroting Sapkowski's own words or a common stance of people who haven't considered the underlying themes of the books series.
Because while it's true that there are a lot of western european influences in the Witcher, it's still Central/Eastern European to the bone, and at its core, the lack of understanding of this topic is what makes the Netflix series inauthentic in my eyes.
The slavicness of the Witcher goes deeper than the aestetics, mannerisms, vodka and sour cucumbers. Deeper than Zoltan wrapping his sword with leopard pelt, like he was a hussar. Deeper than the Redanian queen Hedvig and her white eagle on the red field.
What Witcher is actually about? It's a story about destiny, sure. It's a sword-and-sorcery style, antiheroic deconstruction of a fairy tale, too, and it's a weird mix of many culture's influences.
But it's also a story about mundane evil and mundane good. If You think about most dark, gritty problems the world of Witcher faces, it's xenophobia and discrimination, insularism and superstition. Deep-seated fear of the unknown, the powerlessness of common people in the face of danger, war, poverty and hunger. It's what makes people spit over their left shoulder when they see a witcher, it's what makes them distrust their neighbor, clinging to anything they deem safe and known. It's their misfortune and pent-up anger that make them seek scapegoats and be mindlessly, mundanely cruel to the ones weaker than themselves.
There are of course evil wizards, complicated conspiracies and crowned heads, yes. But much of the destruction and depravity is rooted in everyday mundane cycle of violence and misery. The worst monsters in the series are not those killed with a silver sword, but with steel.
it's hard to explain but it's the same sort of motiveless, mundane evil that still persist in our poorer regions, born out of generations-long poverty and misery. The behaviour of peasants in Witcher, and the distrust towards authority including kings and monarchs didn't come from nowhere.
On the other hand, among those same, desperately poor people, there is always someone who will share their meal with a traveller, who will risk their safety pulling a wounded stranger off the road into safety. Inconditional kindness among inconditional hate. Most of Geralt's friends try to be decent people in the horrible world. This sort of contrasting mentalities in the recently war-ridden world is intimately familiar to Eastern and Cetral Europe.
But it doesn't end here. Nilfgaard is also a uniquely Central/Eastern European threat. It's a combination of the Third Reich in its aestetics and its sense of superiority and the Stalinist USSR with its personality cult, vast territory and huge army, and as such it's instantly recognisable by anybody whose country was unlucky enough to be caught in-between those two forces. Nilfgaard implements total war and looks upon the northerners with contempt, conscripts the conquered people forcibly, denying them the right of their own identity. It may seem familiar and relevant to many opressed people, but it's in its essence the processing of the trauma of the WW2 and subsequent occupation.
My favourite case are the nonhumans, because their treatment is in a sense a reminder of our worst traits and the worst sins in our history - the regional antisemitism and/or xenophobia, violence, local pogroms. But at the very same time, the dilemma of Scoia'Tael, their impossible choice between maintaining their identity, a small semblance of freedom and their survival, them hiding in the forests, even the fact that they are generally deemed bandits, it all touches the very traumatic parts of specifically Polish history, such as January Uprising, Warsaw Uprising, Ghetto Uprising, the underground resistance in WW2 and the subsequent complicated problem of the Cursed Soldiers all at once. They are the 'other' to the general population, but their underlying struggle is also intimately known to us.
The slavic monsters are an aestetic choice, yes, but I think they are also a reflection of our local, private sins. These are our own, insular boogeymen, fears made flesh. They reproduce due to horrors of the war or they are an unprovoked misfortune that descends from nowhere and whose appearance amplifies the local injustices.
I'm not talking about many, many tiny references that exist in the books, these are just the most blatant examples that come to mind. Anyway, the thing is, whether Sapkowski has intended it or not, Witcher is slavic and it's Polish because it contains social commentary. Many aspects of its worldbuilding reflect our traumas and our national sins. It's not exclusively Polish in its influences and philosophical motifs of course, but it's obvious it doesn't exist in a vacuum.
And it seems to me that the inherently Eastern European aspects of Witcher are what was immediately rewritten in the series. It seems to me that the subtler underlying conflicts were reshaped to be centered around servitude, class and gender disparity, and Nilfgaard is more of a fanatic terrorist state than an imposing, totalitarian empire. A lot of complexity seems to be abandoned in lieu of usual high-fantasy wordbuilding. It's especially weird to me because it was completely unnecessary. The Witcher books didn't need to be adjusted to speak about relevant problems - they already did it!
The problem of acceptance and discrimination is a very prevalent theme throughout the story! They are many strong female characters too, and they are well written. Honestly I don't know if I should find it insulting towards their viewers that they thought it won't be understood as it was and has to be somehow reshaped to fit the american perpective, because the current problems are very much discussed in there and Sapkowski is not subtle in showing that genocide and discrimination is evil. Heck, anyone who has read the ending knows how tragic it makes the whole story.
It also seems quite disrespectful, because they've basically taken a well-established piece of our domestic literature and popular culture and decided that the social commentary in it is not relevant. It is as if all it referenced was just not important enough and they decided to use it as an opportunity to talk about the problems they consider important.
And don't get me wrong, I'm not forcing anyone to write about Central European problems and traumas, I'm just confused that they've taken the piece of art already containing such a perspective on the popular and relevant problem and they just... disregarded it, because it wasn't their exact perspective on said problem.
And I think this homogenisation, maybe even from a certain point of view you could say it's worldview sanitisation is a problem, because it's really ironic, isn't it? To talk about inclusivity in a story which among other problems is about being different, and in the same time to get rid of motifs, themes and references because they are foreign? Because if something presents a different perspective it suddenly is less desirable?
There was a lot of talking about the showrunners travelling to Poland to understand the Witcher's slavic spirit and how to convey it. I don't think they really meant it beyond the most superficial, paper-thin facade.
154 notes
·
View notes