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surrealsunday · 1 year

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@how-mytearsricochet ... Apologies this response is late! I wanted to give my answers proper time and thought! So I’m going to paste that part of your previous ask below:

I’m more than curious to hear about your opinion at this point of the storyline and I’m practically dying to know the behind-of-the-scene details because it will never cease to fascinate me your writing process and your line of thought: were you frustrated with some of the characters and their actions at some point? Has it been challenging to write scenes like that, do compromises to make it follow a precise timeline given that this time you had to follow a predetermined script ecc

None of your other versions of Elu had ever been through such a horrible messy betrayal as this one; how did that make you feel as an Elu stan and/or as an author? Can you picture it as something one of your versions of Eliott and Lucas (I don’t mean the ones we’ve already met, I mean hypothetical ones that could be born by your hand) would be capable of do eventually (betraying Lucas’s trust)?

So how did “10 Things” was born exactly? What put this specific idea in your mind -The Chosen One- and consequently translated into action? Do you have any other Elu ideas/drafts we don’t know anything about?

Was there anything you would’ve liked to change and/or point out of the OG script? I’ve found insightful the way you pointed out at the very beginning how shitty was for Arthur and Bas as “friends” to act like that behind Lucas’ back -and essentially at his expense-, although I’ve forgiven Bas the very moment Eliott make him notice it, and it was clear Bas never actually thought what kind of friend the deal made him look like and was starting to feel bad (Bas is a baby, you can’t stay mad at a baby 😭); color me naïve or shallow but I admit although I watched it countless times, I’ve never given a lot of thoughts about how ethically moral was the deal from that point of view lol but uhm at least Cameron and Michael weren’t Kat’s friends in the movie.

How did you pick the topic between Lucas and Charles, where did it come from? (if we’re speaking about that, I’m quite curious about Lucas and Doctor Moreau as well; how do you pick Lucas’ different personal trauma? do they come later in the process or are they part of the initial process of building up a specific AU?)

You said once that long stories drain the hell out of you as a writer, did that happen with 10 Things in its own way? How much do you think you have invested, given but also gained, grown as a writer from this experience?

So I’m going to start with how the idea of 10 Things came about and how the story developed. But keep in mind that I am super chaotic in how I write and not organized at all lol. I fly by the seat of my pants and often my best ideas come as I am writing. I am very visual so most of the time I have scenes playing out in my head long before I try to write them. And if a scene won’t play in my head I find it nearly impossible to write (which did happen to me a few times with this fic which is part of why it took me much longer than usual to write).

I thought following a movie premise would make the writing process a lot easier becuase the outline is right there for me. And in some ways that was definitely true. Especially when I started the fic. I knew I was never going to follow the movie line-by-line or scene-by-scene because that would have bored me completely and it’s just really not my thing, but I was still able to follow of rough outline of how things were going to go.

Now of course my own ideas coming into play did complicate things a bit. I didn’t have any problem coming up with ideas. Those came very naturally (like how each character would work into things, what role they would play, the background story for Lucas and Charles, etc). But figuring out how I was shifting those storylines in my own world did occassionally stump me. It actually became harder to follow a movie premise because I am used to just sort of letting the characters go and I see what happens. Here I wanted to keep things more concise and I wanted to stick to a similar breakdown of plotpoints so it was almost like forcing myself to be more organized than I would be normally with writing. It worked out and I did still enjoy, but I definitely had moments of needing to stop myself and asking ‘ok, but what are you trying to get out of this scene?’ Because it’s not enough for me to say, ‘The scene was in the movie.’ I need to have a reason for that scene existing and it needs to impact and move the story forward in some way. Doing that while not doing my usual ‘Oops now it’s a 200k story’ was a challenge lol.

10 Things was really just born from me rewatching the film and I s2g 9/10 I watch things and immediately think ‘ooohhh but what if this was elu’? It’s just how my brain works lol. Hyperfixation is a funny beast. So it wasn’t anything more complicated than that. But why I chose to actually write it is that I thought it would be an easier (ha!), more light-hearted (hah!!!) fic and I was in the mood for that at the time as I had just finished Mood Tattoo.

Also I found it fascinating that you said none of my other Elu’s have ever had such a horrible messy betrayal. Like that is very true but honestly I didn’t really think it explicitly like that when I wrote it. So I wasn’t intimidated by that at all. Tbh I think my main thought was, ‘Oh yes, opportunity for some delicious angst.’ And it was interesting going into that knowing that the reader (at least those familiar with the movie) would know where the angst was coming from and would generally know when it was going to hit. It made me wonder if it would still have an impact. Obviously I changed things and I didn’t flinch from making it painful, but I wasn’t too worried about it being as messy as it became either. I’m not sure if that’s just because I had confidence as a writer tho lol. I think it is more that I write as I go and then I step back at the end and look at the whole product.

In terms of things I would change about the OG 10 Things movie, tbh I think most of what I would change was likely scenes that were cut. Like Bianca’s role in the betrayal of Kat and their very precarious relationship... that shit is never really resolved. And I understand why it wasn’t because it was a huge can of worms and the movie wasn’t as focused on that but damn...

I’m honestly not sure if there were other things I would change. It’s an interesting question. I think I would have liked to see a bit more from Patrick in between when Kat finds out the truth and when she confesses her feelings in the iconic poem. It would have been good to see a bit more of his suffering. Overall tho, even with what they cut or skip over, the feeling from the movie is that it works. It’s so enjoyable to watch and so satisfying and that’s really what I want out of a movie like that. So critique doesn’t come as easily. And I get what you mean about not really considering how eithically moral the actions of the characters are. That’s truly because the aura of the movie is fun and light-hearted. And they follow through on that in every way, especially with the humour. So it doesn’t demand that kind of reflection. But I went darker and more serious with my fic and added sex in the mix so I knew I had to deal with everyone’s actions in a more profound way.

As for any other future Elu AU versions being a betrayal of trust sort of messy situation... yes I could see this. For example, in an exes au, I think it could be very messy. I actually don’t normally like exes au’s so tackling that would be a challenge (it was the same way for friends-to-lovers for me but I ended up loving Punzel). But I think two premises for angst in future au’s would be interesting. One being where either Lucas or Eliott are entirely at fault in a really hard ‘how do we get past this’ way (I don’t mean cheating or something like that... that’s a no-go for me... but that betrayal element just involving much more hurt), and two, an angst premise where the angst comes entirely from an external force and at no time do they doubt they want to be together. 10 Things touches on the betrayal kind of angst but in more depth I think those two angst premises are ones I haven’t really tackled.

Ohhhh man... the question about how I come up with Lucas’s personal trauma in fics like Mood Tattoo and 10 Things. God... I have no idea hahahaha. The way I come up with ideas is legit so random and spontaneous. Like I know some people don’t believe me when I say that because a lot of themes and idea weave through the entire fics in a very intentional way but I have no explanation for that... my brain just kinda works it out 😂. In Mood Tattoo I truly have no memory of how I came up with the idea. I think I was probably coming from the initial idea of having an actual reason for Eliott to be critical of Lucas, and then the power dynamic of Lucas being close with an older surgeon... and then somehow the rest of the fucked-up-ness developed. Usually it happens when I’m out running and daydreaming. For 10 Things I knew I’d use Charles and it would be darker but I also knew I didn’t want it to be exactly like the OG - with Kat sleeping with that version of the guy because she felt pressured and everyone was doing it. For one, I didn’t want it to be a ‘Charles is closeted’ or anything like that. I wanted it to be more like Charles sees sexual conquests as being less than human and only in that way is gender irrelevant. Because it’s about power and domination. It’s about taking and it doesn’t matter who he takes that from. So that just didn’t translate to anything but a brief sexual encounter where Charles ‘takes’ and Lucas though willing, is in a vulnerable state.

10 Things did not take it out of me as a writer the same way other fics have. But each experience has been different. I found 10 Things more difficult simply because I had fallen out of a writing mode. And I don’t like to write unless I really am into doing so because I feel like it will read as laboured. I think my joy when I write does come across in what I write and in the same way, when I am really struggling with a scene and forcing myself to write it - I almost always end up very disatisfied with that scene later and it undergoes a lot of editing work. One thing I have realized in recently tackling my ADHD is that it can be near impossible for me to write when I’m not hyperfixated on it. For all the other fics I was and that’s how I was cracking out 200k stories. For 10 Things my brain had gone elsewhere and it actually wasn’t until I was on some ADHD meds that I was able to complete writing it. That helped me focus and I got a lot of the joy back in writing.

I think I’ve grown and probably changed hugely as a writer in some ways but I also think there is a lot that hasn’t changed. I remember when I started out writing Tempo my main goal was that I just wanted it to be a joy to read - like just really read so easily and just feel fun. And I really felt like I captured that. And that goal has pretty much stayed the same. I’ve struggled more with it as I have written new stories but a lot of that was simply because I worried I’d repeat myself or not create content that was original enough from what I’d already written. So it was a lot of pressure I put on myself. And interacting with readers really was the most inspiring and wonderful thing. It made me really want to put energy into writing and create thoughtful stories with depth. I love so much how readers like yourself analyze and dive into the complexities of the stories, and it makes me want to provide content that is layered. Thankfully I usually do write in a way where I am adding in details or layers I actually never expect readers to pick up on. It just satisfies me to know I’ve connected those threads for myself. But then I’ve had readers notice all those tiny things and it’s the most exciting and amazing thing. So that has driven me to be even more thoughtful with those choices.

I think the only other thing I’d mention in a way I changed - but then didn’t change lol - also has to do with interaction with readers. So back when I was writing for Skamfr and the fandom was more active I of course had interaction with a lot more people and a lot more readers. And while that was obviously wonderful, I did recieve a hell of a lot of terrible messages too. Thankfully for the most part the messages were very overtly hateful and that is extremely easy to dismiss and not have it affect me at all. But messages that were viscious but more specifically critical were a lot harder. I don’t mean fair critique. I have had plenty of that and while I don’t think it’s anything most fic writers are looking for, I’ve had really lovely readers offering critique or just general questions that have made me think about my writing differently and I think I’ve improved as a writer as a result. So yeah, I’m speaking about a different thing when I mention these messages and it did make me a bit nervous or gun-shy when it came to my next stories. With that said... I then got over it quickly, said fuck it, and did what I wanted anyways 😂😂😂. So that’s what I mean by it not changing me. I very much trust my own process and remind myself I’m just doing this for the joy of writing and it’s helped me calm down about the whole thing. Plus the fandom is obviously pretty non-existent now so I’m just left with really lovely readers and that has made the 10 Things experience really lovely.

Omg this truly turned into the longest essay. I’m sorry but also not because you know me and you know this is who I am as a person lmao. And I wanted to give your questions some serious thought and so here we are! I hope I answered all of your questions. I think I did. I will go back and edit this later so apologies for now if I have major typos or anything. Thank you soooooo much for your interest. It really is such a wonderful thing to get to discuss with someone who is actually interested. I’m forever thankful to have you as a reader ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️.

#writing things #fanfic things #10 things fic

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robininthelabyrinth · 3 years

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extra 2 for Tedious Joys - warnings for adult content, WRH/Lao Nie, slightly dubcon, not necessarily in the same universe as the previous extra, possibly AU

ao3 link

Humans had three modes of dealing with evil things: fighting, feeding, and fucking.

Much to Jiwei’s disgust, it seemed that her Master could not be dissuaded from treating with Wen Ruohan through the last of these.

You’re disgusted any time I pick the ‘fucking’ option, her Master said tolerantly. He was watching Wen Ruohan’s body as the other man moved through the crowd like a shark amidst waters filled with fat fish, merciful and restrained only in his current lack of interest and yet convinced of his superiority. You’re barely more interested when I pick ‘feeding’, and my body would collapse if I stopped doing that.

I’ve heard good things about inedia, Jiwei retorted, but her Master only laughed. You agree that he’s evil, though.

Jiwei, sweetheart, you think almost everyone is evil.

Because they are!

The ethical frailty of humanity was practically a given at this point: one need only look around this sect conference to find examples of it, the hall teeming with the stench of moral corruption. Sect leaders who would sell their daughters for an iota more of power, who had blood on their hands from executions conducted behind closed doors, liars, thieves, cheats, crooks, evil –

To be both good and evil is natural, Jiwei, even for us two. It’s not worthy of a death sentence.

Jiwei was not arguing in any seriousness: she had long ago reached the conclusion that it was not a debate that her Master was inclined to yield upon, and of course he had long ago won the argument. After all, her Master had done his share of terrible things too, in his time, to defend his sect and his family as needed, and she had been at his side, aiding him as she ought.

She was not as rigid as Baxia, that fearsome child, who longed only, as her master did, for righteousness; she would not argue with her master the way Baxia did, quibbling over mundanities as if the human world were something that could be judged through the merits of a saber. But then Baxia had Nie Mingjue, whose soul was very near to a saber itself – unbending in its ferocity and clear in its simplicity – and Nie Mingjue listened to his saber in a way his father did not, too close and too compassionate, too forgiving of his inhuman partner’s flaws and too willing to take the time to convince when he ought to simply order.

Perhaps it was simply different for the two of them.

Baxia had roared to life with an ancient soul, a queen among sabers, and even Jiwei would not so easily choose to face her down, for all that she was more clever and more practiced, more thoughtful and more reserved, her power the greater, but her potential worse. Luckily it seemed unlikely to ever become an issue, what with Nie Mingjue earnestly trying to teach Baxia the meaning of being filial to one’s elders, as if age were at all relevant to a saber spirit.

Still, even if she were not Baxia, Jiwei had her own pride: she was still a saber, stubborn and inflexible, and so she said, Even Lan Qiren thinks you shouldn’t fuck him.

Jiwei rather begrudgingly liked Lan Qiren. She hadn’t at first, of course – not that she’d noticed him much when he was just a fellow cultivator her Master had taken a shine to, a teenager with a strange manner and his own pride, but later, when her only thought of him had been to wonder how he would dare attempt to interfere with her connection with her Master – but he was stubborn in his own way, obstinate, uncompromising, tenacious.

There was even unexpectedly some rage in him, buried deep beneath his rules and the scars left on his heart – not enough to do anything with it, the poor soul, but enough to show that he knew what it was. Jiwei had finally started condescending to give him a little of her time and attention, maybe a little of her rage that he always seemed to be seeking: at least he knew that he needed it.

Lan Qiren doesn’t want to fuck anyone, her Master said, fond as always. He, at least, would be more than happy to fuck Lan Qiren if the other man were interested. He doesn’t understand the appeal, so how can he really make a judgment on the matter?

Jiwei wasn’t sure that was how it worked – her Master respected Lan Qiren’s judgment on all sorts of things that Lan Qiren didn’t personally appreciate, and in all honesty she suspected that her Master was thinking with all the brain in the lower half of his body again – but she also didn’t actually care all that much.

Wen Ruohan hates Lan Qiren, she said instead, not for the first time that day.

Her Master frowned, as he did before. I don’t know what’s gotten into Hanhan over it. He even went and got Qiren drunk again, and I thought he swore never to be in his vicinity while drunk ever again, after last time.

Lan Qiren, when drunk, dropped all façade of caring about other people’s lack of interest in his favorite subjects, and also any reservations about using his strength and body to pin people into place – he’d held Wen Ruohan down by the arm, and ended up at one point in his lap to loudly insist that he pay attention because they were just getting to the interesting part, despite assurances by Wen Ruohan that it was not interesting, had never been interesting, and that he would shortly begin to bite off his own limbs in order to escape if it did not rapidly become more interesting.

Her Master had gone over at that point, nominally to assist but actually in order to enjoy having Lan Qiren on his own lap, and yet somehow that had only made Wen Ruohan’s expression worse.

Humans were so confusing.

Didn’t you tell Lan Qiren that you’d rescue him sooner if he got drunk again?

Her Master laughed, but he put down his drink and went: Lan Qiren had drunk four toasts, which was three and three-quarters more than he could tolerate, and he had cornered some poor sect leader and started in on some subject on musical cultivation that even Jiwei, who had no ears, could identify as being both esoteric and extremely boring.

Wen Ruohan caught her Master by the wrist before he got to Lan Qiren’s side.

“You should come spend some time with me, my friend,” he said, his eyes intent, purposeful, gaze as hot as the sun patterned on his clothing. “I have scarcely seen you this evening.”

Because you were too busy trying to get Lan Qiren drunk for some reason, Jiwei said scathingly, and her Master shushed her.

“The days in your Nightless City are long and the nights longer, A-Han,” her Master said, turning his hand to stroke two fingers along the underside of Wen Ruohan’s wrist – the other man released his hand, recoiling as if he’d been burnt; he had never grown accustomed to her Master’s shameless displays of affection. “There will still be time for us to spend time together.”

Wen Ruohan’s eyes narrowed. “But not now.”

“Not now,” her Master said agreeably. “I promised Qiren that I wouldn’t let him embarrass himself.”

“Someone else could do that.”

“They could, yes, but I’m the one that promised him.”

Wen Ruohan’s lips twisted. “You promise him many things. More than you should, with him the sect leader of another sect…”

“So are you, Hanhan,” the Master said. “And don’t I promise you the moon and the stars, if only I could fetch them down for you?”

The poetry of humans was truly insipid, in Jiwei’s view, and yet like all monsters Wen Ruohan both hated and loved the purity of her Master’s emotions, his heart offered on a platter without reservations.

It didn’t seem to be working this time, though.

“Go to him, then,” Wen Ruohan sneered, his jaw tight from where he was grinding his teeth together. “I trust you will tell me, then, when you finally decide to promise him that I will no longer be sharing your bed.”

I like him when he’s jealous, her Master remarked to her, and sometimes Jiwei thought her Master could be a very stupid man. He’s never more ferocious and passionate than he is when he thinks someone has taken something of his.

Never more dangerous, you mean. You always did like the ones that could and did want to kill you.

It adds some spice to life.

Life is not a food. It does not require spice.

You don’t eat, sweetheart; what do you know?

Jiwei considered this comment to fall into the same category as the one about Lan Qiren not knowing a bad idea just because he was sensible enough not to want to fuck it.

“Lan Qiren has no say in who I allow to share my bed,” he said, and stepped forward abruptly: Wen Ruohan, his senses as always tuned to the highest level of paranoia, instinctively stepped back, and so allowed her Master to corner him up against the wall, bringing their faces level and close to each other until their breath was shared. “Don’t think I didn’t see who was sending all those toasts to him, A-Han.”

“You object?” Wen Ruohan hissed, trying to pretend that he was unmoved by her Master’s nearness – as if anyone could miss the blood pounding through his veins, or the hardness beneath his clothing that her Master deliberately pressed his thigh against in a teasing gesture that made Wen Ruohan inhale sharply.

Wen Ruohan was too powerful, Jiwei thought; his wives treated him like a god, and his concubines like something even higher – he had never been treated so intimately, so recklessly and without care for whether or not he approved, and he was fascinated by it.

“Do you like him?” her Master asked, and Wen Ruohan’s eyes went wide in indignation. “The Lan sect breeds for beauty, and he’s got his fair share of it, even if he doesn’t think of it that way.”

“You cannot be serious.”

“There’s something appealing even in his very disinterest,” her Master mused, and Jiwei resigned herself to hearing this again. “He’s above such things, like a statue carved into the mountainside, untouchable and cold, the stone unyielding, and yet his flesh is as soft as any other man’s – it would give if you pressed on it. Turn red if you dug your fingers in, bruising like the skin of a ripe peach.”

Wen Ruohan’s throat worked as he swallowed.

“You like that sort of thing, don’t you? You like it when people are in pain…you like the rush of power it gives you. There are other ways of having power, A-Han.”

Her Master had thoroughly pinned Wen Ruohan against the wall now, even though the other sect leader’s cultivation was higher, his physical strength above their own. Their hips were slotted together, the two of them grinding up against each other, and Wen Ruohan’s mouth was a little agape, his lips and the tongue between them very red.

“There are,” he murmured, eying her Master as if he wanted to peel off his skin and devour him whole, put him in his belly where no one else would be able to reach him. “And this is his: that even now you will leave me and go to him instead.”

Her Master laughed.

“I need to take him to bed,” he murmured, words deliberately ambiguous, and Wen Ruohan jerked in his grasp – perhaps her Master was not so wrong in thinking that Wen Ruohan admired the coldly beautiful Lan Qiren more than he should. “Why don’t you help me?”

Wen Ruohan frowned, even as her Master stepped away. “Help you?”

“Take him to bed,” her Master said, and smiled as Wen Ruohan scowled at him. “It’ll be easier to carry him with two of us.”

Lan Qiren did not especially want to go with them, eager to continue his elaboration on whatever subject he was on now – actually a method for temporarily cutting off someone’s breathing using sound alone, not that anyone would be able to tell unless they had an excellent understanding of musical notation, esoteric cultivation techniques, and the human pulmonary system – although the sect leaders he had cornered were deeply grateful for the intervention. Still, Lan Qiren was a cultivator of song and thought, his strength respectable but nothing in comparison to martial cultivators like Jiwei’s Master or Wen Ruohan; they were easily able to drag him away despite his protests.

Her Master eased the way further by picking up another jar of wine and pouring it into Lan Qiren’s throat as they fought to get him up the stairs, the additional liquor finally acting to push him from wildness into quietude in a single step: he fell asleep at once, instantly becoming as limp as a fully cooked noodle and just as inconvenient.

“Do you have to deal with this every time?” Wen Ruohan complained.

Jiwei’s Master chuckled. “It helps to have experience,” he said, tapping the side of his nose. “Come, get his shoes off while I get the bed ready.”

“You treat me as if I were a common servant,” Wen Ruohan said disdainfully, although he did kneel and remove Lan Qiren’s shoes. Jiwei almost wondered at his willingness, given Wen Ruohan’s usual self-perception as a soon-to-be deity, or at least she did until he ran his fingers up Lan Qiren’s calf and even up to his inner thigh, his gaze firmly fixed on Jiwei’s Master as if in challenge – he was starting something, of course.

“You can’t make him jump when he’s like this,” her Master said, unmoved by the provocation. “He’s utterly insensate; he wouldn’t even notice if you put your hand on his dick.”

“Maybe I should,” Wen Ruohan said, the implicit challenge now outright.

“Maybe you should put it on mine instead,” her Master said. “There’s a second bed in the room.”

Jiwei did not have eyes, but she could enjoy the expression of shock on Wen Ruohan’s face through her Master’s perception of it.

“You’re not serious,” Wen Ruohan said. He did not sound repulsed by the idea – merely surprised that Jiwei’s Master had suggested it, and more than a little intrigued by it.

“I’ve gone night-hunting with him before,” her Master said. “He understands that men who are not him have needs that must be fulfilled; he’s told me before that he doesn’t mind me getting myself off near him, or even while thinking of him, as long as I don’t involve him.”

“You’re rather pushing the boundaries of that agreement, aren’t you?”

Jiwei’s Master had a smile full of teeth – his own type of shark, his own type of monster. “Don’t you like pushing boundaries the most, A-Han?”

It was things like this that drew a clear line between Jiwei’s Master and Baxia’s, Jiwei thought to herself, amused. In the ranking of things that were dear to her Master, his sect came first, and all else second, even family, friendship, or morality; Nie Mingjue, in contrast, would rank family first, morality second, and sect third, and would never take even minimal advantage of a friend, even when the gains were great and the downsides almost none.

Their power over Wen Ruohan was useful to the Nie sect, and pleasing to Jiwei’s Master on a personal basis; the power they drew out from their dual cultivation beneficial to both him and her – they did, in fact, engage in it on the second bed in the room, her Master’s voice rough against his Hanhan’s ear, spinning fantasy and filth at the same time, both their gazes fixed firmly on where Lan Qiren slept innocently on, detached in his disinterest and unlikely to object to anything other than the sheer impropriety of it even if he awoke.

Certainly that had been his reaction the last few times her Master had brought someone back to the single room at the inn that they had been sharing – not that Wen Ruohan needed to know that he wasn’t the first.

Do you intend to court them both? Jiwei asked, curious. It wasn’t the worst idea, even if she despaired at the thought of there being even more fucking instead of fighting: Lan Qiren’s coolness was a good counterbalance to Wen Ruohan’s heat, even if Wen Ruohan’s viciousness was more their speed than Lan Qiren’s level-headed contemplation and compassion. If he obtained them both, her Master could get the benefits of Lan Qiren’s company and conversation, which he truly enjoyed, and Wen Ruohan’s body and cleverness, and perhaps with two of them at his side Wen Ruohan would finally find himself content with what he had, able to stop his endless quest for more, more, more, the yawning pit of greed that lay beneath his arrogance and drove him to do increasingly terrible things.

Perhaps, if they’d let me, her Master replied. His mental voice was tight the way it always was when he dual cultivated with another cultivator, in the time before he reached release – he would be full of energy in the morning, excitable; their morning training together would be especially good for them both, strengthening them as they shared the qi between them. They’d be a force to be reckoned with, especially with me beside them…Qiren doesn’t like sex, but he’s never objected to romance, so it’s not hopeless. Hanhan could be taught to respect limits, and Qiren’s always been remarkably easy-going with those he considers his friends. It would be a good match. Don’t you agree, sweetheart?

You’ve always had eyes for things bigger than you can swallow, Jiwei said. She would roll her eyes if she had them. Well, good luck. Don’t let it be your funeral.

Don’t worry, her Master said, reckless as always. I won’t.

#mdzs #lan qiren #wen ruohan #sect leader nie #my fic #my fics #tedious joys #extras

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skinfeeler · 3 years

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on the internet, there are accusations which are so grave that as a result of their charged nature are hard to even publicly denounce because even doing so makes them stick to the person accused — sometimes they are made up out of whole cloth for sordid and hateful reasons exactly because of this — something i'm sure something most tfem people will be familiar with. in light of that, all that can be asked of me is that i list the circumstances as i know them which i think may have given rise to these.

around mid-2019, shortly after i had been raped, there was a huge debate going on across multiple of my friend groups after i made the mistake of reblogging a theory post about the fate of coltan mining 'after the revolution' that my landlords didn't like. it was upsetting for me as i was rather dependent on my limited contacts at the time, who now all looked to be up in arms with each other. while under the influence of various drugs to cope and self-harming in other ways i liked a few posts in the discourse that seemed reasonable to me given my politic and in terms of people most of whom i understood at the time as people who were friends with others i found reasonable, which generally corresponded to a skepticism that we could extract enough coltan ethically to maintain the current technological status quo and all that entails. this was taken in the moment to be an insult to them as apparently, those people in question whose posts i liked in a haze were their enemies (for being too post-colonial for their tastes?). in that moment, while my blood had not yet dried, the choice they saw fit to make on dealing with this perceived slight was to harass me and force me to apologise for, apparently, personally betraying them as such after extended diatribes about how what i did was evil and how i did not deserve to give my own explanations for it in any way while hurling extended abuse at me. this after they had used my blog as a springboard to cause a situation that was incredibly stressful to me— and sordid in general, the genocide accusations all around were completely unwarranted and served no actual purpose, but i digress.

this set a precedent of harassment and abuse where over the course of the years, even before i started renting from them after they bought a house — they did this because their current situation was no longer tenable — they would consistently, at every imagined or real slight choose to resolve the situation by mobbing me and not giving me anywhere near enough room to construct a narrative of my actions for myself, let alone to assert my standpoint to them, no matter the scale or scope of the situation. too often took this easy way out, and justified it to each other and me by speaking about well, they're married so 'of course' they're going to 'stand up for each other', because of trauma, because of whatever mental illness, the language changed but the message was the same— this is to not be beholden to further context or negotiation, or even juxtaposition with my own mental problems and needs. this extended not just to fights but also to even negotiating any sort of vaguely consistent and regular house cleaning regimen, insisting that it was not possible 'right now' in any way to keep the house to a decent standard of cleanliness, with new reasons being constructed as old ones became irrelevant. to them there was no such thing as a different frame of thought, in fact, they seemed to deny the concept of a frame of thought altogether: to them if you opposed them in thought, behavior, opinion, or behavior, it was either out of ignorance or out of personal malice, or at least, they felt entitled to treat specifically me this way, while they knew i had no other options— as they admit to when they speak in their own crude terms about my former social isolation. for all the good they might have done to me and at times actually did — honesty demands i acknowledge this — they did not fulfill their responsibility to manage the living environment in which these good deeds were placed prevent it from being coercive and harmful. that it is everyone's duty to make not just a token or symbolic but an adequate attempt at not being violent to those who the world has placed you in a position of power over and that this is what ultimately is the determinative factor of moral character as opposed to 'the sum of good things you do' is, i believe, understood in ample contexts by most people.

from domestic to ideological to interpersonal, this was their modus operandii, thereby right down to monitoring my internet usage. you may understand that when this became so blatant as the parable of the scorpion and the frog being recited to me — a noxiously essentialist story which apparently they didn't grasp was very telling of them to kin as the scorpion in, but which is surprisingly common and i've encountered before and since — i no longer had any grounds to keep faith that any of this was ever going to meaningfully change, and i sought out a new place to live, as me returning to my parents permanently or elsewhere was not an option. i did find one, in the end, and the day where i... refused to apologise for blocking them on tumblr (???) which was apparently existentially upsetting to them, which i did because i couldn't bear these two engaging with me in the established way and was anticipating that they would again — as they persistently have, and immediately did — was the same day i exited the house for temporary shelter because apparently laying down a boundary that simple or like, digital wasn't viable. at the end of the day, with three bags over my shoulders and in my arms, i fumbled the door closed behind me which apparently made some loud kind of noise (i was preoccupied with other things entirely, so i didn't notice), and for the first time in that day nicole came out of her room after me, running after me screaming at me and hurling insults at me and family who had come to pick me up, this is what is being referred to as ‘slamming doors’. as far as i am concerned, her response to that then and as well as her response now was and is more intelligible as abject rage at me refusing to play along with the rules of engagement that she had grown to believe were immutable and sacred — to defy or question them, supposedly ableism or whatever was convenient at the time, now apparently 'social darwinism' — than any real and actual violence on my part.

#this is purely so my friends have a credible alternative to those haranguing them and they are at liberty to disseminate this

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theculturedmarxist · 3 years

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Essay quam videri

hey, so this election is the first time I’ve been old enough to vote. im not a Democrat; I was doing work for bernies campaign and was pretty heartbroken when he suspended his campaign cause I know that biden is a rapist piece of shit and kamala is a fucking cop. but when the time came to vote in the election I voted for biden anyway cause I was told it would do more to protect people who were harmed by trumps campaign I don’t expect any sort of real change with biden and I worry that electing him will pacify civil unrest and provide people with a false sense of security,, but I felt like I wouldn’t have any right to be upset about trump being re-elected if I didn’t vote but do you think that voting for biden was fundamentally wrong? I’m trying to figure out how to navigate living in an evil system and sometimes I don’t know if it’s better to opt out or to participate and support an evil that is nominally better than another evil just wanted your opinion cause most ppl I know are on that “vote blue no matter who” shit

Hey,

I do understand how you feel. It can be really confusing, and it is a difficult question to come to grips with, trying to navigate an evil system and to minimize the damage your participation in it brings. This isn't an indictment of you personally, but an indictment of the world in which we live. One of the most horrid aspects of Capitalism is the barbarity that it makes us all ineluctably complicit in. Most people participate in the evils of this system through no real desire of their own, but because Capitalism has developed over the centuries a number of means to coerce participation. You can't have slavery without slaves, and there were always slaves because they created the profits that shackled them. That doesn't make picking master's cotton a fundamentally wrong act. You're a captive, and the captive's first duty is to survive, and secondly, to escape.

This ubiquitous coercion naturally makes any mechanism which we are invited to participate in suspicious. This recent election is a prime example: do you vote for this senile, racist, war-mongering, pedophile rapist, or that senile, racist, war-mongering, pedophile rapist? Do you vote for the man who put the people into camps, or vote for the man that built the camps? Do we bear the ills we have, or fly to others we know not of? You're right to be wary of participation. Part of its purpose is to instill a feeling of complicity in the crimes that result, either in yourself, or cast over some other party. The Democrats took advantage of this over the last four years to berate Trump for doing everything that Obama and Biden also did. They did and said the same things during Bush II's presidency. Now they exchange gifts with him and have brunch. It's theater, and they're all in the same troupe.

Do you know what constitutes bourgeois moralism? That it is pointless, epitomized in the phrase "thoughts and prayers!" It's wishing for good rather than doing good, hoping to be passed over by evil instead of working to destroy evil. Why do the bourgeoisie love philanthropy? Because it does nothing to lessen human misery. That is the essence of bourgeois moralism: seeming rather than being. The proletarian has no use for something so impractical, and you should not let yourself be fettered in this way. It will do you no good, nor anyone else. You will merely appear to be doing good, which is far worse than being nakedly evil.

Whether you decide to vote or not, and who you cast it for is entirely your prerogative. Haranguing the voter for participating or not, in a system they do not control, have no voice in, nor any real method of shaping, for people they had no hand in choosing, is nothing but vapid bourgeois moralism. It's a sleight of hand, transferring the guilt for Trump's crimes from the people that perpetrated them—Trump himself, the bourgeois that supports him, the thugs that carry out his orders, and so on, the willful perpetrators—onto you, the individual that had no part in any of it. This tactic is used to assuage the guilt of those who are willfully either complicit in a real sense or complicit in spirit. The same charlatans that try to shame you into voting want you to ignore that they've spent the last four years casually participating in the society that Trump runs, and dutifully supporting his regime with their taxes and commerce, and facilitating it with their compliance. They have nothing to offer you for your vote, because they are bankrupt themselves, bereft of the moral fortitude they fault others for not having. All they want is absolution, and the onus does not lie on you to give it.

That not casting a vote gives you no right to be upset about the outcome of that vote is another facet of this, a fallacious tactic on the part of the bourgeoisie. Not casting a vote is a vote in itself. Your assent and support is something that should be earned, not demanded, or expected, or brow-beaten out of you. If there is no candidate that you believe deserves your vote, then the only responsible choice is to not cast it. To say otherwise is to disembowel the very meaning of democracy. The compulsion of assent renders it meaningless.

With that said, is it fundamentally wrong to vote for Biden?

I think that isn't as useful a question as, what do you hope to accomplish by it? Biden as an alternative to Trump is a false choice—we have Trump _because_ of Biden. He didn't spring from nothingness, after all. Biden, and the rest of the political class at the behest of their corporate donors, have for decades shaped policy, enacted legislation, and brick by brick built the road that brought us to Trump. That is in addition to the Democrats' faux opposition to Trump, and their total collaboration in acting with him and the rest of the Republican party. The danger you want to mitigate is as much the legacy of the Democrats as it is the Republicans. They work in tandem in order to hold the people you wish to shield hostage against you. To put it simply, there is no Trump without Biden.

Yet neither is one exactly like the other. While they are both bourgeois politicians representing bourgeois cliques, they represent different factions of the plutocracy and their interests. Does the US go to war with Iran, or with Russia? Does the US continue to spread fascism in South America or in Southeast Asia? You can choose not to choose, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that. You can choose the person that supports bombing country A or the one wanting to sanction country B, and there is nothing fundamentally wrong with that, either. In the grand scheme, your personal, individual vote amounts to very little. You'd might as well fret over which brand of soap you buy at the store, which brand of cereal, or your search engine. If there is no ethical consumption under Capitalism, then it would seem to follow that the only ethical choice is to not consume—to commit suicide. Even if you make your own rope from your own home grown organic hemp, you are still injuring the working class by doing the work of the bourgeoisie for it. Capitalism robs us even of escape in death.

What is fundamentally wrong is casting a vote based on nothing but wishful thinking and delusion, of which "Blue No Matter Who" is a byword. The bourgeois voting for Biden at least has the virtue of voting for their own interest. "Blue No Matter Who" is an affirmation of nihilism, that not only can they do nothing, but they also expect nothing. It isn't a political strategy. It's naked resignation. The consumer society that Capitalism has shaped has induced people to believe that their desires can be bought. Buy this soap and 5% of the sale goes to preserving the rain forest. Donate 30 cents to end starvation in Africa. That is the mindset at work here. The removal of Trump is just another item to add to the cart. Vote, and all the discomfort and ugliness that Trump has made them aware of will go away. Things will go back "to normal." They are deluding themselves that think this is not normal.

Mao himself says that nothing is wholly good or wholly evil. Good may come from evil actions, and evil may result from good actions. Gavrilo Princip had no idea that when he killed two aristocrats that he was setting in motion events that would not only lead to the deaths of millions of people, but also the death of the empires he hated. Your vote is just another small piece of an ongoing, dialectical process of events and actions and decisions leading into and influencing one another, most of which is largely outside of your control. Years from now you might have reason to regret it, or to celebrate it, or maybe even both. Actively making that decision, however the outcome, at least means that you chose to be rather than to seem, and that’s the first step to doing good.

#biden #trump #obama #voting

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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"That's Not What The Show Is About"

Be that romance, family, or ethics -- we've all seen this line. Some of us have even said this line. Myself, never personally -- but even people I know and respect have had their song-and-verse about what they say the show is -- or isn't -- about. It's often thrown at fans of differing thought; sometimes, it's thrown at creators, such as to accuse them of not knowing what the show is about.

So there are several things to approach about this, in the end. What a show communicates to you -- truly communicates to you, that you truly see standing as the message -- is valid. But one has to understand. That's what it means to /you./ You can't determine what someone else receives, genuinely receives, out of a work.

This says nothing of hyperinflation of arguments with angry fans in egregores that are all mad with All The Things. At some point, your interpretation stopped working for you, which is a personal thing to choose to overcome, subvert, to work around amd find answers and alternatives to, to stop watching or yes, to stay ragemad. That's your own agency in play and I've discussed this before, but beyond this disclaimer, not a point of this post.

I want to move forward about when this is thrown at creators.

When SPN started, or before it started, Kripke pitched oodles of ideas, some of which were retired before it ever hit air. And when it first made air, it was the mood and idea of the piece, the concept of monster hunting, that was the draw. Kripke said himself, from his mouth to fandom’s ears, that it wasn’t until a few episodes of watching the natural chemistry J2 had that they realized they needed to focus more on the story of the brothers than the circumstances they battle through as generalized archetypes.

At that point, the show changed what it was about.

By the time season 5 ended, there was already a written moral. They chose family. It was about family. That’s the whole point, right? But when this show launched, in its first few episodes, it hadn’t been. The creators elected to explore an evolving concept. They chose to explore many things, and fandom often crowed what the show was and wasn’t about, even back then, as far back as the first few seasons. But here’s the thing.

Shows do not have true agency of their own, but rather, the agency of their creators. The fandom’s agency ends at their ability to choose whether or not they like a given show, or what they do within their own digital sandboxes with the content. The fandom does not own the content. The fandom will never own the content. The fandom reacts to the content. You can like it or not like it, but the show is about whatever a creator wants it to be about.

Sure, early on “family” mostly reduced to the brothers. Because uh, y’know, brothers are family. But what “family” means to people and the scope they should take that storyline can also change. How Kripke, Carver, and Dabb see family are not guaranteed to be the same. That doesn’t mean they changed the underlying value even, just the angle and presentation. Yes, adopted kids are family, or potential spouses are family, or crazy aunts are family, it’s all family. But this slavish dedication to, for example, “the show is about two brothers.” I mean, yeah. And it still is. It’s about a lot of shit. It’s multidimensional. But the angle of presentation. But this idea that it’s literally ONLY about two brothers ended... ages ago. It was about family. It was about ethics against dire circumstances. These things still live on.

People can not-like a given angle. But they do not have the authority to yell at a creator that they’ve made the show something it isn’t about. The writer decides what a show is about and how to present it. Personally I see perfectly well how these flowed one concept into the next and stayed true to a very old part of the show, but others don’t. That’s fine. But also if they decided to completely cut the family values out of the show and make the villain the purple tentacle space orcas from planet Xenon, no matter how fucking stupid I would think it is, I’m not entitled to @ the creators and tell them that isn’t what the show is about. Because it is now. The end. It’s now about purple tentacle space orcas against family-less brothers and there ain’t shit I can do about it beyond choose to watch another show that isn’t about fucking purple tentacle space orcas.

I can say I feel it’s stupid. But I also can’t @ people that, for whatever fucking reason, like the purple tentacle space orca shit and tell them it isn’t what the show is about. Because, quite clearly, there’s goddamn purple tentacle space orcas on the screen even if I try really, really hard to interpret them as Leviathan vessels based off of someone making a dick joke. It’s fucking goddamn purple tentacle space orcas now, the end, like it or leave it.

Shows change, they adapt. Some people like the way it adapts. Others do not. Welcome to individuality. Not everything is For You. And hell, there’s a lot -- and I mean a fucking LOT -- of fandom hot takes that I, personally, think are extremely divided from the show. I mean big ones. Mainstreamed concepts in fandom egregores. Never falling into those thought processes and walling them off as absurdism to me somehow kept me from ever being upset with the resulting content or building expectations based on those thought processes, but I guess we’ll just pretend it was unrelated and I was lucky. But just because you build a group of people with a thought process, if that thought process does not pan out long term, that doesn’t mean you’re Right-Er than the creators that are actually making the piece and determining what the show is about. Your vision deviated from theirs at some point.

Fandom needs to understand, ESPECIALLY at the end, we do not own the piece, we do not get to declare what a piece is or isn’t about. Frankly, I want that fucking phrase to die in a salt-and-burn fire under the tongue of Chuck using it in meta-narrative statement like many other fandom statements have been drawn out by him this year. Maybe I’ll get it. Maybe I won’t. That’s cool. It’s not my piece. I can hope for it. I can’t demand it or call it a failure if it doesn’t.

But this idea of possession of the product not only is gonna lead people to a final resolution that they get confused and angry by, it has built angry wings for /years and years and years/ because their imagined ownership and belief in what the show should be continues to diverge from what the show is actually doing. And that’s... not the show’s fault, it’s really not. No matter how mad and blue in the face any of us get, it’s not, and it will never be. The balance of self care on continuing watching/refusing to figure out why we’re mad/not adjusting expectations is a thing for fandom to process as grown adults. The right to not like it is one thing. The idea of talking about creators themselves not knowing what the show is about is not just comedy though -- it’s literally the problem.

Think about it. S’all I ask.

#supernatural #spn #fandom

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eligos-venator · 4 years

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Guilty or Innocent: Eligos Venator

Asked someone to marry you?

“Guilty. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who wasn’t a romantic at some stage in life. Even someone like myself has done that, once upon a time.”

Kissed one of your friends?

“See, because of the wording, I have to say ‘innocent’. I don’t have friends, friend. I have clients.”

Danced on a table in a bar / tavern?

“Yes. And yes, it cost an exorbitant amount of gil for that client.”

Ever told a lie?

“Truth and lies are so easily exchanged for one another. Truth can be used to forge a lie, and a lie can lead to a truth. I’ve told plenty of lies, and I’ll tell many more. Honesty? That’s what I get paid for. But even in honesty, one can deceive through omitting inconvenient truths.”

Had feelings for someone you can’t have?

“That’d require caring enough to have such feelings. I find that to be a waste of both energy and time.”

Ever kissed someone of the same sex?

“Once. I got paid. No, it wasn’t worth the gil.”

Kissed a picture?

“Why would I do that?” The man asked, raising a brow. “That’s rather sad.”

Slept until 5pm?

“Context is required. I’ve pulled all nighters and then slept from afternoon till supper, many times before. But simply falling asleep at a normal hour and not waking till evening the next day? Never. I don’t allow myself to, as I’ve too much work to deal with, and limited hours in any day to get it done.”

Worked at a fast food chain / restaurant

“We all start somewhere. Me, I had to pick myself back up somehow after hitting rock bottom. The skills I had spent years learning at the academy were too identifying for me to be able to sell them, and I didn’t have a gil to my name. I managed to somehow get a job at a quiet restaurant, and worked my way up from busboy to server, to bartender, in the span of a year. Management could tell I was eager to learn and take on every role I could, and the additional roles I took on paid for the equipment needed to start out as a mercenary, and truly start rebuilding my life.”

Stolen something?

“Guilty. I cannot detail as to what because frankly I do not recall. I’ve committed many a crime, but to put effort into remembering them all is a waste of effort. It’s just a paycheck. And sometimes laws must be broken in order to get it.”

Been fired from a job?

“Plenty of times.” Eligos grinned at this. “There’s always someone who thinks lowly of freelancers like myself, and will try to fire them after the work’s done in order to avoid paying for services rendered. There’s even more that try to ask for the impossible in order to claim breach of contract so they can fire you. My advice to fellow mercenaries is to have a good contract, and to make sure to collect something that you might be able to use to, ah, ‘encourage’ them to keep to their word. It won’t earn you any friendship or build camaraderie with your employer, but going hungry won’t help you either. Better to ensure you are able to eat than worry about what your employer’s personal view is of you.”

Done something you regret?

“We all have regrets in life. I try to lead a life without regret, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t stumbled before and thought back on those choices made. Hindsight is perfect, as they say, and to beat ourselves up over the past accomplishes nothing. It’s better to focus on the future.”

Laughed until something you were drinking came out of your nose?

“That sounds painful. No.”

Caught a snowflake on your tongue?

“If so, I don’t recall. I may well have when young, but after a while, it becomes the same as any other weather phenomenon and is something you adapt to, rather than enjoy.”

Sat on a roof top?

“They’re not the best spot to snipe from, but in crowded areas they’re sometimes the only high ground you can use to get a clear shot.”

Kissed someone you shouldn’t have?

“Shouldn’t have, how?” He asked as his brow raised. “If we’re talking about morals, perhaps so, but my paycheck isn’t decided by my personal ethics. I’m paid to do what I’m told, regardless of consequences and morality.”

Sang in the shower?

“Does humming count? If so, then yes. I can’t say I’m much of a singer, but I’ve a few songs I enjoy greatly, like any other person.”

Been pushed into a body of water with all your clothes on?

“I’ve been tossed overboard while still wearing full armor before. I highly recommend always keeping a grappling hook and line on you when out on the ocean, in case you’re either knocked overboard during a storm, or if your crewmates think it’d be funny to see if you can float in your gear.”

Shaved your head?

“No.” Was the immediate, flat, and unamused reply as the man crossed his arms and yellow eyes stared with clear displeasure at the thought of being bald. “I keep my hair short for convenience. But I don’t keep it that short.”

Made a boyfriend / girlfriend cry?

“Probably. Yes. I anger quite a few people. I’ve upset even more. I’ve made mistakes and have made a few people important to me upset before as well. But the biggest mistake is to let that lie and not handle it. If a mistake is made, it’s best to act immediately to try to resolve the matter. It won’t change the tears spilled, but it will help keep more from falling, in both present and future.”

Shot a gun?

“It’s a part of my job description, half the time. I am partial to utilizing a gun to take targets down at a range. It minimizes the risk to myself.”

Still loved someone you shouldn’t?

“I don’t even know if I’m capable of that emotion. I don’t see how I could still love someone I shouldn’t without having the capacity to love in the first place.”

Have / had a tattoo?

“I’m adverse to identifying marks on my own person, given they can be used to pick me out of a lineup if seen. Someday, maybe, I’ll get one. I wouldn’t mind having one, really. But given my job, it’s a bad idea for me to cave to that temptation.”

Liked someone, but will never tell who?

“If I did, you’d never know.”

Been too honest?

“I say it as I see it. If people have a problem with that, they’re welcome to take their issues with them and jump off a bridge, for all I care.”

Ruined a surprise?

“I ruin many things. Surprises have been one of those that I’ve ruined, yes.”

Been told that you’re beautiful by someone who totally meant what they said?

“No.” That was all he had to say as he crossed his arms, his lips tugged down in a frown as he made a small shooing motion with his left hand to indicate that he wanted the next question to be asked already.

Stalked someone?

“For business purposes. So yes. I’m unable to divulge details, due to the contract signed. What I can say is that it’s not something I particularly enjoy. But a job is a job.”

Thought about murder?

“Frequently. My job often entails applying lethal force against targets. It’s natural I have to think abut it and plan ahead accordingly.”

How about mass murder?

“While I don’t find the idea of murdering a population of people appetizing, I work under the assumption that I’ll need to be armed enough to, at minimum, take out twice the number of targets I’m sent in for. No battle plan ever survives first contact with the enemy, and if you aren’t prepared to adapt to the situation, you’ll find yourself in over your head. I always make sure I’ve enough equipment to take care of both enemy and ally should the situation unfold unfavorably.”

Cheated on someone?

“I am very strict when it comes to contracts made. I don’t break the terms unless my own are broken first. This includes relationships. I have never cheated, nor do I have the slightest of reasons to consider such.”

Gotten so angry that you cried?

“Not at all. I don’t get angry. That’s a waste of energy and time. I get even.”

Tried to stay away from someone for their own good?

“No. Why would I care about what’s good for someone else? People won’t spare a second thought about you and what’s good for you. They’ll take what they need. It’s on your own head if you can’t do the same for fear of consequences for another.”

Thoughts about suicide?

”In the past, I considered it frequently. Looking the part of half-breed is rough on any, but especially so when you grow up in a society raised to be intolerant of others not like them. But I’ve learned since then and grown, and no longer consider such an option.”

Had a girlfriend / boyfriend?

” Girlfriend, yes. I’ve had a few relationships. But I’m very content with my life as it is now.”

Gotten totally drunk during a holiday?

“I drink, but not to excess. Even on holidays I would rather keep my wits about me than let myself be overly influenced by beverage.”

Tagged by: @tiwahra-ffxiv @ivyffxiv [Thank you for the tags!]

Tagging: @uurkhilen @voidtouchedduelist @lilac-memorials @lighttheabyss @octophopi @vesper-aldaine @cigarettes-n-daisies @arcurisrilanox @nocturnedreaming @cadrenebula @yokasaris @roleplay-aficionado @cottoncnyandy @wildgirlcinna @misorastraus @arcana-divine @a-corsairs-chorus @shroudkeeper @miyuki-mazaki @knightingale-xiv and anyone else who wants to do it!

#asks and memes #thank you for the tag!

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cctinsleybaxter · 4 years

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2019 in books

The year’s contenders for the good, the bad, and the rest. I used to make a list of the ten best books I read all year, a tradition encouraged by my mom as far back as high school, but out 2019′s twenty-six mediocre offerings it didn’t really come together. Instead I’ve decided to break my ‘honorable mentions’ category into three subsections that I hope you’ll enjoy. In order of when read, not in order of affection:

Honorable mentions [books I liked; 3+ star material]

The Fifth Season by N.K Jemisin was given to me as a Christmas present last year, and I wasn’t sure how much I would like it since I don’t really do high fantasy. Rules need not apply; I loved the world building and narrative structure, and the characters were so much better than I’m used to even when their arcs seemed familiar at first glance. I guessed what was going on with the formatting maybe a little too quickly, but even then it was emotionally engaging and I was eager to keep reading and see what happened next. Haven’t devoured a book that way in years.

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi has been on my list for a while; as a memoir told through short stories it’s hit-or-miss, but so worth it. I especially loved getting to read his early attempts at fiction, and the chapter Phosphorus regarding his first real job as a chemist in 1942 (his description of his absolute disgust at having to work with rabbits, the feel of their fur and the “natural handle” of the ears is a personal favorite.) This excerpt is one I just think about a lot because it’s full of small sweet details and so kindly written:

“[my father] known to all the pork butchers because he checked with his logarithmic ruler the multiplication for the prosciutto purchase. Not that he purchased this last item with a carefree heart; superstitious rather than religious, he felt ill at ease breaking the kasherut rules, but he liked prosciutto so much that, faced by the temptation of a shop window, he yielded every time, sighing, cursing under his breath, and watching me out of the corner of his eye, as if he feared my judgement or hoped for my complicity.”

Slowing Down from Mouthful of Birds by Samanta Schweblin is a one-page short story, but I’m including it because it’s the best in the book and one of the better stories I’ve read in general. I won’t spoil it for you since it’s more poem than anything else (and you can read the whole thing here.)

A Short Film About Disappointment by Joshua Mattson deserves to be lower in the order because it’s like. Bad. But I couldn’t help but have a self-indulgent kind of love for it, since it’s a book about white boy ennui told through movie reviews. It definitely gets old by the end (one of those things where you can tell the author lost steam just as much as his leading man), but parts of it are so well-written and the concept clever. 80+ imaginary movie reviews and psychosomatic possession by your traitorous best friend.

The Gone-Away World by Nick Harkaway has one of the greatest twists I’ve ever read in a novel, and no that’s not a spoiler, and yes I will recommend it entirely on that basis. It does its job as a multi-year sci-fi epic; reminds me a lot of Walter Moer’s early stuff in that it’s a bit Much(tm) but still a good mixture of politics and absurdity and absolute characters. Tobemory Trent was my favorite of the ensemble cast (but also boy do I wish men would learn how to write women.)

My Only Wife by Jac Jemk is a novella with only two characters, both unnamed, a man describing fragmented memories of his wife. It has me interested in Jemck’s other writing because even though I didn’t love it she writes beautifully; reading her work is like watching someone paint. The whole thing has a very indie movie feel to it (no scene of someone peeing but there SHOULD be), which I don’t think I’ve experienced in a story like this before and would like to try again.

Mentions [books I really wanted to like but my GOD did something go wrong]

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou is the most comprehensive history we have of Elizabeth Holmes and her con-company Theranos. It’s incredibly well-researched and absolutely fascinating, but veers into unnecessary pro-military stuff in one chapter (’can you believe she tricked the government?’ yes i can, good for her, leave me alone) and carries an air of racism directed at Holmes’ partner and the Pakistani people he brings onto the company. Carreyrou works for WSJ so I don’t know what I expected.

Circe by Madeline Miller was fun to read and goes down like a glass of iced tea on a hot day, but leaves a bit of an unpleasant aftertaste. It says a lot of things that seem very resonant and beautiful but ultimately ring hollow, and the ending is too safe. Predictable and inevitable.

I was also bothered about Circe’s relationships with Odysseus and Telemachus as a focal point, not because they’re father and son (Greek mythology ethics : non-committal hand gesture) but because it’s the traditional “I used to like bold men but now I like... sensitive men.” Which as a character arc feels not unrealistic but very boring. You close the book and realize you’re not nine and reading your beat-up copy of Greek Myths, you’re an adult reading a New York Times Bestseller by a middle aged straight white woman.

Reservoir 13 by Jon McGregor could have been the best thing I read all year and I’m miserable at how bad it ended up being. The concept is excellent; a thirteen-year-old girl goes missing in a rural English village, and every chapter chronicles a passing year. I knew it would be slow, I like slow, but nothing happens in this book and it ends up it feeling like Broadchurch without the detectives. Plus, McGregor, you know sometimes you can take a moral stance in your story and not just make everything a grey area? Especially with subplots that deal with things like pedophilia and institutional racism?

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor is about a twenty-something who moves from Iowa to San Francisco in the 90s and explores gender and sexuality through shapeshifting. It was something I really thought I would like and maybe even find helpful in my own life, but I couldn’t stand a single one of the characters or the narration so that’s on me! It does contain one of my favorite lines I’ve read in a long time though:

“And anyway, weren’t French boys supposed to be like Giovanni, waiting gaily for you in their rented room and actually Italian?”

Dishonorable mentions [there’s no saving these fellows]

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson was supposed to be a fun easy-to-read thriller and what can I say except what the jklfkhlkj;fkfuck. It very quickly goes from ‘oh hey I read books like this when I was 15’ to ‘oh the girl who intentionally gets kidnapped by a wealthy serial killer is accidentally falling in love with his son and can’t stop talking about his eye color now huh.’ I felt like I was losing my mind; why did grown adults give this 5 stars on Goodreads.

The Beautiful Bureaucrat by Helen Phillips is supposedly surrealist horror fiction about working an office job in a new town, and reminded me of that rocky third or fourth year when I really started hating Welcome to Night Vale. All spark no substance, and even less fun because you know it’s going nowhere. I’ve also realized this past year that I cannot stand stories about women where their only personality trait is the desire to have children. People will throw the word ‘Kafkaesque’ at anything but here it was just insulting.

The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai alternates point of view between Yale, a gay man living in Chicago in the late 80s and watching his friends die, and Fiona, the straight younger sister of one of those friends now looking for her erstwhile daughter in 2018. It was nominated for the 2018 Pulitzer, and part of my interest was in wondering how we were going to connect the plot lines of ‘the personal cost of the AIDS crisis’ with ‘daughter lost to a cult.’

The answer is that we don’t. The book is well-researched and acclaimed beyond belief, but it is SUCH a straight story. Yale’s arc is fueled by the drama of his boyfriend cheating on him and infecting them both, Fiona is painted as a witness to tragedy and encouraged to share their stories with her own daughter. “You’re like the Mother Theresa of Boys Town” one of the men complains bitterly of her, and the claim goes undisputed. It’s a story that makes a lot of statements about love and families and art that I feel we’ve all heard before to much greater effect.

#long post #stardate 2k19 #apologies for any typoes or bad wording i've been trying to write and edit this for like the past week and a half

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p-redux · 5 years

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Just When You Thought It Was Over....Hahaha, No But Seriously, I’m Going To Cut To The Chase...Sort Of...

*big long sigh*

So, as you’ve seen the last few days, there’s been a back and forth between @contemplatingoutlander and other Non-Shippers. CO said she was “done,” with the tit for tat, but of course she wasn’t, and it seems she’s decided take on each NST she feels has wronged her.

I don’t want to get into a back and forth with her because it will never end, and also because, at this point, the details are beside the point. It’s all ancient history. Whenever I feel myself getting bogged down by the minutiae of a situation, I take a step back, and try to look at the complete picture--not each individual part, but the WHOLE of a situation. It’s only when we step back and out that we can see things more clearly. Seeing the forest, and not just the trees. Sadly, I’ve said all this before months ago. So, I’m going to copy and paste some of what I posted in a previous blog with some additions and edits.

CO this is for you directly. And I want to make it clear that I’m not posting this to incite others to “pile” on you (I tried to find a turn off comments option but I don’t see one, or I would have used it). I’m posting this because it’s the truth and gets at the crux of the matter, the bigger picture, the forest, if you will. And I hope that THIS time you actually take it to heart.

Here is the FOREST: People don’t care if everything someone says is completely accurate, and that person is right, and there is even proof to back it up, people care about how they are treated. That’s where you lost sight of human nature. It doesn’t matter whether everything you said about others is true, it doesn’t matter whether everything you said about me is true, none of that matters if in the process you treat people like sh*t. A person can prove to people that the Earth is round, but if that person is a b*tch while doing so, people won’t care. And that’s the bottom line… all your proof, your dissertations, your pleading for NST to take the higher moral ground, your crusade to show people certain negative things about me, and other NSTs, all ultimately fell on deaf ears because you, YOU, ContemplatingOutlander, and no one else, treated your fellow NST badly. Read that again. It’s really that simple. That’s the TRUTH you should be concerning yourself with. No one wants to be treated like sh*t, especially by a friend. THAT’S why you are blocked by so many.

So, it’s not that NST were blind to my sins, and if only you, CO could prove to them what a “terrible” person I am, that they would then turn against me and align with you, it’s that they didn’t care about my “sins” because I didn’t treat them the way you did. You supposedly had all the “info,” all the “proof,” all the “ethics” and “morals,” yet you treated people badly. THAT'S why you are blocked and I am not. Simple as that.

I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t wish you any harm, CO, I truly don’t. I would hope the finger pointing, attacks, and unnecessary drama, which no one WANTS, would stop, and we could all go back to having fun on here the way each of us individually see fit…like grown adults. There’s room here for ALL of us.

One would think if THIS many people who were your friends at one time are telling you that you need to self-reflect and reevaluate YOUR behavior, that you would. You’re a smart lady, it can’t be that we’re ALL wrong, and you’re just “misunderstood.” Life doesn’t work that way. It’s like that analogy “If you walk down the street and you run into an a*shole, he’s an a*shole. If the next day, you walk down the street and you run into an a*shole, he’s probably an a*shole. If the day after that, you walked down the street and you run into another a*shole, he’s most likely an a*shole. If you walk down the street again and you run into another a*shole, YOU’RE the a*shole. Forgive the indelicate analogy, but hey, I’m me. :-)

I think I made my point. Just a suggestion, and you’re obviously free to take it or leave it, but I really, really, really hope you take the time to consider this: Stop looking outside of yourself and blaming others. Look INSIDE. Reflect. DO things differently. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll have fun here again, and you’ll have more friends. That’s all, folks.

#co #contemplatingoutlander #purv #nsts #truthers #nonshippers #truth

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travllingbunny · 5 years

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The 100: 6x09 What You Take With You

How amazing was this episode? It is, so far, one of the two best episodes of the season (alongside 6x07) and probably in my top 10 favorite The 100 episodes of all time.

It benefited from its focus on just three storylines and a limited number of characters, which allowed it to properly focus on the characters and their psychological and emotional journeys.

The title seems to be a reference to the Dagobah cave scene in The Empire Strikes Back, or rather, the dialogue right before it:

Luke: There is something not right here. I feel cold, death.

Yoda: That place… is strong with the dark side of the Force. A domain of evil it is. In you must go.

Luke: What’s in there?

Yoda: Only what you take with you.

Luke ends up having a hallucination of fighting Darth Vader in the cave and killing him, only to take off his helmet and see his own face, in possibly the most famous movie scene of a character confronting their “Shadow” self.

So, when the episode titles for season 6 of The 100 were released, it wasn’t hard to guess that this episode would contain scenes of a character “facing their demons” in a fantasy sequence (and which character it would be, especially as we had seen glimpses of Octavia fighting the Blodreina version of herself in the trailer). As a fan of psychological character exploration through trippy fantasy sequences, I had high expectations from this episode regarding Octavia’s story – and they were completely fulfilled and maybe exceeded. I wasn’t expecting to see Charles Pike in Octavia’s hallucination soul-searching, and his appearance and how he was used was brilliant.

The other two, equally important storylines, were:

the continuation of the saga about the Bellamy/Clarke relationship through the story about the fight between Josephine and Clarke for control of Clarke’s body, and Bellamy’s attempts to save Clarke from real and certain death;

and the conclusion of the opposite storyline - about Abby crossing a lot of ethical lines to work with the Primes and use bodysnatching to resurrect Kane in another body. This was the final death of Marcus Kane, a tragic end of Kabby romance, but it also a fitting ending for Kane, with him asserting his own integrity and morality by choosing to die and refuse to be complicit in the practices of the Primes, but to instead start a fight against them. It will also probably be the turning point in Abby’s character arc. The resolution of this storyline has caused a lot of controversy and anger, which I don’t understand, since Kane’s decision was obvious and in-character, so much that I predicted it last week, because it was the only thing that made sense narratively and for Kane’s characterization.

More thoughts under the cut.

Octavia vs Blodreina

The fact we still don’t know what happened to Diyoza or to Octavia in the Anomaly makes me think that this is a plot that will carry over to season 7, after the bodysnatching business is wrapped up. And the more they postpone the resolution, the more hopeful I am for Diyoza to survive season 6.

Choosing the angry, violent red box instead of the calm green box is such an Octavia thing to do. But maybe it was the right thing in this case, as it let her face her demons head on and figure things out for herself.

The red butterflies scene was one of the many callbacks to season 1.

Pike’s role made sense because Octavia’s descent into darkness was not just prompted by the trauma of Lincoln’s death at Pike’s hands, but also because it started when she decided to murder Pike for revenge, making herself judge, jury and executioner. That was the first time she committed actual murder, as opposed to killing people in fight. She probably thought at the time, as a big portion of the fandom did, that Pike was a bad guy and had it coming. But one could now say the same thing about Octavia herself, and she is obviously aware of it. If Pike deserved to die, doesn’t she, too? Using the same standards, shouldn’t she be murdered for revenge by someone like James (the Wonkru guy from 6x02, who lost his mother in the gorge and blames Octavia fori t)? In fact, Octavia tried to get him to kill her, because, on some level, she thought she deserved death, too, even while she was pretending that she didn’t feel any guilt and trying to justify all her actions. Why should Bellamy ever forgive her for throwing him into the fighting pit to die? I can see many similarities between Octavia and Pike: both of them are fighters by nature, both were driven by the desire to save and protect people, both were angry and traumatized by what had been done to their people, and both were also prone to black-and-white thinking and harsh judgment of their enemies. As Octavia’s mind version of Pike pointed out, we are products of what we have done, and what has been done to us. Pike is an embodiment of both for Octavia. And Pike himself was a product of what the Ice Nation under Queen Nia had done to him – killing almost all of the people he grew up with, many right in front of him (including 15 children), which made him go into the woods to fight for months. Pike started pre-emptively seeing Grounders as enemies even when they were not, and eventually, as a Chancellor, started acting as a dictator and hunting for traitors in his camp. Octavia started by proclaiming everyone (or almost everyone – Echo didn’t count) her people, One people, but that eventually turned into tyranny and seeing enemies in everyone who disagreed or refused to do everything she asked of them. Pike condemned Lincoln to death and execute him for the same reasons Octavia as Blodreina condemned Bellamy, Indra and Gaia to the fighting pit: to maintain authority and show that rebellion is not allowed and will be punished by death. We may not have seen this put into words, but Octavia’s vision of Blodreina in Pike’s role, condemning/executing Pike the way he had Lincoln, showed her realization about herself. „Pike“ even reminded Octavia that he was trying to earn his redemption by doing good when she killed him. Of course, since Pike was really an enbodiment of a part of Octavia’s own mind, it is really something she has been thinking about and that she’s telling herself. It’s a level of self-reflection that I never expected to see from Octavia of the earlier seasons, and shows how much she’s grown.

So does she deserve redemption? As „Pike“ pointed out, it is not about deserving. You just need to make the decision to go and do good, and not be Blodreina anymore, shown by her symbolic killing of „Blodreina“. She is still to actually start her redemption arc, but getting into the right frame of mind and realizing she wants to change and do better was the necessary first step.

Kane’s goodbye

I’ve already written quite a bit about Abby’s emotional and ethical downfall and the tragic development of the Kabby relationship in seasons 5-6 here and I predicted that the storyline would end with Kane’s death by his own choice (and that Henry Ian Cusick would return to play Kane in a vision for his last scene), even though I didn’t guess when or how it would happen.

Unlike some other fans, I find this to be a very fitting ending for Marcus Kane. I don’t think of what he did as suicide, but as a sacrifice, or, more than anything, a refusal to legitimize and benefit from an evil practice that involves brainwashing people so they could be lambs easily led to slaughter, and then murdering them as lesser and disposable, so you could prolong your own life. He couldn’t fight against it, speak against it, while being in a stolen body himself. (There is a reason why Gabriel is ashamed to admit to his followers that he lives in a host body.) Everything about it was wrong to him, and went against everything he believes in. (Meeting Gavin’s widow and realizing that the Primes are lying to their people also played a role. As Gabriel confirmed in this episode, and as Kane 2.0 and the other Primes, no doubt, are aware, there is no trace of the host mind after the transfer – unless the transfer fails.)

Indra has finally been woken up! But is she staying on the ship now, and if so, when do we see her again? I’m glad she got to say goodbye to her friend before his death. I like the fact that Indra pointed out that both the Arkers and the Grouders had some disturbing practices of their own, but Kane gave the logical answer (something I was hoping someone would point out at any point) – the fact we did bad things in the past, doesn’t mean we should let evil things happen. That’s not how morality (or common sense) works.

The show loves angst, so of course, Kane’s death had to be exactly like Jake Griffin’s death (which we saw in the flashbacks in 1x03), and Abby had to witness it. But, as Raven pointed out, it is better for her if she gets to say goodbye. (Raven would know, since she never got to say goodbye to Finn or Shaw. Or Sinclair.) Kabby has been one of my favorite ships on the show – because it is one of the very few romantic relationships that was well developed, way before Kane and Abby got together. Their chemistry was obvious since season 1. And while Greyston Holt did a great job playing Kane 2.0, it only made sense that Henry Ian Cusick return to play Kane in that last scene, when Kane appeared to Abby the way she saw him in her mind-eye - which also made him feel like real Kane to the audience. The scene was truly beautiful and sad, with Abby’s heartbreak, and Indra and Raven reciting the Ark prayer (with Indra adding the Grounder “Your fight is over”). I don’t think that Kane would really do the same to bring Abby back – or that Abby would have done it if she had been in a healthier state of mind, but I can see why he told Abby that. While he disagreed with her decision and couldn’t accept it, he showed understanding, empathy and love to her, while urging her to let him go and continue her life.

All in all, considering the tricky actor availability situation due to Cusick’s role on another show, I think that the writing staff have found a good way to give Kane a proper sendoff, and make it meaningful and highly relevant to this season’s themes and main plot.

In a way, it’s more Abby’s tragedy than Kane’s – he made the decision that was the only right one, one of the most in-character things he’s ever done, but Abby is still lost and needs to let go off Kane, really recover from addiction, and find her own sense of morality again.

The Kane/Abby storyline and relationship this season is juxtaposed to the Josephine/Gabriel story – and the Clarke/Bellamy story. We have seen bodysnatching as something people (Gabriel, Russell and Simone with Josephine, Abby with Kane) resort to in order to resurrect someone they love. But while Josephine couldn’t be happier about it – because she’s selfish and, let’s say, morally challenged, Kane, with his deep sense of morality, could never accept that. We’ve also seen a storyline about Bellamy doing everything to save Clarke – but while all of those are motivated by love, the big difference between what Bellamy is doing and what Abby has done (and what Gabriel initially did when he resurrected Josephine, at the expense of 40+ of the people he had raised from embryos) is that Bellamy is fighting against an evil act, to right a wrong, as opposed to doing evil or enabling evil.

Bellarkephine

Bellarke has always been the central relationship on the show, but it’s never been as front and center as it is this season. In 6x07, Clarke gave up on living at the moment when Josephine managed to convince her that Bellamy had given up on her and moved on and that he and everyone are better off without her, and the last few been about Bellamy being willing to do everything to get Clarke back. The show is being really obvious about Bellamy’s and Clarke’s feelings for other other, even more so than it was in the previous seasons (and I happen to think it was already quite obvious). It’s not the first time that other characters have called out those two on their feelings for each other (from Lexa noticing in season 2 that Clarke cares for Bellamy and worries about him more than about her other people, to ALIE!Raven in season 3, taunting Bellamy over being more devoted to Clarke than his girlfriend Gina, to Octavia calling out Bellamy in season 5 and calling Clarke another traitor who he loves), but now it is an integral part of the main story, the way it was not before.

I’ll say one thing, though – while it is undeniable, seeing his behavior over the previous few episodes. that Bellamy cares for Clarke more than anyone else at this point, as Josephine points out (and that statement implies that he cares for her more than his girlfriend, Echo), I think one should be fair and acknowledge that Clarke is in danger of certain and definite death, after a definite and short period of time, while the others back in Sanctum are only in danger of potential death, so I don’t think it would be fair if they begrudged Bellamy going off to save Clarke.

This dynamic was weird, because Bellamy was simultaneously not fond of (to put it mildly) of Josephine, but was incredibly tender and caring with her body, because it was Clarke’s body, and Clarke is still in there somewhere. The way he gently wiped JoClarke’s black blood and put his own, so the Children of Gabriel wouldn’t know she was a Nightblood, reminds me of Bellamy cutting himself to fool the Ark guards, so they wouldn’t know the blood belonged to Octavia, when she would accidentally cut herself.

Josephine said that love was the reason why Sanctum would be destroyed – implying not just that her father put everything in danger for his love for her (by putting her in Clarke’s body), but also that Bellamy’s love for Clarke and his determination to save would be the cause of Sanctum’s destruction. It’s the 3rd time that the word “love” has been used on the show to describe Bellamy’s and Clarke’s feelings for each other: the first time was in season 2 when Clarke said she was being weak when she tried to keep Bellamy from going to Mount Weather, because love is weakness; the second time was in season 5, when Octavia called out Bellamy on pleading for the life of a traitor who you love; and this is the third time.

The moment when Bellamy looked at Clarkephine when he knew Clarke could hear him, and paused before saying “I won’t let you die”, was one of those moments where Bellamy or Clarke seem to want to say more, or are saying a lot more, through or instead of a statement like “Hurry” or “Don’t feel bad about leaving me here”. Those two have always had their own way of saying ILY.

Bellamy replying “Tell me about it” when Josephine called the “weird” relationship between him and Clarke “exhausting” has to be one of the best meta moments on the show.

(BTW, I don’t think Bellamy actually wanted to kill Clarke in 1x02 – the first moment he could have let her die, he saved her. But maybe she thought so, or maybe Josephine saw her memories and drew that conclusion. Also, the show Josie is misusing the word “genocide” and should look up the definition.)

But after a while, what was Josephine trying to taunt Bellamy, turned into Josephine being moved by Bellamy’s love for Clarke – not because she’s a compassionate person (she’s not), but because it reminds her of Gabriel’s love she had and lost. We got her explicit confirmation that she has really been in love with him, since they got to the planet (which may have been the first time they met). And while we know, from his reactions in 6x08, that he is still in love with her (but she may not know that), he has still been trying to kill her for the last 70 years – because she is a villain and is largely responsible for maintaining a terrible system of oppression and murder. This is the main difference between Gabriel/Josephine and Bellarke: Clarke is actually not a villain, she is a hero. Josephine is the villain that some of the characters and a part of the fandom imagines Clarke to be, because they are not paying attention to the actual story.

I love the fact that Clarke used the Morse code, for the second time, but now to both mock Josephine with “Boohoo” and try to make Bellamy laugh, while confirming that she was able to hear them both.

It’s really amazing just how Bellarke-heavy this episode was, even though Clarke and Bellamy weren’t able to directly interact most of the time – and haven’t been since 6x04. The one moment when they did get a chance to interact, for some 10 seconds, was when Clarke temporarily took control over her body because Josephine realized she sucked at defending herself and had to let Clarke do it. And it was amazing – the way Eliza changed her expression, voice and demeanor and the way she looked at Bellamy, the way Bellamy immediately knew she was Clarke, the chemistry that was suddenly there again in full force when it was Bellamy and Clarke interacting, rather than Bellamy and Josephine. Clarke is determined to never leave Bellamy again (as we saw in 5x13, when she was not willing to leave him behind even while they were seconds away from missiles hitting), but this time, he was right that literally staying there would have killed her, so she did the smart thing and sneaked him the keys – allowing him to save himself, while he let her go to save herself.

My judgement of the Children of Gabriel after 6x03 still stands: morally ambiguous group, the right goal, but too murder-happy.

Josephine may be a 200+ old narcissistic, evil Prime that I want to die, but her interactions with Clarke are really fun. It was great to see Clarke get the upper hand, at least for a while, and be in control again. And I loved the fact that Clarke rubbed it into Josephine’s face that she had stolen some skills from her – and calling her out on the irony of Josephine complaining about it, while living in Clarke’s stolen body.

I can’t wait to see Josephine and Gabriel reunited, and Octavia and Clarke and Bellamy reunited – but I’m also looking forward to more of the Clarke/Josephine fight for control in the mindspace.

Rating: 10/10

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kdtheghostwriter · 5 years

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SNK 115 - “OMW”

I mean...

Let’s be real. As far as Deus Ex goes, I’ve seen more preposterous this week.

If any of you are wondering why this post took so long, it isn’t for lack of time I assure you. This chapter was…a lot. And god damn, Isayama, I wasn’t expecting to dig up my Junior Year debate notes for this one blog post but here we are lads. Quick recap before we get into writers’ mumbo-jumbo.

Flashback

Deus EX

#HeelFloch

Sad Hange

RESURRECTION

We all know Isa loves his religious imagery. He isn’t quite as egregious as Zack Snyder (who is, tbh?) but it’s definitely a thing. He also loves mythology of all types. And while Norse mythology seems to be his area of expertise, it isn’t mine - which is why seeing Stupid Sexy Zeke emerge from his Titan Incubator made me think of another Stupid Sexy God from the Ancient Greek Canon.

I speak of the Goddess Aphrodite, who has dominion over love, beauty and its various trappings. Admittedly, this comparison is drawn in relation to aesthetics only. Zeke’s aloof temperament doesn’t really mirror that of the Greek goddess. Even though Aphrodite did technically help start the Trojan War but that’s neither here nor there.

Zeke’s appearance from the steam of the felled Titan is nearly identical to the foam that appeared during Aphrodite’s spontaneous conception in the Ionian Sea. For the sake of transparency, I must point out that long ago, a fanfic author by the name of Homer relayed to us that Aphrodite was the daughter of Zeus and Dione. This is not technically wrong but it is quite boring. And it was also pre-dated (shout-out to Hesiod). Uranus, the primordial god of the sky, got into a spat with his children as deities are wont to do. This particular dust-up ended in Uranus being castrated by his son – the Titan, Cronus – who usurped the throne. The disembodied testicles fell into the sea like a pair of primordial bath bombs and out of the resulting effervescence appeared a full-grown Aphrodite in all of her Tumblr-banned glory.

Zeke, with nothing left of him after the explosion than a head and torso, was taken into the gut of a waiting Titan. Let me clarify, here. He was not eaten, no. The mindless titan scooted itself along the river banks and inserted the dying Zeke into its stomach cavity. Then OG Ymir with her trademark PATHS Magiks, crafts the golden boy a brand new body and sends him on his merry way.

Like I said up top: of all the examples of Deus Ex, this isn’t even the third-most severe I’ve seen. The implications of it are…a lot. And it actually makes sense if you consider what we know about Titan Biology.

Back to the beginning. Once upon a time, the Founder Ymir Fritz made a deal with the Devil of All Earth that gave her untold power after coming into contact with the “source of all living matter.” With that power, Ymir became the Progenitor of Titan Power. Upon her death 13 years later, her soul was split into nine pieces and connected via a metaphysical system known only as PATHS. These PATHS transcend space and time and bind together every subject of Ymir, even those who have been long dead.

We also know that the Titans themselves are a conundrum of theoretical physics. Their mass and energy are created from nothing. They generate massive amounts of heat, but don’t appear to need fuel. They have no digestive system and regurgitate the contents of their stomach when it becomes full. Even though they are huge creatures, their actual limbs and body parts are incredibly light. Even though Zeke has little recollection of what happened to him post-explosion, he’s likely smart enough to infer, as we can, exactly how and why he emerged from the carcass of a Titan with a brand new body.

This is all before we mention that Zeke Jaeger is a part of the Fritz family tree. The Royal Family line that descends directly from Ymir herself.

I also thought about Lazarus of Bethany while reading this section. Lazarus was a good friend of Jesus, the lad from Bethlehem. Maybe you’ve heard of him. Jesus was told that Lazarus had fallen ill, but has business and doesn’t set out until a few days later. Jesus and his crew arrive in Bethany only to discover that Lazarus has already passed away. This leads to the Gospel’s shortest verse.

Jesus wept. [John 11:35, KJV]

Perhaps the better comparison for her is to Abraham (with the whole “making a great nation” stipulation). But! I’m trying to do something pithy here, so bear with me.

The story of Lazarus might be the Good Book’s most well-known resurrection (besides that other one). The idea here is that the world’s most Holy Figure decided that this man’s time on Earth wasn’t done. Jesus was too late to heal Lazarus and felt so guilty as to weep. Lazarus was then called forth from his tomb, still wrapped in his death robes.

For the Eldian Empire, no figure is more Holy than Ymir Fritz. She’s the Founding Titan and, if this chapter is to be inferred upon, her spirit still influences the will of her subjects to the day. An entire cult has formed with the sole purpose of returning her to her former glory. I should also point out that Zeke essentially committed suicide.

Like, yeah, maybe the injuries were a bit too extreme for an old shifter to be able to regenerate from, but even if that’s the case there would have been the telltale signs of an attempt to do so, like Pieck in Liberio. There wasn’t even that. He was so tired of the fight – so done with Levi torturing him – that he was willing to abandon his years-long plan entirely and sacrifice his powers to the shadows of death. He chose to die; the Founder chose differently.

The rainstorm clearing to make way for the sun. The beautification of Zeke Jaeger. The visage of his tall, strong frame standing firm as his hated rival lays broken and mutilated at his feet. It’s all very hard to miss. Who knows where his head is at following this? I do, however, finally know why I get so many Spidey Sense tingles whenever Zeke opens his mouth.

The name is Immanuel Kant: German scholar and one of the godfathers of modern philosophy. I first learned of Kant and his teachings as a teenager on my high school debate team as I prepared my cases for the Lincoln-Douglas competition. It was my first tournament and I placed second out of dozens of students. After I was done for the day, a girl came up to me and gave me congratulations for understanding Kant. I thanked her, but the truth was that I didn’t fully grasp Kantian philosophy until I got home that night and studied a bit more. Kantian ethics can be hard to grasp because they are often in conflict with each other. (Gee, that sounds familiar.)

Kant’s ethics are deontological in principal. This is a fancy way of saying that the main concern is the Deed That Must Be Done. It is a separation of morals from emotion. Kant rejected the Utilitarians of the day and their schools of thought regarding the inherent “goodness” of an action. Specifically, he had a big problem with Determinism, saying that things like free will were inherently unknowable; also, basing the morality of a decision around perceived outcomes was impossible, because consequences existed outside of physical existence and therefore could not be quantified. Kant set out to quantify the question of moral relativism with his most famous work: The Categorical Imperative.

This is a terribly complex system that has been repurposed and reinterpreted countless times over the past two centuries so I’ll spare you any ballywho. Basically, CI is the inverse of Consequentialism where everything but the consequences matter. Saving a person from drowning isn’t inherently a good action unless there is a logical reason for doing so. This is admittedly a very simplified summation, but even the expanded version leads to some dissonance of reason.

If we look at the Abstract of Categorical Imperative, it tells us: “Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself.” This line is very similar to the Golden Rule, which Kant famously opposed. The American scholar Peter Corning pointed this out, saying, “Kant’s objection is especially suspect because the Categorical Imperative sounds a lot like a paraphrase…of the same fundamental idea. Calling it a universal law does not materially improve on the basic concept.” To borrow an idea myself, it’s like playing the Super Mario theme in a minor key. It’ll sound more dour than usual, but it’s still the Mario theme. Joking aside, what’s important here is that the whole point of CI is to quantify the question of morality and it appears to do that in part by using the qualitative philosophy of the Golden Rule.

Another big beef came from Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard. He felt that Kantian autonomy was insufficient in holding people to the standards of CI’s universal truths. In his words: “Kant was of the opinion that man is his own law – that is, he binds himself under the law which he himself gives himself. Actually, in a profounder sense, this is how lawlessness or experimentation are established.” In other words, if the only thing that matters is reasoning, you can justify almost anything to serve your immediate reasoning.

EXAMPLE

Here is where the dubious nature of the Categorical Imperative fully rears its head, as it displays BOTH the morality and immorality of Zeke’s plan.

On one hand, this plan is fucking awful. There are numerous and many arguments to be made against it; working solely in the context of Kantianism, it is irrational to presume that sterilizing the Eldian people will lead to a more peaceful world. It relies on a ludicrous number of assumptions – the least of which isn’t that Marley will one day stop being a total bell end. Besides that shit, it violates the nature of Kantian philosophy by attempting to foresee the outcome of the situation.

The other hand? It actually makes sense. CI says that only reason matters. It’s ethics through the lens of rational thought. No matter your thoughts about the Great Titan War, how it started and ended, whether or not the Eldians’ preceding subjugation was just or not, it’s a fact that the Titans have caused a great deal of suffering for many people. Only one race of people can transform into these beasts, so the idea of stripping their ability to reproduce isn’t a great leap to make. It is rational specifically in the context of this universe.

(Apologies for any details missed. I haven’t read any Kant in several years and this is a very condensed version of a concept I would encourage you to look into further. Thinking about this all now, the fact that I ever made it to out-rounds while arguing any of this is frankly absurd.)

It makes sense then, finally, why Yelena is so devoted to Zeke’s plan. Titans destroyed her home and slaughtered her people. The rational course of action is to remove this weapon from the hands of those (Marley) that would abuse them. And if those same perpetrators get screwed over during the course of this plan then…[Shrug Emoji]. She claims what she wants is justice. What she really wants, of course, is revenge. Just like her sensei, Jaeger-san, who wants revenge still. Which Jaeger, you ask? The answer is yes.

Situations have been reversed. The volunteers (and Onyankopon) are seated at the head of the table while the officers of the Garrison and Military Police that held them captive are under their thumb. Color-coded armbands are divvied out to the Eldian forces, juuuuust in case you forgot which period of history we’re sending up here. Armbands are assigned based upon when a person surrendered to the Jaegerists. Those higher ups (and Falco) that partook of the wine get their own special armband, because Everything Is Awesome!!

Then there’s this fucking guy. Before I revisited the world of epistemology, I had a much less astute take prepared about character psychology and the concept of the “Double Turn.” I may still write that as a separate post; it won’t do any good here. Reiner didn’t appear, firstly (even though it appears that he and the Warrior Unit are on Paradis), and the visage of a disembodied child using Titan Magiks to bring Zeke back from the precipice of death brings up some very real questions about how real the Curse really is. We don’t know how Ymir Fritz died originally. Given the way mythology tends to work, I’d say patricide is highly plausible.

As usual, all we can do is speculate. One thing that doesn’t need speculation is Pieck. As usual, she’s right on time. As expected, she’s exactly right.

Stray Thoughts

- As I noted last time, Levi was sent flying into the river. Evidently, he had enough strength to make it back to shore, just not much more than that. I suspect he’s alive for now but, goddamn did he get messed up. Levi underestimated Zeke’s suicidal tendencies, just as Zeke underestimated Levi’s tenacity. For two fellas that spent months in direct contact with each other, they have almost no clue.

- Not to stir the pot here but, here’s an in-story example of Kantian Ethics in case you’re still not quite sure. On the roof in Shiganshina – if Kant had been there (lol) – he would have disputed Levi giving the serum to Armin. Not for the reason you think. Categorical Imperative is all about reason. The reason Levi chose to save Armin is because he refused to rob his loved one of their humanity and instead chose to let him rest as opposed to reviving him for the sake of continuing a senseless, endless war. As Momtaku has said before: Levi chose Erwin over Armin. This was a choice made on emotional, borderline selfish, grounds and thereby irrational, which in Kant’s eyes makes it immoral. Just a little extra nugget for you. Discuss, friends!

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buzzdixonwriter · 6 years

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The Right Fights For Might

I have a long list of reasons to oppose Kavanaugh wholly unrelated to the most recent accusation leveled against him, but I want to peel that off to use as an example of how not to respond to such charges and, after that, why we should be extremely leery of letting the current generation of right wingers anywhere near the seats of power for the rest of their lives.

#1: How To Not Shoot Yourself In The Foot

If my objective was to nullify a scandal like the one facing Kavanaugh -- i.e., a single accusation of wrong doing decades ago when he was a teenager -- I would suggest crafting a response along these lines:

“I want to go on record as categorically denying any memory or knowledge of the events and actions recounted in the accusation.

“However, since the accusation includes a report of heavy drinking on my part as well as others, I can’t state with absolute certainty that what has been reported didn’t actually happen.

“I may very well have been so intoxicated at that time as to not remember my actions.

“If I did indeed do what I’ve been accused of, then I humbly and sincerely apologize to the person I assaulted. I am having my representatives contact her representatives, and if she is willing I will attempt to set things right by her.

“As you all know from your own experiences, most teenagers do silly or stupid or even harmful things at some point in their adolescence.

“That is no excuse.

“However, like you, most teenagers grow and mature and wise up. We become better people because we remember not only our mistakes, but our misdeeds. We learn from our errors and the errors of others.

“We all have things in our past that we blush or cringe over. This accusation causes me great shame and sorrow at even the thought of having violated the rights and the trust of the victim.

“Again, I humbly and sincerely apologize. All I can say is that I have grown from that young adolescent, that I have learned the hard lessons we all need to learn in order to function as good neighbors and good citizens, and nothing else in my record reflects the behavior reported in the accusation.”

(Mind you, all this is contingent on the accused knowing full well there are no other shoes waiting to drop; they catch you lying at this point and you’re toast.)

#2: Why The Current Crop Is Crap

For the above to work, you need two things: An absolute certainty that there’s nothing else out there waiting to bite you on the ass, and a willingness to appear vulnerable in order to prove your innocence and sincerity.

You’re basically hanging yourself out there to dry. If Hoy Polloy and Lumpy Proletariat don’t buy it, the show’s over.

If they do, it can actually strengthen you.

Remember Bill Clinton acknowledged a premarital affair while running for president and convinced enough people he wouldn’t do it again to win the election.

Remember Jimmy Swaggart crying copious crocodile tears when he got caught hiring prostituted to masturbate for him, begging his followers -- and more importantly, his donors -- to forgive him.

Remember Swaggart, the second time he was caught, basically telling everybody outside his cult, “Fnck you! It’s none of your business! I’ll do what I want! How dare you attack a man of God?”*

He knew who the suckers were and that they weren’t going to leave him, no matter how outrageous his behavior.

Most conservatives lean authoritarian, claiming to respect law and order and to hold individuals responsible for their actions, but the hard right brand of conservative embraces authoritarianism because it excuses them from moral and ethical culpability.

The hard right wingers repeatedly turn their backs on law and custom to blindly follow any strong leader who will absolve them of the guilt of their own nature.

“We were only following orders!” they wail when caught again and again and again with blood on their hands, greenbacks stuffed in their mattresses, and corpses stacked around them like firewood. “It’s not our fault! He made us do it!”

“He” is whatever bully they follow -- be it charismatic politician or a religious fanatic -- to enable their own bad behavior or cater to their prejudices.

The hard right likes to mock the self-criticisms of the left -- “Marxist dialectics” they sneer -- while failing to comprehend (or more likely, deliberately obfuscating) the point of such exercises, which is to “keep things real” by constantly challenging and reexamining ideas from many changing angles.

They decry this as postmodernism and “truth is relative” but the real truth is that the classical philosophers whom the hard right claims to admire taught this exact same principle and emphasized over and over and over again that one’s perception significantly altered one’s views, and that one need to constantly reexamine one’s own life and principles to make sure on stayed on course.

Small wonder the hard right loves the strong leader who says “Follow me! I’m never wrong and I’ll never make you wonder if you are!”

This is why the hard right, no matter how much to their advantage an alternate strategy may be, will never abandon their defiant winner-take-all attitude, nor will they ever concede defeat no matter how thoroughly rejected.

Without trivializing a very real, very serious crime, they are in effect rapists, and everything they espouse is solely to enable them to keep on dominating and domineering others.

They are bullies who never matured, never grew up.

*For the cheap seats, let the record show that I, Buzz Dixon, personally believe there is a divine entity responsible for this universe whom we humans commonly call God, but that God is not the malevolent mammon motivated monstrosity many modern evangelicals claim to worsh

#politics #alt-right #far right #Brett Kavanaugh #rape culture #MeToo

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avaalons · 6 years

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Chris’ Disney Princess Part 9 (The Visitor)

They’re back!!

All previous parts in the newly organised masterlist if you’re just getting started or need a refresher! Every series has its own masterlist page now so here’s the Disney Princess masterlist and you can click the link in my bio to find the main masterlist page with all my other stuff linked!

***

The Visitor

Chris delivered you back to your apartment later that day and your farewell was drawn out to say the least. He walked you up, pressed you against your door to kiss you senseless before you could even get the key in the lock. When you did eventually stop long enough to unlock your door, your back was against the door frame again.

‘I can’t believe I just get to kiss you. It’s like I can’t stop now I’ve started,’ he smiled against your mouth, running delicate fingers along your temple and smoothing your hair back from your face.

‘Well, don’t then,’ you whispered back.

It was another twenty minutes before Chris actually left, and you slumped against your closed door in giggly giddiness, fingers pressed to your lips, still tingling and swollen from his attentions.

Your phone buzzed in your pocket.

Tomorrow? It’s about the longest I can wait xxx

You almost hated the girlishness with which you responded but you quickly typed out a reply, purposefully playing with him.

If I must. I’ll try and make room for you between washing my hair and doing the laundry xxx

***

The next few weeks were a blur of sneaking around. It had started with you both agreeing that there was no need to draw attention to yourselves but then you realised that the covert operations were actually quite exciting after that first kiss in the darkness of the office next to Chris’ audition room.

It obviously didn’t make sense to ‘out’ yourselves to the media, but you were keeping it from your agents and PR too, given that you were going expressly against the advice of both camps. But other than that, it was just a game really, and it didn’t feel like there was any real danger around, now you’d decided you didn’t care either way.

So it was a Wednesday evening and you were in Chris’ lap on your sofa. You’d been making out lazily for a good while, the tv program you’d had on in the background now insignificant and long forgotten.

These make out sessions had been getting hotter and heavier as the weeks went by and you were finding it more and more difficult to remember what your reservations actually were, and tonight was no exception. Somehow, Chris’ shirt had been discarded and his hands were roaming shamelessly under the comfortable but cute track shorts you’d had on for your cosy night in. When you could feel the warmth from his skin and the ripple of his muscles as he shifted beneath you, you could just feel the progression this was taking and, you realised, it felt totally natural.

You pulled back just enough to speak, keeping determined eye contact with him, adamant you were going to be bold and take what you wanted.

‘Stay with me. Tonight.’

He blinked a little, a question forming on his lips. Maybe he was going to ask if you were sure and then decided better of it, didn’t want to be appearing to question your judgement.

‘I’d love to,’ he eventually settled on a response and you sank your head back down to capture his lips again, your delicate dance taking on a new significance under the development you had just introduced, anticipation crackling in the air.

You eventually scooted back, pulling on his hand, keeping hold of your brave and bold feeling. His eyes followed your movements and allowed himself to pulled upright and then into walking as you led him towards your bedroom, you going backwards so you could keep steady eye contact with him. You pushed on your door with your back, using your weight to lever it open and then you were in the cool darkness of your bedroom, only blue moonlight filtering through the window. It was quieter in here, stiller somehow, and you could feel your heart hammering in your chest, hear the rush in your ears.

Chris’ face was half illuminated in the moon’s glow and you could see him grin at you.

‘What?’ You asked softly, smiling back.

‘Just… I had all these vague plans you know? Romantic dinner, wine, candles, soft music… and here you are, getting the jump on me. Surprising me, always.’

You wound your arms around his neck and you felt him slip his palms over and down your ribs, settling just above your hips.

‘Every day with you is romantic, Chris. This is right. I know it,’ You punctuated your words with kisses against his mouth, reaching up on your tip toes to meet him, and he walked you backwards towards your bed.

You quivered under his touch as he undressed you, as he explored you with his mouth. You felt like he was worshipping your body, lavishing time on you in a way no man ever had before. He might not have been able to prepare the perfect set up, but you didn’t care, nothing mattered when he was working you like that, like an instrument he’d been playing all his life.

By the time you were curling up against his chest and he was using his fingers to comb your hair back from your forehead, glistening with a light sheen of sweat, you’d been treated to two shattering orgasms and were wrung out, spent. Your eyes were already drifting shut even as he pressed kisses into your hair.

***

You awoke in a startled panic, shooting straight upright into the light-flooded room and clutching what scrap of sheet you could get hold of to your bare chest. It took you a minute to catch up, to realise why you had woken so violently, before your sleepy gaze focused on the woman stood in your doorway. It was still the middle of the night but there she was, in a blaze of indignation, arms folded against her classic beige trench coat, hair in an immaculate twist at the back of her head, heeled pumps black and shiny tapping against your floorboards in impatience.

Chris stirred beside you, blinking with only one eye at the sudden interruption and clearly confused.

‘Mom?!’ You yelled in disbelief, ‘What are you… get out! Get out now, Jesus!’

It was Chris’ turn to shoot upright, but your mom was already disappearing behind your bedroom door, back out into the living area.

You looked wildly at Chris, completely mortified.

‘That’s your… that’s your mother?!’ He double checked what he’d just heard.

‘Sure is. Stay here.’ You replied, your voice high-pitched and strained. You shot from the mattress, scrabbling to find a robe to throw on before flying out into the living room.

She was stood, still, leaning against the island that separated your living area from your kitchen. Her back was to you and it was poker straight, both arms stretched out to either side of her, white fingers gripping the edge, like she was trying to stay calm by letting her frustration flow into the marble worktop.

‘Mom, what’s going on? Is everything okay? Dad? Everyone?’

Horrible, emergency-like scenarios involving various family members all shot through your mind at once: what other reason could she have for showing up like this?

She seemed to steel herself before responding but turned around slowly to face you when she spoke.

‘Your father is fine, siblings all fine, nieces and nephews all fine. Not that you would know. But that’s beside the point. The only one in this family that doesn’t seem to be fine is you!’

You were taken aback by her tone but were still confused, ‘Mom, there’s nothing wrong with me…? I’m good, really. What’s this about? You’re worrying me.’

‘I thought those tabloid places just wrote trash. My daughter would never behave the way you were depicted in those reports. Gallivanting about with Hollywood star to further her career,’ she practically spat the word ‘gallivanting’, making it clear what she actually meant when she said that.

‘My daughter is working hard. I didn’t allow her to give up on her education and fund her way to LA for her to simply sleep her way to the top. No, I raised you with a decent work ethic. You have morals and dignity.’

You could barely believe what you were hearing.

‘So I came to see for myself. Flew out to get the truth, and what do I find? You playing hussy to some second rate action star!’

You weren’t awake enough for this, you thought as you blinked, speechless. You had to still be asleep. That was it, surely? It was all just a bad nightmare. You’d laugh about this with Chris in the morning.

‘I don’t… understand. Mom, I’ve not seen you in… months, and you just show up here-’

‘We had an agreement. Your father and I would fund this venture of yours into acting as long as you conducted yourself with-‘

You’d had it, ‘Conducted myself! Mom, are you listening to yourself. Regardless of anything you might have read, everything you apparently know is pure assumption and speculation. Aside from which, I’m a grown woman! You and Dad haven’t funded me in a long time and I certainly don’t need you to hold money over my head in some sort of threat.’

‘Are you forgetting yourself? Are you forgetting everything we did for you, everything we sacrificed so you could pursue this alleged career of yours. I’m not denying that you’ve kept your public persona fairly clean up to now but clearly you’ve decided to throw all that away. How could you let your head be so easily turned? Are you really still that naive? What do you think will happen in a few months, weeks even, when he’s bored and goes back to his usual business, reputation intact, and yours is in tatters?’ The way she narrowed her eyes told you she was out to hurt. It was obvious she felt let down by her perception of your behaviour and the way it had been reported, but that didn’t give her any right to speak to you the way she was currently.

You opened your mouth, about to tell her so when you heard a deep voice from behind you. Chris sounded different to how you’d heard him before: he spoke lowly and firmly and, you thought, with a commanding edge.

‘Now, I’m sure you didn’t mean to come here in the middle of the night after not seeing your daughter for months, just to insult her, disrespect her and be completely unnecessarily rude to her. Have you got somewhere to stay?’

The words you were going to say stuck in your throat. How you weren’t crying right now, you had no idea. This night was just getting more and more surreal. But Chris was real, as you gazed at him in adoration. Your knight in shining armour, standing up for you against your mom.

Your mom, on the other hand, was perplexed. You weren’t sure when the last time someone would have spoken to her like that - it could well have been never. She held a hand against her collar bones, affronted and shocked.

‘I really don’t think-‘

‘No.’ He cut her off with a single hand held up. ‘I asked, do you have somewhere to stay?’

She gave a curt nod.

‘Then I suggest you go there. And when you are ready to apologise, perhaps you could pay your daughter the courtesy of calling ahead and arranging a time and place to talk with her, civilly and with the same dignity and respect you raised her with and she clearly possesses.’

Your mom was silent, her lips parting and closing as sentences began and died on her lips. She and Chris appeared to be in some sort of silent stand off, with her only darting her glance to you momentarily to see if you would interject, but you simply crossed your arms and raised an eyebrow, creating a united front with Chris and challenging her, daring her, to continue.

She eventually picked up her purse and stalked from your apartment in silence and as soon as the lock clicked shut behind her, you visibly relaxed, the tension that had been propping up your shoulders and keeping your spine straight ebbing away. You brought your fingertips to your lips, feeling the shock setting in. Before the first sob left you, Chris’ warm arms were around you, tucking you into his chest.

‘So that’s your mom, huh?’ He was soft and gentle, in complete contrast to his demeanour only minutes ago.

You nodded against his chest.

‘She seems… interesting,’ he spoke sardonically, trying to alleviate your shock.

‘I’ve never heard her speak like that before. She’s so disappointed in me,’ the weight of her words settled over you, doubt starting to creep in. ‘She’s never been totally on board with my career. She thought she’d have to fund me for a few months, it wouldn’t work out and I’d be back in my old bedroom, trying to figure out a new plan. But she’s never been so… hard or unfeeling towards me.’

‘Hey, listen to me,’ he tucked a finger under your chin and guided your face up to meet his gaze, ‘Nothing, and I mean nothing, she said was true. You are, without a doubt, one of the most conscientious, intelligent and elegant women I have ever known. You do everything with grace and dignity and I’m sorry that being connected to me has called that into question, but your mom should know better, quite frankly.’

‘I’m more annoyed that she’s totally ruined this perfect, amazing night,’ you sighed, remembering the perfect bliss you had floated on mere hours ago.

‘She’s not ruined anything. What we have is totally separate, okay? Come on, let’s go back to bed and I’ll do my best to make you forget all about her. Let’s just be together tonight and we’ll worry about her and figure out a plan tomorrow,’ he squeezed you tighter when he felt you press into him harder, ‘Sound good?’

‘Yeah. Yes. Let’s go back to bed.’

You wanted to lose yourself in him. This relationship was going to be a battle out there in the wide world, you knew, and your mom was just the tip of the iceberg. But right now, you were holed up together with hopefully no more unwanted visitors and, for tonight, you could just enjoy each other before arming yourselves against it all tomorrow.

#chris evans #chris evans fanfiction #chris evans x reader #chris evans x you #chris evans imagine

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contextualstudieslorena · 3 years

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Interviewing Emma Quick on Taxidermy

Have you ever been interviewed?

Erm, yeah actually few times now for some bands that I used to play (guitar and bass) in and also for a taxidermy magazine... that doesn't make this any easier though. I definitely prefer the role of the interviewer, although this is my first time doing that!

Have you ever given an interview before?

What/Who got you into Taxidermy?

Well I have to say that my magic 8 ball never saw this ever being something that I would do as a job once 'grown-up' but like mosty people who get into it, I've always been fasinated by Taxidermy since I was a kid. I think that interest stems back to a local Bradford museum that my mum used to take me to when little, which had a big glass display full of all sorts of native animals. That question of 'how did they get in there' really stayed with me. I didn't have a clue! I had been working a pretty serious and well paid corporate job up until about 5 years ago but thanks to an major extitenial crisis, I deciced to leave the industry, go travelling (again) and try and find a more creative path for myself once back. I booked myself in for a taxidermy day course thinking it would be nothing more than a small distraction and an opportuinity to learn but I got on so well with the two women running the course that they asked me to come back and be a part time apprentice for them. Everything just sort of took off from there.

What are your family’s/friends opinions on Taxidermy?

My family are all very supportive as are my friends but I did have a few people asking me when I would get a 'proper job' again during the first couple of years. People views on taxidermy can be quite polarised and the problem with that can be that people just don't know enough about the process or how things are procured. The main difference between a friend and an angry finger-pointing stranger is usual just that they are more comfortable to ask questions and find out more. Believe me, I had a steep learning curve there myself and a lot of moral questions around it but realising it's no longer just all men out shooting for throphies and now largerly a female based craft using only natural death and bi-products makes a big difference, for a start.

How do you think Taxidermy changes the world, what idea would you like to bring when you do it?

I don't think I would say it changes the world now but I think it's fair to say it did. I have very strong feeling against early traditional taxidermy as the animals were nearly always hunted and killed for purpose which just makes me so sad and angry but I guess I can see some ductional value in what the Victorians were trying to do in term of documenting natural history.

What are the good and bad things about Taxidermy?

The good is taking something that would usually be throw in the bin, incinerated or just rot away and making it into something that someone will love for years to come. The bad is the awful history of early taxidermy and the few people who still see it as ok to hunt in order to mount their animals (I'm looking at you, America).

What is your opinion on people who hunt animals with the purpose of Taxidermy?

Oh my god, well if you can't tell already... these people absolutely disgust me. Thankfully it very rare that I come into contact with them. My biggest consideration around what I work on is around trusted supply - nearly everything I use comes from registered conversationalist, animal sanctuaries and vets, and the rest is either found or brought in by my cats/friend's cats. I was very careful to seek out and interogate any contacts I was put in touch to ensure any animal I work on is from unavoidable death. I don't pay anyone for animals, only the postage costs so I can be sure there are no gains to be made from their death. This doesn't stop the odd person offering me something for money that I can feel in my bones has been killed, or the odd yank making some comment on my instagram thinking i'm down with hunting too. Blocked!

How do you think Taxidermy impacts the way people see animals?

I'm not sure about that but it definitely did make me see animals, and even humans in quite a new light. Learning about anatomy first-hand was so interesting to me and you really do start to look and see bodies differently once you get into that. We all seem a little more fragile now than we did before.

How do people's opinions on Taxidermy affect you?

Hmm, this is a tricky one for me. I'm naturally very sensitive and empathic by nature so I don't like to see anyone upset by what I do. I also totally understand that without delving into the subject and learning about the more modern side of the craft, that I expected most people to have some issues with it. I've had a few people contact me through my shop to tell me how evil I am and that i'll burn in hell etc etc (also, usually American) but I never retaliate with negativity. On the few occasions this has happened I have taken the time to write back and explain a little about how I obtain my animals and to my surprise, nearly all of them came back later to thank me for 'opening their eyes' and explaining. A couple even offered to buy something after! You can't write this stuff! I'd much rather people fire questions at me than get angry because they don't understand how it's all done or what my ethics are.

What, in your opinion, makes a good Taxidermist?

Someone who sincerely cares about animal protection and conversation.

What is your own opinion on people who stuff their own animals?

Have you ever had a bad experience with Taxidermying an animal?

Well I get them in all sorts of states, sometimes in terrible conditions. ie: Nearly every fox i've ever received has been hit by a car (bloody humans again!) or too far gone re decay. I never really get over the feeling of sadness if something is too rotten to work on but on the otherhand, i've managed to restore so many animals to their former glory that it sort of makes up for it, it's such an amazing and emotional feeling to bring something 'back'.

Do you feel a certain weight/responsibility when Taxidermying?

Always. Everytime I receive and work on something. This is the most important part of taxidermy for me. It also matters who my customers are and if they share the same ethical beliefs. I've found that nearly all of them do too.

How does the pandemic affect you as a Taxidermist? #

Yeah, it's been a struggle as most of what I receive is found so less people walking, less supply. I've really noticed an increase in people trying it out over this past year though - i guess the pandemic has been a good time for hobbiests.

Is there something that you would like people to know about Taxidermy?

I guess what I didn't realise is how much emotional attachment people make to the finished pieces. If i'm having a bad day I might take a look at some of my reviews as customers really do gush over what i've sent out and am bowled over about how much love there is for them. I often get people's life stories when working commisions and found that people don't see them as just a dead animal. They can hold all sorts of emtional ties to lost pets and lost loved ones and other such things. I'm often asked to make memorial pieces, or something that marks a certain stage in their lives. I couldn't have continued doing this if i just thought they were seen a a cool 'prop' for the mantlepiece.

Also, that it's really not as bloody, smelly or dirty as you might think (if you are any good, that is).

What are some stereotypes about Taxidermy that upset you?

Ha, there is no such thing as a positive taxidermy sterotype in film and tv tropes. We are always the murderers and phsycos! God i could list off a hundred films which include a sinsiter blood-splattered taxidermist with evil intent, and i'm sure some do exist but in real life, try and get to know us and you'll generally find good-hearted people. I won't say this upsets me because again, I understand how the craft is perceived and plus, I have a pretty dark sense of humour so it's easy enough to laugh this kind of thing off.

Have you always been interested in animals?

Yeah I've been a real nature girl ever since I can remember, certainly my first and last love. I'm definitely one of those weirdos who prefers animals to people and have had loads of different pets around the home throughout my childhood - Dogs (dog i love dogs!), cats, mice, gerbils, rabbits, ferrets and snakes to name just a few. My sister and I were brought up to love and care for creatures as much as my mum does - she is bascially like Ms Doo-little, taking in strays and injured animals and making sure they find homes and the treatment they need. It made me chuckle to myself reading Lorena's answers as very simiarly, me and my sis were young members of all sorts of wildlife groups when we were little and were always reading some sort of wildlife encycolpedia or heading off to the woods while our mates were more interested in mum's lipstick etc.

Was it hard for you to be interested in such a different form of art when it comes to finding materials to use?

Are there any Tv shows/artists/documentaries, etc that you recommend people watch to learn more about Taxidermy?

Erm, yeah this can be hard given how we taxidermist are perceived but I am starting to see a few documentaries pop up about modern day practices which is a welcomed change. I remember the bad film portrayals better than the few doc but i think even Netflix has one film called 'Stuffed' on it currently which does help provide a more realitic view of the craft.

Why do you think a lot of people see Taxidermy in a negative way?

What would you tell someone if they want to start practising Taxidermy?

That there is so much to learn and you'll never really stop learning. It's a difficult thing to do right and does take years of practice. I've spoken to people who have done it for over 30 years who still consider themselves as ameatures. My main tip would be to ensure your supply is a clean one and you are not adding any more unneccessary pain to the world.

What is something you would like to tell people about Taxidermy (a random fact or just a curiosity)

I once read that taxidermy started because of the Platypus. The explorers who found it did not believe it was a real animal and that someone had artifically created it so they disected one and sent it back to scientists to validate the strange (and very lovely little) creature, or so the story goes....

Please add here any additional information or commentaries that you find that are interesting to people who aren’t very familiar with Taxidermy.

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questwithjess · 6 years

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An Open Letter, to the ‘Affected-By-YouTuber-Scandal’ Community:

**below includes some adult language and extensive discussion of sensitive topics**

Okay, so…this is mostly regarding the current, Logan Paul debacle...

I don’t often comment on these kinds of events; but this, plus Felix’s 2017 issues, have made me feel that it might now be irresponsible, not to try to explain some of the idiosyncratic, psychosocial phenomena, at play here.

Be warned, I’ve got a long, strange, tangent-prone, and distinct opinion: and it’s one, I imagine, not many people are going to approve of, or share in with me.

Nor, is it the opinion most people would expect of someone who has, both, had a close friend commit suicide by hanging; and who also, on a separate occasion, found the body of a very close loved one. These are devastating experiences, and that goes without saying. However, the equally-unavoidable truth, is that these experiences are also highly subjective.

Of course, in Logan Paul’s case, we can all agree, including Logan himself, that he handled this more-than-badly. And honestly, if that was someone I loved in his video, it would be much harder for me to say this: but, even so, I do think that there’s more to this situation to be addressed, than just to vilify a still-maturing, still-youthfully-impulsively-irresponsible, career-choice-YouTuber.

And this is where context becomes SO important; because BOTH sides are morally right, to a degree.

These actions are both condemnable and defendable: because these actions will have various, subjective effects, on…you guessed it…various subjects.

And poignantly, in manifestation, it’s a lot like Felix’s fiverr-scandal in early 2017.

Yes, if you look at both of these situations emotionally, without deeper objective-analysis; they are both just insensitive, unnecessary, and hurtful faux pas that could’ve easily been avoided, by being more empathetic and heedful of overall feelings, decency, and political-moral-correctness.

Yet, if the inquest is about whether or not these actions were done from an intention to harm or offend, or from an intention to inform or entertain; then, it’s no longer so simple to judge.

Philosophically, it can seem reasonable to declare, that such subject-matters should never be ‘entertainment,’ informative or not. And, this has long-since been an ethical-dilemma, for artists of all kinds. But, never before, have the rules for navigating this dilemma, been more complicated and unclear than they are now; and have been, ever, since our lives became inexorably-bound to the internet, and to the various forms of technology that, now-constantly, keep us attached. This is why, it becomes paramount, for all our well-beings’, to judge each situation, as calmly and rationally as possible.

But, back to the individuals’ in question, and their remiss indiscretions. Remember, both of these incidents are related to highly-emotional situations, and cover topics where feelings run especially, and understandably, deep.

And so, this naturally brings up part of the unwritten social contract, into which all well-known entertainers, of all mediums, enter. Their ultimate-success, is based on their fans; and the riskier the material they choose to feature, the more they are gambling with losing the favor of many of those fans.

However, this is where YouTube – and particularly, being a successful, 20-something YouTuber, coming into your emotional and neurological-maturity inside of the bubble that is YouTube – creates a unique, and incomparably-surreal, experience.

This is especially true, in terms of inevitably-testing moral boundaries via their content; since, unlike other types of celebrities, YouTubers pretty much manage and represent their work, themselves. And, in many cases, they have very little image, or buffer zone, or entirely-fictional character, between them and their interactive audience.

It is entirely up to them, with millions of viewers (and sometimes, the entire media-public) watching, to walk the tightrope of an incredibly-elusive balance. They have to continuously keep their fans, and YouTube, and the public happy; whilst in the process, also staying, both, financially-profitable, and personally true to themselves.

Whether they’re conscious of it or not; along with this career they’ve chosen, they’ve also accepted a constant struggle to reconcile all these competing factors, on a nonstop, daily basis.

Their lives, essentially, become YouTube.

Everything becomes their content.

And to be inside of that uncanny-surreality; is to look at life, through a new cognitive-filter.

So, it’s these psychosocial phenomena of artistically-detached-ethical-mystification and real-world-surreal-world-disconnect, that, in my opinion, explain exactly how and why Logan & his friends, did not preemptively, realistically-consider the probability of encountering a deceased person in Aokigahara.

As much, as why Felix didn’t completely, realistically-foresee that he was eventually going to cross the ‘too offensive to be socially-acceptable’ line, and that the consequences for doing-so, would be so undeniably-far-reaching.

And so, this is where I plead; not, for you to ever ignore your feelings, or to ever give these guys a pass when they screw up.

But rather, merely, to try to understand them, hear them out, let them explain, and accept their sincere apologies when they offer them.

Remember, their worlds exist, always adjacent and attached to, the precarious mediums of YouTube, video, and the internet. And, because of this, they are eternally sharing with us, pieces of themselves.

Sharing with us, their best and worst moments.

And so, before we only exactingly-express our criticisms; I feel as though they also deserve these practical considerations.

I also, truly believe, there’s a way to express your disagreement with their actions, without cruelly and hatefully trying to tear them down as people.

For better or worse, they made these mistakes while trying to show people something that they’ve never seen before. And yes, their negligent actions do have consequences; but so too, are there consequences to the actions of those who maliciously-attack the non-malicious-actions of others. Just something to consider.

This is a good place to note: I know, it might sound like I’m just defensive-fangirling, but that’s not, quite, the case.

And I’ll totally admit, I do have some bias, in Felix’s case.

I have watched, the illustrious, ‘PewDiePie’ for years.

Yes, because I find his...particular...humor, uniquely-engaging.

But, even more so; it’s because I find him cathartic.

As weird as it is to admit; he’s like the male, Swedish version of who I used to be, personality-wise. To the point where, I often, literally, predict what he’s going to say or do, before he says or does it. Also, he looks just like an old friend of mine; and, I mean, they are nearly identical twins, down to the voice.

These are totally-subjective reasons for viewership, I know.

But, they lend to the fact, that the core of my appreciation of him, may be one of sympathetic-thoughtfulness; but, it is in no way, mindless-fan-worship.

More than anything, my qualitative, if not abstract, comprehension of his identity, comes with the ingrained acknowledgement and acceptance of his semi-flawed morality.

Just as I acknowledge and accept my own flawed-morality, past and present.

And, in truth, it’s that very-same ethical-imperfection, that allows him to create his ever-inimitable, and beloved, brand of comedy. Just as mine, allows me to try to honestly and empathetically analyze, both best and worst of occurrences.

Experiencing his humor, has seriously taught me invaluable lessons; and it’s one of the most emphatic examples I have, in understanding how similar moral-identities can improve, hold-steady, or decline, dependent on the presence of differing, relative life experiences.

So, basically, I guess I think of Felix as a study-guide: called to YouTube by our mercurial and morbidly-hilarious universe, itself. I don’t always agree with what he says or does, but I'm constantly seeing the world in new ways, because of the distinctive perspective that he offers.

That being said, even though I understand and appreciate his humor-driven, moral-ambiguity; I do not deny the negative consequences that inevitably manifest, when anyone pushes that line too far.

Which, as we all know, last year, he did.

But, again, this is why context is so important. Felix’s satirical-humor is indeed, often offensive; but, it has never, once, been from a hateful place.

Disaffected, and cynical? Maybe.

Nihilistic, and reckless? Maybe.

But, hateful? No, never.

It might be true, that he doesn’t always take these issues seriously enough, given his young, vast, impressionable audience and the current human-rights-atmosphere of our planet; and, that does, honestly, bother me sometimes. But, I also can’t ignore, that though seriousness and compassion are not the defining trademarks of his channel; they are the definite cornerstones of his charity work.

In the bigger picture, I’m not sure if there’s any way to create honest comedy, without producing both positive and negative effects. Or, whether or not social-moral-consciousness should empathetically-supersede that comedy. But, I do know that, for every person, full-spectrum-conscientiousness grows at its own, individually-singular rate. And our complete-empathetic-capacities develop, as our relatively-occurring life experiences, catalyze their transformations.

Though he’s already grown so much, over the last few years; something humorless, and close to his heart, may further-change how Felix sees the world, one day. And that change, might in turn, further-affect his personality, his humor, and thusly, his YouTube content. But, if not or until then, his cleverly-jarring-comedy will continue to enlighten, for his viewers, the full scope of human nature. The good, the bad, and all the indescribable-weirdness, in between.

But, back to my main point...

With Logan Paul, it’s a very different story. I’d heard of him plenty, but had never actually watched his channel before all of this; because honestly, besides Felix and a few others, I don’t stay current with YouTubers, the way I once did. Though, ironically, after this whole disaster, I actually have developed a certain kind of respect for Logan as a creator; and it’s one, that I wouldn’t have had, otherwise.

That sounds horrible; but just hear me all-the-way out, okay? Please?

His previous content that I’ve, now, just checked out, trying to get a read on him; has been mostly funny-but-frivolous, classic-youth humor and drama.

I found his personality to be a trite-but-interesting-enough, pesky-but-charismatic blend of unique and basic; that typical, early-20s-mixture of being part authentic, and part who you think you’re supposed to be, for popularity’s sake. Overall, my impression was that he was probably a decent-enough guy, but definitely still had lots of work to do, towards cultivating his full-identity.

Also, low-key, it became clear, pretty quickly, that he hadn’t yet been tested with real adversity in life. And, in practice, whenever you combine that inexperience with an oblivious, just-go-with-the-flow attitude, eventually you’re in for a rude awakening.

But, that’s just me being a hindsight-oracle.

And I’m sorry, because that rarely helps.

Anyway, my point was, that Logan was definitely not my usual viewing-material.

Too much trendy-mainstream-consumerism; not enough peculiar, thought-provoking, or meaningful substance.

Until this.

Like it or not, this is a significant – yes, albeit a profoundly-intimate – moment, that he’s captured.

Carelessly and invasively, he captured this moment: yes.

But, like for any journalist, even an unintentional one, is that not what it takes to capture the most awe-striking, and heart-wrenching of real moments? The moments that change our understanding, and our shared-humanity?

I think, it was not his conscious-intention to witness real death, even in the so-named ‘suicide forest,’ and because of that oversight-in-judgement and logical-preparation; his reaction was one of shock, and not one of sense.

But, after consideration, I feel that when he momentarily-shared that video with the world, it was, surely, not only for the views.

I think he posted it, because once the cameras were finally off, he felt the power of that experience and he knew that witnessing such reality, had changed him, and thus, that it could change others. Though, how it would change them, he most likely did not fully comprehend until after he’d posted it.

Now, either way, I’m NOT saying that I endorse the choice he, originally, made.

Posting that full, graphic video was always going to be damaging to many people. And whether he truly realized how vast the scope of that damage would be, before the public-outrage made it so-decidedly clear; that’s something only he knows, for sure. Regardless, he quickly removed the video, and stated his sincerest regrets for any pain that he caused. And I actually found him to be melancholy and heartfelt. His past hubris, seemed considerably diminished.

Nonetheless, if I’m being totally honest, whether this is why he posted it originally, or not, I believe it still remains true: it is within these intensely important, scary, solemn, palpable, unforeseen experiences, and all the weird ways that we honestly, humanly react to them; that we learn some of the most memorable lessons.

No, we should never knowingly seek to exploit others’ pain in order to learn, or to teach; but, when we haphazardly-happen upon that pain, and become a part of it, I believe not learning from it, would be the even-greater wrongdoing.

In this case, that meant watching-unfold, the aftermath of one of the saddest-actualities of life; as well as, concurrently, watching-unfold the realest experience of Logan Paul’s life, thus far.

Yes, 22 means he’s a man, and not a boy. But, in reality, at 22 the prefrontal cortex is still developing. And the full processing-spectrums of judgement-capacity, reflection and discretion, and rational-awareness in regard to the accumulation of significant-life-experiences, are all still developing.

For fuck’s sake, he said he’s never even seen (not just never found, or been near, but never seen) a dead body. That means he’s never been to an open-casket funeral yet, in his 22 years of living. Imagine that life-experience bubble. Then imagine, on top of that, you’re a semi-wealthy, (white) American youth, who doesn’t really respect or understand the deeper side of life yet, because you’re still just in that ‘live fast, have fun, do you, chase your dream’ mentality.

Inside of this, you can tell that he did not thoroughly grasp what that forest meant, before going there. And if that ignorance offends you, you are more than allowed to feel that way.

Intellectually, it seems obvious that knowing the stories, and encountering the weight of their truth, are two, very different perspectives. But, sometimes this cannot be fully-understood, until a real-life experience shows you.

A fact, that will hopefully never be lost on Logan, his friends, or any of us, again.

And that’s one reason, anyway; why I think sometimes, awful mistakes, like this video, need to happen.

Of all the paths, in all the forest, they wound up there. From a semi-average ‘YouTuber-on-location’ stunt; to a legitimate test of character, for all of us.

I think, that what they were expecting, was an abstract-legend. They thought they’d have a regular camping trip, scare each other with ghost stories, and then add in some PSA, as an afterthought. What they got was a life-altering experience in true reality; one that they hadn’t wholly absorbed yet, while they were filming what we saw.

This is where it also, must, be understood, that for some people who experience this (discovering a deceased person), especially for those who have lived safely-sheltered lives, or for those who are used to employing emotional-compartmentalization; when they are suddenly faced with real, unfiltered death it can take quite a while for it to really, viscerally hit them.

This perplexing state, is metaphorically-comparable to a dazing-fog of surreality.

And the length of the adjustment-period, back to aware-acceptance, is defined by many things; including, whether or not that experience, has an audience, taking precedence over it.

Yet, this is one, vital reason, why the public forum exists: so, that we can see that we all deal with these difficult situations differently, and to learn to accept and not judge or hate that.

Yes, we may, unavoidably, feel as though they did not handle the situation respectfully. And those are absolutely valid feelings. But, how the guilt will find them later, and the good they may do because of it; we cannot, yet, know.

Yes, for some, the emotional-reaction is instantaneous. They cry. They scream. They pray. They beg. They just shut down.

But, also yes, that other times, they keep on filming and then post, simply because that’s what they’ve always done, and they are still in the process of understanding the gravity of all that’s just changed.

Though they feel it later, they still feel it deeply and truly.

There are SO many reactions, I could never list them all.

This is the nature of death. And, it affects us each, differently.

But, when we’re faced with the unthinkable, I feel, we can either look away from what’s painful, and never fully see it; or we can accept the discomfort that comes with looking right at it, and learning from it all we can, in order to save others.

Because I can guarantee you, someone saw the harsh-reality, in that video; and it was the sobering wake-up call they needed, to no longer romanticize, or glamorize, or trivialize the idea of suicide.

Someone saw them reacting slowly, and casually, and not handling it perfectly; and finally stopped beating themselves up, for reacting the same way in a different-but-similar scenario.

And yes, unfortunately, given his young fan-base, there were also, assuredly, some morbidly-curious kids who were faced with their first, visceral dose of life-and-death reality. Whether that was a maturing-lesson or a scarring-trauma; again, will be subjective to the child.

I, myself, experienced a very similar test while still in elementary school. And, though I did, consequently, have a great-many complicated feelings to work through; overall, it taught me some very crucial truths, about seeking out adult knowledge as a child. Truths, which would later, prove to save my life.

All in all, there are many interpretations, perspectives, and outcomes.

Negative, and positive.

Things work out in as many ways, as there are people and possible choices.

And we don’t all feel the same, about what heals us and hurts us, when dealing with tragedy.

Plenty of people, feel that no matter how shocking your choice of how you talk about it is, that the most important thing is to express yourself truthfully and genuinely. And, what he posted was definitely-not sensitive or tactful: but, it was bravely, brutally, and transparently honest.

My final point, more than anything, is this: I feel that, as negative as the whole situation is (and this applies to almost-all other such ‘celebrities’ and ‘scandals’), adding more negativity, almost seemingly-trying to push Logan to the brink of the very-despair we’re all supposedly-fighting; this helps, literally, no one.

It, especially, doesn’t help the memory of the person whose life was lost.

Instead, we should all be honoring that person by learning their story, respecting their memory through not further-using them for our own agendas, and also, by associating with them a peaceful-event, where we choose to look at the full-spectrum of life’s volatile-truths; in order to finally love each other and ourselves a little more, and to treat each other and ourselves a little better.

So, let’s all be better people, right now; by finding a way to express our negative emotions, without casting excessive and divisive shame and hatred. Because, fundamentally, in their use, they undermine the very-worthy cause, we’re supposed to be defending.

We’re supposed to be, being kinder to each other, and to ourselves.

Kindness > Blame

Forgiveness is a virtue, to all. Always.

Especially, when it’s challenging.

So, no matter how obscure or famous the person: find a way to be kind.

This is how the most lives are saved, in the grander scheme.

Note: Though this is an open letter; its intention is to provoke contemplative silences, not angry responses. I hope that I portrayed the fact that I respect everybody’s right to their opinion, whether they agree or disagree with the opinions I’ve stated here. And though, it is my true hope, that one day we can all talk these things out rationally, rather than emotionally-reacting with wrath; ultimately, that’s a choice every person has to make for themselves. So, if you agree with what I’ve said: thank you. If you disagree with what I’ve said: thank you. And if you’ve fully-understood all I’ve said: double thank you. Seriously, I’m obviously a very long-winded, over-analytical, micro-editing, weird-stream-of-consciousness kind of writer. I’m sure to most people, this will read as confusing and all over the place. But, hey, that’s just my manifestation of truth. Thanks, friends. Be well.

#youtube #loganpaul #pewdiepie #analysis #opinion #openletter #life #socialcommentary #felixkjellberg #youtubers #scandals

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serensama · 7 years

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V route asks

Hi guys I’ve just gotten a couple of asks that might be a little spoiler-y so I’m answering them here under the cut so no one has to be forced to see it!

WILL UPDATE THIS POST FOR EVERY SPOILER-Y ASK I GET SO YOU’RE NOT INUNDATED WITH IT ALL :)

@mc-of-my-life I am one of the camp leaders honey! I am all about V being happy but then Ray being happy too! I need that boy to live happily ever after, my soul depends on it. Granted this MC... WHO DOES THAT? Who lets themselves be kidnapped? Man as soon as the driver said that if i didn’t wear the sleeping mask that he had sleeping pills for me to use I was like- SERIOUSLY??? WHY NOT JUST CLUB ME OVER THE HEAD?

Yes. Yes they are my darling. I just want to hug Mama V so tightly, bless her. Also- I love her voice actor, such a beautiful calming voice, I wonder how V would have grown up differently if he had heard his mother’s voice as he went to sleep TT__TT sorry I have a lot of feelings about this TT__TT

Let me tell you, coming from a psych background did that throw me in for a loop. I was like- you can see her morality? REALLY? Her ethics?? LIKE PHYSICALLY SEE THAT?!?!?! What you're likely seeing is her ego , what she’s portraying to society to meet societal norms. Her superego... that was becoming more and more distorted so if you could see that V... and you did nothing... I need to whoop your ass. Then again he’s quoting Freud so he may need an asskicking anyways. But I agree Nonny- I do believe that V can see more than most people, but i think that’s because he genuinely cares more than most people. Like he wants to take the time to get to know people and help them... sometimes to his ... and their... detriment.

OMG I LOVE HIM SO MUCH. THE SASS. THE FACE. I AM HALF IN LOVE AND I KNOW NOTHING ABOUT HIM. MULLET AND ALL. BLESS HIS FIESTY ASS.

I understand that, trust me- i above all people do. I think V tried his best and got overwhelmed, thought that he could handle her issues and “love” the darkness out of her. I just really hate that Rika discontinued her treatment, knowing full well that she was capable of hurting anyone and she stopped it, that kills me, it makes me furious. It’s one thing if your mental illness is only affecting you but the moment it becomes detrimental to the people around you, becomes dangerous for the people around you- you have a god damn duty to take care of it. The emphasis is on choice, correct- but it also shines upon the consequences of choosing wrong.

Im pretty sure there’s going to be a Saeran route too, to make him so loveable is probably a ploy to see how we all react and how much we want to have one as well. So everyone please continue supporting Cheritz and letting them know how much we love them for their work and please- please let us have a Saeran route. It’s time to right all the wrongs here! *Zen is shocked to learn that tears have moisturising properties!? Immediately goes into his room and starts method acting to cry himself to sleep to wake up with glowing skin,.... but puffy AF eyes*

I know honey, I know- I am here for you!!! I have to say that I DIED when they incorporated how much he loved art and painting and the good ending where he mentions canvases etc- I WAS REBORN! I was like.... am I psychic or what?!?!? Hahahah I always figured that heh was an artistic person as a son of a people (who i thought was a painter and a singer) who are patrons of the arts, he would definitely be one to explore his artistic options. I was saddened to see that I wasn’t completely correct in that HC but I still love that in his blood, he is an artist. And at least one parent saw that and nourished it TT__TT *cries for Mama V* OH GOD TT__TT Don’t even get me started on Ray, that poor fragile innocent bean. I will save him. Next time. I will save him and they will all be happy.

First Nonny: The only bad end I’ve ever done was Jumin’s and that was because I loved his little smirk in the bad end (yes you know the one). Cheritz would have done that on purpose, without a doubt. Kudos Cheritz, kudos!!!! They have some great writers on their staff who should be proud :) Second Nonny: I know. In my head, i didn’t see him die so it didn’t happen. He got out. Saeyoung saved him and he’s alive and well. I saw it happening from day 4 with the way he acted when V came to save her- the level of possessiveness and panic he displayed proved how unstable and how reliant he was on her for his happiness... if she was to go away... and WASNT saved by the RFA... there was only one place for him to go TT__TT.... i hate being right.

WHY!?!? WHY WOULD YOU EVEN PUT THAT INTO MY HEAD NONNY?!?!?! DONT YOU KNOW I LIVE FOR ANGST AND LOVE TRIANGLES?!?! TT__TT *scribbles down all the fic ideas she’s just been given*

Jumin is a saint in every route. He is the Best. EVER. (not a jumin fan girl at all). The sarcasm and eloquence to which he destroyed Rika made me smile and clap. She deserved to have all her preposterous ideas and excuses thrown back at her. But- but... she does need help. Serious psychiatric help and all the people who she brainwashed and manipulated need help too.... but omg... if it were just me and her, in a quiet room before she was taken away for treatment and still rather lucid- I would rip into her for hurting my babies. For breaking Yoosung. For betraying Saeyoung and destroying Saeran. For manipulating Jumin and crushing V.... and well thanking her for giving Zen a pat on the back and some flowers I guess and just leaving Jaehee alone... and then wishing her a good recovery and a lifetime to think over the wrong she had done!

I don't think it’s a bad thing I mean... it’s kinda that same in the deep route- the one you’re romancing is almost always threatened of being overshadowed by the one still trying to win your heart. Only difference is that we didn’t get to really win Ray’s heart/get a good ending with him. Which is fair. BECAUSE I NEED A ROUTE JUST FOR HIM GOD DAMN IT. HE DESERVES ONE. HES GONE THROUGH THE MOST AND NEEDS THE MOST LOVE!!! But I think V did shine in all of this- the reason why there’s so much support and outpouring of love for Saeran is because of what happens to him in the route. I honestly believe if Saeran got his happy ending and got reunited with Saeyoung and joined the RFA the amount of angsty love for Saeran would be cut by like HALF. We are a sucker for pain, and seeing a beloved character in pain makes us want to rally and support him... and now that V got his happy ending... everyone wants one for Saeran too. It’s only natural :)

#mystic messenger spoilers #v route spoilers #april answers #mysme #general talk #v route asks

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