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firein-thesky · 18 days

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Why is it that dc such as r@pe, sa, and incest is totally okay to write about and romanticize but y’all draw the line at racism, fat phobia, and homophobia *talking about the writings creators make, not personal beliefs*? Whats the difference between these things? All of them are hurtful and affect people in real life, so why is everybody on here choosing and picking one and not the other? Do writers on here think that they are not comparable or that one is okay to romanticize and the other is going way too far?

Im just genuinely curious as I have seen this topic be brought up again and again, which has made me realize this and Id like to see it from someone else's pov.

hi! there is a lot to answer and unpack here and i have every intention of doing so underneath the cut. forgive me if this gets long, but you’ve asked me 4 very massive questions that i think warrant detail, nuance, and thought. there is a lot i’d like to say here.

that being said, mind the content warnings and protect yourself.

cw: mentions of rape, incest, racism, homophobia, fat phobia, discourse in general

firstly, i am going to choose to give you the benefit of the doubt in assuming you are actually curious in hearing another side and you are not simply looking to stir a pot or pick a fight with beliefs you have no intention of changing or having an open discussion on. your accusatory tone in the first half indicates otherwise and kindly, i am not an idiot. but i want to earnestly talk to you about this and again, will think better of you than you perhaps have indicated you think of me.

secondly, you do not have to censor words like rape in my inbox. that sort of censorship has become wildly popular because of tik tok and other money-hungry social media that also desperately want to silence people. do you know why you have to censor words like that on tik tok? or words like genocide? suicide? racism? 1. so that they can make money and market and push their squeaky clean algorithms but 2. and perhaps worse, so they can silence victims. if social media platforms and capitalism and the systems of powers had it their way, you would never utter these words again—whether to call someone out for justice or to have an open discussion like this one. i encourage you greatly to think critically about this and how you choose to use censorship and why.

now, to your questions.

to preface, i am interpreting this ask as being anti-dark content in fiction as you state that ALL these subjects harm people in real life. or at least, you are being critical of all dark content in fiction and the way writers engage with them, effectively ‘picking and choosing’ which are deemed acceptable and which aren’t, when they are all hurtful. i apologize if that wasn’t your intention/what you believe, but regardless, i’ll endeavor to answer you.

i personally have drawn no lines about dark content nor spoken about any of these topics specifically really, which indicates to me you have a different narrative and/or are coming from more inflammatory arguments that are always circling fandom lately. in the post i most recently reblogged, i spoke mostly of violence. which, of course, all of those things can be. but i didn’t name one of those topics in particular.

regardless, i don’t believe in the censorship of any dark content in art, but rather advocate strongly for critical analysis on a case-by-case basis. in general, i encourage thinking critically about every aspect of the world around you.

i do not believe that rape, incest, and sa are okay to write about or create art about but racism, homophobia, and fat phobia are not. i believe all of those topics are ones that can, should, and will be explored in the safety of art. all to varying degrees of success, earnestness, impact, and intent. you’re right that these are real things, that can hurt people, and the fictional work about them can have impact on our society that is tangible but the actual art or fiction created is not real. and again, this is all to varying degrees on a case-by-case basis.

art and fiction also historically and massively do discuss these dark content topics and have actively swayed the public’s opinion on matters, whether for better or for worse. throwing away all dark content in art and fiction because it is ‘harmful’ is deeply, deeply dangerous and reductive. a lot of art that engages with dark content actually makes very succinct points about it—i think of vladimir nabokov’s lolita or octavia butler’s bloodchild or speak by laurie halse anderson.

this is where we must exorcise critical thinking. some pieces of work will handle dark content poorly—white saviors making art on racism. men making art about a woman’s experiences that (as you are so interested in) romanticize her pain. etc. etc. and some art will handle it’s dark content incredibly and be transformative, perhaps even revolutionary in how we talk, perceive, or acknowledge systems of oppression, violence, and dark content in this world. some dark content in fiction will have damaging beliefs and effects on society, some will not—we must also look at scope for this, at the writer perhaps, the historical moment, their audience etc.

(for example, there is a significant difference in a main stream male writer, writing of a woman’s experience with rape in a published book in a way that makes it sound romanticized, sold to thousands and thousands of general public vs. a woman using fanfic to explore rape, take control of it, or whatever in a fanfic for a small online community where there are warnings on it. indicating she is aware of its potential damage in a way her male counterpart is not…)

but i still believe in dark contents’ existence in art. of course there is differences between all of these topics you brought up, but i don’t think their differences matter in this answer. i believe in their right to be explored in art. i am talking broadly of media/art here, which i think is the more relevant conversation, but i think you are actually more interested in a much smaller scale of people. ie. fandom. ie. mostly marginalized people in small communities online writing and creating dark content.

people will choose and pick which ones they’d like to create art over and which ones they don’t, which ones they read and which ones they don’t. there’s no ‘hard line’ drawn anywhere. and i can’t control it and neither can you. perhaps you think violence is okay to be explored in fanfic, but racism isn’t. someone else will have different preferences. i do not believe in its censorship.

now, let’s move onto your interest in romanticization and what i think you are more pointing to, which is fandom. you are specifically referring to people in fandom who write about rape, incest, etc. and ‘romanticize’ it—ie. they write about it in a way that is a fantasy. it is perhaps supposed to be horny or sexy. so let’s talk about it.

i must remind you that these topics you’ve brought up (rape, incest, sa) being written are fiction and it is (most often) done by someone marginalized who has either experienced this or is in threat of experiencing this under a patriarchy. i assure you, they are aware of its harm. hence the copious warnings in fandom spaces.

if i can be candid, sometimes i think that people forget how systems of oppression work when discussing fandom and whether dark content being created should be allowed or not.

for example, i sometimes think people who are anti-dark content in fandom believe that a woman or afab person writing a fictional fanfic about rape or sexual violence then influences people to go out and rape people or that women actually like it. when the reality, in fandom spaces, is that rape and sexual violence happen frequently under the patriarchy and then these women in fandom write fictional fanfic in response to cope, explore, take control of, etc. etc.

to insinuate that women or afab people (which fandom mostly is) exploring dark content safely in fiction then causes their own oppression and harm or trauma is rather victim-blame-y to me. fandom exploring dark content does not cause these things to happen in our society….these actions (rape, incest, sa) happen in our society or systems of power and fandom reacts to them in their art by exploring it in dark content. do you understand what i’m trying to say?

it’s not a matter of what is ‘okay’ to romanticize and what isn’t. i do not think the romanticization that fandom does with dark content (ie. my kidnapper actually loves me! or this sexual act that i did not consent to…maybe feels good) is not actually romanticizing but coping because of the systems of power that i described above. and this can be coping with anything—shame of sexuality, shame of fantasies, trauma, fear, etc. etc.

as i said in my tags in that post i reblogged and as plato said, dark content in art is a safe place to explore what would otherwise be harmful and dangerous in real life. it is cathartic. potentially even, a purging.

and even if it isn’t all that—maybe it just is trashy fantasy. it is still playing pretend. it is still fiction and in fandom spaces, it is still most likely being created by a marginalized person. and again, even if it isn’t, we don’t get to censor it. we can be critical of it or wary or whatever, but to censor it, is a slippery, slippery slope. do deem some topics as “acceptable” and others as “unacceptable” is dangerous.

just like kids play pretend where they ‘fight’ or ‘kill’ or ‘kidnap’ or ‘shoot’ each other in games of cops and robbers or heroes and villains, they are safely exploring adventure, dark content, fantasy, tragedy, and higher emotions. adults can do the same in fiction and with adult topics like sex.

and at the end of the day, we don’t get to demand the credentials to do so either. we don’t get to censor them or control them and nor should we be allowed to. i cannot stress enough that i encourage you to be critical of censorship or the absolute disgust in dark content and at those (again—often marginalized people) who engage with it in fandom. i believe it is deeply puritanical, conservative, and dangerous.

you don’t have to like dark content or consume it at all and fandom makes it easy not to with all the warnings and tags, but you cannot control others or police them. nor should you want to.

and at the end of the day, i have some questions for you. you don’t have to respond to this, perhaps they’re just things to think about. what is the end goal here? what is the point in harassing, shaming, attacking, criticizing, or interrogating people in fandom spaces who create or support dark content? do you believe that if it is purged from fandom, it will be purged from our society? if you want it purged from society—shouldn’t you start there rather than in the inbox of marginalized writers in fandom? people in fandom did not create rape, incest, and sa nor do they in their exploration of fiction…they are merely reacting to a world that did create it.

i hope at no point i came off as rude to you, as was not my intention. i intended to stand up for myself and respectfully state my opinions and thoughts on this matter. i’m sorry it got long, but also i don’t believe in being brief on such complex matters. i am a writer who engages critically with the world around me and sometimes, things cannot be made into short, snappy answers. sometimes, we must unpack.

genuinely wishing you well.

#i cannot guarantee that i’ll have the time patience or energy to answer every ask like the one above in such detail #going forward #but i do support open discussions and i wanted to be kind to this anon #these are just my 2 cents on all of this #cw: rape #cw: incest #cw: racism #cw: fat phobia #cw: homophobia #discourse

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greensun · 9 months

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THE BIG QSMPSTUCK LOREDUMP AKA: I finally get to do all the lorebabble I wanted to do.

EDIT (11/1/2023): THIS VERSION IS NOW OUT OF DATE AND DOES NOT INCLUDE THE PEOPLE IN THE ICE CUBES. I AM CURRENTLY REWORKING PARTS OF THIS BUT MOST SHOULD STAY THE SAME FOR THE NEW POSTS SANS BAGHERA, KAMETO, AND DANTDM'S CLASSPECTS! LOOK FORWARD TO UPDATED POSTS IN THE FUTURE.

SOME NOTES: 1. I have a very specific version of qsmpstuck going on with my art I make that I made with a group of friends (thanks Slimercord!) 2. There are other people who made other classpects and takes on QSMP characters that are more character based, mine is not that case, it looks at how QSMP as a whole would work as a full sburb session, and balancing how many people would be on each aspect or class to carry that motif of Homestuck's balancing/equal duality theme. This means I am looking at and using Classpects as a narrative & plot device, not necessarily a personality test like how someone would classpect a real person (This is how the Extended Zodiac works, and why I choose to ignore it for character classpecting. It works great for classpecting real life people though, so by all means you can use the EZ for you and your friends!). 3. AND WITH THAT! It means two people per aspect and and class, with the exception of space and time having three people, and knights and heirs having three people. 4. FAIR WARNING: IF YOU HAVE NEVER READ HOMESTUCK, THERE IS LOTS OF DEATH IN IT, WITH LOTS OF RESURRECTIONS. I WILL BE DISCUSSING DEATH IN A VERY JOKING MANNER HERE! 5. For posterity in case things change in the future: This post was made August 2nd 2023, after the French were added, and right before the Election arc finished. I'm sure if I came back to this after QSMP is over my classpecting would be different. (Updated August 20, 2023)

I'll add this again at the bottom but if you want more of my notes and thought processes or just more qsmpstuck in general here's the link to my tag for all qsmpstuck on this blog, and here's the link to all qsmpstuck on my regular mcyt blog. (my regular blog includes other people's qsmpstuck takes & reblogs however! But every classpect analysis I reblogged in there w/ an anonymous ask sent to the OP was me on anon lol)

HERE WE GO! The big ol google doc sheet I had to make for this. Every note on that godtier order list is how we decided the character would godtier, and we still aren't even technically done! I have so much information built up for this AU I am not sure I could include all of it in this post.

CLASSPECTS

Anyway, in terms of classpects, the way we went about deciding was 1. Finding symbolic meanings we felt fit the characters best 2. If the classpect was funny and had a fun double entendre to the character 3. If we really struggled, we went and picked up Dahni Witch of Light's classpect analyses and found which class fit a character best within an aspect we had a vague idea of. I find Dahni's analyses to be the best at classpecting non-homestuck characters with, because they give enough leeway in interpretation and are somewhat broad, while still applying as a fictional character's story arc, rather than solely a personality test. We also basically ignored most classpect's assigned "role" concept thingy, they were too nebulous in meaning to help much, with the only ones we kept being Sylphs are the passive creation class with Maids as the active creation class, and then Bards are passive destruction, Princes are active destruction.

AND NOW BACK TO THE CUBES YOU CARE ABOUT: As stated before, we did lay it out so we (mostly) only had two per aspect and class, to get that true fan session balancing spirit. Space/time and knight/heir are the only ones with three members. Here's how the outfits look!

My favorites here & their reasonings are: - Etoiles: Sylph of Blood - We all agreed him getting a classpect that is at least somewhat silly would be fitting, but all immediately came to the conclusion that he would hands down be a blood player. From his love of fighting, and the way he goes about befriending everyone he meets to help them, he's just so blood player. To balance out our initial silly classpecting idea, we made him a Sylph! It fits, like, really well! He creates friendship, he helps people, like. What more could you want from a classpect for him. - Mariana: Maid of Doom - I sent these two asks to this other person about this and liked their reasonings lol. - Spreen: Prince of Breath - Look I'm a Spreengirl I think he would play a great active destruction class and he takes away other's freedom (in minecraft). He kills people. He's just so Prince to me. It's really funny. - BBH: Knight of Life - Do you know how funny it is to take a guy who's whole thing is that he's like entirely black and red themed and put him in the burlap sack outfit. Also Knight & Space player frog breeding combo. He's working with Foolish on those frogs. - Foolish: Page of Space - This guy is the ultimate builder of all time ever. He was hands down the easiest to look at and go Oh he is THE space player here. - Fit: Prince of Space - Y'know 2b2t and hacked clients and griefing people? Prince of Space. Plus since he's a space player, soooo - Philza: Knight of Rage - Another great Space & Knight combo. This guy is such a hater on QSMP (positive) he doubts easily distrusts whenever necessary. Such a rage player. - Missa: Bard of Time - Missa is really failgirl I know quite a few people haven't like... watched much of his MC stuff. However you should check out when he had to be placed in a box to fish by himself so he wouldn't die a third time in Minecraft Extremo. He's a perfect Bard, and then he does music. Great set up for a Time player. Wouldn't want it any other way. - Antoine: Seer of Void - truly. Truly. A guy I looked at for two minutes and immediately knew what classpect he needed. That scene where he just like lightly questioned Cellbit after he escaped the federation and it made Cellbit so nervous he started just saying things that made him look way more nervous than necessary? Core Antoine moment for me. The fact he has a basement filled with so much writing on every candidate? The fact he hides his true face so much? We don't even know what's going on there? Void Player. Seer. So fitting it's beautiful to me. - Felps: Maid of Breath - Look, breath is THE aspect of freedom and doing what you want at your own pace. I think I would be committing a cardinal sin if I DIDN'T make Felps a breath player. - Tazercraft: Witch of Doom & Page of Time - They get to do a fucked up glitch timeloop. With these two classpects they can literally do whatever they want forever. Witch of Doom is a classpect that you give to a character if you know they can rip everything to shreds, have fun doing it, but wouldn't (usually) use it to actively hurt people out of true malice (for no reason) (a witch can DEFINITELY respond negatively if push comes to shove). Page of Time is so funny as a classpect also. Just like... Look up what the Page godtier outfit looks like. You'll see what I mean... And why Pac is a page. - Rubius: Waste of Breath - This classpect sounds really mean, sorry. I promise I like Rubius. He's supposed to be a stand in for what the Hussie author insert was in Homestuck, opposing Doc Scratch and fighting him. Hussie was a Waste of Space, I wanted to keep the pun with waste here. Breath worked the best. The federation has a Lord of Blood ability to counter him. Neither of these two count for the main classpect total.

One day I might post a copy of the google sheet and link it for more in-depth reasonings for every character, but like... almost everyone had reasonings like this where we spent waaay too long analyzing everyone LMAO. This is getting long as is, so I'll cut off classpecting here.

DREAMING MOONS

I am about to say something that will make people either really mad or really happy. There is no canon true definition of what assigns you a dreaming moon in Homestuck's text. The only thing we can glean from canon about which moon you get is that Prospit humans make their bed in the morning, and Derse humans don't. Needless to say, this doesn't help when you want to individually give each person a dreaming moon, but it IS great news for me: it makes assigning dreaming moons based on dividing the cast in half really, really easy. That is how it worked for the troll session, it was cut in half with teams, and then assigned based on red team vs blue team. So that is what I did here. All of the English speakers were given Prospit, and all of the Hispanic side were given Derse. This has lore relevance. We'll get back to it in a moment.

Also for note, the Federation is Prospit, with Dersite carapacians being a more nebulous identity against the Federation. Hispanic side was given Derse because they just seem more like Derse guys. Plus the whole Time on Derse/Space on Prospit theme going on in original HS canon is something I kinda wanted to go along with.

Quackity was given dual dreamer, with one of his dreamselves being ElQuackity, hence why he isn't listed. To balance this, we had to make another dual dreamer, and figured handing it to Kameto, who basically is permanently lost in the void, would be a good balance.

The French and Brazilian sessions were assigned using the "well this character would make sense here" method.

Server/Client Orders & Session Chains

If anyone needs a brief refresher, a client is the person you get into a sburb session, and a server is the person gets you into the session. Everyone is a client and a server to someone different. (tl;dr John was Rose's client, Rose was John's Server.) THAT BEING SAID! It means the loop for sessions close once you're all connected to both a client and a server. There are three separate sessions here, and one of them is a mobius double reacharound.

For clarity, the arrows mean: Client <- Server

The Original session, the mobius double reacharound, is the Spanish-English session. The order is

Quackity <- Mariana <- Spreen <- Roier <- Missa <- Vegetta <- Maxo <- Luzu (<- BBH)

BBH <- Foolish <- Slimecicle <- Jaiden <- DanTDM <- Fit <- Philza <- Wilbur (<- Quackity)

Because of the nature of a Mobius Double Reacharound, it means BBH and Quackity enter the session first, by technicality. The first person in a session is also the person who does the ectobiology. Unlike the troll session which only had Karkat as the ectobiologist, if Q!Quackity were the sole ectobiologist, no clones would be made and everyone would be stuck in a paradox, so I think it's funnier if BBH and Q had to work together on Ectobiology. I find their dynamic hilarious. Anyway, Luzu and Wilbur had to be the last in their respective chains, because no one else would be able to enter.

The next chain is the Brazilian closed Session, which is

Forever <- Mike <- Pac <- Felps <- Cellbit (<- Forever)

As previously mentioned, Pac e Mike (uou uou) have very good classpects to make up for the fact they have no space player. I'll come back to this.

The final chain is the French closed session. It goes

Baghera <- Antoine <- Etoiles <- AyPierre <- Kameto (<- Baghera)

They have balanced moons! They have a space player! They have a seer even! Both light and void! However, in missing a time player, they are forever doomed to fail the session.

LANDS OF PLANETS AND PARTNERS

Now I can finally explain actual lore. My apologies for making you read about 1000 words before this.

The Hispanic-English session is glitched. There is not a planet for each person. They have to share planets with a person from the opposite dreaming moon, generating lands that are a combination of two different aspects entirely. The planetary pairings for this prime session are the same pairings used for the initial egg pairings.

I really love designing lands for Sburb AUs it's my favorite thing in the world. The first one is the Land of Acid and Alcohol, Slimecicle (Heir of Heart) and Mariana's (Maid of Doom) land. Its oceans are acid and gasoline, and then covered in bottles that are a Russian roulette of alcoholic beverages, and then Molotov cocktails! The second is the Land of Steam and Dreams, Roier (Witch of Blood) and Jaiden's (Seer of Hope) land. It's filled with buildings built in an industrial revolution style architecture, playing on how people could believe in social mobility and "making it" in that time period, while also being reliant on heavy metallic machinery! I have a lot of fun conceptualizing lands.

The session's glitches don't stop at the planetary pairings on their own however, and it continues when Luzu attempts to enter the session. The session glitches from him being BBH's client, where it refuses to match pairings if they're connected directly, as the game would be unable to generate the gates above each player's house, it would simply loop back to connecting with the same Land. Luzu ends up being paired onto Quackity's land because of this, because the Game still detects him as having a dreamself on the opposite moon, even if he technically has both.

This causes BBH and Wilbur's land to glitch, and they end up paired together (as a bit of a nod back to how BBH and Wilbur were initially intended to be paired, before admins just made a new egg for Wilbur). We'll get back to this in a bit.

Some other lands from the AH session I enjoy are - The Land of Lush Forests and Iridescent Lakes, also known as LOLFAIL, BBH and Wilbur's land, which is a double Life player land, so the oceans are filled with gemstones and the land is covered in the most dense forest imaginable. It has the most difficult underlings spawn on it compared to any other land in the Anglo-Hispanic session. - The Land of Frogs and Typhoons, Spreen and Fit's land, which every space player is guaranteed frogs as part of their land, combined with Spreen being a breath player, it is a constant hurricane with frogs in it. They do not work on trying to calm the storm. They just start killing the frogs. There are so many frogs. The frogs are constantly flying at anyone who enters the land. Fit's slogan is FTF. Thank you to crow qsmp-yaoi for saying this idea because it truly brings me to tears every time I think about them being hit by those frogs flying at Mach 10. - The Land of Synapses and Static, Maxo and DanTDM's land. It's a darkened land, caused by Maxo's void, and then covered in a blanket of constant fog so thick a lighthouse can barely cut through it. The land also has mimicking noises to make familiar sounds to any player that steps on it, caused by Dan's Mind. It is an overbearingly lonely land. One where you understand what it truly feels like to be alone. One where you can lose someone as soon as you take your eyes off of them. Maxo last saw Dan on this land. No one else has seen him since.

I'm going to stop myself here, but I might come back and draw some more Land illustrations for these, haha.

Denizeggs

With the planetary partners, you might have seen this coming. Each planet in the combined session is missing a Denizen. Instead, what each player finds at the heart of the land is a little egg they need to help raise. They all find eggs at different points, however. Some people find their egg before they godtier, some find them afterward.

All of the eggs correspond to the land of their respective parents, however Luzu joins into the session too late to ever meet Tilin, second to last of the chain, she's already dead by that point.

And then the final major glitch in starting this session, when Wilbur joins as the final member of the chain, and enters, the only land open is BBH's land. Due to the nature of Sburb already knowing how things would end, it was always going to be this way, and there was no other option on who's planet he would join. The game glitches again, and detecting a second Prospit player, spawns in a new Denizen: Tallulah.

The eggs generally follow how they were in QSMP proper. Some of them die early. Some of them don't. Juanaflippa is as tragic as she is in canon. Two dads who are just bad at raising a child and it would have never worked out. Slime still kills Tilin by accident. Spreen doesn't care about Ramon, ditched him etc you know how it goes. The eggs are partially a planet quest too, so it's best if the eggs do live here.

Also in the glitches with this, there's a lack of consorts on any of the combined planets. There are a few, but not really as common as canon proper would have.

BRAZIL! 🇧🇷

The Brazil Session is a closed session between the five Brazilians. One of the requirements to complete Sburb is that you need a Space player (required to have forge in order to complete the final genesis frog & launch it into creating a new universe) and a Time player (required to keep the session in the proper timeline). The Brazilians have a time player (Pac), so they're halfway there!

There's some hiccups along the way. Mostly just Cellbit accidentally killing Felps and having to sprite him so Mike could make him a robot body to live in, but same old same old etc. Pac and Mike also kill each other by accident, but some other stuff happens there.

They still don't have the main aspect to actually continue the session, realize this, and also have a guy with one of the most conceptually powerful classpects to exist in terms of being able to glitch a game and save everyone. They manage to contact the primary session, reaching out to two grieving parents who are desperate to do anything to revive their daughter, one of whom is also a very powerful Doom player.

Brazilian Lands (brief edition)! - Land of Vultures and Culture, Forever's land, is a Hope land based around having Forever work to help save consorts who are hiding beneath intense structures and live in very isolate communities from each other. There's also massive megafauna in the skies that are always trying to kill them. - Land of Electronics and Experiments, Mike's land, is a pretty typical doom land, based around Chume labs, and has a constant lightning storm overhead - Land of Dancefloors and Dollhouses, Pac's land, is a combination of a land quest he has to get through, and a typical time land. All time lands have a clockwork or a music theme, I think him having a hot pink land that's massive amounts of dollhouse rooms attached to each other he has to make it through is just a fun concept. - Land of Cloud and Sky, Felps's world, is just a land with everything high in the sky. His whole quest is about him harnessing his ability to go with the flow to connect his consorts together. This is hard when he's sprited himself after dying upon entering due to Cellbit fucking up and accidentally killing him, and living in a robot body built by Mike. Aradia style. - Land of Searchlight and Bone, Cellbit's world, is a giant panopticon style prison. With so many bones, both decorating the prison, and filling the prison cells. His final moment is when he gets to the office of the panopticon, and it is his quest bed. He has a whole ordeal over it.

RICARLYSON! So these guys have regular consorts and Denizens, Richarlyson spawns in the heart of Skaia, and gives the quest for the other five guys to raise him.

Pac (Page of Time) has the ability to manipulate time as he wants once he realizes his abilities. Mike (Witch of Doom) can rip a hole in the universe so big it saves all of the players and sets them smack in the middle of another session, especially a previously contacted session with the connection being a Maid of Doom. With a time player land as well, they get a scratch construct on the Land of Dancefloors and Dollhouses, setting up their ability to scratch their session and set loose a whole new universe where theirs once stood.

French

The French session has probably the most normal planets of everything going on here, what really starts their journey going awry is that they have no time player.

Antoine, being a Seer of Void, can see something is going wrong. He makes contact with people outside of their session in an attempt to restore things to balance. He goes off into the veil and contacts the horrorterrors, and sets up a connection between two Doom players who seem they both desperately need it.

While he's doing that, the rest of the French proceed to have the most normal Sburb session out of anyone. Etoiles is having a great time on his planet. Aypierre gets a genesis tadpole. Kameto has two backup lives.

French Planets (Brief Edition) - Land of Apples and Airplanes, Baghera's land! It's probably the nicest land of anyone's. There are many jokes about how she doesn't get why everyone keeps complaining about their lands being horrible until she reaches theirs. - Land of Sham and Soil, Antoine's land, it's a dark land with tall dirt towers that make it impossible to see where you step. You'd need to be someone who could find where you're going in the pitch dark to even survive here. - Land of Bonds and Breakouts, Etoiles's land, is a land of a giant maze dungeon labyrinth. It's a nightmare for everyone but him. He loves it. - Land of Bogs and Frogs, AyPierre's land, is a land with frogs in a very thick swamp. I'll be honest i Just need to cook on this one some more. - Land of Hidden Leaves and War, Kameto's land, is a Naruto joke.

POMME! Is like Richas she's in the middle of Skaia. An easter egg if you will.

The French session is brought into the primary session when Antoine manages to contact with everyone else fully, rather than quietly watch from the outside. Etoiles and Baghera lose their original selves, and are their dreamselves when the universes collide in, and were unable to godtier, due to not knowing about the quest slabs.

GODTIERING! & the rest of the chronological story

THIS is the order of the godtiers from the beginning of the Spanish-English session. Anyone in the other sessions who godtier before their universe collide event has a red numeral to keep them distinct. I feel pretty strongly almost everyone would godtier here, they're all characters based on gamers. Sburb au works exceptionally well when you know everyone's gaming style.

Also, yeah I have notes listed on each godtier order for how each person dies. Like it's that detailed atp.

Spreen has the highest kill count out of everyone on purpose. I think he'd be down to cut his friends down knowing they'd be revived immortal afterward. As well as, the federation is Prospit in this scenario, they want everyone to godtier. I think him playing to what they want out of him feels his style. Anyway, he sprites his own dreamself due to ElQuackity messing with timeloops. To make his living player self trust him, Spreensprite convinces him to godtier Roier first. It is himself he's talking to, after all. Roier becomes the first godtier in any universe, and not out of his own volition. After seeing it really did work with Roier, Spreen godtiers himself. He gets li'l bear ears ala Jade getting doggy ears with her dreamself sprited, he threw in a Rubius cubito to his kernelsprite first. I like the bear ears I'm biased .3. q!Spreen being really fun in a Sburb concept is why I got hooked on this au after all.

After the first lore is repeated, BBH godtiers himself by decapitating himself with a sendificator to fuck with Foolish. He's kinda bitter about getting beige clothes. He befriends the midnight crew at least. This is before he has Dapper. He finds out about godtiering from Roier by accident and then is like. Oh I have the BEST idea.

Vegetta is killed by Spreen by request, wanting to be stronger to protect Leo, and then Spreen godtiers Missa in order to use his time powers on Derse to throw his dreamself at the kernelsprite, locking the time loop. Anyway, Missa is essentially locked in a tower on Derse's moon after this, now permanently in his Dreamself's body, who hadn't awoken prior. Fit realizes people are walking around in weird clothes, hears about it vaguely from BBH, sends a text to Spreen who'd been ghosting him, and goes like. Hey man. Wanna kill me? And gets his first reply in months.

Phil is attacked by an overpowered monster and almost dies, and Missa manages to get the message to Fit that this is happening through time shenanigans, and Fit manages to get him to his questbed before he fully dies and loses his dreamself. Phil is not happy about this and could not be angrier. He doesn't blame Fit though it's like a self anger thing.

THE BRAZILIAN CASCADE HAPPENS! PEOPLE DIE. By which I mean Slimecicle and Mariana work together to try to help the Brazilians into the session in a bid at saving Juanaflippa, hoping one of them have the ability to revive her. Slimecicle is murdered in the crypts of Prospit by Quackity in a duel, where he cuts off Quackity's arm in exchange for Quackity cutting down his life. Truly one of those luck moments where Charlie dies on his questslab. Mariana is murdered at the same time by Spreen, who is now fully working under orders from the Federation.

Pre-cascade, Pac and Mike both godtier, because they stumble into a stable timeloop, by Mike accidentally glitching Pac's questslab into throwing it at him and killing him. He godtiers with this. Now, as a fully godtiered page of time, they make it to Mike's questbed, and godtier!Mike nudges Pac's slab at Past!Mike to pick up and throw when fucking around with powers.

Felps godtiers in the cascade along with Mariana and Slimecicle, they leave behind Derse and its moon, and they both get destroyed. Where his body sleeping on the quest slab godtiers. Aradia style. Except... as a Maid of Breath, his robot sprite body doesn't explode. He just sort of... exists in both. When one falls asleep the other wakes up. The rest of the Brazilian session just assumes the Cascade fucked with his robot body's energy sources. He kind of just figures each side is a weird dream he keeps having.

Cellbit is staunchly anti-godtier, while Forever wants someone he trusts to godtier him. Cellbit refuses to godtier Forever, and causes a major fight between them. Then Spreen murders Cellbit into his godtier under orders from the Federation, which is preceded by a long Scooby-doo-esque chase, where BBH sees them both, and decides to follow. BBH is a fully godtiered Knight of Life here, he has resurrection powers for other players, and Spreen is functionally immortal as well. BBH 100% catches up to him after he kills Cellbit, and proceeds to put Spreen in a torment nexus of dying and undeath. Thus ends the Killing Spree(n).

AND THEN THE FRENCH CASCADE HAPPENS! The final session connects, and Baghera sacrifices herself to make it happen. After they make it in, they learn about Quest slabs, and there's a whole thing with Etoiles dramatically getting her to her questslab before she fully dies. Etoiles then proceeds to go kill himself on the questslab immediately after. Felps is also hanging out with the French, they found him hanging out in the void and take him with them. They lose Kameto in the void however, nobody's really sure where he went.

Pre-French Cascade, Antoine is the only French player to godtier, and no one will explain how it happened. It seems like no one really knows, but Etoiles keeps saying more fantastical descriptions every time someone asks. He's never taken his seer hood off of his face.

Back in the order of the godtiers, Forever befriends Baghera, and eventually her and Etoiles and Cellbit help him godtier. It's a whole event. Richas is having a blast.

Bobby dies, and Jaiden decides to godtier in order to get into the Federation's good graces, as well as out of guilt of feeling that if she were stronger and godtiered she could have saved him. Roier godtiers her.

AyPierre is godtiered in a tragic accident with one of his many machines. Etoiles helps pull him to his quest bed. He's a Thief of Space he has fun with it.

Foolish is the second to last person to godtier, and he is godtiered by Pomme by accident. He wanted his godtier to be as cool as possible, and somehow managed to not godtier by this point. It's just very him. He's down with the page pants.

Quackity is the final member to godtier. BBH kills ElQ at one end of the universe with the aid of Maximus. Slimecicle kills the regular QQ in one final duel.

At the end of the universe, the only people left alive and able to contact the rest of the sessions to never godtier are Wilbur and Maxo.

DanTDM disappears on the Land of Synapses and Static, never to be seen again, along with Turnip following soon after.

Luzu finds a glitch and is absorbed by it not long after he enters.

Nobody is really sure if Kameto godtiered or not.

MISCELLANEOUS NOTES

We're currently working on figuring out sprites for everyone, so hey! I might come back and add an update on that, but this post is so long my computer is lagging. I have a gaming laptop. It shouldn't be doing that. Here's some stuff on the sprites we do have + some misc notes.

Cellbit's flashlightkind is like how Kanaya's lipstick works. It's a chainsaw.

Spreen has Spreensprite, BBH has Skeppysprite, Missa has a sprite that is a mysterious skull sprited twice called Skullskullsprite, and Roier has his dog with a spiderman called Dogmansprite, and Jaiden has Arisprite, who's Miku & Ari combined :D (thanks icarus!)

It is 5 am as I finish typing this and queue it. I think I started typing this at 5 pm yesterday. Feel free to comment any thoughts you have or play around in this au! Also feel free to @ me if you do, either on my main mcyt blog (@etoilesbienne), or here!

qsmpstuck tag on my art blog / qsmpstuck tag on my regular mcyt talk blog

#qsmp #qsmpstuck #qsmp au #qsmp homestuck au #mcytstuck

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dangerouslypassiveaggressive · 1 month

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A Terribly Organized Almost-Essay About Suzanne Collins and Why I Think She Writes

Lukewarm take because it's been years, but here it goes: if there's anything I've learned over the years, it's that Suzanne Collins is not a people pleaser. (The author, at least. I don't know her personally lol). And she be pleasing the people, that's not what I mean! I just kept hearing the same question being asked over and over again. "Why Snow? Why him?? Why not anybody else? Really?? A prequel about HIM??" It really made me think.

And don't get me wrong! I'd slash someone's tires for a Finnick prequel just like the next person (Suzanne please!), but that has never been the point of her writing. The Hunger Games novels, and by extension, the prequel book The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, aren't just fun fiction reads. Yeah, they're gripping. The world-building is superb. Young people are at the center of it. And all these characteristics are great, but the thing that draws us in, that keeps us consuming her media like hungry little caterpillars, is that they are, time and time again, a captivating and accurate criticism, analysis, and deconstruction of the broken systems society experiences in the real world. I can only speak from my own experience as a Mexican American woman in the United States, so take all of this with a grain of salt.

The Capitol is colorful and fun and interesting and horrible and sadistic. And it is all those things because it is a symbol of our own real-world 1%, except our own glittering Capitol members here in the real world feed us the hope that we may reach their status if we only work hard enough for long enough. The Hunger Games system never makes that claim. In fact, they are fed the narrative that the system only works because they're stuck where they are. Suzanne Collins is taking everything one step further in her writing because it is a type of satire, a critique of the things we already know. So as an author, she blows it out of proportion so that her reader will say "look at this! How ridiculous! How would someone let the system treat them this way!" And it is ridiculous, it's downright laughable that an entire society, an entire country, would let itself be oppressed in such a cruel way by just a few people in charge instead of rising up and- oh wow, yeah, I see it. She wrote about us.

Suzanne Collins just organized everything neatly into boxes- well, districts. Because every district comes with some form of product that they manufacture, but much more importantly: a class. We go in order from 1-13. District 1 manufactures luxury items and District 2 makes weapons (but mostly trains Peacekeepers), so they have the most privilege and wealth. On the other end, Districts 11 and 12 are the agricultural and coal mining districts, respectively. That's back-breaking work. Not to mention District 11 puts kids as young as 12 to work, and District 12 is poverty-stricken and starving. "But what about District 13?" You may ask, "They make nuclear weapons! Why aren't they up there with 2?" Fantastic question. If we know, and the people of Panem know, that the hierarchy is very clearly set by literal number order, why would one of the most powerful and competent districts be given more power and be put at the top? Placing them at the end lets them believe that they aren't powerful or competent. I mean, jeez, look at 12 and they're before 13? I wouldn't believe I could make it on my own either. (We know now that's not how things go down, but it's a clever power move regardless.)

But after all this, would it hurt Suzanne to give us a single book just for fun?

Yes, I believe it would, that's the whole point. We're not meant to fall for the Peeta/Katniss/Gale love triangle. We're not meant to be interested in Finnick's secrets and early life. We're not meant to want to know the morbid details of how Haymitch won his Games (with double the contestants! Ooh. Aah.) We're meant to be horrified at every turn, at every story. We're meant to ask ourselves how things got so bad, how anyone let this happen. Suzanne Collins has written wonderfully fleshed out characters that grip us and make us want to know more, but the point has never been them or even their loved ones. It was never about Katniss or Prim or Peeta or Finnick or Annie. It's always been about the systems that let this story happen, and where Suzanne got her inspiration: the very real lives we lead. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes shows us the same thing.

So why Coriolanus Snow? Because he is the catalyst to a broken system that only serves the powerful. If Suzanne were to write a novel about any of our much more beloved characters, then she would be writing the exact same book over and over about the same oppression happening in the same system. She does not write for the sake of bringing her very well-written characters to life, but to flesh out the poverty, the starvation, the power struggles, the horrors they experience. We know this because she writes a lot of her characters as symbols. (Coin, for instance, as the symbol for a power-hungry figurehead, or Prim as the innocent during war.)

Snow is living in a slightly different biome than what we know from The Hunger Games series. He has to make sacrifices and decisions for him and his family, but it's different. It is a view and critique from the inside looking in. This is not Katniss getting to experience the Capitol for the first time and understanding just how terribly unfair everything is. This is someone who is very aware of the way things work and playing the game to stay in power and keep their privilege. Not only that, but it's someone who feels entitled to all of it. In this novel, Suzanne plays around with power and people's position in it. What if a mad scientist was in charge? What if the creator of the thing that brought a semblance of peace was just as horrified as the reader? How far is one person willing to go for power? What if we saw the dawn of a world we're already familiar with?

So I hope she keeps writing, because I love seeing our world through her eyes and the parallels she writes from our world to hers of the injustices happening every day. Even though we'll probably never get the stories we crave, but that's okay. Keep putting those kids through hell, Suzanne.

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dragonsfromthemoon · 1 year

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ON ASOIAF, AGE GAP AND RHAELYA

This is a topic discussed over and over on fandom spaces. Often it is brought up by antis as a “gotcha!” against the fans of certain fictional couples — and on this meta, my focus is mostly on Rhaegar and Lyanna, though some arguments can be used for other ships as well.

That said, we have two ways of looking into this subject in the context of A Song of Ice and Fire.

Parting from a doylist analysis, we could rightfully criticize George R. R. Martin for his approach to age and relationships, especially regarding his female characters. In Rhaegar and Lyanna's case, we could object him putting an underage girl in a relationship with a married man about eight years her senior. If I were the one writing this story, I would have aged Lyanna up; there is no narrative/worldbuilding/plot reason for not doing that. Alas, I am not George R. R. Martin, the story does not belong to me.

The gist here, however, is reprobating the author's conscious choices, nor the characters themselves or their relationship. Rhaegar and Lyanna cannot make decisions or be held accountable in the real world, as they are only fragments of George R. R. Martin's imagination and words on a blank paper. The same is valid for any other relationship featured on Planetos.

Nevertheless, a doylist analysis is bound to face some questions and run into some issues as well. The first being, who is the one raising the objections? The answer is crucial, because the objector parts from their own vision of the world — which is dictated by one's upbringing, moral and culture. Needless to say, all of these things vary from person to person. Different fans will approach the matter of age gaps differently, based on their own opinions and experiences. The second one is, who gets to judge what is right or wrong? And this is followed by the question: what is the the acceptable age gap — 10 years? 5 years? 2 years? 1 year? Months? We would debate over it endlessly, because there is really no right answer, and everyone would apply their own biases to the issue. Thirdly, why did the objector decide to engage with a material that features such age gaps in the first place? We have the power over what we read and watch, over the fandoms we join; as well as the power of not engaging with triggering content for us anymore. Sanitizing fiction is not the way to go, because it brings more harm than good in the form of persecution and harassment of content creators and censorship (again, who gets to decide what must be censored and why?)

There are two more intertwined factors to take into account when discussing a doylist perspective: George R. R. Martin's historical inspirations and worldbuilding. Though so many times exaggerated and factually wrong, the fact remains that he draws inspiration from the European Middle Age (with focus on England) to build Planetos. And that reflects directly on the issues of age in his work. Childhood, adulthood, marriageable age, age of context are notions that differ drastically from our contemporary ones. We are talking about distincts periods of history, with distinct approaches to social and cultural norms, after all. Here the author himself discusses the issue of ages, if one would be interested to read on the topic.

Which brings me to the watsonian analysis part of this essay. Above all, the in-universe context matters here. And if we hope to understand the characters, their actions and views on relationships in a deep level, we cannot dissociate them from their historical and social in-universe background.

By the time Lyanna met Rhaegar, she was 14 and already engaged to Robert Baratheon. Her fiance Robert, by the way, was also older than her. By all accounts he desired her and claimed to love her, constructed an image of her in his mind. It is safe to speculate she would have been expected to marry Robert not long after Brandon Stark's marriage to Catelyn, if her elopement with Rhaegar and the Rebellion had not happened. My point here is, this was hardly a frowned upon marriage arrangement in A Song of Ice and Fire. Except for Lyanna, that is, as she did not desire Robert nor this marriage. Even so, her issue was not with his age (her distaste for Robert is a whole other discussion).

Well, when Lyanna starts her affair with Rhaegar de facto, she is about 16 (not 14, as antis like to claim; let's get our facts straight). By Westerosi standards, a woman grown, apt to marry and bear children. Rhaegar was about 24. Thus they have a 8 years age gap. This is hardly a remarkable age difference in Westeros, as so many couples have it even bigger. Almost all of romantic entanglements in this story have an element of age imbalance. I will not name these examples; I trust the readers to come up with their own.

My point here is, through watsonian lens, the age gap between Lyanna and Rhaegar is scarcely a problem or something to be particularly condemned. And quite frankly, there are other aspects of their characters and their dynamic that are more relevant to discuss, if we as readers take upon us to analyse them.

#ashter rambles #rhaegar targaryen #lyanna stark #rhaelya

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vettelsvee · 3 hours

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SHE'S NOT HANNA | Sebastian Vettel

f1 masterlist | history series masterlist | season 1

summary: seb overhears di talking with her sister only for him to find out her birthday is next monday... and that he has confused feelings about the intern

word count: 3507

warnings: bad language. mention to threesomes. much disrespect towards diana from a certain driver. narrated on seb's pov. i remind you this is a fictional work and everything you read here is not real.

taglist: [@theseerbetweenus @annewithaneofthegreengable @vincentvanshoe @formulaonebuff] if you wanna be tagged in each part just tell me in the comments <3

feedback, as well as reblogs and comments, are truly appreciated!

2009 Bahrain Grand Prix Bahrain International Circuit, Sakhir

April 25th

Saturday

Sebastian

The qualifying session in Bahrain went well, but it could have gone much better. That third place on the grid for the race the next day could have been a pole position if Rocky hadn't insisted on using the same amount of fuel we would start the race with tomorrow. Even Diana had said that with about two liters less it would have been better!

There was still some tension in the garage because our results hadn't been as expected, but I tried not to dwell on it as I watched the sun begin to set on the horizon, listening to my engineer's analysis and the deafening noises of the mechanics, whom I admired for working tirelessly on Mark's car and mine. The conversation Rocky and I were engrossed in was so fruitful that, to our surprise, we had been analyzing every single piece of data we could extract from the other drivers and, especially, discussing the improvements that could be made the next day for nearly three hours.

Di had been with us for most of the time, with a concentration that pleasantly surprised us. When her phone started ringing, the engineer's insistence that she answer the call, despite her attempts to insist it wasn't important, finally made a move a few meters away from us to take it.

I tried not to pay attention in what the blonde was talking about. After all, it was probably related to her personal life. As I studied the graphs and numbers in front of me, I couldn't help but get distracted when her soft voice, speaking in German, rose slightly:

"Yes, Ame, I understand," she tried to whisper calmly, failing miserably. Many of those present began to look at her curiously, wanting to know what my teammate's call was about. "Don't worry, okay? I'll be home on Monday night so don't get your hopes up too much... it's not like Dad is going to behave differently now that I'm away from home most of the time."

As much as I wished the latter hadn't made me want to know more about Wagner's personal life, I made every effort to focus my gaze and open my ears to the data I was being given, but it was totally impossible.

I hated myself because I couldn't forget about her, especially when all she did was raise her voice more and more, even catching Helmut's attention, who seemed to be in a bad mood.

"It's just another day," she continued, breathing in and out for relaxation. "Don't get me wrong: I know it's my birthday, but after so many years without celebrating it, I feel like it's just another day. Besides," she added, "it's good for me because I can focus on studying during the flight back home."

Listening to that made me completely stop paying attention to the conversation with Rocky, and I blatantly stared at the girl, who was still on the phone. I didn't know how to react to that, but I also couldn't find out much more about what she was saying because, as if she had realized that we were all paying attention to her, she switched to what sounded like Spanish. A perfect Spanish that not even Fernando spoke.

I might have been born to drive because it was the only thing I managed to do well, but... why did she do everything right?

"Seb, are you listening?"

"Uh... yeah."

My response was as calm as possible, but I realized I had failed miserably as the man in front of me began shaking his head, continuing to talk to me about things that had stopped mattering to me several minutes ago. My mind couldn't stop thinking about Di's birthday. Knowing that she hadn't celebrated it for a long time, for whatever reason, made me feel quite sorry, especially when I looked back at the last celebration Hanna and my mother had prepared for me at home.

Seeing that my mind was increasingly wandering, Rocky decided to let me go, but not without reminding me that I should be as calm as possible that afternoon so as not to interfere with tomorrow's results.

That's what he thought, because I certainly didn't plan to end the day in the calmest way.

Quickly, I got up from my seat and headed towards the entrance of the box from the pit lane, running. Seeing Mark standing with his mechanics, his arms slightly crossed and covered in grease up to his elbows, relaxed me a little for some reason; although, deep down, I was dying of nerves to tell him about the idea that had occurred to me and that I knew made no sense, but that I would still like to carry out.

At least someone would rid me of the birds my head had created.

"I know you don't care, but I think I have a very good idea."

"Do you know how to screw over the rest of the teams so we can at least win the constructors championship?"

Was this guy okay, or was stress making him say such nonsense?

"What? No!" I quickly replied while laughing, trying to get to the point and not beat around the bush. "Listen to me, and then you can say whatever you want, okay?" The Australian nodded, so I didn't hesitate to speak. "Monday is Di's birthday, and we're going to throw her a surprise party after the race," I affirmed, convincing myself that everything would go according to my sudden plans.

Webber looked confused, possibly because he was either surprised by my decision or completely agreed with it.

"Have you talked to anyone about this? Is Britta okay with you getting carried away? Are you sure Hanna won't mind? Does Diana know that you know her birthday in on Monday?"

His voice didn't stop for a moment, and I could even hear him getting breathless because he didn't pause for a second to catch his breath. His constant questions were making me more uneasy than I already was, so I didn't hesitate to cut him off.

"No," I began answering each of his questions. "No, and I don't care. Hanna is very understanding about the whole Diana thing, and she's the only thing that matters here; just because my girlfriend isn't the center of my life for once doesn't mean anything, Di deserves it."

"Okay..." my teammate replied, not very convinced, exerting more force in his crossed arms. "What do you need help with?"

Dam., I hadn't prepared anything because I hadn't planned to get to the point where Mark Webber actually agreed with me and wanted to help me with a crazy idea.

"Well... I thought we could do it at the hotel, right after the race," I explained as my mind projected a beautiful party with lots of balloons, a huge cake, and many gifts. "In a calm way, you know Di isn't usually into big parties," I clarified, remembering all the times she had been offered to come party with us, but she had politely declined, not limiting herself to making excuses. "I have to talk to other drivers first to see if they agree. What do you think?"

"Once we're in trouble, do things right," he replied. "Don't worry about anything now. Go talk to whoever you need to, and in the meantime, I'll call the hotel to reserve a large hall where we can all fit and you can fill it with confetti and stuff."

While my relationship with the light brown-eyed man was good, and I knew I could partly be myself when I spent time with him, I hadn't reached the point of trust to beg him for help with something. I suppose he thought the same of me, and now he would surely want to kill me for the mess I had just gotten him into; but he hid it perfectly because his smile never left his face.

"Thanks, Mark," I replied sincerely. "This means a lot to me, and I'm sure it does to Di too."

"Don't mention it, Seb. I'm happy to help you make your favorite paddock girl happy," he said, using the phrase I usually referred to the girl with, giving me a pat on the shoulder.

Immediately afterward, after several more glances and making sure the Australian didn't reveal the plan in front of the blonde, I began my journey through the paddock. Although at first I was a little worried about how reluctant people might be to my proposal, I ended up surprising myself because the vast majority of team bosses, drivers, and various members of the staff from the different teams agreed to come the next day to celebrate Di's twenty-first birthday.

Throughout all that hustle and bustle I avoided Britta, whom I ran into a couple of times. I felt guilty for not telling her what I was planning, but I was aware that she was going to give me hell as soon as she had the chance, and she was going to call me everything but nice. I knew that lately she had gotten much closer to the Austrian, and they had made some plans together, but there were still certain topics that my public relations and I were still avoiding, and that at the least opportune moment were going to come up.

Lewis and Fernando were the most excited to hear the proposal, even encouraging me to keep spreading the news. Others, like Rosberg, almost made me lose my nerves.

"We have to do something that surprises her! Man, it's Di's birthday, and if you say she hasn't celebrated it in forever, we have to make it even more unforgettable!"

Nico was so excited that it seemed like the celebration was for him. He kept raising his arms and that, along with the fact that he didn't stop using the nickname I had given to the girl, just made me angrier and angrier.

I was overreacting, and I couldn't deny that I was getting jealous because of the close relationship he seemed to have with the blonde. The affection with which he spoke about her was by no means similar to the one I had for, for example, Karina.

"Can you calm down for once?" I whispered angrily as I tried to calm his gestures. "You're not five years old and someone just gave you a Tamagotchi, damn it."

"Are you sure you're doing the right thing, Vettel?"

I felt Nico's penetrating gaze analyzing my expression, which was probably a mess. His words, totally contrary to what I thought he was going to say, were loaded with insinuation and provocation, and he knew it perfectly; I was smarter than him, and I wasn't going to play his game.

Before answering him, I clenched my teeth and forced myself to take a deep breath as I slowly counted to ten, trying to keep my calm as best as I could despite the growing anger that was quickly building up inside me.

"What are you talking about, Nico?" I asked, using the same tactic he was using and fixing my eyes on his.

I didn't understand why he was asking that, especially when he had no idea about my personal life, except that Prater was my girlfriend, of course. Everyone knew that except Diana, and I hoped it would stay that way until I found the right moment to tell her, or until they met each other.

"This whole surprise party for Diana," he continued, not abandoning the provocative tone that was bothering me so much. "Are you sure you're doing the right thing?" he repeated threateningly.

What right did this guy have to question what I was doing or not doing with my personal life? If Roeske barely controlled anything about me, even though that was his job, this jerk wasn't going to do it.

"It's none of your business, Rosberg," I replied flippantly.

My compatriot smiled as if he had gotten what he wanted: to anger me and make me snap.

"I don't know. I just wonder what Hanna would think if she found out about all this. Do you think she would be happy to see you bending over backward to have a stranger kneeled in front of you?"

The mention of my girlfriend made something stir in my stomach.

He knew perfectly well how I was feeling at that moment, and as much as my angry gaze was begging him to stop, he didn't seem willing to.

"And what do you think Diana would say if your girlfriend showed up unexpectedly at her birthday party? They would finally know about each other's existence, and it would be a perfect gift for your little pet!"

The blond's provocations were starting to go too far. I could feel my jaw tensing and my fists clenching. I was trying to keep my composure, God or whatever exists knew it well, but I couldn't take it anymore. Not anymore.

"Don't you dare talk about Di like that, Nico. You're crossing the line."

"I think I know what surprise you're preparing for Wagner after the party: a threesome with her and Hanna," he continued. "Well, that would be more to make you happy than them."

That comment was the last straw. I wasn't going to allow him to speak badly of either of the two girls, but I wasn't going to say anything at the moment because I knew that the punch I could receive in the face from Rosberg would cause me more problems than, if I was honest with myself, I didn't give a damn about.

Therefore, without saying another word, I turned around and headed towards the parking lot at the same time I heard the comments from the Williams driver calling me a coward, unfaithful, idiot, and a bunch of insults that I tried not to care about but definitely were affecting me more than I wanted them to. I realized this when I reached my car and kicked one of the bins next to it so hard that it was hard for me to walk the few meters that separated it from the driver's door.

On my way to the mall, doubts began to torment me. It was the first time I gave myself the opportunity to think about myself and what it seemed I was experiencing.

Was I being a good boyfriend to Hanna, or was I just behaving like a jerk who sometimes thought of another girl when he saw her? Was that fair to Di, or was it totally normal given the admiration I had for the Austrian?

As I made my way through the streets of Bahrain, what I was most afraid to ask myself was what had begun to flood my mind in a worrying way: did I truly love Hanna, or our relationship had become a habit that I couldn't break out due to the fear of the unknown?

I tried not to think too much about it because she didn't deserve it, but I couldn't avoid it anymore. Since Diana had come into my life in a closer way, I had been avoiding my feelings, and now, now that I finally seemed to recognize that something was wrong with myself, the mental block began to make itself present, along with the tears streaming down my cheeks as I drove in silence except for the constant echo in my head of Nico Rosberg's insults, which hadn't stopped since I lost sight of him.

When I arrived at the mall and parked the car clumsily, in a position that didn't even correspond to the white lines drawn on the asphalt, I took out my cell phone and saw that, in addition to a call from my partner, along with several text messages from her, there were a multitude of voicemail messages from Britta, possibly from missed calls. That only made me feel worse: the woman had only tried to communicate with me for, surely, something important.

I called her, and she didn't take long to answer. Her voice sounded really worried, but I didn't give her the opportunity to talk much because I felt the need to unload everything that had been inside me for so long:

"Britta... I need to talk to you because you are my mother when I don't have mine by my side," I murmured, my voice breaking because I couldn't contain my emotion. "I have so many doubts in my head, and I don't know what to do anymore."

"Of course, I'm here to listen to you. What's wrong? I saw you today in the paddock very excited preparing the party that I found out you're going to throw for Diana tomorrow."

I sighed, defeated and, why not say it, excited by her calm, calm voice, and by her last sentence. My words flowed in such a way that it seemed like I had been preparing them for days, and I ended up revealing more things than I had planned to do at first, including my biggest doubt. She listened attentively, nodding with small articulations as I shared my concerns.

"If I'm in a relationship, and I wanted to punch Diana's father when I found out they didn't celebrate her birthday, it's for a reason, right?"

"Is that what's bothering you?" the blonde wanted to know. "Do you think I didn't already know?"

I tensed up at what I suspected. Sometimes I was worried about how much Britta knew me.

"I know you've been thinking a lot about her, Seb," she revealed, "just as I know that's exactly what's been going through your head for longer than you'd like."

Yes, since the Saturday before the race in Monza, when I accidentally fell asleep in Di's bed.

"I don't know if I'm doing the right thing," I finally confessed. "I don't know if this is fair to Hanna."

"Before you're honest with her, you have to be honest with yourself. You can't pretend to have feelings you don't have, and if that's what's making you doubt, you need to clear your mind, slowly, but surely."

She was right, but saying it was easier than doing it. Nor could I afford to think about my love life in the middle of a Formula 1 season that, let's face it, was going pretty well for me.

"Di is different, and I won't deny that I'm attracted to her," I continued to explain, praying that she wouldn't judge my feelings, "but it's in a totally different way than Hanna."

"How so different?" Roeske asked curiously. "Different in what way, Seb?"

"In every way," I replied with determination. "It's as if at the same time they're the same, but at the same time, so different... She's not Hanna, Britta."

A muffled scream on the other end of the phone made me tense up in my seat. At the same time, I began to hear more noise, but I didn't decide to steer the conversation to find out where Britta was so that such a noise could be heard.

"I mean, Di is unique," I continued, trying to explain myself a little better, "and I can't compare her to anyone else. It's going to sound very selfish, but..."

"Say it," the woman demanded.

"I want to find out if what I feel for her is real.”

If even I was impressed by what I had just said, surely the woman on the other end of the call was too.

"Sebastian Vettel," if Britta Roeske said my full name, it wasn't a good sign, "I need you to listen to this carefully," indeed, she was right. "Sometimes, in life, we have to take risks to find out what we want and, moreover, what’s actually made for us."

"What do you mean?"

"That you should be honest and, especially, be careful with your feelings and those of the people you love, or say you love," she added. "If you think what you feel for Diana is more than just a whim, you really love her, and you think that the right thing to do is to fight for her, do it without fear."

If only the answer were easier than a simple yes or a simple no…

I hadn't even hung up on Roeske and I was already in a whirlwind of emotions, fighting with myself about my feelings. There was no doubt that, as much as Britta's words kept swirling in my mind, there was no better advice than one's own.

I didn't want to hurt anyone, and I was afraid of losing people who had become a fundamental pillar in my life over a simple slip-up that would eventually turn into a mistake.

Perhaps, for the sake of the mental health of more than one person, it was best to ignore how much, more and more, I cared about Diana Wagner, and settle for the love I believed was meant for me.

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leportraitducadavre · 1 year

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Naruto

Related content on my blog for cellphone users

Disclaimer

I’m not a shipper of any of the problematic four. I analyze canon and enjoy some crack-ships. Shipper to none.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING LINK IMAGES: The images provided in each post are subjected to manga4life's domain, the site modifies the server where the images are stored to keep them online if the prior server is threatened by anti-piracy attacks.

If you see that one of the images doesn't take you to the image and you have an "error" pop-up, try changing the prior link for this one: https://hot.leanbox.us/ [followed by manga/naruto/xxxx-xxx.jpg]

Naruto re-read

#posts - if this doesn't work, try searching the hashtag that follows: #naruto re read (spaces necessary)

Feminism

About feminism and my female characters critiques.

Inclusivity: The woke fandom's drug.

Female empowerment in the Naruto fandom and Feminism without feminists (a companion piece).

Fictional works vs. real historical events. Is it ok to use parallels?

The infinite “who’s strongest Kunoichi” debate and the sexist erasure/degradation of female characters. And a response to it.

Contradictory traits in a character = Bad writing?

Political review

Revolution! Is Internal Reform possible for the Shinobi System? Or is too corrupt to be changed from within?

The Curse of Hatred - or a poorly constructed theory based on bias.

The Chunin Exams -and their actual purpose

Naruhina/Hinata Hyuuga

Hinata’s suicide or why her intention to fight Pain wasn’t to save Naruto.

Hinata endorses slavery. A quick explanation of why.

NaruHina A full analysis of their relationship. Plus, could The Last have worked if it didn't reduce Naruto's character?

NejiHina or the possibilities of the pairing.

The Hyuga clan. And the Caged Bird Seal.

Sorry, no, Hinata never hit Pain.

SasuSaku/Sakura Haruno

Debunking the idea that Sakura was born into a “clanless” family.

SasuSaku a full analysis of their relationship, part one.

Sakura isn’t stronger than most characters. And a small addition.

Sakura and Ino, an analysis of their relationship.

Sakura and Naruto, an analysis of their relationship. Part 1

Sakura as Orochimaru's apprentice and Sasuke as a Medic AU.

Sakura's personality. A defense of Kishimoto's writing. Additionally

Other pairings

ShikaIno. Why this ship has problems.

My opinion about the idea that Kishimoto "planned SNS".

Uchiha clan

How the Uchiha are perceived, a short exploration through Kishimoto's writing.

Were the Uchiha truly oppressed?

Minorities using violence, is it ok?

Sasuke Uchiha

Sasuke and Kakashi’s relationship. What went wrong?

How Sasuke and Obito surpassed their role in the manga (meta).

Sasuke as a Medic AU and Sakura as Orochimaru's aprentice.

Itachi Uchiha

About Itachi, his fandom, and moral standpoints.

Can Itachi's character be fixed? Spoiler alert: It's the fandom's perception of him that should change, not his character.

Debunking an Itachi stan

Madara Uchiha

Madara Uchiha and sexism.

Madara Uchiha’s characterization.

Obito Uchiha

Obito Uchiha. A character ruined by the fandom and his relationship with Minato.

Obito’s redeemers. A small debunk of their arguments.

Shisui Uchiha

Shisui Uchiha. A quick analysis of his participation in the manga.

Fugaku Uchiha

Fugaku Uchiha, the neglectful father.

Naruto Uzumaki/Naruto the series

The white boy, the hero. Parallelisms between Santiago Maratea and Naruto Uzumaki.

Naruto Uzumaki, an underdog or a genius?

Naruto Uzumaki and the hero concept

Other characters

Team Taka. Their relevance.

Kakashi of the Sharingan.

Shikamaru‘s Sexism. Analyzing Sasuke Retrieval Arc.

Minato. A fandom-perceived hero that might not be such.

Jiraiya. My thoughts against the fandom’s obsession with calling him a hypocrite.

Neji vs. Kidomaru. An analysis of their fight.

Yamanaka clan techniques. and a quick rambling of the clan.

Rock Lee.

Hiruzen Sarutobi

Tobirama Senju

Tobirama. The Scientist. An exploration of Tobirama’s academic status and a debunking of his COH theory.

Does Tobirama defy masculinity? No, he doesn't.

Fear and Racism - an analysis of Tobirama’s advocates.

Boruto

Sarada Uchiha and the non-importance of her MS. A small rant about why the quote "she awoke her MS out of love, unlike the others" is false.

#naruto #naruto analisys #meta #pinned post

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queeniegalore · 2 years

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Our Dear Friend Jonathan - an Academic Analysis of Dracula Daily

I’ve had a little interest, so I'm posting the short project I did on DD for my Digital Humanities class at uni way back in June! A few caveats - this is technically an 'analysis of a digital artifact' and not an essay, so it's not hugely in depth, plus I was only given 1000 words (which i exceeded by quite a bit, whoops) so I didn't get to included nearly as much as I wanted to. Also tumblr only let me include 10 images, so I've cut out a few of the memes I'd used (it also erased my links but I have them all saved so I'll add them in list form if anyone wants me too). Finally, I've contacted all the artists included and obtained permission to post their (credited!) work! Enjoy!

Our Dear Friend Jonathan

Substack, Tumblr, and the Digital Intimacy of the World’s Biggest Book Club

By Rebecca F

Dracula Daily, created in 2021 by Matt Kirkland, is an astonishingly simple concept on the surface. Utilising the email subscription service Substack, Kirkland divides Bram Stoker’s 1847 epistolary novel into emails that are sent on the real-world date that corresponds with the in-fiction date of the events. Protagonist Jonathan Harker starts a travel diary detailing his trip to Transylvania on the 3rd of May, and the rest of the novel continues in journal entries, letters, newspaper clippings, and even a diary kept on phonograph, all dated, up until the final entry in November. Some entries are pages long, some only a few paragraphs, many days (almost two weeks in June) don’t have an entry at all. Every entry, however short, is emailed on the correct date, and unless the reader wants to go out and buy a copy of the book to ‘cheat’ and read ahead, that’s all they get. Interestingly, the book itself doesn’t present all of these entries chronologically – dates tend to skip back and forth. Reading via subscription, then, changes the fundamental experience of reading Dracula in more ways than one. In 2021 the mailing list slowly spread by word of mouth, and Kirkland ended up with 1600 subscribers. In 2022, after the idea went viral on popular internet social media sites Twitter and Tumblr, Dracula Daily has 200,000 subscribers – and climbing (Martinelli).

1. Image Header for the Dracula Daily subscription

How does reading Dracula via email change the experience of reading Dracula? For this analysis I’ll be dividing this question into two parts – firstly, the actual physical, practical and individual act of reading the novel via email and the way that effects the intended experience, and secondly, the wider, communal ‘book club’ aspect, which is the real reason Dracula Daily has gone so viral and become such an important moment in what I have coined digital intimacy.

2. Dr Seward by Tumblr user @crepuscol

Playing With Time

Dracula by Bram Stoker is a famously claustrophobic novel. The opening chapters with Jonathan Harker travelling to Count Dracula’s castle only to be held captive there lean on the sense of being trapped and confined with a monster – but these chapters are over in fifty or so pages, freeing the reader quite quickly and bringing a sense of relief before the slower build up to the main climax. Reading the book chronologically, however, changes all that. Having to wait for daily updates really intensifies the sense of time – we can feel how long Jonathan is trapped with the Count, and we can slowly see his mental state deteriorate. Occasionally, unlike in the novel as published, we escape the castle entirely, leaving him there alone, to read letters from his fiancée Mina, her friend Lucy Westenra and Lucy’s three suitors. These are amusing and engaging asides that nonetheless leave us screaming for the focus to return to our trapped protagonist. This builds a sense of intimacy, we’re now directly invested in Jonathan and every entry from him feels like a letter written personally to us. As Tumblr user @atundratoadstool puts it, “We all will–in fact–be skipping ahead some chapters in a few days to meet another narrator only to skip immediately back to catch up with our collective friend Jonathan Harker… You can’t have your dread or anticipation undercut by future events. Like all the characters you’re going to meet, you just have to wait for Dracula to act upon you,” (emphasis mine) (@atundratoadstool). Another user, @soup-is-here, describes it thus, “I think at this point the dread of Jonathan's isolation is so much worse than the idea of him actually being bitten, especially in this email format. It really demonstrates just how long the Count kept him there in a way sitting and reading the book wouldn't,” (@soup-is-here). So, we realise that the act of digitising this novel changes the nature of the novel.

In their essay “Universal Design and its Discontents,” Richard H Godden and Jonathan Hsy discuss the pervasive nostalgia that sometime overtakes discussions about digital culture, quoting Adam Kirsch who asks, “Is it actually true that reading online is an adequate substitute for reading on paper? If not, perhaps we should not be concentrating on digitizing our books but on preserving and circulating them more effectively,” (Godden and Hsy). One can’t help but wonder what traditionalists like this must think of a project like Dracula Daily, which seems to embody everything they despise about the digital humanities – and one could also feel a level of frustration that they would miss or dismiss the excitement that these readers are experience in discovering a new way of reading and meaningfully engaging with an old text.

3. Dracula going out in his lizard fashion by Tumblr user @horseboneologist

4. Jonathan Harker and Count Dracula by Tumblr user @nehezt

Digital Intimacy

Dracula Daily, as a movement rather than the literal subscription, really came to life on Tumblr. A quick browse through the Dracula Daily tag will show up thousands of posts, a combination of art, memes, discussion and – perhaps surprisingly – serious and thoughtful analysis, all with anywhere from dozens to thousands of interactions. At one point, Dracula Daily trended on Tumblr above popular Marvel Cinematic Universe release, the Eurovision song contest and hotly anticipated Dr Who casting news (Kuppermann).

Marketed as a youth pop culture microblogging site and having somewhat of a reputation for frivolity, one could be excused for being baffled that a 125-year-old piece of classical literature has gathered such a huge and devoted following. But it seems that the digital intimacy the subscription forges between the readers of Dracula and its characters also translates to the readers of Dracula and each other. In short, the act of reading the novel all together, one tantalising piece at a time, has created an exclusive 200,000-member strong book club, and in order to be part of it – to enjoy the in-jokes, to get the memes, to contribute to the meta – one has to keep up with the story.

Every day when the email arrives – the same time for everyone across the world – the Dracula Daily tag becomes flooded with people sharing their thoughts on the latest entry, replying to and reposting each other’s posts, adding to the discussion, arguing, analysing, and joking. This demonstrates a remarkable collective level of reading comprehension and critical thinking skills, as readers mine every sentence of the daily entry for material. There are blogs now to keep track of the different posts, one, who responded to my request for help in putting this project, has entries archived meticulously with tags like “memes,” “reference,” “serialisation,” and “analysis” (@draculadailytracker). And while the Tumblr denizens do tend to run with jokes like Jonathan Harker’s preoccupation with paprika, there is a surprising amount of intelligent literary discourse. An example of this is that when Jonathan writes an entry about the "g*psies" who show up at the castle, a number of posts sprang up acknowledging and discussing the racism, Orientalism, imperialism and anti-Romani sentiments that are embedded through the novel. There have also been mature discussions about the sexual politics of the book, as well as the homoeroticism and queer themes. The literary establishment has tended throughout the years to be overwhelmingly white and male, this is an excellent demonstration of the ways the digital humanities can work towards democratising and opening up these discussions.

In her essay “Whither the DH?” Lee Skallerup Bessette talks about the way Digital Humanities – in an academic sense – can help foster communities amongst disparate groups of people, she even likens it to the practice of letter writing between artists and intellectuals in years past (Bessette). This Tumblr phenomenon is an unusual demonstration of this, and all the more fascinating because it is entirely organic and without an official organising body. The only thing that holds Dracula Daily together is the daily email. There isn’t a real club, there aren’t prompts, there’s no incentive to join in. The material itself isn’t even new – it is merely presented in a new way. “When asked, Kirkland can only guess why people have been fascinated by the project,” writes Jacob Kupperman. “He proposes that the “gap between ‘vampire cliche’ and ‘actual Dracula’” driven by Dracula’s long cultural legacy may play a role, as well as the communal nature of reading the text via newsletter,” (Kuppermann). Or as a tumblr reader says, “not only is it free and making the novel available to just anyone who has an email, which is by far the most integral and necessary aspect of subscribing or interacting with anything these days in a formal way, but it's introducing this story in an ingenious, new format that gets the readers to interact with it not as a novel but as if, our dear Jonathan Harker, is emailing us personally,” (xmichaelmyers).

Ultimately, it remains to be seen whether Dracula Daily will survive the June posting drought, or make it to the end of its run with anywhere near the same amount of hype and engagement it received in its first month. But this phenomenon is a remarkable achievement in dh – it’s organic, it’s grass roots, and an excellent example of how literature can be reimagined through technology. As we collectively await updates from our dear friend Jonathan, we’re doing it together, intimately engaged, in the world’s biggest and most active book club.

Works Cited

atundratoadstool. Where Wild Flowers Grow of Their Own Accord. 7 May 2022. 10 June 2022. <https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/atundratoadstool/683528925666770944?source=share>.

Bessette, Lee Skallerup. "W(h)ither DH? New Tensions, Directions and Evolutions in Digital Humnities." Kim, Dorothy and Jesse Stommel. Disrupting the Digital Humanities. Brooklyn: Punctum, 2018. 419-454.

draculadailytracker. Tumblr Book Club. 10 June 2022. 10 June 2022. <https://draculadailytracker.tumblr.com/>.

Godden, Richard H and Jonathan Hsy. "Universal Design and Its Discontents." Kim, Dorothy and Jesse Stommel. Disrupting the Digital Humanities. Brooklyn: Punctum Books, 2018. 91-116.

Kuppermann, Jacob. "Dracula in Real Time." Long Now 19 May 2022. <https://longnow.org/ideas/02022/05/19/dracula-in-real-time/>.

Martinelli, Marissa. "Why Hundreds of Thousands of People Are Reading Dracula Together Right Now." Slate 17 May 2022. Website. <https://slate.com/culture/2022/05/dracula-daily-bram-stoker-book-newsletter-jonathan-harker.html>.

soup-is-here. Absolute Unit. 31 May 2022. 10 June 2022. <https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/atundratoadstool/683528925666770944?source=share>.

xmichaelmyers. The Wolf's Den. 05 May 2022. 10 June 2022. <https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/xmichaelmyers/683421341500751872?source=share>.

5. The Three Suitors by Tumblr user @marghen

#dracula daily #digital humanities #FINALLY getting around to posting this from last semester #got a aHD for this baby #I had a ridiculously small word limit so it’s not as in depth as I’d have liked 😭

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thepartyishere · 2 months

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This is long winded rant about Cogwheels by Akutagawa

I wrote this a while back in a fit of obsession over the irl Akutagawa (that will never go away). I'd consider it vague analysis/ summary and not 100% focused on the BSD character if that's what you're looking for. Tbh I'm practicing my analysis/ writing skills and I'm not very confident in them yet. All this warning, it's not actually that bad I think (hope), I just have high standards for myself.

Anyways this is for @twinksintrees who asked about it

PDF of Cogwheels by Akutagawa Ryunosuke that I used:

https://documents.pub/document/ryunosuke-akutagawa-cogwheels.html?page=1

Cogwheels is a fictional work by Akutagawa Ryunosuke, but it’s widely acknowledged to be a thinly veiled autobiography. It was written in 1927, the same year the author commits suicide.

The story follows the main character’s thought processes in his day to day life. The events that occur aren’t what captivates me, but the emotions and thought patterns described. The mood is consistently very alone, different, and other from the population. This feeling of otherness is furthered by the paranoia the main character is experiencing, which drives him away from the few people he knows and the various physical illnesses he struggles with. His thought patterns feel disjointed to the reader, containing lots of logical leaps. He'll notice a recurring theme or object, like seeing an airplane several times in different situations and become paranoid and obsessive over the meaning of it. Throughout the work these varying recurring themes seem random and unimportant to the reader until the climax in which the character goes on a walk and encounters each of the subjects of those recurring themes, which he had been perceiving as premonitions of insanity and death. The culmination of all the foreshadowed repetition and the subsequent breakdown he has as he believes he is dying breaks down the distance the reader feels to the illogical fears and thoughts. The paranoia becomes justified to an outside observer when it all comes together.

Cogwheels reflects Akutagawa’s deteriorating mental state, as he successfully committed suicide the same year it was written. According to his Wikipedia page, he had intensifying and persistent visual hallucinations throughout his life as well as anxiety. We’ll never know the specifics of his mental illness, but I believe liberties can be taken to apply the experiences of the main character in Cogwheels to its author as the story is mostly autobiographical. The main character’s thought patterns revealed what I interpreted as compulsions and possibly OCD (but I am not particularly knowledgeable on the subject), depression, paranoia and other symptoms I may not be able to diagnose. The way in which these experiences are written and the feelings the descriptions invoke could not have been done by someone who wasn’t experiencing those exact things.

The story feels like a very honest look into how Akutagawa thought and his worldview. This was written as his struggles and illnesses (mental and physical) were coming to climax. Another detail that may be Akutagawa’s thoughts projected is that multiple times in the story the character wants to admit himself to a mental hospital, but, "to go there meant death to me." Akutagawa’s life was plagued by fear of inheriting his mother’s madness. She was admitted to a mental institution when he was very young. Toward the end of his life that fear only grew as well as, "a vague sense of anxiety about my own future," which is one main reason for his suicide, given in his suicide note.

Regarding suicide, I can't help but think of how Dazai and Akutagawa's roles are reversed in BSD as they are in real life. The author Dazai greatly looked up to Akutagawa and I wonder what he may have thought and felt reading the works of a similarly depressed author. He was very affected by Akutagawa's death, being around 18 when it happened (Akutagawa was 35). The authors really are very similar, their works known for being bleak. It’s as if everyone else can't see how horrible things are and they are uniquely miserable in the world. As I continue to learn about the two authors I hope to compare their similarities in writing style and lifestyle in more depth.

Akutagawa also had connections to Junichiro, with whom he publicly disagreed over whether the content or the structure of a story is more important in writing. Akutagawa argued that structure, or how the story is told, is more important. Any relationships between the real life inspirations for the Bungou Stray Dogs characters interests me, and I find this opinion held by Akutagawa relevant to Cogwheels. The content of the story is the quite mundane and sad life of the character, while the descriptions of declining sanity and the emotions conveyed are what I believe make the work so compelling. I’d be interested in reading Junichiro’s work to compare how his preference for the content and plot of a story impacts his writing.

In Cogwheels, the character’s emotions are constantly being influenced by anything he may perceive as or relate to something negative. His “normal” thought patterns or casual day will be interrupted once he makes any sort of negative connection or suspicious observation. He will obsess over the meaning of it, spiraling into distress and anxiety.

This is my favorite example of that:

""Asylum" was precisely what it was. I somehow felt something soothing in the rosy tint of the wall and relaxed at a table. Fortunately there were only a few other customers there. I sipped a cup of cocoa and started to drag on a cigarette, as usual. The smoke rose in a faint blue stream up the rosy wall. The harmonious mingling of the soft colors was agreeable to me. But after a time I discovered a portrait of Napoleon on the wall to my left and began to feel uneasy again. When Napoleon was only a student, he had written on the last page of his geography notebook: "Saint Akutagawa Helena, a small island." lt might have been, as we say, only a coincidence. But it must have made even Napoleon shiver eventually . . . Gazing at Napoleon, I thought about my own work. And there burst upon me certain phrases in A Fool's Life. (Especially the words, "Life is more hellish than hell itself.") And also the hero's fate in my Hell Screen-a painter called Yoshihide. Then.. smoking I looked around the cafe trying to escape such memories. I had taken shelter here no more than five minutes earlier. Already the place had undergone a complete change. What made me most uncomfortable was the fact that the chairs and tables of imitation mahogany did not go with the rosy walls. Afraid I should fall into an agony imperceptible to others, I tried to get out of the cafe by quickly tossing down a silver coin."

This passage shows how one thing (a painting of Napoleon) will remind him of something negative and cause a downward spiral that seems to contain leaps between subjects, and he becomes distressed. As a fan of the writing style, I especially notice and admire the way Akutagawa describes the color of the wall as soothing in the beginning, with pleasant imagery, then cites the colors of the furniture and walls as his greatest source of discomfort in the end of the passage. The character feels as though the very environment around him has turned against him, changing with his shifting moods. What was pleasant has become hostile, the outside mirroring his inner state.

The last paragraph of Cogwheels is something that has struck me since the first time I read it. It’s the character’s reaction to the climax of the story, in which he went on a walk and had a breakdown over the culmination of the recurring premonitions:

“It was the most frightening experience in my life- l haven't the strength to go on writing. lt is inexpressibly painful to live in such a frame of mind. lsn't there anyone to come and strangle me quietly in my sleep?”

I am reminded of what Asagiri said in an interview: “This story (Bungou Stray Dogs) is not for people who are good at living.” Akutagawa was also arguably not good at living, which creates a connection between the inspiration for the manga character and its reader that fascinates me.

As much as I describe the thought patterns and paranoia in Cogwheels as something somewhat foreign, something experienced by someone who was nearing the end and reaching the height of their lifelong mental illness, I find some familiarity in it. Akutagawa was far from good at living and the lack of control and fear I sense in his life and in this story resonate with me. I’m drawn to the hopeless tone of his works and the tragedies of his life.

Sources and Further Info:

Akutagawa’s Wikipedia page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ry%C5%ABnosuke_Akutagawa

Some of his childhood and analysis/ comparison to Edgar Allen Poe

https://www.washburn.edu/reference/bridge24/Akutagawa.html

BSD Wiki for some of the relationship between author Dazai and Akutagawa

https://bungostraydogs.fandom.com/wiki/Real-life_References

A partial translation of the Asagiri interview (@Popopretty1 on Twitter)

https://twitter.com/Popopretty1/status/16634469970163916

#friends it is 4:16 am and I am too tired to keep rereading this so here you go #I kinda don't love it but I'm proud of it anways #it takes practice to get good so this is practice #this kind of thing is why my mom thinks im bonkers lol #slippery slimey #bungou stray dogs #if you read it you can leave constructive criticism or say something nice:)#akutagawa #guys idk if im cold or just very anxious about posting this bc i am literally shaking probably both #this is the first thing ive posted from a computer usually im on my phone #ok ill stop rambling and actually hit post

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ghostofacrow · 5 months

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i watched the Somerton RGU video and I'm assuming this one isn't plagiarised besides the wikipedia synopsys because I don't think the person who wrote it liked Utena, he keeps joking about how weird the show is and spends half the video trying to pick apart what's real and what is a metaphor and says he dislikes the movie because it blurs the line between reality and the metaphorical events more.

That's not how fiction works! Ohtori academy is definitively real in the show, it's even what Somerton treats as the baseline reality - it's still a metaphor!! For patriarchy or gendered society or just for adolescence in general, the things that are real in the show still mean something. Fictional events aren't either a metaphor or definitively real, this is some dream theory ass analysis and especially with something like Utena that deals so much in symbolism this is such a useless approach and it takes up the bulk of the video. "Do they actually have sword fights or not?" is possibly the least interesting angle you could take here.

Knowing that every time he had a good thought, it wasn't his, really makes me question if he is actually capable of meaningful media analysis that goes beyond 1:1 mapping elements of a movie onto real life (by real life I mean the experience of a white cis gay man). Genuinely does he know what symbolism is?

Then I remembered a clip from the Attack on Titan video where his main argument for why the Eldians aren't a metaphor for jewish people in ww2 is that there are some aspects of the story that don't match real life exactly but. They're marked with stars. There's an obvious ghetto. Everyone has german names in this japanese story. The general look of all the technology clearly say ww2 era. The idea that a story can use this many specific signifiers of a very narrow time and place but because there are some elements that don't match reality exactly, it's actually not about that history is so weird.

So I went to look up the clip and, of course, he is also wrong about the history, most of the things he list that didn't happen in WW2 did actually happen. Honorary Aryans were a thing. There's even direct examples of people of jewish descent (like Helmuth Wilberg) earning honorary aryan status through military service, the thing Somerton confidently claims didn't happen.

There wasn't a crack special forces unit in the Nazi military made up of Jews but the Sonderkommandos are a well documented historical fact. A lot of the day to day operation of the death camps was handled by prisoners who were forced into that position and they were killed and replaced on schedule.

He gets confused about what Paradis is because surely it must stand in for exactly one real historical thing or the whole allegory is fake and claims it's not a ghetto because there is a literal ghetto later in the story. He even admits that it might be Israel but "jewish exile island" is also literally the Madagascar Plan, the only reason this didn't happen was the logistic issues of moving thousands of people halfway across the world while under a naval blockade.

There's so much you can argue about how Attack on Titan uses it's historical elements (and personally I think it uses all of this very carelessly), but denying that they are there because there wasn't a jewish exile island irl is so stupid. I started out just being confused about the RGU analysis and just wanted to get a backup argument but what I actually found is Holocaust disinformation and it feels both wrong to tag this onto the "Somerton doesn't understand what a metaphor is" post but I also don't want to ignore it so here it is. Fuck this guy seriously

#james somerton #long post #this was supposed to be about rgu but #cw Holocaust

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tanadrin · 1 year

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Almea is interesting because, despite being fantasy--originally of a very classic mold; it seems to have started out as much of a place for Zompist to set D&D campaigns as anything else--its author is clearly concerned with the mechanics of history: although there is no simple 1:1 comparison (Verduria is not an allegory for France; Ctesifon was not Rome; Xurno is not Russia), the way the world is presented, and the way in which the author explores it, meshes well with the major trends of our own world and how we understand them. Almea is a world you can make historical atlases of; it is a world with its own history of colonialism and international relations and a similar technological arc. It is, in short, a set of fantasy starting conditions (”what if three million years ago aquatic elves and swamp orcs fought an apocalyptic war, and in the aftermath a new hominid civilization tried to re-run Earth history”) whose consequence are worked out in a fairly Earthlike way.

You might contrast this with Middle-Earth--for all that Tolkien had a pretty good head for history and language, he’s much more interested in exploring his fictional history through the framework of legendary narrative. Zompist has the Historical Atlas and the Almeopedia; but Tolkien’s big work is the Silmarillion, a work of history which is primarily concerned with telling that history in the epic mode. You can’t really make a historical atlas of Middle-Earth--for one, it’s not detailed enough. Corners of the world which fall out of the story, like the outer provinces of Arnor after the collapse of the northern kingdom, basically just disappear. There might be something in the big gaps in eastern Rhovanion and Rhun, but it’s clearly not relevant to the stories Tolkien wants to tell, so we have scant sense of what that is.

Comparing different approaches to worldbuilding is interesting to me, because once you start doing that, you really expose how shallow the imagination is of people who think of worldbuilding as, like, a secondary accessory to “real” storytelling. It is a fairly common position that worldbuilding is, I don’t know, basically a second-order activity, an indulgence at best, and that the real purpose of worldbuilding is to provide a good foundation for “proper” stories, which the ends of worldbuilding ought to serve. To me, though, worldbuilding has always been an interesting activity in its own right. Often a much more interesting activity, because how you design a world, the internal and external logic you approach it with, and how you present the results of that design, will not only, as a matter of inevitable consequence, cause certain stories to emerge from that world, in a way that feels as natural as breathing, but will give a strong scaffold, a supporting superstructure that helps those stories fit together in a way that transcends their individual arcs and themes.

For example, all stories that you might tell about Almea are part of an analytic history of a fantasy world that is About what it means to approach a fantasy setting with the tools of modern historiography, political analysis, and sociology, as much as they are About the individual themes of those stories. All stories you might tell about Middle-Earth are About reclaiming the epic mode for modern fantasy, and the possibility of redemption in a world marred by suffering, as they are the Silmarils or the One Ring. Bad worldbuilding often is merely an adjunct to storytelling--and that’s how you get shared settings that feel like a hodgepodge whose elements have no coherent relationship to one another, because the story someone wants to tell comes first, and, well, they’re going to force it to work in the setting whether it’s natural to it or not. And even good writers can build (or contribute to) lousy, boring worlds using this approach.

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autisticsupervillain · 8 months

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Fictional Throwdown Friday!

This Week's Fighters...

Alex Mercer vs Emperor Belos!

Conditions:

Speed Equalized. Season 1-2 Belos is used.

Scenario:

After having successfully assimilates mankind into his hive mind, Mercer discovers the door to the Boiling Isles and decides to "cure" it as he did mankind. Belos rejects Mercer's offer to join forces in wiping out the Isles, viewing him as even more disgusting than the witches.

Analysis: Mercer

It's the early 21st century and the apocalypse is here. A viral pandemic has engulfed New York city and begun assimilating all in It's wake. The government is powerless to stop the fleshy monstrosities that roam the streets. It seems that the end is here. And the man responsible is none other than Alex Mercer.

Fortunately, that is not who we're talking about today. Let's take it from the top.

Alex Mercer was a scientist who worked for the pharmaceutical company known as GENTEK. He was a brilliant virologist, a progidy even among GENTEK's most intelligent minds. As such, he was made head researcher on the Blacklight Virus, a powerful bio-weapon that promised to make the company rich. When his research was shut down by Blackwatch, a Government squad designed to contain viral epidemics, Mercer refused to go down quietly. He spitefully unleashed Blacklight onto New York as he was shot dead, the virus consuming and copying his body perfectly as it was freed.

Alex Mercer died that day and the Blacklight Virus woke up wearing his skin.

Believing itself to be Alex Mercer, the Blacklight Virus escaped from the morgue and set out to uncover his past and discover who he was. This doesn't go do well, as it results in him unleashing another sentient bioweapon known as the Redlight Virus, who swiftly begins causing chaos across New York. "Mercer" teams up with Mercer's sister Dana to both bring down GENTEK and stop the Redlight Virus, putting Blacklight into position to put together the pieces of his past by assimilating GENTEK staff.

The revelation that he isn't the real Akex Mercer shakes the virus to his core, giving him an existential crisis that follows him for the rest of his life. This causes him to eventually become disillusioned with humanity, motivating to try assimilating it into his own personal "superior race". This backfires when Mercer tries to assimilate Sgt. James Heller, whose "stuborn DNA" allows him to resist Mercer's influence after being transformed. Heller eventually grows strong enough to assimilate Mercer straight back, ending his spree for good.

From here on out, I'll be referring to the Blacklight Virus as Alex Mercer just for simplicity's sake, even if they are technically different characters.

Alex Mercer is effectively John Carpenter's The Thing on steroids. He's a sentient hunk of biomass capable of absorbing and shape-shifting into nearly anyone he so much as touches. While Mercer may technically be a "virus" he's shown to be capable of absorbing and infecting inorganic material, implying he attacks not on the cellular level, but the atomic one. This is what allows him to absorb and replicate clothing, as well as immitate the functions of some minor forms of technology, such as handheld radios. He also gains the memories of the people he absorbs, allowing him to use their identity to the fullest while undercover. He can even evade sensors designed specifically to detect viruses like himself and fool other shapeshifters.

Having said that, he still has plenty of combative powers at his disposal for when stealth isn't an option. His complete control over his own body grants him monstrous versatility, allowing him to turn his limbs into hammers that can smash tanks and whips that can pull helicopters out of the sky. He can create pseudo-wings to glide through the sky, can alter his eyes to see in the infrared spectrum and detect infected people, can run up walls, and can cover himself in steel-like armor to shrug off damage from powerful foes.

As if his offensive capabilities weren't enough, he's nigh unkillable to boot. He can shrug off the radioactive fallout of a nuke, can stop the Redlight Virus from trying to take over his mind, can endure explosions that reach up to several thousand degrees, and can adapt to being infected with every virus known to mankind. What's more his absurd levels of regeneration allow him to come back from being flat out liquified.

Anyone whom Mercer doesn't assimilate, he infects, granting him complete control over their mind and body. He's led an army thousands strong and nearly conquered the world with it. What's more, he gets stronger with every person he assimilates. Mercer as absorbed the Redlight Virus and the Supreme Hunter, two bioweapons even stronger than he himself was at the time, as he has the combined strength and experience of thousands of soldiers, making him a force to be reckoned with in combat.

To get an idea of exactly how strong that is, Mercer back in Prototype 1 defeated Elizabeth Green, who could cause earthquakes with 480 tons of tnt of force behind them. By the time of Prototype 2, he's absorbed countless more people and thus grown far, far stronger than that.

Source:

With all that being said, he still has one major flaw. Alex Mercer has a limited supply of biomass inside his body, which he must maintain by constantly absorbing other people. As such, his regeneration can fail if he takes enough constant damage and even on a full tank he has limits. When Mercer was obliterated by a nuke at the end of Prototype 1, only one small chunk of him remained. It was only after absorbing a crow that came to feed on him that Mercer came back.

Alex Mercer is an unstoppable, insatiable monster with apocalyptic ambitions... and the virus he made is pretty nasty too.

Analysis: Belos

The Boiling Isles are not a kind or welcoming place. The seas and rain boil hot enough to melt a man's skin. Rainbows can turn you inside out. Monsterous beasts roam the land and the closest civilization floats on the corpse of a long dead Titan. Yet, the most dangerous threat any human can face is the mysterious masked witch who calls himself Belos... and the monsterous man he is underneath.

Philip Wittebane was your average 1600s American colomist when he and his older brother Caleb moved into the small town of Gravesfield. They both found themselves quickly adjusting to the town's local culture and practices, developing a taste for witch hunting at an early age as a result. This passion, however, was derailed in adulthood when the brother's happened upon an actual witch. The beautiful sorceress Evelyn who hailed from the mystical Demon Realm captivated Caleb with her beauty and magic, convincing the older Wittebane to follow her to home realm.

Believing his brother to be under a dastardly spell, Philip followed suite to save his brother, only to find the two happily married and expecting a baby. Caleb and Evelyn had genuinely fallen in love. Unable to reconcile his puritanical beliefs with the reality before him, Philip murdered his brother Caleb in a fit of rage and swore to annihilate all witches everywhere. No matter how many years it would take and how many brothers he would have to bury.

As a human, Philip could not use magic naturally by himself. Witches have bile sacks next to their heart that stores magic within them, but humans have no such thing, so Philip had to find alternatives. As such, he taught himself how to use glyphs, using the language of the Titan in written form to harness the magic emitted by his corpse. Other humans use glyphs written on pages or the environment to cast spells, but Philip took a bit of a shortcut. By carving glyphs directly into his own body, Philip could cast magic with nothing but a thought. Similarly, Philip found an exploit in the laws of magic that would allow him to cheat death itself. By feasting on the souls of a witches Palismen, or staff, Philip could live for hundreds of years, feeding off the magic of the thousands of souls trapped within his body.

However, these practices had disastrous side effects on his body, causing him to literally melt alive if he didn't regularly consume more and more Palismen, to the point of eating them to extinction. As such, Philip had a time limit on his goal, so he'd need a little help. Upon discovering the god-like being known as The Collector, Philip used their guidance to master all forms of magic and launch his master plan.

Philip took on the name Belos and set his thousand year plan into motion. Firstly, he would revive his brother as a "Grimwalker", seeking to mold this new version into a perfectly loyal witch hunter to fit Belos' own personal ideals. The corpses of thousands of failed attempts litter his layer, showing how little cares for a brother who doesn't obey his every whim. Then, Belos would create the coven system, convincing every witch in the realm to let him brand them with a coven sigil that seals away their ability to use any magic outside of their covens. Then, finally, he would enact the Day of Unity ritual, using the sigils to suck the life out of every witch on the Isles, killing all of witch kind.

To this end, Belos ironically became the most powerful witch of all time. He is known to have access to fire, ice, and light glyphs, allowing him to blast you with massive flames, create huge mounds of ice, and create floating orbs of light. He can create shields to protect himself from harm, manipulate plant life to his will, and telekinetically ragdoll you with just a thought. His telepathy can reach across his entire palace and his teleportation lets him cross the battlefield in seconds.

Luz Noceda, another human who uses magic, was able to make a massive wall of ice almost the size of a boat. Given the energy needed to freeze the boiling hot waters of the Boiling Isles, creating this ice would've required an energy roughly equivalent to 7 kilotons of tnt, and Belos is literally decades ahead of her, to the point of tanking her attacks without a scratch and nearly petrifying her in stone.

Source:

However, all of this power has come at a grievous cost. If Belos were to go too long without eating a Palismen and runs out of magic to sustain himselfwith, he'll melt into a rotting green slime monster. While this constant rot has given him the ability to stretch his limbs and shapeshift to a degree, the fact that he has such abilities at all shows how bad his condition has gotten. If reduced to his full on slime monster state, Belos will be forced to possess other beings to sustain himself, rotting away and consuming his hosts into lifeless skeletons for months until he's forced to find a new one. But, even then, he's remarkably difficult to put down, as he could still pull himself back together even after being smashed into a puddle by the Collector. Yet, in this state, his death is essentially garranteed. He'll run out of life to consume eventually and he'll eventually melt away into nothing. A perfect metaphor for the soulless parasite Philip Wittebane is under his benevolent fascade.

Throwdown Theme:

youtube

Throwdown Breakdown:

These two have a lot of versatility and a lot of power and abilities they can bounce off each other. I think Mercer pretty definitively has the intelligence and skill advantage. While Belos is positively ancient and has learned magic stronger than anybody's from one of the most powerful and ancient characters in the setting, Mercer has all the combined knowledge of thousands of assimilated soldiers and scientists rattling around in his head. I can also see him countering some of Belos's abilities with his shapeshifting, assimilating his plants and ditching his limbs to avoid petrification.

However, by that same token, Philip's magic is certainly going to catch Alex off guard and he's more familiar with shapeshifters than Mercer is with magic, due to Abominations existing in his setting and Belos being one himself. Hell, that may even give him a clue he should keep his distance given his own powers. His wide variety of spells would give Mercer a lot to try and adapt to while his teleportation would keep Alex from getting close, forcing Mercer to try attack from a distance where his arsenal is more limited relative to Philip's.

I fully believe Mercer can out-assimilate Belos. He absorbs matter down to its individual molecules, while Belos just slowly rots you from within, making it much faster and more potent. Because of this, Mercer would almost assuredly win if Philip runs out of magic.

However, I believe Belos can zone him out and run him out of biomass first thanks to one key thing: power.

Mercer is far stronger than 480 tons of TNT. Belos however, is far stronger than 7 kilotons of TNT. Or, more precisely, 7000 tons of TNT. With a stat gap like that, he'd likely liquify Mercer with every hit he lands, with even Alex's armour doing little to help against that gap. With that big a difference in strength, Belos could control Mercer's movement and options with telekinesis, keeping him away. Once Philip sees Mercer eat one of his summons, he'd just stop using them to stop giving Mercer's more power and assuming doing so gives Alex similar power to Philip, then he'd still have to close the gap with telekinesis and teleportation keeping him at bay.

There is the argument that Mercer could shapeshift glyphs onto his skin or guve himself a bile sack to let himself use magic. However, he wouldn't know to do the latter as he's never encountered witches before. For the former, I think it is well in Alex's capabilities physically and intellectually to notice Belos's glowing glyphs and copy them onto his skin, but Philip wears robes that cover his entire body specifically to hide them. He'd have to damage Philip's clothes to notice them and that again requires getting close.

If Philip runs out of magic and regresses to his slime monster state, he almost certainly gets absorbed. But he'd likely eat through Alex's biomass reserves first due to his strength advantage. Mercer can close this gap by absorbing his summons, but that would still have him struggling against telekinesis and teleportation and he'd have to constantly adapt to Belos's wide variety of spells, such as his fire and petrification, before he could get in close.

If both characters do everything right according to their current knowledge of the situation, then Belos is the more likely victor.

So Belos beats Mercer, Mercer beats Alucard, and Alucard beats Belos. Genocidal monster rock-paper-scissors. I'd settle the battle royale debate, but I think I'll be taking a break from these three from awhile. I can't spam the same five characters forever.

After the next one, but that's a joke fight so it's a freebie.

This Throwdown's Winner is...

Emperor Belos!

#fictional throwdown fridays #the owl house #emperor belos #philip wittebane #prototype #alex mercer #Youtube

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leebird-simmer · 1 year

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Intro to Film Studies, Ch. 10

per John Halas, animation’s key characteristics are:

symbolization of objects and human beings

picturing the invisible (sound waves, magnetism, radar, etc)

penetration (showing interior workings of the body or of a machine; showing complex inner states, like dreams or memories or fantasies)

selection, exaggeration, and transformation

showing the past and predicting the future

controlling speed and time

as early as 70 BC, there is evidence of a mechanism that projected hand-drawn moving images onto a screen, described by Lucretius in De Rerum Natura.

16th century: erotic flipbooks in Europe

1825: Peter Mark Roget’s ‘persistence of vision’ theory, explaining how human beings perceive movement (later debunked by neuroscience, but a very reasonable theory at the time)

1831: phenakistoscope developed, made up of two rotating discs which appeared to make an image move

1861: Kinematoscope developed; employed a series of sequential photographs mounted on a wheel and rotated.

1877: praxinoscope pioneered by Emile Reynaud. A strip of images were mounted in a revolving drum and reflected in mirrors, a model later revised and renamed theatre optique.

1890s: comic strips become popular in print media. This is important because comics provided some of the initial vocabulary for cartoons (characters continuing from one episode to the next, sequential narratives, visual jokes, speech ‘bubbles’)

Proto-animation: early live-action cinema demonstrated certain techniques which preceded their conscious use as a method in creating animation. This is largely in regard to stop-motion, mixed media and the use of dissolves to create the illusion of metamorphosis in early ‘trick’ films.

Incoherent cinema: influenced by the ‘Incoherents’ (artists working between 1883-1891), a movement principally led by French caricaturist Emile Cohl, this kind of animation was often surreal, anarchistic, and playful, relating seemingly unrelated forms and events in an often irrational and spontaneous fashion. Lines tumble into shapes and figures in temporary scenarios before evolving into other images.

Animated documentary: In recent years, there has been an exponential rise in the production of animated documentary. This has essentially been characterized by the fusion of documentary tropes (non-fiction subject matter, participant interviews and analysis, use of statistical and archival evidence) and animation, resulting in a reclamation of what might be termed ‘naïve histories’ in the spirit of offering alternative perspectives on the dominant grand narratives of contemporary social, cultural, and national existence.

Character animation: Many cartoons and more sophisticated adult animated films (Japanese anime, for example) are still dominated by ‘character’ or ‘personality’ animation, which prioritizes exaggerated and sometimes caricatured expressions of human traits in order to direct attention to the detail of gesture and the range of human emotion and experience. This kind of animation is related to identifiable aspects of the real world and does not readily correspond with more abstract uses of the animated medium.

Anthropomorphism: The tendency in animation to endow creatures, objects and environments with human attributes, abilities and qualities. This can redefine or merely draw attention to characteristics which are taken for granted in live action representations of these things, and literally create original ‘worlds’, which nevertheless have a high degree of familiarity and identification. {note: Bojack Horseman does an incredible job with this; the eating habits, gait, posture, mannerisms, etc. of the background characters add so much texture!}

Walt Disney remains synonymous with animation because of his radical technical & aesthetic innovations between 1928-1942, sometimes referred to as the ‘Golden Era’ of cartoon animation.

1. Walt Disney Productions founded in 1923

2. Disney premiered first synchronized sound cartoon in 1928: Steamboat Willie

3. Disney introduced Technicolor to cartoons in 1932 with Flowers and Trees (which later won an Oscar)

4. Ub Iwerks (Disney’s first and most influential animator) developed the multi-plane camera, which achieves the illusion of perspective by having the relevant image painted on a series of moveable panes of glass placed directly behind each other. Elements of the image can be painted in the foreground, other elements in the mid-spaces, and other elements in the receding background.

5. Disney releases the first full-length, Technicolor, sound-synchronized, animated cartoon feature: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

Deconstruction: All media ‘texts’ are constructed. To understand all the components within each construction, it’s necessary to deconstruct the text and analyze all its elements. For example, the cartoon is made up of a number of specific aspects which define it as a unique cinematic practice (i.e. its frame-by-frame construction; its modes of representation and so on).

Synecdoche: The idea that a ‘part’ of a person, an object, a machine, may be used to represent the ‘whole’, and work as an emotive or suggestive shorthand to the viewer, who invests the ‘part’ with symbolic associations.

Iconic: The dominant signs that signify a particular person or object (Chaplin’s bowler hat, mustache, and cane; Daffy Duck’s upturned beak and lisping voice)

Ideology: a dominant set of ideas and values which inform any one society or culture, which are imbued in its social behavior and representative texts at a level that is not necessarily obvious or conscious. An ideological stance is normally politicized and historically determined.

Metamorphosis: The ability for a figure, object, shape or form to relinquish its seemingly fixed properties and mutate. This transformation is literally enacted within the animated film and acts as a model by which the process of change becomes part of the narrative of the film.

Condensation: The compression of a set of narrative or aesthetic agendas within a minimal structural framework. Essentially, achieving the maximum amount of suggested information and implication from the minimum amount of imagery used.

Squash & stretch: Many cartoon characters are constructed in a way that resembles a set of malleable and attached circles which may be elongated or compressed to achieve an effect of dynamic movement. When animators ‘squash’ and ‘stretch’ these circles, they effectively create the physical space of the character and a particular design structure within the overall pattern of the film. Interestingly, early Disney shorts had characters based on ‘ropes’ rather than circles and this significantly changes the look of those films.

Reduced animation: Animation may be literally the movement of one line which, in operating through time and space, may take on characteristics which an audience may perceive as expressive and symbolic. This form of minimalism constitutes reduced animation, which takes as its premise ‘less is more.’ Literally an eye movement or the shift of a body posture becomes enough to connote a particular feeling or meaning.

#my notes #study blog #film studies

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poohnotpiku · 2 years

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Intro - I am not Piku....

I am NOT Piku….

Before I start dumping all the garbage in my head onto my blogs (yeah…am planning to write a series of them!!!), I would like to put forward a disclaimer…This is my first time trying to write a blog…so please be kind….else…do what you gotta do… 😊

Let’s first talk about Piku….yeahhhh, you Bollywood freaks got it right….Piku is the main character from Shoojit Sircar’s 2015 Hindi movie ‘Piku’, played by beautiful Deepika Padukone. The movie also has great actors like Amitabh ji and Irrfan Khan (may his soul rest in peace). The story revolves around how Piku lives with her aged ailing father (Amit ji) and deals through different hilarious and emotional incidents of day-to-day life…..I will not go into more details….do watch the movie (if you haven’t yet)…it’s a very good movie!

Now coming back to me….I am, let’s say, Pooh!... Sometimes I think I am more of a ‘poo’ (eww yucksss)…Am I? Not sure…who cares!!...anyways…so I am in my thirties living with my dad, who is a patient with many issues…and that’s where I think there is a slight similarity….a veryyy teeny-tiny similarity with Piku, which makes my friends and relatives say – ‘Pooh, you are real-life Piku’ (me rolling my eyes!!!!)….no worries guys….I will walk you through various chapters of my life and let you decide…Am I a Piku?? I don’t think so….we will see! We will do an in-depth ‘gap-analysis’…shucks….the techie in me…oh yes, I am a techie by profession...

I have a younger sister, let’s call her DeeDee, who is married but lives in the same city as me (Thank God!!!). I have a younger brother, let’s say Sonu, who is currently a nomad i.e. he did his masters in Indore, then work-from-home in Kolkata (yes I am from Kolkata, India) during pandemic and now he is working-from-office in Mumbai…so you get the idea. These three people are the pillars of my life….And then there is Singh Jiju, my sister’s husband, who has been sucked into our mad family. I am sure he feels, he is in an upside-down or a downside-up (is there such a term??) world, whenever he is with us (rofl).. But as dad says, he is a saint and he kinda is! He has been our support through various ups and downs in our lives (we have had many!) in last 5years…

Now that I have introduced the main characters of my ‘saga’, I can next plan to discuss more on ‘Pooh Vs Piku’ battle in my later posts…Am I Pooh? Am I Piku? Am I Pooki? Or Am I Spooky??? I leave it onto you guys to decide….Until then, ciao!

P.S.:

1. I am going to be cent percent Factual….no Fiction…tighten your seat-belts 😊

2. You would see lots of ‘…..’ in between my sentences. This means I am giving a ‘slight pause’, not a big pause as a comma, but somewhere between a continuous sentence and a comma. RIP English language!!!

3. If you see some words trailing with their last characters repeated N times, it means I am literallyyyyyy screaming out those words.

4. You would see long sentences with inappropriate or missing punctuation. This is because these are my mind’s rumblings and they have no brakes, they just keep spilling out!

5. Read my posts with open souls and not with spectacles of an English teacher :D

#poohnotpiku

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dearestones · 1 year

Note

For the writing ask, 8, 28, & 38 please! :) Hope ur having a great day <33

Hey, Devin here!

8. If you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

Oh my gosh, what a delightful question! Let's see...

I think it really depends on what characters I'm using and the scenario that I'm using them in! You see, I can write paragraphs upon paragraphs of scenery, building up to the characters interacting, and I can focus on their actions regarding each other. For me, when characterizing characters, it's not just the dialogue that is a part of them, but also their actions.

Do they twirl their hair when they're bored? Play with the uneven edges of old tables? Tap their feet against the legs of their chair?

On the other hand, I absolutely adore dialogue. With the right identifiers, pauses, and context given through words alone, you can convey what a character is doing, feeling, and how they are effecting their environment, others, and even themselves.

I don't know, you can take these elements by themselves and depending on your execution, can come up with extremely good pieces of fiction if need be.

Of course, if you say entire story... do you mean novel length or one-shot, drabble fic style? For my purposes, I can write a fic that is solely based on the descriptions of characters' actions for maybe... 1-2k words. Perhaps? As for dialogue heavy stuff, since we're focusing mostly on dialogue, maybe a little less or more than 1k.

I don't know, I think it would be an interesting challenge hehehe.

28. Who is the most delightful character you’ve ever written? Why?

Don't ask me this question! Hehehe!

Let's see....

In the past, it definitely would have been AE-3803 and U-2001 from Cells at Work, Veneziano (North Italy) from Hetalia, and Alastor from Hazbin Hotel.

As of recent memory, that honor belongs to Hacker from Akudama Drive, Tim Wright from Marble Hornets, and Jade Leech from Twisted Wonderland!

(I know, I'm cheating, but bear with me).

Let's break it down!

AE-3803:

She's so cute! Oh my gosh, she's wonderful, resilient, and she is a great foil to U-1146! I went into so many analysis posts between her and U-1146 on my main blog (especially back in 2020-2021) when I was writing my magnum opus of the time, the Abnormalities!verse. I won't get into too many spoilers, but my gosh, I took so many of the characteristics that are canon to her, and then I made her go through it. (What is it, you may ask? Well, I put her through the ringer and she is traumatized). She is delightful in the way that you know at the end of the day, you know she'll get back on her feet no matter how bruised and aching she may be. She'll rise above her traumas and look her tormentors in the eye with both compassion and understanding. But through it all, she will harden her resolve, her weak cell structure turning to steel. She is my baby and she has gone through so much! ;; That isn't to say she isn't wonderful in canon. She is. She serves as one of the more lighthearted aspects of the series and she is a wonderful companion to have when time gets tough, especially in the later chapters.

U-2001:

He's an old man! There's next to nothing about him in canon, but I always headcanon him to be such an old man who loves watching from the sidelines! He doesn't say much, but when he does, you can guarantee that he will be a deadpan snarker and will surprise you with either the world's greatest advice or the dirtiest joke imaginable and you will have to deal with that reality because no one will ever believe you. He is the blorbo that no one else wanted and I adopted way back in 2018. For the real ones who followed from my main blog and used to be bombarded by CAW (mah booiiiii!!!!)

Veneziano:

He's an old man with tons of issues buried underneath a concerningly fractured and thin veneer of clumsiness and ineptitude! I won't say more, but my gosh, I made an entire anthology series for him on ffnet and I participated in a week long event based on prompts which you can view on my main tumblr and on my ao3. Long story short, he is someone who you know has layers upon layers of trauma and personality underneath, but the thing you'll notice upon meeting him is that his smile is radiant, one that draws you in. It isn't until you take a step back that you realize that it's empty and quite sad.

Alastor:

He's a radio demon! It's been a while, but someone once requested to have a deaf! reader x Alastor one shot way back when... and let me tell you... The process behind that fic was something else. Just... I don't know what to say. The zaniness behind his radio personality and the evil that lurks behind his ever present smile? That stuck with me while writing him.

Hacker:

He's a maverick in a world filled with other mavericks! In my fics, I always think him more of the cycnical, younger brother archetypes. It's such a shame that Akudama Drive was short as it was, but from what little of what I've seen of Hacker, he is such a neat charaacter??? I love him so much. His snark, deadpan delivery at times, and snark was a definite bonus when viewing the anime for the first time. Furthermore, his relationship with the main character was also great? They were such an iconic sibling duo who I would die for because the feels! All of the feels! Not only that, but his character plays off the other zany and almost nonsensical rules and other players in the anime. Back when a lot of people used to request me for Akudama Drive, interactions besides x readers were in high demand and seeing some of the weirdest combinations for interactions were the highlight of my day. Seeing him play off with other character archetypes was always a joy to me because he could range from disgruntled, tsundere little brother to someone who can be gigantic thorn in someone's side because he's a little shit who knows too much.

Tim Wright:

He is a man who I can project my fears and mental issues on. That's it. Okay, I kid, but there are so many other people who can write an analysis on him and be loads better than what I can say. What I will admit, however, is that he showed me that life is possible even after years of trauma and repression. That it is worth keeping moving forward, to seek help when possible, and to face the past in order to ultimately heal. In one of my fics, I had to put myself in his shoes and when I did... I just felt simultaneously bittersweet and sad, but at the same time, determined to move forward--to be compassionate and kind.

Jade Leech:

He is the eely perfect character. Nothing else should be said. Hahahah! I'm not sure how obvious it is, but I love Octavinelle as a whole. The aesthetic, the non-human characteristics, the strange things they say or do that denotes them as merfolk and therefore other than humans... It's all there! I could have easily said the same for Azul and Floyd, but with Jade, there's also the underlying philosophy of how the sea works underneath his veneer of a gentleman. He's somewhat cold and calculative, like a scientist who doesn't have the moral or ethical wherewithal to stop experimentaing, hahah! Yet, at the same time, he isn't cruel or needlessly malicious, he's bored and just wants to have fun. He tickles my brain just right and writing his internal observations and what he takes note of is what really gets me.

Have you figured out what are my favorite aspects are when writing characters? ;D

38. What is something about your writing process YOU think is Really Weird? If you are comfortable, please share. If you’re not comfortable, what do you think cats say about us?

I... I don't have a writing process?

I know there are lots of people who say that you have to use outlines or write blurbs or jump back and forth in the timeline, but like...? I don't?

I usually just write as a train of thought and then it happens to turn into a story. Of course, there's the proofreading part, but that usually occurs after I let the fic simmer for a day or two before posting.

Also, I downloaded this extension where everything I type makes a typewriter sound.

It's awesome and it helps me focus.

And the inclusion of listening to the same song on repeat is also a great addition to the writing process.

Thanks for the questions and I hope that you have a wonderful day! :D

Feel free to ask more! :D

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